Hong Kong: Xia Baolong welcomes delegation Led by Director of the Chief Executives Office Carol Yip, a delegation of politically appointed officials for national studies and duty visits began a study programme in Beijing yesterday. The delegation was received by Director of the State Councils Hong Kong & Macao Affairs Office Xia Baolong. Mr Xia extended a warm welcome to the under secretaries and political assistants from various departments of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government who joined the programme and acknowledged their work so far, emphasising that politically appointed officials are an integral part of the Hong Kong SARs governance team and perform vital functions. Mr Xia added that he hopes all members will fulfil their oaths faithfully, demonstrate their patriotism and love for Hong Kong through concrete actions, continuously strengthen their learning and experience, enhance their capabilities and levels of performance, take up responsibilities, and deliver good results. He urged them to fully support the Chief Executive in the governance of Hong Kong in accordance with the law, contributing to Hong Kongs progress to prosperity and ensuring the steady and successful implementation of one country, two systems. Ms Yip spoke to Mr Xia about the objectives and learning outcomes of the study programme. She mentioned that this is the first national studies programme for politically appointed officials organised by the current-term Hong Kong SAR Government, and the largest of its kind to date. She said this reflected the Governments emphasis on enhancing politically appointed officials understanding of the history, political system, legal system, policies and socio-economic development of the country. Ms Yip said she believes that, through comprehensive and in-depth study of national affairs, the politically appointed officials of the Hong Kong SAR Government will be able to consider matters more from national, international, and holistic perspectives in their policy formulation, public communication and other daily work. She added that they are expected to gain a better understanding of the needs of the country in delivering high-quality development, thereby helping them to facilitate Hong Kongs integration into national development and achieve better outcomes for Hong Kong and nationally. Over the course of Monday and yesterday, the delegation received three thematic lectures at the National Academy of Governance (NAG). On Monday, Deputy Director of the Department of Politics & Law Research at the National Academy of Governance Prof Sun Dongfang delivered a lecture on the holistic view of national security and the modernisation of the national security system and capabilities, while Deputy Director of the Legislative Affairs Commission and the Basic Law Committee of the Hong Kong & Macao Special Administrative Regions of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Zhang Yong delivered a lecture on the Constitution and the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR. Yesterday, Prof Zhang Zhanbin of the School of Marxism at the NAG gave a lecture to the delegation on the philosophy and implementation of modernisation with Chinese characteristics. This story has been published on: 2023-11-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza a breakthrough that will facilitate the release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory, officials said Wednesday. The truce raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, which was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. Now in its seventh week, the conflict has leveled vast swaths of Gaza, fueled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank, and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East. The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar announced the deal, and Egypts state-run Qahera TV channel said the truce would take effect at 10 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) Thursday. Both countries have played a key role in mediating between Israel and Hamas. Fifty hostages will be freed in stages, in exchange for the release of what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will let go women and children first, and the supply of humanitarian aid flowing into the besieged territory will be ramped up. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume the war after the truce and keep fighting until we achieve all our goals, including the destruction of Hamas fighting and governing abilities and the return of all hostages. Residents in Gaza City said the fighting there had intensified overnight into Wednesday, with gunfire, heavy artillery and airstrikes in central neighborhoods. Apparently they want to advance before the truce, said Nasser al-Sheikh, who is sheltering with relatives in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. A diplomatic breakthrough The announcement capped weeks of indirect Qatari-led negotiations between Israel and Hamas, an Islamic group that seized Gaza from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007 and has governed it since. The United States and Egypt were also involved in stop-and-go talks to free some of the roughly 240 hostages captured by Hamas and other fighters during their Oct. 7 raid. U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed the deal, saying Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure that the hostages are released and humanitarian aid can be sent to Gaza. Qatars prime minister and top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel said that the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it can assist with any release. Israels Justice Ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible for release as part of the deal, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offenses. Under Israeli law, the public has 24 hours to object to any release. The Israeli military says it has detained more than 1,850 Palestinians in the West Bank since the war began, mostly suspected Hamas members. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed there, frequently during gunbattles triggered by army raids. Will the war resume? The drawn-out process of releasing hostages will force Israel to rein in its offensive and could ultimately mean it ends the war without achieving its goal of crushing Hamas. The devastation has already galvanized international criticism of Israel, and even the U.S., its closest ally, has expressed concern about the heavy toll on Gazas civilians. An airstrike overnight hit a residential building in the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 17 people, including children, said Ahmad Balouny, a relative of the deceased. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of two children pulled from the rubble, one of them badly burned. In northern Gaza, about 60 bodies and 200 people wounded by heavy fighting were brought into the Kamal Adwan Hospital overnight, hospital director Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout told Al-Jazeera television on Wednesday. He said the hospital is using cooking oil to keep its generator running. The Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza said 128 bodies were brought in overnight after nearby strikes, more than double the number that arrived Tuesday night. Despite the heavy toll on Palestinian civilians, Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar will likely present the release of the prisoners seen by most Palestinians as heroes resisting occupation as a major achievement, and declare victory if the war ends. Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid including fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza, and that Israeli aircraft would limit their operations during the cease-fire. The war erupted in early October, when several thousand Hamas fighters broke through Israels formidable defenses and poured into the south, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking scores more captive. Israel responded with weeks of devastating airstrikes on Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It does not differentiate between civilians and fighters, though some two-thirds of the dead have been identified as women and minors. The ministry said that as of Nov. 11 it had lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of large parts of the health system, but believes the number has risen sharply since then. Some 2,700 people are missing and believed to be buried under rubble. Over 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced in the war, and many, if not most, will be unable to return home because of the vast damage in the north and the continued presence of Israeli troops there. The war has also led to severe shortages of food, medicine and other basics throughout the territory. Israel cut off all fuel imports at the start of the war, causing a territory-wide power blackout. Deal could divide Israelis The return of hostages could lift spirits in Israel, where their plight has gripped the country. Families of the hostages who include babies and older adults have staged mass demonstrations to pressure the government to bring them home. But they could also find themselves divided as some hostages are freed and others remain in Gaza. Soldiers are likely to be the last to be released, and their families may press the government to extend the truce until they return home. Ofri Bibas Levy, whose brother, sister-in-law and two nephews aged 4 and 10 months are among the captives, said the deal puts the families in an inhumane situation. Who will be released, who wont? Will the kids be freed? Will they be freed with their mothers or not? she asked The Associated Press before the deal was announced. No matter which way it happens, there will still be families that will remain worried and sad and angry. Hamas will meanwhile get a chance to regroup after suffering heavy losses, especially if it extends the truce with additional hostage releases. Israeli troops and tanks are expected to remain in place, despite the risks of being stationary behind enemy lines. Israel claims to have killed thousands of Hamas fighters and destroyed parts of the groups tunnel system. But Israeli officials acknowledge much of Hamas infrastructure remains intact. The military says 68 soldiers have been killed in ground operations. Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press reporters Najib Jobain in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip; Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip; Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed. ___ Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war. In September, October and November, proposals were sent to the Armenian side to hold negotiations both in Moscow and in the framework of multilateral events, to which we have not yet received clear answers. How can it be unknown when I have just presented the facts? Maria Zakharova, official representative of the Russian foreign ministry, noted this on Wednesdayand commenting on the statement by the Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia, Armen Grigoryan, that he is not aware of Russia's proposals for signing a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan. "At the same time, Yerevan wants to negotiate in Washington and Brussels, although neither the US nor the EU can be considered bona fide mediators for a number of reasons. Their actions are subordinated to the objective of removing Russia from the South Caucasus, they want to destroy the existing security mechanisms in the region and at the same time to shamelessly steal and modifyin accordance with opportunistic considerationsthe tripartite agreements reached with the participation of Moscow. Therefore, there is no real benefit from their mediation, nor can it be, as the charge is different, the objective is different...Yerevan's reckless bet that the West will help them has been a fiasco; this is also obvious; it is impossible not to see this. Despite the existing proposals and invitations, the negotiations on the peace treaty are still frozen," added the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry. Economy minister: Armenias national air carrier needs additional funding Armenia economy minister on cars customs clearance fees: We will have internal discussions with EAEU 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 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 It is clear that it is about a radical change in Armenia's orientation in foreign relations. Maria Zakharova, official representative of the Russian foreign ministry, noted this on Wednesdayand commenting on the recent interview of Armen Grigoryan, Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia. "Of course, I have to comment on these passages about the diversification of Armenia's political line without changing the vector. I would like to understand this somehow... not just hearing and reading all this in the form of statements, but how it is generally understood in practice. In my opinion, this is a clear attempt to hide real intentions. It is clear that it is about a radical change in Armenia's orientation in foreign relations. This is done very clearly at the suggestion of or hinting by the West. "On the other hand, they try in every way to cover it up, believing that in this way they can maintain the same level of assistance and some kind of special relationship. All this is so visible and clear that it is simply impossible to hide it behind such words and wordings. "And the talk that Armenia was allegedly forced to look for an alternative, not receiving an answer to its requests from Russia, and that it is not Armenia that is leaving the CSTO, but the opposite... Well, it seems to me that this is just an attempt to shift the responsibility, to find people responsible for their own miscalculations. There were consultations both in a bilateral format and through the CSTO, but a decision was made in Yerevan, and it seems they justified it, in favor of deploying an EU [monitoring] mission on the territory of the [Armenian] republic. "During the session of the CSTO Collective Security Council in which Armenia participated, there was a request from Armenia to withdraw the draft statement of foreign ministers supporting efforts to achieve peace in the South Caucasus region, which is also very telling. Russia and CSTO allies are still open to dialogue and ready to help, but Yerevan's wish is necessary [for that]. Let me note that the questions raised in the [aforesaid] interview arise for many people, including Armenian citizens. Sadly, the truthfulness of the answers did not turn out very well," said the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry. Such a harsh assessment of France's actions from Baku does not surprise us at all. Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry, stated this at Wednesdays press briefingand commenting on the statement by the president of Azerbaijan that France is preparing the grounds for a war in the South Caucasus. I believe that in Baku or in a number of other places, they are quite tired of the invasion of Paris, which is unsuccessfully trying to restore its geopolitical prestige in the South Caucasus, which it has lost in other parts of the world and on other continents "Sadly, the risks of relapse remain in the South Caucasus. In this regard, Russia is consistently working to transform the region into a zone of stability and prosperity, based on the balance of interests of all regions and their neighbors. "Western mediators, including France, have completely different goals. They seek to turn the South Caucasus into another arena of geopolitical confrontation, ignore the fundamental interests of the countries of the region, and do nothing to ensure the security, stability, and prosperity of this region," added the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry. Croatia take Euro qualification spot at Wales' expense Rob Page is bidding to lead Wales to a third consecutive European Championship. Photo: AFP Wales missed out on automatic qualification for Euro 2024 as Tuesday's 1-1 draw with Turkey condemned them to the play-offs after Croatia clinched a place in Germany with their 1-0 win against Armenia. Rob Page's side needed to beat Turkey along with Croatia dropping points at home to Armenia if they were to reach next year's tournament via a top-two finish in Group D. Turkey, who were already assured of qualification, finished top of Group D, with Croatia in second place and Wales four points behind them in third. Wales have to regroup in time to face Finland, Ukraine or Iceland in the play-off semi-finals in Cardiff on March 21. A UEFA draw on Thursday will decide which of the three nations Wales will face. France missed out on finishing with a perfect record in Group B as they drew 2-2 with Greece in Athens, with Kylian Mbappe rested from the starting line-up. Greece, the 2004 Euro winners, do not qualify automatically but can still come through the play-offs. The Netherlands had already qualified from the same group before their 6-0 win over minnows Gibraltar in Faro, Portugal. Romania and Switzerland had already qualified from Group I prior to their clash in Bucharest, which the hosts won 1-0 thanks to Denis Alibec's second-half goal. Israel, who will be in the play-offs, won 2-0 in Andorra in the same group, while Belarus beat Kosovo 1-0. The final draw for Euro 2024 will take place in Hamburg on December 2. (AFP) Explore innovation and entrepreneurship in the region at SIUs Nov. 30 showcase by Christi Mathis CARBONDALE, Ill. The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Showcase at Southern Illinois University Carbondale on Nov. 30 is a celebration of the regions newest innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs and everyone is welcome to come. The event takes place at the Dunn-Richmond Economic Development Center, 1740 Innovation Drive in Carbondale, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The festivities will feature refreshments and cocktails by Hunan Fine Asian Cuisine, patent presentations, special graduate recognition and the announcement of winners in a business plan competition. This showcase offers a unique opportunity for people from around the region to learn about the creative activities and developments taking place at SIU and the surrounding area, gain insights into cutting-edge projects that will help shape the future and horizon of our community and celebrate the amazing innovation and entrepreneurship right here in Southern Illinois, said Lynn Andersen Lindberg, executive director of Innovation and Economic Development and of the SIU Research Park. Diverse program A variety of events are planned throughout the evening. People affiliated with SIU who have received patents for their inventions or processes will be recognized. In addition, representatives from area businesses who recently completed the intensive 10-week Launch That Business fast-track training program, offered by SIUs Illinois Small Business Development Center, will be honored for graduating from the program. Visitors can see exhibits highlighting the products or services offered by those businesses at the showcase, as well. The rigorous Launch That Business program is designed specifically to assist home-based or small business entities get their business concepts on track, offering entrepreneurs practical steps for registering their enterprises as legal entities and providing them with simple tips and tools to maintain their businesses. The winners of the Southern Illinois Business Plan Competition Powered by Regions Bank will also be announced. The competition was open to new business concepts, pre-venture plans or existing small businesses from Alexander, Franklin, Gallatin, Hamilton, Hardin, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnson, Massac, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, Saline, Union, White and Williamson counties. Local competitions were held in October and the regional final was held earlier this month with the finalists competing for a share of $20,000 in prize money and in-kind services. For more information about the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Showcase, call 618-536-4451. SIU brings Amahl and the Night Visitors to Shryock stage Dec. 5 by Pete Rosenbery CARBONDALE, Ill. The combined talents of Southern Illinois University Carbondale opera theater students, the SIU Orchestra, Choral Union and Concert Choir will gather next month for a holiday concert that features a classic story of a disabled boy and three visitors from a long time ago. The one-act opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, is set for 7 p.m. Dec. 5 in Shryock Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public. The opera is directed by SIU School of Musics Carissa Scroggins, an assistant professor of practice and voice area coordinator. Darryl K. Clark, associate professor of musical theater dance in the School of Theater and Dance, is choreographing the performance, which will be conducted by Susan Davenport, professor and director of choral activities in the School of Music. First opera for TV has SIU connection Written by Gian Carlo Menotti, Amahl and Night Visitors was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theater on Dec. 24, 1951, in the NBC studios and broadcast live on television, Davenport noted. Set in Bethlehem shortly after the birth of Christ, the show was the first opera written for television. David Aiken, who was from Benton and attended then-Southern Illinois Normal College, where he studied English, portrayed King Melchoir, one of the three kings, in the world premiere TV production. A bass baritone, Aiken, who died in 2011, continued in that role for several years and later joined the voice faculty at Indiana University. Aiken became an advocate for the opera, continuing to perform and support performances of Amahl well into the final years of his singing career, Scroggins said. Holiday sounds continue Davenport said the choral union and concert choir, accompanied by the SIU Orchestra, will finish the concert with Mark Hayes International Carols Suites. The audience can expect to hear at least one holiday carol that they recognize, although many will be in their original languages, Davenport said. The medleys of carols include holiday songs from Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the British Isles. Talk at SIU to focus on link between eclipses and societal upheaval by Tim Crosby CARBONDALE, Ill. A Southern Illinois University Carbondale researcher with a background in geology, chemistry and the humanities, and an interest in interdisciplinary studies, will give the December Journey to the Eclipse talk, focusing on times when, according to the historic record, the sun did not behave as it should. Ken Anderson, director of SIUs Advanced Energy Institute, co-director of the Ancient Practices program, and a professor of geology, will give the monthly address at 3 p.m. Friday, Dec. 1, at the Guyon Auditorium in Morris Library. The talk series, which corresponds to the upcoming April 8 total solar eclipse in Southern Illinois, is free and open to the campus and public. Anderson's talk, titled "Cast a Long Shadow," will discuss historical accounts of times when the sun or moon behaved unexpectedly. He will delve into what caused those changes in the appearance in these two most prominent and normally reliable celestial bodies, and what effects those disruptions had on humans who experienced them. A native of southeastern Australia, Anderson received his doctorate in organic geochemistry from the University of Melbourne in 1989. After working in the private sector and at Argonne National Laboratory, he joined SIU as an associate professor in 2003 and was promoted to full professor in 2007. A strong proponent of breaking down academic barriers, especially those between the humanities and the STEM disciplines, Andersons research interests span geology, chemistry and engineering, and courses that he teaches are accepted for credit in geology, chemistry, history and classics. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Anderson is an entrepreneur who runs a small business spinoff resulting from his work at SIU. The Journey to the Eclipse series is aimed at bringing together experts in astronomy, solar eclipses and other sun-related topics for students, faculty and staff of SIU, as well as members of the Southern Illinois community. The monthly series began in April, with each talk set for 3 p.m. on the first Friday of each month in Guyon Auditorium. The talks also will stream live via Zoom and be recorded. For more information and links, go to eclipse.siu.edu. A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a state law requiring Marylanders to obtain a handgun qualification license before purchasing or receiving a firearm is unconstitutional. This is a significant ruling for the Second Amendment and every American who cherishes our constitutional freedoms, said Randy Kozuch, the executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action, in a statement. In a split 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals found a portion of the states Firearm Safety Act of 2013 to be unconstitutional. That part of the law prohibits Marylanders from purchasing, renting or receiving a handgun unless they have received a valid handgun qualification license. It is also illegal to sell, rent, gift or transfer a firearm to a person without a license under that law. To receive a handgun qualification license, applicants must be Maryland residents aged 21 or older. They are required to pass a firearm safety course and undergo a background check to ensure they arent prohibited from owning a gun under state or federal law. The licenses are issued by the Maryland State Police. The application review process can take up to 30 days. The case, brought on behalf of the firearms rights organization Maryland Shall Issue, two individual plaintiffs and a gun store, was filed initially against former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican. Hogan met his term limit earlier this year and was replaced by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, who is now considered the defendant in the case. Moore said he is disappointed by Tuesdays decision. This law is not about stripping away rights from responsible gun owners its about every Marylander having the right to live free from fear, the governor said. I am determined to do more than just give thoughts and prayers and attend funerals and thats why this law is vital to our administrations commitment to keeping guns out of the wrong hands and saving lives. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, a Democrat, said he is incredibly frustrated, and that Tuesdays ruling threatens the safety of our communities. State Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, called the ruling crazy. Every responsible gun owner supports basic firearm training and keeping guns out of criminals hands, Ferguson said. This decision will unequivocally lead to more gun violence and firearm-related deaths. The law was upheld when it was initially challenged in 2016. Tuesdays opinion, written by U.S. Circuit Judge Julius Richardson, reversed that ruling. Richardson, an appointee of former President Donald Trump who clerked for former Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, cited the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which overturned New York states gun licensing policy and disrupted the licensing process in Maryland, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island. The state has two weeks to ask for a review of the decision by the entire 14-judge 4th Circuit. It also may ask the Supreme Court to review the decision. The New York law that the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in 2022 required people applying for permits to carry guns in public to demonstrate proper cause to successfully receive a concealed carry permit. In his opinion, Richardson wrote that the Bruen decision effected a sea change in Second Amendment law and that, in order for the law to be constitutional, the state must demonstrate that the challenged law is similar enough to a historically recognized exception to the right to keep and bear arms. U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, said that the ruling is yet another disastrous consequence of the absurd new Supreme Court standard that todays gun laws need to match those from centuries ago. In a statement issued after the release of the opinion, William Taylor, the deputy director of Second Amendment litigation at Everytown Law, a group that advocates for gun safety, said that the now-stricken licensing process is not only common sense, it is entirely consistent with the Second Amendment and the new test established by the Bruen decision. While todays decision is a setback to public safety, we fully expect that the full 4th Circuit, or if necessary, the Supreme Court, will reverse this dangerous decision and uphold Marylands critical gun safety law, he said. The three-judge panel ruled Tuesday that the states argument for upholding the law did not meet the Bruen cases historical standard. The 4th Circuit Courts decision to overturn Marylands restrictive gun license law sends a clear message: Law-abiding Marylanders fundamental right to self-defense must not be infringed, Kozuch said. Vir Das made history by taking home the trophy for the best unique comedy at the 2023 International Emmy's, for his comedy special 'Vir Das: Landing.' He returned to New Delhi, India, after accepting the honour in New York on Wednesday. Vir Das expressed his gratitude to the media at New Delhi Airport for the honour. He said, "I am very happy to bring this home. Now, I have a show in Panchkula, so I will go to Panchkula and then to Bengaluru. This award will tour India like me and I am very excited. We are here because of people who came before us, like Johnny Lever. I would love to do a show with Johnny Lever, as he is my idol. I think he is the greatest live comedy artist. I think hopefully this is the first award for Indian Comedy International but not the last, hopefully, many comedians can win it." Johnny Lever is an Indian film actor and one of the most noted comedians in Hindi cinema. Lever is one of the first stand up comedians in India. Das added, "There is love for India in every joke of mine and there will be love in every joke in the future as well. If you love your nation, write about it." The award for the Comedy Category was a tie, with 'Derry Girls Season 3' also receiving the recognition. 'Vir Das: Landing' marks his fourth Netflix comedy special that presents a show about what it means to be truly global while looking for a home. To carry your country across the world with you, whatever that country is, and to find your feet. A show about growing up in India, seeing the globe, love troubles, colossal failures, social media madness, the perils of outrage, unplanned drugs, war-zone boarding schools, metaphorical mathematical equations, the current state of comedy, getting nominated, getting intoxicated, and ultimately just getting situated. 'Vir Das: Landing' which premiered on the OTT platform Netflix, was competing with Le Flambeau from France, El Encargado from Argentina, and Derry Girls Season 3 from the UK. Earlier, Vir's third standup special 'Vir Das: For India' received a 2021 International Emmy Nomination for "Best Comedy." (ANI) Justice Bibek Chaudhuri, who has been moved to Patna High Court from Calcutta, said his transfer along with other 23 judges in one go marks the "beginning of a power shift" from executive to the judiciary. While speaking in the farewell ceremony hosted by the Calcutta High Court upon his transfer to Patna, Justice Chaudhuri said that he considered himself to be one of the first in the wave of judges who would be transferred post-emergency, in order to signify a shift of power from the executive to the "highest seat of the judiciary" being the Supreme Court Collegium. "In 1975, during Emergency, 16 High Court judges were transferred by the Executive in one go, after almost 48 years, 24 High Court judges have been transferred by the SC Collegium in one go. I think I am one of the beginners in the shifting of power from the hand of the executive to the hand of the judiciary," he said. He said on January 28, 1983, the Centre had decided the chief justices of high courts would be from an outside state and one-third of the judges of a high court must be from outside the state. "In 1983, the Indian Government's policy mandated that 1/3rd of all High Court judges be from outside the State and I think, by our transfer, it is the beginning of the introduction and implementation of that policy," he added. Asserting that it was the desire of the Collegium to transfer him to Patna High Court, he said when he was elevated to the higher judiciary, he knew that the Constitution contained a provision under Article 222 that a judge can be transferred. "With all humility, there are judicial pronouncements which lay down that Article 222 be used very sparingly. Please consider my case. [During the process of transfer] I shall not be able to discharge my judicial duties at Patna for many days. This might not happen if all the transferee judges had the chance to work in their native place," he added. The Supreme Court Collegium had proposed the transfer of Justice Chaudhuri to Patna High Court on August 3. However, a request by Justice Chaudhuri for reconsideration of the proposal was refused by the Collegium and it reiterated the recommendation for his transfer on August 10 and the gazette notification of his transfer to the Patna High Court was made on November 13. The Supreme Court collegium headed by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud also consisting of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, Justice B R Gavai and Justice Surya Kant had proposed his name for transfer for better administration of Justice. Justice Chaudhuri said during his five-year tenure in Calcutta High Court, he disposed of about 6,000 main cases and a similar number of applications. "I may submit before you that in spite of the Covid pandemic and interruption in the court work during my years stay here I have collected the data from the register listing and computer, I disposed of about 6000 of main cases and a similar number of applications. So, I tried to deliver justice and tried to give relief to the litigant and that was my only motto," Justice Chaudhuri said. (ANI) Uttarakhand Secretary and Nodal Officer for Silkayara rescue operation Neeraj Khairwal said on Wednesday that rescuers managed to insert a microphone and speaker into the tunnel while a team of the National and State Disaster Response Force established audio communication with the 41 workers trapped in a 60-metre stretch on the Silkyara side of the tunnel. Giving updates about the health status of the workers, the official further informed a team of doctors who also spoke with the workers and inquired about their health. "Whatever medicines were needed have been delivered to them". He also said that rescuers successfully delivered essential items like medicines, clothes, food and other items to the trapped workers, adding that cooked food, clothes including undergarments, toothbrushes and towels has been sent through a 6-inch pipeline in sufficient quantity, "Some people were suffering from stomach upsets," he said. "A microphone and speaker have been sent through a wire in the pipeline to the labourers trapped inside the tunnel. The teams of NDRF and SDRF have also continued audio communication with the labourers," the official said. Expressing hope that all trapped workers will be freed one by one, Khairwal said, "The workers are very happy about the progress of the rescue operation and quite positive". The collapse occurred on November 12 during the construction of a tunnel from Silkyara to Barkot, trapping 41 labourers due to a muck fall in a 60-metre stretch on the Silkyara side of the tunnel. A total of five agencies--Oil and Natual Gas Corporation (ONGC), Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVN), Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), and Tehri Hydro Development Corporation (THDCL)-- have been assigned specific responsibilities to evacuate the 41 labourers who have been trapped in the 2-km-built portion of the under-construction structure. On Tuesday morning, rescuers managed to insert an endoscopy camera into the tunnel and the first visuals captured showed the 41 workers had ample space inside the tunnel for them to move about. Visuals of workers trapped inside for the past 10 days emerged on Tuesday morning, has given new hope to worried relatives, some of whom are camping outside the site of the collapsed tunnel structure (ANI) As part of its continuing investigations into the attacks on the Consulate General of India, San Francisco, USA, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday raided 14 places in Punjab and Haryana. The locations raided by the NIA were spread across the districts of Moga, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, Mohali and Patiala in Punjab, and Kurukshetra and Yamunanagar in Haryana. The crackdown led to the seizure of digital data containing information related to the accused persons, along with other incriminating documents. The move was a bid to unravel the complete conspiracy behind the March 19, 2023 and July 2, 2023 attacks involving criminal trespass, vandalism, damage to public property and attempts to cause hurt to the officials of Indian Consulate in San Francisco and set the Consulate building on fire through acts of arson. The NIA has been probing the case with the aim of identifying and prosecuting the attackers and the assailants of the attacks and sending a strong message to such anti-Indian elements. A team of the NIA had visited San Francisco in August 2023 to investigate the incidents of attacks on the Consulate through violent acts of arson and vandalism leading to fear among the Consulate staff and the community. As part of its investigations, the NIA said that it has crowd-sourced information to identify and collect information about US-based entities and individuals involved in these violent incidents. The agency has already identified certain individuals who were part of the conspiracy behind the repeated attacks. These include the attackers and many of their associates, who are both Indian and foreign nationals. The Consulate General of India in San Francisco was attacked on March 19 by a group of assailants who committed criminal trespass, damaged public property, and attacked officials of the Consulate. Prior to this attack, on the same day, some attackers attempted to set the Consulate building on fire by sprinkling inflammable substances early in the morning. Subsequently on July 2 at midnight, a few persons attempted to set the Consulate building on fire. (ANI) He stated that Prime Minister Modi, who refers to himself as Vishwaguru, should answer as to why this has happened. He was speaking after inaugurating the state government's ambitious public health programme, Anaemia Mukta Poushtika Karnataka programme in Karnataka's Bengaluru. "Those who have praised Gujarat as a model should answer why Gujarat is rising in the malnutrition index," CM Siddaramiah said. The CM asked to compare the statistics given in National Health and Family survey 4 and 5 and quipped 'can this situation in Gujarat become a model?' "Without eradicating poverty and illiteracy, everyone will not get good health. So treating these ills is the first priority of our government. Our government's aim is to reach health benefits to everyone's doorstep", added the Karnataka CM. He said that the government is ready to provide the required funds. The CM called upon Women and Child Welfare Minister Lakshmi Hebbalkar and Health Minister Dinesh Gundurao to work together to fullfil the aim of the Government and to keep the children and everyone in our state healthy. The programme was organized by the Department of Health and Family Welfare at Jnanjyoti Hall. Senior officials of the department including Health Minister Dinesh Gundurao, Women and Child Welfare Minister Lakshmi Hebbalkar and Urban Development Minister Bairathi Suresh, Chief Minister's Legal Adviser Ponnanna were present. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Malnutrition refers to deficiencies or excesses in nutrient intake, imbalance of essential nutrients or impaired nutrient utilization. Around 1.9 billion adults worldwide are overweight, while 462 million are underweight. Malnutrition is triggered by a lot of factors including scarcity of resources as many families around the globe cannot afford sufficient nutritious food. (ANI) Accompanied by Deputy Inspector General of Police SKR Rayees Mohammad Bhat, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Kulgam, Additional Superintendent of Police and all Deputy SPs of district Kulgam, the meeting addressed the prevailing security scenario, existing security grid, operational challenges, and countermeasures. The officers briefed the IGP on various aspects, including security challenges and measures taken, an official statement said. Emphasising the need for a robust security grid, IGP Kashmir urged officers to enhance coordination among ground agencies. He stressed proactive measures to strengthen the anti-terrorist grid, generate specific intelligence and intensify operations for peace and stability in the district, the statement said. Special attention was given to monitoring anti-national elements, particularly terrorist associates, with a commitment to maintaining peace. The IGP highlighted a zero-tolerance policy towards drug dealing, urging strict action against peddlers. In discussions about investigations, the IGP urged prompt resolution of pending cases. Emphasising police-public relations, he encouraged a public-centric approach, advocating service-oriented policing to build trust and bridge the gap between the police and the public. (ANI) Addressing the special BRICS meeting on the Israel-Hamas war, Iran President Ebrahim Raisi slammed Israel, calling the Zionist regime "criminal," and said that what is happening these days is a clear sign of an "unjust international system of the West." In his speech at the virtual extraordinary meeting of leaders of BRICS countries on the West Asia situation, Raisi said that the issue of Gaza is the issue of humanity and justice. "The Zionist regime and its supporters have not only violated humanity, ethics and rights, but they are also trying to deceive the public opinion of the world by suppressing valid information and spreading disinformation," Raisi said, as he blamed Israel for the ongoing Gaza conflict. Highlighting further that Israel, along with the US' support is responsible for the loss of lives in Gaza, Raisi, during his virtual address said, "Let's not forget that the root of war lies in the continuation of occupation. Contrary to Israel's propaganda distortion, legitimate defence is not their barbaric action, but legitimate defence according to international conventions of defence against occupation." "As an occupying regime, the Zionist regime, with the green light and full support of America, has declared war against the people under occupation and has set a record in registering war crimes. The political and military leaders of this regime openly talk about the genocide of Palestinians," he added. Calling Israel a threat to international peace and security, the Iranian president said, "The President of the fake Israeli regime has announced that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza; The prime minister of the regime says 'even children are legitimate military targets'; The spokesperson of the regime's army says 'the goal of the attacks is maximum destruction, not precision in the attacks'; The Minister of Defence of the Regime calls people as 'anthropomorphic animals'; And the minister of cultural heritage of that fake regime says a nuclear attack on Gaza is the right option to destroy the people there." "Such a regime, which is armed with all kinds of chemical weapons of mass destruction and atomic bombs, is definitely a threat to regional and international peace and security," he added by saying. "Apart from the 75-year history of occupation and terror and aggression, there were also numerous conflicts in the West Bank in the last one year. In this one year, Palestinian resistance has given about 200 martyrs. Did anyone have a missile there? The goal of the regime was to clear the Bank and transfer its population to Jordan and Egypt and occupy it. In fact, Hamas operated in defence of the Noble Quds and the West Bank and the desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque and against the expansion of settlements and expansionism of the Zionists," the Iranian President noted further. Raisi further called on the BRICS countries to adopt a binding resolution in the UN General Assembly against the Zionist regime amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. He said, "Considering the inability of the UN Security Council to implement its mission to establish peace and security; and obstructing the US to issue a binding resolution for a ceasefire; It is necessary for the BRICS member countries to adopt a binding resolution in the UN General Assembly against the Zionist regime in the framework of the 'Union for Peace' mechanism, with the aim of stopping the crimes against the people of Gaza." "The continuous attacks of the Zionist regime on hospitals and medical centres, religious places, the killing of women and children, doctors, nurses and journalists in Gaza are all acts of terrorism. It is necessary to identify that fake regime as a terrorist regime and its army as a terrorist organisation," Raisi said. Reiterating his call for the formation of a single Palestinian state, Raisi further went on to say that the right of the Palestinian people to defend themselves and their struggle to liberate the occupied areas is supported by all governments and free nations. He stated, "The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that the final solution that will lead to lasting peace and stability in West Asia and the world is the formation of a single Palestinian state after holding a referendum based on the democratic principle of "Every Palestinian, one vote". Being on the path of previous failed plans for peace will only result in the repetition of war and insecurity." "America and the Zionist regime must also know that they cannot stand against the will of the nations and that occupation and genocide will have no place in the new international just order," Raisi added. The leaders of the BRICS countries--Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa-- joined the virtual meeting along with their counterparts from newly added member states. At least 12,700 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the West Bank, which draws its data from Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas's attacks stands at about 1,200. (ANI) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the country will continue its war with Hamas even after the "pause to return our hostages," until Israel achieves all its war aims. Netanyahu made these remarks on Tuesday ahead of an expected Cabinet vote on a ceasefire proposal. "While this meeting is to discuss the return of our hostages, I would like to start with something/... there is a lot of nonsense out there to the effect that after the pause to return our hostages, we will stop the war. Then, let me make it clear. We are at war --and we will continue the war," Netanyahu said. "We will continue the war until we achieve all our war aims: To eliminate Hamas, return all our hostages and missing persons and ensure that there is no element in Gaza that threatens Israel," he added. https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1727091023552156003?s=20 Netanyahu, speaking further said that the return of the hostages is a supreme task and he is obligated to it. The Israeli Prime Minister said, "Yesterday evening I met with the members of the war cabinet, members of hostages' families, I listened closely to their plight. With shaking voices, with sometimes tears, they described the nightmare they were in." "I told the dear families: Returning our hostages is a sacred and supreme task. and I am obligated to do it together with my colleagues...There is no greater precept than redeeming captives until we redeem them all. We will not relent in our efforts until we redeem them all," the Israeli PM said. Reiterating that the war with Hamas will continue, Netanyahu further added by saying, "The war will continue until we achieve all our goals. Eliminating Hamas, returning all our hostages and assuring that the day after Hamas, Gaza will no longer threaten Israel, that there will be no longer an element that supports terrorism, and threaten the state of Israel." In a stern warning to the Palestinian authority following their denial of Hamas' involvement in the October 7 assault on Israel, Netanyahu on Sunday said that the day Hamas is eliminated by Israel, it will not allow whoever runs the civil administration in Gaza to support terrorism. 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. Hamas terrorists seized about 240 hostages during the assault when they surged across Gaza's militarised border into southern Israel to kill around 1,200 people, mostly civilians who were massacred at their homes and fleeing a music festival amid brutal atrocities, The Times of Israel reported. The hostages are of all ages and include young children and elderly people, as well as Thai and Nepali nationals. (ANI) Elon Musk, CEO of X and Tesla, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 2023. (HAIYUN JIANG/Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times) Too bad. I seriously have been considering buying a Tesla but you-know-who, the companys famous CEO, seems determined to drive me away at top speed. In that, I am not alone. Billionaire Elon Musk is facing a wave of backlash for a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter until he bought that, too, and changed the name. Advertisement His endorsement of a tweet helped give new life to old antisemitic tropes. The incident began with a post last Wednesday from a self-identified conservative Jewish user who complained about antisemitic content on social media during the Gaza conflict. Advertisement To the cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting Hitler was right, he wrote. You got something you want to say? Why dont you say it to our faces. An alleged white nationalist account soon responded by attributing this antisemitism to minorities and blaming it on the Jews: Jewish commun(i)ties have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them, said the post. Im deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest (barnyard epithet) now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that (they) support flooding their country dont exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is. Helpful? I think not. But the exchange would have been easier to ignore had Musk not chimed in with this little nugget: You have said the actual truth. Oh? Which part? To many eyes and ears, including mine, Musks posting seemed to endorse the age-old lie that Jews and minorities are conspiring to flood the country with nonwhites, particularly Muslims, to displace the white race under a brand of paranoid lunacy known internationally as the great replacement theory. Advertisement Here we go again. As an African American, I have become all too familiar with paranoid scenarios that cast minorities as either a direct threat or as victims manipulated by some other group, presumably to oppress the white Christian mainstream. Adding to its outrageousness, the message Musk endorsed echoed the last words posted online by Robert Bowers before he massacred worshippers at Pittsburghs Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the single deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. In postings before his massacre, Bowers already had built up a record of such abhorrent assertions. I still believe most Americans know better than to believe the not-great replacement theory, but too many subscribe to the baloney. In August, a federal jury unanimously found Bowers guilty and sentenced him to death, but like some other racist killers, he is sickeningly celebrated online. Clarence Page Columns As it happens Sign up to receive Clarence Pages columns by email as soon as they're published. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy > By Sunday, Musk became the story, which is hardly an unfamiliar place for him to occupy, as major advertisers began to peel away from X. Household names such as Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount and Sony joined other major X advertisers in choosing not to advertise on the social media platform. Advertisement At the same time, liberal non-profit watchdog group Media Matters for America (MMFA) published a report showing that X was running ads for major mainstream brands alongside user posts espousing pro-Nazi views. The report came after Musk personally posted a series of tweets that the White House called an abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate. Outraged, 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. A thermonuclear lawsuit? Thats a new one. I guess the Musk who famously claimed to be a free speech absolutist isnt so absolute after all. cpage@chicagotribune.com Twitter @cptime Following the attack on Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza, where three doctors and a patient companion were killed, the World Health Organisation expressed solidarity with the health workers of the hospital, calling for an 'urgent ceasefire'. The World Health Organisation office in the occupied Palestinian territory took to social media 'X', and stressed the need for humanitarian access and the protection of health care. They mourned the deaths of those three doctors and a patient companion who were reportedly killed in the attack on Wednesday. Reportedly, many were additionally injured in the attack. Moreover, the hospital also sustained substantial damages, according to the post. Meanwhile, since the beginning of the war, the WHO has documented 178 health attacks in the Gaza Strip that have resulted in 553 fatalities and 696 casualties, including 22 fatalities and 48 injuries to healthcare workers on duty. "A ceasefire is urgently needed. Humanitarian access is urgently needed. Protection of health care is urgently needed. Action is urgently needed," the post added. https://twitter.com/WHOoPt/status/1727042368329719969?t=eoAZvTZtXV4-DC3pa93ZRQ&s=08 Earlier on Tuesday, the WHO also announced the death of one of their staff members in Gaza, namely, Dima Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj, 29 years old, who had been with the WHO since December 2019. "She worked as a patient administrator at the Limb Reconstruction Centre, a critical part of the WHO Trauma and Emergency Team," the WHO said in a statement. "Dima died today (Tuesday) when her parents' house in southern Gaza--where she had evacuated from Gaza City--was bombed," the statement added. She was tragically killed alongside her husband, their six-month-old baby boy, and her two brothers. Reportedly, over 50 family and community members sheltering in the same house also died, according to the statement. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territory, said, "she was a wonderful person with a radiant smile, cheerful, positive, respectful. She was a true team player. Her work was crucial, and she had been requested to take on even more responsibilities to support the Gaza suboffice and team. This is such a painful loss for all of us. We share our deepest condolences with her mother and father (a long-serving medical specialist in Gaza), her family, and her many friends." Moreover, the statement highlighted that the humanitarian community and the UN family have lost other members since October 7. The Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) lost two doctors, adding, "UNRWA has lost 108 colleagues. These are not just numbers, but people who were working so that others could have a better life," the statement added. Following the incident, the WHO pleaded with all those who hold power in their hands to end this conflict to do so. (ANI) During the diplomats visit he will meet with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to review India-Seychelles bilateral engagement in various fields. The Eat African collection of 115 islands, have maintained strong relations with India since gaining its independence in 1976. Minister Radegonde's visit intends to strengthen ties between the Republic of Seychelles and India in the three-day visit. Though the economic and commercial cooperation at the moment is small between the two sovereign states, there exists significant scope for enhancing cooperation in this field. Presently, Seychelles' main items of import from India are rice, miscellaneous food products, cement, linen, cotton, vehicles and associated transport equipment's, medicines, instruments and appliances for medical, surgical & dental use. The last time Seychelles visited India was with former President Danny Faure, visiting India twice in 2018, once in March to attend the Founding Conference of the International Solar Alliance and again in June, for a State Visit. India and Seychelles enjoy cordial bilateral relations buttressed by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of 'SAGAR' - Security and Growth for All in the Region. PM Modi's SAGAR intends to strengthen economic and security cooperation with its maritime neighbours while also assisting in developing their maritime security capabilities. The state's visit to India marks another African state developing relations with India after visits from the President of Tanzania and Vice-President of the Dominican Republic in October 2023. This could be a further move to develop BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) union participation after the addition of African states Egypt and Ethiopia as well as Argentina, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. (ANI) The Indian Coast Guard Ship (ICGS) Arinjay on Tuesday apprehended Pakistani fishing boat Naz-Re-Karam in the Arabian Sea with 13 crew members. The boat is being brought to Okha harbour for thorough rummaging and joint interrogation by all agencies, Indian Coast Guard said in a press release. In a press release, Indian Coast Guard said, "ICGS Arinjay, whilst patrolling in the Arabian Sea, observed one Pakistani Fishing Boat fishing about 15 KM inside Indian waters near the International Maritime Boundary Line on November 21, 2023." After being challenged, the boat started to flee towards Pakistan. However, the ICG ship intercepted the boat and stopped it in Indian waters. According to the press release, the Pakistani fishing boat Naz-Re-Karam with 13 crew members, left Karachi on November 19. In the press release, the Indian Coast Guard said, "The fishing by the boat in the area could not be explained and justified by the crew and the boat is being brought to Okha harbour for thorough rummaging and joint interrogation by all agencies." (ANI) French President Emmanuel Macron has welcomed the announcement of a groundbreaking agreement facilitating the release of hostages in Gaza and the implementation of a humanitarian truce. In a post on X, Macron expressed his commitment to tirelessly working towards the release of all hostages while underscoring the significance of the declared truce in providing much-needed aid and rescuing civilians in Gaza. "I welcome the announcement of an agreement for the release of hostages and a humanitarian truce. We are working tirelessly to release all hostages. The humanitarian truce announced should allow to introduce aid and rescue the civilians in Gaza," posted Emmanuel Macron. Notably, citizens from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France also successfully departed Gaza for Egypt via the Rafah crossing, as confirmed by officials from each respective country. On November 1, the French Foreign Ministry disclosed that among the evacuees were five French citizens, including dual passport holders and seriously injured individuals. A dedicated team from the French Embassy in Egypt awaited the group's arrival, with France expressing gratitude to Egyptian authorities for their role in facilitating the safe exit. Meanwhile, two French children lost their lives in the northern Gaza Strip, earlier announced by France's foreign ministry on October 31. The mother of the deceased children and her third child were reported to be suffering from injuries. The incident has reinforced France's plea for an immediate humanitarian pause in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. Hamas, the terrorist group controlling Gaza, currently holds 239 hostages captive, including foreign nationals from 26 different countries, according to figures released by the Israeli military. In a significant breakthrough, the Israeli Cabinet Secretariat revealed plans for the phased release of 150 security prisoners over four days. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said when the deal was approved that for every additional 10 hostages who are released, there will be an additional day of pause in the fighting. Israel has committed to a cessation of hostilities during this period. However, it's important to note that despite the agreement, approximately 150 hostages will remain under Hamas control, with over 200 individuals abducted during the October 7 offensive into Israel. Hamas has agreed to allow the return of 50 hostages, marking a step towards resolution, but challenges persist in achieving a comprehensive release. (ANI) The Yahalom special forces unit of the Combat Engineering Corps has played a significant role in uncovering and destroying these shafts using various methods. Hamas has embedded its network of terrorist tunnels below population centres across the Gaza Strip. Many of the shafts leading to its tunnel network are located within civilian hospitals, schools, homes, mosques and playgrounds. On Tuesday, the military breached a blast door at the end of one tunnel underneath Shifa Hospital. Hamas has previously boasted of digging hundreds of kilometres of tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip, a network the Israeli military often refers to as the "Gaza Metro." Many more tunnels will be uncovered when the IDF begins an expected offensive in southern Gaza. Israel launched its war in Gaza after at least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas's attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on Oct. 7. Another 240 men, women, children and soldiers were taken back to Gaza as hostages. Some people remain unaccounted for as Israeli authorities continue to identify bodies and search for human remains. (ANI/TPS) One local beach has been cleared of having dangerous bacterial levels, but several others remain closed to the public, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said on Tuesday. Visitors should not swim, surf or play in the ocean at the following areas, as warnings of high bacterial levels remain in place: Mothers Beach in Marina Del Rey The entire swim area Santa Monica Pier in Santa Monica 100 yards up and down the coast from the pier Santa Monica Canyon Creek at Will Rogers State Beach near Will Rogers Tower 18 100 yards up and down the coast from the creek Malibu Lagoon at Surfrider Beach 100 yards up and down the coast from the public restrooms Pico-Kenter storm drain at Santa Monica Beach, Santa Monica South Tower 20 100 yards up and down the coast from the storm drain. Redondo Beach Pier in Redondo Beach 100 yards up and down the coast from the pier. World Way Extension at Dockweiler State Beach 100 yards up and down the coast from the jetty. 28 th Street extension in Manhattan Beach 100 yards up and down the coast from the 28th Street extension. In better news, however, the warning has been lifted for Inner Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro. For information on beach closures, call 1-800-525-5662 or visit PublicHealth.LACounty.gov/Beach/. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA. WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) Ten men have been arrested on prostitution charges in Williamson County. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said on Nov. 16 and 17, authorities with the TBI Human Trafficking Unit, Williamson County Sheriffs Office, Spring Hill Police Department, and the 21st Judicial District Attorney Generals Office participated in an undercover investigation to try and find those engaged in trafficking, promoting, recruiting, or soliciting others for commercial sex. I cant die at Wingstop: Victim talks after brazen attack Undercover officers put several decoy advertisements on websites known to be linked to prostitution and commercial sex, according to investigators. The focus of the investigation was to identify anyone looking to engage in commercial sex acts with minors. Over the course of the investigation, 10 men were charged with patronizing prostitution of a minor that is punishable as trafficking for commercial sex acts and booked into the Williamson County Jail. The men have been identified as: Henry Denery Aguilar-Aguirre (DOB 07/05/1991), Antioch: Patronizing Prostitution, bond $98,000. Juan Carlos Aguilar (DOB 03/25/1999), Antioch: Patronizing Prostitution, bond $98,000. Michael McRedmond (DOB 10/11/1970), Chapel Hill: Patronizing Prostitution, Manufacture/ Delivery/ Sale/ Possession Schedule II Drug, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia, bond $9,500. Salvador Jiminez De Jesus (DOB 02/10/1982), Dickson: Patronizing Prostitution, bond $100,000. Shawn Baker (DOB 11/04/1982), Ardmore: Patronizing Prostitution, bond $100,000. Edwin Alexander Veliz (DOB 11/22/1975), LaVergne: Patronizing Prostitution, bond $95,000. Selwyn Andre Walker (DOB 06/08/1998), Nashville: Patronizing Prostitution, Simple Possession, Unlawful Drug Paraphernalia, Resisting Stop/Arrest, bond $105,000. Austin Glenn Davenport (09/18/1994), Columbia: Patronizing Prostitution, bond $150,000. Carmen Noe Garcia Guox (DOB 09/18/1989), Smyrna: Patronizing Prostitution, bond $100,000. Stanley Lewis Jones, Jr. (DOB 05/15/1978), Thompsons Station: Patronizing Prostitution, bond $50,000. To learn more about human trafficking, click here. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRN News 2. Martha Stewart. Rich Fury/Getty Images; Martha Stewart/YouTube With Thanksgiving almost upon us, why not try out a celebrity chef's recipe for mashed potatoes? Gordon Ramsay prefers to make potato puree, an even creamier version of mashed potatoes. Chrissy Teigen tops her mashed potatoes with crispy shallots on Thanksgiving. Ina Garten keeps her mashed-potatoes recipe simple. Ina Garten. Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty Images/Food Network/YouTube The Food Network star uses unsalted butter, whole milk, and sour cream to make her classic mashed potatoes. She also recommends using a handheld mixer to break up the potatoes, rather than mashing them by hand. See the recipe here Martha Stewart's recipe for "perfect" mashed potatoes uses milk and unsalted butter. Martha Stewart. Rich Fury/Getty Images; Martha Stewart/YouTube The recipe on Stewart's website claims that "instant potatoes from the box can't compare to this homemade version." The chef recommends that to make stiffer mashed potatoes, you should use only a 3/4 cup of milk or cream. For richer potatoes, add another 2 tablespoons of butter to the mixture. See the recipe here Gordon Ramsay prefers to make potato puree, an even creamier version of mashed potatoes. Gordon Ramsay. Amy Sussman/Getty Images; Plateresca/Getty Images The "Hell's Kitchen" star's recipe is similar to more traditional mashed-potato recipes, although it calls for a potato ricer, over a cup of heavy cream, and lots of butter to make the mashed potatoes slightly more smooth and creamy. See the recipe here Chrissy Teigen tops her mashed potatoes with crispy shallots. Chrissy Teigen. Jack Milton/Portland Press Herald/Getty Images; Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images The recipe, though unique, doesn't require many ingredients. Teigen calls for 4 pounds of Yukon gold potatoes, three sliced and peeled shallots, one cup of heavy cream, one cup of butter, flour, salt and pepper, and frying oil. The directions for making the mashed potatoes and crispy fried shallots are also relatively simple and straightforward, making this a great recipe to bust out for the first time on Thanksgiving. See the recipe here Giada De Laurentiis' mashed potatoes appear to be inspired by Italian ingredients. Giada De Laurentiis. Gabe Ginsberg/FilmMagic/Getty Images; Food Network/YouTube De Laurentiis uses garlic, unsalted butter, and mascarpone (in place of heavy cream), as well as grated Parmesan cheese. To make the mashed potatoes slightly more viscous, she also adds chicken broth to the mixture. See the recipe here Guy Fieri adds a bit of spice to his mashed potatoes with powdered wasabi. Guy Fieri. Steve Jennings/Getty Images; Paige Bennett/Insider The other ingredients in Fieri's recipe for mashed potatoes are relatively traditional, including a whole head of roasted garlic, butter, and heavy cream. See the recipe here Alton Brown's recipe for creamy mashed potatoes uses a food mill instead of a ricer or hand masher. Alton Brown. Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images; Jung Hsuan/Shutterstock However, even if you don't have this tool in your kitchen, you can still follow along with his simple yet classic recipe, which uses heavy cream and unsalted butter, and use your preferred method of mashing. See the recipe here Bobby Flay's mashed potatoes utilize buttermilk, black pepper, and green onion. Bobby Flay. Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images; Joanna Fantozzi/Insider Flay is the only celebrity chef to use buttermilk, rather than heavy cream or whole milk, in his mashed-potatoes recipe. While it can never hurt to try it out, one Insider reporter making this recipe did find that while the potatoes were nice and fluffy, the buttermilk made the mashed potatoes too tart and sour for their liking. See the recipe here The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, uses cream cheese to make her simple creamy mashed potatoes. Ree Drummond. Tyler Essary/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images; The Pioneer Woman/YouTube The recipe also calls for half a cup of cream, half a cup of half-and-half, butter, and optional milk if the mashed potatoes need to be thinned out. Unlike some other recipes, Drummond also likes to dot her potatoes with butter and bake them in a casserole dish at the end. See the recipe here Anthony Bourdain's Robuchon-style mashed potatoes take inspiration from Michelin-starred chef Joel Robuchon, who is famous for his buttery mashed potatoes. Anthony Bourdain in 2015. Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic/Getty Images; Joanna Fantozzi/Insider The recipe calls for a whopping six sticks of unsalted butter and only a half-cup of heavy cream. While this recipe may not be for the faint of heart, it will certainly get people talking ... and reaching for seconds. See the recipe here Emeril Lagasse's recipe for mashed potatoes includes garlic, butter, and heavy cream. Emeril Lagasse. John Lamparski/Getty Images; Joanna Fantozzi/Insider The celebrity chef also recommends using Idaho potatoes, rather than Yukon or russet. When an Insider reporter tried out Lagasse's mashed-potato recipe and compared it to one by Martha Stewart, Anthony Bourdain, and Bobby Flay, she liked his garlicky mashed potatoes the best. See the recipe here Joanna Gaines' recipe for garlic mashed potatoes comes from her "Fried Chicken Night" episode of "Magnolia Table," but they work just as well for Thanksgiving. Joanna Gaines. Rob Kim/Getty Images; Lapina Maria/Shutterstock The ultra-decadent recipe calls for two sticks of salted butter, half a cup of warm milk, cream cheese, and sour cream. Gaines uses a handheld potato mashed to make these traditional, yet creamy, potatoes. The "Fixer Upper" star also says that to add more texture to your mashed potatoes, leave about five stripes of skin on each potato. See the recipe here Read the original article on Insider PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. - A 15-year-old was arrested on Monday for making a social media threat towards the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. According to PCSO, detectives charged a 15-year-old from Miami with one count of False Report Concerning Planting a Bomb, Explosive, or Weapon of Mass Destruction. READ: Kentucky man who escaped custody in Tennessee spotted in Pinellas County: FBI investigators An investigation began after the teenager sent a direct message to the PCSO Instagram account, saying "I sent a bomb to your police station." Pinellas detectives, along with Miami Police Department detectives identified the 15-year-old as the suspect. The teen said he didn't think law enforcement would take the threat seriously. In addition to this arrest, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office arrested a 16-year-old last week after he posted similar threats on a Pinellas County Sheriff's Office Instagram post. He was charged with three counts of Written or Electronic Threats to Conduct a Mass Shooting or Act of Terrorist and Unlawful Use of Two-Way Communication Device. "The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office has zero tolerance for all threats made on social media. We are committed to the safety of all citizens and will investigate all threats to the fullest extent," PCSO wrote in a press release. A view toward the ceiling of the atrium with reflections off the wall panels as the Thompson Center stands mostly vacant, Nov. 9, 2023. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune) Helmut Jahns State of Illinois Center is the most cerebral, the most abstract, yet easily the most spectacular building ever constructed in the Loop, Tribune architecture critic Paul Gapp wrote when it opened in 1985. A year later, it would be featured prominently in Running Scared, the 1986 buddy cop action comedy starring Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines. The movies climax takes place in the atrium, and it is a cinematic love letter to the buildings soaring rotunda with its pale blue and salmon colored interiors that Gapp called no less than breathtaking. Even the spiraling mosaic tile floor is memorable. Advertisement Those distinctive design elements may not survive the upcoming gut rehab. Last year, the state sold the building (renamed the James R. Thompson Center in 1993) to Google, which plans to demo the interiors and revamp the space in the coming months. Much as I hate the idea of changing the buildings idiosyncratic look, few who worked there liked the open plan layout, which created all kinds of issues including wonky temperature control. Neglect hasnt helped things either. Advertisement But as Gapp wrote: In a city where architects so long worshipped the 90-degree angle and black curtain walls, the centers asymmetry and multicolored skin appear as almost impudent nose-thumbing at the past. For decades its functioned as a visual palate cleanser to the more traditional-minded buildings around it. The James R. Thompson Center stands mostly vacant on Nov. 9, 2023. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune) If youre feeling nostalgic and want to wander around this gorgeous, modernist space one last time before its obliterated, the building is open to the public Thursdays through Saturdays thanks to the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which has an exhibit there through the end of the year. Or, you can revisit Running Scared, which is streaming for free (with ads) on Freevee. Crystal and Hines star as streetwise police detectives more adept at trading quips than nabbing bad guys. But dont tell them (or the screenwriters) that. Their worldview: Everybodys a scumbag except for them, thanks to Chicagos hard-boiled everything. Their easygoing banter is just this side of smug, and you realize their light way with the material is a talent thats been missing on screen lately. Its striking to encounter it on a re-watch. Gregory Hines, from left, and Billy Crystal star in the 1986 action comedy "Running Scared." (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ) Their captain is fed up with them (of course) so he tells them to take some time off. Crystal slaps the desk: No! We got too much going on! You know, their captain replies, its a very bad sign when a cop thinks that Chicago will fall apart without them. So theyre off to Key West, where they hook up with a succession of beautiful women and decide to retire and open a bar under those sunny skies instead. Back in Chicago, they give their 30-day notice. Show me another career where they let you shoot people! their captain says incredulously. Its meant to be a funny line, but, wow, talk about hitting close to the truth. Before they hang up their badges, they have one last bust to make. Their target is an elusive, suit-wearing, Mercedes-driving kingpin played by Jimmy Smits, and the final showdown takes place inside the Thompson Center. Director Peter Hyams doubled as the films cinematographer and he has a real eye for capturing the buildings unique qualities and dimensions. Even the exposed, glass-walled elevators play an important plot point. Advertisement The movie makes the most of its wintry Chicago setting. Its cold, naturally. Snow is everywhere. Their Florida fantasy makes sense. But more importantly, the film looks like it was shot in Chicago, which sounds obvious, but isnt always the case depending on whats filming here. (A good chunk was shot on a soundstage in Los Angeles, with location work in Key West and Chicago.) Theres a car chase that takes place on the L tracks. In another scene, you can glimpse the old 666 Lounge in the background, located at 666 S. State St. We also see a church with a large sign reading Christ died for our sins. What we dont see is that, in real life, these buildings were literally right next to each other in conversation with one another, really which is such a hilarious detail and a missed opportunity by Hyams. But its the films use of the Thompson Center that stands out in the way it shows off those glorious interiors. Why so much color, Gapp wondered back in 1985? Some view Jahns personal and rather peculiar palette as better suited to Acapulco or Miami Beach than to Chicago. Jahn replies that he is trying to make brightly optimistic architecture. Too many people, he says, have stopped believing in the future. Jahn wasnt wrong, then or now. Nina Metz is a Tribune critic. Advertisement nmetz@chicagotribune.com About 2,000 Haitian migrants celebrated their first Thanksgiving in the United States through an event organized by a local non-profit as many families are still unsure where they are going to sleep. Immigrant Family Services Institute (IFSI) provided turkey dinners with Haitian sides including rice, beans, and fried plantains in a joyful feast at several locations across Massachusetts. I feel so excited. I feel at home, said Remy Pierre at the IFSI office in Mattapan. I feel very grateful and joyful, because, right now, we were singing together, we were dancing together. We feel the family lifestyle. Pierre has been in the country a couple of months and has shelter, but others he celebrated with dont know where they will sleep each night. Alexis Regina Laguerre, who took pride partaking in an American holiday of gratitude, is a now homeless wife and mother of two. Wed love to find a place to stay because its four of us, and we dont know where were going to sleep, said Regina Laguerre. State transportation building to be used as temporary shelter for migrant families, officials say Dr. Geralde Gabeau, executive director of IFSI, has helped thousands of migrants find housing initially in shelters and hotels, and she has coordinated jobs and other resources. But more housing is desperately needed, with up to 20 migrants sleeping on benches at Logan Airport in recent days and others in conference rooms at the state Transportation Department building, as the states shelter cap hits its maximum and lawmakers are at a stalemate over how to spend $250 million for emergency shelters. The cold weather is coming, and people are desperate to find a place, Gabeau said. And thats one of the reasons why my call is to everyone, not just the state but also the legislature, to come together and pass this bill to open up more space for families. Haitian migrants are escaping gang violence, a food shortage, and job crisis in their homeland. Gabeau says these families cannot turn back, as more arrive every day. As long as the situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate, people will be coming, because they have no other place, Gabeau said. Its a matter of life-and-death situation. Advocates scramble to aid homeless migrant families after Massachusetts caps emergency shelter slots Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW Rescuers are desperately searching for any signs of two missing children and an adult thought to be trapped under mud and debris after a devastating landslide in southeastern Alaska, officials said. The side of a mountain gave way and tumbled over a highway in the small town of Wrangell, about 200 miles south of Juneau, on Nov. 20 just before 9 p.m., McClatchy News previously reported. A photo shows a massive pile of fallen trees and other debris at the base of the mountain and overflowing into the bay. The landslide measured 200 feet wide and took out three single-family homes, McClatchy News reported. Officials believe three people are still missing, the Alaska Department of Public Safety said in a Nov. 21 news release. A drone operator found the bodies of two adults on Nov. 21, the department said in the release. Search and rescue teams and K9 teams are searching the ground, and planes and helicopters are searching from the sky, officials said. The U.S. Coast Guard and good Samaritans are searching the bay at the base of the mountain, according to a news release. Two and a half inches of rain fell over three days prior to the landslide, McClatchy News reported. Officials asked the public to avoid the area since more landslides are possible, and those who live in the area should evacuate. Devastating landslide kills 1 when it hits homes, Alaska officials say. Others missing Growing 5,978-acre wildfire prompts closures on Blue Ridge Parkway, Appalachian Trail Boom that rocked Minnesota region could be a meteor. Scared the soul out of my dog Debris is scattered about inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls, N.Y. The border crossing between the U.S. and Canada has been closed after a vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on a bridge near Niagara Falls. The FBIs field office in Buffalo said in a statement that it was investigating the explosion on the Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two countries across the Niagara River. | Derek Gee, The Buffalo News via Associated Press The investigation continues after a speeding car flew through the air and erupted in flames on Rainbow Bridge, which connects New York and Canada. Two people are dead as a result of the crash, one a native western New Yorker, per NBC News. No sign of terrorism in recent Rainbow Bridge explosion Nov. 22 at 6:45 p.m. An initial investigation of the crash on Rainbow Bridge that occurred at midday doesnt indicate the accident was an act of terrorism, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said. Just came from the scene of this horrible incident at the Rainbow Bridge. No evidence of terrorism indicated at this time. Grateful for our first responders keeping drivers and residents safe on this busy travel day. Will continue to update on any developments. https://t.co/nNGFPHm0bm Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) November 22, 2023 The bridge incident has affected the busiest travel day of the year. Gov. Hochul said that the crash left nothing but the engine and would take time for law enforcement to investigate all the pieces and clean up the area, per NBC News. The pieces are scattered over 13, 14 booths, said Gov. Horchul in an afternoon press conference. Its still unknown when the Rainbow Bridge will reopen, reported The New York Times. We have to wait for the scene to be investigated and cleared and ensure the facility is safe for the traveling public and our officers, said Rose Brophy, director of field operations for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Buffalo at a news conference per the Times. And once that is done we will assess that and reopen. The Whirlpool and Lewiston-Queenston Bridges are now open, Gov. Horchul announced reported NBC News. But the Maple Leaf Train from New York City to Toronto will not be going further than the Niagara exit because of the bridge incident. Related 2 people died in a vehicle explosion at the U.S.-Canada border. Heres what we know Nov. 22 at 2:09 p.m. Two individuals who were in a car crossing the Rainbow Bridge connecting the United States and Canada around midday on Wednesday are confirmed dead after the car crashed into a screening location and exploded. So far, known injuries include a 27-year-old man who has been hospitalized for minor injuries, Fox News reported. The vehicle that exploded was headed to Canada from the U.S. side and attempting to approach the border officer building, according to Fox News. The incident started and ended on the U.S. side of the border, ABC reported. Law enforcement personnel block off the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls, N.Y. The border crossing between the U.S. and Canada has been closed after a vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on a bridge near Niagara Falls. The FBIs field office in Buffalo said in a statement that it was investigating the explosion on the Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two countries across the Niagara River. | Derek Gee, The Buffalo News via Associated Press The FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, New York State Police and the Niagara Regional Police Service are investigating the incident. Since witness statements vary, authorities are trying to acquire videos from multiple angles of the incident, according to various news reports. After an initial passport and license check, the vehicle was sent to a second security checkpoint. At that point, the vehicle, which contained a suitcase or briefcase that may have held explosives, sped up and crashed into the second checkpoint, ABC 7 reported. Border crossing points between western New York and Canada are currently closed. Canada/US Border closed at Niagara Falls, Rainbow Bridge due to a possible VBIED, car exploded. pic.twitter.com/tS2sSwwYOT NYCFireWire (@NYCFireWire) November 22, 2023 Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt said about the explosion: We have major issues happening right now at the U.S. borders in the Niagara Region. Right now we currently have the Rainbow Bridge closed in both directions in Niagara Falls. Niagara Regional Police, Niagara Parks Police as well as Canada Border Services are working on an incident in that area. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on X, Ive been briefed on the incident on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls and we are closely monitoring the situation. State agencies are on site and ready to assist. Hochul added, At my direction, (New York State Police) is actively working with the @FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to monitor all points of entry to New York. I am traveling to Buffalo to meet with law enforcement & emergency responders & will update New Yorkers when more information becomes available. FBI Buffalo said on X, The FBI Buffalo Field Office is investigating a vehicle explosion at the Rainbow Bridge, a border crossing between the U.S. and Canada in Niagara Falls. The FBI is coordinating with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners in this investigation. As this situation is very fluid, thats all we can say at this time. The Niagara Gazette reported, All local bridges to Canada including Lewiston-Queenston, Whirlpool and the Peace Bridge in Buffalo are closed to traffic following the explosion. This is a developing story and will be updated. Chocolate cake is always, always a good idea. And pretty much every occasion calls for chocolate cake. Birthdays, weekdays, rough weeks, major accomplishments chocolate cake makes it better. Homemade chocolate cake can be next level, and you dont have to be an expert baker to whip up a top-tier chocolate cake at home. These recipes, which are sourced from avid bakers and accomplished pastry chefs alike, can be as easy as mixing common supermarket ingredients (dont underestimate the role of boxed pudding in a moist dessert) or a bit more complicated for those comfortable with an electric beater and egg separation. The good news? Whether youre strengthening your baking skills or just getting familiar with an oven, practicing a chocolate cake recipe results in fresh, homemade chocolate cake. Share your freshly baked treats with friends, coworkers, neighbors a slice of fresh chocolate cake is the key to popularity. With these 20 recipes, youll work your way up to being the go-to baker for birthday cakes in no time. From fruit-forward iterations to nutty bites, each chocolate cake recipe is distinct, sprinkles and all. Heres what to bake before you can dig in. The chocolate cake is as classic as it gets, with one special twist coffee. While it might seem like a strange ingredient, freshly brewed coffee actually helps enhance the cocoa flavor. Serve this on late nights, like New Years Eve or before a big dance party, and with a cup of coffee or espresso. Top-Secret Chocolate Cake by Ree Drummond Secrets out: this chocolate cake is phenomenal. And not too difficult to make. The recipe starts with boxed cake mix, the ultimate hack to dress up a dessert at home. Homemade ganache frosting, plus fancy sprinkles, make this cake next level. Martha Stewart's Mile High Salted-Caramel Chocolate Cake by Martha Stewart This cake is so decadent that its almost hard to believe it exists. Of course Martha Stewart is to thank for this rich cake that layers sticky salted caramel between moist chocolate sheets. Flaky sea salt sprinkled atop the homemade Dutch chocolate frosting is truly the cherry on top. Double Chocolate Layer Cake by Ed Kasky The more chocolate, the better. This two-layer cake is old fashioned and classic in all the right ways. Every bite is super chocolatey, thanks to a duo of chocolate frosting and chocolate cake made with both melted chocolate and cocoa powder. Its one of the most popular cake recipes on the internet for a reason. Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake by Melissa Clark Forget the typical sandwich spread mayonnaise takes on a second identity in this cake recipe. Adding richness, lushness and tenderness to the better, mayo is the hidden ingredient to a soft and luscious chocolate cake. The only other thing that this cake needs is a dusting of powdered sugar on top. Easy Flourless Chocolate Cakes by Justin Chapple Flourless chocolate cake is its own kind of treat. Naturally gluten-free, its hard to tell this chocolate cake is even missing anything, thanks to its decadence. Using frothy egg whites and high-quality chocolate are the two keys to success with this recipe. Mexican Chocolate Cake by Nathan Turner Two spices add an extra element to this Mexican chocolate cake. Cinnamon and cayenne pepper add a nice zing, and a touch of instant coffee adds some depth. Sour cream brings the moisture to this cake thats almost as easy to make as it is to eat. Valerie Bertinelli's Sicilian Love Cake by Valerie Bertinelli Ready to fall in love? This basic cake comes together with store-bought cake mix and instant chocolate pudding. A homemade mascarpone and ricotta filling adds some Italian flair to this chocolate cake, echoing tiramisu but in its own, chocolatey way. Chocolate-Peppermint Cake by Christina Tosi Chocolate and mint may be one of the worlds best culinary combos. And of course Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi knows how to best couple these two in a cake. This recipe is more about technique than it is baking (read: the cake can be from the store), and it relies on making a peppermint-flavored milk to douse the cake in. Red Wine Chocolate Cake with Raspberries by Chloe Coscarelli Leftover wine (or a freshly opened bottle to drink while baking) is the key to this adult-friendly chocolate cake. Vegan chef Chloe Coscarellis recipe uses wine and vinegar for moisture and a little bit of sweetness, plus fresh raspberries on top for a burst of color and fruity flavor. Pre-bought coconut whipped topping finishes everything off. Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cake by Erica Chayes Wida Five ingredients make this crowd-favorite cake. And all five ingredients are typical supermarket purchases. Chocolate cake mix and peanut butter unite for a flavor bomb thats moist, nutty and chocolatey, and the addition of extra chocolate chips adds some nice meltiness. Switch it up for peanut butter chips if preferred. Guinness Chocolate Cake by Clodagh McKenna Inspired by a fresh, frothy pint of Guinness, this chocolate cake takes the stout to another level. Bubbly dark beer provides a nice base to make the chocolate cake, which also uses buttermilk for moisture and a touch of rang. A whipped cream cheese icing is a luscious contrast to the rich, Irish-style chocolate cake. Jean-Georges' Molten Chocolate Cake by Jean-Georges Vongerichten This five-star restaurant worthy cake is totally doable in your home kitchen. This petite cake is very chocolate forward and quick to make. Bake it in individual ramekins or other molds for an elegant dessert thats dinner party ready. Dark Chocolate Layer Cake by Siri Daly This dark chocolate cake is packed with secret ingredients that give it a special oomph. One cup of stout adds a chocolatey, malty flavor, while a pudding-based filling adds creaminess to each bite. The four layers make this a substantial and celebratory cake. Mexican Chocolate Icebox Cake by Melissa Knific Icebox cake is timeless, and is one of the easiest ways to prepare cake for a group, especially without turning the oven on. Inspired by Mexican hot chocolate, this cake combines graham crackers, cinnamon and chocolate for a hooey dessert. Whipped cream cheese adds an extra level of decadence, though go ahead and use the store-bought frozen version in a pinch. Dark Chocolate Lava Cake (Moelleux au Chocolat) by Sebastien Giannini and Anina Belle Giannini If its a French pastry, its fancy. And this recipe from the South of France is merveilleux. Fresh strawberries add sweetness to the semisweet chocolate base, with the finished product being gooey, melty and oh so decadent. Chocolate-Coconut Cake by Elizabeth Karmel Chocolate, coconut and marshmallow, oh my! This cake is almost like a giant candy bar, but more sophisticated as its 100% made from scratch. This chocolate cake tastes best the next day, so go ahead and make it ahead of a celebration. Youll thank us later. Ree Drummond's Instant Pot Chocolate Lava Cakes by Ree Drummond Amateur or busy baker? No matter your skills in the kitchen, let the Instant Pot do most of the work for dessert. This lava cake cooks in ramekins in a pressure cooker, ensuring that the outside is crisp and insides are gooey, just like they should be. Molten Brigadeiro Cake by Leticia Moreinos Schwartz Inspired by a brigadeiro, a Brazilian chocolate truffle, this molten cake is about to become a family favorite. Condensed milk adds a nice sweetness to the cake, which is served warm. Naturally, it pairs well with your favorite ice cream. Martha Stewart's Chocolate Beet Cake by Martha Stewart Beets in cake may seem odd, but Martha Stewart knows what shes doing. A lot of processed sugar comes from beets, so its a flavor that you might be familiar with. In this case, whole beets add a fudginess and dramatic dark hue to the sheet cake. Thanks to the inclusion of the root vegetable, this dessert is basically a salad. This article was originally published on TODAY.com As a parent, the things youre most thankful for include your childs health and safety but attempting to share an elaborate meal with them and all of your extended family may leave you feeling less-than-filled with gratitude. You can count on children to bring their full, honest, picky-eating, straight-talking selves to the table. While not always relaxing or enjoyable, every Thanksgiving with kids is a meal to remember. Here, some of the wittiest parents on X (formerly Twitter) share their wry observations on what its like to share this national holiday with little ones. I love when my child has themed group lunches at school like Thanksgiving Feast Day or Holiday Brunch - - so she can practice refusing all the food and ask for chicken nuggets, before her final performance in front of our family. Amanda Marcotte | Mediocre Mommy (@storiesofamom) November 19, 2019 I love Thanksgiving. Can't wait to slave for hours over a meal my kids will rudely reject in front of relatives who are judging my parenting Ally (@TragicAllyHere) November 16, 2016 When your children refuse to eat anything other than a buttered dinner roll today just take a deep breath and be thankful that there will be more leftovers for you. Also, fuck guilt and other people's opinions on what your kids should or shouldn't be eating. Moderately Mom (@moderately_mom) November 28, 2019 Thanksgiving is a sweet day where my kids scream for hrs while I cook & then my 4 yo announces at the table that Grandma Edna smells funny. Ash (an female) (@adult_mom) November 16, 2016 Its the day before thanksgiving and my children better not ask to eat today. Professional Worrier (@pro_worrier_) November 27, 2019 Spent the hour ride home from Thanksgiving with my butt wedged between two car seats because the #baby was screaming. Yea, holidays with kids! Ohio mom of two #BLM (@OhioMomoftwo) November 24, 2017 It's almost Thanksgiving, so that means it's time to buy a bunch of food your kids will stare at for 10 minutes before asking for pie! the Mom TruthBomb (@momTruthBomb) November 16, 2016 My kids think Im going to make them breakfast when we still have plenty of cranberry sauce leftover from thanksgiving we need to eat. Jessie (@mommajessiec) November 28, 2022 When planning your Thanksgiving meal portions, don't forget to account for all of the stuff your kids will throw on the floor. Lauren Mullen (@DraggingFeeties) November 18, 2017 Its 9pm on Thanksgiving : One of my children is eating mashed potatoes with a spatula, out of glassware. One of my children is dipping eggos in home made whipped cream. The other one is yawing Im not tired Thanksgiving accomplished! hahahaheater (@dishs_up) November 27, 2020 The most rewarding part of cooking for days to have a wonderful thanksgiving for my family is when the kids start gagging and ask for pop tarts Maryfairyboberry (@maryfairybobrry) November 1, 2021 What son of a bitch signed me up to bring 30 juice boxes and a pumpkin pie for 5s kindergarten Thanksgiving party?! Oh shit. Its me. IM the son of a bitch. Marissa (@michimama75) November 22, 2021 May this be the year that your children eat something other than dinner rolls. - a parent's Thanksgiving blessing the Mom TruthBomb (@momTruthBomb) November 28, 2019 [Thanksgiving dinner] Me: *wins wishbone contest* Wife: so what did you wish for? Kids: *walking into the kitchen* our shoes are tied and we are ready to go Me: *smiles* The Dad (@thedad) November 26, 2020 Thank you, in advance, to my family for the hours they'll put into preparing a Thanksgiving dinner so that my daughter can eat mac 'n cheese & immediately raid the dessert spread. (@tinyandtired) November 23, 2017 You know what I'm thankful for every Thanksgiving? Having kids that all of a sudden are "tired" when I've had enough of visiting my family. A Bearer Of Dad News (@HomeWithPeanut) November 20, 2018 Kids: *open fridge* Me, being the cheerful mom I always thought Id be during the holidays: DONT YOU DARE PUT YOUR HANDS ON ANYTHING IN THERE! THATS FOR THANKSGIVING!! MomTransparenting (@momtransparent1) November 27, 2019 Going to my parents for Thanksgiving, where my kids will continue to be picky eaters, but its an away game. Tired Dad of 2 (@Tired_Dad_of_2) November 25, 2021 Let's get married & have kids so instead of enjoying Thanksgiving dinner you can make sure no food touches on her plate while I microwave him a hotdog. Simon Holland (@simoncholland) November 22, 2019 Happy Thanksgiving! Or as we like to call it in our house, I dont like that, I want butter noodles. Godspeed. Amanda Marcotte | Mediocre Mommy (@storiesofamom) November 28, 2019 Happy Thanksgiving, dont forget to pack some granola bars for your kid who will look at a table full of every imaginable food and refuse to eat any of it. The Dad (@thedad) November 24, 2022 We have this tradition where every Thanksgiving my wife & I cook a big meal, then our kids criticize it A Bearer Of Dad News (@HomeWithPeanut) November 24, 2021 Me, before kids: This is dumb, we should get the whole week off. Me, with kids in school: Do they really need the day after Thanksgiving off, too? Ramblin Mama (@ramblinma) November 21, 2017 Son: why is there a parade for thanksgiving? Me: to remember why we celebrate *points* there's a turkey *points* and that's a pilgrim Son: *points to Pikachu* and who's that? Me: *smiling* son, I think it's time I tell you the true meaning of the holidays The Dad (@thedad) November 28, 2019 Nothing makes me long for Monday morning more than a 5-day Thanksgiving break spent with kids hopped up on pie and leftover Halloween candy. the Mom TruthBomb (@momTruthBomb) November 28, 2016 Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota is dealing with the deaths of three airmen last month, causing an outcry from community members and pushing military officials to increase mental health resources at the remote installation. Capt. Christopher Thibeaux-Moore, a spokesman for the base, told Military.com in an emailed statement that there was a "loss of three airmen in October" and Minot is "actively working to provide extensive mental health and resilience resources to struggling individuals." Details about the deaths -- such as whether they are attributable to accidents, illness, training or suicide -- were not disclosed by the base, which said they are currently under investigation. The Air Force has, in the past, cited Pentagon and internal suicide prevention policies to Military.com as justification for not releasing more information regarding deaths at various installations. Read Next: Navy Officially Ends Its 'Up or Out' Policy that Forced Sailors to Advance or Separate "The loss of any airman affects us as a team," Col. Kenneth McGhee, 91st Missile Wing commander, said in an emailed statement. "We aim to respect the privacy and care of our members and their families in the wake of these events, and we must continue to advocate for various support systems through the Air Force and the local community to ensure that those who need to seek help are able to do so." Community members in Minot, North Dakota, have been sounding alarms about the string of deaths. Last week, one woman in the community stood near a busy bridge for several days with a sign that said "3 Days for 3 Lives Lost" in an attempt to raise awareness about mental health issues in the military, according to a report from the Minot Daily News. The woman, Lisa Hermosillo, told the local newspaper that there has not been proper information from the base about the situation. "They said they wanted to respect the families and didn't want too much information getting out. I heard [about] it because airmen were changing their profile pictures on Facebook to honor the person who died," Hermosillo told the Minot Daily News. "Some airmen reached out to me saying they didn't even know deaths had happened until they saw a TikTok I made. How do we come together as a base and community if the problem is going to be isolated?" The installation is a crucial component in America's nuclear triad -- the combination of land, sea and air-fired missiles that can react at a moment's notice in a national security emergency. Minot Air Force Base operates two legs of the triad, housing the 5th Bomb Wing's B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers and the 91st Missile Wing's Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles. The northern base, located near the Canadian border, has often been criticized as one of the least desired duty stations among airmen due to its cold climate and remote location. The entire active-duty Air Force tracked 64 deaths by suicide in 2022, for a rate of 19.7 per 100,000 airmen, according to annual suicide statistics released last month. Minot Air Force Base is home to more than 5,400 military service members, 677 civilians and more than 5,000 dependents, according to a base fact sheet. Col. Daniel Hoadley, the 5th Bomb Wing commander, said in a statement that extra chaplains, counselors and mental health professionals have been made available in the wake of the deaths. Additionally, more counselors have been embedded in the affected squadrons. "This is not a topic that leadership teams take lightly, and there is considerable effort put in to prevent and respond to these tragedies," Hoadley said. "There are a variety of resources in place to provide support systems for our airmen and families in times of need." Air Force officials have been tight-lipped about deaths at other bases, such as Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. When it was revealed that there had been 17 deaths of personnel tied to Tinker, the service and base declined to provide Military.com with the number of those deaths that were attributed to suicide. It said only that 11 of the deaths were attributed to illnesses or natural causes and accidents, and the other six were from "other causes" under investigation. The string of deaths at Minot also comes as Air Force officials investigate whether troops in a wide assortment of jobs who have served at any of the nation's intercontinental ballistic missile bases are at risk for Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other cancers. -- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly. Related: Amid Deaths, Tinker Air Force Base Remains Tight-Lipped on Number of Suicides I love making Ina Garten's dishes during the holidays, and these three recipes are my favorite. Her overnight mac and cheese is decadent, and there are never leftovers of the potato gratin. But Garten's skillet corn bread is my favorite and always steals the spotlight at Thanksgiving. As a food writer, I've tested and tasted many of Ina Garten's best recipes. I've whipped up her comforting pastas , learned how to bake by making her incredible cakes , and started many mornings with her easy but delicious breakfasts . So it's no surprise that I always turn to Garten's dishes during the holidays. And these are the three easy "Barefoot Contessa" recipes that I tell everyone to make for Thanksgiving. Ina Garten's overnight mac and cheese is delicious, decadent, and super comforting. Garten's overnight mac and cheese. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider In her cookbook "Go-To Dinners," Garten said her overnight mac and cheese is the "creamiest, crustiest, most delicious mac and cheese." And believe me, she's not exaggerating. Garten's overnight mac and cheese features both Gruyere and sharp white cheddar cheese. Garten's mac and cheese features Gruyere and extra-sharp white cheddar cheese. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider To make Garten's dish for four, you'll need: 8 ounces cavatappi or elbow macaroni 3 cups heavy cream 2 cups Gruyere cheese, grated 1 cups fine fresh white breadcrumbs 1 cup sharp white cheddar, grated 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted teaspoon ground nutmeg Garten's mac and cheese is the perfect make-ahead dish for the holidays. Garten's overnight mac and cheese is a creamy, decadent dream. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten's mac and cheese couldn't be easier to assemble you don't even need to make a roux. Plus, it requires less than 30 minutes in the oven, so it's an easy dish to bake right before Thanksgiving dinner. But, more importantly, Garten's overnight mac and cheese is extremely delicious. I love the crunchy breadcrumbs on top, and the sauce is decadent without being too rich. When I made this dish for the first time at Friendsgiving, my boyfriend praised it for being "exceptionally creamy" while a friend said it tasted "like a hug in your mouth." It's my favorite "Barefoot Contessa" mac and cheese recipe, although Garten's "grown up" mac and cheese is definitely a close second. Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's overnight mac and cheese here. Garten's potato gratin is one of my family's favorite holiday dishes. Garten's potato-fennel gratin. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider I wasn't much of a cook before the pandemic, unless you count warming up frozen food from Trader Joe's. But when I wanted to contribute something to my family's holiday menu, this recipe seemed like a good place to start. Garten's potato-fennel gratin, which appears in her very first cookbook, " The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook ," is 100% foolproof. Plus, it tastes amazing. "I love to make potato gratin and fennel gratin, so I decided to combine the two," Garten writes in the recipe's description. "If you make this in an old French gratin dish, it looks wonderful and can go from the oven to the table with style." Garten's potato-fennel gratin only requires five ingredients. Garten's potato-fennel gratin only requires a few ingredients. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider To make Garten's gratin for four, you'll need: 1 pound russet potatoes (2 large ones) 1 small fennel bulb yellow onion 1 cups Gruyere cheese 1 cups plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream If you're trying to make the dish for a larger party, Garten also has a recipe that serves 10 . There are never any leftovers when we serve Garten's potato-fennel gratin at Thanksgiving it's that good. Garten's potato-fennel gratin is so comforting, and it looks great on a plate. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten's potato-fennel gratin is such a creamy and satisfying dish, with perfectly cooked potatoes and a deliciously cheesy cream thanks to the Gruyere. The sauteed fennel also adds a lovely mild sweetness to each bite. This is easily one of my favorite holiday side dishes, and it's so much better than mashed potatoes. Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's potato-fennel gratin here. Garten's brown-butter skillet corn bread blew me away the first time I tried it. Garten's brown-butter skillet corn bread. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten included this corn-bread recipe in the republished version of "The Barefoot Contessa" cookbook, calling it the "best corn bread I've ever made!" I decided to try the recipe for the first time before a Friendsgiving party a few years ago, and it was a huge hit. You probably already have most of the ingredients for Garten's corn bread in your pantry. You probably already have the ingredients for Garten's corn bread. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider To make Garten's corn bread, which serves 10 to 12 people, you'll need: 3 cups all-purpose flour 2 cups whole milk 1 cup fine cornmeal (Garten says this makes moister corn bread than medium grind) 1 cup sugar pound unsalted butter 2 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten 2 tablespoons baking powder My boyfriend and I love Garten's corn bread so much that we now make it twice every year for Friendsgiving and Thanksgiving. Garten's corn bread is super fluffy, and always steals the show. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten's brown-butter skillet corn bread is one of my favorite "Barefoot Contessa" recipes of all time. It's perfectly baked and delectably moist, which is evident the minute you cut the first slice. The warm, golden hue makes for a stunning centerpiece, and the corn bread just tastes so deliciously fluffy. It's the perfect blend of sweet and savory, and I can never resist getting seconds no matter how stuffed I am. Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's brown-butter skillet corn bread here. Read the original article on Insider CHEATHAM COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) The Cheatham County Sheriffs Department arrested three employees of a bail bonding agency for multiple crimes associated with bounty hunting. It began on October 27 when 74-year-old Dan Holton said two men, now identified as Alexander Beecham and Gauge Waddell, came to his house around noon and banged forcefully on his door. Have breaking come to you: Subscribe to News 2 email alerts The men said they were looking for Holtons daughter who had a warrant related to a DUI. Holton told News 2, the men were dressed like law enforcement officers and did not identify themselves. I said she is not here, she doesnt live here. And he took a step and looked over my shoulder into my house and that is when I began to get nervous. Holton said the mans van blocked his car in the driveway and he asked them to leave. When the men parked a short distance from his home, Holton said he went and took their picture with his phone. Holton said the men were wearing tactical vests that said Bail Enforcement Agent. (Courtesy: Dan Holton) According to Holton, neither man identified themselves as bounty hunters or bonding agents. Investigators said the word Agent is much larger than the other text, which Corporal Shane Dunning said is misleading. Dunning said the men never registered with local law enforcement, as mandated. We didnt get any notification they were in our county doing work. According to the arrest affidavit, Alexander Beecham and another man would go on to another nearby home looking for their suspect. The document claims the men entered a home without authorization, scaring a 16-year-old boy who was inside. He didnt give them permission to come in. He confronted them in the kitchen area of the home that they came in the back door that was unlocked, Dunning said. According to the arrest documents, later that day, Alexander Beecham and 50-year-old Illa Jordan returned to the same home. The woman they confronted was with two minors. The paperwork said Beecham approached and began yelling forcefully, asking if she was the suspect. The victim claimed the male was carrying a gun in his hand. She stated that the woman, Jordan, had been in the woods apparently laying in wait. CRIME TRACKER | Read the latest crime news from Middle Tennessee News 2 asked Dunning if the suspects were legitimate, and if they were recognized by the state with credentials to be bail bondsmen or bounty hunters. I know they have acquired an 8-hour class that is required, but I also have documentation that they were denied the actual bonding agents in Rutherford County, Dunning answered. News 2 obtained a copy of the document registered in the Circuit Court for Rutherford County in Murfreesboro. The documents for both Beecham and Waddell requesting they be added as bonding agents for Free At Last Bonding show a red DENIED stamp with the date of August 25, 2023. Surveillance video from November 15 shows the three suspects being booked into the Cheatham County Jail. All three suspects smiled in their mugshots. It was kind of a joke to them, said Dunning. The attorney for the bonding company said the employees acted according to law and 74-year-old Dan Holton is to blame. Cayley J. Turrin, attorney for Free at Last Bail Bonding and the 3 suspects, sent News 2 the following statement: We look forward to our day in court, as we have tried to provide the corporal with proof of innocence and documents that show that these charges are false, including video footage. Unfortunately, at every turn, we were denied by the Corporal in Cheatham County and we look forward to our day in court. We tried to explain the nuances of bonding laws but were again denied by him. These are very serious charges, and we have fought them in the past and have won, we look forward to doing the same here. The alleged victim in this matter was merely upset that we were trying to bring his daughter to court in Coffee County that she had purposely missed. Blame is being placed on the wrong individuals here and this is a simple case of an individual who did not want to appear in court and a father who was trying to hide her. When told of the comment from the attorney, Holton told News 2, Well nobody is hiding anybody, never have been. There is no defense for being terrorized by a couple of thugs. Street racer charged after meetup causes $100K worth in damages near Nashville airport News 2 checked with the Department of Commerce and Insurance. Gauge Waddell is licensed as an Insurance Producer. The status date is November 20, 2023, almost a month after the alleged crimes. Alexander Beecham has a similar document also with a status date of November 20, 2023. Illa Renee Jordan has a valid state Insurance Producer license registered with the state as of September 15, 2023. This date is before the alleged incident. When told of this, Shane Dunning said she still did not notify law enforcement authorities they were in the county looking to pick someone up. We want to work with our bounty hunters and bail bondsmen, but we ask them to please do it the right way to protect our citizens. Gauge Waddell has been charged with Violation of bounty hunting professional and Impersonation of a licensed professional, with a $5,000 bond. Illa Jordan has been charged with Violation of bounty hunting professional bondsman with a bond of $2,500. Alexander Beecham has been charged with Violation of bounty hunting professional bondsman, Impersonation of a licensed professional, Aggravated assault (two counts), and Aggravated burglary, with a bond of $35,000. Read todays top stories on wkrn.com Kevin Walters, PIO for the Department of Commerce and Insurance sent News 2 the bail bondsmen regulations in Tennessee: Bail bondsman license summary A bail bond is a type of limited-lines insurance. Limited-lines insurance licenses are issued by the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance (Department). Therefore, in rare situations when it is necessary for bail bondsmen to be licensed in Tennessee, they must obtain a limited-lines producers license from the Department. Non-residents may obtain limited-lines producers licenses when the producer holds a like license in another state and meets the requirements of 56-6-108. With a few notable exceptions, Tennessee statutes exempt professional bondsmen from licensure by the Department of Commerce and Insurance. 40-11-302(b) (2022). However, if a professional bondsman acts as surety for certain civil bonds, insurance licensure is required if any of the following conditions are not met: 1) the bond is a maximum of $10,000; 2) the court regulating the bondsman has regulations for the civil bonding activities of the professional bondsman; and 3) the court requires, at a minimum, a 10% security. 40-11-302(c). Therefore, if a professional bondsman writes as surety for the statutorily specified civil bonds and fails to meet the requirements of 40-11-302(c), he or she must be licensed by the Department. For surety companies, a $100,000 deposit must be made with the Department before the company is authorized to execute any bonds in the state. 56-15-105. Tenn. Code Ann. 56-15-101 gives power to fidelity or bonding corporations to execute, as surety, bonds according to the judicial proceedings of the courts of the state. Additionally, an agent must be licensed if he/she writes a bond through a licensed bonding company. 56-15-105; 101. Where the exceptions do not apply, trial courts have the power to regulate the licensure of bail bondsmen. In re Hitt, 1995, 910 S.W.2d 900 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1995). [I]t is the trial courts function to regulate the professional bondsmen that execute bonds in its court, and it may impose reasonable limitations on the total liability of such bondsmens undertakings in that court. [T.C.A. 4011302306] . Further, a trial court has the inherent power to administer its affairs, including the right to impose reasonable regulations regarding the making of bonds. Taylor v. Waddey, 206 Tenn. 497, 334 S.W.2d 733 (1960). In re International Fidelity Insurance Company, 989 S.W.2d 726, 728 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1998), quoting Hull v. State, 543 S.W.2d 611, 612 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1976). Even when the Department does not have the power to regulate the bondsman, the Department may investigate the civil bonding activities of any professional bondsman [,] and if the Commissioner believes the civil bonding activities are not in the best interest of the general public, the Commissioner shall send a report of the investigation to the court. 40-11-302(d)(1); (2). The court, after receiving the Commissioners report, shall hold a hearing and enter any orders the court deems appropriate. Id. at (3). Therefore, the Department can only regulate bondsmen licensure in limited circumstances, as outlined in 40-11-302(c), and when the bondsmen are writing under a licensed bonding company. Trial courts have the power to regulate bondsman on all other occasions. Bounty hunters, on the other hand, involve different faucets of the law. Bounty Hunter Licensing Requirements A bounty hunter is defined as: a person acting as an agent of a professional bondsman who attempts to take or takes into custody a person who has failed to appear in court and whose bond has been forfeited, for a fee, the payment of which is contingent upon the taking of a person into custody and returning the person to the custody of the professional bondsman for whom the bounty hunter works. 40-11-318(a). However, 40-11-318(a) details that a bounty hunter is NOT a professional bondsman if that bondsman is arresting the same person with whom they have contracted with. Bounty hunters must have credentials verifying that they are acting as agents of a professional bondsman in Tennessee, and that they have completed the training required by 40-11-401. Tenn. Code Ann. 40-11-401 provides for the mandatory continuing education requirements of bail bondsmen and bounty hunters. According to 40-11-401(b), bail bondsmen can also act as bounty hunters as long as the requirements for both professions are met according to statute, and as long as the bondsman did not contract with the arrestee according to 40-11-318(a). Other than the credentials verifying the completion of all requirements listed in 40-11-401, bounty hunters are not required to have licensure in Tennessee. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRN News 2. A 43-year-old man, and two women were wounded overnight Tuesday in two separate shootings in the South Shore neighborhood, Chicago police said. The first shooting happened about 9:35 p.m. in the 7900 block of South Oglesby Avenue. Police said a man was standing on the sidewalk when someone began shooting in his direction before fleeing eastbound. The victim was taken in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head to UChicago Medicine. Around 10:20 p.m., two women, ages 20 and 30, were walking in the 2000 block of East 72nd Street when someone opened fire, striking them both, police said. The younger woman suffered a wound to the left shoulder and a graze wound to the head. The other woman suffered a gunshot wound to the wrist. Both were taken to Advocate Trinity Hospital and listed in good condition, police said. No one was in custody for any of the attacks, and detectives were investigating. Qatar has brokered a "truce-for-hostages" deal between Israel and Hamas that will include a four-day ceasefire, the Associated Press reported on Nov. 21. Qatar's Foreign Ministry said it would announce within the next day when the ceasefire would begin. The ceasefire will mark the first pause in a six-week war that has claimed thousands of lives and caused intense destruction in the densely-populated Gaza Strip. The temporary halt in fighting will allow for the exchange of at least 50 of the 240 hostages that Hamas is holding in Gaza, as well as the release of 150 Palestinian POWs all of whom are women or minors. Hostage releases will begin 24 hours after the deal is approved by all parties. The government of Israel is committed to bringing all of the hostages home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office said in a statement. Ahead of a cabinet vote on the ceasefire, Netanyahu said the war against Hamas would resume after the truce expires. We are at war, and we will continue the war, he said. We will continue until we achieve all our goals. On Oct. 7, Hamas launched a massive attack on Israel, killing over 1,200 Israelis while injuring thousands more. In retaliation, Israel targeted Gaza with airstrikes and launched a ground invasion. Over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting began. Read also: Ukrainians trapped in besieged Gaza: We are constantly bombed Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Its not enough to cover your own mouth when you cough this cold and flu season, as veterinarians warn of a mystery respiratory illness affecting dogs in Illinois and nationwide. The unknown infection causes respiratory symptoms and can lead to long-term, medicine-resistant pneumonia in affected dogs. It can also cause inflamed tracheas in dogs, also resistant to medication. Advertisement Affected dogs may be lethargic, with lots of coughing, sneezing and eye discharge. The mystery disease advances quickly, with dogs falling quite sick within a day or two. All together, symptoms look a lot like kennel cough, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Veterinary Medicine wrote on its blog Tuesday. Antibiotics and oxygen therapy have helped some, but not all of the sick dogs. Advertisement Symptoms spread most easily in spaces where lots of dogs gather, like kennels or parks, the college said. Dogs can also catch the disease through indirect contact. The disease is thought to have started in near Portland, Oregon. The Oregon Department of Agriculture has documented more than 200 cases in about three months. Dogs in 10 states, including Illinois, have since fallen sick, the Today show reported. Though the virus has crossed state lines, UIUC Veterinary Medicine wrote that it has not seen an uptick in cases. The disease seems to be a virus, but doesnt quite match common respiratory issues, the American Veterinary Medical Association reported last week. Research into the disease is underway at the University of New Hampshires Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, where researchers are looking at samples from Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Senior veterinary pathologist David Needle told The Associated Press that dogs are not necessarily dying in large numbers due to the illness. Still, public health officials in affected states are encouraging dog owners to minimize contact between their furry friends and other local pets. Getting dogs up to date on vaccinations for respiratory illnesses, including dog flu, can also help. Both common strains of dog flu have traveled through Illinois in the past. Advertisement The Associated Press contributed. Maryland is one of 14 states that require background checks for all firearm purchases, whether or not the seller is a federally licensed dealer. Since 2013, Maryland has imposed an additional requirement on handgun buyers: They must first obtain a "handgun qualification license," which entails completing at least four hours of firearm training and undergoing a seemingly redundant "investigation" aimed at screening out people who are legally disqualified from owning guns. According to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, that process, which can take up to 30 days, violates the Second Amendment. In a decision published on Tuesday, a divided 4th Circuit panel concluded that Maryland's handgun ownership licensing system is not "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation"the constitutional test that the U.S. Supreme Court established last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Writing for the majority in Maryland Shall Issue v. Moore, 4th Circuit Judge Julius Richardson notes that Bruen "effected a sea change in Second Amendment law," making a variety of gun control laws newly vulnerable to constitutional challenges. Maryland's handgun licensing law is the latest example. The state argued that the law fits a tradition of disarming "dangerous" individuals, such as people with felony records, illegal drug users, and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors. "Maryland simply assumes that those federal prohibitions are justified by a historical 'dangerousness' exception," Richardson writes. And because "the challenged law is ostensibly designed to prevent those same groups of people from acquiring handguns," the state argued, "it also falls within the same 'dangerousness' exception." But even if the goal is the same, Richardson says, the "mechanism" embodied in the licensing law is "entirely different." Maryland did not merely prohibit people from owning guns based on criteria that supposedly indicate they pose a threat to public safety. "Instead," Richardson writes, "it prohibits all people from acquiring handguns until they can prove that they are not dangerous. So Maryland's law burdens all peopleeven if only temporarilyrather than just a class of people whom the state has already deemed presumptively dangerous." Even assuming that punishing "prohibited persons" for possessing firearms is consistent with the Second Amendment, Richardson says, that policy is not "relevantly similar" to "making every person seek the government's permission before they can even acquire arms." The latter policy "preemptively disarm[s] every person until they can each prove that they are not dangerous," which "burdens a far broader swath of people." The state also cited early laws that required periodic training of militia members. But as Richardson notes, "these Founding-era laws placed no restrictions on acquiring or owning firearms." Since they "did not burden a Second Amendment right at all," he says, "they cannot be 'relevantly similar' to Maryland's law." Writing in dissent, Judge Barbara Milano Keenan faults the majority for overlooking the significance of Bruen's distinction between "shall issue" carry permit laws, which allow people to publicly possess guns for self-defense if they meet "objective criteria," and "may issue" laws, which require demonstration of a "special need" and therefore give licensing officials broad discretion to reject applications. The New York law that the Supreme Court rejected in Bruen fell into the latter category, requiring applicants to show "proper cause" for exercising the right to bear arms. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that "shall issue" laws, which 43 states had enacted, could pass constitutional muster: Nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States' "shall-issue" licensing regimes, under which "a general desire for self-defense is sufficient to obtain a [permit]." Because these licensing regimes do not require applicants to show an atypical need for armed self-defense, they do not necessarily prevent "law-abiding, responsible citizens" from exercising their Second Amendment right to public carry. Rather, it appears that these shall-issue regimes, which often require applicants to undergo a background check or pass a firearms safety course, are designed to ensure only that those bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, "law-abiding, responsible citizens." And they likewise appear to contain only "narrow, objective, and definite standards" guiding licensing officials, rather than requiring the "appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion"features that typify proper-cause standards like New York's. Thomas did allow for the possibility that "shall issue" laws, depending on their details and practical impact, could be inconsistent with the Second Amendment. "Because any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends," he said, "we do not rule out constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry." Still, Keenan says, the Supreme Court expressed general approval of nondiscretionary carry permit laws, which she thinks is relevant in this case because Maryland's law likewise allows anyone who meets "objective criteria" to acquire a handgun. "Although such laws may impose conditions that result in some delay in acquiring or bearing a firearm," she writes, "they do not require a discretionary governmental determination regarding firearm possession or carry, and they generally do not prevent law-abiding, responsible individuals from exercising their Second Amendment rights." Would the Supreme Court consider Maryland's "wait time" of up to 30 days so "lengthy" that it violates the Second Amendment? Keenan suggests not, noting that "many of the shall-issue public carry laws cited by the Supreme Court in Bruen set forth permissible processing periods either comparable to or longer than" Maryland's "30-day processing period" for a handgun qualification license. Does it matter that Maryland's law applies to the mere acquisition of a handgun, as opposed to carrying it in public? Again, Keenan thinks not. "This distinction turns on a false premise, namely, that there is a difference between the Second Amendment right to keep arms and the Second Amendment right to bear arms," she writes. "Neither the text of the Second Amendment nor the Supreme Court's precedent supports such a reading. Thus, the majority cannot discard the language in the Court's shall-issue discussion on the basis that the Court was addressing only shall-issue public carry laws." I'm not so sure about that. Publicly carrying guns raises additional safety concerns that legislators historically have tried to address with regulations that applied in public but not in private. These include laws that favored open over concealed carrying and laws that prohibited people from publicly carrying or discharging guns while intoxicated. Under Bruen's historical test, such precedents suggest there is a constitutionally relevant difference between regulating guns in public places and regulating the acquisition of guns, even when they will be kept in homes or businesses. Maryland evidently sees such a distinction, since it requires an additional license to carry guns in public. The requirements for a "handgun wear and carry permit" go beyond the requirements for a handgun qualification license. They include eight hours of training and an investigation aimed at verifying that the applicant "has not exhibited a propensity for violence or instability that may reasonably render the person's possession of a handgun a danger to the person or others." The post The 4th Circuit Says Maryland's Handgun Licensing Law Is Unconstitutional appeared first on Reason.com. Thousands of Charlotte-area children will receive gifts of clothes and toys under the Christmas tree again this year, thanks to contributors to The Salvation Army of Greater Charlottes annual Angel Tree program. In cases where donors dont step up, Charlotte Observer readers cover the expense by giving to the Empty Stocking Fund, which the Observer has sponsored since about 1920. Majors Jason and Bethany Burns began as the area commanders for The Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte on June 18. While we are new to Charlotte, the communitys reputation is known far beyond its borders, Jason Burns told the Observer. We know this community is one that prides itself on banding together to meet needs. And we are confident this year that will again ring true. These are among the toys in the Salvation Army of Greater Charlottes annual Angel Tree program. How the Empty Stocking Fund works In October, Salvation Army staff accepted and processed applications from families requesting assistance for the holidays. Parents gave wish lists of items for their children, and the requests were transferred to Angel Tree tags. Each tag represents a child. Charlotte-area residents and groups anonymously adopt and buy gifts for the children, and will deliver the presents to The Salvation Army Christmas Center by Dec. 7. The center this year is at 1831 N. Tryon St. In cases where donors dont step up or angels go unadopted, Charlotte Observer readers cover the expense by donating to the Empty Stocking Fund. The Salvation Army of Greater Charlottes annual Angel Tree program has begun. It provides toys for children in need, and the Observers Empty Stocking Fund covers additional needed expenses. Seen here, the Salvation Army Womens Auxiliary group met for a stocking-stuffing event Nov. 10. Families in need Families in various circumstances seek help from The Salvation Army, Jason Burns said. The primary earner in a household could have unexpectedly lost a job, he said. Medical bills, loss of a family member and other factors also drive the need. Some parents never thought they would be in a position of asking for help, Burns said. They are coming to us for the very first time because they dont know where else to turn. Through programs like the Empty Stocking Fund, we can ensure that every child registered is taken care of, he added. Popular wish list items The childrens wish lists often include the same popular toys any child would want, Burns said. But we also see basic needs, such as coats, socks, shoes and more, he said. For the youngest children, parents often request necessities like diapers, wipes and car seats, Burns said. Yolanda Brown, a member of the Salvation Armys Womens Auxiliary, places gift filled stockings into a carrier. The impact Last season, Observer readers donated $164,526 to the campaign that helps provide gifts for kids, as well as senior citizens and people with disabilities. Money raised by the 2022 Empty Stocking Fund campaign allowed The Salvation Army to buy 12,000 toys for this years campaign, along with gift cards for seniors, foster children and adults with disabilities, Salvation Army officials said. The 2023 Angel Tree program will help about 4,000 families in Mecklenburg and Union counties, representing at least 5,500 children. And the program is providing gift cards to at least 1,500 seniors and 400 people with disabilities. In 2022, the program served 2,607 families representing 6,662 children, officials said. The effort also served 1,715 seniors and provided 407 gift cards for foster children and individuals with disabilities, according to Salvation Army figures. Burns said a favorite childhood memory of his was coming down Christmas morning and seeing the Christmas tree and gifts underneath it. At The Salvation Army, we believe that every child should have the opportunity to experience the joy of a Christmas morning, he said. Every family should have an opportunity to create those special memories. Majors Jason and Bethany Burns were appointed as the area commanders for The Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte effective June 18. How to donate To donate online, visit Empty Stocking Fund CLT.org. To donate by mail, send checks to: The Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte, PO Box 31128, Charlotte NC 28231. Make checks payable to The Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte and write Empty Stocking Fund in the memo line. (28/22 NEWS) 60 years ago on November 22, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, a day that will live in infamy. Some say it is a day when America lost its innocence on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Many people still remember the images of the President being shot and the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, covered in his blood. I-Team Lead Investigator Andy Mehalshick talks with area residents about that fateful day and the impact the assassination has had on their lives, even 60 years later. Wednesday marked the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a day that many believe America lost its innocence. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22nd,1963, still captures the attention of area residents, even after the passage of 60 years. The question that we often hear over and over again over the years is this: What night have been if JFK had lived? There are images engrained in the minds of people all around the world, Americas youngest president riding in a motorcade in Dallas, his life ended by Lee Harvey Oswald. Larry Cook is a presidential historian and has studied the assassination of President Kennedy. Man accused of intimidating a witness, assault It was devastating of course to Americans, not only in a sad way, it was devastating to America. Fear because you got to remember, we just came out of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We almost had nuclear war with Russia. Kennedy faced down Kruschev. So immediately when Kennedy was killed, those things flashed in peoples minds, Cook explained. Cook has photos of JFKs visits to Northeastern Pennsylvania. One photo was taken in front of the Hotel Sterling in Wilkes-Barre in October of 1960 when he campaigned for President. Cook says that questions surrounding JFKs assassination help keep it at the forefront of peoples minds. Theres been so many conspiracy theories about the assassination really more than any other assassination in American history. So people are still interested in that, they havent released all the records on it, Cook stated. Former Eyewitness News Photographer Cholly Hayes was assigned to photograph President Kennedy when he visited Germany to make his famous speech at the Berlin Wall. He remembers that day. He was in the army. The president looked up at me and said say, up there soldier, whats your name? I said PFC Hayes Mr. President. He said, Well, PFC Hayes, have you had breakfast yet? Would you come to join us? Wow, I was 20 years old, said Hayes. Political Analyst David Yonki was only a young boy when he saw then-candidate Kennedy in a motorcade driving through Pittston in 1960. John Kennedy on November 22 was frozen in time. He will always be an historic figure an iconic figure because he was taken from us. He will never age he will never get sick 20, 30, 40 years from now. That image is still going to be part of history, Yonki said. Even after the passage of 60 years, the assassination of President Kennedy for many people seems like it happened only yesterday. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to PAhomepage.com. Today marks the 60th anniversary of JFKs assassination and the first real traumatic event of my life that ended my eight-year-old universe of innocence. For me, the oldest of six in an Irish Catholic family, John Kennedy, was the embodiment of what a hero was supposed to be. In the years since his killing, theres been a string of similar national atrocities culminating most recently in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. These days, its hard to maintain any semblance of my third-grade selfs optimism in a country where grade schoolers have to drill for the possibility of a mass casualty shooting in their school. When I was in third grade, our survival drills required us to sit with our little faces pressed against the pastel cinder block walls of our school hallway to contemplate the nuclear apocalypse. We did get to pick a book to read as a diversion. I picked You Will Go to the Moon which seemed like a good plan B at the time. What is it with American culture and death, anyway? Could it be a nation built on bloody violent conquest just cant stop even after all the territories have been subdivided? Since JFKs murder, more Americans have died from civilian gunfire than the well over one million American soldiers killed in all of our wars, according to a flyer circulated by the Virginia Center for Public Safety back in January of 2016. A PolitiFact review of the claim noted that the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention analysis of yearly gunfire deaths in the U.S. from 1968 to 2014 all added up to 1.5 million gun-related deaths, greater than the 1.4 million lost to armed conflict since the creation of the nation. Between 2015 and 2020, the United States had an additional 237,000 gun deaths. In 2021, the United States set a record with 48,830 gun-related deaths, with 54 percent flagged as suicides and 43 percent as murders. Overall, that reflected a 23 percent spike since 2019, according to the Pew Research Center. It is sixty years after JFKs murder and the guns are winning with the nations children and their families that are increasingly losing. Earlier this month the family and friends of Jillian Ludwig, 18, gathered to hold candles in the wind outside her church in Brielle. They were mourning the talented young musicians death from a random gunshot to her head while she was walking in a park in Nashville, where she attended Belmont University. A 29-year-old was arrested. Since the start of the pandemic, theres been a 50 percent increase in the number of children and teens under 18 killed by gunfire with the death toll spiking from 1,732 in 2019 to 2,590 in 2021, according to data from the CDC. When it comes to guns and dead children, its another example of American exceptionalism. These gun crimes make a mess all the way around. Yet, our national government is completely incapable of doing anything meaningful to address the issue because just enough of our elected leaders are captives of the firearms industry that market their deadly wares with a survivalist mindset that feeds on fear. In 2020 and 2021, firearms contributed to the deaths of more children ages 1-17 years in the U.S. than any other type of injury or illness, reported KFF (Kaiser Health News). The child firearm mortality rate has doubled in the U.S. from a recent low of 1.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2013 to 3.7 in 2021. The KFF analysis continued: The United States has by far the highest rate of child and teen firearm mortality among peer nations. In no other similarly large, wealthy country are firearms in the top four causes of death for children and teens, let alone the number one cause. U.S. states with the most gun laws have lower rates of child and teen firearm deaths than states with few gun laws. But even states with the lowest child and teen firearm deaths have rates much higher than what peer countries experience. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. The Washington Post reports that last year there were 46 school shootings, more than any year since the 1999 school shooting in Columbine when 12 students and a teacher were murdered by two high school seniors who committed suicide. There have been 389 school shootings since Columbine, according to the newspaper. Through 2017, the country averaged about 11 school shootings a year, never eclipsing 16 in a single year, according to the Washington Post. But starting in 2018, violent incidents started climbing. In 2020, with instruction mostly remote, just nine school shootings were reported but in 2021, with in-school instruction resumed, there were 42 school shootings. New Jersey is not immune from the scourge of gun violence like the case of the 15-year-old charged with opening fire at the Brunswick Square Mall back in May or the teen shot leaving school in Newark earlier this month. But our relatively low level of gun ownership and tight regulation pays off. New Jersey ranks 48th in the nation in terms of our gun death rate, just ahead of New York, and only behind Hawaii and Massachusetts, according to the Violence Policy Center, a national educational organization working to stop gun death and injury. VPC reports that in Mississippi, where over 50 percent of the households own a gun and the lack of firearm regulation is a source of state pride, the gun death rate per 100,000 is 32.61, the deadliest in the county. Here in New Jersey, where just over 15 percent of households have a gun and our gun laws are stringent, our gun death rate per 100,000 is only 5.13. Unfortunately, our national addiction to gun violence is holding the entire nation back no matter where you live. Consider that in addition to the tens of thousands of men, women and children lost to gun violence each year, theres a $557 billion economic consequence annually, according to Everytown, a national alliance of leading anti-gun violence groups. This $557 billion problem represents the lifetime costs associated with gun violence, including three types of costs: immediate costs starting at the scene of a shooting, such as police investigations and medical treatment; subsequent costs, such as treatment, long-term physical and mental health care, earnings lost to disability or death, and criminal justice costs; and cost estimates of quality of life lost over a victims life span for pain and suffering of victims and their families. Thats more than ten times the budget of the Marine Corps. Its $300 billion more than what it takes to float the Navy, and more than the Army, Air Force and Marines combined. Its equal to five times the countrys budget for the U.S. Department of Education. Think of it as a killer tax that targets children. Texas Gov. John Connally adjusts his tie as President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, settled in rear seats, prepare for a motorcade into Dallas on November 22, 1963. The president Kennedy was assassinated a few hours later. UPI File Photo Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Sixty years have passed since news broke across the UPI newswire that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. While many witnesses to that dark episode of American history are gone, the few who survive are working to keep the story from fading away. "Kennedy seriously wounded perhaps seriously perhaps fatally by assassins bullet," the transmission from veteran UPI reporter Merriman Smith read. A photograph of the original UPI teletype dispatch on November 22, 1963. UPI File Photo The president of the United States and Texas Gov. John B. Connally had been shot by a sniper, as Smith described. Three shots rang out in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963. Smith would later break the news confirming Kennedy's death. The 60th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination differs from past milestones that marked the passage of another decade, Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, told UPI. The funeral procession for President John F. Kennedy leaves the White House for St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington on November 25, 1963. Photo by Abbie Rowe/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum "We reach this juncture now where memory is fading into history," Fagin said. "We've reached this juncture where only one homicide detective is left. He's 96. Only a couple of Parkland doctors are still around today. It makes me aware, very acutely, that this is slipping further and further away from us." Yet, firsthand accounts persist, both in the words written by Smith and in those who remain to tell the story of one of the most impactful moments in U.S. history. An honor guard prepares to fold the American flag during President John F. Kennedy's funeral ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on November 25, 1963. Photo by Abbie Rowe/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum Merriman Smith's reporting Smith, UPI's reporter on the ground, tightly gripped a radio telephone from the pool car in the president's motorcade as it rolled down Elm Street in Dallas. He fended off other reporters in the car as he shared his account of what he observed with UPI Southwest Division Manager Jack Fallon, said Bill Sanderson, author of Bulletins From Dallas: Reporting the JFK Assassination. President Kennedy strolls in a White House corridor with UPI White House Correspondent Merriman Smith on May 10, 1962. Smith was in the motorcade in a press car four cars behind Kennedy's limousine on the day of his assassination in Dallas, Texas. November 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the kennedy assassination. (FILE/UPI) "Bulletin precede," Smith yelled into the phone, indicating that this was now the top story of the day. Four minutes after the shots were fired, the UPI bulletin spread nationally and was read by Walter Cronkite on live TV. Smith stayed on the story as it continued to evolve, racing through the halls of Parkland Memorial Hospital to find another phone and boarding Air Force One to witness the swearing-in of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Flanked by Jackie Kennedy (R) and his wife, Ladybird Johnson, Vice President Lyndon Johnson is sworn in as president by Dallas U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes (L) on November 22, 1963 aboard Air Force One following President John F. Kennedy's assassination. File Photo by Cecil Stoughton/JFK Library The Kennedy family departs the Capitol on November 25, 1963. From left to right, Peter Lawford, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Caroline Kennedy, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. Photo by Abbie Rowe/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum At each turn, Smith knew where to be, who to talk to and what details to share with readers, Sanderson told UPI. Smith finished that day in Washington, filing his eyewitness account of the assassination, which would win a Pulitzer Prize. Jack Fallon, shown here in 2003, was UPI's Southwest Division editor in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He directed UPI's coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Photo by Tobin Beck/UPI His 20-plus years as a White House reporter prepared him to be "the man" on that day, Sanderson said. "He understood the beat better than anyone else," Sanderson said. "What Smith was able to do was within the first half-hour or so manage to file enough copy -- or give enough reporting to the rewriter, to be able to get a pretty coherent story on the wire. That was important in those days." Smith wrote his story from a first-person point of view, which is less common today. But rather than expressing how the events impacted him, he detailed the weight of the moment in his observations of others, such as his depiction of Kennedy associate Theodore C. Sorenson. "Sorensen sat wilted in the large chair, crying softly. The dignity of his deep grief seemed to sum up all of the tragedy and sadness of the previous six hours," Smith wrote. Reflecting on Smith's reporting highlights how the world has changed. Sanderson recalls afternoon editions of newspapers, which have become nearly extinct. These afternoon editions brought Smith's reporting to newsstands nationally, delivering the news of Kennedy's assassination ultimately to the world. 'The weight of the world' Darwin Payne was in a much different place in his journalism career than Smith on Nov. 22, 1963. While Smith was the most veteran White House reporter of the day, Payne was a 26-year-old reporter with the Dallas Times Herald. He had a few years of experience under his belt, having served as the wire editor for the Fort Worth Press, where he exclusively handled UPI copy. But on that day he was thrust into the biggest story of his life, he told UPI. The newsroom had been preparing for Kennedy's arrival for a few days. He had made stops in San Antonio and Fort Worth, but Dallas promised to be an even bigger event. Payne's assignment was to be the "rewrite man" for a sidebar on first lady Jackie Kennedy -- one of several angles to be covered that day. A reporter was sent to the Dallas Love Field airport to relay the depiction of her arrival to him. "There was a lot of excitement about Jackie those days," Payne recalled. "She wore a beautiful raspberry dress with black trim, a pillbox hat. The crowd went wild over her." Now 86, Payne remembers a foreboding feeling in the newsroom leading up to JFK's arrival. Dallas had become the site of demonstrations by what he called "ultra-right wingers" who one month before had accosted U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, hit him with a sign and spat on him. "It was worse than anyone ever pictured it as," Payne said. "I expected and feared something would happen as it did." Several officials urged Kennedy not to come to Dallas, including ministers, the Dallas Citizens Council and U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes. She later swore in Johnson as president aboard Air Force One hours after Kennedy's arrival. Despite the trepidation, it was a welcome procession, according to Payne, up until the first shot rang out at 12:30 p.m. President John F. Kennedy slumps into the arms of his wife, Jackie Kennedy, immediately after a sniper's bullet struck his head on November 22 1963. Photo of the fatal assault was taken with a Polaroid camera by a woman watching the parade. UPI File Photo When word came across of the shooting, Payne was told to abandon his first lady story and race to Dealey Plaza. "I felt the weight of the world," he said. "I felt that this would be the story of my life, no matter what happened. I was feeling that things could've not been what we thought they were. They might've missed him." He was devastated to learn what had happened in his hometown, but knowing he had a job to do helped Payne make it through a difficult day. When he arrived at the plaza, Payne found everybody in tears and a lot of confusion about what they had witnessed. "Most people knew the president had been hit. There was no doubt about that," Payne said. "The ones I centered on the most, because they were crying the most I suppose, were three or four women who worked in the manufacturing facility across the street from the school depository." The women led Payne to Abraham Zapruder, the owner of a nearby clothing manufacturer who captured the assassination on 8mm film. He attempted to persuade Zapruder to come with him to the newsroom to develop the film. Zapruder refused, saying he would only submit the film to the FBI or Secret Service. At about the time Payne had left Zapruder, his newsroom learned that police officer J.D. Tippet had been fatally shot by the gunman. Payne then toured the book depository where the shots that killed Kennedy originated. He peered through the window that Lee Harvey Oswald looked through as he fixed his sights on the president's vehicle. "It was a very eerie feeling, knowing what we were seeing," he said. "We were seeing what the assassin saw looking out the window." He then saw where the rifle was recovered and listened to the superintendent of the book depository discuss one person that was missing from his work staff that day. That person was Oswald. After a brief trip to the newsroom, Payne was off to a rooming house where the suspect lived. He spoke with tenants who described the man they knew as O.H. Lee as a "loner" that "didn't mix with anybody." Payne continued to canvas the rooming house before returning to the newsroom at about 10 p.m. He expected he would have to give up his notes to another reporter but that reporter told him the story was his. Last month, Payne's book Behind The Scenes: Covering the JFK Assassination, was published. 'Two Days in Texas' The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is hosting a special exhibit to commemorate the 60-year anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. "Two Days in Texas" will be on display through June. "We look at the different cities and people he encountered through photos and artifacts," Fagin said. A re-enactment of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, using a four-power telescopic gunsight mounted with a 35mm camera, illustrates approximately what the assassin saw when he fired the fatal shots on November 22, 1963. The re-enactment was conducted on December 4, 1963. UPI File Photo The exhibit features several artifacts that have never been on display to the public. One such artifact is an Eastern Airline sign that was displayed on the sky stairs that the Kennedys descended after arriving in Dallas. The same sign remained on the stairs just a few hours later when Kennedy's casket boarded the plane to D.C. "I find it to be very evocative. It represents how quickly world history changes and its devastating impact," Fagin said. Fagin hosted a conversation with Payne on Friday, one of several special events focused on telling the story of one of the darkest days in U.S. history. With witnesses to the assassination and the events that followed becoming fewer as time passes on, it falls to historians, educators, people like Fagin to keep the story alive. "An anniversary like this, I recognize this as the last major anniversary where the storytellers will be here," he said. The South Carolina attorney general announced 57 criminal counts against nine defendants in connection with criminal activity in South Carolina prisons. Those charges include criminal sexual conduct with a minor and child sexual abuse material. Attorney General Alan Wilson said seven indictments and ten arrest warrants have been filed as part of three different investigations, which law enforcement nicknamed Clean Sweep, Block Party, and Gatekeeper. In a statement, Wilson said the charges could be traced to the presence of contraband cellphones in South Carolina prisons. ALSO READ: SC corrections officer charged after letting inmate in restricted area, sheriff says Weve continued to focus on the problems contraband cell phones within prisons cause with corruption, financial crimes, and drug trafficking, but now we have allegations involving the victimization of a child from within the walls of [the South Carolina Department of Corrections], the statement reads. We are committed to bringing severe accountability for such alleged abuse. The indictments against four of the suspects came after an investigation into Lee Correctional Institution involving allegations of sexual abuse of a minor victim, the production of child sexual abuse material, and public corruption. Wilson said that Jacob Nathaniel Lance, a Lee Correctional inmate, is accused of using a cellphone inside the prison to perpetrate the abuse of the minor victim with his alleged co-conspirator, Abbygale El-Dier. The state said it intends to seek a life sentence without parole against Lance. Brittany Welch, a correctional officer, is accused of corruption for allegedly allowing inmates access to contraband. Wilson said kitchen worker Brian Keely is also accused of being part of the illegal contraband trade. Keely, in addition, is accused of having child sexual abuse material. ALSO READ: Chester Medical Center undergoes security upgrades as wing for prisoners set to open Two correctional officers were indicted as a result of the Block Party investigation for offenses relating to illegal contraband in Broad River Correctional Institution, which led to the seizure of over 600 grams of methamphetamine, 200 grams of cocaine, and marijuana, tobacco, cell phones, and other electronics. In the Gatekeeper investigation at McCormick Correctional Institution, Wilson said three more correctional officers are accused of being part of an illegal contraband trade in the prison. Wilson said five other SCDC employees or officers at the prison were indicted back in July. People who wear badges and are sworn to uphold the law should be held to a higher standard, SCDC Director Bryan Stirling said. We will absolutely not tolerate officers and employees bringing contraband into our prisons. They break the public trust and make our prisons less safe for the inmates, staff, and public. The charges brought at the conclusion of each investigation are listed below: CLEAN SWEEP Abbygale Alexandria El-Dier (Bond denied) Criminal Sexual Conduct with a Minor, First Degree (5 Counts): 25 Years to Life Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, First Degree (10 Counts): 3 to 20 Years Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years Jacob Nathaniel Lance (Bond denied) Criminal Sexual Conduct with a Minor, First Degree (5 Counts): 25 Years to Life Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, First Degree (10 Counts): 3 to 20 Years Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years Brittany Nicole Welch ($10,000 bond) Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years Obstruction of Justice: 0 to 10 Years Brian Darold Keely ($7500 bond) Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years Furnish or Attempt to Furnish Contraband: 1 to 10 Years Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, Third Degree: 0 to 10 Years BLOCK PARTY Alexis Tucker ($10,000 bond) Trafficking Cocaine, 200-400 Grams: 25 Years Trafficking Methamphetamine, 400 or More Grams: 25 Years Possession with Intent to Distribute Marijuana: 0 to 5 Years Furnishing Contraband to a Prisoner: 0 to 10 Years Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years Jorge Romero-Navarro ($10,000 bond) Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years GATEKEEPER Whitney Thurmond ($10,000 bond) Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years Dontai Parks ($7500 bond) Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years Brandon Taylor (Hearing at a later date) Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years The July 2023 indictments resulted in 18 counts against five defendants: Brittany Marie Pixley Misconduct in Office (4 counts): 0-10 years Sexual Misconduct with an Inmate: 0-10 years Criminal Conspiracy: 0-5 years or $5,000 Money Laundering, value $300 to $20,000 (2 counts): 0-5 years and up to $250,000 or twice value of financial transactions, whichever greater Judy Willis Mather Misconduct in Office: 0-10 years Criminal Conspiracy: 0-5 years or $5,000 Money Laundering, value greater than $100,000: 0-20 years and up to $250,000 or twice value of financial transactions, whichever greater Shaquaila Ewnique Morgan Misconduct in Office (4 counts): 25-30 years and $200,000 Criminal Conspiracy Money Laundering Dion T. Gaines Misconduct in Office: 0-10 years Criminal Conspiracy: 0-5 years or $5,000 Money Laundering, value $300 to $20,000 (2 counts): 0-5 years and up to $250,000 or twice value of financial transactions, whichever greater Ethics Violation: 0-10 years and $10,000 George Stevenson Leverette Trafficking Methamphetamine, 100-200 grams: 25 years and $50,000 Possession of a Schedule II Controlled Substance (Amphetamine): 0-6 months and $1,000 Unlawful Possession of Prescription Medication (Sildenafil): 0-2 years and $500 Possession of a Firearm During the Commission of a Violent Crime: 5 years in addition to the punishment provided for the principal crime (WATCH BELOW: Riot breaks out at South Carolina prison, DOJ investigating) Sam Altman is CEO of OpenAI once again. The return of the influential AI startups co-founder caps a chaotic four-days that saw two replacement CEOs, Altmans potential transition to Microsoft, and threats of mass resignation from nearly all of the companys employees. Altmans return to OpenAI will coincide with a shakeup within the companys nonprofit arm board of directors. Silicon Valleys pre-Thanksgiving saga started on November 17, when OpenAIs board suddenly announced Altmans departure after alleging the 38-year-old entrepreneur was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. The move shocked not only shocked industry insiders and investors, but executive-level employees at the company, as well. OpenAIs president Greg Brockman announced his resignation less than three hours after news broke, while the startups chief operating officer described his surprise in a November 18 internal memo . We can say definitively that the boards decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices, he wrote at the time. A flurry of breathless headlines ensued, naming first one, then another CEO replacement as rumors began circulating that Altman would join Microsoft as the CEO of its new AI development team. Microsoft previously invested over $13 billion, and relies on the companys tech to power its growing suite of AI-integrated products. Just after midnight on November 22, however, Altman posted to X his intention to return to OpenAI alongside a reorganized board of directors that will include previous members such former White House adviser and Harvard University President Larry Summers, as well as former Quora CEO and early Facebook employee Adam DAngelo. This is just what happened . Entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetown Universitys Center for Security and Emerging Technology Helen Toner are no longer board members. [Related: Big Techs latest AI doomsday warning might be more of the same hype .] [E]verything ive [sic] done over the past few days has been in service of keep this team and its mission together, Altman wrote on the social media platform owned by former OpenAI executive Elon Musk. Altman added he looks forward to returning and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft. Although concrete explanations behind the attempted corporate coup remain unconfirmed, it appears members of the previous board believed Altman was pushing too far, too fast in their overall goal to create a safe artificial general intelligence (AGI), a term referring to AI that is comparable to, or exceeds, human capacities. Many of AIs biggest players believe it is their ethical duty to steer the technology towards a future that benefits humanity instead of ending it . Critics have voiced multiple, repeated concerns over Silicon Valleys approach, ethos , and rationality . Twenty-five years ago, Ada County leaders unsuccessfully challenged the tax exemptions received by one of Idahos largest employers by calling into question its charitable status. This year, Ada County leaders want the same authority. They want the Legislature in 2024 to give local Idaho governments control over charitable tax exemptions for hospitals. The countys proposal, which was endorsed by the Idaho Association of Counties at its annual meeting in September, would affect some of the largest employers in the state, including St. Lukes Health System and Saint Alphonsus Health System, by potentially reducing a standing tax exemption the nonprofit hospitals receive. The proposition has drawn criticism from the states hospital lobby, which argues that imposing taxes on nonprofit hospitals would increase health care costs for residents and endanger rural health care. The Republican Ada County Commission presented a resolution to local legislators Nov. 13 that would remove an automatic tax exemption that hospitals receive for most of their properties to not include ancillary facilities such as doctors offices. Also, an element of charity, which was historically a requirement of the exemption, should be returned to the exemption, according to a copy of the proposal, which was sponsored by Ada County commissioners as well as leaders in Canyon, Adams and Madison counties, according to Ada County spokesperson Elizabeth Duncan. In the U.S., many hospitals are registered as nonprofit charities with the Internal Revenue Service, which means they are not required to pay federal income taxes. The major hospital systems in Idaho, including St. Lukes and Saint Als, are registered nonprofits. In addition to operating emergency departments that serve all people, the hospitals also are required to provide community benefits and charity care. Some other hospitals are for-profit companies owned by shareholders or investors. Nationwide, hospital consolidation has led to increased health care costs, and nonprofit hospitals have come under scrutiny for allegedly reducing charity care while increasing executive pay and receiving billions in tax breaks. Some states, like Oregon, Illinois and Utah, have moved to compel nonprofit hospitals to spend certain amounts on community benefits, according to a report from KFF Health News. KFF is the organization formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation. In Ada County, there are 401 hospital parcels that qualify for hospital exemptions, with a total assessed value of $1.3 billion, according to data from the Ada County Assessors Office. If those exemptions were entirely removed, nonprofit hospitals in the county could owe $10.9 million in property taxes. At the Nov. 13 meeting, Commissioner Tom Dayley referred lawmakers to a U.S. Senate report from October, released by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, that found that many nonprofit hospital systems across the country are failing to provide low-income Americans with the affordable medical care required by their nonprofit status. In a response, the president of the American Hospital Association called the report tunnel-visioned, and said its been proven that nonprofit hospitals more than earn their tax-exempt status by providing benefits determined to best serve each community. St. Lukes paid about $1.5 million in property taxes in Ada County in 2022, spokesperson Christine Myron told the Statesman by email. The hospital system provided $27 million in charity care and gave $78 million to community ventures, she said. Myron said potential tax increases could impede some of the hospitals investments in urban and rural settings, and the hospital sometimes houses medical equipment at locations outside of its main hospitals. We are concerned with any proposed legislation that disincentivizes that kind of cost-saving innovation and taxes properties that St. Lukes uses to support its operations and functions, she said. Saint Alphonsus referred the Statesmans requests for comment to the Idaho Hospital Association. Rep. Lauren Necochea, D-Boise, was at the Nov. 13 meeting and said she was concerned about how changes to hospital tax exemptions could affect access to health care for Idahoans. In the rhetoric Im hearing from the commission, theres a subtle disdain for nonprofit hospitals and a preference for for-profit health care providers, which doesnt make sense, she said. Necochea said nonprofit health providers ensure people on Medicaid and Medicare receive health care, when they otherwise could not. Most hospitals accept Medicare and Medicaid, as both programs together account for more than 60% of hospital care, according to the American Hospital Association. Idaho has the lowest number of doctors per capita, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Necochea said she worries tax exemption changes could lead nonprofit health systems to think twice about opening clinics in rural areas when a local county commission could question its finances and impose property taxes. She said rural clinics, which in Idaho are often owned by large nonprofit health systems like St. Lukes, are not there because they generate lots of revenue. Theyre there because theyre part of the mission. Youre going to heap additional risk onto them with no express benefit to the public, she said. How are Idaho nonprofits defined? Idaho law does not define charitable organizations, but a 1984 Idaho Supreme Court ruling involving Sunny Ridge Manor, a Nampa nursing home, provided eight factors state and local governments can use to determine if an entity is charitable, and therefore should receive tax exemptions. In 1997, the Ada County Board of Equalization which is made up of the county commissioners denied property tax exemptions for some St. Lukes properties after the hospital system earned $20 million in profits, which former Commissioner Frank Walker said amounted to the hospital no longer qualifying as a charitable situation, according to previous Statesman reporting. At the time, the hospital said it had provided $10 million in charity care, community education, health screenings, subsidized clinics and other services for poor people. The Ada County assessor estimated that St. Lukes could owe $2 million in taxes as a result, according to the previous reporting. The hospital system appealed the decision to the State Board of Tax Appeals, arguing that hospitals provide major community benefits regulated by federal requirements, including that net income must be used to improve patient care, expand services or contribute to education and medical research. As part of the dispute, the county submitted a report written by a Harvard Business School professor that found that large cash reserves and high rates for medical care at St. Lukes meant it is hard to identify the charity in this very commercially driven enterprise. But the board ruled in 1998 that St. Lukes still qualified for a charitable exemption. That year, the Idaho Hospital Association lobbied the Legislature to automatically exempt hospitals that are federally recognized nonprofits from local taxation. Larger hospitals must submit annual reports to counties about their charitable services, but counties cannot alter the exemptions based on the reports, according to Statesman reporting then. The Association of Counties fought against that bill which became law in the 1990s, and now is back more than 20 years later in an attempt to gain more local control for taxing authorities. Were not looking at granting county commissions broad discretion, Seth Griggs, executive director of the association, told the Statesman. We want to make (the law) have clear standards so the hospitals know whats accepted, but also so county commissions have the basis for making their decisions. We do think that St. Lukes and Saint Als and other hospitals, they need to be brought into compliance and at least pay a little property taxes for the benefits they get from the community, Beck said at the meeting with lawmakers, noting that some hospital parcels include parking lots and administrative offices. In the legislative session this year, two bills were introduced to rewrite the exemption status hospitals get. House Bill 109 would have made administrative and medical facilities not contained within a hospital ineligible for an exemption, according to a summary of the bill. House Bill 110 would have given counties full authority to determine whether to grant a property tax exemption in full, partial, or an exemption at all, according to the bill summary. Both proposals were sponsored by Rep. Josh Tanner, R-Eagle. Neither bill received a hearing. Beck told the Statesman in an interview that the County Commission supported the first bill, but that he would be in favor of either bill getting a hearing in the upcoming 2024 session. He said he wants hospitals to get the same treatment as other nonprofits, which includes an evaluation by the local commission about whether an organization meets the charitable factors laid out by the Idaho Supreme Court. Ada County is not after a larger chunk of property taxes, Beck said. We just want the hospitals to be on the exact same footing as every other 501(c)3. Beck gave an example of a church in Meridian that runs a for-profit day care business. He said the Ada County Assessors Office calculated that 20% of the building is used for the day care business, so the church which is generally tax-exempt received an 80% exemption from its property taxes. Duncan, the county spokesperson, said in an email that any increases in taxes on hospitals would be used to reduce the taxes of other property owners, rather than generating additional revenue for the county. A spokesperson for the Idaho Hospital Association, Greg Morrison, told the Statesman the proposal could raise health care costs and have serious negative impacts on patient care, especially in rural areas. He said nonprofit hospitals must abide by strict federal requirements to receive charitable status, which the IRS reviews on a per-parcel basis. That means that a hospital property that includes a parking lot could be tax-exempt if deemed so by the IRS, but standalone parking lots would not qualify, he said. When hospitals buy up physician practices, as has become common, they often buy only the practice, meaning that rented office space is still taxed, with taxes paid for by the landowner, Morrison added. At the end of the day, the last thing we need is to create another layer of government regulation that will only make it more costly and complicated and have a negative impact on patient care, Morrison said. He said the proposal would introduce uncertainty for hospitals, which could potentially owe millions in taxes depending on the whim of county commissioners a shift he said could also potentially conflict with federal law. Rural health care in Idaho dramatically underfunded to begin with Mark Baker, the chief administrative officer of Bingham Healthcare, which owns Bingham Memorial Hospital in Blackfoot, told the Statesman that changing tax exemptions could make it difficult for hospitals like his to make ends meet while they face rising labor and supply costs, lower Medicaid reimbursement rates and an increase of insurance claim denials. He said his nonprofit hospital already pays about $130,000 on property taxes for standalone clinics and other ventures, and estimated the proposed law change could double that. Raising taxes on small rural hospitals that are barely making ends meet could be the straw that finally breaks the camels back, he said. Its a slippery slope to start down based on the whim of some people in Boise. You reach a point where the sustainability equation doesnt work out any longer, he said. A well-behaving nonprofit hospital is not there to make wide margins and high profitability just because there are some bad actor systems out there doesnt mean that we should pass laws that negate the benefit from all the good-acting health systems. Brad Huertas hospital in Arco, a town with fewer than 1,000 people, serves an area larger than Rhode Island. Called Lost River Medical Center, the nonprofit has an emergency room and is designated as a critical access hospital, which confers special benefits as part of a federal effort to ensure rural residents have health care. The problem with rural hospitals is nobody lives here, Huerta told the Statesman by phone, pointing out that elk and bear outnumber residents where he lives. In addition to the care they provide, Huerta said, rural hospitals are often economic engines in small towns, driving commerce and providing well-paying jobs. Rural areas are already dramatically underfunded to begin with, he said. For them to lose any type of exemption would be an extreme hardship. Huertas hospital has its own taxing district, which he said raises a couple of hundred thousand dollars for the hospital each year. But the hospital is not owned by Butte County, the local jurisdiction. If the automatic property tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals were removed, the Arco hospital would still qualify for property tax exemptions, because its hospital district status makes the hospital qualify for a governmental exemption, according to the Idaho Tax Commission. Morrison, of the Idaho Hospital Association, said his association is still concerned about how a final bill proposal could affect any nonprofit hospitals, since the proposal has not yet been finalized. He said there are 21 nonprofit hospitals that are members of the association and could be affected. Huerta said his hospital and others like it give away millions of dollars in free health care to residents without insurance, which he thinks more than covers the tax exemptions they receive. At the hospital in Arco, Huerta said he used grant money from the state to build a day care center, because he heard from nurses that they couldnt work unless they could find care for their children. If the law is changed, he worries the status of the day care center could be jeopardized. Would that be tax exempt? Huerta said, adding that no patients are seen in the day care center, but that without it he could lose nurses, forcing him to close his hospital. There are two main highways in Butte County, and Huerta said residents have to travel at least 90 minutes by car to seek treatment elsewhere. Huerta said changes to the exemption could spell dire consequences for hospitals like his and cripple rural health. Potential for change at legislative session In an interview with the Statesman, Idaho Senate Majority Leader Chuck Winder, R-Boise, said this issue comes up from time to time but he would withhold his judgment until he sees a final bill. This has been probably more of an issue in the last five or six years, as the hospitals have bought up medical practices, Winder said. They still pay taxes on outlying buildings. NEW YORK For more than a year, Mayor Eric Adams has been demanding financial support from the federal government to pay for migrants in the citys care. A federal investigation into the mayors fundraising unrelated to the crisis of housing migrants hasnt changed his attacks on the White House and Congress. In fact, it has served as a way for Adams to continue to show hes in control of the city and fighting, even with President Joe Biden, for its needs as scandal swirls around him. Were not trying to negotiate with Washington. Were trying to say that 140,000 people three to four thousand [a week] are coming here. There is a cost, Adams said at a wide ranging City Hall press briefing Tuesday. Adams confirmed plans to ask nearly all city agencies to make further 5 percent spending cuts to their budgets before he releases his preliminary city budget in January. And hes planning to cut spending on housing and serving migrants by 20 percent. Last week, Adams released his November financial plan, which included 5 percent cuts to agency spending totaling nearly $4 billion over two years which includes cuts to garbage collection, new police recruits and library hours. The cuts are necessary, in part, because the city projects spending nearly $11 billion on migrants over this fiscal year and the next, Adams has said. The federal government has barely given New York City any money to cover the new costs, and Adams is quick to point the finger turning the angst facing him and his administration onto those in Washington. Cuts include a $60 million reduction to the school food program, which Adams suggested Tuesday would hurt his healthy eating initiative. Thats how painful this is. The initiative that we put in place to improve the lives of everyday, working class people, is being impacted right now, he said. And D.C. needs to do its job. That echoed his comments at a town hall in Brooklyn Monday night. D.C. has abandoned us, and they need to be paying their cost to this national problem, he said. If you have a problem, Dont yell at me, yell at D.C. We deserve better as a city. The White House didnt respond to a request for comment. City budget cuts are not leverage in his tough talk to federal officials, Adams said. Its a reflection of the costs of trying to house more than 50,000 migrants. Adams has been calling for federal funding for more than a year, dating back to summer 2022, when the increase in homeless asylum-seekers coming to the city was first acknowledged. Hes also called for a decompression strategy, hoping the federal government would divert migrants away from the city. It has created a growing rift with the White House Biden and Adams havent talked in nearly a year, and Biden didnt meet with him in his latest visit to the city. But it makes sense that Adams would want to divert blame and perhaps talk about policy rather than his own political troubles. The FBI briefly temporarily seized his electronic devices earlier this month as part of an investigation into the Turkish governments influence in local politics. Adams and nobody else has been charged, and his chief counsel said she had no reason to believe Adams was the target of an investigation. But amid that news, Adams approval rating is sagging. Only 37 percent of New York City voters approved of the job Adams is doing, while 56 percent disapproved, according to a Marist poll released Tuesday. Adams is keeping his focus on Washington amid all the troubles swirling around him despite it dogging him wherever he goes. Earlier this month, he ditched a White House meeting to ask for federal migrant funding when his campaign fundraisers home was raided by the FBI. But Adams said Tuesday hes scheduling another trip to the capital with clergy members. Im looking forward to getting to D.C., he said, to have a real conversation around the impact of the migrant crisis on our city. New Yorks leaders in Congress, meanwhile, have taken a muted approach on migrant funding for the city. And Adams is pressing them too saying again Tuesday he wants his fellow elected officials to push for federal funding as much as he is. City Comptroller Brad Lander and leadership of the City Council have accused Adams of using misleading budget practices, deliberately underestimating revenue while overestimating spending on migrants to present a more dire fiscal situation than reality. Adams ripped them, calling for message discipline. If one wants to dispute that you should pay $300 [per day for shelter] instead of $315, OK lets do that argument. But to constantly send out the signal that this is not impacting our city, I just think is wrong, Adams said. And when you have elected officials looking for political points, instead of making the point that New York City tax dollars should not be going to paying for a national problem? Every conversation should start with that from my elected officials. Frank Carone, Mayor Adams former chief of staff and longtime political confidante, plans to urge friends and family to donate to the mayors legal defense fund as the FBI continues to investigate his 2021 campaign over ties to the Turkish government. Speaking with the Daily News on Wednesday, Carone stressed he wont be the legal defense funds official fundraising coordinator, and described his role more akin to a friend helping out. Still, it marks the first time Carone has confirmed taking on a role in Adams fundraising machinery since stepping down as chief of staff in late 2022. Asked if he plans to give the $5,000 maximum allowed by law to the fund, Carone said, of course. Of course Ive been making phone calls to friends and family to help out, he said of urging others to follow his lead in donating. I will continue to do what I can to help. Adams defense fund will help cover legal expenses the mayor incurs as part of the FBI probe into whether the Turkish government conspired with his 2021 campaign to pump illegal money into its coffers via straw donors. Adams has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the probe. He has hired white-shoe law firm WilmerHale to represent him in the inquiry. His ex-chief counsel, Brendan McGuire, who returned to the firm as a partner after leaving City Hall this summer, is one of the lead attorneys assigned to represent him. Something of this magnitude can go into hundreds of thousands of dollars if not a million dollars, Adams said during a briefing Tuesday of his expected legal bills. There are strict rules around who can donate to legal defense funds. City employees are barred from donating, as are those who do business with municipal government agencies. Since leaving City Hall, Carone has launched Oaktree Solutions, a consulting firm that has picked up a number of clients with business interests before the city, like real estate developer SL Green. Carone affirmed hes not restricted by any doing business rules, though. I dont do business with the city, said Carone, who is, in addition to running Oaktree, expected to help lead Adams 2025 reelection campaign, a role he hasnt officially assumed yet. In his briefing Tuesday, Adams said he will hire a professional fundraiser to handle the day-to-day of the legal defense fund. In addition to seizing Adams cellphones, FBI agents earlier this month raided the homes of his top campaign fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, and City Hall aide Rana Abbasova as part of the probe. Former Chicago Ald. Edward Burke arrives at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse with wife Anne Burke on Nov. 30, 2023. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune) On the morning the FBI raided then-Ald. Edward Burkes City Hall offices in November 2018, four federal agents more than a thousand miles away descended on the home of Houston-area fast food restaurant tycoon Shoukat Dhanani. When Dhanani answered his door that day in Sugar Land, Texas, the agents immediately assured him he was not in any trouble, but said they were investigating Burke and needed to ask him some questions about a Burger King that Dhanani had purchased and renovated in the 14th Ward, Dhanani told a federal jury in Chicago on Wednesday. Advertisement After Dhanani invited the agents into his dining room, they showed him photographs of Burke and his longtime ward aide, Peter Andrews Jr., and played him a selection of wiretapped recordings made in the case, according to the testimony. They also asked about a meeting Dhanani had with Burke at the Beverly Country Club over the summer, he testified, and why he felt Burke had tried to push him to hire his private law firm for property tax appeals. Advertisement What I think I may have said (to the agents) was ... It was my understanding that I would have to give the alderman the property tax business in order for us to get our permit or get going, Dhanani testified. [ Ed Burke trial: What you need to know ] Dhananis turn as one of the key witnesses in Burkes historic corruption trial came nearly five years to the day after he was questioned by the FBI at his home. When he was asked Wednesday about his mood the day the agents came to his door, Dhanani paused and said, Well I was relieved when they got to the house and they said Im not in trouble. Then he added, Otherwise I wouldnt have let them in, prompting spectators and some jurors to break into laughter. Former Ald. Edward Burke, accompanied by his wife, former Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne M. Burke, arrive for his trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, on Nov. 22, 2023. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune) The testimony by Dhanani, CEO of the Texas-based company that owns about 150 Burger Kings in the Chicago area, is one of the centerpieces of the corruption allegations against Burke, who is accused of using his official position to extract private legal business from developers. Through Dhananis account, as well as in emails and wiretapped calls, prosecutors painted a picture of Burke actively on the prowl, openly pitching his firm, Klafter & Burke, while wining and dining Dhanani, and sending Andrews to play hardball and shut down the remodeling work when Dhanani initially failed to come through. [ Ex-Ald. Edward Burke corruption trial: Evidence seen and heard by the jury ] But attorneys for Burke and Andrews have tried to flip the script in cross-examination, painting Dhanani as a savvy, self-made businessman who was making an effort to ingratiate himself with Burke as he tried to expand his footprint in Chicago. Burkes attorney, Joseph Duffy, also repeatedly pointed out that Dhanani never actually gave Burke any legal business, and the renovation of the Burger King on South Pulaski Road eventually was completed without any more interference from Burke. Advertisement On Wednesday, Duffy drilled down on Dhananis testimony on direct examination that he had a gut feeling that the reason for the work stoppage at the Burger King was because he hadnt hired Burkes firm. Duffy suggested Dhananis intuition was flat-out wrong. Nobody called you and told you that the job was being stopped because you had not provided work, did they? Duffy asked, to which Dhanani replied, No. Dhanani agreed with Duffy that Burke had been cordial in all of their phone conversations and meetings, including a December 2017 repast at the stately Union League Club on West Jackson Boulevard, where his son, Zohaib Dhanani, was so impressed he asked about becoming a member. When Shoukat Dhanani was asked if he recalled his son saying after the meeting that Burke was a gracious host and he wanted to buy him a nice bottle of rum, Dhanani was initially foggy, but eventually said, Mmm, kind of rings a bell, yes. Duffy also attempted to put a different spin on Burkes request that Dhanani attend a January 2018 fundraiser at his home for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who at the time was considered a front-runner in the race to replace outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Prosecutors painted the episode as another example of Burke as an old-school politician getting someone with business at City Hall to do his bidding. Advertisement Under questioning by Duffy, however, Dhanani agreed that he wanted to attend the fundraiser because he was interested in rubbing elbows with some of Chicagos movers and shakers. At the time, his interest had also been piqued by Burkes mention of a lucrative opportunity to open up Burger Kings at Midway Airport. Duffy replayed for the jury the January 2018 call where Dhanani told Burke he couldnt make it to the fundraiser due to bad weather in Houston. After Burke said theyd do it some other time, Dhanani abruptly brought up the Midway Airport proposal. What do we need to do, or should we do to get started to see if we can get in (to Midway) with the Burger Kings? he said. Seemingly caught off guard, Burke replied , I cant um, I cant, uh, talk, uh, now with you, Im in a situation. Burke said they could talk about the deal next week. But Dhanani confirmed when asked by Duffy that Burke never got back to him, and the proposal died on the vine. On redirect, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker hit back at the notion that Burke was the one being played. Advertisement Had you ever had a public official who had authority over the area where your restaurant was located take you to lunch? Streicker asked. No, I dont think so, Dhanani said quietly. Ever had a public official ask you to hire his private business after you sought approval for a permit? Streicker said. No, Dhanani testified. Burke, 79, who left the City Council in May, is charged with 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity. Andrews, 73, is charged with one count of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, two counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity and one count of making a false statement to the FBI. A third defendant, real estate developer Charles Cui, was not charged as part of the Burger King scheme. Advertisement U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall ended testimony early on Wednesday due to the Thanksgiving holiday. The trial is scheduled to resume Monday. In his questioning of Dhanani on Wednesday, attorney Todd Pugh, who represents Andrews, pointed out that Dhanani had no idea who Andrews was when he first came to Chicago to meet Burke in June 2016. Even after dealing with Andrews over the permit squabble, Dhanani struggled to remember him. In fact, when the FBI showed him a photo of Andrews at his home in 2018, he said he didnt recognize him. Pugh repeatedly referred to Dhananis two meetings with Burke as the private club discussions, stressing that Andrews was not there and what was said was between Dhanani and Burke. He also spent a large portion of his cross-examination on whether Dhanani realized that under Chicago ordinances, his Burger King had failed to secure the driveway permits they needed to begin renovation, as Burke and Andrews suggested in their meeting. Afternoon Briefing Weekdays Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy > He showed Dhanani stamped documents showing that his company wound up filing three applications for driveway permits on Nov, 14, 2017, more than five months after Burke first raised the issue. Advertisement Dhanani testified he stayed out of the day-to-day details of the renovations and that to this day, hes still unsure whether driveway permits were needed. Thats not how we do it in Texas anyway, he said. In your mind you believed, your words not mine, Driveway permits were BS, right? Pugh asked. Yes, Dhanani said. jmeisner@chicagotribune.com rlong@chicagotribune.com mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt pushed back against criticism of his recent praise of Elon Musk just days after the tech billionaire appeared to embrace an antisemitic conspiracy theory on his platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk came under fire last week after appearing to endorse an antisemitic conspiracy theory that suggested antisemitism was carried out by minorities and Jewish people were to blame. This claim is in line with false conspiracy theories arguing that Jewish people want to flood the country with minorities. Okay. Jewish [communities] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them, the post read. Im deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest s 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, the user continued, adding, You want truth said to your face, there it is. Musk responded to the post, writing, You have said the actual truth. In a follow-up post, Musk also went after the ADL, claiming the group unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. Pressed over the exchange in an interview with Mediaite, Greenblatt said, Were living in perilous times. And thats why it was so deeply problematic and dangerous when the owner of X validated an awful antisemitic theory to his 160 million followers or so. Greenblatt noted to Mediate he initially called out Musks post right away. A day after Musk posted, the ADL chief posted a screenshot of the exchange and wrote, 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. Two days after Musk posted the controversial message, he announced euphemisms including decolonization and from the river to the sea would be prohibited from X, saying they imply genocide. Greenblatt later praised Musks announcement, calling it an important and welcome move and that he appreciates this leadership in fighting hate. Its important that he made a good policy decision and announced that he was no longer going to tolerate language genocidal language that call to eradicate the state of Israel and annihilate the 7 million people who live there, Greenblatt told Mediaite. But we will call out when they get it wrong. And we will credit them when they get it right, Greenblatt continued. The ADL chiefs apparent praise for the tech giant sparked backlash from many, including New Yorker writer Isaac Chotiner, who wrote on X last week, The most prominent organization fighting anti-Semitism in America will commend your leadership in fighting hate 24 hours after you endorse vile neo-Nazi anti-Semitismif you take a strong stand against critics of Israel. When Chotiners post was read during the interview with Mediate, Greenblatt responded, Totally baseless and wrong. So again, Isaac Chotiner does not comment on the fact that we criticized him 24 hours before, we didnt give him a free pass, Greenblatt continued. So I dont think one negates the other. I dont want to give you the wrong impression, the ADL chief noted. Im not saying Oh, hes off the hook because he said this on Friday, or Oh, hell always be bad because he said this on Wednesday.' A number of corporations, including Disney and Apple, pulled their advertisements from the platform as a result of the post. Musk has pushed back against claims he is antisemitic, saying Nothing could be further from the truth. Musk has previously been accused of using antisemitic rhetoric and has maintained a tense relationship with the ADL, which is focused on fighting hate and antisemitism. In May, the ADL published a report documenting the rise in antisemitic incidents after he took over the company. Sarah Fortinsky contributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Protesters have failed to stop a controversial film on women's rights and trans issues from being shown at the University of Edinburgh. Two previous screenings of Adult Human Female were cancelled after pro-trans activists blocked the venue. The film went ahead on Wednesday despite a protest involving more than 100 people. They say the film is transphobic, a claim denied by the academics behind the screening. The documentary was directed by academics and film-makers Deirdre O'Neill and Michael Wayne and has been available to view on Youtube since December 2022. The film-makers describe it as "the UK's first feature-length documentary about the clash between women's rights and gender ideology/trans rights". It defines sex as being determined by biology and says women's rights have been damaged by aspects of the trans movement. An attempt to show the film last December at the University of Edinburgh was halted amid safety concerns after protesters formed a blockade around the venue. Police were called but no arrests were made. A second attempt to show it was again cancelled in similar circumstances in April. More than 100 protestors tried to prevent the film being shown The events have been organised by University of Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom (EAFAF). It is made up of university staff who are concerned by what they call a "growing climate of censoriousness and a general chill around discussing and debating difficult issues in this university". The crowd at Wednesday's event chanted "trans rights are human rights" and shouted "shame" as people arrived for the screening. Skye Marriner, president of the Edinburgh College Students' Association (ECSA), said the protesters were there to show people that "this kind of thing" was not welcome on the campus. "It's not supported by the student body in Edinburgh. It actively harms trans people and it supports transphobic language and that's not OK," she said. "If the trans community says they are not comfortable with this then that is something we need to respect." Professor Jonathan Hearn, who teaches political sociology at the university and is a founding member EAFAF, said he was relieved the screening was finally going ahead and he was perfectly happy for people to demonstrate. "It's become a matter of principle for the university to show that it can stand by its academic freedom and freedom of speech policies. "It's just important symbolically to show that people can show films that are controversial, though I am not sure how controversial it is, and people can protest too. That's OK too," he said. INDEPENDENCE, Mo. A popular water park in Independence is opening its doors next summer for non-residents. Adventure Oasis will reopen for the 2024 season. The Independence City Council voted to open the park to non-residents. Christmas in the Sky event canceled by Jackson County Parks and Rec The waterpark has only welcomed Independence residents since 2020. Before 2020, the waterpark allowed non-residents. Mayor Rory Rowland said the city of Independence is excited to see individuals from across the Kansas City metro area visit its park. We are excited to welcome back citizens from across the metro area to Adventure Oasis, Rowland said. We look forward to family fun all summer long and hope community members from across our area come and visit Independence. It will cost $10 for residents of Independence to enjoy the waterpark, and it will cost $15 for non-residents. Christmas in the Sky event canceled by Jackson County Parks and Rec Holiday special season passes go on sale Friday, December 1. The sale will continue through January 1, 2024. Prices are $80.50 per person for Independence residents and $114.50 for non-residents. Regular prices for season passes are $95 for Independence residents and $135 for non-residents. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports. An Afghan intelligence analyst who played a key role in helping the British military in Kabul is facing deportation to Rwanda for a second time after a Home Office blunder. The man, who gathered information to help coalition forces in their war against the Taliban, came to the UK on a small boat because he feared for his life and could not wait for help through official routes after the Wests withdrawal from Afghanistan. He applied for the Ministry of Defences Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) scheme, for those who worked with or for the UK government, two years ago but has not heard anything back. The Independent first revealed that he had been threatened with deportation to Rwanda in August this year, but a week later, Home Office officials started to progress his asylum claim and sent him a questionnaire to fill out. The questionnaires are sent to applicants from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen and take the place of an interview. These nationalities all have high asylum grant rates so the analyst believed he was safe to stay in the UK. But Home Office officials have now admitted they started progressing his claim in error and it has been paused pending his potential removal to Rwanda. Rishi Sunak has pledged to send asylum seekers to Rwanda despite the Supreme Court finding the plan illegal (Getty) The analysts work alongside the armed forces in Afghanistan was described by one British RAF adviser as having a meaningful and positive effect on the UKs national security interests. Another RAF colleague said he had undoubtedly furthered the UKs military and national security objectives. In an email sent in November, an officer at Asylum and Human Rights Operations told the analyst: We have made an administrative error and you are not eligible to complete a questionnaire. Your case currently remains in the Third Country Process. He was then told in an email from the Asylum Case team that his application was being considered but no further details were given. He is calling for his asylum claim to be processed and for the government to end his limbo. Speaking to The Independent from a government hotel in the Midlands, he said: This unfairness by the Home Office is putting a huge amount of pressure on my mental health. I am living in an unknown situation and it is extremely difficult. Charity workers have anecdotally reported that other asylum seekers have been told that they received their questionnaires in error, but the scale of the reversals is not known. The Supreme Court ruled last Wednesday that flights to Rwanda will not be able to go ahead because of flaws in the Rwandan asylum system. In a unanimous ruling, the judges agreed that there was a real risk asylum seekers would be returned to their home countries to face persecution, breaching the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Despite this, Rishi Sunak has pledged to strike a new treaty with Rwanda to address concerns raised in the court judgement. He has vowed to bring in emergency legislation to give the treaty parliaments stamp of approval. But that is likely to take many months to pass through the House of Lords and could face months of legal challenge after this. Steve Smith, CEO of refugee charity Care4Calais which is supporting the analyst, said: At a time when the UK has a record asylum backlog, thousands of asylum seekers, like the Afghan analyst, have had their asylum claim put on hold through this governments inadmissibility policy with no realistic prospect of them being removed to a third country. The only sensible response to last weeks Supreme Court ruling would be to readmit these asylum seekers back into the UK asylum system and get on with processing their claims. A government spokesperson said: Those who fear persecution should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach and not put their lives at risk by making unnecessary and dangerous journeys to the UK. The number of people risking their lives by making illegal and dangerous Channel crossings is unacceptable. That is why we have introduced legislation which will ensure those arriving in the UK illegally may be detained and promptly removed to their country of origin or a safe third country. SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said this morning to expect more arrests in the labor trafficking case that has already seen the arrests of three executive officers of a West Bountiful landscaping company. Earlier this week, three company executives for Rubicon Contractors LLC were taken into custody and charged with seven counts of aggravated labor trafficking. BACKGROUND: 3 Utah company executives accused of labor trafficking According to investigators, Clayton Phillips, 49, Tyler Brinkman, 57, and Adam Perea, 35, were recruiting workers from Mexico using temporary non-agriculture work visas. Once in Utah, the workers allegedly were forced into poor working and living conditions and subjected to unreasonable charges for housing and equipment. Reyes office further added that the workers received negligible pay, forcing them to rely on food banks and charity to survive. Investigators also found that workers were allegedly forced to be on the job even while sick and threatened with deportation if they did not comply. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now ABC4 Breaking News Alerts The treatment of these workers is appalling. I know our AG Victim Advocates have been on the scene supporting them, said Reyes. We intend to prove the victims are innocent people who came to America using a legal immigration process to work hard, earn a living, and contribute to society. But, instead, we believe they were exploited in subhuman living and working conditions as indentured servants in a labor trafficking scheme. Reyes office said Phillips, Brinkman, and Perea were only the first Rubicon employees to be arrested in connection to the labor trafficking scheme. According to a press release additional Rubicon employees are expected to be charged. However, the Attorney Generals office did not specify how many. This is another example of how broadly this type of crime plagues Utah and America and why I have made it a priority to combat human trafficking for the past 10 years, said Reyes. My office and I will continue to prioritize awareness and enforcement of these crimes and human rights abuses. Attorneys Skye Lazaro and Jamie Thomas who are representing Rubicon on behalf of Ray Quinney & Nebeker law firm told ABC4 that Rubicon is cooperating with the investigation being conducted by the Attorney Generals Office. Northrop Grumman employees found unconscious died of argon gas We learned today that Rubicon is being investigated by the Attorney Generals Office about its labor practices, Lazaro and Thomas said in a statement to ABC4. Rubicon denies any wrongdoing and has complied in good faith with all applicable laws. Rubicon is cooperating with the investigation and believes it will ultimately be vindicated. Charges are allegations only. All arrested persons are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah. As African countries make strides in the development of their telecommunications industries, social media posts shared thousands of times claim to show a mobile phone factory in Zambia. However, the featured image was generated using artificial intelligence (AI) software. For now, the Zambian government has only announced a plan to launch a smartphone factory, which is slated for 2024. The image shows men in grey shirts assembling smartphones in a factory. A mobile phone factory in Zambia represents a facility within the country dedicated to manufacturing and assembling mobile phones, reads a post on X (formerly Twitter) published on November 9, 2023. This contributes to local industry, job creation, and technological advancement in Zambia, the post adds. A screenshot of the false post, taken on November 15, 2023 Many of the replies to the post identified the image as being AI-generated. Others, however, celebrated the purported announcement. A screenshot of the replies to the X post Similar claims also circulated in French, including here and here. But the picture is not real. Expert analysis Software to detect AI-generated images is still being developed and is not completely reliable, even if it can sometimes be used to confirm suspicions of AI use. The most effective tool remains observation, so AFP Fact Check contacted AI specialist Victor Baissait. The best way to verify if an image has been generated by AI is to look at what we see in the image; if there are things that are done too well or on the contrary, inconsistent, Baissait said on November 13, 2023. "In this image, when you look closely, you see a lot of electronic cards. It's difficult to know if it's true to reality if don't know much about it, but some of the smartphones and graphics cards look a bit stretched, said Baaissait. We also see, in this image, a border which begins and then disappears: this is a clue, he added. A closer look indeed shows that some mobile phones and electronic components seem disproportionately large compared to the workers' hands, and in the foreground, the outline of the grey tray containing graphics cards is incomplete. Screenshot from Facebook, taken on November 14, 2023 / Yellow box added by AFP Fact Check The hands, a complex part of the body to represent, are another weak point of AI. Here, they simply seem a little weird, but often AI adds extra fingers, for example, said Baissait. In the image, the position of their hands is almost identical, as if they were all performing the same gesture or task simultaneously. Screenshot from Facebook, taken on November 14, 2023 / Blue box added by AFP Fact Check Baissait added: The person in the foreground has a sort of badge where their employee name would be. But the letters displayed on the label do not correspond to any alphabet. Screenshot from Facebook, taken on November 14, 2023 / Red box added by AFP Fact Check He explained that text is another aspect that AI struggles with, especially in small spaces. The text must be large in the image for this to work well. Baissait suggested that we look for a photograph that shows the same scenario, to see if the one shown is credible. For example, in smartphone factories, is it the workers or the machines who do the assembling? said Baissait. So we looked for photographs of workers in a mobile phone factory and found these images taken by AFP photographers in 2022 and 2017 in China. They show employees sitting next to each other on the assembly line and handling screens and electronic components. This photo taken on July 20, 2022, shows employees working on a smartphone assembly line at the Oppo factory in Dongguan (AFP/JADE GAO) In this photo taken on May 8, 2017, the components (circuits and chips) of smartphones are handled by a worker at the Oppo factory in Dongguan (AFP / NICOLAS ASFOURI) While the image appears somewhat consistent with what a mobile phone assembly plant looks like, the other clues point more toward an AI-generated image. Zambia in 2024 A reverse image search found the original image on LinkedIn, published by Genevas Ecofin Agency, an online publication with a focus on African economic news (archived here). The French post, published in early November 2023, announced Kenyas first smartphone assembly plant and Zambias plans to launch a factory by June 2024 (archived here). Zambia is following suit with the announcement of a future smartphone manufacturing plant scheduled for June 2024. This initiative, revealed by the Minister of Technology and Science, Felix Mutati, at the Africa Fintech Summit 2023, aims to make connectivity more accessible and affordable, reads the post. Ecofin Agency also published a French article on its site on November 3, 2023 (archived here). A browse through the agencys other LinkedIn posts shows images that appear to be AI-generated. Screenshots of posts on Ecofin Agencys LinkedIn account, taken on November 14, 2023 Ecofin Agency confirmed to AFP Fact Check that the image from November 14, 2023, was generated by AI. The image in question was created by our community manager on DALL-E to illustrate the announcement of a smartphone assembly plant project in Zambia. DALL-E is a generative AI programme capable of creating images from text prompts, much like Midjourney. It is free if you have a Microsoft account. The AI-generated image of the assembly line was then circulated across multiple social media platforms without the full context. AFP Fact Check attempted to recreate a similar image using the prompt: image of workers sitting on a production line in a smartphone manufacturing factory in Zambia. Below are the four generated images that the software came up with. They appear close in style, colours and composition to the image circulating on social media. AI images generated by AFP Fact Check using DALL-E 3 on November 14, 2023 While these images do not show an existing factory in Zambia, the government does plan to launch a smartphone factory by June 2024, following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Zambia and the Chinese technology company ZTE (archived here). This is not the first time that the landlocked southern African country has invited a foreign company to start this type of industry. In April 2021, the government wanted to see Chinas Transsion Holdings set up a phone assembly plant in the country -- such as the one in Ethiopia (archived here). Back in 2009, local media reported that Zambias first mobile phone manufacturing plant, M-mobile Telecommunications (M-Tech), had been officially opened in the capital city Lusaka. However, in 2011, South Africas ITWeb warned that M-Tech may close if the Zambian government does not move quickly to protect the company against undue competition from China" (archived here). AFP Fact Check made multiple attempts to contact Zambia's technology and science ministry to find out the status of these projects, but we have not yet received a response. Teeming prisons are a hotbed of tuberculosis, the world's second deadliest communicable disease after Covid (Alfredo ZUNIGA) A programme using artificial intelligence to test inmates in a high security Mozambican jail for tuberculosis has spawned hope that the new tech can help eradicate the disease. Teeming prisons are a hotbed of TB, the world's second deadliest communicable disease after Covid, according to the World Health Organization. Mozambique, a country of 32 million people, recorded about 120,000 infections last year. Caused by a bacteria that most often affects the lungs, it infected more than 10 million people in 2022 and killed 1.3 million, according to WHO. Almost one in four infections last year occurred in Africa. In the sprawling courtyard of the maximum security jail in the Mozambican capital Maputo, an inmate in an orange T-shirt stood before a tripod with a wide white tablet. Behind him, a doctor scoured a two-piece portable X-ray machine connected to an AI programme that has been hailed as a breakthrough in the fight against tuberculosis. "It processes it in real time, we have the results in less than five minutes," the doctor said. The image popped on the computer of a technician sitting at a table outside a medical tent a few metres away, along with a diagnosis. "Radiological signs suggestive of tuberculosis -- negative," the message said. The programme is part of a large test run of the technology to scan all inmates at three prisons in Maputo. It is being conducted by a local non-profit organisation supported by the Stop TB Partnership, a UN-backed entity. Early diagnosis is key to save lives and tackle the spread of the disease. While a chronic cough is a hallmark of infection, people can also carry TB without showing symptoms. Prisons are a perfect breeding ground due to crammed cells and airborne transmission. Traditional spit, skin or blood tests for TB involves visits to a lab and the results can take up to three days. The quickest time for reliable results is 24 hours. - 'Great leap in technology' - The combination of AI and portable X-ray machines is faster and eliminates the need for visits to clinics and radiologists, who can be scarce in poor rural areas, said Stop TB's deputy head Suvanand Sahu. "This is a great leap in technology," he said. At the Maputo Provincial Penitentiary, prisoners testing positive are placed in isolation, locked in a quarantine room behind a rusty metal door. Inside, about a dozen inmates wearing face masks sit on mattresses thrown on the ground. Clothing, blankets and other belongings hang from a line strung between two discoloured blue pillars. Serious cases are taken to a medical ward. Mozambique's jails were about 50 percent over capacity in 2022, according to the UN. "It's not easy to see your friends playing and walking there but you have to accept that I am sick," Kennet Fortune, an inmate who has spent 10 year behind bars for drug-related offences, said pointing at the trees in the prison yard. He is currently undergoing treatment and the process can take months. "When the time comes, I'll be out," he said. A WHO report this month found that global deaths from tuberculosis dipped in 2022, showing progress towards eradicating the disease. The UN health agency said 7.5 million people were diagnosed with TB in 2022 -- the highest figure since it began monitoring in 1995. Sahu of Stop TB said he was hoping that the success of pilot programmes could help get funding to scale up the use of AI in diagnosing tuberculosis. "Only a few years ago, if I was to say in a meeting that we can bring X-rays to all communities and have them read by a artificial intelligence with no need for radiologists, they would have kicked me out of the room and told me to go write a sci-fi novel," he said. str-ub/ach The Air Force, together with the air defence of Ground Forces of Ukraines Armed Forces and the National Guard, destroyed all 14 Russian Shahed-131/136 drones on the night of 21-22 November. Source: Ukraine's Air Force Details: The military said Russian occupiers used 14 Shahed attack UAVs and a Kh-22 cruise missile launched with a Tu22M3 aircraft from the south-east (Primorsko-Akhtarsk in Russia) from 20:00 on 21 November to 03:00 on 22 November. Units of mobile air defence groups, fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft missile units were involved in repelling the air attack within Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia and Khmelnytsky oblasts. The Kh-22 cruise missile did not reach its target, it fell in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in an open area, and the blast wave damaged private houses. Early reports indicate there were no casualties. Background: Ukraine issued an air-raid warning in several oblasts due to the threat of attacks UAVs on the evening of 21 November. At around 01:00 on the night of 21-22 November, it was reported that the drones were moving to the west of the country. An air-raid warning was issued in Khmelnytskyi and Ternopil oblasts. At around 03:00, the all-clear was given. Support UP or become our patron! The U.S. Air Force will roll out tens of thousands of specialized spectacles to airmen around the globe to protect their eyes from lasers and shrapnel. The gear aims to limit the potential risk to pilots and other aircrew amid a recent spike in lasing incidents. Its also the first time that Air Force-issued eyewear is designed to block lasers as well as ballistic threats, the service said Sunday. Getting lasered without having proper protection could not only prevent the pilot from flying and landing an aircraft safely, but it could also cost them their career, Capt. Pete Coats, who leads the eyewear initiative at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, said in the release. When a laser pointers beam hits an aircrafts windshield or an eyeball itself, the light can cause flash blindness that is particularly dangerous for troops that are taking off or preparing to land, according to the Air Force Safety Center. Preventing those disruptions can save lives in the air and on the ground. A suite of eight types of eyewear including daytime and nighttime anti-laser spectacles, anti-ballistics glasses, and visors that work with night-vision goggles can shield airmen from those potentially deadly effects. The gear is built to protect all aircrews except for pilots in the U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane and the F-35A Lightning II fighter, the service said In a statement. Aircrews on platforms that fly low and slow, such as helicopters or tiltrotor aircraft, need defenses against both lasers and ballistics, whereas those in fighter or bomber jets likely only need to fend off unwanted beams. The service plans to distribute more than 42,000 pairs of the glasses and visors to its units over the next three years. The need for such measures has played out at installations around the world, such as Italys Aviano Air Base, which said in October it had logged 13 lasing incidents against its aircraft over the past year. The lights were most often directed at HH-60 Pave Hawk search-and-rescue helicopters, the base said, which are easier targets than the F-16 Fighting Falcon jets also stationed there. American and Italian officials are crafting a process to notify local law enforcement of perpetrators locations, Avianos 31st Fighter Wing said in a release. Avianos woes are part of a surge in the number of laser strikes reported to federal officials over the past few years. The Federal Aviation Administration has logged more than 10,300 lasing incidents and 28 injuries so far in 2023, surpassing the nearly 9,500 events that were reported in 2022. Airmen most often reported laser incidents in Florida, New Mexico and Texas within the continental U.S., and in undisclosed locations overseas, between October 2016 and December 2022, according to data collected by the Air Force Safety Center. The service recorded nearly 550 incidents around the world within that time period. Aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft is a federal crime punishable by as many as five years in prison and up to $280,800 in fines. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations asks anyone with knowledge of a lasing incident to report them to the FAA or the Air Force. These are not harmless pranks, the agency said. Santa Claus brings joy and delivers presents with his sleigh, powered by flying reindeer. However, in Alaska, Santa relies on the help of the Alaska Air and Army National Guards. Dubbed Operation Santa Claus, the annual community outreach program sees gifts and holiday cheer delivered to remote Alaskan communities by way of a C-17 Globemaster III and UH-60 Black Hawk. However, in 2023, Operation Santa Claus also became a lifesaving mission. Operation Santa Claus is a joint effort between the Salvation Army, the Alaska Air National Guard, and the Alaska Army National Guard (Alaska National Guard) In 1956, spring floods and a subsequent drought impacted subsistence fishing and hunting in Alaska. To ensure that children in remote, struggling communities still had a Merry Christmas, the National Guard flew in donations of gifts and supplies. Now conducted annually, the Guard partners with the Salvation Army to deliver gifts, books and school supplies across the state. In 2022, the 67th Operation Santa Claus delivered 1,780 pounds of donations to 325 children in Scammon Bay, Minto and Nuiqsut. On November 15, 2023, while conducting an Operation Santa Claus delivery to the village of Tuluksak, Alaska, an Army National Guard UH-60L was diverted on an emergency call. The Alaska Rescue Coordination Center at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson received an urgent request for assistance: a critically ill patient in Napaskiak, Alaska required immediate medical evacuation. With snow and ice blocking the area, helicopter evacuation was the only way to save the patient's life. Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus, and their National Guard helpers during Operation Santa Claus 2022 (Alaska National Guard) Having completed one of two scheduled deliveries to Tuluksak, the Black Hawk crew altered their Operation Santa Claus mission to a MEDEVAC. With gifts and volunteers still on board, the helicopter landed at Bethel, Alaska, to bring two LifeMed paramedics and their equipment on board and headed out to Napaskiak. Less than five minutes after taking off, they landed and delivered the paramedics, who stabilized the patient for transport to a local clinic to prep for the MEDEVAC. Since the stabilization process took 30 to 40 minutes, the Black Hawk took off and made the 15-minute flight to Tuluksak, where the crew offloaded the last of the Operation Santa Claus gifts and volunteers. Returning immediately to Napaskiak, they picked up the paramedics and their patient and flew them to the Army Aviation Operating Facility in Bethel. There, the patient was transferred to a LifeMed ambulance. The patient is transferred to the LifeMed ambulance (Alaska National Guard) Meanwhile, Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus and 10 volunteers from the National Guard and Salvation Army celebrated an early Christmas with the children of Tuluksak. After gifts were distributed, ice cream was eaten and pictures with Santa were taken, the Black Hawk picked everyone back up. "This mission was a great example of how the Alaska National Guard is able to work jointly between Army, Air Force and multiple civilian agencies to support the local population through state missions like Operation Santa and through federal missions such as this RCC request for assistance," UH-60 pilot Chief Warrant Officers 2 Colton Bell said in a National Guard Public Affairs release. "This mission specifically showcases our abilities to adapt to multiple, rapidly changing missions while operating in adverse weather while still completing them efficiently and safely." The holidays are stressful, but it could be worse. You could work in an airport. In one of the busiest airports in the world. For free. You could work in an airport for free and sit for five hours a day wearing a blue vest and invite strangers bring me your tired, your hungry, your flight-delayed, your missed connections, your abusive, your entitled, your perpetually turned-around, your extremely frustrated, your actual refugees seeking asylum to complain to you, to ask countless questions, to ensure their trajectory. For no money. You could do this because you are a good person who wishes to experience the satisfaction of being helpful in an unhelpful environment. Advertisement You could work at an information desk at OHare International Airport. [ Expect busy Chicago airports, roads as Thanksgiving travel kicks into high gear ] More than 2 million passengers pass through OHare Thanksgiving week alone, a confusing place even if you visit regularly. Not McCormick Place confusing. (Nowhere else in Chicago is that confusing.) Finding help is not quite finding-an-employee-at-Home-Depot difficult. But it often seems easier to find a Nuts on Clark at OHare than a person with answers. Advertisement This is where the saints of the information desk come in. They are the 125 volunteers of Travelers Aid Chicago, they have been at OHare since it first opened to commercial traffic in 1955, and from what I could tell by spending time with them, youve never given them a second thought. You take them for granted. You barely notice them. But they can tell you the number of Nuts on Clark at OHare (four) and what to do if youve been stranded at OHare without a passport. Theyll tell you where to take a service dog that needs to poop and can offer decent directions to the Blue Line. They bill themselves as the oldest nonsectarian social welfare movement in America, but their constituents are swaggering tech bros and people who have never been to an airport, business owners and military vets, travelers with special needs, people in the visible grasp of trauma, children scared of flying for the first time, wide-eyed exchange students, grandparents without boarding passes, runaways, newlyweds, migrants; until recently, they carried adopted babies through OHare to new parents outside of security. [ Your homemade cranberry sauce could cost you time in airport security line, TSA says ] Take, for example, Jon Ziomek, who stands behind a podium on a Thursday morning, listening to a very nervous woman explain, and explain, she doesnt know where to walk. With a pause of calm, he points her down the right hallway, then turns to me and says quietly, Going to Zurich through London then transferring. I didnt ask why not book direct from Chicago? Why make someone feel bad about their flight choices? After all, working an information desk at OHare at a time when understaffed airlines leave gates looking like ghost towns of customer service can mean absorbing anger. We are often the first official-looking person a frustrated traveler sees so we get it. They are insulted, cursed at, told they move slow. Travelers Aid service desk volunteer Jon Ziomek assists travelers at OHare International Airport. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) When I met Kim Heiferman her Travelers Aid vest pinned with almost 37 pieces of flair after a decade with the group she had been on her shift for about an hour and already handled 76 people. After each interaction, they press a clicker to keep track. She said: Today, Ive gotten Where can I smoke? Where is baggage claim? Where is my gate? Where is Garrett Popcorn? As she talked, a tired man stopped before her: Curious. Whats the best place to eat? I got two hours. I mean, I dont need to eat, you know? Im overweight, as you can see, of course. But look, can you just tell me where? She patiently offered suggestions, then turned to me: Some will swear at you. Some are very, very angry. I love talking to people, and yet I had this one guy walking down the hall just screaming at me, which is a dagger in your heart, because you are not paid, youre here to help. Usually, people arent harsh. Still ... Advertisement [ Thanksgiving weather in Chicago: The most extreme conditions since 1872 ] Travelers Aid says it has about 900,000 passenger interactions a year in OHare. And even if you dont consider the people who approach them experiencing medical issues, the people who approach them fleeing domestic abuse, the people who approach them so stoned theyre not sure what city they landed in, the people who approach them with nothing but a strip of paper with the faded number of a distant relative, there is just the stress of being in a big airport: the lost luggage, the expenses, the crowds, the missed flights, the indifference. John Ishu is the director of Travelers Aid Chicago and has been with it for 25 years. He thinks of OHare as a midsize metropolis. One with a population of more than 200,000. They speak 40 languages. And every 24 hours, seven days a week, the population changes. Its a place of transition and people in crisis, and theres no stopgap for that. So were there. Travelers make their way through Terminal 1 at OHare International Airport on Sept. 14, 2023. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) The next time you see someone at OHare behind a blue desk with a button reading Ask Me, remind yourself, theyve been doing this for 172 years. Before airports. Travelers Aid Chicago even predates its own agency, the Heartland Alliance. (Indeed, when Jane Addams created Heartland in 1888, it was among the first services offered.) Travelers Aid and its many sister organizations in 20 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada and Australia dates to 1851, when philanthropic former St. Louis Mayor Bryan Mullanphy gave his city $500,000 in his will to help pioneers going West in covered wagons. They helped with sick horses, broken axles, families running out of food. By the 1940s, when Travelers Aid became one of the agencies that helped form the USO, the group could be found nationwide in railroad and bus stations, often assisting returning war veterans. But fundamentally, it served migrants, domestically and internationally. In the early 20th century, that often meant immigration from Europe. These days, it can mean asylum-seekers from everywhere, as well as the migrants who are put on planes in San Antonio, Texas, several times a day, bound for OHare. Most of the time, a Travelers Aid volunteer will meet them at their gates, provide them with fresh diapers, socks and toys for children, then guide them to resettlement agencies. Ziomek stepped around his podium to greet a large group of migrants being resettled elderly, millennial, children representing a half-dozen countries in Europe and South America. They gathered behind a staff member with the International Organization for Migration. They looked around the chaos of the airport and smiled at Ziomek who beamed back. So wheres everyone going? Ziomek asked. Advertisement USA, the leader said. Specifically? Ziomek laughed. The man waved his hand airily theyre headed all over. Ah, Ziomek said, instinctively grabbing a stack of free coloring books for the kids. Ziomek has been doing this for eight years, several times a week. Though most Travelers Aid volunteers stick with a single desk, Ziomek floats about, working at all nine information desks scattered around OHare. (Midway Airport does not have a Travelers Aid office, but a spokesperson with the Chicago Department of Aviation said its being discussed.) Ziomek has a trim gray beard and a serene demeanor. He has calmed so many hysterical people he could qualify as a hostage negotiator. Its the rare shift he doesnt meet someone openly weeping, he says. He keeps boxes of tissues on hand. Travelers Aid service desk volunteer Jon Ziomek customizes a map for a traveler in Terminal 3. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) Quick, memorize this binder, he jokes, handing me the groups thick laminated folder containing information on everything from cabs to the location of Chicago hot dogs. Hes handled only 19 people in the past 20 minutes, which he says is a little slow. He doesnt know if he always helps. In a way, a job like this is a reminder of just how much the human eye can take in. There are signs all over this place that probably answer a lot of the questions that people have, but there is also a limit of how much we can absorb. Advertisement He notes that theres a terminal where one sign for the baggage-claim area points straight up, but 20 feet beyond that sign, a different sign for the same baggage area points straight down. He notes that there is a Terminal 5 but no Terminal 4 (which has become the bus and shuttle center). American Airlines airport code is AA yet Spirit Airlines is NK. JetBlues ticket counters are in Terminal 2, yet its gates are in Terminal 3. (To make this even more confusing, the blue information desks near several baggage areas are staffed by parking-lot businesses and have nothing to do with Travelers Aid.) Now imagine all that but you dont speak much English, and you dont know anyone, and maybe you dont even know where youre headed you just hope someone might help when you get there. Travelers Aid service desk volunteer Jon Ziomek helps a traveler find their way on Sept. 14, 2023. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) Ziomek recalls a woman who came up to me at the desk and just said Sri Lanka. I said that there were no direct flights, and I went on and on explaining and when I was done, she just repeated, Sri Lanka. Among the 125 volunteers, they speak 26 languages. There is also a language-translation phone service, so Ziomek called and as they tried to understand what language the woman was speaking, her daughter called her cellphone. She explained that her mother was flying to Doha in Qatar and then transferring to Sri Lanka. The daughter hung up. Ziomek told the woman that she could wait there for the flight. Then she handed him a small note. It read: I have dementia. About eight years ago, a 14-year-old girl from the Netherlands arrived at a Travelers Aid desk, unsure how to get to Rockford. She lived with her grandparents who agreed to let her come here to meet someone she knew online, said Tony Medina, volunteer manager. She was waiting awhile for her pickup. All she had was a Rockford address, but when Travelers Aid did an online search, they got an image of a vacant lot. The person she was meeting wouldnt return phone calls from us. The girl received a return plane ticket. Most likely, Medina said, we avoided a human trafficking situation. Ziomek and Lorenzo Vasquez stood behind an information desk in Terminal 3 and spoke quietly and casually. It was Vasquezs first day with Travelers Aid. He wore a porkpie hat and listened to Ziomek explain the job and occasionally looked up to scan the clamor from another rush of passengers: fathers with visible sweat stains carrying children, couples bickering softly, armies of matching teenagers in volleyball sweatsuits. Advertisement It takes a special personality to do this, Medina told me with a public-service gene, to be specific. Vasquez, a former Chicago firefighter who also volunteers with the USO, has it. You scan for distress, Vasquez said. You read faces. Its a skill you pick up. Occasionally, Ziomek would call into the ether: Help? Anyone? Travelers Aid service desk volunteers Jon Ziomek and Lorenzo Vazquez in Terminal 3 at OHare International Airport. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune) Like many Travelers Aid volunteers, theyre retired. Ziomek taught and was assistant dean at Northwestern Universitys Medill School of Journalism, as well as its director of editorial masters programs. (Disclosure: I took a class with Ziomek myself at Northwestern, about 30 years ago.) There are two 17-year-old volunteers (the minimum age to join) but most are retired professionals, at least 60. They include Chicago police, firefighters, dentists, plumbers and teachers; many were airport employees, airline workers and even pilots who miss airport life. If they do six months of this, Ishu said, they stay years, even decades. Heiferman was a nurse who volunteered eight hours a day, five days a week, for nine years. But shes cut back a little after the pandemic. I cant pinpoint exactly what changed for me, but people in this place are on edge all the time now. And I still love it. People, to generalize, expect to get screwed over at an airport. They will be mistreated, inevitably. Volunteers report passengers who zone out in the middle of gate directions, passengers who wander off in midsentence, passengers who shake their heads furiously when told to call airline customer service, as if theyd been sentenced to death. Advertisement Elisabeth Adams, a former Pan Am employee and 10-year Travelers Aid vet, gets it. Afternoon Briefing Weekdays Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon. By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy > Shes not paid to get it, but she does. She stands at a desk in Terminal 5 on a Friday morning. She has the short graying hair, thin eyeglass frames and the Glinda-the-Good-Witch smile of a preschool teacher. She doesnt witness many tears, she says, but she knows to anticipate something she cant anticipate. She has the image of a passenger seared into her brain who, trapped in OHare airport limbo, began shouting that hes been wearing the same underwear for two days, then reached into his pants and gave himself a massive wedgie, to illustrate his despair. Adams looks up. A woman stands before her and explains very quickly that shes been trying to get home to Texas for days and she has a sick child there waiting for her and she may start to cry. Please dont, Adams whispers to me, then Ill be a liar. Advertisement She turns back to the passenger: OK, how can I help? cborrelli@chicagotribune.com MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) Disgraced Catholic priest Alex Crow has married a young woman he met at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School and flew to Italy with, according to a public record that WKRG News 5 has obtained. 2 charged with carjacking in Jackson County Alexander Matthew Carter Crow, 30, has married the 18-year-old Mobile woman, according to an Alabama Marriage Certificate from the Judge of Probates office. (WKRG News 5 has decided not to include his wifes name in our reporting.) Crow and the woman signed the notarized marriage certificate on Nov. 17, 2023, and the probate court received it on Monday, according to the document. The marriage license seems to counter Crows own words about his intentions. When Crow and his then-girlfriend left the country, he wrote a letter to the Archdiocese of Mobile saying he would never return to America. Murphy High School player makes sensational buzzer-beater In July, the Archdiocese of Mobile, the churchs regional administrative division, formally punished Crow for that action along with other accusations. Fr. Alex Crow abandoned his assignment in the Archdiocese, a spokesperson said in a statement. His behavior is totally unbecoming of a priest. He has been informed by the archbishop that he may no longer exercise ministry as a priest, nor to tell people he is a priest, nor to dress as a priest. The news of Crows marriage took the archdiocese by surprise. Until today, we were not aware that they had become civilly married, a spokesperson said. Crow was ordained a priest in 2021. He was assigned to Corpus Christi Parish. Crow was a spiritual leader at McGill-Toolen High School at the same time the girl was studying there, according to past WKRG News 5 reports. Baumhowers Victory Grille coming soon to Foley According to a Facebook post from McGill-Toolen, Crow visited Theology classes and heard confessions from September through December 2021. Initially, Crow was accused of grooming the 2023 McGill-Toolen graduate. Earlier this month, the Mobile County Sheriffs Office announced that they closed the case on Crow. So did Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood, who said his office interviewed 30 witnesses and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. Despite the case being closed, Sheriff Paul Burch maintained that he believes Crow groomed the teen at a young age leading up to the couples departure. Spanish Fort Police Dept. becomes CALEA accredited Once a predator, always a predator, Burch said about Crow at the time. Why else would you start something if you didnt intend there would be a physical relationship in the end? For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRG News 5. The Alexander Kielland, on the right, was a floating platform used as an accommodation block for oil rig workers Families of men who died when part of an oil rig capsized hope UK authorities can be persuaded to help open a fresh inquiry into the disaster. The Alexander Kielland's accommodation platform capsized in 1980, off Norway, killing 123 men. Relatives, some from Cumbria, will meet in parliament in December and hope to help kick-start the inquiry process. A Norwegian government inquiry, held before the rig was salvaged, blamed a crack in one of the bracings. The Kielland capsized and sank in stormy weather on 27 March 1980, in the Ecofisk oil field. One of the five legs supporting the platform broke away An original inquiry held behind closed doors a year later said the disaster, which saw 89 survive, was caused by a fatigue crack on a bracing holding one of the five legs supporting the so-called flotel. Two years ago, the Norwegian government accepted there were flaws in that report, but there was no basis for a new inquiry. Families said they had never been able to see the report and had many questions about what actually happened. Colin Lamb, from Plumbland near Aspatria, west Cumbria, lost his father Colin in the disaster, and his body has never been found. He was one of 34 British men living on the Kielland and working long, gruelling shifts to lift oil from the sea bed. Colin Lamb lost his father, also called Colin, in the disaster "We lost my dad in 1980 and I still dream about him, as if he's still here," he said. He said the pain is worse because bereaved families have been left without answers. "I only found out two months ago that my father's passport had been retrieved and kept in the Norwegian archives," he said. "We should have had that passport in 1983 when the Kielland was uplifted. We shouldn't be talking about this now, it should have been done back then in the 1980s." Mr Lamb, along with other relatives, ultimately wants the Norwegian government to open a new inquiry. About 15 MPs with constituents affected by the disaster will meet families in parliament next month. Keith Hunter was one of the men killed in 1980 It has been organised by the Conservative MP for Workington, Mark Jenkinson. "Those families need answers. I think there's been some acknowledgement of failings in the process for those outside of Norway," he said. "I'll do anything I can to help my constituents and others by raising awareness with other MPs to try and get those answers." Keith's son Alan travelled to Norway to meet with other families who lost relatives Alan Hunter, from Distington near Workington, whose father Keith was also killed, was one of several family members to travel to Norway in September for a conference on the disaster. "We've been left in the dark for all these years and the British government have had nothing to do with it from day one," he said. "It would be nice to get some answers, and put it all to bed." A UK Foreign Office spokesperson said: "The British Embassy in Oslo has engaged with the Norwegian authorities on this issue. "Any further investigation into the incident is a matter for the Norwegian authorities." The BBC has approached the Norwegian government for comment. Follow BBC Cumbria on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@bbc.co.uk. I was hospitalized for a serious allergic reaction while on a dreamy trip to Greece with my fiance. I usually plan my trips down to the minute, but my health issues forced me to slow down. Spending time alone and having to nix my itinerary has inspired me to plan my trips differently. This summer, my fiance and I finally took the two-week vacation to Greece that we'd been dreaming of for years. When I travel, I create incredibly detailed itineraries that dictate where and when I'll eat, play, and sightsee, sometimes down to the minute. I spent months crafting our itinerary, and everything had to be perfect which meant, of course, that it wouldn't be. The trip started out really great I was enjoying Greece but a sunscreen ended up causing me health issues. Hayley Hutson A week into the trip, we were soaking up the amber glow of the sunset over the Aegean Sea from our rental villa in Athens. Earlier that day, I had borrowed sunscreen from a friend after leaving my mineral sunscreen inside. I have sensitive skin and had reacted badly to this brand once before, but only after using it daily for months. I figured a quick spritz couldn't do any damage. By the next day, my chest had broken out in hives. It was uncomfortable, but I was determined not to let a little itching get in the way of our plans. We moved on from Athens to Crete, where we checked into our dreamy Venetian mansion-turned-boutique hotel in the heart of Chania. Unfortunately, the increasingly itchy rash had crept up my neck and down my arms overnight. After trying a few remedies, I headed to the hospital I tried finding remedies at the local pharmacy but nothing helped me. Hayley Hutson Two pharmacy trips and three types of allergy medication later, I was admitted to the hospital because the rash was only getting worse. Over the next 12 hours, I was given several rounds of IV-administered cortisone while I prayed for a miracle. No such luck. After refusing advice to stay overnight, I was allowed to leave under a few conditions: no alcohol, no chocolate, and absolutely no sun exposure. The first two were unfavorable, but the third effectively kicked my carefully curated itinerary to the curb. Having to ditch my plans ended up being a good thing I don't typically travel alone. Hayley Hutson With sun exposure out, I had to find a way to enjoy my time on a sun-soaked island while dodging UV rays. After shaking off the disappointment of missing our family boat trip and convincing my fiance to bask in the famous pink sands of Elafonisi Beach without me, I embraced the unexpected freedom of a day without any plans. I've never been the solo-travel type, but there was no way I was about to spend the remainder of my dream vacation in bed. I surprised myself by thoroughly enjoying my solo day on Crete. While wearing a dress that covered every inch of my rash, I explored the local shops and ate lunch on a shady patio overlooking the harbor. With nowhere to rush off to, I found myself taking in the incredible sights, sounds, and smells around me in a way I normally wouldn't. In slowing down, I was able to experience the town more meaningfully. Although travel itineraries are handy, this experience taught me that you can miss a lot when you're fixated on sticking to a plan. Sometimes, the best travel moments are the ones we stumble into. On my next trip, I think I'll leave a day or two open and just see what finds me. Read the original article on Insider Almost half in new poll say too much money is going to Ukraine Nearly half of U.S. adults say too much funding is going to Ukraine amid its war with Russia, according to a poll released Wednesday. Opposition to aid, however, is down from last month and seems to be driven by a decline in opposition from Republicans. In the latest poll from The Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs, 45 percent of those surveyed said the U.S. government is spending too much on aid to Ukraine, down from 52 percent in October. Republican opposition to aid, however, remains strong, with 59 percent of GOP respondents saying the government is spending too much on aid. Thats down from 69 percent who said the same in October. Meanwhile, 38 percent of respondents said current spending is about the right amount, up slightly from October. Among Republicans, nearly 30 percent said spending is about right, up from 20 percent last month. Support for Ukraine appears to be more robust among Democrats across a swath of categories. Nearly half of the public, 48 percent, supports providing weapons to Ukraine 57 percent of Democrats and 42 percent of Republicans. About 2 in 5 U.S. adults support sending government funds directly to Ukraine 54 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of Republicans. Congress has yet to pass the White Houses emergency supplemental request for funds for national security, Ukraine aid and Israel aid. That package would include $61 billion for Ukraine, which the Biden administration said is necessary for the war-torn country. The AP-NORC poll was conducted Nov. 2-6 among 1,239 adults, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. A Lake Norman developer has four months to come up with a better plan for its proposed 660-home community at the lake, which almost was rejected Monday. After Mooresville commissioners blasted the project during the pre-agenda meeting Friday, Cornelius-based North State Development LLC asked that its rezoning request be moved to the boards April 1 meeting. Commissioners unanimously approved the extension Monday night. The board, meanwhile, unanimously backed a smaller, $60 million development on Monday night proposed by an international bagel magnate from Long Island, New York. Regarding the proposed 660-home community, commissioners cited concerns over traffic, fire response and a lack of retail-commercial space. The development would be on 52 largely wooded acres in the 400 block of Alcove Road at Lake Norman. Narrow, two-lane Alcove Road connects Interstate 77 Langtree Road exit 31 with Mooresville exit 33 to the north. I dont know that Ive even seen a project come in with such a lack of support, commissioner Tommy DeWeese said at the town board meeting on Friday when commissioners reviewed Mondays agenda items. I think its almost a tragedy that were calling it mixed-use commercial. Mooresville town commissioner Tommy DeWeese The developer hasnt even provided a traffic impact analysis, commissioner Gary West said at the meeting. Mooresville town commissioner Gary West Multi-family buildings, dog park The development, titled Alcove Road, would include two multi-family buildings totaling 340 units; a building with 170 active adult units; 150 town homes; and 10,000 square for non-residential use, according to the developers application at the Mooresville Planning Department. The community also would include a dog park, clubhouse, swimming pool and walking trails, according to Mooresville Planning Department documents reviewed by The Charlotte Observer. The developer did not release a project cost. The 52.2 acres are west of the longtime lakefront Templeton Bay subdivision. No affordable housing was proposed, town planner Erika Martin told the Mooresville Planning Board in September when the advisory panel, in a split vote, recommended the rezoning be denied, the Observer previously reported. Regarding fire response, the fire departments been looking around, but theres not a site under consideration at this time, Martin told the Planning Board. Representatives of the developer didnt respond to requests for comment from the Observer on Wednesday. In its rezoning application, North State said its project will enhance the tax base, and bring more housing for seniors and others and more retail to Mooresville. The developer also said its worked closely with North Carolina Department of Transportation over a year on a planned state road over I-77 known as the Fairview Flyover. The road is so named because it would connect Alcove Road on one side of I-77 with Fairview Road on the other side of the interstate. Fairview Road leads to the national headquarters of home improvement retailer Lowes Cos. Inc. and Lake Norman Regional Medical Center. Construction of the Flyover is scheduled to begin in 2025. The start of our development will closely coincide with the approved Flyover, allowing us to partner closely with NCDOT on site work and other construction opportunities, the developer said in its rezoning application. North State said it will provide a 10-foot greenway/multimodal path that wasnt part of the original Flyover plans. And the developments landscaping will make the road far more friendly to the eye than what otherwise would be displayed should (the Flyover) be built on its own, according to the developers rezoning application. Board approves Exit 36 community Also Monday, the board unanimously approved New York bagel magnate Anthony Paritis zoning request for a 13.43-acre mixed-used development at the traffic-clogged intersection of West Plaza Drive and Talbert Road off I-77 Exit 36. Cars and trucks navigate the Mooresville intersection of N.C. 150 (West Plaza Drive) and Talbert Road at noon Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. A developer plans 266 multi-family homes and 18,332 square feet of commercial, retail and restaurant space near the intersection off I-77 Exit 36. Paritis Joseph John North Carolina Realty LLC made the rezoning request. Pariti and brother Dennis sold their chain of bagel stores in 2004, The New York Times reported. Anthony Pariti founded the Always Bagels chain in Long Island in 1985, according to its history on LinkedIn. The chain eventually expanded to grocery stores from Canada to Texas, Paritis Mooresville lawyer, Cliff Homesley, told the Planning Board in September. Pariti learned of the parcel from his brother, who operates a business across West Plaza Drive from the property near auto magnate Randy Marions headquarters, Homesley said. Pariti proposes 266 multi-family homes and 18,332 square feet of commercial, retail and restaurant space. Businesses attracted to the development would be in a building at the intersection, town planning documents show. Homes would be in four buildings, four stories tall on the southern part of the property. No affordable-housing units are planned. The developer will compensate for that by paying the town at least $300,000 to put into its affordable housing fund. The developer hasnt shared how much units will cost. The developer also plans a public art display at the corner of Talbert Road and N.C. 150, and a walkway from the display to the rest of the development and the neighboring Revere at Mooresville luxury apartments community. This will be a kind of welcoming node for our community, Homesley said. This project will create an inviting centerpiece for the town of Mooresville. D.R. Horton revives plan for 176-townhouse development in eastern Lincoln County Residents will be able to voice their opinions at a public hearing on a rezoning request from D.R. Horton to permit a 176-townhouse development in eastern Lincoln County . The proposed development would be located on North Ingleside Farm Road, near its intersection with N.C. 73, county planning department documents show. D.R. Hortons original proposal, submitted in August 2022, included nearly 300 apartments and 36,000 square feet of commercial space. Those plans were scrapped after residents voiced concerns about traffic at a community involvement meeting in January. According to county documents, the proposed development is an area designated as a walkable neighborhood, which allows up to two housing units per acre. The concept plan for the development proposes attached townhouses at a density of six units per acre, county documents show. Last August, The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners voted to amend the countys Unified Development Ordinance to require a minimum lot size of one acre for new single-family homes, The Denver Citizen reported. The rule does not apply to townhouse developments. The three-bedroom, two-bath townhouses would be between 1,700-1,800 square feet and include one-car garages, representatives for D.R. Horton told residents at the community involvement meeting. Prices are expected to start in the mid-300s. The developer is planning to sell the townhouses, but the neighborhoods homeowners association would not place restrictions on whether property owners can lease their residences, D.R. Horton representatives said. The public hearing is scheduled for Dec. 4 at 6:30 p.m. at the Lincoln County Administration Building, 353 N. Generals Blvd. Four days after the OpenAI board abruptly fired company co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, he's back at the top of the company with a reconstituted board of directors. Washington policymakers already struggling to catch up with a fast-moving technology were caught off-guard by an even faster-moving boardroom drama. We lived through three, maybe four seasons of Succession this weekend, said Divyansh Kaushik, an AI policy researcher and associate director for emerging technologies and national security at the Federation of American Scientists. Regardless of how things shake out, the chaos is likely to impact how Congress and the Biden administration approach AI regulation. Altman has played a central role as a kind of AI guide for Congress ever since OpenAIs uncannily human chatbot, ChatGPT, triggered Washingtons newfound fixation on AI. His Senate testimony in May was lauded by both sides of the aisle, with lawmakers praising his genuine and authentic desire to help craft new AI rules. The upheaval could spark new antitrust concerns. Microsoft, OpenAIs top investor, wielded significant leverage over the process; if its direct clout in the artificial intelligence space grows, that raises new questions about corporate concentration in the AI industry. Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is already warning that the AI industry could be heading toward oligopoly. A Microsoft consolidation of power could send it further in that direction. The OpenAI boards chaotic coup, reportedly undertaken in the name of AI safety, could also heighten Washingtons interest in existential risks posed by advanced AI or discredit those fears and the tech-world ideologies associated with them, including effective altruism and longtermism. AI experts across Silicon Valley are increasingly at odds over the risks and rewards associated with advanced AI, a debate that is also shaping Washingtons efforts to corral it. While some researchers and venture capitalists push for the technologys rapid development, others warn that long-term risks posed by advanced AI systems including, in some readings, possible human extinction require an incredibly cautious approach. Both sides of the fight are already battling for influence in Washington. Zach Graves, executive director at the Foundation for American Innovation, said how Washington responds to future arguments about existential AI risk will depend on why the OpenAI board chose to oust Altman. It might just be that they made a very big miscalculation, [and] they didnt have much to back it up, Graves said. But if details emerge that suggest real safety concerns including the possible development of artificial general intelligence, seen as a dangerous technological line to cross by some on OpenAIs board policymakers could become even more interested in AIs cataclysmic potential and the organizations sounding the alarm. I think there's going to be more scrutiny on [effective altruist] stuff in general, probably from both sides of the aisle, Graves said. They broke through into the mainstream discourse. With the dust still swirling around OpenAI and Altman, even lawmakers at the forefront of Washingtons AI efforts were reluctant to immediately weigh in. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not respond to a request to comment on the kerfuffle. Neither did spokespeople for Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). Spokespeople for Sens. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) declined to comment. Only Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) who serves as part of the Senates AI gang of four policy leaders alongside Schumer, Heinrich and Young had thoughts. Ive had the opportunity to work with Sam Altman several times on Capitol Hill and have appreciated his insight into the development of artificial intelligence, Rounds said in a statement to POLITICO. The senator added that Altmans willingness to work with policymakers has been extremely helpful, and said hes confident [Altman] will continue to contribute to the advancement of this valuable new tool. An employee at an Amazon facility in Southern California was stabbed Tuesday and a suspect was taken into custody. The stabbing occurred at around 9:30 a.m. near Obrero Drive and Jeronimo Road in the Mission Viejo area in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles, the Orange County Sheriff's Department said. CALIFORNIA SUSPECT SHOT DEAD AS HOUSE EXPLODES DURING DRAMATIC STANDOFF An Amazon employee at a facility in Mission Viejo, California was stabbed Tuesday, according to reports. The victim was taken to a hospital in critical condition. She was described as a woman in her 40s who is an Amazon employee, KTTV reported. The incident reportedly occurred inside the Amazon building. The suspect, a man, was arrested. The Orange County Sheriff's Department urged the community to avoid the area near the facility. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP "Were stunned by this senseless act of violence and are focused on providing support for our employee now and throughout her recovery as well as to our team on-site," Alisa Carroll, an Amazon spokesperson, told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Were grateful to EMS and police for responding so quickly and will assist them as needed throughout their investigation," she added. Original article source: Amazon employee stabbed at California warehouse facility, suspect in custody Hayden Watson says he will look for work elsewhere if he has to give up his dog, Nala A pub manager said he was prepared to give up his job to keep his beloved American bully XL. Hayden Watson lives upstairs at The Harrier in Gunthorpe, Peterborough with his "playful" eight-month-old puppy, Nala. He said a customer complaint prompted a call from his manager to say she cannot remain on the premises when such dogs are banned in January. Greene King, which owns the pub, has been approached for comment. In September, the government announced American bully XLs would be added to the list of breeds prohibited under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Reports linked them to numerous attacks, which resulted in the death of a man near Walsall and a 10-year-old boy in Caerphilly. But the ban, which begins to come into force from 1 January, has seen a backlash from thousands of pet owners who say XLs are gentle, loving dogs. Hayden says Nala is an excitable puppy that has never done anything wrong Mr Watson said "all the regulars love Nala", who was a "huge comfort" to him after he returned from a recent spell in hospital. But "out of the blue", he had a phone call from his boss to say there had been a complaint about a bully XL being "at a so-called family pub". Mr Watson said he was told banned breeds would not be allowed on the premises. "I'd still 100% choose my dog over my job," he said. "She's part of my family, she's never done anything wrong. She's so loving, why should I have to put her down?" Owners of American bully XLs have until 1 February 2024 to have them euthanised by a vet, for which they can claim 200 in compensation. The alternative is to have them insured, microchipped, neutered, certified exempt and muzzled in public at all times. The costs involved are believed to be prohibitive for many owners, while some councils and housing associations stop tenants from keeping banned dogs. Owners of bully XLs in Peterborough, including Laura Creed (second from left) and Donna Smith (far right) Donna Smith, 40, who runs a Facebook group for bully XL owners in Peterborough, said the ban had left a lot of her members feeling anxious and depressed. "I will do absolutely anything to keep my dog, including taking out a loan to cover the costs," she said. Laura Creed, 38, another XL owner, said Conservative Peterborough MP Paul Bristow had agreed to speak on the topic during a debate in Parliament on 27 November. "All we can ask for is that he will look at this seriously," she said. "Breed-specific legislation doesn't work - last year 1.5m was spent on kennelling seized dogs, so can you imagine the cost to the taxpayer of this ban? "We don't object to dog licenses because then the onus is on the person to prove you are capable of owning a dog." A Defra spokesperson said it had taken "quick and decisive action to protect the public from tragic attacks". "We are working closely with the police, veterinary experts and animal welfare groups as we take forward these important measures", the statement added. 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 NEW YORK At a Tuesday press briefing, Mayor Eric Adams revealed his travels to Turkey go back to his days when he was state senator but wouldnt commit to releasing full details of his travel to that country, which lies at the heart of an FBI probe into his campaign. The disclosure came in response to a litany of questions related to the sprawling FBI probe that became public earlier this month. Among some questions Adams didnt directly answer was whether a suspended City Hall aide once worked for his political operation. A day earlier, the New York Daily News reported that City Hall staffer Rana Abbasova allegedly told colleagues to delete text exchanges immediately after federal investigators raided her New Jersey home and seized her electronic devices. A top Adams administration official shared that information with investigators, according to a source, but Adams and his staff declined to comment on any of the circumstances surrounding the matter Tuesday. Adams did not say whether Abbasova volunteered on his 2021 mayoral campaign, which the feds are probing for possible ties to the Turkish government as well as campaign donations funneled to it through potentially illegal straw donors. The mayor also would not comment on whom Abbasova allegedly contacted. Were not conducting the investigation. Were cooperating with it, his chief counsel Lisa Zornberg said. So were not going to comment in response to the question that you asked. The investigation into the 2021 campaigns ties to Turkey came into public view on Nov. 2 after the FBI raided the home of Brianna Suggs, a top fundraiser for Adams 2021 campaign. That same day, Abbasovas home was raided, and days later, the FBI seized Adams electronic devices. So far, the probe appears to be focused on donations to the Adams campaign from Turkish immigrants working for the Brooklyn-based KSK Construction, as well as contact Adams had with former FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro when he was serving as Brooklyn borough president. During his time as BP, Adams received a text from Reyhan Ozgur, Turkeys consul general in New York, about fire safety issues at the then-under-construction Turkish consulate building and whether Adams knew Nigro, according to a source. Adams, in turn, asked Nigro to look into the matter, which was ultimately resolved, paving the way for the buildings ribbon cutting, which was attended by Turkish President Recep Erdogan. The probe has raised questions about Adams travel to Turkey. He has said hes traveled there six or seven times, although only three of those trips have been reported on publicly. On Tuesday, Adams revealed that he traveled there during his time as a state senator, noting that he also traveled to Azerbaijan at the time. Financial disclosure forms from Adams time as a state senator do not list those trips, though, public records show. Hes also traveled to Turkey twice in his official capacity as borough president, and once on a trip he took with his son, Jordan Coleman. When asked to provide a complete list of the times hes traveled to Turkey, who paid for the trips and the purpose of each visit, Adams initially responded during Tuesdays briefing that he would. We will give a complete list of our travel to Turkey, he said in response to a question from the Daily News. Well give you the complete list. But he then made a distinction between personal and governmental trips. We will give the list on what was the governmental trips that we took, he said. We followed the procedure every time because I believe in following the procedures. When asked to clarify if hed provide details about what he classified as his personal travel as he previously said he would Adams offered a one-word reply. Maybe, he said. Adams declined to say anything about whether hes received advice about the federal investigation from Frank Carone, his former City Hall chief of staff and a top adviser during his 2021 campaign. I speak with him about a number of things, Adams said. I dont go into personal conversations. Responding to a question about the legal defense fund set up in response to the federal probe, Adams noted that Vito Pitta, his campaign compliance attorney, would not serve as a fundraiser for the fund. He added that hes in the process of hiring someone to carry out that role. Something of this magnitude can go into hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not a million dollars, he said. So we want to properly make sure we comply with all the rules, and thats what were doing. _____ By Joan Faus BARCELONA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Spain in recent weeks to protest against the pledge of an amnesty for Catalan separatists in return for their votes for a new socialist government. But in the Catalan capital Barcelona, street graffiti and placards about the war in Gaza have been much more ubiquitous in than any new referencing of the amnesty or independence. The region's separatist parties see the amnesty as a foot in the door to press further their goals for self-determination - and have warned newly elected Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez their ongoing support for his government will depend on progress. However in Catalonia, polls show that while approval for the amnesty and even a referendum on independence is high, appetite for separation itself has fallen. "Momentum has waned a lot," said Anais Nadal, a 44-year-old hairdresser in Barcelona who supports independence. Attendance at separatist marches has nosedived, she said. "People have gotten tired because nothing has been achieved and it will be very hard to recover the level of support there was", she said. "I support the amnesty law, I think it can help but being realistic I doubt we will achieve much more". There is also mistrust of the movement's leaders after the unfulfilled promises made during the last independence drive in 2017, which brought on one of the most serious crises in Spanish politics since the return to democracy. That push culminated in a unilateral declaration of independence which led to Madrid imposing direct rule on Catalonia and the arrest and jailing of separatist leaders. "Many separatists have felt deceived by their politicians who made them believe that independence was just around the corner," said Catalan columnist Jordi Barbeta. "So it seems difficult to recover that enthusiasm and level of mobilization now, but this does not mean people are not pro-independence". 'TURNING THE PAGE' In an impassioned congressional speech last Wednesday answering detractors who accused him of trading Spanish unity for votes, Sanchez presented the amnesty deal as a means to turn the page on Catalonia's independence ambitions. "We have opted for reunion over revenge, unity over fracture," he told lawmakers, prompting raised eyebrows among separatist parties. Since assuming office in 2018, Sanchez has taken a softer approach to Catalonia than his conservative predecessor, pardoning nine jailed independence leaders and annulling the crime of sedition under which they were sentenced. His efforts bore fruit. Hardline separatist party Junts and its more moderate rival, ERC, lost 550,000 votes combined in the national election in July compared to 2019, and a third of their 21 seats, while the Socialists gained 418,000 votes in Catalonia. Sanchez's socialist PSOE now believes the amnesty will help it gain votes and potentially even wrest control of Catalonia's regional government from the ERC in a 2025 regional election, a government source said. Junts and ERC, meanwhile, hope to use their leverage in the national parliament to lure back voters. Junts congressional leader Miriam Nogueras told Sanchez last week her party still considered itself bound by the 2017 independence referendum that Madrid ruled illegal. "For us, the commitment to independence is unrenouncable. If anyone says that this agreement serves to turn the page, they are deceiving their citizens," she said. But separatist parties face a challenge to mobilise voters for a fresh independence drive as they are deeply divided among themselves and engulfed in infighting, a stark contrast with the unity behind the 2017 push. Josep Rius, vice-president of Junts and a close friend of its leader Carles Puigdemont, who remains in self-exile in Brussels because of charges he faces over the 2017 drive, said they take Sanchez's willingness to grant an amnesty he once refused as a sign further concessions might be possible including to a binding independence referendum. "The agreement signals a change of paradigm and gives a new push (to the independence cause)" he said. "As if it was a transatlantic ship, the PSOE has started shifting its position," he added. Separatists argue that there are loopholes and interpretations of the Spanish constitution that would allow a referendum to go ahead should the Madrid government want it to. A Catalan socialist party source said it was "good news" Junts had agreed to step away from unilateral action, but that there would be no independence referendum. 'REGROUPING' The largest protests against the amnesty have taken place in Madrid and other cities, with just a handful of smaller events in Barcelona. Though apathy may currently dominate feelings about independence, the region's relationship with Madrid remains a hot button issue as it has for decades. A survey released by the Catalan government-run Centre for Opinion Studies found the region's residents rated its relationship with Spain as their primary concern, followed by the economy. Sixty percent of respondents backed the amnesty, which is estimated to benefit several hundreds of separatists, while 41% want Catalonia to leave Spain, from a high of 49% in 2017. Support though for a referendum remains high, at 73%, signalling that a majority wants to decide on the issue of independence even if it is to vote no. Catalan political scientist Toni Rodon said support for independence could nudge upwards still if separatist parties could agree a joint approach or initiatives to devolve more powers to Spanish regions slowed. Raul Romeva, an ERC politician who was Catalonia's foreign affairs chief in 2017, acknowledged the separatist movement would now have to refresh tactics and regroup, but should feel emboldened by its deal with Madrid. "The path is not easy, quick or pain-free, but there is no question we will end up voting (in a referendum)," he said. (Reporting by Joan Faus, additional reporting by Belen Carreno, editing by Aislinn Laing and Angus MacSwan) The face of Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, center, and his wife, Kitihawa, a Potawatomi woman, left, unfold in 2019 in a floating four-face sculpture along the Green Line "L" at Harding Park. (Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune) Most modern histories of Chicago cite the arrival of Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette and explorer Louis Jolliet in 1673 as the beginning of the citys story. But Chicagos history didnt start in 1673, and its time to revisit that narrative as well as others as we celebrate National Native American Heritage Month. Chicago was an established place that Native people used for centuries before Europeans arrived. Their names for this place, Zhegagoynak (Potawatomi), Zhigaagong (Ojibwe), Zaagawaang (Odawa), Sikaakonki (Myaamia, or Miami), Shekakoheki (Sauk), Sekakoh (Menominee) and Guusge honak (Ho-Chunk), among other names, pre-date European arrival. Advertisement While its often said that Chicago was inhabited by Indians prior to the European explorers arrival, this simple statement overlooks a more nuanced reality that at least a dozen distinct Indigenous nations used this place in myriad unique ways. Chicago was a center for meeting and trade, and at some points in history, it had more permanent village sites. Other tribal nations came into the area seasonally to harvest food sources or traveled through the portage to access the Great Lakes or the Mississippi River. Even after the first land cession in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, the majority of the land we now call Chicago remained under Native control for several more decades, particularly by the Anishinaabeg, a confederation of Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa people, who were the primary Indigenous nations in Chicago by this time. Few non-Native settlers lived in the area, and those who did depended on Anishinaabe people to survive. Advertisement Among these early settlers was Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, an important early settler who is often cited as the founder of Chicago. Remembering DuSable as an early Black settler and discussing the many intersections between Black and Native histories is important. But naming him as Chicagos founder erases the many Indigenous people who had previously lived at the site and established it as an important place long before 1779. Indeed, there were well-documented Ho-Chunk, Illinois, Anishinaabe, Sauk, Miami, Wea and Meskwaki villages at Chicago well before then. It also overlooks how dependent he and other early settlers were on Anishinaabe people, in particular Anishinaabe women. To incorporate newcomers across the Great Lakes, Native people and early settlers often looked to marriage as a strategic move. Non-Native traders brought connections to other trade goods and networks, and Native people had established kinship and trade networks that were essential for Europeans survival. Marriage transformed someone from a foreigner to a relative. DuSables Potawatomi wife, Kitihawa, and other Native women frequently served as translators, instructed their husbands on trade and communication protocols, and assisted with day-to-day business. Along with other Anishinaabe guides, they also provided navigation through the labyrinth of waterways connected to the fluctuating Chicago portage. They were essential to the survival of DuSable and others, and the trade businesses that these men are credited with running and that continued to draw more settlers to Chicago would have crumbled without these womens support. As a historian, Im often asked what people can do to right past wrongs. One of the first things I talk about is reframing narratives. The stories we tell ourselves about Native and non-Native histories have a tremendous impact on how we understand the land we live on today. Do the reframed narratives outlined above make you reconsider who should be celebrated and remembered when we talk about the history of Chicago? This month, I encourage you to reconsider common narratives such as these by looking to Native people themselves. Explore the place name lists that nations like the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and the Menominee Nation have created for our region. Read about other Chicago moments you might have heard of such as the Battle of Fort Dearborn on the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Centers website. Consider this explanation of Chicagos name written by experts at the Myaamia Center, the Miami Tribe of Oklahomas educational initiative. Identify and read historical books and manuscripts written by Native people about Chicago, many of which can be found in the Newberry Librarys collection, such as Potawatomi leader Simon Pokagons 1893 work The Red Mans Greeting. Explore upcoming events and initiatives on the Chicago American Indian Community Collaboratives website. Native peoples have been on this continent since time immemorial. It is time we hear their stories and correct the erasure narratives that have long been ingrained in white society. That can start right here in Chicago. Rose Miron is director of the DArcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. The families of those being held by Hamas have been calling for their release for weeks (AFP via Getty Images) The agreement for a ceasefire and the first large-scale freeing of hostages held by Hamas came after weeks of negotiations which had been taking place against the brutal and bloody backdrop of a war claiming thousands of lives in Gaza. Around half a dozen countries, most with nationals who were kidnapped in the attack on 7 October, have been involved in the negotiations, which have been taking place with Qatar as the main interlocutor between Israel and Hamas and the US playing an active role. The deal is basically the same as one which had been discussed in the past return of a certain number of women, children and those ill among the 240 hostages who were seized in exchange for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons. The agreement which was said to have come very close to being concluded last month was for around 50 of the hostages being freed in return for about 110 Palestinian inmates. The terms stipulated a temporary ceasefire for this to take place, with a period of three days mooted. But it fell apart as it neared the last hurdle. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that all the hostages being held must be freed, and this would come about, he insisted, through Hamas feeling pressure enforced by pulverising military action. At the time the Israeli cabinet appeared to have consensus in this stance. But divisions began to emerge, and the current agreement takes place amid severe discord in Netanyahus cabinet and angry clashes between ministers and families of those taken. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (via REUTERS) The cabinet was split between those in the government who wanted a deal to get out as many of the hostages as possible, and those who believed that much tougher terms can be extracted from Hamas with ongoing armed operations. There was also the argument from those who wanted to reject that deal was that the ceasefire which would accompany the freeing of hostages would mean military momentum being lost and Hamas and its allies being able to regroup and replenish. Among those arguing for an agreement, it is said, were Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, both of whom had been brought into the war cabinet, as well as David Barnea, the head of Mossad, who had been to Doha along with William Burns, the CIA director, to meet Qatars prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani. In the opposite camp were those, like Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who wanted far tougher terms for a ceasefire. That side were believed to be backed by the majority of senior military officers. Then there are those like the far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has said he is very worried about release of prisoners, pointing to the thousand who were freed in exchange for the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit in 2011. One of those freed, Yahya Sinwar, became the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and is allegedly one of the masterminds 7 October attack. Israels national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir (Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters) Ben-Gvir and his religious hard-right colleagues are accused of seeing the war as an opportunity to expand the Jewish state by seizing Palestinian land. They have advocated annexing the West Bank which is administered at present by the Palestinian Authority. Ben-Gvir and his allies have been in confrontation with families of hostages who have been campaigning to bring their loved ones home. They have objected to demands by some of hard-right MPs for death sentences for captured Hamas fighters who had taken part in the 7 October attack, pointing out this puts the kidnap victim at risk. There were chaotic scenes in the Knesset during a meeting on Monday with MPs with members of right-wing parties jeering at some of the family members. At one point Ben-Gvir forcibly hugged Gil Dickmann whose cousin is being held hostage. Afterwards Dickmann wrote on Twitter/X I told you: Dont hug me. And you still did. I told you: Dont endanger our loved ones. You still endangered them and all for a photograph everyone has seen that you are making a circus on the blood of our families. There is another element which has played a role the day after scenario. Not, in this case, what would happen to Gaza when the conflict ended, but the fate of Netanyahu and his government, as well as military and intelligence chiefs, who had presided over the biggest intelligence failure in the countrys history since the Yom Kippur War. Golda Meir resigned as prime minister over the intelligence failures in that conflict in 1973. A public inquiry is due to begin about what happened this time and Netanyahu, who has sold himself to the electorate as Mr Security, is extremely vulnerable. He [Netanyahu] is almost certainly toast the morning after the war is over. The same is probably true of the military leadership, so they have not played the moderating role [in the hostage negotiations] that they might ordinarily be expected to, said Daniel Levy who took part in peace negotiations in the governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. The government has been pushing the idea that it is only military pressure that put a deal on the table in the first place. Something very similar was available four weeks ago. But if thats the narrative that they need to make it viable thats fine. They might have preferred not to do the release at all, but if they have to, this is the story that they will push. NEW YORK Rumors of a potential Andrew Cuomo mayoral run, stoked by a poll apparently commissioned by the former governor, have been met with skepticism from local officials and analysts. Cuomo has already appeared to toy with runs for two offices he once held governor and state attorney general after he resigned from the governorship in disgrace in 2021, driven from office by a state attorney general inquiry that found he had sexually harassed 11 women. The latest trial balloon appears to be the first indication that Cuomo, who has long denied the harassment allegations, might have Gracie Mansion on his radar. Cuomo worked on his fathers doomed 1977 mayoral run, but has toiled little in city politics since. Still, Cuomo has been privately talking about the concept of a mayoral run, according to three people with knowledge of the conversations. Politico previously reported on the dialogue. It is unclear how seriously Cuomo, 65, is considering a mayoral run. He is currently on vacation in Sicily. I dont know if this is just the musings of a man who has nothing else to do, said Christina Greer, a Fordham University political science professor. I dont know if this is just his need to have his name out there. Greer said much of the state Legislature likely would not welcome a political comeback from Cuomo, who often bulldozed lawmakers to get his priorities passed. Many members of the left-leaning City Council have never worked with Cuomo, she added, and only know his reputation for employing an aggressive, bullying style. Allen Roskoff, a progressive political operative who has been recruiting challengers to Mayor Eric Adams, said Cuomo had not reached out to him. Cuomo would enter a hypothetical race with plenty of enemies, Roskoff said. One of those enemies, Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat, said in a Wednesday text that most of his colleagues want Cuomo to take a more extended vacation in Italy and leave the governing to those who are not abusive. We are done with narcissistic politicians born on third base trying desperately to hold on to power, Kim wrote. Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, a Brooklyn Democrat, had a more restrained response to the chatter. I would say my thought is a cautionary one for him, Simon said by phone. Being governor is very different than mayor. New York governors carry immense powers that city mayors do not. The poll that sparked the rumors assessed Cuomos viability in multiple races, including for governor and senator, along with a head-to-head question with Cuomo and Adams, according to images published on social media by journalist Ben Max. Cuomo has maintained a friendly relationship with Adams sometimes joining him for dinner. In a WNYW-TV interview, Cuomo condemned a federal investigation into Adams campaign fundraising as very heavy-handed. Adams has not been accused of wrongdoing. Adams poll numbers have plunged as news of the inquiry has dripped out, possibly piquing Cuomos interest in positioning himself for a mayoral run. Cuomo, who is seen as a cautious political operator, likely would not run for mayor unless polling indicates he is a viable candidate, analysts said. Evan Roth Smith, a New York political consultant, said he was very confident Cuomo had commissioned the poll. He described the survey as robust and said it appeared to be the work of Expedition Strategies, a Virginia firm. Expedition did not reply to a request for comment. Cuomos spokesman Rich Azzopardi said he did not know the source of the poll. In a statement, Azzopardi said that the future is the future and that Cuomo gets these questions often. Azzopardi added that many New Yorkers view Cuomos exit as a political railroading, and he noted sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo did not lead to criminal charges despite reviews by five New York district attorneys. Cuomo has said he was vindicated by the lack of charges, though multiple prosecutors said they found allegations against him credible. The office of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, declined to weigh in Wednesday on the talk around a Cuomo mayoral run. But in 2021, Heastie directed the Assemblys Judiciary Committee to probe Cuomo. The probe determined that the evidence of Cuomos sexual misconduct was overwhelming, and led to a damning assessment by the committees chairman, Assemblyman Charles Lavine of Long Island. The former governors conduct, Lavine said in a November 2021 statement, is extremely disturbing and is indicative of someone who is not fit for office. (Chris Sommerfeldt contributed to this story.) _____ ST. CHARLES COUNTY, Mo. Dozens gathered for another pro-Palestinian rally Tuesday afternoon in the St. Louis region. Its estimated that around 50 people rallied around 1 p.m. outside the Boeing 598 facility in St. Charles County, holding signs and briefly slowing down traffic around the area. The demonstration was planned on behalf of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee. St. Louis pot tax money goes up in smoke thanks to city hall blunder Joint direct attack munitions, also known as JDAMs, are manufactured at the facility. Demonstrators maintain that the U.S. is directly funding what they call ongoing genocide in Gaza and that taxpayer money is supporting it. This is at least the second such demonstration in St. Charles County this month. There have been similar demonstrations in the City of St. Louis and west St. Louis County in recent weeks. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2. The topic was justice and righteousness. I was sitting in my Contemporary Civilization class at Columbia University last month debating free will, when I received an email with the subject line You are disgusting. I hope you fucking get what you deserve you racist freak, the email read. The night before, as a senior staff writer for the Columbia Daily Spectator, I broke the news about an Israeli student who was allegedly assaulted on campus in broad daylight. Like the dozens of other news articles I have written, I thoroughly investigated before publishing the news. I interviewed the New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner of Public Information twice, the student who had reported the assault, and a friend of that student who was with him minutes after the altercation. We reached out to the alleged attacker for comment, and I reviewed video evidence of the incident. This email was not the only consequence for my publishing this story. Sidechat, an anonymous social media platform open to those with a Columbia email address, blew up with claims against me, my article, and the Spectator, calling the reporting racist and defamatory. The most glaring comments focused on my Jewishness and claimed that my identity compromised my writing, including assertions that the story was written with a religious agenda. In addition to writing for the Spectator, I am an active member of the Jewish community on campus. I chose to attend Columbia for college because I was told by many students and advisers that here I would feel welcomed and comfortable to participate in the broad, diverse campus community while being fully accepted as a Jew. The question of my safety on campus due to my Jewish identity never crossed my mind. This was the first time that I felt unsafe and unwelcome at Columbia. Following the online comments and the harassing emails about my story, I left campus out of safety concerns and only returned after Columbia Public Safety and the Public Safety interim director confirmed that being on campus would not pose a physical risk. My experience at Columbia is not an isolated case. During my reporting about the impact of the conflict on the Columbia community, I had spoken with 54 Jewish students about safety on campus, 33 of whom said they have felt unsafe or targeted, 13 of whom were personally harassed, either in person or online, and 12 of whom have tried to hide their Jewish identity when walking around campus. Most of the 54 students I spoke to felt uncomfortable with their full names being published because they were concerned for their physical safety. This problem extends beyond Columbia. According to a poll published by Hillel International on Nov. 20, more than half of the 300 Jewish college students surveyed reported feeling unsafe on their college campuses and 37 percent said they have felt the need to hide their Jewish identity. The increase in hatred since the start of the Israel-Hamas war is taking many forms. And it is also affecting Muslim, Palestinian, and Arab students, who have reported incidents on Columbias campus of hijabs being pulled off of Muslim women, harassment, and stalking. Students told the Spectator that Islamophobia has been occurring on campus as some students have been spat at or called a terrorist. Students also face doxxing and having their personal information leaked and spread online. Our students started to coordinate to walk in like two or three because some of them would be harassed or scared of wearing keffiyeh on their shoulder, one student told the Spectator. And, its not just a problem at Columbia. On Nov. 18, around noon, roughly 20 members of a neo-Nazi group began a march near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and moved toward the State Capitol, according to an email UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin wrote to the campus community denouncing the march. Men dressed in red, covering their faces, marched carrying large black swastika flags, according to videos posted online. There will be blood, the members of the neo-Nazi group chanted. David Skad, a UW-Madison sophomore who serves on the student board of its Rohr Chabad House, told me that on the morning of Nov. 18, he woke up, went on a run to the Madison Zoo, and while resting for a moment on a bench, received an influx of texts with the videos of the march. Skad said that he had traveled to Poland four and a half years ago and walked the roads that lead to Auschwitz. It was one of the reasons he felt compelled to post the videos on Instagram. Antisemitism is not a concept. It is real, Skad wrote in the caption. The test is not whether there will be antisemitism, but rather if the Jews will be alone to face it. For the first time, Skad had to consider whether it would be safe for him to return to his room on campus. Theres literal Nazis walking through my city. Think about how surreal that sentence is, he said. Skad said that in the past weeks, he has been warning others about rising antisemitism, but found that other students did not take him seriously. He said that the night after the neo-Nazi march, he was in a conversation with a student and explained how recent slogans being used on college campuses normalize dangerous things. Yet, the student responded that the march was likely Zionist propaganda and paid for by the Zionists. Already in our society, theres started to be a normalization of hatred. And when that happens, its not surprising that the Nazis would feel comfortable walking through, Skad said. He explained that while free speech gives people the right to march for the death of Jews, it also means that people need to speak up in support of them. Sophie Genshaft, a UW-Madison freshman, says that the rally walked past her dorm room. Coming from a small town with only a few Jewish people, Genshaft said she has never faced antisemitism before and was shocked to see neo-Nazis in her college hometown. I definitely didnt think that this was something that I was gonna have to deal with as a freshman in college, she said. I genuinely do not understand how Jewish kids can be made [to] feel so unsafe. Genshaft explained that the march was just hate, which was a really scary experience. While she is not sure how the university could have taken stronger action against the march, I have a hard time understanding how it happened in the first place, she said. Allison Lax, a New York University sophomore, has been posting Instagram stories in support of Israel since Oct. 7. She said that in response, she has received death threats and aggressively worded messages, including Go die Zionist bitch and I bet you wish you were a hostage. Her NYU email was hacked, she says, and someone tried to submit reports to the universitys Bias Response Line against the Jewish community in her name. Lax says that at a Students for Justice in Palestine rally, an NYU student she knew from class looked at her and said, Death to k*kes. Following this incident, she dropped the class. I cant just sit next to someone and take a quiz who calls for the deaths of my people, Lax said. On campus, Lax, who has spoken on news channels about the rising antisemitism at NYU, said that she often hears her peers call her names under their breath. Im really scared walking around campus because people know who I am, they clearly dont like me, they dont like what I stand for, they dont like that Im Jewish, Lax said. But, at the same time, Ive never been more proud to be Jewish. Daniel Kroll, a Columbia University junior, says that on Nov. 9, while he was wearing a yarmulke and getting food from the kosher dining section of a campus dining hall, a student entered the kosher area, stepped towards him, and shouted, Fuck the Jews. After the incident, Kroll sat down in shock to process what had occurred. He said he has never before felt scared or uncomfortable on campus expressing his Jewish identity. Unfortunately, Kroll noted, this is no longer the case. The idea that there are people that are sitting next to me in class who might feel comfortable enough in the environment on campus, where they dont see anything wrong with doing that, thats what scares me a little bit, he said. As my colleague Isabella Ramirez and I reported for the Spectator, LionLez, a queer club on campus, announced a Black Lesbian Films event with the caption Zionists arent invited. When someone emailed in response, LionLez president Lizzy George-Griffin, responded that white Jewish people are today and always have been the oppressors of all brown people, WHEN I SAY THE HOLOCAUST WASNT SPECIAL, I MEAN THAT, and Israelites are the Nazis. Following LionLezs Instagram post advertising the event, which has since been deleted, Nava, a student at Columbia School of General Studies, commented, Im a black lesbian Jew and I found your flyer so aggressive and cringey. Nava had subscribed to LionLez because she supported their mission of gathering queer students and was looking forward to their upcoming events. She said she was excited to attend the movie night until she scrolled to the bottom of the email. I see that email essentially tells me that Im not wanted here, that this is inclusive, but they exclude people, she said. It makes me think that these places, while they advertise themselves as progressive and inclusive, that comes with conditions. George-Griffin wrote a three-page-long statement to the Spectator explaining, In 7th grade my PWI had me crying and throwing up over the Holocaust, thinking nothing so inhumane ever happened before. That is a failure of the education system. It was extremely bad, and it is treated as if nothing comes close to how bad it was. On her point regarding oppression of all brown people, George-Griffin stated, The brown people in Israel are being used by white supremacists to uphold white supremacy. Two LionLez board members wrote to the Spectator that George-Griffin acted alone and that her messages do not represent the entirety of the club leadership. Antisemitic incidents on campus are not new. They have been bubbling for years, under the surface. A Columbia graduate student shared with me in a Spectator interview that on the first day of classes last year, when she mentioned that her family is Israeli, a professor said, So you must know a lot about settler colonialism. How do you feel about that? In a meeting with another professor, she says the professor told her, Its such a shame that your people survived just in order to perpetuate genocide. Now, she avoids mentioning her Israeli connection, saying that her father is Iraqi and mother is Ukrainian, even though they were both born and raised in Israel. Other Columbia students have also told me that they refrain from mentioning that they are Israeli or took a gap year studying in Israel while in class or speaking to peers. On Nov. 1, three and a half weeks after the war broke out and the rise in antisemitism began, University President Minouche Shafik, Barnard President Laura Rosenbury, and Teachers College President Thomas Bailey announced a new task force on antisemitism to enhance our ability to address this ancient, but terribly resilient, form of hatred, they wrote. Despite actions taken and statements made by universities, students still report concerns both for their physical safety walking on campuses and for the Jewish student population at large on college campuses going forward. Only hours after being allegedly assaulted, the Israeli Columbia student told me, We were all kind of shocked that this stuff can happen on our own campus, which should be a safe haven. Since that first week following the start of the Israel-Hamas War, the antisemitism and hatred of Jews on college campuses has only festered and grown. As that has occurred, many students have echoed a similar sentiment: College campuses are supposed to be a place of learning and growth, specifically in academia and higher thinking. Yet, students described how over the past month and a half, it has turned into a place where hatred and explicit acts of antisemitism are perceived as acceptable and even encouraged. Even as the most clear example of antisemitism is in front of us, people are still unwilling to look it in its face and see evil. And thats why its going to take everybody to use their voice to call it out, Skad said, a day after neo-Nazis marched through his college campus. Were pleading for allies, for people to stand with us and see that we too deserve humanity. More from Rolling Stone Best of Rolling Stone TechCrunch The world is watching the humanitarian crisis in Gaza unfold in real time through firsthand accounts documented on, of all places, Snapchat. Israel has retaliated against Hamas October 7 attack with unprecedented force against the Palestinian territory, claiming over 9,000 Palestinian lives according to Gaza Health Ministry numbers reported by the Associated Press. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 30 journalists have been killed since Israels bombardment and total blockade of the region began, and journalists in Gaza say that without consistent access to food, water and power, its becoming impossible to continue reporting. WINCHESTER, Ind. The Indiana Court of Appeals has upheld the murder conviction of a Winchester man, and his resulting 64-year prison sentence. A Randolph Circuit Court jury in August 2022 found Monty Joseph Cook, now 64, guilty of killing his neighbor and lifelong acquaintance, David Brumley. Monty Cook The 61-year-old victim was found in his South Street home, in November 2018, with a pillow case and a plastic bag over his head. An autopsy determined he had died as a result of "ligature neck compression" that caused asphyxia and suffocation. During the trial, Randolph County Prosecutor David Daly said Cook also stole the victim's 2008 Ford Mustang GT and used Brumley's debit card. Investigators said Cook had made "incriminating Internet searches" around the time of the homicide, and that the defendant's DNA and fingerprints were recovered from the crime scene. The Ford Mustang was found in eastern Arkansas three weeks after the slaying. Cook was arrested in April 2019 in Kingman, Arizona, about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas. The jury also found the Winchester man guilty of auto theft and two counts of theft. In September 2022, Judge Jay Toney imposed a 62-year sentence for the murder conviction, and sentenced Cook to two more years, to be served consecutively, for the theft convictions. In his appeal, Cook who did not testify at his trial or make a statement prior to being sentenced maintained there was insufficient evidence to support the murder conviction, and that his sentence was too harsh. In a ruling this month, the Indiana Court of Appeals disagreed. "Cook's Internet browsing history suggests that, in the weeks before Brumley's murder, Cook planned to kill someone, dispose of the body and go on the run," Judge Leanna Weissman wrote in the 3-0 decision. "Security cameras then recorded Cook with Brumley's car, debit card and loan check the day after Brumley was last seen alive." The judge also wrote that "neither the nature of Cook's offenses nor his character convinces us that his 64-year sentence is inappropriate." She found the Winchester man "carried out the premeditated, unprovoked and cruel murder of his longtime acquaintance before stealing the victim's car and money and fleeing across the country." "What'is more, these offenses are just another chapter in Cook's alarming history of criminal conduct." The Winchester man's earlier criminal record included convictions, in LaGrange County in 2005, for arson, burglary and conspiracy to commit confinement. Incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Cook has a projected release date in October 2066, when he would be 107, according to a state Department of Correction website. Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com. This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Court upholds Winchester man's murder conviction, 64-year sentence By Mark Bendeich and Aidan Lewis LONDON (Reuters) -Arab foreign ministers welcomed an agreement for a temporary truce between Israel and Gaza militant group Hamas on Wednesday but said it should be extended and become a first step toward a full cessation of hostilities. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan told a media briefing in London that the agreement, which includes hostage releases and stepped-up aid into the devastated Gaza Strip, should also ultimately lead to a resumption of talks for a two-state solution to the wider Israel-Palestinian conflict. Under Wednesday's temporary ceasefire deal, Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said the humanitarian aid should be sustained and expanded, and it should not become contingent on further hostage releases. "Whatever humanitarian access now increases as a result of this hostage deal must remain in place and must be built upon," he said. "There must at no point be a reduction in this access based on progress for further release of hostages ... Punishing the civilian population of Gaza for the holding of those hostages is absolutely not acceptable." The conflict began on Oct. 7 when Hamas gunmen and other militants burst across the border into Israel, killing 1,200 civilians and Israeli soldiers, and taking about 240 hostages. Israel responded with a heavy bombardment and then invasion of the Gaza Strip, killing more than 13,000 Palestinians, including at least 5,600 children, according to Gaza's Hamas-run government. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from northern Gaza to the south. The Arab foreign ministers are leading a so-called contact group of mostly Muslim countries which are lobbying Israel's major allies and the U.N. Security Council to bring about an end to the Gaza war and move towards a permanent solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. 'CHOICE' After trips to China and Russia, they visited Britain and France on Wednesday where they met the British and French foreign ministers and French President Emmanuel Macron as they seek to push for a U.N. Security Council resolution on humanitarian relief for Gaza. "We intend to put the Security Council in front of a choice: are they going to be complicit in the starvation and deprivation of the people of Gaza or are they willing to enforce the basic principle that civilians must not be affected by military conflict," Prince Faisal said in his strongest comments on the war to date. "I must believe that our partners in the West and in the East will take our opinions into consideration. If they don't, that will certainly be an important signal to us as well." Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the contact group was pushing to ease a vetting process demanded by Israel that has restricted the amount of aid entering Gaza through the Rafah crossing. Egypt has said deliveries of relief to Egypt must be scaled up inside Gaza, lobbying hard along with other Arab states against any mass displacement of Palestinians fleeing Israel's offensive. "Current conditions are dismal. First of all the displacement of those in the north to the south, the volume of people, the lack of shelter, the lack of sanitation, the potential risks of disease spreading," Shoukry said. "All of this ... cannot be a manner to incite further displacement out of Gaza." The contact group ruled out any Arab security force in Gaza after the war, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said. "We're not going to clean Israel's mess," he said, adding that any talk about the "day after" in Gaza had to be linked to a broader plan that incorporates the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he said the possibility of an explosion of conflict was "getting higher every day". "That has to be a plan with an endgame, with timelines, with a mechanism for implementation, with guarantees, and the whole world has to be behind it and the U.S. will have to play a leading role," Safadi said. (Reporting by Mark Bendeich and Aidan Lewis; Editing by Nadine Awadalla, Michael Georgy, Angus MacSwan and Daniel Wallis) LITTLE ROCK, Ark. A seven-page letter from the Arkansas Board of Corrections chairman provides a detailed list of concerns with a request for prison beds and a related press conference by the governor and attorney general. The Nov. 20 letter from chairman Benny Magness addressed to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney General Tim Griffin is in response to a Nov. 17 news conference where both took the Board of Corrections to task for not providing more prison beds. Sanders and Griffin were joined by Secretary of Corrections Joe Profiri at the Friday conference. I fear that you may not be appraised of the actual facts that led to your press conference, Magness writes, and I fear that some of the sentiments conveyed overlook an important feature of Arkansass constitutional order. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls on Arkansas Board of Corrections to open 500 additional prison beds The chairmen then lists a variety of factors leading to his concern, not just with the Nov. 17 press conference but with the nature of how Sanders, Griffin and Profiri dealt with the board. Magness points out that the Arkansas Department of Corrections has approved a total capacity of 15,022 inmates while housing 16,288 as of Nov. 20, meaning state prisons are 1,266 over capacity. This does not include the approximately 2,000 ADC inmates held in county jail backup, Magness wrote. This is coupled with what Magness called a critical shortage of personnel that would be made worse by adding more inmates. Adding more inmates would be an avoidable risk that could lead to lawsuits, he said. Magness continues that the Nov. 17 press conference by Sanders and Griffin was a surprise. Since taking office, neither the Governors Office nor the Attorney General have contacted the Board to discuss or address any concerns-whether about bedspace, staffing, or any other topics addressed during the press conference. I hope to foster an open and collegial dialogue with your offices and would invite the opportunity to collaborate in a more productive manner. In the future, I would welcome the opportunity to speak with your offices directly, rather than hearing your concerns after the fact from news reports. letter from Board of Corrections chairman Benny Magness to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney General Tim Griffin dated Nov. 20. Magness also called out Sanders statement at the conference that Sec. Profiri had made a thoughtful, informed and desperately needed request for the board to add 622 beds. If Secretary Profiris proposal was thoughtful, he failed to share those thoughts with the Board, Magness stated. Indeed, Secretary Profiri did not attend the November 6, 2023 Board Meeting, and the request for additional beds was first provided to me just minutes before our meeting began. Arkansas Board of Corrections rejects states offer of more prison beds to expand capacity Magness continued that the board did suspend the rules at its meeting in order to add Profiris request to the meeting agenda. Staffing remains a central issue in the ability of corrections to house inmates. Magness states that one-third of our open [staff] positions are unfilled and I shudder to think about what would happen in the case of a riot in any of our extremely understaffed facilities. Magness provided some context of staffing against the request for more beds. For context, the vacancy percentages at Ouachita River, McPherson, and the Maximum-Security Correctional Units are approximately 38.76%, 38.57%, and 33.33%, respectively, he wrote. Of the 622 additional beds proposed by Secretary Profiri just minutes before our November 6 Board Meeting, 428 were requested for these understaffed Units. In other words, nearly 69% of the additional beds were proposed for areas with critical staffing shortages. The chairman continued that Profiri failed to provide any information necessary for the Boards ability to consider the propriety of the full request for 622 additional beds, and in some cases, I believe that Secretary Profiri transferred inmates before ever seeking Board approval. Magness then outlines what he calls my second and broader concern regarding the governor apparently not considering the Arkansas constitution, specifically Amendment 33, which prevents political interference on state boards or institutions. Gov. Sanders announces new tough, but fair prison reform package After giving the history of Amendment 33, Magness continues: I believe the attempted alteration of Secretary Profiris duties to the Board has dealt incredible damage to the safety and security of Arkansans, calling out statements made by Profiri that he is unaccountable to the board and only works for the governor. He also stated that Acts 185 and 659, passed in the most recent general session, are incompatible with Amendment 33s preservation of the Boards powers. I take no joy in making the simple observation that we find ourselves standing at a constitutional crossroads, and this letter reflects my solemn commitment to faithfully discharge the duties of my office, Magness wrote. Magness ends that while the governor is free to hold press conferences, I personally believe that more work can be accomplished in a conference room than in a press hall, adding, Otherwise, given your stated support for protecting Arkansans, I trust that your administration will support a robust funding measure at our next fiscal session regardless of who occupies the position of Secretary of Corrections to provide the Board with the necessary resources to house the inmates committed into our custody. He concluded with an open invitation for Sanders and Griffin to meet with the Board of Corrections. Arkansas prison reform bill gets hours of discussion in Senate Judiciary Committee meeting A spokesperson for the governors office responded: Governor Sanders top priority is keeping Arkansans safe, and finds it completely unacceptable that the Board of Corrections fails to take action, choosing to write multi-page letters defending catch and release instead of opening additional prison beds to keep violent, repeat offenders behind bars. Arkansans deserve better, and the Sanders administration will continue to do everything in its power to enforce the law and keep the most dangerous criminals off our streets. Attorney General Tim Griffin responded: Allowing an unelected board to thwart the will of the governor and the legislature is a horrible way to run state government and deserves a fresh examination. The Chairman has presided over decades of prison policy that has made us less safe and brought us to the breaking point. The best option for all Arkansans is for the board to approve more prison beds now. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KARK. Nurses at Ascension Via Christi St. Francis and St. Joseph will hold a one-day strike for the second time this year on Dec. 6, the union representing the nurses said Wednesday. The announcement comes amid the first contract negotiations at those hospitals after nurses voted to unionize. Nurses have raised concerns about staffing issues and patient safety at both hospitals. Nurses in Wichita have complained about an unsafe level of staff to patients. Management is floating nurses all over the hospital without regard to their competencies or clinical specialties, Marvin Ruckle, a nurse in the NICU at St. Joseph Hospital, said in a news release. Before we unionized, a neonatal ICU nurse would be floated to work in the adult psychiatric unit, which is completely outside that RNs area of expertise. We want to limit these unsafe floating practices and ensure that nurses are only floated to units where they have current competencies to perform the job well. Ascension said it is disappointed National Nurses United has made the decision to proceed with a strike but added it has a plan in place to remain open and care for our patients. While we respect the right of Ascension Via Christis represented associates to participate in this short-term strike, we believe that differences are best resolved respectfully at the bargaining table and continue to focus on our upcoming scheduled bargaining sessions as we work together to reach a mutually beneficial agreement for all. Nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, which has roughly 700 nurses, will also go on strike the same day. St. Joseph has roughly 300 nurses and St. Francis is around 650. St. Joseph nurses voted in March, a few months after St. Francis voted, in favor of joining the National Nurses Organizing Commission, an affiliate of the National Nurses United, the countrys largest registered nurses union. Ascension, a Catholic, not-for-profit health care system, is one of the largest health care systems in the country, with roughly 139,000 employees and hospitals in about 19 states. The company had more than $1 billion in cash in the fiscal year ending June 30. During the one-day strike in June, Ascension officials didnt allow nurses to return to work for three days. Ascension said the contracted workers they had to bring in required a three-day minimum. Ascension would not say who it contracted or provide a copy of the contract for the June strike. The union called it a scare tactic. Ascension did not answer questions Wednesday about who it will contract with to cover for striking nurses and if the nurses will again have to be off for multiple days. CRESTON, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) A suspect is on the loose, and an Ashe County deputy is recovering at the hospital after a late-night two-state chase. Ashe County Sheriff deputies in the Creston area tried to stop a white Honda Accord on Sutherland Road before midnight on Tuesday. They said the suspect reached over 100 miles per hour in a chase. After ending the pursuit at one point, deputies saw the car and started hunt again as it went into Tennessee. The suspect wrecked his car on the other side of a curve of McEwen Road. The wreck forced the suspect to flee on foot. White House Christmas tree cut from Ashe County farm As an Ashe County deputy pursued around the same bend, he left the road to avoid colliding with the wrecked vehicle. That move caused a wreck. Deputy Josh Carter soon found Deputy Josh Pruitt at the scene. Carter searched the immediate area for the suspect and began life-saving measures on Pruitt. Emergency personnel took Pruitt to a Mountain City, Tenn. hospital. Pruitt left the hospital with a concussion early Wednesday morning. The suspect is unidentified at this time and remains on the loose, Ashe County Sheriff B. Phil Howell said. He may be injured and armed, so please be cautious. We believe we have enough items from the vehicle to identify the subject, but ask the community if they know the individual, to please reach out; that would speed up the process. Queen City News is tracking CRIME in your area >> Latest stories here Howell commended his deputies for initiating the suspect in the Sutherland area and attempting to be safe while they also pursued a local drug criminal. He also said he was glad to see his deputy released and recovering at home. If residents have tips on the suspect, they should contact the Ashe County Sheriffs Office at 336-846-5600 or Ashe Crime Stoppers at 336-846-4188. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Queen City News. President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade approximately one minute before he was shot, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Riding with President Kennedy are first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, right, Nellie Connally, second from left, and her husband, Texas Gov. John Connally, far left. The 60th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, marked on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, finds his family, and the country, at a moment many would not have imagined in JFK's lifetime. (Jim Altgens/AP) Sixty years ago today, Americans of all stripes were shocked when Walter Cronkite told them, wiping away tears, that John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas. It verges on trite to say everything changed after that. It also happens to be true. As Stephen Sondheim famously wrote in a song lyric, Something Just Broke. Advertisement But, that truth has taken on new forms as time has passed. The legacy of JFK has evolved as has its lessons for America. For the first few decades after the tragedy, the narrative was one of before and after. For many, JFKs death marked the loss of the countrys innocence, as manifested in the turbulent 1960s, the sexual revolution and a litany of cultural changes. Advertisement Where were you when you found out? Virtually every American old enough to remember could tell you. JFK in those early decades was put on a pedestal. He was seen as inspirational (Ask not what your country can do for you, We choose to go to the moon) and a symbol of a nation on the rise of a younger, vigorous, forward-looking country. In more recent times, the legacy has morphed into something more complicated and in some respects worrisome. The theorizing rampant on the internet a technological advancement JFK no doubt would find mind-boggling in some ways has its origins in the still-raging debate over who was responsible for the assassination. The limousine carrying mortally wounded President John F. Kennedy races toward the hospital seconds after he was shot, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. (Justin Newman/AP) Who would have guessed that, after creating the Peace Corps, launching the Apollo moon shot and averting a possible World War III during the Cuban missile crisis, JFKs legacy in 2023 would in no small part be tied to an old human fixation: conspiracies. To this day, lingering skepticism that a lone gunman killed the president could be termed the mother of all such theories. Gallup has been surveying Americans on JFKs death since a few days after that tragedy happened. In general, most Americans long have told pollsters they believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy while less than a third think he acted alone, as the Warren Commission concluded in 1964. Gallup first asked Americans about the assassination just days after the 1963 murder. A 52% majority believed there was some group or element other than the gunman involved. Another 29% thought he acted on his own, and 19% were unsure. But from the mid-1970s through the early 2000s, Americans belief in a conspiracy zoomed upward, ranging from 74% to 81% in six readings, before it declined in two more recent polls. Advertisement Who else was it if not Oswald acting alone? Early suspects in the public mind ran the gamut. They included the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia (particularly the Chicago Outfit), Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and Cuban President Fidel Castro. Sam "Momo" Giancana leaves the courtroom in the Federal Building before being jailed for contempt of court on June 1, 1965. (William Yates/Chicago Tribune) Chicago figured more prominently in the investigation when many locals suggested mobster Sam Momo Giancana, boss of the Chicago Outfit, had been involved for lurid reasons. During its investigation into the assassination and certain mob dealings, the FBI uncovered an affair in which the same woman was involved with the president and the mobster, although not at the same time. Their mutual connection was reportedly Frank Sinatra. Giancana, known to enjoy politics and show business, was also embroiled in an FBI scheme to assassinate Fidel Castro, a government investigation disclosed. But in 1975, before he was scheduled to appear before a committee investigating intelligence activities, Giancana was assassinated mob-style in his Oak Park home while cooking Italian sausage and bell peppers. The reported motive: The Chicago and New York mobsters didnt like the questions he was expected to be asked. Coming 12 years after the assassination, such disclosures only served to stir up more speculation that Oswald did not act alone. 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 > Fast forward to today: Large swathes of the American citizenry are awash in conspiracy theories. It hasnt helped that the 45th president of the United States traffics eagerly in the stuff, from groundless assertions that Barack Obama isnt a natural-born citizen to evidence-free contentions that Joe Biden fraudulently won the presidency in 2020. Suspicion toward fellow Americans fueled in part by QAnon, Reddit threads and the like dominate our culture. Too many people believe what they want to believe about those whose opinions they oppose, regardless of evidence. In what some might view as a supreme irony, JFKs nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is running for president 60 years later, spouting wild claims such as the alleged health risks posed by 5G technology. Advertisement Supporters react as Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a campaign event at Independence Mall, Oct. 9, 2023, in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/AP) Wed like to think JFK would look at this aspect of todays America and be saddened. True, he was not the heroic figure so widely portrayed in the first decade after his death. JFKs reckless womanizing, covered up by a White House press corps enamored of the Kennedy mystique and abiding by unwritten rules that politicians personal lives werent fair game, now is an inexorable part of his legacy. The country has come a long way in that respect, too. Ask two Democratic politicians, Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, who tried to emulate JFK as would-be carriers of the torch of progress and were held to account. As we take stock and acknowledge a day that did indeed forever change our history, maybe we can recapture a little of what JFK at his best stood for. Respect and tolerance for each other regardless of creed or color. Imagination, faith in our ability to achieve and optimism that a better future is possible. Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. Four men have been sentenced for the shooting murder Ashley Dale in Liverpool, with the gunman ordered to serve a minimum jail term of 43 years. The 28-year-old was hit when James Witham burst into her home and began firing after a feud with her boyfriend. His accomplices Niall Barry, 26, Sean Zeisz, 28, and Joseph Peers, 29, must serve prison sentences of at least 47, 42 and 41 years respectively. Mr Justice Julian Goose told the men: "Each of you is a dangerous offender". Ms Dale's father Steve Dunne said he had been "confined to a nightmare" and "history was repeating itself" as his teenage son was also shot dead seven years ago. He said: "I am now sitting with my one remaining child, having been put through the trauma of yet another trial, listening to those verdicts being read out in relation to Ashley's murder. "I have lost another child. A victim of big egos running around the city with powerful guns, involved in petty feuds and killing innocent people." The trial at Liverpool Crown Court heard how Ms Dale's partner Lee Harrison, who was not in the house at the time, had been the intended target of the shooting in August 2022. A feud with Barry over the theft of drugs had been reignited at Glastonbury festival in June that year. During the festival, Barry was heard threatening to stab Mr Harrison and Zeisz was assaulted by a group said to include Jordan Thompson - a friend of Mr Harrison's and member of the Hillside organised crime group with which he was associated. Ms Dale, an environmental health officer, was killed when Witham, of Ashbury Road, Huyton, forced open the door of her home in the Old Swan area and began firing a Skorpion submachine gun. Barry, of Moscow Drive, Tuebrook, was described by the prosecution as a "malign presence" behind the killing. Zeisz, 28, of Longreach Road, Huyton, was found to have organised and encouraging the attack with Barry. Peers, of Woodlands Road, Roby, was described in court as a "foot soldier" who drove Witham to the scene and earlier helped Witham to stab tyres on Ms Dale's car in an attempt to lure the couple out of the house. Ashley Dale's father Steve Dunne said he had been "confined to a nightmare" The court heard how in the final months of her life Ms Dale had voiced her mounting fears and anxieties in voice notes to her friends. These messages proved instrumental in convicting those responsible, with some of the voice notes sent just 30 minutes before she was shot dead. The court heard Ms Dale's partner Lee Harrison had been "totally uncooperative" with police. Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, X and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk [Source] Nonprofit Asians Are Strong is calling on the publics help in funding a self-defense program for Asian seniors with a first-of-its-kind in-language curriculum. Headquartered in San Francisco, the organization has collaborated with martial arts and self-defense experts to develop over the past three years what it says is a unique self-defense program tailored for Asian seniors. As they have successfully launched a 10-week, in-language curriculum with the San Francisco Chinatown YMCA, they now aim to make this program widely accessible by digitizing and translating it for global distribution. With a goal and total cost of $25,000, donations received through Asians Are Strongs Givebutter will be used to produce the video program, with the potential to translate it into multiple languages. Co-founder and Executive Director Hudson Liao said the organization initially conducted one-off workshops for elders, using dim sum as an incentive to encourage participation. Finding it challenging to develop skills and plans in this format, they piloted classes with the San Francisco Chinatown YMCA and later launched a formal 10-week curriculum. Additional classes were also piloted with Self Help for the Elderly and various community centers. Trending on NextShark: Philippine president announces last Filipino hostage freed from Hamas Everyone loved it and wanted us to come back because they saw how valuable the information was and how much everyone enjoyed it, Liao tells NextShark. But we don't have enough people and instructors to teach all these classes because we all have full-time day jobs. So we want to digitize and translate our 10-week course into an online video program so that we can reach and help more people. This video program will help us reach and protect millions more Asian seniors around the world. Liao and his friends founded Asians Are Strong amid the surge in hate crimes and violent attacks on elderly Asians in San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic. Incensed by the assaults, they organized rallies and self-defense demonstrations in the Bay Area before eventually establishing self-defense classes at YMCA. Trending on NextShark: BTS wins 6th Worldwide Icon of the Year at MAMA as 4 members set to enlist Besides the horrific physical nature of these attacks, we also saw the emotional trauma it was giving our seniors, says Liao. I would hear over and over again that a lot of them stopped going out to just do groceries because they were afraid to get attacked. We couldn't sit back and not do anything. We wanted to equip them with basic self-defense knowledge and techniques so that they had some tools to mitigate any harm to themselves in the situation. But more importantly, it was to give them back some agency and confidence. Liao and his team including a restaurateur, tech CEO and financial risk manager collaborated to create the curriculum. Liao, who leads the classes, teaches seniors aged in their 50s to 80s how to defend themselves against attackers through techniques like breaking grips and delivering kicks. Trending on NextShark: North Korea claims its spy satellite captured images of White House, Pentagon Liao says he and his friends, some of whom are ex-military and law enforcement, have been lifelong martial artists. While they are trainers at their respective gyms, they had not initially focused on self-defense until they began the program. Beyond practical skills, the program fosters an intergenerational connection, providing emotional support to empower seniors. It has since become a silver lining for both instructors and participants, fostering a sense of community and resilience. Trending on NextShark: Watch: BTS' Jimin, Jungkook mobbed by fans at Incheon airport upon return from Japan Liao recalls some memorable and positive responses from participants, including a time when a group of grandmothers guided by tear-away flyers approached the class location at Portsmouth Square. Despite initial uncertainty, they stayed, had a great time and expressed gratitude. Another time was after one of our first classes at the Chinatown YMCA, one of the grandmas that took the class stopped us after class to give us zip-block bags of mixed nuts so that we wouldn't be hungry. That is how our people show love by sharing food. And then the first graduating class of our 10-week course was amazing. It was so rewarding to see how much they enjoyed and profited from the class, Liao shares. Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! AstraZeneca said three billion doses of the vaccine had been supplied to 180 countries and saved 6.3 million lives worldwide - MATTHEW HORWOOD/GETTY IMAGES AstraZeneca has denied its Covid-19 vaccine is defective in response to a multi-million pound legal case over claims the jab caused blood clots. The drugs firm is being sued in the High Court by a father-of-two who suffered a significant permanent brain injury after receiving the vaccine in April 2021. At least 40 further claims for damages are expected to be lodged in the court within weeks. Lawyers estimate the claims are worth about 80 million. In its defence filed in the High Court, AstraZeneca, which is based in Cambridge, has argued that the claim is confused and wrong in law. In the defence filing, AstraZeneca said that the benefit/risk profile of the vaccine was, and remained, positive. It said the vaccine developed in conjunction with Oxford University was approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The company one of the biggest in the UK is being sued by Jamie Scott, who suffered a serious adverse reaction after receiving the jab. The Telegraph has previously reported that his wife was called to his bedside three times by doctors who thought he was going to die. Mr Scott, who worked in IT, survived but can no longer work after suffering a serious brain injury caused by a blood clot. AstraZeneca denied it had overstated the safety of the vaccine in press releases issued when the vaccine was first approved for use - iSTOCK In the legal claim being brought under the Consumer Protection Act, lawyers for Mr Scott said he had been left with very serious injuries including speech difficulties, reduced cognition, memory and processing. MHRA reports of adverse reactions to the AstraZeneca jab suggest at least 81 people died in the UK from a vaccine-induced reaction that led to blood clots and low blood platelets. The new condition known as Vaccine-induced Immune Thrombocytopenia and Thrombosis (VITT) is also suspected of causing serious harm in hundreds more people. VITT is very rare and affects about one in 50,000 people under the age of 50. In its defence, AstraZeneca said Mr Scotts claim was unclear, lacking in detail and imprecise about the Claimants case in general and the nature of the defect alleged in particular. The firms lawyers said the vaccines development was a significant scientific achievement which contributed substantially to bringing the Covid-19 pandemic under control in the UK. It said three billion doses of vaccine had been supplied to 180 countries and saved 6.3 million lives worldwide. AstraZeneca said that the vaccine was granted, and retains, regulatory authorisations in the UK and added: The benefit/risk profile of the AZ vaccine was (and remains) positive. AstraZeneca said it recognised that VITT refers to a new diagnosis, but the company did not accept the use of the term in its defence. The term assumes a causal connection with the AZ vaccine and defines a condition by reference not to its symptoms but to its cause, when that may be disputed, lawyers for AstraZeneca said. Relative risk reduction The drugs company denied it had overstated the safety of the vaccine in press releases issued when the vaccine was first approved for use. Taken overall, the original wording of the press release did not exaggerate the safety of the AZ vaccine based on the clinical trial data, said AstraZeneca in its defence. Lawyers for Mr Scott had also argued the vaccines efficacy had been vastly overstated because the drugs firm had concentrated on a relative risk reduction of 70 per cent and not an absolute risk reduction of 1.2 per cent. But AstraZeneca denied that the omission of absolute risk reduction data was misleading. It added: The absolute risk reduction was not included in the press release because this information varies depending on the underlying risk level at the time of the trial and in the context of individuals with different risk levels. Absolute risk reduction data are difficult to interpret, potentially confusing and (taken in isolation) not a good indicator of efficacy. Concerns about the rare but serious blood clotting side effect had emerged as the vaccine began its rollout. In the filing, AstraZeneca said there was a reasonable possibility that the vaccine was capable in very rare cases of triggering the side effect, but it was not known how this happens. The UK changed its guidance to advise against giving the vaccine to under-30s in early April 2021 and to the under-40s in May 2021. But AstraZeneca pointed out that because Mr Scott was aged 44 at the time of receiving the vaccine, he was in the age category where the vaccine continued to be recommended in the UK. 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. An asylum seeker grabbed a mother in the street and simulated sex with her in front of her children, a court heard. Gloucester Crown Court was told that a child in the back of a passing car filmed the incident on a mobile phone and this was used to identify the perpetrator as Chris Buyoye, 29, of Saw Mills End, Barnwood, Gloucester. Cathy Thornton, prosecuting, told the court that the 43-year-old mother was walking with her two children along Eastern Avenue in Gloucester at about midday on Aug 13 this year when she noticed she was being followed by a man. Ms Thornton added: Becoming anxious, she put out her hand and warned him not to come close to her. But this didnt stop the man, who was later identified as Buyoye, going up to her and pretending to push away a bee which he told her was about to land on her. She again warned him again not to get close to her. Buyoye grabbed the woman and turned her to the left so that she was facing away from him. Pushing his pelvic area Buyoye then locked his arms around her upper arms, so that she couldnt move, and began pushing his pelvic area into her buttocks. She describes it as being humped with him simulating sexual intercourse from behind. She wasnt strong enough to unblock his arms until he slightly relaxed his grip and she took the opportunity to raise her arms, which broke his hold on her. She then stepped to the kerb to cross the road to get away from Buyoye, who had run off in a different direction. A woman and her partner in a car witnessed what was happening, as did a child in the back seat who filmed the incident. As the witnesses stopped and offered to help the victim, she also called the police. The court heard that in his police interview Buyoye denied that this incident had happened at all. He said the woman had bent over and he stated he didnt know what a bee was. The court was told that Buyoye was found guilty at a trial at the magistrates court and he was committed to the Crown Court for sentencing. During this trial the victim said she was embarrassed that this incident had been witnessed by her children and that she had been traumatised by the whole saga. She was also very emotional throughout the trial. In a victim statement, she said that the assault had made her feel very vulnerable and feared for the effect it might have on her children. Convicted for very similar offence Judge Rupert Lowe reminded Buyoye that he had come to the United Kingdom 17 years ago as a 12-year-old and that he was now an asylum seeker living in Gloucester. You have previously been convicted for a very similar offence and we are here today because you committed another sexual offence, worryingly very similar, which you still seem to be maintaining your innocence for the offence committed on Eastern Avenue in August this year, said the judge. Your not guilty plea forced the woman to relive this incident in giving evidence in your trial. You have shown a distinct lack of remorse. In sentencing Buyoye, the judge told him that he was revoking the community order for his previous offending and that the total sentence for both sets of offending was 18 months immediate custody and placed him on the sex offenders register for 10 years. 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. Authorities are warning residents as ATM skimming thefts are on the rise and targeting low-income Southern Californians. Those eligible for cash or food assistance will typically receive their benefits via an EBT (electronic benefit transfer) card every month. Through skimming thefts, suspects are able to capture EBT cardholders information and steal the funds for themselves, Riverside County officials said. Skimming involves a suspect installing devices on ATMs and point-of-sale terminals to record cardholders personal identification numbers (PINs) and create fake debit or credit cards to steal from victims accounts, according to the Department of Public Social Services. Across Riverside County, investigators have located and removed over 600 illegally installed cameras from ATMs over the past two years. Since the beginning of 2023, reports show a general increase in EBT theft across Riverside County. From January to August 2023, thieves have stolen over $3.1 million in benefits from CalWORKs and CalFresh (formerly known as food stamps) from Riverside County residents. The thefts were mostly achieved through skimming, authorities said. Ninety percent of these skimming crimes happen in the first five days of the month when benefits are loaded onto the EBT cards, said Special Investigations Unit Chief Shawn Ferris. This is organized crime. Thieves understand how the system works. Its vital for residents to take steps to protect themselves. A new statewide app called ebtEDGE was launched to help residents better protect their benefits. The app allows users to quickly access account information, review transaction history, freeze or unfreeze EBT cards, block internet and out-of-state transactions, and more. Some ways to protect yourself against skimming thefts include: Keep your PIN and EBT account numbers a secret Cover your hand when entering your PIN Try changing your PIN the day before benefits become available each month Self-inspect ATMs and point-of-sale machines for illegally installed devices Use direct deposit Do not click on any links from text messages or emails regarding your EBT card Watch out for suspicious websites Keep track of your balances daily at BenefitsCal.com, www.ebt.ca.gov, or by calling 877-328-9677 Make sure to check your receipt after each purchase Riverside County EBT cardholders who may need to replace stolen benefits should report the theft to county officials within 10 days of the incident by visiting the nearest DPSS office or by calling DPSS at 877-410-8827. To download the ebtEDGE app for Android, click here or for the iPhone, click here. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA. AUSTIN (KXAN) After a busy wildfire season in Central Texas, the developer behind an automatic wildfire detection system relocated its headquarters to Austin and is expanding its resources to help in wildfire prevention efforts. SmokeD System Inc., founded in Poland, launched four years ago before relocating its operations to the Texas capital in September. The company uses artificial intelligence in its devices that are then installed as antenna systems on large towers or buildings. That technology, paired with optical sensors and cameras, can pinpoint exact locations and alert users with the SmokeD Alerts app of wildfires within a 10-mile radius, according to a company news release. Within the past two months, SmokeD has partnered with 45 different locations to install the technology, company officials said. We can spot something from really long-range distance and inform people and fire teams about the danger, said Artur Matuszczak, founder and CEO of SmokeD System Inc. SmokeD System Inc. uses artificial intelligence, optical sensors and cameras to detect and alert users with the SmokeD Alerts app about fires within a 10-mile radius. (Courtesy: SmokeD System Inc.) SmokeD System Inc. uses artificial intelligence, optical sensors and cameras to detect and alert users with the SmokeD Alerts app about fires within a 10-mile radius. (Courtesy: SmokeD System Inc.) Matuszczak said the app allows users to see the view from various detectors and both receive and share alerts early if a fire is detected. Its the best way to inform as many people as possible at the beginning of the fire, he said. Along with Central Texas being a hotbed for wildfire activity, Matuszczak said its also home to a wealth of various corporations and companies that SmokeD could collaborate with to expand the systems reach. WILDFIRE AI NEWS: Austin Energy to use 360-cameras, artificial intelligence for wildfire detection This is a place where we have high tech corporations from worldwide, actually, not only from the United States, he said. We have to think about cooperation with big companies, so thats the best place. SmokeD hopes to include physical partnerships that allow the technology to be installed on a companys tower or building, as well as financial alliances via paid advertising within the app. We built a coalition of businesses and even individuals that want to help protect some local communities, he said. More details on SmokeD and the app are available online. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called on Kyiv's allies during the 17th Ramstein-format meeting on Nov. 22 to strengthen Ukraine's air defenses ahead of the coming winter months. Austin, who visited Kyiv earlier this week, opened the latest meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) in a virtual format with the participation of around 50 countries. " We're focused on supporting Ukraine as it continues to fight through this winter and defend its critical infrastructure," Austin said, adding that both the U.S. and Germany recently announced new defense aid packages. "We've already organized coalitions focused on building up Ukraine's Air Force and its information technology capabilities, and today we'll discuss the progress that's been made since our last meeting in developing a new capability Coalition on ground-based air defense," he added. Ukrainian officials warned that Russia is preparing large-scale attacks on the country's infrastructure once the temperatures drop. For that reason, Kyiv appealed to its partners to provide further air defenses to repel these strikes. Read also: With winter approaching, is Ukraines energy system ready for renewed Russian attacks? Russia launched a mass wave of attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure during the fall and winter of 2022-2023, causing regular blackouts. The 17th Ramstein-format meeting was announced by Washington earlier in November. Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said that the U.S. support for Ukraine continues even though the packages are growing smaller. Congress is yet to approve the $61 billion in additional funding for Ukraine proposed by the White House. According to Austin, the UDCG's members have already provided Ukraine with over $80 billion in security assistance since early 2022. Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said at the meeting that Russia would not stop its aggression on its own: "The only language that Moscow understands is force. We have learned this language well." He stressed that further support from allies would help Ukraine protect millions of innocent lives. "Our people are waiting for the opportunity to return home. Rebuild their homes. To be reunited with their families," Umerov added. Read also: Historian Serhii Plokhy: The better we prepare for the long war, the sooner it will end Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department Missing Persons Unit are asking for the publics assistance in locating a woman who has been missing out of Pico Rivera since late September. According to LASD, 32-year-old Gabriela Ponce was last seen in the 6000 block of Rosemead Boulevard around 3 p.m. on Sept. 30. Authorities described her last known outfit as a blue flannel shirt with blue pants that have a white stripe. Worker stabbed at Orange County Amazon distribution center She is 5 feet, 5 inches tall, weighs 120 pounds and has brown eyes with brown hair. Authorities continue search for woman missing for nearly a month She is known to drive a blue 2011 Ford Escape with the California license plate: 8MVU747 Gabriela suffers from a mental health disorder, law enforcement officials said, and her loved ones are concerned for her well-being. Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact the LASDs Missing Persons Unit at 323-890-5500. Those wishing to provide information anonymously can do so by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or by visiting their website. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA. FILE - Protesters hold empty containers of anti-retroviral (ARV) medicines during a demonstration over shortages of ARVs, organized by people living with HIV or AIDS, sex-workers, members of the LGBT community, and their supporters, in the port city of Mombasa, Kenya, Thursday, April 22, 2021. Kenyan authorities issued a warning Wednesday about counterfeit HIV prevention drugs being sold in the country saying "their safety, quality and efficacy cannot be assured." (AP Photo-file) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) Kenyan authorities issued a warning Wednesday about the sale of counterfeit HIV prevention drugs in the country, saying their "safety, quality and efficacy cannot be assured. The Pharmacy and Poisons Board said the drugs were in two batches falsely labeled as Truvada, a commonly used HIV prevention drug worldwide. The board said on X, formerly Twitter, that it will take stern legal and regulatory action against anyone found trading, distributing, selling or dispensing from the batches. Kenyan police fear that thousands of counterfeits of Truvada could already be in circulation on the market. Around 1.4 million people have HIV in Kenya, according to UNAIDS data in 2022. Of those, 1.2 million are on antiretroviral therapy drugs. Truvada is manufactured by U.S.-based Gilead Sciences Inc., which in January warned that millions of dollars worth of fake versions of its HIV drugs were being sold in the U.S., posing dangers to patients. But their discovery in Kenya, East Africa's commercial hub, shows the herculean task of tackling fake medicines. Truvada is used in treating HIV and as a preexposure prophylaxis for people at high risk, including those with multiple sexual partners and those who share needles while injecting drugs. Earlier this month, Kenya's National Syndemic Diseases Control Council, a state body charged with coordinating national strategy for HIV and AIDS, raised the alarm that HIV infection rates among those ages 15 to 29 had surged by 61% between 2021 and 2022. Across Africa, health workers have expressed concern about complacency as AIDS treatment improves. Mark Warren says the plan is too short-term and will not help businesses Newquay's business leaders have reacted with disappointment to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's Autumn Statement. The announcement included a cut in National Insurance rates and a rise for minimum wage. There was also an increase to benefits and a boosted housing allowance for renters. But Mark Warren, Newquay Business Improvement District (BID) manager, said it was a "short-term plan" when "long-term certainty" was needed. Simon Thompson, who runs a cafe on Fore Street and employs eight people, echoed his concerns. He said: "There was not one thing for a hospitality business. Simon Thompson says the budget will not help him "The government is blind to the fact of what businesses are facing at the moment so these changes in minimum wage and national insurance are fantastic for the people I employ. "But they mean nothing to me as a businessman." Nevertheless, a 23-year-old Newquay resident, who did not give her name, said the rise in national living wage would offset the cost of living and help her to move out of her mother's house. "Getting that extra bit of money would be fantastic," she said. In an interview with the BBC, Mr Hunt acknowledged people were "feeling bruised" by the UK's financial troubles and said the government promised to reduce the tax burden on families when it could. Mr Hunt said the National Insurance reduction would help 27 million people and "means someone on the average salary of 35,000 will save over 450 a year". Follow BBC News South West on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk. Salt Creek Ballet presents The Nutcracker Dec. 1-2 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie and again at Dec. 16-17 at the McAninch Arts Center in Glen Ellyn. (Salt Creek Ballet/HANDOUT) This time of the year, you cant escape the sounds of Tchaikovskys Nutcracker suites or Tiny Tim asking God to bless all of us. We are all, at all times this month, about a candy canes throw from a production of The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol. Some are whimsical, some are classical, all are seasonal. Advertisement Heres a handy guide to several area productions. A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol is a novella by Charles Dickens published in 1843. You know the story Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly old man who squeezes 13 cents out of every dime. One night he is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley who warns him to change his ways or suffer eternal consequences. Advertisement Marley tells him hell be visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come and after their visits, Scrooge does in fact become a better person. M & M Productions presents Scrooge the Musical: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 1-2 and 3 p.m. Dec. 3 at the Reinhart Auditorium at Merrillville High School, 276 E. 68th Place, Merrillville. Tickets: $10-$14. 219-947-4922; facebook.com/mmrmt. Now in its 24th year, Scrooge the Musical by Leslie Bricusse draws from Dickens, as well the 1970 movie Scrooge, which starred Albert Finney as the title character. The lobby will be fully themed, transporting guests to the world of Christmas in 1860 England. Metropolis Performing Arts Centres A Christmas Carol: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays through Dec. 23; 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays and Dec. 2-24 at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell St., Arlington Heights. Tickets: $20-$40. 847-577-2121; metropolisarts.com. There will be an American Sign Language performance at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 7. 4th Street Theater presents A Christmas Carol: 7 p.m. Dec. 2 at 4th Street Theater, 125 N. 4th St., Chesterton. Tickets: $5-$20. 219-926-7875; 4thstreetncca.com. Actor and storyteller Grant Fitch performs his one-man version of the Dickens tale, performing all the characters himself. M & M Productions presents Scrooge the Musical Dec. 1-3 at the Reinhart Auditorium at Merrillville High School in Merrillville. (M & M Productions/HANDOUT) A (Berwyn) Christmas Carol: 7 p.m. Dec. 2, 2 and 6 p.m. Dec. 3 at Baila Conmigo Dance With Me, 6829 Stanley Ave., Berwyn. Tickets: $9.75-$27.50, 708-788-8960; facebook.com/BailaConmigo.DanceWithMe. Advertisement Baila Conmigo Dance With Me presents a dance version of the Dickens story. A Christmas Carol: A Live Musical Radio Play: 7 p.m. Dec. 2, 8-9; 2 p.m. Dec. 3 and 10 in the board room of the Mundelein Village Hall, 300 Plaza Circle, Mundelein. Tickets are free. 847-949-3282; survey123.arcgis.com/share/88a0729943f94a8a8d88974c41c6046e. The Mundelein Arts Commission presents the play brought to life by local actors and with musical accompaniment. Studio5 presents Tom Mula: A Reading of Jacob Marleys Christmas Carol: 8 p.m. Dec. 9 at Studio5 Performing Arts Center, 1934 Dempster St., Evanston. Tickets: $27.05-$37.34. 847-328-6683; studio5.dance/calendar. Tom Mula does a staged reading of his novel Jacob Marleys Christmas Carol, which tells the tale from the perspective of Scrooges former business partner. Featuring a live improvised score by Larry Schanker. Riverfront Playhouses A Christmas Carol Musical: 8 p.m. Dec. 8-9 and 15-16 and 3 p.m. Dec. 10 and 17, and a reunion concert at 8 p.m. Dec. 10 and 17, at the Riverfront Playhouse, 11-13 S. Water Street Mall, Aurora. Tickets: $18-$20. 630-897-9496; riverfrontplayhouse.com. Advertisement The Riverfront Playhouse celebrates its 30th anniversary of A Christmas Carol, which was adapted for the Riverfront Playhouse by the late Jack Schultz. This version has a group of actors arriving in town on a circus wagon to tell the story while still allowing Ebenezer Scrooge to receive all of his ghostly visits. The Nutcracker Tchaikovskys The Nutcracker is the story of a girl named Clara, who receives a nutcracker doll from her mysterious Uncle Drosselmeyer at a Christmas Eve party. At night, the doll transforms into the Nutcracker Prince and Clara wakes up and together they battle and defeat the evil Mouse King. Grateful, the Nutcracker Prince takes her on a magical journey through the Land of Snow to the Kingdom of Sweets. Along the way, they meet animated toys, dancing snowflakes, flowers, spices, candy and the enchanting Sugar Plum Fairy. Barrington Dance Ensemble presents The Nutcracker: 7 p.m. Dec. 1-2 and 2 p.m. Dec. 2-3 at Richard C. Johnson Auditorium, Barrington High School, 616 W. Main St., Barrington. Tickets: $25-$38. 847-382-6333; barringtondance.org. The 30th anniversary production features Marize Fumero, principal dancer with the Milwaukee Ballet; and Arionel Vargas, former principal dancer with the English National Ballet, as Snow Queen and King. Albright Community Theatres The Nutcracker: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 1, 8 and 9; 2:30 p.m. Dec. 2-3 and 9 at the Batavia Government Center, third floor, 100 N. Island Ave., Batavia. Tickets: $18-$23. 630-406-8838; albrighttheatre.com. Advertisement See the Batavia theater companys version of Claras fantastic voyage. North Shore Centers Salt Creek Ballets The Nutcracker: 7:30 p.m. Dec. 1; 1 and 5 p.m. Dec. 2 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. Tickets: $28-$54. 847-673-6300; northshorecenter.org. This years production features guest artists from all over the United States, courtesy of the Joffrey Ballet. The Macs performance features live accompaniment from New Philharmonic. The Nutcracker presented by M3 Dance: 12 p.m. Dec. 2-3 and 5 p.m. Dec. 2 at the Hemmens Cultural Center, 45 Symphony Way, Elgin. Tickets: $30-$40. 847-931-5900; cityofelgin.org. Students from surrounding suburbs take the stage alongside professional guest performers. Director and choreographer Lauren Blane blends multiple dance genres such as ballet, jazz, contemporary and tumbling. A Sugar Plum Tea Party is at 2:30 p.m. Dec. 2. Indiana Ballet Theatre presents The Nutcracker: 7 p.m. Dec. 7-8, 1 and 6 p.m. Dec. 9, 2 p.m. Dec. 10 at Theatre Northwest, Indiana University Northwest, 3401 Broadway, Gary. Tickets: $20-$25. ibtnw.org/events. Advertisement Indiana Ballet Theatre presents this annual, all-ages, classical, mime ballet. The Dance Theater of Will Countys Nutcracker Ballet: 7 p.m. Dec. 8-9 and 3 p.m. Dec. 9-10 at Lockport Township High School East Campus Theater, 1333 7th St., Lockport. Tickets: $25. 815-588-8888; lths.org/o/lthsd/page/foundation. The Dance Theater of Will Countys version features professional performers and local dancers. Elise Flagg Academy of Dances The Naperville Nutcracker: 7 p.m. Dec. 8, 1 and 5 p.m. Dec. 9, and 1 p.m. Dec. 10 at Pfeiffer Hall, 310 E. Benton Ave., Naperville. Tickets: $30-$40. 630-637-7469. northcentralcollege.edu/show. Join the dancers for a Naperville tradition. The Music Institute of Chicagos Duke It Out! Nutcracker: 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Dec. 9 in at Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston. Tickets: $15. 847-448-8308; nicholsconcerthall.org. Advertisement Tchaikovskys classical score alternates with Duke Ellingtons and Billy Strayhorns jazz version of the holiday favorite in a music and dance performance. An interactive musical instrument petting zoo for children takes place between the two performances. The Ballet Makkai Youth Companys The Nutcracker: 2 p.m. Dec. 9-10 in the John and Nancy Hughes Theater at the Gorton Center, 400 E. Illinois Road, Lake Forest. Tickets: $30. 847-234-6060; gortoncenter.org. The Ballet Makkai Youth Company and students from the Irina Makkai Classical Ballet School will perform a classic version of The Nutcracker. Libertyvilles Dancenter Norths The Magic of the Nutcracker: 3 p.m. Dec. 9-10 at Libertyville High School, 708 W. Park Ave., Libertyville. Tickets: $22-$40. 847-367-7970; dancenter-north.com/magic-nutcracker. The 35th annual production features more than 100 performers, elaborate sets and costumes set to Tchaikovskys iconic score. Engage Dance Theatre presents The Nutcracker: 1 and 5 p.m. Dec. 16-17 at the Raue Center for the Arts, 26 N. Williams St., Crystal Lake. Tickets: $18-$30. 815-356-9212; rauecenter.org. Advertisement The company purchased sets and costumes from the Milwaukee Ballet. There will be guest dancers and a sensory-friendly performance at 6 p.m. Dec. 20. Ruth Pages The Nutcracker: 1 p.m. Dec. 16-17 and 5 p.m. Dec. 16 at James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts at the College of Lake County, 19351 W. Washington St., Grayslake. Tickets: $15-$26. 847-543-2300; ruthpage.org. This production recreates famous choreographer Ruth Pages original, full-length staging. McAninch Arts Centers Salt Creek Ballets The Nutcracker: 1 and 5 p.m. Dec. 16-17 at the McAninch Arts Center, 425 Fawell Blvd., Glen Ellyn. Tickets: $36-$46. 630-942-4000; atthemac.org. This years production features guest artists from all over the United States, courtesy of the Joffrey Ballet and features live accompaniment from New Philharmonic. Pictured are Lezlie Gray and Christian English, performing in Ballet 5:8s version of Beyond the Nutcracker, performed this year Dec. 16-17 at Lincoln-Way Central High School. (Kristie Kahns/HANDOUT) Ballet 5:8s Beyond the Nutcracker: 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 16 and 3 p.m. Dec. 17 at Lincoln-Way East High School, 201 Colorado Ave., Frankfort. Tickets: $12.50-$37.50. 708-329-8773; ballet58.org. Advertisement Ballet 5:8 artistic director Julianna Rubio Slager choreographs this holiday tradition featuring students and guest artists. This version has a girl named Emma, her Uncle Abrahms and the angel Anastasis as they embark on a journey through time and discover what Christmas is all about. Genesee Theatres Dancenter Norths The Magic of the Nutcracker: 6:30 p.m. Dec. 21-22 at the Genesee Theatre, 203 N. Genesee St., Waukegan. Tickets: $18-$40. 847-367-7970; dancenter-north.com/magic-nutcracker. The 35th annual production features more than 100 performers, elaborate sets and costumes set to Tchaikovskys iconic score. Annie Alleman is a freelance reporter for the Beacon-News. Discussing finances can be a little uncomfortable in general. Talking about costs in relation to adding a child to your family can feel completely taboo. But discussing finances, and finding out the average adoption costs in your area, is essential. Leah Atkins, an interior designer in Lawrenceville, Georgia, had several serious health conditions that caused her and her husband to turn to adoption when they wanted to grow their family. The couple was astounded by the expense of the process. We knew that it wasnt cheap, but we had no idea just how expensive it truly was, she said, citing legal fees as the most expensive percentage of the total cost for their two adoptions. Average adoption costs can vary greatly based on the type of adoption and circumstances around the adoption. If you are considering adopting a child, these are some of the costs you can expect so that you can begin planning for your familys future. The three types of adoption Researching the various types of adoption is an important part of beginning the adoption journey, said Rita L. Soronen, president and CEO of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. There are three routes to adopting a child: Domestic adoption: Adopting an infant in the United States International adoption: Adopting a child from another country Foster-to-adopt: Adopting a child from the foster care system The costs of each kind of adoption differ widely. It is important to know that there are also many options for financial assistance for families hoping to adopt and that understanding these options can go a long way toward alleviating the worry about cost, said Soronen. Cost of a domestic adoption The average cost of adopting a child in the United States is between $20,000 and $45,000, says the Child Welfare Information Gateway from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This price can cover legal fees, home studies, travel and lodging, court fees, and medical and living expenses for the birth parent. Soronen said its important to get clarity from the adoption agency or the attorney involved on specific costs prior to making a commitment. Parents can expect a private adoption agency to be more expensive. However, some agencies will offer a sliding scale based on the adoptive parents income. For an independent domestic adoption, parents find the birth mother without an agency and use an adoption lawyer to facilitate all of the legal aspects and paperwork. Costs can range from $15,000 to $40,000, according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway. Adoption costs by state may differ since adoption laws vary state to state. Cost of an international adoption Depending on the country of adoption, international adoption costs will vary greatly. Parents should plan to pay between $20,000 and $50,000 for an international adoption, according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway. Be sure to budget for multiple trips to the country before and during the adoption process and add the extra expenses of travel and hotel costs. Cost of adoption through foster care Morgan Lampp and her wife, Mara Hill, dreamed of adopting a baby and were surprised to learn that in their home state of Florida, foster care adoption costs were extremely low. Through our adoption classes it was very clear that there would be little to nothing out of pocket with our adoption, says Lampp. The classes, home study, fingerprints and background checks all covered. Even our lawyer costs for adoption were covered in full. While every state has different rules and fees associated with adoption through foster care and every case is different, for this couple, the process moved very quickly. Last year we had our home study completed and within a month we were matched with our baby, Kai. She was officially adopted by us at the end of May, said Hill. According to Soronen, heres what prospective parents need to know about adoption through foster care: Adoption from foster care entails working with the public child welfare system and their contract agencies. Since the agency holds custody until they are adopted, most of the fees are the responsibility of the public system. There are some costs that can occur, including home studies or other out of pocket fees, but these are typically reimbursable and range from $0 to $3,000. Children adopted from foster care often qualify for state or federal subsidies that follow the child through age 18, or in some circumstances until age 21. Many states also offer educational vouchers for youth adopted from foster care. This can include college or trade schools. New parents Lampp and Hill said they hope adoption through foster care is an avenue that more parents will explore. We encourage anyone interested in adopting because these children need a safe and loving environment, and a forever family. If money is something stopping you, know that this may be a route for you. How to pay adoption costs While the cost of adoption can be expensive, there are a variety of ways to save and pay for adoption, including: Federal and state subsidies for foster care adoption Loans and grants for individuals Workplace benefits Military reimbursements Tax credits Grants Even with careful planning, there may be additional fees and expenses that prospective parents should anticipate during the adoption process. Depending on the circumstance and age of a child when adopted, there may be a need for post-adoption medical or mental health assistance, said Soronen. There may also be legal fees to consider. Since adoption is a legal exchange, families may want to consider engaging an attorney, even if one is not required, to assure that all aspects of the adoption are handled appropriately. The bottom line The adoption journey is one that, in the end, joyfully creates or expands a family and provides a child a permanent and loving home, says Soronen. Although costs can be a challenging part of that journey, there are multiple options and supports available. This article was originally published on TODAY.com Thanksgiving week is the time of year when youre most likely to have a cooking fire, according to the American Red Cross of Greater Pennsylvania. Cooking is the leading cause of home fires, home fire injuries and the second leading cause of home fire deaths, said Jorge Martinez, CEO of the American Red Cross of Greater Pennsylvania. To help keep you and your family safe, the Red Cross is offering cooking safety tips that should help prevent fires: Stay in the kitchen when you are frying, grilling, or broiling food. If you must leave the kitchen for even a short period of time, turn off the stove. Use a timer to remind yourself that the stove or oven is on. Avoid wearing loose clothing or dangling sleeves while cooking. Keep kids and pets at least three feet away from cooking areas. Keep anything that can catch on fire potholders, oven mitts, wooden utensils, paper or plastic bags, food packaging, and towels or curtains away from your stovetop and oven or any other appliance that generates heat. Clean cooking surfaces on a regular basis to prevent grease buildup. Consider purchasing a fire extinguisher to keep in your kitchen. Always check the kitchen before going to bed or leaving home to make sure all stoves, ovens and small appliances are turned off. The Red Cross also encourages having a smoke alarm near your kitchen, on each level of your home and near sleeping areas. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW TRENDING NOW: Its a devastating loss: Family, friends remember mother of 2 killed in Washington County crash Car hit by train in Homestead Mike Tomlin announces who will take over duties after Matt Canada firing VIDEO: How to protect yourself from mail theft DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts NEW YORK Guns N Roses frontman Axl Rose was accused of a brutal rape of a Penthouse magazine model more than 30 years ago in a lawsuit brought Wednesday on the eve of the Adult Survivors Act expiring. The lawsuit filed by Sheila Kennedy in Manhattan Supreme Court accuses Rose of raping her in a New York City hotel room in February 1989 after inviting her back when they met at a nightclub. The rock star targeted Kennedy, the 1983 Penthouse Pet of the Year, according to the suit, when he was at the peak of his commercial success. Rose used his fame, status, and power as a celebrity and performer in the music industry to gain access to manipulate, control, and violently sexually assault Kennedy, reads Kennedys suit. The claims were brought under the Adult Survivors Act historic legislation that lifted the statute of limitations to bring sex abuse claims thats set to expire at midnight. Representatives for Rose and Kennedy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Guns N Roses frontman Axl Rose was accused of a brutal rape of a Penthouse magazine model more than 30 years ago in a lawsuit brought Wednesday on the eve of the Adult Survivors Act expiring. The lawsuit filed by Sheila Kennedy in Manhattan Supreme Court accuses Rose of raping her in a New York City hotel room in February 1989 after inviting her back when they met at a nightclub. The rockstar targeted Kennedy, the 1983 Penthouse Pet of the Year, according to the suit, when he was at the peak of his commercial success. Rose used his fame, status, and power as a celebrity and performer in the music industry to gain access to manipulate, control, and violently sexually assault Kennedy, reads Kennedys suit. The claims were brought under the Adult Survivors Act historic legislation that lifted the statute of limitations to bring sex abuse claims thats set to expire at midnight. Representatives for Rose and Kennedy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. This developing story will be updated. FOX 2 (WJBK) - Look who's got a new photo for their Instagram feed - it's internet personality Brandon Heitmann. Yep, Brandon the pool-building-bum has been arrested again. "There's going to be justice and that justice is going to take place here in Macomb County," said Prosecutor Pete Lucido. Justice is taking place on the federal level as well. It seems Brandon's company's 'restructuring bankruptcy' has been involuntarily placed into the 'this company is toast' category. With official statements like this, from a federal bankruptcy trustee, declaring: "The debtor and it's sole owner and president, Brandon Heitmann, have engaged in conduct pre-and post-petition that is either dishonest or incompetent." Harsh words for the headmaster of the Heitmann Academy. And as bad as things are for Brandon Heitmann, it might be even worse for his criminal attorney. Or should we say ex-attorney, now criminal, Glenn Franklin - because he just got convicted of felony wire fraud. A lot has happened since Rob Wolchelk did his first story on Brandon just three months ago. Heitmann runs a company called Exigent. Brandon liked to brag a lot about his success, showing off fancy cars and vacations. This influencer had a fancy website filled with videos, a get-rich-quick podcast and even his own school you could attend to achieve success as a builder like him, called "The Heitmann Academy." The problem is, Brandon wasn't too good at putting in pools. He may have billed himself as a super-rich contractor, but he didn't even have a contractor's license. He put in Becca and Alex's pool for $100,000 but they say it wasn't level and was sagging in spots and wouldn't pass code. DN paid Brandon more than $100,000 for her pool, which sat for two summers half-done and done wrong. Joe and Angela handed over $60,000 for a pool to Brandon - but he never even broke ground. Brandon finally got his contractor's license last spring, but it was too late. By this point the Shelby Township police were investigating and by the time Wolchek confronted him, Exigent was on the verge of extinction. Wolchek: "Can I talk to you about your business?" Brandon Heitman: "Talk to my attorney, thank you." Wolchek: "What's that?" Brandon Heitman: "You can talk to my attorney, thank you." Wolchek: "I want to talk to you right now. Brandon hang on. Hang on man. Brandon, c'mon. What's going on with your business?" Brandon Heitman: "You can talk to my attorney. Thank you." Wolchek: "I want to talk to you." Brandon Heitman: "Not now." Wolchek: "What's going on with your business? You're a talkative guy. I've seen your videos." Brandon Heitman: "Thank you." Brandon didn't look so smarmy in his first mugshots after being charged with two counts of taking money under false pretenses over $20,000. Then, while attending a preliminary hearing last month, Wolchek tried to speak to Brandon after court. But his lawyer, who never responded to Rob's calls and then went on a YouTube show claiming he didn't call him back, started getting lippy to Wolchek. Glenn Franklin: "We have no comment other than, the last time you spoke with him, he asked you to call me. I called you two, three times." Wolchek: "No you didn't." Glenn Franklin: "I did. I have my phone records." Wolchek: "Okay, you show me that. What number did you call me at? I saw you on some little YouTube thing." Glenn Franklin: "Whatever number was on your card. I have my phone records." Wolchek: "Well you show me that because I don't believe you. So Brandon what's your defense going to be?" Glenn Franklin: "C'mon, let's go (Franklin grabs Brandon to lead him away)." Brandon did his walk of shame in silence as Wolchek tried to question him - and then his lawyer got lippy again. It was not the brightest move since Wolchek knew this guy was facing his own criminal charges. Wolchek: "Are you Glenn Phillip Franklin, counselor? Because if that's you, you also have felony charges against you, don't you?" Wolchek: "Is that you counselor? Here's my card so you can make sure you can contact me. There's my phone number. Is that you Mr. Franklin, right there, who also has felony charges?" Glenn Franklin III rolls off in his impressive Porsche. But Glenn apparently didn't impress a jury in federal court where he stood trial for being involved in a fraud scheme. Earlier this month, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Glenn franklin's attorney, Arnold Fink, told us he's "Reasonably optimistic that his conviction will be set aside." He also said, "Glenn is a wonderful person, kind, gentle. A good friend and a good person to know." Well, apparently Brandon Heitmann disagrees because he's got a new attorney - and he's going to need one, because he's been charged with another count of obtaining money under false pretenses over $20,000. "We're going to make sure these laws are followed, one way or the other," Lucido said. The Macomb County prosecutor says he's going hard after cheating contractors. "We win them squarely, we'll lose them fairly, but here's the bottom line - if you're not adhering to what you're supposed to be doing, we're going to make sure that there's punishment associated with it." Punishment is what Angela wants, she's one of the victims who has a criminal case against Brandon and hopes they don't offer him a deal, even if Brandon pays her back. "Obviously the money would be great, but there's other people out there as well, and what justice do they get?" Next comes Brandon's company's bankruptcy which was filed as a Chapter 11 restructuring last summer. On Thursday it was ordered by a federal judge to be converted to a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. And Andrew Vara, the United States trustee called out Brandon harshly. "Brandon Heitmann is the 100 percent owner and president of Exigent," he said. "The debtor failed to keep adequate business records. Specifically, the debtor cannot account for money it received from customers, cannot adequately explain how those funds were spent and has not reasonably justified funds withdrawn by Mr. Heitmann from the business accounts." The trustee says Brandon's statements to the court were false and that he used the business as his own piggy bank. Look at the amount of money Brandon drained from the company according to the court in just three months before filing bankruptcy. The total: $173,508. The pool guy and his lawyer both dove in and hit bottom hard. "Brandon Heitmann and Attorney Glenn Franklin, just a couple of drips in the pool we call the Hhhhhall of Shame." This embedded content is not available in your region. Residents at a social housing estate have said they are living in fear over their children's health due to major structural issues with their houses. The majority of those living in Killaire Wood Lane in Bangor, County Down, are families, and many deal with complex mental and physical needs. But some have been forced to live with crumbling door frames and water damage. "If we weren't on benefits, would we be treated this way? I doubt it," resident Leigh Corbett told BBC News NI. "When you're in social housing, you can't just refuse to pay your full rent until issues like these are sorted, like you would if you had a private landlord. "Most of us pay for our rent through our Universal Credit so we don't actually see the money, it pays the company straight from our benefits. "But it shouldn't matter how the money is paid. You should have a basic expectation of a safe house." BBC News NI has also spoken to another resident, the mother of a severely disabled child whose family say they are terrified that damp and mouldy conditions in the little girl's bedroom will result in her becoming sick before a major operation. Single mother Leigh Corbett said residents feel let down by Choice Housing who, she said, keep "fobbing" them off Killiare Wood Lane was completed in 2018 by Choice Housing and there are more than 100 houses in the development. Ms Corbett, who works as a classroom assistant and has three children, said she has had to replace bedroom floors multiple times due to water seeping through poorly sealed balcony doors. Another resident phoned police to report that he thought his door had been "kicked in", but it was due to a decaying wooden frame. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) confirmed it attended a call-out and no crime was recorded. 'Keep fobbing us off' "I don't think we're being unreasonable - we shouldn't be expected to live like this," said Ms Corbett. "We're all house-proud people and we love living here but you can't keep your house nice when there's water running down the walls and you're worried about parts of your house falling down around you, or you or your kids getting sick. "We've become accustomed to door handles falling off and then you just reattach it when you're going out - it's not normal. "All we're asking is for Choice to replace the windows and doors as soon as they can, and to be compensated for the money we've spent fixing their mess, but they keep fobbing us off. "There are a lot of people with mental health problems living here and this worry is making them worse." Lena Andrews, who lives in Killaire Wood with her daughter, said she complained to Choice in 2019 about draughts. As a result, some of her windows were sealed with silicone, meaning she couldn't open her balcony doors. "Covid then hit so nothing was done for ages and I was using draught excluders and towels to keep the water out, but it was still coming in when it rained and the wooden floor in my daughter's bedroom lifted," she said. "When lockdown lifted in 2021, a new foreman came round and was asking about all the problems that had been reported. "I let him in and showed him everything, including the silicone. He couldn't believe that the doors had been sealed like that because it was a fire safety risk, so he had the silicone removed. "We were then told the balconies would be replaced with big windows, but that never happened so we're still in this mess." Choice admitted silicone was used as a temporary measure but said it was most likely removed as it no longer had the required effectiveness, rather than due to fire safety concerns. On 1 November this year, Lena woke up to a puddle of rainwater in her living room. It was coming in through her ceiling. Lena said: "I phoned Choice straight away and they told me to turn the electrics off at the mains and they'd put me down as an emergency, but it would take four days. "I put a load of pots and pans down to try to keep the water off the floor and wasn't sitting there half an hour when my smoke and carbon monoxide alarms started going off - the water was setting them off. "So I called Choice again and they told me I needed to turn them off too. How is that safe? What if there was a fire? "Their customer service just isn't good enough." In a statement to BBC News NI, Choice Housing said its emergency priority repair time is 24 hours and that alarms have battery back-up for when an electrical supply has been switched off. There are more than 100 houses in Killaire Wood Lane in Bangor, the majority of which are occupied by families Choice has apologised to residents and admitted "the hardwood components should not be failing in such a short timeframe". "We also apologise that it is taking longer than we had hoped to replace defective windows and doors. Whilst we had made some progress with the original contractor to remediate, the latter then went out of business. "However, we have now completed a survey of all properties and have progressed our own contract for these works. This will allow replacement of defective windows and doors to commence on site in February 2024." Choice said it will "expedite" repairs already reported and plans to be on the ground in Killaire Wood Lane this week, while surveyors will also check window and door measurements. It added that affected tenants would not be "out of pocket for any loss incurred as a result of damage caused by these unacceptable defects". Yahoo Sports 49ers-Eagles is set up to be an instant classic but it's not the only game on the Week 13 slate with juicy storylines. CBS Sports Jacob Gibbs joins Matt Harmon for another edition of the fantasy viewer guide and helps identify which games to binge, stream and skip in Week 13. The Biden administration is walking a political tightrope with its plan to impose minimum staffing levels on nursing homes. The White House is facing criticism from the left and the right, and the proposal is dividing Democrats, especially some front-line members facing a difficult reelection in 2024. Those lawmakers, mostly from rural areas, argue that the proposal is too strict and would force nursing homes to close. In many parts of the country, Americas long-term care facilities are facing severe workforce shortage issues that are harming access to critical care for our nations seniors, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), one of the Senates most vulnerable Democrats, wrote in a bipartisan letter. Best Black Friday Deals With this in mind, we are deeply concerned that now is the worst possible time for the United States to establish the nations first federal staffing mandate for long-term care facilities. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), and independents Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Angus King (Maine) also signed the letter, along with more than 20 Republicans. On the House side, Rep. Greg Pence (R-Ind.) led a bipartisan letter with Democratic Reps. Jared Golden (Maine) and Chris Pappas (N.H.). The lawmakers said the rule would result in limited access to care for seniors, mandatory increases in state Medicaid budgets, and could most consequentially lead to widespread nursing home closures. Their arguments echo industry groups who say any federal standard is unfeasible because of a nationwide staffing shortage made worse by the pandemic. They say it also amounts to an unfunded federal mandate because Medicaid reimbursement rates are too low. Top Stories from The Hill Almost 95 percent of nursing homes do not meet at least one of the three proposed staffing requirements, according to the American Health Care Association, a long-term care trade group that represents 14,000 nursing homes. The rule will only result in negative, unintended consequences for residents, staff, and the entire health care system, the organization said. President Biden last year announced a slate of nursing home reforms and vowed staffing minimums would be among them. Advocates have been calling for such a requirement for more than two decades, arguing that residents are safer and have better care with more staff, but the industry has successfully resisted thus far. The proposed rule was published Sept. 1 and attracted nearly 50,000 comments by the Nov. 6 deadline. Nursing home experts said the massive amount of interest in the policy gives the administration very little room to maneuver. I think there is somewhat of a zero-sum nature to this, as its currently written, said David Grabowski, a professor of health policy at Harvard Medical School. This hasnt fallen across [traditional] party lines, and both sides are sort of worried about access issues, and I think both sides are worried about nursing home quality, and Ive never thought of that as being an issue for the left or the right. Grabowski said he would like to see more political will behind giving nursing homes more money to meet the requirements. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it will invest $75 million in boosting workforce recruitment and training, but Grabowski said that likely wont be nearly enough to overcome the existing shortages. Current law requires only that homes have sufficient staffing, but it leaves nearly all interpretation to the states. The current law also requires nursing homes to have a registered nurse (RN) on duty for eight consecutive hours per day, seven days a week, and to have a licensed nurse either an RN or licensed practical nurse on site 24/7. Among other provisions, the new proposal would require facilities to have an RN on staff 24 hours per day, seven days per week. The proposal would also require nursing homes to provide at least three hours of direct care per resident per day, including at least 33 minutes from a registered nurse. Alice Burns, an associate director of KFFs Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured, said rural areas have historically suffered from workforce shortages, so she understands why lawmakers from rural districts are concerned about the proposal. Still, she said their broad opposition is puzzling, because the proposal has a hardship exemption that would allow nursing facilities to maintain lower staffing levels if they met certain requirements. Edward Miller, chair of the gerontology department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said he could see the administration broadening the exemption for rural facilities. Its one thing to raise the standard to create a mandate. But if its unrealistic for rural areas to satisfy that requirement, you think it would be in the administrations interest, particularly with an election year, to either give them more time or just modify the standard or waive it altogether, Miller said. There is plenty of opportunity for the administration to modify this to reflect the realities on the ground, particularly in low resource areas, he added. On the flip side, other Democrats and consumer and nursing home advocates, including unions, want the administration to strengthen the requirements. They said the rule was a positive step, but overall doesnt go far enough. Residents deserve the best of care from highly trained, fairly compensated, and sufficiently numbered staff. We therefore strongly urge you to quickly strengthen and finalize the proposal, wrote Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and 99 other House Democrats. Our nations 1.2 million nursing home residents deserve high quality care that prioritizes their safety. The proposed rule takes a vital step towards ensuring residents receive this high quality care by establishing commonsense staffing minimums and improving enforcement, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) wrote in a letter with 11 other Senate Democrats. Casey, who is facing a Republican challenger next year, also called for more support to help nursing homes comply with the new rules. We urge CMS to provide for strong enforcement of a final staffing standard while ensuring state survey agencies and their staffs are adequately resourced to conduct this important work, the lawmakers said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. A version of this story appeared in CNNs What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. It was kind of funny when whoever posts Instagram photos for Joe Biden celebrated the presidents birthday this week with an image of Biden smiling in front of a cake with a bonfire of candles presumably 81 on top of it. Turns out on your 146th birthday, you run out of space for candles! the caption reads. That wasnt Bidens only stab this week at poking fun at what might be his most glaring weakness, the widely held perception in opinion polls that hes too old for another term. At the annual White House turkey pardon, Biden made clear he was not there at the first pardon, 76 years ago, even though he was alive at the time. But then he seemed to make a generational gaffe when he conflated Beyonces tour with Taylor Swifts, and then called the latter Britney Spears. Rather than praise the birthday joke on Instagram, most commenters have taken the opportunity to criticize his support for Israel. The content of Instagram comments is not a valid measure of any sentiment, but it is true that when people see that content in their feed, they will also see the criticism. Who knows if the Israel-Hamas war will still be a major top-of-mind issue for American voters when they go to polls in less than a year. Who knows what will happen with the economy, one of the many areas along with his handling of Israel where polls suggest Biden has weak support, even among Democrats. Policy tweaks and the natural course of events could change the framework of those storylines. One thing that wont change is that Biden will still be the oldest-ever president. While he has poked fun at himself before, the series of jokes on his birthday could be an acknowledgement that his age is an issue to defuse. Democrats rely on young voters When Democrats win elections, it is frequently because of turnout by younger voters. In 2022, when Democrats held onto the Senate and only narrowly lost the House, CNNs Harry Enten wrote they would have gotten crushed without younger voters. So it is with alarm that Democrats must be looking at an NBC News poll out this week that confirms a dramatic drop in Bidens support among young voters. Biden is actually narrowly trailing former President Donald Trump among voters ages 18-34 in that NBC poll. Biden won voters ages 18-29 with 60% of the vote in 2020, according to exit polls. A CNN poll released in early November found a similar drop. Its important to remember that these current polls are among a pool of all registered voters, which is larger than the subset of people who will actually show up to vote. Disagreement over Israel It is Bidens strong support for Israel that seems to be contributing to a generational wedge between Democrats. In that NBC poll, only about a third of registered voters approved of his handling of the situation in Israel and only about half of Democrats approved. A majority of Democrats in the poll said Israel had gone too far in its response to the terror attacks by Hamas. CNNs John King found more anecdotal evidence in a new report from college campuses in Michigan, which has a large Muslim population. He talked to multiple students who said they supported or volunteered for Biden in 2020 but wont be doing so this year. Rather than support Trump, who has talked about reviving his ban on people from mostly Muslim countries traveling to the US, students told King they may not vote at all or may opt for a more liberal third-party candidate. The writer Franklin Foer wrote a book about Biden, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Bidens White House and the Struggle for Americas Future. Appearing on CNNs Inside Politics on Tuesday, he said perceptions of Israel have changed around Biden. I think part of the generational divide is when Biden was a younger person, Zionism and liberalism were much more deeply interconnected and there was a sense that Israel was an underdog nation, Foer said. The nation of Israel was founded in 1948. Predating the baby boom Flip the age issue around and look at Bidens current difficulty connecting with younger voters not as that of an octogenarian but as someone whose birthday in 1942 predates the post-World War II baby boom, which lasted from 1946 to 1964. There was a string of four boomer presidents, three of whom (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Trump) were all born in 1946, technically the first year of the boom. The fourth, Barack Obama, is technically a boomer as he was born in 1961. There is some gray area between generations, and Obama has written of not really identifying as a baby boomer. And then, the country went back in time from a president born in 1946 to one born in 1942 when it traded in Trump for Biden. Incremental changes to the electorate may have important impacts in the coming years, particularly as baby boomers and voters Bidens age represent an ever-smaller portion of the people voting. CNNs Ronald Brownstein has written repeatedly about the changing demographics of the country and how that is affecting its politics. We are right now at the teetering edge of the influence of the baby boomers, the University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald told Brownstein back in May for one such story. They are just starting to enter those twilight years in their turnout rates, while other [more diverse] groups are maturing. So we are right at that cusp that critical point of where things are going to start changing. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com In the face of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the U.S.s unwavering moral support for Israels military response to Hamas Oct. 7 attack is angering the international community including close allies. The Biden administration has refused to heed growing calls for a total ceasefire amid tens of thousands of Palestinian casualties and devastating conditions in the besieged enclave. This has prompted accusations of double standards, threatening the U.S.s grip on power in the Global South and the Middle East. We look forward to a stronger role on the part of great powers such as China in order to stop the attacks against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry told his Chinese counterpart during a visit to Beijing, where a delegation of Arab and Muslim leaders pushed for an end to hostilities in Gaza after failed negotiations with the West. Unfortunately, there are major countries that give cover to the current Israeli attacks, he added. The Biden administration has done things no other administration has by giving gifts to a Netanyahu government that has been more far right than ever, Yousef Munayyer, head of the Arab Centers Palestine/Israel Program, told Semafor. Unlike former U.S. President Barack Obama, Biden has especially tempered his tone with Israel and taken a less critical stance on the Israel-Palestine issue. The U.Ss historically close-knit relationship with the Jewish state also puts it in a very difficult position on the world stage, Munayyer said, as there are inevitable constraints to what the U.S. can publicly say and do. This has led Arab leaders to engage with countries like China instead, who they view as a refreshing alternative to the West. The Chinese are not beholden to the pro-Israel orthodoxy, Munayyer said. The Arab worlds perception of American complicity in the carnage in Gaza will weaken the U.S. in its competition with China which, unlike the U.S., has championed the Palestinian cause despite its own record of human rights violations, Tuqa Nusairat, a Middle East expert from the Atlantic Council, writes for the L.A. Times. Those in the Arab world and Global South have pointed out the double standards in past American statements about respect for human rights and international laws of war, when it comes to the U.S. response to Russias invasion of Ukraine. Every U.S.-made missile dropped on Gazas besieged population along with Americas tepid response to the war will damage U.S. standing in the region and around the world for years to come, Nusairat writes. The U.S. is also losing credibility with developing nations who view its inaction towards Israels campaign in Gaza as hypocritical particularly in comparison to its stance on Russias invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administrations decision to veto a United Nations resolution for a humanitarian pause in Gaza this October sparked outrage, with one African diplomat telling Reuters that the veto told us that Ukrainian lives are more valuable than Palestinian ones. Even the European Unions inconsistency over its support for Ukrainians, but not for Palestinians, is geopolitical kryptonite, the Financial Times Brussels bureau chief wrote. Domestically too, Bidens position is being challenged by progressive Democrats. In a recent poll, the U.S. presidents national approval rating dropped to an all-time low of 40% with a majority of voters disapproving of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Sen. Bernie Sanders recently proposed that Congress require U.S. military aid to Israel to be conditional, while a group of Democratic senators wrote to Biden calling for increased protection of civilians in Gaza. We are concerned that increased and prolonged suffering in Gaza is not only intolerable for Palestinian civilians there but will also negatively impact the security of Israeli civilians by exacerbating existing tensions and eroding regional alliances, the lawmakers wrote in their letter. NATO could meet to discuss Article 4 after Russian missile strike in Poland: reports closeVideo Fox News Senior Foreign Affairs correspondent Greg Palkot reports the latest on Russian missiles hitting Ukraine and landing in Poland on 'Special Report with Bret Baier.' KYIV, Ukraine The sirens wailed again today In Kyiv, and the Fox News team heard explosions nearby. Russian missiles were launched in a massive attack against Ukraine Tuesday, and one struck inside Poland, igniting big international concerns. Early reports said a Russian missile landed three miles inside Poland, striking an agricultural site, killing two people perhaps by accident Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was still very concerned. RUSSIAN MISSILES CROSS INTO NATO MEMBER POLAND, KILL 2: SENIOR US INTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL A vehicle travels past a police blockade after an explosion in Przewodow, a village in eastern Poland near the border with Ukraine, Nov. 16, 2022. (REUTERS/Kacper Pempel) "This is a very significant escalation. We must act," he said in a TV address. It's significant because any attack on a NATO country by another nation could trigger "Article 5" military action by the alliance. NATO says its concerned but is not confirming the reports. Neither is the Pentagon. REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: "COLD" WAR IN KYIV AS RUSSIA HITS COUNTRY'S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE "We dont have any information at this time to corroborate those reports," Pentagon spokesman Gen. Pat Ryder said, "and we are looking into this further." Moscow is flatly denying it was involved. According to a defense ministry spokesman, "No strikes were made against targets near the Ukrainian-Polish state border by Russian means of destruction." Firefighters work to put out a fire in a residential building hit by a Russian strike amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine Nov. 15, 2022. (REUTERS/Gleb Garanich) Later reports suggested what landed in Poland might have been fragments of a Russian missile shot down by Ukrainian air defenses. Poland is confirming the missile was Russian made. REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: OLD-STYLE GEAR TO FIGHT CURRENT-DAY UKRAINE WAR A Fox News crew saw something similar when it went to the scene of a Russian strike in Kyiv Tuesday. A Russian missile flying over Kyiv had been hit by a Ukrainian missile and fell in pieces to the ground, badly damaging and setting fire to an apartment building. One person was killed, another was injured. When Fox reached the neighborhood, the fire was out, but the damage was evident. Emergency workers swarmed over the scene. Some carted away shards of the missile. Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller speaks to the media after a meeting in Warsaw of the security committee about the missile attack on the territory of Poland Nov. 15, 2022. (Maciek Jazwiecki/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS ) One eyewitness told Fox the fireball in the sky was "shocking." Another said it was simply the work of the "Russian terror state." All told, according to officials here, some 90 Russian missiles were launched across the country, and 70 were shot down by Ukraine. Fifteen hit the power grid, leaving millions nationwide without electricity. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP NATO says it will consider acting on the cross-border missile incident. Poland reportedly suggested the alliances "Article 4" be considered, which is a response to a threat rather than an attack by another nation on an alliance member. Greg Palkot currently serves as a London-based senior foreign affairs correspondent for Fox News Channel (FNC). He joined the network in 1998 as a correspondent. Follow him on Twitter@GregPalkot. Students in the National Junior Honor Society at Palos South Middle School in Palos Hills recently assembled over 100 goody bags to donate to Guest House Chicago. (School District 118) Palos South students make goody bags for Guest House Members of the National Junior Honor Society at Palos South Middle School in Palos Hills recently assembled over 100 goody bags to donate to Guest House Chicago. The donated bags were filled with comfort items for patients undergoing chemotherapy and other medical procedures. Advertisement Guest House provides lodging for patients and their families who travel to Chicago for medical treatment, and to military veterans receiving treatment at the Road Home Program at Rush Hospital. Swallow Cliff DAR lauds Maddog Strong Foundation Swallow Cliff Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Chapter Regent Audra Gray, from left, Frank and Cyndi Grobmeier of the Maddog Foundation, and Swallow Cliff awards chair Gale Shafer gather for a photo after the foundation was presented the DAR's Community Service Award. (Swallow Cliff DAR) The Swallow Cliff Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution recently presented one of its two DAR Community Service Awards to the Maddog Strong Foundation. Advertisement The foundation was started by Cyndi Grobmeier to honor the memory of her 18-year-old daughter, Maddie, who died after what was thought to be a severe asthma attack one day after her birthday. Maddie was an advocate of organ donation, and her mother started the Maddog Foundation nonprofit in 2019 to help our younger generation redefine organ donation advocacy, Grobmeier stated in a news release. We believe that by sharing real, factual information with teens and young adults, they will make an educated and informed decision about organ and tissue donation, she said. The Swallow Cliff DAR organization will present its second Community Service Award in December. Chevrolet dealer donates $10K to cancer fight Phillips Chevrolet President Curtis Pascarella and General Manager Mike Maheras recently presented a $10,000 check to Michelle Pruitt of the American Cancer Society. (Phillips Chevrolet) Phillips Chevrolet, a dealership based in Frankfort, Lansing and Bradley, recently presented $10,000 to the American Cancer Societys Making Strides Against Breast Cancer initiative. Phillips Chevrolet President Curtis Pascarella and General Manager Mike Maheras recently presented the check to Michelle Pruitt, senior community development manager with the American Cancer Society, which will use the funds for breast cancer research, providing information and support and programs to help early detection and breast cancer risk reduction, according to a news release. Oak Lawn library staging battle of gingerbread houses Adriana Aranda, the owner and head decorator of Simply Sweet Creations in Oak Lawn, is providing baked goods to support gingerbread themed programming in December at the Oak Lawn Public Library. (Oak Lawn Public Library) The Oak Lawn Public Library is arranging a gingerbread house competition open to all ages, beginning Dec. 4. Entries in the contest can be built as a team by families, or can solo masterpieces, according to a news release from the library. Its a delicious competition for fun prizes! the release stated. Advertisement The contest will have categories for youth, teen and adult, and gingerbread creations should have a footprint no larger than 18 by 18 inches. Families with children should bring their entries to the Youth Services desk; Adult & Teen competitors can drop their houses off at the Adult/Young Adult Services Desk. There is a limit of one entry per category, and entries must be submitted by Dec. 11. Every submission will receive a coupon for two free delicious cupcakes at Simply Sweet Creations Bakery in Oak Lawn, while supplies last. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy > Patrons will have the following week to vote on their favorite in each category before winners are revealed on Dec. 19. The top three families in the Youth category will take home a Squishmallow, and winning teens and adults will receive a gift card. Chef Adriana from Simply Sweet Creations will also award a Chefs Choice prize for the Teen and Adult categories. The library will also offer a slate of gingerbread programs throughout December, including a group activity for kids 5-7 called Can You Catch the Gingerbread Man at 4:30 p.m. Dec. 7 and Take-and-Make kits of ginger spices and recipes for adults and teens to pick up and make at home starting Dec. 4. More information is at 708-422-4990. Holiday Bazaar scheduled in Midlothian The Friends of Midlothian Public Library annual Holiday Bazaar is from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dec. 2 at Midlothian Public Library, 14701 Kenton Ave. The bazaar will feature craft items, baked goods and gently used holiday decorations. After the kickoff, items will remain available for sale in the library commons through Dec. 19. Donated items for the sale will be gratefully accepted at the library through Nov. 30. Advertisement The bazaar also will feature a raffle of gift baskets, with tickets on sale starting Nov. 27 for $1 each or $5 for six. Proceeds from the bazaar and raffle go to the Friends, a nonprofit volunteer organization that supports the welfare and growth of the library. More information is at 708-535-2027 or by email at friends@midlothianlibrary.org. Send news to communitynews@southtownstar.com. A vigil for the hostages outside the Museum of Modern Art in Tel Aviv, known as the The Hostages and Missing Square - Getty Images The phone calls from the White House came all weekend. Joe Biden had instructed his team to ensure that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was left in no doubt: America wanted a ceasefire to free the hostages. The US president was giving personal direction as he worked hour by hour on clinching an agreement to exchange the captives for a pause in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Mr Netanyahu had argued that any ceasefire will be used by Hamas to regroup but Washington was warning him he was losing the moral high ground as the Palestinian death count rose. It is hard to ignore the pressure of your firmest international ally, and Mr Biden was keen to secure the release of some of the nine Americans believed to be among the hostages. But Mr Netanyahu was also under huge, building pressure from the families of the Israeli hostages desperate to get their loved ones home from the Hamas tunnels. In the end, the man once known as Mr Security agreed to stop the bombs, but only for a matter of days, to secure the hostages freedom and allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The deal was on Tuesday night on the brink of being completed, with Mr Netanyahu presenting it to the Knesset, Israels parliament. Hamas fighters leading hostages into Al-Shifa hospital in footage released by the IDF - AFP He said that Mr Biden had been instrumental, too, in making the deal better for Israel getting them more hostages freed for a lower cost. At times during the six weeks it felt like the delicate diplomatic dance to release any of the estimated 240 hostages would be a step too far. More than once it had faltered in its tracks. Even as the world waited with bated breath for news of a deal on Tuesday evening, those involved in the negotiations were cautious it could fail right up to the last moment. Negotiators endured hours of tension during round the clock talks before the final breakthrough, painfully aware that any escalation in the Gaza Strip could easily derail their high-stakes diplomacy. We are now very close, very close, Mr Biden said, a small smile on his face at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. We could bring some of these hostages home very soon. But raising his hands to stress the point, he said: I dont want to get into the details of things, because nothing is done until its done. As he spoke, almost 7,000 miles away in Israel, Mr Netanyahu was taking the necessary steps to implement the painstakingly composed deal. Ground activity of IDF forces in the Gaza Strip in the search for hostages - IDF The Israeli prime minister held three back-to-back meetings with his war cabinet, security cabinet and government to approve the agreement. Sources familiar with the negotiations confided that, against steep odds, Israel and Hamas had reached a tentative agreement. On Tuesday night, it was expected that about 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza would be released in exchange for more than 100 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons. The pause in fighting was expected to be four days. Hamas had demanded five, while Israel had wanted only three. The outline of the deal was put together during weeks-long discussions in Doha, with Qatar acting as a crucial mediator between Israel and Hamas. The length of any Israeli pause in fighting remained a key point of contention until the final breakthrough. It had been a long time coming. Earlier this month, Qatari mediators met senior figures from Hamass political office. Then David Barnea, the head of Israels Mossad intelligence service, and William Burns, the director of the CIA, held talks with Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, the Qatari prime minister. A six-page document was put together setting out the broad terms of the agreement but as late as Monday, key issues had still not been resolved. Behind the scenes, Qatari mediators were shuttling proposals and counter proposals between Israeli and Hamas teams in Doha, who never met in person. Meanwhile, the United States exerted its leverage in a diplomatic blitz, with the president working on the negotiations hour by hour and jumping in personally when he felt necessary. There were still plenty of details to be ironed out, including the exact number of the hostages to be freed from Gaza and from Israeli prisons. Talks had already stalled several times before, most recently after Israel raided Gaza Citys Al-Shifa hospital last week. Qatari mediators acting for Hamas in Doha, met with a wall of silence from Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, after the raid. But over the weekend, Sinwar, who is believed to be hiding in the southern town of Khan Yunis, decided to pick up the phone once again with some fresh demands for the Qatari mediators. The Hamas leader had agreed to release more than 50 women and children in return for the release of an estimated 150 Palestinian women and children in Israeli jails. But he has also demanded that Israel limit its drone monitoring of Gaza to six hours a day and that 400 trucks a day be admitted into Gaza, which Israel had vetoed citing security reasons. On Tuesday night, a compromise appeared to have been reached: Israel would run the flights but only in north Gaza, not in the south, where Hamas leaders are thought to have fled. US citizens Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie are released after being taken hostage by Hamas terrorists - Government of Israel/Reuters Precious momentum had been regained but was nearly lost after Brett McGurk, the White Houses Middle East coordinator, appeared to suggest that if the deal went ahead it would lead to a massive surge of humanitarian relief. The comments triggered a rebuke from other nations involved in the negotiations, including Ayman Safadi, the Jordanian foreign minister, who said that the aid should come with or without a deal. The White House national security council was forced to clean up the remarks. The United States does not support conditions on the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. We never have, and never will, said Adrienne Watson, the councils spokesman. Domestic concerns were just as influential as high geopolitics in silencing the guns. Thousands of Israelis, including families of the hostages, had marched from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem demanding Mr Netanyahu secure their release even at the price of a ceasefire. The entrance of a tunnel under Gazas Al-Shifa hospital, from a video released by the Israeli army - AFP Two thirds of those who responded to an opinion poll in Israel supported a prisoner swap. One grandmother, Kamelia Hoter Ishay, said: The only thing I am waiting for is the phone call from my daughter, Reuma, who will say: Gali is coming back. And then Ill know that its really over and I can breathe a sigh of relief. There are an estimated 4,800 Palestinians being held in Israel for security offences including around 560 serving life sentences for killing Israeli civilians and soldiers. Many supported the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in return for the hostages. In the final hours before the breakthrough, key practical challenges had to be overcome, including how to arrange the safe release of the hostages. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, conducts a security assessment at the IDF's headquarters - Kobi Gideon/Israeli Gpo/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock There was not only the danger of Israeli air strikes to consider but also the risk of a Hamas double cross, or even the kidnap of the hostages by other terror groups in Gaza. With the first humanitarian pause agreed, international pressure will now build for more pauses and eventually a full ceasefire. Hamas has undertaken to use the pause to carry out an audit of all the hostages held in their tunnels to establish their locations, which terror group is holding them and if they are still alive. Negotiators now hope to use the break in the bloodshed to negotiate phase two: the release of more hostages in exchange for more pauses. Achieving real peace after the horrors of Oct 7 will present even more of a diplomatic challenge than todays success against all the odds. Before then, the focus will be on hoping the humanitarian pause holds without breaking out into renewed violence. 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. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hosting a virtual meeting of G20 leaders on Wednesday, but Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden are not attending it. Sources: European Pravda with reference to Bloomberg Details: China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that instead of Xi, Prime Minister Li Keqiang would take part in the G20 video summit. The summit is to take place the day after Modi skipped a virtual meeting of developing countries leaders attended by Xi Jinping, where the group discussed the conflict between Israel and Hamas. According to Indian media reports, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar attended the meeting. Today's meeting comes as Modi concludes India's presidency of the G20, a group of the world's largest economies. The Indian leader has used the one-year term, which ends this month, to demonstrate the South Asian country's growing global influence ahead of national elections scheduled for early next year, with Modi seeking a third term as prime minister. Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said at a briefing on Tuesday that the "vast majority" of G20 leaders will participate in a video meeting on Wednesday. US President Joe Biden is skipping the summit while the Kremlin confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will address the gathering of world leaders. India hopes to review the progress made during its year-long presidency, when it pushed the development of emerging economies as a central agenda item. India secured a joint statement at the G20 leaders' summit in September amid disagreement over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Since then, the war between Israel and Hamas has exacerbated the divide between the developed world and the Global South. Background: Earlier this month, Biden and Xi met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, and it was their first face-to-face meeting in a year and Xi's first visit to the United States in four years. Biden said that during the talks with the Chinese leader, they discussed Russia's war against Ukraine and the situation in the Gaza Strip. Support UP or become our patron! Elon Musks defamation lawsuit against Media Matters is shaping up to be one of the worst business decisions the Tesla founder has made in a whilewhich is a kind of accomplishment, given his disastrous time at Twitter/X. In the three days since Musk filed the suit in a U.S. District Court in Texas, legal experts have openly dismissed the legal challenge as an effort to silence the press as well as criticism of Musks behavior and acumen. But few have completely shirked the pressure of the suit more than the man on the receiving end of it, Media Matters President Angelo Carusone. In an interview with The Washington Post, Carusone said that if the lawsuit doesnt get dismissed, the media watchdog will pursue discovery, the wide-ranging legal process by which evidence and information is shared between prosecution and defense and, by way of being utilized in court, could become public recordor fodder for another Media Matters report. Carusone said if it comes to that, Media Matters would seek communications regarding whether executives at the social media company knew internally about the failed safeguards against placing major brand advertisements back-to-back with white supremacist, pro-Nazi content. Carusone also told the Post that they would be seeking other internal communications regarding Musks overt antisemitism on the platform. Media Matterss investigation revealed that X, formerly known as Twitter, was placing ads from reputable companies alongside antisemitic, pro-Nazi posts. The ensuing fallout resulted in the hemorrhaging of some of Xs biggest and markedly safe advertisers, such as Apple, IBM, Disney, Lionsgate, and Paramount. X claimed that the watchdogs report was an inaccurate representation of their algorithm, arguing that Media Matters had artificially manipulated the reports results by following just 30 accounts on the platform and refreshing pages at a higher rate than average. Yet Carusone said that wasnt the point of the investigationinstead, Media Matters proved that X-touted safeguards meant to prevent this from happening either dont exist or are completely ineffective. The point that weve been making is that the filters that they say exist are not working the way that they claim, Carusone told the Post. Ads can and do run alongside extremist content. En Garde In what could be a game-changing moment in crypto history, the co-founder and CEO of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, has stepped down and pleaded guilty to multiple federal crimes. As the New York Times reports, the resignation and guilty plea of CEO Chengpeng Zhao, better known as "CZ" within the industry, are part of a deal the bombastic crypto chief has cut with the US Justice Department, Treasury Department, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, all of which have been investigating the company over money laundering claims for years. Along with CZ, Binance itself has also pleaded guilty to money laundering and sanctions violations, and has agreed to a whopping $4.3 billion in fines and restitution. Zhao will also be paying a $50 million fine as part of his plea deal, and as the NYT points out, insiders say the Justice Department is keeping the option open to seek a stiffer penalty than the 18-month prison sentence advised under federal sentencing guidelines for crimes of this nature. This dramatic turn of events is a severe about-face for the company's now-resigned CEO, who until now had resisted internal calls to resign in the aftermath of mass withdrawal events late in 2022 and earlier this year that saw billions of dollars worth of crypto be taken out of the massive exchange over 24-hour time periods. SOS Zhao's brash assurances that everything was fine in the perennially ablaze room that is the crypto industry included his insistence that the $3 billion mass withdrawal at Binance last December was "very normal market behavior" and that a crypto market crash just a few months prior was "healthy." As with FTX, this stunning admission of guilt does not necessarily spell the end for Binance. As the NYT reports, the exchange is allowed to stay open so long as it accepts a government-appointed monitor to oversee it and makes sure that CZ doesn't get involved with the company again for three years. Although he admitted to having trouble "let[ting] go emotionally" and having "made mistakes," Zhao said in a lengthy paid subscriber tweet on X-formerly-Twitter that he will "remain available to the team to consult as needed, consistent with the framework set out in our US agency resolutions," which kinda sounds like the opposite of letting go. Just six weeks after ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of his own bevy of financial crimes, this latest play in the battle between crypto vs. government regulators has very much come out on the side of the feds though CZ, unlike SBF, seems to be handling it much more savvily. More on crypto: A Former FTX Exec is Launching a New Crypto Exchange How can I love Thanksgiving and yet hate the turkey part of the meal? Its not even that I dont like to eat turkey. I do. I enjoy a turkey sandwich, but only if its made with maple glazed honey coated turkey breast. So basically I like turkey disguised as ham. I also still have the fondest of memories of the Swanson turkey TV dinner from the 70s, which included mashed potatoes, stuffing, a tablespoon of gravy and that cranberry apple dessert that was to truly scrumptious to 7-year-old me. But as for eating a thick slice of turkey on Thanksgiving? Thats a hard pass. As far as Im concerned its taking up valuable real estate on my plate where some more sweet potato casserole could go. The problem with all this is if I made a Thanksgiving dinner without turkey, there would be a mini revolt in my family. So every year I cook a turkey while complaining about cooking a turkey. Oh sure, I could order a pre-cooked turkey, but at this point its become a family tradition and by that I mean the complaining part. Im sure it wouldnt feel like Thanksgiving at all if my kids didnt get to enjoy the dulcet tones of me grumbling in the kitchen about the blasted turkey. Alas, I tried many different ways to prepare a turkey from those heat-resistant oven bags that promise a moist turkey and an easy clean up. But in my case the turkey always ended up with a snap, crackle and pop. So, umm, basically the opposite of moist. As my son once said, Congratulations, youve made turkey dog chews. Ive also done all that salt rubbing and basting nonsense. One Thanksgiving I was exfoliating and moisturizing the turkey so much I felt like I was an attendant at some high-end spa. The biggest bummer was that for all that effort the turkey was still a little dry. This is why I believe gravy was invented. Its a foolproof food lubricant. Yeah, I realize that sounds kind of disgusting so let me go old school and quote my grandmother whose motto was, Theres nothing that gravy doesnt make taste better. The one thing Ive never attempted to do in the hopes of having a resplendent, juicy turkey cooked to perfection is deep fry the bird. OK, full disclosure: I once did try to deep fry a turkey breast and the results were, well, lets say inedible with a side of my life flashing before my eyes. Based on that experience, I would never attempt to cook a 30-pound bird in a vat of cooking oil. Sorry but once a recipe calls for a commercial grade fire extinguisher and elbow length Kevlar insulated gloves that are heat resistant to 932 degrees Fahrenheit, count me out. Ive also been an eyewitness to extended family members frying a turkey and it was horrifying. Heres a lifesaving tip for you: Dont ever put a frozen turkey in 30 quarts of cooking oil. The result will be akin to watching the Hindenburg disaster. Honestly we all need to admit that the turkey is just an unnecessary distraction from the festival of carbs thats gracing the table. Never mind that all the time you spend fussing with the turkey could be put to better use like making more luscious desserts or adding mac and cheese to the menu. So, this Thanksgiving maybe Ill dare to toss tradition to the wind and free the bird in favor of more pies. That sounds like a sweet deal to me. Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com. Blackbeard met his bloody end off the North Carolina coast 305 years ago marking the infamous pirates final battle. During his exploits on the water, Blackbeard took over ships in the Caribbean and blockaded a South Carolina port. But eventually, two ships caught him off guard on Nov. 22, 1718, according to the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Crew members, led by Lt. Robert Maynard, came face to face with Blackbeard for a fight in Ocracoke Inlet, off the Outer Banks barrier islands. The two used swords and fired pistols before another sailor cut Blackbeards throat, according to state historians. Legend says Blackbeard fought on, in spite of bullet wounds and gashed neck, as other British seamen joined in for the kill, historians wrote in a blog post. Even while being stabbed, he yet cocked a pistol to continue the fight as he fell dead. Maynard reportedly decapitated Blackbeard before returning to Virginia with the surviving pirates and the grim trophy of Blackbeards severed head. What else to know about Blackbeard the pirate Blackbeard was born Edward Teach, though historians also have spelled his name Thatch, Thach and Thache. The pirate, whose nickname comes from his facial hair, is believed to have been born in England or Jamaica around 1680, officials said. In 1717, Blackbeard captured a French ship used in the slave trade and renamed the vessel Queen Annes Revenge. He is believed to have targeted ships from the Caribbean to New England, and Ocracoke Inlet was likely a favorite hideout, according to legend. Pirate raids would be beneficial for both the captain and his crew the crew would get shares of the loot, while the captain would add captured sailors to his numbers, enabling him to successfully raid more ships, the National Park Service wrote. Believing North Carolina Gov. Charles Eden hadnt done enough to stop the pillaging, concerned residents turned to Alexander Spotswood, a ruler in Virginia. He put a bounty on Blackbeard and sent Maynard to North Carolina in his attempt to capture the pirate dead or alive, the Queen Annes Revenge Conservation Lab wrote on its website. Blackbeard was one of several pirates operating off North Carolina in the early 1700s, dubbed the Golden Age of Piracy. Vanished like ghosts. Mystery surrounds Outer Banks shipwreck 102 years later Mysterious US Navy vessel washes up on NC Outer Banks, then disappears in the night Papa Johns Pizza will pay a blind man $175,000 to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. According to a release by the EEOC, in 2020, a Papa Johns location in Athens fired a blind man after failing to properly accommodate his service dog while allowing him to work. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] The EEOC complaint said when Michael Barnes applied for the job after hearing the company hired workers with vision impairments, he applied for the job. Barnes, who is legally blind, spoke to the stores manager and was hired. The EEOC lawsuit said Barnes was told by the manager that he would not be able to start the job until his accommodation request for his service dog was approved. Not allowing blind and visually impaired people to travel to and from work in the way that affords them confidence and independence is akin to telling sighted workers who rely on the flexibility and independence of driving that they may not travel to work by car, said Karla Gilbride, the EEOCs general counsel. TRENDING STORIES: Instead of approving the service dog, Papa Johns denied Barness accommodation request and fired him before he worked a single shift, according to the EEOC. The ADA protects workers with disabilities by requiring employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities to afford them an equal opportunity to work. The EEOC is pleased that Mr. Barnes has been compensated and the company agreed to implement training and evaluate its policies to prevent this type of discrimination from occurring again, Marcus G. Keegan, regional attorney for the EEOCs Atlanta District Office, said in a statement. Now, Barnes will receive $175,000 from Papa Johns and the company will be required to train its employees on provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, review its employment policies, and allow monitoring by the EEOC for complaints of discrimination or retaliation. We are glad that Papa Johns has agreed to provide training to its employees and hope that in the future, no other job applicant who uses a service dog will experience the discrimination that Mr. Barnes faced, Gilbride said. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] IN OTHER NEWS: The European Union has prepared a framework to provide Ukraine with long-term security assistance, including the continued provision of weapons, training of Ukrainian troops, and support for Ukraine's domestic defense industry, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 21, citing internal EU documents. The proposed measures will be discussed with EU ambassadors in the upcoming week and with senior EU leadership in December, Bloomberg reported. It aims to build upon the plans for long-term security guarantees presented by the Group of 7 (G7) countries at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July 2023. The proposed G7 security guarantees would entail explicit and long-lasting obligations, as well as bolster Ukraine's ability to resist Russian aggression. They would also cover sanctions, financial aid, and post-war reconstruction. The EU's proposed plans would seek to bolster those of the G7, as well as to assist Ukraine in fulfilling its reform obligations. The proposal comes as it appears likely the EU will fail to deliver on its pledge of one million shells to Ukraine by March 2024. Weapons provisions from the EU would continue to operate under The European Peace Facility, in which member states are reimbursed for military aid sent to Ukraine. However, several EU countries, including Germany, were reportedly hesitant about committing to the four-year, $21 billion plan under the European Peace Facility suggested by the EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, in July 2023. Unnamed diplomats told Reuters in November that some of the member states preferred to allocate funds on a yearly basis instead of committing far in advance. The plan still appears to be receiving pushback, as an unnamed EU diplomat told Bloomberg that there was still disagreement about the terms and that the EU hoped to at least agree on 5 billion euros ($5.4 billion) for 2024. Commitments for future military aid would follow after, the diplomat added. Such a plan would run contrary to the logic of Borrell's proposal, which was to create a more predictable source of funding over several years. Read also: This Week in Ukraine Ep. 34 Whats wrong with Hungary? Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. The European Commission has submitted a draft decision to its member states on providing Ukraine with long-term security commitments. Source: Bloomberg, as reported by European Pravda Details: The EU ambassadors will discuss the draft document this week, followed by the leaders of the member states discussing it at a summit next month. Bloomberg reported that this project will also serve as the basis for consultations between Kyiv and the Group of Seven (G7) countries. During the NATO summit in Vilnius, the G7 members agreed to hold talks with Ukraine on bilateral security commitments intended to deter future Russian aggression. For its part, Ukraine has committed to pursuing a range of reforms, including in the law enforcement, judicial, security and defence sectors. Some of Kyiv's key allies are seeking to conclude bilateral agreements this year. The EU framework document aims to rely on these bilateral agreements and includes the following proposals, as described by Bloomberg: "A predictable, efficient, sustainable and long-term mechanism for the provision of military equipment to Ukraine" that mobilises the European defence industry Providing training to Ukrainian armed forces Greater cooperation with the Ukrainian defence industry to boost capacity and align standards Strengthening Ukraines ability to counter cyber and hybrid threats as well as disinformation Supporting Ukraines de-mining efforts and addressing contamination caused by explosive remnants Helping Ukraine with its reform agenda relating to its EU accession process, as well as boosting its ability to monitor stocks of firearms, light weapons and ammunition and counter any illegal trafficking Supporting the countrys energy transition and nuclear safety efforts Sharing intelligence and satellite imagery. The document states that weapons support will further be provided through what is known as the European Peace Facility. This mechanism reimburses EU member states for the weapons they supply to Ukraine. However, the EU's original plan to provide 20 billion over four years to cover the cost of weapons for Kyiv is at risk of collapsing as some member states, including Germany, have been unable to agree on the terms, an EU diplomat said. Instead, member states hope to at least agree on 5 billion for next year, with commitments for further support to follow, said the diplomat, who spoke anonymously. Notably, Hungary regularly blocks the disbursement of funds from the European Peace Fund. These discussions are taking place when the EU fails to fulfil its promise to provide Ukraine with one million rounds of artillery ammunition by March 2024. Support UP or become our patron! A Bloomington man has received a 30-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to sexually exploiting a child. Joshua Ray Vestal, 40, of Bloomington pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child for forcing a teen younger than 16 to engage in sexual conduct with him. Evidence in the case proved Vestal filmed the conduct with his cell phone. Four days after the 2022 incident occurred, Vestal's girlfriend discovered a video and nude images of the child on Vestals phone. She identified Vestal and the child in the video. She sent the images and video to her phone to preserve the evidence, then presented what she had found to Vestal. When confronted, Vestal submerged her phone in a toilet, according to evidence presented in the case. Vestal reset his own cell phone and took out the SIM card in an attempt to erase the images. But when the witness got a new phone, the video had transferred to the device. When presented with the video the next day, Bloomington Police Department officers arrested Vestal. He pleaded guilty Nov. 13 in U.S. District court to sexual exploitation of a child. A second charge, possession of matter containing a visual depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, was dismissed. District Judge Matthew P. Brookman recommended two low-security prisons for Vestal, one in Elkton, Ohio, and one in Milan, Michigan. Vestal must participate in substance abuse treatment, trauma-based mental health treatment, sex offender treatment and anger management classes while incarcerated. He will be on supervised probation for life and must register as a sex offender. Court records show that Vestal has served three stints in state prison since 2002 for robbery, burglary and being a violent felon in possession of a handgun. This defendant not only sexually abused a vulnerable child entrusted in his care, he then attempted to conceal his heinous acts by destroying the evidence, Zachary A. Myers, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said in a news release. The serious sentence imposed in this case will ensure that children are protected from this predator." Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967. This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Joshua Ray Vestal sentenced to 30 years for child exploitation Jacquelyn Huff, left, with Homer Glen co-workers and Kris Pasquini and Alana Charboneau in a sunflower field. (Village of Homer Glen) A GoFundMe account set up to help with funeral arrangements for Homer Glen employee Jacquelyn Huff, who was killed by her husband Sunday, and to benefit their 6-year-old son had raised nearly six times its goal Wednesday from nearly 300 donors. The GoFundMe account for Jacquelyn Fonte was set up by her sister-in-law, Kristin Fonte, who stated on the page Jackie was such a bright light in so many lives. Anyone who knew her understood how lucky they were to be her friend. Advertisement Jacquelyn Huff was the community events coordinator for Homer Glen and responsible for putting on many of the festivals, activities and special events village residents enjoy. The flag outside Village Hall was lowered Monday in her honor. Jacquelyn Huff at HomerFest. (Village of Homer Glen) The Will County sheriffs office said Tuesday night that Jacquelyn, 38, was shot three times in the head by her husband, Michael Huff, 47, a sergeant who worked more than 20 years for the Glendale Heights Police Department. Michael Huff died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head, the sheriffs office reported. Advertisement Police were called to the 13600 block of Shannon Drive in Homer Glen at 5:46 p.m. Sunday. Police said two children, ages 6 and 18, were home at the time, and the 18-year-old heard the shooting and called 911. Neither child witnessed the shooting, police said. Police and the Northwest Homer Fire Department responded and confirmed that both Huffs had died. The sheriffs office had responded to the Huff residence on three prior occasions, police said. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy > The first call was in 2020, when the family was out of town and requested a check on the residence after they received a notification a motion alarm went off. The second call was Oct. 14, when Michael Huff contacted the sheriffs office saying he was a victim of a battery after a fight with a family member who did not live at their home, the police statement said. Jacquelyn Huff celebrated her one-year anniversary as communtiy event coordinator for Homer Glen this month. (Village of Homer Glen) The following day, the sheriffs office was summoned by Jacquelyn Huff so she could remove items from the residence, police said. Will County Circuit Court records indicate the couple has been going through divorce proceedings since Oct. 20. The first appearance in court was Nov. 1 with a second date set for Jan. 18. Advertisement The sheriffs office urged residents who know somebody facing a domestic violence situation to call the Groundwork Domestic Violence hotline at 815-729-1228 or the Illinois Domestic Violence Helpline at 877-863-6338, and for anybody struggling with mental health issues or thoughts of suicide to call 988. The 988 Lifeline provides around the clock free and confidential support for people in distress. A memorial Mass for Jacquelyn Huff will take place at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 29, at St. Matthew Church, 155 Glen Ellyn Road, Glendale Heights. Michelle Mullins is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown. BofA says the TMX expansion and Coastal GasLink projects will benefit Canadian oil and gas stocks in an otherwise tough year for the sector. A pipe yard servicing government-owned oil pipeline operator. (REUTERS/Jennifer Gauthier) (Jennifer Gauthier / reuters) Canadian oil and gas could be a bright spot for energy investors in 2024, according to Bank of America Securities analysts eyeing a challenging year ahead for the sector south of the border. BofAs recent 2023 Global Energy Conference in Houston, TX saw the highest-ever attendance from Canadian companies, analysts led by Doug Leggate noted in research published on Monday. Following meetings with executives from Imperial Oil (IMO.TO)(IMO), Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO)(CNQ), and Tourmaline Oil (TOU.TO), they see stronger prices for Canadian producers next year, thanks to improving pipeline capacity. The Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project, stretching from Alberta to British Columbia, is expected to start operating in the first quarter of 2024. Its set to ship an extra 590,000 barrels per day of crude to the West Coast. Earlier this month, TC Energy (TRP.TO)(TRP) said its Coastal GasLink project is mechanically complete. The pipeline is set to deliver natural gas from northeastern B.C. to the LNG Canada facility in Kitimat, B.C. Leggate says the macro outlook for oil in 2024 will remain a story of Saudi Arabia and OPEC+ intervention to support prices, versus demand concerns, and rising supply from the United States and Guyana. Canadian crude trades at a discount to the U.S. benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (CL=F). With a backdrop that frankly sets up a challenging year ahead for the broader energy sector, we see 2024 demanding a nimbler sector positioning that keeps stock selection at the core of sector strategy, Leggate wrote. Increasingly, we see Canadian oils displacing mid-cap E&Ps (explorers and producers) as the incremental investment opportunity to leverage commodity outlook where the backward-dated price structure points to a challenging year ahead for the U.S. oils. He says backwardation, when the spot price is higher than the futures price, looks like a permanent new normal for oil markets, and a headwind to sector valuations. Despite those headwinds, Leggate has buy ratings on shares of Suncor (SU.TO)(SU), Imperial, and Canadian Natural Resources. Several Canadian oilsands companies reported third-quarter financial results in recent weeks. Leggate says the sector's performance has been "arguably overwhelmed by continued deterioration in oil prices." WTI futures fell more than five per cent on Wednesday as OPEC+ announced a four-day delay to its upcoming meeting, without disclosing a reason. The new date of Nov. 30 clashes with the start of the 2023 UN climate summit, commonly known as COP28, set to be held in Dubai. Jeff Lagerquist is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jefflagerquist. Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android. Mississauga Mayor and Ontario Liberal leadership hopeful Bonnie Crombie was pressed while at a mosque in Hamilton. pic.twitter.com/Me3iR18pPj Ahmar Khan (@AhmarSKhan) November 21, 2023 Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie faced stern questions from community members during a Sunday night visit to a Hamilton mosque over her stance on the current situation unfolding in Gaza, which has been rocked by more than six weeks of Israeli bombardment. Crombie, who is a frontrunner for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership, was told by a voice off camera in a video posted to social media that she will "not get the Muslim vote," as others urged her to "condemn Israel" over "the killing of innocent babies." "Will you make one tweet," another voice pleaded. "It takes 10 seconds to make one tweet to condemn Israel killing innocent babies." Hamilton Muslims call out Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie for not calling for a ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/tabY0ypLNP Hussein E (@therealhebrahim) November 20, 2023 Crombie answered that she would put out a statement on social media in which "we will ask for permanent peace and for the killing to stop." This post on X, formerly known as Twitter, was published a day later. Yesterday, I was invited by members of the Muslim community in Hamilton to attend a meeting at the Hamilton Mountain Mosque and listen. I was grateful for the invitation and for the opportunity to hear firsthand the concerns of the community during this extremely difficult time. Bonnie Crombie (@BonnieCrombie) November 21, 2023 In the statement, Crombie writes: "I would like to appeal for all killing to stop and for hostages to be released, for the war to end, and for peace efforts to resume." My prayers are not just for the Middle East but also for all of us at home. Bonnie Crombie was at the Hamilton Mountain Mosque to 'listen' Bonnie Crombie is confronted over her 'weak' stance on Gaza during a meeting with Canadian Muslims at a Hamilton Mosque (AK/X) Crombies campaign told Yahoo News Canada she was invited by the Muslim community of Hamilton to listen and that is exactly what she did. Bonnie is grateful for the invitation and for the opportunity to hear firsthand the concerns of the community during this extremely difficult time, Crombies team said in a statement shared with Yahoo News Canada. Bonnie Crombie is up against Ted Hsu, Yasir Naqvi and Nate Erskine-Smith for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership, voting for which will begin next week with results expected Dec. 2. Ontario Liberal Party leadership hopefuls (left to right) Ted Hsu, Yasir Naqvi, Bonnie Crombie and Nathaniel Erskine-Smith are seen in a composite image of four photographs respectively taken in Toronto, on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022; in Ottawa on Friday, Dec. 9, 2022; in Mississauga, Ont. on Wednesday, June 14, 2023; in Ottawa on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick, Justin Tang, Chris Young, Patrick Doyle (The Canadian Press) Canadians react: Crombie blasted for 'nonsense,' 'weak stance' over Gaza at mosque Clips of Crombie from her Sunday evening appearance at a Hamilton mosque were quickly re-shared on social media, with many unhappy over her "weak stance" in refusing to call for an outright ceasefire in Gaza. So proud of our Muslim brothers and sisters in Hamilton. I am wondering what was the public statement Bonnie Crombie made when Sara Jama the Hamilton elected member of the parliament was kicked out of the NDP for calling for a ceasefire and trying to call the Ontario parliament https://t.co/K6RpLztzWR Bahira Abdulsalam PhD PEng (@BahiraR) November 20, 2023 : Will you condemn Israel bombing children? : I hear you. I see your passion. Youre hurting. : Were not children. Were grown ups. Dont talk down to us anymore. Or you will not get the Muslim vote. A+ response to the we-see-you nonsense! https://t.co/xyfpaJ2OQB Nabila Idris (@NabilaIdris) November 22, 2023 (Un)Followed someone who thought her response here earned her the Premiership Jessa (@Jessa_McLean) November 21, 2023 She said Palestine in person but couldnt reflect it in her statement. Shame on you @BonnieCrombie. There is no two sides when it comes to genocide. https://t.co/d6bmP9zh4B pic.twitter.com/bMkZt2Icgs Wala (@falasteeniah) November 21, 2023 No where does she say ceasefire. No where does she acknowledge Israel as the perpetrator for atrocities. She can play dress up at home and leave our mosques alone. https://t.co/sAEyLmFFXB Ujyara (@UjyaraFarooq) November 21, 2023 The Mississauga, Ontario and Canadian public is only looking for clear, outright, loud and resounding leadership calling on an immediate ceasefire and the expulsion of all Israeli diplomats and the commencement of war crimes proceedings against the state of Israel at this point. https://t.co/A7dEUUjjN7 Arshad Khan (@arshadfilms) November 21, 2023 Canadians react: Crombie commended for 'right move' At least one user on X suggested Crombie had the difficult task of trying to appeal to all sides in this time. It's impossible for politicians to be able to satisfy the diaspora politics of all their potential voters. There's 160 languages spoken in Toronto alone. Appealing to universal and Canadian human rights principles is the only right move, and Crombie does this well here: https://t.co/2zb8Hg5r8l Kashif Pirzada, MD (@KashPrime) November 21, 2023 Polling shows more Canadians want ceasefire in Gaza; leaders not keeping up Crombie's night at the Hamilton mosque was not the first time a Canadian politician had to face the music over their refusal over calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Just last week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was chased out of a Vancouver restaurant by pro-Palestine demonstrators who confronted him with ceasefire now chants at the downtown venue. A House of Commons petition started one month ago has broken the record for most signatures ever for an e-petition, with more than 280,000 Canadians signing. It calls on Trudeau to demand an immediate ceasefire as Israeli bombardments have killed more than 13,000 Palestinians. The most recent polling from Mainstreet Research found 71 per cent of Canadians support a ceasefire. A freeze on the cap on local housing allowance (LHA) rates will be lifted from April next year - sturti Hundreds of thousands of landlords will receive a cash injection worth 1.3bn next year in a move that will protect property owners from tenants who are at most risk of falling into arrears. A freeze on the cap on local housing allowance (LHA) rates will be lifted from April next year, the Treasury announced. This means the Governments contribution to the rent of 1.6m social tenants living in the private rental sector will increase by an average of 800 per year, Jeremy Hunt said. It will be equivalent to 7.8bn in housing benefits payments over five years and is a boost for 1.6m rental properties, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). LHA rates determine the amount of housing benefits that social tenants receive and are based on a level of market rents in a local area. Previously, they were capped at the 30th percentile of rents in a local area. This meant a tenant could get all of their rent covered if they lived in the cheapest 30pc of properties in an area. But the rates have been frozen since April 2020, meaning they are based on September 2019 rents. Record rent growth over the last few years means that now only one in 20 homes newly listed for rent are fully covered by LHA, according to Zoopla. Mr Hunts announcement means that the rates will be raised next year to cover the cheapest 30pc of properties. The increase will reduce the squeeze on tenants and provide relief for landlords who are grappling with high mortgage bills. Tenants on housing benefits make up 38pc of the private rental sector. Many of these low income earners have to make up the difference in rent themselves, and are at risk of falling behind on payments. In many places the increases in payments will be worth hundreds of pounds a month. In 36 local authorities, housing benefits payments for a two-bedroom home will rise by more than 33pc, Zoopla said. In Cambridge, high levels of rent growth since 2019 mean rents payments for two-bed properties will rise by 55pc, or an extra 463 per month, the rental website said. Tom Wernham, research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the move will alleviate the huge affordability pressures facing private renters on benefits. However, the move will be a one-off, with the rates frozen again from 2025-26 onwards. This is only a temporary solution, Mr Wernham said. Recommended The five key rules that every buy-to-let landlord must know Read more 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. Slovak truckers have temporarily unblocked a border checkpoint at the Slovakia-Ukraine border, allowing cargo to pass through, Ukraine's State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko told Ukrainska Pravda on Nov. 22. The temporary lift came after negotiations with Slovak border guards. The crossing between Vysne Nemecke in Slovakia and Uzhhorod in Ukraine began to be blocked on Nov. 21 by the Slovak Truckers Union. However, Demchenko said that 250 trucks crossed through the checkpoint in both directions over the past 24 hours on Nov. 21, albeit 100 fewer than is typical for the previous days. Slovak truckers threatened on Nov. 16 to join Polish truckers in blocking border crossing points with Ukraine to protest the EU's liberalization of transport rules for Ukrainian trucks. Protests on Nov. 11 also forced trucks traveling toward Vysne Nemecke to wait in an 18-kilometer line. Polish protests at the Ukrainian border stretch into their third week, with Ukraine accusing the protesters of causing further harm to its wartime economy. Polish truckers complain that the high number of Ukrainian drivers entering Poland are hauling goods from Poland to other countries, undercutting local businesses that cannot match cheaper Ukrainian prices. Ukrainian officials and industry representatives deny the accusations. Although the protesting Polish truckers said that the blockade would only apply to non-essential goods, Ukrinform reported on Nov. 20 that trucks carrying humanitarian aid or fuel and other essential goods had been on standby at the border for days. Read also: Trucker protests: Unraveling the standoff between Polish and Ukrainian haulers Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. It was a question posed on a private Facebook page that resulted in a retired Boston-area pediatricians being charged this week in Hingham District Court with raping two children and sparked an investigation spanning several generations of former patients. Was it normal for a doctor to insert their fingers in her vagina during a yearly checkup? a woman identified in a Norwell police report as Victim 2 asked the group Oct. 4. The response she received from the post was overwhelming in that what happened to her was not the norm, the report says. But that turned out to be news to another woman, identified in the police report as Victim 1, who said that the same thing had happened to her and that she had been under the impression that it was a normal part of a routine pediatric physical exam. Norwell pediatrician Dr. Richard Kauff is arraigned in Hingham District Court (Greg Derr / The Patriot Ledger via USA Today Network) It was then, police said, that both women realized they had been patients of Dr. Richard Kauff, who had treated children in the town of Norwell for 40 years. By the time Kauff was arraigned Monday, 20 more women and two girls had come forward to accuse him of sexual assault, Plymouth County Assistant District Attorney Jeremy Beth Kusmin said in Hingham District Court on Monday. The number of allegations has been growing exponentially since Kauff was charged on Nov. 2 with raping Victims 1 and 2, Kusmin told the judge. We anticipate dozens more similar charges, Kusmin said, adding that for now Kauff is charged only with assaulting Victims 1 and 2. Kauff adamantly denies the charges, his lawyer, Kelli Lea Porges, told the court. She described her client as a lifelong member of the community. Kauff and his lawyer did not immediately respond to phone requests for comment. Kauff, 68, who is charged with 12 felony counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 and four felony counts of rape of a child with force, was released on $50,000 bail. Prosecutors say Kauff could spend the rest of his life in prison if he is convicted of the alleged crimes, which date from November 1991 to August 2004. Victim 1 and Victim 2 had never spoken before they connected on the Facebook page identified at the arraignment as South Shore Mamas. But in separate interviews with police, both alleged the abuse started when they began seeing Kauff at ages 7 to 8 and continued until they left his practice around ages 18 and 19. Both alleged that Kauff would have them change into paper gowns, lie down on an examination table and then count to three before he would insert his fingers into their vaginas. Its like a rocket ship, Kauff would say, according to the police report. Sometimes Kauff did it while their parents were in the examination room, the women told police. But they could not see what he was doing, because his large frame blocked their view. Kauff became extremely upset when detectives arrived Oct. 11 at his home in Norwell and informed him he was under investigation, the police report said. Dr. Kauff stated that he had practiced medicine for over forty years without a single issue, it said. South Shore Medical Center said it was contacting patients. "These charges are very serious, and we stand ready to assist and cooperate with any investigation," the center said in a statement. Police said that after Kauff was charged, he agreed to stop practicing medicine. His next court appearance is Jan. 11. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com FILE PHOTO: Egyptians boycott pro-Israeli brands in protest of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas FILE PHOTO: Egyptians boycott pro-Israeli brands in protest of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas By Farah Saafan and Suleiman Al-Khalidi CAIRO (Reuters) -On a recent evening in Cairo, a worker cleaned tables in an empty McDonald's restaurant. Branches of other Western fast-food chains in the Egyptian capital also appeared deserted. All have been hit by a largely spontaneous, grassroots boycott campaign over Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip since the deadly Hamas attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Western brands are feeling the impact in Egypt and Jordan, and there are signs the campaign is spreading in some other Arab countries including Kuwait and Morocco. Participation has been uneven with only minor effects seen in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Some of companies the campaign is directed at are perceived to have taken pro-Israeli stances, and some are alleged to have financial ties to Israel or investments there. As the campaign has started to spread, boycott calls circulated on social media have expanded to list dozens of companies and products, prompting shoppers to shift to local alternatives. In Egypt, where there is little chance of people taking to the streets because of security restrictions, some see the boycott as the best or only way to make their voices heard. "I feel that even if I know this will not have a massive impact on the war, then this is the least we can do as citizens of different nations so we don't feel like our hands are covered in blood," said 31-year-old Cairo resident Reham Hamed, who is boycotting U.S. fast food chains and some cleaning products. In Jordan, pro-boycott residents sometimes enter McDonald's and Starbucks branches to encourage scarce customers to take their business elsewhere. Videos have circulated of what appear to be Israeli troops washing clothes with well-known detergent brands which viewers are urged to boycott. "No one is buying these products," said Ahmad al-Zaro, a cashier at a large supermarket in the capital Amman where customers were choosing local brands instead. In Kuwait City on Tuesday evening, a tour of seven branches of Starbucks, McDonald's and KFC found them nearly empty. In Rabat, the capital of Morocco, a worker at a Starbucks branch said the number of customers had dropped off significantly this week. The worker and the company gave no figures. McDonald's Corp said in a statement last month that it was "dismayed" by disinformation regarding its position on the conflict and that its doors were open to all. Its Egyptian franchise has underlined its Egyptian ownership and pledged 20 million Egyptian pounds ($650,000) in aid to Gaza. Asked for comment, Starbucks referred to a statement on its website about its operations in the Middle East that was updated in October. The statement said the company was a non-political organisation and dismissed rumours that it had provided support to the Israeli government or army. Starbucks, which earlier this month reported record revenues for the fourth quarter, said it had nothing further to share on its business. Other Western companies did not immediately respond to requests by Reuters for comment. 'UNPRECEDENTED REACTION' The boycott campaigns have spread in countries where pro-Palestinian sentiment has traditionally been strong. Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel decades ago, but those deals did not lead to a popular rapprochement. The protests also reflect a groundswell of anger over an Israeli military operation that is more destructive than previous offensives, causing a humanitarian crisis and killing 13,300 civilians, according to authorities in Hamas-run Gaza. Israel said about 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, and that about 240 were taken hostage. Previous boycott campaigns in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, had less impact, including those advocated by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. "The scale of the aggression against the Gaza strip is unprecedented. Therefore, the reaction, whether on the Arab street or even internationally, is unprecedented," said Hossam Mahmoud, a member of BDS Egypt. Some campaigners have singled out Starbucks for suing its workers' union over a post on the Israel-Hamas conflict, and McDonald's after its Israeli franchise said it gave free meals to Israeli military personnel. An employee at McDonald's corporate offices in Egypt who asked not to be named said the Egyptian franchise's October and November sales fell by at least 70% compared to the same months last year. "We are struggling to cover our own expenses during this time," the employee said. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the figures the employee provided. Sameh El Sadat, an Egyptian politician and co-founder of TBS Holding, a supplier to Starbucks and McDonald's, said he had noticed a drop or slowdown of about 50% in demand from his clients. UNEVEN TAKE-UP Despite efforts by targeted brands to defend themselves and retain business with special offers, boycott campaigns have continued catching on, in some cases outside the Arab world. In Muslim-majority Malaysia, a worker at a McDonald's in Putrajaya, Malaysia's administrative capital, said the branch was seeing about 20% fewer customers, a figure that Reuters was not immediately able to verify. Ride-hailing app Grab also faced calls for a boycott in Malaysia after the chief executive's wife said she had fallen "completely in love" with Israel during visits there. She later said the posts were taken out of context. The Malaysian arms of Grab and McDonald's said following the boycott calls that they would donate aid for Palestinians. Earlier this month, Turkey's parliament removed Coca-Cola and Nestle products from its restaurants, with a parliamentary source citing a "public outcry" against the brands although no big Turkish company or state agency has cut ties with Israel. Take-up of boycotts has been uneven, with no major impact seen in some countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia. Even where boycotts have a wider following, some people are sceptical they can have much effect. "If we really want to boycott and support these people (Palestinians), we take arms and fight with them...Otherwise, no," said Cairo kiosk owner Issam Abu Shalaby. ($1 = 30.9000 Egyptian pounds) (Reporting by Farah Saafan, Sarah El Safty and Mai ShamsElDin in Cairo, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, Danial Azhar in Kuala Lumpur, Ahmed Hagagy in Kuwait City, Jonathan Spicer in Istanbul; Additional reporting by Deborah Mary Sophia; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) Six people will face murder charges over the death of the man who was attacked on Dale Street Two boys have been charged with murder over the death of a man who passed away almost two months after being stabbed in a city centre. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said the man was one of two who were seriously injured in an attack on Dale Street in Manchester on 16 August. He "sadly passed away in hospital from his injuries" on 9 October, it said. Two 16-year-olds, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have been charged with murder. One of the boys was charged earlier and was remanded to appear at Manchester Magistrates Court on Thursday. The other boy was charged on 16 November and was remanded in custody to appear at Manchester Crown Court on 4 December. He will appear alongside four men - Mohammed Al-Enizi Hameed, 36, of Rusholme; Hussein Muhalhal, 20, of Longsight; Fares Hassan, 21, of Hulme; and Hussein Mouhelhel, 21, of Fallowfield - who have were previously charged with attempted murder and assault. GMP said the men would now face charges of murder and assault. Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, X and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk British Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has pledged $8.7 million to help combat anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom. File Photo by UK Parliamentary Recording Unit for EPA-EFE Nov. 22 (UPI) -- British Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has pledged $8.7 million for programs combatting anti-Semitism over the next three years. "I am deeply concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism in our country," Hunt told the House of Commons, "so I am announcing up to 7 million over the next three years for organizations like the Holocaust Educational Trust to take anti-Semitism in schools and universities." The Holocaust Educational Trust is an organization that helps promote Holocaust education. "Since 1988, the Holocaust Educational Trust has worked with schools, universities and communities around the UK to raise awareness and understanding of the Holocaust," the Holocaust Educational Trust says on its website. Hunt also said the government would provide an additional $3.75 million to the Community Security Trust, which helps support the Jewish community. The government provided 3 million to the organization in October to help protect Jewish community centers such as schools and synagogues. The CST says there were 408 anti-Semitic incidents London in October, while there were 28 recorded in October of last year. "When it comes to anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, we must never allow the clock to be turned back," Hunt told the House of Commons. London Metropolitan Police say they are investigating a number of potential terrorism law violations and that they have made 75 arrests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict. A Brooklyn man claiming self-defense in the slaying of a cousin who intruded his home was chided Tuesday by the victims daughter, who claimed her father was very sickly and hardly a threat. Lashawn Craig, 45, was charged only with weapons possession for fatally shooting his 64-year-old cousin Timothy Jones at his home on Pulaski St. near Malcolm X. Blvd. in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Friday, cops and Jones daughter said. He was on dialysis. He had heart problems and a stent, Jones daughter, Angela Hollins, 35, told the Daily News. I just felt like my cousin [Craig] did have the upper hand. He didnt have to resort to that. She added that her father had recently been living in a nursing home where he was getting physical therapy. It was uncalled for, for a life to be taken, lamented Hollins, an MTA bus driver. Craig, an MTA train operator and Army veteran, was chatting with a neighbor outside his multifamily home after getting home from work on Friday evening. At around 9:35 p.m., Jones appeared and shouted, Wheres my photos? prosecutors said at Craigs arraignment on Monday. Jones daughter speculated the carnage may have stemmed from a disagreement about family photos. This was a family matter, Hollins said. My fathers sister passed away on the 15th [of November], so maybe he wanted those photos. After hearing Jones screaming, Craig stepped into his apartment, grabbed a .40-caliber pistol, and went back outside to resume talking with his neighbor, prosecutors said. Then an alarm went off in his apartment, prosecutors said. Upon hearing the alarm, Craig went back to his apartment, where he allegedly found Jones, wearing a mask and gloves. After demanding Jones leave, Craig saw his cousin reach into his pockets, prosecutors alleged. That led Craig to shoot Jones numerous times, causing his demise, said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny. Jones died at Kings County Hospital. Kenny said it was later determined that Jones was carrying a Taser. I dont think that was a reason for him [Craig] to go get a firearm, Hollins said. I dont think it should have went that far. After the shooting, Craig who had no criminal history called 911, reported the shooting and secured his own gun, which had been stolen from Virginia, Kenny said. The Friday night bloodshed was the culmination of an ongoing dispute between the two relatives, Kenny said. Earlier in the afternoon they had a heated, heated exchange in which Lashawn Craig told us that he felt unsafe. He had a real funny feeling of what Timothy Jones was capable of, Kenny said. And at that point he decided to arm himself with an illegal .40-caliber firearm. Craigs lawyer said Jones had a rap sheet dating to 1987 that included arrests for robbery, grand larceny and domestic violence. The lawyer also noted in court that Jones had previously threatened gun violence against Craig and other family members. Jones survived a shooting on June 16, 2022, when he was shot and critically wounded in his apartment, running from accused gunman Jose Romero, prosecutors say. He was a loving person. He had love for everybody, Hollins said. Craig, charged only with weapons possession, was set free on supervised release without bail after his arraignment Monday. He is set to return to court on Wednesday morning. A Brooklyn woman who allegedly threw hot coffee and yelled Islamophobic slurs at a man of Indian descent and his 18-month-old son has been arrested and charged with multiple hate crimes, according to the New York City Police Department. The arrest was made almost two weeks after a viral video of the incident circulated online. Ashish Prashar, 40, who was wearing a keffiyeh, a black and white Palestinian scarf, was with his son at a Fort Greene playground Nov. 7 when the woman approached him, yelling at him, striking him and throwing her phone and coffee at him, he told NBC New York after the incident. You and your son get away, shes recorded saying in the video. Police said she made anti-Muslim statements directed at the two of them. Hadasa Bozakkaravani, 48, was arrested Tuesday and charged with nine counts, including four hate crimes: assault, assault of a person under 11, reckless endangerment, aggravated harassment and menacing, according to police. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges and was released on her own recognizance. Ashish Prashar. (via NBC New York) Prashar, who recorded the attack and went viral, has been outspoken about Palestinian rights and mass deaths in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war. The keffiyeh he was wearing has been a garment often donned at pro-Palestinian rallies as a show of solidarity. He told NBC New York that the scarf was given to him more than a decade ago in the occupied West Bank by a Christian Palestinian. He said he was holding his child when Bozakkaravani called him a terrorist and began hurling objects at him. If he hadnt put his son down, he said, the child could have been burned by her coffee. This is post-9/11 again, Prashar said. Like every brown person now is a target. Weve been completely dehumanized by our president and our institutions. Bozakkaravanis lawyer did not immediately return a phone call from NBC News. In tweets about the incident, Prashar expressed frustration that the NYPD took two weeks to make an arrest. Police representatives did not respond to NBC News question about why it took so long. No parent should feel unsafe to take their child to a playground because someone decides you are less than human, Prashar said. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com The following items were taken from police and court reports and news releases. An arrest does not constitute a finding of guilt. Alsip TEENS ARRESTED: Two boys, age 17 and 15, were arrested on accusations of aggravated discharge of a firearm and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon following the nonlife-threatening shooting of a man at an apartment complex in the 12600 block of Alpine Drive, police said. The man told investigators he was walking into his apartment about 5 p.m. Nov. 8 when he heard gunshots and realized he had been shot in the lower abdomen, police said. Investigators located the teens inside an apartment and recovered clothing worn by the juvenile suspects as well as a stolen 40 mm Springfield XD-M handgun and a privately assembled 9 mm handgun without a serial number, police said. Advertisement Burbank SEX ASSAULT: A Burbank man was being held without bond Wednesday in Cook County Jail, charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault of a child, according to sheriffs records and the states attorneys office. Burbank officers took Julio Mora, 34, into custody Oct. 20, and said Mora, a registered sexual predator, had been staying at the victims home while formally registering as residing at his parents home in Tinley Park. The Illinois State Police sexual offender registry shows Mora was convicted of child pornography involving a 16-year-old when he was 23. HABITUAL CRIMINAL: A 42-year-old felon who was twice thrown out of a cannabis dispensing store wound up in jail with a Dec. 5 court date, charged with being an armed habitual criminal, according to police and Cook County sheriffs records online. Marco D. Jackson, of Chicago, was kicked out of Star Buds, 7844 Cicero Ave., at 2:15 p.m. Nov. 16 after begging for marijuana from customers and attempting to take an employees necklace, police said. Officers apprehended him at a motel in the 7700 block of Cicero Avenue with five pills of suspected MDMA in his pocket and retrieved a loaded 9 mm handgun from a nearby trash can, police said. Jackson was also charged with illegally manufacturing/delivering a controlled substance, unlawful use of a weapon by a felon, attempted robbery and resisting arrest. He remained in Cook County Jail Wednesday without bond, according to sheriffs records online. Advertisement Crete Township RESIDENTIAL BURGLARY: Jewelry and commemorative quarters were reported stolen Oct. 27 from a home on Finch Lane in Pheasant Lake Estates. Homer Glen ALLEGED FRAUD: A Blue Island man remained in the Will County jail Wednesday after pleading not guilty to unrelated charges of home-repair fraud and defrauding a Homer Glen bank branch, according to Will County circuit court and sheriffs records online. Thomas J. Hoekstra, 58, 2700 block of 139th Street, is charged with theft of $500 to $10,000 by deception, home-repair fraud greater than $1,000 and induced contract theft by deception of more than $1,000 on Dec. 26, and with defrauding a financial institution of $10,000 to $100,000, burglary, theft of $10,000 to $100,000 by control, illegally using stolen identification and possessing a fraudulent drivers license Feb. 25, court records show. He initially appeared in court, but failed to return in April, according to court records. Homewood SHOTS FIRED: A Homewood man accused of shooting at a vehicle Oct. 28 in the 17500 block of Dixie Highway during an argument, police said. Officers took Jermel Chambers, 21, 2100 block of Spruce Road, into custody Oct. 31 at an undisclosed location for aggravated discharge of a firearm, police said. Chambers, who had a handgun with him at the time, was also charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, police said. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday By submitting your email to receive this newsletter, you agree to our Subscriber Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy > FORGERY: John Donohue, 65, the Bronx, New York, was taken into custody Nov. 8 at an undisclosed bank in the 17600 block of Halsted Street on accusations of forgery, identity theft and possessing an illegally altered identification card after he used fraudulent identification while trying to cash a check and withdraw money from the victims account, police said. Officers additionally accused Donohue of illegally possessing a controlled substance when they found undisclosed narcotics in his possession, police said. Monee FUEL THEFT: Obel Corcho-Melgarejo, 45, Miami, Florida, is scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 14 on a two-count felony theft charge, according to Will County circuit court records online. Monee officers arrested Corcho-Melgarejo Oct. 25 on suspicion of illegally purchasing 464 gallons of diesel fuel for $2,092 at the Petro Travel Center, Interstate 57 and Monee-Manhattan Road, with a company business card, police said. He was charged Nov. 15 with the Class 3 felony of stealing $500 to $10,000, court records show. New Lenox Township BATTERY: A Mokena area woman convicted of beating her 78-year-old mother-in-law in 2019 was booked Friday into the Will County jail six months after failing to return to court for sentencing, according to sheriffs and circuit court records online. Nicole E. Vieni, 37, 18700 block of Ruth Drive, was convicted in March of aggravated battery, a Class 3 felony, and two misdemeanors, domestic battery and interfering with a domestic battery report, court records show. Orland Park FATAL CRASH: A Joliet man was killed Monday night in a head-on collision on Southwest Highway just north of Will-Cook Road, police said. Jose Martinez, 48, was driving a Toyota Sienna southwest at about 11 p.m. when he encountered an Oldsmobile Bravada being driven northeast, police said. Martinez passengers and the 31-year-old driver of the Bravada were also taken to a hospital where they were treated for nonlife threatening injuries, police said. DRIVE-BY SHOOTING: Participants in a Nov. 15 evening drive-by shooting targeted the home in the 17500 block of Coronado Drive, police said. No one was struck in the shooting, which occurred at 10:40 p.m., police said. The assailants drove off after firing a handgun multiple times, police said. Advertisement DUI CRASH: Tatianna Rodriguez, 20, Chicago, was charged with drunken driving with a blood-alcohol concentration above the legal limit, illegally transporting alcohol and failing to reduce speed to avoid a collision during a Nov. 7 two-vehicle crash investigation at 151st Street and 94th Avenue, police said. Steger AGGRAVATED ROBBERY: A Crete man eluded police for about 13 hours Nov. 13 before being arrested after the owner of the car he was taking jumped on the hood, police said. Michael C. Dennis, 51, 1400 block of Vincennes Street, Crete, faces charges of aggravated robbery indicating a firearm, vehicular hijacking, driving a stolen vehicle and two counts of possessing a stolen vehicle, according to sheriffs and court records. A Steger officer first saw a man believed to be Dennis checking car doors near Tiverton Lane and Tinbury Place and attempted to stop him, but took cover when the man pulled out what appeared to be a pistol, police said. He ran into the 630-acre Kings Grove Forest Preserve, police said, where officers from Beecher, Crete, Monee, Park Forest, South Chicago Heights and Steger set up a perimeter including a K9 team and deploying a drone equipped with a thermal-imaging camera. At 7:40 a.m., police said Dennis took the car in Cretes Swiss Valley subdivision and drove far enough to determine he couldnt shake the owner off, abandoning it near Ashland Avenue and Steger Road. The Bulgarian parliament ratified on Nov. 22 the agreement to provide armored transport vehicles to Ukraine, together with corresponding armament and spare parts, the Bulgarian News Agency reported. The agreement between the Bulgarian Interior Ministry and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry was supported by 131 Bulgarian lawmakers, with 49 voting against and one abstaining. The deal was signed in Sofia on Aug. 8 and in Kyiv on Nov. 13. The vehicles in question are no longer needed by the country's Interior Ministry, the news agency reported, without specifying the type or the number of the vehicles. Deputy Defense Minister Ivelina Dundakova said that the agreement is implementing the parliament's decision in July to provide Ukraine with additional military-technical support to Ukraine. This support was reportedly meant to include 100 older armored vehicles from the Bulgarian Interior Ministry's stocks. The Bulgarian parliament approved in September a military aid package for Ukraine including small-caliber ammunition and S-300 anti-air missiles. 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. The National Assembly of Bulgaria has ratified an intergovernmental agreement between Sofia and Kyiv, which provides for the supply of 100 written off armoured personnel carriers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Bulgaria to Ukraine. Source: European Pravda with reference to Nova.bg Details: With this decision, Bulgarian MPs ratified the agreement between their Foreign Ministry and the Defence Ministry of Ukraine about "free supply of armoured vehicles". The decision was supported by 152 MPs from the coalition parties GERB-SDS, We Continue The Change, Movement for Rights and Freedoms and There Is Such a Nation. Socialists and the members of pro-Russian Revival party voted against the decision. The agreement was made back in July of this year, signed in Sofia in August and on 13 November in Ukraine. Since it concerns military and technical cooperation, it must be additionally ratified by the Bulgarian Parliament. The agreement was signed with a warning that it started to be applied even before the ratification. Earlier, Bulgaria said that the APCs would be sent to Ukraine in September-October. As we reported earlier, APCs were in storage of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Bulgaria since the 1980s. This is the first case when the Bulgarian side supplied Kyiv with armoured equipment directly, not through mediators as it was doing before. Support UP or become our patron! On the morning the FBI raided then-Ald. Edward Burkes City Hall offices in November 2018, four federal agents more than a thousand miles away descended on the home of Houston-area fast food restaurant tycoon Shoukat Dhanani. When Dhanani answered his door that day in Sugar Land, Texas, the agents immediately assured him he was not in any trouble, but said they were investigating Burke and needed to ask him some questions about a Burger King that Dhanani had purchased and renovated in the 14th Ward, Dhanani told a federal jury in Chicago on Wednesday. After Dhanani invited the agents into his dining room, they showed him photographs of Burke and his longtime ward aide, Peter Andrews Jr., and played him a selection of wiretapped recordings made in the case, according to the testimony. They also asked about a meeting Dhanani had with Burke at the Beverly Country Club over the summer, he testified, and why he felt Burke had tried to push him to hire his private law firm for property tax appeals. What I think I may have said (to the agents) was ... It was my understanding that I would have to give the alderman the property tax business in order for us to get our permit or get going, Dhanani testified. Dhananis turn as one of the key witnesses in Burkes historic corruption trial came nearly five years to the day after he was questioned by the FBI at his home. When he was asked Wednesday about his mood the day the agents came to his door, Dhanani paused and said, Well I was relieved when they got to the house and they said Im not in trouble. Then he added, Otherwise I wouldnt have let them in, prompting spectators and some jurors to break into laughter. The testimony by Dhanani, CEO of the Texas-based company that owns about 150 Burger Kings in the Chicago area, is one of the centerpieces of the corruption allegations against Burke, who is accused of using his official position to extract private legal business from developers. Through Dhananis account, as well as in emails and wiretapped calls, prosecutors painted a picture of Burke actively on the prowl, openly pitching his firm, Klafter & Burke, while wining and dining Dhanani, and sending Andrews to play hardball and shut down the remodeling work when Dhanani initially failed to come through. But attorneys for Burke and Andrews have tried to flip the script in cross-examination, painting Dhanani as a savvy, self-made businessman who was making an effort to ingratiate himself with Burke as he tried to expand his footprint in Chicago. Burkes attorney, Joseph Duffy, also repeatedly pointed out that Dhanani never actually gave Burke any legal business, and the renovation of the Burger King on South Pulaski Road eventually was completed without any more interference from Burke. On Wednesday, Duffy drilled down on Dhananis testimony on direct examination that he had a gut feeling that the reason for the work stoppage at the Burger King was because he hadnt hired Burkes firm. Duffy suggested Dhananis intuition was flat-out wrong. Nobody called you and told you that the job was being stopped because you had not provided work, did they? Duffy asked, to which Dhanani replied, No. Dhanani agreed with Duffy that Burke had been cordial in all of their phone conversations and meetings, including a December 2017 repast at the stately Union League Club on West Jackson Boulevard, where his son, Zohaib Dhanani, was so impressed he asked about becoming a member. When Shoukat Dhanani was asked if he recalled his son saying after the meeting that Burke was a gracious host and he wanted to buy him a nice bottle of rum, Dhanani was initially foggy, but eventually said, Mmm, kind of rings a bell, yes. Duffy also attempted to put a different spin on Burkes request that Dhanani attend a January 2018 fundraiser at his home for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who at the time was considered a front-runner in the race to replace outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Prosecutors painted the episode as another example of Burke as an old-school politician getting someone with business at City Hall to do his bidding. Under questioning by Duffy, however, Dhanani agreed that he wanted to attend the fundraiser because he was interested in rubbing elbows with some of Chicagos movers and shakers. At the time, his interest had also been piqued by Burkes mention of a lucrative opportunity to open up Burger Kings at Midway Airport. Duffy replayed for the jury the January 2018 call where Dhanani told Burke he couldnt make it to the fundraiser due to bad weather in Houston. After Burke said theyd do it some other time, Dhanani abruptly brought up the Midway Airport proposal. What do we need to do, or should we do to get started to see if we can get in (to Midway) with the Burger Kings? he said. Seemingly caught off guard, Burke replied , I cant um, I cant, uh, talk, uh, now with you, Im in a situation. Burke said they could talk about the deal next week. But Dhanani confirmed when asked by Duffy that Burke never got back to him, and the proposal died on the vine. On redirect, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Streicker hit back at the notion that Burke was the one being played. Had you ever had a public official who had authority over the area where your restaurant was located take you to lunch? Streicker asked. No, I dont think so, Dhanani said quietly. Ever had a public official ask you to hire his private business after you sought approval for a permit? Streicker said. No, Dhanani testified. Burke, 79, who left the City Council in May, is charged with 14 counts including racketeering, federal program bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity. Andrews, 73, is charged with one count of attempted extortion, one count of conspiracy to commit extortion, two counts of using interstate commerce to facilitate an unlawful activity and one count of making a false statement to the FBI. A third defendant, real estate developer Charles Cui, was not charged as part of the Burger King scheme. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall ended testimony early on Wednesday due to the Thanksgiving holiday. The trial is scheduled to resume Monday. In his questioning of Dhanani on Wednesday, attorney Todd Pugh, who represents Andrews, pointed out that Dhanani had no idea who Andrews was when he first came to Chicago to meet Burke in June 2016. Even after dealing with Andrews over the permit squabble, Dhanani struggled to remember him. In fact, when the FBI showed him a photo of Andrews at his home in 2018, he said he didnt recognize him. Pugh repeatedly referred to Dhananis two meetings with Burke as the private club discussions, stressing that Andrews was not there and what was said was between Dhanani and Burke. He also spent a large portion of his cross-examination on whether Dhanani realized that under Chicago ordinances, his Burger King had failed to secure the driveway permits they needed to begin renovation, as Burke and Andrews suggested in their meeting. He showed Dhanani stamped documents showing that his company wound up filing three applications for driveway permits on Nov, 14, 2017, more than five months after Burke first raised the issue. Dhanani testified he stayed out of the day-to-day details of the renovations and that to this day, hes still unsure whether driveway permits were needed. Thats not how we do it in Texas anyway, he said. In your mind you believed, your words not mine, Driveway permits were BS, right? Pugh asked. Yes, Dhanani said. jmeisner@chicagotribune.com rlong@chicagotribune.com mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) A burn ban will be lifted at 5p.m. on Wednesday for western North Carolina counties according to the NC Forest Service. The counties include: Alexander Alleghany Ashe Avery Buncombe Burke Caldwell Catawba Cherokee Clay Cleveland Gaston Graham Haywood Henderson Iredell Jackson Lincoln Macon Madison McDowell Mecklenburg Mitchell Polk Rutherford Swain Transylvania Watauga Wilkes Yancey Burn bans were in place for the counties because of hazardous forest fire conditions in the area. The first ban took effect for 14 counties on Nov. 5. The second ban took effect in the additional 16 counties on Nov. 8. Burn ban for NC mountains as 2 wildfires scorch 1,585 acres While recent rainfall has decreased fire danger and provided some relief from persistent dry conditions, I cant stress enough how important it is for the public to be careful, ready and responsible when burning outdoors, said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. Almost all wildfires in this state are human caused, which means most wildfires in this state are preventable. Do your part. Check for restrictions before burning. Get a valid permit. Check the weather, and never leave any outdoor fire unattended. Nearly a third of NC under burn ban due to forest fire conditions Burn permits will be available starting at 5 p.m. in all counties. Burn permits are available from any open authorized permitting agent or online. Previously granted permits were canceled because of the ban. A new permit must be obtained. Rain could be on the way for western NC wildfires Residents with questions regarding their specific county can contact their N.C. Forest Service county ranger or their county fire marshals office. To find contact information for your local NCFS county ranger, visit NC Forest Service. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to CBS17.com. With Tuesdays storms bringing several inches of rain across North Carolina, the states forest service announced Wednesday that burn bans will be lifted. At 5 p.m. Wednesday, the North Carolina Forest Service will lift the ban on open burning in 30 counties. The burn ban was issued earlier this month because of hazardous conditions for forest fires. Before Tuesdays rain, the state went about a month without any significant rainfall. In recent weeks, several forest fires have broken out in western North Carolina, including the 750-acre Sauratown Mountain Fire in Stokes County and the Poplar Drive Fire in Henderson County. But despite the welcome wetness, North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler says its important to not let your guard up. While recent rainfall has decreased fire danger and provided some relief from persistent dry conditions, I cant stress enough how important it is for the public to be careful, ready and responsible when burning outdoors, Troxler said in a statement on Wednesday. According to the forest service, most wildfires in the state are caused by humans. You can obtain a burn permit by clicking this link. (WATCH: Burn ban in effect for 14 NC counties) Severe turbulence during a flight this week led to crew members on board being taken to hospital in Australia. The incident occurred on a plane operated by Australian low-cost airline Bonza, flying across the state of Queensland between Rockhampton and the Sunshine Coast on Tuesday (21 November). The extent of the injuries and the exact number of people hurt has not been confirmed. The Independent has contacted the airline for further information. Tim Jordan, chief executive of Bonza, confirmed that no customers were hurt. A flight from Rockhampton to the Sunshine Coast experienced unexpected and severe turbulence leading some Bonza crew members needing to be assessed at Sunshine Coast University Hospital, he told The New Daily. The priority is always the safety of our staff and customers, Mr Jordan added, stating that staff were able to return home last night. The mid-air fright caused the cancellation of a flight from the Sunshine Coast to Mildura, in Victoria, while the aircraft was assessed. Bonza is a new airline, having only started operations in January 2023. It has five aircraft in its fleet, according to Planspotters.net, and serves domestic and regional routes across Australia. Its not the only airline to have experienced severe turbulence this year. In June, a British Airways flight from Singapore to London Heathrow hit such severe turbulence over the Bay of Bengal that the plane had to return to its starting point to check for possible damage. A mother-of-two described her terror after the plane was hit by the worst turbulence in years as it was flying at 30,000ft. She said it felt like she fell out of the sky. Two months earlier, eight passengers and two crew members required medical assistance after severe turbulence struck a plane making its way to Portugal. The moment the turbulence first hit was caught on camera, showing people and food being thrown across the cabin. Westchester County Judge Susan Cacace has submitted retirement papers to step down from the bench, paving the way for her to run for Westchester District Attorney. Cacace has not formally announced her candidacy and her resignation is not effective until Dec. 7. But she has widely been expected to enter the race. Because judges cannot remain on the bench while running for another public office, Cacace has been mum on her plans since DA Mimi Rocah announced in late October that she would not be seeking a second term. Westchester Judge Susan Cacace has announced she is stepping down from the bench effective Dec. 7, 2023 and is widely expected to be running for Westchester District Attorney. Cacace would be the fourth Democrat to enter the race. Former Westchester prosecutor Adeel Mirza of New Rochelle and civil rights lawyer William Wagstaff III of Mount Vernon registered campaign committees with the state Board of Elections in recent months and Yorktown resident Sheralyn Pulver Goodman, a longtime public defender who now runs the county's Independent Office of Assigned Counsel, has also said she is running. David Szuchman of Mamaroneck, a former Manhattan prosecutor now an executive at PayPal, is also said to be considering a run for DA. Suzanne Berger, the Democratic party chairwoman, said she was aware that Cacace intended to step down from the bench but did not expect any announcement about the DA's race until she was no longer a judge. Democrats hold a nearly 3-to-1 advantage among registered voters in Westchester and the party is expected to endorse a candidate for DA in February. No Republican has entered the race yet. Cacace was a prosecutor in the DAs Office for 14 years before joining her husband in the law firm Cacace & Dibbini. Two years later she was elected a county court judge and she won re-election in 2015. She has spent the past several years presiding over the Sex Offense Court. The 59-year-old Democrat lives in Bronxville but has deep institutional ties in Yonkers where she grew up. The Cacace Justice Center, the police and court building on South Broadway, is named for her late father, Robert Cacace, who was the chief administrative judge in Yonkers. Her brother Kevin is a Yonkers school board member and president of the Chamber of Commerce and another brother, Robert, is commissioner of information technology at City Hall. Cacaces name had been among those mentioned as possible candidates in 2016 when then-DA Janet DiFiore stepped down to become New Yorks chief judge. But she kept her judgeship as it became clear Democrats would pick Anthony Scarpino, a former judge who won the election later that year. Scarpino was beaten by Rocah in the 2020 Democratic primary, becoming the first DA in 50 years not to serve more than one term. Rocah will be the second. All three announced candidates have said they would remain in the race even if Cacace, a proven vote-getter, entered. "There's no candidate that will stop me from running this race. Period," Wagstaff said. Pulver said she didn't believe any judge could match the varied experience she brings to the race as a former prosecutor and defense lawyer who has management experience as a former deputy commissioner of the Westchester Department of Probation and now administrator of the office that assigns lawyers for the indigent. This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Susan Cacace leaving bench as Westchester DA run is expected Chico officials on Wednesday announced the city was awarded $43 million in compensation for acting as a hub for authorities responding to the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed more than 18,000 homes and other buildings. The compensation award came from the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. Fire Victim Trust, which was established in July 2020 to pay wildfire claims from the utility companys bankruptcy. In June 2020, PG&E pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in connection with the Camp Fire that ravaged the small town of Paradise about 15 miles east of Chico. Much of Paradise was left in ruins. It was the deadliest wildfire in Californias history and the costliest disaster anywhere that year with total damages estimated at more than $16 billion. Chico officials said the Camp Fire compensation largely stems from the destruction of city roads by tens of thousands of vehicles driven by emergency responders, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, utility companies, debris removal services, lumber companies and construction companies. Payments will be made according to Fire Victim Trusts proportional payment schedule. Chico officials expect about $21 million will be received next month as dictated by the bankruptcy court, according to a Chico news release. This money will help Chico continue to support the residents of Chico and Paradise, Chico City Manager Mark Sorensen said in the news release. As the center of response and recovery, we were proud to support Paradise and its residents during the most destructive wildfire in Californias history. In the months after the Camp Fire, Chico served as a base camp for Cal Fire, emergency responders, FEMA, the California Governors Office of Emergency Services, the town of Paradise, Paradise Unified School District, PG&E, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, AT&T, Comcast and several other private and public organizations. Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert! WAS THIS WEEKENDS DEMONSTRATION PEACEFUL PROTEST OR ANTI-ISRAEL? Fallout continued Tuesday from the weekend protest at the California Democratic Partys Sacramento convention. One of the groups that called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war issued a rebuttal to the California Legislative Jewish Caucus statement condemning the protest as anti-Israel. As reported by The Bee, last weekends convention was interrupted by hundreds of protesters demanding ceasefire now. The disruption highlighted a growing rift in the Democratic Party, and prompted a scathing response from the Jewish Caucus. In a weekend statement, the caucus labeled the demonstrators anti-Israel protesters and condemned their chants of from the river to the sea and resistance is justified when people are occupied. It said that the former is a call to wipe Israel off the map and the latter a defense of Hamas deadly Oct. 7 attack, which was the largest mass murder, rape and kidnapping of Jews since the Holocaust. A number of Jewish delegates who were already very anxious attending the convention, given the spike in antisemitism since the October 7 massacre by Hamas now believe it is unsafe to participate at all. We must never allow the Democratic Party to be unsafe for anyone, the caucus said in a statement. The caucus went on to say that while it supports the right to protest loudly and vociferously, it condemned protesters storming through security and shutting down convention activities as completely unacceptable. On Tuesday, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, Sacramento accused the caucus of peddling a false narrative. The group said that the protest was peaceful and that it was the Democratic Party that decided cancel scheduled meetings and receptions. Further, nobody was threatened because of their Jewish identity by the protesters some of whom were themselves Jewish. Members of Jewish Voice for Peace Action show support for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip during a sit-in protest at the California Democratic Party state endorsement convention on Saturday at SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento. There were, of course, no chants calling for the destruction of Israel or justify(ing) the Hamas attack. One person seen distributing an obscene, white supremacist and antisemitic flier at the rally was denounced by the Palestinian MC, then isolated and sent away by the crowd of 2,500, according to the statement. The group said that the phrase from the river to the sea expresses a geographical reality and that resistance to occupation and oppression comes in many shapes and forms including armed self-defense. We mourn all loss of life, and we reject all violent attacks on non-combatants, including those against Israelis and the ongoing, much larger collective punishment (a serious war crime) to which Israel is subjecting the people of Gaza, who were not responsible for Oct. 7, the group said. Signs read From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free at a protest on Saturday at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento, repeating a pro-Palestinian slogan that some consider antisemitic and a call for an eradication of the state of Israel. RUSTY HICKS IS RUNNING California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks on Tuesday confirmed rumors that he intends to seek the Assembly seat being vacated by Assemblyman Jim Wood next year, formally announcing his bid for office. According to Politico, Hicks whose term as party chair isnt up til 2025 might not have to give up that position if he wins election to the Legislature. And Hicks himself did not mention stepping down in his campaign announcement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In the State Assembly, I will bring my experience as an educator, organizer and veteran to help our North Coast neighbors and all Californians, Hicks said in the statement. With his statewide profile and connections, he emerges as a clear frontrunner for the seat. ANOTHER CALIFORNIA CONGRESSIONAL DEM IS RETIRING Via Gillian Brassil... Longtime California Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, announced Tuesday that she will retire from Congress after this term, adding to the generational turnover among Democrats in the states delegation. Im choosing this beautiful season of Thanksgiving to announce that I will not seek re-election, Eshoo said in a video, and I do so with a heart filled with unending gratitude to you, my magnificent constituents. Eshoo, who turns 81 in December, has represented the South Bay for more than three decades in the House. Her safely-Democratic 16th District covers parts of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. First elected in 1992, she was the first woman and Democrat to represent the Silicon Valley district. A long-tenured member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, she worked on the Affordable Care Act as a member of its health subcommittee, where she is the top Democrat. Her office notes several legislative accomplishments, including the creation of the two federal advanced research centers for biosafety and medical cures, health insurance coverage for breast reconstructive surgery, and the electrification of Caltrain. Eshoo, who is Armenian-Assyrian, advocated for and successfully pushed Congress to formally recognize the Armenian genocide during World War I. This resolution not only honors and commemorates my ancestors and all those who perished in the first genocide of the 20th century, Eshoo said when the resolution passed in 2019, but serves as a timely reminder that we must remain vigilant to prevent similar atrocities today. From 1978 to 1982, Eshoo was the first woman to chair the San Mateo Democratic Party. She was elected to the countys board of supervisors in 1982, serving for a decade. For about a year starting in 1981, Eshoo was chief of staff to Assembly speaker pro tempore Leo McCarthy. Eshoo makes a half dozen California House Democrats not seeking re-election. Her announcement comes a day after Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Paicoma, revealed he would not run. In July, California Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Norwalk, announced she would retire when her term ends in Jan. 2025. Three California Democrats Reps. Adam Schiff, Katie Porter and Barbara Lee are leaving the House to compete for the late Sen. Dianne Feinsteins seat. Eshoos retirement means another longtime ally of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, is leaving office. At the beginning of this year, former Rep. Jackie Speier retired. Pelosi, 83, said shed seek reelection in 2024. QUOTE OF THE DAY He is running a shadow campaign. Even people in his own party are saying that a lot of Democrats want to move Biden out. - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, referring to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, in an interview on Fox and Friends, via Mediaite. Best of The Bee: Arnold Schwarzenegger is in full legacy mode, via Ari Plachta . Heres some good news for holiday travelers. You can now travel with your pets on board Amtrak Capitol Corridor trains, according to a Nov. 16 news release, via Sarah Linn . Sparkz, a company planning to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles, is in discussion about opening a battery plant at the former corporate headquarters of rocket manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne in Rancho Cordova. Sparkz officials did not respond to email and phone requests for comment, via Randy Diamond . California Democrats have lots to deal with as they head into 2024 an open U.S. Senate seat, deep divisions over the Israel-Hamas war, a debate over reparations for Black residents, via Lindsey Holden. Private plane flights taken by David Cameron while he worked for the collapsed finance firm Greensill Capital are being examined by tax officials, it has been claimed. Lord Cameron has accepted using Greensill Capitals company plane a number of times but insists the appropriate tax was paid for any benefit received. According to The Guardian, tax officials are looking at flights taken by Lord Cameron that took off or landed close to his homes in Oxfordshire and Cornwall. It is also reported they are examining an offshore trust set up by Greensill that was used to pay Lord Cameron. The Guardian said it had seen flight logs showing that Lord Cameron had taken at least 13 flights to and from Newquay Airport on Greensills private jet. It said there were also two flight logs involving RAF Brize Norton, in west Oxfordshire, said to be for Lord Camerons benefit. The flights are taxable services because they are given to staff as a benefit in addition to any salary. Lord Cameron, now the Foreign Secretary, undertook lobbying work for Greensill between 2018 and 2021, earning as much as 7 million in salary and shares. A parliamentary inquiry subsequently found he had exercised a significant lack of judgment in bombarding ministers and officials in an attempt to secure government Covid loans for Greensill. The lobbying did not succeed. A spokesman for Lord Cameron told The Guardian: As already made clear in David Camerons evidence to the Treasury select committee in May 2021, he did use Greensills company plane a number of times on a personal basis, all for short-haul flights, and tax was paid appropriately for any benefit received. Further, all income received from Greensill has been properly declared to HMRC and all tax paid in full. There is also said to be scrutiny of the method of payment to Lord Cameron. He was paid for his lobbying work through a trust in Guernsey set up by Lex Greensill, an Australian businessman and Greensills founder, who lives in Cheshire. The private flights would constitute a benefit in kind. It is unclear what precisely HMRC would be examining in relation to whether Lord Cameron had paid tax in full on the flights. HMRC said it could not comment on individual taxpayers. 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 passport program organized by Main Street Libertyville promotes shopping at small businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, kicking off the holiday shopping season. (Chloe Hilles/Chicago Tribune) Thanksgiving weekend is busy for Pam Lockowitz, owner of Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in Libertyville. Between the tree lighting on Friday night and Small Business Saturday the following day, she said the chocolate shop is usually elbow room only with lots of families coming in for dessert or picking up treats to give as gifts. Advertisement Lockowitz, who has owned the shop for 22 years, said she does a lot of business during every holiday season, but Small Business Saturday helps people focus on how local businesses support the community. Our employees live here and work here, so its a good way to create economic development strength within the community, Lockowitz said. Advertisement For Main Street retailers in Libertyville, the Saturday after Thanksgiving kicks off what they hope to be a busy holiday season. Small Business Saturday, a shopping holiday introduced by American Express in 2010, encourages shoppers to celebrate small businesses and often brings new faces into the shops in Libertyville. In addition to the national shopping day, Main Street Libertyville organizes a passport program to promote visiting multiple businesses. Customers can pick up a passport and receive stamps at each of the 24 participating businesses. Each participating business donated prizes that will be raffled off to those who turn in their stamped passports. Small Business Saturday is a great sales day for Libertyville downtown businesses and hundreds of passports are returned as a part of the raffle program, said Jennifer Johnson, executive director of Main Street Libertyville, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Main Street America. Were always looking for ways to promote economic revitalization in downtown so this is one of those opportunities, Johnson said. (The program) is really about getting people into the shops so theyll come back and attracting new clientele. Business owners and employees said there is increased foot traffic on Small Business Saturday and helps start the holiday season, which tends to be the busiest time for businesses and shoppers. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson said business has been unpredictable for the locally-owned establishments, but summer and the holiday season have brought an uptick. Advertisement Main Street Libertyvilles responsibility is to support the small business all year long and work to preserve historic downtown, Johnson said. Our downtown business owners are our families, they contribute to the community and they also patronize our community, Johnson said. Shopping locally supports the local town, city and neighborhood through sales taxes, which is used to support public schools, parks, roads and more. A 2022 American Express Small Business Economic Impact Study found for every $1 spent at a local business, over two-thirds, or $0.68, stays in the local community. There are 33.2 million small businesses in the United States, making up 99% of all businesses, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Data from QuickBooks Intuit shows 65% of small businesses annual revenue was generated during the holidays last year. The same survey said this year, small businesses can look forward to a 42% increase in consumer spending over the holiday season. Advertisement Monica Johnson, a sales associate at Oh Olive in Libertyville, said an organized Small Business Saturday program increases foot traffic and brings in new customers from around Lake County who are likely to come back on another day. The Main Street organization does such a great job with promoting the event and throughout the year, there are so many different events that bring people out to the sidewalk, Johnson said. FILE PHOTO: A nurse holds malaria vaccine vials before administering it to an infant at the Lumumba hospital in Kisumu By Amindeh Blaise Atabong YAOUNDE (Reuters) -Cameroon received its first shipment of Mosquirix malaria vaccines manufactured by British drugmaker GSK Plc late on Tuesday, as the nation struggles with the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 600,000 each year globally. A batch of 331,200 doses of the vaccine - also known as RTS,S - was offloaded at Yaounde's Nsimalen International Airport, making Cameroon the first African country to receive the vaccine after pilot programmes in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi. Malaria remains one of Africa's deadliest diseases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), killing nearly half a million children under the age of five. The initial consignment of vaccines will go to 42 out of 203 health districts in the country, Cameroon's health minister Manaouda Malachie said. "We lose many compatriots who die because of this disease. Today, we have a vaccine which comes to add to the panoply of measures already rolled out," Malachie told reporters at Nsimalen. Inoculations will begin next month or early next year, according to a health official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. GSK says more than 1.7 million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have already received at least one dose of the shot, and that it would be rolled out in another nine malaria-endemic countries, of which Cameroon is one, from early next year. A further 1.7 million doses of the RTS,S vaccine are expected to arrive in Burkina Faso, Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone in coming weeks, the global vaccine alliance GAVI said in a joint statement with WHO and UNICEF. Other African countries are set to receives doses over the next few months. UNICEF representative Juliette Haenni said it was a historic moment to protect children. "Children are the most concerned. The ones we are targeting are the six to 24 months old - the most vulnerable," Haenni said. The WHO says a second malaria vaccine developed by Britain's University of Oxford, R21/Matrix-M, will become available by mid-2024. (Reporting by Amindeh Blaise Atabong; Editing by Hereward Holland, Alex Richardson and Christina Fincher) Romana Didulo, supported by her followers, claims to rule over Canada After camping out for two months in an old school in a small Canadian village, a self-proclaimed "queen" and her entourage have left for a farm nearby, although villagers are worried they may return. The presence of the group in Richmound - a village of about 150 people in south-western Saskatchewan - drew a significant police presence, loud protests by locals and at least one arrest. The group is led by Romana Didulo, a QAnon-inspired conspiracy theorist. She and her followers have spent the last few years travelling around Canada in motorhomes and other vehicles. In September, after between 15 and 25 members moved into the former school, villagers held protests, driving around the buildings in their cars and honking their horns. Village officials repeatedly said they wanted the group out, but were stymied by the fact that the school is privately owned by one of Ms Didulo's supporters. The current owner of the building and land, Ricky Manz, was arrested and charged with assault during an altercation in October. The self-proclaimed "Queen of Canada" and her retinue were broadcasting online every day from the school, and last week sharp-eyed villagers noticed a heater propped up on a propane tank in the background of a livestream. It was a possible fire code violation, which prompted an inspection visit by local officials. The inspectors were turned away, a village spokesperson told the BBC, but within an hour the group was packing up and moving out. Reports said they initially went east, but they are now thought to be on a farm to the west of the village. "We're glad they're gone, but everyone's still on edge in case they come back," said the village spokesperson, who asked not to be identified by name for fear of reprisals from the group. Ms Didulo and her followers have threatened to execute local officials and have previously issued threats against medical professionals, journalists and others. A flag belonging to the group was still flying above the school on Tuesday, the spokesperson said. Experts say the locals' concerns are justified. "They are very secretive about what they are doing, but they still care about what's going on in Richmound and talk about coming back," says Christine Sarteschi, a professor at Chatham University in Pittsburgh and an expert on extremism who has been studying Ms Didulo's movement. "They're unpredictable at this point and that unpredictability makes people nervous," she says. The 'Queen of Canada' Ms Didulo, 48, emigrated from the Philippines to Canada as a teenager. She set up several businesses before forming a fringe political party in 2020. The group is a peculiarly Canadian offshoot of the sovereign citizen movement - a broad collection of anti-government groups who refuse to pay taxes and make up their own fake legal systems and are sometimes found in the US. On her most popular Telegram channel she issues decrees to "absolve" her 34,000 followers from bills and debts. The decrees do not have the force of law, however, and several of her followers have lost their homes and vehicles after following her advice. She also spreads anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and ideas related to QAnon - a wide-ranging, unfounded theory that says former US President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. Ms Didulo's group participated in the "Freedom Convoy" protests in Ottawa in early 2022, and last year attempted to arrest police officers in Peterborough, Ontario, accusing them of "crimes against humanity". Six of her followers were arrested instead. Richmound Mayor Brad Miller told a local radio station: "It would be great if we could get them right out of Saskatchewan and keep them going." Ms Didulo and group members did not reply to messages to emails listed on her Telegram channels. An astronaut in a spacesuit. you can see his gloved hands taking a picture in the reflection from his helmet. also in the reflection is earth and a strut of the international space station. Canada is announcing new "astronaut assignments" today (Nov. 22), and you can watch the event live. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will host a livestream at 9:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT) on its YouTube channel and on Facebook, agency officials posted on X (formerly Twitter). The event will be at CSA headquarters near Montreal, Quebec. We will simulcast the announcement here on Space.com when the livestream is available. As with all crew assignments, we won't know who has been assigned to what kind of a mission until the time of the event. There are three active CSA astronauts available: Medical doctor David-Saint Jacques (who flew to the International Space Station for 204 days in 2018-19), fire scientist Jenni Sidey-Gibbons (eligible for her first spaceflight) and Joshua Kutryk (a military pilot eligible for his first spaceflight). The fourth and only other active CSA astronaut will be busy with another, already announced mission for a long while: In April 2023, Jeremy Hansen was assigned to NASA's Artemis 2 mission to fly around the moon no earlier than late 2024. The new announcement this month will mark a rare second time in a single calendar year that the CSA unveils new astronaut assignments. Related: Artemis 2 astronaut Jeremy Hansen says a Canadian will walk on the moon one day Canada has been contributing robotics to NASA human space programs since the late 1970s, starting with Canadarm on the space shuttle, continuing with newer robotics on the ISS and then pledging a next generation of robot to fly on the NASA Gateway space station near the moon when it is completed sometime late this decade. Typically, Canada then receives an astronaut seat (along with a share of science) for its robotics work. The current ISS agreement gives Canada a 2.3% share on the orbiting complex, in exchange for NASA's use of the Canadarm2 robotic arm and the Dextre robotic helper. The agreement equates to a long-duration spaceflight for CSA roughly every six years under current flight rates; the last such excursion was Saint-Jacques' in 2018-19. But newer options have popped up for spaceflight recently. Canada's pledge of Canadarm3 for Gateway in March 2019 gives it a slice of the NASA-led Artemis moon missions as well. (Artemis 2 is the first such assignment with the Canadarm3 scheme, but more are coming eventually.) Additionally, Canada may ask for a short-term mission on ISS based on a memorandum of understanding with Houston-based Axiom Space forged in September 2022. (Axiom runs roughly two-week missions to the ISS using SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, commanded by a former NASA astronaut.) There has been a slew of space funding for CSA in recent years, including a lunar utility vehicle to support Artemis astronauts, a funded commitment to work on the ISS until 2030, and a mini-lunar rover targeted for landing in 2026. Additionally, earlier in 2023 the Canadian government pledged to streamline launching regulations to support the nascent industry; Maritime Launch Services is now expanding a launchpad for eventual orbital flights in coastal Nova Scotia, facing the Atlantic Ocean. RELATED STORIES: Maple leaf to the moon: Canadian Space Agency debuts new logo Canada to launch new satellites to monitor climate change, gather military data What 1st Canadian astronaut on moon mission is learning from his crewmates (exclusive) But given Canada has a small tax base for space funding, meaning government-funded opportunities to fly to space are few, it's rare for multiple CSA astronauts to receive announcements (or spaceflights) around the same timeframe. The only time two CSA astronauts worked together in space was for a few days in 2009, when astronaut Julie Payette (aboard STS-127) visited Expedition 20/21 astronaut Bob Thirsk on the ISS with her space shuttle crew. For a time in the 1990s, additional government space funding allowed CSA astronauts to fly frequently on the space shuttle, when that spacecraft used to bring seven or so astronauts to space at once every few months. Notably, Marc Garneau and Thirsk flew only one month apart in 1996 during STS-77 in May and STS-78 in June, respectively. And Canadian astronauts flew at least once per year between 1995 and 2001 on space shuttle flights. While opportunities for CSA astronaut flights slowed after 2001 as the space shuttle moved towards retirement, short-duration flights took place in 2006, 2007 and 2009. The CSA (along with other space station partners) then shifted to long-duration excursions for the ISS in 2009, 2012-13 and 2018-19, prior to recent changes in world spaceflight that now allow for government-sponsored Axiom Space or moon flights. Canadians have flown to space by other means, to be sure, such as by joining the NASA astronaut corps or by funding their own flights to space. Recent examples include NASA's Drew Feustel (who commanded the ISS in 2018) and entrepreneur Mark Pathy (who paid for his seat aboard 2021's Ax-1 ISS mission). Canadian actor and "Star Trek" captain William Shatner also visited space for a few minutes aboard a suborbital Blue Origin flight in October 2021. Essex Police received reports of suspicious activity and a cannabis smell from the property Police said they discovered more than 400 cannabis plants at an empty house after a tip-off from nearby residents. Community policing teams and a dog section entered the property in St Lawrence, near Maldon in Essex, on Tuesday morning. Essex Police said residents had reported suspicious activity and the smell of cannabis. No arrests were made but the force said it appeared to have been lived in recently. The discovery was made in a quiet cul-de-sac in St Lawrence, police said Several rooms were converted to grow the plants, with heat lamps, blackout blinds and ventilation equipment, officers said. Sgt Matt Dalby added: "The team will continue to target those who are profiting from this illegal trade. It will not be tolerated." The force did not say whether it was tracing any suspects or was appealing for information. Follow East of England news on Facebook, Instagram and X. Got a story? Email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp 0800 169 1830 A man who prosecutors said led a violent mob against police during the 2021 Capitol insurrection has been convicted of multiple felonies, after representing himself in court with what the judge reportedly called a gobbledygook defense. Taylor James Johnatakis, of Kingston, Washington, was convicted by a federal jury in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday of seven charges for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. His three felony offenses were for obstructing an official proceeding; civil disorder; and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers. His four misdemeanor convictions were for entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building; and engaging in an act of physical violence in a Capitol building. Rioters loyal to then-President Donald Trump are seen storming the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. Rioters loyal to then-President Donald Trump are seen storming the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors said Johnatakis directed a crowd of rioters to grab metal bike racks and thrust them against a line of police officers who were attempting to protect the Capitol. At least one of the officers was injured, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Johnatakis told the judge that he wanted to accept full liability for the charges, but he refused to plead guilty. He argued that he is a sovereign citizen exempt from U.S. law, according to NBC News. I have repented all my sins, he reportedly said while asking the judge to discharge the case against him. The judge summarized Johnatakis sovereign citizen claims as bullshit and gobbledygook, according to NBC News. The number of people claiming to be part of the anti-government sovereign citizen movement has grown since the coronavirus pandemic and with the help of QAnon conspiracy theorists, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Johnatakis had called QAnon conspiracy theories a good source in an episode of his podcast that was posted a few days after the insurrection, according to the Kitsap Sun. We overlap with a lot of things Q believers believe in, but there is a difference, Johnatakis said on the podcast. Q is not my idol, Q is not my god. Johnatakis will be sentenced at a later date by the federal judge. More than 1,200 people, including people from all 50 states, have so far been charged for crimes related to the Jan. 6 assault at the Capitol. Also on Tuesday, Gabriel Augustin Garcia of Miami, a member of the Proud Boys, was convicted of two felony charges related to his actions at the Capitol. He is set to be sentenced in March. Fellow Floridians Jamie Buteau and Jennifer Peck Buteau were also sentenced on Monday for their roles in the Capitol attack. Jamie Buteau, of Ocala, will serve 22 months in prison for the felony offense of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers. Jennifer, his wife, will serve 90 days on a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building, the Justice Department announced. An Ohio man was also arrested Tuesday for multiple felony and misdemeanor charges in relation to the attack. Matthew Honigford, of Delphos, allegedly assaulted a police officer with a flagpole and pushed against a police line with a metal barrier during the violence. Related... Canadian police secure the area near the Rainbow Bridge border crossing after a car exploded at the US-Canada checkpoint (Usman KHAN) A car erupted into a fireball at a US-Canada checkpoint near Niagara Falls on Wednesday, killing the two occupants, triggering border closures and sparking a massive security alert on the eve of a major holiday. The regional FBI field office concluded the blast, which occurred around 400 miles (640 kilometers) northwest of New York City, was not linked to terrorism. Witnesses described seeing a car traveling at high speed before it crashed into a checkpoint barrier and exploded into flames. The blast happened at the major Rainbow Bridge crossing near Niagara Falls with nothing left of the vehicle which was incinerated except for the engine, according to New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Confirming the two fatalities, she suggested the vehicle may have been from western New York state. The victims' identities have not yet been made public. Authorities on both sides of the border activated emergency responses and images showed access roads to the crossing swarming with emergency service workers and vehicles. The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed and was closely following developments. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told parliament "this is obviously a very serious situation." - 'He was flying' - "We've seen this car coming down towards the border and he was flying -- over 100 miles an hour," Mike Guenther, a Canadian visiting the United States, told CBS News. The car then swerved and "hit the fence, went flying up into the air," he said. "He went up into the air and we just seen the fireball and that's all we could see. It was just covered in smoke everywhere." The incident came on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, one of the busiest US travel days when millions of Americans take to the roads and skies. Rainbow Bridge -- among the busiest crossings between Canada and the United States -- has 16 vehicle lanes and is normally open around the clock, according to US Customs and Border Protection. Hochul said that debris was spread across as many as 14 of the lanes following the incident. Three other nearby border crossings had been closed in the aftermath of the incident, but had since reopened, US Customs and Border Protection said. On the US side, Niagara Falls State Park, which attracts millions of visitors every year, was closed until further notice according to the park service. Canada's Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said "any time... (infrastructure like) a border crossing sees this kind of violent circumstance, it's a source of concern for" US and Canadian authorities. Trudeau's office said he had been briefed and was in contact with US law enforcement. The regional FBI field office located in the city of Buffalo, New York said a search had revealed "no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified." It added that the matter had been turned over to local police as a traffic investigation. Multiple witnesses reported hearing a loud explosion and seeing a large cloud of smoke near the inspection station. - Flames, thick smoke - Canadian Chorkor Millionaire was accompanying friends back across the border into his home country when they heard a loud boom. There was a vehicle "caught up in flames, thick smoke all of the sudden," he told AFP, adding: "Everybody was terrified." New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that officers of the city's police department, the country's largest, had deployed to the border crossing to assist the investigation. Dramatic videos showed thick plumes of black smoke rising from a conflagration at the crossing. burs-gw/bfm/sco SAN DIEGO A man was taken into custody Wednesday morning following a rampage at a car dealership in Kearny Mesa, authorities said. According to the San Diego Police Department, a call came in around 3:33 a.m. reporting a male suspect was seen breaking windows in a parking lot of at Kearny Mesa Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, located at 8010 Balboa Ave. Substitute teacher arrested after suspected inappropriate activity with teen: police A short time after, police said a security company also called and reported seeing a man on surveillance jumping on vehicles and breaking windows in the lot. They also said the suspect had broken one of the buildings windows. According to witness statements, the man was seen waving his arms and acting erratically. A damaged window Officers arrived to the scene and located the individual. The man was arrested at that time. SDPD said this is considered a felony vandalism case. An employee at the car dealership told FOX 5 that staff is working to access the damage. It appears at least 15 vehicles on the lot were damaged during the rampage. No injuries were reported. Anyone with information related to the incident is encouraged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 5 San Diego. A Frankfort man has been arrested and held on a $1 million bond for allegedly physically abusing a newborn baby. Frankfort police arrested Arien Ernest Fredrickson, 29, on Monday and charged him with first-degree assault and first-degree criminal abuse on a child. Fredrickson is scheduled for a preliminary hearing Tuesday in Franklin District Court. In their report, police said they were called to an apartment on Louisville Road late Sunday to respond to a four-week-old girl in medical distress, with blue lips, blue skin around her eyes and a possibly obstructed airway. The baby girl, who was unresponsive and had serious injuries around her head and neck, was rushed to Frankfort Regional Medical Center and then to Kentucky Childrens Hospital in Lexington, police said. WKYT, the Herald-Leaders reporting partner, reported that the injuries were potentially life-threatening. Fredrickson told police that he intentionally physically assaulted the baby in (an) attempt to quiet her crying, police wrote in their report. Police also charged Helena T. Herbert, 19, with failure to report child abuse and first-degree criminal abuse. Herbert told a police detective she had been aware her boyfriend was abusing the girl since the beginning of November, including attempts to smother the baby with his hand, but she did not take the girl away from him or call authorities for help, police wrote in their report. Like Fredrickson, Herbert remained in the Franklin County Regional Jail on Wednesday in lieu of a $1 million bond, according to jail records. She is also scheduled to appear in Franklin District Court Tuesday. West Wales Airport wants to replace its control tower and buildings It is hoped five major aerospace companies will be operating from an airport in west Wales under plans to update its facilities. West Wales Airport Ltd in Blaenannerch, Ceredigion, has submitted a planning application to replace its control tower and buildings with new ones. An extended taxiway is also included in the proposal. It is also hoped the plans will provide a "significant employment boost" to the area. The airport said in a statement in support of the application it was "well recognised for its unique capabilities" in the drone sector, which had created a "high level of demand" for its services. It said the five unnamed aerospace companies had expressed a wish to operate as permanent, if not long-term, residents of the airport from April 2024. The statement said the existing buildings were no longer fit for purpose and and a new control tower would function as a centre for radar data, communication systems and control of flight operations. This embedded content is not available in your region. In another sign of the King's K-pop diplomacy, members of South Korean girl group Blackpink have been presented with honorary MBEs. It comes during the state visit by South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol, in which the King had praised the global reach of Korean pop culture. Blackpink were name-checked by the King for supporting environmental causes. "I can only admire how they can prioritise these vital issues, as well as being global superstars," he said. The members of Blackpink were presented with MBEs at Buckingham Palace The MBEs recognised how the girl group acted as ambassadors for the COP climate change summit and have been advocates for the UN's sustainable development goals, helping to bring the environmental message to "millions of young people". There was a special investiture this morning in the 1844 room in Buckingham Palace, often used for the most distinguished guests. It was another reflection of the red carpet being rolled out during this South Korean state visit, with the diplomatic courtship reflecting the increasing importance of this strategic ally and economic partner. The members of Blackpink - Roseanne Park, Jennie Kim, Jisoo Kim and Lalisa Manoban - are now honorary members of the Order of the British Empire and were guests at the state banquet in Buckingham Palace on Tuesday evening. The 'soft power' of a state visit saw an important ally given a red carpet welcome in London The King's speech had highlighted the global reach of South Korean popular culture and its "remarkable ability to captivate imaginations". While the King admitted to a personal lack of "what might be called Gangnam Style", the military band for the changing of the guard put that right on Wednesday morning, by playing the song in a surprise change of musical direction. Tourists gathered outside Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard had heard an unexpected medley of K-pop songs, rather than marching tunes. This embedded content is not available in your region. There had been a full ceremonial welcome for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday - greeted by the King, Queen Camilla and the Prince and Princess of Wales, before taking part in a carriage procession along the Mall. The president was given the grand spectacle of a state banquet, held in the Buckingham Palace ballroom, with 170 guests including the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron as well as the Royal Family and South Korean dignitaries. State visits are a "soft power" mix of serious diplomacy as well as pageantry - and the focus of the South Korean visit has been on boosting trade links and military partnerships. On Wednesday afternoon, South Korea's President Yoon met Mr Sunak to sign a "Downing Street Accord", with plans for a trade deal and co-operation in science, technology and green energy. A defence agreement would build a stronger approach to enforcing sanctions against North Korea and preventing its "illegal weapons programme", with joint sea patrols between the South Korean Navy and the UK's Royal Navy. In the evening President Yoon will attend a banquet in the Guildhall in the City of London, which will emphasise growing business links, with 21bn of investments by South Korean firms in the UK. The Lord Mayor of the City of London, Michael Mainelli, is expected to speak of the increasing importance of South Korean technology firms operating in the UK. He will also reference Korean popular culture to show the economic impact. "Like a K-pop single, Korea is climbing up the charts," the mayor will say. royal family with text "Royal Watch newsletter: Get insider stories and analysis every week, straight to your inbox You can see more royal stories in the free BBC Royal Watch newsletter emailed each week - sign up here from within the UK. or here, from outside the UK. Organizers of the 15th Chinese Nebula Awards convened at a meeting on Nov. 16 and decided to hold the event, which is China's top sci-fi awards for worldwide Chinese-speaking sci-fi writers, in May next year in Chengdu at the same venue where this year's Worldcon was held. Aerial photo taken on Oct. 16, 2023, shows a night view of the Chengdu Science Museum in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province. [Photo/Xinhua] The awards, part of the 2024 Nebula Celebration, are scheduled for May 17-19, 2024, at the Chengdu Science Museum, the former main location for the 81st World Science Fiction Convention held in October in Chengdu, Sichuan province, according to the announcement following the meeting. The meeting was attended in person and online by key figures in the Chinese sci-fi circle, including Liu Cixin, Yao Haijun, and Wu Yan. Besides the award ceremony on May 18, 2024, Dong Renwei, the chair of the executive committee of the 2024 Nebula Celebration, highlighted that the festival will feature three major events. First, it will promote Chinese children's sci-fi achievements and establish an international children's sci-fi association. Second, it will host the 2024 International Sci-Fi Summit Forum to commemorate 120 years of Chinese sci-fi and gather stories to complete the "Moon Colony Novel," the earliest yet unfinished Chinese sci-fi story, written in 1904. Finally, it will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Chinese Nebula Awards, recognizing its accomplishments over the years. Dong also emphasized the urgent need to restart interrupted international exchanges and award initiatives disrupted by various obstacles like the COVID-19 pandemic. He stressed the importance of persisting in promoting mutual prosperity through diverse intercultural exchanges in science fiction, enhancing the cohesion of the Chinese Nebula Awards' global brand, and strengthening its influence. His remarks were met with agreement and appreciation by the meeting attendees. The celebration fest will include a children's sci-fi conference and award ceremony, an after-party banquet, and field trips to the new venue of the Sanxingdui Museum and the ancient city ruins in Chengdu's Pidu district. Plans also include creating a book gathering recollections of creating, holding, and participating in the awards by founders, award-winning writers, workers, and other participants. Founded in 2010 by Chinese sci-fi heavyweights Dong Renwei, Yao Haijun, and Wu Yan, the Chinese Nebula Awards recognize the best in sci-fi works, writers, translators, critics, publishers, and other industry participants. By conducting an annual review of Chinese-language sci-fi, the award organizers aim to inspire innovation among Chinese sci-fi talents, drive the revitalization of the Chinese sci-fi cultural industry, highlight achievements in Chinese sci-fi literature development, and promote Chinese sci-fi. The awards continue to evolve by appointing young leaders, considering non-fiction and translated works, emerging writers, and sci-fi movies. They also plan to enhance the awards' international appeal and engage in global exchanges. JACKSON, Miss. (AP) Mississippi prosecutors have dismissed indictments against a man in the shooting death of former state Rep. Ashley Henley, and the earlier burning of a building, saying they need more time to investigate. The murder and arson charges against Billy Lamar Brooks were dismissed without prejudice, which means a grand jury could consider new charges later, according to a document filed Friday in Yalobusha County Circuit Court. Suspect charged with murder in death of ex-DeSoto County lawmaker Ashley Henley Former state Rep. Ashley Henley, 40, was shot to death in June 2021 outside the burned-out mobile home in a rural area where her sister-in-law, Kristina Michelle Jones, was found dead in December 2020. Ashley Henley (R-Southaven) served in the Mississippi House from 2016 to 2020 in a district in DeSoto County, about 70 miles north of where she was killed. She was a teacher before she was elected to office, and she often took her young son to the state Capitol during legislative sessions. After reviewing the case for trial, attorneys for the State requested additional time to fully investigate and review this matter, said the document signed by an assistant district attorney and Circuit Judge Smith Murphey. The document said it is not possible to estimate the timeframe needed to complete this investigation, but prosecutors could present the case to a grand jury at some point. Former Mississippi state Rep. Ashley Henley found shot dead at same home where sister-in-law died Brooks attorney, Bradley Peeples, declined to comment Wednesday on this latest development. He told The Associated Press that Brooks has been out on bond since last year. Henley and other relatives contended Yalobusha County authorities were doing too little to examine possible criminal charges in Jones death. Relatives put up a homemade sign at the mobile home site with photos of Jones under the phrase, I was murdered. Yalobusha County coroner Ronnie Stark said Henley had been mowing grass at the site before she was killed. Brooks, who lived near Jones, was indicted in February 2022 on a charge of maliciously setting fire to the home of Jones and Terry Henley. Court records show that on June 30, 2022, a grand jury filed a new indictment against Brooks to add a murder charge in the death of Ashley Henley. Investigators said Henleys body had been found on June 13, 2021. The dismissed indictment accused Brooks of killing her on or about the same day. Henley sought a second term in November 2019 and lost by 14 votes to a Democrat. She challenged the election results, saying she believed she had found some voting irregularities. A bipartisan House committee held a public hearing on her challenge and unanimously dismissed her request for a new election. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WREG.com. FILE - In an April 7, 2014 file photo, pedestrians walk by City Hall and St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The historic South Carolina city of Charleston has elected its first Republican mayor since the Reconstruction Era. William Cogswell, formerly a Republican state lawmaker, defeated incumbent Democratic Mayor John Tecklenburg by about 2 percentage points in Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023 runoff, according to the South Carolina Election Commission. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith, file) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) The historic South Carolina city of Charleston has elected its first Republican mayor since the Reconstruction Era. William Cogswell, formerly a Republican state lawmaker, defeated incumbent Democratic Mayor John Tecklenburg by about 2 percentage points in Tuesday's runoff, according to the South Carolina Election Commission. Results posted online by the commission showed a 569-vote margin separating the the two candidates. Cogswell, 48, had secured the most votes in the Nov. 7 general election but not a majority, meaning that he and Tecklenburg headed to Tuesday's runoff. Charleston's municipal elections are technically nonpartisan. But Tecklenburg is a well-known figure in the state's Democratic politics, endorsing Joe Biden in South Carolina's pivotal 2020 presidential primary. Cogswell, who served three terms as a Republican in the state House and describes himself as a moderate, earned endorsements from others within South Carolina's GOP political circles, including Sen Tim Scott. Charleston last elected a Republican mayor in the 1870s, according to historical records from the city and other municipal areas. Republicans including state GOP Chairman Drew McKissick and U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, who served in the state House with Cogswell, celebrated the GOP win in social media posts and statements. We can confidently say that Im going to be the next mayor, Cogswell said Tuesday night, as final results came in. The people have spoken, and were ready for a new direction ... a new direction that puts labels aside, so that we can find pragmatic solutions to our problems. In a concession speech Tuesday night, Teckleburg called his eight years as mayor the honor of my life and asked his supporters to rally around the new mayor. I'd like to congratulate our new Mayor-Elect William Cogswell ... and I'd like to ask each and every Charlestonian, everybody out there, to give him your support," Tecklenburg said. "When Mayor Cogswell succeeds, Charleston succeeds, and that's something we're all in favor of. The City of Charleston has become the second reliably blue area in South Carolina where Republicans dominate congressional and statewide politics to choose a Republican mayor in recent years. In 2021, Daniel Rickenmann, a longtime city council member backed by Republicans, was chosen as the mayor of South Carolinas capital city of Columbia. ___ Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP A Celina child donated their hard-earned cash to their local police department. Keagan Carder raised $261 over the summer through his lemonade stand outside of The Williow Restaurant on North Main Street, according to a social media post by Celina Police Department. >> Local city fountain to undergo $500k makeover Carder donated his cash toward the departments Shop with a Cop program, which allows children in the community to shop with a police officer for Christmas gifts. American Legion Riders from Celina Post 210 also donated $500 toward the program. China is shutting down mosques in areas outside of Xinjiang in violation of the right to freedom of religion, according to a report released Wednesday from Human Rights Watch (HRW). The Chinese government has expanded its policy of mosque consolidation, which has targeted the Muslim population in Xinjiang for years. Since 2017, Chinese authorities have destroyed or damaged two-thirds of Xinjiangs mosques, HRW said, citing the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. About half of those mosques have been demolished. In Xinjiang, the Chinese governments aggressive assimilationist policies in ethnic minority regions have led to severe abuses that amount to crimes against humanity, such as cultural persecution. These abuses include the systematic destruction of numerous mosques, the HRW report said. The report alleged government documents suggest China has been enforcing the same policy on the provinces of Ningxia and Gansu, which have the highest Muslim populations in the country after Xinjiang. The practice is part of Chinese leader Xi Jinpings call for the Sinicization of religions, which seeks to expand the role that the Chinese Communist Party plays in peoples religious lives, effectively expanding state control over religion, HRW said. The Chinese government is not consolidating mosques as it claims, but closing many down in violation of religious freedom, Human Rights Watch acting China Director Maya Wang said in the report. The Chinese governments closure, destruction, and repurposing of mosques is part of a systematic effort to curb the practice of Islam in China. HRW was unable to identify the exact number of mosques that have been shut down or repurposed in Ningxia and Gansu, but the report cited forthcoming research that estimates one-third of mosques in Ningxia have been closed since 2020. The report cited the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides for the freedom of thought, conscience and religion and called on the Chinese government to reverse its policies and release those detained for violating them. The report also called on foreign governments, in particular member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, to increase pressure on China to end this campaign against the Muslim population. The Chinese governments policies of Sinicization show a blanket disregard for freedom of religion not only of all Muslims in China, but all religious communities in the country, Wang said in the report. Governments concerned about religious freedom should raise these issues directly with the Chinese government and at the United Nations and other international forums. The Biden administration has been critical of Chinas treatment of religious minorities, particularly of Muslim Uyghurs, which the U.S. formally declared a genocide in an official U.S. report on human rights in 2021. Genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang, according to the report. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. A TV screen displays a warning message called "J-alert" after the Japanese government issued an emergency warning, saying a missile had been launched from North Korea, in Tokyo A TV screen displays a warning message called "J-alert" after the Japanese government issued an emergency warning, saying a missile had been launched from North Korea, in Tokyo BEIJING (Reuters) - China's foreign ministry said it is in the interest of all parties to ensure peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea claimed it successfully placed its first spy satellite in orbit, vowing to launch more in the near future. After two failed attempts, North Korea's latest launch drew the ire of South Korea and Japan. "China has taken note of (North Korea's) announcement of its satellite launch and the reactions of relevant parties," spokesperson Mao Ning said in response to a question on the situation at a regular media briefing on Wednesday. "Maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula and promoting the process of political settlement of the peninsula issue are in the common interests of all countries in the region," she said. South Korea, Japan and the United States had coordinated to position Aegis destroyers to track the launch and shared that data, South Korea's military said. In addition, the U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson arrived at a port in the South Korean city of Busan, part of a mission of extended deterrence against North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. Mao said it is hoped that all parties concerned "will remain calm and exercise restraint" and engage in meaningful dialogue and address each other's legitimate concerns in a balanced manner. "China will continue to play a constructive role in promoting the political settlement of the Peninsula issue, she said. (Reporting by Liz Lee; Writing by Bernard Orr; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Gerry Doyle) (Bloomberg) -- Chinese leader Xi Jinping met a top Russian lawmaker, underscoring the warm relations the nations have forged following the invasion of Ukraine. Most Read from Bloomberg Beijing was willing to work with Moscow so ties featured comprehensive strategic coordination and mutually beneficial cooperation, Xi told Vyacheslav Volodin, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Volodin, speaker of the of the Duma, Russias lower legislative house, said relations have reached the best level in history and that Russia firmly supports China in safeguarding its territorial integrity, according to the report. Beijing has provided Moscow with diplomatic and economic support since Vladimir Putin ordered the attack on Ukraine in February 2022, cover that has mitigated the effects of Western sanctions on Russia. Last month, Chinese Premier Li Qiang told Russian counterpart Mikhail Mishustin that he wants to boost their trade and other cooperation between the nations. Also in October, Xi reiterated to Putin that deepening ties is not an expedient but a long-term solution. Putin was visiting Beijing for the Belt and Road Forum, which Xi touted as an alternative to the US-led world order. It was a rare trip abroad for the Russian leader after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him in March for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Listen: Putin and Xi Test Their No-Limits Friendship: Big Take Podcast The two nations have also recently reinforced their military bonds, with Zhang Youxia, vice chair of Chinas top military body, and counterpart Sergei Shoigu meeting at a security forum in the Chinese capital. Beijing has placed some boundaries on ties since Xi and Putin declared a no limits friendship between their nations just before the Winter Olympics in 2022. Xi hasnt provided any major military aid to Russia that would provoke US sanctions against China, and hes warned against the use of nuclear weapons and attacks on civilians. Beijing has sought to cast itself as a neutral broker on the war by releasing a blueprint for bringing peace to Ukraine in February this year, though the proposal has made little progress. Chinas exports to Russia have jumped this year, following the West severing trade ties due to the war. China has also stepped up fossil fuel imports from Russia. More: Chinas Selling So Much to Russia That Containers Are Piling Up --With assistance from Evelyn Yu. (Updates with details of Xis meeting with Volodin.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. [Source] A Chinese firefighter suffered severe brain damage after giving his gas mask to a little girl trapped during a residential fire in Hebei province earlier this year. Heroic sacrifice: Back in March, 30-year-old Ku Xuehui faced a life-altering choice during a rescue mission while battling a residential fire triggered by an exploded electric vehicle. Responding to a desperate plea from a resident, Ku entered a burning building to save a young girl trapped on the third floor. To ensure the girl's safety, Ku gave her his own gas mask, leaving himself exposed to toxic fumes. Agonizing consequences: While Ku appeared unharmed following the incident, he later exhibited symptoms of cognitive decline. Kus wife, Sun Lei, shared they decided to visit a doctor after Ku started struggling with articulation, movement and cognitive function. The diagnosis would later reveal severe brain damage, with Ku's mental capabilities reportedly reduced to that of a 3-year-old's. Trending on NextShark: 79-year-old woman fulfills lifelong dream of visiting all 193 countries Waiting for a miracle: Sun, who documented their challenging journey on social media, has remained resilient while monitoring her husband's recovery. Their 12-year-old son, Ku Bozun, has also been assisting in his father's rehabilitation since the summer holiday. Hopeful for a miraculous recovery, the boy has been patiently teaching his father to read and count using the same books they used for him when he was younger. Community rallies behind a hero: As Ku battles through rehabilitation, a large community on Chinese social media have expressed admiration and well-wishes, closely tracking every step of his progress through Sun's video diaries. Ku's firefighting squad has also rallied around their fallen comrade, sending members daily to assist with his care. Trending on NextShark: Filipino social media personality Sammy Manese dies Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! From the Dispatch Politics on The Dispatch Happy Wednesdayand Happy Thanksgiving! Dispatch Politics will be back in your inboxes on Monday. Up to Speed The Commission on Presidential Debates on Monday announced dates and locations for three general-election presidential debates next year: one in Texas in September, two in Virginia and Utah in October. Whether anyone will show up, however, remains to be seen. The Republican Party voted last year to pull out of all debates sanctioned by the commission, and former President Donald Trump has thus far opted not to debate during the Republican primaries. Joe Bidens campaign also has not committed to the debates. Bob Vander Plaatsthe prominent evangelical leader and GOP power broker in Iowaannounced Tuesday he is endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for president. The move surprised few: Vander Plaats has long called for Republicans to move on from Trump and heaped praise on DeSantis, whom Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds also endorsed earlier this month. Trump lashed out at Vander Plaats in the wake of the endorsement, jeering in a statement at his unsuccessful mid-2000s attempts to run for governor and pointing out that the DeSantis campaign and two affiliated groups groups paid Vander Plaats nonprofit, the Family Leader Foundation, $95,000 this summer. (The payments, Reuters reported in August, were made for advertising at a candidate event and tables at a post-event dinner with Tucker Carlson.) Trump also doubled down on his attacks on R eynolds with a Tuesday video (falsely) calling her the most unpopular governor in the entire United States of Americaand booked his first Iowa TV ads of the cycle. Does Christie Have a Path? Former Gov. Chris Christie speaks at the Hudson Institute November 15, 2023, in Washington. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Its been difficult to tell quite what to make of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies second presidential campaign. On the one hand, hes been the only candidate willing to go after Donald Trump bare-knucklelikely a necessity if anyone is ever going to overtake the shadow incumbent. But his fitness as a vessel for that message is called into question by his deep unpopularity with the GOP base: Morning Consult polling routinely finds him twice as unpopular among Republican voters as any other primary candidate, and his criticisms of Trump have drawn choruses of boos at some candidate events. Hes still polling under 3 percent nationally, hes all but written off the Iowa caucuses, and his likeliest near-term impact may be simply to hamstring former Gov. Nikki Haley in New Hampshire, who is popular among some of the same independent voters who like Christie in the Granite State. On Friday, the Christie campaign released a memo outlining what Christie sees as his current path forward and laying out his argument that calls for an immediate consolidation of the presidential field are premature. And on Tuesday, Christie spoke with Dispatch Politics about why he thinks he is still best positioned to survive the early nominating contests and come out the other side as the partys Trump alternative. Heres that conversation, edited for length and clarity. Dispatch Politics: The only path to victory is through Donald Trump. Thats been a mantra for you throughout this whole campaign, and as far as were concerned, its obviously correct. Youve been pursuing that strategy, youve been on every debate stage, but Trumps status as the frontrunner has only solidified. Have you been surprised by that, and do you think its likely to change? Christie: Look, I dont think that his consolidation has really grown. I think its pretty much stayed where it isand thats just to the national polls. If you look at whats going on in Iowa or New Hampshire, hes in the 40s. Put the shoe on the other foot: If Joe Biden were in the Democratic primary and in the 40s, thered be people looking at it sounding, you know, five-alarm fire time. Trump is essentially an incumbent in this race in the Republican primary. Hes won the nomination the last two times. And you have much more than 50 percent of the voters in a Republican primary in the early states who say they dont want himand I think thats really the story. These national polls are just ridiculous. Theres no reason to pay any attention to them. If he were to lose Iowa, for instance, or lose New Hampshire, those national polls would change in three days. Ive always saidI think I said back when I met with you guys in Junethat nothing was going to change in this race until people started to vote. And I still believe that. DP: I wanted to ask about New Hampshire. Youve been seeing a surge there, Nikki Haleys been seeing a surge there, DeSantis has faded. All three of you have appeared in recent days at events with Gov. Chris Sununu. He seems to be enjoying sizing you all up, and hes likely to endorse. Do you think youre likely to land that endorsement, and is that central to your strategy for the state? Christie: I dont know. I have a great relationship with the governorweve known each other for 12 years and have always gotten along well. I hope I get his endorsement, but I have not a clue, and I think anybody who tells you they think they do are just making it up. In terms of centrality, I just have never knownbeing someone whose endorsement has been pursued over time, I never really know whether it has much of an impact at all. Quite frankly, I think itll have more of an impact with all of you than it actually will broadly in an election. That being said, every little bit helps in an election, and certainly the support of a popular incumbent governor cant hurt your campaign. And Id love to have it also because, lets face it, Chris and I are the two most prominent national Republicans whove been willing to speak out strongly against Trumps fitness for the presidency. Not Nikky Haley, not Ron DeSantis, not Tim Scott, not Mike Pence. Its been me and Chris Sununu. So, I would hope that he makes an endorsement consistent with his principles. DP: Its not really a secret why you and Haley are both seeing a surge in New Hampshire: Youre both appealing more to some of the independents, some of the Democratic crossover voters in that state. To the extent that you and she are probably one and two for a lot of those voters right now, whats your pitch to that kind of voter at your events in New Hampshire? Christie: My pitch is that Im the most consistent person in the race in terms of what I think the central issues are. The central issue in the Republican primary is Donald Trump, and anybody who tries to pretend differently is not being honest. And Ive been very direct about what I feel about Trumps fitness for the presidency, his fitness as a nominee, and the fact that I believeand I believe itll be proven by a jury this springthat he committed crimes while in the presidency. And yet Gov. Haley says she thinks he was the right president at the right time, and shed be inclined to pardon him if she became president. And she raised her hand and said that she would support him even if he was a convicted felon. Im the only one left in this race, on the stage, that didnt do that. And I think if independent voters and reasonable Republicans look at that in terms of who they can rely on to tell them the truth, to be direct with them, and someone they can count on in terms of their principles, then I think Im the choice. DP: Right now, Haleys significantly outpolling you in Iowa, shes outpolling you in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada. In New Hampshire, thats the only state where you are regularly polling above 5 percent right now. What do you say to the argumentwhich a lot of people have been making recentlythat if you stick this campaign out, its possible that your likeliest concrete contribution is just preventing Haley from consolidating in New Hampshire, making that Trump cakewalk to Super Tuesday even easier? Christie: Look, Im within the margin of error of Nikki Haley in any of these polls. So you can make the same argument the other way. And I think if you made it the other way, that Nikki should get out for me, I think it would be unfair as well. This is not a simple math equation where you add up everybody else, and if everybody else dropped out one state in, everyone would get those votes. Some people would vote for Trump. Some people wouldnt vote at all. So its just not that simple. The fact is that at this stage in 2015, Jeb Bush was winning the New Hampshire primary; at this stage in 2015, Ben Carson was +10 in Iowa. In 2015, the exit polls showed us that over 50 percent of New Hampshire primary voters made their decision in the last three days before the primary. (Editors note: Haley is currently leading Christie by an average of 7 points in New Hampshire polls, comfortably outside the margin of error. Christie is also misremembering the conditions of the 2016 primary cycle. In fact, Bush led Trump only briefly in New Hampshire in early summer 2015, and Trump surpassed him permanently that July. Carson momentarily surged above Trump in Iowa in late October 2015, leading Trump by about 9 points in the Real Clear Politics polling average before plummeting again in early November.) So, look, I know that you guys love to obsess about this stuff, and you want it to be over. Sorry, the elections set for January 23 in New Hampshire. And as far as me being behind her in Iowa, the fact that at this point Im only about 10 points behind her in Iowa, and Ive not spent one minute there or one dollar, and she has spent millions and millions of dollars and weeks and weeks in IowaI dont know what thats supposed to tell us. I made it very clear from the beginning that I wasnt going to compete in Iowa. I havent competed in Iowa. So why would anybody be surprised that she would be ahead of me in Iowa? DP: I will say as a campaigns guy I personally will not be happy when its over. I wont know what to do with myself when its over. But the reason I ask is because nobody knows better than you, as youve said, that before a challenger can beat Trump you have to somehow get to that two-way race against him. Christie: Well, our memo lays down exactly how you get there. We do very well in New Hampshire. Nikki Haley loses in South Carolina to Donald Trump. If she loses in South Carolina to Donald Trump, in her home state, how does she justify staying in the race? If shes not going to win her home state, where she was a two-term governor, where is she going to win exactly? If Ron DeSantis does not win Iowa after getting Kim Reynolds endorsement, and now today Bob Vander Plaats endorsement, where exactly in the next number of states is Ron DeSantis going to win? So how it gets down to a one-on-one racewere in this until the convention. And were the ones with the burn rate of $15,000 a day, as opposed to [$120,000] a day on Ron DeSantis. Were going to have the money to stay in this race and continue to compete, and we have the clearest message against Donald Trump. You cant cuddle up to Donald Trump and expect to beat him at the same time. DP: So to map out one plausible way this goes here: Say Trump wins Iowa, DeSantis comes second. Trump wins New Hampshire, you come second there. Trump wins South Carolina, Haley takes second. Are you saying that forecloses those two folks paths in a way it doesnt necessarily foreclose yours? In theory, they could turn the money spigot down too. Christie: Yeah, but they haventthey could, but they havent. Theyre both competing in Iowa and spending millions on ads in Iowa. We cant tell these things until the election actually happens, but if youre Ron DeSantis, youve moved your staff to Iowa, youve got the endorsement of the very popular incumbent governor and of the leaderor at least one of the leadersof the evangelical community in Iowa, and you have spent tens of millions of dollars in Iowa between the campaign and Never Back Down, and you dont win that racewhere are you going to win? I mean, I dont understand why you guys cant understand this. Its pretty simple. Hes made the decision to make Iowa his number one objective and spend a lot of money there. So the fact is that hes got to winor do extraordinarily well and come close. And if he does, then greathes going to continue. But if he doesnt, I think therell be real questions raised. And its even worse for Gov. Haley, because South Carolinas her home state. And I mean, again, like you saidwell, she comes in second. Well, if I came in second in New Jersey, I think people would rightfully be askingwell, you were the two-term governor there. Youve lived there your whole life. If youre not going to win there, where are you going to win? DP: Well, I dont think the scenario I just sketched out is particularly good news for Haley or DeSantis either. I mean, the person it seems to be really good news for is Donald Trump. Christie: The fact is that the variable that is very rarely written about is that the day before Super Tuesday, [Trump] goes into a courtroom in Washington, D.C., and will be there five days a week for the next six to eight weeks. Having Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, sit 20 feet from him and admit that he committed crimes at Donald Trumps direction and that he watched Donald Trump commit crimes. Not some left-wing prosecutor, not some product of the two-tiered system of justice that Trump talks about, but one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus and the guy that he called the next James Baker when he made him chief of staff. If you dont think the race is going to change at that point, then, you know, I think youre wrong. And I think the race will change significantly. Even the New York Times polling in the general election showed that Trump went from winning five of six swing states against Biden to losing all six if hes convicted. And I dont know if the numbers are correct, but the trend is absolutely undeniable. And so my view is, you have to do the very best you can in these early states, which I intend to do, and then be ready for the fallout of his conviction. And its different than an indictment. An indictment is a set of accusations by a justice system that lots of Republicans think is biased. I think they feel much differently about a juryand feel much differently when Mark Meadows, a conservative Republican from North Carolina, gets on the stand and accuses his former boss of committing crimes on his watch and directing him and others to commit crimes on his behalf to obstruct the results of the election and keep him in power. No, look, if it doesnt and I turn out to be wrong, then all you guys will be right and Donald Trump will be the nominee. But I dont believe that. And Im running because I believe our standards have to be higher and better, both in terms of who we nominate and how you pursue that nomination in terms of your honesty with the American people. And the only thing to say to them, honestly, is that this guys unfit for the presidency. Notable and Quotable President Trump has reduced his weight through an improved diet and continued daily physical activity, while maintaining a rigorous schedule. It is my opinion that President Trump is currently in excellent health, and with his continued interest in preventative health monitoring and maintenance, he will continue to enjoy a healthy active lifestyle for years to come. Dr. Bruce Aronwald, personal physician to Donald Trump, November 20, 2023 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. MERRIMACK, N.H. Greg Weiners top priority this presidential election season is finding a candidate whos not living in an alternative reality. And so far, the 54-year-old believes former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is the only Republican contender who fits the bill. Christie, he says, is the sole contestant with the guts to take on former President Donald Trump. The other Republican candidates are hiding behind him, Weiner, a self-described New Hampshire moderate, told USA TODAY. They dont want to call it what it is, the extreme right end of the party. Weiner is among a small, yet key constituency of independent-minded New Hampshire voters who Christie is banking on to propel his longshot White House bid. Since launching his candidacy in June, the former governor has campaigned almost exclusively in the Granite State, painting himself as the leading anti-Trump voice in the race and courting voters like Weiner who are unhappy with the direction of the Republican Party. Yet, with just two months to go until the states first-in-the-nation primary, Christies strategy has so far failed to inspire runaway support on the ground. Polls published just last week showed the former New Jersey governor lagging at least six points behind former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and 28 points behind Trump in New Hampshire, despite his having spent more time than either of them in the Granite State. GOP strategists have come to view Christies Trump attacks as at least part of the problem: the X-factor that is both drawing voters and preventing him from garnering more widespread support. Hitting a ceiling When Christie announced his 2024 presidential bid, he immediately defined his candidacy as anti-Trump going so far as to call the former president a lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog. Charlie Bass, a former U.S. congressman for New Hampshires second district, said the approach quickly differentiated Christie from other candidates and allowed him to early on solidify a broad coalition of voters who were not being reached by his rivals. I call them soft Republicans, and if a guy like Christie isnt on the ballot, theyll vote for Biden, Bass said of Christies core supporters, who are mostly comprised of moderate Republicans, undeclared voters and Democrats who dropped their party affiliation to support Christie in the upcoming Republican primary. Christie has for the most part maintained those supporters. A recent survey conducted by the University of New Hampshire and CNN showed the former governor drawing support from 33% of self-described moderates. The problem, said Jim Merrill, a New Hampshire GOP strategist, is that Christie has struggled to break through that ceiling and attract more conservative voters to his coalition. I think the challenge for him has been, he came out of the gate and very much defined himself as Im going to go after Trump. Im going to punch him every day, Merrill said. As weve seen, theres some reluctance on a large part of the base to hear that message. A small polling bump While three polls published last week, including the UNH/CNN survey, showed Christie inching ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his support has stagnated over the last few months. And Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, said fluctuation in recent polling numbers are more a result of other changes in the race, including movement away from DeSantis in New Hampshire and a narrowing field of contenders that has seen South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former Vice President Mike Pence drop out. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and ScottOs mother Frances Scott at the conclusion of the Republican National Committee presidential primary debate hosted by NBC News at Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County. He's gained a little bit, but not a tremendous amount, of momentum, Smith said, noting a modest four-point bump for Christie since September, compared with Haleys eight-point leap. Amid the polling stasis, Christies campaign has pointed to another figure in the UNH/CNN survey as a sign for hope: The number of Republican primary voters who find the Jersey Boy unappealing has dipped. In September, 60% percent of poll respondents said they wouldn't vote for Christie under any circumstances. Now it's 47%. Karl Rickett, a spokesperson for the Christie campaign, argued that the drop goes to show what never really means and is a sign that theres a lot of time for the former governor to make headway with Republican voters. And Christie during an appearance on CNN called the decrease "expected." "People are turned off by the fact that someone is telling the truth about Donald Trump. Now that they're hearing more about Donald Trump they're becoming less and less concerned about me and more and more concerned about him," he told CNN host Dana Bash. But that 47% leaves the campaign with limited places to go to broaden its support, Smith said, noting that there just aren't that many other Republicans left out there. The Trump challenge Many of those never-Christie Republicans can be accounted for in the 42% of likely Trump voters, who are turned off by his regular assaults on the the former president's character and abilities. More than eight in ten of those voters say they will definitely back Trump, limiting the number of voters the other candidate can attract. But they arent the only ones reluctant to support Christie. If Trump is elected, Pam McGrath, a 64-year-old from Exeter, New Hampshire, would consider crossing the northern border into Canada. A self-identified independent who prefers more moderate politicians, McGrath is among the key demographic of voters the Christie campaign is looking to court. Still, she said Christies attacks against the former president have rubbed her the wrong way. All hes doing is bashing Trump and its frustrating because I feel like hes giving him more publicity instead of talking about what bothers him and what hes going to fix, McGrath said, standing outside a rally for Nikki Haley. While McGrath hasnt yet made up her mind on who shell support, she said she is leaning toward the South Carolina governor because of Haley's focus on the issues. GOP strategists like Merrill see Haleys issue-oriented approach and strategy of tiptoeing around Trump as among the key factors propelling her rise in New Hampshire, in a direct contrast to Christies confrontational approach. Nikki Haley has succeeded so far in threading the needle, talking about her conservative credentials and addressing Trump obliquely, but in a way that doesnt turn off some voters who may like Trump but just arent prepared, necessarily, to vote for him this time around, Merrill said. After the third GOP debate, both Merrill and Bass questioned whether Christies campaign was pivoting toward a similar approach to discussing Trump, noting that Christie seemed to be more reserved and less aggressive in pursuing Trump from the debate stage. But the Christie campaign has denied any such change in strategy and has said that the former federal prosecutor is as committed as ever to outlining his differences with the bombastic front-runner. Without an adjustment, however, strategists see an uncertain path for the former New Jersey governor. The question for him is, can he find a way to break through that typecasting right now of the anti-Trump candidate and make himself into something more, Merrill said. Theres time to do it. The question is, can he do it? This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chris Christie's Trump attacks may be his perfect defect in New Hampshire Christian leaders in the city where Jesus Christ was born are saying the cancelation of Christmas celebrations is a meditation on the spiritual meaning of the holiday amid bloodshed in the region. The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem, an interdenominational council of bishops and pastors responsible for churches in the Holy Land, made their decision known on Nov. 10 via a joint letter. "Each year during the sacred seasons of Advent and Christmastide, our Christian communities throughout the Holy Land take great delight in their preparations for the commemoration of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," the patriarchs wrote in their letter. "In addition to attendance in religious services, these celebrations have normally involved participation in numerous public festivities and the large-scale display of brightly lit and expensive decorations as a means of expressing our joy at the approach and arrival of the Feast of the Nativity." "But these are not normal times. Since the start of the War, there has been an atmosphere of sadness and pain. Thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children, have died or suffered serious injuries," the bishops continued. "Many more grieve over the loss of their homes, their loved ones, or the uncertain fate of those dear to them. Throughout the region, even more have lost their work and are suffering from serious economic challenges. Yet despite our repeated calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence, the war continues." The Christian leaders clarify that their decision to downplay the fanfare of local Christmas celebrations is meant to highlight the spiritual core of the holiday amid more than a month of bloodshed. US CATHOLIC BISHOPS REAFFIRM ENDING ABORTION AS 'PRE-EMINENT PRIORITY' READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP Armenian Orthodox arrive at the Church of Nativity, where it is believed that Jesus was born, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas and Epiphany. To date, there have been more than 1,200 Israelis reported killed by Hamas, while the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health is claiming nearly 13,000 civilians have been killed by Israeli military activity in Gaza. VATICAN REEAFFIRMS 'GRAVE SIN' OF FREEMASONRY, SAYS CATHOLICS CANNOT JOIN THE WORLD'S LARGEST SECRET SOCIETY Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa, middle, leads a mass on Easter Sunday at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. "Therefore, We, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem, call upon our congregations to stand strong with those facing such afflictions, by this year foregoing any unnecessarily festive activities," the patriarchs wrote. "We likewise encourage our priests and the faithful to focus more on the spiritual meaning of Christmas in their pastoral activities and liturgical celebrations during this period, with all the focus directed at holding in our thoughts our brothers and sisters affected by this war and its consequences, and with fervent prayers for a just and lasting peace for our beloved Holy Land." The Christian leaders' statement contextualizes reports from earlier this month quoting Bethlehem civil authorities on the decision to take down Christmas decorations in the area. ARCHBISHOP ABSTAINS AS CHURCH OF ENGLAND APPROVES TRIAL BLESSINGS FOR SAME-SEX UNIONS BY 1 VOTE People attend Christmas celebrations around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank. Domestic and foreign visitors gather around the Church of the Nativity, where Jesus is believed to have been born, to participate in Christmas ceremonies and Mass. Michele Burke Bowe, ambassador of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to the Palestinian Authority, told Fox News Digital that the stripped down holiday in the Holy Land will be much closer to the "first Christmas" than people are used to. "This year in Bethlehem, there will be no Christmas tree, choirs, lights or decorations. The 100-plus-year-old Christmas parade composed of marching bands and bagpipers from the parish scout troops has been canceled," said Bowe. "Instead, by edict of the Patriarch and Church Heads of Jerusalem, this December will be very much like that first Christmas 2,000 years ago. No gifts, no celebrations, no fireworks or festivities-- Just a babe born on a deep winter night under a bright star." FINNISH LAWMAKER WINS SECOND 'HATE SPEECH' CASE OVER QUOTING THE BIBLE Anba Antonius, Coptic Orthodox Bishop of Jerusalem takes part in the Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem, West Bank. Bowe also serves as president of the Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem, which provides maternal care for expectant mothers in the region, regardless of faith. "The families of Bethlehem will celebrate Christmas with Mass, prayer and sacrifice as requested by the religious leaders. Christmas will be somber, reflecting on the recent events in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank," Bowe said. People attend Christmas celebrations around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank. She concluded, "But Christmas will not be without hope. Just as Mary and Joseph found shelter in the manger, the Holy Family Hospital, not 1,500 footsteps from the birthplace of Christ, will provide refuge to mothers delivering their babies without regard to financial need or religious creed." Israel and Hamas are in the 48th day of the war, which began on Oct. 7 when Palestinian terrorists launched a surprise attack on southern Israel. Both sides have agreed to a temporary cease-fire for humanitarian purposes that includes a hostage release deal. Under the deal, Israel's military has agreed to temporarily stop its pursuit of Hamas including its ground invasion of Gaza and its airstrikes for humanitarian purposes. Also, Hamas has agreed to release dozens of hostages in tandem with Israel agreeing to release Palestinian prisoners on a 3-to-1 ratio. Fox News Trey Yingst reported Hamas leaders would release one hostage for every three Palestinians that Israel releases from its prisons. Fox News Digital's Lawrence Richard and Bradford Betz contributed to this report. Original article source: Christian leaders in Bethlehem defend canceling Christmas celebrations to emphasize 'spiritual meaning' You are here: Business This photo taken on March 15, 2023 shows a cargo truck at the highway port in Manzhouli, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. [Photo/Xinhua] Manzhouli, China's largest land port, has registered a surge in cargo volume so far this year, according to the port administration office. Manzhouli, in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, handled more than 20 million tonnes of cargo from January to Nov. 20, up 39.9 percent year on year. The figure consisted of 18.73 million tonnes of railway freight and 1.32 million tonnes of road freight, up 35.3 percent and 171 percent, respectively, said Zhang Shipu, director of the administration office. Thus far this year, Manzhouli port has handled 4,353 China-Europe freight train trips, transporting a total of 472,900 twenty-foot equivalent units of cargo. Imports and exports via Manzhouli port mainly include daily necessities, industrial machinery, and agricultural and sideline products. To further promote the high-quality development of Manzhouli and enhance the facilitation of cross-border trade, the port has launched a raft of measures to improve customs clearance efficiency for China-Europe freight trains, streamline clearance procedures and reduce associated costs, Zhang said. As he aims to be the last challenger standing against former President Donald Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Chris Christie's turning up the volume on two other rivals. Christie's amplifying criticism of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for not vigorously targeting Trump, who remains the faraway front-runner for the GOP nomination as he makes his third straight White House run. "Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have not made the case against him. They refuse to make the case against him. Theyre scared to make the case against him," Christie charged in a Fox News Digital interview on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. And Christie, a very vocal Republican critic of Trump, touted that "the one thing people say about me is Im not." POPULAR GOP GOVERNOR IN A CRUCIAL PRIMARY STATE TEAMS UP WITH CHRISTIE, HALEY AND DESANTIS DeSantis and Haley are currently battling for second place in the latest national surveys in the 2024 Republican race and in the most recent surveys in Iowa, whose caucuses lead off the GOP nominating calendar. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP As Christie runs a second time for the White House, he's once again concentrating most of his time and resources on New Hampshire, which holds the first primary in the Republican schedule and votes second after Iowa. Christie is currently in third place in New Hampshire polls, far behind Trump and slightly trailing Haley. Christie placed all his chips in his campaign for president eight years ago in the Granite State. However, his campaign crashed and burned after a disappointing and distant sixth-place finish in New Hampshire, far behind Trump, who crushed the competition in the primary, boosting him toward the nomination and eventually the White House. CHRISTIE VOWS TO CONFRONT TRUMP IF FORMER PRESIDENT DOESN'T DEBATE Christie became the first among the other GOP 2016 contenders to endorse Trump and for years was a top outside adviser to the then-president and chaired Trumps high-profile commission on opioids. However, the two had a falling out after Trumps unsuccessful attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Biden. In the past three years, Christie has become one of the harshest Trump critics in the Republican Party. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who's running a second time for the Republican presidential nomination, held a round table discussion with Salvation Army leaders in Derry, New Hampshire, on Nov. 21. Christie, who for months has pledged to seek out and confront Trump on the campaign trail, said "I think the one person Donald Trump doesnt want to have a one-on-one with is me." "Hes not afraid of Nikki Haley," Christie argued. "And he certainly made his feelings about Ron DeSantis known. He doesnt look like hes very intimidated by him. But the fact is, you dont hear him saying that stuff about me. He doesnt want to be on that stage with me." DESANTIS LANDS THE ENDORSEMENT OF A TOP EVANGELICAL LEADER IN IOWA Christie teamed up Monday night at a town hall in Nashua, New Hampshire, with Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who also joined Haley and DeSantis on the campaign trail in the Granite State this week. Sununu, a popular governor who's also an outspoken Trump critic, has said he'll make an endorsement in the GOP nomination race sometime after Thanksgiving, and that it's down to Haley, DeSantis or Christie. Asked about the case he's making to Sununu, Christie told Fox News: "who does he want standing across from Donald Trump when this gets down to a one-on-one? Who does he think can take him on in a direct way? Whos been saying the same things as Chris Sununu has been saying for the last couple of years about Donald Trump, trying to move the party in a new direction? And I think Im the person who has the clearest, strongest voice on that." Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (right) teamed up with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (center) at a town hall in Nashua. Christie said that he needs to do "well" in New Hampshire's primary to be successful in his long-shot bid for the 2024 nomination. Asked to define what "well" means, Christie answered, "No. I cant define it. Ill know it when I see it and well see what it looks like." "If I dont think Ive done well enough, Id get out," Christie emphasized. "I'm not somebody whos going to linger here. This is hard work, and youve got to get up out of bed every morning and feel like you have a chance to win. And if that moment comes where I dont feel like I have a chance to win, Im not going to elongate a campaign just for the sake of doing it." But he added: "Im convinced that Im going to do very well here. And Im going to be the last one standing against Donald Trump and Im going to take this right to the convention because hes going to be convicted of federal crimes of interference of our election process this spring." CHRISTIE JEERED AS HE TELLS TRUMP SUPPORTERS THEY 'FEAR THE TRUTH' AT FLORIDA REPUBLICAN GATHERING Former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told Fox News Digital he believes former President Donald Trump will be convicted of "federal crimes of interference of our election process this spring." Trump has made history as the first former or current president to be indicted for a crime, but his four indictments including in federal court in Washington, D.C. and in Fulton County court in Georgia on charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss have only fueled his support among Republican voters. Christie's a longtime friend of Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, dating back to their days as fellow governors. Manchin, a moderate Democrat in a heavily red state, announced earlier this month that he wouldn't seek re-election to the Senate next year and instead is mulling a potential third-party run for the White House. "Joe and I had dinner together about ten days ago in D.C. It was great to see him," Christie shared. "We had a great dinner together on his boat in the Potomac. Hes been a great friend for 14 years now, and I suspect that whatever happens in the upcoming year, were going to continue to be great friends." But Christie ruled out teaming up with Manchin in any possible third-party presidential bid. "Im committed to winning the Republican nomination for president. I have no interest in being a third-party candidate," Christie told Fox News. "Joe can do whatever it is he wants to do. Everyones got to make their own decision. My decision is the only interest I have is being the Republican nominee for president because I think thats the best chance I have to win." Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub. Original article source: Christie turns up the heat on Haley and DeSantis as he tries to be the Trump alternative in GOP 2024 race A Chinese coastguard vessel maneuvers beside the Philippine coast guard ship BRP Cabra as they approach Second Thomas Shoal (AP) The Philippines government said a plan by civilians to travel to the disputed waters of the South China Sea and spread Christmas cheer for soldiers posted there was ill-advised. A coalition of civilian groups, called the Atin Ito coalition, earlier planned to sail a convoy of volunteers in nearly 40 ships and bring Christmas presents and provisions to soldiers deployed at the BRP Sierra Madre Shoal in the South China Sea, that has been the flashpoint of tensions between the Philippines and China. Marines of the Philippines are stationed at a deliberately grounded and rusted old warship called BRP Sierra Madre. The warship has been parked at the Second Thomas Shoal also known as Ayungin Shoal in the West Philippine Sea since 1999 as a reminder to China that the Philippines has staked its territorial claim to the island. The Philippiness National Security Council called the plan by civilians to send a convoy to the shoal ill-advised, reported the Inquirer. The plan to send the convoy was made in early October. The National Security Councils assistant director general Jonathan Malaya said the intention by civilian groups was supported by the government in principle. However, he warned that undertaking such a convoy to Ayungin Shoal at the time of heightened tensions between the Philippines and China is ill-advised. The government has now urged the civilian group to take the convoy to other islands like the Kalayaan Island Group of Palawan province, particularly Pag-asa (Thitu) Island. It is the largest among the Filipino islands that has a permanent civilian habitation of at least 400. The government also suggested they visit other outposts in the West Philippine Sea. There is, therefore, no need for a civilian Christmas convoy mission at this time, Mr Malaya said. He said the group can also look to send Christmas donations to the Philippine Navy and the Philippine coastguard, that would bring them to soldiers at the BRP Sierra Madre during its resupply missions. Edicio Dela Torre, convenor of the Atin Ito campaign, was quoted as saying by The Guardian that the mission will go ahead, but with negotiations about the form of bringing festive cheer to the troops. We want something peaceful, something fun, we are not going [in order] to confront, he said. AUSTIN (KXAN) Starting in 2024, many City of Austin employees will have the option to work from home 50% of the time, according to a new telework policy. As COVID-19 cases waned and employees from various industries started to leave their working-from-home arrangements, Interim City Manager Jesus Garza announced it was also time for city employees to prepare to return to the office. PREVIOUS: City of Austin employees to return to the office, union not on board Garza said in May that all workers would return to the office by the end of 2023, which caused some employees to protest, citing a better work-life balance when getting to work partially from home. I know when I announced a Citywide standard, employees were concerned about changing their schedules. Some felt they were losing what many viewed as a new benefit the city had been able to offer. But at the heart of our organization is our ability to serve the public and be available for those city needs. It is through that lens that I am announcing a new policy that will be implemented by each department effective January 1, 2024, Garza wrote in a memo sent to city employees Friday. The policy allows some city employees to 50% of their time from home within a two-week period. City executives and operational staff such as public works and utilities personnel will be excluded from the benefits. Others who work in call centers, IT, and in some engineering positions may be eligible to work entirely from home, according to Garzas memo. I believe this policy accounts for the modern working environment and the ability to effectively telework, balancing our need to be accessible to the public, Garza wrote. District 2 Council Member Vanessa Fuentes brought forward a resolution in early November recommending telework opportunities for city employees to not only offer more flexibility but also propel the city toward its climate goals. Fuentes told KXAN she was very pleased with Garzas new telework policy. This new telework policy acknowledges the role that the city of Austin has as one of the largest employers. We have set a goal to get 15% of Austinites working from home to meet our climate goals by reducing carbon emissions from transportation [modes], she said. The city of Austin has over 13,000 employees, and by having a hybrid model a flexible work arrangement where city workers are allowed to work from home a couple of days a week, its gonna go a long way [and] it shows that the city of Austin is leading by example, Fuentes continued. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin. EDITORS NOTE: How City Council members voted on this measure was initially reported incorrectly. It has been corrected. EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) The City Council voted 5-3 Tuesday, Nov. 21, for a zoning change that would allow a logistics warehouse to be built on what had previously been agricultural land in the Lower Valley. The zoning change would allow for developer Octavio Saavedra and his company EP Logistics to build a logistics warehouse at 9614 Socorro Road, which is near Western Technical College. The zoning change affects about 30 acres. As part of the approved plan, access for semi-trucks would be limited to Carl Longuemare through a bridge that would be constructed. About 20 residents attended the meeting to protest the proposed zoning change. Residents cited that Socorro Road is an historic road, increased traffic that would result from the plan, the current poor condition of the road and noise pollution. Three previous public meetings were held to address the zoning request and the owner made changes to address concerns, city officials said. City Council members who voted for the zoning change were: Brian Kennedy, Art Fierro, Henry Rivera and Isabel Salcido. Alexsandra Annello, Joe Molinar and Chris Canales voted no. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News. OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) The City Rescue Mission is set to unveil its addition to the Womens Shelter. City Rescue Mission, known for hope and support in the community, is preparing to unveil 60 new StepUp beds in its womens shelter. According to City Rescue, the beds will be a significant upgrade for the facility and were made possible through the generous contributions raised during the annual Hearts of Hope Luncheon. OSDH shares food safety tips for healthy holidays This event will be celebrated with an open house on Monday, November 27, 9:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. at 800 West California Avenue in Oklahoma City. Mission leadership says the new StepUp beds, designed with comfort and safety in mind, are expected to enhance the quality of life for many women seeking refuge and support. The addition of these beds represents our ongoing commitment to providing a safe, dignified, and supportive environment for those residing in our womens shelter, said Erin Goodin, President and CEO of City Rescue Mission. We are deeply grateful to the Hearts of Hope Luncheon attendees for their unwavering support and generosity. Find more Top Stories from KFOR.com For more information or to arrange a visit to the womens shelter, please contact Wendy Elliott, Vice President of Development, at welliott@cityrescue.org. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KFOR.com Oklahoma City. Climate conspiracy theories are flourishing with lifestyle influencers joining in the misinformation war and scientists hounded on social media, researchers say, as pressure rises on leaders at the COP28 summit. "Mis- and disinformation about the climate emergency are delaying urgently needed action to ensure a liveable future for the planet," the United Nations said in a policy brief in June. "A small but vocal minority of climate science denialists continue to reject the consensus position and command an outsized presence on some digital platforms." At the UN's last COP summit, officials and campaigners called for delegates and social media giants to adopt a common definition of climate disinformation and misinformation, and work to prevent it. As leaders prepare for the world's biggest climate meeting in Dubai from November 30 to December 12, AFP Fact Check details three trends in false climate information in 2023. - Conspiracy theories thrive - Wildfires and heatwaves struck around the world this year, fuelling false claims that the disasters were brought about by humans to justify repressive climate policies. Unfounded conspiracy theories surged about "15-minute cities" -- urban-planning initiatives aiming in part to reduce traffic emissions -- with commentators branding them a plan by global elites to keep populations captive. AFP fact-checks debunked numerous claims sparked by the deadly wildfires that ravaged Maui, Hawaii in August. Among them, one TikTok video claimed blazes were started on purpose in a "land grab" to "get people into 15-minute cities". Conspiracy theories have a "choke hold... on all conversations around public policy" on climate and emissions reductions, said Jennie King, head of climate research and policy for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate, a campaign group that analysed thousands of posts on X (formerly Twitter), said the denialist hashtag ClimateScam trended on X after New York authorities issued a smog warning due to smoke from wildfires in Canada. - Health influencers spread misinformation With the decline of the Covid pandemic and the numerous conspiracy theories it spawned, some "wellness" and New Age spiritualist influencers now post false claims about climate change, analysts at non-profit Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) said in a report. They analysed posts by health influencers including bodybuilders and yoga teachers. "Arguments are intimately linked to concerns around bodily integrity, including a common accusation that climate policies are a pretext to make people unhealthy," they wrote. AFP fact checks have debunked claims that the World Economic Forum wanted to make people eat insects or that US cities planned to ban meat and dairy foods under climate policies. - Scientists targeted online With governments pushing reforms to reduce carbon emissions, 2023 has seen online attacks on public figures over climate reforms - from state officials to journalists to meteorologists. "All of those are seen as targets for this sort of information warfare," said King, signalling "the increasing scapegoating of anybody who is associated with climate policy or climate action." During a heatwave that started in April, Spain's State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) said its employees received threats from people who believed the widely debunked theory that the authorities were creating weather disasters through aeroplane "chemtrails". Researchers meanwhile documented cases of scientists abandoning Twitter for alternative social networks as insults and threats from climate change deniers surged on the platform after billionaire Elon Musk took it over in October 2022. Peter Gleick, a climate specialist with nearly 99,000 followers, announced on May 21 he would no longer post on the platform because the "intensity of abuse has skyrocketed". Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and prominent analyst of climate disinformation, said he believed the rise was "organised and orchestrated" by opponents of reforms. An analysis of posts on Twitter carried out by computational social scientists at City, University of London in January 2023 found that the number of tweets or retweets using strong climate-sceptic terms nearly doubled in 2022 to more than a million. Since then, Musk's move to restrict researchers' access to the platform's analytical data has made the trend harder to measure, City researcher Max Falkenberg told AFP. rlp/giv Journalists from the investigative outlet Slidstvo.Info have discovered that Vladyslav Neskorodiev, a collaborator from Luhansk who goes by the alias Lev (Lion), was involved in the murder of children's writer and poet Volodymyr Vakulenko in Kapitolivka, Izium district, during the occupation of the Kharkiv region. Neskorodiev has family members in both the occupied territories and Kyiv Oblast. Source: Slidstvo.Info Details: Law enforcement officers reported a week ago that they had identified two soldiers from Luhansk Oblast who were suspected of killing Volodymyr Vakulenko and three other men. V.V. Neskorodiev and S.A. Udodenko were served with notices of suspicion. Neskorodiev, aka Lev, is the commander of a company of the "Luhansk Peoples Republic" [a self-proclaimed and non-recognised formation in Luhansk Oblast, backed by Russia ed.]. Udodenko, aka Udod (Hoopoe), is a machine gunner. Both hail from the currently occupied city of Luhansk. Slidstvo.Info journalists found Vladyslav Neskorodiev's sister and aunt and talked to them. In the spring of 2022, Russian soldiers led by Neskorodiev visited Volodymyr Vakulenko's house several times. The investigation materials state that Russian soldiers abducted the writer along with his teenage son, who has a disability. Despite a day of torture, Vakulenko refused to cooperate with the Russians, and at first they took him and his son back home. But two days later, a white car marked with a letter Z was once again seen parked in Vakulenko's yard. [The letter Z is one of the most recognisable symbols of the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine; the Russians often mark their armoured vehicles with a Z ed.] Neskorodiev ordered the soldiers to drag Vakulenko out of the house by force. The Russian soldiers also took his backpack, which had military patches of Ukrainian Armed Forces units on it. Locals found the backpack in Kapitolivka, a 15-minute drive from Izium, a few days later. Neskorodiev probably gave Udodenko the order to shoot Vakulenko. Udodenko killed the writer with three gunshots, after first breaking his fingers. Vakulenko's body was identified among other bodies showing signs of torture that were recovered during an exhumation in November 2022. Slidstvo.Info found Vladyslav Neskorodiev's page on the Russian social network Odnoklassniki (Classmates). The traitor is 33, married to Lina, and has a 7-year-old daughter. The family decided not to leave occupied Luhansk. Slidstvo.Info called Neskorodiev, but his Ukrainian number turned out to be no longer in service. Vladyslav's sister Siuzanna moved to Irpin, Kyiv Oblast, after the occupation of Luhansk in 2014. The first she had heard about the war crimes her brother is suspected of was during her conversation with the journalists. Quote from Siuzanna: "You're telling me this now, and my heart just started pounding. I don't know this whole story at all... We are from Luhansk. I left back in 2014. But my brother stayed there, and I don't even know where he is or what's going on with him... I was shocked when I heard from my grandmother what had happened there, in Luhansk. It was a shock for me, I couldn't believe it." Details: Siuzanna said that when Russian troops occupied Kyiv Oblast, she did not have time to flee to safety with her children, so she waited in the basement of their house until Irpin was liberated. Her family survived the occupation in Irpin. Their house in Irpin also survived, although the windows were smashed. They have moved to another house now. Siuzanna had lost touch with her brother after a falling-out: "We haven't spoken for seven years. I don't even know where he is or what's going on with him. We've never got on that well. The last time we saw each other was in 2014, when we were in Luhansk." She said she was unaware that her brother had sided with the Russians: "He was working on construction sites, helping our aunt and uncle. I don't know any more than that. My family stayed in Luhansk: my cousin Oleksandr Kovalov and my mother. My aunt stayed because my grandmother said she wouldnt leave. I can't answer for the rest of them, I don't know why they decided to stay. Everyone decides for themselves." Siuzanna reiterated that she hates the Russian army and that she herself "would never have switched to the Russian side". But Neskorodiev's aunt, Nataliia Kovalova, who lives in Luhansk, is fine with the occupation and does not hide her loyalty to Vladimir Putin and the Russian army on Odnoklassniki. Kovalova told the journalists she had also fallen out with her nephew, but that she was convinced that Neskorodiev was incapable of killing a civilian because she had raised him since he was a boy. "Vladyslav would never be able to kill any civilian, and I know that for sure. I raised him from childhood, he is not that kind of person. So whatever the Ukrainian Prosecutor's Office publishes, thats their problem. I don't believe it and I never will," declared Nataliia, who is also convinced that "the Russian army is protecting Ukrainians" and "American mercenaries" are serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine suspects Vladyslav Neskorodiev of organising the murders of three more civilians in Izium: Ivan Shabelnyk, Ukrainian combat veteran Yurii Kavun, and Leonid Taran. Neskorodievs whereabouts are currently unknown. In Ukraine, he faces imprisonment for a term of 8 to 12 years (Article 438 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). Support UP or become our patron! The Colorado Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear appeals related to a judge's ruling against an effort to keep former President Donald Trump off the states ballot in 2024. The appeals were filed by both Trump and the Colorado voters arguing he is ineligible to hold office. Trump took issue with the state judge's finding that he "engaged in insurrection," while the voters disagreed with the ruling that the constitutional clause about ineligibility does not apply to the presidency. State Judge Sarah B. Wallace last week dismissed a legal challenge brought by a group of Colorado voters represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which argued Trump's 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 Friday, Wallace found that Trump "engaged in insurrection" but said the Constitutions ban on insurrectionists' holding office did not apply to Trump because the clause in question explicitly lists all federal elected positions except the presidency. Sean Grimsley, an attorney for the group of voters who filed the legal challenge, welcomed the Supreme Court's decision to take up the appeal. "We look forward to presenting arguments on the one legal question at issue that an insurrectionist former president can and must be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Grimsley said in a statement. Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said the judge had overstepped. The district judge rightly rejected the far-lefts efforts to keep President Trump off the ballot, but she then went out of her way to wrongly criticize the President. Weve asked the Colorado Supreme Court to strike her wrong-headed speculation, because it goes far beyond her jurisdiction, Cheung said in statement. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court are scheduled for Dec. 6 in Denver, a month before Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold must certify ballots for the states March 5 primary. Courts in Minnesota and Michigan have recently rejected similar legal efforts to disqualify Trump from running for president in those states. Petitioners in Michigan have filed an appeal with the states Supreme Court. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Chaim Peri was an artist and a peace activist who used to take sick people from Gaza for treatment in Israeli hospitals. On 7 October he was among those kidnapped by Hamas fighters when they came across the border to carry out an attack that claimed 1,200 lives. Every day of waiting since then has been one of despondency and fear for his family. They are relieved now that the freeing of hostages is due to start under a deal, but they are also aware that Mr Peri, 80, who suffers from heart disease, will not be among the first to come home. It is a strange feeling now. Things are moving at last and that is great. It is also right, of course, that children and women will be the first to be let go, said his son Noam. If only we had some idea about when our father may get out. He is not a healthy man; he needs daily medication. He is a brave man, a hardy man, but at his age he may not survive much longer. He has fought for human rights all his life, including Palestinian rights. It would be so sad if he had a lonely death in Gaza. Mr Peri was listed as missing after the attacks and his family only found out that he was alive when Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old neighbour at Kibbutz Nir Oz, who has been freed by Hamas, reported that she had seen him in captivity. Seventy-three residents of the Kibbutz were abducted, Yocheveds 83-year-old husband Oded is among those still being held. Their daughter, Sharone, agreed with Noam Peri that it was only right that women and children should be the first to get home. But everyone is really concerned about what can happen next. Why is Hamas delaying the freeing of the others? When will they come out? It is a kind of psychological warfare that they are carrying out, she said. The agreement, which was brokered by Qatar as the main conduit, and Egyptian help, with the US administration a driving force, is structured to encourage the further releases of hostages. Relatives and friends of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have protested for their release for weeks (AFP via Getty Images) A four-day ceasefire will be used to free 50 women and children from Gaza, followed by the release of 150 Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails. A second phase would then come into play with the pause in fighting extended by a day for every 10 further hostages freed. Israel will then release up to 150 more Palestinian detainees. The process will not get under way until Thursday. The Israeli government has issued a list of the 300 inmates who would be freed. Under the countrys constitution citizens have 24 hours to appeal to the Supreme Court against individual releases. This option, it is thought, is unlikely to be pursued successfully. All Israeli and American air activity, including drone flights, are due to stop in the south of Gaza for the four days. In the north of the territory, however, the suspension will be limited to six hours every day. Israeli forces will stay in position, but will not carry out any offensive operations. Much needed humanitarian assistance will be boosted with 200 lorries carrying food, four fuel tankers, and four lorries carrying gas going into Gaza from Egypts Rafah crossing on each of the four days. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will get access to the hostages to check on their physical and mental well-being, and the conditions under which they are being kept, something the families of the hostages and the Israeli government has been pressing to happen. Some of the hostages suffer from illnesses which need medical care and some have been injured during their abduction. Among those taken away was a Thai worker who was nine months pregnant and may have given birth. There are many in their 70s and 80s who are afflicted by high blood pressure and may suffer strokes if they do not receive the required medication. Netanyahu: We are at war, and the war will continue until all our goals are achieved (AFP) The families of the hostages have welcomed the ICRC access, but there is trepidation among some that the Israeli military may try to carry out rescue operations if they track down the location of the hostages, and these could go wrong with potentially fatal consequences. Im really conflicted about this. Obviously its a very good thing that the Red Cross is getting the visits to help people with medical conditions. But would the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] find out the locations and then try rescue missions if they did? Its hard to imagine they wouldnt, said the brother of a young man who was kidnapped from the Supernova musical festival. Until now I would have said hell yes go and save the hostages with a rescue attempt. But now with this deal in place, with progress being made, Ive become very nervous about something like that. Things can go wrong on these things even with best precautions taken. The brother, who has spoken regularly to Israeli and foreign media since the war began, did not want his identity disclosed on this occasion. This is a very tense time, delicate time. People can take things wrongly, think Im appeasing the terrorists. The fact is, we are all very nervous about things going wrong now, he wanted to explain. Relations of women and children who are likely to be freed in the first tranche remain apprehensive. Yosi Shnaiders cousin, Shiri Bibas, and her two children 10-month old baby Kfir, and four-year-old Ariel were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. He said: We saw a photo of them with Hamas, there was blood on one of the kids blankets. Shiri looked terrified, she was crying. We do not know what has happened to them, what kind of state they are in. They should be in the first 50 freed, but weve heard nothing. Hamas is playing games, first of all they said they did not know where all the women and children were. Then they say they will give 10 names at a time. We dont trust them, everyone is very worried. Anyway, whatll happen after this? Will the government try to destroy Hamas like they said, or will the war just end? There was cautious hope among some international leaders that the temporary ceasefires will lead to an end to the fighting. Qatars prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said the deal should establish a comprehensive and sustainable agreement that would put an end to the war and the bloodshed. He added that this could lead to serious talks for a comprehensive and just peace process. However the near unanimous cabinet approval for the hostage deal, with only the party of the ultra-right security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, voting against it, was on the pledge that the truce was strictly temporary. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his ministers: We are at war, and the war will continue until all our goals are achieved. The stated goal of the Israeli government is the total destruction of Hamas and the liquidation of its leadership and command and control. That has not been achieved yet and it remains unlikely that peace will break out in the immediate future. First, he had a whiff of suspicion. Simon Sherman, a retired university professor, started wondering about how money was being spent by the association at his oceanfront condo in Hallandale Beach. Now, his quest for accountability is careening toward financial ruin. Hes accused of defaming condo board members. The association says Sherman engaged in a damaging smear campaign even after his suspicions of wrongdoing were disproven. They have money, they have power, they have attorneys, Sherman, a Russian immigrant, said from his Parker Plaza Estates condo. I didnt recognize that it could happen in the United States. A months-long investigation by the South Florida Sun Sentinel found that condo and homeowner associations regularly use Floridas defamation laws to silence critics. The laws were written to allow a victim to recover financial damages from someone who spreads lies about them and harms their reputation. Were it City Hall, a critics accusations would carry some free-speech protections, allowing citizens to act as watchdogs of public spending and decision-making. But under the shadow government of a condominium or homeowner association, residents who suspect wrongdoing speak up at their own peril. Sherman and his wife, Lyuba, are among the millions of Floridians nearly half the states population living under community association rule. One attorney called it a sub-democratic society. In this sub-America, the laws favor the few who sit on association boards. Sun Sentinel reporters interviewed attorneys, legislators, association board members and activists, and examined court files, state complaint records and emails to regulators. The documents read like cries for help yet help rarely materializes. But the lawsuits sometimes do. Even critics acting in good faith can end up bullied into silence and stuck with a large legal tab. Before Marglli Gallego, president of the board at the sprawling Hammocks Community Association, was arrested in April 2021 in a corruption case, she and the association filed defamation claims against three unit owners, saying their accusations that she stole money from the association hurt her reputation and caused police to investigate her. The association even sued two Miami-Dade Police Department detectives on the case, for defamation, for publicly accusing Gallego of theft during their investigation. Gallego lost one case, settled another and a third was voluntarily dismissed. The case involving the detectives continues. Gallego, who is awaiting trial, pleaded not guilty to charges of grand theft and subsequent charges of money laundering, racketeering and organized fraud. Before Ben Dvir, then-president of Blue on the Bay condo in Miami, was arrested and charged with grand theft, he sued a unit owner in his building for defamation. He called the man, who is a police officer, an owner with too much time on his hands that represents a thorn in the side of every condo board. Dvir also initially sued a consulting firm the officer had hired to investigate potential wrongdoing. The case against the unit owner, who Dvir said accused him of defrauding the association of money, continues. Dvir was arrested Sept. 13, accused of embezzling $32,905. His arraignment, where he will enter a plea, is scheduled for Oct. 13. A successful defamation suit in Florida must prove that the person negligently communicated false statements that hurt the victims reputation and caused damage. Slander is spoken defamation; libel is written. If it concerns a public official, the standard for winning a lawsuit is higher the official has to prove the speaker had actual malice, either by knowingly spreading falsehoods, or showing reckless disregard for the truth. Association board members are not considered public officials, in the eyes of the law. Although winning a defamation lawsuit is difficult, said University of Florida constitutional law Professor Lyrissa Lidsky, filing one is easy. That enables association boards to use the law as a weapon, she said. You can cause a lot of pain with a lawsuit, Lidsky said, and defamation law lends itself to inflicting that kind of pain. In South Florida, the heart of Floridas condominium society, residents have been sued for comments that legal experts said are specifically protected in Florida law allegations contained in litigation, or statements of opinion, or communications to local government and the police, for example. Very often [associations] get away with doing whatever the hell they want, said attorney Richard Lubliner, who has been involved with numerous association legal battles, including Shermans case. Because nobody has the money to stand up to them. The lesson many activists take away is that condos and homeowner associations, or HOAs, are not a place for dissenters. Its an uphill battle if youre an individual taking it on, said Shawn Brown, a Tampa-based attorney specializing in condominium law. Conformity is more or less mandated in an association. Charles Moerdler, a unit owner in the Parker Plaza Estates building where Simon Sherman is battling the board, has vast experience in defamation law, including as past general counsel for the New York Post. Moerdler said heated community association quarrels are endemic to Florida because retirement can breed boredom and a yearning for continued relevance. When youve got nothing else to do, its something to do, Moerdler said. Association wars have escalated since the COVID-19 pandemic, he believes, because the forced isolation sent retirees to their computers. At 88, Moerdler is still working. He said hes advised Sherman unsuccessfully to stop the quarreling. There is one truth Ive learned, Moerdler said. Any relationship involving home ownership is the second most difficult relationship that man has, close on the heels of matrimony. Behind the facade The high drama of condo-living that was famously parodied on the television sitcom Seinfeld is a reality in South Florida, where the shows creator, Larry David, got his inspiration. Davids father was the president of his condo association in Sunrise. The cases reviewed by the Sun Sentinel carry similar themes: Allegations that board members gave lucrative contracts to family members, took kickbacks from vendors, rigged board elections to defeat enemies and more. Wafting from the South Florida court files is widespread anger, passion, fear and disgust. And behind those cases are people risking financial devastation. One defamation lawsuit begins colorfully, with the sexy allure of Florida condo life: Nestled within a Iuscious seascape and nuzzled gently by soothing sea breeze, Sea Air Towers must have been named in a moment of reverent exhale. Then it exposes a meltdown within the Hollywood condo, which is undergoing renovations: The new board sued four unit owners for allegations they made to the media, city inspectors and state officials. The board says the owners have feigned, forged, and fraudulently flung baseless allegations, rumors, innuendo, and lies. The unit owners argued that the lawsuit is an unlawful, frivolous attempt to shut them up in order to cover up mismanagement. The case is still pending. What trivialities condo boards of yesteryear faced complaints about splashing in the swimming pool, or the color of paint have yielded to much more serious and costly priorities: Preventing another disaster like the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside. The tragedy, which killed 98 people, prompted more rigorous inspections and maintenance standards. The requirements led to dramatic and often unaffordable increases in fees and assessments that have inflamed confusion and distrust. Thousands of condos and HOA neighborhoods in South Florida are 50 years old or older. At the Pointe South Condominium in Boca Raton, a former board member was sued for comments she made to the Sun Sentinel shortly after the Surfside collapse. She cast doubt on the structural integrity of her condo building, but the associations leadership said she was wrong. The case was settled in April. In Broward County, there were 23 community association-related defamation lawsuits filed from 2020 to mid-2023, the Sun Sentinel found about 13% of the 179 defamation cases filed in that time period. Two of the most recurrent provocations were negative online reviews and community association infighting, reporters found. In one Miami-Dade County case that spanned three years, three residents of El Dorado Condominium in Aventura and the Diario Las Americas newspaper were sued by the condo association for libel after the residents participated in a news report about suspected mismanagement of funds. The attorney said the accusations were false and that the negative publicity caused property values to decline. One ruling in that case underscores the difference between speaking out in a community association versus a City Hall. Diario Las Americas claimed that the associations defamation suit was an illegal Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP suit. Florida has anti-SLAPP laws specifically intended to protect people who are speaking out on public issues. Florida law prohibits condo or HOA boards from spending association funds to engage in a SLAPP suit. But Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Abby Cynamon disagreed with the newspapers argument, explaining in an August 2019 ruling that Floridas anti-SLAPP law does not apply, because in this condo case, no public issues are involved. Judge Cynamon also noted that condo critics dont have the protections a person would have when criticizing a mayor or some other public figure. There is no case law in Florida that holds a condo board member can be considered a public or semi-public figure, the judge wrote. The case is now closed. The newspaper agreed to a confidential settlement after mediation; one of the three residents was voluntarily dismissed from the case, and then the case went inactive. Tampa attorney Brown said defamation filings are an emerging trend used by both sides of disputes. Typically, theyre borne of a personal conflict between a board member and a resident. And sometimes its the resident rather than the board who files the defamation claim. In one Broward case, a unit owner sued the board president for calling him a fat crybaby and rendering him persona non grata among his neighbors. One of the presidents defenses: The plaintiffs reputation is so dismal that any purported statements could not have harmed it or made it worse. In multiple cases reviewed by the Sun Sentinel, residents who were sued for speaking out agreed to be quiet, and issued public apologies or retractions. In a Boca Raton case surrounding a concrete restoration project, the residents promised to never do anything like this ever again. A Davie woman who was sued by her association apologized for speaking out about illegal and unethical activities, then was sued a second time when she sent neighbors another letter warning she was being retaliated against by the board. In a Boca Raton case last year, unit owner Alison Landes was threatened by the Boca Lakes Condominium Associations attorney with costly mediation and a potential lawsuit if she didnt apologize to all the neighbors and cease from emailing anyone now or in the future, according to court files. She had emailed neighbors suggesting that gatehouse work at the association was improper. Attorney Guy Shir told her shed violated the condo documents by committing a nuisance. Her association ultimately did sue her for defamation. Landes attorney argued she was being hit with an illegal SLAPP suit. Under the demand in the letter, her attorney wrote in a court motion, she can never email another member about anything forever. In mid-August, Landes filed a handwritten letter to the judge, saying shes 74, has health issues, is a caregiver for her sister, and was preparing to settle the case. Shir also filed defamation lawsuits against four residents on behalf of the Boca Grand Condominium Association. Among other things, the residents had questioned an association contract with the brother of one of the board members, alleging corruption, the lawsuit said. One of the statements that was described as defamatory was a residents claim that the board is not being transparent regarding Association general business. The lawsuits were voluntarily withdrawn months later. Shir said a new board decided to drop them. Shir said he demands an apology, or evidence that the allegations are true, before moving ahead towards a lawsuit. He said lies are powerful and cause harm. You can ask any questions you want about anything a board does thats an agenda item, and nobody is doubting that, Shir said. When you start referring to actions as illegal, improper, questionable to allege wrongdoing, thats when it becomes defamation. Conspiracy theories spread When Michael Perkins was president of Southwind Lakes Homeowner Association in Boca Raton, he initiated a libel lawsuit against a resident whod set up a website to criticize the board. Perkins said his plan to build reserves and improve the community which meant increasing its $35 monthly association fees sparked revolt from the resident, O. Michael Gray. Some neighbors latched on, Perkins said. The website was basically him tearing these guys apart and saying how inept they are and they were wasting everyones money, Michael Gray, recalled. Gray had the communitys best interests at heart, his son said. In some cases, though, residents can indeed go too far. You do have the owners out there who consistently disregard or confuse the truth with what they would like the truth to be, said Plantation attorney Joel McTague, who often represents associations. I think sometimes the board is justified [in suing]. Gray accused Perkins of committing crimes, including taking illegal kickbacks. He crossed the line, Perkins said, and when he crossed the line, thats when we decided weve got to put a stop to this. Grays lawyer argued it was a SLAPP suit. But Gray lost the suit when he failed to show up in court. The association was still pursuing him for damages when he died. Freedom of speech? For Simon Sherman, a retired biomedical informatics professor at the University of Nebraska, silence at Parker Plaza Estates would have been a betrayal of his values. He and his family left Belarus in the former Soviet Union more than three decades ago, carrying two suitcases and $1,000 in cash. They idealized Americas freedoms, especially the Constitutions protection of free speech from government interference. But a condo or homeowner association isnt the government a limitation the Shermans were not expecting. Though community association board members have similar responsibilities to govern and spend other peoples dollars, they rule over a private, nonprofit organization, and can restrict speech. The law is complex and evolving, lawyers said, but courts have ruled that a resident voluntarily agrees to abide by private restrictions in condos or HOA neighborhoods. The rules are laid out in the association master document known as a declaration and in the bylaws. There is no freedom of speech within condos or HOAs per se, said attorney McTague. If someones looking for their rights, they should first examine the rules they agreed to live under, he said. There is a Bill of Rights, he said. Its called the condo declaration or homeowner association declaration. Sherman and more than a dozen allies in the 520-unit, oceanfront Hallandale Beach tower were suspicious about association money spent inside the units of some board members part of a vast mold removal project. That part was true, everyone agreed in court filings. The board spent nearly $1 million removing mold from 192 condos after a contractors mistake. Sherman alleged there were improprieties in the mold project one of many accusations Sherman lobbed at board members and board member Michael Fagan. He claimed extra work was done in one of Fagans condo units. He called the city to report work being done on a community room without permits. He raised red flags about a $27 million loan the association took out for work to meet the states required 50-year maintenance certification. His emailed accusations went to residents, real estate agents and more, the associations court filings recounted. The associations attorneys said there was nothing improper about any of it and claimed Sherman was simply disgruntled after losing his reelection to the condo board. Abusive attacks Eventually, Fagan and the board decided theyd had enough of his accusations. An August 2020 letter to Sherman from association attorney Matthew Maranges was painfully blunt. Perhaps you little more than a recalcitrant, gadfly condo commando seek to restore some semblance of credibility after the Condominium community overwhelmingly rejected your bid to continue serving on the Associations Board, it read. But neither the Associations current hard-working, diligent Board of Directors, nor the Condominiums residents, should be embroiled in such delusions of grandeur. Maranges footnoted William Shakespeares Macbeth, accusing Sherman of weaving a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The board carried through with its threat, suing Sherman in federal court for defamation, slander, trade libel, behaving as a private nuisance, and interfering in business relationships. They accused him of infringing on an unregistered trademark because they claimed the email address he used, PPLoudSpeaker@gmail.com, made his emails appear to come from Parker Plaza, showing the display name PARKER PLAZA. They said he made frivolous requests for information that were cumbersome and a nuisance. The associations current attorney on the case, Luis Konski, called Shermans actions harassment that caused delays to building repairs. Sherman said in a court affidavit that he had engaged in protected speech to educate the members of the Association of what I believe, and have evidence to support, is substantial misconduct on the part of the Board. Fagan also pursued Sherman in state court, saying he was defamed in social media posts, mass emails and a lawsuit against the board. Fagan, who owns four condos in Parker Plaza but lives in Plantation, declined to comment to the Sun Sentinel because of the ongoing litigation, but argued in one of the lawsuits that he did absolutely nothing wrong. He expressed pride in the tower where he grew up, designed by the late Morris Lapidus, the architect famous for designing glitzy Miami hotels, including the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. He volunteered his time on the board, the lawsuit says, and was subjected to Shermans unhinged and abusive attacks. If I go quiet Sherman and his allies were motivated by a prior controversy at Parker Plaza Estates, when a small group of owners brought down a corrupt administration. In 2005, three retired professionals at the condo sifted through documents to ferret out a vast corruption scheme. Their probing led to the arrest of the condo president, building manager, a plumbing contractor, and a maintenance supervisor on charges of engaging in a kickback plot. The condo president and plumbing contractor pled no contest, paid restitution and served probation. The building manager pled guilty and went to prison and the maintenance supervisor was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease and died without facing trial. In Shermans case, he said he met with local police but nothing came of it. He used GoFundMe donations to hire an investigative firm, and it found no criminal wrongdoing, according to court filings. And two committees empaneled by the condo board investigated and found no impropriety. Sherman said he has a following in the building and garnered 199 signatures in a failed attempt to recall board members. But most of the financial risk is his. Sherman sold a second unit he owned in the building for $415,000 to pay his legal bills. He hasnt tallied his expenses, he said, in part because he doesnt want to have to tell his wife, Lyuba, if she asks. Plus, their oldest son gave him advice. My son told me, he said, Father, you must not think about money, or youll lose all your cases, Sherman recalled. You are right, and you will win. But Sherman isnt winning. The two defamation cases against him are ongoing. And Sherman and 13 neighbors recently lost a lawsuit they filed against the condo association about alleged financial and election improprieties. The lawsuit is a so-called derivative action, filed on behalf of the entire association. But Florida law allows the courts to dismiss such a lawsuit if an independent committee acting in good faith and conducting a reasonable investigation determines that the lawsuit is not in the condo associations best interests. The accused condo board is allowed under Florida law to choose its own independent committee, a setup Sherman says is unfair. The committee empaneled by Parker Plaza Estates consisted of two people, including one of the accused board members. It concluded that the lawsuit should be dismissed and, in July, Broward Chief Judge Jack Tuter agreed. The case was not appealed. In an email to residents, the condo board vowed to recoup more than $150,000 in legal fees from Shermans side. On a recent afternoon, Sherman sat in his marble-floored condo on the 14th floor, holding a stack of legal bills, condo documents and more, that are his daily homework. His balcony was sealed up for construction and loud machinery squealed and screeched. Lyuba Sherman brought out a fresh raisin cake, and said shed seen a therapist to work through her emotions about their legal entanglement. She got a toy poodle, Teddy, to cheer her up. Shermans attorney, who recently made a motion to withdraw from the cases citing irreconcilable differences, said Sherman stands to owe more than $200,000 perhaps much more if he loses all three cases. Its too late to turn back now, Sherman said. Hes in too deep financially to stop. Shermans hands twisted as he described his predicament, like he was wringing the last drops of moisture from a rag. They put me in a situation in which I cannot go quiet, because if I go quiet, he said, glancing toward the kitchen, where his wife was just out of hearing distance, I will lose everything. (Reporters David Fleshler, Ron Hurtibise and Danica Jefferies contributed to this report.) McDonald's [File photo: VCG] Fast-food giant McDonald's Corp is increasing its minority stake substantially in its business in China to facilitate faster decision-making and exploit growth opportunities in its fastest-growing market. McDonald's on Monday agreed to raise its stake from 20 percent to 48 percent. It will buy additional shares from global investment firm and its strategic partner Carlyle, which operates and manages McDonald's business in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao. Upon completion of the McDonald's-Carlyle transaction, the CITIC consortium will continue to own 52 percent. Post regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2024. "Our strategic partnership with CITIC and Carlyle has been extremely successful in growing McDonald's presence in the region since it began. China is now our second-largest market; we've doubled our restaurants to more than 5,500 since 2017," said Chris Kempczinski, McDonald's president and chief executive officer. "We believe there is no better time to simplify our structure, given the tremendous opportunity to capture increased demand and further benefit from our fastest-growing market's long-term potential." In 2017, the chain sold control of its restaurants in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao to Carlyle and CITIC for $2.1 billion. The business in China has generated sales growth of more than 30 percent year-to-date since September 2019, said the company. Jason Yu, general manager of Kantar Worldpanel China, a market research provider, said expansion in China and constantly enhanced digital marketing allowed the quick-service restaurant chain to enter more consumption scenarios, including deliveries. This, in turn, has propelled McDonald's revenue growth in recent years. "The increased ownership of its China business means McDonald's will be able to make faster decisions to capture growing market demand in China by expanding its restaurant portfolio further in coming years." The company said it is aiming to reach a goal of 10,000 or more restaurants by 2028 in the China market. "That means the fast-food giant is entering more third- and fourth-tier cities, and is in need of innovating its store formats to meet diversified demand from consumers," Yu said. McDonald's China has invented many new store formats, including the M2go shops, which offer contactless pickup lockers just by scanning a code. The format is designed to fit fast-paced lifestyles in urban China, where more than 70 percent of its business comes from deliveries and takeaways. It also introduced breakfast stalls in subway stations in Beijing and has aimed to continue to add more drive-through restaurants. There are more than 660 of them already in China. Being present in more locations is a must for fast-food restaurants and for McDonald's to benchmark itself against both Chinese and foreign competitors, said Yu. The catering sector has seen a strong recovery this year. From January to June, the domestic catering sector achieved sales revenues of 2.4 trillion yuan ($336.5 billion), up 21.4 percent year-on-year, according to China Catering Report 2023. Domestic fast-food service chains have fueled their expansion quickly. The Fujian province-based Wallace, which mainly sells fried chicken burgers, has 20,000 stores across China. Another Fujian province-based Chinese burger seller Tastien has nearly 4,000 stores. KFC China, a unit of Yum China, the largest restaurant group in the country by number of stores, had more than 9,200 stores in the country by March-end, and is boosting its presence aggressively by targeting lower-tier cities. Yum China said in September it has more than 14,000 stores under its six brands, including Pizza Hut, and its target is to have 20,000 stores in China by 2026. Newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is coming to town and hes having a fundraiser at Congressman Vern Buchanans house. Buchanan, chairman of Floridas congressional delegation, is set to host Johnsons first fundraiser since winning the chambers election to choose a new speaker. The fundraiser is not open to the public. We look forward to welcoming the new speaker to Southwest Florida as we work to expand the Republican majority in 2024, Buchanan said in a statement to the Bradenton Herald. Johnson is in his fourth term as a federal lawmaker. His congressional district includes western Louisiana. In a statement released after his election as speaker, Johnson said he looked forward to delivering a comprehensive conservative policy agenda. The urgency of this moment demands bold, decisive action to restore trust, advance our legislative priorities and demonstrate good governance, Johnson said. Access to Monday evenings fundraiser costs at least $1,000. That price allows access to the reception, but guests who want to stay for dinner as well must pay $25,000, according to a news release. Buchanan has thrown fundraisers for Republican leaders at his Longboat Key mansion in the past. In February 2020, former Vice President Mike Pence was the guest of honor at a similar event. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy attended two of Buchanans fundraisers in 2022, raising more than $2 million for GOP candidates. The fundraiser will benefit Johnsons joint fundraising committee, the Johnson Leadership Fund. Organizers expect the event to raise over $1 million. In a statement Monday, Congresswoman Doris Matsui issued a statement calling for a temporary negotiated ceasefire to ensure the release of hostages held by Hamas and to protect Palestinian civilians. Israeli and Palestinian civilians deserve to live their lives in peace and dignity free from and unthreatened by violence, Matsuis statement reads. Candidates run to replace embattled Sacramento District 2 Councilman Sean Loloee We must take the first steps to peace to free the hostages, to allow the flow of real and substantial humanitarian aid, and to protect the lives of innocent civilians. A temporary negotiated ceasefire would help achieve these goals. The announcement comes as Sacramento area activist groups including Jewish Voice for Peace Action have lobbied Matsui to call for a ceasefire. Efforts have included a week-long sit-in at Matsuis office in downtown Sacramento. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX40. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is now 58 years old. If it were a person, it would be eligible to start making IRA withdrawals without penalties next year. Congress has reauthorized it and amended it multiple times over the last six decades. In 2006, the most recent time lawmakers touched it, the VRA received unanimous and bipartisan support in Congress. It is among the most successful laws ever drafted in the history of the republic. According to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, though, everyone has been reading it wrong the entire time. A three-judge panel of Republican appointees held earlier this week that private plaintiffs cannot sue states to enforce a key provision of the landmark law known as Section 2, which imposes a permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in election and voting laws. Judge David Stras, a Trump appointee writing for the 21 panel, noted that courts had assumed Section 2 was privately enforceable for much of the last half-century, but concluded that a deeper look had revealed that this assumption rests on flimsy footing. The ruling is contrary to more than a half-century of practice and precedent. If embraced by the Supreme Court, it also threatens to gut one of the last remaining forceful provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The case, Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, is a challenge to alleged racial gerrymandering when the state redrew its state legislative maps for the 2020 Census. Voting-rights groups alleged that the state had engaged in vote dilution against Black Arkansans by packing as many of them as they could in certain districts where they form a supermajority, thereby dispersing the rest through other districts where they form a minority. Stras, in the ruling, treats the plaintiffs case with undisguised disdain. Quarreling over district lines begins like clockwork every ten years after the United States Census, he wrote, before quickly adding that the advocacy groups behind the litigation had sued nearly everyone who had anything to do with it. His tone belies the fact that this is generally how litigation works. When the district court considered the case, it also asked both sides to consider a procedural question: whether the plaintiffs had the right to bring the lawsuit at all under Section 2. That provision is one of the original twin pillars of the VRAthe other being Section 5, which, before the Supreme Court effectively demolished it in 2013, required certain states to submit changes in those laws for preclearance by federal authorities. Section 2 is enforceable by litigation from the attorney general of the United States. For decades, the courts have also concluded that Section 2 created an implied cause of actionthat is, its text implicitly created a right for private parties to bring a lawsuit to enforce it even though it did not explicitly spell it out. The Supreme Court has handed down more than a few rulings since the VRAs enactment based on this assumption. Congress has also allowed this assumption to persist throughout every reauthorization and amendment. What fools! They should have run it by the U.S. District Court for Arkansas and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals first. Stras discarded the abundant evidence that the VRAs drafters intended for private parties to be able to sue states under it, dismissing the legislative history as inappropriate for a judge to consider. He also shrugged off the Supreme Courts ruling in a 1996 VRA case where it decided an implied cause of action existed under a different VRA provision in part because the justices concluded that one existed under Section 2. Taken at face value, these statements appear to create an open-and-shut case that there must be a way to privately enforce Section 2, Stras wrote. If five Justices assume it, then it must be true. The problem, however, is that these were just background assumptionsmere dicta at most. Generally speaking, the law is always whatever five justices say it is. But the Supreme Court is also fortunate that it can rely on a panel from the Eighth Circuit to correct its apparent errors and oversights. One member of the panel recognized how the federal appellate process is actually supposed to work. Chief Judge Lavenski Smith, a George W. Bush appointee, stated the obvious in dissent: Stras and Judge Raymond Gruender, another George W. Bush appointee, are ignoring precedent in favor of predicting how the court might rule in the future. While that private right has been called into question by two Supreme Court justices, the Supreme Court has yet to overrule itself on that precise issue, Smith wrote. In fairness to the panel, it does have some reason to turn to prophecy in this case. Certain members of the Supreme Court have been signaling for conservative judges in lower courts to make this ruling for years. In the 2020 case Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the court raised new barriers to Section 2 claims. Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, suggested it should go even further. Our cases have assumedwithout decidingthat the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furnishes an implied cause of action under Section 2, he wrote. Lower courts have treated this as an open question. Because no party argues that the plaintiffs lack a cause of action here, and because the existence (or not) of a cause of action does not go to a courts subject-matter jurisdiction, this Court need not and does not address that issue today. Thomas also flagged that possibility again in a footnote in his dissent from the courts ruling in Allen v. Milligan earlier this year. The Court does not address whether Section 2 contains a private right of action, an issue that was argued below but was not raised in this Court, he obliquely noted. That question did not form the core of Thomass argument in that case because, as he has stated often over the last 20 years, he does not think Section 2 should prohibit racial gerrymandering at all. Those two justices may yet persuade three more of their colleagues to rule against recognizing a private cause of action in Section 2. But they have not done so yet, Smith noted, and so the prevailing precedent should decide the case. Until the Court rules or Congress amends the statute, I would follow existing precedent that permits citizens to seek a judicial remedy, Smith wrote. Rights so foundational to self-government and citizenship should not depend solely on the discretion or availability of the governments agents for protection. Resolution of whether Section 2 affords private plaintiffs the ability to challenge state action is best left to the Supreme Court in the first instance. Why does it matter if the Voting Rights Act is enforceable by private plaintiffs? If the panels conclusion is upheld by the Supreme Court, then Section 2 effectively becomes a light switch. A Republican presidentsay, Donald Trumpcould simply instruct the Justice Department to stop bringing Section 2 lawsuits at all. With no private alternative, that would deal an immense and perhaps irrecoverable blow to voting-rights enforcement in this country. Its unclear whether the Supreme Court would go that far. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the court has been largely hostile to the VRA and its sweeping protections of Americans right to democratic governance. But there are also apparent limits to that disdain: Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and the courts three liberals upheld a straightforward Section 2 case on racial gerrymandering in Alabama earlier this year. Since the Eighth Circuits ruling is binding unless overturned, well likely soon find out just how far the courts conservatives are willing to go to demolish the VRA. A conservative website has been accused of racist dog-whistling after it posted a bizarre poll about Nikki Haleys background. Did you know that Nikki Haleys parents are immigrants from India and her birth name is Nimarata Randhawa? The Florida Standard posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. The site, which has a small following of just under 7,700 followers on X, is known for its flattering coverage of and friendly relationship with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is battling to keep his place ahead of Haley in the Republican presidential race. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was given the name Nimarata Nikki Randhawa at birth. She has not hidden this fact. She married Michael Haley, and has reportedly gone by her middle name Nikki since childhood. A community note added to the Florida Standards post pointed this out. Haley has repeatedly invoked her Indian heritage during her campaign, albeit while downplaying the existence of deep-rooted racism in the U.S. She has faced numerousracist attacks and questions about her name throughout her political career. The Florida Standard also published an article Tuesday headlined Republicans Shocked After Discovering Nikki Haleys Real Name. It accused Haley of being less than candid about her own identity after she recently called for all social media users to be verified by name online. The sites tweet was viewed more than 2 million times, earning pushback from prominent figures on social media. This is a race-baiting question in search of a racist answer, wrote Cornell William Brooks, a Harvard professor and former president of the NAACP. Olivia Troye, a former aide to ex-Vice President Mike Pence, wrote: Yes. We know. Its actually wonderful that Nikki Haleys parents are immigrants. Whats your point other than backing far right racist tropes? Oh. Right. Youre scared that shes gaining momentum. CNNs Jake Tapper had a shorter assessment, writing, Wtf is this. The Florida Standard did not immediately return HuffPosts request for comment. Related... In October 2023, Nigeria's government launched a new vaccine drive aimed at curbing cervical cancer, which claims around 8,000 lives in the West African country every year. But the campaign has also seen the spread of conspiracy theories, including from public figures. An influential radio host suggested that the jab could cause infertility and serve as a covert means of controlling Nigerias population growth. Experts, however, say the claims have no scientific basis. Nigeria announced in late October its plan to introduce the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine into its routine immunisation programme. On October 25, 2023, Abuja-based radio host Ahmed Isah told listeners of his daily "Brekete Family Show" that the governments cervical cancer vaccination drive may be harmful to young women who are the targets of the campaign. The popular programme is broadcast to a live studio audience and streamed simultaneously on Facebook and YouTube. Recordings of the show are also published on both platforms. Guests frequently include top government officials. "If you have daughters like me, if any school tells you that it wants to give your daughters cervical cancer vaccine, do not agree," Isah said in Pidgin in the presence of Nigeria's internal affairs minister Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo who had been invited to the programme. The radio host based his opposition to the vaccines on the fact that the "United States, China, and the United Kingdom were yet to discover cures for cancer". He also claimed the vaccine could cause sicknesses and infertility, citing Pfizers fatal drug trial in Kano state in northwest Nigeria in 1996 (archived here). In another episode, he alleged that the trial had killed "people in their hundreds" (archived here). His claims made their way onto other social media platforms including TikTok. Similar reports have also circulated on the WhatsApp messaging service. One viral voice note alleging that the vaccine drive was causing infertility prompted government government officials to issue a denial (archived here). Another WhatsApp message attributed to Kenyan doctor Wahome Ngare said that HPV vaccines were "unnecessary" because a "simple and cheap treatment of the cervix with persistent HPV infection would prevent" cervical cancer. The message contained a link to a YouTube video, in which a narrator claimed that a girl seen in the clip started developing neurological problems after she received the HPV vaccine. Ngare, an obstetrician-gynaecologist, wrote a Facebook post in March that was similar to the WhatsApp message and contained the same YouTube link. In 2019, he told a local broadcaster that the HPV vaccine was not a risk worth taking and insisted that it caused "paralysis". Combatting cervical cancer Caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), cervical cancer affects about 12,000 (archived here) and kills 8,000 Nigerian women annually, the countrys health minister Muhammad Ali Pate said at the launch of the vaccine drive (archived here). The loss of more than eight thousand Nigerian women yearly from a disease that is largely preventable is completely unacceptable. Cervical cancer is mostly caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), and parents can avoid physical and financial pain by protecting their children pic.twitter.com/LVqhe58d9Q Muhammad Ali Pate (@muhammadpate) October 24, 2023 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the vaccine prevents "HPV types 16 and 18 that are known to cause at least 70% of cervical cancers" (archived here). Nigerias National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) administers the vaccines with support from the WHO, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the United Nations Childrens Fund and other partners. "In Nigeria, the impact of the Human Papillomavirus is sobering," said Muyi Aina, the director of NPHCDA (archived here). "Over 56 million women aged 15 and older are at risk of developing cervical cancer." The countrys pilot vaccination aims to reach about 7.7 million girls aged nine to 14 in a five-day mass vaccination campaign across 16 states and the countrys capital city of Abuja, where Isah hosts his show. The second phase of the roll-out will start in 21 states in May 2024. Vaccine safety HPV vaccines have been available in Nigeria for years before the government announced its campaign. A private practice in Abuja has been offering the jab since at least 2022 (archived here). Already, more than 100 countries have used HPV vaccines, based on WHO data (archived here). The vaccine was also administered to schoolgirls in Lagos in southwest Nigeria in 2022 (archived here). An official of the states ministry of health said a few not-for-profit organisations have carried out similar campaigns in the past without any problems. "This vaccine has been used for 16 years, even in Nigeria, but in the private sector where it is very expensive," said Abujas health and environment secretary Dolapo Fasawe (archived here). Fasawe spoke on Isahs show a day after he made his claims. NPHCDA official Bassey Okposen, who was also a guest on the same edition of the show, identified the vaccine to be used as Gardasil 9. It was approved by Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration Control (NAFDAC) in October 2023. NAFDAC head Moji Adeyeye warned that Nigeria, as Africa's most populous country, had one of the highest cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates on the continent (archived here). "Data from immunogenicity trials, post-hoc analyses of efficacy trials, and post-licensure observational studies among females have demonstrated that a single dose of HPV vaccine is sufficient to elicit an immune response that provides similar protection as a multidose regimen against initial and persistent HPV infection", she said. The vaccine brand has been in use in the United States since 2014. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists common side effects as headaches, tiredness, and a sore arm (archived here). In rare cases, severe allergic reactions can occur and potentially be life-threatening. However, infertility is not listed among the vaccines side effects. Emily Kobayashi, who heads GAVI's Human Papillomavirus Programme, also refuted the claim that the vaccine causes "infertility or sickness of any kind". "The vaccine has gone through rigorous testing and approvals, and since 2006 more than 270 million people have received it," she said. Isah said that he made his claims after receiving messages from his audience and that he acted in the public interest (archived here). "It is good that you have educated us," he said. But false claims about HPV vaccines, especially Gardasil 9, are neither new nor limited to Nigeria. In 2020, a claim that the vaccine caused a spike in cervical cancer and autoimmune disease in Australia circulated on social media. However, experts told AFP Fact Check that there was no evidence to support the claim. Another social media post in the US claimed the vaccine was dangerous because it contained aluminium and polysorbate 80. In reality, it only featured small doses of those compounds and was certified for human use. African depopulation conspiracies Isahs claim that the vaccination drive was part of a plan by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to kill off Nigerians is also not new. Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates is a favourite target of conspiracy theorists. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he was accused of wanting to depopulate the world (archived here). Shortly after his visit to Nigeria in July 2023, a smiliar claim resurfaced on TikTok and WhatsApp (archived here). The Gates Foundation told AFP Fact Check that Isahs "claims are false". Pfizers Kano drug trial Contrary to Isahs second claim, the subject of Pfizers tragic drug trial in Kano, northwest Nigeria, involved an unapproved antibiotic and not a vaccine. In 1996, the American pharmaceutical firm conducted a trial for trovafloxacin without proper approval from the Nigerian government (archived here). The drug was intended for the treatment of meningococcal meningitis, which was rampant in the country's north at the time. At least 11 children died in the trial. The families of the children argued that they could not provide informed consent for the trial because they did not speak English (archived here). Incidents like the 1996 drug trial fuel mistrust in Western drugs and vaccine trials, according to Lagos-based public health doctor Adebola Ojo. "Vaccines are quite effective in reducing the spread of diseases. But all possible side effects must be publicly disclosed to those taking them," Ojo said. November 23, 2023 Fixes a typo in the lead. A YouTuber is under police protection after a fire at his home in the suburbs of Sydney. Police suspect arson was the cause of the fire and are hunting a criminal gang. A detective on the case said he had "no doubt" the intent of the fire "was to create havoc." A controversial YouTuber has been given police protection after his home was targeted in a suspected arson case last year, and a hunt is underway for the criminal gang believed to be responsible. Jordan Shanks-Markovina, better known as friendlyjordies on his YouTube channel where he has more than a million subscribers, is a political commentator. Some videos on his channel have featured interviews with prominent politicians, and he has used his platform to advocate for environmental issues, including Australian bushfires. Shanks-Markovina's home was "firebombed" in November 2022, his lawyers said at the time, according to The Guardian. He was reported as "safe," and the home was vacant at the time of the attack. The home and the neighboring property suffered "significant damage," per The Guardian, but there were no reports of injuries. Police released security footage of the attack on Wednesday morning, as part of an investigation to find the perpetrators. The security footage shows two cars at the property a black 2018 Mercedes C200, and a silver 2013 Ford Falcon. The footage was first shared on the Facebook page of the The New South Wales Police Force. Police believe the Mercedes to be stolen, according to a press release from NSW Police. They also believe four men were involved in the incident. Detective chief inspector Richard Puffett described the attacks as deliberate, The Guardian reported, and "by no means" spontaneous. "I have no doubt that the intent was to create havoc," he said, per The Guardian. "Anyone that's prepared to burn down a residential premises in the middle of the night is looking to harm somebody." He added that one of the vehicles had cloned license plates, which he described as "a hallmark of these networks." "We believe the modus operandi of these offenses is distinctly unique to at least one of the organized criminal networks," he said. Shanks-Markovina's online content is believed to be a possible motive for the attacks. He spoke to the media after the fire last year, saying he had "a shortlist" in his head of those he thought could be behind the attack, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. "We've done some extremely dangerous reporting over the last year," he said. "There are many people that would want to do that." At the time, Shanks-Markovina also announced an indefinite hiatus. He has since returned to his channel, with his latest video focusing on the Australian media's coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. Business Insider reached out to Shanks-Markovina for comment. Read the original article on Insider ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - A Florida man facing attempted murder charges after allegedly shooting at an ex-girlfriend at her home is now possibly facing a charge of first-degree murder in the alleged shooting death of his wife, whose body was found days ago inside a storage unit in Apopka, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said Wednesday. The Orange County Sheriff's Office confirmed Wednesday that an arrest warrant had been issued for Cory Hill, who was considered a "person of interest" in the disappearance of his wife, Shakeira Rucker, and then considered to be the "prime suspect" in her death. He is charged with first-degree murder with a firearm in Rucker's death. In the warrant, deputies shared an updated timeline of events surrounding the death of Rucker and the alleged attempted murder of Hill's ex-girlfriend, Angel Milligan. According to the warrant, Hill is alleged to have shot and killed Rucker in his storage unit and then, three hours later, drove to his ex-girlfriend's house to allegedly shoot her. In the arrest warrant, Orange County Sheriff's Office investigators said the two women Rucker and the ex-girlfriend had recently discovered Hill had been in a relationship with both of them. "Hill attempts to kill the female he was having an affair on Rucker with approximately three hours later. It can be deduced Hill killed Rucker and then attempted to kill the female he had an extramarital affair with," the affidavit said. Here is a look at the timeline of events deputies outlined in the arrest affidavit: It allegedly took Cory Hill less than 20 minutes to kill Shakeira Rucker in his storage unit Rucker and Hill were seen together the night of Nov. 11 on surveillance footage from a retail store and restaurant, according to deputies. Credit: Winter Springs Police Department The next morning, the two were also seen entering the storage facility where Rucker's body was found, Your Storage Units Apopka on Wiggins Road. In both sightings, Rucker was seen wearing a blue outfit. That's the same outfit she was wearing when deputies found her inside the storage unit days later. At the storage unit, Hill was seen on surveillance footage entering the facility at 6:39 a.m. with a woman in the passenger seat matching Rucker's description, according to the affidavit. Seven minutes later, Rucker's phone contacted her family saying she was on her way home, according to the arrest warrant. Less than 20 minutes after Hill and Rucker entered the storage facility, deputies said he was spotted leaving the facility alone. Hill reportedly told Rucker's family that she was not with him and he hadn't seen her since 6:30 a.m. that day. This was later disproved by Hill's cell phone data and "the fact that Rucker was never seen leaving the storage unit she was found deceased in," the affidavit said. When deputies arrived to the storage unit on Nov. 18 after someone reported a bad smell coming from Hill's unit, they found Rucker in said blue outfit, the affidavit said. A fired cartridge casing was found in her hair, plus three others in the storage unit. Blood was seen near Rucker on the ground and on the walls, deputies said. "There was no evidence to suggest the victim was shot somewhere outside of the storage unit and then moved into the storage unit," the affidavit said. Hill also allegedly tried to hide Rucker's body by "haphazardly" placing two tires in front of her body. "Based on the positioning of the female's body, the tires were placed there after the female fell on the floor," the affidavit added. Cory Hill allegedly tried to kill his 'paramour' 3 hours after killing Shakeira Rucker At 10:13 a.m. that day (Nov. 12), Hill arrived to Milligan's house and "attempted to kill her," according to deputies. In the affidavit, Milligan is described as Hill's "ex lover" and "paramour." Rucker reportedly recently discovered Hill was in a romantic relationship and living with another woman, which was revealed to be Milligan. "Rucker and the paramour learned they had both been deceived by Hill," the arrest warrant said. Shakeira Rucker's estranged husband, Cory Hill, seen with Angel Milligan, whom investigators said Hill tried to kill on Nov. 12, 2023. Hill fired off several bullets into her home, broke into a window, gained entry and tried to find Milligan "to kill her," the affidavit continued. Deputies said they found several fired 9 mm cartridge casings at the scene. On Tuesday, forensic analysis revealed the fired cartridge casings from Rucker's shooting and the incident involving Milligan were a match. Hill's car was also seen at both crime scenes, deputies said. A warrant was secured for Hill on Wednesday. Cory Hill's ex Angel Milligan: 'Why? Why me? Why her?' Milligan spoke to FOX 35 News this week and shared she wanted to know why the man she briefly dated was allegedly involved in the murder of his estranged wife. Hill and Milligan dated for four months before separating in September, she said, adding that she didn't know he had a criminal past. "I want to ask him, Why? Why me? Why her?" said Milligan. "It's heartbreaking, not an easy feeling." Despite having been involved with "violent situations" with Hill in the past, she said she's lucky to be alive. " just having flashbacks of what happened that day, what could have happened," Milligan said. Shakeira Rucker's brother: 'Everyone is angry' A vigil was held for Rucker on Sunday, a day after her body was found, where her family opened up about the situation. "Everyone is angry, but we must stay strong for the sake of my sister. Shes up there looking at us. We got to stay strong for her kids," Rucker's brother Clarence Thornton said. Hill remains at the Orange County Jail without bond. VENICE, Fla. (WFLA) A new Costco store is coming to Sarasota County. The wholesale retailer is planning to open a warehouse in Wellen Park on U.S. 41 east of West Villages Parkway. The new store will include a gas station and a full automotive service center. Shoppers can also find everything from groceries, housewares televisions, appliances and more under one roof. LIST: Whats open and closed on Thanksgiving 2023? We are thrilled to welcome Costco to Wellen Park, said Rick Severance, president of Wellen Park. This is an incredible addition for our residents, as they have been very encouraged about what Costco will provide for them. Costco will bring hundreds of new job opportunities to the area, ranging from entry-level to management. With all of the development activity in and around Wellen Park, job creation has been a big focus, said Severance. There are over 500 people now employed in Downtown Wellen and with Costco opening up nearby, there will be hundreds of new job opportunities for our residents. Details on when the new store will open were not available. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. While Ukraines counter-offensive faces challenges, Ukraine remains strong and has made important gains, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Nov. 21 interview with Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall. When asked about criticisms that Ukraine's counter-offensive was "not going according to plan" and sent a "bad message, Zelenskyy highlighted Ukraines progress in both the Black Sea and commando raids on Russian-occupied Crimea. Read also: Ukraines attritive counteroffensive and the looming winter "It's not just a good message. Its true," the president stated. But I just want to say that we remain strong. Its hard for us. Yes, we need more successful results on the battlefield, but this is necessary, first and foremost, for us. Ukraine has indeed destroyed part of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, forcing its ships to move, and now they do not have such a "total" influence on the Black Sea region, Zelenskyy said. When it comes to results on the battlefield, Ukrainians need strength the most and added that the counter-offensive is "not a movie" and "cannot be magic every day." Read also: Zelenskyy says Ukraine needs more battlefield successes On Nov. 8, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine would try to achieve results on the battlefield by the end of 2023. On Nov. 14, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted that the Defense Forces are successfully pushing the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea. Earlier, in an interview with Radio NV, former U.S. Army Europe Commander Ben Hodges suggested asking the Russian Black Sea Fleet commander about the success of Ukraine's counter-offensive. 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 Jonathan Miller of the Public Rights Project says the order is part of a concerted effort by extreme conservative judges and advocates to hollow out the [VRA]. Members of Congress and civil rights activists are condemning a federal appeals court ruling that threatens the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On Monday, a three-judge panel for the St. Louis-based Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ruled that private citizens, those not affiliated with the federal government, are prohibited from bringing a lawsuit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. WASHINGTON DC, UNITED STATES 2021/08/03: The Poor Peoples Campaign rallied and marched in Washington DC, where faith leaders, low-wage workers, and poor people from around the country protested for the US Senate to end the filibuster, protect voting rights, and raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Hundreds were arrested in a non-violent act of civil disobedience outside the Hart Senate building. (Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) Jonathan Miller, chief program officer at the Public Rights Project, told theGrio, This outcome is unconscionable. The Supreme Court itself has recognized the ability of private litigants to bring Section 2 claims, he said. Miller added that the courts ruling is part of a very concerted effort by extreme conservative judges and advocates to hollow out the Voting Rights Act. For years, private U.S. citizens and groups have brought most of the cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Those lawsuits include challenges to state voting laws or Congressional maps that several courts have argued violate the constitutional rights of Black voters. In a statement obtained by theGrio, U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, Congress must act to protect voting rights for Black voters and voters of color. The Congressional Black Caucus will not stop until we pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the Voting Rights Act, said Horsford. BALTIMORE MARCH 2: CBC chair Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., speaks during the Congressional Black Caucus news conference at the House Democrats 2023 Issues Conference in Baltimore, Md., on Thursday, March 2, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) This comes just weeks after civil and voting rights groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging North Carolinas new election law that they say will make casting a ballot difficult for Black voters. A similar lawsuit was filed by the Democratic National Committee and the North Carolina Democratic Party. On Tuesday, plaintiffs Rodney D. Pierce and Moses Matthews filed a lawsuit challenging North Carolinas senate district maps on the grounds that they violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In response to Mondays appellate court ruling, Miller said, Its not coincidental that you would see a ruling like this. He believes the VRA ruling is intended to keep voter suppression tactics in place and stop gerrymandering efforts from being reversed. Earlier this year, advocates used Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to prevent the enforcement of Alabamas Congressional map, which the Supreme Court argued discriminated against Black voters. In September, a special master was appointed to redraw the map to ensure Black Alabamians have a second majority-Black district in time for the 2024 midterm elections. Miller told theGrio, I think this [ruling] is a direct response to lawyers for the NAACP, elders, the ACLU and other groups, who were successful in having Alabamas Congressional map redrawn, by saying Section 2 cant be enforceable anymore. He also said that the Supreme Courts handling of certain cases has invited courts of appeals to take these bold and reckless actions. Miller continued: This [ruling] is a result of an incredibly conservative Supreme Court and incredibly conservative judges and appellate courts who are really trying to push the law as far and as quickly as they can and see what they can get away with. Congressman Horsford said the recent decision from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals is ill-advised and cannot stand. [It] should be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which we hope will reaffirm that citizens have a private right of action to bring forward lawsuits under Section 2, said Horsford. Miller said he believes that this case will find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court as it is deeply problematic. He added, Somethings going to need to be done and done quickly. TheGrio is FREE on your TV via Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, and Android TV. Please download theGrio mobile apps today! The post Court ruling on Black voters right to sue under Voting Rights Act is unconscionable appeared first on TheGrio. This photo taken on March 30, 2023 shows the scenery of Potala Palace after snow in Lhasa, southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region, March 30, 2023. [Photo/Xinhua] Zhang Yun, a scholar who has engaged in Tibetology research for about four decades, said that he has witnessed the significant progress in human rights development in southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region. "An unmistakable transformation is the visible enhancement in the quality of life for local residents," said Zhang, a researcher with the China Tibetology Research Center (CTRC). Recalling his first visit to the region in 1998, Zhang said that most vegetables were transported from other inland provinces and cities, residents were plainly dressed, and the living conditions were not good. However, there has been a dramatic change in the mood, dress and housing conditions of residents in the plateau region over the past decades. Zhang was among close to 50 tibetologists who took part in a forum held in Beijing Tuesday, focusing on the promotion and interpretation of a white paper titled "CPC Policies on the Governance of Xizang in the New Era: Approach and Achievements." The document, issued by the State Council Information Office on Nov. 10, highlighted that the Communist Party of China (CPC) guidelines for governing Xizang in the new era have brought about all-round progress and historic success in various undertakings in the region. During the forum, experts and scholars engaged in multidimensional discussions, offering insights and suggestions on the region's modernization in the new era. Based on detailed data and abundant facts, the white paper summarizes the comprehensive progress and historic achievements in various fields in Xizang under the guidance of the CPC, said Chen Zongrong, a Party official of the CTRC. "This unequivocally indicates that the social and economic progress of Xizang epitomizes the nation's outstanding achievements in development, created on the roof of the world through the Chinese path to modernization," Chen noted. The 2022 GDP of Xizang reached 213.26 billion yuan (about 29.86 billion U.S. dollars), 2.28 times of that in 2012 calculated at constant prices, according to the white paper. The per-capita disposable income of the region's urban and rural residents as a whole rose to 26,675 yuan in 2022 from 8,568 yuan in 2012, representing the country's highest growth rate for eight consecutive years since 2015, the document said. "The tremendous achievements in Xizang's economic and social development vividly demonstrate the incomparable superiority of the socialist system. They represent a microcosm of the historic achievements and changes in the cause of the Party and the country," said Zheng Dui, director-general of the CTRC. Su Faxiang, a professor with Minzu University of China, highlighted that the Tibetan language has been widely used, ancient Tibetan texts and documents have been well protected, cultural heritage preservation has been continuously strengthened, and intangible cultural heritage has effectively been inherited and preserved. "These efforts have laid a solid cultural foundation for the region's modernization," Su said. The white paper reveals that China has implemented a series of policies benefiting people's livelihood in Xizang, such as in housing, healthcare, education, ecological conservation and infrastructure development, Zhang said, noting that these policies are long-term, fundamental, and conducive to the region's sustainable, efficient and high-quality development. "With strong support from the central government, nationwide assistance, and diligent efforts of local residents, Xizang has great prospects for future development," he added. Several states are experiencing increases in deaths related to COVID-19 as the holidays approach and this years respiratory viral season sets in. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), eight states saw increases in coronavirus deaths based on data available through Nov. 11: Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, Michigan, North Carolina and Tennessee. The absolute increases ranged from 0.1 percent in Colorado to 3 percent in Maryland. Both Colorado and Maryland were the only two states where the percentage of deaths in the past week caused by COVID-19 were in the yellow range, meaning they fell within 4 to 5.9 percent of deaths. Maine nearly fell within this category at 4 percent. Best Black Friday Deals Nationally, the absolute increase in COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. rose by 0.2 percent that week, according to the CDCs data. Hospitalizations due to COVID-19 also rose by 8.6 percent. Currently, only 1.3 percent of U.S. counties 42 are considered to have high hospital admission levels. Since the end of the public health emergency for the pandemic, hospitalization rates have served as the metric for community COVID-19 levels. About 86 percent of the country is currently considered low in hospital admission rates. Last month, the CDCs Respiratory Disease Season Outlook projected the U.S. would likely see a similar amount of hospitalizations as it did last winter. Whether hospitalizations end up being somewhat higher or lower than projected, they will likely be higher than before the pandemic. The majority of the country is experiencing minimal or low rates of emergency department (ED) visits in which people are testing positive for the virus. ED visits, however, did rise by 7.1 percent in the most recently recorded week. New Mexico is currently the only state reporting substantial rates of ED visits in which patients are testing positive, though that data for states including Oklahoma, Missouri and Minnesota is not available. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Thanksgiving is an awful time to ask about politics, relationships, work, college admissions and which family member brought the disgusting side dish, Americans in the nation's capital told Fox News. "What we're not going to talk about at Thanksgiving is politics," Kyle told Fox News. "Everybody has different views it's about getting family together on the holidays." Justin, a high school student, said he was not looking forward to explaining his upcoming college decision. "It's just a dreaded topic," he said. "It's always, 'where are you going to go to college? What's your major? What do you want to do when you grow up?'" Discussing family disputes and politics are the top conversations Americans don't want to have at the holiday table this year, according to a survey from Preply, a language tutor site. Religion, COVID-19 and social reform were divisive subjects to avoid last year, a psychologists told Fox News at the time. Politics should be avoided at the Thanksgiving dinner table, some Americans told Fox News. INDUSTRY EXPERT WARNS THANKSGIVING FLIGHTS COULD BE 'UNSAFE' AS RECORD NUMBER OF TRAVELERS PREPARE FOR TAKEOFF READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP "Politics would be the biggest ticket to avoid at all costs," James told Fox News, adding that Thanksgiving is "not the time to voice your ideas of the way things should be run." Hailey agreed: "Sports and politics, those are kind of off-limits because we get too aggressive." "We're just going to keep it what [we're] thankful for," she continued, "and that's spending time with each other." WATCH MORE FOX NEWS DIGITAL ORIGINALS HERE Others said they try not to discuss dating. "I don't really talk about relationships," Zion told Fox News. Ana, another D.C. resident, said: "When are you getting married? And when am I having kids? That's the two top questions that I don't like being asked at Thanksgiving dinner." Asking about people's relationships at Thanksgiving could turn into an awkward situation, Zion said. Some even avoid asking about Thanksgiving recipes. TURKEY FARMERS EXPLAIN WHY PRICES ARE SO HIGH AS THANKSGIVING FAVORITES' COSTS SOAR "Certain people can't cook in my family, so we don't ask who made it," Victoria told Fox News. "We just eat it and be like, 'okay, yeah, this is good,' but you know it's not good. So we don't ask who made the dish." Another woman, Elizabeth, said: "Don't talk about people's food. If you don't like it, don't eat it. But don't say, Oh, who made the potato salad?" "I don't want to talk about finance and no problems," Roberta said. "I want all to be joyful, laughing, eating, drinking and having fun." Thanksgiving is a day to focus on family and gratitude, locals told Fox News. "I don't want to hear about any negative stuff," Michelle said. "I want to talk about what people are blessed to have and what they are thankful for." To watch the full interviews with D.C. residents about Thanksgiving, click here. Original article source: Cringeworthy things your family doesn't want to talk about this Thanksgiving The Netherlands will return to Ukraine ancient Crimean Scythian artifacts that it has held since Russia's illegal annexation of the peninsula in 2014, Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and Information Policy reported on Nov. 22. Ukrainian Culture Minister Rostyslav Karandieiev has signed an agreement with Dr. Fred Virmen, acting director of the University Library of the University of Amsterdam, finalizing their return, the ministry announced. The artifacts were on loan to the Allard Pierson Museum of Antiquities in Amsterdam when Russia illegally seized Crimea in 2014, and both Ukraine and museums in now occupied Crimea claimed them once the exhibition in Amsterdam ended. As the museum awaited a final legal decision on what to do with the artifacts, it kept them in storage. The museums in occupied Crimea that had originally lent the Scythian artifacts to the Netherlands claimed that the terms of the loan were violated and that they should return to their place of origin, politics aside. On the other side, Ukraine said that the items legally belonged to Ukraine and that the Netherlands recognized that Crimea was sovereign Ukrainian territory, so there was no reason for the artifacts to be returned there. A long legal battle followed, with Dutch courts ruling several times that the artifacts should return to Ukraine. The Dutch Supreme Court concurred, ruling in June 2023 that they should be returned to Kyiv. In addition, the Allard Pierson Museum said that it would not charge Ukraine for 9 years of storage fees. In August 2023, Ukraine's Culture Ministry reported that at least 763 cultural heritage sites in Ukraine had been damaged by Russian forces. Other ancient items were allegedly looted from occupied Crimea in May 2023. Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. FILE - Czech Republic's President Petr Pavel delivers a speech at the European Parliament, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023 in Strasbourg, eastern France. Czech President Petr Pavel said he decided to sign into law a package of dozens dozens measures proposed by the government and approved by Parliament designed to keep the ballooning budget deficit under control. (AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) PRAGUE (AP) Czech President Petr Pavel has signed Wednesday into law an economic package of dozens of measures introducing budget cuts and increased taxes designed to keep the ballooning budget deficit under control. Pavel's signature was the last step before the government proposal which was approved by parliament turned into law that would see Czechs pay more taxes on alcoholic beverages, in the country renowned for its beer, and medicine. Businesses would also pay higher corporate taxes. Prime Minister Petr Fiala previously said the austerity measures were necessary because the debt was rising at a threatening pace. Pavel said the current situation is unsustainable. According to the government, the measures should reduce the budget deficit by 97 billion Czech crowns ($4.3 billion) next year and for 2025 by 150 billion ($6.7 billion). As a result, the deficit of 3.5% of the gross domestic product expected for this year should drop to 1.8% next year and to 1.2% in 2025. Corporation tax will go up by two points to 21% while property tax for individuals will be also hiked, as well as the tax on alcohol, tobacco and betting. Value-added tax will have two rates, 12% and 21%, instead of the current three 10%, 15% and 21%. Medicines will move from the 10% rate to 12%, while people will pay 21% VAT on their beloved beer in bars. The package is a compromise reached by Fialas five-party ruling coalition that took over after defeating populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis and his centrist ANO movement in the 2021 parliamentary election. The opposition condemned the changes and said it planned to take the matter to the Constitutional Court, the highest judicial power in the country, while the labor unions called for a day of protests and strikes on Monday. A father with an aggressive brain tumour has raised thousands of pounds to fund research into the disease. Phil Russell, 56, from Hessle in East Yorkshire, was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in October 2021. It is the most common form of brain tumour in adults with patients given an average 12 to 18 months to live. Mr Russell said he hoped the research "makes a difference for future generations." Since being diagnosed, Mr Russell, along with family and friends, has raised nearly 13,500 for the charity Brain Tumour Research. Mr Russell, a medical engineer, said: "I hope the money we're raising is life-changing. I know it won't help me but I hope it makes a difference for future generations." In recognition of his efforts, Mr Russell will later visit the Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence at Queen Mary University of London, where scientists are trying to find a cure. 'Screaming in pain' Mr Russell said: "It is heartening to hear from the scientists about the work being done in their quest to find a cure, which can't come soon enough." His diagnosis came about rapidly, his wife said. He had been working at home, on his laptop, when he began to suffer from a headache. He took some painkillers but four hours later phoned his wife, "screaming in pain". Mrs Russell said: "Phil told me it was sudden and very violent and was unlike any pain he'd experienced. He said it was like he'd been hit by a bat." An MRI scan at Hull Royal Infirmary revealed the tumour which had caused a bleed on the brain. Following surgery, Mr Russell underwent radiotherapy and two rounds of chemotherapy treatment. Even though Mr Russell's latest scan showed the tumour was stable, he has suffered two strokes within the last 10 months, which have left him with reduced mobility, joint pain and short-term memory loss. In June, a team of 45 cyclists, all inspired by Mr Russell's story, took part in the Humber Bridge Sportive, raising funds for Brain Tumour Research, as well as a local charity called Paul for Brain. Matthew Price, community development manager for Brain Tumour Research, said the charity was "really grateful" to Mr Russell and his supporters. Follow BBC East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) An industrial fire at a Fresno dairy supplier was reported to the Fresno Fire Department on Tuesday, fire officials say. Firefighters say they received reports of a commercial fire at California Dairies in Downtown Fresno around 2:30 p.m. Upon arrival, firefighters say they encountered a lot of smoke coming out of the building. They suspected that it was coming out of one of the commercial drying units. The sprinkler system was keeping the fire in check, but as of now, they are looking for the best way to access the unit. Firefighters say this is not a common fire call. Industrial fires can be dangerous because they can get lost or encounter hazardous chemicals. There is no information as of now regarding the cause of the fire. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to YourCentralValley.com. Nurse, Ann McQuain, left, provides some food and some attention to the surviving Ellis children. Their brother died Thanksgiving Eve of malnutrition, in Louisville, Kentucky. The children were identified, left to right, Sandra, 15 months, Marie, about 3, Betty, 8, Mary, 11 and Victoria, 3 or 4, on right. Nov. 27, 1969 On Thanksgiving Day 1969, Courier Journal readers picked up their morning paper to learn a young child in our community died of malnutrition. Bobby Ellis was 9 years old and weighed just 30 pounds when police carried him through the doors of General Hospital. The news echoed through Louisville homes, around Thanksgiving meals, and in the prayers of our congregations. Unthinkable, people would say, that a child in our community died of hunger. A child, a symbol of innocence and hope for the future, had been deprived of all he represented. Kentuckiana decided this would not happen again. People came together from every faith, political party and zip code, calling on their community to Dare to Care. Bobby Elliss death cast a light on food insecurity in our communities Fifty-four years later, Dare to Care Food Bank works tirelessly to illuminate the darkness by empowering, informing, and feeding our neighbors in Kentuckiana. Still, the shadow of Bobbys would-be future hangs heavy on us all. The number of people living in food-insecure households in the United States grew drastically in 2022. In the U.S. 1 in 7 people, including 1 in 5 children live in food insecure households, according to USDA. Everyone must help: Ending food insecurity requires power in numbers Dare to Care and our partners have witnessed this firsthand. Our community has seen a 30% increase in neighbors seeking food assistance in the past year as public benefits declined and food prices increased. Acting as a community will help ensure our neighbors, our loved ones and all who face hunger have access to nutritious food. Dare to Care Vigil 2023 Check in on friends and family this holiday season Entering the holiday season, youll have more opportunities to check in with family and friends. The underlying causes of food insecurity unemployment, poverty and inconsistent access to food are often difficult to address alone. Making a connection and sharing a resource can be an easy first step. Grow your knowledge of Louisville's resources and solutions More than 300 partners in Kentuckiana are on a zero-hunger mission. They are strategically located to engage every corner of our communities, from English Indiana to Carlton Kentucky. Dare to Care offers an interactive map to find local resources and its Facebook page also offers consistent updates. Advocate for government programs to help feed your neighbors Federal lawmakers are empowered with the ability to support and expand government programs that supply your neighbors with healthy food. Help them see the united voice in our community that is working to end hunger. Looking to give back? Here are 22 places to donate in Louisville Become a Dare to Care Ambassador Dare to Care and its partners work to empower people to share their collective mission and educate others on food insecurity in our communities. You can attend an event, volunteer with your friends and family, host a food or fund drive, host your own event and get your business involved to offer additional support to your neighbors. Donate to a Dare to Care Food Bank This is one of the most needed sources of support. When you donate, youre giving Dare to Care the ability to purchase the most needed items to support the nutritional needs of our communities. A donation to Dare to Care, no matter the size, is a commitment to a healthier, stronger community. Donate today. Vincent James Vincent James, Sr. is the President and CEO of Dare to Care Food Bank. He joined the team in October 2021, having previously served as Louisville Metros Chief of Community Building. James has a strong background and history of leadership experience in the private, faith and public sectors. To learn more about Dare to Care visit daretocare.org. This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Thanksgiving tragedy led to Dare to Care. We need it more than ever Extreme weather incidents, such as the impact of the wildfires felt here in San Francisco, California, in 2020, have contributed to the rise in, and awareness of, climate anxiety. Credit - Jessica ChristianSan Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images Google searches related to climate anxiety are at a record high after steadily increasing over the past five years, the search giant said in an email to TIME. Searches worldwide related to climate anxiety or eco-anxiety increased by 4,590% from 2018 to 2023, according to the companys data. The two most commonly Googled questions were What is eco anxiety? and How to deal with climate anxiety? Searches in English on the topic were 27 times higher in the first 10 months of 2023 than during the same time period in 2017, according to the BBC, which reported the data on Nov. 22. In Portuguese, searches skyrocketed by 73 times during that time. The analysis didnt measure the total volume of searches, but looked at a sample to identify the popularity of a trend over time around the world, and adjusted data to compare countries with different population sizes. Climate, or eco, anxiety is loosely defined as a chronic fear of environmental doom, mental distress or anxiety associated with worsening environment conditions or negative emotions related to climate change. The anxiety can manifest itself through a range of emotionsanger, guilt, sadness, fear, hopelessnessand physical symptoms such as insomnia, Emma Lawrance, mental health lead at Climate Cares Centre at Londons Imperial College, told TIME in a phone call. Awareness of climate anxiety has been increasing in recent years, as extreme weather has swept across the U.S. and wildfires have turned skies orange from California to New York. News website Grist reported that Google searches for the term rose 565 percent from 2020 to 2021. Psychologists have long acknowledged the mental health impacts of climate change and have offered resources and tips on how to cope. In an essay for TIME, Susan Clayton, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at the College of Wooster, argued that climate anxiety can threaten ones ability to function, and recommended acknowledging and sharing negative emotions with others, while balancing negativity with positive feelings and breaks from the news, if possible. Existential fear around climate change has led European activists such as U.K. group Just Stop Oil, which says that human-induced climate change will destroy human civilisation unless emergency action is taken, to stage protest actions, resulting in mass arrests recently. The BBC analyzed publicly-available Google Trends data to find that search trends for eco-anxiety were highest in Nordic countries, with Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway accounting for more than 40% of searches. The report noted searches were likely higher among speakers of languages who Google more often and have a greater awareness of climate anxiety, not necessarily reflecting the most greatly impacted countries. Data shows that Earths poorest populations bear the brunt of climate change. The worlds 46 least developed countries, home to about 1.1 billion people, accounted for less than 4% of total global greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, the United Nations reported in 2022. But in the past 50 years, these countries suffered 69% of worldwide deaths caused by climate-related disasters, the U.N. said. The U.K. ranked 10th among countries in the world for climate anxiety searches in the last five years, while the U.S. ranked 16th, according to Google. Around 7% of American adults are experiencing at least mild levels of climate change-related psychological distress, according to a survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in July. That includes 3% experiencing severe depression and/or anxiety, based on clinical indicators. The study was the first of its kind, but programs founder and director Anthony Leiserowitz told TIME in a phone call he expected those numbers to rise. A much larger group, and one thats steadily increased over the past decade, were worried about climate change. About two-thirds of Americans said they are at least somewhat worried about global warming in the programs latest report in spring 2023. That included 30% who are very worried. Thirteen percent of Americans expressed the belief that it is already too late to do anything about global warming. A not-yet-published study Lawrance discussed with TIME found that a third of young people in America, who had experienced a climate-related event, were scared to have children because of the climate crisis, compared to one fifth who didnt experience a similar event. Her and others study among young people in the U.K. this year showed that 10% of individuals with high climate distress worried about the impact of climate change on their own future more than anything else, including personal finances, relationships, jobs or politics. On the positive side, Leiserowitz and Lawrance both said worry can galvanize collective climate action, which can also lead to better mental health as people take change into their own hands. The single best antidote for climate anxiety is action, Leiserowitz said. Lawrance said young peoples concerns need to be validated, not dismissed, by adults, and policymakers need to listen to these voices and take this seriously. For many youth, she said, the anxiety is not the climate crisis itself, its knowing not enough is being done about it. Leiserowitz encouraged those with severe climate-related depression or anxiety to seek professional help.They should not just be trying to tough this out by themselves, he advised. Contact us at letters@time.com. Daytona Beach police say man arrested after woman stabbed to death, baby killed in intentional fire Police in Daytona Beach said they have arrested a man after a Central Florida mother was stabbed to death and her baby died after a fire that was intentionally set, our sister station WFTV in Orlando reports. Officers said three children, including a 1-month-old baby, was inside the apartment where Denjah Moore was murdered. Two of the children were rescued, and the baby died as a result of the fire, according to police. Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young said the suspect charged in the deadly fire, Charles Ivy, is the father of at least two of those young kids. [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks] The defendant in this incident deserves a special place in the gates of Hell, for what he did, Young said. Police are now sharing more details on how investigators say Ivy is connected to the horrific crimes. The fire started just after midnight on Tuesday at the Countryside Apartments on Beville Road. [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter] The fire department says the way the smoke flowed to the outside of the home and believes it was intentionally started inside. Unfortunately, they only call us when theres trouble, a problem, or a crisis, said Lt. Antwan Lewis with the Daytona Beach Fire Department. Cell phone video captured a sea of red flashing lights from fire trucks and ambulances. Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live. Good morning, Chicago. The holidays are stressful, but it could be worse. You could work in an airport. In one of the busiest airports in the world. For free. You could work in an airport for free and sit for five hours a day wearing a blue vest and invite strangers bring me your tired, your hungry, your flight-delayed, your missed connections, your abusive, your entitled, your perpetually turned-around, your extremely frustrated, your actual refugees seeking asylum to complain to you, to ask countless questions, to ensure their trajectory. For no money. You could do this because you are a good person who wishes to experience the satisfaction of being helpful in an unhelpful environment. You could work at an information desk at OHare International Airport. More than 2 million passengers pass through OHare Thanksgiving week alone, a confusing place even if you visit regularly. Not McCormick Place confusing. (Nowhere else in Chicago is that confusing.) Finding help is not quite finding-an-employee-at-Home-Depot difficult. But it often seems easier to find a Nuts on Clark at OHare than a person with answers. This is where the saints of the information desk come in. Read the full story from the Tribunes Christopher Borrelli. Here are the top stories you need to know to start your day. Subscribe to more newsletters | Puzzles & Games | Todays eNewspaper edition Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza a breakthrough that will facilitate the release of dozens of hostages held by Hamas as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory, officials said Wednesday. The owner of a Burger King in then-Ald. Edward Burkes Southwest Side ward told a federal jury yesterday he agreed to hire the powerful Democrats property tax law firm to get the alderman to lift roadblocks to remodeling his restaurant and also sent a political donation to support Burkes candidate for mayor. The long-awaited testimony of Shoukat Dhahani, CEO of the Texas-based company that owns about 150 Burger Kings in the Chicago area, struck at the heart of the corruption allegations against Burke, who is accused of using his official position to extract private legal business from developers. A political committee that helped expand the Democratic majority on the Illinois Supreme Court and was backed by Illinois Senate President Don Harmon emptied its bank account just weeks after being notified it faced one of the largest state election fines ever for failing to timely disclose millions of dollars it spent until after last Novembers election. On Tuesday, the State Board of Elections issued a final order assessing $99,500 in fines against the All for Justice political action committee. The action followed a Tribune story earlier this year detailing the PACs reporting deficiencies as it spent more than $7.3 million on independent expenditures supporting Democratic Justices Elizabeth Rochford and Mary Kay OBrien, both of whom won their campaigns and increased the courts Democratic majority to 5-2 from a previous 4-3 advantage. Famed Northalsted nightclub Berlin has closed a month into a boycott called for by newly-unionized bar staff who said the club has stalled contract negotiations. Nurses at Ascension St. Joseph Joliet hospital began a strike Tuesday as part of a call for higher wages and increased staffing levels. The strike, which involves 517 nurses who are organized through the Illinois Nurses Association, is the second one at St. Joseph since August. Co-owner Mark Kotlick said Tuesday he plans to make repairs and reopen the restaurant. The fire occurred while employees were inside and appeared to start because of electrical issues, he said. We havent been in business for 95 years to let this shut us down. The Chicago White Sox continued their work to fill infield holes by signing veteran Paul DeJong to a one-year deal, a source confirmed to the Tribune. DeJong went to Antioch High School and Illinois State. The Chicago Blackhawks power play may or may not be getting better, but it is getting younger. The Hawks promoted rookie defenseman Kevin Korchinski to the first unit and shifted veteran Seth Jones to the second group. Helmut Jahns State of Illinois Center is the most cerebral, the most abstract, yet easily the most spectacular building ever constructed in the Loop, Tribune architecture critic Paul Gapp wrote when it opened in 1985. A year later, it would be featured prominently in Running Scared, the 1986 buddy cop action comedy starring Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines. The movies climax takes place in the atrium, and it is a cinematic love letter to the buildings soaring rotunda with its pale blue and salmon colored interiors that Gapp called no less than breathtaking. Even the spiraling mosaic tile floor is memorable, writes critic Nina Metz. Its that time of the year again to bundle up, grab a cup of hot cocoa and take a stroll after dark to see some sparkling holiday light displays. Here is our list of light shows in and around Chicago and beyond, with some indoor displays if you want to avoid the cold. Birds fly over the Quanzhou Bay estuary wetland in southeast China's Fujian Province, Nov. 18, 2023. [Photo/Xinhua] China's central authorities on Tuesday started a new round of environmental inspections, said the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Five teams, conducting the first batch of this third round of inspections, have been dispatched to Fujian, Henan, Hainan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces for one-month inspections, according to the ministry. Inspectors will focus on issues such as the implementation of major decisions and deployments of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council on ecological civilization construction, relevant provincial departments' implementation of ecological environmental protection responsibilities, and the promotion and implementation of ecological environmental protection work by municipal Party committees and governments, said the ministry. Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.) attempted Tuesday to clarify his recent remarks about Vice President Harris, claiming he was simply recounting what others have told him rather than voicing his own opinion. Phillips received blowback for comments he made to The Atlantic in which he said he has been told by others that Harris is not right for the job of being president. I hear from others who know her a lot better than I do that many think shes not well positioned, Phillips said of Harris. She is not well prepared, doesnt have the right disposition and the right competencies to execute that office. Best Black Friday Deals He later added that in his personal experience, he has not seen those deficiencies and that hes enjoyed his interactions with Harris. Asked Tuesday if he agrees with that sentiment on CNN NewsNight, Phillips said, No, in fact what I said in that report, I hope you just articulated, is that thats what people have told me. CNN anchor Abby Phillip then asked the Minnesota Democrat why he would repeat what others have said if he has firsthand experience with the vice president. I did not articulate that distinctly. That was asked of me. Others have said that to the reporter in question, Phillips responded. What Ive said is when Ive been around her, Ive been impressed. Shes been kind; shes been thoughtful and decent. But what Im trying to explain to Americans, whether its relative to the presidents age or the standing of Vice President Harris amongst Americans, if Democrats wish to beat Donald Trump this is not about protecting people, its about protecting the principle of democracy, Phillips continued, adding the Biden-Harris administration approval ratings show Americans do not want this ticket in 2024. Phillips went on to say he does not recall saying those words. I recall those words being shared with me and saying thats what people have been saying, Phillips said. I am defending the vice president because I think shes a good person; I think she is well-prepared, but Im telling you the country has a different opinion, and thats exactly what I said there. He added that he believes President Biden is also a good person but that the country does not want him as the next president. Pressed on whether he is implying he doesnt think Harris should be a successor to Biden, Phillips responded, No, you know what Im saying actually and what Ive said directly to many and would actually say to her if she was right next to me run. The water [is] warm, we live in democracy. While he said he has not directly asked Harris to run for president, Phillips said he did make calls to certain candidates who would not jump in the 2024 race. Phillips launched a longshot presidential bid challenging Biden last month, claiming he is is not running in opposition to the president, but rather to encourage passing the torch to a new generation of leaders. He has repeatedly pointed to Bidens low approval numbers and advanced age, which is 81 as of this week. Polling so far has shown low support for Phillips, who was not a well known member of Congress before launching a White House bid. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released last week showed that while more than half of Democrats want to see another Democrat challenge Biden, the incumbent still maintained a comfortable lead with 64 percent saying they would back him. Phillips and author Marianne Williamson Bidens only Democratic challengers each received only 4 percent of support. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. The Subject Yesterday, Israelis government agreed to a four-day cease-fire in Gaza. Hamas would free 50 hostages in exchange for the release of 150 prisoners held by Israel. Allies could send humanitarian aid. After that, the conflict could continue. Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, whod called for a more permanent ceasefire last week, wasnt satisfied. On the 26th day of his presidential primary challenge to President Biden, Phillips talked with Semafor about what he wanted, how a new president could bring peace to Gaza, and criticism of what hed said about Vice President Harris. The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. The Interview Dave Weigel: Lets start with the reaction to whats happening now a brief ceasefire followed by a return to armed conflict after some hostages are freed. Are you comfortable with that? Dean Phillips: As I laid out very clearly, I want to see all hostages released, then a comprehensive ceasefire or withdrawal, and then a replacement of Israeli troops with a multinational force from countries in the region not including Israel and the US. I think thats a big part of the problem. Of course, Im thrilled that some hostages are being released. Im dismayed and frankly disgusted that Americans continue to be held by Hamas over six weeks later. It hasnt been the primary focus, it appears, of the United States of America. I dont remember a time in recent memory, where so many American citizens were being held hostage, without it being the biggest news story of every day. Thats unacceptable, and it should be our primary focus is to extract American citizens using every single lever available to us. [ .] Dave Weigel: What else could the administration be doing right now to put pressure on the Israeli government? Dean Phillips: Many people in the United States and Israel making decisions today created the very ground for the problems were facing. I know there are very limited ways without more risk to human life, to extract hostages. That is why we have special forces; that is why we have the most extraordinary military in the world. Thats also why we have an extraordinary diplomatic corps, to use every tool available to America, to a) prevent such circumstances, and b) make that the foremost priority of the United States when Americans are held hostage, period. Dave Weigel: Youve met people who are calling for a ceasefire, continuing after hostage release, and I think youve suggested theres a lack of concern for Israeli suffering from some of these people. Do you believe that calling for a ceasefire now is pro-Hamas or anti-Semitic? Dean Phillips: Well, Ive had a conversion. A month ago, I did not believe that anti-Semitism was driving some of these perspectives. On the campaign trail, over the last number of weeks, I have to admit that a combination of anti-Semitism and ignorance is very dangerous. Anybody who favors humanity and doesnt recognize that it is the responsibility of a democratically elected government to defend its citizens is missing the entire point. Israel is a mosaic of Jews and Muslims and Christians. Its not just a Jewish nation; its a multicultural nation. It has a responsibility to both protect its citizens and ensure that grave risks at its own borders are neutralized. If we were facing the same thing from Canada, with 1200 Americans killed in my state of Minnesota by a border incursion kids slaughtered in front of moms and moms slaughtered in front of their kids I dont think the United States of America would rest until we neutralized the group that did that. But my empathy for Palestinians is immense. Im gonna keep focusing on these failures of the leaders of the past, from the West Bank to the West Wing. Israeli policy under Netanyahu is part of the problem. American policy, and the lack thereof has been part of the problem. I respect President Biden, but my goodness Senate foreign relations chair and ranking member, eight years as Vice President, three years as president, and this cycle of bloodshed continues for every single year hes been in Washington. Its time for a new generation of leaders. Its true here. Its true in Israel. Its also true in the Palestinian territories. Dave Weigel: One of your principles is that Israelis must call for elections and demand from their government a commitment to a future of mutual security, peace, and prosperity. How do you enforce that? You have a very right-wing government, with cabinet members saying pretty eliminationist things about Gaza. Dean Phillips: Thankfully, in America, it is up to Americans to make choices about who leads them. Do we want to keep putting people in positions of power from the past? Or do we want to move to the future? Israel will face the same question, probably sooner rather than later. Will they choose war? Would they choose peace? I think I think based on polls right now, an overwhelming majority are holding Netanyahu accountable, and I think theyll choose peace. Palestinians have not been able to vote since 2006, so I believe that America and our allies could exert some pressure and create the conditions for votes in both the West Bank and Gaza. And that would mean investment and democratic civil society. In addition to a peacekeeping force, I believe its time to start making those investments right now to create the foundation for elections. Now, granted, it would require both peoples to choose peace. We cant impose that. Weve never been successful at imposing regime change, imposing democracy. What we have to do here in America also has to be done in the Middle East. Its the same thing that the black and Jewish communities have to do again, in the United States. Communities who are both under threat and persecution should be unifying right now, not dividing. Dave Weigel: How do you bring about those conditions in Gaza? Is the idea that Hamas will not exist; will not be allowed to compete in this future democratic process? Dean Phillips: Vision is easy. Execution is hard. When I argue for a multinational peacekeeping force that does not include the United States or Israel, attendant to that is a massive investment in civil society, democracy-building, massive commitment of infrastructure dollars to Gaza. I do believe that if those investments are made, which wont be instantaneous, and will take time, it can create the foundation for Palestinians to see the possibilities. If they were to vote right now, I dont know what choice they would make. They might choose Hamas again, because theyre so distraught and angry. But if we do something that has a longer-term vision, that should have been done decades ago, I would argue that by the time my children were in their 20s, or in their 50s, and in leadership positions around the world, that well have a very different Middle East. Dave Weigel: What could be done right now to influence Israel and the Netanyahu government? Is it worth putting restrictions or red lines or conditions on weapons aid? Dean Phillips: I think being consistent is most important. The United States shares dollars, resources, and support with some awfully challenging regimes and countries and governments all around the world. Im not putting Israel in that basket; Im just saying that we have to look at this with some sobriety. Israel is our partner, has been since their founding. Theyre the only democracy in the Middle East. Theyre the only multicultural nation in the Middle East. Theyre the only progressive nation in the Middle East. I do believe that, considering the butchering attack on October 7, it is important that America continue to support Israel, and then use all of its leverage to push for peace. And that means an end to the settlement policy. It means, I believe, an end to the right-wing policies of the Netanyahu government. Can the US use its dollars to extract that? I think the answer is, actually, no. Israel is not the same Israel as 1948. Its a successful, wealthy, democratic nation that generally can fend for itself. We also should be supporting Palestinians, but we can only do that if a terrorist organization is removed from power. We have an AUMF (authorization of military force) that I was renegotiating with Ken Buck, as recently as some weeks ago. I would argue that we should include Hamas on it, the way weve included al Qaeda and ISIS. Theyre dangers to Americans. Theyre a terrorist organization that is preventing peace; that is imposing itself on Israel and Palestinians. But the US should not be involved in Gaza physically. Dave Weigel: But not conditioning some of the military aid and weapons we give Israel on what theyre doing internally. Not threatening to cut if off if they dont, for example, stop expanding settlements. Dean Phillips: Im not there yet. Could I get there? Yes. Could I get there if this continues, if Netanyahu continues to operate in this manner after hostages are released, and this continues to spin out of control? Do I believe that America should use every lever available to us to ensure the security of Israel? Yes. Im afraid that Netanyahu is increasingly acting like a man who has more to gain personally from a protracted conflict than he has to gain from peace. This is about support of Israel. My contention is, what leverage do we have to use against a man who I believe no longer is able to keep Israel secure, and whose policies are making it more and more likely it will remain insecure for years to come. Dave Weigel: Whats your reaction to Sam Altman returning as CEO of OpenAI? Is he still interested in financially supporting your campaign? Dean Phillips: Im not going to speak for him, but I believe so. Im so pleased to see him return to open AI and by the way, what an extraordinary expression of democratic capitalism! I dont know if theres been another example of that. What changed here is 500 of 700 employees said, were going to either walk out or hes coming back. Thats like labor organizing, but not for money and not for benefits for principle. Its beautiful. Its beautiful. Dave Weigel: Finally, I wanted to get your reaction to Democrats who didnt like what you told Mark Leibovich about Kamala Harris. Youve dealt with this sort of criticism before; you suggest that the vice president isnt in the best position politically, and youre accused of demeaning her as unintelligent. Delaware Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester sort of said as much: I know her as somebody whos intelligent, dependable, a proven leader. Whats your response to that? Dean Phillips: You can imagine how just staggering and disheartening that is and how, frankly, those who ostensibly commit themselves to defend against misinformation and disinformation are so willing to participate in it. The country has expressed itself and I think its unfair to her. Thats what I was articulating. Thats why her approval ratings are 39%. I have had nothing but good experiences with her. And I said those words. The fact that people would either be ignorant and not read them, or convert them into something I didnt say that is damaging to Democrats chances to beat Donald Trump. I support the vice president. I believe shes competent. Ive only seen the good in her. The fact of the matter is, I think she should run for president. So why would Democrats be putting up an 81-year old when theres the vice president right there. Why not run? Ive said this for years. Democrats should jump in. Dave Weigel: If you became president, do you see a role for her in the administration, or as vice president? Dean Phillips: I make one commitment: I will have the most diverse cabinet, not just in terms of races and religions, but in terms of politics, in history. I will have a youth cabinet for the first time in American history. Do I want the very best and brightest to join this administration? Absolutely. And do I think Vice President Harris is a perfect example of someone with whom I would love to work? Yes, and many others whose names are not even known at all right now around the country, with whom Ive worked in Congress, who are waiting for the chance to rise to leadership positions that are being held back by a generation that keeps people down, including President Biden Im not keeping people down. Im trying to create space in place for this beautiful generation to rise. Thats why I worked so hard for Hakeem Jeffries over two and a half terms, to get him elevated. I wanted him the first time. I wanted him the second time. Nobody has pointed out what I did for Hakeem Jeffries, having a dinner with my freshman colleagues two nights before the election that helped him become the chair of the caucus because otherwise, Barbara Lee was going to win it. He won by just a handful of votes. Ive spent my whole damn life trying to afford others the same opportunities that were afforded me only because of luck. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) bashed President Biden Tuesday for the recently negotiated hostage deal between the militant group Hamas and Israel. No, because we have nine Americans held hostage right now by Hamas, [who] have been there for six weeks, including at least one child, Phillips, who is also challenging Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination for president, said on CNN when asked if he would accept the current hostage deal. And by now, I would have expected American special forces to perhaps play a hand in extracting them, Phillips continued. I think its absurd, shocking and dismaying, that six weeks later, we still have American hostages held by a terror organization in Gaza. The hostage deal, which will go into effect Thursday, includes a temporary four-day cease-fire between Hamas and Israel and the release of 50 hostages by Hamas. It may also result in the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. I welcome the deal to secure the release of hostages taken by the terrorist group Hamas during its brutal assault against Israel on October 7th, Biden said in a statement Tuesday on the deal. Jill and I have been keeping all those held hostage and their loved ones close to our hearts these many weeks, and I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented, the presidents statement continued. On Tuesday, the Israeli Cabinet approved the hostage deal. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said fighting will still occur after the cease-fire. We are at war, and we will continue the war, he said in remarks translated from Hebrew. We will continue the war until we achieve all our objectives: Eliminate Hamas, return all our abductees and missing persons and ensure that there will be no element in Gaza that threatens Israel. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Vice President Kamala Harris, right, and Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota. AP Photo/Charles Krupa; Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips is repeating uncredited criticism of Kamala Harris. Phillips recently told The Atlantic that "others" told him Harris doesn't have the chops to be president. But Phillips told CNN he's been "impressed" by Harris and believes she is "well-prepared." Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota in a recent interview told The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich a mouthful about Vice President Kamala Harris, one half of the Biden administration that he'd like to topple as part of his quest to be the Democratic Party's new standard bearer. Phillips speaking about Harris' prospects as a future presidential candidate while promoting his 2024 presidential bid panned the vice president's viability as a strong contender as he remarked that people "who know her a lot better than I do" weren't keen on her potentially seeking the White House. "She is not well prepared, doesn't have the right disposition and the right competencies to execute that office," Phillips told Leibovich. After bringing up Harris' low polling numbers, the congressman added: "It's pretty clear that she's not somebody people have faith in." But as Phillips sought to explain during a CNN interview on Tuesday, he doesn't actually share similar feelings about Harris. CNN anchor Abby Phillip prodded Phillips over the motivation behind his recitation of critical remarks about the vice president made by unnamed individuals. "You've actually been around her Why repeat what other people have told you if you have firsthand experience?" Phillip asked of Phillips' working relationship with Harris. The congressman responded: "I did not articulate that distinctly. That was asked of me. Others have said that to the reporter in question. What I've said is when I've been around her, I've been impressed. She's been kind; she's been thoughtful and decent." Also in our interview tonight, I asked @deanbphillips about the comments he made about VP Harris in a new Atlantic interview: pic.twitter.com/b4JzTc6fIE Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) November 22, 2023 Phillips has sought to stake his longshot presidential bid as one rooted in generational change, as he's spoken repeatedly of voter concerns over Biden's age. The president earlier this week turned 81 years old, and would be 86 at the end of a potential second term. With Biden largely staying away from New Hampshire's primary contest due to the state's scheduling of its Democratic presidential primary before South Carolina a violation of the new DNC calendar Phillips is looking to carve out an electoral path in the Granite State. But Phillips going on record to repeat remarks critical of Harris while at the same time speaking favorably of her character is not endearing him to many Democrats including fellow Rep. Robert Garcia of California. Garcia on Tuesday blasted Phillips over his remarks and criticized the Minnesotan's presidential bid. "Apparently Dean Phillips is floundering so hard that he's now resorting to attacking Vice-President Harris. He better keep the VP's name out of his mouth and apologize," Garcia wrote on X. "No one will support him so he's going to torch his entire reputation on the way out. Sad to see." Phillips has insisted that while he thinks highly of both Biden and Harris, he doesn't think they're the best candidates to lead the party in 2024. And the congressman also told Phillip he didn't "recall" making comments critical of the vice president. "I recall those words being shared with me and saying that's what people have been saying," Phillips said. "What I'm trying to explain to Americans, whether it's relative to the president's age or the standing of Vice President Harris amongst Americans, if Democrats wish to beat Donald Trump this is not about protecting people, it's about protecting the principle of democracy." In a University of New Hampshire/CNN poll released this month, 65% of likely Democratic presidential primary voters in the state said they'd write-in Biden's name next year. (The president's name isn't on the ballot due to the state's defiance of the DNC presidential primary calendar.) In the same poll, Phillips was in second place but far behind Biden at 10% support. Read the original article on Business Insider Officers responding to a wellbeing check Tuesday night in the Logan Square neighborhood found a 40-year-old man and a boy, 6, dead inside of a bedroom, Chicago police said. Shortly after 10:15 p.m., officers responded to a residence in the 3500 block of West Lyndale Street and discovered a boy and a man in an advanced state of decomposition inside of a bedroom. The victims were identified as Josean D. Cano, and Samuel Cano, 6, of the Lyndale Street address, according to the Cook County medical examiners office. A death investigation was launched pending autopsy results. Detectives were investigating. (NEXSTAR) American Airlines is investigating the circumstances surrounding a viral video that appeared to show baggage handlers at a Florida airport allowing a travelers wheelchair to come crashing down onto the tarmac. We recognize how important it is to support the independence of customers with disabilities by ensuring the proper care of mobility devices throughout their journey with us, a spokesperson for the airline said in a statement shared with Nexstar. This visual is deeply concerning and we are gathering more details so that we can address them with our team. We will continue to work hard to improve our handling of assistive devices across our network, the carriers statement concluded. American Airlines flight attendants ask for permission to strike Footage of the incident was first shared to TikTok by user @haez93 earlier this week. In the video, a baggage handler on a jetbridge is seen sending a wheelchair down a ramp toward a baggage handler on the tarmac. Once it reaches the end of the ramp, the wheelchair smashes into a barrier, flips over it, and crashes onto the tarmac. The handler on the ground then picks up the wheelchair and loads it on a baggage cart. The TikTok user who filmed the video further indicated that this was the third such wheelchair the handlers had mishandled. Dang, after I saw them do this and laugh with the first two wheelchairs I had to get it on film, wrote the TikTok user, who indicated the incidents took place in Miami. That is not what [Id] call handling with care for someone[s] mobility device. Viewers largely appeared to agree, with many noting how expensive wheelchairs or similar mobility devices can be. My cousin[s] basic bottom dollar wheelchair was 5k, one commenter wrote. [H]e would be immobile if it came back damaged. As a wheelchair user, seeing this will stop me from ever travelling out of fear this will happen @American Airlines, another wrote. Incidents such as this one arent entirely uncommon in the airline industry. In its most recent Air Travel Consumer Report, the U.S. Department of Transportation noted an increase in instances of mishandled wheelchairs: In Aug. 2023 alone, U.S. carriers reported 1,104 instances of mishandled wheelchairs, or 1.52% of the 72,825 total wheelchairs checked by passengers. In July, the percentage of mishandled wheelchairs was only 1.39. To address many of the significant barriers and challenges experienced by passengers who use wheelchairs, the Department has initiated a rulemaking proposing that, if adopted after public comment would, among other actions, make it an automatic violation of the Departments Air Carrier Access Act regulations for airlines to mishandle a passengers wheelchair, reads a news release issued upon the publication of the report. This Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would also enhance training requirements for airline personnel who provide hands-on transfer assistance to passengers and handle wheelchairs. The proposal was currently under review as of late October, according to the DOT. Southwest Airlines hikes on-board alcohol prices In the meantime, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said the DOT will be investigating the specific incident in the viral video as well. This is totally unacceptable, Buttigieg wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in response to a repost of the original TikTok video. Well be investigating. This is exactly why we are taking action to protect passengers who use wheelchairs. Everyone deserves to travel safely and with dignity. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. Over the course of the day, 58 combat clashes have occurred at the front. The Russians have launched two missile attacks, 29 airstrikes and 40 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems on Ukraine. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, information as of 18:00 on 22 November Details: On the Kupiansk front, the Russians were conducting assault actions near the settlements of Synkivka, north-east of Petropavlivka and Ivanivka in Kharkiv Oblast, where the Defence Forces of Ukraine repelled 12 attacks. On the Lyman front, the Russians did not conduct any offensive (assault) actions. On the Bakhmut front, the Russians did not conduct any offensive (assault) actions. On the Avdiivka front, the Russians conducted unsuccessful assault actions to the east of the settlement of Novobakhmutivka and to the north of Lastochkyne, Avdiivka and Pervomaiske in Donetsk Oblast, where the Defence Forces repelled 22 attacks. On the Marinka front, the Russians, supported by aircraft, conducted unsuccessful assault actions near Marinka and Novomykhailivka in Donetsk Oblast, where the Defence Forces repelled 14 attacks. On the Shakhtarsk front, the Defence Forces repelled three attacks by the Russians to the west of the settlement of Staromaiorske in Donetsk Oblast. On the Zaporizhzhia front, the Russians tried to regain lost positions near the settlement of Robotyne in Zaporizhzhia Oblast four times, but to no avail. At the same time, the Defence Forces of Ukraine continue conducting an offensive operation on the Melitopol front and offensive (assault) actions on the Bakhmut front. Quote: "The Defence Forces keep holding positions on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast. They continue launching attacks on the enemy." During the day, the aviation of the Defence Forces launched 11 attacks on clusters of Russian manpower, armament and military equipment. Ukrainian Rocket Forces units struck 11 areas where manpower, armament and military equipment were concentrated, a command post, an air defence system, four artillery systems and an ammunition storage belonging to the Russians." Support UP or become our patron! President Volodymyr Zelenskyy convened a teleconference meeting on Nov. 22 to receive operational updates on the battlefield situation and address other pressing matters, the Ukrainian leader said on his Telegram channel. "Daily reports on the receipt of ammunition, vehicles, equipment, and distribution among the brigades. A roundup of the situation on the battlefield," the message reads. Read also: Ukraine counts on powerful EU decision in December, Zelenskyy tells EU Council chief in Kyiv The head of state said that the participants discussed inclement weather and difficulties in the defense of the Lyman, Bakhmut, Donetsk, and Avdiivka sections of the front, as well as offensive actions on the southern front. Zelenskyy noted that during the call, intelligence officials provided relevant updates about international dynamics and developments, as well as insights into the enemy's potential plans and intentions. "At this stage, the Russian army has made convicts the main source of replenishment of losses on the battlefield," Zelenskyy added. Read also: Zelenskyy says Ukraine needs more battlefield successes The president said he was also given reports on the elimination of the consequences of the shelling of civilian infrastructure in Kherson, Beryslav, and Nikopol. In particular, the Russian forces hit the water supply network in Nikopol. "Services are working to restore water supply to people. My office is keeping it under control," he added. In addition, Zelenskyy reported that the Black Sea "grain corridor" initiative continued to yield positive results, with cargo transportation volumes reaching record highs over the past few days. 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 Extreme Weight Loss star Brandi Mallory died after going on a quick run to purchase dinner earlier this month. Documents from the Atlanta Police Department obtained by TMZ confirmed she was last spotted grabbing a meal from Chipotle. Security footage reviewed by investigators showed her going to the fast food restaurant to pick up her meal and return to her car. Brandi Mallory reportedly died on Nov. 9. (@brandimallory/Instagram/Screenshot) A man who owns a deli in the strip mall noticed her inside of her vehicle in the parking lot the next day on Nov. 9, and initially thought she was sleeping, according to the report. However, after noticing that the car was still there hours later and she was unresponsive, he called police. It appears to be a dead body in a car parked in the parking lot, the man told the 911 operator in audio posted by TMZ. Theres a girl laying in her car, she doesnt look right. Ive knocked on the hood, no movement doesnt look like shes breathing. According to officials, the 40-year-olds cause of death has yet to be revealed and is under investigation, but said theres no foul play involved. The beloved reality television contestant was on Season 4 of ABCs Extreme Weight Loss, losing more than 100 pounds on the show. Mallory continued to motivate her supporters after the show and was active on social media. She also shared her work as a makeup artist and dance instructor. Following her death, people opened up about their bond with Mallory and how she impacted their lives. You truly made an impact on this world with your zest and your passion for body positivity, Kim Williams Maxile, a fellow Extreme Weight Loss alum, said in an Instagram post. Im blessed to have gotten to experience you in this world. Love you so much, sis. Mallorys funeral was held at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Tucker, Georgia, on Monday. A political committee that helped expand the Democratic majority on the Illinois Supreme Court and was backed by Illinois Senate President Don Harmon emptied its bank account just weeks after being notified it faced one of the largest state election fines ever for failing to timely disclose millions of dollars it spent until after last Novembers election. On Tuesday, the State Board of Elections issued a final order assessing $99,500 in fines against the All for Justice political action committee. The action followed a Tribune story earlier this year detailing the PACs reporting deficiencies as it spent more than $7.3 million on independent expenditures supporting Democratic Justices Elizabeth Rochford and Mary Kay OBrien, both of whom won their campaigns and increased the courts Democratic majority to 5-2 from a previous 4-3 advantage. All for Justice was notified Aug. 3 by the state elections board it would be fined for 35 specific violations of failing to timely disclose to the public its spending on behalf of Rochford and OBrien in the crucial closing months before the November 2022 election. The PAC was given 30 days to appeal or seek a reduction in the fines, but did not do so. Instead, on Aug. 31, it transferred its remaining cash balance of $149,516 to another independent expenditure committee, Chicago Independent Alliance, a PAC that has been dormant since July 2019, six months after it was created. All for Justice and the Chicago Independent Alliance share the same Chicago address as the Andreou & Casson law firm. Documents filed with the state elections board show Luke Casson, a founding partner of the law firm, as chair and treasurer of All for Justice. On his previous LinkedIn profile, which is no longer active, Casson listed himself as counsel for the office of the president of the Illinois Senate, who is Harmon, and political director of the Democratic Party of Oak Park, which is Harmons political base. A day before All for Justice transferred its remaining cash to the Chicago Independent Alliance PAC, the alliance PAC also received a $200 donation from the Andreou & Casson law firm. It was the first contribution the alliance PAC had received in more than 4 years. State election board officials said they moved forward with a final order to assess the fines against All for Justice despite its empty bank account by citing a provision in its administrative rules that makes the officers of a PAC personally liable for civil penalties if the PAC lends or donates funds to a second political committee while it owes fines to the State Board of Elections. Casson is the only officer of the All for Justice PAC, according to state election records. Reached by the Tribune, Casson said he had no comment on the boards action. He said, I didnt know and I had no knowledge of the fines, despite the boards Aug. 3 notice levying the fines. He did not respond when asked if he was saying he did not receive the boards notice. Asked why 28 days after the boards notice of the fines was issued All for Justice transferred its remaining funds to the dormant Chicago Independent Alliance PAC, Casson responded: Thats none of your business. Asked if the funds transfer was an attempt to circumvent paying the fines, Casson said, It wasnt. I just said we dont have any comment. The Chicago Independent Alliance PAC was launched with $20,000 in small donations and spent more than $13,000 in its first three months, including $9,000 in support of a Chicago mayoral candidate that it did not name a violation of state campaign finance laws but it was never cited by the state election board. The Chicago Independent Alliance previously paid a $950 fine to the state elections board in July 2019 for filing its required quarterly report of funds raised and spent 25 days late, state records showed. The alliance PAC lists its purpose as making independent expenditures in support of independent candidates and common sense economic policies for growth and prosperity, state election records showed. For years, the Chicago Independent Alliance PAC had a cash balance of $5,206. With the transfers from All for Justice PAC and the contribution from Cassons law firm, the independent alliance PAC reported a cash balance of nearly $155,000. The All for Justice committee was fined Tuesday by the state elections board for falling to timely file expenditures of $1,000 or more within two days of spending the money. The committee spent heavily on television ads painting Rochford and OBriens Republican opponents as virulent anti-abortion candidates in the months after the U.S. Supreme Court decision ended Roe v. Wade and sent the issue of abortion rights to the states. Rochford, a Lake County judge, beat Mark Curran, a former Lake County sheriff, with a healthy 55.2% of the vote. OBrien, an appellate court judge, defeated Michael Burke, a sitting Supreme Court justice who had been appointed to fill a vacancy, with only 51.1% of the vote. By not following the disclosure rules, the spending by All for Justice which represented a quarter of the more than $23 million spent overall on the two Supreme Court races and nearly 40% of the money behind the Democratic candidates went undisclosed until the end of January, months after the election. All for Justice was formed in August 2022 as an independent expenditure political action committee, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to support or oppose candidates but cannot coordinate its spending with the contenders it backs. Because it began spending money on Sept. 29, within 60 days of the Nov. 8, 2022, election, All for Justice was required to file detailed public reports within two days for each expenditure of $1,000 or more that it made on behalf of Rochford and OBrien or against Curran and Burke. Instead, they filed nothing until amended reports were filed months after the election. Kent Redfield, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield and a campaign finance expert, called the actions of All for Justice in shedding its bank account the moral and ethical equivalent of hiding assets before filing for divorce or bankruptcy. The Illinois campaign finance law relies on transparency and timely reporting to (ensure) that the general public and the news media know who is supporting a candidate for public office, Redfield said. When the system is working correctly, citizens and the news media know in real time where the money supporting elections comes from and who it is benefiting. But, he said, A willful violation of this magnitude strikes at the heart of the trust and sense of legitimacy that is necessary to sustain our political system. Although All for Justice did not file timely expenditure reports, it did file the mandated timely reports on money it was taking in from contributors, indicating an awareness of the states campaign finance laws. All for Justice filed quarterly reports on what it raised and spent, but because the filing of the report covering Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2022, was not required until Jan. 17, it wasnt until more than two months after the election that the group publicly disclosed spending nearly $6 million of its $7.3 million in independent expenditures. And even then, it did not list which candidates it spent money on to benefit from the work of specific vendors, such as those involved in nearly $6.3 million in TV ads and nearly $800,000 in mailers, as required by law. Election authorities, alerted to the transparency issue by Redfield and the Tribune earlier this year, contacted representatives of All for Justice and it filed amended quarterly reports providing the required detailed expenditure information Jan. 31 weeks after Rochford and OBrien were sworn in. Harmon, the state Senate president, was a major donor to All for Justice, contributing $500,000 from his personal campaign fund and another $200,000 from the Illinois Senate Democratic Fund he controls. The Harmon-backed donations were part of nearly $1.1 million in contributions from Democratic politicians, including $75,000 from state Rep. Jay Hoffman of Swansea and five senators who gave $50,000 each. Another nearly $3.4 million came in to All for Justice from organized labor groups, while lawyers, law firms and related entities provided more than $2.3 million to the group. Overall, All for Justice spent $3.7 million on behalf of Rochford and more than $3.6 million on behalf of OBrien, election reports ultimately showed. Harmon has played a leading role in the passage of several campaign finance reform initiatives. A spokesman for Harmon said Casson acts as an outside legal counsel for the Senate presidents office and is not a state employee. Asked through his spokesmen about what relationship Harmon has with Casson and the actions Casson has taken divesting funds from the All for Justice PAC, Harmon did not directly respond. Instead, Harmon released as statement saying, All political committees in Illinois have a responsibility and duty to comply with all applicable campaign finance regulations. When the Tribune first reported issues surrounding the transparency of All for Justices spending in February, Harmon said in a statement that if the state elections board needs new tools to make disclosures more intuitively and more timely, I am happy to work with them to achieve the shared goal of meaningful campaign finance transparency. The General Assembly took no action on the issue this year. _____ More than two dozen Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday accused X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, of failing to curb and profiting from misinformation and violent content related to the Israel-Hamas war. In a letter to X CEO Linda Yaccarino and owner Elon Musk, the lawmakers voiced concerns about the social media companys ongoing failure to enforce its policies on the promotion of misinformation and hateful, violent, and terroristic propaganda videos since the outbreak of the conflict last month. X loses ad sales, faces blowback after Musk antisemitism controversy Given Xs major cuts to content moderation staff over the last year, it appears that X has willfully permitted, and benefited from, the illegal spread of terrorist propaganda, the lawmakers said. Such behavior from one of the worlds most widely used social media platforms is wholly unacceptable. The letters signatories included Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). The letter pointed to two recent reports from the Tech Transparency Project and Institute for Strategic Dialogue highlighting examples of X Premium accounts, as well as non-X Premium accounts, spreading violent content from the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Notably, X Premium, the paid subscription service that replaced Twitters traditional blue check verification system, provides users with prioritized rankings in conversations and search. The lawmakers also suggested that there are clear indicators that X is profiting from the spread of Hamass terrorist propaganda through the monthly subscription fees it collects from the X Premium accounts posting such content, as well as the ads displayed in replies to posts. They also accused the social media company of benefiting financially from subscribers who have promoted false and misleading content about the Israel-Hamas war. X has been repeatedly criticized for apparent content moderation failures. The company is also currently facing an exodus of advertisers over a pair of reports from Media Matters for America that accused the platform of placing ads for mainstream brands next to pro-Nazi and white nationalist content. What to know about Elon Musks feud with Media Matters Musk, who also faced backlash last week for appearing to endorse a post promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory, followed through on threats to sue Media Matters on Monday. He alleged that the liberal media watchdog group manipulated the algorithm to produce its reports. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. For politicians, it turns out an addictive social media platform is hard to quit, in spite of any moral qualms they might have about its owner. In the past few weeks, Elon Musk owner of X, formerly known as Twitter has gone from provocateur to full-on villain for much of the American left. He personally amplified antisemitic conspiracy theories, sued a progressive research group over claims that ads ran next to pro-Nazi posts and allowed a reported spike in Hamas-affiliated propaganda tied to the Israel-Hamas war to go largely unmoderated. Liberal lawmakers Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) had seen enough. On Tuesday, they sent a letter to X cosigned by 25 other House Democrats asking Musk to stop the spread of Hamas-related content, claiming X is profiting from Hamas terrorist propaganda on the platform. When they sent the letter, Goldman and Raskin promptly shared the news on X. As much as wed personally like to not have to engage with a platform that boosts this kind of shit, we do have an obligation to speak to constituents on Twitter, and its still a very effective way to reach them, Simone Kanter, a spokesperson for Goldman, told POLITICO. Politicians are finding they just dont have a competitor for Xs free, real-time ability to reach voters and journalists. X is still the closest thing to a virtual town square for the Washington conversation, even if users are spending less time on the platform since Musk took over in October 2022. Outside the Beltway, its still where powerful players go to share news, including seemingly every character in the OpenAI drama over the past several days with recently reinstated CEO Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman, co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella going to X first to tweet out the latest twists and turns in the leadership saga. The press still lives and dies on Twitter, and as long as theyre there, its going to be hard for elected officials to avoid it, said Andrew Bleeker, president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic-aligned communications firm. Theres also a strong first-mover advantage in big shared platforms like social media. Having launched in 2006, X also has a head start over newer competitors like BlueSky and Metas Threads, since it has an established user base richly stocked with users interested in politics. Because users are heavily engaged, you can create some buzz around your announcements where it's more difficult to drive that organic traffic elsewhere, said Mark Jablonowski, the president of DSPolitical, a digital ad firm that supports Democratic candidates. One issue for X is that using the platform isnt the same as giving it money, and Musks antics have definitely dried up advertising. Goldmans office said due to the misinformation and propaganda on X, his office has stopped all political advertising on the platform since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Theres also been a mass exodus of advertisers like IBM, Disney and Apple from X, days after Musks antisemitic endorsement and a Media Matters for America report finding ads were placed next to pro-Nazi content. Musk sued the self-described progressive research group, saying they manipulated the platform to defame X. X did not respond to a request for comment to the lawmakers pushback. CEO Linda Yaccarino did attempt to allay advertisers and advocates concerns in a tweet last week that theres absolutely no place for antisemitism and discrimination on the platform. Raskin told POLITICO he could see a day he leaves the platform, saying he believes there could be a breaking point if nothing changes. And he said itd send a more powerful message if there was a mass lawmaker exodus. I would definitely reassess with my colleagues this has more significance if a lot of people agree to do it together. Similarly, Kanter said if Musk doesnt address their concerns, well absolutely consider voting with our feet and getting out. Some politicians are starting to hedge their bets and build up followers on alternative sites, like Metas Threads, launched in July as a direct competitor to X. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris opened accounts on Threads on Monday, days after publicly condemning Musks antisemitic comments. While a White House official said theyre aware of the increase in hate speech on X, the launch of accounts on Threads had been in the works for weeks. Threads feels like the most obvious viable alternative right now, said Crystal Patterson, who formerly was Facebooks head of global civic partnerships and worked for several Democratic presidential campaigns. With President Biden joining Threads, I assume Threads will continue to grow and be used more. Of course, she added, the kicker is they also have a ton of issues with Meta. The influential evangelical leader of a top social conservative organization in Iowa endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday. Bob Vander Plaats, president and CEO of The Family Leader organization, announced his personal endorsement of DeSantis in an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News' "Special Report." "We need to find somebody who can win in 2024," Vander Plaats said, pointing to the 2022 midterms, where an anticipated "red wave" never materialized for most of the country. DeSantis, however, won re-election in Florida by a wide margin. Vander Plaats praised DeSantis as "bold and courageous" as he announced his endorsement, which was widely expected. GAME ON IN IOWA AS DESANTIS AND HALEY BATTLE FOR SECOND PLACE BEHIND TRUMP Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramawamy and Nikki Haley join The Family Leader president and CEO Bob Vander Plaats at a candidate forum in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 17, 2023. "Were hopeful that were able to secure that endorsement," DeSantis told reporters hours earlier, during the first of two campaign stops in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary and second overall contest in the GOP nominating schedule, after Iowa's lead-off caucuses. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP The Florida governor, along with 2024 GOP White House rivals, former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, appeared with Vander Plaats on Friday at a Family Leader presidential forum in Des Moines, Iowa. COULD THIS IOWA EVANGELICAL LEADER'S ENDORSEMENT PUT DENT IN TRUMP'S COMMANDING LEAD? "I think that if you saw that Family Leader forum, clearly his folks there gravitated to me. I dont think theres any question about that. We have a good relationship," DeSantis said. Vander Plaats shared in his Fox News Channel interview that at last Fridays Thanksgiving Family Forum, he [DeSantis] closed the sale on me." "He was very clear about, we need a president who can serve two terms, not one. We dont need a president thats going to be a lame duck on day one," Vander Plaats highlighted. Former President Donald Trump, the commanding front-runner for the Republican nomination as he makes his third straight White House run, was invited but declined to attend the forum. Trump also skipped a similar presidential forum hosted by the Family Leader in July. DESANTIS, HALEY, RAMASWAMY, GET PERSONAL AS THEY SIT SIDE-BY-SIDE Vander Plaats, who has long had a rocky relationship with Trump and who has argued that it is time for new conservative leadership, said the former president's "absence communicates a lot to our base." "Theres definitely a shot that the former president can be beat here," Vander Plaats told Fox News Digital in an interview last week. Pointing to Vander Plaats, DeSantis on Tuesday noted, "Bob has been somebody thats been very vocal that Donald Trump is not going to be the way forward, not going to be able to get the job done, particularly as a lame duck president." In a major boost for DeSantis who has staked his campaign on winning in Iowa 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. Vander Plaats, who has repeatedly showered praise on DeSantis this year, told Fox News last week that the Reynolds endorsement of the Florida governor "will weigh in on my discernment. But that wont make my endorsement." Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, hosted by the DeSantis-aligned super PAC Never Back Down, on Nov. 21, 2023. DeSantis, pointing to the backing from Iowa's governor, numerous state lawmakers and officials, and the probability of a Vander Plaats endorsement, highlighted that "to have so many members of the Iowa legislature, to have the governor, and then to have Bob and his network. Thats going to be a pretty powerful machine and were going to turn all that on. Or theyll turn that on. And were going to go there and do that." DeSantis predicted "that these first two states are going to totally upend the conventional wisdom." Taking a shot at some of his rivals, DeSantis argued that Republican primary voters "certainly dont want to fall in line behind an establishment candidate whos not going to be able to make any big changes. And I think thats true for most of the people who are running against us in the primary." Vander Plaats is a top social conservative leader in a state where evangelical voters play an outsized role in Republican politics. 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. Trump's campaign, reacting to the latest development, argued that "Kim Reynolds endorsement wont save Ron DeSanctus, and neither will Vander Plaat$ endorsement." And in a preemptive strike last week, Trump's political allies also dismissed the importance of a Vander Plaats endorsement. A recent memo from veteran Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, who among other things conducts surveys for the Trump-aligned super PAC Make America Great Again Inc., argued that a Vander Plaats endorsement would have "no significant impact" on the caucuses. Pointing to polling he conducted in September, Fabrizio charged that "while the DeSantis camp will try and spin that a Vander Plaats endorsement will revive their sputtering and shrinking campaign, cold hard data tells a much different story." WITH CLOCK TICKING TOWARDS FIRST VOTES IN THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION RACE, THIS CANDIDATE REMAINS IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT When asked about the criticism, Vander Plaats told Fox News that "my endorsement means one vote. Beyond that, well see what happens." However, he added, "I think their obsession with my endorsement probably would indicate that theyre more fearful of it than they should be." The Democratic National Committee described Vander Plaats as a "far-right extremist" and argued that his endorsement "is the ultimate kiss of death for Ron DeSantis sinking campaign and guarantees DeSantis will never be the Republican nominee." "Vander Plaats endorsement should come as no surprise both he and DeSantis share the same desire to ban abortion and rip away freedoms from millions of women," DNC national press secretary Sarafina Chitika charged in a statement. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley speaks at a town hall in Newton, Iowa, on Nov. 17, 2023. A couple of hours before Friday's Family Leader 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, Marlys Popma, the former Iowa GOP executive director and former president of the Iowa Right to Life, 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." The big question going forward is whether the Reynolds and Vander Plaats endorsements of DeSantis, and the surprise backing of Haley by Popma, can make a dent in Trump's commanding lead over the rest of the field. Nicole Schlinger, a longtime Iowa-based strategist with close ties to evangelicals, argued that endorsements only go so far. "I think what matters more to Iowa caucus goers than anything is meeting with the candidates and getting their questions answered about their policy positions," she told Fox News. "Endorsements, whether its the governor or Bob Vander Plaats, can shine a light on the campaign, and then its up to the candidate to seal the deal." Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub. Original article source: DeSantis lands endorsement from influential Iowa evangelical leader in race for GOP nomination (Bloomberg) -- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis secured the endorsement of influential Iowa conservative Bob Vander Plaats, a boost to his bid to upset former President Donald Trump in the early voting state. Most Read from Bloomberg Vander Plaats formally backed DeSantis on Tuesday, saying in an interview on Fox News that he was thrilled to throw his personal endorsement and support behind the Republican presidential hopeful. We need to find somebody who can win in 2024, he added, calling DeSantis a bold and courageous leader. Vander Plaatss backing is the second major endorsement for DeSantis in Iowa this month, following Governor Kim Reynolds. Both Vander Plaats and Reynolds are influential among evangelical voters, a sizable bloc in the state and a group whose support will be crucial in the caucuses in January. With less than two months to go before Republican presidential primary voting officially kicks off, DeSantis is making a make-or-break push in Iowa, banking on a strong showing that can give him momentum to stay in the race. Polls show DeSantis trailing Trump, the GOP frontrunner, by over 45 points, according to the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. In Iowa, Trump only has a 30-point lead over DeSantis. But the Florida governor also faces a threat from former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has surged in the polls in recent weeks and gained new donor interest thanks to strong debate performances. The DeSantis camp has moved more staffers to Iowa and expressed confidence in its ground game. A new super PAC linked to DeSantis allies from Florida is also ramping up ad spending in the state. A senior adviser to the campaign, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss their thinking, said the race is still a two-way contest between DeSantis and Trump, and Haley has likely peaked. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, DeSantis hailed the endorsement. His support tells Iowans they can trust me to fight and win for them, the governor said. The DeSantis campaign and a super PAC linked to him paid $75,000 in recent months to Vander Plaatss Family Leader Foundation, according to campaign finance reports. The endorsement comes days after Vander Plaatss Family Leader Thanksgiving forum, a tradition for Iowa evangelicals to hear from candidates. Trump opted to skip the event entirely, as well as an event hosted by Vander Plaats earlier this summer decisions the evangelical leader criticized. Evangelical voters helped power Trump to the White House in 2016 but the former presidents ties with that group have become strained after he criticized the partys messaging on abortion for the GOPs underwhelming 2022 midterm showing. --With assistance from Bill Allison, Gregory Korte and Stephanie Lai. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has assembled an illustrious list of Iowa endorsers, including Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. But for the throngs of Iowans filling the stands of a Donald Trump rally in Fort Dodge Nov. 18, such high-profile endorsements make little difference. Rally attendee Paul Feauto told the Des Moines Register "nobody else stands a chance" against Trump. Feauto, 65, said he "couldn't believe it" when Reynolds endorsed DeSantis over Trump. "Most of Iowans, I've got to tell you, love Trump," Feauto said. "This is a Trump state, and boy, this is definitely a Trump town." Even so, DeSantis continues to rack up a growing number of significant endorsements. Beyond Reynolds and Vander Plaats, 41 state legislators, including top-ranking Senate President Amy Sinclair and House Majority Leader Matt Windschitl, have thrown their support behind DeSantis. Vander Plaats, president and CEO of The Family Leader, who endorsed DeSantis Tuesday, says the Florida governor is "tailor-made" for an Iowa caucus victory. "Endorsements only go so far. I hope I can influence others, but there's no guarantee on that," Vander Plaats told the Des Moines Register. "But I do believe, with Gov. Reynolds, with my endorsement, and with some of the others that I've talked about all the legislators and county chairs that he has I think he's tailor-made to win Iowa." The Florida governor has also launched coalitions of Iowa faith leaders, sheriffs, anti-abortion activists, Moms for Liberty and agriculture leaders. "I see the energy. I see the momentum. It's exciting to see," Reynolds told reporters at DeSantis' Urbandale office opening. "Iowa breaks late. There's a lot of time left." But it's unclear whether support from Reynolds and other political leaders will be enough to sway Iowa caucusgoers in DeSantis' favor come Jan. 15, or if the fervor for the former president is too powerful to overcome. Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who worked for Marco Rubios 2016 presidential campaign and Joni Ernsts 2014 U.S. Senate campaign, said the disconnect between the candidate favored by political leadership and the candidate loved by the party's base is a "phenomenon not unique to Iowa." "I think if you look at Trump, he has very few endorsements in the Senate, for example," Conant told the Des Moines Register. "When he was president, he was always more popular with voters than their elected representatives." What Iowa endorsements does Donald Trump have? Trump's biggest Iowa endorser so far has been first-term Attorney General Brenna Bird. Bird has been aggressive in using her position to join lawsuits challenging President Joe Bidens Democratic administration on issues such as its student debt forgiveness plan, vaccine mandates, gun rights and more. As she endorsed Trump in October, Bird said, "Iowans know (Trump) is the only candidate who can defeat Joe Biden and bring prosperity back to America." Former President Donald Trump talks with Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird during a commit to caucus rally, Monday, Oct. 16, 2023, in Adel, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall) More: Donald Trump nabs high-profile caucus endorsement from Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird Trump also has a coalition of more than 20 supporters in the state Legislature. Donald Trump attacks Kim Reynolds, Ron DeSantis as Trump's supporters brush off her endorsement Trump fired off attacks at his political adversaries at the Fort Dodge rally this month, focusing his ire on those Trump says have been disloyal to him, including DeSantis and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump did not mention Reynolds at the rally, but he released a scathing video on social media days later, calling Reynolds the "most unpopular governor in America" and suggesting DeSantis had promised her a role in his administration in exchange for the endorsement. "Her endorsement of Ron DeSanctimonious, who is 50 points down to me in the polls, has given him exactly zero bounce," Trump said in the video. "He's a wounded bird falling violently from the sky." Fort Dodge rally attendee Barb Vonsak, 67, of Fort Dodge said she had viewed Reynolds as a potential VP pick for Trump before their falling-out, arguing that Trump "counted on her" and he "kind of helped her a lot" during the pandemic. She still supports Reynolds, despite Trump's animosity. Vonsak said she'd vote for Reynolds again, calling her a "tough cookie" and praising her response to COVID. But Vonsak said the need for a "strong leader" and the fact that "career politicians just kind of spook me" make her believe Reynolds' endorsement of DeSantis was a mistake. Conant, the Republican strategist, speculated that endorsements from Iowa political leaders won't do much to convert Trump supporters. "Trump has a very strong direct bond with his base," Conant said. "And I don't think there's anything that is going to disabuse people who really like Trump to not vote for him." Supporters of Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump gather to hear him speak during a rally, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. (AP Photo/Bryon Houlgrave) Instead, Conant said the endorsements may "embolden" Republicans who are considering a split with the former president to make the jump. "I think if your strategy is to appeal to voters who like Trump but are open to an alternative, there is hope there. The problem is that a lot of those voters who like Trump and are open to an alternative are still with Trump," he said. "And I think that's (when) an endorsement from a popular governor or a really strong campaign can make a difference. Iowa Poll shows locked-in base of Trump voters An October Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows 43% of likely Republican caucusgoers choose Trump as their first choice for president. That puts him 27 points ahead of DeSantis and Haley, who are tied for second place with 16%. Among Trump supporters, 63% said their minds are made up about caucusing for the former president. Just 37% of likely caucusgoers who chose Trump as their first choice said they could be persuaded to caucus for someone else. Meanwhile, 70% of DeSantis supporters and 73% of Haley supporters said they could be persuaded to support someone else. Pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the Iowa Poll, said Haley and DeSantis are "on ground that you could only describe as shaky," while Trump's support is "solid." However, Iowa Poll data also shows how popular Reynolds remains among Iowa Republicans. In an August Iowa Poll, Reynolds performed better than any 2024 presidential candidate among likely Republican caucusgoers: 81% viewed her favorably (including 50% who viewed her very favorably), 18% viewed her unfavorably and 1% were not sure. Vander Plaats has called for Republicans to rally around one alternative candidate to Trump, winnowing the crowded primary field. With DeSantis' growing list of endorsements, Vander Plaats says DeSantis is becoming that alternative. "I believe, by lending my voice there, Iowa's showing a coalescing around one candidate," Vander Plaats said. "And I think with 48 days left now he stands a good chance to win the Iowa caucuses. Nationally, some Republican leaders including former Trump aides say they're ready to move on Reynolds is far from the only Republican leader to break with Trump ahead of the 2024 election. Many Republicans who rallied with Trump, worked for Trump, or defended him during his presidency have endorsed other primary candidates and called on the party to choose a new leader with a less polarizing reputation. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds embraces former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Davenport, Monday, March 13, 2023. Former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly told the Washington Post that it was "beyond (his) comprehension" why so many people still support Trump. Kelly was one of 16 former Trump advisers to speak to the Post about their concerns that Trump appears poised to win the GOP nomination. Trump evokes very strong emotions in people. You're either really for him or really against him. And I think when he was president and he was the leader of the Republican Party and there was no alternative, people fell in line," Conant said. "But now that we have a competitive primary, I think a lot of Republicans want to go a different direction." Katie Akin is a politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at kakin@registermedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @katie_akin. Galen Bacharier covers politics for the Register. Reach him at gbacharier@registermedia.com or (573) 219-7440, and follow him on Twitter @galenbacharier. Brianne Pfannenstiel is the chief politics reporter for the Register. Reach her at bpfann@dmreg.com or 515-284-8244. Follow her on Twitter at @brianneDMR. This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: DeSantis rakes in big Iowa endorsements. Does it matter against Trump? Fred Daibes, the North Jersey developer charged alongside U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez in an alleged bribery scheme, will keep his attorney in a separate bank fraud case, despite federal prosecutors warning of a legal conflict of interest. Daibes is one of five people indicted in the alleged corruption scheme involving New Jersey's senior senator and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez. Daibes pleaded not guilty last month to charges related to the case, in which Menendez is accused of secretly acting as an agent for the Egyptian government. At a hearing last month, a federal prosecutor said he believed Daibes' attorney in the bank fraud case, Lawrence S. Lustberg of Gibbons P.C., faced a potential conflict because he also represents a defendant in the corruption case, Wael Hana. Hana, a halal meat exporter, is accused of bribing Menendez to win the senator's help in getting favorable treatment from Egyptian officials. Manhattan, NY October 18, 2023 -- Fred Daibes, involved in the bribery case involving Senator Robert Menendez exits the Federal Courthouse in lower Manhattan for a hearing on corruption charges. At a Nov. 16 court hearing, however, Daibes said he will keep Lustberg as his attorney. Lustberg did not respond to messages for comment. The corruption indictment shed light on Menendez's alleged interference with Daibes' bank fraud charges, saying the senator recommended that President Joe Biden nominate a U.S. attorney he believed he could influence in Daibes' favor. "Mr. Lustberg knows certain facts allegedly relevant to those charges," Vikas Khanna, first assistant U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton last month. In the bank case, the government said Daibes and Michael McManus, the chief financial officer of Edgewater-based Daibes Enterprises, used others not named in the indictment to secure millions of dollars in loans. The loans were used for Daibes' benefit without the knowledge of the bank or regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., prosecutors said. The activity allegedly occurred from 2008 through 2013. Alleged conflicts for Daibes attorney At the Nov. 16 hearing, McManus officially withdrew his plea deal in the bank case, after a judge rejected it last month. The next scheduled court date is for Dec. 15. McManus's attorney, John Whipple, said Tuesday that he had no further comment at this time. At the October hearing, the government requested that Daibes be made aware of the potential conflict of interest and, if it's appropriate, sign a voluntary waiver to continue with Lustberg as his attorney. At Hana's arraignment in the corruption trial last month, U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein repeatedly asked Hana if he wanted new attorneys. That same day, Hana signed a waiver of any potential conflict of interest involving Lustberg's representation of Daibes, according to court documents. Stein noted that Lustberg could be called as a witness in the Menendez case. Hana said he was satisfied with Lustberg even after Stein reiterated that he would not be able to appeal on the grounds that Lustberg was conflicted. Menendez investigation: This cast of characters has been linked to the Menendez investigation Plea deal rejected in bank fraud case In October, days after Menendez was indicted, Wigenton rejected plea agreements from Daibes and McManus in the bank case. They stemmed from charges filed in 2018 against Daibes when he was indicted on multiple counts of alleged conspiracy to circumvent lending limits set by Mariner's Bank, which he founded in 2001. That led to Daibes and now McManus withdrawing their pleas. In 2022, Daibes admitted to receiving more than $1 million in gross receipts from Mariner's Bank and pleaded guilty to making false entries in a loan memorandum. His sentencing hearing was delayed four times. Daibes pleaded guilty to a single count of the original 14-count indictment, which cited a 2008 memo for a $1.8 million nominee loan that falsely identified the borrower and the source of repayment. The line of credit was actually for Daibes, who funded the repayment, prosecutors said. This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Fred Daibes keeps lawyer despite Bob Menendez case conflict Joshua Amburgy, 40, appears in Clermont County Common Pleas Court for sentencing on Tuesday. Prosecutors say he stabbed his mom numerous times before charging at police with a knife. Its been just over a year since Joshua Amburgy fatally stabbed his mother at their Miami Township home before charging at police with a kitchen knife. Now, 40-year-old Amburgy is faced with the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars. He was sentenced on Tuesday by Clermont County Common Pleas Judge Victor Haddad to a minimum of 41 years to life in prison. That sentence comes after his guilty plea last month to aggravated murder and felonious assault, court records show. What happened to Melissa Amburgy? When Miami Township police arrived at 58-year-old Melissa Amburgys home on Valencia Drive on Nov. 1, 2022, officers found her suffering from multiple stab wounds in the basement, prosecutors said in court filings. Ted Amburgy, her husband and Joshua Amburgys father, told police that he and his wife were hanging wall art when Joshua Amburgy tried several times to get his mother to meet him upstairs. When Melissa Amburgy refused, prosecutors said, her son came downstairs and stabbed her seven times using a knife from his parents kitchen. Ted Amburgy witnessed the stabbing and intervened by hitting his son with a chair. Ive been in combat; Ive been all over the world, but Ive never seen somebodys eyes like that, he said. I could see in his eyes the devil had taken over. Joshua Amburgy then fled the home, knife still in hand, but was confronted by police a short time later in the backyard of a residence on Geneva Court. Prosecutors said police were forced to shoot him in the leg after he failed to comply with multiple commands to drop the weapon, instead charging at them. Prosecutors say Joshua Amburgy charged at police with a knife after stabbing his mother seven times in the basement of their Miami Township home. Body camera footage of the incident shows there were roughly 12 seconds between the time officers first spoke to Joshua Amburgy and shots being fired. Police recovered the knife Joshua Amburgy used to stab his mother, as well as a larger, butcher-style knife from his pocket. Meanwhile, Melissa Amburgy had been flown by helicopter to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where she later died. Killing had been planned for a month, prosecutors say In an interview with investigators, Joshua Amburgy said he had been angry with his mother prior to stabbing her and that he probably still wouldve attacked her if she came upstairs as he requested, court records state. He has consistently suggested that Melissa Amburgy was out to get him, according to prosecutors. In planning to kill his mother, prosecutors said, Joshua Amburgy tried for a month to obtain a gun before giving up and buying a large kitchen knife from a local dollar store, though that knife ultimately wasnt used. Family says Joshua Amburgys mom fought for him the hardest Joshua Amburgy was on probation for assaulting a police officer and had been living with his parents in suburban Clermont County at the time of the killing. Though determined ineligible for a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, he has a long history of serious mental health issues, according to his lawyer, Bruce Wallace. Melissa Amburgys family described her as a devoted mother and grandmother who spent roughly two decades battling the mental health care system in an effort to get her son the help he needed. He murdered the one person who fought for him the hardest, said Jessica Amburgy, Joshua Amburgys sister-in-law. Wallace didnt dispute assertions that his client lacks remorse for his actions, but added that by pleading guilty he has accepted responsibility and spared his family the anguish of a trial. There was only three people there that day but this is blown way out of proportion to where the news got ahold of it, Joshua Amburgy said during his sentencing on Tuesday. The story has exacerbated itself and I dont understand why. Prosecutors and his family asked the court to impose a sentence of life without parole. He will be at least 81 years old before hes eligible for release. This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Miami Twp. man gets decades in prison for fatally stabbing his mother A devolution deal for Lancashire will give the county a "stronger voice" and allow politicians to focus on issues that matter most to the people", a council said. The proposed changes, outlined in the Autumn Statement, would mean the transfer of more money and powers from the government to a Combined County Authority. Unlike other areas in the north-west of England, like Merseyside and Greater Manchester, Lancashire would not elect a regional mayor. Philippa Williamson, leader of Lancashire County Council, said the extra powers meant the authority could support new jobs in growing industries. 'A triumph' Announcing the plan, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Michael Gove, said he was delighted an agreement had been reached. It would unlock the economic potential of Lancashire, he said. Leaders from Lancashire County Council and Blackburn with Darwen and Blackpool councils have been working together to progress a devolution deal for the county for the past six months. There would be no changes to the borough or district councils in the area. Lancashire Mr Gove added: "Lancashire has a long tradition of innovation and entrepreneurship, which this deal will build on to unlock the economic potential of the whole area. Phil Riley, leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council, described the deal as a triumph, adding that he hoped it would allow the region to compete on an even playing field with our neighbours in Manchester and Liverpool. The county council said the intention was to make the region a better place to live, work and invest. It said the deal would ensure Lancashire had a stronger voice on the regional and national stage. Ms Williamson said the extra powers would mean the council could focus on issues that matter most to the people of Lancashire. She added that the authority could support new growing industries and develop skills needed for such opportunities. Chart showing the top 10 countries and jurisdictions that will have the largest shares of people aged 65 years or over in 2050, according to the UN forecast. (Nicholas SHEARMAN) Eyes closed, hips swaying, retiree Polly Chan danced like no one was watching at a community centre in Hong Kong, where experts warn of a loneliness epidemic among the ballooning elderly population. The 71-year-old and about 30 others were part of a pilot programme called "Noon-D" -- for "afternoon disco" -- intended to reach out to an increasingly isolated group in the fast-paced city. A self-proclaimed "rebel" who has been clubbing since she was a teenager, Chan said she struggles to express her unhappiness to her family -- and finds the dance floor to be the best cure. "I don't have many people to talk to," Chan told AFP. "When I dance, I feel very relieved." Kicked off in July, the disco sessions take place weekly at a community centre that is made over with spinning mirror balls and floor-to-ceiling shimmering tassels. Programme curator Lai Sim-fong told AFP the idea was born out of workshops held with elderly Hong Kongers in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the city enforced some of the world's harshest social restrictions. "It's mainly designed to address the loneliness suffered by the elderly and their lack of social life," she said. "Some elderly people said they avoided going outside and they observed many others had lost interest in leaving their homes." And while the disco sessions were fully booked, Lai said the programme meets only a fraction of the need for socialisation among a Hong Kong elderly population that can all too often feel invisible. - World's oldest city - Hong Kong is forecast to become the world's oldest city by 2050, according to the United Nations, with the population of people aged 65 and older reaching 40.6 percent. Adding to the issue is an exodus of younger people -- partially triggered by a sweeping national security law Beijing imposed in mid-2020 to quell political dissent -- as well as the lingering effects of the pandemic. A survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong in the first half of 2022 found that a third of the nearly 5,000 elderly respondents were suffering from at least one of three conditions -- depression, anxiety and loneliness. That poll was taken when the city was still struggling to curb a fatal coronavirus wave that hit seniors the worst. Another poll from later in 2022 found that among seniors whose children and grandchildren had left the city -- a group classified as "left behind" -- nearly 70 percent showed a tendency toward depression, while nearly 80 percent were "under a high risk of social isolation". The number of suicides in the city hit a decade-high 1,080 last year, according to the Samaritan Befrienders Hong Kong, with more than 40 percent of victims aged 60 or older. "Elderly people are often less capable of seeking help and often tend to consider themselves a burden when they suffer mentally," said Samaritan chairman Heymans Wong. Caregivers should help older people to "expand their social circles", he said. - 'Hidden elderly' - But doing so is easier said than done, according to Adeline Tsang, elder care director at Hong Kong's Christian Family Service Centre. She struggles to convince her wards to leave their homes. Pandemic lockdowns "affected both their cognitive and physical conditions", Tsang told AFP. "The separation anxiety and sense of interpersonal distance have also become stronger for them since many of their young relatives have left the city in recent years," she said. At an elderly daycare centre Tsang oversees, she enlisted a special troop of caregivers to socialise with seniors -- volunteer therapy dogs. Retired driver Ho Yiu-keung, 70, melted with joy when Rally, a labrador and former guide dog, allowed him to pet her golden hair. "It's better than hanging out with people," Ho told AFP. "They (the dogs) don't talk back." He had started going to the centre after spending much of the pandemic locked down at home, making him "feel like I was being jailed", he said. Meeting friends, exercising, and playing mahjong at the daycare have brightened his daily life, he said, advising carers to draw out the "hidden elderly" using more fun activities. "Make them happy, make them feel that they can have some attention here, then they would be interested to come out," Ho said. su/dhc/tym/cwl Crews work to install suicide prevention barriers at San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge earlier this month. Disneyland has declined to elaborate on its safety measures after the third apparent suicide at its resort in one year. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) In San Francisco, a safety net is under construction at the Golden Gate Bridge to prevent future tragedies. In New York City, college officials opted for metal screens at a library where students had died. And in Missouri, fencing and steel mesh went up at a Columbia parking garage after a public outcry. Across the nation, the installation of fencing, nets or other physical barriers at tall structures has become a recognized strategy for preventing suicides. As the Disneyland Resort reels from the third such death in a year, many advocates say that such safety barriers have been shown to save lives. Experts say that such barriers or obstructions can help buy time for someone to intervene or for a person's suicidal impulse to dissipate. That can be critical because such feelings can soon evaporate: Most people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die of suicide later, studies have found. Since its most recent death, Disneyland has not publicly announced the installation of new fencing or other barriers, and has not answered questions from The Times about whether it was considering such a move. "In an effort to deter this type of tragedy, we have long had multilayered security protocols in place at our parking structures, which we have substantially enhanced over time," a Disneyland Resort spokesperson said in an email. "However, as with all of our security and safety measures, we dont discuss specifics so as not to compromise our efforts." Last week, Anaheim police were called to a structure at the Disneyland Resort and found the body of a 24-year-old man. His death is being investigated as a suicide. People died in similar incidents in February 2023 and December 2022 at the same kind of structure at the Disneyland Resort, according to the Anaheim Police Department. Three others died in the same way in the area in 2010, 2012 and 2016, bringing the reported total to six since 2010. Installing physical barriers such as fences can help prevent deaths by stopping people from acting on a fleeting impulse, researchers say. In New Zealand, for instance, researchers found that suicides spiked after safety barriers were removed from a bridge, then stopped after barriers were reinstalled. When someone is suicidal, "their mental state is often in a state of crisis. And so they have less flexibility in their thinking," said Jill Harkavy-Friedman, senior vice president of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. As a result, she said, if a physical barrier stops them from acting, "they're not likely to shift gears and think of something else ... They don't say, 'I can't do that; let me do this instead.'" If there is a risk of suicide at a site, "there's really no reason not to put a barrier in and every reason to put a barrier in," Harkavy-Friedman said. Read more: Former official says Long Beach hospital 'dismissed' plea for barrier to prevent deaths Neither an Anaheim city spokesperson nor other city officials answered questions from The Times about whether the city had suggested that Disneyland install barriers following last week's incident. "Our thoughts go out to a family grieving the loss of a loved one and to all who were impacted," Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken said in a statement. "We want to respect them and also an ongoing review of the incident." "We encourage everyone to continue raising awareness of the tragedy of suicide and the importance of mental health," she added. Efforts to construct barriers typically focus on tall structures where deaths have occurred. Parking garages are a particular concern for suicide prevention, because they tend to have open sides and less monitoring than other tall structures, according to the International Parking & Mobility Institute. Bridges are also a common target of such interventions. In Pasadena, officials have erected mesh fencing at the Colorado Street Bridge and have unveiled several designs for permanent barriers to protect the public. In San Francisco, a 3.5-mile-long network of stainless steel mesh is nearly complete at the Golden Gate Bridge, where roughly 2,000 people have died by suicide since the iconic structures opening in 1937. The $217-million safety netting, which extends 20 feet out from the bridge, was designed to blend in with the spans architecture. Between 2011 and 2020, there were an average of nearly 34 deaths by suicide at the bridge every year. In 2022, when the first part of the safety barrier was installed, there were 22 such deaths, bridge spokesperson Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz said. And fatal incidents have continued to decrease as the barrier netting has grown. As of Oct. 31, there had been 13 deaths by suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge this year, Cosulich-Schwartz said. Read more: Babies are losing their lives to a preventable illness. Her job is stopping it Restricting easy access to lethal means reduces suicides, said Paul Muller, president of the Bridge Rail Foundation, a nonprofit that has advocated for a safety barrier at the Golden Gate since 2006. In a 2015 analysis of 22 peer-reviewed journal articles on suicide prevention methods, researchers found that measures that physically blocked people from accessing potentially lethal sites such as bridges or train tracks led, on average, to a 91% drop in deaths by suicide at those sites. Barriers work, said study author Jane Pirkis, director of the Center for Mental Health in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. However, some scholars have argued that more studies are needed on their effectiveness. In 2020, researchers in the United Kingdom who reviewed existing studies said they had "methodological limitations." More research is needed on the "potential for suicide method substitution and displacement," they wrote. Veronica Kelley, chief of mental health and recovery services for the Orange County Health Care Agency, said that "while there is evidence that restricting access to means of suicide is an effective approach for preventing suicides, the evidence for preventing suicide by jumping is not well-established." "Calling attention to suicide prevention is the most effective way to reduce suicides," Kelley said. The Orange County agency is "actively participating in a national campaign with the goal of achieving zero suicides," she said, and "we can all do our part by calling attention to the fact that suicide is preventable, treatment works, and recovery happens." Harkavy-Friedman, who characterized the research on barriers as "quite strong," said "there's no reason to have an either/or we need both. We need public education and we need barriers." At some sites where barriers are impractical, advocates have also pushed for signage. Harkavy-Friedman said there is not a lot of research on the effectiveness of such signs in preventing suicide. Read more: California countertop workers died of a preventable disease. The threat was known years earlier Cincinnati-based editor Laura Trujillo learned after her mother died by suicide at Grand Canyon National Park in 2012 that dozens of people had lost their lives in the park the same way. Still, the thought of a barrier along the 277-mile canyon struck her as logistically improbable. Then in 2018, while visiting her eldest son at the Ohio State University, she saw a flier posted at a site where a student had died. It said: "Remember: You Matter," alongside the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number. The simple language struck her. If a person in crisis couldnt be physically blocked from a dangerous location, she thought, perhaps they could still be deterred from harming themselves. Trujillo began writing letters to the National Park Service to encourage suicide prevention signs at the canyon. Although park officials never confirmed to her that they were taking any specific action, in 2021 she was sent a photograph of a sign with the Lifeline number inside a free park shuttle bus. When she saw the photo, Trujillo burst into tears. It was the same shuttle service her mother had taken on her last day. "I think of my mom sitting there. If that sign was up there, I have no idea if it could have interrupted her train of thought," she said. But "sometimes, we all need that reminder." If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek help from a professional and call 988. The first nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline will connect callers with trained mental health counselors. Or text HOME to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line. 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. Full text: Remarks by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the extraordinary joint meeting of BRICS leaders and leaders of invited BRICS members on the situation in the Middle East with particular reference to Gaza Xinhua) 08:12, November 22, 2023 BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday addressed the extraordinary joint meeting of BRICS leaders and leaders of invited BRICS members on the situation in the Middle East with particular reference to Gaza. The following is the full text of his remarks: Working Toward a Ceasefire and Realizing Lasting Peace and Sustainable Security Remarks by H.E. Xi Jinping President of the People's Republic of China At the Extraordinary Joint Meeting of BRICS Leaders And Leaders of Invited BRICS Members On the Situation in the Middle East with Particular Reference to Gaza November 21, 2023 Your Excellency President Cyril Ramaphosa, Colleagues, This is our first summit since the expansion of BRICS. Before I speak about the issue of our discussion, I wish to extend a warm welcome to leaders of new BRICS members and express my thanks to President Ramaphosa and the South African government for your efforts that have made our meeting possible. Given the current circumstances, it is very timely and very important that we meet and speak up for justice and for peace on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. The conflict in Gaza is raging on into its second month. China is gravely concerned that the conflict is causing enormous civilian casualties and a humanitarian disaster, and tends to expand and spill over. China believes that the following is urgent and imperative: First, the parties to the conflict must end hostilities and achieve a ceasefire immediately, stop all violence and attacks against civilians, release civilians held captive, and act to prevent loss of more lives and spare people from more miseries. Second, humanitarian corridors must be kept secure and unimpeded, and more humanitarian assistance should be provided to the population in Gaza. The collective punishment of people in Gaza in the form of forced transfer or water, electricity and fuel deprivation must stop. Third, the international community must act with practical measures to prevent the conflict from spilling over and endangering stability in the Middle East as a whole. China supports the resolution adopted at the emergency special session of the U.N. General Assembly on October 27. The U.N. Security Council under China's presidency has adopted Resolution 2712. All the parties must act to deliver on these resolutions through concrete measures on the ground. The root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli situation is the fact that the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, their right to existence, and their right of return have long been ignored. I have emphasized on many occasions that the only viable way to break the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in the two-state solution, in the restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine, and in the establishment of an independent State of Palestine. There can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine. China calls for early convening of an international peace conference that is more authoritative to build international consensus for peace and work toward an early solution to the question of Palestine that is comprehensive, just and sustainable. Since the outbreak of the latest Palestinian-Israeli conflict, China has been working actively to promote peace talks and a ceasefire. China has provided humanitarian assistance to help ease the humanitarian plight in Gaza. This includes USD 2 million of emergency humanitarian assistance provided through the Palestinian National Authority and U.N. agencies, and emergency humanitarian supplies worth RMB 15 million, such as food and medicine, to the Gaza Strip with the help of Egypt. China will provide more supplies and assistance according to the needs of the people in Gaza. At the U.N. Security Council, China has acted in its capacity as president to facilitate the adoption of the resolution, which calls for extended humanitarian pauses and corridors, the protection of civilians, and the provision of humanitarian assistance. Colleagues, The BRICS cooperation mechanism is an important platform for emerging markets and developing countries to strengthen solidarity and cooperation and safeguard common interests. Our meeting today to coordinate positions and actions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict marks a good start for greater BRICS cooperation following its enlargement. China commends South Africa for its significant contribution as BRICS chair to advancing BRICS development. As Russia will take over BRICS chairmanship next year, China stands ready to work with other members to jointly support Russia's work as the chair and usher in a new era for BRICS cooperation. Thank you. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) A 23-year-old woman from Socorro was recently charged with intoxication manslaughter after a deadly UTV crash on Saturday, Nov. 4, according to court documents. Court documents state Maria Isabel Lopez Martinez, 23, told police that she was at home with her family and had been drinking that Saturday. Martinez told police that she decided to ride an off-road vehicle and also decided to pick up Irene Stephanie Acevedo, 24. Martinez told police that she had been drinking and also mentioned it was her first time operating an off-road vehicle. Martinez told police that she let Acevedo ride in the bed of the vehicle as they made their way back to Martinez residence. Court documents state Martinez did not know the area well and was unsure of how to maneuver the UTV in reverse to return back the way she came. Martinez told police that as she made her way down Wewoka Drive, she began to accelerate rapidly at a curve and lost control of the UTV. Court documents state after Martinez made a hard right turn at the curve, she then over corrected and lost control, causing the vehicle to roll on its side. Acevedo was then thrown off of the vehicle as she was not restrained, according to court documents. Socorro Police Communications then received a call at around 6:30 p.m., regarding a motor vehicle accident at the 200 block of Wewoka Dr. While at the scene, Martinez admitted to drinking two 12-ounce bottles of Corona, and three foam cups of Tamarindo Smirnoff Tequila, according to court documents. Martinez also provided a breath sample which yielded a BAC of 0.088/0.085, according to court documents. Upon arrival, officers discovered the off-road vehicle on its side and Acevedo being rendered first aid as she laid unresponsive on the ground. Acevedo was then transported to a local hospital where she later died as a result of her injuries. Martinez is facing a charge of intoxication manslaughter. She self-surrendered and was subsequently booked into the El Paso County Detention Jail on Wednesday, Nov. 22 with a $21,000 bond. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News. A state board has suspended the license of a doctor who allegedly misread medical images, including missing a brain tumor in one patient. The suspension for Dr. Anand P. Lalaji was effective Nov. 16, according to the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure. Lalajis attorney, Richard Walter, said Lalaji is challenging the suspension and will file a request for a hearing. Dr. Lalaji has always maintained that he has complied with the appropriate and applicable standard of care relative to the studies he reviews and looks forward to the fair hearing process, Walter said. Lalajis area of practice is diagnostic radiology, using imaging procedures such as X-rays, CT scans and MRIs to assess or diagnose a patients condition. Lalaji finished medical school in 1998 at the State University of New York at Brooklyn and has his office in Atlanta, but has a telemedicine practice, according to the state Board of Medical Licensure. The report that resulted in the boards move to suspend his license came from Mercy Health Lourdes, a hospital in Paducah. The hospital reported that it suspended Lalajis privileges in August 2022 over concerns about incorrect or missed image readings in eight cases between June 13 and Aug. 6, including the brain tumor, according to the medical licensure board complaint and suspension order. Lalaji told a hospital executive some of the issues arose from technical problems from the quick implementation of radiology coverage at the hospital; that some cases would not have occurred if not for communication delays that had been resolved; and some from doing a high volume of readings in a short time in order to meet coverage needs. Lalaji said he was confident the issues had been resolved, according to the Board of Medical Licensure documents. The hospital lifted his suspension in September 2022, but suspended him again in November 2022 from reading images. A hospital committee expressed great concern for patient safety, according to the order. Lalaji said he would fix the issues, but concerns remained and in January 2023 a committee recommended terminating his staff appointment and clinical privileges. The committee said Lalaji had inaccurately, incompletely and otherwise improperly read multiple diagnostic films, tests and other procedures . . . . A consultant who looked at charts on 10 patients for the Board of Medical Licensure said all 10 represented a deviation from the proper standard of care. The consultant said all people make mistakes, but it was concerning that Lalaji seemed to have a large number of incorrect interpretations of images in a relatively short time. Lalaji contested the findings in several cases but the consultant did not change his opinion. On the wall of Jay Mullis' office in Oak Ridge is a chart detailing billions in federal funding needed over the next 25 years to clean up radioactive waste left over from World War II and the Cold War. Mullis manages the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management, whose work includes shipping highly radioactive materials out of the state, monitoring mercury contamination in the Upper East Fork Poplar Creek and clearing contaminated buildings across the region for future clean energy and national security missions. It is part of the largest cleanup effort in the world, led by the Department of Energy, whose 107 sites across the U.S. take up about the same space as Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The department has finished cleanup at 92 sites, and Oak Ridge is one of the 15 remaining, along with fellow Manhattan Project sites in Hanford, Washington and Los Alamos, New Mexico. Mullis' detailed wall chart extends all the way to 2047, the year he expects his office could finish cleanup of hazardous facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It won't be until at least three years later, in 2050, that it finishes cleaning up Y-12 National Security Complex, where unused buildings that once enriched uranium for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima are literally falling apart. It is generational work, he said. It is also dangerous and expensive work that must be conducted very close to where thousands of scientists and engineers come to work every day. Crews with the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and cleanup contractor UCOR lift a 37,600 pound reactor in the Low Intensity Test Reactor site at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Oak Ridge cleanup is popular with lawmakers Cleanup of Oak Ridge's nuclear past relies entirely on appropriations from Congress, which much be secured freshly each year. It hasn't been difficult for the office to make its case to lawmakers, especially since it cleared the massive former K-25 site, once home to the world's largest building, four years ahead of schedule and $80 million below budget. To date, Oak Ridge cleanup has cost around $14.6 billion, and will likely take about that much more to finish, a spokesperson from the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management told Knox News. Mullis said funding for his office has risen sharply since around 2015, a sign of lawmakers' confidence in its ability to return on the investment. When have you ever heard of a government project running ahead of schedule and under cost? Mullis said. If youve got extra money, this is the place to send it because we can get stuff done. The Biden administration's budget request for the next fiscal year included $635 million for Oak Ridge cleanup. In total, nuclear site cleanup across the U.S. is expected to receive about $8.3 billion. Through cleanup of the K-25 site, now known as the East Tennessee Technology Park, the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management gave land seized from local owners by the federal government for the Manhattan Project back to the city, where the acreage will now be used by private companies contributing to the local tax base. Giving land back to Oak Ridge and protecting the region's environment are two missions that make the project attractive to lawmakers. This is something that has tremendous bipartisan, bicameral and administration support, said U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Chattanooga, in an interview for a Department of Energy web series in October. We are cleaning up legacy sites, sites that are dirty, in communities all over the United States. As chair of the U.S. House subcommittee that appropriates money for water and energy projects, Fleischmann has advocated for tax dollars going to environmental cleanup. How well do you Know Your Knox? We answer the questions you really want to know How nuclear waste in Oak Ridge gets cleaned up Dozens of buildings across the Oak Ridge Reservation, the 30,000-acre tract of land owned by the Department of Energy, once housed nuclear reactors and radioactive material that contributed to scientific research and weapons development. As their missions came to an end following World War II and the Cold War, these buildings were mostly left to nature since it would have cost millions to maintain them, Mullis said. At their core are hot cells, incredibly heavy metal containers that protected workers from radioactive nuclear fuels once stored in reactors. In order to clean the buildings and safely demolish them, workers must first deactivate them, a process that accounts for 70% to 80% of total project costs for each facility, Mullis said. The Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management has 84 federal employees, including engineers and geologists, and nearly all of its deactivation and demolition work is carried out by contractors. United Cleanup Oak Ridge, known as UCOR, is its lead contractor with 2,000 employees. The office's current 10-year contract with UCOR is valued at $8.3 billion. The highest-level radioactive waste from Oak Ridge is shipped to places like the Nevada National Security Site, a Department of Energy facility in the middle of the desert, Mullis said. Though it represents less than 10% of the volume of waste from Oak Ridge legacy sites, this material carries over 90% of its radioactivity. The bulk of low-level radioactive waste is buried in on-site landfills in Oak Ridge. If all waste were shipped out of state, the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management would incur an added cost of between $800 million and $1.4 billion, Mullis said. The final two steps in the cleanup process are demolition and soil remediation. After demolition finished at the former K-25 site, a smaller crew began cleaning the soil and monitoring groundwater beneath the plant's footprint. It's work that is ongoing. Demolition crews were then able to move their focus to ORNL and Y-12, where legacy buildings are being deactivated and torn down at an accelerating pace. In the past two years alone, crews have demolished two research reactors in the central campus of ORNL that were built following World War II. UCOR is preparing another research reactor nearby for demolition. At Y-12, crews are preparing to demolish a Manhattan Project-era building this spring and expect to finish a large mercury treatment facility in 2025. What would happen if Oak Ridge cleanup stopped? Oak Ridge is the kind of place where it's common to find "material you didn't expect," Mullis said. For instance, a contractor sent out to Y-12 to examine a legacy site touched a pipe so rusty it broke apart and mercury began dribbling out. The element was vital to early weapons development. Now, it "weeps" out of the walls of several Y-12 buildings when the weather gets hot, Mullis said. Sometimes the surprises are even bigger. When crews prepared the Biology Complex at Y-12 for demolition, they found rooms they didn't know existed behind boards. In these hidden rooms, crews found jars of mice in formaldehyde and long-forgotten logbooks. The sprawling facility, nicknamed the "Mouse House," pioneered research into the effect of radiation on genetics. It had been left vacant for decades and trees were growing up through its roof. Crews completed demolition of the complex in 2021, clearing the 18-acre footprint for a new Lithium Processing Facility that will move Y-12's operations of the element away from a deteriorating Manhattan Project building. What if all of this cleanup work suddenly stopped? For one thing, hazardous materials would find their way into nearby creeks and rivers, Mullis said. For another, ORNL and Y-12 would be unable to pull off their ambitious modernization plans. Decades ago, safety precautions and regulations were not as rigorous as they are today. Buildings were thrown up quickly in the rush to develop nuclear weapons and research faster than the U.S.'s rivals. Though aspects of that mission survive today in Oak Ridge, many of those facilities are overdue for a makeover. In their place, the Department of Energy will build new emblems of U.S. nuclear strength. They'll just take a lot longer to build. Ive always been a big history buff, Mullis said. Its pretty cool to me to be here and be able see the history of the Manhattan Project, because this is, in many ways, where it started. Know Your Knox answers your burning questions about life in Knoxville. Want your question answered? Email knowyourknox@knoxnews.com. Daniel Dassow is a growth and development reporter focused on technology and energy. Phone 423-637-0878. Email daniel.dassow@knoxnews.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing at knoxnews.com/subscribe. This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: How is nuclear waste in Oak Ridge being cleaned up? Police opened fire on a dog that was attacking a person in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles Tuesday night. The officers were responding to a domestic battery call around 11:45 p.m. in the 4900 block of Marmion Way when they saw a dog attacking a person, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesperson told KTLA. At some point during the incident, police opened fire on the dog. Video captures $100,000 dog heist at Gardena pet shop It was unclear if the dog was killed in the shooting. No other injuries were reported and there was no word on whether any arrests were made. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA. Four people are in the hospital after they were shot inside a Beavercreek Walmart. Many others were not injured physically but may be affected mentally. News Center 7s Kayla McDermott spoke with a therapist who said its going to take time for people to recover. Theyre replaying events in their head. What happened, oh my gosh did this really happen? Julie Manuel, clinical program manager at Kettering Health said. Questions many survivors could be asking for the rest of their lives. >>UPDATE: Dayton man identified as Walmart mass shooter, 4 still hospitalized These are questions Clinical Psychologist Dr. Kathy Platoni asked herself when she survived the shooting at Fort Hood in 2009. You cant unsee tragedy like this. This kind of trauma is unforgettable, Platoni said. She said Monday nights shooting reminded her of her trauma. Just sent chills up and down my spine and took me back to a place thats very hard to forget, Platoni said. >> I-TEAM: FBI search Dayton home linked to Beavercreek Walmart mass shooter As a psychologist with first-hand survival experience, Platoni knows what people are dealing with. People who were not targeted for whatever reason are going to feel terrible that they werent the ones who sustained these critical injuries, she said. But she said talking is the first step in healing. >> RELATED: Heartbroken; Walmart releases statement following shooting at Beavercreek store People need to be heard and people also need to listen to the support thats been provided to them, Platoni said. Manuel agrees. Talk about what you are feeling, dont push it down and just say Ill deal with that next week, Manuel said. Especially this week, when the majority of people will be surrounded by loved ones. Talk to your family, talk to your friends, whoever your closest members are, she said. Platoni is a part of the Southwest Ohio Critical Incident Stress Management Team (CISM), which helps people, including first responders, through traumatic events. CISM can be contacted at 513-825-2260. More information on coping with a traumatic event can be found here. WASHINGTON Donald Trump's schedule for 2024 is getting mighty crowded complete with conflicts between campaign events and court dates. While Trump's legal team is trying to delay all of his trials until after Election Day, the former president currently faces a tight campaign-and-court calendar heading into next year. That includes: A civil defamation trial is scheduled for the same day as the Iowa caucuses, on Jan. 15. The trial in the federal case accusing Trump of trying to steal the 2020 election is scheduled to start the day before what's known as Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen Republican delegate contests are scheduled. A prosecutor's request to start a Georgia election fraud trial on Aug. 5, is less than three weeks after the Republican convention and on the cusp of the fall general election. Trump, the former president and current Republican frontrunner, often claims without evidence his indictments and trials are designed to derail his campaign. But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, echoing other prosecutors, said she doesn't "consider any election cycle or an election season" in making decisions about law enforcement. "What goes into the calculus is: This is the law," Willis said during a forum sponsored by The Washington Post while discussing the Georgia case accusing Trump of trying to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State. While many of these dates could change and probably will Trump's 2024 campaign schedule currently has multiple legal-political scheduling conflicts. Here's a look at the former president's current timeline. Donald Trump at a courthouse in New York City Will December bring another fraud ruling? Right now, Trump is in the midst of a civil trial involving bank fraud allegations brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Judge Arthur F. Engoron , who has already ruled in James' favor on most of the allegations, is holding a trial over damages that's expected to run through mid-December. Engoron's eventual ruling could gut the family's business empire. Trump, who testified during the trial, plans to appeal adverse rulings, a process that could last throughout the election year. Jan. 15: Iowa and E. Jean Carroll Jan. 15 may turn out to be one of the most unique days in American political history. As Iowa kicks off the Republican nomination process with caucuses, a defamation trial against Trump begins in New York City. Writer E. Jean Carroll, who won a $5 million judgment against Trump in May after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation, sued Trump again for defamation over comments he made as president. A judge has already ruled in Carroll's favor, and the January defamation trial is designed to determine damages. Trump, who does not have to attend any civil hearing, did not show up for Carroll's first trial and has denounced her accusations as politically motivated. March 4: A trial in D.C., a campaign across the country Trump's first criminal trial, on federal election fraud charges is currently scheduled to start jury selection on March 4, per an order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. Special Counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting a case that charges Trump with engineering an effort to steal the 2020 election from President Joe Biden. On March 5, the day after Trump is expected in court in Washington, more than 15 states are scheduled to hold Republican primaries on so-called Super Tuesday, the busiest delegate haul of the campaign. Will March heat up the Republican race? By the time early March rolls around, Trump could have the GOP presidential nomination locked up - or he could be in a historic fight for his political life. After Iowa on Jan. 15, Trump and his Republican rivals compete in the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 23, Nevada caucuses on Feb. 8, and the South Carolina primary is on Feb. 24. If Trump wins those contests, it's over. If an opponent like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis break through in one or more of those states, it could be a months-long fight for delegates. March 25: Hush money trial begins Trump also faces state charges in New York over hush money payments designed to buy pre-election silence from adult film star Stormy Daniels. The fate of that case is uncertain. Judge Juan Manuel Merchan has set a trial date for March 25, 2024 but has also suggested he may push that back because of the federal election conspiracy trial. May: Trump's classified documents trial, maybe There is also uncertainty over Trump's federal trial on his alleged mishandling of classified documents. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has proposed the trial for a still-to-be-determined date in May. But she also continues to consider Trump's request to push it back until after Election Day on Nov. 5, 2024. A hearing on the schedule for the documents trial is scheduled for March 1, four days before Super Tuesday. Trump is accused of defying grand jury subpoenas for documents he removed from the White House when he departed on Jan. 20, 2021. Some of those documents contain classified information, and Trump is accused of disclosing some of that information to third parties. Aug. 5: Georgia on his mind In Georgia, where Trump is accused of violating state conspiracy laws in trying to overturn his loss of the state to Biden, Willis has asked a judge to set a trial date of Aug. 5, when Trump could be the official presidential nominee of the Republican Party. Trump and his lawyers are pushing to delay the trial, lest he be forced to sit in a courtroom while the general election campaign is continuing at full speed. Noting that Trump could have more than a dozen co-defendants in the case, Willis said in her request for the trial date that it "balances potential delays from Defendant Trump's other criminal trials in sister sovereigns and the other defendants' constitutional speedy trial rights." Gag orders and campaigning These legal dates aren't set in stone, and Trump could face sudden hearings while on the campaign trail. Opponents say Trump's constant attacks on prosecutors and jurists violated limited gag orders imposed by judges Chutkan and Engoron. Trump has appealed those gag orders, but they could spell further court proceedings as Trump hits the campaign trail. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: When are Trump's trials? His 2024 schedule is on a collision course A Michigan businessman called Democratic Senate candidate Hill Harper to offer $20 million in campaign contributions if he agreed to drop out and instead mount a primary challenge to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, according to a source with direct knowledge of the call. The source added that Harper declined the alleged Oct. 16 offer from donor Linden Nelson which would have split the campaign money between $10 million in bundled contributions directly to Harpers campaign and $10 million in independent expenditures. Harper declined to comment on the record about the alleged call from Nelson, a Michigan entrepreneur and past donor to candidates in both parties, but he recounted the call in the same terms as the source in a post on X after this story's publication. But the episode illustrates the intensity of the blowback toward Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, in response to her outspoken criticism of the Israeli government since its war with Hamas began. More than 20 Democrats joined Republicans in voting to censure Tlaib earlier this month after she invoked a pro-Palestinian slogan that's widely seen as calling for the eradication of Israel, and pro-Israel Democrats are still searching for a candidate to primary her. POLITICO reached Nelson briefly to seek comment on the alleged call to Harper, but he ended the call after a few seconds and did not respond to subsequent calls, texts and emails seeking comment. Three of Tlaib's fellow progressive critics of Israeli government policy, Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), are facing their own Democratic challengers who are touting their more pro-Israel rhetoric and voting records. Harper, an actor and business owner, has also positioned himself as a progressive in the primary to succeed retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) but he's struggled to gain traction as Senate rival Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) leads in polling and fundraising. Harper also might not have proven the most ideal recruit to challenge Tlaib with a more pro-Israeli government approach. Harper called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, largely echoing the ceasefire support from a few dozen congressional Democratic progressives; he did so on Nov. 10, well after the alleged call from Nelson. The answers to ensure long-term peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians are neither simple nor pain-free, but one truth stands firm: violence against defenseless children, trapped and frightened, is abhorrent, regardless of who is behind it, Harper wrote in a statement calling for the ceasefire earlier this month. In addition, Harpers Detroit residence is located in Rep. Shri Thanedars (D-Mich.) district, not in Tlaibs. She has represented her district, which includes Dearborn and its large Arab American population, since 2019. Despite facing multiple past Democratic challengers, she's handily won her primary elections since then. A Tlaib spokesperson declined to comment on the alleged Nelson-Harper call. Tlaib has called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, a position that's slowly amassing more Democratic support as casualties increase from the Israel-Hamas war. As the Democratic Party confronts deep divisions over Israel that were exacerbated by the U.S. ally's military response to Hamas, progressive incumbents are seeking help from party leaders to quell pro-Israel Democrats' interest in primary challenges to lawmakers deemed insufficiently supportive of the war. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has already heeded that call by endorsing Omar's reelection. Nelson has also previously donated to a group seeking to unseat Tlaib and has a history of involvement with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has railed against her. He has donated to other Michigan Democratic candidates over the years, including Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) this cycle and Andy Levin in previous cycles, according to FEC records, as well as former Rep. Mike Bishop (R-Mich.). AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann said that the group was absolutely not involved in any way in this matter. Also, our records indicate that this individual has not contributed to AIPAC in over a decade. Its not clear if the alleged donation offer would have violated any campaign finance laws, had Harper accepted it. Saurav Ghosh, the director for federal reform at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said that any potential coordination between a candidate and a donor floating that amount of financing would be illegal. It would be illegal for a wealthy donor and a person planning to run for office to essentially coordinate and line up $20 million in financing to support that persons candidacy; this would raise serious corruption concerns about the candidate being wholly within that one donor's pocket, said Ghosh. A promise to make a future donation boosting the candidate could count as a contribution under campaign finance laws and could thus qualify as an excessive contribution, Ghosh added, as the promised money would still end up directly benefiting the candidate even if it were routed through an outside group like a super PAC. Nelson did not respond to a subsequent request for comment on the potential illegality of the alleged offer. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the home state of Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.). Sam Altman reinstated: Early this morning, news broke that Sam Altman had been reinstated as OpenAI's CEO, ending five days of tech world drama. It's looking more and more like the board's defense they gave for firing himthat he was not "consistently candid" in his communications with themwas no cover for a smoking gun, but rather the culmination of petty drama and tensions between those who want artificial intelligence development to slow down, believing the future of humanity is imperiled by this technology, and those who see its value and want to forge ahead. (Disclosure: My husband works for OpenAI.) The unique structure of the companya nonprofit oversees the for-profit subsidiarymade it so the fiduciary duty of the board was to "humanity, not OpenAI investors." Problems ensued. Board member Helen Toner, an academic at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, had earlier this year published a research paper critical of OpenAI's safety efforts, but complimentary of those undertaken by Anthropic, the company's chief rival. "Any amount of criticism from a board member carries a lot of weight," said Altman to Toner via email, per The New York Times. Toner also publicly pushed back, via an article in Foreign Affairs, on some of the things Altman said in a testimony to Congress; she lived in Beijing for nine months and has written that, in the artificial intelligence arms race between the U.S. and China, actually China is far behind, so far behind that "regulating AI will not set America back" and "an inflated impression of Chinese prowess should not prevent the United States from taking meaningful and necessary action now." Altman, on the other hand, has welcomed regulation but also cautioned that there are geopolitical implications to stifling American AI development as global competitors forge ahead. The board should destroy the company? Cut ahead to this past week, when Tonera 31-year-old former Model U.N. kid from Australia, who has been widely criticized as underqualified for a board positionallegedly said that the board's duty is to humanity, so destroying the company would be consistent with that. Now, Toner is out, and some loud voices on Twitter are chalking it all up to misogyny, as if everything has a culture war component at all times. Now, former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is out as CEO of OpenAI. Economist Larry Summers and former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor are joining the board, alongside existing board member/Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo. In essence, this new political compass is correct, and though the drama might dissipate, the broader tensions are not going away anytime soon. Hostage deal: Israel and Hamas just agreed to a four-day pause in fighting during which 50 Hamas hostages will be returned to Israel, and 150 Palestinian prisoners currently held by Israel will be returned to Gaza. The pause will allow more humanitarian aid to reach Gazans in need, and the Israeli government has also declared that "the release of every 10 additional hostages will result in an additional day in the pause." Hostages will not be released until tomorrow at the earliest. "Our hands will remain on the trigger," said Hamas, and "our victorious brigades will remain on the lookout to defend our people and defeat the occupation and its aggression." All statements from Hamas and Israel relating to the deal can be found here, via Al Jazeera. Aid sites hit: "The Biden administration has been providing Israel with the location of humanitarian groups in Gaza for weeks to prevent strikes against their facilities," reports Politico. But this has not dissuaded the Israeli military from hitting those areas. "Israel's continued bombardment of these humanitarian facilities raises more questions about whether Washington has the political sway many in the administration want with Israel." Aid workers have said that the Israeli military's commitment to protecting humanitarian groups from strikes has been stronger in the past, but that they are showing less concern for those sites now. "We don't see eye-to-eye on what they consider collateral damage or military necessity and what we consider a very high civilian toll, whether it's in life or in infrastructure, including ours," a United Nations official told Politico. Scenes from New York: Eric Adams: secret libertarian? In response to Mayor Eric Adams's budget cuts, libraries are cutting Sunday service ???? pic.twitter.com/rmmGGq1UV7 Emma G. Fitzsimmons (@emmagf) November 16, 2023 QUICK HITS Happy Thanksgiving! I am grateful for each and every one of you, dear Roundup readers. Tell me in the comments if you're making any good pies this year. I did apple (homemade crust, of course) and goat milk/honey with a pecan crust that takes the place of a traditional pecan. "AAA, the automobile owners' group that also tracks air travel, expects that 4.7 million people will fly between Wednesday and Sunday. That is an increase of 6.6 percent compared with last year, and the highest number of Thanksgiving air travelers in nearly two decades," reports The New York Times. It's beautiful that COVID didn't eliminate people's desire to endure the indignities of travel, congregate in large groups, and stuff their faces. For a minute there, it looked like the shut-ins would win. Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on prediction markets: "Getting a sense in real time how people want to price various near-term outcomes is useful in understanding an unfolding story." Is former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo trying to replace Eric Adams as mayor? Lord help us. The public service announcements have gone too far: anti-murder billboards are an incredibly effective economic indicator my hometown just got its first pic.twitter.com/6utC7D0JLl Will Manidis (@WillManidis) November 20, 2023 Binance's CEO Changpeng Zhao, most frequently referred to as CZ, pleaded guilty to money laundering violations. He will pay a $50 million fine, and the crypto giant will pay a $4.3 billion fine, but will be allowed to continue to operate. This: Can we please dispense with the media lionization of "teen activists," as if a person is blessed with some moral purity of soul by virtue of their youth? Teenagers are among the most garbage people on earth, and easily conned by even worse adult garbage people https://t.co/BXZba4xDgl David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 21, 2023 The post Don't Trust a Model UN Nerd appeared first on Reason.com. Authorities said officers found drugs from Mexico during a traffic stop on the interstate in the Texas Panhandle over the weekend, which led to one arrest. The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) said Tuesday it seized 68 pounds of suspected methamphetamine on Saturday, Nov. 18, after a Texas Highway Patrol Trooper stopped a vehicle in Oldham County. At about 9 a.m., DPS said a trooper stopped a 2011 Mazda CX90, traveling east on Interstate 40 near Vega for a traffic violation. The trooper then found multiple plastic-wrapped packages of methamphetamine inside all four tires, according to DPS. During a traffic stop Saturday morning, a DPS trooper stopped a 2011 Mazda CX90 on Interstate 40 near Vega for a traffic violation. The trooper then found multiple plastic-wrapped packages of suspected methamphetamine inside all four tires, amounting to nearly 70 pounds of drugs. Special agents with DPS and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were contacted, and they assisted with the investigation. After further investigation, DEA Special Agents adopted the case, DPS said. The Mazda's driver, Wendy Perez, 31, of Menifee, California, was arrested and booked into the Randall County Jail on a charge for felony possession of a controlled substance. DPS said the drugs were reportedly being transported from Tijuana, Mexico, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: DPS trooper finds drugs during I-40 traffic stop in Oldham County Editors note: This story was updated to correct the cars location. A person narrowly escaped death Monday night after a crash into wetlands off Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach left them and their vehicle submerged underwater, authorities announced Tuesday. First responders with Huntington Beach Police and Fire departments responded to PCH, south of Warner Avenue, and located the vehicle, officials said in a post to social media. Authorities were able to quickly mobilize, get into dive gear and make entry into the water. First responders with the Huntington Beach Police and Fire departments on the scene of a crash with a victim trapped underwater in their vehicle on Nov. 20, 2023. (HBPD) First responders with the Huntington Beach Police and Fire departments on the scene of a crash with a victim trapped underwater in their vehicle on Nov. 20, 2023. (HBPD) First responders with the Huntington Beach Police and Fire departments on the scene of a crash with a victim trapped underwater in their vehicle on Nov. 20, 2023. (HBPD) It is unclear what led to the accident and how long the single occupant of the vehicle, which had flipped over, was submerged, but first responders pulled them from the vehicle and onto shore where they were immediately given CPR until medical personnel with the fire department could take over. The victim was rushed to the hospital in critical, but stable condition, authorities said. No information was provided on the identity of the driver, nor did officials say whether they believe alcohol and or drugs may have been a factor in the crash. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA. A drug dealer who was tracked down after a Cambridge University student died from an overdose, has been jailed for four and a half years. Benjamin Brown from Guildford, Surrey, was identified by police after 20-year-old Keshava Iyengar was found dead in a friends room at Trinity College in March 2021. Cambridgeshire Police said it was not possible to prove that his actions had caused the death of Mr Iyengar. But Brown later admitted two counts of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs, one count in the supply of class B, two counts in the supply of class C, possession of class A and possession with intent to supply class C. A coroner ruled that Mr Iyengars death was drug related after a pathologist revealed he had potentially fatal quantities of Xanax in his blood. Brown described himself as a pharmacist His inquest was told the natural sciences student had been taking anti-anxiety medication after he had been involved in a parking dispute which had involved the police and had also been experiencing a tough time with his studies. A subsequent police investigation found messages on the second year students phone from a drug dealer called Lean Xan Man, who described himself as a pharmacist selling a variety of prescription pharmaceuticals, via social media platforms including Instagram and Snapchat. Detectives identified Lean Xan Man as Brown and he was arrested at his home in Guildford on July 27 2021. After searching his house officers found a variety of drugs, more than 15,000 in cash and sticky labels bearing his business logo. Sentenced at Huntingdon Law Courts, Brown was jailed for four-and-a-half years, with the judge describing his drug dealing business as substantial, sophisticated and lucrative. He said that, through greed, Brown had profited from the vulnerabilities of others dependent on prescription medication for conditions such as anxiety. Detective Constable Dan Harper, who investigated the case, said: Brown was running a huge operation from his bedroom in Surrey, which had tragic consequences. It is not possible to prove that Browns actions caused the death of Keshava, but you can say with certainty that drugs ruin lives and there is a reason why some can only be prescribed by a medical professional. 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. Polish President Andrzej Duda expressed support for Ukraine's accession to NATO and the EU in a video address posted to the platform X on Nov. 21. The message of support arrived on the 10th anniversary of Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, a grassroots social uprising that grew out of pro-EU demonstrations in the fall of 2013. Duda congratulated Ukraine on the European Commission's recommendation to begin EU accession talks and said Poland would continue to support Ukrainian sovereignty in its fight against Russian aggression. "Because no one understands better than the Poles what a high price to pay for freedom and independence," Duda said. "We will help you on your way to the EU and NATO, because we want to see you in our European family as soon as possible." European Council President Charles Michel met with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Nov. 21 to discuss Ukraine's path to EU membership. "I am absolutely convinced that our future will be safer with Ukraine within the European Union," Michel said. Ukraine's accession to the EU has met some resistance, notably from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has consistently opposed both sanctions against Russia and aid to Ukraine. Duda's words of support also come on the heels of increased tensions between Poland and Ukraine. A protest led by Polish truckers at the Polish-Ukrainian border has entered its third week amid deadlocked negotiations. Prior to Poland's parliamentary elections in October, the country's ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) had adopted increasingly oppositional stances to Ukraine, spurred by disputes over grain. Read also: 10 years later: EuroMaidan activists who went on to fight Russian invasion Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. This embedded content is not available in your region. Veteran anti-Islam populist leader Geert Wilders has won a dramatic victory in the Dutch general election, with almost all votes counted. After 25 years in parliament, his Freedom party (PVV) is set to win 37 seats, well ahead of his nearest rival, a left-wing alliance. "The PVV can no longer be ignored," he said. "We will govern." His win has shaken Dutch politics and it will send a shock across Europe too. But to fulfil his pledge to be "prime minister for everyone", he will have to persuade other parties to join him in a coalition. His target is 76 seats in the 150-seat parliament. At a party meeting on Thursday Mr Wilders, 60, was cheered and toasted by party members in a room crammed with TV cameras. He told the BBC that "of course" he was willing to negotiate and possibly compromise to become prime minister. The PVV leader won after harnessing widespread frustration about migration, promising "borders closed" and putting on hold his promise to ban the Koran. He was in combative mood in his victory speech: "We want to govern and... we will govern. [The seat numbers are] an enormous compliment but an enormous responsibility too." Before the vote, the three other big parties ruled out taking part in a Wilders-led government because of his far-right policies. But that might change because of the scale of his victory. The left-wing alliance under ex-EU commissioner Frans Timmermans has come a distant second with 25 seats, according to a forecast based on 94% of the vote. He made clear he would have nothing to do with a Wilders-led government, promising to defend Dutch democracy and rule of law. "We won't let anyone in the Netherlands go. In the Netherlands everyone is equal," he told supporters. That leaves third-placed centre-right liberal VVD under new leader Dilan Yesilgoz, and a brand new party formed by whistleblower MP Pieter Omtzigt in fourth - both have congratulated him on the result. Although Ms Yesilgoz doubts Mr Wilders will be able to find the numbers he needs, she says it is up to her party colleagues to decide how to respond. Before the election she insisted she would not serve in a Wilders-led cabinet, but did not rule out working with him if she won. Mr Omtzigt said initially his New Social Contract party would not work with Mr Wilders, but now says they are "available to turn this trust [of voters] into action". Dilan Yesilgoz had been tipped as a possible prime minister, but failed to match her poll ratings A Wilders victory will send shockwaves around Europe, as the Netherlands is one of the founding members of what became the European Union. Nationalist and far-right leaders around Europe praised his achievement. In France, Marine Le Pen said it "confirms the growing attachment to the defence of national identities". Mr Wilders wants to hold a "Nexit" referendum to leave the EU, although he recognises there is no national mood to do so. He will have a hard time convincing any major prospective coalition partner to sign up to that. He tempered his anti-Islam rhetoric in the run-up to the vote, saying there were more pressing issues at the moment and he was prepared to "put in the fridge" his policies on banning mosques and Islamic schools. The strategy was a success, more than doubling his PVV party's numbers in parliament. Graphic showing ANP prognosis During the campaign Mr Wilders took advantage of widespread dissatisfaction with the previous government, which collapsed in a disagreement over asylum rules. For political scientist Martin Rosema from the University of Twente, it was one of several gifts that had been handed to Mr Wilders on a plate in a matter of months. Another was that the centre-right liberal leader had opened the door to working with him in coalition. "We know, also from international precedent, that radical right-wing parties fare worse when they're excluded," he said. Migration became one of the main themes, and Mr Wilders made clear on Wednesday he intended to tackle a "tsunami of asylum and immigration". Last year net migration into the Netherlands more than doubled beyond 220,000, partly because of refugees fleeing Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But the issue has been aggravated by a shortage of some 390,000 homes. At the Hague headquarters of Ms Yesilgoz's VVD, supporters had been preparing to raise their glasses at the prospect of the Netherlands' first female prime minister. VVD supporters had hoped for victory but it was the Freedom party that won But there was a collective gasp of disbelief when the exit polls flashed up on the screens and they huddled over their phones trying to understand what went wrong. Ms Yesilgoz took over as centre-right leader when the country's longest-serving prime minister, Mark Rutte, bowed out of politics in July. She came to the Netherlands as a seven-year-old refugee from Turkey but has adopted a hard line on immigration. Some politicians and Muslim figures have accused her of opening the door to the far right by refusing to rule out working with Geert Wilders. Ms Yesilgoz, 46, had tried to distance herself from the Rutte government in which she was justice minister, but ultimately she was unable to live up to the opinion polls. Right up to the eve of the election, almost half of the electorate were being described as floating voters. Many of those may well have decided not to back her. A measure of Mr Wilders' success in winning over voters came from one Muslim voter in The Hague who said: "If he wasn't so opposed to Muslims, I'd be interested in him." Hours before the vote, Mr Wilders was buoyant about his chances, telling the BBC. "I think it's the first time ever in Holland that in one week we gained 10 seats in the polls." He was realistic about the uphill task he faced in forming a government led by him, but he said he was a positive person and victory would make it "difficult for the other parties to ignore us". News Daily banner Sign up for our morning newsletter and get BBC News in your inbox. Dilan Yesilgoz heads the centre-right liberals, who are among the favourites in the election Four parties have emerged as front-runners as Dutch voters are deciding who will lead their country into a new political era. The polls suggest a neck-and-neck race and voting ends at 21:00 (20:00GMT). Centre-right liberal leader Dilan Yesilgoz is tipped to win and become the first female Dutch prime minister. Her closest rivals are anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders and a left-alliance led by former top-ranking EU commissioner Frans Timmermans. More than 13 million Dutch voters have a choice of 26 parties in Wednesday's vote, and as many as 17 could win seats. European eyes are watching this election closely, after 13 years of governments under Mark Rutte. The biggest party could end up with less than 20% of the national vote and fewer than 30 seats in the 150-seat parliament, unprecedented in Dutch politics. Trust in the government is at a low ebb after a political scandal left thousands of parents wrongly labelled as welfare fraudsters. A politician who championed their rights set up a centrist party only three months ago and already he is being cast as kingmaker. Pieter Omtzigt's New Social Contract is likely to be central to forming the next coalition government. He has shown little interest in running the country, but whoever does win will need his support. Pieter Omtzigt, who voted with his wife in the eastern city of Enschede, heads a brand new party "I know what I'm capable of for the Dutch people," said Dilan Yesilgoz, who came to the Netherlands as the daughter of Turkish refugees and has made lowering migration levels as much a priority as tackling the high cost of living. Unlike her rivals, she has not ruled out working with Mr Wilders' Freedom Party. But if he wins, she will keep her conservative-liberal VVD party well clear of a Wilders government. When he announced in Tuesday night's final TV debate that he would be a prime minister for all Dutch people, she said that could only happen if he tore up all his policies, such as banning Islam and leaving the EU, dubbed "Nexit". Mr Wilders, who has been an MP for 25 years, has offered to put his anti-Islam policies on hold, and said he understands that Dutch voters are not yet ready to leave the EU. "We have no Nexit in our programme, we have a referendum about Nexit and that's something different," he told the BBC. Geert Wilders has enjoyed what he calls a "10-seat surge" in the polls ahead of the vote His rhetoric in this election has been mild, says political scientist Martin Rosema, who believes some of the parties could find a way of working with him in government. "There could be an option that [the Freedom Party] supports the coalition with or without ministers. You usually either a have a majority or a minority [government], but in this case there could be something in-between." After casting her vote in The Hague, Nurten Demir said that even though Mr Wilders had some good ideas, she could never vote for him: "If he wasn't so opposed to Muslims, I'd be interested in him. But he's not a democrat." Nurten Demir (L) voted with her husband in The Hague Despite the extraordinary amount of choice on offer, many voters are apathetic and almost half were said to be undecided even the night before. Turnout with just over three hours of voting remaining was put at 50%, five points down on the 2017 election, according to Ipsos which is conducting the night's big exit polls. Outside another polling station, Renee said 13 years of Rutte-led governments had left too many problems unresolved such as student debt and the climate crisis, and believed one of the smaller parties offered the best alternative. "No party is perfect so you just pick the party that fits", Source: Renee, Source description: After voting in The Hague, Image: Renee Meanwhile, in one of Rotterdam's poorest neighbourhoods Crooswijk, Drago complained that higher taxes were making life impossible. Like many he believes migration has exacerbated an already difficult housing crisis, which has left the Netherlands with a shortage of 390,000 homes: "Normal people can't survive. They're waiting 10 years before they can buy a flat." At a nearby launderette, three female students also voiced concerns about migration but said they would probably vote for the Labour-GreenLeft (PvdA/GL) alliance. Alliance leader Frans Timmermans is confident he has a strong chance of putting together a coalition if he comes first. "This country can never function without a coalition, it's our history," he told the BBC. "The left has never been able to govern this country on its own, we always need partners in the centre of politics." Last year net migration into the Netherlands more than doubled beyond 220,000, partly because of refugees fleeing Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That's why even Pieter Omtzigt's centrist NSC wants a ceiling of 50,000 on migration, and it is one of the reasons why Geert Wilders has been surging in the polls. Far-right rival Thierry Baudet has not enjoyed the same success with the voters. He has fallen behind in the polls and twice came under attack on the campaign trail, ending up in hospital on Monday night after being hit over the head with a beer bottle. News Daily banner Sign up for our morning newsletter and get BBC News in your inbox. (Bloomberg) -- Far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders won the Dutch elections and said he plans to lead the countrys next government, after a late surge in the final days of the campaign catapulted his anti-EU party past his mainstream rivals. Most Read from Bloomberg Wilderss Freedom Party is projected to win 35 seats, more than doubling his representation from the previous parliament, according to an exit poll from public broadcaster NOS. With that number substantially less than the 76 required to secure an outright majority, he will still need to find partners to join him in a governing coalition. If the projections are accurate, Wilderss prospects of leading the next government will hinge on his ability to forge alliances with rivals further to the center. In his speech after the results Wilders called for a coalition that would include outgoing premier Mark Ruttes VVD, which has indicated that it might be prepared to govern alongside him. The hope of the Dutch people is that they will get their country back, Wilders said in a speech after his election victory, adding, I am willing to compromise in talks with other parties. The victory comes after a campaign that highlighted a growing opposition to immigration in the Netherlands. The 60-year-old is known for his anti-Islamic views and has lived under police protection for two decades on account of death threats. Wilders and his team hugged and cheered as the result was announced and sang along to the Rocky theme tune Eye of the Tiger. Reporters who watched his campaign team celebrate at a crowded bar in Scheveningen near The Hague did so from behind security glass. Wilders has promised a binding referendum on leaving the European Union. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was quick to congratulate him on his victory on the micro-blogging site X. The controversial politician benefited from strong showing in the campaigns final election debates and from the refusal of Ruttes successor as party leader, Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, to rule out working with him. Yesilgoz-Zegerius signaled before the election that she might go into coalition with Wilders, and after the exit polls gave a speech conceding that it was not up to the Liberals to take the lead now, referring to her own VVD Party. Despite campaign pledges on banning the Koran and shutting down mosques, Geert Wilders conveyed a more moderate message than in previous years, said Stefan Couperus, an associate professor of political science at Groningen University. That seems to have worked electorally. The Left alliance led by Frans Timmermans looked set to come second with 25 seats, while a new party formed by lawmaker Pieter Omtzigt is projected to get 20 seats, NOS said. The PVV cannot be ignored, and wants to work together with other parties, and that means that we and they have to step over their shadow, Wilders said. If Wilders ends up leading the next government, it would elevate a euroskeptic into the heart of one of the unions stalwart members. He has called for the Netherlands to withdraw from its international climate obligations. Anti-migration sentiment of the kind Wilders has long-championed was a prominent issue on the campaign trail. Wilders has been a member of parliament for 25 years but only once taken part in government, between 2010 and 2012 when he had an arrangement to support Ruttes first, minority coalition from outside. Rutte later ruled out working with him, after Wilders made comments insulting people of Moroccan descent for which he was censured by the courts. Its likely that the outgoing caretaker government led by Rutte could preside for a while, especially if Wilderss strong showing complicates the coalition-building process. At the last election, four parties were needed to broker a majority government and the negotiations took a record nine months. --With assistance from April Roach and Sarah Jacob. (Updates with details throughout.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Dutch voters cast ballots Wednesday in a cliffhanger election poised to usher in a new political era after Prime Minister Mark Rutte's record 13-year stint in charge. Opinion polls suggest the result is far too close to predict, with any of four candidates -- including one from the far-right -- within striking distance of power in the EU's fifth-largest economy. The vote is being closely watched across Europe and further afield: the Netherlands tends to punch above its weight in the EU and on the world stage, with steadfast support for Ukraine and eurozone fiscal discipline. Polls suggested huge numbers were undecided going into election day, making the result a literal coin-toss for one voter. "For me, this is a bit of a different election because anyone can win. In the end it came down to two candidates. I tossed a coin and chose one," Vincent Spijker, a 54-year-old quality control manager, told AFP after casting his vote. Curbing immigration, solving a crippling housing shortage that especially affects Dutch youth, and the cost-of-living crisis have dominated the campaign. The war in Gaza and climate change have received less focus. Whoever comes out top will face a long struggle to form a workable coalition, a process that will likely last well into next year. The last Rutte government took 271 days to be formed. "To me there are a lot of parties, some of them a bit useless really. That makes it a bit difficult to vote," 21-year-old student Talitha van Zanten told AFP. - 'In the freezer' - Could the Netherlands elect its first woman prime minister? Dilan Yesilgoz, leader of the centre-right VVD party and successor to Rutte, is hoping to cap a meteoric career by clinching the top job. Born in Turkey, the charismatic 46-year-old has taken a hard line on immigration, pledging to drive down refugee numbers -- a paradox to many as she arrived as a young girl following her asylum-seeking father. Hard-working and media-savvy with a strong Instagram presence, Yesilgoz shrugs off the fact she would make history as the first woman PM, but told AFP at a recent rally: "It's about time." Yesilgoz immediately raised eyebrows by declaring a willingness to welcome anti-Islam firebrand Geert Wilders into a VVD-led coalition -- a radical departure from Rutte's policy. Wilders has toned down some of his more hardline views, even saying there were "bigger problems" than bringing down asylum numbers and that he could put some of his anti-Islam positions "in the freezer". As prime minister he would govern "for all Dutch people," Wilders insisted during an election-eve debate. His PVV party carried some momentum into the final days of campaigning, enjoying a big spike in the polls, and he seems likely to play some role in post-election jockeying. A Wilders win would be a political earthquake felt beyond the Netherlands, but it is unclear who would accept to join a PVV-led coalition, making forming a government tricky. Pensioner Lyon Kloezeman, 75, told AFP she voted Wilders in the hope he will "stem the flood of asylum-seekers." "We don't have the money, time or space (for asylum-seekers), and we should look after our own people," Kloezeman said. - 'Saint Pieter' - Pieter Omtzigt, a maverick MP and whistleblower, has thrown a massive spanner in the works with the creation of a completely new party, the New Social Contract (NSC). Dubbed "Saint Pieter" and considered by many a Messiah for his crusade to clean up Dutch politics, he looked the clear favourite at one point. But his support appeared to have dipped in the final days of the campaign, hampered by uncertainty over whether he actually wanted the top job. If Yesilgoz, Omtzigt and Wilders are all on the right of the political spectrum, former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans is hoping to build a left-wing wall to keep them at bay. Architect of the EU's Green Deal, the 62-year-old brings experience, climate credentials and a safe pair of hands to the campaign. He too saw a jump in support in the final days, with analysts saying left-wing voters were banding together with his Green/Labour party to prevent a right-wing coalition. In the fragmented Dutch "Polder" political system, no party is likely to win more than 20 percent of the vote, meaning coalition horse-trading begins immediately after the results. Voting closes at 9:00 pm (2000 GMT) when exit polls are published. Turnout is usually relatively high above 70 percent. Until then, the suspense is total. "Anyone who knows who is going to win this election is lying through their teeth," political analyst Julia Wouters told AFP. "Anything and everything can still happen." bur-ric/giv Miguel Angel Gabela won the election in Miamis District 1, a victory that also marks the downfall of an incumbent commissioner 10 weeks after he was arrested on corruption charges. Unofficial results of Tuesdays runoff election show Gabela with about 54% of the vote to win the District 1 seat, his first successful campaign in four bids for City Hall over the last decade. The 59-year-old auto parts salesman beat Alex Diaz de la Portilla, a well-funded incumbent whos accused of selling his vote in exchange for political contributions and gifts. Its a new day for city of Miami, Gabela told the Miami Herald shortly after arriving at his victory party at the 94th Aero Squadron restaurant. Rick Astleys Never Gonna Give You Up blasted as Gabela greeted supporters, which included Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins a former opponent of Alex Diaz de la Portilla and his brother Renier Diaz de la Portilla in separate county commission races. Im thrilled that the people chose Miguel Gabela, Higgins said. Its a strong sign that Miami residents are sick and tired of the rampant corruption at City Hall. Its nice to know District 1 will be represented by someone who will focus on the people. Another backer seen fist pumping and cheering the results was Manuel Prieguez, a lobbyist and former state representative who is suing Alex Diaz de la Portilla in Miami-Dade Circuit Court over an alleged shakedown scheme involving the longtime operator of a city-owned marina. Read more: Miami commissioner sued for alleged shakedown of Rickenbacker Marinas operator Prieguez said the results were extremely gratifying for him personally, and he lauded Gabela for a campaign that has lasted most of the year. Make no mistake, that man worked tirelessly since February walking door to door, and his message resonated the message that corruption was the biggest problem in the city of Miami, Prieguez said. And now that has been corrected to a great degree by making sure that Alex Diaz de la Portilla cannot continue as a commissioner in the city of Miami. Candidate Miguel Gabela celebrates with Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins after results show him winning the District 1 seat on the Miami City Commission during his election night party at the 94th Aero Squadron Restaurant on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Read more: Pardo wins in Miami District 2 race, becoming citys first gay commissioner A former state lawmaker with decades of experience in Tallahassee, Diaz de la Portilla made a political comeback in 2019 when he was first elected to the city commission, beating Gabela in their first campaign against each other. The Diaz de la Portilla name is well-known as a political dynasty in South Florida politics. In the criminal case against him, Diaz de la Portilla has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to all charges. His legal woes mounted further the week before the election when he lost his family home in a foreclosure sale Nov. 15 after making no mortgage payments on the property since 2012, according to court documents. Still, Diaz de la Portilla had boasted he would win big in the weeks leading up to the election. After the results Tuesday night, he gave a short comment to the Herald. Stay tuned, he said in a text message. City of Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz De La Portilla during the first City Commission budget hearing at City Hall, on Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. The campaign featured several waves of political attack ads that were intensified by the charges against Diaz de la Portilla. The drama also played out in court, with the city seeking to invalidate Gabelas candidacy based on his residency. The challenge came months after commissioners, including Diaz de la Portilla, voted to redraw district boundaries in a way that excluded Gabelas longtime home from District 1. A Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge and a three-judge panel from Floridas Third District Court of Appeal agreed that Gabela was a qualified candidate, but the legal battles will continue. On Monday, Diaz de la Portilla sued Gabela in civil court, alleging that Gabela doesnt live in the district. On Tuesday, City Attorney Victoria Mendez has asked the full 10-judge appellate panel to review the opinion. District 1 includes Allapattah, the Health District, Grapeland Heights, Flagami and parts of Little Havana. Commissioner Manolo Reyes, who handily won reelection Nov. 7 in District 4, congratulated Gabela and pledged to work with him and Damian Pardo, who won the District 2 seat and unseated the incumbent, Sabina Covo. The people spoke. They chose who they want to represent them, Reyes said. Im willing to work with both of them. I hope they bring a philosophy to serve the people and not to serve themselves. (Bloomberg) -- Colombian state oil producer Ecopetrol SA said it is analyzing importing gas from Venezuela starting at the end of next year, following President Gustavo Petros visit with Nicolas Maduro in Caracas on Saturday. Most Read from Bloomberg Ecopetrol said it is evaluating alternatives presented by Petroleos de Venezuela SA and has an existing contract through 2027 for gas import and export through a 139-mile pipeline that connects Venezuelan gas fields with northeast Colombia, which is currently being stabilized, the company said in a statement following an extraordinary board meeting. Ecopetrol would be the latest of a series of foreign companies that have shown interest in partnering with Venezuela following the ease of oil sanctions last month. A deal between the two state companies would provide further economic relief to Maduros administration, which has been trying to revive its depleted oil industry ahead of presidential elections next year. Read More: Chevron, Repsol Poised to Capitalize on Venezuelan Oil Opening Petro said it was very likely that Ecopetrol would become a partner of PDVSA in production for oil and natural gas during a visit to Caracas last weekend. Energy Minister Andres Camacho also said Colombia was considering importing light crude from Venezuela to cut fuel costs. Ecopetrols board said it requested the Colombian government to quickly review the amount of gas imports required. The Colombia oil driller said it requested an authorization from the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control in November of last year to advance negotiations with PDVSA, then under sanctions. The US lifted some sanctions on oil and gas operations in Venezuela last month after the Maduro government and the opposition agreed to work on a deal for better electoral conditions. (Updates with background starting in the 3rd paragraph) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Sixty years ago today, Americans of all stripes were shocked when Walter Cronkite told them, wiping away tears, that John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas. It verges on trite to say everything changed after that. It also happens to be true. As Stephen Sondheim famously wrote in a song lyric, Something Just Broke. But, that truth has taken on new forms as time has passed. The legacy of JFK has evolved as has its lessons for America. For the first few decades after the tragedy, the narrative was one of before and after. For many, JFKs death marked the loss of the countrys innocence, as manifested in the turbulent 1960s, the sexual revolution and a litany of cultural changes. Where were you when you found out? Virtually every American old enough to remember could tell you. JFK in those early decades was put on a pedestal. He was seen as inspirational (Ask not what your country can do for you, We choose to go to the moon) and a symbol of a nation on the rise of a younger, vigorous, forward-looking country. In more recent times, the legacy has morphed into something more complicated and in some respects worrisome. The theorizing rampant on the internet a technological advancement JFK no doubt would find mind-boggling in some ways has its origins in the still-raging debate over who was responsible for the assassination. Who would have guessed that, after creating the Peace Corps, launching the Apollo moon shot and averting a possible World War III during the Cuban missile crisis, JFKs legacy in 2023 would in no small part be tied to an old human fixation: conspiracies. To this day, lingering skepticism that a lone gunman killed the president could be termed the mother of all such theories. Gallup has been surveying Americans on JFKs death since a few days after that tragedy happened. In general, most Americans long have told pollsters they believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy while less than a third think he acted alone, as the Warren Commission concluded in 1964. Gallup first asked Americans about the assassination just days after the 1963 murder. A 52% majority believed there was some group or element other than the gunman involved. Another 29% thought he acted on his own, and 19% were unsure. But from the mid-1970s through the early 2000s, Americans belief in a conspiracy zoomed upward, ranging from 74% to 81% in six readings, before it declined in two more recent polls. Who else was it if not Oswald acting alone? Early suspects in the public mind ran the gamut. They included the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia (particularly the Chicago Outfit), Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and Cuban President Fidel Castro. Chicago figured more prominently in the investigation when many locals suggested mobster Sam Momo Giancana, boss of the Chicago Outfit, had been involved for lurid reasons. During its investigation into the assassination and certain mob dealings, the FBI uncovered an affair in which the same woman was involved with the president and the mobster, although not at the same time. Their mutual connection was reportedly Frank Sinatra. Giancana, known to enjoy politics and show business, was also embroiled in an FBI scheme to assassinate Fidel Castro, a government investigation disclosed. But in 1975, before he was scheduled to appear before a committee investigating intelligence activities, Giancana was assassinated mob-style in his Oak Park home while cooking Italian sausage and bell peppers. The reported motive: The Chicago and New York mobsters didnt like the questions he was expected to be asked. Coming 12 years after the assassination, such disclosures only served to stir up more speculation that Oswald did not act alone. Fast forward to today: Large swathes of the American citizenry are awash in conspiracy theories. It hasnt helped that the 45th president of the United States traffics eagerly in the stuff, from groundless assertions that Barack Obama isnt a natural-born citizen to evidence-free contentions that Joe Biden fraudulently won the presidency in 2020. Suspicion toward fellow Americans fueled in part by QAnon, Reddit threads and the like dominate our culture. Too many people believe what they want to believe about those whose opinions they oppose, regardless of evidence. In what some might view as a supreme irony, JFKs nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is running for president 60 years later, spouting wild claims such as the alleged health risks posed by 5G technology. Wed like to think JFK would look at this aspect of todays America and be saddened. True, he was not the heroic figure so widely portrayed in the first decade after his death. JFKs reckless womanizing, covered up by a White House press corps enamored of the Kennedy mystique and abiding by unwritten rules that politicians personal lives werent fair game, now is an inexorable part of his legacy. The country has come a long way in that respect, too. Ask two Democratic politicians, Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, who tried to emulate JFK as would-be carriers of the torch of progress and were held to account. As we take stock and acknowledge a day that did indeed forever change our history, maybe we can recapture a little of what JFK at his best stood for. Respect and tolerance for each other regardless of creed or color. Imagination, faith in our ability to achieve and optimism that a better future is possible. Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. Given our staid reputation, we might seem to be an unlikely crew to be weighing in on the recent demise of the Lakeview alternative nightclub known as Berlin. But weve been around a bit more than you perhaps think. More importantly, Berlin had been around for 40 years and in that time commanded an important place in this citys history. From the start, it has stood for peace, diversity, entrepreneurship and tolerance. Tim Sullivan and Shirley Mooney, a gay man and a straight woman, opened Berlin in 1983 because they dreamed of a place where gay and straight Chicagoans could be together. At the time on Chicagos North Side, there were bars for gay men, bars for gay women, drag bars, leather bars and, of course, hundreds of bars catering to heterosexual patrons. Patrons knew their lanes. The idea behind Berlin was that everyone could drink a beer together in this arty, bohemian place on Belmont Avenue and get to know each other a little better. And it worked: Over the years, this newspaper reported that Elton John, John Waters, Bob Mackie, Donna Karan and Oliver Stone, to name but a few, all hit the artistically intimidating dance floor at one time or another. In the years that followed, the bar became an important refuge and escape for many as the AIDS crisis tore Lakeview and other Chicago neighborhoods asunder. And for fans of alternative music in that era, Berlin was the place to go. Chicagos nightclub scene is littered with the flotsam and jetsam of clubs and bars that have burned out due to the fickle nature of the business, the Tribunes RedEye reported a decade ago, but not Berlin, which has always successfully mixed tattoos and transvestites, pinafores and platforms, dada and go-go and everything in between. Thats all over now, say the current owners, Jo Webster and Jim Schuman, the married couple who took over Berlin after Sullivan (by day, an urban planner) died in 1994 from complications due to AIDS. Why? Berlin has been the target of a devastating strike and aggressive boycott following the unionization of its staff and a series of what would-be impossible demands for any small business, let alone one in a trade as fickle as that of a bar. Among the demands, along with massive wage increases: that every Berlin employee represented by the union who works just one seven-hour shift per week, be considered a full-time employee and thus receive free health care coverage and pensions to be paid in full by Berlin. Few small businesses, if any, could manage that. The bar says it would like to give the union what it wants and treat every part-time server as if they had a full-time job, but that these additional wages, health care, and pension benefits would cost Berlin over $500,000 in the first year of the contract alone. Adding to their woes, Schuman is suffering from stage 4 cancer. Service workers deserve to be fairly compensated, and the union says its members will continue to fight for what we are worth. But for all its panache, Berlin was not run by some big corporation (as are many clubs) but was a mom-and-pop business already facing a difficult environment. In such instances, it cant just be about what employees want but also what such a business reasonably can afford and still stay alive. In the end, Berlin was a soft target for radical overreach. For many who treasured what Berlin always stood for, for those who relied upon its enigmatic tolerance from the beginning, long before such clubs became cool, there is both sadness and irony in what has occurred. Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook. Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com. You are here: World Flash Chinese Premier Li Qiang will attend the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit on Nov. 22 at the invitation of the government of the Republic of India, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning announced on Tuesday. Based on the publicly disclosed evidence, the tragedy that took place at Thousand Oaks and Westlake boulevards on Nov. 5 was the outcome of feverish passions that escalated until something went terribly, irredeemably wrong. By now, the basic outline of the events that unfolded on that Sunday afternoon are well known. There was a demonstration and a counterdemonstration to vent outrage over the horrible bloodshed that began with a brutal terrorist attack on Israeli citizens and continues with the merciless response of the Israeli military on Gaza as it seeks to eradicate Hamas, the militant group that orchestrated the attack. One of the demonstrators, Paul Kessler, a 69-year-old Jewish man from Thousand Oaks who was there to show support for Israel, landed hard on the pavement. He suffered a severe blow to his head and died. What is not yet clear, and may never be, is what precipitated the fall. Was he shoved? Did he stumble while trying to escape real or perceived physical danger? Did he trip while maneuvering in a situation fraught with tension? Eleven days later, after interviewing dozens of individuals, sheriffs deputies arrested Loay Alnaji, a 50-year-old Moorpark man who is a U.S. citizen and a native of Jordan. He had been at the demonstration to show sympathy and support for the Palestinian people. Alnaji has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of involuntary manslaughter and battery causing serious bodily injury. The aftermath of this tragedy is testing the skills of Ventura County law enforcement and the temperament of the community at large. Both have restrained from overreacting to the politicized circumstances that preceded this tragic death. At a vigil at Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks two days after Kesslers death, mourners honored his life and joined together in a show of sympathy and support for the family and each other. There were no impatient cries for justice, no suggestion that the centuries of conflict and hate from the Middle East had suddenly been transported to Ventura County. In fact, there was a sense of calming reassurance. I dont think Pauls death is a sign of whats to come, Rabbi Ari Averbach told The Star following the vigil. The outreach from everyone reminds me we live in a safe and wonderful place. The Ventura County Sheriffs Office proceeded with deliberate patience. Although they knew of Alnajis presence he was, in fact, among those who called 911 following Kesslers injury deputies methodically continued to interview individuals who had been at the scene, collect evidence and seek out video that might better document what transpired. In filing charges, District Attorney Erik Nasarenko made clear his office was not alleging a malicious motive. He said prosecutors have no information whatsoever that Alnaji arrived at the scene with the intention to harm anyone. Alnajis defense attorney asserts his client was several feet away from Kessler at the time of his fall and says that Kessler himself had behaved provocatively that day. As anyone who has witnessed such scenes can testify, there is often no shortage of provocation from both sides. In this instance, the tension spawned tragedy. A vibrant man who was passionate in his convictions is dead. If someone was responsible, intentionally or not, justice demands accountability. This will now play out as it should, based on evidence and by the rule of law. Many will not be satisfied. Some will assert that a hate crime should be charged. Others may believe that Alnaji is being unfairly scapegoated because of his Arab ancestry. There is a time when noisy, forceful expression of opinion is appropriate, such as on a street corner in a nation that values and protects freedom of speech. And there is a time when sober examination of the facts is what matters above all else. This is such a time. This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Editorial: Seeking justice in Thousand Oaks The U.S. Supreme Court justices have adopted a code of conduct designed to assure Americans that they will behave ethically. The document released by the court last week, however, falls short of addressing all the concerns that have been raised about the justices outside activities and possible conflicts of interest. It also perpetuates a system in which individual justices have the final say about whether they will participate in a case. Unlike lower-court federal judges, justices arent bound by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. In 2019, Justice Elena Kagan said that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was studying a possible code for the court, but justices were apparently unable to reach a consensus. Read more: Opinion: The Supreme Court finally has a code of ethics, but it has a fatal flaw Now, after embarrassing news reports about questionable conduct by some justices, it finally has brought forth a document designed to dispel the misunderstanding that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. The new code which the justices call a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct is endorsed by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., who were the subject of news reports describing their undisclosed luxury vacations paid for by wealthy individuals. Both justices have said they didnt believe they were obliged disclose the information. Earlier this year the Judicial Conference of the United States clarified its guidance to say that judges must disclose travel by private jet. Read more: Opinion: How far are the Supreme Court justices willing to go to remake constitutional law? That the court finally adopted a code of its own shows that the justices can be influenced by public and congressional criticism. That doesnt mean the code goes far enough. Amanda Frost, a judicial ethics expert at the University of Virginia Law School, told The Times that it was a small but significant step in the right direction. But Frost also noted that there was no acknowledgment of past transgressions, no enforcement mechanism and no guarantee of increased transparency or accountability. The lack of enforcement is particularly a problem when it comes to requiring justices to refrain from participating in cases because their impartiality might reasonably be questioned so-called recusal. Read more: Opinion: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' corruption is intolerable. Here's what we can do about it Recusal is admittedly a more complicated matter for Supreme Court justices than for lower-court judges, because a justice who withdraws from a case cannot be replaced the way a lower-court judge can be. According to the new code, the rule of necessity may override the rule of disqualification. A commentary attached to the code explains that the loss of one justice is effectively the same as casting a vote against the petitioner. Even so, there are some circumstances in which recusal by a justice is necessary to maintain public confidence in the court. For example, it seems obvious that Thomas, whose wife, Virginia, was involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, should not sit on any case arising from the prosecutions associated with attempts to overturn that election or the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Nor should an individual justice be the sole judge of whether he or she should recuse. In a recent op-ed in The Times, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, cited two proposals for changes in the recusal process: the appointment by the chief justice of retired appeals court judges to decide recusal questions and, alternatively, a procedure in which a justices eight colleagues would decide whether recusal was necessary. Its important that the court toughen its ethics policies because it is unlikely that proposals in Congress to increase transparency and accountability at the court will win the necessary bipartisan support any time soon. In July, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act, which would strengthen ethics enforcement and provide a mechanism for reviewing a petition that a justice be disqualified from a case. But Republican leaders decry ethics reform as an attempt by Democrats to punish a conservative court whose decisions they dont like. That means maintaining the court's integrity will be up to the justices. They should regard the promulgation of its new code as just a small step toward repairing the institution's reputation with the public. If its in the news right now, the L.A. Times Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Turkeys stand in their enclosure at Tara Firma Farms in 2017 in Petaluma, Calif. An estimated 46 million turkeys become Thanksgiving meals in the United States each year. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images) The turkeys that were booked into suites at the Willard Hotel in Washington before a visit to the White House where President Biden pardoned them from being a Thanksgiving dinner are living fantasy lives. (The birds, Liberty and Bell, will spend the rest of their lives at the University of Minnesotas College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences in St. Paul.) A few other lucky birds will be adopted by animal welfare advocates at this time of the year. Rare is the turkey that has anything other than a miserable life before it ends up at a market. Most of the estimated 46 million turkeys that will be sold around Thanksgiving spend their 14 to 20 weeks of life in a sunless barn where they grow unnaturally large, making for crowded conditions with no activity beyond eating and pecking each other even though many have had their beaks painfully trimmed. Before slaughter, the birds flapping and wriggling are shackled upside down by their legs and dunked in electrified water. That is supposed to leave them unconscious, but sometimes it doesnt. Then, unconscious or not, they are killed by mechanical throat-cutting blades. These practices have been widely reported. Read more: Opinion: This Thanksgiving, don't eat turkeys. Try honoring them instead Only poultry is treated this gruesomely. Factory-farmed turkeys (and broiler chickens) dont even have basic government welfare standards over life and death that other food animals do, because poultry is not covered by the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which is enforced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That seems ridiculous, but so far there has been no political will to change the law, animal welfare advocates say. However, turkey suppliers and grocery stores can pressure farms to improve these conditions. And we should demand that they do so. Increasingly, turkey suppliers are switching to whats called "controlled atmosphere stunning" to kill the birds. The animals are taken in crates out of their barns and go straight to compartments at a slaughterhouse, where they are gradually stunned with gas that puts them to sleep and eventually kills them. They never leave the crates in the process and are not shackled alive. Workers prefer this method as well because they dont have to handle heavy live birds flapping and resisting. Read more: Turkeys for Thanksgiving -- as friends, not feast At least four of the top 10 turkey sellers Perdue, Tyson, Jenny-O Turkey Store, and Butterball say they use the controlled-atmosphere stunning procedure. This is a good start. All turkey suppliers should use gas stunning for all their operations. In addition to that, conditions in barns for turkeys should be overhauled. Birds should have room to roam in the barns and items for enrichment like perches or bales of hay to peck at and they should be allowed outside in sunlight. Consumers who want to buy turkeys that have been humanely raised and slaughtered need to pay attention to welfare labels, which can be confusing. The ASPCA has a guide to labels. But turkey producers and stores use various labels on their products, and some are stricter than others. Butterball says it follows the American Humane Certified standards. But that certification doesnt set minimum space allowances indoors or insist on better living conditions for the birds and it does allow routine and painful beak trimming and toe clipping, according to Hillary Dalton, the senior research manager at the nonprofit animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming. Dalton suggests people look for stamps of approval from Global Animal Partnership, Certified Humane, and Animal Welfare Approved. Also look for turkeys from small farms that have raised the turkeys outside on pasture. However, few of those farms can afford access to the gas stunning process. Those farms often stun their animals with an electrified knife and then cut their throats. Its a trade-off: Would you prefer to buy a turkey that lived a more natural life on a farm or a turkey that lived on a grim factory farm but had an easier death? Of course, we could eat less turkey, which would reduce the demand for these animals. If American consumers are going to eat turkey on Thanksgiving and other days, the least we can do is insist on better conditions for those birds. The fact that millions of turkeys are raised to be food does not mean they should be subjected to inhumane conditions before they end up on our tables. If its in the news right now, the L.A. Times Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Pavel Butorin has called on the US Department of State to designate his wife, US-Russian journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, as 'a wrongfully detained person' (Michal Cizek) For Pavel Butorin, Thanksgiving is the most important American holiday, but there'll be an empty chair and a gaping absence this Thursday, which his wife will spend in a Russian prison. Alsu Kurmasheva, a US-Russian journalist who like her husband works at the Prague-based, US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), has been detained for over a month. "Around this time every year, we join our American friends and their families over a plentiful meal to share our gratitude for the love and support that we've all received," Butorin, a Russian-born US citizen, told AFP. "Alsu will be getting a meal delivered through a small window in her prison door, a prison meal," added Butorin, the director of RFE/RL's Russian-language TV and digital network. Kurmasheva was detained after going to Russia in May to attend to her ailing mother. On June 2, as she was boarding a plane back to Prague where she lives with Butorin and their two daughters, the police seized both of her passports and imposed a small fine for her failure to register as a US citizen. In October, authorities detained her on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent. The detention has been extended until December 5. "In reality, I think Alsu has been taken hostage because she is an American citizen and because she is a journalist with Radio Free Europe," Butorin said, labelling his wife as a "political prisoner". - 'Not the best decision' - "They waited for an American citizen to find themselves in a vulnerable situation inside Russia so they could capture them and hold them hostage," said the 51-year-old Butorin. Facing up to five years in jail if found guilty, Kurmasheva is the second US journalist to be detained by Russia after Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in March for "spying". Butorin said Kurmasheva was well aware of all the risks before travelling to Russia but had to help her sick mother. "It wasn't an easy decision to make... (and) in hindsight, yes, it wasn't the best decision." On Monday, RFE/RL published extracts from Kurmasheva's letter from prison, sent via an official online system that is under censorship. "It's a paid system and it takes payment cards issued by Russian banks only, so not everybody here in the West has the ability to communicate with her like that," Butorin said. In the letter, Kurmasheva said she went for walks and even runs in the prison yard, but her husband said the upbeat tone did not fool him. "We should all remember that she's being kept captive by a penitentiary system notorious for its mistreatment of political prisoners," he told AFP. - 'Wrongfully detained' - The couple met in Prague and have been married for 16 years. Their two teenage daughters both have US citizenship. "It's hard for them to fathom that their mother is behind bars only because she is a journalist, only because of something that she has published as a journalist or said on the air," said Butorin. He said he was grateful for all of the support he has received, but has called on the US Department of State to designate his wife as "a wrongfully detained person". "This designation will essentially mean that the US government will in fact commit to securing Alsu's release. I would appreciate that very much." He said Turkey and other Muslim nations could also help -- an ethnic Tatar, Kurmasheva has Turkic roots. "She is not a criminal, she doesn't deserve this, her family and children miss her very much and we want her back," added Butorin. frj/amj/yad It was a happy day at the Saint Louis Zoo last week when one of its endangered Amur tigers gave birth to three cubs. Mama tiger Reka is being observed by zoo staffers after giving birth to the three cubs. The zoo says shes been an attentive mom, cleaning, feeding the cubs, and keeping them warm. Amur tigers are considered one of the most endangered big cat species in the world, and the cubs are a significant contribution to the population in North America, the zoo said in an announcement on Tuesday. The zoo shared pictures of the cute cubs, along with a video of them with their mom. According to the zoo, there are fewer than 500 Amur tigers left in the wild. MORE CUBS: Two tiger cubs born at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo The cubs parents are Reka, aged 5, and Maxim, aged 11. See more information about the cubs at the Saint Louis Zoos website here. (WATCH: Tiger World zoo voicing opposition after Big Cat Public Safety Act passes) For weeks, progressive activists, faith leaders and Palestinian Americans have pushed Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat, to support a ceasefire in Gaza. They protested, called his office and met with Cleaver, the 10-term congressman and former pastor of St. James United Methodist Church. Cleaver on Monday officially called for the Biden administration to use its diplomatic tools to encourage an immediate, bilateral ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages and humanitarian aid into Gaza. My hope is that this ceasefire will enable the difficult but necessary work of a negotiated, durable agreement to move forward and provide a framework for long term peace and a two-state solution something that I strongly support, Cleaver said. Cleavers comments came as the White House was already in negotiations over a temporary ceasefire, which was made official late Tuesday. Israel and Hamas agreed that Hamas would release 50 hostages in return for 150 Palestinian prisoners and a four-day halt to Israels bombardment of Gaza. The temporary ceasefire will ensure that hostages with American citizenship will be released, according to the Biden administration. But Cleavers public statements about the war and the pressure hes faced from activists in Kansas City illustrate the rift in the Democratic Party over the war in Gaza, as a vocal activists push for a permanent ceasefire while an influential, pro-Israel faction calls on lawmakers to back Americas closest ally in the Middle-East in its effort to destroy Hamas. The divide is evident in the Democratic lawmakers from Kansas and Missouri. Progressive Rep. Cori Bush, a St. Louis Democrat, has pushed for a ceasefire. Cleaver, a more establishment Democrat, has taken a more measured approach. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Johnson County Democrat who touts her moderate bona fides, has avoided taking much of a public stand. Since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, when Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 200 people hostage, Israel has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Only a minority of Democrats have called for a permanent ceasefire. Instead, it appears likely that Congress will pass a package providing around $14 billion in military aid to Israel, part of a larger package that would also support Ukraine and fund border security. Even if lawmakers were united in supporting a ceasefire, there is relatively little Congress can do, aside from encouraging the Biden administration to push for a softer approach in negotiations. Democrats from Missouri and Kansas have faced pressure as they navigate the contentious issue and grapple with the U.S. role in the conflict. On Oct. 16, less than a week after Hamas surprise attack on Israel, Bush sponsored a resolution in the House calling for a ceasefire. I am grieving for every Palestinian, Israeli, and American life lost to this violence, and my heart breaks for all those who will be forever traumatized because of it, Bush said in a release. War and retaliatory violence doesnt achieve accountability or justice; it only leads to more death and human suffering. The resolution talked about both Israeli and Palestinian deaths and urged the Biden administration to send humanitarian relief to Gaza. But it had little chance of passing Congress, where a majority of both Democratic and Republican lawmakers were offering support for Israel. Less than a week later, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell announced he would drop out of the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate to challenge Bush for her seat in Missouris 1st Congressional District, the states most diverse and heavily Democratic district. He will likely get backing from AIPAC, a pro-Israel group that has said it will spend more than $100 million in 2024 in primaries against lawmakers it says have opposed Israel. Bush is among the members its targeting, along with the other seven members of the progressive Squad in the House Democratic Caucus. Davids, meanwhile, has largely avoided public pronouncements about the war. She issued a statement condemning the attack on Israel and has signed onto letters calling for humanitarian aid. I unequivocally condemn this violence, Davids said after the Hamas attack. I have always supported security assistance for Israel, our close ally in the Middle East. I remain committed to that support as Israel confronts this ongoing threat and will stand by efforts to protect Israelis and reaffirm Israels right to self-defense. But Kansas 3rd Congressional District is one of the top targets for Republicans in 2024 despite Davids double digits victory in 2022. The National Republican Congressional Committee has been quick to criticize her votes against a Republican sponsored Israel defense package that would cut IRS funding and her vote against censuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and the only Palestinian American member of Congress. For the most part, Davids has mirrored the response of the Biden administration. The White House has been steadfast in its support for Israel. While it has pushed for Israel to avoid civilian casualties and has supported humanitarian pauses to the fighting in order to get aid to Palestinians in Gaza and allow people to move from areas that may be attacked, officials have been adamantly opposed to a ceasefire, saying it would be a victory for Hamas. Cleaver, too, appeared to be following the Biden line. After protesters showed up at his Kansas City office, Cleaver released a statement calling for a humanitarian pause in the fighting to get aid for Gaza. The White House, too, had been pushing for humanitarian pauses. He then sponsored a bill directing financial institutions to provide support for Palestinians who flee Gaza. He withdrew the legislation after faith leaders and Palestinian Americans told him it was counter-productive. His latest call for a ceasefire, in which he hoped that a pause to the fighting would lead to broader talks that would encourage a two-state solution, was the first time he adopted stronger language than the White House. While the Biden administration has said it supports a two-state solution, it is also supporting Israel in its effort to eliminate Hamas, arguing that it is possible in the same way the U.S. attempted to kneecap the Islamic State. Cleaver, meanwhile, appears to just be pushing for peace. Having spent decades as a faith leader, fundamentally, I believe we are all children of the world and all worthy of love and peace, Cleaver said. The world has already seen enough death and suffering. CLEARWATER, Fla. (WFLA) Florida wildlife officials and Tampa Bay animal organizations recently rescued a manatee entangled in crab traps, rope and fishing line. On Nov. 16, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) was alerted to a manatee in distress near Island Estates in Clearwater Bay. A rescue team could not respond to the entangled manatee until the next day, due to the weather conditions, according to a news release from the Clearwater Marine Aquarium (CMA). With the help of ZooTampa, they located the 9.5-foot manatee, tagged it with a radio transmitter and attempted to rescue it, but there were too many other manatees in the area to carry out the rescue. We continued to assist with scouting for the animal over the weekend and tracking reports, and the animal was consistently reported in waters within or nearby Island Estates, said Hannah Rogers, Senior Rescue Biologist at CMA. The team tracked the manatee down in the Mandalay channel on Monday. They discovered that not only was the line wrapped around the base of the manatees tail, it also had four stone crab traps hanging off of it. Crews disentangled the manatee and checked it over before releasing it back into the ocean. Anyone who spots an injured, orphaned, entangled, distressed or dead manatee is urged to call the FWC Wildlife Alert Hotline at (888) 404-3922. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) A prison escapee who has been on the run for more than month was spotted Tuesday in Pinellas County, according to the FBI. The FBI said Sean Williams has been missing for 34 days since escaping a prison van while being transported from a detention facility in Kentucky to the federal courthouse in Greeneville, Tennessee. Hulk Hogans son arrested for DUI in Clearwater, police say Williams is facing state charges in Tennessee related to the rape of a child, aggravated sexual battery of a child under 13, and especially aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor. He is also facing several federal charges, including escape. (Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation) (Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation) (Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation) (Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation) Last Friday, authorities said a member of the public spotted Williams at a shopping center in Sylva, North Carolina. (Williams) is familiar with the area and should be considered dangerous, the FBI said in a news release. Law enforcement is asking the community of Sylva, North Carolina, to be vigilant and aware of their surroundings. The FBI did not say exactly where or what time he was spotted in Pinellas County on Tuesday. According to the wanted poster, he was born in Florida, but his exact birthplace was not disclosed. Clearwater assistant property manager accused of stealing almost $80K from company Williams is described as being 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 170 pounds. He has brown hair, which is longer than what is seen in the picture, and hazel eyes. He has several tattoos on his arms and one on his fingers. Anyone with information regarding his whereabouts should contact their local FBI office or submit a tip online. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. The European Union has sent the latest 1.5 billion euro ($1.6 billion) installment of its macro-financial assistance package to Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on X on Nov. 22. The tranche is part of an 18 billion euro ($19.6 billion) support package for 2023, known as the Macro-Financial Assistance (MFA) package for Ukraine, which is disbursed in monthly tranches. The package aims to assist Ukraine with paying for essential public services, maintaining macroeconomic stability, and restoring critical infrastructure destroyed by Russian attacks. "Europe's funding has supported Ukraine's economic stability and public services since the start of Russias war," von der Leyen said. EU support to Ukraine "has now reached 85 billion ($92.7 billion)," with "more to come." The European Parliament voted in October to endorse a proposal for a $53 billion financing package for Ukraine's recovery until 2027. Read also: Michel: Future safer with Ukraine in the EU Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. The confrontation between Brussels and Budapest looks set to continue after two European Commissioners told the European Parliament members that the EU executive is still not ready to unblock 700 billion for Hungary's recovery. Source: European Pravda, citing Euractiv Details: Hungary is still waiting to receive funds from the 700 million EU Recovery and Resilience Fund, established in the wake of the COVID pandemic, and the European Commission has said the funds will not be allocated until Viktor Orban's government addresses long-standing issues of judicial bias and the rule of law. Addressing the European Parliament on Tuesday (21 November), Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders hailed a new Hungarian law introduced in June that aims to address EU concerns about the independence of the judiciary as "an important step in the right direction". "However, it is not the end of the process. Hungary also needs to complete the accompanying implementation steps," the official said. Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn told European lawmakers that "there has already been some valuable change in Hungary. For example, there is now an active integrity authority, there are now ways of challenging a prosecutors decision not to pursue a case, and OLAF [the European Anti-Fraud Office] now has reinforced cooperation structures in Hungary". The Commissioner added, "The dialogue with Hungary is particularly intense on issues regarding the prevention of risks of conflict of interest in the boards of public interest trusts, and the extent of the powers of the newly created integrity authority". The debate in parliament came after Orban's Fidesz party submitted a bill to parliament on "protecting national sovereignty" to protect against what it labelled as improper political interference by foreign individuals or groups. The draft law went hand in hand with launching a billboard campaign that harshly criticised Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President. "Its clear that Hungary has not made effective or sufficient progress towards fulfilling the conditions on judicial independence. In fact, the Hungarian Government seems to be putting more efforts into sabotaging and derailing the reforms than into implementing them," stressed EPP lawmaker Jeroen Lenaers. Background: Hungarian officials have recently indicated that their support for new EU aid to Ukraine might depend on the European Commission providing funds for Hungary's recovery. Earlier this week, Orban sent a letter to European Council President Charles Michel demanding an "urgent" discussion and urging other EU leaders to review aid programmes for Ukraine and the sanctions regime against Russia. "Abusing a veto for blackmail is a cynical and a shameful practice that should be abolished, not rewarded," Lenaers noted. "Ukraine needs our help and Ukraine must get our help, and the EU must find ways to get that aid to Ukraine without rewarding the dismantling of the rule of law, and Hungary," the official added. Support UP or become our patron! Flash Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Nov. 18, 2023. [Photo/JINI via Xinhua] Israeli ministers met on Tuesday night in a bid to approve a Qatari-mediated deal to release dozens of the children and women held hostage by the Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wartime cabinet gathered for a special meeting in the evening, followed by a meeting of his extended security cabinet and his government. The release of Palestinian prisoners is a highly contested issue in Israeli society. As part of the regular procedure in Israel, any potential swap deal that includes the release of Palestinian prisoners needs to be brought for a vote in both the security cabinet and the government. At 10:30 p.m. local time (2030 GMT), the ministers were still deliberating. Meanwhile, hundreds of relatives of hostages rallied outside the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, where the ministers convened to vote on the deal. Live TV broadcasts showed demonstrators carrying posters with photos of their loved ones and chanting "Bring them home!" Several protesters, whose loved ones were reportedly not on the list of hostages supposed to be released in the upcoming deal, burst into tears. Two far-right Israeli parties, headed by ultranationalist settler leaders who are members of Netanyahu's coalition government, announced they would not support the deal. The Jewish Power party demanded the release of all hostages "on our terms," while the Religious Zionism Party called for continuing the attacks in Gaza until Hamas "completely surrenders." In broadcast statements at the beginning of the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu urged the ministers to accept the deal. "The decision tonight is a tough one, but it's the right one," he said. He added that Israeli forces would resume fighting right after the pause "until we achieve our goals: destroying Hamas and returning all of the hostages." A government official confirmed to Xinhua that under the proposed deal, at least 50 children and women would be freed in exchange for the release of about 150 female and teen Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons. Israel also agreed to a four-day ceasefire. Israel is pressing to include the release of 30 more children whom it believes are being held in Gaza by other militant groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed group, and even in private homes. Under the deal, if Hamas locates these children, Israel will agree to another day of ceasefire for every 10 released children. The first hostages and prisoners would be released on Thursday or the weekend, said the official. During the pause, the Israeli forces, including tens of thousands of troops, will remain in the Gaza Strip. Earlier on Tuesday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the group's officials are "close to reaching a truce agreement" with Israel, and that Hamas has delivered its response to Qatar, according to a report by Israel's state-owned Kan TV news. More than 240 hostages, comprising civilians, soldiers, children, women and the elderly of various nationalities, were taken to Gaza by Hamas militants in their surprise raid on Israel on Oct. 7, during which about 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians. In the massive offensive against Gaza launched by Israeli troops, so far 14,128 Palestinians have been killed, primarily civilians, according to the Gaza-based Health Ministry. The European Parliament has decided to open an office in Kyiv to develop closer cooperation with the Ukrainian parliament, EU news outlet Euractiv reported on Nov. 21. The decision was reportedly made earlier on Nov. 21, aimed at facilitating relations with the Verkhovna Rada, particularly in connecting with relevant committees in the European Parliament, as well as easing administrative work. Read also: Ukraines ruling party to submit resolution to recall treason suspect Dubinsky from key finance committee post Each member state in the European Parliament has a liaison office to assist the parliament in working with member states, such as communicating with stakeholders, organizing events, and maintaining relations with local media. Read also: EU parliament supports joint arms procurement bill According to the document, only a few European Parliament offices have been created in non-European cities, including New York, Addis Ababa, and Jakarta, where parliamentary staff are seconded to EU delegations. Read also: Von der Leyen arrived in Kyiv to discuss Ukraines accession path, financial support and to address parliament An EU delegation in any country outside the European Union serves as a diplomatic mission of the EU on the territory under the aegis of the European External Action Service. The article further says that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola to open a representative office in Ukraine during her visit to Lviv on March 4. The matter was raised again in late April by the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk. 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 embourgeoisement of organized labor proceeds at a fast clip. Graduate students, adjunct professors, digital journalists, congressional staffers, NGO do-goodersthey all want to join unions, and more power to them. While their college and graduate degrees may exclude them from any conventional definition of working class, their anemic paychecks do not. But the professional-managerial class is never going to be the beating heart of a thriving labor movement, because that leaves out workers who lack college degrees, i.e., most of them. Its necessary and good for the college-educated to seek greater power in the workplace, but boutique unionism can never squeeze more than a few drops of fair pay out of any enterprise that lacks profits to redistribute. The ivory tower, Grub Street, politics, and philanthropy arent where the money isand labor needs to go where the money is. Willie Sutton famously recommended banks. On Monday, workers at two Wells Fargo branches notified the National Labor Relations Board that they plan to hold elections on whether to organize with the Communications Workers of America, or CWA. One branch is in Bethel, Alaska, the other in Albuquerque, New Mexico; there are 13 nonmanagement workers between the two. The major issues there appear to be low pay and insufficient staffing. The Wells Fargo organizers draw inspiration from efforts to unionize Amazon warehouses and Starbucks coffee shops, and also from the new United Auto Workers contract. Jesse McCool, a compliance officer for Wells Fargo in St. Louis whos helping to lead the drive, told The Wall Street Journal: We would be foolish to not strike while the iron is hot. The labor share of national income relative to capital has declined sharply in the twenty-first century; even McKinsey says so. Herding capital into labor unions, or anyway the people in charge of capital, is an ingenious way to address this problem. Investment bankers may be too rich to consider unionizing, but the workers at your corner bank bear little resemblance to Mr. Monopoly. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for a bank teller is $36,380; for a bank manager, $68,976. These are both below median household income ($74,580). Though a bank manager typically gets another $20,000 or so in bonuses, I can well imagine wondering why, after counting so many greenbacks in the course of my workday, I get to take so few home. Its not, apparently, like working at Grays Papaya, where you can eat all the hot dogs you want. Indeed, one in three bank tellers is on some form of public assistance. In capitalist America, capital is on the dole. Yet only 1.3 percent of banking employees belong to a union, compared to about 6 percent in the entire private sector. The financial sector is currently the least unionized in the country, says the CWA, despite having the largest footprint on the U.S. economy. Thats a slight exaggeration; insurance has a lower unionization rate (1.2 percent). But I suppose you could argue insurance is part of the financial sector. Anyway, bankings unionization rate is very low. Restaurant employees, most of whom work in fast food, have a higher unionization rate than bankers. The reason its news when two bank branches separated by three thousand miles try to join a union is that it happens so rarely. When 100 workers at Beneficial State Bank, a Los Angelesbased community bank founded by the philanthropist billionaire Tom Steyer, voted to affiliate with CWA last March, it became the first bank to unionize since First American Bank in Willmar, Minnesota, affiliated with the UAW way back in 1983. By one estimate, no more than 30 banks have ever been unionized at any given time, and none of the big ones has ever unionized. Wells Fargo is one of the big ones. Its the fourth-largest bank in the United States, with assets of almost $1.7 trillion and more branches (4,600) than any other bank except JP Morgan Chase, the countrys biggest bank. Its usually a mistake for managers to read a union drive as a sign that the companys workers dont love themHoward Schultz of Starbucks was notoriously susceptible to such self-pitybut in the case of Wells Fargo, CWA started organizing because of the 2016 scandal over workers being pressured to engage in deceptive practices ranging from sleazy to illegal. As of September, management was still struggling to right the ship. Indeed, as recently as December 2022, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau leveled a $1.7 billion fine, plus $2 billion in customer restitution, on Wells Fargo for assessing fees and interest charges on auto and home loans illegally. Wells Fargo is a corporate recidivist, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said at the time. In a 2022 letter to shareholders, Wells Fargo chief executive Charles Scharf insisted that we have a different company today and that hubris, contempt and indifference were no longer acceptable there. We will listen and not retaliate, Scharf pledged at a Senate Banking Committee hearing last year, when asked whether hed interfere with unionization efforts. But even before the Albuquerque and Bethel branches moved to unionize, employees at Wells Fargo branches were filing unfair labor practice charges. Democrat Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, detailed some of these in an October letter to Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu and Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michael Barr. Since May, Wells Fargo managers have been charged with either threatening or retaliating against employees engaged in union activity in Salt Lake City; Des Moines, Iowa; San Antonio; Beaverton, Oregon; and Chandler and Lake Havasu, Arizona. The bank settled the Salt Lake City case, and an NLRB regional director ruled against the bank in the Beaverton case. Yes, we are only talking about 13 bank workers, but every movement starts somewhere. Ten years ago, Barbara and John Ehrenreichwho coined the term professional-managerial class in 1977revisited the subject and found that people with college and higher degrees have proved to be no more indispensable, as a group, to the American capitalist enterprise than those who honed their skills on assembly lines or in warehouses or foundries. Frustration with that circumstance is now causing a wide swath of the professional-managerial class to unionize, and banks are an especially ripe target. Its not hard to imagine the Wells Fargo unionization drive spreading to the better-behaved American banks. At the 2022 Senate Banking Committee hearing, the chief executives of the six biggest banks in America all pledged, alongside Scharf, never to interfere with union drives, but it was interesting to watch many of them stumble over their words before answering. It goes against their instincts and their likely future behavior. Let the outside agitating begin. MEMPHIS, Tenn. A former Memphis Police officer pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon and is sentenced to one year of diversion. In January 2019, body camera footage captured police arresting Drew Thomas for allegedly vandalizing a store on Airways that he was banned from. Video of police using pepper foam on a man leads to conversation about mental health calls Thomas family told WREG Investigators that he had mental issues with dozens of arrests and emergency commitments. That night, MPD sent Officer William Skelton to the scene because he was trained to handle people with mental health issues. He had also dealt with Thomas earlier. Skelton put Thomas into handcuffs and into the squad car. Skelton told Internal Affairs he sprayed pepper foam four times, restrained Thomas legs and shut the door. He also refused to crack a window for five minutes and 55 seconds, despite that being against department policy. The MPD director at the time called it unacceptable. Skelton resigned before the administrative hearing, but MPD never referred the case to the DAs office. When the incident made headlines, the former DA Amy Weirich had a special team look at the case. In November 2020, a grand jury indicted Skelton on an official oppression charge. Two years later, he entered a guilty plea on the lesser charge of reckless endangerment with a weapon. Monday, he was sentenced, getting a year of diversion. This means if he stays out of trouble and follows certain conditions, he can get his charge expunged or wiped from his record. This isnt the first time this has happened when it comes to a former officer facing criminal charges. Another former officer pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of statutory rape and can request the charge be expunged next summer. A former Lieutenant pleaded guilty to official misconduct and got the charge wiped last year after completing diversion. This also prevented the public from accessing the states criminal case file to see what evidence was collected. State law requires the public to wait a year before accessing it, but in the past, the case was expunged before the records could be made available. Former Memphis Police officer facing criminal charges for 2019 arrest WREG will keep watch to see what happens in Skeltons case. His diversion is set to end a year from now. We reached out to the DAs office for a comment and to learn if the possibility Skeltons criminal case file could be kept secret. DO YOU NEED A STORY INVESTIGATED? WREG Investigators want to hear from you! Call our tip line at 901-543-2378. You can also send an email to newstips@wreg.com. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WREG.com. Ex-Obama admin official arrested after he was recorded taunting NYC vendor with Islamophobic language A former national security adviser in the Obama administration has been arrested and charged with harassment and stalking in connection with anti-Islamic statements made to a man at his Manhattan workplace, police said. Stuart Seldowitz, 64, also of Manhattan, was captured in a series of videos harassing and verbally abusing a New York City food cart vendor with Islamophobic language. The New York Police Department said Wednesday that Seldowitz was charged with second-degree aggravated harassment and three counts of stalking, one of which is stalking as a hate crime. He is accused of approaching the 24-year-old at his workplace multiple times and making anti-Islamic statements, the NYPD said. A person on X, the platform formally known as Twitter, posted video of Seldowitz taunting the cart operator on the Upper East Side. In one clip that appeared to be shot at night, Seldowitz asked the vendor if he had raped his daughter "like Mohammed" did. The vendor politely asked Seldowitz to leave. "Why should I go?" Seldowitz asked. "Im standing here. I'm an American. I have freedom. It's a free country. It's not like Egypt." In another clip that appeared to be shot in daytime hours, Seldowitz called the vendor a terrorist and said: "It's not my fault you pray to a criminal." "You support killing little children, Seldowitz told the vendor. "You kill children, not me," the vendor said. "If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasnt enough," Seldowitz said after telling the man he had "no right to be on the sidewalk." In a second daytime shot, Seldowitz again sought to mock the vendor before a bystander intervened and prompted him to leave. Seldowitz did not immediately return messages from NBC News on Wednesday seeking comment. But in an interview with NBC New York, he said the incidents began when he was simply trying to make small talk. "This whole thing started when I innocently asked him if he was Egyptian and he said yes,'" Seldowitz said. "I said, 'This must be a tough time to be an Egyptian in New York.' " Seldowitz went on to explain he's sensitive to the tensions caused by the Israel-Hamas war. He added the vendor triggered him by allegedly saying he backed Hamas. Follow for live updates "I said youre OK with the raping of women, the killing of children, the taking of hostages and the killing of 1,200 people in Israel?" Seldowitz told the news station. "And he said, 'Yes, it was all for Palestine,' and thats what got me upset." New York City Council member Julie Menin, who represents the neighborhood where the incidents unfolded, said she reported Seldowitz's verbal abuse to police. "This is vile hate speech and harassment and truly abhorrent," she said in a statement. "There is no place for hate in our community and city." Seldowitz had been a consultant for Gotham Government Relations, and the lobbying firm said it has "ended all affiliations with" him. The video of his actions is vile, racist, and beneath the dignity of the standards we practice at our firm, Gotham Government Relations said in a statement. The videos of Seldowitz come as law enforcement officials across America have voiced their concerns that tensions in the Middle East could spill over to Jewish, Muslim, Arab and South Asian Americans. Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. climbed 388% in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks last month, compared to the same period last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a group focused on fighting antisemitism and extremism. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said last month that requests from Muslims for help and reports of bias also spiked across the U.S. from Oct. 7 to Oct. 24, compared to any 16-day stretch last year. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte said he might make a political comeback if his vice president daughter was impeached over 1.8m in confidential funds she reportedly spent in 11 days. There have been efforts in the lower house of parliament to impeach vice president and education secretary Sara Duterte for her alleged use of the funds. The Commission on Audit revealed she spent 1.8m in 11 days. She has also drawn scrutiny over her request for 9.3m in confidential funds for 2024, with at least one opposition lawmaker revealing there have been talks about ousting her. If you do that, I'll return to politics, Mr Duterte, known for his deadly anti-drugs crackdown, brash rhetoric, and unorthodox political style, told local broadcaster SMNI this week. The 78-year-old former president announced his retirement from politics in 2021 after serving six years in office that was marred by controversies and protests. He stepped down as president in June 2022. Its either I will run for senator or I will run for vice-president even if Im old, he said, warning his opponents that the 2025 midterm elections were just around the corner. Look, you dont have a headache as of now. I will be forced to come out of retirement, he said. I do not lose anything. I am retired. If that [impeachment] happens and I am still alive and do not have dementia yet, I will run, he said, adding that he would have to defend his daughter. He claimed that the controversial fund did not come from Congress but from the office of the president. You cannot go into a guessing game to just go into impeachment. For what? Intelligence fund? It was given to you. Why would you give it to me if I cant spend it? he added. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr earlier clarified that Ms Duterte enjoyed his full support and that she does not deserve to be ousted from office. We will make sure that this is something that we will pay very close attention to, he said at a press conference. When asked about the impeachment rumours, Ms Duterte said: I believe I still have the trust of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Why? Because before he left, I asked him about the impeachment. He told me that its true that he knows about the impeachment, Ms Duterte was quoted by Rappler as saying. Police said Liza Nixon was so intoxicated her speech was slurred and she was unsteady on her feet - Cavendish Press (Manchester) Ltd The ex-wife of a business tycoon behind the price comparison website TravelSupermarket.com has been banned from the roads for two years after she was caught driving home drunk from a Halloween party after claiming she had been spooked by guests. Liza Nixon, 55, who had been drinking prosecco tested nearly three times the alcohol limit after police stopped her white Sport HSE Dynam following a tip off. Officers said the mother-of-one was so intoxicated her speech was slurred and she was unsteady on her feet, stumbling as she walked to the police car. She later said she planned to get a cab home from the Halloween themed party at a farm in the village of Little Budworth, Cheshire but decided to drive the 17 miles to her 1.4 million property in Mollington, near Chester, after being spooked by two of the guests. At Chester Magistrates Court, Nixon, whose ex-husband Chris was formerly managing director of the TravelSupermarket.com site, admitted drink-driving and was also ordered to complete 80 hours of unpaid work as part of a 12-month community order. The court heard Mr Nixon, 50, wrote a character reference in support of his former spouse. Speech was slurred The incident occurred at 12.30am on Oct 29 this year after police spotted Nixon driving out of the car park of a rugby club in Chester. Lionel Cope, prosecuting, said: Officers had earlier received information of a drunk driver in a vehicle in a white Range Rover travelling towards Chester and saw it exiting the rugby club on Hare Lane. They noticed there was a female in the drivers seat and the female continued to pull out of the car park. The officer went in front of her and drove for 20 yards and then activated his lights to stop the vehicle. It was believed the lady was under the influence of alcohol as her speech was slurred and she was clearly unsteady on her feet. She stumbled to the police car and sat in the back of the police car. A breath test reading showed Nixon had 103mg of alcohol in 100ml of breath, the legal limit being 35mg. A probation report compiled on Nixon said: She has been very candid in interview and very cooperative. She attended a party in Little Budworth and had driven over there at 6pm in the evening. She arrived there about 6.30pm and her intention was to consume one glass of prosecco but decisions were made about 8pm that she would start to consume more alcohol and then get a taxi home. She is extremely remorseful The report continued that she had panicked when unable to pinpoint the address of the rural farm, and did not feel particularly comfortable around two female guests who were outside vaping, and instead decided to get in her car and drive home. She was out of her comfort zone and made a stupid decision, the report adds. Nixons counsel Kathrine Wright said: She had been at a Halloween party and had driven there not planning to drink. In fact, she ended up having a few drinks and intended to get a taxi home. But they could not get out, as the location was quite remote. She was left with two women and did not feel safe and after a while she made the decision, which she accepts was a completely stupid one, to drive home. She is extremely remorseful for what she describes as a stupid mistake. 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. The top two lawmakers on the US Senates space and science subcommittee are pushing federal regulators to accelerate the approval of commercial space launches, arguing that the current pace could cost the United States its edge in the new space race. In a letter sent last week to the head of the Federal Aviation Administrations commercial spaceflight office, Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Eric Schmitt implored FAA associate administrator Kelvin Coleman to act now to eliminate red tape and reduce delays in processing launch and return to Earth or reentry licenses. As the pace of launches from U.S. commercial spaceflight companies increases and Chinas state-backed space industry continues to grow, it is imperative that the processes at the FAA and other federal agencies adapt to keep pace with American innovation as well as adversarial threats in space, the senators wrote in a letter dated November 14. Keeping pace with industry demand The FAAs Office of Commercial Space Transportation is responsible for protecting public safety while simultaneously greenlighting a growing number of commercial space launches, which have quadrupled in just four years. The FAA has already licensed 104 launches this year, compared to 26 launches in 2019. Keeping pace with industry demand is a priority and is important for several reasons, including meeting our national security and civil exploration needs, an FAA spokesperson told CNN in a statement on Tuesday. Were working diligently to attract, hire and retain additional staff. In their letter, the senators named NASAs commercial partners involved in the agencys flagship human spaceflight program and urged Coleman to fast-track high priority missions such as returning Americans to the moon. Senators Kyrsten Sinema (left) and Eric Schmitt implored the FAA associate administrator in a letter to act now to eliminate red tape and reduce delays in processing launch and return to Earth licenses. - Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images; Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images Elon Musks SpaceX is responsible for developing the lunar lander called Starship that will ferry astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time since the Apollo program. During a hearing last month before the Senate space and science subcommittee, a top SpaceX executive accused government regulators of stifling the companys progress on Starship, a pivotal part of NASAs Artemis program and the most powerful rocket ever built. Its a shame when our hardware is ready to fly, and were not able to go fly because of regulations or review, said William Gerstenmaier, SpaceXs vice president for build and reliability, noting that the company had been ready for more than a month to launch the next Starship test flight. Licensing, including environmental (review), often takes longer than rocket development. This should never happen. And its only getting worse. Race to the moon The remarks came as SpaceX was the subject of a lengthy environmental review by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and a safety review by the FAA after the companys first test flight of its massive moon rocket exploded about four minutes after lifting off in April. Regulators gave SpaceX the green light to proceed last week, and the company completed a partially successful second test flight on Saturday. In the letter dated the day before the FAA granted the launch license for Starships second test flight, Chairwoman Sinema, an independent from Arizona, and Senator Schmitt of Missouri, the top Republican on the subcommittee, told Coleman they were troubled by witnesses saying regulatory delays could enable China to continue to close the once-wide gap between itself and the US in space. Beijing is leading a parallel effort to NASAs Artemis program by attempting to land Chinese astronauts on the same region of the moon and at roughly the same time. It is no secret that the United States is in a space race with China our chief economic and military adversary. We cannot be our own worst enemy when it comes to beating China to the moon and Mars, Schmitt told CNN. The senators are now asking Coleman to respond to several questions, including what additional resources he may need to accelerate the launch licensing process, by November 28. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com Activists kick off Climate Week with protest against fossil fuels in New York City By Gloria Dickie DUBAI (Reuters) - As global temperatures and emissions climb, people are increasingly turning to courtrooms to challenge fossil fuel companies' activities, leading to wins on issues like "climate-washing" but also backlash as companies file countersuits. In the last five years, the number of climate-related court cases that have been filed around the world more than doubled, according to a 2023 report by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and New York's Columbia University, from 884 filed by 2017 to nearly 2,500 as of today. A lawsuit "holds companies to account in a way that just protests or campaigns cannot do," said Joana Setzer, a climate litigation researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Analysts say the strategy appears to be working, with more than half of cases with judicial outcomes leaning toward stronger climate action, according to a 2023 report from LSE. "We have seen more ambition and more action from governments thanks to litigation," Setzer said. Here are some key trends in climate litigation: WHERE CASES ARE BEING FILED Most of today's climate lawsuits have been filed in the United States, including 20 filed by U.S. cities or states against major fossil fuel companies that are likely to go to trial. Some U.S. cases, however, feature right-wing states challenging federal rules for requiring companies to disclose their environmental impacts. About 17% of cases since 2017 have been filed in developing countries, while European courts are hearing several cases that experts say could set new legal precedents. 'CLIMATE-WASHING' IN FOCUS Companies of all kinds are being challenged over alleged "climate-washing," or misleading plans and statements related to tackling emissions. Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) is facing a proposed class action lawsuit over allegedly violating California consumer protection laws by advertising itself as carbon-neutral. "Climate litigation has really widened from large fossil fuel companies to this aspect of accountability and transparency," Setzer said. "If you are able to make statements about 'net zero' or 'carbon neutral', then really these should be proven." In 2021 and 2022, more than 50 climate-washing cases were filed globally against companies, up sharply from just 15 in the previous two years, the LSE report found. COMPANIES STRIKE BACK Companies are not only on the defense. They are also filing their own cases against governments with the aim to delay or dismantle regulations on climate action, the UNEP report said. These so-called backlash cases include one filed by 26 Republican-led states, an oil drilling company and an oil and gas trade group, challenging a Biden administration rule allowing employee retirement plans to consider environmental, social or governance issues in their investment decisions. Not all challenges succeed, though. After a judge in September upheld the rule, the plaintiff's coalition said in October it would appeal. In Europe, a court denied energy companies RWE and Uniper compensation for lost revenues from the Dutch government, after the Netherlands decided to close coal-fired energy plants by 2030. Oil majors also have targeted climate protesters following a government crackdown on direct action in Europe, while Britain has made it illegal to lock or glue oneself to property as a protest stunt. This month, Shell filed a suit against Greenpeace seeking $2.1 million in damages after protesters in January boarded the company's oil production vessel near the Canary Islands. OTHER CASES TO WATCH DUARTE AGOSTINHO AND OTHERS V. PORTUGAL AND 32 OTHER STATES Six Portuguese youth are suing 33 European countries for allegedly failing to avert catastrophic climate change that they say now threatens their right to life. The case among the first to be heard at the European Court of Human Rights does not ask for financial compensation, but for governments to cut emissions more drastically. The case was heard in Strasbourg in September 2023. A ruling is expected in the first half of 2024. LUCIANO LLIUYA V. RWE AG Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya is suing German energy utility RWE for about $20,000. He says the company's emissions have contributed to the melting of Andean glaciers, swelling a lake above his hometown to dangerous levels. "It's a nominal amount, but a significant precedent," said Joe Snape, an associate at law firm Leigh Day. The argument rests on attribution science can the plaintiff prove the company's emissions are responsible for worsening climate change, and to what extent? Following a May 2022 expedition to Peru to gather evidence, the case will be heard early next year in Hamm, Germany. PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA V. BIG OIL In September, the U.S. state of California launched a lawsuit against oil companies Exxon Mobil, Shell, ConocoPhillips, BP and Chevron. The suit accuses the companies of deceiving the public by downplaying fossil fuel risks and argues they are responsible for tens of billions of dollars in climate-related damage. The lawsuit is seeking a compensation fund to pay for future climate-related damages in the state. Ambitious in scope, the case is "an amalgamation of strategies," Setzer said. "It's not just a compensation case, but also a deception case, which makes it stronger." (Reporting by Gloria Dickie in London; Editing by Katy Daigle and Josie Kao) Demonstration demanding the liberation of hostages who are being held in the Gaza Strip, in Tel Aviv Demonstration demanding the liberation of hostages who are being held in the Gaza Strip, in Tel Aviv (Reuters) -Hamas fighters released a first wave of 13 Israeli women and children on Friday under a truce deal and also released 11 farm workers from Thailand and the Philippines, after guns fell silent across the Gaza Strip for the first time in seven weeks. Here is what we know about the hostages. WHO ARE THE HOSTAGES? Gunmen from Palestinian group Hamas took about 240 hostages and killed 1,200 people when they raided Israel on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli government. The hostages were from communities, including collective farms, called kibbutzim and military bases in southern Israel as well as people attending an outdoor music festival. In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the U.S., Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, Israel's government has said. According to Israeli media and the Israeli government, up to 40 hostages were children, including a 10-month-old baby and pre-schoolers. Also among those taken were soldiers, elderly people and people with disabilities. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE HOSTAGES? Hamas has to date released 28 hostages under the terms of a temporary truce deal. On Friday, 24 hostages were handed over at the Rafah border crossing - 13 Israelis, plus 10 Thais and a Filipino. The Israeli hostages included four children and their mothers, and five elderly women. Before the deal was struck, Hamas had released four captives: U.S. citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct. 20, citing "humanitarian reasons," and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct. 23. Israeli forces freed one hostage, Ori Megidish, a soldier, in their ground invasion of Gaza on Oct. 30. The Israeli military said earlier this month that it recovered the bodies of two hostages in Gaza City, including 19-year-old soldier Noa Marciano. The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, announced late on Tuesday the death of another Israeli hostage but did not identify the individual. WHERE ARE THE HOSTAGES BEING HELD? Hamas has said it has hidden the captives in "safe places and tunnels" in Gaza. Israel says the group has a vast underground network where it stores weapons, commands operations and uses tunnels to move its fighters. Lifshitz, an 85-year-old grandmother who was freed by Hamas, said that after she was seized, she was taken into underground tunnels that she compared to a spider web. The Israeli military has said it found evidence that some hostages were held at or under hospitals. The Israel Defence Forces said on Sunday that Marciano, the soldier whose body was recovered, was killed by Hamas within Al Shifa hospital. The military released video that it said also showed militants forcing two hostages into Shifa hospital on Oct. 7. WHAT HAVE CONDITIONS BEEN LIKE FOR HOSTAGES? Lifshitz said her captors separated hostages into small groups. She said she and a few others with her slept on mattresses on the floor of the tunnels. Doctors provided care and Hamas ensured conditions were hygienic, she said. In a video released by Hamas in October, a 21-year-old French hostage was shown having her injured arm treated by a medical worker. Hamas released another video in October that showed three women hostages denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said they were used for "cruel propaganda". HOW HAVE ISRAELIS REACTED TO THE HOSTAGE TAKING? Family members and thousands of supporters have pressured the Israeli government to prioritise freeing the hostages, fearing they could be killed in Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza. They have also travelled the world to highlight the hostage's plight. After the first wave of hostages were released, Netanyahu repeated his commitment to bringing all of them home. For the families of those who returned on Friday there was happiness mingled with concern for those who remained in Gaza. (Reporting by Reuters bureauxWriting by Cynthia Osterman, Alexandra HudsonEditing by Deepa Babington and Mark Potter) SEOUL (Reuters) -Officials and experts around the world are seeking to determine whether North Korea's first spy satellite is operational as it orbits the earth after being launched on Tuesday, an effort that South Korea asserts was likely to have included Russian aid. North Korea appears to have overcome the technical problems that sent two previous attempts with its new Chollima-1 rocket plunging into the sea. WHAT ARE THE CAPABILITIES OF NORTH KOREA'S ON-ORBIT SPY SATELLITE? Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Reuters that U.S. Space Force data had catalogued two new objects in an orbital plane consistent with the launch from North Korea at the time stated by Pyongyang. "I conclude the objects are the spy satellite and the rocket upper stage," he said. What remains unconfirmed, however, is whether its payload, the reconnaissance satellite Malligyong-1, is operating, and whether the North received any outside help. It may take some time to determine whether the satellite is in operational orbit, is sending signals, and what its capabilities are, analysts said. "To assess the success of this launch, it is crucial not only to determine whether the projectile entered orbit but also to secure the ability to adjust and conduct reconnaissance from that orbit," said Hong Min, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification. "This includes verifying the capability to take pictures with optical cameras and transmitting them appropriately to the satellite centre." HOW COULD THE SPY SATELLITE BE USED? North Korea has not shown imagery of the satellite, but photos released by state media from a visit leader Kim Jong Un made this year to a production facility showed small, solar-powered satellites that are most likely similar to the one launched on Tuesday, said Vann Van Diepen, a former U.S. government weapons expert who works with the Stimson Center in Washington. "It's likely that this is a relatively small, optical satellite that is going to have relatively low resolution," he told Reuters. "But even a relatively low-resolution satellite is better than not having a satellite, which is their current situation." Such a satellite is unlikely to provide the North with detailed intelligence on specific weapons systems in South Korea, for example, but it would still be useful for identifying things such as large troop movements, Van Diepen added. To launch a more-capable satellite, North Korea will most likely need to develop a larger rocket, which it appears to be doing, he said. After the first failed test, South Korea recovered some of the Chollima-1 wreckage - including, for the first time, parts of a satellite, which it said had little military value. IS RUSSIA HELPING? South Korea's spy agency has said North Korea may have overcome technical hurdles with the help of Russia, which in September publicly pledged to help Pyongyang build satellites. Many experts expressed doubts, however, that Moscow could have provided game-changing assistance in the roughly two months since then. "It's much too early for the North Koreans to have integrated any assistance Russia may have agreed to supply," Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said in a post on the social media platform X. "Maybe the Russians gave them some advice, but it's normal for countries to launch and learn." Chang Young-keun, a professor at Korea Aerospace University, said it would have been impossible for the North to rebuild a satellite with Russian technology or hardware assistance within that time. "But Russia could have offered some analysis on previous failures and telemetry data," he said. Replacing parts, improving software, system integration, and test runs can't typically be done quickly, but Russian support could still be valuable in key areas such as improving the satellite's capabilities or resolving the combustion instability that plagued an earlier launch, said Lee Choon-geun, a rocket expert at South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute. DO NORTH KOREA'S LATEST SATELLITE TESTS HAVE TIES TO MISSILE PROGRAMS? The United States and its allies called North Korea's latest satellite tests clear violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions, which prohibit development of technology applicable to North Korea's ballistic missile programs. U.N. resolutions - passed with Russia's support - also ban any scientific and technical cooperation with North Korea in nuclear science and technology, aerospace and aeronautical engineering and technology, or advanced manufacturing production techniques and methods. The Chollima-1 seems to be a new design and most likely uses the dual-nozzle liquid-fuelled engines developed for Pyongyangs Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which has roots in Soviet designs, analysts said. However, although the space launch vehicle (SLV) probably uses the same RD250-like engines as North Korea's ICBMs, there are design differences between the two, Lewis said. "North Korea is no longer shy about testing ICBMs, so no - this really is an SLV," he said. (Reporting by Hyun Young Yi, Hyonhee Shin, Ju-min Park, and Josh Smith; Writing by Josh Smith and Angus MacSwan) Flash An estimated 100 million vulnerable children face climate change impacts in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). "Nigeria is the second most vulnerable country worldwide in terms of children's exposure to climate change. About 100 million children are confronted with the harsh realities of rising temperatures," Farah Mahmud, the chief field officer for UNICEF in Nigeria's northwestern state of Kano, told the media Monday. In light of this development, the UN agency has developed an action plan from 2023-2027 to address certain issues of climate change and the vulnerability of children while integrating climate change in all its interventions across sectors, Mahmud said. "The effective implementation of the projects in Nigeria would build resilience to climate change." According to the UNICEF official, about 1 billion children are at "extremely high" risk of the impacts of the climate crisis globally. To ensure resilience to climate change, the UN agency had resolved to integrate climate change in whatever projects it implemented, he said. "Nigerian children are also confronted with flooding, drought, and severe storms," he added. Incident at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing in Niagara Falls Incident at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing in Niagara Falls (Reuters) - An explosion at on Wednesday at the Rainbow Bridge connecting the United States and Canada at Niagara Falls on Wednesday was likely caused by a reckless driver, according to early assessments, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. (Reporting by Ted Hesson, writing by Dan Whitcomb, editing by Jasper Ward) The State Border Guard Service of Ukraine showed how they save the lives of their comrades on the front line Ukraine's State Border Guard Service provided a glimpse into the life-saving efforts of its medical teams operating on the front lines in a video posted to Facebook on Nov. 22. Ukrainian border guards of the Steel Frontier Brigade of the Offensive Guard face a variety of war injuries: from contusions to serious bullet or shrapnel wounds. Read also: The team says the work of a military medic is significantly different from what their colleagues in civilian life deal with. In the combat zone, you have to take care not only of the wounded, but also ensure your own survival. "We save lives," said a medic with the Steel Frontier Brigade, call sign Sava. Without us, there would have been many more casualties and much more severe injuries. 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 Claim: A photograph taken on Feb. 4, 1978, shows then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter sledding at Camp David, Maryland. Rating: Rating: True It was Feb. 4, 1978. The president of Egypt was in town, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter was spending the afternoon flying down a hill on a toboggan at Camp David. It sounds unbelievable, but it's true Carter, 54, spent the morning talking with President Anwar Sadat and then the afternoon playing in the snow with his daughter, according to photos from the National Archives. Camp David, the president's private retreat in northern Maryland, has long been used as a meeting ground for diplomatic talks, most famously by Carter himself when he brokered the Camp David Peace Accords between Sadat's Egypt and Israel, represented by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in September 1978. But as the photographs from Feb. 4 prove, September wasn't the only month the Egyptian leader visited Camp David. News articles from the weekend of Feb. 4 - 5, 1978, explain that Carter had invited Sadat to Washington, D.C., and to Camp David to better understand the Egyptian leader's goals and expectations if they were to discuss peace with Israel in the future. But going to Camp David meant a bit of a retreat for the presidential family, regardless of who else was there. Additional photos show the former president pulling the toboggan for his daughter Amy and one of her friends. Photographer Karl Schumacher's film roll is titled "Winter Games at Camp David," and all of the photos, including Carter meeting with Sadat in the morning and then burning off steam in the afternoon, are viewable online through the National Archives. Sources: The Burlington Free Press 05 Feb 1978, Page Page 8. Newspapers.Com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/200267147/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2023. The Lexington Herald 03 Feb 1978, Page 22. Newspapers.Com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/686253470/. Accessed 21 Nov. 2023. https://legacy.catalog.archives.gov/id/10610729. Accessed 21 Nov. 2023. By Ju-min Park SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea vowed on Thursday to deploy stronger armed forces and new weapons on its border with the South, pulling back from a 2018 military accord designed to curb the risk of inadvertent clashes between two countries that remain technically at war. Pyongyang's statement came a day after South Korea suspended part of the same inter-Korean agreement and resumed frontline aerial surveillance of North Korea in a protest over Pyongyang's launch of a spy satellite. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2018? The so-called Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA) signed between the two Koreas was the most substantive deal to result from months of historic meetings between leader Kim Jong Un and then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in. On Sept. 19, 2018, South Korea's defence minister and his North Korean counterpart signed the CMA in the North's capital, Pyongyang, accompanied by polite applause from the onlooking leaders. Under the CMA, both countries agreed to "completely cease all hostile acts against each other" that are the source of military tension and conflict, by implementing military confidence-building measures in the air, land, and sea domains. The measures included the two sides ending military drills near the border, banning live-fire exercises in certain areas, the imposition of no-fly zones, the removal of some guard posts along the Demilitarized Zone, and maintaining hotlines. On the ground, both sides agreed to completely cease artillery drills and field training within 5 kilometres (3 miles) of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) between the countries. At sea, the two sides installed covers on the barrels of naval guns and coastal artillery and closed gun ports in a buffer zone along the sea border. MILITARY DEAL IN DOUBT With inter-Korean and denuclearisation talks long stalled, recent drills and shows of force along the fortified border between the Koreas have cast doubts on the future of the measures, which were meant to reduce tensions. South Korea had accused Pyongyang of violating the agreement after North Korean artillery shells fell into a maritime buffer zone that was supposed to be free of live-fire drills under the agreement. The North then said South Korea had resumed the use of propaganda loudspeakers at the border in violation of the agreement. South Korea denied the accusation. Kim Myung-soo, nominee for South Korea's chairman of joint chiefs of staff, said last week that the 2018 agreement limited his military's surveillance of North Korea and live-fire drills near the maritime border. DROP THE DEAL Just as North Korea's launch of a spy satellite further ratcheted up tensions on the Korean peninsula, the two Koreas are walking away from a confidence-building pact aimed at cutting the risk of accidental military clashes. South Korea's national security council said this week it planned to "suspend the effect of Article 1, Clause 3" of the 2018 military agreement, enabling Seoul to restore reconnaissance and surveillance activities along the border. Under that clause, both countries agreed to establish no-fly zones close to their border. South Korea's military had restarted aerial surveillance in border areas, which had been conducted before the agreement was signed, the defence ministry said. South Korea said, however, its decisions on whether to take further actions to pull out of the military agreement would depend on the North's follow-up moves. Meanwhile, North Korea said its army "will never be bound" by the pact, ripping up the agreement and vowing to restore all military measures it had halted under the 2018 deal. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Ed Davies and Gerry Doyle) LAKELAND, Fla. - Music is one of the most powerful spiritual tools there is. When a Lakeland pastor found, at a young age, that she was blessed with a beautiful, powerful voice, she hoped to someday use it to make a difference. READ: It's time for the 9th Annual Turkey Gobble runs in Tampa Whether singing in church or performing for millions on national TV, Pastor Lis Burns is truly living her dream job, using her voice to help others find theirs. Words can mean one thing when you speak them. But when you sing them, it's a whole different message. "I think music is sort of the universal language in that way," Burns said. "It really and truly brings people together." Burns was born in New York City, surrounded by song. "My dad is one of nine children [in] the Munizzi family," Burns said. "They are all musical. Everybody sings. Everybody plays instruments. Growing up, music was really just part of everything we did." FAITH IN ACTION: Polk ministry helps adults with disabilities gain independence Her family moved to Florida when she was six. Even as a child, Lis Burns knew she was destined for ministry. She studied music at Southeastern University, sang professionally in theme parks, and even through a battle with cancer, she found high notes on her lowest days. "I remember thinking, I'm going to do this. And I would pump myself up with music," Burns said. In 2007, she and her husband, Dr. Jason Burns founded Access Church in Lakeland, growing it from a Bible study in their living room to a place that thousands now call home. "We try to say that the church fully comes alive for you when you are serving," Burns said. Though members are used to seeing her with a mic in hand, she recently got the chance to share her gifts and story on a whole different stage, competing on FOX's Don't Forget the Lyrics. Between songs, she spoke about the church, her journey with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and her father who continues his fight against cancer. "My dad is currently going through cancer," Burns said on the show, "and I would love to be able to help him financially, so he doesn't have to worry about medical bills." Afterward, she said, "It wound up being such a cool, positive thing because I was hoping maybe somebody watching is going through cancer right now or maybe somebody needs to hear, you can do this, you can make it." When all was sung and done, she walked away with $150,000. "It was such a dream come true," Burns said. The first thing she did with the prize was share with the church and give back to her parents. She's also looking forward to some time away with her husband and three kids. "I haven't bought the car yet," Burns laughed. "I said I was going to get rid of my mom van, but I think I'm having a harder time letting her go. 'Van-essa' is her name." Whether at church, the coffee shop, or rocking out on TV, Pastor Lis looks for any opportunity to strike a chord with people in need of a little harmony. "There's some people that will never necessarily open their Bible and read scripture, and yet even they know, oh wow, this music did something to me. It made me feel good," Burns said. She spends her days lifting her voice while lifting those around her. READ: Kentucky man who escaped custody in Tennessee spotted in Pinellas County: FBI investigators "The world is hard and sad, and we hear so many bad things," Burns said, but when we go outside of ourselves, when we serve others, I really feel like life begins to come alive. And if you're looking for that joy, I feel like that's the secret." Access Church is located in South Lakeland on Florida Avenue South, and they have some exciting news. They'll soon be opening a second location in north Lakeland with construction hopefully finished by February. Do you know someone who's living out their faith and using it to make a positive impact? We are looking for Faith in Action stories all around the Tampa Bay area. Just reach out to Haley.Hinds@fox.com. Chart showing age and sex of the 208 hostages by Hamas as identified by AFP, indicating whether they are being held, released or dead (Laurence SAUBADU) Israeli and Palestinian families were torn between hope and fear Wednesday following an overnight deal to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Under the terms of the deal, Palestinian militants will release 50 hostages, all women and children kidnapped during the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, in exchange for the freeing of 150 Palestinian prisoners, made up of women and teenagers. But beyond the fact they would be released at a ratio of three prisoners for every hostage, little is known about how and when they would be freed -- although it will happen during a four-day pause in the fighting. Israel has published a list of 300 prisoner names eligible for release, but no such information has been released by Hamas, sparking a welter of emotions on both sides. "We are very happy that a partial release is pending," said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum which represents the 240 or so people snatched on October 7, among them women, children and elderly people. "As of now, we don't know exactly who will be released when." There are at least 35 children among the hostages, 18 of them aged 10 and under, according to an AFP count, as well as more than 50 women. "We don't know who will get out because Hamas will release the names every evening of those who will get out the next day," said Gilad Korngold, whose eight-year-old grandson Naveh and granddaughter Yahel, three, are among seven family members held captive. "We don't know anything but we have to stay at home. That's what they told us," he told AFP, the tension evident in his voice. "Until I see them with my own eyes, I won't believe what anyone says." His words were echoed by Shemi Calderon, whose nephew Ofer is being held in Gaza. "We're happy there is a deal, but they're not here until they're actually here," he said. "Let's hope this madness will end as soon as possible for everyone." One Palestinian mother from Beit Safafa was also struggling to put her feelings into words after her daughter Malak's name appeared on the list. "I'm nervous and worried, I don't know how to describe my feelings," said Faatina Salman, whose daughter was 16 when she was arrested on her way to school for trying to stab a policeman in Jerusalem. "I'm afraid that something will happen to the deal, and at the same time I can't believe I'll be able to hold hug her after eight years in prison," she said of her daughter who is now 23. - 'Pain in my heart' - The hostages have become a focal point of Israel's massive military campaign in Gaza after Hamas militants stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians and snatching hundreds of others in the worst attack in Israel's 75-year history. Since then, Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and hit Gaza relentlessly, with the Hamas-run government saying more than 14,000 people have been killed, two thirds of them women and children. Another mother from annexed east Jerusalem said she was delighted her daughter was coming home after serving half of her 16-year sentence in an Israeli jail, but admitted she had "mixed feelings" over the high price that secured her release. "I cry, laugh, and tremble... I had hoped that she would come out in a deal, and this year I kept imagining her walking through the front door," Sameera Dwayyat said of her 26-year-old daughter Shruq. "At the same time, there is great pain in my heart. I wish she had been sentenced for 10 more years and we hadn't lost a single child in Gaza." On the list of prisoners slated for release are 33 women, 123 boys under 18, and 144 young men aged 18. All are from the occupied West Bank or east Jerusalem and none had "blood on their hands", Israel has said. In Tel Aviv, supporters of the hostage families expressed relief at the breakthrough, but shared deeply mixed feelings that the deal did not involve all those who had been abducted. "We are happy for everyone who is being released, but we're still thinking about all the people who are left behind," 42-year-old teacher Marva Tovia told AFPTV. "It's really heartbreaking, I feel torn." bur-hmw/jkb Thomas Hand (left) said: Every day she must be asking why daddy hasnt come to save her" Families of hostages are enduring an agonising wait to discover if their loved-ones will be released on Thursday as part of Israels ceasefire deal with Hamas. Ten to 13 hostages will be handed over on each of the next four days under the terms of the agreement, with children expected to be prioritised. A nine-year-old Irish girl was yesterday reported to be among those in line to be released, as was an American three-year-old who was orphaned in the Oct 7 massacre. They are two of 39 children believed to be held in Gaza. Hamas claims it is only holding 30 children, and says it has not been able to locate additional hostages who were captured by rival factions such as Islamic Jihad. Hopes were kindled on Tuesday evening after an Israeli TV reporter read out live on air a purported government list of 50 hostages, predominantly women and children, expected to be released this week. However, the Israeli prime ministers office later denied any knowledge of such a list. Government sources said Hamas may only disclose the identities of those they plan to free each day at the time of them being released, or shortly before. Children first Emily Hand, an Irish-Israeli nine-year-old, was nevertheless hoped to be one of those freed. Earlier in the week her father Thomas Hand gave an emotional press conference in which he said: Every day she must be asking why daddy hasnt come to save her. Meanwhile the US-based family of three-year-old Abigail Mor Eden appeared hopeful that she would be home within the next couple of days. The toddlers parents were murdered by terrorists when they overran the kibbutz of Kfar Aza. Her two siblings hid for 14 hours before being rescued. It is understood that the Israeli government expects children who were kidnapped along with their mothers to be released alongside their parents, although analysts have suggested that Hamas has not agreed to this. It was reported that soldiers specially trained in childrens welfare will be deployed to greet the returning child hostages. Israels Haaretz newspaper said that one soldier would be assigned to each child or family, to ask if they were cold, hungry or thirsty, emphasise that they were safe and only touch them with their express permission. A legal challenge from families of Israeli victims of Palestinian violence yesterday failed in a legal challenge to block the hostage release deal. The Almagor association had claimed that the Governments decision intensified the risk of the recurrence of serious acts of terrorism to which all the citizens and residents of the country are exposed. The Court said it rejected the petition outright on the grounds that the hostage deal was a political issue. All we have to do is pray Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, families spoke of a harrowing roller coaster of emotions, with some hitting out at a lack of information from the Government. Relatives of Amit Soussana, who was abducted from the kibbutz of Kfar Aza, said they had only learnt about the details of the deal from watching the news. Her mother said she did not believe her daughter, whom Hamas terrorists dragged out of a closet, would be among the first to go free because she is a single woman. Her sister, Shira, said: Its a nightmare. We dont know what will happen next. All we have to do is pray. Neither Israel nor Hamas has provided an official list of the 240 hostages thought to be held in Gaza. The Israeli authorities have notified some of the relatives of those being held, while others who believe friends or family members are among the hostages have not been officially informed. Thirty-nine of the hostages identified are 18 years old or younger. A baby boy called Kfir Bib, who is less than a year old, is believed to be the youngest. Yesterday, activists with yellow ribbons, that became a symbol of the hostages families movement, gathered in the area of Tel Aviv that has become known as Hostages Plaza. A religious group set the table for every individual being held by Hamas, putting flour on each plate for the ritual of baking challah. Im not going to believe it until it happens Shemi Kalderon, whose nephew Ofer together with his 16-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son were abducted from the kibbutz of Nir Oz, was rallying outside the Israel Defense Forces headquarters with the pictures of his relatives on Wednesday night. This is a roller coaster that has been going on for too long, Mr Kalderon said. Of course, it gives us some hope that [the] kids will come back. But Im not going to believe it until it actually happens. The deal caused profound soul-searching in Israel, as many feared that the ceasefire, whether it holds for four days or longer, could derail the operation to eradicate Hamas. Israel has said the truce could be extended as long as an additional 10 hostages were freed per day. However, Mr Kalderon, who served 40 years in the Israeli armed forces, said taking a pause in fighting for the sake of releasing at least some of the hostages was the right thing to do. I know the army inside out, he said. Im sure they can pick up where they left off. Theyre already in Gaza. Theres no going 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. The family of Nancy Ng, a 29-year-old who went missing last month while on a yoga retreat in Guatemala, says theyre grateful that one of the final people to see her finally shared details with the media last week. Younger sister Nicky Ng, 27, said her family isnt ruling out the possibility that Nancy drowned in Lake Atitlan after an account from Christina Blazek, a witness who spoke through an attorney. But they now have more questions than answers, Nicky told NBC News. G. Christopher Gardner, Blazeks attorney, said in an interview with KABC-TV of Los Angeles last Wednesday that his client had tried to warn Nancy of the lakes rough waters when they were out kayaking right before she disappeared. Neither Blazek nor Gardner responded to NBC News request for comment. Blazeks comments through her lawyer are a start in helping determine Nancys whereabouts, Nicky said, but the family said they are hesitant to accept the account at face value and are hoping that Blazek will come forward with a statement of her own. She said the family has not heard back from either Blazek or Gardner. I dont know how much my family can accept that statement if its not backed up or confirmed by authorities, Nicky said. Whatever shes sharing with her attorney, I dont believe its something thats under oath. And its maybe even his interpretation of what she told him. She added: At the end of the day, what we want is more information so that we can direct our search team. Nancy Ng poses for a photo in front of a mural in Guatemala. (Family photo) Nancy went missing on Oct. 19 during a Be the Change yoga retreat organized by Los Angeles instructor Eduardo Rimada, Nicky said. She went off on a kayaking excursion in Lake Atitlan. Gardner told KABC that Blazek, who also attended the retreat, happened upon Nancy kayaking on the lake and attempted to warn her that the conditions werent safe for swimming. In Blazeks account, Gardner said, Nancy ignored the warnings, got in the water and pushed her kayak away from herself in the process. Blazek then said she attempted to help retrieve Nancys kayak and it was in those moments that Nancy disappeared. [Blazek] kept one leg in her kayak and one leg in [Nancys] kayak and tried to get back to her ... and got close to her, Gardner told KABC. And then apparently, [Blazek] lost the kayak again and she turned around to go back to get the kayak again, and when she turned back around, Ms. Ng was gone. Rimada told NBC News in a text message that Nancys disappearance weighs heavy on my heart. I am not ready to speak publicly yet but I have been in clear communication with Nancys family and the authorities in Guatemala since the very beginning, Rimada said. The FBI conducted interviews to help bring closure to the Ng family that I was also completely forthcoming with. Gardner told KABC that Blazek tried to get help and also cooperated with local authorities. She was told she needed to talk to the police, and she went and gave a full statement to Guatemalan police, said Gardner. They told her there was nothing that could be done. Apparently that lake is known for having people drown on it. NBC News reached out to the Guatemala prosecutors office but did not receive a response and cannot independently verify Blazeks account. The FBI said in a statement that it is in communication with the Guatemalan government and is assisting them with the investigation. Additionally, the agency told KABC that they are not aware of any evidence of foul play and witnesses were cooperating. And while the State Department confirmed that there is a missing U.S. citizen at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, they declined to share further details about the case due to privacy considerations. But Blazeks account has prompted new questions from the family and resurfaced some theyve had since the day of the accident. Nancys a good swimmer. I dont understand how this could have happened. Was she struggling for a long time? Did Christina hear her scream or yell for help? Nicky said. What was the scope? The circumstances? Did she just disappear? Was there a land nearby that she could have swam? I had no context or not enough context of what was going on. So those are the same questions we still have today. And they havent been given information about Blazeks police report that she said she filed, Nicky added. According to a report from the Solola Prosecutors Office, excerpts of which have been seen by NBC News, Blazek was unable to provide testimony at her summons on Oct. 20, as she had already left for the U.S. The account comes after the family unsuccessfully attempted to connect with Blazek over emails, seen by NBC News, first on Oct. 25 and Oct. 31. Black Wolf Helicopters, the private search-and-rescue firm hired by the family to continue efforts on the ground, released Blazeks name in a press release on Nov. 13, to encourage her to come forward, Nicky said. And the next day, Nicky said her family saw Blazeks lawyer in the media, the first time they had heard from her. Gardner gave an explanation in the interview as to why Blazek might not have come forward until weeks later. [Nancys family members] tell her they understand she has been through a traumatic experience but then they tell her she needs to come forward to assist authorities ... and they say in the same email if she doesnt come forward theyll make her come forward, the attorney told KABC. The family, however, disagrees with Gardners characterization of their attempts to contact her. The email from Oct. 31 reads, Please help us to understand what happened and bring Nancy home. If you fail to cooperate, we will pursue this matter further. I think we expressed the urgency of it, Nicky said. And said that we would just further pursue this matter, I think as any family would do, to involve the authorities to get more information. It is an active case. Its an open missing persons case and yet, the only witness to this missing person isnt isnt being more forthcoming. Nicky added, I think thats an appropriate response from a family thats waited two weeks to hear from this person. Nancys disappearance has been devastating for the family of six, Nicky said. When we think about the [possibility of] drowning, my dad, he takes it really hard because he taught Nancy how to swim, Nicky said. I think theyre taking it really hard, and at the same time, theyre trying to be strong for me and my brothers. Nicky added that the search for Nancy, who worked with special needs children in the Alhambra Unified School District in Southern California, has been difficult for the students she was close with as well. We have had a lot of her clients parents reach out to us and just say Nancy had a special connection with their child and that their child now doesnt understand why Nancys not back, Nicky said. As the search continues, her family hopes that others will spread the word about Nancy and honor her infectious spirit, Nicky said, describing the beloved sister as a lover of the environment and animals who never failed to live in the moment. She will stop by the side of a road to pick up litter or to pick up a bottle to recycle. She cares so much about the environment. And shes just an inner child on the outside. She will literally dance in the rain, Nicky said. For now, Nicky said, the family is going to do all they can to keep Nancys story alive. And this Thanksgiving, theyre leaving a seat at the dinner table for her. I keep thinking, what would Nancy do? Nicky said through tears. I know she wouldnt give up when its in the name of someone she loves. She will go above and beyond for that person. So Im just trying to do right by her. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Dutch far-right populist leader Geert Wilders, who has called for a referendum on leaving the EU and vowed to stop all immigration to the Netherlands, has won a shock victory in parliamentary elections held on Wednesday. The victory for Mr Wilders, sometimes dubbed the Dutch Donald Trump, is sending shockwaves across Europe and represents a dramatic lurch to the right for a country once seen as a beacon of tolerance. The anti-Islam politician will now seek to form a new ruling coalition to become the country's first far-right prime minister. With 98 per cent of votes counted on Thursday morning, Mr Wilders Freedom Party (PVV) had won 37 seats out of 150, well ahead of 25 for a joint Labour/Green ticket and 24 for the conservative Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte. The Freedom Party will still need to form a coalition government, but has already more than doubled the 17 seats it won at the last election. I had to pinch my arm, a jubilant Mr Wilders said in a victory speech. Voters said, We are sick of it. Sick to our stomachs, he said, adding he was now on a mission to end the asylum tsunami, referring to the migration issue. The Dutch will be No 1 again, he said. The people must get their nation back. Immigration the issue that triggered the collapse of Mr Ruttes cabinet after 13 years in power has been one of the dominant talking points in the election campaign. Mr Rutte was the countrys longest-serving prime minister, but faced a steady decline in popularity. Mr Wilders election programme called for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, a total halt to accepting asylum-seekers and migrant pushbacks at the Dutch borders. The populist with dyed blonde hair said in a television debate during the election campaign: Its been enough now. The Netherlands cant take it any more. We have to think about our own people first now. Borders closed. Zero asylum seekers. A self-proclaimed fan of Hungarys far-right Victor Orban, Mr Wilders is also explicitly anti-EU, urging the Netherlands to significantly reduce its payments to the bloc, and to stop the entry of any new members. He has also repeatedly said the country should stop providing arms to Ukraine, saying it needs the weapons to be able to defend itself. None of the parties he could potentially form a government with shares these ideas. Mr Wilders called on other parties to engage in coalition talks, although both the VVD and the upstart centrist New Social Contract party the Freedom Partys most likely partners have raised serious concerns about working with the far-right. Pieter Omtzigt, a former centrist Christian Democrat who built up the New Social Contract party in just three months to take 20 seats, said he would always be open to talks. Frans Timmermans, the leader of an alliance of the centre-left Labor Party and Green Left, which was seen winning 25 seats, said Mr Wilders should not count on a coalition with him. We will never form a coalition with parties that pretend that asylum seekers are the source of all misery, Mr Timmermans was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. And in the coming days and weeks we will increasingly see how difficult, how important, how essential our task is to stand up for the Netherlands where we exclude no one, to stand up for the Netherlands where we embrace everyone to stand up for the Netherlands, where we do not look at what your background is, what your religion is, what your skin color is, he added. Hungary's nationalist prime minister on Wednesday congratulated Mr Wilders, saying the "winds of change are here". Congratulations to Geerts Wilders and the PVV for their spectacular performance in the legislative elections which confirms the growing attachment to the defence of national identities, said French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. It is because there are people who refuse to see the national torch extinguished that the hope for change remains alive in Europe, she added. Spains far-right politician, Santiago Abascal, added: More and more Europeans demand in the streets and at the polls that their nations, their borders and their rights be defended. Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister of Italy, said, "a new Europe is possible. In 2016, Mr Wilders said he wanted to ban all Islamic symbols, mosques and the Quran, although in this election campaign he has been seeking to soften his image in the hope of entering government, which some voters said they liked. He said recently that opposing Islam remained at his partys core but concerns over the cost of living, improving care for the elderly and limiting immigration were what he focused on now. His enduring popularity since he created PVV in 2006 has pushed ruling parties over the years to give the Netherlands one of Europes toughest immigration policies. Abroad, his comments about the prophet Mohammed and calls for the Quran to be banned led to sometimes violent protests in countries including Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt. He was convicted of discrimination after insulting Moroccans at a campaign rally in 2014. Death threats against him mean he has lived under heavy police protection for years. Alejo Vidal-Quadras says the Iranian regime wants to sweep us away from the Earths surface - Thierry Charlier/AP Photo A Spanish politician shot at close range in Madrid earlier this month has accused Iran of attempting to assassinate him. Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a co-founder of Spains hard-Right Vox party and the former head of the centre-Right Peoples Party in Catalonia, was shot in the face in the wealthy neighbourhood of Salamanca on Nov 9. The 78-year-old is an ally of the Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an exiled opposition group. On Wednesday, Mr Vidal-Quadras said Tehran was behind his attempted murder in a message delivered to a conference organised by Iranian opposition supporters. Let me remind you [of the methods] the Iranian regime uses to impose its malignant will upon us, he said in a statement read to European parliamentarians. These included to plot and execute terrorist attacks as the one I have recently suffered. Police at the Madrid street where Alejo Vidal-Quadras was shot in the face earlier this month - NACHO DOCE/REUTERS Mr Vidal-Quadras, who remains in hospital recovering from a double jaw fracture, did not offer any proof to back up his claim and police have not confirmed his theory. A former European Parliament vice-president, he is also known for his opposition to Catalan separatism. Irans embassy in Madrid said it firmly condemns any kind of terrorist operation, though it did not immediately comment on his claims. British woman detained Three people were detained on Tuesday in Andalusia as part of an investigation into the shooting in which the gunman fled the scene on the back of a motorcycle ridden by an accomplice. The trio, a British woman and two Spanish men, were being transferred to Madrid on Wednesday to appear before an investigating High Court judge. Police sources told the El Pais newspaper that Mr Vidal-Quadrass connection to Iran remained an open line of investigation. Supporters of Alejo Vidal-Quadras hold candles in his honour after the assassination attempt - SUSANA VERA/REUTERS EU must not appease Iranian regime The veteran politician also called on Wednesday for a change in the EU policy towards the Islamic Republic to avoid trying to appease, to negotiate, to dialogue and to make concessions. The Iranian regime does not want to find some balance of power between us; it wants to sweep us away from the Earths surface, he said. In October 2022, Mr Vidal-Quadras was placed on an Iranian sanctions list in retaliation for European Union penalties imposed on the country following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. Aminis death triggered months of nationwide protests that posed one of the boldest challenges to Irans theocracy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Tehran blamed the demonstrations on a foreign conspiracy, without providing evidence. Ms Amini had been detained for allegedly violating Irans hijab rule. 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. Flash Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, holds the First China-Uzbekistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue with Uzbekistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bakhtiyor Saidov, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 21, 2023. [Photo/Xinhua] Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held the First China-Uzbekistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue with Uzbekistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bakhtiyor Saidov on Tuesday in Beijing. The two sides had comprehensive and in-depth communication and reached broad consensus on implementing the important consensus reached by the two heads of state and strengthening the synergy of development strategies, and jointly announced the establishment of a strategic dialogue mechanism between the two countries' foreign ministers. Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said that China and Uzbekistan are friendly neighbors with a shared future. No matter how the international situation changes, the bilateral relations have maintained sound and steady development and are full of vitality. The close interaction between the leaders of the two countries shows the high level and particularity of China-Uzbekistan relations, and also demonstrates the distinct features of the bilateral relations represented by mutual respect, good-neighborliness, solidarity and mutual benefit, Wang said. China is ready to work with Uzbekistan to make good use of the new platform of China-Uzbekistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue, advance all-round mutually beneficial cooperation and speed up the building of a China-Uzbekistan community of shared future, Wang said. Wang called on the two sides to consolidate the belief of solidarity and mutual trust, promote common development, cultivate the public opinion for everlasting friendship, and safeguard peace and stability. Saidov said that Uzbekistan cherishes the solid mutual trust between the two heads of state and the friendship between China and Uzbekistan and supports the global initiatives proposed by China, and will continue to abide by the one-China principle, firmly support each other and deepen strategic mutual trust with China. Uzbekistan expects to comprehensively deepen all-round cooperation with China and push the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level, said Saidov. The two sides also agreed to further strengthen coordination within multilateral frameworks such as the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, promote the building of China-Central Asia mechanisms, and safeguard regional peace, development, security and stability. The two sides also exchanged views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A man who escaped from a prison transport van in Tennessee over a month ago and was recently spotted in Western North Carolina facing multiple charges of sex crimes against women and children, has been captured in Pinellas County, Florida, the FBI says. After being spotted at a department store in Sylva on Nov. 17, Sean Christopher Williams, 51, was seen in Pinellas County Nov. 21 and taken into custody later that day, per the FBI. Williams was apprehended without incident after being tracked down by a K-9 officer and his partner, the FBI said in a social media post. Sean Williams TBI photo According to the FBI, Williams is a concrete and glass business owner who was originally born in Florida and has ties to Cullowhee, North Carolina, and Johnson City, Tennessee. The man was wanted for escaping a transport van while being moved from a detention facility in Kentucky to the federal courthouse in Greenville, Tennessee. He was in federal custody for three counts of production of child sexual abuse material and one count of distribution of cocaine. Initial reporting: Former WNC man charged with child rape escaped prison transport van, still on the run Williams was placed in a transport vehicle by a detention officer in Laurel County, Kentucky, but when the transport van arrived at the Greeneville courthouse around 8:30 a.m. Oct. 18, the detention deputy discovered the back window of the van had been kicked out, court records say. After his escape, Williams was seen several blocks from the courthouse in Greeneville, asking a resident to borrow a phone, according to the FBI. Williams was on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations Most Wanted list for two counts of rape of a child, sixteen counts of esp. aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor and three counts of aggravated sexual battery (under 13). Williams spotting: FBI: Prison escapee charged with child rape spotted in Sylva, Jackson County The apprehended escapee was federally indicted on Sept. 12 for producing visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office of the Eastern District of Tennessee. Prior to his escape, a trial was set for Jan. 23, 2024, according to the release. Beyond his child sex charges, Williams is at the center of two lawsuits that allege the Johnson City police knowingly failed to investigate multiple complaints from alleged sexual assault victims. Williams is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting more than 50 women, according to reporting from The Tennessean. Police Chief Steve Lillard at Western Carolina University Police Department, an agency that previously arrested Williams, told the Citizen Times, In the investigation that we assisted with it appeared that the majority of the crimes that had victims were in the Tennessee area based on what was shared with us. Escapee on the loose: Escapee charged with child rape, seen in WNC, evades capture 34 days later: What we know Ryley Ober is the Public Safety Reporter for Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at rober@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @ryleyober This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Fugitive wanted child rape spotted in Sylva captured in Florida Law-enforcement officers secure the roadway leading to the Rainbow Bridge after a vehicle exploded at the Niagara Falls International Rainbow Bridge border crossing between the United States and Canada in Niagara Falls, N.Y., on Wednesday. Photo by Pat Cray/EPA-EFE Nov. 22 (UPI) -- New York Gov. Kathy Hochul worked to "dial down the temperature" Wednesday, saying there's no indication of a terrorist attack after two people died in an explosion on the Rainbow Bridge -- one of the busiest U.S.-Canadian crossing spanning the two nations. "At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist attack," she said. "Let me repeat that: At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist-involved attack here at the Rainbow Bridge in Western New York. We're not aware of any threats to this area, but state the caveat that the investigation is ongoing." Hochul said law-enforcement experts from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection came to the conclusion after examining the scene. They did not find any evidence of online threats or any group taking credit for the crash. "You're going to hear me say 'at this time' a dozen times because it is still unfolding, but I didn't want to leave the public with a lot more anxiety than they needed to have," she said. Hochul said the video from the crash was almost unbelievable: At 11:27 a.m. a car was traveling at an "extraordinarily high rate of speed," went airborne over an 8-foot fence and through a median, crashing into a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol booth. The car and the booth immediately burst into flames. After the fire, the only thing left of the car was the engine. A vehicle exploded on the Rainbow Bridge, U.S.-Canada crossing in Niagara Falls. Photo by Daniel Mayer/Wikimedia Commons "I saw the video of an airborne vehicle that was absolutely surreal. You actually had to look and say, was this generated by AI? Because it was so surreal to see how high in the air this vehicle went and then the crash and the explosion and the fire," she said. Hochul said one of the people in the vehicle was a resident of western New York, adding the injured Border Patrol officer was treated at a local hospital and released. She said people from around the world have been closely watching the crash in aftermath of the surprise attack on Israel that's put the nation on edge. Hochul said the Rainbow Bridge will remain close while the investigation continues but nearby bridges have opened. "The world is watching to find out what happened here," she said. "There's a lot of unanswered questions here, but at this time we just need to dial down the temperature right now." Earlier, Canadian government officials said they were operating under the assumption that the crash was terrorism. Canadian Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said the government was taking the explosion "extremely seriously," and the White House said it was monitoring the situation closely, as well. U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland had been briefed about the incident. At one point, a live feed showed law enforcement blocking off portions of the roadway near the bridge. A man and woman charged with operating a commercial sex ring that catered to wealthy and prominent clients in Massachusetts and the suburbs of Washington D.C. will remain behind bars for now, a judge said on Wednesday. Junmyung Lee, of Dedham, and Han Lee, of Cambridge, will continue to be held after agreeing to voluntary orders of detention during their hearing in federal court in Worcester in connection with the recent dismantling of the high-end brothel network. Both Han and Junmyung returned to the custody of USMS. The pair made an initial court appearance earlier this month when they waived their right to a preliminary hearing. In an affidavit filed in support of keeping the pair behind bars, Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Zachary Mitlisky wrote, I believe that Han and Junmyung pose a risk of flight and should be detained pending trial. I believe this based upon, among other things, the strength of the case and evidence against them, the nature of the offense and corresponding elements of deceit, their financial resources (both known and unknown), their lack of genuine ties to the community, their inability to work and support themselves due to their immigration statuses, and the potential penalties they face upon conviction. Junmyung and Han were arrested in early November after federal investigators busted brothels at luxury apartments in Watertown and Cambridge, as well as Tysons and Fairfax, Virginia. Acting Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Josh Levy said the brothels, which were promoted on Bostontop10.com and BrowneyesgirlVA.blog, brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars for the operators. The websites listed the height, weight, and bust size of women available for appointments and depicted nude and semi-nude photographs of each, Levy noted. The women were also listed as available on the websites and were updated frequently to include coming soon or open to reflect the impending arrival of new women arriving in the area. These three individuals made hundreds of thousands of dollars running this ring, Levy said during a news conference that was held to announce the arrests. This case goes back to the summer of 2020 when investigators identified several buyers. Those who purchased sex services included politicians, pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors who possess security clearances, professors, lawyers, business executives, technology company executives, scientists, accountants, retail employees, and students, according to Levy. Pick a profession. Theyre probably represented in this case, Levy said. They are the men who fueled this commercial sex ring. None of the clients have been charged, and authorities have not publicly named any of them. Investigators said that there are potentially hundreds of yet-to-be-identified customers. At the time of the news conference, Levy stressed that the investigation is in the early stages and said that prosecutors are committed to holding accountable both those who ran the scheme and those who made purchases. Levy said buyers paid upward of $600 per hour for services and some even paid a monthly membership fee to be pre-cleared for sex in a process similar to TSA PreCheck. In the detention filing, Mitlisky alleged that Han was the leader and organizer of the interstate prostitution network. In that capacity, among other things, Han communicated with and recruited women to travel interstate and engage in commercial sex for cash in Boston and eastern Virginia, Mitlisky wrote in the detention filing. She maintained the websites and business records associated with her organization, she maintained the brothel units (both in Massachusetts and in her regular travels to Virginia) and has been seen picking up and dropping off females, dropping off supplies, paying for the rent and utilities, and entering and exiting the units regularly. She concealed over one million dollars in prostitution proceeds. During the execution of the search warrants at the six different brothel locations -- four in Massachusetts and two in Virginia -- investigators said they recovered multiple Asian women who were assigned stage names and advertised for commercial sex. According to Mitlisky, a search of Hans apartment ended with the seizure of bulk quantities of condoms stored in bags and cardboard boxes, boxes of bulk-purchased lubricants, lingerie, UTI testing kits, pregnancy testing kits, mouthwash, fake eyelashes, over $22,000 in cash, ledgers, multiple cell phones, dozens of gifts cards, laptop computers and thumb drives, three sets of keys containing eight keys and seven key fobs, financial records, various bills and documents, and receipts of money orders. Han maintained ledgers detailing the daily activity of her brothels. At the time of the search warrant execution, one such ledger was open to a page showing the stage names, appointment dates, times, and earnings of the women, specifically Tina and Yoko DDD, who were then-listed on the Virginia brothel website, Mitlisky wrote. Simply stated I do not believe that Han has legitimate employment but I do believe she has made an astounding amount of money running her prostitution business over the last several years. Mitlisky said investigators also identified two active checking accounts held in Hans name at Bank of America, and that records for the accounts were reviewed from December 2019 through October 2023, during which time about $965,000 was deposited into the two accounts. A third person charged in the case, James Lee, was arrested in California and has yet to appear in court in Massachusetts. 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 A specialized FBI unit has recovered more than 20,000 stolen or fake art and memorabilia valued at over $900 million since 2004. The bureau's Art Crime Program works behind the scenes to recover some of the world's most prized pieces that pit agents against dangerous, transnational organized crime groups, such as the Mafia and Russian organized crime, with tens of billions of dollars at stake. Recoveries include Monet, Rembrandt and Dali paintings, an original Charles Dickens novel, Judy Garland's ruby slippers in "The Wizard of Oz," a 1952 World Series ring and 13th century Native American artifacts, among thousands of other items. "Art and cultural property crime leads to billions of dollars in losses every year," Ellen Ferrante from the FBIs Office of Public Affairs said during an FBI podcast released in November. "And art crime can involve a number of illegal activities, like theft, fraud, looting and trafficking of art across state or international lines." MINNESTOA MAN CHARGED WITH STEALING RUBY RED WIZARD OF OZ SLIPPERS WORN BY JUDY GARLAND Kristin Koch, the supervisory special agent and program manager of the FBIs Art Crime Program, said art crime involves all types of investigations, including stolen art from a museum, frauds and forgeries, antiquities trafficking and violations of Native American protection laws. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP "Many art crime matters involve violations of federal law," Koch said. "The art crime market worldwide is a tens of billions of dollars industry every year in the illicit market. And the illicit market is also very large. So, whenever there's money involved, there's usually crime involved." REAL-LIFE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT CASE OF ARNE CHEYENNE JOHNSON SCARED US S---LESS: LAWYER Ferrante said FBI agents run up against organized crime groups from around the world during the investigations and recovery of these items. "Although tremendous strides have been made to combat cultural property crime, intelligence reveals this is a growing global threat, demanding proactive FBI measures and resources," Ferrante said. The FBI Art Crime Program investigates art fraud and other illicit art-related activities, which is estimated to rake in tens of billions of dollars for criminals. Koch added that organized criminal groups are largely responsible for trafficking stolen items from overseas to the U.S. and vice versa. "There are a number of art crime investigations that are being conducted or have been conducted by the Art Crime Team that involve [transitional organized crime] TOC actors, such as the Mafia, Russian organized crime or other organized criminal groups throughout the United States," Koch said. The "Wizard of Oz" slippers were stolen in 2005 and not recovered until more than a decade later in an FBI sting operation. The slippers of which only four authentic pairs remain were on loan to the Judy Garland Museum in the late actress' hometown when someone climbed through a window in 2005 and broke the display case, prosecutors said. POLICE RESCUE WOMAN FROM SERIAL KIDNAPPER IN SHOCKING BODYCAM VIDEO At the time, the slippers were insured for $1 million, but the current market value is about $3.5 million. Terry Jon Martin, 76, was indicted in May on one count of theft of a major artwork. He pleaded guilty in October and is awaiting sentencing. WATCH THE FBI'S BEHIND-THE-SCENES INVESTIGATION OF RUBY SLIPPERS Another criminal who was brought down and ultimately convicted of selling fake Andy Warhol paintings is Massachusetts man Brian Walshe. He was on house arrest for that case when he allegedly killed his wife, Ana Walshe, on New Year's Day. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. BRIAN WALSHE IS CALCULATED GUY WHO LACKS EMPATHY, ART SCAM VICTIM SAYS Koch referred to this case during the podcast, without naming Walshe, but explained the complexities of the case and how many figures were involved. "Through investigating that case, not only did we find that he had sold some fake paintings to the dealer in Los Angeles, but he had sold some fake paintings to a number of other individuals," Koch said. That included "an individual in France, another individual in Massachusetts and the paintings that he was using to make the fakes that he had basically stolen from a friend of his that was living in Korea." The FBI did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for more information. Fox News Digital's Emmett Jones contributed to this report. Original article source: FBI squad targeting sinister art underworld saves Monet, Yankees memorabilia (BCN) Federal agents seized $9 million worth of cryptocurrency linked to a cyber scam organization that has exploited more than 70 victims, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of California said Tuesday. Before the seizure, the Justice Department and the U.S. Secret Services field office in San Francisco traced the Tether cryptocurrency, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, to addresses allegedly linked to a group that scammed its victims through romance and cryptocurrency confidence schemes, the U.S. Attorneys Office said. Court documents showed that members of the cyber scam organization convinced their victims to make cryptocurrency deposits by deceiving them that they were making investments with trusted firms and cryptocurrency exchanges. The victims then found out late that these so-called firms and cryptocurrency exchanges are non-existent platforms. Sam Altman returns as CEO of OpenAI These scammers prey on ordinary investors by creating websites that tell victims their investments are working to make them money. The truth is that these international criminal actors are simply stealing cryptocurrency and leaving victims with nothing, Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri of the Justice Departments Criminal Division said in a statement. Secret Service agents discovered the funds were quickly laundered through dozens of cryptocurrency addresses and exchanged for several different cryptocurrencies, which federal prosecutors note is a money laundering technique known as chain hopping. These techniques are used to layer the proceeds of criminal activity into new cryptocurrency ecosystems, all to obfuscate the nature, source, control, and ownership of those proceeds. The seized funds were linked to numerous victim reports made via the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and Federal Trade Commissions (FTC) Consumer Sentinel Network, the U.S. Attorneys Office said. U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey said his office is working further with partner agencies to seize cyber criminals illegal proceeds. Silicon Valley remains one of the worlds preeminent locations for cryptocurrency firms. As such, we remain dedicated to using all tools at our disposal to bring justice to the victims of frauds and scams, he said in a statement. According to the U.S. Attorneys Office, company Tether Limited Inc. assisted in the seizure of the cryptocurrency from the cyber scam group. Copyright 2023 Bay City News, Inc. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4. Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, right, speaks to an attendee at an employer engagement forum in Jackson, Mississippi. Associated Press Feds are probing Sheriff Bryan Bailey's role in an officer's DUI dismissal, Mississippi Today reported. Bailey won reelection in Rankin County, Mississippi, this month after facing calls to resign. Five deputies from Bailey's department were convicted of torturing Black people earlier this year. Federal authorities are looking into whether or not Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey had a role in getting another cop's DUI dismissed. The Mississippi county gained national notoriety after five officers from the department were convicted for torturing Black people earlier this year. On March 12, state troopers arrested officer Steven Frederick on a charge of driving under the influence, Mississippi Today reported. Frederick who is dating Bailey's daughter ran over three road signs before crashing a state-owned vehicle into a ditch, the outlet reported. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Rankin Sheriff's Department did not immediately return Business Insider's requests for comment. Highway patrol video reviewed by Mississippi Today showed that Frederick had a blood alcohol level of 0.15 at the time of the crash and refused medical attention at the scene. Covington County Sheriff Darrell Perkins ordered Frederick to be released to Sheriff Bailey without bond less than an hour after he arrived at the Covington County Jail, the local outlet reported. Perkins told Mississippi Today that Bailey said he took Frederick to the hospital. On August 9, a Covington County Justice Court judge dismissed the case against Frederick after state trooper Daniel Loftin failed to appear in court, Mississippi Today reported. After the hearing, authorities learned that Bailey had contacted a prosecutor and asked what would happen if a trooper failed to appear at a DUI hearing, to which the prosecutor replied that the case would be dismissed, Mississippi Today reported. Frederick is an officer for Mississippi's controversial Capital Police division. In March, the state legislature voted to expand the division's patrol area to include the entire city of Jackson. The expansion was a "centerpiece of efforts" for majority-white Republican state officials to have more control over law enforcement in the majority-Black capital city led by Democrats, NBC News reported. History of violence in Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey's department Bailey who won re-election this month after running unopposed has resisted repeated calls to resign over his department's history of violence. On August 3, five Rankin sheriff's deputies, all part of the so-called Goon Squad, pleaded guilty to federal charges related to an attack on two Black men earlier in the year. The group broke into the home of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in Braxton, Mississippi, on January 24 without a warrant. The officers then beat and sexually assaulted the two men before one deputy Hunter Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, according to court documents obtained by BI. The sheriff's department is also facing a lawsuit the family of Pierre Woods, a Black man who deputies shot to death in February 2019 outside his home. Two of the convicted "Goon Squad" officers, Elward and Christian Dedmon, were also present during Woods' shooting in 2019, according to the lawsuit. BI also previously reported the deaths of Damien Cameron, Cory Jackson, and Trevor McKinley . Cameron, a Black man, died while in the custody of the sheriff's department in July 2021. Cameron's mother told BI that police beat him, Tased him, and knelt on his back for 15 minutes while he complained he could not breathe. Jackson died in May 2021 after a sheriff's deputy arrested him while he was experiencing hallucinations and refused to take him to the hospital, his family told BI. In August 2021, deputies shot McKinley, Cameron's high-school classmate, inside his grandparents' home. In December 2021, while responding to a call of a drug overdose, deputies also shot and killed Robert Rushton, who police said was armed with two knives. A fifth man, Adam Coker, died in the Rankin County Jail in September 2021. Read the original article on Insider Since the attacks by Hamas militants on Israel on Oct. 7, U.S. intelligence officials say the war abroad has "sharpened the focus of potential attacks" in the U.S. and are reminding Congress that it is running out of time to reauthorize a key provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Section 702 of the act, which allows the government to collect the communications of certain foreigners abroad without a warrant, including text messages, emails and phone calls, expires on Dec. 31. The government has been pressing for its renewal over the objections of a number of Republicans and Democrats who distrust the provision for different reasons. FBI Director Chris Wray said in a hearing on worldwide threats earlier this month that 702 is a critical tool to protect the homeland from hostile foreign threats. "Loss of this vital provision, or its reauthorization in a narrowed form, would raise profound risks," said Wray. "For the FBI in particular, either outcome could mean substantially impairing, or in some cases entirely eliminating, our ability to find and disrupt many of the most serious security threats." In the GOP-led House, Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio have both been vocal critics of Section 702. In 2022, they wrote to Wray to call for reforms to address concerns they had about FBI oversight of the program and their fear that the FBI has disregarded Americans' constitutional rights in the course of using the authority. Republicans and Democrats alike are concerned about the conversations of Americans swept up under Section 702. In collecting communications of foreigners outside the U.S., the information of Americans who are in contact with these foreigners may also be gathered. Intelligence agencies cannot target Americans without a warrant because it would violate the Fourth Amendment. Court review of intelligence collection, reports to Congress, and reviews by intelligence community inspectors general are all mechanisms intended to prevent 702 misuse, but critics point to past FBI failures. In 2018, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) reported that the FBI had conducted thousands of queries for Americans' data without proper justification. In response, the FBI implemented remedial measures, including changing its query procedures and conducting internal audits. It also mandated harsher consequences for unauthorized queries by FBI employees. The FISC acknowledged it was encouraged by the FBI's reforms and concluded these efforts were consistent with the requirements of the 702 statute and the Fourth Amendment. "It's going to be constant learning and adapting to ensure that there's a protection of American civil liberties," said Josh Skule, former FBI executive assistant director of intelligence and now, the current president of Bow Wave LLC, a national security services company. In April, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released data showing that FBI searches of U.S. citizens' electronic data under the warrantless surveillance program plunged significantly in 2022, after the FBI's reforms were implemented. Searches dropped from more than 3.4 million in 2021, to just over 204,000 in 2022, a decline of nearly 94%. FISA Section 702 origins Section 702 was enacted by Congress in 2008 to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to address the advent of email and cell phones. Terrorists, the DNI points out, including those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, had email accounts serviced by U.S. providers, which meant that prior to 702, the government had to meet a probable-cause standard to obtain these communications. The provision gives the government the authority to collect this information foreigners abroad without a warrant and authorizes targeted surveillance of non-U.S. persons believed to be outside of the U.S. Jill Sanborn, strategic advisor and national security expert who served as the FBI's executive assistant director for national security, said national security measures would look vastly different without this tool. "I remember the world without 702," Sanborn said. "If we don't have this tool, the ability to protect the American people will decrease exponentially because we will not have a collection authority that allows intelligence officials to get ahead of the various foreign intelligence threats transiting the U.S. telecommunication infrastructure." Section 702 has contributed intelligence to high-priority missions, including the operation against al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022, which disrupted planned terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda at home and abroad, according to the intelligence community. And the statute also led to the takedown of Chinese hackers attempting to access U.S. critical infrastructure and uncovered plots by Iranian adversaries to kidnap and assassinate U.S. citizens and government officials. Skule said only a handful of successful 702 examples are unclassified, but they demonstrate how vital the provision is in thwarting national security, cyber and counterintelligence threats. "Look at Colonial Pipeline are we ok with gas pumps on the East Coast shutting down repeatedly?" Skule said. "We don't get to the investigative background on cases like that without 702." Sanborn agreed, saying the ability to connect dots and have an intelligence picture to help fend off or respond to intrusions like the Colonial Pipeline cyber attack would be nearly nonexistent without 702. "Most people don't realize that 702 doesn't just help thwart terrorism and threats of violence, but it also allows intelligence agencies like the FBI to alert companies that their systems may have been compromised by a foreign adversary," Sanborn said. Some in Congress want more changes to 702 By the time Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess, it will have about a month to act before the provision expires. Some lawmakers are calling for more changes to 702. A bipartisan group of senators and House members introduced a bill earlier this month that would reauthorize the provision for four years with significant changes, including requiring a warrant with limited exceptions. The exceptions include imminent threats, defensive cybersecurity purposes and locating and rescuing hostages. "Our bill continues to give government agencies broad authority to collect information on threats at home and abroad, including the ability to act quickly in emergencies and settle up with the court later," Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, one of the bill's cosponsors, said in a statement. "But it creates much stronger protections for the privacy of law-abiding Americans, and restores the warrant protections that are at the heart of the Fourth Amendment." The lawmakers say the bill has the backing of dozens of civil society organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which has supported allowing the law to expire without significant reforms and which sued unsuccessfully in 2013 to have the 702 provision declared unconstitutional. "This legislation would address the countless abuses of Section 702 we have seen from the government, and it would ensure the protection of Americans' Fourth Amendment rights," Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at ACLU, said in a statement after the bill's release. At the worldwide threats hearing, Wray expressed concern about this approach. Requiring warrants would lead to a "de facto ban" of 702 authorities, he said, with query applications either failing to meet court approval or taking too much time to be approved. A nation without Section 702 Despite the controversy, 702 reauthorization remains a top priority for government officials. The President's Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) assessed 702's effectiveness and provided a set of recommendations for the president's consideration. The Board said that allowing Section 702 to lapse could lead to "one of the worst intelligence failures of our time" and also recommended measures to help restore trust in the tool, rather than eliminating it. "No one is saying we shouldn't have reforms or not fix things that need improvement," Sanborn said. "What it comes down to is this: can the United States afford a self-inflicted intelligence failure? Because if Congress lets 702 lapse and it results in an attack or a significant foreign cyber intrusion on our soil, it will be self-inflicted." Could Brightline be a model for high-speed rail in U.S.? Thanksgiving turkey recipe that cooks in under 2 hours Binance CEO pleads guilty to federal charges Susan Murabanas life-changing moment happened at 22 years old, when she looked through a telescope for the very first time. Suddenly, Saturn and its yellow-gold rings were more than just an illustration in a textbook; they were real and the experience was powerful. The opportunity came while she was a student volunteering with Cosmos Education, a non-profit dedicated to improving science learning in developing countries. By traveling with the organization to schools and villages in her home country of Kenya and helping teach young children, her love for astronomy was sparked. I thought I was going to inspire them [the children], she said. Instead, I was inspired too. In 2006, Murabana joined a teacher training program called Global Hands-On Universe, where she led a space education project. Four years later, she completed an online Masters degree in astronomy from James Cook University in Australia, before being invited to the University of California as a short-term scholar. Here, she realized she wanted children in Africa to be as exposed to opportunities as children in the US were. Seeing the access to all these opportunities for kids planetariums, science centers, festivals and everything else I wanted to bring back that, she said. I wanted to have something sustainable and Kenyan that the Kenyan community would like. Travelling Telescope In 2014, Murabana and her husband Daniel Chu Owen set up the social enterprise Travelling Telescope. Combining Susans experience in education and public outreach with Owens passion for astrophotography and his knowledge of telescopes, the Travelling Telescope is an educational program designed for young children in underserved and remote communities. With just a telescope and a mobile inflatable planetarium, they aim to change lives by giving children a chance to see Saturn, the moon, and various constellations, whilst teaching them basic science and astrophysics. Daniel Chu Owen and Susan Murabana, co-founders of Travelling Telescope. - Daniel Chu Owen, Travelling Telescope Theres a satisfaction you get from going to a school, talking to the children, and seeing their reaction and their anticipation, said Murabana. A 12-year-old boy in eastern Kenya even told us, I used to think scientists lie, but now I believe in science. Creating change Murabana and Owen would love to inspire more Kenyans to be involved in the space industry, and dream of seeing the first Kenyan in space. Owen says most Kenyans arent aware that the country is involved in space research, but in 2018 the Kenya Space Agency deployed its first satellite into orbit from the International Space Station, and a satellite station in Malindi, on the coast of southeastern Kenya, is used by the European Space Agency for satellite tracking. Murabana believes astronomy, or even simply the act of looking up at the sky, establishes an awareness of the need to protect our planet, which can create a generation of more informed leaders. They say the first environmentalists were astronauts, said Owen, because they were the first ones to see the planet in its entirety. We are bringing that home in a way looking out at space helps us look at our own planet much more objectively. A Masaai man watches the stars, while nearby elephants look on. - Daniel Chu Owen, Travelling Telescope But there is also a more personal motivation for Murabanas work combatting the perception that astronomy is a Western science. When she was volunteering with Cosmos Education, the team had graduate students from the UK and US but no one else from Africa. Despite Murabanas passion for astronomy, she felt she didnt belong. It wasnt until a few years later, when she attended a solar eclipse viewing and a related conference in Ghana themed African Cultural Astronomy, that her perceptions changed. The history of astronomy in Africa can be traced back for millennia, and includes the ancient Egyptians and the Dogon people of Mali. Everything I was having access to in terms of astronomy was Western, like the moon landings, and we still dont have astronomy textbooks that have come from the African culture, she explained. So going to this conference and learning about how traditionally, different African cultures have looked up to the sky and tried to make sense of it was just empowering. I felt like I belonged, and that Africans could also be a part of this. Cosmic hill Murabana and Owen fund Travelling Telescope by running astro-tourism services, which include camping trips, called Star Safaris, and astronomy nights for paying tourists. They are in the process of buying a piece of land in Kenya, away from light pollution, on which theyre hoping to create what they call a cosmic hill. I would like to build an observatory there, explained Owen, and invite people to come and learn about space and watch special events like meteor showers. I want to have a little base, somewhere for us to sit and enjoy the sky with whoever wants to share it. So far, over 400,000 people have looked through the Travelling Telescope and the pair want to amplify their impact by reaching more schools. For Murabana, the dream is that every child, at least once in their lifetime, gets the chance to have a lesson under the night sky. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com Fieldworker shot in the hand in Porterville, police say TULARE, Calif. (KGPE/KSEE) A field worker woman was shot in the hand in Porterville on Tuesday and is in recovery in the hospital, according to Tulare County Sheriffs Office. After 12:15 p.m. on Tuesday, deputies were called to a shooting on Vineyard Avenue near 15 and Road 200, just west of Porterville, where field workers were harvesting grapes. Officers say when they arrived at the scene, they learned a man in a gray Honda drove up and began firing toward an empty canal, about 100 yards away from the field workers. A 45-year-old woman, one of the workers, was shot in the hand and is in recovery at a local hospital with minor injuries according to police. Police say the suspect is on the run and is described as a man in his mid-20s, driving a gray Honda. The investigation is ongoing at this time. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Tulare County Sheriffs Office at (559) 733-6218. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to YourCentralValley.com. The battles around Krynky in the lower reaches of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast are extremely unpleasant for the Russian army, although they are smaller in scale than some other battles in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Source: UK Ministry of Defence on Wednesday, reported by European Pravda Details: UK analysts stated that fighting continues around the village of Krynky in Ukraines south, where Ukrainian marines hold a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River. Ground fighting is characterised by confusing, disorderly infantry clashes and artillery duels in difficult forested terrain. Ukraine has been particularly effective in its use of small attack drones, while the Russian Air Force has been flying a significant number of sorties in support of frontline troops, mostly launching munitions from outside the range of Ukraine's air defence system. The fighting around Krynky is smaller in scale than some of the major battles of the war, but it will be seen as extremely unpleasant by the Russian leadership. Quote: "Russia withdrew from the west bank of the Dnipro River a year ago, almost certainly aiming to hold Ukrainian forces west of the river, keep the sector quiet, and free up Russian forces elsewhere." Background: The day before, the UK Ministry of Defence noted that Russia had accumulated significant stockpiles of cruise missiles ahead of winter. UK intelligence also believes that the frontline in Ukraine is unlikely to change in the near future. Support UP or become our patron! Flash China remains the most powerful engine of global growth due to its strong resilience, ample potential and strong vitality of the economy, the reform and opening up policy, and the huge Chinese market, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular press conference on Tuesday. Just as some friends from the business community have said, China has become a synonym of the best investment destination, and the "next China" is still China, Mao added. Mao's remarks came after some foreign media reports that China's actual use of foreign investment dropped by 9.4 percent year-on-year in the first 10 months of this year and some foreign companies intend to move industrial chains out of China. China will improve the mechanisms for protecting the rights and interests of foreign investors, further shorten the negative list on foreign investment and fully ensure national treatment for foreign investors, which sends out a strong message about China's continued expansion of opening up, Mao cited what President Xi Jinping has stressed at the APEC CEO summit as saying. We invite businesses from across the world to invest and cultivate success in China, the spokesperson said. FILE PHOTO: Locals sit on a wall situated on the foreshore of the harbour in the Fiji capital of Suva By Kirsty Needham SYDNEY (Reuters) -Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka told parliament on Wednesday the Pacific Islands nation was likely to collaborate with China on a key port modernisation and shipyard project, after discussing it in a meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping. Fiji previously sought Australia's involvement to build a modern ship-building facility at Lautoka, officials and a consultant to Rabuka on the project told Reuters. China is the world's largest shipbuilder, accounting for half of all ships built this year. The pace of expansion of its navy has concerned Australia, which has donated dozens of patrol boats to its Pacific Islands neighbours to boost surveillance of their territorial waters. Rabuka told Fiji's parliament on Wednesday his government was focused on upgrading infrastructure, "particularly the modernisation of port facilities and shipyards". "I anticipate potential collaboration with China in that endeavour, given China's globally competitive shipbuilding," he said. Rabuka met Xi for the first time on the sidelines of the APEC forum in San Francisco last week. He said on Wednesday Fiji supports China's vision for global security, and that Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative "aligns with our nation's development agenda". Discussions were underway to address Fiji's "debt crisis" responsibly, he added. Fiji has external debt equivalent to 56% of gross domestic product, most of which is owed to multilateral development banks. The amount also includes FJD$375 million ($167 million) of China EXIM bank loans taken out almost a decade ago. An Australian-based ship design company said Rabuka had earlier sought the involvement of Australia, Fiji's largest aid donor, in the shipyard project. Sea Transport chairman Stuart Ballantyne said his company had received a request from Fiji for a fleet of commercial ships it could assemble locally. Ballantyne said he had advised Rabuka on the broad scope of the shipyard project, which would involve moving an "archaic" shipyard near Suva to the other side of the island, Lautoka, and constructing two undercover sheds. Rabuka wants to revive shipbuilding as a training ground for tradespeople in Fiji, from carpenters to electricians, Ballantyne said, adding he was unaware of any Chinese involvement. "If the Chinese have stepped up to the plate - they are the aggressors in the Pacific, the movers and shakers," he said. The Australian government has funded a feasibility study with Fiji Ports to explore redevelopment options at the Lautoka foreshore, including a barge landing and ship-building and maintenance facility. Fiji Ports chief executive officer Vajira Piyasena told Reuters the government had called for expressions of interest from investors for a joint shipyard venture in September. The government advertisement said the project would meet the government's shipbuilding requirements for five years, with a business model based on a joint venture with Fiji Ships and Heavy Industry, a subsidiary of Fiji Ports. An official said only local proposals had been received, and the official was not aware of any contract being awarded. Fiji Ports referred questions about China's involvement to Rabuka's office, which did not respond to requests for comment. China's embassy in Fiji did not respond to a request for comment. China has been pushing for greater security and trade ties with Pacific Islands countries. It has signed a security pact with Solomon Islands, raising alarm in the United States which responded by striking a defence deal with Papua New Guinea. China's policy on the Pacific Island nations fully respects the sovereignty and independence of those countries without attaching political conditions or empty promises, Xi said after meeting Rabuka last week. (Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Edwina Gibbs) Finland to close all but northernmost border crossing with Russia Finland to close all but northernmost border crossing with Russia By Essi Lehto HELSINKI (Reuters) -Finland will close all but the northernmost crossing point on its border with Russia from midnight on Friday in a bid to halt a flow of asylum seekers to the Nordic nation, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Wednesday. Since the beginning of the month, more than 600 people without valid travel documents to the European Union have come to Finland via Russia, prompting Helsinki to shut several crossings and accuse Moscow of funnelling migrants. The Kremlin denies the charge. "The government has today decided to close more border stations," Orpo told a press conference. The asylum seekers come from a range of nations including Yemen, Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, according to immigration authorities. The European Union border agency Frontex plans to deploy officers and equipment to Finland as soon as next week in response to a request from Helsinki, a spokesperson said. EU migration commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Tuesday Finland had asked for 60 Frontex officers on top of 10 already stationed along its 1,340-kilometre frontier with Russia. Earlier on Wednesday, Estonia accused Russia of involvement in "a hybrid attack operation" to bring migrants to its border, after 75 migrants - mostly from Somalia and Syria - attempted to enter from Russia since last week. The Baltic country said it had prepared to close border crossings if migration pressure from Russia rose, and to deal with migrants if they tried to enter outside official crossings. The Finnish border guard said on Wednesday that unauthorized entries continued at crossing points with Russia and had moved further north along the border to Vartius and Salla, two frontier stations that still accepted asylum applications. Finland said Russia was letting migrants through those two crossing points by foot despite an agreement that they could only be crossed by car. "There are growing signs that the situation is worsening on the eastern border," Orpo said. Finland will shut three of the four remaining border crossing points from midnight on Friday, leaving only the Raja-Jooseppi crossing in the Arctic open. All other crossings will be shut until Dec. 23, also for Finns wanting to enter Russia. "Raja-Jooseppi is the northernmost (border crossing) and it requires a real effort to get there," Orpo said. The government will seek to amend legislation that prevents it from closing the entire border, he added. President Sauli Niinisto said on Monday repatriating people who do not meet the criteria for asylum had become impossible and called for an EU-wide solution to stop uncontrollable entry to Europe's passport-free Schengen area. The Kremlin said on Monday it had lodged a formal protest over Finland's partial border closure, saying the decision reflected an anti-Russian stance. In 2021, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia accused Moscow's close ally Belarus of artificially creating a migrant crisis on their borders by flying in people from the Middle East and Africa and attempting to push them across the frontier - an accusation Belarus repeatedly denied. (Reporting by Essi Lehto; writing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; editing by Alexandra Hudson, Christina Fincher and Mark Heinrich) Finland will close all but the northernmost crossing on its border with Russia due to a rising number of asylum seekers, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Nov. 22, Reuters reported. The measure, which is to take effect on Nov. 24, follows Helsinki's accusations that Russia is orchestrating the influx of migrants as retribution for Finland's entry into NATO. Finnish media initially reported on Nov. 20 that Helsinki plans to close all four still open crossings with Russia. However, Orpo clarified that the Raja-Jooseppi checkpoint would remain open. "Raja-Jooseppi is the northernmost (border crossing), and it requires a real effort to get there," the prime minister said. Lying in Finland's northern reaches, Raja-Jooseppi is around 190 kilometers southwest of Russia's Murmansk and roughly 160 kilometers south of the Barents Sea. Join our community Support independent journalism in Ukraine. Join us in this fight. Support Us The Finnish Border Guard recorded a spike of asylum seekers arriving at the country's eastern border on Nov. 12. These migrants are foreigners who pass through Russia from third countries, such as Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Somalia. Some 600 migrants without proper documentation arrived in the country in November compared to a few dozen in the previous months. Finnish media also reported in September that Russia has been building up its military bases along the border with Finland. Helsinki has already reacted by the closure of some of its nine border crossings with Russia. The country's military also plans to construct fences at the Vartius crossing station. Reports of Moscow-orchestrated migrant crisis echo the strategy used by Belarus against its NATO neighbors. Minsk has been facilitating flows of third-country migrants to the Baltic countries and Poland since 2021. Read also: Trucker protests: Unraveling the standoff between Polish and Ukrainian haulers Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. The Finnish government has decided to close seven checkpoints on its border with Russia in response to the growing migration pressure and Russian border guards involvement in it, leaving only the most remote checkpoint open. Source: Petteri Orpo, Finnish Prime Minister, as reported by European Pravda with reference to Yle Details: In accordance with the Finnish governments decision, three more border crossing points will be closed in Kuusamo, Salla and Vartius on the land border between Finland and Russia on the night of 24-25 November. There will be only one crossing point on the Finnish-Russian border, Raja-Jooseppi, where asylum seekers will be able to apply for international protection. This border crossing point is the most difficult for Russians to reach and is open for only four hours a day. Background: Last Thursday, Finland decided to close the Vaalimaa, Nuijamaa, Imatra and Niirala border crossings due to a surge in illegal migration. They have been closed to traffic since Saturday. The decision to close seven checkpoints on the Finnish-Russian border will be valid until 25 February. Finnish border guards previously reported that in recent months, an exceptionally large number of people without entry documents had tried to enter Finland through checkpoints on the southeastern border. Media reports suggested that Finland was ready to close the remaining checkpoints still operating on the border with Russia on the night of 21-22 November due to Russia's weaponisation of illegal migrants. Support UP or become our patron! (Bloomberg) -- Finland will leave just one border crossing open on its frontier with Russia to stem a flow of asylum seekers seen as a hybrid operation masterminded by Moscow. Most Read from Bloomberg The Nordic country will close another three road checkpoints after already shuttering the four busiest ones last week, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Wednesday, citing a worsening situation. Only the northernmost crossing, Raja-Jooseppi in Lapland, will stay open starting in the early hours of Nov. 25, Interior Minister Mari Rantanen told reporters in Helsinki. The decision is unavoidable, she said, adding the government stands ready to do more if needed. Orpo had on Monday warned Russia that more border crossings would be closed if migrants continue to be brought there by Russian officials. Asylum seekers from countries including Yemen and Afghanistan have continued to arrive at Salla and Vartius check points, which are located in remote areas. Many come lightly clothed in freezing weather, most with bicycles, including childrens bikes, local media have reported. Their lack of gear and suitable vehicles indicates they are getting transport from Russia. Finlands government says the operation threatens national security, and on Saturday sealed the southeastern stretch of the border in response. Read More: Finland Closes Russian Border Crossings Citing Security Risk The newest member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization guards 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of border with Russia, the alliances longest stretch facing its main adversary. Finland updated its border guard laws last year to give authorities a toolkit to counter hybrid influence activities, including an arrival of exceptionally high number of immigrants in a short period of time or what they termed the instrumentalization of migration by a state. Thats after experiencing a similar operation in 2015 to 2016. Poland and Lithuania are among European Union members to have encountered the phenomenon. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. PLAINS TWP., LUZERNE COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) North River Street in Plains Township was shut down hours as firefighters battled heavy fire that broke out at an auto body shop. Victims identified after deadly Luzerne County fire As of 4:30 p.m., crews were battling a fire that happened at a former gas station and auto shop in the 1300 block of North River Street in Plains Township Tuesday. Traffic was backed up as the fire crews closed the road during rush hour and ran hoses across the roadway. Information on how the fire started is limited at this time. 282/22 News will update you with the latest as it is released. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to PAhomepage.com. COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) Columbus firefighters are on the scene of a fire at an oil refinery in east Columbus. According to the Columbus Division of Fire Deputy Chief Jeffery Geiter, firefighters responded to GFL Columbus Refinery on 4020 East 5th Avenue at approximately 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. Police ID person of interest in Grandview Heights death This embedded content is not available in your region. Geiter said firefighters were keeping other oil tanks on the property cool in an effort to prevent the fire from spreading; however, as of 9 p.m., the fire was not contained, but we are not seeing any further growth at this time. Geiter said about 75 crews battled the fire, which was extinguished by approximately 10 p.m. Crews are going to remain on the scene to ensure the fire does not reignite. Were in the process of identifying exactly what was on fire, Geiter said. Hazmat is just trying to identify what the product could be. And then its what precautionary measures, if needed, we would take, you know, to keep the environment safe. Sheetz $1.99 Thanksgiving gas: Can your car use it? No injuries were reported. A spokesperson with John Glenn International Airport, which is near the oil refinery, said because of the direction of the wind, the fire did not impact travel. Hazmat units were also dispatched to the scene, as was Columbus Public Health to test the air as a precaution. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NBC4 WCMH-TV. Prof Sir Jonathan Van Tam said that the first he heard of the Eat Out to Help Out Scheme was on the TV. Asked by Mr Keith if he was consulted about the scheme, he said: Absolutely not. The first I heard of it was I think on the TV. He added: Had I been consulted I wouldnt have made any distinction between Eat Out to Help Out and any other epidemiological event that brought different households into close contact with each other for the purposes of socialising, eating and consuming alcohol. That epidemiological effect is kind of agnostic to what was on the menu as it were. But I would have said this is exactly encouraging what weve been trying to suppress and get on top of for the last few months. It didnt feel sensible to me. 04:41 PM GMT Covid Inquiry has finished for today The Covid Inquiry has been drawn to a close by Baroness Heather Hallet. Thanks for following The Telegraphs live coverage. Check the website for the latest updates. 04:35 PM GMT Baroness Hallett denounces those who threatend Van-Tam Baroness Hallett, chairman of the Inquiry, told Sir Jonathan: I just want you to be reminded the vast majority of the population abhor such conduct and we are enormously grateful to you and your colleagues for the way in which you served the public of this country in a time of national emergency. So please ignore the violent criminal idiot element and remember the rest of us are grateful. 04:05 PM GMT Police asked me to move my family over death threats, says Van-Tam Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam has told the Inquiry that police asked him to move his family out of their home in the middle of the night following death threats during the pandemic. He said they were threatened with having their throats cut and he considered resigning from his job as deputy chief medical officer as a result. He said: The workload was horrendous - 16 hours a day, seven days a week... Where I think it finally got to me, I might have expected that if a crisis happened, this was my responsibility to have that kind of workload [but] I did not expect my family to be threatened with having their throats cut. I did not expect the police to have to say will you move out in the middle of the night, in the middle of the evening. Will you move out for a few days while we look at this and potentially make some arrests? We didnt move out because of the cat as it happened. It was a very stressful time. And my family didnt sign up for that. 04:03 PM GMT Van-Tam wanted to leave 'mark in the sand' by expressing concern over easing of restrictions Prof Sir Jonathan said he wanted to leave a mark in the sand by writing a letter to the Government expressing his concern over the easing of restrictions in May 2020. He was asked by Hugo Keith KC, inquiry counsel, about a joint letter he signed on May 26 2020 to Simon Case, the then permanent secretary in No 10, in which he acknowledged the damage being done to the health and welfare of society by virtue of the lockdown, but warned that easing of restrictions raised an intolerable risk. Multiple, small changes, appearing reasonable when examined in isolation, can easily lead to R going above 1, the letter read. Asked why he decided to sign the letter instead of continuing to give his advice orally to Government in his role as Deputy Chief Medical Officer during the pandemic, he said: I wanted to leave a mark in the sand here. He added that he wanted to lay down the trail in writing, and it was incontrovertible that we wanted to say that this needed to be taken very carefully. 03:26 PM GMT Public Health Englands risk assessment 'failed us', says Van-Tam Public Health Englands risk assessment failed us as Covid began to emerge, Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam told the Covid Inquiry. The former deputy chief medical officer said: One of the things that I think where the risk assessment system has failed us is that whilst it may be extremely accurate, and Im absolutely not calling into question the judgment of any of my PHE or wider health protection colleagues about the risk assessment, the problem is that it relates to the current moment. That unfortunately, when you then try and say, well, what does it mean for the future? You get into massive uncertainty, and thats part of the problem. But equally, it doesnt give any kind of flavour to the less experienced reader about what the range of possibilities kind of is in the future. Sir Jonathan added: I think its very unfortunate that (the risk assessment) can be read as, well, (the risk) is low, just forget about it. 03:21 PM GMT Lockdown should have been imposed up to 14 days earlier, says Van-Tam Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam said he believed lockdown should have been imposed seven to 14 days earlier than it was in March 2020. He told the inquiry that his instinct reaction on imposing national restrictions was not a day too soon. With the benefit of hindsight, he said, I think I reflect that these measures would all have been better certainly seven days earlier than they were, possibly a little longer than that. So somewhere in the kind of seven to 14-day window, that would have perhaps been a bit more timely. He said his view on this was a reference to all the countermeasures that were imposed in March 2020, up until and including the full lockdown. Asked by Baroness Hallett, the inquiry chair, whether he thought there was a chance the UK could have avoided the mandatory national lockdown had restrictions been imposed earlier, Prof Sir Jonathan said it was impossible to say, but that on the balance of probabilities there were probably no alternatives. 02:56 PM GMT Van-Tam spoke to other countries in January 2020, Inqury hears Prof Van-Tam has described co-ordinating the UKs Covid response with international partners in January 2020. 02:34 PM GMT Overwhelming workload during pandemic, says Van-Tam Sir Jonathan said he and others were overwhelmed by the horrendous workload during the pandemic. The former deputy chief medical officer added that he lost track of the number of meetings due to the sheer volume of them. 02:05 PM GMT And we are back... Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed the lunch break. Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam has been sworn in and is now being questioned. Jonathan Van-Tam is the latest former government adviser with a front-row view of the pandemic to give evidence to the Covid Inquiry. Mr Van-Tam was the deputy chief medical officer for England throughout the pandemic and played a significant role in the Governments response. Jonathan Van-Tam gives evidence to UK Covid inquiry 01:12 PM GMT Inquiry breaks for lunch The Covid Inquiry has taken a break for lunch and it is due to resume at 2pm. But if your appetite for Covid news still needs satiating, you can read a story by Associate Editor, Gordon Rayner, and Senior Reporter, Neil Johnston, on how a second lockdown could have been avoided, according to Prof Chris Whitty. The chief medical officer told the Inquiry that the second lockdown, which began on Nov 5 that year, was not necessarily inevitable. Here is the full story, enjoy. 12:42 PM GMT Vallance frustrated with Sturgeon breaking ranks with the rest of the UK Sir Patrick Vallance appeared frustrated over how Nicola Sturgeon broke ranks with the rest of the UK on face masks and schools in August 2020. In a diary entry on August 24 2020 shown to the inquiry, the then chief scientific adviser wrote: Scotland breaks ranks over face coverings and schools despite CMO having worked hard to get all CMOs aligned to a very good statement released before. It was announced at this time that pupils in Scotland would be told they must wear face masks in school corridors and communal areas - a policy that was not recommended by Public Health England at the time. Another diary entry by Sir Patrick Vallance described a meeting with Boris Johnson about giving financial incentives to people for self-isolating in September 2020 which descended in chaos. The entry from September 8 2020 read: I made the point about having to give incentives for self-isolation - PM agreed and said he would take it up with Cx (the Chancellor) afterwards. Chris and I were aligned and presented what needs to be done. I left the call. Apparently it descended into chaos and CMO not clear where it will land. Asked about the note, Sir Chris said although he did not recall the exact meeting, the general tenor of this is one which I recognise. 12:39 PM GMT Sunak challenged on Eat Out to Help Out in Commons At Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday, Rishi Sunak was challenged on whether scientists were consulted about Eat Out to Help Out. It followed Sir Patrick Vallance telling the Covid Inquiry that Sunak hadnt asked for advice on the scheme despite him telling the Commons that scientists were consulted at all stages of pandemic planning. Mr Sunak said: There is an ongoing statutory inquiry into Covid and its absolutely right that process is followed, and I look forward to giving evidence in the coming weeks and addressing all those quesitons. 12:12 PM GMT WhatsApp 'an appalling mechinism' for discussing technical issues, says Whitty Prof Sir Chris Whitty said the messaging app WhatsApp was an appalling mechanism for discussing technical issues during the pandemic. He told the Covid Inquiry on Wednesday: We didnt do very much technical stuff on WhatsApp unless it was extremely straightforward, like there have been three new cases or something of that kind. For something that has greater scientific subtlety... WhatsApp would be would not be an appropriate approach for trying to do that. 11:31 AM GMT Second lockdown could have been avoided, says Whitty Sir Chris said a second lockdown could have been avoided if more action to stop the virus had been taken earlier. Asked by Mr Keith that in Public Health terms if the government had an option, he said by the time of the second lockdown in November 2020 there were few options. He said: By the time it got to the stage of the second lockdown given the principal aims of ministers to minimise mortality, I couldnt see many options. Whether other decisions could have been taken earlier to prevent it I think is in a sense quite an important question. But in terms of once we got to that point, I think the realisation was there wasnt really much choice. Sir Chris was asked if a circuit breaker in September or introducing the tier system earlier there remained a possibility the second lockdown might not have been necessary or might not have been as long. I think most people would say thats the case, he said. I think there are a variety of ways we could have potentially at least had a less onerous lockdown than we did on the second one, the third one my view, because it was a new variant I think, I would say probably we didnt have any choices, but on this one I thought it was inevitable by the time we got there, but it wasnt necessarily inevitable had previous decisions been different. 11:13 AM GMT Whitty can't recall Eat Out to Help Out discussions, Inquiry hears Boris Johnson has previously told the Covid Inquiry that the Eat Out to Help Out scheme was properly discussed, including with top scientists. However, Sir Chris asserted that neither he nor the then chief scientific adviser were ever advised on the scheme, which was the brainchild of the then chancellor Rishi Sunak. Asked about Mr Johnsons claim in his witness statement to the inquiry that it was properly discussed, Sir Chris said: Neither Patrick nor I can recall it, and I think we would have done. Sir Chris also told the inquiry he made clear in his written evidence that there was no consultation with he or Sir Patrick Vallance over the scheme before it was introduced in autumn 2020. 10:47 AM GMT No major revelations in Whitty's evidence, writes The Telegraph's Associate Editor Gordon Rayner We have now had more than a day of evidence from Prof Sir Chris Whitty and his reflection on what happened in 2020 is that restrictions should have been put in place several days earlier, writes Associate Editor Gordon Rayner. Sir Chris has told the Inquiry that if we were to run this again with the benefit of everything that is now known about the progress of the virus, he would have brought in the March 16 measures days earlier, but not weeks earlier. On that day Boris Johnson urged people to work from home and avoid pubs and restaurants. A week later he issued his stay at home order to start the first national lockdown. He said: I think we would have brought in the 16th of March measures several days earlier. Not a long time earlier, but several days earlier. And personally, I would have added into those the measures on stopping hospitality. Anyone who hoped Sir Chris was going to bring major revelations to the Inquiry or admit to major errors will be disappointed with his evidence so far, which has been markedly free of the sort of criticism that former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance made of ministers earlier in the week. 10:39 AM GMT Talking about 'lockdown fatigue' unhelpful, says Whitty Sir Chris said talking about lockdown fatigue in press conferences was one of the biggest communications errors he made during the pandemic. The chief medical officer said his communications on the issue had been really poor and it was probably my most prominent communications error. He said the idea of the public becoming exhausted from restrictions was already in the general sphere, but a debate was triggered by Sage in part by me talking about it foolishly in press conferences in early May 2020. The end result of that, he told the inquiry, was a statement by Sage firmly that this should not be taken as a reason to delay an action. Sir Chris said he was told off by his behavioural science colleagues as the way he had phrased it, he said, implied it had come from them, which it absolutely had not. They also pointed out to him that he had explained the idea very poorly, and Sir Chris discouraged others from talking about it in public. The concept was not unreasonable, he added, but linking it to the first lockdown was really unhelpful and thats entirely on me on this one. 10:32 AM GMT Government Covid communications around herd immunity 'upset' Britons, says Whitty There were communication errors around the idea of herd immunity, which upset and confused the public, the Covid Inquiry heard. Sir Chris Whitty said: I dont think I ever saw anybody on the record, or anybody sensible, aiming for herd immunity as a goal. I definitely made communication errors through the pandemic, but my view was this was an area where communications were a long way from helpful to the public - which is really what this should be about because it gave an impression the government was pursuing a policy which it absolutely was not pursuing. And reasonably, people were upset about that policy because it would have been the wrong policy, but it wasnt the policy. 10:11 AM GMT Whitty says Downing Street not 'seized of urgency' in early stages of pandemic Sir Chris Whitty told the Covid Inquiry he is not convinced that all parts of the Downing Street machinery was seized of the urgency of action against Coivd in early March 2020. He said: What I think people were really not able to conceptualise was how exponential growth would turn from those apparently smaller numbers, still each one a tragedy, but smaller numbers to really very large numbers in an extremely short period of time because of the doubling time. Elaborating on which part of the system may not have fully understood, Sir Chris said: I think actually it was a relatively widespread lack of understanding of where we were going ahead. I think the people who had been heavily involved in looking at this, and you know certainly Mr (Dominic) Cummings, and many others, I think had realised by now that this was heading in a very difficult direction. But I dont think everybody in the building did. He added: This was a lot of people really not getting what exponential growth was actually going to mean. 09:56 AM GMT Herd immunity a 'ridiculous goal', says Whitty Sir Chris Whitty said that pursuing a policy of herd immunity in March 2020 was a ridiculous goal and very dangerous. Asked if he cautioned against public debate over herd immunity by Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the Inquiry, and whether it needed wider context, Sir Chris said it caused confusion and would have led to huge loss of life. He said: Well, my view was it was a clearly ridiculous goal of policy and a very dangerous one, and I thought a lot of what was being said could have led to considerable confusion, and indeed did, and I think, you know, Ive laid out several times in public and I did say in my statement my view that it would have been inconceivable, led to extraordinary high loss of life. 09:54 AM GMT The Covid Inquiry gets worse by the day, says The Telegraph's Allison Pearson The scientists are throwing bamboozled Boris under the bus, but their focus on flattening the curve ended up flattening a whole society, writes The Telegraphs Allison Pearson. Read the full article here. 09:45 AM GMT Van-Tam arrives at Inquiry Prof Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, the former deputy chief medical officer for England, has arrived at the Covid Inquiry. He is expected to give evidence on Wednesday. Former deputy chief medical officer for England Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam arrives at Inquiry - Shutterstock/TOLGA AKMEN 09:43 AM GMT Questioning of Sir Chris has begun Questioning of Sir Chris Whitty has resumed for a second day to give evidence at the UKs Covid inquiry. 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. MEMPHIS, Tenn. Five people have been arrested on various drug-related charges in Tiptonville, Tennessee according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. The investigation started back in March 2022 when TBI agents and investigators started looking into drugs being distributed within Lake County. Charges dismissed in former DeSoto County lawmakers killing After gathering evidence, on November 13 the five people were charged after a Lake County Grand Jury returned indictments. The following were booked into the Lake County Jail: Michael W. Sneed, 38, of Jonesboro, Arkansas is held on a $2,000 bond and is charged with two counts of Manufacture, Delivery, Sell, and Possession of Schedule II (Methamphetamine). Kaprice Hart, 40, of Tiptonville, Tennessee is held on a $30,000 bond and is charged with one count of Manufacture, Delivery, Sell, and Possession of Schedule II (Cocaine). Jack W. McKenzie III, 37, is held on a $20,000 bond and is charged with two counts of Manufacture, Delivery, Sell, and Possession of Schedule II (Methamphetamine). Gregory J. Rivers, 62, of Tiptonville, Tennessee was released on their own recognizance and charged with two counts of Manufacture, Delivery, Sell, and Possession of Schedule II (Methamphetamine). Mark A. Davidson, 50, of Tiptonville, Tennessee was released on their own recognizance and charged with two counts of Manufacture, Delivery, Sell, and Possession of Schedule II (Methamphetamine). The Lake County Sheriffs Office, Drug Task Force, and the Dyersburg Police Department also assisted the TBI with this drug investigation. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WREG.com. At Chisinau airport, five people were detained who tried to take parts for Soviet armored vehicles to Turkey Five passengers aged between 30 and 57 were detained in Moldova by Chisinau Airport customs officers while trying to smuggle parts for Soviet military vehicles to Istanbul in their luggage, Moldovan Newsmaker reported on Nov. 22, citing law enforcement officials. The parts were confiscated and a criminal case was opened. The investigation is being conducted by the Prosecutor's Office for Combating Organized Crime. There are no details about what kind of vehicle parts the detained people were carrying. Read also: 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 As millions in America watch the annual Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday, five South Carolina teenagers from York County will be among the participants. Lizzie Martin, Kaylee Brown, Brooklyn Grace Bowers, Teagan Connelly, and Angelina Gentry are in the Spirit of America group that will perform in one of the worlds most famous parades in New York City, said Julie Martin of Julies Fancy Feet Dance Academy. The dance studio is in downtown York. The studio posted the accomplishment on social media. The dancers had to audition and be accepted into the Spirit of America group that is represented in the parade each year, Martin said in a phone interview with The Herald on Wednesday. Martin is in New York preparing and rehearsing with the group. It is a big deal, Martin said. A big honor. The honor was so big that the city of York posted congratulations on the citys official Facebook page and urged the community to tune in and watch. The parade airs from 9 a.m. to noon Thursday on NBC. Flags to be lowered across Ohio in honor of late Rosalynn Carter **Related Video Above: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter marked 77th wedding anniversary in July.** COLUMBUS (WJW) Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is ordering United States and State of Ohio flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of the late Rosalynn Carter. The former first lady, who had been married to former President Jimmy Carter for more than 77 years, died at age 96 on Sunday. The Carter Center said she had been living with dementia and declining health for months. Lung cancer survivor celebrates first Thanksgiving as a new father A few days before, The Carter Center confirmed that the former first lady was in hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia. Jimmy Carter entered hospice earlier this year. FILE The former first lady Rosalynn Carter speaks to the press at conference at The Carter Center on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2019, in Atlanta. Rosalynn Carter, the 96-year-old former first lady, is in hospice care at home, the Carter Center says. (AP Photo/Ron Harris, File) FILE Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife former first lady Rosalynn Carter sit together during a reception to celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary on July 10, 2021, in Plains, Ga. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, Pool, File) In this Sept. 15, 1966, file photo, then Georgia State Sen. Jimmy Carter hugs his wife, Rosalynn, at his Atlanta campaign headquarters. Rosalynn Carter turns 96 on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023 and is celebrating at home in Plains, Ga., with her family, including former President Jimmy Carter. Her plan includes eating cupcakes and peanut butter ice cream, then releasing butterflies in her garden with friends doing the same around the Carters hometown. (AP Photo/File) FILE In this Feb. 8, 2017, photo, former President Jimmy Carter, right, and his wife Rosalynn arrive for a ribbon cutting ceremony for a solar panel project on farmland he owns in their hometown of Plains, Ga. Jimmy and Rosalynn are celebrating their 77th wedding anniversary, Friday, July 7, 2023. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File) Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, right, work at a Habitat for Humanity building site Monday, Nov. 2, 2015, in Memphis, Tenn. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have volunteered a week of their time annually to Habitat for Humanity since 1984, events dubbed Carter work projects that draw thousands of volunteers and take months of planning. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) Flags will be lowered on all public buildings and grounds across Ohio until sunset on Nov. 29. Fran and I are saddened to learn about the death of First Lady Rosalynn Carter, DeWine said in a tribute on X, formerly known as Twitter. Over the decades, she has been a strong advocate for increased access to mental health services, and her passion truly brought this issue into focus across the nation. Our prayers are with President Carter and the entire Carter family. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Fox 8 Cleveland WJW. . Police are searching for more than a dozen suspects who ransacked a Nike Store in Los Angeles, stealing roughly $12,000 in merchandise. Video of the incident shows masked and hooded people running through the store on Sunday, stuffing boxes of shoes into trash bags and ripping clothes off the rack before fleeing. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, on Sunday at around 5:50 p.m., a total of 17 suspects in five vehicles pulled up to the shopping center on the 9800 block of South Alameda Street. "The suspects, whose faces were concealed by medical masks or other material, ran into a retail store with trash bags in hand," police said in a statement. "They placed clothing and boxes of shoes in the trash bags and fled from the location without paying for the merchandise." HUMAN REMAINS DUG UP FROM YARD IN LOS ANGELES NEIGHBORHOOD LINKED TO PERSON MISSING FOR NEARLY 6 MONTHS READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP Suspects steal merchandise from a Nike Store at the Freedom Plaza in Los Angeles. The LAPD described the suspects as four Black females and 13 Black males, ranging in age between 15 to 20 years old. They identified the suspects' vehicles as a tan Infiniti four-door, a gray KIA SUV, a white Honda four-door and a black Audi. "This flash mob used their size in numbers to intimidate and instill fear onto the store employees to prevent them from taking the merchandise," police said. CALIFORNIA MAN FATALLY SHOT ON LOS ANGELES FREEWAY BY HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICER IDENTIFIED Flash mob retail crimes are so prevalent in Los Angeles that the police department has formed a dedicated task force to crack down on organized retail crime. The video shows the suspects tearing through the store with blue trash bags. A child can be heard crying as they rush past. One of the suspects was recorded wearing a distinctive hooded sweatshirt with a logo of a bonsai tree and the words, "Ritual of the Spirit." A suspect in a hoodie carries a trash bag full of stolen merchandise. "They began to pilfer through the store, placed shoe boxes and clothing apparel into the trash bags, and ran out of the store without paying for the merchandise," police said. LA INTERNAL AFFAIRS WATCHDOG ACCUSES LEFTIST BOSS OF HIDING FACTS TO THWART SHERIFF'S REELECTION More than a dozen suspects flee the scene after a flash mob ransacked a Nike Store in Los Angeles. Authorities said this "grand theft incident" is being investigated by detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department's Commercial Crimes Division, Organize Crime Retail Taskforce (ORCT). Police are asking anyone with information about the incident to contact ORCT Detective Juan Campos. Organized retail crime rose in popularity during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and has caused more than $100 billion in product losses across the U.S., according to a 2022 National Retail Security Survey. Another report released by the Council on Criminal Justice this month found that shoplifting incidents in major U.S. cities are growing fastest in Los Angeles and New York. "Shoplifting, especially smash and grab episodes caught on video, has received extensive attention from the media and policymakers, and retailers have cited theft concerns in closing stores and placing goods in locked cases," said CCJ Research Specialist Ernesto Lopez. "Far better data from law enforcement and the retail industry data is needed to help strengthen our grasp of shoplifting trends. For now, its unclear if the increase is a result of increased shoplifting, increased reporting from businesses to police, or a combination of both." Fox News Digital's Jamie Joseph contributed to this report. Original article source: Flash mob ransacks Nike Store in Los Angeles, steals $12K in merch: police As families travel and gather for Thanksgiving, COVID continues to sicken Floridians, but its not the menace it once had been. Instead, other viruses like the stomach flu are wreaking havoc. Florida is at a low risk level for COVID as of Nov. 17, and the states health surveillance shows a drop in hospitalizations and deaths from the virus compared to previous years at this time. Going into the holiday weekend, COVID levels for the week of Nov. 10 in Broward and Palm Beach counties are at the lowest levels thus far this year, according to Florida Department of Health data. COVID can be seasonal, though, and cases tend to rise after holiday gatherings and travel. COVID is still out there, and I am sure there will be somewhat of a winter surge, said Dr. Jason Goldman, an internal medicine specialist in Coral Springs. However, as family and friends gather for their holiday meal, the stomach flu, also known as norovirus is a big reason to keep a distance and wash your hands well. Norovirus has been tearing through schools, said Dr. Jill Roberts, an associate professor with the USF College of Public Health. Its insanely contagious and hard to get rid of. Norovirus causes vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain and sometimes fever. It transmits directly from an infected person, or indirectly through contaminated surfaces, objects, foods or drinks. The tip of a pin can get a thousand people sick, Roberts said. Related Articles In the Southeast, which includes Florida, the percentage of laboratory tests for norovirus that came back positive has nearly doubled over the last month. Each year, there are about 2,500 reported norovirus outbreaks in the United States, according to the CDC. The norovirus mutates, and every couple of years theres a new strain, USFs Roberts said. You can get norovirus illness many times in your life, because infection with one type of norovirus may not protect you against other types. Hand-washing is the best way to prevent getting infected. In the United States, outbreaks of norovirus happen most often during late fall, winter, and early spring. While the symptoms usually last about 48 hours, children under 5 years old and adults over 85 years old are most likely to end up in the emergency department, with severe dehydration as the biggest risk. With the stomach flu, the symptoms are distinct and easy to diagnose. Its respiratory illness like influenza and RSV that have symptoms that can be similar. Both are on the rise in Florida. The most recent weekly summary update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention designated Florida as having high levels of activity for influenza-like illness. Traditionally, the winter flu season ramps up in December or January, but it made a November entrance in Florida this year. We are seeing a lot of flu and a lot of RSV, said Goldman, the internal medicine specialist. Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is distinguished mostly by a croupy cough that resembles a bark. Symptoms also include a congested nose, cough, fever and sore throat. Floridas RSV season is longer than the rest of the nation, with the length varying by region, according to state health data. So far this year, Florida has experienced 28 RSV outbreaks. There are treatments for RSV, but they can be expensive, Roberts said. We want to restrict treatments for those at high risk. So far this fall, the CDC estimates at least 780,000 flu illnesses, at least 8,000 hospitalizations and at least 490 flu-related deaths including at least one child. In Florida, no one can say for certain how long this years season will last. Uptake of the flu vaccine has been relatively low this year: about 35% of U.S. adults and 33% of children have been vaccinated. Thats down compared to last year. Goldman said he expects flu season to last at least through the end of April. Last year I had patients as late as June with the flu, he said.Thats why prevention is most important. Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com. A Florida man is behind bars after allegedly hitting another man with a leaf blower after a fender bender, according to the Lake County Sheriff's Office. According to an arrest affidavit, deputies were dispatched to the scene Saturday morning in reference to a car crash where one of the parties involved was struck with a leaf blower by the other. The victim claims he was trying to operate his GPS while driving, which caused his work truck to hit a trailer attached to a truck, which then forced it to collide with a parked vehicle. Deputies say that's when Patrick Eittson, 60, ran out of his home to where his car was parked in front, armed with a leaf blower. FLORIDA MAN THROWS PACKAGE OF OREOS AT WIFE WHILE ARGUING OVER EMPTY COFFEE MAKER: OFFICIALS Patrick Eittson, 60 According to deputies, Eittson was described as being "irate" and slammed the leaf blower into the hood of the man's truck. The victim then opened the door to his work truck, but was then met by Eittson who bashed him with a leaf blower instead of calming down as requested, deputies said. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP FLORIDA MAN CLAIMS 'VOICES' MADE HIM ROB A DOLLAR GENERAL TWICE IN 2 DAYS: DEPUTIES In the arrest affidavit, while Eittson was being arrested, he told deputies that he "did not strike the victim with the leaf blower but that he did strike the hood of the work truck." Eittson was transported to the Lake County Jail and remains held on $26,000 bond. Original article source: Florida man hits man with leaf blower after fender bender: 'irate' Its likely that you have come across a video of a hikers encounter with a mountain lion hopefully with a happy ending. Sightings are common across Colorado state parks or California's Santa Monica mountains. But coming across one in Florida is a rarity. And that is because the only subspecies of mountain lion to inhabit the area is the Florida panther. A Florida Atlantic University student recently came across the elusive animal after years of looking in the southwestern parts of the state (where Florida panthers are more likely to be found). Are vampire bats swarming to Florida? New study says climate change is pushing them north So what makes the Florida panther unique? How is it different than a mountain lion? Here is what we know: What is a Florida panther? The Puma concolor coryi, or Florida panther, is a subspecies of the mountain lion. Florida panther. According to the National Wildlife Federation, Florida panthers are large, tan cats, whose bodies are covered in tawny-beige fur, except for the whitish-gray belly and chest, with black markings decorating the tip of their tail, ears, and around the snout. They are about 6 to 7 feet long, with males being slightly larger than females. What is the difference between the Florida panther and a mountain lion? As a mountain lion subspecies, the Florida panther mostly resembles mountain lions. But there are identifiable differences. Florida panthers usually have a crooked tail and a unique patch of fur on the back, according to the National Wildlife Federation. The back fur is almost like a cowlick, not conforming to the rest of the panthers fur. These differences are a result of inbreeding and poor genetic variation a result of the animals low population. There are about 200 Florida panthers living in Southwest Florida, according to the Mountain Lion Foundation. These genetic mutations have also started to appear among mountain lion populations in other states where population numbers are decreasing. Burmese pythons: 12-foot Burmese python caught in Brevard. Is Volusia County next? Why are Florida panthers so rare? Only a few hundred Florida panthers live in the state today, a number much higher than 50 years ago. The subspecies was severely hunted during the 1970s, leaving the population between 20 and 30 in the wild, according to the National Wildlife Federation. The Florida panther was one of the fist species to be added to the endangered species list in 1973 when Congress enacted the Endangered Species Act. Is the Florida panther a native species? Yes. The Florida panther and the bobcat are the only two native cat species in Florida. Bobcats are much smaller than panthers, with a distinctive tail that is only about one-third their body length (about 28-47 inches), according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Florida panthers are a subspecies of mountain lion. How do they differ? Florida QAnon power couple going to prison for Jan. 6 Capitol assault OCALA, Fla. (WFLA) A married couple from Ocala who were seen pushing their way into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 are the latest Florida protestors going to prison. Jamie Buteau, 50, and Jennifer Buteau, 46, are one of five Florida husband and wife defendant duos arrested on charges related to the 2021 melee, which was connected to five deaths, hundreds of injuries and more than $2.8 million in property damage. Crack, contraband smuggled in broad daylight from street into Sarasota County Jail Investigators said about five minutes after entering the Capitol, the Buteaus were at the front of the mob that prevented officers from closing large doors that would have cut protestors off from other restricted areas of the building. Mr. Buteau was photographed picking up a chair and moments later, he was seen on video throwing it at a police officer who was hit in the arm after the chair ricocheted off a wall. His wife spit on police after the couple was sprayed with chemical irritants, investigators said. Investigators said the Buteaus appearance in a 2018 documentary about QAnon helped tie them to the Jan. 6 violence. QAnon is a political movement associated with a belief in the existence of satanic cannibals that control a sex trafficking ring involving children. The Buteaus are now two of 559 defendants who have pleaded guilty, according to data collected by the George Washington University Program on Extremism. Mr. Buteau was sentenced to 22 months in prison for assaulting an officer. His wife got 90 days on a misdemeanor count for demonstrating in the Capitol building. Retired Green Beret arrested on Capitol siege charge details FBI offer, Oath Keepers role & plan to fight charges Jon Lewis of the Program on Extremism said the divide that spurred the attempt to stop the election process nearly three years ago is no better now. The narratives, the conspiracies, the grievances that drew this violent crowd, including the ones from Florida to the U.S. Capitol have not gone away, Lewis said. The threat has in the views of many extremism experts gotten worse. The Buteaus are two of the 105 Florida residents charged so far in connection with Jan. 6. Thirty-six are from the Tampa Bay area. Thirty-seven Floridians have pleaded guilty and 13 have been convicted at trial. Broadway actor Jamie Beeks of Orlando is one of the few defendants in the country acquitted of charges. The judge in his July bench trial decided there was not enough evidence to convict the former member of the Oath Keepers who was arrested while performing in the play Jesus Christ Superstar. Other Tampa Bay-area defendants include the subject of one of the most memorable viral pictures of the day, in which Parrish resident Adam Johnson is seen smiling and waving while hoisting House Speaker Nancy Pelosis lectern. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) The grin was gone from Johnsons face when he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two and half months in prison. Englewood businessman Graydon Young was one of the first Floridians arrested. The veteran who said he joined the Oath Keepers in December 2020 was also the first to plead guilty and agree to cooperate with the government. During his first hearing in a Tampa federal courtroom, Young slumped his head onto a table with a slight thud as the judge discussed the case. He would later testify against other Oath Keepers, telling the jury he was acting like a traitor against my own government during the assault. Graydon Young (Photos from US Dept. of Justice paperwork) Paul Hodgkins, described as a quiet man from Tampa, was incriminated the way many others were. By a House floor selfie of him standing near the House Speakers rostrum. Hodgkins was sentenced to eight months in prison. Hodgkins explanation was similar to many others, according to his attorney Patrick Leduc who said he went to protest the election but got carried away. This guy is poor as dirt, working-class, humble, Leduc said at the time. His worst nightmare is this. (Senate Television via AP) Robert Palmer of Largo was caught on video throwing a fire extinguisher, a plank and a spear-like pole at police. He teared up outside court last fall after pleading guilty. Palmer was sentenced to more than five years in prison in what was at one point the longest sentence tied to the riot. Palmers stint was eclipsed in September when Henry Tarrio, a Proud Boy leader from Miami, was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Robert Palmer, US Capitol Suspect (FBI) Former Congressional Candidate Jeremy Brown, a retired Green Beret once featured on a Special Forces recruitment poster, talked with 8 On your side from the Pinellas County Jail, insisting the video evidence will clear him. We werent even anywhere close to the Capitol when we found out the Capitol got breached, Brown said, referring to a group he was with that day. There are political factors at play here and those that refuse to recognize them are never going to grasp the entire big picture and thats why Im taking my case to trial. Jonathan Pollock of Lakeland (Courtesy of Polk County Sheriffs Office) The feds are still looking for Jonathan Pollock, 24, of Lakeland. He allegedly assaulted officers during the riot. The FBI is offering a $30,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Analysis of the data by 8 On Your Side revealed several details about Floridas defendants. The accused range in age from 20 to 72, and are on average about 43 years old. In addition to Floridas five husband and wife defendants, there are two father and son duos and one pair of siblings, Pollock and his sister. The professions of the Florida defendants include a doctor, a nurse, a rabbi, a pastor, law enforcement officers and an adult film star. The group also includes 10 Proud Boys and eight Oath Keepers. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. Often we talk of traditions as if they are naturally understood, even universal. But holiday recollections remind us that traditions are as personal as the people living them out simple and sometimes braided strands of family, food, nostalgia and finding your own warm light. Ahead of Thanksgiving, we asked a few mid-Missourians plus myself to share a few thoughts about their own holiday traditions. Here are the rich tales they passed along. Families, both biological and chosen, establish all manner of traditions around the Thanksgiving holiday. The tradition of great stories to tell Sometimes an oral tradition forms at and around the Thanksgiving table: an inheritance of anecdotes, one-liners and inside jokes as sumptuous as any late-November meal. When Columbia writer Sarah Medcalf discusses Thanksgiving, the hilarious and heartfelt instantly emerge. One of six kids, she played her part within "a big Catholic family in a small house in Wyoming, with my Irish immigrant dad and quietly brilliant mom," she said in an email. "We squeezed eight people around a small kitchen table, pulling in the living-room party bench to successfully seat everyone," Medcalf added. "Wyoming Novembers are cold, so the windows always fogged and insulated our chaos from the outside world." Stories that are distinctly hers and her family's unlock consonant tales nearly any family could relate to. Quotable children. Gleeful goading and "fibbing" from the grown-ups. How one year's request to pass the bread ended up with a dinner roll smacking her father between the eyes like one of David's pebbles and the eventual laughter "shaking the small house." "The stress of the holiday sparked each of our fuses throughout the day, but the blow-ups and arguments of years past always made their way into family lore," Medcalf said. With her father entering "his last days of life," this Thanksgiving arrives with a different sentiment and spirit. "Im trying to make peace with his impending passing, and though the waves of grief often catch me off balance, I know that Im in a very special time with my little family. So I keep telling the stories," Medcalf said. Fresh stories attend the growth of her own family, of memories made with her husband and son. "Things are much simpler for the family Ive made. Our home comfortably holds us. We have different ideas about what we want from holidays, and our family is small enough to include our kiddo in the planning and execution of our special days," she said. A first married Thanksgiving included a debate over which is the "butt end of the chicken which end was more visually offensive and why Rob so rudely pointed it at me." "I still draw visually offensive roast chickens on love notes to him," Medcalf added. Folding a child into the festivities creates a lovely sense of more: more presence, more personality, more to remember and hold tight. "Things have only become more silly, joyous and fun as he has grown, and Ive realized deviating from family tradition can be a radical act, and that building new traditions can be revelatory," Medcalf said. "Things I assumed were set in stone are not, and you are allowed to take apart your ideas and traditions and use only the parts you like. Ive realized that seemingly terrible moments can, with time, become memories that fill my heart and reaffirm my love." Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of these stories are the promises they make: to remain, to create their own echoes with time and togetherness. "I do not know what this year will bring, but come what may, there will be stories to tell and memories to make with my dearest people, and for that, Ill be forever grateful," Medcalf said. When change is the tradition Sometimes change is the tradition. Growing up in Lebanon, Missouri, Tina Casagrand Foss remembers living in the Thanksgiving house, the place where family gathered. "Cooking would start at least a day early, and we'd always have turkey and ham ready at some odd time like 2 in the afternoon," the University of Missouri alum and founder of The New Territory magazine said in an email. Growing into her own life, Casagrand Foss finds that miles traveled, minor revolutions across the American map, form a new sort of tradition. Often, work has called her husband away in late November. "At least one year he was away fighting wildfires in North Carolina, and another he was building treehouses on an island," she said. She estimates they have been Thanksgiving hosts once in nine years as a couple. And so together has become less of a place, more being in the middle of people you cherish. Gathering with full hearts When a gathering is truly welcoming, Thanksgiving allows us to bring all of who we are to the table. Nina Mukerjee Furstenau, one of our moment's great food journalists who happens to live in Columbia distinctly remembers her parents, who grew up in India, adopting the holiday "with enthusiasm" by the time she moved through grade school. Thanksgiving staples found a home at her family's table as did their immediate community. "Because holidays in India were always a time for community, they included our elderly neighbors each year to make it feel like celebrations they were used to," Furstenau said in an email. "My mother had us dress up, and she used her silver-edged plates, lace tablecloth and candles." Thanksgiving, at its best, comes with a simple charge though one that's not always easy to fulfill. But Furstenau sees it with clarity. "I love Thanksgiving because the expectation is to gather and share beloved foods. I especially appreciate the idea of gratitude for what our land provides," she said. For the journalist, who is always tasting and tracing how food unites and distinguishes us, the holiday also comes with a desire to more fully understand Native American history, she said. Thanksgiving 2023, as Furstenau anticipates it, will offer a chance for respite and a remembrance of all that brings us together. "Im looking forward to sitting at our home table, much less formal than in my mothers day and which now includes a vegetarian main dish for some of us, and taking a deep breath surrounded by family its just glorious," she said. "I also look forward to the day after Thanksgiving when I have traditionally made an Indian meal with the delicious flavors I grew up with, and sending up love to my family farther away." 'It's all about the Chex Mix' Large, labor-intensive feasts don't have to define holiday memories. "It's all about the Chex Mix, baby!" former Tribune lifestyle editor Caroline Dohack said in an email, recalling a childhood custom. "Growing up in the Ozark foothills, we always got the entire week before Thanksgiving off school to observe the high holy holiday that is Deer Season," she said. Since her family committed the relative heresy of not hunting, they filled their time with jigsaw puzzles and other indoor pursuits. "My mom would make huge batches of Chex Mix in her roasting pan, and we'd snack endlessly on that crunchy, savory melange of cereal, nuts and pretzels," Dohack said. Now a familiar, somewhat unmoored, feeling settles around mid-November. "I should not be sending my kids to school. I should not be logging into work. Don't they know it's Deer Season?" Dohack said. She carries over the tradition and gently, flavorfully pushes back against the sensation that something's missing. "My husband and our children know that when the temperature dips I'll be getting out my roasting pan and mixing up a batch of our favorite seasonal treat," Dohack said. Tradition in the leftovers Though nowhere near best, I save my story for last since, my family's truest tradition doesn't take place on Thursday, but in the days after. Honoring the flavors native to their home state of Arizona, years ago my parents started shredding leftover Thanksgiving turkey for an abundance of enchiladas. And my little Missouri-based family of 3 hasn't hesitated to keep the kitchen open. To fill the enchiladas, we typically mingle the turkey with cheese, chilis and a few generous spoonfuls of the red sauce which will surround the entire dish. Though depending on whether you're using white or dark meat, and how the meat was seasoned, a green sauce my typical favorite might work just as well. Leftover turkey sandwiches are great, but these enchiladas give me a reason to anticipate Thanksgiving and keep the gratitude alive at least through the holiday weekend. The flavors are their own promise, their own story about what it means to gather and enjoy. Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen. This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Food, travel, inside jokes form Thanksgiving traditions for Missourians The Foreign Office has stepped up its warning to British travellers about the prospect of terrorist attacks saying they could be indiscriminate and occur without warning. Five months after the last update, the online travel advice entitled Reduce your risk from terrorism while abroad has been augmented to reflect heightened concern about the impact of the current conflict that began with the Hamas assault on Israel on 7 October 2023. A new heading has been brought in to the advice: Impact of conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It warns: The current conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories has led to heightened tensions around the world. Terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaida and Daesh, have called on their supporters to carry out terrorist attacks in response to the conflict. The conflict could also motivate individuals to carry out attacks, including in Western countries. Terrorist attacks could target Jewish or Muslim communities, or the interests of Israel and its allies. Much of the travel advice remains the same. It warns: There is a high threat of terrorist attacks globally affecting UK interests and British nationals, including from those who view the UK and British nationals as targets. Public spaces are potential targets for terrorists. These include places like bars, restaurants, shops, places of worship, tourist sites and transport networks. Significant dates, including anniversaries, public holidays, religious festivals and political events may also be targeted. In many countries, as in the UK, the main threat is from self-initiated terrorists who are inspired by, but not directed or significantly supported by, terrorist groups. These terrorists are often self-radicalised, influenced by extremist content online, and could be motivated by a range of extremist ideologies. Their attacks are difficult to predict and disrupt, and could happen in almost any country. Attacks by self-initiated extreme right-wing terrorists have mainly taken place in Western countries, and may target minority groups or perceived representatives of the establishment. Terrorists sometimes call for attacks against British interests and those of other countries through social media, publications and other public messages. These calls are often intended to motivate sympathisers to carry out attacks. The FCDO currently warns against all-but-essential travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon and Syria. A seasoned deer hunter is shocked when his hound dog trots up with a human femur clenched between its teeth. A woman veers off her normal urban walking path and happens upon a human skull. New property owners commission a land survey that reveals a set of human remains just below a pile of leaves. These examples are real cases handled by coroners offices where we have assisted as forensic anthropologists. What happens after someone inadvertently discovers a human body? How are human skeletal remains identified? It can be a major effort, requiring collaboration across law enforcement, forensic anthropologists and death investigators to uncover the identities of the unidentified dead and help bring justice to people who were victims of foul play. There are nearly 15,000 open cases in the United States involving unidentified people, according to the Department of Justices National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a centralized database and resource for unidentified, missing and unclaimed people. This is an underestimate, though, because there is no universal reporting requirement across agencies. Many practicing forensic anthropologists work hard to alleviate whats routinely referred to as the nations silent mass disaster the crisis of so many missing and unidentified individuals. A specialized branch of anthropology Anthropology is the holistic study of human culture, environment and biology across time and space. Biological anthropology focuses on the physiological aspects of people and our nonhuman primate relatives. It considers topics ranging from the evolutionary history of our species to the analysis of ancient and modern skeletal remains. Forensic anthropology is a further subspecialty that analyzes skeletal remains of the recently deceased within a legal setting. In field school courses, future forensic anthropologists learn from models about what can be gleaned from skeletal discoveries. Katherine Weisensee, CC BY-ND Forensic anthropologists are trained in identifying human skeletal remains. They use scientific techniques to identify deceased people whose faces are unrecognizable often referred to as Jane and John Does. Forensic anthropologists skills allow them to interpret from skeletons the trauma and disease a person suffered in life, as well as estimate when that person died. One of us is employed as a postdoctoral research fellow as well as a forensic anthropologist and deputy coroner through a county coroners office; the other is a university professor who responds to local forensic scenes on an as-needed, consulting basis. The realities of forensic anthropology casework are often misrepresented by crime and mystery movies and shows, but our positions reflect how a lot of practicing forensic anthropologists are employed in the United States. Outside of local work, forensic anthropologists travel to sites of political violence, mass disasters such as the tragedies of 9/11 or the collapse of the Surfside condo building in Miami, and events like the devastating fires in Maui. Normal procedures for handling deaths can quickly become overwhelmed during crises; burial of the dead can take priority over identification, as has been occurring in Gaza. Scientific tools to identify the unidentified The complex decomposition process begins as soon as someone dies. Environment, weather, trauma, clothing and location of the death, among other variables, can all complicate how quickly a body decomposes. In cases of advanced decomposition or extreme circumstances such as fires or building collapses, the deceased may no longer be recognizable. Thats a situation in which local law enforcement might want to contact a forensic anthropologist, if possible, to collaborate on figuring out the persons identity and possibly the circumstances around their death. A forensic anthropologists primary toolkit involves observing subtle variations in features of the skeleton to create a biological profile: an estimation of the individuals age at death, biological sex, height during life and any potentially unique skeletal characteristics, such as healed trauma or tooth loss that may have been visible during life. Forensic anthropologists assess the entire skeleton, with an emphasis on the skull, pelvis and long bones. Information learned from the skeleton is then uploaded to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System so it can be compared with missing person records. The goal is to develop leads on the persons identity. An estimated time of death can also provide a useful point of comparison. For example, consider a case in upstate South Carolina that one of us assisted on. Human remains were discovered in someones yard after a dog dragged several bones out of a creek. Our assessment revealed that the size and shape of the bones were consistent with this Jane Doe being a middle-aged woman. This information allowed local investigators to quickly narrow the pool of missing people in the area who fit that description. Ultimately, they were able to identify this unknown person. Missing person records can vary at the county and state levels, though, and not all missing people are even reported. These bureaucratic challenges can complicate our attempts to match up information learned from the skeleton with the database. A forensic artist may create a 3D scan of a skull as a starting point to reconstructing what the person looked like during life. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images In the absence of a match, the next step in the identification process can involve a forensic facial reconstruction. Based on the forensic anthropologists assessment, along with any clothing found associated with the decedent, a forensic artist will create a 2D or sometimes 3D facial reconstruction. Law enforcement can release the image to the public through a press release, which may generate leads about who the person was. DNA can provide other valuable clues, but submitting samples for analysis can be cost-prohibitive. If funding and resources are available, we submit samples from bone or teeth to a lab that can then generate a genetic sequence from the skeletal remains. Even with a clear sequence, though, the unknown DNA sample must be matched either to a sample collected during life or from a close relative in order to be useful for determining identity. It can take weeks, months or even years to get the unknown sequence back and compare it with known individuals. If no match is found, genetic genealogy may suggest leads through potentially related individuals but this investigative field is still emerging. In each step toward identification, there are many logistical and bureaucratic barriers that contribute to an enormous backlog of unidentified people in county morgues and coroners offices. Many cold cases remain unsolved for decades, and the process is further compounded in cases involving undocumented people. Despite these hurdles, forensic anthropologists remain committed to returning names to the unidentified. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Madeline Atwell, Clemson University and Katherine Weisensee, Clemson University. Read more: Katherine Weisensee receives funding from the National Institute of Justice. A petition has been filed asking the Second District Court of Appeals to take another look at a former ballerina's 'Stand Your Ground' immunity claim after a trial judge dismissed the motion in September. An attorney for Ashley Benefield, 31, who was arrested and charged with murder in the second degree with a firearm in November 2020, filed the petition in October stating the Stand Your Ground immunity statute "was enacted for cases like this." The petition asks the court to find that Ashley Benefield is either entitled to immunity from prosecution or quash the trial court's order related to the immunity claim. Ashley Benefield was arrested a little over a month after investigators responded to a call from a neighbor who said Ashley Benefield had told him she'd been attacked by her husband, Doug Benefield, and that she had shot him, according to an affidavit. Previous reporting: Former ballerina's 'Stand Your Ground' hearing concludes: Wait begins for judge's decision Day 1 of hearing: Former ballerina accused of killing estranged husband in court for Stand Your Ground During a hearing in July, assistant state attorneys Suzanne O'Donnell and Rebecca Freel, and Ashley Benefield's defense attorney, Neil Taylor, argued whether or not Ashley Benefield's actions the night she fired a gun at Doug Benefield were self-defense. Ashley Benefield filed a motion to dismiss the case and requested immunity, claiming she fired the gun because she feared for her life. The motion placed the burden on the assistant state attorneys to prove through clear and convincing evidence that Ashley Benefield did not act in self-defense. Manatee Circuit Court Judge Matthew Whyte found the state met its burden of establishing that Ashley Benefield wasn't entitled to immunity, despite prosecutors failing "to present any evidence disproving the assertions set forth by Ms. Benefield." 12th Judicial Circuit Judge Matt Whyte speaks to attorneys during the hearing. Ashley Benefield is accused of killing her estranged husband, Doug Benefield, and is attempting to have the case dismissed under Florida's Stand Your Ground law. The hearing on the justifiable use of force immunity defense began Thursday, July 6, 2023 at the Manatee County Judicial Center in Bradenton, Florida and is expected to last two days. Following the immunity hearing, Whyte denied the motion stating in his order that considering the totality of the evidence presented at the hearing, the state proved Doug Benefield's homicide wasn't a "singular act of necessary self-defense but was instead the culmination of a lengthy, concerted effort" by Ashley Benefield. In the petition to the higher court, Ashley Benefield's attorney argues the prosecutors failed to meet their burden of proof. Instead, the petition argues the prosecution's evidence supported Ashley Benefield's claims and corroborated her case of self-defense. The petition also states Ashley Benefield's motion and supporting attachments demonstrated a pattern of violent behavior from Doug Benefield and that Ashley Benefield's past experiences of witnessing those behaviors firsthand led her to have a legitimate fear that Doug Benefield might cause her great harm the night of the shooting. Keep reading: Former Florida ballerina evokes 'Stand Your Ground' in 2020 homicide of estranged husband More: Maya Kowalski files complaint related to sex abuse allegations with St. Petersburg police The petition lists the examples of the previous violent outbursts, all of which had been brought forth previously during the hearing in the summer and in motions filed by Ashley Benefield including Doug Benefield shooting a gun at a ceiling to get Ashley Benefield to stop talking, throwing a loaded gun at her and punching a hole in a wall in their bedroom. It gives further insight into details of what Ashley Benefield said transpired the night she shot her husband, including that at some point, Doug Benefield had told her it was time she "began acting like a wife" and that he threatened to put her in the POD to ship to Maryland. Ashley Benefield's attorney claims the trial court erred in disregarding the motion Ashley Benefield submitted. Gabriela Szymanowska covers the legal system for the Herald-Tribune in partnership with Report for America. You can support her work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America. Contact Gabriela Szymanowska at gszymanowska@gannett.com, or on Twitter. This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Former ballerina appeals for 'Stand Your Ground' immunity in court [Source] Political strategist Donna Brazile is facing criticism for allegedly intentionally mispronouncing GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's name on HBOs talk show Real Time with Bill Maher. Braziles pronunciation: In the episode last week, Brazile, the former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), was corrected on how to pronounce Ramaswamys name. Vivek needs to just shut the hell up and go home, Brazile said on the show. Its Vivek, Maher responded, correcting her pronunciation, to which she replied, Well, whatever before continuing to mispronounce his name. Trending on NextShark: Nepal makes history with first registration of same-sex marriage Whatever? Maher shot back. Would you say that about another ethnic The ex-DNC chair then responded with the correct pronunciation of the tech entrepreneurs name before thanking Maher for learning something new and repeating her initial comment, Vivek? Vivek needs to go home. While Maher agreed, he suggested that there is a little racism there when people refuse to learn how to pronounce the candidates name correctly. Trending on NextShark: Japan kicks off trial of over-the-counter morning-after pills Backlash: The clip has since gone viral on X, with many criticizing Brazile for perpetuating harmful stereotypes and fostering anti-immigrant sentiment. The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) noted the responsibility of public figures in using their platforms and emphasized that AAPI names should not be treated as punchlines. Trending on NextShark: Philippine president announces last Filipino hostage freed from Hamas Refusing to pronounce someones name correctly & telling them to go home furthers the perpetual foreigner myth, fostering anti-immigrant sentiment that AAPIs do not belong in the U.S. AAPI names are not punchlines & we expect public figures to use their platforms responsibly, the foundation stated. To add to this, this type of rhetoric historically has contributed to a culture where violence against our community members becomes more acceptable. Do better folks. It doesn't matter who says it. It's wrong and dangerous, added Andy Kang, the national director of anti-hate at TAAF. Ramaswamys response: Ramaswamy, who was born in the U.S. to Indian parents, responded to the incident in a tweet, writing, I wonder what theyd do if a white Republican intentionally mispronounced Donnas name & then told her to return home. Trending on NextShark: American tourist faces investigation for graffiti spree on over 155 locations in Seoul I wonder what theyd do if a white Republican intentionally mispronounced Donnas name & then told her to return home. https://t.co/UIfiSCU6p6 Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 19, 2023 Trending on NextShark: BTS wins 6th Worldwide Icon of the Year at MAMA as 4 members set to enlist A spokesperson for Ramaswamy's campaign also criticized Brazile's comments, stating that reverse racism is still racism. If that were a white Republican they would be fired and torn to shreds on cable TV. Donna will probably get an atta boy from her colleagues. Gross and wrong, the spokesperson told The Hill. Brazile has not commented on the issue. Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. - Weeks after Montgomery County Public Schools settled a shocking sexual assault case brought by former Damascus High School football players, theres a multi-million dollar judgment in another sexual assault case at Gaithersburg High School. A former student whos not named in court documents sued MCPS, claiming he was sexually assaulted by other students in the Gaithersburg High School locker room. After a week-long trial in front of Judge Kevin Hessler, the students lawyer told FOX 5, the jury sided with the student, and awarded him $4 million in damages. Court papers detailed that the sexual assault happened when "John Doe" was a freshman on Gaithersburgs wrestling team. The attack took place in 2018 and the suit was filed in 2020. GAITHERSBURG, MD, AUGUST 26, 2013: The newly finished and opened Gaithersburg High School. (Photo by Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images) Montgomery Parents Coalition leader Janis Zink Sartucci told FOX 5 that, once again, Montgomery County school officials refuse to speak out on the case. "We have one very clear pattern here in Montgomery County, and that clear pattern is of the adults in charge hiding," he said. "We dont see them speaking about these cases. We dont see them standing up for victims. We dont see them supporting the victims in any way, shape or form." FOX 5 reached out to Montgomery County Public Schools and received no reply. The attorneys for the plaintiff also declined an interview, telling FOX 5 their client wants to remain anonymous. Some parents at Gaithersburg High told FOX 5 - even five years later - theyre still concerned because school is a place where kids are supposed to be safe. Despite the jury finding that Montgomery County Public Schools failed to protect the former student who was sexually assaulted, on Tuesday attorneys for the school district filed a motion to defer the $4 million judgment. The lawyer for the student told FOX 5 he was not surprised by that move. Two former governors on Tuesday urged Fairview and the University of Minnesota to work out financial terms of a long-term partnership after the health system said the existing arrangement is untenable. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty requested more specifics on what the state would have to "backfill" to address the U's financial needs while former Gov. Mark Dayton expressed dismay over all that has unfolded this past year. The two men, speaking before a state task force on training health professionals at the U, agreed the ongoing uncertainty must end or risk top talent leaving the university. "Your presentation glosses over the reality of what you have put Minnesotans through for the last year," Dayton said following remarks from James Hereford, the Fairview chief executive. "It seems as though you're making your own decisions in your own best interest without concern for the future of the medical school, which then means the future of medical care in Minnesota." The comments came one day after Fairview announced it won't renew its current affiliation with the university, which runs through the end of 2026, but pledged to negotiate for a new agreement. Fairview acquired the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis in 1997 and provides significant financial support to the U's medical school at least $100 million this year alone. Hereford said the health system is willing to pay its fair share and wants the university to be successful. "The problem is we have been a source of investment into the university, and we simply cannot afford it at the levels that we've been able to support it at in the past," Hereford said. "It's just not going to work." The task force heard from Hereford as it moves into the next phase of its work, drafting recommendations by mid-January for what additional state support lawmakers should provide for training health care professionals at the U. That's difficult to do, Pawlenty said, without knowing how much funding Fairview will provide going forward. "I know there's a lot behind the curtain here, but it would help a lot if you and the university and your team could agree on the number," he said to Hereford. "You're not going to probably want to put your number out there first, because you'd like to see what the state is going to do ... because maybe the state will pay more than you think. So, it's sort of this weird moment." To reach a new agreement, Dayton said Fairview and the U will likely need a mediator to resolve all the bad blood built up over the past year. He criticized the health system for pushing a merger with Sanford Health, which the university opposed. And he faulted Fairview for how it handled Monday's decision to not renew the existing affiliation agreement, saying the U's two members on the Fairview board of directors only learned of it that morning. "From all descriptions I've heard, that relationship is in tatters," Dayton told Hereford. The CEO did not respond directly to the comments, but told both governors at different points that he recognized the urgency of the situation. "Time is of the essence. We need to come together. We need to figure out what our solution paths are," Hereford said. The health system's decision this week doesn't affect the delivery of patient care at M Health Fairview, the network of hospitals and clinics that it jointly operates with the U. The current affiliation will run through at least December 31, 2026, while Fairview and the university work toward a new agreement. "I hope what we're continuing to signal to all our respective organizations is that we're leaning in, we're committed, we're looking for a path forward," Hereford said. "Because that does help stabilize." Jeffrey Ettinger, the interim president of the U, opened the meeting by requesting "conceptual support" from the task force for building a new world-class medical center facility on its East Bank campus an idea the university started to publicly float in January. Doctors are working in "outdated facilities" at the U Medical Center, where space is so tight that some patients are being turned away, even for services where the U has unique expertise, he said. What's more, Ettinger said, there's operational inefficiency with staff and patients having to routinely travel across the Mississippi River between medical center facilities on or near the U's East Bank and West Bank campuses. "The university does not intend to ask for specific financial support of new facilities in the 2024 legislative session the near-term need is clearly to stabilize the funding for the academic medical programs," Ettinger said. "We will be keenly interested in soliciting and receiving your conceptual support for this vision for a world-class medical center on the Twin Cities campus," he said, "that fosters our academic health mission, its core health sciences and serves Minnesotans with the best we have to offer." WORCESTER - Former Sutton contractor Sean J. Brennan, wanted in Worcester for skipping charges of theft, is still on the run from authorities eight months later. Its ridiculous, said Nancy Bode, a Connecticut woman in her 70s who alleges Brennan owes her nearly $100,000, in a telephone interview from her East Haven home last week. Bode is one of many who have accused Brennan, who has done multiple jail stints, of bilking them during business dealings. Shes the only one of his alleged victims who lives on his street. Its very frustrating, said Bode, who says she has watched Brennan come and go from the home he shares with his significant other despite warrants for his arrest. A Worcester Superior Court judge issued a warrant for Brennan in March after he skipped a court hearing regarding an indictment dating to 2016. His eight counts include accusations of larceny from multiple individuals, as well as allegations that he failed to return expensive contracting equipment from local businesses. Brennans lawyer withdrew from the case after his default and a new one has not been listed. Police in Worcester County have told the T&G Brennan is a smooth talker who has beaten theft allegations by framing them as legitimate business disputes. Bode has a $98,000 civil judgment in Connecticut against Brennan, who she alleges ripped her off during a home renovation. She said she has yet to see any payment on the judgment, which a judge imposed in 2018 after Brennan failed to appear in New Haven Superior Court. Bode said she was outraged when she learned that Brennan has a home improvement contractors registration in Connecticut. State officials there confirmed the registration is active, despite Brennan providing them with an East Haven address that does not exist in that towns records. We do not verify addresses as part of the application process, Kaitlyn Krasselt, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection, wrote in an email. Bode said she complained to the Department of Consumer Protection Oct. 18 about Brennan but never heard back. Krasselt said the agency does not have a record of the complaint. DCP looks into all complaints and allegations of misconduct filed with our agency against registered contractors, she wrote. If it is determined a contractor violated state laws and regulations related to home improvement work, action could be taken against a credential. Bode said Brennans listing of an incorrect address ought to be grounds to revoke his registration. Thats got to change, she said of the departments practice of not checking addresses. Robert T. Douglas of Grafton, who alleges Brennan stole $3,000 from him after promising to work on his garage, has long been incredulous that he hasnt been arrested. Douglas said he recently asked local prosecutors for an update in the case and was told there wasnt much they could do unless Brennan was arrested in Connecticut. Massachusetts police arent authorized to travel to Connecticut to arrest Brennan on the Worcester warrant. But he also faces a warrant out of Waterford, Connecticut, on charges of identity theft and forgery, and could be extradited to Massachusetts if arrested by Connecticut police. Spencer Police Officer Stephen LeBrun, whose department has outstanding charges against Brennan, said detectives contacted East Haven police Nov. 15 after the Telegram & Gazette inquired about efforts to locate Brennan. Later that night, East Haven police showed up at Brennans home, Bode told the T&G, but were unable to find him. Bode said her home cameras showed Brennans vehicle leaving the area within hours of the police search and that police appear to be continuing to try to find him. They go by several times a day now, she said Nov. 17. I feel good about that. Police in East Haven did not return emails seeking comment. This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Former Sutton contractor Sean Brennan remains at large Two luxury mansions belonging to Hui Ka Yan, the founder and chairman of Evergrande, have been seized. The properties in Hong Kong's prestigious The Peak neighborhood are worth $192 million, per HK01. Once China's second-largest property developer, Evergrande has been mired in a debt crisis since 2021. Hui Ka Yan, the founder and chairman of Chinese property developer Evergrande, is having a really bad end to the year. In September, Hui was put under police surveillance. A month later, the real-estate mogul who was Asia's second-richest person worth $42 billion in 2017 lost his billionaire status after his fortune plunged 98% from its peak amid a debt crisis. It's unclear if Hui is back in the billionaire zone, but he is the largest holder of Evergrande's stock, which has lost almost all its value from its heyday in 2017. Now, a creditor has seized two luxury mansions linked to Hui. They are located in The Peak, Hong Kong's prestigious neighborhood, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing documents lodged with Hong Kong's Land Ministry. The properties at 10C and 10E Black's Link are tied to Hui via Tan Haijun, an associate of Hui who is listed as a director of firms holding the two houses, per Bloomberg. The houses which are valued at 1.5 billion Hong Kong dollars, or $192 million will be formally seized in days, local media outlet HK01 reported on Wednesday. They were pledged to Orix Asia Capital, an investment firm, for an HK$821 million loan in late 2021, according to the media outlet. It's not the first time Hui has lost a luxury home. In November last year, China Construction Bank seized another mansion he owned, which is also located on Black's Link. The property is now on the market for HK$880 million. Hui's assets have been under scrutiny since Evergrande's liquidity crisis came into public view in the second half of 2021. At the time, Chinese authorities reportedly told him to use his own money to pay the company's debt. Evergrande first defaulted on an offshore dollar bond in December of 2021 and was weighed down by over $300 billion worth of debt at the end of 2022. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in August. Evergrande faces a winding-up petition in Hong Kong. The company has until December 4 to come up with a new restructuring proposal to stave off liquidation. Evergrande and Orix Asia Capital did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. Evergrande's share price closed 1.9% lower at 26 Hong Kong cents on Wednesday. Read the original article on Business Insider FILE - Michael Voris, founder of Church Militant, speaks during a rally outside of the Baltimore hotel where the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops are holding its Fall General Assembly meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2021, in Baltimore. Voris, of a far-right, unofficial Catholic media group, has resigned for an unspecified violation of the organization's morality clause, the group said in a statement Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) The founder of a far-right, unofficial Catholic media group has resigned for an unspecified violation of the organization's morality clause, the group said in a statement Tuesday. Michael Voris stepped down as president of St. Michaels Media and Church Militant, a Michigan-based enterprise established to address what Voris official biography calls the serious erosion of the Catholic faith in the last 50 years." Michael Voris has been asked to resign for breaching the Church Militant morality clause, the organization said in its statement. The board has accepted his resignation. More details were not provided, and the board said it has chosen not to disclose Michaels private matters to the public but asked for prayers for him as he is focusing on his personal health. Voris declined to specify what happened in a repetitive, nearly 14-minute video statement on X, formerly Twitter. There are things I have to go away and address and work on, horrible, ugly things, he said. Not going to share them, nobody elses business but mine. The consequences of me not dealing with those obviously are some peoples business. I need to conquer these demons, he said, adding that they are like spiritual terror" to him. He asked people to continue supporting the organization he founded. The Church Militant site and its sleek newscasts have drawn a loyal following with a mix of fiercely right-wing politics and radically conservative Catholicism in which many of Americas bishops are viewed with suspicion and disgust. It is not recognized as a Church apostolate and lacks authorization to promote itself as Catholic, according to a 2020 statement by the Archdiocese of Detroit, in whose territory it is based. The organization says on its site it has more than 40 full-time employees. As long as Im physically able and mentally able to do this, this is my work, said Voris in a 2022 interview with the AP. I consider this a gift from God. Church Militant is often critical of Pope Francis, and has elevated extremist voices like those of Milo Yiannopoulos and echoed popular refrains from mainstream conservatives. Current articles on the site feature a climate crisis denier, criticize efforts at LGBTQ+ inclusion and platform Bishop Joseph Strickland recently ousted from his Texas diocese by Pope Francis after his increasingly severe criticisms of the pontiff. In 2016, Voris acknowledged that when he was younger, he had for years been involved in live-in relationships with homosexual men and multiple other sexual relationships with men and women, actions he later abhorred as extremely sinful. In 2021, Voris' group was initially denied permission to rally outside a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, with city officials saying it posed a threat to public safety in part because they said the site promoted and exalted the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Voris claimed the city wrongly blocked the event because it disapproved of the group's message, and a federal appeals court overturned the city's decision. In 2017, a confidant of Pope Francis singled out Church Militant for criticism. The Rev. Antonio Spadaro said the site framed the 2016 presidential election as a spiritual war and Donald Trumps ascent to the presidency as a divine election. Voris said at the time he was shocked and claimed Spadaro was among those "using a leftist agenda to pursue leftist goals. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Four high school students accused of beating a classmate to death in Las Vegas have been formally charged with second-degree murder. Jonathan Lewis Jr, 17, died after a fight in an alleyway near his school, where as many as 10 of his classmates swarmed him. Police said nine students in total have been arrested so far. The first four to be charged are under 18 but will be tried as adults under Nevada law. Dontral Beaver, 16, Damien Hernandez, 17, Treavion Randolph, 16, and Gianni Robinson, 17, appeared in court on Tuesday where the charges were read. All are being held in jail. The fight, which was caught on a video shared to social media, took place near Rancho High School on 1 November. Police said the brawl broke out over a set of headphones and a vape pen that was stolen from the victim or his friends. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police's homicide lieutenant Jason Johansson declined to show the video to the press, saying it was "very graphic" and "devoid of humanity". Gianni Robinson (left) and Treavion Randolph He said the video showed Jonathan taking off his shirt to prepare for the fight before he was immediately swarmed by 10 students. Mr Johnson said the video shows the teens "kicking, punching and stomping" on the victim after he is pulled to the ground. The victim was left unconscious and was found by a member of the public who brought him back to school. He was later taken to hospital after school staff attempted CPR on him. The teenager died six days later after suffering "non-survivable head trauma", police said. A post-mortem examination determined his death a homicide by blunt-force trauma. Police said they have arrested nine students, who are aged 13 to 17, and are still working to identify all those who were involved. Those who have not yet been charged are awaiting separate court hearings because they are all under the age of 16. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told reporters on Tuesday that his office chose to charge the teens with second-degree murder instead of first-degree murder because the evidence indicated the beating was not premeditated. Robert Draskovich, a lawyer for one of the students charged, said he believed the videos of the fight were "incomplete". "I'll be going through all the videos with my investigator to see what really happened," Mr Draskovich told reporters. Under Nevada law, the accused face 10 years to life in jail. A Palestinian man cries as he carries the body of his niece who was killed in an air strike on Gaza - Mohammed Salem/Reuters There could hardly be a more fragile ceasefire than that announced in Gaza, but diplomats across the Middle East, America and Europe will be working flat out to try and mould it into a longer peace. On the surface there is little cause for optimism. Despite the prospective release of 50 Israeli women and children and 150 Palestinians, the deal is shorn of the language of ideals and Israel has vowed to continue its offensive once the 4-5 day truce ends. We are at war, and the war will continue until all our goals are achieved, said prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the Israeli cabinet meeting which approved the deal late on Tuesday night. But the realpolitik of the war in Gaza for both sides will provide diplomats with a chink from which they may be able to carve a more meaningful ceasefire; that and the softening of hearts the release of so many captives must surely bring. Hamas, for its part, has taken a brutal pummelling. Forty-six days of airstrikes, artillery bombardment and close quarters combat has left its northern divisions in tatters and much of its vital infrastructure and leadership decimated. Israel, too, must face reality, military and political. At the start of the conflict, it estimated there were 30,000-40,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza. Smoke rises from northern Gaza following an air strike - JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images It has since killed an estimated 14,000 people in its stated military objective of ending the organisation in Gaza but, of those, just 4,300 were adult males, according to the Hamas controlled Gazan health authority. The hard truth Israeli military strategists now face is this: for the most part, Hamas, like legions of terrorist insurgents before them, have stashed their grab-bags and vanished into the general population in the south of the Gaza strip. Most will go unnoticed for what the vast majority of combatants the world over really are: poor and uneducated boys led by cultish thugs and grasping psychopaths. Trying to kill them within a zone that Israel itself has asked civilians to move risks collateral damage on a scale that even the cold legal logic of proportionality in war would struggle to justify. The incremental military gain will be too slight to justify the likely civilian carnage. Israel also has a unique humanitarian crisis on its hands, and one that could yet prove its undoing. In most wars of the type being fought in Gaza, much of the potential humanitarian fallout is mitigated by people fleeing. But in Gaza, mass migration is not possible. Some 2.3 million people are sealed into a crowded hellhole into which only a trickle of food, water and power is currently flowing. Israels hardmen like to say they dont care what the world thinks when it comes to protecting the Jewish homeland. But if Gazas ragged millions start to starve or succumb to infectious diseases such as cholera and typhoid this winter it wont be long before commentators like me start to recall the ghettos of Poland and Ukraine that our great grandparents died in. Interestingly, it is from within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) itself that these and other strategic worries are being most acutely felt. The defence establishment in Israel maybe tough and disciplined but it is by no means the most right wing or reactionary of the countrys institutions. Many of its soldiers have a deep empathy for their Palestinian neighbours. Moreover, their commanders know that there are limits to the usefulness of military action alone. It is the Israeli defence establishment that has continued, over many years, to try and keep the idea of a long-term peace alive, and many within it are now looking to the countrys politicians to start pulling their weight in the current crisis. The military is a tool, we cannot be the only solution. We hope that in the coming days we will see more from the political and humanitarian sides, one IDF officer told me on Tuesday. But are Israels politicians up to the job? It is widely acknowledged that several cabinet ministers are no more than racist thugs and the interior minister has a long police charge sheet against his name. Can these extremists, who were only on Monday accusing the families of Israels hostages of aiding Hamas, be held in check long enough to allow a longer peace to be negotiated, or might the country be sucked into an counterinsurgency and humanitarian disaster in Gaza that it cannot win? In security terms alone, the Americans and many within Israels defence establishment will see that such an outcome would leave the country dangerously exposed to Hezbollah on its northern border. But even that something which without US assistance could prove genuinely existential may not be enough for the countrys Messianic right. We must hope that cooler heads prevail. 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. FRANKLIN COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) A Franklin County man was charged with illegally baiting and hunting in Michaux State Forest, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. In May, a trail camera was found and seized in an illegally baited area 50 yards from Fickes property along Black Gap Road, investigators say. Later in October, another illegally baited area with a hunting blind was found. Pennsylvania gets three new laws dealing with medical exams, human milk, soil According to the complaint, Donald Fickes, 41, of Fayetteville, was found a few feet away from the hunting blind, holding a rifle and dressed in camouflage. He immediately started walking to his home when game warden agents approached him, and set the rifle, a Marlin model 25. bolt-action, along a tree. Fickes said he was hunting groundhogs, but investigators say the wooded area and season were not ideal for groundhog hunting. The bait that was also found is commonly used for deer. Fickes also did not have a hunting license, and has prior criminal convictions for felonies so he is not allowed to possess a firearm, the complaint notes. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now abc27 Evening Newsletter In Pennsylvania, it is illegal to hunt without a license, to put bait in a state forest to hunt wildlife, and it was archery season, meaning that only bow and arrows or a crossbow can be used to hunt. Fickes, of Fayetteville, faces a felony charge of prohibited possession of a firearm, along with multiple summary counts of taking or killing big game beyond season/daily limits, use of artificial/natural bait, taking/possessing big game or wildlife, among other charges. Fickes is currently locked up in Franklin County Jail, unable to post his bail set at $50,000. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Nov. 28. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27. The truce agreement is the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the Israel-Hamas war (JACK GUEZ) A secret cell headed by CIA and Mossad chiefs, and multiple contacts between US President Joe Biden and leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt underpinned an "excruciating" five weeks resulting in the truce agreement, a US official said. In a detailed account to reporters by a senior US official speaking on condition of anonymity, a picture has emerged of a tense international effort beset by sudden communication cutoffs with Hamas, disputes over hostage lists, and safety concerns on the ground. The US official said the "extremely excruciating five-week process" of negotiations began with a call from Qatar to Washington and the Israelis, in a bid to free some of the hostages snatched by Palestinian militants during their October 7 raids on Israel. On Wednesday, Israel and Hamas announced a truce deal allowing the release of at least 50 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Qatar, which brokered the agreement, "asked that a cell be established to work on the issue very carefully, very secretly, together with the Israelis", the US official said. Qatar hosts a Hamas political office, and has behind-the-scenes diplomatic links with Israel. It is also home to the largest US military base in the region. Biden administration officials were having "daily, sometimes hourly, senior level of engagement with Qatar, with Egypt and with Israel on the issue of the hostages," according to the official. The president himself entered the talks, holding Zoom calls with families of victims on October 13, followed by his visit to Israel five days later. The release of two American citizens on October 20 was seen as "a pilot process" for the overall negotiations, the official said. "We were able to track, kind of in real time, the (hostages) as they moved from Gaza, ultimately across the border and into freedom," the American said. Their safe return "gave us some confidence that... Qatar really could deliver through the cell that we had established." - Biden 'engaged daily' - Soon Mossad director David Barnea and CIA chief William Burns were also deeply involved. A flurry of phone calls between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed on October 20, 22, 23 and 25. Biden "was engaged daily as extremely difficult talks and proposals were traded back and forth," the official said, noting that discussions centered around transportation corridors, surveillance and timeframes. Hamas came under intense pressure to produce a list of hostages. Communication proved difficult as messages had to pass from Doha or Cairo into Gaza and back. By October 25, Hamas was saying it could guarantee about 50 releases in the first phase, but their formal list came up short: just 10 names. On November 9, the CIA's Burns rushed to Doha to help thrash out a deal text, but the identification of hostages remained a sticking point. Biden called the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, on November 12 and "made very clear that where we were was not enough," the US official said. Shortly afterwards, "Hamas produced the identifying criteria for the 50 hostages." As Israel's bombing of Gaza intensified and civilian deaths soared, Biden called Netanyahu on November 14 urging him to "move forward with this deal," and the prime minister ultimately agreed, the official said. But suddenly, with a deal in sight that day, "everything stalled again," the US official said. Hamas had broken off talks. Biden called the Qatari emir on November 17, according to the official, to make clear the deal "had to close." Two days later, the Americans met with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and received assurances from Hamas "closing the gaps," the US official said. "For the first time (they) really see this coming together." mlm/dhw/ser The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraines parliament, has unanimously supported the bill No. 8011 on ensuring the rights of military personnel to parenthood or motherhood even after traumatic injuries, MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak said on Telegram on Nov. 22. The decision was supported by 271 parliamentarians. Read also: Childhood under occupation: How a boy from Donetsk Oblast survived Russia Thus, during the martial law, military personnel have the right to the free collection, cryopreservation and storage of their reproductive cells in case of loss of reproductive function during hostilities. This also applies to employees who directly participate in the defense of Ukraine or ensure national security and defense, including police officers. Read also: Psychologists reveal dreams of Ukrainian adolescents living in wartime In the event of the death of military personnel, the procedure for the use of their biological materials will be determined by the government, taking into account the requirements of the legislation on the protection of personal information. In general, the collection of sex cells costs about UAH 450 (around $12) for men and UAH 1,425 (around $40) for women. The necessary medical examinations before the procedure can be done during general military medical commission check-ups. Read also: Russian invaders flood Kherson Oblast with 34,000 propaganda textbooks to brainwash kids 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 group of academics at the University of Edinburgh hope a third bid to show a controversial documentary on women's rights and trans issues will go ahead on Wednesday. The film Adult Human Female is due to be shown at a venue in George Square. Two previous attempts to show it have been cancelled after pro-trans activists protested at the events. They claimed the film includes "a clear attack on trans people's identities", a claim denied by both the film-makers and those trying to show it. This time, the film's supporters hope that increased security and a pledge from the university to back academic freedom mean it will finally be shown. But even if that happens, it is clear that the furore over Adult Human Female is one part of a much wider battle in universities. What is Adult Human Female? The film at the centre of the battle is described by its makers as "the UK's first feature length documentary about the clash between women's rights and gender ideology/trans rights". It was directed by academics and film-makers Deirdre O'Neill and Michael Wayne and has been available to view on Youtube since December 2022. It says women's rights have been infringed by aspects of the trans movement and defines sex as being determined by biology. The filmmakers have written about the attempts to stop their work being shown around the UK. An attempt to show the film last December at the University of Edinburgh was halted amid safety concerns after protesters formed a blockade around the venue. Police were called but no arrests were made. A second attempt to show it was again cancelled in similar circumstances in April. Some university staff and student groups had called for the screening to be called off, claiming the documentary contained content that was "a clear attack on trans people's identities". Who is behind the screenings? The events have been organised by University of Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom (EAFAF), which is made up of university staff who are concerned by what they call a "growing climate of censoriousness and a general chill around discussing and debating difficult issues in this university". They do not accept claims that the film discriminates against trans people and say it in fact supports the Equality Act 2010, which protects trans people against discrimination. Professor Jonathan Hearn, who teaches political sociology at the university and is a founding member of the group, says this is a debate about academic freedom and not trans rights. "I believe the film has good reason to be shown and discussed. I do not believe it's transphobic. If we felt it was threatening to people we would have reservations about showing it," he said. "But it just has views that are unpopular with some people. "Our showing it here is a symbolic issue, showing that a small militant group cannot dictate to the whole university what can see," he added. Who is protesting against it? Those protesting against the showing come from a range of organisations representing both students and staff at the university. Prominent among them are some members of the Edinburgh branch of the University and College Union and members of the university's Staff Pride Network, an LGBT+ support group. An email from the UCU's joint presidents at Edinburgh to members on Friday 17 November, seen by the BBC, said a protest against the film would be hosted by the Edinburgh University Students' Association (EUSA) "trans & non-binary campaign and LGBTQ+ Campaign, in collaboration with FemSoc, Gender Liberation, Pride Society and Staff Pride Network". The email said: "This protest against the University's decision to authorise the screening of Adult Human Female on campus will take place on 22 November from 17:30 outside 40 George Square. "It would be wonderful to have a showing of UCUE members in solidarity with our trans and non-binary staff and students." The BBC contacted EUSA for a comment but was told nobody was available to speak. The organisation pointed to its previous statement on the protests and attempts to show the film. The statement said: "We recognise the value of academic discourse in university spaces, however, this film contains many inaccuracies regarding trans people, which has a demonstrable harmful impact on an already marginalised and vulnerable group, without any grounding in reality." The Edinburgh branch of the UCU was approached for comment but did not give a response. Posters calling for action against the film showing have been put up around the university campus The university and academic freedom At the centre of this is an ancient institution - the University of Edinburgh - with an international reputation, clear policies on free speech and a duty of care to staff and students on both sides of the debate. A spokesperson for the university said they remain "steadfast" in their commitment to upholding freedom of expression and academic freedom. "It is in this context that the group Edinburgh Academics for Academic Freedom (EAFAF) is holding a rescheduled screening and discussion of the documentary 'Adult Human Female' on the University campus," they said. "The decision to allow an event or discussion to proceed is made in line with our policies and is not an endorsement by the university of any views. We firmly uphold the right of people to take part in peaceful and lawful protest and we have measures in place to allow the event to proceed with the safety of both attendees and protestors as paramount." The issue of free speech in universities has become heavily politicised. Speaking in the Scottish Parliament after the last attempt to show Adult Human Female was cancelled, First Minister Humza Yousaf said he had not seen the film but urged the university to defend freedom of speech and to allow robust debate and discussion. He added: "I see that as no conflict with the other stance that I'm very proud of, which is supporting trans rights. That is something that I am unequivocal about. "But we should ensure that our universities - and society more generally - are a place where we can have that robust exchange of ideas." For Professor Hearn, ensuring the film goes ahead is fundamental to how our universities work. "It is almost a test of honour for the university," he said. "It was catastrophic for me. It was shameful." Bernard Bousset recounts the events which changed his life in a clear voice, but he is visibly still deeply troubled, all these years later. In 1964, a man he had spent the night with stole his watch and some money. After reporting the theft, the police charged Mr Bousset with sexual activity with a minor, under a discriminatory law inherited from the Nazi collaborator authorities of Vichy France which imposed different ages of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex. Mr Bousset, today 82, was eventually issued a "significant" fine. But what was more disastrous was the press's reporting of the conviction - which made it public knowledge to everyone around him. The consequences were calamitous, he recalls. "At the time, homosexuality was so negatively perceived. I was ostracised from my family. I was so ashamed." "You could lose your job and your home for being gay. You had no rights." Mr Bousset is one of an estimated 10,000 people - mostly gay men - who were convicted between 1942 and 1982 under laws used to target homosexuals. On Wednesday, the French Senate - the upper house of the French parliament - will debate a bill which would offer a formal apology to the victims of the homophobic legislation. If passed, the bill would financially compensate victims of two discriminatory laws. One was the Vichy-era legislation, which set the age of consent for homosexual sex at 21, compared to 13 for opposite-sex relationships. After the Nazi occupation ended in 1945, the new authorities did not repeal the law. A second law, adopted in 1960, criminalised homosexuality as a "social scourge," alongside alcoholism, drug use and prostitution. Judges were given wide leeway to target homosexuals under existing laws criminalising public indecency, says Antoine Idier, an associate professor at Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a political sciences university. Victims of the discriminatory legislation frequently had their lives ruined, says Mr Idier. People could be fined or jailed for several months. On release, many faced social ostracism. Some lost their jobs or were forced to move cities. "In a few cases, we even see cases of suicide," he adds. People convicted under the laws included Charles Trenet, the singer of classic ballads La Mer and Douce France, who spent 28 days in prison after being accused of soliciting young men in 1963. Though the charges were eventually dropped, the high-profile case publicly highlighted Mr Trenet's homosexuality, about which he was discreet. The singer Charles Trenet spent 28 days in jail after being accused of soliciting young men in 1963 Hussein Bourgi, a Socialist lawmaker who proposed the bill, said: "It is high time to bring justice to the living victims of legislation which served as the basis for a politics of repression with brutal and punishing social, professional and familial consequences." If the proposed law passes, it would bring France into line with other European countries, which in recent years have officially apologised to the victims of homophobic legislation. The UK's "Turing Law," which received royal assent in 2017, pardoned gay men convicted under some discriminatory legislation. In the same year, Germany apologised to the victims of anti-gay laws adopted under the Nazis and maintained by the authorities of post-war West Germany. "France is later than other countries on this issue," says Regis Schlagdenhauffen, an assistant professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) who has researched the persecution of gay people in France. "But it should officially recognise the injustice while some victims are still alive." "France will be greater for it," he adds. The bill is not certain to pass. In its initial stages, it received a mixed reception from senators, who were sceptical of proposals to pay living victims 10,000 (8,730). Even if passed by the Senate, it would also need to be approved by the National Assembly before becoming law. Mr Idier says the bill as it stands does not go far enough. He argues the law should also recognise people who were convicted under pre-1942 laws, which did not explicitly target homosexuals but gave judges discretion to enforce them against gay people. As for Mr Bousset, though welcoming of the bill, he says the attempt to reckon with France's past has come too late. "It will not erase [the pain] I lived with and which many homosexuals still live with," he says. "It is incredible to say, but even today, I am still ashamed when I am in straight environments." "I never could erase this conviction. It lives within me." Russia can prepare its troops to attack NATO within six years if the full-scale war unleashed against Ukraine is frozen, analysts from the German Council on Foreign Relations or DGAP warn in their latest brief, issued in November. The German analysts believe that the "most urgent threat" to the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance is Russia and its imperial ambitions. "Once intensive fighting will have ended in Ukraine, the regime in Moscow may need as little as six to ten years to reconstitute its armed forces," the report says. Within that timeframe, Germany and NATO must enable their armed forces to deter and, if necessary, fight against Russia. Only then will they be in a position to reduce the risk of another war breaking out in Europe. Read also: Ex-NATO chief proposes partial NATO membership for Ukraine without Russia-occupied territories According to the analysts, it is Moscow that determines the timing, combining long-held motivation with a military buildup, and the window for a possible invasion will open "as soon as Russia believes that an attack, for instance on the Baltic states, could meet with success." The DGAP estimates it will take from five to nine years for NATO states to rearm. Read also: Four scenarios for Ukraine's future in NATO The experts pointed out that during its war against Ukraine, Russia has put its arms industry on a war footing. The basis for calculating the period of time for NATO to prevent a possible war by strengthening its deterrence potential is the assumption that the Kremlin will manage to freeze the war against Ukraine. Thus, Moscow would have time to rebuild its ground forces. "Any troops or systems that NATO countries deploy only a short time before Russias reconstitution is achieved will not impact Russias considerations," the analysts write. Russia would underestimate NATOs combat readiness and could be tempted to start a war. NATO countries called Russia the biggest security threat in their communique following the Vilnius summit in July, but stressed the alliance "does not seek confrontation." 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 public has increasingly soured on Congress and now, some House lawmakers are starting to agree. With legislating all but brought to a halt and partisanship at an alarming high, members of Congress in both parties are running for the exits, opting out of another term on Capitol Hill to vie for higher office or, in some cases, leave politics altogether. It is a trend that skyrocketed in recent months amid a tumultuous 10-week stretch on Capitol Hill and one that is likely to continue through the end of this year, highlighting the challenges of navigating a polarized, and oftentimes chaotic, era of Congress. Best Black Friday Deals Right now, Washington, D.C. is broken, Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) said in a statement when announcing that she would not run for reelection. [I]t is hard to get anything done. Too often elected officials chase the 24-hour news cycle, focusing on the issue of the day, and when you look back there is little to show for it, said Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), an 18-year veteran of the House who has also opted against running for reelection. Thirty House members 19 Democrats and 11 Republicans have announced that they will not seek reelection next year, covering a wide range of congressional seniority, post-House plans and reasons for jumping ship. Sixteen are retiring from public office, 11 are running for seats in the Senate, and three are eyeing other government positions. Top Stories from The Hill The list includes, most recently, Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), who accepted an offer to lead Youngstown State University as president; and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), who is hanging up her hat in Congress after 30 years. They are joined by Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), the 49-year-old lawmaker who had a stint running the New Democrat Coalition; Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is one of three House members jockeying for a Senate seat; and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), who frequently draws media attention for criticizing the GOPs stance on election denialism. Additionally, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) is running for Houston mayor, and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) is mounting a longshot bid for the Democratic nomination for president. Both, however, can remain in Congress and run for reelection if they lose or drop out of their other races. The number of House members opting against reelection in 2024 is not necessarily unusual 49 tapped out in 2022 and 36 in 2020. But unlike past cycles, when the exiting lawmakers have tended to tilt heavily toward one party or the other, depending on the moments political winds, the current departures are coming from both parties in a cycle when control of the House is up for grabs. Here are the House incumbents not running for reelection in 2024 Matthew Green, a politics professor at Catholic University, pointed out the frustration some lawmakers have voiced when announcing their future plans. At this point, the number of retirements is not incredibly high, per se, but I think that the reason some of the members are giving for retiring is indicative of possibly some deeper dissatisfaction with Congress, Green told The Hill in an interview. Half of the House members not seeking reelection next year 15 lawmakers revealed their plans in October and November, a hectic two months on Capitol Hill that had lawmakers reeling from a near-government shutdown; witnessing the first successful ouster of a sitting Speaker; and grappling with the ensuing three-week saga to elect a new top lawmaker, which shut down legislative business in the chamber. With the October that we had, I think the American people could be forgiven for thinking that the word unprecedented was just another name for Tuesday for a while, Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at Georgetown Universitys Government Affairs Institute, told The Hill in an interview. Everything was unprecedented for a while. In the past two weeks alone, one Republican accused another of elbowing him in the kidney at the Capitol; a committee chairman called another member a smurf; and a congresswoman called her colleague a p. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who has served in Congress since 1996, reflected on the current atmosphere in Washington when announcing his retirement. Im not certain that two more years in Congress in this climate is the best way to deal with things I care about, Blumenauer told Willamette Week in an interview. The previous two months in Washington are largely emblematic of the entire span of the 118th Congress, which has been marked by bitter battles inside the parties and between the two, a pair of shutdown cliffs, a near-economic default and, all in all, little law-making. Just 21 pieces of legislation have been signed into law this year, far fewer than this point in the 117th Congress, when Democrats had unanimous control, and during 116th Congress, which was another run of divided government. I have been here nine years, and Congress refuses to deal with the big issues that we have to deal with, Buck told CNN in an interview when asked what drove his retirement decision. He went on to list the sustainability of Social Security and Medicare and the ballooning debt. We really need to work on issues; theres no incentive structure here to do that, he added, before knocking the belief among many Republicans that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and criticizing them for defending prisoners from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Blessing, of Georgetown University, said Congress is becoming a place where you dont feel effective. A place that has an environment thats too negative for you to professionally function in, she added. The low productivity is translating to a negative perception among Americans. Congress, an institution that has never enjoyed overwhelming public approval, is currently seeing its lowest marks in years: Just 13 percent of the American public approve of the way Congress is handing its job, the lowest mark since November 2017. Not all lawmakers, to be sure, are leaving Congress because of the bodys ineffectiveness. Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), who was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease earlier this year, said she was retiring to spend her valued time with loved ones; and Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said his cancer diagnosis this year which he said was gone in May after surgery drove his decision to step down from public office. Rep. Jeff Jackson (D-N.C.), a first-term lawmaker, launched a bid for North Carolina attorney general one day after the states GOP-controlled Legislature approved a new congressional map that drew his district red. The list of lawmakers leaving the House is likely to increase in the coming weeks and months, especially after the Thanksgiving and December holiday season, a time that lawmakers often talk with family and reassess their political futures. Inside Elections reported earlier this month that Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) is making calls to succeed Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) in the upper chamber, after writing in a Desert News op-ed in early October that he decided to stay out of the U.S. Senate race at this time. After the Inside Elections report, Politico said Curtis met with Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Green, the Catholic University professor, said more retirements could be announced after the holidays because the window for when lawmakers can announce their retirements and still give candidates a chance to campaign is narrowing. But he also referenced the toxic nature of serving in Congress. If the reasons that members are unhappy is because Congress is a toxic place, Green said, it would not surprise me to see a lot more retirements in the next several weeks. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. City officials last week took steps to permanently ban drive-thru restaurants from downtown Lincoln. According to a new city ordinance adopted Nov. 14, future drive-thru restaurants are prohibited from building in the historic downtown area of the Placer County city. The ordinance does not affect existing drive-thru restaurants. City Council members adopted the ordinance after members of the Planning Commission adopted a resolution recommending the change in August. Drive-thru facilities are not an appropriate or compatible land use for the downtown, the resolution said. Commissioners said drive-thru businesses werent compatible with the small lot spaces in the downtown area, making them likely to cause long lines and traffic jams. Furthermore, they would detract from the historical fabric of downtown. The decision comes as Lincoln attempts to revitalize its downtown, making it more attractive for pedestrians and families. As it stands now, the area lacks restaurants, retail and recreation hubs, according to meeting documents, and there is an overabundance of auto repair shops in the area. Im 100% in agreement with this and Im ready to support it, Councilwoman Holly Andreatta said during the meeting. Council members Bill Lauritsen, Ben Brown and Andreatta voted to adopt the ordinance. Mayor Paul Joiner and Councilman Dan Karleskint were absent from the meeting. The recent UN independent assessment on Afghanistan, pursuant to Security Council Resolution 2679 (2023), has proposed a three-pronged initiative, focusing on building confidence through addressing the basic needs of the people of Afghanistan, attention to regional and global security and stability, and a roadmap for political engagement to reintegrate Afghanistan into the international community. It has also proposed a multilayer UN mechanism in support of this initiative. As a welcome recommendation, the assessment envisages a more active and structured role for the UN in coordinating the now-fragmented international response to the situation in Afghanistan. Given the Councils expectation to see a forward looking assessment, the analysis doesnt cover what has gone wrong in the past. It simply identifies key current issues and proposes concurrent moves in the above three areas, calling for further engagement with the Taliban administration. A quick review of the Talibans behaviour since their inception in 1994 would have easily shown that at least a few recommendations of the assessment are pipedreams. If anything, they may work in favour of the Taliban and assist the growth of the terror it brings. In its analysis and identification of issues, the assessment portrays the Taliban as helping make Afghanistan and ignores their invention and evolution as part of regional and global geopolitical games. It vaguely refers to their opponents as stakeholders without acknowledging the thousands of men and women who have sacrificed their lives, have been wounded or have been imprisoned or forcefully removed from their homes in the struggle to free the country from the Taliban tyranny since August 2021. The assessment asserts that neither the international community, nor the vast majority of Afghans, wish to see renewed armed conflict in Afghanistan. In doing so, it assumes that Afghanistan is currently in a post-conflict state and avoids making any reference to the armed national resistance actively taking place against the Taliban. It also fails to acknowledge that the people of Afghanistan are entitled to resort to all possible means to exercise their right to self-determination. The assessment does not say enough about major Taliban war crimes and crimes against humanity, including gender apartheid; and is silent about their use and abuse of international aid, national revenue, and resources. It accepts the militancy of the Taliban and has no proposal for their disarmament. The assessment is right that the status quo of international engagement is not working. But in its proposed new method of engagement hasnt learned from previous efforts and ignores the political realities. A concurrent three pronged-strategy, without conditionality and pressure on the Taliban, has the risk of the Talban taking advantage of economic and security engagements, as well as passage of quality time, to further strengthen their military and ideological grip over the country, and delay political engagement, as they have been doing in the past three decades, in particular during and after the failed Doha talks. Requests for a robust and healthy Afghan economy, cooperation on areas such as security, counter-narcotics and regional connectivity, and genuine fight against radicalisation, extremism, and terrorism, need legitimacy in governance more than anything else. The assessments call for economic dialogue and eventual coordination with the Taliban authorities financial and security bodies, with no conditionality and pressure and without addressing the use and abuse of aid by the Taliban and their butchery of people, is completely premature and a recipe for disaster and mistrust. Responding to the assessment, the Taliban through a letter to the UN, has already welcomed further engagement and has seen the proposed support to the national economy as a pathway to the recognition of their regime. They have flatly rejected the proposed intra-Afghan dialogue and see no need for it at all. The assessments call for gradually resuming diplomatic engagement inside Afghanistan is also disappointing. Such a move would further embolden the Taliban and reduce the international communitys leverage to a new low. It claims that security conditions have improved inside Afghanistan, easing travel and transport and economic predation by armed actors have sharply reduced. It forgets that the key armed actor the Taliban have taken the entire country and its more than 40 million population hostage. We welcome the assessments noting of persistent presence of terrorist groups and individuals inside Afghanistan such as Al-Qaeda and their relations with the Taliban, and the fact that measures taken by the Taliban against them has not been satisfactory to concerned member states. A requirement for a serious and genuine implementation of resolution 1373 (2001), however, is missing from the assessment. The call for reviewing and updating relevant provisions of the UN 1988 Sanctions list pursuant to resolution 1988 (2011) is welcoming, provided that such a review is conducted with the intent to ensure strict enforcement of the sanctions regime. This is one of the few leverages of the international community. In the face of what has been happening since August 2021, the revision of the entire sanctions regime is long overdue. The update must strengthen its monitoring and depoliticization, making it more targeted on the Talibans assets, travels, and arms. In the past two years, prominent figures of the Taliban have been instrumental in numerous violations of human rights. Their names must be added to the sanctions list. The assessment rightly identifies inclusive governance as key demand of many Afghan stakeholders and of the international community but finding its remedy in Afghan traditions of consultations and dialogue, such as the formation of a constitutional jirga, would be contested by many for two reasons. First, the Taliban have abolished the 2004 Constitution, hence holding a constitutional jirga is impossible. Second, part of the problem is the historic imposition of jirga as a fair consultative body. Jirgas have historically failed to bring sustainable solutions to the political crisis. Despite having the loya jirga defined in the 2004 Constitution, no constitutional jirga has ever been held in Afghanistan. Almost all jirgas have served the interests of the rulers who have held them. Chances are that in the current climate, any jirga formed under the Taliban rule will be handpicked and will serve their interests. Over the past two decades, the people of Afghanistan proved that they are well-receptive to modern and decent methods of political participation, such as transitional authority, free elections, and referendum. They do not deserve being offered inferior alternatives in the name of tradition, which would only serve to whitewash and normalize the Talibans tyrannical rule. The first step of upholding the obligations of the State of Afghanistan, forming an inclusive government and enabling normalisation starts with at least the creation of an equilibrium between the Taliban and their opponents, through internal and external conditionality and pressure. This is what the proposed UN mechanism of support should be focused on, not further unconditional engagement with the Taliban. Ambassador Mahmoud Saikal served as Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations from 2015 to 2019. More than 40,000 projects have received federal funding from the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden two yeas ago. But many Americans may not have noticed the impact of the historic investment just yet. Construction hasnt started in many places and signs of the nations aging infrastructure continue to make the news. Just this year, Vermonts roadways were no match for historic rainfall that stranded residents and shut down businesses, and a train derailment in Ohio spewed poisonous fumes into the air and killed thousands of fish. The Biden administration is eager to show the impact the law which garnered bipartisan support in Congress is having ahead of the 2024 election, putting up signs along roadways claiming credit for projects across the country and billboards celebrating the two-year anniversary. The law provides funding not only for roads and bridges, but also to create a nationwide network of electric vehicle chargers, increase access to high-speed internet, improve public transportation and upgrade ports. Its too early to know the full impact the additional infrastructure spending will have on the US economy. The federal government has until 2026 to disburse the money, and some massive projects will take more time to be completed. Here are five projects that have received money from the law so far: Upgrading Boston Logan International Airports Terminal E A bright red, spaceship-looking Terminal E reopened earlier this year at Boston Logan International Airport after undergoing a number of renovations, with funding assistance from a $62 million grant from the infrastructure law. Construction at Terminal E began in 2019, prior to the laws passage, adding four new gates. Upgrades were also made to the HVAC system, the ticket area, the baggage claim area and jet bridges. Some of the federal grant is also being used to improve the arrival roadways for Terminals A and E and the roadway between Terminals C and E. The airport received the grant last year from the infrastructure laws Airport Terminals Program, which will award $1 billion each year for five years. Replacing an aging bridge over the Wisconsin River The I-39/90/94 bridge, which crosses the Wisconsin River, is set to be replaced. - From WisDOT The I-39/90/94 bridge that spans the Wisconsin River in Columbia County will be replaced with two new bridge spans thanks to $80 million from the federal infrastructure law. Construction is expected to begin next year. The bridge is nearing the end of its operational life, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Two overcrossing bridges for county roads U and V will also be replaced. About 23% of the current bridge traffic is composed of trucks, since the route links economic hubs like Milwaukee, Chicago and Wisconsins capital city of Madison, which is about a 45-minute drive to the south of the I-39/90/94 bridge. The route also connects major tourism destinations, with a large share of Wisconsins tourism revenue coming from nearby counties. The bridge is one of the few that cross the Wisconsin River in the southeast part of the state, according to the Wisconsin DOT. Dedicated electric bus lanes running in and out of Park City, Utah Park City Main Street Historic District on May 29, 2021, in Park City, Utah. - AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images/Getty Images Free electric bus service is already provided through Park City, a popular Utah ski town. The trip, which runs from the historic district to the Kimball Junction neighborhood, is intended to take 10 to 15 minutes. But the buses are delayed about one-third of the time due to traffic congestion. To make the route more efficient, local officials have been considering adding dedicated bus lanes along State Route 224 since 2018. Earlier this year, the project received $25 million from the infrastructure law. Construction is expected to start next year. In addition to creating two 12-foot-wide lanes one running in each direction there are plans to build two new bus stations, upgrade three existing stations and purchase five more electric buses. Improving train travel along the Northeast corridor President Joe Biden arrives to give a speech on the Hudson River Tunnel Project at the West Side Yard on January 31, 2023, in New York City. - Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Billions of dollars from the infrastructure package are going to dozens of projects that will improve train travel along the nations busy Northeast corridor between Boston and Washington, DC. One major project receiving funds is the rail tunnel that runs under the Hudson River, connecting New Jersey with Manhattan. First opened in 1910, the tunnel has several age-related problems and also suffered damage when Hurricane Sandy inundated the tubes with salt water in 2012. Separately, in Maryland, initial construction began in March to replace the 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, which runs under the city of Baltimore. It will ultimately be replaced with two new tubes for Amtrak and Maryland Area Regional Commuter, or MARC, trains. The improvements are expected to increase train speeds in the tunnel from 30 mph to 110 mph. The Susquehanna River Bridge in Maryland and the Connecticut River Bridge both of which are more than 100 years old will also be replaced. The infrastructure law allocated $22 billion to Amtrak directly, some of which is being used to replace its fleet of more than 1,000 railcars and locomotives. Some of the new cars have already entered service. Building a fish passage around Washingtons Howard A. Hanson Dam In this 2009 photo, water flows from the Howard A. Hanson Dam in East King County, Washington. - Dean Rutz/The Seattle Times/AP The Howard A. Hanson Dam has protected Washingtons Green River Valley from flooding since it was constructed in 1961, but its also putting Chinook and Coho salmon and steelhead populations at risk. Earlier this year, the US Army Corps of Engineers received $220 million from the infrastructure law to complete work on a fish-passage facility that will help fish navigate around the dam, reopening more than 60 miles of habitat. Washingtons lawmakers have been requesting federal funds for the project for several years. Growing the salmon and steelhead fish populations will help support the endangered Southern resident killer whales that are found mostly off British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. The fish passage is also expected to help maintain the water supply to the Tacoma Public Utility. A new downstream fish passage facility at Howard Hanson Dam is the single most impactful project that (the US Army Corps of Engineers) can take to benefit Puget Sound salmon and orca recovery without negatively impacting other user groups, Seattle District Commander Col. Alexander L. Bullock said in a statement last year. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com Gavin Newsom is still a rising political star, but his path to national prominence has gotten rocky as he heads into his debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis next Thursday. His approval rating has sunk. He faces questions about his trip to China and the collapse of a major freeway in downtown Los Angeles. He angered longtime labor supporters by vetoing two bills they wanted, including one that would have provided strike benefits to jobless workers. When the idea of a Newsom-DeSantis debate was floated earlier this year, it promised an unfiltered look at two political up-and-comers who may someday compete for the presidency. It still has that potential, but the stars are not as bright. The two governors will meet for 90 minutes Nov. 30 on Fox News Channel, with commentator Sean Hannity moderating. Fox is calling it The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate. Gavin Newsom is taking a risk by doing this debate. He is facing questions about if his focus is on Californians or if his focus is on his national ambitions, said Christian Grose, academic director of the University of Southern California Schwarzenegger Institute While too much emphasis on national politics could mean great risk for Newsom, Grose said, the governor can score a victory at home with Californians if he emphasizes the states growth, tolerance and diversity. Newsoms camp was optimistic about the debate. Governor Newsom is thrilled to debate Ron DeSantis and expose DeSantis weakness as a leader and candidate. The fact he even accepted Gov. Newsoms year-old debate challenge shows just how desperate he is to distract from his own flailing campaign, said Newsom consultant Nathan Click.. The race for president DeSantis presidential concerns are more immediate. The governor, 45, is seeking the Republican nomination and is struggling to even stay in a distant second behind former President Donald Trump. Despite a series of nationally televised Republican debates this summer and fall, his poll numbers have been static.. Newsom, 56, is looking ahead. He sees a Democratic Party eager for aggressive, center-left leadership. Though he says hes not interested in a White House run next year, the Democratic Party lacks a consensus front runner for 2028 or even next year should President Joe Biden step aside. In recent months he has made all the moves of a presidential contender, setting up a sophisticated fundraising operation, traveling to Israel and China, barnstorming through red Southern states to meet with Democrats and donating to campaigns. But unlike U.S. senators or House members, governors are uniquely responsible if things go wrong at home, and can be uniquely vulnerable if voters feel theyre not focused on state business. And some things have gone wrong for Newsom. Newsoms vanity play to get national attention isnt playing well at home, said Steve Maviglio, a Sacramento Democratic consultant. Newsoms approval sinks Through most of his six years as governor, Newsom has been generally viewed positively by Californians. Not anymore. The latest Berkeley-IGS statewide poll October 24-30 found 49% disapproved of the job hes doing and 44% approved. It surveyed 6,342 registered voters. Margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points. The Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics survey of 1,000 registered voters, conducted Nov. 11-14, had Newsoms approval at 46% and disapproval at 40%. Margin of error is plus-or-minus 3 percentage points.. Click, Newsoms consultant, cited a late August/early September poll by the Public Policy Institute of California that showed Newsom with a 56% approval rating among likely voters. PPIC surveyed 1,146 likely voters. Margin of error is plus-or-minus 3.7%. Last month, the PPIC approval rating was 54%. Emerson this month found one-third of voters gave Newsom an F on his handling of the homeless issue and 14% a D. One-fourth rated him a C and 28% an A or B. Fifty-seven percent gave a Newsom a D or an F for his handling of the cost of living. Twenty-one percent rated his performance as a C, 12% said B and 10% A. The dip in Newsoms approval suggests that many Californians are concerned with how things are going in the state,which may give the governor less leeway to fully engage on the national stage, said Eric Schickler, co-director of Berkeleys Institute of Governmental Studies. The poll said the decline in Newsoms popularity was broad based. Newsom visited Israel and China last month. His trip to China was widely scorned by conservatives and drew questions from human rights activists about the focus on environmental cooperation, economic development and tourism. Fifty percent approved of the trip while 39% disapproved in the Berkeley poll. While many Chinese cities have some of the worlds worst air pollution, Newsom said California could learn a lot, citing that countrys drive to build more electric vehicles and extensive use of offshore wind. His office said he did bring up Chinas human rights violations and anti-democratic policies. Newsom and controversy Newsom has also had a rocky autumn back home. Labor applauded his signing of legislation in September creating a minimum wage for fast food workers. But he angered unions, who have long been loyal, deep-pocket supporters, when he vetoed a bill that would have paid state unemployment benefits to workers on strike for at least two weeks. He said the bill was too costly. Hollywood writers and actors were mired in months-long strikes that were settled recently. Newsom also rejected a labor-friendly bill that would have extended workplace safety policies to domestic workers such as housekeepers. This month, Newsom has faced questions about a Nov. 11 fire that caused the collapse of a heavily-traveled section of Interstate 10 in downtown Los Angeles. The highway reopened Sunday night, far sooner than expected, after a round-the-clock effort to get it repaired. When he announced the completion of work, Newsom declared Its about government getting things done. But questions remain about whether the state had done enough to control the risk. The Los Angeles Times reported the fire was driven by wood pallets stored under the freeway. The land, it said, was leased by Caltrans to a private company that subleased it to other businesses. The highway, the China trip, public concern about homelessness, the economy and the vetoes are not unusual matters for a governor to tackle. But Newsom is under a different sort of scrutiny because hes being viewed as a national figure. And events back home are often out of his control. As a result, I guess I see more downside risk although given how Newsom is trying to build a bigger political brand nationally, said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabatos Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis group. DeSantis is likely to pound away at the controversies, raising the question of whether Newsom will look resolute in his well-practiced defenses or taken aback. I can see the attraction in doing this event. In some ways it allows him to be a presidential candidate for a night without actually being a presidential candidate, said Kondik. But given the recent turmoil, the risk is there. Whether its Newsom or Biden, voters want elected officials to focus on what matters to them, said Maviglio. Israeli ministers convene to vote on hostage deal Xinhua) 08:24, November 22, 2023 JERUSALEM, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Israeli ministers met on Tuesday night in a bid to approve a Qatari-mediated deal to release dozens of the children and women held hostage by the Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wartime cabinet gathered for a special meeting in the evening, followed by a meeting of his extended security cabinet and his government. The release of Palestinian prisoners is a highly contested issue in Israeli society. As part of the regular procedure in Israel, any potential swap deal that includes the release of Palestinian prisoners needs to be brought for a vote in both the security cabinet and the government. At 10:30 p.m. local time (2030 GMT), the ministers were still deliberating. Meanwhile, hundreds of relatives of hostages rallied outside the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, where the ministers convened to vote on the deal. Live TV broadcasts showed demonstrators carrying posters with photos of their loved ones and chanting "Bring them home!" Several protesters, whose loved ones were reportedly not on the list of hostages supposed to be released in the upcoming deal, burst into tears. Two far-right Israeli parties, headed by ultranationalist settler leaders who are members of Netanyahu's coalition government, announced they would not support the deal. The Jewish Power party demanded the release of all hostages "on our terms," while the Religious Zionism Party called for continuing the attacks in Gaza until Hamas "completely surrenders." In broadcast statements at the beginning of the cabinet meeting, Netanyahu urged the ministers to accept the deal. "The decision tonight is a tough one, but it's the right one," he said. He added that Israeli forces would resume fighting right after the pause "until we achieve our goals: destroying Hamas and returning all of the hostages." A government official confirmed to Xinhua that under the proposed deal, at least 50 children and women would be freed in exchange for the release of about 150 female and teen Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons. Israel also agreed to a four-day ceasefire. Israel is pressing to include the release of 30 more children whom it believes are being held in Gaza by other militant groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed group, and even in private homes. Under the deal, if Hamas locates these children, Israel will agree to another day of ceasefire for every 10 released children. The first hostages and prisoners would be released on Thursday or the weekend, said the official. During the pause, the Israeli forces, including tens of thousands of troops, will remain in the Gaza Strip. Earlier on Tuesday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the group's officials are "close to reaching a truce agreement" with Israel, and that Hamas has delivered its response to Qatar, according to a report by Israel's state-owned Kan TV news. More than 240 hostages, comprising civilians, soldiers, children, women and the elderly of various nationalities, were taken to Gaza by Hamas militants in their surprise raid on Israel on Oct. 7, during which about 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians. In the massive offensive against Gaza launched by Israeli troops, so far 14,128 Palestinians have been killed, primarily civilians, according to the Gaza-based Health Ministry. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) By Michelle Nichols (Reuters) - The Gaza Strip is the "most dangerous place in the world to be a child," the head of the United Nations children's agency UNICEF said on Wednesday. UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell told the U.N. Security Council that more than 5,300 Palestinian children had reportedly been killed since Oct. 7 - when Palestinian militants of Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking hostages, most of them civilians. Israel has focused its retaliation against Hamas in Gaza, a territory of 2.3 million people. "The true cost of this latest war in Palestine and Israel will be measured in children's lives those lost to the violence and those forever changed by it. Without an end to the fighting and full humanitarian access, the cost will continue to grow exponentially," Russell, who last week visited Gaza, said at a council briefing on women and children there. Israel has bombarded Gaza from the air, imposed a siege and invaded with soldiers and tanks. "The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child," Russell said. "In Gaza, the effects of the violence perpetrated on children have been catastrophic, indiscriminate and disproportionate." Israel agreed on Wednesday to a ceasefire with Hamas for four days to let in humanitarian aid and free at least 50 hostages held by militants in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. "Women in Gaza have told us that they pray for peace, but that if peace does not come, they pray for a quick death, in their sleep, with their children in their arms. It should shame us all that any mother, anywhere, has such a prayer," U.N. Women Executive Director Sima Bahous told the 15-member council. ISRAEL ACCUSES HAMAS OF EXPLOITING CHILDREN Israel's U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan accused Hamas of exploiting children in Gaza for years and repeated long-held criticisms that the United Nations is biased against Israel. "Make no mistake as soon as the pause ends, we will continue striving towards our goals with full force," he said. "We will not stop until we eliminate all of Hamas' terror capabilities and ensure that they can no longer rule Gaza and threaten both Israeli civilians and the women and children of Gaza." Hamas denies operating from places such as hospitals in Gaza and denies using civilians as human shields. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the ceasefire agreement as "an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done to end the suffering." There are 5,500 pregnant women expected to give birth in Gaza in the coming month, the head of the U.N Population Fund (UNFPA), the world body's sexual and reproductive health agency, told the Security Council. "Every day approximately 180 women deliver under appalling conditions, the future for their newborns uncertain," said Executive-Director Natalia Kanem, adding that UNFPA was also worried about some 7,000 women who gave birth over the past 47 days and lack access to care, water, sanitation and nutrition. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; editing by Grant McCool) The British father of 12-year-old twins who were killed in the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel says he has been left broken by their deaths. Gavin Heller, who lives in north London, said the "unfathomable, unimaginable, unspeakable has happened to my gorgeous children". Yannai and Liel Hetzroni-Heller were killed during the attack on the Kibbutz Be'eri. The pair were raised in Israel by their great-aunt, who was also killed. In a statement issued through the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, which is supporting UK-based relatives of those who were killed or kidnapped during the attack, Mr Heller said: "I am utterly devastated by the news of my children's deaths in Israel; it has broken me. "Yannai and Liel had their entire lives ahead of them, but they were cruelly and brutally murdered. My life will never be the same. "There are no words that can ever or will ever explain this pain and brutality. "The unfathomable, unimaginable, unspeakable has happened to my gorgeous children, and the world has turned against humanity." 'Not enough fragments to bury' Israeli media has reported the children were held hostage by Hamas gunmen in a building that caught fire during a stand-off with Israeli forces. Yannai and his great-aunt were buried at a ceremony on 15 November, at which some of Liel's belongings were also buried in the absence of her body. Days later some of her remains were identified. Mr Heller added that he was "heartbroken and horrified". "There's, for certain, no worse way to leave this world than to be violently murdered by a terrorist; all because they were Jewish," he said. "Lives have been torn apart in the worst way. Liel wasn't even buried as there weren't enough fragments of her. Her toys were buried instead of her body. "Too few moments were shared with them and I cannot believe this is how their story ends. I will forever hold my precious Yannai and Liel in my heart. "May they both be at peace, together in heaven. All we can do now is pray that the world comes to its senses and understands that 'never again' is now." By Charlotte Van Campenhout AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Geert Wilders, the Dutch populist whose anti-Islam comments have led to death threats, could become the next leader of the Netherlands following an election upset for his Freedom Party (PVV) on Wednesday. After 25 years in Dutch politics without holding office, Wilders was set to lead coalition government talks and has a good chance of becoming prime minister. An exit poll on Wednesday evening showed the PVV in a clear lead, 10 seats ahead of its closest rival, Frans Timmermans' Labour/Green Left combination. "We will have to find ways to live up to the hopes of our voters, to put the Dutch back as number one", Wilders said in his first response, adding that "the Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch, the asylum tsunami and migration will be curbed." Wilders was convicted for discrimination against Moroccans after leading a chant at a campaign rally in 2014, when he asked the crowd whether they wanted more, or fewer Moroccans. After supporters chanted "Fewer!" he answered: "We're going to take care of that." Wilders said in 2021, when the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, that he was the victim of a "witch hunt" and a broken legal system. Having made strongly anti-EU comments in the past, he moderated his tone over the election campaign as he sought to get his party into government. He will have to work with pro-EU parties to form a coalition. But he kept to his strict anti-immigration, Dutch-first approach, winning his PVV its largest support in its 17-year existence. "It's enough now. The Netherlands can't take it anymore. We have to think about our own people first now. Borders closed. Zero asylum-seekers," Wilders said in a television debate on the eve of the election. "Wilders is by far the best campaigner. Even his political opponents will admit that," author Willem Post of the Netherlands' Clingendael Institute think-tank said. "He's the one-liner guy, he's a bit like (former U.S. President Donald) Trump." Wilders' inflammatory views on Islam have prompted death threats and he has lived under heavy police protection for years. He has called the prophet Mohammad a "paedophile", Islam a "fascist ideology" and "backward religion", and wants to ban mosques and Quorans, the Muslim holy book, in the Netherlands. His comments have led to sometimes violent protests in nations with large Muslim populations, including Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt. In Pakistan, a religious leader issued a fatwa against him. A self-proclaimed fan of nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Wilders is explicitly anti-EU, urging the Netherlands to take back control of its borders, to significantly reduce its payments to the union, and to block the entrance of any new members. Wilders has also repeatedly said the Netherlands should stop providing arms to Ukraine, as he says the country needs the weapons to be able to defend itself. However, none of the parties he could potentially form a government with share these ideas. The politician is one of the Netherlands' most recognisable figures thanks to his dyed blond mane, but little is known about his private life, except that he is married to a Hungarian-born woman and has two cats - who have their own Instagram and X accounts. On a kids' TV program, Wilders last week said he enjoyed playing "Mario Kart" on his PlayStation and reading Donald Duck comics. (Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout, Toby Sterling and Bart Meijer; Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Rosalba O'Brien) Georgia woman accidentally tipped $7,000 for a Subway sandwich A Georgia woman stopped in at Subway for a cheap bite and walked away spending about 1,000 times what she intended. On Oct. 23, Vera Conner made her weekly trip to a Subway shop in College Park, Georgia, to order her usual: a #4 Supreme Meats from the Subway Series lineup. She was expecting her Footlong to cost $7.54 but was shocked to find out later she was actually charged $7,112.98. When I looked at my receipt, I was like oh my God! Conner told NBC News, adding that she had somehow left a tip for $7,105.44 on her Bank of America credit card. I thought this number looks familiar it was the last six numbers of my phone number. Who would leave a tip like that? Connor says she mustve made the mistake while inputting her phone number into the Subways card machine as part of the chains loyalty program. She posits that at some point the machine must have changed to the tip screen, causing the error. Connor didnt realize the costly flub until days later, when she was checking her receipts at the end of the week. I thought it would be an easy fix ... then I got the denial from the bank, Conner said. She added that the letter didnt specify why her charge dispute was rejected. Thats when I started worrying. Conner said she called the Subway location and her bank, and even showed up at the sandwich shop in person to try to fix the problem. However, a Subway manager said her bank would have to handle it. Bank of America later said the refund was denied because the claim had to be resubmitted. Since Conner still had to pay $7.54 for her now-long-eaten sandwich, she would have to dispute the tip and the tip only. Subway declined to comment to TODAY.com, but did respond to WSB-TV on Nov. 20, saying they were aware that Conner disputed the charge and that Bank of America had requested a chargeback. When reached for comment, a Bank of America representative said Conners month-long nightmare is set to be over soon. We asked Subway to refund the money to the client, and were pleased they have agreed to do so, the spokesperson tells TODAY.com. Although Conner said she was finally issued a temporary credit for the charge on Nov. 20, she thinks using her card in the future may give her pause. You hear all the time that you should use your credit card instead of your debit card so that these things dont happen, said Conner. Im even getting mad at the bank because Im like how did they not think $7,000 was suspicious at Subway? This article was originally published on TODAY.com Germany has announced a new batch of military aid for Ukraine, which includes armored vehicles, a mine-clearing tank, ammunition, and trucks, Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported on Nov. 22. Germany will provide Ukraine with 20 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, each with a full complement of ammunition. Additional elements of the package include: Read also: Frozen war frees Russia to rearm, threaten NATO within 6 years, German military analysts warn - One Winsent-1 mine-clearing tank; - Five Warthog Ambulance track carriers; - 2,380 155mm artillery shells; - 2,428 encrypted radios; - Two HX81 88 heavy-duty recovery trucks; - Two semi-trailers; - Nine various transportation vehicles; - Two ambulances. The German Defense Ministry added that the total sum of military aid provided to Ukraine in 2023 amounts to EUR 5.4 billion ($5.88 billion). Read also: Berlin to double its military aid to Kyiv to $8.5 billion in 2024 During his visit to Kyiv on Nov. 21, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced an additional package of military assistance that included IRIS-T air defense systems, drones, and artillery shells. He had earlier confirmed Berlins plans to increase security assistance to Ukraine in 2024. 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 Flowers are left outside the house where 22-year-old Giulia Cecchettin used to live with her family in Vigonovo, near Venice, northern Italy, Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. Her body, reportedly with multiple stab wounds, was found wrapped in plastic on Saturday in a ditch near Venice. Police in Germany over the weekend arrested Filippo Turetta, 21, who had been on the run since Nov. 11, when he was last seen arguing with Giulia Cecchettin. (Contaldo/LaPresse via AP) BERLIN (AP) A German court on Wednesday ordered the extradition of an Italian man suspected in the killing of a 22-year-old woman that stirred outrage in Italy. The Higher Regional Court in Naumburg, in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt announced the 21-year-old suspect's extradition, according to German news agency dpa. The suspect, Filippo Turetta, was arrested on the weekend near the eastern city of Leipzig and is currently in custody in Halle. The court said Turetta agreed to the extradition. He will remain in custody until he is handed over to the Italian authorities. It was not immediately clear when the extradition would take place. Italy had requested his extradition on Tuesday, dpa reported. Police in Germany over the weekend arrested Turetta, who had been on the run since Nov. 11, when he was last seen fighting with 22-year-old Giulia Cecchettin, hitting her in a physical attack that was captured by roadside video cameras. Cecchettins body, reportedly with multiple stab wounds, was found wrapped in plastic on Saturday in a ditch near Lake Barcis, in the province of Pordenone north of Venice. Italian newspapers had been consumed with the search for them both, given multiple reports from friends and family that Turetta had refused to accept Cecchettins decision to end the relationship. Cecchettins sister, Elena, said she had been concerned about Turettas possessiveness of her sister but never imagined he could hurt her. The fate of Cecchettin, who had been due to graduate university Thursday with a degree in engineering, had dominated news reports for a week and led to an outpouring of anger when her body was finally found. Germany handed over 20 Marder armored vehicles, a Wisent-1 demining tank, 2,380 155mm shells, and other aid in its latest delivery to Ukraine, the German government said on Nov. 22. Counting the latest tranche, Berlin has provided Kyiv with 80 Marder infantry fighting vehicles drawn from military and industry stocks. The delivery also included five Warthog ambulance carriers, two other ambulances, two 8x8 Hx81 tractors with two semi-trailers, and nine transport vehicles of various types. Ukraine further received 2,428 crypto phones. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced a $1.4 billion defense aid package for Ukraine during his visit to Kyiv on Nov. 21. This new package is to include four IRIS-T SLM air defense systems, 20,000 155mm shells, and anti-tank mines, Pistorius said. Read also: Germany pledges $1.4 billion military aid package for Ukraine Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, in Berlin with Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister - Michele Tantussi/Getty Images Italy and Germany are to build a gas and hydrogen pipeline across the Alps in a bid to shore up energy supplies in the wake of the war in Ukraine, the two countries leaders announced on Wednesday. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, said the project would strengthen long-term supply, security and transformation during a bilateral meeting in Berlin with Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister. Since Moscows invasion of Ukraine, Germany has been anxious to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. The proposed pipeline will bring supplies from North Africa, up through Italy, across Austria and into southern Germany. It would enable the import of 10 million tons of hydrogen by 2030, according to German media reports. We agree that we want to expand our energy co-operation in order to strengthen long-term supply, security and transformation, Mr Scholz said. With a new pipeline across the Alps, we want to increase the security of supply of both our countries. At the same time, we want to quickly conclude a German-Italian gas and solidarity agreement. Emergence of a larger European hydrogen network Germany and Italy also want to promote the production of renewable energy in North Africa. The corridor also offers enormous opportunities for the import of renewable energy from North Africa and connects demand centres in Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, contributing to the emergence of a larger European hydrogen network, a joint statement said. The two leaders began discussing the project in June when Mr Scholz visited Rome. At their meeting in Berlin, the pair agreed to work more closely not only on energy but also on migration, security and climate change. They signed an action plan after a meeting of top officials from both countries and the two leaders participation earlier in the day in a virtual G20 summit. The two leaders come from very different political backgrounds. Mr Scholz is from the centre-Left Social Democrats while Ms Meloni is head of the Right-wing Brothers of Italy party and leads a coalition of three Right-wing parties that took power in the wake of an election last autumn. Germanys stance on migrants and refugees, once so open under Angela Merkel, has hardened considerably recently amid complaints from local authorities that they cannot deal with an influx of asylum seekers. Mr Scholz has said that he will closely study the deal that Rome recently struck with Albania in which migrants who are rescued in the Mediterranean will be taken to two processing centres that Italy will build in northern Albania. Migration a concern for both leaders Italys geopolitical interests are converging with German interests, particularly in Africa and the Balkans, said Francesco Galietti, a political analyst and the founder of a think tank called Policy Sonar. Both countries are worried about the number of migrants trying to reach Europe from Africa. Theyre both concerned about Russian influence in the Balkans and they are both in favour of EU enlargement, Mr Galietti told The Telegraph. Ms Meloni recently held meetings with the leaders of Slovenia and Croatia. The message she wants to convey to the Germans is I can be useful to you in the Balkans and Africa, he said. Separately on Wednesday, both leaders took part in a G20 video call with Vladimir Putin during which they urged the Russian president to end the war in Ukraine by withdrawing all of Moscows troops from occupied territory. I called on President Putin to end his attack on Ukraine and withdraw troops from Ukraines territory, so that this war can finally end, said Mr Scholz. Ms Meloni said: It is simply enough for Russia to withdraw its troops from the invaded territory. 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. On Wednesday, 22 November, the German federal government updated the list of military assistance for Ukraine over the past week, from which it appears that Kyiv has received another 20 Marder infantry fighting vehicles along with ammunition. Source: European Pravda Details: Together with the 20 Marder IFVs sent recently, Germany has sent a total of 80 such vehicles to Ukraine. The military package includes a WISENT-1 demining tank (12 provided in total), 2,380 152-mm artillery shells (21,910 in total), and two 8x8 HX81 tractors and semi-trailers (81 and 76 respectively). Also mentioned were 2,428 cryptophones (2,667 in total), five Warthog Ambulance tracked carriers (10 in total), nine other vehicles (trucks, minibuses, all-terrain vehicles) and two ambulances. Federal Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced Germanys new 1.3 billion military aid package for Ukraine during an earlier visit to Kyiv. It includes four additional IRIS-T-SLM air defence systems, as well as 20,000 155-mm artillery rounds and anti-tank weapons. Prior to that, Pistorius confirmed media reports that Germany would double its military aid to Kyiv in 2024 to 8 billion. Support UP or become our patron! By Andreas Rinke and Sarah Marsh BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany and Italy want to swiftly agree a solidarity deal to boost their energy security, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday at the countries' first intergovernmental summit in seven years seeking to strengthen cooperation on a raft of issues. With Scholz from the centre-left Social Democrats and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni from the rightist Brothers of Italy, the two leaders and their governments make for unlikely allies. Yet with Europe facing war on its doorstep in Ukraine, worries over irregular migration and a scramble for new sources of energy, the leaders of the euro zone's first- and third-largest economies have rallied on a number of issues of late. These include the construction of a pipeline to transport gas and hydrogen between the two countries and approaches to tackling illegal migration. Scholz told a joint news conference with Meloni that the two countries wanted to expand their cooperation in energy to strengthen their long-term supply security. Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year hit its exports to Europe, sparking an energy crisis that countries have been scrambling to overcome and ensure doesn't happen again by diversifying supply. "Especially important will be building up the south corridor for gas and hydrogen," Scholz said, referring to a planned hydrogen-ready pipeline between North Africa and Europe. "In parallel to this we want to quickly agree a German-Italian gas and solidarity deal," Scholz said. Berlin signed such a deal with Paris last year that saw Germany supplying France with more electricity to compensate for setbacks in its nuclear production and France delivering gas to Germany. In a 31-page action plan, Berlin and Rome also pledged to enhance regular dialogue - for example through meetings of their defence and foreign ministers - and coordinate more closely on key policies in general. Meloni said the plan took their bilateral cooperation "to a new level". "I think this is good news for our peoples, and I also think it is great news for Europe as a whole," she said. Still, the fact the document is a plan, and not a treaty, underscores the slightly less close alliance between Germany and Italy compared to each country with France - the euro zone's second-largest economy. The two governments also discussed irregular migration, Scholz said. The German stance on the issue has converged more with the Italian one. It has switched to a tougher line in view of rising arrivals and complaints from local authorities that they cannot deal with the influx. Scholz has said, for example, he would look closely at Italy's deal with Albania to build two reception and detention camps there for migrants arriving by sea. "For us it is naturally interesting to observe these things even if the vicinity of Italy and Albania, which are only separated by a sea, plays very big role," he said. (Reporting by Avlise Armellini and Angelo Amante in Rome and Andreas Rinke and Sarah Marsh in Berlin; Editing by Nick Macfie and Mark Potter) Each year during Native American Heritage Month, many of us at Native News Online get asked: "What is a good Native organization to donate to?" This year, during November and in advance of GivingTuesday we offer some answers to that question by spotlighting several nonprofits working to create a better future for Native Americans. Here are 20 organizations advocating for equity, sovereignty, cultural preservation, and the education, safety, and health of Indian Country. Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) Formed in 2011, NABS works to advance the understanding of the ongoing generational trauma caused by U.S. Indian Boarding School policy, which drove the erasure of Native culture and subjected Indigenous children to horrific and sometimes deadly abuse. They provide education, advocacy, and healing resources to Native boarding school survivors and their descendants. Donate here. Native American Rights Funds (NARF) NARF works to hold the governments accountable for Native American rights, resources, and lifeways through litigation, legal advocacy, and legal expertise. For more than 50 years, they have provided tribes, organizations, and individuals with legal assistance and representation in cases involving tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, natural resource protection, voting rights, and Indian education. Donate here. IllumiNative Led by Native women, IllumiNative elevates Native American voices, stories, and issues to advance justice, equity, and self-determination by disrupting the erasure of Native peoples, re-educating America, and mobilizing support for Native issues. They drive organizations around pressing issues, representation in mainstream media, research-based action, and multimedia storytelling. Donate here. American Indian College Fund Since its founding in 1989, the American Indian College Fund has invested in Native students and tribal college education through programming and scholarships. Once access to college is achieved, the Fund provides critical tools and support to help students succeed. Donate here. Association on American Indian Affairs For 100 years, the Association on American Indian Affairs has worked to protect sovereignty, preserve culture, educate youth and build capacity. The group advocates at the federal level to alter the impact of the United States legacy of Native erasure, as well as on the ground, to support tribal programming. Donate here. NDN Collective NDN Collective works to defend Native communities against natural resource extraction that causes climate change and violates human rights through tactics that shift the financial and political systems that drive the destruction. Through campaigns, grants and fellowships, they support the development of sustainable and regenerative tribal infrastructure. Donate here. Indian Land Tenure Foundation Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF) is a national and community based organization that supports Native American Nations in the recovery and control of their rightful homelands by promoting education, increasing cultural awareness, creating economic opportunity, and reforming the legal and administrative systems that block Native ownership of Natiev lands. Donate here. Native Hope Native Hope supports tribal works with tribal nations on an individual basis to determine their needs and create customized action plans to reach their goals and create a better future for Indian Country. Through a fellowship program, Native Hope provides capital, resources and tools to Native community leaders to launch and sustain their vision for their own community. Donate here. National Indigenous Womens Resource Center National Indigenous Womens Resource Center is dedicated to ending violence against Native women and children by supporting grassroots advocates and providing culturally-centered resources, technical assistance, training and policy development. They advocate for the rights of Native women and children on and off tribal lands, safe and affordable housing, access to Indigenous healing ways and culturally-based trauma services. Donate here. National Indian Health Board NIHB represents Tribal governments to ensure the representation of Native peoples in the U.S. healthcare system. Through advocacy in various areas including policy formation and analysis, legislative and regulatory tracking, program development and assessment and more to elevate Native health care issues and drive better health outcomes for Native Americans. Donate here. National Council of Urban Indian Health The National Council of Urban Indian Health is the only national organization that supports the development of quality, accessible, and culturally competent health and public health services for American Indians and Alaska Natives living in urban settings. They provide technical assistance, training, and policy support to advance health outcomes for Urban Natives. Donate here. Native Forward Scholars Fund Native Forward is the nations largest scholarship for Native students pursuing higher education. In 50 years, they have financed more than 200,000 Native American students from more than 500 tribes in all 50 states. In addition to funding, they provide graduate, undergraduate, and professional students with holistic resources and programming to support their success. Donate here. National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) NICWA works to advance the health, safety, and spiritual well-being of Native American children. The organization is the most comprehensive source of information about Native American child welfare. It supports tribes in capacity building in tribes to prevent child abuse and neglect at all levels of government. Donate here. National Indian Council on Aging (NICOA) NICOA focuses on meeting the unique needs of aging Native Americans by advocating for comprehensive health and social services and economic well-being within the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services. Donate here. StrongHearts Native Helpline American Indian and Alaska Native women suffer some of the highest rates of violence and murder in the United States. StrongHearts has become a lifeline to Native Americans and Alaska Natives impacted by domestic and sexual violence by offering a culturally appropriate, anonymous, and confidential service available 24/7 nationwide. Donate here. Institute of American Indian Arts A tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts also operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in a historic Pueblo revival building listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The museum houses the National Collection of Contemporary Indian Art, with more than 7,000 items. Donate here. Native CDFI Network Native Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) are critical to building financial assets and economic growth in Indian Country. In the absence of traditional banks, they provide financial services and products that would otherwise be inaccessible to Native communities, such as home loans, small business loans, credit building, and more. With 69 member CDFIs, the Native CDFI Network collectively advances policy priorities and fosters systemic and sustainable Native community and economic development. Donate here. Native Women Lead Native American women face some of the largest barriers to accessing capital, receiving less than 1% of investment, philanthropic and federal funding. Native Women Lead seeks to change that by investing in Native women-owned businesses through virtual and in-person events, scholarships, business coaching, and networking. Last year, the organization reached 170 Native women business owners from 85 Tribal Nations across the United States and Canada and awarded 50 scholarships. Donate here. Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, Inc. One of the longest-standing organizations of its kind, Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous People, Inc. is committed to advancing self-determination and sovereignty by directly supporting Indigenous community projects. The organization supports Indigenous communities across the globe. Donate here. Indigenous Environmental Network Indigenous grassroots leaders formed the Indigenous Environmental Network 30 years ago to stand up for the inherent rights of Native peoples to practice cultural and spiritual ways of life and to stop the destruction of our waters, lands, and territories. Donate here. Never miss Indian Countrys biggest stories and breaking news. Click here to sign up to get our reporting sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Help us ensure that the celebration of Native Heritage never stops by donating here. 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 HARRISBURG, Pa. Josh Shapiro isnt yet worried about President Joe Bidens standing. Rather, the governor of Pennsylvania attributes Bidens recent polling slide behind former President Donald Trump to voter brain fog that he thinks will clear once the general election cycle kicks into gear. Im not sure folks remember just how chaotic it was, how divisive it was, how he was just in your face in your living room every day, Shapiro said, referring to Trump. I dont think people want to go back to that. Shapiro, whos widely considered to be a future Democratic presidential prospect, sat with NBC News for more than 30 minutes in his office at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Monday to discuss the 2024 race and his concerns about the contest, his first year as governor, and the war between Israel and Hamas and the tensions it has unleashed in the U.S. Since his campaign for governor last year, Shapiro has emerged as one of the Democratic Partys most visible officials and a leading member of its next generation at a time voters are expressing concerns over Bidens age. After he beat a Trump acolyte last year, hes already seeking to pave the way for Democrats to win the pivotal state next year against Trump himself. Shapiro spoke with NBC News following an address he gave about his first year in office to the Pennsylvania Press Club, in which he touted his administrations initial accomplishments and called attention to unfinished business he sought to pursue in the year ahead. Image: Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro (Jared Soares for NBC News) Shapiro took office following a 15-point win last fall over Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, whom he painted as an extremist on democracy issues and abortion rights while running on his own platform of protecting essential freedoms. He feels a similar effort against Trump would help Democrats again win in Pennsylvania, arguably the state Biden most needs to capture next fall. As people are reminded of what it was like and they are forced to tune back in and listen to that during the course of a presidential race, theyre going to reject his extremism, his chaos and his danger, he said of Trump. But Shapiro also wants Biden to offer a clear explanation for how his record has benefited Pennsylvanians, particularly efforts to expand broadband access and other infrastructure investments. In the Senate, Biden, who spent his childhood in Pennsylvania before he moved to Delaware, touted himself as Pennsylvanias third senator, and he has made more than two dozen trips to the state since he took office. Image: Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro (Jared Soares for NBC News) Trump has led Biden inside or outside the margin of error in national polls this month released by NBC News, Fox News, Morning Consult, Reuters/Ipsos, The Economist/YouGov and Quinnipiac University. In Pennsylvania, surveys conducted by Bloomberg/Morning Consult and The New York Times/Siena College told a similar story. Surveys also show widespread dissatisfaction with the economy across party lines, while, increasingly, some core Democratic constituencies have heavily scrutinized Bidens handling of the Israel-Hamas war. My expectation is that as the race joins and theres a real competition of ideas and of approach, the president will be in a much stronger position, he said, adding that the current polling does speak to the worry that a lot of people feel about whether its the economy or safety, immigration, you name it. But does any of that make him think its time for Democrats to pass the torch to the next generation of leaders? I think its clear that this is going to be a race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, he said, dismissing the question. And Im going to do everything in my power to make sure Donald Trump is defeated. If Donald Trump is given the opportunity to get the keys to the White House again, hes even more dangerous the second time around, because he and the team around him know how to operate the levers of government. Hes told us that he understands how to do it, and hes going to use that to prosecute his enemies, he continued. I know what the reality is. And the reality is itll be the two of them, barring some unforeseen circumstance, squaring off. For the better part of a year, Shapiro has batted away questions about his own presidential ambitions. But he did sound open to the idea that the 2028 Democratic nominee would be a current sitting governor. Image: Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro (Jared Soares for NBC News) Governors know how to get s--- done and deliver for people in really tangible, meaningful ways, he said. And what I hear from the good people of Pennsylvania is that they want folks to stop making noise, stop tweeting and seeking likes and love on the internet, and instead do the hard work that actually delivers concrete, tangible things for people. Shapiro's first year Shapiros first year in office hasnt been easy. Working with one of the last remaining split legislatures in the country, including a state House that is under the narrowest of Democratic control, Shapiro was unable to get a number of initiatives off the ground, and he was locked in tense budget negotiations for months. The episode was capped by his line-item veto of a $100 million school voucher program he and state Senate Republicans supported after House Democrats said they wouldnt. Whats more, Shapiros administration is dealing with the fallout of sexual harassment allegations against a top legislative aide which became public after the aide, Mike Vereb, then his legislative secretary, resigned in late September. A former Vereb aide filed the complaint which alleged both harassment and retaliation months before he resigned. Last month, Shapiros office settled the claim for $295,000. Speaking Monday at a Hilton ballroom in Harrisburg, Shapiro put focus on what his administration sees as its greatest successes from year one. Front and center among them was the rapid repairing of a collapsed section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia this year. With a sign reading Getting Stuff Done at his side, he also drew attention to efforts to expand a property tax rebate for seniors, provide universal free breakfast in public schools, initiate automatic voter registration and remove the college degree requirement for state employees a change he said led to a flood of applications and 60% of the states new hires having no college degrees. (He said he hopes the change triggers private-sector businesses to do away with those degree requirements, too.) Image: Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro (Jared Soares for NBC News) He said he still wants to see a school voucher program which cuts against much of his party sent to his desk, as well as a minimum wage increase, a gun violence initiative and statute-of-limitations reform. He expressed interest in providing gas tax relief, as well as legalizing recreational marijuana like neighboring Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and New York. I think it is an issue that makes sense if we want to remain competitive, he said. Our neighboring states are doing it; were losing out on that revenue. And were not getting the good people of Pennsylvania the opportunity to make that purchase if they want in a legal manner. During a question-and-answer session following his speech Monday, Shapiro was pressed about what he knew about the sexual harassment claims and when he knew it. He declined to discuss any specifics about the case but touted the process by which such claims are adjudicated in the states executive branch, and he called on lawmakers to adopt similar standards for the Legislature. He said in the interview: Whats clear is that in our administration, we have a thorough, robust, independent process if anyone ever raises any issues. And weve never deviated from that. Image: Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro (Jared Soares for NBC News) Foreign conflicts hit home Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent outbreak of war in the region have hit close to home for Shapiro, a self-described proud American Jew who said he and his wife have had to have a number of difficult discussions with their four children about both the war itself and an outbreak of antisemitism around the world. He has also sought to combat both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents that have drawn attention across the commonwealth in recent weeks. The war has split open a divide on the left between some progressives and activists and the majority of elected Democrats, including Biden, who have vociferously defended Israels right to retaliate after the October attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage. In Gaza, health officials say, the death toll has eclipsed 13,000. Surveys find larger numbers of young voters rejecting Bidens handling of the war while older generations are more likely to be supportive. (Israel and Hamas reached a deal Tuesday, which Biden helped broker, that included a temporary pause in fighting and the release of some hostages.) The divide has hit home in Pennsylvania, too, where Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman faces a backlash from pro-Palestinian activists and some former staffers for tightly hugging Israel. On Tuesday, a dozen Democratic state lawmakers wrote a letter to the states congressional delegation asking it to support calls for a cease-fire in Gaza. Image: Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro (Jared Soares for NBC News) Speaking to the generational divide over Israel, Shapiro said this war is unique in just how much disturbing imagery is being presented seemingly nonstop not just on TV but also on social media, and he doesnt blame young people for being upset by what theyre seeing come out of Gaza. I dont blame them for wanting to engage and speak out, he said. I think thats really healthy. I think its incumbent upon them to know some history and not just enter the conversation in recent weeks but go back and understand what happened in the past. You can enter this conversation in biblical times; you can enter it in 1947 and 1967. You can also enter it on Oct. 7, if you want. For Shapiro, the question of how the war should be handled is pretty cut and dry. In this nation, I dont know of another time where folks have sided with the hostage-takers over the hostages, and weve got 10 American hostages there, he said. So I stand with Israel having the right to defend itself. I stand on the side of the United States government in making sure we do everything we can to get our hostages home and free the other hostages, as well, and the belief that you cannot allow a terrorist group to not only live side by side with Israel but also to upset any prospects for peace in that region. Shapiro did describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a terrible leader who has driven Israel to an extreme that has been bad for Israel and bad for the stability in the Middle East. Had Netanyahu not been in power, Shapiro said, more progress would have been made on reaching a two-state solution, as well as on the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and some Arab countries. The nuance when it comes to how do we create a two-state solution? is a conversation that needs to be had right now, led by the United States, he said. But there should be no nuance when it comes to good vs. evil. And in this case, Hamas is pure evil, pure terrorists. And Israel, a pluralistic democracy, even with its faulty leaders, has every right to defend itself. And I stand with them in their efforts to get their hostages home and rid that region of Hamas. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com The Government has rebranded its Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) following accusations that it sought to suppress free speech. The unit, which has links to Britains intelligence agencies, is now called the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT) and sources claim it is predominantly focused on false information that is deliberately spread by foreign states. The change represents a shift from the units activities during the pandemic. The Telegraph has previously reported how the CDU collected social media posts by members of the British public including legitimate posts criticising the Governments lockdown policies. Documents obtained under data protection laws show that the unit, and the AI firm it employed, recorded social media posts by leading scientists and researchers. They included Dr Alexandre de Figueiredo, a fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who opposed a blanket policy of vaccinating all children against Covid. Freedom of speech campaigners have described these activities as Orwellian. Under review The CDUs change of name was revealed by Sir John Whittingdale, the minister for data and digital infrastructure, in a written response to a question posed by David Davis, a Conservative MP, who has been a vocal critic of the unit. Sir John said the NSOIT was focused exclusively on risks to national security and public safety and that preserving freedom of expression is an extremely important principle underpinning the teams work. He added that ministers continue to keep the work of the NSOIT under review and the approach to sharing any content with platforms. The civil servant in charge of the unit has previously told MPs that one of its main functions was passing information over to companies such as Facebook and Twitter to encouragethe swift take down of posts. However, the Government has stressed that it does not have the power to force social media to remove posts, and that it never refers posts by journalists or MPs to the unit. Sir John Whittingdale said the NSOIT was focused on risks to national security and public safety - JOHN NGUYEN/JNVISUALS A Government source said that 95 per cent of referrals that the unit has made to social media firms since Russia invaded Ukraine were about that conflict, until mid-October when the unit also turned its attention to coordinated in authentic behaviour relating to the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories. A Government spokesman said: The name of the team has changed to more accurately reflect their remit and works to tackle some of the most significant national security risks facing the UK. On Wednesday, Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group which earlier this year published a major report on the CDUs activities, said the name change must be accompanied by transparency. Silkie Carlo, the director of the group, said: We wont accept a superficial rebrand and will continue to scrutinise the unit. Its important the unit now publishes and follows rules that prevent it from the political monitoring and censorship of lawful. 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. Steam and smoke rising from distillation towers and cooling towers towards the left at Grangemouth oil refinery and petrochemical plant in Central Scotland. Scotland's only oil refinery could cease operations as soon as 2025 under plans announced by owners Petroineos. Oil operations at Grangemouth can be traced back more than 100 years to 1919, with the refinery established in 1924. It was one of the first crude oil refineries in the UK. It is currently the primary supplier of aviation fuel for Scotland's main airports, and a major supplier of petrol and diesel ground fuels across the Central Belt. The 1,700-acre site supplies 70% of the fuel to Scotland's filling stations as well Northern Ireland and the north of England. It also provides power to the Forties oil pipeline, which brings oil and gas ashore from the North Sea. BBC Scotland News takes a look back at the site's history. The early years The oil operations at Grangemouth can be traced back to 1919, when Scottish Oils was formed. It brought together the businesses including that of Dr James "Paraffin" Young, who opened the world's first oil works near Bathgate, West Lothian, in 1851. Scottish Oils was acquired by a company which later became BP. Grangemouth was an attractive location for a refinery because of its transport links and the availability of local skilled labour thanks to the Bathgate works. By 1924, the BP refinery was in operation. Until the outbreak of war in 1939, it maintained a throughput of 360,000 tonnes per year. It was forced to close as oil imports dwindled. Post-war boom The refinery re-opened in 1946. From the 1950s, operations grew to meet demand for petrochemicals and fuels. British Petroleum Chemicals was established in 1947 to research petrochemicals. It decided to locate its site adjacent to the existing refinery. North Sea oil and the Forties Pipeline The advent of a new source of crude oil feedstock in the shape of North Sea oil brought further business in the 1970s. The opening of the Forties Pipeline - which carries crude oil from North Sea installations to the nearby Kinneil terminal - in 1975 was another key development. The Forties Pipeline - which carries crude oil from sea to land - opened in 1975 The 235-mile system links 85 North Sea oil and gas assets to the mainland. It comes ashore at Cruden Bay, Aberdeenshire, and onwards to Kinneil. The pipeline relies on the refinery for steam and electricity to function. In 2017, Ineos acquired the pipeline. Jim Ratcliffe takes over Ineos - a company owned by Britain's richest man Jim Ratcliffe - bought Innovene, owners of the Grangemouth site, in 2005 in a 5bn takeover. Three years later the 1,700-acre plant was closed when about 1,200 staff went on strike over proposed changes including an end to its final salary pension scheme for new workers. The industrial action led to the Forties pipeline temporarily shutting down. It was the first time production at Grangemouth, which processes 210,000 barrels of oil a day, has been completely halted and led to worries about short-term fuel shortages. Jim Ratcliffe is the founder and chairman of Ineos In 2013, another dispute with the union led to the plant being threatened with closure - which would have resulted in the loss of 800 jobs. Unite the Union balloted for strike action in a dispute over a disciplinary case against a union organiser and the use of temporary workers. This was dropped, but Ineos proceeded to shut down the plant and issued an offer of revised terms and conditions - which included ending the final salary pension scheme and cutting shift allowances. This was coupled with a survival plan which included a 300m investment to keep the site open. It was ultimately accepted by the union. While the petrochemical plant is wholly owned by Ineos, the refinery is owned by Petroineos - a joint venture between Ineos and PetroChina. Fracking controversy Ineos announced with great fanfare the arrival of the first shipment of shale gas from the US in 2016. Shale gas, which can be recovered through fracking, is used at Grangemouth to create plastic pellets for general manufacturing. The pellets are made from ethane, which Ineos used to get from North Sea natural gas. However, the company says in the last decade supplies have diminished and at times the pellet-making process has been running at half speed. Since 2016, the Grangemouth facility has used shale shipped from the USA. Fracking legal challenge Following the Scottish government's fracking consultation, an "effective ban" was put in place in 2017 following "overwhelming opposition". Ineos and another petrochemical firm sought a judicial review, but lost in court - though for an unexpected reason. Fracking The judge sided with the government, who argued that in reality there was no ban in place as the policymaking process was still ongoing. However, the moratorium in Scotland continues, in contrast to the pro-fracking stance of the UK government. Environmental campaigners oppose fracking, which they say can cause pollution, quakes, and undermine efforts to tackle climate change. The future In February 2019, 1bn worth of investment was announced in the UK by Ineos. This included building a 350m energy plant at Grangemouth, and 500m for overhauling the Forties pipeline. However, owners Petroineos has now said Grangemouth has been facing significant challenges because of global market pressures. Petroineos intends to turn the site into a fuels import terminal which would result in the loss of at least 400 jobs. Work to transform the site is expected to take 18 months. The firm said its new terminal would be able to import petrol, diesel, aviation fuel and kerosene into Scotland. Trade union Unite has said it would "leave no stone unturned" in its fight to save jobs at Grangemouth. A great-grandmother of 13 scratched off her ticket in the parking lot of a North Carolina convenience store. What she saw left her trembling, she told lottery officials. I really was, she said. Rosa Yearby of Moore County won $250,000 on a 20X The Cash ticket, NC Education Lottery announced in a Nov. 21 news release. I went back in and showed it to the ladies, Yearby told lottery officials. They were just as excited as I was. Yearby reached out to her family to share the news. I almost couldnt think of my kids numbers, she told officials. My son said, You need to get that ticket home. Yearby did just that. She kept the ticket close by until she could go into lottery headquarters Nov. 20 to collect her prize. After taxes, she took home $178,126, according to the release. She told lottery officials she plans to use the money for home improvements and to pay bills. Moore County is 60 miles southwest of Raleigh. Many people can gamble or play games of chance without harm. However, for some, gambling is an addiction that can ruin lives and families. If you or a loved one shows signs of gambling addiction, you can seek help by calling the national gambling hotline at 1-800-522-4700 or visiting the National Council on Problem Gambling website. Grandfathers lottery ticket left his hands shaking. Now, he will spoil grandkids Lottery player thought he won $50 or $75. But his wife knew his win was much bigger A winning lottery ticket worth $44 million is about to expire in Florida. Is it yours? This story has been corrected to reflect that Rep. Owen is thankful for legislation allowing Missouri businesses to expand retirement benefits for their workers. An earlier version made reference to a legislative retirement bill. As legislators prepare to return to the Missouri Capitol in January, those representing Greene County reflect upon what they were thankful for during the previous legislative session, while also looking ahead to their hopes for the 2024 legislative session. Rep. Bishop Davidson, who represents the 130th District in the Missouri House of Representatives, is thankful for the friendships he has formed during his time in office. Davidson was elected in 2020. I'm thankful for the handful of friendships that I have been able to cultivate, Davidson said. It really makes the job so much more bearable when you have some friends that you can trust in a world that's naturally very distrusting. Bishop Davidson Davidson speculates that, while most people value the friendships formed in their lifetime, few of them are truly tested in the way that friendships formed in the political sphere can be. I can't imagine being like a wealthy individual, like a billionaire, where all these friendships are constantly being tested. And I wonder how many of our friendships would exist under those pressures? Davidson said. But I have the fortune of knowing I've got a couple that do exist in that environment, and that means that theyre really solid. Sen. Curtis Trent Sen. Curtis Trent echoes Davidsons thankfulness for the relationships hes formed while in office. The 2023 legislative session was Trents first year serving as a state senator. I was really thankful for all the staff and particularly my chief of staff, Bruce DeGroot, and all the Senate staff there for the ease of which they made the transition, the help that they provided with the process and just the mechanics of setting up a new office, Trent said. There's always lots to do there, and they went out of their way to make that a very pleasant experience. Wins for welfare recipients, postpartum mothers on Medicaid Both House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, District 132, and Rep. Betsy Fogle, District 135, expressed thankfulness for the passage of legislation that extended postpartum Medicaid coverage to new mothers for a year after theyve given birth. Previous coverage only lasted 60 days after delivery. Crystal Quade, the Missouri House Minority Leader and Democratic representative for District 132, announces her run for governor of Missouri in 2024 at Big Momma's Coffee & Espresso Bar in Springfield on Monday, July 10, 2023. I am extremely thankful that we were able to get postpartum health care coverage for new moms extended in our state, Quade said. That's a piece of legislation we've been working on bipartisanly for a very long time. That's something that myself and a lot of Springfield area legislators have been working on across the aisle, so it's really great to get that done, Fogle said. In Missouri, the average pregnancy-related mortality ratio was 32 deaths per 100,000 live births from 2018-2020, but among Black mothers, it was three times higher, at 71 out of 100,000, than among white mothers, at 23 out of 100,000. For those on Medicaid, the ratio of pregnancy-related deaths was 2.5 times higher than those with other health care coverage. Medicaid is health care coverage provided by the state to low-income Missouri residents. Missouri House Representative Betsy Fogle speaks to a crowd of about 75 individuals during the Transgender Day of Remembrance event at The Old Glass Place on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022. The event included speakers like Fogle, live music, an artist showcase and tribute to trans individuals who have lost their lives over the last year. Quade and Fogle, as well as Rep. Alex Riley, District 134, were very thankful to see a piece of legislation co-sponsored by Riley pass into law this year. Recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF, will now be eligible for transitional benefits that enable them to earn more without fear of losing all their benefits. With a new sliding scale of eligibility, as people earn income that would put them over full-benefit eligibility, their benefits will be decreased proportionally, rather than entirely lost. So the idea there is we're trying to restructure our system from one that keeps people trapped in poverty to one that encourages people to work and to work their way up the income ladder and ultimately to become self-sufficient, Riley said. Republican candidate for Missouri House of Representatives Alex Riley talks with supporters at the Greene County GOP watch party on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Riley aims to address a problem plaguing SNAP and TANF beneficiaries across the state. They wouldn't accept raises, they wouldn't keep working their way up the income ladder because they would lose their benefits, Riley said. That certainly makes economic sense why someone would make that choice, but unfortunately that results in people being stuck in low-income jobs, stuck in poverty, and never really able to work their way out. This legislation brought Springfield-area legislators and organizations together to enact the change. We started in 2017. We have had Evangel students working on that. Weve had members of the Drew Lewis Foundation and several nonprofits throughout Springfield come and testify, Quade said. I really feel like that piece of legislation was something that came from the heart of Springfield. More: Women working in the Springfield tech industry face disparities but love what they do First responders gain support, education programs funded, Springfield sees budget victories Sen. Lincoln Hough, chair of the appropriation committee, is thankful for the educational wins benefiting all levels of the learning process. Although some proposals meant to address the states teacher shortage were unsuccessful, lawmakers did guarantee public school teachers make at least $38,000 annually. Also, legislation loosened rules for retired teachers wanting to work as substitute teachers so that their requirement benefits are not at risk. Funding for the Career Ladder Program was doubled, allowing school districts to provide compensation to teachers who take on extra roles and responsibilities. Sen. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, speaks during debate on the 2023 state operating budget in the Missouri capitol. We've seen pretty incredible investments in what I would say is the future of our education system around the state, Hough said. Investing in the students and the youth for tomorrow has always been a priority and something that I'm incredibly thankful for. Riley hopes to see additional legislative focus on advancing education in the state during the upcoming legislative session. I'm always interested in working on paying teachers more and providing more school choice options for parents, Riley said. I'm optimistic we can get a little bit done there as well. Hough is also thankful for the success of legislation aimed at supporting first responders and their mental health. The fund will help first responders, including firefighters, ambulance, workers, 911 operators and others working in the field. These frontline workers take care of our communities and neighbors, day in and day out, Hough said. It was time that the state wrapped our arms around them and said, We're here for you, too. Rep. Melanie Stinnett talks with supporters at the Greene County GOP watch party on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Rep. Melanie Stinnett, District 133, was pleased to see legislation, a version of which she sponsored, that will advance access to health care for Missouri residents living with a disability. Eligibility for the Ticket to Work Health Assurance Program was adjusted to allow working adults with disabilities earn higher incomes and still qualify for Medicaid coverage. I was really thankful that we were able to get that done for a group of people that often feel like their voice isn't heard, Stinnett said. Rep. Bill Owen, District 131, was pleased to see that legislation expanding retirement benefits offered by Missouri businesses made its way to the governors desk. Rep. Bill Owen I'm thankful for any expansion of workforce retirement plans, which will help more people create wealth for themselves and their families, Owen said. A variety of budget wins were among the things that Reps. Stephanie Hein, District 136, and fellow Springfield Democrat Fogle were thankful for from the 2023 legislative session. Hein, who was a member of the House Budget Committee during the past session, highlights teamwork with Springfield legislators and community members as the reason many efforts were successful. We were able to bring home some really good things for Springfield, particularly in the budget, Hein said. That wasn't by happenstance. We all worked really well together to make sure that we had Springfield as a priority. The relationship that we have with our city leaders, county leaders and our community leaders is something that I value, and I hope people are proud of how we work together. Rep. Stephanie Hein Hein points to the rarity of such collaboration among Springfield-area lawmakers, on both sides of the aisle, along with stakeholders and constituents living in the Greene County area. I don't know that people understand that that relationship is really unique because we don't hear that from our colleagues across the state, Hein said. The 2024 fiscal year budget approved by state lawmakers included funding for several Springfield area projects, landmarks and nonprofits, including repairs to Springfield's long-dormant Jefferson Avenue Footbridge, investment in Missouri State University and Ozark Technical Community College and funds for nonprofits focused on helping families living in poverty. Im thankful for all the budget wins that we were able to bring home to our area, Fogle said. Having Sen. Hough serve as appropriations chair in the Senate has been good for Springfield and good for southwest Missouri. I've been really thankful to be a part of the budget negotiations. Rep. Alex Riley Rep. Riley and Sen. Trent both expressed hopes for a good economy and balanced budget in the upcoming legislative session. I think we'll be able to find a way to pass another strong budget that's fiscally responsible, but continues to meet our state's needs, Riley said. Hopefully, we won't have too much downturn in the economy and so we'll still have plenty of resources to fulfill all the needs of the state, Trent said. I'm always kind of hopeful that we'll have a better than average session every year. Legislators share hopes for bills to address child care, health care, public safety Quade, who is running for governor in 2024, and Hein are both hopeful to see movement on legislation addressing the shortage of child care in the state. Gov. Parson and the Missouri Chamber of Commerce have both expressed desires to see this issue addressed by lawmakers. Gov. Parson wanted to pass some legislation around child care, but we never really got that across the finish line, Quade said. That is something that I'm really looking forward to working on together with the (Missouri) Chamber of Commerce and a lot of other organizations. I'm hopeful that we'll get something done. The Missouri Chamber, in conjunction with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, released a report in 2021 that showed the state loses out on $1.35 billion annually, with $280 million in annual lost tax revenue, due to the lack of child care options in the state. Rep. Stephanie Hein and Rep. Crystal Quade embrace at a Democrat watch party at the Old Glass Place in Downtown Springfield on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. I am hopeful that we can work together to be able to get some meaningful legislation passed or even budgetary priorities passed that help ease some of the childcare issues that are impacting our city and our state, Hein said. It is an issue that does have some bipartisan support, which is great, and if we could get some of those issues addressed this session, I would consider that a win. Stinnett would like to see a continued focus on advancing legislation benefiting children living with disabilities and improving aspects of health care in Missouri. I'm really hopeful for several pieces of healthcare related legislation that I'm going to be championing surrounding general health issues and health care topics, but also children with disabilities, and just continuing to move the needle forward for our communities and health care access that we need, Stinnett said. Riley wants to see legislation improving public safety in Springfield and across the state. I think we'll be able to continue to do more on the public safety side, which is certainly one of the big problems that we're facing as a state regardless of where people are, Riley said. Our crime rates are not where we want them to be. Republican Sen. Curtis Trent represents Greene County and other parts of southwest Missouri. Trent expects to see a handful of unsettled issues from last legislative session make their way back into the legislative spotlight in 2024. There's a lot of other policy issues that I expect will be coming up, everything from education to the election process initiative petition reform, Trent said. In the last legislative session, lawmakers proposed putting a measure on the ballot aimed at overhauling the initiative petition process by requiring more than 60% of votes in favor of an initiative to pass the measure. This is something Owen hopes will be discussed again. Im hopeful that we can finally get initiative petition reform on the ballot, Owen said. More: Mark Twain's original handwritten manuscript of 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' restored "Hope springs eternal" among legislators seeking compromise across the aisle Most Greene County legislators who were asked what they were hopeful for in the upcoming legislative session gave a similar reply a productive session bolstered by bipartisan communication and compromises. At the beginning of the legislative session, hope springs eternal, with all the good things we can potentially get done for the public, Trent said. I am really looking forward to trying to figure out how to try to work with the other side of the aisle to deal with our child care crisis, Quade said. Hough pointed to a recent meeting between Gov. Parson and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly as part of the Disagree Better initiative, which aims to find areas of common ground while learning how to constructively frame areas of disagreement. Missouri State Senator Lincoln Hough speaks during a dedication of Jordan Valley Community Health Center's new clinic, the Roy Blunt Center for Family Health and Wellness, at the corner of Kansas Expressway and Grand Street on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022. I was hoping that we could build on that message, that camaraderie, Hough said. Weve got different opinions, and we have different ideas, but we don't need to be disrespectful. We don't need to be mean-spirited. With the 2024 elections on the horizon, at every level from local school boards to the U.S. president, Hough knows that there are bound to be disagreements among candidates and lawmakers. My hope would be for everyone to just keep a respectful demeanor when we're engaging in debates and philosophical differences and different proposals, Hough said. We're all in this thing together, and we're better when we work together. We can disagree, but we can do it and be respectful. Hough is not alone in acknowledging the difficulties faced by lawmakers in such a busy election year. My hope is that we can, as a legislative body, continue to move priorities for Missouri along and not get caught up in what we know are going to be somewhat deconstructive political headwinds heading into campaign year, Fogle said. From left: Democratic candidates Amy Blansit and Samantha Deaton with House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, Rep. Betsy Fogle and Stephanie Hein. The latter three won their races in 2022. It's not going to be necessarily an easy year, Hein said. So I'm hopeful we can come together where we see some mutual agreement, mutual understanding of a problem and address it in an effective way for our community. I think this upcoming session is going to be one of the more challenging sessions we've seen, given the election year dynamics and so many state positions open that will have competitive elections, Riley said. That will pose a lot of challenges for getting a lot of things done, but I'm an eternal optimist, and I think that we'll find a way to get a few things done. Rep. Bishop Davidson checks election results at the Greene County GOP watch party on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022. Rep. Davidson has a more attainable hope in mind as he heads into a session he has heard many speak of with a general pessimism. Id like to cultivate patience. I'd like to cultivate joy. I'd like to cultivate some virtues in myself, Davidson said. I always try to pay attention to my own character each session and see, Where am I lacking? Where have I changed? Has this job changed me? What should I actively try and improve on this session? I can tell you, I hope this bill passes, but it would be hope and hope alone, Davidson said. At least if I'm hopeful that I can cultivate some patience, I have some very real control over that. This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Greene County lawmakers give thanks, share hopes for 2024 legislature A temporary cease-fire has gone into effect in Gaza, halting the bombing that has gone on for more than a month. Qatar, which brokered negotiations, announced Wednesday that fighting will cease for four days. Hamas will release 50 hostages, and Israel will release 150 Palestinian prisoners. All released prisoners will be women and minors. Administration officials are feeling tentatively vindicated over the cease-fire deal, Politico reported Wednesday. The White House is taking it as a sign that Joe Bidens strategy is working, although one official, speaking anonymously, acknowledged that theres still more to do. But the White House now has another issue on its hands. There was some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel, according to the Politico report. At least 11,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israels retaliation to the October 7 Hamas attack. Health officials in Gaza said Tuesday that they are no longer able to get an accurate death toll because of the ongoing Israeli attacks. The fighting has also killed at least 53 journalists and media workers. But now that fighting will pause, more journalists can enter Gaza and show the full extent of destruction, which the administration has so far seemed content to ignore. The majority of U.S. citizens back a cease-fire, and support has slowly but steadily grown among Democratic members of Congress. Biden, however, has until now resisted calling for an all-out cease-fire, even telling reporters two weeks ago that there was no possibility of one. His resistance to a cease-fire has contributed to a major disconnect between Biden and younger voters. GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) A top Grand Rapids Public Schools executive who had been on paid leave for weeks as a complaint was investigated is back on the job. Larry Johnson returned to work Tuesday, the school district said. A spokesperson said little else, noting GRPS does not discuss personnel matters. Sources told News 8 there was a complaint about three weeks ago that Johnson verbally threatened a parent. A Monday statement from the school indicated the complaint stemmed from a conversation on the phone. The district said it brought in an outside firm to look into what happened. GRPS has not said whether that review is yet finished or, if so, what it found. Johnson is the districts chief of staff and executive director of public safety and school security. He has led GRPS security since 1997. Before working for the school district, he was a police officer. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOODTV.com. WAYLAND TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) The Gun Lake Casino has donated $15,000 to Kids Food Basket. The casino hosted a turkey giveaway on Saturday, passing out 1,500 Thanksgiving turkeys to its GLC Rewards cardholders. It pledged to give a matching donation to Kids Food Basket, which opted for monetary donation instead of 1,500 turkeys, the casino said in a Tuesday release. Where to find Thanksgiving buffets, dinners and to-go meals in West Michigan We had a tremendous turnout at Gun Lake Casino that resulted in 1,500 Thanksgiving turkeys provided to our guests, Carter Pavey, the Gun Lake Casino vice president of marketing, said in the release. We were equally thrilled to provide a $15,000 donation to West Michigan-based Kids Food Basket to help end childhood hunger in our communities. Nick Glaser, the director of philanthropy for the nonprofit, thanked the casino for the donation. This generous gift fuels our work to help ensure West Michigan kids are nourished and ready to thrive this holiday season and beyond, he said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOODTV.com. Californias Department of Justice can continue to share firearm data with researchers studying the causes of gun violence, per a new court order. The Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that firearm data can be accessed by the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center and others as directed in Assembly Bill 173, which required the study of gun violence, the impact of it and effective responses. On Tuesday, Attorney General Rob Bonta hailed the three-judge panels decision regarding Barba v. Bonta as a victory in the states ongoing campaign to curb gun violence. In the case, plaintiffs sought to prevent researchers from accessing data on firearms purchases in California, saying it violated their privacy. They had secured a preliminary injunction from a trial court that prevented the DOJ from releasing the information. The courts decision, issued Friday, overturned that injunction. The lower court had not weighed the states established public health interest when it allowed the preliminary injunction, the appeal court justices said, and gun rights groups didnt effectively rebut Bontas evidence showing the need for empirical research. AB 173s information-sharing serves the important goal of enabling research that supports informed policymaking aimed at reducing and preventing firearm violence, Bonta said. Research and data are vital in our efforts to prevent gun violence in California and provide a clear path to help us save lives. Brad Benbrook and Steve Duvernay of Benbrook Law Group, the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The court order allows the DOJ to resume providing the data to the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center and other qualified researchers, Bonta said. Garen J. Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, called the decision an important victory for science. Wintemute and his team have used the data extensively to study the impact of gun violence and potential ways to prevent deaths. It reaffirms the value of objective evidence in understanding and intervening on important health problems, firearm violence among them, Wintemute said. For more than 30 years, researchers at UC Davis and elsewhere have used the data in question to conduct vital research that simply couldnt be done anywhere else. Were glad to be able to return to that important work, which will improve health and safety here in California and across the country. California law has required the DOJ to maintain records of handgun sales in California since the 1950s, Bonta noted in the news release about the court decision. Legislators recently added sales of long guns and ammunition. This data provide an opportunity for research not available anywhere else, the DOJ stated, and UCD researchers have been using the information in studies since 1989. In 2016, the state Legislature directed the Regents of the University of California to establish a Firearm Violence Research Center to produce interdisciplinary research on the nature and consequences of firearm violence, DOJ officials said. The UC center also works with policymakers to identify, implement and evaluate innovative firearm violence prevention policies and programs. On Aug. 15, the California Department of Justice used the information to release the first-ever data report from its Office of Gun Violence Prevention. The report showed how California had used data-driven strategies to pull its firearm homicide rate down to 33% below the rest of the U.S. The state once ranked 50% above the national average in such deaths. Then in November, the DOJ Office of Gun Violence Prevention used the data to issue a second report that looked in-depth at the ties between domestic violence and firearms. Paul Carrillo, vice president of Giffords Center for Violence Intervention, said the DOJs August report underscored the gravity of the challenges that the nation faces from gun violence. The report sheds light on disparities that persist, and it underscores the impact of external factors such as the pandemic and the trafficking of illegal firearms, Carrillo said. We must address these challenges head-on, collaborating with partners across all levels of government and within our communities to break the cycle of violence. During his tenure, Bonta has worked to expand the types of data and information that researchers can access from the California Department of Justice. A Haitian gang leader charged with kidnapping three U.S citizens at gunpoint in two separate incidents in the volatile Caribbean country has been extradited to the United States, Haiti police said. Jhon Peter Fleronvil was extradited on Monday, according to Haiti National Police, which posted photographs of him in handcuffs on its social media pages. Fleronvil had been in custody since September 11, 2022, when he was arrested in the northeastern Haitian city of Fort-Liberte while attempting to travel to the neighboring Dominican Republic by crossing the Ouanaminthe-Dajabon border. An FBI arrest warrant and affidavit Fleronvil, whose first name is spelled John in U.S. court documents, was filed in the District of Colombia federal court on Nov. 7. He had his first appearance on Tuesday in Miami before federal judge Lisette M. Reid. Fleronvil is a member of the brutal rural gang Kokorat san Ras. The armed group was recently identified in a United Nations sanctions report on Haiti, and operates in the countrys rice growing Artibonite Valley between Port-au-Prince to the south and the city of Port-de-Paix to the northwest. The gang has been accused of committing acts of extreme violence that have forced people to abandon their homes and farmland as members carry out armed robberies, assassinations, rapes and kidnappings for ransom. The gang is known to torture victims and kill them when ransoms are not paid, the U.N. reported. Its among two of the most vicious gangs operating in the rural valley, which has become a high-risk area for anyone who ventures there, including police, who routinely engage in gun battles and are subject to armed attacks. U.S. authorities say in July of 2022 during one such gun battle with police, two U.S. citizens, a married couple visiting family in Port-de-Paix, was abducted by armed gang members and later held hostage by Fleronvil and another leader of his gang, Jean Renald Dolcin, until a $10,500 ransom was paid. The next day a third U.S. citizen was taken captive by the gang in the town of Tibwadom while in route to Port-de-Paix, and held in the same location, U.S. authorities said. That victim was also released after a ransom payment. Gang violence recently forced the evacuation of dozens of sick babies and pregnant women from a hospital in the countrys largest slum, and led to more Haitians being displaced in the capital. On Wednesday, Martin Griffiths, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, referred to the attacks in a post on X. Very concerned about the situation in Port-au-Prince where violent clashes last week left dozens of people dead, including children, he said. Homes were burned down, families were displaced and hospital patients had to be evacuated. People in #Haiti deserve to work and live in dignity. With attacks, sexual violence and kidnappings increasingly on the rise in Haiti, where gangs now control at least 80% of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, the State Department announced last week that U.S. authorities are committed to ensuring that those involved in the kidnapping and killing of U.S. citizens face severe consequences for their criminal actions. This has led to the indictments of several Haitian gang members and leaders. Last November, Fleronvil was among seven gang leaders indicted for their alleged role in the kidnappings of U.S. citizens in Haiti. Three of the leaders were involved in the abduction of 16 Christian missionaries, the Department of Justice said. That group, which included five children, was kidnapped in Croix-des-Bouquets while returning from visiting an orphanage and most of them were held captive for 61 days after a ransom was paid. The leaders of the 400 Mawozo gang, Lanmo Sanjou, aka Joseph Wilson, and Jermaine Stephenson, aka Gaspiyay, were charged in the missionaries kidnapping along with Vitelhomme Innocent, leader of the Kraze Barye gang. Last week, the FBI announced that it had doubled a $1 million reward to $2 million for information leading to the arrest of Innocent, who was also placed on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The gang leaders face is also splattered on billboards across South Florida as part of a strategy that the FBI hopes will lead to his capture in Haiti where his increasing violence and kidnappings forced the U.S. Embassy in Tabarre in July to curtail services, withdraw non-emergency personnel and order U.S. citizens to leave the country. Miami Herald federal courts reporter Jay Weaver contributed to this report. WASHINGTON The U.S. has secured a deal for the release of 50 women and children held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip in exchange for a pause in fighting by Israel for at least four days. Three Americans are among the hostages set for release including 3-year-old Avigail Idan, whose parents were killed during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and two women, according to a senior Biden administration official. The delicate agreement, approved Wednesday morning by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet, follows weeks of intense hostage negotiations amid the 46-day Israel-Hamas war, with Qatar and Egypt acting as an intermediaries between the Biden administration, Israel and Hamas. President Joe Biden confirmed the deal late Tuesday, vowing that his security team will not stop negotiating to bring Americans home. "Jill (Biden) and I have been keeping all those held hostage and their loved ones close to our hearts these many weeks, and I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented," Biden said. He added, "Today's deal is a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination of many dedicated individuals across the United States Government to bring Americans home." TEL AVIV, ISRAEL - NOVEMBER 20: The parents and relatives of children kidnapped on October 7th take part in a demonstration outside the UNICEF headquarters to protest their silence to 40 children held hostage in Gaza on Worlds Children Day. Israel is set to release 150 Palestinian prisoners held as part of the deal. Israel has also agreed to extend the pause in fighting for one additional day for every 10 additional hostages Hamas releases. It will take 24 hours for implementation of the deal to begin. The deal is a massive breakthrough in diplomatic efforts to free the approximately 240 hostages militants kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack. Only four hostages, including two Americans, have been released so far. A fifth hostage was rescued by Israeli forces. Still, nearly 200 hostages will remain captive in Gaza including some women and children even after the release of 50. Ahead of his cabinet vote, Netanyahu made clear the pause in fighting will be temporary. "We are at war, and we will continue the war, he said. "We will continue until we achieve all our goals. High among them, he said, is that Gaza will not threaten Israel. He said Israel would resume its offensive against Hamas after the cease-fire expires. Hamas, in a statement on Telegram, announced it agreed to the deal. "After difficult and complex negotiations for many days, we announce, with the help and success of God Almighty, that we have reached a humanitarian truce agreement," the Hamas statement said. U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting about countering the flow of fentanyl into the United States, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House November 21, 2023 in Washington, DC. 'Extremely excruciating': How the hostage deal came together Families of hostages, including nine Americans still in Gaza, have desperately awaited a deal as fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas has intensified in northern Gaza. The deal capped an "extremely excruciating five-week process," the administration official said. The Oct. 20 release of two American hostages, Judith Raanan of Evanston, Ill. and her teenage daughter Natalie, served as a "pilot" for a larger hostage deal, the official said, giving the U.S. confidence that Qatar could deliver. The structure of the deal came together last weekend after a series of fits and starts in negotiations including communications going completely dark with Hamas earlier in the week. Initially, Hamas was refusing to provide identifying information for most of the hostages, according to the official. Biden told Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, in a Nov. 12 phone call that Hamas needed to provide clear identifying information of hostages for any agreement. Once Hamas agreed to identify the hostages, Biden told Netanyahu it was time to move forward on the deal. The U.S. disclosed last week that it has information Hamas has been holding some hostages and concealing military operations below hospitals in Gaza. Biden had indicated Tuesday a deal was imminent, telling reporters, "Were now very close." Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq said a "limited truce" could come in hours. Hamas militants crashing across the border from Gaza on Oct. 7 killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took 240 people as hostages, Israeli authorities say. Israel's ensuing military campaign has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says. November 20, 2023: A Palestinian woman walks on building rubble following an Israeli strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. Contributing: Associated Press and USA TODAY reporter John Bacon. Reach Joey Garrison on X, formerly known as Twitter, @joeygarrison. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hamas to release 50 hostages, Israel to pause fighting in US deal By Enas Alashray, Ahmed Tolba and Andrew Mills CAIRO/DOHA (Reuters) - Hamas said on Wednesday it agreed with Israel to a four-day ceasefire that will see the release of hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails and allow humanitarian aid and fuel to enter the besieged enclave. Hamas said in a statement it would release 50 women and children - from among the roughly 240 hostages captured by the militants in their surprise Oct. 7 attack in Israel - in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian women and children. It said the agreement, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, will allow hundreds of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid trucks to enter Gaza. All Israeli air activity in south Gaza will stop for four days, while air traffic in the north, the initial focus of Israel's ground assault, will stop from 10:00 a.m. to 04:00 p.m. local time, Hamas said. "As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the lookout to defend our people and defeat the occupation," Hamas said. A Qatari mediator said the country hoped the deal would lead to a permanent ceasefire. Israel, in a separate statement confirming the deal, said the pause in fighting would be extended for another day for every additional 10 hostages released. Hamas did not mention any such arrangement. "Israel's government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal," Israel's prime minister's office said. Israeli bombardments have flattened swathes of Hamas-ruled Gaza, killed 13,300 people in the tiny densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to authorities in Gaza. Qatar's chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be working inside Gaza to faciliate the hostages' release. "(It's) going to be an intensive period where we're going to be 24/7 in direct communication with the ICRC and the two parties making sure that we perfect the release of the hostages," Al-Khulaifi said. He said that the truce means there would be "no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing." Al-Khulaifi added that Qatar hopes the deal "will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire. And that's our intention." Al-Khulaifi said: "In our understanding its the light at the end of the tunnel. It is a positive development to this very difficult and complicated crisis that we're living. (Reporting by Enas Alashray and Ahmed Tolba in Cairo and Andrew Mills in Qatar; Writing by Rami Ayyub in Washington, Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Simon Cameron-Moore and Michael Georgy) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said Israel is in the midst of a fight for our existence and that its invasion of the Gaza Strip aims to eliminate Hamas by destroying its military and governance capabilities. Thats certainly a lofty goal. Unfortunately, the American experience in Afghanistan over the past two decades indicates that it is almost impossible to crush a nonstate actor if its leadership and finances are protected in countries that ones military will not, or cannot, attack. Since Hamass leadership lives and its fundraising occurs outside of Gaza, its unclear how Israel can truly fulfill its goal of destroying the terrorist group. One of this conflicts greatest ironies is that Hamas has Netanyahu to thank in part for its strength. For years, he has propped up Hamas in Gaza in order to weaken the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, or P.A., in the West Bank, thereby dashing hopes for a two-state solution. He reportedly admitted as much in 2019, in defending his decision to allow Qatari funds to flow into Gaza. Another irony is that while Hamas fully controls the institutions of governance in Gaza, the P.A. is paying the lions share of the international aid flowing into the area. For example, in 2021 alone, the P.A. transferred $1.7 billion to Gaza, theoretically to pay the salaries and pensions of tens of thousands of civil servants idled by Hamass brutal takeover of Gaza in 2007. A similar phenomenon occurred in Iraq when Baghdad for years effectively subsidized tens of thousands of workers operating in Islamic Statecontrolled areas. The P.A.which Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently said should take over Gaza once the war is overreportedly transfers up to 30 percent of its annual budget to the Gaza Strip. The authority also controversially pays a stipend to Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere who are imprisoned in Israeli jails, or to the families of Palestinians who were killed while carrying out an attack. But heres a further conundrum: Israel collects the P.A.s taxes and customs dutieswhich make up 65 percent of the Palestinian budgetbecause the P.A. does not have official statehood status. This means Israel can freeze or deduct this money whenever it likes, which it did earlier this month. Additional aid to Gaza comes from oil-rich Qatar (where many senior Hamas leaders live and work in luxurious surroundings), which in 2021 provided $360 million for Hamas government salaries and cash handouts to familieswith Israels knowledge and approval. The United Nations funds and runs schools and hospitals in Gaza and employs many workers, teachers, and medical personnel, spending $600 million in 2020. These are, of course, avenues for Hamas to extract money through taxes, extortion, and black marketeering, despite the efforts of international overseers, including Israel itself. All this is to say that every dollaror shekel, as the P.A. and Hamas largely pay their employees in Israeli currencythat Hamas does not have to spend on Gaza schools, hospitals, government salaries, and governance, the group can instead spend on terrorist purposes. Hamas imposes taxes and fees on the local population; that money is then spent on Hamass end goals. It is unclear how much of the P.A. money is skimmed by Hamas, but if the Islamic States financial management structure in Mosul can serve as a rough guide, it could be up to 50 percent. This is in addition to what other donors provide. Anonymous Western officials speaking to The Wall Street Journal estimated that Iran provides Hamas $100 million annually for military activities, while the terrorist group generates $12 million to $15 million a month on smuggled Egyptian goods, according to Gaza-based economist Mohammed Abu Jayab. A recent analysis from Die Welt suggests Hamas sits upon a financial empire worth $700 million. Hamas has even experimented in recent years with using cryptocurrencies to evade government surveillance. While the full extent of its efforts is unknown, Israel as recently as mid-October continues to freeze Hamas-linked crypto accounts. Even with these diversified income streams, the money itself never has to touch Gaza. Hamas and its allies, like most sophisticated terrorist groups, have built a complicated web of global money-laundering streams with the assistance of the Iranians. It is probably impossible for forensic accountants to unravel completely Hamass financial dealings. The U.S. Treasury Department is playing financial whack-a-mole; last month, it sanctioned several Hamas investment portfolio managers living in the West Bank, Sudan, Turkey, Algeria, and Qatar. A further wrinkle is that if, say, Israel cuts off the P.A.s $1.7 billion to Gaza, it will negatively impact the very people who would serve as the governing backbone of a potential post-Hamas Gaza. It also doesnt really cost that much to carry out a terrorist attack. The September 11, 2001, attacks cost Al Qaeda under half a million dollars, according to the 9/11 Commissionwith the hijackers even returning $26,000 to an Emirati facilitator right before the strike because they didnt need it. While it remains unclear how much it cost Hamas financially for its October 7 attack on Israel, the terrorist group almost certainly has enough flexibility to weather whatever financial penalties are coming. And if not, their funders have more than enough money to compensate them for their losses. Terrorism is political theater; the terrorists want the public to watch their horrific acts and to fear whats coming next. Thats likely why so many Hamas attackers wore GoPro cameras and videotaped their murderous behavior. But their monstrous activities were in service of a political goalto force an overreaction by Israel that causes misery for a civilian population where Hamas hides and operates. This can generate new recruits, propaganda, and supportdiplomatic and financialfrom allies in the region and further abroad. Hamas must be destroyed or at least neutered as a terrorist organization for this conflict to conclude. Sadly, without eliminating Hamass leadership outside of Gaza and cutting off its regional financial lifelines, the goal of decisively crushing the group once and for all will remain out of reach. After this round of war ends, there will remain aggrieved Gazans looking to commit violence against Israel, buttressed by an Islamist ideology to justify murderous actions. There will also continue to be enough money and direction from outside of the Strip. Thus, the conflict in Gaza will likely burn on, ebbing and flowing as it has done for years, no matter the outcome of Israels current military operation. You may be surprised, but Hamas does not call for only killing Jews and eliminating Israel. If you are Christian, a member of another religion or even participate in your local Rotary club or the Lions, Hamas also considers you an enemy, too. "Hamas is using Gaza as an umbrella to be legitimate," says author and Middle East expert Walid Phares. "The reality is this is a jihadist movement, and it is manifesting itself in America and Canada, and in Western Europe. We have never been at this level of danger for our democratic world." The Hamas charter seeks to expand Islam to become the controlling religion across the globe, targeting any non-believer, which includes "Main Street" America. RABBIS AND CHRISTIAN LEADERS CALL FOR 'NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER FOR ISRAEL' ON MONDAY, NOV. 6 Hamas considers Jews and Christians their enemies. The terrorist group's guiding philosophy is detailed in "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement," which was adopted on Aug. 18, 1988. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP It says that the duty of every Muslim is "Jihad," that "there is no solution to the Palestinian question except through Jihad," and says "the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians," until they follow the ways of Hamas. "Israel is just a thick skin though the rest of the international community that happens to be blocking them," says Phares, who has written the new book, "Iran, An Imperialistic Republic and U.S. Policy," that explains how Tehran's proxies, like Hamas, spread their message of hate. "They know our society very well. They are here," he said. Article 22 of the Hamas charter mentions an unexpected subject of its call for Jihad, the "American as apple pie" business, community and charitable organizations found throughout the nation: Rotary and Lions clubs. Freemasonry is also on its list. CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION AROUND THE WORLD IS HIGHLIGHTED IN NEW REPORT: 'PEOPLE ARE BEING SERIOUSLY HURT' "The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement" says that "the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians," until they follow the ways of Hamas. The charter cites what it calls "secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests." Hamas faults the humanitarian organizations, falsely accusing them of attempting to "colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption." "They are part of what the Jihadists consider a sin, a national sin," Phares explained. "They will go against them; they will go against the Freemasons and they will go against every entity that is a social organization." FBI Director Christoper Wray appeared before the House Committee on Homeland Security last week, announcing that the bureau has ramped up extensive investigations into Hamas in order to disrupt any potential Hamas-related attacks on U.S. soil and shut down any financial support flowing to the terrorist group. "Weve kept our sights on Hamas and have multiple investigations into individuals affiliated with that foreign terrorist organization," said Wray. "We've seen a rogues gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies," he told the panel. "We cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization may exploit the current conflict to conduct attacks here, on our own soil." ISRAELI CHRISTIAN SAYS HAMAS ISN'T JUST A DANGER TO JEWS: FIGHT OF LIGHT AGAINST DARKNESS Hamas terrorists take part in a gathering in Gaza City on Jan. 31, 2016 to pay tribute to members who died after a tunnel collapsed in the Gaza Strip. Federal prosecutors have brought a slew of cases against Hamas-affiliated charities and individuals in the U.S. The most notable convictions, in 2008, were of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its leaders on charges of giving material support to Hamas. The foundation, based in Richardson, Texas, just north of Dallas, was found to have funneled at least $12 million to Hamas, and some of its leaders were sentenced to as many as 65 years in federal prison. Congressional testimony linked the Holy Land Foundation with current Hamas political leader Abu Marzouk, who authorities said in 1992 "provided more than 10 percent of all donations to the Holy Land Foundation." Today, Marzouk is believed to be living in Qatar and is worth more than $3 billion. While FBI Director Wray said that "were not currently tracking a specific plot," he explained that the bureau is "keeping a close eye on what impact recent events may have on those terrorist groups intentions here in the United States, and how those intentions might evolve." Both the Rotary and Lions clubs told Fox News that their organizations are not political and are known for their vast volunteer and charitable work around the globe. Both the Rotary Club and the Lions said they have more than 1.4 million members and are engaged in a variety of humanitarian efforts, from providing food programs and rebuilding communities to fighting diseases and providing clean water, sanitation and hygiene. The Lions told Fox News that "Lions International is a non-political, non-sectarian volunteer service organization whose members are dedicated to serving a world in need." Both the Rotary and Lions clubs told Fox News that their organizations are not political and are known for their vast volunteer and charitable work around the globe. The Rotary said that it, too, "is non-political, non-religious and exclusively focused on providing humanitarian support everywhere." Observers note it is a sad and revealing testament to the misguided philosophy of Hamas, that it would ever consider those who help as worthy of its enmity. Fox News' Seth Andrews and Emily Robertson contributed to this report. Original article source: Hamas terror organization charter targets Christians and US service organizations Loved ones and community members knew the late Geoffrey Holt to be a reserved man who liked simple things. What most people didnt know is that he was sitting on a $3.8 million fortune. Holt died on June 6, leaving millions to his beloved town of Hinsdale, New Hampshire, about 20 miles southwest of Swanzey. Hinsdale Town Administrator Kathryn Lynch said Edwin Smokey Smith is Holts estate executor. He told town administrators about Holts generous donation a few months ago. The money was given to the NH Charitable Foundation, a non-profit. The town and other community committees can apply annually for a grant of $150,000 to be used for health, education, culture or recreation, she told USA TODAY in an email on Wednesday. The town is considering using the money for electronic ballot machines since Holt was an avid voter. They are also considering updating the town clock. The possibilities are endless, Lynch wrote. Mr. Holt had dyslexia, we could fund a program to educate the teachers on this subject. Mr. Holts mother was a librarian. We will honor that as well. The main thing, she said, is that they want to honor how frugal Holt was and find ways to help people in Hinsdale save money through the town budget. Geoffrey Holt is seen in a collection of family photos provided by his estate. Holt left the town of Hinsdale, N.H., nearly $4 million when he died last June. 'We want Eddie out of here': Naughty dog finds forever home after shelter's hilarious post Holt would be all sorts of embarrassed if he knew about all the publicity hes getting Smokey Smith, Holts pal and executor of his estate, calls the late millionaire Geoff. The pair met when Smith ran an insurance company. Holt had insurance with Smith and would always come visit the office to handle business in person. He was very reserved, Smith said. He liked to be at the back of a group rather than in the front. He got along well with people but he didn't want to be the one leading the conversation. If he knew what was going on today with this story he would be all sorts of embarrassed. He really didn't like to be the focus of attention. He said Holt worked for Agway Corporation in the 1970s. According to his obituary, he was a production manager with the company. When they closed in the 1980s, he received a cash settlement that he chose to invest. He also did odd jobs around town when Agway closed. Smith eventually hired him to do some work on his land. He had some barns that needed to be removed, so Holt took on that job, among others. 'I was so scared': Cancer survivor mom relieved to find out daughter is also in remission New Hampshire man shared mobile home with woman for 20 years, collected trains Smith said Holt eventually moved into an apartment he owned and then, a mobile home that he shared with a woman named Thelma Parker. He lived with Parker for 20 years and according to his obituary, she was his longtime life partner. She died in 2017. She was good for him and he was good for her, Smith said. She sort of kept him on the straight and narrow. She helped him be a little more social. They were a good fit. She was the inspiration he needed to keep moving and she had somebody around to help her and do things with her and for her. The trailer where Geoffrey Holt lived is seen at Stearns Park, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, in Hinsdale, N.H. For years, Holt was known as a mobile home park groundskeeper in the small New Hampshire town. Now, he's being remembered as a millionaire who gave his fortune to the community. He had a car when he worked at Agway but sold it. After that, he biked back and forth, Smith said. When he lived with Parker, they shared a vehicle. What Holt seemed to really love was his lawn mower. Hed ride around Smiths property with his bad leg elevated on the hood of the vehicle, his friend recalled. We have about a 25-acre parcel and Geoff had free rein on going anywhere he wants to, he said. He had several places where he trimmed back the brush so that he could sit down there and read magazines, newspapers, just put his foot up and enjoy the brook and nature. He actually took a photo of Smith on the mower once and thought the photo was perfect. That's a true Geoff expression, he said. Seeing him sitting on the lawn mower was the way most people saw him. It just looked like Geoffrey. He appreciated what was going on. In this photo provided by Ed Smith, Geoffrey Holt rests his leg on top of his riding mower in Hinsdale, N.H., on April 4, 2020. Holt left the town of Hinsdale nearly $4 million when he died last June. Trailer park owner Ed Smith looks at one of Geoffrey Holt's riding mowers at Stearns Park, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, in Hinsdale, N.H. Holt had an affinity for car replicas: 'He had well over 1,000 of them' Over the years, Smith knew Holt to collect train layouts and had 30 or 40 of them, Smith said. He also loved die-cast cars, or miniature replicas often made using metal-casting methods. He had well over 1,000 of them, he said. Holt had a stroke in September 2021 and spent a month in rehab. He returned to the mobile home for about six weeks and then couldnt take care of himself anymore, Smith said. He also had dementia, so he eventually moved to an assisted living facility and then full nursing care. In this photo provided by Ed Smith, Geoffrey Holt smiles on Sept. 12, 2022. Holt left the town of Hinsdale, N.H., nearly $4 million when he died last June. (Ed Smith via AP) Millionaire confided in friend about investment Holt spent many years in preparatory school when he was younger. His parents initially told him he was only supposed to be away for a short period of time, Smith recalled. That's where he learned that if you stay in the background, you stay out of trouble, Smith said, adding that boarding school may be part of the reason for his late friends shyness. A young Geoffrey Holt smiles in this undated photo provided by his estate. For years, Holt was known as a mobile home park groundskeeper in the small New Hampshire town of Hinsdale. Now, he's being remembered as a millionaire who gave his fortune to the community. (Family photo courtesy of Ed Smith via AP) In 1963, he graduated with a bachelors degree from Marlboro College in Vermont and then served in the United States Navy, his obituary reads. He later earned a masters degree from American International College in Massachusetts in 1968 and then taught social studies and drivers' education at Thayer High School in Winchester, New Hampshire. Geoffrey Holt's diploma for earning a Master's degree from American International College is seen Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023, in Hinsdale, N.H. Holt, a longtime trailer park resident, came from a well-educated family. He left the town of Hinsdale, N.H., nearly $4 million when he died last June. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty) Smith recalls the day Holt told him about his fortune. It was about 13 years ago. He said his investments had done better than he expected. Smith told his friend to chat with a trust attorney. He wasnt sure what else to do. The only thing that I said to him when he left was Dont forget Hinsdale, Smith recalled. I didnt expect that he would give his full estate to the town but that's the way it worked out It really shows that he had a great deal of respect for me and I am humbled by that, actually. Geoffrey Holt leaves behind his sister, Allison Holt, as well as Mary Desmond, daughter of his life partner, Thelma Parker. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Secret millionaire leaves $3.8M to New Hampshire town of Hinsdale Kathy Rice had yet to attend any 2024 campaign stops before this week, but when former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced a town hall in her hometown, the 54-year-old decided to see what the buzz around her was about. She went into the event here hoping to hear from Haley on three key issues: the economy, immigration and foreign policy. Shes great, Rice said as she left. Shes very powerful. Shes very relatable. And she gets it. It was just short of an endorsement. Were lucky here in New Hampshire that we get a chance to see so many different candidates, she said. For weeks Haley has been gaining momentum in the Granite State, where recent polls show her in second place well behind former President Donald Trump but increasingly ahead of the other candidates seeking to consolidate the states non-Trump vote. Despite the former presidents overwhelming lead, Haleys campaign is hoping she can seal the deal with undecided voters like Rice as she runs on her record as Trumps ambassador to the United Nations and the six years she led the Palmetto State. Best case scenario for the campaign, early state voters known for breaking late in ways that defy conventional wisdom might still surprise the country and support someone who isnt the former president. For now, many voters still want to be courted. Weve got to do whatever it takes to save America, Haley said at her second town hall of the day, in Raymond. But in order to do that, its gonna take a lot of courage, courage from every single person in this room and the overflow room. A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released last week showed that 20% of likely GOP primary voters would support her, up from 12% in September, placing her firmly in second place. Trump received support from 42% of primary voters, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie received 14%, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was backed by 9% and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy had 8%. The poll found that 52% of likely GOP primary voters in the state had made up their mind. Haleys debate performances and rise in early state polling numbers here in New Hampshire, as well as South Carolina and Iowa have led to new interest from GOP megadonors. But the upswing has also led to increased scrutiny and criticism from her rivals, particularly of her foreign policy record. Attacks on all sides Her primary opponents have attacked those credentials from all sides. DeSantis and the super PAC backing him have hammered her from the right, going after her work recruiting Chinese business to South Carolina when she served as governor from 2011 to 2017. Ramaswamy, with whom shes shared some of the sharpest exchanges in the past three primary debates, has consistently tried to brand her as a hawk. In the first debate, he mockingly congratulated her on future positions on the boards of defense contractors, and in the third debate, he called her Dick Cheney in three-inch heels, a reference to the unpopular former vice president and his role in shaping foreign policy under former President George W. Bush. Several of her rivals jumped at the opportunity to blast her proposal earlier this month that all social media users should be verified by name, which she cited as a national security issue. Haley later walked the policy back. But those moments dont always resonate on the trail. Kay Vasile, a 59-year-old office manager from Barrington who attended the Raymond town hall, hadnt heard about the social media proposal. But she was struck by the way Haley talked about veterans issues, the impact those policies have on families and the need to provide better mental health services. Haleys husband, an Afghanistan veteran, is currently deployed with the South Carolina National Guard. Vasile, who said her husband was in the Air Force for 37 years, brought up veterans care when it was her turn in the photo line following the town hall. I just thanked her for that and let her know that, you know, its true, she said. When he came back from Iraq it was the guard base did as good as they could with integrating and helping with that, but it needs to be longer. Still, she has more research to do. I like Chris Christie, what he has to say. I loved (South Carolina Sen. Tim) Scott and I liked (former Vice President Mike) Pence, but theyre gone, she said. So, shes my next one. Since Haley launched her presidential campaign in February, she has held more than 60 events in the state across 10 counties. This week, her campaign released the slate of New Hampshire delegates that will represent her at the Republican National Convention next summer, touting it as evidence of the depth of support she has there. The campaign recently announced a $10 million ad buy reservation in New Hampshire and Iowa across digital, TV and radio. We have a long way to go and theres going to be continued movement within the field here, said veteran New Hampshire GOP strategist Jim Merrill. But I think where she is in New Hampshire comes as a product of her sweat equity and the time shes put in here. New Hampshire Republican Gov.Chris Sununu, who has not endorsed but has attended campaign events with most of the major candidates, said nine weeks is plenty of time for candidates to make an impression on Republican and independent voters, many whom havent decided who theyll support. Sometime after Thanksgiving well have those hard conversations, said Sununu. Sometimes the awkward conversations with the weird uncles and the crazy cousins that come over for Thanksgiving. But thats the way we do it. Nine weeks left Part of making an impression is rolling with the punches. During the question and answer session of the Hooksett town hall, Haley complimented 9-year-old Hannah Kesselring on her hat, a piece of Haley campaign swag. Thank you, one of your guys gave it to me for free, she said, setting off a wave of laughter through the crowd. I want you to tell me which guy that was, because we dont do things for free, Haley replied, drawing more laughs. Kesselring then asked what Haley would tackle first if elected. Later, flanked by her parents Steve and Kim, Hannah said she thought Haleys answer she said she would hire new agency heads was spot on and called Haley awesome. Steve, a 40-year-old small business owner, said he wanted to hear from Haley because he liked whatd hed seen of her at the United Nations (and because Hannah said she wanted to meet Haley after watching the third GOP debate). But the event hadnt helped narrow down his options. I would say that, yes, I do like a lot of what DeSantis has to say. I do like a lot of what Haley has to say. And I like what Trump did, he said. So at the end of the day, its really a tough, split decision to know where to go. Not everyone left undecided. New Hampshire state Rep. Stephen Pearson said he was impressed by Haleys performance at the first GOP debate, but wanted to hear her off the debate stage. By the end of the town hall, hed decided to endorse her. Pearson said he appreciated Haleys efforts to share hard truths things people need to hear even if they may not like it. And as a lieutenant in the Manchester Fire Department, he appreciated her comments on fentanyl, which has made the ongoing opioid epidemic in the city worse. I see the reality, he said. Its something that is just devastating to this country. John Hallinan, a 72-year-old security head for local circuit courts, described himself as an independent who is frustrated with the Republican Partys position on abortion in the wake of recent electoral losses. Haleys comments in past debates about seeking consensus on the issue resonated with him. He also saw her as a better option than the front-runner. He liked Trumps policies, but had grown tired of the noise surrounding him. Right now, to me, his candidacy is more of a revenge tour, and that bothers me, he said. Shes refreshing. Shes an underdog. Shes an achiever. I have followed her since she was at the UN. Very impressed tonight. Foreign policy bona fides At the center of Haleys case for her candidacy has been the two years she served as US ambassador to the United Nations. Her stump speech is peppered with nods to her time there dealing with China, Russia and Iran, while working with US allies like Israel and Ukraine. At one point, Haley criticized the congressional debate over funding for the border, aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel, arguing all three are critical. Theres a reason the Taiwanese want us in the West to support the Ukrainians: because they know if Ukraine wins, China wont invade Taiwan. Theres a reason the Ukrainians want us to support the Israelis: because they know the dangers that if Iran wins, for them, Russia wins, she said. Its all connected. Don Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general and controversial, failed 2022 Republican nominee for Senate in New Hampshire, tried to inoculate Haley from the criticisms of her foreign policy while introducing her. She knows what its like when a service member comes home after being in a combat zone for a year and has to readjust to family life and to life outside of a combat zone, Bolduc, the chairman of her New Hampshire campaign, told the audience in Hooksett. So those people out there that call her a war monger or someone whos beating a war drum, have no idea what theyre talking about. In an interview, he said that Haley is about preventing conflict, preventing wars. Jeffrey Reaume, a 56-year-old engineer from Portsmouth, said he was still surveying the field after Haleys Raymond town hall and described her foreign policy as a mixed bag for him. Im for supporting Ukraine. Im for supporting Israel, to a point, he said. I think making China out to be the big bad wolf that cant be dealt with any other way I think that weve done that before. It doesnt usually work out well. But Natalie Cote, a 59-year-old artist from Raymond, called Haley absolutely brilliant as she walked out of the Monday night town hall, her first time seeing her in person. I feel her experience really suits the problems that were having in the world today, she said. Asked how she might vote in the primary, however, she stayed noncommittal. I need to do more research, she said. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com (Bloomberg) -- As Israel has waged its war in the Gaza Strip, officials across the world are united in trying to figure out how to restore order when all the fighting stops. Theres little agreement, however, and even less optimism. Most Read from Bloomberg Israels goal is to eradicate Hamas and secure the enclave. But like so much about the events of the Palestinian militant groups Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state and its aftermath, what advocates seek for the future of Gaza reflects how they interpret the past and on that, they cant agree. That raises questions over whether Israel can ever achieve its stated aims: to deradicalize and demilitarize the Palestinian territory of 2.2 million people on its southwestern border. Israel and Hamas agreed a hostage deal announced early Wednesday and a pause in fighting, but its uncertain whether any sustainable peace will endure. US President Joe Biden wants to bring the more moderate Palestinian Authority from the West Bank, led by Mahmoud Abbas, back into Gaza more than 16 years after it was ejected and restart the building of a Palestinian state, as he laid out in a recent essay and public statements. Interviews with two dozen officials, diplomats and analysts in Israel, the Arab world, Europe and the US most of which were granted on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations show the range of options along with the mistrust and confusion dominating the discussions. Unlike the US, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes a Palestinian state and wants to keep the West Bank and Gaza separate. It seeks to foster a young technocratic leadership inside Gaza with Arab money, US guidance and Israeli security that will build something like Dubai on the Mediterranean, according to senior Israeli officials and others with whom theyve spoken. Its an approach most outsiders consider pie in the sky. The Palestinian Authority says it wont discuss the future without a ceasefire, but privately officials say theyre ready to return, just not on the back of Israeli tanks. The European Union supports its return, one senior official said, and could beef up its border control mission in Gaza that was withdrawn after Oct. 7. Top officials from the EU have been holding discussions with officials from the authority and key Arab states. Some other European and US officials say the only way forward is a multinational or United Nations force, with an emphasis on Arab troops. Governments in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia say they wont put boots on the ground and that the US is too supportive of Israels war. Let me be very clear: I know I am speaking on behalf of Jordan but I have discussed this issue with almost all of our Arab brethren, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told the Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain on Nov. 18. There will be no Arab troops going to Gaza. That leaves an option of a force like the one in Haiti or Lebanon, but these are considered to be highly ineffective, and Israel either wont accept it or will mostly ignore it once in place. Many Arabs see the Hamas attack last month as evidence that Israel has been ignoring the Palestinian question to its detriment, pursuing peace with countries further afield such as the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. The assault was significant less for its savagery than for the underlying factors that, they argue, drove desperate people to do desperate things. This is an opportunity, they say, to restart stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and return to the two-state model that has animated policy and analysis for some three decades. Some also argue that Hamas cant be eliminated because the group, designated a terrorist organization by the US, UK and EU, is inherent to Palestinian society and now must be incorporated into peace talks. Israelis mostly draw a different conclusion. They say they pulled their forces and settlers out of Gaza in 2005. Palestinians could have constructed factories, farms and hotels. Instead, Hamas which won legislative elections a year later and then took control by force mostly built rockets and underground tunnels, training thousands of militants to kill and maim, while leaving the population impoverished, the Israelis say. The lesson is that Israel must never again leave neighboring territory in the hands of Palestinian security forces because militants will take over and try another Oct. 7 attack. For them, the model is Japan and Germany after World War II destroy fully the existing authority and create a new entity backed by an aid package. The only way to uproot Hamas entails a massive devastation to homes and infrastructure, leaving parts of Gaza today looking like the European cities in rubble at the end of the Second World War, said Uri Dromi, an Israeli government spokesman in the 1990s. The situation calls for a similar remedy: A new Marshall Plan for Gaza. A scenario of total devastation in Gaza risks radicalizing an entire generation of youth against the Jewish state, Arab leaders like Jordans King Abdullah have warned. Plus, it would involve billions, if not tens of billions, of dollars. The question is from whom and who would decide how to spend it. Qatar, for one, has financed Gaza for years, with money going toward infrastructure. Some Arab leaders, though, say theyve paid to rebuild Gaza three times already due to conflicts with Israel and arent much interested in a fourth without rock-solid guarantees. Explainers on the Conflict:Your Guide to Understanding the Roots of the Israel-Hamas WarHow This Israel-Hamas Conflict Is Like Nothing Thats Happened BeforeHow West Bank, Settlements Fit Into Israel-Hamas WarAll About the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Enclave Where Hamas Rules In Israel, many say its time to abandon the clearly failed two-state formula and find a new approach. Its as if nothing happened and people are coming up with the old stuff, said Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. I would vie for something which is out-of-the-box thinking. There is an opportunity to do something different. Biden says that ground rules for what should happen next include no forcible displacement of Palestinians, no siege or blockade of Gaza and no reduction in its territory. But Israel has been pressing to move Gazans temporarily into Egypt or other Arab countries to complete its military operation and limit civilian casualties. Egypt refuses as do the others on the grounds that, in the past, Israel drove Palestinians from their homes and may not let them back. Israel denies that, but says it plans to create a buffer zone inside Gaza so that militants are kept far from its communities. That, too, contradicts Biden. In trying to plan whats next, many look at recent history. The Palestinian Authority was in charge of Gaza from 1994 until 2007. In 2006 legislative elections, Hamas squeaked past Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. It then began pressuring Fatah officials, leading to a violent civil war. Hundreds were killed and the Palestinian Authority was exiled from the strip. Walid Ibrahim al-Walid, a general in the Palestinian Authoritys preventive security service, counts himself lucky to be alive. He says Hamas made two attempts on his life in Gaza. They came to my house, where I was with my family, and began shooting and throwing grenades, he recounted. Now living in the West Bank, Al-Walid would like to go back to Gaza, where hes from, as part of a new leadership. There are some 25,000 Palestinian Authority officials still in Gaza, some of whom work within Hamas ministries, and others whove collected salaries for 16 years while staying home. Such civil servants could, in theory, form a new governing structure. Two names come up as possibilities to run Gaza, at least in the short term. One is Mohammed Dahlan, the top Palestinian Authority figure in Gaza before Hamas took over. Dahlan challenged President Abbas and has been living in exile in Abu Dhabi since 2011. The other is Marwan Barghouti. Hes been in Israeli prison for two decades, is highly influential in the West Bank and considered a possible successor to Abbas. Israel would have to be willing to release him. The Palestinian Authority, though, is widely considered to have grown sclerotic after almost two decades under Abbas, with corruption and inefficiency endemic. Israeli officials say the authoritys return would be a recipe for disaster and they wont permit it. US officials dont deny that there are significant problems with that possibility, but say theyre less severe than Israel contends. In truth, there are so many variables when the war will end, how much will be left standing, how many civilians are killed, whether the fighting spreads more deeply into Lebanon that detailed planning seems almost fantasy-like. It isnt even clear who the decision makers in key places will be. Many expect that when the war ends, Netanyahu will be forced to resign for having overseen the security lapse that permitted the Oct. 7 attack. Since his government is especially nationalist, a change could mean a new approach. Its far from clear, however, whether a new administration would be more moderate on Gazas future or a Palestinian state because the events of recent weeks have driven many Israelis further to the right. In a poll by Channel 12 last week, only 10% of Israelis said they favored bringing the Palestinian Authority into Gaza, with 30% favoring an international force. Its also not clear how much longer Abbas, 88, will be in office or who might replace him. The same could be said of Biden at 81, facing a tight reelection race in one year, possibly against Donald Trump, whos campaigning partly on a platform of isolationism, suggesting that US military engagement abroad would decrease markedly. Biden has taken a central role in supporting Israel, sending two carrier-led combat fleets to the Eastern Mediterranean to warn Hezbollah and Iran not to jump into the war with Israel. Among many other issues is what will be left of Gaza. Much of Gaza City is in ruins. Gazas inhabitants are mostly the descendants of refugees and many have lived without productive work, although thanks to UN agencies, their core needs health and education have been met. The reputation of the strip is more dire than the reality. According to the World Bank, Gaza has near universal literacy, much higher than in neighboring Egypt, let alone poorer countries like Sudan and Chad. Rates of infant mortality and life expectancy were also better. But the impact of the war will be devastating. The UN Development Program has already forecast that with some 390,000 jobs lost so far, the economy could shrink by up to 12% in 2023, poverty could rise by a third and the area could be set back by some 15 years. More than two thirds of Gazans have been displaced. Gaza could look like Syria with huge internal refugee tent camps amid rubble. Its extremely difficult to think of the endgame, said Khaled Al-Hroub, professor in residence of the faculty of liberal arts at Northwestern University in Qatar. Much depends on the final outcome of the war and the degree to which Hamas is weakened. He said Hamas cant be eliminated and must be included in negotiations on a future Palestinian state, or as former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa put it: Hamas will most certainly have a role in what emerges after the guns are silenced. Meanwhile, said Al-Hroub, Israel is turning Gaza into a reconstruction site that will consume whoever is in power for years to come in healing it. And, for now, its hard to see who would wield that power beyond Israel. The country says it trusts no one else to make sure Hamas isnt rebuilding its forces. It plans on having its troops moving freely in and out, which will protect the border communities it plans to rebuild, but create friction in Gaza. If a local governing body does emerge, the situation might most resemble parts of the West Bank where Palestinian officials handle civil matters and Israeli troops are responsible for security. Its an arrangement that Palestinians have complained about for years, saying Israeli troops humiliate their officials who are dismissed by the population as toadies and agents of occupation. Meanwhile, the most striking gap remains over the meaning of Oct. 7. Israelis focus on the killing, maiming and kidnapping of women, children and elderly, by militants. To them, its evidence of a deeply violent streak and proof that Hamas needs to be uprooted the way the Islamic State was from Iraq and Syria in 2016-17. Palestinians view it differently. They tend to see the attack as a triumph over Israel, according to a recent poll by Ramallah-based Arab World for Research and Development. Support for a two-state solution has plummeted, it showed, while belief has soared in the installation of a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. To the question of whether the events since Oct. 7 have made them more or less in favor of coexistence, nine in 10 Palestinians said less. Thats the kind of sentiment Israelis cite as a reason to focus purely on their own security calculations, without expecting cooperation from anyone else. As long as there is no stability in Gaza, Israel can rely on nobody, said Rabi, the Dayan Center director. Whatever the solution, it has to have something to do with the security needs of Israel. --With assistance from Antony Sguazzin and Fadwa Hodali. (Adds deal on hostages in third paragraph) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Harry and Meghan at St Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham for Christmas service in 2018 (PA) The Duke and Duchess of Sussex would not turn down a Christmas invitation from the royal family if they were asked, reports claim. Senior members of the family traditionally gather to spend the festive period at Sandringham House the late Queens country estate in Norfolk. It is understood that Harry and Meghan are open to joining the royals, having last done so in 2018 when they were photographed walking to church alongside the Prince and Princess of Wales. However, no arrangements have been made yet for the Duke and Duchess to attend the Christmas and New Year festivities, according to a source close to the couple. I cant imagine the Sussexes would decline an invitation to spend time with His Majesty. As of yet, there have not been any invitations for the holidays, a source told The Sunday Times. Prince William, Kate (L), pictured with Harry and Meghan in 2018 (PA) A Christmas invitation would mark a move towards reconciliation after claims of animosity between Harry, Meghan and the royals. But another insider told the MailOnline that an invite for the Sussexes may not go down well with the family. They said it would be bizarre to think that Harry and Meghan could waltz back in and allow bygones to be bygones if only someone would be good enough invite them. It seems as if they are really doubling down on their reconciliation strategy. Which begs the question, why now? Could it be that they have realised moaning about how awful being a member of the Royal Family is, isnt such a great strategy after all? Harry and Meghan left royal duties in 2020. Since their departure, the couple has discussed the difficulties they faced within the royal family in their Netflix docu-series and during a sit-down interview with Oprah. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their interview with Oprah Winfrey (PA Media) Harry also released his tell-all memoir Spare, which had a string of claims including Prince William attacking him as well as describing the hardships Meghan faced while part of the family. Last week Meghan was seen walking down Hollywoods red carpet for Variety's Power of Women Awards after extracts were published from a new book detailing Harrys alienation from his family. Omid Scobies book Endgame, which is published on 28 November, describes a new palace drama. According to the book, it dives deep into the current state of the British monarchy, an unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the throne, a Queen willing to go to dangerous lengths to preserve her image, and a prince forced to start a new life after being betrayed by his own family. The book claims: Queen Elizabeth IIs death ruptured the already-fractured foundations of the House of Windsor, and dismantled the protective shield around it. With an institution long plagued by antiquated ideas around race, class and money, the monarchy and those who prop it up are now exposed and at odds with a rapidly modernizing world. The late crush of holiday travelers picked up steam Wednesday, with about 2.7 million people expected to board flights and millions more planning to drive or take the train to Thanksgiving celebrations. Airline officials say they are confident they can avoid the kind of massive disruptions that have marred past holiday seasons, such as the meltdown at Southwest Airlines over last Christmas. As of Wednesday evening that appeared to be the case. U.S. airports reported 59 flight cancellations into, out of or within the U.S. Wednesday and 2,750 flight delays, according to FlightAware, a tracking service. FlightAware said anything less than 300 cancellations and 4,000 delays per day is considered very good. Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York said it was checking all vehicles arriving at the airport and performing additional security screenings after a car crashed and exploded at a nearby checkpoint on the U.S.-Canada border. But the airport said it remained open and fully operational. All four border crossings in the area were closed, the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission said. Snow showers could snarl traffic in other parts of the country. The National Weather Service was predicting accumulating snow in northern New England Wednesday, including up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) of snowfall in northern Maine. Snow was also expected to hit the northern Rocky Mountains on Thanksgiving Day, bringing up to 1 foot of snow to parts of Wyoming by Friday. Security lines at airports could be long. Delta Air Lines is telling passengers to arrive at the airport at least two hours before their flight if they are traveling within the United States, three hours early if theyre flying overseas and maybe earlier on Sunday and Monday. Jordan Sessions heeded that advice and got to the airport early Wednesday for a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Oakland, California. But the Portland airport wasn't crowded and the check-in lines were short, so he wound up waiting a bit for his flight. That wasn't the case for Brittany Dandridge, who found lines out the door when she arrived for her flight from Dallas to Oakland. Luckily I was traveling with my dog and they allowed me to skip the line, she said. The Transportation Security Administration said it screened more than 2.6 million passengers Tuesday and it expected another 2.7 million passengers to come through airport security on Wednesday. On Sunday, it expects to screen 2.9 million passengers, which would surpass a previous record set on June 30. Lines ebbed and flowed all morning Wednesday at Moynihan Train Hall in New York. Some travelers said they opted to travel by train for convenience or lower prices. Others said they just wanted to avoid any chaos at the airport. Matthew Hudnall and Abby Greenbaum were traveling from Atlanta to New York to Boston to visit family with their 5-year-old daughter. By the time they reach Boston, they will have taken a total of nine trains, they said. I think we thought it would be calmer and less stressful than flying. So, far thats true, Greenbaum said. Amtrak said it was expecting 750,000 passengers between Nov. 19 and Nov. 26. The company said travelers could see some boarding delays this weekend because of high passenger volumes. The holiday will also test the Federal Aviation Administration, which faces shortages of air traffic controllers at key facilities that caused reductions in flights to the New York City area this summer and fall. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said during a news conference Monday that the government prepared for holiday travel by hiring more air traffic controllers, opening new air routes along the East Coast and providing grants to airports for snowplows and deicing equipment. Airlines have also added tens of thousands of employees in the last couple of years, and Southwest says it bought more winter equipment to keep planes moving even during sub-freezing temperatures. AAA predicts that 55.4 million people will travel at least 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home between Wednesday and Sunday, the third-highest forecast ever by the auto club. AAA says most of them 49.1 million -- will drive. Drivers will get a break from last year on gasoline prices. AAA says the nationwide average for gas was down to $3.28 a gallon on Wednesday, compared with $3.63 a year ago. Charging stations not gas prices were on the mind of Guy Maughan as he set out last week in his Tesla on a 13-day Thanksgiving road trip that will take him from his home near Seattle to his brother's home in Los Angeles and then to his parents in Phoenix. Maughan said he and his travel companion a 7-month-old golden doodle named Nala expect to spend only about $150 to charge the car along the 3,000-mile (4,800-kilometer) route. I love driving, I love road trips, and the car takes care of all the heavy lifting, said Maughan, who is a real estate agent. I just put in the destinations and it tells me where we're going to stop. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Air travelers will enjoy lower prices too. Airfares in October were down 13% from last year, according to government figures, and fares around Thanksgiving have been about 14% lower than a year ago, according to the travel site Hopper. Even so, the high cost of rent, food, health care and other expenses were weighing on people's travel plans. Jason McQueary, a 25-year-old social worker and graduate student, said rent and other essentials eat up most of his paycheck and he was grateful for his credit card points, which brought down the cost of his roundtrip flight from Denver to Chicago from $450 to $150. I was just like, 'Man, Im glad I only come home once a year, said McQueary, who was waiting to get picked up Tuesday after arriving to Chicago OHare International Airport to spend Thanksgiving with family in his hometown of Byron, Illinois. ___ Associated Press writer Claire Savage and photographer Erin Hooley in Chicago, Associated Press Video Journalist Terry Chea in Oakland, California, and Associated Press writer Joseph Frederick in New York contributed to this report. HONOLULU Earthquake activity associated with Hawaiis most active volcano is on the uptick, which has forced authorities to shut down parts of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the Kilauea volcano is not erupting but has shown more signs of increased unrest in the form of earthquake spikes in the upper East Rift Zone. "Decisions to temporarily close areas of the park are never easy but are made as a precaution. Kilauea volcano is very restless right now, and safety is our utmost priority. When USGS notifies us of significant changes, we will re-evaluate area closures," Hawaii Volcanoes National Park Superintendent Rhonda Loh said in a statement. OFFICIALS WARN HAWAIIS KILAUEA VOLCANO COULD RESUME ERUPTING AT ANY TIME No unusual activity was noted in other sections of the rift zone, which would indicate a higher likelihood of volcanic activity. According to USGS, "unrest may continue to wax and wane with changes to the input of magma into the area, and eruptive activity could occur in the near future with little or no warning." Some sections of tails have been closed since October to decrease chances that visitors are exposed to rockslides and other side effects of earthquakes. 4 CLASSIC TYPES OF VOLCANOES A year ago, the park closed the summit of Mauna Loa due to the threats associated with increased volcanic activity. Mauna Loa is exhibiting normal activity and was last reported to be in code green, while Kilauea is one step ahead of Mauna Loa and is considered to be under code yellow. Volcanoes considered to be under an orange or red alert indicate a heightened unrest with eruptions that are considered to be imminent or underway. Original article source: Hawaii National Park expands closures surrounding Kilauea volcano For the first time in U.S. history, a general election presidential debate will be hosted at a historically Black college or university. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced Monday that Virginia State University in Petersburg will host the second debate of the 2024 general election cycle Oct. 1. We are honored and grateful to have been chosen as a host for a 2024 Presidential Debate, VSU President Makola M. Abdullah said in a news release. This is a historic moment for our university and for HBCUs nationwide. Additional debates will be hosted at Texas State University a Hispanic-serving institution on Sept. 16 and the University of Utah on Oct. 9, the commission said. A vice presidential debate will be held at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania on Sept. 25. Breaking News!!! We have been selected as one of the 2024 Presidential Debate sites. We are honored to serve as the first HBCU to host a General Election U.S. Presidential Debate. #GreaterHappensHere#VSUDebate24 pic.twitter.com/nFXDi10ley Virginia State University (@VSU_1882) November 20, 2023 In 2024, students at our four debate sites will help bring another set of historic conversations to audiences here and abroad. And their campuses will anchor four unique chances to listen and learn, the commission said in a statement announcing the locations. The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The GOPs presidential primary candidates have faced off in three debates hosted by the Republican National Committee so far this year. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, has not attended any of those debates. A fourth Republican debate is scheduled for Dec. 6 and will be held at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. For more from NBC BLK, sign up for our weekly newsletter. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (DC News Now) Emergency workers freed a person who was pinned inside a car after it and a trash truck hit each other Wednesday morning. Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service (MCFRS) said the head-on collision took place on Darnestown Road (Route 28) at Sugarland Road. Foot of standing rainwater floods road in Montgomery County Pete Piringer, spokesman for MCFRS, posted initially posted about the crash at 8:51 a.m. In a follow-up post, Piringer said noted that a utility pole was hit with part of the pole sheared off. Piringer said there were three patients. None had injuries that were considered life-threatening. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC. Wednesday 22 November saw the opening online of the 17th Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting (Ramstein), in which about 50 countries are taking part. Source: European Pravda Details: The meeting was opened by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who visited Ukraine at the beginning of this week. He stated that both Ukraine and Israel are facing relentless foes who are out to annihilate them. Quote: "And we see that Iran is fueling conflict in both Gaza and Ukraine by arming Hamas and Putin. Irans support for the Kremlin and Hamas harms Ukraine, stability in the Middle East, and the rules-based international order. So as Ukraine faces another winter of war, I urge this group to provide Ukraine with air-defense capabilities to protect its people," Austin said, stressing that the US is fully capable of continuing its strong support for Ukraine even as it stands with Israel in its hour of need. He noted that a few days prior to his visit to Kyiv, Putins forces had started a new barrage of missile attacks on Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine to try to damage Ukraines energy grid. "But I remain more confident than ever that the Ukrainian people will stay resilient in the face of hardship. Thats because they are fighting for their homes, for their families, and for their very future. As we dig deep to support our partner, we must think creatively about how we can continue to meet Ukraines needs. The United States remains committed to doing our part," Austin assured his audience. Background: Earlier, the US Department of Defense denied that the supply of NATO-standard ammunition requested by Ukraine has dropped by 30% since the beginning of Israels war against Hamas. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv on 20 November. He announced a new US$100 million military aid package for Ukraine, which includes artillery projectiles and an additional HIMARS system. Austin stated that the US Defense Department would continue working towards securing additional funding for Kyiv's defence and other needs in the US Congress. Support UP or become our patron! After evaluating dogs from kennels across 3 states, the City of Brunswick Police Department made a decision on its newest team member. >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<< An 11-month-old male Shepard/Malinois mix was chosen to join the force. The new K9, imported from Hungary, now needs a name from outside the galaxy. According to a Facebook post made by the department, it is asking the community to help vote for these potential names taken from Star Wars: Echo Loki Vader Luke Click on the Facebook post below to vote. Youll have to comment on the post with the number of the name you choose. The winning name will be announced in the near future but all votes must be made before Dec. 1, 2023. The department said that the new K9 and his handler will begin extensive training together. [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter] Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live. TAMPA She had vowed to try everything, so Tammy Ferrer tucked a small pouch of her sons ashes into her bra and drove to Old City Hall, prepared to tell the story again. Maybe this time, she thought, someone would do something. It had been seven weeks since an 85-year-old man behind the wheel of a Saturn sedan collided with her sons speeding motorcycle, flinging him into the median. The day after, Ferrer discovered that the same driver was involved in a crash at the same Tampa intersection while making the same maneuver three months earlier. Hed hit a car while crossing multiple lanes of traffic sending three people, including himself, to the hospital. Ever since, Ferrer had poured over state statutes, learning what she could about taking away someones license if they arent fit to drive. Shed searched for clues on the grassy Hillsborough Avenue median where her son, Cody Kurtz, landed that August afternoon. She knocked on doors to identify witnesses. She found footage of the crash from a local business, even though she says police told her all nearby cameras werent working. She called the mayor, a customer at her familys boat shop, seeking to have the case assigned a new detective. And now she was standing before the Tampa City Council in October, fighting back tears with her husband, Frank, by her side. We are here today to raise a red flag as a matter of public safety, said Ferrer, 50. She described the similarities between the two crashes. She told them that the driver, Franklyn Christophers, had an active license, and that she believed his driving ability should be reevaluated. Before her time was over, she held up the small pouch containing a portion of her sons remains, which she carries with her each day. This is what I have left. More than 450 people died in crashes in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties last year, according to state data. Tampa officials have called the citys persistent road safety issues a public health crisis, writing in a recent grant application: Our roads are unsafe for everyone. In car-centric Florida, where more than a fifth of the population is over the age of 65, older drivers were involved in more fatal crashes than any other state in the country in 2021, according to federal data. The Ferrers drove home making sure to avoid Hillsborough Avenue. The straight, wide thoroughfare is consistently described by planners as one of Tampas most severe crash corridors and where yet another memorial, one for their son, now stood. He flew off She didnt want her son to buy a motorcycle. She hated the thought of him weaving through the frenetic streets of Tampa and Hillsborough County, where more motorcyclists were killed in crashes last year than any other county in Florida. But hed saved up. He was working hard for the family business and living at home. When he bought the motorcycle in June, Ferrer left a voicemail with the dealership, pleading with them to reverse the sale. He was a boyish 26, headstrong and goofy with a bright smile that lit up his face. He loved the open water and hoped to one day be a hands-on father, spoiling his children the way he spoiled his nephew with McDonalds Happy Meals and long days fishing off the dock. Her son didnt have a spotless driving record. Earlier this year, he received a ticket from a Tampa red-light camera. Two years prior, hed received another. In 2019, he was involved in a crash and ticketed for following a motorist too closely. That same year, he completed traffic school after receiving a speeding ticket for going 49 mph in a 40 mph zone. On the last Sunday in August as Hurricane Idalia churned in the gulf he decided to take his bike out for a spin. It was going to rain soon, Ferrer cautioned as she peeled potatoes in her pajamas. Take your car instead, she said. I wont be more than two hours, he said, and went to walk out the door. Are you leaving without kissing your mother goodbye? He rolled his eyes, 6-foot-4 and smiling. I love you, baby, she said. I love you, too, he said, planting a kiss on her forehead. Ill be right back. An hour or so later, he was plowing past the motels, dollar stores, auto body shops of Hillsborough Avenue at 65 mph 20 over the posted limit police would later estimate. (In Florida, unlike a handful of other states, speed alone is generally insufficient to base charges of reckless driving. But the risk of death from a crash generally increases with driving speed.) Three lanes move in each direction. Kurtz was in the middle, wearing a helmet. Meanwhile, Christophers was leaving his bungalow, the front gate rusty and the yard strewn with old refrigerators and lawnmowers. He climbed into his 2007 sedan, one of his brake lights secured with tape and a walking cane on the seat. Video footage shows that he drove along 45th Street, pausing at the stop sign. He turned onto Hillsborough as he often did, trying to cross three lanes of traffic to reach a break in the grassy median to make a U-turn and continue his journey west. He saw the motorcycle five blocks away, he told the Tampa Bay Times in an interview outside his home. He thought he had enough room to make a wide righthand turn. But his fender collided with the motorcycle, spraying metal and plastic from the bike across three lanes. Congregants poured out of a nearby church. At least four onlookers called 911. He flew off. He hit the tree, one woman told the dispatcher. We need you guys now. Two times, people have hit me Three months earlier, in May, Christophers was involved a similar crash while pulling onto Hillsborough Avenue. He collided with Yahaira Thomas, a 25-year-old day care worker heading home. Her daughter was strapped into a car seat in the back. Thomas was driving in the far-left lane, she told the Times, three lanes over from Christophers, when he turned into her path. Christophers told the Times that Thomas was on her phone, which she denies. He acted like he didnt see no cars, she said. He tried to cut across all the lanes. Both cars were towed. An ambulance took Thomas and her daughter to St. Josephs Hospital. She went to physical therapy a handful of times for neck pain but said she stopped when she realized shed have to pay out of pocket or petition her insurer to pay. An ambulance took Christophers to the hospital, too. I still have a problem with my back, he said. He received a $163 civil traffic citation for failing to yield the right of way, which he is contesting. The case remains open in Hillsborough court. Not every accident involving death is a crime, said Stephen Romine, a Clearwater-based criminal defense attorney with decades of experience working driving-related cases. A tragedy is not necessarily a crime. When it comes to having a driver reevaluated, the presumption of innocence is important, said Tampa Bay defense attorney Roger Futerman. You cannot take action based solely on a police officer issuing a failure-to-yield ticket, he said. A judge or magistrate can suspend a license or require retesting, he said. The Department of Motor Vehicles can, too, when a driver has accumulated a certain number of points for traffic violations. State law gives police officers discretion to require the reevaluation of a driver and the submission of medical records to an advisory board for review. The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles revoked more than 8,100 licenses last year as a result of the medical review process, according to a spokesperson. Police did not tick the box for reevaluation on Christophers May citation. At the scene in August, they did. One of the responding Tampa police officers can be heard saying, He probably shouldnt be driving, according to bodycam footage reviewed by the Times. Definitely needs to be a reevaluation, the other replied. The reexamination process should be used in extreme circumstances, Futerman said. He has worked with clients who, for example, have had a seizure at the wheel and had their license suspended while they consult with doctors about epilepsy medication. Last month, Hillsborough Assistant State Attorney Christine Brown told Ferrer via email that once police complete their investigation of the crash that killed her son the case would be presented to her offices Traffic Homicide Committee. But after reviewing factors including Christophers medical and driving history and the speed of both drivers, the Tampa Police Department decided against filing criminal charges, so the case was not sent to the committee. The department issued a civil traffic citation for making an improper righthand turn. The case remains open in court. In the last eight years, Christophers has received seven tickets for running red lights in Hillsborough, records show. In all but one case, a judge ordered a temporary suspension of his license after he failed to show up to a hearing or pay the fine on time. I am a good driver, he told the Times. Never in my life will I cross there again, he said, motioning to where his street meets Hillsborough Avenue. People drive too fast. Two times, people have hit me. He provided a phone number for someone he identified as his ex-wife, who he said could provide more details on the crash. When the Times called, the number belonged to his daughter, a nurse. She said she had power of attorney for her father and that Christophers would not talk further. How can I ever stop? At home, Ferrer has covered her kitchen island with pieces of her sons abbreviated life. His favorite apple juice, his favorite peanut butter. A napkin from Chipotle, his favorite takeout. His business card from the boat shop. The customers loved him, Ferrer said. A teddy bear hed given his mother last year. An Etch A Sketch her husband gave her recently, hoping she might find it therapeutic. Sometimes I dream Cody will draw something for me on it, she said. Ill have to dedicate the whole rest of my life to fighting and fighting, she said. Because what if I dont and someone else is killed? Christophers resides 2 miles south of the Ferrers and 200 feet from the crash scene, where flowers are arranged at the base of the tree where Kurtz landed. Messages from loved ones are scrawled on the trunk. After the August crash, Christophers said a doctor told him: Dont drive. Id like to know why, he said. How am I going to get around if I cant drive? Standing outside of his home recently, Christophers appeared shorter than the height of 5 feet, 11 inches recorded on his latest traffic citation. He moved slowly and softly hunched. He reached into the breast pocket of his plaid button-down shirt, retrieving his drivers license and a folded copy of his insurance. If you have time, he said as the reporter turned to leave, please call the police to see if I can drive again. A few weeks later, Ferrer drove to the county courthouse with her husband. Christophers had a hearing for the May, nonfatal crash. She knew that Christophers license was pending revocation. Hed failed to submit a medical report as required when police requested his reevaluation from the August crash, records reviewed by the Times confirmed. Still, she wanted to keep up to date on the outcome of the May crash. Maybe shed get to see Christophers face-to-face. He did not show. The judge ordered his license suspended for failing to appear. With that, Ferrer drove home, making sure to avoid Hillsborough Avenue. Having graced the fashion week runways in Paris and London, as well as the feet of celebrities like Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner and Keke Palmer, its safe to say that Uggs are officially back in style. Although the aesthetic merit of this 2000s fashion staple has been hotly debated, whats not up for debate is the undeniable warmth and comfort of the Ugg. A guest at Copenhagen Fashion Week wears Ugg boots in August 2023. A guest at Copenhagen Fashion Week wears Ugg boots in August 2023. However, its the very same features that endear customers to Uggs classic boot from the 2000s (as well as similar knockoffs from other shoe manufacturers) their flat, flexible soles, looser fit and plush sheepskin lining that also make foot experts like podiatrists and orthopedists cringe. We spoke to several such experts to find out why they dont recommend we wear this style of boot. Foot doctors warn against wearing this style of boot heres why. High heels and other types of overly cramped footwear are well-known culprits of painful foot issues. However, shoes that are too loose can also make wearers susceptible to various issues. Too much motion can lead to overuse syndromes, such as tendonitis, saidDr. Frances J. Lagana, a Massachusetts-based podiatrist and division chief of podiatry at UMass Memorial Health. It can also create shearing injuries resulting in blisters and calluses. The extra space inside the shoe may cause your foot to work harder than it needs to, which may lead to overuse injuries such as sprains and plantar fasciitis. [These boots are] very roomy, so they can cause overuse of the musculature and the tendons of the feet. Essentially, when youre wearing a shoe that isnt secure, youre trying to hold a shoe on with your foot as you walk, Lagana said. It may seem logical to avoid these problems by going down a shoe size. However, according to Lagana, going down a size wont fix the problems caused by an unstable shoe. [These boots] are not mechanically stabilizing. Theyre not secure in the sense that a laced boot or shoe would be, she said. And the more we wear our boots, the worse this issue of roominess can become. Over time, the fleece fibers of this type of shoe can compress down and the fabric can expand, which can cause your foot to slip and slide even more in the shoe, saidDr. Meghan Kelly, a New York-based, board-certified orthopedic surgeon and assistant professor of foot and ankle surgery at Mount Sinai. Theres also a major lack of support. While Ugg has released many different styles over the years, including recent styles with thickerplatform soles, theiconic boot of the mid-2000s sported a thinner, more flexible sole perhaps too flexible. If you can fold a shoe in half, like with ballet flats, its not going to give you enough support, Kelly said. Podiatrists and orthopedists also warn that the lack of arch support in many styles of Uggs and Ugg-type shoes can cause painful foot issues like plantar fasciitis and tendonitis. I wouldnt say [Uggs] are any more dangerous than any other pair of unsupportive shoewear, Kelly said. Youd see similar problems in patients who wear other unsupportive shoes all the time, like flip-flops or any other kind of sandal without arch support. While a simple arch support insert may seem like the obvious solution, unfortunately, this could potentially cause even more issues. Orthotics or shoe inserts can only be as effective as the shoe they are put into, Lagana said. The foot might become more painful with an orthotic in this type of shoe because it will have the ability to move around, which can potentially irritate the foot or make it sore. Karin Teigl is seen wearing Ugg ultra mini beige boots, on Nov. 25, 2022, in Vienna, Austria. Karin Teigl is seen wearing Ugg ultra mini beige boots, on Nov. 25, 2022, in Vienna, Austria. Theyre a breeding ground for fungi and bacteria. Sporting soft, plush fleece lining, Ugg-type boots are worn without socks by many, which can lead to several not-so-comfy skin infections. Preexisting or dormant fungal or viral infections can be exacerbated by warm, moist environments, Lagana explained. Because people do not wear socks with these types of shoes, they perspire right into the material, and that moisture is contained in the fleece fibers. This warm, moist environment can host microbes like fungi and bacteria, which can cause nasty skin and toenail infections. Additionally, these unwanted guests can be nearly impossible to clean out without ruining the shoe. If you think about issues like athletes foot or toenail fungus, youd have to get down into the toe of the shoe in order to properly clean that area, which can be difficult, Kelly said. Not to mention, cleaning products run the risk of ruining the inside lining, which is the major appeal of shoes like Uggs. But there are cases when its fine or even recommended to wear Ugg-type boots. While it may seem like your Uggs are doomed to the back of the closet, it doesnt necessarily mean that you cant wear them ever again. I actually had a couple of patients that used Uggs when they had swelling during post-op because theyre very roomy and soft, Kelly said. This was the only comfortable pair of shoes they could wear. As with all things health-related, the key to being able to wear your Uggs while having happy feet is moderation. If youre wearing them to commute to and from the office in a snowy environment, and you change into shoes with proper support once you get into the office, you should be OK, Kelly said. However, if youre wearing them every day or for long periods of time purely for fashions sake, you might want to reconsider wearing them. And like with any shoe, if the soles on your Uggs become worn down, its a sign that they should be replaced with another shoe. Related... On Wednesday, Channel 9 celebrated PINK DAY to bring awareness to breast cancer. We have been sharing stories of hope and resilience in partnership with the American Cancer Society. Channel 9 reporter Elsa Gillis visited a local high school where students and staff are lifting one another up during the difficult journey of being diagnosed with cancer. My plan was never to tell them that I had cancer because I didnt think that; I just thought it was personal. And I thought they were not going to understand. This is an adult problem, said Carie DHondt, a math teacher at William Amos Hough High School. However, DHondt said she quickly learned, after sharing her breast cancer diagnosis, that she was wrong. When I told them I was leaving, so many of my students cried or asked if they could stay after and share their stories with me because they had been through this with their mom or their grandmother. And other types of cancer, obviously, had affected their family, DHondt explained. DHondt said when she returned to the school after treatment, the support for her and the conversations surrounding cancer did not stop. PINK DAY: Ch. 9, American Cancer Society share breast cancer survivor stories She said two of her students approached her about starting Hough Stands Against Cancer. They graduated in 2021. And I gave them my word that I would grow this club, DHondt said. And grow it, she did. What started with 17 members has now grown to 130. Mackenzie Johnson, the president of the club, said she was inspired to join by her grandmothers fight against breast cancer. We just love creating awareness, helping with fundraising, and helping those who are struggling with cancer, Johnson explained. Its knowing that these kids come to school every day. And they might have someone at home who is battling cancer. And they dont think their friends understand. And they dont think that their teachers care, or they might not think that someone can relate to them, said DHondt. So just having other people at school that they can talk to and that they know have been through it It means everything. ALSO READ: Support group offers solace for women battling breast cancer DHondt said the club is not only to help students. The vice principal of the school is currently facing her own battle with cancer, so the club organized a pink-out game to honor her. The club is also organizing a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. Its just really impactful on how many students struggle with this, know someone that went through this, and how many people have a story to share, which is horrible, but I feel like thats what also gives people faith and the strength that they need to continue to battle if they feel like theyre not alone, Johnson said. DHondt is proud to announce she is now a breast cancer survivor. She said the club has raised around $7,000 since it was founded in 2019. It has organized and participated in a handful of events in and out of the school to support all cancer diagnoses, with more to come. VIDEO: Agency steps up to help woman with cancer experiencing homelessness RIDGWAY, Pa. Despite the harsh conditions, a resourceful hiker who lost his way in the wilderness used a combination of hand sanitizer and a lighter to keep him and his dog warm until they were rescued. The hiker was first reported missing about 7:30 p.m. Saturday after walking his dog near the Laurel Mill Cross-Country Ski and Hiking Trail in Ridgway, Pennsylvania. TOP 10 CAMPING SPOTS FOR A NATURE-FILLED THANKSGIVING A hiker and his dog were reported missing near the Laurel Mill Trail in Elk County, Pennsylvania. They were found safe after spending a very cold night. The search was briefly halted due to the low temperature of 20 degrees. Elkland Search and Rescue, with the assistance of over 75 volunteers and canines from the St. Marys Police Department, searched for a missing individual and his dog over 2,230 miles throughout the night. As night fell and temperatures dropped to around 20 degrees, search tasks were scaled back while heat-seeking drones continued their operation. Additional search and rescue resources were called in the morning to assist. "Being the second day of bear hunting season, hunters were also starting to work their way back into the woods," said John Feldbauer, chief of Elkland Search and Rescue. MISSING HIKER FOUND ALIVE IN TEXAS NATIONAL PARK Soon after, the Elk County authorities said they received a call stating a hunter had located the missing hiker and was assisting him to the command post. After a brief medical evaluation, the hiker was reunited with his family. "The hiker was cold, sore and hungry but otherwise OK," Feldbauer said. "When interviewing the hiker, he told us that after he didn't hear the helicopter or drone any longer, he used hand sanitizer and a lighter to build a small fire to try to keep warm throughout the night." Feldbauer also urged caution for everyone who ventures outdoors. "Everyone should always carry at least a small survival pack when going outdoors, as you never know what could happen to you, even if you do it frequently," he said. WATCH: CALIFORNIA RUNNER ROARS FOR HER LIFE AS MAMA BEAR CHARGES If you are lost, make your shelter close to an opening. That way, if and when a helicopter or drone is in your area, you can get to that opening and you are easier to see from the air. "Make yourself as big as possible," he added. "Take your coat off and wave it in the air in the direction of the aerial unit." Original article source: Hiker lost in Pennsylvania wilderness with dog uses hand sanitizer, lighter to stay warm The Iowa caucuses are less than two months away, and Republican candidates are preparing their final pitches to voters. The race for the nomination has been dominated so far by former President Trump. The field has also recently been winnowed by the withdrawal of former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Another big clash is just around the corner. The fourth debate will happen in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Dec. 6, hosted by NewsNation. The Hill and NewsNation are part of Nexstar Media Group. Best Black Friday Deals Ahead of that, here are The Hills current rankings of the candidates vying for the nomination. 1. Former President Trump Trump is the runaway favorite, and there may be no catching him. The former presidents hold on the GOP seemed to have loosened just a year ago, when he took a large share of the blame for disappointing results in the midterms. Specifically, Trump endorsed a number of candidates who won primaries but lost in the general election. In January, when data and polling site FiveThirtyEight began tracking the GOP nomination battle, Trump was ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by about 10 points nationally. Today, his lead is 47 points. Trump stands at roughly 60 percent support, which suggests that even if the field narrowed to a one-on-one match-up, any rival would have a tough job defeating him. There are several reasons why Trumps position has strengthened. First, his indictment in four separate criminal cases has catalyzed the GOP base to rally around him even as it has outraged his critics all over again. Top Stories from The Hill Second, DeSantis has sputtered. The central thesis of the Florida governors campaign that MAGA voters are open to an alternative standard-bearer has come to look increasingly questionable. Third, many polls now show Trump with an edge in a general election match-up against President Biden. This has made it far harder for Trumps GOP rivals to get traction with the argument that he is unelectable. Its still theoretically possible that something could happen to blow Trump off course, or that voters allegiances will shift as they follow the race more closely. But its not at all clear given the innumerable controversies Trump has already weathered what exactly could thwart him. 2. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley Haley still trails DeSantis in national polls. But she claims the second-place spot here because she is plainly on the rise, while DeSantis is treading water. Strong debate performances have fueled Haleys momentum. Haley is an experienced politician who likes to remind audiences she has never lost an election. On the debate stage, she is fluent and confident. The former governor of South Carolina a state known for bare-knuckle politics isnt afraid to mix it up either. The single most memorable moment of the third debate came when she swatted away businessman Vivek Ramaswamy as just scum for raising her daughters use of TikTok. Haley now has a firm hold on second place in New Hampshire, where DeSantis has sunk to fourth, and even fifth, in some polls. Haley has been gaining ground in Iowa, too. Two polls within the past month have shown her in a tie with DeSantis for second in the Hawkeye State. The only woman in the race, Haley is drawing renewed interest from GOP donors seeking a nominee other than Trump. Haley is a more traditional Republican than Trump, especially on foreign policy. Her rhetoric is more carefully modulated, most notably on abortion. And she is, pretty clearly, the most electable of all the candidates in a general election. Its a very open question whether that can take her all the way to the nomination. But Haley looks to be at least en route to becoming the main alternative to Trump. 3. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis DeSantiss campaign cant be dismissed yet, but it clearly hasnt lived up to expectations. Tuesday brought new blasts of good and bad news. The Florida governor won the endorsement of prominent Iowa conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats, adding to the backing he is already receiving from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R). On the other hand, NBC News reported more infighting among his allies, including a meeting last week where two key figures nearly came to blows. DeSantiss campaign has been an oddity all around. Speculation abounded for months that he would enter the race then he did so with a glitch-ridden Twitter Spaces event. There have been pointless and strange furors, as when his campaign shared a video that included homoerotic images and aimed to hit Trump for being allegedly soft on LGBTQ issues. In July, DeSantis had to lay off roughly one-third of his staff, despite entering the race with a massive war chest. The Florida governors backers maintain that his ground operation in Iowa can still pay dividends. He is clearly stronger there than in New Hampshire, and the endorsements will help. The media always likes a new storyline, and its always possible DeSantis can somehow pull things together in the final stretch. But up to now, its been a very underwhelming campaign. 4. Vivek Ramaswamy Make no mistake, the battle for the GOP nomination is a three-horse race, at most. Ramaswamys Trump enthusiasm makes him a hair more likely than Chris Christie to win the nomination, but its purely an abstract calculation. In fact, the novelty seems to have worn off the Ramaswamy candidacy. In the FiveThirtyEight averages, hes polling at just 5 percent nationally and in Iowa, and 7 percent in New Hampshire. Ramaswamy, 38, has a fairly fervent online following, but theres no real sign that will translate to the real world where his antics appear to irk more people than they attract. Iowa polls from Selzer & Company generally regarded as the gold standard in the state showed the share of likely GOP caucusgoers who hold an unfavorable view of him almost doubled between August and October. 5. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Christie has, in political parlance, a lane in this primary. The problem is his lane as the fiercest Trump critic isnt likely to lead anywhere. Christies attacks on Trump have earned him plenty of media attention, but very little support in a party where a vast majority of voters 82 percent, according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll holds a favorable impression of the former president. Christie has put all his bets on New Hampshire, which has a long history of maverick behavior and importantly allows unaffiliated voters to request a ballot for either the Republican or Democratic primary on the day. Christie is performing respectably in Granite State polls he drew 14 percent support, good enough for third place, in a CNN survey released last week. But theres nowhere, really, for Christie to go from there. Christie has real skills, which he displays on the debate stage, and which previously earned him two terms as the governor of a blue state. Its just that theres a yawning gap between his position and that of todays GOP. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) Hillsborough County Schools and the University of Tampa are being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education for discrimination. A list of open Title IV Shared Ancestry Investigations lists the two separate investigations, both of which were opened this week. Details surrounding the investigations are not published as part of the list, but the list is for discrimination involving shared ancestry. The investigation into the University of Tampa was opened on Monday, while the investigation into Hillsborough County Schools was opened on Tuesday. The U.S. Department of Education has also opened investigations into Columbia University, Cornell University, Lafayette College, Wellesley College and the University of Pennsylvania within the last week. The investigations into the colleges stem from an alarming increase of antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and other discrimination in schools since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, according to a Thursday news release. News Channel 8 has reached out to both schools and the U.S. Department of Education for more information. The University of Tampa said the investigation stems from an incident in September, before the Israel-Hamas conflict, but couldnt provide other details, citing privacy laws. Yesterday, The University of Tampa was made aware of a Department of Education request for information, a university spokesperson said in a statement. This request stems from an incident that occurred in September, which was addressed by the University. This occurred prior to the recent Israel-Hamas hostilities. The University is fully cooperating with the request for information, but cannot comment further due to student privacy laws. Hillsborough County Schools sent automatic reply due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Its unclear if the investigation into Hillsborough County Schools is related to the Israel-Hamas war. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. A no-show in a St. Louis County courtroom Tuesday left questions about whats next for a Hillsdale worker charged with accidentally running over a FOX 2 photojournalist. St. Louis County Associate Circuit Judge Natalie Warner waited and waited for Earl Longmeyer, but he never showed up. Records show hes the director of public works. Longmeyer, 57, was caught on camera getting into the drivers seat of a Village of Hillsdale Public Works truck and driving away. A trailer that the truck was towing accidentally ran over FOX 2 photojournalist Wade Smith. Smith suffered serious leg injuries and is on his way to recovery. Court records reveal the judge issued an arrest warrant Tuesday afternoon for Longmeyer after failing to appear in court. While Longmeyer did not appear in court Tuesday, the FOX Files found the same public works truck parked outside village hall on the wrong side of the street. It appears the village added a warning label to stay back 20 feet on the trucks tailgate. Its unclear whether Longmeyer was working. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said last month that its something hes never seen before in his years as a prosecutor or as an attorney. Theres no evidence that the intent was to harm, Bell said. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Breaking News The FOX Files went to Hillsdale in August to investigate why the village threatened to tow multiple cars for not having the proper village sticker. Dorothy Moore, the chair of the Board of Trustees, whos also known as the mayor, refused to answer why. Court records allege Moore directed Longmeyer to drive and was aware members of the news media were standing along the passenger side of his vehicle and trailer and proceeded to drive at an excessive speed. Moore is not facing any charges. Longmeyer has been charged with operating a motor vehicle in a careless and imprudent manner involving an accident. FOX 2 reached out to Longmeyer by phone after the arrest warrant was issued, but the number had been disconnected. The FOX Files reached out to village hall for comment but did not hear back. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2. From the G-File on The Dispatch Hey, If youre a conservative of a certain age, its almost impossible you havent heard some version of the joke about the New York Times (or Washington Post) covering an impending extinction-causing asteroid impact: World Ending Tomorrow; Women, Minorities Hardest Hit. Well, heres a BBC story on how the Black Death, aka the Great Pestilence, aka the Great Mortality, hit women of color hardest. Researchers at the Museum of London conducted a study which, in the words of the BBC, found there were significantly higher proportions of people of colour and those of Black African descent in plague burials compared to non-plague burials. I mean, dont get me wrong. This is actually interesting. A lot of folks understandably assume there were no people of African descent in places like Britain until relatively recently. Thats not true. But let me offer just a little bit of skepticism. The study is based on the remains of 145 individuals from a total of three cemeteries. And, according to the researchers, the disproportionate share of black women demonstrates the devastating effects of premodern structural racism. According the BBC article, the Black Death killed 35,000 Londoners, or up to half the population in 1348. Call me crazy, but that suggests there were a lot more than three cemeteries full of plague victims (not counting all the bodies that were burned or thrown in the Thames). In fact, we know there were lots of mass graves because, you know, a staggering number of people died. According to the write-up in the Guardian, of the 145 bodies examined at those three cemeteries, about a third (49) died from the plague. And of those, nine victims were of African ancestry. From this we are to conclude that London suffered from premodern structural racism? Eh, maybe. Or maybe the bodies disposed of in these cemeteries died near these cemeteries and thats why they were put there. Or maybe when the plague afflicted a certain part of the city where African-descended Londoners were overrepresented, these cemeteries were the ones that were open for business. Its also possible that black Londoners were of sufficiently low statusthey were disproportionately domestic servantsthat these mass graves were designated as the place for low-status victims. I mean outbreaks of the plague dont occur uniformly across cities. In Ancient Rome, you might get an outbreak of some terrible pestilence in the Greek quarter. But going by that information alone doesnt mean we can conclude that an Ancient Roman gravesite is proof of structural anti-Hellenism (which, in fairness, was a thing). If a plague hit New York City, its entirely plausible that, five centuries later, the mass graves near Chinatown would be disproportionately filled with Asian corpses. That wouldnt necessarily mean future researchers could conclude that New York was structurally anti-Asian. The past screws with historians all the time. We know a lot more about the ancient Roman trade in things that were transported in amphora than we know about the trade in other things because clay pots can survive in shipwrecks indefinitely. That doesnt mean that they didnt trade other stuff. Look, Im not trying to be a jerk here. Im sure poor women of African descent in medieval London didnt have it great compared to rich aristocrats or even poor white women, who also died in droves from the plague. But its also worth noting that medieval Europe sucked in virtually every material way compared to today (well leave the spiritual comparisons for another time). Were women and minorities hardest hit? In some ways, sure, absolutely. In other ways, probably not. In other words, racism could explain why they were disproportionately buried in these places while not being proof that they disproportionately died from the plague or that disproportionately dying from the plague is by itself evidence of structural racism. Heck, Im sure there are some plague-truthers whod be eager to point out that there are shockingly few Jewish plague victims in mid-14th century mass graves. Of course, that wouldnt be because the Jews were tipped off about the plague or, as RFK Jr. might speculate, because the plague was designed to spare Ashkenazi Jews. It would be because the entire Jewish population had been expelled in 1290. [The plague] is portrayed as being an indiscriminate killer, but we actually know it wasnt, Rebecca Redfern, one of the authors of the study, told the Guardian. Because, as the Guardian notes, Previous studies have shown those who experienced poor nutrition in the famine that preceded the plague had a higher risk of dying from the disease. Well, yeah. That makes sense. But I still think its fine to say that the plague was an indiscriminate killer in that it didnt discriminate about who it infected. It was just more effective in killing the weak and undernourished because thats how most plagues roll. Onyeka Nubia, a scholar of black history in Britain, cautioned that historical evidence be treated objectively, in the words of the Guardian. He says, We have a responsibility to make sure that this information does not get divided between left and right in a culture war. Look, Im pretty down on needless culture war brouhahas. But this strikes me as working the refs. The very idea of imposing concepts like structural racism to 1300s London is itself a salvo in the culture war. After all, the actual concept of structural racism depends on ideas about race that literally hadnt been invented yet. I mean, if this is true, what happens to all of the work the left has invested in the idea that the Enlightenment invented racism? The retroactive imposition of modern concepts on the past is always fraught. For instance, some academics now insist that you cant even tell the difference between male and female skeletons not because thats what science saysscientists definitely can tell the differencebut because thats what the new fads about sex differences and transgenderism demand. Still, I have no doubt that anti-black bigotry existed in some form in pre-modern London. But to think that structural racism is a concept that significantly illuminates 14th century England is bananas. And the relentless search for racism as some kind of Rosetta stone for the pastand the presenthas reached the point of diminishing returns. Ba-na-nah. Speaking of bananas, have you ever heard that its bad luck to bring a banana on a boat? Well, strap in. Ive had a mild interest in nautical superstition ever since I was a kid. Its probably because my name is Jonah. At summer camp, I met a kid who grew up around boats and he couldnt believe that my parents would name me Jonah, given that the name was synonymous with bad luck. Heres the pithy summary from Wikipedia: A Jonah is a long-established expression among sailors, meaning a person (either a sailor or a passenger) who is bad luck, which is based on the Biblical prophet Jonah. Clergymen are considered bad luck, as they are all of Jonahs ilk. Redheads and women are also to be avoided as passengers. So good luck to any ginger priestsor priestesses!named Jonah who want to go on a cruise. Anyway, the first time I was told that bananas were bad luck, I went on a deep dive into structural anti-bananaism. It turns out that its what social scientists would call an overdetermined phenomenai.e., there are multiple sufficient explanations. Herewith some of them: Bananas, like hope, float. When a cargo ship carrying bananas and a bunch of other stuff sank, only the bananas would float to the surface. So the poor banana got the blame. Banana peels are slipperythey cause accidents and accidents are dangerous on boats. Nuff said. Bananas scare away fish. Okay, they dont actually scare away fish, at least to my knowledge. But because ships carrying bananas had to go very fast to get them to port before they spoiled, sailors trolling for fish were often going too fast to catch any fish. They blamed the bananas. The Bermuda triangle or something. The trade route from the New World to Europe took ships through rough seas. Sailors often blamed the cargo for mishaps. Bananas are the scythe of Chronos. Bananas emit ethylene gas as they ripen. The problem is that ethylene gas causes other fruits and vegetables to ripen very quickly (which is why if you want to get unripe fruit to ripen, put it in a bowl with a banana or two). Poorly ventilated cargo holds full of a wide variety of produce would arrive in port with the perfectly ripe, but incandescently evil, bananas sitting amid giant pools of rotted goo. Hence the bananas must be bad luck. Bananas, somewhat like rock n roll, cause spontaneous combustion. The same process of ethylene-induced hyper-ripening produces a byproduct: alcohol. Every now and then a stray spark would ignite the alcohol and the whole ship would burst into a banana-fueled inferno. Finally, bananas are the underground railroad for Satans minions. Because venomous spiders and snakes like to live in bananas, sailors carrying them would disproportionately get bitten and die or generally have a very unpleasant time at sea. Again, they blamed the bananas. Banana bias. Now, why do I bring this up? Several reasons. I think its interesting. Because its my frickn newsletter, and Ill talk about bananas if I want to. (Dont try to appeal my banana musing.) But the most relevant reason is that I think this is a useful illustration of my earlier point about how the past can screw with us. We look backward a bit like the drunk who looks for his car keys under the traffic light because thats where the light is good. We draw conclusions from the evidence the past deigns to bequeath us. Humans have the faculty of reason, but reasoning alone can steer us in all sorts of weird directions. In philosophy, this is called availability error and in statistics and psychology availability bias. Its closely related to recency biaswe make decisions based on the stuff we remember, not the often really important stuff we forgot. This is true for individual people and whole societies, which is why some people in every era are convinced things have never been worse. Its also closely related to, well, just bias. There are many kinds of biastalk about overdetermined phenomena!but heres one way to think of it. When everyone is getting attention and praise because theyre talking about structural racism, climate change, economic inequality, Donald Trump, cultural Marxism, whatever, theres a very strong incentive to shoehorn whatever youre working on into that stuff, especially when you yourself are caught up in the hysteria. The other day I discovered a prominent doctor in San Francisco, Rupa Marya, who literally argues that colonialism causes capitalism and racism. Wait, let me finish. Thats a highly debatable proposition, but hardly a novel or interesting claim these days. She goes on. Capitalism and racism in turn birth everything from white supremacy andI defecate you negatoryhuman supremacy, femicide, child abuse, and then ultimately wait for it inflammation. I dont mean inflammation of outrage at the lack of social justice or something. I mean like chronic inflammation of, like, internal organs and stuff. Medical inflammation. And therefore #FreePalestine Okay, that was a pretty gratuitous tangent, I just thought it was funny enough to include. But it does get to my larger point. Humans are pattern-recognizing creatures. But pattern recognition alone does not a reasonable creature make. Those sailors were definitely onto something when they recognized the banana curve of death. But that doesnt mean that bananas are cursed. Some archeologists found an interesting pattern in a snippet of mass death in 14th century London, but theyI believebrought other biases into it to make sense of the pattern. Again, maybe not. But Ill need more data before I come anywhere close to buying the idea that Edward IIIs England was rife with structural racism in significant ways. And only someonea medical doctor no less!who has a lot of psychological and ideological baggage outside of their expertise can look at the more than 130 million Americans who suffer from chronic inflammation and declare, Aha! It must be the colonialism! (I mean a lot of rich, white, beneficiaries of capitalism suffer from chronic inflammation. If the perpetrators and the victims share the same ailment, maybe the theory is off?). On Friday, I wrote about antisemitism and the tendency of some people to look for things they dont like, spot some Jews on the scene (or infer from their absence), and reason backward that the Jews were responsible for the bad thing. This too, is an example of letting your biases find the patterns you want in the noise of the pastor the present. And its all bananas. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everybody. 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. Many places in former First Lady Rosalynn Carters hometown of Plains, and the sister city of Americus, are paying tribute to her. Along West Lamar Street in the heart of downtown Americus, a castle has stood for 131 years. For the last 20 of those years, Mandy Wolters and family have stayed there every Thanksgiving. [SPECIAL SECTION: Remembering Rosalynn Carter] We come here for our family history, and the history of the town here, Wolters told Channel 2s Berndt Petersen. The Windsor Hotel is part of it all, built in 1892. Some have called it a Victorian masterpiece. Not only is it famous for its architecture, but its also famous for some of its guests, like Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. RELATED STORIES: They spent the night at the hotel in 2002 when the Carter Presidential Suite was named in his honor. They were frequent guests for years. The Rosalynn Carter Tea Parlor honors the former first lady. The Wolters family hails from that part of Georgia. Mandy Wolter told Petersen that her granny went to school with Jimmy Carter, and she met Rosalynn many, many times. She was so sweet and so caring and so loving. And she was concerned for people, Wolters said. On Wednesday, the Carter family released a statement about Rosalynns passing, saying: Rosalynn Carters deep compassion for people everywhere and her untiring strength on their behalf touched lives around the world. We have heard from thousands of you since her passing. Thank you all for joining us in celebrating what a treasure she was, not only to us, but to all humanity. RELATED NEWS: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper will not pardon any turkeys this year, skipping the annual Thanksgiving ceremony due to concerns about avian flu. For years, Cooper has pardoned two turkeys before Thanksgiving. Last year, Cooper pardoned two lucky birds named Biscuit and Tater at the Executive Mansion. Meanwhile, over at the White House, President Joe Biden last year pardoned Chocolate and Chip, two North Carolina-raised turkeys, who were set to live out the rest of their lives at N.C. States Talley Turkey Education Unit. Turkeys are big business in North Carolina, one of the largest turkey-producing states nationally, according to the National Turkey Federation. For the past year, 2022 National Turkeys Chocolate and Chip have been gobbling up some fun here at NC State. After receiving a Thanksgiving pardon, they have made themselves quite at home in our Talley Turkey Education Unit. Read more about them: https://t.co/xNh8vVGVMW pic.twitter.com/4ozvV85oaH NC State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (@NCStateCALS) November 22, 2023 This year, the ceremony is being canceled due to concerns with the spread of avian flu, according to a Cooper spokesperson. We love the turkey pardon and celebrating Thanksgiving, but this year the N.C. Poultry Federation relayed concerns about transferring turkeys given the safety protocols farms currently have to prevent the spread of the avian flu, Cooper spokesman Jordan Monaghan said in a statement shared with The News & Observer. WUNC first reported the canceled ceremony. We appreciate the contributions these businesses make to our economy and families across the country and hope to bring this event back in the future. The poultry industry practices biosecurity guidelines year-round, and especially during times of avian influenza outbreaks, said Bob Ford, executive director of the Poultry Federation, in an email to The N&O. Outbreaks, he said, are more prevalent during the migratory season going on now in North Carolina for wild waterfowl like ducks and geese. North Carolina is on a migration route known as the Eastern Atlantic flyway. Recent outbreaks have spread in the upper Midwest and the Dakotas and cases have been reported in Canada and even in Mexico, he said. But we still maintain a high state of alert. We were sorry that we had to turn down the Governors invitation to do the official North Carolina state turkey pardon this year. Hopefully, we will be able to plan one for next year, Ford said. This annual pardoning ceremony in North Carolina has often been accompanied by smiles, dad jokes by Cooper and snazzy turkey names. In 2018s pardoning festivities, Cooper said First Lady Kristin Cooper had asked him this year if he had any good turkey jokes. I said, nah, Ill just wing it. Despite North Carolina canceling the ceremony, the White House proceeded with its celebration, with Biden pardoning Minnesota turkeys named Liberty and Bell during the annual tradition that this year coincided with Bidens 81st birthday. North Carolina also partakes in another holiday tradition at the White House, often providing Christmas trees. This year, the state provided an 18-foot Fraser fir tree from Cline Church Nursery in Fleetwood. Instead of the annual pardoning, Cooper is packing locally sourced meals for people in need at the nonprofit Equal Plates Project in Asheville on Wednesday afternoon, Monaghan said. Hole in ozone is larger than ever and only getting bigger and scientists dont know why There is much less ozone at the centre of the ozone hole compared to nearly two decades ago, according to new study which suggests some yet-unknown chemicals may be damaging the Earths protective layer. The ozone layer blankets the planet and protects the Earth from the Suns harmful ultraviolet radiation known to cause skin cancer. When a hole in this protective layer was first discovered in 1985, it was quickly attributed to the presence of human-made chemicals in the atmosphere called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) widely used as refrigerants, propellants and aerosol applications and solvents. The 1987 Montreal Protocol put heavy regulations across the globe on the production and consumption of CFCs, following which research groups began to notice the ozone layer slowly recovering. But a new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, has found that the ozone hole above the Antarctic has been growing in size over the last few years. Most major communications about the ozone layer over the last few years have given the public the impression that the ozone issue has been solved, Hannah Kessenich, from the University of Otago in New Zealand said. While the Montreal Protocol has vastly improved our situation with CFCs destroying ozone, the hole has been amongst the largest on record over the past three years, and in two of the five years prior to that, the researcher explained. The new study found that the ozone hole as of 2023 has surpassed the size of the three years prior. Late last month it was found to be over 26 million km2 nearly twice the area of Antarctica. This means that the hole is not only larger in area, but also deeper throughout most of spring, researchers said. However, scientists are not entirely sure what chemicals other than CFCs are damaging the ozone layer. A previous study, published earlier this year, indicates some refrigerant chemicals other than CFCs may also be damaging the ozone layer. The new research found that the recent drop in ozone is connected to changes in the air circulation patterns above Antarctica. This reveals the recent, large ozone holes may not be caused just by CFCs, Ms Kessenich said. Researchers caution that understanding the causes behind this change is important since the ozone layer over the Antarctic plays a major role in the Southern Hemispheres climate. Since ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation, a hole in the ozone layer not only causes extreme UV levels reaching the Earth, but can also drastically impact heat distribution in the Southern Hemisphere, they explain. This could in turn affect people locally by altering wind patterns and surface climate, the study warned. Today is set to be the most-congested travel day for drivers in Washington and nationwide, according to WSDOT and AAA. The states busiest highway will be living up to its name, as I-5 is expected to see the most congestion out of any highway statewide. On northbound I-5 from Lacey to Tacoma, congestion is expected from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. On southbound I-5 from Tacoma to Lacey, congestion is expected from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. For drivers up north, northbound I-5 from Bellingham to the Canadian border is expected to see congestion from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. On southbound I-5 from the Canadian border to Bellingham, congestion is expected from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. (Saturday and Sunday will see congestion from 9 a.m. into the late afternoon.) On eastbound I-90 from North Bend to Cle Elum, congestion is expected from 11 am. to 6 p.m. On westbound I-90 from Cle Elum to North Bend, congestion is expected from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. (Saturday and Sunday will see congestion from around 11 a.m. up into the late afternoon.) WSDOTs data is based on previous Thanksgiving travel periods. Lastly, if youre going to be driving, its essential to check off the following things before you hit the road: Check your gas, fluids, and tires Pack an emergency kit, including water, food, blankets, warm clothes, etc. A good rule to determine what you need in your emergency kit: if your car broke down, what would you need? Click here for WSDOTs full list of Thanksgiving travel times, including which Home prices in South Florida continue to climb higher despite another drop in transactions. Miami-Dade County has a median sales price of $618,217 for houses, up from $575,000 a year ago, according to the Miami Association of Realtors home sales report released on Tuesday. The monthly report compared housing activity between October 2023 and October 2022. Condo prices followed suit, rising to $405,000 from $388,531. Broward saw the same trend, with prices at $575,000 for single-family homes, up from $540,000 and at $272,750 for condos, an increase from $262,000. But annual sales keep falling, a trend seen since the start of this year. Miami-Dade recorded 1,971 sales, down from 2,067 a year ago. Broward recorded 2,135 deals, a fall from 2,222. When theres limited supply, prices go up, said Jason Damm, real estate expert and assistant professor of professional practice in finance at the University of Miami. The supply is very low, not just in Miami, but across the U.S. People dont want to sell, because it means getting out of a very low interest rate and moving to another place that would mean taking out a loan with a high interest rate. Many first-time buyers blame the steady rise in prices on their inability to afford a home. Experts have told the Miami Herald that national and local trends are creating a challenging market for many buyers. Freddie Mac has a 7.44% fixed-rate for 30-year mortgages, up from 6.61% a year ago and the biggest peak in two decades. These rates, as Damm said, force many would-be sellers to stay in place. Spending more Another challenge? South Florida continues to attract wealthy residents, and corporate expansions are drawing workers with deep pockets and bigger salaries, adding more competition for real estate. As a result, buyers spend more money for the homes they want usually those move-in ready and in the trendiest neighborhoods, pushing prices higher despite a decline in sales. Miami-Dade, in particular, said Christina Pappas, draws workers having to move to Florida for their employers. Pappas overseas the Keyes real estate firm as its president. And given Browards slightly lower prices than Miami-Dade, it draws more of the first-time homebuyer pool. Both counties are seeing a rise in prospective buyers from Argentina and Chile. Miami-Dade saw 42% of all transactions closed in cash; Broward, 41%. Both counties had nearly double the national average of 29% in cash deals. Miami-Dade has a four-month supply of houses and a 6.3-month supply of condos. Broward has 3.4 months of houses and 4.6 months of condos. These are slight increases from January when Broward had about a three month supply of houses and condos and Miami-Dade had four. A balanced market consists of six to nine months of inventory anything less gives sellers the upper hand and anything more swings in the favor of buyers. A look ahead Buyers may expect even more favorable conditions for home shopping by summer by next year, Damm said, with the combination of rising supply and potentially lower interest rates. Some economists believe the Federal Reserve will reduce interest rates leading to lower mortgage rates given the decline of inflation. Although a decrease in interest rates will increase competition, buyers will likely have an easier time home hunting with more residential options on the market. Its not a good time to buy, because of interest rates, Damm said. If Im a buyer now Im going to be purposefully holding off to see where interest rates go and see if they go lower. GRANDVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio (WCMH) Within the same day Grandview Heights police detained a woman as part of an investigation into a local mans death, they also requested a SWAT team from Columbus to help search for a homicide suspect, whom they have since identified. Grandview Heights Chief of Police Ryan Starns told NBC4 that his department had a female person of interest in custody, and was questioning her in connection with the Nov. 17 death of Stephen Albright. However, he did not release her name. Police are now asking for the publics help in locating Jacob Laurence, 33, in connection with the investigation. Laurence was identified as a person of interest in the case from surveillance photos released last week. Jacob Laurence Grandview Heights police said Laurence may be in the Hilltop or Franklinton neighborhoods in Columbus. Laurence has an outstanding warrant for his arrest from a previous burglary investigation. Police said Laurence may have changed his appearance and shaved his head. He is to be considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached. Anyone who knows his location is asked to call 911 Earlier in the day Tuesday, Grandview Heights police found the woman while conducting surveillance on Columbian Avenue. The agency said that around 5 p.m., investigators were serving a search warrant in the 100 block of the same street. This embedded content is not available in your region. Columbus police dispatchers said that around 2 p.m., Grandview police requested a SWAT team to Columbian Avenue to search for a homicide suspect. A Grandview Heights police sergeant at the scene confirmed that this call was connected to the investigation into Albrights death. Grandview Heights police previously said they found 57-year-old Stephen Albright unconscious with severe head injuries at 7:45 p.m. on Nov. 16. He died in a local hospital Friday morning. At the last update, detectives said they did not know how Albright got the injuries. While originally handling the case as a felonious assault investigation, they later transitioned to a death investigation. (Photo courtesy/Grandview Heights Division of Police) (Photo courtesy/Grandview Heights Division of Police) (Photo courtesy/Grandview Heights Division of Police) (Photo courtesy/Grandview Heights Division of Police) Grandview Heights police shared videos and photos captured by security cameras of two people riding bicycles in the area. The pair was spotted there moments before Albright was injured, and witnesses said they also saw people assisting someone off of the ground, who then left on a bicycle. The victims brother, James Albright, said Stephen was a giver and helping others was in his nature. If there ever was a person who would indicate that being peaceful, loving, family-oriented and just a good old soul was appropriate for this world, he was the one, he said. James said the night of the incident, Steve had dropped his daughter off at a class and decided to go for a run as he often does. When Stephens wife alerted him of what happened, James came to Columbus right away. He told NBC4 that sitting by his brothers side in the hospital was one of the hardest things hes had to do. Police said there was no evidence that there was any threat to public safety. However, they asked anyone with information on the incident to call 614-488-7901. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NBC4 WCMH-TV. An unlikely visitor was found inside the mans intestines (American Journal of Gastroenterology) In some situations, people wish they could be a fly on the wall but maybe not an intestinal wall inside a mans digestive system. However, this is where one unfortunate insect found itself. The bizarre discovery came to light when a 63-year-old patient went in for a routine colon screening in Missouri. The colonoscopy seemed to be going to plan until the doctors reached the transverse colon in the large intestine and came across a fully intact fly. Matthew Bechtold, the chief of Gastroenterology at the University of Missouri, told The Independent that he and other doctors prodded the fly and confirmed it was dead. The patient was bewildered by the discovery and had no idea how the insect got into his body. He told the doctors he had only consumed clear liquids before his procedure and, two days before, he had eaten pizza and lettuce but could not recall a fly being on any of the food he ate. He had no symptoms to suggest he had ingested it. The fly was prodded but did not move (American Journal of Gastroenterology) The findings, published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, represented a very rare colonoscopy finding and mystery on how the intact fly found its way into the transverse colon. Mr Bechtold suggested a couple of ways in which the fly may have made its way to its final resting place through consumption or by entering up his rectum yet he and his fellow doctors remain unsure. He said that if the fly had entered through the patients mouth, you would think that upper digestive enzymes and stomach acid would have degraded the fly. However, the fly was intact, making this hypothesis less likely. If from the bottom, an opening must have been created long enough for the fly to fly undetected into the colon and somehow make its way to the middle part of the colon with no light in a very curvy, large intestine. He added: However, this seems unlikely as well. There have been other rare cases in the past where insects have remained intact throughout their journey into the digestive system, the journal revealed. In some incidents, flies and larvae have made their way inside a human and infested the intestines, known as intestinal myiasis. Insects can deposit eggs onto food, which is then consumed by a human and, in rare cases, survive stomach acid and the gastrointestinal environment, according to the National Library of Medicine. In some cases where larvae have been found in the stools of some patients, they have experienced diarrhoea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention does not track cases of intestinal myiasis but does make note of one particular case in 1984 when a one-year-old child was experiencing moving worms in her stool after being fed over-ripe bananas. The doctors at the time did not prescribe any medicine but instead told the parents to cover up their fruit from flies. The moving worms then stopped appearing. EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) The Hospitals of Providence has announced plans to develop a state-of-the-art medical campus on Eastlake, the hospital announced in a news release on Tuesday, Nov. 21. The campus will include an acute care hospital, which will offer emergency services, radiology, cardiology, neurology and orthopedics. A medical office building will house physician clinics for primary care and specialty care. We are committed to fulfilling the health care needs of our community and this investment and development of a medical campus will certainly help to care for our neighbors and families in far East El Paso, said Tasha Hopper, chief executive officer for The Hospitals of Providence East Campus and overseeing the Eastlake project. We are so excited about our plans for the Eastlake medical campus and our planned projects and investments will only further enhance access to health care services in this area, said Nicholas Tejeda, Western Group president for Tenet Healthcare. We could not be more proud to continue our tradition of growing with El Paso and improving access to care. Since 2017, The Hospitals of Providence has been a part of the Horizon City community with the opening of their Horizon City Campus. The expansion and addition of a medical campus will dramatically improve access to care to the surrounding communities including Horizon City, Socorro, Clint, and Fabens, among others, according to the news release. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a breakthrough deal to release 50 women and children who were kidnapped and held in Gaza, a potential landmark deal that will also involve a four-day pause in fighting, the delivery of hundreds of aid trucks, and the release of 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. The fate of some 240 hostages captured in the Hamas terror attack Oct. 7 has been a source of anguish in Israel, with regular demonstrations demanding their release and mounting political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The deal comes after weeks of mounting pressure from the United States and other countries over the fate of civilians in Gaza, where local officials say more than 14,000 people, including 5,000 children, have been killed in Israel's aerial bombardment and ground assault, with more than 1.6 million Palestinians displaced in a mounting humanitarian crisis. After growing reports a deal was close, the breakthrough was announced early Wednesday local time (late Tuesday ET) by Qatar, the Gulf state that hosts Hamas leadership and worked alongside the U.S. and Egypt to broker the agreement. Israels government approved the deal early Wednesday local time. Hamas, which carried out the Oct. 7 attack that Israel says killed some 1,200 people, confirmed the deal in a statement, casting it as a chance to consolidate the will of our victorious resistance. It said that all hostages exchanged by both sides must be under the age of 19, although this detail was not mentioned by any other party. Three Americans could be part of the first group of hostages released: two adults and a 3-year-old girl named Abigail, a senior Biden administration official said. The pause, the start time of which is yet to be announced, is set to last four days, an Israeli official said. Israeli drones responsible for much of the bombardment, and whose buzzing noise is a constant psychological burden on many Palestinians will stop flying over the strip for six hours a day as Hamas consolidates the remaining hostages, the official said. Some captives are being held by other militant groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The deal includes an option to extend the pause in exchange for 10 hostages released per day, the Israeli official said. Meanwhile, more fuel trucks will be allowed to enter Gaza, which Israel had previously resisted on the grounds this can be used by Hamas to launch rockets and power tunnels, along with as many as 300 to 400 daily humanitarian aid trucks, according to a senior U.S. official and a source familiar with the talks in the region. A senior Israeli official who outlined the deal said the government would release 150 Palestinian women and children, none of whom are accused of killing Israelis directly. Netanyahu's office released a list of 300 prisoners eligible for release under the agreement. On the list, 123 are teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17, held on allegations from throwing rocks and contacting banned terrorist groups, to attempted stabbings and planning suicide attacks. There are 33 women, ages 18 to 59, accused of crimes such as nonfatal stabbings and recruiting and transferring money for terror groups. And 144 are 18-year-old males, who appeared to fall outside the original criteria put forward by Israel, meaning it was unclear when they would be released. Israel is holding more than 4,700 Palestinians, including 146 minors, in detention on what it calls "security grounds," according to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. In additional some 1,300 Palestinians are under "administrative detention" which means they are being held without trial and without having committed an offense, on the grounds they plan to break the law in the future B'Tselem says. In addition, the Red Cross is expected to be allowed access to the hostages who remain in Gaza, including to provide them with medicine, said an Israeli official briefed on the proposed deal. Israeli soldiers operate in an undisclosed location in Gaza in an image released on Nov. 21, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces via Reuters) The agreement capped what the Biden administration official described as an "extremely excruciating five-week process" to free the hostages. President Joe Biden was directly involved in the negotiations and received hourly updates on the progress, the administration official said. Among the sticking points, they said, were Israel's requirement that Hamas provide identifying information and "proof of life" for the hostages and Hamas' demand that fuel enter Gaza. Biden said in a statement late Tuesday he welcomed the agreement. First lady Jill Biden "and I have been keeping all those held hostage and their loved ones close to our hearts these many weeks, and I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented," he said. Before the deal was announced, Netanyahu stressed that it would not mean the war with Hamas is over. "We are at war, and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals to eliminate Hamas, to return all our hostages and missing persons and to guarantee that there will be no factor in Gaza that threatens Israel," he said in remarks Tuesday before the Cabinet vote. "There are stages in a war, and there are also stages in the return of the abducted," he added. A man holds his baby as he looks at posters of the men, women and children held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip during a vigil in Jerusalem on Nov. 5, 2023. (Maya Alleruzzo / AP) One remaining hurdle is that Israeli victims of alleged Palestinian attackers held in jails have a right to appeal a deal involving the prisoners release to the Supreme Court within 24 hours. So the deal is not final until that period closes. Only four hostages have been released so far: Nurit Cooper, 79; Yocheved Lifshitz, 85; and two Americans Judith Raanan and her teenage daughter, Natalie. Israeli forces also freed a soldier who had been taken captive, Pvt. Ori Megidish, 19. Last week, two hostages were confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces: Yehudit Weiss, 65, a mother of five captured in the Beeri kibbutz, and soldier Noa Marciano, 19. Their bodies were found near Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, the IDF said. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com The Gaza hostage deal represents a rare moment of humanity in a savage conflict that has inflicted unfathomable violence on both Israeli and Palestinian civilians. For the child and female hostages expected to be released during a pause in the fighting and their families, it represents everything a chance of life seven weeks after a Hamas terror attack on Israeli soil slaughtered 1,200 people. There were growing hopes, for example, on Tuesday night that American Avigail Idan, who turns four on Friday and whose mother and father were murdered in the attacks on October 7, could be among the first released. I am very hopeful, our family is hopeful, its been 45 days since (Avigail) was abducted and taken to Gaza, her great aunt Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali told CNNs Pamela Brown. Its excruciating. For our family, we have spent the last seven weeks seven weeks worrying, wondering, praying, hoping. The hours to come will be agonizing for loved ones waiting for their relatives and even more so for those whose family members are not on the list to be freed in this preliminary arrangement. Much remains uncertain, including when the pause will start, how and when hostages will start to emerge and if the agreement will last. The complex agreement was brokered by Qatar, which served as an intermediary between Hamas and Israel in exhaustive negotiations with the close involvement of the United States, and was endorsed by the Israeli cabinet early Wednesday local time. It will likely require similar attention from all involved to implement in a vicious war zone and it will be at risk of unravelling at any moment. This is because of a vacuum of trust between two bitter enemies and the extreme logistical challenges of extracting hostages from a territory that waited weeks for the arrival of a few aid trucks amid a raging Israeli offensive. The carefully choreographed plan would see the release of at least 50 women and children held in Gaza by Hamas in exchange for a four-day truce in Israels air and ground campaign against the Islamist group, an Israel government statement said. The announcement also held out the potential for the truce to extend beyond the original four-day period, given that an extra day could be added for each 10 additional hostages available for release. Hamas said in a statement that 150 Palestinian prisoners would be released from Israeli jails. Nothing is certain until the hostages start coming out. And the sequencing of the agreement means there will be a constant risk of incidents that could disrupt it. But the weeks of negotiations at least proved that intense diplomatic efforts can accomplish something concrete, even if the agreement is far from the ceasefire that Israels critics are demanding internationally after a conflict that produced harrowing scenes of Israeli kids killed in their beds and Palestinian hospitals under Israeli fire. The deal is the most significant diplomatic breakthrough since the Hamas attacks, and may temporarily ease some of the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose legacy will now be forever tarnished by October 7. The White House will greet the deal as a significant victory and a first success after weeks of painstaking personal engagement by President Joe Biden and top foreign policy and intelligence officials that threatened to go nowhere. Biden held multiple phone calls with Netanyahu and the emir of Qatar. His envoy, Brett McGurk, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were intimately involved in the region. The Israeli leader said Tuesday that the president had been responsible for improving the deal at critical moments. The agreement, even if it fully delivers on its potential, is unlikely to permanently ease Netanyahus tenuous political plight. Hes trapped between the extreme right-wing coalition members he chose as a last resort to cling to power and an Israeli public that blames him for the Hamas attacks. And Biden has already absorbed considerable domestic political damage for his steadfast support for the Israeli response. Heart-rending video of civilian carnage in Gaza has caused some young and Arab American voters in the Democratic base to revolt, furthering weakening Bidens shaky electoral coalition with his reelection race heating up. The impending hostage release deal is also the latest example of Qatars capacity to play on all sides of a treacherous regional power game. Home to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, the oil rich Arab nation also hosts a vast US air base that is critical to American national security a duality that reflects the Emirates emerging role as a Middle Eastern power with wider aspirations. There will be some hope that the agreement, if honored by both sides, could lead to further breakthroughs and improve the prospects for more hostages still captive in Gaza. Their continued incarceration presumably in dark tunnels beneath the war-torn enclave tempered the sense of euphoria about those who are expected to be freed. The first step for the precarious agreement will be gathering the hostages and facilitating their transfer and initiating the pause in fighting and the entry into Gaza of humanitarian aid under the deal. The potential for snags is ever present. As Gershon Baskin, a former Israeli peace activist who once acted as a channel to Hamas, put it on Tuesday: You have to remember Israel is negotiating with people who it intends to kill there is no trust between the parties. The hostage breakthrough and the expected release of a fraction of those captured by Hamas on October 7 raises the question of what happens to those left behind. The answer will be tough for their loved ones to hear. If it took this long to get women and children out, what does it look like for the Israeli soldiers that are being held? said Christopher OLeary, a former US government director of hostage recovery. It could be a very protracted period that they are held, which is why going back on offensive military operations after this tactical pause is going to be required, OLeary told CNN Internationals Richard Quest. Even so, international expectations might subtly shift during the truce, making a resumption of Israels offensive harder than Netanyahu might wish. Longer term, hopes that a broader peace initiative could grow from this small first step risk being undercut by the searing reality of the conflict. Israel believes it is fighting an existential war not just for its national survival but for that of the Jewish people. Hamas fighters in Gaza are fighting against obliteration or embracing martyrdom and while the groups leaders might seek to leverage remaining hostages for thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails, the most likely scenario is a fight to the finish in Gaza after the pause ends. This would inevitably mean new Israel Defense Force advances on Palestinian population centers and more deaths among trapped civilians that will further exacerbate the brittle international situation inside Israel, the US and elsewhere. There is no scenario to end this war without Israel making sure Hamas is no longer in control of their territory. That means killing all their operatives and their leaders, their political and military leaders, Baskin told CNN Max. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com TechCrunch Yesterday in Helsinki, this editor interviewed four of the six general partners at Benchmark, the nearly 30-year-old, Silicon Valley firm thats known for some notable bets (Uber, Dropbox), paying each general partner exactly the same way, and for continuing to raise similar-size funds over its many years rather than balloon in size. Victor Lazarte, a gaming company entrepreneur who joined Benchmark five months ago as its newest GP, admitted that there was no business reason for Benchmark to come other than its an exceptional place for the tech world to convene. Larzarte was equally candid when the conversation turned to soaring valuations in recent years, and I asked about his own gaming company, Wildlife Studios, which raised a Series A round from Benchmark in 2019 at a $1.3 billion valuation and, less than a year later, was assigned a valuation of $3 billion when Vulcan Capital led a subsequent round. We get those depositions done this year and then we can decide on whether or not theres articles, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told POLITICO. | Francis Chung/POLITICO House Republicans are closing in on a make-or-break moment in their drive to impeach Joe Biden, with GOP centrists remaining highly skeptical of the effort even as its leaders look to decide in January on whether to file formal articles against the president. Even with a planned deposition of Hunter Biden in the coming weeks, the party remains in a tense spot, with centrists signaling that the partys investigation hasnt yet met their bar for an impeachment vote and the right flank ratcheting up pressure to move forward. It's all building to a decision on whether to pursue impeachment articles as soon as January. Republicans would likely accuse the president of improperly using his political office to further his familys business dealings though they havent yet found a smoking gun to that effect and some members acknowledge that seems increasingly unlikely. Impeachment advocates are still probing other issues as well, such as the federal investigation that resulted in a failed plea deal for Hunter Biden. We get those depositions done this year and then we can decide on whether or not theres articles, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told POLITICO, predicting that decision would happen early next year. But a familiar obstacle for Republicans stands in their way here, too: their thin majority. Though Republicans can draft and file articles without a locked-in whip count, impeachment backers will need near unanimity to actually recommend booting Biden from office, since it's virtually assured no Democrat would vote to impeach Biden. Ending an impeachment inquiry without a vote or a failed one would be an embarrassing political setback both for hardliners and Speaker Mike Johnson, who conservatives view as their ally on the issue. But centrists remain unconvinced that impeachment is necessary, and whats more, that group has grown increasingly willing to buck leadership after the three-week speaker fight and with 2024 drawing closer. Any kind of an impeachment puts our Biden people in a really tough spot, a GOP lawmaker involved in the investigation, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said in an interview. Impeachment hurts us politically it makes our base feel better. Republicans are aware that the deeper they go into 2024 the larger the shadow of the upcoming election looms, both for Biden and their own vulnerable members. And there's no guarantee any potential political benefits of keeping the conversation in the spotlight into the presidential election will negate the added pressure on Biden-district Republicans. We understand that the further you go toward an election, the more politicized these conversations become. Thats why its all the more important for us to begin to take action sooner rather than later, said Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), a member of the Judiciary Committee. Jordan estimated that he and Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) have a dozen to 15 interviews they still want to finish by the end of the year. At least one of those interviews is likely to spill over into January: Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who purchased Hunter Biden artwork. Jordan, Comer and Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) also briefed Johnson on the status of their Biden investigations last week. And more fights on that front could further drag out the inquiry. Comer has said that he wants to hold individuals who dont comply with the subpoenas in contempt, though he acknowledged that its a decision for the conference. If anyone in Republicans' final batch of interviews fights a subpoena in court, that could tee off a lengthy legal challenge. Not to mention, decisions on impeachment could easily run into a pair of government funding deadlines in mid-January and early February. But conservatives are eager to move the impeachment effort to its next phase, with the Judiciary Committee expected to take the lead on drafting any formal articles. I think it needs to move with alacrity. Ive always felt that we should be able to move faster. But I do anticipate that it comes to Judiciary soon, said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), a member of that panel. Republicans are months into their sweeping investigation into the Biden family. Theyve poked holes in some of Joe Biden's and the White Houses previous statements and found examples of Hunter Biden trading on his family name, including invoking his father to try to bolster his own influence. But theyve struggled to find a direct link that shows Biden took official actions as president or vice president to benefit his familys business deals. But Republicans aren't putting all their bets on the one basket. They've hinted that they could also draw obstruction allegations into the impeachment articles, citing any refusal by the Biden administration to cooperate. Meanwhile, Democrats and the White House are already previewing their rebuttal to that potential charge. They've cited a Trump-era Justice Department opinion that states investigative steps and subpoenas initiated so far arent valid because Republicans never held a formal vote to start the inquiry and are likely to point back to fulfilled records requests and interviews. House Republicans have already spent a year on their expensive and time-consuming so-called investigation and theyve turned up zero evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden. In fact, their own witnesses and the thousands of pages of documents theyve obtained have repeatedly debunked their false allegations, Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement to POLITICO. GOP lawmakers have also pointed to unproven allegations of bribery as a potential focus of impeachment articles, though they are facing doubt from some colleagues that they will be able to find the kind of direct evidence that shows Joe Biden participated in the sort of pay for play scandal that conservatives accuse him of. Oversight Committee Republicans also argued in a memo earlier this year that they didnt need to show direct payments to Joe Biden to prove corruption. The House GOP has also touted two payments from James Biden to Joe Biden one for $200,000 and another for $40,000 as evidence of money laundering and the president benefiting from his familys business deals. The checks from James Biden are earmarked as loan repayments and the White House has said they were a loan, an idea contested by Republicans. Both payments came a month or two after an account that appears to be associated with Joe Biden, based on records reviewed by POLITICO, wired James Biden both $200,000 and $40,000. I dont think were going to have a closed-caption video with some Chinese national handing Joe Biden the bank money, the GOP lawmaker who was granted anonymity said, acknowledging the impeachment case would ride on a mountain of circumstantial evidence. But, they argued, some federal prosecutions had been built on similar bases. Centrists have credited the GOP investigations with uncovering new evidence about Biden family business dealings and raised questions about Biden himself. But theyve also warned leadership that they dont want to move forward on a vote without a smoking gun. Johnson, during a recent meeting with that faction of the conference, indicated that he wasnt yet ready to pull the trigger on impeachment, but that they should keep following the evidence, according to two Republicans in the meeting. Still, that sparked quick pushback from his right flank, who worried that Johnson was trying to quietly pull the plug on impeachment. In a statement late last week that appeared aimed at trying to clear the air, Johnson said the GOP investigators have my full and unwavering support. Now, the appropriate step is to place key witnesses under oath and question them under the penalty of perjury, to fill gaps in the record, Johnson said, adding that Republicans are moving toward an inflection point in this critical investigation. Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have issued a subpoena for a top Justice Department prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden who allegedly tried to shield President Biden from certain questions, inquiries and search warrants related to the investigation, Fox News Digital has learned. According to the subpoena, which Fox News Digital reviewed Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf has been ordered to appear before the committee on Dec. 7 at 10 a.m. ET at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. Wolf first began facing scrutiny earlier this year amid allegations from FBI whistleblower testimony that she limited questions and inquiries about the president and blocked search warrants because she was worried about "optics" during the years-long probe. WATCH: WHITE HOUSE ISSUES STERN DEFENSE OF BIDEN'S STAMINA ON 81ST BIRTHDAY AMID GROWING AGE CONCERNS One whistleblower, Gary Shapley Jr., who was the supervisor of the investigation at the IRS, said that "at every stage" of the Hunter Biden probe, decisions were made that "had the effect of benefiting" the presidents son. Shapley made a number of damning allegations that cast doubt on the legitimacy of the years-long investigation, and he lobbed critical accusations at Wolf. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP According to Shapley, Wolf worked to "limit" questioning related to President Biden and apparent references to Biden as "dad" or "the big guy." TRUMP MEDICAL REPORT RELEASED AS BIDEN FACES CONCERNS OVER AGE, HEALTH Hunter Biden Wolf allegedly said there was "no specific criminality to that line of questioning" relating to President Biden, which Shapley said "upset the FBI." In October 2020, Wolf reviewed an affidavit for a search warrant for Hunter Bidens residence and "agreed that probable cause had been achieved," Shapley testified. However, Shapley said Wolf ultimately would not allow a physical search warrant on the presidents son. Shapley said Wolf determined there was "enough probable cause for the physical search warrant there, but the question was whether the juice was worth the squeeze." WATCH: WHITE HOUSE ISSUES BRUTAL RESPONSE TO BIDEN'S INAPPROPRIATE NICKNAME GIVEN BY ANTI-ISRAEL CRITICS Wolf allegedly said that "optics were a driving factor in the decision on whether to execute a search warrant," Shapley said, adding that Wolf agreed that "a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guesthouse of former Vice President Biden but said there is no way we will get that approved." Wolf also allegedly tipped off Hunter Bidens legal team ahead of a planned search of his storage unit. Fox News Digital has reached out to the Justice Department for comment. Original article source: House GOP subpoenas DOJ prosecutor who allegedly tried to shield Biden during federal probe into son Hunter Hunter Biden leaves a courtroom following an appearance on July 26, 2023, in Wilmington, Del. | Julio Cortez, Associated Press The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena this week to the Delaware assistant U.S. attorney over allegations of obstructing the investigation into Hunter Biden, President Joe Bidens son. Lesley Wolf, who worked under Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, had firsthand knowledge of the Justice Departments criminal inquiry, wrote Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in a letter on Tuesday. She was asked to testify by Dec. 7. Based on the Committees investigation to date, it is clear that you possess specialized and unique information that is unavailable to the Committee through other sources and without which the Committees inquiry would be incomplete, the letter said. Internal Revenue Service agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler in their whistleblower testimony alleged that Wolf attended a substantial majority of meetings held by the prosecution team in relation to Hunter Biden, the Judiciary Committee chairman wrote. Related The letter alleged that Wolf was responsible for many of the decisions to deviate from the standard investigative protocol, including tipping off the defense counsel about a potential search warrant for Hunter Bidens abandoned storage unit. Wolf also restrained investigators from asking Hunter Biden about the big guy or dad, in reference to President Biden, Jordan wrote. As Politico reported, the Justice Department declined to comment on the newly issued subpoena. The House Oversight Committee has also recently ordered the presidents son and brother Hunter Biden and James Biden as well as Rob Walker, a business associate of the Biden family, to testify under oath. Related Earlier this month, Weiss gave testimony to the House Oversight Committee behind closed doors. He maintained his stance about not requesting special counsel status when investigating Biden. Republicans had previously expressed distrust in Weiss appointment to special counsel after Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers alleged that Weiss struggled to bring the charges forward when conducting the investigation under the Trump administration, as the Deseret News previously reported. They also alleged he was denied special counsel status last year. I am, and have been, the decision-maker on this case, Weiss told members of the House committee. At no time was I blocked, or otherwise prevented from pursuing charges or taking the steps necessary in the investigation by other United States Attorneys, the Tax Division or anyone else at the Department of Justice. WASHINGTON The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday subpoenaed a top deputy to the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden as part of the Republican impeachment inquiry into the president. Lesley Wolf, a top prosecutor from the office of the U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, was asked to appear for testimony before the GOP-led committee on Dec. 7 in a subpoena reviewed by NBC News. Weiss, a Trump appointee, was named special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation in August. In a letter accompanying the subpoena, committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said that Wolf was "directly involved in that offices investigation of Hunter Biden" and that the probe "deviated from standard investigative procedures," two IRS whistleblowers testified. Given her role in the Biden investigation, Jordan said in the letter obtained by NBC News, Wolf is "uniquely situated" to advance the panel's impeachment inquiry. Wolf and a spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday night. The interview request comes months after Biden's plea deal with federal prosecutors unraveled when the presiding judge in the case raised concerns about its terms. Weiss, who had requested and was granted special counsel status following the failed plea deal, is overseeing Biden's indictment on gun charges. Weiss took part in a closed-door voluntary interview this month with the Republican-led Judiciary Committee, telling the panel that he was not thwarted from advancing charges against the president's son after IRS whistleblowers publicly testified that Weiss told investigators that he lacked authority to bring charges in the case. Jordan has issued a series of subpoenas tied to the impeachment inquiry, casting a wide net that has included Biden family members and other administration officials. White House counsel Richard Sauber demanded the withdrawal of those subpoenas last week, calling them unjustified and describing the impeachment inquiry as illegitimate. Ali Vitali reported from Washington and Zoe Richards from New York. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Dont expect a GOP heel-turn on the issue of abortion any time soon at least not while Mike Johnson is one of the highest-ranking Republicans in Washington. While the party has suffered repeated defeats on the issue of reproductive rights in the past two years, the right has shown no signs of abandoning its support for sharp restrictions on the availability of abortion procedures in the US. In some cases, many still support a total ban on the practice. That radical belief is shared by only a fraction of the US population 37 per cent, according to a Pew poll last year but one of the most radical opponents of abortion rights in the Republican Party is now the head of its caucus in the lower chamber of Congress. A new deep dive into his political past from CNNs KFile has revealed that Mr Johnson recently referred to the practice as an American holocaust. The comments reported by CNN were made last year on a DC-based radio show. In the same interview, he accused Planned Parenthood, the nations largest provider of reproductive health services, of viewing Black Americans as prey. It is truly an American holocaust, said the speaker. The reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these big abortion (providers), they set up their clinics in inner cities. They regard these people as easy prey. I mean, its true. In other snippets of published audio, the House speaker is heard describing humanity as inherently evil and arguing that the governments base purpose is to restrain man. These comments were made on a radio show in 2010 where Mr Johnson and the host both staunchly advocated for a government that catered largely to a right-wing Christian mindset. He insinuated that nonbelievers were immoral in the same breath. We have to acknowledge collectively that man is inherently evil and needs to be restrained. Thats see, thats the problem with the radical left. They dont acknowledge a God. Mr Johnson was swept into the speakers office after the downfall of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the hands of a rebellion led by Matt Gaetz and a group of Republican House members who were upset with his handling of the budget process as well as other issues with his leadership. His ascent to the highest role in the House came after several other more prominent Republicans tried and failed to secure enough votes from their colleagues for the job. As speaker, Mr Johnsons first major act has been to once again pass a funding measure to avert a shutdown without the support of his partys conservative wing. He will now face a test to retain their trust in the coming months as the GOP caucus debates the budget measures it will send to the Senate. His past comments unearthed by KFile also touched on LGBT+ issues. Specifically, in 2022 he appeared to endorse calls for the Supreme Court to re-examine past court cases, which could include the 2015 decision in Obergefell v Hodges to establish same-sex marriage as a protected right. Mr Johnson went far further in 2005, when he argued in favour of Texass law banning sex between gay men, and in 2009 said that Americans should be allowed to discriminate against gay people. There are laws on the books that prohibit discrimination against people for their immutable characteristics, their race and creed and that kind of thing, he said in the 2009 audio found by CNN. Theres a difference, and the law has recognized a difference, between that and homosexual behavior. As something that you do, not an immutable characteristic of what you are. His comments are, if nothing else, a clear illustration of just how much ground the right has been forced to give in Americas culture wars as the conversation around what rights should or should not be protected by the Constitution evolves. In a statement to CNN, his office was forced to walk back his comments from just last year. A spokesperson told the news network that Mr Johnson now believes cases like Obergefell to be settled law. Late last year, Democratic majorities in the US House and Senate rallied to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, a landmark piece of legislation that enshrines in federal law the requirement for states to recognise same-sex marriages. It also overturned the similarly-named Defense of Marriage Act, which banned the federal government from recognising same-sex marriages. Detectives have launched an appeal to trace a female housekeeper after 350,000 worth of jewellery was stolen from a suitcase in a Knightsbridge hotel. Marinela Manolesu, 28, had been working at the unnamed luxury hotel when the haul was stolen on Sunday Oct 8, police said. She left the UK for Romania a week after the theft, officers believe. The victim had been storing the jewellery in their suitcase at the hotel in central London when the theft occurred. The alarm was raised when the owner checked inside the luggage and saw their valuable collection was missing. Police believe the theft was opportunistic rather than targeted. They are not linking it to any other high-value thefts at this stage. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said detectives were keen to speak to Ms Manolesu to help assist with their enquiries. She had not worked at the hotel for very long. The spokesman added: Our enquiries to date suggest she left the UK and travelled to Romania on Sunday Oct 15. We have contacted authorities in the country. Police Constable Beth Hiles, the investigating officer, said We are keen to hear from anyone who has seen Marinela Manolesu or knows where she is. The victim of this theft has been left devastated by the loss of many valuable personal possessions and we are keen to achieve justice in this case. 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. Thanksgiving gatherings can bring about tense moments, but journalist Amanda Ripley's book "High Conflict" advises readers on transforming disagreement into something productive. When you cultivate good conflict between people who are extremely divided, people want more of it. Theres almost a transcendent feeling that arises even in deep disagreement, Ripley said. (Getty Images) Family gatherings can produce tense moments even in the best of times. And these are not the best of times. Disagreement has become toxic, tribal and venomous over the last several years in America. But one of the preeminent books on the topic of conflict advises us on how to transform disagreement into something positive, rather than always try to avoid it. Amanda Ripleys 2022 book High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, has become a key resource for those trying to work through differences rather than run over their opponents or retreat into contempt. High conflict, Ripley explains, is all-consuming disagreement that gets stuck in anger and frustration and dehumanizes the other. However, when you cultivate good conflict between people who are extremely divided, people want more of it. Theres almost a transcendent feeling that arises even in deep disagreement, Ripley said in an interview. Here are five recommendations drawn from Ripleys writings and interviews, on how to pursue the kind of healthy conflict that can be serious and intense but leads somewhere useful. Why were not talking about trust and how to build it every single hour of every single day in this country I do not know," said Ripley. (Shutterstock / Rawpixel.com) Ask good questions A conflict mediator told Ripley to ask questions about peoples values and interests to move away from talking about political positions or gripes. How did you come to that? Why is this story important to you? How do you feel when you tell it to me? are all examples of this kind of question. Whether you agree or not, these deeper motivations matter far more to the debate than the facts of the conflict (and also happen to be more interesting), Ripley wrote. If any of us want to understand whats underneath someones political rage, we need to follow stories to these moral roots just like mediators. Other sample questions include: Who is your why? How did you come to have your political views? What is oversimplified about this issue? How has this conflict affected your life? What do you think the other side wants? Whats the question nobody is asking? What do you and your supporters need to learn about the other side in order to understand them better? What do you think the other community thinks of you? What do you think of them? What do you want to know about the other community? What do you want them to know about you? If someone says something based on a questionable source of information, Ripley has said she will answer this way: Its funny because I heard the exact opposite. How do you decide who to trust today? She added: Why were not talking about trust and how to build it every single hour of every single day in this country I do not know. "Having someone articulate your most important message proves that youve been understood, which is all most of us want," Ripley said. (Getty Images) Listen skillfully Ripley talks often about a practice called looping, in which she tries to restate in her own words what a person has just said to her, to make sure shes understood them. Its not robotically repeating the words, but distilling it into the most elegant language I can muster, Ripley said. Then I check to see, Is that right? It seems obvious and maybe a bit contrived, but it works like magic, Ripley wrote. I dont always have the self-control to loop. But when I do pull it off, it always helps lowering the heat of the conversation. ... This sounds squishy, but it is a key to the kingdom. Having someone articulate your most important message proves that youve been understood, which is all most of us want. Another element of listening involves empathy. One former gang leader in Chicago told Ripley he would sometimes imagine a person across from him as a young child, to see them the way they once were, and a way they could be again, a sort of innocence. Notice also that anger can be an expression of fear. Rather than admit our fear to others or ourselves, we might feel that to be a weakness and turn to anger if that feels more like strength. Anger can be productive and healthy, Ripley has said. But contempt and disgust dehumanize the people we disagree with. (Getty Images) Distinguish between anger and contempt Anger can be productive and healthy, Ripley has said. But contempt and disgust dehumanize those we disagree with and are a surefire way to enter into high conflict. Anger is OK. ... It is initiatory, it is important as a signal. Its energizing, Ripley said. Contempt is really hard to work with, and the same with disgust. Contempt and disgust can lead us to seek to humiliate the other. All manner of high conflict often is really, at some level, about feelings of humiliation, Ripley said. One thing that Ive learned is to never embarrass your opponents. It just backfires. It may feel good to you, but it just hits at the core of our human need to belong and to matter. Redirect energy to points of common cause If a disagreement seems intractable or to be going in circles, but youre not ready to break it off, you could seek to talk about which values underneath the debate you agree on, or on what problem you both want to solve, and how that could happen. Its ideal if people dont just talk, but actually work together on some kind of common problem. It triggers our instincts for cooperation rather than competition, Ripley said. What problem are they going to solve together that they both care about? That creates a third identity outside of the conflict. And we know its a lot easier to create a new identity than to get rid of an old one. One conflict mediator told Ripley of a family feud over a shared business. The mediator asked the family members to work on crafting a mission statement together. It was the first time they had been in the same room without f-bombs being hurled and someone storming out, the mediator told Ripley. They were so darned proud of that mission statement. Similar exercises could be a way out of high conflict at a family gathering and toward a more productive conversation. Backing up from the conflict can include being mindful of the way our bodies can hijack our emotions and thoughts and regaining control through rhythmic breathing. (Getty Images) Slow down and disengage if necessary Its helpful to slow the conflict in your mind by imagining seeing the conflict from afar, rather than something that requires your immediate action, Ripley said. Backing up from the conflict can include being mindful of the way our bodies can hijack our emotions and thoughts and regaining control through rhythmic breathing. Taking slow, deep breaths is one of the few actions that influence both our somatic nervous system (which we can intentionally control) and our autonomic system (which includes our heartbeat and other actions we cannot consciously access), Ripley wrote in her book. When all else fails, breathing slows down conflict, so you can think again. But family settings often lack one of the key guardrails that can help disagreement be productive: a set of ground rules and rituals to enforce them. So, if things are going nowhere but down, take a break and get some space, Interfaith America founder Eboo Patel said in conversation with Ripley. Sometimes, simple disengagement is the best course of action. Human remains dug up from yard in Los Angeles neighborhood linked to person missing for nearly 6 months Homicide detectives in a Los Angeles neighborhood dug up what are believed to be the human remains of a person who went missing in June, authorities said Tuesday. The remains were excavated from a backyard near Woodley Avenue and Woodley Place in the citys North Hills neighborhood, the Los Angeles Police Department said. "You cant really believe it. Its like the weirdest thing to happen," one resident told FOX11 Los Angeles of the grisly discovery. Footage from the scene shows law enforcement digging through the backyard of the 1-acre property near a pool and pool house. WASHINGTON WOMAN SAYS SHE ESCAPED HOME WHERE SHE WAS HELD CAPTIVE FOR DAYS; POLICE FIND MAN DEAD INSIDE The human remains were dug up from a backyard near Woodley Avenue and Woodley Place in Los Angeles' North Hills neighborhood, police said. The remains are linked to a missing persons case from June, according to police. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP The Los Angeles County Coroners Office is working to identify the human remains. No details about the body or missing person were immediately provided, and police said that the Los Angeles County Coroners Office will identify the remains. Police said one individual was being booked in connection with the alleged murder. Local news outlet KNBC-TV reported, citing police, that the body may be that of a male migrant worker, while a homeowner told local station KTLA that the victim was allegedly killed by a relative. BODY FOUND STUFFED IN SUITCASE FLOATING IN CALIFORNIA LAKE IDENTIFIED AS 23-YEAR-OLD MAN LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton told reporters at the scene that one individual is being booked for murder in connection to the case, without providing details about the suspect. The individual charged was identified as 48-year-old Russell Robinson, according to KABC-TV. He was arrested on suspicion of murder and was being held on $2 million bail. CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "Someone thought they could murder someone and hide the body," Hamilton said. "My message is very clear: the Los Angeles Police Department never gives up on homicide investigations. Ever." Original article source: Human remains dug up from yard in Los Angeles neighborhood linked to person missing for nearly 6 months JAKARTA (Reuters) - More than 200 ethnic Rohingya came ashore in Indonesia's Aceh province late on Tuesday, taking total arrivals of members of the Myanmar Muslim minority to more than 1,000 for the week, a leader of the province's fishing community said. During November to April, when the seas are calmer, many members of the persecuted minority leave Myanmar on rickety boats for Thailand, Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia. Acehnese fishing community chief Miftach Cut Adek told Reuters that the latest arrivals, 216 mostly of them women and children, "weak and lacking nutrition", had arrived near Sabang, off the northern tip of Sumatra island, late on Tuesday. Mitra Salima Suryono, a spokesperson for the U.N. refugee agency in Indonesia, said there did not appear to be any particular reason for the big number of Rohingya arriving. "The reason why they migrated is to find a safer life," she said. Mitra said Aceh villagers had tried to prevent hundreds of Rohingya arriving in the Bireuen area in northeast Sumatra last week although they eventually came ashore on Sunday. For years, Rohingya have left Buddhist-majority Myanmar where they are generally regarded as foreign interlopers from South Asia, denied citizenship and subjected to abuse. Nearly a million Rohingya live in refugee camps in the Bangladeshi border district of Cox's Bazar, most after fleeing a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017. Indonesia's Foreign Ministry has said it "has no obligation nor capacity to accommodate refugees, let alone to provide a permanent solution". Usman Hamid, the director of rights group Amnesty International Indonesia, called for authorities to take in the Rohingya and talk with neighbours, especially Malaysia and Thailand, where Rohingya also often stop. (Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Robert Birsel) This all feels familiar, somehow. A government less than a year away from a general election its likely to lose, and a chancellor pulling rabbits from a hat in a last-ditch effort to please a grumbling audience. And, amid the misdirection, a great big trap for the opposition. This autumn statement perfectly encapsulated the contradictions of our adversarial parliamentary system: set aside the accents, and it would be perfectly easy to close ones eyes and imagine that todays announcement was being made by the last Labour chancellor, Alistair Darling, rather than by Jeremy Hunt. A range of reforms aimed at making life easier for both bosses and employees, extra help for those on benefits, all wrapped up with a sting in the tail: extra sanctions for the workless who can work but choose not to. A National Insurance cut for 27 million voters sorry, I mean workers to kick in at the very start of 2024, the outright abolition of Class 2 National Insurance payments (and cuts in the Class 4 rate), permanent full expensing allowing business to offset full capital costs against tax liability and a warning that those unemployed who dont engage with efforts to return them to work will face the withdrawal of their benefits. There isnt a single item in the long list of changes announced by the chancellor that could not have been included in any Labour budget between 1997 and 2010. This could prove a problem for a Labour party determined to go on the offensive. The rest of us might welcome a degree of political and economic consensus after the hellish chaos of the last few years, but for Sir Keir Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves it makes life difficult. It takes away some of Labours ability to present itself as a clean break with thirteen years of Conservative rule, and it does so while laying some cunningly disguised fiscal traps. Hunts fiscal headroom was brought partly with the assumption that real Government spending will stay roughly flat over the next few years. That is a bold assumption, to say the least. But if you arent going to be in government when it comes unstuck, it might seem like an appealing one to make - lumbering Labour with the extra tax or borrowing. After all, given Hunts apparent largesse, Reeves might find it rather more difficult to convince her own party that her much vaunted fiscal credibility is worth the candle. If the Conservatives can afford to cut taxes, why cant Labour afford to spend? But there can be little doubt that the tax changes announced today are both popular and the absolute maximum that a government in straitened circumstances can afford. A Labour government would be in something of a bind. Should it reverse these tax cuts, and alienate voters, in order to address Labours preferred spending priorities? Or should it leave them in place and make cuts elsewhere? In her response, Reeves chose to rehearse a theme that we will hear increasingly as 2024 progresses: that it is time for a change after 13 years of wasted Tory government. She also had a couple of good lines, taking advantage of a recent report that the Conservatives former favourite ad agency has abandoned the party. The ravens are leaving the Tower when even Saatchi and Saatchi are saying the Conservatives arent working!. The question does anything in Britain work better today than when the Conservatives came into office thirteen years ago?, meanwhile, will resonate with voters and make ministers uneasy. But it doesnt tell us how Labour will actually respond to these tax changes. Broad attacks on the governments competence, however well made, cannot alter the fact that at least some of these changes will be extremely popular, particularly among the business community whose support Labour has made no secret about courting. Does the party even have a policy on National insurance and the levels paid by the self-employed? If Reeves welcomes these changes, she restricts her own room for manoeuvre once shes behind her desk at the Treasury; if she resists them, she risks making workers and businesses suspicious of her and her party. Until recently it was Hunt and Sunak who were thought to be out of wriggle room. It turns out theres still some left; and they have little to lose by exploiting 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. The self-employed are to benefit from a 1p cut to National Insurance that will leave them 350 better off a year on average. The Chancellor said that slashing workers tax burden was part of the Governments plan to reward hard work and boost economic growth. The main rate of Class 4 self-employed National Insurance will fall from 9pc to 8pc a tax cut that will affect an estimated 2.1 million workers. It will mean an annual saving of 117 for basic-rate taxpayers, or 322 for higher-rate taxpayers and 358 for those paying the highest 45p rate of income tax. On top of this, Mr Hunt has also abolished Class 2 National Insurance a flat rate that self-employed workers pay on profits of more than 12,570. The Government estimates that 1.9 million will benefit from the additional move, saving an average 186 per year. The cuts, which Mr Hunt said were made after careful consideration and in recognition of the contribution made by self-employed people to our country, came alongside further cuts to National Insurance for employees. The main rate of National Insurance paid by workers and employers, known as Class 1, will also be cut by two percentage points from January in a measure that will help 27 million workers and save someone on the average salary of 35,000 more than 450 a year. The changes will also provide a significant boost to businesses who also contribute to National Insurance. They have been called an important acknowledgment of a sector that has been in rapid decline since the pandemic. Since the end of 2019, the number of people who work for themselves has dropped by around 700,000, with experts putting the exodus down to the rising tax burden and disruption to businesses caused by Covid. Experts have also blamed the sharp drop in freelancer numbers, which during the previous decade had been on an upwards trajectory, on changes to so-called off-payroll tax rules known as IR35. The rules mean that a worker using an intermediary, such as a limited company, must have their employment status assessed for tax purposes. If they are deemed inside IR35, the worker will be taxed as an employee potentially cutting their take-home pay by 30pc. Kwasi Kwarteng promised to abolish the IR35 regime during his brief stint as Chancellor last year under Liz Truss, but this decision was later reversed. Recommended National Insurance calculator: find out your new take-home pay Read more Its a drop in the ocean Penelope Silver, who owns a Reiki healing business in Cheadle Hume, Greater Manchester, said the cut to national insurance was a drop in the ocean. Ms Silver, 48, a single mother-of-two and the sole breadwinner in her family, said: Im not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, but in reality its not that much. Even if the cuts mean an extra 350, thats not going to go very far, with all the money I have to spend on essentials. Its a fortune buying food every week, with two teenage girls. The school bus alone is 300, so it wouldnt even cancel that out. Penelope Silver, owner of a Reiki healing business, says the benefit hardly covers the cost of paying her two daughters school bus fares As an entrepreneur, Ms Silver said she had tough times when her daughters Tasha, 18, and Charlotte, 16 were younger, but she has since built up a successful businesses through hard work. The rent on her three-bedroom house increases by 5pc annually, while heating bills have also soared. Although she provides the basics for her daughters, they help her out by earning their own money to buy train tickets or clothes, as well as freelancing for her business. I am very mindful that the Government is kind of between a rock and a hard place, she added. But I dont see how they can make this kind of situation better. Self-employed reeling from off-payroll rule Andy Chamberlain of the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE), said the trade body was pleased the Chancellor had recognised the vital contribution of the self-employed sector to the UK economy. However, he said the tax cuts would not undo what he described as the damage the Government had already done. He said: Whilst its a welcome relief to feel there is some support on offer from Government, the self-employed sector is still reeling from gaping gaps in support during the pandemic and the implementation of the off-payroll working rules, which have had a devastating impact on hundreds of thousands. Not all self-employed workers will benefit from the tax cuts. Seb Maley, chief executive of contractor insurance firm Qdos, said: People working via their own limited companies whether freelancers, contractors or consultants pay minimal national insurance, due to how they tend to pay themselves via their businesses [in dividends]. Yet again, the Government has let these workers fall through the cracks when it comes to tax cuts. Dave Chaplin, chief executive of IR35 compliance firm IR35 Shield, said: Jeremy Hunt today claims he focused on growth. If he is so focused on growing the economy, he should have unshackled the UKs flexible self-employed workforce by repealing the unworkable and deeply flawed off-payroll legislation. How to avoid the common pension tax mistake catching 86 per cent of people Recommended How to avoid the common pension tax mistake catching 86 per cent of people Read more 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. My husband, Ricardo, and I were lifelong planners. But when we faced our most difficult challenge, we discovered that under California law Ricardo couldnt plan how or when to end his life. Ricardo began experiencing symptoms of dementia in the early 2000s. Having seen family members with dementia suffer catastrophic declines and given the ways his decline was impacting his capacity to do the things he loved most, Ricardo was determined to end his life before dementia robbed him of his dignity and his autonomy. Californias End of Life Option Act provides legal and peaceful medical aid in dying (MAID) to those who have a terminal diagnosis and are within six months of dying. But people suffering from dementia are barred from accessing MAID: they will lose the capacity to make decisions long before reaching that six-month point. Opinion Ricardo wanted to pursue a legal way to die at home, but because he could not access MAID, we needed to find an alternative. We considered our options, but none seemed viable. Some options could have even led to severe legal consequences. So Ricardo chose to have an assisted death in Switzerland, the only country in the world that offers this choice to non-citizens. The months before his death were spent saying goodbye to family and friends a moving experience for all who participated. Our family traveled to Switzerland, where Ricardo died at the Pegasos clinic on October 1, 2021. After turning a dial that released a lethal medication into an IV in his wrist, he died within moments, surrounded by his closest loved ones and listening to his favorite music. This was the painless and peaceful death he had hoped to have at home. Nearly 75% of people who utilize MAID are suffering from terminal cancer. For these people, California provides the option of a compassionate death. But for those who suffer from dementia, Californias law offers nothing. This effectively creates an underclass of patients who must either scramble for a solution or accept the inevitable decline that will be their fate. The good death that Ricardo had is only available to people who have the financial means and physical stamina to travel to Switzerland. Many who would choose this option cannot do so. For these reasons, I and several others formed A Better Exit, with the goal for California to remedy the inequities in current law so that all people with terminal illnesses have access to MAID. On the morning of his death, Ricardo was interviewed at Pegasos. Here is some of what he said: I firmly believe that this is a right that every human has, to determine when and how to leave this life. Im not committing suicide. I am committing to live my life to its very very end with the same kind of values Ive tried to exercise throughout my life. I hope that there will come a day when dying will be treated like any other human experience, rather than something that has to be avoided at all costs. It cannot be avoided, because we all are destined to die. The issue is how we die, and with what kind of values. Everyone should have the option to die on their own terms and have meaningful goodbyes with friends and family. According to the California Department of Public Health, the number of Californians living with dementia will reach over 2.1 million by 2040. If you are one of them, will you want the right to have the good death that Ricardo had in your own home? Marcia Hofer, Ph.D. is a retired clinical psychologist and a reluctant activist who became the founding president of A Better Exit after the death of her husband. For more information, visit www.abetterexit.org. GRINDAVIK, Iceland Storms now pounding Iceland with strong winds and heavy rains are hampering sensitive volcanic monitoring as Grindavik, a town of 4,000 now directly over a magma dike, nervously waits for what officials say is an imminent volcanic eruption. "IMO has increased surveillance in and around Grindavik and the area around Hagafell," the Icelandic Met Office wrote in its latest advisory. "The effectiveness of this surveillance depends on the high sensitivity of earthquake and real-time GPS measurements, which are highly dependent on weather conditions." Winds blowing to 50 mph with higher gusts are also whipping up waves crashing ashore, mimicking small earthquakes. WHAT HAPPENS BEFORE A VOLCANO ERUPTS? The road to Grindavik is closed by emergency services and police. Access is only possible with special permits. "Ocean waves also create microseisms that overwhelm the low-frequency detection capabilities of seismometers on the Reykjanes Peninsula," continued the IMO. "Given the weather forecast for the next two days, which indicates precipitation and significant wind, it can be expected that both seismic monitoring and real-time GPS observations will be affected." The IMO also fears that fog and hail could shroud visual confirmation of the eruption. Residents of the town fled their homes 12 tense days ago when the IMO put the area under high alert as magma pooled under the town. The magma intrusion has been setting off up to 2,000 earthquakes per day as it presses up the surface of the Earth. Photos and video show torn streets and a twisted landscape. CAN VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS AFFECT THE WEATHER? "There's no certainty about whether we will be able to get back to our home or not," Hans Vera, an evacuated resident told, FOX Weather earlier this month. "It just depends on where the probable eruption is going to happen. If it's coming up in the middle of town, which is a possibility, then there's a great chance that all of Grindavik, all of town, all of the villages is going under." The IMO reported that the frequency of quakes appears to have gone down. As of early afternoon Wednesday, only 50 temblors were recorded, a vast difference from the 1,500 to 1,800 quakes per day in recent weeks. But the weather is causing confusion and officials don't know if activity is actually decreasing. "The intense weather affecting the country has an impact on the sensitivity of the seismic monitoring system to detect the smallest earthquakes, making it difficult to assess whether the seismic activity is decreasing overall," wrote the IMO. HOW TO WATCH FOX WEATHER A satellite view of the coastal town Grindavik, Stora-Skogsfell mountain peak, Blue Lagoon hot springs and Svartsengi Geothermal Power Plant, Geldingadalir volcano and Fagradalsfjall volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula from late October. Authorites told FOX News Correspondent Bryan Llenas that there is still a high chance of an eruption, but that chance decreases as time goes on. "Iceland is incredibly concerned because the magma is so close to the surface that they think at most we will get a 30-minute warning before an eruption takes place," Llenas told FOX Weather Tuesday. Some residents have had police escorts into their homes for 10 to 15 minute visits to collect anything precious or essential. But, not all residents were given the go-ahead. "I still did not get to go and pick up our personal stuff while some went twice already," wrote a frustrated homeowner on the Department of Civil Protection and Emergency Management social media page. "I registered at island.is and still did not receive any response. When I will be finally allowed to go? Waiting for 12 days and counting." WHAT WAS THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN US HISTORY? GRINDAVIK, ICELAND - NOVEMBER 14: Police direct traffic out of Grindavik on November 14, 2023. For the second day residents were allowed in to quickly collect personal belongings. (Photo by Micah Garen/Getty Images) In a press conference Tuesday, the Icelandic Civil Defense said it called in experts to explore the possibility of pumping seawater on any lava that may emerge, to halt a flow. The director pointed to a sudden 1973 eruption from a volcano Iceland thought was dormant. Limited monitoring capabilities misplaced the actual eruption site, according to VisitIceland.com. A mile long fissure opened up spewing lava and ash which consumed 400 buildings. The lava flow added almost a square mile to the town and fishing village. The town got innovative when the molten rock threatened the seaport. "They established an extensive network of pipes and pumps to spray seawater onto the lava, slowing its advance and redirecting its flow," states VisitIceland.com. "This remarkable endeavor, involving 6.2 million tons of seawater, successfully saved the harbor." VOLCANIC GAS FORCES RENEWED EVACUATIONS IN GRINDAVIK AMID ONGOING FEARS OF ERUPTION IN ICELAND HEIMAEY, ICELAND - Volcano eruption on Heimaey Island in Iceland on 23 January 1973. Firefighters work to control the lava flow by cooling it down with water so it does not flow into the harbor. ICELAND RUSHES TO BUILD DIKE AIMED AT PROTECTING POWER PLANT FROM VOLCANIC ERUPTION Meantime in the present day, the government is building two walls, 3-miles long and 25-feet high to divert the magma away from the neighborhood and a geothermal energy plant serving over 30,000 families. "They continue to monitor that ten-mile long tunnel of magma. At this point, they think the most likely eruption point is 2 to 6 miles north of Grindavik. And at that point, it depends on which way the lava will flow," said Llenas. "They hope to have enough time to put up barriers to divert it and try to save the town in a worst-case scenario." The rough weather will taper off Thursday into Friday. Original article source: Iceland's volcano monitoring now hampered by ongoing severe weather, officials say The ubiquity of smartphones with video recording capabilities means that at any time, most people can start filming within just a few seconds of seeing something worth recording. While taking videos may be prohibited in certain spaces, filming the police in public is legal in both Missouri and Kansas, as well as in the rest of the country. The American Civil Liberties Union, a national nonprofit civil rights group, says that the ability to photograph and record law enforcement officers is protected by the U.S. Constitution. Taking photographs and video of things that are plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right and that includes police and other government officials carrying out their duties, the organization wrote on its website. What does this mean in practice in Missouri and Kansas? Local experts explained what types of filming are fair game and which could get you in trouble. Is it legal to record police in Missouri and Kansas? It is legal to record the police in Missouri, Kansas and everywhere else in the country, as long as you are in public and are not obstructing law enforcement activity. Just last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which includes Kansas, held that there is a First Amendment right to film the police performing their duties in public. The circuit court judges ruled that this right falls squarely within the First Amendments core purposes to protect free and robust discussion of public affairs, hold government officials accountable, and check abuse of power. St. Louis attorney Stephen Schultz notes that the same is true in Missouri. However, your constitutional right to film the police does not allow you to break other laws, like trespassing on private property. In private places, like a home or apartment, the property owner can set the rules including by telling you to stop recording. When does recording the police break the law? In Kansas City, residents are only prohibited from witnessing or documenting city officials, including police, firefighters, EMTs and city code inspectors, if doing so substantially and physically hinders, obstructs, molests, resists or otherwise interferes with the official duties being performed. This section of the ordinance was created after Kansas City Police Department officers arrested resident Roderick Reed for stopping his car in the road to film them forcibly arresting a Black transgender woman in 2019. Reed was later pardoned by Mayor Quinton Lucas, and City Council voted 12-1 to enshrine the right to document police activity in the citys code in June of 2020. What should I do if I am told to stop filming the police? Know your rights: You are allowed to capture images, including video, of anything happening in a public space. While some states restrict audio recording, both Kansas and Missouri are single-party consent states, meaning that you are allowed to record your interactions with law enforcement without getting their permission first. Remain calm: The ACLU recommends not physically resisting a law enforcement officer. However, if they ask for your recording device, you do not need to hand it over. Police cannot take your device or look through your images or videos without a warrant. They are also not allowed to delete files off your device, as this can be considered evidence tampering. Ask if you can leave: Law enforcement cannot detain you without reasonable suspicion of a crime and simply taking photos or videos doesnt count as reasonable suspicion. An easy way to tell whether you are under arrest is to ask whether you are free to go. If you are, you can choose to leave the scene. Document everything: If you believe your rights have been violated, write down the names and badge numbers of the officers involved. Get the contact information of any witnesses who can verify what happened. And if someone else has a camera or recording device, see whether they can get photos or a video of your device being taken away. The Stars Joseph Hernandez contributed. Do you have more questions about police accountability in Missouri or Kansas? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com. INDIANAPOLIS Thus far this year, Indianapolis Metro Police have recorded 16 officer-involved shooting incidents taking nine lives. What goes unreported are the number of times when IMPD, by U.S. Supreme Court guidance, would be justified in responding with lethal force and instead effected an arrest without firing a shot. Weve seen many incidents throughout the year where officers could potentially be justified in using lethal force and make the decision not to, said IMPD Lt. Shane Foley. There are a lot of things officers are considering. What is the person wanted for? What level of force is he presenting? Does the person have access to any firearms or any other weapons? The number of officers that are on the scene? Threat to the public? Were always considering what threat that any of these incidents could face not only to our officers but also to members of the public. Hours after IMPD was involved in its most recent fatal shooting Friday night, officers responded to a report of a man with a gun outside of a bar at 75th Street and Shadeland Avenue. A 911 caller said Antonio Berry threatened a bartender and went to his pickup truck to retrieve a firearm. Detectives, already in the vicinity investigating the thefts of guns from cars, responded and saw Berry waving his gun in the air. When officers and an Indiana State trooper maneuvered their vehicles to pen Berry in, he attempted to drive away, crashing his truck into three police vehicles. In that incident, the officers were able to surround the vehicle and thankfully the suspect complied with officers instructions and thats what ended the incident when he complied and they took him into custody without additional incident after ramming multiple police vehicles, said Foley. Absolutely a truck can be considered a deadly force situation. Weve seen earlier this year people have been killed with people using vehicles as weapons. Weve seen earlier this year where people have used these weapons against our officers and it resulted in injury. On Sunday, IMPD SWAT officers responded to a pair of incidents where they feared reported armed men were threatening the lives of children. In the 400 block of Sumner Avenue, officers watched Terrence McCray leave his house with a baby in his arms, challenging officers to kill him. After being told McCray had a gun in the house when the distraught man came outside without the infant, SWAT officers took him down with a projectile fired from a less lethal launcher. Just a few hours later, police located Eugene Ridley after a domestic dispute in the 4100 block of East Washington Street in a car with a firearm and four children. The individual had a shotgun in the vehicle. Thankfully our SWAT officers made a quick decision to use a less lethal device which helped prevent that individual from getting to the shotgun and likely prevented the potential for using lethal force, said Foley. In both of these situations, members of our SWAT team had to make very quick decisions and both of those resulted in kids being safe and apprehension of the suspect without use of lethal force. As of mid-October, IMPD had responded to 639,000 calls for service leading to police officer shots fired in less than one-quarter of one percent of the calls. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WTTV CBS4Indy. This years Nobel Peace Prize Laureate cannot attend the award ceremony in Oslo on Dec. 10. Narges Mohammadi sits in Tehrans notorious Evin Prison, where she is serving her third prison sentence for defending human rights. A mathematician and physicist who loves singing and mountaineering, she told me she would have had a very different life in any other country. But the political situation in Iran gave her no choice, and she has devoted her whole life to the struggle for freedom and equality in her country. Mohammadi has endured beatings and mistreatment in prison and is suffering from ill health, including the effects of a recent hunger strike. She is barred from speaking to her children or even receiving a photo of them. Yet she still retains the courage of her convictions. If I were to return to the starting point again, she told me, I would make the same choices with more determination and will. Convinced that she will live to see victory of rights over despotism, she said, prison walls will never stand in my way. Restrictions on Nargess communication with the outside world have tightened since her Nobel win. I sent questions to her via her family, and was able to speak to her briefly on the phone, through indirect means, before the line was abruptly cut. Here is an excerpt from our conversations: I have always wanted to visit Iran, and hope that one day I will. When you think of your childhood, is there anything that comes to mindwhether beautiful or difficultthat would help us to imagine the life of an Iranian family? I was born into a middle-class family. In Iran, family relationships are not only strong among close relatives but also between extended family members.My mother's family was politically active and engaged. My grandfather was a well-known merchant in the Qeysariyeh Bazaar in Zanjan. His son and grandchildren were political activists. Mostly educated in reputable Iranian universities, they were supporters of democracy and opponents of tyranny. My grandmother's large courtyard was where we played our childhood games. In the 1979 revolution, a significant portion of my mother's family and some members of my father's family were imprisoned. These events directly linked the world of my childhood to the world of struggle and resistance. I was only a small child when I was faced with the execution of the son of one of my aunts, and the daughter of another aunt, both of whom had been teachers. I had no understanding of the phrase execution. The word torture was so abruptly thrust into my childs mind, that without any understanding of what it implied, I felt fear and hatred toward it. In the 1980s many families experienced a similar situation. And none of these difficulties and hardships prevented our large family from being happy and hardworking. Our outlook on our future life was very optimistic, and I owe that to the teachings of my family. My mother and aunts were fond of singing, dancing, and playing the Dayere. They raised their children with love, joy, and satisfaction, putting all their might and ability into it. My mother shared all her strength, love, and affection with her four children. Many families held religious beliefs, but they did not identify with the concept of religious government represented by the Islamic Republic. Over time and through the experience of the tyranny of religious government, they began to distance themselves from it and finally rose up in opposition to it. An example: the religious government allowed men to have up to four simultaneous marriages and positioned the man as the head of the family. However, the reality was that men were deeply concerned about openly acknowledging even a second marriage, knowing that it would create a very negative reputation and even stigmatize them in society and was considered immoral and incompatible with Iranian culture. Even legalizing discrimination against women did not make it acceptable to society. Girls, supported by their families, especially their mothers, attended colleges and universities, and found employment. So much so that by the time I attended university, there were more female than male students. My father was very kind, tolerant, and considerate. Not only did he not oppose our attendance at university, or staying in dormitories or renting an apartment in the city, he even undertook all the related costs and expenses, which were not inconsiderable. This was common practice in our family and among our acquaintances, and this was while we lived in a provincial town. I remember that my mother refrained from even wearing black socks, let alone dresses. She wore lively and colorful clothing. The religious government forced us, as children of that happy mother, to wear dark and black overcoats, trousers, and headscarves. The values of Iranian families were different from the values promoted by the government. The image that the tyrannical government portrays of the Iranian people and society to the world does not match the lively, dynamic, tolerant and considerate culture of the Iranian people and society. The majority of Iranian society opposes compulsory hijab, yet the government kills, imprisons, and deprives women of employment and social rights for not conforming with that compulsion. A majority of Iranians never chant "Death to America," but the government falsely claims that they do. Mohammadi with her mother Family archive of Narges Mohammadi Did you think, growing up, that it was possible that you could be imprisoned? Is the life you lead one that you had imagined, or did you picture something different? I majored in mathematics and physics in high school, and at university, I selected applied physics as my major. All of my cousins, both female and male, attended university, and my mother expected nothing from us but studying. I intended to pursue physics until the doctoral level. While studying at the university, I also attended singing classes. I formed the Girls' Mountaineering Group, which did not exist at the university until that time, and we established an independent student organization for student activities. My fascination with Einstein's theory of relativity and Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty as one of the most essential results of quantum mechanics, was so great that I conducted rare experiments in optics, lasers, physics, and chemistry labs. When the university decided that some students should travel from Qazvin to Tehran for nuclear physics experiments in applied physics, I was among the first volunteers. The 1990s was the decade of student protests, women's movements, and the expansion of civil society. The future of my academic studies was heavily influenced by the tumultuous political and social events in Iran during this period. Creating institutions and organizations for students and women and participating in journalistic activities to help create and form a civil society was of such immense importance that it laid a historic responsibility on our shoulders. My passion and sense of responsibility toward the creation of a democracy was not only rooted in the concepts of "civil society," "democracy," and "human rights," which were the main principles of our time, but were also nurtured by my life experience. I had witnessed execution, prison, torture, and the violation of women's rights in school, on the streets, and in society from my childhood years onwards. Alongside my brother and sister-in-law, I had been repeatedly detained by "revolutionary committees" and the morality police. Human rights were, for me, as necessary as breathing to stay alive. I always think that if I had been born in a European or American country and had a different life experience, I could have been an active physicist in a university or laboratory who would also advocate for human rights and peace. However, the reality is that my life path led me in the direction of becoming a human rights defender in Iranian society as well as globally. One who had also happened to have studied physics and worked for a time as a professional engineering inspector. Who were the biggest influences in shaping you to become the extraordinary woman that you are? The history of my land is the tale of the struggles of freedom-seeking and tradition-breaking women, which has continued till the Woman, Life, Freedom movement of today. The poetry of Forough Farrokhzad, Parvin Etesami, and the authoritative and rebellious role of Tahirih Qurrat al-Ayn, as well as the role of women like Farrokh-Rou Parsa, the first female minister and parliament representative, and Zhinous Nemat Mahmoudi, the founder of the Iranian Meteorology Service, is undeniable and highly influential in the contemporary history of my country. I still remember the picture of Forough Farrokhzad, smoking a cigarette, in my brother's room, and her poems representing the facets of feminist culture. I still remember my sister's admiration for the iconoclasm of Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri, for singing the "Morq-e sahar" ballad among men and without a veil in Grand Hotel Lalehzar. In university I learned of Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, who was a staunch supporter of womens liberation. When Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize, I saw her significant impact on the advancement of human rights culture in society. My family had courageous, hardworking, and resilient women who were educated, employed, and highly influential. Female members of our family, both before and after the 1979 revolution, strived to attain higher education and make a meaningful entrance into society. I think it was a smart and targeted strategy to break the barriers against women, and it was successful. Women in Iran are aware that they have never tolerated oppression or discrimination in any form. The trajectory of their activism rises from the historical activism of women, some of whose names have been lost to time. I have had the privilege of spending time with women in refugee camps around the world. They have been displaced by violence or persecution and who have lost their homes and freedoms, so there is some similarity. I am amazed usually by their fearlessness and the way they manage to even laugh, and express themselves, and to not get crushed by their experiences. How do you keep each other going in such difficult circumstances? In total, since 2012, I have been imprisoned alongside more than 800 fellow cellmates. Having a political female prisoner alongside women charged with murder, robbery, and drug trafficking can be quite challenging. From the outside, it even seemed impossible for us to coexist. But life, with all its beauty and nuances, continued inside the walls and bars. On Dec. 24, 2019, after severe beatings, I entered Zanjan Prison wounded and severely hurt. One of the charges against me, in addition to protesting against the massacre of people that November, was organizing dance and song parties in the women's ward of Evin Prison during my previous imprisonment. In Zanjan Prison, I would use utensils as makeshift tambourines and dance and sing with the women prisoners. Once, in the middle of our dancing, the warden used the PA system to demand we stop as dancing was forbidden. In the political ward, holding discussion sessions, group studies, protest gatherings, making declarations, and participating in acts of resistance created common ground that can foster communal life. Although different political orientations and conflicting ideologies can lead to discord and conflict, we, by emphasizing our commonalities, made life there more vivid. In my belief, life and resistance are intertwined, and fundamentally, our struggle is for life. Sometimes, women with different ideas and inclinations become so close in prison life that I feel if this could happen in society as well, we would finally achieve humane communities and ideals. We gather to celebrate the birthdays of our fellow inmates, even the birthdays of their children. The sound of our singing and joy reaches the male wards, and male wardens complain about what happens in the women's ward. This is the sound of our vibrant life. I imagine myself in your situationand hope that I would have half of your courage if I didand cannot imagine how I would bear being separated from my children, and how much I would worry about them, probably more than I worried for myself. How do you cope with this? Are you able to speak to your family? After the birth of [my twins] Ali and Kiana, I was detained three times. The first time, they were 3 years, 5 months old. Kiana had undergone surgery and was constantly in my arms. Suddenly, at night, male security forces stormed our house and I was arrested. I'm unable to put into words that moment for you. Kiana had a fever and couldn't let go of me. Her little hands, burning with fever, clung to my neck, and I had to, with my own hands, unhook her little fingers and entrusted her to [my husband] Taqi's arms. Kiana was shedding tears and crying, "Mom, don't go." In the midst of those aggressive and ruthless men, I lifted Ali and put him to sleep, laid him down on the bed. But Kiana knew something bad was about to happen and would not close her eyes. I had to leave the house in front of her feverish eyes. I went down the stairs. Kiana called out, "Mom, come and kiss me." I looked at the stern-faced man and he gestured for me to go. I rushed back up the stairs and kissed Kiana. My legs felt faint. Once again I walked down the stairs. Kianas cries became louder, Maman Narges come and kiss me. Once more I went up the stairs and kissed her. I don't know how I survived coming back down. The second time, Taqi had left Iran. Ali and Kiana were 5 years, 5 months old. Security forces stormed my mother's house. The third and final goodbye was when they were 8 years, 5 months old. I took them to school. Security forces surrounded the courtyard and the house, and then I went to prison. After two months, Ali and Kiana left Iran. The night of their flight was an eternity for me. July 17, 2015, at 5 a.m.Ali and Kiana's departure from Iranis even more unforgettable for me than Nov. 28, 2006, their birthday. I think my detentions in front of my children, enduring solitary confinement, not seeing their faces and not hearing their voices, was unbearable beyond any word, logic or belief. [But] all these years, the dream of freedom and equality in my homeland and the realization of human rights and democracy in my society have given meaning to this suffering for me. From July 17, 2015, until July 16, 2016, and also from August 2019 to August 2020, I was banned from contacting Ali and Kiana. I am still banned to this day. I have requested to be allowed to make phone calls to them many times, but the requests have been turned down. Dreams are my only point of connection to Ali and Kiana. But every time I see them in my dreams, they are still the same age, and have the same faces they had when they were 8 years old, when they were separated from me for the last time. Mohammadi with her family Family archive of Narges Mohammadi Most of us cannot imagine being imprisoned for our convictions and live in countries where that isnt a risk that we would face. But I do feel as if there are more women in prison around the world than at any time I can remember, simply for their belief in basic equality and human rights. What is your impression of the root causes, and how do societies change? Do you see any grounds for optimism? I am a feminist who believes that violence against women is one of the most prevalent, deeply rooted, and historical forms of oppression. Religious, economic, and governmental institutions are older and more powerful than human rights institutions. It is inevitable that, in examining the causes of oppression against women, we encounter the root of that persecution, namely religious, economic, and governmental institutions, and this sets the stage for a challenging and severe struggle. Our struggle to abolish mandatory hijab is a fight against the dictatorship of the religious state, which has now led to the formation of a great and revolutionary movement. In my belief, democracy and human rights are impossible without the realization of women's rights, and it is the realization of women's rights that guarantees democracy. I am very hopeful about future developments in Iran, the Middle East, and the world, and this hope demands more action, effort, and struggle from me and propels me forward. Hope increases my motivation to resist and fight on. I know too well that victory is not easy, but it is certain. Q: So many of us have been in awe at the courage of the women of Iranand the many men who support themand angry and sickened to see the violent response from the authorities. Do you have any words for your fellow countrywomen, or even to those who have unjustly imprisoned you? Women and youth in Iran are the most radical, widespread, and influential forces for deep change and transition in society. The revolutionary movement "Woman, Life, Freedom" has affected and changed the makeup and alignment of political forces, intellectual tendencies, and even the layers of religious society. Now is the time for rising up, standing, and resisting. We have now become an influential and recognized force in the world, and this is an opportunity for our society to take a leap towards democracy, freedom, equality, and human rights. We aspire to a "peaceful transition from the authoritarian religious regime" and will continue the struggle until we achieve the movement's goal: democracy and human rights. Ive been following the tragic story of Armita Geravand, who, like Mahsa Jina Amini, died in an encounter with the morality police. What have you heard about the case, if you are able to comment on it safely? The pain of this horrific incident was deep and merciless because the government attempted to prevent the disclosure of the truth through deceit, lies, and duplicity. The government's effort to bury the truth is more terrifying and agonizing than its actions to eliminate its opponents and protestors. Ruthless threats from the security forces blocked Armita's story from being told by her classmates and companions. Her family, facing state cameras, couldn't even cry out in agony to save the life of their dear daughter. The government delivered the horrifying message to society that it can kill our children and not even allow us to cry out the truth and our pain. The great pain here is the burial of the truth by a regime whose very foundation is built on lies and deceit. Does your Nobel Peace Prize hold any particular meaning for you? For people who are learning about your work for the first time, is there anything that youd like them to know? We, the people of Iran, were able to turn our national demand into a rallying cry that became the name of our movement. Reciting "Woman, Life, Freedom" from the Nobel Peace podium is a most potent and meaningful message to the people of Iran that their voice has been heard by the world. The selection of a human rights activist as the Nobel Peace laureate brings authenticity and legitimacy to social and protest movements in Iran and the Middle East that aim to bring about fundamental changes towards achieving democracy and human rights. It will also strengthen the determination and effort necessary to establish a civil society, the necessary prerequisite for democracy. Through my sister, I found out that Ali and Kiana heard about my Nobel Peace Prize award while in school. These days, prisoners entering the prison tell me that they are being interviewed, and I think to myself that when they left Iran they werent yet able to speak Farsi properly, but now they are being interviewed for my freedom. It fills my heart with excitement. When I heard I had received the Nobel Peace Prize, the name Mahsa-Jina Amini emerged from the depths of my being. This movement is adorned with her beautiful name, and I dedicate this award to her. Dictatorship not only imprisons, tortures, and executes people, not only silences the voices of the opposition, not only threatens freedom of expression and belief, not only turns universities into barracks and security zones, and not only constrains writers or censors books and newspapers. Dictatorship destroys life itself. It imprisons love in the hearts of the youth, it tears apart the world of children and chains happiness and transforms dreams into regrets. Dictatorship and war are two sides of the same coin. We are afflicted with the rule of a despotic religious government, and until we transition from a religious and despotic state and attain democracy, freedom, and equality, which is the glorious day of victory, we will not stand down. On that day we will embrace freedom and sing the sweet anthem of victory while dancing and rejoicing in the streets and alleys of our cities. And on that day, we will hold warmly the hands of those who supported us from all over the world. May our hands remain clasped, for your support reinforces our strength. With reporting by Kay Armin Serjoie Contact us at letters@time.com. Ex-Trump Organization accountant Jeffrey McConney broke down in tears on the witness stand Tuesday as Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York pressed on into its eighth week. While McConney expressed how tired he was of being the former president's scapegoat, his tears fell as he lamented the way law enforcement keeps targeting him as a way to get to Trump. I'm an honest person, he mumbled through tears as he reminisced about his time at the real estate company, according to The Daily Beast. I got to do things that a normal accountant wouldn't be able to do I'm very proud of the work I did in the 35 years. He described all the ways prosecutors had pressed him in the last five years, bemoaning how they have subpoenaed him, compelled him to testify at the Manhattan district attorney's tax fraud trial against the Trump Organization last year, and made him appear at the New York Attorney General's current bank fraud trial. When speaking to a friendly defense lawyer, however, McConney, who is also one of the defendants in the lawsuit, did not say anything damaging or scathing about the company. He, instead, dragged on about documents for hours. In her $250 million lawsuit, New York Attorney General Letitia James has accused McConney of aiding the Trump family and former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg in doctoring business paperwork to secure better deals with banks and insurance companies. I just want to relax... and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets with the company that I was working for, he said. I think everything was justified I feel proud of what I did. His tearful response came after a question from defense lawyer Jesus Suarez asking why McConney no longer works for the Trump Organization. McConney was the company's comptroller for years, overseeing its internal finances and approving transactions made by Trump himself. That role also included presiding over the billionaire's questionable business dealings. Court records from previous court cases show that he played a key role in Trump's scheme to direct charitable funds to then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a plot that eventually ended with the New York attorney general shutting the charity down. The Manhattan district attorney's trial last year revealed how McConney also helped executives evade taxes, with him admitting that he "tried to help them in any way I could with some suggestions. The company was convicted of all charges and fined $1.6 million. In that case, McConney attempted to shoulder all the blame and attribute it to personal "mistakes." A juror later told The Daily Beast that the jury grew tired of him after realizing "he was stonewalling the prosecution and just could not say enough for the defense. He employed the same tactic last month when lawyers with the attorney general questioned him about his role in the alleged fraud scheme, which involved nearly a dozen real estate projects over the course of 10 years. The retiree had an easier time on the witness stand Monday and Tuesday as he fielded questions from the defense. But the story of his departure from the Trump Organization failed to include the crucial fact that he was promised a $500,000 severance package when leaving the company. When state investigators questioned him in court early last month, McConney revealed that he had already received $375,000 of the sum and was still owed $125,000. "That monetary arrangement raises obvious red flags, given the concern that his former employer may still have considerable influence over a witness in the case," The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery reported. The situation mirrors the agreement McConney's former supervisor, Weisselberg, made ahead of his testimony in the district attorney's criminal trial last year. He revealed when he testified that he was actually still earning the same $640,000 annual salary and receiving the same $500,000 yearly bonus, including a payout that he admitted he was looking forward to receiving shortly after that trial. Former prosecutors who spoke to The Daily Beast at the time decried it as a blatant method of keeping Trump's trusted workers in check. McConney quickly regained his composure on Tuesday and then took questions from Andrew Amer, special litigation counsel for the attorney general. He also quickly resumed his strategy of claiming ignorance when asked about holes in his testimony. On Monday, the former Trump employee said that external-hired accountants at the firm Mazars USA wrote a particular paragraph in Trump's 2015 statement of financial condition that was littered with caveats. The assertion supported the defense's attempt to cast away blame by creating distance between Trump and certain details in his vastly inflated financial statements. During cross-examination on Tuesday, however, Amer displayed an image in the courtroom and pointed out that McConney had written the very same paragraph in blue pen on a handwritten note that lauded Trump's "brand value" and how it "afforded Mr. Trump the opportunity to participate in licensing deals around the globe as reflected on the balance sheet herein. Upon being questioned about it, McConney claimed he didn't remember who wrote it. McConney's testimony went on to prove injurious to himself, Trump, the former president's eldest sons and Weisselberg as he was questioned about the blue-ink notes written on the sides of several net-worth statement drafts presented by prosecutors, Business Insider reports. Another cautionary note from the 2015 draft showed McConney wrote that "this computation also includes forecasted deals that have not signed yet" and asked whether Trump wanted to exclude $151 million in as-yet-fictional assets from the statement. The final version of that year's net-worth statement indicates that McConney's suggestion went ignored, possibly by Trump himself. In the civil case, the attorney general alleges that Trump fluffed up his net-worth statements with those sorts of nonexistent assets. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. During Tuesday's cross, McConney was also handed a draft of Trump's 2014 statement and was asked to look at a note on the draft's first page "DJT TO GET FINAL REVIEW" which he said he had written. The former president has repeatedly denied involvement in preparing the decade's worth of financial statements and, in a pretrial deposition denied knowing who had written the note on the draft. The attorney general had alleged that the 2014 net-worth statement contained $3.5 billion in exaggerations. "Donald Trump would get final review?" Amer asked the retired accountant. "That was my understanding, yes," McConney answered from the stand. Amer asked next whether Trump would get the final review of every statement until leaving for the Oval Office in 2017, after which Eric Trump would approve the drafts. "That was my understanding, yes," McConney answered again. When asked if it was his handwriting on the drafts the blue pen marks McConney also confirmed that it was. McConney's slew of handwritten notes indicate that it was Trump and his top executives who made the final changes and signed off on these net-worth statements. As such, those notes deal a serious blow to the Trump team's primary defense of blaming the external accountants. The attorney general's office also seems prepared to argue that these handwritten notes show McConney, Weisselberg and Trump intentionally plotted in doctoring the numbers each year. While presiding Judge Arthur Engoron has already found before the trial that Trump and the other defendants committed fraud in inflating his wealth on the statements, the trial is to determine whether they further violated six specific state laws: falsifying business records, filing false financial statements, insurance fraud, and conspiracy to commit each of these counts all of which require proof of intention. McConney's notes could also come back to bite the Trumps and their company by the end of the trial. "The fact that these incriminating, hand-scrawled drafts were turned over to authorities by Mazars but not by the Trump Organization could come up at the end of the trial as evidence that Trump's side failed to retain and turn over documents as required by state subpoenas," Business Insider's Laura Italiano reported. FILE- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks at a rally in Mumbai, India, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023 welcomed a cease-fire that's expected to enable the release of dozens of hostages taken by Hamas and urged leaders of the top rich and developing nations to work together to ensure the Israel-Hamas war doesn't expand in the region. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File) NEW DELHI (AP) Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday welcomed a cease-fire in Gaza that's expected to enable the release of dozens of hostages taken by Hamas, and urged leaders of the top rich and developing nations to work together to ensure the Israel-Hamas war doesn't expand. Hosting a virtual meeting of Group of 20 leaders, Modi said the hostages should be released and humanitarian assistance expedited. India has the G20 presidency for 2023. "Terrorism is not acceptable and civilians death is condemnable, he said. Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza a breakthrough that will facilitate the release of dozens of hostages held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory, officials said Wednesday. The truce raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, which was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and Chinas Premier Li Qiang represented their countries at the virtual summit. President Joe Biden attended the September G20 meeting in New Delhi that added the African Union as a member. Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped both the September G20 summit and Wednesday's virtual summit. Russias President Vladimir Putin and Canadas Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attending the virtual summit. Putin in his speech pointed to shifts on the global stage to argue that the world is going through a process of radical transformation with new, powerful centers of global economic development emerging and strengthening. Turbulence in the markets is increasing, chronic problems in the international financial sector, energy and food security are worsening, he said. Putin noted the criticism of Russias action in Ukraine but sought to deflect attention from it by pointing at civilian suffering in the Israel-Hamas war. Yes, of course, military actions are always a tragedy for specific people, specific families and the country as a whole, he said. And, of course, we must think about how to stop this tragedy. The war and the loss of life cant but cause shock, Putin continued. But isnt anyone shocked by the extermination of civilians in Palestine, in Gaza today? Isnt anyone shocked about doctors forced to perform operations on children and use a scalpel on childrens bodies without anesthesia? Modi urged the G20 leaders to push for effective implementation of various decisions made at their September summit in New Delhi. Those include climate financing, reforms of multinational development banks and work on the creation of a framework for ethical and artificial intelligence as well as developing a common framework for digital public infrastructure. India's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the U.S. administration has asked Congress to increase World Bank financing by more than $25 billion and Germany has pledged $331 million in hybrid capital that can be used by the World Bank to increase lending over the next 10 years. Other issues critical to developing countries include alternative fuels like hydrogen, resource efficiency and food security. Modi announced the creation of a social impact fund with an initial contribution of $25 million to help developing countries meet sustainable development goals. He urged other countries to join the initiative. Artificial intelligence should reach the people and it must be safe for the society, Modi said. He invited all G20 member countries to attend a Global AI summit in New Delhi next month. India is promoting itself as a bridge to the developing world and a rising global player. Ahead of the G20 virtual summit, Modi held a similar meeting with 130 leaders of mostly developing countries. Indias G20 presidency ends on Nov. 30 and the baton is being passed to Brazil for 2024. ___ Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov contributed to this report from Moscow. New reports suggest Indias transnational repression efforts may be more pervasive than previously thought. The Financial Times on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources, reported that U.S. authorities thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate a Sikh separatist on American soil and issued a warning to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after his high-profile visit to Washington earlier this year. The Intercept on Wednesday, citing leaked Pakistani intelligence reports, suggested a pattern of India targeting Sikh and Kashmiri activists in Pakistan. The reports come two months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus shocking accusation that Indias government was involved in orchestrating the assassination of a Sikh separatist in British Columbia, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Ottawa and Delhi. The Modi government has repeatedly denied all claims of operations to target dissidents abroad. Indias alleged assassination program is only getting attention now because it was accused by a so-called friendly country like Canada, a Pakistani military veteran told the Diplomat. However, Delhis suspected transnational repression has for years flamed diplomatic spats within South Asia. The Intercept, citing leaked Pakistani intelligence documents, reported that India has likely orchestrated dozens of attempted or successful killings in Pakistan in recent years. Islamabad has repeatedly sounded the alarm about this, but the West believes that India can do no wrong and that Pakistan is just being paranoid, one scholar on Pakistan told the Intercept. Many powerful nations like the U.S., Russia, and China resort to assassination, a former Indian intelligence agent told the Diplomat. And Indias emergence as a rising power on the global stage means it might do things just as all big nations do. India should steer away from copying the Wests actions of targeting political dissidents on foreign soil, writes foreign policy analyst Angshuman Choudhury for the Wire India. The West and Israels sense of exceptionalism guides their rash interventionism, Choudhury argues, leaving a messy trail of destruction in the Global South and angering governments who then look to India and China to build meaningful relationships instead. But by mimicking the Wests policy of killing those it considers enemies in foreign jurisdictions, India risks losing its standing in the region as a rising power that believes in cooperation, not obtrusion. Despite some efforts by the West to counter transnational repression by countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and China, these countries still enjoy diplomatic and trading relations with Western democracies, Time reports. India too will unlikely face any major repercussions even if Canadas accusations are true because New Delhi is seen by the West as a strategic partner, especially in countering China. Exiles living in Western democracies that continue to share economic ties with perpetrators of transnational repression will never feel truly safe. Its definitely a national security issue, but this is also a human rights issue, the researcher said. (Bloomberg) -- India has restored online visa services to Canadian nationals in a sign that relations are improving after the two countries sparred over the killing of a Sikh separatist leader. Most Read from Bloomberg Indias foreign minister linked the move to the improved security of Indian diplomats in Canada. We had temporarily halted the visa services as diplomats could not go their office and do their work, Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told reporters Wednesday. India had alleged that its diplomats face increased harassment in Canada, when it suspended the visa services in the aftermath of Ottawas allegation that New Delhi was responsible for the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist leader. Nijjar is wanted in India for terrorism-related offenses and was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in suburban Vancouver on June 18. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus accusation sparked outrage from the Indian government, which has denied involvement in Nijjars death. Officials forced the North American country to reduce its diplomatic staff in New Delhi and also suspended visa services for Canadians. India resumed issuing certain categories of visas for Canadian nationals in October but the applications for these were to be made through government-appointed outsourced agencies as against online applications. --With assistance from Abhay Singh. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Mr Pannun is a key figure in the political movement that seeks to establish an independent Sikh state in northern India - ARUN SANKAR/AFP via Getty Images The United States foiled a plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist on US soil and issued a warning to Indias government over concerns it was involved in the incident, it has been reported. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US citizen and a leader of the breakaway Khalistan movement, was identified by the Financial Times (FT) as the target of the foiled plot. It is unclear whether Washingtons complaint to New Delhi caused the would-be assassins to abort the plan, or whether the FBI intervened to prevent it. The FTs report comes two months after Canada caused a diplomatic rupture by linking the Indian government to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader on Canadian soil. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, said there was credible evidence to suggest New Delhi was involved in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia in June. India has rejected Canadas accusations. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was killed on the grounds of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple earlier this year - CHRIS HELGREN/REUTERS American spy agencies were involved in gathering the intelligence cited by Canada following Mr Nijjars murder, along with others in the Five Eyes alliance, of which the UK is a member. It was after the incident in Canada that Washington shared details of the assassination plot involving Mr Pannun with its allies, as well as the FT, amid concerns that India could be plotting extrajudicial killings in a number of countries. While the US has urged India to assist Canadas investigation, it has avoided publicly criticising New Delhi over the case as it courts India to serve as a counterweight to an increasingly powerful China. According to the FT, Washingtons private warning to New Delhi over the plot to assassinate one of its citizens came after Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, was feted at a high-profile state visit to the US capital in June. However, Joe Biden, the US president, was reported to have raised Mr Nijjars murder with Mr Modi at the G20 summit hosted by India in September. It is unclear whether he also raised the plot to assassinate Mr Punnan at the same time. President Biden is said to have raised the topic of Hardeep Singh Nijjar's death with Mr Modi, left, in September - REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein Mr Punnan, like the late Mr Nijjar, is a prominent campaigner for the creation of an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan in Indias northern state of Punjab. The Khalistan campaign is strongly opposed by India, who has labelled activists involved as terrorists. But calls for a breakaway homeland have intensified in recent years among the Sikh diaspora in Canada, the UK and elsewhere. At least one of the alleged suspects in the US assassination plot has been indicted in a New York court, the FT reported. The charges are currently under seal and the US Justice Department is reportedly weighing up whether or not to wait for Canada to conclude its investigation into Mr Nijjars murder before making it public. One of the people named in the indictment is believed to have left the US already. There was no immediate response from Indias foreign ministry, or from the US embassy in New Delhi, to requests for comment on the report. India branded Canadas claims it was potentially involved in Mr Nijjars murder absurd. The dispute between the two nations has already led Canada to recall 41 of its diplomats from India. Threat to an American citizen Mr Pannun, who also holds Canadian citizenship, is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, a US-based group advocating for an independent Sikh state. He declined to say whether the FBI had alerted him to the plot to kill him when contacted by the FT. But he said: The threat to an American citizen on American soil is a challenge to Americas sovereignty, and I trust that the Biden administration is more than capable to handle any such challenge. 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. India's Enforcement Directorate, its crime-fighting agency, has issued a show-cause notice to Byju's, accusing it of violating the nation's foreign exchange rules. The ED's allegations say that the Bengaluru-headquartered startup has violated rules under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), to the tune of $1.12 billion, by failing to submit documents of imports against advance remittances and proceed of exports made outside India and delayed filing of documents for foreign direct investment received by the startup. TechCrunch reported about the impending show-cause notice earlier Tuesday. In a press statement (PDF), the Indian agency said "various complaints regarding the foreign investment received by the company" prompted it to launch a probe. The show-cause notice follows the agency searching the premises of Byju's and its founder Byju Raveendran in late April. At the time, the agency said it had found and seized "incriminating" documents and digital data at the firm's premises. "On conclusion of the investigation, it was found that Think & Learn Private Limited & Byju Raveendran have contravened the provisions of FEMA by failing to submit documents of imports against advance remittances made outside India, by failing to realize proceeds of exports made outside India, by delayed filing of documents against the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) received into the company, by failing to file documents against the remittances made by the company outside India and by failing to allot shares against FDI received into the company," the Indian agency said Tuesday evening. Byju's said at the time that it was confident that the Enforcement Directorate will find that the startup, once valued at $22 billion, is in compliance with all local laws. In a statement earlier Tuesday, a Byju's spokesperson said the startup hadn't received a notice from the ED. The ED's show-cause notice is the latest headache for the Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which has spent the last six months correcting several mistakes. The startup, backed by Prosus, Peak XV, Sofina, BlackRock, UBS and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, missed its revenue target for the financial year ending in March last year, the startup disclosed in a much-delayed account this month. Byju's CFO Ajay Goel left the startup to return to Vedanta late last month, following high-profile and abrupt departures of auditor Deloitte and three of Byjus key board members in June. Prosus, which owns more than 9% of Byjus and is one of its earlier backers, publicly slammed the Bengaluru-headquartered startup in July for not evolving sufficiently and disregarding the investors advice and recommendations despite repeated attempts. The ED has widened its crackdown over foreign exchange violations in the past one and a half years. It accused Andreessen Horowitz-backed crypto exchange CoinSwitch of violating similar rules last year. Influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats announced Tuesday that he was officially throwing his support behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the 2024 GOP primary a decision that was expected. Im thrilled to throw my personal endorsement and support behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Vander Plaats, who serves as the CEO and president of The Family Leader, told Fox Newss Bret Baier. The reason its not a surprise is that we need to find somebody who can win in 2024. And what we saw in 2022, the supposedly red wave really only happened in Florida and in Iowa, he explained when pressed by Baier while he decided to formally endorsed the Florida Republican. Best Black Friday Deals Gov. DeSantis took a reliable toss-up state in Florida and made it complete red, won by 20 points, won in demographics that we havent won in. But hes also done that by being a bold and courageous leader, he continued. Vander Plaatss endorsement came just two weeks after Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) also announced her endorsement of DeSantis. The Trump campaign mocked the Iowa evangelical leader following his announcement, sending out an email with the subject line misspelling Vander Plaatss name that read Bob Vander Plaat$ Endorses A Candidate Who Will Never Be President. Over 150 faith leaders in Iowa are organizing their congregations for President Trump and not a single one demanded nearly $100k like Bob Vander Plaat$ did from Ron DeSanctus. When you are actually the leader of a movement like President Trump is, people are willing to support you for free, the campaign said in a statement. Kim Reynolds endorsement wont save Ron DeSanctus, and neither will Vander Plaat$ endorsement. The Trump campaign was referring to a Reuters report from August, citing campaign filings and a report the news outlet had obtained that found that $95,000 had been given to The Family Leader Foundation by DeSantiss campaign and two pro-DeSantis groups. Reuters reported that the money ultimately paid for tickets for a July presidential candidate forum, being featured in several pages of advertising in a booklet that was given out at the event, a lunch and an event after dinner. A RealClearPolitics polling average of Iowa surveys shows DeSantis placing second at 17.3 percent support, behind Trump at 47 percent. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley placed third at 14.3 percent support. An NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey released last month showed Haley gaining ground against DeSantis, with the two tied for second place. The RealClearPolitics polling average of New Hampshire and South Carolina surveys shows Haley polling second behind Trump by a double-digit margin. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. The occupiers are entering the territory of the Kherson Oblast from the Crimea The Ukrainian Armed Forces had no chance of holding the defense in Kherson Oblast at the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, with the attacking Russians having a numerical superiority of 12 to 1, as reported in the article "How Ukraine lost the South" by NV on Nov. 22. NV identified several reasons for the swift capture of the vast region from the outskirts of Mykolaiv to Mariupol by Russian invasion forces. Read also: Russia leaves Avdiivka in ruins, targets private residences ahead of new siege strategy photos As of Feb. 24, 2022, the Ukrainian General Staff had 24 infantry brigades, and only one of them the 59th separate motorized infantry brigade was in place to defend the entire left bank of Kherson Oblast and the Melitopol sector. It was stationed at the Oleshky Sands training ground. Additionally, the 137th Marine Battalion was positioned directly on the administrative border with the occupied Crimea, numbering about 1,500 military personnel. "The artillery had an incomplete composition because two divisions were on training in Divychky in Kyiv Oblast, the group of engineering support sappers was also on training in Kamianets-Podilskyi, said Major General Andriy Sokolov, former commander of the Southern Operational Command at the time of the full-scale invasion, in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda, NVs sister publication. Read also: Liberation of Andriyivka foiled Russian counterattack south of Bakhmut Plus, there were about 250 people in the 137th Marine Battalion, which was staffed at 50%. Part of them were conscripts who carried out stabilization actions on the border with Crimea." According to Sokolov's estimates, 20,000 to 25,000 Russian soldiers opposed 1,750 Ukrainian soldiers. "From the operational point of view, it was necessary to have at least four combat brigades in this sector," the General Staff told NV. "Given the situation as of Feb. 24, 2022, there was no possibility of transferring additional Ukrainian forces AFU from the existing ones for the defense of the southern region without a significant risk of weakening the defensive capabilities in other invasion directions, first of all, from the north to Kyiv." "Without mobilization, there were no chances of holding the defense, said Viktor Chumak, a reserve Major General of Justice. Without either hidden or explicit mobilization, it is impossible to increase the number of the army. On what legal grounds will you pull up the number of troops to the required level? And what was there to transfer to the south? From where? From the east? That was just as dangerous a sector." In September 2023, Ukrainska Pravda reconstructed the events during the defense of the south at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The publication reported that the first line of defense was the 137th Marine Battalion, which served directly on the isthmuses from Crimea and monitored the Russians. There were 300 marines, half of whom were conscripts. The soldiers of the 59th brigade were to take up the second line of defense in the event of a Russian attack. Read also: Five important factors: What is happening in Kherson and what are its prospects for liberation? On April 11, 2022, Ukraines State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) opened a case on the improper defense of Kherson Oblast, which led to its rapid occupation. In March 2023, the SBI, in response to a request from BBC Ukraine, replied that the case is being investigated under Part 1 of Article 111 and Part 3 of Article 425 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine treason and negligent attitude to military service. The case concerns the improper organization of the mining of bridges and dams for further demolition in order to slow down the Russian advance into the mainland of Ukraine. 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 Inmate at Georgia jail kills cellmate in racially motivated attack, authorities say An inmate at a county jail in Georgia killed his cellmate with his bare hands Sunday simply because of the color of his skin, authorities said. Jaquez Jackson punched and kicked the cellmate and slammed his head on the toilet, the Clayton County Sheriffs Office said in a statement Monday. The sheriff's office did not identify the victim. But the Clayton County Medical Examiner's Office identified him as Carlos Alfredo Zegarra-Arryo, of Athens, Georgia. The cause and manner of his death have not been officially determined, a representative with the office said Tuesday. Jackson told investigators he does not like Mexican/Hispanics and wanted to kill them, the sheriffs office said. Jackson is charged with murder, malice murder, aggravated assault and starting a penal riot, the statement said. Jackson was initially in the jail on a probation violation on charges that included simple battery, simple assault, terroristic threats and obstruction of an officer, the sheriffs office said. In April 2022, he was sentenced to 12 months in jail and four years' probation, the statement said. In October, Jacksons probation was revoked, the sheriffs office said, and he was sentenced to serve a year in prison. He was awaiting acceptance from the Georgia Department of Corrections, it said. The sheriffs office said the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had been contacted about the alleged inmate slaying. Charges were filed against Zegarra-Arryo in 2021, including theft by taking and unlawful removal of baggage or cargo from a terminal, according to Clayton County court records. Two counts of unlawful removal of baggage or cargo from a terminal were filed against him in 2022. It's unclear whether the cases were connected. Last year's case was ongoing, court records show. Zegarra-Arryo's relatives could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. 0108263 License for publishing multimedia online Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 The South Carolina Attorney Generals Office announced a new set of indictments Tuesday against inmates and employees of the state Department of Corrections. The indictments from the State Grand Jury follow three separate investigations that are part of the ongoing fight against staff members who smuggle in contraband, especially cellphones. The combination of public corruption and contraband cellphones has contributed to the violent crimes, drug trafficking, child sex crimes and other crimes being committed against our citizens, said state Attorney General Alan Wilson. These investigations are part of our ongoing effort to say no more. The three investigations produced dozens of indictments charging nine people, seven of whom were employees of the corrections department, with crimes ranging from misconduct in office and conspiracy to narcotics trafficking. One particularly high profile investigation, Operation Clean Sweep, saw the indictment of an inmate, Jacob Lance, who is accused of using a contraband cellphone to direct and encourage his girlfriend, Abbygale Alexandria El-Dier, to send him videos of her sexually abusing her daughter. I have seen a lot, said Corrections Director Bryan Stirling, (but) I will never, ever forget that poor childs face. Lance and El-Dier have both been charged with five counts of criminal sexual conduct of a minor in the first degree, ten counts of criminal sexual exploitation of a minor in the first degree and one count of conspiracy. Two employees of Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, where Lance was incarcerated at the time of the alleged abuse, were charged with facilitating the smuggling of contraband cellphones into the prison. Brian Keely, a food services manager, and Lt. Brittany Welch were both arrested following a surprise sweep of Lee Correctional Institution. Evidence on Keelys phone allegedly showed him making contraband deals with inmates, and he reportedly had cellphones and drugs hidden inside of his cafeteria office, officials said. Keely has also been charged with ten counts of possessing child sex abuse material. Welch, who had been with the Department of Corrections for six years, was accused of tipping off inmates about contraband searches, allowing inmates to share contraband and even holding onto contraband for them. The discovery of abusive videos on Lances cellphone led to a series of statewide sweeps, where K-9 teams inspected corrections officers cars for contraband during shift changes. Two other investigations, Operation Block Party and Operation Gatekeeper, saw the arrest of five corrections officers. They have been charged with helping to bring contraband into prisons across South Carolina. Bond hearings for the defendants in the investigations was held Tuesday morning in Richland County court in front of circuit court Judge Jocelyn Newman. In their remarks, Wilson and Stirling described the arrests as a collaborative effort. They thanked the federal Department of Homeland Security, the state Department of Corrections, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the Simpsonville Police Department and the Lee County and Sumter County sheriffs departments. Officials Tuesday stressed that the fight against contraband and cellphones in prisons was not simply a matter of enforcing the rules. In every major investigation into narcotics or gang activity, some of the leadership was being run through South Carolina prisons, said Creighton Waters, an assistant attorney general and chief attorney of the state grand jury. Waters shot to international fame this year as the lead prosecutor in the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial. At the heart of all of these prison cases, Waters said, was a cellphone. The most dangerous thing an inmate can have is a cellphone, Stirling said. As part of the effort to stamp out cellphones, the Department of Corrections has begun selectively blocking contraband devices. State agencies are forbidden by federal law from jamming cellphones, but the current program allows them to identify unapproved devices, which can then be deactivated by telecom providers. Since July 29, approximately 790 devices were deactivated at Lee Correctional Institution, which holds roughly a thousand inmates. But expanding what Wilson called the iron curtain is expected to cost between $10 and $12 million. Stirling said that he intends to ask for funding from the General Assembly when the session resumes in January. Who was arrested? Information on the those charged in operations Clean Sweep, Block Party and Gatekeeper, along with their bond, charges and the sentencing ranges can be found below. Clean Sweep: Abbygale Alexandria El-Dier (Bond denied): Criminal Sexual Conduct with a Minor, First Degree (5 Counts): 25 Years to Life; Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, First Degree (10 Counts): 3 to 20 Years; Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years J acob Nathaniel Lance (Bond denied): Criminal Sexual Conduct with a Minor, First Degree (5 Counts): 25 Years to Life; Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, First Degree (10 Counts): 3 to 20 Years; Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years Brittany Nicole Welch ($10,000 bond): Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years; Obstruction of Justice: 0 to 10 Years Brian Darold Keely ($7500 bond): Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years; Furnish or Attempt to Furnish Contraband: 1 to 10 Years; Sexual Exploitation of a Minor, Third Degree: 0 to 10 Years Block Party: Alexis Tucker ($10,000 bond): Trafficking Cocaine, 200-400 Grams: 25 Years; Trafficking Methamphetamine, 400 or More Grams: 25 Years; Possession with Intent to Distribute Marijuana: 0 to 5 Years; Furnishing Contraband to a Prisoner: 0 to 10 Years; Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years; Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years Jorge Romero-Navarro ($10,000 bond): Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years; Criminal Conspiracy: 0 to 5 Years Gatekeeper: Whitney Thurmond ($10,000 bond): Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years Dontai Parks ($7500 bond): Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years Brandon Taylor (Hearing at a later date): Misconduct in Office: 0 to 10 Years An intruder shot dead by a Port Orange homeowner last Thursday while trying to break into the home was released from jail the day before the shooting where he had been locked up for a previous burglary arrest, court records show. On Tuesday, Port Orange police identified the intruder as Justin Alvaro Dematos, 46, of Port Orange. But Dematos's fiancee said Tuesday that he recently started struggling with mental illness and would get disoriented and lost when he went out for walks and show up at strangers' homes not knowing where he was. "I just wanted to clarify that he was having mental problems and his mother was coming from Boston this week to take him to a psychiatrist, but we could not get him help in time," a tearful Maria Alvaro said in a telephone interview. Warned twice Police said that on Nov. 16, Dematos approached a home in the 5900 block of Pelham Drive at approximately 12:05 a.m., and tried to break in. Barking dogs at the home woke up the residents, who heard Dematos ringing their doorbell, police said. The homeowner, while inside, verbally confronted Dematos who walked away. He then went to the side of the home and reportedly removed the screen to a bedroom window that had been left slightly open, said Port Orange police detective Michael Wallace. The homeowner verbally confronted Dematos again, asking him what he was doing on his property but Dematos did not respond Wallace said. Police said Dematos then attempted to enter the home through the open bedroom window and was shot one time by the homeowner, police said. Dematos died at the scene. Arrested for burglary the day before shooting Court records show that Dematos was arrested on Nov. 15, the day before he was fatally shot, and locked up in the Volusia County Branch Jail on charges of burglary of an occupied dwelling and loitering or prowling. Dematos was booked into the county jail at 12:04 a.m. on Nov. 15 and got out nine hours later at 9:08 a.m. after posting $5,500 bail. Port Orange police said that at 11:53 p.m. on Nov. 14 they were called to a Fern Cliff Drive home where a resident reported that Dematos rang his doorbell but left after the homeowner did not answer. As police were investigating that incident, they were called to another neighborhood home where Dematos also had tried to break in, according to court records. Dematos tried to unlock the front door of that home by tinkering with the electronic door keypad, police said. Police asked Dematos what he was doing at the homes in the middle of the night. When police asked him if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, he said he was not, the report notes. Dematos told police he had gone for a walk in the woods and got lost ending up in someone's backyard. He admitted to ringing the doorbell and pushing the buttons on the keypad, according to his arrest report. Mental problems Dematos did not have a criminal record and his only arrest happened the day before he was shot dead. Maria Alvaro, who was Dematos's girlfriend for three years, said she recently noticed that Dematos was acting strange, and even his friends said he was not well, she said. Maria Alvaro said Dematos would become disoriented and talk to himself and said he heard voices. When she bailed him out of jail on Nov. 15, he told her he had gone out for a walk, and lost his sense of direction and ended up at strangers' homes. Maria Alvaro said that on one occasion they were out on a drive when Dematos started asking her who was with her in the car because he was hearing someone else talking to her. "What I want is for this not to happen to other people's loved ones and to clarify what happened with Justin (Dematos)," Maria Alvaro said. This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Florida man fatally shot as he tried to break into home identified An Iowa woman whose husband ran for Congress and lost the GOP primary in 2020 was convicted by a federal jury Tuesday of a voter fraud scheme during the primary and general elections. Kim Phuong Taylor, 49, of Sioux City, was convicted of 23 counts of fraudulent voting and 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting as well as three counts of fraudulent registration, according to court records. Her husband, Jeremy Taylor, lost the Republican primary in Iowa for the US House in 2020 but was elected as the Woodbury County supervisor in a general election that year. Prosecutors say Kim Taylor visited households in the Vietnamese community, encouraging residents to fill out voter registration forms and absentee ballot request forms. Some of the residents couldnt read or understand English, according to prosecutors, and she offered to help. Kim Taylor submitted or caused others to submit dozens of voter registrations, absentee ballot request forms, and absentee ballots containing false information, the Justice Department said in a statement. She also completed and signed voter forms without voters permission and told others that they could sign on behalf of relatives who were not present, the DOJ said. Kim Taylor faces up to five years in prison on each count. A sentencing date hasnt been set. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com Kim Taylor, the wife of an Iowa county supervisor, was found guilty of 52 counts of voter fraud Tuesday, concluding a months-long case into her interference in the 2020 election. Federal prosecutors said Taylor attempted to generate votes in the 2020 primary and general elections in Iowa in order to help her husband, Woodbury County Supervisor Jeremy Taylor, win the primary for Rep. Steve Kings (R-Iowa) former seat. Jeremy Taylor lost that primary, receiving only 8 percent of the vote, but prosecutors said Kim Taylor again broke the law in assisting her husband to seek reelection as a supervisor that fall, which he did win. Best Black Friday Deals According to prosecutors, Taylor applied for and submitted false absentee ballots, signed ballots on voters behalf without their permission and encouraged others to do the same. She was arrested in January. The 52 counts carry a maximum sentence of five years each. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled. U.S. Attorney Timothy Duax denounced Taylors actions in a statement to local outlet KCAU. The right to vote is one of our most important constitutional rights. Ms. Taylor deprived citizens of their right to vote in order to benefit her husbands campaign, Duax said. The guilty verdict is an example of how the justice system works to protect the voting rights of citizens, and ensure fair and honest elections. Jeremy Taylor, still serving as a county supervisor, defended his wife in a statement. While this was certainly not the outcome we were hoping for, we respect our court system that allowed the jury to hear my wifes side of the story, he told KCAU. While I plan to continue making decisions that are best for our countys families, my first priority right now is to deal with todays results as a private matter in order to be there for my own family, my wife and our children. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Iran has officially presented a new version of its notorious Shahed kamikaze drone, now powered by a jet engine rather than the previous piston-propeller arrangement. The Shahed-238 was also shown with new guidance systems, with radar and electro-optical/infrared guidance now apparently being offered in addition to earlier Shahed versions, which primarily employed a combination of inertial and GPS navigation to hit fixed targets. The Shahed-238 was displayed on the ground during an aerospace achievement exhibition organized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), at the Ashura Aerospace Science and Technology University, in Tehran, on November 19. The exhibition was attended by Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was shown a variety of different Iranian drones and missiles. A video showing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei visiting the Ashura Aerospace Science and Technology University, in Tehran, on November 19: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHmAkWmmZ50 The existence of the jet-powered drone was first revealed back in September. Developed on the basis of the Shahed-136 drone, which has been widely employed by Russia in Ukraine, three examples of the Shahed-238 were on display, representing the three different guidance options . One of these is thought to feature an anti-radiation seeker. Although this remains unconfirmed, a similar seeker is thought to be available for the Shahed-136. If correct, this version of the Shahed-238 would be intended to home in on hostile radio-frequency transmitters, especially air defense radars, allowing it to be used for the suppression/destruction of enemy air defenses (SEAD/DEAD) missions. An active radar seeker is also possible. This would be a major technological boost, but the actual capabilities of it are not clear. If this is indeed an active radar seeker, it could theoretically allow the drone to hit moving targets in all weather, although how it would initially find the right target after flying a significant distance from its launch to its target area is unknown. Some sort of autonomous target recognition would be needed. Perhaps this would be most valuable for anti-surface/anti-ship applications which eliminates some of these challenges. From left to right, versions of the Shahed-238 with (probable) radar, inertial/GPS, and electro-optical/infrared guidance modules. Iranian State Media The operating mode of the version with electro-optical/infrared guidance is unclear. Some reports suggest this uses a passive infrared sensor to autonomously home in on heat sources , while others describe a man-in-the-loop system, with an operator using video fromt the sensor to guide the missile to its target. This would also likely impose a range restriction, based on the need to maintain a link between the drone and operator throughout the engagement. It remains the case that we dont know for sure what kinds of guidance modes are actually used and to what degree they have been tested, let alone whether they are currently available. However, these guidance systems have already been fielded on other Iranian missiles and drones, so its clearly a possibility. Interestingly, a video shown as part of the exhibition in Tehran included footage of the test launch of a Shahed-238 from the roof of a moving pickup truck although its assumed that operational versions of the drone will be able to employ the same rocket-assisted takeoff as used by the Shahed-136. The drone shown in that video is fitted with a ball-like electro-optical sensor turret below the nose. This gimballed housing suggests the sensor here is intended primarily for surveillance and possibly combined strike missions. This additional payload would further decrease the range, but that would not be a major issue bearing in mind the man-in-the-loop guidance and sensor control necessary for this type of configuration. https://twitter.com/IranDefense/status/1723852937254879323 All three of the Shahed-238 drones were also finished in an unusual matte black color scheme. While this has led to some speculation that they may have had some kind of treatment with a radar-defeating coating or paint, it may simply reflect the fact that these kinds of drones are now mainly intended for nighttime attacks, as seen in the tweet embedded below. However, any kind of reduced radar signature would clearly make the Shahed-238 a tougher target for air defenses. Getting rid of the exposed internal combustion engine and prop (although wood/composite is typically used) will also lower the drone's radar cross-section, possibly significantly. Although, on the other hand, the jet exhaust will also contribute to a boosted infrared signature, especially when viewed from the rear aspect. https://twitter.com/Archer83Able/status/1724464172442726809 While no details were provided regarding the specification of the Shahed-238, the jet propulsion will ensure significantly higher speed and fast transit to target times, which is is a big factor when trying to go after more time sensitive targets. Although, the jet engine will also impact the range, unless additional fuel capacity has also been introduced. It will be interesting to see if the warhead size has been reduced to add more fuel, even if relatively small amounts. The basic Shahed-136 reportedly has a maximum range of 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) and a cruising speed of 180km/h (111mph), about the same speed as a Cessna 152. A Russian-operated Shahed-136 during one of the drones first combat employments in Kyiv, Ukraine, in October 2022. Photo by YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images The jet-powered Shahed-238 will also be more expensive than piston-engine versions. The low price point of these drones has always been an advantage. For example, a Shahed-136 about $20,000 a piece to make, The New York Times has stated. Meanwhile, a single AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) fired by one of Ukraines National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) that have shot down plenty of Shaheds costs roughly between $500,000 and $1 million . https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1602997512859779072 Even if the price of the Shahed-238 is hiked up, it will still be far cheaper than a cruise missile, and would also be affordable enough to allow mass attacks on its chosen targets. With earlier, propeller-driven versions of the Shahed having been widely used by Russia in Ukraine, the appearance of a new modification of the drone has led to comments from Ukrainian officials, including Yuriy Ignat, spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force. A view of the underside of a Russian-operated Shahed-136 clearly shows the pusher propeller at the rear. Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images Now there is news that Iran is producing a new Shahed with a jet engine, with different radar guidance, Ihnat said . There are different options It is painted in a matte black color, which can also complicate the work of visual detection. I dont know if Russia will receive them, but these countries have such experience. With Russia having stepped up its use of Shahed-136 drones in recent months, ahead of an expected onslaught against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, the potential availability of new versions of the drone could be very welcome for Moscow. At this time, its unclear what stage of development the Shahed-238 is at, not to mention whether Russia is actively pursuing its procurement. What is clear is that Russia has been refining the tactics it uses with its Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 (known in Russia as Geran-1 and Geran-2), as well as introducing improved versions of these. In September, we reported on how a new type of Shahed-136 drone was being used, featuring a warhead packed with tungsten balls, according to Ukrainian officials. This should produce a more destructive fragmented shrapnel effect. Fragments of an Iranian-made Shahed-136 (with the Russian name Geran-2 prominent displayed), shown during an exhibition in the center of Kyiv earlier this year. Photo by Aleksandr Gusev/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images As well as new warheads, improved versions of the Shahed have also been found to contain new engines, batteries, servomotors, and bodies, according to Capt. Andriy Rudyk, a representative of Ukraines Center for the Research of Trophy and Prospective Weapons and Military Equipment. At the same time, Russia has reportedly launched domestic production of Shahed drones . Unfortunately, Russia now has the opportunity to manufacture its own, Yuriy Ignat said, back in September, This is a new challenge against which we will respond. It is likely they will start attacking energy infrastructure again. At the same time, there remains a question about how much of the Russian-made Shahed drone actually comprises components from domestic production. In the past, Iranian-made Shahed drones had been found to contain certain Russian-made components, including guidance systems and batteries, suggesting that the country was gearing up for full-scale local production. In August, we published new details about a Russian plan to domestically build 6,000 Shahed-136 (Geran-2) drones by 2025. These were to be built in a facility 500 miles east of Moscow in the Tatarstan region. You can read more about that in our story here . https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/1724804137655902424 While this goal is very likely over-ambitious, theres no doubt that Russia is looking to increase the numbers and capabilities of Shahed-type drones in its service. Offering improved performance, at last in terms of speed, as well as different guidance options, the Shahed-238 would certainly be of extreme interest to Russia, based on its previous experience with drones of this kind in the Ukraine war. Russian dollars could be funding its rapid development, even. For Iran, too, as well as the various proxies that it has provided with kamikaze drones , across the Middle East, the Shahed-238 will likely also provide a boost in capabilities. In this theater, Shahed drones, as well as smaller Iranian delta-wing uncrewed aircraft designs, have made a significant mark, perhaps most notably in the infamous drone and missile strikes on oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia in 2019. https://twitter.com/KianSharifi/status/1384921308086128645 After all, while the Shahed-136 has a very impressively long range, in many cases, this isnt required to hit the targets chosen. A jet-powered version of the same drone would be much faster and more survivable. Already, the baseline Shahed drones have been a major headache for Ukrainian air defenses, proving tricky targets for ground-based systems and fighter aircraft alike. Much of the difficulty in countering the Shahed-131/136 comes from the fact that they are small and low-flying, as well as appearing in significant numbers, while the Shahed-238 would be a tricky target due to its combination of small size, black paint, and high speed. With Ukraine relying heavily on drone-hunting teams equipped with searchlights and rudimentary anti-aircraft guns, to defeat the Shahed threat, a faster kamikaze drone will be a far tougher proposition for these teams. https://twitter.com/PerEkstrom1/status/1726175957986517021?s=20 Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, lieutenant general Serhiy Nayev (R) takes part in an anti drone drill in Chernigiv region on November 11, 2023. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP) (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images) Even more advanced air defenses will be more challenged by much higher-performance Shaheds. Reduced reaction times would make taking them out tougher, especially when employed in large numbers and when part of layered attacks that can include both types of Shaheds, as well as cruise and ballistic missiles. At the same time, being available with different guidance options could make it harder to defeat the drones using non-kinetic means, like electronic jamming, in certain cases. https://www.twitter.com/RALee85/status/1665597057455779842?s=20 With Russia seemingly running low in terms of its conventional cruise missile arsenal, a more survivable Shahed would also help address that issue, at a fraction of the cost of a long-range missile. It remains to be seen if jet-powered Shaheds end up on the battlefield in Ukraine, but they clearly would be a troubling development for Ukraine's over-taxed air defenders to content with if they do. Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com U.S. officials believe that Iran is preparing to provide Russia with short-range ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 21. According to the officials who spoke with the journalists, Iran has already transferred drones, guided bombs, and artillery shells to Russia. Washington is now concerned that ballistic missiles could be next, after Iran displayed Ababil drones and Fateh-110 missiles to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during his visit to Tehran in September. Read also: The looming war with Iran A U.S. National Security Council official said that Iran is contemplating the provision of ballistic missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine. The report added that the Russian embassy in Washington and the Iranian delegation at the UN have not commented on the situation. Read also: Pentagon discloses expanded US air defense deployment to Middle East in response to escalating Iran threats The United States also believes that Iran is becoming an increasingly important partner to Russia but is also benefiting from the relationship. Sources say that Russia is helping Iran improve its satellite capabilities and is supplying the country with missiles, air defense systems, and military electronics. Read also: Iran unveils new jet-powered kamikaze drone Iranian officials have stated that Tehran wants to purchase Su-35 aircraft from Russia, but the supply has not yet occurred. Washington previously accused Iran of supplying Mohajer-6 and other drones to Russia. According to media reports, in exchange for the arms, Russia supplies Iran with cyber warfare technology, "captured Western weapons," and assists in developing Iran's missile program. 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 major Iranian-backed militant group in Iraq warned Wednesday it may strike additional U.S. targets after U.S. warplanes killed multiple militants in response to the first use of short-range ballistic missiles against U.S. forces at Al-Asad Air Base earlier this week. U.S. fighter jets struck a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and a Kataib Hezbollah command and control node near Al Anbar and Jurf al Saqr, south of Baghdad, on Tuesday, two defense officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide additional sensitive details of the attacks. There were Kataib Hezbollah personnel at both sites at the time of the strikes, but the officials said they could not yet confirm whether anyone there was killed. Militia officials in Iraq said the attack had killed eight Kataib Hezbollah members. The U.S. airstrikes followed an initial retaliatory strike by an AC-130 gunship that was in the air when the Iranian-backed militants fired two short-range ballistic missiles at Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq late Monday evening. The gunship was able to locate the origin of the missiles, and fired on several militants who had fled in a vehicle, killing several of them. Kataib Hezbollah in a statement meanwhile said it was considering expanding the scope of targets if the U.S. military continues with its strikes, adding that the attack will not go unpunished. The dangerous back-and-forth strikes have escalated since Iranian-backed militant groups under the umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria began striking U.S. facilities Oct. 17, the date that a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. The attacks have continued unabated since, with at least 66 rocket and missile attacks hitting U.S. facilities and wounding at least 62 service members. The Monday attack stood out in that it was the first time militants had used ballistic missiles, and the U.S. response inside Iraq was immediate. It was also noteworthy because the previous planned counterattacks by U.S. warplanes had focused on militant weapons caches and training centers in Syria, due to political sensitivities in Iraq. The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who rose to power through the backing of an Iran-backed political coalition, called the recent escalations a dangerous development, reflecting the delicate balance the government must strike between Iranian factions and U.S. military presence. In a statement, Sudanis office called the the U.S. attack a violation of the countrys sovereignty and of the U.S.-led coalitions mission to combat Islamic State militants on Iraqi soil, given that the attack was done without giving Iraq notice. Over the past month however, the Iraqi premier has also called for the authorities to pursue the attackers of U.S. bases in Iraq, as he tries to maintain a delicate balance in maintaining positive ties with both Washington and Tehran. On Tuesday evening, U.S. officials speaking on background said the U.S. is trying to communicate that it does not seek wider conflict, but that the Iran-backed attacks against American forces must stop and that the U.S. will take further action if needed. The U.S. has moved considerable assets to the region two carrier groups, multiple squadrons of warplanes and U.S. personnel to try and dissuade factions from turning the crisis between Israel and Hamas into a regional war. Its not the first time the U.S. has taken significant action against Kataib Hezbollah. Iin 2020 a series of Kaytusha rocket attacks by Kataib Hezbollah against Camp Taji in Iraq killed three service members two Americans and a British soldier and seriously wounded several others. In response the U.S. conducted two rounds of airstrikes taking out multiple weapons facilities. Kareem Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report from Baghdad. Nasser Jabbar: "We lost the land and we lost the water" (Asaad NIAZI) For the past decade, Nasser Jabbar and his children have lived in a rundown house built of grey concrete blocks at a shantytown in southern Iraq. Drought chased the father of 10 out of the countryside, where he had been a herder and farmer, and into a life of unemployment and urban poverty. "We lost the land and we lost the water," said the father in his 40s, wearing a traditional white robe. He spoke to AFP in his home on the edges of Nasiriyah, capital of Dhi Qar province. Jabbar's neighbourhood typifies the extreme poverty that those displaced by climate change face in south and central Iraq. With declining rainfall, the country has seen four consecutive years of drought. In the shantytown where he lives, cracked streets lined with rubble and piles of rubbish snake between houses thrown together by their inhabitants. On an empty lot surrounded by ramshackle buildings, sewers empty onto open ground as cows rest in the shadow of a low wall nearby. Like Jabbar, many of the displaced who live here abandoned their villages after a life working in agriculture. In the old days in Gateia, Jabbar's village in Dhi Qar, he farmed five hectares (just over 12 acres) of land with his brothers. In winter, they harvested barley; in summer, vegetables. Before leaving his fields behind for the last time, Jabbar did what he could for four years to combat the onward march of an increasingly inhospitable climate. - $4 a day income - He dug a well, but "little by little the water dropped", and he had to sell off his herd of 50 goats one by one. Once in the city, he found work on construction sites carrying bricks or mixing concrete, but had to stop in the end because of back problems. "I haven't worked for three years," he said. Now two of his children, aged 17 and 18, support the family by carrying goods to market, earning a little less than four dollars a day. Despite Iraq being an oil-rich country, poverty is common. In addition to drought, the authorities blame upstream dams built by Iraq's powerful neighbours Iran and Turkey for dramatically lowering water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which have irrigated Iraq for millennia. By mid-September, "21,798 families (130,788 individuals) remain displaced because of drought conditions across 12 governorates" in central and southern Iraq, an International Organization for Migration report said. According to the IOM, 74 percent of climate refugees resettle in urban areas. Dhi Qar's deputy governor in charge of planning, Ghassan al-Khafaji, noted "significant internal migration" in the province, sparked by water shortages. In five years "3,200 housing units were built on the outskirts of the city" of Nasiriyah, as a result of an exodus from Iraq's famed southern marshes which have been assailed by drought. Those houses account for "between 20,000 and 25,000 people", Khafaji added. - Risk of unrest - "This internal migration has put extra pressure on employment, with our young people already suffering from significant unemployment." Iraq has been wracked by decades of conflict, and corruption has eroded public administration. Urban centres are no better off than the countryside. Cities are "already confined in their ability to provide basic services to existing residents due to limited, ageing and underfunded infrastructure", Thomas Wilson, a climate and water specialist at the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP. "Trends in rural to urban movement put an additional burden on failing infrastructure," he said. He recommended "resource management plans, effective governance, and investment" in favour of the regions the displaced come from, in the framework of a "policy to reduce and mitigate forced migration". In a country of 43 million people, nearly one Iraqi in five lives in an area suffering from water shortages. In April, a UN-issued report noted the risk of "social unrest" because of climate factors. "Limited economic opportunities for young people in crowded urban areas further risk reinforcing feelings of marginalisation, exclusion, and injustice," the report said. "This could fuel tensions between different ethno-religious groups or increase grievances vis-a-vis state institutions," it added. Qassem Jabbar, Nasser's 47-year-old brother, joined him in Nasiriyah three years ago. "Since we left, I haven't been working", said Qassem, his waist strapped in a brace after he had a back operation he could only pay for with the help of donors. Of his own 10 children, only two go to school. How could he possibly cover school fees for them all? tgg/gde/srk/srm The Israeli government has approved a deal for the release of hostages captured by Hamas in exchange for a brief ceasefire in Gaza. The decision was announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office in a WhatsApp message early Wednesday, according to the New York Times. In exchange for a 4-day pause in the fighting, the agreement would see the release of at least 50 hostages held captive in Gaza, per a government statement. During this short period, Israel had agreed not to attack or arrest anyone in Gaza. This would mark the longest truce in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war since it began on Oct. 7. The Israeli government is committed to the return of all abductees home, the government said, per NYT. The statement continued: Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 abductees women and children will be released for 4 days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting. The release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite. Since Hamas deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Hamas and its allies in Gaza have seized about 240 hostages, and roughly 1,200 people have died, according to Israeli authorities. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli airstrikes and ground assaults on Gaza began, according to health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory, and nearly 1.7 million people have been displaced in Gaza since the conflict erupted, a UN agency stated. Prior to the Israeli Cabinet vote, Netanyahu vowed to continue the war after the temporary truce. We are at war, and we will continue the war, said Netanyahu. We will continue until we achieve all our goals. More from Rolling Stone Best of Rolling Stone Children walk past posters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas on a wall in Tel Aviv on Nov. 21, 2023. Credit - Ahmad GharabliAFP/Getty Images The first truce in the weekslong war between Israel and Gaza-based militant group Hamas has officially started, and a group of hostages are scheduled to begin being released in several hours. A spokesperson for the foreign ministry of Qatarwhich had been, along with Egypt and the U.S., mediating negotiations for weekssaid in a news conference Thursday that the ceasefire would begin at 7 a.m. local time, Friday, and at 4 p.m., a first batch of 13 yet-unidentified hostages held by Hamas will be freed. Humanitarian aid to Gaza will follow as soon as possible, the spokesperson added. Israel and Hamas came to an agreement earlier this week for the release of at least 50 women and children currently being held hostage by Hamas, in exchange for a brief pause in fighting and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners. The diplomatic breakthrough was approved by Israels Cabinet during a tense, six-hour late-night session, according to Israeli media, and announced late Tuesday by the foreign ministry of Qatar. While the deal was initially to take effect Thursday, a senior Israeli official told the Times of Israel that it was delayed because it still needed to be officially ratified. A statement by the Israeli government said that 50 hostages will be released over four days, during which there will be a lull in fighting, and that the release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite. Those hostages of the same families will be put together in the same batch, Dr. Majed al Ansari, the Qatari spokesperson, said on Thursday, explaining that hostages will be released every day within a specific window of time. A senior Israeli official told Haaretz that Hamas will release 30 children, eight mothers, and 12 other women, all of whom are Israeli. Additional foreign nationals may be released as well, the official said, pending negotiations with other countries. A U.S. senior administration official briefing the media earlier on Tuesday said that three Americans may be released, including two women and a child named Abigail who turns four this month. Today's deal will bring home more American hostages, U.S. President Joe Biden posted on X. According to an unnamed Egyptian source quoted in U.K.-based news site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, Hamas agreed in a side deal mediated by Iran to release 23 Thai hostages who were abducted on Oct. 7. (Tens of thousands of Thailand nationals work in Israel, many as fieldhands in areas near the border with Gaza). The Thai foreign ministry, however, declined to confirm such an agreement. Israel, in turn, will free 150 detained Palestinian women and children, according to a statement released on Telegram by Hamas. A list of 300 detained Palestinians, including more than 120 minors, who could be releasedmost charged with throwing stones and none of whom have been convicted of murder, according to the Wall Street Journalhas since been shared by the Israeli government, giving the Israeli public 24 hours to appeal to the Supreme Court against the release of any particular individual. According to the Jerusalem Post, after the initial group of 150 prisoners are released in exchange for the 50 hostages to be released by Hamas, an additional three Palestinians from the list will be released for every additional hostage Hamas releases. Hamas added that Israel agreed to stop air traffic over the south of the Gaza Strip for the four days of military pause, while air traffic in the north will be halted for six hours daily, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. As part of the deal, Axios reported, Israel will also allow around 300 aid trucks to enter Gaza daily from Egypt, including the delivery of fuel during the pause. Israel has until now largely objected to the entry of fuel into Gaza out of concern that Hamas may seize it for military use. Israeli forces will remain in Gaza throughout any pause, not engaging in combat but ready to act at any moment required, according to Channel 12. A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent later told Al Jazeera that they were told the fuel will not be allowed into hospitals, claiming it would be limited to use for water and sanitation networks. Humanitarian aid groups are calling for a broader end to hostilities, saying that pauses are insufficient to address the need in Gaza. The humanitarian pause agreed between armed groups in Gaza and Israel must pave the way for a lasting ceasefire, said the Norwegian Refugee Council, an independent organization that aids displaced people around the world. Neither hostages nor access to humanitarian relief should ever become bargaining chips in political or military negotiations. Hamas official Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera in an interview Wednesday that the militant organization seeks a permanent ceasefire and is ready for a comprehensive prisoner swap. Hamass initial statement announcing the deal, however, said: At a time when we announce the reach of the armistice agreement, we confirm that our hands will remain on the trigger, and our triumphant battalions will remain on the lookout to defend our people and defeat the occupation and aggression, promising to establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. And before the Tuesday night Israeli Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized in a speech that, while there will be a pause in fighting, this does not mean an end to the war. We will continue the war until we achieve all of our war aims: To eliminate Hamas, return all of our hostages and our missing, and ensure that there is no element in Gaza that threatens Israel, he said. We will not relent until we achieve the absolute victory. During Hamas Oct. 7 attack, more than 1,200 Israelis were killed and over 200 taken hostage. In the weeks since, Israels attacks on Gaza have killed more than 13,000 Palestinians, per the enclaves health ministry, in what U.N. experts have called a genocide in the making. Israel has faced division over what concessions should be made in order to secure the hostages release. Hamas freed four hostages in October: two Americans, mother-and-daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan, and two Israeli women, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz. While the Israeli government previously rejected international calls for a ceasefire, saying one would only be granted with the release of all hostages, relatives of hostages have advocated for an all for all deal in which all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, which are estimated to number in the thousands, would be released in exchange for all hostages captured on Oct. 7. With additional reporting by Solcyre Burga, Olivia-Anne Cleary, and Mallory Moench. Write to Simmone Shah at simmone.shah@time.com. (Bloomberg) -- Hamas agreed to free 50 hostages from Gaza in return for a four-day cease-fire with Israel and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners, a breakthrough in the conflict amid growing international pressure for the two sides to work toward a deal. Most Read from Bloomberg Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to say war will continue until Hamas is destroyed as an organization, but the accord will mark the first major lull in fighting since the conflict erupted just over six weeks ago when the Iran-backed group attacked Israel. Hamas said there would be a cessation of all military operations in Gaza during the four days. Israel will halt airstrikes throughout the Gaza Strip, and stop flying intelligence drones over the northern part of the territory, where most of its ground forces are, for six hours a day. Israel-Hamas Deal Hinged on Proof-of-Life Evidence, Qatar Sheikh More aid will move into Gaza from Egypt, which Palestinian officials and the United Nations say is needed to ease a humanitarian disaster. The pause, pushed for by the US and its allies, is expected to begin on Thursday morning, after the Israeli public has had an opportunity to appeal in the courts against the prisoners being released. Israels cabinet has already approved the deal and its not expected to be stalled by legal disputes. The hostage talks were mediated by Qatar, which hosts some of Hamass political leaders, as well as the US and Egypt. US President Joe Biden on Wednesday spoke with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, and expressed his appreciation for the Gulf countrys efforts. Biden also spoke with Egypts president and Netanyahu, who thanked the US leader for helping secure the deal. Qatar said the humanitarian pause could help stop the war and lead to a comprehensive and just peace process. On Tuesday, Biden said the White House would work to ensure the deal is carried through in its entirety, hinting at the complexity of the arrangement and the possibility of a breakdown. Financial markets showed little reaction to the agreement, which was flagged days ago. The Israeli shekel has recovered all of its heavy losses from the first three weeks of the war, while gold was steady. The war-risk premium for assets such as gold and oil has evaporated this month, largely because traders are optimistic the conflict will be mostly contained to Gaza and that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia based in Lebanon, will refrain from a major assault on Israel. Markets are focused on how long the fighting continues once it is resumed, and what will happen in Gaza, eventually, when fighting is over, said Ori Greenfeld, chief strategist at at Tel Aviv-based Psagot Investment House. Theyre also looking to understand whether more hostage deals happen. Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union, will initially free 50 women and children held in Gaza. In turn, Israel will release 150 women and Palestinians under the age of 19 from Israeli jails. US officials said three Americans would be among the hostages leaving Gaza. A second stage could see the halt in fighting extended by one day for the release of every 10 additional hostages, Netanyahus office said. The government has published a list of 300 Palestinians that could be freed overall, most of them people arrested since the war began on Oct. 7. On that day, Hamas raided southern Israeli communities from Gaza, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 240. Israel retaliated by bombarding Gaza and launched a ground offensive, which the territorys Hamas-run government says have killed more than 13,000 people. The developments come as international pressure grows on Israel to end its offensive in Gaza, much of which has been damaged by airstrikes. Hamas says thousands of people are missing or trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings. A Million Gazans Have Nowhere to Hide From Coming Israel Troops Fraught Talks On Wednesday, an Arab delegation headed by Saudi Arabias top diplomat, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, visited London after meetings in China and Russia earlier in the week. The group of foreign ministers is pushing for an end to the war and is next headed to Paris for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron. Jordans Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned that the longer Israel continues with what he and many Arab and Muslim states have described as a massacring of Palestinians, the greater the risk of a region-wide conflict and terror attacks against Western targets. Theres concern that if we get to a certain point theres no going back, he told reporters in London. Prince Faisal said he hoped the truce can be the basis for extended pauses and then transition to a cease-fire. Netanyahu struck a different tone at the start of a cabinet meeting early on Wednesday, when the breakthrough was announced. There is nonsense out there as if after the pause in fighting, we will stop the war, he said. We are at war and we will continue it until we achieve all the objectives. We will eliminate Hamas, return all the hostages and guarantee that there will be no element in Gaza that threatens Israel. Heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas continued on Wednesday in northern Gaza. The main thrust of Israels ground offensive is into Gaza City, the strips biggest urban area and which the military describes as Hamass center of gravity. Troops have taken control of part of the citys Al Shifa hospital and over the weekend showed videos they say prove Hamas exploited the facility, building a command center and tunnels underneath. In recent days Israel has said its turning its attention to the south of Gaza, signaling the possibility of sending troops there. Israel has urged civilians to evacuate to southern Gaza since the beginning of the war. Qatar said it will run an operations room that will be in constant contact with Israel, Hamas, the Red Cross and US officials to ensure all parts of the hostage deal are implemented. This could lead to de-escalation, said Steffen Hertog, an associate professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science. That said, four days of cease-fire are not a lot and given the composition of the current Israeli coalition with its extremist components, a more permanent arrangement might be harder to come by. --With assistance from Abeer Abu Omar, Jordan Fabian, Fadwa Hodali and Jennifer Jacobs. (Updates with Biden calls to Netanyahu and Qatari emir starting in 6th paragraph) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Leo Correa, Associated Press Israel began attacks on a hospital in northern Gaza Monday, killing at least 12 people. The strike marks the second time in the conflict that Israel has performed military operations on a hospital. The military forces said the attack was in response to gunfire on their troops that was coming from within the Indonesian Hospital, CNN reported. Israel also continues to occupy the Al-Shifa hospital complex, where Israeli intelligence says Hamas housed an underground command center. What we know about the Indonesian Hospital The Indonesian Hospital in the Gaza Strip was built using Indonesian funds and oversight. We urge all countries, especially those that have close relations with Israel, to use their influence and power to urge it to stop its atrocities, Retno Marsudi, Indonesian foreign minister, said in a statement, per The New York Times. The Indonesian government is still searching for information on three Indonesian volunteers who were inside the hospital during the attack. Heavy fighting has erupted around the hospital, with Israel performing a ground operation there, NBC News reported. Israeli forces also surrounded Jabalia, a refugee camp in the area. Terrorists were eliminated and infrastructure was destroyed, Israel Defense Forces wrote in a post on X, per NBC News. Israel said it was targeting Hamas underground shafts in the area. Indonesian President Joko Widodo told President Joe Biden during a Washington visit that the U.S. needs to do more to stop the atrocities in Gaza and said that a cease-fire is a must for the sake of humanity, per the Times. The most recent confirmed death toll from Gaza reports that at least 11,078 Palestinians have died in the war a number that was released on Nov. 10, The Associated Press reported. The Hamas-run Ministry of Health said that communication breakdowns and intensified ground invasions have made it more difficult to compile a comprehensive list. Israel lists its death toll at around 1,200 Israelis. There is growing optimism that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in return for the release of hostages will be announced. There are continuing indications that a temporary ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas may be announced soon. This comes as negations between Hamas, Israel and the U.S., brokered by Qatar and Egypt, press on. Editor's note: Latest updates on the now agreed to ceasefire deal can be read at the bottom of this post. Before a meeting with his war cabinet Tuesday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the airwaves, urging the Israeli government to back a deal to exchange some of the hostages held by Hamas for a pause to the fighting. Tonight we stand before a difficult decision, but it is the right decision, said Netanyahu in a televised address. All security organizations support it fully. The war has its stages, and the release of the hostages has its stages as well. But we wont rest until we achieve total victory, and until we bring everyone back. Any hostage deal wont mean the end of fighting, he added. The war will go on until Israel meets its objectives, which were eradicating Hamas, bringing all hostages back, and ensuring that in the day after Hamas, Gaza wont threaten Israel. https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1727063774488629747 Regardless of these stated conditions, the realization of any deal at all to pause the fighting and release hostages that have been in captivity for a month and a half does open the door to other potential negotiations. Earlier in the day, Ismail Haniya, the Qatar-based political leader of Hamas, said on Telegram that the group was close to reaching a truce agreement with Israel. Netanyahu later said he hoped to have good news about the hostages soon and convened a meeting of his war cabinet to discuss the captives. Qatar delivered a draft of the hostage deal to the Israelis early Tuesday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majid Al-Ansari told CNN . Several iterations of the deal, currently under negotiations, have emerged. Most reporting suggests that talks are centering on the release of 50 to 80 hostages, none them Israeli troops, in return about 150 Palestinian women and teenagers imprisoned by Israel and a pause in fighting for as long as five days. As the negotiations continue however, there's increasing tension within Israeli society about how to approach the issue. While hard line Israeli politicians oppose a ceasefire, some of the families of those held by Hamas and its affiliates held protests to urge the Israeli war cabinet to agree to a deal. https://twitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1727045069579096230 Israel's advance deeper into the tunnel system under al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City continued Tuesday. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) say they breached "the blast door from the terror tunnel underneath" the hospital. "Today we continued in exposing the Hamas subterranean [tunnel] route under the Shifa Hospital," IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in his evening address Tuesday . "We will continue to expose other hospitals in Gaza. Hamas terrorists systematically built a vast subterranean infrastructure, using patients and hospital staff as human shields. Human shields for terror. This is a war crime, is against international law, and we will continue to expose this to the world, in order to highlight this practice." The images released by the IDF do not show anything beyond the door and The War Zone cannot independently confirm where they were taken or exactly what they show. The IDF, as well as the White House and Pentagon , have repeatedly maintained Hamas is using hospitals in Gaza as military centers. Hamas and Palestinian health officials have vociferously denied that. https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1727029906473902148 The IDF set up a website listing the military items it claims it has recovered from Al-Shifa. https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1726963701541200103 IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told reserve troops today that their efforts inside Gaza have helped bring Hamas to the negation table to talk about releasing some of the 240 hostages it holds. "You are doing an outstanding job," Halevi told the troops. "Seriously, it is really impressive. You entered here with force. You dealt a swift blow to Hamas' Beit Hanoun battalion. The way ahead is still long. We must be determined to take this route and deliver maximum achievements, to dismantle Hamas militarily and governmentally, to establish improved security in the communities in the southern region, and to bring back the hostages. All these things work together. You should know that your work in the ground maneuver also creates better conditions for bringing back the hostages. It hurts Hamas, it creates pressure, and we will continue this pressure." https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1726994076174860482 The IDF said the 162nd Division, in collaboration with the Israeli Air Force (IAF) conducted operations in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza "to prepare the battlefield." "The attacks on terror targets included support from fighter jets and UAVs," the IDF said. "During the battle, the division struck three tunnel shafts in the area of Jabalia, in which terrorists were hiding." The 401st Brigade "engaged terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip, during which they killed terrorists and directed aircraft to attack from the air," the IDF said. "In addition, the forces located and destroyed rocket launchers." Combat squads of the 551st Brigade, in collaboration with special forces, "operated north of Jabalia in order to eliminate the terror targets in the area and clear a path for divisional forces and neutralized terrorist targets in the area. During the operation, troops killed dozens of terrorists with air support, captured enemy weapons in various locations, including private houses and childrens bedrooms, and located and destroyed tunnel shafts." https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1726858164962988521 The Magellan unit operates deep in enemy territory to find targets, the IDF says. https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1726933658739880236 Hamas said it has carried out a number of attacks on Israeli forces in Gaza, including ambushes in Juhor Al-Dik using several different kinds of rocket launchers and rockets. https://twitter.com/war_noir/status/1727024554927911010?s=12 Hamas also said it carried out more strikes against Tel Aviv in response for the ongoing bombardment of Gaza. https://twitter.com/Sarah_Hassan94/status/1727003115633930304 With the Israeli economy sputtering after a month and a half of war, the IDF is releasing thousands of reservists from duty who are not taking part in ground operations in Gaza. https://twitter.com/israelradar_com/status/1726911415141777624?s=12 Fighting along the Lebanese border continues. "Following a warning about the infiltration of hostile aircraft in the north of the country a short time ago, interceptors were launched at a number of suspicious aerial targets that crossed from Lebanese territory towards the Western Galilee area," the IDF said, adding that the incident ended without offering further details. IDF forces also "attacked an anti-tank launcher earlier today in the Lebanese border area. Also, the IDF is now attacking targets of the terrorist organization Hezbollah." https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1727013445563023668 The Hezbollah-linked Al Mayadeen media outlet said on Telegram that two of its reporters were killed by the IDF. "We strongly condemn the Nazi occupations targeting of Al-Mayadeen TV journalists, correspondent Farah Omar and photographer Rabih Al-Maamari, who were martyred in the treacherous Zionist bombing of southern Lebanon today...The policy of killing and targeting journalists will not succeed in concealing the truth of this Nazi occupation and its continuing crimes against children and women, and the war of extermination that it is committing around the clock under the cover of President Biden and his Zionist administration." The Committee to Protect Journalists said that as of Nov. 21, its investigations showed at least 53 journalists and media workers were among more than 14,000 killed since the war began on Oct. 7with more than 13,000 deaths in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank and 1,200 in Israel. The War Zone cannot independently verify casualty claims by either side. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Tuesday that she was aware of the reports about the killing of Omar and Me'mari. While she could not confirm the claim, the Pentagon condemns any attack on journalists covering this war or any others, she said. https://twitter.com/HindHassanNews/status/1726960356785049946 https://twitter.com/marcgarlasco/status/1726997680864579821 The IDF signaling that it may move its operations in Gaza further south is raising concerns about the safety of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live or fled there. Singh said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has repeatedly reminded his Israeli counterpart to do as much as possible to protect civilians. The Secretary just had another call with Minister Gallant today," she said. "And it's of course something that in all of our conversations - whenever we talk to our Israeli counterparts - abiding by the law of armed conflict, upholding those humanitarian laws, is extremely important." https://twitter.com/SecDef/status/1727069256448459242 Singh also said the Pentagon shares a White House assessment that Russias Wagner mercenary group may send air defense systems to Hezbollah. That, however, has not yet happened, she added. She did not specify what kind of system, but earlier this month we reported that it was the Pantsir-S1 , also known by NATO nomenclature as the SA-22 Greyhound. It is a system Russian forces used last year to fire at a U.S. Reaper drone flying over Syria. https://twitter.com/revishvilig/status/1727058940729671834 Singh could not comment on reports that France is preparing to send its Dixmude helicopter carrier to the eastern Mediterranean to offer medical assistance in Gaza. Most of the medical assistance that I know that we are really focused on is making sure that humanitarian aid is getting into the region, she said. We are continuing to see a steady flow of trucks being able to get life-saving support medical supplies, food and other assistance into Gaza. But I just don't have anything to announce from here today on anything that any of our ships would be doing." https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status/1727025607446565012 Singh would also not comment about whether the U.S. will stop flying surveillance missions over Gaza as part of any hostage release negotiations. https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1727057834632740882 Asked whether the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group's deployment to the region has been extended, Singh said "she remains on station. I have no announcements to make on her movement. When the Secretary feels that the Ford is ready to rotate out, we will certainly let you know, but at this moment, she remains on station in the Eastern Med." Despite ongoing ceasefire negotiations, tensions in the region remain high, with at least two Arab governments issuing strong statements condemning Israel. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called for a global export ban on arms to Israel and said Riyadh opposes any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, according to Haaretz . Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh said that Israel had ordered the evacuation of a Jordanian field hospital in Gaza, but that it would not heed the order, the publication reported. The PM also said Jordan's army was beefing up its presence along its border with Israel and that "the peace agreement [with Israel] is considered to be paper on a shelf gathering dust as long as Israel does not respect" its obligations. https://twitter.com/sameerhashmi/status/1727025147344003501 There is hope for dozens of premature babies transported out of Gaza hospitals imperiled by fighting between Israel and Hamas. https://twitter.com/palestinercs/status/1726915652513095983?s=12 This is a developing story. We will update it when there is more news to report about the Israel-Hamas war. Update: 8:23 PM Eastern Time - The U.S. carried out two additional airstrikes early Wednesday morning Iraq time in response to an attack Tuesday on the Al-Asad airbase that injured about eight U.S. troops, a U.S. military official told The War Zone. The strikes were on Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah operatives south of Baghdad in Anbar province, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. One strike was on an operations center and one was on a command and control node. The strikes were carried out with precision-guided munitions, but the official declined to say which aircraft delivered them, other than that they were crewed airframes. A battle damage assessment is still ongoing, said the official. There were Kataib Hezbollah personnel present, but it is unknown at the moment if there were any casualties, the official told us. The strike follows one carried out Tuesday by a U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider gunship, which you can read more about here . Update 9:35 PM Eastern - Israels cabinet has approved a deal for the release of hostages seized by Hamas in exchange for a pause in fighting in Gaza, according to CNN . The agreement would see the release of at least 50 hostages women and children in exchange for a four-day truce in Israels air and ground campaign, according to a government statement. And it held out the potential for an extension, saying that an extra day would be added for each additional 10 hostages available for release. The statement made no mention of the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, though it is understood this is also a key part of the deal. The deal could include Americans, a senior Biden administration official told reporters, including from The War Zone, Tuesday evening. Of 10 unaccounted for Americans, one is a 3-year-old girl named Abigail who turns 4 Nov. 24, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. There are also two women. All three could potentially be involved in the deal, which is set to take part in stages, the official said. It is unclear at the moment when the ceasefire will go into effect. "If we have a deal tonight, basically the implementation will begin about 24 hours or so from now, so probably about Thursday morning, Israel time," the official said. "So you will begin to see over the course of that 24 hours, the initial releases...You'll see the first first hostages come out over the course of Thursday." As far as where the hostages will be released, the official declined to offer specifics. "We do have various locations where the hostages will be brought out," said the official. Update: 12:02 AM EST Axios has more details on the deal, which they say includes: In the first phase of the two-phase deal, Hamas is expected to free at least 50 Israeli women and children held in Gaza, while Israel is expected to release about 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and children over the four-day pause. Israel will allow around 300 aid trucks per day to enter Gaza from Egypt. More fuel will also be allowed in during the pause in fighting, according to an Israeli official. In the second phase, Hamas could release dozens more women, children and elderly people. The Israeli government said it would extend the pause for every additional 10 hostages released. "The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension," Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The Israeli Cabinet approved the deal after more than five hours of discussions. Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com The News Israels cabinet signed off on a deal that would see about 50 hostages released by Hamas in exchange for a ceasefire that would last several days and the release of some imprisoned Palestinian women and children, according to Israeli news reports. We will not stop the war after the ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. There is nonsense out there suggesting that we will halt the war after the ceasefire to return the hostages. Families of the hostages held by Hamas have 24 hours to appeal to the Supreme Court before which the deal cannot be finalized, NBC News reports. Earlier Tuesday, a Hamas leader told Reuters that the two parties were nearing a truce agreement. Negotiations have centered on the arrangement of aid into the Gaza Strip, the length of a ceasefire, and the exchange of both Israeli and Palestinian prisoners. Know More Qatari officials previously said that the remaining details in the negotiations were minor, and U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, said Monday that the agreement was nearing. It is not expected that the truce will be indefinite. Netanyahu has previously vowed to not stop fighting until we bring our hostages home. Step Back Fighting has raged for weeks, and world leaders have called for a cessation in hostilities as civilian deaths rise. More than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its strikes on Gaza, the enclave's Hamas-run government has said, following the militant group's Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Israeli authorities say around 1,200 people were killed in Israel in that attack. The Israeli government and Hamas have agreed to a brief ceasefire in Gaza to allow for the release of 50 Israeli hostages seized during Hamas' deadly attack last month and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, said Qatar, which mediated negotiations, according to The New York Times. The beginning of the ceasefire will be announced within the next 24 hours, and the measure will last for at least four days, the Qatar government said, adding that the pause will also allow more civilian aid and fuel to enter the territory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced its approval of the truce in an early Wednesday WhatsApp message. The office said women and children would be among the hostages released and that the release of every 10 additional hostages will result in an additional day in the pause, emphasizing that the government is "committed to bringing all the hostages home." Hamas also announced that it had reached the deal "with the help and blessing of God" in a statement on Telegram. The group added that, while it had agreed to a truce, its fighters will remain readied and "on the lookout" to defend Palestinians and "defeat the occupation and aggression." American progressives who have demanded a ceasefire for several weeks welcomed the hostage agreement but said it's insufficient, especially if Israel resumes the bombardment after the pause ends as Netanyahu has indicated is the plan, Common Dreams reports. "A temporary pause in the violence is not enough," Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., said in a statement. "We must move with urgency to save as many lives as possible and achieve a permanent cease-fire agreement." Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., the lead sponsor of a House ceasefire resolution, and anti-Zionist advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace echoed Tlaib's sentiments. Families and friends of about 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring them home during a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Israels Cabinet was convening Tuesday to consider a possible deal for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a temporary halt to Israels military offensive in Gaza. Hamas captured the hostages in an Oct. 7 cross-border attack that killed at least 1,200 people and triggered an Israeli invasion of Gaza. | Ariel Schalit, Associated Press Israel and Hamas agreed to a hostage deal Wednesday local time. What we know about the deal: The agreement involves Hamas releasing 50 hostages who were taken Oct. 7, and requires Israel to release 150 Palestinian women and children who are currently being held in Israeli prisons, CBS News reported. Hamas said hostages would be released in a span of four days, and Israel agreed to cease fighting on those days. The deal will go into force Thursday local time, allowing 24 hours to be finalized. The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause, a statement from Hamas said, per CBS News. A pause in fighting will allow humanitarian aid to reach Gaza The pause will also allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs, Qatar, which is mediating the deal, said in a statement, per CNN. Israel made it known that it would just be a pause in fighting and would start back up its air and ground campaign to complete the eradication of Hamas once the four-day hostage release ends, per CNN. By pausing the conflict, it marks the longest break in fighting since the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas took close to 240 people hostage, a majority of them civilians. The Israeli government is committed to bringing all the hostages home, Israels government statement said, per The New York Times. Reports say that at least 200 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli prisons, a majority of them being teenage boys, according to the Times. Some were being held before the Oct. 7 attacks, and some were taken after Palestinian government believes around 700 people who are missing are currently being held in Israeli prisons. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a temporary cease-fire for humanitarian purposes that includes a hostage release deal, Fox News has confirmed. "The Israeli government is committed to the return of all hostages home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostages women and children will be released for 4 days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement. "The release of every ten additional hostages will result in an additional day of respite. The Israeli government, the IDF and the security forces will continue the war in order to return all the hostages, to complete the elimination of Hamas and to ensure that Gaza does not renew any threat to the State of Israel." The cease-fire was officially announced hours after Israeli and Hamas leaders said Tuesday that negotiations were in their final stages. Qatari negotiators helped broker the agreement, which would take effect at 10 a.m. local time 3 a.m. ET Thursday, according to Egypt's state-run Qahera TV channel. Under the deal, Israel's military has agreed to temporarily stop its pursuit of Hamas including its ground invasion of Gaza and its airstrikes for humanitarian purposes. Also, Hamas has agreed to release dozens of hostages in tandem with Israel agreeing to release Palestinian prisoners on a 3-to-1 ratio. Fox News Trey Yingst reported Hamas leaders would release one hostage for every three Palestinians that Israel releases from its prisons. LIVE UPDATES ON THE ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP Smoke, rising over the destroyed buildings following the Israeli attacks on Gaza's Beit Hanoun, is seen from Sderot, Israel on Nov. 21, 2023. Hamas, which governs Gaza, took about 240 hostages from Israel during its terror attack on Oct. 7, when it invaded Israel and killed approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The terror group said at the time that it took enough hostages, which included Israelis, Americans and other foreign nationals, to free all Palestinians in Israel. Hamas likewise officially approved the cease-fire, saying that it would release 50 women and children in exchange for 150 women and children held in Israel. It is not immediately clear which prisoners would be released. The initial hostages released will likely not include the entirety of women and children being held hostage. Even with a delicate deal finalized, the actual release of the hostages is expected to take at least 24 hours. The hostages would be released in groups of 10-12, Fox News' Jeff Paul reported Wednesday. "You'll see the first hostages come out over the course of Thursday," a senior administration official said, noting that the release could occur at multiple locations. STATE DEPARTMENT SAYS TRANSITION PERIOD MUST FOLLOW ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR In their statement confirming the cease-fire, Hamas praised the brutal Oct. 7 terror attack against civilians as "victorious resistance." "The terms of this agreement were formulated according to a vision that aims to serve our people and strengthen their steadfastness in the face of aggression, and always pay attention to their sacrifices, suffering and concerns," Hamas said in a statement Wednesday. "At the time when we announce the arrival of a truce agreement, we affirm that our victorious brigades and all our resistance factions will remain the protective shield and defender of our people until the occupation and aggression are defeated." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel needs to 'root out Hamas completely.' Netanyahu met with his war council Tuesday afternoon, then the security council and then his full cabinet before the agreement was announced. Ahead of the meetings, he said he hoped there would be "good news." Earlier Tuesday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Mark Regev, the senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, openly said a deal was close. After the deal was announced, Israeli forces continued to target Hamas with deadly airstrikes and ground operations inside Gaza ahead of the expected Thursday cease-fire. WATCH: IDF HAMMERS HAMAS TARGETS AFTER DEAL IS STRUCK: President Biden said he welcomes the cease-fire deal and that he is "extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented." An Israeli army battle tank moves at a position near a barbed wire fence along the border with the Gaza Strip and southern Israel on Wednesday, Nov. 8. Israel indicated that the temporary cease-fire is not an end to the war, and that their goal of eliminating Hamas remains. "Nothing says that the war ends after hostages are returned," Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told Fox News on Tuesday. "Hamas needs to be destroyed." Before the deal was struck, Conricus said that any cease-fire with Hamas, "based on our previous experience is always a dubious endeavor." "We have had soldiers taken hostage or being abducted in 2014 after a U.N. cease-fire was brokered. So we have to be very careful when it comes to anything that relates to operations on the ground with Hamas," he said. "Based on our experience with Hamas, I can only believe what I see and I can touch with my own hands." WATCH: IDF SPOKESPERSON SAYS WAR WILL CONTINUE AFTER HOSTAGES RETURNED: Around 240 hostages are being held by Hamas inside of the Gaza Strip. Qatari mediators were previously seeking a deal for Hamas to release 50 Israeli hostages, Reuters reported. Among those hostages would be three Americans, including Abigail Mor Idan. Approximately 10 Americans remain unaccounted for. Israel and Hamas have been at war since Hamas-led forces carried out the deadliest terror attack in Israel's history on Oct. 7, when it invaded Israel and killed approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The Gaza Health Ministry run by Hamas has said more than 12,700 Palestinians have been killed by Israel's military in their counteroffensive. Original article source: Israel, Hamas agree to temporary cease-fire, hostage release deal including freeing 3 Americans Israel and Hamas have agreed to a four-day truce in the war that has claimed thousands of lives and destroyed large parts of Gaza (MOHAMMED ABED) Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war. In the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the war, Palestinian militants will release during a four-day truce 50 women and children kidnapped during their October 7 raids. After weeks of Qatar-brokered negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved the truce accord Wednesday after a near-all-night meeting, in which he told ministers this was a "difficult decision but it's a right decision." The cabinet's sign-off was one of the last stumbling blocks after what one US official described as five "extremely excruciating" weeks of talks. Hamas released a statement welcoming the "humanitarian truce" and said it would also see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails. "The resistance is committed to the truce as long as the occupation honours it," a Hamas official told AFP. Hamas gunmen carried out on October 7 a cross-border attack, the worst in Israel's history, that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government. Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups also took an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage, among them elderly people and young children. Israel declared war on Hamas, vowing to bring the hostages home and to destroy the militant group. It launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which, according to the Hamas government in the territory, has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children. Israel said that to facilitate the hostage release it would initiate a four-day "pause" in its six-week-old air, land and sea assault of Gaza, while it stressed that the agreement did not spell the end of the war. For every 10 additional hostages released, there would be an extra day's "pause", the Israeli government said. - 'Brave souls' - Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group that took part in the October 7 attacks, had earlier told AFP the truce would include a ceasefire on the ground and a pause in Israeli air operations over southern Gaza. The negotiations have involved the US Central Intelligence Agency, Israel's overseas spy agency Mossad, Egyptian intelligence, and leaders in Doha, Cairo, Washington, Gaza and Israel. A senior US official said three Americans, including three-year-old Abigail Mor Idan, were among the 50 earmarked for staggered release from Thursday. US President Joe Biden said he was "extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls... will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented". Qatar's foreign ministry confirmed the deal, saying that "a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons" would be released in exchange for the hostages. "The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension," the ministry said. - Misgivings - Ahead of the Israeli cabinet vote, Netanyahu had faced criticism from within his right-wing coalition, some of whom thought the deal gave too much to the Palestinian militants. Hardline Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir signalled he would vote against the agreement, saying it should include the release of Israeli soldiers also taken by Hamas. But with dozens of families in Israel who are beyond desperate to have their loved ones returned home, and the Israeli public gripped by the hostages' fate, the government ultimately set aside any misgivings. Israel's hawkish Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said before the crunch meeting that he had won assurances that the deal would not spell the end of the war. "Immediately after we have exhausted this phase" he said, security operations would "continue in full force." In a statement, the Israeli government underscored that the truce agreement would not mean the end of the war in Gaza. Israel "will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza," the government statement said. - 'Unbearable situation' - Earlier, Gaza resident Hamza Abdel Razeq said he would welcome any ceasefire agreement, hoping it would bring some respite for people who have endured Israel's bombing and expanding ground offensive. "The people are really suffering," he told AFP. "I believe it will pave the way for longer truces or even a total ceasefire." A US official said there was also hope that the deal would lead to a "full pause" in fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border between Israel and Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran. Since the Israel-Hamas war began, the border has seen escalating exchanges of fire, killing scores on both sides. Another Gaza resident, Mahmud Abu Najm, said: "We... pray to God for its success because the people are enduring an unbearable situation." Large parts of Gaza have been flattened by thousands of air strikes, and the territory is under siege, with minimal food, water and fuel allowed in. Six weeks into the war, Israel has come under intense international pressure to implement a humanitarian ceasefire. But in recent days it has pressed its offensive into northern Gaza. The Israeli military said air strikes had hit "around 250" Hamas targets in the past day, destroying three underground shafts in the Jabalia area, which it said it had fully surrounded. At Jabalia's Indonesian Hospital, the Hamas-run health ministry said strikes had killed dozens, but there was no independent confirmation of the toll. The Israeli army said later its troops had "directly targeted" the source of fire from within the Indonesian Hospital. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said three doctors, including two it employed, were killed in an Israeli strike on the Al-Awda hospital in Jabalia refugee camp. Israel says Hamas uses medical facilities to hide fighters and as bases for operations, making them legitimate military objectives while insisting it does everything possible to limit harm to civilians. bur-arb/ser Israel has agreed to a deal with Hamas to secure the release of 50 women and children kidnapped by the terror group in exchange for a four-day ceasefire. Under the agreement, 150 Palestinian women and children will also be set free from prisons in Israel, and hundreds of trucks carrying fuel, food and medicine will be allowed into Gaza. Hamas is believed to be holding around 250 hostages, kidnapped when terrorists surged into Israel on 7 October, killing 1,200 people. Following weeks of intense negotiations mediated by Qatar, and under pressure from the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to urge his ministers to vote for the ceasefire. His office announced the breakthrough early on Wednesday after six-hours of intense debate between ministers in Tel Aviv. The Israeli government said in a statement that it was committed to the return of all abductees home. It added: Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 abductees women and children will be released for four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting. Israel also said it would extend the respite by an additional day for every 10 hostages freed. The deal, which was announced shortly before 1am UK time, cannot go into effect for at least 24 hours to give time for Israeli judges to review potential legal challenges to the prisoner release. That means the first hostages would not be released until Thursday morning at the earliest. Hopes child will be released by her birthday It is hoped that 30 children, eight mothers and 12 other women will be handed over by Hamas during the four-day pause in hostilities. Among those expected to be freed are three Americans, including American-Israeli hostage Abigail Edan, who turns four on Friday. Both her parents were murdered by Hamas during the October terror attack. Families have been campaigning for Israel to reach a deal to bring hostages home Abigail was in her fathers arms when he was shot by Hamas terrorists, who later snatched her and members of a neighbouring family, according to Abigails great aunt Liz Hirsh Naftali. Her older siblings witnessed the murder of their parents and only survived by hiding in a wardrobe. For our family, we have spent the last seven weeks...worrying, wondering, praying, hoping, Ms Naftali told CNN. The one thing that we all hold on to is that hope now that Abigail comes home, she comes home by Friday...her fourth birthday. We need to see Abigail come out and then we will be able to believe it. Abigail hid in a bomb shelter after her parents were killed but Hamas found her Reacting to the news that dozens of hostages including Americans could soon be coming home, the US President said he will not stop until they are all released. I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented, Joe Biden said. Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released. Hamas has to date released only four captives: US citizen Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie Raanan, and two elderly Israeli women, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz. Pause would allow aid workers into Gaza The truce deal will create a safe passage for humanitarian aid and supplies to enter Gaza, Hamas said. Israel had committed not to attack or arrest anyone in all parts of Gaza during the truce period, the terror group added. Ursula Von der Leyen, European Commission President, said Wednesday that Europe would do its utmost to use this pause for a humanitarian surge to Gaza. Thousands of civilians have been killed or injured in Gaza including this child who was hurt overnight - Getty A senior US administration official, meanwhile, said it was hoped Hamas would be encouraged to release all of the kidnapped women and children, with the deal structured to incentivise releases beyond 50. The official said: In terms of proof of life, we are confident that the 50 are there and will come out, and we believe there are others being held in this category [women and children]. He added that the pause in fighting would allow Hamas to collect the additional women and children it has been concealing since Oct 7 and the White House anticipates more would be released. Hamas never said we have this many [women and children] were only going to release 40 per cent, it is all [of them] and thats how it works, the official added. Qatar expressed hope on Wednesday morning that the deal secured overnight would lead to further agreements and a permanent ceasefire. But that was at odds with the sentiment of Mr Netanyahu who before the cabinet meeting vowed Israel would continue the war against Hamas after the pause in hostilities. The hostages return was a sacred and top goal, Mr Netanyahu said in a video message to ministers, but we will not stop until we have total victory. 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Original article source: Israel, Hamas reach hostage deal, Biden looks to tear down energy source and more top headlines Attacks by Yemens Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Israeli ships in the Red Sea have sparked fears that the Israel-Hamas war could still spiral across the Middle East even as the two sides agreed on a pause in the fighting. The U.S. is reportedly considering designating the Houthis as a terrorist organization following the attacks: Analysts say the Houthis raid mirrors Iranian military tactics, prompting fears of an escalation in the frequency of such strikes. So far, however, Gulf nations have voiced their desire to avoid the conflict metastasizing further. Iran told the U.S. last week that it wanted to avoid a broader conflict but it did not rule out the possibility if Israels bombardment of civilians continues. The White House National Security Council has said there are signs of collaboration between Russia and Iran against Israel. The Wagner Group a paramilitary arm of the Kremlin is preparing to provide air defense capabilities to Iran and Lebanons militant Hezbollah group, NSC spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday. Ties between Israel and Russia are at their lowest point in years, journalist Milan Czerny wrote for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The abrupt cooling in ties could quickly have unintended consequences, he says. Israel has already stopped giving advance warning to Moscow ahead of airstrikes it carries out in Syria, raising the risk of an inadvertent confrontation between the two powers. Leaders in the Middle East are closely watching the moves of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollahs leader. The militant group has an extensive arsenal which rivals that of some countries, Joe Buccino, a retired U.S. Army colonel, wrote in Al Arabiya. How Nasrallah behaves in the coming weeks and months could determine whether the conflict spirals further. While neither side wants an all-out war, a strategic miscalculation could lead to escalation, Buccino noted. The war has yet to expand beyond Israel and the Gaza Strip, and neighboring nations have so far exercised restraint. Any missteps, though, risk broadening the conflict, Veena Ali-Khan, a Yemen and Persian Gulf researcher, wrote for Al-Monitor. Gulf nations recognize the anger in their populations towards Israels treatment of Palestinian people, Ali-Khan said, and while Gulf States now condemn Israel ... for the past six years they have overlooked the Palestinian issue and pursued deals with Israel. That the war has not yet spilled over could be influencing Gulf nations decision-making: They now calculate that escalation may no longer be imminent, shaping their policies of non-intervention, Ali-Khan noted. Israel-Hamas war: Gaza hostages will not be released before Friday, says senior Israeli official Israels national security adviser said the release of hostages under a temporary truce agreement with Hamas will not happen before Friday. Negotiations for the release of our captives are progressing and continue all the time, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a statement released by the prime ministers office. The start of the release will proceed according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday, Hanegbi said. It is expected that at least 50 hostages will be freed by Hamas during a four-day ceasefire under a new deal with Israel, brokered by the Qatar and the United States. Dozens of children and their mothers held captive in Gaza since Hamass brutal incursion into Israel on 7 October will be freed via Egypt, according to the agreement. The deal can be expanded to include the release of 85 women and children in total, diplomatic sources told The Independent. Israel is willing to extend the much-needed humanitarian ceasefire by a day for every 10 additional hostages released by Hamas, sources said. The first release of hostages had been expected on Thursday, but late on Wednesday Israel said it had been delayed and would not happen until at least Friday. Key Points At least 50 hostages to be freed from Gaza during four-day ceasefire Israel could extend ceasefire by a day for release of every 10 hostages US and Qatar-brokered deal follows gut-wrenching talks Deal to free Palestinian children from Israeli prisons not yet finalised Hostage swap delayed by at least a day, says Israel More than 13,000 people have died in Gaza, officials say as they resume detailed count 10:29 , Tom Watling The director of the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza says it has resumed its detailed count of casualties from the Israel-Hamas war, and has documented more than 13,000 deaths.The Health Ministry had stopped updating its figures on 11 November after the breakdown of access and communication in northern Gaza, where Israeli ground troops are battling Palestinian militants.The latest count is based on updated figures from hospitals in the south and 11 November figures from the northern hospitals. The real toll is likely higher.The Health Ministry says another 6,000 people have been reported missing, and are feared buried under the rubble. Palestinians flee to the southern Gaza Strip, on the outskirts of Gaza City, during the ongoing Israeli bombardment (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press All rights reserved) Anxious families wait to see if loved ones will be among those freed 09:45 , Namita Singh Relatives of the Israeli hostages are worried about the fragility of the agreement, while others fear not everyone will come home, writes Kim Sengupta: Anxious families wait to see if loved ones are among 50 freed in Gaza hostage deal Gaza is worlds most dangerous place for children - Unicef 09:30 , Namita Singh The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, the head of the United Nations childrens agency Unicef says. Executive Director Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council that more than 5,300 Palestinian children had reportedly been killed since 7 October, when Palestinian militants of Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking hostages, most of them civilians. Israel has focused its retaliation against Hamas in Gaza, a territory of 2.3 million people. How Joe Biden and a secret cell of aides worked to arrange a Gaza ceasefire 09:15 , Namita Singh How Joe Biden and a secret cell of aides worked to arrange a Gaza ceasefire Children will be traumatised after capture, says psychologist 09:00 , Namita Singh Dozens of Israeli children held hostage by the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza for more than six weeks face a difficult return when they return home under a prisoner swap agreement, doctors and child psychology specialists said. At least 50 hostages, most of them children, are expected to be returned under a deal which includes a four-day pause in the fighting in Gaza and the return of around 150 Palestinian prisoners. They will probably show signs of post-trauma, which means that some of them will be very fidgety, very frightened, some may be very angry, said Dr Daphna Dollberg, clinical and developmental psychologist at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. Watch: IDF says Israel still at war despite suspension of hostilities for hostage release 08:45 , Namita Singh Lord Cameron in Israel following truce announcement with Israel 08:27 , Namita Singh Foreign secretary Lord Cameron is visiting Israel following the announcement of a truce in the war with Hamas. The former prime minister arrived in Israel amid uncertainty about when the pause in the fighting will begin. The agreement for a four-day ceasefire in Gaza appears to have hit a last-minute snag. (REUTERS) A senior Israeli official said it would not take effect before Friday, a day later than originally expected. The deal will see the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, with Palestinian prisoners expected to be freed by Tel Aviv. The lull in the fighting is also expected to clear the way for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza to ease the suffering of citizens who have been bombarded and besieged by Israel as it takes on Hamas in response to the 7 October atrocities. In pictures: David Cameron reaches Israel 08:18 , Namita Singh British foreign secretary David Cameron and Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen visit Kibbutz Beeri following the 7 October deadly attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas (Reuters) (Reuters) (Reuters) Israel-Hamas truce deal for hostage release hits last-minute snag 08:11 , Namita Singh An agreement for a four-day cease-fire in Gaza and the release of dozens of Hamas-held hostages and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel appeared to have hit a last-minute snag when a senior Israeli official said it would not take effect until Friday, a day later than originally announced. The diplomatic breakthrough promised some relief for the over 1.7 million Palestinians who have fled their homes under weeks of Israeli bombardment, as well as families in Israel fearful for the fate of their loved ones captured during Hamas 7 October attack that triggered the war. This picture taken from southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing after an Israeli strike as flares are also dropped over north Gaza on 22 November 2023 (AFP via Getty Images) Israels national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, announced the delay late on Wednesday, without providing a reason. Israeli media reported that some final details were still being worked out. The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, which played a key role in mediating with Hamas, said early Thursday that a new time for the agreement to go into force would be announced in the coming hours. It was originally set to begin today at 10am . The US and Egypt also helped negotiate the deal. Israel says attacked over 300 Hamas targets over the last day 07:02 , Namita Singh Israel said its forces carried out aerial strikes on over 300 Hamas targets over the past day. The claims could not be independently verified. In Israel, sirens warning of incoming rocket fire from Gaza blared in communities near the border with the enclave, the military said. There were no reports of damage or injuries. No let up in Israels attack on Gaza amid truce deal 07:02 , Namita Singh Israeli aircraft and artillery struck Gazas southern city of Khan Younis in at least two waves and 15 people were killed, reported Palestinian media. This comes amid efforts to broker a ceasefire deal to secure release of hostages and let in humanitarian aid. Smoke billows after an Israeli strike on Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on 23 November 2023 (AFP via Getty Images) Attacks were also reported in several other parts of Gaza, including the Jabalia and Nuseirat camps. Announcement on start of truce could come in few hours - Qatar 06:25 , Namita Singh An Egyptian security source said mediators had sought a start time of 10am today. Speaking in the morning, Qatars foreign ministry spokesperson Majid bin Mohammed Al Ansari said an announcement on the beginning of the truce could come in the next few hours. Qatar has been mediating in the negotiations on the truce. The negotiations on the release of our hostages are advancing and continuing constantly, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a statement released by the prime ministers office. The start of the release will take place according to the original agreement between the sides, and not before Friday, it said. Maryland hate crime commission member suspended for anti-Israel social media posts 05:40 , Namita Singh Marylands attorney general suspended a member of the states new commission aimed at addressing hate crimes this week after she posted on social media criticizing Israels actions in Gaza. Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a news release on Tuesday that his office recently learned about the personal social media posts of Zainab Chaudry, director of the Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Maryland Commission on Hate Crimes Response and Prevention is required to include a representative of CAIR along with other advocacy organizations. It was created by state lawmakers during the 2023 legislative session and began meeting last month. Mr Brown has the authority to appoint its members as chair of the commission. Report: Maryland hate crime commission member suspended for anti-Israel social media posts Humanitarians want more aid for Gaza, access to hostages under Israel-Hamas truce. And more time 05:26 , Namita Singh International aid groups say they are ready to deliver thousands of truckloads of food, water and other supplies to besieged Gaza if a temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war takes hold as hoped on Thursday. Some hailed an important first step, but many said on Wednesday that a four-day truce isnt enough to meet overwhelming needs after seven weeks of fighting have displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now living in miserable conditions. More here: Humanitarians want more aid for Gaza, access to hostages under Israel-Hamas truce. And more time What happens when the Gaza ceasefire ends? 04:57 , Namita Singh A four-day ceasefire in Gaza set to begin on Friday will allow for the release of 50 hostages, the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid, and a brief respite from the relentless bombardment of the densely populated territory for more than two million civilians. But what happens when it ends? The short answer is that the war will continue, and it may be even bloodier than before. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it bluntly on Wednesday during a live address about the hostage deal. The war continues, he said. We continue until we have achieved complete victory. More in this report: What happens when the Gaza ceasefire ends? Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad flees Gaza 04:56 , Namita Singh Plestia Alaqad, a Palestinian journalist whose dispatches from Gaza have provided a rare glimpse of the war to millions of social media followers around the world, has fled Gaza amid Israels ongoing bombardments and military siege. I traveled yesterday and this was literally one of the hardest decisions that I took, she wrote in the caption under an Instagram video on Wednesday. I hope this nightmare ends and Ill be back in Gaza soon. She made the decision to leave for the safety of her family, fearing that her reporting and role as a journalist could put her familys life in danger, she said. My colleague Alex Woodward has more: Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad flees Gaza: I hope this nightmare ends Optimistic that release will begin on Friday: White House 04:55 , Namita Singh The release of hostages under a temporary truce between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants will not happen before Friday, Israels national security adviser and the US said, dashing hopes of relatives that some would be freed on Thursday. Israel and Hamas agreed early on Wednesday to a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days, to let in humanitarian aid and free at least 50 hostages held by militants in the enclave in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. The starting time of the truce and release of hostages captured by Hamas during its 7 October attack on Israel has yet to be officially announced. An Egyptian security source said mediators had sought a start time of 10am on Thursday. White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson said final logistical details for the release were being worked out. That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning, Ms Watson said. Shadowy Hamas leader in Gaza is at top of Israels hit list after last months deadly attack 04:23 , Namita Singh The mastermind of the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the worst Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed in generations is a secretive figure, feared on both sides of the battle lines. Since Hamas fighters carried out the deadliest attack on Israel in decades, Israeli officials have vowed to crush the Palestinian militant group and its enigmatic leader in Gaza. Report: Shadowy Hamas leader in Gaza is at top of Israel's hit list after last month's deadly attack Anxious families wait to see who will be freed in Gaza hostage deal 04:22 , Namita Singh There is relief that moves are being made to bring those being held captive back, writes our World Affairs Editor Kim Sengupta. But some relatives are worried about the fragility of the agreement, while others fear not everyone will come home. Anxious families wait to see if loved ones are among 50 freed in Gaza hostage deal Israel unveils what it claims is a major militant hideout beneath Al Shifa Hospital 04:22 , Namita Singh Israeli military officials have shown a group of international journalists a small living quarters they found in a tunnel underneath Al Shifa Hospital, claiming that the space had been used by Hamas militants. Israel unveils what it claims is a major Hamas militant hideout beneath Gaza City's Shifa Hospital How the hostage deal came about 04:08 , Namita Singh The negotiations hardly ran smoothly. But in the end, persistence paid off. Six weeks ago, not long after Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took scores of others hostage in a surprise assault, the government of Qatar quietly reached out to the United States to discuss how to release those who had been taken captive by the militant group. But the mission demanded extreme sensitivity. It was so secret that US officials established a communications cell to reach Hamas directly, and kept those negotiations tightly guarded throughout the US government. Only a handful of people were aware of the talks, according to a senior White House official. For weeks through the cell, which allowed the small circle of negotiators to speak regularly without additional bureaucracy, US and Israeli officials would scramble to put together a deal that would release dozens of hostages held by Hamas. Report: How the hostage deal came about: Negotiations stumbled, but persistence finally won out Netanyahu vows Gaza war will continue after ceasefire 04:04 , Namita Singh Families of hostages, and Palestinians trapped in besieged Gaza wait anxiously for the start of a long-awaited truce and exchange of captives, in the first breakthrough in a bloody seven-week war. At least 50 women and children captured by militants are expected to be gradually released over a four-day period in exchange for a halt in fighting and the release of 150 Palestinian women and children jailed in Israel. Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid including fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza. Israeli diplomatic sources told The Independent the ceasefire could be extended by a day for every additional 10 or so additional hostages released. In exchange, there will also be more Palestinians released. Our chief international correspondent Bel Trew reports: Netanyahu vows Gaza war will continue after ceasefire as hostages face anxious wait NYC halal food truck vendor terrified by former Obama advisers racial abuse 03:57 , Namita Singh Mohamed Hussein told The Independent that Stuart Seldowitzs insults about his Islamic faith and threats against his family in Egypt were entirely unprovoked. Report: Food truck vendor says he is terrified over former Obama advisers racial abuse Susan Sarandon, Melissa Barrera dropped from Hollywood companies after comments on Israel-Hamas war 03:46 , Namita Singh Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Scream star Melissa Barrera were each dropped by Hollywood companies after making comments on the Israel-Hamas war that some deemed antisemitic. Spyglass Media Group, the production company behind the upcoming Scream VII, acknowledged Barreras exit from the horror franchise. The Mexican-born actress, who starred in In the Heights and the two recent Scream installments, had posted statements on Instagram Stories calling the war genocide and ethnic cleansing. Gaza, she wrote, is currently being treated like a concentration camp. An Israeli armoured vehicle heads towards the Gaza Strip on 22 November 2023 in Southern Israel (Getty Images) Spyglass said in a statement that its position is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech. Late on Wednesday, Barrera posted a statement on Instagram Stories about her firing. First and foremost I condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people, she wrote.I believe a group of people are NOT their leadership, and that no governing body should be above criticism, she added. I pray day and night for no more deaths, for no more violence, and for peaceful co-existence. I will continue to speak out for those that need it most and continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Ex-State Department official arrested for hate crime after confronting halal vendor 03:36 , Namita Singh New York police on Wednesday arrested a former US State Department official after he was captured on video calling an Egyptian halal street vendor a terrorist and saying the death of 4,000 Palestinian children wasnt enough. Stuart Seldowitz, 64, was arrested on charges of aggravated harassment, hate crime stalking, stalking causing fear, and stalking at a place of employment, police said in a statement. A 24-year-old male victim stated to police that an individual approached him at his work place multiple times and made anti-Islamic statements multiple times on different dates causing the victim to feel afraid and annoyed, police said. Video went viral earlier this month of multiple arguments over the Israeli-Hamas conflict between Mr Seldowitz, a former State Department employee, and the unidentified man working in a halal cart on a Manhattan sidewalk. The war that broke out on 7 October has prompted a surge in antisemitism and Islamophobia in the United States and fueled frequent street protests in support of both Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. Social media posts showed Seldowitz saying, If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasnt enough. It wasnt enough. Red Cross can visit hostages, says Netanyahu 03:27 , Namita Singh The Red Cross will be able to visit any remaining hostages in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said. We need to know they are alive, if theyre okay. Its the minimum, said Gilad Korngold, who drew just a measure of comfort from the deal between Israel and Hamas and was among those who was still awaiting word of relatives. Seven of his family members, including his 3-year-old granddaughter, were taken hostage. I want everybody back. But I think - and its a very tough decision - but I think the children and women must be (first). Theyre most fragile. You know, they need to get out. Smoke from Gaza City fills the sky in the distance as an Israeli tank heads towards the Gaza strip on 22 November 2023 in Southern Israel (Getty Images) Release delayed as truce agreement not signed by Hamas and Qatar 03:18 , Namita Singh There was a 24-hour delay because the agreement was not signed by Hamas and mediator Qatar, reported Israels public broadcaster Kan, citing an unidentified Israeli official. The official said they were optimistic the agreement would be carried out when it was signed. No one said there would be a release tomorrow except the media ... We had to make it clear that no release is planned before Friday, because of the uncertainty that hostages families are facing, Kan quoted a source in Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahus office as saying. In this photograph taken near the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, smoke rises over Beit Hanoun in Northern Gaza after an israeli air strike on 22 November 2023 in Sederot, Israel (Getty Images) Israeli media, citing anonymous officials, reported the pause in fighting with Hamas also would not start before Friday. Israels Ynet news website reported that Israel had not yet received the names of the hostages slated for release by Hamas. Since the Hamas attack on southern Israel that surprised the government and shocked Israelis, five hostages have been recovered alive. Israel says 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians and about 240 hostages of different nationalities taken hostage by Islamist gunmen. No Gaza hostage release before Friday, Israel says 03:02 , Namita Singh The release of hostages under a temporary truce between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants will not happen before Friday, Israels national security adviser said, thwarting hopes of relatives that some would be freed today. Israel and Hamas agreed early yesterday to a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days, to let in humanitarian aid and free at least 50 hostages held by militants in the enclave in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. The starting time of the truce and release of hostages captured by Hamas during its 7 October attack on Israel had yet to be officially announced. An Egyptian security source said mediators sought a start time of 10am today, but the Israeli official said negotiations over the fine details of the handover were still taking place and would take some time. US shoots down multiple drones launched from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen 02:56 , Namita Singh The United States shot down multiple one-way attack drones launched from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen on Thursday morning local time, US Central Command said on X. The drones were shot down while the US warship was on patrol in the Red Sea. The ship and crew sustained no damage or injury, the post said. Negotiations still going on, says Israeli security chief Wednesday 22 November 2023 22:20 , Jane Dalton The release of 50 hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza will not begin until Friday, according to Israels national security adviser. The release, which was part of a deal between Israel and Hamas that included a four-day ceasefire, had been expected to begin on Thursday. Negotiations for the release of our captives are progressing and continue all the time, the adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said in a statement released by the prime ministers office. The start of the release will proceed according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday, Mr Hanegbi added. At least 50 women and children who were captured by Hamas militants on 7 October are expected to be released in the coming days in exchange for a four-day pause in fighting and the release of 150 Palestinian women and children jailed in Israel. The deal represents the first diplomatic breakthrough since the beginning of the war. Aid groups ready to deliver thousands of trucks to Gaza Wednesday 22 November 2023 22:10 , Jane Dalton International aid groups say they are ready to deliver thousands of truckloads of food, water and other supplies to besieged Gaza if a temporary ceasefire takes hold as hoped on Thursday. Some hailed an important first step, but many said that a four-day truce wasnt enough to meet overwhelming needs after seven weeks of fighting have displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now living in miserable conditions. Key details of the accord remain unclear, including the mechanics of getting more aid to desperate civilians and escorting the first group of Israeli hostages out of Gaza where they have been held since Hamas rampage in Israel. Aid groups say a key ambition is to get help to northern Gaza. Hostage swap delayed by at least a day, says Israel Wednesday 22 November 2023 21:59 , Jane Dalton Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus national security adviser says a planned hostage-for-prisoner swap with Hamas has been delayed until at least Friday. Tzachi Hanegbi said contacts on the deal were continuing. The release will begin according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday, he said. Pope Francis meets with relatives of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners Wednesday 22 November 2023 19:00 , Tom Watling Pope Francis met separately Wednesday with relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israel and begged for peace and an end to what he called terrorism and the passions that are killing everyone. Francis spoke about the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians after his meetings, which were arranged before the Israeli-Hamas hostage deal and a temporary halt in fighting was announced. Francis didnt refer to the deal, which marked the biggest diplomatic breakthrough since the war erupted following Hamas Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel. Pope Francis meets with relatives of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners Gaza health officials say they lost the ability to count dead as Israeli offensive intensifies Wednesday 22 November 2023 18:00 , Tom Watling Palestinian health officials in Gaza said Tuesday that they have lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of parts of the enclaves health system and the difficulty of retrieving bodies from areas overrun by Israeli tanks and troops. The Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, which carefully tracked casualties over the first five weeks of war, gave its most recent death toll of 11,078 on Nov. 10. The United Nations humanitarian office, which cites the Health Ministry death toll in its regular reports, still refers to 11,078 as the last verified death toll from the war. Gaza health officials say they lost the ability to count dead as Israeli offensive intensifies Israel Supreme Court rejects appeals against Palestinian prisoner swap Wednesday 22 November 2023 17:02 , Tom Watling Israels Supreme Court has rejected appeals to the exchange of Palestinian prisoners for hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, it has just been announced. The rejection paves the way for the negotiations to go ahead for tomorrow. A temporary truce in Gaza is expected to begin at 10am tomorrow. Earlier today, the Israeli Ministry of Justice published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners from which at least 150 could be swapped for 50 hostages held by Hamas. Israeli citizens and officials had 24 hours to appeal against this, pursuant to standard law. It was not believed that any appeals would carry significant weight and the Supreme Court has now confirmed this. UN chief 'welcomes temporary truce agreed by Israel and Hamas Wednesday 22 November 2023 16:30 , Tom Watling The United Nations secretary general has welcomed the agreement to a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Antonio Guterres, in a statement on X, wrote: I welcome the agreement reached by Israel & Hamas. Its an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. The UN will mobilise all its capacities to support the implementation & maximise positive impact on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. I welcome the agreement reached by Israel & Hamas. Its an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. The @UN will mobilize all its capacities to support the implementation & maximize positive impact on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) November 22, 2023 UK's Cameron meets Arab, Islamic country counterparts to discuss Israel-Hamas conflict Wednesday 22 November 2023 16:00 , Tom Watling British foreign minister David Cameron met his counterparts from Arab and Islamic countries in London on Wednesday to discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict after the two sides agreed to ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days. We discussed how to use this step forward to think about the future and how we can build a peaceful future which provides security for Israel but also peace and stability for the Palestinian people, Cameron said in a statement. Foreign Ministers from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey, Indonesia and Nigeria, as well as the Secretary General of the League of Arab States and Ambassador of Qatar attended the meeting, Britain said. Lord David Cameron poses for a family photo with members of the Arab League (PA) Iranian foreign minister meets Hamas officials in Beirut Wednesday 22 November 2023 15:30 , Tom Watling The Iranian foreign minister has met with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials in Lebanon ahead of the temporary truce in Gaza, which comes into effect tomorrow. In a statement on X, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian wrote: Today in Beirut, in a meeting with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials, I was informed about the latest developments in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as more details of the humanitarian ceasefire and future scenarios. Undoubtedly, resistance cannot be removed. The killing of civilians, the human blockade and the forced displacement of Palestinians must be stopped. . . . pic.twitter.com/NaiN9p3XBJ H.Amirabdollahian (@Amirabdolahian) November 22, 2023 Israeli officials to visit Qatar later today ahead of hostage swap Wednesday 22 November 2023 15:00 , Tom Watling Head of the Israeli security service Dedi Barnea and Major General Nitzan Alon will visit Qatar today to finalize the final details of the agreement for the release of the abductees and the ceasefire, local reports have said. More than 50 from same family killed in north Gaza - Palestinian minister Wednesday 22 November 2023 14:39 , Tom Watling More than 50 members of the same family have been killed in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza during Israels military campaign there, the Palestinian foreign minister said on Wednesday. Only this morning, from the Qadoura family in Jabalia, 52 people have been wiped out completely, killed, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said on the sidelines of a briefing by Arab and Muslim foreign ministers in London. I have the list of the names, 52 of them, they were wiped out completely from grandfather to grandchildren. Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israeli strikes on houses in Jabliya (REUTERS/Fadi Alwhidi) Gary Lineker in new impartiality row after sharing post accusing Israel of textbook genocide Wednesday 22 November 2023 14:15 , Tom Watling Gary Lineker has sparked a new impartiality row after sharing an interview with an Israeli academic describing the situation in Gaza as textbook genocide. The Match of the Day presenter reposted a video of journalist Owen Jones speaking with Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, New Jersey. In the clip, Segal who has an established career discussing Israeli history told Jones the raids and violence taking place in Gaza was a clearly articulated case of genocide. Gary Lineker shares interview accusing Israel of textbook genocide Israeli sources confirm 6-hour window for hostage releases every day Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:54 , Tom Watling Israeli sources have reported that there will be a six-hour window each of the four days of the temporary truce, effective from tomorrow, in which hostages may be exchanged. Another Israel-Hamas prisoner swap will take place this month - Palestinian official Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:38 , Tom Watling The Israel-Hamas deal agreed on Wednesday for the freeing of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners will be repeated later this month, a Palestinian official told Reuters. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that would mean a total release of 100 of the around 240 people Hamas seized during its Oct. 7 killing spree in southern Israel. Hamas top advisor discusses details of temporary truce Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:09 , Tom Watling A top Hamas advisor has discussed additional details of the temporary truce agreed with Israel overnight. Taher al-Nono, adviser to the head of Hamass political bureau Ismail Haniyeh, said that eight of the 300 aid trucks that will enter Gaza each day of the truce will be fuel tankers. He added that the aid will also include basic equipment, clothing and medical equipment for all hospitals. It was suggested that the aid will continue beyond the days of the agreement but that remains unconfirmed. -, -': , 6 . , , pic.twitter.com/9ROFLhuqkN | Sapir Lipkin | (@sapirlipkin) November 22, 2023 Syrian air defences shoot down missiles over Damascus, state media claims Wednesday 22 November 2023 12:48 , Tom Watling Syrian state TV is reporting intercepted missiles over Damascus, fired from the direction of Israel. Rishi Sunak says he welcomes ceasefire in Gaza Wednesday 22 November 2023 12:45 , Tom Watling WHO chief joins chorus of voices calling for temporary truce to become permanent ceasefire Wednesday 22 November 2023 12:20 , Tom Watling The chief of the World Health Organisation has joined the chorus of Arab leaders and Palestinian groups calling for the temporary truce agreed between Israel and Hamas overnight to be turned into a permanent ceasefire. In a statement on X, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he welcomed the announcement from the early hours of this morning but that it was not enough to end the suffering of civilians. Efforts to free the remaining hostages must continue, and I reiterate that those still in captivity must receive any needed medical care, he said. We continue to call for all hostages to be released. We also continue to call for a ceasefire so that civilians in Gaza can receive sustained, safe and scaled up support for recovery. You can read his full statement below. We welcome the announcement of the Israel-Hamas agreement for 50 Israeli hostages to be released. My thoughts are with the families, some of whom my @WHO colleagues and I met with in recent weeks. We also welcome the 4-day pause in fighting that will allow more aid to be safely Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 22, 2023 Israel-Hamas cease-fire to start Thursday morning, according to Egyptian state media Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:55 , Tom Watling Egypt's state-run Qahera TV has said that the Israel-Hamas truce will take effect at 10 am local time (0800 GMT) tomorrow, adding weight to claims originally made by a senior Hamas official earlier this morning to the same effect. Egypt helped mediate the four-day cease-fire, which will facilitate the release of dozens of hostages captured by Hamas during its 7 October attack into southern Israel. The deal will also see the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and the entry of more humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israeli media has also reported that the truce will begin Thursday at 10 am. Ex-Obama official caught on video allegedly racially abusing Muslim man Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:42 , Tom Watling A former high-ranking official in the Obama administration has been caught on video allegedly racially abusing a Muslim food vendor in New York. The video was posted online and quickly ignited a firestorm among Democrats who quickly identified its subject as Stuart Seldowitz, a former member of Barack Obamas White House national security council (NSC) who also worked on Israel-Palestine policy for the State Department for several years. In the video, Mr Seldowitz is allegedly seen and heard making racist comments to the vendor, who tries to get him to leave him alone without further abuse, reported The Daily Beast. Ex-Obama official caught on video allegedly racially abusing Muslim man Family of girl among three American hostages to be released hope she will be home for fourth birthday Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:13 , Tom Watling A three-year-old girl is among three American hostages expected to be released in the landmark deal struck between Israel and Hamas, with the little girls family clinging onto hopes that she will be home for her fourth birthday on Friday. The Israeli government approved a truce agreement brokered by the US and Qatar on Wednesday for the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas in the 7 October attack on Israel which left 1,200 dead. Under the terms of the deal, 50 hostages many of them women and children will be freed by Hamas in exchange for a four-day pause in Israels air and ground campaign in Gaza. Arab ministers welcome truce but call for extended cessation of hostilities Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:10 , Tom Watling Arab foreign ministers welcomed an agreement for a temporary truce between Israel and Gaza militant group Hamas on Wednesday but said it should be extended and become a first step toward a full cessation of hostilities. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan said at a roundtable discussion with journalists in London that the agreement, which includes hostage releases and stepped-up aid into the devastated Gaza Strip, should also ultimately lead to a resumption of talks for a two-state solution. Earlier, The Independent reported that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank were issuing the same calls. The Arab foreign ministers are leading a so-called contact group of mostly Muslim countries which are lobbying Israels major allies to bring about an end to the Gaza war, which erupted on Oct. 7 when Hamas gunmen launched an attack on Israel, killing 1,200 civilians and Israeli soldiers. Saudi Arabias Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud attends a meeting hosted by Russia yesterday (POOL/AFP via Getty Images) Keir Starmer welcomes hostage agreement and humanitarian pause Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:03 , Tom Watling Keir Starmer has welcomed the agreement over hostages and a pause in the conflict. The Labour leader called for all remaining hostages to be released and for "all sides" to uphold this agreement. Sir Keir added: A substantial humanitarian pause is what Labour has been calling for alongside our international partners. We must now ensure this pause is used to tackle the urgent and unacceptable humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. There must be immediate access to aid, food, water, fuel and medicine to ensure hospitals function and lives are saved. Aid and fuel need to not just get in but be distributed widely and safely. We must also use the space this pause creates to take more steps on a path towards a full cessation of hostilities rather than an escalation of violence. It must start a process that ensures Israelis feel safe and secure from terror and that innocent Palestinians, who have endured far too much death and destruction, can return home and rebuild their lives free from bombardment and Hamas control. In recent years, the international community has treated the two-state solution as a slogan rather than a serious strategy. That must now change. Keir Starmer has welcomed the agreement over hostages and a pause in the conflict (EPA) Palestinian Authority leader welcomes truce but calls for permanent ceasefire Wednesday 22 November 2023 10:55 , Tom Watling The leader of the Palestinian Authority, who presides over parts of the West Bank, has said he welcomes the humanitarian truce brokered overnight but is still demanding a permanent end to the fighting. President Mahmoud Abbas, 87, is widely unpopular among Palestinians but US officials, including top diplomat Anthony Blinken, have met with him to discuss taking over in Gaza. President Abbas and the leadership welcome the humanitarian truce agreement, we appreciate the Qatari-Egyptian effort that has been made, and we renew the call for a comprehensive cessation of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, the introduction of humanitarian https://t.co/ZkNdouuaMJ Hussein AlSheikh (@HusseinSheikhpl) November 22, 2023 Watch live: Relatives of Israeli hostages hold press conference in Vatican following ceasefire deal Wednesday 22 November 2023 10:46 , Tom Watling Watch live as relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas hold a press conference after a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday 22 November. Live: Relatives of Israeli hostages hold press conference following ceasefire deal Hamas official says Gaza ceasefire to begin at 10am tomorrow Wednesday 22 November 2023 10:40 , Tom Watling A senior Hamas official has said that the temporary ceasefire agreed upon overnight will begin in Gaza at 10am local time tomorrow. Musa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera: The cease-fire in the Gaza Strip will begin tomorrow at 10am. Gaza is two hours ahead of London, meaning that the ceasefire will begin here at 8am. Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen told Army Radio that he expects to recover the first hostages from Gaza tomorrow under a foreign mediated deal. He declined to confirm a report that the process would begin at 5am. Who are the Palestinian prisoners to be swapped for Hamas hostages? Wednesday 22 November 2023 10:35 , Tom Watling Israel has released the names of 300 Palestinians prisoners being held across the country, ahead of an imminent swap for dozens of hostages taken by Hamas during their attack on 7 October that killed 1,200 people and saw 240 people taken captive into Gaza. The deal is the culmination of weeks of back-and-forth negotiations mediated by US and Qatari officials and will involve a four-day truce during which the hostages and prisoners will be released. You can read the full report here. Who are the Palestinian prisoners to be swapped for Hamas hostages? Hostage recovery to begin tomorrow Wednesday 22 November 2023 10:23 , Tom Watling The process of the recovery of Hamas hostages will begin tomorrow, the Israeli foreign ministry has announced. Cameron welcomes Israel-Hamas truce which paves way for hostage release Wednesday 22 November 2023 10:20 , Tom Watling Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said the truce between Israel and Hamas was a crucial step towards releasing hostages and providing humanitarian relief in Gaza. Hamas will release dozens of hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The Israeli government said the deal will see Hamas free 50 of the roughly 240 hostages held in the Gaza Strip over a four-day period. Cameron welcomes Israel-Hamas truce which paves way for hostage release IDF says hostage release is 'step forward' Wednesday 22 November 2023 10:05 , Tom Watling Russia welcomes Israel-Hamas ceasefire, says humanitarian pauses are only way forward Wednesday 22 November 2023 09:59 , Tom Watling Russia welcomed a ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict on Wednesday and said humanitarian pauses were the only way to make progress towards a settlement. This is the first good news from Gaza in a long time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Russia and most countries were calling for a truce and humanitarian pauses, because only on the basis of such pauses can the contours of future attempts at a sustainable settlement be built. Since the start of the conflict, President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasised the suffering of Palestinian citizens, called the crisis a failure of US policy and urged Israel to show restraint. Russia also angered Israel by hosting a Hamas delegation in Moscow last month. Western officials have accused Russia of employing double standards. They have suggested the Kremlins calls for Israel to stop bombing civilian areas in Gaza are undermined by its own constant targeting of civilian areas in Ukraine as part of its special military operation. Indeed, the United Nations Human Rights Office confirmed yesterday that the number of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian attacks has surpassed 10,000, though they added that the true total was likely significantly higher. Vladimir Putin has been accused of using the Gaza bombardment for his own political gain (POOL/AFP via Getty Images) Fifty hostages in Gaza to be freed as Israel and Hamas reach deal after weeks of fraught negotiations Wednesday 22 November 2023 09:45 , Tom Watling Fifty hostages, including dozens of children, will be released from captivity in Gaza after a deal was reached between Israel and Hamas marking a major breakthrough after weeks of fraught negotiations. Under the agreement, which was brokered by Qatar and the US, at least 50 Israeli civilians including the children and their mothers will be released via Egypt during a four-day pause in hostilities. The Independent understands that there will also be an exchange of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons but details were not yet finalised. Our Chief International Correspondent Bel Trew reports. Fifty hostages in Gaza to be freed in Israel and Hamas deal after weeks of talks Pope says conflict between Israel and Hamas has gone beyond war to 'terrorism' Wednesday 22 November 2023 09:24 , Tom Watling Pope Francis on Wednesday met separately with Israeli relatives of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians with family in Gaza and said the conflict had gone beyond war to become terrorism. Speaking in unscripted remarks at his Wednesday general audience in St. Peters Square shortly after the early morning meetings in his residence, Francis said he heard directly how both sides are suffering. Pope Francis on Wednesday met separately with Israeli relatives of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians with family in Gaza (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) Israel and Hezbollah exchange rocket fire over northern border Wednesday 22 November 2023 09:08 , Tom Watling Israel and Hezbollah appear to be exchanging fires across the northern border only hours after a temporary truce in Gaza was negotiated. Local reports have claimed in the last few minutes that sirens are sounding in the northern Israeli settlement of Kfar Rosh. Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed that warplanes attacked several terrorist targets of the Hezbollah terrorist organisation in Lebanese territory this morning. He also posted a video purporting to show the attack. Smoke rises from an Israeli army position which was hit by Hezbollah shells as it is seen from Rmeish, a Lebanese border village (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All right reserved) Iraq's Kataib Hezbollah militia says 5 killed by US strikes Wednesday 22 November 2023 09:00 , Tom Watling Iraqs Kataib Hezbollah militia said five of its members were killed in its stronghold of Jurf al-Sakhar, south of Baghdad, in U.S. strikes that Washington said were in response to attacks by Iran-aligned militias against its forces in the region. The U.S. carried out two series of strikes in Iraq on Tuesday and Wednesday, its first publicly reported responses on Iraqi territory to dozens of recent attacks and a sign of escalation in the regional conflict tied to the Israel-Hamas war. The attacks began on Oct. 17 and have been linked by Iraqi militia groups to U.S. support for Israel in its bombardment of Gaza following attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel. The strike by fighter aircraft targeted and destroyed a Kataib Hezbollah operations centre and a command and control node near Al Anbar and Jurf Al-Sakhar, a U.S. defence official said. An Iraqi military official said at least three members of Kataib Hezbollah had been killed and seven wounded in the overnight U.S. strikes. Kataib Hezbollah is part of Iraqs Popular Mobilisation Forces, a group of many mainly Shiite Muslim armed groups that was formed in 2014 to fight Islamic State and subsequently recognised as an official security agency by Iraqs government. On the morning of November 22 in Iraq, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) forces conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq. The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, including the pic.twitter.com/HySbSFNlp5 U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) November 22, 2023 Hezbollah leader meets with senior Hamas officials in Lebanon Wednesday 22 November 2023 08:57 , Tom Watling Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has met with senior Hamas officials in the Lebanese capital of Beirut amid confirmation of a temporary truce in Gaza, local reports have confirmed. Nasrallah met with Khalil al-Hiya and Osama Hamdan to discuss with them continuing coordination. They spoken beneath a portrait of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Senior Hamas officials speak with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah (R) in Beirut (Telegram) Ambulances arrive to evacuate final Al-Shifa hospital patients Wednesday 22 November 2023 08:49 , Tom Watling More than a dozen ambulances have arrived at the al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza this morning to evacuate some of the remaining patients. Israeli Defence Forces took control of the hospital last week after claiming that Hamas was running a command post underneath it. They have yet to show conclusive evidence of this. 14 PRCS ambulances accompanied by the UN & Doctors Without Borders arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital to evacuate the wounded and patients, a Palestine Red Crescent Society statement said on X. As of Monday, the United Nations said that just under 300 patients remained in al-Shifa hospital. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were either sheltering there or being treated prior to the evacuation notices handed down by Israeli forces in the past few weeks. It is the largest medical complex in Gaza. On Monday, the World Health Organisation said it had become a death zone. Israeli soldiers inside the al-Shifa hospital complex last week (via Reuters) Add-ons of the Hamas hostage deal Wednesday 22 November 2023 08:41 , Tom Watling A deal was agreed upon overnight for a four-day ceasefire in Gaza while roughly 50 hostages will be released from the enclave in exchange for roughly 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. But included in the deal are additional elements designed to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israel will allow roughly 300 aid trucks to enter Gaza per day, according to one report. This would amount to a significant increase; in the previous weeks, less than a dozen have been permitted to enter the enclave via the Egyptian Rafah crossing. More fuel will also be permitted into the enclave during the pause in fighting, according to one senior Israeli official, though it is unclear how much and to whom it will be given. Previously, any fuel supplies have been handed only to United Nations organisations for fear of Hamas using it for their own ends. Overcrowded hospitals in Gaza have said previously that the lack of fuel is preventing them from performing life-saving surgeries. A Jordanian humanitarian aid convoy enters the Gaza Strip from Egypt in Rafah (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) The Israeli governments decision to approve a hostage swap deal with Hamas, one that will result in a four-day pause in the fighting, has inevitably raised expectations that it could lead to a broader ceasefire in the Gaza conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally sanctioned the deal after coming under intense pressure from hardliners within his own Cabinet to reject it. They contend that the only surefire way of securing the release of the estimated 240 people taken captive during Hamass barbaric assault against Israel on October 7 is the complete destruction of the terror group. But the Israeli premier also had to contend with the views of the hostages families, who have demanded the Israeli government give priority to securing their release over the military imperative of destroying Hamas. Then there is the Biden administration, which has never enjoyed the easiest of relations with the Israeli premier. It had been lobbying hard for Israel to accept the deal, arguing that Netanyahu is losing the moral high ground in the conflict because of the high Palestinian death toll. In such circumstances, Netanyahu had little option but to accept the Qatar-sponsored agreement, even if his own view was that any cessation of Israels military offensive would simply allow Hamas to regroup. There has certainly been no indication from Hamas that the deal might lead it to end hostilities against Israel. On the contrary, a statement issued by the terror group shortly after confirmation of the agreement declared menacingly that our hands will remain on the trigger. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that, despite signing off on the arrangement, which will see 50 hostages held by Hamas released in return for 150 Palestinians detained by Israel being freed, the Israeli military has no intention of ending its military assault to destroy Hamas. For, despite the optimism that has been generated by the deal, with the pause in the fighting due to start today, the reality is that, far from being the precursor to a broader ceasefire, the agreement is unlikely to distract the Israeli government from achieving its declared goal of wiping Hamas from the face of the earth. Israels determination to press ahead with its mission to eliminate the threat the terrorist group poses to the countrys security is based on a number of factors, including the knowledge that, even after the first batch of hostages has been released, there will still be 190 or so who remain in captivity. Of these, some are being held by other Islamist groups, such as Islamic Jihad, that are not under Hamass direct control. Israeli commanders will also be well aware that Hamas, together with its Iranian backers, will be seeking to exploit the hostage crisis to maximum effect to undermine the effectiveness of Israels military assault. So long as the possibility exists of Israeli citizens being released, Netanyahu will face continued pressure to ease the military offensive to save innocent Israeli lives. That said, after the significant success the Israel Defence Forces has achieved during the past month, its commanders will be keen to maintain the momentum of their offensive. Having eliminated much of Hamass terrorist infrastructure in northern Gaza, which has so far resulted in the destruction of 400 tunnels, the Israelis will want to finish the job by neutralising the remainder of the Islamist groups underground network in southern Gaza. From Israels perspective, moreover, the notion that hostilities can be brought to end before the Hamas threat has been completely eliminated is wholly untenable. If a single Hamas rocket is fired against Israel once the military offensive has ended, it will be deemed to be a disaster. The other consideration that will be uppermost in the minds of many Israelis is the possibility that, with Hamas out of the equation, there could be a realistic prospect of reviving talks on the Palestinian issue. Prior to the October 7 attacks, the Biden administration was involved in an ambitious diplomatic initiative to persuade Saudi Arabia to normalise relations with Israel in return for the Saudis receiving security guarantees from Washington. It is unlikely that any such deal could be finalised without also addressing the plight of the Palestinians. While the Gaza crisis has put that initiative on hold, there is no reason why it cannot be returned to once Israels military offensive has ended, and Hamas is no longer in a position to sabotage peace efforts, as it has done so often in the past. One of the biggest obstacles to previous diplomatic efforts to break the impasse on the Palestinian question has been the inability of Palestinian negotiators to present a united front, with their attempts to reach an agreement constantly being undermined by Hamass nihilistic agenda. If Israel does prove successful in its quest to eradicate Hamas, then that could pave the way for the start of a fresh push to resolve the Palestinian issue once and for all. 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. By Ronen Zvulun GAZA (Reuters) - The Israeli army showed a reinforced tunnel beside Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Wednesday, complete with a bathroom, kitchen and an air conditioned meeting room that it said had served as a command post for Hamas fighters. The tunnel shaft, some two meters (6-1/2 feet) high, was accessed through an outdoor shaft in the hospital complex grounds, which were once crowded with tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians the army said had served as a human shield from war. "That's the way that they survive because they use the hospital as a human shield that protects them," said Colonel Elad Tsuri, commander of an Israeli armoured brigade that found the tunnel. "And here they can stay for a long time. There is a room with air conditioning inside." Israel has long accused Hamas of using the Shifa hospital complex as a command and control center as part of a wider strategy that seeks to hide its forces among the civilian population. Hamas and hospital officials have denied the accusation and the hospital site has been at the centre of accusations of war crimes on both sides, with Palestinians accusing Israel of targeting hospitals and Israel saying the sites were being used to shelter armed fighters. Journalists were driven in Israeli military vehicles to the hospital complex in the northern Gaza Strip past a landscape of buildings destroyed or vacated during Israel's nearly seven-week-old invasion of the Palestinian enclave. Graced with arches, the tunnel was a well-built structure lined with stone and concrete. Army escorts used flashlights to illuminate the way in the dark and showed a small kitchen, a bathroom equipped with a toilet and sink behind a closed door, as well as a room large enough for meetings with two metal beds. "We assume that there is another way out that they prepared. It's not open yet and we are sure that there are ways to the city from here," Tsuri said. He said the army knew the tunnel led to another opening in a Gaza kindergarten. Israel has faced international criticism for its Gaza campaign, including its attacks on Shifa, the enclave's largest hospital. Medical officials say Israel has killed around 13,000 people in the strip since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage. Outside on the ground, the army showed scores of guns, grenades and other explosives that military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said had been collected in recent days inside the hospital, a motor home and nearby cars. He said the body of one hostage, Noa Marciano, 19, had been recovered by the army outside a nearby medical clinic. Hamas earlier released a video saying she had died in an Israeli air strike. It was impossible to verify the claim. In Washington, the White House has said its independent intelligence supported Israel's claim that Hamas was using Gaza's hospitals, including Shifa, to hide command posts. Hamas responded at the time: "The White House and the Pentagon's adoption of the false (Israeli) narrative, claiming that the resistance is using Al Shifa medical complex for military purposes, was a green light for the occupation (Israel) to commit more massacres against civilians." But Hagari, referring to Hamas' use of a hideout beneath the hospital, said: "The world now should say what happened in Shifa, what happened in the hospitals, is a war crime." (Reporting by Ronen Zvulun; Writing by Howard Goller; Editing by James Mackenzie and Daniel Wallis) By Bassam Massoud and Emily Rose GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The release of hostages under a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas militants will not happen before Friday, Israel's national security adviser said on Wednesday night. Israel and Hamas agreed early on Wednesday to a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days, to let in aid and free at least 50 hostages held by militants in the Palestinian enclave in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. The starting time of the truce and release of hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel had yet to be officially announced. An Egyptian security source said mediators sought a start time of 10 a.m. on Thursday. Israel's public broadcaster Kan, citing an Israeli official, reported there was a 24-hour delay in the agreement because the deal was not signed by Hamas and mediator Qatar. The official said they were optimistic the agreement will be implemented when it is signed. "Negotiations for the release of our captives are progressing and continue all the time," Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a statement released by the prime minister's office. "The start of the release will proceed according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday," Hanegbi said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made no mention of a potential delay in implementation of the agreement during a press conference late on Wednesday. Hanegbi's statement was released about an hour after the press conference. The first truce in a near seven-week-old war, reached after mediation by Qatar, was hailed around the world as a sign of progress that could ease the suffering of civilians in Israel-besieged Gaza and bring more Israeli captives home. Arab ministers praised the agreement but said it should become a first step toward a full ceasefire. Israel said the ceasefire could be extended further if more hostages were freed, and a Palestinian source said as many as 100 hostages in total could be released by the end of the month. Hamas and allied groups captured around 240 hostages when Islamist gunmen rampaged through southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7. Previously, Hamas had released just four. Israel has subjected Hamas-ruled Gaza to a siege and relentless bombardment since the Oct. 7 attack, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, over 14,000 Gazans have been killed, around 40% of them children, according to medical officials in the territory. "It's not going to get all the hostages out, but it does get these first 50 or so, all women and children... We'll start to see them come start to get released over the next 24 hours or so," White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said. The United States also hoped that hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks would reach Gaza in the next few days, Kirby said. "Now, it's important that all aspects are fully implemented," U.S. President Joe Biden said in a comment on the deal on X. The Red Cross will be able to visit any remaining hostages in Gaza, Netanyahu said at Wednesday night's press conference. STAGGERED RELEASE OF HOSTAGES The 50 hostages would be released over four days at a rate of at least 10 daily, Netanyahu's office said in a statement on Tuesday night. The truce could be extended day by day as long as an additional 10 hostages were freed per day, it said. Israel's justice ministry published a list of 300 names of Palestinian prisoners who could be freed. Hamas said the initial 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children imprisoned in Israel. Hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel supplies would enter Gaza, while Israel would halt all air sorties over southern Gaza and maintain a daily six-hour daytime no-fly window in the north, the enclave's ruling Islamists said. Qatar's chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters the truce meant there would be "no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing". Arab foreign ministers, visiting Britain and France for talks on Wednesday, said the agreement should be extended. "Whatever humanitarian access now increases as a result of this hostage deal must remain in place and must be built upon," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said in London alongside his Jordanian and Egyptian counterparts. They are leading a so-called contact group of mostly Muslim countries that are lobbying Israel's major allies and the U.N. Security Council to bring about an end to the Gaza war and move towards a permanent solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. "That has to be a plan with an endgame, with timelines, with a mechanism for implementation, with guarantees, and the whole world has to be behind it and the U.S. will have to play a leading role," Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said. Both Israel and Hamas said the pause in hostilities would not halt their broader missions. "We are winning, and we will continue to fight until a complete victory," Netanyahu said at Wednesday night's press conference. Hamas said in its statement: "As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the look-out to defend our people and defeat the occupation." (Reporting by Reuters journalists in Gaza, James Mackenzie, Dan Williams, Emily Rose and Henriette Chacar in Jerusalem, Andrew Mills in Doha, Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay in Washington, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Peter Graff, Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Nick Macfie and Cynthia Osterman) Chairs with books and pictures of hostages held by Hamas are seen at Israel's newly opened National Library (Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD) Two Hebrew copies of Eric Hill's book "Where's Spot?" stand on tiny children's chairs at Israel's newly opened National Library, alongside pictures of three-year-old Israeli twins taken hostage by Hamas. An installation featuring one chair for each of the hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been installed in the central book well in the library's modernist new home, seven years in the building. On each chair is a hostage's portrait, along with a book that "reflects his personality, his hobbies, his connection to his family or occupation", said National Library of Israel director Oren Weinberg. Home to more than five million books and periodicals and thousands of rare texts, the new facility across from the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem, opened last month as the country fought a war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Millions of books in its collection have been stored in robotically managed subterranean stacks that plunge deep beneath the brightly illuminated book well at the building's core. The outbreak of war on October 7 scuppered a week of festivities planned for the inauguration, Weinberg said. "But this was maybe the least of our problems considering everything around us," he told AFP. Hamas's attacks killed at least 1,200 people in Israel, and around 240 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli officials. Israel's war against Hamas has killed more than 14,000 people in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. When sirens sounded in Jerusalem during the October 7 attacks, conservators rushed to the library to move a collection of rare manuscripts on display for the inauguration to vaults located five stories underground, said Rachel Neiman, a library spokeswoman. The library has also taken on digital documentation of the attacks, including survivor testimonies, images and videos, and interviews with families of the hostages, she said. "It's one thing to be able to collect the testimonies," she said. "It's another thing to be able to organise them and preserve them and have them ready for historians in the future." ibz/slb/dr Israel's government has approved a hostage deal a major diplomatic breakthrough amid the war. The outline includes the release of 50 hostages who are in Gaza and the release of 150 Palestinians held in Israel. The deal comes as Israeli forces continue their extensive ground operations in the Gaza Strip. Israel's cabinet approved a hostage release deal on Wednesday morning local time, a major diplomatic breakthrough that comes more than six weeks into the devastating war between the two sides. In a statement, Israel's government said it approved the outline of the first stage of an agreement that will see the release of 50 hostages who were abducted by Hamas during its October 7 terror attacks in exchange for a four-day ceasefire. The government added that the pause in fighting would extend one day for every 10 additional hostages released. Hamas said in a Telegram post that it agreed to the deal and that 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel would be released. "The Government of Israel, the IDF, and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas, and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza," the Israeli government said in a statement. Despite the tentative agreement, it remains unclear exactly when the hostage and prisoner exchange will be completed. NBC News reported the families of victims of people in Israeli jails will have 24 hours to appeal to Israel's Supreme Court to object to the deal. The groundbreaking development follows weeks of intense negotiations and high-level engagement involving Israel, the US, Qatar, and Egypt, a senior Biden administration official told reporters on Tuesday, adding that this first phase of the deal involves only the 50 women and children. On Wednesday morning, Qatar released a statement saying that the start time of the pause would be announced in the next 24 hours. The pause will "allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs," according to a statement from the Qatari foreign ministry. Hamas is believed to be holding around 240 hostages including Israelis, Americans, and other foreign nationals who were captured during the militant group's brutal rampage, which left over 1,200 people dead. The Israeli government has been under widespread domestic pressure to secure their release, while protests and demonstrations have sprouted in major cities around the world in a show of solidarity with the hostages and their families. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with soldiers as he visits an Israeli army base in Tze'elim, Israel November 7, 2023. Israeli Government Press Office/Haim Zach/Handout via REUTERS The US has provided Israel with both diplomatic support and aerial surveillance to help with its hostage recovery efforts. White House National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday that the Biden administration was working "hour by hour" and "doing everything we can" to secure their release. Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said that between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. local time he will convene the country's war cabinet, security cabinet, and government, in three separate meetings. The office said the announcement comes "in light of developments on the issue of the release of our hostages," indicating that a deal may be in reach. Four hostages have already been released from Gaza. Emi Palmor, who previously served as the director general of Israel's Ministry of Justice and has experience on a hostage negotiation team, said this could end up being the only deal that the country manages to reach with Hamas, and its also uncertain if the militant group will actually honor its agreements. "The government is trying to do its best," she told Business Insider. "The decisions are extremely difficult and it's a risk management because, I think that even without saying this, everyone understands that we are playing with the devil." An Israeli soldier rides in a tank amid the ongoing ground operation against Hamas in this handout image released November 20, 2023. Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS How a pause in the ongoing fighting which Israeli officials vow will continue until Hamas is ultimately destroyed will play out remains unclear. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is several weeks into its ground offensive and controls large swaths of territory in northern Gaza while its warplanes continue to bombard the coastal enclave, where over 12,000 people have been killed since the war began in early October. IDF Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told reserve soldiers on Tuesday that the ground operations in Gaza are creating "better conditions" for bringing back hostages. "It hurts Hamas, it creates pressure, and we will continue this pressure," he said. Both Israel and the US have previously rejected growing calls from the global community for a ceasefire, with the White House arguing that it benefits Hamas and gives the militant group time to regroup. The Biden administration has, however, managed to get the Israelis to agree to short pauses on a daily basis to allow for civilians to evacuate northern Gaza and facilitate the movement of humanitarian aid. The fighting, meanwhile, has not been limited to Gaza, and has drawn in other Iran-backed militants like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. US forces in Iraq and Syria have also been attacked dozens of times over the past month by groups that are supported by Tehran. Correction: November 22, 2023 An earlier version of this story misstated who has 24 hours to appeal the deal to Israel's Supreme Court. NBC News reported the families of victims of people in Israeli jails will have 24 hours to object to the deal, not the families of hostages. Read the original article on Business Insider FILE PHOTO: The Campidoglio is lit up in red to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women By Angelo Amante ROME (Reuters) -Italian lawmakers on Wednesday unanimously backed a raft of measures to clamp down on violence against women after the killing of a university student, and the arrest of her ex-boyfriend triggered a nationwide debate over the issue. The upper house Senate passed the bill proposed by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni by 157-to-0, a rare show of unity between the ruling parties and the opposition. The lower house Chamber had already granted it a first unanimous green light late last month. The new law expands protections for women at risk to prevent more serious violence and stem a wave of femicides which have sparked outrage across the country. "This law introduces measures that in many cases can make the difference between life and death," said Family Minister Eugenia Roccella. The murder in recent days of Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old student from a small town near Venice, has particularly shocked the nation due to the young age of the victim about to graduate this month. Her former partner, Filippo Turetta, has been arrested as a suspect. Turetta is being held in Germany where he was found by police on Saturday in a broken down car. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Wednesday that his extradition had already been agreed. The government also pledged to campaign in schools to promote respect for women and raise awareness on the issue of violence among pupils. "It is absolutely unacceptable that women have to endure harassment, humiliation and violence every day," School Minister Giuseppe Valditara told a news conference at the Senate while presenting the initiative. As of Nov. 19, 106 women have been killed this year in Italy, including 55 by their partner or former partner, interior ministry figures show. This compares with 109 women killed in the year-ago period, including 53 by a partner or ex-partner. (Reporting by Angelo Amante; Editing by Richard Chang) A Jan. 6 rioter who represented himself in his criminal trial and whose arguments an exasperated judge called bullshit and gobbledygook was found guilty by a jury on Tuesday of obstruction of an official proceeding, assaulting officers and civil disorder, and four misdemeanor charges. During pretrial proceedings last week, Taylor James Johnatakis declared that he would accept full liability and wanted to come to a resolution but repeatedly rejected plea deals to his charges. Judge Royce Lamberth said he could have reduced his sentence if he werent so hardheaded. NBC News reported that Johnatakis defended himself with sovereign citizens statements, which propose that government laws should not have any authority over individuals. I have repented all my sins, Johnatakis said. He asked Lamberth to discharge the case since there was no controversy. Johnatakis is one of the more than 1,200 people who have been charged for their role in the Capitol attack. Read it at NBC News Read more at The Daily Beast. BEIJING (Reuters) -The junior coalition partner of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has sent a delegation to Beijing to meet with China's top leadership team as Asia's two largest economies seek to improve strained ties. A Komeito party delegation led by the leader of the party Natsuo Yamaguchi on Wednesday met with Cai Qi, head of the powerful Secretariat of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee that oversees day-to-day affairs of the CPC. The ruling parties of both countries should "accurately grasp each other's development and strategic intentions," Chinese state media quoted Cai as telling the Japanese delegation. Both sides should work together to promote "positive" and "friendly" mutual understanding, added Cai, also the fifth-ranked member of the CPC's seven-person Politburo Standing Committee, the highest tier of political power in China helmed by President Xi Jinping. The visit came on the heels of rare face-to-face talks between Xi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, also LDP's leader, on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the United States last week during which both sides affirmed their strategic relationship. Bilateral ties have become strained after the neighbours clashed over issues from Japan's release of treated radioactive water into the ocean to maritime territorial claims, detention of Japanese citizens, Taiwan and export curbs. In a survey of Japanese firms with operations in China released on Tuesday, the number of companies planning to expand in the country fell below 30% for the first time in a reflection of the fraught ties. Wednesday's meeting also touched on the discharge of the radioactive water. Despite China's repeated protests, Japan started dumping water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in late August, swiftly prompting a Chinese ban on Japanese seafood imports and the postponement of Yamaguchi's visit. Yamaguchi's two-day visit this week, originally scheduled for end-August, is expected to set the stage for a resumption of dialogue between the LDP-Komeito coalition and the CPC, after both sides broke off talks in 2018. (Reporting by Ryan Woo; editing by Jason Neely, Alexandra Hudson) YAOUNDE, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least three civilians were killed after Boko Haram raided two communities in Cameroon's Far North region, security and local sources said Wednesday. Militants of the terror group ambushed two motorcyclists who were riding along a dusty road in the Djourou locality of the region Tuesday, killing them before absconding with their motorcycles, a security source familiar with the attack said. Overnight into Wednesday, the militants then went further to shoot a middle-aged man along the same road, the source said. Cameroon has increased security in the region as the end-of-year festivities approach, resulting in the killing of at least 10 Boko Haram militants and the capture of several others in the last two weeks, according to security sources. The terror group has killed about 12 civilians and two soldiers since the start of November, the sources said. WSHINGTON, D.C. (WAVY) After congress passed a resolution to keep the government funded, Congresswoman Jen Kiggans released a statement. The statement follows the passing of H.R. 6363, the continuing Appropriating and Other Extensions Act, being signed into law. Congress worked together to pass a continuing resolution, and keep our government funded, Kiggans said. Stopgap bills like this are far from ideal, especially for our defense industrial base which needs stability when it comes to funding, but I voted in favor of it to avoid a government shutdown. Kiggans said a government shutdown would threaten national security, and interrupt critical services for working families. With SEAL teams, two carrier strike groups deployed and struggling families, Hampton Roads could not afford a shutdown, Kiggans said. By passing this continuing resolution, we are able to focus on getting our remaining fiscally conservative appropriations bills across the finish line, Kiggans said. I remain committed, now more than ever, to finding a path forward to reduce spending, secure our borders and truly tackle the problems plaguing the American people. I came to Congress to fight for the people of Southeast Virginia. That will never change. Keep up to date with the latest news on WAVY.com. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WAVY.com. As chancellor, Jeremy Hunt is the government's chief financial minister and is responsible for controlling how the nation's money is spent. In his second Autumn Statement in the role on Wednesday, he will set out the government's spending plans in one of the last big economic events before the next general election. It could be a critical juncture for the British economy, after a period of soaring living costs, anaemic growth and high tax levels. Mr Hunt took over at a daunting time for the UK economy, after former Prime Minister Liz Truss's mini-budget caused turmoil. Now Mr Hunt wants to put the economy on a path to higher economic growth and appease Tory MPs who have been calling for tax cuts. After years of economic and political turbulence, it's a tall order for Mr Hunt, who is running out of time to get the UK's flatlining economy moving before the next election. Jeremy Hunt: The basics Age: 55 Childhood: Grew up in Godalming, Surrey Education: Oxford University, obtaining a First in philosophy, politics and economics Family: Married to Lucia Hunt, three children Parliamentary constituency: South West Surrey The chancellor is a big name in the Conservative party - and has twice unsuccessfully tried to become the party leader. In the Tory leadership race last year, he put his weight behind Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over Ms Truss. This was after getting eliminated from the contest himself early on, having failed to get enough votes to go any further. He had stood for the top job before - and in 2019 he nearly made it, finishing second in the leadership race with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson named as the winner. Mr Hunt was brought up in the Surrey town of Godalming and attended Charterhouse School, where he became head boy and was known for his love of cross-country running. At Oxford University, he served as president of the Conservative Association. But prior to his career in politics, Mr Hunt had a career as an English teacher in Japan and as an entrepreneur - co-founding the Hotcourses education publisher. When the business was sold in 2017, he netted a reported 14m, making him one of the UK's richest politicians. Mr Hunt said he would use the money to fund campaigns after he leaves politics. Mr Hunt was first elected to parliament at the 2005 general election, taking over from Virginia Bottomley as the MP for South West Surrey. From 2005 to 2007 he was the shadow minister for disabled people as a reward for supporting David Cameron - who attended Oxford University at the same time as him - in the Conservative leadership contest. Then when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government was formed in 2010, Mr Hunt joined the cabinet as secretary of state for culture, Olympics, media and sport. It was an important role in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics, during which he worked closely with Mr Johnson, who was Mayor of London at the time. Earlier in 2012, he faced calls to resign over his role in the BSkyB takeover bid. The then-Labour leader Ed Miliband said Mr Hunt should quit over his contacts with Rupert Murdoch's media empire while he was considering the bid, which was later withdrawn. But he survived the row and in September 2012, was appointed heath secretary. He held office during a slow period of investment in the NHS which created big problems, amid times when demands on the health service were growing. Junior doctors took to picket lines in 2016 over pay and conditions He also faced criticism over his handling of plans to introduce new contracts for junior doctors. The medics took part in a series of walk outs in 2016 - on two occasions, between 08:00 and 17:00, leaving emergency care uncovered - the first time that had ever happened in the history of the NHS. A new contract for junior doctors was later imposed. But Mr Hunt did go on to secure a funding increase for the NHS and also oversaw the introduction of an Ofsted-style system for rating hospitals and GP surgeries in England. During the 2016 EU referendum, Mr Hunt was a remain campaigner, but afterwards said he would support leave. His long-running appointment as health secretary ended when he became foreign secretary in July 2018. This was after his predecessor Mr Johnson quit over former Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit strategy. During his time as foreign secretary between 2018-19 Mr Hunt tried to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who had been held in Iran on spying charges, which she always denied. After her release, he accused the UK of "diplomatic failure" and said global co-operation was needed to "stamp out" states taking people hostage. This embedded content is not available in your region. In March 2019, he became the first Western foreign minister to visit Yemen since conflict there began. After losing to Mr Johnson in the 2019 leadership race, Mr Hunt said the campaign was "always going to be uphill" for him because he voted Remain in the 2016 EU referendum. He was elected to head a committee of MPs which scrutinises the performance of the NHS and government health policy in January 2020, saying he was "honoured". Last year, he revealed he had had cancer but had now recovered. He said at the time that "every member of his family" has had the disease and that he had "a minor one" himself. Recently Mr Hunt made headlines appearing at an infected-blood inquiry where he called the scandal a "huge failing of democracy". A nun leaves the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalems Old City on November 21 (Kenzo TRIBOUILLARD) Devoid of visitors, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City is haunted by an unusual quiet. The holiest place in Christianity has been emptied of its normal throngs of visitors by the war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip. Briton Noel Gomez, a Catholic, organises Christian pilgrimages and stood where the faithful say Jesus Christ was crucified, interred and resurrected. It was practically empty. "I'm shocked to see this," he told AFP. "I thought maybe at least 50 or 100 people here. It's only me and you here now." At the beginning of November he was supposed to accompany a 60-strong group to the church. But since the October 7 attacks on Israel such tours have been cancelled. Under normal circumstances, there would be snaking queues of people wanting to visit the final Stages of the Cross in the church in annexed east Jerusalem. It usually takes "one and a half to two hours in the queue" for the final station, the marble Edicule, the presumed tomb of Christ, said Gomez, 50. The October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, the Israeli authorities say. It was unprecedented in violence and scale. In response, Israel vowed to eradicate Hamas and has relentlessly bombarded Gaza ever since, killing more than 14,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas government. - 'It's empty' - "It's like the feeling of Covid again. Very sad," said Israeli tour guide Naomi Miller, visiting the site by herself. "One of the holiest sites in the world to Christians. And it's empty." Coptic priest Kyrillos Alorshalemy, 41, said he appreciated the quiet so he could pray and meditate. In normal times, he said he would have to stand for hours because people "ask priests to pray for them -- 10, 20 people every day". The lack of crowds means "it is easier to park and get pictures", said a 43-year-old smiling woman who asked not to be identified. She prays on behalf of paying customers unable to do so in person. Their prayers were printed out, and she photographed them before the Stone of Unction, the rock slab where tradition says the body of Jesus was prepared for burial. Franciscan Sister Maria Celina Mendoza said she had mixed feelings. She arrived in September for a three-month stay, but spent almost a month "locked up" in a pilgrims' house in the Holy City after October 7. Returning at the beginning of November, she felt "great emotion at being able to enter alone" the tiny sanctuary, with "no one telling you to leave". - 'Really sad' - The 69-year-old Mexican nun, a missionary in Angola, added: "On the other hand, the fact that all these people... have left makes me really sad." With no pilgrims or tourists, residents now have "easy access, let's say, that we don't have all the time", said a Palestinian Greek Orthodox woman, 39, who preferred not to give her name. But "the reason behind it is so sad", she said. "This is the first time that I'm able to come back, to get the chance to pray and maybe light a candle and pray for peace." Much of the current activity around the holy building is linked to restoration work begun at the start of last year. Franciscan Father Stephane Milovitch, director of the Cultural Heritage Office for the Custodia Terrae Sanctae in Jerusalem, said work to restore the basilica's pavement, and some archaeological excavation, has "begun again" with the return of some Palestinian workers. The 57-year-old Frenchman said he had also noted the return of some "Filipino, Indian and some South American" immigrants. "The Church of the Holy Sepulchre reunites Christians separated elsewhere" as it is administered by the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox communities, and frequented by the Coptic and Syrian Orthodox churches, he said. And with no crowding, the current "catastrophe" at least offers "time to meditate and bear in our prayers the suffering of one and all". pyv/dla/srm/slb/dv SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) A San Francisco Jewish-owned ice cream shop that closed last month after being vandalized has reopened, according to State Sen. Scott Weiner. Smitten Ice Cream, which is located in SFs Mission District, was vandalized and graffitied in October. The shops front windows were shattered, and it was defaced with graffiti that read FREE PALESTIEN, with an apparent misspelling of Palestine. Ex-San Jose PD officer who allegedly masturbated at crime scene arrested The graffiti suggests that the shop was targeted because I am Jewish, wrote Smitten owner Robyn Sue Fisher in an Instagram post at the time. On Tuesday, Sen. Weiner posted a photo of himself and Fisher cutting a red ribbon to reopen the shop on X, formerly known as Twitter. Today we celebrated the reopening of Smitten, a Jewish-owned business in the Mission that was vandalized, including graffiti relating to the war in Israel/Gaza, Weiner wrote. Well never let hate prevail in San Francisco. Im proud of the Smitten team and the community that rallied against hate. At the time of the initial incident, Smitten owner Fisher said the incident was being investigated as a hate crime. KRON4 reached out to the San Francisco Police Department to confirm this but was unable to independently verify it. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4. Universities have been at the forefront of the spike in antisemitism in the U.S., with strategies to combat the issue that so far leave much to be desired by Jewish students. Colleges have had mixed approaches to combatting antisemitism in the wake of last months deadly Hamas terror attack on Israel and the subsequent military response, with campuses taking actions ranging from the release of statements to designated police protection in certain cases. Cornell University made headlines after a student allegedly made threats online to bring a gun to school to shoot up a dining hall with kosher options that caters to Jewish students. The person also reportedly said he would slit the throats of Jewish students. The university suspended the student and increased police presence in areas Jewish students would frequent, including the dining hall and the Hillel center. Jewish organizations also praised universities such as Columbia for suspending the Students for Justice in Palestine group, which has been accused of contributing to the rise in threats with its statements cheering on Hamas. Antisemitism on college campuses has been the topic of two congressional hearings since the Oct. 7 attack, with administrations under fire for lackluster statements condemning the event or slow responses to antisemitic incidents on campus. Jewish students do not see subsequent actions as sufficient to protect them. Talia Khan, a 25-year-old grad student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told The Hill she has received poor answers when bringing concerns of antisemitism to her administration. They are fully aware of all of these like situations and they havent done anything to make us feel more safe, said Khan, the president of MITs Israel Alliance. They say that they are working on it, that these things take time, etc. But when asked, What are you going to do to make us feel safe today? Tomorrow? Theyre not giving anything back. Just words. She said that in one instance, the head of diversity, equity and inclusion for the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Sophia Hasenfus, liked a social media post that said, this is what oppressed fighting the oppressors looks like on Oct. 7 after the attack. Khan also said she had to switch out of one study group to avoid students who were saying Hamass attack was justified. You have administrators and people in power making students feel so scared and unsafe on campus, and the MIT administration is fully aware of every single one of these cases, she said. MIT said in a statement it is always hard to hear from someone who feels unsupported and that school officials appreciate that there are a diverse range of sincerely held views and feelings across our student body and wider community. A spokesperson pointed to an announcement from MIT President Sally Kornbluth last week on steps the school was going to take to combat antisemitism. In the video, Kornbluth announced a university commission called Standing Together Against Hate, saying that No one in our community should have to feel afraid to walk on campus wearing a Star of David, or a yarmulke, or a hijab or any other emblem of their faith. Kornbluth said the school has stepped up security and reminded students they are violating campus policies by disrupting classrooms by chanting slogans of kind. The MIT spokesperson said there has been special outreach to students and groups affected by the conflict and support is available through the Division of Student Life. In addition, folks across a host of offices have been actively engaged, including the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, which encompasses MIT Hillel; the campus police, and members of our committed faculty (including those with long-time ties to Israel and the region), among others, they added. The Anti-Defamation League reported 312 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. from Oct. 7-23. The same time period in 2022 only saw 64 antisemitic incidents. But even before the Oct. 7 attack, antisemitism was on the rise, with FBI statistics showing related hate crimes up 25 percent between 2021 and 2022. Across the country, Ephraim Shalunov, a sophomore at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said he has had Heil Hitler yelled at him on campus and harassment against Jewish students is just completely commonplace with little assistance coming from the school. Shalunov said his school became the first public university to pass a condemnation of Hamas through student government, although not without violent protests trying to disrupt the proceedings, to which the administration was extremely slow to respond. He said there was no interest in trying to stop the disruption. And only after people were assaulted were police finally called, despite the fact that they were screaming genocidal chants through megaphones at hundreds of Jewish students in an orderly meeting that is obviously a violation of numerous campus policies. A UC Santa Barbara spokesperson told The Hill, Our campus has been working to offer support to our students during these challenging times, including a host of services that provide them with academic and personal advising, support for their well-being, and more. We also provide students with tools, including how to report bias incidents and information about campus policy. The University reviews and responds to these incidents as they are reported. Shalunov said the university had senior officials attend a vigil held for Israelis after the attack but that there was a steady degeneration on campus in the weeks to follow. Despite being in frequent contact with the vice chancellor for student affairs and the dean of student life, he said, the school has offered him nothing in response. Our campus administrators and student affairs professionals care very deeply about our students and have been meeting with individuals and campus organizations and have shared information about available resources in meetings and several campus-wide messages, the school spokesperson said. The campus demonstration response team is present at every event to monitor and help address student concerns in real-time and coordinate with our campus safety partners. The Department of Education recently launched a civil rights investigation against seven schools amid allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia. The probe includes Columbia, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley College, Lafayette College and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. We at the Department of Education, like the nation, see the fear students and school communities experience as hate proliferates in schools, said Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary of civil rights for the department. Khan said a letter has been sent to her administration titled Unsafe environment for Jews and Israelis at MIT that details the instances of antisemitism and how Jewish students have felt unsafe and not supported on campus. The letter outlines four steps students want officials to take: banning student groups that incite antisemitism from campus, enforcement of school rules equally for all groups, adopting the definition of antisemitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and educating staff on it and demanding officials publicly declare their goal to combat antisemitism in all forms, including anti-Zionism. Jewish students are facing unprecedented anti-Semitism on campus. Were no longer talking about words that hurt, said David Brog, the executive director of Maccabee Task Force, which works to help Jewish and pro-Israel students combat antisemitism. Were talking about physical attacks and threats. Were talking about the celebration of the massacre of Jews in Israel and all that implies for the safety of Jews on campus. And the response of most universities has been to embrace an appalling double standard. When it comes to other minorities, they will not tolerate the smallest micro-aggression. But when it comes to Jewish students, theyre suddenly champions of the most violent free speech. These universities need to wake up, grow a backbone and make it clear that they will oppose physical threats and the celebration of violence against Jews to the same extent they would oppose such violence against any other group, Brog added. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Sixty years have now passed since President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But despite the passage of time, records related to his assassination remain sealed by the government, fueling conspiracies that question the official telling of events. Multiple organizations and individuals have pressed for the documents to be released, including the Mary Ferrell Foundation the largest online repository of JFK assassination records which is suing President Joe Biden, demanding the documents be made public. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a presidential candidate and nephew of the former president, has also called for the files to be released. What is so embarrassing that theyre afraid to show the American public 60 years later? RFK Jr. said in a Nov. 20 statement unveiling a petition demanding Biden release all remaining records. When contacted by McClatchy News, a spokesperson for RFK Jr.s campaign said Mr. Kennedy is not doing any interviews on the anniversary of his uncles death. What are the documents? Millions of pages of documents were created by a number of government agencies including the CIA and the FBI on the subject of John F. Kennedys killing, Rex Bradford, the president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, told McClatchy News. They were later compiled by various investigative bodies, including the Warren Commission, which looked into the assassination and wrote the Warren Report, the governments official narrative of what transpired in Dallas. In 1992, following the release of Oliver Stones film JFK, which popularized a belief that the government was involved in the assassination, Congress passed the JFK Records Act to identify and release these documents. Huge amounts of this stuff was declassified over about a five-year period, Bradford said, though some documents remained sealed or were released with redactions. The publication of the volumes of records was unprecedented for the government, Kaeten Mistry, a professor of American history at the University of East Anglia in England, told McClatchy News. Yet it will never satisfy everyone. All remaining withheld documents were supposed to be released by 2017, according to the act, but Presidents Donald Trump and Biden using a provision in the law ordered some of them to remain under wraps, Bradford said. Biden further prolonged their release when he ordered federal agencies to establish their own criteria and timelines for publishing the documents in July, Bradford said. Those criteria translate to: not bloody soon, Bradford said. What documents remain sealed? As it stands, about 3,500 documents, the majority of which are held by the CIA, remain unpublished or published with partial redactions, Bradford said, citing a National Archives estimate. This information at this point, a lot of it is informant names, agent names, the location of CIA bases, some of its sensitive information, embarrassing information, Bradford said. At this point theres very little about Lee Harvey Oswald per se. Oswald, a Marine veteran, was concluded to have acted alone in shooting Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository Building, according to the Warren Commission Report. The vast majority of records that remain secret, or were recently released, will relate to national security matters, Mistry said. The government is always more cautious when it comes to releasing those to the public. The bureaucratic process of releasing them is also inherently time-consuming, Mistry said. Will they be released? While a handful of the documents may be made public in the coming years, absent any changes or particular public will on this matter, I expect much of the rest of it is unlikely to be released, Bradford said. That said, its doubtful that the withheld materials contain a smoking gun, indicating one particular group orchestrated Kennedys death, Bradford said. However, Bradford said, people who have researched the assassination have found circumstantial evidence indicating a murderous milieu of Cuban exiles, organized crime and the CIA appeared to have had ties to Oswald. Its unlikely that somewhere in a CIA vault they have a document that says we did it, Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami political science professor specializing in the study of conspiracy theories, told McClatchy News. So, Im not exactly sure what people think theyre going to get. Even if additional documents were released, the American public the majority of whom believe there was a broader conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, according to a Gallup poll of 1,009 U.S. adults would likely remain skeptical, Uscinski said. If the government released all the documents today, are all the people who believe conspiracy theories about it going to suddenly change their mind? Uscinski said. The answer is probably not. Americans showing unusually high level of dislike toward 2024 candidates, experts say Most people in US support cease-fire in Gaza as Biden remains opposed, poll finds Supreme Court unveils ethics code but its vague and unenforceable, experts say DALLAS (CBSNewsTexas) - A day in Dallas that attracted 200,000 people to welcome President John F. Kennedy became Dallas' darkest day of the 20th century. His assassination in downtown Dallas shocked a nation and placed a cloud of shame over the city for decades. As we continue to remember the anniversary of the assassination, our Steve Pickett reports on the moniker "city of hate" attached to Dallas for decades. RELATED STORY: America's continuing obsession with the JFK assassination 60 years later On the morning of November 22, 1963 would bring pure joy to a 13-year-old teenager who was waving passionately to a visiting president. Quin Mathews was captured on film waving to JFK as he arrived in Dallas. "Kennedy came right up, then he saw me," Mathews exclaimed. "I wanted him to know he was welcome here. I knew there were people who didn't welcome him to Dallas." A half century after the assassination, Mathews chronicled the worldwide criticism, the postcards, the letters, the prosecuting of a city labeled as co-conspirator in the president's deaththe city of Dallasin a film called "City of Hate." "I was aware there was a lot of antipathy to Kennedy," he said. "There was a chill; something bad was going to happen when Kennedy comes here. No one thought he'd be shot, but we thought something bad might happen." Stephen Fagin is the chief curator for The Sixth Floor Museum, which is Dallas' showcase of remembrance of the city's darkest day of the 20th century. Dallas' police chief urged an appeal for calm from to the citizens of Dallas. Fagin says the racially-segregated, politically-conservative city drew concern prior to JFK's arrival. "There was already this reputation that Dallas had unfairly received, by a small but vocal minority of political extremists," he said. "So, when the Kennedy assassination happened, there was a collective "Oh, Dallasthat's where things like this happen." On the Sunday morning after the assassination, one pastor said, "In the name of God, what kind of city have we become? Local moderate pastors challenged their church members to move away from extremism. Those messages are archived today at SMU. "I think these clergy wanted their congregations to be introspective, reflective about what kind of spirit, kind of acrimony, animosity would generate the hatred that would result in the assassination of a president," SMU Political Science Professor Matthew Wilson said. "There was a sense that Dallas was deeply bound up with the Kennedy assassination, and that's a legacy the city struggled for decades to overcome and put behind them." Mathews says, "That was the definition of Dallas for 40 years, but it's not now." The killing of a president left this city wounded for years. Even today, Dealey Plaza attracts tourists. But Mathews believes 60 years later, a president can be remembered without ridicule and hate for the city where it happened. Thanksgiving turkey recipe that cooks in under 2 hours From the archives: JFK's assassination in Dallas covered by CBS News in 1963 Ancient Vines | Sunday on 60 Minutes Joe Biden has insisted that Kamala Harris will be his running mate at next years presidential election - CHRIS KLEPONIS/CNP/STARTRAKSPHOTO.COM Kamala Harriss allies have rallied to her defence after Joe Bidens challenger from within the Democratic Party suggested the vice-president was not up to the job. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota congressman who has launched a campaign to challenge President Biden for the partys nomination, drew angry rebukes after he claimed voters and Ms Harriss own circle had no confidence in her. Mr Phillips told The Atlantic that Americans have made the decision the 59-year-old was not prepared in the event she needed to step into Mr Bidens shoes. He added: That is not my opinion. However, Mr Phillips said he had heard from others who know her a lot better than I do that many think shes not well positioned. She is not well prepared, doesnt have the right disposition and the right competencies to execute that office, he said. Congressman Dean Phillips launched a long-shot presidential bid in October - MEG KINNARD/AP Christina Reynolds, an ally of Ms Harris who served in the Obama administration, accused Mr Phillips of falling back on a tired and sexist old trope. Ive gotten to see her up close, she told The Telegraph, so I feel very comfortable saying not only does she have the disposition to do this job, she is doing a phenomenal job of it. Scoring cheap political points Karen Finney, a prominent Democratic strategist and close friend of Ms Harris, demanded that Mr Phillips apologise. Hiding behind the well-worn people are saying and leaning in to gossip over your own experience for the sake of scoring cheap political points is not leadership, she said. Ms Harriss office declined to respond to the comments when contacted by The Telegraph. However, insiders in her team have pointed to the claims of racism and sexism in some of the criticism around the vice-president. Ms Harriss approval ratings are lower than those of Mr Biden - AVALON/WHITE HOUSE Tina Smith, a senator from Mr Phillipss home state, said: I know the vice-president well and know her to be exceptional. Ms Smith described the vice-president as always prepared and deeply knowledgeable, adding in a pointed aside that she ss also loyal. Mr Phillips, 54, launched his long-shot bid against Mr Biden, 81, a month ago, saying the US presidents age and poor polling had become an emergency. He pointed out that Ms Harriss polling was even worse in his interview with The Atlantic on Tuesday. Its pretty clear that shes not somebody people have faith in. I can handle weaklings like Trump His late entry to the race has triggered fury from Democrats, who argue that it is too late to block Mr Biden winning the partys nomination but could severely damage his re-election bid. Mr Phillipss bid comes as he faces his own threat of a Democratic primary challenge for his Minnesota district should he seek re-election to Congress. His wide-ranging interview with The Atlantic was tinged with derision at times, with Mr Phillips at one point claiming he had looked into Donald Trumps eyes for the better part of an hour. I know exactly how to handle weaklings like Donald Trump, Mr Phillips said, but he declined to reveal his strategy. Why would I give away my special sauce? The magazine wryly noted Mr Phillips must first dispatch the incumbent president before he can douse Trump with his proprietary Dean Sauce. 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. Ten days after Hamas massacred more than 1,000 Israelis during the terror attacks some have described as the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, it looked like President Joe Bidens and Americas influence in the Middle East was at a nadir. Mr Biden appeared to have been snubbed by Arab leaders whom hed been set to meet during a planned visit to Israel and Egypt, in critics telling because of his vociferous support for Israels military campaign to eradicate Hamas from the Gaza Strip following the 7 October attacks. But Biden administration officials now say the presidents brief sojourn in Tel Aviv marked the start of what has been a high-stakes game of shuttle diplomacy that will soon result in the release of at least 50 women and children from captivity by Hamas in the coming days, with even more hostages possibly seeing freedom after that In exchange for Israel extending a pause in offensive operations and releasing some Palestinian prisoners. The under-the-radar negotiations began shortly after the initial attacks, when the Qatari government approached the US and Israeli governments to discuss the potential for talks with the aim of inducing Hamas to release the hostages theyd taken. Though Qatar, a US ally that hosts a major American military base on its soil, also serves as a home base for several top Hamas officials, the White House maintains that the Qatari government made clear from the beginning that the militant groups hostage-taking was outrageous and stated that the hostages needed to be released unconditionally. But a Biden administration official said the Qataris were more pragmatic behind the scenes, admitting in private discussions that dealing with Hamas to secure the release of the hostages would be a difficult process. President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv. (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) In response, officials say Mr Biden, through National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, ordered the standing-up of a small cell to work with the Qataris and Israelis very secretly and very carefully with an eye towards negotiations. Mr Sullivan delegated this delicate task to Brett McGurk, a veteran diplomat and Middle East expert who has served in various roles under the last four presidents, and Joshua Geltzer, a counterterrorism expert who currently serves as legal adviser to the National Security Council. Qatar and Israel demanded really extreme discretion and sensitivity on this, but the cell over time established processes that proved to be effective, the official said. Mr McGurk and Mr Geltzers outreach to the Qataris and Israelis was the beginning of what the White House now says were daily, sometimes hourly engagements with officials from both countries on matters related to the hostages, as well as work by American operatives working on the ground to independently corroborate information obtained from other parties. A senior Biden administration official said the president himself also dove into this delicate work, with Mr Biden becoming directly and personally engaged to in this process throughout almost hour by hour, continuing as recently as Tuesday evening, when he received a briefing from Mr McGurk not long before he departed the White House for his familys annual Thanksgiving visit to Nantucket. Israeli officials, including Mr Netanyahu, have acknowledged Mr Bidens involvement, with the Israeli leader praising the US presidents work during the hostage crisis. President Joe Biden speaks from the Oval Office of the White House Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023, in Washington, about the war in Israel and Ukraine. (AP) But the extent to which pressure from Mr Biden forced the Israelis to accept an agreement has gone unreported until now, largely due to the intense secrecy surrounding the negotiations. That pressure, delivered personally by the president over the 13 calls he has shared with Mr Netanyahu since the Hamas attacks, came as Mr Biden faced unrelenting criticism from the left wing of his party over his full-on embrace of Israels campaign against Hamas, including repeated calls for a ceasefire from Democrats in Congress. Aides to Mr Biden say the presidents engagement with Mr Netanyahu included making very clear that Israel had to drop its opposition to allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, which Israeli government officials had initially described as part of a total siege on the Hamas-controlled territory. His early engagement with the Israeli leader as well as corresponding talks with Egyptian President Fattah al-Sisi resulted in a landmark deal to open the Rafah border crossing to trucks carrying needed aid, and later on to allow dual nationals to exit Rafah into Egypt. At the same time, talks undertaken by the secret cell continued, eventually leading Hamas to release a mother-daughter pair of US nationals on 23 October. A Biden administration official described that limited hostage release as kind of a pilot process allowing the US to track, kind of in real-time, the hostages as they moved from Gaza into Egypt with the aid of the International Committee of the Red Cross. That limited hostage release proved the concept and gave us some confidence that Qatar really could deliver through the cell that wed established, said the official, who added that the release of that pair of Americans directly led to a very intensified process of negotiations towards the release of hostages that is set to commence at 3.00 am ET on Thursday. It was around then that the circle of officials involved in the talks expanded to include David Barnea, the director of Mossad, and his US counterpart, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, with the two top US and Israeli spies beginning regular conversations about the contours of a deal from the Israeli side while continuing to coordinate their engagements with the White House cell. Between Mr Burns, National Security Adviser Sullivan, and Mr Biden himself, the negotiations over the next several weeks expanded to the point where US officials were holding multiple calls a day with Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials at key moments, all of which proved critical to getting the traction and the process set up for the hostage release, the official said. Officials said Mr Bidens engagement with Mr Netanyahu was particularly important during a critical six-day period in which they spoke on 20 October, 22 October, 23 October and 25 October. The President, of course, recognised that there was now a possibility to secure the release of a large number of hostages and that the hostage deal was really the only realistic path to securing a multi-day humanitarian pause in the fighting, the official said. Things began to move faster starting on 9 November, when Mr Burns travelled to the Qatari capital, Doha, for a meeting with the Emir of Qatar and Mr Barnea. At the time, a sticking point in the talks was Hamas refusal to provide identifying information for the first 50 hostages women and children all who were to be released under the agreement. Mr Biden stepped in, calling the Emir personally and telling him that Hamas needed to provide what an official involved in the talks said was clear identifying information for who would be in this group of 50, including ages, gender [and] nationalities. Without that, it was just very hard to move ahead it was a very important and a very intense call about where we stood, the official said, adding later that the Emir told Mr Biden that he would do everything he possibly could to get this done. Eventually, Hamas agreed, and on 14 November, Mr Netanyahu told Mr Biden during a phone call that he could accept an offer to release women and children in exchange for some Palestinian prisoners and a pause in the fighting, but talks sputtered amid Israeli forces move on the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which the Israelis have contended houses a Hamas command facility. Hamas began demanding that the Israelis withdraw from the hospital, with the Israelis refusing to do so. The lines of communication went dead for several days until Mr Biden stepped in again on 17 November. The US president was in San Francisco for the US-hosted Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, but the official said Mr Biden took time out of his schedule to call the Emir once more and emphasise that this was the time that the deal had to close. The onus really at this moment was on Hamas, and we had a few very key demands that Hamas had to meet, the official said. On 18 November, top Biden aides including Mr Burns met with the Emir in Doha to review a six-page draft agreement. The meeting basically identified some of the remaining gaps in what by now was a pretty detailed five to six page text, with details on implementation steps from both sides so that nothing here is being left to chance at all, an official said. The deal is now structured for women and children in the first phase, but with an expectation for further releases the clear aim is to bring all hostages home to their families. Its possible that Israel and Hamas could have reached a similar deal long ago, had it not been for the Netanyahu governments insistence on starting its ground offensive into Gaza. Moti Cristal, a former member of the Israeli government who has been a negotiator during previous crises, told The Independenta deal along the same lines had been in the offing before the invasion began. But the retired Israeli Defence Force officer said the US played a critical and instrumental role in the negotiations during the Israeli ground campaign, which also had the effect of convincing Hamas that Israel was serious about making military progress against the organisation. And after weeks of work by Mr Biden, his aides, and the Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari governments, it all came to fruition late Tuesday when Mr Netanyahus cabinet voted to approve the deal, just as Mr Biden was leaving for his five-day Thanksgiving vacation. The Israeli government said the agreement will initially result in a four-day pause in hostilities, the longest break in the fighting since the Israeli Defence Force began attacking Gaza following the 7 October attacks. In a statement, the president said he would continue his engagement with leaders in the region to ensure this deal is carried through in its entirety and stressed the importance of all aspects of this deal being fully implemented. As president, I have no higher priority than ensuring the safety of Americans held hostage around the world, he said. Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released. Joe Exotic is shown in a video screen grab from his 2016 run for president. Joe Exotic will not be getting a new trial. The former Oklahoma zookeeper and 2024 presidential candidate became known worldwide early in the pandemic because of Netflix. He filed a motion for a retrial last year in his murder-for-hire case after being resentenced. He filed a second motion Nov. 20. He claims witnesses conspired with federal prosecutors and investigators to withhold and make up evidence "in efforts to secure the wrongful conviction." His trial judge on Nov. 21 rejected those complaints, saying the big cat breeder's own words were "the most credible and damning evidence" of his intent. "Defendants allegations, whether viewed individually or cumulatively, are incapable of overcoming the strong, credible evidence of guilt set forth in the record," U.S. District Judge Scott Palk said in a 73-page order. "Contrary to his assertions, Defendant received a fair trial, and the jury returned a reasonable and just verdict." An appeal of the denial is planned. Joe Exotic was found guilty in 2019 in Oklahoma City federal court. Jurors convicted him of hiring two men to kill his chief critic, Carole Baskin, and of crimes involving his zoo animals. He is serving 21 years in prison. How did imprisoned zookeeper become known around the world? The self-described "gay, gun-carrying redneck with a mullet" became famous when Netflix released "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness" on March 20, 2020. The true-crime documentary series was a somewhat sympathetic look at his life, his case and his now closed zoo in Wynnewood. Millions watched while in pandemic-induced lockdowns, making it a breakout hit. Joe Exotic was born Joseph Allen Schreibvogel, but his name has changed over the years depending on his marital status. The latest change to Joseph Allen Maldonado came in January after a divorce. He is 60. Baskin said Nov. 21 she was very relieved by the judge's decision. Carole Baskin and her husband, Howard Baskin, pose for a photo in Washington, D.C., during a trip to lobby for passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act. "Maldonado has never shown any remorse for the crimes against me and against animals that he clearly committed," she told The Oklahoman in an email. "Even today Maldonado continues through surrogates to regularly disparage me and my husband online, actions that he well knows could incite violence. He is dangerous and he is right where he belongs." Baskin is a Florida animal rights activist who successfully sued Joe Exotic for more than $1 million. She had been outspoken against a major attraction at his zoo, so-called play times with tiger cubs. Joe Exotic maintains he was set up by a former business partner, Jeff Lowe. More: Joe Exotic made tiger cub petting the main attraction at his roadside zoo; now it's banned In his new trial requests, he told the judge a key prosecution witness, Allen Glover, has admitted to lying in court and "to a lot of people" to keep Lowe out of trouble. Glover, an ex-convict, worked at the zoo. He told jurors that Joe Exotic paid him $3,000 in 2017 to kill Baskin. "I said I'd cut her head off," Glover testified. "He was fine with it." He also testified he never intended to go through with the plot and used the money to party on a Florida beach instead. In a 2021 affidavit, Glover said he committed perjury during his trial testimony "regarding my involvement as the hitman." "Jeff Lowe created the entire murder-for-hire plot from start to finish," he also said in the affidavit. He said Lowe later repeatedly rehearsed with him what to say to federal agents to get Joe Exotic indicted. He said in the affidavit that Joe Exotic "always joked about wishing Carole Baskin was gone because of the financial stress she caused him." "No one ever took him seriously." He also claimed he and Lowe plotted at one point to kill Joe Exotic at the zoo. "The plan was to tie a wire between two poles on a path ... so that it would decapitate him," he said. In his order, the judge concluded that Glover's recantation does not entitle Joe Exotic to a new trial "because it would not probably produce an acquittal." He did agree Glover was credible in his recantation on some points but not on others. "Defendant claims 'the first murder for hire count depended almost entirely on Glovers testimony; without it there could have been no indictment and no evidence to carry the case to the jury,'" the judge wrote. "But this argument ignores the strongest, most credible evidence against Defendant his own words. Allen Glover appears in "Tiger King 2." "Even assuming the jury discounted Mr. Glovers credibility, the Courts confidence in the outcome of the trial is not undermined because Defendants statements provide overwhelming, powerful evidence of his guilt." The judge pointed out that Joe Exotic had told an informant in a secretly recorded phone call in 2017 that if Glover got busted "me and Jeff are just, we got our story down to where we fired the (expletive) and he just went off the deep end." The judge noted that Joe Exotic in a 2018 conversation about a second hitman said "that one of Jeffs run off with my money and never heard from him again." Joe Exotic offered in 2017 to pay $10,000 to an undercover FBI agent posing as a hitman to shoot Baskin, according to testimony at his trial. "Just like follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off," he said in a Dec. 8, 2017, recording played for jurors. At trial, Joe Exotic said he had a gut feeling at the time the guy was an undercover officer so he never agreed to any murder and never did anything further to make it happen. He told jurors he gave Glover $3,000, at Lowe's direction, to travel to South Carolina to take care of legal problems. What happens now? His attorney said Wednesday they will now go to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. "Justice would never come from Palk. We knew that," Florida attorney John Phillips wrote in an Instagram post. "All we have wanted for 2 years is to address the merits of the wrongful conviction with the appellate court." Attorney John Phillips speaks to the media after Joe Exotic was resentenced in January 2022. The attorney called Palk biased. He alleged Palk denied the retrial to protect his legacy and fellow judge Amanda Maxfield Green. "Shameful," the attorney wrote. Maxfield Green was the lead prosecutor at Joe Exotic's trial. She became a magistrate judge in 2020. How has his prison sentence changed? In January 2020, the trial judge sentenced Joe Exotic to 22 years in prison. "Despite what you may believe, you are not the only in-step person in an out-of-step world," Palk told him. The federal appeals court in Denver ruled in 2021 that Palk made a mistake. The judge resentenced him early last year to 21 years. The appeals court has since upheld that punishment. Is he really running for public office? Joe Exotic ran for president in 2016 as an independent. He got 962 votes, according to the Federal Election Commission. He ran for governor of Oklahoma in 2018 as a Libertarian. He came in third in the primary, getting only 664 votes. He announced in March he was running for president again. "Yes, I know I am in Federal Prison and you might think this is a joke but it's not. It is my Constitutional right to do this even from here," he said on his campaign website. This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: What happened to Joe Exotic? An update on his bid for retrial Students attend the launch of the 2023 Huawei "Seeds for the Future" program in Gaborone, Botswana, on Nov. 21, 2023. The Chinese technology company Huawei launched the "Seeds for the Future" program on Tuesday in Botswana, aiming to cultivate local information and communications technology (ICT) talent and young leaders for the future and promote the development of digital communities. (Photo by Tshekiso Tebalo/Xinhua) GABORONE, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese technology company Huawei launched the "Seeds for the Future" program on Tuesday in Botswana, aiming to cultivate local information and communications technology (ICT) talent and young leaders for the future and promote the development of digital communities. About 25 undergraduate students from four universities in Botswana will participate virtually in the program from Nov. 21 to 27. During the event, the students will gain rich experiences, including technical lectures, leadership workshops, Chinese cultural experiences and communication with peers from around the world, said David Zhang, managing director of Huawei Technologies Botswana, who officially inaugurated the ceremony in Botswana's capital city, Gaborone. "They will also participate in Huawei's global Corporate Social Responsibility activity - Tech4Good, exploring how ICT technologies can help address major issues facing mankind," Zhang added. Annually, Huawei invites students to debate future trends and capitalize on new opportunities as part of its flagship Corporate Social Responsibility initiative. Winners of this global competition will be invited to China for the Tech4Good Start-up Sprint, where they will visit Shenzhen, Beijing and other cities to learn about real-world entrepreneurial ecosystems and compete for a 100,000 U.S. dollars startup support fund. Botswana's Minister of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture Tumiso Rakgare said ICT is a crucial enabler in the country's development of a knowledge-based society, education, economic growth, governance and innovation during the same occasion. A Johnson County pediatric neurologist will remain in custody pending the outcome of his case, in which hes accused of attempting to make child sexual abuse material, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. During preliminary and detention hearings Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jill A. Morris denied a request to release 49-year-old Brian M. Aalbers of Overland Park on bond, and instead ordered him to be detained until the criminal case is resolved. After the hearing, Aalbers defense attorney, Greg Watt, said he looks forward to giving his client a zealous defense and while the hearings didnt go as intended, they will continue moving forward. Aalbers, who has an active osteopathic physician license according to the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts website, was charged earlier this month with one felony count of attempted production of child pornography between Dec. 28, 2020, and Oct. 28, 2023, according to court documents. The complaint containing the charge was unsealed last week after Aalbers was arrested. 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 was redacted from court documents made available last week. Although Aalbers showed up while police were there, officers released him pending further investigation after consulting with detectives. Later, a person contacted Kansas City police, saying Aalbers was sending texts that were alleged to be suicidal, including that he feared losing his license and going to jail. The person traced Aalbers through an app on a phone, noting that he was in Lenexa. Officers with the Lenexa Police Department found him at a Lenexa hotel and took him for a voluntary mental health treatment. Devices Aalbers had in his possession when he went to the hospital for treatment were locked up in a security office. On Oct. 30, while admitted there, Aalbers allegedly contacted the person who reported him to police and asked that his backpack be retrieved. Aalbers allegedly asked the person to destroy the items because there was bad stuff on the devices, according to an affidavit prepared by an FBI agent. After obtaining search warrants in federal court, authorities seized several devices, which included laptops, cameras and memory cards. They were brought to the FBIs Heart of America Regional Forensics Computer Laboratory for analysis. Authorities allegedly searched through more than 20,000 videos. A little more than 1,000 were flagged by a forensic computer analyst, according to the affidavit. Aalbers appeared in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri in downtown Kansas City for the hearings Tuesday dressed in a black-and-gray-striped prison uniform. After both the prosecution and defense stipulated to the affidavit attached to the complaint as being direct testimony, Morris found that probable cause was established and that Aalbers be bound over for further proceedings. During the detention hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen A. Brackett requested that Aalbers be held in federal custody, alleging, in part, that he is a danger to the community and a flight risk due to the potential punishment if convicted, which is a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison. She also cited the number of videos that were found and his alleged attempts to have a person destroy items. Brackett also said there have been protection orders filed against Aalbers and that he had made financial transactions indicating he was trying to access a large amount of funds. There are also numerous victims that have yet to be identified, she said. Watt, Aalbers defense attorney, said they understood the seriousness and gravity of the allegations, but he urged the judge to consider releasing his client on bond saying he had no criminal history, and that he had a long and productive career that came to an abrupt end when he resigned in light of the allegations. Aalbers was very rooted in the Kansas City area, was not a flight risk and would be willing to surrender his passport, Watt said. Aalbers also lacked the desire to hurt himself. As for the financial transactions, Watt said it was to prepare to hire counsel and be able to support himself. In her order denying bond, Morris cited, among other things, that the allegations span a period of nearly three years and involved numerous devices to make thousands of videos. The order also said that since the investigation started, Aalbers allegedly attempted to access funds and make large transfers and allegedly requested that evidence be destroyed. Aalbers also has mental health concerns, according to the judges order. There are two full orders of protection against defendant, as well as a third temporary order of protection, according to the judges order. Records filed in Johnson County court show family members sought orders of protection against Aalbers in connection with the criminal investigation. WASHINGTON House Speaker Mike Johnson struggled to defend himself at a recent private party meeting on Capitol Hill when some House Republicans confronted their new leader asking for any evidence that he was leading them in a new direction or taking hits on their behalf. Just Google my name and youll see, was Johnsons reply. He had been besieged by unflattering media coverage since winning the gavel (much of it focused on his evangelical Christianity and hard-line stances against abortion rights and same-sex marriage), the Louisiana Republican told his colleagues. He had even been mocked on Saturday Night Live, he noted, by not one but two comedians. Johnson, a fairly anonymous lawmaker before his election last month, has struggled to adjust to the new level of scrutiny that has come with his sudden ascent to the post second in line to the presidency. Some Republicans thought his response at the meeting reflected his steep learning curve as he settles into the job. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times A mild-mannered Christian conservative who does not curse and rarely raises his voice, Johnson has pleaded for grace from his fellow Republicans as he has made some of the same moves that led them to oust his predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California. Hard-right conservatives were enraged by his decision last week to team with Democrats to push through legislation to avert a government shutdown, which meant leaving out the spending cuts and policy changes they demanded. A group of them protested the move by blocking a separate spending bill from being considered the following day, even as Johnson implored them to give him a break and fall in line. Speaker Johnson was on the floor of the House today, basically begging for forgiveness, frankly, from some of us in the Freedom Caucus who were giving him a lot of grief, trying to fight him and push him into the right direction on this spending bill, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told constituents during a recent virtual town hall meeting. I love Mike, Roy said, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by The New York Times. I told him on the floor of the House today, I said, Mike, this is strike one. It might even be strike two. Youre not going to get any hall passes on this. Im not going to hold you differently than I did Kevin McCarthy or anyone else. Hes been put on notice, he added. You now need to do your job. Lets fight now. Johnsons allies concede he is learning on the job, but they argue he is running the House in a far more functional way than his predecessor did and even demonstrating courage in doing so. Hes got a spine of steel, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority leader who had a toxic relationship with McCarthy but has quickly forged a close rapport with his successor, said in an interview. Mikes style is a lot different, Scalise said of the change at the top. He seeks input, and then when he makes a decision, he sticks with it. Hes willing to lean in and take the heat and then go out and sell it. Taylor Haulsee, a spokesperson for Johnson, said the speaker was committed to building consensus by empowering the Republican leadership team and seeking counsel from members across the conference. Johnson, who for decades has championed his hard-line views on social issues in opinion pieces and public speeches, has left plenty to dig through to show the heavy influence his religious beliefs have on his policy stances and political worldview. Since winning the gavel, his openness about how he practices his faith has also drawn considerable attention, leading to the Google hits he referred to behind closed doors with his colleagues. In a recently surfaced video clip that was mocked on late-night television, for instance, Johnson explained how he and his eldest son relied on a third-party service to incentivize them not to view pornography online. The company, Covenant Eyes, which says it helps customers fight the lure of pornographic content online, monitors a users browsing and notifies their designated accountability partner Johnsons is his son, Jack, and vice versa if they view forbidden content. Its a common practice among evangelical Christians, who often pair up to support each others spiritual development, including the avoidance of sexual temptation. On Capitol Hill, Johnson has not tried to hide from or apologize for his evangelical views. In his first meetings as speaker, he started off with a prayer asking God for cooler heads and unity to prevail; he has since led some meetings without doing so. Its a stark stylistic change from McCarthy, whose references were based more in pop culture than in Scripture. When the California Republican wanted to make clear he would not hold grudges against lawmakers who had tried to block him from the speakership, for instance, McCarthy quoted from Ted Lasso, telling his members that the happiest animal in the world was the goldfish, which was blessed with a 10-second memory. On Capitol Hill, Johnson also is developing a reputation for a more collaborative approach than his predecessors. Unlike McCarthy, who did not solicit feedback from his top lieutenants and shot down ideas so routinely that they eventually stopped even raising them, Johnson regularly seeks input from Scalise, as well as from Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the majority whip, and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the partys No. 4. But hard-right Republicans and their allies outside the government are concerned that Johnson is veering toward the same pragmatism and establishment tendencies that drove McCarthy and his predecessors in the job, despite describing himself as an arch-conservative and pledging his allegiance to former President Donald Trump. Johnson has told colleagues he wants to meet regularly with the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus to keep them apprised of his strategy, even if they disagree. For now, that is exactly where many of them find themselves. In a recent meeting, described by multiple people familiar with the exchange, Johnson tried to defend his legislation to avert a government shutdown, which they vehemently opposed, by arguing that it would ultimately help them achieve their goals. Im doing this for your own good, he told the group, which had been pressing for deep spending cuts that were not included in the bill. Many Republicans are concerned that Johnsons lack of experience is also leading him to make politically questionable choices. His first substantive legislative decision was to tie $14 billion in aid to Israel to cuts to IRS enforcement, a deeply partisan move that was aimed at appeasing his far-right flank. But Johnson ultimately got nothing in return for that move. In the end, the measure predictably fell flat in the Senate, and the right wing still revolted over spending. At the same time, Johnson has tried to assure more mainstream Republicans from competitive districts that he is pragmatic more than dogmatic, and that he recognizes he no longer just represents a deep-red district in a heavily Christian state. While he has opposed sending more aid to Ukraine, he has told Republicans that he is now willing to bring up a bill to do so but that he wants to leverage it to extract concessions from Democrats on border policy. As he has angered his right flank, Johnson has won some early praise from Democrats. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, commended Johnson in a statement for embracing a bipartisan measure to keep government funding flowing. If he keeps doing that, I think we can get a lot done that will help a lot of people, Schumer said. For now, while there may be brewing frustration with Johnson from the right, most Republicans do not think there is any appetite to oust another speaker before the 2024 election. He started in a very difficult situation, Scalise said. I can tell each week hes definitely got a fuller grasp of the job. c.2023 The New York Times Company The New York judge overseeing Donald Trumps civil fraud trial and his law clerk have received hundreds of harassing messages that court security has deemed serious and credible since the former president began publicly criticizing court staff. Since October 3, when Trump posted on social media a baseless allegation about Judge Arthur Engorons law clerk, threats against the judge increased exponentially and were also directed to his clerk, according to Charles Hollon, a court officer-captain in New York assigned to the Judicial Threats Assessment unit of the Department of Public Safety, who signed a sworn statement. Hollon said the threats against the judge and his clerk are considered to be serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative. Trumps social media posting prompted the judge to impose a gag order prohibiting the former president from making statements about court staff. The gag order was later extended to include Trumps attorneys from commenting on the judges private communications with his law clerk. At the time, the judge said his chambers had received hundreds of harassing and threatening calls and emails. The additional details made public in the Wednesday filing, however, reveal the extent of that contact, including dozens of messages daily, phone doxing and the increased use of antisemitic language. Engoron has fined Trump twice for a total of $15,000 for violating the gag order. Last week, a New York appeals court judge temporarily lifted the gag order after Trump argued it violated his constitutional rights. The ruling to stay the order is temporary to allow time for a fuller panel of judges to weigh in. In a court filing Wednesday, a lawyer for the Court Administration for New York state asked an appeals court panel to keep the gag order in place and deny Trumps effort to permanently lift the gag order. Hollons sworn statement was included in the filing. Lawyers for the New York attorney generals office also urged the court to keep the gag order in place, writing that a speedy denial is necessary to ensure the safety of court staff as well as the integrity and the orderly administration of the proceedings through the end of the trial. Hollon said Engorons law clerk has received 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and 30-50 messages daily on social media platforms and two personal email addresses. On a daily basis, he said, the judge and his staff receive hundreds of harassing and threatening phone calls, email and voicemail messages such that security staff are having to constantly reassess and evaluate what security protections to put in place to ensure the safety of the judge and those around him. Since the gag order was lifted on November 16, Hollon said, the number of messages increased. He also said about half of the harassing messages the clerk received were antisemitic. Trumps brief on the matter is due Monday. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com By Hyunjoo Jin and Dan Levine (Reuters) -A Florida judge found "reasonable evidence" that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and other managers knew the automaker's vehicles had a defective Autopilot system but still allowed the cars to be driven unsafely, according to a ruling. Judge Reid Scott, in the Circuit Court for Palm Beach County, ruled last week that the plaintiff in a lawsuit over a fatal crash could proceed to trial and bring punitive damages claims against Tesla for intentional misconduct and gross negligence. The order has not been previously reported. The ruling is a setback for Tesla after the company won two product liability trials in California earlier this year over the Autopilot driver assistant system. A Tesla spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday. The Florida lawsuit arose out of a 2019 crash north of Miami in which owner Stephen Banner's Model 3 drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler big rig truck that had turned onto the road, shearing off the Tesla's roof and killing Banner. A trial set for October was delayed, and has not been rescheduled. Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor, called the judge's summary of the evidence significant because it suggests "alarming inconsistencies" between what Tesla knew internally, and what it was saying in its marketing. "This opinion opens the door for a public trial in which the judge seems inclined to admit a lot of testimony and other evidence that could be pretty awkward for Tesla and its CEO," Smith said. "And now the result of that trial could be a verdict with punitive damages." The Florida judge found evidence that Tesla "engaged in a marketing strategy that painted the products as autonomous" and that Musk's public statements about the technology "had a significant effect on the belief about the capabilities of the products." Scott also found that the plaintiff, Banner's wife, should be able to argue to jurors that Tesla's warnings in its manuals and "clickwrap" agreement were inadequate. The judge said the accident is "eerily similar" to a 2016 fatal crash involving Joshua Brown in which the Autopilot system failed to detect crossing trucks, leading vehicles to go underneath a tractor trailer at high speeds. "It would be reasonable to conclude that the Defendant Tesla through its CEO and engineers was acutely aware of the problem with the 'Autopilot' failing to detect cross traffic," the judge wrote. Banner's attorney, Lake "Trey" Lytal III, said they are "extremely proud of this result based in the evidence of punitive conduct." The judge also cited a 2016 video showing a Tesla vehicle driving without human intervention as a way to market Autopilot. The beginning of the video shows a disclaimer which says the person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. "The car is driving itself," it said. That video shows scenarios "not dissimilar" than what Banner encountered, the judge wrote. "Absent from this video is any indication that the video is aspirational or that this technology doesnt currently exist in the market," he wrote. (Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Richard Chang and Stephen Coates) Judge Arthur Engoron and his law clerk Allison Greenfield have been inundated with death threats and antisemitic attacks after Donald Trump targeted the judge and his assistant on social media. According to an affidavit filed by attorneys for the New York state court system, Engoron and Greenfield have been subjected to a deluge [in] the courts chambers phone and the law clerks personal cell phone, personal emails and social media accounts [of] hundreds of threatening, harassing, disparaging and antisemitic messages. The filing argues that the harassment leveled against Engoron, who is charged with ruling in the states civil fraud case against the former president, and his staff support the need for gag orders against Trump and his attorneys. On Oct. 3, Trump posted an image of Greenfield, Engorons principal law clerk, on Truth Social. He described Greenfield as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumers (D-N.Y.) girlfriend. Schumers girlfriend, Alison R. Greenfield, is running this case against me. How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!! Trump wrote. In response, Engoron leveled a narrowly tailored gag order against Trump barring him from targeting his staff; the order was later expanded to include the former presidents attorneys. Trump was fined in late October for violating Engorons order. Despite the gag order, Greenfield was subjected to intense online abuse by Trumps supporters. According to court documents, Ms. Greenfields personal information, including her personal cell phone number and personal email addresses also have been compromised resulting in daily doxing. She has been subjected to, on a daily basis, harassing, disparaging comments and antisemitic tropes. According to testimony given by Greenfield to Charles Hollon, a court officer-captain in the Department of Public Safety, the clerk has been receiving approximately 20-30 calls per day to her personal cell phone and approximately 30-50 messages per day on combined sites of social media, Linkedln and two (2) personal email addresses. Hollon writes that the threats against Justice Engoron and Ms. Greenfield are considered to be serious and credible and not hypothetical or speculative. In his signed statement, Hollon included examples of some of the voicemails left on Engorons court voicemail, the censored slurs were generated by the courts transcription software. Threats sent to the voicemail of Judge Arthur Engoron, according to an affidavit filed by Charles Hollon, a Court Officer-Captain in the NY Department of Public Safety. pic.twitter.com/b9T90WfXBo nikki mccann ramirez (@NikkiMcR) November 22, 2023 Everything about you screams little fagot dork. So again. I hope they. ******* bury your ugly ***. You and that fat ******* ***** ******* planet of the apes ******* star Letisha [James] the ***********. Little ******* Jews and, filthy little Jews [] Thats you. And I hate that word, and I hate putting people under group but you are filthy little Jews, one voicemail said, adding that Engoron should be assassinated. You should be killed [] You should be executed. But on trial executed for your crimes. We are going to get you and anyone of you dirty, backstabbing, lying, cheating American. You are nothing but a bunch of communists. We are coming to remove you permanently. Hollon added that the messages received by Justice Engoron and his staff every day has created an ongoing security risk for the judge, his staff and his family, and that the implementation of a gag order resulted in a decrease in the number of threats, harassment, and disparaging messages that the judge and his staff received. However, when Mr. Trump violated the gag orders, the number of threatening, harassing and disparaging messages increased, Hollon wrote. More from Rolling Stone Best of Rolling Stone Jeremy and Kim Taylor bid farewell before soldiers depart for Fort Hood, now Fort Cavazos, in Texas on Jan. 24, 2021, at Camp Dodge's Freedom Center in Johnston. SIOUX CITY The wife of a northwestern Iowa county supervisor was convicted Tuesday of a scheme to stuff the ballot box in her husbands unsuccessful race for the Republican nomination to run for Congress in 2020. The Sioux City Journal reports that jurors deliberated six hours before finding Kim Taylor guilty of 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration and 23 counts of fraudulent voting. Prosecutors said Taylor, a Vietnam native, approached numerous voters of Vietnamese heritage with limited English comprehension and filled out and signed election forms and ballots on behalf of them and their English-speaking children. More: Iowa voting guide: How to check voter registration status, options to vote in 2024, what to know They said the scheme was designed to help her husband, Jeremy Taylor, a former Iowa House member who finished a distant third in the race for the Republican nomination to run for Iowas 4th District congressional seat. Despite that loss, he ultimately won election to the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors that fall. No one testified to seeing Kim Taylor personally sign any of the documents, but her presence in each voters home when the forms were filled out was the common thread through the case. Jeremy Taylor, who met his wife while teaching in Vietnam, has not been charged, but has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator. The case remains under investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Timmons, one of three prosecutors who presented the federal governments case, said he couldnt comment on any potential future indictments. Kim Taylor, who remains free pending sentencing, faces up to five years in prison on each charge. Now is a time for empathy for a family that is suffering," said her attorney, F. Montgomery Brown, adding his focus is to get the best outcome at sentencing. Similar handwriting on ballots helped connect the dots Woodbury County election officials became aware of possible voter fraud in September 2020, when two Iowa State University students from Sioux City requested absentee ballots only to learn ballots had already been cast in their name. They were allowed to withdraw those ballots and cast their own, but Woodbury County Auditor Pat Gill, who also is election commissioner, kept the fraudulent ballots. When processing absentee ballots on election night, election workers notified Gill that the handwriting on a number of them appeared to be similar. More: Racist, antisemitic and threatening behavior toward Iowa campaign disclosure workers grows Most voter fraud cases involve one voter casting a single ballot in another persons name, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Evans, who helped prosecute Taylors case. Despite whats in the media, voter fraud is extremely rare, Evans said. To have someone vote dozens of times for several people, that is rare. This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: County supervisor's wife stuffed ballot box for him, Iowa jury finds Police found Anthony Mangiapane in possession of Nazi memorabilia and a stash of firearms, including pistols, shotguns and AR-15-style rifles with high-capacity magazines. A business owner in Warren, Michigan, was found guilty this week of shooting at a Black pedestrian passing by his store last year. Following a three-day trial, a Macomb County Circuit Court jury convicted Anthony Mangiapane, 56, of ethnic intimidation, assault with a deadly weapon and a felony firearm charge, according to the Macomb Daily. Thank you to the Macomb County jury for holding this man accountable for his hate-driven, violent actions, said Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido. Anthony Mangiapane has been convicted after shooting at a Black pedestrian near his store in July 2022. (Photo: Macomb County Sheriff) Court testimony indicated that Mangiapane was at his Schoenherr Road business on July 25, 2022, when the victim walked by on the sidewalk. Mangiapane shouted racist comments, demanded he leave the vicinity, and then fired three rifle bullets at the 37-year-old man. Police said the victim was on his cellphone at the time, and the person on the other end of the line heard the gunshots. Mangiapane holed up inside a neighboring business before surrendering to authorities. He remains in the Macomb County Jail. The forensic lab confirmed that a shell casing discovered at the site matched a rifle in the building Mangiapane owned. A witness tip prompted officials to summon the Michigan State Police bomb squad, who discovered an M203 grenade shell and took it to a secure location. Police also found a stash of firearms, including pistols, shotguns and AR-15-style rifles with high-capacity magazines. Police discovered a weapon with a green laser that they believe Mangiapane pointed at the victim. They also found Nazi memorabilia. The assault with a deadly weapon charge carries a four-year felony sentence, engaging in ethnic intimidation can bring a two-year felony term, and possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony adds a mandatory two years. Judge Edward Servitto is scheduled to sentence Mangiapane on Jan. 24, 2024. Never miss a beat: Get our daily stories straight to your inbox with theGrios newsletter. The post Jury: Michigan business owner shot at Black man walking past store appeared first on TheGrio. Angie Kraus pauses at the door of a south Fort Worth apartment and, according to Afghan custom, slips off her sandals. The living room is nearly devoid of furniture, and a baby girl is lying on a blanket near the kitchen. We want to see what you need, Kraus says to young Afghan mother Aziza through an interpreter. Its Kraus first time to meet this family. Shes come prepared with an electric tea kettle and iron necessities in every Afghan home. Aziza already has a vacuum and a blender, she tells Kraus, but she needs a bed for the baby. Aziza, an Afghan refugee who fled her country when the Taliban took over in 2021, holds her sleeping baby in her apartment in Fort Worth. Aziza asked Angie Kraus to help supply her with a bed for her baby as she begins to get settled in her new home. Kraus lets Aziza know about the English classes offered at the apartment complex. She holds the infant for a few minutes before leaving and promises to find a baby bed and possibly a stroller. Then she moves on to a nearby apartment where another family with small children lives. Kraus, a former school administrator, started looking for the next thing when she retired in June 2020. She found it in August 2021 when she saw scenes on the news of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and subsequent Taliban takeover. She knew she wanted to help Afghan families. Kraus completed a volunteer orientation with Refugee Services of Texas, a refugee resettlement agency that has since closed its doors due a budget shortfall. At first, her volunteer work was confined to donations. Then she was asked to pick up some arriving Afghans from the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. I met a family, Kraus said. Thats what really changed it for me. Kraus dropped the family off in south Fort Worth, nearly an hour from her home. She assumed that was their permanent location, but two days later she learned the refugee agency had moved the new arrivals into an apartment complex 10 minutes from her house. Angie Kraus, the founder of nonprofit Amshera, buys milk for Afghan families at the Afghan Halal Market in Fort Worth. Kraus volunteers her time and money to assist Afghan refugees staring their new life in Fort Worth after they fled country following the Taliban takeover in 2021. I was like, Im going to teach them English, Kraus said. Im a retired educator, so Im equipped to do this job. Im so thankful to God this is my purpose. And then I met the neighbors and the next neighbors. Eventually, 29 refugee families moved into the apartment complex near Kraus home. In March 2022 she started the nonprofit organization Amshera to assist Afghan refugees in Fort Worth. Amshera means sister in the Dari language of Afghanistan. Today Kraus has about 170 families on her Google Sheets spreadsheet, and new names get added regularly. The calendar squares in her planner overflow with handwritten reminders to visit new families, take someone to a doctor appointment or help register newly-arrived children in school. We need more volunteers, Kraus said. Money would be great, too, but we need people. Theres not enough people serving all of them. The planner of Angie Kraus, the founder of nonprofit Amshera, filled out with her tasks throughout the coming weeks. A new home On a Wednesday in late September, Kraus leaves her house early to pick up 62-year-old Mohammad Amini for a dental appointment. By 8:20 a.m. they are at Cornerstone Assistance Network, a nonprofit that offers free dental services, among other things, to uninsured Tarrant County residents. Afterward, Kraus takes Amini back to his apartment and stays for a short visit with his family. I end up really here a lot, Kraus said. Like because I take him to an appointment and then they say every time I come ... Angie, food! Kraus met Amini and his family Jan. 3, 2022, the day they arrived in Fort Worth. Like the majority of Afghans admitted into the U.S. through Operation Allies Welcome, they underwent processing at a military base upon their arrival in the country. Mohammad Amini, an Afghan refugee who fled Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover, in his apartment living room in Fort Worth on Sept. 27, 2023. Amini was part of the armed forces helping Americans when he lived in Afghanistan. His work made him a target for the Taliban, which led to him and his family fleeing the country. According to Amini, they spent 72 days at a base in Indiana and 45 days at a temporary house in Saginaw before reaching their new home a bare apartment in west Fort Worth. Resettlement agencies typically stock the apartments of new arrivals with basic necessities like dishes and cooking utensils, but Kraus said the Aminis apartment was empty. Kraus was visiting another Afghan family at the same apartment complex the day Amini and his family moved in. He said, We are here and we have nothing, Kraus remembers. So we went to Walmart and we got blankets and food and silverware, and you know we just got everything that we could. More than a year-and-a-half later, the apartment is a far cry from that first day. Rugs, another necessity in Afghan homes, cover the floors. A sofa stands next to the front door and low cushions for seating line two walls of the living room. A U.S. flag and Afghan flag hang side-by-side on the wall. Dentist Stan Fitzer works on Mohammad Amini, an Afghan refugee who fled Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover, at Cornerstone Assistance Network in Fort Worth. While Aminis wife serves flatbread and milk tea, Amini sits under the two flags and talks about his time in the Afghan Special Forces. I love USA, he says through an interpreter. Kraus makes more visits in the afternoon. At an apartment complex in south Fort Worth, an Afghan friend introduces her to Aziza and her baby. A short walk across the parking lot and up a flight of stairs takes her to the apartment of another Afghan family with children. Kraus had heard the mother needed a playpen. A woman holding a baby answers the door. No, she tells Kraus, she already has a playpen. What she needs is a baby swing. Kraus immediately sends her friend back to Azizas apartment with the playpen, which can also double as a crib. Then she moves on to her last visit of the day. The Wahidis, a family of eight, arrived in the U.S. this summer. The younger children proudly show Kraus bright neon bandages on their arms evidence of the vaccinations they received the previous day in preparation for starting school. Omar Wahidi, 12, shows the bandaids from vaccines given to him in his right arm. Wahidis family fled from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover. In order for him to attend school, he needed to receive all the required medical vaccinations. The oldest son is getting ready to apply for a job. Kraus tells him what the job involves and what kind work clothes hell need. She also praises his good attitude and willingness to learn new things. You will do great at that job, she tells him. Here, too, Kraus asks what the family needs and promises to bring them a sofa. We left all our things (in Afghanistan), one of the sons said. This will not always be your house, Kraus said. Things will get better. A long road Another obstacle Afghans fleeing the Taliban face in the U.S. is a backlogged immigration system. Prior to August 2021, Zamir Khan was building a good life for his family in Afghanistan. Then the Taliban marched in, and Khans job of flying missions for the Afghan government that facilitated U.S. interests made him a target for the extremist organization. D-Ray, Khans trainer and mentor, still remembers the conversation he had with Khan after the Taliban re-took control of the country. As a former instructor pilot with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, D-Ray asked his full name be withheld for security reasons. Do you want to leave? D-Ray asked him. Ill talk to my wife, Khan replied. A few minutes later he returned to the phone. Yes, he told his friend. They will kill me if I stay. With the help of a U.S. Congressman, D-Ray was able to get Khan, his wife and their two small children out of Afghanistan. A few months later the family settled in Fort Worth. Khan said hes thankful for the opportunities his children will have in the U.S. opportunities his daughter could never have in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. My greatest hope will be that my daughter and my son will graduate from university, he said. Afghans who worked with the American government for a minimum of one year qualify for a special immigrant visa, but the speed with which the Taliban invaded and the urgency in getting Afghan allies out forced the U.S. to admit the majority of the refugees under humanitarian parole. Mohammad Wasiq, a translator and Afghan refugee, tries to remember the English translation while speaking to the receptionist at Cornerstone Assistance Network in Fort Worth. Humanitarian parole grants temporary residency and a work permit that expires in one or two years. Unlike special immigrant visas, which provide a path to permanent residency and eventually citizenship, humanitarian parole does not. Because of the temporary status, humanitarian parole beneficiaries are required to apply for asylum within a year of arriving in the U.S. Khan applied for asylum shortly after he arrived in the area, but it was months before he got word that his asylum was approved. In the meantime, his humanitarian parole was set to expire before the end of the year. He was concerned his work permit would expire and he would lose his job at a communications company. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is legally required to prioritize Afghan asylum claims. As mandated by Congress, USCIS is required to conduct the asylum interview within 45 days and give a final ruling within 150 days. Jacob Oakes, an immigration attorney with the North Carolina-based Pisgah Legal Services and director of the Justice for All program, told the Star-Telegram in August that his organization has Afghan clients whove been waiting more than a year for a ruling on their asylum claim. (Theres) no end in sight, he said. We hope it comes through soon. Nilofar Safi, left, helps Angie Kraus carry diapers, an iron and a tea kettle up to Azizas apartment in Fort Worth on Sept. 27, 2023. In April, seven Afghans with pending asylum cases sued USCIS for its failure to rule on their cases in a timely manner. On Sept. 11, the plaintiffs reached a settlement with the U.S. government that requires the USCIS to address the backlog in cases and post public status reports of their progress on the USCIS website. According to Oakes, USCIS is chronically understaffed and underfunded, especially the area that handles asylum claims. Asylum officers have to undergo special training on the process and how to interact in a sensitive way with the applicants, many of whom have experienced traumatic situations in their country of origin. Because of that, the government cant easily shift employees from another area to help with the asylum backlog, according to Oakes. D-Ray said hes grateful for steps the U.S. government has taken, like allowing qualifying Afghans to renew their humanitarian parole, but hes concerned about the overall slowness of the process. These people didnt arbitrarily show up, he said. We brought them here. Providing welcome Refugee resettlement agencies are often newcomers first point of contact in the U.S. Briana Vice, regional director of church and community engagement for World Relief, said the humanitarian organization has settled around 540 refugees in the Dallas-Fort Worth area during the 2023 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. Vice estimates that 40% of those were from Afghanistan. Afghans are still fleeing their country, Vice said, and some of them who took refuge in other countries immediately after the Taliban takeover eventually get resettled in the U.S. World Relief coordinates housing with apartment managers before the refugees arrive. Vice said its difficult to find housing for new arrivals because they have no rental history, and some places arent willing to take the risk. As part of their initial resettlement services, World Relief meets new arrivals at the airport, gets them enrolled in English classes and helps them apply for any state benefits theyre eligible for. They also help the arriving refugees find employment so they can become self-sufficient. A fresh cup of Sheer Chai Afghan milk tea is poured for guests in Mohammad Aminis apartment living room in Fort Worth on Sept. 27, 2023. These services last for 90 days, but Vice said there are programs, such as cash assistance, that extend beyond that time. World Relief also provides refugees with a caseworker during the first 90 days, but Vice said caseworkers are responsible for multiple individuals. The organization relies heavily on volunteers in the community who can come alongside and build long-term relationships with refugees as they integrate into life in a new culture. Those interested in volunteering, Vice said, are required to submit an application through World Reliefs website and attend a training. The trainings are virtual in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and are held the third Tuesday of every month from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Information on how to donate or volunteer through Kraus nonprofit is found on the Amshera website. It just takes normal people, Kraus said. Just help somebody. Angie Kraus, the founder of nonprofit Amshera, hugs Khatima Amini after getting groceries together at the Afghan Halal Market in Fort Worth. Kraus volunteers her time and money to assist Afghan refugees starting their new life in Fort Worth after they fled the country following the Taliban takeover in 2021. JACKSON, Miss. Marquita Moore was lying on her sofa at home on the night of Oct. 10 when she got a text from her aunt. It was a link to an article revealing that Jackson police had failed to notify the public about dozens of homicides this year. Marquita clicked on it, wondering why her aunt thought shed be interested. Then she scrolled to the list of 24 homicide victims. The second name was her older brothers. Marrio Terrell Moore, 40, had been killed on Feb. 2, the article said. This was news to Marquita and to the rest of her family. She shuddered and started to cry. Lord, this is my brother, she recalled saying aloud. Someone done killed my brother. It was after 8 p.m., and she was in her pajamas. She put on a jacket and shoes and went to the Jackson Police Departments downtown headquarters looking for an explanation. An officer told her no one was available, she said. Over the next couple of days, Marquita and her relatives, dazed and stricken, gradually learned bits of information about what had happened and at each step grew angrier and more hurt. Marrio had been bludgeoned to death, wrapped in a tarp and left on the street. For months, his body had lain in the Hinds County morgue, unclaimed. Then, on July 14, inmates at the county penal farm had buried his remains in a paupers field. The news wrecked Marrios mother, Mary Moore Glenn, who has not come to terms with his death and what authorities did to his body without her knowing. What are you hiding? Mary said in a recent interview. Why cant you just come and just tell somebody that their child is gone? Marrio was buried the same day and in the same place as Dexter Wade, a Jackson man whose death sparked public outrage and calls for a federal investigation when NBC News reported on it last month. Wade, 37, was struck and killed by an off-duty Jackson police officer while crossing a six-lane highway on March 5. Authorities failed to notify his mother, who reported him missing to Jackson police a few days later, and buried him without her knowledge. Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has blamed a communication failure and expressed regret, but the city has declined to answer detailed questions. Both cases expose failures of a system designed to ensure that families are notified when their loved ones die and are given the chance to claim their bodies. In the days after learning about his death, Marrios family sought explanations from the Jackson Police Department and Hinds County coroners office. They recorded conversations with officials from both agencies and provided copies to NBC News. NBC News also obtained documents about the case through public records requests. The recordings and documents show that authorities said they made attempts to contact Marrios family but did not do enough to find his mother and other relatives in Jackson who say they would have claimed him. A Hinds County coroners office investigator said in a report that she called Marrios brother, but the phone number didnt work. A police commander told the family that a detective left a card at Marrios mothers house. But neither his mother, brother nor two sisters recall being contacted by anyone responsible for reaching his next of kin. The coroner's office and the Jackson Police Department did not comment. Marrio led an itinerant life and often went months without seeing his closest relatives, and so they did not report him missing in the months after he was killed. But the family says that should not have mattered; they were not hard to find. They just, Oh, well, he aint got nobody, Marquita said. And they just threw him away. Image: Marquita Moore (Imani Khayyam for NBC News) Marrio, the oldest of five siblings and the father of an adult daughter, was loved by his family. He was humble and thoughtful. He worked maintenance and construction jobs and most recently collected shopping carts at a grocery store. He read a lot. He was able to talk to just about anyone about virtually anything: religion, politics, what was happening on the street. That is what his family wants people to know about him. He was very smart and intelligent. He just happened to struggle with things of the world, cousin April McNair said. Marrio had a 20-year drug habit, and with that perhaps because he had been raised in a devout Christian home came feelings of guilt, his family said. He seemed in constant motion. He walked fast, like he always had to be somewhere. He moved around within Jackson and also, temporarily, to more distant places like Atlanta and Indiana. He was convicted of car theft and grand larceny. He rarely shared what he was up to or where he was going. He usually stopped by his mothers house during the holidays to eat and talk and collect mail and then left. It was as if he didnt want to burden anyone, including the people who loved him most. If you tried to get too close to him, he knew what he was doing and he knew somebody was going to tell him, You need to do this or do that. So he stayed away for that reason, said another sister, Marcedes Onuchukwu. Because he basically didnt want nobody, I guess, shaming him because of his choices. Still, his family tried to keep in touch. His mother, stepfather, aunt, uncle and siblings at various points this year looked for him or tried calling him, relatives said. They didnt find him, but that wasnt unusual. It didnt occur to them to report him missing. He wasnt missing. He just didnt want to be found. He didnt want to be seen, Marcedes said. The last relative to see him was Marquita, who ran into him at a corner store in January. She gave him $5 and told him to be careful, and he assured her that he would and quickly walked out of sight. She assumed theyd all see him around Thanksgiving. Image: Moore Family (Courtesy Moore Family) At around 10 a.m. on Feb. 2, a cold and rainy day, a man called Jackson police to say hed come across a body wrapped in a tarp on Gunda Street earlier in the morning, according to reports by the Hinds County coroners office and the Jackson Police Department. The dead man had dozens of wounds to his face and head, including skull fractures, indicating that hed been beaten. In one of the mans pockets were wet envelopes addressed to "Mario Moore" and a debit card with the name Mario Moore, a deputy medical examiner investigator, Stephanie Horn, reported, recording a misspelling of Marrios first name. The mans body was taken to the county morgue, where the cause of death was determined to be homicide by blunt force trauma to the head. On Feb. 8, fingerprint records maintained by the state crime lab confirmed the mans identity as Marrio Moore, the documents show. A search of medical records led to a number for a brother, whom Horn identified in her report as Gavin Moore. The number was not a working number and the decedent remained unclaimed, Horn wrote. (Marrios family says that his only brother is named Godwin Onuchukwu and theyve never heard of a relative named Gavin Moore. Godwin told NBC News he had never gone by the name Gavin.) On March 31, the coroners office asked the Hinds County Board of Supervisors for permission to bury Marrios body in a paupers field at the countys penal farm. On April 3, the board approved the request, along with similar requests for nine other bodies, including Dexter Wades, by a unanimous voice vote that lasted 12 seconds. The burial happened on July 14. NBC News requested from Hinds County any records documenting efforts to notify Marrios next of kin. Those records do not indicate that the county did anything more. Marrios family including his mother, who has lived for 20 years in a house 2 miles from where his body was found and where he received child support bills and other mail knew nothing about any of this. Months passed. Pauper's field Potter's field in Mississippi (Ashleigh Coleman for NBC News) On Oct. 9, the local NBC affiliate, WLBT, reported that the Jackson Police Department had just released the names of 24 homicide victims that had not previously been disclosed, including Marrio's. A commander told the station that it had been an accidental oversight and blamed a communications failure. Marrios uncle, who works for the Hinds County Sheriffs Office, saw the list and shared it with his wife, who texted the link to Mary, Marrios mother, and Marquita, his sister, on the night of Oct. 10. The familys first thought was to protect Mary. A grandchild snuck onto her phone and deleted the text so that they could break the news to her in person, once they knew more. Then they started searching for answers. Image: Marrio Moore's homicide location in south Jackson, Miss. (Ashleigh Coleman for NBC News) On Oct. 11, the morning after Marquita had gone to Jacksons police headquarters, she and Marcedes left a message at the county coroners office. Horn, the deputy medical examiner investigator, called them back, they said. The sisters asked why they werent told about their brothers death. Horn told them that the coroners office had shared information about Marrios identity with Jackson police. Its up to their detectives and everybody to reach out, Horn said. (Horn could not be heard identifying herself on that recording, but she did identify herself on another recording the family shared.) State law says that coroners shall make reasonable efforts to notify members of the decedents family. If a body goes unclaimed after five days, county authorities can bury it. The state Medical Examiners Office and the state Board on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training said they leave it to local agencies to develop specific policies on death notifications. A Hinds County coroners office representative has said that it generally relies on police to notify the families of people who have been killed, and that investigators typically work closely with Jackson police on the process. At the time of Marrios death, the Jackson Police Department did not have a formal policy on death notifications. Jacksons police chief recently said the department had enacted a new policy. On the call with Horn from the coroners office, the sisters started by asking: Where was their brother's body? Horn said Marrio was in a massive grave," according to the recording. Hes buried already? Marcedes asked. Aint no way, Marquita sobbed. Aint no way. When the sisters pressed her, Horn explained that Marrio's gravesite was in an undisclosed location where inmates and unclaimed people are buried. To get more information, including an autopsy report and the exact location where their brother was buried, Horn said they would first have to go to Jackson police and provide proof that they were Marrios family. After the call, the sisters said, they contacted their mothers pastor and asked her to meet them at Marys home to deliver the news. When everyone arrived, Marquita recalled, she told her mother, Marrios gone. Girl, quit playing with me, Mary replied. For real, mom, Marrio is gone, Marquita said. Mary broke down. She was in disbelief, but when her daughters told her about their conversation with Horn, she knew it was true. Image: Mary Moore Glenn and Marquita Moore (Imani Khayyam for NBC News) There was so much they still didnt know. They kept asking investigators for an explanation. Instead, they got conflicting information. On Oct. 12, a homicide detective went to Marys home and told the family that Marrio had an ID on him when he was found, according to the familys recordings. The detective said he went to two homes believed to be his address, but nobody was there. Whatever happened to him, this is February. And this is October. And Im still getting mail here. But you all are telling me that you all couldnt find the next of kin, Mary told the detective, who the family says identified himself as Joshua Johnson, the detective listed in police documents on the case. If my son was a person out there that went and committed a crime, you all would have found the next of kin, Mary continued. You all would have found him. You all would have come knocking at my door looking for him. Mary continued grilling Johnson on the delays. Maam, I dont want to tell you all any lies," Johnson responded. "We couldnt find no next of kin. Nobody was out there." He told them Marrios homicide case was cold, that police had no leads, and left. One day later, Commander Abraham Thompson, who oversees homicide detectives, visited the family at Mary's home and told them that there was no photo ID on Marrio. He also told them that hed seen body camera footage showing Johnson leaving a card with his information on it at Marys home on Feb. 9. (The Jackson Police Department denied a public records request for this footage.) Thompson, who identified himself on a recording shared by Marrios family, told them that police could have done more to find the next of kin, but that the coroners office bore some responsibility as well. He said the situation made him reflect on what the police department could do better in the future. "I tell people all the time, I'm human, too," he said. "And my son was a human being," Mary shot back. "Absolutely," Thompson agreed. "He was treated like he was a dog in the street," Mary said. "Thats the way he was treated." Later in the conversation, Thompson admitted that leaving a card wasn't enough to notify the family. "We could have did better," Thompson told Mary. "I said we could've did a better job at trying to make sure that we stayed consistent and persistent with trying to find the next of kin. Leaving a card in the door? Oh, he might felt that that was sufficient. No, I dont feel that it is. We could have, should have, kept going." Mary began the process of recovering her sons body. She paid $250 to reclaim the rights to his remains. A coroners office staffer told her it would cost another $500 to have Marrio exhumed. The family asked a funeral home for help. A representative warned them that there wouldnt be much left of Marrios remains, just bones in a bag, April, a cousin, recalled. At that point, thats when reality set in, April said. Yall dispose of peoples bodies like animals? Not even like animals, because people do animals better than that. Details from a pauper's field on Potter's field near the Raymond Detention Center. (Ashleigh Coleman for NBC News) The more Mary thought about it, the more upset she grew. When they dig him up, Im not going to be able to stand it, she said. Once they begin to She became too upset to finish the thought. Instead of seeking an exhumation and funeral, the family decided to hold a memorial for Marrio without his body. They have not been told where exactly Marrio is buried. NBC News has asked for his grave number in the paupers field, but the coroners office has not responded. The memorial was held Oct. 20 at Marys church, Nu Vision Worship Center in Jackson. A pastor described Marrio as a man who never lost his connection with God. Others recalled his charisma and intelligence and how he drew people into long conversations. The program included photos of him as a boy and as a young man, arms around his mother and siblings, relaxing on his bed. There were tears, but there was also laughter. Afterward, Mary didnt go back home with the rest of her family. She and her husband took some time alone to think and try to find peace. She could not. It really didnt do anything, Mary said. Because he was just a picture. It wasnt the person. The last time Im going to see him is that picture. Im not going to see him no more. She still wants to know the truth of what happened to her son. It hurts bad that hes gone. But nobody thought that I was important enough to let me know about my child, she said. Nobody thought that my family was important enough. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com LAS VEGAS (KLAS) A juvenile was arrested at a Las Vegas-area school Tuesday after they brought a firearm on campus. According to a message from the principal of the school, on Tuesday, Nov. 21, officers with the Clark County School District Police Department arrested a juvenile for possession of a firearm at Clark High School. This embedded content is not available in your region. Principal Kerry Larnerd said there were no threats to the school or students, but the school was placed in a brief lockdown as a precaution. Lanerd told parents and guardians to discuss school safety with their children and remind them that weapons of any kind are not permitted on campus. This is the 22nd gun confiscated by the CCSDPD since the 2023-2024 school year began in August. The last was at Durango High School on Nov. 6. The full message sent to Clark High School families can be read below: Dear Clark Community: This is Ed W. Clark High School Principal Kerry Larnerd. In an effort to keep you informed of matters happening within our community, I want to make you aware of an incident that occurred today. This morning, CCSD Police arrested a juvenile for possession of a firearm. There were no threats to the school or students. As part of the investigation, the school was placed in a brief lockdown out of an abundance of caution. Due to privacy law, we are unable to discuss individual student matters, however, this event serves as a reminder that weapons of any kind are not permitted on campus. Please take this opportunity to discuss school safety with your child. If they ever face a situation where they are unsure whether or not to share information with an adult, please remind them to never hesitate reporting anything that may be a safety issue. Students and parents can also make reports through the SafeVoice reporting system by calling 1-833-216-SAFE (7233), through the website at safevoicenv.org or through the free downloadable phone app. Should you have any questions or concerns regarding your child, please feel free to call us at 702-799-5800. Thank you, Mrs. Larnerd For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. GHAZNI, Afghanistan, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Police have discovered arms and ammunition in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province, the provincial police office said in a statement on Wednesday. Acting on a tip-off, the units of police launched operations in different districts of the province recently and discovered a variety of arms and ammunition including 22 pieces of handguns, 11 Kalashnikovs, seven heavy rifles and thousands of bullets and projectiles, the statement said. Police have also arrested more than 10 people for further investigations, it said. Previously, police discovered arms and ammunition including rocket-propelled grenades and AKM assault rifles in north Afghanistan's Faryab province on Monday. A 52-year-old man was sentenced Tuesday to more than 21 years in prison for a 2016 traffic crash that killed a woman in Johnson County. Landunn D. Richardson, of Kansas City, Kansas, was convicted in October of second-degree reckless murder and driving with a suspended license in the death of Vickie Taylor, 50. He was ordered to serve 256 months in the Kansas Department of Corrections. Richardson has been held in the county jail since December 2017. On Aug. 26, 2016, Richardson was involved in a head-on crash in the 5200 block of Metcalf Avenue. Police said at the time that Taylor was driving north on Metcalf when a southbound vehicle crossed the median and hit her vehicle. Authorities alleged that Richardson had illegal narcotics in his system at the time of the crash. He was found guilty of second-degree murder and driving with a suspended license in a jury trial in Johnson County that ended Oct. 13. R.V. Haderlein Elementary School in Girard, Kan., the school that is demanding an eight-year-old Native American student cut his hair to continue attending. (photo/Google Maps) School administrators in Kansas this September violated an eight-year old Native American boys cultural and religious freedoms when they required him to cut his long hair to conform to school policy, according to the Kansas American Civil Liberties Union Foundation (ACLU). The boy, a member of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma, had been growing his hair for more than a year after seeing tribal men wear their hair long at the Nations annual gathering of the Little Turtles, according to the letter the ACLU sent Girard School District administrators on November 17. The boy was attending Haderlein Elementary School in Girard, Kansas. The boys mother learned of the schools Boys hair length policy in August 2023, and visited the school the following month to request an exemption for her son because of his Native American heritage and spiritual beliefs, according to the ACLU. The schools policy forbids boys, but not girls, from wearing their hair long. Hair is not to touch the collar of a crew neck t-shirt, cover the eyebrows, or extend below the earlobes. Ponytails, rat tails, or any other style that would circumvent the policy are not permitted, the policy reads. She was told there were no exemptions. On September 23, 2023, Haderlein Elementary School Assistant Principal Joni Benso emailed the student's mother, informing her that if her childs hair was not cut by the following Monday, he will be sent home. Neither Benso nor the schools Principal, Tina Daniel, responded to Native News Onlines request for comment. Ultimately, the letter reads, to ensure that the student would be able to continue attending school, rather than being sent home or facing other punishment, he was forced to cut his hair over the weekend of September 22, 2023. The Wyandotte Nation said in a statement to Native News Online that, while not directly involved, the nation is aware of the incident, and it harkens back to decades of cultural oppression against Indigenous peoples. This oppression has taken many forms including, but not limited to, the forced cutting of Native American men and boys hair in order to impose conformity with dominant white culture and to stifle long-held religious and traditional Native American practices and beliefs, the Nations response, emailed from Chief Billy Friend, reads. The apex of this oppressive tactic can be found during the tragic Indian boarding school era, when Native children were taken from their homes and communities, relocated to strange and distant boarding schools, and forcibly assimilated through, among other means, the cutting short of boys hair. Chief Friend added that long hair is a cultural tradition in his nation that hasnt been practiced for the past several decades, but many in our current generation have [begun] to practice once again. The ACLU asserted that Haderlein Elementary Schools policy and refusal to accommodate the students religious and cultural practices violates the Kansas Preservation of Religious Freedom Act, the U.S. Constitution, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Girard Schools Superintendent Todd Ferguson responded to an email from Native News Online on Tuesday stating that: Nothing matters more to the USD 248 district and staff than creating a safe, respectful and caring school for every student. Ferguson said he was unable to comment on individual students due to confidentiality, but that the Board of Education will review and consider updates to the dress code policy on December 14. The Wyandotte Nation urged the Girard Schools Unified School District 248 in their statement to reconsider its policy governing boys hair length in light of the unique history involving Native American children. This is a culturally sensitive issue that brings to light historical traumas for many Tribal Nations, beyond our own, the nation wrote. In March 2022, a Native American student in the first-grade had his long hair forcibly cut off by two other students while attending school at Del City Elementary in Oklahoma, prompting an internal investigation. Last week, the UC Health Hospital in Aurora, Colorado, on Friday finally admitted that a hospital staff member cut the hair of 65-year-old Lakota elder Arthur Janis, without his or his familys permission. On November 18, Native News Onlines publisher Levi Rickert wrote a column about the sacredness of hair to Native Americans. We hope that a respectful, culturally informed discourse between the family and the school representatives will ultimately lead to a workable resolution. Never miss Indian Countrys biggest stories and breaking news. Click here to sign up to get our reporting sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Help us ensure that the celebration of Native Heritage never stops by donating here. About the Author: "Jenna Kunze is a staff reporter covering Indian health, the environment and breaking news for Native News Online. She is also the lead reporter on stories related to Indian boarding schools and repatriation. Her bylines have appeared in The Arctic Sounder, High Country News, Indian Country Today, Tribal Business News, Smithsonian Magazine, Elle and Anchorage Daily News. Kunze is based in New York." Contact: jkunze@indiancountrymedia.com REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (KRON) A San Mateo County jury delivered its second verdict for Karina Castros killer on Tuesday. One day after convicting Jose Rafa Solano Landaeta of first-degree murder, jurors also found several aggravating factors to be true. The Hayward man plotted and murdered his 27-year-old ex-girlfriend in a manner that was egregiously vicious and cruel on Sept. 8, 2022, according to the second verdict. Prosecutor Josh Stauffer said the cases level of pre-meditated planning, violence, and the victims vulnerability were all aggravating factors. Landaeta chased Castro with a sword outside her San Carlos apartment building, nearly slashed off her arm, and decapitated her. Eye-witnesses testified that he continued swinging the sword into her head and neck even after she was dead. Karina Castro (Images via Facebook) The victims two young daughters, both under age eight, were inside the apartment at the time. Landaeta was the father of the youngest daughter. Martin Castro said his daughter should be remembered as an amazing mother and a hero who protected her children from a murderous man. She loved her kids more than anything. Their mom was a hero as far as Im concerned. Theres no telling what could have happened if she had (stayed) in the apartment and he went up there at her. She kept him outside and away from them, Martin Castro said. Martin said his daughter, San Carlos murder victim Karina Castro, should be remembered as a hero and an amazing mother. "She loved her kids more than anything. Their mom was a hero. She kept him outside and away from (her children)." @kron4news pic.twitter.com/4QeaYBDF9Y Amy Larson (@AmyLarson25) November 21, 2023 Trial evidence showed Landaeta planned the sword attack. That morning, he told his boss in Berkeley that he was sick, went home early and retrieved the sword in Hayward, told his friend through social media messages about his plan, and drove an hour to Karina Castros home. Stauffer told the jury that even though the murder plot was not cunningly devised nor sophisticated, it was still planned and thus an aggravating factor. Jose Solano Landaeta waits to hear the jurys verdict on Nov. 20, 2023. (Pool / Photo by Nicholas Mazzoni) Even on Day 1 of the trial, tears were flowing in the courtroom. The victims friends and family cried in the courtrooms gallery. A bystander who witnessed the grisly beheading wailed on the stand. The jurys foreman wiped tears from his face while looking at photographs of Karina Castros decapitated body. From listening to weeks of testimony from sheriffs deputies, eye-witnesses, psychiatrists, and the killer himself, Martin Castro said he learned a lot about what happened to his daughter during her last moments alive. We got the verdict we were looking for. Hes guilty. While Im glad hes going to be in prison for as long as possible, my daughter is still gone. My daughter was my life. I just want her back, Martin Castro told reporters outside the courthouse Monday evening. Despite a mountain of evidence against him, Landaeta remained optimistic that he would be found not guilty by the jury and regain his freedom. He was pretty sure he was going to walk out the front door. I was not as optimistic myself, defense attorney Robert Cummings said after the verdict. Landaeta will face 25 years-to-life in prison when he is sentenced on January 9, 2024 by Judge Lisa Novak. Im hoping he gets life, Martin Castro said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4. KANSAS CITY, Mo. The Kansas City Fire Department is mourning following the recent passing of one of their own. KCFD Captain John (JP) Parison III died on Friday, November 17, with his family by his side, after a short battle with cancer. He was also the father of fellow KCFD firefighter/EMT, John Parison IV. Rally House employee shot in Kansas City Northland KCFD announced Wednesday that after a review by the pension board along with the city of Kansas Citys legal department, Parisons diagnosis and subsequent passing met the criteria for a line of duty death classification. Courage, honor, integrity, humility, knowledge, respect, and love. Captain John Parison embodied all these qualities. Captain Parison was passionate and loved his family, friends, KCFD, and the citizens he served, KCFD Interim Chief Ross Grundyson said. His love for this department, the citizens of Kansas City, and his drive to be the best he could be was evident in how he conducted himself and treated others. Captain Parison was a true public servant and the epitome of what we, as firefighters, should strive to be. As we grieve this loss and look for ways to honor him. Do so by carrying on his legacy of courage, honor, integrity, humility, knowledge, respect, and love. Captain John Parison (JP), You will be missed. Thank you for your service. Two dead after vehicle explodes at Rainbow Bridge between U.S. and Canada: officials A visitation will be held on Friday, Nov. 24, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Kansas City, with a funeral service following. Burial will be at Park Lawn Cemetery. The family has requested the funeral and graveside service be private. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports. OLATHE, Kan. A Johnson County judge sentenced a Kansas City, Kansas man Tuesday for a deadly 2016 crash that left a 50-year-old grandmother dead. Landunn Darail Richardson was sentenced to prison for 21 years and four months for second-degree murder and one year for driving with a suspended license. The sentences are set to run concurrently. Leavenworth woman pleads guilty to severely beating elderly woman with walker Fifty-year-old Vickie Taylor died in the head-on crash on Metcalf Avenue. The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Xavier Andrews and Kendall Kaut with the help of the Mission and Overland Park police departments. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports. Adil is now back in the ring performing his moves after procedure which left him with one kidney When Adil Malik was 25, his life was turned upside down after being diagnosed with kidney cancer. But three years on, the professional wrestler has won his fight and turned his personal battle into a documentary to help others. "No 25-year-old should have to go through this, once you hear the big 'C' word you think the worst," he says. Around a third of new cases in the UK are diagnosed in people aged 75 and over, according to Cancer Research UK. Adil was vlogging his fitness journey three years ago when he discovered he was losing his appetite. He says it soon after this that he also noticed blood in his urine. "I was eating six meals a day, slowly it went down to five, four, three, two a day," he tells BBC Asian Network. "It should have raised alarm bells, but I left it for a month thinking it would clear up on its own." Fearing the worst, Adil eventually went to the doctors and was quickly referred to a specialist who diagnosed him with stage three renal cell carcinoma - the most common type of kidney cancer. Adil has made a documentary about his kidney cancer diagnosis Adil, from east London, says he broke down after the diagnosis but feels his resilience and faith gave him determination to "overcome it". He decided to document his journey, filming the highs and lows, which included a nephrectomy - the removal of a kidney. Adil then turned that into a documentary called Wrestling with Cancer which he wants to act as a warning for other young people to never ignore abnormalities in their bodies. And he says he's motivated by raising awareness in ethnic minority communities such as his, where he feels there "is a reluctance to get checked out" when it comes to serious medical issues. "There's a stigma with diseases like cancer, people just want to forget about it," he says. The film, which also features other young people who've had cancer, has been shown at different film festivals around the world, including in Orlando, Valencia and Lisbon. Adil hopes there will be greater education around the subject and wants the documentary to inform people about kidney cancer. "Know your body is normal and don't be afraid to get yourself checked out," he says. Adil is now back fighting fit and performing his pro wrestling moves in the ring. "I've managed to get ring ready again," he says. "Nothing was ever going to stop me from wrestling." If you, or someone you know, have been affected by cancer, you can visit BBC Action Line for help and support. What are the symptoms of kidney cancer? Often there are no obvious symptoms and it's usually diagnosed when testing for something else. But they can include: Blood in your pee A lump or swelling in your back, under your ribs, or in your neck Pain between your ribs and waist that does not go away Loss of appetite or losing weight without trying to Feeling tired or having no energy A high temperature that does not go away Sweating a lot, including at night Source: NHS Asian Network logo Listen to Ankur Desai's show on BBC Asian Network live from 15:00-18:00 Monday to Thursday - or listen back here. FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. Members of Congress visited the site of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High tragedy this week in whats expected to be the last in a series of tours designed to urge lawmakers to take action on school safety. This was the second time U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Parkland, led a bipartisan group of House members through the vacant 1200 building that has remained a time capsule since it was the site of the mass shooting that killed 17 people on Feb. 14, 2018. They also had a closed-door roundtable discussion with relatives of Parkland victims. Those who visited Monday say they were moved by the horrific scenes of broken glass and blood stains, as well as by stories of the failures that happened that day. They promised to continue the push for legislation to improve school safety. The highest responsibility any of us have, not just as elected officials, but as human beings, is to take care of our kids, said Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican congressman and former FBI agent from Pennsylvania who toured the building. And our kids are not safe right now. Other congressional members in attendance were three of Moskowitzs fellow Democrats: Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, Daniel Goldman of New York and Wiley Nickel of North Carolina. Nine members of Congress, including Moskowitz, toured the school in August. With turmoil in the House this year over issues such as who would serve as speaker, Moskowitz said its hard to get legislation related to school safety or any other issues passed this year. Were at just an unfortunate chaotic time, but there are more discussions going on right around school safety or where can we find agreement on gun violence prevention, he said. D.C., unfortunately, doesnt work very quickly. While Republicans have been resistant to tightening gun laws, Wasserman Schultz said the visit helped her see issues that could generate bipartisan support. If you go through the building and the frozen way in which time was encapsulated, you can really see how you can change the structure and the way we build buildings, and the way we run schools to make sure that a shooting like this doesnt happen again, she said. She noted that student Jaime Guttenberg was running to the stairwell during the attack, but she couldnt get there in time, because of the configuration of the doors that were locked. She couldnt get to safety. With a different building configuration, she would have been alive today, Wasserman Schultz said. Members of Congress also toured the 1500 building, which opened on a different part of campus in 2020 to replace the 1200 building. It has all the top, best safety features in the country and is probably the safest building around, said Max Schachter, whose son, Alex, was killed in the shooting. Schachter and Tony Montalto, who lost his daughter, Gina, accompanied the members of Congress. A major safety upgrade in the new building is at the windows on the classroom doors, Schachter said. The shooter in the 2018 attack didnt actually enter classrooms but shot through the large window pane on the doors,, he noted. If you look at the new building, the pane of glass is very, very thin, and so the kids he can see in the classroom are much more limited, Schachter said. And you cant just shoot through the glass, put your hand in, unlock the door, walk in and shoot everyone. District spokesman John Sullivan wouldnt discuss specific safety upgrades to the 1500 building except to say, The materials used in the construction took into account the structural and safety failures in the 1200 building. Along with members of Congress, U.S. State Attorney Markenzy Lapointe also toured and shared a letter from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland written to family members of victims. We renew our commitment to working together to put an end to the gun violence that has devastated too many families and too many communities, Garland wrote. I know that nothing can undo the enormous loss you have suffered. The Justice Department will never forget what happened here; we will never forget those you lost; and we will never stop working to honor their memories. The building is scheduled to be demolished next summer. For more than five years, the State Attorneys Office had maintained it as a crime scene for the trials of killer Nikolas Cruz, who was sentenced to life in prison, and former school resource officer Scot Peterson, who was acquitted of child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury charges. The school district received full control of the building in July, and since then, its been toured multiple times by legislators, law enforcement officials and school district leaders from around the country. Schachter and Moskowitz said they would like more members of Congress to tour the building before its demolished, believing that seeing it can prompt them to act on school safety. However, Sullivan said he expects this to be the last tour. He voiced a similar prediction last month after more than 200 officials from various school districts visited. The superintendent said there will be no more visits, Sullivan said Monday. We will clean the 1200 building as soon as possible. ________ Stuart Seldowitz issued an apology following his discriminatory rant at a food vendor in New York City A former adviser to Barack Obama said that killing 4,000 Palestinian children wasnt enough during a racist and islamophobic rant to a food vendor. In videos shared on social media, Stuart Seldowitz can be heard asking someone off-camera whether they raped their daughter like Muhammad did. Muhammad, your prophet ... He was a rapist, he said. Mr Seldowitz was acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under President Obama, a senior political officer and was deputy director in the US State Departments Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003. Most recently he served as foreign affairs chair for Gotham Government Relations, which cut ties with him following the release of the videos. In the viral clips, Mr Seldowitz appeared to be speaking to a man working inside a food van in New York City. In one video, Mr Seldowitz can be heard saying he is going to put up big signs here that say This guy believes in Hamas. The vendor then told Mr Seldowitz he was an American citizen, to which he asked how he became a citizen and called him a terrorist. You support killing little children. Youre a terrible person, Mr Seldowitz said The vendor replied: You kill children, not me. Mr Seldowitz was acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under President Obama Mr Seldowitz said: If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what, it wasnt enough. It wasnt enough. In another clip, Mr Seldowitz referred to his friends in immigration and that the Mukhabarat wants your picture in an apparent reference to an Egyptian intelligence agency. The Mukhabarat in Egypt will get your parents. Does your father like his fingernails? Theyll take them out one by one, he said. The vendor repeatedly asked Mr Seldowitz to leave, telling him that he did not speak English. Tell me why I should go? Im standing here. Im an American. Its a free country. Its not like Egypt, Mr Seldowitz replied. When the man repeated that he did not speak English, Mr Seldowitz called him ignorant before asking if he spoke Arabic, the language of the Koran. The holy Koran that some people use as a toilet. What do you think of that, people who used the Koran as a toilet? Does it bother you? he laughed. Verbal attack on innocent vendor In the second video, Mr Seldowitz said he is going to put up big signs here that say this guy believes in Hamas. The vendor then told Mr Seldowitz he was an American citizen, to which he asked how he became a citizen and called him a terrorist. You support killing little children. Youre a terrible person, Mr Seldowitz said The vendor replied: You kill children, not me. Mr Seldowitz said: If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what, it wasnt enough. It wasnt enough. Mr Seldowitz has since apologised for the incident. I regret the whole thing happened and Im sorry... In the heat of the moment, I said things that probably I shouldnt have said, he said on Tuesday evening. If I had to do it all over again, I would not have raised the religious aspect, Mr Seldowitz added, insisting that he was not bigoted against Muslims. I dont think Im an Islamophobic guy. Ive spoken up for equal treatment of Muslims on numerous occasions with numerous different people. 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. Taylor James Johnatakis A 39-year-old Kingston man who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was found guilty Tuesday of seven charges, including three felonies, by a federal jury in Washington, D.C. Taylor James Johnatakis, who represented himself at trial, was convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder, and assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers, all felony charges, according to a press release from the office of Matthew Graves, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Johnatakis was also convicted of four misdemeanor crimes related to his actions that day, when the certification of President Joe Biden's election by Congress was delayed after supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building. The misdemeanor charges were listed as entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds; and engaging in an act of physical violence in the grounds of any of the Capitol building. Johnatakis will be sentenced at a later date. As previously reported by the Kitsap Sun, Johnatakis confirmed he was at the Capitol in his own podcast, "The Peasants Perspective," published after the events of Jan. 6, 2021. In the podcast he did not offer specifics about his level of participation in the disturbance, where Trump supporters were accused of assaulting police officers, breaching security and sending lawmakers scrambling for cover until the building was secured. Prosecutors said that Johnatakis led a mob of rioters up a staircase to the Capitol and was part of a group that overwhelmed police officers on an outdoor staircase and then followed the officers underneath scaffolding of the inauguration stage as they attempted to retreat. The statement also alleges that Johnatakis, while on the southwest staircase of the Capitol, organized and coordinated rioters with a megaphone he had brought with him that day, specifically telling rioters to "Pack it in!" toward a police line and then to push bike racks toward police. Prosecutors also said he was one of three defendants that then grabbed and pushed bike racks directly into the line of police officers, one of whom was injured. The other two defendants accused of using the bike racks, Isaac Steve Sturgeon and Craig Michael Bingert, have both been convicted and sentenced for their roles. Johnatakis is the second man from Kitsap County to be found guilty by a jury of crimes associated with the events of Jan. 6. In April, David Charles Rhine, of Bremerton, was also found guilty of four misdemeanor charges for trespassing by a jury in U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia. Rhine was sentenced to four months in prison. A third man, John M. Cameron of Port Orchard, pleaded guilty in 2022 to a count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a capitol building and was later sentenced to 36 months of probation and 30 days of intermittent confinement. Cameron was also ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and $500 in restitution to the Architect of the Capitol. A judge later vacated the confinement requirement and allowed for placement at a residential reentry center for 30 days, according to court records. This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Kingston man found guilty of 7 charges related to Jan. 6 riot The Kirkland Police Department is asking people to avoid the Totem Lake area while they look for a bank robbery suspect. KPD first posted about the bank robber on Tuesday at 4:45 p.m. Police are searching for the suspect on Northeast 132nd Street from 124th Avenue Northeast to 132nd Avenue Northeast. Also from 124th Avenue Northeast to Slater Avenue on Northeast 124th Street. The area is near Totem Lake Village, past Evergreen Hospital. KPD is asking people to use alternate routes. Officers will also be collecting evidence in the area. This is an ongoing investigation. Thanks for your patience, said KPD at 6:37 p.m. ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Experts and policymakers have stressed the need to put in place innovative and good land governance policies so as to unlock Africa's productive potential. This came during the 5th edition of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa (CLPA), which is underway from Nov. 21 to 24 at the African Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. The high-level conference is organized biennially by the African Land Policy Center, which is a joint initiative of the AU, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and the African Development Bank (AfDB). Experts and policymakers attending the conference underscored that if African countries create innovative and good land governance policies that promote equitable access to land and create an enabling environment for investments, it will unlock the productive potential of the continent. Judith Nabakooba, Uganda's minister of lands, housing and urban development, said during the occasion that there is a need for Africa to have good land governance policies that strengthen women's rights to land to achieve fair and sustainable outcomes for all. "Uganda understands the relation between land, trade and the wellbeing of the people. Effective land governance and management is the cornerstone of sustainable social justice," a UNECA statement quoted Nabakooba as saying. She said policies formulated should be visional and must integrate climate change issues and reform land justice systems. Kanziemo Leontine, natural resources management advisor at the AfDB, said land governance and regulating access to and use of land is an enabler of accelerating the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement through contributing to the production of goods, unlocking agricultural potential, and promoting gender equality. "The issue of good land governance becomes critical for the achievement of the AfCFTA," Leontine said, adding that African governments should continue to invest in supporting women farmers. The high-level conference is being held under the theme of "Promoting Sustainable Land Governance in Africa for Accelerating Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement." A woman is wanted by police after a suitcase containing 350,000 worth of jewellery was stolen from a central London hotel, the Met has said. A public appeal for information has been launched to find the whereabouts of Marinela Manolesu after the suitcase was stolen from a hotel in Knightsbridge on Sunday. The 28-year-old had been working as a housekeeper at the unnamed hotel. Officers believe she has left the UK and travelled to Romania. Authorities in Romania have been alerted to the alleged theft, the Met Police said. 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 The Kremlin has declined to comment on the recent statements by the United States regarding Iran's alleged preparations to supply short-range ballistic missiles to Russia for use in the war against Ukraine, Russian media reported, citing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. "I don't think it's worth commenting on. Our relations with Tehran are developing, including in the sphere of military-technical cooperation," Peskov said. Read also: Lack of evidence so far for claims Iran sold missiles to Russia, Zelenskyy says U.S. officials believe that Iran is preparing to provide Russia with short-range ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine, U.S. newspaper the Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 21. According to the officials who spoke with the journalists, Iran has already transferred drones, guided bombs, and artillery shells to Russia. Washington is now concerned that ballistic missiles could be next, after Iran displayed Ababil drones and Fateh-110 missiles to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during his visit to Tehran in September. Read also: Horrific scenes as Russia ballistic missile batters busy market in daytime attack on Kostyantynivka, 16 dead The report added that the Russian embassy in Washington and the Iranian delegation at the UN have not commented on the situation. The United States believes that Iran is becoming an increasingly important partner to Russia, and is benefiting from the relationship. Sources say that Russia is helping Iran improve its satellite capabilities and is supplying the country with missiles, air defense systems, and military electronics. Washington previously accused Iran of supplying Mohajer-6 and other drones to Russia. According to media reports, in exchange for the arms, Russia supplies Iran with cyber warfare technology, "captured Western weapons," and assists in developing Iran's missile program. Read also: Russia can achieve its goals in Ukraine only by military means Kremlins Peskov Russia is also engaged in the production of Iranian kamikaze drones in the special economic zone in Alabuga, Tatarstan. Iran transfers materials and technologies to Russia, and continues to supply Shahed attack drones. However, Moscow officially denies this. 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 Kremlin is struggling to stifle "hysteria" over Ukrainian advances in Dnipro, a think tank said. Russia's defense minister claimed his troops have thwarted all Ukrainian counteroffensives. However, Russian military bloggers said they're failing, per the Institute for the Study of War. The Kremlin is struggling to stamp out Russian military bloggers' "hysteria" around Ukrainian offensives in the Dnipro River, according to war analysts. Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu claimed in a speech Tuesday that troops had thwarted all of Ukraine's attempts to carry out "amphibious operations in the Kherson direction," the respected Institute for the Study of War reported. He also claimed Ukraine had suffered "colossal" losses. Shoigu's speech is likely intended to play down Russian military bloggers' fears about Russia's struggles on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, the Institute said. However, it will likely fail to have the desired effect as bloggers' complaints mount, the organization added. Sergei Shoigu and Vladimir Putin. RIA Novosti The Telegram channel VChK-OGPU claimed last Friday that Ukrainian forces killed all 76 Russian personnel in the 1st Battalion of the 35th Motorized Rifle Brigade near the town of Krynky, according to the Institute. In a video shared by the editor-in-chief of Censor.Net on Telegram on Monday, a Russian soldier near Krynky said that the Russian military is forcing injured soldiers to launch assaults and that there are three Ukrainian drones for every Russian soldier, the ISW reported. On Monday, a Russian milblogger called Two Majors on Telegram, posted a letter allegedly written by a Russian soldier. It said the lack of drones in the area meant Russian forces were moving more slowly and exposed them to Ukrainian strikes. The military bloggers' claims appear to corroborate assessments made by Ukrainian officials. Serhiy Bratchuk, a representative of the Ukrainian volunteer army and head of Odesa's Regional Military Administration, told Ukraine's Espreso TV Monday that Ukrainian forces have secured bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the river and fired back at Russian forces. On Sunday, army spokesperson Natalia Gumenyuk said Ukrainian forces may have gone as far as five miles into the left bank, AFP reported . Last week, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president's office, said his soldiers had covered 70% of the distance separating them from Crimea and had established a "foothold" on the eastern bank of the Dnipro. Business Insider has not been able to independently verify these claims. Meanwhile, Russia has fended off Ukrainian attacks by sending Su-34 fighter-bombers to support ground forces in southern Donetsk, Russia's defense ministry said Tuesday. Taking control of the region would bring Ukrainian forces closer to Crimea, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pledged to free from Russia's occupation, per Reuters . Read the original article on Business Insider RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) A beloved Christmas movie many households watch during the holiday season is turning 20. Elf hit the big screens in 2003 and now to celebrate and spread Christmas cheer, Krispy Kreme is releasing Elf-inspired donuts. Starting Friday, customers can enjoy the Buddy Snow Globe donut, the Buddy Makes Breakfast donut, and the Christmas Lights donuts packed in the dozen donut boxes, according to a news release. The Buddy Snow Globe donut is an original Krispy Kreme glazed donut with a twist to go with the theme. Its dipped in sugar-cookie light blue icing and has white sprinkles, topped with powdered sugary snow. It also has a chocolate Elf piece for more decor. The Buddy Makes Breakfast donut is an original donut topped with cake batter spaghetti buttercream, milk chocolate candies, sprinkles, and maple drizzle. The Christmas Lights donut is another original glazed donut dipped in rich chocolate icing, drizzled with green icing and topped with rainbow sprinkles and a Christmas Elf piece. For those who cant make it, a fresh six-pack of the Buddy Snow Globe, Festive Lights, and Santa Belly donuts are heading to select grocery stores. Krispy Kreme global chief brand officer Dave Skena said in a statement the inspired donuts are to honor memorable moments from the movie. He also added, Smiling is Buddy the Elfs favorite, and ours, too. We know our fans are going to smile a lot when they spread holiday cheer to family and friends all season long with our Elf holiday collection. The Charlotte headquartered company announced their annual Day of the Dozens will be returning on Dec. 12. Customers will be offered a $1 original glazed dozen donuts when they purchase any dozen at regular price. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to CBS17.com. AUSTIN (KXAN) Two children were found safe and in another county on Tuesday after officials said they were previously missing, the Kyle Police Department said on social media. Both children were previously reported missing in Kyle. Thank you to everyone that helped share the information, Kyle PD said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin. Dozens of physicians, dentists, and psychiatrists rally this month outside the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in Los Angeles. The Union of Physicians and Dentists said its members have voted to authorize a possible strike. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) Physicians and dentists working at Los Angeles County-run hospitals and clinics have voted to authorize a possible strike, citing concerns about inadequate benefits and rampant vacancies. The Union of American Physicians and Dentists represents more than 1,100 county employees in two bargaining units that gave the green light for a walkout after two weeks of voting. The workers authorized a strike in the event that their negotiating committee determined it was necessary, the union said. The union did not announce strike dates and such an action is not guaranteed to go forward, but the vote brings its members a step closer to a walkout that could affect a range of county facilities not just the hospitals run by the county. Among the workers represented by the UAPD are psychiatrists working in L.A. County jails, where labor leaders said vacancy rates for such professionals had run as high as 70%. With so many vacancies, "we cannot provide adequate care to inmates with unmet medical and psychiatric needs, said Dr. Gary Pedneault, a psychiatrist at a county jail for women, in a statement. L.A. County-run hospitals are also facing a possible strike by SEIU-United Service Workers West, whose members work for companies contracted by the county to clean and sanitize the public hospitals. SEIU-USWW said it had notified the county Tuesday that more than 700 environmental services workers could go on strike as soon as Dec. 6. "This is not a decision we take lightly," the union said in a letter, but "our members can not continue to be treated like a second class in their place of work." Both groups have raised concerns about benefits and understaffing: UAPD members have faulted what they say are inadequate benefits for making it difficult to attract and retain physicians. Some physicians said they had to work long hours while pregnant to pad their maternity leave and have more time to bond with their babies. L.A. County offers more extensive "Megaflex" benefits to some other county employees, but "the healthcare workers of Los Angeles who are the linchpin of the healthcare system ... are not being allowed to have that," said Dr. Stuart Bussey, president of the UAPD, calling it "unfair." "We need good health benefits to fix this recruitment and retention problem," Bussey said. The L.A. County Department of Health Services did not promptly respond to questions about vacancy rates for medical professionals in its facilities. In a statement, it said the doctors and dentists represented by the union "already have an extensive benefits package in place" that includes "comprehensive medical, dental, and leave benefits among numerous other provisions." County officials have estimated that providing "Megaflex" benefits to all UAPD members in the two bargaining units would cost at least $86.8 million annually. That cost "would make it prohibitive to consider such investments in wages and incentives by specialty, location and other hard-to-recruit roles for patient care," Department of Health Services director Dr. Christina Ghaly warned county supervisors. UAPD officials said they dispute the cost estimate and are seeking another one. Besides physicians and dentists working for the L.A. County Department of Health Services, the UAPD members weighing a strike include people employed at the Department of Mental Health, Public Health, and the Medical Examiner, among others. The Department of Health Services said in a statement earlier this month that it was optimistic that negotiations with the UAPD would "ultimately result in a fair and amicable agreement that safeguards patient care, values healthcare workers and enhances physician recruitment and retention in County service." SEIU-USWW, in turn, said workers who clean L.A. County-run hospitals are not getting the health benefits that L.A. County supervisors have called for county contractors to provide for their workers as L.A. County enters into new contracts. The union also said it was concerned about understaffing. "We are here today to demand that the county please implement the motion that was approved in April for the workers, so that we can have medical insurance," said Amparo Diaz, who works in housekeeping at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, speaking with a Spanish-language translator to the Board of Supervisors. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, hearing the concerns, asked Tuesday for the county chief executive to update the board on the implementation of the county requirement. The Department of Health Services said Wednesday that it was "on track to implement the policy by December 31, 2023, as required by the motion." It has previously estimated that requiring county contractors to fully fund healthcare coverage at the minimum levels sought by supervisors Affordable Care Act Gold Level coverage could increase county costs for contracted cleaning, food and security services by $6.3 million to $10 million annually. That number could be higher if contractors pass along more costs than expected, it said. 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. LAS VEGAS (KLAS) Las Vegas officers arrested a man after he led police on a car chase, side-swiping a patrol car, before hiding in his ex-wifes apartment, according to police documents. On Nov. 18 at around 1:40 a.m. a patrol officer with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was driving near Flamingo Road and Koval Lane when he was told a reckless driver was endangering multiple pedestrians, according to the report. The officer located the white Acura SUV with Arizona plates near Flamingo Road and Tuscany Casino Drive, and when the suspect, identified as Robert Gonzalez, did not stop for him or other officers, a police car chase began, the report stated. Robert Gonzalez faces charges after led police on a car chase, side-swiping a patrol car. (LVMPD) The officer attempted to block Gonzalez, turning on the lights and sirens, but Gonzalez continued, causing multiple minor collisions, according to the report. At that point, the ground pursuit stopped so officers could render aid or prepare for the suspect to flee on foot. Meanwhile, an air unit followed Gonzalez, and at around 2:30 a.m., they saw him switch to another vehicle, a white Chevrolet Truck belonging to Gonzalez father, the report stated. According to the report, during the pursuit, Gonzalez was driving between 75 and 80 miles per hour. Officers attempted to stop the truck near Rosewood Drive and Cherokee Avenue. An officer angled his patrol vehicle to block Gonzalez with his lights and sirens. The truck then moved into oncoming traffic to avoid the patrol vehicle, side-swiping the patrol vehicle. The truck hit the patrol vehicles front passenger bumper and buddy bumper. The damage to the patrol vehicle was minor, the report stated. The air unit then told officers that the driver of the truck left the vehicle and walked into an apartment. Officers arrived at the apartment building and a neighbor told police that a man matching Gonzalez description often visited the unit across the hall from him. When police knocked on the door of the apartment, a woman answered. Police said she appeared to be in emotional distress and told police that her kids were in the apartment sleeping, according to the report. While she told police she didnt want them to enter, she pointed and nodded her head toward the rooms inside the apartment. Officers again asked to enter the apartment, and she allowed them in. She continued to cry and pointed to the back room when they asked where Gonzalez was, the report stated. When police entered the room where Gonzalez was, they saw him lying in bed, holding a small boy. Police said Gonzalez appeared extremely sweaty and became verbally aggressive toward the officers, according to the report. Officers told Gonzalez to get off the bed and get away from the boy, to which he replied, I do not recognize your authority, the report stated. He also told police he went to the apartment to spend the night with [his] kids. While Gonzalez argued with officers, the woman grabbed the boy off the bed and away from Gonzalez. Gonzalez continued to argue with police, who took him into custody, according to the report. The woman told police Gonzalez was her ex-husband and the two shared two children. Both kids lived with her. She told police she was married to Gonzalez for 15 years and they separated three years ago, according to the report. She told police Gonzalez banged on her apartment door in a panic, telling her he was going to prison and needed to see his kids. She said she heard police sirens and a helicopter and asked what he did, but he would not tell her. Gonzalez faces a charge of driver disobeying a peace officer and endangering other persons/property. His next court appearance is scheduled for Dec. 26. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. LAS VEGAS (KLAS) Police arrested a ninth suspect in the deadly beating of a student near Rancho High School that happened earlier this month. They still need help identifying one additional person of interest. As of Tuesday, police arrested a ninth teenager in connection with the murder of 17-year-old Jonathan Lewis. That teen was booked into the Clark County Juvenile Hall for open murder. No additional information about the suspect was released. Detectives said in a release Tuesday that they still need help identifying one outstanding person of interest. They released additional photos of the teen, who they say was last seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and khaki pants. Police release additional photos of an outstanding person of interest in the murder of Jonathan Lewis. (LVMPD) Police release additional photos of an outstanding person of interest in the murder of Jonathan Lewis. (LVMPD) On Tuesday, four of the eight teenagers accused in the crime appeared in the Las Vegas Justice Court where they were charged with second-degree murder charges and conspiracy to commit battery with substantial bodily harm. In police documents listed later in the day, police said some of the teens could be gang members associated with the gangs known as Young Rich Team, Murder Block, and 2100 Block. Dontral Beaver, 16; Gianni Robinson, 17; Damien Hernandez, 17; and Treavion Randolph, 16; will be tried in court together and due to the nature of the crime, they are being charged as adults in the court system. The judge on Tuesday ordered the teens to continue to be held without bail at the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center for safety reasons until their next court appearance on Dec. 14. The other four suspects are currently in the juvenile court system, waiting to be certified to enter the adult court system. That court date is scheduled for Dec. 6. The teens are accused of attacking 17-year-old Jonathan Lewis during a fight over some stolen items. Video of the beating showed Lewis on the ground with a group of teens kicking and punching him. The coroner listed his cause of death as complications of multiple blunt-force injuries. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. LAS VEGAS (KLAS) A man with several previous DUI convictions is accused of driving impaired at 100 mph on a Las Vegas freeway, leading to his latest arrest, documents said. Philip Erwin faces charges of DUI, driving more than 31 miles over the speed limit and driving with a revoked license for DUI, among other charges, documents said. On Thursday, Nov. 16, around 1 a.m., a Metro police officer stopped a driver, later identified as Erwin, on the 215 Beltway near Sahara Avenue, documents said. The officer paced the SUV going 100 mph in the 65-mph zone, documents said. Erwin told the officer he was driving home from a bar, police said. A second person was in the front passenger seat and passed out. Philip Erwin faces charges of DUI, driving more than 31 miles over the speed limit and driving with a revoked license for DUI, among other charges, documents said. (LVMPD/KLAS) The officer said Erwins smelled of alcohol and had slurred speech, documents said. As he walked, he had an unsteady gait [and] was falling over, police said. He also had glossy and watery, bloodshot eyes. Records show Erwin received his first DUI charge in Las Vegas Justice Court in 2011. In that case, he pleaded no contest. A judge ordered him to attend DUI school, perform community service and pay a fine, records showed. Erwin stayed out of trouble for three months and avoided jail. In 2015, Erwin pleaded no contest to DUI. A judge ordered him to attend DUI school, perform community service and pay a fine, records showed. Erwin stayed out of trouble for three months and avoided jail. In 2018, Erwin pleaded no contest to DUI. A judge ordered him to attend DUI school, perform community service and pay a fine, records showed. Erwin stayed out of trouble for three months and avoided jail. In May, police issued a summons for Erwin on a new DUI charge, though it was listed in court documents as his first charge within seven years, according to records. The summons was returned to court due to an undeliverable address. Erwin then failed to appear for his June arraignment and a judge issued a warrant for his arrest. On Nov. 16, Erwin appeared before a judge on the new charges. He posted bond and was due to return to court on Nov. 30 for a warrant return hearing in the previous DUI case. While Erwin faced a charge of driving with a revoked license, it was unclear if or when a judge or the DMV had revoked his license. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) The last day to apply for a ballot by mail for the special City Council election is Tuesday, Nov. 28. The election will be for an unexpired term for City Council District 2. City Rep. Alexsandra Annello announced earlier that she will be running for House District 77. Candidates to fill her seat are: attorney Veronica Vero Carbajal; long-time City Hall staffer Judy Gutierrez; El Paso ISD Trustee Josh Acevedo; and Ben Mendoza. Election Day is Dec. 9. Early voting will be from Nov. 27 through Dec. 5. You are eligible to vote early by mail if you are a registered voter who is: 65 years of age or older Disability (Have a sickness or physical condition that prevents from appearing at the polling place during the Early Voting period or on Election Day without a likelihood of needing personal assistance or injury of his/her health) Expected to give birth within three weeks before or after Election Day Out of the county on Election Day and during the period of Early Voting by personal appearance (must provide out of county address) Confined in jail or involuntary civil commitment To vote by mail, a voter must complete and submit an application for a ballot by mail, also known as an ABBM, to the early voting clerk. To download and print an ABBM, English or Spanish, or for more information visit https://epcountyvotes.com/voter_information/civilian_ballot_by_mail. If a voter requested a ballot by mail and later decides to vote at the voting place, a voter must surrender their ballot by mail to vote in person. If a voter does not surrender their ballot, a provisional ballot will be offered to the voter. If the voter does not believe that the ballot will be delivered on time through the mail, the voter can drop off their own ballot only on Election Day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. In-Person: The El Paso County Elections Department, 500 E. San Antonio Ave., Suite 314, El Paso, Texas 79901 Curbside: Campbell Street (Eastside) of the Enrique Moreno County Courthouse, 500 E. San Antonio Ave., Suite 314, El Paso, Texas 79901 Voters with questions can call (915) 546-2154 or email at epelections@epcounty.com. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News. VIENTIANE, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Lao government and the private sector convened for a meeting here on Tuesday to discuss collaboration to improve the business environment and increase private sector investment in the Southeast Asian country. Over 80 participants representing various entities, such as line ministries, embassies, development partners, and the domestic and foreign business community, attended the 21st Trade and Private Sector Working Group meeting, hosted by the Lao Ministry of Industry and Commerce, the Lao News Agency reported on Wednesday. In his opening remarks, Lao Deputy Minister of Industry and Commerce Bounthueng Douangsavanh emphasized the importance of improving the business environment to create favorable conditions to overcome current macroeconomic challenges. "Over recent years, we have made several reforms to improve the environment for business. However, much more needs to be done to promote economic diversification and reduce our dependence on the resource sectors as main growth drivers," said Bounthueng. The meeting was divided into two main sessions. The first session featured constraints to private investment, including skill shortages in the Lao labor market presented by the World Bank, and key findings and recommendations from the European Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Laos. The second session focused on an update of ongoing reforms to improve the trade and investment environment, including the revision of the controlled list and investment promotion law by a representative from the Investment Promotion Department under the Lao Ministry of Planning and Investment. Bounthueng concluded the meeting, recognizing the valuable contributions of all participants and reiterating the government's commitment to creating a more conducive environment for trade and private sector growth. Trade and Private Sector Working Group is one of the ten sector working groups under the Round Table Process and is the main forum for policy dialogue between the Lao government and development partners. The working group meetings are organized semi-annually to address issues related to trade policies, investment promotion, infrastructure development and other matters that affect the private sector and trade within the country. Although C.S. Lewis was famous when he was alive, the death of the beloved Christian apologist and author from renal failure went largely overlooked because of something else that happened the same day. Lewis died around 5:30 p.m. at his home in Oxford, England, The Kilns. Adjusting for the time zones, this was an hour before John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas. The U.S. president was pronounced dead a half-hour later. Lewis was 64 when he died, a week before his birthday. Kennedy was 46. Lewis stepson, Douglas Gresham, would later recall that he learned about Kennedys death before that of his stepfather. (Lewis married Greshams mother, Joy Davidman, in 1956; she would die of cancer four years later, inspiring Lewis to write A Grief Observed.) In a 2013 interview with the U.K.s Independent, Gresham said that, because Lewis brother was so devastated by the loss, the stepson had worked with Walter Hooper to issue a news release about Lewis death the next day, and only two news outlets reached out about the news. The New York Times announced the death Nov. 24. People only very slowly became aware of Jacks death, Gresham said. For years afterwards, his estate would forward letters to me that were still addressed to him. While largely unheralded, Lewis death was not entirely unexpected. He had been in declining health for a few years and had resigned from his position at Cambridge University in August 1963. His kidneys were failing, and treatment at that time largely consisted of blood transfusions; dialysis did not become common until the 1970s. In a July hospitalization, he came so close to death that he received the Roman Catholic last rites. Correspondence in the last months of Lewis life showed that he didnt expect to live much longer. He signed one letter, sent in June, a tired traveller near the journeys end. Related His last months were spent at home, in a room set up on the first floor, as he could no longer ascend the stairs to his bedroom and study. He was cared for, first by a nurse, and then by his brother, Warnie. According to an article on the blog of The Gospel Coalition, among his final correspondents was a young woman by the name of Kathy Kristy, who would later go on to marry the renowned pastor Tim Keller, who died earlier this year. In his last week of life, he met with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien and Tolkiens son. (After Lewis death, Tolkien would say, So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man my age like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.) Lewis also worked on an essay that would be published the next month in the Saturday Evening Post, entitled, We have no right to happiness. There is not much known of his last day, other than that he had a quiet morning at home with his brother, and took a nap in the afternoon. His brother later said that he took tea to Lewis in bed around 4 p.m., and then rushed to his brothers side when he heard him collapse on the floor about 90 minutes later. Lewis was unconscious when his brother found him; he died a few minutes later. Its unknown what his last words were. But we do know what Lewis thought about death generally, because of his famous argument from desire, in which he said, If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. The fact that our heart yearns for something earth cant supply is proof that heaven must be our home. 60 years ago today, C. S. Lewis made it home. pic.twitter.com/xYx9LTR4jV Matt Smethurst (@MattSmethurst) November 22, 2023 Laurence Fox, right, claims to have had his career damaged by accusations of racism on social media - Lucy North/PA Wire Laurence Fox is a colour-blind liberal who doesnt like racism, the High Court has been told. The actor and politician is being sued by former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and drag artist Crystal over a row on X, formerly known as Twitter, in October 2020. Mr Fox called Mr Blake and the former RuPauls Drag Race contestant, whose real name is Colin Seymour, paedophiles in an exchange about a decision by Sainsburys to celebrate Black History Month and provide a safe space for its black employees. After Mr Fox called for a boycott of the supermarket, the actor was called a racist by the pair and actress Nicola Thorp in their own posts on the platform. The Reclaim Party founder, who denies being a racist, is counter-suing the trio over their tweets, claiming they damaged his reputation. Simon Blake (left), Nicola Thorp and Colin Seymour (right) sued Fox before then being countersued - Lucy North/PA Wire His barrister, Patrick Green KC, told the court: The allegation of being a racist will have been looked upon very seriously by many of Mr Foxs actual and potential colleagues ... He is not a racist, he is a colour-blind liberal who dislikes racism, progressive and identitarian politics. Fox has claimed he lost his acting agent in the aftermath and that on two occasions after the claim against him was filed, faeces was posted through his door. Mr Green said in written submissions that there is little doubt that Mr Foxs reputation has actually suffered very considerably since October 2020, particularly in the mind of his former agent Sue Latimer. He added that Fox has also seen a decline in invitations to events for making professional appearances, in addition to a fall in acting roles. The court was told that Fox received several queries about acting roles in 2020 before opportunities dwindled, including for a role in the HBO series Succession, and a project by Disney, thought to be the Obi-Wan series starring Ewan McGregor. Opportunities for 2023 which did not come to fruition included an offer to appear on the show Banged Up, where high-profile figures, including EastEnders actor Sid Owen and Conservative MP Johnny Mercer, spent several days locked in a decommissioned prison, the court heard. All four people in the claims appeared at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Wednesday for the first day of the trial. Fox is expected to enter the witness box on Friday. Ignoramus or an intelligent racist Lorna Skinner KC, representing Mr Blake, Mr Seymour and Ms Thorp, said the trio honestly believed, and continue honestly to believe, that Mr Fox is a racist. In written submissions, the barrister said the 45-year-old has made a number of highly controversial statements about race, adding: If and to the extent that Mr Fox has been harmed in his reputation, it is his own conduct and not the claimants comments on it that caused that harm. Ms Skinner highlighted several of Foxs social media posts, including a June 2022 tweet of four pride flags arranged in the shape of a swastika. Such a disgusting post could only be made by a complete ignoramus or an intelligent racist with an agenda. Mr Fox is the latter, she said. The court was later told the politician tweeted a photo of himself in August 2023 blacked up and describing himself as someone who had racially transitioned. Cant wait. As someone who has recently racially transitioned, Im glad my culture is going to be celebrated! Its been a long journey. First the hair curling, then the course of white blockers. Its just great to finally be myself. https://t.co/wvCx5I56cn pic.twitter.com/mKyMglPqdJ Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) August 9, 2023 Ms Skinner continued: This is so offensive on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to start ... this is self-evidently a racist tweet. The barrister later told the court that Mr Blake and Mr Seymour had both faced serious harm to their reputations due to Foxs tweets and would defend their posts as expressions of honest opinion. However, Mr Green said in his written submissions that neither man has suffered any actual, real-world consequences due to the actors activity on social media. The barrister said that the posts did not cause people to think worse of Mr Blake and Mr Seymour and that people did not believe they were paedophiles. Instead, Mr Green said readers would have understood that Foxs posts were a retort to an allegation of racism rather than a factual allegation. He said it was accepted that abuse had been sent to Mr Blake and Mr Seymour on the platform previously known as Twitter, but that it had been from trolls, a well-recognised species of Twitter user who have, at best, a ribald sense of humour and, at worst, deep personality disorders. The trial before Mrs Justice Collins Rice is due to conclude next week with a decision expected at a later date. 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. Digital store-issued coupons can be a convenient way for shoppers to save money, but not everyone has access to the technology needed to redeem these discounts or deals. Now a group of lawmakers is calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate equity concerns, particularly when it comes to older Americans and low-income customers. We want to make sure we have equity across the board and if people need to use coupons to get access to food or other goods, that theyre available to all people, said Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.). Our Washington News Bureau spoke with Strickland about a letter she led to the FTC, which was co-signed by more than a dozen other members in the House. CHECK IT OUT >> Heres how to save money the way an extreme couponer does We respectfully request your agency open an investigation under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act to examine the harm that the lack of access to store-issued digital coupons is having on consumers, particularly senior citizens, low-income individuals, and those without Internet access or digital devices, the letter said. The letter points to examples such as an 18-count carton of eggs costing $3.49 at a supermarket; but with a digital app, the cost would be reduced to $1.99. Strickland said she wants the FTC to look into whether these digital apps are further widening the digital divide. Does this discriminate against people who dont have digital access and if they do have digital access, is it easy to use for all people? said Strickland. The FTC confirmed it has received the letter but would not comment further. The letter points out that consumer protection groups have called on stores to offer alternatives such as physical paper copies of coupons, or honoring the digital price during the check-out process if a customer makes the request. (WATCH >> Action 9: Make sure to read fine print on coupons) FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., is asking The Associated Press and Reuters to answer questions about their journalists knowledge of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack after Israel accused the outlets of having a forewarning of the terrorist strike that killed over 1,200 people. Lawler, along with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, is penning letters to the news outlets demanding answers about any possible knowledge they may have had prior to the Hamas attack, which the outlets previously denied. "That these journalists would knowingly not share this information, and in the process save thousands of Israeli and Gazan lives, is simply beyond the pale," said Lawler. A fire rages after Hamas fires rockets in Sderot, Israel, on Oct. 10. ISRAEL SETS ITS EYES ON SOUTHERN GAZA AS IDF MOPS UP HAMAS REMNANTS IN NORTHERN GAZA CITY After a report from Honest Reporting raised ethical questions about why some AP and Reuters journalists were at the site of attack shortly after the atrocities occurred, the Israeli governments press office director, Nitzan Chen, accused the outlets of being "alongside Hamas terrorists, documenting the murder of Israeli civilians, lynching of soldier and kidnappings to Gaza," according to a letter obtained by Politico. Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said that if the allegations are true, and the journalists "had prior knowledge of this deadly attack, yet said nothing," it is "morally repugnant" and needs to be "thoroughly investigated." READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP "Its not enough to just verify the authenticity of images these outlets have a moral obligation to ensure they arent being used as pawns to spread Hamas propaganda," said McCaul. However, The Associated Press and Reuters are denying any involvement. The Associated Press said "the first pictures AP received from any freelancer show they were taken more than an hour after the attacks began. No AP staff were at the border at the time of the attacks, nor did any AP staffer cross the border at any time." Reuters also asserted that their staffers were "not on the ground at the locations referred to in the Honest Reporting article." "Reuters categorically denies that it had prior knowledge of the attack or that we embedded journalists with Hamas on Oct. 7," the outlet said. ISRAEL, HAMAS AGREE ON TEMPORARY CEASE-FIRE IN GAZA STRIP, RELEASE OF 50 HOSTAGES Nonetheless, Lawler wants the news organizations to "come clean" so that the lawmakers can "get to the bottom" of the events that occurred in the early hours prior to the terrorist attack. "These companies must come clean about any involvement or advance notice their contractors or employees may have had of the October 7th massacres," said Lawler. "It should not be hard for both news outlets to provide answers, and we must get to the bottom of this. We demand the truth." McCaul added that the outlets should "ensure their reporting is independent and impartial." The AP pointed to its previous response to the allegations when reached Wednesday by Fox News. Fox News has reached out to Reuters for comment. Original article source: Lawmakers demand answers from AP, Reuters amid accusations their journalists knew about Hamas attack Two bodies have been found in the rubble of a hospital in Selydove, Donetsk Oblast, that was struck by Russian missiles on Nov. 20, Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported on Nov. 22. The State Emergency Service said that rescue operations at the partially destroyed hospital were still ongoing, and there was possibly one more person trapped in the rubble. Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote on Nov. 21 that the hospital had been hit late at night on Nov. 20, which damaged two hospital buildings and wounded at least six. He added that the extent of the damage was still being assessed and cautioned that there may be additional casualties hidden in the rubble. Russian missiles struck a mine a few minutes later elsewhere in Donetsk Oblast, killing one employee of the mine and temporarily trapping 39 miners underground, according to Klymenko. They have since been brought to the surface. Read also: How Ukrainian identity evolved since the Revolution of Dignity Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. LEAVENWORTH, Kan. A Leavenworth, Kansas woman has pleaded guilty to violently beating an 84-year-old woman, using the victims walker. Court records say the incident took place on Sept. 15, 2022, when Sherry Housworth, 53, banged on the victims door. The victim answered the door and stepped outside to greet Housworth, a person she did not recognize. Missouri court rejects ex-KCPD detective DeValkenaeres motion for rehearing While outside, court records state Housworth became agitated, grabbed the victims walker and began striking her with it. When officers arrived, the victim was lying face down in the yard and was bleeding. She had facial swelling and bruising were visible. The victim was conscious when officers arrived. The victim described her attacker and told police the woman who beat her, called her a cannibal and accused her of holding the womans husband hostage, according to court records. Blue Springs police shoot at trespassing suspect, investigation begins Housworth was later located at a house a block away and taken into custody. On Friday, Nov. 17, Housworth pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated battery, attempted aggravated battery, aggravated assault and two counts of criminal threat. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for December 20, 2023. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports. Filmmaker Byron Hurt is chronicling his family history in the upcoming NOVA premiere Lee and Lizas Family Tree. In the exclusive clip below, Hurt and his family take on the challenges of finding out the answers about their ancestors. The film follows Hurt and his family as they rediscover their family tree, which had been marred by slavery. According to the films synopsis, Hurts large family has an executive committee, by-laws, and a reunion to celebrate the familys two oldest known ancestors, Lee Hurt Sr. and Liza Waller Hurt. However, the details of Lee and Lizas lives arent known, until now. As the synopsis states: Many descendants of enslaved people have little record of their familys ancestry. Follow one familys quest to discover their lost history, and see how science and genealogy can help rebuild a family tree broken by slavery. Join filmmaker Byron Hurt at his extended family reunion as they celebrate the joy of family in the African diaspora, and discover new details of their history that they thought were lost forever. As many Black families who have sought to discover their histories can relate, its not easy piece together the past. While millions of Americans with European backgrounds can use their DNA to easily trace their histories, Black Americans who are descendants of slaves can only go back so far without running into issues, such as a lack of records and documentation. This leaves many Black Americans lineages a mystery to their descendants. To create the documentary, Hurt films himself and his family as multiple generations rediscover their history and utilize geneaology and experts such as Howard Universitys Dr. Fatimah Jackson to bring to light Lee and Lizas lives. The film also explores how Black families can use genetic testing tools and technologies such as Ancestry and 23andMe to find out more about their past. Directing Lee and Lizas Family Tree was a very special journey for me, Hurt said in a statement. For starters, I had never made a science-based documentary before this one. So, for someone who hated science in high school, this was a challenge that took me completely out of my comfort zone. The best part of making this film was documenting my familys journey to discover our unknown family history using genetic ancestry test kits. I come from a large and beautiful family that has held well-organized family reunions for 37 years. It was such an honor for me to chronicle our familys ancestry committee as they went about the process of turning over stones to find out new information about family members and how far we could go back through the generations beyond our oldest known patriarch and matriarch, Lee Hurt and Eliza (Liza) Waller. I hope that audiences will be moved by my familys story, learn how to conduct DNA research with their family members, and commit to documenting their family history so that upcoming generations can know and appreciate their heritage. Lee and Lizas Family Tree will air on PBS on Nov. 22 at 9/8c. It will also be available for streaming on PBS online or at the PBS App. Watch an exclusive preview below: FILE - Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall appears during a segment on "Fox and Friends" in New York on March 10, 2023 to promote his book "Saved: A War Reporter's Mission to Make It Home." Hall, nearly killed by a Russian bomb while reporting in Ukraine on March 14, 2022, returned to the country this week to interview Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) NEW YORK (AP) Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, nearly killed by Russian bombs while reporting in Ukraine less than two years ago, returned to the country this week to interview Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Hall has endured dozens of surgeries since the March 14, 2022, blast. He lost his right leg below his knee and part of his left foot, the eyesight in his left eye and suffered burns across his body. His two Fox reporting colleagues that day, photographer Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian fixer Oleksandra Sasha Kuvshynova, were both killed. Besides the Zelenskyy interview, Hall told Fox's Bret Baier on Tuesday that he returned to Ukraine to pay tribute to Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova. It was also an opportunity to remind people that journalism will never be stopped, despite the dangers, he said. The staggering toll in the Israel-Hamas war is another reminder. The Committee to Protect Journalists said 53 journalists and media workers have been killed there since Oct. 7, as of Wednesday. In his interview, Hall asked Zelenskyy about growing doubts among Republicans in the United States about support for Ukraine, and whether he would be willing to meet with former President Donald Trump. Zelenskyy said he would. Zelenskyy also gave Hall an award for his outstanding personal contribution to strengthening interstate cooperation, support for Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity. Lachlan Murdoch, Fox Corp. executive chairman and CEO, accompanied Hall on the trip. SIR National debt stands at 2.5 trillion, a similar level to our GDP, and costs 85 billion a year in interest payments. Unfunded public-sector pension liabilities stand at around 2.6 trillion (report, November 21), yet government spending continues at eye-watering levels. So much for the Chancellors sudden fiscal headroom. We are living on unaffordable borrowings, and setting a woeful example for future generations. David Hutchinson Nutley, East Sussex SIR I hope the Chancellor will be wise enough to adjust inheritance tax in the Autumn Statement (Letters, November 20), not by reducing the percentage taken, but by modestly raising the nil-rate band, thus increasing the amount which can be passed on free from tax. This measure would be inclusive, not exclusive, and would protect the many who are far from wealthy but are increasingly subject to paying this iniquitous tax because of property price rises. Christopher Rose Leiston, Suffolk SIR Andrew Cook (Letters, November 19) states that many of the bereaved families he meets are more distressed by seeing their parents savings swallowed up in care home fees than by paying inheritance tax. As a result of illness, my husband requires 24-hour care. Under the current system, we are expected to meet the full cost of his essential care using our savings. We are then taxed at 20 per cent on the savings we withdraw an additional 17,000-a-year bill. Tax relief on savings withdrawn to meet care needs would be compassionate, and would potentially benefit many more than the 4 per cent of families who would gain from inheritance tax reform. Linda Jordan Stourbridge, Worcestershire SIR I have been dismayed by the number of Conservative supporters who have renounced the party on your Letters page (November 20). As the son of a Welsh coal miner I was brought up on the socialist creed. I cooled when Labour cosied up to the unions, which systematically destroyed our ship-building, car-making, aircraft, textile, mining and iron and steel industries, aided by incompetent industrial management. My damascene moment came in 1970 when Vic Feather, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, told the workers at a Ford factory that his job was done when the employees drove away from work in the same car as the bosses. Mr Feather was then chauffeured off in his Rover. I have remained loyal to the Conservative Party since then, because other political groups do not have the same principles as me. Loyalty works both ways, through thick and thin. Brian Farmer Braintree, Essex Covid predictions SIR Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser during the Covid pandemic, wrote in his diary that the Treasurys predictions for the impact of Plan B in late 2021 were based on no evidence, no transparency and pure dogma, and were wrong throughout (telegraph.co.uk, November 21). Treasury predictions are necessarily based on mathematical modelling. But so were the accepted epidemiological predictions during the same period. It is ironic that Sir Patrick felt justified to criticise Treasury modellers in such a manner when his criticisms applied equally well if not more so to the epidemiological modellers upon whom he relied. Epidemiological models provided the main justification for imposing non-pharmaceutical interventions (including lockdowns) upon the public, many of which proved both cruel and disastrous. It seems that, in government scientific circles, using modelling is one of those irregular verbs I use modelling that is accurate; you use modelling that is based on flawed assumptions; he uses modelling that is wrong throughout. Thomas Howey Buckhurst Hill, Essex SIR Rory Stewart would make ministers undergo formal training for their posts (Features, November 21). We have learnt of the poor numeracy skills of certain members of the Cabinet during the pandemic. I would contrast this with the requirement in recent years for people to have GCSE maths in order to work in pre-school nurseries. Keith Appleyard West Wickham, Kent Short prison sentences SIR Rory Stewart is quite right to highlight the ineffectiveness of short prison sentences in tackling reoffending (Features, November 21). What is often overlooked is the destructive effect that these sentences can have on the families of those incarcerated. People who are imprisoned for short periods are also prone to being locked up for multiple offences over time. This will result in any children they have being raised in a chaotic environment, deprived of a consistent parental presence in the home. It is widely understood that the outcomes for such children are very poor. They are more likely to suffer from a range of adverse effects, such as mental and physical health issues, lower attainment in education and a higher risk of becoming offenders themselves. Stuart Harrington Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset Imported calendars SIR On Monday I went looking for 2024 calendars. Apart from one (from Northumberland), they had all been printed in China - including that of the National Trust. The thought of such a volume of paper goods being imported horrified and saddened me. Joyce Wotherspoon Morpeth, Northumberland SIR Some of my friends have said they will not be sending Christmas cards this year, owing to the cost of postage. Those who miss out will be the charities which make cards. Is it not time Royal Mail produced a special Christmas stamp at a reduced rate? It would surely benefit from such a move, as would charities and the general public. Ann Attwell Bury, Lancashire Telegraph ownership SIR I have to say Im disappointed to read that the Telegraph may be acquired by the Abu Dhabi-backed investment fund RedBird IMI (Business, November 21). Would it exercise daily control over content? Surely there must be other options, or does it all come down to who has the deepest pockets? Rob Lunn Bearsted, Kent SIR Can you guarantee that such a takeover would not inhibit editorial policy? Donough McGillycuddy Grantham, Lincolnshire Heaths reputation SIR Your report (November 20) reiterates Lord Lexdens call in the House of Lords for an independent inquiry into the false child sex abuse claims made against the late prime minister Ted Heath. You previously reported (October 27) that the Home Office minister who refused the request on behalf of the Government nevertheless commented at the time that such allegations were patent rubbish. Is this not an admission that justice has not been done? Perhaps an acceptable way forward would be for the present Prime Minister to issue a statement to Parliament and the media that there are no grounds for these allegations, and to make a public apology on behalf of all those who mishandled the affair. When there has been a miscarriage of justice, resulting as it always does in damage to the reputation of the victim, a prompt and open apology by, or on behalf of, those responsible should follow as a matter of course. It is sad that so many of those in leadership roles, in both secular and faith bodies, are often very slow to do this. Dr Ruth Hildebrandt Grayson Sheffield, South Yorkshire Fowl play SIR Our dog Roxie, a cavapoo, has a string of bells attached to the handle of the patio door so she can ring them to indicate when she needs to go out. Recently, while I was enjoying supper in front of the television, she rang the bells. When I went to open the door, she doubled back and gobbled the chicken off my plate before I had a chance to stop her (Letters, November 21). Im now wise to this particular antic, but no doubt she has other tricks up her sleeve. Louise Boxhall Thurlestone, Devon The gift of a drum should be just for Christmas Surefire hit? A selection of drumsticks from the German manufacturer Rohema - dpa picture alliance / Alamy/Alamy SIR Roy Baileys letter (November 20) reminded me of the time when my parents thought that my young son would love a drum as a Christmas gift. After a noisy day, we were about to depart when it was pointed out to me that we hadnt put the drum in our car. I explained that it was a special present from his grandparents, which would be even more special if it was only played when we went to visit. Two or three visits later, it inexplicably disappeared. Noel Radcliffe Chester SIR I wanted to buy my musical grandson a drum kit for his birthday, but his parents thought it a bad idea. Undeterred, I bought an electronic drum kit and got him to assemble it in my music room. He had a very happy time putting it together, and although the sound can be channelled through my superb sound system, he prefers to wear headphones and can plug in his phone to play along with his favourite songs. Everyone is happy. Tom Gough Leigh-on-Sea, Essex How to make the winter fuel payment fairer SIR A compromise suggests itself in response to calls to stop wealthy pensioners receiving the winter fuel payment (Letters, November 21). While still making the payment on an annual basis, make it part of the state pension. If someone has an income (including the total state pension) over the tax allowance, they will pay tax on it at their highest rate. Those living solely on the state pension will not. Tony Foot Mosterton, Dorset SIR John Glen, the Paymaster General, is, like all Treasury officials, completely out of touch with the concerns of the average pensioner (Hunt urged to clarify ministers remark about stripping pensioners winter fuel benefit, report, November 21). An army of civil servants would be needed to administer a new system, while many older people could suddenly find themselves excluded and struggling to keep homes heated when faced with major health concerns. Brian Elphick Storrington, West Sussex SIR You raise the question of whether or not winter fuel payments should be restricted to those who really need them. If they continue and the recipient does not need the cash, the answer is simple: keep it and spend it. You will then have spare cash from your other (taxed) income which you can donate to one or more charities of your choice and send the donation using Gift Aid. John LEstrange Billericay, Essex Letters to the Editor We accept letters by email and post. Please include name, address, work and home telephone numbers. ADDRESS: 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0DT EMAIL: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk FOLLOW: Telegraph Letters on Twitter @LettersDesk NEWSLETTER: sign up to receive Letters to the Editor here 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. To the editor: Why are so many Cuban Americans in Florida voicing their opposition to open borders? Why do they consider immigration one of their most ardent concerns? ("Florida Democrats lesson for California: Dont take anyones support for granted," Nov. 16) Have they forgotten the migration of thousands fleeing hostilities during the Cuban revolution? How about the Mariel boatlift of 1980, which brought Cubans fleeing oppression to the United States? Or the ongoing Cuban migration crisis that started in 2021, in which economic hardship rooted in the Trump-era sanctions has sparked another wave of people seeking entry into the U.S.? True, Latino voters are not one homogeneous group, but if we could come together, we would find that we all want the same thing: justice and liberty for all. Toni Martinez-Burgoyne, Pasadena .. To the editor: Interesting how people from Venezuela and Cuba who escaped dictators in their home countries are now ready to endorse one here. Fernando Torres, North Hills .. To the editor: I guess the saying commonly attributed to P.T. Barnum is right there's a sucker born every minute. Anyone who supports former President Trump at this juncture has fallen for the con and cannot, or will not, admit to themselves that they've been duped. There is nothing redeemable about him. His supporters are now in a cult, even as they refuse to believe and accept it. The head of the Republican National Committee has even said she will support the former president if he is convicted. Democratic voters must come out in overwhelming numbers. At this point I no longer have any sympathy or empathy for those who are in the cult. None. They made the choice to support a traitor. Let them lie in the bed they've made for themselves. Scott Hughes, Westlake Village .. To the editor: The Latinos in Florida mentioned in this article obviously didnt learn their lesson from Trumps first term as president. Noncitizens like Alejandro Rodriguez, a Nicaraguan who lives in Florida, could be targeted for deportation if Trump is reelected. Who can forget what candidate Trump said to Black voters in 2016: "What do you have to lose?" He definitely showed undocumented and noncitizen Latinos what they had to lose. Latinos need to wake up. If you think Trumps first go-around was bad, a second will be hell on Earth. Hector Hernandez, San Clemente .. To the editor: Alejandro Rodriguez, an immigrant from Nicaragua, says that "if I have my door open, anybody can come in and out. Same thing with borders." That remark made me think of the story of students who are awarded an advanced degree. Along with congratulations, the provost asks what they suggest for those working toward the degree. The answer: "Tighten up the requirements." Rodriguez's position is pretty selfish. He's made it into this country but supports restrictions for others. How is that attitude going to help humanity in the face of climate challenges already provoking migration from affected areas and threatening even more populations? We need enlightened and creative solutions to a critical situation, not "the boat is full." Margo Kasdan, Seal Beach This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. SUVA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- As Fiji heads into the festive season, the Fiji Police Force and Land Transport Authority (LTA) have joined forces to launch a festive season operation aimed at curbing reckless driving after the death of 72 people in road accidents this year. Fiji Police Chief of Operations Livai Driu expressed deep concern over the alarming trend of accidents, emphasizing the need for intensified enforcement measures, reported Fiji Broadcasting Corporation news website on Wednesday. "Officers will be out in full force in conducting targeted operations to combat and ongoing issues that plug on our roads, such as speeding, drinking or driving, and mobile phone usage whilst driving. These are all consequences of irresponsibility, and they will not be tolerated," Driu said. The LTA echoes the Police Force's call for stricter enforcement, emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility and prioritizing the safety of loved ones. The festive season operation will involve increased police visibility on roads, random breathalyzer tests, and targeted operations to address specific traffic violations. The joint operation will continue until January. President Biden speaks after "pardoning" the national Thanksgiving turkey at the White House on Nov. 20. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) To the editor: Thanks to The Times for publishing an opinion piece calling on people to honor turkeys instead of eating them. It is hard to speak up and question tradition. Killing 46 million turkeys for Thanksgiving is a horrific way to honor tradition and to follow cultural norms. Nowadays, we have options. Thirty years ago, it made sense to my husband and me for us to switch to plant-based foods. It makes even more sense for others now that there are so many plant-based options. In addition, can you imagine having the job of slaughtering turkeys for a living? Deborah Suyehara, Los Angeles .. To the editor: I echo Gene Baur's sentiments and have chosen to leave turkey off my Thanksgiving plate. For people who care about animals all animals the holiday season is a difficult time of year. It's maddening to constantly hear people share their plans to express gratitude by eating the corpse of an innocent sentient being, whether it's on the news, on social media or even from Peloton instructors. The true stars of the Thanksgiving meal are the "side" dishes anyway. Sweet potato casserole, anyone? Mindy Kursban, Fairfax, Va. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Geoffrey Holt is seen in a collection of family photos provided by his estate. Holt left the town of Hinsdale, N.H., nearly $4 million when he died last June. (Family photos courtesy of Ed Smith via AP) (Family photos courtesy of Ed Smith via AP) A man who lived a life of modest means recently passed away and donated millions of dollars to a small New Hampshire town. According to the Associated Press, Geoffrey Holt was working as a caretaker of a trailer park in Hinsdale, a small town of about 4,000, 60 miles southwest of Concord, at the time of his death on 6 June. He was 82. He spent the last 15 years living off Social Security checks, his friend, Edwin Smokey Smith, told CNN. When he died, he left his life savings a whopping $3.8m to the town to improve areas of education, health, recreation and culture. Hinsdales poverty level is currently around 12 per cent. The median family income is about $72,000. The funds came from a trust he established in 2001. The account was passed along to the mans friend and was donated to the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, to towns administrator Kathryn Lynch, told CNN. Community members, schools and other organisations can apply for grants up to $150,000 per year. Officials were notified of the donation in September. The town already has several ideas for how it wants to invest the funds, including an electronic voting machine and fixing the town hall clock, Ms Lynch told CNN. Mr Holt was a committed voter, the friend said. At one point, he also taught drivers education. Officials have toyed with the idea of setting up an online course in his honour. According to the AP, the man wore threadbare clothes, drove a lawn mower and owned almost no furniture or computer. His fortune primarily came from investments and jobs he worked throughout his life. When he asked Mr Smith, the trailer park owner and former state legislator, what to do with the funds, he told him to remember the town, the AP reported. Its not clear why the millionaire chose to live frugally. His sister, Alison Holt, 81, told the outlet that her brother didnt need a lot to be happy and didnt want to draw attention to himself. Mental health staff did not escalate a woman's care or risk status even after two overdoses, an inquest heard. Linda Banks died in April 2022 from a fatal overdose after weeks of contact with the Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Trust, who considered her low risk. The 48-year-old was hospitalised twice in February but the trust's plan for her safety did not change, assistant coroner Janine Richards heard. Ms Richards is considering if failings contributed to Ms Banks' death. The inquest previously heard that Ms Banks, from Chilton in Country Durham, was grieving for her mother, stressing about perceived financial problems and struggling to end her alcohol dependency when she began contacting the trust's crisis team in February. She was admitted to University Hospital of North Durham on 18 February after taking a drug overdose and given an assessment by mental health nurses, the inquest in Crook heard. The nurses noted she had been "upset and tearful" and had "impulsively" taken an overdose of her medication at home for which she "felt instantly regretful", the coroner heard. Linda Banks had many contacts with mental health workers They said she "remained regretful and strongly denied any thoughts of self-harm or wanting to end her life", with the resulting safety plan focusing on finding her support for her alcohol withdrawal, benefit issues and bereavement counselling. She was not given a copy of the safety plan because the mental-health staff were not able to use the printers in the accident and emergency department. It was run by a different NHS trust with a different system, the inquest heard. Ms Banks returned to hospital eight days later after taking a larger overdose and she appeared "confused and disorientated" as well as "paranoid and suspicious of staff" her notes said. Ms Richards asked if that should have "set some alarm bells ringing" that she may have been in psychosis. 'Driving her distress' Liaison nurse Christopher English told the coroner her symptoms could have been a sign of psychosis or linked to the "physical" illness for which was she was being treated in hospital. Another assessment on 2 March found her "emotional and tearful" and expressing worries about being in trouble with hospital staff while needing "constant reassurance and support", the coroner heard. Ms Richards asked if that prompted Mr English to reconsider her treatment plan, to which he replied that it was "definitely taken into consideration". But he again said that these issues could have been symptoms of the physical illness for which she was being treated. A final assessment was carried out on 8 March by Mr English before her anticipated discharge. He said she had "remained slightly anxious" but was "bright and reactive" and not expressing any plans or intention to harm herself. He said her safety plan had remained unchanged from the one in February because he believed that it had been designed to address the issues that were "driving her distress". 'Hearing voices' Mr English said he did not feel there had been a need for further psychiatric treatment as her "anxieties were reasonable to what she was concerned about" rather than having "any delusional element". On 29 March Ms Banks' GP contacted the trust's access team, which offered low-level mental health treatment, asking for an urgent appointment as she was extremely agitated and paranoid. Access team clinician Lesley Hooton said she managed to speak on the phone to Ms Banks and her brother, who said she was "anxious" and "paranoid", hearing voices and "struggling to eat, relax and sleep". But she "had no plans to harm herself" and Ms Hooton decided Ms Banks did not meet the "threshold" for needing an intervention from the crisis or early intervention psychosis team. So Ms Hooton arranged a visit from the access teams' outreach workers, which would typically take two to three weeks to happen. Ms Banks's brother contacted Ms Hooton again several days later to say his sister's mental health had deteriorated further, that she was not responding to him and he was having to force her to drink water. Ms Hooton said at that point she decided the crisis team should get involved and arranged for them to assess her, closing the access team's involvement. The inquest has heard that the crisis team, which was in special measures and suffering chronic staff shortages, assessed Ms Banks and still deemed her to be at low risk of self-harm. She took a fatal overdose days later. The inquest continues. Follow BBC Tees on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@bbc.co.uk. (FOX40) A man who was convicted of murdering three students and a teacher by way of a mass shooting at Lindhurst High School in 1992 is appealing his conviction. On May 1, 1992, Eric Christopher Houston, 20, entered his former high school in Olivehurst while armed with a shotgun and a rifle. He shot and killed four people, wounded several others with gunfire, and held almost 90 students hostage for about eight hours before surrendering. He did his time: Man found to be an accessory to a double-murder in 1998 could be released soon thanks to a recent law According to official court records obtained by FOX40.com, Houston targeted Lindhurst High because one of his former teachers gave him a failing grade which he felt prevented him from graduating when he attended in 1989. In addition, he blamed the failing grade for his loss of employment and breakup with his girlfriend. At trial, Houston also accused this former teacher of molesting him. Houstons trial was moved from Yuba County to Napa where a jury convicted Houston of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and a variety of other related charges. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection scheduled for 2022, but it was delayed because of appeals. They deserve life in prison: Daughters of man murdered in 1998 double homicide speak out for the first time The death penalty is legal in California, however,Governor Gavin Newsom placed an official halt on capital punishment in June 2023. According to www.npr.org, no one in the state has been put to death in almost 17 years, however, if the moratorium was lifted, Houston would be due. Houston is on death row at San Quentin State Prison and has appealed the courts decision several times. Although the Supreme Court upheld the sentencing on most of Houstons appeal claims, one will be further investigated. His most recent appeal challenges the death sentence under a claim that it is cruel and unusual punishment because of his mental status. Records show that during Houstons hearing, UC Davis Medical School board-certified psychiatrist and former professor Charles Schaffer diagnosed Houston with major depression with psychotic features and bipolar disorder. He also noted the probability of an unspecified personality disorder and PTSD; however, in Schaffers opinion, Houston could understand the nature and quality of his acts and could distinguish right from wrong. Yuba County Board of Supervisors approved a memorandum of understanding with the San Joaquin County District Attorney to help litigate the validity of Houstons claims because of Yuba County staffing shortages. On Oct. 27 Yuba County district attorney signed a memorandum of understanding to execute the litigation. Officials say the process could take between two and three years before a judge decides. Even if Houston is found to be ineligible for the death penalty, under current law, he will not be released from prison, said Yuba County District Attorney Clinton Curry. His sentence would simply be converted from death to life without possibility of parole. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX40. Two young children were stabbed during a domestic incident in west suburban Lisle late last week, authorities confirmed Tuesday. The children, ages 4 and 1, were hurt inside their home Friday in the 1900 block of Matson Lane, Lisle police Chief Kevin Licko said in a Tuesday news release. After police responded to the scene just before 5:30 p.m., the homeowner told officers that someone he knew was in the house with a knife and his children were covered in blood, authorities said. A woman in the home was taken into police custody. The children were hospitalized and were in stable condition, authorities said. Police did not give the relationship between the woman and the two children. The DuPage County state attorneys office was working with Lisle police. This is an active investigation, but there is no threat to the community at this time, Licko said. Lisle is about 26 miles southwest of Chicago, near Naperville. Lithuania delivered 3 million units of 7.62x51mm small arms ammunition, remote detonation systems, and winter equipment to the Ukrainian military, the Lithuanian Defense Ministry announced on Nov. 22. "One more new package of military support from Lithuania has reached Ukraine today," the ministry's statement read. "Our commitment to assist Ukraine remains unbreakable." Lithuania has already provided Ukraine with around 500 million euros ($543 million) in defense assistance, according to the ministry's statement. The country is also among the leading Ukraine donors in terms of gross domestic product shares. Vilnius announced on Nov. 10 that it had supplied Ukraine with National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS). Read also: Ukraine war latest: Austin visits Kyiv, US announces new $100 million military aid package Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. The Little Rock Police Department has arrested a suspect in a deadly shooting that took place in October. LRPD officials said 20-year-old Omarion Dilworth was arrested in connection with the deadly shooting of Mario Collins on Oct. 12. Little Rock police investigating deadly Thursday night shooting On Oct. 12, LRPD officers responded to a shots fired call in the 5500 block of West 51st Street just before 7:50 p.m. When the officers arrived, they said they found a man, later identified as Collins, dead from an apparent gunshot wound. Dilworth is facing a charge of capital murder. US Marshals searching for suspects in two deadly October shootings in Little Rock Authorities are still searching for 24-year-old Arijuana Houston in connection with the shooting. Houston is also facing a charge of capital murder. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KARK. MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) Six days after a Mobile County Grand Jury cleared the two officers involved in Jawan Dallass, 36, death from any wrongdoing, Dallass family viewed the body camera footage and spoke to the media. Along with them was a team of civil rights attorneys and Mobile NAACP President Robert Clopton. This is one of the worst video of a police killing that I have ever witnessed, Dallas family attorney Harry Daniels, said. After watching the video, Daniels announced a civil lawsuit against the city before the end of the year. The Dallas family was previously barred from seeing the footage due to the pending investigation. Additionally, the City of Mobile cited the Grand Jury Secrecy Act, which prevented the family from viewing the footage until a Grand Jury decided. The lack of information surrounding Dallass death sparked unrest among some members of the public who questioned the Mobile Police Departments actions. FULL PRESS CONFERENCE: Mobile woman arrested for alleged stabbing in apartment After the Grand Jurys decision on Nov. 16, Mobile County District Attorney Kieth Blackwood said the family would have the opportunity to view the footage with the City of Mobiles Executive Director of Public Safety, Robert Lasky. A city spokesperson said the Dallas family opted to view the footage with their attorneys present. This is one of the worst days of my life, Phil Williams, Dallass stepfather, said. Ive seen my son actually die. Dallas died on July 2 at the Plantation Mobile Home Park in Theodore after being tased twice by Mobile Police officers. Police were originally called to the scene to investigate a reported burglary in progress. I dont have any information that he was involved in any kind of burglary, Blackwood said. He was with people that had been trespassing on property. Reports showed that Dallas was tased at least twice by Mobile Police. After watching the footage, Daniels alleged that at least 13 cycles of the taser could be heard in the video. Now we dont know if those cycles actually stuck his body, but we know it was 13 times, Daniels said. Additionally, Blackwood said Dallas had a number of drugs in his system at the time of his death. The toxicology report, which has been made public, showed four drugs in Dallass system: Methamphetamine, Amphetamine, and two different synthetic cannabinoids. Alex Crow marries teenager he met at McGill-Toolen High School Blackwood said the officers taser did not contribute to Dallass death, but that a medical complication brought on his death. Prior to contact with police, an eyewitness, an associate of Mr. Dallas, told authorities that Mr. Dallas was already exhibiting signs of these underlying medical conditions, Blackwood said. The autopsy report, which has also been made public, ruled Dallass cause of death to be Cardiorespiratory Failure brought on by the toxicity of drugs in his system. Contributing to his death was the struggle Dallas endured with the officers. It was officially ruled in the autopsy that Dallass death was an accident. Daniels said Dallas was complaining that he couldnt breathe due to has asthma condition, and he alleged that the officers did not attempt to help Dallas until after he went unconscious. One of the officers told him to shut the f up, Daniels said. I can see what the City of Mobile doesnt want to release this video. The family and the legal team saw two videos, one from each officer. Daniels estimated that each video was 45 minutes each. Social activist Bishop William Barber II has been involved in the case since the beginning. He released a statement in response to the family viewing the footage. What is being reported to me by the lawyers and the family is worse than tragic. It is a form of police terror and deep unjust abuse of power. Brother Dallas in essence was begging for his life. Now we see why they did not want the video seen by the public. I will be traveling by invitation of the mother and the family to Mobile at the end of the next week to give a full community briefing and rally support. We are calling on every federal agency that has power to investigate police departments to go into Mobile and uncover what is going on that gives the police the sense that they can taze individuals to death and think there will be no punishment. Bishop William Barber II Mobile mayor Sandy Stimpson released a statement hours after the Dallas family viewed the footage. The loss of a son is tragic under any circumstances. The Dallas family and their representatives met with members of the administration earlier today to view the body camera footage related to this case. While the loss of life is never the intended outcome of any interaction with the Mobile Police Department, the cause of death in this case was clearly due to cardiorespiratory failure and mixed drug intoxication. The family has a right to their interpretation of the video, however the video is only one piece of all the evidence presented to the grand jury. There are still ongoing investigations and expected civil action. For those reasons and out of respect for the family, we wont be making any additional comments at this time. Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson. The city announced that both officers involved in Dallass death were released back into the field at the end of October. The Department of Justice is still conducting its investigation. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRG News 5. The No. 1 Marine general appeared in a brief video Tuesday in an effort to reassure Marines he was recovering from the cardiac arrest that had left him hospitalized for weeks. It was the first known public-facing appearance that Commandant Gen. Eric Smith made since going into cardiac arrest more than three weeks ago. Im still in the fight I need you to be in the fight, Smith said. Its not the first time Ive been knocked down. When I was shot in 2004, I bounced back from that. Ill bounce back from this. In April 2004, Smith was shot in the left leg but remained in Iraq, becoming the second-in-command of a Marine infantry regiment there, The Washington Post reported. Bidens pick to lead the Marine Corps helped design its new vision Before Tuesday, Smith had issued statements about his medical condition, but only in the form of written news releases issued by Marine Corps headquarters communications team. Clad in the camouflage combat utility uniform and standing upright without support, he thanked Marines for their support and wished them a happy Thanksgiving. Smith, who reportedly runs his own Instagram account, also posted a long caption to the video with reflections on the upcoming holiday. The world is uncertain, and Ive been reminded recently that we cant take anything for granted, but as Marines, we must be certain of one thing that well always have each other, Smith wrote. Thanksgiving is a great time to reaffirm our commitment to our fellow Marines and the core values that bind us together. Im thankful for each one of you, who had the courage to walk past the other services recruiting offices that offered you tangible rewards and probably an easier life, to join the one branch you knew was going to be the most challenging, he said. Smith went into cardiac arrest Oct. 29, and the Marine Corps announced him to be in stable condition three days later. He has been released from the hospital, the Corps said Thursday, and is preparing for a procedure to fix his bicuspid aortic valve a congenital heart abnormality that doctors said contributed to his cardiac arrest. Meanwhile, the hospitalization of Smith and the lack of a Senate-confirmed assistant commandant left Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the general in charge of force modernization, performing the duties of commandant. Gen. Christopher Mahoney took over Nov. 3 following his confirmation as assistant commandant. On Tuesday evening, Mahoney issued his own Thanksgiving message to the force, urging Marines to plan for mission success by managing the risks of holiday travel. [A]ssess road terrain and weather conditions, get sleep, and allow adequate time for traffic, Mahoney wrote. If conditions change, change your plan for the well-being of your family, friends, unit, and yourself. Remember this Marines, you are the most important thing to me, Mahoney continued. Take good care of yourselves and each other. Smith is not yet back to full duty status, Marine spokesman Maj. Josh Larson said Tuesday in an email to reporters. But Smith repeatedly has indicated his intention of getting back to work once he can. Ill be back in the fight soon enough, and I cant wait to see you all again, Smith wrote Tuesday. Republican presidential candidate and former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley is moving a scheduled Bluffton rally to the University of South Carolina Beaufort at 2 p.m. Monday. According to Haleys campaign team, the move from the previous location at the Okatie Ale House was made to accommodate a larger crowd than initially expected. The event is open to the public. Tickets are free, but registration is required via eventbrite.com. Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations and a Bamberg native, holds a firm grasp on second place in the states primary contest in the most recent power rankings reported in The State newspaper Nov. 14. She received 28 points in the ranking behind former President Donald Trumps 35 points. The power rankings result from reporter Joe Bustos polling of seven political observers in South Carolina to rank their top five candidates according to who they believe would have the best chance to win the states Republican presidential primary. Haleys statewide poll numbers have climbed recently, making her the clear second-place candidate in South Carolina and in several recent polls of New Hampshire voters, according to reporting in The State. She also recently was tied for second place with DeSantis in a Des Moines Register poll of Iowa voters. Poll respondents have been taking notice of Haleys strong debate performances. Haley is charging to be the top alternative to Trump. Shes strong on the debate stage and proved it again in Miami, especially in her handling of Vivek Ramaswamy and branding him the preferred candidate of Russia and China, said Adolphus Belk, a Winthrop University political science professor. But Haley still has work to do. Nikki Haleys momentum is real, and she has emerged as the most likely Trump alternative in the Palmetto State, said Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor at the College of Charleston. She has benefited from three strong debate performances, particularly when she can showcase her foreign policy experience. On a typical Saturday morning in Fayetteville, a line of customers stretches from the counter of Superior Bakery and into the parking lot of the Hope Mills Road pastry shop. People chat as they wait their turn inside the unassuming bakery, trading testimony of their favorite treats, like the crumble-topped coffee cakes that line the tables of the sales floor each day; the golden pineapple upside-down cakes, sticky with a rich caramel glaze; the fudgy chocolate cake donuts, still hot from the fryer. The smiling owner, Nick Poulos, hands each customer a complimentary fried croissant the shop's calling card. It was 67 years ago nine years before Poulos was even born when his father, John Poulos, first opened Superior Bakery. He came from Greece to America five years earlier, at age 20, to join his two brothers in Fayetteville. He didn't have baking experience, other than a stint as a dishwasher at a patisserie in Athens, Greece, but when he learned of a bankrupt bakery on Raeford Road in 1956, "he knew he'd found his perfect business venture," the family recounted in the patriarch's 2019 obituary. At the time, Poulos was already at the helm of two city restaurants he'd later sell to focus on the bakery. Under the elder Poulos' ownership, Superior Bakery sold wholesale baked goods to restaurants in the city. All of the baking was done by hand, producing two or three trucks of pies and bread every day of the week. He was a hustler, Nick Poulos said of his late father, who died at the age of 89, leaving behind his wife of 61 years, Kay; their three children; six grandchildren; and more than a couple of pages in the annals of Fayetteville's food history. Nick Poulos moves a rack of rolls into an oven at Superior Bakery on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Greek restauranteurs rule the Fayetteville food scene The entrepreneurial spirit that filled John Poulos, filled his brothers, too. They each owned and operated restaurants that would go on to become some of the longest-running in Fayetteville. Gus Poulos opened New York Restaurant in 1957 and Chris Poulos opened Chris's Steak & Seafood House in 1963. Both are still in operation today, but neither is still in the Poulos family. In the late '80s, Chris Poulos sold his share to Greg Kalevas, his longtime business partner. Nikolaus and Selena Drakos purchased New York Restaurant from Gus Poulos and his wife around the same time. The Poulos brothers were among a few Greek families that were Fayetteville food pioneers, opening iconic restaurants that shaped the area's food scene for decades. Many of them like Luigis, Zorbas, Lindys and Pizza Palace are still in operation. Before buying his restaurants and then the bakery, John Poulos learned the ropes from the Kanos family, who operated Rainbow Restaurant, which still serves diner favorites from its longtime spot on Ramsey Street. Those restauranteurs were role models for Nick Poulos and his peers, he said. We had all these influences of all these guys that were hardworking, put family first and were consistent as heck," he said. "Everybody had a restaurant and was that kind of a guy." Nick Poulos helps a customer take his order out to his car at Superior Bakery on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. Superior Bakery comes to be a Fayetteville icon Poulos was 6 years old when Superior Bakery moved to its current location on Hope Mills Road, a now-bustling thoroughfare that at the time was a sparsely inhabited lane surrounded by trees. Over the next two decades, Poulos said, he spent time working at the bakery. Whenever he was home on break from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he would put on an apron and get to work. When he graduated with a degree in business in 1987, Poulos worked at the bakery alongside his brother Stephen and his father, while he figured out his next move. About three years later, his dad was ready to retire. Soon after, his brother was looking to move on, too. Nick Poulos said he was willing to take over, even if he wasnt entirely prepared to. Im the baby of the family, then all of a sudden it was all mine, he said. Dough goes round and round in a mixing bowl at Superior Bakery on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. For his first decade in charge, Poulos said, he was still under the watchful eye of his father, who had difficulty relinquishing control. Come the early 2000s, however, many of the mom-and-pop restaurants serviced by Superior Bakery closed. In their absence came chain restaurants and hotels with their own supply chains that didnt include the need for local baked goods, he said. The business model his father created, which had worked for so long, could no longer survive. Nick Poulos pivoted the business to a retail bakery, quickly finding a loyal legion of customers and nearly quadrupling monthly sales. Yet, with the newfound success under the younger Poulos' vision, he never truly knew how his father felt about what he'd accomplished. Nobody told me, Im proud of you, Poulos said, his words tinged with sadness. Along with the change to a retail bakery eventually came the iconic red logo with blue lettering that has come to be synonymous with Superior Bakery in the Fayetteville area, designed by his wife Kathie. Red and blue, Poulos said, convey his patriotic spirit and the baker clutching bread, cake and buns is borrowed from the business cards his father used in the 1980s. Nick Poulos pulls rolls out of an oven at Superior Bakery on Wednesday, April 19, 2023. End of Superior Bakery may mean the end of an era After more than thirty years as the owner, Nick Poulos said hes still excited to come to work every day, and he doesnt plan to retire anytime soon. Im 58 going on 17, he said. I dont plan on slowing down. Despite his own two children growing up in the bakery like he did, they never caught the bug, he said. His son John Poulos, 27, a computer science expert who works for Amazon Web Services, and daughter Lily Poulos, 22, who holds a degree in public health show no interest in taking it over. Poulos says he wouldnt necessarily want anyone else to take charge. The shop could lose the magic that makes it a Fayetteville landmark. It takes a lot to get that special feeling when you walk in the door, he said. When Nick Poulos hangs up his apron, his family's legacy of operating food establishments in the city may come to an end. All the old guys Uncle Chris, my dad, Uncle Gus all of them are gone, he said. Who are the guys now? Food, dining and business reporter Taylor Shook can be reached at tshook@gannett.com, on Twitter, or Facebook. Want weekly food news delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the Fayetteville Foodies newsletter. This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Superior Bakery has served Fayetteville for decades. What happens next? A Fort Worth police officer was fired after authorities determined he was intoxicated while on duty, the Fort Worth Police Department announced in a news release Tuesday. Officer Marvin Simon reported to work late on June 7, 2023, and several hours into his shift, dispatchers received two separate calls that he appeared to be asleep in his patrol car, according to the release. Simons sergeant responded to his location and came to believe he was intoxicated, the release states. The officers chain of command began an administrative investigation and obtained evidence that Simon was intoxicated while on duty. He was then placed on restricted duty and was stripped of all police powers pending a full investigation, according to the release. After a review of the Internal Affairs investigation, Simons chain of command determined he violated multiple department policies. Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes agreed with the chain of command and fired Simon, according to the release. The Fort Worth Police Department exists to safeguard the lives and property of those we serve, and is committed to the highest standards of professionalism in doing so. In this case, Officer Simon did not conduct himself in a manner that represents the professionalism of our officers, said police in the release. Our department will continue to hold employees accountable who do not meet the standards expected of a Fort Worth police officer and in doing so, we will continue to be transparent and open with our community. Simon was with the department for 21 years and was assigned to South patrol before being placed on restricted duty. People incarcerated in the Los Angeles County jails will be able to call home for free starting Dec. 1, after county supervisors approved amending the existing phone contract. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Two years after promising to make phone calls free for people inside the countys seven jails, on Tuesday the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors finally approved a contract that will get it done. Starting Dec. 1, more than 12,000 inmates will be able to call home for free. The five supervisors unanimously voted without discussion to amend the existing phone contract, shifting the financial burden of the calls from inmates and their families to a pot of money known as the Inmate Welfare Fund. Previously, the proceeds of the high-priced jail calls went into the Inmate Welfare Fund, which under state law is supposed to be used mainly for the benefit and education of inmates. In recent years, that fund grew to a balance of more than $32 million as revenues both from phone calls and inmate commissary purchases outpaced expenditures. Under the new contract arrangement , up to $12.9 million per year will come out of that fund to pay for phone calls. Read more: Lawsuits target extortionate phone calls, commissary items in California jails At Tuesdays board meeting, several advocates and formerly incarcerated community members voiced support for the new phone plan during public comments. I really applaud the board, said Kent G. Mendoza-Morales, associate director of local policy at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition. Its official. Earlier this year, Mendoza-Morales told The Times how his mother used to sell stuff in alleys to help pay for phone calls and food from the commissary. On Tuesday, he thanked the supervisors for approving the contract change, adding that being in communication with your family is one of the most crucial things you can have in jail. In a statement Tuesday afternoon, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department celebrated the change as well, saying the amended contract would save families millions of dollars every year. We anticipate that free phone calls will increase the communication between inmates and their families, which can aid in rehabilitation, strengthen relationships and assist in a smoother transition when the inmate is released from custody," the statement said. "While the Sheriffs Department is committed to providing improved inmate services, it has concerns about the implementation details of this program. The statement did not offer details about those concerns. The board began seriously discussing a shift to free phone calls in 2021, with a pair of motions asking the county's chief executive office to explore how much it would cost and what funding source should cover it. At that point, county audits show, phone revenues were bringing in about $15 million per year. That money went into the Inmate Welfare Fund, along with $20 million to $30 million per year from commissary sales. Typically, the county spent between $9 million and $20 million of the fund on programs and an additional $5 million to $14 million on facility maintenance. In April, lawyers targeted the high price of phone calls and commissary items in jails across the state and sued several counties including Los Angeles. They alleged the charges amounted to an unlawful tax levied on the countys poorest residents. The lawsuit also alleged that the money has been spent on general jails issues, including salaries and office furniture, rather than services that benefit inmates. The case is still pending. Nationally, the average jail charges about $3 for a 15-minute phone call, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. In California that figure is slightly lower, about $2 per call still an impossible cost for some inmates and their families. When the supervisors took up the issue in July, several indicated they felt it was the countys duty to cover the cost of the calls but it wasnt immediately clear what funds they could use. At the time, the countys chief executive officer estimated that providing free calls would cost about $30 million per year: $15 million to cover the the calls and another $15 million to pay for programs currently being funded by the call revenue. The contract that supervisors approved Tuesday will come in at least $2 million under that, though it could be even less depending on how much phone time inmates use. Under the new plan, the county will be billed a maximum of 4.2 cents per minute when the monthly call volumes are under 9.5 million minutes and a minimum of 2.8 cents per minute when the call volumes are over 22.9 million minutes per month. The contract also includes free phone time for several hundred youths in custody of the countys Probation Department. It maxes out at just under $13 million per year, bringing the total impact on county finances to about $28 million. Bianca Tylek, executive director of the criminal justice advocacy group Worth Rises, said in an interview that she was "thrilled to finally see Los Angeles follow through with a proposal they passed two years ago." But she went on to add concerns about the per-minute costs to the county, which she said are higher than in many other jurisdictions. A 15-minute call in Los Angeles will cost the county between and 42 and 63 cents. A letter Worth Rises sent to the county says a 15-minute call in Mississippi is 60 cents, while in Maryland it is 45 cents and in Illinois is just 14 cents. "Its one of the worst free phone call contracts that weve seen," Tylek told The Times. "Theres no reason for them to be paying this much at all. Its not actually this expensive to do. Its only expensive if you poorly negotiate your contract. Times staff writer Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report. 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. LOS ANGELES A 34-year-old man was identified Tuesday as the person walking on an interstate and who officials say was armed with a stun gun before he was fatally shot by a California Highway Patrol officer. Los Angeles resident Jesse Dominguez died at a hospital after the confrontation with law enforcement Sunday, according to a Los Angeles County coroner's report, though his cause of death has not been formally disclosed. The name of the highway patrol officer involved in Sunday's shooting had not been disclosed as of late Tuesday afternoon. Dominguez's loved ones are struggling to comprehend his "unnecessary death," stepmother Akasha Dominguez said in a statement to NBC News on Tuesday. "Were still trying to process everything," Akasha Dominguez said. "As you can imagine this is a very hard time for the family and we have been inundated with calls and texts on this untimely and unnecessary death. Right now we need to mourn the loss of our son, brother and friend." The confrontation unfolded a little after 3 p.m. as part of Interstate 105 in Los Angeles County was shut down following 911 calls about a man walking on the freeway. Video circulating on social media appeared to show the highway patrol officer tussling with the man on the pavement before he shoots him at close range. The man had used a stun gun on the officer, who then opened fire, according to the highway patrol. A use-of-force expert said the officer could reasonably have viewed a Taser or another stun gun to be nearly as dangerous as any firearm. A stun could cause a grave and immediate threat to anyone, and you dont want an officer being stunned and his weapon taken away, said former California police officer and sheriffs deputy Ed Obayashi. Law enforcement agencies regularly ask Obayashi to investigate officer-involved shootings. Obayashi did question why the officer confronted the man one on one when the freeway had been cleared and no one appeared to be in immediate danger. The problem is if I got distance between an individual with a stun gun and myself, then theres an opportunity to de-escalate, an opportunity to retreat, Obayashi said Tuesday. That side of the 105 was shut down, so theres no danger to anyone. My question would be what compelled this officer to approach this individual?" he said. "Theres a zillion cops here, so I dont know why this cop was by himself and approaching this individual. Thats going to be a fundamental question. Andrew Blankstein reported from Los Angeles and David K. Li from New York City. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com The Louisville Metro Police Department has concluded its investigation into the mass shooting at Old National Bank this spring that left five people dead, along with the shooter, who was fatally shot by police. Others, including a Louisville police officer, were wounded. Police released 64 pages of records related to the investigation Tuesday, including writings by the shooter, Connor Sturgeon, that provide insight into his mindset as he planned the April 10 attack. The journal entries are direct information to the planning and his mindset in the days leading up to the shooting, with his possible motives for his actions including political issues surrounding corrupt politicians and lack of gun control, a police detective wrote. The documents also include an investigative letter by the LMPD Homicide Unit, a medical examiners report on the suspect and the receipt for the rifle Sturgeon used in the shooting. The records posted on the police departments website revealed that: Sturgeon, 25, bought a Radical Firearms RF-15 at River City Firearms in Louisville April 4, six days before the shooting. He brought it, along with 120 rounds of ammunition, loaded between four separate rifle magazines, into the bank. He carried a gym bag that also contained a shirt that he planned to change into and eye and ear protection. The shooting unfolded over about eight minutes from the time the first person was shot until Sturgeon was killed after being shot in the head, leg and arm. Sturgeon fired over 40 rounds during the attack. Only one of the 13 people who were in the conference room when the attack began escaped unhurt. Sturgeon wrote that he wanted to send a message to those with power that they are not invincible. I have decided to make an impact, he wrote. These people did not deserve to die but because I was depressed and able to buy __ (guns?), they are gone. Perhaps this is the impact for change upper class white people dying. I certainly would not have been able to do this were it more difficult to get a gun. He wrote that the plan for the shooting was something I have to do. He also appeared to blame the National Rifle Association for the shooting, writing, Lets give it up for the NRA!! (raucous applause.) I couldnt have done this without all of your lobbying dollars. You really brought this whole thing together. This is the world you are building. One without any regard for the value of Human Life. Sturgeon wrote that this is so easy. I just lied to everyone so easily and none caught on, one entry states. This is intentional. There is nothing anyone could have done. The writings also included statements in which Sturgeon said he didnt consider himself a terrorist, or a monster. I may be a psycho, he wrote. I am definitely very sick. Sturgeons parents told police he spent the day before the shooting, Easter Sunday, with his family and showed no signs of anything being wrong. He was in therapy for mental health issues and had been to an appointment the Thursday before where changes were made to his medications to increase dosage units, but he had not made statements indicating a threat to himself or others, according to the investigative letter. Sturgeon told his mother he had had a panic attack the Monday before and said he wanted to go on FMLA from the bank because of that. He stated he could not pinpoint what was going on with him, but he needed to leave. Sturgeon had voluntarily checked into a mental hospital after a suicide attempt last year. Though he had positive relationships with peers and bosses, the records state that Sturgeon was unhappy with his career path and wasnt sure he wanted to stay in banking. Some of the survivors told police that Sturgeon had a poor work ethic, but that he kept his position because his father was good friends with a high-ranking bank official. He had worked at the bank since 2018. An examination by the Mayo Clinic after Sturgeons death revealed that he did not have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a disorder caused by repeated head traumas. Aside from alprazolam, a medication used to treat anxiety and panic disorders, Sturgeon did not have drugs or ethanol in his system at the time of the shooting, according to a medical examiners report. Police reviewed Sturgeons phone records, email, social media and electronic devices but did not find indications that he had searched for information on mass shootings or how to carry them out. Police said they did not locate any vast search history involving guns, violence, or any long-term planning, and while Sturgeon searched for gun ranges after buying the rifle he used in the attack, police said there was no record that he went to a range. In addition to a written plan that included notes on social media posts he planned to make before carrying out the shooting, police released images of letters Sturgeon left behind for his parents and others, and a handwritten will. In an announcement Tuesday, Louisville Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel and Mayor Craig Greenberg said the Commonwealths Attorneys Office had determined that Officer Cory Galloway, who shot and killed the shooter, was justified in his actions. On April 10, 2023, the citizens of Louisville collectively suffered one of the most devastating events in the citys history, Greenberg said in a news release. Five innocent people: Josh Barrick, Deana Eckert, Tommy Elliott, Juliana Farmer, and Jim Tutt had their lives inexplicably stolen from them. Others were shot, but survived, and their lives are forever changed. LMPD Officer Nickolas Wilt, just 10 days out of the police academy, survived a gunshot wound to the head. Officer Cory Galloway was forced to confront and stop an active shooter. Countless family members, Old National Bank employees, and others will undoubtedly carry the pain of that day with them. Gwinn-Vallaroel said in the news release that our priority has been assisting the families, Old National Bank employees, officers, and community members affected by the horrific events of that day. She said they will continue to honor the victims, their families, and the officers directly affected by the tragedy. Survivors of mass shooting at Louisville bank plan lawsuit against the gun maker LMPD officer injured in Louisville bank shooting discharged after months-long hospital stay Report: Louisville shooters parents say son shouldnt have been able to buy gun A woman and her alleged lover have been arrested more than a month after her husband was stabbed to death outside his home in Northern California, police said, in a case that included incriminating texts, surveillance video and a Selena Gomez song as evidence. On October 8, Hayward Police responded to reports of an assault with a deadly weapon on the street and found Parwiz Assar, 51, suffering from stab wounds. He was declared dead by medical personnel at the scene. Evidence ultimately led authorities to Seattle, where they arrested 21-year-old Samim Azizi. Police said he's being held without bail at the King County Jail and awaiting extradition to California. Razma Mohammad-Ibrahim / Credit: Alameda County Sheriff's Office About two weeks later, Assar's wife, 35-year-old Razma Mohammad-Ibrahim, was taken into custody in Hayward. Jail records show she is being held without bail at the Santa Rita County Jail. Mohammad-Ibrahim and Assar were married for approximately 12 years and "had been experiencing marital problems," police said, adding that Mohammad-Ibrahim and Azizi met around December of 2022 and became romantically involved. "It is believed the two planned to kill Assar so Mohammad-Ibrahim could end her marriage to be with Azizi, have full custody of her children, and have all the family assets," Hayward Police said. According to the Mercury News, police collected a wide range of evidence implicating the suspects, including surveillance video, internet searches and an alleged text message from Azizi to Mohammed-Ibrahim that he had selected a "strong" knife. On the night of the attack, Assar's Ring doorbell camera showed a masked man leap from a bush and attack him as he walked to his front door, the Mercury News reported. Just hours after the attack, a friend of Assar's told police that Assar had asked if he could stay at his house because he was afraid his wife was planning to attack him, the Mercury News reported, citing police records. According to the Mercury News, on the day Assar was killed, a post made to his wife's Instagram account included the Selena Gomez song "Single Soon." Assar and Mohammad-Ibrahim have young children who are in currently with other family members, police said. The U.S. Marshals Service, the Renton Police Department, the Washington State Crime Lab and the Washington State Department of Corrections helped the Hayward Police Department investigate the case. "I would like to take a moment to recognize the outstanding investigative work that led to the arrests in this case," Acting Chief Bryan Matthews said in a statement about the arrests. "Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones of Mr. Assar as they continue to grieve during this difficult time." Hayward is about 30 miles southeast of San Francisco. Thanksgiving turkey recipe that cooks in under 2 hours Canada highway safety official on situation at Rainbow Bridge after vehicle explosion Israel's Netanyahu on hostage, short-term cease-fire deal with Hamas HAYWARD, Calif. - A romantic entanglement took a deadly turn when a Hayward woman and lover allegedly conspired and carried out a plan to kill the woman's husband, according to authorities. Razma Mohammad-Ibrahim, 35, and her 21-year-old flame, Samim Azizi, of Washington, were arrested and charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of 51-year-old Parwiz Assar in October, according to the police department. Mohammad-Ibrahim and Assar are both from Hayward. The woman and the victim had been married for 12 years and were experiencing marital problems, investigators said. In December 2022, Mohammad-Ibrahim met Azizi and the two became involved in an intimate relationship. Investigators believe the suspects devised a plan to kill Assar so that Mohammad-Ibrahim could end her marriage and be with Azizi. The woman also wanted to have full custody of her and her husband's children and acquire all the family assets, authorities said. On the night of Oct. 8, Assar was stabbed to death in the area of Lance Way and Tucker Street. The department started a homicide investigation into the victim's death, where they uncovered the love triangle and possible motive. As a result of that investigation, Mohammad-Ibrahim and Azizi were subsequently arrested and charged. Loved ones are raising money for the family of a 31-year-old man who was fatally shot early Saturday in Kansas City. Officers found Richard Louis Rico Gonzalez unresponsive around 1 a.m. in the front yard of a home in the 1800 block of Mercier Street, according to the Kansas City Police Department. Emergency medical crews responded and pronounced Gonzalez dead at the scene. A loved one started a GoFundMe to raise money for Gonzalezs funeral and to help pay for expenses to raise his daughter Athena. Gonzalez, who grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, was goofy and always loving, a loved one wrote on GoFundMe. At family events, he talked to everyone, hugged them and told them he loved them. He always told his daughter how much he cared for her and didnt mind when anyone called him a mamas boy because of his love for his mother. Gonzalez also enjoyed music, and wrote and rapped his own songs. The friendships he made along the way will last a lifetime, a loved one wrote on GoFundMe. The memories we have of him will live on forever through our hearts and his love will forever be felt. Gonzalezs killing was the 170th homicide in Kansas City this year, according to data tracked by The Star, which includes fatal police shootings. As of Tuesday, there were more homicides in Kansas City this year than in 2022, which was previously considered the citys second deadliest year ever recorded. Police said they currently have no suspects and the investigation is ongoing. Anyone who may have information about the shooting should call homicide detectives at 816-234-5043 or the anonymous TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477. Authorities are searching for a missing girl who disappeared in Lancaster earlier this week. The missing teen was identified as Iyauna Turner, 14, by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. Turner went missing on Nov.17 and was last spotted on the 43300 block of Gadsen Avenue around 3 p.m. She may possibly be headed to Los Angeles, authorities said. Turner is described as a Black female standing 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighing 150 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. She may be wearing her hair in a ponytail, officials said. She was last seen wearing a black tank top and gray sweats. Iyauna Turner, 14, in a photo from the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. Video captures $100,000 dog heist at L.A. County pet shop The missing girls family has not heard from her since and is concerned for her well-being, LASD said. Anyone who may know Turners whereabouts or has additional information is asked to call the Lancaster Sheriffs Station at 661-948-8466. Anonymous tips can be submitted to Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477 or online at lacrimestoppers.org. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA. Prosecutors in Fulton County have dropped murder and other charges against Ludacris longtime manager, Chaka Zulu, after they determined he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed a 23-year-old college graduate during a fight in the parking lot of his Buckhead restaurant in 2022. In an exclusive statement emailed to Channel 2s Michael Seiden, Jeff DiSantis, a spokesman for Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, explained the decision. The Atlanta Police Department made an arrest on charges determined at a standard of probable cause, which is their duty in this and all cases The District Attorneys office investigates cases to determine what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at trial...Our investigation of the facts and analysis of applicable law indicates that this is an appropriate resolution of this case based on the standard of proof required. Because the defendant is now involved in a pre-indictment diversion program, we will not comment further about the matter at this time. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] The music executive, whose real name is Ahmed Chaka Zulu Obafemi, was one of three people shot on June 26 in the shopping center parking lot outside of his Buckhead restaurant. The shooting left Artez Benton dead and sent another person to the hospital. APD investigators said that the shooting was the result of a fight between Zulu and others. On September 13, Zulu surrendered on charges of murder, aggravated assault, simple battery and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Jail records show that he was released the same day on $200,000 bond. After the shooting, Zulus attorney, Gabe Banks, argued that his client had acted in self-defense and released surveillance video from outside of Apt4B that showed Zulu getting beaten by a group of men before he fired his gun. On Wednesday, Banks reiterated his claims of self-defense in the following statement: Mr. Chaka Zulu, a beloved son of Atlanta, is pleased with the outcome of the thorough investigation conducted by District Attorney Fani Willis and her team of lawyers and investigators. From the beginning of this case, Mr. Zulu was committed to a fair process. He fully believes that after a thoughtful examination of all the facts and evidence related to this matter, District Attorney Willis reached an appropriate and just decision. It is not lost on Mr. Zulu that there was a loss of life under extraordinary circumstances. However, it is now time for Mr. Zulu to put this difficult process behind him, and to focus on the support and nurturing of his family. Accordingly, we respectfully request privacy at this time, and that any inquiries be directed to the office of Gabe Banks, Esq. RELATED STORIES: An attorney representing Bentons family told Seiden that they do not believe justice was on their side. He should be held criminally responsible and he should have been formally charged for the death of their son, said Theresa Seals, an attorney for Bentons family. They still stand by that today as they did from the very beginning. It is a little surprising to them to kind of now hear that the next step is the diversion program, she added. The (DAs) office just gave them generalities of what could happen and not a definite program. An almost three-minute-long clip captured Zulu getting into a verbal confrontation with another man, Tremon Robinson, in the restaurant parking lot. As the pair argue, another man, Corey Crawford, can be seen retrieving something out of a vehicle, which Zulus legal team believed was a gun. Things turned physical when Robinson appeared to chest bump Zulu, who retaliated by shoving Robinson into a nearby car and grabbing him by the collar. Crawford, Benton and another man immediately jumped in to help Robinson, with all four pummeling Zulu with punches, kicks and stomps. The video also showed Zulus female assistant jumping in to try to defend Zulu, but she ended up getting punched in the face by Robinson. After getting back on his feet, Zulu can be seen brandishing a gun and firing at least one shot into Benton, knocking him to the ground. Crawford, off-camera, then fires multiple shots of his own, with at least one striking Zulu in the back. Police arrived at the scene and Zulu and Benton were rushed to a local hospital. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] After graduating with honors from Druid Hills High School, Benton went to Young Harris College, where he was recruited to play baseball. After graduation, Benton, who was the youngest of three kids, moved back home with his parents to save money while he went back to school to become an electrician. IN RELATED NEWS: Ina Garten has so many delicious potato recipes, and so far I've made six of them. In honor of the holiday season, I decided to rank them. Garten's elevated mashed potatoes are super easy, and my family loves her potato gratin. Whether you like your potatoes mashed, roasted, or elevated, Ina Garten has a recipe for every taste and preference. I've made Garten's most popular potato recipes and, in honor of the holiday season, decided to rank my favorites. These recipes are all fantastic year-round, but if you're looking for a great Thanksgiving side dish, I've definitely got you covered. Taking the sixth spot are Garten's rosemary roasted potatoes. Garten's rosemary roasted potatoes. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten's rosemary roasted potatoes couldn't be easier to make. All you need are small red and white-skinned potatoes, fresh rosemary leaves, garlic, and olive oil. And after tossing all the ingredients together, you just need to throw the potatoes in the oven for an hour. Garten's rosemary roasted potatoes are a great side when you're craving something classic. Garten's rosemary roasted potatoes are very easy to make. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Just because they're in sixth place doesn't mean Garten's rosemary roasted potatoes aren't delicious the competition is just that fierce when it comes to "Barefoot Contessa" potato dishes. The potatoes develop a beautiful golden color in the oven, and the pop of rosemary makes for a lovely Instagram photo. Plus, this dish makes your kitchen smell incredible. Garten's rosemary roasted potatoes are also deliciously crispy, with a soft and creamy middle. Both of my parents were huge fans of the dish and liked that it was a lighter alternative to mashed potatoes or a gratin. Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's rosemary roasted potatoes here. In fifth place are Garten's parmesan smashed potatoes. Garten's parmesan smashed potatoes. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten loves to give a new twist to a classic dish, and her parmesan smashed potatoes are no different. Her recipe involves smashing the potatoes with an electric mixer, a great time-saving technique, and features unpeeled red potatoes, half-and-half, sour cream, butter, and freshly-grated parmesan cheese. "The key to mashed potatoes is what you add to them to make them have great flavor," Garten told Al Roker while demonstrating this dish on his podcast, "Cooking Up a Storm with Al Roker," in November 2021. "Two things people really miss a lot, in almost every recipe, is the salt. It needs a lot of salt to give it flavor." Garten's parmesan smashed potatoes are packed with flavor. Garten's parmesan smashed potatoes have a delicious texture. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider I love the texture of these thick and creamy potatoes, and the salty sharpness of the parmesan pairs really well with the subtly sweet red potatoes. I made these for the first time at a Friendsgiving, and they were a huge hit with my boyfriend and friends. "The smashed potatoes were deliciously salty, and also not overcooked," my boyfriend said. "They still had a bit of texture to them it wasn't just like a bowl of soup." "The best mashed potatoes I've had!" our friend Kayla added. "So creamy and thick." Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's parmesan smashed potatoes. The fourth spot belongs to Garten's elevated store-bought mashed potatoes. Garten's elevated store-bought mashed potatoes. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider I know what you're thinking: How can store-bought mashed potatoes be so high on this list? But if anyone can elevate something from the supermarket, it's the Barefoot Contessa. Garten developed this recipe, which is a spin on her parmesan smashed potatoes, for The New York Times last year after declaring that she was burnt out from cooking. "Mashed potatoes are an essential Thanksgiving side dish but can be time-consuming," she wrote. "Instead of starting with raw potatoes, then peeling, cutting, and boiling them, start with these prepared potatoes and no one will know you didn't make the dish from scratch." Garten's recipe features a pack of refrigerated mashed potatoes, plus butter, sour cream, and freshly-grated parmesan cheese. All you have to do is heat the refrigerated potatoes over a pan of simmering water and then throw in the extra ingredients. Garten's elevated store-bought mashed potatoes taste super delicious, and they barely require any work or dishes. You can whip up Garten's elevated store-bought mashed potatoes in less than 20 minutes. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten's elevated mashed potatoes were super creamy, with the parmesan cheese infusing each bite with a lovely richness. I made these for my parents when I was home for Thanksgiving and they couldn't even tell the mashed potatoes were store-bought. What's really great about the recipe is how quick it is. You could easily whip up these mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving in less than 20 minutes and have a side dish that everyone will love. Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's elevated store-bought mashed potatoes here. Rounding out the top three are Garten's hash browns. Garten's hash browns. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten uses diced instead of shredded potatoes for her hash browns, and Jeffrey her husband of 53 years is a huge fan. "When my husband tasted them he wanted to know if he could have them for dinner!" Garten writes. "Hey, why not? What makes him happy is just fine with me." Garten's hash browns feature boiling potatoes, chopped yellow onions, butter, scallions, and fresh flat-leaf parsley. I'd happily eat Garten's hash browns for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Garten's hash browns are deliciously crispy and creamy. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten's hash browns were a huge hit when I whipped these up for brunch with my boyfriend and our friends. The potatoes have a deliciously crispy exterior that gives way to the soft and creamy middle, and the parsley and scallions add so much extra flavor. One friend loved these so much, they declared they could've eaten the whole pot. I served the hash browns with Garten's sweet banana pancakes (also very delicious), but I think they'd also pair really well with chicken, turkey, or any other holiday centerpiece. Get the full recipe for Garten's hash browns here. The English roasted potatoes that Garten learned from Emily Blunt are in second place. Emily Blunt's English roasted potatoes. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Emily Blunt's English roasted potatoes were such a hit that they temporarily crashed the "Barefoot Contessa" website when Garten shared the recipe in May 2020. Blunt taught Garten how to make her family's special recipe for roasted potatoes on a 2018 episode of "Barefoot Contessa." The simple dish only requires two main ingredients Yukon Gold potatoes and parsley and features some helpful cooking tips. After parboiling the potatoes, Blunt shakes them in the pot to help roughen up the edges. "If you rough up the edges, once you roast them it just gives a really nice, sort of crispy, crunch," Blunt explained to Garten during the episode. Blunt also lets the potatoes dry for 15 minutes before baking them, which she said creates "such a fantastic crust on the outside." Blunt's English roasted potatoes look gorgeous and taste delicious. Blunt's English roasted potatoes look beautiful on the plate. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider I will always love my dad's recipe for Greek roasted potatoes above all, but these English roasted potatoes are a close second. Blunt's two quick tricks really pay off on the texture. There's such a satisfying crunch on the crust of the potatoes, which are deliciously soft and creamy in the middle. These potatoes go great with just about everything, but you'll definitely have a lot of happy guests if you make them for the holidays. Get the full recipe for Emily Blunt's English roasted potatoes here. Taking the top spot is Garten's potato-fennel gratin. Garten's potato-fennel gratin. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten's potato-fennel gratin is the first dish I cooked for my family's holiday menu. The recipe, which appears in " The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook ," features russet potatoes, fennel, yellow onion, heavy cream, and Gruyere cheese. "I love to make potato gratin and fennel gratin, so I decided to combine the two," Garten writes in the recipe description. "If you make this in an old French gratin dish, it looks wonderful and can go from the oven to the table with style." Garten's potato-fennel gratin is one of my favorite holiday dishes. I make Garten's potato-fennel gratin every holiday season. Anneta Konstantinides/Insider Garten's potato-fennel gratin is just so creamy, comforting, and delicious. The potatoes always come out perfectly cooked, the combination of heavy cream and cheese is a dream, and the sauteed fennel cuts through with some lovely sweetness. The dish couldn't be easier to assemble, especially if you want to hand off a holiday cooking task to a younger chef in the family (or that cousin whose most-used app is DoorDash). I make Garten's potato-fennel gratin every holiday season, and it's always one of my favorite dishes at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Get the full recipe for Ina Garten's potato-fennel gratin here. Read the original article on Insider Malaysias governement has warned that a Coldplay gig taking place today (22 November) will be shut down if the band misbehaves, although it rejected calls from conservative Muslims to cancel the show. Protests led by the countrys opposition bloc have objected to Coldplays Kuala Lumpur show over the bands support for the LGBT+ community. Frontman Chris Martin is known for waving Pride flags during his performances, while his bands concerts are frequently decorated in rainbow colours. Communications and digital minister Fahmi Fadzil said he does not foresee any problems with Coldplays first concert in Malaysia, although security has been beefed up for the show that is expected to bring some 75,000 people to a stadium outside the capital. When asked if a kill switch to cut off power supply to the stadium would be used, Fahmi said: Yes, its one of the things we have discussed with the organiser. The prime minister has also said the band, you know, is very supportive of Palestine. So, we are upbeat about the concert today. Malaysia introduced a kill switch measure following the uproar sparked by British rock band The 1975, where frontman Matty Healy criticised the countrys anti-LGBT+ laws and kissed a male bandmate on stage. The Kuala Lumpur festival was later suspended and The 1975 have reportedly been banned from performing in the country ever again. Last month, Healy defended his actions in a 10-minute speech delivered during a gig in Dallas, Texas. He argued that The 1975 didnt waltz into Malaysia but were booked by festival organisers who were aware of the bands political views and stage show. He said that kissing his bandmate Ross McDonald was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government but an ongoing part of The 1975 stage show which had been performed many times prior. Had the band omitted any routine part of the show to appease the Malaysian authorities bigoted views of LGBTQ people, Healy claimed, it would have been a passive endorsement of those politics. As liberals are so fond of saying, silence causes violence, use your platform so we did that. And that is where things got complicated, he said. Matty Healy of The 1975 sparked uproar after kissing his bandmate onstage at a festival in Malaysia (Photo by Mauricio Santana/Getty Images) (Getty Images) Coldplays concert in Indonesia last week was marred by violent clashes between riot police and conservative Muslims protesting the bands record of support for the LGBT+ community. More than 200 conservative Muslims demonstrated outside the Gelora Bung Karno stadium in Jakarta, where the band were performing on Wednesday (16 November), and demanded the event be cancelled. The demonstrators reportedly held a large banner that said: Reject, cancel and disband Coldplay concerts. Protesters said the bands pro-LGBT+ stance was in conflict with the countrys faith and morals. The same protest group had also organised demonstrations last week at multiple sites in Jakarta, including outside the British Embassy, the Associated Press reported. Once again citing the bands support for LGBT+ rights, which they said clashed with their beliefs, various Islamic groups called for the cancellation of the bands inaugural concert in predominantly Muslim Indonesia. At least 4,000 security officials were deployed in and around the Coldplay venue. Local police said the demonstrators calling for the cancellation of the concert did not have permission to stage a rally. Additional reporting by agencies A 64-year-old man was fatally wounded overnight in the East Pilsen neighborhood, Chicago police said. Shortly before 4 a.m., a victim was sitting inside of his vehicle in the 1800 block of South Canalport Avenue when someone opened fire in his direction, striking him 14 times, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital where he was pronounced dead. The gunman fled the scene in a pick-up truck. No one was in custody and detectives were investigating. LAS VEGAS (KLAS) A man who police say drove into a barrier on the Las Vegas Strip told officers he was swerving to avoid another vehicle, though police say surveillance video showed there was no other vehicle involved. On Thursday, Nov. 16, officers with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department were called to the intersection of East Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard in front of Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino at around 1:40 p.m. Arriving officers found a vehicle that appeared to be a Chevrolet SUV, half-on and half-off the curb, after crashing through a barrier in front of the resort. Two people were taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. A vehicle crashed into a barrier in front of a Las Vegas Strip casino. Police made contact with the driver, identified as 30-year-old Carlos Avila. Police said Avila was sweating profusely, acting extremely agitated and could not hold still. Avilas eyes were bloodshot, according to the report. Police smelled a strong odor of alcohol on his breath, and asked Avila if he was drinking. Avila told police he had an unknown beverage but did not know how long ago, the report stated. Avila also told police he smoked marijuana every day. Carlos Avila, 30, faces two counts of DUI. (LVMPD) Avila told police he was driving on Las Vegas Boulevard and attempted to run on Flamingo when a vehicle cut him off, and he attempted to avoid a crash which caused him to crash into the barrier, according to the report. Surveillance video from The Cromwell, however, showed Avilas vehicle nearly hit the center median and immediately lost control and hit the barrier. Police did not see another vehicle in the video causing the crash, the report stated. Police said they found both empty and full bottles of Corona as well as a bag of green leafy substance in the vehicle. Avila agreed to do a field sobriety test, but he was unable to focus on the instructions and would walk away while officers were explaining the tests. Police said they did not perform any tests, according to the report. Police arrested Avila and took him to the Clark County Detention Center, where he was held on a $10,000 bail. He faces two charges of DUI resulting in substantial bodily harm. If he makes bail, Avila will not be able to drive and will be placed on electronic monitoring. His next court appearance will be on Dec. 5 at 9:30 a.m. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. A judge denied bond for the man accused in the stabbing death of Nat King Coles great-nephew. Tracy Cole, 31, was stabbed multiple times in the early morning hours of Sept. 14. Police arrested Ricardo Gayle a month later on Oct. 28. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Gayle waived his first appearance in court on Oct. 30 but had a bond hearing scheduled for Tuesday. A judge denied Gayles bond, saying in the court documents that Gayle poses a significant risk of committing a felony pending trial. Gayle also on Tuesday waived his right to a preliminary hearing, meaning the case could proceed to a grand jury indictment. TRENDING STORIES: As previously reported, Atlanta police said Gayle stabbed Cole several times in Coles apartment complex stairwell across from the Civil and Human Rights Museum in September. Officers said Gayle prevented Cole from calling 911 and stole his two phones. Gayle was charged with murder, aggravated assault, possession of a knife during the commission of a felony and hindering persons making an emergency telephone call. After Gayles arrest, Coles family said they were overjoyed at the news. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] IN OTHER NEWS: One of two 19-year-old men accused of shooting at a Miami-Dade police officer this week was sentenced Wednesday to more than six years in state prison. Why? He tried to kill his drug dealer in 2020. On Monday, Drequan Humes was arrested along with Travis Fernandez Jr. after Miami-Dade police say they shot at officers who were monitoring a group of armed men at a Miami Gardens house. According to their arrest reports, one of the bullets fired by Fernandez grazed a cops face. Theyre charged with attempted second-degree murder of a police officer. Humes is also charged with gun possession by a convicted felon. As of Wednesday afternoon, both remained behind bars at the countys Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center after pleading not guilty earlier in the day. A Miami-Dade police officer was shot in Miami Gardens on Monday, Nov. 20, 2023, the department said. Not Humes first rodeo with police This wasnt the first time Humes was charged with attempted murder, police records reveal. In 2020, a 15-year-old Humes fired a bullet that wounded two young adults his marijuana dealers in an effort to steal their drugs, according to an arrest report. Drug rips, a term police use when people steal from their suppliers, are a growing concern among law enforcement agencies. Humes pleaded guilty in 2021. As part of his agreement with prosecutors, he had to go to a boot camp and wear an ankle monitor starting in January 2023, court records show. However, by March, authorities say Humes had cut off his ankle monitor officially becoming a fugitive. READ MORE: Miami-Dade police arrest two 19-year-old men after gunman shot officer in the face Mondays shooting landed Humes back in jail. A few days later, a judge on Wednesday sentenced him to more than six years behind bars for the 2020 attempted murder charge. What led to the officer getting shot? New details have also emerged about what transpired before the officer was grazed in the face by a bullet on Monday. Around 10:30 a.m., Miami-Dade police officers were in the area of Northwest 154th Street and 19th Avenue monitoring a group of armed men including Humes and Fernandez in connection to a shooting investigation. Authorities havent divulged much on that shooting probe, but court records show Humes also faces a separate charge of grand theft auto. It wasnt immediately clear if the vehicle theft had something to do with the shooting. READ MORE: Five detained after Miami-Dade officer grazed by bullet in Miami Gardens, police say Upon spotting the armed men in front of 1881 NW 154th St., officers say they drove up to see what was going on. Thats when, police say, Humes and Fernandez starting firing at the polices vehicles. A 29-year-old officer with seven years in the force was struck in the face, but has since been discharged from the hospital. The men took off running, then a multi-agency manhunt ensued. Later that day, five men were detained for questioning. Of those, Humes and Fernandez were the only ones charged. While Fernandez denied shooting at the Miami-Dade officers, police say Humes provided a statement detailing his involvement in the shooting. What Humes told investigators was redacted from his arrest report. Miami Herald staff writer Grethel Aguila contributed to this report. BUCYRUS, Ohio (WCMH) Two people are facing drug-related charges after deputies executed a search warrant in Bucyrus Wednesday morning. Crawford County deputies executed a search warrant at about 8:40 a.m. on the 300 block of West Warren Street as the result of a drug trafficking complaint. A 44-year-old man will be charged with trafficking drugs and a 32-year-old woman will be charged with permitting drug abuse and possession of drugs, according to the Crawford County Sheriffs Office. Deputies took a photo of the arrested pair at the scene, which showed the man wearing a shirt that read Warning: I do dumb things! (Courtesy Photo/Crawford County Sheriffs Office) Man arrested in connection with Grandview Heights death The sheriffs office said it will be forwarding a report to the Crawford County Prosecutors Office for the consideration of additional charges. NBC4 is not naming the suspects because Crawford County court records did not show charges against the pair as of Wednesday afternoon. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NBC4 WCMH-TV. A Florida man is facing three felony charges after being involved in a road rage incident that started with a tossed cup of coffee, according to the Flagler County Sheriffs Office. According to the arrest report, officials said the whole ordeal began at a Chick-fil-A when the suspect, Donovan Matthews, 36, of Palm Coast, got into an altercation with a man and woman in another vehicle. The report stated that one of the parties involved in the argument threw a cup of "cold" coffee at Matthews before leaving the business. Deputies say Matthews then followed the man and woman in his car and intentionally struck their vehicle. FLORIDA ROAD RAGE CONFRONTATION: MAN WHO PULLED KNIFE ON CONCEALED CARRY HOLDER CHARGED WITH ASSAULT Florida man Donovan Matthews was arrested in a road rage incident that began with a tossed cup of coffee. Following the collision, deputies say both parties exited their vehicles near the intersection of Diandra and Palm Coast Parkway. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP Deputies say Matthews continued the argument before attempting to hit the woman in the face, but the man from the other party intervened and moved in to defend her. This then caused Matthews and the man to end up on the ground in a fight where Matthews repeatedly hit him, the report said. TEXAS POPEYES EMPLOYEE SELLING DRUGS ON THE CLOCK SHOOTS AT CUSTOMER TRYING TO ROB HIM: POLICE A Florida man is facing three felony charges after someone threw a cup of coffee at him Saturday morning, deputies said. According to the authorities, Matthews is charged with multiple felonies, including aggravated battery and assault. Original article source: Man arrested in Florida road rage incident that started with a tossed cup of coffee: deputies A man arrested in connection with the deaths of a Washington couple appeared in court this week, where he was identified as the victims tenant on the brink of eviction when the pair died. The suspect, 45-year-old Timothy Burke, was taken into custody on Friday on murder and kidnapping charges in the deaths of Karen Koep and Davido, who legally has no last name. The couple allowed tenants to stay on their property in camper vans and garages dotted across a plot of land on Stedman Road Southeast in Lake Forest, Washington. They rented out the land to individuals regardless of whether they could afford to pay, records obtained by The Seattle Times show. The pair went missing nearly a week ago, the Thurston County Sheriffs Office said. Officials still have not been able to locate their bodies. Mr Burke is being held in jail without bond at Thurston County Jail, per court records. He had his first court appearance in the case on Monday. When responding to a welfare check requested by Ms Koeps employer on 13 November, deputies found two bullet holes in the walls, according to the outlet. Officers observed two large blood stains in the living room. It appeared as if someone had tried to use bleach and a vacuum to clean the blood, the newspaper reported. Two emergency responders said the amount of blood was more than they believed someone could survive losing. No one was at the property when officials arrived. Neighbours said they heard gunshots either on Friday or Saturday evening. Investigators believe that someone dragged the couples bodies to the garage, where a car might have been. Officers did not find Ms Koeps vehicle when searching the scene. When they eventually found the car, blood was found in the trunk. According to the newspaper, officials obtained surveillance footage showing the man driving the vehicle to two different credit unions on Nov 12, one day before officers searched the home. Mr Burke allegedly attempted to use Davidos debit card and was arrested for identity theft. Officials said a best friend of Mr Davido tipped them off about Burkes potential eviction. They subsequently obtained a partially written eviction notice for Mr Burke. Additionally, the man previously told law enforcement officials that his landlord was attempting to evict him. When he was ultimately arrested, officials found a semi-automatic pistol in Mr Burkes pocket, which matched the bullet casings found in the couples home. The Independent reached out to Thurston County Public Defense for comment. Conch fritters and cracked conch are popular menu items in South Florida. But the queen conch served in the state is usually harvested in the Bahamas, and not caught here or at least it shouldnt be. Harvesting queen conch, which is a protected species in Florida and in consideration to be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, can be a third-degree felony in the state, as a Key West man found out late last week. Burley David Smith, 67, was arrested Friday by state fish and wildlife officers who say he caught and ate two queen conchs on Wisteria Island, an undeveloped island just off Key West frequented by homeless people. As of Tuesday, Smith remained in Monroe County jail, held on a bond of $21,500 on one felony count of harvesting queen conchs, a misdemeanor charge for harvesting the conchs and another misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest without violence. Information about his legal representation was not immediately available. Three Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers were sent to the island to respond to reports a person was catching and eating queen conch, said agency spokeswoman Arielle Callender. When they arrived, Callender noted a witness told them Smith caught the conchs, cooked the sea snails and ate them at his camp site. The officers spoke with Smith, who they said was argumentative and refused to cooperate. When the officers told Smith he was being detained, he became combative and was placed under arrest, Callender said. The officers went to his campsite and found two empty queen conch shells next to a pot and fire, Callender added. For more information on queen conch and other fisheries regulations in Florida, go myfwc.com/fishing/saltwater/recreational/marine-life. The Coastal Carolina Human Trafficking Task Force arrested and charged a man with 14 counts of promoting prostitution and three counts of promoting prostitution of a minor on Nov. 18., according to a news release from the New Hanover County Sheriff's Office. Brandon Scott Hollaman, 42-year-old from Indian Beach, was arrested in Carteret County on warrants issued by the New Hanover County Sheriff's Office. The charges are related to criminal activity of Cape Fear Escorts/Entertainers, according to the release. "Cape Fear Escorts/Entertainers would recruit victims by promising them thousands of dollars for dancing, but would, in turn, have the victims engage in commercial sex and took proceeds from it," the release said. "All these incidents took place in the New Hanover County area." Hollaman was being held at the New Hanover County jail under a $500,000 secure bond as of Nov. 21. The task force consists of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), New Hanover County Sheriff's Office, Onslow County Sheriff's Office, Jacksonville Police Department, Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), Homeland Security Investigations, North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations, North Carolina Probation and was assisted by the Durham Police Department. Six other individuals have previously been charged during an investigation spanning over six months and involving more than 150 victims. More: Six charged in connection with human trafficking and prostitution in New Hanover County This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Man charged with promoting prostitution in Cape Fear Escorts investigation A 34-year-old man has been accused of sucker-punching an elderly shopper in a Broward County Walmart an unprovoked attack recorded on a security camera. Joseph Albert McFadden was taken into custody Friday at another Walmart in the county after the stores security staff identified him as the attacker, the Broward Sheriffs Office announced Tuesday. The Lauderhill man charged with aggravated battery on a person 65 or older remained behind bars at the countys North Broward Bureau as of Wednesday morning, jail records show. Bail has been set at $10,000. The victim a man in his 80s was punched twice in the face before 10 a.m. Oct. 11 at Walmart, 3001 N. State Road 7 in Lauderdale Lakes, as he was leaving the store with a shopping bag in his hands, the stores surveillance footage revealed. The attacker then left the store and walked north towards Oakland Park Boulevard. READ MORE: Unprovoked attack: South Florida Walmart footage shows man punching elderly shopper Detectives say the attacker did not steal anything from the victim, and the victim does not know the attacker and did not have words with him prior to the incident, the sheriffs office said in a news release last month when they were still looking for McFadden. It was a brazen, unprovoked attack caught on camera. An Atlanta man was sentenced to serve life in prison without parole plus 30 years after a Cherokee County jury convicted him of rape and attempted murder, in addition to other charges. The Cherokee County District Attorneys Office said Fernando Castillo, 40, was convicted on Aug. 28 for 11 charges, including rape, attempted murder, and false imprisonment among others. On Nov. 9, Castillo was sentenced to life in prison. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] According to the DAs office, Castillo was arrested on June 26, 2020 after deputies responded to a 911 call about a rape in Cherokee County. When the young woman in this case first met Castillo, she had no idea what a cruel, callous man he was. Throughout their relationship, the violent incidents kept escalating, as often happens in the cycle of violence, District Attorney Susan K. Treadaway said in a statement. This jury verdict and sentencing ensures that a very dangerous man remains off our streets for the remainder of his natural life. We hope that this case encourages other victims of domestic violence to seek the help they need. The victim had dated Castillo for about eight months, according to the DAs office, and the morning of June 26, 2020, Castillo forced his way into her home, then her bedroom, and started attacking her. The DAs office said he smothered her after beating her, then pinned her to a wall and strangled her before sexually assaulting her multiple times. When Castillo fell asleep, the victim left home and called for help. TRENDING STORIES: After talking to law enforcement, the victim was examined by a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, who detailed the multiple injuries shed sustained in Castillos attack. In court during the trial, members of the jury spent four days listening to testimony and seeing evidence from the case, then took two days to deliberate and convict him of 11 charges, including rape, aggravated sodomy (two counts), aggravated sexual battery (two counts), criminal attempt to commit murder, aggravated assault (two counts), aggravated battery, false imprisonment, and burglary in the first degree, according to the DAs office. After the trial, during sentencing, a Cherokee County Superior Court Judge listened to arguments from both prosecutors and defense attorneys, then sentenced Castillo to life in prison. Castillo, according to the DAs office, is a recidivist offender, meaning he had already been convicted in his past at least once. In addition to Castillos life imprisonment, he was given a life without parole and an additional 30 years to serve, as well as being ordered to not speak to the victim or her family. The facts of this case are tremendously disturbing and one of the worst cases of strangulation I have seen in my career. The defendants attack on this victim was pure evil. He was vicious, brutal, and unrelenting, and she was lucky to escape with her life, Assistant District Attorney Kelly Chavis, of the Gang and Organized Crime Unit, Office of the District Attorney, Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit said in a statement. If you or someone you know is impacted by domestic violence, please contact the Cherokee Family Violence Center, CFVC.org, or call 770-479-1703 (24/7 crisis hotline). In case of an emergency, call 911. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] IN OTHER NEWS: ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - The man who federal investigators said escaped custody in Tennessee and was spotted a month later in Pinellas County was taken into custody Tuesday evening. The FBI's office in Tampa said Sean Williams, 52, was apprehended in Pinellas County after being tracked down by a K-9 officer. The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said deputies responded to 11505 Walsingham Road after receiving a report of a suspicious person in the area, which is where they found the suspect. READ: Search underway for missing, endangered man last seen nearly a week ago: Manatee deputies Authorities said the suspect escaped from a transport van while he was being moved from a detention facility in Kentucky to the federal courthouse in Greenville, Tennessee more than a month ago. Courtesy: Tennessee Bureau of Investigations. Williams was in federal custody for three counts of production of child sexual abuse materials and one count of cocaine distribution, according to authorities. A federal warrant was issued for the suspect after he escaped on October 18. Brian Boyd, former DEA Agent and Forensics and Counterintelligence expert called Williams escape suspicious. He said, "The question of escaping from a transport van begs two questions; how did he get away? Usually, they're chained at their ankles and their wrists so was there some collusion with somebody within the jail system? How did he get a key?' Courtesy: FBI Tampa. Boyd believes Williams likely had an escape plan in place. The FBI reports Williams had tried to escape custody in July 2023, but was unsuccessful. "If he had an accomplice, did they provide him a vehicle? I can't imagine he got out of a transport van and started running up the highway in an orange suit," he said. FOX13 asked FBI Tampa Bay what Williams' ties to Pinellas County were, if any. But did not receive a response. Boyd says many fugitives choose Florida without a plan in place. "I don't want to make a joke about it but everybody comes to Florida for the warm weather. It's also relatively easier to disappear because there a good amount of tourists down here," he said. The man who was fatally shot following a standoff with law enforcement at a home in East Bremerton on Friday was a suspect in the murder of a man in Pierce County in August, The News Tribune in Tacoma reported. The man who was fatally shot following a standoff with law enforcement at a home in East Bremerton on Friday was a suspect in the murder of a man in Pierce County in August, The News Tribune in Tacoma reported. On Tuesday, the Kitsap County Medical Examiner's Office identified the man who died at the residence on Forest Drive, the homicide suspect, as 49-year-old Shaun Luzama and said he died of multiple gunshot wounds. A woman who was shot at the scene and later died was identified as 47-year-old Denise Pangelinan. She suffered a single gunshot wound. Both had Bremerton addresses, the Kitsap County Medical Examiner's Office said. The connection between Luzama and Pangelinan is unclear. Investigators have confirmed that a law enforcement shooting took place Friday, but the exact circumstances of that shooting remain unclear. In a statement released Wednesday afternoon by the Kitsap County Incident Response Team, law enforcement confirmed that Luzama had an outstanding Pierce County arrest warrant for murder and said that after law enforcement responded to the East Bremerton residence to contact the man, Luzama fired several shots, which brought on a prolonged standoff. Negotiation attempts were unsuccessful. At about 10 a.m. on Friday, Pierce County and Washington State Patrol SWAT teams "engaged Luzama who was in possession of a firearm and seated next to Ms. Pangelinan in a vehicle. Forensic analysis and a thorough review of digital evidence to determine the circumstances of this tragedy will likely take several months," the statement said, noting that Kitsap County SWAT team members were present but were not involved in the use of force. KCIRT and the Pierce County Force Investigation Team are investigating the law enforcement shooting. Anyone with information related to the case may contact Bremerton police by calling 360-473-5228. Following a fatal shooting at an apartment complex in Parkland in August, prosecutors in Pierce County charged Luzama with two counts of second-degree murder and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm in September, and a warrant was issued for his arrest, The News Tribune reported, identifying the shooting victim in that matter as Michael Lefeau. This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Man killed in East Bremerton was wanted in Pierce County murder A child molestation case that shocked even the prosecutor has ended with a prison sentence in Newton County Superior Court. The investigation against the suspect, Derrick Alan Crooms, 47, began in late 2021 in Oconee County, where sheriffs deputies took the initial report. But the investigation showed the assaults on the children also occurred in other jurisdictions. Alcovy Judicial Circuit District Attorney Randy McGinley announced Tuesday that Crooms has been sentenced to the maximum of life in prison without parole. Some of the victims were less than 5 years old when the molestations and rapes began, according to McGinley. Even while seeing the worst of humanity, there are cases, like this one, that shock us all, McGinley said in a statement released from his office in Covington. The bravery of the victims in this case cannot be overstated. Its hard to imagine the strength needed to confront their abuser and share their thoughts in open court. They were able to not only tell the defendant how his abuse affected them, but that they are all strong enough to move on, the district attorney said. Sex crimes: GBI probe spurred by Oconee Sheriff's Office leads to arrest of suspect in child-rape case When the allegations first surfaced, Oconee investigators learned that Crooms and his wife were living in a campground, deputies said at the time. The wife was working as a traveling nurse, deputies said. Because most of the crimes occurred outside Oconee County, the case was turned over to Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Haylee Peacock, who worked with Newton County investigator Adrianne Roop on the investigation. Investigators also discovered that Crooms had abused children outside the state of Georgia, according to the GBI. Crooms was scheduled for trial in September in Covington, but he entered guilty pleas to four counts of rape, three counts of incest, seven counts of aggravated child molestation, two counts of aggravated sexual battery, five counts of child molestation and one count of enticing a child for indecent purposes. Sentencing was delayed until a presentencing investigation was conducted on Crooms background. The majority of the abuse occurred in Newton County, according to McGinley. Crooms had a prior record of child molestation dating back to 1996. The victim in that earlier case told FOX-5 TV in 2021 that Crooms served four years and was released. Then in 2017, she said, a judge allowed him to be removed from the sex offender registry, a decision which she had objected. At the sentencing this month, McGinley said all of the victims provided impact statements, either as testimony in court or through written statements. Other relatives also spoke of the impact the assaults had on the youngsters. This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Man gets life sentence for child rapes first reported in Oconee County SAN DIEGO Authorities released bodycam video and identified a man who was killed by police after reaching for a weapon in his waistband last week in City Heights. Imanol Aparicio, 22, of San Diego, was identified as the suspect allegedly in possession of a loaded unregistered polymer 80 firearm and a backpack containing a loaded 30-round magazine with 13 rounds, Lt. Joseph Jarjura with the San Diego County Sheriffs Department (SDSO) said in a news release Tuesday. On the evening of Monday, Nov. 13, San Diego police received a report of a man shooting a female victim in the 4500 block of Polk Avenue in the Teralta East neighborhood, according to authorities. The caller told police the suspect was standing outside the home with a firearm. When officers arrived on scene, the suspect had already left, but was later located in the 4000 block of Wightman Street in the Cherokee Point neighborhood. Officers shouted multiple times at the suspect to take his hands out of his pockets, but he responded saying Go for it and ran while reaching in his waistband, per law enforcement. He turned towards the officers while continuing to reach and manipulate something in his waistband. Officers gave the suspect multiple warnings and commands, Jarjura said. Two arrested in double homicide outside El Cajon house party Officers then fired multiple rounds at the suspect who was struck, according to SDSO. He still did not comply with officers as he continued to move around on the ground while taking out a firearm. The suspect was shot again by officers and stopped moving, Jarjura said. A police K-9 was sent out to retrieve the firearm, enabling officers to secure the suspect and begin to administer aid on him. Aparicio was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. No officers were hurt in the shooting. Authorities identified the Midcity Division officers involved in the shooting as Sergeant Matthew Ruggiero, hired in 2005, Officer Jeremy Avalos, hired in 2019, and Officer Jonah Tafoya, hired in 2020. Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call the Homicide Unit at (858) 285-6330/after hours at (858) 565-5200. You can remain anonymous by calling Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 5 San Diego. A man who lived frugally all his life left an unexpected gift of $3.8 million after his death to his small New Hampshire town with less than 4,000 residents. Geoffrey Holt, who died on June 6, left his fortune to the town of Hinsdale, which borders Massachusetts, Edwin Smokey Smith, Holts best friend, told CNN in a phone call Tuesday. He moved to New Hampshire in 1968 and lived on his social security checks for the last 15 years of his life, Smith said. Holt lived in a trailer park in the town, and the kitchen chairs in his mobile home were made of plywood, Smith said. Geoffrey lived very simply. And he didnt require a lot, said Smith. The nearly $4 million gift came from a trust fund Holt established in 2001, primarily made in mutual funds accounts, according to Smith. The town of Hinsdale, New Hampshire - Robert F. Bukaty/AP There was no probate. He had everything set up in trust, Smith said. Geoffrey was the first trustee and then on his passing, I became a successor trustee. When he was younger, much to his dismay, his parents sent him to boarding school, Smith said, noting Holt wanted to go to public school. Holts fortune was left to the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, according to Kathryn Lynch, the towns administrator. Members of the town, including schools and local organizations, can apply annually for grants for up to $150,000 per year, Lynch said. A transformational gift for a small community The town is considering various avenues to use the funds from the newfound gift, Lynch said, including possibly buying an electronic voting machine and fixing the town hall clock, which doesnt work properly. First is to get electronic ballots in Mr. Holts honor as he was an avid voter and our Supervisors of the Checklist count ballots by hand at elections, Lynch said. In a statement to CNN, Kristen Oliveri, a spokesperson with the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, said Holts generosity has the potential to be transformational for a small community like Hinsdale. Oliveri said the funds will be used to support projects, programs and organizations that provide health, educational, recreational or cultural benefits to the residents of Hinsdale. The Charitable Foundation is honored to help put such generosity into action, and we look forward to helping distribute these funds in the years to come, she said. While Smith emphasized his friend would be happy to know his gift is being appreciated and recognized, he noted Holt would also be stressed at the thought of being in the limelight. He didnt like to be in the front of the crowd, Smith said. He liked to be in the back. And not just as a follower. He did his own thing For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com LINCOLN COUNTY, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) A man has been sentenced in connection to the 2019 attack on four Lincoln County detention officers, according to authorities. Larry Wade Stanley, Jr., 48, has been sentenced to a minimum of 14 years to a maximum of 20 years in prison in connection to the assault. A Lincoln County Superior Court jury found Stanely guilty of assault on law enforcement officers in connection to the attack that occurred in June of 2019. Stanley had been charged with four felony counts of assault on law enforcement officers in the detention center after he refused to return to his cell. During the incident, Stanley and two other inmates assaulted four LCSO detention officers who were on duty at the time. MORE FROM QUEEN CITY NEWS Crime & Public Safety The officers were hospitalized for their injuries, authorities said. Stanleys sentence will be served at the end of the current sentence of being a habitual felon that hes serving in the North Carolina Department of Corrections. His projected release date on that sentence is January 2028. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Queen City News. PORTLAND, Ore, (KOIN) A man was sentenced to over 22 years in prison on Monday after committing an armed robbery at a Tigard pawn shop in 2022. Rosario Reginal Jumpingbull was found guilty of six counts of first-degree robbery with a firearm and felon in possession of a firearm. He will be transferred to the Oregon Department of Corrections to begin serving his 270-month sentence, officials said. PAT protestors take to the Burnside Bridge, downtown streets Tuesday morning Jumpingbull robbed the store with an accomplice on July 14, 2022. The defendant entered the business while wearing a mask and immediately pulled out a gun. He pointed the weapon at the three employees inside at the time and demanded they give him cash. Prior to the robbery, the defendant received information from a pawn shop employee about where a large amount of cash was stored and security measures that were in place, the Washington County Sheriffs office said. One employee described that the defendant knew where he was going. The victims complied with the defendants demands, and he fled the store with a large amount of cash. Jumpingbulls accomplice drove them away from the scene, but a nearby drivers dashboard camera captured footage of the vehicle as they fled from the area. Investigators with the Tigard Police Department were able to read the license plate and linked the vehicle to the driver. They learned she was associated with Mr. Jumpingbull and confirmed he was involved in the armed robbery. Officers then secured a warrant for the defendants arrest, officials said. Jumpingbull was arrested in downtown Portland on Aug. 17, 2022, after a short vehicle pursuit and foot chase, authorities said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com. China's top legislator holds talks with chairman of Russian State Duma Xinhua) 08:34, November 22, 2023 Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, holds talks with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 21, 2023. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator Zhao Leji held talks with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin on Tuesday in Beijing, calling for enhanced exchanges between the legislative bodies of the two countries. Zhao, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, said that under the strategic guidance of the two countries' top leaders, the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era has maintained the correct progressive direction. Political mutual trust has been continuously consolidated, practical cooperation has been carried out vigorously and people-to-people and sub-national exchanges have been continuously deepened, setting an example of new model of major-country relations. Zhao said that no matter how the international situation changes, China and Russia should work together to consolidate and develop comprehensive strategic coordination, bring constant benefits to the two peoples, and safeguard international fairness and justice. The two sides should continue to promote synergy between Belt and Road cooperation and the Eurasian Economic Union, achieve more practical cooperation outcomes, and promote cooperation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS and other mechanisms, he said. Zhao said the China-Russia committee for parliamentary cooperation is a solid and effective platform for enhancing political mutual trust, promoting practical cooperation and carrying forward the friendship between the two peoples. The NPC of China is willing to work with the Russian Federation Council to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, strengthen exchanges further, and promote the development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era, Zhao said. "We are willing to make use of exchange mechanisms, special committees, bilateral friendship groups and other platforms to carry out in-depth exchanges and cooperation at various levels and in various fields, and strengthen the exchange of foreign-related legislative experience," he added. Volodin said that Russia firmly upholds the one-China principle, and that all parties and groups of the Russian State Duma support the continuous development of friendly relations with China. The Russian State Duma is willing to make joint efforts with the NPC of China to give play to the positive role of the Russia-China committee for parliamentary cooperation, provide a legal guarantee for the promotion of practical bilateral cooperation, and contribute to the development of Russia-China relations, Volodin said. Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, holds talks with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 21, 2023. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) William Lupica, 72, of Macedonia listens as family members give their impact statements during his sentencing for sexually abusing and secretly videotaping children. A father's voice shook as he spoke Tuesday to 72-year-old William Lupica, who recently pleaded guilty to sexually abusing several children at his wife's in-home daycare while using secret cameras to capture video and photographs. The father recalled how he trusted Lupica with his family, right up until news broke of Lupica's arrest. "Twenty years," he said, "you, your wife and your family were part of our family. We had you in our home." Lupica received a life sentence Tuesday afternoon for multiple sex offenses involving teenagers and children younger than 5 years old. He is eligible for parole after 30 years when he is 102. Summit County Assistant Prosecutor Jon Baumoel addresses the court during the sentencing of William Lupica, 72, of Macedonia for sexually abusing and secretly videotaping children during a hearing in Summit County Common Pleas Judge Joy Malek Oldfield's courtroom in Akron. For the victims' families who spoke at the sentencing hearing, this day was a long time coming. "It's been a whirlwind and a shock to start plus the waits and delays, but we're glad we're here now," said the father of one victim after the hearing. "We were just eager to get it over with." Lupica earlier pleaded guilty to two counts each of rape and gross sexual imposition, as well as numerous counts of pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor and illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material. This comes 18 months after Macedonia police arrested Lupica at his Apache Run home. Arrest: Macedonia man arrested on child sex charges used 'secret cameras,' prosecutor says Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Jon Baumoel said at the time that the rape counts involved multiple children under the age of 5. Baumoel said numerous images of children, both nude and in sex acts, were found on Lupicas phone. He said the investigation found that Lupica used secret cameras throughout his house to capture these images. Lupicas wife had operated a childcare business at their home. A feeling of betrayal William Lupica, 72, of Macedonia is escorted out of court by a Summit County Sheriff deputy after Lupica was sentenced for sexually abusing and secretly videotaping children in Summit County Common Pleas Judge Joy Malek Oldfield's courtroom in Akron. Lupica was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 30 years. For the family members who spoke at the Tuesday hearing, Lupica was once a friend, an extension of their families, so when he was arrested, some could not believe it. "I first thought, no way," one mother said. "Then the police showed me the nude pictures of my daughter." She described the ensuing weeks and months as a "living nightmare." Another mother described how she trusted Lupica with her 2-week-old child, who after attending the daycare for years began crying every day when she dropped her off. At the time, she felt the crying was separation anxiety. She recalled taking her daughter to the doctor's office for urinary tract infections that stopped when she pulled her out of the daycare. "I paid $36,000 to have my daughter sexually abused," she said. Facing life in prison Summit County Common Pleas Judge Joy Malek Oldfield listens to family members give their impact statements during the sentencing of William Lupica, 72, of Macedonia for sexually abusing and secretly videotaping children. Lupica was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 30 years. Before Judge Joy Malek Oldfield handed down Lupica's life sentence, the defendant spoke to those present. "I'd like to say that I don't know how I got here," he said. "I'm truly sorry. My wife, best friend and soulmate, I deceived her too. To the people here and to my wife, I'm sorry." Oldfield designated Lupica a Tier 3 sex offender, which requires him, if hes released from prison, to report his address to the sheriff's office every 90 days for the rest of his life. This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: William Lupica gets life for sexually abusing, videotaping children Deputies in Fayette County arrested a man they say was intent on breaking into closed businesses in the middle of the night. On Nov. 14, at approximately 2:15 a.m., deputies responded to a suspicious person call at a business near Kenwood Road. A caller to 911 reported seeing someone wearing a ski mask and peering into the businesss windows. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] When deputies arrived at the business, they saw a man matching the description provided by the caller. Deputies identified the man as Desjuan Toliver, 29, of LaGrange. According to deputies, it was clear that Toliver had intentions to break into the business with pieces of concrete he carried to the storefront. TRENDING STORIES: When they searched him, they found car keys hidden in his sock. Deputies located a GMC Yukon and a trailer parked several businesses away containing more pieces of concrete, ratchet straps, and moving blankets. Toliver was booked into the Fayette County Jail and is facing charges of loitering, prowling, and criminal intent to commit burglary. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] IN OTHER NEWS: No surprise from a guy who took the lead defending Donald Trump's attempted coup, but the newly appointed Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., moved quickly to abuse his power in an effort to spread lies and disinformation. He's pretending to do so under the guise of "transparency," by releasing over 40,000 hours of security footage from the January 6 insurrection online this week. Of course, Johnson does not actually expect people to watch the footage, especially as pretty much every American already knows what happened that day: attempted murder, vandalism, bashing cops, and limitless jackassery from people dumb enough to listen to Donald Trump. But of course, the MAGA movement now indistinguishable from the Republican Party wants to rewrite history in gaslight, claiming that our lying eyes deceived us and that the Capitol riot was merely a tickle. The purpose of this release is not subtle. Propagandists can soon cherry-pick a few moments where rioters were not beating up cops, and pretend that somehow negates the rest of the time that they were beating up cops. As I noted in Tuesday's newsletter, the tactic is familiar to anyone who has survived a trash boyfriend, the kind who whined, "Why don't you talk about all the days I didn't cheat on you?" This post is an example of why timestamps matter on the videos, this one is being used to say "police excorted them in" This is 3:00 PM 2 hours after the riot started. The man leading this group in hallway fought his way in at 2:39:52 PM after spraying officers with a chemical pic.twitter.com/QkiLcfk4xK SeditionHunters (@SeditionHunters) November 18, 2023 Relitigating a day that makes Republicans look like fascists and cowards doesn't seem like the smartest electoral strategy. But the GOP now is primarily composed of professional trolls who cannot turn down an opportunity to spew noxious gases online. Sure enough, some of the most annoying people in Congress tweeted conspiracy theories about the footage in language so fevered you could practically hear them panting as they typed. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, a man who is only spared from being the biggest dweeb in the Senate by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, retweeted an image of a Capitol rioter with captions falsely implying he was an undercover FBI agent. "I cant wait to ask FBI Director Christopher Wray about this at our next oversight hearing," Lee wrote, with a junior high student's enthusiasm for being annoying to adults. I cant wait to ask FBI Director Christopher Wray about this at our next oversight hearing. I predict that, as always, his answers will be 97% information-free. https://t.co/m3rRE4Byfu Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) November 19, 2023 Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only. And, of course, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., repeated the same obviously silly story, because the woman never met a conspiracy theory she doesn't like. Im calling on @SpeakerJohnson to create a January 6th Select Committee. Releasing the tapes is not enough! There needs to be investigations and ACCOUNTABILITY for ALL of the lies, deceit, and lives ruined. Every member of the Jan 6th committee, Nancy Pelosi, FBI, DOJ, DC pic.twitter.com/1dMd1S7piS Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) November 19, 2023 NBC News reporter Ryan Reilly immediately debunked the lie. Actually hes not a cop, hes holding a vape, and hes got a photo he stole from Nancy Pelosis office hidden under there. Hes been sentenced to four years in prison. Nice try tho! https://t.co/ydJQWoKJKA pic.twitter.com/dGNX0UpizL Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) November 19, 2023 In a shocking twist, this managed to embarrass Greene just enough that she deleted the screenshot and rewrote the tweet to erase the mention of a badge. (The above tweet is her original draft.) Of course, she's still shameless enough to continue pushing the flat-out falsehood that January 6 was anything but the Trump-inspired effort to overthrow an election it was. But Lee was able to do what was previously unthinkable, and exhibit more brazen dishonesty than Greene, by doubling down and bickering with former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., when she correctly noted he's a "nutball conspiracy theorist." What's crucial to understand here is that there is almost no chance that Lee believes a single word of the conspiracy theory. Nor do most, if any, of his followers. The person who originally tweeted the image, after all, is another convicted rioter, Derrick Evans. We can say with certainty that the convicted rioters know they are not, in fact, secret FBI agents. Nor did Lee apologize when confronted with irrefutable evidence that the man in the photo is Kevin Lyons, who has admitted his guilt and is sitting in prison for his crime. Instead, a spokesperson for Lee reiterated the implication that there's an FBI conspiracy afoot. But mostly, we know Lee is lying because, while Lee may not be the smartest man, almost no one is stupid enough to believe this "FBI did it" conspiracy theory. This isn't like those conspiracy theories of old, where people actually believed it, like claims about the moon landing being fake or JFK being murdered by the mob 60 years ago today. MAGA conspiracy theories are, more often than not, a collective exercise in knowing B.S. The point of these conspiracy theories is not to believe them, but to sucker liberals into go-nowhere arguments with disingenuous actors. The end game is to overwhelm their opposition with so many lies and bizarre digressions that people eventually just get exhausted and give up. Taking advantage of people's goodwill and presumption of good faith is a tactic that reactionary forces have used forever. Jean-Paul Sartre famously wrote in 1945 about how fascists would bait decent people into faux-debates with similar tactics, noting that they "know that their remarks are frivolous" so they "seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert." The hope is that you, the well-meaning liberal, will take at face value their claim to sincerely believe the FBI did January 6. And that you, in your earnest desire for a better level of discourse, will provide time and energy to trying to reason with the unreasonable. But of course, people like Lee don't believe their own words and are simply playing games. The end goal is to "win" the argument by wearing everyone else down into submission. The good news is that it doesn't seem to be working. It's hard to measure these things, but the online reaction showed that folks seemed aware that arguing with Lee is beneath their dignity. Some, like Reilly, offered the correcting facts, but mostly people avoided getting sucked into "debates" over whether or not things like photographic evidence, court records, and the insurrectionist's own confession count as evidence. Most importantly, the tone and tenor of the response showed that people grasp that Lee is not confused, but rather lying. So the focus was mostly on calling out what he's doing, and indicating that no one is fooled. This matters, because the trolling tactics that Sartre identified nearly eight decades ago only have power if people give in to them. This isn't an "ignore the trolls and they go away" argument, as we know that never works. But one can choose not to argue on a troll's turf. It's not up for "debate" whether January 6 happened or why it happened. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. By keeping these realities in mind, the public discussion can shift away from disingenuous rabbit holes and back to what matters: How people like Lee and Greene are actively fighting to destroy American democracy. If people can stick with it, there's a strong chance the effort to relitigate January 6 will backfire on Republicans. In the end, they may have wished they'd pushed it down the memory hole, instead of constantly reminding people what happened that day. As an added bonus, there's one group of people who may actually bother to watch the Capitol footage, a group Johnson probably didn't consider when he elected to release the tapes: The sedition hunters. A community of online sleuths has spent the past couple of years combing through the publicly available photos and videos of the riot and using social media profiles and facial recognition software to figure out the identities of the insurrectionists. As Reilly wrote in his book on the subject, their all-volunteer work has already led to hundreds of arrests by the FBI. Still, the work isn't done and there are many rioters that the sedition hunters haven't yet been able to identify. Being handed a ton more footage will probably aid them in digging up more names and addresses. So for the short-term goal of making noise on Twitter, MAGA leaders likely just ensured that the news will have a regular injection of stories reminding voters of Jan. 6 and how bad it gets when Donald Trump is in charge. Maryland resident Collin Reed scored a $1 million prize from a scratch-off lottery ticket while visiting Florida. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI Nov. 22 (UPI) -- A Maryland man paying a visit to Florida found his trip paid for itself when he scored a $1 million prize from a scratch-off lottery ticket. The Florida Lottery said Collin Reed, 39, of Baltimore, was visiting Naples when he made a stop at a Publix store and bought a $5 Gold Rush Doubler scratch-off ticket. The ticket turned out to be a $1 million top prize winner. Reed traveled to the Florida Lottery's Fort Myers District Office and took his prize as a one-time, lump-sum payment of $685,000. The Publix store in Naples earned a $2,000 bonus commission for selling the winning ticket. A federal appeals court struck down Marylands licensing requirements for handgun owners Tuesday, citing a 2022 landmark ruling by the conservative-majority US Supreme Court. Marylands Firearm Safety Act of 2013, passed in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was deemed unconstitutional in the 2-1 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. At issue were key components of the state law, which imposes strict standards to qualify for a license to own a handgun. Tuesdays ruling comes nearly 11 years after 20 children and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary and as the US remains gripped by an epidemic of deadly shootings. This year alone, more than 38,400 people have been killed by gun violence in a nation that has seen 612 mass shootings, per the Gun Violence Archive. Under the Maryland law, an applicant for a handgun license must meet four requirements. They must be at least 21 years old, a resident of the state, complete a gun safety course and undergo a background check to ensure they are not barred under federal or state law from owning a firearm. An applicant must then fill out an application, pay a processing fee, and wait up to 30 days for a state official to issue a license. The appeals court ruled that requiring applicants to wait up to 30 days for a handgun permit violated the constitutional rights of citizens, and the laws waiting period could well be the critical time in which the applicant expects to face danger. In its ruling, the court noted the 2022 Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen effected a sea change in Second Amendment law. That ruling changed the framework judges must use to make decisions, indicating modern gun control laws are only constitutional if a similar law was in effect at the founding of the nation. The appeals court on Tuesday held that Marylands handgun law failed to meet the historical test outlined in the Supreme Courts ruling. The state had provided no compelling historical law requiring advance permission before a citizen can purchase a firearm, the appeals court noted. We are weighing options for next steps in this case, which prevents us from any further comment at this point, said state attorney generals office spokesperson Jennifer Donelan, when asked if Maryland planned to appeal Tuesdays decision to the US Supreme Court. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com BALTIMORE, Md. (WHTM) The Maryland Zoo has welcomed a new member to its facility. Brie, who is a one and half-year-old female river otter has joined Hudson, the male river otter, and a recently reduced female otter named Nora. Bries arrival has been long-planned, said Erin Grimm, Curator of Mammals at the Maryland Zoo. She was selected as a companion for Hudson by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums North American River Otter Species Survival Plan. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now abc27 Evening Newsletter Brie came to Baltimore from the Milwaukee Zoo. After being quarantined at the zoos hospital which is standard procedure for all newly arrived animals, Brie was moved into the otter habitat where she is getting used to her roommates and new home. Courtesy of Maryland Zoo Courtesy of Maryland Zoo Courtesy of Maryland Zoo Courtesy of Maryland Zoo Brie will be very visible to guests over the next few weeks. In the meantime, keeps will slowly introduce her to her new roommate Hudson. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27. Massachusetts has created a new state police unit to combat hate crimes. The Hate Crimes Awareness and Response Team, part of the Massachusetts State Police, will enhance statewide data collection and information-sharing to identify statewide, national, and global patterns and trends; increase stakeholder collaboration and educational outreach; develop advanced training in coordination with the Municipal Police Training Committee to equip law enforcement with best practices for hate crime response; and streamline coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, says a press release from Gov. Maura Healeys office. The team will consist of four or five state police officers. With hate crimes on the rise across the country and here in Massachusetts, it is essential that we bring people together to advance proactive solutions and support our communities, Healey said in the release, issued Monday. We are proud to launch the Hate Crimes Awareness and Response Team, which will play an essential role in addressing and preventing hate crimes, supporting survivors, and strengthening our communities. We are also dedicating $460,000 to school districts that far too often are on the frontlines of confronting bias-motivated incidents and can be instrumental in preventing hate and creating safe environments for students and their families. Here in Massachusetts, we stand firmly against hate and we are backing up that commitment with resources and investments. One hate crime is too many, and were seeing more than one a day, she added in a Monday news conference at the State House, MassLive reports. So its necessary that we say firmly and forcefully whatever the bias, whoever the target, hate has no place in Massachusetts. The state saw 440 hate crimes in 2022, up from 406 in 2021. The largest proportion of the crimes were motivated by bias against race or ethnicity, but religious prejudice also accounted for a substantial share. Our administration remains deeply committed to ensuring that communities and organizations have the tools and resources needed to create safe, inclusive, and protected environments, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll noted in the release. This new statewide initiative is another step toward strengthening Massachusetts ability to uphold our values and celebrate our diversity. We will continue to confront intolerance with the determination that this moment demands. Healey is one of the first two out lesbian governors in the nation. She and Driscoll were the first all-woman ticket to win election to the states two highest offices. Groups representing various populations praised the new initiative. Among them was GLBTQ+ Legal Advocates and Defenders, which specializes in cases regarding queer and trans rights. Addressing hate-motivated violence, including anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim incidents and violence targeting BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people, concerns all of us, GLAD Interim Executive Director Richard Burns said in the release. Today [Monday] is Transgender Day of Remembrance, and transgender people, particularly transgender women of color, continue to face unacceptable harassment and violence, including here in Massachusetts. We appreciate the Healey/Driscoll administrations focus on providing resources to strengthen community-led prevention efforts, and support work to foster positive school environments and more inclusive and resilient communities across the state. Pictured: Gov. Maura Healey Massive warehouse fire breaks out overnight in Logan Square CHICAGO - A three-alarm fire broke out at a warehouse late Tuesday night in the Logan Square neighborhood. The fire started just before midnight at a warehouse located at 2701 N. Pulaski Road, according to officials. It eventually escalated into a three-alarm fire and prompted a Level 1 Hazmat situation. The blaze was extinguished around 2 a.m., according to CFD. There have been no reported injuries. The cause of the fire is under investigation. This story is developing. Check back for updates. Even Floridians dont like Matt Gaetz. A mere 21 percent of Floridians responded that they approve of the man they elected to congress while another 57 percent said they flat out disapprove of the job Gaetz has done since being elected, according to a Florida Atlantic University Mainstreet PolCom Lab survey. Thats a far cry from Gaetzs results in the 2022 election, when he swept Floridas 1st Congressional District by a margin of 35 percentage points. The poll comes on the heels of several weeks of high drama sparked and stoked by the far-right congressman, in which he led a charge to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for daring to coordinate a bipartisan effort to avert a government shutdown. Since then, Gaetz has worked to aggressively divide and strong-arm the caucus alongside a minority cohort of conservative colleagues. All that time in the limelight drew more attention to some of Gaetzs other scandals, including the House Ethics Committees investigation into allegations of sexual assault and misuse of funds by the congressman. In February, the Justice Department concluded its own investigation into Gaetz, opting against criminal charges relating to allegations of sex trafficking and sex with a minor, determining that they couldnt bring a strong enough case to court. I am the most investigated man in the United States Congress, Gaetz said during an October ethics inquiry Despite all the bad press, Gaetz has trudged ahead, with rumors swirling that the controversial politician may run to unseat Florida Governor Ron DeSantis during the 2026 gubernatorial election. Gaetz has since snubbed the report as overblown clickbait, clarifying that his singular focus is getting Donald Trump elected to a second term in the White House. Failing the longshot bid, Gaetz may be pushed out of politics altogether if he falls short on gathering the numbers to keep his current seat. The poll was not great for the congressman, but its early and these assessments can change, Kevin Wagner, a pollster and political science professor at FAU, told Newsweek. Even people that disapprove can still vote for him if they like the other choices less. In Mayotte, a group of French territorial islands between Mozambique and Madagascar, residents face a severe shortage of clean water. According to many of the islands nearly 300,000 people, the response to a years-long drought has been lacking. CNN reported that Mayotte is experiencing its worst drought in over 25 years, with its two water reserves operating at less than 10% of their capacities. Authorities are tightly rationing water in the island territory, with citizens having access for 18-hour stretches every couple of days, per a schedule the government issued on Oct. 9. Worse, even when the water is on for residents, it is often contaminated, exacerbating an outbreak of gastroenteritis among residents. The dire conditions have caused outrage among residents, who blame local officials and the French government. France colonized Mayotte in 1841 and declared it one of its five overseas departments in 2011. Despite being legally part of France, conditions in Mayotte are significantly worse than in mainland France. According to the Associated Press, Mayotte is the poorest place in the European Union. Most residents live below the French poverty line, half earning less than $170 monthly. While the water shortage is primarily the result of a six-year drought that continues to worsen, residents also blame corruption and mismanagement for the crisis. A protest movement using the slogan Mayotte is Thirsty has accused officials of embezzling funds. Inspections of the islands infrastructure have revealed hundreds of leaks that result in wasting some of the already dwindling water supply, and officials have been very slow at drilling new water sources or upgrading facilities to process water for safe drinking. Frances international radio news network RFI reported that government efforts to distribute water to the communitys most vulnerable members now include the entire population. Soldiers and firefighters are being deployed to hand out some 330,000 litres of bottled water per day on Mayotte, or roughly one liter per resident daily, the outlet noted. This distribution does not represent a long-term solution to the crisis. It may also create a new environmental disaster by producing millions of tons of plastic waste every day, far beyond the capacity of facilities in Mayotte to recycle. With the environmental crisis continuing, Frances efforts to relieve its most distressed territory appear insufficient, leaving Mayotte residents to wait for their local officials and their leaders in Paris to give the ongoing crisis the attention and resources it needs. Kyiv's Commercial Court on Nov. 22 started bankruptcy proceedings against Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), the country's largest airline, Ukrainska Pravda reported. The Ukrainian state-owned bank Ukreximbank filed a lawsuit against the airline on Oct. 31, Forbes Ukraine said, adding that the company currently held Hr 20.5 billion ($568 million) in debt. Forbes previously reported on Oct. 30 that the company's assets were being auctioned off for prices significantly below their market value, citing sources from the airline. Ukraine's airports ceased to operate for all non-military flights after the beginning of the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Before the war, UIA owned at least 25 planes, 10 of which were in Ukraine at the time of the full-scale invasion, sources told Forbes. Leasing companies recalled 10 of the planes that were outside of Ukraine. Four of UIA's remaining planes attempted to find new flights in Europe, but this too ceased in September 2022, and no UIA flights have flown since then. The flights stopped in part because of disputes between two of the primary shareholders, businessman Aron Maiberh and Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. Oleksandr Polyanskyi, head of the union of UIA airline pilots, told Forbes that the company does not pay its bills. Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine's most well-known business tycoons and billionaires, was arrested on Sept. 2 for alleged fraud and money laundering related to his oil and gas holdings. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) handed Kolomoisky additional criminal charges on Sept. 7, accusing him of embezzling $250 million from PrivatBank in 2015. Read also: Oligarch Kolomoisky is behind bars. How did he get there and can he find a way out? Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) The Florida State Fairgrounds just got a little brighter. The fairgrounds debuted Sunny, its newest mascot on Tuesday. Fairgrounds officials said Sunny is a vibrant character full of energy that defines the Florida State Fairgrounds. Sunny radiates joy and will bring it to visitors of all ages, the fairgrounds said. With the introduction of Sunny, the Florida State Fairgrounds brings a face to the property that locals, Florida residents and visitors from around the country all hold special memories at and events that guests look forward to year-round. Sunny gives guests someone to connect with and embodies the spirit of the fairgrounds, celebrating life, fun and the endless possibilities that come with each day and each event at the fairgrounds. Whether guests are at the fairgrounds for year-round festivities or to immerse themselves in the excitement of the annual State Fair, they can count on Sunny to be their guide through every adventure! Sunnys first public appearance will be at St. Petes 95th annual Santa Parade and Tree Lightning on Saturday. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. A 21-year old Merced man wanted in connection to two shootings, including the killing of a teenager at a Halloween party, was arrested Tuesday. Merced police said Darrion Wayne Murphy was detained without incident in the 13000 block of Jefferson Street in Le Grand by officers in the Merced Police Department Gang Violence Suppression unit. Murphy had a firearm in possession at the time of his arrest, according to a Facebook post by the Merced Police Department. Murphy was identified as the suspect in the shooting death of Renzo Arellano, a 17-year old who was attending a Halloween party on Oct. 27 in Merced, according to Merced police. Authorities also said Murphy was identified as the suspect in a 7-Eleven store shooting from Nov. 14 in Merced after a clerk was shot in the chest. Murphy was booked into the Merced County Jail and faces charges of murder, attempted murder and armed robbery. His bond was set at $1.75 million, according to jail records. During the Halloween party shooting, officers responded to calls of numerous shots fired in the area of Merced Avenue and Shirley Street in Merced. Officers found the victim, Arellano, with multiple gunshot wounds. He went on to succumb to his injuries. The 7-Eleven shooting took place at the 2255 East Gerard Ave. store in Merced. Police received a call from the 7-11 clerk, claiming to be shot in his chest. The clerk was transported to a regional trauma center and survived his injuries. Officers in the Gang Violence Suppression unit learned of Murphys location Tuesday. Merced police are asking anyone with information regarding either incident to contact Detective Christian Lupian at 209-388-7844 or via e-mail at lupian@cityofmerced.org. Detective Edwin Arias can also be contacted at 209-388-7826 or via e-mail at ariase@cityofmerced.org. Metro Atlanta woman charged more than $7,000 for Subway sandwich says she cant get her money back More than $7,000 for a Subway Italian sub. Thats what a metro Atlanta woman discovered charged to her credit card bill after ordering her regular #4 from a College Park Subway. >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<< I could have gone to Italy and got the sandwich, Vera Conner told Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray. Conner said at the end of every week, she checks her credit card statements and thats when she noticed the charge. [DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks] I know exactly what it normally costs. Its $7.54, she said. But the bill for the meal charged to her credit card was $7,112.98. I was like, Oh, my God! How did this happen? Conner said. Read: This Week in the 904: Stuart Davis with First Florida Credit Union discusses avoiding holiday debt Conner then noticed that the number on the tipline matched several numbers of her telephone number. She now believes the screen changed to tip when she was trying to enter her phone number to collect her Subway rewards points. I must have been keying it in the pad, and the screen changed, Conner said. Read: Man sues daughters mother for telling family about Mega Millions $1.35B win She thought it would be a simple fix, but for nearly a month Conner has been trying unsuccessfully to get the charge reversed. Conner said the Subway store manager repeatedly refused to discuss it with her and she received a denial letter when she disputed the charge with her credit card company. This is unbelievable because I feel like everyone that sees it, has to know that its a mistake. Ive worked in retail before. I know how we tally up at the end of the night, Conner said. Bank of America, which is the issuer of Conners credit card, said they reached out to the Subway franchise and its corporate offices. Read: Israel-Hamas war: Israeli cabinet approves deal for hostage release Minutes after tagging Subway on social media about this story Monday evening, Subway responded to Grays multiple requests for comment and said they were aware that Conner disputed the charge and that Bank of America had requested a chargeback. Subway said it was in the middle of processing the chargeback. CLICK HERE to read the original article by WSB-TV. [SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter] Click here to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, click here to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and click here to stream Action News Jax live. Major Pete Davey, an F-16C Fighting Falcon pilot assigned to the 428nd Fighter Squadron "Buccanners", Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, flies in formation with an MQM-107E "Streaker" sub-scale aerial target drone during a Combat Archer mission over the Gulf of Mexico recently. (UPI Photo/Michael Ammons/Air Force) Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Security forces at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico have lifted a shelter in place mandate and issued an "all-clear" nearly five hours after reports of an active shooter in the area. "Our team will continue to conduct additional security forces patrols throughout the evening ... to ensure the safety and security of our Air Commandos," base officials reported. Captain. Jackie Pienkowski, chief of public affairs at the base, said Cannon went into an active shooter protocol about 4:50 p.m. Tuesday after security forces received "reports of an individual hearing gunfire." Pienkowski later said there were no injuries reported and no suspect was identified. She said as a safety precaution, the active shooter protocol requires people on the base to shelter in place, secure all facilities and that "no movement is allowed on or off base." "Multiple community law enforcement agencies are assisting Cannon Air Force Base Security Forces in securing the base," Pienkowski said in a news release issued about 8 p.m. Tuesday. "Cannon AFB will continue to search the base and secure the area," she added. Area law enforcement officers assisted Cannon personnel in securing locations and said earlier in the evening that no injuries had been reported. "There's not an active shooter, but we are trying to locate a person who has made threats," Clovis Police Chief Roy Rice said about 6 p.m. "Nobody has been shot." Personnel at Cannon received a text message at 4:59 p.m. that said , "There is an active shooter on Cannon AFB. Last known location was bldg#1408/HOSPITAL. All non-response personnel should seek shelter immediately until further notice." Cannon personnel alerted police who then contacted the Clovis, N.M. police's SWAT team, which came on the base and worked with Cannon to "clear every building before the night's done." Curry County Sheriff Mike Reeves said state police and other law enforcement agencies were also on base. "They had some information about somebody might be armed ... possibly a shot fired. But we can't find anybody," Reeves said. Miami-Dade County Public Schools is hosting a series of webinars next week for parents to learn more about the districts magnet programs. Parents have an opportunity to attend the webinars available in English, Creole and Spanish on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, respectively twice a day, at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Interested parents should register for the sessions online through the districts Parent Academy. The window to apply to attend a magnet school in the 2024-25 school year runs through Jan. 15. What is a magnet program? Miami-Dade schools first launched its choice programs in 1954, with Henry S. West Laboratory School at the School of Education at the University of Miami, and in the years that followed, it continued to expand on its offerings. Nearly a decade after Henry S. West opened, the district implemented a dual-language program at Coral Way Elementary School. And another decade later, it opened its first magnet program, the Expressive Arts center Dr. Charles R. Drew Elementary School. Since then, the districts offerings have expanded to include more than 1,000 choice programs. About 370 of those are magnet programs. According to School Board policy, there are four types of magnet programs: a magnet school that enrolls students from across the district; a magnet school for students zoned for that school; a magnet program within a school that serves students enrolled in the specific as well as the traditional program; and a magnet program that serves students from across the district virtually. The types of programs offered included STEM, liberal arts, visual and performing arts or international magnet programs. How to apply Interested students or families should submit an application to the program theyre interested in. Each student can apply to up to five programs at five different schools, but only one program per school. Applications are submitted through the MDCPS Parent Portal and families are responsible for completing the application and all the necessary documentation or, in some cases, scheduling an audition, submitting a portfolio or testing appointment required by certain programs by Jan. 15. The deadline for auditions and testing, which are required for performing arts or language programs, is Feb. 29. Whats next? Once the application period ends, eligible students who submitted an application will be included in the lottery selection process. If selected, the student must accept the offer by March 29. The offer will be forfeited if its not accepted by the deadline. Students who are waitlisted could still be accepted to their program of choice if a seat becomes available. If a seat does not open up, though, or if a student is not accepted, they will have to attend the traditional public school they are zoned for. Things to remember Those considering applying for a magnet program should be aware of certain requirements. Among them include a minimum 2.0 grade point average (GPA) and no more than 10 unexcused absences during the previous school year and just 5 for the current year. Some programs also have prerequisite courses that must be completed by the start of the school year, like Honors Algebra I and Honors Physical Science. (Proof of course completion or enrollment is also required by Jan. 15.) If a student isnt enrolled in these courses, they can still apply but they have to sign up to take them over the summer. For a full list of eligibility requirements, visit the districts resource page. According to school board policy, transportation services are not required for each magnet program and vary depending on a childs eligibility and need. Nevertheless, all magnet school students in the district qualify for an EASY Card. For all other information, visit the districts School Choice and Parental Options page. A Miami Valley congressman has issued a response after a mass shooting at a Beavercreek Walmart Monday night. >>RELATED: Beavercreek Walmart shooting probed as partially racially motivated, FBI says >>PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Local lawmakers, law enforcement react to Beavercreek Walmart mass shooting Rep. Mike Turner said he is grateful that the four victims survived the horrific event in a statement Wednesday morning. As we continue to learn more about Monday nights tragic shooting, my prayers and support are with the victims, their families, and the people of Beavercreek. I am grateful that the four victims survived the horrific event, and I am praying for the one survivor who remains in critical condition. Thank you to the brave law enforcement officers who worked to protect innocent lives. >>PREVIOUS COVERAGE: 4 victims hurt, shooter dead after shooting at Beavercreek Walmart >>PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Local man IDd as Beavercreek Walmart mass shooter News Center 7 reported Tuesday that Beavercreek Police identified the shooter as Benjamin Jones of Dayton. Jones died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the scene of the shooting. >>PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Dozens of police swarm Beavercreek Walmart, sprint into store after shooting, witnesses say The city also addressed this connection on Tuesday. It does not appear the Dayton Police Department has had much interaction with this individual. Nevertheless, we are committed to aiding our law enforcement partners in any way possible to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the events leading up to this tragic incident. The Dayton Police Department is dedicated to doing whatever it can as we all grieve and heal together as a community. The shooting remains under investigation. News Center 7 will continue to provide updates on this story. Your slice of the headlines in Ukraine. Daily. Wednesday, November 22, 2023 A decade after Euromaidan, EUs Michels marks anniversary with trip to Kyiv European Council President Charles Michel arrived in Kyiv on Nov. 21, the tenth anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity or Euromaidan Revolution the third top European official to arrive in the Ukrainian capital on an unannounced visit that day. Zelenskyy and Moldovas Maia Sandu commemorate those killed during Revolution of Dignity Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and First Lady Olena Zelenska visited the memorial to activists who were killed during the Revolution of Dignity on Nov. 21, the press service of the Office of the President of Ukraine said. Ukraine could join EU by 2030 Michel Ukraine might be ready to join the European Union in 2030, by which point it will hopefully be at peace, European Council President Charles Michel said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Nov. 21. Slovak carriers initiate blockade at border checkpoint, stranding 300 trucks Truck movement at Slovakias Vyshne Nemecke border checkpoint has been halted by carriers, Ukraines State Border Guard Service (DPSU) reported on Telegram on Nov. 21. Hungarys opposition to Ukraines EU accession not insurmountable Zelenskyy Budapests current opposition to beginning negotiations on admitting Ukraine into the EU can be overcome diplomatically, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a joint press conference with Moldovan President Maia Sandu on Nov. 21. Stories of three Revolution of Dignity participants who gave their lives in the war against Russia As Ukraine commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity on Nov. 21, citizens reflect on the sacrifices made by their fellows for the future of their country. Russia likely stockpiling missiles for new attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure UK intelligence Russia has likely stockpiled missiles for a repeat of last year's attempt by Moscow to destroy Ukraine's critical infrastructure, reads the latest UK Defense Intelligence report published on Nov. 21. Ukrainian pilots in Denmark already flying F-16s with instructors Ihnat Ukrainian pilots in Denmark are already conducting flights with instructors on F-16 fighter jets, the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, Yuri Ihnat, said during a briefing on Nov.21. Investigation into the shooting of Maidan activists nearing completion The investigation into the case of the organization of the dispersal and shooting of Maidan demonstrators is almost finished, the State Bureau of Investigation or SBI reported on Nov. 21. No decision yet on change of Ukrainian commanders says Umerov Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has said that no decision has been made on a possible reshuffle among the ranks of Ukrainian commanders, the Interfax-Ukraine agency reported on Nov. 21. 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 Circa 1974-present Latest News: Lost BBC Interview Hints at Banksy A recently discovered recording from 2003 might have solved part of the mystery behind the identity of anonymous street artist Banksy. During that interview, former BBC arts reporter Nigel Wrench asks Banksy if he could use his real name in the interview, citing a report from The Independent referring to him as Robert Banks. When Wrench asks the artist to confirm if thats his name, he answers, Its Robbie. Banksys identity has long been the subject of speculation, with Massive Attacks Robert Del Naja and Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett among the names linked to the artist. The Daily Mail reported in 2008 that Banksy was then-34-year-old Robin Gunningham, though he has denied this. [table-of-contents] stripped Who Is Banksy? Banksy, whose real identity remains unknown, is a street artist believed to have been born in Bristol, England, around 1974. He rose to prominence for his provocative stenciled pieces in the late 1990s. Banksy is the subject and director of the 2010 documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop that examines the relationship between commercial and street art. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the project. Art Getty Images Banksy began his career as a graffiti artist in the early 1990s, in the Bristol, Englandbased graffiti gang DryBreadZ Crew. Although his early work was largely freehand, Banksy used stencils on occasion. In the late 1990s, he began predominantly using stencils. His work became more widely recognized around Bristol and in London, as his signature style developed. Banksys artwork is characterized by striking images, often combined with slogans. His work often engages political themes, satirically critiquing war, capitalism, hypocrisy, and greed. Common subjects include rats, apes, policemen, members of the royal family, and children. In addition to his two-dimensional work, Banksy is known for his installation artwork. One of the most celebrated of these pieces featured a live elephant painted with a Victorian wallpaper pattern and sparked controversy among animal rights activists. Other pieces have drawn attention for their edgy themes or the boldness of their execution. Banksys work on the West Bank barrier, between Israel and Palestine, received significant media attention in 2005. He is also known for his use of copyrighted material and subversion of classic images. An example of this is Banksys version of Claude Monets famous series of water lilies paintings adapted to include drifting trash and debris. In a 2003 interview, a BBC reported asked the artist whether graffiti artwork should be considered vandalism. If its done properly, it is illegal! But I got a good reaction I think off most people from my work, Banksy replied, according to Rolling Stone. You know, Ive even had policemen in the past say they kind of like things about it, but I just think its my right to go out and paint it. Banksys Identity Getty Images Banksys identity remains unknown, despite intense speculation. The two names most often suggested are Robert Banks and Robin Gunningham. Pictures that surfaced of a man who was supposedly Banksy pointed toward Gunningham, an artist who was born in Bristol in 1973. Gunningham moved to London around 2000, a timeline that correlates with the progression of Banksys artwork. Making Banksys identity potentially harder to pin down is the suggestion by journalist Craig Williams and others that Banksy is a collective of artists working together under the same brand. However, news broke in November 2023 that the artist said his name was Robbie in a BBC interview conducted two decades previously. According to Smithsonian Magazine, an ongoing lawsuit threatens to reveal Banksys full name once and for all. A greeting card company called Full Color Black is suing the artist for defamation over a now-deleted Instagram post from 2022. After a Guess clothing store used one of Banksys works as part of a window display in collaboration with Brandalisedof which FCB is the trading companythe artist posted: Alerting all shoplifters. Please go to Guess on Regent Street. Theyve helped themselves to my artwork without asking, how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes? FCB is seeking at least $1.6 million in damages and wrote in its filing that the claimant reserves the right to seek an order that he identifies himself for the purposes of these proceedings. "The Banksy Effect" Banksys worldwide fame has transformed his artwork from acts of vandalism to sought-after high art pieces. Journalist Max Foster has referred to the rising prices of graffiti as street art as the Banksy effect. Interest in Banksy escalated with the release of the 2010 documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. The movie, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award. Banksy requested the ability to attend the ceremony in Los Angeles in disguise, which the Academy ultimately rejected. In October 2013, Banksy took to the streets of New York City. There, he pledged to create a new piece of art for each day of his residency. As he explained to the Village Voice, The plan is to live here, react to things, see the sightsand paint on them. Some of it will be pretty elaborate, and some will just be a scrawl on a toilet wall. During that month, he also sold some of his works on the street for $60 a piece, well below the market value for his art. Quotes We cant do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves. People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible, and childish. But thats only if its done properly. People who should be shot: Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, people who write lists telling you who should be shot. Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesnt look right, contact us! You Might Also Like House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks at the US Capitol on November 2, 2023. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite Mike Johnson backed Clarence Thomas' suggestion that SCOTUS "reconsider" its rulings on contraception and same-sex marriage. "There's been some really bad law made," he said in a podcast interview unearthed by CNN's KFILE. "And maybe some of that needs to be cleaned up," he added. House Speaker Mike Johnson backed up Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' suggestion last year that the court revisit its landmark rulings on contraception and same-sex marriage. CNN's KFILE unearthed an audio clip this week in which Johnson said that what Thomas was "calling for is not radical." "In fact, it's the opposite of that," he added. Johnson, who is now the Speaker of the House, made the comments in a podcast interview with right-wing commentator Todd Starnes on June 24, 2022 the same day the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Thomas joined the court's other conservative justices in the 6-3 decision, a historic and far-reaching ruling that immediately gutted abortion rights in nearly half of all US states. Thomas went even further in his concurring opinion, writing that the court "should reconsider" its rulings in three landmark cases: Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, which legalized same-sex sexual activity; and Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage. The justices, Thomas wrote, are obligated to "correct the error" established by those precedents. Appearing on Starnes' show the day that opinion was released, Johnson said that "there's been some really bad law made." "They've made a mess of our jurisprudence in this country for the last, you know, several decades," he added. "And maybe some of that needs to be cleaned up." CNN also unearthed another clip in which Johnson, a hardline conservative and longtime opponent of abortion rights, described abortion as "an American holocaust." "The reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these big abortion" providers, "they set up their clinics in inner cities," he said in a May 2022 radio interview. "They regard these people as easy prey. I mean, it's true." Read the original article on Business Insider Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) Any aspiring entrepreneur has probably been told to fall in love with the problem they want to solve, rather than the solution they have in mind. Such a mindset allows them to stay focused on building and refining their products from scratch, rather than letting their egos get in the way. But a groundbreaking idea alone is rarely enough to take off. Startups also require funding, infrastructure, and institutional support to ensure scalability, as well as connections to government agencies and potential clients to achieve sustainability. With support from the Department of Trade & Industry and Department of Science & Technology, Shell Philippines officially launched the Shell LiveWIRE program, its flagship enterprise development program, last September 2020 to provide these opportunities. With a vision to strengthen local economies, Shell seeks to support ideas on the cutting-edge of innovation, with a strong focus on energy solutions, and promote entrepreneurship and meaningful employment. Some benefits they offer to their chosen startups include mentorship by industry experts who can provide key insights; funding of up to 1,000,000 in equity-free cash and 100,000 in grants; and the unique opportunity to be integrated into the Shell Value Chain, a testament to the companys commitment to sustainable practices. Photo from Shell Philippines The acceleration programs very first winner, Nanotronics, sought to solve the countrys longstanding plastic problem, which is often passed on to ordinary people. Buy a metal straw, bring a tote bag to the grocery store, reuse and repurpose trash before throwing them out while these are noble goals to aspire towards, industries actually produce more disposable waste than individuals do. This is why an industrial shift to more sustainable practices is crucial. Everything from their products to their packaging needs a serious revamp, making their shift to sustainable practices much more crucial. Together with his team at Nanotronics, Dr. Jerome Palaganas has been developing nanotechnology materials from indigenous plants. Cellulose nanocrystals, as theyre called, are designed to reduce plastic waste in an environmentally friendly way by providing a biodegradable packaging alternative for fast-moving consumer goods. Nanotronics went on to win the inaugural edition of the Shell LiveWIRE program and even bagged the gold prize in the programs international division, the first from the Philippines to win in the contests 40-year history. After gaining access to global market support, Nanotronics reach has extended into multiple markets from electronics and automobiles, to medicine and even 3D printing. Since then, SLW has continued to uplift enterprises addressing pressing issues through future-proof economic solutions. In 2021, Agro-Digital PH was crowned the grand winner of the Shell LiveWIRE program, with their plans of creating a trust-based digital food value chain. By assisting farmers and fishermen in establishing an online presence and connecting with cooperatives and associations, these sectors develop a digital food system that puts a premium on transparency and eliminates the need for middlemen. Photo from Shell Philippines Last years winner was Bambuhay, the inventor of the first bamboo plantable toothbrush. As a renewable and ethical alternative to the 16 billion pieces of plastic toothbrushes that get thrown way annually around the world, bamboo also captures carbon dioxide more than any other plant and by extension, purifies the air we breathe. Founder Mark Sultan Gervasa started his company with 10,000 and eventually recouped his investment on a massive scale with a current sales revenue in the millions. The startup has also lifted 68 families out of poverty while eliminating more than 1,100 tons of plastics, as of writing. This year, Shell continues their mission of seeking out solutions to deeply rooted societal problems and equipping them with the resources needed to scale. The company is committed to power lives and provide a platform to those who want to do the same. Founders can pre-register for the 2024 Shell LiveWIRE Acceleration program at shell.com.ph/LiveWIRE and walk away with a great channel for business growth and an invaluable learning experience. Learn more about the Shell LiveWIRE program by visiting www.shell.com.ph/LiveWIRE. By Andrew Kaczynski and Curt Devine, CNN (CNN) Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, voiced support for revisiting Supreme Court decisions that struck down restrictions on the use of contraception, barred bans on gay sex and legalized same sex marriages, according to a CNN review of his prior public statements. On a conservative talk radio show the day the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Johnson underscored Justice Clarence Thomass concurring opinion that the high court should reconsider those other landmark rulings. Johnson, citing his years as an attorney against activist courts, defended Thomas view, insisting that what Thomas was calling for was, not radical. In fact, its the opposite of that. Theres been some really bad law made, he said. Theyve made a mess of our jurisprudence in this country for the last several decades. And maybe some of that needs to be cleaned up. When asked about Johnsons post-Roe comments, a spokesman for the congressman told CNN that Johnson views the cases as settled law. Still, CNNs review of more than 100 of Johnsons interviews, speeches and public commentary spanning his decades-long career as a lawmaker and attorney paints a picture of his governing ideals: Imprisoning doctors who perform abortions after six weeks; the Ten Commandments prominently displayed in public buildings; an elimination of anti-hate-crime laws; Bible study in public schools. From endorsing hard labor prison sentences for abortion providers to supporting the criminalization of gay sex, his staunchly conservative rhetoric is rooted in an era of biblical morality, that he says was washed away with the counterculture in the 1960s. One of the primary purposes of the law in civil government is to restrain evil, Johnson said on one radio show in 2010. We have to acknowledge collectively that man is inherently evil and needs to be restrained. His vision has been well received as a congressman in his deeply conservative district in western Louisiana. But his surprising rise to the speakership has brought his particularly subtle brand of fire-and-brimstone to second in line to the presidency delivering him a national platform from which to shape and influence laws. Johnsons endorsement of Thomas opinion, legal experts say, positioned him significantly outside the mainstream. Speaker Johnson embraces a view that is not only outside of the mainstream but is so radical in terms of his endorsement of the Thomas position, that even the extremely conservative Supreme Court majority isnt willing to go there, said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a CNN legal analyst. It would take the country back more than a half-century. The frontlines of the culture war CNN unearthed more than two dozen radio interviews from Johnsons time as an attorney at the socially conservative legal advocacy group Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) where Johnson litigated and voiced support for what he sometimes described as a battle for the country between the forces of good and evil. The arrows in the culture war are particularly directed at our youth, where the Enemy often has the greatest effect, read the 2005 webpage for God & Country, a Christian local radio show co-hosted by Johnson. We cannot lose our children to the forces of darkness. Be aware and get active in your kids schools. Topics discussed on the show included creation science in public schools; how to fight the porn industry; Gods design for government; and the true meaning of separation of church and state. As an attorney at ADF, Johnson repeatedly battled two organizations in his fight to keep religion in the public square: The American Civil Liberties Union, which he called the most dangerous organization in America, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The groups clashed over prayer in public schools, public displays of nativity scenes and the right to open public meetings with prayer. They have convinced an entire generation of Americans that theres this so-called separation of church and state, Johnson said in 2008 about the ACLU. Johnsons rhetoric has tapped into a persecution complex for evangelicals as American culture leans increasingly left on social issues, said Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor. They want to feel embattled. They want to fight the culture war, Burge told CNN. When he talks about Griswold and Lawrence, evangelicals know that what he really is saying to them is: Our way of life is under attack and liberalism is on the march. Stand firm in our convictions, added Burge, referring to the landmark cases that legalized gay sex and contraception use. Johnson served not only as an attorney at ADF but a national spokesman for the organization, making appearances on radio and national television where he often addressed so-called right of conscience cases involving Christian businesses. Discussing one case in New Mexico, where a wedding photography company was found in violation of the states anti-discrimination laws for refusing to photograph a same-sex couples commitment ceremony, Johnson argued anti-discrimination laws did not recognize a behavior like homosexuality. There are laws on the books that prohibit discrimination against people for their immutable characteristics, their race and creed and that kind of thing, Johnson said in a 2009 radio interview. Theres a difference and the law has recognized a difference between that and homosexual behavior. As something that you do, not an immutable characteristic of what you are. The New Mexico Supreme Court disagreed and ruled against the company, which ADF represented. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Johnson doesnt understand the problem with a government compelling its citizens to follow not just religion, but a particular religion, said Katherine Lewis Parker, the former legal director for the ACLU of North Carolina, who opposed Johnson in a lawsuit related to prayer at official meetings. In that 2007 suit, three residents in Forsyth County, North Carolina, argued local officials had an unconstitutional practice of sponsoring sectarian prayer with specific references to Jesus during meetings. Johnson defended the officials and argued that even in Congress, prayers often contain Christian references, which he called a logical function of the nations demographics. During a deposition, Johnson peppered one of the plaintiffs about what type of prayer would be acceptable in county meetings. So if someone might be offended by virtually any prayer, should we just get rid of prayer entirely? he asked. An appeals court ruled against Johnsons arguments in 2011, though the Supreme Court later ruled in favor of allowing such prayers in a separate case. I think he is a true believer and I think he wants to blend religion and government, Parker said of Johnson. Homosexuality was a frequent topic for Johnson, which he has called inherently unnatural and a dangerous lifestyle. In addition to suggesting he hopes the Supreme Court will reverse its decision allowing same-sex marriage, he also wrote in support of Texas anti-sodomy laws, which said gay men caught having sex could be fined. It recognized a fundamental right, a constitutional right to, to sodomy, which had never been recognized before, Johnson said at a forum in 2005 on the Supreme Courts ruling in Lawrence v. Texas which struck down the ban on gay sex in that state. Johnson supported an Arkansas law against same-sex couples adopting children, citing it as good public policy in 2008. In 2013, he opposed President Barack Obamas appointment of an openly homosexual ambassador, Wally Brewster, to the Dominican Republic, calling it a provocative move against the Catholic country. Move to government In 2015, transitioning from his role at ADF to a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, Johnson sparked national controversy with the Marriage and Conscience Act. The bill aimed to protect individuals objecting to same-sex marriage on religious grounds but faced opposition from Johnsons hometown editorial board, business leaders and even Republicans in the state legislature. Critics argued it could enable discrimination against LGBTQ individuals by businesses. Following backlash, the bill never reached a vote. In response to the bills failure, then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, issued a similar executive order. Apparently, defending religious liberty makes one anti-gay now, Johnson wrote on Facebook amid debate on the bill. Just two years later, Johnson moved from the state legislature to Congress where hes maintained a 92% rating from the CPAC Center for Legislative Accountability 11% higher than the average Republican in 2022. In Congress, Johnson signed on to some of the toughest anti-abortion bills, such as a 2021 so-called heartbeat bill, which would essentially outlaw abortion after six weeks. He has repeatedly called states that allow abortion pro-death states. It is truly an American holocaust, Johnson said in May 2022 on local DC radio. The reality is that Planned Parenthood and all these big abortion (providers), they set up their clinics in inner cities. They regard these people as easy prey. I mean, its true. Johnson also supported plans to change Medicare and Social Security benefits while increasing the retirement age, emphasizing urgency in addressing escalating entitlement. He has blamed booming entitlements costs in part on abortion. And you dont have 40 or 50 million able-bodied workers in the economy, Johnson said on a podcast he co-hosts with his wife. That would be paying taxes into the system to be able to support their elderly, you know, neighbors and friends. On numerous occasions, Johnson also voiced approval for a Louisiana state trigger law passed in 2006 which banned abortion without exceptions for rape and incest the day Roe v. Wade was overturned. Im grateful to be from Louisiana, one of the dozen states or so that has a trigger law that will automatically become an abortion free state, pro-life, Johnson said in 2022. In 2022, Johnson introduced a bill that some described as a national version of what critics call Floridas Dont Say Gay bill. The bill never made it out of committee. For Johnson and those who share his worldview, such policies have spiritual implications not only for individuals but the entire nation, said Philip Gorski, a professor and chair of the sociology department at Yale University who has studied Christian nationalism. There is much more at stake for Johnson and others who crome from that conservative Christian subculture, he said. There is this view the United States is a Christian nation which has entered into a sacred covenant with God that involves upholding certain standards of Christian morality, and when those standards are violated, when those precepts are broken, it threatens the entire country with divine wrath and all kinds of decline. Efforts to keep Trump in office Following Trumps 2020 reelection defeat, Johnson played a pivotal role in efforts to overturn the election urging his colleagues to sign onto the Texas Attorney Generals longshot lawsuit aiming to throw out the results in key swing states. It was rejected by a bipartisan majority of the Supreme Court, Eisen told CNN, but Johnson was willing to perpetuate the loser as the winner and to twist the law and the facts to support that. Johnson also endorsed some fringe conspiracies, including the unsubstantiated belief that voting software machines were manipulated. On January 6, 2021, Johnson voted to object the election results, later saying he was doing his duty to uphold the Constitution. For Johnson, the vote to keep Trump in office reflected a striking evolution from his past critique of Trump in 2015, whom, as first reported by the New York Times, he openly labeled as dangerous, lacking character, and devoid of a moral center. It was the apex of the transactional relationship between the religious right and former TV star. During a church service in 2022, reflecting on the conclusion of Roe v. Wade, Johnson remarked that much of the credit belonged to Trump. There is a lot of credit to go around, but you have to acknowledge, Donald Trump for all of his, peccadillos, okay? Bless him, Johnson said. He was true to his word. The-CNN-Wire & 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved. Russian forces operating on the southern front have significantly increased the number of assaults and airstrikes, but Ukrainian troops have prevented Russian gains and inflicted heavy losses, General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the commander of the Tavria Group, said on Nov. 22. In the southern front where the Tavria Group operates, Russian forces have carried out 29 airstrikes and almost 1,000 artillery barrages since Nov. 21. Ukrainian troops by the embattled city of Avdiivka were holding strong, Tarnavskyi said. Russian attackers suffered heavy losses, he added, totaling up to 500 casualties, as well as three tanks, several other pieces of military hardware, and three ammunition depots. Ukrainian offensive operations in the direction of the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol were ongoing, Tarnavskyi said. The attacks on Avdiivka, which began in earnest in early October, have been very costly for Moscow. Commander-in-chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said on Nov. 10 that Russia had 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. Assessments such as the Nov. 22 report from Tarnavskyi indicate that Russian losses have continued to mount since then. Russia has been trying to capture the small town just north of the occupied city of Donetsk since 2014. 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. As each of the military services seek to use simulations for more realistic training, some new technology and updates to existing programs will be on display at the simulation industrys largest event in late November. A new shooting simulation system to replace decades-old tech now in use and tactical training simulation that brings drone, counter-drone and Ukrainian-based trench warfare into its digital world are two such items that will be on display at the annual Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference, held in Orlando, Florida, Nov. 27 to Dec.1. The Lockheed Martin SIMRES system uses a new approach to force-on-force shooting simulation as the existing technology: the multiple integrated laser engagement system, or MILES. Early versions of the multiple integrated laser engagement system were in testing in the 1970s, and have been the shooting simulation system used by the Army and Marine Corps since the 1980s. The system works on individual weapons such as the M4 and crewed vehicles such as the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle and Abrams tank. As its name suggests, the system uses small lasers fired from the modules installed on the weapons system. The laser strikes a sensor on the opposing force, triggering a beep and registering in the system to track hits. While an improvement over blank rounds, and estimates of targets hit and damage that predated the sensor system, lasers dont perform the way that bullets and other projectiles do. With a laser, the trajectory essentially is flat, with no drop thats associated with actual projectiles. The system cant effectively simulate indirect fire such as mortars or grenades. And, being a laser, anything in its path will disrupt it. So, a soldier need only hide behind brush or a leafy bush to defeat the laser system. Hardly a realistic training scenario. The system is reaching the end of its life and has been scheduled to become obsolete beginning in 2026, Karen Saunders, then-head of Program Executive OfficeSimulation, Training and Instrumentation told Military.com in 2021. Through a combination of GPS, sensing, software and light detection and ranging or Lidar technologies, their system creates a kind of virtual space in live training, SIMRES Chief Engineer Dan Hyatt told Military Times. By using decades of weapon ballistics data, Hyatts team has created what they call an e-bullet, which allows them to model the real-world physics of a projectile and how it would perform when fired at certain distances, angles and even through barriers, such as concrete walls. So, no more soldiers hiding behind bushes. Hyatts teams conduct a digital scan of the training area and then use sensors about the size of a deck of cards strapped on individual users to track participants movements, weapon orientation, hits and misses. That technology also allows for indirect fire. Early development has included the M4 and the M320 grenade launcher, both widely distributed small arms systems used by thousands of soldiers and Marines. Hyatt said some of the systems already have been tested by soldiers at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, and at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. The system also gives trainers and observers a birds eye view of exercises unfolding in real time. When you are watching our engagement its like a first-person shooter or flying around with 3D view or snap to any soldier and see their view, hover above at a 20-foot altitude, Hyatt said. The system is being further developed via an Army other transaction agreement still under development and is not yet competing for a current Army program of record, but it is expected to display features the Army has shown interest in during recently launched efforts to improve the services simulation capabilities. The Armys Cross-Functional Team-Synthetic Training Environment and Program Executive OfficeSimulation, Training and Instrumentation have ramped up efforts in recent years to overhaul simulation technology across the force. In 2021, then CFT-STE director Maj. Gen. Maria Gervais said the service was seeking to replace MILES. That same year, the Marine Corps announced it was replacing MILES with Saab Inc.s Force-on-Force-Next program, after beginning its search in 2017. SIMRES is a recently developed shooting simulation technology for force on force training developed by Lockheed Martin. (Lockheed Martin) Nearly half of the organic weapons systems in an Army brigade combat team cannot be used with MILES, retired Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler, who currently serves as Lockheed Martins STE campaign manager, told Military Times. That tech limitation limits home station and combat training center training, Chandler said. The legacy system also requires hours of setup that eats up training time. Chandler said something as simple as not being able to lead a target when firing with a laser, can introduce negative training to soldiers. Essentially a soldier will adapt to the system and then must unlearn the bad habits introduced by the system. One of the things I dreaded was going out to the field and having to use MILES gear, because it didnt work half the time, it was difficult to learn how to use and employ, Chandler said. The Marine Corps FoFTS-Next system, a contract worth potentially $248 million according to a Saab announcement, is expected to field in 2024, Marine officials told Marine Corps Times in November. The system has since been renamed the Marine Corps Tactical Instrumentation System, or MCTIS Between 20242026, the Corps expects to field 16 MCTIS systems in total. Those will be delivered to Camp Pendleton, California; Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia; Japan and Guam. For more screen-based, tactical training, Bohemia Interactive Simulations will unveil new updates and features to its long-running Virtual Battlespace program used by both the Army and Marine Corps for more than a decade. The company is releasing VBS4, the fourth iteration of an interactive, 3D, computer-based operational environment at the upcoming show, Bohemia Interactive Simulations co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Peter Morrison told Military Times that. New features include both drone operator and counter-drone views and capabilities. Following the re-emergence of trench-style warfare in the Russia-Ukraine War, the company also added tactical trench warfare training for users. From an offensive perspective we can literally train the drone operator, Morrison said. Simulate dropping a payload from a drone or running a drone into a tank. Defensively, we can simulate drone weapons. The Bohemia Interactive Simulations team has built out simulations that allow an artificial intelligence application to analyze how effective counter-drone measures used by players have been. The application can decide if the user has concealed their position effectively and other steps, and whether the other sides drone operator would spot their location, Morrison said. The application also holds key training features on effective trench-clearing steps that a user would have to take to be successful, based on an analysis of current Ukraine trench engagements. *CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to include the other transaction agreement status of Army simulation development with Lockheed Martin. Russia deployed several columns of armored vehicles during unsuccessful attacks near Avdiivka on Nov. 22, losing almost 80% of equipment, the Tavria group spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said. Russian forces continue trying to surround Avdiivka, launching 13 unsuccessful attacks against the front-line town and settlements on its flanks, Shtupun said today on television. According to the spokesperson, Russian forces are dealing with desertions, and seven Russian soldiers surrendered to Ukrainian troops on Nov. 21. 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. Shtupun warned on Nov. 18 that Russia is preparing to launch the third wave of attacks against Avdiivka. Russia's onslaught against Avdiivka, the gateway to occupied Donetsk, has 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 Avdiivka. Russia has been trying to capture the small town just north of occupied Donetsk since 2014. 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. MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee police released to FOX6 News on Tuesday, Nov. 21 dash camera video of a police chase involving a stolen Amazon delivery truck from March 17, 2023. Police said it started near 65th and Lancaster around 1:35 p.m. on that Friday. The accused demanded the keys to the van from a delivery driver, got in and drove off. Officers later spotted the van more than three miles away near 60th and Meinecke and tried to pull it over, but the man refused. SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News The chase ended near 27th and St. Paul when the man stopped in a gas station parking lot where he was arrested. Viewer video shows Amazon van involved in apparent police chase 33-year-old Michael Miller is the man who police say was behind the wheel of the delivery truck. He faces criminal charges including robbery, fleeing or eluding an officer, second-degree recklessly endangering safety and felony bail jumping. Miller's competency has been called into question. His case remains in the court system. Its a new concept in Florida, but youre probably going to hear a lot more about 7 Brew Coffee in the near future. Since its launch in Rogers, Arkansas, in 2017, the drive-thru coffee company has opened over 150 stores in 25 states. Eleven of those stores are in Florida. Zac Cockman, head of growth for 7 Brew, expects there will eventually be hundreds in the Sunshine State. The first 7 Brew on Floridas west coast is proposed for Tampa. But next summer, there could be one in Manatee County as well. Paperwork filed with Manatee County Development Services indicates a 7 Brew is planned for the Braden River Shopping Center, anchored by Publix, at 14529 State Road 70 E., in Lakewood Ranch. 7 Brew was born from a desire to change drive-thru coffee into a fun, mind-blowing experience for everyone. We dreamed of serving premium coffee in record time and making new friends while were at it. The dream came alive with our first stand in Rogers, Ark., and our seven original coffees, the company says. We take pride in serving specialty coffees, smoothies, chillers, teas, and our exclusive 7 Energy, a premium energy drink that can be infused with over 20,000 flavor combinations. 7 Brew is so much more than just a coffee stand. Its the concept of cultivating kindness and joy with every drink through our service, speed, quality, energy and atmosphere. Its contagious and its changing the drive-thru coffee industry, the company says. For the record, here are the original seven favors sold by 7 Brew: Blondie: Caramel and vanilla breve (270-850 calories) Brunette: Hazlenut and caramel mocha (280-850 calories) Smooth 7: White chocolate and Irish cream breve (260-840 calories) Cinnamon roll: White chocolate and brown sugar cinnamon (300-770 calories) White chocolate mocha: White and milk chocolate mocha (280-850 calories) German chocolate: Coconut and caramel mocha (280-860 calories) Triple 7: A Smooth 7 with six espresso shots (180-840calories) Among businesses which have opened in the Braden River Shopping Center, one of the newest in Lakewood Ranch, are Slim Chickens, an Arkansas-based company, known for its lightly breaded chicken tenders soaked in a buttermilk marinade, Jeremiahs Italian Ice, Panda Express and Piesanos Stone Fired Pizza. In addition, a McDonalds restaurant is under construction on an outparcel. LAS VEGAS (KLAS) A U.S. Navy helicopter was dispatched to rescue two California men after a crash on a closed road at Death Valley National Park on Saturday. Charges are pending, according to a news release from the park. The two men went around a locked gate, concrete barriers and a closure sign to take their motorcycles on Titus Canyon Road. One of the men crashed, breaking his collarbone and sustaining other non-life-threatening injuries just before sunset. They called 911 on a satellite phone, but rangers could not reach them promptly due to the road conditions. A National Park Service employee walks through an eroded section of Titus Canyon Road. (NPS photo) Rangers called for helicopter assistance and a VX-31 helicopter responded from the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, about 80 miles to the southwest. The two men were transported to Ridgecrest Regional Hospital in California. Tarantula causes crash in Death Valley, motorcyclist hospitalized Titus Canyon is one of the parks most popular backcountry drives, according to the news release. When open, the 27-mile high-clearance road provides access to Leadfield ghost town, petroglyphs at Klare Spring, and spectacular canyon narrows. The road was closed in August when flooding devastated the park, forcing the entire park to close. The park has been gradually reopening roads, but Titus Canyon remains closed. On Monday, Badwater Road was fully reopened. The men told authorities they were following a map app showing the road as open. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. Hundreds of Missing Cow posters which appear to mock hostages in the Israel-Hamas war have sprung up on campus at the University of Pennsylvania. The posters, which have appeared in many locations throughout the campus, include a photo of a cow silhouette with Beef Dinner written on it. They also offer a reward of a box of chalk and a can of beer for finding the missing cow. The posters have attracted criticism because they appear to resemble the Kidnapped posters, designed by Israeli artists Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid, which display the names and faces of people who are being held hostage by Hamas terrorists. In a post on X, StopAntisemitism accused the posters of mocking kidnapped Israelis and comparing hostage victims to cows. The university said it is working to identify those responsible for hanging up the Missing Cow posters, which they described as crude and deplorable. Penn Public Safety is actively working to identify the individuals responsible for hanging crude, deplorable posters on campus, a university spokesperson said. The university added that the posters were immediately removed and that disciplinary action would be taken against those responsible. Meanwhile, a person associated with the effort told The Daily Pennsylvanian the posters were not intended to be antisemitic, and they were merely a joke to promote veganism. The format of the poster was an unintentional mistake that we now realize could be misconstrued, the unidentified person said in an email. They added the posters did not mean to allude to the kidnapping of Israeli hostages by Hamas. It is not known who is responsible for putting up the posters, but members of the animal rights organisation The Anonymous for the Voiceless were seen on campus on the day the posters appeared. However, the group has denied any involvement, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported. Another row over antisemtitism has erupted at the University of Pennsylvania (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) Animal rights advocates have been criticised in the past for comparing meat-eating and slaughter of livestock to the Holocaust. In 2003, animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were widely criticized for their Holocaust on Your Plate campaign which juxtaposed harrowing images of people in concentration camps with disturbing pictures of animals on farm. The Missing Cow posters are the latest development in a row over antisemitism that erupted at UPenn following Hamas attack on Israel. A number of megadonors including Jon Huntsman Jr and Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan vowed to halt their donations to the university unless its president, Elizabeth Magill, resigned after the college hosted a Palestine Writes Literary Festival to which polarising figures such as Professor Marc Lamont Hill were invited. Mr Hill was ousted from CNN in 2018 after calling for an end to what he said was Israels ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and supporting a free Palestine from the river to the sea. Following the event, more than 4,000 people signed an open letter to Ms Magill, saying that platforming of outright antisemitism without denunciation from the university is unacceptable. Organisers of the festival have denied that it embraced antisemitism. At the time, the university disavowed the event, but supported its right for it to be held on campus, saying in a statement that we unequivocally and emphatically condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values. The statement continued: As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values. But in the wake of Hamas attack on Israel, which saw more than 1,400 Israelis killed and over 14,000 Palestinians killed in retaliatory airstrikes, many megadonors argued that the universitys response was not enough and urged fellow UPenn alumni to close their checkbooks until the institutions leadership resigned. Ms Magill later addressed the backlash, and condemned the attacks by Hamas on Israel, adding: Hateful speech has no place at Penn. No place. I categorically condemn hateful speech that denigrates others as contrary to our values. Israel and Hamas announced that a deal, brokered by Qatar and the United States, had been reached to free 50 hostages during a four-day ceasefire. Dozens of children and their mothers held captive in Gaza since Hamass brutal incursion into Israel on 7 October will be freed via Egypt, according to the agreement. FILE - House Education Committee member Ashley Henley, R-Southaven, asks a question about teacher pay raise legislation presented before the committee on Jan. 31, 2019, at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. On Nov. 17, 2023, a judge signed an order to drop indictments on murder and arson against Billy Lamar Brooks in the June 2021 death of Henley and the earlier burning of a building. Prosecutors saying they needed more time to investigate, and new charges could be brought later. Henley served in the Mississippi House from 2016 to 2020. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) JACKSON, Miss. (AP) Mississippi prosecutors have dismissed indictments against a man in the shooting death of a former state lawmaker and the earlier burning of a building, saying they need more time to investigate. The murder and arson charges against Billy Lamar Brooks were dismissed without prejudice, which means a grand jury could consider new charges later, according to a document filed Friday in Yalobusha County Circuit Court. Republican former state Rep. Ashley Henley, 40, was shot to death in June 2021 outside the burned-out mobile home in a rural area where her sister-in-law, Kristina Michelle Jones, was found dead in December 2020. After reviewing the case for trial, attorneys for the State requested additional time to fully investigate and review this matter, said the document signed by an assistant district attorney and Circuit Judge Smith Murphey. The document said it is not possible to estimate the timeframe needed to complete this investigation, but prosecutors could present the case to a grand jury at some point. Brooks' attorney, Bradley Peeples, declined to comment Wednesday on this latest development. He told The Associated Press that Brooks has been out on bond since last year. Henley and other relatives contended Yalobusha County authorities were doing too little to examine possible criminal charges in Jones death. Relatives put up a homemade sign at the mobile home site with photos of Jones under the phrase, I was murdered. Yalobusha County coroner Ronnie Stark said Henley had been mowing grass at the site before she was killed. Brooks, who lived near Jones, was indicted in February 2022 on a charge of maliciously setting fire to the home of Jones and Terry Henley. Court records show that on June 30, 2022, a grand jury filed a new indictment against Brooks to add a murder charge in the death of Ashley Henley. Investigators said Henley's body had been found on June 13, 2021. The dismissed indictment accused Brooks of killing her on or about the same day. Ashley Henley served in the Mississippi House from 2016 to 2020 in a district in DeSoto County, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) north of where she was killed. She was a teacher before she was elected to office, and she often took her young son to the state Capitol during legislative sessions. Henley sought a second term in November 2019 and lost by 14 votes to a Democrat. She challenged the election results, saying she believed she had found some voting irregularities. A bipartisan House committee held a public hearing on her challenge and unanimously dismissed her request for a new election. The Missouri Supreme Court has turned away an appeal about how to word a ballot question on access to abortion in the state. Missouri lawmakers have already banned abortion except in cases of medical emergency, but proponents of broader access to the procedure are seeking to put a question about it directly before voters next year. Lawyers for religious leaders challenging Missouri abortion ban say law imposes beliefs on everyone In all seven states where abortion has been on the ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, voters have either supported protecting abortion rights or rejected attempts to erode them. In Missouri, officials and advocates on both sides are grappling with how to word the question that could go on the ballot. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has proposed asking voters whether they are in favor of allowing dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth. A state appeals court in October said the wording was politically partisan. Ashcroft appealed the decision, but on Monday the Missouri Supreme Court declined to hear his argument. Summaries are used on Missouri ballots to help voters understand sometimes lengthy and complex constitutional amendments and other ballot proposals. Ashcroft, who is running for governor in 2024, said his wording fairly and accurately reflects the scope and magnitude of each of the six proposed abortion rights ballot measures. Abortion-rights advocates eye more wins after Ohio ballot success My responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the people of Missouri have ballot language that they can understand and trust, Ashcroft said in a news release. If these petitions make it to the ballot, the people will decide. I will continue to do everything in my power to make sure Missourians know the truth. A statement from the ACLU of Missouri said the repeated rejection of the Secretary of States arguments verify that his case has no legal bearing. Ashcroft is the son of John Ashcroft, a former governor, U.S. senator and U.S. attorney general under President George W. Bush. Jay Ashcroft is among four Republicans who have announced their candidacies for governor next year. Ashcrofts original description of the proposed abortion amendments, which could go on the ballot in 2024 if supporters gather enough voter signatures, would have asked voters whether they want to allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth, without requiring a medical license or potentially being subject to medical malpractice. Download the FOX4 News app on iPhone and Android In October, an appeals court panel wrote that allowing unrestricted abortion during all nine months of pregnancy is not a probable effect of initiatives. The panel largely upheld summaries that were written by a lower court judge to be more impartial. Those summaries would tell voters the amendments would establish a right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives and remove Missouris ban on abortion. Missouris current law makes most abortion a felony punishable by five to 15 years in prison for anyone who performs or induces one. Medical professionals who do so also could lose their licenses. The law prohibits women who undergo abortions from being prosecuted. Earlier this month, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment that ensures access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. Missouri will be among first states to implement new bar exam Measures to protect abortion access will be on 2024 ballots in Maryland and New York. Legislative efforts or petition drives are underway in a variety of other states. There are efforts to protect or expand access in Arizona, Florida, Nevada and South Dakota; and to restrict it in Iowa, Nebraska and Pennsylvania. Drives are on for both kinds of measures in Colorado. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook of K-pop juggernaut BTS are preparing to fulfill their mandatory service in the military, their agency BigHit Music announced Wednesday. Bighit has yet to give details on when the idols will enter the military. "We ask you for your continued love and support for RM, Jimin, V, Jung Kook until they complete their military service and safely return," Bighit said in a statement. Jin, BTSs oldest member, enlisted in December 2022 while members J-Hope and Suga entered the military in April and September this year, respectively. Able-bodied men in South Korea are mandated to join their country's armed forces by age 28 and serve at least 18 months. Prior to Jins enlistment, BTS announced that it would pursue individual careers. As the septet renewed its exclusive contract with Bighit in September 2022, the agency said the group will continue its activities by 2025 after they complete their military service. The centre is expected to lead the way in research in space weather, space-based solar power, optical communications, 3D-printed satellites and solar physics A 50 million space and technology centre will be built at Northumbria University in an attempt to create an MIT in the North. The American aerospace giant Lockheed Martin and the UK Space Agency are part-funding the venture, which will design and build satellites for launch and train the next generation of space engineers. A suite of state-of-the art research labs, classrooms and clean rooms dubbed the space station will be situated in Newcastle city centre. Known formally as the North East Space Skills and Technology centre (NESST), the project is expected to create 350 jobs and lead the way in research in space weather, space-based solar power, optical communications, 3D-printed satellites and solar physics. Dr Robert Wicks, the head of Northumbrias Space Technology Laboratory, said: I think wed like to be discussed as an MIT in the North, known for technological excellence and space technology. Thats the envelope wed like to go for. My dream is to reach children at the age of 14 or 15, get them excited about space, get them building little satellites, bringing their idea to university and by the end of their degree having launched their own satellite from the UK on a UK rocket. Thats the goal we should have. This is an opportunity to be genuinely innovative in education and in the industry, thinking about things like 3D-printed satellites which can be made in a month rather than a year. Thats slightly adventurous but we should be pushing in that direction and not doing the same as everyone else. He added: Its not just about space engineers, we need to understand the market, the legal situation. Just because Elon Musk can launch 10,000 satellites, should he? Is it legal? These are the things we need to be thinking about and teaching. Lockheed Martin, which is investing 15 million, will become the first anchor tenant in the new space centre, helping British companies to access the global space market and launch opportunities at home and abroad. The aerospace company is expected to launch its UK Pathfinder mission from SaxaVord spaceport in Shetland. The North East Space Skills and Technology centre is expected to create 350 jobs The 10 million UK Space Agency award for Northumbria University was announced at the UK Space Conference on Wednesday afternoon to support the development of NESST. Northumbria University is matching the funding to create a 50 million investment. Andrew Griffith, the science minister, said: Making Britain a space superpower means backing brilliant ideas up and down the land and harnessing the full potential of talent in our growing sector. The project is expected to inject more than 260 million into the North East economy in the next 30 years, as part of the Governments levelling-up agenda. Northumbria University also recently received 5 million from the UK Space Agency to build a new laser-based satellite communications system. Jamie Driscoll, the Mayor of the North of Tyne, said: The North East is famous as a centre of innovation and technological firsts, from the railways to the light bulb. When RMS Mauretania launched from Wallsend more than a century ago, she went on to set new speed records across the Atlantic who knows what NESST will achieve. The UK Space Agency award to Northumbria is the largest of all the projects funded and the maximum amount that could be granted under the organisations new Space Clusters Infrastructure Fund. Prof Andy Long, the vice-chancellor of Northumbria University, said: Northumbria University and the North East as a region will be on the global map as a centre of excellence in space technology, the place to go and the partner to work with. 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 Missouri judge is weighing at trial this week whether a law requiring voters to show a government-issued photo ID at the ballot box violates the state constitution. The trial, which began Friday and is expected to run through at least Wednesday in Jefferson City, centers on the 2022 law, which includes the photo ID requirement. Previously, voters could use alternative options such as school IDs and utility bills to vote. The Missouri NAACP and the League of Women Voters of Missouri, which sued over the law last year, argue in court filings that the law infringes on Missourians right to vote by requiring voters without government-issued IDs to comply with the flawed and inadequate process of filing provisional ballots. There is no guarantee that their vote will count, the organizations wrote in a pre-trial brief. The Voter ID Restrictions are unconstitutional, and any further enforcement of the law must be enjoined. Cole County Circuit Court Judge Jon Beetem, who is overseeing the trial, dismissed the lawsuit in October 2022, saying that the plaintiffs failed to show that the laws photo ID requirement would be unconstitutionally burdensome for every voter in Missouri. However, Beetems ruling gave the plaintiffs the opportunity to file an amended complaint, which they did in November 2022. Attorneys for the state of Missouri and Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the two defendants in the case, push back in court filings, arguing that the law advances compelling government interests of election integrity and security. Any burdens of getting an ID are not even attributable solely to the voter ID requirements of this law given the near ubiquity of the need for photo ID in modern life, the defendants wrote in their brief. Under the 2022 law, Missourians must use an ID issued by Missouri or the federal government in order to vote. If a voter does not have one, they can cast a provisional ballot. But for that ballot to count, the voter has to return to their polling place with the required ID or hope that the signature on their ballot matches the signature on file with the election authority. Voting rights advocates have decried the legislation as an attempt to stifle voting rights. They have argued the voter ID requirements hurt people with disabilities, marginalized communities, seniors and students who dont have the required forms of photo identification or means to get them. ID restrictions do nothing to stop voter fraud because there is no voter fraud, Tom Bastian, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Missouri, one of the groups representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement. Over the past twenty years, Missouri has had zero recorded instances of voter fraud that would be stopped by these provisions. Bastian added that the laws requirements place a heavy burden on registered voters, they confuse Missourians, and they decrease voter turnout. Ashcroft, who as secretary of state is in charge of overseeing Missouris elections, is also running for governor in 2024 on a staunchly conservative platform. He took to social media on Friday, saying we are back in court defending voter integrity. The elections law from the GOP-controlled General Assembly and signed by Republican Gov. Mike Parson, came after nearly two years of false claims from former President Donald Trump and his supporters about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. It was a result of a sustained push from Missouri Republicans to enact some form of voter ID requirement. Missouri courts in 2006 and 2020 ruled that previous photo ID laws violated the state constitution. On top of the League of Women Voters of Missouri and the Missouri NAACP, three individual voters are also plaintiffs in the case. One is Renee Powell, a 53-year-old from Columbia who has epilepsy and mobility issues and uses a walker to move around. Powells non-driver ID expired in 2021, according to the plaintiffs pre-trial brief, and the only reason she would get it renewed is to vote. Obtaining a new ID would require a substantial amount of time and effort, including using public transit that would drop her off on a busy roadway with no sidewalks, preventing her from using her rollator, the brief said. Another plaintiff, 36-year-old Kimberly Morgan of Fenton, has her first name misspelled on her birth certificate, state-issued ID and marriage certificate. Morgan has been unable to get these errors corrected to comply with the new law because the state has required her to submit documentation thats at least five years old and includes her correct information. The third plaintiff is John OConnor, a 90-year-old Columbia man who is mainly homebound due to eyesight problems including complete blindness in one eye, hearing impairment and stability issues. It was only through the help of his wife and the DMVs acceptance of an expired drivers license against the departments rules, that he was able to obtain an acceptable ID card, the brief said. Powell, OConnor, and Morgan all experienced severe and real burdens because of (the laws) Voter ID Restrictions, Bastian said in his statement. Their experiences represent those of thousands of Missourians impacted by the unconstitutional burdens created by (the law) for no reason than the myth of voter fraud. The plaintiffs completed their arguments and witness testimony in the case Tuesday afternoon and attorneys for the state began shortly after. After those arguments, which continued on Wednesday, Beetem is expected to take the matter under advisement and issue a written opinion possibly early next year. After nearly $870 million in verdicts from alleged PCBs exposure at Sky Valley Education Center, a jury has ordered Bayers Monsanto to pay an additional $165 million to employees of the Monroe school. The employees claimed that chemicals made by the company leaked from light fixtures and got them sick. In July 2021, three teachers who taught at the school were awarded $185 million. In Nov. 2021, four students, two parents, and an adult who spent time at the school who said they suffered brain injuries from the toxic chemicals were awarded $62 million. In Oct. 2022, a jury awarded ten students and parents $275 million. This latest verdict was awarded to six teachers and a custodian, who said the toxic chemicals gave them cancer, brain injuries and other issues. Monsanto said it is appealing the verdicts. A Monsey doctor and his wife pleaded guilty to charges of taking kickbacks and bribes in exchange for $1 million in genetic tests. U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said Yitzchok Barry Kurtzer, 63, and his wife, Robin Kurtzer, 62, both of Monsey, pleaded guilty this week to charges of conspiracy to violate the Federal Anti-Kickback Statute. The defendants admitted that they and others worked together to solicit and accept kickbacks in exchange for referring expensive tests to particular labs, Sellinger said. Bribes and kickbacks have no place in a doctors office. Patients need to be sure that their doctor is acting in their interest, uncorrupted by the promise of lucrative bribes and kickbacks." Sellinger said two of Barry Kurtzers employees, Amber Harris and Shanelyn Kennedy, have also pleaded guilty for their roles in the kickback scheme. Dr. Lee Besen and Kimberly Schmidt have also each pleaded guilty for a related cash-for-genetic tests scheme. An investigation found that Barry Kurtzer was a primary care physician with offices in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, area. Robin Kurtzer helped manage those offices. Sellinger said that Barry Kurtzer and Robin Kurtzer began to solicit and receive monthly cash kickbacks and bribes in exchange for collecting DNA samples from Medicare patients and sending them for genetic tests to clinical laboratories in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He said the Kurtzers used their employees in the scheme, including Harris and Kennedy, who each helped collect the DNA swabs in exchange for payments to them. The cash kickbacks ranged up to $5,000, and the Kurtzers typically accepted the bribes in cash at one of Barry Kurtzers offices, at times behind locked doors. Sellinger said that at one point, the Kurtzers complained that they were not getting paid enough and negotiated for higher kickbacks and bribes. As a result of these schemes, Sellinger said Medicare was billed over $1.3 million for tests generated from Kurtzers office. The Kurtzers face up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. Sentencing is scheduled for March 28, 2024. This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Monsey NY doctor, wife plead guilty in genetic testing kickback scheme The number of people seeking asylum at the United States-Canada border or trying to cross into America has increased in the last year, which experts say is part of the larger global migration patterns they're seeing. U.S. authorities have repeatedly warned of the perils of crossing the northern border, especially in the winter months when temperatures can drop below zero and storms can aggravate the conditions. Its extremely dangerous with the cold weather, the cold water, Brady Waikel, in charge of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection station in Niagara Falls, told WIVB-TV of Buffalo. Despite the dangers, more migrants, mostly Mexicans, decide to try and cross the northern border, the longest in the world at 5,525 miles. The border with Mexico measures 1,900 miles; then-President Donald Trump built 450 miles of border wall for about $1 billion. The most up-to-date figures from CBP recorded 189,402 encounters at the northern border in fiscal year 2023. This includes people who arrive at legal points of entry and turn themselves in to request asylum, as well as those who are captured after illegally crossing into the U.S. There were 10,021 arrests for illegal crossings in that period. According to an analysis by Noticias Telemundo, migrants from Mexico lead the number of illegal crossings from Canada, with 4,868 interceptions, up from 882 arrests in 2022. Other countries with the most migrant interceptions were India, at 1,630, compared to 237 arrests in 2022, and Venezuela, at 753, as opposed to five arrests the year before. We have exceeded 6,700 apprehensions in less than 1 year, exceeding the previous 11 years combined, Robert Garcia, head of the Border Patrol in the Swanton, Vermont sector, said in early September on X. As of press time, CBP had not responded to Noticias Telemundos requests for an interview with Garcia. Although the figures on the northern border are modest compared to the 2,045,838 encounters that CBP recorded on the border with Mexico during 2023, experts told Noticias Telemundo the numbers are rising. Government immigration policies don't change the need or reasoning of people who decide to cross in one direction or another," said Shauna Labman, director of the Human Rights Program at the University of Winnipeg, Canada, who added that some people are fleeing and seeking protection and thus making "dangerous decisions." Migration Policy Institute analyst Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh said they're seeing high levels of migration around the world, the highest since World War II. "People are moving at a faster rate than in the past, and that is also seen in the north," she said. For more from NBC Latino, sign up for our weekly newsletter. Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy published a series of TikTok videos in October where he walked along hiking trails in Canada near Pittsburg, New Hampshire and crossed a stream into the U.S., saying it was easier than crossing the Rio Grande. Dont just build the wall. Build both walls, he said during the Nov. 8 Republican primary debate. Regarding Ramaswamys proposal to build two border walls in the U.S., experts said it would be an extremely expensive and ineffective solution. I think it would not be viable for several reasons. One of them is that the barriers on the border between the United States and Mexico have been shown to not slow migration but, in fact, push migration into certain corridors where people can cross," Putzel-Kavanaugh said. "The other point is that the northern border has a variety of geographies with rivers, lakes, forests and that would be a challenge because of the environmental impacts." Crossings turn deadly Sometimes, the risk that immigration agents warn about is illustrated tragically: Jose Leos Cervantes, 45, originally from Aguascalientes, Mexico, collapsed after crossing the border into the U.S. from Quebec at the end of February and was pronounced dead at a hospital. In March, eight people from two families, one from Romania and one from India, died while trying to cross the St. Lawrence River. Their bodies were found in Akwesasne Mohawk territory, which straddles the Canada-U.S. border. It also happens that many people cannot find work in Canada and try to go to the United States. But it is very dangerous, there are always very tragic cases of people who lose their fingers, their clothes stick to their skin, and some die from freezing or for other reasons, Camelia Tigau, a visiting professor at the University of Toronto and a scholar at the Center for Research on North America at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told Noticias Telemundo. Another aspect that complicates the situation along the northern border is that states have transferred migrants who entered through Mexico to areas near Canada, so they can request asylum in the neighboring country in search of better job opportunities, health benefits and a more nimble immigration system. Miguel Angel Gutierrez, a Venezuelan migrant who was transferred in February from Arizona to Plattsburgh, New York, told Noticias Telemundo that being sent north hasn't been easy. "Well, we have to get to Canada and start producing to send to our family; I left Venezuela months ago," he said. "A shelter organization in Denver paid for our ticket, but here we've been practically stranded. ... We weren't counting on them to leave us here." The increased presence of border agents along the northern border has had repercussions for Latino communities living in Vermont where migrants often work in the dairy industry. "Immigrations response is to mobilize more agents to these border places with Canada like Vermont and New York now they ask everyone for documents and there are more deportations, too," said Nacho de la Cruz, a community leader in Vermont. He said it has impacted Latinos who have legal status "but are discriminated against because they speak Spanish." Canadian asylum numbers rise after changes Canada is seeing more claims for asylum: Figures released by Canadas immigration, refugee and citizenship agency show that 7,270 asylum applications were processed in September alone. In 2022, by contrast, the monthly average was 3,600 applications and it was fewer than 1,100 in 2021. The increase in asylum claims, experts say, is due to more global migration, as well as changes the country did to help clear a post-Covid backlog of visa cases that was disrupting trade and tourism. The Canadian government recently waived certain visa requirements, specifically the one that ensured a person left at the end of an authorized stay, according to Fernando Torres, an immigration lawyer based in Vancouver, Canada. Also since March, after an agreement between Canada and the U.S., a person entering Canada through an unofficial point of entry from the U.S. would lose the right to request asylum. Since then, while irregular land crossings to Quebec have dropped to double digits, the number of asylum-seekers arriving legally at airports across the country has more than tripled, from 1,595 in March to 5,435 in September. It is illegal to enter between ports of entry and it's not safe. We encourage asylum seekers to cross the border at designated ports of entry. The Safe Third Country Agreement applies to the entire land border, Karine Martel, spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency, said in a statement to Noticias Telemundo. Migrant smuggling increases A Times Union investigation reviewed dozens of court records that showed that the boom in northern border crossings has become a lucrative opportunity for smuggling rings that earn tens of thousands of dollars for each group they transport across the border. The cases reveal that New York has rapidly grown as an immigration corridor and a human trafficking node. Migrants take a flight from Mexico to travel to Toronto or Montreal. Some stay there for a few months to work, but then often contact a smuggler and agree to pay for their services to cross the U.S. border. Despite the harsh weather conditions, for many people the northern border is more attractive since they don't deal with the gangs that kidnap and exploit migrants arriving in the southern region. In addition, Mexicans don't need a visa to enter Canada, which various experts said can encourage the current rise in migration. Noticias Telemundo conducted searches on social networks such as TikTok with key terms such as crossing from Canada to the US, passing to the United States from Canada, and counted more than 40 videos of people explaining what their experience was like when crossing the border illegally and even offer their services as guides by direct message. The coyotes (smugglers) are now worse. Now there are coyotes online who have YouTube channels, Instagram and TikTok accounts that promote this type of absolutely irregular immigration," said Torres, the immigration lawyer in Vancouver. "As a lawyer, I do not recommend anyone to cross illegally, that only brings them problems." Diana Cruz, a Mexican migrant, shared her experience on TikTok and said smugglers charged her and other family members more than $5,000 to cross the U.S. border from Canada. She was detained for several days by U.S. immigration authorities. From the beginning everything was bad the people who are dedicated to dropping you off at the point in Canada lost us twice," she said of the smugglers. "They made us get off and enter the forest at a point where it wasnt supposed to be. ... We got lost and when we got to the highway in the United States, we heard voices and they were from immigration." I spent Dec. 24 locked up, without communication, without my family," Cruz warned about her experience. Even after she was released, she warned people thinking of crossing illegally to "think about it, because they throw you like a dog in the street and they dont care if you have a way to communicate." An earlier version of this story was first published in Noticias Telemundo. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com The sordid details of one of the more shocking crimes to occur in the Erie region in recent years were revealed in plea hearings in Erie County Common Pleas Court in early January. A young city man left virtually blind and with other long-term health issues was attacked on Dec. 28, 2021, by four fellow members of a local arm of a larger prison and street gang. The assailants carried out the attack because others in the gang felt the man was not fully participating in the responsibilities of their gang, an assistant district attorney read from a statement at the Jan. 6 hearings. The group planned to kill the man at a cemetery in North East Township. He was shot twice, beaten, stomped and stabbed repeatedly with drywall knives the group planned to use to decapitate the man. His head was not cut off, but the knives were plunged repeatedly into his eyes, according to the statement and testimony presented at other court hearings. It was a crime so brutal, and so unimaginable, that the lead prosecutor would call it "more despicable than murder." The four suspects would eventually plead guilty to charges in the attack and get prison time as their cases made their way through the courts earlier this year. But as two of the men settle into lengthy terms behind bars, another has finished his time in jail and the fourth will soon wrap up his prison stay. 'I've never seen anyone beaten so bad' The victim, Julieus Windham, survived the vicious attack. He testified that he crawled from a wooded area at the cemetery to a nearby house, where a resident called the Pennsylvania State Police. "In my 25 years of law enforcement, I've never seen anyone beaten so bad," the investigating trooper, Mark Olowin testified at a September 2022 court hearing. State police located the scene of the attack and found blood and other items including an unspent .380-caliber cartridge. Within a month, the four suspects were in police custody. Dreshaun D. Jordan, then 23, was apprehended on Jan. 2, 2022, following an attempted traffic stop and vehicle pursuit in Jamestown, New York. A little more than three weeks later, the other three suspects Sammy Carrasquillo Jr., then 18; James A. Terrell, then 28; and Mark R. Smith, then 32 were apprehended at a hotel in Ellicott, New York. All were held for court on charges including attempted homicide following preliminary hearings in May and September 2022. More details and sentencing The Jan. 6 hearings were held to accept the guilty pleas of Jordan and Smith. Prosecutors at the hearing revealed details of the group's reported affiliation with the Gangster Disciples gang and their plans to kill and decapitate Windham. Smith, accused of shooting Windham during the incident, pleaded guilty to attempted homicide and possession of a firearm prohibited. Jordan pleaded guilty that afternoon to conspiracy to commit homicide, aggravated assault and terroristic threats. Smith was sentenced on Jan. 19 to 15 to 30 years in prison on the attempted homicide charge, followed by 10 years of probation on the weapon charge. "I can't imagine what Mr. Windham went through, I just can't," Erie County Judge David Ridge said at sentencing. Jordan, the accused leader of the local arm of the gang, was sentenced on March 1 to 25 to 56 years in state prison. Ridge told Jordan that some of the facts of the case were the worst he had seen. "It's tough to describe," Chief Deputy District Attorney Jeremy Lightner said during the sentencing. "I would argue it's more despicable than murder." Carrasquillo and Terrell each pleaded guilty in June to a second-degree felony count of aggravated assault. Lightner said both had agreed to cooperate in the prosecution of Smith and Jordan, who he said were the shooter and the planner in the attack, respectively. Prosecutors allowed the pair to cooperate, but did not make a sentencing recommendation on their guilty pleas to aggravated assault, Lightner said. Carrasquillo, of Cleveland, was sentenced on July 31 to serve 11 to 23 months in prison, with credit for 390 days he had already spent in jail, followed by six years of probation. Carrasquillo was paroled on Sept. 11, according to court records. Terrell was sentenced on July 7 to 18 to 36 months in prison, with credit for 380 days he had spent in jail, followed by seven years of probation, according to court records. Contact Tim Hahn at thahn@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNhahn. This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Details of North East near-killing revealed in 2023 as 4 sentenced EL PASO, Texas The public should be allowed to see more of the court records filed in the federal prosecution of the man who killed 23 people in a racist attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, according to two recent motions. The requests to U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama were made by the U.S. Attorneys Office, which sought to make public most of the records it had entered in the court record under seal; and El Paso Matters, which asks for the unsealing of records submitted by both the prosecution and defense. Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to a variety of federal hate crimes and weapons charges after the federal government agreed not to seek the death penalty in the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting in which he killed 23 people and wounded 22 others. He was sentenced to 90 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. Dozens of documents filed with the court by prosecutors and defense attorneys between 2020 and 2023 were done so under seal, meaning they could be accessed by court officials and attorneys in the case, but not the general public. On Nov. 2, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorneys Office entered a motion to unseal most of the sealed documents that prosecutors introduced over the past three years. The request excludes records with personal identifiable information related to victims in this case, information that remains subject to the Courts Protective Order, and/or information that could materially impact the conduct of the pending state case, according to the filing. The confessed gunman still faces a state trial on capital murder charges that could carry the death penalty, but no trial date has been set. Defense attorneys filed motions on Nov. 10 and Nov. 14 seeking to prevent public disclosure of payments to court-appointed defense attorneys and experts they hired, including such records sealed by a judge. Its not clear if the request to unseal records by prosecutors and El Paso Matters involves payment records for defense attorneys and experts. Defense attorney Joe Spencer said his client, Patrick Crusius, had a broken brain from mental illness that led him to kill 23 people and injure 22 others at an El Paso Walmart on Aug. 3, 2019. Nacho Garcia Jr./El Paso Matters On Tuesday, El Paso Matters sought permission to intervene in the case to seek the unsealing of a broader range of documents that were submitted by prosecution and defense attorneys. The request was submitted by attorneys Amanda Crouch of San Antonio and Katie Townsend of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which provides free legal services to protect First Amendment freedoms and the news gathering rights of journalists. An exhibit submitted in support of the El Paso Matters motion argues that there is a significant public interest in unsealing the records now that the federal case has ended. For example, the public, to this day, knows little about the details of Crusius attack. Nor does the public have an understanding of why the Government decided not to seek the death penalty in this case, according to the El Paso Matters motion. Though sentencing proceedings revealed publicly for the first time that Crusius suffers from mental illness it is unclear whether this documented mental illness was a factor in the Governments decision. El Paso Matters seeks access to the Sealed Records to provide the public with a more fulsome picture of how Crusius was prosecuted and sentenced for his crimes. Prosecutors took no position on El Paso Matters motion to unseal the records, while defense attorneys objected, according to the news organizations motion. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTSM 9 News. RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) A federal lawsuit filed this week challenging the new districts for the North Carolina State Senate is likely just the first of what could be multiple cases, according to experts. Following the passage of newly drawn North Carolina Senate districts in the General Assembly last month, two individuals are formally challenging them in court. I dont think we should expect that this is the last lawsuit on these maps, said Chris Cooper, an expert on state politics at Western Carolina University. So, this is the first battle of what I would expect would be a multi-battle war. In addition to redrawing the state Senate districts, Republicans also redrew the maps for the state House of Representatives and North Carolinas 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The lawsuit filed on Monday said the new Senate district map unlawfully deprives Black voters of the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. In particular, plaintiffs Rodney Pierce and Moses Matthew claim the bill violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. According to the lawsuit, the bill was enacted despite having ample evidence of racially polarizing voting and a history of discrimination in the Black Belt counties of northeastern North Carolina. Having such evidence, the plaintiffs said there is an obligation under the Voting Rights Act to analyze it before drawing lines. Republican Senate leaders have not responded to a request for comment. When the GOP unveiled the new districts last month, they repeated in committee meetings and during debate that they considered political data but not racial data in drawing the districts. The chairs elected not to use race in drawing these proposed districts, strictly to protect the state from lawsuits alleging illegal racial gerrymandering, said Sen. Ralph Hise (R-Mitchell). The passage of the new maps is also considered in the lawsuit to be the the most recent episode in North Carolinas long history of race discrimination generally and race-based vote suppression in particular. Following the filing of the lawsuit, Pierce and Matthew are seeking an order that would: declare that SB 758 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, prohibit future elections to be conducted under SB 758, and require a remedial plan that includes a minority opportunity district in N.C.s Black Belt counties. The lawsuit names President Pro Tem of the N.C. Senate Phil Berger and N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore as defendants along with the entire N.C. State Board of Elections, including Alan Hirsch, Chairman Alan Hirsch, Secretary Jeff Carmon III, and members Stacy Eggers IV, Kevin Lewis, and Siobhan Millen. The plaintiffs have asked the court to move forward on an expedited timeline, asking for a decision on their request for a preliminary injunction by Friday, Dec. 1. Candidates are scheduled to begin filing to run for office on Dec. 4. Cooper says while court cases in years past have led to changes in the states primary election schedule, its unclear at this point if this case could lead to next years primary on March 5 being delayed. While the case focuses on districts in the northeastern part of the state, it could have significance for the balance of power in North Carolina. Republicans currently have the exact number of seats they need in both the House and Senate to have a supermajority capable of overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Coopers vetoes. Democrats need to flip just one seat next year to change that. This is a state consistently decided on a knifes edge, said Cooper. Pretty much no one thinks the Democrats are going to get the majority control. Thats not really up for debate. This is about supermajority or no supermajority. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to CBS17.com. More than half of Americans support providing additional financial and military assistance to Ukraine. Source: a national poll conducted by NBC News, reported by European Pravda Details: According to the study, 55% of US citizens surveyed are in favour of allocating additional funds to Kyiv and supplying more military aid. The poll shows that 26% of respondents said they strongly supported increasing aid to Ukraine, while 29% said they were inclined to support it. At the same time, 43% of respondents were opposed. Democratic voters are much more supportive of aid to Ukraine: 77% favoured additional funding and military assistance to Kyiv, compared to only 35% of Republican supporters. Overall, the survey shows that US voters, regardless of party affiliation, are more supportive of increased funding to strengthen security on the US southern border than they are of support for other countries in conflict (74%). By comparison, among other countries, humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip has the most support (58%). Background: Earlier, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin stated that his department would continue to work to get additional funding for Kyiv's defence and other needs approved by the US Congress. Joe Biden's administration still has about US$5 billion of the budget approved by Congress last year for military assistance from US stockpiles. Biden is trying to persuade 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 Ukraine. Congressional leaders hope to mobilise votes for additional military aid for Ukraine and Israel, as well as for immigration improvements, before Christmas. Support UP or become our patron! The protracted, often bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which broke out into hot war on Oct. 7, 2023, when the militant Palestinian group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel and Israel retaliated by bombarding the Gaza Strip, dates back to the early 20th century when British authorities facilitated the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, and ultimately the forcible displacement of Palestinian Arabs by Zionist militias, to establish a Jewish homeland there. In the current Israel-Hamas war, more than 10,000 civilians, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been killed since Oct. 7. The internet is rife with war-related misinformation, which Snopes, as always, is dedicated to countering with facts and context. You can help. Read our latest fact checks about the ongoing conflict. Submit questionable rumors youve encountered. Become a Snopes Member to support our work. We welcome your participation and feedback. Since Hamas' surprise attack on Israeli civilians and soldiers in early October 2023, swirling reports about the war have filled social media all of which with varying degrees of legitimacy. Among some of the most debated questions were these: Adding to the divisiveness of the Israel-Hamas war, some have claimed that Palestinian civilians residing in the Gaza Strip, thousands of whom died in Israel's retaliatory attacks, were responsible for their own fate because they had elected the militant group Hamas, which attacked Israelis on Oct. 7, to run the territory. It's true that an election was held in 2006, and it's true that Hamas won it but the reality of how and why that transpired, and to what degree Hamas truly represents a majority of Palestinians in Gaza, isn't nearly that simple. We wrote an explainer that we hope can deepen many people's understanding of the ongoing conflict. This rumor goes to the fragility of truth in wartime and the way political divisiveness affects our perceptions. The claim that babies were found beheaded after Hamas' brutal attack on an Israeli kibbutz on Oct. 7 flooded social media, despite a lack of evidence that infant beheadings occurred. We hunted down every available report and reached out to every available source to see if the claim could be corroborated. Here's Snopes' running list of fact checks and analysis related to the war. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) Miss Universe Philippines has explained the viral video of Philippine bet Michelle Dee being escorted out of a TV guesting in Mexico City. "Firstly, the segment was over by the time she exited. Michelle had to excuse herself to drink water because she wasn't feeling well due to the past weeks' tedious back-to-back schedule," the organization said in a statement on Tuesday. The Philippine team said they decided it was best for Dee to return to the hotel given her condition. She will be joining the next activities once her health improves, it added. Dee is in Mexico along with other Miss Universe candidates for a series of activities following the coronation on Sunday (Philippine time). The Filipino beauty queen landed a spot in the Top 10 of the 72nd Miss Universe held in El Salvador. Sheynnis Palacios was crowned Miss Universe 2023, the first Nicaraguan to win the title. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhnyi said back in January 2022 that Ukraine does not need mobilization, People's Deputy Roman Kostenko said Ukraines Parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense, and Intelligence was considering the issue of introducing martial law and mobilization in Ukraine from the beginning of 2022, weeks before Russia launched its full-scale invasion and war, an MP says. MP Roman Kostenko told NV about Ukraines secret preparations for war in a comment for the article How Ukraine Lost the South. NV identified several reasons for Russia's rapid seizure of the vast region from the suburbs of Mykolaiv to Mariupol, which was published on Nov. 22. Read also: Can Ukraine's armed forces mobilize 300,000 in one go? Interview with Danilov "We talked about mobilization, reservists, and increasing funds to finance the army," Kostenko said. At the beginning, around January 2022, (Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii) Zaluzhnyi visited the committee. He said that there was no need for mobilization yet. Read also: Initial Russian invasion group in Kherson Oblast had 12-to-1 superiority in troop numbers over Ukrainian force Closer to the outbreak of the invasion, the commander-in-chief's rhetoric changed: Zaluzhnyi said he supported increasing the number of troops. "For me, the more troops, the better," the lawmaker quoted him as saying. "(The head of the Defense Intelligence, Kyrylo) Budanov, also came," Kostenko said about the Rada committee meetings before full-scale war. He kept saying: War, war. I asked him: Do you report to the (President's) Office? Why don't you give them suggestions that they need to mobilize, pull up personnel, dig trenches? He said that yes, he was reporting. Read also: No need for new mobilization wave yet defense minister Ukrainia President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree on general mobilization after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022 when martial law was also introduced. 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 majority of Memphis' homicides this year have taken place between people who know one another, the Memphis Police Department said Tuesday afternoon. Department data showed that only 8% of this year's homicides involved a victim not knowing their killer. The data was presented to the Memphis City Council during a crime update as the year comes to a close. About 30% of homicides involved people who knew one another, and 50%, according to MPD Chief Cerelyn "C.J." Davis, had unknown relationships, but that category is listed as "unknown" because they could not "100% validate that it was a stranger or somebody in the family, or something of that nature." "When you talk about 300 homicides, it's not that there were all these incidents where people didn't know each other," Davis said. "A lot of them did know each other... It's not like you've got murderers on the loose just randomly [killing people]." Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn CJ Davis can be seen speaking about results from their targeted crime reduction operation during a press conference involving federal and local partners on Friday, October 20, 2023 at the U.S. Attorneys Office in Downtown Memphis, Tenn. Councilmembers, like Council Chairman Martavius Jones, expressed surprise at the breakdown from MPD, saying that the narrative around homicides and shootings makes Memphis seem more random and deadly compared to other cities. "What has people scared to walk outside their homes is that they think that there's some stranger that's going to come up to you and you're going to be a victim now," Jones said. "I know that it was a tragic situation for every person that's on this list here, but I think that it says a lot to think that of the homicides that we have, that only 8% of them involved strangers. That's a different narrative that Memphis is the most violent city out here and you shouldn't go to Memphis and you shouldn't go outside after eight o'clock." Jones said the city, and also the media, "don't do a good enough job of putting that information out there," which Davis agreed with. Davis suggested, following Jones' comments, that a separate, publicly accessible database be put on MPD's website that would track data like that. Currently, Davis said, that data is available but is part of the City of Memphis' databases, including a tally of incidents reported, and can be difficult to locate. A reporter with The Commercial Appeal searched for the breakdown of known and stranger homicides, similar to what Davis presented Tuesday, and could not locate a database on the city's website for it. Homicide record surpassed The data MPD presented Tuesday came after Memphis surpassed its previous record for homicides, which was set at 346 in 2021. With just under a month and a half left in the year, Memphis reached 352 homicides. Those homicide numbers include murders but also include "justified homicides," traffic-related homicides and suicides. According to the data presented Tuesday, Memphis has reported 31 unjustified homicides and murders so far this year. A man sitting in the back of a Memphis Police Department vehicle looks out the window before being driven away after MPD responded to a barricade situation just south of Bartlett on Wednesday, September 20, 2023. A further breakdown of those homicide stats MPD presented showed that the majority of homicides that MPD had identified a cause in were due to non-domestic violence-related disagreements. So far this year 116, or 33%, of homicides were traced back to that. The next-highest group for homicides was domestic violence-related. Those incidents make up 11% of 2023's homicides and include a recent high-profile series of shootings where a man is accused of shooting, and killing, four relatives and injuring a fifth. "...We're seeing more domestic violence incidents that are occurring with the use of weapons," Davis said. "Weapons are more prevalent in those situations now, whereas in the past we've responded to domestic violence where there were two individuals that physically were in a fight. Now we're seeing just simple conflicts escalate to shooting, which is very tragic." Crime across the board has gone up in Memphis, and the city is on pace to surpass the previous record crime rate set in 1996. Mayor Jim Strickland speaks at the entrance to the newly renovated Tom Lee Park prior to the ribbon cutting to officially open it to the public in Downtown Memphis on Saturday, September 2, 2023. Following a mass shooting that left eight people injured in mid-August, outgoing Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland told The Commercial Appeal that the ease of access to guns was "directly correlated" with the increase in shootings and gun deaths seen across the city, and across the country. "It is a completely different world than it was 10 or 20 years ago with respect to the number of guns on American streets," Strickland said in August. "As the United States, and as Tennessee in particular, have loosened restrictions on guns, there are, as a result, more guns on the streets and more shootings and more gun deaths. It's directly correlated." More: Gov. Bill Lee assigning 40 additional Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers to Memphis In particular, Strickland pointed to a 2013 law that allows Tennesseans to keep guns in their cars so long as they are secured. Many vehicle break-ins, Strickland said at the time, have been traced to people looking for guns stored in cars. Davis has echoed that sentiment in past appearances before the Memphis City Council as well. "When the state allowed guns in cars, the theft of guns from cars skyrocketed," he said. "In talking to police officers, that's the number one reason these people are breaking into cars. It's to steal guns. I think each of the last few years there have been over 2,000 guns per year stolen from Memphis cars. Those are being used to perform illegal acts. They're not going hunting with those guns. I think [state legislation] is a major contributor to gun violence in Memphis." Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton. This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis police chief CJ Davis talks about city's homicide rate Albert Necaise was one of the last of the legendary Coast attorneys who operated without a smart phone or computer, capturing the attention of jurors and winning verdicts through hard work, a reverence for the law and a gift for storytelling. Necaise passed away Sunday, Nov. 19, at his home in Orange Grove with his wife of 65 years, Lois Ann Necaise, by his side. The 87-year-old had experienced numerous health setbacks over the previous two years. He was done with hospitals. He just wanted to be home. He was just one of those people, said Lauren Esposito, his paralegal for 30 years. He was larger than life. He just had a presence. I dont know of another Albert Necaise, Ill say that. His Catholic faith, family and the law were the cornerstones of Necaises life. Michael Necaise, the second of three children, said his father spoiled them because he spent so much time working. As a youngster, while his friends cut school to fish, Albert Necaise headed to the courthouse so he could sit in on trials. He just loved, loved the law, Michael Necaise said. He had planned his entire life to be an attorney. Thats what he wanted. Spirit of giving Albert Necaise was born and raised in Gulfport, the only child of Herbert and Mamie Necaise. His father was a sheet metal worker and roofer, while his mother ran a hotel in New Orleans. Necaise worked from the time he was a small child, hauling butter in a wagon pulled by his goat Billy from a local dairy to neighborhood markets, where he sold the wares for a small markup. He eventually saved enough money to buy himself a used bicycle. He received a Catholic education before attending community college and then the University of Southern Mississippi, where he was introduced to his future wife, Lois Ann Walker. She remembered him from the first time they met, when she went as a teenager to buy medicine at the Gulfport drugstore where he was working. A young Albert Necaise They started dating and married within a year. They became the parents of three children in quick succession: Ann, followed by Michael and then, exactly one year later, Brian. Michael Necaise is still not sure how his father managed to graduate from law school at what is now Mississippi College School of Law. Albert Necaise opened a small law office in Gulfport before going to work in the District Attorneys Office for Boyce Holleman, a mentor who also relied on a quick wit and gift for storytelling to capture a jurys attention. When Holleman left the job in 1971, he tried to convince Necaise to work in his law office, but Necaise wanted to be district attorney. He was elected to the job and served for 12 years. When he returned to private practice, he wound up representing some of the criminals he had convicted as district attorney. They knew he was a good lawyer, Michael Necaise said. They all said the same thing about dad: He was hard but he was fair, his son recalled. Like Holleman, Necaise knew how to charm a jury. It started with jury selection, said Gulfport attorney Steve Simpson, who recalled the way Necaise connected with jurors. Necaise might launch into a story about a mutual acquaintance, for example. He was just a great storyteller, great storyteller, which in trial practice is the key to your success, said Simpson, who worked as a diversion officer in the District Attorneys Office under Necaise. Necaise noticed how Simpson seemed to love the law and talked the young man into going to law school. Robin Midcalf, now a County Court judge in Harrison County, also worked for Necaise while he was DA and before she became a lawyer. He was always checking in to make sure she kept up her grades because he knew she wanted to go to law school. Weve lost one of our legends of the legal community, Midcalf said. I will put him up there with the likes of Boyce Holleman. She remembered Necaises generosity, something he never advertised because, in his mind, that defeated the purpose of giving. The man was very generous, she said. He helped a lot of people. Hed hear a sob story and open his wallet. Ive seen that. I dont know how many times I saw it. Its not something that you would expect. He certainly did not want any accolades for it. Necaise served for decades as attorney for the Harrison County School District. He handled all the districts legal business, former Superintendent Henry Arledge said, telling his clients what they needed to hear, even when it wasnt what they wanted to hear. Each Christmas, Necaise picked a family in need and donated everything from the turkey and fixings to presents for the children, with gifts the children could give their parents included, too. Albert and Lois Ann Necaise in 2018 at St. James Catholic Church in Gulfport with great grand-children Knox, left, and Adler Addy Brogdon. Necaise never missed mass until he was no longer physically able to attend. Hopping from one courtroom to the next Necaise worked long hours. Former paralegal Lauren Esposito recalls that he would run from one courtroom to another, often returning at nightfall to an office full of clients People would just wait to see him, she said. They loved visiting with him. He was always late to court. Always. He knew his cases well, though, and when hed get a call from the courtroom, where an irate judge was waiting on him, hed rush out the door. An attorney hates to walk into court without his paperwork, so he would say, Just give me an empty folder, Esposito recalled. One time, a judge who had once worked as one of Necaises assistant district attorneys, was tired of the lawyer being late to court. He decided to fine Necaise $100, Michael Necaise recalls. The judge agreed Necaise could donate the fine to a charity called Hope Haven. Necaise then talked the judge, James Thomas, into donating the same amount to the charity. During a break, Thomas asked Necaise, How come youre late for court and it cost me $100? Esposito said that Necaise carried a flip phone because he needed it only for calls and never used a computer. He studied his case files and shot from the hip in court. I dont remember him ever sitting down and preparing a closing argument, she said. He could pull some rabbits out of a hat. Albert and Lois Ann Necaise are pictured in 2012 at their home in Lyman. Necaise also owned a farm with Henry Arledge, former school superintendent, where they raised cattle in Harrison County. Necaise believed in second chances On his 50th anniversary as a lawyer, Necaise was honored with a reception at the Great Southern Club. Federal and state court judges, a Mississippi Supreme Court judge and many lawyers showed up. The occasion was supposed to be a surprise, but Michael Necaise isnt sure his family and friends pulled it off. Albert Necaise seemed to know everything before it happened in the legal community. Dads grapevine was fiber optic, he said. Albert Necaise worked until he couldnt, Esposito said. A couple of years ago, he just grew too weak to make it to court. He is now at peace, his family said. His granddaugher Lauren Williams held his hand the day before he died. As she got ready to leave, she told him that she would see him the next morning, although she was doubtful. He gave her his trademark half-crooked smile and winked. Both Williams and Michael Necaise said one of the biggest lessons they learned from Albert Necaise was to give people second chances. In fact, he was known to dispense even third and fourth chances. Everybody, his granddaughter said, deserves to have another chance. Albert Necaise did not make it widely known, but he had a kidney transplant at age 80 in 2016. His son Michael, right, was the donor at age 56. Albert Necaise with great-grandchild Ollie Sumrall. A Murfreesboro police officer shot and killed a man, suspected of the "strong armed robbery" of an armored truck Wednesday morning after he ran from the scene into a nearby restaurant. Police were called to a shopping center on North Thompson Lane at about 9:13 a.m., according to Larry Flowers, a spokesperson for the department. Police identified the suspect as 44-year-old Steven James Murphy of Murfreesboro. Flowers identified Adam Claiborne, a five year veteran of Murfreesboro police, as the officer who fired the shots at Murphy. Murphy originally approached the armored truck driver, but the driver produced a weapon, causing the suspect to flee, Flowers said during a news conference Wednesday. Murphy retreated inside a Jason's Deli, where six employees were preparing to open for service. He then tried to rob the restaurant, Flowers said, noting that all of the employees were able to leave the scene safely. A Murfreesboro police officer shot a man suspected of "strong armed robbery" of an armored truck at a shopping center on North Thompson Lane on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. "Once our officers arrived, one of our officers confronted the man and gave him various commands to produce his hands," Flowers said. The man refused, he said. Murphy then "charged at him with two large knives," Flowers said. "After repeated commands, our officer had to discharge his service weapon, striking the male subject multiple times," Flowers said. Murphy was taken to a local hospital but later died, Flowers said. "It's a sad day any time any resident in our city loses their life," he said. "Our heart goes out to his family, who will be grieving. Our hearts also go out to our officer who was involved in this because he and his family will have to deal with this as well." The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has been called in to investigate. Claiborne will be on paid administrative leave until the end of the investigation, Flowers said. This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Murfreesboro police fatally shoot robbery suspect at Jason's Deli Owners bring their dogs to a park in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022. Veterinary laboratories in several states, including Oregon, Colorado and New Hampshire, are investigating an unusual respiratory illness in dogs that causes lasting illness and doesnt respond to antibiotics. The Oregon Department of Agriculture, which is working with state researchers and the U.S. Deparment of Agricultures National Veterinary Services Laboratory to find out what is causing the illnesses, has documented more than 200 cases of the disease since mid-August 2023. | Richard Vogel, Associated Press A mysterious illness is spreading between dogs in some parts of the U.S., causing dogs to be sick for weeks, and it has even killed some dogs. Symptoms include: Intense coughing that can go on for weeks. Sneezing. Lethargy. Intermittent loss of appetite. Fever. Runny eyes. Its difficult to determine exactly how many cases there have been across the U.S., but veterinarians report seeing more dogs with those symptoms in the last few months. They cough for three weeks, four weeks, and sometimes they result in pneumonia, Dr. Gracen Chang, a veterinarian at Southfield Veterinary Hospital in Michigan, told CBS News. States reporting dog illness cases Vets have observed confirmed cases of the illness in at least six states but believe it is likely more widespread. In Oregon, vets reported more than 200 cases of the disease starting in August, CNN reported. Here are states that have had cases of the illness: Colorado. Massachusetts. Oregon. Rhode Island. Illinois. New Hampshire. The illness has impacted a variety of different dog breeds. What we know about the mysterious dog illness Researchers have discovered a pathogen that might be at the root of whats making the dogs sick. Dr. David Needle, pathology section chief at the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture at the University of New Hampshire, called the pathogen a funky bacterium, per NBC News. Its smaller than a normal bacterium in its size and in the size of its genome. Long story short, its a weird bacterium that can be tough to find and sequence, he said. What you can do to protect your dog from the illness Experts observed that each of the cases share one thing in common the dogs with the infection had spent time in places with a high concentration of dogs, such as boarding facilities, doggie day care or dog parks, according to The New York Times. Were really hoping just with getting the word out there that people are less inclined to do that, Dr. Lindsey Ganzer, a veterinarian and chief executive at North Springs Veterinary Referral Center in Colorado Springs, told the Times. The veterinary community as a whole is kind of scared. Heres what you can do for your dog, according to NBC News: Avoid places with a lot of dogs. Hire a dog walker or dog sitter rather than sending your dog to a day care facility. Discuss the best steps to take for your dog with a veterinarian. If you observe any strange behavior or similar symptoms, take your dog to the vet immediately. An unusual, potentially deadly disease is spreading among dogs in the United States, but a California veterinary expert advises people to not sound the alarm, yet. Disease experts are studying a potentially fatal illness in dogs, which has been reported both officially and anecdotally across the country, including Oregon, California and Washington, NBCs Today Show reported in November. Were seeing a definite uptick in respiratory diseases, said Erik Olstad, a general practitioner and assistant clinical professor with the UC Davis William R. Pritchard Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. In rare cases, it can turn serious or fatal. According to a Nov. 17 news release from the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Oregon Department of Agriculture has seen more than 200 case reports from veterinarians since mid-August. The disease is still a mystery, the department said, as specialists are trying to find the cause of the illness. Olstad said the disease is atypical compared to other common respiratory illnesses in dogs. The tough thing is, were testing these dogs with this kind of mysterious disease, and theyre not showing up positive for a lot of the common things that we would see that would cause cough like canine influenza, he said. So were just a little confused on whats going on. Since experts dont know what the pathogen causing the illness is, he said, they cant confirm its transmission, too. Olstad added that he doesnt want people thinking that theres this wild illness wiping out millions of dogs. Thats not the case. What are symptoms of the disease affecting dogs? The AMVA said dogs sickened by the mystery illness experience chronic mild to moderate inflammation of the trachea, which lasts up to eight weeks or longer. Other symptoms include chronic or acute pneumonia that becomes severe rapidly within 24 to 36 hours. Medications are not working well to treat these symptoms, the AMVA said. Olstad said other signs of this illness are difficulty breathing, coughing, nasal discharge, low energy and lack of appetite. If your dog is showing signs of sickness, Olstad recommends that you speak to a veterinarian right away and avoid taking your pet out in public places. There are things that we can look at, like if your dog has a really high fever with this cough, that can be tough for you to detect at home, he said. An unusual, potentially fatal disease is sickening dogs across the United States. Is the illness in California? Is the illness spreading in California? Its a tough question, Olstad said. Since we dont know what this illness is, he said, I cant confirm if a dog comes into my office with a cough that thats the illness because dogs have a bunch of illnesses that cause cough, nasal discharge, difficulty breathing ... The Los Angeles County Department of Public Healths Veterinary Public Health Program is looking into reports of dogs with sudden respiratory illness of unknown origin, officials announced Tuesday. The dogs tested negative for common viruses and bacteria seen in canines with similar symptoms of cough, sneezing and lethargy. Owners are being contacted to determine where the dogs may have become infected, the department said. We are communicating with federal and state entities to ensure coordinated efforts as we learn more from our ongoing investigations. The San Diego Humane Society reported on Nov. 15 that four dogs have died in its clinic due to illnesses, but the society attributed those deaths to a respiratory disease called streptococcus equi subspecies zooepidemicus, or, strep zoo. The shelter also reported infections involving a bacteria called mycoplasma. While the Pacific Northwest is seeing an uptick among dogs in coughs that turn fatal, Olstad said, UC Davis vet clinic hasnt experienced that. We havent really seen a ton of that in my section of the hospital, Olstad said. Ive treated a bunch of dogs with coughs but I havent had to deal with any fatal repercussions. How is mystery sickness spread? While its still being studied, Olstad said the illness is infectious and may spread much like human respiratory diseases. This means it can spread through contact with sick animals from respiratory droplets, such as when a dog sneezes or when a dog drinks out of an infected water bowl. How to prevent your dog from contracting respiratory illness Experts are advising dog owners to decrease contact with other dogs, according to the Los Angeles Times. Olstad said you dont need to lock your furry friend in a room, but just avoid other sick animals and large groups of unknown dogs. If you have another dog in your household thats healthy, they can play together, but you should steer clear of dog parks and shows. It would be just fine if you still went out on your walks and you hung out with known dogs that are well-vaccinated and are healthy, he said. Olstad also said that people should make sure their dogs are completely vaccinated for para-influenza, canine influenza and bordetella, which is the kennel cough vaccine. Andrea Cantu-Schomus, communications director with the Oregon Department of Agriculture, advised pet owners to talk to their vets for further advice. Because of the broad spectrum of potential respiratory diseases, there is no one-size-fits-all recommendation, and working with a veterinarian is the best way to ensure that owners have accurate information that is appropriate for their situation, she said in the AMVA release. 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. Los Angeles County public health officials are investigating a mysterious respiratory illness affecting a rising number of dogs. Its origin, transmission and treatment are unknown. Reported incidents of the disease have emerged in several states, including Colorado, Oregon and New Hampshire, and it has been fatal in some instances. At least 10 cases have been reported to the L.A. County Department of Public Health since Thursday. The affected dogs have ranged in age from 9 months to 11 years, the department said. Some have been ill since the beginning of October, and one dog died of the disease, officials said. Two others have recovered. There is no specific diagnosis for the illness. Rather, veterinarians make the determination when evaluating a dog who is suffering respiratory symptoms but tests negative on a panel of common diseases with similar symptoms, such as kennel cough. Read more: No shots for Spot? Study finds owners' vaccine hesitancy can extend to pet dogs The diagnosis also requires the dog to have either acute pneumonia that progresses rapidly, chronic pneumonia that is not responsive to antibiotics, or a respiratory infection for at least six weeks with little to no response to antibiotics. The illness, which investigators refer to as atypical canine infectious respiratory disease (aCIRD), causes symptoms such as coughing, sneezing, nasal discharge and lethargy. Public health officials warn the public to monitor their pets for such symptoms and, if they display them, to take them to a veterinarian to be evaluated. Officials also recommend isolating the sick dog at home for at least 28 days after it first becomes ill, and quarantining the animal for at least 14 days from other dogs in the household to prevent the spread. Though it is unknown how the disease spreads between animals, public health officials recommend keeping the dog away from pet day-care centers, grooming facilities, boarding kennels and dog parks, as they may be vectors for disease spread. Meanwhile, health researchers have been looking for clues to the disease. Read more: Orphaned sister mountain lions find home in Oakland Zoo after mother is killed by a car NBC News reported that researchers with the University of New Hampshires Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and the school's Hubbard Center for Genome Studies may have identified a bacterium responsible for the symptoms. It is unknown, however, whether the pathogen is responsible for all instances of the disease. The Oregon Department of Agriculture, on the other hand, suggests the infection is viral in nature due to the ineffective response to antibiotics, which don't work against viruses. 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. In-N-Out Burgers empire is expanding again in Californias Inland Empire. The Lake Elsinore Planning Commission recently voted 5-0 to approve permits for a second In-N-Out location in the city as part of a larger development along Dexter Avenue between Crane and Allan streets, Patch reports. The 3,887-square-foot restaurant will include a two-lane drive-thru and will be advertised by a 45-tall In-N-Out Burger sign that drivers will see from the 15 Freeway. Raunchy, alcohol-fueled Taco Bell party included open sex, lawsuit claims It will be the sixth location in southwest Riverside County. The other Lake Elsinore location is at 331 Railroad Canyon Road, just east of the 15 Freeway. The Southern California-based fast-food chain, which just celebrated its 75th anniversary, is approaching 400 locations in California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Texas and Oregon. It has recently announced plans to expand into Tennessee and New Mexico in the coming years. Cars line up in the drive thru at an In-n-Out restaurant on October 28, 2021 in Pleasant Hill, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) The very first In-N-Out burger opened in 1948 at a tiny stand at Francisquito and Garvey avenues in Baldwin Park, a suburb of Los Angeles. Harry and Esther Snyder are credited with inventing the worlds first drive-thru with a two-way speaker box that same year. (Photo courtesy: In-N-Out Burger) The original In-N-Out in Baldwin Park, California. (Courtesy: In-N-Out Burger) A menu is displayed in the drive thru at an In-n-Out restaurant on October 28, 2021 in Pleasant Hill, California.(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) An In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Alhambra, California, is pictured on Aug. 30, 2018. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images) The very first In-N-Out Burger opened in 1948 as a tiny stand at Francisquito and Garvey avenues in Baldwin Park, a suburb of Los Angeles. Founders Harry and Esther Snyder are credited with inventing the worlds first drive-thru with a two-way speaker box. Lynsi Snyder, their only grandchild, is the current president and CEO. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA. Gov. Brian Kemp is assigning Georgia National Guard troops and other state resources to help with the logistical challenges associated with ceremonies and services to honor the late former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Kemp issued an executive order Tuesday activating the State Operations Center to coordinate the state assets that will assist next week in the final farewells and interment of Mrs. Carter, who died Sunday at her home in Plains. The order also calls on the Georgia Department of Defense to provide up to 50 National Guard troops. Ceremonies celebrating the life of the former first lady of both Georgia and the United States will begin next Monday morning with a motorcade from Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus to the Rosalynn Carter Health and Human Services Complex at Georgia Southwestern State University, where wreaths will be laid. The motorcade then will travel to The Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, where members of the public will be able to pay their respects from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. as Mrs. Carter lies in repose. On Tuesday, the motorcade will travel to Glenn Memorial Church at Emory University for a tribute service with invited guests at 1 p.m. On Wednesday, the funeral procession will arrive at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains for an 11 a.m. service for family and invited friends. The casket then will depart for a private interment at the Carter family residence. Under a second executive order Kemp issued Tuesday, the U.S. and Georgia flags will be flown at half-staff at all state buildings and grounds from Monday through sunset on Wednesday. National Insurance (NI) is the tax (though its not technically a tax in the strictest sense) paid by workers under state pension age to fund the UKs state benefits, most notable of which is the state pension. Today the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced that the Class 1 National Insurance rate will drop from 12pc to 10pc from January 6 2024. This is paid by employees earning between 12,570 and 50,270. It means the average worker on 35,000 will save more than 450 a year as a result. Additional changes are being changed for self-employed National Insurance from April 2014, when Class 2 contributions will be scrapped altogether and the Class 4 rate will drop from 9pc to 8pc. On average, this will save two million self-employed workers 350 a year. Racking up enough National Insurance contributions (NICs) over your working life can be the difference between getting an extra 10,000 a year in government payments when you reach retirement. Here, Telegraph Money explains what NICs cost, how to find out whether you have gaps in your record, and how to fill them. What is National Insurance? NI has been around since 1911. Introduced by Lloyd George, it was created to provide a national system of insurance to protect the poorest members of society from facing a loss of income as a result of sickness or unemployment. Its changed a bit since then, but given payments also fund new style jobseekers allowance, maternity allowance and contribution-based employment and support allowance, some of its fundamental principles of helping those worse off are still in place today. You are legally obliged to pay NICs once you are aged 16 and in work. Youll usually be issued with a NI number just before you turn 16. This is made up of two letters, six numbers and a final letter and is unique to you. All sorts of people and bodies may need to know your NI number, such as HMRC, employers and pension providers, your local council, student finance agencies, banks, building societies and other financial services. You will continue to pay contributions until you reach state retirement age. After this, you no longer have to make payments, even if you still have a job. The amount you pay depends on how much you earn; the type of contribution known as the class you pay depends on whether you work for an employer or for yourself. Forthcoming changes aside, NI has been tinkered with frequently over the past few years. Boris Johnsons government decided to raise NI by 1.25 percentage points in April 2022 to fund health and social care. The rate was due to return to 2021-22 levels in April 2023, when a separate new 1.25pc Health and Social Care Levy was due to take effect. Kwasi Kwarteng, briefly chancellor, reversed the rise in the September 2022 mini Budget and cancelled the planned introduction of the levy. To make things more complicated, in March 2022 Mr Johnsons government had previously raised the income threshold, above which NI is charged, to align it with the income tax personal allowance at 12,570. This saved the average employee (and self-employed worker) around 300 a year. At one point there was also a plan to make pensioners pay NI but this was dropped. Classes of National Insurance There are four main classes of NICs, which are split up like this: Class 1 NICs are paid by employees who earn over a certain income threshold Class 2 is a flat weekly rate paid by self-employed individuals with profits over a certain threshold Class 3 contributions are voluntary contributions paid by those wanting to plug the gaps in their NI record, so they can qualify for certain benefits, such as the state pension Class 4 NICs are paid by self-employed workers, depending on their profits. From April 2024, Class 2 NI will be abolished. National Insurance contributions: how much you pay Employees Class 1 contributions As an employee, you pay NI contributions when you earn more than the primary threshold. This changes over time, but at the moment, it is 242 a week (12,570 a year). You will pay Class 1 NICs of 12pc on income between 242 and 967 a week (or between 12,570 and 50,270 a year). You then pay contributions of 2pc on any earnings over 967 per week (or 50,270 a year). If your income falls below the 242 per week (or 12,570 a year) primary threshold you do not need to pay anything, but you will have a gap in your contributions record unless you qualify for NI credits, allocated when you claim things like child benefit and Statutory Sick Pay. More on this later. From January 6 2024, youll pay 10pc over the primary threshold. Self-employed Class 2 and 4 contributions If you work for yourself, you pay NI when you make more than 12,570 a year in profit. You might make two types of contribution: a Class 2 weekly flat rate of 3.45 per week, and a percentage Class 4 contribution, charged at 9pc on profits between 12,570 and 50,270, and 2pc on profits over 50,270. If your profits are less than 12,570 but more than 6,725 youll be treated as though you pay Class 2 contributions, but if profits are less than 6,725 youd have to make voluntary Class 2 contributions to have NICs recorded. From April 2024, Class 2 contributions will be abolished. Those with profits of more than 12,570 will come under the scope of Class 4 contributions, and will therefore continue to make NI contributions. Those with profits between 6,725 and 12,570 will get NI credits so they continue to contribute to benefits entitlement such as the state pension. Additionally, the Class 4 rate will reduce to 8pc. Payment thresholds are due to stay the same. What if Im both employed and self-employed? If you fall into both working categories, you need to pay both Class 1 NIC on your employed income and you may have to pay Class 2 and 4 NIC for your self-employed work. Voluntary Class 3 contributions If you have gaps in your record, you might be able to make voluntary contributions to fill them. For the 2023-24 tax year, the weekly Class 2 rate is 3.45, and the weekly Class 3 rate is 17.45. National Insurance credits when youre not working NI credits are a means by which you can maintain your NI record when youre not making NI contributions. Becky OConnor of PensionBee said: If you take any time out of paid work, or dont earn enough to qualify for the basic state pension, you need to look up whether you are eligible for NI credits. You might be eligible for credits if, say, you are unable to work due to illness, or because you are caring for someone. Ms OConnor added: For example, parents taking time out of work to look after young children are eligible for credits [when they claim child benefit] for years when they arent working, but are still making a valued contribution to society. The type of credits you receive can vary. Those receiving child benefit will automatically receive Class 3 credits, while anyone who gets Carers Allowance, Maternity Allowance or Employment and Support Allowance will automatically receive Class 1 credits. Changes for parents with unclaimed NI credits For women who are claiming for missing years of NI credits after taking time out of work to care for children, it is now possible to make claims dating back up to 12 years. This follows a recent intervention from the Government. (Previously, it was only possible to backdate claims for up to three months). Ms OConnor said: This was a particularly important decision because many women were missing out on NI credits as a result of not claiming child benefit, which is the main method the Government uses for determining eligibility for credits. You can claim child benefit up to a child turning 12, meaning a parent of one with unclaimed credits could have a 12-year gap on their NI record. Laura Suter, head of personal finance at AJ Bell said: As this would leave you short of the full 35 years of credits youd need to be entitled to the full state pension, that would equate to 3,634 a year in state pension youd miss out on. Allowing parents to go back and fill in gaps on their record will help to boost the collective wealth of women when they retire. How National Insurance affects your benefits Paying NI contributions provides the right to access certain contributory benefits, which you might need if youre ever out of work, or when you reach retirement age. This includes the new style Jobseekers Allowance, Maternity Allowance and perhaps most notably the state pension. Ms OConnor said: The amount of state pension you get basically depends on the number of qualifying years of contributions you have. To qualify for the new state pension, which pays 10,600 a year, you need to have made 35 years of NI contributions. To get any state pension at all, you need to have at least 10 qualifying years of contributions. Not all benefits depend on NICs so your contributions wont have a bearing if you claim the likes of Universal Credit, Attendance Allowance, Disability Allowance and Child Benefit. How to check your National Insurance record You can check your NI record for free on the Government website: https://www.gov.uk/check-national-insurance-record. You can also check by logging into your personal tax account online, or by writing to HM Revenue and Customs to request a statement at this address: National Insurance contributions and Employers Office HM Revenue and Customs BX9 1AN You should be able to see the record of payments you have made, or which credits you have received, as well as which class of contributions. You can also find out if there are any gaps, and whether its possible for you to pay voluntary contributions in order to plug those gaps. If you want to know what your state pension forecast looks like, you can check here: https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension. Recommended A definitive list of tax codes and what they mean Read more This article is kept updated with the latest information. 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. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) The Philippines is reviving three mega-railway projects with financing from other foreign donors after completely dropping China as a funding source, the head of the Department of Transportation (DOTr) said on Wednesday. Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said the three big-ticket rail projects, originally costing a combined $5 billion, will be reviewed by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Board for new costing. Kailangan nating kumuha muna ng updated approval kasi although its part of the 197 flagship infrastructure projects, ay magkakaron ito ng change of cost dahil ang project na ito ay project ng nakaraang gobyerno, meron nang approved cost. Pero tingin ko ay magkakaron ng additional cost because of the delay, because of the increase in cost of materials and cost of labor, he explained. [Translation: We need to get an updated approval first because although it's part of the 197 flagship infrastructure projects, it will have a change of cost because this project is a project of the previous government that already has an approved cost. But I think there will be an additional cost because of the delay, because of the increase in cost of materials and cost of labor.] The mega projects earlier approved and brokered by the Duterte administration include a freight connection between the two giant former US military bases in Luzon: an $896-million, 71-kilometer railway connecting Subic Bay Freeport Zone and Clark Freeport Zone. The two others involve a $2.5-billion railway stretching from Calamba to Bicol province and a $1.45-billion train line in Mindanao. Bautista last month had said the Philippines will no longer seek funding from China for these three projects. The cancellation came in the wake of an outbreak of fresh tensions in a waterway flashpoint in the West Philippine Sea, although Bautista at the time downplayed speculations that the decision was linked to that. On the sidelines of a forum in Makati on Wednesday, the DOTr chief said the government will tap mixed financing from other donors or partners. Official development assistance (ODA) bodes well since if in the form of a loan, it can be paid long-term and with a grace period. Itong tatlong railway projects na ito (These three railway projects), mainly financed by either ODA, PPP or from government. And were looking at all those three sources as possible financing for these projects. Bautista, however, pointed out that the government may have to partly bankroll the projects since the ODA cannot cover expropriation costs for gaining right of way. Meron tayong tinatawag na (We have what we called) fiscal space problem so most probably, ito ay magiging ODA. Maybe certain part of the project can be financed by the government also, he said. For example, yung right of way. Hindi yan kino-cover ng mga ODA. Ito ay magiging gastos ng gobyerno. Pinag-aaralang mabuti yan. Under existing guidelines, yung right of way hindi nako-cover yan ng ODA, so dapat gobyerno talaga magbayad, he added. [Translation: ODAs do not cover that. It will be a government expense. It is well studied. Under existing guidelines, the right of way is not covered by ODA, so the government must pay.] For the first time since the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israeli border towns on Oct. 7, 2023, that left at least 1,200 people dead, the Israeli government agreed on Nov. 22 to suspend its air and ground campaign in Gaza for four days in exchange for the release of at least 50 hostages held by Hamas. That suspension has held. Nearly six weeks in the making, the cease-fire deal also calls for the release of 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. As of the morning of Nov. 27, 58 hostages held in Gaza have been released by Hamas, as well as 111 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel. Of the hostages, 40 were women and children. In a separate deal between Hamas and Egypt, 17 Thai hostages and one Filipino were also released. _ _The fate of the remaining hostages is still unclear. To make sense of the deal, The Conversation asked Gregory F. Treverton of USC Dornsife, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council in the Obama administration, to share his thoughts on what it means for the ongoing war in Gaza. Military goals unchanged The agreement between Israel and Hamas driven by U.S. pressure on Israel to exchange 50 hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners and to pause fighting for four days is surely a welcome break in a horrific war. Not least, it will permit food and fuel to enter a devastated Gaza. It does not, however, fundamentally change the awful geometry of the war: Netanyahu has pledged that Israel will continue the fight, and there seems little sign that Israel is any closer to a plan for what to do about Gaza or the Palestinians than when the war began. For its part, events have played out much as Hamas might have planned. They knew their barbarism on Oct. 7 would call forth a brutal Israeli response. Keren Shem, the mother of hostage Mia Shem, holds a photograph of her daughter as she speaks to the press in Tel Aviv on Oct. 17, 2023. Gil Cohen-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images Hamas knew, cynically, that the more Palestinians who were killed, the better for its cause. Global opinion would shift against Israel, and its American patron, and it has. And Hamas likely expected the Palestinian statehood issue, all but forgotten by the world, including the Arab world, would return to international prominence. In the process, Hamas probably anticipated it would, paradoxically, become more popular in Gaza, not less. A distant hope for lasting peace In the short run, the best that can be hoped is that this exchange and pause will be extended or be the first of more to come. Certainly, Israel has been under global and especially American pressure to agree to some pause, and the Netanyahu unity government has felt the heat, domestically, for seeming to disregard the hostages. In the longer run, after much more killing and suffering, the alternatives still remain dreary. Israel has no stomach for occupying Gaza and surely none for letting Hamas again pretend to govern. The Palestinian Authority remains corrupt, weak and inept in the eyes of those it governs, and as a result is a poor candidate to take on Gaza. The best hope is a distant one that some coalition of mostly Arab states but also perhaps including the U.S. could govern Gaza, perhaps exercising some tutelage over a reformed Palestinian Authority. But that is a long way off, and the hostage exchange and pause does not take the region or the world much closer to a lasting peace. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Gregory F. Treverton, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Read more: An 8-year-old Native American boy in Kansas was forced to cut his hair to comply with his elementary schools hair policy, according to the Kansas American Civil Liberties Union, which called the policy discriminatory. In a letter sent Friday to school officials with the Girard Unified School District in Girard, Kansas, and the R.V. Haderlein Elementary School, the ACLU demanded the school rescind its hair policy. The ACLU Kansas said it wants the school to immediately grant [the redacted students name] an accommodation allowing him to wear his hair below his shoulders in accordance with his cultural and religious traditions. According to the legal advocacy group, the boy is a member of the Wyandotte Nation, a federally recognized Native American Tribe based in Wyandotte, Oklahoma. The ACLU did not release the name of the child or his mother. In August, the boy was told to cut his hair and the following month his mother asked for an exemption because of his Native American heritage and spiritual beliefs, the ACLU wrote in the letter. Many men in the Wyandotte Nation only cut their hair when mourning the loss of a loved one, the letter said. The schools assistant principal sent an email to the boys mother saying the boys hair had to be cut, or he will be sent home, the ACLU said in its letter. According to the ACLU, the mother decided to cut the boys hair out of fear that her son would be reprimanded and to ensure he would be able to go to school, but the decision caused him distress. The Wyandotte Nation said in a statement shared with CNN that the school and school district should take a close look at its rule governing boys hair length in light of the unique history involving Native American children. For centuries, tribal people have faced a siege of cultural oppression. This oppression has taken many forms including, but not limited to, the forced cutting of Native American men and boys hair in order to impose conformity with dominant white culture and to stifle long-held religious and traditional Native American practices and beliefs, the tribe said. This is a culturally sensitive issue that brings to light historical traumas for many tribal nations, beyond our own, the tribe added, referencing when Indigenous children were sent to Indian residential boarding schools. We hope that a respectful, culturally informed discourse between the family and the school representatives will ultimately lead to a workable resolution. The R.V. Haderlein Elementary School student handbook has a policy specifically for male students hair that states, Hair is not to touch the collar of a crew neck t-shirt, cover the eyebrows, or extend below the earlobes. Ponytails, rat tails, or any other style that would circumvent the policy are not permitted. When asked about the schools policy and the letter from the ACLU, Girard USD Superintendent Todd Ferguson told CNN the district will review the policy. Nothing matters more to the USD 248 district and staff than creating a safe, respectful and caring school for every student. I am unable to comment on individual students, families or employees, due to confidentiality laws, Ferguson said in an email. I can share that the USD 248 Board of Education is planning to review and consider updates to the dress code policy when they meet on December 14th. Jennesa Calvo-Friedman, an ACLU attorney and co-author of the letter, told CNN she appreciates that the school board is going to consider updates to the policy. I hope that the school district changes the policy now and takes seriously the statement that a safe, respectful and caring environment for every student is important, Calvo-Friedman said. But also, nothing will sort of undo the fact that this little baby was forced to cut off his hair by the community that was supposed to be his own learning community. The ACLUs letter follows a recent series of incidents regarding hair policies in schools that advocates have called discriminatory. In Texas, a Black high school student was referred to alternative school last month over the length of his locs hairstyle, CNN previously reported. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com A bouncer partially caught on video during an altercation with a transgender woman at a NoDa restaurant was not certified to do security work and his company didnt have a license to operate as a security company. Gridiron Protection Services, hired by Billy Jacks Shack, has no record on file showing it ever applied for a license to do security work in North Carolina, according to the states Private Protective Services Board in Raleigh. While thats illegal, its a common and sometimes a dangerous problem with private security, making it a threat to public safety, Private Protective Services Director Paul Sherwin told The Charlotte Observer Tuesday. Lynette Matusik says she was the victim of a hate crime the night she visited the popular eatery on North Davidson Street. What was supposed to a night of revelry and conversation turned into a scuffle with a bouncer who used slurs against her, she said. Matsuik ended up with a black eye, while the bouncer told police she bit him in the thigh. Matusik captured the physical altercation on her Meta Smart Glasses and shared the video with news media, including The Observer and WCNC, which first reported the story on Sunday. Theyre not security, and Im not going to use that word, Matusik said. Billy Jacks Director of Operations Scott Krezmer confirmed that it used Gridiron as a security company. He declined to speak on what happened that night, citing an ongoing investigation. In a statement posted to social media Sunday, Billy Jacks said that the incident contradicts the very thing that the restaurant stands for. The restaurant has cut ties with its third-party security company, the statement said. Gridiron, based in Charlotte, did not respond to phone calls and emails from The Observer seeking comment. The states Private Protective Services Board also said it will conduct an investigation into Gridiron. A Night in NoDa Matusik went out for a casual night in NoDa on Friday, dropping into a few bars early into Saturday, she told The Observer. Her night out turned sour when she got to Billy Jacks Shack. A video that Matusik captured using her Meta Smart Glasses showed her sitting at the bar when a bouncer approached. Whoa, hey, get your hands off me, she said in the video. He removed her from the bar, and the two appeared to move to the ground. She told him she was recording. Lynette Matusik after her run-in with a bouncer who was working at a NoDa pub. I dont care, the bouncer responded in the video. Matusik asked: Why are you choking me? I asked you for your ID, the bouncer was heard saying before telling Matusik to leave. Matusik told The Observer that she never heard him ask for identification until that moment. The bouncer told Charlotte-Mecklenburg police that Matusik bit him on the thigh, according to an incident report. Its a claim she called ridiculous. Police charged her with simple assault. No other person had been charged as of Tuesday. Pictures of Matusik after the altercation show her with a black eye and bruising. The case ought to be investigated as a hate crime, she said. Matusik shared her video hoping that shedding light on this incident will spur a broader discussion on the safety and security measures, she wrote in an email. What security licensing means Not having a license to do security work means Gridirons employees never went through a state-sanctioned criminal background check or formal training, Sherwin said. The bouncer named in a CMPD incident report also had no registration, according to the Private Protective Services Board. Training to be a security guard isnt as intensive as police training. Even then, companies often dodge the training or dont realize theres a legal process, Sherwin said. Unarmed guards are supposed to go through a 16-hour course that covers fundamentals. That could include a security guards duties and responsibilities, what authority they have as guards and how to communicate with the public. Armed guards take that and another 20-hour course that dives deeper into use of force, the law and weapons handling. As police departments are stretched thin, businesses increasingly rely on private security, Sherwin added. Since October 2021, the board says it has investigated 74 North Carolina security companies for being unlicensed. There were six investigations in Charlotte. Some of them are these fly-by-night companies that either intentionally ignore their requirements to comply with the law, or theyre unaware of it, Sherwin said. Either way, theyre not doing the right thing. The North Carolina Democratic Party distanced itself Wednesday from comments made by a progressive party leader, and called for the recently created Jewish Caucus to get a formal status within the party that was denied just last week by its executive committee. In a statement released on X, formerly Twitter, NCDP spokesman Tommy Mattocks said party leadership believes in creating safe spaces for our many constituency communities to organize so that they may advocate for the elected officials and policies that most-impact their lives and their beliefs. Mattocks said that procedural issues led to many of the no votes that were cast on Nov. 12, when the partys executive committee voted 17-16 to reject recognition for the Jewish Caucus, according to a vote count reported by Jewish Insider. Sixteen other members of the committee voted to abstain, including NCDP Chair Anderson Clayton and all three of the partys vice-chairs. Despite the vote failing, Mattocks said, the party remains committed to helping the Jewish Caucus achieve recognition under the NCDP. NCDP says progressive leader doesnt speak for party In the statement, the party also distanced itself from controversial comments made last week by Ryan Jenkins, president of the partys Progressive Caucus, saying that Jenkins doesnt speak for the party and his comments about what happened during the Nov. 12 vote were not an accurate depiction of what occurred. Speaking to WFAE, Jenkins said members of the Jewish Caucus had done nothing but whine and play the victim and attack people, and claimed that each of the 16 votes to abstain was a no vote that didnt want to get targeted. Jenkins told WFAE that many progressive party members dont want the Jewish Caucus to be affiliated with the party, and that if the party ended up accepting the caucus, progressive members could boycott the 2024 election. If the Democratic Party caves to it, thats the end of the Democratic Party. Were not Democrats, were the Jewish Caucus. Were a Zionist group. Because they control everything, Jenkins went on to say, according to WFAE. (If we approve the caucus), were telling them very clearly they are allowed to threaten and bully us and they will get their way every single time and that our rules dont apply. The comments received attention on social media last week, and Jenkins apologized on Saturday, telling WFAE he realized he chose my words poorly and should have been more exact, and was sorry if anyone misinterpreted what he said as playing to antisemitic tropes about secret cabals and other racist nonsense. Internal complaint over Islamophobic comments The controversy over the Jewish Caucus being passed up for formal affiliation, and Jenkins comments, is the latest flare-up in the N.C. Democratic Party over how the party has responded to allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia within its own ranks. Recent tensions between party caucuses over Israel and Palestinians have been brewing for several months, and have seemed to grow in light of the unprecedented terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas last month, and the subsequent military response that has left thousands dead in Gaza. In March, Nazim Uddin, a member of the partys Asian-American Pacific Islander Caucus, filed a complaint against Matt Sadinsky, the former head of the Jewish Caucus, and other members, for what he said was derogatory and Islamophobic language. Specifically, Uddin said he had a recording of a phone call between Sadinsky and Jenkins, in which Sadinsky called Uddin a Nazi and said he wouldnt be surprised if Uddin was an Iranian spy sent to undermine American democracy. Uddin and Jenkins also claimed that Sadinsky repeatedly pronounced Uddins first name Nazim as Nazi-em. In an interview with The Charlotte Observer last month, Sadinsky denied saying those things. Uddin, meanwhile, told the Observer he had lost faith in the partys ability to mediate a resolution to his complaint, and said the party could not be a party that turns a blind eye to blatant racism, bigotry and Islamophobia. The complaint was ultimately resolved last month, according to Jewish Insider, nearly eight months after it was first submitted. Congressional Democrats urge party to recognize Jewish Caucus The tensions within the party mirror similar dynamics that have played out among Democrats nationally. At the same time, Republicans have drawn attention to the controversy over the Jewish Caucus not being recognized to accuse the NCDP of antisemitism. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has in the past made antisemitic remarks himself, and is the presumed GOP frontrunner for governor, said the failed vote was another sad example of North Carolina Democrats refusing to stand with Israel and the Jewish people against terrorism. After the vote, several Democratic members of North Carolinas congressional delegation, including U.S. Reps. Kathy Manning, Wiley Nickel, Deborah Ross, and Jeff Jackson, said they were disappointed by the vote, and called on the party to address the issue and recognize the caucus as soon as possible, according to Jewish Insider. On Wednesday, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, who is his partys presumed frontrunner for governor, told The N&O he had met with Clayton, the party chair, to express my disappointment with the results of the vote and to find a path forward. In a statement, Stein said the party must embrace North Carolina Jewish Democrats who feel isolated during a time of rising antisemitism and come together to focus on our priority defeating Mark Robinson, who has a well-documented history of antisemitic comments. Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israeli strikes on a house in Rafah Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israeli strikes on a house in Rafah (Reuters) -Hamas fighters released a first wave of 24 hostages including Israeli women and children and Thai farm workers under a truce deal that saw guns fall silent across the Gaza Strip for the first time in seven weeks, with more hostages set to freed. The following is a timeline of the war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. Oct. 7: Hamas gunmen launch a surprise attack on southern Israel, crossing over from Gaza and rampaging through towns. Israel says the gunmen kill 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and take more than 240 hostages. Hamas military commander Mohammad Deif announces on Hamas media that the attack has started and urges Palestinians everywhere to fight. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is "at war" and retaliatory air strikes against Hamas-run Gaza begin, along with a total siege of the narrow coastal enclave squeezed between Israel and Egypt. Oct. 13: Israel tells residents of Gaza City, where more than 1 million of the enclave's 2.3 million people live, to evacuate and move south. Gaza remains closed and residents say they have nowhere to go after southern parts of the Strip are bombarded. Oct. 17: An explosion at al-Ahli al-Arabi Baptist hospital in Gaza City causes heavy casualties and triggers outrage in the Arab world. Palestinians blame the blast on an Israeli air strike but Israel says it was caused by a misfiring Palestinian rocket launch. The health ministry in Gaza says 471 people were killed. Israel disputes this figure and an unclassified U.S. intelligence report estimates the death toll "at the low end of the 100 to 300 spectrum". Oct. 18: U.S. President Joe Biden visits the Middle East to show support for Israel and try to prevent a wider regional conflict. He ascribes the hospital blast to an errant rocket fired by Gaza militants. Arab leaders respond to the deaths at the hospital, which they blame on Israel, by cancelling a summit with Biden in Jordan. Oct. 20: Hamas releases two American hostages - Judith Tai Raanan, 59, and her daughter Natalie, 17. The women were taken from Nahal Oz kibbutz in southern Israel. Oct. 21: Aid trucks are allowed through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into Gaza after days of diplomatic wrangling. It is only a small fraction of what is required in Gaza, where food, water, medicines and fuel are running out. Oct. 23: Hamas releases two more hostages, elderly Israelis Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz, "on humanitarian and poor health grounds". The two women were kidnapped from Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel with their husbands, who are still held by Hamas. As she is freed, Lifshitz shakes hands with one of the militants and says "shalom" (peace). Oct. 26: Israeli forces carry out their biggest raid into Gaza so far, with tanks and infantry hitting infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts. Oct. 27: Israel's chief military spokesperson says Israeli ground forces are expanding their operations inside Gaza, signalling the start of a ground offensive. Oct. 28: Netanyahu says Israeli forces have begun the second phase of the war and says Israel will "destroy the enemy above ground and below ground". He tells Israelis to expect a "long and hard" military campaign. Oct. 31: Israeli air strikes hit Gaza's densely populated Jabalia refugee camp. Israel says it has killed a Hamas commander. Palestinian health officials say the strike killed about 50 people and wounded 150. Nov. 1: Evacuations from Gaza begin through the Rafah crossing for an estimated 7,000 foreign passport holders, dual nationals and their dependents, and people needing urgent medical treatment. Nov. 6: U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres says Gaza is becoming a "graveyard for children", and demands a ceasefire. Palestinian health authorities say the death toll from Israeli strikes has exceeded 10,000. Nov. 13: Israeli tanks advance on Gaza City's Al Shifa hospital, with some 650 patients still inside. Israel says the hospital sits atop tunnels housing a headquarters for Hamas fighters using patients as shields, which Hamas denies. Nov. 15: Israeli special forces enter Al Shifa Hospital and search the site, which covers more than 20 acres, with patients still inside. They initially uncover only a small collection of weapons but in the following days find the entrance to a concrete-walled tunnel and show footage of what they say is a 55-metre section, 10 metres underground. Charges of war crimes are exchanged on both sides, with Palestinians accusing Israel of targeting civilians and Israel saying militant groups use civilians as human shields. Nov. 21: Israel and Hamas announce agreement on a four-day pause in fighting. Netanyahu's office says 50 women and children will be released and that the pause will be extended by another day for every additional 10 hostages released. Hamas says the 50 hostages will be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children detainees in Israel, and that humanitarian, medical and fuel aid will be allowed into Gaza. Palestinian health authorities say Israel's bombardment has killed about 14,000 Gazans, roughly 40% of them children. Nov. 24: Hamas releases 24 hostages who are handed over at the Rafah border crossing - 13 Israelis, plus 10 Thais and a Filipino. The Israeli hostages included four children accompanied by four family members, and five other elderly women. Thirty-nine Palestinian women and children detainees are released from Israeli jails as part of the deal. More Israeli hostages are due to be freed on Nov. 25. (Compiled by Alexandra Hudson, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Mark Potter) Jason Greenberg in Needham, Massachusetts, might be far from the front lines of the war between Israel and Hamas. But his family is right in the middle of it. Three of his cousins are now hostages of Hamas. They were captured from a kibbutz during the October 7th attacks. No one has heard from them since then. It is agonizing. On a moment-to-moment basis. And its more than six weeks since their abduction, Greenberg said. On October 7th, Jason Greenberg was in Israel, north of Tel Aviv, visiting family when Hamas launched its attacks. Two other cousins, 80-year-old Carmela Dan, and 13-year-old Noya Dan were killed. Greenbergs cousins: Ofer and his two children, 16-year-old Shahar and 12-year-old Erez are believed to be alive. From what he understands about the terms of release, women, children, and the elderly only, Greenbergs cousins may be separated from their father. Right now, Greenberg is waiting to find out which hostages will be released. My hope is 50 families will be able to welcome home their relatives, their loved ones, and if Im able to be one of those 50 that will be amazing, Greenberg said. No matter what happens, this Thanksgiving holiday will be bittersweet for Jason Greenberg and his family. But he remains optimistic Im thankful for the return of the first set of hostages. And my hope all is all 50 will be able to be returned over the next four days and that more will be able to come home after that, Greenberg said. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW BRANDYWINE, Md. (DC News Now) Police said that a man accused of killing his uncle in Prince Georges County was found dead in New Jersey. The Prince Georges County Police Department (PGPD) said that officers responded to the 15000 block of Brandywine Rd. on Nov. 20 around 11:50 p.m. for a shooting. They found 62-year-old Lewis Parker Sr., who had been shot inside a home. Responders took him to the hospital, where he died. Head-on collision between trash truck, car in Montgomery County; people taken to hospital PGPD investigators later identified his nephew as the suspect in the shooting and got an arrest warrant for him. Officials said that on Tuesday, they were informed that the nephew had died from what is believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Police still were working to determine a motive in the shooting. Anyone with any information should call police at (301) 516-2512. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will be allowed to visit hostages held by Hamas in Gaza as part of Israels temporary ceasefire agreement with the terror group, Benjamin Netanyahu has said. Fifty of the 240 hostages kept captive by Hamas are expected to be released over a four-day period under the deal, in exchange for the freeing of 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. There will also be a pause in fighting, which is expected to start tomorrow at 10am. Mr Netanyahu said that the deal allows for representatives of the ICRC to tend to those who will continue to be held in Gaza. I expect the Red Cross to do its job, and to visit them all and to bring them the medication that they need, he said during a press conference on Wednesday evening. The ICRC has not yet confirmed Mr Netanyahus claim but had earlier said it was ready to facilitate the release of the hostages. The hostages are expected to be transported to Israel through Egypt, the only other country to share a border with the Gaza Strip. 09:56 PM GMT Thats all for today Thank you for following our live coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. The key developments from the day were the following: The process of recovering 50 Israeli hostages is due to begin tomorrow, and the four-day ceasefire is expected to start at 10am. Israel will not notify the families of hostages due to be released by Hamas until they are out of Gaza. The White House hopes several hundred more aid trucks carrying food, water and medicine will reach Gaza in the coming days, amid the conflict with Israel, national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Wednesday. Israels Supreme Court has rejected a legal challenge to the hostage deal, which will also see 150 Palestinians held in Israeli jails released. The head of the United Nations childrens agency has called the besieged Gaza Strip the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. 09:40 PM GMT Pictured: Palestinian ambulances in Gaza A convoy of Palestinian ambulances waits on a road leading to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City - RONEN ZVULUN 09:30 PM GMT Families won't be notified until hostages leave Gaza Israel will not notify the families of hostages due to be released by Hamas until they are out of Gaza, a senior Israeli official has said. The decision has been taken amid concerns that Hamas may not free the specific hostages it committed to release under the deal reached on Wednesday, the Times of Israel reported, citing the unnamed official. The agreement which will see a four-day pause in fighting, and 50 Israeli hostages released in batches in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails will take effect from 10am tomorrow. After being returned to Israel, the hostages will be immediately flown to hospitals, the official said. The International Committee of the Red Cross has said it is ready to facilitate the release of the hostages. They are expected to be transported to Israel through Egypt, the only other country to share a border with the Gaza Strip. 09:17 PM GMT Netanyahu says hostage deal does not include 'release of murderers' The hostage deal does not include the release of murderers, Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday, according to CNN. Most Israelis have welcomed the agreement, but there has been concern from some that perpetrators of fatal attacks on Israelis could be among the list of Palestinians set to be released as part of the trade. 08:56 PM GMT Pictured: Israeli soldiers in 'terror tunnel' Israeli soldiers in a tunnel underneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City - RONEN ZVULUN 08:29 PM GMT White House hopes hundreds of aid trucks will reach Gaza in coming days The White House hopes several hundred more aid trucks carrying food, water and medicine will reach Gaza in the coming days, amid the conflict with Israel, national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Wednesday. 08:17 PM GMT Gallant: Israel 'slowly but surely' dismantling Hamas Yoav Gallant, Israeli defence minister, has told a press conference that Israel is slowly but surely dismantling the military framework of Hamas. The defence minister said he recommended to the Israeli parliament that the armed forces should go further into Gaza to show Hamas the powers of Israels military and rescue hostages. He says that he sincerely hopes that the hostage release agreement will be actually executed. 08:02 PM GMT Netanyahu holds press conference about hostage deal Benjamin Netanyahu is speaking now live on TV at a press conference to talk about the hostage deal. He also said he is still working to get an agreement to release all, and I mean all hostages held by Hamas. Discussing his conversations with the families of the hostages, he said: I heard about the constant fearthe constant terror, the suffering and anxiety, he said. He also said the Red Cross will be allowed to visit the remaining hostages in Gaza. 07:32 PM GMT Israeli military reiterates it is still at war with Hamas Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, has reiterated that the planned upcoming ceasefire is an operational pause only. Israel is still at war with Hamas, Hagari told a news conference on Tuesday evening. He said that the IDF was committed to bringing every hostage home. The Hamas massacre of October 7 was a genocidal attack, Hagari said. 07:30 PM GMT Biden calls Qatari emir to thank him for mediation US President Joe Biden called Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to thank him for mediation between Israel and Hamas that resulted in a truce, the emirs press office said on Wednesday. 07:22 PM GMT Yemen's Houthis launch missiles towards military posts in Israel's Eilat Yemens Houthis have launched a number of missiles towards military posts in Israels Eilat, the groups spokesman said in a post on X on Wednesday, which was reported by Reuters. 07:17 PM GMT Israels Supreme Court rejects legal challenge to hostage deal Israels Supreme Court has rejected a legal challenge to the hostage deal. The Almagor association, which was set up in 1986 to represent victims of terror, had claimed that the governments decision, intensified the risk of the recurrence of serious acts of terrorism to which all the citizens and residents of the country are exposed. Almagor had asked the Supreme Court to annul the governments decision [and] order [the government] to discuss again the terms of the deal with Hamas, according to information released by the Court. The Court said it rejected the petition outright on the grounds that the hostage deal is a clear political issue to which this court does not consider its involvement as necessary. 06:34 PM GMT Pictured: Explosions as fighting commences Smoke trails left by rockets fired towards Israel by Hamas fighters in north Gaza - John MACDOUGALL / AFP Israeli air strikes over Gaza this evening - REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko An Israeli air strike in Gaza, as seen from southern Israel - REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko 06:27 PM GMT France calls for EU sanctions against Hamas officials France wants the European Union to impose sanctions against top Hamas leaders, a senior French official said Wednesday. France is pushing for sanctions at the European level against senior Hamas figures, individually, because for the moment ... the European Union only condemns the organisation as a whole, Laurence Boone, secretary of state for European affairs, told AFP on the sidelines of an international meeting in Madrid. The idea would be to specifically target certain individuals with mainly financial sanctions such as an asset freeze, she added without specifying who should be targeted. 05:50 PM GMT Switzerland set to ban Hamas The Swiss government has decided to draft a law explicitly banning Hamas activities or support for the Palestinian terror group. The ban has the sole aim of preventing the terrorist activities of this organisation, and the people who support them, Justice Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider told a press conference. She said banning Hamas would make it easier to expel dangerous people and speed up criminal proceedings against potential terrorists. The act, to be drafted by the end of February, is aimed at giving Swiss authorities the tools to counter Hamas activities or support for the group within Switzerland, AFP reported. 05:44 PM GMT Netanyahu and members of war cabinet to hold news conference Wednesday Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the war cabinet will hold a news conference at 7:15 pm (9:15 pm local time) Wednesday in Tel Aviv, according to the prime ministers office. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and former Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who are members of the emergency war cabinet, are expected to be among those at the conference. 04:56 PM GMT Pictured: Israeli soldiers reposition Israeli soldiers reposition in an area in Southern Israel near the Gaza Strip - JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images 04:55 PM GMT Major NGOs call for longer truce Humanitarian and human rights organisations have said a four-day truce in the Israel-Hamas war was too short and called for more time to deliver vital aid to the Gaza Strip. Paul OBrien, from Amnesty International USA, said on a conference call of major non-governmental organisations that the four-day truce was not enough and its certainly not enough in human rights terms. 04:28 PM GMT Dispute erupts over whether Pope called Gaza situation a 'genocide' A dispute has broken out over whether Pope Francis used the word genocide to describe events in Gaza, with Palestinians who met with him insisting that he did and the Vatican saying he did not, Reuters has reported. The opposing versions emerged at an afternoon press conference with 10 Palestinians who met the Pope on Wednesday morning at his Vatican residence. That meeting followed a separate one with Israeli relatives of hostages in Gaza. When we shared the stories of the families that have been killed (in Gaza) he mentioned I see the genocide, said Shireen Awwad Hilal, who teaches at the Bethlehem Bible College. It was very clear, the word genocide did not come from us. It came from His Holiness, Pope Francis, she said. Palestinians who have relatives in Gaza speak to media after meeting Pope Francis in Rome - GUGLIELMO MANGIAPANE/Reuters But a statement sent by Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, in response to a question texted by a reporter, said the opposite. I am not aware that he (the Pope) used such a word. He used terms that he expressed during the general audience and words that in any case represent the terrible situation that is being lived out in Gaza, Brunis statement said. 04:10 PM GMT UN says Gaza world's 'most dangerous place' for children The head of the United Nations childrens agency has called the besieged Gaza Strip the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. UNICEFs executive director Catherine Russell said over 5,300 children have reportedly been killed in Gaza since Hamas October 7 attack on Israel, accounting for 40 percent of the deaths. This is unprecedented, saidMs Russell, who had just returned from a trip to southern Gaza. I am haunted by what I saw and heard. Palestinian children wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are treated at al Aqsa Hospital on Deir al Balah - Marwan Saleh/AP 03:59 PM GMT Pictured: IDF investigating Hamas tunnels An image from the IDF claiming to show the 'terror tunnels' in Gaza - IDF The IDF has said the 'terror tunnels' run underground houses, schools, hospitals and cemeteries - IDF 03:53 PM GMT Cameron meets counterparts from Arab and Islamic countries British foreign minister David Cameron has met his counterparts from Arab and Islamic countries in London to discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict. We discussed how to use this step forward to think about the future and how we can build a peaceful future which provides security for Israel but also peace and stability for the Palestinian people, Cameron said in a statement. Foreign Ministers from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey, Indonesia and Nigeria, as well as the Secretary General of the League of Arab States and Ambassador of Qatar attended the meeting, Britain said. Lord Cameron welcomes Arab and Islamic counterparts to Lancaster House - Dan Kitwood/PA Wire 03:39 PM GMT Israeli army says intercepts cruise missile The Israeli military has said it intercepted a cruise missile fired towards the south of the country. After reports of an infiltration by a hostile aircraft near the southern Red Sea resort of Eilat, an Israeli fighter jet successfully intercepted a cruise missile that was launched toward Israel, it said in a statement. No infiltration into Israeli territory was identified, the military added. Yemens Huthi rebels, who have declared themselves part of the axis of resistance of Irans allies and proxies, have fired a series of drones and missiles towards Israel since the Gaza war erupted on October 7. 03:27 PM GMT South Africa hopes Gaza truce bolsters efforts to end conflict South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has welcomed the four-day agreement and said he hoped the deal would bolster efforts to achieve an outright end to the conflict. Mr Ramaphosa has been one of the most prominent voices on the African continent on the brutal war between Israel and Hamas. South Africas strong support for Palestinians dates back to former President Nelson Mandelas days, with the country likening their plight to its own before the end of apartheid in 1994. Israel rejects the comparison. It is my hope that the achievement of this pause will strengthen efforts to achieve an outright end to the current conflict, Mr Ramaphosa said in a statement, reported by Reuters. He said there needed to be a durable political resolution in the Middle East. 03:14 PM GMT Saudi foreign ministers cautiously welcomes the agreement Saudis foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, was cautious in response to the Israel-Hamas deal. Its good news.. but only one step in the right direction, he said, speaking at a press conference in London. He added: We hope it can be a basis for extended pauses which lead to a ceasefire. Speaking at a news conference, he said they had been tasked to convey a message to the world the violence in Gaza must stop immediately, the BBC reported. 02:52 PM GMT Israeli army says intercepts cruise missile fired at southern Israel The Israeli military on Wednesday said it intercepted a cruise missile fired towards the south of the country. After reports of an infiltration by a hostile aircraft near the southern Red Sea resort of Eilat, an Israeli fighter jet successfully intercepted a cruise missile that was launched toward Israel, it said in a statement. 02:31 PM GMT 284 patients evacuated to Egypt since fighting began Gaza has evacuated 284 patients to Egypt since Israel launched attacks on the enclave following the October 7 massacre, according to Egyptian government press office director Ayman Walash. He added that 2,222 tons of medical aid had been delivered via the Rafah crossing, as well as 6,063 tons of food, 4,625 tons of water, and 1,407 tons of other aid. Since November 21, 378 tons of fuel have been delivered. 02:15 PM GMT Switzerland looks to ban Hamas The Swiss government announced Wednesday it would bring forward a draft law by the end of February explicitly banning Hamas activities or support for the Palestinian militant group within Switzerland. The Federal Council decided to draft a federal act banning Hamas, considering this to be the most appropriate response to the situation that has prevailed in the Middle East since October 7, the government said in a statement. The act will provide the federal authorities with the necessary tools to counter any Hamas activities or support for the organisation in Switzerland. The Swiss government also called for respect for international humanitarian law and particularly the protection of civilians in Gaza. 01:58 PM GMT Hostage exchange to be repeated later this month The Israel-Hamas deal agreed on Wednesday for the freeing of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners will be repeated later this month, a Palestinian official told Reuters. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that would mean a total release of 100 of the around 240 people Hamas seized on October 7. In return, Israel would free a total of 300 Palestinian prisoners in the two exchanges - a number corresponding to a list of women and teenaged male inmates it published on Wednesday as candidates. The second batch will follow the first batch. They would need four or five days to organise it will involve 50 Israeli (hostages) in return for 150 Palestinian (prisoners), the Palestinian official said. He said the prisoners would include elderly, women and children and the conditions will be the same. Israeli officials did not immediately confirm this. But Israel has offered, in a cabinet statement, to extend the pause by a day for every additional 10 hostages handed over by Hamas. 01:43 PM GMT Pictured: Israeli soldiers repair equipment in southern Gaza Israeli soldiers repair tank tracks near the Gaza Strip in Southern Israel - JACK GUEZ / AFP 01:27 PM GMT Jeremy Hunt announces funds to combat antisemitism Jeremy Hunt expressed his horror in parliament today at the October 7 massacre and loss of life on both sides since then. The chancellor also announced additional funds to fight antisemitism. He said: I am deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in our country, so I am announcing up to 7m over the next three years for organisations like the Holocaust Educational Trust to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities. I will also repeat the 3m uplift to the Community Security Trust. When it comes to antisemitism and all forms of racism, we must never allow the clock to be turned back. 01:16 PM GMT Syria's two main airports still shut month after Israeli strikes Syrias two main airports are still shut a month after simultaneous Israeli strikes put them out of service - the longest such closure since the Syrian conflict began, a war monitor said Wednesday. Flights to and from Damascus and Aleppo airports have been suspended since the October 22 strikes damaged the runways. Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said both airports are closed despite the completion of repair works. Syrian authorities did not respond to an AFP request for comment on the extended closures. Since Syrias conflict began in 2011 after the government repressed pro-democracy protests, Israel has repeatedly targeted Damascus airport, but this is the first time the countrys main such facility has been shut for a month, Abdel Rahman added. 01:05 PM GMT IDF will implement 'operational pause' rather than ceasefire The Israeli Defence Forces will be implementing an operational pause rather than a ceasefire, a spokesperson has said. Our terminology is not ceasefire, our terminology is an operational pause, Lt Col Richard Hecht, the IDFs international spokesperson, told a briefing. He added that the IDF was still waiting on the final details of the agreement and that he could not confirm when the fighting would stop or how it would operate. We still havent got the nitty gritty of this framework, he said. We still have probably, maybe a day-plus before this thing matures, and things can happen in that day. And I assume today is going to be a day of fighting in Gaza. 12:56 PM GMT Israel launches strikes on Damascus, says Syria The Syrian Army has accused Israel of launching aerial strikes on outposts in the vicinity of Damascus. Syrian state television said the countrys air defences shot down one of two missiles launched from the Golan Heights. There were no casualties or damage, the Syrian Army added. The IDF declined to comment. 12:43 PM GMT Maldives considers banning Israeli tourists The Maldives could ban Israeli tourists from visiting the tropical Indian Ocean island. An MP in the Muslim-majority country has proposed a bill that would stop holidaymakers from Israel visiting. The two countries have never had diplomatic relations. 12:33 PM GMT SNP urges PM to call for permanent ceasefire The SNP urged the Prime Minister to call for a permanent ceasefire in the Middle East now that a humanitarian pause had been brokered. SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn told the Commons: I think all of us in the chamber are united in our relief at reports that hostages are due to be release by Hamas in Gaza, but we cant afford to lose sight of what comes at the other side of the temporary pause in hostilities that we are about to see. At the end of four days do we simply see the return to the killing of children in Gaza every 10 minutes? Or do we choose in this House to instead back a permanent ceasefire? Rishi Sunak replied: Of course we want to see all hostages released as quickly as possible, including British nationals, and I would urge all parties involved to deliver the agreement in full. The Prime Minister thanked Qatar for its role in the negotiations, and said the UK would maximise the opportunity of this temporary pause to step up aid to suffering civilians in Gaza. 12:25 PM GMT Sunak welcomes ceasefire as 'crucial step' Rishi Sunak welcomed the humanitarian paused agreed in the Israel-Hamas conflict as a crucial step towards ending the nightmare for the families of those taken hostage. The Prime Minister told the Commons: We welcome the agreement reached overnight for a humanitarian pause in Gaza. This is something that we have consistently pushed for and is a crucial steps towards ending the nightmare for families of those taken hostage in Hamass terror attack and also addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. 12:12 PM GMT UN welcomes Israel-Hamas deal as 'important step' The United Nations on Wednesday welcomed the deal between Israel and Hamas, but said much more needed to be done. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres welcomes the agreement reached by Israel and Hamas, with the mediation of Qatar supported by Egypt and the United States, a spokesman for Guterres said in a statement. This is an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done, they added. 12:01 PM GMT Eight killed in US airstrike in Iraq At least eight pro-Iranian fighters were killed by US strikes in Iraq today, according to the Iraqi group. The United States said the strikes were in response to attacks on their troops. The Hezbollah Brigades, a pro-Iran group within Iraqs Hashed al-Shaabi, said that the US bombardment left eight martyrs and will not go unpunished. 11:49 AM GMT Ceasefire to begin at 10am tomorrow, according to reports A temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is expected to begin tomorrow at 10am local time (8am GMT), according to Hamas officials. 11:39 AM GMT More than 1,000 wounded arrive at Kamal Adwan hospital overnight More than 60 dead and 1,000 wounded people have arrived at Kamal Adwan hospital since last night, the hospitals director has claimed. Ahmed al-Kahlout told Al Jazeera: Shelling and bombardment are increasing everywhere in the vicinity of the hospital. A lot of buildings have been badly affected. We need to keep in mind this hospital is now only one operating hospital from Wadi Gaza to northern Gaza. The medical teams are very tired. We dont have a single drop of fuel. We work in the dark using handheld searchlights. The reports have not been independently verified. 11:19 AM GMT Israeli troops display flag in Gaza Israeli troops have been photographed displaying the flag of the Israel Border Police inside of Gaza. Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who yesterday cautioned against Israel striking any deal with Hamas, shared the imagine on X. He wrote: The flag of the Border Guard is raised proudly in the heart of Gaza in memory of the soldiers of the Border Guard who fell. Keep yourselves heroes, eliminate as many enemies as possible and return to us in peace. - ". , pic.twitter.com/u14AjijTyq (@itamarbengvir) November 22, 2023 10:54 AM GMT Arab ministers welcome truce Arab foreign ministers welcomed an agreement for a temporary truce but said it should be extended and become a first step toward a full cessation of hostilities. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan said at a roundtable discussion with journalists in London that the agreement, which includes hostage releases and stepped-up aid into the devastated Gaza Strip, should also ultimately lead to a resumption of talks for a two-state solution. The Arab foreign ministers are leading a so-called contact group of mostly Muslim countries which are lobbying Israels major allies to bring about an end to the Gaza war. 10:40 AM GMT Erdogan may visit Egypt to discuss Gaza patients President Tayyip Erdogan said he may travel to Egypt soon and discuss how to accelerate the evacuation of patients from Gaza and other steps, broadcaster Haberturk and other Turkish media reported on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Algeria, Erdogan was reported as saying the Islamic world must act in a spirit of unity and solidarity on Gaza, and that Israel must be forced to comply with international law and give account of its actions in Gaza. 10:33 AM GMT Hostage recovery to begin tomorrow The process of recovering Israeli hostages is due to begin tomorrow, according to the countrys foreign minister. 10:25 AM GMT At least 400 Hamas tunnel shafts destroyed At least 400 tunnel shafts have been destroyed by Israeli troops in Gaza since the beginning of the ground offensive last month. Soldiers from the Israeli Defence Forces elite Yahalom combat engineering unit have played a key role, the IDF said. Entrances to the tunnels have been uncovered embedded in civilian infrastructure, including inside hospitals, schools, residential buildings and other sites. Israel has used the discoveries to bolster their claims that Hamas has used the Palestinian population as human shields. 10:12 AM GMT Patients evacuated from al-Shifa Hospital Patients are being evacuated from al-Shifa Hospital by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. They have dispatched 14 ambulances, accompanied by the UN and Doctors Without Borders. Kidney patients will be transferred to Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, while those injured by Israeli strikes will be transferred to the European hospital south of Khan Younis. 10:05 AM GMT Macron welcomes ceasefire deal French President Emmanuel Macron has welcomed the agreement between Hamas and Israel. We are working non-stop so that all the hostages are freed, he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. The French presidency did not return requests for a comment on French media reports that three French hostages could be liberated initially. 09:43 AM GMT IDF continues operations in Gaza The Israeli Defence Forces are continuing operations in Gaza as a ceasefire looms on the horizon. IDF activity in Gaza - IDF IDF activity in Gaza - IDF 09:39 AM GMT Israeli strikes target Hezbollah Israeli fighter jets are carrying out strikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, according to the Israeli Defence Forces. The IDF said that the targets include a military compound where terrorists had convened, alongside other infrastructure. The strikes follow rising tensions along the border and repeated attacks by Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions. 09:21 AM GMT Conflict between Israel and Hamas has gone beyond war to 'terrorism', Pope says Pope Francis on Wednesday met separately with Israeli relatives of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians with family in Gaza and said the conflict had gone beyond war to become terrorism. Speaking in unscripted remarks at his Wednesday general audience in St. Peters Square shortly after the early morning meetings in his residence, Francis said he heard directly how both sides are suffering. 09:13 AM GMT Six Palestinians killed in Israeli strike on West Bank Six Palestinians were killed on Wednesday in Tolkurm camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement. The Palestinians were targeted in an Israeli drone strike, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported earlier on Wednesday. Another Palestinian was killed by Israeli forces near the city of Qalqilia, WAFA said, raising the number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday to seven. 09:05 AM GMT Senior Palestinian official welcomes truce deal The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday welcomed a humanitarian truce agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, a senior Palestinian official said. President Mahmud Abbas and the leadership welcome the humanitarian truce agreement, value the Qatari-Egyptian effort made and reaffirm the call for a comprehensive cessation of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the entry of humanitarian aid, senior official Hussein al-Sheikh wrote on X, formerly Twitter. 08:53 AM GMT Injured Palestinians fill hospitals Palestinians injured as a result of the attacks of the Israeli army are being taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for treatment in Deir al-Balah, Gaza. An injured child is seen as a result of the attacks of the Israeli army at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza - Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images Palestinians, including children injured as a result of the attacks of the Israeli army are being taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for treatment in Deir al-Balah, Gaza - Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images 08:41 AM GMT Jordan hopes Gaza truce will be a step to end the war Jordan said on Wednesday it hoped the Gaza truce would be a step that would end the war in Gaza and prevent the targeting of Palestinians and their displacement from their land. In a statement on state media, the foreign ministry said it hoped the four-day pause will allow much-needed humanitarian aid. 08:33 AM GMT Almagor Terror Victims Association to petition Israeli high court The Almagor Terror Victims Association is set to file a petition against the hostage and ceasefire deal in Israels high court at noon today. In a letter to Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Almagor founder Meir Indoor said: Almagor demands to see the list of prisoners Israel is considering releasing as part of the deal. The organisation also demands to see all details of the commitments Israel is making to Hamas regarding restrictions on combat during the ceasefire period, including the cessation of intelligence gathering, as well as the delivery of fuel and other supplies which may help Hamas conduct terror operations against residents of Israel. Additionally, they call on justice minister Yariv Levin to disclose the general commitments Israel is making to Hamas that have been given directly or through a third party. 08:07 AM GMT Israeli operations in Gaza continue Operations by the Israeli Defence Forces are ongoing in Gaza, with strikes being carried out against infrastructure and ground clashes with Hamas fighters. The 7th Armored Brigade called in a number of airstrikes overnight, the IDF said, adding that the attacks were against sites where gunfire was directed at troops. Sheikh Zaid, near Jabaliya, was raided by troops from the Givati Infantry Brigade and a number of Hamas observation posts were destroyed. Several Hamas terrorists were killed as the Harel Armored Reserve Brigade struck Hamas tunnel infrastructure in northern Gaza, the IDF added. A building in northern Gaza sheltering Hamas operatives and weapons was also destroyed by the 261st Reserve Brigade, killing those inside. 07:55 AM GMT Iran's foreign minister starts regional tour Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian is starting a regional tour following the announcement of the truce, the Nournews agency affiliated to Irans top security body reported on Wednesday. The visit is in line with Irans diplomatic efforts to halt the Zionist regimes attacks on Gaza, lift the blockade and send humanitarian aid to the oppressed people of Gaza, Nournews said. Amirabdollahian will travel to Lebanon today. 07:41 AM GMT Ceasefire is 'crucial step', says Lord Cameron Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron said the temporary ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was a crucial step. Hamas will release dozens of hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Lord Cameron said: This agreement is a crucial step towards providing relief to the families of the hostages and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. I urge all parties to ensure the agreement is delivered in full. Of course, we want to see all hostages released immediately and families affected by the horrors of the October 7th terror attack reunited. This pause provides an important opportunity to ensure much greater volumes of food, fuel and other life-saving aid can reach Gaza on a sustained basis. We have already doubled our aid commitment to Palestinians this year and will work closely with the UN to ensure it reaches those who need it. The UK will continue to work with all partners in the region to secure the release of all hostages, restore security and reach a long-term political solution which enables both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace. 07:30 AM GMT At least 53 journalists killed in conflict At least 53 journalists have been killed in the conflict since October 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The total includes 46 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese, the CPJ said. A reporter and photojournalist working for Lebanese media outlet Al Mayadeen are the most recent deaths. They were killed on Tuesday during Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, where tensions have flared in recent weeks. The CPJ said that the conflict has been the deadliest period for journalists since it began tracking data in 1992. CPJ is also investigating numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing, detained, hurt, or threatened, the statement added. 07:21 AM GMT Israel lists Palestinian prisoners slated for release under Gaza deal Israel provided details on Wednesday about Palestinian prisoners slated for release under a foreign-mediated deal to recover hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza, a publication that appeared intended to allow for any last-minute legal challenges. The list posted on the Justice Ministry appeared to include 300 prisoners, twice the jailed 150 females and minors that Israel has agreed to free in return for 50 hostages. 07:09 AM GMT France hopes for release of its hostages France hopes its eight citizens believed held as hostages will be released as a result of a truce deal between Israel and Hamas, Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna said on Wednesday. We hope that there will be French people among the first batch of hostages to be released, Colonna told France Inter radio. 06:24 AM GMT Europe promises 'surge' in aid Ursula Von der Leyen, European Commission President, says that she welcomes the agreement reached between Israel and Hamas on the release of the 50 hostages and on a pause in hostilities in Gaza. The European Commission will do its utmost to use this pause for a humanitarian surge to Gaza, she said in a statement. As this picture of the United Nations delivering supplies on Tuesday shows, people in Gaza are desperate for basics like fresh water: Gaza aid 06:19 AM GMT Russia responds Russia welcomes a humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas, according to Moscows foreign ministry. Moscow welcomes the agreement between Israel and Hamas on a four-day humanitarian pause, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a post on Telegram. Has Putin been trying to use the Israel-Palestine conflict to try to restore Russias reputation? Listen to expert analysis from Telegraph journalists 06:14 AM GMT Hopes for birthday reunion The family of American-Israeli hostage Abigail Edan are praying for the release of the little girl, who turns four on Friday. For our family, we have spent the last seven weeks...worrying, wondering, praying, hoping, Abigails great aunty Liz Hirsh Naftali. told CNN. The one thing that we all hold on to is that hope now that Abigail comes home, she comes home by Friday...her 4th birthday. We need to see Abigail come out and then we will be able to believe it. Abigails parents were murdered at a kibbutz during the terror attack by Hamas on October 7. 04:38 AM GMT Joe Biden reacts The White House issued a statement from the US President: Jill and I have been keeping all those held hostage and their loved ones close to our hearts these many weeks, Mr Biden said. I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented. He added: Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released. 04:34 AM GMT Deal could 'seed bigger agreement' Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear Israel will continue fighting at the end of the ceasefire, declaring last night we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. Qatari mediators, however, expressed hope the deal reached on Wednesday morning would lead to a permanent ceasefire. Qatars chief negotiator, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be working inside Gaza to facilitate the hostages release during the intensive period. Were going to be 24/7 in direct communication with the ICRC and the two parties making sure that we perfect the release of the hostages, Mr Al-Khulaifi said. He said that the truce means there would be no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing. Mr Al-Khulaifi added that Qatar hopes the deal will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire. And thats our intention. He added: In our understanding its the light at the end of the tunnel. It is a positive development to this very difficult and complicated crisis that were living. 03:38 AM GMT First hostages could be freed in 24 hours If everything goes to plan, the first of 50 hostages all women and children will be released by Hamas during a ceasefire to start as early as tomorrow. Israel and Hamas have agreed on a complete pause in fighting for four days but that may be extended if the terror group frees more hostages, according to a US official who briefed journalists overnight. In terms of proof of life, we are confident that the 50 are there and will come out and we we believe there are others being held in this category [women and children], the official said, adding we do anticipate itll be more than 50. If Hamas need additional days to collect extra hostages before releasing them thats something that well deal with, the official said. Washington also expressed hope the deal would lead to full pause in hostilities on the north of the Lebanese border. 02:18 AM GMT Three Americans expected to be included in Gaza hostage release Three Americans held by Hamas in Gaza since its attack on Israel last month are expected to be among at least 50 hostages to be released by the terrorist group, a senior US official said. The three include a three-year-old girl whose parents were among the more than 1,200 people killed in Hamas initial Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The American girl, named Abigail, will turn four on Friday, the official said. The hostage group will also include two American women. Initial releases of hostages are expected within 24 hours of the deals announcement, with the first likely to be freed on Thursday morning, the official said. I would say its at least 50 of the women and children over a period of four to five days, the official said, without providing details of any other nationalities expected to be released. 02:13 AM GMT Hamas welcomes 'humanitarian truce' Hamas released a statement welcoming the humanitarian truce, which it said would also see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails. The provisions of this agreement were formulated according to the vision of the resistance and its determinants that aim to serve our people and enhance their steadfastness in the face of aggression, a Hamas statement said. Families and friends of about 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring them home during a demonstration in Tel Aviv 02:03 AM GMT Hard-Right revolt We are hearing more about the mood inside the meeting room. The vote passed after six hours of tense discussions in Tel Aviv. Officials from Qatar, which has been mediating negotiations, as well as the US, Israel and Hamas had for days been saying a deal was imminent. But before the vote this morning there was believed to be a revolt by hard-Right coalition partners who were opposing the release of Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of aid to Gaza. Urging ministers to support the ceasefire deal, Benjamin Netanyahu reminded his colleagues on Tuesday night that the hostages return was a sacred and top goal. 01:39 AM GMT Women and children prioritised Israel says the first hostages to be released would be women and children. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stipulated during the government meeting that the agreement would include visits by the Red Cross to hostages who have not yet been released, as well as the supply of medicine. According to Haaretz news agency, which cited a senior Israeli official, Hamas would be expected to release 30 kidnapped children, eight mothers and 12 more women. 01:27 AM GMT Good morning We have just received confirmation that Israels government has approved a ceasefire deal with the Hamas militant group. 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. RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) Cast and crew of the Netflix hit show Outer Banks will impact ferry schedules next week, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation. Kimmie Stewart Casting put out a call last week for people interested in working as background actors for the shows fourth season. The agency also announced they would be shooting on Monday, Nov. 27 in Wilmington. The NCDOT announced Wednesday that Netflixs shooting schedule would impact the Southport-Fort Fisher ferry schedule for Nov. 27. A film crew plans to shoot scenes for the show aboard the Motor Vessel Southport, one of two boats on the route. Filming aboard the boat is scheduled from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Nov. 27, according to NCDOT. NCDOT said the Ferry Division will operate on the modified, one-boat schedule with extra departures for commuters during peak times. The ferry will operate on the following schedule Nov. 27: Southport to Fort Fisher: 5:30 a.m., 7:00 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 4:00 p.m., and 6:30 p.m. Fort Fisher to Southport: 6:15 a.m., 7:45 a.m., 9:15 a.m., 10:45 a.m., 12:15 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 3:15 p.m., 4:45 p.m., 5:45 p.m., and 7:15 p.m. The Ferry Division will resume its regular, two-boat schedule for the route starting at 5:30 a.m. Nov. 28. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to CBS17.com. An election billboard for anti-islam lawmaker Geert Wilders is seen near the parliament building in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, 20 November 2023 (Associated Press) Voting for parliamentary elections in the Netherlands began on Wednesday as pollsters said the race for the next Dutch leader will be a close call. The elections will determine a new direction for the Netherlands as outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte has been at the helm of affairs in the country for the past 13 years. Campaigning for the elections ended on Tuesday, with Dutch party leaders clashing in a heated television debate. Four political parties from the left to far-right political spectrums are competing to secure a leading position in the Dutch parliament. Over 13 million voters are expected to participate in the elections, casting their ballots between 7.30am and 9pm local time. Dutch News reported that 221 polling stations many of which are at train stations will open earlier as will a handful of mobile polling stations for rural areas. There are about 9,823 polling stations nationwide, according to Dutch non-profit Open State Foundation. The centre-right government led by Mr Rutte collapsed in July due to disagreements on strategies to curb the influx of asylum seekers. Mr Rutte is the countrys longest-serving prime minister, but has faced a decline in his popularity and promised not to seek re-election. The last pre-election poll has put three political parties neck-to-neck. The far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) is set to win 28 seats, according to a poll by I&O Research. Mr Ruttes Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and a coalition of the GroenLinks (GL) and Labour Party (PvdA), known collectively as GL-PvdA, will get a total 27 seats, according to the poll. Due to a margin of error, however, the three parties are considered tied at the moment, according to the Dutch Volkskrant newspaper. Observers believe that the focal points of the Dutch election campaign revolved around three primary issues: immigration, living standards and the climate crisis. Despite unemployment standing at less than 4 per cent, several social concerns remain. These include a shortage of housing, failures in the healthcare system and a growing sense of resentment towards the widening gap between the rich and the poor in a traditionally egalitarian Dutch society. Dilan YeAilgoz-Zegerius, 46, the leader of the centre-right, is considered a frontrunner in the elections and could potentially make history as the first woman Dutch prime minister. She, however, faces stiff competition from anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders and a left alliance led by former top-ranking EU commissioner Frans Timmermans. Ms YeAilgoz-Zegerius, the new leader of Mr Ruttes party, has declared that unlike the outgoing prime minister, she will not rule out the PVV from coalition negotiations. Mr Wilders another top contender for the Dutch leadership role since then has also adopted a more moderate tone, saying he is available for coalition talks. The main challenge... is the perception that the partys [PVV] campaign is devoid of any substance, Sarah de Lange, professor of politics at the University of Amsterdam, was quoted as saying by AFP. YeAilgoz-Zegerius emphasises that they will do things differently, without going into detail what the key measures will be. Among the other leading candidates are Mr Timmermans, the EUs former climate chief who is leading a combined ticket for the Labour and Green Left Parties, and Pieter Omtzigt, a former Christian Democrat who launched his own protest party called New Social Contract that focuses on reforming the Dutch political system. On Tuesday, Politicos Poll of Polls showed Ms YeAilgoz-Zegerius leading with 18 per cent, followed closely by Mr Wilders and Mr Timmermans on 16 per cent each and Mr Omtzigts party at 15 per cent. The two things we can expect are that we will no longer have any big parties left good luck finding a majority and high volatility, which makes it extremely difficult to make any sort of predictions about the outcome, Leonie de Jonge, assistant professor in European politics and society at Groningen University, told the Guardian. Additional reporting by agencies Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) A joint patrol in the West Philippine Sea involving different countries will possibly happen as Manila continues to reach out to like-minded nations to ensure peace in the disputed area, Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose 'Babe' Manuel Romualdez said Wednesday. We are also working with other countries like Australia, Japan, and even South Korea and perhaps sometime in the future were going to have a multilateral joint patrol, he told CNN Philippines The Source. Romualdez said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was very clear he wants to see a combination of other countries that have the same interests to make sure that the waters are free from any kind of harassment from other countries. The Philippines and US on Tuesday began their three-day maritime and air patrols in the West Philippine Sea as part of a series of activities to boost defense ties and maintain peace in the disputed area. This started in the vicinity of Batanes at the northern tip of the country close to Taiwan and will end in the West Philippine Sea. Romualdez said authorities have been planning this for a long time, and the chief executive gave his go signal for the joint patrol when he was in Hawaii. The official noted there are no arrangements yet on whether US troops will join the Philippines resupply missions to Ayungin Shoal. In a resupply mission in September, a Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft from the US Navy was spotted. The National Security Council said this is legal since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that the exclusive economic zone of any country is subject to freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight. There was also no American ship or any other assistance from Washington used during the operation. Other countries the Philippines is talking to about joint patrols are Vietnam and Malaysia, which also have territorial claims. There is an indication that both countries, Vietnam and Malaysia, are very interested into also being able to protect the waters from any kind of interference, Romualdez said. Eric Brunner CANTON It's been some time now since Eric Brunner was in prison, but it's only recently that he has been truly free. Brunner, who served 13 years for two sex crimes, has slowly been piecing his life back together after being exonerated of the crimes, with help from the Ohio Innocence Project. Back in 1996, Brunner, now 52, was sentenced to 40 years in prison for rape and attempted rape. Based on DNA testing performed in 2019, his rape conviction was vacated by Stark County Common Pleas Court Judge Kristin Farmer on Aug. 31. "It was 13 years, but I've been fighting for almost 30 years, people not believing in me," Brunner said. "They were smiling in my face, but talking about me behind my back. So, it's about clearing my name and stuff." Why was Eric Brunner in prison? On the night of Jan. 13, 1996, Brunner and his fiancee were drinking at a downtown bar when they got into an argument. Brunner left the bar on foot and headed to a cousin's house on Seventh St. NE. Several people were at the house, including two women who later accused Brunner of rape and sexual assault which allegedly took place in a darkened bedroom. During the trial, neither of the women could definitively identify Brunner as their attacker. Nonetheless Brunner was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was released on parole in 2009 and required to register as a sex offender. Brunner recalled that when a police officer he knew first informed him that he was a suspect, he voluntarily submitted blood and DNA samples. "He was telling me at the time they wanted me to come down and take a DNA test because they were gonna put a warrant out on me," he said. "I was like, 'Oh no, you don't have to put no warrant out for me to come take a DNA test; I'll be down there; what time you want me to be there?' They were like, 'Well, we never heard of anybody doing anything like that before. You're the first.' I said, 'I don't got nothing to hide.'" However in 1996, the advanced DNA technology which would have eliminated Brunner as a suspect, didn't yet exist. During the trial, an investigator from the Stark County Crime Lab testified that a blood sample from the rape kit showed only markers connected to the victim. Brunner's conviction was upheld following an appeal in 1997. In 2004, he was classified as a sexual predator. That same year, he filed a request for more DNA testing. The motion was granted in 2005 but the results were again deemed inconclusive. In 2005, an appeal by Brunner to overturn his sex-offender status was unsuccessful. In 2019, Farmer granted Brunner's request to re-test the DNA in response to a request from the Ohio Innocence Project, which took up his case in 2018. Ohio Innocence Project helps exonerate 40 Ohioans Brunner is one of 40 Ohioans who have been exonerated through the efforts of the Ohio Innocence Project, based at the University of Cincinnati School of Law. According to the project's website, exonerated Ohioans have served more than 800 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit. In 2022, the group secured exoneration for another Canton man who served four years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Brian Howe, Brunner's attorney and an assistant professor of clinical law at the University of Cincinnati, pointed out that the more precise test done in 2019 found that the semen found in the victim's rape kit did not match Brunner. "In Eric's case, he has been consistent in maintaining his innocence; he has never wavered," Howe said. "Most importantly, there was physical evidence we felt would conclusively prove the matter one way or the other. There was sperm found in the sexual assault kit. It was just a simple matter to test whether or not it came from Mr. Brunner." Howe noted that when the 2005 test was done, the lab skipped the first step of separating out any sperm cells from the material collected. "So, all they found was DNA from the victim," he explained. "It didn't prove anything because the lab didn't separate out the sperm cells. So, in 2019, what they did was take that extra step. They separated the sperm cells and did the DNA testing on those first, and what they found was a clear male profile, and it didn't belong to Eric Brunner." Were it not for the Ohio Innocence Project, Brunner said, "I'd probably be dead because I probably would have committed suicide." In 2022, the Fifth District Court left it up to the Stark County Prosecutor's Office to decide whether it would re-try Brunner on the attempted rape conviction or drop it a process which took nearly two more years. No DNA was collected during the investigation of that case. On Sept. 1, the Prosecutor's Office vacated the conviction. "That's the day I stopped going to the (sex offender) register," Brunner said. "I was tired. There's never been a warrant out for my arrest to pick me up or anything. I just, I just stopped going to register. I was like, 'I'm done with it.'" Stark County prosecutor still believes he's guilty But Stark County Prosecutor Kyle Stone, who took office in 2020, said he remains convinced that Brunner is guilty of the rape charge. We support the original 1996 conviction of Mr. Brunner," he said. "There was no evidence presented to this office that would lead us to believe an injustice occurred. However, due to circumstances beyond the control of this office and the difficulties in trying a case nearly 30 years later, our ability to pursue justice efficiently, effectively, and with the utmost integrity would be hindered. Therefore, we are unable to retry Mr. Brunners case. Howe said he respects Stone, noting that they've worked well together on previous cases, however, "The results are what they are." "You can't really argue with the DNA results, in our mind," Howe said. "It's conclusive proof that Eric's not responsible for the sexual assault. The Prosecutor's Office was very clear at the time of the trial that they believed the sperm came from the perpetrator; it was conclusive that a rape occurred. It wasn't until we proved that the DNA excluded Eric from that sperm, that's when that office downplayed the importance of the sperm." Eric Brunner is shown outside of the Towne Manor Motel in Canton where he cleans rooms in this file photo from 2021. Brunner served 13 years in prison from 1996 to 2009. Eric Brunner has faced a rocky road to recovery Meanwhile, Brunner, who was released from prison on Jan. 5, 2009, has struggled to put his life back together, at one time working and living as a maintenance man in a low-budget hotel in downtown Canton, and at fast-food restaurants, all while laboring under his sex-offender status. He was attacked and beaten by two men connected to one of the victims. The head injuries he sustained required surgery. His engagement was broken. He also lost an aunt, one of only two people he said always believed in him the other being his mother. He has an adult son who lives in Canton but they're estranged. He admits he wasn't a hands-on father. Prior to his convictions, Brunner said his only previous imprisonment was for narcotics after police found drugs in his car during a traffic stop. "I think I did a year-and-a-half, but never any violent charges," he said. But a search of court records show that the 20-something Brunner was no choir boy. He was arrested several times in the early 1990s, mostly on drug-related charges, driving violations and some misdemeanor assault charges for which there was no jail time. He has moved from Canton to Cleveland to Cincinnati looking for a new start Last year, Brunner moved to Cleveland where he resided in an Exoneree House with several other men. "I had no opportunities in Canton," he said. "I couldn't get hired nowhere. I was doing under-the-table jobs and stuff." He has since relocated to Cincinnati, where he has his own apartment and a job. He was removed from the sex-offender registry earlier this month. "I'm happy to be off the registry. That was a big setback," he said. Brunner said he's waiting for monetary compensation from the state for the time he spent in prison. What advice does he offer to others who have been falsely accused? "I'd tell them to keep fighting to prove your innocence, no matter how, how much people talk about you or stab you in the back," he said. Yet, Brunner admits he's still struggling with some bitterness. "I kind of feel upset and hurt because nobody never apologized to me," he said. "No one has said, 'Hey, I apologize for mistreating you because I thought you did something that you didn't do. I'm sorry.' But the Bible says that 'The love of many has grown cold.'" Reach Charita at 330-580-8313 or charita.goshay@cantonrep.com. On Twitter: @cgoshayREP This article originally appeared on The Repository: Eric Brunner rebuilds life after DNA clears him of sex crimes Mercia Academy in Derbyshire has been closed with immediate effect More than 500 students are learning remotely after their school was closed over health and safety concerns. Mercia Academy, formerly William Allitt School, in Sunnyside, Newhall, Derbyshire, was shut on Friday. In a letter to parents and carers, it said the school would close with "immediate effect" due to issues with the building. The school said the health and safety of students and staff was of "paramount importance". Falcon Education Academies Trust, which sponsors the school, said students would take part in remote learning "until further notice". The trust's chief executive, Angela Barry, said in a letter to parents that a number of tests were taking place to assess defects and issues within the building. It will look at electrics, the roof structure and whether or not there is mould. Tests will also examine if asbestos is present in the building, but results have been clear so far, Ms Barry said. Lloyd Stacey has a daughter at the school Parent Lloyd Stacey said he was frustrated because parents had been "kept in the dark". "Everyone we ring, from the board of education to the Falcon Academy, to the school - we can't get answers to why has it been closed and how long for?" he said. Ms Barry said she was hoping test results would come back at end of this week or the start of the next, at which point parents would be updated. "I want to reiterate that we do sincerely understand the concerns that you have, and we have great sympathy," she said. "It was an extremely difficult decision to close the school, but we hope you understand that the health and safety of our students, staff, and all those who use the building is paramount." For over a decade, the school has been earmarked for demolition, with a new building to be built in its place, but funding issues have delayed the move. 'Working hard' In 2022, Derbyshire County Council included an initial 7m for the new school in its budget with preliminary work taking place in recent months. The authority said while it was not directly responsible for the school's operation, it was offering whatever support it could. Heather Wheeler, MP for South Derbyshire, who has supported plans for a new school, said it was hoped that enough of the site would be deemed safe to allow children taking GCSEs to be able to go back "as soon as possible". "I cannot tell you how hard Mrs Cooper [the academy principal] and team have worked to try and make this happen and their number one aim is to get back to face-to-face teaching as soon as possible," she said. A Department for Education spokesperson said: "The safety of pupils is our top priority. We are working closely with the school to minimise any disruption to education and make sure that pupils can safely return to school as soon as possible." The spokesperson confirmed the closure was not related to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac). Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk. As a political impasse continues to leave Haiti without a clear path to a functioning democratically elected government, a United Nations leader is challenging the countrys political class and civil society leaders to think about their people. The countrys deepening spiral, made worse by the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, has left its nearly 12 million citizens without any elected leaders and a multifaceted crisis where raging gang violence, sexual assault and kidnappings by armed gangs are growing, hunger is deepening and the economy is in shambles. The situation in Haiti is not hopeless, Dennis Francis, the Trinidadian diplomat who was elected by the United Nations General Assembly in June as president of its 78th session, told the Miami Herald at the conclusion of his visit to Haiti, which ended Tuesday. The leaders, Francis said, have to find a way to work together in the interest of the country. This is the challenge Francis, 66, posed as he visited Port-au-Prince over two days this week his third overseas trip since assuming the leadership role in September of the U.N.s main policy-making body, the General Assembly, and his first to Haiti in more than 40 years. They all spoke about the need to fix Haiti, he said. I emphasized to them that the question of fixing Haiti resides in their hands. The international community cannot fix the problem, the solution to the problems in Haiti have to be Haitian solutions to the problems, and the international community, the U.N. and others will hold their hands and accompany them on that journey to provide assistance and support where necessary. During the visit, Francis met with Prime Minister Ariel Henry along with his ministers in charge of justice, foreign affairs and womens affairs. He also sat down with representatives of political parties and civil society groups, who after more than two years of negotiations remain at a political impasse over how to govern the country and get it to long-overdue elections. In the encounters, Francis reflected upon the importance of Haiti, which has no elected officials currently, returning to constitutional order and reinstating its most basic public services to meet the needs of the countrys population. He also stressed the urgent need for Haitians to identify concrete avenues in which the international community can support Haitian-led solutions to restore and maintain the countrys stability and sustainable development. In fact, I challenge them, Francis said. I said to them, you know, You are the political elites in Haiti. You are concerned about the fact that the existing regime is not a democratically elected one. And it is your impression that they are very comfortable holding on to power. But I said to them, When are you going to prioritize the Haitian people? That is where your concern needs to be. Because if this country is to develop and you want to give the young Haitian children any hope for living out their lives in dignity, and enjoying the dignity and honor of having a job, being able to look after their families, there is no other way to do it, you have to honor the people, he said. And you have to make the people the national priority. Not the elites, not the politicians, not those who have access. The country belongs to the people, all of the people. Children and youth are paying the highest price from the impact of increasing gang violence in Haiti. I visited a @UN assisted school in #Haiti and was deeply moved by the children's enthusiasm and innocent cheerfulness, even in these challenging circumstances. pic.twitter.com/v79GtLoIl0 UN GA President (@UN_PGA) November 22, 2023 Haitis political impasse is increasingly giving way to frustrations both at home and abroad as the countrys crisis worsens by the day, and the prospect of outside help arriving with the deployment of a Multinational Security Support Mission, led by Kenya, remains blocked by a court order. Despite a resolution by the U.N. Security Council giving the mission legal backing and a vote by Kenyas parliament last week authorizing the deployment of 1,000 of the East African nations security officers to be deployed to assist Haiti, the High Court in Nairobi delayed a decision until late January on an opposition groups challenge to the effort. Members of the international community, while recognizing the urgent need to help Haiti take down gangs, continue to call on Henry and the countrys political and civic forces to come to a political consensus on how to govern in order to help find a solution out of the crisis. On Tuesday, the 15-member Caribbean community, which has been trying to help with negotiations, said a Nov. 8-14 visit by its Eminent Persons Group to Port-au-Prince did not result in a political deal as it had hoped. Prior to the visit by the group, made up of the former prime ministers of The Bahamas, Jamaica and St. Lucia, there was talk about the prospects of a tentative agreement following discussions led by former British diplomat Jonathan Powell, who succeeded in getting Henry to agree to make concessions to share power. But those prospects faded, the regional bloc known as CARICOM said, when the former prime ministers arrived in Haiti and found that it was immediately apparent in discussions that the earlier intransigent position of some sections of the opposition group insisting on the resignation of the prime minister as a pre-condition for meaningful discussions still prevailed. Until now, that position has not been supported by the United States or others in the international community, whose diplomats have said that if Haitians want leadership change, they must do so at the ballot box. During his visit, Francis did not address the demands for Henrys resignation. But he was frank and told Haitians to stop squabbling, according to two people who were present during the meetings. Its my sense in the conversations that theyre very devoted to their country, Francis said about the Haitians he met with. That is an important, necessary requirement. I really felt a great sense of hopefulness because there is a resilience. There is a survival instinct. There is character in the Haitian people. And I think the basic ingredients are there for this country to stand up and take its place among the community of nations and function properly as a mature democratic state. Francis is among several high-level U.N. diplomats who have visited Haiti in recent months. The U.N. Security Council has passed three resolutions concerning Haiti since the summer and a committee is currently deciding on designating new names to a sanctions list after agreeing last year to target individuals involved in Haitis gang crisis and instability. In July, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited Port-au-Prince as part of an effort to get the Caribbean Community and others to support the Haitian governments request for an outside security force to help the police tackle gangs, and shore up support for the U.N.s humanitarian efforts. As U.N. chief, Guterres is tasked with carrying out Security Council resolutions, which are binding. The General Assembly, meanwhile, has its own resolutions. Though they are non-binding, its where all members of the U.N. have an equal say on a full spectrum of issues before it, not just peace and security. Francis is hoping to use his stature and his role for the next year to bring attention to the issues he cares about, Haiti among them. I am from Trinidad and Tobago. Haiti is a member of CARICOM, an integral member of CARICOM. And the people of the Caribbean are deeply concerned and worried about what has taken place and is taking place in Haiti, he said. We have an extraordinary respect for the Haitian people, because its not lost on us that Haiti led the way in declaring its independence, hundreds of years ago, it was the first one in the Western Hemisphere. The U.N. has not forgotten and will not forget Haiti Francis last visited Haiti in 1979. At the time, the country was still under dictatorship and Francis had just graduated from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. When he became president of the General Assembly, he wanted Haiti to be his first overseas trip, he said. However, he ended up having to travel to Seoul, South Korea, in September for a meeting of the Council of Former Presidents of the General Assembly and then this month to the Cook Islands in the Pacific. With so many issues vying for the worlds attention, Francis said he wanted to send a clear message to Haiti and its people. I felt it was important to deliver a message to the Haitian government and people and that message is that with all of the crises going on in the world, with the war in Ukraine, the situation in Gaza, the conflicts in Africa, the international community, the U.N. has not forgotten and will not forget, he said. As I said to the people in Port-au-Prince... Haiti is not politically immature, he said. It might be immature as a democracy, as a young democracy, but young democracies work and they work because people make them work. The politicians make them work. And that is what has to happen in Haiti. People must step up to the plate, make responsible decisions that are based on the welfare and the well-being of the people, and what is good and right for the Haitian economy and for the Haitian people. A police officer stands by the crack in a road in the fishing town of Grindavik (Reuters) Iceland watches on helplessly as rescue workers escorting locals back to the evacuated fishing town of Grindavik say it is now a waiting game before an eruption. Gripped viewers are glued to main TV News channel RUV.is as it plays a live stream of the glowing crater with modern Icelandic electronic music underneath as the countdown continued on Tuesday. It comes as 1,200 households scramble to grab as many heartfelt objects as they can under observation from rescue teams from the town above the volatile Reykjanes Peninsula. The police checkpoint lies 25km (15.5 miles) away from the town but only 12km (7.5 miles) from cracks starting to form across the roads and stretching far into the mountains. On Tuesday, families waved as they were allowed out with cars full of toys, photographs and one vehicle towing a jetski amid intense hail storms and heavy winds hampering accurate seismic readings. A disappearing road in the fishing town of Grindavik (Reuters) Jon Baglundsson, spokesperson for the ICE-SAR, a volunteer rescue team escorting hundreds to retrieve valuables, said its now a waiting game. He told The Independent: Since the village was evacuated over a week ago we have been working to let residents retrieve their most heartfelt valuables in small numbers every day. This project has been going quite well and running smoothly. This takes time, there are 1,200 homes. People are mostly coming back for pictures of children, grandchildren on hard drives or whatever people store on their memories nowadays. A police checkpoint some 24km from Grindavik (Provided) In recent days, 1,500 to 1,800 earthquakes have been recorded daily in the region, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO). Mr Baglundsson added: The seismic activity has dwindled slightly but land is still rising to the northwest of the town. An eruption is still expected and imminent but we just dont know when or where. There is no time limit but they are asked to go as quickly as they can. We always have concerns for their safety and that is why people are allowed in few numbers and escorted by people from search and rescue teams who have a radio on them at all times They are prepared with an escape route if something happens and will receive alerts from scientists at the Met Office if there are any indications an eruption is more imminent than it already is. When magma breaks to the surface you see a kind of murmur on seismological meters and a lot of small tremors. Which indicates that magma is reaching the last 100m to the surface. There hasnt been any panicking but they do realise what can happen ... they show understanding and have concern for their own safety. Imagine being evacuated from your home and you have no idea when or if you will have a home to return to. The uncertainty is probably the worst. Britons were still boarding flights to Rejkavic with a nearly full plane on Monday morning unperturbed by reports of the possible eruption. One couple Joseph and Rachel Hamilton, both 28, said they trusted in the Icelandic authoritys advice and had already paid for their trip of a lifetime. Flights with airlines including Icelandair, Easyjet, Wizz Air and Transavia France have been cancelled due to the weather on Tuesday. If we get stuck here, we get stuck, Joseph said. Diggers were spotted frantically building a wall to protect the Svartsengi power plant from being damaged by any potential lava flow. The Svartsengi geothermal power plant near the evacuated town of Grindavik (Reuters) It came as authorities say rescue workers could get as little as 30 minutes notice before the anticipated volcanic eruption. The challenge that we have is that we will not see any strong evidence that the magma is coming up, we will see some small earthquakes and we can see how they will probably form in one place rather than another, Vidir Reynisson, the head of the civil protection and emergency management agency, told Fox News. We will maybe get a 30-minute notice before the eruption starts. That is what we are working with. All the big signs are already there, so we are looking for the small signs, the signs that say that even though we are monitoring very closely, it could be 30 minutes or less from now on until the eruption starts, but that could go on for days or weeks, he added. We need to understand the possible future scenarios, at least in general terms. At the very least, businesses need this to plan their activities. So, the scenarios for the development of events at the moment look like this: We are taking a time frame of at least two years here to consider the effects of elections in key countries. You will not like everything I have to say, but someone has to say it. If you prefer not to know, stop here and read no further. Inputs we know so far: 1. Positional warfare does not lead to a significant change in the contact line. Military analysts say each side's defense capabilities exceed the other's offensive capabilities. 2. The West does not currently consider the scenario of Russian defeat acceptable, given the consequences for the quantity and quality of arms supplies. 3. Putin has chosen a strategy of war of attrition, in which authoritarian Russia has more chances than Ukraine, which depends on democratic allies whose position may change after elections (in which Russia will certainly interfere for this purpose). This leads to three main scenarios for Ukraine. 1. Continuation of the war of attrition. The worst-case scenario, and so far, everything is moving along this trajectory. A change of government in the West will lead to a decrease in support to the point where Ukraine will not be able to continue the war and will be forced to negotiate peace on Russia's terms. Even if political support remains at the current level, the number of tension points in the world will increase, distracting from Ukraine. The West's ability to provide weapons will begin to dry up. At the same time, no one will put the American or European economy on a war footing (Ukraine cannot provide itself with enough modern weapons, although it must take all possible steps in this direction). Putin has chosen a strategy of war of attrition This scenario means Ukraine's defeat, which leaves no chance for economic recovery (at the same time, it is Russia's defeat, but they are satisfied with the end of the war by mutual defeat). Ukraine also has problems in domestic politics, as it is impossible to hold elections during endless martial law. If they are held, they will preserve the current government in the worst way, giving the West grounds to finally abandon Ukraine as an undemocratic country or lead to mass protests, which will have extremely negative consequences in times of war. 2. Freezing the war. This scenario provides the West with a way out of the current trap of "defeat, victory, and delay are equally unacceptable." In this scenario, the allies maintain their support for Ukraine at approximately the current level to prevent both Ukraine's defeat and Russia's defeat. Noting the impossibility of achieving success, the Western allies will persuade Ukraine to negotiate a freeze on the conflict while putting intense pressure on Putin. Either Biden will initiate the negotiations in the spring or summer of 2024 (he needs to look like a winner in the election, or at least a peacemaker), or the winner of the American elections will do so in the spring of 2025. After signing the peace agreement, both sides (Ukraine with the help of the West and Russia with the help of China) will begin to intensively prepare for the next war, which will take place in 5 years (at least 3, maximum 7). Since the peace agreement leads to the lifting of martial law, democratic elections are held, in which new faces representing the course of comprehensive modernization win, while Zelenskyy is associated with defeat and leaves the political scene (refusal to hold democratic elections in peacetime will have even worse consequences for him). During the preparations, Russia has a chance to learn from the mistakes of 2022, and Ukraine has an opportunity to modernize significantly (not only technically but also institutionally; I would also note in parentheses that it is worth starting now). In the best-case scenario, Ukraine modernizes so well that Russia is afraid to attack. In the worst-case scenario, Ukraine is poorly prepared, and a second invasion leads to a complete defeat and the establishment of a pro-Russian regime (see the first and second Chechen wars). 3. Victory. Ukraine manages to convince its allies that Russia's defeat is an acceptable (and even desirable) scenario. Aid increases sharply to a level that allows for a successful spring and summer counteroffensive, the liberation of the South and Crimea, a significant reduction in the front line, freezing the occupied part of the East until better times, and, in this format, entering into negotiations on Ukrainian terms. After the peace is signed, Ukraine joins NATO and receives large sums of money to rebuild and modernize its economy. A victorious Ukraine attracts the world's attention in various ways. The security situation is favorable for economic growth, and the unblocked seas are open for exports. Zelenskyy easily wins the democratic elections as a winner in the war. Meanwhile, Russia's defeat leads to an accumulation of factors that lead to political change, as has always been the case in its history after military defeats. These changes (in the soft form of federalization or the more likely more severe form of decolonization) make it impossible for Russia to engage in further aggression. The "Victory" scenario is the least likely, as it presupposes a level of strategic and negotiating skill that Ukraine does not currently possess. At the same time, it is the only one that ensures the survival of the ruling political team, and it is good that the interests of society and the political elite coincide. Two final remarks. There can always be some "black swans" or even "gray rhinos" (a long-awaited event). For example, Putin may die, and the possible duration of concealing this information is much shorter than the time it takes to identify a successor and consolidate power. But it is pointless to bet on such events. 2. Trump is an eccentric and completely unpredictable character, so there is a non-zero probability that, due to certain factors, he will suddenly change his stance and support Ukraine as much as possible. But it is obvious that it would be just as foolish to bet on that. Once again, I want to emphasize that the future is not predetermined. Better scenarios are possible, but we need to implement them, not just believe in them. Please give your criticisms in a reasoned manner, not in the format of "Well, it's impossible" or "I still believe in victory." 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 John Madore was barricaded in his Strafford, New Hampshire, bedroom, with a loaded 9-millimeter pistol and an assault rifle next to him, warning the police officers on the other side of the door. He had just allegedly choked his sister until she couldnt breathe and knocked his mother to the floor, according to court documents. I have firearms, an affidavit quotes Madore as saying, and this is not going to end well. That was Jan. 11, 2016, inside his mothers Strafford home. Madore was charged by police and later admitted to the New Hampshire Hospital because authorities believed he posed a danger to himself or others, court records show. John Madore On Friday, officials say Madore, 33, entered the lobby of that same psychiatric hospital in Concord, armed with a 9-millimeter handgun, and shot security officer and former Franklin police chief Bradley Haas to death before being shot and killed by a state trooper. The authorities have not said whether Madore was connected to the U-Haul in the hospital parking lot with an AR-style rifle, tactical vest, and several magazines of ammunition inside. Court records show his life in between was marked by bouts of severe mental illness, thoughts of suicide, hospitalizations, jail sentences, and absconding while on bail. What the court records dont reveal is whether his bail conditions ever restricted his access to firearms. Mental illness and gun safety to be part of legislation New Hampshire court records reveal that for John Madore, who killed a hospital security officer, guns and mental illness intersected in dangerous ways. On the heels of last months mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, by a man whose mental illness was known to many, Madores life, as well as his and Haass deaths, are almost certain to become part of the discussion over mental illness and gun safety in the Legislature next year and beyond. Citing the hospital shooting, the New Hampshire Gun Violence Prevention Coalition issued a press release Sunday, calling for tighter gun regulations. Gun violence is here in the Granite State and we need to take meaningful action to prevent and deter future tragedy, said state Sen. Debra Altschiller, a Stratham Democrat who is expected to reintroduce her prior bills that failed, including tightening gun laws, such as allowing the courts to temporarily take a persons guns if their mental health poses a danger to others. The Legislature passed a so-called red-flag bill in 2020, but Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed it. An attempt to override the veto failed. Madores family could not be reached for this story. More: NH Hospital security guard slain in shooting honored at candlelight vigil According to court records, Madores involvement with the police dates to at least 2014 when he was stopped for speeding in New London and charged with carrying a firearm without a license and resisting arrest. The Legislature repealed the requirement to carry a license in 2017. The gun charge was placed on file without a finding, with a condition of good behavior for six months, the court record said. Madore pleaded guilty to speeding and resisting arrest charges and was fined $620. He was 23. Two years later, his mental health struggles brought the police to his home several times, beginning in January 2016 when he barricaded himself in his bedroom, armed with two guns. According to a police affidavit describing the incident, Madore, upset that the familys dog had to be put down, knocked his mother to the floor and attempted to strangle his sister. When the police called for a SWAT team, because the officers perceived a deadly encounter with the defendant, Madore surrendered peacefully, according to the affidavit. He was charged with second-degree assault, simple assault, and reckless conduct and spent 19 days in the Strafford County jail. Those charges would later be dismissed amid competency concerns, according to court records. Madores bail stipulations after the incident at his mothers home included no contact with his mother and sister and participation in the countys bail supervision program, according to court records. It is unclear if those conditions included restrictions on Madores access to guns, as the court declined Monday to release the bail order. Getting help If you or someone you know needs help with mental illness: Dial 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or visit 988lifeline.org. New Hampshire also offers help via phone, text, and chat 24 hours a day through its Rapid Response Access Point. A 988 operator can connect you or call or text 833-710-6477. To chat, visit nh988.com. NAMI New Hampshire can connect you and your family with resources. Dial 1-800-242-6264 or visit naminh.org. Madore spent time in hospitals Four days after his release from jail, Madore went to Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover and then the New Hampshire Hospital in Concord asking to have his mental health evaluated, according to a court record. He was admitted to the latter, discharged several days later, and disappeared in violation of his bail, according to court records. Madores competency evaluations are sealed. Madores mental health appeared to worsen in the next year. Twice in May 2016, the family called the police over concerns about Madores statements that he wanted to die by suicide. The second time, they found Madore in the woods, barefoot, indicating he wanted to kill himself. Hed spent the night there, according to court records. The police took Madore to the hospital for an involuntary emergency admission, according to a court record. The Strafford County Attorneys Office later asked that his bail be revoked because he posed a danger to himself and the community, court records state. A second competency and involuntary admission to the state hospital followed in the summer of 2016. About a year later, in October 2017, the charges against Madore were dropped. His court file does not say why. Nor does it say how long he remained at the state hospital or what his discharge conditions required of him. The authorities have not said what brought Madore to the state hospital Friday afternoon armed with a handgun and extra ammunition. On Monday afternoon, state officials and staff from NAMI NH held a candlelight vigil near the New Hampshire Hospital grounds to remember Haas and support hospital staff and patients. This story was originally published by the New Hampshire Bulletin This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: NH Hospital shooter's troubled past in documents: I have firearms' Ron DeSantiss team cant decide how to respond to Nikki Haleys growing success in the presidential race. The infighting is so bad that some advisers are turning on each other. Two leaders of DeSantiss Never Back Down super PAC nearly got into a fistfight during a private meeting last week to discuss how to push back on Haley, NBC News reported Tuesday. You have a stick up your ass, Never Back Downs top consultant, Jeff Roe, told fellow board member Scott Wagner, according to an anonymous source who was in the room. Why dont you come over here and get it? demanded Wagner, a longtime DeSantis adviser. He had to be restrained by two other board members. After the meeting, three close DeSantis allies launched a second super PAC for the Florida governor called Fight Right Inc. The move was partly urged by DeSantis and his wife, Casey, who are growing increasingly frustrated with Never Back Downs leadership team, NBC reported. DeSantis was once lauded as the natural successor to Donald Trump, but his campaign has failed to launch. When Haley first announced her candidacy, her support was in the single digits. She was far behind DeSantis, and even further behind front-runner Donald Trump. But a Monmouth University poll released last week showed that Haley has surpassed DeSantis and now boasts a sizable lead over the Florida governoreven though she still trails the former president by a significant distance. Trump is still comfortably in first place with 46 percent support. But Haley has taken second place with 18 percent. DeSantis, meanwhile, trailed behind at a paltry 7 percent. DeSantiss major donors have grown frustrated with his lack of momentum, and one of his biggest former backers is considering switching to team Haley. Billionaire Ken Griffin, a Republican megadonor, told Bloomberg last week that he is actively contemplating donating to Haleys campaign. Griffin was DeSantiss biggest donor during the 2022 election, giving $5 million to his gubernatorial reelection campaign. Griffin also repeatedly said he would love to see DeSantis run for president in 2024. But Griffin changed his mind in September, withdrawing his support from DeSantis in part due to the governors weird feud with Disney. PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, Md. - Prince Georges County Police are providing new details on what led up to the crash that killed two children who were walking to school Monday morning. Officials released the identities of the two young children who were hit and killed as 10-year-old Shalom Mbah and 5-year-old Sky Sosa. Shaloms mother spoke with FOX 5, expressing her heartbreak and devastation. A close family friend also told FOX 5 that the fifth grader was a twin who loved music and singing. His family had moved to the area from Cameroon about five months ago. "If theres something to want to tell the media, is to let them put this family into prayer. Put us into prayer so that we may be able to go through his process," family friend Gilbert Ndi said. "[Its] so confusing. Its something that we have not come across before. So, even the Cameroonian society looks at this so strange that a car is hitting a child, five months in the United States. Its so strange for them." Police also shared new details on how this horrific scene unfolded. They say the driver involved made a left-hand from Taylor onto Riverdale Road at around 8 a.m. Monday, actually striking three people in the crosswalk: a father of one of the two children and then, of course, the two kids. Investigators will determine if the driver should be charged but officials say that could take some time. Chief Malik Aziz said during a press conference Tuesday that investigators are unsure if the driver made a complete stop or a rolling stop at the intersection. Community members have also been expressing frustration, saying there hasnt been a crossing guard in the mornings at the intersection involved. FOX 5 asked the police chief about it at a news conference Tuesday morning. Aziz confirmed that those folks were right: there was no crossing guard there at that time. This is a school that tweeted on "National Walk to School Day" on Oct. 4 that Riverdale Elementary is 100% walkers. #NationalWalktoSchoolDay Today was National Walk Bike and roll to school day. Our students were excited to our staff out in the community greeting them. Riverdale Elementary is 100% walkers. @pgcps pic.twitter.com/MUxSA9qnPn Riverdale Elementary RES (@PGCPS_RES) October 5, 2023 But the chief also said there's a chance that had a crossing guard been in the area, they could have become a victim too. "In all likelihood, adults, school crossing guard or not, would have most likely, and in high probability, have been struck too," the chief said. "A driver of a van appeared to make a left-hand turn and whether they completely stopped or continued to roll, struck three people and killed two children. In this particular case, the school crossing guard, it wouldn't appear that that would have made a great difference into the facts that are surrounding the facts as we know them now," Aziz continued. In the same breath, the chief also said theyve had a hard time hiring crossing guards. The department confirmed today that PGPD currently has 63 working crossing guards, 83 vacancies and 22 interviews set up for next month. FOX 5 was told that the long-time crossing guard here retired over the summer. "That is one of the locations that we have been seeking to fill and have a proper replacement for the person who retired after many years of service, making sure our children could cross the street in a safe manner," Aziz said. We asked police if there is any kind of plan to cover this intersection with an officer until they find someone new but have not received an answer yet. But in the wake of this tragedy, the police chief is making a plea for people to apply if they care about the community and can do this work. The school system is making counselors available virtually over the Thanksgiving break. Theyll also have counselors in person when the children return on Monday. "Our hearts ache as we extend our most deepest condolences for this most tragic accident that claimed the lives of two of our beloved Riverdale Elementary School students. The entire school community, the school system, is grieving and our thoughts are with the families affected by this unimaginable loss during the pre-Thanksgiving break," Prince George's County Public Schools superintendent Millard House II said. As for the grieving families, they are asking for privacy and prayers to help them get through this. "It's very, very traumatic. There are a lot of things you cannot understand because you are not of the balance to say anything. But its a child. So humble. Very receptive. Very respectful. Talked [nice/less], very hardworking and prayerful. So this happening to us, like I said, is a very heartbreaking situation," Ndi said. FOX 5 will be sure to share verified fundraising information shared with us on how the community can help both families. Two Kansas City area locations of The Big Biscuit closed abruptly over the weekend, leaving an estimated 60 employees out of a job before the Thanksgiving holiday. The restaurants are at 16506 E. U.S. Highway 40 in Independence and 530 N.W. Highway 7 in Blue Springs. Those were the first two locations of the local breakfast-and-lunch chain, which was founded in 2000 by Dan Gerson. In 2010, Gerson sold the company, which has since expanded to include two dozen locations in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and, soon, Arkansas. But he kept ownership of the Blue Springs and Independence locations. Gerson died in September, and employees say his son Luke Gerson took over operations of those Big Biscuit restaurants. They fired our general manager and made her tell us we have no job, said Silvia Sarmiento, who worked at the Independence location. No Thank you for your time, no clarification on how to reapply, nothing. Just because its common for companies to lay people off doesnt mean (the way they did this) was right. The Star was unable to reach the Gerson family. Chad Offerdahl, president of The Big Biscuit (which is now based in Overland Park), told The Star that though they do not own the two closed locations, Big Biscuit is working diligently with the Gerson family on options to reopen those two stores. He added, We have informed the Gerson family that they should feel free to encourage their former employees to apply for positions with The Big Biscuit companies. PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) Non-profit Free Speech For People sent a letter to the Oregon secretary of state on Tuesday calling for former President Donald Trump to be banned from the Oregon ballot after his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. This challenge is the latest from Free Speech For People, which issued similar challenges in Michigan and Minnesota. The organization describes itself as a national non-partisan group that is focusing on holding insurrectionists accountable for their role in the violent assault on American democracy. In their letter, Free Speech For People and Oregon Co-Counsel Jason Kafoury of Kafoury & McDougal and Daniel Meeks, argues that Trump should be disqualified from the primary and general election ballots under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The group is asking Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade for a temporary rule and later a declaratory ruling disqualifying Trump from the ballot. Oregon mom convicted for preventing daughter from receiving surgery for liver cancer Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in the United States Constitution states no one holding public office shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. The letter states With the urgency of an approaching primary election, we urge you to address this critical issue now. Mr. Trumps conduct encouraging the Big Lie of a stolen election, encouraging and inciting an insurrection, and facilitating that insurrection by refusing to intervene to stop it despite urgent requests that he do so and by supervising subordinates who actively blocked the National Guard from assisting the besieged Capitol Police, renders him ineligible for any federal office, including that of president. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the letter asks the secretary to respond by Dec. 1, 2023. Marion County DA asks Gov. Kotek to revoke 50+ commutations granted by Kate Brown Secretary Griffin-Valades office tells KOIN 6 News she is considering her decision on the matter. In addition to their challenges to bar Trump from the ballot in Minnesota and Michigan which is pending an appeal Free Speech For People notes they filed charges in 2022 against Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn for their roles in the January 6 insurrection. The organization says even though those legal challenges did not result in disqualification because Cawthorn lost his primary as the challenge was pending, and a judge found insufficient evidence of Greenes involvement they argue this still set a legal precedent for their challenge of Trumps candidacy. The group also pointed to a September 2022 case in New Mexico, in which a judge banned Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin from holding office under the insurrectionist disqualification clause. Its very disappointing: PPS board members speak out after their homes were targeted by vandals The non-profit argues that states should have the legal authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and that these challenges do not violate a candidates constitutional rights, and that a criminal charge is not required for these challenges. Chris Shortell, associate professor of political science at Portland State University, explains, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment hasnt come up very often since it was adopted, but it was a provision that was included in the 14th Amendment to keep people who had been in office during the Civil War as part of the Confederacy from running for office again. It says that anyone who participates in an insurrection or aids and abets enemies of the United States after having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, cant hold federal office after that. He says based on the 14th Amendment, anyone who was involved in what would be regarded as an insurrection, that they should be barred from serving in office. Harney County Judge rules Oregon gun Measure 114 unconstitutional The professor says there is no requirement for anyone to be convicted in order to be disqualified from office under the amendment adding that Trumps ballot eligibility is a question for states. We just dont have a whole lot of court guidance about the implementation of Section 3 about how it works. And the truth is that it varies significantly from state to state. So, this is really an individual state question, and not even on the merits of whether Donald Trump qualifies under Section 3 for disqualification from office, but on whether you can even bring a challenge about that or not. Theres tremendous variation across the states, and there are some real barriers to success for some of these attempts, Shortell said. He furthered, There are different rules in different states that are going to govern what you can do and how you might challenge a candidates inclusion on the ballot. If theyre successful in excluding Donald Trump from the ballot in the primary election, then Donald Trump would not become the Republican nominee in all likelihood, unless the Republican party changed their rules for how they select their nominee. If hes not on the ballot in enough states, then other Republican primary candidates theoretically could get enough votes. But if he stays on the ballot in most states, which is the likely outcome, he could still be the Republican nominee. Salem report shows gun violence is predominantly caused by young men in gangs I think that there are compelling arguments on each side about the wisdom of applying this relatively vague provision of the Constitution to these circumstances. On the one hand, I think you have an argument that this is something thats vague enough that it could be abused in the future. Its something that could lead voters to greater frustration with the electoral system. With democracy, you can undercut support for democracy by seeming to have an end run around the ability of voters to cast a ballot on a particular candidate. And those are real concerns. Shortell adds, On the flip side, you have also a powerful argument that allowing individuals to get away with and not face consequences for the actions surrounding January 6th is also damaging to democracy and harming. In this case, were not talking about taking away someones right to vote. Were not talking about stripping them of citizenship. Were not talking about imprisoning them. This simply is a provision that says you cant hold public office if youve engaged in an insurrection. There are reasons to believe that that could have a value in reinforcing some of the underlying purposes of democracy, Shortell said. Shortell explains there are several paths that could exclude Trump from the ballot, noting some secretaries of state can make that determination on their own, and some states have commissions that do not require the same demands that a court case would. He also pointed out that some legislatures could enact their own policies to exclude Trump. It wont produce more paramedics: AMR appealing $513,000 fine from Multnomah County This is not the first time Oregon has questioned ballot eligibility. In February 2022, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled gubernatorial candidate Nicholas Kristof was ineligible for office based on residency requirements. Shortell points out Oregon senators are also challenging ballot qualifications under voter-approved Measure 113, which bans lawmakers from reelection if they accrue more than 10 unexcused absences. Overall, Shortell says its difficult to predict whether cases challenging Trumps candidacy will go to the Supreme Court depending on the legal grounds, noting Its really hard for courts to grapple with terms like insurrection, which is not really defined. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) State auditors flagged the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) over fund transfers amounting to more than 2.6 billion for the purchase of goods and services that remain unliquidated. In its management letter to the DICT, the Commission on Audit (COA) questioned the fund transfers made to the Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) as they lack supporting documents. The purpose of the transfer, duration of implementation, the responsible implementing unit of the DICT and related projects, cannot however be determined due to the absence of supporting documents and monitoring records of the transfers, the COA said. Auditors noted the PITC confirmed a balance of only about 1.6 billion of payments received from the DICT. This puts a difference of over a billion pesos in the books and records of the DICT. The variance supposedly included deliveries made by the PITC but were not recorded in the books due to absence of certification from implementing units that there were goods and services received by the DICT. Thus, the existence of these outstanding balances implies the non-delivery and the non-materialization or operationalization of the projects, the COA said. Auditors recommended the DICT central office accountant to account for all the transfers made, corresponding deliveries, unliquidated amounts, and projects involved and submit to the COA for validation. The DICT management agreed with the recommendations. The management letter containing audit observations and recommendations on the DICT for 2022 was uploaded to the COA website earlier this month. It was received by the DICT Office of the Secretary on Nov. 3. The last member of Jersey's Normandy Veterans Association has died. Billy Reynolds celebrated his 100th birthday in June. Raised in Jersey, he left the island just before Nazi Germany invaded in 1940 during World War Two. He survived the Blitz in London and Liverpool, before going into the Army and joining the Guards Armoured Division. Mr Reynolds landed in Normandy shortly after D-Day, and drove trucks full of ammunition up to the front line to supply tanks in the battle for Caen. The Lieutenant Governor said Mr Reynolds was "a real hero" He was awarded France's highest military honour, the Legion d'Honneur, for his actions throughout the war. Mr Reynolds returned to Jersey after the war and became a champion racing driver. He also maintained a fishmonger's business. The Lieutenant Governor, Vice Admiral Jerry Kyd, said Mr Reynolds would be "missed by so many". He said: "Although he was an incredibly humble man, as proper gentlemen tend to be, he was also a real raconteur with a quick wit and an easy smile. "He was intensely proud of his family and Jersey, and, as one of the last remaining veterans of the Second World War, he was also very proud of his war service in the British Army. "He lived his life to the full and a man who gave so much throughout his life a real hero and a gentleman and family man who will be missed by so many." Obituary: Chris Stone, BBC Jersey In the early summer of 1940, Billy Reynolds' family was in a dilemma. Should they leave the island before the Germans arrived? Or should they stay to look after their homes and their business? On one of the last boats out of Jersey, Billy and his mother finally left, leaving the rest of the family on the island. They went to live with his sister in London, where Billy worked as a delivery driver for a grocers based in Covent Garden at the height of the Blitz. But eventually their luck ran out and their flat was destroyed in a raid. They lost everything and relocated to a village near Liverpool. As soon as he was of military age, Billy applied to join the RAF - like many he wanted to join the glamorous ranks of the so-called Brylcreem Boys - the fighter pilots who had saved the country in the Battle of Britain. But that battle was over and they were then recruiting for air gunners. Perhaps fortunately for him, Billy turned that down and instead joined his brothers in the Guards Armoured Division. Intense training prepared him for his part in the great invasion of occupied Europe. He landed in Normandy a few days after D-Day and was quickly in action in the campaign to liberate Caen. He faced bombs and shells as he worked to supply front-line tanks with fresh ammunition. On one occasion, an 88mm shell landed in soft earth next to him, still spinning, and ricocheted off to explode on a nearby bank. Billy Reynolds was the last surviving member of the Jersey's Normandy Veterans Association After fighting to close the Falaise Gap, his unit raced across France to help liberate Brussels, a joyous occasion which saw them hailed as heroes by the grateful Belgians. He never forgot the welcome they showed him. But tougher challenges were ahead. The Guards Armoured Division was part of the British spearhead of Operation Market Garden, Montgomery's famous "A Bridge Too Far" attempt to end the war early by securing important bridges into Germany; and site of the Battle of Arnhem. Billy's column was bombed to pieces in Eindhoven, and he tried to drive his burning lorry away from the rest of the inferno. He also had to drive a loaded truck across the Nijmegen bridge under fire from German guns which had already knocked out the first trucks in the column. Shortly afterwards, he was sent to rescue civilians who had packed into a church in the town of Elst to escape the battle that was raging outside. Incredibly, Billy survived the war virtually unscathed and returned to Jersey where he remembered being amazed at how small everything was. The need for excitement didn't leave him, though, and he took up motorsport in earnest - he became a hill climb champion, and sand racing champion, and was never happier than when he was behind the wheel. His happy marriage to Doreen, and three children, did little to calm his passion for cars, and he would often be seen driving his 1932 Lagonda well into his 90s. Billy was a generous man with a great sense of fun. He was once asked by the future King Charles whether his Jersey heritage had given him any useful French that might have helped him in Normandy. With a twinkle in his eye, Billy replied: "Yes, sir. I learned to say: 'Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?'" Billy Reynolds had a life that was both very long and very busy. He was a war hero, a racing champion, a businessman and a loving family man. I'm proud to say that he was also my friend. Follow BBC Jersey on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. Send your story ideas to channel.islands@bbc.co.uk. North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and the states chamber of commerce have engaged in a heated back-and-forth correspondence over the confirmation of Black judicial and board nominees in the state, according to a series of letters shared with CNN and published online. Cooper said in a letter sent Friday to the states chamber of commerce, that he was concerned over the habitual failure of the North Carolina General Assembly to confirm Black nominees to various judicial or quasi-judicial roles. He asserted that those decisions were often made in consultation with the chamber of commerce, based on what he called frequent reports from legislators, staff and stakeholders. I strongly urge you to work with your staff and members to consider the Chambers impact, intentional or not, in making North Carolina government less representative than the people it serves, Cooper wrote in his letter. Gary Salamido, president and CEO of the chamber of commerce, denied the governors claims in a letter sent Sunday and posted online. He described Coopers claims over the chambers lack of support as meritless and beneath the dignity of the governors office. Your inappropriate assertion that the NC Chamber staff is in any way, intentionally or not, racially motivated is extraordinarily misplaced, highly offensive, and completely without merit. We are inclusive in every respect; our people are of the highest personal and moral character, Salamido wrote. CNN has reached out to state Rep. Tim Moore, who is the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, for comment. Among the claims in Coopers letter, the governor said six consecutive Black nominees to the Board of Review were rejected in 2021 and 2022, adding that in each of these denials it was difficult, if not impossible, to get an explanation from General Assembly members or the Chamber of substantive objections to the nominees. Salamido noted in his response to the governor that the nominee to that post who was ultimately confirmed is Black, and said two out of three of the current board members are Black. He also said that each of the failed nominees faced headwinds in their nominations having nothing to do with race. Cooper has at times struggled to pass legislation and confirm his partys nominees through the states Republican-led General Assembly. In a Monday letter, Cooper said he hopes Salamido and the chamber members acknowledge the need to do much better and urged the chamber to support the confirmation of a current nominee to the North Carolina Business Court, who would be the only Black member on the six-seat board. It would make all the difference to have you and your members engage in earnestly advocating her confirmation to the General Assembly, the governor wrote. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com North Korean state-backed hackers are distributing a malicious version of a legitimate application developed by CyberLink, a Taiwanese software maker, to target downstream customers. Microsofts Threat Intelligence team said on Wednesday North Korean hackers had compromised CyberLink to distribute a modified installer file from the company as part of a wide-reaching supply-chain attack. CyberLink is a software company headquartered in Taiwan that develops multimedia software, such as PowerDVD, and AI facial recognition technology. According to the companys website, CyberLink owns over 200 patented technologies and has shipped more than 400 million apps worldwide. CyberLink spokesperson Melinda Ziemer told TechCrunch that the organization identified a "malware issue" in the installation file for one of its apps, a video editing program called Promeo, on November 11. "Upon discovery, our dedicated cybersecurity team immediately removed the bug and additional security measures were put in place to prevent this from happening again in the future," Ziemer said, noting that none of the company's other applications are impacted. Microsoft said it observed suspicious activity associated with the modified CyberLink installer, tracked by the company as LambLoad, as early as October 20, 2023. It has so far detected the trojanized installer on more than 100 devices in multiple countries, including Japan, Taiwan, Canada and the United States. The file is hosted on legitimate update infrastructure owned by CyberLink, according to Microsoft, and the attackers used a legitimate code signing certificate issued to CyberLink to sign the malicious executable, according to Microsoft. "This certificate has been added to Microsoft's disallowed certificate list to protect customers from future malicious use of the certificate, said Microsofts Threat Intelligence team. The company noted that a second-phase payload observed in this campaign interacts with infrastructure previously compromised by the same group of threat actors. Microsoft has attributed this attack with high confidence to a group it tracks as Diamond Sleet, a North Korean nation-state actor linked to the notorious Lazarus hacking group. This group has been observed targeting organizations in information technology, defense and media. And it focuses predominantly on espionage, financial gain and corporate network destruction, according to Microsoft. Microsoft said it has yet to detect hands-on keyboard activity but noted that Diamond Sleet attackers commonly steal data from compromised systems, infiltrate software build environments, progress downstream to exploit further victims and attempt to gain persistent access to victims' environments. Microsoft said it notified CyberLink of the supply-chain compromise but did not say whether it had received a response or whether CyberLink had taken any action in light of the company's findings. The company is also notifying Microsoft Defender for Endpoint customers who were affected by the attack. UPDATE, Nov. 29, 11:00 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from CyberLink. North Korea claimed it has launched a spy satellite into space for the first time, prompting South Korea to partially suspend a military deal aimed at lowering tensions between the neighbors. It was not immediately clear if the satellite is functional, or if the launch was in fact successful. Pyongyangs two previous attempts at launching a satellite into space failed. The U.S., Japan, and South Korea have said that theyre so far unable to verify the Norths claims, but Pyongyang says it has already received images of U.S. military bases in Guam. South Korea responded by suspending parts of a 2018 inter-Korean agreement that created no-fly and buffer zones between the nations, saying it would restart aerial surveillance of the North. If the satellite is indeed operational, it poses a new security threat for South Korea, one analyst told South Korean outlet The Korea Times. The satellite is not only capable of obtaining real-time information about South Koreas military assets, but it would also bolster the regimes ability to conduct accurate missile strikes on targets, Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said. Questions are swirling about Russias involvement with the satellite, but analysts are split on whether Moscow had direct influence in its launch. Yang believes its possible that the satellite is using advanced Russian systems, but Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the BBC there was no clear evidence of Moscows involvement. Seoul, meanwhile, said it had detected signs the Norths space program was receiving some assistance from Russia following a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin in September. North Koreas broader collaboration with Russia and its exploitation of the growing rifts between Moscow and the West should, however, prompt U.S. leaders to reevaluate Pyongyangs nuclear capabilities, Jamie Kwong and Ankit Panda wrote last week in Foreign Affairs. The theory that pressure could change Pyongyangs strategic calculus and force Kim to disarm has proved futile, they argued. Washington must adopt a more pragmatic approach centered on proactive risk reduction and conventional deterrence. South Korea has suspended parts of its 2018 agreement with the North aimed at lowering military tensions. This comes after Pyongyang claimed to have successfully launched a spy satellite into space. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said the launch threatened South Korea's security. Seoul said it would resume surveillance flights along its border with North Korea, breaching a no-fly zone established under the military pact. Some analysts have said these developments could escalate tensions further. Pyongyang fired a rocket, said to contain its Malligyong-1 spy satellite, late on Tuesday and hailed the launch as a "success". On Wednesday, South Korea's military confirmed that the satellite had entered orbit but noted that it was too soon to tell if it was actually functioning, though both it and the US strongly condemned the launch. US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the move risked "destabilising the security situation in the region and beyond." Developing a functioning spy satellite is a major part of North Korea's five-year military plan, set out by its leader Kim Jong Un in January 2021. The technology could in theory enable Pyongyang to monitor the movement of US and South Korean troops and weapons on the Korean Peninsula, allowing it to spot incoming threats. It would also allow the North to plot its nuclear attacks with more precision. Kim Jong Un is said to have overseen the launch of the spy satellite North Korea's space agency, the National Aerospace Technology Administration, said the launch was an attempt to bolster the country's self-defence capabilities, in the face of "dangerous military moves" by its enemies. Pyongyang added that it planned to launch several more spy satellites "in a short space of time". Some analysts are sceptical as to whether the satellite is advanced enough to be effective. Jang Young-geun, who runs the Missile Centre at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, predicted that given past attempts, the resolution of the satellite's camera is "probably not at a level to allow for detailed military reconnaissance." Nonetheless, he said, a low resolution is "better than nothing", as an attack - regardless of the target - will need information to make it more effective. Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also reckoned that while the satellite could enhance the effectiveness of North Korea's armed forces, it could conversely have a "stabilising effect" on the Peninsula. "It could make Pyongyang act less skittishly in crises," he said. "For instance, it could use its satellites to verify that the US and South Korea were, in fact, not surging their forces to prepare for a major attack." North claims success after two failed launches This is the North's third attempt this year to put a spy satellite into orbit, after two previous attempts in May and August failed. South Korean officials said they believed Pyongyang had received technical support from Moscow, which allowed it to overcome the hurdles that had led to its previous failures. When Kim Jong Un met Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny space centre in Russia's far east in September, the Russian leader hinted he would help Mr Kim build satellites. The US and South Korea believe the North is sending Russia arms to use in Ukraine, and that Moscow may have agreed to share its military expertise in return. But Mr Panda said there was no evidence that Pyongyang had received Russia's technical assistance and implemented it. "This was North Korea's third launch attempt and they've been carrying out their own research and development on space systems for a while now," Mr Panda noted. It is unclear if Russia helped North Korea to launch a spy satellite Jo Bee Yun, an associate research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defence Analysis (KIDA), added that the time was too limited for Russia to have provided "game-changing" technology, but that "significant transfers" could be expected in the future. Mr Kim and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed the Comprehensive Military Agreement in 2018, in an attempt to de-escalate tensions between their two countries and prevent a conflict erupting. It limited military movements by both sides near the border, removed guard posts, banned live-fire drills, and created a no fly-zone. But the South Korean government had recently argued that the deal left it vulnerable to an attack, by prohibiting it from flying surveillance aircraft and reconnaissance drones along the border. Members of South Korea's National Security Council met in the early hours of Wednesday morning, followed by its defence chiefs and cabinet. All agreed the country should restart surveillance operations along the border with immediate effect and with the president's backing. This increased surveillance will allow the South to monitor North Korean outposts and long-range artillery, previously hidden behind its mountain slopes. Seoul currently relies on US spy satellites to monitor the North, but is planning to launch its first home-built model into space at the end of November. Some analysts warn that the suspension of the military pact could escalate tensions and make cross-border skirmishes more likely. Hong Min, from the Korea Institute for National Unification, pointed out that the deal had significantly reduced the number of cross-border incidents and had been successful in deterring the North. He said Seoul risked providing it with "the justification to carry out further provocations." However Jo Bee Yun of KIDA, does not believe the suspension would increase tensions, noting that Pyongyang has been regularly launching missiles since 2022. "The cycle of provocations has already resumed. South Korea had to respond sometime or another." North Macedonia has become the second Balkan country after Romania that successfully completed a training programme of the first group of Ukrainian soldiers. The information about the training was kept secret up until now for security reasons. Source: Slavjanka Petrovska, Defence Minister of Macedonia, in an interview for the Macedonian Television national TV-channel, as reported by European Pravda with reference to Balkan Insight Details: According to the minister, the training was conducted "at the facilities, which belong to the army of the Republic of North Macedonia, under a corresponding decision of the government". She added that North Macedonia, which had become a NATO member in 2020, would continue training Ukrainian soldiers in 2024 and for "as long as it takes". Petrovska did not specify which kind of training the soldiers had undergone, or how many soldiers were or would be trained. This training makes North Macedonia the second Balkan country after Romania that offered military grounds on its territory for training Ukrainian soldiers. Romania suggested that Ukraine use its bases for lodging foreign instructors who would train Ukrainian soldiers in the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion. This November, it opened a training centre for Ukrainian pilots who will train to fly the F-16 fighter jets supplied by the West. In August, Greece also offered its help in training Ukrainian soldiers on the F-16s but not on its territory. Slovenia joined the training programme in 2022 but sent its instructors to a training ground in Germany. Croatia considered the possibility to open its bases for training of Ukraine's Ground Forces but this step was blocked by the Croatian President. Background: Since the beginning of the war, North Macedonia has sent 10 batches of military aid to Ukraine and is considered one of the biggest suppliers of equipment among Ukraines allies, taking into account its size and population of a little less than 2 million people. A small country which is now replenishing its stocks with Western equipment has sent about 30 Soviet T-72 tanks, 12 Soviet Mi-24 attack helicopters and four Su-25 attack aircraft. All this, ironically, was bought from Ukraine in 2001. North Macedonia also joined the declaration of the leaders of the G7+ group about security commitments concerning Ukraine. Support UP or become our patron! PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A shooting in North Philadelphia has left two men dead and five others injured on Tuesday night, police said. The shooting happened in the area of 6th Street and Allegheny Avenue at around 8:30 p.m., according to police. Police said they found four men suffering from gunshot wounds nearby at the 3200 block of Fairhill Street. They were all taken to Temple University Hospital, where two of them were pronounced dead, police said. Another three shooting victims, all men, walked into separate hospitals. One man walked into Temple Hospital, another went to Episcopal Hospital and another man went to Jefferson Einstein Hospital, authorities said. The conditions of the other five men are unknown at this time. Police said they recovered at least five guns and drugs from the scene and at least 70 shots were fired. "This is a block that has had some narcotic activity," Interim Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Stanford said. "This isn't a block that we aren't familiar with. With that being said, I would say it's probably something connected to a narcotics trade but I'm not going to say that with 100% certainty." The shooting is under investigation. Thanksgiving turkey recipe that cooks in under 2 hours Dr. Celine Gounder on how to avoid getting sick during the holidays Thanksgiving travel rush underway ahead of holiday A Northeastern University admissions counselor was arrested Tuesday after federal prosecutors say he used Zoom to obtain child sexual abuse material. Beau Christopher Benson, 35, of Dorchester, is slated to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Boston on charges of possession and receipt of child pornography, according to the Massachusetts U.S. Attorneys Office. Law enforcement was notified that Benson allegedly participated in Zoom video chat rooms used to share and view child sexual abuse material in April 2023, charging documents indicated. Its alleged that Benson recorded his participation in the chat rooms, which featured videos and conversations about child pornography. Prosecutors said that about 15 child sexual abuse videos were found saved in his Dropbox. Investigators noted that a cyber tip ultimately identified Benson as an online user who allegedly uploaded two child pornography to Dropbox. The files allegedly depicted children who appear to be approximately two to four years old, prosecutors said in a news release. Benson has since been suspended by the university. In a statement, a Northeastern University spokesperson said, The university does not comment on personnel matters, but we can confirm that Mr. Benson has been suspended indefinitely. The charge of receipt of child pornography provides for a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and up to 20 years in federal prison, at least five years, up to a lifetime of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000. The charge of possession of child pornography provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, at least five years, up to a lifetime of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000. 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 The public has been urged to be vigilant after a man was scammed out of almost 2,000 by criminals posing as police officers. The man in the north-west received calls on Tuesday from men claiming to represent the National Crime Agency (NCA) and police. He was told his National Insurance number had been compromised and his bank accounts frozen. He was also told to buy gift vouchers and share the codes by text message. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said the criminals, posing as police officers, then contacted the man again saying police would arrange to meet him to follow up. However no meeting took place with the people who called him and the man "was swindled out of close to 2,000", said the PSNI. It follows reports of scammers asking people to withdraw cash in exchange for bank transfers in Belfast. Speaking after the latest incident, PSNI Ch Supt Gerard Pollock said: "Police will never contact anyone in this way, and if they do they can be certain it's a scam and the person they are talking to is a criminal." 'Serious distress' "Sadly this isn't the first time we've seen this type of fraud and we can't stress enough just how important it is for people to spot the signs criminals use to try and steal your money," he added. "They have one aim and that's to con people out of their money and they will never give up on trying. "The impact of this type of crime can be devastating, leaving a real sense of fear and causing serious distress for people, not to mention the financial loss. "If you have been targeted in this way, or know of someone who has received such a call, we want to hear from you. "It's never too late to report this type of incident to police, to your bank or building society or Action Fraud." The NCA said it would never not send unsolicited correspondence requesting money or bank details. "If you have doubts about the authenticity of a message received from the NCA, please contact 0370 496 7622," they added. Incidents can be reported to Action Fraud via their website or by telephoning 0300 123 2040 or calling police on the non-emergency number 101. Further advice and information is available on the NI Direct website. Northumbria University's Wynne Jones building will be remodelled into the centre A university has secured 50m to build a "world-leading" space skills centre. The UK Space Agency gave Newcastle's Northumbria University 10m to create a hub for satellite relays and weather. Aerospace company Lockheed Martin, which provides military aircraft to Israel, provided 15m to the project. The university defended accepting the money, saying it remained "committed to ethical research and investment", adding the project would be a "game-changer" for the UK space economy. The university also said it would match-fund the UK Space Agency and Lockheed Martin money with a further 25m, totalling 50m for the project. On its website, Lockheed Martin said it was "proud of the significant role it has fulfilled in the security of the State of Israel". "We also believe in strengthening the industries and individuals that will fuel future growth for Israel," it continued. Lockheed Martin also makes F-35 fighter jets for the Danish government Lockheed Martin said it had helped strengthen the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ground forces by providing radars, rockets and guidance systems. IDF warplanes have carried out strikes across Gaza, where at least 13,300 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The Israeli action came after Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented assault from the Gaza Strip on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages. The BBC asked Northumbria University about its affiliations with Lockheed Martin and a spokeswoman said: "The partnership is with the UK government via the UK Space Agency (UKSA) and Lockheed Martin's UK Space and Satellite division. "Northumbria remains committed to ethical research and investment, and all decisions on business partnerships must meet the criteria of creating and applying knowledge to benefit communities and the economy and to transforming lives." When asked how this tallied with taking investment from a company which has contributed to what the UN describes as a "war and health crisis", the university spokeswoman said it adhered "to the latest policy guidance on research collaborations with external organisations". "The university's research is underpinned by robust processes and policies, alongside statutory and regulatory requirements, to ensure the highest standards of rigour and integrity," she added. NESST is expected to inject 260m into the North East economy over the next 30 years The North East Space Skills and Technology Centre Centre (NESST) is expected to create over 350 jobs and is set to open in 2025. Lockheed Martin has previously invested 630,000 into collaborations with the university on other projects. NESST is to be built in the centre of Northumbria University's Newcastle city campus, combining "industry and academia to collaborate on internationally significant space research and technological developments". 'Supercharge' The university said NESST would "put the UK at the forefront of research and innovation in areas including optical satellite communications, space weather and space-based energy". Prof John Woodward, faculty pro-vice chancellor for engineering and environment, said the building would "supercharge our opportunities". Early research programmes in NESST will focus on satellite laser communications systems, space energy and manufacturing small satellites for launch into orbit. Prof Woodward said: "We'll also have a mission operation centre, we can watch the launch of satellites into space and bring back the data from those satellites and analyse the data in the building. "We're starting to work with local colleges to produce the pipeline of talent into these degree programmes, and we hope also to run PhD programmes, real research opportunities for people." Follow BBC North East & Cumbria on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to northeastandcumbria@bbc.co.uk. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has moved the deadline for the submission of bid documents for the 2025 automated election system (AES) to Dec. 12. "The SBAC (Special Bids and Awards Committee) postponed the submission of the bid documents. Instead of November 28, ginawa po itong [It moved to] December 12, to give everybody, all the possible suppliers to prepare all their documents and submit to the Comelec," Chairman George Garcia said in a media briefing on Wednesday. This is the second postponement as the original deadline for the submission of bids was set for Nov. 20 before being moved to Nov. 28. The poll chief said pushing back the deadline for bids will also give the en banc more time to resolve the disqualification petition filed against prospective bidder Smartmatic. "At the same time para magkaroon muna hopefully ang Comelec ng resolution doon sa controversy surrounding a particular supplier," Garcia said. "Para lang po matapos na yung issue na yan. Para maging dirediretso yung procurement process." [Translation: At the same time, we are also hoping to have a resolution regarding the controversy surrounding a particular supplier. So that we can end this issue and so that the procurement process will proceed smoothly.] The voting technology firm participated in the pre-bid conference on Nov. 13 and purchased bidding documents. The SBAC also issued a supplemental bid bulletin announcing the resetting of the scheduled submission, receipt and opening of bids from Nov. 28 to Dec. 12. The venue for submission and receipt of bids will still be at the SBAC Secretariat Office at the Far East Managers and Investors Incorporated (FEMII) Building at 9 a.m. The opening of bids will take place at the Bureau of Treasury Conventional Hall at the Palacio del Gobernador at 10:30 am. Comelec en banc reviewing draft resolution on Smartmatic disqualification petition Garcia said the Comelec en banc also discussed in an executive session on Wednesday morning the petition for disqualification against voting technology firm Smartmatic. The petition seeks to review the qualifications of Smartmatic and possibly disqualify them from participating in the bidding for the 2025 AES. It was filed in June by former acting Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) secretary Eliseo Rio, former Comelec commissioner Augusto 'Gus' Lagman, Franklin Ysaac and Leonardo Odono. Garcia said the en banc is studying the draft resolution before they proceed to vote on the matter. He admitted he already has a vote, but refused to reveal it to avoid influencing the en banc. "Nobody controls the decision of the entire en banc," he said. "It should be based on discussion and appreciation of the facts and laws applicable." Seven members of the en banc, composed of six commissioners and one chairperson, will vote. Garcia appealed to the public to understand why they are taking their time to carefully study the matter before releasing a resolution. He earlier said they will release the decision on the case by Nov. 22. "Kung ano man yung [whatever the] desisyon ng Comelec, this will practically lay down whatever is the roadmap of the commission in the succeeding election in the final analysis, someone will go to the Supreme Court to question the legality of the decision," Garcia noted. The poll chief reminded those involved in the petition to observe the sub judice rule or "under a judge" rule, which prevents individuals from discussing merits of the case while there is no resolution. Garcia said the public's decision will be for the good of the country and the interest of the Filipino people. A former State Department employee in recent weeks was recorded harassing a halal food vendor in Manhattan, calling the man a "terrorist," The New York Times reports. Stuart Seldowitz, who held positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations including deputy director of the State Departments Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, was seen in several videos posted to X/Twitter, taking pictures of the vendor and pelting him with Islamophobic comments. After a brief, tense exchange about children being killed, Seldowitz tells the man, "If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasnt enough. The recordings of the encounters went viral online as tensions have intensified between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups across the country since the beginning of Israel's war on Hamas. The video clips show Seldowitz returning to the same vendor over several days once at night and twice during the day and refusing to leave each time. In one clip, he's heard saying, Its a free country its not like Egypt" and calling the vendor "ignorant" for not speaking English before continuing to make inflammatory comments about the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad. While the Times was unable to reach the vendor for comment, Seldowitz told the outlet that the back-and-forths started after he asked the vendor if he was Egyptian. As the conversation continued, Seldowitz said the man expressed support for Hamas. No such claims, however, are shown in any of the public videos. Seldowitz also expressed regret for the remarks he made toward the vendor, said he returned to the location to ask if the man was "still a supporter of Hamas and insisted he is not Islamophobic. "This is disgusting, hateful, and New York wont tolerate it," New York Attorney General Letitia James tweeted of Seldowitz's conduct. "We wont stand for Islamophobia or any kind of hate in our state." Ex Obama Adviser Says Killing 4,000 Palestinian Children Wasnt Enough Stuart Seldowitz, who worked on the National Security Council South Asia Directorate under President Barack Obama, was filmed accusing a New York City food truck vendor of being a terrorist. Videos show pic.twitter.com/mixpY2HJZD Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) November 22, 2023 NEW YORK - A woman who allegedly threw her cell phone and hot coffee at a man in a hate crime attack at a New York City playground surrendered herself to police on Tuesday. Police said Hadasa Bozakkaravani, 48, is accused of making anti-Islamic statements to the victim at Edmonds Playground near Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, before assaulting him, police said. Bozakkaravani faces nine different charges, including four separate hate crime charges. New York City has seen a jump in hate crimes, including growing anti-Muslim attacks, as tensions remain high in the U.S. amid protests around the Israel-Hamas war. RELATED: NYC hate crimes on the rise as tensions run high over Israel-Hamas war The total number of bias incidents investigated by the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force last month increased by 124%, the NYPD announced in its citywide crime statistics for October. The latest war began with an attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7. Since then, Israel has responded with weeks of attacks in Gaza, killing more than 11,000, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. The city has recorded eight investigations into anti-Muslim crimes with none reported in the same month last year. New York City has also seen a 214% spike in anti-Jewish incidents compared to October 2022. Islam Moustafa says his New York City halal cart on 83rd and 2nd Ave. has never experienced anything like the harassment leveled against it by former Obama National Security Council Director Stuart Seldowitz videos of which went viral on Tuesday. Weve been here since the [2nd Ave. Q train] opened, about seven years ago. I dont recall the cops being called to this place before, Moustafa, a co-owner of the halal cart, tells Rolling Stone, adding that he has a meeting with the NYPDs 19th precinct on Wednesday afternoon to discuss a hate crime investigation. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed to Rolling Stone that the departments Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating the incident. On Wednesday, Seldowitz was arrested, with authorities telling the press that the former government official faces charges related to stalking and aggravated harassment. According to an ABC affiliate in New York, Seldowitz had nothing to say to reporters as he was walked out of the 19th Precinct in handcuffs. The videos of the abuse show Seldowitz berating the carts employees, asking them if they had raped their daughter like Mohammed did, threatening them with deportation, and telling them that if we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasnt enough. The Mukhabarat in Egypt will get your parents, Seldowitz told the employee. Does your father like his fingernails? They will take them out one-by-one, he added. This man wearing a green jacket was berating and harassing a halal cart vendor off 83rd and 2nd Ave in NYC. Does anyone know who this man is? Planning to report to the authorities. pic.twitter.com/GwklyXpsPH Layla (@itslaylas) November 21, 2023 The videos were filmed by one of the carts employees, who told The Daily Mail that his encounters with Seldowitz began in early November. Moustafa tells Rolling Stone the vendor was scared to share the video but passed it along to a friend who posted it online. According to the user who posted the video, the NYPD had initially stated that there was nothing they could do about Seldowitz harassment, as it was an issue of free speech. Seldowitz could not immediately be reached for comment. The workers feel a little scared, especially after they learned that he was a government official, Moustafa added. They feel that hes going to use his status to hurt them somehow. Seldowitz, who once worked in the U.S. State Departments Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, confirmed to The Daily Beast that he was the man depicted in the videos. Following his departure from government work, he was hired by Gotham Government Relations, a New York-based lobbying firm that cut ties with Seldowitz after the videos went viral on Tuesday. Moustafa tells Rolling Stone that the employee was recovering from his encounters with Seldowitz. Hes a little scared right now, he was unable to smile to customers after what happened Hopefully hes going to move on, and its an individual instance. Were a bit shocked that it came from an ex-government official with that much status, but hopefully hes going to pay for his mistakes. More from Rolling Stone Best of Rolling Stone The New York Police Department (NYPD) will spend nearly $400 million to upgrade its radio system, including encrypting its communications channels, which the public has been able to tune into since 1932. At a New York City Council meeting Monday, NYPD Chief of Information Technology Ruben Beltran said the upgrade, expected to cost $390 million, will be completed by the end of next year, replacing the old analog radio network with a fully encrypted digital system. The move is part of a growing trend. Over the last decade, other large police departments in Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Portland have all encrypted their radio communications or are planning to do so. Departments say broadcasting in the clear gives criminals advance warning. Beltran said encryption would also protect the information of crime victims and block pranksters who jam up NYPD frequencies. (The NYPD regularly leaks information on arrestees and even victims for political purposes.) However, scanner enthusiasts, news organizations, and elected officials complain that encrypted radio is cutting off a longstanding and useful source of information on police activity. As Gothamist reported, NYPD radio chatter has been the source of several major news stories over the years: The New York Daily News obtained the crucial video of Officer Daniel Pantaleo killing Eric Garner thanks to a call that came over the police radio in Staten Island. As tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators flooded the streets in June 2020, Gothamist recorded NYPD officers on radio airwaves using threatening language about the protesters, including saying that officers should run protesters over and shoot them. Responding, one officer was recorded saying "don't put that over air." Police frequencies going dark is especially challenging for photojournalists, who rely on scanners to get to emergency scenes as fast as possible. The Chicago Police Department is considering a 30-minute public broadcast delay to allow news organizations to still hear dispatch calls. Responding to concerns from council members, Beltran wouldn't commit to similar policies, but he alleged that the NYPD "is the most transparent police force in the country," a statement so removed from reality that it can only be considered comedy. The NYPD is notorious for flouting the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Every reporter in New York City knows that filing a records request to the NYPD is a complete waste of time unless you're willing to file a lawsuit, too. Speaking of which, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), a New York watchdog group, filed a lawsuit in March alleging that the NYPD unlawfully refuses to respond to FOIL requests. The suit cited delays in 42,000 public records requests filed over the past four years to the NYPD. For example, I've been waiting since June 2020 for disciplinary records on the officers who fatally shot Amadou Diallo in 1999. "The idea that we're going to turn this sort of vital information into something that's only accessible to the public at the whims of police is just truly chilling," Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the STOP, said of radio encryption to The New York Times. In unrelated news, the New York City public library system is cutting Sunday service as a result of budget cuts. The post NYPD Will Spend Nearly $400 Million to Hide its Radio Communications appeared first on Reason.com. The holidays are stressful, but it could be worse. You could work in an airport. In one of the busiest airports in the world. For free. You could work in an airport for free and sit for five hours a day wearing a blue vest and invite strangers bring me your tired, your hungry, your flight-delayed, your missed connections, your abusive, your entitled, your perpetually turned-around, your extremely frustrated, your actual refugees seeking asylum to complain to you, to ask countless questions, to ensure their trajectory. For no money. You could do this because you are a good person who wishes to experience the satisfaction of being helpful in an unhelpful environment. You could work at an information desk at OHare International Airport. More than 2 million passengers pass through OHare Thanksgiving week alone, a confusing place even if you visit regularly. Not McCormick Place confusing. (Nowhere else in Chicago is that confusing.) Finding help is not quite finding-an-employee-at-Home-Depot difficult. But it often seems easier to find a Nuts on Clark at OHare than a person with answers. This is where the saints of the information desk come in. They are the 125 volunteers of Travelers Aid Chicago, they have been at OHare since it first opened to commercial traffic in 1955, and from what I could tell by spending time with them, youve never given them a second thought. You take them for granted. You barely notice them. But they can tell you the number of Nuts on Clark at OHare (four) and what to do if youve been stranded at OHare without a passport. Theyll tell you where to take a service dog that needs to poop and can offer decent directions to the Blue Line. They bill themselves as the oldest nonsectarian social welfare movement in America, but their constituents are swaggering tech bros and people who have never been to an airport, business owners and military vets, travelers with special needs, people in the visible grasp of trauma, children scared of flying for the first time, wide-eyed exchange students, grandparents without boarding passes, runaways, newlyweds, migrants; until recently, they carried adopted babies through OHare to new parents outside of security. Take, for example, Jon Ziomek, who stands behind a podium on a Thursday morning, listening to a very nervous woman explain, and explain, she doesnt know where to walk. With a pause of calm, he points her down the right hallway, then turns to me and says quietly, Going to Zurich through London then transferring. I didnt ask why not book direct from Chicago? Why make someone feel bad about their flight choices? After all, working an information desk at OHare at a time when understaffed airlines leave gates looking like ghost towns of customer service can mean absorbing anger. We are often the first official-looking person a frustrated traveler sees so we get it. They are insulted, cursed at, told they move slow. When I met Kim Heiferman her Travelers Aid vest pinned with almost 37 pieces of flair after a decade with the group she had been on her shift for about an hour and already handled 76 people. After each interaction, they press a clicker to keep track. She said: Today, Ive gotten Where can I smoke? Where is baggage claim? Where is my gate? Where is Garrett Popcorn? As she talked, a tired man stopped before her: Curious. Whats the best place to eat? I got two hours. I mean, I dont need to eat, you know? Im overweight, as you can see, of course. But look, can you just tell me where? She patiently offered suggestions, then turned to me: Some will swear at you. Some are very, very angry. I love talking to people, and yet I had this one guy walking down the hall just screaming at me, which is a dagger in your heart, because you are not paid, youre here to help. Usually, people arent harsh. Still ... Travelers Aid says it has about 900,000 passenger interactions a year in OHare. And even if you dont consider the people who approach them experiencing medical issues, the people who approach them fleeing domestic abuse, the people who approach them so stoned theyre not sure what city they landed in, the people who approach them with nothing but a strip of paper with the faded number of a distant relative, there is just the stress of being in a big airport: the lost luggage, the expenses, the crowds, the missed flights, the indifference. John Ishu is the director of Travelers Aid Chicago and has been with it for 25 years. He thinks of OHare as a midsize metropolis. One with a population of more than 200,000. They speak 40 languages. And every 24 hours, seven days a week, the population changes. Its a place of transition and people in crisis, and theres no stopgap for that. So were there. The next time you see someone at OHare behind a blue desk with a button reading Ask Me, remind yourself, theyve been doing this for 172 years. Before airports. Travelers Aid Chicago even predates its own agency, the Heartland Alliance. (Indeed, when Jane Addams created Heartland in 1888, it was among the first services offered.) Travelers Aid and its many sister organizations in 20 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada and Australia dates to 1851, when philanthropic former St. Louis Mayor Bryan Mullanphy gave his city $500,000 in his will to help pioneers going West in covered wagons. They helped with sick horses, broken axles, families running out of food. By the 1940s, when Travelers Aid became one of the agencies that helped form the USO, the group could be found nationwide in railroad and bus stations, often assisting returning war veterans. But fundamentally, it served migrants, domestically and internationally. In the early 20th century, that often meant immigration from Europe. These days, it can mean asylum-seekers from everywhere, as well as the migrants who are put on planes in San Antonio, Texas, several times a day, bound for OHare. Most of the time, a Travelers Aid volunteer will meet them at their gates, provide them with fresh diapers, socks and toys for children, then guide them to resettlement agencies. Ziomek stepped around his podium to greet a large group of migrants being resettled elderly, millennial, children representing a half-dozen countries in Europe and South America. They gathered behind a staff member with the International Organization for Migration. They looked around the chaos of the airport and smiled at Ziomek who beamed back. So wheres everyone going? Ziomek asked. USA, the leader said. Specifically? Ziomek laughed. The man waved his hand airily theyre headed all over. Ah, Ziomek said, instinctively grabbing a stack of free coloring books for the kids. Ziomek has been doing this for eight years, several times a week. Though most Travelers Aid volunteers stick with a single desk, Ziomek floats about, working at all nine information desks scattered around OHare. (Midway Airport does not have a Travelers Aid office, but a spokesperson with the Chicago Department of Aviation said its being discussed.) Ziomek has a trim gray beard and a serene demeanor. He has calmed so many hysterical people he could qualify as a hostage negotiator. Its the rare shift he doesnt meet someone openly weeping, he says. He keeps boxes of tissues on hand. Quick, memorize this binder, he jokes, handing me the groups thick laminated folder containing information on everything from cabs to the location of Chicago hot dogs. Hes handled only 19 people in the past 20 minutes, which he says is a little slow. He doesnt know if he always helps. In a way, a job like this is a reminder of just how much the human eye can take in. There are signs all over this place that probably answer a lot of the questions that people have, but there is also a limit of how much we can absorb. He notes that theres a terminal where one sign for the baggage-claim area points straight up, but 20 feet beyond that sign, a different sign for the same baggage area points straight down. He notes that there is a Terminal 5 but no Terminal 4 (which has become the bus and shuttle center). American Airlines airport code is AA yet Spirit Airlines is NK. JetBlues ticket counters are in Terminal 2, yet its gates are in Terminal 3. (To make this even more confusing, the blue information desks near several baggage areas are staffed by parking-lot businesses and have nothing to do with Travelers Aid.) Now imagine all that but you dont speak much English, and you dont know anyone, and maybe you dont even know where youre headed you just hope someone might help when you get there. Ziomek recalls a woman who came up to me at the desk and just said Sri Lanka. I said that there were no direct flights, and I went on and on explaining and when I was done, she just repeated, Sri Lanka. Among the 125 volunteers, they speak 26 languages. There is also a language-translation phone service, so Ziomek called and as they tried to understand what language the woman was speaking, her daughter called her cellphone. She explained that her mother was flying to Doha in Qatar and then transferring to Sri Lanka. The daughter hung up. Ziomek told the woman that she could wait there for the flight. Then she handed him a small note. It read: I have dementia. About eight years ago, a 14-year-old girl from the Netherlands arrived at a Travelers Aid desk, unsure how to get to Rockford. She lived with her grandparents who agreed to let her come here to meet someone she knew online, said Tony Medina, volunteer manager. She was waiting awhile for her pickup. All she had was a Rockford address, but when Travelers Aid did an online search, they got an image of a vacant lot. The person she was meeting wouldnt return phone calls from us. The girl received a return plane ticket. Most likely, Medina said, we avoided a human trafficking situation. Ziomek and Lorenzo Vasquez stood behind an information desk in Terminal 3 and spoke quietly and casually. It was Vasquezs first day with Travelers Aid. He wore a porkpie hat and listened to Ziomek explain the job and occasionally looked up to scan the clamor from another rush of passengers: fathers with visible sweat stains carrying children, couples bickering softly, armies of matching teenagers in volleyball sweatsuits. It takes a special personality to do this, Medina told me with a public-service gene, to be specific. Vasquez, a former Chicago firefighter who also volunteers with the USO, has it. You scan for distress, Vasquez said. You read faces. Its a skill you pick up. Occasionally, Ziomek would call into the ether: Help? Anyone? Like many Travelers Aid volunteers, theyre retired. Ziomek taught and was assistant dean at Northwestern Universitys Medill School of Journalism, as well as its director of editorial masters programs. (Disclosure: I took a class with Ziomek myself at Northwestern, about 30 years ago.) There are two 17-year-old volunteers (the minimum age to join) but most are retired professionals, at least 60. They include Chicago police, firefighters, dentists, plumbers and teachers; many were airport employees, airline workers and even pilots who miss airport life. If they do six months of this, Ishu said, they stay years, even decades. Heiferman was a nurse who volunteered eight hours a day, five days a week, for nine years. But shes cut back a little after the pandemic. I cant pinpoint exactly what changed for me, but people in this place are on edge all the time now. And I still love it. People, to generalize, expect to get screwed over at an airport. They will be mistreated, inevitably. Volunteers report passengers who zone out in the middle of gate directions, passengers who wander off in midsentence, passengers who shake their heads furiously when told to call airline customer service, as if theyd been sentenced to death. Elisabeth Adams, a former Pan Am employee and 10-year Travelers Aid vet, gets it. Shes not paid to get it, but she does. She stands at a desk in Terminal 5 on a Friday morning. She has the short graying hair, thin eyeglass frames and the Glinda-the-Good-Witch smile of a preschool teacher. She doesnt witness many tears, she says, but she knows to anticipate something she cant anticipate. She has the image of a passenger seared into her brain who, trapped in OHare airport limbo, began shouting that hes been wearing the same underwear for two days, then reached into his pants and gave himself a massive wedgie, to illustrate his despair. Adams looks up. A woman stands before her and explains very quickly that shes been trying to get home to Texas for days and she has a sick child there waiting for her and she may start to cry. Please dont, Adams whispers to me, then Ill be a liar. She turns back to the passenger: OK, how can I help? cborrelli@chicagotribune.com Liberty and Bell participate in a turkey pardoning ceremony at the White House. Here are five times traditional Thanksgiving foods, including turkey, potatoes and macaroni, made the Odd News headlines. Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, and for many families in the United States, this means heaping servings of turkey and an array of side-dishes. The Thanksgiving table is not the only place you can find foods such as turkey, potatoes, macaroni, sweet potatoes and vegetables, though -- they also appear in the Odd News headlines. In celebration of this day of thanks, and the traditional meals it brings, here are five times Thanksgiving foods never quite made it to the plate. Aggressive turkey causes chaos in Minnesota neighborhood Residents of a Coon Rapids, Minn., mobile home park complained earlier this year that they were being terrorized by an unwelcome neighbor: a wild turkey. Neighbors said a flock of turkeys spent time in the area in November 2021, but one of the birds stayed behind when his cohorts moved on and has since been attacking cars, damaging property and chasing children. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources told residents the best thing they can do to encourage the turkey to leave is to keep trash and other potential food sources secured. Inert WWII grenade found among potatoes at factory Workers at a factory in the suburbs of Auckland, New Zealand, spotted something on their potato conveyor belt that definitely would have ruined a Thanksgiving reveler's mash: an inert World War II grenade. Night shift employees at the Mr. Chips factory said 28 tons of recently-delivered russet potatoes were on the conveyor belt when a worker spotted what initially appeared to be a particularly mud-covered spud. The New Zealand Defense Force's explosive ordnance disposal team ended up getting involved when workers discovered the object was a grenade dating back to World War II. The device was found to be a non-explosive grenade, likely used for training purposes. 500 pounds of cooked pasta found by New Jersey river basin No turkey day dinner would be complete without a side of mac and cheese, but 500 pounds of cooked pasta next to a New Jersey river basin might be excessive for even the most voracious of appetites. Residents of Old Bridge discovered the quarter ton of cooked spaghetti, elbow macaroni and ziti covering a 25-foot area near the bank of the river. The derelict durum semolina was hauled away by the Old Bridge Department of Public Works after about two days, and investigators were able to trace the source of the "uh oh, spaghetti woes" back to a local man, but no charges were filed. Georgia man's 186-pound sweet potato harvest might be a world record Plenty of Thanksgiving dinner enjoyers might have David Anderson of Washington County, Ga., to thank for their feast after he harvested 186 pounds of sweet potatoes from a single plant. Anderson said weather conditions were ideal this year for a bountiful crop of potatoes and sweet potatoes. The single root system yielded 186 pounds of sweet potatoes, breaking the record of 81 pounds and 9 ounces set by Manuel Perez of Spain in 2004. Truck rolls over, covers Ontario highway in celery Your grandmother would be disappointed if you skipped your veggies, but a truckload of celery stalks didn't quite pass the 5 second rule when they spilled across Highway 400 in the Aurora, Ontario area. Ontario Provincial Police tweeted photos of the roadway absolutely covered in spilled stalks, writing: "So much celery." The high-fiber mess took crews several hours to clean up, but no injuries were reported from the truck crash or the resulting celery spill. So much celery! #AuroraOPP working hard to keep motorists safe Hwy 400 S/B. Please be patient. #Celery https://t.co/TXRNxiR85z pic.twitter.com/ygAYQCPJtQ OPP Highway Safety Division (@OPP_HSD) October 3, 2023 COLUMBUS, Ohio (WJW) Hunters in three Ohio counties are required to sample harvested white-tailed deer for chronic wasting disease, a fatal neurological illness, during the seven-day gun season starting next week. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources is watching for afflicted deer in Hardin, Marion and Wyandot counties, according to a Wednesday news release. 10K deer harvested in 2-day youth hunting season The disease was first confirmed in a captive deer in Ohio in 2014. Since 2020, a total of 28 wild deer have tested positive in those three counties, according to ODNR. The most recent confirmation was for a single deer in Hardin County this past summer. Authorities are still testing a suspected case in Allen County. The state has tested more than 39,000 deer since 2002. Mandatory deer sampling locations As the disease surveillance area remains in effect, its mandatory for hunters to submit deer harvested in those three counties during gun season, which runs from Monday, Nov. 27, to Sunday, Dec. 3. Sampling doesnt require hunters to surrender their deer. Sampling locations can be found all week at: Big Island Wildlife Area Headquarters , 5389 Larue-Prospect Road West, New Bloomington Killdeer Plains Wildlife Area Headquarters , 19100 County Highway 115, Harpster Wyandot County Fairgrounds , 10171 state Route 52, Upper Sandusky Rural King , 233 American Blvd., Marion Hardin County Fairgrounds , 14134 County Road 140, Kenton McGuffey Conservation Club, 6950 Township Road 55, Ada The locations have self-serve kiosks for sample submission during the seven-day gun season and voluntary submission until the end of deer archery season on Feb. 4. For questions about deer sampling, call 419-429-8322. To see a list of all sampling locations, visit ODNRs website. Outside the surveillance area, hunters can have deer tested by the Ohio Department of Agricultures Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, which can be reached at 614-728-6220. The winner of the 2023 Fox 8 Celebrity Turkey Bowl is How to properly handle a deer carcass In the surveillance area, the use of bait including salt, minerals or food to attract, feed or hunt deer is prohibited. Food can still be used to feed domestic animals, however, and deer over areas where food or plants are growing may still be hunted. Hunters cannot completely remove a deer carcass or its high-risk parts including the brain, spinal cord, eyes and lymphoid tissue from the surveillance area, unless the carcass complies with regulations or is delivered to a taxidermist within 24 hours of leaving the area. See carcass regulations and a list of certified taxidermists on ODNRs website. To keep the disease from spreading, hunters should properly dispose of carcasses by double-bagging high-risk parts. If permitted by the waste disposal company, they can be left out with the garbage. If there isnt a trash pickup service, the parts can be taken to a municipal landfill or buried at least 3 feet deep where the deer was harvested. Receptacles for deer carcasses can also be found in the three-county surveillance area. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Fox 8 Cleveland WJW. Images of a man and a woman whom Grandview Heights police identified as persons of interest in the Nov. 13 beating of 57-year-old Stephen Albridge on West 5th Avenue that led to his Nov. 17 death from head and other injuries. The woman was taken into custody Tuesday, said police, who also identified the at-large man as Jacob Laurence. He is considered "armed and dangerous," and anyone who sees him should call 911. A woman Grandview Heights police believe is one of two persons of interest in the investigation into the beating death of 57-year-old-Stephen Albright has been taken into custody and police have identified the man being sought. Grandview Heights police were conducting surveillance Tuesday on a home in the 100 block of Columbian Avenue near Glenwood Park in Columbus' Hilltop when they requested the assistance of Columbus police and its SWAT unit, according to a dispatcher. Authorities later took a woman at the house into custody for questioning. She has not yet been identified by Grandview Heights police. Grandview Heights police have identified the second person of interest as Jacob Laurence, and are asking the public's help in locating him. Police said that Laurence may be in the Hilltop or Franklinton neighborhoods of Columbus. He has an outstanding warrant from a previous burglary investigation in Franklin County, and is to be considered "armed and dangerous," police said. Jacob Laurence, seen here, has been identified by Grandview Heights police as the second person of interest in the beating death of Stephen Albright, 57, a husband and father of two teenage daughters, who was found unconscious with head injuries on Nov. 13 and died four days later at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Laurence should be considered 'armed and dangerous,' police said. Stephen Albright, a husband and the father of two teenage daughters, was found unconscious with severe head and face injuries on Nov. 13 on West 5th Avenue near the railroad tracks east of Dublin Road in Grandview Heights, police said. He was transported in critical condition to Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, where he died from his injuries on Friday, Nov. 17. Grandview Heights police originally issued images of a man and woman riding bicycles in the area where Albright is believed to have been beaten. The images were from videos recorded between 7:40 and 7:48 p.m. on the day of the attack. Images of an unidentified woman in custody and of Jacon Laurence, whom Grandview Heights police said are persons of interest in the Nov. 13 beating of 57-year-old Stephen Albright on West 5th Avenue that led to Albright's Nov. 17 death from head and other injuries. Anyone who sees Jacob Laurence should call 911 immediately. Anyone with information about the incident or the possible whereabouts of Laurence is asked to contact Grandview Heights police at (614) 488-7901 or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at (614) 461-8477. @ShahidMeighan smeighan@dispatch.com This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Woman of interest in Grandview Heights beating death in police custody Slovak authorities will investigate measures to prevent haulers from blocking the Ukraine-Slovak border crossing at Vysne Nemecke, Deputy Infrastructure Minister Serhii Derkach said on Nov. 22. "Slovak colleagues confirmed that they do not support the border blockade, especially when it comes to the single cargo transport point with Slovakia at Uzhhorod - Vysne Nemecke," Derkach wrote on social media following his talks with Denisa Zilakova, a state secretary at the Slovak Transport Ministry. "They promised to consult the Slovak Interior Ministry on how to prevent such protests." The Slovak Union of Freight Carriers initiated protests near the Slovakia-Ukraine border crossing on Nov. 21, blocking cargo vehicles moving toward Vysne Nemecke. Join our community Support independent journalism in Ukraine. Join us in this fight. Support us They have joined Polish truckers in a protest against the EU's liberalization of transport rules for Ukrainian trucks. Four checkpoints have been blocked by Polish protesters as of Nov. 22, leaving thousands of vehicles stranded at the crossings. Polish truckers complain that the high number of Ukrainian drivers entering Poland are hauling goods from Poland to other countries, undercutting local businesses that cannot match cheaper Ukrainian prices. Ukrainian officials and industry representatives denied the accusations, and the EU warned the Polish government to ensure the end of the blockade. According to Derkach, transport liberalization is a necessary step in the conditions of war and Russia's blockade of the Black Sea shipping. He also stressed that Slovak inspections uncovered no serious violations from the side of Ukrainian truckers. The Ukrainian Border Guard said earlier on Nov. 22 that the crossing was temporarily unblocked in cooperation with the Slovak police. State Border Guard spokesperson Andrii Demchenko said that 250 trucks crossed through the checkpoint in both directions over the past 24 hours on Nov. 21, albeit 100 fewer than is typical for the previous days. Read also: Trucker protests: Unraveling the standoff between Polish and Ukrainian haulers Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Ohio firefighters battled an oil refinery fire for several hours Tuesday night. >>Body cam shows officers entering Beavercreek Walmart, locating mass shooter Columbus firefighters were dispatched just after 8 p.m. to GFL Columbus Refinery across from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and were put out after 10 p.m., according to our news partner WBNS in Columbus. It is also located near John Glenn Columbus International Airport. Firefighters had to deal with massive flames when they arrived at the scene. Whitehall Division of Fire provided mutual aid and posted videos and photos of the fire on its social media page. Columbus Fire Battalion Chief Jeffrey Geitter told WBNS crews worked to keep other surrounding tanks cool to keep the fire from spreading. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Photo from Whitehall Division of Fire Facebook Page Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) Seventeen Filipino seafarers were among those taken hostage after Yemen's Houthi rebels hijacked a cargo ship in the Red Sea, government officials confirmed Wednesday. CNN Philippines first confirmed this through Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega. They were part of a total of 25 crew members taken hostage by the rebels on Nov. 19, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) also said in a statement. Earlier reports showed the other victims are from Bulgaria, Ukraine, Mexico, and Romania. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the government is doing everything in [its] power to ensure that the seafarers will be able to return home safely. DFA is in coordination with their counterparts in Iran, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia for updates, and the DMW is in regular communication with the families of the hostages, Marcos wrote in a social media post. In a separate statement, Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ma. Teresita Daza also said there is an all-of-government approach and various government agencies are meeting and working together on this. The DMW said it has already talked to the families of those taken hostage and gave assurance of assistance. The department which has primary jurisdiction over assistance cases involving seafarers added that it is working with officials of the registered shipping and manning agency of the sailors' vessels in monitoring the situation. A CNN report earlier stated that the group allegedly backed by Iran seized the vessel, believing it was an Israeli ship. This claim, however, was refuted by the Israeli government. Tel Aviv also said there were no Israelis among the crew. Officials from the Japanese government, meanwhile, confirmed that one of its companies operated the ship. While there were no Japanese on board, they are now working with Israel for the release of the vessel. The Houthis are reported to be part of the so-called "axis of resistance" led by Iran, which has been mobilized to oppose Israeli power, especially amid the war in the Middle East. Oil prices have been clouded by fears of splits in the OPEC alliance on how to cut production (YAMIL LAGE) International oil prices fell Wednesday after a key ministerial meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies was pushed back from Sunday to November 30. The Vienna-based organisation announced the postponement of the OPEC+ alliance gathering in a brief statement, without providing any explanation. The 13 OPEC members headed by Saudi Arabia and ten partners led by Russia are due to decide on their output policy amid slumping crude prices and recent rumours of discord among alliance members. Global crude prices shed more than five percent following the surprise announcement but stablised a little. At 1630 GMT, Brent North Sea crude was down 3.9% at $79.27 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was 4.1% lower at $74.61. - Diverging views - "Uncertainty is never good for financial markets, which now have to wait longer to get clarity what OPEC+ will do next year," UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo told AFP. The postponement also signalled the existence of "different views among the group's participants", he added, confirming what two OPEC+ sources had told AFP on condition of anonymity. The alliance has postponed ministerial meetings in the past, "but never for four days" indicating difficulties to reach agreement, said Jorge Leon of Rystad Energy. With oil prices plummeting below $80 per barrel since peaking in September, analysts expect further production cuts by the alliance. But the great unknown is how the cuts would be implemented next year and potentially shared among members. In recent months, nine OPEC+ members including Riyadh, Moscow, Baghdad and Dubai have reduced their output. Saudi Arabia bore the brunt, voluntarily slashing production by a further million barrels a day since July. Voicing discontent over the slump in prices, Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman recently "blamed speculators for the oil price slide" rather than weak demand, said analyst Carsten Fritsch of Commerzbank. - End of Saudi cuts? - Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak on Wednesday sounded a different note, saying that "current oil prices objectively reflect the current situation". "They are at a sufficient level, so the market is balanced. But we will discuss these issues in detail at the next meeting", he added, quoted by Russian news agencies. Oil prices are far from the levels near $140 a barrel reached after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But they remain above the average of the last five years, despite concerns about demand, particularly in China -- the world's biggest importer of crude. For the Saudis, however, the $80 mark is critical as the break-even price is slightly above it, according to IMF estimates. In the absence of an agreement, investors fear that Riyadh might put an end to their additional cuts, Fawad Razaqzada of City Index told AFP. "It's clear that they're dissatisfied with some of the other OPEC+ members who are not complying with the cuts" previously announced, he added. Russia is reportedly reluctant to implement its commitments because it needs the oil revenue to finance its war in Ukraine. The two sources close to the discussions contacted by AFP, also mentioned "disagreements between Riyadh and African countries over quotas". Some members have said they would like to increase their production. At the last meeting in June, the United Arab Emirates obtained an increase in their volume for 2024, to the detriment of other countries such as Angola, Congo and Nigeria. anb-emb/kym/tw FILE PHOTO: The sun is seen behind a crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County By Nicole Jao NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell nearly 1% in a volatile session on Wednesday as OPEC+ producers unexpectedly delayed a meeting on production cuts, raising questions about global crude supplies. Brent futures settled 49 cents lower to $81.96 a barrel, after falling more than 4% to a low of $78.41 earlier in the session. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude settled 67 cents lower at $77.10, after declining more than 5% to a session low of $73.79 earlier in the day. OPEC+ postponed the meeting, originally scheduled for Nov. 26, to Nov.30, it said in a statement, a surprise development that drove prices sharply lower in early trading. The group was expected to discuss whether to expand oil output cuts. Prices bounced back after news that the disagreement was related to African countries, which are among the smaller producers in the group, rather than the top oil exporters. Some traders also pointed to low liquidity ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. The OPEC+ meeting, which includes major producers Saudi Arabia, Russia and other allies and members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, had been expected to consider further changes to a deal that already limits supply into 2024, according to analysts and OPEC+ sources. The delay stoked concerns that more production could come online from oil producers in the coming months, said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial. A rise in inventories also pressured prices lower on Wednesday morning, he said. U.S. crude oil inventories rose by 8.7 million barrels last week on higher imports, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said. The U.S. dollar bounced back from a 2-1/2-month low after economic data showed lower unemployment claims. A rise in the greenback makes dollar-denominated oil more expensive for buyers in other currencies. Both crude benchmarks have fallen for four straight weeks. To support prices, OPEC and its allies will need to not only extend, but increase cuts, said John Evans of oil broker PVM in a note. Earlier this week, an OPEC technical panel invited a top financial market dealer to give a presentation, seen by Reuters, which painted a bearish outlook for the oil market. Even if the OPEC+ nations extend their cuts into next year, the global oil market will see a slight supply surplus in 2024, the head of the International Energy Agency's oil markets and industry division said on Tuesday. (Reporting by Nicole Jao, Paul Carsten, Ahmad Ghaddar, Laura Sanicola and Colleen Howe; editing by Jason Neely, Marguerita Choy, David Gregorio and Deepa Babington) OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) Attorney General Gentner Drummond issued a formal opinion Tuesday explaining that Oklahoma law does not allow pregnant women to be punished for seeking, performing or self-inducing an abortion to intentionally terminate their pregnancy. The opinion was requested by four state senators and two state representatives: Sen. Warren Hamilton, Sen. George Burns, Sen. Shane Jett, Sen. Nathan Dahm, Rep. Tom Gann, and Rep. David Smith. Oklahoma Supreme Court keeps anti-abortion laws on hold while challenge is pending Oklahoma law does not allow the punishment of pregnant women attempting an abortion, the opinion states. The Legislature has repeatedly made this clear and just last year, repealed the one law that would have expressly allowed such a prosecution. The AGs opinion goes on to say that while Oklahoma law does not allow for pregnant women to be prosecuted, abortion is legally prohibited throughout pregnancy except to save the life of the mother. The opinion notes that historically, in Oklahoma and nationwide, pregnant women have not been prosecuted for seeking, obtaining or inducing an abortion. Federal complaint filed after woman denied life-saving abortion Drummond also issued updated guidance to Oklahoma law enforcement agencies and district attorneys regarding the states abortion laws. Drummonds updated guidance emphasizes that criminal prosecution should be pursued only for those who intentionally perform or assist with an elective or on-demand abortion in Oklahoma, not for a life-saving abortion saying the law protects the judgment of medical professionals in making such a determination. Medical doctors, in particular, should be given substantial leeway to treat pregnant women experiencing life-threatening or emergency physical conditions, using their reasoned medical judgment, so long as they are not unnecessarily terminating the life of the unborn child or intentionally abusing their position to facilitate elective abortions, Drummond wrote in the guidance. Study: Most Oklahoma hospitals unable to explain emergency abortion care policies to patients The memo comes after the Oklahoma Supreme Courts decisions earlier this year in OCRJ v. Drummond and in OCRJ v. Oklahoma, when Oklahomas two recent civil abortion statutes were declared unconstitutional due to overly narrow language regarding exceptions when a mothers life is at risk. Abortion providers stopped performing the procedure in Oklahoma in May 2022 after Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law what was then the strictest abortion ban in the country. About a month later, the U.S. Supreme Court stripped away womens constitutional protections for abortion, which led to abortion bans in more than 20 states. The number of abortions performed in Oklahoma immediately dropped dramatically, falling from about 4,145 in 2021 to 898 in 2022, according to statistics from the Oklahoma State Department of Health. In at least 66 cases in 2022, the abortion was necessary to avert the death of the mother, the statistics show. Abortion statistics for 2023 are not yet available, a health department spokeswoman said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KFOR.com Oklahoma City. NORMAN, Okla. (KFOR) A 22-year-old man has been arrested for allegedly shooting over 40 business and vehicle windows throughout Norman, Moore, and Oklahoma City. John McGregor runs The Pickup Shop in Norman. The small business has been around since 1982. It was supposed to be a normal Halloween Eve, but when McGregor showed up to the shop, he said something looked off. McGregor said one of the front windows on the shop had a spiderweb-like crack. First instinct was, you know, My goodness, did we make somebody mad?' recalled McGregor. We have never had something like this happen before. This was just completely off guard, something that you never imagine could really happen. Once he took a closer look, he said he noticed a small entry point. Its aggravating. It makes you mad. It really gets you pissed off, stated McGregor. To replace the window, McGregor said it cost the shop around $1,200. We were able to absorb the cost, but it really got down to just the timing of it. The struggle of finding a window, finding somebody that can replace such a big window at a good time, weather coming in, rain coming in. All in all, it wasnt a good thing and I wouldnt really wish this upon anybody to have to go through, said McGregor. He wasnt sure what caused the damage at first, but saw on social media it could have been a BB gun. I feel lost: Man tries cashing check, catches fraud charges instead Down the street is another victim who paid $485 to replace the rear window of her SUV. Maybe there was a malfunction with the way the temperature changed, Mary Stanley on first thought when she saw the rear window of her car was broken. Stanley said her car could have also been shot with a BB gun. She also wondered if her Tahoe was targeted because out of six cars in her driveway, she said only the Tahoe had a broken window. Stanely said she hopped on social media to get an idea of what may have happened to her car. Thats when she saw a flood of posts saying something similar happened to them too. Thankfully, we were able to get ours fixed that same day. A lot of people cant afford to do that. I cant imagine driving around in a Tahoe with kids in the back without having a window in the middle of winter, she added. Moore Police Department Digital Media Specialist, Clint Byley told KFOR dispatch received an influx of calls on Halloween, all with the same story of busted windows. We sent officers to the scene and after the sheer amount of them, we started investigating, said Byley. As of Tuesday morning, Byley said there are over 40 victims in Moore alone. There are 30 additional incidents in Norman and Oklahoma City that could be connected to this case as well, according to Byley. No injuries have been reported at this time. OKC organization steps in to save local womans home An arrest warrant was issued for 22-year-old Zachery Cox. He has been charged with 43 misdemeanors: 42 counts of vandalism and one count of shooting from a vehicle. A Cleveland County affidavit reveals Moore investigators were able to track Cox down through video surveillance. Our detectives worked really hard to obtain surveillance video and footage and images of the suspects vehicle. Essentially, we were able to use block cameras and some other equipment to get a positive identification on a vehicle and then that led to us contacting the owner and the suspects, explained Byley. Moore investigators located Cox at his home and spoke with him, according to court records. [Cox] confessed to leaving his home in Pink, Oklahoma and traveling to Sunnylane Estates Trailer Park to pick up two friends who would enter his truck. [Cox] stated that they drove around the city of Moore as well as Norman and South Oklahoma City and randomly shot out windows, court documents read. Cox did not have an excuse for this action, only stating that it was a bad idea, the affidavit continued. Numerous BBs were allegedly found in the truck used to commit this crime. Cox reportedly admitted to shooting all of the windows from inside the vehicle over a span of several hours. Cox was booked into the Cleveland County Detention Center November 17. McGregor and Stanley are shocked to find out adults were involved in this crime as they both assumed it was committed by teenagers. Its an adult, somebody that knows better, somebody that should be setting the standard for young people. For them to go out and choose to do something like this, you know, I think the misdemeanors are too small of charges, stated McGregor. Woman arrested after alleged vandalism at Del City cemetery While Cox has been charged with 43 misdemeanors, Byley said his charges could be upgraded to felonies based on how many misdemeanors there are. Byley said the Moore Police Department has still been receiving calls from potential victims. We actually got more phone calls this morning of other people who say, Yeah, my windows were shot out. Its kind of amazing. Here we are, you know, two and a half, three weeks later, almost a month later, and were still getting calls, stated Byley. Both Stanley and McGregor are happy to see an arrest come out of this case, but they are also hoping for restitution. I would love to see restitution come back to us. I believe there are a lot more victims out there that need to be taken care of first. Id like to see them have justice first, said McGregor. Stanley said if restitution is awarded and Cox fails to make a payment, he should face additional jail time. Only Cox has been arrested as Monday afternoon, but Byley said the Moore Police Department is currently working with the Cleveland County District Attorneys Office on two other arrest warrants in this case. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KFOR.com Oklahoma City. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has claimed to reject big government and high taxes while embracing economic growth. Conscious, no doubt, that voters wont thank the Government for yet another year of managed decline, Hunt has announced a mix of supply side reforms and tax cuts in an effort to boost our moribund economy. Those tuning in would be forgiven, therefore, for wondering whether this Autumn Statement for growth might be better described as another mini-Budget. But for all the rhetoric, the details in todays statement left it failing to live up to the hype. Importantly, the tax burden is still set to grow to the highest level in 70 years, despite the initial excitement over cuts. Yes, reducing national insurance will let people hold onto more of what they earn. But in the context of frozen income tax thresholds, its little more than a sleight of hand. For every 1 the Chancellor will let workers keep, he will take 4 through fiscal drag. Introducing permanent full expensing in the corporate tax system will encourage investment into tangible assets like IT equipment, buildings, and machinery - boosting productivity that has stagnated since the global financial crisis. But where was the cut to corporation tax, not least given that Hunt himself once expressed a desire to reduce it to 15 per cent? According to forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility, Britains economy will continue to barely crawl along over the coming years. It will grow by just 0.6 per cent this year and 0.7 per cent next year and that comes after many years of lacklustre to non-existent expansion. Truss may have reintroduced growth into the political lexicon after years in the wilderness, but based on todays statement, prospects are based on the power of prayer more than significant policy change. Again, there was an understanding that crippling red tape is holding back British entrepreneurialism, suggesting that the current Chancellor is more ideologically aligned with this predecessor than previously thought. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng rejected the prevailing big-state, high-regulation orthodoxy, and Hunt has now announced supply-side reforms spanning the benefits system, financial services and planning system. The great advantage of such regulatory changes, like allowing pylons to be built faster, is that they can deliver growth without cost to the Treasury - if the Government is willing to face down the vested interests who will vociferously lobby against them. The call for tax cuts is loud and clear, and it is not just about reducing the immediate financial burden on individuals and corporations. High taxes are anathema to economic growth; they disincentivise investment, dampen the entrepreneurial spirit, and slow the cogs of innovation. But they must be accompanied with fiscal prudence. And this can only be achieved by reassessing the spending side of the ledger. Its always disappointing to hear a Chancellor spraying taxpayer money on his favoured projects, like supporting the Hay Festival, however much it might be expected. On this occasion, it was accompanied by an increase in benefits of 6.7 per cent and the state pension by 8.5 per cent both by more than is strictly necessary to cover rising prices. Never before has so much been spent on public services, yet the more the Government invests, the narrower the marginal gains appear to be. Ask anyone who has tried to see the dentist lately. The Autumn Statement represents cautious incrementalism rather than a shift in gears towards courageous, comprehensive reform. It may be too little, too late for a tired government at the tail end of its parliamentary term. It is unlikely to sway voters any more than it will breathe life back into our economy. For all the missteps, Truss was right that we need growth - and that we need bold measures to achieve it. For now, well keep doing laps of the doom-loop, rather than breaking free from it. Mark Littlewood is director general at the Institute of Economic Affairs 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. PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) A 19-year-old Oregon man is wanted in connection to a fatal shooting that occurred near Main Street and Third Avenue in Riddle on Nov. 20 shortly after 11:30 p.m., the Douglas County Sheriffs Office said. Suspect Gauge Douglas James Main remains at large following the shooting, which killed 20-year-old Devonte Lovell Clark and injured 29-year-old Killian Mavity, both from Grants Pass. Mavity was hospitalized for a gunshot wound to his arm. His condition is not known at this time. Suspect Gauge Douglas James Main. (Photos provided by the Douglas County Sheriffs Office) Suspect Gauge Douglas James Main. (DCSO) The missing Honda Civic that Main allegedly used to flee the scene of the shooting. Tips for safe and smooth travel during Thanksgiving weekend in Oregon Main allegedly fled the scene of the shooting in a stolen 2017, silver, four-door Honda Civic with the Oregon license plate 276PAT. A sheriffs office has provided the public with a photo of Main and the Honda Civic he was last seen driving. Main should be considered armed and dangerous, the Douglas County Sheriffs Office said. Anyone who observes the vehicle or Main is asked to call 911. The shooting remains under investigation by the Douglas County Sheriffs Office, the Roseburg Police Department and Oregon State Police. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com. Every fifth Ukrainian family is facing some degree of acute food shortage, especially those living near the war zone. Source: Matthew Hollingworth, World Food Programme (WFP) Representative in Ukraine, during a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday, 21 November; Ukrinform Details: Ukraine, which used to feed 400 million people worldwide annually before the beginning of the full-scale war, is now facing a food problem: people face challenges accessing food in 80% of settlements near the contact line. More than 900,000 people "living within 30 kilometres of the frontline" are experiencing the most acute food needs, which worsen in winter, the official added. Hollingworth stressed that "in one of the worlds most formidable breadbaskets, there are hundreds of thousands of people living in proximity to the hostilities that now depend on humanitarian food assistance". The programme representative said WFP will supply food to about 750,000 of these people over the winter. An additional 1.5 million civilians will also receive financial assistance in areas directly affected by the hostilities. The official noted that a total of 31 attacks on facilities crucial to grain production and export have been recorded since mid-July. Twenty-eight occurred in Odesa Oblast, where vital Black Sea and Danube River terminals "crucial to grain production and export" are located. Ukraine accounted for 9% of global wheat exports, 15% of maize and 44% of sunflower oil until February 2022, the WFP representative mentioned. The official said Ukraine has suffered US$40.2 billion in losses to the agricultural sector. Support UP or become our patron! Landlords and homeowners will be able to convert houses into two flats without planning permission under Government plans. The scheme, outlined in the Autumn Statement, could provide a boost to property investors, first-time buyers and downsizers. Under the plans, homeowners will get a new permitted development right to convert a house into two flats as long as the exterior of the property is unchanged. The Government wants to implement the changes in 2024 following a consultation. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Hunt said: Today we take further decisions to unlock the building of more homes. It comes as the Government has repeatedly missed its target to build 300,000 homes in England every year, to make housing more affordable and to help the under-40s get on the property ladder. The plans are also welcome news for landlords who have been dealt with successive blows in recent years including the reduction of tax relief on mortgage interest repayments and a looming end to no-fault evictions under the Renters Reform Bill. The Chancellor also announced 32m to bust the planning backlog and develop fantastic new housing quarters in Cambridge, London and Leeds which will lead to many thousands of additional dwellings. Window of opportunity First-time buyers will also benefit from an extension of its mortgage guarantee scheme, which helps people take out a mortgage with a 5pc deposit by underwriting the risk to lenders. Liz Emerson, co-founder of the Intergenerational Foundation think tank, said the changes to make it easier to convert houses into flats would encourage older people to downsize in situ. She said: Its a win-win for all generations. Splitting a home into two lots increases the supply of new housing. It can be a rental income or it can be sold. It allows older generations to remain in their own communities. There is a window of opportunity, and the Government could help older generations to think about downsizing in their own homes during that window of opportunity before they get into very old age. Research from the Intergenerational Foundation has previously found there were around 25 million under-occupied bedrooms, and around 3.5 million homeowners were interested in downsizing but hadnt done so. Liz Emerson says the planning changes will encourage older people to downsize Ms Emerson said: This would also help the housing crisis facing renters more widely. An increase in the supply of new homes, whether theyre subdivided homes or not, obviously reduces the pressure on the wider rental market and would help to bring down prices for all. Stuart Baillie, head of planning at estate agent Knight Frank, said the introduction of the new permitted development right was an unexpected development which provided an investment opportunity for buyers and a chance for older residents to downsize while remaining in their communities. However, he said it raised concerns about a potential clash with local authority policies focused on maintaining family-sized housing stock. He said: While the new permitted development right may increase housing unit numbers, theres a risk of a predominance of one or two bed apartments. It is crucial to ensure that residential space standards are rigorously applied to guarantee a decent quality of accommodation. Balancing housing quantity with quality is paramount to the success of these initiatives and the overall health of our housing market. Timothy Douglas, head of policy at trade body Propertymark, said the move was positive, adding: It will increase the number of units in many communities. He said: That is another way of increasing supply and the choices of people to live and rent in the property. If youve got a big family home, that can be divided up for two family homes to live in. We would caution that there will be an impact on local communities, on car parking at a basic level for example, increased car parking on streets. Its likely that theyre going to have to work still towards building regulations, but by moving to the permitted development rights status, thats taking pressure off planning departments. Mr Douglas said it would also be a boost to landlords who could convert houses into flats to help meet a high demand for rental properties, adding: Its a win for increased supply and choice for renters. Landlords consider flat conversions Markella Mikkelsen, 58, is among buy-to-let landlords who welcomed the measures, saying she would now consider changing houses into flats. She said: The reason I hadnt considered it is because of the red tape around planning. It can take a long time. You can spend a lot of money putting in a planning application and the council basically says no. But if that is now going to come under permitted development that would really ease things up a lot. Ms Mikkelsen, from the Manchester area, has already been converting houses into HMOs (houses in multiple occupation) because there has been a surge in demand from professionals looking to rent a room in a flat-share. She added: A lot of people often contact me and say, do you have an ensuite? In an HMO they would have to share facilities and share a kitchen and bathroom. A lot of 30-year-olds dont want to do that anymore. This would definitely bridge that gap. Although it can be expensive to convert a house into a flat, Ms Mikkelsen said it will pay itself back in rent. 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. Judge Aileen Cannon seems to be in no hurry. On paper, she has scheduled a trial to open next May in the case charging Donald Trump with hoarding national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago. In reality, she has run the pretrial process at a leisurely pace that will make a postponement almost inevitable, according to experts on criminal prosecutions related to classified information. Delaying Trumps trial until after the November election would have a momentous implication: It might mean the trial never happens at all. If Trump wins the election and the case is still pending, hes expected to order the Justice Department to shut it down. Even a shorter delay would be fraught: Pushing the trial into the summer or fall could run headlong into the Republican National Convention or the heart of the general election campaign. For now, Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal district judge in Florida, is officially sticking with the May 20 trial date she announced four months ago. She even recently denied Trumps bid to push it back. But in a series of more technical rulings, Cannon has postponed key pretrial deadlines, and she has added further slack into the schedule simply by taking her time to resolve some fairly straightforward matters. It could be seen as a stealth attempt to delay the ultimate trial date without actually announcing that yet, said Brian Greer, a former Central Intelligence Agency attorney. Theres pretty much no chance they could go to trial on May 20 with the current schedule, he added. David Aaron, a former DOJ national security prosecutor, agreed, saying a May 20 trial is unlikely unless a lot of discipline is imposed. Early delays in a complex case The case would not be a simple one for any judge to manage. Trump is charged with retaining classified documents at his Florida estate after he left the White House and then impeding the governments effort to retrieve the records. Because much of the evidence in the case is classified, a 1980 law known as the Classified Information Procedures Act, or CIPA, governs how that evidence should be handled. Most federal judges outside the Washington area rarely encounter CIPA cases, and Cannon isnt known to have handled one before Trumps. She has already lamented some of the practical complications surrounding this one. A facility to store classified information near the southern Florida courthouse she has designated for the trial isnt expected to be ready until early next year, the judge said during a Nov. 1 hearing. Other delays are more substantive. Last month, after prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smiths office ran into difficulties making a small amount of evidence in the case available to Trump and his lawyers due to what the government says is its extremely sensitive nature, Cannon suspended the deadlines for motions related to classified information. She took more than five weeks to hold a hearing on Trumps request for a new schedule and nine days more after that to issue a new one. And when she did finally set a new schedule, she put off the deadline for many pretrial motions by nearly 16 weeks. Shes certainly taken her time to litigate things, Greer said. Last week, prosecutors tried to jump-start the case by asking Cannon to give defense lawyers a Dec. 18 deadline to file most of their requests to use classified information at trial. The next day, before any of the defense attorneys had even responded, Cannon denied the request and said she doesnt plan to set such a deadline until March 1. The signals are of a court that is proceeding slowly and methodically through the process, said Brandon Van Grack, a former national security prosecutor who also was part of special counsel Robert Muellers team. In order to have a trial by May, the court would just need to push the parties on a tighter deadline. At a hearing earlier this month, Cannon said prosecutors pressing for a faster schedule in the case were being unrealistic about the complications involved. Im just having a hard time seeing how realistically this work can be accomplished in this compressed period of time, given the realities that were facing, Cannon said. A clash of legal and political calendars Cannons approach stands in stark contrast with her counterpart in Washington, Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the other federal criminal case against Trump. (Trump faces separate state-level criminal charges in Georgia and New York.) The case in Washington, involving Trumps efforts to interfere with the 2020 election results, is scheduled for trial in March and Chutkan, an Obama appointee, has seemed determined to stick with that timeline. She has repeatedly insisted that she will not, and cannot, consider Trumps political schedule as she sets deadlines for the case. Cannon, in contrast, has so far danced around the issue of whether Trump should get any deference in scheduling because of his status as a presidential candidate. But those questions may soon become impossible to dodge. The classified documents trial is expected to last for weeks or longer. If the May 20 start date proves infeasible, the trial could risk overlapping with the Republican convention, set to open July 15 in Milwaukee. Could she try to squeeze it in before that? Maybe, but I doubt shed do that, Greer said. Delaying it until August, September or October would open its own can of worms, assuming Trump wins the GOP nomination. The political stakes would be white hot, as Trump would be sidelined from the campaign trail to attend a trial on charges that carry decades of potential prison time. But pushing the trial until after the election might be the most controversial move of all. It would set up the chance for Trump to avoid the trial altogether by winning the election, because as president he could appoint an attorney general willing to fire the special counsel and drop the charges. Trump might even be able to pardon himself. Many Trump critics are already deeply skeptical of Cannon. Before he was even indicted, she sided with Trump on issues related to the materials that investigators seized from Mar-a-Lago. A federal appeals court quickly blocked part of Cannons order and later overturned the rest of it. Judge Cannons bias is showing over and over again, former Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann wrote last week on X, formerly known as Twitter, declaring the judge to be in the bag for Trump. Cannon is surely aware of the suspicion about her in some quarters. That has led some lawyers to conclude she may already know the trial is unlikely to start in May, but sees no reason at the moment to ignite the firestorm she would face if she puts it off. Whatever Cannons motivations, theres little dispute that she and prosecutors have very different views of the urgency of getting the case to trial. The Department of Justice is trying to do everything in its power ahead of trial to move as expeditiously as possible, Van Grack said. And the court is just reluctant to or resistant to any efforts to expedite the process. More delays on the horizon Other significant pretrial showdowns are lurking in the case, all of which may cause further delays, attorneys warn. One almost certain clash is over Trumps plan to ask the judge to force prosecutors to gather more evidence that the defense thinks might be relevant to the case, like files from the National Archives and Records Administration, which manages presidential records. The Justice Departments probe into Trumps retention of classified records after his presidency kicked off after NARA notified the department that it was missing many records. If any of that additional evidence is classified, the parties and the judge may have to go through multiple rounds of litigation about what portions can be used at the trial. Another layer of complexity: Trump is not the only defendant in the case. His personal aide, Walter Nauta, and a Mar-a-Lago facilities manager, Carlos de Oliveira, are also charged for allegedly helping Trump conceal the records and other evidence from investigators. With three defendants all having the opportunity to make motions, it could be that at least one of the defense teams decides to move to use a lot of classified information as evidence, Aaron said. Prosecutors are also likely to ask Cannon to allow special procedures at the trial itself, potentially proposing a procedure called the silent witness rule to try to admit some evidence without it being shown or read out in court. Sometimes witnesses testifying about classified matters even appear in disguise or are obscured from the public by a divider placed in the courtroom. Trump, his co-defendants and members of the media will likely oppose such measures, leading to more litigation. This can put the government to a choice sometimes called graymail between making secrets public and abandoning a prosecution or part of it. There are valid reasons [to object] from a press perspective and a defense perspective, but it also does provide an opportunity for mischief by the defense as part of the graymail problem that CIPA is supposed to thwart, Aaron said. CIPA will thwart the graymail problem, but that does sometimes take time. CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) What happened the night of Nov. 22, 2022 forever changed the Chesapeake community. Six people went to work at the Sams Circle Walmart and would never come home. Those who survived the tragedy are still grappling with the trauma caused by that night. One of those survivors is 35-year-old Sarah Merlo. 10 On Your Side spoke with the former employees attorneys about whats next for the woman who survived seven gunshots. Merlos attorneys say she worked at the Sams Circle Walmart for three years. The shooter was her supervisor and she reported his disturbing behavior numerous times over a two-year span. In September, Merlo filed a lawsuit stating the risk of being shot was not part of the job. Chesapeake Walmart employee shot 7 times files lawsuit The 35-year-old survived seven gunshotsincluding one to the face, leaving her with severe physical injuries, ongoing medical treatment and unable to work. Merlo believes the shooter targeted her out of his dislike for her. The night of Nov. 22, 2022, Merlo hid under a table and begged her supervisor to not shoot her. Judge paves way for $50M Walmart lawsuit to go forward Last Tuesday, Walmart filed a demurrer and motion to dismiss Merlos $25 million lawsuit against the corporation for negligent retention. Merlos counsel has previously denied commenting on the lawsuit until today. Attorneys Craig Davis and Kyle McNew sent 10 On Your Side the following statement on behalf of Merlo: Sarah Merlo is a survivor and what happened to her was a senseless yet avoidable tragedy. We do not believe that the law should simply accept gun violence as a risk of being at a Walmart, whether you are a customer or an employee. We look forward to establishing Walmarts knowledge of [the shooters] troubled mind and violent tendencies and their failure to take reasonable steps to protect their employees and customers. Earlier this week, a judge ruled Briana Tyler can move forward with her $50 million lawsuit against Walmart on the grounds that Walmart should have known that the shooter was a danger to employees and terminated him based on prior complaints, and that the corporation can be held responsible for the actions of its employee. Merlo faces a lifetime of medical care and trauma as a result from last years mass shooting. She showed up for her shift as a dedicated employee and by the end of the night suffered immense physical and mental injuries. Statement from Attorneys Craig Davis and Kyle McNew, on behalf of Sarah Merlo For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WAVY.com. GT Voice: Continuity in trade links will support China-Argentina ties Global Times) 08:37, November 22, 2023 After Javier Milei from the far-right Liberty Advances coalition won Argentina's presidential runoff on Sunday, the direction of Argentina's political and economic future has attracted great attention and triggered hot discussion. Amid the uncertainty, with its economy under severe pressure, it would be unwise for Argentina to alienate China economically. Diana Mondino, Milei's principal adviser on foreign affairs, told Sputnik Brazil on Monday that Argentina would not proceed with plans to join the BRICS grouping. She also said that the country's government will "analyze" if joining the organization promises advantages. As the invitation to join the BRICS grouping was just approved in August, these comments from a candidate for the post of foreign minister could be a signal of potential adjustment in Argentina's economic policy and political direction amid public opinion and pressure over a looming recession and rising poverty. The potential policy uncertainty may cause some confusion or concern over the impact on Argentina's major trading partners in the short term, but given the momentum of economic ties between China and Argentina, the new situation will not and should not constitute an obstacle to bilateral cooperation. In response to speculation on Argentina's future economic and trade relations with China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Tuesday that the development of bilateral relations with Argentina had been showing good momentum. China is Argentina's second-largest trading partner and the largest agricultural export market. The two countries have strong economic complementarities and huge potential for cooperation. China is willing to continue to work with Argentina to promote the stability and long-term development of bilateral relations. Bilateral trade reached $19.8 billion in 2022, up 14.9 percent year-on-year, according to media reports. Argentina mainly exports agricultural products to China, while importing mechanical and electronic products and textiles. Despite Argentina's trade gap with China, observers believe that their cooperation in lithium, natural gas and other energy fields has sufficient potential to reverse the trade balance. For instance, Brazil runs a trade surplus with China through its iron ore exports, and Chile gains a trade surplus with China through copper resources. Moreover, it is due to increasingly close bilateral ties that China has pledged a number of major investment projects in Argentina in recent years. In February 2022, Argentina joined the Belt and Road Initiative, which includes more than $23 billion in investment and cooperation agreements, covering such areas as green technology, scientific and technological innovation, infrastructure construction and agricultural cooperation. Infrastructure projects like dams and high-speed railway lines meet Argentina's development needs and strategic goals and also reflect China's friendship and support for the country. On the financial cooperation level, a currency swap line with China helped Argentina avert a default with the IMF twice this year, according to media reports. Apparently, the close economic, trade and investment relations between the two countries are of great significance to Argentina's economic and social development, whether it is promoting economic growth, creating jobs, upgrading infrastructure or expanding exports. This is also why even if there may be short-term political fluctuations in Argentina, it is still justified for the new government to ensure the fair treatment of Chinese investments. Nevertheless, given the current circumstances, we must also take into account the risks that Chinese investment projects may face, and we have the right to demand that Argentina abide by agreements already signed by both sides and assume its responsibilities in accordance with the contracts. The interests of Chinese companies should not be hurt because of a new government or political differences between the two countries. We believe that Argentina's new government will also realize the importance of bilateral economic and trade cooperation, which is conducive to the country's own development. Even Milei said in August that he'd respect deals already signed in Argentina by Chinese companies, which include a contract to build twin dams in Patagonia and an agreement to set up a nuclear plant, according to Bloomberg. Given the benefits of those investments and projects, there is every reason to believe the new president will honor the spirit of these contracts. (Web editor: Tian Yi, Liang Jun) Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) The House of Representatives and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) agreed that all vehicles with plate number "8" must be apprehended. House Secretary General Reginald Velasco said he met with MMDA Acting Chairperson Romando Artes on Tuesday. "Last night, the House of Representatives and the MMDA formally agreed to apprehend the drivers of vehicles bearing '8' plates and confiscate the expired or spurious plates," said Velasco in a statement released Wednesday. "We discussed that using unauthorized and illegal special plates should not be tolerated as it threatens public safety and undermines the integrity of the vehicle registration system," he added. The lower chamber earlier said it has not released or authorized a special plate bearing number "8" to any of congressmen. This was after the MMDA said it had apprehended a lawmaker with that plate number while unlawfully using the EDSA bus lane. Former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued Executive Order No. 400-A in 2005 which assigns protocol plate number "8" to congressmen. But the House in 2016 ordered the recall of all vehicles with plate number "8" due to reports of abuse by the car owners. According to the Land Transportation Office, no congressmen could use the plate number anymore because all plates that were issued already expired in 2016 and no new protocol plates were released to congressmen since the 17th Congress. One million gallons of crude oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to harm endangered species that live there. The spill was first detected on Friday by the US Coast Guard, who said overflight teams had observed visible oil on the surface of the water and intermittent surface sheens over the weekend. Officials said the origin of the leak appeared to be near the 67-mile long pipeline system owned by Main Pass Oil Company, a subsidiary of Houston-based Third Coast Infrastructure LLC, which is located around Plaquemines Parish, in Louisiana, southeast of New Orleans. In an update on Monday the agency said that three skimming vessels were working to recover oil on the surface and that remotely operated vehicles would continue to survey the pipeline if weather conditions permitted. The coast guard also said that the volume of discharged oil was currently unknown but that the potential release from the affected pipeline could be up to 1.1 million gallons. The Coast Guard continues to oversee the coordinated effort to mitigate the impact of the oil discharge, the agency said in a statement. The Unified Command is coordinating with federal, state and local agencies to ensure the safety of the public, protect the environment, and respond to the incident. There have been no reports of injuries or shoreline impacts at this time. The coast guard said that a marine safety information broadcast was transmitted to vessels in the area. This situation remains dynamic, and changes should be expected as further assessment and oil spill recovery operations develop, the transmission said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency of the US Commerce Department, is helping oversee the incident. According to NOAAs Office of Response and Restoration, in the last 50 years, at least 44 oil spills that discharged more than 420,000 gallons each have occurred in US waters. US Coast Guard overflight teams observed visible oil on the surface of the water (US Coast Guard) If estimates about the volume of the spill are correct, it will be more than three times this amount. NOAA notes that even small amounts of oil spilled in the ocean can have severe impacts on local wildlife and ecosystems. NOAAs emergency operations coordinator, Doug Helton, told WWL-TV the impact of the oil, rather than its volume, was of most concern. "There are endangered and threatened species in Louisiana waters. Most of coastal Louisiana is wetlands and marshes, and thats typically considered really sensitive to oil," Mr Helton said. "Even if this doesnt make it ashore, it doesnt mean that this is an incident that we can just ignore. There are a lot of things that live out in the gulf." Among the species that authorities are most concerned about are sea turtles and whales. The Kemps Ridley the worlds most endangered species of sea turtle was last year found hatching just north of the spill at the Chandeleur Islands for the first time in 75 years. Gulf of Mexico oil spill (US Coast Guard) The species is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, meaning they are at "extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. According to NOAA, Rice Whales fewer than 100 of which are thought to remain are the only baleen whales known to inhabit Gulf waters. Scientists have previously warned that pipelines are a major risk to their existence. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster remains the largest known aquatic oil spill in US history. The well took five months to seal, by which time some 134 million gallons had spilled into the Gulf. Seventeen people were injured and 11 workers disappeared. Their bodies were never recovered. The disaster also killed up to 105,400 sea birds and resulted in a record $20.8 billion settlement with BP, Anadarko, Transocean and Halliburton, the operators of the platform. The Independent has approached Third Coast Infrastructure LLC for comment on the spill. One of Scotland's oldest surviving churches has held its last regular Sunday service. Birnie Kirk, on the outskirts of Elgin in Moray, was built in 1140. The 12th Century building is due to close by 2027, as the Church of Scotland undergoes what has been described as "radical reform" amid falling congregations. The last weekly service was on Sunday but Birnie Kirk will still be available for use for weddings and funerals. "The building will continue to be maintained by the Kirk Session pending its release," a Church of Scotland spokesman said in a statement. "This will allow for the possibility of occasional use such as for funerals or weddings. "There is also an opportunity to organise worship in the Birnie Kirk hall. "However, Birnie Church is still on schedule to be released from Church of Scotland ownership by the end of August 2027." The building is described by Historic Environment Scotland as being of national importance. The Church of Scotland said it was "making the best use of resources" in "increasingly challenging times". "We are aware of the close emotional ties which people and their communities have with their local church, and we share in the sadness felt when a church is released," the statement explained. "Closure of much-loved places of worship is a grief Church of Scotland ministers, elders, members and staff all bear. "However, we do believe radical reform is necessary if we are to address the challenges of falling minister numbers, a decline in membership and a reduction in income both nationally and locally. "As part of that process we recognise the need to reduce the number of buildings we own, which has become unsustainable for our needs. "Strong and effective mission, with a particular focus on supporting the most vulnerable people in society, is at the heart of what the Church is about and this work is not solely dependent on buildings." By Ahmad Ghaddar, Maha El Dahan and Olesya Astakhova DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) -OPEC+ has delayed a ministerial meeting expected to discuss oil output cuts to Nov. 30 from Nov. 26 as producers struggled to agree on production levels and hence possible reductions, OPEC+ sources said, a surprise delay that sent oil prices sliding. Three OPEC+ sources said this was linked to African countries. OPEC+ said after its last meeting in June that the 2024 output quotas of Angola, Nigeria and Congo were conditional on reviews by outside analysts. Sunday's meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies such as Russia, known as OPEC+, had been expected to consider further changes to a deal that already limits supply into 2024, according to analysts and OPEC+ sources. "Uncertainty is never good for financial markets, with markets now having to wait longer to get clarity what OPEC+ does next year," said UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo. "The postponement of the meeting also shows there are some different views among the group participants." Brent crude settled down 49 cents a barrel at $81.96, recovering from steep losses earlier of nearly 5% after news that the dispute was linked to African producers, among the smaller exporters in OPEC. That led some investors and analysts to downplay the importance of the issue that caused the delay. Brent has fallen from near $98 in late September, pressured by rising supplies and concern about demand and a potential economic slowdown. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman agreed to delay the meeting, another OPEC+ source said, citing issues around other producers. The Sunday meeting had been expected to convene in OPEC's Vienna headquarters. OPEC announced the delay in a statement which didn't mention if the group would convene online or in person on Nov. 30, although three delegates said it was expected to be in person in Vienna. EXTRA CUTS? Several analysts have predicted OPEC+ is likely to extend or even deepen oil supply cuts into next year and some, including Helima Croft at RBC Capital, have said Saudi Arabia might ask other members to share the task. "We see some scope for the group to do a deeper reduction," Croft said this week. Before the OPEC statement, Bloomberg News reported that the meeting could be delayed for an unspecified period of time, citing delegates who said Saudi Arabia had expressed its dissatisfaction with other members about their output numbers. Saudi Arabia, Russia and other OPEC+ members have already pledged oil output cuts of about 5 million barrels per day (bpd), or about 5% of daily global demand, in a series of steps that started in late 2022. This figure includes a 1 million bpd voluntary reduction by Saudi Arabia and a 300,000 bpd cut in Russian oil exports, both of which last until the end of 2023. (Reporting by Nadine Awadalla, Nayera Abdalla, Ahmad Ghaddar, Vladimir Soldatkin and Maha El Dahan; Writing and additional reporting by Alex Lawler; Editing by Jason Neely, Mark Potter, Kirsten Donovan and Deepa Babington) Sam Altman will return as CEO to OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT announced late Tuesday, capping off several days of tumultuous changes. Altman will resume his position as CEO and a new initial board will be formed. Bret Taylor, former chair of Twitter before it was acquired by Elon Musk, will serve as its chair. Other members will include former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora co-founder Adam DAngelo, OpenAI said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. DAngelo is the only returning member from the previous board, which ousted Altman last Friday. Best Black Friday Deals We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this, OpenAI added. In recent days, the company reportedly faced threats from hundreds of employees who said that they would quit unless Altman was brought back. OpenAI over the weekend announced former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear would become its CEO, and Altman was hired to lead a generative AI team at Microsoft, which has invested heavily in OpenAI. OpenAI President Greg Brockman also left the company after the news of Altmans firing. Brockman, who had been hired by Microsoft amid the turmoil, said on X he would also be returning to OpenAI after the decision to bring back Altman. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the tech giant is encouraged by the changes to the board and looks forward to a continued partnership with OpenAI with Altman and Brockman back at the company. We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance. Sam, Greg, and I have talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI leadership team in ensuring OAI continues to thrive and build on its mission. We look forward to building on our strong partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of AI to our customers and partners, Nadella said in a post on X. Altman said he is looking forward to returning to the company and building on our strong partnership with [Microsoft]. [I] love openai, and everything ive done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satyas support, im looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft, Altman said in a X post. Updated at 11:43 a.m. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. One of the favorite protagonists in journalistic investigations of deeper sources of Moscows recent foreign policies is the flamboyant Russian idealogue Alexander Dugin. Equipped with a long beard, sonorous voice, and extroverted personality, Dugin is a telegenic speaker who easily checks the box of an archetypical Russian philosopher. He can be different things to his various audiences a modern Dostoevsky, a right-wing Trotsky, an Orthodox monk, a second Rasputin, or an alternative Tolstoy. Yet, Dugins role in inspiring the Kremlins new aggressiveness, in general, and Russias full-scale war against Ukraine, in particular, is complicated. In contrast to how he is often portrayed, Dugin is neither a philosopher of intellectual novelty nor an ideologue with direct access to the Kremlin. He likes to pose as both and is promoted as a deep thinker with links to the Kremlin by his Russian and non-Russian followers. Oddly, some of his critics, too, take these claims at face value. Dugin is an erudite polyglot who can express himself decently in several languages. He is well-read in social theory, esoteric literature, and normative philosophy. His political outlook accommodates a variety of approaches ranging from Samuel Huntingtons civilizationism to Aleister Crowleys satanism, from far-left syndicalism to far-right traditionalism, and from staunchly reactionary principles to expressly non-conformist ideas. He has been called everything from a conservative, Marxist, imperialist, fundamentalist, and geopolitician. Most of these labels are, in one way or another, apt yet by themselves also imprecise. When labeling his own ideology, Dugin invents new constructs like neo-Eurasianism or Fourth Political Theory, designed to intrigue readers in Russia and beyond. Read also: How Ukrainian identity evolved since the Revolution of Dignity Dugin is, moreover, an engaging lecturer and interlocutor. In conferences, talk shows, and interviews, he comes across as clear-eyed, eloquent, and responsive. He frankly admits his extremely nihilistic position. Dugin openly calls for a worldwide anti-liberal revolution, constantly predicts the end of international order, and readily explains his total disgust for the West. In the 1990s, Dugin even presented himself unashamedly as a fascist. He repeatedly praised representatives of German Nazism and its allies. Recently, though, Dugin has refrained from publicly expressing his sympathy for historical European fascism. He poses now instead as an anti-fascist. Dugin and his think tanks output of texts over the last 35 years has been enormous. He and his entourage have published dozens of books in various languages and put out hundreds of statements in different formats across a wide variety of Russian and non-Russian media outlets, public venues, and social networks. The staggering quantity of Dugins statements rather than their limited depth, questionable quality, and bizarre claims have made him famous. Dugin is now perceived across the world as one of the most noteworthy representatives of contemporary Russian political thought. His publicistic omnipresence, bellicist discourse, and rhetorical skills have led many observers to see him as a or even the mastermind behind the resurgence of Russian imperialism and Moscows anti-Western turn. During the last 15 years, Dugin has been labeled as, among others, Putins brain and the worlds most dangerous philosopher. However, Dugins philosophical pronouncements and political ideas are merely Russian translations or reformulations of various older, non-Russian, anti-rational, and anti-individualistic philosophical discourses. Anyone familiar with classical geopolitics, integral traditionalism, international occultism, the German Conservative Revolution, French post-modernism, European New Right, and other alternative schools of thought will experience constant deja vu when listening to Dugin. Readers unfamiliar with these concepts may perceive him as an original Russian philosopher. Yet, what he proclaims as his own neo-Eurasian or Fourth Political theory is largely copy-pasted from disputed and marginal theorists and philosophers from abroad. Dugins hodgepodge of nihilistic fantasies, fascist dreams, and totalitarian plans contains little new for students of non-Russian ultra-nationalism, anti-democratism, and illiberalism. A somewhat similar deception exists with regard to Dugins frequently alleged influence on Russian political decision-making. To be sure, some of the people around Russian President Vladimir Putin, like his long-time KGB associates Viktor Cherkesov and Vladimir Yakunin, have shown documented interest in Dugins writings. In the past, some of Dugins most extreme statements previewed todays rhetoric of the Kremlins propagandists. In 2014, Dugin called, in an infamous video presentation, on Russians to kill, kill, kill Ukrainians. In 2015, he asserted, war is our homeland, our element, our natural and native environment, in which we must learn to exist effectively and victoriously. Other older statements by Dugin appeared, at their time, as outrageous too, yet sound much less surprising today. Nevertheless, the increasing congruence between the philosophers discourse and the Kremlins rhetoric, especially since 2022, should not be over-interpreted. A growing closeness is manifest yet insufficient to claim a straightforward causality between Duginist ideas and Putinist policies. In the past decades, Dugin has proven to have had a better pre-sentiment of where post-Soviet Russia is going than many academic researchers. He has been a prophet rather than an instigator of these tendencies. What Dugin and his followers have contributed to since the 1990s is an increasing poisoning of Russian media and intellectual discourse with dualistic, conspiratorial, and doomsday ideas. Their stories about an age-old Western enmity toward Russia, the inevitable final battle between the traditional land and liberal sea powers, the alleged subversion of Russian society by evil foreign forces, etc., have indirectly contributed to the radicalization of Putins regime and policies. In doing so, Dugin and his followers have been assisted by dozens of other reactionary, fascist, racist, and ultra-nationalist Russian writers and commentators. Read also: Opinion: Will the Kremlins war soon expand to a second front in Georgia? Together, they have performed something similar to what the German so-called Conservative Revolution did during the Weimar Republic of the inter-war period. Rather than influencing parties, politicians, bureaucrats, and diplomats directly, they have created an atmosphere in which violent internal repression and armed external aggression seem natural. Few Russian decision-makers repeat Dugins ideas verbatim, and even fewer have read his books. Given Dugins earlier affirmations of fascism, only select Russian officials would admit to being impressed by him. Notwithstanding, the Russian extreme right, as a whole, was able to make a crucial contribution to Russias anti-Western turn in 2007, intrusion into Ukraine in 2014, and large-scale aggression in 2022. Dugin and similar right-wing drummers have relentlessly voiced openly imperialistic, radically nationalistic, and paranoid anti-Western ideas over more than three decades. When Putin announced his turn against the West 15 years ago, annexed Crimea almost 10 years ago, and started a large war nearly two years ago, many Russians did not need to be explained why Moscow supposedly had to do so. Russias extreme right, with Dugin as its philosophical patriarch, had already done so. Editor's Note: This article was first published by The Moscow Times. The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent. Submit an Opinion Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made headlines when he confirmed his belief that general elections should be postponed until after Ukraine wins the war. Despite some calls from Western allies to field elections sooner rather than later, polling shows that a majority of Ukrainians agree with Zelenskys assessment that the country must remain laser-focused on prevailing in the fight against Russia. Ukraines ongoing fight to expel its Russian invaders isnt merely a territorial dispute it is an existential war that will determine whether this independent nation survives or is subjugated to rule by the Kremlin. The democratic future that Ukraine is fighting for and which the country has made so much progress in achieving since the Revolution of Dignity is impossible if the war itself is not won. And while rushed elections might appease external expectations, the reality is that it would be virtually impossible for a critical mass of Ukrainians to properly participate in the elections, given the realities of wartime. The fact is Ukraine faces significant logistical challenges that would prevent millions of Ukrainians from fully participating in the democratic process. Currently, there are over 6 million Ukrainian refugees, with the near majority now living throughout Europe, and 5 million Ukrainian citizens have been forced to flee their homes and now live as internally displaced persons (IDPs), posing significant challenges to voter mobilization and access. Read also: Watchdogs: Parliament moves to destroy key pillar of judicial reform Ukraines active-duty soldiers would also be prevented from participating in election campaigns and organizing around new and emerging veterans interest causes. Needless to say, veterans and service members who have risked everything to defend their country deserve to have their voices heard in the next election. The security situation is another important obstacle to holding elections, as citizens must feel it is safe to go to their polling stations. The status quo of daily Russian missile bombardments, artillery barrages and Iranian-made Shahed drone strikes would make it extremely difficult to establish the security infrastructure necessary to safeguard new polling centers. Whats more, Russias history of targeting large gatherings of civilians suggests that Russian forces could choose Election Day as an opportunity to stage massive attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Such actions would not only sow terror in the general population, but would benefit the Kremlin by disrupting or discrediting the democratic process. Finally, Kyiv cannot risk endangering the national unity, which has been crucial to its fight for survival. Ukraines will no doubt be competitive and likely divisive a natural and desirable attribute in elections, but highly corrosive to that all-important nationwide solidarity. Establishing an adequate security environment and liberating as many Ukrainian communities and citizens as possible are crucial preconditions for holding safe, free, and fair elections. Only after building the security context required to ensure citizens safety can Ukraine politically mobilize and build public correspondence between different audiences, political parties, and new political interests. Read also: How Ukrainian identity evolved since the Revolution of Dignity Ukraine should use this time to focus on building the legislative framework to ensure all citizens have access to the franchise and to enhance institutional transparency. For example, the passage of last Septembers reworked asset declaration law is a crucial step in the right direction to enforce accountability over elected officials and help establish an open political environment conducive to inclusive public discourse. Additional reforms should focus on ensuring that Ukraines extensive diaspora is able to access international polling stations and protect the voting rights of the millions of Ukrainian IDPs residing outside of their official voting registries. Ukrainians understand better than anyone that democracy requires more than just elections; it must be fortified through inclusive, representative processes that allow citizens to participate fully. Indeed, both the Orange Revolution of 2005 and the Revolution of Dignity of 2014 began after ruling interests denied the popular will and manipulated state institutions following controversial election cycles. Ukrainians are fighting to preserve a free, independent Ukrainian democracy based on inclusivity, liberty, and political accountability. But in order to do that, Ukraine must first achieve victory and guarantee its national independence while also undertaking requisite legislative and institutional reforms. Only then can Ukraine guarantee truly free and fair elections for all its citizens. Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in the op-ed section are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the views of the Kyiv Independent. Submit an Opinion Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Editors Note: Christopher McCallion is a fellow at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank based in Washington, DC. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN. America currently finds itself embroiled in three major geopolitical crises, in three distant parts of the world, pitting it against three consequential powers, on behalf of three countries that are not treaty allies of the United States. Christopher McCallion - Christopher McCallion Notwithstanding the temporary truce and hostage deal announced Tuesday, US forces are still on hand in the Middle East to deter Iran and Hezbollah from intervening against Israel in its war with Hamas, putting American troops at risk and threatening to pull the US into another major war in the region. American troops have already been targeted by dozens of drone and missile attacks from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and have conducted retaliatory strikes in response. In Eastern Europe, the US is essentially engaged in a proxy war with Russia over the latters invasion of Ukraine. In East Asia, the US risks a catastrophic showdown with China over the political status of Taiwan. During his Oval Office address last month, President Joe Biden argued that all these flashpoints are interconnected fronts in what the administration has previously framed as a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. Biden referenced former Secretary of State Madeleine Albrights quote that America is the indispensable nation, adding that American leadership is what holds the world together. Biden further asserted that making sure Israel and Ukraine succeed is vital for Americas national security. In a Washington Post op-ed this weekend, he reiterated that the US is the essential nation. These claims do not stand up to scrutiny. Americas entanglement in these crises is only further overstretching its capabilities, courting unnecessary risks, inflaming local enmities and depriving the American people of resources better used at home. Indeed, the American people are increasingly reluctant to foot the bill indefinitely for military aid to conflicts abroad, with recent polls showing declining support among both Democrats and Republicans for both Israel and Ukraine. The decades-long US policy of maintaining permanent friends and enemies in the Middle East has been counterproductive to its stated interest in regional stability. The US in recent years antagonized Iran by imposing a maximum pressure campaign of economic sanctions while assassinating key Iranian military figure, Qasem Soleimani. Meanwhile, the US has inadvertently boosted Tehrans regional influence by overthrowing Saddam Husseins government in Iraq and later by contributing arms to anti-Assad forces during the Syrian Civil War, which ultimately empowered Iran-backed militias in the fight against both ISIS and US-supported Sunni rebels. Nor has regional stability been advanced by the United States partners, whose bad behavior has been enabled by unconditioned support from Washington. The US has consistently backed Israel despite its continued settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and long-standing blockade of Gaza, feeding the underlying Israeli-Palestinian conflict that now threatens to engulf the region. And despite its democracy versus autocracy rhetoric, the US supported Saudi Arabias gruesome war against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, which produced what the United Nations called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with some 377,000 people killed and approximately 80% of the country in need of humanitarian aid. The Biden administration has since doubled down on its security relationship with the Saudis. Contrary to the goal of avoiding a broader conflict in the Middle East or Ukraine, the presidents Oval Office address last month instead sought to frame these crises in global terms. Biden claimed that if the US does not thwart distant adversaries, they and others will be emboldened to pursue further aggression, and American alliances will be undermined. This reasoning is based on dubious assumptions drawn from WWII and the Cold War, respectively known as the Munich analogy and the domino theory. Biden claimed that if Russia is not stopped in Ukraine, Putin will march on to Poland or the Baltic states. This is not plausible. Russia does not have the material capability to try to conquer Eastern Europe, even if it wanted to. Even without the US and Canada, European NATO members in 2022 spent vastly more on defense and retained many more active duty personnel than Russia, had a combined GDP nearly nine times larger, a population 3.5 times larger and their own nuclear deterrent. Russias poor performance in Ukraine makes this fear even more remote. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' week in California on November 15. Biden hailed talks with Xi as agreements were reached on fentanyl and military communication. - BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/AFP via Getty Images The president also made a veiled suggestion that if Russia is not decisively defeated in Ukraine, China would be emboldened to invade Taiwan. This assumption is similarly unfounded. As political scientists like Daryl Press and Jonathan Mercer have argued, states tend to predict an adversarys future behavior based on current capabilities and perceived interests rather than past behavior in a separate context. If China invaded Taiwan, it would most likely be because Beijing has a greater stake in Taiwan than Washington does, possesses a military advantage a hundred miles off its coast and believes it has no path to peaceful reunification not because the US wavered in its support for Ukraine. Meanwhile, there is no sign Americas treaty allies are losing faith in the credibility of its commitment to their defense. Low defense spending on the part of capable states like Japan and Germany indicates Americas allies remain all too confident they can continue passing the buck to Uncle Sam. Were the US to do less for their defense, Japan and Germany would almost certainly do more out of their imperative for self-preservation not simply surrender their sovereignty to China or Russia. The US should adopt a more restrained grand strategy, one that would more rigorously set priorities among foreign interests, entail fewer risks of entanglement, be less prone to provoke distant rivals and be more aligned with Americas domestic resources and needs. First, the US should not maintain eternal allies and enemies. As former President Richard Nixon once said, Our interests must shape our commitments, rather than the other way around. Military alliances are commitments to wage war on anothers behalf if necessary. America should therefore enter alliances to counterbalance specific threats when they emerge; as threats change, so should alliances. Alliances involve significant costs and risks and must therefore be guided by truly vital security interests, not pretensions of global leadership. Second, the US should stop uniting its adversaries. By framing international politics as a fight between democracy and autocracy, the US is merely ensuring that it has lots of enemies arrayed against it. The growing security alignment between China, Russia and Iran is largely based on a common threat from the United States, rather than an attempt to export a given regime type (which they dont share). The US itself has by far the most extensive record of trying to impose its own values on others by force. Prudent rapprochements with former adversaries should be made when there are no vital interests in dispute. Third, the United States should shift the burden of managing regional threats over to its regional partners, especially in the Middle East and Europe. Ammunition shortages resulting from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are only one demonstration that Americas resources are finite. Scaling back Americas overextended military presence would incentivize capable regional states with an interest in self-preservation to pool forces to counterbalance local threats. Burden-shifting to regional partners would also mitigate the risk of the US getting pulled into a major war and reduce the substantial costs of maintaining forces overseas. The United States favorable power position and distance from Eurasia allows it to pass the buck to others while remaining secure. Finally, if the US wants to advance democratic values around the world, it should do so by providing a compelling model of successful democracy at home thats worthy of being emulated abroad. Biden declares that America is a beacon to the world. Yet as America attempts to prop up its empire, its republic is hurting. We should save the republic, not the empire. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com The Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing his Florida documents case set up a likely delay of the trial this month and legal experts worry about the potential for more mischief. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled the former presidents trial date for next May but in reality, she has run the pretrial process at a leisurely pace that will make a postponement almost inevitable, Politico reported on Wednesday. Delaying the trial until after the November election could allow Trump to shut the case down if he wins but even a shorter delay could push the trial into the heart of the general election campaign and potentially run up against the Republican National Convention next summer. Cannon last week postponed several pretrial deadlines that likely make the May trial date unworkable. It could be seen as a stealth attempt to delay the ultimate trial date without actually announcing that yet, former CIA attorney Brian Greer told Politico, adding that there is pretty much no chance they could go to trial on May 20 with the current schedule. Much of the classified evidence in the case is governed by the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) and this is believed to be Cannons first CIPA case, setting up additional concerns. Prosecutors are likely to ask Cannon to allow special procedures at the trial, potentially proposing the silent witness rule to try to admit evidence without it being shown or read out in court, according to Politico. Under the rule, witnesses can sometimes testify on classified issues in disguise or while they are obscured by a divider, according to the report. Trumps team and the media will likely try to litigate against such measures, which could put special counsel Jack Smiths team to a choice between making the secrets public and abandoning part of the prosecution, experts told the outlet. There are valid reasons [to object] from a press perspective and a defense perspective, but it also does provide an opportunity for mischief by the defense as part of the graymail problem that CIPA is supposed to thwart, former DOJ national security prosecutor David Aaron told Politico. CIPA will thwart the graymail problem, but that does sometimes take time. Scheduling issues are also likely to push back the trial. Cannon has already suspended the deadlines for motions related to classified information. She took more than five weeks to hold a hearing on Trumps request for a new schedule and nine more days to issue a new one after the hearing. Her order put off the deadlines by nearly 16 weeks. Shes certainly taken her time to litigate things, Greer told Politico. The signals are of a court that is proceeding slowly and methodically through the process, added Brandon Van Grack, a former national security prosecutor who served on special counsel Bob Muellers team. In order to have a trial by May, the court would just need to push the parties on a tighter deadline. But Cannon has pushed back on prosecutors attempts to speed up the schedule. Im just having a hard time seeing how realistically this work can be accomplished in this compressed period of time, given the realities that were facing, Cannon told Smiths team at a hearing earlier this month. The trial is expected to last weeks and could overlap with the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, which is scheduled for July 15, if it is delayed. Could she try to squeeze it in before that? Maybe, but I doubt shed do that, Greer said. Delaying it until August or later would mean that Trump is already likely the Republican presidential nominee. But pushing the trial until after the election could potentially give Trump a chance to win and appoint an attorney general willing to drop the case or even pardon himself. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. The Department of Justice is trying to do everything in its power ahead of trial to move as expeditiously as possible, Van Grack said. And the court is just reluctant to or resistant to any efforts to expedite the process. Keeping the May 2024 schedule in place while making it unlikely that the trial would actually proceed by then also complicates matters for judges overseeing Trumps other cases in D.C., Atlanta and New York City. The tricky thing is, it puts them in limbo. Another judge could schedule something for May but may not want to, because its possible trial will still go in May, Greer told The Daily Beast. If youre a cynicand Im notyou might say she deliberately did this Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban threatens to block all aid from the European Union for Ukraine, as well as Ukraines future EU accession, if the EU leaders do not agree to reconsider their whole strategy of support for Kyiv. Source: the letter studied by the Politico media outlet, as reported by European Pravda Details: In a letter addressed to Charles Michel, the Head of the European Council, Orban claims that no decisions concerning financing Ukraine, starting the EU accession talks or further sanctions against Russia can be implemented until this "strategic discussion", for which the EU leaders would gather in Brussels in the middle of December, is held. The letter is undated but has the stamp of his office. Quote: "The European Council should take stock of the implementation and effectiveness of our current policies towards Ukraine including various assistance programs." He also asks why Europe has to continue supporting Ukraine in times when the US, which has supplied Kyiv with the largest part of the military aid, may be unable to continue the financing due to a political deadlock over future support. "The European Council must have a frank and open discussion on the feasibility of the EUs strategic objectives in Ukraine," the letter states. "Do we still regard these objectives realistically attainable? Is this strategy sustainable without robust support from the United States? Can we take continuing support from the United States for granted? How do we conceive the security architecture of Europe after the war," it goes on. It adds that "the European Council is not in a position to make key decisions on the proposed security guarantees or additional financial support for Ukraine, endorse further strengthening of the EU sanctions regime or agree on the future of the enlargement process unless a consensus on our future strategy towards Ukraine is found." One of the EU diplomats who preferred to remain anonymous stated that Orban had "mined" the whole decision-making process of the EU about Ukraine in order to put pressure on the European Commission with the goal of allocating 13 billion to Hungary. The diplomat added that, while in other cases Budapest abstained during key voting and let the EU impose sanctions against Russia, this time "I dont see it happening". "Its not a matter of neutrality for Hungary," said the envoy. "Its about leverage." Since Hungary is increasing tension and threatens to sabotage the EU leaders summit in December, some countries are already contemplating ways to work around Budapest and keep aid flowing to Kyiv. Background: Viktor Orban, during the meeting of his party Fidesz on 18 November, repeated that he considers the start of negotiations concerning Ukraines EU accession an error, as Ukraine is so far not ready for it. The Hungarian government also announced "consultations" with the population, the main question of which would be the support for Ukraines EU membership. Support UP or become our patron! Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has written to European Council President Charles Michel, demanding a review of EUs strategy for supporting Ukraine. Otherwise, Hungary could block new tranches of aid and Ukraine's future accession to the bloc, Politico reported on Nov. 22. Read also: Hungarys PM Orban calls for Plan B in Ukraine conflict Orban believes that the European Union cannot make new decisions on funding or initiate negotiations for Ukraine's EU accession until a "strategic discussion" on Ukraine's support has taken place within the EU. He also referenced the issues with approving financing aid to Kyiv in the United States and expressed doubts about the wisdom of continuing EU assistance. "The European Council must have a frank and open discussion about the feasibility of EU's strategic objectives in Ukraine," the letter stated. The PM thinks that the EU "is not able to make crucial decisions" regarding Ukraine unless there is a consensus on the future strategy of support. Read also: Orban proud of meeting with Putin The report noted that Orban's letter "raises the stakes in the ongoing standoff between Budapest and Brussels," which is withholding EUR 13 billion ($14.2 billion) in EU funds for Hungary over concerns that the country does not meet European standards in the rule of law. On Nov. 8, the European Commission recommended starting membership negotiations for Ukraine and Moldova. Following this, Orban stated that the European Union should not start negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the bloc, stressing that this is Hungary's "clear position." Read also: Hungary calls for strategic debate on EUs policy towards Ukraine Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto also claims that Ukraine "would bring war into the European Union," thus the country is "not yet fit for EU membership." On Nov. 21, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukraines disagreements with Hungary are not insurmountable and can be resolved diplomatically. 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 Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) More lawmakers in the lower chamber have called on the government to cooperate with the International Criminal Court's (ICC) investigation into the Duterte administration's bloody war on drugs. Three resolutions have been filed so far by Reps. France Castro, Arlene Brosas, Raoul Daniel Manuel, Bienvenido Abante Jr., Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez, and Edcel Lagman. Lagmans House Resolution No. 1482 urges the current administration to provide its "full cooperation to the ICC prosecutor investigating alleged crimes within the jurisdiction of the body related to the Philippines so-called war on drugs. In July, the ICC said it would continue its investigation into former President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody anti-drug campaign after it rejected the Marcos administration's petition against the probe's resumption. READ: ICC to continue probe into Duterte's drug war; court chamber junks PH appeal Previous government data showed the extra-judicial killings claimed more than 6,000 lives, but local and foreign human rights groups said the number could be between 12,000 and 30,000. Following the ICC's decision, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said the Philippine government had no plans to continue its dealings with the ICC. "[W]e will not cooperate with them in any way or form. So, we continue to defend the sovereignty of the Philippines and continue to question the jurisdiction of the ICC in their investigations here in the Philippines," Marcos said in July. Marcos' running mate in last year's polls, Vice President Sara Duterte, is the daughter of the former chief executive. Sen. Marcos: Supporting ICC probe will be a shame Senator Imee Marcos rejected calls to work with the ICC as she reiterated her support for Duterte. She said the country should be ashamed to let foreign courts intervene when the justice system is working. Ang laking kahihiyan talaga pag pumasok yang ICC sa Pilipinas. Wag tayong papayag nang ganyan, she said. [Translation: It would really be a big shame for the Philippines if the ICC comes in. Let us not allow them to treat us like that.] Isipin mo, para nating sinurrender ang ating soberanya. Hindi na tayo republika; talagang umaasa na lang tayo sa kanila, she added. Pinalaya nga si (dating) Senator (Leila) de Lima, eh. Hindi ba katibayan yun na maayos ang korte at talagang umaandar ang hudikatura? [Translation: Come to think of it its like surrendering our sovereignty. Were no longer a republic; were just relying on them. Former senator Leila de Lima was even freed. Isnt that proof that our courts are doing their job and the judiciary is working?] CNN Philippines Correspondent Currie Cator contributed to this report. (Bloomberg) -- Hungarys Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeking sweeping new powers to detect and punish what he sees as foreign influences in the European Union nation, the latest in a series of increasingly autocratic moves under his more than decade-long rule. Most Read from Bloomberg The new Sovereignty Protection Agency will have ample budgetary and institutional support, including from the intelligence services, to identify purported foreign efforts to influence politics, according to a bill filed by Orbans ruling party late Tuesday. The prime minister will pick the agencys chief. The bill, which is all but certain to be approved as Orbans lawmakers wield a supermajority in the legislature, will impose a prison term of up to three years on politicians that accept foreign funds in elections. It will also allow authorities to shutter civil groups deemed to run afoul of the new regulations. The legislation steps up Orbans unprecedented consolidation of power since 2010, which has seen the nationalist firebrand extend his sway over all walks of life in Hungary, from politics, business, the courts and even education and culture. The proposals attracted an immediate response from the European Commission, which has had a long-running legal battle with Hungary over the nations rule of law standards. The EU last year suspended more than $30 billion of Hungarys funding on rule of law and graft concerns, money Orban is negotiating to unlock after a prolonged recession and budget crunch. Let me assure you that the commission is following developments closely and we are looking at all angles, Christian Wigand, a spokesman for the Brussels-based EU institution said. Budapest-based rights organization Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which has often been a target of the governments attacks, said the draft law serves to silence critics of the regime rather than defend against foreign influences. Journalists, companies, churches, trade unions and municipal governments may also become the targets of the new agency, Helsinki said in a statement. The language of the draft, just like bills crafted in recent years for similar reasons, is imprecise on purpose, full of vague concepts which can be broadly interpreted. The latest decision, along with Orbans cozy relationships with authoritarian leaders from Moscow to Beijing, have made Hungary the black sheep of Europe. It also sparked tensions with Western allies in the EU and and NATO military alliance, particularly after Russias invasion of Ukraine. A staunch supporter of former US President Donald Trump, Orban told supporters last week that stricter rules would be needed to keep what he called liberal hegemony in check, which he blamed for a searing 2002 election defeat that forced him into opposition for eight years. Hungary isnt the black sheep of Europe, Orban said on Wednesday in Zurich at an event organized by Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche. He blamed the EU for giving strong leaders a negative connotation in Brussels. Since his political return, Orban has taken no chances, changing the Constitution over opposition objections, appointing loyalists to key formerly independent institutions, overhauling election rules and marshaling government resources for elections and political campaigns. He has won four straight landslide general elections that international monitors have concluded to be free, but not fair. Orban Targets EU in New Campaign With Key Funds Still Suspended Perhaps most importantly, Orban set up whats considered Europes most powerful propaganda machine. It includes a politically-domesticated public media apparatus and a juggernaut of over 500 outlets spanning print to television and digital outlets which are under the sway of a ruling party-led foundation. While officials from Orbans ruling party earlier said the so-called sovereignty bill would also seek to target foreign funding of media, the bill doesnt explicitly mention it. Some of Hungarys dwindling number of independent outlets rely on funding from abroad to operate, while Orbans cabinet and state companies channel vast funds to a pro-government media. The legislations effect is set to be chilling nonetheless. Civil groups and those not explicitly named in the law are just beginning to assess just how broadly the new agency charged with keeping tabs on foreign influence will interpret its remit. --With assistance from Alessandro Speciale and Stephanie Bodoni. (Updates with EU response, background from fifth paragraph) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Firearms are displayed at a gun shop in Salem, Ore., Feb. 19, 2021. A Harney County judge ruled Tuesday the Oregon gun control law approved by voters in 2022 is unconstitutional. Measure 114, a controversial Oregon gun control law approved by voters in 2022, is unconstitutional, Harney County Circuit Court Judge Robert Raschio ruled Tuesday. Raschio released his 40-page opinion nearly 60 days after the conclusion of a weeklong trial for the measure which requires Oregonians to apply for and obtain a permit before purchasing a gun, and outlaws large-capacity magazines that hold more than 10 rounds unless owned by law enforcement or military members or were purchased before the law's passage. It also creates a statewide firearms database. Raschio first blocked the implementation of the measure last year. In Tuesday's decision, he said he would make his block permanent. The state is appealing the decision. During the trial, Raschio heard from gun owners, gun manufacturers, law enforcement officials, historians and various other witnesses. Tony Aiello Jr., the attorney representing the Oregon gun owners who filed the lawsuit, argued the state's case was not about public health, public safety or public concern but instead about the individual right to self-defense and the right to bear arms and "how that right will fare against the might of the Oregon State government." State attorneys called on several witnesses to argue the law made reasonable changes to gun laws, calling on professors from the University of California, Berkeley, and Southern Oregon University to testify that firearms available in the U.S. and in Oregon during the 1850s were most commonly single-shot, smoothbore flintlocks, shotguns, Colt revolvers and pepperbox handguns and not firearms holding more than 10 rounds. Drafters of Oregon's constitution could not have envisioned in the 1800s that there would be firearms with more than 10 rounds, they said. Raschio said he used their testimony, along with testimony from former Cody Firearms Museum curator Ashley Hlebinsky, to find Oregon constitutional convention delegates and those voting for the constitution would "have been generally aware of firearms development and multi-shot technology" and that the highest level of gun development had been introduced in the state at the time. Oregonians of 1857 were reliant on firearms and were not seeking to "restrain access to the best firearms with the highest functionality possible they could procure," in writing Oregon's right to bear arms in Article 1 Section 27 of the state constitution, Raschio wrote. The permit to purchase section of Measure 114 is facially unconstitutional and unduly burdens Oregonian's right to self-defense against harm, Raschio determined. He made a similar conclusion on the unconstitutionality of the large-capacity magazine ban. The judge cited testimony from Harney County Sheriff Dan Jenkins and Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen, who spoke of the difficulty of responding to emergencies quickly with their small departments. Raschio prohibited testimony during trial about treating gunshot victims, witnesses and victims of gun violence but did hear from Joe Paterno, a volunteer with the Measure 114 campaign, who provided testimony about how mass shootings impacted the campaign, driving more volunteers and signatures. "The mass shooting events have a significant impact on the psyche of America when they happen. People tend to believe these events are prolific and happening all the time with massive levels of death and injury," Raschio wrote. "The court finds this belief, though sensationalized by the media, is not validated by the evidence." He referred to the limit of 10 rounds of ammunition as an "arbitrary number" that the state failed to rationalize. He determined the state failed to prove the ban would prevent mass shootings. In an email, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said Raschio made an incorrect decision and confirmed the state would appeal. "The Harney County judges ruling is wrong. Worse, it needlessly puts Oregonians lives at risk," Rosenblum said. "The state will file an appeal and we believe we will prevail." The state will have until noon on Dec. 8 to review and file any objections when the court will enter the judgment. Dianne Lugo covers the Oregon Legislature and equity issues. Reach her at dlugo@statesmanjournal.com or on Twitter @DianneLugo This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Oregon gun control Measure 114 is unconstitutional, judge rules An Oregon state judge ruled Tuesday that a series of gun control provisions passed by voters last year violates the states constitution, preventing the measure from taking effect. Measure 114 passed by a slim margin would require individuals to first complete a training course and pass a background check before purchasing a firearm in the state. It also implements a ban on high-capacity magazines. Gun rights advocates and others quickly challenged the provisions, and Harney County Circuit Court Judge Robert Raschio last December temporarily blocked the measures enforcement, just before it was set to take effect. Best Black Friday Deals After conducting a trial this fall, Raschio issued his final decision Tuesday, finding the measure violated the Oregon Constitutions guarantee that the people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence of themselves. Oregon citizens have a right to self-defense against an imminent threat of harm, which is unduly burdened by Ballot Measure 114, Raschio wrote in his 44-page ruling. Both sides had acknowledged that the measure would delay someone from purchasing a firearm for a minimum of 30 days. Raschio wrote that the state failed to provide any convincing evidence of a threat to public safety requiring a permitting process. Providing an extensive historical analysis of gun restrictions when the Oregon Constitution was adopted in 1857, Raschio also found the ban on magazines with more than 10 rounds was unconstitutional. Magazines, along with the rest of a firearms components, are protected arms under Article |, 27. There is no historical basis for limiting the size and capacity of firearms, including their magazines, Raschio wrote. In July, a federal judge ruled that the provisions did not violate the federal Constitutions Second Amendment. That case is now before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But Raschios ruling prevents Oregon from implementing Measure 114 regardless of how that case ultimately shakes out. The Harney County judges ruling is wrong. Worse, it needlessly puts Oregonians lives at risk. The state will file an appeal and we believe we will prevail, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum (D) said in a statement. Updated: 10:31 a.m. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) An Oregon mother has been found guilty of first-degree custodial interference and two counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment for using alternative medicine like CBD oil to treat her daughters liver cancer, and for keeping the teenager away from scheduled surgery. Thirty-nine-year-old Wilsonville resident Christina Dixon was first indicted in 2019 after she and daughter Kylee Dixon who was 13 at the time failed to show up for a medical procedure scheduled for June 6. Vancouver opens third Safe Stay Community for unsheltered residents Officials deemed Kylee a ward of the state, and ordered Christina to bring the teen to the Oregon Department of Human Services. During the early phases of authorities search for the mother and daughter, investigators believed they were somewhere along the Oregon Coast. But on June 13, the Clackamas County Sheriffs Office announced that Christina and Kylee were found in the Longhorn Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. The teen was taken into protective custody that same day. Later in June, demonstrators gathered in Portlands Pioneer Courthouse Square to show support for the Dixons. Harney County Judge rules Oregon gun Measure 114 unconstitutional One rally attendee, who described herself as a family friend, said that Christinas research on Kylees medical condition introduced her to a naturopathic doctor. The family friend claimed that the new doctor prescribed the teen with a regimen that shrunk her liver tumor to 10% of its original size. According to the American Cancer Society, researchers have conducted early clinical trials on CBDs affect on cancer treatment and there are more studies underway. While the studies so far have shown that cannabinoids can be safe in treating cancer, they do not show that they help control or cure the disease, ACS said. Christina was officially booked into the Clackamas County Jail in August 2019, after turning herself in to police. Man sentenced to 22 years in prison for armed robbery at Tigard pawn shop More recently on Nov. 17, the defendant was convicted of custodial interference and criminal mistreatment although she says Kylee is currently in good health. On Sunday, Christina requested that the court delay her sentencing as she searches for a new attorney to represent her case. The sentencing is now scheduled on Dec. 8. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com. NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell held her weekly news conference on Wednesday, Nov. 22. New Orleans attorney weighs in on Linda Frickey trial She discussed public safety, the ongoing underground wildfire, quality of life, administrative priorities and more. Watch the full conference in the video player at the top of this post. 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. Latest Posts For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WGNO. Attacks by Russian invasion forces have left more than 1,300 people in the frontline town of Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast without electricity, water, or communications, the National Police press service reported on Telegram on Nov. 22. Devastating shelling and the approaching frosts leave people with no chance of survival, the statement reads. Read also: Ukrainian army reports 30% surge in Russian assaults near Avdiivka; losses of some positions The police station in the city has been destroyed; nevertheless, two police squads, dubbed the White Angels and a detective-operational group, remain on constant duty in Avdiivka. Additionally, about 16 people continue to work in the Avdiivka hospital, despite the damage inflicted by the shelling. This includes two doctors and other medical staff. Although essential medicines are available, providing assistance in critical conditions is currently challenging, say law enforcement officers. The police are also actively delivering food, household gas, necessary items, and providing transportation for the wounded. For the safety of people, the Points of Invincibility will be relocated by the forces of the military administration of Avdiivka. Citizens will be informed of the exact locations, the press service added. Read also: Points of Invincibility are set up by the Ukrainian authorities to provide sources of heat and power to civilians who are affected by Russian attacks. Earlier, Ukraines Tavria Operational Command Oleksandr Shtupun, reported that Russia had sharply increased the number of assault operations near Avdiivka. Russia has lost about 10,000 military personnel within a month of active offensive operations on Avdiivka, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi said on Nov. 10. Read also: Russia halves attacks on Avdiivka after losing 10,000 troops in one month, preparing new offensive According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the occupiers are losing soldiers and equipment under Avdiivka "faster and more massively than near Bakhmut." 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 Plestia Alaqad, a Palestinian journalist whose dispatches from Gaza have provided a rare glimpse of the war to millions of social media followers around the world, has fled Gaza amid Israels ongoing bombardments and military siege. I traveled yesterday and this was literally one of the hardest decisions that I took, she wrote in the caption under an Instagram video on Wednesday. I hope this nightmare ends and Ill be back in Gaza soon. She made the decision to leave for the safety of her family, fearing that her reporting and role as a journalist could put her familys life in danger, she said. Speaking in Arabic to her followers, she said she hoped for an end to the war and the return of Gaza citizens to their homes. Earlier this week, Ms Alaqad said she stopped wearing her blue press vests and helmet, fearing that what she once used to protect her during the crisis has made her a target. I dont feel safe in Gaza no matter what, even while sleeping I dont feel safe, but especially when wearing [the] press vest and helmet I dont feel safe, she wrote. I hope this nightmare ends soon, I hope we dont lose anymore journalists. At least 53 media workers, including 46 Palestinian journalists, have been killed since 7 October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of 22 November. Belal Jadallah, considered a giant among Gaza journalists and the director of the nonprofit media group Press House Palestine, was killed and his pharmacist brother-in-law was seriously wounded during an Israeli attack on Sunday, according to his family. On Monday, two Lebanese journalists were killed during an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon, close to the border with Israel. Ms Alaqad, who now has nearly 4 million followers on Instagram, is among young Palestinian journalists whose social media posts have provided rare firsthand accounts of the devastation. Within the month after Israel launched its retaliatory campaign, she gained more than 2 million followers. Her video diaries shared views from her home during airstrikes; sheltering in the dark during blackouts while listening to the sounds of bombs booming in the distance; evacuating her home as it burned; and tours of Gaza revealing the scale of devastation around her. The more I walk, she said in one video as she surveyed collapsed homes and buildings and the rubble around her, the [more] speechless I get. Her often unfiltered overage of Israels attacks has shifted a dynamic across world media struggling to capture what is happening in Gaza amid power shortages, blackouts and ongoing bombardments. Ms Alaqads footage, viewed by tens of thousands of people on Instagram, was profiled by NBC News, New York Magazine and The New York Times, which shared her dispatches and images in the days after Israel launched its siege. Reporting and posting about whats happening in Gaza, Palestine feels pointless, she wrote on the 37th day of Israels siege after regaining access to her account. It feels like Im posting movie scenes for people to watch, and whenever they get bored they watch something else. In her latest video, speaking in Arabic, she told her followers that she feels guilty for leaving and expressed her sorrow for Gaza citizens forced to leave their country to stay alive. More than 12,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 5,000 children, following Israels retaliatory strikes in the wake of Hamas attacks on 7 October that killed 1,200, according to Gazas health ministry. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a four-day pause in fighting that will allow for the release of at least 50 women and children reportedly held hostage in Gaza, while Hamas announced that the deal will include the release of 150 Palestinian women and teenagers from Israeli prisons. The pause also is expected to accelerate the flow of desperately needed humanitarian relief, medical aid and fuel into Gaza. Relatives and supporters of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons staged a sit-in in front of the Red Cross in the West Bank city of Ramallah. (Getty Images) (Getty Images) Negotiations around the release of Israeli women and children held hostage in the Gaza Strip have centered on an exchange for Palestinian women and minors held in Israeli prisons. The size of that group has grown quickly during the six weeks of war and upheaval since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, according to a Palestinian prisoners rights group. The group, Addameer, says about 200 boys, most of them teenagers, were in Israeli detention as of this week, along with about 75 women and five teenage girls. Before Oct. 7, about 150 boys and 30 women and girls were in Israeli prisons, it said, and since then, many other detentions have occurred, as well as many releases. Addameer said that it compiled the figures using data from the Israel Prison Service, which administers the countrys jails, and information from the families of detained people. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times Early Wednesday, the Israeli government and Hamas announced they would uphold a four-day cease-fire in Gaza to allow for the release of 50 hostages captured during Hamas assault last month on Israel and 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Many of the most recent arrests came during raids across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where protests and violence have surged, including attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers. Israel has said that the arrests are part of a counterterror operation against Hamas in the West Bank. There are also about 700 people missing from Gaza who are believed to be in Israeli prisons, but information on their whereabouts is murky, said Tala Nasir, a spokesperson for Addameer. It was not clear how many of those people, if any, were women or minors. The Israeli military has said it has apprehended 300 people in Gaza during the ground invasion who it claimed were connected to armed Palestinian groups and that they were brought into Israeli territory for further interrogations. Of the roughly 240 Israeli hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas and other armed groups, 33 are minors, the youngest of whom is 9 months old, according to the Israeli government. At least 62 are women, according to an organization formed by the hostages families. Four of the women being held hostage are Israeli soldiers, according to interviews with their family members and information gathered by a forum of the hostages families. As of this week, the total number of what Addameer calls Palestinian political prisoners in Israel including people from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel was 7,000, up from about 5,000 before Oct. 7, according to Addameer. That includes more than 2,000 people held in administrative detention, meaning they are being held indefinitely without charges, it said. Nasir said that her group defines that category as Palestinians arrested for offenses that are related to political activity and free speech rather than crimes such as drugs or violence. She added that Addameer had received many reports in recent weeks of people arrested on charges of incitement for their social media posts in Israel and the West Bank. Earlier this month, the Knesset passed an amendment to a counterterrorism law that criminalized the consumption of terrorist materials. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said that it was monitoring 121 cases of arrests and detentions linked to social media posts, some of which merely contained expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, or even verses shared from the Quran. Rights groups have long warned that Palestinian detainees are held without due process and face abuse and even torture. Military Court Watch, a nonprofit legal group, said last year that of the 100 Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces that it had interviewed, 74% reported physical abuse, and 42% said they were put in solitary confinement. The women in Israeli detention include Ahed Tamimi, 22, a high-profile figure in the West Bank who was sentenced to prison in 2018 for slapping an Israeli soldier. Israeli officials accused her of her posting hate speech online; her family said the post was not hers. Six Palestinian detainees who were held without charges have died in Israeli prisons in recent weeks, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authoritys news agency. One of them, Omar Daraghmeh, was a senior member of Hamas, the militant group said when his death was announced. c.2023 The New York Times Company Nearly seven weeks into the war, Israel and Hamas have agreed on a deal that would see the return of 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails in exchange for the release of at least 50 women and children held in Gaza, during a four-day pause in fighting, bringing hope to many families. The first hostages were initially expected to be released as early as Thursday, but the Israel National Security Council said on that day no hostages would be released before Friday. The reasons behind the delay are unclear, but one Israeli official familiar with the matter downplayed its seriousness, citing fairly minor implementation details. The Palestinian prisoners concerned are women and children, Hamas said Wednesday, adding that the agreement also involves the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying aid relief, medical supplies and fuel to all parts of the besieged territory. The Israeli government on Wednesday published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners for possible release, as Israel is offering a potential second phase of exchanges. The list includes the ages of the prisoners, and the charges on which they are being held throwing stones and harming regional security are among the most common. Others are listed as detained for supporting illegal terror organizations, illegal weapons charges, incitement, and at least two accusations of attempted murder. Some of the people are listed as being members of Hamas and other Islamic militant groups, but many of the prisoners are not listed as belonging to any organization. Most of the Palestinian prisoners listed as eligible for release are male teenagers aged 16 to 18 children under the United Nations definition although a handful are as young as 14. Some 33 are women, according to a CNN count. This release will constitute a fraction of the Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Love notes across the airwaves One radio station in the West Bank city of Ramallah has for 20 years been a way for Palestinian families to try to maintain a connection with relatives in detention. Callers send in voice notes to radio presenter Murad Abu Al Saba, which he then broadcasts on Radio Ajyal. How are you, Auntie Hannadi? I love you, a young girl is heard saying on a voice note played on the radios airwaves from Al Sabas phone. When are you going to be released from jail? the girl asks. The young girls aunt is a Palestinian activist who was arrested by Israeli authorities along with thousands of others after Hamas deadly October 7 attacks. Murad Abu Al Saba, presenter at Radio Ajyal, sits at the radio station in Ramallah, West Bank, on November 22, 2023. - Alex Platt/CNN We have three phone lines here to receive messages from the families of prisoners, Al Saba, the presenter, told CNN, adding that due to the volume of calls, some people had failed to get through. So we have started making promo announcements, he said, if you cant get through, send us a voice note over WhatsApp. The families have no way of knowing if the prisoners get to hear their messages, but that doesnt stop them from sending them. A family in waiting Another family revered by many Palestinians but deemed a threat by the state of Israel also awaits the return of its loved ones. Speaking to CNN at her home in Ramallah, Iman Barghouti prays for the release of her husband Nael, and sister-in-law Hannan. Hannan and one of her sons were arrested before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, and three other sons were detained after October 7. They are held under administrative detention, which means they are being held without knowing the charges against them, and without an ongoing legal process. Iman said neither she nor Hannan were involved in the politics of this war, yet they suffer its consequences. The family of a young Palestinian prisoner watches TV news updates on the Israel-Hamas hostage deal, near Hebron, on November 21, 2023. - Mussa Qawasma/Reuters Now a grandmother, Hannan is on the Israeli list of those eligible to come home under the hostage deal. Her sons remain in prison. They (Hannans grandchildren) are waiting to see their grandmother, Iman told CNN. She has a beautiful relationship with them, she loves everybody. Amid Imans optimism at Hannans potential release, she is beginning to hope that her husband, Nael el Barghouti the longest-serving Palestinian political prisoner could also be freed in a swap, although he is not among the 300 prisoners listed by Israel. The announcement of the deal between Hamas and Israel was a happy day for us, Iman said. Nael has been in and out of prison since he was first arrested 44 years ago, in 1978, for engaging in attacks against the Israeli military. He was released in the 2011 Israel-Hamas deal, which saw 1,100 Palestinians exchanged for one Israeli soldier held by Hamas for five years, Gilad Shalit. Nael was re-arrested by Israeli forces in 2014 for Hamas membership, according to Israeli media, and has since been serving a life sentence. An uptick in arrests Around 8,300 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in Israeli jails, said Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners Affairs. More than 3,000 of them are being held in what Israel calls administrative detention, Fares told CNN, adding that this means they are being held without knowing the charges against them, and without an ongoing legal process. Most of the prisoners are men, Fares said, adding that there are also about 85 women and 350 children in detention. Israel has stepped up its arrests since Hamas attacks on October 7. Up to 2,070 arrests were documented in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in that month alone, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, a non-governmental organization dedicated to addressing the concerns of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. That figure includes 145 children and 55 women. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh claimed to Reuters last week that Israel had been ramping up arrests ahead of a hostage deal. Israel is preparing for an exchange of prisoners, and they are arresting as many people as they can simply because they are preparing for such a deal, Shtayyeh said. Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners Affairs, speaks during an interview with Reuters at his office in Ramallah on November 15, 2023. - James Oatway/Reuters This weeks diplomatic breakthrough offers a glimmer of hope for the families of Palestinian prisoners, as well as those of Israeli hostages. Hamas is holding 236 hostages in Gaza, including foreign nationals from 26 countries, according to the latest figures from the Israeli military. The abductions took place on October 7, when Hamas militants launched their brutal attack on Israel, killing at least 1,200 people. Four hostages have been freed so far two American women and two Israeli women. An Israeli soldier who was abducted by Hamas was rescued by Israeli forces, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. While the first phase of the deal would include the release of 150 prisoners in four stages over four days, the Israeli Cabinet Secretariat said, more Palestinians could potentially be released from the list of 300 detainees, in exchange for at least 10 Israeli abductees being handed over to Israeli security forces each day. CNNs Amir Tal, Zeena Saifi and Kareem El Damanhoury contributed to this report. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com Families and friends of about 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring them home (AP) Israel has released the names of 300 Palestinians prisoners being held across the country, ahead of an imminent swap for dozens of hostages taken by Hamas during their attack on 7 October that killed 1,200 people and saw 240 people taken captive into Gaza. The deal is the culmination of weeks of back-and-forth negotiations mediated by US and Qatari officials and will involve a four-day truce during which the hostages and prisoners will be released. There is also the option for an extension: for every ten more hostages released by Hamas, an additional day of ceasefire will be tacked on to the original four day agreement. The captives taken by Hamas include 33 children, the youngest of whom is 10 months old, according to the Israeli government, and at least 62 are women. It is expected that around half of the Palestinians named by the Israeli Ministry of Justice will be released in exchange for a minimum of 50 of those women and children taken by Hamas. There is a possibilty that such exchanges will be extended if Hamas releases more hostages. The reason their names have been published is because of a legal formality in Israel that requires affording Israeli citizens 24 hours to make an appeal to the Supreme Court to block the release of certain prisoners. The majority of Palestinians named in the document are teenagers between 17 and 18. The overall age range is between 14 and 59. Out of the 300 listed, 274 are male. Their alleged crimes vary from attempted murder to damage to the security of an area. Many of them are yet to be sentenced. Their status on the document remains under arrest. Of the total 7,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel, nearly 30 per cent are being held in administrative detention, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners rights group. This means that they are being held indefinitely under arrest without being charged, according to a spokesperson. The group also claims that those being held under administrative detention have been arrested for offences related to political activity and free speech rather than crimes like drugs or violence. Addameer said it had also received many reports in recent weeks that Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel had been arrested on charges of incitement for their social media posts. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said that it was monitoring 121 cases of these arrests. They said some of these social media posts merely contained expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, or even verses shared from the Quran. Earlier this month, the Israeli government passed an amendment to a counterterrorism law that criminalised the consumption of terrorist materials. The number of Palestinian detainees subsequently increased from 5,000 to 7,000. The Israeli military has also said that it has apprehended 300 people in Gaza during the ground invasion that it claimed were connected to armed Palestinian groups, and that they were brought into Israeli territory for further interrogations. Military Court Watch, a nonprofit legal group, said last year that of the 100 Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces that it had interviewed, 74 per cent reported physical abuse, and 42 per cent said they were put in solitary confinement. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) An analysis by the nonprofit organization Oxfam has exposed a stark contrast in carbon pollution, revealing that the carbon emissions of the richest 1% of Filipinos are equal to the combined emissions of the poorest 50% of the population. The study, "Climate Equality: A Planet for the 99%," highlighted the unequal distribution of emissions associated with different income groups up to 2019. "The report shows the stark gap between the carbon footprints of the super-rich whose carbon-hungry lifestyles and investments in polluting industries like fossil fuels are driving global warming and the bulk of people across the world," Oxfam Pilipinas Executive Director Erika Geronimo said. Oxfam also emphasized the role of the richest 10% in the climate breakdown, noting that its contribution to the climate story is "far less well known and documented" along with the top 1%. In the Philippines, the report claimed that the excessive carbon emissions in 2019 of the nation's richest 10% of people contributed to 18,584 heat-related deaths. It is true for the rest of the world, according to Oxfam. The study found that the top 1% of the world's population, or 77 million people, is accountable for 16% of the consumption-related emissions worldwide. This is equal to the emissions of 5.11 billion people, or 66% of the world's population based on income. Carbon emissions from private jets, planes cars, and yachts, among other high-end fossil fuel transport of the so-called super-rich, are enough to cause 1.3 million excess deaths due to heat, said Oxfam. But carbon emissions and heat are not the only challenges faced by lower-income groups, particularly those living in poverty. Oxfam emphasized that climate change hit people in poverty the hardest as they tend to live in areas prone to flooding, heavy rains, heat stress, and other natural disasters, with poor-quality houses that often lack basic building safety. Aside from not having savings and access to social protection insurance, the study stated that people in lower-income groups also face challenges in proving their losses since their assets are frequently unregistered or improperly acknowledged. Oxfam said that this is true in the Philippines with regard to land tenure and when "disputed" land is taken from disaster victims, resulting in long-term relocation. Citing other research, Oxfam noted that after Super Typhoon Yolanda (internationally known as Haiyan), "only those who could prove their rights to land were given alternative lands, compensation, and access to insurance." The inequality of the climate crisis is more obvious when poorer communities in the Philippines are being made to bear the harshest burden of more severe and frequent disasters due to the climate crisis despite having minute carbon emissions compared to the 1% richest," Geronimo said. "And even with the best intentions to prepare for disasters, we are constantly dealing with further damage and loss," she added. "We may not be able to keep up if we are not more committed and ambitious with our climate actions." What can be done Oxfam's proposed solution is not new, but it is one that climate activists continue to fight for: taxing the ultra-rich and investing the proceeds in renewable energy. "A 60% tax on the incomes of the richest 1% would cut emissions by more than the total emissions of the UK and raise $6.4 trillion a year to pay for the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy," said the Oxfam report, which advocates for a new round of taxes on corporations and billionaires. The report noted that the top 1%'s income level varies by nation and takes purchasing power equality into account, but analysis conducted within-country sheds further light on the differences. Oxfam said that in France, the top 1% of earners emit the same amount of carbon in a year as the bottom 50% does in a decade. When emissions related to investments are taken out of the equation, the carbon footprint of Bernard Arnault, the richest person in France and the creator of Louis Vuitton, is 1,270 times greater than that of the typical French citizen. Aside from taxing the super-rich, Oxfam further underlined the need for tailored government measures to address these discrepancies in the fight against climate change, such as phasing out fossil fuels and implementing proven policies to dramatically drive down the gap between the richest and the rest. Israa Riad Jabes bears the scars of her failed martyrdom operation after her explosive device detonated prematurely Israel could release a Palestinian woman who disfigured herself in an attempted bombing as part of its deal to free hostages captured by Hamas. Israa Riad Jabes became a cause celebre for some Palestinians following the failed attack in Jerusalem in 2015, after which the Israeli authorities refused her requests for plastic surgery for her badly mutilated face. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison after a gas cylinder she was carrying exploded at a police checkpoint, injuring a police officer. She is on a list provided by Israel of 300 Palestinians who might be released, of whom 150 are expected to walk free in return for 50 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, following Thursdays breakthrough in negotiations. Also possibly set for release is Nafooz Jad Hammad, who was beginning a 12-year sentence for stabbing her Jewish teacher when she was 14 years old. Her victim, Maria Cohen, has already spoken out against the deal, describing it as humiliating. Ms Cohen is among a backlash of Israeli families angry at the agreement, some of whom were on Wednesday threatening to launch a legal challenge to prevent it. Jabes became a cause celebre for some Palestinians after Israeli authorities refused her requests for plastic surgery It came as police in East Jerusalem were reportedly on alert to prevent victory celebrations among Palestinians. The US, Qatar and Egyptian-brokered deal will see three roughly three incarcerated Palestinians released for every Israeli or international hostage held in Gaza, as well as a four-day pause in the fighting and extra aid for the beleaguered enclave. A similar ratio is expected to govern any further extensions of the deal. Israel has said it is willing to extend the pause in fighting in return for 10 hostages per day. Hamas said the truce with Israel will begin at 10am local time on Thursday. It is thought that 287 of the 300 Palestinian prisoners who could be released are males aged 18 or under. A large proportion are being detained for stone-throwing and similar offences. Among the 13 women adult women on the list, most have been imprisoned for stabbing. Nafooz Jad Arad Hammad, 16, stabbed Ms Cohen in front of her five children and husband, who was also slightly injured, in 2021. Why do my child have to see the person who tried to murder me? I am still mentally ill and so are my children. Something is not right here, she told Ynet news website. I am shocked, this is great anger and contempt for my life and that of my children. The Israeli public has 24 hours to contest the release of Palestinian prisoners. Families of Israeli hostages protest outside the ministry of defence in Tel Aviv calling for their release - AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images One group of terrorist victims said on Wednesday morning that they would file a petition with the High Court of Justice at noon today against the deal on principle. In a letter to Yariv Levin, the justice minister, Meir Indoor, the founder of the Almagor Terror Victims Association, and board member Dr Aryeh Bachrach wrote that the group believes the same landmines and surprises in the agreement were [present] in almost every other [hostage] deal in the past. The court is expected to reject the petition, as it did with petitions against the deal to free Gilad Shalit from Gaza in 2011 in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners. Addameer, a Palestinian NGO, said that about 200 boys, most of them teenagers, were in Israeli detention as of this week, along with roughly 75 women and five teenage girls. Before October 7, about 150 boys and 30 women and girls were in Israeli prisons, it said James Marlow, a Middle East security analyst, said he understood that, in addition to Israa Riad Jabes, there were two other individuals on the list of Palestinian prisoners who had attempted to become suicide bombers. It is believed that this Israel - Hamas deal, which is expected to begin Thursday morning, will raise the popularity of Palestinian Hamas in Judea & Samaria (West Bank) where the support of the Ramallah Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas is at an all-time low, he said. Other commentators said the population of Gaza was less interested in the identities of the prisoners, but are instead desperate for the war to end. 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. The protracted, often bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which exploded into a hot war on Oct. 7, 2023, when the militant Palestinian group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel and Israel retaliated by bombarding the Gaza Strip, dates back to the early 20th century. It began when British authorities facilitated the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine to establish a Jewish homeland, which ultimately led to the forcible displacement of Palestinian Arabs by Zionist military forces to make way for the modern state of Israel. In the current Israel-Hamas war, more than 11,000 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians, had been killed as of Nov. 10, and the internet is rife with war-related misinformation, which Snopes is dedicated to countering with facts and context. You can help. Read our latest fact checks about the ongoing conflict. Submit questionable rumors youve encountered. Become a Snopes Member to support our work. We welcome your participation and feedback. In November 2023, as Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, a number of posts drew attention to the challenges faced by Palestinians in the West Bank, in particular regarding Israeli control over water access. A post on Reddit claimed that according to a 2011 United Nations (U.N.) report, [A] Palestinian living in the West bank doesn't have the right to collect rainwater or build a well on HIS LAND because rain water is an 'Israeli property'. An X post claimed, Rainwater is the property of 'Israel'. Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rainwater and appeared to quote a U.N. report as well. Rainwater is the property of 'Israel'. Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rainwater. Source: a UN report: 'according to Israeli military orders in effect in the area, rain is the property of the Israeli authorities and thus Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rain pic.twitter.com/XrRt6xadyp David Miller (@Tracking_Power) November 19, 2023 We also received questions from readers, asking if Palestinians were indeed forbidden by Israeli authorities from gathering rainwater for domestic and agricultural needs. The above claims were taken from a real report by independent human rights organizations submitted to a U.N. body in 2011, which found that Palestinians in the West Bank were not able to gather rainwater for their needs. Titled, Israels violations of human rights regarding water and sanitation in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] the report is considered a non-U.N. document, however. It was written by the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene group (EWASH), a coalition of almost 30 organizations working in the water and sanitation sector in the occupied Palestinian territory, and Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization in the West Bank. It was submitted in September 2011 to the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), a body of independent experts in the U.N. The report referred to a specific Israeli military order in 2009 that stated rainwater was the property of Israel (emphasis ours): [...] in July 2009, Israeli military forces issued stop-work and/or demolition orders on cisterns being constructed in the village of Tuwani, even though the villagers of Tuwani faced a severe water shortage on account of the drought, increasingly stringent Israeli restrictions on movement necessary to gather tankered water, and attacks on water resources and infrastructure by Israeli settlers. If constructed, these cisterns would have significantly eased the water crisis for the people of Tuwani. However, according to Israeli military orders in effect in the area, rain is the property of the Israeli authorities and thus Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rain water for domestic or agricultural needs. In 2010, Israel approved the construction of a filling point in the village of Tuwani that alleviated the problem of water availability in the village even though the capacity of the filling point was significantly below the capacity requested by humanitarian agencies (less than 1/4th) in order to serve surrounding villages, which are considered as the cluster of communities most at risk of water scarcity in the West Bank. The findings of the above report echo another finding from a 2017 Amnesty International report titled, The Occupation of Water. Per the report, in 1967 Israeli military authorities consolidated complete power over all water resources and water-related infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian territories. Military Order 158 required that all Palestinians get a permit from the Israeli military before constructing any new water installation. Since then, any extraction of water and water infrastructure development has had to go through Israel, which has resulted in devastating consequences for the Palestinians there, according to Amnesty. The Amnesty report also stated (emphasis ours): [The Palestinians] are unable to drill new water wells, install pumps or deepen existing wells, in addition to being denied access to the Jordan River and fresh water springs. Israel even controls the collection of rain water throughout most of the West Bank, and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army. As a result, some 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas in the occupied West Bank have no access to running water, according to [humanitarian agency] OCHA. Even in towns and villages which are connected to the water network, the taps often run dry. A 2016 Al Jazeera English report found that Palestinian villages in the West Bank received water supplies for only two hours in a week. While Israel implemented a policy of water cuts each summer, it had reached a higher peak that year. Israeli officials, however, said the authorities provided equal amounts of water in Israel and Palestinian territories. Deeb Abdelghafour, the Palestinian Water Authoritys (PWA) director of the water resources department, told Al Jazeera, We have been facing shortages for decades, and the reason is not natural, but man-made meaning the Israeli occupation and Israeli control over water resources in the Palestinian territories. Israeli authorities have long argued that they have fulfilled their obligations under the Oslo accords. Israels coordinator of government activities in the territories told Al Jazeera that it provided 64 million cubic meters of water to the Palestinians annually, even though it is only obliged to provide 30 million under the accords referring to the landmark 1993 agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). A 1995 Interim Agreement under the accords gave Israel continued control over water sources for Palestinian territories, but stipulated that such a status would be in effect for five years, after which the two groups would have final-status negotiations. Those talks never took place, and the agreement remains in effect, even though, as Israeli human rights organization BTselem pointed out in a May 2023 report: the Palestinian population has grown by about 75%, yet the amount of water Israel allows the Palestinians to extract [remains] the same. BTselems report found that in order to make up for the shortage, the Palestinian Authority was forced to buy more water from Israel at several times the cost and could not transport water between regions in the Palestinian territories. The report stated (emphasis ours): Moreover, clauses addressing the distribution of water completely ignore the division of the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C in other articles of the Interim Agreement. Israel retained all powers in Area C, which covers about 60% of the West Bank, and Palestinians need its consent given sparingly for virtually anything: every new drilling, every water grid that connects neighboring Palestinian communities, and every wastewater treatment facility, which inevitably have to be built far from residential neighborhoods, must pass through Area C. This policy has led to sharp differences in daily per capita water consumption among Palestinian communities. While the agreement allows Israel to export water from inside the country to West Bank settlements, it precludes the Palestinian Authority from transporting water from one part of the West Bank to another. This creates an absurd situation, as the Palestinian Water Authority produces water at a negligible cost in the Qalqiliyah, Tulkarm and Jericho Districts but cannot deliver it to other Palestinian communities, sometimes mere miles away, due to Israels refusal. The resulting discrepancies in water consumption among the various Palestinian districts are staggering: in 2020, daily per capita water consumption in Bethlehem and Hebron Districts was 51 liters, while in Qalqiliyah District it was almost three times greater 141 liters. A 2012 paper by Haim Gvirtzman, a professor at the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University and a member of the Israel Water Authority Council, argued that there was almost no difference between the per capita water consumption of Israelis and Palestinians. Refuting many claims from Palestinian authorities, the paper stated: [...] while Israel has ensured that nearly all Palestinian villages and towns are connected to running water, the Palestinians have violated their part of the agreement by refusing to build sewage treatment plants (despite available international financing). Moreover, the Palestinians have drilled hundreds of unlicensed wells and set up unauthorized connections to Israeli water supply pipelines. [...] the Palestinians should be working to pay individually for their water consumption, to prevent leaks in domestic pipelines, to implement conservative irrigation techniques, and to reuse sewage water for irrigation. The fact that they have taken none of these steps and have not adopted any sustainable development practices precludes their demands for additional water from Israel. According to the United Nations humanitarian agency, OCHA, since 2021 Israel demolished nearly 160 unauthorized Palestinian reservoirs, sewage networks and wells across the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and the rate of demolitions were quickening. Local Palestinian villages have seen their farms dry up with farmers leaving for northern towns with more water supplies, or finding jobs in flourishing farms on Israeli settlements. Israeli settlements along the West Bank considered illegal under international law tell a different story. An August 2023 Associated Press report found the settlements to be like an oasis where, Wildflowers burst through the soil. Farmed fish swim in neat rows of ponds. Children splash in community pools. Journalist Amira Hass noted in Israeli publication Haaretz in 2014 that the Interim Agreement impacted water access in Gaza, arguing that it forced the region to rely only on the aquifer within its borders. The agreement did not account for population growth, resulting in overpumping from neighboring regions including Israel, leading to seawater and sewage penetrating the aquifer, making more than 90 percent of potable water there undrinkable. A Washington Post report on water supplies during the 2023 war found that there had been no natural surface water in Gaza since the early 2000s. The enclave had to depend on Israels National Water Carrier to supplement its groundwater sources, which the PWA purchased. In 2021, however, only 6% of Gaza's water came from Israel. Since the outbreak of the war in 2023, Israel imposed what Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called "catastrophic" cuts to water supplies in Gaza. In late October, Israeli officials reopened a water pipeline into Gaza, arguing there was no shortage of food and water in the besieged territory. While the Israeli military order controlling the Palestinian collection of rainwater was reported on more than a decade ago, the overall status of Israeli control of Palestinian water supplies continues unabated. Sources: As Israeli Settlements Thrive, Palestinian Taps Run Dry. The Water Crisis Reflects a Broader Battle. AP News, 17 Aug. 2023, https://apnews.com/article/water-climate-change-drought-occupation-israel-palestinians-30cb8949bdb45cf90ed14b6b992b5b42. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Black, Ian. Water under the Bridge: How the Oslo Agreement Robbed the Palestinians. The Guardian, 4 Feb. 2013. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/on-the-middle-east/2013/feb/04/israel-palestinians-water-arafat-abbas. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Bollack, Eloise. Palestinian Villages Get Two Hours of Water a Week. Al Jazeera, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/24/palestinian-villages-get-two-hours-of-water-a-week. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Gvirtzman, Haim. The Israeli-Palestinian Water Conflict: An Israeli Perspective. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Jan. 2012, besacenter.org/the-israeli-palestinian-water-conflict-an-israeli-perspective-3-2/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Hung out to Dry: How the Oslo Accords Entrenched Israels Control over Palestinian Water. Middle East Eye, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/oslo-accords-palestine-israel-entrenched-control-water. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. "Israels Settlements Have No Legal Validity, Constitute Flagrant Violation of International Law, Security Council Reaffirms." 2016, UN Press. https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Israels Violations of Human Rights Regarding Water and Sanitation in the OPT - Report by Al-Haq and EWASH to CESCR - Non-Un Document. Question of Palestine, https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-195880/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Newman, Alexandra and Rachel Wilson, Mark Oliver. Gazas Limited Water Access, Mapped. CNN, 18 Oct. 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/18/middleeast/gaza-water-access-supply-mapped-dg/index.html. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Parched: Israels Policy of Water Deprivation in the West Bank. BTselem, May 2023, www.btselem.org/publications/202305_parched. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. PerryCook, Taija. Timeline: The Oct. 7 Hamas Attack and Israels Retaliatory War on Gaza. Snopes, 20 Nov. 2023, https://www.snopes.com/articles/465623/oct-7-hamas-attack-and-israeli-retaliation/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. The Israeli Watergate Scandal: The Facts About Palestinian Water. Haaretz. Haaretz, https://www.haaretz.com/2014-02-16/ty-article/the-israeli-water-gate-scandal/0000017f-f0a9-df98-a5ff-f3ad9bf20000. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. The Occupation of Water. Amnesty International, 29 Nov. 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occupation-of-water/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Why the Gaza Water Crisis Is Decades in the Making. New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398073-why-the-gaza-water-crisis-is-decades-in-the-making/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. Wolfe, Daniel. Water Is Running out in Gaza. It Will Mean More Deaths. Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/gaza-israel-water-crisis/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2023. A young paraglider tried flying off the top of a mountain but came crashing back down onto the icy slope, Wyoming rescuers said. The injured 21-year-old Teton County resident was hauled out of the backcountry from the belly of a helicopter on Nov. 20, rescuers said on Facebook. The crash happened about three-quarters of the way up the main ski run below the gondola on the summit of Snow King Mountain in Jackson around 1 p.m., Teton County Search and Rescue said. It wasnt possible for a helicopter to land on the steep, icy north-facing slope, so rescuers strapped the injured paraglider to a helicopters belly for the short flight out of the backcountry to an ambulance waiting at the base of the mountain, officials said. Information about the paragliders condition was not provided. Paragliding instructor killed in mid-air crash with hang glider, Utah police say BASE jumper plunges down cliff, Montana rescuers say. Witness rushes to call for help Hang glider airlifted to hospital after crashing on mountain, California video shows Damian Pardo won the runoff for Miamis District 2 seat, beating incumbent Sabina Covo and becoming the citys first openly-gay commissioner, unofficial election night results showed. He led Covo by more than 250 votes, with all precincts reporting. The mood inside Flanigans in Coconut Grove was one of celebration as a crowd of about 50 supporters crammed into a small room adorned with Christmas decor where they clapped and chanted Damian, with one attendee likening the victory to David and Goliath. Guests included Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera and businessman Bill Fuller, who, along with Martin Pinilla, won a $63.5 million judgment against Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo earlier this year. Commissioner-elect Damian Pardo is embraced by Ball & Chain owner Bill Fuller as he reacts to to the news of unseating incumbent commissioner Sabina Covo during a runoff election watch party for Miami District 2 commission seat at Flanigans in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday, November 21, 2023. Its such an honor, Pardo said when asked about the historic race. Because I know what it means to young folks. I know what it means to older folks like me... Its really proven when you can get elected to be a city commissioner in what is considered to be a pretty conservative city. Pardo, 60, is a Morningside resident and financial planner with a history of activism, including serving on the city and county LGBTQ advisory boards, the Stonewall National Museum & Archives in Fort Lauderdale, Care Resource, which is an AIDS service organization, as well as SAGE, a national organization for elders in the LGBTQ community. READ MORE: Gabela defeats suspended Miami Commissioner Diaz de la Portilla in runoff Pardo was among the founders of the LGBTQ civil rights organization, SAVE, serving on its board from 1993 to 1997 and continuing to volunteer for the organization in subsequent years. Despite his history with the group, SAVE endorsed Covo, citing concerns about Pardos comments on the Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the Dont Say Gay bill, at LGBTQ board meetings. Pardo told the Herald he adamantly opposes the bill, and that his comments were misconstrued. Commissioner-elect Damian Pardo reacts with friends Xavier Cortada, Adam Roberti and Jorge Mursuli as he reacts to to the news of unseating incumbent commissioner Sabina Covo during a runoff election watch party for Miami District 2 commission seat at Flanigans in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday, November 21, 2023. Covo, 44, is a public relations consultant and former TV journalist who was elected to a shortened term on the commission in February after she won a special election to replace Ken Russell. Shes spent a whirlwind nine months in office, where she faced criticism for her vote to settle a controversial lawsuit over a small park in Brickell, and received pushback for her connections to developers, with critics calling her the establishment candidate a characterization that Covo denied. Covo and Pardo beat out six other candidates in the general election earlier this month, with Covo leading with 39.3% of the vote, followed by Pardo with 26.4%. Covo raised the most money out of all eight candidates in the general, with more than $237,000 in campaign contributions, according to the most recently-available campaign finance reports. Excluding the more than $165,000 that he loaned himself, Pardo raised the second-most in the crowded candidate field with about $90,000 in contributions, campaign finance reports show. Pardos platform included criticizing corruption in City Hall. Across town on Tuesday, Miami District 1 candidate Miguel Gabela led against incumbent Alex Diaz de la Portilla. Pardo said he wasnt surprised by Gabelas apparent win. Voters had enough, Pardo said of the apparent results for both districts. They want to believe that things can change. The District 2 winner will represent Miamis coastal neighborhoods, including Coconut Grove, Brickell, downtown, Edgewater and Morningside. Apparent commissioner-elect Damian Pardo reacts to to the news of unseating incumbent Sabina Covo during a runoff election watch party for Miamis District 2 seat at Flanigans in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday, November 21, 2023. Parents with children on the autism spectrum will be able to find a low-sensory space at the Park Ridge Library to give the children a respite in case they feel overstimulated, library personnel said. The space is scheduled to open around the end of November. Library Director Joanna Bertucci said the new calming space in the childrens area has soft colors, carpeting and comfy furniture. The room will also have toys like fidget spinners, pop-its and other toys. The room is meant for children in 5th grade and below, she said. The calming space will have a dimmer switch and therapeutic and calming night lights that cast stars on the walls. Bertucci said that in the space, kids can calm down if the outside world is too intense, and they can also use it to explore the sensory objects. Its really whatever the patron wants it to be, she said. The space still has to go through some routine building inspections, said Bertucci, and it will open soon after that. She said when the room does open, it will be kept locked and staff must let people in. She doesnt foresee any sort of time restrictions, but will wait and see how the room is received. Bertucci said the library used $50,000 in state grants from the Live and Learn Accessibility program to renovate two bathrooms in the childrens area. One was converted into a calming space, and the other remained a bathroom. The Live and Learn Accessibility program is meant to help libraries with their construction costs for remodels, additions, or projects making them ADA-accessible. Bertucci said the library has been offering a quiet hour on the first Sunday of every month since February to offer an option for children who need a low-sensory setting. On those Sundays, the library opens an hour earlier, it operates with fewer lights on and often makes toys and therapy dogs available. Low-sensory spaces in libraries have become a growing trend around the Chicago area. Waukegan and Orland Park libraries have also opened spaces for young children to decompress. The Northbrook library also started a quiet hour back in 2017. Caroline McCarthy, the director of training and consulting at Have Dreams, an organization that helps families and individuals living with autism, looks at the trend of growing resources for children with autism as hopeful. Instead of parents having to keep their neurodiverse children home and not allowing them to participate in these events, we can still provide a safe space for them and be successful, she said. According to Have Dreams, about one in 44 children fall on the autism spectrum or have ADHD or some other type of neurodiversity. Sometimes public spaces can be overwhelming, said McCarthy. A calming room in a public setting definitely gives a sense of safety which allows for better participation in those social settings and environments. (FOX40.COM) Individuals who are running in this years Run to Feed the Hungry event will have the option of participating virtually. Following a bomb threat towards the annual event, organizers sent an email to registered participants noting they are able to choose to partake in the 5K or 10K at a location of their choosing. Organizers told FOX40.com that they have will a link on the race website for people to submit their virtual times sometime on Wednesday. Trails, parks and outdoor areas near Sacramento to stretch your legs and get some fresh air The Sacramento Police Department said it will have an increased presence at the annual event as an abundance of caution. SPD and the FBI urge people to always remain vigilant, follow instructions from law enforcement personnel, and report suspicious activity immediately, the police department wrote in a news release. This years Run to Feed the Hungry is celebrating 30 years of the annual event and is taking place on Thanksgiving Day, like every year. Looking to join a Turkey Trot? Heres several in the Sacramento area The event supports the Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services, a local nonprofit which helps those in need move toward self-sufficiency and financial independence. For those who participate in person, both 5K and 10K races will begin on J Street near the Sacramento State entrance and run through East Sacramento. The 10K race will start at 8:15 a.m. and 5K race will start at 9 a.m. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX40. A woman is suing Delta Air Lines after claiming that she was groped and kissed by an off-duty member of staff during a flight. In a lawsuit filed to Minnesota District Court, it is alleged that flight attendants continued to serve alcohol to their colleague despite the passenger expressing concerned about the level of intoxication. The filing includes allegations from Alison Petri that she was kissed on the mouth and rubbed on her buttocks by the person sitting next to her, who was allegedly travelling with a crew bag and drinking heavily during the three-hour flight from Las Vegas to Minneapolis, reports KMSP-TV. According to the lawsuit, Ms Petri walked to the back of the plane after being kissed to inform a flight attendant about what had happened, but she claims cabin crew continued to serve wine to the passenger at the centre of the row. When youre on a plane, you cant just run away and get away from a bad situation, youre basically a hostage on that flight," said Minneapolis attorney Jeff Storms, who is representing Ms Petri. Either colleagues or friends were serving her, and instead of cutting her off, it was dont worry well keep the party going, dont worry, well take care of you. Ms Petri said she reported the incident to staff on the gate and at the airport in Minneapolis, asking them to contact police. Last summer, the disruptive passenger was convicted of a disorderly conduct in connection with the case and sentenced to one year of unsupervised monitoring. A further allegation in the lawsuit is that flight attendants repeatedly contacted the intoxicated passenger to warn her about the reports, with Mr Storm claiming Delta staff conspired with one another. The Independent has contacted Delta for comment. A spokesperson for the airline told Insider that the alleged assailant at the time was an employee of a Delta subsidiary but not directly employed by Delta. They added: While we dont have any specific comment on this pending litigation, Delta does not tolerate inappropriate or unlawful behaviour. Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and our people. SAN DIEGO Three people were injured in an overnight rollover crash in La Jolla, authorities said Wednesday. According to the San Diego Police Department, the incident happened around 12:41 a.m. when a 19-year-old man was driving a 2005 Nissan Frontier westbound on 2200 block of Nautilus Street. Woman arrested after kidnapping attempt in East County The driver reportedly swerved and lost control of the vehicle, in turn, causing it to roll over several times, authorities explained. Two rear passengers were ejected during the crash. SDPD said the driver exited the vehicle and fled on foot. As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, he remains at large. Police believe alcohol was a factor in this incident. Three passengers were transported by ambulance to a local hospital, two with minor injuries and another with life-threatening injuries. SDPDs Traffic Division responded and is investigating the collision. Anyone with information related to the incident is encouraged to call Crime Stoppers at 888-580-8477. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 5 San Diego. A panel of federal judges ruled Tuesday that a Texas police officer used excessive force when his patrol dog bit an unarmed woman for roughly one minute, but it said the judicial doctrine known as qualified immunity shielded the officer from the womans lawsuit, court records show. In an 18-page opinion first reported by NBC News, a three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that K-9 officer Tyson Sutton of the police department in Conroe, north of Houston, violated Olivia Slighs constitutional rights during the encounter on July 5, 2018. Sligh has told NBC News that she was having a mental health crisis when her boyfriend called 911 seeking help. Body camera video of the confrontation showed Sutton siccing his patrol dog, Thor, on Sligh after she resisted orders from Sutton and a Montgomery County sheriffs deputy. Olivia Sligh is approached by Conroe police officers and a K-9 officer. (Conroe Police Department) The video shows the dog repeatedly biting Sligh as Sutton appears to shout release commands that are not obeyed. Sligh said she was left with more than a dozen scars and herniated discs. A U.S. district judge dismissed Slighs lawsuit alleging excessive force, describing Suttons use of the patrol dog in a 2022 decision as not unreasonable. The decision said Sligh "assaulted" the deputy, Alexis Montes, while he tried to handcuff her an allegation Sligh denied. But in Tuesday's decision, the panel concluded that Sutton's use of Thor "constituted an excessive use of force in violation of the Fourth Amendment." The officers could have used physical force in a "more measured manner, or they could have provided a clear warning that they would employ a dog bite if Sligh did not comply. Instead, Sutton sicced Thor on Sligh without warning." At the time, the decision says, Sligh was not suspected of a crime and did not pose an immediate safety threat. She was not trying to flee, and she was in need of emergency medical care, the decision says. But the panel found that lawyers for Sligh had not overcome Sutton's qualified immunity, which bars lawsuits against law enforcement officers unless their conduct violates a clearly established right under the law or the Constitution. Sligh's lawyers had relied on another dog bite case, in which a patrol animal bit an unarmed man suspected of driving under the influence for nearly two minutes. But the panel rejected that comparison, describing the man in that case as a "nonresisting plaintiff" who suffered an "intentionally prolonged application of force." "Because the present case involves an application of unintentionally prolonged force against an actively resisting plaintiff, we do not find that Suttons violation of Slighs constitutional right was clearly established," the judges wrote. The judges also dismissed other claims in the suit, including a "failure to intervene" allegation against Montes. Sligh's lawyer, Randall Kallinen, said Tuesday that he planned to request a rehearing before the same panel. He said he also plans to ask the full 16-judge panel to weigh in. A lawyer for Montes did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Sutton, Steven Selbe, called the 5th Circuit's opinion "very thorough" and said it was the "correct outcome in my view." Selbe has told NBC News that the body camera video "clearly contradicts" Sligh's allegations that the officers were acting recklessly and out of control. Instead, he said, the video reveals the officers "did it right." "It is both ironic and sad that Deputy Montes and Officer Sutton were trying to help the plaintiff and her actions led to an additional injury occurring," he said. The U.S. Supreme Court declined last year to review two cases challenging qualified immunity, including an appeal from a Texas woman whose son died in a county jail while a guard watched and declined to intervene. A federal bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, also seeks to reform the judicial doctrine, but lawmakers have been unable to pass the legislation. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com (WHTM) The Human Rights Campaign, a national organization that focuses on fighting for LGBTQ+ rights has recently released the scores of its Municipal Equality Index. The report scores cities around the country on their efforts to ensure equality for those in the LGBTQ+ community. 10 Pennsylvania cities participated in the index. These included Allentown, Carlisle, Erie, Harrisburg, New Hope, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Reading, State College and Wilkes-Barre. Cities are given total scores based on five categories including: non-discrimination laws, municipality as an employer, municipal services, law enforcement, and leadership on LGBTQ+ equality. Cities can also earn additional FLEX points in areas where the campaign determines that the city has gone above general expectations. Flex points are added to the total score to create a final score. Final scores cannot exceed 100. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now abc27 Evening Newsletter In this years report, the City of Harrisburg received its highest score to date and its first perfect final score of 100. This is a significant improvement even from recent years when the city received 81 points in 2018, 69 points from 2019 to 2021, and 71 points in 2022. According to the city, the improvement in score came after several actions including the appointment LGBTQ+ liaisons in both the police department and mayors office, as well as improved reporting hate crime statistics to the FBI, and providing transgender-inclusive healthcare benefits to employees. Previous administrations may have preached equality, but it did not manifest itself inside City Hall, Mayor Williams said in a statement about the score. That is unacceptable, and in Year One of my administration, we sought to change that. The LGBT Center of Central PA, which recently $26,091 in Community Development Block Grant funds from the city, Grant also made a statement about the score improvement. The LGBT Center is grateful for the work that the City of Harrisburg is doing to make this a safer and more inclusive place for LGBTQ+ people to live, work, and play, said LGBT Center Executive Director Amanda Arbour. We look forward to continuing to work together with the Administration towards these goals. Pennsylvania gets three new laws dealing with medical exams, human milk, soil Scores for participating Pennsylvania cities: Allentown: TOTAL SCORE 88 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 8 = Final Score 96 Carlisle: TOTAL SCORE 97 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 6 = Final Score 100 Erie: TOTAL SCORE 98 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 6 = Final Score 100 Harrisburg: TOTAL SCORE 96 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 13 = Final Score 100 New Hope: TOTAL SCORE 87 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 3 = Final Score 90 Philadelphia: TOTAL SCORE 98 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 8 = Final Score 100 Pittsburgh: TOTAL SCORE 90 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 13 = Final Score 100 Reading: TOTAL SCORE 89 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 2 = Final Score 91 State College: TOTAL SCORE 100 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 6 = Final Score 100 Wilkes-Barre: TOTAL SCORE 76 + TOTAL FLEX SCORE 6 = Final Score 82 For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) Manila is working with experts from other countries to ensure BRP Sierra Madre on Ayungin Shoal remains safe for Filipino troops there, Philippine ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez said Wednesday. What we are trying to do here is to get some advice on how we can stabilize it and make it still safe for many of our soldiers who are staying on that ship, Romualdez told CNN Philippines The Source. BRP Sierra Madre is a World War II-era ship deliberately grounded in 1999 to serve as the country's outpost in the West Philippine Sea. The Department of National Defense said the vessel needs immediate repair as it is deteriorating fast. Philippine authorities have reached out to engineers from the United States and other countries, Romualdez said. They have given us an indication of where it would be best to try to anchor the ship perhaps. Im not privy to exactly the details of all this type of advice but its there, he added. There are proposals to build permanent structures on Ayungin Shoal given the current state of BRP Sierra Madre. Sen. Francis Escudero earlier said he would look into allocating 100 million for the construction of a structure on Ayungin, which can include accommodation for Filipino troops stationed at BRP Sierra Madre. The proposal was supported by Sen. Bato dela Rosa and Senate Minority Leader Koko Pimentel, who said the structure should be non-military, like shelter for fisherfolk during bad weather or halfway house for research vehicles. READ: NSC: Proposed funding for building structures on Ayungin merits Congress discussion Reports that U.S. shell deliveries have dropped by over 30% since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack are not necessarily accurate, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said in a press briefing on Nov. 21. ABC News, citing an unnamed Ukrainian official, reported that shipments of NATO-standard 155mm shells from the U.S. to Ukraine had fallen "by more than 30%" since the start of the Israel-Gaza war. "Look, I would push back on that assertion," Singh told reporters. "We have been able to supply Ukraine with what it needs during its counteroffensive, and we will continue to supply Ukraine with what it needs as it heads as we head into winter." Singh went on to say that continued U.S. military aid to Ukraine would require cooperation from Congress. The White House requested $61 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine in a bill submitted to Congress in October. Amid political turmoil and threats of a government shutdown, the request has not been approved. "And so the only way that we can continue to support Ukraine is if also Congress passes that urgent supplemental that we requested," Singh said. The U.S. Defense Department announced on Nov. 20 that Biden had authorized a $100 million military aid package from Ukraine under the Presidential Drawdown Authority. Those funds are not subject to congressional approval. Read also: Investigation: Czech parts make their way to Russian military helicopters despite sanctions Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. The Pentagon has dismissed reports that the supply of NATO-standard projectiles essential to Ukraine has fallen by 30% as Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Defense, responded to an ABC News article on Tuesday, 21 November, concerning the cutback in arms supplies. Source: Pentagon Quote from Singh: "Look, I would push back on that assertion. We have been able to supply Ukraine with what it needs during its counter-offensive, and we will continue to supply Ukraine with what it needs as it heads as we head into winter." Details: The official said the US can simultaneously support Israel to defend itself in the war against Hamas. Singh took the opportunity to stress that the Pentagon requires help from Congress, as this is the only way to maintain support for Ukraine. Background: On 21 November, ABC News quoted an unnamed Ukrainian official as saying that the US had cut supplies of vital NATO-standard ammunition to Ukraine by "more than 30%" since the start of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza last month. Support UP or become our patron! The Pentagon is moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously decide to kill humans South Korea's military drones fly in formation during a joint military drill with the US at Seungjin Fire Training Field in Pocheon on May 25, 2023. YELIM LEE The US is among countries arguing against new laws to regulate AI-controlled killer drones. The US, China, and others are developing so-called "killer robots." Critics are concerned about the development of machines that can decide to take human lives. The deployment of AI-controlled drones that can make autonomous decisions about whether to kill human targets is moving closer to reality, The New York Times reported. Lethal autonomous weapons, that can select targets using AI, are being developed by countries including the US, China, and Israel. The use of the so-called "killer robots" would mark a disturbing development, say critics, handing life and death battlefield decisions to machines with no human input. Several governments are lobbying the UN for a binding resolution restricting the use of AI killer drones, but the US is among a group of nations which also includes Russia, Australia, and Israel who are resisting any such move, favoring a non-binding resolution instead, The Times reported. "This is really one of the most significant inflection points for humanity," Alexander Kmentt, Austria's chief negotiator on the issue, told The Times. "What's the role of human beings in the use of force it's an absolutely fundamental security issue, a legal issue and an ethical issue." The Pentagon is working toward deploying swarms of thousands of AI-enabled drones, according to a notice published earlier this year. In a speech in August, US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, said technology like AI-controlled drone swarms would enable the US to offset China's People's Liberation Army's (PLA) numerical advantage in weapons and people. "We'll counter the PLA's mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, harder to beat," she said, reported Reuters. Frank Kendall, the Air Force secretary, told The Times that AI drones will need to have the capability to make lethal decisions while under human supervision. "Individual decisions versus not doing individual decisions is the difference between winning and losing and you're not going to lose," he said. "I don't think people we would be up against would do that, and it would give them a huge advantage if we put that limitation on ourselves." The New Scientist reported in October that AI-controlled drones have already been deployed on the battlefield by Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion, though it's unclear if any have taken action resulting in human casualties. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Read the original article on Business Insider In 1906, Yale University professor William Graham Sumner published one of his most important works. Hailed as a pioneer of sociology and anthropology, Sumner developed in his book Folkways the idea of ethnocentrism, which he defined as a view of things in which ones own group is the center of everything. An estimated 1.1 million immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Latin America entered the United States that yearthe highest number since the countrys founding. Against the background of mass migration and cultural cross-pollination, Sumner argued that each culture effectively constructed its own unique system of morality. The morals of an age, he wrote, are never anything but the consequences between what is done and what the mores of the age require. Sumner added that any attempt to discern an absolute philosophy of truth and right, based on an unalterable principle, is a delusion. As the 20th century wore on, what started as an academic concept to make sense of cultural differencethe idea that morality was culturally conditioned, and infinitely changeablecame to underpin a host of other critical theories gaining traction in universities and intellectual circles. The rise of postmodernist theory and the so-called cultural turn of the 1970s emphasized the inherent instability of language, meaning, and ideas. For theorists like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, making sense of overarching Western assumptions required deconstructing thembreaking down their multiple, slippery meanings and constantly challenging their value. Arriving at meaning or belief becomes a constant process of deconstruction and analysis. Everything is up for grabs in the culture of critique. To open a newspaperor better yet, TikToKin the year 2023 is to witness what happens when playful intellectual theories about the relativity of morals escape the seminar room and, through a baffling process that no one can quite understand, permeate a significant portion of left-leaning culture. As scores of young TikTok users deconstructed Osama bin Ladens Letter to America last week, it became clear that the view that morality depends entirely on context, grievance, class, race, and religion is alive and well. I will never look at this country the same, said one young woman, after reading the missive, in which bin Laden condemns the U.S. for failing to instate Sharia law and justifies killing American civilians because their tax dollars fund the U.S. governments support of Israel. In the last 20 minutes, my entire viewpoint on the entire life I have believed and I have lived, has changed. Please read that entire letter, she implored. We can hope that only a few individuals were so moved by the vitriolic declarations of a mass killer who loathed every principle upon which freedom and democracy were built. But take this small-scale phenomenon along with other recent examplesof feminist organizations refusing to acknowledge that Israeli women were brutally raped because they are colonizers, or students calling for a global intifadaand it becomes clear that a pernicious new morality is at work. A world in which ideas are unstable and objective right or wrong dont exist (replaced by mere different points of view) is a world that allows those perceived as powerless to use violence against those critiqued as powerful. Clear calls for the destruction of the West are understood as the desperate cries of disenfranchised victims. And symbols of slaughter and rape wrought upon the youngHamas paraglidersare really just clever optical illusions: If you squint hard enough, apparently, they become symbols of liberation and hope. Too many in the West have heeded this call to relativism, leading us into a culture almost entirely devoid of the unalterable principles that Sumner regarded as delusional. We become a society where critique is more acceptable than assertion. The problem is that most of the enemies of Western liberalismthe ones being celebrated by many on the left, influenced by moral relativismare certain and all too happy to assert themselves. The militant jihadists carrying on bin Ladens legacy do not play by the rules of radical skepticism. As Sam Harris laid out in a recent podcast, jihadists unequivocally assert, time and time again, that murdering infidels is an act of martyrdom rewarded by an eternity in paradise. They write remarkably transparent charters to this effect and then they manifest their beliefs in murderous action. Though the Western culture of critique can excuse moral fickleness, in contrast to a culture of assertion it can be generous, capacious, and interesting. It inspires art, challenges rigid norms, and forges new avenues of inquiry. Indeed, a degree of critique is absolutely necessary for a thriving marketplace of ideas, an essential part of our vibrant and progressive society. But when the culture of critique becomes too extreme, sincere convictions about right and wrong are deemed naive at best or totalitarian at worst. When it offends our postmodern sensibilities to claim that some ideas are better than others, we grant cover and credibility to bad ideas and bad actorsthose who wish upon us not the utopia of pluralism that many moral relativists may seek, but a far more monolithic, sinister, and deadly future. When we meet malevolent and unshakeable beliefs not with equally concrete assertions of the inherent dignity of human life, freedom, democracy and the rule of law, but with a lacuna of insipid and self-undermining ideasoften centered on the culpability of the Westa simple law of density determines the outcome. The flimsier set of ideas float to the surface and bob away, wherever the tide takes them, while more solid ideas, no matter how reprehensible, anchor themselves to the bottom, resisting ebb and flow. The writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali alluded to this dynamic in a recent essay announcing her conversion to Christianity. Formerly a prominent atheist, Ali realized that the God holethe void left by the retreat of the churchhas merely been filled by a jumble of irrational quasi-religious dogma. Much of this irrational dogma falls apart when probed and cannot stand up to the destructive ideas of our time, among them authoritarianism, fundamentalist Islamism, and woke illiberalism. Ali found in the Judeo-Christian tradition the moral underpinnings that, in her words, advanced science and reason, diminished cruelty, suppressed superstitions, and built institutions to order and protect life, while guaranteeing freedom to as many people as possible. With the war in the Middle East dangerously close to expanding beyond Gaza, and Russia and China continuing an increasingly united attack on the West, the stakes of morality today are high. There is no time for privileged intellectual somersaults that turn heroes into villains and villains into heroes. As Albert Einstein warned, Relativity applies to physics, not ethics. At the very least, we must take the liberal values and institutions that have developed over centuriesand which are the best guarantors of individual liberty, human rights, freedom of speech and religion, prosperity, and peace that the world has ever knownextremely seriously. We must understand that they are at the core of our ability to deconstruct anything in the first place. And we must unapologetically assert their importanceif not their moral righteousness when we are confronted with forces that would see them dismantled. 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. Whats viral these days on TikTok, you ask? Osama bin Ladens 2002 letter to Americans explaining why al Qaeda killed nearly 3000 Americans on 9/11. A young generation of Americans are reading this letter and some are agreeing with its justification for mass murder. This is a logical extension, of course, of believing that Hamas was justified in perpetrating the horrors of 10/7 in Israel. Weve seen plenty of that sentiment in the past month, spun as liberation from oppression. But the slogan from the river to the sea is not just about liberation: it justifies mass slaughter in the name of that cause. This brain virus of believing that moral righteousness or divine destiny demands the purposeful destruction of masses of innocent people has long been a debilitating parasite on the human species. Nearly every religion and every civilization has had its share of those infected by it. That the virus exists is not what is so worrisome; its clear weve always had it. That it exists widely throughout the post-World War II world where we supposedly looked clearly at the virus and repudiated it on an international scale through the United Nations and its treaties and international courts, is what shocks. That young people in America could look at what was done on 10/7 and say the victims deserved to be tortured and killed in their homes, is what shocks. That young people in America could nod their heads sagely in agreement with Osama bin Laden, who murdered thousands of their fellow citizens, is what shocks. The moral compass of our younger generation appears completely shattered. We live once again in the pre-World War II days, the lessons of that war forgotten. Never again! now rings hollow, and in a haunting example, a Greek memorial to the victims of the Holocaust was defaced after after 10/7. How could this have happened? I think there are many reasons, including the post-Christian, post-truth world the West has labored to create over the past half-century. Many books have already been written on that topic. But there is another partial cause we cannot overlook. Our children have forgotten, all because we failed to pass on what we remember. We blithely left the task to technology and social media, not understanding that neither wish our children well. Related I first noticed the gradual disappearance of the teaching of history when my oldest daughter was in high school. Of course, U.S. history and world history are still required for graduation, but what was taught was an egregiously superficial gloss with many omissions, half-truths and a complete lack of nuance. My daughter could tell me the life story of Harriet Tubman which is awesome but could not tell me anything about the Cold War. She was taught nothing whatsoever about the history of the Middle East in the modern day, even though her own country was embroiled in wars in that region at the time. It was left to her father and I to fill in the blanks. And advances in technology have made the situation far, far worse than it was when my daughter was in school. Wesley Yang summed up the horrifying results in this fashion: When we made the succession from a text based culture to a streaming one, all prior knowledge instantly evanesced, reformatting all prior culture and leaving a blank slate. In the resulting brave new world children can know they are the opposite sex, mass murderers of civilians are heroes of resistance and Osama Bin Laden is a profound and wrongly maligned truth teller. Anything can happen now. Hes right anything can happen now, and you can rest assured anything includes the justification of mass murder by our sweet, oblivious, disconnected, terminally online children. Concomitantly, it also means that our sweet, oblivious, disconnected, terminally online children will be deeply surprised when they themselves die in one of these righteous campaigns, as were the young people at the rave in Israel on 10/7. Goebbels was only partially correct. (And if you dont know who Josef Goebbels is, you should. If you have to Google him, youve proved my point.) Goebbels was right in saying that if you repeat a big lie often enough, people will begin to believe it. But what he didnt add was that this works best when people have no remembrance or understanding of the past for then there are no lies and no truths at all. We have failed our children, and all the world will pay the cost in blood and horror. Valerie M. Hudson is a university distinguished professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and a Deseret News contributor. Her views are her own. Former Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) made a name for himself as a freshman congressman in 2021 with his icy comments on Donald Trump, but with his new Senate bid, he appears to be warming to the former president. Meijer, whose family owns the Midwestern chain of supermarkets, announced earlier this month that he would be running to fill the seat Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) is planning to leave behind. He told Politico Monday that he would support whoever wins the Republican presidential nomination a title that Trump appears to have on lock. Thats despite telling the same outlet just last year that he had no idea how he would support Trump in 2024. Meijer also voted to support Trumps second impeachment during his first few weeks representing Western Michiganders in the House, saying around the same time that he considered Trump unfit for office. Asked who changed himself or Trump Meijer told Politico, Its something that Ive grappled with. A primary challenger trounced Meijer last year, although both lost to Democrat Hillary Scholten. Peter Meijer is yet another shameful example in a long line of weak, craven Republicans willing to embrace what they know to be wrong to satisfy their personal thirst for relevance and power. #NeverTrumphttps://t.co/FsOfRGcClm Jeff Timmer (@jefftimmer) November 22, 2023 I would say one of the things thats really changed between then and now is my frustration at the cynical calculation that Ive seen on the Democratic side, Meijer told Politico, appearing to take issue with the various civil and criminal charges lodged against the former president. My overarching goal is to make Joe Biden a one-term president, he went on. I think that economic damage that he has wrought and will continue to bring will have far more wide-reaching negative consequences on the country than a second non-consecutive Trump administration. And frankly, if Donald Trump is returned to the Oval Office, there would probably be few better motivators to rein in executive power, he added, noting that he considered the office of the presidency the most dangerous institution in the country today. Peter Meijer i cant explain. He gained a place in history and then blew it. I really really cant explain. He was the one i respectED the most. https://t.co/g761KgYRZW Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) (@AdamKinzinger) November 22, 2023 Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a prominent Republican critic of Trump, reacted with disbelief to the abrupt change in tune. Peter Meijer ... I cant explain. He gained a place in history and then blew it, Kinzinger wrote. Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party turned Never Trump activist, said Meijers behavior was weak and craven. The race to fill Stabenows Senate seat is crowded, with Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin as the presumed front-runner. Among Michigan conservatives, polling shows Trump still enjoys broad support. This photo provided by the Philanthropy Roundtable shows the new Philanthropy Roundtable CEO Christie Herrera photographed in Washington, D.C., in 2021. Herrera says that she plans to fight for the principles the advocacy organization has always prized. But Herrera, who was officially promoted in mid-October 2023, recognizes that battle is getting tougher and more complicated than ever. (Pablo Sartor/Philanthropy Roundtable via AP) NEW YORK (AP) Christie Herrera says, as the new president and CEO of Philanthropy Roundtable, she plans to fight for the principles the advocacy organization has always prized. But Herrera, who was officially promoted in mid-October, recognizes that battle is getting tougher and more complicated than ever. The Roundtable is going to be who weve always been and thats a home for donors who share our values, she said. We will continue to be passionate about philanthropy, about values-based giving, about philanthropic freedom, and about philanthropic excellence the nuts and bolts of giving that I feel the philanthropic sector has gotten away with some of the social issues theyre taking up. Challenges to the Roundtables values abound, however even from fellow conservatives. The House Ways and Means Committee, led by Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, is looking into the political activities of tax-exempt organizations and wrote that Congress may need to consider closing growing loopholes that allow the use of tax-exempt status to influence American elections. Legislation in the Senate, co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, looks to require donor-advised fund account holders to complete donations within 15 years in order to maintain their income tax deductions. Currently, there is no time limit for donor-advised fund account holders to complete their donations. And some experts, including Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, say Americans trade their right to privacy on their donations when they seek tax deductions for them. (If that money is not being used for the tax system, we should know something about where it is going, he said.) The Associated Press spoke recently with Herrera about her promotion at the Roundtable, where she has worked since 2019 and oversaw its philanthropic programs, and policy and government affairs, marketing and communications teams. She previously worked with elected officials in various states to create legislation for nonprofits. The interview was edited for clarity and length. - Q: We live in polarized times. Do you feel the Roundtable should lessen that polarization? A: Yeah, absolutely. Freedom is important no matter what you believe. And we always love finding allies across the aisle and forming those strange bedfellows coalitions because thats the only way were going to get policy done, especially with a gridlocked Washington and so many purple states. Q: What is the biggest challenge you see to the Roundtable doing what it has in the past? A: Its one thing and one thing only and thats protecting philanthropic freedom. That is what makes generosity possible -- allowing donors to give where and when they choose. The really interesting thing about this is that were seeing threats coming from the left and the right, which puts the Roundtable in a unique position to stand up for philanthropic freedom, for conservative foundations and progressive foundations, because we believe in the right to give no matter what your ideology. Q: Does philanthropic freedom include the right to give anonymously? A: Absolutely. Donor privacy is the biggest sleeper issue in philanthropy. I think its time for philanthropy to step up and start talking about these donor privacy issues. We saw the Supreme Court rule on this in their last term and really this freedom to give to the causes you care about without harassment or intimidation is important on the right and the left. Q: The number of Americans who donate to nonprofits is declining. Are privacy concerns part of that? A: I think its a lot of things. The decline in the number of people who identify as religious is probably part of that since religious giving is a huge part of philanthropy. But these policies do not help. The King-Grassley legislation that was introduced in the last Congress, restrictions on family foundations, private foundations that give to (donor-advised funds), the regs that are about to come out through the IRS and Treasury. Naming and shaming donors will ultimately hurt. Itll hurt the donors and hurt the charities they care about. _______ Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. FILE - Volunteer escorts and others stand outside the Red River Women's Clinic in Moorhead, Minn., Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. The clinic has operated since 1998 in Fargo, where it was North Dakota's only abortion clinic. Physicians and the former, sole abortion provider in North Dakota on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023, asked a state district court judge for a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the state's revised abortion laws. (AP Photo/Dave Kolpack, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) Physicians and the former, sole abortion provider in North Dakota on Tuesday asked a judge to block enforcement of part of a revised law that bans most abortions, saying a provision that allows the procedure to protect a womans health is too vague. North Dakota outlaws all abortions, except in cases where women could face death or a serious health risk. People who perform abortions could be charged with a felony under the law, but patients would not. Tuesdays request for a preliminary injunction asks the state district court judge to bar the state from enforcing the law against physicians who use their good-faith medical judgment to perform an abortion to treat pregnancy complications that could pose a risk of infection, hemorrhage, high blood pressure, or which otherwise makes continuing a pregnancy unsafe. The doctors and clinic are asking the injunction to remain in place until their suit against the full law goes to trial next year. Physicians have perceived the law's language for serious health risk to be so vague that they don't know at what point a condition rises to the level of being what the statute calls a serious health risk, Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Meetra Mehdizadeh told The Associated Press. Physicians want to be able to provide treatment for their patients before their health declines and before they experience serious and potentially life-threatening complications, she said. Because of the restrictions placed on abortion access in North Dakota, they dont know whether they can do that legally. The state's revised abortion law also provides an exception for pregnancies caused by rape and incest, but only in the first six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. It also allows for treatment of ectopic and molar pregnancies, which are nonviable situations. The Red River Womens Clinic sued the state last year after the U.S. Supreme Courts Dobbs decision, which overturned the court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a nationwide right to abortion. The lawsuit targeted the states since-repealed trigger ban a ban designed to go into effect immediately if the court overturned Roe v. Wade as unconstitutional. The clinic moved last year from Fargo, North Dakota, to neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota, where abortion remains legal. A judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the ban from taking effect last year, which the state Supreme Court upheld in March. In April, the Republican-led Legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill revising the state's abortion law. Republican Gov. Doug Burgum signed that bill into law in late April. In June, the clinic filed an amended complaint, joined by several doctors in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2024. Chief Justice Jon Jensen wrote in the court's March decision that it is clear the citizens of North Dakota have a right to enjoy and defend life and a right to pursue and obtain safety, which necessarily includes a pregnant woman has a fundamental right to obtain an abortion to preserve her life or her health. Republican state Sen. Janne Myrdal, who sponsored the bill, called Tuesday's filing sad" and said it could have come earlier. We can do a lot better in North Dakota than what these people who are suing us are intending to do, so we're going to stand firm and continue to protect life, she told the AP. The Associated Press sent a text message to North Dakota Republican Attorney General Drew Wrigley seeking comment. ___ Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report. A French pilot has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Tuesday after decapitating a skydiver with the wing of his plane in 2018. The unnamed pilot is also banned from flying for one year, according to Le Parisien. He got a 12-month prison sentence, which has since been suspended. The pilot, 64, hit Nicolas Galy, 40, with the planes left wing just seconds after Galey jumped out of the aircraft at an altitude of about 13,123 feet. Galy was wearing a wingsuit, which allows someone to control their free fall using inflatable winged sleeving, like a flying squirrel. Wingsuit flying is often regarded as one of the most dangerous sports. More: Passengers sue US airline for 'emotional distress' after off-duty pilot attempted hijack Galys emergency parachute deployed and his body landed in a field, according to the Daily Beast. The pilot, who was operating the plane Galy jumped out of, started to descend toward the aerodrome tarmac after Galy jumped. He said that when he lost visual contact with the wingsuiter, he thought the plane was clear of them. French wingsuit acrobats Boris Paturet and Nicolas Minvielle take part in an acrobatic wingsuit training flight in Pamiers, southwestern France, on Oct. 30. Prosecutors said there was a lack of communication between Galy and the pilot on the trajectory the plane would take. In court hearings, the pilot said he is not at fault and Galy did not follow the expected course and should never have been on that course. An investigation of the incident by the Civil Aviation Accident Investigation Office found the pilot, an employee of Midi-Pyrenees Parachuting School in southern France, was not in a good state of health to have been flying. His license was invalid due to a medical condition. The court found the pilot guilty of operating an aircraft without a valid aeronautical license. The school was fined 20,000 euros (about $21,773) for not verifying the license of its pilots, but half of that has been suspended. The school told Le Parisien there are now more security measures in place. Kathleen Wong is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Hawaii. You can reach her at kwong@usatoday.com. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: French pilot guilty of manslaughter after decapitating skydiver Oscar Pistorius pictured after he was sentenced in 2016 for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp (MARCO LONGARI) Lawyers for Oscar Pistorius said on Wednesday they hope the former South African Paralympic champion who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend a decade ago will be released immediately if granted parole later this week. Pistorius, 37, will appear before a parole board at a correctional centre outside Pretoria where he is currently detained on Friday. Asked whether the hope was for the ex-athlete to be home for Christmas, Pistorius' lawyer Conrad Dormehl, told AFP that "the best-case scenario" was "an immediate release" on Friday. "An immediate placement on parole would be the best-case scenario, which would obviously be before Christmas," Dormehl said. Legal experts and a lawyer for the victim's family have previously told AFP that, normally, it can take weeks before a prisoner who is granted parole is effectively discharged from jail. Pistorius lost a first bid for parole in March, when a board found he had not completed the minimum detention period required to be let out. But the Constitutional Court last month ruled that was a mistake, paving the way for a new hearing. South Africa's Department of Correctional Services (DCS) normally follows a "one-month policy", allowing 30 days for prisoners to complete a pre-release programme before letting them out, said Nicole van Zyl, a law researcher at University of the Western Cape. An earlier date could be set if authorities were to take into consideration the delay caused by the error previously made in calculating Pistorius' minimum detention period and the public scrutiny that followed, she said. An immediate release was thus "not impossible", said Dormehl. "We are hoping that the parole board can come to a swift resolution of the matter," he said. Pistorius killed Reeva Steenkamp, a model, in the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, firing four times through the bathroom door of his ultra-secure Pretoria house, in a killing that shocked the world. Known worldwide as the "Blade Runner" for his carbon-fibre prosthetics, Pistorius was found guilty of murder and given a 13-year jail sentence in 2017 after a lengthy trial and several appeals. He had pleaded not guilty and denied killing Steenkamp in a rage, saying he mistook her for a burglar. A year before the killing, Pistorius became the first double-amputee to race in the Olympics, competing at the 2012 London Games. ub-zam/giv Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) A high-level trade delegation to be formed by United States President Joe Biden will visit Manila in March, Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Babe Manuel Romualdez said Wednesday. It will be led by (US) Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, he told CNN Philippines The Source. Around 30-40 chief executives from top American companies are expected to join the trade and investment mission, and they will be coming from various industries that have business interests in the Philippines, Romualdez added. He said Philippine officials are forming a team that will assist the delegation. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. announced the trade and investment mission following an official visit to the US. He participated in the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders Meeting in San Francisco last week. Romualdez said Marcos secured investment pledges worth $672 million (around 37.3 bilion), which will be implemented in stages. WARSAW/PRAGUE (Reuters) - Poland and the Czech Republic have extended temporary controls on their borders with Slovakia until Dec. 3 and Jan. 3 respectively, in response to continuing efforts by migrants to enter from Slovak territory. Slovakia is a transit country for migrants mostly from the Middle East and Afghanistan who are seeking to reach western Europe, especially Germany, after crossing into the European Union via Hungary from Serbia, which is not in the EU. The number of illegal migrants arriving in Slovakia so far this year exceeded 46,000 as of Nov. 12, marking a more than six-fold increase from the same period last year. "Border controls ... will be extended to the period from November 23, 2023 to December 3, 2023," a regulation issued by Poland's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration said. Czech Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said the temporary controls were necessary due to a lack of common EU policies that would better guard the bloc's external border and jointly deal with migration. "If neighbouring countries have an interest in keeping these controls, I cannot imagine that we would be the only country to cancel them," he told a news conference. Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria all tightened their borders with Slovakia on Oct. 4. Warsaw cited "a serious threat of illegal immigration on the Polish-Slovak section of the state border". The measure was later extended several times. Similarly, Slovakia on Monday approved an extension of its own temporary border controls with Hungary till Dec. 23. In September, Germany introduced checks on its borders with its eastern neighbours in the face of increased illegal migration flows as the EU carves out a new migration pact that will overhaul rules for handling irregular arrivals. Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria and Germany are all part of Europe's open-border Schengen zone. Rakusan said he and the interior ministers of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Germany would meet next Monday in Hungary to discuss the situation. (Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw and Jan Lopatka in Prague; Editing by Gareth Jones) EVANSVILLE Almost one week after a judge issued a warrant for his arrest, Evansville police apprehended a 25-year-old man who stands accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl. Vanderburgh County jail records identified the man as Edgar Alexander Acosta. He was booked into the jail, where he is being held on a $10,000 cash bond, just after 2 a.m. On Nov. 16, the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor's Office charged Acosta with one count of sexual misconduct with a minor, a Level 4 felony, according to court records. Prosecutors filed the charge about one month after a woman contacted the Evansville Police Department to report that Acosta had sexually abused a 15-year-old girl, Acosta's arrest affidavit states. EPD Detective Cameron Werne, writing in the affidavit, said he and a "partial Spanish-speaking Evansville police officer" soon traveled to an apartment on the city's South Side and made contact with Acosta, who identified himself with a Venezuelan ID card and agreed to speak with investigators at EPD's headquarters. During the interview, Acosta reportedly identified the victim and confirmed she was 15 years old, though he at first denied having abused the girl, according to Werne. "I continued to speak with (Acosta)," Werne wrote, describing the interview. "And he eventually stated he was sorry and that he was dishonest." Acosta went on to claim he had sexual intercourse with the victim on one occasion approximately two-and-a-half months ago, the police said. Under Indiana law, any adult who has sexual contact with a minor under the age of 16 years old commits the crime of sexual misconduct with a minor. The offense is a Level 4 felony if the offender is over the age of 21 years old, according to state statute. Detective Werne said he did not believe Acosta's claim that this only happened one time. Under pressure from the detective, Acosta allegedly changed his story and said he had sexual intercourse with the victim approximately five times in Evansville. Acosta was released at the conclusion of the police interview because detectives had not yet taken a statement from the victim, Werne wrote. The next day, investigators conducted a video-recorded forensic interview with the 15-year-old girl at Holly's House, a child and adult victim's advocacy center in Evansville, according to Acosta's arrest affidavit. The victim reportedly said she first met Edgar while her family was traveling to the United States earlier this year. In July, after arriving in Evansville, she said Acosta initiated a "sexual relationship," Werne wrote. Her testimony ultimately corroborated Acosta's confession, according to the police. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest on Nov. 16. Acosta was scheduled to appear for his initial hearing in Vanderburgh County Circuit Court Wednesday at 1 p.m., court records state. The probable cause affidavit filed in support of Acosta's arrest did not clarify his immigration status or if he held Venezuelan citizenship. Houston can be contacted at houston.harwood@courierpress.com This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Police arrest 25-year-old Evansville man accused of child sexual abuse A North Hills man is being held without bail on a murder charge after a missing mans body was found buried in his backyard. Russell Robinson, 48, was arrested for the murder of 35-year-old Carlos DeLeon, a Guatemalan man who had not been seen since June, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a news release. Police received a tip that DeLeon was dead and his body was buried in a North Hills backyard. After investigators removed a structure and dug up the concrete foundation on Tuesday, the remains of DeLeon were located, police said. During a Tuesday news conference, LAPD Department Chief Alan Hamilton said detectives had been on the case for several weeks and police were comfortable that we have the right person in custody. Robinson is being held at the Valley Jail in Van Nuys on $2 million bail. No information on a court date was available. Anyone with additional information about this incident is asked to contact Detective Moselle at 818-374-9550. To remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or go directly to lacrimestoppers.org. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA. [Source] The Fort Collins police are investigating four separate burglaries that took place within the same month, all targeting homes of Asian families in Colorado. Windsor burglary: In one of the burglaries, a group of thieves broke into an Asian couples home in Windsor, stealing cash, handbags and watches, amounting to $200,000 worth of items, reported 9News. The incident took place before 7 p.m. on Thursday when both Kae Dumrongpalasit and her husband Ram were at their restaurant. The couple's doorbell recorded a video of a woman knocking on their door, who then seemingly gave the all-clear for the break-in. The thieves reportedly entered through the basement after disconnecting the Wi-Fi, disabling the indoor cameras. Dumrongpalasits concerns: The Dumrongpalasit family expressed the emotional impact of losing valuable items and raised concerns about whether the suspects were familiar with their routine and schedule. Trending on NextShark: Pokemon Horizons: The Series trailer, release date unveiled "We work so hard for it and it is all gone And the value of the stuff, it is a lot," Kae told 9 News. And then seeing [my husband] getting super depressedI have to be strong, so I try to be strong the whole situation, but it hurts a lot. Investigation: There is currently no information regarding the whereabouts of the thieves. The Fort Collins police are collaborating with the Windsor Police Department to investigate possible connections among this burglary and the other three. Trending on NextShark: Thailand a step closer to becoming 1st Southeast Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) Police in Lancaster County are looking for a missing endangered woman and are asking for the publics help. Nancy McDowell 69, of Clay Township, was reportedly last seen on Nov. 15 in the area of the 500 block of N. Duke Street in Lancaster City around 12:30 p.m., according to a police report. According to police, she was last known to be with her husband driving an unknown vehicle and could also be going by the last name of McKee. It is possible she could be in the Lebanon/Lancaster area. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now WHTM Severe Weather Alerts Anyone with information on McDowells whereabouts is asked to call the Northern Lancaster County Regional Police Department at (717)-733-0965. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC27. MUNCIE, Ind. A Muncie man's legal woes increased when he allegedly told the city officer who had arrested him that he had smuggled a firearm into the police car and intended to shoot him. That claim resulted in a count of intimidation, a Level 6 felony carrying a maximum 30-month sentence, being filed in recent days against 30-year-old William Christopher Cottrell II. The threat perhaps prompted even more concern in Muncie than it might have in another community. On December 28, 1990, city police officer Gregg Winters was driving a local man to jail following his arrest for public intoxication when the handcuffed prisoner managed to produce a handgun and shoot the officer. Winters died of his bullet wounds 11 days later. His assailant would be convicted of murder, sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in June 2007. After Cottrell's threat made on the night of Nov. 8 the officer pulled his car over and was joined by other officers in removing the Muncie man from the vehicle and confirming he did not have a gun. Cottrell had been taken into custody that evening after his 2014 Hyundai Sonata crashed into a utility pole in the 1600 block of South Macedonia Avenue. Officers found an empty bottle of an alcoholic beverage and a handgun in the vehicle. Because of his criminal record which includes convictions for robbery, theft of a firearm, driving while intoxicated and escape Cottrell is prohibited from possessing guns. At the crash scene, he refused to take a portable breath test to measure his level of intoxication, telling an officer, "You're going to have to shoot me." He then allegedly struggled with officers trying to take him into custody. While being driven to IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital for a blood draw, Cotrell allegedly told the officer he had "never even checked me," also indicating he had managed to slip out of handcuffs. "Never seen this Taurus (handgun) pointed at your head," the Muncie man reportedly added. "You're a dummy. Don't move." The officer reported he found the threat to be "credible," stopped the car and took part in another search of Cottrell. Another officer then drove the Muncie man to the hospital, where he was reportedly "verbally and physically aggressive." Following the blood draw, Cottrell was delivered to the Delaware County jail. He was later charged in Delaware Circuit Court 4, along with the intimidation count, with unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, driving while intoxicated and resisting law enforcement. The most serious charge against him, the firearm count, is a Level 4 felony with a maximum 12-year sentence. The Muncie man later received a May 6 trial date. He continues to be held in the jail under a $20,000 bond. Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com. This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Police: Muncie arrestee claimed he had gun, threatened to shoot officer Update: The Clark County Coroners Office identified the victim as Yilmaz Ogur, 50, of Las Vegas. His cause of death was listed as a gunshot wound to the head, with the manner being homicide. LAS VEGAS (KLAS) Officials are searching for a vehicle that they say might have been involved in a possible road rage shooting that left a man dead. On Oc. 29 at approximately 4:06 p.m., Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officials received a report of a shooting in the area of Escondido Street and Cactus Avenue in south Las Vegas. First responders found a man inside a vehicle who had been shot. The unidentified man was taken to an area hospital, where he died days later. LVMPDs Homicide Section determined that the shooting victim had been driving north on Escondito Street in a blue KIA Sportage, a crossover SUV, following a white 4-door sedan, when gunshots were heard. Metro detectives are asking for the publics help in identifying the white sedan they say might have been involved in the shooting. Anyone with information is asked to contact the LVMPD Homicide Section at 702-828-3521, or via email at homicide@lvmpd.com. Additionally, those wishing to remain anonymous can contact Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555 or via the organizations website. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. A woman was arrested after police say she was seen punching, kicking, and beating her service dog with a glass bottle near Boston Common on Tuesday night. Jasmine Velasquez, 27, of Boston, was arraigned Wednesday in Boston Municipal Court on charges of animal cruelty and assault and battery on a law enforcement officer. Officers conducting a walk-and-talk near the Common around 8:40 p.m. overheard the noise of a crying dog and learned that a woman was beating the animal in the area of 131 Tremont Street, according to the Boston Police Department. As officers approached the suspect, they observed the suspect kick the dog, the department said in a statement. Officers were able to quickly separate the suspect from the dog and moved the dog to a safe location as there was broken glass and unknown liquid on the ground. Multiple witnesses alleged that the woman, later identified as Velasquez, struck the dog multiple times with her hands, feet, and the bottle. A prosecutor said in court that video of the alleged incident was caught on a nearby street camera. They [officers] were able to see Ms. Velasquez hit the dog with an open right hand one time, hit the dog with a glass bottle 11 times, and kick the dog three times, the prosecutor told the court. The dog was screaming when officers arrived. Boston Animal Control responded to the Common and took custody of the dog. The extent of the dogs injuries wasnt revealed in court. Boston Department of Recreation identified the dog as Rocky, a 5-year-old Australian cattle dog. While in a Boston police booking cell, Velasquez spit on an officer who was forced to restrain her for being uncooperative, according to the prosecutor. The prosecution requested Velasquez be held on $1,500 cash bail and that she stay away from witnesses connected to the case and have no animals in her custody. Velasquez, the mother of a 4-month-old who is in DCF custody, held her hands to her face and sobbed loudly in court as her attorney told the judge that she currently resides at the Pine Street Inn. However, the Pine Street Inn says Velasquez has not received services from Pine Street for almost two years. The $1,500 is beyond the scope of anything she could muster, Velasquezs attorney said. She is not working at this time because she is disabled. She told me that she fractured her tibia last year and shes still recovering. She still has balance and ambulation issues. Thats why she has the service dog to assist her with ambulation. Velasquez is due back in court in December for a pretrial hearing. An investigation remains ongoing. 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 Polish President Duda holds consultations with the leaders of the two main parties in the newly elected parliament in Warsaw WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish lawmakers started a debate on Wednesday to reinstate public financing for in-vitro fertilisation, marking a shift after eight years of nationalist rule which brought severe restrictions on women's reproductive rights. The Law and Justice government (PiS) lost its parliamentary majority in the Oct. 15 elections, paving the way for opposition parties from the centre-right to the left to form a ruling coalition. They are expected to take over executive power later this year, and have pledged to undo PiS reforms that have raised international alarm over media freedom and democratic norms as well as women's and minority rights. Ending budgetary funding for IVF, which the Catholic church says is sinful, was one of the first policy decisions by PiS after it won elections in 2015 on a promise to bring more conservative values into public life. "You took away the right to happiness, the right to have a child from the poorest Polish families," said Barbara Nowacka, one of the leaders of the liberal Civic Coalition (KO), the biggest grouping within mainstream opposition. Observers says women's rights were a key factor behind record election turnout last month and the rise in support for mainstream opposition parties. PiS had also mandated a prescription requirement for emergency contraception and, in 2021, implemented a near-total ban on abortion following a Constitutional Tribunal ruling that terminations due to foetal defects were unconstitutional. Critics accused PiS of orchestrating that decision, pointing to court reforms many said had politicised the judiciary, although PiS denies both. The Civic Platform and New Left have promised to introduce a right to abortion until 12 weeks, but this may prove difficult for now due to a more conservative approach of the centrist Third Way party and the fact that President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, would have to sign the bill into law. (Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; Editing by Christina Fincher) President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden board Air Force One at Nantucket Memorial Airport in Nantucket, Mass., on Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023, following a press conference where President Biden spoke about a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel. (Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times) Israels acceptance of the terms of a hostage deal with Hamas late Tuesday reflected the intense pressure brought by the Biden administration to reach an agreement that would free some of those held by the armed group and produce potential longer-term opportunities to de-escalate the conflict. The initial approval of the deal by the Israeli Cabinet came after a secret cell of top aides to President Joe Biden worked furiously over the past several weeks on a web of negotiations involving Qatar, Egypt and Israel, an effort hampered by communications outages in the Gaza Strip and a series of last-minute disputes that derailed the talks. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times White House officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the five weeks of sensitive negotiations that had led to a deal, said the agreement would include the release of three Americans: two women and a toddler. The officials said they would continue to push for the release of all U.S. hostages. The deal came at a time when Democrats are increasingly divided over Bidens embrace of Israel, particularly as the civilian toll in Gaza grows, and as polling shows the president receiving low marks on his handling of the crisis ahead of his reelection campaign. But the arrangement was also the latest example of the widening breach between the White House and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israels overwhelming response to the Hamas attacks, which has led to the deaths of about 12,000 people in Gaza. For weeks, Biden has publicly and privately tried to persuade the prime minister to pause the bombardment of Gaza to allow in humanitarian aid and to reduce civilian casualties. Netanyahu has consistently refused to consider a wide-scale halt to Israels military operations in Gaza unless it would lead to the release of the hostages. White House officials said that over the last several weeks, Biden had concluded that persuading Netanyahu to accept a dayslong suspension of the fighting rather than more limited pauses for several hours at a time would require linking the break to a deal to free hostages from captivity in the tunnels used by Hamas fighters. Biden made that case with increasing urgency to Netanyahu during 13 calls since the Hamas attacks and a face-to-face meeting in Israel, officials said, underscoring the presidents willingness to ratchet up the pressure on his counterpart. Bidens initial full-throated embrace of Israels right to defend itself in the hours after the Oct. 7 attacks has evolved into repeated calls for restraint by the Israeli forces in Gaza. Aides said the president was also hopeful that the hostage release could be an early step toward a broader peace in the region once the immediate crisis ends. In an opinion article published in The Washington Post on Sunday, Biden described how far his ambitions stretch beyond the four-day pause in fighting agreed to Tuesday. Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today, he wrote. It should be to end the war forever, break the cycle of unceasing violence, and build something stronger in Gaza and across the Middle East so that history does not keep repeating itself. Biden and his top aides have repeatedly said they do not tell Israel how to respond to the slaughter of 1,200 people inside their country, and Netanyahu made it clear Tuesday that he intended to resume military operations against Hamas as soon as the hostages were freed in accordance with the deal. The war will continue, Netanyahu said. But some senior American officials have signaled they would not be disappointed if the pause became a more permanent cease-fire. If the White House tries to use the hostage deal to press for a longer-term cease-fire and start moving toward the bigger questions about occupation and a two-state solution, that could put Biden on another collision course with Netanyahu when the fighting is scheduled to resume. A top administration official, who briefed reporters Tuesday in the hours before the deal was finalized, said the pause in fighting was a step toward an eventual push for peace. But the official cautioned that such a possibility was a long way off. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a deal that had not yet been finalized. In the short term, the president and his aides say they are focused on ensuring that Hamas lives up to the promises the militant group made during weeks of negotiations that often seemed destined to fail. The first sign of progress came in late October, when U.S. officials received word through intermediaries in Qatar and Egypt that Hamas could accept a deal to release women and children. In return, they wanted Israel to free Palestinian prisoners, pause the fighting and delay a ground invasion. With Israeli troops massing outside Gaza, officials in Israel and the United States debated whether to accept the deal. Israeli officials did not think Hamas was serious about the offer and refused to delay the ground offensive. Hamas refused to provide any proof of life about the hostages. Negotiations stalled. At the White House, Biden and his foreign policy team kept pressing. On Nov. 14, hope swelled again after Netanyahu called the president to say he could accept the latest offer from Hamas. But just hours after the call, Israeli military forces stormed Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which they said served as a Hamas command center. Suddenly, communications between Hamas and the officials in Qatar and Egypt went silent. When Hamas resurfaced hours later, they made it clear: The deal was off. For several days, the militant group demanded that Israeli troops withdraw from the hospital, which Israel refused. It took several days for the talks to resume, following a call from Biden to the emir of Qatar. Administration officials continued pressing Israel and, through the intermediaries, Hamas. After Bidens call, top aides, including the director of the CIA, met with the emir in Qatar to go over the latest draft a six-page text with detailed steps for implementation on both sides. Within a week, the diplomatic pressure paid off. On Tuesday evening, as the Israeli Cabinet took its final vote to approve the deal, Biden headed out of Washington for a five-day Thanksgiving vacation with his family on the island of Nantucket. The Israeli decision, announced by Netanyahus office, would allow for a pause of at least four days in the fighting in Gaza. If it holds, it would be the longest halt in hostilities since Hamas Oct. 7 attacks prompted Israel to begin its bombardment of Gaza. In a statement Tuesday night, Biden pledged to work with regional leaders to ensure this deal is carried through in its entirety. It is important that all aspects of this deal be fully implemented. But even with the deal in place, Biden faces challenges ahead. There are still Americans being held hostage in Gaza, and the tensions in the United States, and within his own party, show few signs of diminishing. Officials said they were keenly aware that the horror for the families of those still in captivity in Gaza will not end until their loved ones are home. For Biden, it could not happen soon enough. As president, I have no higher priority than ensuring the safety of Americans held hostage around the world, Biden said in his statement, adding, Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released. c.2023 The New York Times Company Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. recently met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping who said he wants the West Philippine Sea issue resolved by the militaries of the two claimant countries, Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose 'Babe' Manuel Romualdez said on Wednesday. The two leaders met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco last week. Marcos said he discussed with Xi his concerns over the ongoing tensions in the West Philippine Sea and to hopefully find ways to prevent conflict in the area. Speaking to CNN Philippines The Source, Romualdez said Marcos was clear on his intention to find a solution to lower the tensions. But I think in the end President Xi just simply said that we should just keep talking about it and from the read out I saw from our report is that President Xi said that lets just have our military talk about all these things, our militaries to resolve these things in the West Philippine Sea, he added. Following this meeting, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Tuesday that China carrying out construction activities on its own territory is a matter purely within the scope of Chinas sovereignty and other countries have no right to point fingers at it. This was her response when asked about Marcos saying Beijings military bases in the West Philippine sea are now closer to the Philippines coastline. Romualdez said Xis statement is not encouraging at all. The developments also show there is conflict and that there is no real clear sign that theyre going to be letting up any of these things that is happening, the envoy said, referring to China. It goes to show there is really a disconnect in everything, he added. Romualdez said Marcos will do what he can to continue finding ways to have a dialogue with China to resolve matters peacefully. More than 70% of Ukrainians have a negative view of Russian citizens, while just 3% view them positively, according to a poll conducted in October and published by the Ukrainian polling agency Rating on Nov. 22. Another 22% said that their attitude towards Russians was neutral, while 2% refused to answer. The respondents were made up of a representative sample of 2,000 Ukrainians from across the country, except Russian-occupied Donbas and Crimea. When asked how they view Russian citizens who actively oppose the war, 14% of respondents said their attitude towards them was still negative, 32% said they felt neutral, and 52% said they viewed them positively. The survey also asked Ukrainians who they believe is responsible for unleashing the full-scale invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin was named responsible by 20% of Ukrainians, and 14% said the Russian elites were responsible. Just 2% of Ukrainians believe that the sole responsibility lies with the Russian people. However, 59% answered that all three share equal responsibility for starting the invasion, rather than one group or figure. During the survey, respondents were asked if they had to leave their homes due to the full-scale invasion. The results showed that 15% of Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes. Additionally, 11% of the respondents had left their homes at some point since February 2022 but have returned since then. People in Donbas reported the highest levels of being forced to leave their homes since February 2022, at 67%. When polled on whether their home had been destroyed by the full-scale invasion, 13% of Ukrainians said that this was the case. Another 12% said that their home had been damaged. Only 38% of Donbas residents reported that their home had not been damaged or destroyed since February 2022. The survey also covered the topic of language use. The poll revealed that 58% of Ukrainians speak only Ukrainian at home, while 10% speak only Russian, and 31% said they speak a combination of both languages at home. The highest level of respondents reporting they spoke a mix of the two languages was found in the east of Ukraine and in Donbas, with 52% and 57% respectively. Read also: Poll: 44% of Ukrainians have war zone experience Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Russians' confidence in their nation's military has dropped by five percentage points since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to Gallup poll results published on Nov. 21. In a survey conducted during summer 2023, Russians' self-reported confidence in the military dropped from 80% to 75%. While three in four Russian adults still express confidence in the armed forces, the change represents a significant drop from the start of Russia's full-scale war. High casualty rates, disastrous mobilization campaigns, and the Wagner revolt in June 2023 likely contributed to the public's waning confidence. Moreover, a war that was expected to last weeks has dragged on for two years, with no end in sight. Read also: Putin cracks down on pro-war opposition as all-out war falters While the poll reveals decreased faith in the army, Russians' overall support for other institutions has grown. Russians' confidence in financial institutions, banks, and judiciary all rose to record levels in 2023. The Russian population in general remains more supportive of the military than any other national institution, but the military was the only organization to lose support among the Russian people in 2023. Gallup noted that among Russians who approve of the country's political leadership, confidence in the military has held steady. Those who disapprove of the government, however, have also begun to doubt the armed forces. The latest poll reveals that 90% of those who approve of the government remain confident in the military. In contrast, among those who disapprove of the government, only 40% have confidence in the military. According to Gallup, this gap is one of the largest ever recorded "since the World Poll began." Read also: 10 years later: EuroMaidan activists who went on to fight Russian invasion Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. On Wednesday, Pope Francis met separately with the families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians with relatives in Gaza at the Vatican, declaring that the war was terrorism. He spoke at St. Peters Square after the conversations, saying that he listened to how both sides are suffering in the region, and prayed that they would resolve problems and not go ahead with passions that are killing everyone in the end. The Associated Press reported that during his address, people were holding Palestinian flags and posters showing dead bodies with the word genocide. Francis didnt mention the Israeli-Hamas hostage deal in his speech but has remained neutral in the conflict by publicly calling for the war to end. The Oct. 7 Hamas attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel, and the countrys retaliation against Gaza has killed over 11,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials. Pope Francis met this morning with both families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas and families of Palestinians living in Gaza. Pray for peace, Francis said. pic.twitter.com/5Hu8FU5EtH The Recount (@therecount) November 22, 2023 Read it at Associated Press Read more at The Daily Beast. By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -A messy dispute broke out on Wednesday over whether Pope Francis used the word "genocide" to describe events in Gaza, with Palestinians who met with him insisting that he did and the Vatican saying he did not. The opposing versions emerged at an afternoon press conference with 10 Palestinians who met the pope on Wednesday morning at his Vatican residence. That meeting followed a separate one with Israeli relatives of hostages in Gaza. "When we shared the stories of the families that have been killed (in Gaza) he mentioned 'I see the genocide'," said Shireen Awwad Hilal, who teaches at the Bethlehem Bible College. "It was very clear, the word genocide did not come from us. It came from His Holiness, Pope Francis," she said. But a statement sent by Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, in response to question texted by a reporter, said the opposite. "I am not aware that he (the pope) used such a word. He used terms that he expressed during the general audience and words that in any case represent the terrible situation that is being lived out in Gaza," Bruni's statement said. Other participants at the Palestinian news conference concurred that they had heard the pope use the word genocide. "We were all there. We heard it and no one has a hearing problem," Hilal said when pressed by reporters. The participants said the pope was very informed about the situation in Gaza and the lack of water, medicine and basic necessities. "TERROR SHOULD NOT JUSTIFY TERROR" Israel has placed Gaza under siege and relentless bombardment since Hamas militants attacked southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 14,000 Gazans have been killed, about 40% of them children, according to medical officials in the Hamas-ruled territory, figures deemed reliable by the United Nations. The Palestinians at their news conference said the pope condemned Hamas' action as terror, with more than one quoting the pope during the meeting as saying "terror should not justify terror". Earlier on Wednesday, in unscripted words at his general audience, Francis said the conflict had gone beyond war. "This is what wars do. But here we have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism," he said. He asked for prayers so that both sides would "not go ahead with passions, which, in the end, kill everyone". Israel's Ambassador to the Vatican Raphael Schutz said he did not want to refer directly to what the pope had said but added: "There is a simple distinction, one side is murdering, raping, and does not care about those on their own side. The other side is engaged in a war of self-defence." Schutz was speaking at a news conference with Israeli families who had met the pope. Most said they were not aware of the pope's comments because they happened after the meeting. During the general audience, a group of Palestinians in the crowd held up pictures of bodies wrapped in white cloth and a placard saying "the Nakba continues". Nakba is the Arab word for catastrophe and refers to the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in the 1948 war that surrounded Israel's founding. The meetings and the pope's comments came hours after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days to allow in aid and release at least 50 hostages captured by militants in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. (Additional reporting by Guglielmo Mangiapane; Editing by Janet Lawrence, Alexandra Hudson) Pope Francis called for dialogue to end the conflict in the Mideast to avoid a 'mountain of dead on each side' (Divisione Produzione Fotografica) Pope Francis on Wednesday met separately with Israeli relatives of Hamas hostages and Palestinians with family in Gaza, while warning the ongoing conflict could result in "a mountain of dead". At the end of his weekly audience at the Vatican, the 86-year-old pontiff called for prayers for peace, saying of both groups: "They suffer so much and I heard how they both suffer." "Wars do this, but here we have gone beyond wars. This is not war, this is terrorism," he added, without specifying whether he was referring to the October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas or Israel's military operation in Gaza launched in response, or both. The Vatican said last week the pope hoped to show his "spiritual closeness" during the private meetings, which it said would be "exclusively humanitarian in nature". Each delegation told press conferences in Rome following the meetings that they believed Francis could use his moral influence to help them. Hamas gunmen carried out on October 7 a cross-border attack, the worst in Israel's history, that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government. Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups also took an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage, among them elderly people and young children. In retaliation, Israel launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which the Hamas government said has killed 14,100 people, mostly civilians and thousands of them children. "Let us pray that the difficulties resolve themselves in dialogue and negotiation and not with a mountain of dead on each side," Francis said in a video message released Wednesday. Rachel Goldberg, whose 23-year-old son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped by Hamas, told journalists the pope "has a lot of influence". "He's very respected in the Muslim world, in the Jewish world, really irrespective of religious background. So I think that when he speaks the world really listens." Palestinian Yousef Lalkhoury said the pope was capable of asking for a "just peace" for his people. "We have urged him to visit Gaza because we believe he can stop the war," Lalkhoury said. Short of freeing all the hostages, the Israeli delegation said it hoped Francis could push for the Red Cross to be allowed access to them. - 'Broken heart' - Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war. "I'm not counting hostages being freed in this deal until I see them walk over the border and see them embraced safely," said Goldberg, who was among 12 families of hostages represented in the meeting with the pope. Muhamed Halalo, an IT manager from Gaza who lives in Belgium, was one of 10 Muslim and Christian Palestinians who met with Francis. "I have a broken heart, my eyes full of tears," he said as he described how his entire extended family had been wiped out in a strike that killed 30 people. Israeli Adav Kipnis said his parents were murdered during the October 7 attack and seven of his family members were kidnapped. "We don't know if those captured are alive, if they are injured... Give us information if they are even alive and being taken care of," he said. The Palestinians present claimed the pope used the word "genocide" during their meeting to describe what was happening in Gaza. "I am not aware of him using that word," Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told AFP, adding that he had been present at the meeting. The pope "used the terms he used to express himself during the weekly audience and words that in any case represent the terrible situation in Gaza", Bruni said. The pope has never described it as genocide in public. "He spoke to us about what he already knew about Gaza, and he's the one who described whats happened as a genocide", Shireen Hilal from Bethlehem insisted. "He said that terror cannot or should not justify terror". ar-ide/ams/giv SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) Here is a look at the major races and bond items on the ballot in Weber Countys municipal elections, all of which were nonpartisan. Ogden Mayoral Race Preliminary election night results show Ben Nadolski leading in Ogdens mayoral runoff race. Ben Nadolski 54.8% Taylor Knuth 45.2% According to early figures posted by Weber County election officials on Tuesday night, Nadolski leads the race for the mayors office with nearly 55% of the vote, leading by more than 900 votes. Utah General Election results for the Nov. 21 election (Real-Time) Still, a significant number of ballots have yet to be counted, as county election officials expect some 15,000 ballots to be processed in the coming days. Nadolski, 46, ran on a platform focusing on economic prosperity, promising to accelerate business opportunities for Ogden residents while improving community safety and trust. Nadolski, a former Ogden city council member, currently works as the regional supervisor at the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. His rival in the race is Taylor Knuth, the deputy director of economic development for Salt Lake City, who ran on a platform focusing on housing attainability, public safety and accessibility to local government. If Knuth is to surpass Nadolskis lead, hell need to win 60% of the remaining vote, election officials say. Knuth told ABC4 that he believes every vote needs to be counted before anyone is declared the winner. Knuth and Nadolski were the only two candidates in Ogdens mayoral race. A primary in September narrowed the contest from a field of seven candidates. The city saw a crowded primary as former Mayor Mike Caldwell announced in May that he would not seek a fourth term. Weber County Justice Center Bond Also on the ballot in Weber County was a $98 million bond to remodel the county sheriffs office and jail. Preliminary results showed that nearly 58% of ballots processed so far were against the bond, with 42% being for it a difference of roughly 7,000 votes. According to officials, if the bond were to pass, it would add 200 beds to the jail, improve access to health care facilities, bring in support workers, and allow all administrators to work in one location. Ogden City Council Seats Along with the mayoral contest, races for two city council seats were also on the ballot for Ogden residents. In the contest for the Fourth District seat, Dave Graf leads Steven Van Wagoner with 52% in preliminary results, ahead by nearly 200 votes. Meanwhile, in the race for the at-large seat, Shaun Myers was ahead of J. Levi Andersen with 61% in preliminary results, up by more than 2,100 votes. Voter Turnout As of last week, early voter turnout was only around 20% in Weber County. On election day, however, turnout jumped to about 30%, with 38,000 ballots processed. Officials said Tuesday they were hopeful turnout would reach 45% once all the ballots are counted. That would be above average for a municipal election. Ricky Hatch, the county clerk/auditor, told ABC4 that voting might have started off slow this year due to the election being pushed back to Thanksgiving week. We usually have almost half of all ballots returned on Monday and Tuesday of election week, he said. So, its kind of on pace, it might be a teeny bit slower. Weber County election officials said they expect to get another 15,000 ballots processed overnight Tuesday. The results will be posted in the coming days. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah. ATLANTA - President Biden has ordered that all flags at U.S. government buildings and military bases to be flown at half-staff starting Nov. 25 in honor of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19. The flags will be flown at half-staff from Saturday until sunset on the day of Carter's interment. According to the Carter Center, the former first lady died "peacefully with family by her side" at her rural home in Plains. She was 96 years old at the time of her death. READ THE PROCLAMATION Throughout her life as First Lady of Georgia and First Lady of the United States, Rosalynn Carter exemplified hope, warmth, and a steadfast commitment to doing all she could to address many of our society's greatest needs. She was a champion for equal rights and opportunities for women and girls; an advocate for mental health and wellness for all; and a supporter of the often unseen and uncompensated caregivers of our children, aging loved ones, and people with disabilities. Above all, the deep love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership, and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism. As a mark of respect for the memory of Rosalynn Carter, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions from November 25, 2023, until sunset, on the day of interment. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-first day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-eighth. JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR. RELATED STORIES Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also ordered that the flag of the United States and the flag of the State of Georgia be flown at half-staff on all state buildings and grounds from Nov. 27 through sunset Nov. 29, the day of Carter's interment. Additionally, Kemp has declared a State of Emergency related to the death of Mrs. Carter. According to the executive order, the purpose of the State of Emergency is to allow state resources to be used to meet the personnel and logistical challenged presented in executing Mrs. Carter's final farewell and internment. The executive order dictates that the Georgia Department of Defense provide up to 50 Georgia National Guard troops to assist as needed. This State of Emergency order will coexist with the State of Emergency order that was issued in response to current inflation. Click to open this PDF in a new window. Flags will be flying at half-staff across the U.S. for Rosalynn Carter. President Biden ordered the U.S. flag to be flown at half-staff starting Saturday, Nov. 25, as a mark of respect for the memory of the former first lady, wife of former President Jimmy Carter. Rosalynn Carter died Nov. 19, 2023, at her home in Plains, Georgia, at the age of 96. The former first lady and former President Jimmy Carter were married for 77 years. She and the former president had four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. Where should flags be flown at half-staff for Rosalynn Carter? The flag of the United States should be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions starting Saturday, Nov. 25. Biden also directed that the flag be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all U.S. embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations. How long will the flag be flown at half-staff for Rosalynn Carter, wife of former President Jimmy Carter? The flag should be flown at half-staff until sunset on the day of interment. The former first lady's funeral services are scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023, in Plains, followed by private interment at the Carter family residence. When is Rosalynn Carter's funeral? Here's a schedule of events honoring the former first lady What did President Biden say about Rosalynn Carter? In his proclamation, Biden said, "Rosalynn Carter exemplified hope, warmth, and a steadfast commitment to doing all she could to address many of our societys greatest needs. "She was a champion for equal rights and opportunities for women and girls; an advocate for mental health and wellness for all; and a supporter of the often unseen and uncompensated caregivers of our children, aging loved ones, and people with disabilities. "Above all, the deep love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership, and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism." Is it half-mast or half-staff? On ships and at naval stations ashore, flags are flown at half-mast. On shore, flags are flown at half-staff. This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: RIP, Rosalynn: US flags to be at half mast for Jimmy Carter's wife MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) A woman accused of killing her grandson in Prichard pleaded not guilty in court Wednesday. Mary Jordan, 76, was arrested on Nov. 15 after her grandson, 38-year-old Dana Jordan, was shot and killed at a home on Circle Drive. Jordan previously confessed to the homicide, according to court documents. Alex Crow marries teenager he met at McGill-Toolen High School Those documents also said that Jordan was upset about something Dana did the night before he was killed. She then allegedly shot him multiple times. Neighbors at the crime scene only had positive things to say about Jordan. Gregory Carroll Sr. said he has lived next door to Jordan for 15 years. Sometimes I would come out on the porch, and she would say good morning to me, and I say good morning back to her, he said. Thats the kind of person she is. If I needed something, if I needed a favor, she was always willing to help and thats what I love and admire about her. Ten of Jordans family members were in the courtroom Wednesday supporting her. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 2. Previous coverage on Dana Jordans death ALSO ON WKRG.com: Thanksgiving cooking advice with Gulf Shores Fire Department For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRG News 5. Princess Anne visited St Leonards-based Focus SB which won the King's Award for Enterprise for International Trade The Princess Royal visited a company in East Sussex which was awarded an award by the King earlier this year. Princess Anne went to St Leonards-based Focus SB, which won the King's Award for Enterprise for International Trade in April. The princess visited the factory on Wednesday and was given a private tour by staff. Focus SB, which started trading in 1979, is a British manufacturer of electrical accessories. Princess Anne was given a private tour of the factory Focus SB's managing director Gary Stevens met King Charles in June to celebrate winning the award. Mr Stevens said: Its a huge honour for an SME based in Hastings to have the recognition of a Kings Award, one of the most prestigious awards a company can be bestowed." He added: "Meeting the King at Buckingham Palace and then to have a visit from Anne, The Princess Royal is a huge boost and reward for every single employee at Focus SB." Follow BBC South East on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) While vocal against Chinas activities in the West Philippine Sea (WPS), Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri on Wednesday promised to tone down his statements during the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF) in the country with high-level Chinese officials in attendance. Its an international forum so kailangan dito walang bastusan. Kailangan dito very diplomatic and i-moderate natin yung ating hinaing, Zubiri told reporters. Were trying to make sure na hindi naman siya combative kasi ayaw naman natin na aalis na yung mga miyembro ng APPF sa Pilipinas with a sour taste in their mouth, he added. [Translation: Its an international forum so no rude remarks. We need to be very diplomatic and moderate our complaints. Were trying to make sure its not combative because we dont want APPF members to leave with a sour taste in their mouth.] The Senate passed a resolution strongly condemning Chinas intrusions, including the harassment of Filipino fishermen, in the WPS. Crossing party lines, lawmakers from the majority and minority have been united in calling out Chinas "bullying." As Chinese parliamentarians confirmed their attendance to the APPF, Zubiri said he does not want chaos. Were trying to promote peace and stability Ayaw naman natin na agad agad on battle mode na kaagad yung Pilipinas (We dont want the Philippines to be on battle mode) he added. The Senate leader said he will not compromise the country's position in the long-standing maritime dispute and will continue to push for peace, security, and stability in the region, freedom of navigation, and respect for each other. The WPS issue may be discussed during breakout sessions of the political security and regional cooperation committees, Zubiri said. He also said lawmakers, together with the Department of Foreign Affairs, have prepared a draft resolution, which they hope will be adopted by all 19 participating countries by the end of the forum. What we want is to be able to come up with a resolution that will generally be accepted by all, he added. The 31st APPF will be held at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City on Nov. 23 to 25 with the theme Building Resilient Partnerships: Advancing Peace, Prosperity, and Sustainability in the Asia Pacific. Lawmakers from 18 other member states have confirmed their attendance. They are from Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mexico, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russian Federation, Thailand, and Vietnam. A total of 273 delegates are expected in the forum. Private childrens care providers have been accused of profiteering, charging desperate councils with more than a million pounds a year in one case. Buckinghamshire council said it was on track to spend 1.7m on one childs around-the-clock care and accommodation this year. Council leader Martin Tett said care services make up 70pc of the authoritys expenditure, and that he anticipates 50m of overspend by Christmas. It comes as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is under pressure to provide emergency funding for childrens services in the Autumn Statement. Mr Tett said: Its crippling my budget. We had one childs case where the annualised cost was going to be 3.2m. Fortunately, we eventually found a lower cost placement. The private providers which source us these services are very expensive, and they know councils are desperate. When people complain about a pothole not being fixed and ask what they get for paying their council tax this is it. The Local Government Association (LGA) has also blamed private equity-backed providers, who they say have jacked up their prices in the face of rising demand for childrens care services after the pandemic. Last year, the biggest independent childrens care providers made a collective 300m profit according to a report commissioned by the LGA. It also found that councils spend on privately run childrens homes has more than doubled over the past six years. The 1.7m Mr Tetts council will spend on one child this year relates to a 15-year-old boy with mental health difficulties and a long history of serious self-harm. He needs round-the-clock, supervised care to keep him safe. Currently, his medical diagnosis says he does not meet the threshold to be detained under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act if it did, this would trigger automatic health funding for his treatment. He has received some hospital care, but was discharged and so the council is now his legal guardian. His care costs 40,000 a week, most of which goes on three specialist staff per shift per day. The council said it explored cheaper care options, but that it did not provide an adequate level of safety. The cost of the childs care to date for this financial year is around 800,000. If costs stay at 40,000 per week, they will reach 1.75m. Buckinghamshire council would not reveal the name of the provider, and does not break this down in its accounts. In its most recent filing, the council says it spent 112.8m on childrens services in 2021. It also paid its corporate director of childrens services 177,300, with pension contributions of 45,488. A spokesman for The Childrens Homes Association, which represents private, social and charitable childrens care providers, said around 50pc of its members are micro-businesses struggling to make single-digit margins. Meanwhile, private equity-backed providers they admitted are able to make significantly higher margins. Care Tech, which owns 400 childrens homes in the UK, was taken private last year giving it a valuation of 1.2bn. Another firm, Outcomes First Group, is backed by Stirling Square Capital Partners, while Keys Group is owned by G-Square Capital. The Telegraph approached all three of these firms for comment. Care Tech declined, while the other two firms did not respond. There are only a couple of big providers, so they can just name their price Roger Gough, the leader of Kent county council, said he has seen mostly a cost, not demand, increase in the private childcare sector. Most pressure is to do with increased unit costs. Placement costs have rocketed, with cost increases in the private-equity space playing a very significant part. Mr Goughs council is looking at an overspend of 43.7m, but is currently taking actions to address it. He added: Roads, visible services, maintenance of estates these will suffer significantly. Support from the Government has tended to decline because it also has huge cost pressures. Last years winter was tough, roads have gotten worse. Were hoping HS2 reallocation will fund this, otherwise residents daily lives will come under strain because of it. Others argue demand for childrens services has risen in tandem with placement costs. Shaun Davies, the chairman of LGA, said every council he has spoken to has seen a huge increase in requests for special educational needs and support. Mr Davies, who is also the leader of Telford & Wrekin council, said: Private care placements are costing hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. There are only a couple of big providers, so they can just name their price. Councils are also spending money on legal fees where parents challenge councils childcare provisions, Mr Davies said. He added: Providers make their priciest services seem all shiny and nice, knowing full-well they wont have to pay for it. Recommended Free childcare: Who is eligible for it and when does it start? Read more 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. Republican Celeste Maloy beat state Sen. Kathleen Riebe, a self-described moderate, to win Utah's special election Tuesday night, filling the last remaining open seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Associated Press called the race at 8:36 p.m. local time. The election, which was held in Utah's 2nd Congressional District, was triggered by the resignation of former Republican Rep. Chris Stewart, who left Congress in September due to his wife's unspecified illness. Maloy, who served as Stewart's chief legal counsel in Congress, won a three-way primary election that month. BIDEN USES TRUMP'S OWN WORDS AGAINST HIM IN BID TO RECAPTURE THIS MAJOR VOTING BLOCK FOR DEMS IN 2024 From left to right: Utah congressional candidates Celeste Maloy, a Republican, and Kathleen Riebe, a Democrat. As a candidate, Maloy touted her roots growing up in rural southern Utah, of which the district covers a vast portion, and has leaned into her support of former President Donald Trump, arguing the numerous ongoing prosecutions against him are politically motivated. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP "Its exciting that were going to have somebody come out of this primary that represents rural and southern Utah. I think its time for that, and everybodys ready for it," Maloy said following her primary win. However, Riebe has argued the race is a pickup opportunity for Democrats, and has leaned on her experience as a school teacher while making the case that people in the district "are ready for a change." TRUMP TO REMAIN ON COLORADO BALLOT AFTER JUDGE REJECTS 14TH AMENDMENT CHALLENGE TO ELIGIBILITY In an interview with Deseret News in August, Riebe expressed concern over the nation's rising debt, and vowed to join the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition if elected. "Coming to a very rational decision and having very moderate ideas, I think that is what serves us best," she told the outlet. Maloy is currently the heavy favorite to win the special election given Stewart's double-digit margin of victory in the six elections he was the Republican nominee for the district, going back to 2012. The U.S. Capitol is seen lit by the morning sun. A GOP win gives Republicans some extra cushion for close votes. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub . Original article source: Pro-Trump candidate beats moderate Dem in Utah special election to fill last seat in US House Productivity growth is stumbling despite efforts by ministers to reform the public sector and improve services while keeping a tight grip on the nations finances. Output per hour is falling this year and will grow more slowly than previously hoped, the Office for Budget Responsibility said as it downgraded its forecasts. The dire forecast came as Jeremy Hunt said higher productivity is vital to improving public services. Alongside extra funding and support, we need to see reform. We need a more productive state, not a bigger one, the Chancellor said. That is why I want the public sector to increase productivity growth by at least half a per cent a year, the level at which the size of our state starts to reduce as a proportion of GDP. I have already announced plans to cap and reduce the size of the civil service to pre-pandemic levels. Productivity is not only critical for ensuring public services improve, but it also enables rising living standards as wages can rise faster than prices when workers create more output. Mr Hunt said a government task force, called the Public Sector Productivity Programme, is working with the emergency services to understand where bureaucracy is holding them back. He added: Through this vital work we will ensure that over time the growth in public spending is lower than the growth in the economy whilst always protecting the services the public value. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that public service productivity in the second quarter of this year was down 1.1pc compared with the same period of 2022. On Wednesday, the OBR slashed its forecasts for productivity growth across the economy as a whole. Output per hour worked is set to fall by 0.1pc this year, according to the economic watchdog, rather than growing 0.1pc as it predicted in March. It will grow by 0.8pc next year and again in 2025, in contrast with the 1pc and 1.3pc previously anticipated for each year respectively. Niamh ORegan at the Social Market Foundation said modernising public sector technology could help boost productivity. The UKs public sector productivity has been poor for over two decades, growing just 4pc between 1997 and 2018, and so planning to grow this by 0.5pc a year, while welcome, is very ambitious, she said. The Government plans to improve public sector productivity, largely through adopting new technology, to cut bureaucracy and resolve administrative tasks faster for both the police and the NHS. Technology can help, but doing it well will require up-front investment in time and resources. Trying to do it on the cheap is bound to fail. 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. London - The U.K.s Space Command is in line to boost to its space domain awareness capabilities following a deal announced by the Ministry of Defence Nov 22 for a small London-based company to set up and operate a ground-based telescope in Cyprus. Known as Project Nyx Alpha, the capability being provided by British space technology company SpaceFlux will enable Space Command and the U.K. Space Agency to accurately monitor the fast growing number of satellites and debris in orbit. The British plan to have the system in play by spring 2024, reestablishing a former capability that had lapsed. Spaceflux will build, maintain, and routinely operate the system tasked by UK Space Command and UK Space Agency analysts from the soon to launch U.K. Space Operations Centre at the Royal Air Force base at High Wycombe, southern England, said the MoD in a statement The centre is planned to coordinate civilian and military space domain awareness capabilities to enable operations and protect U.K. interests like the Skynet satellite communications network from space-related threats and hazards. Announcing the deal at the U.K. Space conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Air Vice-Marshal Paul Godfrey, the head of the UK Space Command said the new capability was a key part in helping Britain defend its interests in space. Space domain awareness underpins our ability to protect and defend U.K. and allied interests in space. The U.K has critical assets in geostationary orbit, and Project Nyx Alpha will help us to monitor them more closely, he said. To support military and civil missions in space Godfrey also announced the British have procured space domain awareness data from Spaceflux, as well as Raytheon Systems. On its website Spaceflux says it offers access to the largest optical taskable sensors currently available in the market, with telescopes up to 70-cm in diameter, allowing the detection of the faintest objects from LEO to GEO and Cislunar. The website says the company is rapidly expanding its network to 10 locations this year and a total of 25 locations by the end of 2024. Cyprus was chosen as the location for the British telescope due to the fact it provides a better view of the geostationary orbit than sites on the UK mainland said the MoD statement. The U.K. already have a major military base on the eastern Mediterranean island. Property dispute in Colorado leaves 3 dead, 1 critically wounded and suspect on the run A suspect accused of fatally shooting three people and wounding a fourth in Colorado on Monday night has been arrested in New Mexico, the Custer County Sheriffs Office said Tuesday. The shootings in the rural Colorado community of Westcliffe prompted a manhunt for Hanme K. Clark. U.S. marshals and New Mexico State Police arrested Clark in Albuquerque on Tuesday, the sheriff's office said. Sheriff Rich Smith told reporters he was informed at 2:48 p.m. The best resolution for us is that nobody else got hurt, no cops got hurt, and the suspect also did not get hurt, Smith said. The sheriffs office responded to a report of gunshots near Westcliffe, about 80 miles south of Colorado Springs, just before 1 p.m. Monday. Authorities have said the shooting was a suspected property dispute," and the victims have property bordering that of the suspect. The victims were identified Tuesday as Rob Geers, 63; his wife, Beth Wade Geers, 73; and James Daulton, 58. Daulton's wife, Patty Daulton, was wounded but survived and was being treated at a trauma center, Smith said. suspect murder (Custer County Sheriffs Office via AP) The location of the shooting is a "remote area in the county," Smith said. A SWAT team arrived about 20 minutes after the sheriff's office responded to the reports of gunfire, he said. Deputies used thermal imaging, night vision equipment and drones during the search. Residents were told to stay inside while authorities canvassed for the suspect. The shelter-in-place order was lifted at 8:13 p.m. The sheriff's office said the shooting took place at 173 Rocky Ridge Road, in woods on a property line. The suspect and neighbors in the area had complained about each other in the past, Smith said. "We've been to this suspect's house several times," he told reporters, noting that deputies deal with property line disputes every day. "The county actually started in 1876, right after the Civil War, and the lines aren't as formal as they would be in the big city, and so there's a lot of this that has to be straightened out in courts to figure out where the property lines are," he said. The focus was on arresting the suspect, but a lengthy investigation will now follow, Smith said Tuesday. A woman was in the vehicle with the suspect when he was arrested, Smith said. "Were going to ascertain what her involvement is in this situation," he said. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Canton girl gives boyfriend 5 hours to kill mom, then does it herself: authorities [Watch previous FOX 8 News coverage in the player above.] (WJW) Ohio prosecutors allege a 17-year-old Canton girl killed her 33-year-old boyfriends mother, just hours after she had given the Toledo man an ultimatum to do something about her for interfering in their relationship. The body of 53-year-old Nicole Jones wrapped in a tarp and hidden in a dumpster that was taken across state lines the next day was never recovered. The couple then fled the state, launching a search for the missing juvenile that led authorities to Mexico. Macedonia man sentenced for raping children at home daycare Kaitlyn Coones, 17, of Canton, later admitted to killing Nicole Jones by bludgeoning her in the head with a rock while her back was turned, then strangling her to death, Lucas County Assistant Prosecutor Andrew Lastra told FOX 8 News. Prosecutors are now seeking to have the teen tried as an adult on charges including aggravated murder and abuse of a corpse, but an adult court case has not yet been certified, he said. Meanwhile, her boyfriend, 33-year-old Jonathon Jones, whom authorities say has also admitted to his role in his mothers death and the cover-up, is now facing similar charges in Lucas County. It started with a welfare check In April, Coones was reported missing from her Canton foster home. She went to Toledo to be with Jonathon, who lived with his mother at her Timbers Edge Boulevard home in Sylvania Township, according to authorities. One of the girls caretakers told police Coones had sent her a text message claiming she had killed two people, one of them being her boyfriends mother, according to a police report by Sylvania Township police Detective Jake Albright. Canton police asked Sylvania Township police to investigate the Jones home, but those officers didnt find anyone at the home, nor were they looking for items of evidence, Lastra said. They were basically checking on the house. Deputy U.S. Marshals were already at the home with an arrest warrant for Jonathon, according to the township police report. Coones at the time was listed as a missing and endangered juvenile. Jonathon had skipped his sentencing in Wood County on charges of endangering children and attempt to commit pandering obscenity, to which he had pleaded guilty, township police said in May. The U.S. Marshals Service Missing Child Unit and Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force were involved in the search. Hopkins Airport official punished over security rule: I-Team They were found in Mexico At the time, Jonathon and Coones were in Arizona, intending to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Authorities stopped them there, but they were released, according to the report. The second person Coones claimed to have killed was a man whom she shot at in Arizona an unaware bystander waiting at a bus stop, Lastra said. But the man was not actually struck by the gunfire. That incident was referred to Arizona authorities, he said. The couple was found by Mexican authorities on May 8 in Ahumada, a municipality in northern Mexico. They were driving Nicoles 2021 Buick Encore and had the womans Social Security card, ID, credit cards and her health insurance card, according to the police report. Authorities also recovered a backpack with burgundy stains, it reads. Jonathon was arrested, and Coones was turned over to American authorities at the El Paso border station, where she was interviewed by the FBI. She gave him an ultimatum Lastra said Coones felt that Nicole was interfering with their relationship. The day Coones reportedly ran away to Jonathons Toledo home, she snuck in through a window, and Nicole didnt know she was there, according to the police report. Coones told FBI agents she gave Jonathon an ultimatum, according to the police report. He had five hours to decide what they were going to do about his mother, Albiright wrote. After that five hours had passed, Coones reportedly said she waited another hour. When he didnt act, she went outside, found a large-sized rock and when Nicole was distracted in the refrigerator in the kitchen Kaitlynn by her own admission bludgeoned Jonathons mom and strangled her, Lastra said. Police ID gunman in Mondays Beavercreek Walmart shooting, update on victims conditions A tarp and plastic bags Coones told agents she and Jonathon then went shopping for cleaning supplies to clean the kitchen floor and tarps and large garbage bags to wrap Nicoles body, according to the police report. After her admission, authorities obtained a search warrant for the Timbers Edge Boulevard home and Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents processed the home, finding probable blood on the kitchen floor near and beneath the refrigerator where Nicole was allegedly bludgeoned. Coones said they hid Nicoles body in a dumpster at an apartment complex along Holland Sylvania Road near his home, according to Lastra. At the time, Jonathon was wearing a GPS monitor as a bond condition in his prior child endangering case. Authorities tracked that monitor right to the apartment, which corroborated what Coones told federal agents in her confession, Lastra said. A refuse company removed that dumpster from the premises the next day, taking it across the state line into Michigan for processing, Lastra said. Nicoles body was never recovered, despite best efforts, he said. Murder cases moving forward Lucas County prosecutors are now awaiting a judges order allowing Kaitlyn Coones adult court case to proceed. The case would then be presented to a Lucas County grand jury for possible indictment, Lastra said. Jonathon Jones is due back in court next month. He faces counts of aggravated murder, murder in the commission of felonious assault, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. Court records indicate he intends to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Fox 8 Cleveland WJW. The Georgia Attorney Generals Office is moving to use a slain activists journal against dozens of other individuals charged in connection to the movement to Stop Cop City. Prosecutors believe that the journal of Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, a nonbinary activist who was shot nearly 60 times by Georgia State Troopers in January, shows the beliefs of 61 people named in a massive August indictment. Each of the 61 individuals have been indicted on RICO charges, some also face domestic terrorism charges, and others face money laundering charges. Deputy Attorney General John Fowler wrote in the motion filed on Nov. 15 that Teran was conspiring with the 61 defendants through what prosecutors described as the Defend the Atlanta Forest criminal enterprise, according to documents obtained by HuffPost. Defend the Atlanta Forest is a decentralized movement and slogan connected to the multi-pronged effort to stop the development of a $90 million police training facility dubbed by critics as Cop City. The Stop Cop City movement believes the Atlanta Police Training Facility will harm the environment, and the safety of the many Black and Brown residents nearby. Terans death brought expanded scrutiny to the police training facility. According to The Guardian, Teran, who went by they/them pronouns and was known as Tortuguita, is believed to be the first environmental activist to be killed by police during a protest. An autopsy found that Teran was likely sitting with their hands up and legs crossed when they were struck by an onslaught of gunfire during a confrontation with police at a protest. Police claim that Teran shot at an officer first. There has not been video evidence that shows Terans killing, and an independent autopsy did not find gunpowder on Terans hands. Terans journal expressed that he believed that revolution only happens through violence. They also claimed that police only react to crime, not prevent it, and that police often engage in harmful activities themselves like domestic violence. All cops are bastards because they enforce unjust laws by choice. Individual LEOs (law enforcement officers) may be upstanding and fair people at heart, but their compliance with the judicial system makes them bastards, Teran wrote in an undated entry. [All cops are bastards] because they are not meant to protect people, they protect property and property-owning entities. They also wrote about the idea that killing law enforcement officers is okay, which prosecutors claimed could be linked to the motivations of the other defendants in the August indictment. These statements are a glimpse into the mind of a Forest Defender and the attitudes kept by Teran and his [their] co-conspirators, reads the motion. He writes about the forest and his desire to stop the construction of the training center as well as his [their] contempt and hatred for police. However, Teran also talked about working towards a better world where violence isnt common or necessary. They wrote about being kind to others and focusing on community aid and altruism. Lyra Foster, an attorney for multiple people in the indictment, told HuffPost that the prosecutors attempt to use Terans journal against the people in the indictment is proof that they are losing in the court of public opinion. Tortuguita obviously isnt here to be on trial or to be charged with anything, Foster told HuffPost. Theyre using a dead young persons journal in order to try and inculpate young activists for two of the most serious crimes [domestic terrorism and RICO] we have on the books for acts of civil disobedience, which the RICO legislative history explicitly excludes. A young persons meandering thoughts put to writing will never be evidence that proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and is a desperate media stunt, because they are losing in the court of public opinion, she added. Attorney General Chris Carr (R) said the people named in the indictment are militant anarchists who co-conspired against a police training center set to be built in the Atlanta forest. The movement has been going on since 2021, but the indictments accusations date back to 2020 when there was an increase in racial justice protests, and tensions with police and protestors. The indictment has been dubbed anti-democratic and a tool of suppression by opponents. The attorney generals office did not provide HuffPost with a comment. Related... PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) Protesters in support of Portland teachers congregated outside city hall Wednesday morning. Hundreds of protestors, young and old, were gathered, the day after numerous Portland Public Schools board members had their houses vandalized, with spray-painted messages left on cars and driveways. Wednesday marks the start of the strikes 4th week, with tensions still high and the governor even tweeting get this done tonight. Protesters massed outside Portland City Hall in support of teachers on Nov. 22, 2023 (KOIN) Negotiations havent progressed any closer to a deal, with PPS telling KOIN 6 on Tuesday night that there were no talks planned, although both sides were hard at work. A big question moving forward is how students will make up 11 missed days. The district wants to make the first week of Christmas Break, which is scheduled to start Dec. 18, a school week instead, and extend the school year into June. However, teachers would have to agree to those changes. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com. The CEO of the Legal Aid Society, the countrys largest and oldest legal aid service provider, did not mince words: The organizations funding was under threat, she claimed, by the fact that the union representing staff attorneys was considering a pro-Palestinian resolution. The Legal Aid Societys civil practice is supported by millions of dollars in donations from law firms, Twyla Carter, the CEO, said in a staff call last week, and four firms were reevaluating their words, not mine their commitment. The firms cause for concern was a pending resolution before the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, the United Auto Workers Local 2325 that represents about 2,700 legal and social service workers in the greater New York City area. Among other things, the resolution calls for an immediate cease-fire in Israel and an end to Israeli apartheid and the occupation and blockade of Palestinian land, sea, and air by Israeli military forces, and it announces that the ALAA stands for human rights and against apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. (An agreement was announced late Tuesday that Hamas would release some hostages in exchange for a temporary cease-fire.) Ever since the proposed resolutions contents leaked online a few days ago, the union has been under fire for even considering voting on it. As the death toll in the Gaza Strip passes 13,000, according to Palestinian authorities, the struggle over the union resolution is indicative of a broader conflict in the United States over tolerance for dissent against the Israeli government, as well as the line between criticisms of Zionism and accusations of antisemitism, particularly within institutions dependent on government funding and private donations. On the staff call, Carter fretted over the law firms reevaluating their financial support and over the possibility that citywide budget cuts aimed at nonprofits would affect the Legal Aid Society. If we lose any funding, were going to have really hard conversations here in the future, Carter said. HuffPost obtained a partial recording of the call, which was previously reported by journalist Talia Jane and The Intercept. In it, Carter referred to the union resolution as selfish and privileged and vented at one point: Nobody gives a shit about the nine wars that are happening in Africa. Although Carter said she was not pressuring union members one way or the other on their resolution votes, she defended the Legal Aid Societys decision to release a preemptive statement accusing the resolution of containing coded anti-semitic language and thinly veiled calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. (Asked for comment on the content of the call, a spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society referred HuffPost to the organizations previous statement and declined to comment further.) The ALAA resolution is one-sided, Carter said on the call, which is why our response was one-sided. Shes not alone in feeling that way: On Thursday, four union members from the Nassau County Legal Aid Society filed suit, arguing in a complaint that the vote should be prevented altogether because even being associated with the rank antisemitism of the resolution would forever harm the attorneys ability to fairly represent Jewish clients. The next day, Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Felice J. Muraca issued a temporary restraining order stopping the vote forcing the union to pause the voting process with about 20 minutes left for ballots to be cast. The unions lawyers made their case for reopening the vote at a hearing on Tuesday, but Muraca continued the order and said he intended to make a decision in the next month. Although its not clear how union members may have voted in favor of the resolution, there could potentially be substantial support for it. Last year, the ALAA urged UAW International to divest from Israeli bonds via a resolution that was approved in a 555-182 vote. And the ALAA Joint Council, a decision-making body made of union officers and delegates from each ALAA chapter, voted 108-13 last week to hold a membership-wide vote on the measure, according to a legal filing from the union. Michael Letwin, a retiree member of the union who hadbeen its president for 13 years, until 2002, worked for decades as a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society and identifies as an anti-Zionist Jew. Hes part of a coalition within the union, ALAA Labor for Palestine, that supports the resolution, which Letwin described as a response to a call for solidarity from Palestinian trade unionists. The idea that we would, or should, sell our conscience because of threats to funding is really abhorrent, he told HuffPost. Theres a genocide going on, and were not going to just ignore that, anymore than we would ignore what was happening in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. We will not be silent, and we will not be silenced. We will not be silent, and we will not be silenced.Michael Letwin, former president, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys Some union members who spoke to HuffPost said executives focus on funding and budgetary concerns was a way of weakening support for the resolution before the final vote. I do think there is an attempt to really scare people, said one staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation, referring to Carters remarks to the staff. Were already fighting for living wages here, so its an issue people are extremely passionate about, and obviously our salaries bring people out to be vocal in the union who wouldnt necessarily be vocal about political issues, the attorney said. Its kind of a way of ensuring that everyones listening, and if anyone was on the fence, I think this chills a lot of people, and it directly links our vote on this resolution to the funding that Legal Aid is going to get and the salaries were going to have. Within the ALAA, some members are fuming at the lawsuit, characterizing it as an effort to suppress support of the resolution, particularly among Jewish attorneys. The complaint refers to the resolution as antisemitic numerous times but does not explain its reasoning, aside from referencing potential jurists and fellow attorneys who are Jewish and who may take great offense to the said Resolution. It also compares the resolution to others that have created great controversy and division across the United States and the entire world, and have fomented hate and derision towards the nation of Israel, and most significantly as it relates to the relief requested herein, people of Jewish descent as a general matter (often referred to pejoratively as Zionists in the public sphere), including clients of the plaintiffs. An attorney for the plaintiffs, David Smith, did not return HuffPosts request for comment. In court Tuesday, he referred to the resolution as a hate screed, Jane reported. Numerous union members objected to what they argued was the suits failure to distinguish between criticisms of Israel and Zionism and hatred of Jewish people. Theres a strong contingent of Jewish people involved in the planning and organizing around this resolution and whats happened in the aftermath, and were all extremely outraged by both management and by the specific members who brought this suit who are conflating antisemitism and anti-Zionism specifically to silence us and our peers, said Dany Greene, an appellate attorney and ALAA member who is Jewish. The fight over ALAAs resolution echoes a similar scuffle within a chapter of the same union last month. Unionized attorneys at Bronx Defenders, one of more than 20 chapters represented by ALAA, independently released their own pro-Palestinian statement on Oct. 20, which the chapter said had the support of an overwhelming majority of members. Let this public statement reflect: we do not consent to Israels genocidal rhetoric and actions against the Palestinian people and we do not consent to U.S. political support for this genocide, the statement read. We urge all people of good conscience who claim to be committed to the abolition of the prison industrial complex, to migrant rights, to housing justice for all, to ending the family-regulation system, to join us in publicly condemning the atrocities of Israel and defending the Palestinian people from ethnic cleansing and genocide. The statement came out despite managements apparent best efforts to stop it. Before the union members voted, Bronx Defenders interim general counsel wrote to them and advised that the name The Bronx Defenders Union contained the trademarked name of the organization itself and made it clear that use of BxDs name in the proposed statement about Israel and Palestine is unauthorized and BxD will enforce its trademark rights. One employee at the firm, Yosi Badie, criticized management for using the same intimidation tactic as Starbucks. We put the statement out anyway because we believe its our duty to speak out for Palestinian people against occupation, Badie told HuffPost. Especially as public defenders, its our whole job to be standing against oppression and for liberation of people, here and across the world. Babatunde Aremu, the Bronx chapter chair, released a follow-up statement to the New York Post last month defending the unions stance. We stand by that statement, and we reject the premise that supporting Palestinians is antisemitic, he said. We vehemently oppose antisemitism and are deeply upset at the violence and civilian casualties. The reaction was swift: Fueled by coverage in the Post, a petition to defund the public defender group racked up nearly 2,000 signatures and referred to the union as an openly antisemitic organization. It separately referred, incorrectly, to the nonprofit organization itself: We will not stand by silently while the Bronx Defenders rationalizes the murder of innocent Jews. Alan Dershowitz, the prominent conservative lawyer and supporter of Israel, castigated the organization in an open letter in the New York Law Journal, writing, If a lawyer belongs to the National Lawyers Guild, The Bronx Defenders, or other legal organizations that support Hamas, clients should be entitled to ask them whether they support the barbaric acts committed by that terror group on Oct. 7. Management responded with a press release five days after Dershowitzs letter, clarifying that it did not approve the unions statement and saying it wasnt consistent with the organizations values or mission. We condemn antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination and bigotry, the release said. An internal message to staff from Bronx Defenders Executive Director Justine Olderman, obtained by HuffPost, shed some light on the situation behind the scenes: Since Derhsowitzs letter, she wrote, the organization had fielded numerous complaints from supporters offended by the unions statement, and law firm partners were in conversation with each other about a potential response, including whether to sever ties with us. At least one firm has already decided they will no longer support us, and we are no longer in consideration for a renewal of the $25k we get annually from another firm for our Employee Hardship Fund, Olderman wrote. (Bronx Defenders did not respond to HuffPosts request for comment. Several people told HuffPost that $25,000 was a relatively small sum for Bronx Defenders, which operates on a multimillion-dollar budget.) Carter, in her call with Legal Aid Society staff, referenced Bronx Defenders, saying the group was losing funding. In a court filing Monday, lawyers for the ALAA were careful not to weigh in on the merits of the resolution but argued that suppressing any vote at all was an infringement of union members free speech rights. The Vote itself represents an act of expression by ALAA members, they wrote, arguing that stopping the vote wasnt necessary to ensure indigent defendants in the state receive unbiased defense attorneys, as plaintiffs argued. Plaintiffs appear to be grasping at a rationale to justify suppressing speech they find offensive, the defense added. They compared the accusation that the union was discriminating against plaintiffs to political discrimination: Unions are prohibited from political discrimination, but they frequently endorse political candidates. Nonetheless, on Tuesday, Judge Muraca had continued his temporary restraining order, continuing to block the vote. As the future of the resolution hung in the balance, union attorneys kept the focus on Gaza. Assembled on the courthouse steps, they took turns reading their resolution aloud it was now a public court record. Today, the court continued its attack on the First Amendment, on union democracy, and on solidarity with a free Palestine, Letwin said in an additional statement, flanked by fellow union members. But amid the Israeli genocide throughout Palestine, rank-and-file UAW 2325 members will not remain silent. Related... A public library system in Missouri is set to remove a book on sexual health, but only after allowing everyone on the titles waitlist to read it first. An internal review committee of the St. Charles City-County Library system decided to remove Bang Like a Porn Star: Sex Tips From the Pros from shelves after parents campaigned for its withdrawal. Critics argued that the bookwhich includes interviews with gay porn starscontained images which are too graphic for a public library. St. Charles City-County Library CEO Jason Kuhl said the work does have explicit photographs that seemed unrelated to the text they should have been illustrating. He said 20 people are currently waiting to check the book out, however, and the book wouldnt be removed until the waitlist has been cleared. While the system only originally had a single copy of the book, more copies were purchased for the committees review. Read it at St. Louis Post-Dispatch Read more at The Daily Beast. The second special session called by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is now over. Colorado lawmakers convened for four days in Denver to pass multiple bills that provide short-term relief for property taxes, as well as equalize state tax refunds and boost rental assistance programs. This was after Colorado voters rejected Proposition HH at the ballot box in early November, which was a complicated tax question that would have addressed rising property taxes and equalized refunds from the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). Heres what the lawmakers representing Pueblo did during the session and what they think about how it went. The gold-covered dome on the Colorado Capitol building shines in the late afternoon sun in downtown Denver in this Associated Press file photo. Property taxes will be slightly reduced Homeowners will see some relief in property taxes. The bill addressing property tax relief reduces the assessment rate from 6.765% to 6.7% and increases the amount of the home value exempt from property taxes to $55,000. The Colorado Sun calculated that the average Colorado property owner will save approximately $200 on property tax bills due in April, but that depends on local tax rates as well as the home value. The state will backfill most lost revenue to counties, school districts and other local government entities that mostly depend on property tax revenue, Colorado Public Radio reported. Pueblos state senator sponsored bill equalizing TABOR refunds Nick Hinrichsen, the state senator whose district includes all of Pueblo County, was the sponsor of one of the bills that passed through state legislature during this special session that equalizes refunds from extra money the state collects under TABOR. The bill was also sponsored by Sen. Janice Marchman of Loveland, as well as Rep. Javier Mabrey of Denver and Rep. Ruby Dickson of Centennial. All single tax filers will receive an estimated $847 and joint filers will get $1,694, according to the bills fiscal note. The majority of Coloradans will get more back from the state because this bill passed. By sending refunds out equally, we're giving more of a benefit to middle-class income earners 70% of Coloradans and more than 80% of Puebloans will see an increase in their in their refund because of this, Hinrichsen said about his bill. For people earning less than $51,000, thats an extra $261 for single filers and $522 for joint filers than if the bill hadnt been passed. However, people earning more than $104,000 will receive a smaller TABOR refund with this bill. Hinrichsen told the Chieftain before the special session started that he wanted to prioritize equalizing TABOR refunds. He also sponsored a bill last year that flattened TABOR refunds and expedited their disbursement. He said that he is working on another bill for the regular session that starts in January to equalize TABOR refunds in future years. Not much bipartisan support The multiple measures that were passed through the Colorado Legislature at a quick pace last weekend were mostly sponsored by Democratic lawmakers. Democratic Rep. Matt Martinez, whose district includes parts of Pueblo and the San Luis Valley, told the Chieftain he thinks that the rushed timing of the session meant that there was less opportunity to collaborate with Republicans. Martinez added that he wants to have more conversations across the aisle to work on more long-term measures for property tax relief in future years. Rep. Tisha Mauro, also a Democrat, represents parts of the city and county of Pueblo. Mauro said that some of her Republican colleagues agreed on some of the points in the bills but they decided to vote against them. Rep. Ty Winter, a Republican whose district includes southeastern Colorado and parts of Pueblo West, told the Chieftain in a text message that the collection of bills passed during the session amounted to a re-packaging of the failed Proposition HH. Winter, along with most Republicans, opposed Hinrichsens bill to equalize TABOR refunds. He said that he listened to voters who rejected Proposition HH and changing TABOR. Unlike Proposition HH, the property tax relief bill does not dip into TABOR refunds, Colorado Newsline reported. However, another bill to expand income tax credits that legislators also passed this session dips into the TABOR surplus. The GOP caucus introduced a measure that used reserves from the general fund for property tax relief, which Democrats opposed, according to Colorado Newsline. Democratic support wasnt always unanimous Hinrichsen was one of a few Democrats to oppose the creation of a state task force to study how to reduce property taxes moving forward. He said that he has a philosophical disagreement with addressing property taxes at a state level when its more of an issue for local governments to decide but hopes that the task force will be able to deliver some good results. On the other hand, Hinrichsen thinks that the state should do more to address income taxes, which he says are assessed at higher rates for low- and middle-income Coloradans but relatively low for high-income residents. Mauro supported the task force. She said that she doesnt disagree with Hinrichsens objections, but that the task force will be able to show lawmakers the extent to which they can take action to address property taxes in future years. Anna Lynn Winfrey covers politics for 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: Special session: Why a Pueblo legislator pushed for equal TABOR refunds By Guy Faulconbridge and Vladimir Soldatkin MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin told the leaders of the Group of Twenty (G20) on Wednesday that it was necessary to think about how to stop "the tragedy" of the war in Ukraine, some of his most placatory remarks to date about the conflict. Putin's decision to send troops into Ukraine in February 2022 triggered Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two and the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War. Addressing G20 leaders for the first time since the start of the war, the Kremlin chief said some leaders had said in their speeches that they were shocked by the ongoing "aggression" of Russia in Ukraine. "Yes, of course, military actions are always a tragedy," Putin told the virtual G20 meeting called by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "And of course, we should think about how to stop this tragedy," Putin said. "By the way, Russia has never refused peace talks with Ukraine." The remark, although clearly intended for international consumption, is one of Putin's most dovish on the war for months and contrasts with his sometimes long diatribes about the failings and arrogance of the United States. Fighting in Ukraine since February 2022 has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands, displaced millions more and devastated swathes of the country's south and east. Putin used the word "war" to describe the conflict instead of the current Kremlin term of "special military operation". "I understand that this war, and the death of people, cannot but shock," Putin said, before setting out the Russian case that Ukraine had persecuted people in eastern Ukraine. The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine's armed forces. About 14,000 people were killed there between 2014 and the end of 2021, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, including 3,106 civilians. "And the extermination of the civilian population in Palestine, in the Gaza Strip today, is not shocking?" Putin asked. He also said it was surely shocking that doctors in Gaza were having to perform operations on children without anaesthesia. UKRAINIAN SUPPORT The West and Ukraine have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russia in the war and to eject Russian forces, though the failure of a Ukrainian counteroffensive to achieve any real gains this year has raised concerns in the West over the strategy. Along with Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, Russia controls about 17.5% of Ukrainian territory, according to estimates by the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School. Putin says that territory is now part of Russia. While U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have promised to support Ukraine, there is increasing division over aid for Ukraine in the U.S. Congress ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November 2024. Some American lawmakers are prioritising aid to Israel even as U.S. defence officials stress that Washington can support both allies simultaneously. Ukraine has vowed to fight until the last Russian soldier has left its territory, though some inside Ukraine have called for a different strategy. Putin skipped previous G20 summits in New Delhi and Nusa Dua, Indonesia, sending Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov instead. The Russian leader addressed the 2021 and 2020 summits from Moscow. He last attended a G20 gathering in person in Osaka, Japan, in 2019. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Gareth Jones and Alex Richardson) Russian dictator Vladimir Putin reiterated his false narrative about Ukraine's "attack on the Donbas" and Moscow's alleged pursuit of "peace" in his online address to the virtual G20 summit, published by the Russian propaganda agency TASS on Nov. 22. War is always a tragedy, but "we have to think" about how to stop it, Putin said, claiming that "Russia has never refused peace talks." Read also: Putin leaves hiding to meet Kyrgyzstan President in Bishkek in first foreign trip since ICC arrest warrant He also said that the number of casualties during a war was always "staggering" and drew parallels with the situation in Gaza, which he called "the destruction of the population in Palestine. Putin has rarely traveled abroad since sending troops into Ukraine in Feb. 2022 and has attended major international summits either online or not participated at all after the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest on March 17, accusing him of overseeing the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine. Read also: Putin has 'at least three' body doubles, Ukraines intelligence says The Russian dictator did not attend the BRICS summit in South Africa in August and the G20 summit in India in September for fear of arrest. Instead Russia was represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Since being charged by the ICC, Putin has traveled abroad only three times to China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The Kremlin dictator could be arrested on the territory of 123 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute. U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping did not participate in the virtual G20 summit attended by Putin, Bloomberg wrote on Nov. 22. The summit was chaired by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 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 Queen Camilla will be welcoming her family to Sandringham for the first time (PA) Queen Camilla will reportedly be joined by her children and five grandchildren for the first time at Sandringham for Christmas celebrations. King Charles is said to have extended the invite to Camillas family as the royals prepare for their annual holiday gathering. According to ITVs royal editor Chris Ship, Camilla usually hosts her family at her private home in Wilshire, but things will be a little different this year. On Christmas day, it is an annual tradition for the royals to attend church on the Norfolk estate, with the Prince and Princess of Wales and other senior members of the family in attendance. The royals at St Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham in 2022 (PA) A royal source with knowledge of this years arrangements at Sandringham told the news outlet: "The Queen has invited her children and grandchildren this year which is different from previous years. Joining the Christmas holidays will be Tom Parker Bowles,48, Laura Lopes,45 and the Queens sister Annabel Elliot,74. Tom Parker-Bowles (L) and Laura Lopes (R) (PA) Camillas five grandchildren Freddy and Lola Parker Bowles and Eliza, Louis and Gus Lopes, will also be among the guests. The Queens three grandsons were all Page of Honours at the Kings Coronation alongside her great nephew Arthur Elliot. The royals are set to enjoy a festive lunch in the larger ballroom in the Sandringham House, rather than the dining room, the ITV report adds. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, is also said to be joining the lunch. She and her former husband, Prince Andrew, will stay at Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate. It is not yet confirmed if the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will attend this years Christmas festivities in the UK. Their last royal Christmas was in 2018 as the two were seen alongside The Prince and Princess of Wales. The Princess of Wales walks side by side with Harry and Megan (PA) Recent reports claim the couple may be happy to accept an invitation to spend Christmas with the royal family. A source told The Times: I cant imagine the Sussexes would decline an invitation to spend time with His Majesty. As of yet, there have not been any invitations for the holidays, The insider added. Will there be a royal Christmas reunion? Well just have to wait and see... QUEENS - The NYPD is looking for the suspect accused of strangling a teen on a Queens subway at the Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue station. According to police, the 17-year-old-boy was on a northbound A train back on Nov. 9 when he was approached by an unknown individual. Following an argument, the individual strangled the boy, causing him to lose consciousness, police said. The individual was last seen wearing a yellow shirt and orange boots. (NYPD) The victim exited the train, while the unknown individual remained. The boy sustained minor injuries and was taken to a hospital in stable condition. The individual is described as a man with a light complexion, bald, around 3040 years old. He was last seen wearing a yellow shirt and orange boots. WANTED-STRANGULATION: 11/9/23 approx. 3:50PM, 'A' train at Far Rockaway @NYPD103PCT Queens. The suspect & a 17-yr-old male victim were involved in a dispute when he strangled the victim causing him to lose consciousness. Any info call us at 800-577-TIPS Reward up to $3,500 pic.twitter.com/itTdyDrbsE NYPD Crime Stoppers (@NYPDTips) November 21, 2023 Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). According to the NYPD, New York City has seen 491 felony assaults in the subway system between Jan. 1 and Nov. 5, a notable increase from the 470 felony assaults reported in all of 2022. Patriotic Millionaires demands were projected on the walls of the Treasury and Bank of England buildings on Tuesday night - Patriotic Millionaires UK A group of British millionaires have projected demands on the walls of government buildings asking that the Chancellor tax them more. The messages, which appeared on the walls of the Bank of England and Treasury on Tuesday night, came ahead of Wednesdays Autumn Statement. The Patriotic Millionaires UK is a group of more than 30 British millionaires who believe the rich must pay more tax in order to tackle growing wealth inequality within the country. They claim that taxing the wealth of those with more than 10m by just 2pc could raise 22bn, which they say would relieve pressure on working people. The entrepreneurs, investors and philanthropists in the group include the co-founder of backpack company Osprey Europe, the co-chairman of ready-meal company Cook, James Perry, and Guy Singh-Watson, the founder of food delivery service Riverford Organic Farmers. In a video shared to X, formerly Twitter, slogans including: Tax our wealth and Tax wealth not work are displayed on the buildings. The message also reads: The public want it. An accompanying comment on social media reads: Our tax system should be fair. The Autumn Statement should raise taxes on us, the super rich. It continues: We want it. The public wants it. Our country needs it. Tax our wealth and invest in a stronger, more sustainable Britain. Its the patriotic thing to do. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is expected to cut National Insurance contributions on estates in todays Autumn Statement. A consultation on plans to cut inheritance tax is expected to follow in Marchs Spring Budget. Phil White, of Patriotic Millionaires, said: We have a potential 423m a week, which is currently absent from national investment revenue, because we dont tax extreme wealth. Surely the people in the UK deserve more? The campaign groups membership criteria states that a millionaire must be in the 1pc in order to join the network, meaning they must have a net worth of more than 4m. The millionaires movement, which started in the US, has lobbied world leaders and business executives meeting in Davos for the World Economic Forum. Now is the time to tackle extreme wealth; now is the time to tax the ultra rich, they wrote in an open letter in January. A YouGov survey in January found that three-quarters of Britons support a wealth tax. Research by Patriotic Millionaires also previously found that 68pc of the richest people in the country supported the introduction of wealth taxes. It is currently possible for taxpayers to choose to pay more tax on a voluntary basis, but between 2000 and 2017, just 200 of these extra payments were received. There has also been an exodus of millionaires from the UK in recent years, as a result of punishing tax changes and political uncertainty. Many have moved to France, which overtook the UK to rank third in the table of countries with the most millionaires earlier this year, as a result of lucrative tax breaks. Recommended We asked you which taxes you want the Chancellor to cut. This is your verdict Read more 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. The Raleigh City Council chambers were packed Tuesday with dozens of people asking city leaders to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. Nearly 13,000 people, almost half of them children, have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7 when Hamas, an armed Palestinian militant group, attacked Israel, killing over 1,200 people, according to The Associated Press. The war is entering its seventh week and thousands more may yet lie beneath the rubble of bombed homes, hospitals and schools. The calls for a cease-fire have trickled to local governments in the Triangle as some residents seek to influence state and federal leaders to end the violence and stop funding to Israel. But what impact do local resolutions on international matters have? Over 50 residents, many wearing black and white or red and white checkered keffiyeh, attended the Raleigh City Council meeting on Tuesday to urge the council to pass a cease-fire resolution. Noor Hawa, a Palestinian-American, played a recording of an Israeli solider saying he would burn (Gaza) to the ground, and another of a Palestinian father weeping after losing all three of his children in bombings by Israel. A cease-fire protects everyone on both sides of the struggle, she said. We all say that we are anti-war during peace times, but this is where the rubber meets the road; this is when it gets hard. This is when you need to put your morality into practice and say that you truly are anti-war. The resolution, submitted by local groups including Refund Raleigh Freedom Committee, Muslim Women For, N.C. Environmental Justice Network, asks the city to call on congressional leaders to: urge President Biden to call for and facilitate de-escalation and an immediate cease-fire request the Biden administration send humanitarian aid to northern and southern Gaza urge the Biden administration to work to release all hostages, including Palestinians held by Israel Tuesday night, Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary cease-fire requiring Hamas to free at least 50 of its roughly 240 hostages. Israel is to release about 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange. The truce will begin on Thanksgiving morning. After nearly two hours of public comments Tuesday, the Raleigh City Council continued its regularly scheduled meeting and at about 8 p.m. went into a closed session, upon which Councilwoman Mary Black announced the council would discuss the cease-fire resolution. The meeting was adjourned late Tuesday night with no action taken. Resolution for Ceasefire, Peace, and International Law by Kristen Johnson on Scribd This embedded content is not available in your region. Passing resolutions on global issues The calls for a cease-fire are a continuation of last weeks City Council meeting where 94 residents signed up to speak in support of the resolution. About 50 of the 57 people who signed up to speak on Tuesday delivered fiery remarks about their frustration with the councils hesitation. The Israel-Hamas war has reached local governments throughout the country, including in Chicago and in Florida, where debates became heated between elected leaders and residents. In Aurora, Colorado, and Philadelphia, the city councils passed resolutions condemning the attack by Hamas, despite requests for a ceasefire. Last week, Carrboro became the first municipality in North Carolina to pass a resolution urging Congress to call for a cease-fire. In an interview with The News & Observer on Wednesday, Carrboro Town Councilman Sammy Slade said polls show a majority of Americans support a cease-fire. Its imperative upon any elected governing body to represent their citizens, Slade said. From town council all the way up to the presidency, before we passed our resolution, no one was representing us or humanity. The Carrboro Town Council also condemned rising Islamophobia and antisemitism, but it was criticized for not condemning the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Slade said the hope for the resolution was to continue pressure on the Biden administration. Like many speakers Tuesday in Raleigh, Slade calls the killing in Gaza genocide. On the congressional level, Congress has the power of the purse. (Biden) is requesting billions of dollars for more bombs to be dropped on Gaza and its imperative our representatives in the House not provide that money. This is genocidal intent, he said. Frayda Bluestien, a professor at UNCs School of Government, says board members who get requests to adopt resolutions on issues of local, state, national, international, and even extraterrestrial, interest are free to weigh in. Hot button issue resolutions do not raise particular procedural or legal issues, but they do sometimes cause board members and attorneys to question whether the board should regularly or even occasionally state an official position, Bluestein wrote in a 2013 bog post. When a resolution relates to something that is not directly or even indirectly within the jurisdiction of the board, the decision about whether to vote for it becomes a matter of each board members personal view on the matter, she continued. It may be useful for the board to develop internal policies or consensus on how to handle resolution requests from citizens or organizations, she wrote. The United States provides $3.8 billion every year to Israel, with nearly all of it going to Israels military, according to The Washington Post. Since the war in Gaza began, the Biden administration has requested $14 billion more in aid to Israel. We constantly make the connection between what happens on the federal level has an impact on what were able to do on the local level, Slade said. Half of our federal discretionary funds go toward a war, and theres definitely a misallocation of those funds. Carrboro has passed other resolutions, most recently, condemning the war in Ukraine. Another resolution urged their congressional leaders to discontinue discretionary funding for wars. At the federal level, Carrboro has passed resolutions on wars in Iraq and Syria. The City Council is Raleighs governing body, consisting of eight members who are elected for two-year terms. Three of the members, including the mayor, are elected at large, while the other members are elected from five districts: A, B, C, D and E. What does Palestine have to do with Raleigh? In Raleigh, some called out Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin Tuesday who at one point looked down at her cell phone while a speaker was talking. She also threatened to end the meeting if the crowd did not stop interruptions. Please get off your phone and pay attention to me, Jamal Mohamad, an N.C. State student, told the mayor. The crowd cheered and yelled shame and extra time at Baldwin. Its disgusting, Mayor Baldwin, that Raleigh and North Carolina are funding millions into Israels occupation, genocide and ethnic cleansing. The city is not directly funding Israel but some people have been critical of the states congressional leaders and their support for funding the countrys military. Sen. Thom Tillis is one of the leaders who backs support for Israel. In an opinion editorial, he called out antisemitism and referred to people calling for a cease-fire as naive and hateful. Simply put, you cannot have a cease-fire with a terrorist organization like Hamas. Nothing they say or do can be trusted, he wrote. Brea Perry, a Raleigh resident who supported the resolution, challenged the City Councils moral clarity. What does Palestine have to do with Raleigh? Perry asked rhetorically. Even if you arent immediately able to make the local and global connections ... it should be enough that you have Palestinian constituents. It should be enough that your Palestinian constituents are waking up daily to more news of their people being massacred. Palestinian Americans make up less than 1% of residents in Wake County but the group is spread across the state and country. Three-quarters of Muslim Americans are immigrants or the children of immigrants, according to a study by the Pew Research Center. City Council members Black and Christina Jones were the only two to address the calls for a cease-fire during the meeting. Both said they supported a resolution. Black said the council has received thousands of emails asking them to sign a cease-fire resolution, and hundreds asking them not to. I have always condemned all harm and loss of life, Black said. I condemn the loss of life that took place on Oct. 7. ... I also condemn the ongoing loss of life of the more than 14,000 children, women and fathers from the indiscriminate bombing in Gaza. Black, who has been active in the Black Lives Matter and environmental justice movements, supports a cease-fire because she is a human first before anything else she said and added, but most importantly, immediately after that, I am an advocate and a Black woman. Jones thanked the speakers Tuesday for their willingness to hold the City Council accountable and thanked Black for speaking out against the war. I do value human life, Jones said. I echo everything that (Black) said because I think it was beautiful and it touched on all the feelings that were all going through. Theres so much hurt in this world. On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the city said they had no comment on the cease-fire resolution. It was unclear if the council would consider the document any further. KANSAS CITY, Mo. Kansas City police responded to a shooting on Wednesday where an employee was shot at Rally House in the Shops at Boardwalk during a suspected shoplifting incident. The shooting call went out just before 12:30 p.m. The Shops at Boardwalk are at the intersection of N. Ambassador Drive and N. Boardwalk Avenue, near the 152 Highway, Interstate 29 interchange. Christmas in the Sky event canceled by Jackson County Parks and Rec Police say they took two suspects into custody in connection with the shooting at 152 and N. Indiana. Witness Billy White was about to go into Proud Souls Barbecue next door to Rally House. He was ahead of his wife when he heard the gunshot. I see the guy come out moving quick with an arm full of jerseys, White said of the suspect Wednesday. I turn back to look to see where my wifes at, and I hear a Pow. I look back, and he runs that way for about 20 feet, and then comes back and hops up on the wall and comes running straight at me with a gun in his hand. White and his wife hid between cars until the suspect took off. Once he got into a car, White rushed to help the worker who had been shot. I stayed there and helped tie a tourniquet on his leg and held his hand until the paramedics got here, White said. Employees get no warning as two KC-area Big Biscuit restaurants shut down The whole thing was unexpected for White, but he was glad to be able to help. I left Lowes and decided I needed some rub, so I was put here for a reason, man, he continued. I dont know. I dont know if what I did did any good, or what but Nah, White said when asked if he was a hero in this situation. If I am, I am. I just try to stay humble man. The names of the suspects and the name of the victim have not been released. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports. [Source] Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan announced they are starring in a new The Karate Kid movie, and they are looking for an actor to play the titular role that the former portrayed in the original 1984 film. Big news: Macchio, 62, and Chan, 69, broke the announcement in a video uploaded by Sony to social media on Tuesday, with the former proclaiming, We're starring in a new Karate Kid movie together." The next star: After announcing the team-up, Chan adds that they are looking for the next Karate Kid, with Macchio agreeing, That's right the global search for the star of our new film starts right now. Trending on NextShark: Japan kicks off trial of over-the-counter morning-after pills The studio is looking for a Chinese or mixed-race Chinese actor between 15 and 17 years old to play Li Fong, who will be the next Karate Kid, according to Sonys casting call post. The post describes the character as someone who is smart, scrappy, skilled in martial arts and fluent in English. Their roles: Macchio played the first Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso, in the original trilogy in 1984, 1986 and 1989. He has reprised the role in the Netflix series Cobra Kai. Meanwhile, Chan played Mr. Han in the 2010 "The Karate Kid," opposite Jaden Smith's Dre Parker, the student and titular kid. Mr. Han is based on Daniel's mentor and martial arts teacher, Mr. Miyagi, played by the late Pat Morita. Trending on NextShark: Philippine president announces last Filipino hostage freed from Hamas Details to note: It is unclear if William Zabka, who played antagonist Johnny Lawrence in the first two movies, will also appear in the 2024 movie. Zabka, 58, is currently leading the Cobra Kai series. While plot details are still kept under wraps, the movie is expected to premiere on Dec. 13, 2024. How people reacted: Many fans of the franchise welcomed Chan and Macchios announcement with delight, with one YouTube user even stating that their life is officially complete after knowing that the two stars will appear in the same The Karate Kid movie. Trending on NextShark: American tourist faces investigation for graffiti spree on over 155 locations in Seoul "This just came out of nowhere and I'm all in for it, one fan on YouTube commented, while another fan wrote, The movie we didnt know we needed right now. Trending on NextShark: BTS wins 6th Worldwide Icon of the Year at MAMA as 4 members set to enlist Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! A Rapides Parish Sheriff's deputy is being accused of stealing money from a internal club funded by employee donations, according to a news release. A Rapides Parish Sheriff's deputy is being accused of stealing money from a internal club funded by employee donations, according to a news release. Kimberly Ryder, 46, was booked into the Rapides Parish Detention Center #1 Tuesday morning on charges of theft greater than $25,000 and malfeasance in office. Ryder, who worked in the sheriff office's finance section, was fired upon her arrest. She left jail on a $2,000 bond in under an hour, according to online jail records. Administrators were told Nov. 8 about "some financial discrepancies dealing with the RPSO Family Club account," the release said. The club includes employees who voluntarily donate $1 per paycheck via payroll deduction to buy things like bereavement flowers, gift baskets, food trays for funerals, gifts for retiring deputies and donations for catastrophic events, it reads. Search continues: Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office issues warrant for mother who took 12-year-old son Sunday Attempted murder arrest: Father arrested after baby found in critical condition at Pineville home The office's financial crimes unit was notified, and an investigation began. From that, an arrest warrant for Ryder was issued. "While no public funds were involved, some of the alleged acts were conducted while Ryder was on duty," the release reads. Ryder, a resident of Boyce, turned herself in. The investigation is continuing. This article originally appeared on Alexandria Town Talk: Rapides Sheriff's deputy fired after arrest on theft, malfeasance charges FILE PHOTO: Sam Altman, CEO of Microsoft-backed OpenAI and ChatGPT creator speaks during a talk at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv (Reuters) - OpenAI said on Tuesday it had reached an agreement for Sam Altman to return as CEO days after his ouster, capping frenzied discussions about the future of the startup at the center of the artificial intelligence boom. Here's what analysts and investors say about the agreement: DANNI HEWSON, HEAD OF FINANCIAL ANALYSIS AT AJ BELL: "There are still huge questions about why Altman was fired and why Microsoft had seemingly been kept in the dark about the decision. What does seem clear is that Microsoft will now play a much bigger role, that the partnership will become stronger and the two companies more integrated." DANIELA HATHORN, ANALYST AT CAPITAL.COM: "The decision wasn't much of a choice as turmoil had clouded the company since the decision to let Altman go last Friday, turning investors and employees against the board members involved in the failed coup. "Microsoft... had openly supported Altman's return over the weekend. Still, the tech giant now wants a seat on the new board that will need to be formed over the coming months, as it wants to avoid any further surprises." THRIVE CAPITAL, OPENAI SHAREHOLDER "OpenAI has the potential to be one of the most consequential companies in the history of computing. Sam and Greg (Brockman) possess a profound commitment to the company's integrity, and an unmatched ability to inspire and lead. "The resilience and strength we have seen from the entire OpenAI team in the past few days has been extraordinary. "We believe this is the best outcome for the company, its employees, those who build on their technologies, and the world at large." IPEK OZKARDESKAYA, ANALYST AT SWISSQUOTE BANK: "His ousting upset to a point that company's existence was put to question. Now, the outcome could be frustrating for Microsoft. "Even though Microsoft benefits generously from ChatGPT's uprise, OpenAI remains a satellite unit, and integrating Altman in an internal MSFT team would've made sense." SUSANNAH STREETER, HEAD OF MONEY AND MARKETS, HARGREAVES LANSDOWN: "While it's still unclear exactly what the tug-of-war prompting his initial departure involved, Sam Altman's views about how to run the company will dominate future direction, especially given hell be supervised under a new board." KELVIN WONG, ANALYST, OANDA: "This latest boardroom tussle has shown that Altman has the full backing of Microsoft as a person and as long as he remains in charge of OpenAI, and there should not be any negative spillover effects between the partnership of OpenAI and Microsoft. "Altman and Brockman are also more suited to collaborate in start-up culture given the infancy of AI at this juncture without any red-tape hindrances from an MNC such as Microsoft." MAK YUEN TEEN, DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR INVESTOR PROTECTION AT NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE BUSINSS SCHOOL: "There may be good reasons why Microsoft does not have a board seat. It may even be to protect Microsoft from anti-trust actions or conflicts as Microsoft itself has its own AI unit. "It (Altman's return) may put an end to the turmoil on the surface for now but there may continue to be deep governance issues that remain. "Sam Altman seems awfully powerful and it is unclear that any board would be able to oversee him. The danger is the board becomes a rubber stamp. Altman and (Microsoft CEO) Nadella may have pushed to allow Altman a much freer hand." VICTORIA SCHOLAR, HEAD OF INVESTMENT, INTERACTIVE INVESTOR: "While he'll (Microsoft CEO Nadella) no doubt be pleased about the fact that order has been restored at OpenAI, in which Microsoft is a major investor, there might be an element of disappointment that he hasn't snapped up the Silicon Valley superstar Altman after all." (Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, Ankika Biswas, Bansari Mayur Kamdar, Ankika Biswas and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Compiled by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee) Paul Nanda of Columbus, Ohio, goofs around while having his photo taken by a friend on Main Street in Park City on Jan. 20, 2010. The graffiti is supposedly the work of Banksy, a British graffiti artist whose work is based on political and social issues. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News The street artist known as Banksy has clung to anonymity since his work became well-known in the late 1990s. Recently, a 2003 BBC interview with the artist resurfaced, in which he claimed his name was Robbie, leading some to believe Banksys real name is Robbie Banks. Banksy is originally from the United Kingdom but has artwork all across the globe, including in Park City, Utah. The artist has gained quite a following and has more than 12 million followers on Instagram. Related 1. Why is Banksys anonymity important? Banksys art makes political statements, often against authoritarianism, according to Britannica. The fact that graffiti is illegal in some of the places where hes left his artwork could potentially put Banksy in trouble with law enforcement. A pending lawsuit from the clothing brand Guess, which stems from the artist encouraging followers to shoplift at the store, may yet confirm the artists name, according to The Guardian. 2. What is Banksys real identity? In 2008, Banksy was suggested to be Robin Gunningham by the Daily Mail, although the artist denied this accusation, according to The Guardian. Its still not confirmed whether Robert Banks or Robbie Banks as the 2003 BBC interview implies is in fact Banksys name. A 2003 article by The Guardians Simon Hattenstone, who is one of the few journalists who has interviewed the artist, described the artist as white, 28, scruffy casual - jeans, T-shirt, a silver tooth, silver chain and silver earring. 3. Does Banksy have a wife? Banksy posted on Instagram nearly four years ago about doing art at home. The caption said, My wife hates it when I work from home. That may be an indication that hes married, or it could be a purposeful misdirection. If Robin Gunningham is in fact Banksy like many fans believe, his wifes name is Joy Millward, per USA Today. 4. Has Banksy ever made money? Banksy told The Guardian in 2003 that hed been offered jobs that would pay mad money. When asked why he refused the jobs, Banksy said, I dont need the money and I dont like children working their fingers to the bone for nothing. Banksys famous artwork entitled Love Is in the Bin or Girl With Balloon sold for $25.4 million at auction in 2021, according to The New York Times. Related HAGERSTOWN, Md. (DC News Now) Its that time again when the red kettles are out and the bells are ringing to make sure everyone in Washington County has a good holiday. The Salvation Army is having its annual Kettle Kickoff, which is to draw attention to Salvation Army work here and in Washington County so that we can continue to serve and provide assistance for those in need in the community, Commanding Officer, Donald Wilson, said. For decades, the Salvation Army has always had a mission to help those in need around the holiday season. Tyler Rorr knows how helpful the Salvation Army is especially after his family received help from their angel tree when he was a child. Now he is back helping the same organization that helped him. DCA travelers plan ahead to avoid holiday trip headaches When I was a child, I remember the excitement of going to the Salvation Army and then they did it at the actual Corp where you come with your family and receive your gifts at the Salvation Army, Rorr explained. So I just remember the excitement, and feeling the community being with other members of the community. This year the Salvation Armys goal is to raise $85,000. ButWilson, who is the corps officer for the Hagerstown Salvation Army, said it could be hard to achieve. This past year, for example, our donations were down almost $250,000, but we had people dealing with food insecurity and Its about 45% over last year, he said. Wilson hopes that the community will step up and help those in need. Were concerned about the days after that when people are dealing with functionary issues, job issues prices, and their families so that we can be there to provide, he said. Seven locations around Washington County will have red kettles set up for donations until Dec. 23. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC. On Memorial Day weekend in 2022, Kate Arnold and her wife, Caroline Flint, flew from Oklahoma City to Cabo San Lucas for a little R&R. They had five kids, the youngest of them five-year-old twin girls, and demanding jobs as obstetrician-gynecologists. The stresses of all this were mounting. That they were a gay married couple living in a red, socially conservative state was the least of it. Caroline was born in Tulsa, spent much of her childhood in Oklahoma, and was educated at the University of Oklahoma. She cast her first presidential vote for George W. Bush. Kate, the more political of the two, was from Northern California and a lifelong Democrat. But her mother was born in Oklahoma City, and she felt at home there; shed even given some thought to running for the state legislature. Kate and Caroline flew down with the twins and their 16-year-old daughter. It says a lot about Kate Arnold that she adopted the three older children while she was attending medical school; the birth mother, whom Kate befriended while volunteering at a home for teenage mothers, was an addict who lost custody. Arriving in Cabo, Kate and Caroline realized that it had been a very long timetoo long since their last date night. So one evening they ordered the kids room service and went off by themselves to a Taco Night theme dinner. We sat outside with the little colored flags, Kate recalled, and they gave us blankets because it was cold and windy. We hadnt been sitting for very long when I started saying I wasnt happy. A little more than one week earlier, a disturbed high school student named Salvador Ramos had entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, with an AR-15 rifle and killed 19 children and two adults, injuring 17 more. It was the deadliest school shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, and it happened just one state over as Kate and Carolines two youngest were about to start school. Two more mass shootings occurred in Oklahoma while they were in Cabo. A man named Michael Louis gunned down, with an AR-15, two doctors, a receptionist, and a patient at the Tulsa offices of his orthopedic surgeon because he was angry that his recent back surgery left him in pain. Then a man named Skyler Buckner killed one person and injured seven others at a Memorial Day festival in Taft, Oklahoma. States with permissive gun laws have a higher rate of mass shootings, and Oklahoma, with some of the most permissive gun laws in the country, has 45 percent more gun deaths per capita than the national averagehigher even than in Texas. That was one reason Kate wasnt happy. Another reason was that the state legislature was trying to limit access to contraceptives. In March, the state Senate had voted to require parental consent before a minor could take contraceptives. Kate was chair of the Oklahoma chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and shed lobbied against this change. (The bill later died in the state House of Representatives.) Youre just gonna get my nine-year-old birth control without my knowledge? one state legislator said to her. How does your nine-year-old need birth control? Kate answered. And yes, if she needs birth control whats worse than her coming home pregnant? Caroline had reasons to be unhappy, too. One year earlier, Oklahomas governor had signed a law barring public schools and charter schools from teaching that an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. School boards interpreted this as an invitation to ban any book that touched on race or gender. Among the books targeted in Oklahoma, according to the free-speech organization PEN America, were Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, A Raisin in the Sun, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Books are my thing, Caroline told me. She couldnt abide the idea that books would be censored. Also, Carolines hospital wouldnt let her perform gender-affirming surgery. The procedure was legal in Oklahoma, but this was a Baptist hospital, and fairly conservative. I would do surgeries, Caroline said, like hysterectomies for patients who are transitioning. And Id have to have another indication to do it. Id have to say, Oh, they also have pain, or find some other reason. Kate was director of womens health at a large, federally funded nonprofit health center serving low-income patients. It was, she told me, A job that I loved. But five months before their Cabo dinner, Kate published an op-ed at a nonprofit Oklahoma news site criticizing state felony prosecutions of women who miscarried after taking drugs during pregnancy. Anytime you criminalize drug use in pregnancy, Kate explained to me, the addicts stop going to the hospital, and you have worse and worse outcomes. After the op-ed appeared, somebody phoned Kates health center to complain. After that, Kates superiors effectively barred her from making public statements about anything. Kates boss explained why: The FBI had alerted the center to threats of violence just for providing birth control. After the op-ed appeared, somebody phoned Kates health center to complain. After that, Kates superiors effectively barred her from making public statements about anything. That irked Kate until her boss explained why: The FBI had contacted the health center to alert them to threats of violence just for providing birth control. Did I mention that Oklahoma allows anybody over the age of 21 to carry a loaded firearm in public, open or concealed, without a license? The last straw for the couple was Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization. That windy June night in Cabo, the Supreme Court was still a few weeks away from overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to ban abortion. But it was no mystery what the decision would say, because one month earlier a draft had leaked to Politico. The Oklahoma legislature had already passed several trigger laws whose cumulative effect was to bar doctors from performing abortions starting at the point of conception, punishable by up to 10 years in prison (later reduced to five). Kate and Caroline didnt perform abortions themselves; they referred patients to Planned Parenthood. Or rather, they had done so until an Oklahoma law barred them from doing even that. That law would later be ruled unconstitutional, but ambiguities in the Oklahoma abortion bans exception for protecting the life of the mother make it potentially dangerous to treat any patient experiencing difficulty during pregnancy. When we left dinner that night, Kate recalled, we knew we needed to leave Oklahoma. We were both in a bit of shock as we walked back to our room. I said I was sorry, and that I didnt know I had been thinking all of that till we finally had a minute. Caroline jokingly called me the worst date ever. For a day, they thought about moving to New Zealand, but they didnt want to be that far from their parents, and besides, Kate and Caroline love this country, despite all its flaws; July Fourth is Kates favorite holiday. They thought about Northern California, but vetoed that because Caroline doesnt like cold summer nights. That left Washington, D.C., a place Kate had enjoyed living in while attending medical school at Georgetown. They arrived this past May, settling into a blue bungalow on a quiet, leafy street near the Maryland border. Kate Arnold and Caroline Flint are two bright, energetic, professionally trained, and public-spirited women whom Washington is happy to welcomethey both quickly found jobseven though it doesnt particularly need them. The places that need Kate and Caroline are Oklahoma and Mississippi and Idaho and various other conservative states where similar stories are playing out daily. These two fortyish doctors have joined an out-migration of young professionalsaccelerated by the culture wars of recent years and pushed to warp speed by Dobbsthats known as the Red State Brain Drain. Republican-dominated states are pushing out young professionals by enacting extremist conservative policies. Abortion restrictions are the most sweeping example, but state laws restricting everything from academic tenure to transgender health care to the teaching of divisive concepts about race are making these states uncongenial to knowledge workers. The precise effect of all this on the brain drain is hard to tease out from migration statistics because the Dobbs decision is still fairly new, and because red states were bleeding college graduates even before the culture war heated up. The only red state that brings in more college graduates than it sends elsewhere is Texas. But the evidence is everywhere that hard-right social policies in red states are making this dynamic worse. The number of applications for OB-GYN residencies is down more than 10 percent in states that have banned abortion since Dobbs. Forty-eight teachers in Hernando County, Florida, fed up with Dont Say Gay and other new laws restricting what they can teach, resigned or retired at the end of the last school year. A North Carolina law confining transgender people to bathrooms in accordance with what it said on their birth certificate was projected, before it was repealed, to cost that state $3.76 billion in business investment, including the loss of a planned global operations center for PayPal in Charlotte. A survey of college faculty in four red states (Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) about political interference in higher education found a falloff in the number of job candidates for faculty positions, and 67 percent of the respondents said they would not recommend their state to colleagues as a place to work. Indeed, nearly one-third said they were actively considering employment elsewhere. In Oklahoma, Kate and Caroline belonged to a book group. They read serious depressing books, Kate said, like Evicted by Matthew Desmond and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. The book group had six people in it. Now its down to three, because another woman in the group moved to Washington state after Oklahoma banned transgender care for minors in May. Kate and Caroline named three additional friends who also left Oklahoma recently for political reasons. The phrase culture war entered the academic lexicon in 1991 with publication of Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia. Hunter saw the culture wars of the late twentieth century as a continuation of American Protestants virulent anti-Catholicism and antisemitism during the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth. Where once a Protestant majority demonized rival faiths, today a shrinking cohort of orthodox adherents to all three faiths demonizes progressive rationalists and pluralists. And, just as a century ago politicians gleefully exploited such animosity, they do so today. At the 1992 Republican convention, Pat Buchanan borrowed Hunters phrase and turned it into a political truncheon. My friends, Buchanan said, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe, and what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War. Buchanans us-versus-them philippic set the tone for congressional Republicans hyper-partisan opposition to Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now Joe Biden. It also inspired the snarling us-them rhetoric of former President Donald Trump and the various Trump imitators challenging him for the 2024 presidential nomination. The culture war moved slowly into state politics, because, at first, Republicans didnt have much of a foothold there. From 1971 to 1994, Democrats held most governorships. That flipped in 1995, and for the next dozen years, Republicans held the majority of governorships. But Republican governors still couldnt advance the culture-war agenda, because state legislatures remained dominated by Democrats. That changed with the 2010 election. In a historic realignment largely unrecognized at the time, the GOP won a majority of governorships and legislative chambers. Today, Republicans control a 52 percent majority of governorships and a 57 percent majority of state legislative bodies, and in 22 states Republicans enjoy a trifecta, meaning they control the governorship and both legislative chambers (or, in the case of Nebraska, a unicameral legislature). At the time Dobbs was handed down, Republicans enjoyed even greater reach, with trifectas in 23 states. The very last restraint on Republicans waging full-scale culture warthe presence of college graduates under the GOP tentwas removed by the 2016 presidential election. College graduates have always tended to be fairly liberal on social issues, but until the 1990s they were pretty reliably Republican, because college grads made more money and didnt want to pay higher taxes. Even Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee caricatured by Republicans as an egghead, won only about 30 percent of college graduates in 1956. The Democrats egghead share crept up after that, but it wasnt until 1992 that a Democrat, Bill Clinton, won the college vote (with a 43 percent plurality in a three-way race). Four years later, Clinton lost it to Bob Dole, and for the next two decades Joe College seesawed from one party to another. As recently as 2012, Mitt Romney eked out a 51 percent majority of college graduates. But with the arrival of Donald Trump, college graduates left the Republican fold for the foreseeable future. Trump dropped the Republican share to 44 percent in 2016 and 43 percent in 2020. If Trump wins the nomination in 2024, the GOPs share of college voters could drop below 40, and I dont see any of Trumps challengers for the Republican nomination doing much better. It isnt clear they even want to, because todays GOP sees college graduates as the enemy. The heaviest artillery is trained on abortion rights. After Dobbs, wholesale abortion bans took effect in 14 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. All but Kentucky and Louisiana are trifecta states. In a fifteenth state, Wisconsin, uncertainty about how to interpret an 1849 statute concerning violence against a pregnant woman put abortions on hold for one year until an appeals court ruled that the statute did not apply to abortions. Lets call these hard-core abortion-ban states the Dobbs Fourteen. In 2020, more than 113,000 abortions were performed in the Dobbs Fourteen, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute. During the first six months of 2023, that number fell to nearly zero; in Texas, for instance, about 20 women qualified for that states very narrowly drawn exemptions. The Dobbs Fourteen made it nearly impossible to get an abortion, as intended. But they simultaneously made it much more difficult for a pregnant woman to give birth, because abortion bans drove OB-GYN like Kate Arnold and Caroline Flint away. It was hard enough for red states to hold onto their OB-GYNs even before Dobbs. A little more than one-third of all counties nationwide are maternity care deserts, typically in rural areas, with no hospitals or birthing centers that offer obstetric care and no individual obstetric providers (not even midwives), according to the March of Dimes. This data was collected before the Supreme Court overturned Roe. But even then, those states with the most restrictive abortion laws invested the least in maternal care, affirming former Representative Barney Franks memorable complaint that for conservatives life begins at conception and ends at birth. Maternity care deserts are typically in rural areas, not all of which impose strict abortion restrictions. But theyre much more common in states that imposed abortion restrictions after Dobbs, representing 39 percent of all counties in those states, compared to 25 percent in states that imposed no abortion restrictions. Texas has, after California, the highest GDP of any state. Yet 46.5 percent of its counties are maternity care deserts; for some women, the nearest birthing hospital is a 70-minute drive from their home. In some states, including Oklahoma and Mississippi, the majority of counties are maternity care deserts. Where resources are inadequate for giving birth, infant mortality tends to be high. Among the Dobbs Fourteen, all but Idaho, North Dakota, and Texas have infant-mortality rates higher than the (shockingly high) national average of 5.42 deaths per 1,000 births. In some of these states, infant mortality is substantially higher. In Mississippi, its 9.39 deaths per 1,000 births. In Oklahoma, its 7.13 deaths per 1,000 births. It hardly surprised me when Kate, comparing their houses in Oklahoma City and Washington, said their Washington bungalow was half the size for double the cost. But the two physicians also took substantial cuts in paynot quite 50 percent for Caroline, and about 25 percent for Kate. How could that be? If Washingtons cost of living is higher, shouldnt salaries be higher, too? For most occupations, yes. But OB-GYN salaries, Kate and Caroline explained to me, vary dramatically according to local demand. Washington has plenty of OB-GYNs; the nations capital is too urban and too geographically small to be a maternity care desert. Oklahoma, on the other hand, suffers a desperate shortage of OB-GYNs, and therefore must pay top dollar. Mississippi is the poorest state in the country. But the average base salary for an ob-gyn at Wayne General Hospital in Waynesboro, Mississippi, is $350,000. (I take this and the salary figures that follow from the workforce data company Glassdoor, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics information is one year out of date.) Compare Waynesboros largesse to the average base salary for an OB-GYN at ClearMD Health Center in Manhattan: $275,000, or 21 percent less. (Even thats a little high for New York City, where, according to Glassdoor, average ob-gyn pay is $243,000.) In Oklahoma City, average base salary for an OB-GYN at CompHealth Physician Obstetrics and Gynecology is $325,000. In Fort Smith, Arkansas, average base salary for an OB-GYN at CompHealth Physician Obstetrics and Gynecology is $312,500. Meanwhile, average base pay for an OB-GYN in Los Angeles is $235,000. Throwing money at OB-GYNs helps red states manage the problem, but it doesnt fix it. One Mississippi-based OB-GYN told the nonprofit news site Mississippi Today in September that the metropolitan area around Meridian (pop. 33,816) has six obstetric providers; as recently as five years ago, it had 12 or 13. The Milken Educator Award bestows $25,000 each year on early- to mid-career elementary and secondary schoolteachers and administrators who further excellence in education. The prize is bankrolled by Michael Milken, the 1980s junk-bond king turned philanthropist who, yes, served two years in prison for securities fraud and was later pardoned by Trump. Notwithstanding that colorful backstory, the Milken Educator Award is quite prestigious, and winners always get fussed over in their home states. The 60 honorees chosen in April 2022 included Tyler Hallstedt, a 35-year-old man who taught eighth grade American history in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee (pop. 42,548), a suburb 20 miles east of Nashville. Tyler was handed the prize at a school assembly by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican. We have some of the best schools in America in this state, the governor told the crowd. We have some of the best teachers in America in this state. And you have one of the best teachers in America in this school. Accepting his award, Tyler was a little subdued. Teaching is a difficult job right now, he said. The reason I continue to do it is the relationships with my students are genuinely important to me. Knowing that I get to see them grow and show them that I genuinely care about them, thats what overrides the difficult and sometimes unfair parts of being a teacher. He could have said more, because at that point Tyler was pretty fed up with the states education policies. One month earlier, Lee had signed into law a bill requiring school districts to maintain lists of all teaching materials made available to students, to make these available on the schools website, and to establish a procedure to periodically review the library collection at each school to ensure that [it] contains materials appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials. Among the books subsequently removed from school curricula was Art Spiegelmans Maus. I literally turned my bookshelf around, Tyler told me, so that the books faced the wall. That was his silent protest. He kept the backward-facing bookshelf in his classroom all year. For Tyler, the final straw was a dustup over a video he showed his class a few months after he collected his prize. The video was about the seventeenth-century English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. It was hosted by John Green, author of the 2012 young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars. Green has engaged in some leftish activism, but the video, the third in a series called Crash Course U.S. History, isnt notably didactic. It is, however, irreverent and funny in a manner intended to appeal to adolescents, and if you look closely you can see, on the back of Greens laptop, a sticker that says THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS. The words are borrowed from Woody Guthrie, who, feeling patriotic one day about Americas war against Hitler and Tojo, painted them onto his guitar; factory workers producing war materiel had scribbled these same words onto their lathes. Tyler received an email from a father complaining that the sticker, which you can barely see, was a call for violence. A nonmetaphorical way to use a laptop (or guitar) to kill a fascist does not spring readily to mind, but that wasnt really the point, Tyler explained to me. He just doesnt like John Green. Greens sticker had previously drawn criticism from a Republican state legislator in New Hampshire, and Greens 2005 young adult novel, Looking for Alaska, had been targeted by Moms for Liberty, an influential hard-right group thats active in book-banning campaigns. As a result of that single complaint, Tylers school barred him from showing his students any videos in the Crash Course series, even though hed been using them for years. Eventually, the school backed down and permitted Tyler to show some of (but not all) the Crash Course videos; however, the damage was done. It showed me that just one angry parent has a hecklers veto, Tyler said. Tyler talked to his wife, Delana, and his adult stepson about seeking greener pastures. Delana was a teacher, too. She wasnt particularly eager to move. But she understood what they were up against, and, at the end of the school year, all three moved to Tylers native Michigan, where he took up a post teaching seventh graders in Petoskey, a small resort town on Little Traverse Bay. He got a 35 percent raise, too. I could tolerate the pay, he told me, but the culture wars are what finally convinced me. Things are so much better here. Since January 2021, 18 states have imposed restrictions on how teachers may address the subjects of race and gender, according to Education Weeks Sarah Schwartz. These include most of the Dobbs Fourteen and a few add-ons, including Florida and New Hampshire. According to a 2022 study by the RAND Corporation, legislative action not only accelerated after 2021 but also became more repressive, extending beyond the classroom to restrict professional development plans for teachers. Lets call these teacher-harassing states the Morrison Eighteen, in honor of the late Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, whose The Bluest Eye is number three with a bullet on the American Library Associations 2022 list of books most frequently targeted for removal. (The 1970 novel ranked eighth in 2021 and ninth in 2020.) Taking a tour of the Morrison Eighteen, we find Texas teachers quitting at a rate thats 25 percent above the national average. In Tennessee, the vacancy rate for all public schools is 5.5 percent, compared to a national average of 4 percent. South Carolina has teacher shortages in 17 subject areas this school year, more than any other state. But Governor Ron DeSantiss Florida is the undisputed champ. A 2022 study led by Tuan D. Nguyen of Kansas State University found that Florida had the most teacher vacancies in the country, followed by Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama (all Morrison Eighteen states). Florida also logged the highest number of underqualified teachers. The availability of state-level data is spotty, but teacher shortages in the Morrison Eighteen states would appear to be getting worse. According to Nguyens website, Floridas teacher vacancies increased 35 percent in the school year after his study was published. Plugging in calculations from the Florida Education Association, teacher vacancies rose another 15 percent in the current school year. In Texas, the number of teacher vacancies more than doubled in the year after Nguyens study, and in South Carolina they increased 57 percent. (In fairness, this isnt happening in all 18 states: Teacher shortages declined in Alabama and Mississippi.) The culture-war capital of the United States is Tallahassee, Florida, thanks to DeSantis and his (thus far, frustrated) ambition to win the Republican nomination for president. Dont Say Gay? Check. Dont Say Race? Check. Pee Where Your Birth Certificate Says? Check. No Kids at Drag Shows? Check. No Preferred Pronouns in Class? Check. Go Ahead and Stuff a Permitless Glock Down Your Britches? Check. Florida also limited abortions to the first six weeks, but six weeks wasnt quite reactionary enough to include Florida among the Dobbs Fourteen. Frustration boiled over in Floridas Hernando County last May, when hundreds of people showed up at a school board meeting to protest that a fifth-grade teacher named Jenna Barbee was put under investigation for showing her students Strange World, an animated Disney adventure film from 2022. Barbees offense was that one of the characters happened to be gay. No one is teaching your kids to be gay, a teacher named Alyssa Marano said at the meeting. Sometimes, they just are gay. I have math to teach. I literally dont have time to teach your kids to be gay. After the meeting, 49 teachers, including Marano and Barbee, either quit or retired en masse. Florida is also a recognized national leader in the harassment of college and university professors. Working with his majority-Republican legislature, DeSantis prohibited Floridas public institutions of higher learning from maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs; he effectively ended tenure at public universities by requiring post-tenure reviews every five years; and he seized control of New College, a well-regarded public institution in Sarasota, abolishing, through a handpicked board of trustees, its gender-studies program, pushing out the school president, denying tenure to five faculty members on political grounds, and abolishing gender-neutral bathrooms. Amid this tumult, Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, offered a place to any New College student who wished to transfer, at the same price they were paying the state of Florida. About 12 percent of the New College students applied for transfer, and in the end roughly three dozen students departed sunny Tampa Bay for the chilly Berkshires. About 40 faculty members left with them, and U.S. News & World Report dropped New Colleges ranking from 76 to 100. An August survey sponsored by the American Association of University Professors demonstrated low morale among faculty in the Morrison Eighteen states of Florida, Georgia, and Texas. But nowhere was morale worse than in Florida, where 47 percent said they were seeking positions in another state. Im a professor, one Floridian who called himself Brodman_area11 posted on Reddit in late September. My university is like watching all the rats escape from the sinking ship. My department alone has lost two pediatricians, and we cant seem to be able to recruit any qualified replacements. Its going to be a diaspora. And good riddance to them, Florida Republicans would likely say. But that fails to recognize how important university communities, public and private, are in creating and sustaining a states economic growth. The college, Karin Fischer noted in a recent report by The Chronicle of Higher Education titled College as a Public Good, has become the one institution that remains in cities and rural regions alike long after the factory shuts down or the corporate headquarters pulls up stakes. A college isnt an easy thing to move. And although colleges sometimes go out of business, it doesnt happen a lot. Of the nations 3,600 nonprofit institutions of higher learning, only about five to 12 close each year. We lose more factories than that every day. Consider Rochester, New York. For more than 100 years, Rochester was a company town, and the company was Kodak. Around the time of Kodaks 1992 centennial, the company employed 60,000 people, nearly all of them in Rochester, which meant more than one in 10 people working in the Rochester metropolitan area worked at Kodak. When you included indirect employment, Kodak drove perhaps one-quarter of Rochesters economy. Then came digital photography and bankruptcy. The company is still around, but today its Rochester payroll is approximately 1,300 employees. Rochester is still a thriving company town, but now the company is the University of Rochester. The university employs 31,000 people, which means more than one in 15 people working in the Rochester metropolitan area work for the university, and that doesnt even count the economic impact of its 12,000 students. The most recent unemployment figure for Rochesters metropolitan area was 3.2 percent in September. That was lower than the national average and the average in New York state. At this point in the discussion, someone is bound to ask: If red states are so awful, why are so many people moving there? Its true. Between 2020 and 2022, the five states with the biggest net population growth were all red: Idaho, Montana, Florida, Utah, and South Carolina. The two biggest net population losers, meanwhile, were blue states: New York and Illinois. I just got done telling you what terrible places Oklahoma and Tennessee have become to live in. But Oklahoma and Tennessee are two of the fastest-growing states in the country. How can that be? Part of the answer is that not many of us move at all, so broad migration patterns are not so consequential as you might think. The big migration story is that Americans have grown steadily less geographically mobile for most of the past century. As the Berkeley sociologist Claude S. Fischer pointed out two decades ago, the idea of the United States as a rootless nation, promoted by writers as varied as Vance Packard and Joan Didion, is simply wronga fantasy derived from the historical memory of westward expansion during the nineteenth century. Today, even immigrants tend to stay put once they arrive in the United States. During the past decade, the percentage of the entire population that moved from one state to another in any given year never rose above 2.5 percent, not even during the Covid pandemic. Even movement from one county in a given state to another is about half what it was before 1990. When Americans do move, the motivating factor is typically pursuit of cheaper housing. In a country where decades can go by with no appreciable rise in real median income, it makes sense that if youre going to move, its best to go where its cheaper to live. Red states almost always offer a lower cost of living. If the climates warm, as it is in many red states, so much the better. Conservatives like to argue that people move to red states because the taxes are lower, and its true, they are. But that confuses correlation with cause. In places where the cost of living is low, taxes tend to be low, too. The high-tax states are the more prosperous (invariably blue) ones where its more expensive to live. But theres an exception to the American reluctance to migrate: Joe (and Jane) College. College-educated people move a lot, especially when theyre young. Among single people, the U.S. Census Bureau found, nearly 23 percent of all college-degree holders moved to a different state between 1995 and 2000, compared to less than 10 percent of those without a college degree. Among married people, nearly 19 percent of college-degree holders moved, compared to less than 10 percent of those without a college degree. More recent data shows that, between 2001 and 2016, college graduates ages 22 to 24 were twice as likely to move to a different state as were people lacking a college degree. As much as Republicans may scorn Joe (and Jane) College, they need them to deliver their babies, to teach their children, to pay taxes, and to provide a host of other services that only people with undergraduate or graduate degrees are able to provide. The larger population may prefer to moveon those rare occasions when it does moveto a red state, but the college-educated minority, which moves much more frequently, prefers relocating to a blue state. There are 10 states that import more college graduates than they export, and all of them except Texas are blue. (Im counting Georgia, which is one of the 10, as a blue state because it went for Joe Biden in 2020.) Indeed, the three states logging the largest net population losses overallNew York, California, and Illinoisare simultaneously logging the largest net gains of college graduates. Its a sad sign that our prosperous places are less able than in the pastor perhaps less willingto make room for less-prosperous migrants in search of economic opportunity. But thats the reality. Meanwhile, with the sole exception of Texas, red states are bleeding college graduates. Its happening even in relatively prosperous Florida. And much as Republicans may scorn Joe (and Jane) College, they need them to deliver their babies, to teach their children, to pay taxescollege grads pay more than twice as much in taxesand to provide a host of other services that only people with undergraduate or graduate degrees are able to provide. Red states should be welcoming Kate and Caroline and Tyler and Delana. Instead, theyre driving them away, and thats already costing them dearly. Sixty autumns have passed since the assassination of John F. Kennedy that Friday, Nov. 22, a day that traumatized a generation of children and revealed the impermanence of their innocence. For many, it was their first rendezvous with death. It endured as a vivid remembrance even as other memories lapsed with the passage of age. Many of those children are now grandparents, having lived past the average American life expectancy in 1963. Others, like my father, are not here for the somber milestone. But until his own twilight, my father like any Irish-Catholic child of that period remained haunted by that afternoon, transfixed by what Kennedy meant at that time, and committed to imparting those reminiscences unto his three sons. Those memories delivered as captivating litanies during holidays, car rides, and walks were rooted in his place in time. He grew up on Hazletons South Side, then a culturally sequestered, hilltop city neighborhood in northeastern Pennsylvania. In that section, surrounded by a small urban mosaic of cultures and denominations, Irish Catholicism dictated the temporal lives of families whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers had labored in anthracite mines. St. Gabriels Church, in all its Gothic majesty, towered over the South Sides blocks of half-double homes. His familys own half-double on Birch Street faced St. Gabriels school an imposing brick building, affixed with an elegant cupola where, at age nine, he was seated that November afternoon inside a third-grade classroom. At the time, amid the Cold War, my father and his parochial school contemporaries were conditioned to duck-and-cover drills beneath wooden desks and daily prayers for the conversion of Russia. There was an unspoken tension. Just a year before, on that last Sunday of October, his father driving him home from his maternal grandparents in nearby McAdoo abruptly pulled to the side of Buttonwood Street to hear the radio announcement that the Cuban Missile Crisis had ended. One year later, though, neither father nor son were prepared for the trauma of that Friday, an unseasonably warm afternoon in a city accustomed to early autumn snow. When the Sisters of Mercy nun delivered the news, my father and his classmates along with more than 900 other elementary, junior high and high school students exited the building. It was a spiritual evacuation, filled with shock and paralysis, into the ornate church, where they packed the pews beneath intimidating, suspended bronze lights. They prayed for Kennedys soul. They hoped it wasnt the end of the world. President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy are greeted by an enthusiastic crowd upon their arrival at Dallas Love Field on Nov. 22, 1963, only a few hours before he was assassinated. For my father, the past felt stale and distant. The magazines inside his childhood home his parents were voracious readers of Look and Newsweek were now dated and irrelevant. The cataclysmic event, moreover, overshadowed memories of three months before, when Hazleton garnered international attention. That August, three miners in Sheppton, a nearby patch town, were trapped 300 feet below ground. A massive, two-week drilling mission ensued, with the assistance of billionaire Howard Hughes, leading to the successful rescue of two miners on the day before the Rev. Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream speech (MINE MIRACLE, read the Los Angeles Times front page banner headline; Kennedy had sent a congratulatory telegram). But while Kennedys death relegated that event to another, faraway time, it also marked an unknowing, dark future ahead. That afternoon in St. Gabriels, seated near my father, were older boys who would become draftees and fight in Vietnam. (In 1966, the city would become newsworthy again when one wounded staff sergeant, native Harrison Bell, appeared on one of Lifes most famous magazine covers.) Overall, in that moment, time was suspended. In the solemn days that followed, my father walked downtown with his father, an office furniture and supply salesman, to view the storefront tributes to the president. He was particularly moved by Fierros furniture store, where the front window displayed a lone rocking chair Kennedys preference for chronic back pain next to a table holding two hands clasped in prayer flanked by burning candles. And that Sunday, standing alongside his father at the Knights of Columbus, he watched Jack Ruby shoot and kill Kennedys assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, on live television. The bar erupted in shock. That day, his father bought the Philadelphia Inquirer, which included a massive In Memoriam Kennedy portrait that my father kept and cherished. Such vivid, precise memories exhibited the mind of an Irish youth who understood the deeper meaning of Kennedys murder. For it signaled the end of an innocent world and the beginning of an uncertain one. He witnessed that innocence firsthand during the 1960 campaign. Hed hear his mother and aunts comment on Kennedys handsomeness, while his father and uncles all World War II combat veterans commended his military service. All those years later, he could recite Frank Sinatras High Hopes, the lyrics changed for a campaign jingle. Everyone is voting for Jack. Cause hes got what all the rest lack. My father also comprehended the deeper cultural meaning in a city of Catholic voters. That late October in 1960, Kennedy spoke before 12,000 in downtown Hazleton, an afternoon described by Pierre Salinger, the presidents press secretary, as the wildest day of the campaign. My father, then six, walked with his mother to Broad Street, where she lifted him above her shoulders to watch the candidate speak at a rostrum in front of the Altamont Hotel. Less than two weeks later, on Election Day, my father walked with his father to the polling station. It was a march toward cultural enfranchisement. After all, in 1928, when Al Smith was the first Catholic to be nominated for president by a major political party, my great-grandfather Patrick a miner with a first-grade education took his 13-year-old son to witness burning crosses in the nearby Conyngham Valley, where Protestants protested Smiths candidacy. My grandfather carried this enduring memory. And so, on that day in 1960, he defied the poll workers and brought my father into the voting booth to pull the lever for Kennedy. Hes going to vote for the first Irish-Catholic president, he told the workers. For a lifetime, my father was left with those fragments of an irretrievable past, one he often shared it could make me cry, hed say at the dining room table on Thanksgiving. Now, in my apartment, I look at a bookcase adorned with a framed photo of Kennedy standing in a convertible in downtown Hazleton filled with books about the late president. Many were given as gifts by my father. In the one biography, he inscribed: As a true believer in luck this book will reinforce all that we (Irish) believe in. Remember, good luck is usually stalked by bad luck. So, why isnt the opposite true? May you always remain on the bright side of the moon. Words written by one who understood, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said that Sunday after the death of John F. Kennedy, that the world is going to break your heart. Charles F. McElwee is the editor of RealClearPennsylvania. Follow him on Twitter at @CFMcElwee. This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: John F. Kennedy assassination: Heartache echoes across 60 years Baristas who work in specialty coffee shops, along with hipsters more generally, have been referred to as the shock troops of urban gentrification and its no different in Philadelphia. These servers of artisanal coffee contribute to economic and demographic changes in neighborhoods in two ways. First, they work in coffee shops that appeal to a new wave of middle-class residents who can afford higher rents while at the same time alienating longtime and less economically advantaged residents. Second, these baristas almost invariably live in gentrifying neighborhoods. They dont have much money, but they tend to exude a cool, white middle-class presence. The appearance of specialty coffee shops and baristas signifies that a neighborhood is becoming trendy and more expensive. As a professor of sociology at Temple University who is fascinated with urban artistic subcultures, I recently published a book called Barista in the City with co-authors Keith McIntosh and Ewa Protasiuk. In 2019, we interviewed 61 baristas in a variety of gentrifying neighborhoods in Philadelphia, including Fishtown, Kensington, Point Breeze and West Philadelphia. We wanted to understand why baristas become gentrifiers and how they view their role as agents of change. Privileged but low-wage workers A few baristas whom we interviewed were managers or assistant managers. Some were employed by Starbucks, but the vast majority worked in specialty coffee shops that strive to outdo Starbucks by offering coffee that is slightly more expensive and relatively high in quality, sustainability and fairness to coffee farmers. We classified most of the baristas we interviewed as either artistic baristas or coffee careerists. Artistic baristas work in coffee shops primarily because they offer flexible employment that allows time for low-paid artistic activities, or enables them to finance their undergraduate education at art schools or other academic institutions. Coffee careerists, on the other hand, have a strong interest in artisanal coffee. They aspire to become coffee shop managers, coffee roasters or coffee buyers who travel to other countries in search of the best beans. Both types of baristas were attracted to the relatively relaxed coffee shop environment. They enjoy chatting with their co-workers and favorite customers. Many stated that they have nothing against those who do corporate work but wouldnt feel comfortable in that environment. I would probably like lose my mind in a 9-to-5 kind of thing, an artistic barista explained. I just am not that type of person. I dont like paperwork. I also dont like the feeling of not being able to be myself. I just know I would end up hating it. Most come from middle-class families and have attended, if not graduated, from college. As such, they have rejected relatively well-paid, middle-class positions in favor of an occupation suited to the lifestyle they wish to lead. Living in a gentrifying neighborhood not only enables them to be near their job, but also to be near emerging art and music scenes, thrift shops or vegan eateries. It also provides relatively low-cost housing that is compatible with their budgets. The average barista in our sample earned $23,000 per year in 2019 and typically worked 32 hours per week. A view from Fishtown, a former working-class Philadelphia neighborhood thats been heavily gentrified. peeterv/iStock/Getty Images Plus On being a gentrifier The baristas we interviewed tended to view gentrification as a process that is harmful to lower socioeconomic class and mostly minority populations. A barista who observed affluent university students move into a low-income West Philadelphia neighborhood and displace working-class Black residents stated: Obviously, its terrible. They felt a degree of guilt about being part of this process. But their low-wage employment and need for affordable urban space that is compatible with their lifestyle caused them to feel they have little recourse to make other residential decisions. I understand that Im also part of the problem when it comes to gentrifying an area, one of the baristas said. My boyfriend tends to disagree with me on that. Hes like, Well, where are we going to move, then? And its true. Like, I dont know, we cant afford to live in Rittenhouse Square. I can just barely afford to live in Fishtown at this point. I thought this would be a good area for meeting other creatives. And I dont want to live in the suburbs. Many baristas, however, were ignorant of the role that their coffee shop plays in commercial gentrification. They tend to believe that such shops open only after a neighborhood has already gentrified. As one barista put it: I think coffee shops are a symptom rather than a cause of gentrification. They spring up in neighborhoods that have already been taken over by gentrifiers. Urban scholarship suggests that the relationship is more complicated, with coffee shops being both a cause and effect of neighborhood gentrification. While specialty coffee shops generally present themselves as progressive and inclusive, longtime residents often view them as expensive, culturally alienating and what American sociologist Elijah Anderson referred to as white spaces. Furthermore, these cafes often displace other retail businesses that long-term residents relied on. There are, of course, some specialty coffee shops in Philadelphia that have designed their prices, programming and decor to attract customers and residents that often feel excluded from such shops. These include Uncle Bobbies Coffee & Books in Germantown and Kayuh Bicycles & Cafe in Francisville. Some, like Quaker City Coffee and The Monkey & the Elephant in Brewerytown, employ vulnerable populations such as formerly incarcerated people and former foster youth. But specialty coffee shops designed to appeal to those that often feel excluded are rare, and they employ only a handful of baristas. Blame the barista? The coffee shops that the baristas we interviewed work for are not the main drivers of urban gentrification. Such gentrification is pushed mainly by real estate developers and by local governments seeking to enhance their tax base. Gentrification, furthermore, is fundamentally a result of larger structural forces such as zoning rules that prohibit multi-unit and mixed-use construction, and government acquiescence to NIMBY resistance to high-rise buildings. These forces limit the supply of housing in walkable urban neighborhoods. In Philadelphia, such neighborhoods include, but are not limited to, Chestnut Hill, Germantown, Society Hill, Mount Airy, Strawberry Mansion and Point Breeze. To ease residential gentrification, baristas could relocate. But they are low-wage service workers, and their housing options are limited by affordability issues and the shortage of urban neighborhoods issues that zoning boards, community groups and political leaders have failed to address. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Geoff Moss, Temple University. Read more: NEW YORK Rep. Jamaal Bowman on Wednesday was cleared by a congressional ethics panel of pulling a Capitol Hill fire alarm even as his criticism of Israel fuels a looming Democratic primary challenge in his Westchester County, New York, district. The House ethics panel declined to open any probe into the caught-on-video fire alarm incident, which took place during a chaotic vote on a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open in September. Bowman already pleaded guilty to a minor criminal misdemeanor charge and agreed to pay a fine after being charged by Capitol Police in the incident. The two-term former Bronx middle school principal insists he didnt mean to trigger the alarm and was not trying to delay or disrupt the vote. Republicans dispute Bowmans account and the video appears to show him intentionally pulling the alarm. The ethics decision came as Bowman has renewed his controversial sharp criticism of Israel amid the war with Hamas launched after the Oct. 7 terror attacks. In a new interview, the progressive congressman called on Israel to end the fighting in Gaza and said Americans should focus on pushing Israel to negotiate an independent Palestinian state. Weve been saying for so long that we (support) Israels right to defend itself and self-determination. But we havent been saying the same thing about Palestinians, Bowman said on MSNBC late Tuesday. Israels safety and security is directly connected to Palestinian freedom, safety, and security. Bowman accused Israel of refusing to take any steps towards a two-state solution to the conflict, which would require the Jewish state to negotiate an independent Palestinian land on the West Bank and Gaza. He compared the situation in the West Bank to Jim Crow segregation in the American South and said he was barred from going through an Israeli checkpoint because he isnt Jewish during a fact-finding trip with fellow lawmakers. The claim drew fiery criticism from some Jews and supporters of Israel, who accused Bowman of lying. Jewish checkpoints are as fictional as Jewish space lasers, tweeted fellow Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., a fierce backer of Israel. But the leader of the liberal Jewish group that sponsored the trip said Torres is the one who is confused. Its a fact: there are checkpoints (separating) who can walk where by religion. Other checkpoints keep roads sterile of Palestinians, tweeted Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street. Bowmans position on Israel, along with his position on the far left flank of the Democratic congressional caucus, has fueled talk of a potential primary challenge by Westchester County Executive George Latimer. Latimer, a popular two-term incumbent, is journeying to Israel Sunday for a solidarity trip with other local lawmakers sponsored by the Westchester Jewish Council. I think we need to show more empathy and understanding for what the Jewish community is going through, Latimer told the News, without mentioning Bowman by name. This was a really heinous terrorist attack and its an important time to stand behind Israel. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is already running anti-Bowman ads in the heavily Democratic district, which includes most of the southern part of the county and the cities of Mount Vernon and Yonkers along with a slice of the Bronx. Latimer said he would make a decision about running for Congress in early December. If I do run, I wouldnt be running against an individual, he said. I have a very progressive record on a lot of issues. _________ A new watchdog report is revealing billions of taxpayer dollars could have been at risk of fraud under President Bidens student loan debt relief program. The U.S. Supreme Court shot down the program in June. But as the Biden administration explores other ways to provide debt relief, the watchdogs argue officials need to learn from these lessons. The findings from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed the Education Department wasnt always taking the proper steps to prevent fraud or mistakes in the student debt relief program. Billions of taxpayer dollars could have been at risk for fraud, said Melissa Emrey-Arras, a Director of Education issues for GAO. Emrey-Arras said while the Education Department had some fraud checks in place, they didnt fully implement those checks. ALSO READ: The Department of Education to start program to monitor student loan repayment process A major concern outlined in the report is that the Education Department wasnt always verifying reported income. That matters because eligibility for the program was income-based. An individual had to earn less than $125,000 a year to qualify to student loan debt relief and married couples had to earn less than $250,000. The Department had planned to automatically approve over two million borrowers based solely on self-reported income, said Emrey-Arras. You dont just rely on what people say. You check the information. Washington Correspondent Samantha Manning asked the GAO if based on these findings, is it fair to say if the U.S. Supreme Court didnt strike it down and it did go forward as originally planned, that there would have been a lot of instances of potential fraud or borrowers who were wrongfully given debt relief? That is our concern, Samantha, Emrey-Arras responded. We are very concerned that the Department did not put in place enough preventive measures. In response to the findings, the Education Department argued the student loan debt relief program inherently had an extremely low risk of fraud. ALSO READ: Supreme Court strikes down Biden student loan forgiveness plan It targeted a population of borrowers well known to the Department; the program would have provided debt relief rather than cash payments; and the share of potentially ineligible applicants was very small, wrote the Chief Operating Officer for Federal Student Aid. That said, the Department fully assessed the risks of fraud, identified the risks discussed by GAO, and, as GAO notes, developed and implemented measures to address them. The Education Department also noted that borrowers who were flagged for verification would not be granted full relief until they submitted tax documentation that was reviewed by the Department. The Education Department partially agreed with GAOs recommended changes, which include implementing robust evaluations of fraud risk. The Department is planning a new effort to provide debt relief to borrowers, said Emrey-Arras. While we dont know the specifics of how that will look exactly, the Department is still figuring that out through the rulemaking process. What we do know is the lessons we have learned from the prior program. When we asked the White House for a response to the findings, a spokesperson referred us to the Education Department. VIDEO: Supreme Court strikes down Biden student loan forgiveness plan Republican Celeste Maloy was projected to win a Thanksgiving-week special election for the open U.S. House seat in Utah left vacant by her former boss, Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), according to Decision Desk HQ. She beat out state Sen. Kathleen Riebe (D), the No. 2 Democrat in the Utah Senate, keeping the Utah 2nd Congressional District seat in Republican hands. Maloy and Riebe were vying to fill the House vacancy after Stewart resigned earlier this year, citing concerns for his wifes health. Maloy previously worked for Stewarts congressional office as chief legal counsel. Best Black Friday Deals The Republican candidate was largely expected to win the seat Tuesday, given her link to Stewart and the GOPs success in the state. Former President Trump won Utah in both 2016 and 2020, and voters in the 2nd Congressional District had voted Stewart in to six terms in office. But Maloy has also been faced with some controversy in the state because she did not cast a ballot in the 2020 and 2022 elections, according to reporting from The Salt Lake Tribune. Maloy will join Utahs three other House lawmakers, all Republican, and its two GOP senators in the states congressional delegation. The district spans much of the western and southern parts of the state, plus northern Salt Lake City. Fox 13 South Lake City reported early Tuesday that voter turnout in the special election was notably low, with the race falling just two days before Thanksgiving. Put your frozen turkey in the fridge, then get in your car, drive to your local dropbox, & return your ballot, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson (R) said on X. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Every year, a vast array of new anime are released, but there are plenty of old-school anime that still hold up. Here are five old-school anime that are not only influential and important but also stand the test of time, and theyre worthy of checking out to this day. 1. 'Yu Yu Hakusho' Yu Yu Hakusho still holds up. The early 90s anime hails from legendary mangaka Yoshihiro Togashi. Yu Yu Hakusho follows Yusuke Urameshi, a young delinquent who is always getting into fights at school after he is killed while saving a child from being hit by a car. Yusuke then gets a second chance at life, becoming a spirit detective who investigates paranormal cases. Yu Yu Hakusho is very influential and is propelled by its characters and actions. The odd friend group that forms Yusuke, Kuwabara, Hiei, and Kurama is iconic and laid the groundwork for other iconic groups, like in Togashis Hunter x Hunter and in newer sensations like Naruto. You can see the influence of the paranormal action series in popular modern anime like Bleach and Jujutsu Kaisen. Yusukes brash, no-nonsense demeanor and willingness to throw hands at a moments notice has endeared him to the anime community. New fans are still discovering the series, which will always be in the greatest battle anime conversation. 2. 'Sailor Moon' Sailor Moon is one of the most successful media franchises Japan has ever produced. It is an important and progressive series that features young heroines with distinct personalities who were ahead of their time. The series was created by Naoko Takeuchi, who is married to Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter creator Yoshihiro Togashi. It follows Sailor Moon, a middle school girl named Usagi Tsukino, who can transform into a magical alter ego to combat evil forces threatening Earth. The series chronicles Usagis adventures with her team of magical girls and her development into a young adult. The original version made available in the United States was a hot mess, being a shell of its Japanese version due to heavy censorship and editing. Through fan outcry in North America, the series eventually was given justice, and audiences could finally experience what made the show special. Sailor Moon was a gateway anime for many fans, and since it was so different from the teenage boy-dominated space, it gave many a different way to view anime, leading them to later search out new shows and obsessions. Sailor Moon is still iconic to this day. 3. 'Fist of the North Star' Fist of the North Star is one of the most influential manga and anime series ever. It was a groundbreaking series introducing the never-before-seen mega-masculine, over-the-top violence that made the series jump off the page and screen. The series also inspired the late Kentaro Miura, author of the legendary dark fantasy manga Berserk. Fist of the North Star is set in a post-apocalyptic earth after nuclear war (its aesthetic is Mad Max-esque) and follows Kenshiro, a martial artist who specializes in hitting his opponents vital points (often resulting in very gory, over-the-top deaths). Kenshiro wanders the wasteland, fighting bandits and gangs that are terrorizing innocent people. Fist of the North Star is one of the most influential, successful, and well-regarded anime ever. 4. 'Astro Boy' (1963) Considered one of the first animes, if not the first ever, Astro Boy is a timeless classic. Astro Boy was so big, almost half of Japans population would tune in and watch new episodes. It was one of the first Japanese animated shows to make it to American television. It was and still is a sensation, with new adaptions being made to this day. One of the best anime of 2023, Pluto, is a new take on Astro Boy. The series is set in 2013, when Dr. Tenma, a scientist, loses his only son, Tobio, in a car crash. In his grief, he creates a highly advanced robot in his late sons image. Tenma is dismayed because despite the robot being the most advanced in the world, it will always remain a child and not grow. Tobio, now Atom, joins the circus and becomes a savior-like figure for other robots who want to be peaceful, setting off the adventures of the series. Astro Boy is a classic that has spawned several sequels and films, and the original still holds up. The original Mobile Suit Gundam spawned a franchise that has been active for over 40 years, but it wasnt an immediate success. It had low ratings for a time, but was boosted by reruns and the sale of models of the giant mechas that have become so iconic. The series holds up as the basis for all the following Gundam series, and it also stands on its own as a compelling anime. Mobile Suit Gundam follows a war between the Principality of Zeon and the Earth Federation. The Earth Federation has developed a new giant robot called the RX-78-2 Gundam, piloted by a teenager named Amuro Ray, who accidentally finds the latest technology when the base he lives on is attacked. The series introduces franchise hallmarks, like the teenage pilot, the masked man, and complicated politics. Mobile Suit Gundam is the granddaddy of the mecha genre and has stood the test of time. Richland High School students are in mourning after the death of a senior just days before Thanksgiving. Maria Vasquez Reyes, 17, was killed Tuesday afternoon in a wreck on the Highway 240 bypass off-ramp to Interstate 182, heading east. Our entire Richland School District community is mourning the sudden loss of Richland High School 12th grade student, Maria Vasquez Reyes, Richland Schools Public Information Officer Shawna Dinh told the Herald in a statement. The loss of a young life is always a profound tragedy, and we are committed to providing support to our students, staff and Marias family as we grieve together. We ask for privacy for Marias family during this incredibly difficult time. Washington State Patrol said the Infiniti G35 being driven by Celcilo Romero, 18, left the roadway and rolled while heading toward the I-182 interchange. The wreck left the eastbound lanes closed for several hours and snarled traffic heading into the after-work commute. Benton County Coroner Bill Leach told the Herald that Vasquez Reyes was in the front passenger seat and wearing a seat belt. She died at the scene. A 17-year-old male passenger, who has not been identified, was also hurt in the crash. Romero and the other teen were taken to a local hospital. Romero had severe injuries, and the other teen was treated for minor injuries, WSP Trooper Chris Thorson told the Herald. Romero could be facing charges, according to the WSP crash report. Thorson said that state patrol investigators are interviewing multiple witnesses and the surviving passenger to come to determine what happened before a charging recommendation is sent to prosecutors. He said it may be a week or two before the investigation is wrapped up. This was the second fatal wreck on Highway 240 in the past week. The other happened about 17 miles north of Richland Sunday morning. The driver in that crash, Jorge Procopio Marcelino, 22, is in the Benton County jail on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter. Investigators believe he was drunk and possibly on depressants when he crashed his Toyota Scion around 2:30 a.m., killing one of his passengers, Florentino Jacinto Santos, 30, of Mattawa. Rishi Sunak rejected an annual cap on overall migration, allies of Suella Braverman claim, as the numbers are set to hit a new record of up to 700,000. The sacked former home secretary put forward a proposal for an annual quota, approved each year by Parliament, as part of a package of measures to meet the Conservatives manifesto pledge to reduce net migration. The disclosure comes as official figures on Thursday are expected to confirm net migration is at its highest level since comparable records began in 1980. Internal Home Office forecasts have predicted net migration, the number entering the UK minus those leaving, hit 700,000 for the year ending June 2023, beating the previous high of 606,000 recorded last year. Other experts suggest it may be lower at 500,000 but, even with the more conservative estimate, that would still set a two-year record of 1.1 million, which is double pre-Brexit levels. Official figures are expected to show net migration is at the highest level since records began - BEN STANSALL/AFP On Wednesday, the Office for Budget Responsibility revised its projections for net migration upwards by 150,000 because of the continuing surge in foreign workers and students. It projected next year net migration would still be at 410,000 in the run-up to the general election. Allies of the former home secretary said she put forward the annual quota for migration in a letter last November to Number 10 as one of a series of proposals to reduce net migration to its pre-Brexit total of 226,000. A source said: It was rejected and didnt get beyond the concept stage. It came a month after Mrs Braverman told the Tory conference that it was her unfiltered, unvarnished, unapologetic belief the Government should meet its manifesto pledge to cut net migration below 226,000 and that her ultimate aspiration was to reduce it to tens of thousands as David Cameron once promised. Mrs Braverman and her deputy Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, proposed a cap on visas for foreign care workers and a ban on their right to bring dependents as part of a drive to get care home businesses to recruit and train up UK domestic workers. The UK issued 282,742 health and care visas in the year to June, 172 per cent more than the previous year. More than half of those 151,774 were handed to the dependents of health and care workers, almost three times the rate of the previous year. Backdoor to residency It is understood that Number 10 is resisting a cap but is said to have proposed a compromise on dependents that would limit care workers to bringing in only one relative. Mrs Braverman and Mr Jenrick advocated scrapping the two-year graduate visa for foreign students to remain in the UK once they finish their degree studies which she claimed was a backdoor to residency. However, this has been blocked amid fears it could deter able foreign students. They also proposed axeing the shortage occupation list, under which companies can pay foreign workers 20 per cent lower than the going rate in roles where there is deemed to be a shortage of workers. The Governments migration advisers have warned it is being used by bosses to recruit cheaper foreign workers. The Government is, however, expected to go ahead with plans to raise the minimum salary threshold that foreign workers must earn to qualify for a work visa in the UK from 26,200 to more than 30,000. But it is thought unlikely that the Government will announce the changes on Thursday when the Office for National Statistics reveals the latest net migration figures. It is expected to provoke demands from Tory MPs for urgent action to reduce the numbers. 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. MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WKRN) A 44-year-old man died after he was shot multiple times by a Murfreesboro police officer during a robbery investigation Wednesday morning. The shooting happened around 9:15 a.m. in a parking lot in the 400 block of North Thompson Lane. WATCH: Police briefing following officer-involved shooting in Murfreesboro (Photo: WKRN) (Photo: WKRN) (Photo: WKRN) (Photo: WKRN) (Photo: WKRN) (Courtesy: Murfreesboro Police Department) (Photo: WKRN) (Photo: WKRN) The incident began as officers were responding to a robbery of an armored truck at an ATM. Murfreesboro police spokesperson Larry Flowers said the suspect approached the driver of the armored truck and attempted to rob him. The driver produced a weapon and the suspect then ran into Jasons Deli. The suspect then attempted to rob the restaurant, which is when an officer arrived and demanded the man show his hand repeatedly, according to Flowers. Suspect sought, 2 in custody after robbery at Murfreesboro ATM The Murfreesboro officer then shot the man with his service weapon multiple times after repeated demands. He was taken to a hospital where he died. Murfreesboro police cannot confirm is the suspect was armed. The scene is secured and six employees inside the restaurant were safely evacuated, according to Murfreesboro police. The officer has been placed on routine administrative leave with pay pending the outcome of the investigation. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has been called to assist with the investigation. TBI agents are working to independently determine the series of events leading to the shooting, including collecting evidence and conducting interviews, according to a release. | READ MORE | Latest headlines from Murfreesboro and Rutherford County No additional information was immediately released. The investigation is ongoing. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRN News 2. The US has two high-speed trains, including the 125-mph Brightline and the 150-mph Amtrak Acela. Brightline rides along Florida's East Coast while the Acela runs along the US' Northeast Corridor. After riding on both trains, I think Amtrak is more representative of high-speed train travel. Brightline opened in September as only the second high-speed rail network in the US, cruising along 235 miles of track between Orlando and Miami at 125 mph. Amtrak's Acela train is faster at up to 150 mph, bolting along the 457-mile Northeast Corridor between Washington, DC, and Boston. I recently rode on both to see how they compare. While I'm happy Brightline has opened to give locals and tourists more options along Florida's East Coast, I think Acela actually meets the expectations of a high-speed train. My two recent high-speed rail trips were from Orlando to Miami on Brightline and Philadelphia to Stamford, Connecticut, on Amtrak. A selfie of the author boarding the Brightline in Orlando. Taylor Rains/Insider The Amtrak covered 115 miles, while Brightline covered 235 miles. The one-way Brightline ticket was more expensive at $79. Amtrak only cost $40, but the ride was half the distance of the one in Florida. Boarding the Acela train in Philadelphia. Taylor Rains/Insider My Brightline ticket was "smart", the lowest fare, which comes with two carry-ons and a reserved seat. I got similar inclusions in business class, the lowest fare on Acela. Station lounge access and onboard food and drinks cost extra in both cases. Boarding both trains was seamless, though I did have to clear a basic security check for Brightline. Security at the Brightline station. Taylor Rains/Insider I had to scan myself and my bags before boarding the Brightline in Orlando, though it was much less invasive than airport security as I didn't have to take off my shoes or my headphones. For Amtrak, I just walked on. Onboard, I found a few distinct differences. But both were overall perfectly comfortable, with plenty of legroom and big tray tables. The legroom onboard Brightline's "smart" car. Taylor Rains/Insider Both were easily better than cramped airplane seats. I particularly loved Acela for its big, plush seats and the included footrest. Onboard the Amtrak Acela. Taylor Rains/Insider I also liked the darker color scheme inside the Acela, as well as the big and secure overhead luggage bins. Brightline lacked a footrest, and the seats were slimmer. Acela's business class (left) and Brightline's "smart" car (right). Taylor Rains/Insider A footrest can be a game-changer on long rides and something I definitely look for on trains. However, I did appreciate the power port being easily accessible to every seat on Brightline. The power outlets and USB ports located in the Brightline seat. Taylor Rains/Insider Brightline has several power ports both under the seats and on the back of them. Amtrak's power ports are located under the window, so they are harder to reach from the aisle seat. The power outlets and footrest on Acela. Taylor Rains/Insider I always try to get a window seat when riding on the Amtrak for this reason alone, especially if I'm working and need to power my laptop. If I get stuck with an aisle like I did this ride, I make sure to board with my laptop already fully charged. But I also don't mind reaching over my window seat neighbor if I have to; it's just an inconvenience. train is considered high-speed when it travels at 124 mph or more. Onboard the Amtrak Acela. Taylor Rains/Insider Acela's plush seats, footrest, and curtains made the experience more comfortable compared to Brightline. Not only was the Acela more comfortable, but it actually felt "high-speed." Amtrak. Amtrak I think Acela is more of a true "high-speed" train compared to Florida's Brightline. A train is considered high-speed by most organizations when it travels at around 125 mph or more. There are world-famous bullet trains in places like Japan and China. Getty Images The world's fastest high-speed trains travel at over 250 mph. This means Brightline's 125-mph train barely makes the cut. Travelers boarding Brightline. Jeff Greenberg / Contributor/Universal Images Group Editorial It only reaches that speed during the section between Orlando and West Palm Beach. But it still is technically high-speed. And the travel time doesn't shave off that much time compared to driving. Coach number four on the Brightline. Taylor Rains/Insider According to Google Maps, the drive between the stations at midday on a Tuesday is about three hours and 20 minutes 20 minutes shorter than Brightline. Granted, the train may be more convenient when rush hour traffic clogs Florida's I-95. Heavy traffic along I-95 in Miami, Florida. Joe Raedle/Getty Images Traffic can make the drive last up to four hours, according to Google. So, Brightline may be more convenient than driving, especially for those who hate battling traffic or prefer to pass the time with Netflix or a book. However, I don't think the $79 is worth taking the Brightline on a regular basis. The ticket kiosks at the Brightline station in Orlando. Taylor Rains/Insider You also have to take into account commute time to and from each station, parking time, and getting to the train early for boarding. Brightline does serve cities like West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale for a lot cheaper, though. Onboard the Brightline train in Florida. Taylor Rains/Insider I can imagine the $15 tickets between Fort Lauderdale and Miami are a useful alternative to driving But those routes also don't cut out time like the Acela does. Amtrak Acela. Michael715/Shutterstock.com The Brightline takes 41 minutes between the Fort Lauderdale and Miami train stations driving takes 35-50 minutes, according to Google. In Amtrak's case, a short hop from Washington, DC ,to Baltimore typically takes about an hour or more to drive, while the Acela only takes about 30 minutes for as little as $17. Amtrak's ultra-speedy Acela got me from Philadelphia to Stamford in about two hours. A selfie of the author on Amtrak. Taylor Rains/Insider This included a stop at New York's Moynihan Train Hall station. This was significantly faster than if I drove, especially through New York's congested streets and highways. The Empire State Building and Tourist District are seen while Traffic jam is reported along the route to New York City on August 17, 2022, in Jersey City, New Jersey. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images According to Google Maps, driving could take about two and a half hours if the conditions were perfect no weather, no traffic, just open road. However, that combination is nearly impossible in New York City. Not only would traffic add up to one and a half hours of extra driving, I don't even want to drive in NYC if I can avoid it. Apartment blocks in Manhattan. Thomas Trutschel/Getty Images I grew up in Florida. I know how to drive on those roads and battle the chaos of I-95. But that's child's play compared to Manhattan. NYC roads are congested, the lanes are narrow, and everyone is aggressive. It's more stressful than it's worth sometimes. Because of this, I think Acela better fits the bill of a time-saving high-speed train. And the ride was only $40. Riding on the Amtrak Acela from Philadelphia to Stamford. Taylor Rains/Insider I think the $40 ride was maybe a lucky break, but I bought it only a few days before departure, so there are opportunities to get cheap seats. Granted, I know the ride can cost over $200 one-way and even more on the longest route between DC and Boston. Inside the Amtrak station in Philadelphia. Taylor Rains/Insider First class seats can reach over $400, which includes a more comfortable setting compared to business class, as well as complimentary meals and drinks. But the time-savings make the sometimes hefty price tag of Amtrak more reasonable. Amtrak's newest Acela cars on a test run. Amtrak The DC to Boston train ride takes about six hours and 50 minutes. And that's with the Acela not even reaching its full speed potential on most parts of the route due to the old and fragile infrastructure. According to Google Maps, the drive time at noon on a Tuesday takes about eight hours. Five o'clock traffic could add another two hours. Overall, I felt Acela better represented what I envision of high-speed rail, though it's still leagues behind countries in Europe and Asia. First class seats on a 186-mph Thalys train in Europe. Taylor Rains/Insider Brightline was nice, comfortable, and convenient, but I wouldn't consider it a faster option unless there's an accident on I-95. Acela, on the other hand, easily shaved off driving time. But it still has a long way to go to catch up to the robust rail networks in Europe and Japan, where people regularly train over driving or flying. It's more realistic to opt for the Acela over driving if I'm in the Northeast. If I still lived in Florida, I'd nearly always choose my car. Brightline. Courtesy of Brightline I also have to take into account traveling around my destination city. If I'm in Northeast cities like NYC, Philadelphia, DC, or Boston, there's ample transport to get around without a car. On the other hand, Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach are car-reliant, and I'd need to rely on the bus, a friend, or a rideshare to get around. At that point, I might as well rent a car anyway. Read the original article on Insider Romesh Ranganathan has opened up on being "racially abused" during his time at private school. The British-Sri Lankan comedian candidly opened up on difficulties during his childhood during a chat with the Radio Times Podcast, revealing he faced racist abuse and was seen as an "outsider" by his classmates. "My parents had come from Sri Lanka and they were obsessed with me going to private school," he said. "I didnt enjoy my time there. I was a bit of an outsider. Without getting too dark, I was racially abused. Eamonn M. McCormack - Getty Images Related: Taskmaster's Rhod Gilbert celebrates first clear cancer scan "So, I wasnt that bothered about leaving. I went to a state school, had a great time and went on to teach at that same school which is where I met my wife." After a teaching career, Romesh went on to carve out a successful career as a comedian and presenter, becoming the host of The Weakest Link and appearing alongside fellow comedian Rob Beckett in their own series Rob and Romesh. The pair co-hosted this year's BAFTA TV Awards, where Romesh opened up on an embarrassing interaction with Luther star Idris Elba. BBC Related: Sean Lock set to be honoured by Channel 4 for Stand Up To Cancer 2023 "I met Idris Elba at the first BAFTAs I came to and I got very starstruck around him. I tried to do banter and it went pretty badly," he told Radio Times. Rob helped Romesh re-enact the interaction, with Rob pretending to be Idris and questioning Romesh on why he was in attendance at the ceremony. Romesh ended the chat by saying that he "loved Luther", to which Rob revealed Idris simply replied "Right. Thanks." "And he didnt say anything else?" Rob asked his co-host, to which Romesh replied: "No, I mean he didnt say exactly the things that you said." You Might Also Like DES MOINES, Iowa Evangelical power broker Bob Vander Plaats endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday, handing the GOP presidential candidate his second major endorsement this month in Iowa. "I am thrilled to throw my personal endorsement and support behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida," Vander Plaats said in an interview on Fox News. Vander Plaats is considered a kingmaker in Iowa. He worked on former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabees 2008 campaign when Huckabee won the GOP caucuses that year. In 2012 and 2016, Vander Plaats endorsed former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, respectively both of whom won the first-in-the-nation contest. DeSantis welcomed the endorsement, saying on X that Vander Plaats' support "tells Iowans they can trust me to fight and win for them." Evangelicals and born-again Christians are a key voting group in Iowa, having accounted for about two-thirds of Republican voters in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, according to an NBC News entrance poll that year. Cruz outperformed Donald Trump by 12 percentage points among evangelical voters on his way to a narrow victory in Iowa, the survey found. On the campaign trail in New Hampshire just hours before Vander Plaats endorsement, DeSantis said hes winning over Iowa evangelicals. I think that if you saw that Family Leader forum, clearly his folks there gravitated to me. I dont think theres any question about that, DeSantis said, referring to a candidate event this month hosted by Vander Plaats organization. DeSantis added that he has a good relationship with Vander Plaats and that Bob has been somebody that has been very vocal about Donald Trump is not going to be the way forward. Vander Plaats relationship with Trump has been frosty since the run-up to the Iowa caucuses in 2016, when the two regularly exchanged barbs in heated Twitter exchanges. Eight years on, they are still at each others throats. Just hours before he endorsed DeSantis, Vander Plaats criticized Trump on X. Responding to a video posted by the Trump campaign, showing the former president excoriating Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds for endorsing DeSantis, Vander Plaats wrote: While disappointing Exceptionally revealing. #LookHigher #ThinkBigger #ExpectMore when it comes to selecting our next president. #ChooseWell2024. The Trump campaign, in response to DeSantis' recent endorsements in Iowa, said, "Kim Reynolds endorsement wont save Ron DeSanctus, and neither will Vander Plaat$ endorsement." Signs have been pointing toward Vander Plaats endorsing DeSantis for months now. Moderating a conversation among DeSantis and two of his Republican opponents entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley Vander Plaats asked each to address what he said were their biggest hurdles in the eyes of Iowa voters hed spoken with. For Haley, he said it was the perception among conservatives that she was in favor of weakened abortion restrictions. Ramaswamy, a practicing Hindu, was pressed about his faith. DeSantis, however, faced an easier line of questioning. Why is this your time? Vander Plaats asked him, adding that polls have often found that DeSantis is the second-choice candidate among Trump supporters. Vander Plaats apparent backing of DeSantis at the event wasnt lost on some audience members. Josh Rouser, 32, of Waverly, said after he attended the candidate forum that while Haley and Ramaswamy were well-received, it did feel like it was the DeSantis show tonight, noting that his supporters were by far the most vocal. DeSantis crossed paths with Vander Plaats twice in the week leading up to Tuesdays endorsement. The day after the Family Leader forum, Vander Plaats delivered remarks at a fundraising gala for the anti-abortion rights group Pulse Life Advocates. Ladies and gentlemen, in the next couple of months we have an opportunity to choose and to choose well a champion for the sanctity of human life, he said in remarks that stopped just short of an endorsement. Speaking to NBC News in July, Vander Plaats gave a glowing review of DeSantis performance as governor of Florida. Hes showing a lot of signs of hes playing to win. And so, I think hes a very, very real candidate to be an Iowa caucus winner, he said at the time, while offering the White House hopeful some advice. The closer he can marry himself to Governor Reynolds, emulate Governor Reynolds, that would bode very, very well for him, he said, referring to Iowas popular second-term Republican governor. That marriage has since been made official, politically speaking. After he appeared alongside Reynolds on the campaign trail at least eight times since he announced his White House bid in May, DeSantis secured her endorsement at a rally in Des Moines this month. Reynolds, who broke with the states tradition of the governors remaining politically neutral before the caucuses, painted DeSantis as a proven leader with a strong record in Florida that could be reproduced nationally. The DeSantis campaign, with significant help from the super PAC Never Back Down, has visited 98 of Iowas 99 counties a statewide tour colloquially known as the Full Grassley, after Chuck Grassley, the senior U.S. senator who popularized the practice. On paper, DeSantis has made significant strides in running a traditionally successful Iowa campaign by racking up influential endorsements and dedicating significant time and financial resources to the state. But it remains unclear whether the playbook will be enough to overcome Trumps commanding lead in the polls. An NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey last month found DeSantis significantly trailing Trumps commanding 43% support, with DeSantis and Haley tied at 16%. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Detectives on Tuesday were investigating two armed robberies this week at Rosevilles Westfield Galleria mall that targeted victims with high-value items in the parking lot. The Roseville Police Department urged shoppers to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity as Black Friday approaches and the busy holiday shopping season begins. The two robberies involving armed suspects occurred over the past two days at the mall, said Lt. Chris Ciampa, a police spokesman. In both robberies, the victims were approached in the parking area, and high-value items were targeted, Ciampa said in a news release Tuesday evening. He said detectives were investigating whether there is a possible connection between the two armed robberies. The Police Department is not releasing any further details about the robberies, including when the robberies occurred, how many suspects were involved in each robbery, what was stolen in each robbery, what type of weapons were used in the robberies or any suspect descriptions. Ciampa said the Police Department was intentionally not releasing any more details about the robberies at this time in hopes of protecting the integrity of the investigation and catching the robbery suspects. We are actively investigating these incidents and are committed to ensuring the safety and security of all visitors and shoppers, especially as we enter the holiday season, Ciampa said in the news release. He said detectives are following all leads and coordinating with neighboring law enforcement agencies. The Police Department in the coming weeks will increase police presence and enforcement efforts in and around the Galleria mall. This increase in police presence is part of our proactive approach to ensure a secure shopping environment during the holiday season, Ciampa said in the news release. Our officers will be highly visible and vigilant in deterring and responding to any criminal activities. The Police Department encouraged holiday shoppers to be vigilant, report suspicious activity to mall security or police and avoid displaying high-value items. Here is a roundup of recent incidents and announcements from Ventura County agencies: Guilty plea in 2018 murder Oxnard resident Osvaldo Hernandez, 24, pleaded guilty last week to one count of second-degree murder for a 2018 shooting that killed Robert De La Cerda, 39. Hernandez also pleaded guilty Thursday to three counts of robbery as well as attempted robbery and unlawful possession of a firearm. He admitted to several special allegations, including that he used a gun when killing the victim, the Ventura County District Attorney's office said in a news release. Hernandez had been out on bail after a concealed handgun arrest when he committed a string of robberies on June 27, 2018, prosecutors said. Between 3:45 a.m. and 6:09 a.m., he carried out a series of robberies at various locations in Oxnard, once brandishing a knife and once flashing a handgun. As it happened: Oxnard man ordered to stand trial in gang-motivated murder During the fourth and final incident that morning, Hernandez approached De La Cerda and another man parked in their car. He pointed a gun and demanded their property. De La Cerda stepped out of the car and exchanged words with the gunman. Hernandez fired one shot, killing De La Cerda, before driving off. Osvaldo Hernandez Oxnard Police Department officers arrested Hernandez the following month. Hernandez is scheduled to be sentenced on the morning of Jan. 25 in room 11 of Ventura County Superior Court. He is expected to receive 15 years-to-life plus 17 years 8 months state prison, prosecutors said. Teen arrested in Santa Paula stabbings Police arrested a 17-year-old male over the weekend on suspicion of stabbing two people during a fight Friday afternoon near Santa Paula High School. The two male victims, one 18 and one 17, both sustained moderate stab wounds and were transported to a local hospital, Santa Paula's interim Police Chief Don Aguilar said Tuesday. Their injuries were not life-threatening, he said. The incident occurred around 3:45 p.m. Friday on Santa Paula Street, near where it intersects with Sixth Street. One of the department's resource officers with the nearby high school was the first to respond, followed by patrol officers and a team of detectives. Detectives eventually tracked down the suspect and arrested him Saturday on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. He was booked into the county's juvenile hall facility. Neither the suspect nor the victims attended Santa Paula High, Aguilar said. Police are still investigating the actions of the victims prior to the stabbing. Neither victim was carrying a weapon, authorities said in a news release. Anyone with information about the incident can call Detective Hector Ramirez at 805-525-4474, ext. 273. Items may be updated. Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @isaiahmurtaugh and @vcsschools. You can support this work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America. This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Roundup: Oxnard man pleads guilty to 2018 murder, more news Rudy Giuliani, who is already going broke, has been sued again by the accounting firm he hired to get him through his most recent divorce. Giuliani hired BST & Co. CPAs, which is based in upstate New York, in 2018 to value his business assets during his divorce from Judith Nathan. The firm filed a lawsuit on Monday stating that Giuliani never paid them the $10,000 retainer they agreed on. BST is also seeking $15,000 in legal fees. BST sent multiple letters to Giuliani over the past five years requesting that he pay up, according to the lawsuit. Giuliani allegedly ignored every single one. The BST lawsuit is just the latest accusing Giuliani of failing to pay his debtsand he could be on the hook for much, much more money. Several of Giulianis former lawyers, including his longtime attorney Robert Costello, have sued Giuliani for failing to pay their legal fees. Giuliani has begun representing himself in court to save some cash. The man once affectionately known as Americas mayor is scrambling to find the money for all his legal fees and even listed his Manhattan apartment for sale in July. In August, after he was indicted in Georgia, Giuliani asked his social media followers to donate to his defense fund. He also flew to Mar-a-Lago to beg his boss Donald Trump to pay him for working as Trumps personal attorney. That didnt work, but Trump did agree to host a fundraiser dinner for Giuliani. Entry cost $100,000 a plate, but Giuliani paid Costello just $10,000 in September. In addition to the racketeering charges in Georgia, Giuliani was ordered to pay more than $130,000 to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The two women served as 2020 election workers in Georgia, and Giuliani falsely accused them for months of fraud. Freeman and Moss are also seeking between $15.5 million and $43 million from Giuliani for alleged defamation. Meanwhile, Nathan says Giuliani owes her more than $260,000 for her country club memberships, condominium fees, and health care as part of their divorce settlement. Giuliani narrowly avoided jail time over that lawsuit in December. And one of Giulianis former associates sued him in May, accusing him of promising to pay her a $1 million annual salary but instead raping and sexually abusing her over two years. Pennsylvanias highest court handed a victory Wednesday to the states highway agency, finding it has the authority to pursue a potential suspension of a major construction contractor based in Centre County after it was accused of millions in theft from employees. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed a prior statewide appeals court ruling in a unanimous 37-page opinion that marked a victory for the state Transportation Department. In a written statement, PennDOT championed the decision as a win for workers rights, as well as its ability to hold contractors accountable. Messages left with attorneys that represent Glenn O. Hawbaker Inc. were not immediately returned. PennDOTs partnership with the construction industry is critical to delivering a better, safer transportation system and we must continue ensuring that all contractors follow the same rules, the agency wrote in a statement. This is a good day for Pennsylvania and continues this Administrations track record of championing workers rights and opportunities, while ensuring a level playing field in procurement. PennDOT moved in 2021 to prevent the Hawbaker company from doing state work for up to three years after it pleaded no contest to theft in a case that was the largest of its kind. The company was accused of illegally diverting millions of dollars and other benefits from its workers to pad its profits, undercut competitors and pay for internal projects and company bonuses. It agreed to pay more than $20 million to workers and submitted to oversight by a corporate monitor at its own expense to ensure compliance with state and federal laws. In exchange, state prosecutors agreed to not bring criminal charges against Hawbaker or any of its shareholders, officers and employees. The business is one of the top employers in Centre County, one that booked $1.7 billion in state transportation construction contracts between 2003 and 2018. It has been pre-qualified to bid on PennDOT projects for decades, a status the agency sought to suspend because of the conviction. The company received temporary relief from a statewide appeals court, but the states high court reversed that decision after a review of what justices described as a procedurally and substantively complex matter. Its unclear when PennDOTs administrative hearing, which could lead to Hawbakers suspension, may be scheduled. It is our expectation that PennDOT will discharge its adjudicatory functions in good faith by allowing Hawbaker to raise and develop every issue it chooses to advance and by giving each issue its due consideration, so that an adequate record is created should appellate review become necessary, Justice Kevin Brobson wrote on behalf of all six justices. UK white paper smears Chinas growing role in world devt with prejudice 08:38, November 22, 2023 By Deng Xiaoci ( Global Times The British government's latest white paper on aid has explicitly raised the so-called concerns over China's growing role in international development, while promising that the UK will resist the risks China "poses to open societies and good governments." Such a move to characterize China as a "challenge" with profound prejudice is a blunt smearing and desperate effort by the former colonial power to maintain its global influence and tackle its own internal social and political divisions, Chinese analysts said on Tuesday. The white paper smeared the Chinese development model with accusations on its drawbacks including "lower standards and limited transparency," while underscoring the necessity for the UK to robustly challenge China, especially when British interests are endangered by China's significant financial role, according to the Guardian's report on the white paper, a brainchild of British development minister Andrew Mitchell,. The white paper, published on Monday UK local time, claims that "between 2008 and 2021, China made $498 billion in loan commitments, equivalent to 83 percent of World Bank sovereign lending during the same period," adding that "its increased assertiveness in seeking to shape the international order makes it essential for us to navigate the challenges that come with its evolving development role." Li Guanjie, a research fellow with the Shanghai Academy of Global Governance and Area Studies under the Shanghai International Studies University, found the hostile tone in the text "not surprising at all, as it marks simply a continuation of the China policy that the current conservative government of the UK adopts." British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described China as the "biggest challenge of our age to global security and prosperity," after the Group of Seven (G7) summit in May. And before that, Sunak made similar remarks, calling China "the biggest state threat" and "a systemic challenge for the world order," during an NBC Interview in March. Li Guangjie told the Global Times on Tuesday that such hostile remarks against China are desperate attempts to tackle its own crisis, showing that the previous colonial empire is deeply troubled by its waning global influence and has met problems in positioning itself in the current world, especially after the turmoil of Brexit. The white paper indicates that the Sunak administration, with the recent appointment as foreign secretary of former British prime minister David Cameron, famous for his pragmatic China approach, still lacks determination to drive China-UK relations on the right track and dig them out of the current low tide, observers said. It also suggested that the Sunak administration is in dire need of establishing an external stimulus to unite domestic forces and the Conservative Party, which is riven by internal divisions, as well as create headlines to boost public support in order to win the next general election, Li Guangjie noted. Recent polling showed that as of early November, 47 percent of British adults would vote for the Labour Party in a general election, compared with 23 percent who would vote for the ruling Conservative Party. "The goal of this white paper from the British government is to ensure that Anglo-Saxon nations continue to play a dominant role in the global development pattern, with intolerance toward any non-Anglo-Saxon nation assuming a leading position in the development pattern. Fundamentally, it's a matter of leadership in world affairs. The UK finds itself unable to accept China playing a leading role in world affairs," Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Tuesday. Opposing such an obsolete imperialist mentality, Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the UN, called on Monday for expanding the voice of developing countries in global governance, at an open debate on promoting sustainable peace through common development at the UN headquarters in New York City. Peace, development and human rights are the three pillars of the United Nations, among which development is the master key to solving all problems and the foundation for promoting peace and safeguarding human rights, the Chinese envoy said. Luo Zhaohui, chairman of the China International Development Cooperation Agency, said in his address to the 2023 Tongzhou Global Development Forum on Saturday that "I can proudly say that China is the developing country that has implemented the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the fastest. We have eliminated absolute poverty, achieved the SDG's poverty reduction target 10 years ahead of schedule, and fully built a moderately prosperous society." "As the world's largest developing country, China's rapid economic development is in itself a major contribution to global development. At the same time, it has accumulated valuable experience for other countries in implementing the SDGs, providing a feasible and replicable practical reference for the world to achieve modernization," Luo remarked. The UK might also intend to use the white paper as a reminder for the US, as relations between China and the US have significantly warmed after the leaders of two countries held a summit in San Francisco last week, observers said. As the UK considers that its foreign policy and views on global landscape are more advanced that those of the US, the UK may tend to release a white paper like this to remind the US that Beijing is still a threat or competitor, so as to lead or mislead the US, amid warming ties between Washington and Beijing, Li Guanjie said. Also the "limited coordination through the multilateral system, especially of bilateral instruments like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)," is also mentioned in the white paper among listed drawbacks of China's growing role in global development. When asked to what extent the white paper could impact third parties around the globe, Chinese observers noted that most would keep their distance from such a malicious defamation of China's role in global development, especially those who have participated in and benefit from the China-proposed BRI. (Web editor: Tian Yi, Liang Jun) Declaring her preference for "something light and comfortable", an Israeli mother-of-four browsed through a collection of pistols in a Jerusalem gun store, which appeared to be experiencing a business boom in wartime. Applications for gun permits have soared across Israel since October 7, when Hamas gunmen stormed through the highly militarised border with the Gaza Strip, with many civilians having to defend themselves while waiting for the army to respond. The worst-ever attack against the country has shattered any sense of security Israelis had, and civilians have rushed to arm themselves against future threats as the most right-wing government in Israel's history loosens gun licensing norms. "Every time my children play in the park I think 'what will I do if someone comes to attack us?'" Riki Tal, 31, told AFP, picking up an unloaded pistol from the collection at the counter. "I want something light and comfortable in my hand," the school teacher said, placing her finger on the trigger, "for self-protection". The basement store forbade photography and declined interview requests but the scrum at the counter was testament to the surging interest in weapons among ordinary civilians. A mother-daughter pair counted crisp bank notes to pay for a Glock and a man wearing a Jewish kippah yanked up his shirt to feel a Smith & Wesson tucked into his jeans. A shelf behind the saleswoman at the counter was lined with souvenirs such as replica bullets and a grenade next to a bevy of figurines with pictures of Israel's dead enemies: Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Moamer Kadhafi. One was missing, Tal joked: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. - 'Gun in the house' - More than 236,000 Israelis have applied for gun permits since the outbreak of hostilities with Hamas, the same as all the preceding 20 years combined, firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said last week. "Guns save lives," he said, urging citizens to "go arm yourself". Ben-Gvir sought to fast-track the once-lengthy licensing process before the October 7 attacks, which killed about 1,200 people across southern Israel and sparked a military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Since the attacks, the criteria has been broadened to make more Israelis eligible for permits and the process further expedited with applicants now required to undergo a phone interview instead of appearing in-person before licensing authorities. "I never saw a reason to have a weapon but after October 7 we said: 'Okay, we need a gun in the house'," a lawyer in the central city of Modiin, who has applied for permits along with his wife. While individual knife attacks and shootings are woefully familiar in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said the unprecedented Hamas raid had prompted his neighbours to invest in security upgrades amid heightened fears of large-scale attacks. His neighbour, he said, has not only purchased a gun but also built a secret bomb shelter, its entrance hidden behind a bookshelf, "just like the movies". - 'Push the state' - There is a visible uptick in people publicly carrying firearms in Jerusalem and other cities -- pushing prams or walking into cafes with assault rifles dangling over their shoulders, or with handguns in holsters on their hips. Many are military reservists but they also include civilians who are part of volunteer security squads set up and armed by the government since the hostilities erupted. Campaign groups such as Gun Free Kitchen Tables (GFKT) say the proliferation of firearms in the hands of civilians could lead Israel down the same path as the United States, which is grappling with spiking gun violence and mass shootings. "We need to push the state to provide security instead of delegating it to citizens," a GFKT staff member told AFP, adding the relaxed norms do not weed out people with a history of domestic violence or substance abuse. "Guns do not make us safer," she added, requesting her name be withheld to prevent online harassment. Back in Riki Tal's home in the east Jerusalem settlement neighbourhood of Armon Hanetziv, her husband sported an M-16 assault rifle that appeared incongruously large in their tiny living room. While Tal recently obtained a provisional licence that allows her to get the mandatory training for a permanent one, her husband, a data engineer and reservist, got the rifle from the government after volunteering for a local security squad. In fear of attacks from Arab settlements visible from their balcony, the couple said the weapon offered a sense of safety even if it was a "headache" to make sure it remained beyond the reach of their children. They often hide it behind their bed or atop a cupboard, separating the rifle from the ammunition. "If I stand outside their school with the gun, a terrorist will think twice," said Tal's husband, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to reporters. "I pray that I never have to use it." bur-ac/slb/dv Russian forces destroyed four unmanned Ukrainian boats en route to occupied Crimea, Russia's Defense Ministry reported in the early hours of Nov. 22. Ukraine has not confirmed Russia's claims. Over the summer, Russian-occupied Crimea saw an uptick in Ukrainian attacks in an attempt to disrupt Russian logistics and derail its southern defenses. A strike on Crimea on Nov. 10 resulted in the sinking of two Russian high-speed landing crafts by a Ukrainian surface drone. The Crimean Bridge, which connects the occupied peninsula to Russia's mainland, has also been targeted in multiple attacks by unmanned boats. In July, Ukrainian forces struck the Crimean Bridge with sea drones, causing an explosion that damaged the bridge. Previously in October 2022, the bridge was the target of another attack as a truck packed with explosives detonated on the bridge near a tanker train, triggering a chain reaction. President Zelensky has previously stated that the Crimean Bridge is a legitimate target for Ukraine and must be "neutralized." Read also: Ukraine war latest: Austin visits Kyiv, US announces new $100 million military aid package Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Moscow will need between five and seven years to rebuild its military capacity, depending on the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Czech President Petr Pavel said at a press conference on Nov. 22. Based on current estimates, it will take Russia at least 5-7 years to recover its combat readiness, said Pavel. Read also: Czech military delegation visits Ukraine, inspects captured Russian equipment On the other hand, there are many conditions within these estimates that could change the situation. A lot will depend on what the outcome of the war will be, how Ukraine will emerge from it, and how Russia will. Read also: Prague remains committed to supporting Ukraine's sovereignty, Czech President says Pavel also added that all NATO member states perceive Russia as the number one threat to Europe, not just the Czech Republic. Hence, Pavel noted, there is a need for realistic preparations, and all European armies are getting ready for the possibility of "high-intensity conflict" on the continent, especially after the Russias aggression against Ukraine. Read also: Czech Republic supports freezing all Russian state assets "We in NATO take this situation seriously, although we certainly do not wish for it," he said. He further stated that Russia must be held accountable for its crime of aggression against Ukraine, thus emphasizing the need to continue supporting the country. 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 (Reuters) - Russia has deployed a new Yars intercontinental ballistic missile at the Kozelsk base in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, the RIA news agency cited the defence ministry as saying on Wednesday. Russia has described the Yars missile, developed in the 2000s and capable of carrying multiple thermonuclear warheads, as one of its newer weapons capable of piercing the missile shield used by the United States and its allies. The Kozelsk regiment, where the new missile was loaded into a silo, was the first one in Russia's Strategic Missile Forces to start upgrading to silo-based Yars missiles, RIA said. The missiles were initially deployed at other regiments in a mobile version. (Reporting by Reuters; editing by Robert Birsel) Russian losses since the beginning of the full-scale invasion have exceeded 320 thousand troops Moscows forces in Ukraine have suffered 36,000 casualties in six weeks, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said at the Nov. 22 meeting of Ukraine Defense Contact Group. Read also: Russia loses 3,500 troops in Kherson Oblast in one month Estonian military Umerov shared the figures to describe the scale of Russian losses that occurred since the last such meeting (also known as Ramstein format) six weeks ago. He further stated that the Ukrainian Armed Forces have pushed the Russian navy out of much of the Black Sea and are gradually restoring freedom of navigation in the region, despite lacking a conventional navy of their own. Russia definitely does not plan to stop out of its own volition, said Umerov. The only language that Moscow understands is the language of force. And we have learned this language well. Read also: Ukraines General Staff report 620 Russian losses over past 24 hours He pointed out that western-provided weapons, including HIMARS rocket artillery, Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles, ATACMS missiles, and tanks like the Abrams, Challenger, and Leopard, have changed the dynamics on the battlefield. Read also: Ukrainian army reports 30% surge in Russian assaults near Avdiivka; losses of some positions "Our people are looking forward to the opportunity to return home, rebuild their houses, and reunite with their families," he added. The minister thanked Western countries for their daily efforts in supporting Ukraine. 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 border crossing over the Narva River in Estonia is on the edge of Nato's eastern flank Estonia has accused Russia of deliberately directing would-be migrants to its border. The claim was made after Finland confirmed it was sealing all but one crossing point with Russia. Finland claimed Russian guards were encouraging people originally from countries including Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria, to try to cross. The Kremlin has denied the allegations made by Finland, but has yet to comment on the claims from Estonia. Last week, Finland's prime minister announced four border crossings in the south were being closed. Petteri Orpo accused Russia of deliberately helping people without proper documentation to get to the border. Mr Orpo said on Wednesday that Finland was now closing all but the northernmost Raja-Jooseppi crossing from midnight local time. Finland shares a 1,340km (833 mile) border with Russia. According to Reuters news agency, Finnish officials said on Wednesday that Russian were likely to be directly involved in more than 600 asylum-seekers arriving there over the past two weeks. Estonia's public broadcaster ERR reported that 75 migrants had tried to enter Estonia from Russia through the Narva crossing point since Thursday last week. None had asked for asylum and all were turned back. A spokesperson for interior minister Lauri Laanemets told Reuters that Estonia had made preparations to close border crossings if "the migration pressure from Russia escalates." They said migrants were appearing at the Estonian border in small groups "in an orchestrated manner." Map showing Estonia, Russia and Finland along with the Narva crossing point Russian forces shelled six communities in Sumy Oblast on Nov. 21, firing 14 times over the course of the day, the Sumy Oblast Military Administration reported. Russia's military fired at least 101 times over the past 24 hours, targeting the communities of Bilopillia, Yunakivka, Krasnopillia, Velyka Pysarivka, Nova Sloboda, and Myropillia. No casualties or damage to civilian infrastructure were reported. The Russian military targeted the settlements with an onslaught of shelling, mortar, and grenade launcher attacks, while continuing to drop mines on the surrounding areas. In Velyka Pysarivka, a Russian attack helicopter fired unguided missiles on the community. The community of Krasnopillia, home to roughly 7,800 residents, experienced the most intense attacks, with 68 explosions recorded in the area. The town is located some 12 kilometers west of the Russia-Ukraine border. Shelling is a daily occurrence for the communities near Ukraine's northeastern border with Russia. Residents in the region's vulnerable border settlements endure multiple attacks per day. Read also: Historian Serhii Plokhy: The better we prepare for the long war, the sooner it will end Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. The Russian Ministry of Defence and Russian officials are trying to calm the Russian hysteria over Ukrainian operations on the left (eastern) bank of Kherson Oblast. Source: Institute for the Study of War (ISW) Details: Military analysts said that Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu spoke at the board of the Russian Defence Ministry on 21 November and stated that Russian troops had interfered with all attempts by Ukraine to conduct successful landing operations on the Kherson front. Shoigu went on to say that Russian troops were inflicting "enormous" losses on Ukrainian forces. Shoigu's statement is likely an attempt to reduce concerns among some Russian military bloggers (milbloggers) about Russia's inability to decisively repel Ukrainian attacks on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, but is unlikely to calm the growing complaints in the Russian information space. Russian military bloggers continue to acknowledge the Ukrainian presence on the left (eastern) bank of Kherson Oblast and complain that Russian troops are unable to suppress Ukrainian operations in the area. A Russian military blogger claimed on 21 November that Ukrainian troops had destroyed an entire Russian assault group near the village of Krynky (30 kilometres northeast of Kherson and 2 kilometres from the Dnipro River). A Russian insider source stated on 17 November that a Ukrainian strike had killed 76 Russians in the 1st Battalion of the 35th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (41st Combined Arms Army of the Central Military District), who were trying to conduct a "diversionary manoeuvre" in Skadovsk district. A Russian serviceman of the 810th Separate Marine Brigade (Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation) operating near Krynky stated in a video posted on 21 November that the Russian military was forcing servicemen who had not yet recovered from their injuries to conduct assault operations. A Russian military blogger also posted a letter supposedly from a Russian soldier operating near Krynky on 21 November, claiming that Russian troops near Krynky do not have reconnaissance drones, which slows their movements and creates a risk of Ukrainian attacks. In addition, Russian forces near Krynky also lacked firepower, as artillery and mortar units quickly changed their location to avoid counter-battery fire after carrying our "several rounds". A Russian soldier claimed that his unit had little to no interaction with other Russian units operating in the vicinity and that the Russian command headquarters on the Kherson front was making poor plans because it received incorrect and delayed information. The same soldier stated that the Russian command on the Kherson front had failed to respond to the changes, which led to increased Ukrainian attacks. Military analysts said that, apparently, military bloggers are not responding to Shoigu's statements, and ISW has not observed any significant changes in Kherson Oblast that have prompted these complaints. At the same time, Ukrainian forces continued operations on the left (eastern) bank of Kherson Oblast and reportedly advanced on 21 November. A Russian military blogger claimed that Ukrainian forces had attacked from Krynky (30 kilometres northeast of Kherson Oblast and 2 kilometres from the Dnipro River) and entered a forested area near a settlement. Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops had continued to hold positions in Krynky, as well as near the Antonivka Road Bridge and a small railway bridge six kilometres east of the Antonivka Road Bridge. Geolocation footage released on 21 November shows that Russian troops have advanced northeast of Krynky. The Russian Ministry of Defence reported that units of the 810th Separate Marine Brigade (Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation) are operating on the Kherson front. To quote the ISWs Key Takeaways on 21 November: Ukrainian and Russian forces continue to conduct offensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine despite rainy and snowy weather conditions. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Russian officials are struggling to subdue Russian hysteria around Ukrainian operations in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast. Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes on the night of 20-21 November and on 21 November targeting port and civilian infrastructure, including a hospital in Donetsk Oblast. US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby reported on 21 November that the Wagner Group is preparing to provide an air defence system to either Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah or Iran. Imprisoned ardent nationalist and former Russian officer Igor Girkins presidential campaign announcement has generated some discourse in the Russian information space, but most Russian milbloggers refrained from discussing Girkins campaign likely due to self-censorship. Washington, D.C.-based analytics company Gallup found that Russian societys confidence in the Russian military has marginally decreased in 2023. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius announced a new military aid package to Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv on 21 November. The Armenian Ministry of Defence (MoD) denied Russian allegations that Armenia is planning to supply Ukraine with weapons. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev accused the West of destabilising the South Caucasus region by supplying weapons to Armenia. A former Russian Investigative Committee departmental head who was serving sentences for accepting bribes from the Russian mafia died in prison on the night of 20-21 November, allegedly by suicide. Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupiansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast on 21 November and advanced in some areas. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu addressed the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) Collegium on 21 November and announced that the Russian MoD is increasing its military training efforts across Russia. US Department of State Spokesperson Matthew Miller commented on 20 November about a report that found that Russian officials in collaboration with Belarusian officials transported more than 2,400 Ukrainian children between ages 6 and 17 to Belarus. Support UP or become our patron! Smoke rises after Israeli air strikes in Gaza, as seen from southern Israel Smoke rises after Israeli air strikes in Gaza, as seen from southern Israel MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia welcomed a ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict on Wednesday and said humanitarian pauses were the only way to make progress towards a settlement. Israel's government and Hamas agreed earlier on Wednesday to a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days, to allow in aid and release at least 50 hostages captured by militants in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. "This is the first good news from Gaza in a long time," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "Russia and most countries were calling for a truce and humanitarian pauses, because only on the basis of such pauses can the contours of future attempts at a sustainable settlement be built." Russia has longstanding ties with Israel, Hamas and other leading players in the Middle East including Iran. Since the start of the conflict, President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasised the suffering of Palestinian citizens, called the crisis a failure of U.S. policy and urged Israel to show restraint. Russia also angered Israel by hosting a Hamas delegation in Moscow last month. (Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Gareth Jones) At least 25 Russian soldiers and an actress serenading them were killed in a Ukrainian Himars strike at an awards ceremony on Sunday, reports have claimed. Several dozen other members of Russias 810th Marine Brigade are said to have been wounded in the blast near Starobesheve, an occupied town in the eastern Donetsk region. Polina Menshikh, 40, was singing at the volunteer concert when the attack took place, Russian state news agency TASS reported. A video published on Telegram by a prominent Russian blogger appears to show the moment the missile struck. Two men in green military uniforms can be seen in frame watching a performance by two musicians on stage, one of whom is a woman. As the building audibly shakes and dust starts to fall from the ceiling behind the stage, the men in uniform look behind them in alarm before the footage cuts out. Revenge for Ukrainian soldiers St Petersburg theatre, where Ms Menshikh worked, confirmed her death with great pain. One colleague said: An entire collective has been orphaned, and we, her colleagues have also been orphaned somewhat. The Kremlin has not commented on the incident which has been reported by pro-Ukrainian outlet Nexta, as well as Russias Moscow Times and Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspapers. Kyiv has not officially claimed responsibility. Ukrainian Col Robert Brovdi claimed on Telegram that Russian commanders had been killed in the strike. He said it was revenge for the deaths of more than 20 Ukrainian soldiers at an awards ceremony in Zaporizhzhia on Nov 5. The Ukrainian officers who organised that ceremony which was near the frontline and was spotted by Russian spy drones are now subject to a criminal investigation. Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, said the deaths of the men from the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Transcarpathian Brigade were a tragedy that couldve been avoided. The blogger who posted the video of the blast added that Sundays revenge strike occurred 37 miles behind the frontline, highlighting the importance of Western-donated arms to Ukraines armed forces. Ukraine has fired thousands of American-supplied Himars rockets since receiving them in June 2022. 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. Russian attacks on Chasiv Yar, Avdiivka, and Toretsk in Donetsk Oblast on Nov. 22 killed two people and injured one, the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office reported. A 59-year-old man was killed in his house during a strike on Chasiv Yar, and a 49-year-old man was killed in an attack on the outskirts of Toretsk, the prosecutors said. In attacks on Avdiivka, a 67-year-old man was reportedly hospitalized with chest wounds. Donetsk Oblast has been partially occupied by Russia since the start of Moscow's aggression in 2014, and the Ukrainian-held territory suffers regular attacks. Many of the front-line settlements have been largely destroyed and depopulated in the course of the fighting. Read also: Opinion: On Ukraines medical front, fortune favors the bold Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Russian attacks over the past day in Kherson Oblast killed one person and injured seven others, Governor Oleksandr Prokudin reported on Nov. 22. Using mortars, tanks, multiple-launch rocket systems, artillery, drones, and aircraft, Russian forces attacked the oblast 115 times, including 46 shells that were fired at the city of Kherson. Civilian infrastructure was damaged in the attacks, including residential buildings, offices, a factory, and an educational institution. Russian air strikes in the town of Beryslav in Kherson Oblast on Nov. 21 killed a 65-year-old man and injured a 57-year-old man. Beryslav was also struck in Russian attacks the following day. The Ukrainian-controlled part of Kherson Oblast suffers regular attacks by Russian forces on the eastern side of the Dnipro River. Read also: Ukraine war latest: Top foreign officials arrive in Kyiv on 10th anniversary of EuroMaidan Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Russian occupiers are planning to officially make Ukrainian citizens in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine "foreigners in their native land" if they refuse to take a Russian passport, the mayor of Russian-occupied Melitopol in Zaporizhzhya Oblast Ivan Fedorov said on national television on Nov. 5. From Jan. 1, 2024 onward, all residents in the occupied territories who do not have a Russian passport will be considered foreigners by the Russian occupation authorities. To remain in their own cities, those who refuse to obtain a Russian passport will be required to apply for either a migration card, a residence permit, or a work permit with fingerprints, among other documents. Failure to comply may result in deportation. Fedorov said that the increased pace of forced passportization of the population is an attempt by the Russians to prepare for the upcoming Russian presidential elections in March 2024. Additionally, he believes that the occupiers aim to demonstrate to Russians that all residents in the occupied territories have been passportized, implying widespread agreement with the Kremlin. One of the goals of the Russians is to intimidate residents by threatening that after the liberation of the occupied territories by Ukrainian fighters, those who received a Russian passport "will end up in jail," the mayor said. This is done to probably to stop the movement of local resistance. The Russians are conducting forced passportization in all occupied territories of Ukraine, leaving residents with little choice but to acquire a Russian passport. Occupation administrations in Russia are enticing Ukrainian senior citizens with a social assistance offer of RUR 10,000, Ukraines National Resistance Center or NRC reported on Nov. 18. The NRC previously reported a passport raid in Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast, where Russian military collected passport applications, took fingerprints, and issued summonses during inspections. The Russian invaders are also allegedly threatening to transfer Ukrainian prisoners without Russian passports to Russia. 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 Russians who plan to buy property abroad are most interested in investing in Cyprus and Hungary, Russian media outlet RBC reported on Nov. 22, citing research from real estate agency NF Group. While Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were the most popular locations in 2022, NF Group noted that Hungary and Cyprus were the most-requested countries by its clients this year. The company said that 61% of its clients want to buy real estate abroad in order to obtain a residence permit or citizenship in that country. Hungary is a popular destination for investment due to its relative affordability, the rapid rise of house prices, and the fact that the country offers a route to a five-year residency permit via a property investment of around $234,000. Western sanctions in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine mean that Russians can only easily enter Europe with a valid residency permit. Some EU countries, such as Cyprus, issue "golden visas," which allow high-income foreigners to quickly obtain a permanent residency permit if they invest in local real estate. The Hungarian government stopped issuing "golden visas" in 2017 but announced on Nov. 14 that it plans to relaunch the scheme as a "guest-investor visa," which will give long-term residency permits to those who buy real estate worth over $543,000. European Commission issued an urgent recommendation in March 2022 that EU member states should put an end to "golden passports" and "golden residence permits." Russians and Belarusians who are under sanctions or support the war in Ukraine are able to travel freely in the Schengen zone due to these schemes, the European Commission warned. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides told the Associated Press on Nov. 20 that he had invited financial crime experts from an unnamed third-party country to assist with investigations into the use of Cyprus as a means of circumventing sanctions against Russia. There should be "absolutely no shadows" over Cyprus because it harms the ability to attract "quality" foreign investment, he said. Christodoulides' comments came after a massive leak of millions of files on Nov. 14 obtained from Cypriot financial service providers, dubbed "Cyprus Confidential," and a subsequent wide-ranging investigation by the International Consortium of Investigate Journalists (ICIJ). Together, they comprise a complex picture of "how Cypriot financial enablers scrambled to help Russian oligarchs and Putin allies shield their assets and avoid Western sanctions," the ICIJ said. Read also: Investigative Stories From Ukraine: Russian military helicopters get Czech components despite sanctions Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Nikolai Ogolobyak was sentenced to 20 years in a high-security penal colony in 2010 A Russian Satanist whose cannibalistic cult dismembered teenagers in a string of ritual murders before eating their hearts has been pardoned after fighting in Ukraine. Nikolai Ogolobyak, 33, was sentenced to 20 years in a high-security penal colony in 2010 for the killings in the Yaroslavl region, north-east of Moscow. But he is now back at home with his mother after being seriously injured while on a six-month tour in Ukraine with the Russian army. He became disabled after he was injured, his father told the Russian news outlet 76.RU, adding that he fought in the Storm-Z assault units made up of prisoners. He can walk, but his injuries are serious. Hes not working yet, hes recovering. Ogolobyaks father also denied local media reports that his son was seen on the streets of Yaroslavl. Theyre writing that hes walking around drunk dressed in black on the other side of the Volga, yelling, screaming, he said. It really p-- me off. It is not known when Ogolobyak joined the Russian army, where exactly he fought or what regiment he was in. The Kremlin said that it had not changed its policy of pardoning prisoners in exchange for fighting in Ukraine following local media reports on Ogolobyaks release. Now everyone is studying the pardon lists very closely, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said. At least 17 convicted murderers have been freed by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after fighting in Ukraine - Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP Ogolobyak was 16 when he joined an occult gang in 2006 with six other Russian teenagers. New members were initiated with the blood of sacrificed dogs and cats, which were then tied to an inverted cross erected on a piece of abandoned land behind a cemetery. Two years later, the group turned its attention to human sacrifices. On 28 June 2008, friends Olya Pukhova and Anya Gorokhova who knew one of the cult members, Alexey Chistyakov, from school were drinking with the group at Ogolobyaks apartment. Prosecutors said that the gathering was planned by Konstantin Baranov, the cults founder, who had fallen in love with a girl called Ksenia Kovaleva and intended to initiate her into the group using human blood. Once drunk, the group took the girls to the clearing behind the cemetery, where they lined up around a fire in the shape of a pentagram. The Satanists then pounced on the two girls, stabbing, beheading and dismembering them, reportedly reciting incantations over their bodies as they cut off their genitals. They took pictures on their mobile phones with the victims severed heads, and fried and ate the girls hearts and tongues, prosecutors said. Kovaleva, Baranovs love interest, was then smeared in the victims blood before their dismembered bodies were buried in pits nearby. Ogolobyak counted the blows The following day, case files said, the group gathered at the clearing again, this time with inductee Alexey Soleviev and two other teenagers who would become the gangs third and fourth victims: Andrei Sorokin, who had previously refused to be initiated, and Varya Kuzmina, his girlfriend. The pair were beheaded, dismembered and buried in pits, with their clothes burnt on a ritual fire. According to witnesses, when Sorokin was killed, Ogolobyak counted the blows out loud, said Elena Smirnova, who prosecuted Ogolobyak. He counted until he hit 666. The four victims parents had initially thought that they were away at a rock festival but when the festival ended in early July and their children did not return, they informed police. The mutilation and dismemberment of the victims meant that a lengthy investigation was required to identify which body parts belonged to each victim. But the cult members confessed and were sent to trial in February 2010. At their sentencing, the group were said to have behaved arrogantly, smiling and demonstrating no remorse for their brutal crimes. Ogolobyak was the only adult at the time of the trial and received a 20-year sentence. He was due to be released in 2030, prior to his pardoning. The other six gang members were sentenced to between two and 10 years, the maximum that a child can receive under Russian law, and have since been released. Atone for crime on battlefield At least 17 convicted murderers have been freed by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after fighting in Ukraine. There have been numerous reports of pardoned murderers killing again after returning to Russia from the wars frontlines. The Kremlin acknowledged the use of prisoner recruits to fight in the conflict earlier this month but said that convicts could atone for their crime on the battlefield with blood. On Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said that prisoners are now providing most of Russias fresh manpower for the war. At this stage, the Russian army has made prisoners the main source of replenishment of losses on the battlefield, he said. Government statistics and rights groups suggest that Russia has freed up to 100,000 inmates and sent them to fight in Ukraine since launching its offensive in February last year. The practice was initiated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late boss of the Wagner mercenary group who died in a suspicious plane explosion in August, exactly two months after he led a failed mutiny that presented the biggest threat to Putins two-decade rule. Prigozhin promised recruits that they would receive presidential pardons after six months of service in Ukraine. 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. Russian troops tried to storm areas near Klishchiivka, to the east of Pivdenne, near Marinka and Novomykhailivka, at the same time continuing their attempts to surround Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast, without success. In total, Ukrainian defenders repelled over 40 Russian attacks in the east of the country. Source: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Facebook, information as of 06:00 on 22 November Quote: "A total of 48 combat clashes took place over the past 24 hours. The enemy launched 5 missile strikes and 61 airstrikes and conducted 60 attacks from multiple-launch rocket systems on the positions of our troops and populated areas." Details: On the Bakhmut front, Ukrainian defenders repelled five Russian attacks near the settlements Klishchiivka and east of Pivdenne in Donetsk Oblast. Moreover, Ukraines Defence Forces are continuing their assault operations south of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, inflicting losses in manpower and equipment on the Russians and consolidating their positions. In the area of responsibility of the Tavriia Operational Strategic Group on the Avdiivka front, Russian forces continue their attempts to encircle Avdiivka. Ukrainian soldiers are firmly holding the defence, inflicting significant losses on the Russians. Russian offensive operations to the east Novobakhmutivka, Avdiivka, Sieverne, and Pervomaiske in Donetsk Oblast were unsuccessful. Ukraines Defence Forces repelled 13 attacks there. On the Marinka front, Russian forces conducted unsuccessful assault operations near the settlements of Marinka and Novomykhailivka in Donetsk Oblast, where Ukrainian soldiers repelled 18 attacks. On the Shakhtarsk front, Russian forces conducted unsuccessful assault operations near the settlement of Staromaiorske in Donetsk Oblast. On the Lyman front, Russian forces conducted unsuccessful assault operations near the settlement of Siversk in Donetsk Oblast. 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 and east of Petropavlivka in Kharkiv Oblast, where Ukrainian soldiers repelled three attacks. On the Zaporizhzhia front, Russian forces conducted unsuccessful assault operations near the settlements of Robotyne and Kamianske in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. 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 continue to hold their positions on the left bank of the Dnipro River, conducting counter-battery operations and striking the Russian rear. In the area of responsibility of the Pivnich (North) Operational Strategic Group on the Volyn and Polissia fronts, there were no significant changes. On the Sivershchyna and Slobozhanshchyna fronts, Russian forces are maintaining their military presence in the border areas, conducting intense sabotage activities in order to prevent the redeployment of Ukrainian troops to threatened fronts. Ukraine's Air Force hit a command post, launched six attacks on the areas where Russian military personnel, weapons and equipment were concentrated and two strikes on Russian anti-aircraft missile systems. Ukraine's Rocket Forces and Artillery struck three clusters of Russian military personnel, weapons and equipment, as well as two ammunition storage points. Support UP or become our patron! The annual Run to Feed the Hungry in Sacramento will proceed as scheduled on Thursday after authorities investigated a bomb threat made against the Thanksgiving Day event earlier this month. After conferring with the city of Sacramento, Sacramento Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation, we will be moving forward with an in-person run or walk tomorrow morning, race organizers wrote in an email to participants Wednesday morning. The threat was taken very seriously and investigated thoroughly by multiple law enforcement agencies, the email continued. Operating a safe and secure event remains our top priority, so the Sacramento Police Department will have an increased presence throughout the start and finish areas and along the course. Race organizers urged participants to remain vigilant, follow instructions from law enforcement personnel and immediately report suspicious activity by calling the Sacramento Police Departments Dispatch Center at (916) 808-5471. Those who do not feel comfortable attending the event in person can participate virtually. To do so, simply run or walk a 5K or 10K at a location and time of your choosing, organizers wrote in their email. More details about how to submit your virtual results will be provided as part of the Race Day Instructions email you will receive later today. An email forwarded to law enforcement on Nov. 13 prompted the investigation. This years race through the streets of East Sacramento will be the 30th edition of one of the nations largest Thanksgiving Day races. The 10K race is scheduled to begin at 8:15 a.m., followed by a 5K run and walk at 9 a.m. TechCrunch Smartphone sales will mount a comeback starting in 2024, defying growing warnings of a prolonged slump across the mobile sector, according to separate projections by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley reviewed by TechCrunch. Morgan Stanley's report predicts global smartphone shipments will rebound by nearly 4% in 2024 and by 4.4% in 2025, shrugging off comparisons to the PC industrys multi-year downdrafts. Driving the smartphone turnaround will be new on-device AI capabilities unlocking fresh demand, Morgan Stanley says. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall speaks after preliminary results show her in a strong lead at an election night watch party for her reelection campaign in the same office building that houses her campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Incumbent Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall all but declared victory Tuesday night after initial results showed her with 59% of the vote, compared to 34% for former Mayor Rocky Anderson and 6% for business owner Michael Valentine. Updated numbers released Wednesday morning showed barely any change, with Mendenhall and Andersons share of the vote total remaining the same and Valentine bumping up to slightly under 7%. Mendenhall celebrated at her election night watch party, located at the same downtown office building that houses her campaign headquarters. This election ends with voters saying loudly and clearly that they wanted a mayor who would keep the city moving forward, she told cheering supporters shortly after 9 p.m. in what was said to be a hastily revised speech. This election is proof that city voters want a city government that allies with its partners instead of arguing with them, Mendenhall said, and that prioritizes results over politics and that trades ideas instead of insults. While not mentioning her opponents by name, Mendenhall said the vote was a repudiation of cynicism and a rejection of the politics of fear and while Democratic-controlled Salt Lake City is a blue island in a red sea that doesnt mean we have to be alone all the time. She expressed pride in her campaign, saying she stayed positive and did not fearmonger, spread rumors or engage in dirty tricks. Mendenhall urged her supporters to join her in extending a hand to all those who disagree with them, to help unite the city. Mendenhalls lead was described as commanding and unbeatable by Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson before the speech. Shes won. Youre not going to overcome that margin, Wilson said. Another guest, former Gov. Gary Herbert, who endorsed her reelection, said the numbers certainly would indicate a good night for Erin. Herbert, a Republican, said he enjoyed working with the Democratic mayor. The capital city is important to the state, Herbert said. And having a mayor you can work with is important. Former Gov. Gary Herbert chats with Clark Cahoon at an election night watch party for Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhalls reelection campaign in the same office building that houses her campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News When the results were posted on a big screen in the lobby of the office building, the more than 200 supporters nibbling on Mexican food and sipping drinks from an open bar cheered loudly. At around 9:20 p.m., Anderson spoke to the crowd of supporters who had gathered at Himalayan Kitchen at 360 S. State St. for his election night watch party. I just want to tell you all I think the writings on the wall, but I was advised by the elections court not to concede until the ballots come in, said Anderson. So its not a formal concession, but I do think it would take a minor miracle for this to turn around right now. Somebody asked me earlier if I have any regrets about this campaign not one, he said. I do wish Erin Mendenhall and her team the very best because I want them to succeed. Ive always wanted them to succeed. Rocky Anderson hugs his only paid campaign worker Kate Fox at a watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News Rocky Anderson shakes hands and hugs his supporters after speaking to the group at a watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News Rocky Anderson talks on his phone as the night nears an end at a watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News Rocky Anderson shakes hands with supporters after speaking to the group at a watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News Rocky Anderson shakes hands and hugs his supporters after speaking to the group at a watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News Rocky Anderson talks to his supporters gathered at a watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News Elizabeth Corker takes a photo with Rocky Anderson at a watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News Kate Fox, Anita Abright and Rocky Anderson look at results at a watch party with supporters in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News Rocky Anderson looks at results with Getro Joseph, John Eckstein and Yuki MacQueen at a watch party in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Scott G Winterton, Deseret News His event drew at least 65 people, who were buzzing with excitement while the DJ played upbeat tunes in the background. Anderson had a wide smile as he walked around, talking to his supporters and the media. A large chunk of the crowd said their goodbyes after the initial results were released. Today, we had probably 12 people around my dining room table, sending out text messages to get out to vote, and theyve been doing it for a week now, he told the Deseret News of his final push to bring out voters. The former mayor said he was proud of the effort his volunteers put into his campaign, which was headquartered at his home. Bernie Garcia, a volunteer from the beginning of Andersons campaign, said he expects the race to be a close one. Still, were looking forward to Rocky 3 and having the city united once again, he said, referring to a potential third term. Anderson said if he doesnt win, he still hopes people will push Mendenhall to do way better when it comes to both the treatment of the homeless population and getting these encampments out of our parks and neighborhoods. And doing way better toward our residents and our businesses because I think everybodys been hurt by the indifference and the lack of any solutions, he added. Election Day is two weeks later than normal this year, thanks to a special 2nd Congressional District election, falling on a Tuesday just two days before Thanksgiving. Its also the first time Salt Lake City has tried ranked choice voting. Because this is a ranked choice voting election, the state elections website noted that the final tabulation rounds and winner wont be displayed until all ballots have been received and counted, which could take up to seven days. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall reacts to a congratulations card from Violet Wilson, left, after preliminary results show her in a strong lead at an election night watch party for her reelection campaign in the same office building that houses her campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Related Valentine sent the Deseret News a statement on Election Day evening, saying if he wins, he will fight for Salt Lake Citys community. If we dont win tonight: we fight like hell even harder for the people and community of Salt Lake City, he said. I am beyond proud of our historic Peoples campaign! Valentine said, thanking his supporters. Running this campaign to serve you has been one of the best experiences of my life. Mendenhall led in fundraising, with more than $849,000 in total contributions as of Nov. 14, according to the Salt Lake City campaign finance website. Andersons total contributions were more than $422,000, while Valentine trailed behind with $2,859. Related Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall takes a selfie with supporters after preliminary results show her in a strong lead at an election night watch party for her reelection campaign in the same office building that houses her campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson applauds as Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall speaks after preliminary results show Mendenhall in a strong lead at an election night watch party for her reelection campaign in the same office building that houses her campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, right, congratulates Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, left, after preliminary results show her in a strong lead at an election night watch party for her reelection campaign in the same office building that houses her campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall poses for a photo with John Stevens, Andrea Stevens and Tony Allred after preliminary results show her in a strong lead at an election night watch party for her reelection campaign in the same office building that houses her campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Kyle LaMalfa and his wife, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, walk to the election night watch party for her reelection campaign in the same office building that houses her campaign headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Kristin Murphy, Deseret News Soon, a familiar ringing that often serves as a reminder that Christmas is getting close will fill the air. The Salvation Armys Red Kettle Campaign officially kicks off on Thanksgiving Day, meaning youll see and hear bell ringers outside your favorite stores. Every little bit helps from a quarter to$20 to $5. Every little bit helps it add up, said Lt. Tylar Melfi, Commanding Officer of the Salvation Army North Boroughs Worship and Service Center. The Salvation Armys fundraising goal for this year for Western Pennsylvania is $2.3 million. For Allegheny County alone, the goal is $547,000. There is a huge need, and it seems we can barely keep up with the need, Melfi said. Melfi told Channel 11 the money stays in the community where it was given. The funds provide critical programs and services throughout the year such as food boxes for older adults, as well as rent and utility assistance. Things are going up, but peoples pay is staying the same. Thats a scary thing for a lot of people. We respond and take that seriously, Melfi said. And, this year, you dont have to have cash to donate. You can scan a QR code that takes you to a link to donate or text the word Kettle to 31333. The red kettle is out, which means its showtime. It means we do what we do, raise money for the entire year, Melfi said. The Salvation Army still needs bell ringers. If youre interested in volunteering, you can schedule a shift and location by clicking here. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW TRENDING NOW: Its a devastating loss: Family, friends remember mother of 2 killed in Washington County crash Car hit by train in Homestead Mike Tomlin announces who will take over duties after Matt Canada firing VIDEO: How to protect yourself from mail theft DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts SAN DIEGO Health officials are warning the public to be aware of tickborne illnesses after a San Diego resident recently died from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. A San Diego resident traveled to the Baja California region before becoming sick and later dying, the County of San Diego Communications Office reported Tuesday. They did not specify an exact timeline. Invasive tick found in 19 states likely to be long-term problem, Ohio researchers warn This is prompting San Diego County public health officials to raise awareness of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever Humans and dogs can contract the disease from a tick bite. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is treated with antibiotics most efficiently when a person is diagnosed within the first week. Those with the disease can develop a spotted red rash. Early symptoms include fever, headaches, and stomach upset, so health officials warn anyone with insect bites or who recently traveled to report it to a doctor. Ticks are generally found in grassy, wooded areas. The county of San Diego noted in areas like Baja California, ticks are a year-round risk because strays often carry infected ticks. In San Diego County, there are typically only one to three cases each year. Deadly listeria outbreak in 7 states tied to peaches, plums and nectarines The last time a death from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever was reported locally was in 2014. The county of San Diego reports all three cases in San Diego County residents reported so far this year were from travel to areas where Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is more common. Prevention The Countys Vector Control Program monitors ticks, rodents and mosquitoes that can transmit diseases to humans. There are around 850 different types of ticks throughout the world. Ticks can carry many different diseases, including Lyme disease, Tickborne relapsing fever (TBRF), 364D rickettsiosis, Tularemia, and many others, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 87-year-old linked to Miguels Cocina E. coli outbreak dies The CDC has several tips for preventing tick bites online. Anyone bitten by a tick should remove it with tweezers. Let a doctor know you were bitten, how long it was attached, and in what part of the world you were bitten. Save the tick for identification because only certain ticks carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 5 San Diego. (KRON) A Santa Rosa man was sentenced to 36 years in prison for sexually assaulting a child, the Sonoma County District Attorneys Office announced Tuesday. Ambrosio Leiva-Moreno, 32, was sentenced on Nov. 15 after being convicted in relation to sexually assaulting a child. The charges against Leiva-Moreno are related to two separate sexual assaults committed against a 12-year-old child, according to the DA. Leiva-Moreno was a trusted adult figure in the childs life, the DA said. This provided him with access to and opportunity to commit his crimes. Wife and lover who allegedly conspired to kill her husband arrested for murder in Hayward Leiva-Moreno pled guilty in September to several forcible sexual assault offenses prior to being sentenced. The sentencing was handed out by the Honorable Laura Passaglia. Prior to handing out his sentence, the judge listened to the victims impact statement which was read in court by a victims advocate on the victims behalf. Judge Passaglia, the DA said, then addressed Leiva-Moreno and indicated she hoped he was listening to the words and understood the impact hed caused. The 36-year prison term is entirely appropriate given the irreparable harm inflicted on a young child by Mr. Leiva-Moreno, said District Attorney Carla Rodriguez. My hope is that this sentence will provide some solace to the victim, moving forward in life. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4. For more than a week, more than 200 inmates at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Regional Detention Center in South Carolina have been stripped of humane treatment due to an apparent lack of jail personnel, according to an inmate at the facility, his fiancee and his lawyer. Malcolm Matthews, who was incarcerated at the Orangeburg County jail in September, said Tuesday it had been more than eight days since he and approximately 250 other inmates have been deprived of the opportunity to shower and visit with loved ones, spurring further outrage and calls for accountability in a criminal detention system in South Carolina that, for years, has neglected its duties involving the maintenance of basic human and civil rights for those under its care. Its inhumane, Matthews said. Even though were incarcerated, we shouldnt have to be subjected to this type of treatment. Its a sentiment the U.S. Department of Justice agrees with, announcing last month the start of civil rights investigations into similar instances at the Alvin S. Glenn and the Sheriff Al Cannon detention centers in Columbia and Charleston, respectively. People confined in local jails across our country do not abandon their civil and constitutional rights at the jailhouse door, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division said in announcing investigations into the Alvin S. Glenn and Sheriff Al Cannon detention centers last month. We are launching these investigations to determine whether the jail conditions in two of South Carolinas largest counties comply with basic constitutional standards. Matthews attorney, state Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, said its important for the public to understand that the issues currently being investigated by the justice department including ongoing neglect and a lack of supervision to ensure a safe detention environment are much more widespread than appears on the surface. The general public looks at these people as being criminals and that they deserve this treatment, Rutherford said. And so it is very difficult to even get anybody to listen to their claims of injustice. Matthews, who was booked into the Organgeburg County jail back in early September, was denied a request for bond, according to Rutherford. He has not been convicted of the charge against him. Shautyll Rivers, Matthews fiancee, said she, too, after spending a couple of days inside the Orangeburg County jail, regarded the conditions inside as horrible. I went in there on a Monday morning at 6 a.m., Rivers recalled. My (menstrual) cycle came on that Monday, and they did not bring me a change of clothes until Wednesday, shortly before my release. I was in there literally having to use tissue to try to keep myself from feeling dirty, and even in bringing me a change of clothes on Wednesday, they didnt permit me a shower. I didnt shower until I made it home. Rivers also said she was restricted from making a phone call upon being booked a customary practice afforded to newly incarcerated detainees leaving her family worried as to her whereabouts, as they didnt hear from her for more than two days. Generally, under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, its unlawful for detention centers to withhold an inmates right to make a phone call following their booking. As for Matthews, Rivers said she received three consecutive notifications since this past Saturday from the jail alerting her that her scheduled visitations with Rivers were canceled. When Matthews and Rivers asked why he was being deprived of showers and visitation rights, they said jail staff cited a lack of jailhouse personnel. Officials from the Orangeburg-Calhoun Regional Detention Center and from Orangeburg County, which oversees the jail, did not immediately respond to The States request for comment. Referencing other instances of unsanitary conditions, such as a lack of functional plumbing, leaving toilets full of urine and feces, Matthews said that beyond a lack of showers and contact with relatives, mental health patients have routinely been grouped in with the general inmate population, creating menacing situations that he says hes in fear of. We really are in a dangerous situation right now and are trying everything we can to reach out to the public in hopes of changing the conditions were being forced to endure, Matthews said. But because were locked up, we cant do anything, and we shouldnt be subjected to this type of cruel and unusual punishment. Jared Leto has had a pretty busy month, and now hes getting some well-earned R&R in Miami. The Oscar winner channeled Spider-Man Nov. 9 to scale the upper tower of the Empire State Building while cameras rolled. He deftly scrambled up floors 86-104, roughly 1,300 feet off the ground. The reason for the 51 year olds risky climb was to snag publicity for his band Thirty Seconds to Mars upcoming world tour. The one South Florida date is Aug. 23 at iThink Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach. I was more excited than nervous to tell you the truth, Leto told the Today show after the thrilling yet harrowing experience. But I have to be honest, it was very, very hard. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. On Monday afternoon, Leto was seen doing a far less strenuous activity shopping on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. Paps caught him walking with a woman who appears to be his model girlfriend Thet Thinn along the busy thoroughfare dressed super casually in shorts, T shirts, sandals and a purple truckers cap that said, Drink your water. So is H20 the secret to how the House of Gucci star still looks 25 and can scale skyscrapers without breaking a sweat? Apparently, hell never tell. Just keep everybody guessing, the Louisiana native told Mens Health last year. Really, honestly, at the end of the day, it doesnt really matter. Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter during a 2003 visit to Macon to promote childhood immunization at Greater Little Rock Baptist Church on Felton Avenue. (/ Telegraph archives) Ceremonies celebrating former first lady Rosalynn Carter will take place the week after Thanksgiving in Atlanta and Sumter County, Georgia, according to the Carter Center. Rosalynn Carter, the wife of former President Jimmy Carter, died Sunday in the couples hometown of Plains. She was 96. The Carter Center, an Atlanta-based nonprofit founded by the couple, said Rosalynn Carters remains will travel by hearse the morning of Monday, Nov. 27, from Phoebe Sumter Medical Center to Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus. The public will be invited to pay respects along the motorcade route, which will be shared in the coming days, and wreaths will be laid at the university. The Carter family motorcade will then travel to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, where the former first lady will lie in repose. The public will be invited to pay respects from 6-10 p.m. The motorcade will next travel on Tuesday, Nov. 28, to Glenn Memorial Church at Emory University in Atlanta. A tribute service will be held at the church with invited guests that afternoon. On Wednesday, Nov. 29, the funeral procession will arrive at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia. A service will be held for family and invited friends, before Rosalynn Carters casket is brought to the Carter family residence for private interment. The public will be able to view the motorcade in designated areas between the church and downtown Plains. Jimmy Carter, 99, has been in home hospice in Plains since February in the same house where he and Rosalynn Carter lived together since 1961, save their time in the Governors Mansion and the White House. (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pointed to progress on finding an agreement on new European Union fiscal rules before the end of the year. Most Read from Bloomberg The EUs Stability and Growth Pact, which limits debt and deficits that bind the euro zones eclectic economies, was suspended during the pandemic to allow spending. With the rules coming back into force on Jan. 1, governments want to put in place a new system that takes into account country-specific issues. While theres no agreement yet on just how much leeway to allow each member state and when and whether to make exceptions, the German leader said a resolution is much closer. For us its clear that we want stability rules to play a role, Scholz told reporters in Berlin alongside Meloni. But at the same time, its also clear to us that no country will be forced into an austerity program. Meloni reinforced Italys position that the rules must protect investments, including spending related to the bloc-wide green transition and defense. Its important that the new governance rules take into account efforts made by the countries in order to support those transitions, those strategic choices, Meloni said. The two leaders pledged to cooperate more closely on energy, defense and migration in the highest-level gathering between their governments in seven years. Scholz was due to host a joint cabinet meeting with ministers from Rome, a format reserved for close allies. Scholz, a Social Democrat, and Meloni of the far-right Brothers of Italy aim to work together despite their political differences. Scholz reiterated that hes carefully examining an Italian plan to build two asylum processing centers on Albanian territory. --With assistance from Iain Rogers. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Texas House members removed a school vouchers provision from an omnibus education bill Friday, leaving no clear path forward for the proposal, which has been Gov. Greg Abbott's legislative priority this year. Credit: Julius Shieh/The Texas Tribune Texas lawmakers are returning home for Thanksgiving as uncertainty looms over Gov. Greg Abbotts yearlong push for school vouchers, which the House rejected Friday in its most direct vote on the issue yet. Both chambers quickly gaveled in and out Tuesday, announcing they would reconvene again Monday. But it is unclear what happens next at the Capitol after the House voted 84-63 on Friday to strip a voucher program out of a broad education bill. Abbott responded to the defeat by promising to continue advancing school choice in the Texas Legislature and at the ballot box. He has not said whether he wants legislators to keep trying in the current special session which still can go until Dec. 6 or whether he would call a fifth special session to push again for vouchers. "Texas parents deserve the freedom to choose the education path that's best for their child to succeed, Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement for this story. Governor Abbott has made it clear that he will do whatever it takes however long it takes to deliver that freedom for all Texas families through school choice. On Monday, Abbott began turning his attention to the primary season, announcing reelection endorsements for 58 House Republicans who opposed the amendment by state Rep. John Raney, R-Bryan, that removed vouchers from House Bill 1. Other allies of Abbott on the issue, like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, have also signaled since Friday their focus is shifting to campaigns. Voucher opponents in both parties hoped that Fridays vote was decisive enough to put an end to Abbotts crusade, which dates back to his 2022 reelection campaign. To drive home the message, anti-voucher state Rep. Four Price, R-Amarillo, led the House in passing a motion to prohibit any reconsideration of Raneys amendment. It's time to shift the focus, Raney tweeted afterward. Other House Republicans lamented Fridays outcome, especially because the amendments passage likely doomed the entire bill, which includes increased public school funding and teacher pay raises. Abbott had made clear he would veto the bill if it did not include the voucher provision. I dont know whether the Governor will call us back for a 5th special session or not, state Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, said in a Facebook post Sunday. Either way, I look forward to the next time I have the opportunity to provide much needed teacher pay raises, increased funding for our local schools, and parents with the opportunity to choose the system of education they believe is best for their child. Prior to the amendment vote, Abbott raised the prospect he would summon lawmakers back for another special session if they removed the voucher provision. He said that even if the Senate accepted the change, he would just have to veto it and we would start all over again." Wed be spending December here, maybe January here, maybe February here, Abbott said. Yet Abbott has not repeated that threat since Friday, and both chamber leaders have stayed quiet on their plans for the rest of the special session. The Senates presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, issued a long statement Tuesday bashing the House and its leader, House Speaker Dade Phelan, for killing school choice, signaling he sees little hope for a revival of the proposal in the near future. In its brief meeting Tuesday morning, the Senate referred two House proposals related to school safety to its Education Committee. But the committee did not immediately schedule hearings on the legislation, and it remains to be seen if the proposals will advance any further. The Senate is set to return 12:30 p.m. Monday, while the House is slated to come back at 4 p.m. that day. Even before HB 1 reached the floor, the House was struggling to consistently maintain quorum. By all appearances, lawmakers were starting to move on with their lives and uninterested in traveling to Austin unless they knew major legislation would be up for debate. The fourth special session has also overlapped with the candidate filing period for the March primary, which started Nov. 11 and ends Dec. 11. Lawmakers are busy firming up their political plans as colleagues announce retirements and other elected offices become open. Abbott has long suggested he would politically target GOP lawmakers who block his voucher crusade. The endorsements he announced Monday were seen as the first move in that direction. Some of Abbotts fellow Republicans agree it is time for primary voters to have their say. State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, said he wants to see a significant turnover in the House as a result of the Raney amendment. Many of us are so resolute on this, that we're going to break caucus rules, and we're gonna support primary challengers, Toth said. Brian Lopez and Zach Despart contributed reporting. Disclosure: Facebook has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. While Illinois educator workforce is larger generally and per student than it has been in the last decade and the supply of new teachers and principals has increased in recent years, shortages persist, especially for special education and bilingual teachers as well as paraprofessionals who assist licensed teachers in the classroom. Additionally, teacher diversity despite some progress continues to significantly lag student diversity. These are some of the main findings of a recent report that was the topic of discussion at a Collinsville event last Tuesday morning. Advance Illinois, a bipartisan education policy and advocacy organization, produced the report and hosted the event in partnership with Collinsville District 10, the Illinois Education Association and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to foster conversation at the local level. We need to be creative, diligent and honest in looking for the reasons why people are not filling the ranks of educators at the pace they need to be to keep up with demand, Madison County Regional Superintendent Rob Werden said at the beginning of the event. The State of our Educator Pipeline 2023 report looks at educator supply and demand, retention, shortages and diversity over the past 5 to 10 years with a particular focus of understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing data from the Illinois State Board of Education. The issue of the pipeline is a pipeline. If there were a magic bullet answer of what we could do to make sure weve got fabulous, effective educators in every slot we need, if there was just one thing, we would have done it. Its not. Its complex, Advance Illinois President Robin Steans, a former high school teacher, said at the beginning of her presentation of the report. Among the takeaways from the report was that the number of teachers, paraprofessionals and school leaders in the state was higher in the 2021-22 school year than it has been in the last decade. The number of teachers has been significantly increasing since the 2017-18 school year, which was when the states revamped education funding formula prioritizing schools with the most need went into effect. Just under $2 billion dollars have gone out to school districts in the last seven years under the new evidence-based formula, Steans said, which has allowed districts to employ more teachers. In terms of retention, the mass exodus of educators that many anticipated would occur during and immediately after the pandemic did not happen, according to the report. In fact, more teachers, principals, assistant principals and paraprofessionals were as or more likely to stay in their position during the first two years of the pandemic than before the pandemic, but its unclear whether this trend will continue. During the pandemic and after the pandemic, culture and climate, as teachers are experiencing it, worsened, Steans said, as teachers are dealing with new issues like behavioral problems in students that take a toll in the classroom. As long as that climate and culture piece is not strong, we worry that that could be a reason people leave, she said. The statewide teacher vacancy rate the percentage of positions that were unfilled was 2.6% for the 2022-23 school year, which is slightly higher than prior years, but changes in the way the state calculates vacancy rates may have contributed to that rise, the report says. The rate was significantly higher for certain positions at 5% for special education teachers, 3.9% for bilingual teachers and 7.2% for paraprofessionals. The teacher shortage is also scattered geographically across the state and half of districts dont have vacancies, but just because you dont have an actual vacancy this year doesnt mean the shortage isnt affecting you, Steans said. It could be affecting the number of applicants districts get for open positions and other important staffing decisions, she added. The educator shortage disproportionately impacts urban and rural schools as well as schools serving Black and Latinx students and students from low-income households, the report shows. Black students are more than three times more likely to be in a district with a vacancy rate thats at or above 5%. If you are of color, if you are low-income, you are dramatically more likely to be in a district with severe shortages that is disrupting your learning, that is disrupting the way the school works, Steans said. English learners and students with disabilities are also disproportionately impacted by the shortage, the report says. Following Steans presentation, a panel with Collinsville 10 Superintendent Brad Skertich, Bethalto 8 Superintendent Jill Griffin, SIUE faculty member Nate Williams and Collinsville High School social studies teacher Dakota Tostado discussed the reports findings from a local perspective, including the challenges facing teachers in the post-pandemic climate and administrators as they grapple with the educator shortage. During the panel, Skertich who was in the advisory group for the Advance Illinois report said one of the reasons for the ongoing shortage is the emphasis on proficiency over growth when talking about education. Proficiency, he explained in an interview after the panel, is the set of skills all students are expected to reach at each grade level, and proficiency levels are set by the Illinois State Board of Education. Often, schools are ranked and assessed according to their proficiency, but whether a student meets proficiency has more to do with their background and home environment than a school or teachers impact, Skertich said. The true measure of a teachers impact, he said, is how much progress their students make from when they enter the classroom at the beginning of the year to when they leave at the end. If our teachers are causing those students to have significant growth and improve, then theyre being successful, he said. When a student has made growth but is not proficient, however, the school and its teachers are still often framed as underperforming, Skertich said. Its a huge morale deflator for our students and our staff, especially when theyre working as hard as possible and theyre making great strides, he said. That needs to be celebrated as much as anything. Teacher initiatives At the state level, Illinois has in recent years been increasing the availability of short-term credentials to help teachers who are licensed in one grade or subject to teach in a different grade or subject and to help those who are not yet fully licensed get into the classroom quicker. There are also a variety of state and federal grants available with the goal of improving teacher recruitment and retention, and during the 2023-24 school year, the state board will launch its new three-year Teacher Vacancy Grant pilot program. Many school districts, like both Collinsville 10 and Bethalto 8 as well as others in the metro-east and across the country, have grow-your-own initiatives to recruit and support future teachers from within the community and improve teacher diversity. These programs are often partnerships between high schools and community colleges or universities to help high school students to start getting credit toward their teacher certification. Local universities have other initiatives, too. This fall, for example, McKendree University in Lebanon launched its Paraprofessional+ Pathway program to help paraprofessionals become licensed elementary teachers in two years, according to a university press release. The program is online, allowing students to complete it at their own pace while continuing to work in their current positions at local schools. Students can also get an add-on special education license through the program. The program is supported in part by a state grant that helps reduce the tuition rate for the universitys paraprofessional students. OFallon District 90 which has a pre-K, five elementary schools and two junior high schools recently launched its TeachD90 program in partnership with McKendree, according to a press release from the district. The program allows eight paraprofessionals in the district to get their teaching licenses through the Paraprofessional+ Pathway program. All but one of Northern Ireland's designated bathing sites met minimum water quality standards Nearly all of Northern Ireland's 26 bathing areas met water quality standards for swimming in 2023. New figures show 18 beaches classified as excellent, with another six found to be good and one sufficient. But Ballyholme in Bangor, County Down, failed to meet the minimum standards for the second year in a row. The mostly positive news comes despite a series of issues with Northern Ireland's bathing water in recent times. The summer was dominated by blue-green algal blooms that caused bathing bans, while the annual report from campaign group Surfers Against Sewage said there was a severe lack of water monitoring which meant "vital information" was unavailable. The water quality standards are compiled by the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera). The department said this year was the first time algal blooms had affected the quality of some bathing waters, which it described as "a huge asset". To determine water quality, 20 samples were collected from each site to check for faecal indicator organisms - that is used to assess how much the water has been contaminated by sewage. Visual assessments were also carried out during each sampling visit to assess for pollution, including waste, proliferation of seaweed, or algal scums and blooms. As well as the 26 identified bathing sites, another seven waters were sampled with results described as disappointing and "showing the vulnerability of all our waters to pollution during heavy rainfall events". 'Accurate real-time information' Those waters included Northern Ireland's first designated inland bathing water at Rea's Wood, Lough Neagh in County Antrim, which was also affected by blue-green algae. The figures come as Surfers Against Sewage published its annual water quality report. It called for "accurate and accessible real-time water quality information" to be available all year and for "transparency across the sewage system". This year a pilot scheme allowed swimmers, for the first time, to use an app to get daily forecasts of water quality at six beaches. While it worked well for four beaches, the department said the modelling supporting the forecasts needed further development for the remaining two and would be refined for next year. Swimmers can now use an app to get daily forecasts of water quality at some beaches The Rivers Trust's all-Ireland director Mark Horton said management of sewage in Northern Ireland was in "critical need for investment and modernisation". He also warned that the absence of a functioning power-sharing government in Northern Ireland and the lack of an independent environment agency meant "decisive actions" to protect and restore water quality were "practically impossible". In November 2023, Northern Ireland Water published a map of storm overflows that are designed to discharge sewage during exceptionally heavy rainfall. Those overflows can potentially lead to bathing areas becoming contaminated. Swansea residents turned to social media to express their concerns when police officers swarmed their neighborhood Tuesday night, looking for a man who had told them he had a gun. But police ended the search after speaking with the mans family, the police chief said. There was no threat to the public, Swansea Police Chief Matthew Blomberg said Wednesday. Police received a call at 8:30 p.m Tuesday of a suspicious person who was jumping in traffic in the area of Old Caseyville Road and Illinois 161, according to Blomberg. Responding officers saw a man in the area but the man ran away into a wooded area nearby. There was verbal exchange between the man and an officer and the man claimed he had a gun, Blomberg said. Blomberg said officers were not able to confirm whether the man had a gun but they took the matter seriously. Although police were not able to find the man, the search was ended after police talked to the mans family, Blomberg said. We were able to identify him through the family, he said. They were in contact with him. The family told police the man had personal issues, Blomberg said. Blomberg said the family was told to call the police if they needed assistance. In this image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard is the aftermath of a landslide in Wrangell, Alaska on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. (U.S. Coast Guard photo via AP) JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) Searchers with heat-sensing drones and a cadaver-dog kept up the search Wednesday for three people missing in a landslide that barreled down a mountain and slammed into homes in a remote Alaska fishing community, leaving three confirmed dead. Monday night's slide churned up the earth from near the top of the mountain down to the ocean, tearing down a wide swath of evergreen trees and burying a highway in the island community of Wrangell, about 155 miles (250 kilometers) south of Juneau. Rescue crews found the body of a girl in an initial search Monday night and the bodies of two adults late Tuesday. Around 54 homes are cut off from town by the landslide, and roughly 35 to 45 people have chosen to stay in that area, interim borough manager Mason Villarma said. Boats are being used to provide supplies, including food, fuel and water, and prescription medications, to those residents. Given the geography of the island with the town at the northern point and houses along a 13-mile (20.9-kilometer) stretch of paved road currently "the ocean is our only access to those residences, he said. Wrangell usually celebrates Thanksgiving with a tree lighting and downtown shopping events but could replace that with a vigil, he said. In that way, the town can come together physically and recognize the tragedy and the loss of life ... but also the triumph of a small community that's really come together and been able to pull off some remarkable successes, even in the face of all this adversity, Villarma said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. Searchers again Wednesday used a trained dog and heat-sensing drones to search for two children and one adult still unaccounted for. Community residents wishing to help the search were welcomed. There is always a need for volunteer support when responding to a disaster, Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel said in an email. They could assist with checking in trained responders, updating maps, staffing command centers and other duties that would not put untrained people in danger, he said. Alaska has the highest per capita rate of veterans in the nation, and in times of disaster we have seen veterans that have highly specialized military training and assistance reach out to assist, McDaniel said. The state transportation department said on social media Wednesday the process of clearing the highway would only begin once search and rescue efforts were complete. There was no immediate timeline for when that portion of the highway would reopen. A woman who had been on the upper floor of a home was rescued Tuesday. She was in good condition undergoing medical care. One of the three homes that was struck was unoccupied, McDaniel said Tuesday. Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration for Wrangell and promised state resources for the community to recover. Because of the hazards of searching an unstable area, a geologist from the state transportation department was brought in to conduct a preliminary assessment, clearing some areas of the slide for ground searches. But authorities warned of a threat of additional landslides. The slide estimated to be 450 feet (137 meters) wide occurred during rain and a windstorm. Wrangell received about 2 inches (5 centimeters) of rain from early Monday until late evening, with wind gusts up to 60 mph (96 kph) at higher elevations, said Aaron Jacobs, a National Weather Service hydrologist and meteorologist in Juneau. It was part of a strong storm system that moved through southeast Alaska, bringing heavy snow in places and blizzard-like conditions to the state capital Juneau as well as rainfall with minor flooding further south. Jacobs said the rainfall Wrangell received on Monday wasn't unusual, but the strong winds could have helped trigger the slide. Saturated soil can give way when gusts blow trees on a slope, said Barrett Salisbury, a geologist with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. Wrangell is one of the oldest non-Alaska Native settlements in the state, founded in 1811 when Russians began trading with Tlingits, according to a state database of Alaska communities. Indigenous people long lived in the area before outside contact. Tlingits, Russians, the British and Americans all accounted for historical influences on Wrangell. Timber once was a major economic driver, but that has shifted to commercial fishing. Among its notables were Old West lawman Wyatt Earp, who served as temporary marshal for 10 days while he traveled to the Klondike, and naturist John Muir. In December 2020, torrential rains prompted a landslide in another southeast Alaska city, claiming two lives. The slide slammed into a neighborhood in the community of Haines, caking city streets with about 9 feet (2.7 meters) of mud and fallen trees. ___ Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska. Rustem Umierov, Ukraines Defence Minister, announced the results of the 17th meeting in the Ramstein format on the evening of 22 November. Source: Umierov on Facebook Details: According to Umierov, the meeting formed a new coalition of Ground-Based Air Defence. Leaders in the coalition are Germany and France, with 20 other countries participating in total. The Netherlands has prepared 2 billion for military assistance to Ukraine. Estonia will provide US$1.5 million for the activities of the IT coalition in addition to Luxembourg's commitment of 10 million. The UK and Norway, within the framework of the Maritime Coalition, will look for ways to further strengthen security in the Black Sea. In addition, along with counterparts in Brussels, work will continue on the movement of Ukraine towards NATO. Quote: "More than 50 countries joined the meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group. Support for Ukraine remains unwavering. I am grateful to our partners who have already begun to announce new packages of military assistance. The biggest and most powerful announcements are not for disclosure." Support UP or become our patron! During a press briefing with select Black media outlets, including theGrio, the Senate majority leader indicated the nations first bill to regulate AI will focus on elections. The United States Senate is racing against time to develop legislation protecting Black voters from the potential harms of AI during next years presidential and general elections. During a recent press briefing with select Black media outlets, including theGrio, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., indicated that the nations first-ever bill to regulate quickly advancing artificial intelligence will focus on how to safeguard voters from disinformation. Senator Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., addresses the Black press and industry leaders during a briefing on the impacts of AI in Black communities. (Photo: Office of Senator Chuck Schumer) We have to do elections first, Schumer said inside his Senate office. The New York lawmaker noted that AI-generated deepfakes (manipulated facial appearances), political ads, and chatbots have been particularly concerning as the 2024 elections ramp up. Schumer said Black voters are among those who have been most targeted by disinformation spread through AI-generated content. When asked by theGrio if legislation has already been drafted to curb AIs potential harm to the voting process and its outsized impact on Black communities, Schumer confirmed that there is some drafted text on watermarking already underway. Watermarking tools are used to label content as AI-generated for public awareness. However, the Senate Rules Committee must draft any AI election-related legislation before it is ultimately taken up for a vote. Schumer said his focus is to ensure that measures safeguarding against bias are included in any upcoming legislation. Concerns about bias in AI technology have been a growing concern in Washington and among civil rights leaders and policymakers, particularly as it relates to the harms it can cause to vulnerable and minority groups. In an effort to begin the work of regulating AI, the White House and Congress have taken some action. Last month, President Joe Biden signed the first-ever executive order on AI, which included measures to advance equity and protect civil rights. That same week, Senator Schumer led a series of forums on Capitol Hill with a group of senators and leaders in tech, labor, civil rights, and business to discuss the opportunities and risks of AI. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 15, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Schumer spoke about the two-year anniversary of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Schumer said during last weeks press briefing that he worked to ensure that there was a sizable number of leaders present at the forum who could weigh in on potential legislation to protect the rights of Black Americans. Participants included Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP; Damon Hewitt, president of Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; and several others. Melanie L. Campbell, president and CEO of the Coalition on Black Civic Participation, who attended both the forums held by Schumer and last weeks briefing, said the risks of AI during the 2024 elections are something that keeps her and other civil rights leaders up at night. This election will determine what kind of democracy we will have or not have [and] AI will have an impact on that, said Campbell. She called for accountability for tech companies responsible for building AI technology, as she does not believe they will self-regulate out of the goodness of their hearts. If Congress and the government dont step up to form guardrails, nobody else will, said Schumer. The Senate majority leader said that while AI legislation to safeguard the upcoming elections is the major focus, he and his colleagues will take a broad look at how Congress can regulate the ever-evolving AI industry from criminal justice and education to healthcare and housing. The racism that weve seen in our society for centuries is built into the information that these systems suck up, said Schumer. So we have no choice but to act, and I dont think its going to be easy. 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 Senator Schumer rings the alarm about harms of AI for Black voters appeared first on TheGrio. Scottish islands such as Orkney were considered in 2020 as possible locations for asylum processing centres - Iain Masterton /Alamy Stock Photo Asylum seekers should be sent to the Orkney Islands rather than Rwanda, Lee Anderson has said. The Conservative party deputy chairman and Red Wall MP said that Scottish islands offered a viable alternative for processing applications because although remote, it was on British soil. He suggested that it would be a better solution than the Falklands Islands, which was considered by the Home Office but rejected because public services were too limited and there were sensitivities about the war with Argentina. Scottish islands such as Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles were considered in 2020 by Priti Patel, the home secretary at the time, as possible locations to build asylum processing centres but the idea was dropped in favour of Rwanda. Speaking on GB News, Mr Anderson, the MP for Ashfield, said that he had suggested the Falklands Islands and South Georgia, an island 800 miles from the Falklands, to Boris Johnson two years ago when he was prime minister. He smiled at me, Mr Anderson said. But I dont think its fair on the Falkland Islands to be honest; they dont want these illegal migrants going down there. Theres a better option: we can keep them on British soil if you like. Weve got the Orkneys or some remote Scottish island. I know its a bit parky up there this time of year. But if people are genuinely escaping war or persecution then a nice Scottish island with a few outbuildings would be suitable. This is a beautiful country. Parts of Scotland are a go to destination, the remote islands Id like to be able to afford a place up there. If we can get some accommodation up there, keep these people safe these people want to be safe, theyre fleeing so-called persecution from these war-torn countries. If we can put them on a nice, safe island in the north of Scotland, job done. Speaking on GB News, Mr Anderson said that 'a nice little island in the north of Scotland is perfect' for asylum seekers - David Rose for the Telegraph If we can find an island in the Orkneys or up there thats got no one on there to start off with, put some decent accommodation on, then its job done. The Falkland Islands, I think its a little bit far to go and its not fair on the Falkland Islanders who have got their own problems at the moment with their sovereignty, with Argentina. But if people are genuinely escaping violence or persecution then a nice little island in the north of Scotland is perfect. The Falklands was previously the most advanced scheme but was rejected by Rishi Sunak because of the limited scale of the Home Office plan to send only 30 migrants to the islands in a six- to 12-month pilot. Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha were also considered but subsequently dropped because of their remoteness and the cost of transporting migrants to the islands. The US government was also said to be very sensitive to the choice of Ascension Island because the base is used by the US space force. The Ministry of Defence dismissed Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus because the only place to land migrants was the British military base on the Mediterranean island. Gibraltar was also ruled out after Fabian Picardo, the chief minister, refused because of constitutional and legal issues and the geographical limitations of the territory. There were also concerns that migrants would leave the territory and travel to Spain and north through Europe. 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. SUFFOLK, Va. (WAVY) The City of Suffolk welcomed seven new officers on Tuesday, Nov. 21. The Suffolk Police Department held a Badge Pinning Ceremony to welcome K. Bouge, J. Camaya, G. Cornwell, M. Freeman, M. Johnston III, J. Lambert and T. Moore. The event was held in City Council Chambers, located in Suffolk City Hall on 442 West Washington Street. Badge Pinning Ceremony (Courtesy: Suffolk Police Department) The ceremony was live-streamed and can be viewed here. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WAVY.com. Several U.S. service members were injured in a ballistic missile attack by Iranian-backed militias on Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq, Pentagon officials said Tuesday. The attack Monday night on U.S. and coalition forces involved a close-range ballistic missile and resulted in eight injuries and minor infrastructural damage, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, said in a statement. U.S. military responded with a retaliatory strike, which was not pre-planned, killing several Iranian-backed militia personnel, CBS News learned. "Immediately following the attack, a U.S. military AC-130 aircraft in the area conducted a self-defense strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of Iranian-backed militia personnel involved in this attack," Ryder said in his statement. In a tweet, U.S. Central Command said the AC-130 "maintained visual confirmation of the individuals from the time of the launch to the time of engagement." The U.S. conducted further "precision strikes" against two facilities in Iraq early Wednesday morning local time, CENTCOM said in a statement. "The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups," including the attack on Al-Asad Airbase, "which involved use of close-range ballistic missiles," the statement read. A U.S. official told CBS News the targets were an operations center and a communications node belonging to Kataib Hezbollah, one of the main Iran-backed militias in Iraq. The sites were manned at time of strikes, the official said, so casualties were expected. The official said there had been no retaliatory action by Kataib Hezbollah as of Wednesday morning. The U.S. service members wounded in the attack are still being evaluated, a Pentagon official told CBS News, adding that this was the 66th attack against American-affiliated military bases in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. Secretary of State Antony Blinken exchanges challenge coins with the U.S. Marine Corps embassy security guard detachment in Baghdad, Iraq, on Nov. 5, 2023. / Credit: Jonathan Ernst / AP The uptick in attacks comes amid international concern that the war between Israel and Hamas could broaden into a wider conflict engulfing the entire Middle East. While Iranian-backed groups have targeted U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria with a mix of drones and rockets, this was the first time a short-range missile was used to attack American troops since Oct. 17, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. Of the 66 attacks in the last month, 32 were in Iraq and 34 in Syria, Singh said. The attacks have resulted in approximately 62 U.S. personnel injuries, Singh added they do not include the injuries from Monday's attack. "These groups in Iraq and Syria, that are attacking U.S. interests, have made their own decisions," Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian told CBS News last week when pushed on whether Iran backs militant groups in the Middle East. "We have not taken anything off the table or ruled anything out," Singh said when asked if the U.S. will launch preemptive strikes to avoid further attacks. "We feel that we have taken appropriate action to decimate some of their facilities and some of their weapons, but again, we always reserve the right to respond at the time and place of our choosing." Last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that "the United States does not seek conflict and has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities, but these Iranian-backed attacks against U.S. forces are unacceptable and must stop." Eleanor Watson and Mary Walsh contributed reporting. Correction: This story has been updated to indicate the strike on Al-Asad Airbase happened Monday night. Thanksgiving turkey recipe that cooks in under 2 hours From the archives: JFK's assassination in Dallas covered by CBS News in 1963 Ancient Vines | Sunday on 60 Minutes (BCN) A proposal that would have seen San Francisco parking meter hours expand into late nights and Sundays has been halted. Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin and Supervisor Ahsha Safai announced Monday that they had reached an agreement with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to halt the plans after a backlash by city residents. The SFMTA had proposed increasing parking meter hours to 10 p.m. on weekdays, an increase of four hours, and adding meter hours from noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays. The Board of Supervisors said they received thousands of letters voicing opposition to the SFMTAs plans, which were first announced in May, and calling on the board to urge the transit authorities to delay implementing the new proposal. Ex-San Jose PD officer who masturbated at crime scene arrested Prior to reaching the agreement, Safai had planned on taking the issue to voters in March of next year but has since tabled that proposal. Small businesses and working families need the time to recover from the past few years of economic crisis, Safai said in a press release. Safai said that after discussions with transit advocates and receiving a commitment from the SFMTA that the plan would be halted, he would withdraw his proposed charter amendment, which would have provided for mayoral accountability over proposed fare increases and expanded hours of operations. In 2008, the SFMTA Board of Directors delegated authority to the director of transportation to set parking meter rates, operations and time limits, which effectively removed any public process for changes. Safais proposed charter amendment would have provided the mayor with the ability to block fare and parking meter increases. Many of our small businesses are still struggling to get back on their feet after the pandemic, Peskin said. Now is not the time to nickel and quarter them and their customers. Im glad that the SFMTA has agreed not to extend parking meter hours for the time being. Copyright 2023 Bay City News, Inc. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4. FILE - Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, greets his supporters upon his arrival at a meeting in a hall on the sea side of Gaza City, on April 30, 2022. Since Hamas fighters carried out the deadliest attack on Israel in decades, Israeli officials have vowed to crush the Palestinian militant group and its enigmatic leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. But seven weeks into the war, 61-year-old Sinwar remains alive, in hiding and at the helm of Hamas fighters as they battle Israeli forces. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) The mastermind of the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the worst Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed in generations is a secretive figure, feared on both sides of the battle lines. In Gaza, no figure looms larger in determining the future trajectory of the war than Yehya Sinwar. Obsessive, disciplined and dictatorial, he is Hamas top leader inside the Palestinian territory, a rarely seen veteran militant who learned fluent Hebrew during years in Israeli prisons and carefully studied his enemy. Israeli officials have vowed to kill him and crush the militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007. But seven weeks into the war, the 61-year-old Sinwar remains alive, in hiding and at the helm of Hamas fighters as they battle Israeli forces. He also controls the groups negotiations over the fate of nearly 240 hostages that militants captured during the Oct. 7 attack. With the devastating toll from Israels bombardment and ground invasion, Sinwars political fate may now depend on how the war ends and whether Palestinians feel they gained anything from their immense losses. If he can win the release of all Palestinian prisoners and the lifting of the 16-year blockade of Gaza, people will feel they obtained something, said Hani al-Masri, a veteran Palestinian analyst. Otherwise, it will be a big problem" for Sinwar personally "because people will say that there was destruction, and we got nothing in return. Sinwar was able to claim an apparent political victory although one that came at a staggering cost in Palestinian lives with the announcement Wednesday of plans for a temporary cease-fire and a hostage-for-prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel. The exchange, which had been scheduled to begin Thursday, was then postponed until at least Friday. Israel offered no immediate explanation for the delay. The wiry, grey-haired Sinwar is believed to have engineered the surprise Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, along with the even more shadowy Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas' armed wing. The attack caught Israels military and intelligence establishment off guard and shattered the image of Israeli invincibility, as militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in scenes of brutality. Hamas said it launched the attack in retaliation for increasing Israeli depredations against Palestinians and the continuing occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza and to push the Palestinian cause back onto the world agenda. What it brought was devastating Israeli retaliation, killing thousands and leveling swaths of Gaza. To Israelis, Sinwar is a nightmarish figure. The Israeli armys chief spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, called him a murderer who proved to the whole world that Hamas is worse than ISIS, referring to the Islamic State group. Among fellow Palestinians, some respect Sinwar for standing up to Israel and for remaining in impoverished Gaza, in contrast to other Hamas leaders living more comfortably abroad. In a show of defiance two years ago, Sinwar ended one of his few public speeches by inviting Israel to assassinate him, proclaiming, I will walk back home after this meeting." He then did so, shaking hands and taking selfies with people in the streets. But he is also deeply feared for his iron grip in Gaza, where public dissent is suppressed. In contrast to the media-friendly personas cultivated by some of Hamas political leadership, Sinwar has not sought to build a public image. He is known as the Butcher of Khan Younis for his brutal approach to Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. Sinwar was born in 1962 in Gazas Khan Younis refugee camp to a family that was among thousands of Palestinians driven from what is now the city of Ashkelon during the 1948 war surrounding Israels creation. He was an early member of Hamas, which emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, when the coastal enclave was under Israeli military occupation. Sinwar convinced the groups founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, that to succeed as a resistance organization, Hamas needed to be purged of spies for Israel. They founded a security arm, then known as Majd, which Sinwar led. Arrested by Israel in the late 1980s, he admitted under interrogation to having killed 12 suspected collaborators. He was eventually sentenced to four life terms for offenses that included the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers. Michael Koubi, a former director of the investigations department at Israel's Shin Bet security agency who interrogated Sinwar personally, recalled the confession that stood out to him the most: Sinwar recounted forcing a man to bury his own brother alive because he was suspected of working for Israel. His eyes were full of happiness when he told us this story, Koubi said. But to fellow prisoners, Sinwar was charismatic, sociable and shrewd, open to detainees from all political factions. He became the leader of the hundreds of imprisoned Hamas members. He organized strikes to improve conditions. He learned Hebrew and studied Israeli society. Being a leader inside prison gave him experience in negotiations and dialogue, and he understood the mentality of the enemy and how to affect it, said Anwar Yassine, a Lebanese citizen who spent about 17 years in Israeli jails, much of the time with Sinwar. Yassine noted how Sinwar always treated him with respect even though he belongs to the Lebanese Communist Party, whose secular principles conflict with Hamas ideology. In 2008, Sinwar survived an aggressive form of brain cancer after treatment at a Tel Aviv hospital. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released him in 2011 along with about 1,000 other prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid. Netanyahu was harshly criticized for releasing dozens of prisoners held for involvement in deadly attacks. Back in Gaza, Sinwar closely coordinated between Hamas political leadership and its military wing, the Qassam Brigades. He also cultivated a reputation for ruthlessness. He is widely believed to be behind the unprecedented 2016 killing of another top Hamas commander, Mahmoud Ishtewi, in an internal power struggle. In 2017, he was elected head of Hamas political bureau in Gaza. Sinwar worked with Hamas' leader in exile, Ismail Haniyeh, to realign the group with Iran and its allies, including Lebanons Hezbollah. He also focused on building Hamas' military power. For Hamas, surviving the war in any form would defy Israel and offer a victory of sorts. Sinwar himself may not survive. "Im sure we will eventually kill him, Koubi said. "But to destroy the ideology he planted, thats not so easy. During the past four years, Carol Rogers and her family lived as nomads after her husband died, and they could no longer live in the home they rented because it didnt meet city safety codes. Rogers, who cares for her son and her daughter-in-law who are disabled, described staying in a friends garage, living in low-cost hotels and even storage units when options for places to stay ran out. She has worked as a cashier at Taco Casa in Saginaw for 10 years where her employer helps when he can, paying for nights at a hotel so that Rogers and her family wont be out on the street. But on Tuesday, right before Thanksgiving, Rogers and her family got the keys to an apartment within walking distance of her job, thanks to help from Saginaw nonprofit Community Link. They hope their four-year nightmare is over. Carol Rogers begins to move her belongings into her new apartment in Saginaw on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. For about four years, Rogers and her daughter-in-law Amber have been living in low-cost hotels, motels and even storage units. Community Link operates one of the largest food pantries in Tarrant County and also provides assistance with housing, credit repair, employment searches, avoiding eviction and mental health counseling. Quite frankly, we cant wait to be settled where we dont have to worry about check out times, or youre not supposed to be here. We will have a bathtub. My family is going to be there, and we wont get chased off the property, she said. The family doesnt have furniture yet, but Rogers said she is perfectly content with her teddy bear collection that shes had since the 1960s and a pile of blankets for her bed as she planned to sleep in and enjoy Thanksgiving before returning to work. Amber Rogers, Carol Rogers daughter-in-law, talks on phone with her husband Matthew accompanied by her cat Phoenix as she begins to sort through her belongings in her new apartment in Saginaw on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. On Oct. 23, Rogers and her family were living in a storage when Rogers sent a Facebook message to Community Link asking for help. Later, a Saginaw police officer arrived and told them that they needed to leave. She told Rogers to get into her SUV, and then took her to the food pantry. Rogers described how someone waved her inside although the food pantry already closed for the day. A case worker helped Rogers find the apartment and complete other paperwork to help get her life back on track. Rogers is an example of the growing number of people who come to the Community Link, said Trey Harper, director of fund development. They have jobs but dont earn enough to feed their families and dont always qualify for government assistance. They often work in manufacturing, fast food or clean houses, he said. Carolina Castillo checks her records for food pickup at Community Link in Saginaw, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. They handed out meals for 143 families while turning away more than they served. (Special to the Star-Telegram Bob Booth) We are seeing an increased number of people who fall in the cracks of needing assistance but who do not qualify for traditional government assistance programs, he said. Community Link provides food to anyone in Tarrant County because of its partnership with the Tarrant Area Food Bank. There are no geographic boundaries. During the pandemic, Harper said there were increases in the numbers of people needing help, but food was more plentiful then as farmers had surplus food. Now, things are more difficult, as food pantries pay wholesale prices, he said. Community Link is seeing 200 new families a month, he said. The number of people needing help have increased sharply, from 13,507 in 2020 to 26,028 in 2023. Other factors driving the increase include less funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and smaller food pantries that have closed. Cousins C.J. Sims and Dylan Sims, from Legacy Baptist Church unload donations collected by the churches Awana Kids Group at Community Link in Saginaw, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. They started serving clients at 9am and completed handing out food by 10:23. They handed out meals for 143 families while turning away more than they served. (Special to the Star-Telegram Bob Booth) Community Link will begin to roll out changes in December to better help people get the food that they need. For instance, there will be an online shopping option so people have assigned times to pick up their groceries. Haper said Community Link also wants to open its doors for people to come in and choose food for themselves. As Rogers prepares for a more stable life in an apartment, she talked about the hardships of getting by without a permanent place to live. After her husband died, she and her family had to leave the house they rented because it didnt meet health and safety codes. She lived in a friends garage for a while, moved briefly to Kennedale and even asked if she could pitch a tent in someones backyard. She also got sick and had to cut back on the number of hours for work. Carol Rogers turns the key to enter their new apartment in Saginaw on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Rogers said the turning point came when the officer took her to Community Link after she sent the message asking for help. Its amazing. We are going to be fine. We will be sitting on the floor as the stuff we have left is still in storage. The important thing is that her family will be together, Rogers said, and they are back in Saginaw and grateful for the assistance from Community Link. Carol Rogers reacts to seeing the bathroom with a shower at their new apartment in Saginaw on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. We get to have a home and not live like nomads, she said while holding back tears. When she thought about spending the first night in her apartment, Rogers was relieved to leave the motels and hotels behind. I will wave at them, (hotels) but I dont want to be a guest. Carolyn Riggins family desperately wants her to move out of the home in Sulphur Springs where she has lived alone since her husband died in 2008. Her daughter, Kashante Nunn, says her own pleas started nearly a decade ago upon returning to Florida. She was staying the weekend with Riggins in 2014 when a party across the street turned violent. A kid got shot, said Nunn. It was our first weekend back, and someone got shot across the street from her. Thats when we knew she needed to move. But Riggins, 70, a pastor, refuses. She isnt oblivious to the problems that plague this community, which takes its name from the waters that once drew some of Tampas earliest tourists. Its historic water tower is getting a fresh coat of paint, but the tourists have long departed. The central Tampa community may be best known for the poker room inside the shuttered dog racing track, concentrations of poverty in surrounding neighborhoods and high violent crime. Little has changed in Sulphur Springs in the more than two decades Riggins has lived here, even as Tampa and the broader region have witnessed explosive growth and investment. People who had hope for Sulphur Springs have come and gone, the communitys troubles stubbornly entrenched while Seminole Heights just south has seen a rebirth. Still, Riggins believes change can happen. She emerged from her COVID-era Zoom sermons believing Sulphur Springs is due for its own rediscovery. And she has gone looking for her own ways to hasten its arrival. Most days, she admits, shes not sure where to begin. The challenges seem too vast. Im going to do anything that I can that will bring some positive energy to the community, Riggins said. Because I want people to know they have people here who care about where they live and what goes on in this community, even if they dont. Absentee landlords Riggins maintains her home in a way that makes her feel good when she returns to it every day. Its painted in vibrant shades. Large bronze-colored stars adorn either side of the wooden front door. She mows the lawn religiously. Inside, the living room wall is covered with palm-tree-shaped mirrors and framed Bible verses, and there are glass angels everywhere. She says shes on a rare block because a few of her neighbors own their homes and take care of them. Next to her, theres a brand-new single-family residence with a garage and a neat lawn. To Riggins, Sulphur Springs struggles begin and end with its many absentee landlords who dont take care of their property. They rent to poor people who cant afford better. It breeds a culture of not looking after yourself or your surroundings, she said. She offers a tour to make her case. Less than a block away sits a two-story house, its windows boarded. People often loiter outside it, she said, and even sleep in the yard. Shes talked to the occupants once or twice. They told her it was better than the shelters, and she didnt know what to say. Can you imagine what it feels like living there? she asked as she walked by. Thats not a home. Sulphur Springs served as one of the regions main draws outside the beaches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its waters were believed to have healing properties. An alligator farm and toboggan slide sprung up nearby to hold visitors attention. A flood in 1933 damaged the attractions, and construction of Interstate 275 through the 1960s bisected the neighborhood and park. The springs themselves closed in 1986 when they became polluted. To City Council member Gwendolyn Henderson, who represents the neighborhood, Sulphur Springs needs some love. Housing conditions there have gotten worse in recent decades, said professor Elizabeth Strom, who teaches anthropology at the University of South Florida and has studied the neighborhood. As rent has increased citywide, and developers have chosen to invest in other areas, more people have gone to Sulphur Springs in search of affordable housing. A lot of people are living there because they dont have a lot of choices, Strom said. Riggins says shes witnessed the influx, particularly as public housing complexes closer to downtown were replaced by mixed-income neighborhoods. What they did was push these people from downtown, so when the tourists come and the other people come, they dont see them, said Riggins. But what those new people dont see is that they got shoved right into our neighborhoods. The return home Riggins first moved to Sulphur Springs in 1979 and, like many, renting was her only option. She was nine years out of high school, recently separated from her first husband but still caring for two daughters alone. She worked at the St. Josephs Womens Hospital, a good job, she said. But it was still hard. Now, I dont say that I did it alone because Ive realized that God has been looking out for me the whole time, she said. But at the time, it felt like I was doing it alone. She didnt have a car. Each day, she left her daughters by themselves to get ready for elementary school. And she walked the dark streets with no sidewalks in the early morning so she could catch a bus in time for her 7 a.m. shift. She moved out while her children completed school, to a home in Temple Terrace. She said it was a financial sacrifice but a step up for her daughters. When they left home, she returned to Sulphur Springs, moving in with Charlie Riggins, her boyfriend, whom she would later marry. Charlie Riggins neighbors called him the mayor because of how involved he was. He was almost nosy, his wife laughed, always checking in on people, making sure they behaved. Soon after moving in with him, she started doing the same. That continued after his death. Standing my ground She started working with Feeding America, and was ordained in 2007. She joined a number of community groups, started participating in programs at the YMCA and attending community meetings. She founded her own church, Bethany Tabernacle. Riggins wanted to make her community better, but nothing seemed to lead anywhere. Recently, though, shes found herself searching for more. During the lockdown, she was cautious, making her church entirely virtual and avoiding unnecessary gatherings. This summer, she found herself attending more meetings, including one organized by the city in early July focused on transportation fixes. I left halfway through, she said. They came here, with all these ideas of what we need. No! You need to listen, you need to work with the people that are here, the people who need the help. She did follow up after the meeting, though, volunteering to host a front-porch roll call, in which police introduce themselves to residents in the neighborhoods they patrol. She said they didnt tell her anything she didnt know. My mother thinks shes a giant, said Nunn. And while she is, this is a new breed of problems she cant fix. Nunn says she knows her mother loves her community, and I know it makes her sad that others dont care for it the way she does. But no matter how many times her daughter and son-in-law, who occasionally help her with household tasks, tell her to leave, she says she wont. She called the person who helped her organize the front-porch meeting with police and let her know that it didnt give the community anything they could act on. These days, she said, she talks with her neighbors, and is thinking of ways to report the nearby housing conditions to the city in another way, in a way that will make them listen. Im standing my ground, said Riggins. This house is mine, this community is mine. Im not going anywhere. The fight over Sheetz building a location in southern Montgomery County has taken a new twist. The major convenience store chain is now suing Centerville. Last month the city council rejected plans for Sheetz to open up on Far Hills Avenue. In August, the citys planning commission approved Sheetzs application to build a one-story more than 6,000-square-foot convenience store and 14 fueling pumps. Some, including representatives of nearby retirement community Bethany Lutheran Village, Epiphany Lutheran Church, and Centerville resident Regis Lekan, filed official appeals to the citys decision. >> PREVIOUS COVERAGE: City planning commission approves plans to build Sheetz in Centerville As a result, the city council held a public hearing. In October, the council reversed the Planning Commissions decision and rejected Sheetzs application. In a lawsuit filed this week, Sheetz is appealing that reversal calling it unconstitutional, illegal, and arbitrary. Centerville City Manager Wayne Davis issued a statement in response to the lawsuit: Our primary goal is to secure the continued safety and quality of life for our residents, businesses, and institutions. As we navigate through this legal process, City Council And staff remain committed to upholding our values of integrity and accountability and making decisions that contribute to the well-being of our community. News Center 7s Brandon Lewis spoke to Julie Reuning-Scherer who is the senior pastor at Epiphany Lutheran Church. She said she was worried the Sheetz would cause a lot of traffic. Theres just a lot of people that come in and out of the same place where Sheetz would need to route traffic for the 3000 vehicles a day that would be coming in and out of that store and gas station. We do not believe that that is a fitting use of that property, Reuning-Scherer said. She said she would rather focus on the work her church is doing and not Sheetz. I really dont want to have to keep worrying about a next door neighbor that causes unsafe situations for residents and people who worship and and utilize the many things that go on at Epiphany Lutheran Church, so my hope would be that this would be quickly resolved, she said. News Center 7 reached out to Sheetz for a statement and is waiting to hear back. We will continue to follow this story. Health officials have urged people to be vigilant following a measles outbreak in Sheffield. The warning comes after vaccine rates among young children in the UK dipped to a 10-year low. Latest figures show only 84.5% had received a second shot of the protective measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab - the lowest since 2010-11. Anyone who suspects their child has symptoms is advised to stay at home and call 111 or their GP for advice. Measles can make children very sick. The main symptoms are a fever and a rash but it can cause serious complications, including meningitis. For some, it is fatal. Other symptoms include; sore, red, watery eyes, a cough and aching and feeling generally unwell. What is measles? Measles is a highly contagious virus that spreads very easily Just 15 minutes in direct contact with someone infected is enough to catch it People whose immunity is compromised, pregnant women and unvaccinated children are at increased risk of severe disease Follow BBC Yorkshire on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Send your story ideas to yorkslincs.news@bbc.co.uk. Police who restrained Sheku Bayoh on the day he died had not received specific training on how to tackle suspects under the influence of drugs, an inquiry has been told. The 31-year-old died after a violent confrontation with officers in Kirkcaldy in 2015. He had earlier taken ecstasy and an illegal substance called Alpha-PVP. Police Scotland's head of safety training has been giving evidence at the inquiry into Mr Bayoh's death. The inquiry is investigating the circumstances of his death, how police dealt with the aftermath, the subsequent investigation, and whether race was a factor. Insp James Young highlighted a series of gaps in the training given to officers at the time. He told the inquiry an updated training manual was introduced in 2013 for new recruits and serving officers. Asked about training for incidents involving drink or drugs, Insp Young said: "It was always mentioned as a risk factor, but there was no specific training on either how to communicate or restrain someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol." The inquiry counsel Angela Grahame KC asked if it was simply left to the discretion of officers. "I would suggest so, yes," replied Insp Young. "Based on their own knowledge, experience, skill. "At that time, we relied heavily on people's own interpersonal skills. I never received any training on how to deal with violent individuals, how to de-escalate." Members of the public had reported that Mr Bayoh had been carrying a knife and behaving erratically before police arrived at the scene. 'Excited delirium' He was restrained on the ground by six officers, stopped breathing and later died in hospital. Insp Young said that in 2015, officers were taught how to spot "excited delirium," a drug-induced state now referred to as acute behavioural disturbance. "We told officers the signs and the symptoms. What we lacked then was being very clear on what the safe management was. "We didn't talk about contain rather than restrain, where possible. "We didn't talk about restraint as a last resort and for the shortest time possible." The training stressed the dangers of positional asphyxia when people were held on the ground. Officers were taught to be mindful of where they were putting their bodyweight and their hands, and to try to put as little pressure on the chest as possible. Violent individuals A police officer since 1995, Inspr Young said on many occasions he had witnessed colleagues lying across the backs of suspects, despite the risks. "It wasn't particularly uncommon to see officers lying across violent individuals because at times that's potentially the only way they can protect themselves and others." He added: "Wherever you can, you don't do it." One of the officers involved in restraining Sheku Bayoh has previously told the inquiry that he held him down by the shoulders and not the chest. Insp Young also told the inquiry there was "no way of telling" what officers had been told during refresher training around the country. Some trainers across the force had preferred to use their own techniques because they didn't agree with the methods contained in the 2013 manual. Changes were made to training in 2016. The inquiry, before Lord Bracadale, continues. MARSHALL COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) A Shelbyville man has been arrested for sexual exploitation of a minor through the work of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) Internet Crimes Against Children squad and Homeland Security Investigations. According to the TBI, special agents received a cybertip on Oct. 5 through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children from an internet service provider of what appeared to be newly-produced child sexual abuse material. Robbery suspect shot, killed by Murfreesboro officer Officials said the investigation led to the execution of a search warrant at a home in Marshall County, as well as the identification of the child in the images. In addition, the TBI said investigators determined 30-year-old Mitchell J. Tompkins was the person responsible for the images. CRIME TRACKER | Read the latest crime news from Middle Tennessee The Marshall County Grand Jury indicted Tompkins last week on two counts of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, along with one count of sexual exploitation of a minor, according to authorities. Tompkins was served on those charges at the Marshall County Jail, where he is reportedly being held on an unrelated charge as of Wednesday, Nov. 22. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRN News 2. A murder suspect on home incarceration in Somerset disappeared early Wednesday after removing the ankle monitor meant to track his location, but was arrested in Kansas, Pulaski County Sheriff Bobby Jones said in a news release. Samuel L. Baker, 24, was scheduled to stand trial Dec. 4 in Pulaski Circuit Court before Judge Teresa Whitaker on charges of murder, first-degree burglary, persistent felony offender and being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. Baker was believed to be armed and dangerous and was suspected to be with 28-year-old Adriana Brown, Jones said Wednesday. On Thursday, the Pulaski County Sheriffs Office confirmed both Baker and Brown were arrested in El Dorado, Kansas. Samuel L. Baker Pulaski County Sheriff's Office Baker was charged with the 2021 shooting death of Robert Claunch, 62, of Pulaski County. Baker originally was jailed in lieu of a $500,000 bond. In August, after several trial delays, Whitaker agreed to reduce his bond to $25,000 in cash or $50,000 in property, on the condition that Baker agree to home incarceration with an ankle monitor, to not have a firearm and to not use alcohol or illegal drugs. Court records indicate Bakers bond was posted Aug. 21. In her 10-page order authorizing the bond reduction, Whitaker acknowledged that Baker faced the possibility of life without parole if convicted at trial. Also, the judge wrote in her order, Baker has failed to follow instructions in the past. In 2018, after Baker was given the opportunity to avoid time in prison by accepting a pretrial diversion for first-degree possession of a controlled substance, he was arrested and charged with drug possession again and with driving under the influence as well, she wrote. After the shooting in the current case, in 2021, Baker led Casey County police on a high-speed car chase and then, after he crashed his vehicle, on a foot chase, the judge wrote. This led to a number of charges related to resisting arrest. Hillary Clinton was right again. If more Americans had heeded her 2016 warnings about the so-called MAGA deplorable and their leader Donald Trump, we could have avoided this reality of neofascism as a dagger to the heart of the American experiment. Instead, we have a rapidly worsening crisis. During a recent appearance on ABC's "The View," Hillary Clinton warned Americans again: I think it would be the end of our country as we know it, and I don't say that lightlyWhen I was secretary of state, I used to talk about one and done. What I meant by that is that people would get legitimately elected and then they would try to do away with elections, and do away with opposition, and do away with a free press.Hitler was duly elected. All of a sudden somebody with those tendencies, dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies, would be like OK were gonna shut this down, were gonna throw these people in jail. And they didnt usually telegraph that. Trump is telling us what he intends to do. Clinton is part of a small and diligent chorus of public voices who, for at least seven years, have boldly told the truth about how Trump and the larger conservative movement represent an existential threat to American democracy. Others, such as former US Attorney Joyce Vance have correctly described Trump and his acolytes plans to end American democracy. Blueprints like Agenda 47 and Project 2025, which call for martial law, imprisoning the MAGA movements "enemies", mass deportation of illegal aliens," ending the rule of law, gutting the First Amendment, criminalizing the LGBTQ community, and taking away the civil rights of other marginalized groups, have been correctly called out by some as Stalinist." As Hannah Arendt so insightfully observed in her landmark work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Stalinism and Hitlerism were the two major totalitarian movements of the first half of the 20th century. Given Trumps admiration of such leaders and his desires for total power and control like a type of God, the following passage from Arendt's book is ominous in how it accurately describes Trump and his MAGA people and the larger neofascist movement: ... Intellectual, spiritual, and artistic initiative is as dangerous to totalitarianism as the gangster initiative of the mob, and both are more dangerous than mere political opposition. The consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against everything they cannot understand. Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. Hillary Clinton made her comments on "The View" before Trump amplified his channeling of Hitler and Nazism. In a series of recent speeches, interviews, and posts on his Truth Social platform, the former president called nonwhite migrants and immigrants monsters who were the equivalent of serial killers. On Veterans Day, Trump basically told his followers that their "enemies" (meaning the Democrats) are vermin and a threat to the country who should be eradicated. He also publicly threatened to prosecute anyone who opposed him. Trump even went so far as to declare that special counsel Jack Smith and the other members of law enforcement who are attempting to hold him responsible for his obvious crimes are afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome and that he is going to have them put in mental institutions." This is a common practice in authoritarian and totalitarian states. Trumps ex-wife has told reporters that he kept a copy of Hitlers speeches in a cabinet near his bed. It is increasingly clear that Trump, who for decades has shown himself to be a casual antisemite, did in fact read from and internalize Hitlers words and evil. In a Truth Social post last Saturday, he took another next step on his journey towards Nazism by invoking the evils of the Holocaust and the final solution: 2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL! This is not the first time Trump has promised a final battle and apocalypse where he and his MAGA people take revenge on the Democrats and their other enemies." These most recent threats by Trump are deadlier and more menacing given the ex-presidents growing Hitler and Nazi energy. Unfortunately, the American people, the news media, and the countrys political class have mostly become numb to the danger, preferring denial, happy pills, hope peddling, and being drunk on American exceptionalism and bromides like It cant happen here." In his new essay, Listen to the Cassandras," Reed Galen, who is one of the co-founders of the pro-democracy organization The Lincoln Project, summarizes these failures and surrender: Trumps reality, after all hes said, done, and what he promises to do in a second White House term, still havent awoken enough people from their collective slumber. Republicans have heard MAGAs siren song and are drawn closer to the rocks. Many voters whove managed to strap themselves to the mast have chosen the lotus eaters life; seeing nothing, hearing nothing, hoping to disappear into their phones and realities of their own creation.It's time to listen to the Cassandras. We must not be a nation who is unwilling to heed warnings. Americas democracy headed for a Thelma and Louise-like trip into the abyss. Were headed for the cliff, we must apply the brakes while there is still time. When democracies die, there is no soft landing. In a 2022 essay, Thom Hartmann makes the following intervention: First, and essential to American fascism, Republicans envision a strong-man Leader who will hold power for as long as he (its almost always a he) chooses, with the transition to the next Leader determined by The Leader himself. This has been the primary characteristic of every fascist-type of government to emerge in the 7,000-year written history of the modern world. For example, in a fascist state the way that you as an average citizen ensure your own advancement and economic, personal, and political security is by sucking up to that one man (albeit often through one of his factotums). You either become an acolyte/follower or you find yourself on the outside looking in. Hartmann continues: You end up doing things on The Leaders behalf, whether youre supporting his party, working at a private corporation, or engaged in the nonprofit sector like teaching at a university or medical center. Defying or challenging The Leader brings opprobrium; supporting The Leader is the path to career advancement. The Trump White House and DeSantis Governors Office are filled with examples. Everything is done for The Leader because The Leader is the state. The state and The Leader have become one. If you challenge The Leader, youre challenging the state, and thats treason.Whatever The Leader says becomes the law. This is called rule by decree and its where every fascist in history including those for the thousands of years before Benito Mussolini invented the word has ended up. One of the reasons that the American people have not responded with the correct amount of alarm and energy to the dangers of Trumpism is that the mainstream news media and the political class have not explained in direct, consistent, and clear ways what life will be like for the average American under a second Trump regime. Even though they are consistently sounding the alarm and trying to rouse the American people to defend their democracy and nation, Hillary Clinton and other pro-democracy leaders are not placing enough emphasis on how Trumpism and American neofascism and todays version of conservatism more broadly are a type of religion for the followers which in turn makes them largely immune from reason and other forms of rational intervention. Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. Moreover, many of Trumps most diehard followers are White Christians, who see in their Dear Leaders evil, profligate sinning, transgressions, and other wicked behavior, as a type of role model and outlet for their own foul desires to hurt those people who they view as the enemy of their real (White) America." And like other forms of fascism, Trumpism and the MAGA movement is a space for wish fulfillment and cathartic violence; this is mass sociopathy as politics. The mainstream news media and respectable political class are afraid to voice that alarming truth assuming they even comprehend it about the intersection of emotions and the political in a failing democracy. To wit. Here is an excerpt from the Washington Posts coverage of Trumps recent trip to Iowa: Joes gotta go, said Lori Carpenter, 59, as she left the Fort Dodge event. And the ho shouldnt have been there in the first place. The ho was Harris, she clarified, before offering another nickname for Harris that was even more vulgar. It doesnt bother me, she said of Trumps insults and crudeness. Her relative, 71-year-old Marsha Crouthamel, agreed. It doesnt bother me either because his policies are strong, she echoed, adding that Trump got a lot of laughs and added, Sometimes you just gotta excite people a little bit. Were Christians, and we can look past that, Carpenter said. We see the good that he did our country when he was in. Asked what she thought of GOP rivals arguing they could deliver Trump-like policies without the baggage, she said: Theyre weaker than him. In a recent conversation with me here at Salon, Robert P. Jones, who is the president of the Public Religion Research Institute, highlighted the larger context of White Christianity and its relationship to Trumpism, neofascism, white supremacy, and political violence: What they see is a society adrift from where they think it ought to be. That explains the reactionary language about "taking America back" and "(Re)Awakening America." It's basically a narrative of loss and decline. Trump repeats those themes of decline and American carnage and how he is the only person who can save America. There is a real belief in Apocalypticism among conservative white Christians, specifically, and white conservatives and the right, more broadly. That is very much tied to changing demographics: we are no longer a majority white Christian country, and we were just 20 years ago. That has set off a visceral reaction, and a kind of panic among conservative White Christians in particular. As I document in The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, most white evangelicals sincerely believe that God designated America to be a promised land for white European Christians. That is not a joke to them. If a person sincerely believes such a thing and the country is changing and is not in agreement with that vision, it opens the door to political extremism and violence to secure that outcome. Many conservative White Christians truly believe that they have a divine mandate and entitlement to the country. In the end, Trump wants to create a Fourth Reich in America. Hitlers dreams of a thousand-year Reich lasted only twelve years and ended with the destruction of the regime and loss of life measured in the many tens of millions. Trumps Fourth Reich will not be a copy of Hitlers (or Stalins regime). Instead, it will be crafted to fit the American mold. But even then, that crafting will be done by similar forces of cruelty, misery, and unnecessary death and destruction. The American people have a choice to make on Election Day 2024 and in the year or so preceding it. Will they make the correct one by first stopping Trump and then confronting a Republican fascist party and larger white right that is much bigger than any one man or leader? Or will the American people surrender to what feels like the near-inevitable tides of history and a growing dread that whats past is prologue? The sisters of an Irish woman killed in an apparent murder-suicide have warned of ignoring "red flags" in relationships. Mother-of-one Denise Morgan, 39, who was originally from Tullyallen in County Louth, was found dead at a property in Queens, New York City, on 21 October. The New York Police Department said "a firearm was recovered in the vicinity of [a] deceased male", who they identified as her former partner, 33-year-old Joed Taveras. "We are speaking as Denises voice, just to try and raise awareness about domestic violence," Lisa Morgan told RTE Prime Time. "You have to make a plan to not let them know youre going... you have to get out." Lisa and Shannon Morgan said they wanted to raise awareness about domestic violence Denise Morgan initially moved to New York seven years ago with her ex-husband and daughter. After the marriage ended amicably, she became involved with Mr Taveras. Denise's sisters told RTE he subjected her to years of coercive abuse, which Lisa witnessed during a visit to New York two years ago. The abuse had become increasingly physical in recent months, they added. The family have shared text messages received from Denise in the weeks before her death, in which she said he had strangled her. On another instance, Mr Taveras is said to have held a knife to her throat. 'We felt helpless' "She found out that he was cheating on her, thats when it started getting physical he knew that she was leaving him, he just couldnt handle that," Shannon said. "She was constantly always telling us what was going on and it was worrying us more." The sisters said they felt "helpless" when speaking to Denise. "We knew she was in a bad situation...thats the guilt thats going to live with us forever is knowing what could have been," Shannon added. Denise was due to move into a new apartment 10 days after she was killed. It is understood she had ended her relationship with Mr Taveras, to which he responded violently. "He shot her in the back of the head, she tried to run away from him, she screamed 'no' while he shot her," Lisa Morgan said. "The detective told us everything, what the neighbours reported, there was fighting and then there was the gunshot, and 10 seconds later there was a second gunshot." 'Walk when you see the red flags' The sisters said they want to raise awareness about domestic abuse, warning people to notice "red flags" in their relationships. "Dont hide anything from your family, sometimes as women we tend to ignore this behaviour - the jealousy, the controlling - and youre embarrassed to speak out about it because you know that youre going to go back to the abuser," Shannon Morgan said. "It's shame, it's embarrassing. "She knew that she had to get out, but unfortunately she didnt get time to get out. "Theyre never going to change, walk when you see the red flags. "The first couple of months with someone you can tell how theyre going to behave in a relationship, which he did, he did show it, he was always jealous." The sisters said they were still in shock and are attempting to come to terms with Denise's death. "I'd go to send her a Snapchat [social media message]... you just forget," Lisa added. "It's not right, no family should ever have to go through this." If you have been affected by any issues in this story you can visit BBC Action Line. When Minnesota's new state flag starts flying next year, it will almost certainly incorporate hues of blue and white and the symbol of the North Star. That imagery rose to the top Tuesday as the State Emblems Redesign Commission winnowed down a list of more than two thousand public submissions for a new flag to six finalists. They also zeroed in on five favorites for a new state seal, gravitating toward representations of snow, the North Star and Minnesota's state bird, the loon. From those finalists, the commission plans to settle on one design for each early next month to use as the basis of Minnesota's new flag and seal. "We are distilling a wealth of excellent ideas," Luis Fitch, the chair of the commission, said at the start of a public hearing, which stretched late into the evening. "We are in the process of crafting not just choosing a new flag and seal." The commission was created by the Legislature last session to take on the daunting task of redesigning the flag and the seal in a matter of months to meet a Jan. 1 deadline. Neither has been substantially redesigned since first created more than 100 years ago. A similar commission in Utah had more than a year and a half million dollars to aid in the effort to redesign their state flag. "This is a big job, this is a big, heavy load," said commission member Denise Mazone. "I want to get it right." The commission was flooded last month with submissions from the public, which included designs with wintery imagery, pine trees and representations of the state's streams and 10,000 lakes. A few people submitted the current state flag, indicating they don't want change. But change will come. The finalists favored by commission members signal a dramatic shift in imagery from Minnesota's long-standing state flag and seal, which have been criticized for decades as offensive to the state's tribal communities. The seal, which is at the center of the state flag, shows a white settler plowing a field in the foreground while a Native American man rides on horseback into the sunset. Others have criticized the flag as poorly designed and too similar to other state flags. The commission favored submissions that followed key design principles, including the use of only a few distinctive colors and imagery that can be recognized from a distance and drawn from memory. Blue, white, green and yellow were the colors used in the final flag designs. "A good flag gets used a lot," said Lee Herold, who owns Herold Flags in Rochester and knows which designs are popular with customers. "When they come in, you can see in their eyes if this means something to them and they are buying something special." The final design must also consider the state's history while representing "Minnesota's enduring values and aspirations," according to a design brief from the commission. Commission members saw the North Star as the most unifying symbol for the state. Many flag submissions also included loons or other state symbols, such as the lady slipper flower or the pine tree. But they didn't make it into the finalists for the flag, in part because those symbols carry less meaning in certain regions of the state. "While loons may be beautiful, and lady slippers might be beautiful and pines might be beautiful, they don't represent us down here," said Anita Gaul, a commission member and community college history instructor from southwest Minnesota. "The people of rural Minnesota, the southern part, might favor a different design other than loons." However, the top vote-getter for state seal features a loon, which members thought was appropriate as a symbol for the official seal. Commission members don't have to take any design as is. They can tweak the final flag and seal design, potentially incorporating an idea from another design that didn't make the final cut. As they narrowed down the field, multiple members said whatever they choose must be relevant for years to come. They warned against choosing a design that looks too modern. "In 100 years, will this still look good?" asked Secretary of State Steve Simon, a member of the commission. "If it screams 2023, do we want to do it?" The new flag will start flying on May 11, 2024 Statehood Day unless the Legislature choses to veto their design. Slovakia will not lift the ban on imports of Ukrainian grain until the EC decision Bratislava awaits proposals from the European Commission on a systematic solution to Ukrainian grain import issues, Slovakian Agriculture Minister Richard Takach said on Nov. 21. Read also: Slovak government led by Fico rejects EUR 40 million new military aid package for Ukraine Slovakias unilateral ban on Ukrainian grain imports will remain in place until Brussels offers a systematic solution to the influx of Ukrainian agricultural products in Europe, Takach said during a bilateral meeting with Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski. Slovakia fully supports the transit of agricultural products from Ukraine through solidarity lanes to third countries, the ministry quoted Takach in a message on its website. However, the reality is that a significant portion of these goods remain in the EU market, thus presenting price competition for Slovak farmers who export grains within the EU. Read also: Slovak carriers initiate blockade at border checkpoint, stranding 300 trucks The minister noted that in Slovakia, crops are grown on approximately 500,000 hectares of landaround one-third of the country's arable territory. Therefore, maintaining this level of production is crucial for the country, as the loss of producers would lead to the collapse of the Slovak agricultural sector. Until such a solution is found at the EU level, the ban on importing agricultural products from Ukraine to the Slovak market, enacted at the national level, will remain effective, the official concluded. Read also: Slovakia-Ukraine border open again after Slovak carriers lift blockade of border checkpoint Wojciechowski, in turn, assured Takach that the European Commission is attentive to the problems of the Slovak agricultural sector but does not consider Slovakia's planned unilateral measures ideal. However, the commission is ready to seek a constructive pan-European solution regarding the import of Ukrainian agricultural goods. Slovak officials previously signaled that the ban could be lifted if Ukraine implements a licensing system for its grain exports. 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 Slovak hauliers have temporarily unblocked truck traffic at the Vysne Nemecke-Uzhhorod checkpoint. Source: Colonel Andrii Demchenko, spokesperson for the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, in a comment to Ukrainska Pravda Quote: "In the course of cooperation with representatives of the Border Police of the Slovak Republic, we received information about the temporary lifting of the traffic blockade for trucks in the direction of the Vysne Nemecke checkpoint. It should be noted that as of this morning, there are about 350 trucks on the territory of Slovakia in front of the Vysne Nemecke checkpoint heading towards Ukraine." Details: Demchenko said that a total of 250 trucks crossed the border in both directions at the Uzhhorod-Vysne Nemecke checkpoint on 21 November, which is at least 100 vehicles less than in the previous days. Passenger cars and buses are still allowed to enter and exit the checkpoint in a regular mode. In case the situation changes, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine promises to inform about it on its information pages. Background: At 13:30 on 21 November, hauliers in Slovakia began blocking the movement of trucks through the Vysne Nemecke checkpoint. The blockade was initiated by the Union of Slovak Carriers. Support UP or become our patron! The SlovakiaUkraine border is now unblocked, Viktoriya Sengetovska, the spoksperson Zakarpattiya Customs in western Ukraine, told Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform on Nov. 22. There are about 400 trucks waiting in line to enter Ukraine from the Slovak side. Vehicles are crossing the border normally, Sengetovska said. Read also: Ukrainian businesses lose $28,000 daily due to Polish blockage The UzhhorodVysne Nemecke checkpoint was unblocked at 12.00 midnight (on Nov. 21), she said. The customs office is working in regular mode. For the past day, 173 trucks were registered for entry here, (and) 104 for exit. Read also: Polish truckers still refusing passage of vital cargo to Ukraine, including fuel, relief supplies Earlier, Ukraines State Border Guard Service reported that on Nov. 21, Slovak carriers blocked the checkpoint on the border with Ukraine. 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 SMITHFIELD, Va. (WAVY) The Smithfield Police Department is searching for a suspect after shots were fired near Westside Elementary School. On Nov. 20 at 4:28 p.m., police responded to a shots fired incident at Jersey Park Apartments, located 0.3 miles away from Westside Elementary School. Officers found multiple cartridge casings in the roadway. Smithfield police are looking for 20-year-old George Anthony Harrison for allegedly pointing and brandishing a firearm near a school, use of a firearm in commission of a felony and attempted malicious wounding. Harrison is described as a Black male standing at five feet and seven inches. He has brown eyes and black hair. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call the Smithfield Police Department at 757-357-3247. Keep up to date with the latest news on WAVY.com. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WAVY.com. Crashing temperatures and accumulating snow are no strangers to the Rockies and Plains, but the setup will allow a period of snow and push of Arctic air to extend into the central United States as the extended Thanksgiving weekend progresses, AccuWeather meteorologists warn. Temperatures surged over the central Rockies and Plains on Wednesday ahead of a blast of Arctic air. However, Arctic air was sweeping southward over the region as the region began to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. Following high temperatures well into the 60s to near 70 F from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Amarillo, Texas, temperatures will plunge 20-50 degrees in some places from their peak by Friday morning. At Denver, temperatures dove from their afternoon high of 68 on Wednesday to the upper 20s on Thanksgiving morning before sliding into the teens on Thursday night. In the Texas Panhandle, temperatures will head downward from their high mark near 70 on Thanksgiving Day afternoon to the upper 20s by Friday morning. The impending temperature plunge will be accompanied by some snow, and not just a few flurries, but a legitimate winter storm that could result in plowable snow in parts of the Plains and Rockies. The track of the storm and specific setup will allow the heaviest snow to avoid the immediate Denver downtown area, but substantial snow will fall well to the northeast of the city in southwestern Nebraska and southeastern Wyoming, where 3-6 inches is in store. GET THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP The Denver metro area can expect 1-4 inches of snow to fall, with the greatest amounts in the foothills to the immediate west of the city. Much heavier snow will fall along the Front Range and well into the mountains over central Colorado, the ranges in Wyoming and the mountains in northern New Mexico through Friday. In these areas, accumulations will range from 6-18 inches with an AccuWeather Local StormMax of 24 inches. Slippery and snow-covered roads are likely along vast segments of Interstates 25, 70, 76 and 80 in the region. Some snow will even spill farther to the west over Idaho and much of Utah into Friday. Several inches of snow will fall on the Wasatch Range, but even the lower elevations of Salt Lake City to the west are likely to pick up a coating to an inch of snow, mainly on non-paved surfaces, into Friday morning. Snow will also spread into the southern High Plains, where Amarillo, Texas, has the potential to pick up a coating to an inch of snow from Friday night to early Saturday. The last time that accumulating snow fell in Amarillo was on March 16, 2023. The legacy of snow from the storm will not end over the Rockies and High Plains. Soon after dropping southward, this storm will swing northeastward from Saturday night to Sunday. As the storm pivots eastward, it will begin to merge with another system rolling in from Canada while also tapping into moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. The strengthening system will then deliver a stripe of snow to extend northeastward well out across the central Plains and into the Great Lakes region from later Saturday to Sunday. The first push of cold air will arrive over the Great Lakes region on Friday. Temperatures will be slashed by 10-20 degrees on average from midweek highs. A second push of cold air will allow snow to fall, road surfaces to cool and some of the snow to accumulate. Motorists traveling over Interstates 29, 35, 70, 80 and others over the Central states from Saturday night to Sunday should be prepared for patches of slippery travel from snow of varying intensity and road conditions ranging from wet to slushy and even icy in spots. Where and when snow falls from the Intermountain West to the Great Lakes region will force officials to de-ice aircraft, which may add to airline delays. The greatest risk of flight cancellations will be over the airports in the Rockies, perhaps including Denver International Airport. A chilly rain will spread eastward and fall just south of the zone of snow. The wet weather will spread over the southern Plains to the middle part of the Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Valley this weekend and may provide an additional easing of drought conditions in the region following the storm from earlier this week. 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. Editors Note: Retro Retail Review is a new video feature that publishes weekly on kansascity.com. Join us for a lighthearted look back with The Stars Randy Mason as he shares his takes on the advertisements that filled the papers pages all the way back to its earliest days. On December 8, 1941, the Stars pages were crammed with urgent dispatches from Pearl Harbor and Washington, D.C. And alongside the shocking news from a day that will live in infamy, ads for refrigerators, lingerie and loan companies seemed to signal business as usual. Amid a page full of movie listings, the Tower Theater boasted four shows daily featuring Sally Rand, the world-renowned fan dancer whod attended KCs Central High School. Cigarette brands like Beech-Nut wanted smokers to linger longer. Tobacco users were also introduced to the amazing Pres-a-Lite at Klines Department Store. Attached to a cars dash, this gizmo could somehow roll out a lighted(!) cigarette. The New York Creation sportswear label spun an illustrated tale around the woes of One Dress Beulah, while Swan Soap went even further. Their suds for mothers ad planted the lovable Gracie Allens face on a cartoon birds body. Babys bath time or a Grimms fairy tale? Watch the video to see the ads. Jeff Hill, the son of embattled Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill, was arrested on Tuesday by South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents on charges related to listening to other peoples telephone calls, according to court records. SLED formally charged Hill with wiretapping intentional interception, use, or disclosure of any wire, oral, or electronic communication and he was released Wednesday on a $20,000 personal recognizance bond, according to court records. County Magistrate Roosevelt Jenkins set his bond. Jeff Hill is technology director of Colleton County government. The charges have to do with his alleged repeated misuse of county equipment, a source familiar with the case said. The arrest came after a long investigation, and one alleged victim in the case is a county official, sources said. No other details were immediately available. A source also said the cellphone of Becky Hill has been seized pursuant to a search warrant and is now in SLED custody. Colleton County Administrator Kevin Griffin said he had no immediate comment on the matter but would likely have a statement later. Jeff Hill did not answer his county phone Wednesday morning. Court records did not list a lawyer. SLED also had no immediate comment. SLEDs usual practice when making an arrest is to issue a press release to the media within hours or a day or so of making the arrest. The press release usually contains a copy of the arrest warrant. As clerk of court earlier this year, Becky Hill had a high profile role in the Alex Murdaugh double-murder trial, which was watched by millions on live-stream Court TV. An outgoing person, Becky Hill was a popular figure with the media and officials at the trial. After the trial, which ended March 3, she published a book full of inside details of her interactions with the Murdaugh murder jury, court officials and law enforcement officers at the trial. The book is called Behind the Doors of Justice. Since then, Murdaughs lawyers have accused her in court documents of jury tampering allegedly influencing the jury behind the scenes to bring back a quick guilty verdict so she could publish her book with a neat, cut-and-dried ending. The Attorney Generals office has investigated those allegations and is contesting them in court. Hill has also denied the allegations in an affidavit. According to the Colleton Countys internet site, the Colleton County technology department is responsible for all the county computers as well as telephones, conferencing and mobile cellular services. In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches conditions of a satellite at a satellite control center in Pyongyang, North Korea, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, after North Koreas space agency said its new Chollima-1 carrier rocket accurately placed the Malligyong-1 satellite into orbit on Tuesday night. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP) SEOUL, South Korea (AP) South Korea said North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the sea but the launch likely failed Wednesday night, hours after Seoul said it would resume front-line aerial surveillance in response to the Norths spy satellite launch. South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a brief statement early Thursday a missile was launched from the Norths capital region toward the Norths eastern waters but that the launch was believed to have ended in failure. It gave no further details such as what type of missile was fired and what happened to it. The launch was North Korea's first known weapons firing in more than two months. It followed South Korea's announcement earlier Wednesday that it decided to partially suspend an inter-Korean agreement and resume flying surveillance aircraft along the border in reaction to the North's satellite launch. North Korea Thursday lambasted the South Korean move, saying it'll deploy more powerful and new weapons at the border in a tit-for-tat measure. South Korea, the U.S. and Japan have strongly condemned the Norths satellite launch on Tuesday night because they believe it was meant to improve the countrys missile technology as well as establish a space-based surveillance system. U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit any satellite liftoffs by North Korea, viewing them as covers for testing its long-range missile technology. The North says it has a sovereign right to launch satellites. The North's neighbors are trying to confirm whether its satellite launch was successful as it claimed and whether the satellite can perform reconnaissance functions. South Koreas military said it assessed that the satellite had entered orbit. But it said it needs more time to verify whether it works. Earlier, the Pentagon said it was assessing the success of the launch, while Japan said there had been no confirmation of the Norths report on the satellite entering orbit. North Koreas space agency said its Malligyong-1 satellite was placed in orbit on Tuesday night, about 12 minutes after liftoff. Leader Kim Jong Un watched the satellite launch on site. He later visited the Pyongyang control center of the Norths space agency, where he was briefed that the satellite would officially begin its reconnaissance mission from Dec. 1, following a period of fine-tuning, according to state media. The Norths official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim was presented with satellite photos of Anderson Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other U.S. military facilities in the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, which it said were taken Wednesday morning. It didnt publicize the photos, and many experts remain skeptical about whether the North Korean satellite is advanced enough to conduct meaningful military reconnaissance. In December, when North Korea released black-and-white satellite photos of South Korean cities following a test launch, many experts said the imagery was too crude for surveillance purposes. In 2012 and 2016, North Korea placed Earth observation satellites into orbit, but experts say neither has ever transmitted imagery back to North Korea. North Korea used the same satellite in its two failed launches in May and August. South Koreas military retrieved debris from the first launch and assessed at the time the satellite wasnt sophisticated enough to perform military reconnaissance. Before Tuesdays launch, South Korean officials said North Korea was likely receiving Russian technological support for its spy satellite launch program as part of the two countries push to boost their partnerships. The U.S., South Korea and others accuse North Korea of shipping conventional arms to support Russias war in Ukraine in exchange for receiving high-tech Russian technologies to enhance its own military programs. Both North Korea and Russia have denied the accusations. A spy satellite is among an array of sophisticated weapons systems that Kim wants to acquire. Experts say he would eventually aim to use his enlarged arsenal to win sanctions relief and other concessions from the U.S. when diplomacy resumes. Some civilian experts said North Koreas Malligyong-1 satellite is likely capable of only detecting big targets like warships or planes. But by operating several such satellites, North Korea could still observe South Korea at all times, they said. Animosities run high on the Korean Peninsula due to North Korea's series of weapons tests since last year and the expansion of U.S.-South Korean military drills. When Heo Tae-keun, South Koreas deputy minister of national defense policy, announced the partial suspension of the 2018 inter-Korean agreement, he said South Korea will promptly and strongly punish North Korea if it uses the South Korean step as a pretext to launch another provocation. Heo called the North's satellite launch a grave provocation that threatens our national security. North Korea's Defense Ministry responded Thursday it will get South Korea to face searing consequences over its decision. It said North Korea won't be bound by the 2018 deal any longer and restore all the steps it has taken to ease frontline military tensions under the agreement. The North's space agency said the satellite would help improve the Norths war readiness in the face of the enemies dangerous military moves. The agency said North Korea will soon launch several more spy satellites to better monitor South Korea and other areas. The 2018 agreement, struck during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the rival Koreas, created buffer and no-fly zones along the countries heavily fortified border. Under the deal, the Koreas were required to halt front-line aerial reconnaissance and live-fire exercises. They also removed some of their guard posts and land mines at border areas. The deal invited conservative criticism in South Korea, with critics saying it significantly restricted the operation of the countrys aerial surveillance assets, which are much more superior to North Koreas. They also accused the deal of heavily benefiting North Korea, because it only called for mutual reductions of conventional military strength while leaving the Norths growing nuclear arsenal intact. ___ Associated Press journalist Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report from Tokyo. By Hyunsu Yim and Soo-hyang Choi SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea on Wednesday suspended part of a 2018 military agreement with North Korea after Pyongyang defied warnings from the United States and drew Western condemnation by launching a spy satellite. The suspension of a clause in the agreement will see South Korea step up military surveillance along the heavily fortified border with North Korea. Pyongyang said it placed its first spy satellite in orbit on Tuesday. Photographs in state media showed leader Kim Jong Un watching the launch of a rocket from a base. Kim was later briefed on the satellite's operations at the control centre of the space agency in Pyongyang and viewed images taken above the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam of U.S. military installations, including the Andersen Air Force Base, North Korea's KCNA state news agency said. North Korea followed the satellite launch by firing an unspecified ballistic missile toward the sea east of the Korean peninsula late on Wednesday, but that appeared to have failed, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing the South Korean military. The G7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the EU condemned the satellite launch and called for a "swift, united, and robust" international response, particularly by the U.N. Security Council. A G7 statement reiterated condemnation of alleged North Korean arms transfers to Russia and expressed deep concern about the potential for any transfer of nuclear- or ballistic missile-related technology to North Korea. U.S.-led efforts to boost U.N. sanctions on North Korea have failed in recent years due to opposition from veto-wielding China and Russia. KCNA said Kim stressed the need for more reconnaissance satellites on different orbits to give his armed forces "abundant valuable real-time information about the enemy and further promote their responsive posture." The satellite would begin its reconnaissance mission on Dec. 1, after adjustments, KCNA said. South Korea's military said the satellite was believed to have entered orbit, but it would take time to assess whether it was operating normally. The Pentagon has said the U.S. military was assessing whether the launch was a success. Jonathan McDowell, of the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Reuters U.S. Space Force data had catalogued two new objects in an orbital plane consistent with the launch from North Korea. "I conclude the objects are the spy satellite and the rocket upper stage," he said. The launch came just over a week before South Korea plans to send its first spy satellite into space on a rocket operated by the U.S. company SpaceX. South Korea's Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said North Korea had "exaggerated" by saying Kim had viewed images of U.S. military installations at Guam. "Even if it enters normal orbit, it takes a considerable time to carry out normal reconnaissance," Yonhap quoted him as saying. "Taking photos of Guam cannot be done on the first day, if you have any knowledge of satellites." Shin said it would take at least until the weekend to tell whether the satellite is functioning. The suspended North-South pact, known as the Comprehensive Military Agreement and aimed at de-escalating tension between them, was signed at a 2018 summit between Kim and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Critics have said the pact weakened Seoul's ability to monitor North Korea while Pyongyang had violated the agreement. SHOW OF FORCE In response to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine USS Santa Fe docked at a South Korean port on Wednesday, a day after the arrival of the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier. On a visit to the carrier, Defence Minister Shin said maritime exercises with the United States and Japan were planned to show "strong will" to respond to any North Korean provocation, his office said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged North Korea to fully comply with U.N. resolutions, which bar its use of technology applicable to ballistic missile programmes. The foreign ministry of China, North Korea's closest ally, called on all parties to ensure peace and stability. KCNA said the Malligyong-1 satellite was launched on a Chollima-1 rocket from the Sohae satellite launch facility at 10:42 p.m. (1342 GMT) on Tuesday and entered orbit at 10:54 p.m. (1354 GMT). North Korea had notified Japan of a satellite launch after two failed attempts to put what it called spy satellites into orbit this year. RUSSIA CONNECTION Tuesday's launch was the first since leader Kim met Vladimir Putin at a Russian space facility in September, where the Russian president promised to help the North build satellites. South Korean officials said the North Korean launch most likely involved Russian technical assistance under a growing partnership that has seen Pyongyang supply Russia with millions of artillery shells. "Didn't the first and second attempts fail because of engine problems? This time, the biggest feature is the success of the engine... It shows that Putin's offer to help in August was not a pretence," Shin said. However, some missile experts said it was too soon for Russian technical assistance to have been fully incorporated and doubted Russia would have shared highly sensitive and proprietary technology. Russia and North Korea have denied arms deals but have promised deeper cooperation. (Reporting by Hyunsu Yim, Soo-hyang Choi, Josh Smith, Ju-min Park, Minwoo Park, Hyonhee Shin and Joyce Lee in Seoul, Liz Lee in Beijing and Satoshi Sugiyama in Tokyo and David Brunnstrom and Katharine Jackson in Washington; Writing by Ed Davies, Jack Kim and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Gerry Doyle, Alex Richardson and Kim Coghill) South Korea approved suspending a military agreement with North Korea that created a no-fly zone near the demilitarized border after Pyongyang claimed its first successful launch of a spy satellite Tuesday. South Koreas parliament voted to suspend the 2018 military reduction agreement, which will allow Seoul to restore surveillance activities at the demilitarized border with North Korea, according to local news agencies. The agreement had created a no-fly zone at the border along with the removal of some guard posts and a ban on aerial reconnaissance and live-fire exercises. Best Black Friday Deals South Koreas move follows North Koreas spy satellite launch, called the Malligyong-1, which was fired atop a ballistic missile Tuesday night local time. After two previous failed attempts in May and August, the claimed success sparked concerns, with both the U.S. and Japan condemning the launch for destabilizing the region. North Korea has accelerated its nuclear and missile capabilities in the last few years but until this week had not yet deployed any major capabilities in space. Over the summer, North Korea began providing artillery shells to Russia to support Moscow in its war against Ukraine. Part of that agreement may have been a deal to help North Korea acquire the technology needed to build out its space ambitions as leader Kim Jong Un traveled to Russias space facilities this summer. North Koreas national space agency said the space launch was justified because the U.S. and its allies have already militarized space. South Koreas deputy minister of national defense policy, Heo Tae-keun, said in a televised briefing that North Koreas launch was a grave provocation that threatens our national security. The Associated Press contributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. SEOUL, South Korea South Korea moved Wednesday to suspend parts of a 2018 military pact with North Korea after Pyongyang defied warnings from the U.S. and its allies with what it said was the successful launch of its first spy satellite. North Korea launched the Malligyong-1 satellite on a Chollima-1 rocket from the Sohae facility on its west coast at 10:42 p.m. Tuesday (8:42 a.m. ET), according to KCNA, the state news agency. The rocket flew normally along the preset flight track, and the satellite entered orbit at 10:54 p.m., KCNA said, citing North Koreas space agency. Photographs published by state media appeared to show North Korean leader Kim Jong Un overseeing the launch, which was earlier reported by South Korea and Japan. South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday that the North Korean satellite appeared to have entered into orbit. It is not clear, however, whether its actually working, it said in a text briefing, adding that it will take some time to verify. North Korea had notified Japan that it would launch the satellite, its third attempt this year after two earlier failures, between Wednesday and Dec. 1. Pyongyang has said it has a sovereign right to develop spy satellites and other technologies to defend itself against what it sees as military aggression by the U.S. and its allies, and it vowed Wednesday to launch more satellites in the near future. The U.S., South Korea and Japan strongly condemned North Koreas latest launch, which used ballistic missile technology in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said it raised tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond. South Korea responded to the launch by suspending parts of a 2018 agreement aimed at reducing tensions between the two Koreas, said a spokesperson for President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is on a state visit to Britain. The pact, known as the Comprehensive Military Agreement, was signed in Pyongyang on Sept. 19, 2018, by Kim and Moon Jae-in, South Koreas president at the time. It followed a flurry of diplomatic activity that year championed by Moon, whose left-leaning administration favored reconciliation with North Korea, that improved relations and raised hopes that North Korea was working toward denuclearization. The agreement suspended live-fire exercises in some areas, imposed no-fly zones and curtailed surveillance, among other measures. But it has been criticized as hindering South Koreas ability to monitor North Koreas activities near the border, especially as the North has stepped up weapons testing in recent years. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that South Korea would restore reconnaissance and surveillance activities around the military demarcation line that separates the North and South, known as the Demilitarized Zone. North Korea is clearly demonstrating that it has no intention to abide by the Sept. 19 military agreement designed to reduce military tension on the Korean Peninsula and to build trust, he said. Han added that restoring reconnaissance and surveillance activities would greatly enhance the South Korean militarys response posture and ability to identify threatening targets, describing it as a measure vital for our national security. South Korea plans to launch its own spy satellite on Nov. 30, as the two countries race to develop their military capabilities in space. South Koreas earlier threats to suspend the agreement did not deter North Korea from its launch Tuesday, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul. But the suspension allows its conservative president, Yoon, to step away from the previous administrations confidence-building measures that disproportionately benefited the Kim regime and which Pyongyang has violated numerous times, Easley said in an email. North Korea is likely to use the enhanced South Korean surveillance as an excuse for further military provocations, he added. The launch Tuesday was North Koreas first since Kim traveled to Russia in September for a spaceport summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Putin suggested that Moscow could help Pyongyang with its satellite technology. It was unclear whether the North Korean launch involved technical assistance from Russia, which would violate international sanctions that Moscow has supported in the past. The U.S., South Korea and Japan have been expanding security ties in the face of North Koreas threats, with President Joe Biden hosting Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the three countries first standalone trilateral summit in August. They also held a brief trilateral meeting last week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco. During a visit to Seoul this month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his South Korean and Japanese counterparts agreed to share real-time data on North Korean missile launches starting in December, the South Korean defense ministry said. The U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson arrived Tuesday in the South Korean city of Busan for a scheduled port visit. The U.S. has been deploying a number of strategic military assets to the Korean Peninsula in a show of extended deterrence against the Norths nuclear and missile programs. Stella Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea, Arata Yamamoto from Tokyo and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com There is no evidence of an arrest warrant being issued for prominent South Korean opposition lawmaker Shim Sang-jung , contrary to a false claim circulating on YouTube. The claim originated from a channel that regularly posts about opposition figures supposedly being arrested. Shim's office also told AFP the claim had "absolutely no basis". Shim Sang-jung finally arrested," reads part of the Korean-language title of a video shared here on November 5, 2023 that has since been viewed more than 300,000 times. The title continues: "A highly angered Han Dong-hoon has unsheathed his sword. Shim broke down in tears and begged for her life." Shim is a lawmaker for the left-leaning Justice Party, and Han is South Koreas justice minister and a close ally of President Yoon Suk Yeol (archived links here and here). The video's thumbnail appears to show Shim fighting back tears with her head bowed. While the video itself shows various clips of Shim, it offers no further information about why she was supposedly arrested. The clip, however, includes intermittent captions that criticise Shim as being a "puppet" of the main opposition Democratic Party and the claim that "the people have turned on her". It was shared by a YouTube channel called "Patriot President Park Chung Hee" that has more than 680,000 subscribers and regularly posts videos about the supposed arrests of mostly opposition politicians. Screenshot of the false YouTube video, captured on November 14, 2023 The video was also shared here and here on Facebook and here on X, formerly Twitter. Comments suggest many users believed Han had ordered Shim's arrest. "This is the meaning of rule of law, no one, not even lawmakers are immune from the law," one user wrote. Another said: "Thank you Minister Han! All traitors like Sang-jung must be detained at once." Shim, however, has not been arrested. Legal prerequisite South Korean law states that parliament must first hold a vote to approve any arrest warrant issued for a sitting member (archived link). A search on the National Assembly's website showed no motion was filed regarding an arrest warrant related to Shim (archived link). Multiple keyword searches also found no official reports or announcements as of November 22 about Shim being placed under arrest or Han issuing an order for her arrest. A spokesperson at Shim's office told AFP on November 22 the video is "outlandish" and "has absolutely no basis," adding that "all sorts of bizarre claims pop up in politics." Appearances at legislature Since the false video was posted on YouTube on November 5, Shim has remained an active parliamentarian. On November 9, she took part in a parliamentary hearing and questioned the country's transport minister. She can be seen at the 46:52 mark of broadcaster MBCs live footage of the session (archived link). Also on November 9, Shim took part in votes at the legislature to pass two high profile bills on unions and public broadcasting, as seen on a screen showing the vote tally at the 52:21 mark of MBC footage (archived link). Shim later posted about the bills on her official Facebook page, which continues to be updated as of November 21 (archived link). Unrelated photo and video A keyword search on Google found the image used as the thumbnail for the falsely shared video matches a Yonhap News photo of Shim at the funeral of a fellow party lawmaker on July 27, 2018 (archived link). Below is a screenshot comparison of the false thumbnail (left) and the Yonhap News photo from 2018 (right): Screenshot comparison of the false thumbnail (left) and the Yonhap News photo from 2018 (right) The approximately nine-minute-long video falsely shared on YouTube also includes three different clips of Shim speaking. Keyword searches on YouTube found these clips were taken from parliamentary hearings on April 30, 2019, March 23, 2023 and April 20, 2023 (archived links here, here and here). GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) Michigan will hold a special election next year to fill two house seats that will be left empty as two representatives are elected to mayor positions. Wednesday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer sent a letter to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, officially calling for the election. Rep. Lori Stone, who represented the 13th House District, has been elected to mayor of Warren and Rep. Kevin Coleman of the 25th House District will be the mayor of Westland. A primary election will be held Jan. 30 and a general election on April 16. Both the 13th and 25th House districts represent areas on the east side of the state, just outside of Detroit. Candidates who plan to run for those districts must file identification and petitions by 4 p.m. on Nov. 27, according to Whitmers letter. For more information on elections, visit the state website. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOODTV.com. I recently spent one night on a luxury train in Europe, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. It's made up of preserved carriages from the iconic Orient Express fleet of the 1920s and 1930s. The train features several sustainability practices designed to conserve energy and reduce waste. This article is part of "Green Getaway: Luxury," a series exploring how people can make more eco-conscious choices on luxury trips. For more climate-action news, visit Insider's One Planet hub. A luxury vacation doesn't have to come with a huge carbon footprint especially if you travel by train. I learned that firsthand on a recent train trip in Europe aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. With rooms starting at $9,000 a night (including tax), it's the ultimate luxury train and a fine option for travelers looking to splurge while being mindful of their impact on the environment. Traveling by train is typically more sustainable than flying or driving. The US Environmental Protection Agency has said 2% of transportation greenhouse-gas emissions in 2021 came from trains while 8% came from planes. "Light-duty vehicles," or passenger cars, were responsible for 58% of emissions, the agency said. "As a traveler, you have the economic power to adopt a 'vote with your dollars' mindset and consciously choose to support local businesses that are aligned with community and environmental impact," Jessica Blotter, the CEO and cofounder of the public-benefit corporation Kind Traveler told Business Insider in October. On the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, I got a taste of a high-end sustainable travel experience that wealthy vacationers are splurging on. And I can see why. In search of a high-end, sustainable trip, I spent one night on the ultimate luxury train: the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express travels through Switzerland. Joey Hadden/Insider In the past two years, I've spent 155 hours traveling by train in the US, Canada, and Europe as a travel reporter. I've found that no matter where I'm going, trains can offer unparalleled views of the world and make any journey feel like an adventure. Perhaps no train does both better than the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, a Belmond train made up of restored cars from historic Orient Express train services of the 1920s and 1930s. Operating since 1982, the train line has 67 routes between 17 European cities, including Rome and Amsterdam, according to Belmond's website. I jumped at the chance to take the train on a recent trip from Paris to Venice. For about $9,000, I spent one night on the train's Paris-to-Venice route in a historic cabin with a couch that converted into a bed and a vanity with a sink. This was my first luxury train experience and the most amazing trip of my life. I was fascinated to learn that on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, sustainability efforts go beyond its transportation mode. Inside the author's historic cabin. Joey Hadden/Insider In 2021, Belmond partnered with EarthCheck, a company that says it monitors and certifies sustainability efforts in more than 550 hotels around the world. During my trip, I had lunch with the train's manager, Pascal Deyrolle. He told me about all the sustainability efforts on the train from preserving history to sourcing food. The train is made up of preserved and restored historic carriages from the iconic Orient Express fleet. Inside the bar car on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Joey Hadden/Business Insider Some of the train's sustainable elements have been in place since the beginning. For example, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is made out of restored Orient Express carriages some of which are nearly 100 years old, Deyrolle said. Wandering through the train cars felt like traveling back in time. Each was filled with furniture and decor reminiscent of early-20th-century luxury, like gold light fixtures and plush seating. The dining experience was another sustainable highlight. Scallops were served during dinner on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Joey Hadden/Business Insider From scrambled eggs and caviar to scallops that nearly melted in my mouth, each extravagant meal on the luxury train felt carefully designed to produce impeccable textures and flavors. And the ingredients tasted so fresh to me. Deyrolle said that before each trip, the train loads food in Venice and refills in Paris. "Everything that we picked up yesterday we are going eat on the way to Venice," he said. Because trains have limited space to store food, Deyrolle said, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express uses fresh meat and produce out of necessity. Deyrolle said the ingredients are sourced locally in Paris and Venice; the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express chooses suppliers that allow it to trace where the products come from, even down to the fishermen who catch the seafood that's served to guests. The train conserves water with reduced-flow faucets. The author's cabin faucet. Joey Hadden/Business Insider The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express stops along the route to refill the water tank, Deyrolle said. But the tank isn't that big, he added, so conserving water is a necessity. He said all the taps on the train have reduced flow. In my cabin, I noticed the minimal flow from my faucet. The water ran only when I was holding the handle down. Limiting energy use and waste is a priority on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. A dining car on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. Joey Hadden/Business Insider Deyrolle said the luxury train has no single-use plastics. In my cabin, I noticed water in cans rather than plastic bottles. Deyrolle said water on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is served only in cans and glasses. Deyrolle said the train also works to minimize waste from packaging, adding that all the food suppliers use recyclable boxes and reusable containers. "We exchange containers when they bring fish, meat, and veggies," Deyrolle said. "For us, it's less packaging, less trash, and less space used on the train." The train has a limited capacity for electricity. So Deyrolle said it conserves energy with custom LED lighting. During the trip, I noticed the lighting intensity changed depending on whether it was sunny or cloudy, day or night. Deyrolle said the train uses different lighting settings to match the ambiance. The train company also works to restore the surrounding nature. A view from the author's cabin window. Joey Hadden/Business Insider Deyrolle said that for each sustainability effort, from waste management to energy use, there's a committee of staff members who are passionate about the issue. "If you're passionate about something, then you're going to focus on it," he said. Deyrolle said his passion is planting trees, so he has a goal to plant a tree for each of the train's staff members in a park in Venice over the next five years. He added that the company made an agreement with the city council to do so. "When I bike along the canal, it's super hot. As soon as I go into the park, we lose four or five degrees just because of the shade from the trees," Deyrolle said. "It's incredible. So trees will help us to bring the actual temperature down and create oxygen." Some of the most memorable moments of my train journey came from looking out the window at dramatic landscapes of mountains, trees, and meadows. Being so close to nature made me feel more passionate about protecting the planet, too. Read the original article on Insider The Scene Sitting side-by-side at a wooden table at a forum with discerning Christian voters, three Republican presidential candidates compared the time theyd spent meeting Iowans. Nikki Haley told the Iowa Family Leaders audience that shed lost count of how many town halls shed had. Ron DeSantis was about to visit his 98th of the states 99 counties were going to save that 99th for a big, big announcement. Vivek Ramaswamy talked about the apartment his family had rented in Des Moines, becoming native Iowans, as his son Karthik goofed around on his lap. The next day, 100 miles away, Donald Trump rallied 2,000 supporters at a high school and promised to return to Iowa four or five times, maybe six times before the Jan. 15 caucuses. This was Iowa, eight weeks out from the first presidential primary contest Trump doing only what he had to, and three far-behind rivals who had to try everything. Tim Scotts exit from the race freed up big donors (ex-Trump adviser Gary Cohn, Citadel founder Ken Griffin) who are now eying Haley after missing her first funding rounds. But DeSantis still presents himself as the only Trump challenger who can compete in Iowa credible with evangelical voters, backed by Gov. Kim Reynolds. He doesnt need to hold off Haley in Iowa, said Steve Deace, a conservative radio host in Des Moines who endorsed DeSantis this summer. Its only a two-person race. Only one candidate has the standing to win: Trump. And only one candidate has the organization to win: DeSantis. Haley is no threat on the ground to alter that. Especially within the Family Leader base. But the DeSantis operation is treating Haley like a threat. Never Back Down, the super PAC thats run ads, paid for field operations and staged town halls for DeSantis, began attacking Haley with paid messaging last month, highlighting times when the former South Carolina governor welcomed Chinese businesses to the state. Fight Right, a new pro-DeSantis group, has reserved $500,000 in ads that will start on Thanksgiving, also targeting Haley. The airwaves are far from full: Since the end of September, the super PACs supporting Trump (MAGA Inc.), DeSantis (Never Back Down), and Haley (SFA Fund) have spent only around $4 million apiece on TV advertising. But one reason Fight Right exists, according to NBC News, is that Never Back Downs anti-Haley messaging, like its prior anti-Trump messaging, was ineffective. The numbers are showing that Nikki is the very clear alternative to Donald Trump, said state Sen. Chris Cournoyer, Haleys Iowa campaign chair. Her numbers are rising in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. I think that DeSantis, even with his 99-county tour in Iowa, is just stagnant, and her message is truly resonating. Davids view The Iowa campaign is unfolding under nearly ideal conditions for Trump, the first choice for most caucus-goers and second choice for most DeSantis voters. Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats brought up that fact at his own event, asking the Florida governor the biggest question hed been hearing: Why doesnt he wait his turn? (Vander Plaats is expected to endorse DeSantis today, which his rivals saw as inevitable after DeSantis-related groups gave $95,000 to the Family Leader.) DeSantiss answer hasnt changed all year: He wins and delivers, Trump loses and falters. I have laid waste to the Democratic Party, he told Vander Plaats. They are a carcass on the side of the road. In Iowa, where his support among Republicans has stabilized around 17%, he casts Haley as a spoiler, explaining that Trumps attack strategy the ex-presidents PAC has only gone after DeSantis shows you who the threat is. But no candidate truly threatens Trump in Iowa, who has built and held a lead since DeSantis entered the race six months ago. At this point in the 2016 cycle, 55 days before the caucuses, Trump led Ted Cruz by 3 points; a late surge and solid evangelical support helped Cruz win by 3. Fifty-nine days out from the last Democratic caucuses, Pete Buttigieg held a 3-point lead over Bernie Sanders, which the Vermont senator would erase, before a botched count that convinced Democrats it was time for another state to vote first. In an average of all Iowa polls, Trump heads into the Thanksgiving holiday up 30 points over DeSantis and the field. Not since 2000, when George W. Bush and Al Gore easily won their party caucuses, have Iowa front-runners held such wide leads in competitive races. DeSantis and Haley are viewed favorably by more GOP caucus-goers than Trump, but so was Scott, who abandoned the race this month. And veterans of the Scott campaign expect his voters to scatter between Trump, DeSantis, and Haley. Those persuadable evangelicals want someone they believe can win, said Matt Gorman, a Scott campaign strategist, referring to the voters who make up around two-thirds of the Iowa GOP electorate. Know More Of Trumps remaining rivals, Haley has done the most to use electability as a point of contrast. She cites polls that show her running stronger than Trump in swing states, and she distances herself from any Trump stance that sounds divisive. Asked at a Marshalltown stop about Trump referring to political enemies as vermin, a comment that flared into days of mainstream media coverage, Haley characterized it as the sort of gaffe he makes and she doesnt. I think he means well, she said, but the chaos has got to stop. More often, the candidates say that they can wield power better than Trump did. Haley boils down her problems with Trump into a few decisions he could have made, but didnt; at the Iowa Family Leader forum, she repeated a story about Trump angrily ripping out pages from a list of unfriendly countries that got foreign aid, the point being that shed rip out even more if she beat Biden. DeSantis, who talks about Trump more frequently than Haley, promises a better-organized, more loyal White House that would create less drama for the media to cover. When Trump was president I mean, he literally would be doing phone calls with foreign leaders, and youd have people on the NSC leak it to The Washington Post and The New York Times and stuff, DeSantis told a crowd in Pella. Part of that is because he kept all these Obama holdovers in the NSC. You cannot do that. All the Biden people, when Im president, are gone on day one. There is no path to a DeSantis White House without an incredible result in Iowa; he has flatlined in New Hampshire, and his campaign and super PAC have been off the air there for months. Haleys avoidance of the abortion issue, preferring a consensus to a specific new federal policy, is well suited to the least-religious GOP electorate on the early calendar. But at the forum, when pressed if she would have signed South Carolinas six-week abortion ban, Haley said she would. Whatever the people decide, you should go, she told Vander Plaats, going on-record about an issue shed evaded. She did it at an event hosted by an influencer that everyone expected to endorse DeSantis an event that Trump felt very free to skip. Notable In Politico, Jack Shafer plays taps for Haleys social media verification proposal, a brief flare-up that DeSantis took advantage of as he tries to fend her off; it crumpled under the most gentle scrutiny. In the New York Times, Reid J. Epstein looks at how Democrats want the electorate to realize that Trump will probably be the GOP nominee, keeping up their yearslong dependence on the Trump outrage machine. And in Semafor, Shelby Talcott assesses how the overall political environment got better for Trump: 63% of Americans consider crime an extremely or very serious issue, the highest theyve ever recorded in over two decades. ST. LOUIS A south St. Louis apartment manager is behind bars and accused of murder in the shooting death of an alleged trespasser. Prosecutors have charged Shane C. Richmond, 48, with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in connection with the investigation. Authorities say he is the property manager for apartments in the 5700 block of South Broadway in the Carondelet neighborhood. Another St. Louis resident loses property via Recorder of Deeds Office Court documents obtained by FOX 2 have not disclosed the date or time the shooting happened, but note that Richmond initially claimed to have shot the victim in self-defense. According to court documents, Richmond lives in one of the apartment units and heard a suspicious noise one night. Investigators say he started walking around while armed with a gun and noticed a broken window to one entry point of a window. A witness told authorities that Richmond entered a vacant room and noticed one man kneeling sideways with his hands up. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Daily News Per court documents, Richmond claims the alleged trespasser stood up, started to make aggressive comments, and ran toward him moments before he was shot. A witness disputes this claim and asserts that the victim never stood up. Investigators say there is no evidence suggesting that more than one real bullet was fired or that the victim might have had a weapon. A warrant was issued for Richmonds arrest on Tuesday. He is being held in the City of St. Louis without bond. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 2. More than 30 staffers of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson called on the progressive lawmaker to back a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war Tuesday, signaling increased pressures between Democrats over the conflict. The letter, first reported by Politico, urges Johnson to join Chicago City Council member Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchezs calls for Chicago leaders, President Biden and the Democratic Party to back a cease-fire. We are proud to be your staffers, we are proud to work with you to make Chicago a better city each and every day, the letter reads. However, we cannot be proud to be silent at a time when silence is complicity in atrocity. Calls for a cease-fire have divided Democrats, as progressives push back against the Biden administration for its ardent support for Israel amid the conflict. Progressives cite the significant civilian death toll in Gaza, estimated to be more than 11,000 people, including more than 4,600 children. This month, hundreds of former Biden campaign staffers called on the president to back a cease-fire. Bidens support for Israel has also faced significant dissent from within the State Department over concerns that it could weaken the U.S.s position elsewhere in the Middle East. More than a dozen House members, all progressives led by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), have backed a cease-fire, in addition to two Democratic senators: Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Dick Durbin (Ill.). In the letter to Johnson, the staffers said the mayor has an obligation to back the measure in order to send a message to the Democratic Party, which will hold its 2024 convention in the city. In Chicago, residents have a tradition of seeing past the headlines and coming together to demand what is just, to hold elected officials and their staff to their duty of enacting policy that dismantles historic injustices, the staffers wrote. We see the need for our elected leaders to call for a ceasefire as directly tied to showing that our city is united in support of human rights. Efforts for a short-term cease-fire cultivated in an agreement late Tuesday. About 50 hostages will be freed in the deal, the Israeli government announced, over a four-day pause in fighting. Earlier Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said fighting will continue at the end of the short-term cease-fire. We are at war, and we will continue the war, he said in remarks translated from Hebrew. We will continue the war until we achieve all our objectives: Eliminate Hamas, return all our abductees and missing persons and ensure that there will be no element in Gaza that threatens Israel. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. The editorials and columns you read on these Opinion pages come from a variety of people, including both staff and people who dont work full-time for The Star, but are writers we trust. I have mentioned before how journalism is a sacred trust between readers and news outlets, and trust is earned by getting to know us. You probably know our staff writers, Melinda Henneberger and Toriano Porter very well. Theres also our longstanding op-ed editor Derek Donovan, and then theres me. But what about the writers you see often, even on a weekly basis? Just who are Joel Mathis and David Mastio? Mathis has written for the Opinion section for quite a while, and David is pretty new. Many of you have written that you would like to know them better. Introducing both to our readers is long overdue. David Mastio Mastio is a former opinion editor for USA Today in Washington, D.C., but has Heartland roots. He began writing for The Star in October. He lives in Nebraska, where he has written and edited for independent centrist startups. I talked to him about his Kansas past: The KC Star has been part of my reading since I was a kid. My family has lived in St. Joseph for a century and my dad was always interested in news and politics. He ran for mayor once after putting up a giant protest gorilla to loom over downtown St. Joe. When I stayed on my great uncles farm outside Wichita, hed get The Star when he went into town for errands. It was the big city paper that kept my family in the loop. David brings years of veteran opinion writing experience and an informed conservative point of view. His take on politics, and national and regional issues, will expand the viewpoints on these pages. I think my conservative values and national conservative political connections give me an advantage over more liberal journalists. Months before Donald Trump won the 2016 election, I said hed win because Hillary Clinton was such a joke. Ill try to bring that advantage to Kansas and Missouri issues and politics as I write every week, Mastio said. Still, hes not a one-note writer, especially regarding the 45th U.S. president. Dont misunderstand, though: I am no Trump fanboy. I live in the reality where he didnt win the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021, was an antidemocratic outrage. I share the values of Kansas and Missouri conservatives, but I think to be ascendant, we have to deal with the world as it is, not as we want it to be. Joel Mathis Mathis is a familiar name to Opinion readers. He has been writing commentaries for The Star since May 2022 and lives in Lawrence. In addition to writing for The Star, he contributes to The Wichita Eagle. He has written and edited content in Kansas, Philadelphia and Chicago. Despite growing up in a conservative central Kansas community, he usually shares a left-of-center viewpoint in his columns. I think about those folks and how they might respond to my opinions every single time I write. So Ive given myself an impossible task: I want to give a left-of-center point of view about Kansas and Missouri politics, but I want to do it in a way that doesnt add unnecessarily to the stark polarization that so often divides Americans and makes our Thanksgiving family meals so fraught. (Put another way: I dont necessarily want to make you angry. I do want to make you think.) Sometimes, Mathis said, that means acknowledging the limits to his point of view: I took Kansas and Missouri Attorneys General Kris Kobach and Andrew Bailey to task recently for challenging FDA decisions but admitted I might not feel the same way if they were trying to reverse a Republican administrations actions. Mathis said he takes the journalism part of opinion journalism seriously. I hope that means you learn something new when you read my column either some bit of news about our elected officials that hasnt been widely disseminated, or some bit of context that makes that news more understandable. And once thats done, I want to persuade you that my way of looking at the situation is the best one. Im happy to have these two stellar writers contributing to The Stars Opinion team. As always, we welcome your opinions, too, through letters and columns. Got an idea? Submit it here. Members of the Starbucks Workers Union picket and hold a rally outside Starbucks store in New York (Reuters) -The Strategic Organizing Center (SOC), a coalition of North American labor unions, said on Tuesday it had nominated three candidates for board seats at Starbucks Corp, deploying a tactic typically used by activist shareholders. Those nominated for election to Starbucks' board are Maria Echaveste, Joshua Gotbaum and Wilma Liebman, who worked in the administrations of former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the union said in a statement. The annual meeting, when Starbucks shareholders will vote on the composition of its eight-member board, is scheduled for March 13, 2024. "The board's nominating and corporate governance committee will review SOC Investment Group's proposed director nominee(s) in accordance with its normal process," Starbucks said in a statement. It added it had invested more than $3 billion over the last three years on wage increases, training, new equipment and technology, and that it would do so at this pace in 2024. It also said it had increased hourly pay by nearly 50% since 2020, offered more working hours and recorded lower staff turnover. Workers at several Starbucks stores walked off their jobs last week in a strike organized by the Workers United union during a key promotional event demanding improved staffing and schedules. SOC said the National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency that upholds workers' rights, has issued more than 120 complaints against Starbucks in the last two years. These include accusations of illegal discipline and firings, store closures to halt union activity, worker surveillance and the failure to bargain with workers in good faith. "At a time when Starbucks has set an ambitious goal of opening more than 17,000 new stores by 2030, it cannot waste any more resources fighting its own workers," SOC said in a statement. A National Labor Relations Board spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The union represents more than 9,000 Starbucks employees at about 360 U.S. stores. It is affiliated to Service Employees International Union, which is part of SOC, a shareholder at Starbucks. Starbucks employed about 228,000 people in the U.S. with 3.6% of Starbucks partners in U.S. company-operated stores represented by unions as of Oct. 1, according to regulatory filing. Strikes have taken place across industries as a tight U.S. labor market, the expiry of union contracts along with still-high living costs have led to tough negotiations for pay hikes and benefits. According to preliminary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 444,900 workers have been involved in work stoppages and strikes through October this year. Starbucks said on Monday it had created a new board committee dedicated to helping it better engage with stakeholders, including the company's employees. (Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh and Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru and Svea Herbst-Bayliss in New York; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Sherry Jacob-Phillips) Months after being met with strong pushback, the State College Area School District is revisiting the idea of turning the Delta Program into its own school. During Monday nights school board meeting, members heard a Delta Program Committee update and heard from parents who continue to have concerns about the proposal. If made its own school, Delta students would still be able to participate in sports, take classes at State High and keep the schools democratic process. But many members of the Delta community still oppose the change, believing it is at best unnecessary and at worst could lead to fundamental changes to the program. The Delta Program is a democratically run alternative schooling program students can opt into starting in sixth grade. Since 2019, the program has been housed within the North Campus of State High after its move from the Fairmount Building in downtown State College. In March, the administration proposed changing the program into a separate school, prompting more than 120 parents, teachers and students to attend a PTO meeting opposing the change. The district said the change would be only a matter of issuing the Delta Program a separate building code, making it recognized as a separate school by the state. District officials have said that a such a change would allow state data, like PSSA test scores and state climate studies, to be tracked more easily. As a program, all of Deltas state data is desegregated into the middle schools and high school. Deltas demographics, standardized test scores and climate surveys are a black hole to the district, getting lost in the larger data groups of students home schools, district officials said. However, the central fear for many members of the Delta community is that the change will fundamentally alter the way Delta operates. Six Delta parents and staff members spoke during Mondays meeting, questioning the decision and asking for other solutions to the districts data problem. Im worried that Delta magic is potentially threatened by going from a program to a school, Delta parent and State High teacher Danielle Crowe said. Standardized testing is not a major concern for many members of the Delta community, with about 20% of the Delta Program population opting out of state-required PSSA testing. The data is the tail wagging the dog on a program that is incredibly successful, parent Lara Fowler said during public comment. Schools with less than a 95% participation rate in PSSA exams have to submit a plan with the Department of Education to raise test participation, and any students who opt out above 5% are automatically counted as a failing score. Board member Deborah Anderson also questioned the validity of the data Delta would receive with such high opt-out rates. The numbers arent gonna look good, thats just factual, Anderson said. When you look at proficient versus non-proficient, with a 20% opt out rate 15% of your students are going to look non-proficient, but we actually dont know. Board member Peter Buck said the board should consider a resolution to assure the Delta community that moving from a program to a school would not change its culture or operations. Its really important that whatever happens, whether its a program or a school, that the board affirms the districts commitment to the culture, structure, governance and curriculum of Delta, Buck said. The Delta Program Committee next meets Dec. 13. According to a handout presented at Mondays meeting, and set to be sent to Delta families by email, next steps include the committee sharing recommendations with the superintendent. The superintendent would make a recommendation to the school board, which would make the decision on the future of Delta. RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) For Cassandra Brooks, next week will mark a milestone. After years of political battles, North Carolina will formally expand Medicaid coverage to more than half a million low-income people. State officials say at least 300,000 of them will gain that coverage immediately on Dec. 1. Brooks described it as a prayer answered. She owns Little Believers Academy, which has childcare centers in Wake and Johnston counties. She spent years advocating for state lawmakers to approve Medicaid expansion. It became personal for her after two of her teachers died due to conditions that went untreated because they couldnt pay for them. Brooks offered health insurance to employees, but she says many of them could not afford it. People need healthcare. We need mental health support. Lets do it all over the nation, she said. Starting Dec. 1, single adults making up to $20,120 a year will qualify for Medicaid. The income threshold goes up to $41,400 for a family of four. Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said hes met with community leaders across the state that his administration worked with during the COVID-19 pandemic. Theyve been trained on how to reach people who may be eligible for coverage and how to help them apply. Weve been working with technology trying to connect with a lot of other programs that provide some healthcare to people to try to determine if they would indeed qualify, he said. So, this is an important day for the people of North Carolina, and Im just excited about getting started on this journey. In 2022, Republican Senate leader Phil Berger and other top Republicans in that chamber publicly backed the idea of expanding Medicaid after years of opposition. House leaders supported the plan this year, but expansion was tied to the state budget being enacted, which did not occur until October. Some Republicans remained opposed to the idea, concerned about the long-term cost of the program and the need for more providers of healthcare. The federal government is giving North Carolina a one-time incentive of about $1.6 billion, which state lawmakers had broad discretion to decide how to spend. Itll be used in a variety of ways, including to help build a new childrens hospital and to fund mental health services. But, some of the money is also going to projects unrelated to healthcare, such as a Civil War museum in Fayetteville. Brooks said she thinks a combination of the incentive from the federal government, the worsening mental health crisis and challenges in the job market all contributed to state leaders moving forward with expansion. This will help business because when you have healthy people, they can go to work. If you dont have healthy people, they cant go to work, she said. Shes written a book From Solace to Strength based on her experience as she pushes for leaders in the 10 remaining states that have not expanded Medicaid to take that step. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to CBS17.com. A New York attorney grievance committee on Tuesday dismissed a complaint filed by adult film performer Stormy Daniels alleging one of former President Trumps lawyers in his hush money case has a conflict of interest. Daniels, who in 2016 was paid the money at the center of Trumps criminal case, filed the complaint earlier this year after claiming attorney Joe Tacopina had a conflict because of his prior dealings with her. Following an investigation of the allegations in the above-referenced complaint filed against you, the Committee has determined to take no further action, Jorge Dopico, chief attorney for the Attorney Grievance Committee of the First Judicial Department, told Tacopina in a Tuesday letter. Best Black Friday Deals The judge overseeing Trumps hush money case in September similarly ruled that Tacopina had no conflict, although the Trump attorney did agree to not cross-examine Daniels if she testifies at trial. Now both the court and the disciplinary committee have ruled that there was no conflict or ethical violation at all, as I have said from day one. Its seems that Stormy Daniels and her joke of a lawyers 15 minutes of fame have come to an appropriate end, Tacopina told The Hill in an email. The development was first reported by The Messenger. Trump is charged in the case with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over reimbursements he made to his then-fixer and personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who had paid Daniels to keep quiet about allegations that she had an affair with Trump. Trump, who pleaded not guilty, denies the affair. Concerns about Tacopinas involvement were raised around the time of Trumps arraignment in April. Danielss attorney, Clark Brewster, in a letter had indicated that Daniels previously contacted Tacopinas law firm seeking consultation about the hush money arrangement. Tacopina has long said he never represented Daniels and never actually met with her. I trust that the grievance committee gave the complaint diligent and careful consideration, Brewster said in an email. In reporting the facts to the committee I simply felt obliged under the rules of Professional Conduct to disclose the facts implicating a rules violation and thereupon leave it to a well constituted committee to render its judgment. Trumps trial in the case is currently scheduled to begin March 25. It is one of four criminal cases the former president faces as he looks to return to the White House. He has mounted various pre-trial attempts to toss the charges, and the judge is set to consider those motions during a Feb. 15 hearing. The judge at that hearing could also change the trial schedule. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock visited Macon on Monday to tour the Ocmulgee Mounds, guided by a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation who is helping lead the effort to get the preserve designated by Congress as a national park. After hiking the grounds and learning more about its history today, it is clear Ocmulgee is not just an expanse of land, it is a living testament to our intertwined histories and a source of economic and cultural vitality, Warnock said at a press conference, flanked by local and state elected officials. To spend time on this land is to take seriously the complicated American story, he said. The event came days after the release of a study conducted by the National Park Service, which assessed an earlier plan for inclusion of a 50-mile river corridor between Macon and Hawkinsville into the national park system. That study rendered a mixed verdict on the plan. It said the plan met the required qualifications for national significance and suitability for national parks, but that the area was not feasible for inclusion in the park system due to the difficulty of acquiring the land, and the fact that some of the assessed land was already under state management. Tracie Revis, the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiatives advocacy director, led the senator on a hike from the parks Visitors Center to the Great Temple Mound. Sen. Warnock climbs the steps to the Great Temple Mound. Revis described the civilization that inhabited the prehistoric mounds as the Atlanta of its day, and connected the modern dispossession of its descendants to the history of plantation slavery. She described how the park initiative has enabled her own homecoming to her peoples ancestral land from Oklahoma, where the Muscogee Creek Nation was displaced to in the 19th century by the U.S. government. The area under consideration by the study was significantly larger than the area the park initiative is currently proposing. Since the time the study was commissioned, the park initiative has removed the Oaky Woods Wildlife Management Area and its surrounding lands from inclusion in the proposed national park footprint. U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop,D-2nd District, described the study as the latest plateau in our climb to achieve a space that is appropriately designated and sized, given its significance. The study is merely a recommendation to Congress, which has the ultimate power to designate national parks. Sen. Warnock emerges from the Earth Lodge. Warnock said legislation to do so would be introduced soon but did not give more details. Mayor Lester Miller told The Telegraph in an interview that now is the right time for the long-running efforts to establish a national park to come to fruition. We want this done in the 118th Congress because this is our 200th bicentennial celebration for Macon and Bibb County, Miller said. He also cited Macons recent reconciliation with Muscogee Creek Nation, whose flag was flown atop City Hall earlier this year, as a significant achievement for the park effort. The Paso del Norte International Bridge from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso on Feb. 26, 2021. Mexican unauthorized immigrants in Texas decreased from 73% of all unauthorized immigrants in 2016 to 55% in 2021, according to the Pew Research Center. Credit: Justin Hamel for The Texas Tribune An estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants were in the U.S. in 2021, a slight increase from 10.2 million in 2019 according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. However, Texas population of unauthorized immigrants remained relatively stable at 1.6 million people. Texas remains the state with the second-highest undocumented population in the U.S. behind California, which had a reported 1.9 million unauthorized immigrants in 2021. The center notes that the report does not reflect changes in migrant apprehensions and expulsions along the U.S.-Mexico border, which began to increase in March 2021 and have since reached historic highs. Despite no significant change in the total number of immigrants recorded in the study, the study points out that the demographics and geographical concentrations of unauthorized immigrants have changed. Although Mexico is still the most common origin country for unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., the study found that the proportion of Mexico-born unauthorized immigrants has dropped significantly since 2017. In Texas, Mexican unauthorized immigrants decreased from 73% of unauthorized immigrants in 2016 to 55% in 2021. The researchers note that general migration from Mexico to the U.S. has declined while there have been expanded pathways to lawful immigration from Mexico and other countries. Nearly every other region of the world including Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and Central America saw increasing numbers of unauthorized immigration to the U.S. The largest increases in immigration came from Central America as well as South and East Asia. Nestor Rodriguez, a UT-Austin professor of sociology, studies various aspects of immigration. He said theres a host of reasons there are fewer unauthorized immigrants coming from Mexico, ranging from personal circumstances to increased job opportunities in certain regions of the country. Fortunately for Mexicans, there seems to be growth in the job market (there), Rodriguez said. It's not in all areas of Mexico but certainly in the industrial north and around Mexico City. Unauthorized immigrants make up 8% of Texas' workforce, second only to Nevada, according to the reports labor force data. Because more people of various ethnic populations are coming to the U.S., Rodriguez said this creates wider social networks that encourage further immigration. Rodriguez says this creates more connections that motivate more people to come here and join their cousins, brothers or sisters. Julia Gelatt, associate director of the Migration Policy Institutes U.S. Immigration Policy Program, said demographic shifts in areas with high immigrant populations arent unheard of, like the changes seen in New York Citys immigrant population in the past. A lot of cities and a lot of states across the United States have seen shifts in their immigrant enclaves over time, Gelatt said. Some of those might be more gradual shifts and some might be more rapid. California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois were the six states with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations in the nation, a consistent trend since at least 1990. Even though the states with the largest populations have remained consistent, the geographic patterns of unauthorized immigrants have changed noticeably. Back in 1990, 80% of unauthorized immigrants were living in those six states. In 2021, only 56% of unauthorized immigrants lived in those six states. The shift in geographical trends suggests that there likely are more work opportunities and resources available in other parts of the country, Rodriguez said. Even though it can be difficult to determine trends in immigration data, as unexpected factors like natural disasters or shifting government stability can largely influence immigration, Gelatt said recent data might indicate the beginning of new migration patterns. (In) the 1990s and early 2000s, Mexico was the big driver in the growth of the unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S., Gelatt said. We might be in a new era, but we (dont) yet know what that's going to mean for migration trends. Fentanyl is a hidden danger in Central Florida. Although it is a growing issue for our region, significant efforts are underway to save lives. Read more about available resources below: AdventHealth Hope and Healing Center The AdventHealth Hope and Healing Center in Sanford offers confidential consultations at no cost. The center helps overcome substance use disorders through different types of programs catered to patients needs. Licensed staff bring a safe, compassionate environment focused on breaking the cycle of addiction. For more information on their services, click here.l Read: Watch Hidden in Plain Sight: The Fentanyl Crisis at 8 p.m. Wednesday on Channel 9 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has a free, confidential treatment referral and information service for individuals facing substance abuse disorders. SAMHSAs National Helpline offers help 24/7 and 365 days a year. Treatment referrals are offered in English and Spanish. The phone number is 1-800-662-HELP (4357) For more information on the service, click here. Read: 9 things to know about fentany Volusia Recovery Alliance The Volusia Recovery Alliance offers support for individuals and families in recovering from substance abuse. Click here for more information. Victorias Voice Foundation Victorias Voice Foundation is part of the national movement to spread awareness about lifesaving opioid overdose reversal medications like naloxone, also known as Narcan. Click here for more information. Read: What should you do if you encounter an opioid overdose? Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live. PRINCE GEORGES COUNTY, Md. (DC News Now) A man who shot and killed an Applebees employee outside the restaurant in Forestville was sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison, plus 80 years. David Isaiah Yates, 24, opened fire and killed Anthony Evans, 38, an employee at the Applebees Grill and Bar on Donnell Drive in May 2021. That evening, employees and a group of customers were arguing over the closing time. As they gathered outside before going home, a car driven by Kieth Cook in which Yates was a passenger, pulled up. Yates fired, striking Evans and two others. Parents appalled; 2 kids hit, killed by car while walking to school in Prince Georges County This was truly just an act of vengeance and cowardness, said Assistant States Attorney Sherrie Waldrup during the sentencing hearing. Mr. Yates wanted to show people he was someone who needed to be feared. Yates was found guilty of first-degree murder and three counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault and conspiracy to commit murder. His co-defendant, Keith Cook, pled guilty to accessory after the murder and was sentenced to 10 years, all but five of which are suspended. With todays sentence, Mr. Yates will be held accountable for his reckless actions, said States Attorney Braveboy. This started out as an enjoyable evening at a restaurant and ended tragically for the victims, which is sad. We lost Mr. Evans and fortunately, the two other victims survived I will continue to pray for all their families as they move forward. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC. There are two popular theories about the origin of the school summer holiday: one, that it came about because farmers needed their children to help with the harvest; and two, that the school calendar was tailored to the long holidays of the Victorian professional classes. Many public school parents worked as lawyers or in Parliament, and had a recess between July and September. Neither idea is relevant to todays students, but a six-week-minimum break remains although, perhaps, not for much longer. The UK already has one of the shortest school summer breaks in Europe, but in Wales it is set to become shorter still. Welsh ministers are considering a proposal to shorten the summer holiday to five weeks, then potentially to four in future. The extra days of holiday would be added to the October or May half terms. It seems a little mean to curtail the summer break, especially if you look back on the long, hot summer holidays of youth through rose-tinted glasses. In France, the summer holiday is eight weeks as standard, and in Spain, it can even stretch to 11 or 12 weeks. Yet there is a strong argument that redistributing the school calendar would benefit both teachers and pupils, particularly those who are disadvantaged. One of the issues with long summer holidays is that you see greater gaps in school achievement between the education haves and have-nots when they come back to school, says Lee Elliot Major, a professor in social mobility at Exeter University. There is evidence of learning loss over the school holidays for young people from under-resourced backgrounds in particular. This has been debated ever since a landmark US study from the early 1990s concluded that a large proportion of the inequality in academic attainment between more and less privileged children was attributable to differences that emerged during the school summer holidays. Some children come back to school in September having forgotten what they learnt before the lengthy summer break, in a well-documented phenomenon called summer learning loss. Over time, this widens the gap between middle class children, who might typically spend the summer holidays travelling abroad or taking part in culturally enriching activities that further their learning, and disadvantaged children who dont have the same opportunities. Some studies show they can slip three months behind, says Major. One 2022 study published in the journal BMC Public Health also found that the summer holidays worsen inequalities in mental health. The long summer holidays can worsen inequalities in mental health among some children - E+ This is not the first time the idea of a restructured school year has been mooted. A five-term year was trialled at John Cabot Academy in Bristol in the early 2000s. Its principal at the time was Sir David Carter, who would go on to be the National Schools Commissioner. He said there was undoubtedly a learning loss over the summer holidays and some children lost the habit of being in school. However, the scheme was dropped in 2009 as it became untenable for parents with children at different schools, who found themselves having to find childcare for two different sets of holiday dates. A five-term year was also considered in 2021 by the then education secretary Gavin Williamson. When asked in an interview whether the six-week holiday was too long, he said, I think we should never be nervous about looking at new routes and different ways of doing things. Now, this issue is more pressing than ever before, for parents as well as pupils. For working parents, finding childcare for the long summer holidays can prove almost impossible or else ruinously expensive. Statistics from the Coram Family and Childcare trust in July found that less than a quarter (24 per cent) of local authorities have enough holiday childcare for parents working full-time. Amid cost of living pressures, the average cost of holiday childcare has risen another three per cent year on year to 157 per week for a place at a holiday club. In recent decades [childcare] has become an even bigger issue for parents, says Major. The reality for many people is that its a real struggle, those six weeks I think this sort of reform makes sense. A new school calendar would also benefit teachers, he argues, although a move to shorten the sacred six-week summer would undoubtedly prove unpopular among some. Josephine Hussey, a primary school teacher in Cambridgeshire, says she would welcome longer half-terms as teachers often end up doing three or four days of work during the school holidays anyway. I have had conversations with teachers where we have discussed how much we love Easter, because we always get two weeks [holiday] then. And it does feel like a time when we can actually kick back a bit, she says. Two-week half terms, which are already in place in many independent schools, would give you a chance to do a bit of prep and then have a week to yourself. However, while research shows the summer holidays can cause children to fall behind, Hussey worries more frequent two-week breaks could actually prove to be just as disruptive. We often find that we have to pick up in autumn and get [children] back on track again, she says, so if we had two weeks holiday for each half term, we might find were having to do that more often. I cant back that up with research, but it does feel quite disruptive to me. Major says that four or five weeks is actually quite a long time anyway, and actually, teachers get incredibly tired at the end of the year around now when we have these very long terms. A four-week summer and two-week half terms would result in a more balanced year for teachers it actually makes sense for workload across the year. Schools out for summer but for how long? 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 tense SWAT confrontation took an odd turn when a dog bolted from the homes front door and jumped into the back of an armored vehicle, according to Florida law enforcement officials. It happened Tuesday, Nov. 21, at a home in Jensen Beach, and its still not clear if the dog was surrendering or switching sides. Jensen Beach is about 115 miles north of Miami. With every search warrant, you usually have a runner. But this time, the runner seemed like he was more interested in jumping to the law enforcement side while a house full of suspects were being arrested, the Martin County Sheriffs Office said in a news release. When special investigation detectives along with the MCSO SWAT Team executed the warrant ... a dog named Bear ran out the door, past the detectives and right into the MCSO armored BearCat. ... No word on what Bear was running from, but he made the right decision. Photos shared on Facebook show Bear sat at the back door of the armored vehicle as his five acquaintances were arrested on multiple drug charges. Deputies did not say if his owner was among those arrested. The Facebook post had nearly 1,500 reactions and over 150 comments as of Nov. 22, including some who wondered if the dog was now in witness protection. Sheriffs office officials did not reveal his fate but noted Bear was safe. Tonight we are happy to report he is in good hands, officials said. Police dog jumps in baptismal pool while hunting accused church burglar, Florida cops say Brave dog is stabbed in face while protecting owner from attacker, Florida cops say Dog found trapped atop spillway in walled Florida canal. See what happened next In a bid to save President Joe Biden in the polls, Democrats are turning to a novel, counterintuitive solution: more Donald Trump. Trump has seemed relatively quiet in the race for the White House. Recently returned to X, formerly known as Twitter, his posts do not receive the torrent of media attention that they did before the January 6 insurrection. Similarly, Trumps speeches and rallies have received muted attention over the last three years. Despite this lackluster media presence, he has blown every other GOP candidate out of the water, pulling numbers that nearly quintuple those of his second-place opponent, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, according to composite polling by FiveThirtyEight. A quieter Trump also seems to be doing better than a vocal and present Biden, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris survey published Monday, which found that the Republican front-runners numbers are eclipsing the incumbent presidents, with Trump polling at 48 percent compared to Bidens 41 percent. Bidens own actions have damaged his favorability in recent months. His foreign policy failures and firm stance behind Israel in its conflict against Hamas have severely affected his approval ratings, particularly with minority voters. A joint poll released in early November by The New York Times and Siena College found that support for the U.S. leader had fallen sharply among Black and Hispanic voters. Young voters have also bemoaned Bidens inability to follow through with campaign promises for mass student loan cancellation, which saw its initial demise at the hands of an ultraconservative U.S. Supreme Court in June. The solution? Reverse course on a party maxim to oust Trump from the public consciousness, according to Democratic leadership, who no longer feel that ignoring the real estate mogul is an effective tactic and instead are quietly hoping for live broadcasting of his notorious campaign rallies, reported The New York Times. Not having the day-to-day chaos of Donald Trump in peoples faces certainly has an impact on how people are measuring the urgency of the danger of another Trump administration, Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an African American political organizing group, told the Times. It is important to remind people of what a total and absolute disaster Trump was. Its a surprising about-face. From Trumps descent down the escalator in June 2015 until January 6, 2021, the consensus among mainstream Democrats was that the media was far too beholden to Donald Trump and that, in the cynical pursuit of eyeballs and profits, they essentially allowed him to act as their assignment editor. The notion that the press was complicit in Trumps rise was widely held during this period, as was the idea that the nation would wake up if they covered him as a dictator in training. The presss coverage of Trump has become more disciplined and aggressivewhen it happensin the aftermath of January 6. But it hasnt dimmed Trumps popularity. Now the hope is that more coverage of Trumps derangement will damage his candidacy. When Colby Moss learned that former first lady Rosalynn Carter died Sunday, he wanted to share his memories of meeting her. Moss, who lives in Fort Worth, was 4 years old and a poster child for United Way of Tarrant County when Rosalyn Carter visited North Texas in 1978. It was a surreal experience, Moss said. I didnt understand then everything that was going on. I knew who she was. Moss, now 49, was born with cerebral palsy and took part in the United Ways year-long campaign. Carter was in Garland campaigning for U.S. Senate candidate Bob Krueger and Rep. Jim Mattox, but took time to talk to Moss. She couldnt have been nicer; she was so kind, he remembers. Moss recalled the first lady talking to him and to his parents. The highlight came when Carter asked him if he wanted to tour her plane. Colby Moss holds up a newspaper photo of himself when he met former First Lady Rosalyn Carter when he was 4. Chris Torres/ctorres@star-telegram.com At first the Secret Service agents would not let his father accompany him, Moss said, until they learned that he could not walk up the steps. When they got ready to leave, she asked me if she could have a kiss. I looked at her and said yes mam and kissed her on the cheek, it was pretty special, Moss said. The pilot gave Moss his wings, but they were stolen several years later when their home was burglarized, he said. Moss went on to graduate from Western Hills High School and attend college. He now works with a Christian rock band out of Nashville called For King + Country. First lady Mrs. Rosalynn Carter visits Fort Worth in 1980, speaking at a convention podium to the public and press. Besides her are House Majority Leader Jim Wright of Fort Worth and his wife, Betty Wright. Contributed Rosemary Moss said her son meeting the first lady was one of the highlights of the year-long United Way campaign. She recalled how Carter took time to talk to her family and visit with her son. She made us feel like we were the only ones there, Rosemary Moss said. She wasnt in a hurry, but the people with her wanted her to hurry. When she heard that Carter passed away, she started crying. I always loved her. I cared for her very much, she said, describing her admiration for her working with her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, to help people throughout the world. The Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon has been dropped by her agency after she said American Jews were getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim. Sarandon attended a series of rallies in support of Palestine over the weekend and was captured on video encouraging others to do the same. People are questioning, people are standing up, people are educating themselves, people are stepping away from brainwashing that started when they were kids, she said. There are a lot of people that are afraid, that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence, she added. She asked attendees to be strong, be patient, be clear and stand with anybody who has the courage to speak out and thanked the Jewish community whos come out to have our backs. United Talent dropped Sarandon, who counts Bull Durham and Thelma & Louise among her credits, after she made the comments. Sarandon has long been known for her political activism and is the latest of series of stars to face a backlash for their comments on the Israel-Hamas war. Actress dropped for anti-Semitic posts Scream VI actress Melissa Barrera, who was set to star in the upcoming Scream VII, was ousted from her role by Spyglass. The production company said that they removed her from the film due to social media posts that could be interpreted as anti-Semitic. Barrera had shared posts about Palestine on her Instagram profile, accusing Israel of committing genocide and brutally killing innocent Palestinians, mothers and children, under the pretence of destroying Hamas. Western media only shows the [Israeli] side. Why do they do that, I will let you deduce for yourself, she said. We dont need more hate. No Islamophobia. No anti-Semitism. Controversial social media usage Maha Dakhil, the co-head of film at the agency CAA, resigned from her position on the agencys board after sharing a picture on Instagram which included the text: Youre currently learning who supports genocide. She also posted an image that said: Whats more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide? Witnessing the denial that genocide is happening. Ms Dakhil has removed the images from her profile and apologised. I made a mistake with a repost on my Instagram story, which used hurtful language. Like so many of us, I have been reeling with heartbreak. I pride myself on being on the side of humanity and peace, she told Variety. Im so grateful to Jewish friends and colleagues who pointed out the implications and further educated me. I immediately took the repost down. Im sorry for the pain I have caused, she 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. Susan Sarandon has reportedly been dropped by her Hollywood talent agency over remarks she made at a recent pro-Palestinian rally in New York City. The Thelma & Louise star, 77, has attended several rallies in support of Palestine amid the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel. A spokesperson for United Talent Agency (UTA) confirmed to Deadline on Tuesday (21 November) that they were no longer working with Sarandon. In particular, the Oscar-winner drew criticism for saying at one rally: There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country. She also retweeted a pro-Palestinian post on X from Pink Floyds Roger Waters, who has been criticized over the years for making antisemitic remarks. The Independent has contacted UTA for additional comment. A contact for Sarandon was not immediately available. Susan Sarandon (Getty Images) In footage from one rally, Sarandon tells the crowd: People are questioning, people are standing up, people are educating themselves, people are stepping away from brainwashing that started when they were kids. She encouraged attendees to be strong, be patient, be clear and stand with anybody who has the courage to speak out and thanked the Jewish community whos come out to have our backs. Sarandon has a long history of political activism. She became a prominent voice in the anti-war movement during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was a vocal critic of Donald Trump during his term in office. In 2018, Sarandon was arrested during a Womens March protest in Washington DC in opposition to the Trump administrations immigration policy. She was arrested again earlier this year at a protest demanding fair wages for restaurant workers at the New York State Capitol in Albany. News of Sarandon being dropped by her agency comes as Melissa Barrera was reportedly fired from Scream VII due to her Instagram posts about the Israel-Hamas war. On Tuesday (21 November), sources confirmed to Deadline and Variety that Barrera, 33, has been dropped from Spyglass Medias forthcoming sequel over the posts, which have been perceived as anti-Semitic. She wrote in an Instagram Story: Western media only shows the [Israeli] side. Why do they do that, I will let you deduce for yourself. also Kami dengan tegas melawan impunitas: Menolak dengan tegas terdakwa Prabowo Subianto kembali berkuasa ; Ami firme kontinua kontra impunidade: Rejeita no kontra makaas akuzadu Jeneral Prabowo Subianto fila ba kaer poder no ukun A-N-T-I ALIANSI NASIONAL TIMOR LESTE BA TRIBUNAL INTERNASIONAL (Timor-Leste National Alliance for an International Tribunal) T el: +670 77432621 | 77372095 | 78474876 | 78164385 maubere81@gmail.com | ixavier@asia-ajar.org | josem@jsmp.tl | jhano.hak@gmail.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- We strongly oppose impunity: We strongly oppose Prabowo Subianto that has been accused of serious crimes returning to power Introduction We have been carefully following with serious concern the political developments and changes that are currently taking place in Indonesia, specifically the presidential candidates who will compete in the upcoming 2024 elections. We have been following these developments with a range of feelings of shock and sadness and we have been completed devastated because the candidates include former general Prabowo Subianto, who may likely take power. We feel this way because the victims and families of violence and massacres and crimes against humanity, have again and again raised our voices against crimes he has committed. We value and respect the political and democratic developments that are taking place in Indonesia which demonstrates a very positive climate. However, we feel that demands for the right to justice and deep injuries from the violence and cruelty of the past will be intensified if we see the main perpetrator that has been accused of serious human rights violations during the Soeharto regime return to peak power and take a key and strategic position in government. The former General Prabowo Subianto, who is currently the Indonesian Minister of Defence and also one of the strongest candidates for the President of the Republic of Indonesia for the upcoming period, is accused in a case of serious human rights violations. When we recall the bloody incidents from the past, we remember the role of the former General Prabowo Subianto as a key actor in planning cruel, barbaric and inhumane actions and organised and systematic serious human rights violations during the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste. For the last two decades the victims of human rights violations and their families in Timor-Leste have continued to urge and have consistently awaited justice for the victims and their families, including urging the UN Security Council to provide justice for victims. The following facts relate to the involvement of the former General Prabowo Subianto The facts show that during the Suharto regime Prabowo Subianto was involved in a series of serious crimes and human rights violations in Timor-Leste such as the massacre that occurred in 1983 in Viqueque which is known as the Kraras incident with 200 victims losing their lives. This town was known as the town of widows because many of the husbands of the victims were massacred in this bloody incident. According to a report published by the truth commission CAVR, Chega! it was noted that at least 530 people were killed by the Indonesian military during the counter-insurgency operation that took place in 1984, across the entire region of East Timor (Timor-Leste). Meanwhile hundreds of others are presumed to have died of hunger in concentration camps on a hill named Bibileo and in several other areas. In the same Chega! report it was reported that the campaign activities and actions carried out by military troops in the Special Forces Command were directly led by Prabowo who is responsible for the highest level of violations and crimes that had ever occurred based on a survey between 1983 and 1984. During the occupation the Special Forces Command played a pivotal role in setting up militias who worked for the Indonesian military up until 1999. The formation of pro-Indonesian militias was the product of Prabowo and the Special Forces Command. In addition, there is strong evidence about the involvement of Prabowo as the person responsible and intellectual actor for a bloody incident known as the Santa Cruz massacre on 12 November 1991, which according to a report from Amnesty International killed more than 300 people who at that time were holding a peaceful demonstration in Santa Cruz. This suspicion is based on the fact that prior to the aforementioned massacre, Prabowo conducted a work visit to Headquarters of the 303 Army Strategic Reserve Command in Liquintai, Taibesi. Meanwhile, in Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto is accused of being involved in several acts of kidnapping and enforced disappearances of university students in 1997-1998 and a range of violations when the dictator Soeharto was in power. Based on the facts of this bitter and cruel history, we, the alliance of civil society organisations, survivors, victims and families of victims under the National Alliance for an International Tribunal (ANTI), wish to convey our attitude and demands as follows: 1. not give their vote to the former General Prabowo Subianto, who was a criminal perpetrator of crimes against humanity in Timor-Leste, to become the upcoming President of the Republic of Indonesia; We appeal to and urge the voters in Indonesia and all elements of pro-democracy civil society who are fighting to promote and strengthen democracy and human rights in Indonesia to unite with the community of victims, survivors, and families of victims who were massacred in Timor-Leste togive their vote to the former General Prabowo Subianto, who was a criminal perpetrator of crimes against humanity in Timor-Leste, to become the upcoming President of the Republic of Indonesia; 2. We the community of victims, survivors, and families of victims of massacres and victims of human rights violations in Timor-Leste urge all those in this modern and civilized community, the intellectuals and all elements of the Indonesian community to consider the voices of victims for justice to demand political responsibility and justice against the main perpetrators and intellectual actors who were involved in planning the cruelty and human rights violations in Timor-Leste so they do not return to power; 3. We urge the international community to put pressure on and demand that the pro-democracy leaders and defenders of human rights in Indonesia strongly and consistently prevent perpetrators of human rights violations from returning to power to avoid potential human rights violations in the future and to uphold the democratic process in Indonesia; 4. We urge the UN Security Council to be consistent in eradicating impunity, based on the alleged facts of the involvement of the former General Probowo Subianto in a range of human rights violations in Timor-Leste and in Indonesia. We urge the use of effective measures to ensure that the perpetrators of crimes and human rights violations are held responsible for their actions in a credible manner, especially former General Prabowo Subianto and other perpetrators; 5. For the Government of Indonesia and the Government of Timor-Leste to strengthen and promote principles of democracy through efforts to combat impunity and to establish cooperation links based on respect for human rights values and the rule of law. Therefore, we urge and stand together with the Indonesian community to NOT ALLOW and trust a major perpetrator of crimes against humanity such as Prabowo Subianto to occupy an important and key position as the President of the Republic of Indonesia; 6. We urge the international community to encourage every nation to take responsibility for arresting the former General Prabowo Subianto for crimes against humanity for which he is accused of. Dili, 10 November 2023 see also ETAN Backgrounder on Prabowo Kami dengan tegas melawan impunitas: Menolak dengan tegas terdakwa Prabowo Subianto kembali berkuasa Pengantar Kami mengikuti secara seksama dengan keprihatinan yang serius atas perkembangan dan perubahan politik yang sedang berlangsung di Indonesia, secara khusus fenomena para kandidat atau calon presiden (capres) yang akan bersaing di pemilu pada tahun 2024 mendatang. Kami mengikuti dengan berbagai macam perasaan shock, sedih dan sangat terpukul karena diantara para figur kandidat yang sama yang selama ini kami, para korban dan keluarga kekerasan dan pembantaian dan kejahatan kemanusian yang kami suarakan berkali-kali atas kejahatan yang dilakukan akan kembali ke puncak kekuasaan seperti terdakwa mantan jenderal Prabowo Subianto. Kami menghargai dan menghormati perkembangan politik dan demokrasi yang sedang berproses di Indonesia yang menunjukan iklim yang sangat positif. Akan tetapi, kami merasa tuntutan hak atas keadialan dan luka dalam atas kekerasan dan kekejaman masa lampau tergores ketika kami melihat pelaku sekaligus terdakwa utama pelanggaran HAM berat di masa regim Soeharto kembali ke puncak kekuasaan dan mengambil alih posisi kunci dan strategik dalam pemerintahan. Mantan Jendral Prabowo Subianto yang saat ini sebagai Menteri Pertahanan Indonesia yang juga sebagai salah satu kandidat terkuat Presiden RI periode mendatang adalah terdakwa atas kasus kekejahatan HAM berat Apabila kami mengenang kembali peristiwa berdarah masa lalu, kami mengingat kembali peran mantan Jenderal Prabowo Subianto sebagai elemen kunci yang merancang peristiwa tragis, kejam/biadab dan tidak berprikemanusian dan pelanggaran HAM berat terorganisir dan sistematik selama pendudukan di Indoensia di Timor-Leste. Selama dua dekade terakhir, para korban pelanggaran HAM dan keluarga mereka di Timor-Leste terus mendesak dan secara konsisten menantikan keadilan untuk para korban dan keluarga mereka termasuk mendesak Dewan Keamanan PBB untuk mewujudkan keadilan bagi para korban. Berikut adalah fakta-fakta keterlibatan mantan Jendral Prabowo Subianto Fakta menunjukan bahwa selama rezim Suharto berkuasa Prabowo Subianto terlibat dalam serangkaian kejahatan dan pelanggaran HAM di Timor-Leste seperti pembantaian yang terjadi pada tahun 1983 di Viqueque yang terkenal dengan peristiwa Kraras yang menelang korban 200 jiwa yang kemudian kota tersebut terkenal dengan nama kota para janda karena banyak dari suami para korban dibantai dalam peristiwa berdarah tersebut. Menurut laporan yang diterbitkan oleh CAVR, Chega! mencatat bahwa setidaknya 530 orang dibunuh oleh militer Indonesia selama operasi melawan-insurgensi yang dijalankan pada tahun 1984, di semua wilayah Timor-Timur (Timor-Leste). Sementara ratusan orang lainnya diperkirakan meninggal karena kelaparan di kamp-kamp konsentrasi di sebuah bukit bernama Bibileo di berbagai daerah lainnya. Dalam laporan yang sama Chega! melaporkan bahwa kegiatan kampanye dan aksi pasukan Kopassandha/Kopasus adalah sebuah pasukan militer yang dipimpin langsung oleh Prabowo yang bertanggungjawab atas peristiwa-peristiwa terkait dengan tingkat pelanggaran dan kejahatan terbesar yang pernah terjadi dalam sebuah survei antara tahun 1983 dan 1984. Selama masa pendudukan, Satuan Kopasus mengambil peran penting dalam pembentukan milisi yang berkerja untuk militer Indonesia hingga tahun 1999. Pembentukan milisi pro indonesia sebagai produk dari Prabowo dan Kopasus. Selain itu, terdapat bukti kuat kertelibatan Prabowo selaku penanggungjawab dan pelaku intelektual atas peristiwa berdarah atau yang terkenal dengan pembantaian St. Cruz, 12 November 1991 yang menurut laporan Amnesty International menewaskan sekurang-kurangnya 300 orang lebih yang pada saat itu sedang melalukan demonstrasi secara damai di St. Cruz. Dugaan ini berdasarkan pada fakta bahwa sebelum peristiwa pembantaian tersebut Prabowo melakukan kunjungan kerja ke Markar Batalion Kostrad 303 di Liquintai, Taibesi. Sementara itu, di Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto dituduh terlibat dalam berbagai aksi penculikan dan penghilangan paksa terhadap mahasiswa pada tahun 1997-1998 dan serangkain kejadian selama diktator Suharta dalam tahtak kekuasaan. Berdasarkan pada fakta-fakta sejarah pahit dan kelam tersebut, kami, aliansi organisasi masyarakat sipil, para penyintas, korban dan keluarga korban yang bernaung dalam Aliansa Nasional ba Tribunal Internasional (ANTI), ingin menyampaikan sikap dan tuntutan kami sebagai berikut: 1. tidak memberikan suaranya ke Mantan Jenderal Prabowo Subianto sebagai pelaku kriminal atas kejahatan kemanusian di Timor-Leste sebagai Presiden Republik Indonesia mendatang; Kami menghimbau dan mendesak para pemilih di Indonesia, mahasiswa dan semua elemen masyarakat sipil pro demokrasi yang berjuang untuk mempromosikan dan memperkuat demokrasi dan Hak Asasi Manusia di Indonesia; untuk bersatu dengan masyrakat korban, para penyintas, keluarga korban yang dibantai di Timor-Leste untukmemberikan suaranya ke Mantan Jenderal Prabowo Subianto sebagai pelaku kriminal atas kejahatan kemanusian di Timor-Leste sebagai Presiden Republik Indonesia mendatang; 2. Kami sebagai masyarakat korban, penyintas dan korban pembantain dan korban pelanggaran HAM di Timor-Leste, mendesak masyarakat modern dan beradab, para intelektual, dan semua elemen masyarakat Indonesia untuk mempertimbangkan suara korban atas keadilan untuk menuntut pertanggungjwaban politik dan keadilan atas para pelaku utama dan pelaku intelektual yang terlibat dalam merancang kekejaman dan pelanggaran HAM di Timor-Leste untuk tidak kembali berkuasa; 3. Kami mendesak masyarakat internasional untuk menekan dan menuntut para petinggi pro demokrasi dan pembela hak-hak asasi manusia di Indonesia untuk dengan tegas dan konsisten mencegah para pelaku pelaggar HAM untuk kembali berkuasa agar menghindari potensia pelanggaran HAM di masa depan dan menegakan proses berdemokrasi di Indonesia; 4. Mendesak Dewan Keamanan PBB untuk secara konsisten dalam memberantas impunitas, berdasarkan pada fakta tuduhan atas keterlibatan mantan Jenderal Probowo Subianto dalam berbagai pelanggaran HAM di Timor-Leste dan di Indonesia. Kami mendesak untuk menggunakan cara-cara yang efektif untuk memastikan para pelaku kejahatan dan pelanggaran HAM bertanggungjawab atas tindakannya secara kredibel, terutama mantan Jendral Prabowo Subianto dan para pelaku lainnya; 5. Untuk Pemerintah Indonesia dan Pemerintah Timor-Leste agar memperkuat dan mempromosikan prinsip demokrasi melalui upaya melawan impunitas dan menjalin hubungan kerjasama atas dasar penghargaan terhadap nilai-nilai HAM dan Negara Hukum. Oleh karena itu kami mendesak dan berdiri bersama masyarakat Indonesia untuk TIDAK MEMBERIKAN TEMPAT dan kepercayaan kepada seorang pelaku kejahatan besar atas kemanusian seperti Prabowo Subianto untuk menduduki posisi penting dan kunci selaku Presiden RI; 6. Kami menghimbau kepada masyarakat internasional untuk mendorong setiap negara bertanggungjawab untuk menangkap mantan Jeneral Prabowo Subianto atas kejahatan kemanusiaan yang didakwakan kepadanya. Dili 10 November 2023 Ami firme kontinua kontra impunidade: Rejeita no kontra makaas akuzadu Jeneral Prabowo Subianto fila ba kaer poder no ukun Introdusaun Ami akompana ho besik ho preukupasaun seriu evoluasaun no mudansa politiku ida-ne'ebe dadaun nee lao hela iha Indonezia, partikularmente fenomena kandidatura neebe sei konkore iha eleisaun jeral Prezidensial iha periodu tinan 2024. Ami akompana - ho laran taridu no susar tanba entre kandidatu hirak nee iha mos naran ho figura hanesan neebe ami povu sobrevivente masakre sira krime pasadu sira kontra bebeik ona atu fila ba ukun no poder hanesan akuzadu eis Jeneral Prabowo Subianto. Ami apresia no kongratula ho dezenvolvimentu politika no demokratizasaun neebe agora lao dadaun iha Indonezia hatudu klima no ambiente pozitivu tebes, maibe ami laran susar, haree no akompana autor prinsipal violasaun direitu umanus grave sira neebe uluk envolve iha rejime Soeharto fila-fali ba ukun no okupa pozisaun xave no estratejiku sira, hanesan akuzadu eis Jeneral Prabowo Subianto neebe atualmente nuudar Ministru Defeza Republika Indonezia neebe nuudar kandidatu forte Prezidente Republika Indonezia iha periodu tuir mai. Haree fila-fali ba akontesementu sira neebe akontese iha pasadu, eis Jeneral Prabowo hanesan elementu xave neebe dezena eventu/akontesimentu trajiku, kruel, desumanu nuudar krime kontra umanidade no violasaun direitu umanus organizadu no sistematiku durante okupasaun Indonezia iha Timor-Leste. Durante dekade rua liu ona vitima sira no familia vitima sira iha Timor-Leste kontinua ezjie no konsistente hein lia-loos no justisa ba Timor-Leste husi Indonezia no komunidade internasional liu-liu membru sira Konsellu Seguransa ONU nian. Faktu sira envolvimentu husi eis-Jeneral Prabowo Subianto Faktu sira hatudu katak durante iha rejime Soeharto nia ukun, Prabowo Subianto ninia envolvimentu iha masakre no violasaun direitu umanus sira iha Timor-Leste hanesan masakre neebe akontese iha Setembru 1983 iha Vikeke neebe kunesidu ho masakre Kraras hodi oho ema atus rua (200) resin no fatin nee agora kunesidu ho naran sidade faluk. Tuir relatoriu CAVR, Chega! Haktuir katak iha ema na'in 530 ne'ebe hetan oho husi tropas Indonezia no lakon durante operasaun kontra-insurjensia ne'ebe hala'o iha tinan 1984, iha Timor-Leste tomak. Ema barak mos mate tanba hamlaha iha fatin konsentrasaun ne'ebe besik atu proteje ba sobrevivente sira husi Foho Bibileo. Iha relatoriu Chega! nee mos relata katak kompania tropas Kopassandha/Kopasus mak unidade ida neebe lidera husi Prabowo mak iha responsabilidade husi asosiadu ho numeru violasaun ne'ebe aas liu, ho papel Kopasandha/Kopasus nian akontese durante levantamentu iha tinan 1983-84. Durante okupasaun iha Timor-Leste, Kopasus hala'o papel sentral iha formasaun milisia sira ne'ebe hala'o serbisu militar Indonezia nian barak tebes ba sira, la'os antes no pelumenus too periodu 1999. Milisia sira sai parte boot husi serbisu iha Prabowo ho Kopasus. Aleinde nee, prova mos hatudu katak iha indikasaun forte Prabowo Subianto nuudar responsavel no autor intelektual ba masakre 12 Novembru 1991 neebe oho mate joventude loriku aswain lubuk ida, hanesan haktuir iha relatoriu Amnesty Internasional hamutuk ema nian 300 resin mak mate no lakon bainhira halo hela manifestasaun pasifiku iha Santa-Kruz, tanba antes masakre nee Prabowo Subianto halo vizita ida Batalhao armada Kostrad 303 neebe estasiona iha Liquintai/Taibessi. Enkuantu, iha Indonezia Prabowo Subianto alegadu envolve iha kazu (sekuestru no desaparesimentu forsadu (penculikan dan penghilangan paksa) hasoru estudante sira iha tinan 1997-1998 no akontesementu relevante sira durante rejime ditadura Soeharto iha poder no ukun. Bazeia ba faktu historiku moruk no todan hirak nee hotu, Ami, Organizasaun Sosiedade Sivil, sobriviente, vitima, familia vitima sira neebe hamahan-an iha Aliansa Nasional ba Tribunal Internasional (ANTI) hakarak hatoo ami nia ejizensia no pozisaun hanesan tuir mai: 1. Ami husu no bolu atensaun ba povu eleitor Indonezia, estudante, elementu sosiedade sivil pro demokrasia sira neebe luta ba promove no hametin demokrasia no direitu umanus iha Indonezia; atu hamutuk ho povu vitima, sobrevivente no masakradu Timor-Leste LALIKA fo votus ba kandidatura akuzadu violasaun direitu umanus iha Timor-Leste eis Jeneral Prabowo Subianto, ba Prezidente Republika Indonezia; 2. Ami nuudar povu vitima, sobrevivente no masakradu Timor-Leste ezije ba sosiedade demokratiku no sivilizadu, intelektual no sosiedade morderna iha Indonezia atu konsidera povu Timor-Leste ninia halerik, terus no ezijensia ba responsabilidade politiku no justisa ba autor xave no intelektual sira neebe komete aktu atrosidade iha Timor-Timur (Timor-Leste) atu la bele fila ba ukun/poder; 3. Atu komunidade internasional bele halo presaun no influensia ba lideransa pro demokrasia no direitu umanus iha Indonezia ho seriu atu prevene kriminal sira ne'ebe kontinua hetan oportunidade ba ukun/poder atu nune'e bele hametin liutan prosesu demokrasia nian no atu defende direitu umanus iha Indonezia no iha fatin seluk iha mundu tomak; 4. Atu Konsellu Seguransa Nasoins Unidas konsistensia ho prinsipiu atu kombate impunidade, bazeia ba akuzasaun no faktu sira kona-ba envolvimentu eis Jeneral Prabowo Subianto iha violasaun krime iha Indonezia mos iha Timor-Leste. Ami husu atu buka mekanizmu ida-ne'ebe efetivu hodi asegura katak kriminal sira iha responsabilidade iha forma kredivel, liu-liu eis Jeral Prabowo Subianto no sira seluk; 5. Atu Estadu Indonezia no Timor-Leste presiza hametin no promove demokrasia hodi kontra impunidade no estabelese sosiedade sira ne'ebe respeita valor direitu umanus no hametin estadu direitu demokratiku. Tanba ne'e, ami ezije no hamriik hamutuk nafatin ho povu Indonezia atu la bele fo-fatin no konfiansa ba kriminozu sira hanesan eis Jeneral Prabowo Subianto hodi okupa fatin importante hanesan Prezidente Republika; 6. Ami bolu membru komunidade internasional sira, estadu iha responsabilidade moral atu kaer eis-Jeneral PRABOWO SUBIANTO hodi responsabiliza ba aktu violasaun sira neebe nia komete; Dili, 10 Novembru 2023 Follow ETAN: Melissa Barrera attends the world premiere of "Scream VI" in New York on March 6, 2023, left, and Susan Sarandon attends a special screening of "Maybe I Do" in New York on Jan. 17, 2023. Sarandon and Barrera were each dropped by Hollywood companies after making comments on the Israel-Hamas war that some deemed antisemitic. (Photos by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS) NEW YORK (AP) Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Scream star Melissa Barrera were each dropped by Hollywood companies after making comments on the Israel-Hamas war that some deemed antisemitic. Spyglass Media Group, the production company behind the upcoming Scream VII, acknowledged Barrera's exit from the horror franchise. The Mexican-born actress, who starred in In the Heights and the two recent Scream installments, had posted statements on Instagram Stories calling the war genocide and ethnic cleansing. Gaza, she wrote, is currently being treated like a concentration camp. Spyglass said in a statement that its position is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech. Late Wednesday, Barrera posted a statement on Instagram Stories about her firing. First and foremost I condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people," she wrote. I believe a group of people are NOT their leadership, and that no governing body should be above criticism," she added. I pray day and night for no more deaths, for no more violence, and for peaceful co-existence. I will continue to speak out for those that need it most and continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Earlier Wednesday, Deadline reported that Jenna Ortega, who played Barreras sister in the two previous Scream films, has exited the seventh installment. Ortega earlier departed the franchise because of her Wednesday schedule, the trade reported. A spokesperson for Ortega didnt immediately respond to queries. A spokesman for the United Talent Agency said Sarandon, the five-time Oscar nominee, is no longer represented by the agency. Sarandon's exit from UTA followed comments she's made about Israel, most recently in an appearance Nov. 17 at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York. There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence," Sarandon said, according to the New York Post. The Post reported that Sarandon joined the crowd in chanting From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free a slogan some see as antisemitic because it suggests the eradication of Israel. Sarandon could not be reached for comment Wednesday. At the rally, she also was quoted as saying: Theres a terrible thing thats happened where antisemitism has been confused with speaking up against Israel. I am against antisemitism. I am against Islamophobia. The Israel-Hamas war has caused rifts throughout Hollywood. Earlier, when many groups were issuing statements condemning Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the Writers Guild of America ultimately didn't after failing to come to an agreement. Maha Dakhil, a prominent agent with Creative Arts Agency, last month resigned her board seat after sharing a social media post accusing Israel of genocide. Dakhil apologized. Israel and Hamas on Wednesday agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza. Hollywood companies have dropped Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Scream franchise actor Melissa Barrera after their comments about the Israel-Hamas war drew scrutiny and accusations of antisemitism. The United Talent Agency dropped Sarandon after she made remarks at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York last week, said a spokesperson for the firm, who did not elaborate on the decision. Her listed representative did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment on the decision. Sarandon, a prolific political activist known for her left-wing views, received criticism after she said at a rally Friday that people who are afraid of being Jewish at this time are getting a taste of what it feels like to be Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence. The remarks were recorded in a video published by the New York Post. The tabloid reported that Sarandon called for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, which has been under siege and bombardment by Israeli forces since the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7. The comments attracted attention on social media. Aviva Klompas, a former speechwriter for Israels mission at the United Nations, tweeted that she believed Sarandon was saying that American Jews have it coming that we dont deserve to live free from harassment and assault. In other comments at the rally, Sarandon said criticism of Israel should not be conflated with antisemitism. Theres a terrible thing thats happened where antisemitism has been confused with speaking up against Israel, she said, according to The New York Times. I am against antisemitism. I am against Islamophobia, she went on to say. In a separate development, Spyglass Media Group confirmed that it had dropped Barrera, an up-and-coming actor, from the Scream horror series after a series of Instagram posts reportedly condemned Israel in strong terms. She also appeared to echo an antisemitic trope about Jewish control of the media, reportedly writing in one post: Western media only shows the [Israeli] side. Why do they do that, I will let you deduce for yourself. (NBC News has not seen the posts; Variety reported on them.) Actress Melissa Barrera in Los Angeles, Calif. on April 20, 2023. (Michael Buckner / Variety via Getty Images) In a statement posted on social media Wednesday, Barrera said she would continue to speak out when she felt compelled. "First and foremost I condemn Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people. Every person on this earth regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or socio-economic status deserves equal human rights, dignity, and, of course, freedom," she wrote. She stated she was praying for the end of violence and peaceful co-existence. "I will continue to speak out for those that need it most and continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Silence is not an option for me," the actor wrote. Barrera's publicist did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Spyglass' decision. Spyglass said in a statement, We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech. The company co-produced the two most recent installments in the "Scream" series; Paramount Pictures handled distribution. Sarandon is a five-time Oscar nominee who won the best actress award for her performance in Dead Man Walking. She is also known for her roles in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Bull Durham and Thelma & Louise. Barrera appeared in the fifth and sixth installments of the Scream franchise, and she had been set to appear in future installments. She also acted in the Starz series Vida and the big-screen adaptation of the musical In the Heights, released in 2021. The war between Israel and Hamas has roiled Hollywood. Maha Dakhil, an agent at Creative Artists Agency, drew criticism after she posted messages on social media that accused Israel of genocide. (She has removed the posts and apologized.) Some members criticized the Writers Guild of America after it did not immediately send out a statement condemning the Hamas assault, which killed more than 1,000 people. Israels retaliatory offensive has killed more than 14,000 people in Gaza. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) A San Francisco man was arrested and charged with murder on Monday in connection with a body being found at Crissy Field on Nov 12., the United States Department of Justice said Tuesday. A police investigation led to Leion Butler, 20, as the suspect in the murder of a victim whose body was found in the Presidio. The victim had a gunshot wound to the head when they were found, the DOJ said. Wife and lover who allegedly conspired to kill her husband arrested for murder in Hayward According to the DOJ, surveillance cameras picked up cars leaving the area of Crissy Field around the time of the murder. One of those cars was linked to the victim. That car was found three days later in San Franciscos Hunters Point neighborhood unoccupied and double-parked with its license plates still attached. Surveillance footage in that area showed someone, later identified as Butler, parking the car and getting out of it. Video also showed Butler wiping down the victims car with something that looked like a towel, the DOJ said. He left in another car. Investigators tracked down the owner of the car that Butler left in, and that eventually led them to Butler. According to investigators, the defendant (Butler) both fit the description of the person who parked the victims car in Hunters Point and was related to the owner of the second vehicle, the DOJ said. Further, investigators developed evidence establishing that on the day of the murder, the defendants cell phone was both in the general area where the victim was found and where the victims car was wiped down. Butler pleaded not guilty to murder. He will appear in front of a judge on Wednesday. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4. A burglary led to a deadly shooting early Tuesday morning in the parking lot at Bartlesville's Osage Hotel and Casino, Osage County Undersheriff Gary Upton said. Hunter McKee of the OSBI confirms an Osage Nation police officer was dragged across a parking lot while attempting to stop a male suspect from fleeing in his pickup truck. Another individual shot and killed the suspect. Upton told the EE that a Bartlesville resident's truck was stolen Monday evening, along with credit cards and other items. The burglary victim received a notification that their credit card was being used at the casino and contacted the Osage Nation Police Department. When approaching the suspect's pickup truck, an Osage Nation police officer was dragged across the parking lot as the suspect attempted to flee. A burglary victim reportedly shot and killed the suspect, he said. OSBI confirms that the male shooting victim died at the scene but couldn't confirm any of the details that led to the altercation. OSBI, the Oklahoma Medical Examiner, Osage County Sheriff's deputies and Osage Nation Police investigate the scene of a deadly shooting outside the new Bartlesville Osage Hotel and Casino Tuesday. Hunter McKee of OSBI said the person who died was suspected of using a stolen credit card. He says the shooting took place at approximately 5 a.m. after the Osage Nation police responded to a call for service. McKee says no arrests have been made and that the investigation is ongoing. McKee confirmed that when that officer approached the male suspect, the man tried to flee in his pickup and dragged the officer across the parking lot. "While that officer attempted to stop him, the suspect continued driving and (dragged the police officer). Another male citizen intervened and shot the suspect resulting in the suspect's death," McKee said. The officer is expected to be fine and isn't currently at a hospital. The shooter was questioned but wasn't arrested, he said. Hunter McKee of the OSBI confirms an Osage Nation police officer was dragged across a parking lot while attempting to stop a male suspect from fleeing in his pickup truck. Another individual shot and killed the suspect. The Osage Nation Police Department confirmed the shooting and provided more details in a statement: "We can confirm that an individual was shot and killed early this morning outside of the Osage Casino & Hotel in Bartlesville. Earlier reports that an Osage Nation Police Officer was responsible for this shooting are false. Neither the victim nor the suspect are tribal members; therefore, jurisdictional authority is under the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI). Osage Nation Police Department (ONPD) and Osage Casino & Hotel Security are fully cooperating with OSBI on this criminal investigation and will report all facts as soon as possible." The body of a shooting victim was taken to the Oklahoma Medical Examiner's Office for further examination Tuesday. Several saws and construction equipment were taken off the victim's truck and piled in the parking lot. The Osage Casino and Hotel also released a statement: "We can confirm there was an incident in the parking lot of Osage Casino & Hotel in Bartlesville early this morning resulting in one fatality. No casino employees were involved, and we are currently working with Osage Nation Police and the OSBI in their investigation. The safety of casino guests is of the highest importance. The casino hotel remains open as the investigation continues. We send our thoughts and sympathy to the family of the victim." The 153,151-square-foot casino off Highway 60 opened for the first time Thursday. Read the EE's previous reporting on the shooting death online. This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Burglary suspect dead after confrontation at Bartlesville casino LAS VEGAS (KLAS) One person has died, and police are calling the situation suspicious, police said in a news release Wednesday. According to Henderson Police Department officials, on Tuesday at approximately 10:10 p.m., dispatchers received a report of a suspicious death in the area of Sunset Road and Arroyo Grande Boulevard. Officials are calling the scene active and the investigation into the death is ongoing. Henderson Police gave no further information on the victim or the manner of the suspicious death. Nor was any information given on whether or not there is a potential suspect. This is a developing story. Stay with 8newsnow.com for more information as it becomes available. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. Petworth House's architecture is inspired by the Baroque palaces of Europe Pivotal scenes in Ridley Scott's latest film, Napoleon, were filmed at a 17th century National Trust house in West Sussex. Petworth House formed the backdrop to key scenes in the film, which stars Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix and was released on Wednesday. The National Trust said it was "by far the biggest production ever to take place at Petworth". It took a week to prepare the house for two days of filming in March 2022. Sue Rhodes, visitor operations and experience manager at Petworth, told BBC Radio Sussex that the film was "one of Ridley Scott's epic masterpieces". The production team thought Petworth was "the perfect backdrop", she said. 'Fascinating experience' Ms Rhodes said Mr Scott's team "fell in love" with Petworth House because its features are more French in style than English. According to the National Trust, the production team opted for real locations over CGI wherever possible. Production designer for the film Arthur Max explained: "There is enough neo-classical architecture in England to make it possible". Petworth House was the setting for pivotal parts of the movie, including the Victim's Ball scene where Napoleon meets his future wife Josephine, played by Vanessa Kirby, for the first time. Victim's Balls were hosted in France following the Reign of Terror. Ms Rhodes said it was "astonishing" to see the scene being filmed. "The house looked gorgeous, much as it would have when it hosted balls and events like this hundreds of years ago," she said. The marble hall provided the backdrop for a meeting between Napoleon and his generals, featured in the film's trailer. The square dining room doubled as the studio where Napoleon's coronation portrait was painted. Ms Rhodes said: "Despite the challenges of such a huge production, it was a fascinating experience, and the cast and crew were incredible." "Ridley Scott was particularly impressed with our art collection," she added. According to the trust, the income generated from the production will help care for Petworth House and enable conservation projects in the future. Follow BBC South East on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@bbc.co.uk. Switzerland approved the transfer of 25 decommissioned Leopard 2 tanks to Germany under the condition that they must not leave EU or NATO member states, the Swiss Federal Council announced on Nov. 22. "Germany has assured that the tanks sold will remain in Germany or with NATO or EU partners in order to close its own gaps," the Swiss Federal Council said. The battle tanks will go to their original manufacturer, the German arms company Rheinmetall. According to the Swiss Federal Council, the German government sent a request in February 2023, asking the Swiss government to allow the sale to Rheinmetall and assured "that the battle tanks would not be forwarded to Ukraine." Swiss law does not allow the delivery of Swiss weapons to combat zones, even when supplied by an intermediary country, due to its long-standing neutrality policy. The Swiss parliament has repeatedly voted against proposals to amend the rules regarding the re-export of Swiss-made weapons to Ukraine. The country also blocked the transfer of Swiss-made Leopard 1 tanks from Italy to Ukraine in June. The parliamentary elections in October resulted in the populist, right-wing Swiss Peoples Party winning the most seats. Members of the party boycotted President Volodymyr Zelensky's speech to the Swiss parliament on June 15, claiming it violated the country's tradition of neutrality. Read also: Switzerland pledges support for creation of special tribunal for Russias war Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Comments are taken directly from the latest Thurston County Public inspection reports, which are available for each food establishment, at the Thurston County Environmental Health Office and their website. For questions concerning these reports, contact the health office at 360-867-2667. Report restaurant, grocery store, deli or bakery complaints online via the complaint form here: https://www.thurstoncountywa.gov/phss/Pages/eh-problem.aspx. Reading inspection scores: Attention should be given to the type of violation (red versus blue) and whether the establishment has a history of red violations or repeat violations. Red violations are those most likely to cause food-borne illness and must be corrected immediately if feasible or according to a compliance schedule established by the health officer. Example: not keeping food at the right temperature. Blue violations relate to the overall cleanliness and condition of operation and must be corrected according to a compliance schedule established by the health officer. Example: a worn floor that needs replacing. If red points exceed 45, the county will require a re-inspection within 10 business days. If red points exceed 100 and theres a lack of managerial control, the county will shut down the establishment for at least 72 hours. The establishment may reopen after management and employees complete retraining and demonstrate corrective action during a re-inspection. Some common abbreviations: PHF/TCS is potentially hazardous food/time control for safety; RTE is ready to eat; PIC is person in charge; FWC is food worker card; CDI is corrected during inspection. Tacos California Downtown #3 1302 Tracey St. SE, Lacey (Commissary) Food truck parked at 728 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia Nov. 3: 115 red points; 10 blue points. Comments: The facility was operating without adequate refrigeration. A sole prep unit was not functioning, resulting in an imminent health hazard. The facility was closed for at least 72 hours and until the unit was properly repaired. The person-in-charge was not maintaining active managerial control of risk factors as demonstrated by high-risk violations. A worker did not wash their hands after leaving their station, touching trash and returning to their station. An employee did not remove soiled gloves and wash their hands before returning to food service. The hand sink basin was unavailable because it stored utensils. Beans cooled on the truck were at 42 degrees rather than at or below 41 degrees. Tomatoes on the counter were held at 52 degrees. TCS foods in a prep unit were greater than 41 degrees. Thermometers were not used to verify food temperatures. The operator was not in compliance with their permit. The facility conducted cooling and disposed of waste in a manner that was improper or not approved. Catering services were actively conducted on the truck, which was not approved. A sanitizer solution was not made at the time of inspection. An inspector previously closed Tacos California in October for numerous violations, some of which the owners disagreed with. Safuras Mediterranean Cuisine 4160 Sixth Ave. SE, Unit 103, Lacey Nov. 8: 80 red points; 15 blue points. Comments: The person in charge was not maintaining active managerial control of risk factors as demonstrated by high-risk violations. An employee did not wash their hands after doing activities with gloves on. The food prep sinks were stocked as hand sinks and used as such. A hand sink did not have a splash guard. Soup was found to be cooling at greater than 2 inches deep while covered. Multiple TCS foods were covered and above 41 degrees. Food items in the walk-in cold hold were above 41 degrees. A thermometer was not used to verify food safety temperatures. The walk-in cold hold was not properly maintaining safe temperatures. An ice machine interior was dirty with a mold-like substance. Visibly soiled cardboard was used as shelving support. Da Nang Restaurant 116 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia Nov. 8: 75 red points; 13 blue points. Comments: Food worker cards were expired. Various equipment was stored in a hand wash sink. The sink also was blocked by a bucket and unused cooker-burner. No paper towels or dispenser was available. Chopped cooked pork was cooled in 1-gallon tubs rather than in 2-inch-deep pans. Wide rice noodles above a stove were at 125 degrees. Boba pearls on a counter were at 56 degrees. Chopped cut pork was at 119-156 degrees. Tofu in prep fridge was at 51-65 degrees. Two large grocery bags of frozen chicken were found thawing at room temperature on a prep table. Such foods must be thawed in refrigeration or in cold running water. The inspector noted there was evidence of insects in the kitchen. The dish-washing machine did not provide any chemical sanitizer at the final rinse cycle. Subway 4055 Martin Way E., Olympia Nov. 6: 75 red points; 12 blue points. Comments: The person in charge was not maintaining active managerial control of risk factors, such as validating food temperatures, ensuring proper hand washing and more. An employee washed their hands for less than 20 seconds. An electric slicer and manual slicer were dirty with visible food debris. TCS meatballs reheated to less than 135 degrees before being placed in hot hold. TCS food items on prep line and in walk-in cold hold were above 41 degrees. A thermometer was not used to take food safety temperatures. Cold hold units had inaccurate or malfunctioning thermometers. A prep cold hold unit was not functioning properly. A new sanitizer solution was not made the day of the inspection. A dispenser was in disrepair. The storage area light did not work. Farrellis Pizza and Pool Co. 4870 Yelm Highway SE, Lacey Nov. 6: 60 red points; 17 blue points. Comments: An employee returned to the kitchen and did not properly wash their hands. The bar sink lacked paper towels. The rear hand sink was blocked by a trash can. There was no written policy that required time to be marked or tracked for TCS foods. A can opener was dirty with visible food debris. A sanitizer solution was not strong enough. Chlorine test strips were not used to properly verify whether a ware washing facility was functioning. The rear storage area had puddled water. Pints & Quarts Ale House 1230 College St. SE, Lacey Oct. 25: 30 red points; 10 blue points. Comments: Hand-washing facilities were inadequately maintained. The bar hand sink lacked paper towels. Splash guards were also absent while food utensils and wares were in the splash zone. Food contact surfaces were improperly cleaned. A slicer was dirty with visible food debris. Foods that can be cooked to order were not properly marked on the menu. A residential refrigerator was in commercial use. An ice machine interior was dirty with a mold-like substance. Hops n Drops 4739 Avery Court SE, Lacey Nov. 8: 30 red points; 0 blue points. Comments: A food worker did not remove their gloves and wash their hands after touching their face. Multiple TCS foods such as shredded cheese and diced tomatoes were at 41-43 degrees in cold hold units rather than at or below 41 degrees. EZ Foods Olympia 4520 Intelco Loop SE, Suite 4A, Lacey Caterer Only Oct. 26: 10 red points; 5 blue points. Comments: The caterer was cited for deficiencies related to proper cold holding temperatures as well as properly installed and maintained ware-washing facilities. No inspection notes were provided. Mariachi Alegre 16605 106th Ave. SE, Yelm Nov. 9: 10 red points; 11 blue points. Comments: A chemical sanitizer solution was too strong. Workers did not use proper thawing procedures. Multiple scoop handles touched food. Scoops must be stored outside of food containers on a smooth, easily cleanable, non-absorbent surface. The facility used non-commercial grade equipment. Meconis Italian Subs 111 Tumwater Blvd. SE, Suite 107, Tumwater Nov. 2: 10 red points; 0 blue points. Comments: Sliced cheese on ice was measured at 60 degrees. TCS foods must be cold held at or below 41 degrees. McDonalds #2913 4640 Whitman Lane SE, Lacey Nov. 8: 0 red points; 2 blue points. Comments: A corner wall by the back hand sink was broken, exposing the wall structure. No violations: Taco Bell #35316 (182 Trosper Road SW, Tumwater) Chipotle Mexican Grill (5116 Yelm Highway SE, Lacey) Dominos Pizza (515 Custer Way SE, Suite B, Tumwater) TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan again reported Chinese military activity around the island on Wednesday, with 11 aircraft crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait as the island's election campaign kicked into high gear. Democratically-governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained for the past four years of regular Chinese military patrols and drills near the island, as Beijing seeks to pressure Taipei over its sovereignty claims. Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary polls on Jan. 13 and candidates have to register with the election commission this week in order to take part. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which Beijing views as separatists, registered its presidential ticket on Tuesday, though the opposition is mired in disagreement about a potential joint bid. Taiwan's defence ministry said that starting early Wednesday afternoon it had detected J-10 and J-16 fighters as well as H-6 bombers and early warning aircraft carrying out overseas missions. Eleven of those aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait's median line flying in airspace to the centre and southwest of the island, working with Chinese warships to carry out "joint combat readiness patrols", the ministry added. The strait's median line had previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides and which Chinese planes now regularly fly over. Taiwan sent its own forces to monitor, the ministry said. China's defence ministry did not answer calls seeking comment. China says its activities near Taiwan are aimed at preventing "collusion" between Taiwan separatists and the United States and to protect China's territorial integrity. Taiwan's government, which has repeatedly offered talks with China, rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future. Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang, traditionally supports close ties with Beijing, and has pledged to re-open dialogue with China should it win the election. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Toby Chopra and Raju Gopalakrishnan) Taiwan's Vice President Lai Ching-te and his running mate Hsiao Bi-Khim arrive to register for the upcoming presidential election, in Taipei Taiwan's Vice President Lai Ching-te and his running mate Hsiao Bi-Khim arrive to register for the upcoming presidential election, in Taipei TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan cannot afford chaos or "experiments" when it comes to being president, the front-runner to be the island's next leader said on Wednesday as the opposition remained mired in a bitter dispute on mounting a joint presidential challenge. The Jan. 13 election will shape Chinese-claimed Taiwan's relations with Beijing at a time China has stepped up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims. Vice President Lai Ching-te of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who China views as a separatist, leads opinion polls to be Taiwan's next president. Talks between the two main opposition parties to team up and take him on have floundered and are in deadlock. Lai and his running mate, Taiwan's former U.S. envoy Hsiao Bi-khim, formally registered with the election commission on Tuesday to run in the election, but it remains unclear what the opposition will do. The deadline to register is Friday afternoon. Lai told reporters he and Hsiao were "confident and determined to lead Taiwan steadily in the chaotic situation". "Taiwan cannot afford chaos and experimentation at this moment," he said. Only candidates with experience and ideas can successfully lead Taiwan to continue its steady progress, Lai said, standing with the DPP's lawmaker candidates for Taipei city. Taiwan's main opposition party the Kuomintang (KMT), which traditional favours close ties with Beijing, had agreed with the much smaller Taiwan People's Party (TPP) last week to offer a joint ticket to take on Lai. But neither party can agree how to interpret opinion polls on which of their candidates, the KMT's Hou Yu-ih and TPP's Ko Wen-je, should stand for president and which for vice president. Hou on Tuesday called for re-opening talks on the opinion polls and said he had never insisted he had to be the presidential candidate. The KMT's interpretation of the polls was that Hou being presidential candidate put him best placed to win over Lai and Hsiao, which the TPP has rejected as unscientific and not in line with its statistical analysis. On Wednesday, Ko's campaign director Huang Shan-shan gave no sign of backing down and criticised what she said were attacks on her, the TPP and Ko by the KMT. "Our enemy is Lai Ching-te. This turmoil has let Lai lie around at home. He's very happy," Huang said. Ko, asked at a separate event what was going to happen, said: "There are still two days, don't be nervous". Another presidential candidate is Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of major Apple supplier Foxconn who is standing as an independent but has also yet to formally register and has trailed in the polls. His running mate, the actress Tammy Lai, briefly visited the election commission on Wednesday to pick up registration documents, but declined to say whether she and Gou, who did not accompany her, would actually register. Bombarded by questions from reporters, Gou's campaign spokesman Huang Shih-hsiu would only say that "anything can happen" before the Friday deadline. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan) A San Antonio man has been indicted on federal charges related to an alleged scheme to defraud two COVID-era programs designed to assist small businesses and restaurants. Getty Images/iStockphoto A San Antonio man has been indicted on federal charges related to an alleged scheme to defraud two COVID-era programs designed to assist small businesses and restaurants. Image Source/Getty Images/Image Source A federal grand jury has indicted a San Antonio man on charges stemming from a scheme to defraud two COVID-era programs intended to assist small businesses and pay employees wages through the pandemic. James Michael Bergeron, 42, allegedly received millions of dollars from the Paycheck Protection Program and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. He spent the money on unauthorized items including real estate, vehicles and investment products, the indictment says. Bergeron was charged with five counts of wire fraud, five of money laundering and another for making false statements on a loan application. He faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in federal prison if convicted. Advertisement Article continues below this ad He was arrested and made his first court appearance Monday, court records show. U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Betsy Chestney released him on a $30,000 unsecured bond. His arraignment is scheduled for Dec. 1. Efforts to reach Bergeron for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful. An attorney representing him has yet to make a court appearance in the case. Federal investigators have been ramping up probes into PPP fraud as widespread misuse of the program has been uncovered. Over the summer, the Justice Department announced it had charged more than 3,000 people and seized more than $1.4 billion in relief funds it says were stolen. Last month, a Houston man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraudulently obtaining more than $20 million in PPP loans. He led a conspiracy involving at least a dozen other individuals, prosecutors said, and more than 75 fraudulent PPP applications were submitted. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Programs, indictment The Paycheck Protection Program was an $800 billion emergency disaster loan program administered by the Small Business Administration. It was designed to provide funds to small businesses with fewer than 500 employees that were affected by the pandemic. Borrowers could have the loans forgiven if the money was spent on payroll and other eligible expenses. The Restaurant Revitalization Fund provided $28.6 billion in similar aid to restaurants, bars and other qualifying businesses. Bergerons indictment says he falsely represented the average payroll for businesses seeking aid. In addition, it says he gave false tax documentation to financial institutions when applying for the loans. The indictment doesnt give details about the loans he allegedly obtained through various businesses, but online databases shed some light on the transactions. Advertisement Article continues below this ad FederalPay.org shows OTOMOB Investments Inc. obtained a $144,888 loan through digital lender Quontic Bank in July 2020. OTOMOB reported operating in the womens, childrens and infants clothing and accessories industry and employing 19 people. The website shows the loan, intended for company payroll, has not been forgiven or paid back. That same month, the indictment says, Bergeron moved more than $90,000 went from OTOMOBs bank account to North Park Lincoln for the purchase of a 2020 Lincoln Navigator. OTOMOB received another loan for $143,899 in February 2021 through FC Marketplace, doing business as Funding Circle. That loan, also intended for payroll, was charged off, the website shows. Both businesses are reported on the website as being owned by a veteran who is either American Indian or native Alaskan. Another business Advertisement Article continues below this ad Another business, American Light, received a PPP loan in July 2020. FederalPay.org shows it received $621,167 through Cross River Bank. That loan has not been forgiven or paid back, according to the website. American Light reported having 54 employees. Bergeron used about $40,000 from the loan to American Light to pay the mortgage loan on his San Antonio house in July 2020, the indictment says. The indictment says Bergerons AZ Plate Restaurant Group LLC received a PPP loan in February 2021, though no information on the transaction could be found on FederalPay.org. The business reported having 111 employees. Another restaurant business, NM Plate Restaurant Group LLC, received a Restaurant Revitalization Fund loan. That May 2021 loan was for almost $3.2 million, the website PandemicOversight.gov shows. Bergeron spent $30,000 in September of last year for the purchase of a 2023 Genesis GV80 at Genesis of NW San Antonio, the indictment says. Advertisement Article continues below this ad William Lai Ching-te, Taiwan's Vice President and the presidential candidate from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), at the DPP headquarters in Taipei on Oct. 24. Credit - Lam Yik Fei for TIME More than once when William Lai was a small boy, a passing typhoon blew the roof of his home clean away. Its a recollection that brings a wry smile to Taiwans vice president, who grew up in the small coalmining hamlet of Wanli perched on the islands far north. Lais father died in an accident in the pits when he was just 2 years old, leaving his mother to raise six children alone. Money was tight. Instead of toys, Lai had banyan trees to climb; instead of new clothes, he wore cast-offs; he didnt have privilege, he had to prove himself. One of the biggest assets my father left me was being impoverished, Lai tells TIME in his only pre-election Western media interview in late October. Because in this environment, I worked harder, more vigorously on everything I did. It gave me a sense of determination. Its a work ethic that has already transported Lai to Harvard, work as a kidney doctor in Taiwan, and then public office as mayor of its southern city of Tainan. Today, Lai, 64, is the frontrunner in January elections to replace outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, who belongs to the same Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) but is ineligible to stand for a third term. Two days after our conversation Lai returned to Wanli on the campaign trail, where he was greeted with presumptive shouts of hello, president! by his erstwhile neighbors. After lighting incense sticks at a lantern-filled temple, Lai told the assembled crowd outside that he would strive to improve transport links and healthcare facilities for seniors, before turning to more weighty concerns. My first priority is to maintain stability in the Indo-Pacific region, Lai told a throng of farmers and crab fishermen. Lai may not worry about typhoons these days, but geopolitical winds continue to batter the Taiwanese. Beijing considers the self-governing island of 23 million its sovereign territory and has repeatedly vowed to reclaim itby force if necessary. Its status remains the most combustive of the myriad squabbles that today define relations between the worlds superpowers. On four occasions, President Joe Biden has vowed to protect Taiwan from Chinese military aggression. The saying that all politics is local comes with an almighty caveat in Taiwan, where Januarys election will hinge on how best to manage cross-Strait relations. The CCP loathes Lais China-skeptic DPP and has branded its candidate a troublemaker. All three of Lais rivals for the presidential palace argue that boosting dialogue and engagement will better safeguard Taiwans de facto autonomy, making their candidacy far more palatable to Beijing. More From TIME According to a late October poll, Lai leads with 32% of support, with 22% for Hou Yu-ih of the main opposition Nationalists, or KMT; and 20% for Ko Wen-je of the upstart Taiwan Peoples Party. Terry Gou, the billionaire founder of Apple supplier Foxconn, brings up the rear with just 5%. On Nov. 15, Hou and Ko agreed to join forces under a single candidate, threatening to tip the balance in favor of the China-friendly camp (although to date have yet to agree whom) The vote also has profound global implications. Taiwan is the worlds 16th-largest trading economy, exchanging $907 billion in goods and services in 2022. It produces 90% of the worlds advanced semiconductor chips, which are vital for every industry but especially to the artificial intelligence boom. A blockade on Taiwan would imperil well over $2 trillion in economic activity, estimates the Rhodium Group, even before factoring in sanctions or any military response. Lai knows that war benefits nobody. Taiwan hopes to be friends with Chinawe dont wish to be enemies, says Lai. We would welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to Taiwan and prepare Taiwanese delicacies for him to try. Lai works in his office at the DPP headquarters in Taipei on Oct. 24. Lam Yik Fei for TIME Whether the strongman would appreciate an invitation to territory he considers his own backyard is a fraught question. What is certain is that an unprecedented third-straight term for Beijings nemesis DPP would represent an entrenchment of China-skepticism across Taiwanese society and potentially a tipping point for relations. While Xi has called reunification a historic mission and an unshakable commitment, Lai counters that we are already a sovereign, independent country. Yet few other countries agree. Taiwan politically split from Chinas mainland in 1949 following the nations civil war. Today, its government retains formal diplomatic relations with just 13 nations. The U.S. switched its recognition to Beijing in 1979, though maintains a bevy of informal ties, and is obligated by Congress to supply Taiwan with weapons. Still, attempts by Taiwan to build direct diplomatic or commercial links are met with fierce reprisals by Beijing, including military drills, a trade embargo, and diplomatic freeze. Following the return of war to Europe, and more recently the Middle East, Taiwans citizens are naturally anxious that Asias unresolved Cold War conflict may be next to reignite. That Chinas economy is suffering from a severe downturn has also increased fears that a crisis might be useful for Xi. Youth unemployment in China stands at 46.5% by some estimates, while the worlds second-largest economy again veered into deflation in October. One measure of foreign direct investment into China fell negative in the third quarter of 2023 for the first time on record. Given such doldrums, Taiwan is an easy scapegoat for China, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu tells TIME. A Ukrainian flag hangs on permanent display in Wus office, and both he and Lai say Russian President Vladimir Putins invasion was a stark reminder to all in Taiwan that peace cannot be taken for granted. The rising temperature spurred Tsai last year to extend mandatory national service for Taiwanese men from four months to one year. In August, she boosted defense spending to a record $19.1 billion, or 2.6% of GDP, a hike which includes purchasing 400 U.S. javelin anti-tank missiles (half have been delivered to date). In October, Taiwan unveiled its first domestically developed submarine. If China were to launch an invasion, we must be able to safeguard our country, says Lai. Any hope of repairing cross-Strait ties requires reaffirming the 1992 Consensusa political agreement between Beijing and Taipei that there is one China, even if they disagree over which is the legitimate power. The DPP steadfastly refuses to recognize the 1992 Consensus, with Lai calling any such concession tantamount to relinquishing our sovereignty. Beijing treats the fuzzy accord as Taipeis support for eventual reunification, but it has little currency amongst todays islanders, of whom 78% describe themselves as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese or some mix, according to a March poll. More and more young people today are supportive of independence, says Lai, which means steadfast support for our way of life, including democracy, freedom, and respect for human rights. Lai poses for a portrait at the DPP headquarters on Oct. 24. Lam Yik Fei for TIME That may be true, yet the fact remains that Lais lead in the polls has been owed to nowmended splits in the China-friendly opposition rather than any ringing endorsement of his candidature or the outgoing Tsai. Growth in Taiwan for 2023 is projected to be 1.61%its slowest pace in eight years. Dissatisfaction has been compounded by a slew of scandals. High-profile #MeToo cases have ensnared at least 10 DPP members in recent months, leading to the resignation of a party official for an alleged cover-up. Lai calls the scandal very regrettable but insists that subsequent reforms will lead the DPP and Taiwanese society into building an environment with greater gender equality. Taiwans torpid economy has made the prospect of releasing Chinese pressure even more tempting. After all, Beijing only has to lift a ban on Chinese tourists to boost Taiwans GDP by over 1%, according to Capital Economics. China is waving other carrots too, and in September unveiled special policy measures to improve access for Taiwanese enterprises to Chinas neighboring Fujian province. Dialogue between Taipei and Beijing is also a crucial way to defuse crises and ensure peace and stability, the KMTs Hou wrote in Foreign Affairs in September. Lai counters that the DPP can still maintain Taiwans sovereignty without endorsing the fiction of reunification. He wants to expand Taiwans growing web of economic ties to make the island indispensable to the global economy, rendering the price of conflict prohibitively high. Chipmakers like TSMC and MediaTek are already powering the AI revolution, while little-known firms like ASEthe world's largest independent semiconductor testing and packaging companyfurther entrench Taiwan's pivotal role in global supply chains. While semiconductors and technology industries are Taiwans strengths, they are also Taiwans responsibilities towards the international community, Lai says. Taiwan is also busy forging new trade pactsmuch to Beijings chagrin. In June, Washington and Taipei signed the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade, the first trade agreement between the two sides since the severing of official relations. The agreement streamlines regulation, fights corruption, and provides help for small- and medium-sized enterprises. The hope in Taipei was that other nations would feel confident to follow in Americas wake. Sure enough, on Nov. 8, Taiwan and the U.K. signed an enhanced trade partnership that paves the way for future talks on green energy, digital trade, and investment. In response, Beijing rebuked London for using trade as an excuse to enhance substantive relations with Taiwan. For Lai, every Taiwanese investment abroad and foreign investment at home incrementally boosts the islands security. Already, Taiwanese firms such as TSMC, Foxconn, and electric vehicle battery manufacturer ProLogium are exploring new facilities in the U.S., India, and France respectively. Meanwhile, foreign firms such as California-based chipmaker Nvidiawhose founder, Jensen Huang, was born in Tainanand Dutch lithography machinery maker ASML are looking at Taiwan expansions. But ultimately, it's a two-way street. While Taiwans burgeoning role in supply chains increases international opposition to Chinese aggression, should Beijing actually gain control of the island, it also increases the cost of diplomatic or military retaliation. In May, Warren Buffett sold off Berkshire Hathaways entire stake in TSMC, citing rising geopolitical tensions. Countries might be really reluctant to sanction Beijing if that stands in the way of them getting access to those semiconductors, says Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and author of Upstart: How China Became a Great Power. Lai leaves after giving a speech at an event with young entrepreneurs in Taipei on Oct. 24. Lam Yik Fei for TIME The question for Taiwans voters remains who they trust to safeguard their cherished way of life. At the DPPs headquarters within a scruffy office block in central Taipei, TIME shadowed Lai through several meetings with suited industry representatives and social activists in tees and sweatpants. At one, Lai was chided about his partys commitment to disabled rights, and for the fact that the governments judicial reform website hasnt been updated since 2020. Does that mean the government didn't do anything or just doesn't care about this topic? asked the spokesman for a lawyers group pointedly. At another meeting, a lesbian couple allowed to wed after Taiwans landmark 2019 marriage equality legislation tearfully described the lingering discrimination their daughter feels at school. While Tsai was often criticized for her academics aloofness, Lai possesses the doctors bedside manner, listening carefully and soothing with soft eyes and disarming humor. Yet the open nature of Taiwans democracy has left it vulnerable to the CCP influencing our presidential elections to support parties they see as friendlier to their interests, says Lai. One prominent DPP lawmaker ended his reelection bid after intimate photos from his affair with a Chinese national were sent to Taiwanese media. In August, counterfeit documents circulated that claimed Lai had pledged $320 million for a housing project during an official visit to Paraguay.. China also targets Taiwanese pockets. After former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August last year, Beijing responded by banning thousands of Taiwanese products, including pineapples, custard apples, and Taiwanese grouper each carefully chosen as a key export in a swing constituency to increase pressure on the incumbent administration. And with the prospect of four more years of DPP government, the question is what levers are left for Beijing to pull for a reaction. Over time, the Taiwan population becomes more inoculated towards coercion, says Chong Ja Ian, an expert on Chinas diplomacy and professor at the National University of Singapore. That also means [Beijing] has to up the ante every time to send a strong signal of displeasure. These tactics alone underscore that China and Taiwan share a language and history, but precious little else. Taiwan ranks 10th in the world (and top in Asia) in the Economist Intelligence Units 2022 Democracy Index. China sits in 156th place. Taiwans politics are messy, partisan, and febrile; China is ruled by Beijings secretive Zhongnanhai leadership complex. China has banned Pride since 2021 in a crackdown on LGBTQ rights; in October Lai became the highest-ranking Taiwanese official to attend Taipeis parade, saying his support was natural given his commitment to freedom, democracy, and human rights. Compare this to China, where online censors even scrubbed out overly effusive tributes following Octobers death of former Premier Li Keqiang, lest the grief foment social unrest. For Lai, any pretense that these two societies are in any way converging is preposterous. Ultimately, the 100 miles of choppy ocean that separates island and mainland doesnt do justice to just how differently their people feel and thinkand the coal miner's son has no qualms getting his hands dirty to keep it that way: We will not back down. Write to Charlie Campbell at charlie.campbell@time.com. NESLONIA, Va. (WFLA) A Tampa father and daughter were killed in a head-on crash involving a Freightliner box truck in Virginia on Tuesday afternoon. Virginia State Police said 69-year-old Augusto Santos Aguilar was driving a 2021 Mazda sedan northbound on Route 13 around 4:16 p.m. when he crossed over into the southbound lane and struck a box truck head-on. Aguilar was taken to a hospital, where he died. Aguilars daughter, 17-year-old Allyssa Aguilar, was sitting in the backseat and died upon impact, police said. St. Pete among the 3 fastest-declining Florida cities, analysis shows The front passenger, Augustos wife and Allyssas mother, was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The box truck driver suffered serious injuries and was also taken to a hospital. Police said no charges are pending at this time. Investigators said they are unsure why Aguilar crossed over the opposite lanes. The northbound and southbound lanes of Route 13/Lankford Highway were shut down in Accomack County due to the crash. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. The Tarrant County Sheriffs Office is looking for a 25-year-old woman who is a suspect in a murder investigation in the Rendon area. Kaitlyn Marie Bailey is actively wanted by the Tarrant County Sheriffs Office, officials said in a news release. She is thought to be driving a 2007 black Ford Fusion with the Texas license plate number FVH1258. Officials say Bailey is believed to be dangerous and armed with a handgun and should not be approached. Anyone with information as to her whereabouts is asked to contact the Tarrant County Sheriffs Office at 817-884-1213. The sheriffs office has not released further details about the homicide or who the victim was. Today's top stories: Nonprofit needs volunteers to help Afghan refugee families Pilot dies in small plane that crashed, caught fire near strip mall District attorney staffs narcotics unit to pursue fentanyl cases Get free alerts when news breaks. A Rancho Cordova teacher accused of slapping a nonverbal autistic kindergartner and restraining him is no longer employed with the district, according to a Folsom Cordova Unified School District spokeswoman. Ebone McNeal, the mother of the 5-year-old boy, has said her child had an illegal restraint used on him in September but wasnt told of the alleged incident immediately as is required by law. Supporters of the child held a news conference outside Williamson Elementary School in September and called for the teacher, Angela McGiffen, to be fired. Its unclear when McGiffens employment status with the Folsom Cordova Unified School District changed and whether she resigned or was fired. In the wake of the incident, McGiffen was placed on administrative leave. Angela Griffin, a district spokeswoman, wrote in an email that she couldnt provide specific personnel information. Payroll records preserved by the website Transparent California say McGiffen worked as a certificated substitute for only one year at Folsom Cordova Unified. McNeal previously told The Sacramento Bee that McGiffen held her child down on the ground kind of like a bear hug. She also sought the teachers arrested. Its unclear if the district is still investigating McGiffens actions. Griffin didnt respond to a question asking about the status of the districts investigation. Sgt. Amar Gandhi, a spokesman for the Sacramento County Sheriffs Office, said there is an administrative investigation conducted by the district thats ongoing. But there isnt enough evidence currently for deputies to pursue criminal charges, Gandhi said, while adding the agencys investigation is still considered open. Deputies provide police services under contract within the city of Rancho Cordova, where Williamson Elementary School is located. Court records show there have been no cases filed in McGiffens name. The U.S. Department of Education found Folsom Cordova Unified failed to provide a proper public education by infrequently holding Individualized Education Program meetings after a child was restrained, according to The Bees previous reporting. The federal watchdog review also found the district was slow to respond when students with disabilities were subjected to hours of isolation or dozens of restraints. A child held in a prone restraint at Guiding Hands, a now-closed El Dorado Hills school, who later died prompted federal education staff to launch a review of district policy. Folsom Cordova was one of a handful of schools in the Sacramento area that sent special-needs students to the school. Guiding Hands closed following the incident and several of its employees were charged with involuntary manslaughter by prosecutors. After A Teacher Went Viral For Virtual Classic Trip To Mexico, This Airline Gave Her Students A Real Experience | Photo: Pixabay Texas school teacher Sonja White became an internet sensation after she turned her first-grade classroom into a Southwest Airlines flight for her students as they pretended to be on a virtual trip to Mexico. After witnessing the educators fantastic idea online, the airline made the childrens dreams come true by inviting them to a real-life aviation experience. Okay internet you win. After watching Ms. Whites viral video, we knew we had to give these young aviators a field trip theyd never forget! the company captioned a TikTok video shared to its account, per CBS. In the two-minute stitched clip, Mrs. White shared her virtual classroom trip before transitioning into her and the first-graders from her school arriving at the Southwest Dallas Maintenance Hangar, where staff members had taken them on an exciting tour that the youngsters would never forget. According to Southwests TikTok video, this was the first time many students had ever gone on an airplane. They were greeted by Southwests Boeing 737 MAX 8, where they chatted with pilots who shared their passion for the aviation industry and technicians who demonstrated the maintenance needed to keep people safe. CORE MEMORY! Southwest Airlines made magic happen for Mrs. Sonja White's first-grade class in North Texas after their amazing 'trip' to Mexico caught the world's attention! : https://t.co/s8MRZv5c0c | @cbsaustin pic.twitter.com/EPMGqXJ9Qq John-Carlos Estrada (@Mr_JCE) November 13, 2023 While aboard the plane, the students were gifted a small set of wings, enjoyed snacks provided by the flight attendants and received invaluable advice from one of the pilots who participated in the tour. According to the airlines TikTok video, the pilot told the the inspired first-graders to always follow their dreams and stay true to their hearts. The fun-filled day continued as the teachers and principal were given two round-trip tickets to any destination with the airline. They all enjoyed music from a live mariachi band and authentic Mexican cuisine, per CBS Austin. The children wore their Southwest Airlines winged glasses and posed for a photo to end the tour. Its safe to say these children had an unforgettable time, thanks to the innovative teaching from Mrs. White. In October, Blavity reported that Mrs. White had gone viral in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month by creating a mock trip to Mexico. The video was shared by thousands of users online who praised the educator for creating a unique and memorable experience for her students. PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) A teen threatened to blow up the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office by sending the department a message on social media because he didnt believe they would take it seriously, according to officials. The 15-year-old, who lives in Miami, was arrested on Monday and charged with false report concerning planting a bomb, explosive, or weapon of mass destruction, according to the sheriffs office. The teen allegedly sent a message Sunday to the sheriffs office on Instagram that said I sent a bomb to your police station with a water gun emoji, deputies said. Courtesy: Pinellas County Sheriffs Office They were able to identify the teen as the suspect, who said he didnt think it would be taken seriously, deputies said. Earlier this week, a 16-year-old was arrested in Hillsborough County for making a post on the Pinellas County Sheriffs Office Instagram page threatening to bomb every school in the county. The Pinellas County Sheriffs Office has zero tolerance for all threats made on social media, deputies said in a statement. We are committed to the safety of all citizens and will investigate all threats to the fullest extent. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. Tennessee authorities on Tuesday evening announced the capture of fugitive Sean Williams, who is accused of raping women and children , in Florida after a weeks-long chase down the East Coast. Williams, former owner of Glass and Concrete Contracting LLC in Johnson City, was recently arrested and charged with 20 counts of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, three counts of child rape and three counts of sexual battery stemming from three separate cases in Washington County before he escaped custody in October. A "Most Wanted" fugitive, Williams, 52, "was located and arrested in Pinellas County, Florida," according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) and U.S. Marshal Service Eastern District of Tennessee. "Everybody up here in Tennessee is certainly very relieved to have this guy back in custody," U.S. Marshal David Jolley told Fox News Digital. "This guy is a real predator of human beings real dangerous guy. Always happy to have guys like that back off the streets." POLICE HUNT SERIAL SEX ASSAULT SUSPECT WHO ESCAPED CUSTODY IN SECOND ATTEMPT A "Most Wanted" fugitive, Sean Williams, 52, "was located and arrested in Pinellas County, Florida," according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). State and federal law enforcement officials, including U.S. Marshals, were able to trace Williams to a pickup truck stolen out of North Carolina on Nov. 17. Officials were then able to track the truck to Pinellas County, Florida, last week "through some very good investigative work," Jolley said. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP A 7-Eleven clerk in Largo, Florida, on Thursday called authorities to report that Williams had been in his store. "Sean Williams was apprehended without incident after being tracked down by a K9 team with the @SheriffPinellas. Great work by all agencies involved!" TBI said in a Thursday post on X, formerly known as Twitter. TENNESSEE BUSINESSMAN ACCUSED OF SEXUALLY ASSAULTING WOMEN CHARGED WITH RAPE, EXPLOITATION Jolley said his birthday was on Thursday, and he told his wife when she asked what he wanted, "Well, capturing Sean Williams would be a great birthday present." Sean Williams was wearing a "light tan" prison uniform, and he may have shaved his head, according to the Greene County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee. Williams was being transported from the Laurel County Correctional Center in Kentucky back to his home state of Tennessee in October when he allegedly kicked open the rear window of a vehicle and ran, according to the Greene County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee. "During travel it appears that the inmate was able to utilize a component of the van[']s headrest to free himself from his hand restraints then to pry the protective screening and force the side window out of the rear of the transport vehicle," Laurel County jailer Jamie Mosley said in a Facebook post at the time of Williams' escape. "He then exited the vehicle through the window area, he was spotted moments later covered with blood in the Davis Street area of Greenville, TN." TENNESSEE BUSINESSMAN SUSPECTED OF RECORDING SEXUAL ASSAULTS OF MORE THAN 50 WOMEN SAYS HE'S INNOCENT On top of the Washington County sexual assault charges, the 52-year-old suspect also faces dozens of federal child sexual abuse charges. TBI offered a $2,500 award for information leading to the suspect's arrest. "Williams is desperate to escape custody and has attempted previously," the U.S. Marshal Service for the Eastern District of Tennessee said in a Wednesday press release. He could face life in prison if convicted. TBI offered a $2,500 award for information leading to the suspect's arrest. TENNESSEE FELON ALLEGEDLY RECORDED SEXUAL ASSAULTS OF MORE THAN 50 WOMEN All the victims mentioned in the lawsuit allegedly became incapacitated after drinking or using drugs at Williams' apartment or with his accomplices. They also all allege that Williams tried to rape or assault them while they were incapacitated. The suspect previously pushed back against the allegations in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital published last month. Sean Williams is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed by 10 anonymous women accusing the Johnson City Police Department (JCPD) of ignoring their complaints about Williams, who they say drugged and raped them at parties held in his downtown apartment. "[D]ue to my luxury place and willingness to spend money on others, I became popular quickly. My reputation became someone with money that like[s] women and parties and people," Williams said, adding that "anyone who came downtown JC more than once was familiar with" him or his parties. Prior to the federal lawsuit, Williams had been on the run for two years after former Assistant U.S. Attorney Kateri Dahl who alleges in a civil lawsuit that Johnson City officials fired her after she brought forth her concerns about Williams charged him with being a felon in possession of ammunition in 2021. HONDOURAN MAN, TWICE DEPORTED FROM US, CHARGED WITH MURDERS IN NASHVILLE AFTER 2 BODIES FOUND North Carolina police eventually caught up with Williams in April, learned he was a fugitive and executed search warrants, finding videos on his electronic devices that allegedly showed him raping 52 different women. Additionally, one of the thumb drives allegedly contained more than 5,000 images of child pornography, the spokesperson said. North Carolina police located drugs in Sean Williams' vehicle and obtained a search warrant for his devices, on which they allegedly found videos and images of 52 different victims appearing to be sexually assaulted by Williams, as local outlet WJHL first reported. Additionally, one of the thumb drives allegedly contained more than 5,000 images of child pornography, the spokesperson said. In July, Williams allegedly tried to escape the Washington County Detention Center. Details of the escape are not included in the federal lawsuit filed against Williams, but later that month, a federal grand jury indicted him on an additional charge for the effort to escape the county jail. Dahl is now acting as a whistleblower in raising awareness about JCPD's alleged mishandling of the victims' cases and concerns. She has filed her own lawsuit against Johnson City and a disclosure with the Justice Department, according to Whistleblower Aid. Original article source: Tennessee fugitive, serial sex assault suspect Sean Williams nabbed in Florida after weeks-long chase Sean Williams, a prison escapee indicted in connection with multiple counts of state and federal child sex charges as well as rape charges, has been captured in Florida after a month-long manhunt. On Oct. 18, Williams escaped from a prison transport van while being moved from Kentucky to the U.S. District Court in Greeneville, Tennessee. When the van arrived at its destination, the back window of the van was kicked out and Williams was long gone. His escape prompted a manhunt through Tennessee and North Carolina where Williams was spotted before his arrest in Florida on Tuesday. He had been added to Tennessee's Most Wanted list. Here is everything to know about Sean Williams' escape and case: Who is Sean Williams? Law enforcement officers from local, state and federal agencies confer on Oct. 18 on Davis Street in Greeneville during the search for escaped federal prisoner Sean Williams. Williams, 51, was a successful businessman from Johnson City. He was an entrepreneur who owned a glass and concrete business. He was also a convicted felon known as an alleged cocaine dealer. He had a history of being accused of sexual assault by various women in the city. Williams had been investigated several times, but no charges were ever brought against him until his arrest. In April 2023, Williams was arrested on the campus of Western Carolina University after an officer saw him sleeping in his car. Inside his car were 12 ounces of cocaine, 14 ounces of methamphetamine, $100,000 cash, multiple electronic and digital storage devices, and two thumb drives containing more than 5,000 images of child pornography plus images and videos of 52 women in states of unconsciousness being sexually assaulted by Williams. When was Sean Williams captured? Sean Williams was captured on Tuesday in Pinellas County, Florida. According to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, Williams was spotted in Largo late Monday. Tuesday evening, deputies were tipped off to his location at a Largo 7-11. Deputies arrived, tracked Williams with a K-9 and apprehended him. UPDATE: #TNMostWanted fugitive Sean Williams is in custody. He was located and arrested in Pinellas County, Florida. As always, thank you for sharing! pic.twitter.com/EpsvKxfmPS Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (@TBInvestigation) November 22, 2023 How did Sean Williams escape? On Oct. 18, Williams was transported from Kentucky to Greeneville for him to attend the U.S. District Court there. Somewhere between the original stop and their final destination, Williams knocked out the back window of the transport van and escaped. The officers driving the vehicle had no idea he got out until they arrived in Greeneville. Williams was originally held in North Carolina but was moved to Kentucky because of another escape attempt back in July. After his escape, Williams had been spotted in various spots in western North Carolina before his eventual capture in Florida. What are the charges against Sean Williams? Local, state and federal officers searched several houses Oct. 18, 2023, on Davis Street in Greeneville while looking for escaped federal prisoner Sean Williams. Williams was indicted in September on multiple counts of child rape, sexual battery and sexual exploitation of a minor. He was later indicted on three counts of producing child pornography. All charges are on crimes spanning from 2008 to 2020. During one of his sexual assault investigations in 2020, police found a handwritten note in Williams' nightstand titled "Raped" with a list of the names of 21 women. After his arrest in April, it was determined that Williams had drugged and sexually assaulted more than 50 unconscious women with photo and video evidence. He is also accused of assaulting two children, the younger being under two years old. Two lawsuits for failure to investigate There is much controversy over Williams' case because of the number of accusations against him. Williams has been accused of sexual assault charges dating back to 2018. There are now two lawsuits against the Johnson City because of the lack of urgency in investigating Williams. One complaint is a whistleblower lawsuit filed by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kateri Dahl, a former federal prosecutor, who claims police disregarded her several requests for an investigation and Williams' arrest. After complaining to people outside the department, she was let go. Dahl was on contract in Johnson City to monitor and prosecute drug and gun crimes. Williams' case was brought before her because police had found an illegal ammunition charge in his condo in 2020. In April 2021, she was given a federal arrest warrant for Williams for being a felon in possession of ammunition. It was then that Williams fled to North Carolina where he was caught two years later on Western Carolina's campus. In the second case, almost a dozen Jane Does claim that police deliberately chose not to look into many victim reports and discouraged them from filing criminal charges while Williams continued to conduct crimes. In 2020, Williams was investigated for his relation to a woman severely injured after falling from a fifth-story window after meeting him at a bar. During the investigation, police found the "Raped" note, ammunition and electronic devices in his condo. Evidence of Williams's sexual assaults of multiple women was found on electronic devices retrieved from his condo following his arrest in April. The devices had been sitting in evidence storage since 2020. Prior to the release of an audit that examined sexual assault investigations from 2018 through 2022, the police chief and two other senior officers announced their early retirement. This audit discovered that officers' misperceptions about assault victims contributed to their failure to properly investigate sexual assault cases, gather evidence, speak with suspects, and make arrests. The city says it is investing $100,000 into sexual assault training for its officers. It is also reviewing its investigative policies and procedures, but only time will tell if any change comes out of this. USA Today Network reporters Kelly Puente and Liz Kellar contributed to this report. Jordan Green covers trending news for the USAToday Network. She can be reached via email at jordan.Green@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter/X @_green_jordan_. This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Sean Williams escape: Tennessee fugitive caught in FL after manhunt If a symbol of the American lifestyle exists, it might very well be the car. So perhaps its not surprising that, according to the Federal Highway Administration, the average American drives an average of 14,000 miles per year or just under 1,200 miles a month. Thats enough for a round-trip drive from Miami to Seattle twicewith a few hundred miles left over. Another way to measure driving is with vehicle miles traveled per capita, the sum of annual miles traveled by vehicles divided by the states total population. Collectively, Americans drive roughly 3.2 trillion miles every yearwhich measures out to 9,780 miles per capita. Have breaking come to you: Subscribe to News 2 email alerts But people in different states drive different amounts. Population density and the cost of gas are among the factors influencing driving habits. CheapInsurance.com used data from the Federal Highway Administration and the Census Bureau to find out which states residents do the most driving. The data are ranked by the average number of vehicle miles driven in each state, by capita. Driving data are from September 2021 through August 2023, and population data are from 2022. Southern and Western states lead the rankings of where drivers spend more time behind the wheel. The top five states are more rural and have lower population densities than others, meaning they may have longer distances to travel for work or regular errands. Its also likely they have less access to public transportation. Nashville drivers have the worst commute in the U.S., study finds At the other end of the list, the five states with the lowest miles driven per capita are in the Northeast and along the Pacific coast. Some of them are home to cities with the best public transportation systems in the country. Tennessee landed at #9 on the list. You can click here to jump down to the Volunteer States stats, or continue to scroll to see how the rest of the country faired. Traffic moving slowly on the highway with the background of the Capitol Hill in D.C. Drew Angerer // Getty Images #51. Washington DC Annual vehicle-miles driven: 3.25 billion Per capita: 4,843.7 Busy traffic in New York City. Canva #50. New York Annual vehicle-miles driven: 112.65 billion Per capita: 5,724.9 Downtown Honolulu traffic. Canva #49. Hawaii Annual vehicle-miles driven: 10.48 billion Per capita: 7,278.2 City skyline. Canva #48. Rhode Island Annual vehicle-miles driven: 8.10 billion Per capita: 7,407.7 An aerial view of a highway intersection in Seattle. Canva #47. Washington Annual vehicle-miles driven: 59.18 billion Per capita: 7,600.6 Main street in a small town in Alaska. Canva #46. Alaska Annual vehicle-miles driven: 5.80 billion Per capita: 7,902.3 A busy highway going over a yellow bridge over a river in Pittsburgh. Canva #45. Pennsylvania Annual vehicle-miles driven: 103.89 billion Per capita: 8,008.7 Chicago traffic at sunset with the skyline in the background. Canva #44. Illinois Annual vehicle-miles driven: 101.66 billion Per capita: 8,079.8 Busy highway traffic and skyline of Los Angeles. Canva #43. California Annual vehicle-miles driven: 319.63 billion Per capita: 8,189.5 Modern downtown buildings along the road. Canva #42. Connecticut Annual vehicle-miles driven: 30.40 billion Per capita: 8,383.7 A view of New York City from the busy highway-loop in New Jersey. Canva #41. New Jersey Annual vehicle-miles driven: 78.62 billion Per capita: 8,488.2 Traffic in the city downtown. Canva #40. Oregon Annual vehicle-miles driven: 36.49 billion Per capita: 8,606.8 Colorful lights of Las Vegas city buildings and night traffic in the city. Canva #39. Nevada Annual vehicle-miles driven: 27.54 billion Per capita: 8,666.1 A city skyline over highways. Canva #38. Massachusetts Annual vehicle-miles driven: 62.12 billion Per capita: 8,897.6 A city skyline with a bridge over a river at sunset. Canva #37. West Virginia Annual vehicle-miles driven: 16.35 billion Per capita: 9,211.6 A city traffic with tall buildings along the road. Canva #36. Maryland Annual vehicle-miles driven: 57.68 billion Per capita: 9,355.9 An aerial view of a city and highways at dusk. Canva #35. Colorado Annual vehicle-miles driven: 54.67 billion Per capita: 9,361.6 Busy traffic on the highway at dusk. Canva #34. Virginia Annual vehicle-miles driven: 83.20 billion Per capita: 9,580.9 Main roads in the city with the skyline in the background. Canva #33. Ohio Annual vehicle-miles driven: 113.94 billion Per capita: 9,692.2 Highway surrounded by green fields and tall trees. Canva #32. New Hampshire Annual vehicle-miles driven: 13.61 billion Per capita: 9,753.9 A tall suspended bridge over the river with city views. Canva #31. Delaware Annual vehicle-miles driven: 10.02 billion Per capita: 9,839.0 City downtown traffic and historic buildings. Canva #30. Michigan Annual vehicle-miles driven: 99.17 billion Per capita: 9,883.6 City skyline and a road in the city. Canva #29. Texas Annual vehicle-miles driven: 299.85 billion Per capita: 9,985.0 A few cars on a highway surrounded by yellow fields. Canva #28. Idaho Annual vehicle-miles driven: 19.47 billion Per capita: 10,043.2 Skyline of the city at dusk with a bridge over the river in the foreground. Canva #27. Minnesota Annual vehicle-miles driven: 57.78 billion Per capita: 10,106.9 Traffic on a highway with the snowy mountain peaks in the background. Canva #26. Utah Annual vehicle-miles driven: 34.35 billion Per capita: 10,161.5 | Check out more lists and rankings from across Tennessee Skyline view of the city with city traffic. Canva #25. Iowa Annual vehicle-miles driven: 33.15 billion Per capita: 10,356.1 A congested highway. Canva #24. Arizona Annual vehicle-miles driven: 77.38 billion Per capita: 10,514.5 Interstate highway leading downtown. Canva #23. Florida Annual vehicle-miles driven: 234.29 billion Per capita: 10,532.4 A highway in the middle of green fields and trees passing over a river. Canva #22. Nebraska Annual vehicle-miles driven: 20.86 billion Per capita: 10,598.5 A city downtown surrounded by green hills. Canva #21. South Dakota Annual vehicle-miles driven: 9.75 billion Per capita: 10,718.6 A highway with little traffic surrounded by green woods. Canva #20. Vermont Annual vehicle-miles driven: 6.97 billion Per capita: 10,774.8 A pickup truck driving on foggy morning rural highway. Canva #19. Maine Annual vehicle-miles driven: 14.93 billion Per capita: 10,780.0 An aerial view of highways with the city skyline. Canva #18. Kansas Annual vehicle-miles driven: 31.67 billion Per capita: 10,782.2 An aerial view of a suspended highway. Canva #17. Kentucky Annual vehicle-miles driven: 50.26 billion Per capita: 11,138.4 Downtown view of a city. Canva #16. North Carolina Annual vehicle-miles driven: 119.59 billion Per capita: 11,178.1 An aerial view of a large highway interchange. Canva #15. Wisconsin Annual vehicle-miles driven: 65.88 billion Per capita: 11,179.9 A city skyline with roads around it. Canva #14. Oklahoma Annual vehicle-miles driven: 45.20 billion Per capita: 11,243.3 A city downtown with a raised road in the center. Canva #13. South Carolina Annual vehicle-miles driven: 60.26 billion Per capita: 11,407.8 City skyline with roads leading to the city in the foreground. Canva #12. Georgia Annual vehicle-miles driven: 125.48 billion Per capita: 11,498.3 A city view with the roads in the foreground. Canva #11. Indiana Annual vehicle-miles driven: 80.70 billion Per capita: 11,810.9 An aerial view of city skyline at dusk. Canva #10. North Dakota Annual vehicle-miles driven: 9.33 billion Per capita: 11,978.0 Main road in a small town with tree-covered mountains surrounding it. Canva #9. Tennessee Annual vehicle-miles driven: 84.72 billion Per capita: 12,014.5 Downtown traffic in small town with mountains in the background. Canva #8. Montana Annual vehicle-miles driven: 13.53 billion Per capita: 12,045.1 Signs on freeway in New Orleans. Canva #7. Louisiana Annual vehicle-miles driven: 55.33 billion Per capita: 12,054.7 Traffic in a town decorated for holidays. Canva #6. Arkansas Annual vehicle-miles driven: 38.25 billion Per capita: 12,560.3 Traffic in St. Louis on 7th Street. Canva #5. Missouri Annual vehicle-miles driven: 80.59 billion Per capita: 13,045.1 Read todays top stories on wkrn.com Long stretch of highway with mountains in the background. Canva #4. New Mexico Annual vehicle-miles driven: 27.62 billion Per capita: 13,068.4 An high-angle view of cars driving on the interstate. Canva #3. Mississippi Annual vehicle-miles driven: 40.49 billion Per capita: 13,771.5 An aerial view of a city and highways leading to it. Canva #2. Alabama Annual vehicle-miles driven: 77.64 billion Per capita: 15,300.3 Traffic jam on roads with drifting snow. Canva #1. Wyoming Annual vehicle-miles driven: 10.69 billion Per capita: 18,378.7 Story editing by Jeff Inglis. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn. Photo selection by Ania Antecka. This story originally appeared on CheapInsurance.com and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WKRN News 2. Terry Richardson sexually abused a model on two separate occasions in 2004, a new lawsuit alleges. Donald Trump's modeling agency waved off her concerns, according to the suit. Richardson published photos of the alleged abuse in a book and gallery. Sometime in 2004, Minerva Portillo had a meeting with Terry Richardson in his downtown Manhattan studio. Richardson was one of the most famous fashion photographers in the world, going on to work for the likes of Tom Ford, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Yves Saint Laurent. Portillo, 22 years old at the time, had just moved to New York from Spain and was excited for the next phase in her modeling career. Richardson appeared enthusiastic at the idea of working with Portillo, but she left the meeting feeling perturbed, according to a lawsuit she filed Wednesday. "During their meeting, Mr. Richardson wore nothing but a robe. Ms. Portillo was disturbed by this," her lawyers wrote. "She tried to keep the meeting professional and kept her distance from Mr. Richardson while they looked through her portfolio together." After the meeting, Portillo expressed her trepidation to her agents at Trump Model Management the modeling agency founded in 1999 by now-former-President Donald Trump and told them that Richardson had worn only a robe, according to the lawsuit. They waved away her distress, her suit alleges. "Trump Model Management dismissed her concerns, telling her that such behavior was commonplace and that given Mr. Richardson's prominence and influence in the industry, Ms. Portillo should overlook his behavior," the lawsuit claims. The agents booked a photoshoot with Richardson for that May, according to the suit. When she arrived at his studio, an employee offered a beverage that made her "feel dizzy, disoriented, and not fully in control of her body," the lawsuit alleges. During the photoshoot, the lawsuit alleges, Richardson instructed her to remove her clothing before forcing her to perform oral sex on him. "She tried to push Mr. Richardson away and attempted to back away from him. But she was closely surrounded by Mr. Richardson's employees, some of whom were cheering," the lawsuit alleges. "Mr. Richardson had his hand on her head, keeping her in place." Richardson and his employees snapped photos while he sexually abused her, Portillo's lawsuit says. Portillo had another appointment with Richardson the next day, for a fashion brand, according to the lawsuit. She "attempted to tell an agent at Trump Model Management about the assault," her lawsuit says, but the agency "insisted that she proceed with the appointment." Portillo, Richardson, and other members of the photography crew traveled in a van back to Manhattan from the shoot location. In the van, Richardson "unbuckled his pants, grabbed her head, and forced it towards his penis without her consent" before commanding her to perform oral sex, the lawsuit alleges, also while his staff took photos. Portillo returned to Spain a week later, abandoning her modeling career, according to the lawsuit. Richardson included the photos in a book and gallery Richardson has faced numerous sexual assault accusations since the early 2000s and was effectively ousted from the fashion industry in 2017 amid the #MeToo movement. An attorney for Richardson didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Portillo's lawsuit. Portillo had previously recounted her story in 2017, to Vogue Spain. She brought her new lawsuit in Manhattan federal court under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law passed in the wake of the #MeToo movement that created a one-year window permitting accusers to bring civil sexual misconduct lawsuits that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. The window for new lawsuits closes on Thursday. Minerva Portillo at a Vogue Spain event. Gabriel Maseda/NurPhoto via Getty Images In addition to Richardson, corporate entities related to Trump Model Management, which stopped operating in 2017, are named as defendants in the lawsuit. Attorneys representing those entities didn't respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit does not identify the particular agents who represented Portillo and booked the meetings with Richardson. "What happened to Ms. Portillo was foreseeable and preventable, because she had shared her concerns about working with Mr. Richardson with Trump Model Management," Aleix Cuadrado, a Spain-based attorney representing Portillo in the case, said in a statement. Richardson published the photos allegedly depicting Richardson's sexual assault in a photo gallery and a book, and sold at least one of them to a private collector, according to the lawsuit. The photos depict Portillo gripping Richardson's penis, Portillo performing oral sex on him, and Richardson ejaculating on Portillo's face while she wears his glasses. Richardson often photographed models wearing his glasses. Portillo's lawsuit says she signed a release form for the photos, but that she did not understand what the form said because her native language is not English. The release form falsely states the photos "do not depict actual sexually explicit conduct," according to the suit. Portillo relied on her agents at Trump's management company to handle release forms for her, the lawsuit says. "There is a difference between provocative but consensually made art, and sexual assault," Christine Dunn, another one of Portillo's attorneys, said in a statement. "Ms. Portillo alleges that this was the latter, and Mr. Richardson did not have the rights to distribute the images." Read the original article on Business Insider Iran ready to send medics to Gaza: minister Xinhua) 09:27, November 22, 2023 TEHRAN, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Health Minister Bahram Einollahi voiced Tuesday his country's readiness to dispatch volunteer physicians and nurses to the war-torn Gaza Strip. He made the remarks on the sidelines of a ceremony to mark Iran's National Nurse Day in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi, IRIB news agency reported. The minister said that "we are ready to provide (medical) assistance to the people in Gaza," where hospitals encountered "brutal Israeli attacks." Einollahi said Iran had ensured the necessary coordination to send medics to the Palestinian coastal enclave. Israel has been carrying out attacks on Gaza over the past weeks in retaliation for the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. The conflict has so far led to the deaths of over 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza and plunged the area into a humanitarian catastrophe with its health system heavily overwhelmed. On the Israeli side, about 1,200 people have lost their lives, the majority of whom were killed in the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Former President Donald J. Trump shakes hands with Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott while coming on stage after receiving Abbotts's endorsement for president during a rally at the South Texas International Airport in Edinburg on Nov. 19, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Gov. Greg Abbott demonstrated his fealty to former President Donald Trump and auditioned for vice president this week, but if these two end up running the country, its employers who will struggle to fill jobs. At a campaign event in Edinburg, 30 miles from Mexico, the GOP leaders celebrated border walls, troop and trooper deployments, floating death traps and contempt for immigrants. Both men know nativism plays well with the Republican base. I ran largely on the border (in 2016), Trump told the crowd. Since these guys got it you have some real bad people coming into our country. Advertisement Article continues below this ad During Trumps time in office, you had some real good people not come into our country. Immigration is critical to U.S. economic growth, and Trumps proposed policies, if he wins in 2024, would not only crack down on unauthorized border crossings but stunt the nations workforce. Trump and his campaign aides have trickled out proposed immigration plans, and if implemented, would restrict the arrival of prospective Americans to the slowest pace in history and expel millions of critical workers. For the first time since the Cold War, Trump would impose an ideological test on visa applicants. He promised earlier this year to block any communists, Marxists or socialists from entering the country. His administration would reimpose and expand a so-called Muslim ban to restrict arrivals from certain Middle Eastern and African countries. The 13 nations he initially targeted included Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania and Venezuela. Advertisement Article continues below this ad While in the White House, Trump reduced legal immigration through 400 executive actions. While the policies took a while to get rolling, he took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to crack down. In the third quarter of 2016, the U.S. issued 318,000 green cards granting permanent residency. Trump reduced that number to 240,000 by the second quarter of 2020, and by the third quarter, he reduced it to only 79,000. If elected again, Trumps administration would reimpose strict limits on refugees and terminate resettlement programs. He has promised to enforce a merit-based immigration system that protects American labor and promotes American values, but without explaining what that means. While this may appeal to some Republicans, it spells trouble for the economy. The U.S. does not have enough unemployed people to fill the 9.5 million jobs currently open, Department of Labor data shows. Some of the hardest-to-fill positions are the lowest-paid and unskilled jobs immigrants have historically taken. A U.S. Census Bureau report released this month shows the U.S. population will shrink without increased immigration. Maintaining the current population is critical for economic growth and funding programs like Social Security and Medicare. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Trump has promised to exacerbate matters with mass deportations of workers and families already in the country. The former president told supporters in Iowa he would round up unauthorized immigrants using former President Dwight D. Eisenhowers Operation Wetback as a model. In 1954, federal soldiers, National Guard troops and federal authorities deported 1.3 million people, mostly of Mexican descent. We will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history, Trump said. To do so, he promised to shift massive portions of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to immigration enforcement. Mass deportations would devastate the Texas economy. About 1.7 million people are already here without authorization, and 1 million are employed. An estimated 311,000 construction workers and 152,000 hospitality personnel are working without proper papers in jobs no one else wants or can do, census data shows. Texas does not have enough unemployed people to perform this labor that we all depend upon. Construction and hospitality companies have begged for expanded worker programs for decades, only to have Republican politicians reject immigration reform. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Trump also wants to take away birthright citizenship, meaning that people born in the United States would not automatically receive the right to remain. He would also end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects so-called Dreamers from deportation because they came here as children. Undergraduates at Texas Christian University (TCU) will have to fork over more money to attend the private college than their peers at Havard University, following recent news of a tuition hike at the Fort Worth institution. TCU announced a 7.9% increase in undergraduate tuition beginning in the 2024-25 school year. The hike is the largest for the university in more than a decade. Annual tuition at TCU will now cost more than $61,000, an increase of about $4,520 annually for full-time undergraduates, and doesn't include costs for fees, books and student housing. AS GEN Z OPTS OUT OF BLUE-COLLAR WORK IN AMERICA, EXPERT SHARES BENEFITS OF LEARNING A TRADE Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, Texas, is home to the Horned Frogs. In comparison, it currently costs $54,269 to attend Harvard University, an Ivy League school, not counting student housing and other various services and fees. "This decision comes after careful consideration of economic factors and it is necessary to maintain and advance TCU's standard of excellence in academics, student experience and services," TCU said on its website. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP News of the hike came after TCU celebrated a $1 billion fundraising campaign in October, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. The school has also spent $200 million on the construction of more than 20 new buildings since 2012. It's not clear if the funds from the $1 billion raised will be used to offset the new student increases. The hike only applies to tuition. Food and housing rates will be addressed at a later date, the school said. The university will increase need-based financial aid to account for the increase, but students on fixed scholarships will have to find other ways to pay for the $4,500 in extra tuition. Texas Christian University is a small private university located in Fort Worth, Texas. The school recently announced a tuition hike for the 2024-25 school year. Tuition and endowment funds go to support a "personalized academic experience, as well as the people and programs that distinguish TCU as a leading university," TCU spokesperson Holly Ellman wrote in an email to the newspaper. The university will increase need-based financial aid to account for the increase, but students on fixed scholarships will have to find another way to come up with the roughly $4,500 in extra tuition. Fox News Digital reached out to TCU for comment. Original article source: Texas Christian University increases tuition, meaning it costs less to attend Harvard KINGSVILLE, Texas (KXAN) Texas A&M University said Tuesday it is expanding as a response to a shortage of medical personnel across Texas. The universitys Irma Lerma Rangel School of Pharmacy said it will add a pharmacy technician program, called Aggie PTP, in early 2024. According to the school, pharmacy technicians work with pharmacists in hospitals, clinics, as well as in independent and community pharmacies to prepare and dispense medications, manage inventory, administer vaccines and facilitate communication with patients and health care providers. ACC offering online option for bachelors in nursing A shortage of pharmacy technicians can result in reduced pharmacy business hours, backlogs of unfilled prescriptions, delays in patients receiving their medications and suboptimal health outcomes. Texas is experiencing a shortage and is in dire need of pharmacy technicians, said Andrea Mora, Aggie PTP program director, clinical associate professor and associate department head of pharmacy practice. The 17-week Aggie PTP curriculum is shorter than many other programs, the school said, and is based on the apprenticeship model where students practice in retail or hospital pharmacies what they learn in the classroom and lab. We are working with various pharmacy partners to create paid apprenticeship opportunities for our Aggie PTP trainees. This will mean that during the last five weeks of the curriculum, our trainees will be able to earn while they learn, said Asim Abu-Baker, clinical professor and associate dean for clinical and professional affairs. The program also provides American Pharmacists Association Immunization Delivery training for technicians. Students who complete the training will be certified to administer certain immunizations, the school said. Tuition will cost half as much as the average cost of other technician programs in Texas, the school said. The WoodNext Foundation, which manages the philanthropy of Roku CEO Anthony Wood and his wife Susan, gave the Rangel School of Pharmacy $1 million to create the program and support incoming students in various ways, including scholarships, according to the school. The Aggie PTP is now accepting applicants, with an application deadline set for Jan. 1, 2024. The first cohort of students will begin in Spring 2024, the school said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin. TEXAS (KXAN) To commemorate its 100th anniversary, the Texas State Parks System debuted its centennial-themed holiday ornament. The ornament went on sale Monday and retails for $19.95 plus tax. It depicts the state of Texas, with dots representing each of the state systems 89 parks, per a release. The two-decade Texas State Parks ornament tradition began back in 2002, with each years ornament featuring natural, cultural and historical resources the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department protects, the release added. Ornaments typically depict wildlife scenery, plants and some of the recreational activities visitors to the parks can enjoy, per the release. Those interested in revisiting previous years ornaments and purchasing them, if supplies are available can find the collection online. For those looking to get in the holiday spirit, visitors at the Texas State Capitol can see the ornament on display along with the Capital Christmas Trees, which were delivered by Eisenhower State Park staff, per the release. Three trees will be delivered to the Texas House of Representatives on Nov. 27, while two trees will be delivered to the Texas Senate Chamber on Nov. 27 and Dec. 4, respectively. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin. Students walk through campus at the University of Texas at Dallas on Aug. 27, 2021. Credit: Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune For years, three large lumpy rocks bedecked in bright paint announced events or bore symbolic messages at the University of Texas at Dallas a cornerstone of campus life. Sometimes the messages were political, Vote Blue. Sometimes not, Welcome Scholars! But Monday morning students found the university uprooted their beloved boulders, known as the Spirit Rocks, overnight and replaced them with freshly planted trees. The rocks removal came weeks after student groups took turns painting pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian messages on their surfaces in response to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. The Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and ensuing assault on Gaza, has triggered intense debates over the decades-old conflict as many urge for a ceasefire. College campuses like UT Dallas have become a nexus of those debates and, in some cases, a test of students freedom of expression. In the weeks since Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people and took hundreds hostage, Israel has maintained an airstrike campaign on Gaza. The relentless assault resulted in the deaths of more than 11,000 people in Palestine, most of whom are women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza. On Tuesday, Israel and Hamas agreed to a hostage exchange agreement and a multiday pause in fighting. Student protests across the country, often accompanied by calls for an end to occupation of Palestinian land by Israeli forces, have prompted backlash by those who perceive these protests as antisemitic, endorsements of Hamas. College administrators have since been tasked with navigating those accusations, while not suppressing student voices. In a Monday statement following the removal of the rocks, the university affirmed the importance of free speech and said the recent paintings related to the Middle East conflict strayed too far from the original purpose of the public message board. The spirit rocks were not intended to be a display for extended political discourse, and because painted messages have been negatively impacting people on and off campus, our best solution was to remove them, read the statement. The university removed a page from its website outlining the purpose and guidelines around painting the rocks earlier this week. UT Dallas did not respond to a list of questions about the rocks and websites removal. For students, the removal came as a complete surprise. Not only was this a 180, but also the reasoning given was hypocritical, lacking and contradictory given the 15 years of history, said Alex De Jesus, a senior political science student. De Jesus said students have used the rocks to protest last years abortion ruling, police brutality and a push to limit LGBTQ+ rights. He said students have largely managed the rocks themselves in the 15 years the quirky public forums have existed on campus. In the past when hateful speech appeared on the rocks, students have painted over those messages. A series of photos, published by the UT Dallas student newspaper The Mercury, showed that between Oct. 11 and 15 the rocks were painted in the likeness of an Israeli flag, a Palestinian flag and a split of the two. During that week, the largest of the spirit rocks oscillated between the two flags within hours. At noon on Oct. 12 one of the rocks was painted to reflect the Palestinian flag and bore the message, No [peace] on stolen land. Two hours later, half of the rock was painted white and blue, in the style of Israels flag, with the message, We are winning. The following week, UT Dallas President Richard Benson released a statement condemning the attack and applauding students civil disagreements about the conflict. Students are conversing about their differences; they are gathering donations and peacefully protesting; they are shaking hands, Benson wrote on Oct. 16. In response, students criticized Bensons lack of acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering stemming from Israeli airstrikes. On Oct. 24 the UT Dallas Student Government passed a resolution calling Benson to amend his earlier statement to consider the plight of Palestinians. The following day, Benson responded to the resolution, acknowledging the pain felt on both sides of the conflict and asked the campus to rededicate ourselves to presuming good faith on the part of others and to listen with kindness and empathy. Roughly one month later, the spirit rocks were removed. How free speech is regulated on college campuses has been a perennial issue for decades. Conservatives have long argued their political speech has been stifled in traditionally liberal settings. More recently, Texas Republicans have passed legislation to create free speech protections in years past. Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers banned diversity, equity and inclusion offices at Texas public universities, which they argued limited free speech on college campuses. The timing of the rocks removal, De Jesus said, is especially painful because that new law, eliminating UT Dallas DEI office, will take effect in 2024. And the rocks caked in years of paint, which serves as a special place for student groups of color and the LGBTQ+ community to share their message are no longer part of campus life. And so for us, this is a new chapter in something else that's darker, he said. Disclosure: University of Texas - Dallas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Millions of Ohioans will be traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday between Wednesday and Sunday. >>If you havent started your Thanksgiving trip, youre not alone. The busiest days are still to come AAA estimates at least two million Ohioans are expected to go someplace for the holiday, an increase of two percent from last year, according to a spokesperson. The Thanksgiving holiday period is defined as Wednesday, Nov. 22 to Sunday, Nov. 26. More than 1.9 million Ohioans will travel by car, nearly 232,000 by plane, and another 65,000 by other means, including rail. Travel experts say despite the increase in consumer goods and services, travel has not taken a dip, said Kara Hitchens, AAA spokesperson. This is translating into more travelers kicking off the holiday season with a Thanksgiving getaway. >>Tips from AAA for drivers in preparing to travel before Thanksgiving Ohios metro areas are expected to be busy, including here in the Dayton area, AAA says. At least 184,000 Ohioans are expected in the Dayton area by car, plane, and other means. That is also an increase of over two percent from last year. More than 161,000 are expected to travel by car in Dayton, nearly 19,000 by air, and close to 5,700 by other means (including train, bus, cruise, etc.) Across the country, at least 55 million travelers are making plans to travel this Thanksgiving with a trip of 50 miles more, according to AAA. >>Driving or flying before feasting? Here are some tips for Thanksgiving travelers INRIX, a global transportation analytics company, expected Wednesday afternoon to be the worst travel period with trips taking as much as four times longer than normal in major metropolitan areas. With record levels of travelers, and persistent population growth in the countrys major metropolitan areas, drivers must prepare for major delays, said Trevor Reed, transportation analyst at INRIX. Although travel times will peak on Wednesday afternoon nationally, travelers should expect much heavier than normal congestion throughout the week. For more traveling tips, visit this website. Recently, veterinarians, animal shelter workers and dog owners throughout the United States have become increasingly aware of a mysterious respiratory illness affecting dogs that often does not respond to antibiotics. A wide range of symptoms have been reported in infected dogs, including flu-like symptoms, cough, nasal discharge, fever, pneumonia and kennel cough-like symptoms. However, labs across the country are still unsure of what's causing this increased rate of respiratory illness in dogs. National media outlets, including the New York Times and AP, have reported on cases of the illness in numerous states, notably Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. However, veterinarian Dr. Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, said every state, including Wisconsin, has probably seen cases of the new dog respiratory illness. We spoke with Dr. Poulsen about this mysterious illness, research efforts surrounding it and what dog owners should do to keep their pets safe. Here's what we learned. A mysterious respiratory illness is spreading among dogs throughout the country. States are seeing high rates of illness but low mortality rates, said veterinarian Dr. Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. What is the new dog respiratory illness? Veterinary experts are currently unsure of the viral or bacterial culprit causing increased rates of respiratory illness in dogs. "What we're seeing is multiple different states seeing different types of respiratory disease, and there are some outbreaks that we're not getting an answer to with our in-depth diagnostic tests," Poulsen said. In most of these cases, he said, dogs are sick with respiratory illnesses or pneumonias, but their diagnostic tests are coming back negative or "normal," and they're not responding to antimicrobial treatments. Poulsen and other experts believe many of these dogs contracted the illness from "high-risk" environments, like dog parks, dog daycares and groomers. Although this new illness is often not responsive to antibiotics, Dr. Kurt Williams, director of the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Oregon State University, told the New York Times that dogs can typically recuperate from the respiratory illness on their own. Some cases have also been treated with antibiotics. What are researchers doing to address the new dog respiratory illness? Poulsen's Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory is working as part of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network to solve the mystery of the new dog respiratory illness. Labs from all over North America meet on a weekly basis to discuss the next steps in identifying the disease. "We assume that something like this, that spreads as fast as this does, is a virus, but we don't really know because there isn't a clearly defined case, and (different cases) all act a little bit differently," Poulsen said. Researchers are currently working to determine whether the illness is a new pathogen or a mutated or evolved version of an existing disease, he continued. Veterinarians and dog owners can help researchers further these efforts by having diagnostic testing conducted on dogs that present with respiratory symptoms. Testing can help vets and owners rule out, or rule in, what their dog might be sick with, Poulsen said. Additionally, the more tests that are submitted to labs, the more information researchers will have to use in their work. How are veterinarians treating the new dog respiratory illness? In an email to patients, Shorewood Animal Hospital medical director Dr. Kevin Joyce wrote that, until the illness is identified or a multi-state outbreak occurs, the hospital will "continue to treat patients with respiratory disease on a case-by-case basis." "We will evaluate patients for risk factors that may put them at risk for more serious respiratory disease and treat each patient according to their individual need," Joyce's statement continued. Poulsen said if a dog is brought to the vet with respiratory symptoms, they will likely be sent home with antimicrobial medication. If they do not respond to the medication and do not start getting better, diagnostic and sometimes other, more in-depth tests should be run. Dog run around the newly opened Muth Family Dog Park, Saturday, June 24, 2023, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. How can I protect my pet from the new dog respiratory illness? Poulsen said, while the cause of the respiratory illness remains unknown, he and other experts are giving dog owners this advice: Make sure your dog is up to date on all their core vaccines, as recommended by your veterinarian. Avoid visiting dog parks at peak times. If your dog is sick, keep them home from daycare, and other places where they could come into contact with other dogs. Keep high-risk dogs home from dog parks, dog daycare and groomers. These include puppies who've not received all of their vaccines, geriatric dogs, dogs with autoimmune diseases or other health conditions, and dogs taking immunosuppressants, steroids, cancer treatments or other drugs that could lower their immune response. Is the new dog respiratory illness deadly? Poulsen said most states have reported high morbidity, or disease, rates but low mortality rates in relation to the new dog respiratory illness. This means they're seeing high numbers of sick dogs but very few are dying. Poulsen said he's seen "anecdotal information" about dogs dying from respiratory illnesses on social media, but the data and research do not support the idea that deaths have been common or widespread. Many dogs who have died also likely had other risk factors or pre-existing conditions, he continued. Can humans contract the new dog respiratory illness? No, Poulsen said, it is not currently believed that dogs can pass the respiratory illness to humans, or vice versa. "I think it's important to say that we aren't seeing anything that's connected with people," he said. "We don't recognize this as a zoonotic pathogen at this point." This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mystery dog respiratory illness in Wisconsin? How to keep pets safe Shop for a Christmas tree and help support good work being done, ride a real train, see The Greatest Show on Earth, shop at a holiday market, run and/or donate in a charity run. Ongoing: Festival of Trees Looking for a Christmas tree? Then head to the Cow Palace at the Maryland state fairgrounds, 2200 York Road, Timonium, for the Kennedy Krieger Institutes 34th annual Festival of Trees. Wreaths, trees and gingerbread houses will be on sale. Enjoy family-friendly events like carnival games, face painting, craft making and more. Proceeds benefit patients, students and programs at Kennedy Krieger Institute. Dates and times are: Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. General admission costs $18 for adults, $13 for seniors, $8 for children 5 to 12 years old and free for children 4 years old and younger. kennedykrieger.org/festivaloftrees Friday, Saturday and Sunday Ongoing: Polar Express Train Ride Ride a train that goes all the way to the North Pole at The Polar Express Train Ride at the B&O Railroad Museum, 901 W. Pratt St. Live the story as the conductor punches golden tickets and dancing chefs serve hot chocolate and cookies. Passengers can read along to the classic story, The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg. Ticket prices range from $47 to $90. Check here for tickets: ticketweb.com Friday through Dec. 19 Ongoing: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Come see The Greatest Show on Earth when Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus at the CFG Bank Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St. Watch 75 performers from over 18 countries do acrobatics, comedy, dance, thrills and more. Ticket prices range from $20 to $75. For tickets go here: ticketmaster.com Friday, Saturday, Sunday Ongoing: Hampden Holiday Markets Peruse gifts made by local artists, crafters and businesses at the Hampden Holiday Markets at St. Lukes Evangelical Lutheran Church, 800 W. 36th St. The first market will be held Nov. 25 and will coordinate with Shop Small Saturday, as well as the lighting of the Hampden homes known for being the Baltimore version of the Miracle on 34th Street. The second market will be held Dec. 23. Both markets will feature two floors and over 40 artisan and craft vendors, as well as small businesses. instagram.com/thelittlemarket.2023/ Saturday and Dec. 23 noon to 5 p.m. Thursday: Y Turkey Trot Charity 5K Run off those holiday calories at the Y Turkey Trot Charity 5K at The Weinberg Y in Waverly, 900 E. 33rd St. The course starts at the Weinberg Y, down 33rd Street, around Lake Montebello and ending back at the Y. Pick up your packet (shirt and bib) on Wednesday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. or Thursday at 7 a.m. You can bring nonperishable and canned food items. Proceeds benefit the Y Open Doors Financial Aid Fund and food drive. runsignup.com Thursday 8:30 a.m. Events calendar Discover more events or submit your own. Some unexpected items can turn up on public transport in London (Yui Mok/PA) Public transport users in London are failing to claim thousands of lost property items handed in every week. Transport for London (TfL) is urging passengers who accidentally leave belongings on trains and buses to check if they have been retrieved. The transport authority moved its lost property office from South Kensington to West Ham last month to accommodate the rising number of objects being stored and to improve processing times. TfLs first lost property office opened 90 years ago. Lost property office performance manager Diana Quaye said the success rate of items being reclaimed is very small. When we moved here, there were about 62,000 items. We receive around 6,000 items a week. Its a very small success rate of people claiming the items. Unfortunately, a lot of people feel if they lose an item, nobody will hand it in. Theres a large amount of items that we have within the lost property office, so we do advise that if you lose any type of item please go online and see if you can reclaim it. Ms Quaye said some of the most common types of items handed in are mobile phones, headphones, bags and umbrellas. Recent examples of more unusual objects include a giant octopus soft toy and a homemade costume inspired by sci-fi television series Doctor Who. In relation to the latter, Ms Quaye said: We had a Dalek costume the other day. Everybody was saying how would you lose that?. Anyone who loses an item on Londons public transport network is encouraged to enter the details on a form on TfLs website. They will then be contacted if it is recovered. Items handed in are stored for up to three months. After that period, anything unclaimed is donated to charity, recycled, disposed of or sold. Cash is held for up to a year. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three Americans held by Hamas in Gaza since its attack on Israel last month are expected to be among at least 50 hostages to be released by the Islamist Palestinian group under a deal arranged with Israel, the U.S. and Qatar, a senior U.S. official said. The three include a 3-year-old girl whose parents were among the more than 1,200 people killed in Hamas' initial Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, the official said. Israeli bombardments since have flattened large swaths of Hamas-led Gaza and killed 13,300 civilians, according to authorities in Gaza. The official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said it was likely that more than 50 hostages, largely women and children, will be released once a pause in fighting takes hold. Under terms of the deal, Hamas is to release 50 hostages and Israel will release 150 Palestinian prisoners during a four- to five-day pause in the fighting. The hostage group will include two American women and an American girl named Abigail who will turn four on Friday, the official said. Initial releases of hostages are expected within 24 hours of the deal's announcement, with the first likely to be freed Thursday morning, the official said. "I would say it's at least 50 of the women and children over a period of four to five days," the official said, without providing details of any other nationalities expected to be released. The deal will also include more deliveries of humanitarian relief aid to Gaza, the official said. Officials hope the pause will be observed in northern Israel where there have been clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces. A rigorous inspection regime will ensure Hamas does not use the pause to rearm the group's fighters in Gaza with weaponry, the official said. Hamas has said "they actually need a pause to locate and determine where people are," the official said. The pause will give Hamas time to identify and collect additional women and children, the official said. "We do anticipate it will be more than 50, but I just don't want to put a number on it," the official said. "But the way the deal is structured is it very much incentivizes the release of everybody." (Reporting By Steve Holland, Costas Pitas, Humeyra Pamuk and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Scott Malone and Lincoln Feast.) Israels first war with neighboring Arab countries began on the same day the Jewish state was re-established on May 14, 1948. While Jewish sovereignty ended 2,000 years earlier, in the year 70 A.D. at the hands of the Roman conquest, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land throughout. The first Jewish commonwealth dates back 3,000 years to the time of King David. That war saw surrounding Arab nations Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and Iraq, (with additional forces sent by Saudi Arabia and Yemen) attack the fledgling state. The war led to the displacement of some 750,000 Arabs. At the same time, Arab nations began expelling hundreds of thousands of their Jewish populations, many of whom would settle in Israel. Todays war in Gaza is a continuation of the many wars and conflicts that have ensued since. Here is a timeline of the Israeli-Arab conflict: SURVIVOR OF HAMAS TERRORISTS HID IN A GREENHOUSE FOR 16 HOURS WITH NO FOOD, WATER: 'I FEEL LIKE I'M GONNA DIE' A majority of United Nations member states vote in the General Assembly on a partition plan to divide British Mandated Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. While the Jews accepted the plan for two states, the Arabs rejected it. Israel proclaimed independence, re-establishing the modern Jewish state and was immediately attacked by a coalition of Arab states, the first of a series of Arab-Israeli wars. Against all odds, the Israelis fight off the Arab armies in the War of Independence. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP A force of Israeli Palmach armored cars in the Negev Desert, Arab-Israeli War, 1948. Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, which would result in Israeli, British and French military action. The French and Brits wanted to depose Nasser while Israel wanted to regain access through the Straits of Tiran. An agreement facilitated by the U.S. and Soviet Union resolved the conflict, but the canal remained closed until 1957 due to sunken ships. Nasser remained in power. In 1964, some three years before Israel took over territory won in the 1967 war, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed, as well as additional smaller groups, calling for a return to what they consider their homeland. Their aim was the destruction of the State of Israel. Buoyed on by its leader Yasser Arafat, the PLO launched deadly terror attacks against Israel. Israeli soldiers celebrate at the Western Wall, June 9, 1967, in Jerusalem, after Israeli troops defeated Jordan in the city. Egypts Nasser tells the United Nations that its peacekeeping force needs to leave the Sinai, with the aim of making it easier to attack Israel. Egypt once again blocks off the Straits of Tiran, which Israel viewed as an act of war. IRANIANS ARE ISRAELIS' 'GREATEST DEFENDERS' DESPITE REGIME'S PRAISE OF HAMAS: ISRAELI JOURNALIST Not wasting any time, the Israelis launched a surprise attack in what would be known as the Six-Day War. As a result, Israel seizes control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai, the West Bank, (known by Israelis as Judea and Samaria), the Golan Heights, and Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem, thereby fulfilling the millennia-long Jewish dream of unifying the holy city as the capital of the Jewish state. Israel's victory against the Arabs was hailed as one of the most significant victories in military history. Following the Six-Day War, with no serious peace agreement reached between the warring parties, the fighting between Israel and Arab nations continued, evolving into a three-year War of Attrition. The tension is underscored by the Three No's declaration made by the Arab League in September 1967 in Khartoum, Sudan: No peace, No recognition, and No negotiations with Israel. Arab nations, led by Egypt and Syria, launch a surprise attack on Israel on the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people, Yom Kippur. The initial Arab advance is met with a strong Israeli counteroffensive. The conflict resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, with Israel fighting back and winning a decisive victory. President Nixon ordered a mass airlift of tanks, ammunition and equipment that is credited with making a big difference in aiding Israel to win the war. Israeli Defense Minister and General Moshe Dayan, left, with Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon, wearing a head bandage, on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal during the fourth Israeli-Arab War. The Camp David Accords, brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1978, laid the groundwork for a subsequent peace agreement between Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin join hands after the Camp David Accords, Sept. 18, 1978, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini seizes power in Irans Islamic revolution, paving the way for a new hostile power. The regime holds 98 Americans hostage for 444 days after protesters stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The Iranian regime refers to the U.S. as the Great Satan and Israel the little Satan and starts a campaign of terror against U.S. and Israeli interests. Ayatollah Khomeini waves to a crowd of enthusiastic supporters on his return to Tehran. The first Lebanon war was launched by Israel to stop Palestinian terrorists attacking communities in northern Israel. The decision to invade Lebanon followed the attempted assassination of Israel's ambassador in London by Palestinian terrorists. The war lasted more than three months, with Israeli troops reaching as far as the outskirts of Beirut, leading to the exodus of thousands of PLO members, including Arafat. Despite the withdrawal of the PLO from Lebanon, Israeli troops continued to monitor activities in Lebanon. On Sept. 16, in coordination with the Israeli army, a Lebanese Christian militia group known as the Phalange enters two Palestinian refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. The Phalange mission was to wipe out terrorists in the camps, but instead they killed many civilians in a notorious massacre. Reports vary on the number of people killed, from 460 to 3,500. Israel held a commission of inquiry following outrage from the Israeli public and found that Israel was partly responsible for the massacre. It also resulted in the firing of the IDF chief of staff and led to the resignation of then Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. American Marines search for survivors and bodies in the rubble, all that was left of their barracks headquarters in Beirut, after a terrorist suicide car bomb killed 241 U.S. servicemen and wounded over 60. A suicide bomber kills 241 U.S. servicemen, mostly Marines, after an Iran directed terror attack carried out by Hezbollah targeted the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The U.S. was there as part of a multinational peacekeeping force. Shortly after the attack, a French peacekeeping mission was also targeted, killing 58 French paratroopers. Israel maintains its occupation zone in southern Lebanon after pulling back from a line further north, controlling the area with the help of the South Lebanon Army. Several Palestinian demonstrators hold a Palestinian flag with a portrait of PLO leader Yasser Arafat as foam thrown by Israeli soldiers drops from a roof during clashes Jan. 22, 1988, in Nablus on the West Bank. Palestinians launched a national uprising, known as the Intifada, against Israels occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This leads to a heavy Israeli military crackdown, resulting in clashes and many casualties on both sides. Hamas is founded around the same time of the first Intifada in 1987. According to The Associated Press, the acronym for Hamas in Arabic is "the Islamic Resistance Movement," in recognition of its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The terror groups founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Standing in front of portraits of assassinated Hamas leaders, masked Hamas terrorists celebrate the 18th anniversary of the founding of the Islamic movement at Hebron University in the West Bank, Dec. 14, 2005. FATHER SPEAKS OUT AS SON REMAINS MISSING IN ISRAEL The Oslo Accords, consisting of two key agreements, were signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). These agreements lay the groundwork for limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, establishing the Palestinian Authority to manage administrative affairs in some areas. The PLO also agreed to renounce violence and recognize the Jewish state. While the PLO gains recognition as a negotiating partner from Israel and the United States, critical issues like Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the status of Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope will become their future capital, remain unresolved. President Bill Clinton stands between PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzahk Rabin as they shake hands for the first time, Sept. 13, 1993, at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords. On Nov. 4, as progress toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians continues, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv by ultranationalist Israeli Yigal Amir, who opposes the Oslo Accords. Following increased rocket attacks on its civilian communities in the north by Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel launched "Operation Grapes of Wrath," to deter the attacks. The Clinton State Department proscribes Hamas as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO.) Other countries follow with their own designations of the group. Israel completes its full withdrawal from Southern Lebanon. In January 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, overseeing a full disengagement from the Palestinian enclave in September of that year. The following year, Hamas wins legislative elections, creating political tensions with Fatah in the West Bank. Elections have not taken place since then. Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers and kills an additional eight, sparking the Second Lebanon War. Hezbollah fires thousands of rockets and missiles into northern Israel, which responds with airstrikes and ground forces. Following hundreds of deaths and massive damage on both sides, hostilities come to an end with the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. In 2007, Hamas forcefully took control of Gaza, overthrowing the Palestinian Authority in the strip. In response to Hamas rockets launched from Gaza, Israel imposed a partial blockade on the enclave by controlling goods and personnel coming in and out of the territory. Hamas members ride an armored vehicle siezed from Fatah during a celebration rally June 15, 2007, in Gaza City, Gaza Strip. Israel launched "Operation Cast Lead" aimed at stopping Hamas rocket and mortar fire from the territory into Israel. Israel killed Hamas terror leader Ahmed Jabari, triggering a week-long period of rocket attacks from Gaza and retaliatory Israeli airstrikes. The conflict resulted in at least 150 Palestinians and six Israelis losing their lives. Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Moscow on Feb. 9, 2010. The highly controversial chant that is seen as calling for Israel's destruction, "From the river to the sea," is adopted by Hamas, according to The Associated Press. Kahled Mashaal, the group's former leader, stated in a speech celebrating the terrorist group's 25th anniversary that, "Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north There will be no concession on any inch of the land." Other reports say the slogan originated in the 1960s and was used by the PLO. Hamas terrorists kill three Israeli teenagers abducted in the vicinity of a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. As Israel attempted to save the teens, Hamas fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, leading to an incursion by Israeli forces into Gaza. The conflict, which Israelis refer to as Operation Protective Edge, lasted 50 days and resulted in more than 2,200 Palestinian fatalities in Gaza and 73 Israeli deaths. Israeli soldiers fire a 155mm self-propelled howitzer toward targets in the Gaza Strip from their position near the southern Israeli city of Sderot, May 12, 2021. ISRAELI FORCES ENTERED GAZA FOR LOCALIZED RAIDS, IDF TELLS FOX NEWS Violent protests unfold along the Gaza-Israel border, as Gazans tried to break through the security fence in what they term as the "Great March of Return," endangering Israeli communities on the border. The IDF responds with sniper fire, killing some 190 protesters over the course of several months. Israeli forces intervene during Palestinians' "Great March of Return" near Gaza-Israel border in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Dec. 21, 2018. In November, Israel executes a raid into Gaza, resulting in the loss of at least seven Palestinian terrorists and a high-ranking Israeli army officer. In retaliation, hundreds of rockets are launched from Gaza into Israeli territory. The Trump administration fulfills an election promise and recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and opens up its new embassy in the holy city. President Trump said in a video statement, "For many years, we have failed to acknowledge the obvious, plain reality that the [Israeli] capital is Jerusalem. At my direction, the United States finally and officially recognized Jerusalem as the true capital of Israel." The UAE and Bahrain normalize ties with Israel in agreements known as the Abraham Accords. The historic Trump administration-brokered accords followed months of negotiations. Sudan and Morocco also sign normalization agreements with Israel. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas reject the accords. From left, Foreign Affairs Minister of Bahrain Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump and Foreign Affairs Minister of the United Arab Emirates Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords at the White House, Sept. 15, 2020. Following weeks of heightened tension in Jerusalem, Israeli police responded to violence on the Temple Mount, the most sacred site to Jews, and the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam's most revered sites. In response, Hamas launched thousands of rockets into Israel, triggering retaliation involving hundreds of airstrikes in the most intense conflict since at least 2014, with many deaths on both sides. Israeli military units conduct anti-terror raids into the Palestinian city of Jenin, resulting in a deadly shootout that kills nine terrorists. The following day, a Palestinian terrorist opens fire at a Jerusalem synagogue during prayer, killing seven people, including children. In May, Israel launched surprise airstrikes in Gaza, leading to a five-day conflict that caused casualties on both sides. In June, Israeli forces conduct a significant raid into Jenin due to an increasing wave of terrorism coming from Iran-backed terror groups from within the Palestinian city. Palestinian terrorists take up position during a confrontation with Israeli soldiers in Jenin on July 3, 2023. Following lethal terror attacks on Israelis, extremist Jewish settlers clashed with Palestinians in their villages. Israel subsequently executes its first drone strike in the West Bank since 2006, targeting terrorist headquarters. The following month, Israel initiated an air and ground offensive targeting terrorists within Jenin, marking the start of a prolonged "comprehensive counterterrorism effort." On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists surprised Israel in a brutal attack by invading its communities along the Gaza border. Some 1,200 Israelis were savagely killed, with 240 Israelis and foreigners kidnapped and taken hostage in Gaza. Split image of Hamas terrorists with civilian body bags. On Oct. 8, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially declared war on Hamas. The offensive occurs a day after the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Israeli Air Force commences attacks against Hamas targets in Gaza, responding to the infiltration by Hamas terrorists into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. Israel has responded with a significant series of airstrikes targeting terrorists in Gaza and a ground incursion into Gaza. The Hamas-controlled ministry of health has claimed 12,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli attacks. 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. The United States and many other countries have expressed support for Israel's ongoing war against Hamas terror. Fox News' Chris Massaro, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. Original article source: Timeline of decades-long Israeli-Arab, Palestinian conflict A federal jury in Missouri ruled in October that the National Association of Realtors and several large brokerages conspired to keep commissions for home sales artificially high by requiring sellers to pay commissions to their listing agents that are split with buyers brokers. Rich Pedroncelli/AP file photo A landmark verdict against the National Association of Realtors and several real estate brokerages could reshape the homebuying process and how real estate agents are paid. But it will likely be a while before anything tangible happens, said Jason Glast of Jason Glast Group, a sales team within Phyllis Browning Co. in San Antonio. He is waiting to see how the appeal process shakes out, and he does not expect any major changes over the next few years. Still, clients have asked how the verdict is affecting his business. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The answer right now is not at all, Glast said. But for those in the industry, we must become even better about explaining what the commission structure is, the fact that it is negotiable and what we provide for that commission. Frankly, before I was a Realtor, I found it all confusing, so I know it is a confusing pricing model. Lynn Kirkman, another local real estate agent, agreed. I dont think its going to affect a whole lot of what we do now, she said. Its business as usual. Im not too concerned about it. In October, a federal jury in Missouri ruled that the National Association of Realtors and several large brokerages conspired to keep commissions for home sales artificially high by requiring sellers to pay commissions typically up to 6% of the sale price to their listing agents that are shared with each buyers broker. Each agent generally gets 3%. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The jury awarded $1.8 billion in damages, a figure that could potentially be tripled. Two of the brokerages named in the lawsuit reached settlements before the trial, and the association said it plans to appeal the verdict, which has spurred a wave of lawsuits with similar claims of anti-competitive practices. That includes a potential class-action lawsuit that two home sellers in North Texas filed in early November against multiple real estate associations and brokerages in Texas, including the San Antonio Board of Realtors. The sellers, QJ Team LLC and Five Points Holdings LLC, allege that sellers are paying more than they would in a competitive market and that they are pressured to consent to higher commissions or risk buyers brokers not showing their houses to clients. While these issues exist at a national level with NAR, we filed this case specifically on behalf of Texas consumers who have been subjected to a price fixing scheme that has gone on too long, attorney Julie Pettit Greeson, who is representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement. This is the only industry where consumers are forced to pay a commission to the representative of their adversary. In the coming weeks, the federal judge in the National Association of Realtors case could require the organization to make changes at a national level, said Ryan Tomasello, a managing director at New York investment banking firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. That could affect the associations nearly 1.6 million members, including 155,000 in Texas. The writing is so clearly on the wall, Tomasello said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad As a result, more buyers could decide to forego a broker or negotiate themselves, and agents commissions could decline, prompting some to leave the industry. Some of the real estate agents interviewed for this article said they dont think buyers and sellers fully understand how they operate and what their jobs entail. In Texas, commissions and who pays what are negotiable, they said. They spend hours showing houses, discussing repairs and improvements, and negotiating offers. And they pay fees for licensing, membership dues for real estate associations, marketing and being part of a brokerage. If a sale does not close, the agents dont get paid. Jill Whittaker, a real estate agent at JBGoodwin Realtors in San Antonio, said shes helped clients save thousands of dollars by suggesting that they ask sellers to make certain improvements, by having extra inspections done to ensure that they wont have to upgrade expensive systems later, or by helping them get out of sticky situations. Advertisement Article continues below this ad For example, a clients lender mistakenly told them that they had to come up with an extra $12,000 to close on a house. Whittaker helped them terminate the contract and get their earnest money back, and they found a different house. How many houses do you buy in a lifetime versus a Realtor whos doing multiple transactions a month or a year, for years in the industry? They have all of that experience to bring to each client, she said. Ultimately, Realtors exist to help our clients. Some experts think its only a matter of time before standard commission practices change as similar lawsuits separate from the one brought against the National Association of Realtors advance. The Department of Justice also has pending legal proceedings against the association, and the Federal Trade Commission is scrutinizing commission structuring. All this civil stuff is just noise, Tomasello said. If they cant work it out and get to the changes that need to be made to make a fairer and more transparent market, the DOJ and FTC have a lot of authority to see to it that those changes do happen. Houston Chronicle staff writer Marissa Luck contributed to this report. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lost another round in court last week when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reinstate the states anti-drag show law, on hold pending a court case. But you know who else lost? We did the taxpayers of this state. Because every time DeSantis uses our hard-earned taxpayer money to defend another one of his ill-conceived and self-serving laws the ones he had hoped to ride all the way to the White House thats money and time the state wont be spending on important issues that might do some actual good in the world. By the end of 2022, the state had spent at least $17 million in legal fees defending culture-wars laws, and the 2023 budget included almost $16 million just for litigation. Real challenges Meanwhile, real problems go begging for attention. Like fixing our insurance crisis so middle-class homeowners arent forced out of the state. Or helping us prepare for climate change so we dont get swamped with every storm. Those topics arent the stuff of catchy campaign slogans. DeSantis favorite Florida is where woke goes to die is no longer resonating with voters but its unlikely itll be replaced by something like, Florida is where insurance costs wont force you out of your home anymore. Even if that ever came true, which is looking highly doubtful at the moment. Havent we caught on by now? The culture wars that DeSantis has specialized in and Republican lawmakers have flogged endlessly are about politics, but not about governing. Theyre about getting voters riled up but not solving actual problems. And whom does that serve? Heres a clue: Not us. Also, last we checked, the whole idea of representative government was that we elect someone to go to the state capital or the nations capital to help solve the problems of the people back home. But thats not happening much anymore. Instead, we allow the politicians running this state and hoping to run the country to take our hard-earned dollars and waste them by passing laws that divide us, that arent needed and then by defending them in court, when they are rightly challenged. We let our representatives act as though we sent them to Tallahassee or Washington to build their careers, not serve the people. We should expect so much more. Obscenity laws In the latest legal development in Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court did the right thing (though it was a 6-3 vote) by refusing, at least for now, to let the state enforce a law that targets drag show performances under the guise of protecting children. The law, which bans children from adult live performances such as drag shows, is being challenged in lower court, and a federal judge had stopped the state from enforcing it on First Amendment grounds until the case is heard. An Orlando restaurant, Hamburger Marys, which hosts drag performances, sued the state on constitutional grounds, saying it would result in a loss of business. The law was bad from the start: Its an overreach by state government, an intrusion on free speech and, if that werent enough, it even runs counter to yet another much-touted, culture-war state law about parental rights. It gives the state power to decide what performances children can attend, rather than parents. And, as U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell noted, existing obscenity laws already protect children from obscene shows or exhibits. The case will proceed through the courts, as it must. But it remains yet another embarrassing example of Floridas misplaced priorities under a power-hungry governor and Legislature with no conscience when it comes to the way they spend our hard-earned tax dollars. When are we going to say weve had enough? Click here to send the letter. Tom Cruise reportedly stepped in to back his agent, one of the top Hollywood representatives, after her pro-Palestine social media posts sparked an industry-wide controversy. Maha Dakhil, 48, was among the most important talent managers at reputed firm Creative Artists Agency (CAA) until last month, when she faced intense criticism for describing Israels war against Hamas as genocide on Instagram. Whats more heartbreaking than witnessing genocide? Witnessing the denial that genocide is happening, she reportedly captioned one of her posts. She apparently also reshared a statement, first posted by the Free Palestine account, which read: Youre currently learning who supports genocide. Thats the line for me, Dakhil wrote at the time, reacting to the post. Dakhil quickly deleted her posts and made her account private but, according to a Variety report, many people had already seen the comments. Some of her colleagues were reportedly offended by these posts, calling them antisemitic, while others felt Dakhils Instagram Stories would adversely impact her relationship with Hollywood, where divisions have been widening ever since the conflict erupted on 7 October. Filmmaker Aaron Sorkin, among Dakhils high-profile clients, quit CAA shortly after the controversy began. Steven Spielberg reportedly had two IMDB pages his and Dakhils edited after they wrongly listed her as his manager. Dakhil apologised for the posts and resigned from her leadership roles at the talent agency, though she was allowed to continue working with her clients, among them the Top Gun star. Variety has now reported that Cruise, 61, may have played a direct role in mitigating the fallout for Dakhil after the Mission: Impossible star expressed his support for the agent during a meeting at the CAA office earlier this month. The Independent has contacted Cruises representatives for comment. Tom Cruise apparently stepped in to back his agent (Getty Images for Paramount Pictu) I made a mistake with a repost in my Instagram story, which used hurtful language. Like so many of us, I have been reeling with heartbreak, Dakhil said in an apology shared with Variety. I pride myself on being on the side of humanity and peace. Im so grateful to Jewish friends and colleagues who pointed out the implications and further educated me. I immediately took the repost down. Im sorry for the pain I have caused, she added. In a statement issued two days after Hamas attack on Israel, killing 1,300 people, CAA said it stands with the people of Israel, the Jewish community, and all innocent victims in the face of horrific acts of terrorism. For those with family, friends, or loved ones living in or connected to Israel and the region, our thoughts are with you. We wish for peace for all people. Israeli retaliatory strikes in the Gaza strip since the attack have killed 13,000 civilians. UNICEF estimated that the number of children killed in Gaza has now exceeded 5,000. The news comes one day after it was reported that Susan Sarandon was dropped by her agents over remarks the Thelma and Louise star made at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York city. In particular, Sarandon was criticised for saying: There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country. A spokesperson for United Talent Agency (UTA) confirmed they were no longer working with the 77-year-old Oscar winner, in a statement to Deadline. Dilan Yesilgoz, leader of the center-right Liberal Party talks to voters during an election campaign in Hilversum, Netherlands, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) No fewer than 26 Dutch political parties are seeking a share of the 150 seats in the lower house of parliament when the Netherlands holds a general election Wednesday. Only a few of them stand a realistic chance of providing the candidate who will succeed Mark Rutte as prime minister. Rutte, who is standing down once a new government is formed, led four coalitions over a record-breaking 13 years, making him the longest-serving Dutch prime minister. These are the main contenders to succeed him. Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, People's Party for Freedom and Democracy Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, who could become the Netherlands first female prime minister, is a former refugee and now advocates cracking down on migration. The 46-year-old justice minister and leader of the Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy, or VVD, sees no contradiction in that. Instead, her party riffs on Yesilgoz-Zegerius' story in its manifesto as a reason to rein in immigration. The Netherlands must, of course, always be prepared to offer security to people fleeing war and violence, the election program says. But it adds the country cant welcome everybody, because doing so could deprive an 8-year-old girl who arrives as a refugee in the Netherlands today of a reasonable chance to later become an engineer, nurse, police officer or (government) minister and leader of the VVD. Her father was a human rights activist forced to flee Turkey. She and the rest of her family were later reunited after he was granted political asylum in the Netherlands. Dilan grew up with the example of parents who do not look away from injustice and actively play a role in making society a little bit better, her official VVD biography says. Yesilgoz-Zegerius took over as leader of the VVD from Rutte and wants to follow him into the prime ministers office. Though Rutte appointed her as justice minister in his final ruling coalition, she has sought to distance herself from his increasingly unpopular and scandal-tainted time in office, saying he remained in power too long. Im a different person. Im not focused on whether things should be different or the same but with how Im going to do things, she said. Geert Wilders, Party for Freedom Geert Wilders is the anti-Islam lawmaker whose sharp tongue and shock of peroxide blond hair made him one of the Netherlands best-known lawmakers at home and abroad. His fiery anti-Islam rhetoric also has made him a target for extremists and led to him living under round-the-clock protection for years. He has appeared in court as a victim of death threats, vowing never to be silenced. To court mainstream voters this time around, Wilders has sought to focus less on what he calls the de-Islamization of the Netherlands and more on tackling hot-button issues such as housing shortages, a cost-of-living crisis and health care. His campaign platform nonetheless calls for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, an asylum stop and no Islamic schools, Qurans and mosques. Wilders, 60, is set to become the longest-serving lawmaker in the Dutch parliament later this year. He has been a member of the House of Representatives since 1998, first for the center-right Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy, where he mentored a young Rutte before quitting the party and setting up his Party for Freedom. He also is a staunch supporter of Israel and advocates shifting the Embassy of the Netherlands there to Jerusalem and closing the Dutch diplomatic post in Ramallah, home of the Palestinian Authority. Wilders was convicted of insulting Moroccans at a 2014 election night gathering. Pieter Omtzigt, New Social Contract Pieter Omtzigt, 49, established his center-right New Social Contract party over the summer, and it immediately rocketed up opinion polls thanks to his reputation as a tireless crusader for whistleblowers and victims of government scandals. He became a sensation during drawn-out talks to form the last Dutch coalition government when one of the negotiators was photographed carrying papers that included the text: job elsewhere next to his name. It was widely seen as a sign that the established political order wanted to be rid of a man who had long been a thorn in their side. It only served to bolster Omtzigts popularity. A former member of the center-right Christian Democrats, his key policy platform is reforming the Dutch political system that has been tarnished in recent years by scandals including the country's tax office wrongly labelling thousands of child welfare recipients as fraudsters. Its very necessary to have a different culture, he said. Weve seen large scandals over the last few years in the Netherlands. Those large scandals have been caused by the way we weve been dealing with politics. Omtzigt wants to establish a constitutional court and to reform the electoral system to give lawmakers more power. He has repeatedly said he prefers to remain in parliament where he can lead lawmakers efforts to keep a close watch on the ruling coalition. Late in the election campaign said he would consider becoming prime minister if his party wins the most seats. Omtzigt says hes learned to better balance work and home life since suffering a burnout that forced him to temporarily halt his work as a lawmaker. Sometimes you can shift down a gear, he said, adding later: I feel top fit. Frans Timmermans. Labor Party-Green Left Frans Timmermans left his position as European Union climate chief and vice president of the European Commission to lead a newly forged center-left alliance of the Labor Party and Green Left into the election. As a former Dutch foreign minister, the 62-year-old Timmermans is the most experienced of all the leading candidates. Thats not necessarily a good thing in a campaign that has focused on political renewal after a series of scandals that tarnished Ruttes reputation. Timmermans, who was foreign minister from 2012-14, was thrust to international prominence when he gave an emotional speech to the United Nations Security Council shortly after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine in 2014. He is known for fluently speaking several languages, although rival Wilders managed to turn that skill against him and portray him as aloof in a televised debate. You speak, I believe, seven languages, but not the language of the people, Wilders said. A group of so-called experts in the Kremlin has developed a new plan for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to destabilize Ukrainian society, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, wrote in his op-ed for outlet Ukrainska Pravda on Nov. 22. The Russians also want to see elections to bring a Russian "fifth column" into parliament, although the holding of elections and referendums in Ukraine is banned under martial law. Read also: Zelenskyy says Russia wants to oust him from office by end of 2023 in Maidan-3 plot So far, these are just ideas, but some stages are already being implemented, Danilov said. The plan was supposedly drawn up based on three factors of the Ukrainian resistance force: unity, Western support, and the motivation and combat capability of the Armed Forces. "Without chaos in the internal situation in Ukraine, achieving Russia's military goals is impossible," Danilov said. Read also: Russian fueling tension in Balkans says Ukraines military intelligence exclusive The ideal situation for Russia and Putin is to return Ukraine to a state of uncontrollability and complete anarchy, in which the country found itself in 1917-1921 when the war was going on from the outside and inside. In order to create destabilization in Ukraine, the Kremlin's plan includes the following steps: military (intensification of pressure in all key areas of the front to worsen the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as much as possible; missile terror in winter; information (spreading panic in Telegram news channels about "heavy losses", "mobilization", corruption, and so on;) political (a campaign through agent channels and "useful idiots" to artificially create an alleged conflict in the top military and political leadership of Ukraine). "Some of these measures are already in place, some are waiting in the wings," Danilov wrote. All these measures in combination should create a critically negative social background... Setting conditions for the central government to be unable to further keep the situation under control and under the threat of a social explosion in the capital and the spread of protests to the regions (to demand) a change of government. Read also: Ukraine's military leadership right to seek new approaches in war with Russia Danilov If Russia succeeds in implementing all its plans, the result will be the undermining of the public consensus of Ukrainian unity, which will lead to "the destruction of Western support and undermining the morale and combat capability of the Defense Forces," the top security official said. At the same time, Danilov emphasized that to a large extent, all of the plans described remain "fantasies of Moscow architects," but the threat "should not be underestimated." Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke about Russia's preparation of a campaign to destabilize the situation inside Ukraine and plans to create "chaos." Moscow has allegedly called the plan "Maidan-3," and they intend to remove Zelenskyy from office by the end of 2023. Earlier, Ukraines Defense Intelligence said that a Russian information attack was already underway. 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 Jeffrey Benjamin, the top Westinghouse official who supervised billions of dollars of construction at SCANAs ill-fated nuclear construction site north of Columbia, has been re-indicted by a federal grand jury on charges connected to a cover-up of impending financial disaster at the project. Benjamin is charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud and causing the failure to keep accurate corporate records of one of South Carolinas largest construction projects ever, a failed $9 billion effort to build two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County at the V.C. Summer nuclear site. Those are the essentially the same charges Benjamin was originally indicted on in 2021 and re-indicted in a superceding indictment earlier this year by a federal grand jury. But federal Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled in August that the most recent indictment was unlawful because prosecutors had not scrubbed that grand jury of all persons who might have been biased against SCANA, meaning the utilitys former ratepayers. SCANA, parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., had for years added a surcharge onto the monthly power bills of its hundreds of thousands of ratepayers to pay for the ongoing costs of the doomed project. Lewis said Benjamins right to a fair trial was violated because he was entitled to be indicted by a fair and impartial grand jury. Had that 2021 indictment not been nixed, Benjamin had been scheduled to go to trial in October in Greenville. Now, any future trial will take months, if not more, to begin. Benjamins attorney, William Sullivan of Washington, DC, said in a statement, We are of course aware of the governments recent new indictment filed after the dismissal of the previous one, and continue to evaluate it on behalf of Mr. Benjamin. The U.S. Attorneys Office issued no statement on the new indictment, which was quietly filed Nov. 14 with no media announcement. Like the old indictment, the new one is 18 pages and contains the same information: Benjamin is a former Westinghouse executive with the title of senior vice president of new plants and major projects, with responsibilities for his companys construction of nuclear reactors worldwide. SCANA and Santee Cooper, South Carolinas two major electric utilities who were building the new nuclear reactors, contracted with Westinghouse in 2008 to oversee the nuclear construction site in Jenkinsville, about 30 miles north of Columbia. Benjamin oversaw the projects crucial phases. As construction problems mounted, costs rose, and schedules slipped, the defendant (Benjamin) and others hid the true status of the project, the indictment said. Through intentional and material misrepresentations and omissions, the defendant... deceived the owners, regulators, and investors in order to maintain cash flow and liquidity for Westinghouse. The defendants misrepresentations and omissions, as well as the associated cover-up, resulted in billions of dollars of losses to the owners and investors, the indictment said. SCANA was an investor-owned corporation whose shares were publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Publicly-traded companies such as SCANA are required by law to release accurate information about events that can affect their stock prices. Santee Cooper is a state agency. Benjamin knew that SCANA was a public company and had an obligation to live up to its public financial reporting requirements, the indictment said. SCANA was under pressure to finish the project by the end of 2020 so it would qualify for $1.4 billion in federal tax credits. But, from the outset, the project was characterized by substantial delays and cost overruns, the indictment said. Benjamin and other Westinghouse officials informed SCANA and Santee Cooper about progress on the project, upbeat information that he knew was false, the indictment said. Westinghouse fired Benjamin in March 2017, and the two South Carolina utilities abandoned the nuclear project in July 2017. An FBI investigation began shortly afterwards. The abandonment threw more than 4,000 construction workers out of work and caused SCANAs publicly-traded shares to begin to fall. Because of its resultant financial problems, SCANA once one of South Carolinas most respected companies was later bought by Dominion Energy, a Virginia multi-state energy company. In 2016 and early 2017, Santee Cooper and SCANA paid Westinghouse more than $450 million for its work on the project, the indictment said. Two former SCANA top executives CEO Kevin Marsh and chief operating officer Stephen Byrne pled guilty to fraud and were given prison terms in connection with the cover-up. Marsh received two years in federal prison and Byrne, 15 months. In October, Judge Lewis gave six months home detention to a top Westinghouse construction official, Carl Churchman, for lying to an FBI agent during the federal investigation into why the V.C. Summer project failed. In 2017, as the project was on the verge of failing, Churchman helped SCANA make public rosy projections of the projects completion dates, although he knew those dates were unrealistic, according to evidence in the case. Churchman is expected to testify at any trial involving Benjamin. Nick Rose was set to contest Norwich North at the next general election A Conservative Parliamentary candidate has resigned after it emerged he made controversial comments about transgender people and migrants during a school debate. Nick Rose was set to contest the Norwich North seat at the next general election, having been selected by members of the Norwich Conservative Federation on 29 October. On Tuesday, an education trust lodged a complaint against Mr Rose. The former candidate was contacted by the BBC, but he did not wish to comment. However, in a statement released through the Conservatives, Mr Rose said: "I am today resigning as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Norwich North. "I appreciate the opportunity to have participated in the political process and wish the party success in the upcoming election." Mr Rose, a former Bournemouth councillor, made controversial comments during a political debate at Thorpe St Andrew High School, near Norwich, on Monday. In a video posted online, uploaded by the Eastern Daily Press, he appeared to say: "A bloke wearing a dress who identifies as a woman should be in a male prison [and] should not be allowed in women's toilets. For goodness sake. "How on earth, all of you ladies here, can allow a bloke in a dress to come into your loos? It's disgusting." He also made comments about migrants entering the UK illegally, describing their arrival as an "invasion". 'Fundamentally incompatible' In response, Don Evans, chief executive of the Broad Horizons Education Trust, which runs the school, said: "We do not feel those comments were appropriate to be aired in a school environment in the manner he chose to do so, as they conflict with the inclusive environment of the school community and are at odds with the content of the school's curriculum. "Whilst we fully support the principle that our students should experience a broad range of views and opinions, we cannot allow our schools to become a platform for views that are fundamentally incompatible with our approach and ethos." Mr Evans said political debates should offer "valuable learning opportunities" for children The trust said it had lodged a complaint with Chloe Smith, the incumbent Conservative MP for Norwich North, who had referred the matter to the Norwich Conservatives. Ms Smith announced last year that she would be standing down. Mr Rose's profile on X, formerly Twitter, describes him as an engineer, businessman, children's author and army reservist. The Norwich Conservative Federation was approached for comment. 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 A historic bridge in Lancaster County is closed until further notice after a tractor-trailer ran into it. According to NBC affiliate WGAL, the bridge dates back to the 1800s. The truck struck the bridge around 9 a.m. on Monday. Police told WGAL the driver, from Georgia, was trying to make a delivery. The truck was 13 feet, 4 inches tall. A large sign over the bridge indicates it is 10 feet, 6 inches. The driver reportedly told police he did not see the sign. PennDOT is developing a repair plan, and the bridge will be closed in the meantime. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW TRENDING NOW: Pittsburgh Steelers relieve Matt Canada of offensive coordinator duties Recall alert: 95K Subarus recalled over loss of rearview image 4 injured, gunman dead after shooting at Walmart in Ohio VIDEO: Channel 11 speaks to family of 15-year-old Serra Catholic cheerleader killed in school van crash DOWNLOAD the Channel 11 News app for breaking news alerts If youre planning to shop at the Wrentham Outlets this holiday season, be warned of some traffic restrictions in nearby towns. Plainville police are limiting access to 10 streets around the outlets during the holidays. Residents of these streets will be issued a placard to be displayed on the vehicle dashboard or mirror. This will allow residents to avoid showing a license to Plainville officers at designated traffic posts along the affected streets. The following streets are affected: Berry Street Horseshoe Drive Wampum Street Everett Skinner Road Cowell Street Cowellside Drive Dorthy Lane Oakridge Drive Country Hill Lane Residents who live on these streets may pick up their placard at the Plainville Police Station beginning Wednesday, Nov. 22, at 8 a.m. Residents are limited to one placard each and must show a Massachusetts drivers license with an address from the above-listed streets. Last year on Black Friday, traffic was backed up for miles on Interstate 495 approaching Wrentham. 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 MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (DC News Now) Maryland State Police (MSP) said a trooper was injured in Bethesda on Tuesday evening. MSP said that a little after 11:00 p.m., they responded to the area of I-270 at Tuckerman Lane for the report of flooding in the area. Virginia State Police trooper almost hit by stolen vehicle A trooper was sitting in his patrol car with its emergency lights activated and diverting traffic from the flooding when a car crashed into the rear of the troopers patrol car. The trooper, who suffered minor injuries, was transported to the hospital and has since been released. The man in the car was identified as Collin Rono, 21, of Potomac, Maryland. He was charged with driving under the influence. Rono was transported to the Montgomery County Detention Center. The crash remains under investigation. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC. In the hours after gunshots cracked across Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, Americans found themselves playing a novel role in a fast-paced drama. Within just six minutes, they heard over national radio that the presidents motorcade had come under fire. Four more, and Walter Cronkite told the CBS television audience that President John F. Kennedy Jr. had been hit. Another 58 minutes, and millions gathered around televisions heard Cronkites emotional announcement that the president was dead. Stunned viewers still remember that moment, but the search for answers was just beginning. For four days, the networks suspended regular programming and even ads, so JFKs death was the only thing on TV. Obsessed viewers followed along as police rounded up suspects, including a former Marine sharpshooter arrested at the Texas Theatre. Lee Harvey Oswald was among those being grilled, Cronkite reported sometime after 2 p.m., perhaps as a new president was being sworn in on Air Force One. Less than 12 hours after the shooting, Oswald was charged and paraded before a pool of cameras. When a reporter asked about his battered eye, the man leaned closer, his face filling the nearest camera. A cop hit me, he said, flatly. Never before had such grand and mysterious events played out at this speed. Then came a plot twist: A nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shot Oswald dead on live television in a crowd of police escorting the suspected assassin to jail. The nation reeled, trying to make sense of this improbable sequence. It was no longer just difficult to process, but hard for many to believe. That remains the case 60 years later, when only a third of Americans believe that Oswald shot Kennedy and acted alone, the official conclusion reached by the Warren Commission, the federal investigation into his death. Many are familiar with alternative theories, or at least familiar elements, like the grassy knoll or the Zapruder film. This is largely because the case spawned a new subculture, a cottage industry of self-published skeptics and the audience they encourage to do your own research. As their work has expanded to new arenas like the Apollo moon landing or 9/11 their stories have moved from photocopied zines to social media, cinema and even mainstream politics. In an age of almost unlimited access to information, why are conspiracy theories such a powerful force? Online chatrooms and social media offer new vectors where conspiracism can move faster than ever. And as people lose trust in traditional news sources, they seem more likely to find answers somewhere else. Colloquially, the term conspiracy theory has become a pejorative shorthand for all manner of outlandish beliefs or ideas the speaker wishes to dismiss as zany or off-kilter. Defining it based on what the words say, a conspiracy theory would seem to be any theory that involves two or more people working in secret to bring about some ends, says Brian Keeley, a leading philosopher working in this space, though conspiracists tend to focus on powerful actors like government agencies or even celebrities. Such things can occur, but the broader application of these theories seems to arise from a human need to find meaning in cataclysmic events. Conspiracy theories have emerged throughout history and all over the world, often in the aftermath of crisis situations. When Rome burned in A.D. 64, some speculated that it was an inside job, ignited so Nero could rebuild the city with a clean slate. Medieval Europeans repeatedly accused Jewish communities of orchestrating epidemics like the plague; this proved a useful out for nobles indebted to Jewish merchants. Similarly, King Philip IV of France leveraged salacious rumors of his own creation in the 14th century to remove the Knights Templar from powerful roles in his own government, spawning theories that persist today. Like Philip, other state actors have advanced conspiracy theories as a type of disinformation the deliberate use of false or inaccurate information to undermine foreign governments or political opponents. When Tsar Nicholas II came under fire for mismanaging the Russian empire in the early 1900s, his secret police forged the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, purportedly minutes from the first Zionist congress of 1897, but in reality based on works of fiction. Likely intended to shift blame and conjure up a unifying threat, this document continues to underlie antisemitic theories about the banking system and the new world order. Russian intelligence services are still known to use similar methods. But Americans have a unique relationship with conspiracy theories. Suspicions surrounding the British crown helped to fuel the independence movement, forming a template for subsequent anti-government theories. Americans were not exempt from bigoted beliefs about their neighbors, particularly Catholics, Jews and Latter-day Saints. But as the country marched west, the nations capital became an increasingly distant and misunderstood center of power. Scandals like Teapot Dome and Watergate havent exactly bolstered trust. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower weighed in during his farewell address in January 1961, warning against the military-industrial complex. This was the state of affairs when JFK was killed. American society offered fertile soil for conspiracy theories to take root and grow, empowered by technologies like radio and TV, with more innovations coming. This new conspiracist subculture would become an arena for the arts to explore, sometimes with a tinge of romance, but more often with disdain. Either way, film, literature and popular music would help introduce their ideas into mainstream thinking. Theres a puzzle out there, theres a mystery. Theres an unsolved crime. And you think, Well, if I looked at all of the evidence, I could figure it out. Jim Garrison was no amateur. Something of a loose cannon, the New Orleans district attorney had cracked down on the citys French Quarter vice in 1962 and charged his own supervisors with racketeering. But when he started pursuing tips that a local plot led to JFKs death, he soon believed he was unraveling a web of relationships and chatter that denoted a grand conspiracy. In 1969, he brought one defendant to trial, the only case ever heard in relation to the presidents murder. Jurors deliberated all of 54 minutes before returning a verdict: not guilty. Critics gloated, calling Garrison a total charlatan, his investigation a reckless and cruel publicity stunt. But he wasnt finished, and Americans werent satisfied. Officially, the case was closed in September 1964. Thats when the Presidents Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy the Warren Commission issued its 888-page report, finding that both Oswald and Ruby acted alone. It was closed again in 1988, even after the House Select Committee on Assassinations argued that unnamed conspirators had probably played a role. The Justice Department responded that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy. But some preferred unofficial answers. The first published alternative beat the Warren report by four months at least in Paris, where author Thomas G. Buchanan was based. The New York Times called his book Who Killed Kennedy? an elaborate concoction, alleging a plot to protect the oil and defense industries, using police and criminals as stooges, with Oswald a CIA agent, all presented without evidence. Still, the reviewer concluded, the hypothesis can be expected to provide sinew and tissue for the Kennedy legend, which will continue to attract mens imaginations for decades to come. The Times wasnt wrong. Another book, Rush to Judgment, spent over seven months on the bestsellers list in 1966-67, perhaps inspiring would-be authors. Among them, the author of 1975s The Umbrella Man called himself an assassinologist. A noted Garrison critic authored 1981s Best Evidence; and Garrison added his own memoir, On the Trail of Assassins, in 1988. That same year, novelist Don DeLillo released Libra, portraying Oswald as a pawn in a CIA scheme to start a war with Cuba. In 1995, James Ellroy threw the mafia into the mix with American Tabloid, while Norman Mailer explored the alleged shooters formative period in Russia through newly released KGB materials in Oswalds Tale. The list goes on, with documentaries and podcasts for good measure. One reason for so many theories is that Kennedy had many enemies. His initial backing of the Bay of Pigs invasion and subsequent about-face irked Cuba, the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans living stateside. His second thoughts about Vietnam were an affront to the military and defense contractors. His brother Roberts pursuit of the mafia as attorney general didnt make him any friends there. So one can pick and choose. If youre conservative, you can believe the Soviets or Fidel Castro of Cuba killed Kennedy, says University of California, Davis historian Kathryn Olmsted. If youre liberal, you can think it was the military industrial complex that killed Kennedy because he wanted to get out of the Vietnam War. This has practically become a field of study, embodied by a 2018 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City titled Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy. Visitors grappled with decades of suspicion between the government and its citizens through 70 works produced between the 1960s through 2016. Some used government reports and statistics to reveal real corruption, while others dove headlong into the fever dreams of the disaffected. The museum called it an archaeology of our troubled times. People start to believe that everything is an illusion, that everything is a sham. You cant trust anyone. You cant trust governmental authorities. You cant trust educational authorities. You cant trust scientific authorities. Controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone wasnt impressed with Garrisons work. He trusted a lot of weirdos and followed a lot of fake leads, he admitted later. But in Garrisons book, the basis for his 1991 blockbuster, JFK, he found a compelling story of a man struggling to piece together his own truth. Unlike Stones oeuvre of anti-war films, JFK is less a leftist screed than an oddly sympathetic profile of a conspiracy theorist, played by Kevin Costner. Reminiscing later, Stone said that the official story of the assassination was a great myth, and that in order to fight a myth, maybe you have to create another one. A hero typically overcomes adversity to achieve an honorable goal, like finding treasure or saving the world. Those elements are present in conspiracy theories, but the person is not. Or perhaps the hero is implied. The character facing long odds to solve a mystery is the theorist himself. This seems to be one lure of conspiracism. Theres a puzzle out there, theres a mystery, Olmsted says. Theres an unsolved crime. And you think, Well, if I looked at all of the evidence, I could figure it out. This mindset can imbue ordinary life with false drama and significance. Bad actors can use that to their advantage, and not just spies or heads of state. Weve got to not forget the capitalism part of conspiracy thinking, says University of Utah historian Robert Goldberg. Operating outside of traditional institutions and expertise, the conspiracy entrepreneur may or may not believe his theories, but he profits from them, through his writings or selling merchandise like T-shirts emblazoned with silly slogans like Bush did 9/11. But what he really sells is reassurance in uncertain times: This did happen for a reason. Even if that reason is clearly delusional. This is where it gets dangerous. If conspiracism seems to borrow the language of religion, it may not be coincidental. For the most obsessed and confused, these theories can become an alternate belief system, driving them to take action. In Waco: The Aftermath, now streaming on Showtime, an FBI special agent executing a search warrant on a neo-Nazi safehouse finds a battery of fax machines, all beeping at once. Each machine is sending a copy of an anti-government conspiracist newsletter, inspired in part by botched and deadly government sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge. In this shows myth, these electronic devices take resentment viral, contributing to the Oklahoma City bombing. The internet is like an infinite number of fax machines, selling any number of myths. We know that conspiracy theories operate like a memetic virus: The more people believe them, the more they spread. Online chatrooms and social media offer new vectors where conspiracism can move faster than ever. And as people lose trust in traditional news sources, they seem more likely to find answers somewhere else. Even political candidates on both sides of the aisle have fallen into this trap, or used it to their advantage. The end result is a climate where the line between truth and fiction becomes more difficult to find. People start to believe that everything is an illusion, that everything is a sham, Olmsted says. You cant trust anyone. You cant trust governmental authorities. You cant trust educational authorities. You cant trust scientific authorities. You have to do your own research and come to your own conclusions. And that means that youre susceptible to believing any lie that public figures put forward that fit your biases. Still, amid the plethora of conspiracy theories circulating today like flat earth theory, QAnon, or unidentified aerial phenomena the JFK assassination looms large. Last spring, the federal government began to release a trove of related documents. And in September, a former Secret Service member who was present when Kennedy was shot shared certain details with The New York Times that could rewrite prevailing theories. But perhaps rather than fixate on his death, we could learn something from his life. As he once said, the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie deliberate, contrived and dishonest but the myth persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. This story appears in the November issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe. Students walk across campus at Texas State University in San Marcos. Texas State officials have decided not to sell the schools University Camp property near Wimberley. Jordan Vonderhaar/Contributor After facing backlash from the community, Texas State University officials have backed off their plan to sell an outdoor reserve that is set aside for for students and alumni. The Texas State University System, the body that oversees the San Marcos campus, was considering selling the University Camp property to a real estate investment group. University Camp is a 126-acre reserve along the Blanco River near Wimberley, about 9 miles northwest of the San Marcos campus. The property is reserved for the use of Texas State students and alumni, as well as current faculty and staff members and retired employees. The property contains 4 miles of biking and hiking trails as well as other outdoor recreation options. READ MORE: Texas State University in San Marcos to host 2024 presidential debate Advertisement Article continues below this ad McAllen-based Needmore River Ranch LLC, a company that owns multiple properties near the University Camp site, had offered to buy the land for $4.6 million, plus a $4.4 million donation to the school, according to since-deleted item on the agenda of the university board of regents Nov. 16 meeting. A copy of the agenda item was obtained by the University Star, Texas States student newspaper. However, Texas State officials received pushback from some opposing the sale. They removed the proposed sale from the agenda prior to the meeting. Texas State President Kelly Damphousse sent an email to students and facility saying the the school had decided against selling the University Camp property. I have decided that so long as I am president at (Texas State), the property will not be sold, Damphousse said in the email. I look forward to watching our Bobcat family continue to use University Camp for research, recreation and leadership training in the years to come, Texas state Rep. Erin Zweiner, who represents Hays County, was among those opposing the sale. In a letter to university officials, Zweiner called University Camp a cherished sanctuary in the Hill Country that embodied the spirit of Texas State. The Nov. 9 open letter was addressed to the chancellor of the Texas State University system and the schools president. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Im so grateful to everyone in the community for being vigilant and making sure that we dont lose a really priceless piece of property on the Blanco River, Zweiner said in a video posted on Facebook. "I'll be the only politician in history" who "won't be allowed to criticize people," Donald Trump complained last month. He was referring to the gag order issued by the judge who is overseeing the federal case that charges him with illegally conspiring to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. While Trump's claim was characteristically hyperbolic, the order does raise serious constitutional questions that are surprisingly unsettled. That much was clear on Monday, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit considered Trump's First Amendment objections to the speech restrictions that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan imposed on October 16. Trump's lawyers argue that the order was not justified by a "clear and present danger," while the government says the relevant question is whether the extrajudicial statements covered by the order would create "a substantial likelihood of material prejudice to the proceedings." The government's position "doesn't seem to give much balance at all to the First Amendment's vigorous protection of political speech," D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett remarked. Chutkan's order bars Trump from making "any public statements" that "target" Special Counsel Jack Smith, his staff, court personnel, or "any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony." Although that language is ambiguous and potentially far-reaching, Chutkan said it left Trump free to defend himself and criticize the prosecution, a major issue in his current presidential campaign. Trump portrays the prosecution as a legally baseless and blatantly corrupt attempt to help President Joe Biden by distracting and discrediting his opponent. Chutkan said Trump could continue to make that argument, provided he did not "vilify and implicitly encourage violence against public servants who are simply doing their jobs." Under Chutkan's order, Trump can describe the prosecution as politically motivated, but he cannot call Smith "deranged" or refer to his staff as "thugs" and "political sleazebags." Such insults, Chutkan worries, are apt to "encourage violence." That rationale, Trump's lawyers argue, amounts to an unconstitutional "heckler's veto," constraining the candidate's speech based on speculation about how his audience might react to it. As Millett noted, "inflammatory language" generally is protected by the First Amendment. Millett mentioned a 1987 case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected a gag order imposed on Rep. Harold E. Ford Sr. (DTenn.), who argued that the Reagan administration's corruption case against him was politically and racially motivated. "Calling someone racist is pretty inflammatory," Millett noted. The "clearly overbroad" order that the 6th Circuit vacated was more sweeping than the order against Trump. Among other things, it covered any "opinion of or discussion of the evidence and facts in the investigation or case," statements about "any alleged motive the government may have had in filing the indictment," and "any opinion" about "the merits of the case." Chutkan's order nevertheless seems to cover some of the same territory. On its face, it precludes Trump from discussing what potential witnesses might say, which goes to the heart of the case against him. As Trump's lawyers note, those potential witnesses include estranged allies such as former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General Bill Barr. If Trump is not allowed to "target" them, does that mean he cannot respond to their criticism of him, which is obviously relevant to his qualifications for office? Still, concerns about witness intimidation cannot be dismissed out of hand. The government cites a pattern of harassment and threats inspired by Trump's public attacks on people he believed had wronged him, including Pence and election workers in Georgia. On October 24, four days after Chutkan temporarily froze her gag order, Trump publicly wondered if Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, would show himself to be a "coward" and "weakling" by agreeing to "lie" for the prosecution in exchange for immunity. The question for the D.C. Circuit is whether Chutkan overstepped in trying to stop Trump from making comments like that. Copyright 2023 by Creators Syndicate Inc. The post Trump Gag Order Raises Unsettled Constitutional Questions appeared first on Reason.com. While former President Donald Trumps legal troubles are just starting to play out in courtrooms around the country, not all of the developments have been negative for the former president. Indeed, while Trump is charged with a staggering 91 felony counts in four criminal cases, in addition to a civil case that threatens his companys ability to do business in New York, his poll numbers in the Republican presidential primary have remained strong. Based on polling numbers alone, one might make the argument that the cases against him have strengthened his political position. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released last week shows him edging out President Joe Biden in 2024. But his prospects could change dramatically if hes found guilty of having committed crimes, with 45% of Republicans in a Reuters/Ipsos poll saying they would not vote for Trump if he was "convicted of a felony crime by a jury." As court proceedings take a break for the Thanksgiving holiday, Yahoo News takes stock of recent rulings that have given Trump more reasons for optimism. New York hush money Stormy Danielss conflict-of-interest complaint tossed by grievance committee Key players: adult film actress Stormy Daniels, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina, attorney grievance committee lawyer Jorge Dopico, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Danielss lawyer Clark Brewster, Judge Juan Merchan A New York attorney grievance committee dismissed a complaint Tuesday filed by Brewster that alleged Tacopina had a conflict of interest in the hush money case because Daniels had prior contact with his office, The Hill reported. In a letter, Dopico told Tacopina that the Committee has determined to take no further action. It seems that Stormy Daniels and her joke of a lawyers 15 minutes of fame have come to an appropriate end, Tacopina told The Hill in an email. In the case brought by Bragg, Trump is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records stemming from a payment made to Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign to cover up an alleged extramarital affair. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 25. Why it matters: The finding by the grievance committee confirms Merchans September ruling on the matter. It clears the way for Tacopinas involvement in the case. Classified documents Judge rejects prosecutions request to set deadlines, making trial delay more likely Key players: Judge Aileen Cannon, special counsel Jack Smith, Trump co-defendant Walt Nauta Last week, Cannon rejected a motion by Smith to set December deadlines for Trumps lawyers to identify which classified documents they would use at trial, ABC News reported. While Cannon has so far said she would adhere to the May 20 starting date for the trial, she has promised to revisit that decision on March 1, a sign many observers believe indicates she plans to delay the proceedings. Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, has issued several rulings in Trumps favor, including allowing Nauta to use his lawyer despite the governments conflict-of-interest objections. Why it matters: Trump has sought to either dismiss all the cases against him or to delay them until after the 2024 election. With polling suggesting a possible steep drop in the number of voters who would support him if he were to be convicted of a felony, thats not particularly surprising. Jan. 6 election interference 14th Amendment challenges fail to block Trump from ballot Key players: Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace, Minnesota Supreme Court, Colorado Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court Legal challenges citing section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which bars those who have engaged in insurrection from holding office in the United States, have been turned back in Colorado and Minnesota , UPI reported . While finding 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, Wallace ruled that the 14th Amendment was not clearly referring to presidents and allowed Trumps name to remain on ballots in the state. The case is now being appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the Minnesota Supreme Court refused a bid to have Trumps name removed from ballots in the states Republican presidential primary. The justices left open the question of whether Trump could be barred from general election ballots. Why it matters: While lower courts have given Trump hope that he will survive 14th Amendment challenges, the matter will almost certainly make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Appeals court seems poised to narrow Trump gag order Key players: U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Tanya Chutkan, special counsel Jack Smith, Trump lawyer John Sauer The appeals court heard arguments this week on the legality of the gag order issued by Chutkan on Oct. 16 that prevents Trump from making comments about court staff, prosecutors or potential witnesses ahead of the start of his trial on federal election interference charges, USA Today reported. The three-judge panel seemed inclined to limit the scope of Chutkans order, which would give Trump a partial reprieve. Prosecutors contend that Trumps social media posts and comments about the potential witnesses in the case encourage harassment and threats against them. Sauer argued that Chutkans order muzzles political speech at the height of a campaign and that his criticisms of those involved with the case are not meant as intimidation. Why it matters: Trump has waged a public campaign against those who have accused him of wrongdoing, the judges overseeing the cases and the potential witnesses who may be called. He is betting that the courts will ultimately allow him to continue with that commentary. Recommended reading ___________________ Tuesday, Nov. 21 ___________________ Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Scott Eisen/Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images, Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images, Getty Images After a Colorado judge rules that former President Donald Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence on Jan 6, 2021, but allowed his name to remain on state ballots in the 2024 election, lawyers for the former president and the group who sued to keep him off ballots file separate appeals. In Georgias sprawling election interference case, meanwhile, Judge Scott McAfee holds a hearing on whether to revoke bond for Trump co-defendant Harrison Floyd. Heres the latest from the legal challenges facing the former president. Jan. 6 election interference Trump, plaintiffs appeal judges ruling in Colorado keeping former president on the ballot Key players: Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) Lawyers for Trump and CREW, the nonprofit group representing six Colorado voters seeking to keep Trump from appearing on presidential ballots in 2024, filed appeals Monday of Wallaces ruling last week, The Hill reported, that allows Trump to remain on ballots. In a partial victory for Trump, Wallace agreed with Trumps lawyers that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution barring those who participated in insurrection from holding office did not specifically include presidents. But Wallaces ruling also concluded 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. In its appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, CREW pointed to what it argued was the judges contradictory ruling. Because the district court found that Trump engaged in insurrection after taking the Presidential oath of office, it should have concluded that he is disqualified from office and ordered the Secretary of State to exclude him from the Colorado presidential primary ballot, the group wrote. While Trumps lawyers applauded the part of Wallaces ruling that allowed his name to remain on Colorado ballots, their appeal centers on her findings that the former president intended to incite political violence on Jan. 6. The judge, they said in their appeal, made legal and factual findings wholly unsupported in the law, and these errors demand review. Earlier this month, Minnesotas Supreme Court refused to order Trumps name be removed from Republican primary ballots, NBC News reported, but left open the question of his inclusion on general election ballots. Why it matters: The Colorado case is likely to be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Wallaces findings on Trumps role in the riot at the Capitol are all but certain to be litigated. Georgia election interference Judge modifies terms of bond agreement for Trump co-defendant Key players: Judge Scott McAfee, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, former Black Voices for Trump director Harrison Floyd, Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman On Tuesday, McAfee heard arguments from prosecutors and lawyers for Floyd about revoking his bail over social media posts that Willis contends have violated the terms of his release, the Associated Press reported. While McAfee stopped short of returning Floyd to prison over inflammatory messages posted to social media about potential witnesses in the case, he modified the terms of the bond order, preventing Floyd from publicly discussing witnesses and unindicted co-conspirators in the case. Floyd is charged with four felony counts in the election subversion case, including allegations of harassing Freeman. In her request to have Floyds bond revoked, Willis cited his recent posts on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, that included mentions of Freeman and attacks on other likely witnesses in the case. In a court filing, Floyds attorneys wrote that their client neither threatened or intimidated anyone and certainly did not communicate with a witness or co-defendant directly or indirectly. Why it matters: While Trump has challenged gag orders issued by judges over his constant social media attacks on court officials as a violation of his free speech rights, Floyd is the first co-defendant in Georgia to make similar attacks. If McAfee finds that Floyd violates the modified terms of his bond agreement, he could be jailed. ___________________ Monday, Nov. 20 ___________________ Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Spencer Platt/Getty Images, Supreme Court of the state of New York, Getty Images (3) A Washington, D.C., appeals court hears arguments for and against lifting Judge Tanya Chutkans gag order on former President Donald Trump in the federal election interference case and signals that it may scale back its overall scope. In New York, meanwhile, Judge Arthur Engoron denies a motion for a mistrial put forth by Trumps lawyers on the grounds that he and his law clerk, Allison Greenfield, are unfairly biased against Trump. Heres the latest on the legal cases facing the former president attempting a return to the White House in 2024. Jan. 6 election interference Appeals court hears arguments on Trump gag order in election interference case Key players: Judge Tanya Chutkan, special counsel Jack Smith, Trump lawyer D. John Sauer, DOJ lawyer Cecil VanDevender, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Patricia Millett On Monday, Sauer told a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals that the gag order Chutkan imposed on Trump amounted to a muzzling of the core political speech of the leading candidate for president at the height of his reelection campaign, NBC News reported. Chutkans order restricted Trump from attacking prosecutors, court staff and potential witnesses in the federal election interference case brought by Smith but allowed him to continue to go after the Biden administration and the Justice Department regarding the handling of the case. The appeals court paused the gag order earlier this month. VanDevender told the appeals court that Smiths office had been subject to multiple threats following inflammatory remarks by the former president and argued the gag order should remain in place. The judges seemed skeptical of Sauers assertion that, despite possible threats made by his supporters, Trump should be granted "absolute freedom" to say whatever he wanted about the case. But the appeals court judges also signaled that they may scale back the original gag order to give Trump leeway in responding to those who criticize him, Politico reported. We have to use a careful scalpel here, Millett said. The appeals court did not issue a final ruling Monday. Why it matters: Trump has sought to try all the cases against him in the court of public opinion, linking the charges against him with an alleged effort to keep him from becoming president again. Should the gag order be lifted, he would be free to continue sharply criticizing Smiths team and those who may testify against him. New York financial fraud Engoron rejects Trumps nonsensical motion for mistrial Key players: Judge Arthur Engoron, clerk Allison Greenfield, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump lawyer Christopher Kise On Friday, Engoron rejected a motion for a mistrial filed by Trumps attorneys on the grounds that the judge and his law clerk were biased against them, Bloomberg reported. As I have made clear over the course of this trial, my rulings are mine and mine alone, Engoron wrote in his ruling. There is absolutely no co-judging at play. He described the arguments made by Kise as nonsensical, writing my principal law clerk does not make rulings or issue orders I do. Engoron added that there is no factual or legal basis for a mistrial based on these allegations against my principal law clerk. Kise had argued that Greenfield had exceeded the annual amount she was allowed to donate in political donations, but Engoron noted that information, which was taken from an editorial friendly to Trump, was false. Why it matters: From the start of the $250 million fraud trial brought by James, Trump has sought to portray Engoron and Greenfield as biased against him. Engoron has already established that the defendants in the case are liable for years of inflating their business assets, and the proceedings will determine the punishment in the form of penalties Trump, his adult sons and their family business must pay the state. Former President Trump is more dangerous than some of the most notorious dictators in the history of the world, says former senator turned MSNBC pundit Claire McCaskill. A lot of people have tried to draw similarities between [Benito] Mussolini and [Adolf] Hitler and the use of the terminology like vermin and the drive that those men had towards autocracy and dictatorship, the Missouri Democrat said during an appearance Tuesday on the network, first highlighted by Mediate. The difference, though, I think makes Donald Trump even more dangerous, and that is he has no philosophy he believes in. Trump recently sparked outrage for a post over Veterans Day weekend attacking his political enemies as vermin, drawing comparisons to the likes of Adolf Hitler from some political observers. Top Stories from The Hill McCaskill said Trump is a unique type of authoritarian figure, noting he is not trying to overcome a neighboring country like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is in Ukraine. He is not going for a grandiose scheme of international dominance. All he wants is to look in the mirror and see a guy whos president, she said. All he cares about is selfish self-promotion. Thats the only philosophy he has. Which makes him even more dangerous. Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 by a wide margin with new national polling also showing him narrowly ahead in a potential rematch with President Biden in next years general election. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ready to familiarise himself with the "peace plan" of former US President Donald Trump, if he has one. Source: Zelenskyy for Fox News; European Pravda Zelenskyy said he was ready to talk to Donald Trump, who said he could "very quickly" secure a peace agreement for Ukraine. "I'm ready. If he has a very specific peace plan, he can share it with me. Yes, we can stop this war if we give Russia Donbas and Crimea. In my opinion, our country will not agree to such a peace plan. This is not a peace plan," Zelenskyy said. Previously, Zelenskyy offered Donald Trump to come to Ukraine. He said that he "will need 24 minutes to explain to President Trump that he cant manage this war, cant bring peace because of Putin." Trump replied that now "it would be inappropriate" for him to go to Ukraine because the Biden administration is dealing with Kyiv, and he "would not like to create a conflict of interest." In the past, Zelenskyy has already called on Trump to publicly share his peace plans that allegedly offer a quick solution for the war waged by Russia. Support UP or become our patron! The claim: Trump A Nov. 13 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) includes a TikTok video of former president Donald Trump giving a campaign speech. Trump just told everyone he IS COMMANDER In Chief I alone in this primary have borne the burden of having troops in harms way being CIC of the armed forces, reads text included in the video. The post was liked more than 100 times in nine days. More from the USA TODAY Fact-Check Team: Our rating: False Trump never claimed to still be commander-in-chief in the video. The full speech makes clear he was speaking about his prior experience as commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. Speech taken out of context The post shows a clip from Trump's Nov. 11 campaign stop in Claremont, New Hampshire. In his speech there, Trump outlined broad policy ideas and made headlines by comparing his political opponents to vermin. But nowhere in nearly two hours of remarks recorded by C-SPAN does the former president claim to still be president or commander-in-chief. The excerpt included in the post clearly shows Trump was referring to his prior experience as commander-in-chief. In it, Trump speaks about the possibility of World War III and claims he alone is positioned to prevent it. You look at whats going on right now in the Middle East and Ukraine, and you add it up, and we have somebody that has no clue what the hell is going on, he says in the clip. Youre going to end up in World War III because of this. No reason for it. Millions of people will die. I know the players. I know the job. I alone in this primary have borne the burden of having troops in harms way as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces. Fact check: Letitia James remarks on Donald Trump misrepresented as critique of Joe Biden Claims that Trump is still president and secretly leading the government are not new. USA TODAY previously debunked claims that President Joe Biden was arrested and Trump reinstated and that Trump and the military are running the country. USA TODAY could not reach the user who shared the post for comment. Reuters and Check Your Fact also debunked the claim. Our fact-check sources: 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: Trump speech mentioned past experience as president | Fact check LAS VEGAS (KLAS) A tuberculosis case has been reported at a high school in Summerlin, according to the Southern Nevada Health District. The health district said it is conducting a TB contact investigation at Palo Verde High School to identify which students, teachers, and staff may have been exposed and will need testing. The health district will notify those who may be at risk. TB bacteria can be spread through the air when a person with TB disease coughs, speaks or sings. People who are nearby may breathe in these bacteria and become infected. It is most likely spread to people they are around more frequently and for longer periods. TB remains a public health concern here and across the country, and the Health District conducts investigations to identify and treat people with TB infection or active TB disease when they are identified in Clark County. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. Encounters with extreme turbulence while in the air can be terrifying. Just this week, a severe incident led to crew members on board a flight across Australia being taken to hospital. In the last year, there have been numerous incidents, from eight passengers requiring medical assistance after their plane was struck on the way to Portugal to a British Airways flight that hit such strong severe turbulence over the Bay of Bengal that pilots had to return to the airport they'd just departed from, with several members of cabin crew reporting injuries. Even seasoned fliers can, at times, get spooked by the mid-flight bumps and shakes, though in reality the vast majority of cases will be nothing more serious than a jiggle to your in-flight meal. We look at what causes turbulence, answer some of the most commonly asked questions, and investigate whether it can ever bring down an aircraft. What is turbulence? Turbulence is caused by eddies of rough air a bit like waves becoming choppy at sea. The Federal Aviation Administration defines clear-air turbulence (CAT) as sudden severe turbulence occurring in cloudless regions that causes violent buffeting of aircraft CAT is especially troublesome because it is often encountered unexpectedly and frequently without visual clues to warn pilots of the hazard. There are three main reasons turbulence occurs: thermal (warm air rises through cooler air); mechanical (a mountain or manmade structure disrupts air flow); and shear (on the border of two pockets of air moving in different directions). This makes the aircraft rise and fall and rock from side to side. Thousands of planes experience severe turbulence every year, costing the aviation industry up to $1bn through flight delays and structural damage. Is turbulence normal? Its completely normal. And although it can feel scary, modern aircraft are designed to withstand a huge amount of turbulence. Pilots often know when theyre going to hit turbulence from weather and radar reports. They radio air traffic control and pilots flying a similar route when they come across choppy air, and respond by alerting passengers and slowing the plane down to turbulence penetration speed, which reduces the chance of damage to the aircraft and gives a smoother ride. Are we seeing more turbulence? Yes. Global heating is causing disruptions in different layers of the atmosphere. Since 1979, wind shear in the jet stream has increased 15 per cent, according to Dr Paul D Williams, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading His research projects that clear-air turbulence will more than double by around mid-century in the mid-Northern Hemisphere affecting popular routes like New York-London and San Francisco-Tokyo. Can I be injured by turbulence? Yes but there are far fewer turbulence related incidents than you might think. According to data from Americas Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the number of injuries has averaged 33 per year over the last 16 years in 2017 there were just 17. Considering 2.6 million passengers fly in and out of US airports every day 959 million a year the odds of being injured by turbulence are pretty low. What is the best thing to do during turbulence? Do as pilots do always wear your seat belt. Whenever you return from the toilet and sit back in your seat, strap in. Turbulence injuries are often caused because people arent wearing their belt. Earlier this year, Steve Steve Landells of pilots union Balpa told The Independent: Dont be tempted to get up when the captain has told you to strap in; we are always talking to the pilots of aircraft ahead of us and, even if it is smooth when we put the signs on, we may know it is going to get bumpy soon. The FAA offers the following tips for staying safe: Listen to the flight attendants. Pay attention to the safety briefing at the beginning of your flight and read the safety briefing card. Buckle up. Keep you and your family safe by wearing a seat belt at all times. Use an approved child safety seat or device if your child is under two. Prevent inflight injuries by adhering to your airlines carry-on restrictions. Could turbulence bring down my flight? The short answer is yes, senior aviation consultant Adrian Young tells The Independent but its unlikely. Weather at high altitude (storms and clear air turbulence), microbursts at ground level and wake turbulence caused by other aircraft can all be included under the term turbulance according to Young. The first is rare as the cause of a crash in transport aircraft. There are a couple of examples from the 1960s, he says. Microbursts cause fewer accidents now than they did in the 1990s. See the American accident at Little Rock in 1999 (an MD-82, flight AA1420). Better extreme weather detection systems exist and flight techniques have been improved. Wake turbulence affects smaller aeroplanes more than large ones. One accident comes to mind; American 587 at New York in 2001. Modern-day engineering and technology reduce the risk dramatically satellites and advanced meteorology technologies give pilots extremely accurate forecasts of areas of expected turbulence. Utimately, its rare and the industry has worked over the years to reduce the risk, says Young. On Monday afternoon, squinting into the sun on the White House lawn, Joe Biden engaged in one of the most tawdry political traditions in the United States: the Thanksgiving turkey pardon. For over three decades, the structure has remained largely the same: First, the president makes awkward small talk and dad jokes. (In Bidens case, he mentioned his age twice, andunfortunately not as a jokeconfused Britney Spears with Taylor Swift.) Second, the president gives free publicity to the National Turkey Federation, the industry group that provides turkeys for the event. Third, the president underlines the importance of Thanksgiving and national togetherness. Biden didnt stray from the script. This ritualistic mockery of both animal rights and the arbitrariness of executive power began as a way to distract from the Iran-Contra affair. When reporters asked Ronald Reagan whether he would pardon Oliver North and John Poindexter for providing weapons to paramilitary death squads in Nicaragua, he said he would pardon a turkey named Charlie. The White House had been receiving two turkeys every year from the National Turkey Federation since 1947, providing a photo op benefiting both politician and industry. And while JFK offered off-the-cuff clemency to a bird one time by saying, Lets just keep him, and Reagan then used the pardoning language in 1987, it was George W. Bush who claimed to officially grant a turkey a presidential pardon in 1989, allegedly in an ad-libbed response to animal rights activists picketing the event. Since then, the pardons three-act play has recognized an individual turkey farmer each year as a shibboleth of American agriculture and humane treatment of animals. On Monday, no reporters could ask the president either about geopolitics or, more prosaically, about the provenance of Liberty and Bell, provided for the occasion by Minnesota-based Jennie-O turkey, a subsidiary of the factory farming giant Hormel Foods. Most newspapers dutifully ran stories about the Britney-Taylor flub rather than about the whole event as an exercise in political obfuscation. Lets start with the water carrying for industrial agriculturealthough its by no means the only problem with this tradition. The turkey industry will have its most lucrative day of the year on Thursday, when Americans will spend close to a billion dollars on over 45 million birds who dont look much like Liberty or Bell. Virtually all turkeys raised in the United States come from crowded concentrated feeding operationsCAFOs, or factory farms. Investigations by animal rights groups like Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, have shown that the same farms that provide the well-groomed, handsome birds for White House events raise the rest of their animals in hellish conditions. In 2016, DxE showed that Jaindl, the Pennsylvania farm that provided turkeys for Obamas lame-duck period Thanksgiving event ran overcrowded farms full of sick and maimed birds. And on Tuesday, the same group released footage taken at a farm owned by this years provider, Jennie-O, which shows conditions much like those at Jaindl, which the group claims are not just cruel but illegal under state law. To the extent that Thanksgiving is a culinary tradition, it is one rooted in mass-scale cruelty to animals. And the legal system has proven more than willing to blame the messenger about this inconvenient truth. Wayne Hsiung, the founder of DxE, was recently convicted in California for organizing the sort of investigations that shine a light on the routine cruelty of animal agriculture. When Biden praised the families across America who feed and fuel our nation in this weeks pardon, he was papering over both the meat industrys many abuses (of human workers as well as animals) and the decline of small family farms; as of a few years ago, 4 percent of U.S. farms controlled 58 percent of all farmland. Perhaps the closest any president has come to acknowledging the reality of the situation was Obama in 2016, saying that I want to take a moment to recognize the brave turkeys who werent so lucky, who didnt get to ride the gravy train to freedomwho met their fate with courage and sacrificeand proved that they werent chicken. But he delivered the line with a smile and it landed like a charm with the crowd. The turkey pardon also touches on another topic that many voters and politicians wish to ignore: the way actual presidential pardons tend to serve power rather than justice. Turkeys, of course, are neither humans nor convicted criminals, meaning that the claim to pardon them is a figure of speechtheir quality of life is solely driven by the cruel intersection of supply and demand curves for their meat, buoyed by cultural traditions like Thanksgiving dinners and by advertising like the turkey pardon event itself. But making a joke of the power of presidential pardon masks one of the most troubling powers of the executive. Enshrined in Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, the power to pardon granted to the president is, as legal scholars have long argued, one of the few powers of the executive that bypasses the legislative and judicial branches; a quasi-monarchical vestige in the republics founding documents. It, like other pardons, is defined more than anything by its arbitrary nature. This has led commentators to see the turkey pardon as a mockery of the countrys legal and carceral system. The philosopher Justin E.H. Smith has written that pardoning of one randomly selected bird at Thanksgiving not only carries with it an implicit validation of the slaughtering of millions of other turkeys. It also involves an implicit validation of the parallel practice for human beings, in which the occasional death-row inmate is pardoned, or given a stay by the hidden reasoning of an increasingly capricious Supreme Court, even as the majority of condemned prisoners are not so lucky. In this respect, the Thanksgiving pardon is an acknowledgment of the arbitrariness of the system of capital punishment. But its not just the power to pardon that is arbitrary; its also how this power is wielded in the service of clientelism. Reagan didnt pardon North and Poindexter (both got off on technicalities), but he did pardon Yankees owner George Steinbrener for illegal contributions to Nixons campaign. His successor, Bush Sr., mitigated the fallout of the Iran-Contra affair by pardoning Reagans former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger before he could go on trial. Donald Trump, who embraced the turkey-pardoning ceremony, pardoned hard-line Republican partisans, including Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Joe Arpaio. The turkey pardon effaces the powers history in favor of a joke, itself embedded in the president giving free advertising to the meat business, all wrapped in the familiar platitudes. By calling on Americans to believe in an American myth and forget everyday politics, the turkey pardon is an exercise in forgetfulness and distraction. News stories yesterday were filled with talk of Bidens Britney-Taylor gaffe. Instead, the whole affair should be a reminder that political theater has a moral cost. If theres a joke there, its on all of us. Even before advertisers began jumping ship over Elon Musk's antisemitic shenanigans, the site had been in deep doo-doo and now, it's hard to see how he plans to pull the site up by its bootstraps this time. As TechCrunch reports, an October analysis from the market research firm Insider Intelligence found that X-formerly-Twitter was already barrelling towards a more than 50 percent decline in ad sales compared to the previous year. Those numbers were notably drawn up before Musk decided to agree with another user spewing antisemitic conspiracy theories, leading to the most recent advertiser exodus. In other words, the situation may be even worse for Twitter now, with analysts predicting the company's decline in ad sales could be even more significant. While things clearly weren't going great beforehand, the fallout from the brash billionaire's bigotry has been shockingly swift and severe. After the inciting tweet, the media watchdog Media Matters for America (which, full disclosure, used to employ this writer) published an expose about ads for huge companies like Microsoft and IBM running adjacent to explicit white supremacist content on X. The watchdog's report, in turn, led to many of these big-name advertisers pausing their ad spend on X and to Musk making good on his promise to sue MMFA for, as he alleges, manipulating the images that show the aforementioned ads next to Nazi posts. Beyond the immediate drama, however, this arguably deserved kerfuffle is exposing what was once a crack in the dam of X's advertiser exodus that may soon become a full-on flood. "The damage to Xs ad business will be severe," Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg told TechCrunch. "A big-name advertiser exodus will inspire other advertisers to follow suit, and there is already likely a long tail of less vocal advertisers that have pulled spending." Indeed, Musk himself admitted just a few months ago that the company's advertising revenue was down about 60 percent year-over-year from 2022. Characteristically, he blamed the decline on the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish nonprofit extremism watchdog that he also, coincidentally, threatened to sue. In the aftermath of Musk's shocking faux pas, things have gotten so bad at the site formerly known as Twitter that CEO Linda Yaccarino has been calling on employees to pull new revenue streams out of thin air while privately fielding texts from concerned colleagues begging her to save herself while she still can. There have, of course, been mass advertiser exits elsewhere before but this time is, by all indications, substantially different given Musk's own actions. "Advertisers are accustomed to dealing with brand safety concerns on social media, particularly during periods of political and social tension or war," Enberg said. "But theyre not accustomed to a platforms owner amplifying misinformation and hate speech, and emboldening conspiracy theorists." More on Twitter: Rabbis Warn That Elon Musk Is Spreading the Type of Antisemitism "That Leads to Massacres" This embedded content is not available in your region. A speeding car crashed and exploded in a deadly fireball on a US-Canada border bridge, triggering a major security scare on the eve of Thanksgiving. Two people in the vehicle died, and a US border agent was injured, but New York's governor ruled out terrorism. The car was being driven from the New York side of the border to Rainbow Bridge when it crashed at a checkpoint. The incident near Niagara Falls saw the closure of four bridges on the world's longest international border. The explosion happened at around 11:30 local time (16:30 GMT) on Wednesday, causing serious disruption on one of the busiest travel days of the year, the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. Train services between New York and Canada were temporarily halted and officers at Buffalo and Niagara Falls airports went into a heightened state of alert screening cars for explosives. The incident stoked fears of a possible terror attack, and baseless speculation swirled online about a supposed threat to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Both US President Joe Biden, who is in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were quickly briefed on the incident. Mr Trudeau excused himself from Question Period in the House of Commons, and said his government was taking the incident "extraordinarily seriously". As a precaution, officials used trucks to block the Canadian entrance to Rainbow Bridge, which links Ontario with New York and the US city of Niagara Falls with Niagara Falls, Canada. Several hours after the blast, there was relief when New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters: "Based on what we know at this moment, there is no sign of terrorist activity with respect to this crash." She added that one of the people who died was a "local" from the western New York region. This embedded content is not available in your region. The two who died were a married couple - the husband was driving and his wife was the passenger, US law enforcement officials said. According to CNN, the motorist was driving a 2022 Bentley and had just been to a US casino after a concert by hard rock band Kiss that he was initially going to attend in Canada had been cancelled. The car travelled at a "very high rate of speed", the governor said, hurtling over an 8ft (2.4m) fence, though it was unclear if the crash was deliberate. The vehicle had been "incinerated" and nothing was left but the engine, she said. Not even a registration plate was recovered. Governor Hochul said video of the crash was "surreal" and looked almost like it "was generated by AI". The person who sustained non-life threatening injuries in the crash is a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, she added. The governor noted it was fortunate that more people were not hurt at the busy crossing "when you look at the scale of the scene, how far the pieces of this vehicle exploded and scattered". Rainbow Bridge remained closed on Wednesday night, but three other US-Canada crossings - the Peace Bridge, Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and Whirlpool Bridge - had reopened to the public. Toronto resident and eyewitness Dor Tamang told BBC News he was on the second floor of a CBP building when the blast occurred. Mr Tamang said he felt the ground shake inside the building. Another eyewitness told the BBC: "We just saw this car going up in flames." He said the blast felt like a "mini-earthquake". Aaron Beatty, from Cleveland, Ohio, said he crossed into Canada to see Niagara Falls on Wednesday morning. "I said, 'oh, I'll just cross over to the Canadian side for a quick hour to see the other side and walk back," Mr Beatty told the BBC. But as he was heading back into the US, a border agent told him to go back to Canada. "That one hour turned into almost eight hours now," Mr Beatty said. (Additional reporting by Max Matza) San Antonio's Animal Care Services says the city has no reported cases of a mystery respiratory illness spreading among dogs in the U.S. Image by Marie LaFauci/Getty Images A mysterious illness is spreading among dogs in the U.S., but San Antonio Animal Care Services said it isnt aware of any local cases. While the illness has yet to make its way into Texas, its been spotted in seven states so far and is being described by veterinarians as an atypical canine infectious respiratory illness. It has spread wildly in states like Oregon, which has reported more than 200 cases since mid-August, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Cases also have been reported in Colorado, Illinois and New Hampshire. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Symptoms of the illness include coughing, sneezing, eye or nose discharge, and lethargy. Researchers still are trying to figure out what caused it, but dogs around other dogs are most likely to develop it. The illness has been fatal in some cases. READ MORE: Animal Care Services director eyes retirement as city contends with rise in severe dog attacks Lisa Norwood, ACS spokesperson, said the citys animal shelter is aware of the illness but has yet to confirm any local cases. We are not seeing it in San Antonio or even in Texas from what we have seen, Norwood said. The best thing people can do is to keep their pets on their property and get their pets vaccinated, so theyre at less risk of illness. Norwood said ACS in-house veterinary team looks for emerging diseases, but prevention starts with pet owners. Until more is understood about the illness, making sure dogs are up to date with their vaccines is critical, she said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Unfortunately, these illnesses do pose a risk to local pets because we have such a low vaccination rate in our community, Norwood said. Its been reported that the illness has been resistant to antibiotics, though the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association said it is milder among dogs vaccinated against respiratory illness. Norwood recommends consulting a veterinarian if pet owners notice their dogs have any respiratory symptoms. People are brought in to Dungeness, Kent, by the RNLI, after a small boat sank after leaving France - Gareth Fuller/PA A man and a woman drowned on Wednesday after a small boat carrying around 60 migrants trying to reach Britain sank just after leaving France, authorities have said. Guirec Le Bras, a Boulogne-sur-Mer prosecutor, said the boat was among several to leave a beach near the French port on Wednesday morning despite the presence of gendarme patrols. It capsized off the beaches of Neufchatel-Hardelot and Equihen-Plage at around 1.30pm local time. The two people who died were both aged around 30, but it was not known where they came from. A third person was rescued from the sea and flown to hospital, while the others on the boat were brought back to land, some suffering from hypothermia, rescuers said. The deaths came almost two years to the day after 27 people died in one of the worst Channel migrant disasters. A person is carried ashore on a stretcher at Dungeness, Kent - Gareth Fuller/PA That led to reports that French and UK coastguards had passed the buck over who was responsible for monitoring and rescuing migrants stricken near the dividing line between the two countrys territorial waters. An HM Coastguard spokesman said on Wednesday: HM Coastguard is currently working with the French Coastguard, who are coordinating the response to an incident involving a small boat in the French search and rescue region, working with Border Force and other partners. The Coastguard helicopter and the RNLI are assisting in the response. HM Coastguard will continue to work with partners to respond to those in distress around the seas and coastal areas of the UK. Mr Le Bras said a manslaughter investigation had started. Olivier Ternisien, the head of the Osmose 62 group, which helps migrants in the Boulogne region, said people trying to get to Britain were taking bigger risks with the deteriorating weather. Mr Ternisiens group and other organisations have also said the increased presence of security forces encouraged migrants to pursue ever more hazardous crossings. The RNLI brings in rescued migrants from the Channel - Steve Finn On Tuesday, a general in charge of 130 gendarmes patrolling the Calais coast told The Telegraph that 30 per cent fewer migrants had made it to the UK so far this year compared to 2022. General Frantz Tavarts unit includes 90 reservists paid for by the UK. The last Channel deaths were on Aug 12, when six Afghans drowned after their small boat capsized. That was the worst accident since the tragedy on Nov 24 2021, when 27 people died. A leaked investigation found that France had failed to tell Britain that the boat was sinking and ignored a rescue offer from a passing tanker. French authorities have said boats are increasingly overloaded, with the average number of about 53 people almost double that of two years ago. According to British authorities, more than 27,200 people have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year. 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. Lexington teacher Emily Presley spent her first Thanksgiving at home with her family since 2021 after returning from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago with new lungs. In May 2022, Presley was finishing teaching STEM science, technology, engineering and math at Wellington Elementary School in Fayette County when a cold developed into severe infections that led to 16 months in the hospital, including nearly a year in Chicago, and two lung transplants. I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and Im so glad my Northwestern Medicine lung transplant team could get me home to share that gratitude with my family, my friends and the Lexington community, said Presley. Its wonderful to be home with my kids and my dog. In October 2022, surgeons at the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute performed a double-lung transplant on Presley, whose lungs were destroyed by viral and bacterial infections that had compounded into acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS. The life-threatening condition allows fluid to leak into the lungs, causing breathing to become difficult and depriving the organs of oxygen, hospital officials said. On Oct. 30, 2023, Presley returned to Lexington. I would say that its been pretty horrible, she told the Herald-Leader Monday. All the procedures, all the poking and prodding. Its been really, really difficult, but Ive been able to get through it because I have a ton of support with my family, including Jeff, my husband, support from my friends. I have a really great community and that really did get me through. Emily Presley is photographed at her home in Lexington, Ky., on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. She will spend her first Thanksgiving at home with her husband and children since 2021 after returning home from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago with new lungs. I have said many times it was hell on Earth. And thats a pretty accurate description, said Jeff Presley, her husband. Jeff Presley said his wife was previously a picture of health and rarely got sick. What she thought was just a cold on a Wednesday progressed to bronchitis by the following Saturday. I walked in the house and I couldnt believe how Emily looked and sounded, Jeff Presley said in a statement released by the hospital. I could hear her breathing from across the room. He took her to Baptist Health in Lexington where she tested negative for COVID and the flu but positive for rhinovirus (the common cold) and parainfluenza (a respiratory virus), which made her susceptible to a bacterial staph infection that ravaged her lungs. Within an hour of arriving at the emergency room, Presley was put on a ventilator and placed into a medically induced coma. I knew it was bad because I had the mask on for oxygen and there were probably like 15 people in my room, said Presley. I remember thinking, This is bad. And then I was out after that for a while. For four months at UK HealthCare, Presley was attached to ECMO, an advanced form of life support that does the work of the heart and lungs, but showed no signs of recovery. Additional infections compromised her lungs and other organs, and ARDS continued to cause inflammation throughout her body. On Oct. 8, 2022, Presley was transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, hospital officials said. Jeff and Emily Presley celebrate their 23rd wedding anniversary at UK Chandler hospital where she has been attached to a life-saving ECMO machine after a bacterial infection ravaged her lungs. The flowers are made of wood. Real flowers arent allowed in intensive care. Challenging months The yearlong stay in Chicago saw some setbacks but mostly improvement for the patient who arrived there incredibly sick. Being able to see her go through everything that shes gone through, and actually get her back to Kentucky is really bittersweet, because Im going to miss her and Jeff, but thats the goal, said Catherine Myers, a pulmonologist with the Canning Thoracic Institute. Staph pneumonias are one of the most common pneumonias to occur after viral infections, said Myers. Because staph lives on our bodies, these pneumonias are often the result of peoples immune systems not working properly after getting a virus. Someone as healthy as Emily could usually fight this type of infection, but in rare instances it can be deadly. During the Covid pandemic, Myers told the Herald-Leader, the center had gotten a large number of patients off of ECMO with severe lung disease who needed transplants, so they were prepared for Presleys case. Wellington Elementary teacher Emily Presley was a model of health before a virus called parainfluenza led to damage in her lungs, husband Jeff said. She has been on an ECMO machine for over four months and is going through multiple therapies for actions like walking and swallowing. Her husband, Jeff, in particular is one of the most dedicated caregivers I think Ive ever met. He was an incredible advocate for her and really stood by her side through everything, said Myers. Emily was just incredibly sick, but her determination to continue living, to continue fighting and, and the trust that she and her husband placed in us was really very remarkable, Myers said. Its easy when youre in the hospital for such a long time as she is to get incredibly frustrated, and even start to doubt your own ability to leave the hospital, doubt your medical providers abilities to kind of get you over the hurdles and get you out of the hospital. And they really put a lot of faith and trust in us, which also was very humbling. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Canning Thoracic Institute, in a hospital statement said he thought Presley was a good transplant candidate. When we got a call from Emilys medical team in Lexington, I knew we could get her strong enough to list her for transplant, said Bharat. That transplant occurred on Oct. 25, but soon after, Presleys immune system reacted negatively to proteins in the newly transplanted lungs, possibly some residue from COVID-19 proteins that may have been present from a prior infection in the donor, Bharat said. Bharat and other members of Presleys medical team told her family the best chance for Presleys survival would be to remove her lungs, relist her for transplantation and transplant her lungs again. I told the medical team that Emily and I love our life together. We love our friends. We love our community. So if theres a chance that she can survive and have good quality of life, then the answer to a second transplant is yes, said Jeff Presley. Emily Presley and her husband, Jeff, are photographed at their home in Lexington, Ky., on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Emily will spend her first Thanksgiving at home with her husband and children since 2021 after returning home from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago with new lungs. Within 24 hours, the team heard that new organs were available, and surgeons successfully transplanted the second set of lungs on Oct. 27, 2022. Over the next year, Presley focused on her recovery, relearning to walk and swallow. She also worked on improving speech, handwriting and other functions with physical and occupational therapies. In all, she was in the hospital 16 months and then they rented an apartment in Chicago. Its the birthdays, the anniversaries, the holidays, for more than a year they were spent in the hospital. And it makes it difficult. It makes it sad, it makes it challenging because the kids couldnt always be with us, said Jeff Presley. Their children are 14 and 17. Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Canning Thoracic Institute, Emily Presley and Dr. Catherine Myers, a pulmonologist with the Canning Thoracic Institute take a photo at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Jeff Presley said his mom Rita Presley, a retired school principal, moved from Somerset to Lexington to care for the kids and their dog at their home. Friends drove their children back and forth from Chicago and Lexington on school holidays. Emilys mother, Paula Cunningham, went to Chicago from Indianapolis and helped care for Presley. Jeff Presley said the only way they could afford to keep their Lexington home and an apartment was a GoFundMe set up through friends and family. For now, Presley is managing doctors appointments and twice weekly physical therapy. She said the family is readjusting, trying to figure out their new normal, and waiting on relatives to come to Lexington to celebrate the holidays. And theres something else. She plans on returning to teaching at Wellington Elementary as soon as shes fully recovered, probably next school year, because she absolutely loves it there. Emily Presley is discharged from inpatient hospitalization at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. The Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of an Illinois inmate who sued the state after he spent two uninterrupted years and three years total in solitary confinement without any opportunities to go outside or get exercise. A similar legal challenge from Texas was also on the horizon, presenting the nations highest court with another opportunity to examine the constitutionality of prolonged solitary confinement, and setting the stage for a potential ruling to determine whether the practice qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constituion. The Supreme court of United States of America. (Getty Images/Grant Faint) Hope vs. Harris, the Texas case filed in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, has potential to compel the justices to narrow their focus to one particular issue that was raised in the Illinois case, which questioned the denial of regular outdoor exercise. The previous case, Johnson vs. Prentice, was brought by Michael Johnson, a Black inmate at the Pontiac Correctional Center in Illinois since 2007, who claimed his constitutional rights were violated in an extreme case of isolation that began in 2013 when he had his exercise privileges suspended in response to ongoing misconduct. Johnson, who was convicted of a violent home invasion and assault, has served an extended amount of his incarceration in solitary confinement due to disciplinary issues and multiple violations of prison rules, while the frequency and duration of the punishments have raised questions about the impact on Johnsons mental health, especially given his previous diagnoses of severe depression and bipolar disorder. During his confinement, Johnson endured countless stretches of 30 to 90 days in total isolation, confined to a small cell for 24 hours each day with no exercise or activity, which is the usual protocol for solitary inmates, his lawsuit claimed. Johnson was only allowed to come out of his cell once a week for a 10-minute shower, further emphasizing the bleak situation he faced behind bars. The deprivation was not imposed to ensure the safety and security of the exercise yard, Johnsons attorneys argued in court papers, but rather to punish Mr. Johnson for engaging in misconduct that was born of mental illness and unrelated to exercise. Johnson sued due to his plight, but in March 2022, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit dismissed Johnsons claim that his lack of outdoor time amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. That ruling survived when the full panel of 10 judges tied 5-5 in their ruling. Undeterred, Johnson appealed to the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority ruled unanimously on Nov. 13 to dismiss the claim, while the courts three liberal justices dissented, calling it an indisputable legal error for the court to throw out the case. For three years, Johnson had no opportunity at all to stretch his limbs or breathe fresh air, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the minority, which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Johnsons mental state deteriorated rapidly. He suffered from hallucinations, excoriated his own flesh, urinated and defecated on himself, and smeared feces all over his body and cell. Jackson raised further questions about Johnsons psychological condition due to his time in isolation, saying the inmate sometimes engaged in misconduct with the hope that prison guards would beat him to death, suggesting Johnsons mistreatment likely amounted to unconstitutional deliberate indifference on the part of his jailers. In other rulings on confinement, multiple federal judges have affirmed the rights of all inmates to have the basic right of access to regular exercise. Legal experts cite a specific ruling on the matter more than 40 years ago by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that contradicts the recent judgments against Johnsons appeal. In 1979, future Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was serving on the bench in the Ninth Circuit when he issued the legal opinion in Spain vs. Procunier, which declared outdoor exercise extremely important to the psychological and physical well-being of inmates, Kennedy wrote, while also noting that it was cruel and unusual punishment for a prisoner to be confined for a period of years without opportunity to go outside except for occasional court appearances, attorney interviews and hospital appointments. Human rights groups worldwide continue to call for an end to solitary confinement, decrying the practice as a torture method that violates international law. Previously, President Joe Biden expressed his desire to put limits on solitary confinement in federal prisons as restrictive housing has surged in recent years, mostly due to the pandemic, while prison officials have also cited an effectiveness to discipline inmates and mitigate safety concerns. The United States stands out globally for high incarceration rates and heavy reliance on solitary confinement, according to the National Alliance of Mental Illness, which released data in March showing tens of thousands of prisoners endure isolation every day for unknown durations, while facing severe physical and mental consequences that often result in tragic outcomes. Former inmates faced a 24 percent higher risk of death within the first year of leaving prison, with 78 percent increased chance of suicide, 54 percent chance of committing a homicide, and a 127 percent chance of experiencing an opioid overdose within two weeks of release, the group said. The U.S.-based advocacy group continues to put pressure on lawmakers to enact increased measures to end solitary confinement and search for alternative methods that would improve safety and well-being in the nations prison system. We simply cannot continue to ignore the facts and collateral damage of this unjustifiable practice, the organization said in a statement. Let us remember that the use of solitary confinement, even in the smallest increments, is harmful and it fails to improve prison or public safety. Legislators and advocates must continue their efforts to end solitary confinement for the most vulnerable among us. The psychological effects of solitary confinement, or administrative segregation, have been well-documented, with numerous studies emphasizing the heavy emotional and physical toll from prolonged isolation and inadequate mental health support. In the ongoing push for criminal justice reform, dozens of states across the country have been actively addressing the issue of solitary confinement, NAMI said. Since 2009, 46 states introduced a total of 920 bills aimed at restricting or ending the practice, resulting in new legislation in 40 states. After 2021, 258 bills were filed in 41 states to regulate solitary confinement, while 39 of these policies passed successfully. The efforts also led to the closure of entire prisons and isolation units, including the recent shutdowns of supermax prisons in New York and Connecticut, according to NAMI. The U.S. launched airstrikes early Wednesday against an operations center and a command-and-control node used by Iranian proxies in Iraq to target American and coalition troops. The strikes were part of planned airstrikes against Iran-backed militants under the Biden administrations recent escalation. Casualties from the strikes remain unknown. A little more than 24 hours before Wednesdays airstrike, the U.S. killed three Iran-backed militants who were attacking Al Asad Air Base, an Iraqi base where U.S. troops are stationed. American airstrikes in Syria last week killed at least 6 people and were the first strikes against Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to cause known casualties. Read it at New York Times Read more at The Daily Beast. The airport in Buffalo, New York, shut its doors to international flights and Amtrak halted service between New York and Canada on Wednesday, hours after a vehicle exploded at a customs checkpoint at the Canadian border nearby throwing portions of the U.S. travel system into chaos on the eve of Thanksgiving. The deputy airport director for the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport, Russell Stark, confirmed that the airport was closed to arriving and departing international flights, and said it was done at the request of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. A Customs spokesperson said the agency was working closely with the FBI and other federal, state and local authorities, but did not comment on the airport closure. The airport later reopened to all air traffic, the airport said on X, stating additional security measures are in place until further notice. An Amtrak spokesperson confirmed that the railroads one train that operates between Toronto and New York had been halted, though the spokesperson could not provide further details. The closures come after a vehicle exploded on Wednesday afternoon at the Rainbow Bridge connecting the U.S. and Canada, prompting officials to tighten border security along the U.S. northern border. Photos and video taken by bystanders and posted on social media showed thick smoke coming from the Rainbow Bridge, which connects the U.S. and Canada at Niagara Falls. They also showed flames on the pavement and a security booth that had been singed by flames. Videos showed that the fire was in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection area just east of the main vehicle checkpoint. The FBIs field office in Buffalo said in a statement that it was investigating the blast, and investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were also responding to the scene. Karine Martel, a spokesperson for the Canadian Border Security Agency, said in a statement that the FBI was taking the lead on the investigation. The explosion at the Rainbow Bridge happened as many Americans are hitting the roads for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and will cause major disruptions for cross-border travelers. It also came as federal law enforcement officials warned of increased threats ahead of the holiday weekend. The cause of the vehicle explosion is unclear. Canadian and American federal, state and local law enforcement have begun investigating. At a news conference on Wednesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said there was no indication that the explosion was tied to terrorism while emphasizing that the situation was fluid. Based on what we know at this moment and again, anything can change there is no sign of terrorist activity with respect to this crash, Hochul said. That assessment was also shared by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who posted on X that there is no indication of a threat related to this incident and that DHS will continue to work closely with state and local officials and continue to update the public as information becomes available. The Associated Press reported that two people had been declared dead at the scene. New York state officials confirmed that nearby vehicles suffered some damage. A law enforcement official confirmed that an officer with the Office of Field Operations was sent to the hospital with minor injuries. Top leadership in both countries have also been looped in. A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said on Wednesday that the White House is closely monitoring the situation at the U.S.-Canada border crossing. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg posted on X on Wednesday that he had been briefed by our staff in NY state and HQ on the explosion & related bridge closures on the US-Canada border. The White House also said on Wednesday that President Joe Biden, who is spending Thanksgiving in Massachusetts, was briefed on the explosion and that he and his team are closely following developments. In Ottawa, meanwhile, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the explosion in Parliament on Wednesday, saying that this is obviously a very serious situation in Niagara Falls and acknowledging that there are a lot of questions and we are following up to try to get as many answers, as rapidly as possible. The prime ministers office says it was in contact with U.S. officials, and that Canadian police and border officials were fully engaged and providing all necessary support. Canadas public safety minister, Dominic LeBlanc, told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday afternoon that the government of Canada is taking this situation extremely seriously but did not offer a possible reason for the explosion. Any time a piece of infrastructure as important to Canada and the United States, like a border crossing, sees this kind of violent circumstance, its a source of concern for the government of Canada and for the United States, LeBlanc said, adding that Canadian law enforcement was working closely with its American counterparts. LeBlanc posted on X later on Wednesday afternoon that he had spoken with Mayorkas, his American counterpart. Constable Phil Gavin, a media relations officer at the Niagara Regional Police Service, said on Wednesday that theres no known threat on the Canadian side and that the 405 highway that leads to the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge is currently closed. Traffic on the Canadian side, according to Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt, has increased, prompting some other closures. Were available and ready to respond as needed. But at this point, everything seems to be focused on the U.S. side, Schmidt said. We have the border closings closed and were dealing with just the traffic issues that come along with that. Officials tightened security at the U.S.-Canada border. In earlier statements Wednesday, Hochul said that the New York State Police and the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force were monitoring all ports of entry to New York and that the states department of transportation was also working on closing parts of Interstate 190. Other bridges between Western New York and Ontario were also quickly closed as a precaution but have since reopened. Eric Bazail-Eimil reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Kyle Duggan reported from Ottawa, Ontario; and Oriana Pawlyk reported from Washington. The Associated Press and Tanya Snyder contributed to this report. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Biden and India's Prime Minister Modi meet with senior officials and CEOs of American and Indian companies, in Washington By Jeff Mason and Shivam Patel NANTUCKET, Mass./NEW DELHI (Reuters) - United States authorities thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States and issued a warning to India over concerns the government in New Delhi was involved, a senior Biden administration official said. The U.S. is treating the plot with utmost seriousness and has raised the issue with the Indian government "at the senior-most levels," the White House said on Wednesday. The Financial Times first reported the plot. White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Indian officials expressed "surprise and concern" when they were informed about the incident. We are treating this issue with utmost seriousness, and it has been raised by the U.S. government with the Indian government, including at the senior-most levels," Watson said. "They stated that activity of this nature was not their policy ... We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable, she said. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who says he is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, was the target of the foiled plot, according to the senior administration official. News of the incident comes two months after Canada said there were "credible" allegations linking Indian agents to the June murder of a Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a Vancouver suburb, something India has rejected. India's anti-terror agency filed a case against Pannun on Monday stating that he warned flag carrier Air India passengers in video messages shared on social media this month that their lives were in danger. The issue is a highly delicate one for the Biden administration, which has been working to develop close relations with India given shared concerns about China's rising power. Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said when asked about the FT report that Washington had shared "some inputs" that were being "examined by "relevant departments." Bagchi said the inputs pertained to the "nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others." "India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well," he said. The FT said its sources did not say if the U.S. protest to India resulted in the plot being abandoned, or if it was foiled by the FBI. It said the protest was registered after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was welcomed on a state visit by President Joe Biden in June. Biden is currently vacationing on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Apart from the diplomatic warning to India, U.S. federal prosecutors have also filed a sealed indictment against at least one suspect in a New York district court, the FT said. The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment. Pannun, like Nijjar, is a proponent of a decades-long but now fringe demand to carve out an independent Sikh homeland from India called Khalistan, a plan New Delhi sees as a security threat due to a violent insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s. India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) registered a case against Pannun under charges related to terrorism and conspiracy, among others. It stated he threatened in video messages to not let Air India operate anywhere in the world. The case comes against the historical backdrop of a bombing in 1985 of an Air India aircraft flying from Canada to India that killed 329, and for which Sikh militants were blamed. Pannun told Reuters on Tuesday that his message was to "boycott Air India not bomb." He told Reuters on Wednesday he would let the U.S. government respond "to the issue of threats to my life at the American soil from the Indian operatives." "Just like Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar's assassination by the Indian agents on Canadian soil was a challenge to Canada's sovereignty, the threat to (an) American citizen on American soil is a Challenge to America's sovereign(ty)," he said. Pannun is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, which India labelled an "unlawful association" in 2019, citing its involvement in extremist activities. Pannun was listed as an "individual terrorist" by India in 2020. (Reporting by Shivam Patel, Krishn Kaushik in New Delhi and by Jeff Mason, David Brunnstrom, Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Heather Timmons and Stephen Coates) UK foreign minister David Cameron on Wednesday met with Arab and Islamic counterparts to discuss how to secure the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas and to increase aid into Gaza. Cameron earlier welcomed a truce deal between Israel and Hamas allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce. "This agreement is a crucial step towards providing relief to the families of the hostages and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza," Cameron said in a statement. He later hosted foreign ministers from Arab and other countries belonging to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in London to discuss cooperation on the ongoing conflict. Discussions "focused on how to secure the release of all hostages, increase the amount of aid into Gaza, and reach a long-term political solution to the crisis", according to a UK government press release. The ministers discussed efforts to "reinvigorate" diplomatic efforts towards a two-state solution. "We discussed how to use this step forward to think about the future and how we can build a peaceful future which provides security for Israel but also peace and stability for the Palestinian people," said Cameron. Foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Turkey, Indonesia and Nigeria, as well as the Secretary General of the League of Arab States and ambassador of Qatar attended the event. The delegation is visiting the capitals of UN Security Council permanent members, arriving in London after meetings in Beijing and Moscow, and with further trips to Paris and Washington planned. jwp/jj/imm Ukrainian fighters are advancing on the left bank of the Kherson region The battles near the village of Krynky on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast will be "highly unfortunate" for the Russian leadership, despite the smaller scale of the fighting compared to major battles, the UK Ministry of Defense said in its intelligence report published on Nov. 22. UK intelligence analyzed the battles around Krynky, noting that Ukrainian marines are holding a bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Read also: Ukrainian forces make strategic advances in Kherson Oblast, ISW reports The ground fighting has been characterized by confused dismounted infantry combat and artillery exchanges in complex, wooded terrain. Ukraine has made particularly effective use of small attack drones, while the Russian Air Force is conducting significant numbers of sorties in support of its frontline troops, predominantly launching munitions from beyond the range of Ukraines air defenses. Russia withdrew its troops from the west bank of the Dnipro River just over a year ago, almost certainly aiming to hold Ukrainian forces west of the river, keep the sector quiet, and free up Russian forces elsewhere, UK analysts said. Read also: Russia loses 3,500 troops in Kherson Oblast in one month Estonian military Developments in occupied Kherson Oblast Since mid-October, U.S.-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War or ISW has been reporting about Ukrainian forces presence on the left bank of Kherson Oblast. Read also: Russian forces attempt to prevent Ukrainian troops from gaining foothold in Kherson Oblast ISW report Reports indicated a breakthrough across the Dnipro River into the Russian-occupied part of the oblast near the town of Oleshky. In late October, ISW reported a Ukrainian advance towards Krynky. On Nov. 10, the think tank subsequently reported that the Ukrainian foothold could have expanded, cutting into the important road from Nova Kakhovka to Oleshky. It was suggested that judging by the reaction of Russian war correspondents, the fighting at Krynky could be more significant than similar raids made by Ukrainian forces earlier. Andriy Yermak, the head of the Presidents Office, confirmed on Nov. 13 that the Ukrainian Armed Forces had gained a foothold in the Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast on the left bank of the Dnipro River. 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 An Arctic blast is set to bring sub-zero temperatures and snow showers to parts of the UK this week. Temperatures are expected to plummet to as low as minus six degrees across rural parts of Scotland overnight Friday into Saturday. The Met Office said there is a chance of snow on Thursday on the highest ground of northern and eastern Scotland where a dusting from scattered showers is possible. The Met Office forecasts heavy rain and gales across northern regions but it is expected to stay largely dry across the rest of the country and Wales. Aidan McGivern, a meteorologist at the Met Office, said: By the end of the week we are going to see cold winds arrive from the North. Its going to feel colder this week and there will be some snow showers over, mainly, hills of northern Scotland. But elsewhere, with high pressure in place, it is going to be mostly dry on Friday and into the start of the weekend. He said Friday would be a chillier day with winds bringing showers to northern Scotland and parts of North Wales. Although those showers will be falling as sleet and snow over the hills of northern Scotland, perhaps to lower levels in the far north, for the vast majority despite the chill in the air, its a dry, its a bright day. As we head into the weekend it is a continuation of that theme, he added. Those showers falling as snow mostly over northern hills, but widespread snow very unlikely, and for the vast majority its just dry, crisp, bright autumn weather. Chris England, a Sky News weather producer, added that the Arctic air will spread to most of Britain over the next couple of days, behind a band of mostly light and patchy rain, bringing very strong winds and a scattering of hail and snow showers to the North and east. He added: High pressure following from the west will settle things down later on Friday, with an extensive frost developing overnight. Temperatures will mostly be a degree or two [Celsius] above or below freezing, but some sheltered northern parts may well go a few degrees lower. It comes as the Environment Agency issues two flood warnings and 37 flood alerts. Local flooding is possible from groundwater across parts of the South of England from Wednesday through to Friday. Local coastal flooding is possible but not expected on Friday for the Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex coasts. 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. The Verkhovna Rada (Ukraines Parliament) has appealed to the new Sejm and the Senate of Poland, in which it called on parliamentarians to immediately find ways out of the situation on the Ukrainian-Polish border. Source: Resolution No. 10243, which was supported by 284 MPs at the plenary session of the Ukrainian parliament on Wednesday 22 November, reports European Pravda with reference to the website of the Verkhovna Rada Quote: "Good neighbourliness in relations between Ukraine and Poland is extremely important for us in conditions of an extremely difficult social and economic situation in our country, caused by the destruction or damage to a significant part of the industrial potential of Ukraine due to the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation in Ukraine," the explanatory note to the draft resolution says. Details: Despite this, the MPs note, the situation has become more complicated due to the blocking of checkpoints on the Ukrainian-Polish border. "Blocking the movement of goods across the border will inevitably lead to a deterioration of the already difficult social and economic situation in Ukraine, and will complicate the possibility of restoring the economy of our country," the appeal says. "Under such circumstances, it is necessary to immediately find ways out of the situation on the Ukrainian-Polish border," they said. Background: Earlier, it was reported that the Polish hauliers strike at the border with Ukraine threatens to spread to a group of farmers who plan to join the protest at the Medyka checkpoint. Since 6 November, Polish hauliers have continued to block three other border crossings with Ukraine: Yahodyn-Dorogusk, Krakivets-Korczowa, and Rava-Ruska-Hrebenne. The Ministry of Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine, together with a number of other organisations, has set up a hub to help Ukrainian drivers blocked on the border with Poland. Support UP or become our patron! FILE PHOTO: The San Antonio tradition rings in the holiday season with a one-hour parade following this year's "Holiday Stories" theme. The parade, which includes 28 illuminated floats, will begin at the Tobin Center the day after Thanksgiving at 6 p.m. Carlos Javier Sanchez / Contributor FILE PHOTO: The San Antonio tradition rings in the holiday season with a one-hour parade following this year's "Holiday Stories" theme. The parade, which includes 28 illuminated floats, will begin at the Tobin Center the day after Thanksgiving at 6 p.m. Carlos Javier Sanchez / Contributor The start of the holiday season kicks off Friday as the 42nd annual Ford Holiday River Parade brings holiday cheer to the River Walk. The San Antonio tradition rings in the holiday season with a parade following this year's "Holiday Stories" theme. The parade, which includes 28 illuminated floats, will begin at the Tobin Center the day after Thanksgiving at 6 p.m. On the last float, guests can expect a visit from Santa Claus himself. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Lining the River Walk will be 100,000 lights, the equivalent of 2,250 strands. The lights will turn on at 7 p.m. and stay on every evening until the weekend following New Year's Day. The parade will make its way through several areas downtown. It will also be televised at 7 p.m. at the Arneson River Theatre. An online map of the parade's full route is available on the River Walk's website, where guests purchase their tickets. Tickets for parade seating can only be purchased online and cost between $12.50 and $40. Standing room-only tickets are also available for purchase. Each ticket will have an assigned gate. Directions to each gate are also online. Advertisement Article continues below this ad However, if tickets aren't an option, there will be several free viewing areas on the East Side of the River Walk between Pecan Street and Richmond Avenue on a first-come, first-serve basis. Bringing your own chair is recommended. Ukrainian troops attacked a meeting of Russian soldiers who had gathered near the village of Kumachove in Donetsk Oblast for a show on the occasion of the Russian Missile Forces and Artillery Day on 19 November. Source: BBC Ukraine; Russian media Details: Russian media, without specifying the circumstances, reported on 21 November the death of actress Polina Menshikh, who performed for the Russian military that day. "Russian actress and theatre director Polina Menshikh was killed during shelling in Donbas. This was reported by the Portal theatre studio, where Menshikh staged one of their musicals," Kremlin-aligned news agency RIA Novosti wrote. screenshot On the evening of 22 November, Ukraine's Ground Forces posted a video, which allegedly recorded the moment of the attack on the hall. In the video, Menshikh's performance can be seen, and an explosion can be heard. In an interview with BBC Ukraine, a representative of the ground forces confirmed the reports of the strike that day. At the same time, Robert Brovdi, the commander of the Ptakhy Madiara Aerial Reconnaissance unit of the 59th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, posted that Ukrainian troops attacked Russia's 810th Guards Marines Brigade on 19 November, when its servicemen were being decorated with medals during the Missile Forces and Artillery Day celebration. He added that this was retaliation for the attack on the personnel of the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, as a result of which 19 soldiers were killed. "Retaliation: the 810th, you feel the pain, we know for sure. [This is] for our boys. For the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade based in Zakarpattia Oblast. Carefully follow the obituaries, especially in channels from the occupied Crimea. And [the news] about the main hospital named after [Ukrainian surgeon Mykola] Burdenko," he wrote. Brovdi said that 25 Russian soldiers were killed, and more than a hundred were injured in the attack. Officially, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has not yet commented on the statement about the attack on the 810th Brigade of the Russian marines. Background: On 4 November, it became known that the Russian army launched an attack on the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade in a frontline village in Zaporizhzhia. The soldiers were gathered together in one place for an awards ceremony on the occasion of Rocket Forces and Artillery Day [3 November ed.]. The 128th Mountain Assault Brigade based in Zakarpattia Oblast confirmed the deaths of 19 soldiers due to the Russian attack during celebrations near the frontline on 3 November. On the evening of 4 November, Ukraine's Defence Minister Rustem Umierov instructed the Main Inspectorate of the Ministry of Defence to conduct a full investigation into the tragedy. Support UP or become our patron! The following is the Nov. 21, 2023 edition of our Ukraine Business Roundup weekly newsletter. To get the biggest news in business and tech from Ukraine directly in your inbox, subscribe here. Persisting protests Polish protests blocking three major Poland-Ukraine border crossings have now stretched into their third week, negotiations are going nowhere, and there is an increasing risk that the protests are going to spread to other EU countries that border Ukraine. If you havent been following closely, on Nov. 7 a group of Polish truckers began blocking Ukrainian haulers wanting to enter Poland. They claim the high number of Ukrainian drivers entering Poland spurred by an EU decision to suspend transport permits for Ukraine last year is undercutting local businesses. And a quick resolution appears unlikely, writes reporter Dominic Culverwell in his latest article for the Kyiv Independent. As the Ukrainian side repudiates the Polish protesters' complaints, analysts in Poland say that there is likely broad support in Poland for reinstating EU permits and restoring a level playing field. Ukrainian officials and industry representatives vehemently deny the protesters claims. Ukraines Ambassador to Poland Vasyl Zvarych has called the protests a stab in the back, while Volodymyr Balin, vice president of the Association of International Car Carriers of Ukraine (AsMAP) told the Kyiv Independent that he is categorically against the fact that we are undermining local businesses in Poland. Meanwhile, many Polish companies are likely to share the same sentiment as the Polish truckers, says Sebastian Stodolak, vice-president of the Warsaw Enterprise Institute think tank. The protesters' demands boil down to restoring the system of protection of the EU's internal market against external competition. Referring to the need to introduce fair rules, a level playing field, and symmetry in relations with Ukraine is very appealing to citizens. Read the full article here. A woman passes by PrivatBank 's office in downtown Kyiv on Dec. 15, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov) Case closed A Ukrainian appeals court ruled this past week that you cant just claim the countrys top bank after the government took it away from you and invested years and billions to undo the damage from your money laundering scheme. Especially when youre sanctioned, in jail on fraud charges, possibly stripped of Ukrainian citizenship, and by the way, U.S. justice really wants a word. Yes, its another setback for old Ihor Kolomoisky, once Ukraines most flamboyant oligarch, whom most journalists couldnt help but enjoy covering. Hes not so much fun anymore, now that hes sitting under a half-dozen different swords of Damocles and knows better than to open his mouth. The sixth appellate courts decision reverses a 2019 ruling that found PrivatBanks 2016 nationalization illegal. Since then, Zelenskys party passed a law that seized banks cant be given back regardless the best you can hope for is money equal to a fraction of your assets. Kolomoisky and PrivatBank are also fighting pitched court battles over assets in the U.K., the U.S., Israel, Cyprus, and Switzerland. Years ago, the prospect of his victory seemed like a much bigger concern. But Kolomoisky is a shadow of his former self. We dont know how hard hes going to get punished when the day comes. But hes certainly not getting back any of his old wealth and power. Still, despite allegedly stealing billions of dollars, he left something of value in this world. For Ukraine, PrivatBank is a top economic contributor, success story, and poster child for the feasibility of reforms. This section was brought to you by Kyiv Independent reporter Igor Kossov. Insurance for ships A ship in the Black Sea near Odesa, Ukraine on Nov. 9, 2023. (Yulii Zozulia / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images) Ukraine launched an insurance program with broker Marsh McLennan and Lloyds of London on Nov. 14 to cover grain vessels leaving Ukraine's deep-sea port, just days after a foreign cargo ship was struck by a Russian missile. Ukraines first Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the $50 million ship insurance fund would protect ships against military risks. The program will start after signing all the necessary contracts with the parties. We expect that this may happen in the coming week," Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko told Forbes Ukraine. Forbes also reported, however, that the details around how exactly the insurance program will work in practice are still unclear, with the Economy Ministry so far not providing specifics. The program envisions that the risk will be shared between insurers and local banks, Deputy Minister of Economy Volodymyr Kuzyo told Forbes. Ukraines Export Credit Agency, state-owned Ukrgasbank, Ukreximbank, and a pool of 14 English insurance companies are involved in the fund. The Export Credit Agency said it has already received about $22 million from Ukraines reserve fund, according to Forbes. Ukrainian state banks will be able to provide letters of credit to the shipowner, which will be a guarantee of covering possible damage. According to the agreements, British insurers are ready to provide the remaining $30 million in the event of an emergency, a person familiar with the agreement process who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Forbes. Help from Japan Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal greets the Japanese delegation at a meeting on Ukraine's economic recovery in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Nov. 20, 2023. (Ukrainian government's press service) A delegation of Japanese officials and business representatives, including Foreign Minister Kiyoto Tsuji, Industry Minister Kazuchika Iwata, and members of Keidanren Japan's largest business lobby arrived in Kyiv on Nov. 20 to meet with Ukrainian officials ahead of a reconstruction conference Japan will host. In the words of Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who met with the group yesterday, "Japan's experience in post-war reconstruction could be useful for the economic recovery of Ukraine." The delegation was in Kyiv "to directly hear the needs of the Ukrainian side, formulate concrete projects with the Ukrainian side, and to work together with the public and private sectors to provide assistance to Ukraine," according to the Japanese Industry Ministry. Japan will host a conference promoting Ukraine's economic reconstruction on Feb. 19 next year, as agreed between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in May during a G7 summit. Following the meeting with the prime minister, Shmyhals office announced that Japan plans to allocate 160 million euros ($175 million) to finance Ukraine's economic recovery projects. "Ukraine is interested in creating joint ventures (with Japan), especially in the processing industry. Cooperation in the fields of agriculture, metalworking, mechanical engineering, critical raw materials, and IT is important for us," Shmyhal said. Artificial intelligence (Getty Images) Since artificial intelligence (AI) is all over the news right now after the board at OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, unexpectedly fired CEO Sam Altman, I thought Id bring you some Ukraine-related AI news. Flyer One Ventures, an early-stage VC firm with roots in Ukraine, was among the investors who participated in a $1 million funding round backing the NYCbased startup Scalestack, whose tool makes it easier for businesses to collect data online on existing and potential customers with the help of AI. The round also saw participation from Ripple Ventures, Forum Ventures, the Founders Network Fund, and notable angel investors, including leaders in sales ops, serial B2B entrepreneurs, and executives at Salesforce. Flyer One Ventures was the only Ukrainian investor. The startup was co-founded in 2022 by Elio Narciso. Before Scalestack, Narciso sold two other companies he founded, ad-tech platform Mobave and mobile content company Zero. He was also previously director of business development at Amazon Web Services. "The AI sales market is projected at $93 billion by 2032. Currently, however, most companies in this industry offer tools aimed at the bottom of the sales funnel, which means businesses still have to manually enter prospect data into the system," Vital Laptenok, general partner at Flyer One Ventures, said in a comment for this newsletter. "Scalestack is fixing this discrepancy. By automating the top of the sales funnel, it helps sales representatives be much more productive during the first critical stage targeting. This, along with the impressive experience of the co-founders, strategic hiring, and a clear vision, were the main reasons why we decided to support the team," Laptenok said. What else is happening Energy giant DTEK calls for more air defense systems as winter looms. Ukraine needs more powerful air defense systems, such as Patriot and IRIS-T air defense systems, to better protect its critical infrastructure from Russian attacks, Maksym Timchenko, CEO of Ukraine's largest private energy company DTEK, said on Nov. 17. In an interview with Reuters in Warsaw, Timchenko said his country needs more of these Western-made systems for the safer operation of power plants as Russia continues to target energy sites in Ukraine. New natural gas deposit discovered in Carpathians, Naftogaz says. Naftogaz, Ukraine's state-owned oil and gas giant, said on Nov. 17 that a new natural gas deposit was discovered in the Carpathians, offering what could be a promising outlook for Ukraine's domestic gas production amid war. Naftogaz's production branch Ukrgasvydobuvannya discovered a well in a field that was thought to be depleted in the western Zakarpattia Oblast, according to a statement published on the company's website. Economic Security Bureau: 'More than 20% of grain exported through high-risk channels.' More than 20% of grain exported over the past nine months went through black market or risky informal channels, Ukraine's Bureau of Economic Security said on Nov. 16. The total export value of that grain is Hr 144 billion ($3.9 billion). One of the primary forms of these high-risk channels involves grain that is sold for cash to recently created shell companies, often with falsified documents, which is then resold several times through different buyers. Through this method, grain can be sold without customs documents and also without paying tax to the Ukrainian government. Forbes: Canada lifts sanctions on Russian billionaire following lawsuit. Canada's foreign ministry agreed to remove sanctions against Russian billionaire businessman Oleg Boyko after he filed a lawsuit, Forbes Russia said on Nov. 16. Boyko was originally sanctioned related to Russia's war on Ukraine, but the specific reasons were not made public. He is sanctioned by Ukraine for doing business in sectors of the Russian economy that help generate funding for the war effort, Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) wrote on its website. Media: Ukrainian oligarch Akhmetov borrowed $400 million from Russian bank. Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov transferred liability for a $400 million loan from Sberbank to a Cyprus-based subsidiary through his ownership of the Ukrainian energy giant DTEK, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) said on Nov. 14, citing information obtained from leaked documents dubbed "Cyprus Confidential." In response to the investigation, Akhmetov issued a statement to ICIJ saying that the loans provided by Sberbank and others before Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 were "standard practice for Ukrainian borrowers." Subscribe to the Newsletter Ukraine Business Roundup Subscribe Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. A Ukrainian soldier smokes as a snow-covered Leopard 2 tank passes by in Donetsk - Anatolii Stepanov The Ukrainian army is facing a difficult winter as it looks to defend its lines in freezing temperatures, Volodymyr Zelensky has said. Difficult weather, difficult defence on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Donetsk and Avdiivka fronts, he wrote on Telegram. General Oleksander Tarnavskyi, who commands Ukraines southern forces, said there has been a surge in Russian attacks in the south in recent days. Temperatures have dropped to minus five degrees celsius this week and are set to get even colder over the coming months. The frontlines are not expected to move significantly until the spring brings warmer climes. Russia is expected to launch another winter bombardment of Ukraines power grid, starving its civilians of heating and electricity. Follow the latest updates below and join the conversation in the comments section. 03:26 PM GMT Thats it for today Thank you for following our live coverage of the war in Ukraine today. Ill be back again tomorrow morning to bring you all the latest developments. 03:06 PM GMT Today's headlines Russia is unable to suppress Ukraines advance on the left bank of the Dnipro river, the ISW said Volodymyr Zelensky hailed German military aid for saving many lives in Ukraine Two bodies were found in the rubble of a hospital struck by Russian missiles Iran could send ballistic missiles to Moscow, the US warned At least 25 Russian soldiers and an actress serenading them were killed in a Ukrainian Himars strike at an awards ceremony on Sunday, reports claimed Viktor Orban threatened to block Ukraines attempt to join the European Union Vladimir Putin told the G20 that it is time to consider how to stop the tragedy of the war in Ukraine 02:51 PM GMT Russia protests after Finland displays damaged tank Russia has issued a formal diplomatic protest after Finland placed a damaged Russian tank on display near its parliament. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Helsinki of Russophobia. The T-72B3 tank was put on display on Saturday by two pro-Ukraine associations. Tensions have soared between Russia and Finland in recent weeks over a surge in illegal migration which Helsinki has accused Moscow of deliberately fomenting. 02:35 PM GMT Time to consider stopping tragedy of war, says Putin Vladimir Putin has told the G20 that it is time to consider how to stop the tragedy of the war in Ukraine. The Russian president denied at a virtual meeting of the group that Moscow had ever declined to participate in peace talks. Yes, of course, military actions are always a tragedy, he said. And of course, we should think about how to stop this tragedy. By the way, Russia has never refused peace talks with Ukraine. Mr Putins remarks come just a day after Rodion Miroshnik, Russias ambassador-at-large, said it could not co-exist with Volodymyr Zelenskys toxic Ukrainian government. 01:31 PM GMT Russia is ready for peace talks, Putin says Vladimir Putin has told the G20 that Russia is ready for talks to end the war in Ukraine, describing it as a tragedy. The Russian president addressed the bloc virtually on Wednesday. Well bring you more as we get it. 01:25 PM GMT In pictures: Snow in Kyiv A woman walks past destroyed Russian military vehicles blanketed in snow in downtown Kyiv - Roman Pilipey The memorial wall of Ukrainian soldiers killed since Russia's invasion - Roman Pilipey 01:12 PM GMT Relations with the US could break at any moment, says Russia Relations between Russia and the US could break at any moment, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. She told reporters at her weekly briefing that Washingtons actions could lead to unpredictable consequences. 12:56 PM GMT Russian assaults surge in southern Ukraine Russian assaults in southern Ukraine have surged, the general commanding Ukraines forces in the south has said. General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said Russia has carried out 29 airstrikes and nearly 1,000 artillery barrages in the past two days. But he insisted they have made no gains and suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Ukrainians. He added that Russia has lost 500 casualties, three tanks and three ammunition depots. 12:39 PM GMT Orban threatens to block Ukraine's EU membership Viktor Orban has threatened to block Ukraines attempt to join the European Union. The Hungarian prime minister has written to European Council president Charles Michel saying that EU leaders should not endorse the European Commissions recommendation of Ukraines accession when they meet next month. The European Council is not in a position to agree on the future of the enlargement process unless a consensus on our future strategy towards Ukraine is found, he said. They must have a frank and open discussion on the feasibility of the EUs strategic objectives in Ukraine which presently aim to achieve the military victory of Ukraine and the military defeat of Russia with the intention to induce fundamental political changes in Russia, he added. 12:24 PM GMT Ukrainian drones proving key to defence of Dnipro bridgehead, says MoD Ukrainian drones are proving key to its defence of the bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnipro river, the Ministry of Defence has said. In its latest defence intelligence briefing, the MoD said the battle will be considered highly unfortunate by Russian leaders. The ground fighting has been characterised by confused, dismounted infantry combat and artillery exchanges in complex, wooded terrain, it said. Ukraine has made particularly effective use of small attack uncrewed aerial vehicles, while the Russian Air Force is conducting significant numbers of sorties in support of frontline troops, predominantly launching munitions from beyond the range of Ukraines air defences. It added: Russia withdrew from the west bank of the Dnipro River a year ago, almost certainly aiming to hold Ukrainian forces west of the river, keep the sector quiet, and free up Russian forces elsewhere. 12:11 PM GMT EU approves new 1.3bn Ukraine aid package The European Union has approved a new 1.3bn ($1.63bn) aid package for Ukraine. The funds are the 10th payment so far in a 15.7bn ($19.6bn) programme of macrofinancial support. Ukraine uses the aid to help pay for public servants, pensions and essential services such as hospitals, schools and housing for the displaced. 11:52 AM GMT Pictured: Actress killed in Ukrainian Himars strike The death of actress Polina Menshikh, 40, has been confirmed to Russias state-run TASS news agency by regional officials. Polina Menshikh was killed by Ukrainian shelling while performing for the Russian military in the Moscow-occupied Donetsk region 11:25 AM GMT Watch: Reported Himars strike on Russian awards ceremony A video allegedly showing the moment of a HIMARS strike on the village of Kumachovo in Donetsk region (controlled by the "DPR") has appeared online It is reported that on November 19, a holiday concert for Russian military personnel was held in Starobeshevo district in the local pic.twitter.com/q1AYyzUMSQ NEXTA (@nexta_tv) November 22, 2023 11:07 AM GMT Iran could send ballistic missiles to Moscow, warns US Iran could send Russia ballistic missiles to use in the war against Ukraine, the US has warned. Tehran has already supplied the Russian army with drones, bombs and artillery shells but may now be preparing to go a step further. National security spokesperson John Kirby said Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu had been shown a number of ballistic missiles when he visited Iran in September. We are therefore concerned that Iran is considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles now for use in Ukraine, he said. In return for that support, Russia has been offering Tehran unprecedented defence cooperation, including on missiles, electronics and air defence. Missiles will be key to Russias expected bombardment of Ukraines energy infrastructure this winter. 10:53 AM GMT Poland charges 16 with spying for Russia Poland has charged 16 foreign residents after they confessed to spying for Russia. Intelligence chief Mariusz Kaminski said the spy ring plotted acts of sabotage and gathered information on deliveries of military equipment to Ukraine. Their assigned tasks included identifying military facilities and critical infrastructure, monitoring and documenting trains transporting military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and preparing for train derailments, his office said in a statement. They are also accused of spreading propaganda to turn Polish public opinion against Ukraine. Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said on X, formerly Twitter, that the accused are each facing up to 10 years in prison. 10:23 AM GMT Migrants freezing on Arctic border with Finland, says Russia A group of 300 migrants is facing a humanitarian crisis on an Arctic border crossing between Russia and Finland, a Russian regional governor has said. Andrey Chibis, governor of Russias Murmansk region, blamed Finland for refusing to let the group cross its Salla border checkpoint. Finland has accused Russia of deliberately fomenting a surge of African and Middle Eastern migrants in retaliation for its accession to Nato earlier this year. About 300 people from more than 10 foreign countries have been waiting not for hours, but for days to cross the border, Mr Chibis said. The crossing is one of two that Finland said on Saturday would remain open to asylum seekers after closing four others. 09:44 AM GMT 'We are getting closer to Iran', says Kremlin after US missiles claim The Kremlin has said it is developing relations with Iran but declined to comment on the USs specific claim that Tehran may soon supply it with ballistic missiles. We are developing relations with Iran, including in the field of military-technical cooperation, but we do not comment on this information, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Tehran has already supplied Russia with drones, bombs and artillery shells. 09:27 AM GMT Two bodies found in rubble of hospital hit by Russia Two bodies have been found in the rubble of a hospital in eastern Ukraine that was struck by Russian missiles on Monday. Ukraines state emergency service believes another person may still be trapped at the hospital in Selydove in the Donetsk region. The citys hospital was hit by multiple missiles late on 20 November, damaging two buildings and wounding at least six. Rescue operations are continuing. 09:09 AM GMT German aid has 'saved many lives', says Zelensky Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed German military aid for saving many lives in Ukraine. Mr Zelensky thanked chancellor Olaf Scholz in a post X, formerly Twitter, a day after Germany announced a new 1.1bn aid package. Thank you for your words and deeds to support Ukraine and all Ukrainians, he said. German assistance has saved many lives. Together, we are strengthening and protecting our Europe. 08:48 AM GMT American public's support for funding Ukraine increases, poll suggests The American publics support funding the war in Ukraine has increased, a poll has suggested. The poll found 38 per cent of American adults believe current spending is about the right amount, up from 31 per cent in October. The proportion saying too much is being spent has also decreased, from 52 per cent to 45 per cent. The poll of 1,239 adults by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research nevertheless shows the stark opposition of many Americans to the aid being sent to Ukraine. 08:30 AM GMT Ukraine unveils new homegrown drone Ukraine has unveiled a new drone which it has developed itself and is almost impossible to jam. Dubbed Backfire, the drone has a range of 21 miles (35km) and has already flown more than 50 trial combat missions, digital transformation minister Mykhailo Fedorov said. We continue to increase the number of drones at the front, he said. Ukraine also unveiled its Beaver long-distance attack drone project earlier this week. The $700million development aims to produce a drone with a range of up to 497 miles (800km). 08:15 AM GMT Russia scaling back Avdiivka assault, says Ukraine Russia is launching fewer ground and air assaults on the beleaguered Ukrainian city of Avdiivka but is not abandoning its plans to take it. Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said eight attacks were repelled on Tuesday as the month-long battle for the city continues. Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles, he added. The invaders are not abandoning their plans to surround Avdiivka. Russia has committed a large number of men and materiel in a bid to take the city, which is in the eastern Donetsk region. 08:01 AM GMT ISW: Russia 'unable to suppress' Ukraine's Dnipro advance Russia is unable to suppress Ukraines advance on the left bank of the Dnipro river, the Institute for the Study of War think tank has said. Russian milbloggers continue to acknowledge a Ukrainian presence in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast and complain that Russian forces are unable to suppress Ukrainian operations in the area, it said. One blogger is reported to have claimed 76 Russian soldiers were killed in a single Ukrainian strike on 17 November, while another said there are three Ukrainian drones for each Russian soldier fighting near the village of Krynky. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Russian officials are struggling to subdue Russian hysteria around Ukrainian operations in the east (left) bank, the ISW added. 07:50 AM GMT American UN ambassador compares Putin to Stalin Vladimir Putin uses food as a weapon of war just like Joseph Stalin, the US ambassador to the United Nations has said. Like Stalin, Putin has used food as a weapon of war, Linda Thomas-Greenfield said. And like Stalin, Putin has inflicted hunger and death on Ukraine. She made the remarks a week after Global Rights Compliance, a human rights law firm, published a report which accused the Russian president of planning to starve Ukrainians and target food infrastructure in the run up to the invasion in February 2022. We must not let Russia continue to weaponize food and inflict so much pain and suffering on Ukraine by attacking Ukraines critical infrastructure as the cold, dark winter approaches, Ms Thomas-Greenfield said. 07:39 AM GMT US denies cutting shell deliveries by 30 per cent The US has denied reports that artillery shell deliveries to Ukraine dropped by more than 30 per cent since Hamass attack on Israel on October 7. American broadcaster ABC News quoted the remarks from an unnamed Ukrainian official. Look, I would push back on that assertion, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters. We have been able to supply Ukraine with what it needs during its counteroffensive, and we will continue to supply Ukraine with what it needs as it heads as we head into winter. 07:34 AM GMT Ukraine downs all Russian drones launched overnight Ukraine downed all 14 drones launched by Russian forces overnight, its air force has said. There have been no reports of casualties or major damage so far after the attack by Iranian-made Shahed drones. The air force also said a Russian X-22 missile was fired on the Zaporizhzhia region but fell into a field, missing its target. 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. The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, has supported presidential Resolution No. 10271, which proposes sectoral sanctions against Russia and Belarus in the military industry to last for the next 50 years. Source: Yaroslav Zheleznyiak, Ukrainian MP 304 of his colleagues supported the resolution. The resolution's author was President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The document is based on the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of 20 November 2023. The president proposes to introduce such sanctions: prohibit transactions with goods and services with residents of the Russian Federation and Belarus, in particular, those conducted through citizens of other states; stop fulfilling economic and financial obligations in favour of residents of Russia and Belarus for operations with military and dual-use goods; prohibit the transfer of technologies and intellectual property rights to residents of Russia and Belarus; do not register or accredit collective management organisations founded by residents of Russia and Belarus; terminate joint projects and industrial programmes in security and defence, the participants of which are residents of Russia and Belarus, as long as these programmes and projects concern military and dual-use goods. Note: In August, the EU Council accepted sanctions against Belarus, which were imposed for its support of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation. Under the measures taken, the ban on the export of a number of critical goods and technologies that contribute to strengthening Belarus's military and technological potential will be expanded. Support UP or become our patron! Ukraine has unveiled their latest drone technology capable of flying up to 35 kilometers behind enemy lines while resisting Russia's electronic jamming, Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced on Nov. 20. The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), dubbed "Backfire," will help Ukraine "hit Russian artillery, logistics hubs, enemy storage points, and command posts," Fedorov said. The UAV, equipped with a power GPS antenna, "is almost impossible to jam," and virtually resistant to location and coordinate tracking, according to Federov. Plans for mass production are underway, and the drone is set to join Ukraine's existing fleet of UAVs in combat after successfully completing over 50 missions in recent months. Earlier this week, Ukraine revealed a parallel development aimed at achieving air superiority and advancing drone technology: a long-range attack drone, named the "Beaver," capable of flying up to 800 kilometers. In the first eight months of 2023, the "Beaver" and other UAVs in Ukraine's arsenal have caused more than $900 million in damages to Russian forces, striking targets in Crimea and other parts of occupied Ukraine, as well as in Russia. Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukrainian drones have reportedly reached locations as far as Moscow and other areas hundreds of kilometers away from Ukraine's border. While Moscow routinely attributes these attacks to Ukraine, Kyiv rarely takes direct responsibility for strikes on Russian soil. Read also: How Russias homegrown Lancet drone became so feared in Ukraine Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Key developments on Nov. 22: Germany delivers over 20 Marder armored vehicles to Ukraine EU sends tranche of 1.5 billion euros in macro-financial assistance to Ukraine Military reports destroying almost 80% of Russian equipment near Avdiivka North Macedonia secretly trains Ukrainian soldiers Ukrainian military: Dozens of Russian marines killed at award ceremony Military: Russia 'dramatically' increasing assaults, airstrikes on southern front Germany handed over 20 Marder armored vehicles, a Wisent-1 demining tank, 2,380 155mm shells, and other aid in its latest delivery to Ukraine, the German government said on Nov. 22. Berlin previously provided Kyiv with 80 Marder infantry fighting vehicles drawn from military and industry stocks. The delivery also included five Warthog ambulance carriers, two other ambulances, two 8x8 Hx81 tractors with two semi-trailers, and nine transport vehicles of various types. Ukraine received 2,428 crypto phones. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced a $1.4-billion defense aid package for Ukraine during his visit to Kyiv on Nov. 21. This new package includes four IRIS-T SLM air defense systems, 20,000 155mm shells, and anti-tank mines, Pistorius said. The same day, the Lithuanian Defense Ministry said it delivered 3 million units of 7.62x51mm small arms ammunition, remote detonation systems, and winter equipment to the Ukrainian military. Lithuania on Nov. 10 announced it had supplied Ukraine with National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS). Meanwhile, the Bulgarian parliament on Nov. 22 ratified an agreement to provide armored transport vehicles to Ukraine, together with corresponding armament and spare parts, the Bulgarian News Agency reported. The agreement between the Bulgarian Interior Ministry and the Ukrainian Defense Ministry was supported by 131 Bulgarian lawmakers, with 49 voting against and one abstaining. The deal was signed in Sofia on Aug. 8 and in Kyiv on Nov. 13. The vehicles in question are no longer needed by the country's Interior Ministry, the news agency reported, without specifying the type or the number of the vehicles. In addition, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called on Ukraine's allies during the 17th Ramstein-format meeting on Nov. 22 to strengthen Ukraine's air defenses ahead of the coming winter months. Russia launched a mass wave of attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure during the fall and winter of 2022-2023, causing regular blackouts. Read also: Bulgarias Soviet stockpiles and large defense industry may be key to Ukraines success EU sends 1.5 billion euros in macro-financial assistance to Ukraine The European Union has sent the latest 1.5 billion euro ($1.6 billion) installment of its macro-financial assistance package to Ukraine, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Nov. 22. The tranche is part of an 18 billion euro ($19.6 billion) support package for 2023, known as the Macro-Financial Assistance (MFA) package for Ukraine, which is disbursed in monthly tranches. The package aims to assist Ukraine with paying for essential public services, maintaining macroeconomic stability, and restoring critical infrastructure destroyed by Russian attacks. "Europe's funding has supported Ukraine's economic stability and public services since the start of Russias war," von der Leyen said on X. EU support to Ukraine "has now reached 85 billion ($92.7 billion)," with "more to come." The European Parliament voted in October to endorse a proposal for a $53 billion financing package for Ukraine's recovery until 2027. Meanwhile, the European Union has prepared a framework to provide Ukraine with long-term security assistance, including the continued provision of weapons, training of Ukrainian troops, and support for Ukraine's domestic defense industry, Bloomberg reported on Nov. 21, citing internal EU documents. The proposed measures will be discussed with EU ambassadors in the upcoming week and with senior EU leadership in December, according to the report. The proposed G7 security guarantees would entail explicit and long-lasting obligations, as well as bolster Ukraine's ability to resist Russian aggression. They would also cover sanctions, financial aid, and post-war reconstruction. The proposal comes as it appears likely the EU will fail to deliver on its pledge of one million shells to Ukraine by March 2024. Weapons provisions from the EU would continue to operate under The European Peace Facility, in which member states are reimbursed for military aid sent to Ukraine. Read also: Opinion: The geopolitics of EU enlargement North Macedonia secretly trains Ukrainian soldiers North Macedonia completed the training of the first group of Ukrainian soldiers, a process kept confidential until now for security reasons, Balkan Insight reported on Nov. 22, citing the country's Defense Minister Slavjanka Petrovska. The Balkan country will continue the training throughout 2024 and "for as long as there is a need for it," Petrovska said in a comment for the national broadcaster Macedonian Television on Nov. 22. The minister said that the instructions took place in facilities owned by the North Macedonian military, but she did not clarify the type of training or the number of Ukrainian soldiers that went through it. A NATO member since 2020, North Macedonia has provided Ukraine with a number of Soviet-era military hardware as it is restocking with Western equipment. The supplied aid includes four Su-25 aircraft, T-72 tanks, small arms, munitions, and other support. The country's government also reportedly approved the provision of combat helicopters earlier this year. Over 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have already received training in partner countries since the start of the full-scale invasion, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said on Nov. 21. Read also: Opinion: Russias defeat must be democracies goal On the battlefield Russia deployed several columns of armored vehicles during unsuccessful attacks near Avdiivka on Nov. 22, losing almost 80% of equipment, the Tavria group spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said. Russian forces continue trying to surround Avdiivka, launching 13 unsuccessful attacks against the front-line town and settlements on its flanks, Shtupun said today on television. According to the spokesperson, Russian forces are dealing with desertion, and seven Russian soldiers surrendered to Ukrainian troops on Nov. 21. 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. Shtupun warned on Nov. 18 that Russia is preparing to launch the third wave of attacks against Avdiivka. Russia's onslaught against Avdiivka, the gateway to occupied Donetsk, has 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 Avdiivka. Russia has been trying to capture the small industrial town just north of occupied Donetsk since 2014. On the southeastern front lines, Russian forces have significantly increased assaults and airstrikes, but Ukrainian troops have hindered Russian gains, General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, the commander of the Tavria Group, reported on Nov. 22. Russian forces have carried out 29 airstrikes and almost 1,000 artillery barrages over the past day, according to Tarnavskyi. During their assaults, Russian forces suffered heavy losses, totaling up to 500 casualties, as well as three tanks, several other pieces of military hardware, and three ammunition depots, said Tarnavskyi. The general also said Ukrainian forces continue their offensive in the direction of the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol. Meanwhile, dozens of Russian marines were killed by a Ukrainian strike during an awards ceremony near occupied Starobesheve southeast of Donetsk on Nov. 19, the Ukrainian military reported on Nov. 22. The unit confirmed the strike on the marines and said the number of casualties had been reported by Russian propagandists. Robert Magyar Brovdi, a commander at Ukraine's 59th Brigade, reported on Nov. 21 that 25 Russian marines had been killed and more than 100 had been injured. Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said the strike on the 128th Brigade was the result of basic security measures being ignored, adding that it likely could have been avoided. 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. Ukraine issued an air-raid warning in a range of oblasts due to a threat of Russian attack drones on the evening of 21 November. Reports emerged at around 01:00 on the night of 21-22 November that the drones had been heading to the country's west. The warning was issued in Khmelnytskyi and Ternopil oblasts. The all-clear was given at around 03:00. Source: Ukraines Air Force on Telegram Quote: "Movement of assault UAVs in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in the northern direction." Details: Danger of missile attacks was also reported in Sumy, Poltava, Kharkiv and Donetsk oblasts. Updated: The threat of assault UAVs was announced in Poltava Oblast, and soon after in Chernihiv Oblast. Updated at 23:05: Threat of drone attacks was also reported in Kyiv Oblast. Later, the Air Force reported that drones are on their way from Kyiv Oblast to Zhytomyr Oblast. An air-raid warning was issued in Odesa Oblast. At 00:30, it was reported that a group of Russian UAVs was entering Vinnytsia Oblast from Odesa and Kirovohrad oblasts. alerts.in.ua 00.50 screenshot alerts.in.ua at 00.50 At 00:57, it became known that a group of Russian drones was entering Cherkasy Oblast from Kirovohrad. At 01:04, the military said one group of attack UAVs was moving through the settlement of Nemyriv in Vinnytsia Oblast toward the city of Vinnytsia, and the second group was approaching Zhmerynka flying toward Khmelnytskyi. At 01:14, the Air Force noted that both groups of Russian drones were approaching Khmelnytskyi Oblast. At 01:53, the military warned the residents that a group of Russian drones was moving toward Ternopil Oblast. Another group of attack UAVs in Vinnytsia Oblast was approaching Zhmerynka flying toward Khmelnytskyi. alerts.in.ua 2.30 screenshot alerts.in.ua at 2.30 At 03:04, the all-clear was given in all oblasts. Support UP or become our patron! Ukraine's new ATACMS shook Russia's attack helicopter fleet, but experts say Russian Ka-52 'Alligators' are still a threat to the front lines A Russian Ka-52 "Alligator" military helicopter firing a missile during the International Army Games at the Dubrovichi range outside Ryazan, Russia, in August 2021. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov Ukraine's first ATACMS strike hit Russia's attack-helicopter fleet, destroying several Ka-52 "Alligators." Western intelligence and experts said the strikes might force a relocation of Moscow's key assets. Experts and milbloggers have suggested the attack helicopters are still a threat to the front lines. Ukraine's first strike using its MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, dealt a harsh blow to the Russian attack-helicopter fleet. But more than a month later, Moscow's Ka-52 "Alligators" remain a threat above the battlefield. The October 17 attacks took out an estimated 14 helicopters including several of the formidable Ka-52s at two Russian airbases inside occupied Ukrainian territory. In the aftermath, Western intelligence and experts suggested that the strikes and Kyiv's new arsenal of the powerful ATACMS might force Moscow to pull back its operating bases and vulnerable military assets from the front lines to better protect the helicopters from future Ukrainian assaults. Satellite imagery collected and analyzed by a Ukrainian reserve officer and milblogger who publishes commentary under the pseudonym Tatarigami UA appears to indicate that Russia still maintains a fleet of dozens of operational Ka-52s. In a thread posted on November 17 to X, the platform formally known as Twitter, Tatarigami UA outlined the various bases used by Moscow for its helicopter operations. "Both the Ka-52 and numerous Mi-28 helicopters continue to pose a significant threat to Ukrainian forces along the frontline," the officer wrote in the thread, adding that the ability of the helicopters to use air-to-surface and anti-tank missiles helped extend the reach of the aircraft so they could operate beyond the range of Ukraine's short-range air-defense systems. Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute think tank, backed up the assessment that the attack helicopters were very much in use. "Ka-52 helicopters are still operating, and they are still a serious problem," he wrote on X. A Ka-52 "Alligator" helicopter during testing in Russias Rostov region in January 2022. REUTERS/Sergey Pivovarov "Russia began operating helicopters from FARPs soon after the ATACMS strike," Lee said, referring to what's known as a forward arming (or area) and refueling point, which is a NATO term for a location where aircraft can be resupplied near the front lines. "Just because you don't see videos of them does not mean they are not there," he added. Russia's Ka-52 helicopters proved to be a headache for Ukrainian forces during the much-anticipated summer counteroffensive in southern Ukraine. In June, Britain's defense ministry said Moscow had reinforced its attack helicopter force in the region, and the following month, it said the aircraft had emerged as one of the most influential weapons in the area. "Given that Russian fixed-wing close-air support to date has been extremely poor, Russian defensive lines have become increasingly reliant on rotary-wing support in the face of the Ukrainian offensive," the UK wrote in an intelligence update a few days after the October 17 ATACMS strikes. Ukraine debuted the ATACMS after secretly obtaining the weapon from the US, which marked the culmination of months of advocacy from Kyiv, American lawmakers, and some military experts. The attacks on the Russian airbases that day specifically involved the ATACMS M39 variant, which is a deadly cluster missile that's packed with 950 anti-personnel and anti-materiel, or APAM, M74 bomblets and has a range of about 100 miles. Experts say the M39 variant is effective against unprotected and dispersed targets, like helicopters on a tarmac. Unlike a unitary warhead, the submunitions released mid-flight by the cluster missile can be dispersed and cause lots of damage across a large area. The occasionally indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions makes them particularly deadly for civilian populations, which has led the majority of nations to ban their use. Read the original article on Business Insider Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, supported the draft law on the status of the English language in Ukraine in its first reading, MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak reported on Telegram on Nov. 22. If passed in the second reading and approved by the president, the law would establish English as an official language of international communication in Ukraine. This would require many of those working in the public sector, such as those working in healthcare, transport, education, or the emergency services, as well as civil servants and public officials, to speak English. The vote on the draft law saw 278 lawmakers voting in favor, with none voting against. There were five abstentions, and 37 lawmakers did not vote. The parliamentary committee did, however, exclude a part of the draft law that envisaged the end of dubbing films in the Ukrainian language. This clause, which required all English-language films in Ukrainian cinemas to be shown in English with Ukrainian subtitles by 2027, became the focus of a petition over the summer. "Dubbing has long become a separate cultural phenomenon" that contributes to the popularity of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine, the petition said. Showing films in their original language with subtitles could result in "a noticeable decrease in the number of viewers in cinemas," the destruction of the Ukrainian dubbing industry, and an increase in viewers watching "movies on pirate sites in Russian," the petition said. Now that the clause has been removed from the draft law, those who advocated for the preservation of dubbing can "rest easy," Zhelezniak said. Read also: Study: Ukrainian language dominance is growing on social media Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. Ukraine's President and First Lady Volodomyr and Olena Zelenskyy have spoken to the media about family support, psychological challenges, and how cracking jokes help them through the darkest days of the war. When you see your children, sometimes you want to hold them, you want to support them, the president told UK tabloid newspaper The Sun in an interview published on Nov. 20, admitting that the war has made his family life difficult and meetings with his wife challenging. Read also: First Lady Zelenska breaks down in tears at unveiling of childrens memorial in Kharkiv Sometimes they cry a little bit. When they cry, you cant cry. You have to be strong and you have to teach them also to be strong. If you want to support your children or your wife, or sometimes your parents, you have to show them that everything is okay, sometimes you have to find some jokes about it. Jokes help. olenazelenska_official/Instagram "I have a lot of meetings (with Olena) online and offline. (We have them) more often than at the very beginning of the war. Of course, some security issues have influence on our life." Asked if she was prepared for the role of First Lady during the full-scale war, Zelenskyys wife admitted to lack of preparation for the role and the absence of guidelines on how to perform it. "It's a difficult question, Zelesnka said in an interview with African media, acknowledging the great responsibility that comes with being the wife of the president of a country at war. Read also: Olena Zelenska opens up about challenges of family separation during war, children's struggles I'll try to be as open as possible. Of course, no one is prepared for this. Being the wife of the president of any country is a challenging task that you have to realize for yourself, decide what role you will play. Unfortunately, there are no methodological instructions or textbooks that teach you what to do or what to know." Speaking about her psychological state, the First Lady said that her life currently revolves between two main areas the office and home. "And there are some business trips when there's a reason to go somewhere, but otherwise it's just work and what I do, Zelenska said. Read also: Sean Penn gets emotional while praising Zelenskyy on late night US television to promote Superpower So it's hard to talk about my psychological state. In particular, I take part in the all-Ukrainian mental health program, and it saves me, helps me. I want to see our victory and I don't want to be in a state where I can't be happy about it. So I have to maintain my psychological state. It seems to me that I'm succeeding. The human psyche is built to accept the conditions offered and to adapt over time. It is not easy, and the sense of responsibility does not disappear." 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 President John F. Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connolly arrive at Brooks Air Force Base on Nov. 21, 1963. Witte Museum Collection Sixty years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, one of his Secret Service agents reminisced about the motorcade's arrival in San Antonio just one day before the shooting. Clint Hill, a Secret Service agent from 1958 to 1975, replied to a photo posted on social media, recalling what the atmosphere in San Antonio was like the morning of Nov. 21, 1963. Advertisement Article continues below this ad "Enthusiastic crowds. The beginning of a very long day," he wrote. Hill was part of first lady Jacqueline Kennedy's security detail. He was captured in photos and video just after the shooting, jumping on the back of the car to try to save her. Hill is the author of a book about his experience during the days leading up to and after President Kennedy's death, titled "Five Days in November." The Alamo City was just the beginning of what was supposed to be a two-day, five-city tour around the state to bolster Kennedy's re-election campaign. Advertisement Article continues below this ad "You can see how happy JFK and Mrs. Kennedy were," Hill wrote about the photo of the smiling couple. Photos from the day before the assassination show the nearly 100,000 gathered to see the presidential motorcade as it made its way through downtown to the president's dedication speech for the new medical center at Brooks Air Force Base. Ukraine will continue to sound air raid alerts when it detects takeoffs of Russian MiG-31K jets, which are capable of carrying hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, the spokesman for the Air Force Command, Yuriy Ihnat, told Ukrainian Radio on Nov. 22. The Air Force has not yet received any other instructions on how to notify the population in the event of a MiG-31 takeoff, Ihnat said. Read also: Zelenskyy demands a solution for MiG-31K air raid alerts that paralyze Ukrainian life The air force will continue to issue air raid alerts if there is the danger of attack by drones, missiles, tactical aircraft, or multiple rocket launchers, he said. "The scheme of warning the population will not change for us," the spokesperson said. We are trying to do this as swiftly as possible on the (air forces) official Telegram channel. As for the level of the threat, i.e. what color to draw the map, this will be decided at the highest level. The MiG-31Ks will continue to take off, Ihnat said. "Sometimes there is information that the MiG-31K took off with a missile, sometimes it took off without a missile, and sometimes there is no such information," he said. We cant take any risks here. Read also: Frequent Russian MiG-31K takeoffs explained by Ukrainian Air Force On Nov. 17, at a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Staff, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instructed the Ministry of Defense, the General Staff, and the Cabinet of Ministers to propose solutions so that the takeoffs of the Kinzhal carriers do not paralyze the country for hours. Ihnat noted that while businesses, the economy, and transportation suffer from prolonged air raid alerts, there is danger every time a MiG-31K takes off. The MiG-31K is a specialized variant of Russia's MiG-31 fighter jet equipped to deploy the Kinzhal hypersonic missile. In recent weeks, air raid warnings tied to sorties of the MiG-31K jets have frequently exceeded three to four hours in duration as Russian forces have started conducting mid-air refueling operations. 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 Russia sharply increased the number of assault operations near Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, before Nov. 22, with both sides losing and gaining positions as the fighting rages on, spokesperson for Ukraines Tavria Operational Command Oleksandr Shtupun said on Radio Svoboda on Nov. 22. Russian invasion forces reduced their activity in the sector on Nov. 20. However, on Nov. 21 they increased the number of assaults by about 30%. Twenty-nine airstrikes were recorded during the day. The invaders unsuccessfully stormed east of Novobakhmutivka, as well as in the areas of Avdiivka, Severne and Pervomaiske. There, Ukrainian forces repelled 13 attacks. Near Maryinka and Novomykhailivka, there were 18 Russian attacks. Read also: Bad weather suppresses Russian aviation near Avdiivka, Ukraine says "And today the occupiers emplyed almost a dozen armored vehicles in the attack; they were moving in columns, Shtupun said. Our soldiers destroyed two tanks, seven armored fighting vehicles the enemy retreated." The situation around Avdiivka is difficult everywhere, but under control, Shtupun said. The Avdiivka coke plant remains a target for the Russians, but Ukraine continues to control it. The Russians also claim that the initiative in the Avdiivka sector has been taken by them. Read also: Russia leaves Avdiivka in ruins, targets private residences ahead of new siege strategy photos When asked about any losses of positions or territories by Ukrainian forces or the Russian army over the past week, Shtupun replied, "If there are any, they are temporary. Active fighting is ongoing, and the line of contact can fluctuate back and forth. Therefore, neither the enemy nor us will talk about any lasting successes at the moment." According to Tavria operational group commander Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, Russia lost491 soldiers in the zone of his responsibility in a day, and seven surrendered, as reported on Telegram on Nov. 22. 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 forces blew up a dance hall where an actress was performing for Russian troops: reports Russian paratroopers march during the military parade at the 76th Guards Air Assault Division in Pskov, Russia, March 2020. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images Even staying away from the frontlines isn't safe for Russian and Ukrainian troops. Ukrainian forces shelled a dance hall where an actress was performing for Russian troops. Earlier this month, Russia attacked a military ceremony in Ukraine, killing soldiers. Ukrainian forces blew up a dance hall in occupied eastern Ukraine, killing a Russian actress who had been performing for her country's troops, according to multiple reports. Polina Menshikh was performing a show on Sunday to celebrate a Russian military holiday when Ukrainian shelling bombarded the dance hall, located in the village of Kumachove about 37 miles from the front lines, according to the BBC. The hall can fit up to 150 people, the BBC reported, but it's not clear how many were present at the time of the strike. The attack killed about 20 Russian soldiers, the BBC reported, citing Ukrainian sources. Russian state news outlet TASS confirmed Menshikh died in the attack, but didn't say if any soldiers had also died. In a cellphone video shared by Russian Telegram channel Astra, Menshikh can be seen singing and playing the guitar while men wearing green jackets and camouflage watch. Then, a loud thump can be heard and the hall is plunged into darkness, abruptly ending the video. Pro-Russian bloggers criticized the soldiers' event, saying it made them an easy target, the BBC reported. It's not the first time troops have come under fire while gathered together. Earlier this month, Russia bombed Ukrainian forces during an open-air awards ceremony, killing 19 soldiers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later slammed for military commanders' "negligence," Business Insider previously reported. Read the original article on Business Insider A significant portion of the money transferred by Washington to Ukraine is returned to the United States through production and jobs, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address to U.S. citizens during an interview with Fox News on Nov. 21. "When you produce for Ukraine and with Ukraine, you produce it also with Americans. So, the big parts will be production in your states," Zelenskyy said. President Zelesnkyy also said he hopes that the U.S. Congress will help, and that the United States will remain by the Ukrainian people. Read also: Zelenskyy calls on Trump to show his plan for ending Russias war on Ukraine in a day "And I hope the United States will be with us against Russian terrorism," he said. In October, the White House requested nearly $106 billion from Congress for Ukraine, Israel, and other priority areas. However, Congress divided the project into two packages. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the United States has sufficient capabilities to simultaneously support Ukraine in its war with Russia and Israel in its conflict with Hamas. Read also: Congressional inaction constricts US aid to Ukraine White House On Nov. 15, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill to extend temporary government funding to prevent a possible shutdown without additional aid for Israel or Ukraine. On Nov. 19, it was reported that the U.S. Congress planned to vote on a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine, but only if it was combined with provisions to further bolster security along the U.S.-Mexico border. Read also: US has clear plan to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian invasion, Blinken says Congressional leaders aim to get the legislation approved before Christmas. 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 Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the country's parliament, has supported the law on the use of the English language in Ukraine, which obliges certain civil servants, as well as emergency aid workers and several other fields, to speak English. Source: Yaroslav Zhelezniak, Ukrainian MP, on Telegram; MP Oleksii Honcharenko; draft bill on the parliaments website Details: On 22 November, the parliament, with 278 votes in favour, supported law No. 9432 on the use of the English language in Ukraine. The law provides for the official establishment of the status of the English language as one of the languages of international communication in Ukraine; the definition of the category of positions for which candidates are required to speak English; the regulation of the peculiarities of the use of the English language in the work of state authorities, local self-government bodies, units of emergency assistance to the population, while crossing the state border, in education, transport and health care. Quote from Zhelezniak: "The provision regarding the screening of English-language films in theatres in the original language with Ukrainian subtitles has been excluded by the committee's decision. So, for those advocating for the preservation of dubbing rest easy." Details: It is mentioned in the document that the law, if finally adopted, will require English language skills of those applying for positions: Public service of category A; Public service of categories B and C, the list of which is established by the Cabinet of Ministers; Heads of local state administrations and their deputies; Military officers serving under contract, the list of which is established by the Cabinet of Ministers; Middle and senior police officers of the National Police, chiefs of other law enforcement agencies and civil protection services, the list of which is established by the Cabinet of Ministers; Prosecutors; Employees of the customs and tax authorities, the list of which is established by the Cabinet of Ministers; Managers of public sector entities, the list of which is established by the Cabinet of Ministers. English language proficiency may also be required in local self-government bodies if the position involves international cooperation (except for elected positions). The English exam will be free of charge for officials. It can be taken no more than once every 4 months, but an unlimited number of times. Emergency assistance will be provided in English to foreigners and stateless persons if they do not speak Ukrainian. Calls must also be received in English (or another language acceptable to the parties). Customs and passport control at the border is also carried out in English for foreigners. The study and use of English is also mandatory in education at all levels. For military personnel, the NATO standard STANAG 6001 will apply to foreign language proficiency at a level sufficient for foreign language communication in professional fields. However, during martial law and mobilisation, the requirement to speak English does not apply to military personnel and law enforcement officers. The requirement to know English for public servants of category A, heads of local state administrations and their deputies will come into force two years after the termination/ cancellation of martial law, and for other officials four years after the end of martial law. This is outlined in transitional provisions. Background: On 28 June 2023, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that the Verkhovna Rada make English language proficiency a mandatory requirement for holding government positions and in several fields. The language ombudsman criticised the law for the provision of showing English-language films without dubbing in Ukrainian, the original language. Ukrainians also created a petition for the preservation of Ukrainian dubbing. It gained the required number of votes for consideration. Some provisions of the law "On the use of the English language in Ukraine" were promised to be finalised, in particular, regarding the showing of films in cinema theatres. On 20 July, the humanitarian committee of the parliament supported law No. 9432. All points that could restrict the use of the Ukrainian language were removed from the document: the requirement to show English-language films in cinemas in the original language; changes to the law on cinematography; changes to the law on the state language in terms of cinema; changes to the media law on reducing the quota of Ukrainian-language programs. Support UP or become our patron! ASHKELON, Israel Tatyana Prima thought shed left the bombs behind when she fled Ukraine more than a year and a half ago, after Russia decimated her city, Mariupol. The 38-year-old escaped with her injured husband and young daughter, bringing the family to safety in southern Israel. The calm she was slowly regaining shattered again on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants invaded. All these sounds of war that we hear now, they sometimes work as a trigger that brings back memories of what weve gone through in Mariupol, she said. Its hard feeling like that youre the one responsible for your child, the one who wants whats best for them, and in some way like youve failed them. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, more than 45,000 Ukrainians have sought refuge in Israel, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics and aid groups. Like Prima, most of them were slowly picking up the pieces of their lives and finding ways to cope when the war in Israel erupted. Now they are reliving their trauma. Some have left Israel, but many remain refusing to again flee a war. Most have lost in-person support systems due to restrictions around gatherings. Others have lost hope of reuniting with loved ones they left behind. On Oct. 7, when Hamas militants attacked, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages, Prima awoke to the sound of alarms. She lives in the coastal city of Ashkelon, a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip. The thud of airstrikes and shelling is constant as Israel pushes forward with its offensive. She describes it as deja vu, reminding her of the morning in Mariupol that forever changed her life. Mariupol has been one of Ukraines hardest-hit cities, besieged and bombarded for weeks as people scrounged for food, water and heat and were cut off from the world with no telecommunications. During the wars early weeks, Prima cooked over an outdoor fire, used snow for drinking water, and sheltered with a dozen relatives on the outskirts of the city, she said. But the shelling intensified, and rockets fell around them. After her husbands hand was blown off fetching water, she decided to leave. That day marked a descent into hell, she said. The family joined a convoy of cars fleeing the city, passing corpses as black ash fell from airstrikes. They went through countless Russian checkpoints and by April 2022 arrived in Israel, where her husbands relatives lived in Ashkelon. Many Ukrainians live in the countrys south. Theres a large Russian-speaking community, and rent is often lower than in bigger, central cities. Ashkelon residents were accustomed to occasional rockets from Gaza, but attacks have surged in the war. Air raid sirens are a constant sound. While most rockets are intercepted, about 80 have landed since the war in populated areas or empty fields, accounting for nearly one-third of all Hamas rocket incidents in Israel, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Shelling sounds remind Prima of her agony in Ukraine, yet she remains stoic when speaking about Israels war, convinced the army and the countrys Iron Dome defense system will protect her family. But the war has intensified feelings of isolation, she said. Her community support groups have moved online in-person gatherings are restricted to buildings with bomb shelters because of the threat of attacks. There is this tremendous hopelessness that these people are facing, said Dr. Koen Sevenants, a mental health specialist with experience in conflict zones. Sevenants and other experts warn that when people who havent fully recovered from a traumatic incident are revictimized, the triggering event can often be worse, with risk for depression and anxiety. Refugee organizations have adapted some of their programs, providing financial assistance and bringing food to people who dont feel safe leaving their homes. But they cant do it all, said Rabbi Olya Weinstein of Project Kesher, which helps some 6,000 people who fled the war in Ukraine and brings families groceries or provides food vouchers. Under rockets, its very hard to be available for everyone, said Weinstein, who hears peoples concerns for the future. Theyre asking what will happen ... what will happen with Israel, will we remain here forever, will we remain alive, what will happen to our kids? Some Ukrainians have been forced to move within Israel since the war began. About 100 children sheltering at a Jewish home in Ashkelon fled soon after Hamas attacked to the center of the country, said Yael Eckstein, of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a philanthropic organization that supports the children. It was the second time they were forced from their home in less than two years they fled a city near Ukraines capital and evacuated to Israel during the early weeks of that war. Theyre struggling to process everything, Eckstein said, with one asking: Since hes now living in a war zone, why cant he go back to Ukraine? Other Ukrainians are trapped in Gaza, with 160 evacuated so far, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Its unclear how many remain in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where more than 12,700 Palestinians, most of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which doesnt differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. In Israel, Veronika Chotari thought shed see her 18-year-old daughter, Tereza, for the holidays. Her daughter stayed in Ukraine last year when Chotari sought cancer treatment in Israel for her youngest child, moving into the quiet central town of Petah Tikva. Until October, shed never heard a siren there, she said. Now, instead of planning to see each other, the two spend hours texting from bomb shelters, making sure the other is alive. Im worried about you mom, please I know its impossible but lets find another place for you, Tereza wrote. Im tired of all this, I hate these wars. State grid operator Ukrenergo warned of electricity shortages in Ukraine on Nov. 22, and urged consumers to use electricity sparingly until evening. "Do not turn on powerful electrical appliances at the same time, turn off the lights in empty rooms, postpone washing to night hours," Ukrenergo advised. According to the state grid operator, the shortages result from increased consumption due to the onset of cold weather and an insufficient volume of electricity imported from the EU. Additionally, "some power units are still being rebuilt after being hit by Russian missiles and drones, and the restored ones cannot carry the same load as before the damage." As of the morning of Nov. 22, Russian attacks have damaged energy networks in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv oblasts, and 427 settlements are cut off from electricity, Ukrenergo reported. Ukraine is bracing for an uptick in Russian strikes against the energy grid as temperatures fall below zero. Preparations have been made to mitigate the damage and defend critical infrastructure from Russian attacks in the winter months. 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. Traces of missiles visible in the sky Russia stepping up shelling of Ukrainian cities as cold weather sets in is inhumane and unacceptable, Denise Brown, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine, said on Nov. 22. In a statement from the UN Resident Coordinator's Office, Brown conveyed alarm over recent spikes in strikes on civilian infrastructures and civilians, coinciding with dropping temperatures. Read also: Russian forces strike yet another school in Kherson as artillery bombardment goes on She highlighted the persistent targeting of hospitals in the Kherson and Donetsk oblasts, citing recent attacks in Selydove, Donetsk region. Additionally, she reported frequent shelling of power plants and electrical grids, noting that Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, has been cut off from gas and water supply. Read also: Russia strikes hospital and mine in Donetsk Oblast, rescuers race to free possible survivors from rubble As temperatures plummet, thousands of families may be unable to keep warm and safe due to these attacks, said Brown. After nearly ten years of fighting and two years after the escalation of the war, civilians in the front-line eastern and southern parts of the country have depleted their resources, many reaching their breaking point. Read also: Ukraine intensifies security measures for energy infrastructure Brown reinforced the UN's commitment to continuing support for Ukrainian civilians affected by the war. But the recent trend of attacks on civilian infrastructure and facilities that provide essential services during the winter is unacceptable and inhumane. 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 Under the radar Florida island named one of the best places to travel, report says Related video: Water taxi connecting Anna Maria Island and Bradenton starts next month TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) A barrier island located just south of Tampa Bay was named one of the 50 best places to travel in 2024. Travel + Leisure said travelers should consider making a trip to Anna Maria Island next year. The travel company divided its list annual list of the 50 best places to visit into seven categories. Anna Maria Island was listed as the top spot in the beach vibes category. St. Pete among the 3 fastest-declining Florida cities, analysis shows The travel agency said Anna Maria Island is way under the radar compared to other Florida destinations and has cultivated a loyal following thanks to its small-town feel. The report highlighted the barrier islands no-high-rises shoreline and incredible sunsets. It said new developments like Mello on the Beach, a hotel that opened in July, and the Joie Inn villas fit right in with the towns beach vibe. To see more of Travel + Leisures top places to visit, click here. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WFLA. Why do we really send our youth to universities? Given how much theyre paying, it can (sadly) no longer be a case of three years of partying. In the 21st century, when few graduates go on to perform jobs related to their degrees, the exercise can rarely be seen as vocational, either. Whats left is the commendable idea of university as a place for expanding or broadening the mind. Yet its becoming depressingly clear that this is no longer true of British universities. They are places where the mind is, instead, narrowed, where the worlds oldest prejudice is flourishing once more. Evidence of this came in a shocking open letter which appeared in The Guardian, written by an anonymous Jewish student at Oxford University. They report a surge of anti-Semitic abuse on campus. Acts of hatred, misinformation and a lack of empathy when we are vulnerable have turned student spaces into places of hostility, the letter notes. It details heightened security around Jewish society events, students afraid of wearing Stars of David and other religious symbols for fear of being attacked. The general picture is one of isolation and fear. It is shameful but hardly surprising that the writer felt obliged to keep their identity under wraps. According to student leaders, Jews have experienced a years worth of anti-Semitic incidents on campus since the October 7 massacre. Such events will feel particularly painful for Jewish students, who comprise just 9,000 out of a national student body of more than 2.5 million. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has contacted every student union in the UK, urging them to sign a template letter pledging support for Jewish students, recognition of anti-Semitism and condemnation of Hamas. So far only five of more than 130 groups have signed. Why is Oxford not addressing the behaviour raised in the letter? Were any other ethnic minority being targeted this way, it would surely be dealt with more decisively. Academics have hardly been falling over themselves to denounce anti-Semitism. Compare the reaction with the murder of George Floyd, or the outbreak of war with Ukraine, with the immediate aftermath of October 7. Contrast universities general tendency towards safetyism and hyper-vigilance over offensive forms of speech with the lack of concern for Jewish students. Much of this was visible even a decade ago when I was at university; in, for example, the popularity of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement always uniquely targeted at Israel. Jewish students reported feeling unsafe in the Oxford University Labour Club even before the advent of Corbynism. Perhaps it was inevitable that this would bubble over into the ugly scenes outlined in The Guardian letter. We know that young people are particularly susceptible to extreme expressions of identity politics, but universities, rather than attempting to combat this narrowness of mind, have become incubators of it. If, say, a teenage apprentice in Sunderland were openly dabbling in far-Right movements, hed likely be reported to the Prevent programme. Yet a blue-haired Classics student toying with equally toxic ideas of a far-Left variety can scream them on Cornmarket Street to her hearts content. The near unanimity of opinion among young progressives on this issue marks a dramatic reversal over the past 50 years. Historically, those on the Left identified with Israel as a progressive state of kibbutzim. But in recent years a new world view has supplanted this, rooted in identity politics and critical race theory. The writer Bari Weiss describes the moral inversion as replacing basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). Israel is therefore recast as part of a global network of Western oppressors and thus fair game for anyone seeking to fight oppression. In this context, Jewish students may no longer be regarded as individuals, deserving of respect, but as cogs in these same power structures. Many of those intimidating Jewish students would undoubtedly describe their actions as part of a wider campaign for justice. Why are universities ignoring, and in some cases facilitating, so much of this? It could be an extreme case of very clever people believing very stupid things. Certain forms of identity politics require Olga Korbut-level mental gymnastics to justify them. Thomas Sowell once described socialism as having a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. The same might also be said of Queers for Palestine, or the way noble concepts like inclusivity have been bastardised and turned into ways of excluding people. In some cases, it may even be because the academics agree. In the days after the October 7 massacre, an alarming number of university lecturers either expressed support for Hamas or used both sides reasoning to justify the slaughter. At the very least we need a Royal Commission to investigate all this. British donors should consider taking a leaf out of their American counterparts books by withdrawing funding from elite institutions which fail to protect Jewish students welfare. Anti-Semitism, a vicious evil in itself, also indicates wider failures within a body politic or nation state. It hasnt simply exploded on campus out of nowhere. British universities have helped intellectualise and therefore legitimise what is, quite simply, hatred. 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 lender has dropped a foreclosure lawsuit against two-time San Antonio mayoral candidate Greg Brockhouse, shown speaking to supporters on election night in 2019. Billy Calzada, Staff / Staff photographer A lender has dropped a foreclosure lawsuit against former San Antonio mayoral candidate Greg Brockhouse. Freedom Mortgage Corp. had filed the petition for foreclosure on Brockhouses Northwest Side house on Oct. 13, an action he called a mistake. Brockhouse had said the loan was under review for a modification at the time Freedom Mortgage filed its complaint in state District Court in San Antonio. He said he was unaware of the lawsuit before a San Antonio Express-News reporter told him about it. Advertisement Article continues below this ad I explained to the Express-News that the foreclosure filing was an error and would be corrected within 72 hours with an approved loan modification, he said in a text Tuesday. The error was corrected as I said, my loan modification completed and the foreclosure filing dropped. He criticized the Express-News for sensationalizing an error in loan processing. Not everything is news and families across our city have struggled since COVID with lost wages, lost businesses, and just life challenges, he added. I am no exception. Brockhouse had operated a janitorial business that shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic, displacing 40 employees. He recently started a mattress and furniture business on the Northwest Side. Advertisement Article continues below this ad In an interview with the Express-News just prior to the suits filing, he said he was considering a run for mayor or the District 8 City Council seat in the May 2025 municipal election. But less than a week later, he said he was not running for office or even considering it. He described his main priorities as family challenges and rebuilding businesses. He unsuccessfully attempted to unseat Mayor Ron Nirenberg twice, first in 2019 and again in 2021. He served one term as District 6 councilman, from 2017 to 2019. Brockhouse and his family moved to District 8 in 2020. He and his wife, Annalisa, purchased a house in the Steeple Brook neighborhood for $528,360 and financed the entire purchase price with American Pacific Mortgage Corp., Bexar County records show. The loan was assigned to Freedom Mortgage in 2020. In June, the Brockhouses obtained a junior VA loan on the house for just under $63,000. The property is valued at $730,200 by the Bexar Appraisal District. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Florida-based Freedom Mortgage sued the couple, seeking a court judgment allowing for either a nonjudicial foreclosure or a judicial foreclosure. It said they owed more than $500,000 on the house. The lender filed a notice of nonsuit without prejudice, meaning it reserves the right to refile the complaint if circumstances warrant. As of Wednesday morning, a judge had yet to sign an order granting the dismissal. Universities across the U.S., such as UCLA seen here, have encountered student protests. Yet where are the university president's voices on the Israel-Hamas War? Credit - FREDERIC J. BROWNGetty Images The surprising new call for college presidents to go mute on social issues is echoing through a spectrum of editorial pages. We have long known that abstinence is no way to learn; silence is not golden. The fear of alienating donors, students or faculty must not be confused with compassion or tolerance. The Edelman Trust Barometer is unambiguous in its direction that chief executive voices have become pillars of trust in societycreating standards that can be the subject of further debate. University presidents are CEOs and have always been critical voices in society. Since the 1960s, college presidents such as Notre Dames Theodore Hesburgh, Yales Kingman Brewster and Berkeleys Clark Kerrall of whom have featured on the cover of TIMEhave made an impact on the discourse surrounding global issues. Commentators on American institutions as far back as Alexis de Tocqueville have noted that positions taken by leaders in civil society create social capital and, in turn, build trust. Presidents need no encouragement to be cowards in the public sphere. Chicagos well-known Kalven Report on Institutional Neutrality was aimed at presidents who might have been tempted to speak up on behalf of the struggle for civil rights, or who might have leaned toward protecting young people from participating in the brutal Vietnam War. Even that report stated that exceptions should be for situations that threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. Dont racism and anti-Semitism threaten the mission? How about populist authoritarianism? Chicagos 1967 report has resurfaced as of late, as discussions rage about what college presidents shouldor by some peoples estimations, shouldntsay. In stark contrast to our position, Michael R. Bloomberg, in a recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, cited the reports stance that the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. He argues that rather than urging college presidents to issue stronger statements, we should demand that they stop making them altogether. Yet, the very schools often praised for their neutralityNorthwestern, the University of Chicago and Vanderbilt, for instancehave previously spoken out on important matters including racial justice, disability, immigration, anti-Chinese bias, and gender bias. Is it because the issue is anti-Semitism that silence seems attractive? But university leaders have an obligation to speak out to ensure safety for students and employeesfree of intimidation and harassment. Its not an infringement on free expression to take a stand as an institutional leader, whether its to condemn perpetual military occupation, to denounce scientific falsehoods during a pandemic, to defend the importance of telling the truth about the legacies of Black slavery, or to point out that progressive pieties often make use of ancient anti-Semitic tropes to promote sick silos of solidarity. Its one thing to allow ideas to be debated, universities should welcome healthy challenges to core values, but the school leaders should also defend the values that have allowed the right for debate to evolve in the first place. The fear of accountability should not stop university leaders from speaking their minds, especially since they know that many who belong to the institution will have different points of view. Of course, presidents may discover that they were wrong about an issue, and they will have to modify their stances. This can serve as a good lesson. It shows that presidents, much like students, always have something to learn. At Wesleyan, in recent weeks an Israeli writer lectured on telling stories in the midst of war and an American historian gave an account of the decades of Palestinian, Israeli misunderstanding. At Yale, academic leaders last week convened an open forum of 500 students from Palestine, Dubai, Kuwait, Israel, China, and Europe, plus 80 faculty and staff, to host the Ambassador of the UAE and Israel. Opening with an interfaith invocation from a revered rabbi and a renowned imam, along with bipartisan expertise from Jared Kushner and Dennis Ross of the prior two Administrations, this event was the first such Arab/Israel exchange of its kind since the invasion seven weeks ago. Universities with missions dedicated to the good of the individual and the good of the world, like Wesleyan, and with mottos saluting light and truth, like Yale, should remind us what Elie Wiesel famously declared: Silence in the face of evil is complicity. Contact us at letters@time.com. A voter applies her I voted sticker at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News Several Utah cities have close election races, with just dozens or hundreds of votes dividing the potential winners. Orem saw a heated few weeks coming up to the election, with dueling political action committees fighting for power after one group swept the primaries. The Stronger Orem PAC also claimed the opposing PAC, Stand For Orem, has been using fearmongering tactics ever since the primaries to try to regain control. In early results, candidates endorsed by Stronger Orem Jeffrey Lambson, Chris Killpack and Jenn Gale have taken the lead, all garnering more than 7,200 votes while the other three candidates had 7,000 or less. We recognize there was an excellent group of candidates who highly engaged the community. We are gratified that our candidates appear to have won. Their message throughout the campaign was of respect and civility and we look forward to the full council working together collaboratively in serving all the residents of Orem, Stronger Orem said in a statement to KSL.com late Tuesday. Another contest for which people are anxiously awaiting results is the Ogden mayoral race. In the primaries, Taylor Knuth and Ben Nadolski beat out the rest of the candidates with Knuth winning by a 168-vote margin. Tuesdays election, however, sees Nadolski taking an early lead by 936 votes. There are thousands more ballots to be counted, and no matter the outcome, it is an honor to be a part of the democratic process. Were in touch with the county clerk and will have more to say when all of the votes are processed. In the meantime, Im looking forward to spending time with my family and wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, Knuth said in a statement late Tuesday. Here are the results as of Wednesday afternoon: Salt Lake County Alta Town Council at-large (2 seats) Elise Morgan, 55 Dan Schilling, 40 Sheridan J. Davis, 39 Bluffdale City Council at-large (3 seats) Steve Austin, 1,218 Gregory D. Wilding, 1,193 Mark Hales, 1,161 Alan W. Lord, 1,156 Billy Hesterman, 1,074 Eric R. Hawker, 544 Bluffdale Proposition 13: Shall Bluffdale city be authorized to levy an initial tax rate in the Fire and Police Protection Fund in the amount sufficient to generate an increase in tax revenue of $569,520 for the fiscal year 2023-2024 as budgeted, adopted and approved by Bluffdale city? No, 1,423 Yes, 1,287 Brighton Town Council at-large (2 seats) Jeffery S. Bossard, 103 Lise Sorensen Brunhart, 83 Gavan Ganung, 63 Adrienne Aldous, 47 Copperton Metro Township Council at-large A Kathleen Ray Bailey, 106 Copperton Metro Township Council at-large B Sean Clayton, 86 Copperton Metro Township Council at-large C Tessa Stitzer, 121 Cottonwood Heights City Council District 1 Matt Holton, 1,044 Jen Cottam, 777 Cottonwood Heights City Council District 2 Suzanne Hyland, 869 Sharon Daurelle, 793 Draper City Council at-large (3 seats) Fred Lowry, 3,914 Cal Roberts, 3,845 Bryn Heather Johnson, 2,990 Jordan Davis, 1,701 Lucky T. Bovo, 1,040 Terry Smith, 1,000 Emigration Canyon Metro Township Council at-large (3 seats) Catherine M Harris, 285 Jennifer Hawkes, 270 David Paul Brems, 264 Tyler Tippets, 158 Herriman City Council District 1 Jared Henderson, 729 Chris Roberts, 630 Herriman City Council District 4 Steven L. Shields, 810 Matt Bello, 418 Holladay City Council District 4 Drew B. Quinn, 963 Matthew Collin Tracy, 383 Kearns Metro Township Council District 1 Jesse Valdez, 191 Patrick Daniel Schaeffer, 184 Kearns Metro Township Council District 3 Chrystal Butterfield, 370 Christopher James Geertsen, 138 Kearns Metro Township Council District 5 Kelly Bush, 405 Midvale City Council District 1 - Ranked Choice Round 1 Bonnie Billings, 547 Dustin Snow, 221 Ben Umeadi, 125 Midvale City Council District 2 Paul Glover, 572 Midvale City Council District 3 - Ranked Choice Round 2 Heidi Robinson, 371 Evan Feinberg, 324 Bart Benson, eliminated Millcreek City Council District 3 - Ranked Choice Round 1 Cheri Jackson, 2,526 Scott Springer, 447 David F. Holz, 309 Murray City Council District 1 Paul Pickett, 643 David W. Rodgers, 418 Murray City Council District 3 Rosalba Dominguez, 1,001 Clark Bullen, 874 Murray City Council District 5 Adam Hock, 1,363 Garry CPA Hrechkosy, 1,047 Riverton City Council District 1 Andy Pierucci, 378 Riverton City Council District 2 Troy McDougal, 834 David Gatti, 809 Riverton City Council District 5 Spencer Haymond, 988 Steven Winters, 587 Salt Lake City Council 2 Alejandro Ale Puy, 1,811 Salt Lake City Council 4 - Ranked Choice Round 2 Eva Lopez Chavez, 1,991 Ana Valdemoros, 1,806 Clayton Scrivner, eliminated Salt Lake City Council 6 - Ranked Choice Round 2 Dan Dugan, 4,063 Taymour B. Semnani, 3,157 James Alfandre, eliminated Salt Lake City Council 7 Sarah Young, 3,559 Molly Jones, 3,096 Salt Lake City mayor - Ranked Choice Round 1 Erin Mendenhall, 22,346 Ross C. Rocky Anderson, 12,964 Michael Valentine, 2,507 Sandy City Council 2 Alison Stroud, 2,559 Sandy City Council 4 Marci Houseman, 2,117 Scott Earl, 1,973 Sandy City Council at-large (2 seats) Cyndi Sharkey, 7,632 Aaron Dekeyzer, 6,669 Jim Bennett, 5,853 Brooke Chirstensen, 4,867 South Jordan City Council 1 Patrick Harris, 1,229 South Jordan City Council 2 Kathie L. Johnson, 2,016 Laurel Bevans, 1,229 South Jordan City Council 4 Tamara Zander, 1,274 South Salt Lake City Council 1 Leanne Huff, 419 Jeanette Potter, 162 South Salt Lake City Council 4 Portia Mila, 279 Nick Mitchell, 277 South Salt Lake City Council 5 Paul Sanchez, 247 South Salt Lake City Council at-large Natalie Pinkney, 1,792 Conrad N. Campos, 540 Taylorsville City Council 1 Ernest Glen Burgess, 972 Dennis Sanok, 526 Taylorsville City Council 2 Curt Cochran, 898 Taylorsville City Council 3 Anna Barbieri, 1,084 West Jordan City Council 1 Chad Lamb, 2,148 Rulon Green, 1,198 West Jordan City Council 2 Bob Bedore, 1,808 Gary Leany, 1,515 West Jordan City Council 3 Zach Jacob, 1,691 Sterling Morris, 839 West Jordan City Council 4 Kent Shelton, 1,939 David F. Pack, 1,445 West Jordan mayor Dirk Burton, 7,654 Kayleen Whitelock, 5,105 West Valley City Council 1 Tom Huynh, 988 Marni Lefevre, 822 West Valley City Council 3 Will Whetstone, 1,342 Heidi Roggenbuck, 1,041 West Valley City Council at-large Don Christensen, 5,998 Sophia Hawes-Tingey, 4,208 White City Metro Township Council at-large (3 seats) Paulina F. Flint, 537 Greg Shelton, 511 Tyler Huish, 410 Howard F. Van Horn II, 345 NIck J. West, 232 Copperton Improvement District at-large trustee (3 seats) Leanne Peterson Heagren, 82 Harvey Seal, 75 Rebecca A. Blackburn, 74 Royce Charles Fewkes, 30 Richard J. Cude, 24 Trevor Patrick, 19 Cottonwood Improvement District at-large trustee (2 seats) James Durrant, 8,003 Wesley J. Fisher, 7,735 Mark R. Katter, 6,598 Kearns Improvement District at-large trustee Gregory R Christensen, 1,714 Royce Gibson, 1,270 Magna Water District at-large trustee Dan L Stewart, 1,554 Shawn Ron Wall, 877 Midvalley Improvement District at-large trustee Ron Sperry, 1,560 Jon West, 1,268 Mount Olympus Improvement District at-large trustee Michele Rivera, 9,458 James W. Carter, 5,060 Taylorsville-Bennion Improvement District Division 2 trustee Matt Swensen, 1,142 Erica Faircloth, 982 Davis County Bountiful City Council (3 seats) Kate Bradshaw, 7,151 Richard Higginson, 5,052 Matt Murri, 4,988 Bob Lindsay, 3,623 Chase Hathaway, 2,207 Harrison Smith, 1,101 Clearfield City Council (3 seats) Dakota Wurth, 1,112 Megan Ratchford, 1,110 Nike K Peterson, 1,015 Chris J. Uccardi, 922 Royal Bateman, 486 Clinton City Council (3 seats) Spencer Arave, 1,745 Austin Gray, 1,571 Dane Searle, 1,428 J. Stark, 1,269 Anthony O. Tony Thompson, 1,046 Farmington City Council (3 seats) Amy Shumway, 3,047 Scott Isaacson, 2,702 Roger Child, 2,241 Rebecca Wayment, 1,911 Rachel Stuker, 627 Laverne Schraedel, 627 Fruit Heights City Council (3 seats) Eileen S. Moss, 832 Caroline Eichelberger, 206 Mark G Cottrell, 659 Gary Anderson, 624 R. Shon Stevenson, 601 Kaysville City Council (3 seats) Mike Blackham, 2,941 Nate Jackson, 2,612 John Swan Adams, 2,762 Don Coleman, 1,960 Tim Allen Hodges, 1,755 Layton City Council (3 seats) Clint Morris, 5,814 Zach Bloxham, 5,438 Dave Thomas, 4,792 Mike Kolendrianos, 3,231 Teresa Stokes, 2,598 Elicia Clegg, 2,054 North Salt Lake City Council (3 seats) Tammy Clayton, 1,845 Ted M. Knowlton, 1,664 Suzette Jackson, 1,183 Leslie Clark, 1,085 Peter Wirthlin, 893 Collin Larson, 776 Syracuse City Council (3 seats) Paul Watson, 2,271 Brett D. Cragun, 2,059 Julie Robertson, 1,953 Drake Mailes, 1,318 West Bountiful City Council (3 seats) Jenn Nielsen, 914 Dell Butterfield, 735 James L. Ahlstrom, 771 Rodney J. Wood, 674 Richmond S. Thornley, 366 West Point City Council (3 seats) Annette Judd, 1,075 Trent W. Yarbrough, 967 Jerry G. Chatterton, 913 Jeremy Strong, 893 Scott Wolford, 825 Woods Cross City Council (3 seats) Julie Checketts, 1,134 Matthew B. Terry, 949 Wallace O. Larrabee, 893 Muskan Walia, 477 Eric Alan Jones, 394 Patrick A. Aron, 214 Benchland Water District trustee (3 seats) Paul J. Hirst, 2,186 Bradley Bornemeier, 1,901 Kenneth Spencer, 1,775 Ralph L. Reeves, 1,729 Central Davis Sewer District trustee (2 seats) Carol Page, 6,002 Steven Brough, 5,186 Romelio Ortiz, 2,774 Mutton Hollow Improvement District trustee (2 seats) Justin Logan, 124 Clifford Hokanson, 105 Marilee Mason, 71 South Davis Water District trustee Elaine Oaks, 807 Melvin Jerry Hawley, 778 South Weber Water Improvement District board member (2 seats) Jeff Monroe (unopposed, declared elected on Oct. 16) Darren E. Hess (unopposed, declared elected on Oct. 16) Clinton Proposition 10: Shall Clinton city, Utah, be authorized to impose a 0.1% sales and use tax to fund park improvements, recreational improvements, and cultural facilities and organizations for Clinton city? Yes, 1,889 No, 1,081 Washington County Apple Valley mayor Michel Lee Farrar, 187 Walter Earl Josey, 83 Apple Valley Town Council (2 seats) Janet Prentice, 192 Barratt Eric Nielson, 169 Margaret Ososki, 83 Raymond Lester Jessop, 62 Enterprise City Council (3 seats) Roy Adams, 233 Bill Fowler, 200 Delbert Staheli, 155 Jared J Bollinger, 143 Mikehel Murphy, 140 Yvonne Colby, 107 Hildale City Council (3 seats) Luke Merideth, 61 Jvar Dutson, 59 Lawrence Barlow, 52 Darlene Stubbs, 57 Jared Nicol, 27 Derick Holm, 15 Hurricane City Council (3 seats) Clark R. Fawcett, 1,862 Drew Ellerman, 1,734 Joseph Prete, 1,706 Amy C. Werrett, 1,612 Stephen Lemmon, 1,541 David L. Sanders, 1,257 Ivins City Council (3 seats) Sharon Gillespie, 1,872 Sharon Barton, 1,798 Kevin M. Smith, 1,217 Cheyne C. McDonald, 1,044 Jenny Johnson, 918 Paul Bryson, 644 La Verkin City Council (3 seats) Darren L. Prince, 411 Micah T. Gubler, 397 Richard M. Hirschi, 277 Justin Gifford, 235 Randy S. Jacques, 189 Cody L. Barnes, 173 Rockville Town Council (2 seats) Megan Honer-Orton, 25 Robin Smith, 25 Layney Delange, 18 Santa Clara City Council (3 seats) Jarrett Waite, 1,128 David Pond, 940 Leina Mathis, 647 Springdale Town Council (2 seats) Pat Campbell, 124 Kyla Topham, 111 Noel Benson, 70 St. George City Council (3 seats) Steve Kemp, 10,350 Jimmie B. Hughes, 10,098 Dannielle Larkin, 9,399 Paula Smith, 8,234 Brad Bennett, 8,196 Virgin Town Council (2 seats) April McKeon, 170 Marci Holm, 145 Cameron Spendlove, 103 Gene Garate, 92 Washington City Council (3 seats) Kurt F. Ivie, 3,325 Craig Coats, 3,152 Ben Leamon Martinsen, 2,385 Troy G. Belliston, 2,942 Ed Tracey, 1,923 St. George City Special Bond Election: Shall the City Council of the city of St. George, Utah, be authorized to issue general obligation bonds in a principal amount not to exceed $29 million to pay all or a portion of the costs of acquiring, constructing and improving trails, parks, and recreation facilities and amenities throughout the city, for the purpose of connecting communities and revitalizing existing facilities; said bonds to be due and payable in not to exceed 25 years from the date of issuance of the bonds? Yes, 11,233 No, 6,334 Summit County Park City Council (3 seats) Ryan Dickey, 1,621 Ed Parigian, 1,196 Bill Ciraco, 1,055 Bob Sertner, 969 Matthew Nagie, 891 John Greenfield, 481 Park City Recreational Facilities Bond Question: Shall Park City, Utah, be authorized to issue general obligation bonds in the amount not to exceed $30 million, for the purpose of financing all or a portion of the costs associated with constructing, improving, furnishing, and equipping new and existing city recreational facilities? Yes, 1,042 No, 1,308 Kamas City Council (3 seats) Monica K. Blazzard, 283 Leslie C Staples, 272 Larry Gines, 248 Justin Reber, 136 South Summit Fire District Commission (2 seats) Thayne D. Stembridge, 866 Julie Anna Black, 854 Larry Leifson, 696 David Ure, 462 Oakley City Council (3 seats) Dave Neff, 319 Joe B. Frazier, 273 Tom Smart, 203 Kelly Edwards, 163 Kerbee Leavitt Atkinson, 154 Coalville City Council (3 seats) Lynn Wood, 204 Shaun H. Powis, 187 Brandon Brady, 148 Stefanie Bowen, 136 Tyler Rowser, 93 Cindy Padgett, 87 Snyderville Basin Water Reclamation District trustee Robert Bob Richer, 2,099 Kevin Williams, 588 Utah County Alpine City Council (3 seats) Jessica Smuin, 1,238 Brent C. Rummler, 1,219 Chrissy Hannemann, 1,135 Jeremiah Jewkes, 911 Pamela Pamela, 399 American Fork City Council (3 seats) Clark Preston Taylor, 2,652 Tim Holley, 2,452 Ernie John, 2,078 Kenneth W. Sumison, 1,728 Jeff Shorter, 1,570 Cedar Fort City Council Seat C Jed Berry, 39 Cedar Fort City Council Seat D Travis Giles, 48 Cedar Hills City Council (3 seats) Kelly Smith, 819 Mike Geddes, 698 Bob Morgan, 619 Mark Nelson, 451 Eagle Mountain City Council (3 seats) Melissa Clark, 1,837 Rich Wood, 1,588 Jared R. Gray, 1,469 Craig Whiting, 1,026 Scott Ferre, 703 Angeline Washburn, 685 Fairfield mayor Hollie C. McKinney, 51 Brad Gurney, 34 Fairfield City Council Seat A Michael Weber, 69 Alina Pringle, 16 Fairfield City Council Seat B Tyler Thomas, 78 Fairfield City Council Seat D Richard Cameron, 79 Genola City Council (2 seats) Curtis G. Thomas, 116 Neil Brown, 77 Stan Judd, 61 Corinne Aagard, 32 Bryan Leroy, 4 Goshen City Council (2 seats) Randy Thomas, 119 Jonathan William Maclee, 52 David P. Okelberry, 41 Charles Pipkin, 26 Highland City Council (3 seats) Brittney P. Bills, 1,576 Kim Rodela, 1,541 Doug Cortney, 998 Liz Rice, 665 Jon Lefrandt, 400 Wesley Warren, 191 Lehi City Council (3 seats) Michelle Stallings, 1,578 Paige Albrecht, 1,413 Heather Newall, 1,106 Nicole Kunze, 900 Kenneth Roberts, 787 K. Casey Glade, 550 Lindon City Council (3 seats) Steve Stewart, 1,414 Cole Hooley, 1,248 Lincoln Jacobs, 1,161 Bret D. Frampton, 1,096 Mapleton City Council (3 seats) Therin Garrett, 1,572 Jessica Egbert, 1,386 Leslie Jones, 1,386 Samuel Bernard, 796 Teresa Brunson, 463 Orem City Council (3 seats) Jeffrey K. Lambson, 7,788 Jenn Gale, 7,347 Chris Killpack, 7,282 Crystal Muhlestein, 6,696 Matt McKell, 6,179 Spencer Rands, 4,914 Payson City Council (3 seats) Brian V. Hulet, 596 Ryan Rowley, 560 Anne Moss, 237 Lacee Mae Smith, 238 Tyler William Moore, 165 Easton Brady, 150 Kirk Beecher, 144 Teancum J. Clark, 98 Carl Brines, 85 Pleasant Grove City Council (3 seats) Eric Jensen, 2,695 Cyd LeMone, 2,649 Steve Rogers, 2,521 Brent Bullock, 2,044 Greg Sorensen, 1,953 Denise Trickler, 1,425 Provo City Council District 1 Craig Christensen, 1,874 Stan Jensen, 1,212 Provo City Council District 3 Becky Bogdin, 1,088 David Lewis, 691 Provo City Council District 4 Travis Hoban, 1,314 Provo City Council citywide 2 Gary Garrett, 4,677 McKay R. Jensen, 4,223 Salem City Council (3 seats) Tim De Graw, 1,070 Cynthia Deveraux Rees, 1,015 Paul Y. Taylor, 903 Howard Chuntz, 784 Alan Dale Hansen, 651 Santaquin City Council (3 seats) J. Travis Keel, 1,046 D. Lynn Mecham, 685 Brian Del Rosario, 666 David Hathaway, 659 Michael E. Romero, 566 Bryan Mecham, 544 Saratoga Springs City Council (3 seats) Chris Carn, 2,202 Lance Wadman, 1,778 Audrey Barton, 1,701 Kara Martin, 784 K. Rand Max, 274 Spanish Fork City Council (3 seats) Stacy Beck, 3,239 Landon Tooke, 2,766 Jesse T. Cardon, 2,528 Matt Barber, 2,374 Mike Clayson, 2,091 Jackie Larson, 1,502 Springville City Council (3 seats) Mindi Wright, 3,049 Jacob Gregg Smith, 2,612 Logan Millsap, 2,260 Craig Conover, 1,909 Hunter Huffman, 1,439 Vineyard City Council (2 seats) Jacob Holdaway, 408 Sara Cameron, 336 Cristy Welsh, 218 Caden Rhoton, 149 Natalie Harbin, 144 Alexander Teemsma, 51 Joshua Hendrix, 6 Woodland Hills City Council (3 seats) Kari L. Malkovich, 172 Benjamin Hillyard, 76 Brian Hutchings, 72 Spencer A. Wells, 24 Weber County Harrisville City Council at-large (3 seats) Karen Taylor-Fawcett, 568 W. Grover Wihelmsen, 542 Blair A. Christensen, 537 Dan Gilboy, 442 Hooper mayor Sheri Bingham 1,172 Greg Simpson, 842 Hooper City Council at-large (2 seats) Ryan R Hill, 971 Dale R. Fowers, 965 Cindy Cox, 921 Kamie R. Hubbard, 887 Huntsville Town Council (2 seats) Bruce Ahlstrom, 109 Lewis Johnson, 105 Lee G Primm, 100 Marriot-Slaterville City Council District West Rob Smout, 176 Corey M Smith, 54 North Ogden City Council at-large (3 seats) Christina Watson, 2,174 Ryan Barker, 1,987 Chris Pulver, 1,932 Phillip D. Swanson, 1,545 Tim Billings, 1,415 Merrill Sunderland, 1,051 Ogden mayor Ben Nadolski, 5,339 Taylor Knuth, 4,403 Ogden City Council at-large C Shaun Myers, 5,837 J. Levi Andersen, 3,720 Ogden City Council District 2 Richard Hyer, 1,282 Ogden City Council District 4 Dave Graf, 2,055 Steven Van Wagoner, 1,859 Plain City City Council at-large (3 seats) Chase Holmes, 436 Jan Hadley Wilson, 859 Miles Robinson, 455 Adam David Favero, 793 Rachael Beal, 658 Melvin Buddy Sadler, 634 Pleasant View City Council at-large (3 seats) Ann Marker Arrington, 1,495 Sara B. Urry, 1,335 Dave Marriot, 1,130 Derek L. Draper, 523 Robert C. Knapp, 414 Riverdale City Council at-large (3 seats) Michael Richter, 782 Steve Hilton, 725 Karina Merrill, 723 Alan D. Arnold, 721 Roy City Council at-large (3 seats) Ann Jackson, 2,860 Joe K. Paul, 2,123 Bryon K Saxton, 1,938 Jeremy A Thompson, 1,658 Benjamin Pearson, 1,637 Claude W. Payne, 897 South Ogden City Council at-large (3 seats) Doug Stephens, 1,193 Jeremy D. Howe, 1,187 Jeanette C. Smyth, 1,138 Sallee Orr, 897 Eric Lee, 762 Uintah City Council at-large (2 seats) Daniel Larry Combe, 200 Robert Hugh Guiller, 165 Austin Bennion, 129 Washington Terrace City Council at-large (3 seats) Cheryl Parkinson, 924 Zunayid Z. Zishan, 532 Michael Thomas, 507 F. Carey Seal, 468 Brett DeGroot, 452 West Haven City Council at-large (3 seats) Carrie Call, 1,328 Nina Morse, 1,059 Kim Dixon, 1,021 Clarence L Kelley, 886 Jim McGregor, 720 Sharon Hilton, 529 Tooele County Grantsville City Council (3 seats) Heidi Hammond, 1,348 Rhett Butler, 1,109 Jeff C. Williams, 982 Richard Farley, 795 Whit Cook, 513 Max D. Chavez, 477 Erda City Council District 1 Scott Droubay, 122 Kalem Sessions, 28 Erda City Council District 3 Clyde Christensen, 116 Jack Buck Peck, 75 Erda City Council District 5 Sheldon B. Birch, 161 Keith Toone, 109 Lake Point City Council (2 seats) Kathleen VonHatten, 362 Kirk Pearson, 348 Doyle Garrard, 322 Tooele City Council (3 seats) Melodi M. Gochis, 2,637 Justin G. Brady, 2,577 Ed Hansen, 2,425 Tony F. Graf, 1,975 Ryan J. Parker, 1,279 Doug Yei, 1,039 Jimi Vallejo places his ballot into a secure ballot drop box at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News Voters place their ballots into a secure ballot drop box at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News Cooper Brannon, 8, watches his father, Austin, vote at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News Jennifer Mendivil of West Valley places her ballot into a secure ballot drop box at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News A voter places her ballot into a secure ballot drop box at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News John Evans of Salt Lake City places his ballot into a secure ballot drop box at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2023. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News The U.S. Department of Educations Office for Civil Rights has launched an investigation into the University of Tampa over allegations of antisemitism. Though the incident predates the Israel-Hamas war, UT is one of several universities and school systems, including Hillsborough County Public Schools, added to a list of discrimination investigations opened since the conflict started. The Department of Educations website stated the investigations are part of the Biden-Harris Administrations continued efforts to take aggressive action to address the alarming nationwide rise in reports of antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and other forms of discrimination and harassment on college campuses and in K-12 schools since the October 7 Israel-Hamas conflict. More information about the Hillsborough schools investigation was not immediately available. The investigation of the UT incident, which took place on Sept. 23, was launched after a students parent filed a complaint, saying the university had dismissed concerns about his son defending himself from antisemitic bullies. The details are outlined in a letter shared with the Tampa Bay Times by Stuart Meissner, whose son, Dylan Meissner, was a UT freshman. The letter was directed to UT President Ronald Vaughn. It said Dylan Meissner was walking to a friends dorm carrying a pink inflatable unicorn when a student he didnt know grabbed the unicorn from him. That student, along with others he was with, used antisemitic slurs against Dylan Meissner, the letter said. Stuart Meissner said his son then took the unicorn back and fighting ensued. His son was put in a chokehold, and a campus security report said Dylan recounted being pushed and punched around the head. Stuart Meissner said his son filed a police report, which states that Dylan was bleeding from the lip and had cuts on his arm from the altercation. Stuart Meissner said the student who grabbed the unicorn later messaged his son on Instagram to apologize and met with him to apologize, saying he had been drunk. A campus security report said the student stated he and Dylan had been playing around and just doing stupid freshman college stuff, according to Stuart Meissners letter. At a hearing by the campus administrative conduct board, Dylan said his attackers used antisemitic slurs, calling him a f----ing Jew. The video evidence the conduct board reviewed did not contain audio, and the board members found the allegations of antisemitism were uncorroborated, Stuart Meissner said. He said they claimed that, because the two didnt know each other, the attacker couldnt have known Dylan Meissner was Jewish. Thats absurd, Stuart Meissner said in an interview. His letter said the board also found inconsistencies between Dylans testimony and the video, and that he had two days to appeal that finding. When Dylan requested the video footage, he was told he would have to review it in person, his father said. By then, he was home in New York and the deadline to appeal lapsed. Dylan and the other student were suspended for three semesters, Stuart Meissner said. He said his son also was asked to write a letter of apology to his attackers. In a letter to Vaughn, Stuart Meissner expressed anger over the request. As the son of someone who fled Nazi Germany (Dylans grandfather), he wrote, I will never permit Dylan to draft such an apology. He also wrote that the boards flagrant refusal to consider this case for what it is the case of a young man defending himself and his cherished heritage against bigots and bullies means the Board and University are guilty of antisemitism too in your name as president of the University. Stuart Meissner said his son, a sports marketing major at UT, is still in New York and has been depressed since the incident. He said he was against his son going to school in Tampa and that his son took out student loans against his wishes. Now the loans need to be repaid and Dylan has been applying to other schools, he said. Meissner, a former prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorneys office, said he felt troubled by the lack of due process on college campuses. It really can have long-lasting effects on peoples lives, careers and mental states, especially young people, he said. A UT spokesperson said the university had been made aware of a request for information by the Department of Education on Monday. He said the university was fully cooperating with the request, but could not comment further due to student privacy laws. A spokesperson for the departments Office for Civil Rights said the agency does not comment on open investigations. The department has opened 12 investigations into discrimination involving shared ancestry since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, which led to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Besides the University of Tampa and the Hillsborough school district, the institutions under scrutiny include Columbia University, Cornell University, Wellesley College and the University of Pennsylvania. Divya Kumar covers higher education for the Tampa Bay Times, working in partnership with Open Campus. In an interview with American media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a significant part of the funds for military aid to Ukraine will return to the United States through production and jobs. Source: Zelenskyy in an interview with Fox News Quote: "I hope that Congress will help us, and I hope that the help of the United States will be around the Ukrainian people. And I hope the United States will be with us against Russian terrorism," Zelenskyy said. Details: Addressing the growing number of Americans who believe that money is better spent on their countrys needs, Zelenskyy said that much of this money comes back to the United States through production and jobs. Quote: "When you produce for Ukraine and with Ukraine, you produce it also with Americans. So, the big parts will be production in your states," Zelenskyy said. Details: Zelenskyy also talked about the gradual progress of Ukraine in the Black Sea. The president noted that Ukrainian defenders were successful in Crimea and the Black Sea, "In Crimea, we had success in the Black Sea. We really destroyed part of the Russian fleet They dont have such total influence on the Black Sea region." Support UP or become our patron! Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, head of the American delegation to the UN, compared Russian President Putin with former USSR Secretary General Joseph Stalin, who organised the Holodomor in Ukraine, killing millions of civilians [Holodomor is a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 - ed.]. Source: Thomas-Greenfield at a meeting of the White House National Security Council, as reported by Ukrinform Details: The Ambassador pointed out that this month is the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, and Russian President Putin was inspired but Stalinist methods that caused it. Just like Stalin, Putin used food as a weapon of war, as well as caused famine and death in Ukraine. This is proven bu the fact that Russia has stolen Ukrainian grain, sabotaged agricultural land, bombarded Ukrainian agricultural infrastructure and port cities, Thomas-Greenfield concluded. She stressed that then millions of Ukrainian women, children, men died because of the harsh and repressive policies of the Stalinist regime, because of man-made and deliberate hunger. This, she said, was a warning of what could happen if cruelty and tyranny were not contained. The Ambassador also stressed that Russia is waging war not only against the people of Ukraine, but also against vulnerable segments of the population around the world that depend on food exports from Ukraine. The representative of the United States recalled that Russia has exacerbated global food security. After all, before the full-scale invasion last year, Ukraine was one of the leading producers and exporters of agricultural products. However, now wheat production in the country has decreased by 35% than before the war. But despite this, despite the relentless attacks, the Ukrainian people have survived and continue to be a beacon of hope for the most vulnerable in the world. Support UP or become our patron! U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield compared Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's weaponization of food resources in Ukraine to the atrocities of Joseph Stalin during the Holodomor, according to a UN press release published Nov. 21. During a meeting of the UN Security Council, Thomas-Greenfield said that Putin, like Stalin, used food as a weapon of war, and that the Holodomor "has become a cautionary tale about what happens when we let cruelty and tyranny go unchecked. The Holodomor, a man-made famine that cased an estimated 3.5 to 5 million Ukrainian deaths, took place during Joseph Stalin's term as General Secretary of the Soviet Union. A report from the human rights law firm Global Rights Compliance published Nov. 16 showed evidence that Putin planned to starve Ukrainians and target food infrastructure ahead of the February 2022 invasion. Matthew Hollingworth, the World Food Program's Ukraine Country Director, spoke to the Security Council via videoconference regarding the food crisis. Ukrainians are being cut off from accessing markets to buy food and farmers are reporting that they can no longer produce enough food a situation that has a dramatic impact inside and outside of Ukraine, he said. Hollingworth said that one in five Ukrainians face food insecurity, and that people face barriers to food access in 40% of front-line settlements. He said that the emergency would only intensify in the winter months. Read also: Holodomor: Soviet Unions man-made famine in Ukraine Russia's bombardment of Ukraine's port and grain infrastructure has also threatened global food supplies. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), there have been 31 documented Russian attacks on essential grain facilities since Russia withdrew from the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July. If attacks on such food infrastructure and the blockage of sea export routes continue, it will dramatically impact the agricultural production outlook over years to come, and may, in the worst-case scenario, lead to wheat production being unable to meet domestic and export demand, Hollingworth told the Security Council. Thomas-Greenfield said that food production in Ukraine is now 35% lower than prewar levels. "Kyiv is doing everything in its power to feed the world," she said. Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya said that Ukraine will commemorate the victims of the Holodomor on Nov. 25. As it was 90 years ago, Russia again seeks to break the will of Ukrainians to resist," Kyslytsya said. Read also: How Ukrainian identity evolved since the Revolution of Dignity Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent. A Catholic priest in Alabama has officially married a recent high school graduate, four months after he fled with her to Europe, according to a marriage certificate filed in court. Alexander Crow, 30, married the 18-year-old former student of McGill-Toolen Catholic High School on Friday, according to the document received by the Mobile County Probate court on Monday. The two left for Italy in July and the Catholic archdiocese of Mobile removed him from his clerical duties. The incident prompted the Mobile County Sheriffs Office and the District Attorneys Office to investigate Mr Crow over allegations that he engaged in sexual misconduct with the teen or groomed multiple girls at the high school. But a statement from the local district attorney earlier this month said no criminal charges will be filed against him. Mr Crow, who was an expert in the theological study of demons and exorcism, was accused of a behaviour totally unbecoming of a priest and abandoning his assignment. Mr Crow volunteered at the high school where he met the student. The local district attorney declined to answer any questions about her trip to Italy with Crow after a subpoena was issued, according to WKRG TV station. She appeared in seemingly good health and said that she is safe, the statement said. Without being able to speak with the young lady about these events, we do not have sufficient admissible evidence to charge a crime at this point. Therefore, this investigation is currently closed. A love letter Mr Crow apparently wrote on Valentines Day this year to the girl and in a separate letter to his brother he said his decision to leave for Italy was Jesuss will. We know how this looks, but we are doing what we are told, Mr Crow wrote to his brother. Do not worry about defending us. This is hard for her too, but she knows she will always be safe if she does Jesuss Will. We will always be thinking and praying for all of you, especially our families and friends. Please pray for us, too. We need it. In the love letter to the teen, Mr Crow said they were married when she was just 17. But the marriage license filed lists the date as 17 November. The girl and Mr Crow or their families have not responded to the latest developments. US hits Iran-backed militants with 4th round of retaliatory airstrikes United States fighter jets struck two sites in Iraq used by Iran-linked militants on Wednesday morning local time, according to U.S. Central Command and defense officials. This is the fourth round of American retaliatory airstrikes in response to a near-daily spate of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria by Iran-backed groups. The attacks began in mid-October, 10 days after Hamas' deadly terror attack on Israel. The Pentagon counts more than five dozen such attacks since then. "U.S. forces have been attacked approximately 66 times since October 17," Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Tuesday night. "32 separate times in Iraq, and 34 separate times in Syria." MORE: US retaliates against Iran-backed militants after ballistic missile strike, officials say Wednesday's strikes were partly in response to militants launching two close-range ballistic missiles at U.S. forces on al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq, injuring as many as eight service members. This was the first use of ballistic missiles against Americans in the region since mid-October, which the U.S. perceived as a definite escalation, a U.S. official told ABC News. "On the morning of November 22 in Iraq, U.S. Central Command forces conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq. The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, including the one in Iraq on November 21, which involved use of close-range ballistic missiles," a statement from Central Command read. The latest U.S. airstrikes in Iraq hit a command and control node, and an operations center used by Kataib Hezbollah to attack U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria recently, two U.S. officials told ABC News. "The strikes were conducted against a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and a Kataib Hezbollah Command and Control node near Al Anbar and Jurf al Saqr, south of Baghdad," one of the officials said. One of the officials said members of the militant group were on site during the strikes, while the other told ABC News that some were likely killed, though a full damage assessment is still under way. In addition to the four pre-planned retaliatory airstrikes by the U.S. since Oct. 17, there have been several instances of American forces immediately firing back at Iran-linked attackers when their locations were identified. The most recent of those counterstrikes just occurred Tuesday when an American AC-130 gunship already airborne in the region spotted a group of militants launch the aforementioned close-range ballistic missiles at U.S. troops stationed in western Iraq. The gunship crew tracked the attackers in their vehicle and struck back, killing several of them, according to U.S. officials. "This self-defense strike resulted in some hostile fatalities," Singh said Tuesday. MORE: US launches 3rd strikes on Iran-linked groups amid attacks on American soldiers: Officials The three earlier pre-planned U.S. airstrikes in recent weeks destroyed weapon storage facilities, a safe house, and another command and control center in Syria used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxy militants to launch attacks, according to Pentagon officials. Some militants are expected to have been killed in at least some of those strikes. While the U.S. counterattacks are meant to discourage further aggression, so far there has been no sign of them slowing. "The United States does not seek conflict and has no desire to engage in further hostilities, but these Iran-backed attacks against U.S. forces are unacceptable and must stop," one of the U.S. officials said. The official put the blame squarely on Iran. "We continue to message to Iran that we hold them accountable for these actions, and that their leaders must take action to constrain the activities of the groups Iran directs, trains and equips. We will not hesitate to take further measures to protect our people, if necessary," the official said. US hits Iran-backed militants with 4th round of retaliatory airstrikes originally appeared on abcnews.go.com In the days following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Lisa Kaplan-Millers WhatsApp group fell uncharacteristically silent. Kaplan-Miller said she first joined the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, an interfaith organization that was founded by a Muslim and a Jewish woman in suburban New Jersey, shortly after the 2016 election. She wanted to discover similarities between the two religions and combat her own misconceptions, she said. Members of the sisterhood meet regularly to learn about one anothers cultures, work on volunteer projects for Muslim and Jewish charities and plan trips around the world. But the war, Kaplan-Miller said, has shifted their normally lively dynamic, morphing their collective grief into a heavy silence. For Kaplan-Miller, conversation and perhaps confrontation felt unavoidable. We truly had no choice if we wanted the chapter to continue, she said. As the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza rages, many interfaith groups in the US whose members have spent years building lasting friendships across religious divides tell CNN the conflict has renewed their determination to draw closer together. Its just like in a marriage. When you have a relationship, you make a promise you will stay with your partner forever, said Mohammed Alhomsi, the Muslim chair of the North Jersey chapter of the Interfaith Encounter Association. In that same way, we have devoted ourselves together as human beings. Crossing divides For years, members of the Interfaith Encounter Association have celebrated holidays together and learned about each others traditions. Alhomsi said he can comfortably eat at the homes of his Jewish friends, knowing everything will be Kosher. Joan Goldstein, the Jewish chair of the groups chapter in North Jersey, has attended Ramadan celebrations throughout the years although she said she hasnt been able to do the full fast yet and still drinks water. At the end of the day, Jews and Muslims are cousins, Alhomsi said. After learning about the October 7 Hamas attack, Goldstein said she felt overwhelmed and confused at how communities could see the Hamas attack in such different lights. In that moment, she realized she wanted to talk to someone she knew and loved. So, she called her sister, Btissam Alhomsi, Mohammeds wife. If we didnt have the connection we had, we would keep walking around in the world with this assumption that was a little misguided and a little incorrect and a little one sided, Goldstein said. We dont always see eye-to-eye, she added. But that doesnt diminish our love for each other. Joan Goldstein and Mohammed Alhomsi. - Mohammed Alhomsi Btissam said she also felt drawn to Goldstein in the days after the war began. We worked with one thing and its very important that a lot of people miss the love and respect between a Muslim and a Jew, she said. I dont care where she comes from. She loves me. She doesnt care where I come from and what I believe. In the weeks since the attack, Goldstein and Mohammed Alhomsi have also attended Zoom meetings with members of the organization from all around the world. Alhomsi said although there are a range of ethnicities, languages and religions on the call, he saw a sense of shared grieving. We feel so weak that theres not much more we can do for our communities, he said. We dont want hate crimes. We dont want them to drag here into the United States where we live, where our children go to school. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has reported an unprecedented surge in reported anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias incidents since October 7. The organization said it has received 1,283 requests for help and reports of bias in the first four weeks after the attack, compared with an average of 406 in a 29-day period last year. Similarly, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 832 antisemitic incidents between October 7 November 7. The group recorded 200 incidents during the same period last year. Goldstein said she felt inspired to speak out about the surge in hate crimes at a recent city council meeting in her hometown of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, after listening to her Muslim friends discuss the importance of denouncing Islamophobia. She used her allotted time to reflect on the Torah and described the moment when the reader is first introduced to Abraham. Where are you? God asks. I am here, Abraham responds. Goldstein urged the council to look past the wars bitter divides and pass two resolutions denouncing both antisemitism and Islamophobia. People of faith, were all hurting right now, Goldstein said. And by passing these two resolutions, we show that not only is the diversity of Fair Lawn being recognized but that people of faith have a place in Fair Lawn as well. Understanding each others pain For many of the women in the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, the Israel- Hamas war is deeply personal. One member has a nephew whos in the Israeli army. Others have Palestinian friends whose families are struggling to survive in Gaza. Kaplan-Miller said everyone feels like they have something at stake in the violence thats unfolding. Afroz Rasheed, a Muslim member of the groups New York chapter, said their shared concern for each other has kept the community bonded together. For years, the women avoided discussions about politics. Instead, they had picnics at the park and met for coffee dates. They brought religious items and pictures of their families to share in meetings. They discussed every topic that came to mind except for the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But all that changed in 2021, when violence erupted at the Al Aqsa Mosque after Israeli police raided the compound. In response, members flooded the group chat with videos and links about the bombing, but a pattern emerged they werent communicating with each other. So, the group partnered with New Ground, a Jewish-Muslim organization that specializes in interfaith discussions, to train members on how to moderate conversations. Members of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom prepare donations for a local charity. - Lisa Kaplan-Miller/Western Nassau Chapter/Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom Kaplan-Miller said many of those early conversations in 2021 revolved around understanding why each side had such a visceral reaction to the conflict. The Jewish members learned what the Al Aqsa Mosque a holy site where Muslims believe the Prophet Mohammed was transported during the Night Journey meant for Muslims. Muslim members learned how their Jewish friends often grew up with the fear of the Holocaust at the back of their minds a fear that reignites when conflict erupts in the region. I really grew up steeped in the Holocaust in a way that I dont think I brought to my consciousness, Kaplan-Miller explained. And so, Israel had become a more powerful symbol to me than I realized in terms of safety. But the conversations werent for everyone. Kaplan-Miller said the last time they spoke about Israel-Gaza violence, one member became so distressed, she stopped returning to the group. The October 7 attack brought a rush of those feelings back for Muslim and Jewish members alike feelings of anger, grief and fear. Now, Kaplan-Miller said the conversations theyre having are a different animal because the violence is only getting worse. Still, she said, the group is more determined than ever to bridge divides for the sake of their friendships. Despite their differences, group members have also found a unique understanding of each others pain. Instead of talking about the politics of war, members of the sisterhood focused on their collective grief. Rasheed said the members can all agree on one thing: no one wants innocent people regardless of background to be hurt. I believe in my religion, and I believe in one thing, that any innocent life killed is a crime, she said. Regardless of who does it, we have no right. As the women shared their fears, they spoke to each other with gentleness, dedicated to being able to hold two truths and narratives at once. Tears, Kaplan-Miller said, were free-flowing. Theres no healing from this, she said. But, we were maybe soothed for the moment. A little less raw walking out than we had walked in. Although the war has tested friendships, Kaplan-Miller said she believes those who have embraced the challenge of communication through the conflict have found a sense of peace. We had an island in this ocean of tumult. It was a quiet little island we created for each other that just felt safe and calming, she said. This intractable problem has been going on for 70 years were not going to solve it. But we can maintain relationships and not lose sight of each others humanity. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com U.S. forces launched a round of airstrikes in Iraq early Wednesday against two facilities used by Iran and Iran-backed groups that were involved in attacks against U.S. forces stationed in Iraq, marking the second U.S. attack in about a day, according to the U.S. Central Command. The U.S. Central Command confirmed its forces conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq in response to an attack against U.S. forces Tuesday. The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, including the one in Iraq on November 21, which involved use of close-range ballistic missiles, the Command Center wrote in a statement. On Tuesday, Iran-backed militias carried out an attack using a close-range ballistic missile against U.S. and coalition forces at the Al Asad Air Base in Iraq, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Tuesday prior to Wednesday mornings second round of strikes. The attack resulted in several nonserious injuries and some minor damage to infrastructure, Singh said. Immediately after Tuesdays attack, a U.S. military AC-130 aircraft carried out a self-defense strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and several personnel believed to be involved in the attack. Singh confirmed the U.S. strike resulted in some hostile fatalities but did not confirm an exact number. Pressed over why the U.S. targeted people instead of infrastructure or weapons storage, Singh said the AC-130 was able to determine the point of origin from where the missile was fired and as a result, U.S. forces were able to keep track of the militants movement. She added the AC-130 was already in the air, allowing for a quick response time. They were able to take action because they saw the militants, Singh said. They were able to keep an eye on the movement of these militants as they moved into their vehicles and thats why they were able to respond. Tuesdays incident marks the latest in a series of increased assaults against American troops and assets in the Middle East. U.S. forces have been attacked about 66 times since Oct. 17, including 32 separate times in Iraq and 34 separate times in Syria, according to Singh. Since the start of the attacks, the U.S. mounted three other strikes, which were all pre-planned and targeted specific facilities and infrastructure known to be used with militias associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Singh noted. We feel very confident that the targets that we have selected, one, we know that Iran supports, backs, arms, equips, financially supports these groups and these IRGC affiliate sorry, locations and their affiliates, Singh said. So we are hitting them where it hurts. The uptick in attacks believed to be from Iran-backed proxies began shortly after the war broke out between Israel and militant group Hamas following the groups surprise incursion into Israel that left more than 1,200 people dead, including hundreds of civilians. Israel has launched a campaign to destroy Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, and has bombarded Hamas-ruled Gaza with airstrikes, bombings and ground attacks in the northern part of the enclave. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict over the past six weeks, according to the Hamas-ruled Health Ministry in Gaza. The increased activity in the Middle East has fueled concerns that Iran and its proxies could seek to widen the conflict and destabilize the region. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. A supporter puts a hand on Mathias Ometu's shoulder as he speaks outside the Bexar County Courthouse Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020 to the media about his experience being detained by San Antonio police. Ometu is the Black jogger who was stopped by San Antonio police and later wrestled into a police SUV against his will and taken to jail where he stayed for two days. Charges against Ometu were dropped Tuesday by Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales. William Luther/Staff Mathias Ometu, 33, is shown in a screen grab of a San Antonio Police Department body cam video worn by a SAPD officer. Police approach Mathias Ometu, 33, as he jogs on the North Side on Aug. 25. He wont provide his name. Im just here working out. San Antonio Police Department ce Mathias Ometu, 33, is shown in a screen grab of a San Antonio Police Department body cam video worn by a SAPD officer. An officer loosens Ometus handcuffs to make him more comfortable. San Antonio Police Department Mathias Ometu, the Black jogger who was stopped by San Antonio police and later wrestled into a police SUV against his will, speaks outside the Bexar County Courthouse Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020 to the media about his experience. Charges against Ometu were dropped Tuesday by Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales. William Luther/Staff Mathias Ometu, the Black jogger who was stopped by San Antonio police and later wrestled into a police SUV against his will, speaks outside the Bexar County Courthouse Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020 to the media about his experience. Charges against Ometu were dropped Tuesday by Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales. William Luther/Staff The civil rights lawsuit filed by a Black man who alleged that San Antonio police officers wrongly arrested him after confusing him with a domestic violence suspect should conclude without a trial, a U.S. magistrate judge recommended this month. U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry J. Bemporad sent his recommendation to a San Antonio federal judge, who can approve the recommendation or reject it and issue his own ruling. Bemporad sided with the city in his recommended ruling, issued last week. It comes three years after Mathias Marty Ometu was detained on Aug. 25, 2020, while on an afternoon jog on the North Side during his lunch break. Ometu refused to provide officers his name, which was his legal right, because he felt that officers were unfairly targeting him. Advertisement Article continues below this ad A struggle ensued after officers attempted to place Ometu into the back of a patrol vehicle to transport him to the home of the domestic violence victim, in hopes that she could identify him. The woman later confirmed that Ometu, a University of Texas at San Antonio graduate and an insurance adjuster, was not the suspect. Ometu was still arrested on suspicion of resisting arrest and transported to jail. He was in custody for a total of 52 hours before he was released on bond. The charge was dismissed a week later amid international headlines and claims of racial injustice. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Ometu filed a federal lawsuit the following year, alleging that SAPD officers Richard Serna and Devin Day used excessive force and performed an unlawful arrest, violating Ometus constitutional rights. The lawsuit also alleged that Police Chief William McManus failed to supervise, screen, discipline, transfer, counsel or otherwise control the officers. The city of San Antonio, in its initial response, denied the allegations, saying it was not liable because Ometus actions were negligent, willful, reckless. It argued that his actions were illegal and that he likely caused his own injuries. It said its training program goes above state standards. Earlier this year, the city filed a motion for summary judgment a judgment that is made when there is no genuine dispute over material facts, allowing a case to be resolved before going to trial. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Ometus attorneys made a similar motion, in hopes that the case would be concluded in his favor. Bemporad, in his recommendation, said that the citys motion for summary should be granted and Ometus motion denied. Bemporad said that Ometu, in his motion for summary judgment, had failed to provide evidence of a pattern of similar constitutional violations by San Antonio police officers that would show that the department failed to train, supervise or discipline officers. In fact, Bemporad said, the citys training goes above state standards, requiring 1,300 hours of training, nearly double the state mandate of 557 hours. Bemporad also said that Ometu had failed to prove that officers Serna and Day had used excessive force and made an unlawful arrest. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Bemporad acknowledged that Ometu was already in handcuffs when Serna and Day attempted to force him into the back of the patrol car, rendering him neither a serious risk to their safety nor a flight risk. However, the judge said the severity of the alleged crime and Ometus resistance throughout the encounter weighed in favor of the officers use of force. At the time they began forcing Ometu into the back of Sernas vehicle, Day and Serna suspected that Ometu had recently choked his ex-wife until she lost consciousness, Bemporad wrote in his recommendation. And the video evidence makes clear that it was only after Ometu began physically resisting by pushing his body back against the officers that they began pushing Ometu forcefully into the vehicle. Bemporad forwarded the recommendation to U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, who can approve the recommended ruling or reject it and analyze the motions himself. Advertisement Article continues below this ad By Marisa Taylor (Reuters) - Four U.S. lawmakers have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Elon Musk committed securities fraud by allegedly misleading investors about the safety of a brain implant being developed by the billionaires firm Neuralink, according to a letter to the regulator. The request for an inquiry came from Democratic House Reps. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, and Barbara Lee and Tony Cardenas of California, according to the letter sent to the SEC on Tuesday and reviewed by Reuters. Scrutiny over Neuralink's handling of safety protocols comes as the company prepares to test the brain implant in humans for the first time, a critical milestone for the startup's ambitions to help patients overcome paralysis and a host of neurological conditions. The letter cites veterinary records obtained from Neuralink experiments in monkeys that indicate the animals suffered "debilitating health effects" from the implants, including paralysis, seizures and brain swelling. At least 12 young and healthy monkeys were euthanized "as a direct result of problems with the company's implant," the letter said. Yet Musk, Neuralink's CEO, downplayed investor concerns about the results of its animal testing, the letter said. Musk wrote that "no monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant," in a post to his social media site, X, on Sept. 10. He added that the company chose "terminal" monkeys to minimize risk to healthy ones. Neuralink did not respond to requests for comment on the letter to the SEC. Blumenauer and other lawmakers wrote to the SEC that evidence they have reviewed shows that the death of animals in Neuralink experiments "relate directly to the safety and marketability of Neuralink's brain-computer interface." As a result, Musk's statement "may have violated" SEC rules in denying a connection, the lawmakers wrote. Last year, Neuralink employees told Reuters that the company was rushing and botching surgeries on monkeys, pigs and sheep, resulting in more animal deaths than necessary. Reuters found that the push for speed came from Musk, who pressured staff to provide the safety data required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize human testing. In May, Neuralink announced it had received FDA clearance for its first-in-human clinical trial, without disclosing details of the planned study. (Reporting by Marisa Taylor; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Marguerita Choy) More than 10 years ago, the US special services could have hacked SORM, a Russian hardware and software system for monitoring telephone conversations, text messages and all message exchanges by residents of the Russian Federation on the Internet. Source: Jacob Appelbaum, American hacker and journalist, who had access to Edward Snowden's leaked documents from the US National Security Agency (NSA), in his dissertation, which was studied by Meduza Quote from Meduza: "If this really happened (and there are reasons to believe so), information about the private lives of ordinary Russians was obtained not only by the Russian authorities, but also by the American ones." Details: Jacob Appelbaum claims that previously unpublished Edward Snowden documents refer to the hacking of Russian SORM by US intelligence services. This follows from Appelbaums dissertation, "Communication in a World of Pervasive Surveillance," which was defended at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands in March 2022. Dissertation Excerpt: "Unpublished NSA (US National Security Agency ed.) documents specifically point to the compromise of Russia's SORM 'lawful interception' infrastructure as an example of the NSA's success in compromising civilian telecommunications infrastructure to spy on targets within reach of the Russian SORM system. On the NSA slides, there is the inscription "You talk, we listen" written in Cyrillic on the jackets of two Russian officers." Meduza believes that it refers to the period before 2013 when Snowden handed over the documents of the special services to journalists. In a footnote to this paragraph, Appelbaum cited a review of Snowden's unreleased documents as the source of the information without providing any references. As the author said, these documents refer to NSA activities aimed at compromising "lawful interception" systems, as well as suppliers of such equipment or software. There is no additional information about the hacking of the Russian SORM in the dissertation. The NSA slides with images of Russian officers in it or other sources have also not been published. It is not known how SORM was hacked and what information about Russians could be accessed by American special services. The Russian SORM already at that time, i.e. in the period before Snowden's leak in 2013, represented several systems: the first for listening to telephone conversations (SORM-1); the second for tracking on the Internet (SORM-2); the third for long-term storage of collected information (SORM-3). NSA employees could gain access to only one of the systems but theoretically to all of them. The second option seems to be more difficult to implement because it would be necessary to compromise many types of equipment or software supplied for the Russian SORM at once. Appelbaum did not answer Meduza's question. Earlier, the anonymous author of the blog Electrospaces.net, dedicated to radio-electronic intelligence, communication and telecommunications security of the leaders of the US and other countries, drew attention to this dissertation (mainly, the blog analyses the activities of the US National Security Agency). In September 2023, a review of Appelbaums dissertation appeared on Electrospaces.net. Jacob Appelbaum was a very famous activist in the 2010s. Since 2008, he has been part of Cult of the Dead Cow, the oldest hacker group to date. In the 1980s its members essentially invented the concept of hacktivism the use of hacking skills to promote social or political change. In 2010, Appelbaum was called the only known American who worked for Julian Assange's WikiLeaks project. In 2011, after three months of litigation, the US Department of Justice forced Google to release Appelbaums Gmail account metadata to authorities as part of a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks. At the same time, the agency forbade the technology company to report this to the activist himself. The release of information became known only in 2015, when the relevant documents were made public by the court. From at least 2013-2015, Appelbaum, along with other Western journalists and independent experts, was engaged in the study of the Snowden archives and published research on the activities of the NSA on the websites of Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and heise.de, in the magazine Der Spiegel and in the newspaper Le Monde. Support UP or become our patron! (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday welcomed the deal to secure the release of hostages taken by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas during the attack on Israel. Israel's government and Hamas agreed to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. Biden added that the deal should also bring home additional American hostages. "Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released," he said in a statement. (Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonali Paul) The News The Biden administration is publicly pressing the Palestinian militant group Hamas to surrender the masterminds behind its October 7 terrorist attack on southern Israel in what appears to be a coordinated attempt to split Hamas and the Palestinian leadership, which are scattered across the Gaza Strip and West Bank and regional countries such as Qatar, Turkey and Lebanon. If Hamas wanted to protect the people of Gaza, it could release the hostages, surrender the leaders and those responsible for October 7, the White Houses point man on the Middle East, Brett McGurk, told a gathering of Arab leaders and diplomats in Bahrain on Saturday. President Joe Biden stressed the same point in an opinion piece published Sunday in the Washington Post on the Ukraine and Mideast wars. 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 Oct. 7, he wrote. The White Houses demand is almost certain to be ignored by Hamas, U.S. officials acknowledge. But they say its still important to initiate a process of holding the militia and political organization accountable for its assault last month that killed 1,200 Israelis. The Mideast region is deeply divided over Hamas, its status, and the way forward after the current fighting ends. Nor is it clear if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government would accept a legal process to try the assailants. Israeli leaders are vowing to eradicate Hamass entire military and political leadership and signaling it will conduct targeted assassinations beyond the Palestinian territories. On Tuesday, an Israeli drone strike in south Lebanon killed a commander of Hamas military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, according to local media. But most of Hamas senior political leadership is based in Qatar and Turkey, both U.S.-aligned countries. And leaders from these countries have offered few signs that theyd be willing to hand over Hamas members to Israel or the U.S., potentially to face charges of murder or kidnapping. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has publicly hailed Hamas as a liberation movement since October 7, and Qatar said it intends to continue hosting Hamass political office in Doha. U.S. and Middle East officials said its too early to discuss specific steps to hold Hamas leadership accountable. But one official involved in the deliberations said the International Criminal Court could be a potential venue to try cases. Jays view Israel and the Biden administration have equated October 7 to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., and Hamas to the Islamic State, or ISIS. (Dozens of American citizens were also killed in the assault last month.) But Mideast leaders, and even many American allies, arent demonstrating support for the type of expansive counter-terrorism operations against Hamas that the U.S. pursued to degrade both al Qaeda and ISIS during the 2000s. That constrains Washingtons and Israels options. Some current and former Israeli officials told me their countrys response to last months attack could be similar to their operations after the 1972 Munich Olympics, when Palestinian terrorists murdered most of the Israeli national team. Israels spy agency, Mossad, tracked and assassinated members of the Palestinian cell, known as Black September, for decades. This included sending hit teams to neighboring countries like Jordan and Lebanon, but also deep into Europe. I should be clear: Israel is determined to kill them all, Yaakov Amidror, Prime Minister Netanyahus former national security advisor, told me this week. How and when? Its a question of capabilities and intelligence. But at the end of the day: We will kill them. Many Mideast countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, have had their own conflicts with Hamas and other Iranian-backed militias in the Mideast, known as the Axis of Resistance. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi fought a years-long war against the Houthi militia in Yemen, which has supported Hamas in recent weeks by firing missiles at Israel. But the mounting death toll in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas central role in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, has sparked sharp condemnation of Israels war tactics by many of these countries. No, you cannot compare Hamas to ISIS, Jordans Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said last weekend in Bahrain. You know, we all condemn the killing on October 7. But those broader characterizations seem to ignore the fact that Hamas did not create the conflict. The conflict created Hamas. In this environment, the status of Hamas leadership could get subsumed into a broader international effort to renew the Arab-Israeli peace process after the current Gaza war ends. President Biden and the White House have backed Arab calls of the fundamental needs for the creation of the Palestinian state. And Hamas, as an organization, would be hard to exclude from the process. The View From The Palestinian Territories Three Palestinian human rights groups said this month that they are asking the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for allegedly committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip. The organizations Al Haq, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Human Rights Center citing the bombing of densely populated civilian areas and the displacement of Palestinian populations. These actions amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and incitement to genocide, they said in a joint press statement. Israel is not a member of the Hague-based court and says it doesnt recognize its jurisdiction. Notable In 2010, a Mossad hit team used fake identifications and disguises to assassinate a senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai. The US has raised an alleged plot to kill a Sikh separatist on American soil at the "senior-most" levels with India, the White House says. According to the Financial Times, the target was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a US-Canada dual national. Mr Pannun is a vocal advocate for an independent Sikh homeland and has been designated a terrorist by India. The report comes weeks after Canada said India may have been behind the murder of another Sikh separatist. The Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources, that US authorities thwarted a conspiracy to kill Mr Pannun and have issued a warning to India over concerns it was involved in the plot. The White House said Indian officials "expressed surprise and concern" when approached by the US about the allegations. "They stated that activity of this nature was not in their policy," spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. "We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days." Ms Watson added that the US has "conveyed our expectations that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable". It is unclear whether the US protest to India resulted in the operation being called off, or whether it was disrupted by US authorities, the Financial Times reported. Mr Pannun is the general counsel for Sikhs for Justice, an organisation based in the US that supports the broader Khalistan movement, which calls for an independent homeland for Sikhs in India. In a statement to the BBC, Mr Pannun called the "foiled attempt" on his life "transnational terrorism which is a threat to the US sovereignty". "I will let the U.S. government respond to this threat," he said. The Khalistan movement was at its peak in the 1980s in the Indian state of Punjab but it has lost steam over time. Politics in modern Punjab has shifted away from the movement and it is no longer a majority position. But supporters in the Sikh diaspora have continued to advocate for a separate state, with calls for independence intensifying in recent years. On Wednesday, India's Ministry of External Affairs said that the US had "shared some inputs pertaining to the nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others". "India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well," spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in a statement. The statement made no mention of Mr Pannun. The Sikhs for Justice group was labelled an "unlawful association" by Indian authorities in 2019, and Mr Pannun was listed as an "individual terrorist" the following year. Mr Pannun most recently angered Indian officials with a video warning Sikhs not to fly on Air India on a day earlier this month because it could be "life threatening". India's National Investigation Agency filed a case against him for those remarks this week. Mr Pannun has since said that he was referring to a boycott of the airline and not making a threat. US officials reportedly shared details of the alleged plot to kill Mr Pannun with some of its allies after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September the country was investigating "credible allegations" that Indian agents may have been involved in the death of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The 45-year-old was shot and killed by two gunmen outside a Sikh temple in a Vancouver suburb on a June summer evening this year. India has repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder. Canadian authorities are still investigating his death. Relations between Canada and India deteriorated sharply after Mr Trudeau's allegation, with both countries expelling envoys in a tit-for-tat diplomatic row. Canada has not publicly shared the evidence or intelligence that led it to believe India was involved. The Biden administration issued a warning to the Indian government over its possible involvement in a plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader on American soil, according to a report. The alleged plot, which targeted New York-based lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, was thwarted following an intervention by the US authorities, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing multiple people familiar with the case. The report comes just two months after Canada accused New Delhi of being involved in the killing of a Canadian national associated with the Sikh separatist movement in Surrey, British Columbia. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Shri Arindam Bagchi said on Wednesday, During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others. The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow up action. Mr Bagchi added that India takes such inputs seriously as it also impinges on our own national security interests. Earlier on Wednesday India finally restored e-visas for Canadian citizens following a lengthy diplomatic spat over the accusation, made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in parliament, which India described as absurd. The new report from the Financial Times said it was unclear whether the alleged plot against Mr Pannuns life was abandoned after Washingtons intervention, or if it was actively thwarted by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Washington reportedly informed a wider group of allies of the attempt against Mr Pannun following Mr Trudeaus September statement. Mr Pannun is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, an activist group that is linked to the movement for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, to be carved out of Indias Punjab. A member of the United Hindu Front organisation holds a banner depicting Gurpatwant Singh Pannun (AFP/Getty) He has come under scrutiny for a series of social media posts targeting the Indian government, including one which appeared to threaten flights operated by Air India. India sees the Khalistan movement as a threat to its national security and Mr Pannun had previously been designated a wanted terrorist by the Indian government. On Tuesday a new case was registered against him by Indias National Investigation Agency (NIA) over the Air India video. Mr Pannu told the FT he would let Washington respond to the issue of threats to my life on American soil from Indian operatives. The threat to an American citizen on American soil is a challenge to Americas sovereignty, and I trust that the Biden administration is more than capable of handling any such challenge, he added. The warning sent by Washington to the Indian government came after prime minister Narendra Modis state visit to Washington in June, according to the report. Federal prosecutors have separately filed a sealed indictment in a New York district court against at least one suspect involved in the plot, it said. One person charged in the indictment is believed to have already left the US, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the proceedings. The Indian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent. Families and friends of hostages held in Gaza call for Netanyahu to bring them home during a demonstration in Tel Aviv on November 21. - Ariel Schalit/AP US officials have a working list of 10 hostages that they believe are likely to be released from Gaza on day one, a source familiar told CNN. It was not clear whether any of the three American hostages including three-year-old Abigail Edan would be released on the first day. The deal is structured in such a way that each day, a group of hostages to be released would be handed off to the Red Cross; the Red Cross would then take the group to a designated border point, which will largely depend on the location of those hostages, the source familiar said. Many of the first 50 hostages are expected to come out through Egypt, they said. A source familiar with how hostages are expected to leave Gaza told CNN that the first swap is expected to take place on Thursday at 10 a.m. Israeli time (3 a.m. ET). 50 Israel hostages including some with dual nationalities are expected to be released over the four-day pause. 10 is the minimum number of hostages to be released each day, but that could be higher. Every evening before the next days release Israel and Hamas will give the Red Cross the list of hostage and prisoner names being released. Hostages will be brought by the Red Cross to Rafah where they will be met by specially trained Israeli soldiers. They will verify that the hostages released were the people expected and on the list. The families of the hostages will not be notified until the identities of those released have been confirmed. Hostages will then be taken by helicopter to several designated hospitals in Israel where there will be special areas and rooms for them, closed to the public. There, their families will finally be able to see them after over six weeks in captivity. The first two days of the hostage release will be treated as a testing period, the source said, to make sure the process is working. By day three, there is expected to be intense discussions about the potential second phase of the hostage release beyond the initial group of 50. The first swap is the most crucial to see that the mechanism is working as was agreed, the source said. In terms of the remaining hostages, including Israeli soldiers, Hamas had initially tried to designate all Israeli women under 45 as soldiers, given that women have to serve in the Israeli military and are often reservists, the source said. Israel rejected that, and the two sides agreed that only women serving, in uniform when they were abducted, would be designated as soldiers. As part of the deal the Red Cross is expected to be able to visit and offer medical support to the hostages that remain in Gaza, the source said. White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk told CNNs Boris Sanchez Wednesday he could not speak to the schedule of when the Americans would be released. He confirmed that three US hostages Edan and two women are expected to come home as part of the 50 hostages released by Hamas. A total of 10 Americans are believed to be hostages. I was asked earlier do we know if the 50 are alive and well. We understand theyre alive, but theyre certainly not well, McGurk said. These 50 women, children and toddlers, its just unimaginable what theyve gone through, but were gonna make sure that they get the care they need when they come home. McGurk said he is hopeful that the Red Cross will get access to the other hostages but noted, I cannot confirm that nor guarantee that. McGurk suggested that the humanitarian pause and hostage releases could continue beyond the initial four-day period, saying they do have some assurances on this. For this humanitarian pause to continue, we have to see more hostages coming out, he said. We do have some assurance that even beyond the four-day period, on day five, day six, we will meet that benchmark to extend the humanitarian pause at least by those of period of days, but I cant guarantee that. We have to see and again, were dealing with Hamas, a terrorist group here, whos holding toddlers and babies at the other end of the table, he said. Meanwhile, the Israeli Supreme Court has now greenlit the (hostage) deal to go forward, thus clearing the way for the process to move forward on Thursday, McGurk said. Asked on CNN News Central if there are concerns around the release of the Palestinian prisoners, McGurk noted that the Israelis are balancing a number of different objectives and risks and they determined that the release of the Palestinian prisoners in this circumstance, after a full debate within their government, was the way to proceed. And I know that was actually discussed today before the Israeli Supreme Court and I understand the Supreme Court has now greenlit the deal to go forward, he said. A senior Israeli official told CNN Tuesday that there was a 24-hour window following the announcement of the deal for appeals to be lodged with the court. The Supreme Court has rejected a legal challenge to the Gaza hostage deal, which includes the release of at least 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The Almagor association, which was set up in 1986 to represent victims of terror, had claimed that the governments decision, among a series of objections, intensified the risk of the recurrence of serious acts of terrorism to which all the citizens and residents of the country are exposed. Almagor had asked the Supreme Court to annul the governments decision [and] order [the government] to discuss again the terms of the deal with Hamas, according to information released by the court. The court said it rejected the petition outright on the grounds that the hostage deal, is a clear political issue to which this court does not consider its involvement as necessary. The ruling clears any legal objection in Israel to the execution of the deal that involves the exchange of Israeli hostages in Gaza for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com This article was originally published in South Carolina Daily Gazette. COLUMBIA With restoration of what remains of Columbias first Black public high school fully funded, the director of the University of South Carolinas civil rights center is turning his attention to expansion. The estimated $24 million project involves new construction on the historic Booker T. Washington High School property. The stories and contributions of South Carolinians in the national Civil Rights Movement can be put on display in a second, modern building, said Bobby Donaldson, director of the University of South Carolina Center for Civil Rights History and Research. Renovations at the former high school auditorium started a decade ago. Its the only building left standing on the campus beloved by generations of Black Columbians. Support The 74's year-end campaign. Make a tax-exempt donation now. The last phase of improvements is set to begin in late 2024 or early 2025. Its funded by a $5 million federal grant awarded in June. That will bring the total spent on its preservation to $8.7 million. But a high school building built in 1956 has its limitations. The new space is where we can envision how we reach audiences decades beyond our time, Donaldson told the SC Daily Gazette. Today, visitors will find walls full of informational placards about the history of the school, its students and the educators who once walked its halls. But there is no space to permanently house exhibits and the schools collection of audio recordings, film clips, photographs, postcards, diaries and manuscripts. There have been temporary displays there. Funding for the expansion The new, adjacent facility will house a research library, archives, conference space, offices and modern exhibit space. Collections include the official papers of South Carolina senior Congressman Jim Clyburn, a Democrat first elected in 1992. The space will include more immersive, interactive and high-tech displays to bring history to life, Donaldson said. So far, hes raised $9 million for the expansion from a combination of federal grants, private donations, the university and most recently, $1 million in the state budget sponsored by state House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia. Donaldson hopes to use the state funding to encourage more private sources to chip in on the project. I want to give people a reason to come to Columbia, Rutherford said. I think if Columbia is going to be on the map, we have to take advantage of our assets. The (Congaree) River is one of those and our history is another. The centers new building will pay homage to the once 4-acre high school campus that was at the center of Columbias Black community from 1916 through its closure in 1974. Related The Past, Present & Future of Historically Black Colleges and Universities More than a school Long the largest Black public high school in the state and the only place Black children could receive a high school education in Columbia as southern states clung to segregation, Booker T. was a source of pride that shaped generations of educators, trades workers and community and Civil Rights leaders, Donaldson said. Donaldson still remembers what Doris Glymph Greene told him when renovations began in 2013 thanks to a donation from another Booker T. graduate. Green was the schools 1959 valedictorian and created the foundation dedicated to preserving its history. I want you to know this building is more than a school to us, Donald recalls her saying. Its a shrine to the struggles and triumphs of African Americans in Columbia. Alumni, faculty and community leaders protested the schools closure and sale to the University of South Carolina in 1974, to no avail. USC gradually swallowed up the property, bulldozing the classrooms and gymnasium to build dormitories for college students. It was only a decade earlier that the university admitted its first Black students since Reconstruction. The schools lone building standing is itself a testament to the struggle for equality. It was built with collections from South Carolinas inaugural 3% sales tax, which then-Gov. James Byrnes pushed as a way to thwart desegregation. Hundreds of Black- and white-only schools were built in a failed effort to prove public schools could be separate but equal. The effort to expand the center comes on the tail of another milestone in the endeavor to acknowledge and amplify the stories of Black South Carolinians. How it differs from other museums The city of Charleston this summer celebrated the long-awaited opening of the $125 million International African American Museum, located on what was once the largest U.S. point of entry for enslaved Africans. The museum, two decades in the making, features exhibits on African culture dating to 300 B.C., the transatlantic slave trade, the Holy Citys role, and the little-known achievements of Black South Carolinians. Donaldson said USCs civil rights center works with museums, including IAAM and the Penn Center on Saint Helena island, home to the Gullah Geechee culture. But his work is less about tourism and more focused on archiving, researching and providing resources to educators who teach U.S. history, he said. What we aim to do with our work is to remind audiences that South Carolina played a valuable role in the long struggle for civil rights, Donaldson said. Related In the 1960s, the Push for Parental Rights Was Led by Black and Latino Parents That history includes the U.S. Supreme Courts landmark 1963 decision, Edwards v. South Carolina, in which the high court ruled the state violated the First Amendment rights of Black high school and college students when police arrested them for protesting on the Statehouse grounds against segregation. Then there was Sarah Mae Flemming, who protested segregation on Columbias city buses more than a year and a half before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. When Clyburn retires, researchers will be able to peruse his congressional papers as well as files from his 18 years as the South Carolina Human Affairs commissioner. Rutherford said one trip to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., shows just how much of the Civil Rights Movement started in South Carolina. Expanding the Center for Civil Rights History and Research, he said, provides the opportunity to educate the public right here in the Palmetto State. SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on Facebook and Twitter. This article was published as part of a content-sharing agreement with The Salt Lake Tribune. Weeks after finding out that the commander of the Utah National Guard would leave his post following an Army investigation, members of the state-based force stood in formation on an open field at Camp Williams under a warm September sun, waiting for Gov. Spencer Cox to pass in a Humvee as part of a ceremony recognizing a new adjutant general taking the helm. Moments earlier during an impassioned speech, Cox told the soldiers and airmen that he considers overseeing the guard among the most profound and the most sacred of his responsibilities. I want you to know that it is a duty I take incredibly seriously, Cox said. It is often overwhelming. I think about you. I pray for you. I worry for you and your families. I care deeply about you, and I am so grateful for your sacrifice to our state and to our country. Three weeks earlier, Cox had placed Army Maj. Gen. Michael Turley on paid administrative leave, saying his decision was based on the information provided to him by the Department of the Army Inspector General. On the day of Turleys suspension, USA Today reported that a two-year DAIG investigation found Turley had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate soldier, citing unnamed sources familiar with the inquiry. But two years before Coxs decision based on the federal findings the governors office was alerted to broad allegations that Turley had made violent threats toward guard members, mishandled sexual misconduct cases and was responsible for a hostile and unhealthy work environment, according to 2021 emails obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune. The state didnt launch its own investigation into Turley until September 2022, spurred by a call from an Army Times reporter who asked Coxs office for a comment on the Armys investigation, according to emails obtained by The Tribune. The Utah Division of Human Resource Management denied a request from The Tribune for its own investigative records. An administrative officer for the Department of Government Operations wrote, the governors office claims ownership of these records as product created for the office by DHRM, preventing the division from releasing them. While it is unknown when the states investigation ended, the administrative officer added: There were no formal charges or disciplinary action brought by the state. Days after his suspension, according to Cox, Turley decided to retire from the U.S. Army and step down as adjutant general. After leaving a voicemail for Turley, The Tribune was contacted by his legal counsel, who as of publication time declined to provide a statement. Now Utah lawmakers are considering whether it should be easier to fire Utahs top military commander. There will be bodies in the street Early in the workday on Sept. 28, 2021, a constituent services staffer forwarded a letter to the executive assistant of Coxs chief of staff, Jon Pierpont: No contact information was provided for a response, but I thought it was important to share, the staffer wrote in the email. The anonymous letter said it was written by multiple members of the Utah National Guard. It leveled several accusations at Turley, alleging that he was responsible for a hostile and unhealthy work environment in the guard. As the Commander-in-Chief of the Utah National Guard, you are responsible for the overall climate and safety for all of those who serve in its ranks, the letter read. We know that you must trust General Turley to follow your vision for a professional working environment, that trust is not being honored. We write this with the belief that you do not know what is happening under General Turleys leadership, or you would have dealt with it by now. According to the writers, Turley allegedly routinely made threats of physical violence against his subordinates in the guard, using phrases such as I will shoot you in the face, and there will be bodies in the street, they wrote. The letter also alleged that there were several cases of inappropriate sexual behavior where General Turley has chosen to gloss over or fail to address the problem head on, adding that his typical response was to move the supervisor or refer them to counseling. The writers cited a specific case in which they claimed Turley overturned a reprimand of an officer who was investigated for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a subordinate. They alleged the general retaliated against the commander who issued the punishment by refusing to promote the commander. He talks a good game and even makes videos about how it starts with me and how we all need to do our part to set a proper culture, but his actions fall short, the letter said, continuing, General Turley sent a clear message to the entire National Guard that he is ok with sexual misconduct, but not ok with the supervisors who report it. Under Turleys leadership, the Utah National Guard held a sexual violence awareness campaign in November 2021. He joined kidnapping survivor and anti-sexual violence activist Elizabeth Smart at a Camp Williams town hall meeting on the topic in spring 2022. Sexual violence is a growing problem in state National Guard units. In fiscal 2022, the National Guard Bureau which administers National Guard units in all 50 U.S. states, as well as Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands and Guam reported a 22% increase in sexual assault reports, rising from 704 in 2021 to 856. That reflects the largest percentage increase recorded over the history of the program, the report states. Turleys behavior, the anonymous letter writers added, created an environment where those who serve under him are reluctant or unwilling to share information that is counter to what he wants to hear, this is an extremely dangerous thing to have in a military organization and leads to things being covered up or neglected if it will make the boss angry. We felt it our duty to report this directly to you first, they wrote to Coxs office. We will be filing a report with the DoD and possibly our congressman just to make sure that this does not go uninvestigated. All these claims are easily confirmed through a proper investigation. Two days after the arrival of the anonymous letter, a second anonymous complaint popped up in constituent services inbox. This letter writer said they were a service member and expressed concern about the climate in the Utah National Guard. As a young officer, they wrote, Turley developed a reputation as a bit of a tyrant, adding that they were surprised Turley was selected as the adjutant general. It continued, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt when he became the tag [the adjutant general] but that behavior just continues to manifest itself. Now that he is the tag and the ultimate decision-maker it has become worse and [with] the nature of our business [Turleys behavior] could be dangerous to our soldiers. Gov. Spencer Cox and Brig. Gen. Daniel Boyack during Utah National Guard Governor's Day at Camp Williams on Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. (Trent Nelson/ The Salt Lake Tribune) Insufficient evidence The anonymous complaints appear to have been forwarded to Pierpont and the governors senior communications advisor, Jennifer Napier-Pearce, on the day constituent services received the second note in September 2021. Based on the complaints, Napier-Pearce told The Tribune, the governor met with Turley in early October 2021, and directed the adjutant general to commission a command climate survey of his subordinates and report back with the results. Those results, provided in January of the following year, were largely positive, according to the governors office. The governor directed Gen. Turley to make improvements based on the survey results, Napier-Pearce added. When asked whether the governors office could share the survey results or details about the survey, Napier-Pearce said, My understanding is that the survey results were presented in person to the governor, but that he did not receive a written report. You might check with the Utah National Guard to see if they have an actual record that they can share. Lt. Col. Christopher Kroeber, a spokesperson for the guard, said such results may only be obtained through a formal public records request. The Tribune has requested those records. Coxs office did not instruct state agencies to investigate Turley or the claims made in the letters, as the anonymous complainants requested, until the next year, when Army Times reporter Davis Winkie reached out to the governors office in September 2022. Winkie asked in an email whether Cox was aware of allegations against Turley being investigated by the Army. Specifically, we are aware that Turley allegedly had an extramarital sexual relationship with an enlisted soldier for several years (including after becoming TAG in 2019) both extramarital sexual conduct and a sexual relationship with an enlisted member (fraternization) are traditionally criminalized under military law. The investigation also reportedly involves false statement allegations too, Winkie wrote. The Army has not disclosed what allegations it investigated. The department has not yet responded to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by The Salt Lake Tribune, though a spokesperson said there were substantiated findings. In a statement, Cox said he was not provided a copy of the report. Within an hour of receiving Winkies email, Pierpont forwarded the inquiry to Division of Human Resource Management Director John Barrand, and two hours later he sent Barrand the year-old anonymous complaints against Turley. Emails obtained from the division indicate it began investigating the general and arranged an interview with him within a week of receiving the emails. The division requested that the Army Inspector General share information relating to this individuals actions as a State employee, records show, adding, This information is crucial to Governor Cox as the direct manager of this individual. Good evening, a legal advisor responded. The Inspector General of the Army declined to provide information to you in response to your query on behalf of the Governor of Utah. According to Napier-Pearce, that meant his hands were tied Cox couldnt respond without cause. The Governors Office was left with insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations and had to wait for the results of the Army Inspector Generals investigation, or for additional evidence, before taking official action regarding Gen. Turleys employment, Napier-Pearce said in a statement. She continued, The Governors Office takes allegations of impropriety seriously and carefully addresses allegations that arise. In this case, the Governors Office promptly addressed each allegation against Gen. Turley. Unfortunately, the offices investigation into the allegation of an inappropriate relationship was hindered due to a lack of information from the Army Inspector General. At the pleasure of the governor While state adjutant generals are nonpartisan, their selection is inherently political. In 49 states except Vermont, where the state assembly selects the state military forces top official adjutant generals are governor appointees. And until a few years ago, the head of South Carolinas National Guard was popularly elected. Turleys predecessor over the Utah National Guard, Jefferson Burton, ran for and won a seat in the state Legislature the year after he retired from the Army. Under Utah law, the adjutant general is appointed by the governor and holds office for a term of six years, but may be terminated by the governor for cause. Turley was appointed by former Gov. Gary Herbert in 2019, but served the majority of his shortened term under Cox. Now this is not something that you do in a vacuum when you choose the new adjutant general, Herbert told The Tribune, adding that he consulted former adjutant generals during the screening process. [Turley] was, I think, clearly the top of the list, and so I felt very good about it. Herbert, under whom Cox served as lieutenant governor, said he was surprised and disappointed by the results of the Armys investigation. The former governor said he didnt receive complaints against Turley during his time in office, but if he had, they would be taken seriously an investigation would ensue. ... It certainly wouldnt be swept under the rug. Following the Division of Human Resource Managements denial of The Tribunes public records request, its unclear the extent to which the state probed allegations it had received against the former adjutant general, and what Cox may have learned through that process. But Burton, the legislator and former adjutant general, proposes changing state law to make it easier for the governor to fire the Utah National Guards top commander. Many of you are aware of some of the challenges we had in the National Guard over the last couple of months due to some actions that were taken that were not appropriate, Burton told the Veteran and Military Affairs Commission, which he chairs, during a November interim legislative meeting. " ... We find that we need to tighten [statute] up a little bit further, a little bit more. If the draft bill is approved by the Legislature, the law would say that adjutant generals serve at the pleasure of the governor, rather than allowing them to be terminated for cause. As Cox handed the guard over to a new leader in September, Air Force Brig. Gen. Daniel Boyack didnt flinch from acknowledging the circumstances under which he was assuming the new role. Our culture must continue to evolve and embrace repeated questions to the status quo, Boyack said. We need to use our diverse force to find new and better ways to do every single part of our mission. If we can think like this, we will continue to have a culture we can be proud of. Boyack told guard members, with their family members in bleachers behind him, that he planned to spend the majority of his time working to improve that culture. He invited the Utah service members to share their cool ideas for making it better. My promise to you is that Im going to run as hard as I can to keep up with you, and never have anything in my conduct that would give you reason to question my integrity or my resolve, Boyack said, addressing the soldiers and airmen for the first time as their commander. I ask the same of each of you. Army Times reporter Davis Winkie contributed to this story. Support for victims and survivors of domestic and intimate partner violence is available 24/7: 1-800-897-LINK (5465). If you or someone else is in immediate danger, or in an emergency, please call 911 immediately. WEST POINT, Utah (ABC4) A man accused of violently sexually assaulting a woman in 2019 after attending a country concert was sentenced to serve time in the Utah State Prison this week. Former Marine sues Tim Ballard and OUR over sexual assault claims Brandon Dunaj, 44, was found guilty on second-degree felony counts of forcible sexual abuse and aggravated assault as well as third-degree felony attempted kidnapping and misdemeanor sexual battery. Dunaj will serve up to 15 years in prison for the crimes. Dunaj was arrested back in September 2019 after the victim was able to get away and find help from her neighbors. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now ABC4 Breaking News Alerts The assault started while Dunaj and the woman were traveling back to his West Point home after attending a concert at the USANA amphitheater. According to court documents, Dunaj dragged the victim by her hair into the house where he continued to assault her. On a second incident, he dragged her from the front lawn and continued his attack. Investigators noted there were drag marks through the grass, dirt and rocks. Deputies said the woman suffered a swollen right eye to the point she could barely see out of it, as well as bruising around her neck and clear defensive wounds. Dunaj was originally charged with first-degree felony counts of forcible sexual abuse, aggravated assault, and sexual battery. As part of a plea deal, Dunaj admitted guilt to the crimes, the charges of forcible sexual abuse and aggravated assault were reduced to a second-degree felony. The sexual battery charge was additionally reduced to a misdemeanor. A single charge of object rape was dismissed in court. He was sentenced Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023, over four years after he was arrested. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah. Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller took to social media this week to thank God for those who turned weapons in during a buyback Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023, in San Antonio. Robin Jerstad San Antonians who turned in their weapons over the weekend got more than just an H-E-B gift card. On Sunday, hundreds of gun owners lined up for a gun buyback event on South Cherry Street. Organizers exchanged $160,000 in H-E-B gift cards for 933 weapons. Those who turned in their weapons were thanked by Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, head of the Archdiocese of San Antonio. "I thank God for moving hearts of people in San Antonio to surrender their guns," Garcia-Siller said on X, formerly known as Twitter. "We know the facts of killings in our State and in many States in the US. Thank you for being instruments of peace instead of power and violence. We pray for the stop of violence, power & corruption." Advertisement Article continues below this ad While some agreed with Garcia-Siller's message, others took to the social media platform to critique it. "Good people surrendering their weapons will do nothing to stop violence," wrote one user. "It will have the opposite effect." "I bet all the criminals were the ones to turn them in," commented another. Garcia-Siller has championed more progressive causes in the past, including immigration reform. Last year, Garcia-Siller said Gov. Greg Abbott's busing of migrants to cities like New York City and Chicago "offends god." Garcia-Siller was appointed archbishop in 2010. San Antonio police collect firearms from gun owners at a drive-thru gun buyback organized by San Antonio City Council member John Courage on Sunday, Nov 19, 2023. Carlos Javier Sanchez/Contributo A Utah Republican seeking to replace retiring GOP Sen. Mitt Romney in the U.S. Senate has been deemed "one hundred percent a liar" by one state lawmaker following his claim that his campaign received endorsements from several elected officials in the state. Earlier this year, then-Utah state House Speaker Brad Wilson, who announced his campaign for the Senate in September, released a list of more than 60 lawmakers who his campaign said endorsed Wilson in the race. Wilson's campaign also said last week that it has received endorsements from more than 50 mayors throughout the state. However, at least a few of those endorsements were not actually given to Wilson's campaign, according to four officials whose names appeared on the lists and spoke to Fox News Digital about the situation. Speaking anonymously about the alleged endorsement of Wilson's campaign, one lawmaker whose name was on the list said he never endorsed the Republican in his race for the Senate. Other officials confirmed to Fox Digital that their names were listed even though they didn't endorse Wilson's bid. UTAH HOUSE SPEAKER JUMPS IN SENATE RACE TO REPLACE ROMNEY: 'OUR COUNTRY IS NOT ON THE RIGHT PATH' Brad Wilson The lawmaker who requested to remain anonymous out of concern for retaliation from Wilson said the fiasco with the campaign began this year when Wilson, whose tenure as House speaker concluded last week, called House members and pressured them to donate to him after he launched an exploratory committee to consider running for the seat. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP "I think it's completely inappropriate to call around and ask for donations from members. So, I was put in a position out of the gate where it's like I say no to our current speaker of the House who still holds and wields all the power," the lawmaker said. "It's completely unacceptable and inappropriate." The lawmaker, despite being reluctant to make contributions so early in the race, ultimately donated to Wilson's campaign and "thought that'd be the end of it." "Then this letter comes down ... saying that I was on a list of legislators that had endorsed him. I'm like, 'Whoa, I didn't endorse Brad. I gave him money because he asked for it ... he's speaker of the House,'" the lawmaker told Fox. "I called other legislators, and they said the same thing. They felt like they were put in a tough position where they felt like they had to donate to him." Describing it as a "he knows what he's doing type of situation," the lawmaker also told Fox that some state House members who didn't financially support Wilson ended up losing their committee assignments. Another House member, the lawmaker said, is supporting Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs in the Senate race and ended up in an awkward situation after the representative made a small donation to Wilson and later appeared on the list, which was released in August, prior to Wilson's campaign announcement. "It just put everyone in a really tough position, and I don't think it's right," the lawmaker said. "I'm not sure what's going to happen as we move forward here because he still technically holds a lot of power." MORE THAN 60 UTAH REPUBLICANS ENDORSE PRIMARY CHALLENGER TO MITT ROMNEY The undisclosed lawmaker said the false endorsements that ended up on the list are representative of how Wilson has "run things as speaker of the House," saying that "you don't cross him" without some type of retaliation. "To have him be speaker and do that is just unacceptable. I mean, I'm not aware of someone who says they're going to run and calls while they're still in power and is gathering up all these bits of, you know, donations and endorsements," the lawmaker added. "Let's be real. Brad doesn't need the money. He is self-funding most of it anyways, and he has tons of it." The alleged endorsements for Wilson's campaign, according to the lawmaker, were "an attempt" by the campaign to show strength early on in the campaign process by listing some House members' names on the list solely because they gave him a donation he solicited. "In reality, they weren't endorsements. They were just people who were scared," the lawmaker said. "I've seen the same thing with the mayoral races or mayors around the state. They're also saying, 'I didn't endorse him, but he put my name on a list.'" The lawmaker said the false endorsements that ended up on the list are representative of how Wilson has "run things as speaker of the House," saying that "you don't cross him" without some type of retaliation. "One hundred percent a liar," the lawmaker added of Wilson. In addition to the state lawmaker, three other elected officials in the state confirmed to Fox News Digital that they did not endorse Wilson's campaign and were seemingly shocked to see their names on the lists. In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for Wilson's campaign said, "It's sad our opponents are spending Thanksgiving agonizing over Brad's endorsement list, but the fact is Brad Wilson has over one hundred Republican endorsements from every corner of Utah, many times more than all the other candidates in the race combined." Asked whether it was appropriate for Wilson to solicit donations during his speakership, Wilson's campaign responded, "Brad has consistently smashed fundraising records in this race because, like any strong campaign, hes been asking his friends and allies to chip in to support his campaign." In September, following Romney's announcement that he would not be seeking reelection to the upper chamber in 2024, Wilson told Fox News Digital that a "number of factors" played into his decision to enter the Senate race. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, announced in September that he is not seeking reelection in 2024 and called for "a new generation of leaders." "One is just the overwhelming support we've had from everyone in the state from elected officials to grassroots support. Just a lot of people encouraging us to run, whether it's been support in terms of wanting to go out and knock on doors or get supporters on board [with] financial support. I mean, that's been overwhelming," he said. "At the end of the day, our country is not on the right path, and we all know it. People feel like Utah is on the right path, and I feel like I've got a lot and a tremendous amount to offer in terms of being able to go back to Washington, D.C., as a conservative, as a conservative fighter, and representing Utah's values back in the U.S. Senate," Wilson, a businessman and graduate of Weber State University who has represented Utah's 15th District in the State House since January 2011, added at the time. Original article source: Utah Republican seeking to replace Romney accused of falsifying endorsements, strong-arming GOP for support The News For the people who worry that artificial intelligence could destroy the world, known as rationalists, the last few days have been confusing and alarming. The board of the highest-profile AI company, OpenAI, fired its CEO Sam Altman for reasons thought to be related to their worries about the risk of AI. That promptly backfired in incredibly confusing fashion one of those board members signed a letter condemning his own actions and threatening to quit. Now, Altman has apparently been rehired. Know More Since the earliest days of AI, researchers have raised the possibility that a really powerful intelligence could be dangerous. I. J. Good, a colleague of Alan Turings and an early AI pioneer, warned in 1965 of an intelligence explosion and said that the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. Since the late 1990s those worries have become more specific, and coalesced around Nick Bostroms 2014 book and Eliezer Yudkowskys blog LessWrong. The argument is not that AI will become conscious or that it will decide it hates humanity. Instead, it is that AI will become extraordinarily competent, but that when you give it a task, it will fulfill . Just as when we tell schools that they will be judged on the number of children who get a certain grade and teachers start teaching to the test, the AI will optimize the metric we tell it to optimize. If we are dealing with something vastly more powerful than human minds, the argument goes, that could have very bad consequences. In 2015, some of AIs leading minds gathered in Puerto Rico, along with figures including one Elon Musk. Musk became so alarmed by the prospect of AI that he helped set up OpenAI, with the explicit intention of reducing the risk that it would destroy humanity. With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon, he said. But the people who worried about AI saw Musks actual for OpenAI making AI open-source as unhelpful at best. Yudkowsky described Musks position as AGI is summoning a demon, so lets make sure everyone has one. Over time, OpenAI changed its view in 2018, Musk was sidelined by the other co-founders, including Altman, and the open-source policy was dropped. But while Altman has always said that he takes AI risk seriously he has argued that A.I. poses an existential risk to humanity, and at one point his Twitter bio read eliezer yudkowsky fan fiction account rationalists Ive spoken to worried he was mainly paying it lip service: He did not, one told me, ever actually to Yudkowsky. (It is worth noting that many outside the rationalsphere and some within it would say thats an entirely sensible decision.) Rumors are swirling about exactly why the board stacked with serious believers in AI risk fired Altman, But whats pretty concrete is that the whole debacle has made it easy to mock the rationalists and effective altruists who worry about this sort of thing. Zvi Mowshowitz, a prominent rationalist, said on his blog: [Skeptics are saying] that this will completely discredit EA or doomerism or any concerns over the safety of AI, forever. Yes, they say this every week, but this time it was several orders of magnitude louder and more credible. Toms view Its very easy to mock concerns that AI will kill everyone, but Ive spoken to enough researchers who think its plausible. The founders of OpenAI as well as other major AI organizations such as DeepMind, Inflection, and Anthropic are all on the record saying its plausible, as are Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the most senior and well-respected AI scientists. That doesnt mean its going to happen. (One person at DeepMind several years ago said something to me along the lines of: Yes, AI risk is real, but were going to solve it and make AI awesome.) But its not crazy sci-fi or implausible nonsense. For now, AI management seems to have encountered another ruthlessly optimizing system. Capitalism has some parallels to the purported risks of AI, in that companies optimize for a certain metric shareholder value whether or not that metric is perfectly aligned with the things we actually care about: Human flourishing or moral goodness or whatever. The OpenAI governance structure, with its nonprofit board empowered to remove the CEO if he or she was following shareholder value rather than the benefits of humanity, was designed to circumvent that problem. Ultimately, pressure from investors overcame those guardrails. Room for Disagreement Plenty of people think that AI risk is crazy sci-fi or implausible nonsense. Yann LeCun, currently at Meta and who alongside Hinton and Bengio is described as one of the Godfathers of AI, said: Will AI take over the world? No, this is a projection of human nature on machines. Notable The original LessWrong posts on AI risk have been made into an e-book, . The whole edited version is also available here. It is roughly twice as long as , but worth the time. The researcher Katja Grace surveyed AI scientists to ask when they thought superintelligent AI would be likely to arrive, and how likely it would be to kill everyone: The answers can be summed up as quite soon and quite likely more specifically, the median answer was that it would probably be here by 2059, and that there was a 5% chance of human extinction. If you want to understand the idea of optimizing for something and how that can go wrong in many more ways than simply AI or capitalism, the long, strange, but mind-expanding 2014 essay Meditations on Moloch by Scott Alexander is a fascinating place to start. Nate Soares, the executive director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, gave a talk at Google in 2017 on why AI is dangerous, why we should think of it more like Disneys than , and issues a warning to programmers: If nothing yet has struck fear into your heart, I suggest meditating on the fact that the future of our civilization may well depend on our ability to write code that works correctly on the first deploy. The video and transcript are here. Two people were killed in a vehicle explosion Wednesday afternoon at Rainbow Bridge, a U.S.-Canada border crossing near Niagara Falls, in western New York. Officials said four U.S.-Canada border crossings in the region were temporarily closed as investigators responded to the situation. The victims were identified Friday by Niagara Falls Police as Grand Island residents Kurt P. Villani, 53, and his wife, 53-year-old Monica Villani. The Rainbow Bridge crossing was reopened Thursday, the Canada Border Services Agency reported on social media. Multiple law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News two people died inside the vehicle that exploded. A senior law enforcement official told CBS News that the nationalities of the two people who died are not yet known. The two people who died were a married couple the husband was driving and his wife was the passenger, U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday night. The officials said the vehicle was a Bentley believed to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is not yet known why the car exploded, but New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a news conference Wednesday that at this time "there is no sign of terrorist involvement" in the "horrific" explosion. FBI Buffalo on Wednesday night said it had concluded its investigation of the incident and found no explosive materials or "terrorism nexus." "The matter has been turned over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation," the FBI said in a statement. Hochul said the vehicle was "incinerated" by the crash, with nothing remaining intact but its engine. She added that pieces of the car were scattered over 13 to 14 border security booths. A Customs and Border Protection officer watches as a vehicle burns at the Rainbow Bridge U.S. border crossing with Canada, in Niagara Falls, New York, Nov. 22, 2023. / Credit: Courtesy Saleman Alwishah via REUTERS There had been conflicting early reports about which direction the car was traveling, but Wednesday afternoon a senior U.S. law enforcement official told CBS News the car was coming from the U.S. side. The official said it hit the customs station. A short clip of security camera footage posted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows the car speeding and going airborne. CBP is working closely with @FBI, federal, state & local partners in response to a vehicle explosion at Rainbow Bridge which remains closed. Out of abundance of caution, CBP temporarily suspended inbound/outbound traffic at 3 other Buffalo crossings that have since reopened. pic.twitter.com/pTXyUsavRB CBP (@CBP) November 22, 2023 Hochul said a border patrol officer who was in the customs station suffered minor injuries and was taken to a hospital, treated and released. Preliminary federal government assessments and law enforcement sources indicate that the vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed when it hit a curb, leading it to crash through a fence and a Customs and Border Protection inspection area, where it caught fire and exploded. Witnesses have told authorities that the vehicle launched into the air when it hit the fence and then exploded when it landed, a law enforcement source tells CBS News' Pat Milton. Scott Sweetow, the former director of the FBI's Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, said the blast may have been the result of a "fuel-air explosion," which is caused by the ignition of a fuel and air mixture. "I am speculating that, due to the high speed of the car, and almost disintegration of [the car], that as fuel in the breached gas tank went forward under high speed, it mixed with the air and created almost a cloud of gasoline, which then ignited, creating the dramatic fireball we all saw," Sweetow told CBS News. Officials have not yet determined whether the crash was deliberate or accidental, according to the preliminary assessments and law enforcement sources. "Right now we have no indications of a threat of terrorism from it," FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Matthew Miraglia said at a Wednesday evening news conference. He did not release any details on the people in the car, saying "We're still doing notifications for family members." He added, "We do not have any derogatory information on this person that we've identified." U.S. Attorney Trini E. Ross said at the briefing, "We will continue to investigate, but our preliminary assessment of this situation is it was not terrorism-related, but we will continue to stay vigilant." Mike Guenther, a Canadian resident visiting New York, said he was walking nearby and saw the car speeding towards the border crossing. "And he was flying, over 100 miles an hour. There was a car in front of him, he swerved out, went in front of the car, hit the fence, went flying up into the air and we just seen the fireball, and that's all we could see, there was just smoke everywhere," he said in an interview with NewsNation. Guenther said the car was heading from the U.S. toward Canada. A Customs and Border Protection officer watches as a vehicle burns at the Rainbow Bridge U.S. border crossing with Canada, in Niagara Falls, New York, Nov. 22, 2023. / Credit: Courtesy Saleman Alwishah via REUTERS Randie Wilson, a Niagara Falls tour guide, said the crash was "like a movie." Wilson said he was getting out of his car when he saw something airborne. "I first thought it was an airplane, looked like slow motion. And I said, 'My God, it's a car.'" Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a speech to parliament that the Canadian government is working in close contact with U.S. officials, and that "additional measures are being contemplated and activated at all border crossings across the country." "We are taking this extraordinarily seriously," Trudeau said. Gov. Hochul said in an earlier statement that "the New York State Police is actively working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to monitor all points of entry to New York," adding that she was on her way to Buffalo to "meet with law enforcement and emergency responders." Law enforcement personnel block off the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge border crossing following a vehicle explosion on Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls, N.Y. / Credit: Carolyn Thompson / AP Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, also said he had been briefed by the FBI. "Initial reports indicate the two people killed were in the car but nothing's been determined on their identity or motive," Schumer wrote on social media, adding that "law enforcement remains on heightened alert over Thanksgiving." In addition to Rainbow Bridge a popular crossing for tourists, connecting Niagara Falls, New York, with Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada three other bridges on the U.S.-Canadian border in the region were closed following the incident: The Peace Bridge, the Lewiston-Queenston and the Whirlpool Bridge. Police blockade roads and sidewalks after an incident at the Rainbow Bridge U.S. border crossing with Canada, in Niagara Falls, New York, on Nov. 22, 2023. / Credit: LINDSAY DEDARIO / REUTERS The Buffalo Niagara International Airport said it was "open and fully operational," and additional "security measures" are in place until further notice. The FAA had said on its website that Buffalo airport was closed Wednesday afternoon to departing and arriving international flights. In an update Wednesday evening, Buffalo airport said its heightened security alert had been lifted, though police would "continue to maintain an increased security presence during this busy travel time." U.S. travelers during one of the busiest travel periods of the year can expect to see an increase in law enforcement and canines patrolling the transportation system, the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement. The TSA said it is "operating at a heightened level of security as a result of world events and the current threat environment." New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement, "The NYPD and our team have been closely monitoring the situation on the ground in Buffalo after an explosion at the Rainbow Bridge, and we've already sent NYPD officers upstate to support efforts on the ground. The NYPD and our partners have already enhanced security, and the city is on heightened alert due to the upcoming holiday, so the public will see increased security at locations across New York City." Toronto police also said they were stepping up security, tweeting: "Due to today's incident at the Canada-US border, we will be increasing directed patrols of uniformed officers throughout the city. This is out of an abundance of caution and there are no known threats for the city of Toronto." Pat Milton, Robert Legare, Andres Triay, Catherine Herridge, Nicole Sganga and Camilo Montoya-Galvez contributed reporting. 2 dead in vehicle explosion at Rainbow Bridge U.S.-Canada border crossing, sources say Ex-Obama official charged with hate crime in alleged harassment of halal food cart worker Hamas releases 13 Israeli hostages from Gaza during short cease-fire PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) The message from Oregon Governor Tina Kotek to Portland Public Schools and the Portland Association of Teachers was short and simple as the historic Portland teachers strike enters its fourth week. Get this done tonight, Kotek posted on social media. This came in the wake of teacher supporters targeting the homes of Portland school board members. Harney County Judge rules Oregon gun Measure 114 unconstitutional Tensions are high between both sides as a deal still hasnt been reached but some leaders say targeting their homes wont change how theyll vote. Board member Julia Brim-Edwards says a property she owns was hit on Tuesday with graffiti spray-painted on the front of the house and on the driveway. Some messages about students and some very not nice things also spray painted on the driveway, Brim-Edwards said. Weve cleaned it up now but definitely moved from intimidation and bullying to something thats clearly vandalism and criminal acts. School board president Gary Hollands home was also targeted, as the word shame was sprayed over a car, along with signs saying fund classrooms now taped all over it. Both board members filed police reports. This, by no means, will sway me one way or the other, he said. In a statement posted to their social media, the teachers union said, in part, PAT condemns vandalism. They added, the PPS school board can approve the settlement their own bargaining team recommended and end the strike in a matter of minutes to get kids back to schools next week. During a march across the Burnside Bridge with hundreds of teachers and supporters, some carried signs with phone numbers of those on the board. Brim-Edwards says moves like sharing school board members home addresses and phone numbers as well as the vandalism are disappointing, but others have stepped up to help. Even though its very disappointing and sad that things have come to this level, I know its not representative of most teachers, Brim-Edwards said. Ive already heard from lots of Glencoe teachers who offered to help clean up the property so I dont think its representative of the vast majority of teachers and Im just keeping that in my heart because I so want to get our kids back in school and reach an agreement and I know our teachers do as well. Meanwhile, as Wednesday marks exactly three weeks since the strike began, Gov. Tina Kotek also spoke out about the vandals and ongoing negotiations. In a statement, she said in part that Portland students, parents and families have gone through enough uncertainty. This is unacceptable. Furthermore, I strongly condemn the acts of vandalism that took place against members of the PPS board. Threats, vandalism, or violence will not resolve this strike. KOIN 6 also reached out to the school district and the teachers union about the latest in negotiations going into tomorrow. PAT did not get back to us but PPS says there are no talks, but both sides are working in their offices this evening. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KOIN.com. A school board in Virginia has rejected a grant aimed at supporting LGBTQ+ students. The Lynchburg City School Board voted against allowing E.C. Glass High Schools Gender and Sexuality Alliance club to accept funding from the It Gets Better Project to create a designated safe space at the school, as reported by Lynchburgs ABC affiliate WSET. This decision comes amid nationwide efforts by conservative officials to restrict LGBTQ+ topics and support in schools. The It Gets Better Project has been supporting LGBTQ+ youth since its creation more than 10 years ago. Earlier this year, the group announced a grant-awarding program for high schoolers. The project has awarded over $600,000 in grants to more than 50 high schools, supporting initiatives such as Pride events, inclusive language seminars, and gender-inclusive facilities. These efforts are particularly significant in the face of increasing legislation targeting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly those of transgender youth as well as the rise of "don't say gay" laws and policies. E.C. Glass High Schools GSA club co-presidents, Brittany Harris and Chester Laub, put together an extensive application, including videos and testimonials, to emphasize their need for support at their school. "We worked so hard to get this," Harris told the outlet. "We submitted videos and testimonials from our students and how they have conquered so much; it was so surreal to be awarded the grant." "I've had panic attacks in classes before and have been sent to the hallway," Laub said. "I used to sit on the floor and cry. Many students, who were in my class and teachers would walk be and say nothing. Having a room where I could actually go calm down and not worry about the other students judging me - it would be amazing." The importance of such support in schools is underscored by the findings of the 2021 School Climate Survey by GLSEN, which revealed that LGBTQ+ students frequently face hostility, bullying, victimization, and discrimination at school. This environment often leads to many students avoiding school activities. The survey found a majority of LGBTQ+ students experience derogatory remarks and harassment, with about 60 percent facing discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Moreover, GLSENs survey results stress the necessity of safe and supportive school environments. LGBTQ+ students facing discrimination tend to underperform academically and suffer psychologically. Conversely, a more inclusive and supportive environment can lead to improved academic and personal outcomes. Concerns over the grants branding led the Lynchburg City School Board to a 7-2 vote against accepting the $10,000 grant, WSET reports. Ross von Metzke, senior director of communications and public relations for the It Gets Better Project, expressed deep disappointment in the boards decision. The Lynchburg City School Boards rejection of funding intended to create a safe space for LGBTQ+ students at E.C. Glass High School is deeply disappointing. Students and educators poured their hearts into this proposal, recognizing the positive impact it would have on local LGBTQ+ students who feel othered and unsupported, von Metzke said in a statement to The Advocate. He also addressed a misconception about the grant: The assertion that the nonprofit required the school club to have specific branding is untrue. That is not something we require of grant recipients, he clarified. Virginia State University (VSU) is among the schools expected to host a 2024 general election presidential debate, making it the first historically Black college or university (HBCU) ever selected to host a general election White House debate. We are honored and grateful to have been chosen as a host for a 2024 Presidential Debate, VSU President Makola M. Abdullah wrote in a statement. This is a historic moment for our university and for HBCUs nationwide. Our university mantra is Greater Happens Here, and we look forward to welcoming the candidates, the Commission on Presidential Debates, and the entire nation to the GREATER at VSU. Abdullah said the selection of VSU is a reflection of the schools commitment to sharing future leaders and cultivating a political discourse. Best Black Friday Deals The debate at VSU will take place Oct. 1 at the schools Multipurpose Center. More updates will be provided as the date approaches. The Commission of Presidential Debates announced the venues for next falls debates Monday, with Texas State University tapped to host the first debate Sept. 16. The debate at VSU on Oct. 1 will then be followed by one at the University of Utah on Oct. 9. One general election vice presidential debate will be held Sept. 25 at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. It remains unclear if the general election events will go forward as planned as the Republican Party has vowed to boycott events held by the commission. Recent polling suggests a rematch between President Biden and former President Trump is likely as the former president continues to maintain a wide lead over his rivals in the Republican presidential primary. Trump has accused the Commission of Presidential Debates of anti-Republican bias. Last year, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted to effectively bar its presidential nominees from events organized by the group. The former president has also not attended any of the RNCs past three primary debates, instead holding counterprogramming events like rallies and a pre-taped interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. A series of recent polls have shown Biden either locked in a tight race with Trump or trailing him in some cases. A poll from The New York Times and Siena College released earlier this month shows Trump beating Biden in five out of the six battleground states that were polled. The White House and the Biden campaign largely shrugged off those findings and have rejected suggestions he should consider stepping down as the Democratic partys nominee. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. ACCOMACK COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) Two people have died in a two-vehicle crash on Lankford Highway Tuesday in the Nelsonia area of Accomack County on the Eastern Shore, Virginia State Police said. The crash took place around 4:16 p.m. at 16239 Lankford Highway, also known as U.S. Route 13. Both north and southbound lanes of Route 13 are closed, and the Virginia Department of Transportation has a detour in place. (Photo Virginia State Police) Two vehicles were involved in the crash a 2021 Mazda CX30 and a 2021 Freightliner box truck. A passenger in the Mazda was pronounced dead at the scene, and the driver of the Mazda died after being taken to Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital. The other passenger was taken to Tidal Health Hospital in Salisbury, Maryland and is in stable condition, state police said. The driver of the Freightliner was also taken to Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital and is in stable condition, state police said. The crash reconstruction team has been called to the scene, where they are currently investigating the crash. State police said they would provide more crash details once they are available. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WAVY.com. Wake Countys new student assignment plan would move 1,572 students to different schools next year over the vocal objections of some parents. The Wake County school board unanimously approved a plan on Tuesday thats supposed to carry out the goals of filling a new school, easing crowding at existing schools and reducing the number of buses needed for the 2024-25 school year. The plan was modified on Tuesday to convert Pleasant Grove Elementary in Morrisville to a year-round calendar. But no assignment changes were made, despite parental lobbying, since the first draft of the plan was released in September. We do understand that families dont prefer to be impacted by reassignment, generally speaking, said Susan Pullium, senior director for student assignment. We feel like weve presented the smallest version of an assignment that accomplishes all of those goals and take into account the feedback from families about keeping their neighborhoods together, trying to offer as much stability as possible. Wake says 1,146 students, or 73% of those being moved, are eligible for a stability transfer. This means theyll be able to stay at their current school if they provide their own transportation. Parents can look for the plans details at wcpss.net/enroll. Wake will contact the families who are directly affected by the approved changes. The plan moves students out of 21 schools. It affects less than 1% of the districts 160,000 students. Student reassignment has historically been a contentious topic in North Carolinas largest school system. Last year, some families fought a plan that moved 1,769 students for the 2023-24 school year. To these families that will be potentially moving to new schools, you will be in good hands, said board member Tyler Swanson. What schools are affected by student assignment plan? The plan fills the new Woods Creek Elementary School in Holly Springs with students from Apex, Holly Springs and Oak Grove elementary schools. Woods Creek will operate on a multi-track year-round calendar but will draw some traditional-calendar students. The plan also helps address Wakes bus driver shortage by moving some neighborhoods to closer schools, including some areas that historically have been bused out of downtown Raleigh to more distant schools for diversity purposes. Weve heard nothing but this will be better for the routes and for the students, Pullium said. Wake will stop providing bus service for some calendar-application students. These students have applied to a school on a different calendar than their assigned school. They can stay at their application school if they provide their own transportation. Wake is also easing crowding at Bryan Road Elementary in Garner by moving some students to Aversboro Elementary. The Bryan Road parents have pointed to how Aversboro is a lower-performing school. Movement, transition is going to be hard for kids, board member Cheryl Caulfield said to Pullium. Its going to be hard for families. But in the long run with the transportation issues we have, with the stability issues that we do have, I do understand the decisions and the way that you did it and how in the long run its going to help families. Calendar change to Pleasant Grove Elementary The moves that have drawn the most complaints revolve around the proposal for Pleasant Grove Elementary. The plan moves a large portion of Pleasant Grove Elementarys students to Brier Creek and Leesville Road elementary schools in northwest Raleigh. Pullium said the main goal is to relieve crowding at Alston Ridge Elementary in Cary and Parkside Elementary in Morrisville by moving whole neighborhoods to Pleasant Grove. Both year-round schools also have an enrollment cap that keeps some nearby families from attending. Some parents complained about being moved to a traditional-calendar school. In response, Pullium recommended changing Pleasant Groves calendar to year-round. That would support stability for the families coming out of Parkside and Alston Ridge into the school to have one less change as part of this reassignment, Pullium said. How stability transfers work for WCPSS Wake will open a stability transfer period, or what has been called grandfathering, from Nov. 29 to Dec. 13 for students who dont want to move to a different school. Students affected by the assignment changes can remain at their current school if they file a request during the stability transfer period and agree to provide their own transportation. The stability rules will vary depending on what school a student is reassigned to next year. Rising fourth- and fifth-grade students being reassigned to Woods Creek Elementary can stay at their current elementary school if they provide their own transportation. In addition, their younger siblings will be able to stay with them at their current school. The proposed Woods Creek transfer rules would also apply to students who are being reassigned into or out of Pleasant Grove Elementary. Excluding Woods Creek and Pleasant Grove, all other students who are being reassigned can stay at their current school if they provide their own transportation. Rising kindergarten, sixth-grade and ninth-grade students can also request to stay with their sibling to avoid being reassigned. WALLER COUNTY, Texas - One family is seeking answers after their mother, 57-year-old Aldonia Johnson, was released from custody in what they describe as a severely deteriorated state. Johnson, who had been in jail for four months, was reportedly healthy when initially booked, but new medical records reveal that she suffered a stroke and is experiencing mental episodes. FOX 26 Houston is now on the FOX LOCAL app available through Apple TV, Amazon FireTV, Roku, Google Android TV, and Vizio! Bruce Ray, Johnson's son, spoke exclusively with Fox 26's Sherman Desselle about the distressing ordeal. Court records show Johnson was arrested July 18 on charges of assault of a peace officer, resisting arrest, and assault of a family member following a family dispute. Photo of 57-year-old Aldonia Johnson, a Waller County woman was who arrested July 2023. Ray and his family regularly visited Johnson in jail and began noticing alarming changes, including significant weight loss. Concerned for her well-being, they sought answers from the jail but say they were met with a lack of information about her deteriorating condition. SUGGESTED: Houston mom says son called hours before death, asked to send money to another inmate in jail "Then we also notice that she's not even trying to reach out to us," said Ray. "She's going to always call us." Bruce tells FOX 26 the family, at one point, was denied visitation - he was told by the jail she had been moved to a different part of the facility to be "observed," and her condition wasn't stable enough for visitors. Family members were eventually granted the visit and were shocked at her condition. They said she had lost over 100 pounds, was vomiting, and could barely walk or talk. "My grandmother had to leave, she couldn't take it," said Ray. "The jailers are telling my sister that my mom has to ask for help. But at the stage she's in - how can she ask for help? She doesn't even know what's going on." Bruce Ray, the son of Aldonia Johnson, posted to Facebook about his concerns Nov. 15. His mother was released the following day. In a Facebook post dated Nov. 15, Ray detailed his mother's deteriorating health, which was shared over 160 times. Johnson was released the following day, but she was in no condition to return home. Video footage from her release showed her unable to communicate and exhibiting excessive movements. Hospital records indicate that Johnson experienced a cerebrovascular accident, commonly known as an ischemic stroke. Despite her history of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and substance abuse issues, Ray emphasizes that his mother's health had never declined to such an extent before. Medical records show Johnson suffered a stroke prior to the Nov. 16 hospital visit. Family members tell Fox 26 she had never shown symptoms of a stroke before and was not given a CT scan during her time in jail. The family is also raising concerns about the handling of Johnson's charges. Although Ray was informed that she was on a parole hold until her release, online records show that her charges were dropped on Sept. 22. Ray didn't know they were dismissed until we showed them to him online. "It doesn't just stop since my mom came home. The fight is far from over," Ray stated. "I want answers, but I also want to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else in that jail." Aldonia Johnson is currently undergoing treatment at the hospital. FOX 26 has sent requests to officials in Waller County and waiting to hear back from them. OVERLAND PARK, Kan. The city of Overland Park passed an ordinance allowing people to raise chickens in their backyard. At Mondays city council meeting, seven voted in favor, while three council members said they didnt want the backyard chicken ordinance to pass. Wondering how to get started? Kansas officials warned of possible bird flu outbreaks The first step is to head over to the OP city website and apply for a permit or acquire a permit at the City Halls Clerk counter. They cost $100 for the first year and $50 for each year it gets renewed. All permits must submit a site plan that details three requirements: Total square footage and location of the chicken enclosure and run. Backyard and perimeter fencing (additional fencing will be required if the backyard is not fully enclosed). Distance of the enclosure and run from the rear and side property lines. Residents are encouraged to talk with their homeowners associations prior to applying for a permit. To be approved, proving the chickens will get adequate care is a must. Sanitation matters and those interested must also be sure to not cause any health or safety issues. There also cant be a bad smell or loud noises due to the chickens. The number of chickens allowed depends on the size of the property. This mapping tool can help determine the size of the lot. If the lot size is under a half-acre, three chickens are allowed in the backyard. Between a half-acre and one full acre, six chickens can live on the premises. FOX4 newsletters: Get the latest news delivered to your inbox One to three acres means a maximum of 12 chickens can be raised with a permit. If the lot is over three acres, having as many chickens as one could want is allowed, even without a permit. Restrictions include: Chickens must be kept in the backyard and are not allowed in the front or side yard. Coops must be placed within a specific distance from property lines and homes. A fence must surround the well-ventilated chicken coop and must be approved by Animal Control . Chickens must be kept in the coop when the resident is not present. Hens are allowed. Roosters are not allowed on a property less than three acres. Other farm animals such as ducks, pigs, and goats are not allowed. Click this link for the complete list of restrictions. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports. Jacqueline Klein, a finalist for the North East ISD board, was accused of spitting on an Uber driver in May, according to a police report. Melissa Manno/Staff A finalist for appointment to the North East Independent School District board was arrested earlier this year after an Uber driver accused her of spitting on him and kicking his vehicle. Jacqueline Klein, 43, was taken to a sobering unit on Frio Street early May 3, where she blew a blood alcohol percentage of 0.204 but was released and not charged, according to a San Antonio Police Department offense report. The legal threshold for intoxication in Texas is 0.08. The report said Klein told one of the officers who responded to a reported assault in progress that she did slam and kick the door of the Uber vehicle but denied spitting on the driver. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Klein is one of four candidates who made it to the final round of North East ISDs interview process after applying in August for an appointment to its District 2 seat, left vacant by the death of veteran trustee Terri Williams. Klein was the favored applicant of the boards three social conservatives, but the trustees have been unable to appoint her or any other hopeful because of a 3-3 deadlock over the choice that has lasted months. Klein ran against Williams in the May 2022 election and came in second among three candidates with 38% of the vote. In the May 3 incident, first reported by KSAT on Tuesday, officers were dispatched shortly before 1 a.m. to a convenience store on Airport Boulevard. They found Klein and the Uber driver, who said she had closed the car door forcefully when he picked her up at Cooteys Tavern and became irate over him asking her not to slam his door, according to the report. When he pulled over to end the ride, Klein got out and tried to damage his vehicle door by kicking it, then spit on him, he told officers. Police found no visible damage to the door and no wet spot on the drivers shirt, where he indicated the spit landed. The driver told KSAT that he had wiped it off by then. Advertisement Article continues below this ad READ MORE: NEISD hopefuls take turns on the hot seat Klein repeatedly has declined interview requests, both when she ran in 2022 and during this years application process. On Wednesday, she provided a prepared statement that acknowledged she was intoxicated on the night police picked her up, which she said was a detention, not an arrest. I offer no excuse for that, she wrote. The police report found no evidence that I had committed any aggressive actions. Nonetheless, I apologize to all of the people who have shown confidence in me. This will not happen again. The statement also criticized one media member, without naming him, for repeated intrusions into my personal life, calling it an effort to distract the public from school security problems. KSAT was the first to report that the school district had sued Klein for failing to pay her property taxes in 2019 and 2020. In a statement provided to the board in October, Klein said she has since paid her taxes and the lawsuit has been resolved. Advertisement Article continues below this ad In October, two trustees grilled Klein over her right-wing political affiliations. Days later, during a special board meeting, two motions to appoint Klein to the seat failed by 3-3 votes. Other motions, including to appoint applicants Nan Burley Richie and Tracie Shelton, also were deadlocked. So youre placing your Black Friday orders this week, and now its time to kick back and wait for those packages to arrive. But beware: Scammers know that and may target you. Eric Shwartz says he should have known better. But with several holiday season packages on the way right now, he thought a recent text was legit. I got a text message, he said, and it was like any other text message. And noticed it was from the USPS. The request seemed reasonable at the time. They have all my information, but they need me to verify my address, he said. But after he entered his address, the site asked for a credit card. Thats when he realized he was being scammed. Last summer, David Landeen received a delivery text that even knew his name. It said David we came across a package form June pending for you. Kindly assume ownership and confirm for delivery here.' He was tempted to click through to cancel: But had he done that, he would have also given his credit card to a scammer. With online shopping season now kicking into full gear its important to now the warning signs of text scam. Victoria Jurkovic of the Ohio Department of Commerce told us that millions of fake delivery notices are sent out every holiday season. Even if you are expecting a delivery, though, she says you still should be suspicious if the message. Wants you to log in to a site with more than your name. Asks for a credit card, bank account, or other personal numbers. Links you to a suspicious website that does not start with https, for secure. Meantime, the postal service says it will not text you about a delivery problem. So keep track of what you order the next few weeks, and only open a delivery notice if it is from that company. That way you dont waste your money. ________________________________ Dont Waste Your Money is a registered trademark of Scripps Media, Inc. (Scripps). Like John Matarese Money on Facebook Follow John on Twitter (@JohnMatarese) For more consumer news and money, go to www.dontwasteyourmoney.com For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to NBC4 WCMH-TV. KENT, Ohio (WJW) Police received reports of screams and possible gunshots coming from a South Water Street home on Tuesday afternoon. There, they found a 35-year-old woman shot dead. A warrant is now out for a 44-year-old suspect believed to have had a domestic relationship with the woman. Oregon mom convicted after preventing daughter from receiving cancer surgery, giving her CBD oil instead Reports came in just after 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 21, leading authorities to the home in the 1300 block of South Water Street, according to a news release from Kent police. This embedded content is not available in your region. Woman finds, adopts terrified girl hiding in nursing facility. Then came a second surprise Authorities obtained an arrest warrant for Dawan R. Wilson, 44, of Arizona, whos now facing a count of aggravated murder in Kent Municipal Court. More information and updates will be provided as necessary, wrote Lt. Mike Lewis. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Fox 8 Cleveland WJW. A well-known chiropractor in Washington state and her husband were possibly killed by a tenant who was about to be evicted, according to officials. Karen Koep and her husband, Davido, were both missing since at least Nov. 13, according to the Thurston County Sheriff's Office. After responding to a welfare check at the couple's home in Lacey, Washington, deputies allegedly found two large pools of blood large enough for them to think someone was killed, according to FOX 13. There was also a strong smell of bleach inside the residence, and deputies allegedly found evidence suggesting the victims' bodies were dragged into the garage. According to FOX 13, Davido is reportedly the landlord of 45-year-old Timothy Burke. WASHINGTON STATE CHIROPRACTOR AND HUSBAND GO MISSING UNDER 'SUSPICIOUS' CIRCUMSTANCES READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP Karen Koep and her husband, Davido, were both missing since at least Nov. 13, according to the Thurston County Sheriff's Office. Court documents state that a partially completed eviction notice written by Davido was found inside the residence, which was for Burke. Prosecutors say that Burke previously called 911 to his residence multiple times and has mental health problems. Surveillance video showed Burke using Davido's debit card, the documents state. Burke was initially arrested for identity theft, but deputies found a gun on him. The bullets used in the murder and those belonging to the gun were a match, the court documents states. TEXAS FATHER ACCUSED OF KILLING SON'S MOM BEFORE ABDUCTING BOY According to FOX 13, Davido is reportedly the landlord of 45-year-old Timothy Burke. Officials found Burke hiding off a trail before he was arrested. Pauline Dutton, Koeps sister, said she believes the eviction is Burke's motive behind the eviction. "I just hope that, you know, all of it has been resolved. I just still keep thinking, gosh, is there more to this that we dont know about? I hope that Tim Burke was the only one involved," Dutton said. Burke hasn't officially been charged yet, but Thurston Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jennifer Lord said during a Monday court hearing that a murder charge is appropriate, according to The Olympian. The Thurston County Sheriff's Office said in a press release that deputies conducted a welfare check on Monday at the Lacey, Washington home of Karen Koep and her husband, Davido. Deputies conducted the welfare check after one of the individuals didn't show up for work. "Its the states perspective, based on the quantities of blood and the opinions of the professionals involved in the determination of facts and evidence in this case, that murder is the appropriate charge rather than assault," Lord said. Judge John C. Skinder set a no-bail hold on Monday after probable cause was found for two counts of first-degree murder. Original article source: Washington state chiropractor and husband allegedly killed by tenant who was about to be evicted: officials More than 50 XL bully owners hosted a meet-up in a park with young children present as part of an effort to prove their dogs are safe. A mass gathering, thought to have been organised by the Bully Linkups Fundraiser, was held at Caludon Castle, in Coventry, on Sunday in a protest against the Governments decision to outlaw the breed. Footage posted on social media shows scores of the dogs and their owners lined up in a field, with as many as 62 canines thought to be present. Sixty-two dogs gathered at Caludon Castle on Sunday - https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=307578692119814&set=pcb.307578922119791 LINK In the clip, many owners stood with their unmuzzled dogs, yanking their leads and harnesses to keep the pets in place as they posed for the camera. It will be illegal to own an American bully XL in England and Wales from February 1 2024, with the ban being introduced in response to several attacks involving the breed. But experts have previously warned that police forces will struggle when assessing if every suspected XL bully meets the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) criteria. The definition includes descriptions of head size, height, muscularity and other physical features but was made without the input of the leading UK dog experts who withdrew from talks with the Government because of concerns it was too vague and broad a classification. Under the rules it will be illegal to sell, breed or abandon an XL bully type dog from Jan 1 2024 and it will be an offence to own one from Dec 31 unless the animal is registered to the Index of Exempted Dogs. Campaigners against the ban on American XL bullies have launched a legal challenge asking for the planned ban to be scrapped in favour of tightening laws around breeding and owning dogs, as well as educating owners. 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. [Source] South Korean mega group BLACKPINK was honored and awarded for their role as ambassadors for climate change at the recent state banquet for South Korea in the United Kingdom. The K-pop royalty: All four members of the K-pop group Jennie (whose full name is Jennie Kim), Jisoo (Kim Ji-soo), Rose (Roseanne Park) and Lisa (Lalisa Manobal) were in attendance at the state banquet held in Buckingham Palace in London on Tuesday evening. King Charles III's speech: King Charles III welcomed South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee in Korean. He later acknowledged hallyu, or the Korean wave, in his address by drawing parallels between British icons and South Korean sensations, such as likening Danny Boyle to Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, James Bond with Squid Game and The Beatles song Let It Be to BTS Dynamite. Trending on NextShark: Chinese celebrity chef sparks nationalistic uproar over egg fried rice video A royal shoutout: The king then applauded BLACKPINK for their work on raising awareness about climate change and environmental sustainability. I applaud Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rose, better known collectively as BLACKPINK, for their role in bringing the message of environmental sustainability to a global audience as Ambassadors for the U.K.s Presidency of COP 26, and later as advocates for the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, he said. A humorous observation: "It's amazing you're still talking to each other after all these years," King Charles told the group in jest during the ceremony. "I hope I shall be able to see you perform live at some point." Trending on NextShark: Boy, 4, rescued after being thrown into well in China to recreate TV drama Receiving awards: Besides being honored and receiving acknowledgment at the banquet, BLACKPINK was also given the Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire or MBE, the third-highest ranking of all three of the Order of the British Empire awards after Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) and Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE). The award is given to those who have made outstanding achievements or long-lasting and significant service to the community. How fans reacted: Several BLACKPINK fans, affectionately known as blinks, celebrated the groups latest achievement on X, with many fans telling the members they were "so proud" of them. Trending on NextShark: 79-year-old woman fulfills lifelong dream of visiting all 193 countries SO PROUD OF U MY BLACKPINK GIRLIES (@blckpinkpic) November 22, 2023 Trending on NextShark: Filipino social media personality Sammy Manese dies SO PROUD OF YOU pic.twitter.com/5TGQBbjGvl BLACKPINK Global News (@BPGlobalNews) November 22, 2023 WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU @BALCKPINK BLACKPINK BLINK UNION (@BBU_BLACKPINK) November 22, 2023 Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! A protester in Boston calling for a reopening of the investigation into Kennedy's assassination on the 30th anniversary of his death. (Jim Bourg / reuters) On the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedys assassination in Dallas, 99% of the government documents related to his killing have been released. The government, under both President Biden and former President Donald Trump, has released more documents in the past few years related to JFKs killing on Nov. 22, 1963. But both Biden and Trump have also withheld some documents on the advice of the CIA. As of this summer, there were around 4,684 documents yet to be disclosed, out of millions released over the past 60 years. The last few thousand documents continue to stir up interest in the question of whether there was more than one person involved with Kennedys murder. Most Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill JFK. But this speculation and suspicion is also nothing new. Since JFKs death, a majority of Americans have believed that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing the president. In fact, the number of people who believed in a conspiracy was higher from 1976 to 2003 around 80% than it is now at 65% according to the polling organization Gallup. The number of Americans who think Oswald did act alone is up now at 29% from roughly 10% during the period from 1976 to 2003. Heres what we know about what information is still undisclosed and whats come out in the last few years. Kennedy, with first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally, ride through Dallas moments before Kennedy was assassinated, Nov. 22, 1963. (STR New / reuters) Why more documents have been released Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 due to a public outcry after Oliver Stones film JFK was released in 1991. The movie stars Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison, a New Orleans district attorney who believed there was an elaborate CIA-driven plot to kill Kennedy, although most scholars of the assassination believe Garrisons theories dont hold up to scrutiny. Multiple government inquiries, most notably the Warren Commission report of 1964, the Church Committee report of 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations report of 1979, had released most of the documents related to JFKs killing by 1992. The 1992 law created an independent agency, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), that released more documents and issued a report in 1998. The law also mandated that all remaining records be released by 2017, but gave the U.S. president the final authority on whether to withhold documents. In 2013, the ARRBs former chairman, U.S. District Court Judge John Tunheim of Minneapolis, wrote the board had prompted the release of more than 5 million pages of assassination records, now housed at the National Archives in College Park, Md., and available to the American public. But, Tunheim wrote, there is a body of documents that the CIA is still protecting, which should be released. The point is not that the declassification will solve the assassination. Rather, release of these documents will further enrich the existing historical record and the CIA needs to demonstrate that it is not continuing to hide relevant information from the American public simply to protect itself, Tunheim, who chaired the ARRB when it released its 1998 report, wrote. Kennedy and the first lady in May 1961. (Abbie Rowe/The White House/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library/Reuters) (Handout . / reuters) Why the last documents are still secret Trump released some documents, but not all, delaying the release of the rest on the advice of intelligence advisers. But from the fall of 2017 to the spring of 2018 the National Archives released approximately 50,000 records in several batches under Trumps directive. Biden has released around 17,000 records over the last two years, with the last batch coming this past summer. There are currently about 4,684 documents that have not been fully released, the New York Times reported in July. A key wrinkle is that most of these documents have actually been released, but are counted as not fully disclosed or released because they have redactions. The Times reported that the redacted records are withholding names, address and other identifying information of people still living, along with locations of places used in intelligence work. Tunheim, however, concluded a decade ago that we will probably never know the complete truth around the assassination of President Kennedy. Investigations at the time were not up to todays standards. Oswalds quick death while in the custody of the Dallas police ensured that we will never know the entire story. However, we can do better. Excessive government secrecy has a corrosive effect and citizens deserve transparency. Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of assassinating Kennedy, is in the custody of Dallas police, Nov. 22, 1963. (Dallas Police Department/Dallas Municipal Archives/University of North Texas/Reuters/Handout) (Handout . / reuters) Good evening. Jeremy Hunt announced today the main rate of National Insurance will be cut by two percentage points. However, the tax burden on the British public is due to rise higher than at any point since the Second World War. Tax burden to hit new post-war high Jeremy Hunt announced today the main rate of National Insurance will be cut by two percentage points, with the change taking effect from January. However, the tax burden on the British public is due to rise higher than at any point since the Second World War. Click here to work out how much you will save as a result of the Chancellors announcement. Police divers arrive at Snowdonia crash scene A police divers unit has been seen approaching the crash site, 24 hours since the Ford fiesta was discovered. What appeared to be a North West Underwater Search and Marine Unit van drove along the A4085 from Garreg and beyond where the cordon had been set up for a second day. Click here for live updates. I first heard about Eat Out to Help Out on TV, says Van-Tam Prof Sir Jonathan Van Tam said that the first he heard of the Eat Out to Help Out Scheme was on the TV. Asked if he was consulted about the scheme, he said: Absolutely not. The first I heard of it was I think on the TV. Read more of our coverage of the inquiry here. Evening Briefing: Todays essential headlines Susan Sarandon | The Oscar-winning actress has been dropped by her agency after she said American Jews were getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim. Comment and analysis Feature of the day I walked out with a 150 trolley it was so easy: the rise of middle-class shoplifting Thefts from shops have hit a record high in this country but its the affluent among us who might be to blame. Read the piece Business news: More businesses shutting than starting up for the first time in 12 years, says ONS More businesses are shutting down than starting up for the first time in 12 years, official data shows. The number of businesses closing down jumped by 5pc year-on-year to hit 345,000 last year, pushing the so-called business death rate to a 12-year high. Editors choice Film | How the English invented the myth of Napoleon Family | 10 ways to boost your childs confidence Travel | Its not about money, its about soul: why Soho remains Londons coolest quarter Sport briefing: Todays essential headlines Sign up to our free Sport Briefing Newsletter to receive the latest sporting news, direct to your inbox every weekday morning. Three things for you If you want to receive twice-daily briefings like this by email, sign up to the Front Page newsletter here. For two-minute audio updates, try The Briefing - on podcasts and smart speakers. 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. CASCADE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) The Gerald R. Ford International Airport made sure veterans and active military members got a warm welcome Wednesday. Members of military-affiliated groups gathered at the concourse to welcome veterans and active military members and thank them for their service as part of Operation Handshake, which started at 8 a.m. The groups also sang patriotic songs and waved American flags. The public was invited to join. A previous Operation Handshake event at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport. (Courtesy) A previous Operation Handshake event at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport. (Courtesy) Ford Airport recognized as a top 20 small airport Each year it is an honor to greet veterans and active military and see the expressions on their faces, Phil Pakiela, captain of the Patriot Guard Riders of West Michigan, said in a Tuesday release. We invite the community to join us for Operation Handshake to thank the brave individuals who fight for our freedom. If your loved one is a veteran or active military member who will be flying into Ford Airport Wednesday, you can contact Patriot Guard Riders with their flight information and arrival time at papapakiela@gmail.com or 616.916.3064. Operation Handshake at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport on Nov. 22, 2023. Operation Handshake at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport on Nov. 22, 2023. Operation Handshake at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport on Nov. 22, 2023. The Ford International Airport is proud to host this annual event that honors those who have served our nation, Gerald R. Ford International Airport Authority Chief Operating Officer Alex Peric said. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WOODTV.com. Whilst the worlds attention is understandably on the potential Israeli hostage release, regional terror instigator Iran is poised to upscale its trade in supplying fellow rogue regimes with increasingly high end weapons. The extremist mullahs ruling Tehran have long been known to overtly support Russias brutal reinvasion of Ukraine, initially supplying hundreds then thousands of the Shahed drones, which have wrecked so much damage on Ukrainian cities and national infrastructure. In addition, Iran have supplied tank rounds and artillery shells, in what has become Russias most important defence partnership since the war began. Whilst this full-blown defence partnership has proven absolutely devastating to Ukrainian and European security, it is about to be similarly replicated in the Middle East. As Putin blames the United States with one hand for increasing tensions in the region and magnanimously offering to help solve the current crisis himself, in a move straight out of the classical Kremlin playbook, with the other hand he is reportedly offering Tehran unprecedented defence cooperation, including on missiles, electronics and air defence. And what is Russia to receive in return for such generosity shown to their Iranian partners in crime? Potentially, a desperately-needed halt in the Ukrainian advances in the south and east of Ukraine, as thousands of Iranian ballistic missiles are up for discussion to help turn the tide back in to Russias favour. These new heightened fears concerning the increasing the Russian-Iranian defence partnership were recently confirmed this week by the White House administration, coming on the back of a September meeting when Iran hosted Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu, showing off a range of new ballistic missile systems to wet the Russian palette. The US intelligence community is additionally concerned that Russia will supply Iran with attack helicopters, radars, combat-trainer aircraft and even fast jets. Whilst Russias long-vaunted friendship without limits with Chinese premier Xi Jinping has resulted in some limited defence collaboration during Moscows war in Ukraine, this would pale in comparison to what we are seeing taking place between Tehran and Moscow. The ramifications for regional security across the Middle East and in Europe are profound. The US and Britain maintain extensive security interests and partnerships across the Arabian Gulf, with around 45,000 US personnel and contractors and around 5,000 British routinely coming under drone and missile attacks from Iranian-directed proxies. Indeed, attacks against US and UK bases in Iraq and Syria have peaked this year, as Iranian weapons continue to proliferate the regions terror organisations, resulting in suspected attempted ballistic missile attacks against Israel only prevented by superior US air defence systems. Whilst this trend of attacks against American, British, and Israeli targets can continue to rise substantially should the Russian-Iranian defence relationship continue to develop unabated, it poses even more worrying threats to Ukrainian and thus broader European security. Russia, whilst suffering enormous casualty figures and almost irreplaceable battlefield losses, can still churn out conscripts and Soviet legacy-era equipment at a rate which Ukraine simply cannot match. In this industrialised war of attrition, mass has a quality entirely of its own. The now likely promise of thousands of Iranian ballistic missiles heading their way to Moscow could cause the already limited and overworked Ukrainian air defences to be overwhelmed, causing untold further destruction to Ukrainian infrastructure and cities, just at a time when Ukrainians are already bracing for this wars second long harsh winter. The West must act. It seems almost weekly that we must utter these words, such is the state of disorder in which the international system currently finds itself but act, we must. As the US attention has partly pivoted back to long-term ally Israel, Europe must now finally be prepared to pick up the mantle, and come to Kyivs aid in a manner which politically it has often been left found wanting. Air defence systems, sensors, intelligence and counter-missile batteries are going to be at an absolute premium, should the battlefields of the Donbas, and indeed cities and towns across Ukraine, be subjected to this likely flooding of Iranian missiles. The expanding defence alliance between Iran and Russia has already caused destruction in Europe, and will very likely lead to increased threats in the Middle East too. This is a menace to global security which we can ill afford to ignore. Robert Clark served in the British Army, including active operations in Afghanistan 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. This is a photo of a schedule written on a classroom whiteboard. This article was originally published in West Virginia Watch. The state department of education failed to adequately monitor school districts use of millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief funds, and more misuse of the money is likely to emerge as spending reviews continue. A state audit, which reviewed only a sample of purchases made since 2020, found that the West Virginia Department of Education lacked adequate capacity to monitor how local school districts used the federal funds. Of the 54 school districts reviewed, 37 school districts were deemed noncompliant in their use of federal funds, including improper purchasing procedures or using funds for unallowable activities. Support The 74's year-end campaign. Make a tax-exempt donation now. In Upshur County, the school district spent $60,000 of federal funds on pool passes. Other funds were spent on private school expenses, food and a student choir trip out of state. It seems like theres a massive problem and we should be looking at everything but thats not ever going to happen, said Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha. State lawmakers were notified of the audits results on Monday during a Legislative interim meeting in Wheeling. West Virginia has already seized control of two school districts Upshur and Logan due to issues that included misspending of the funds. As the state has until September 2024 to spend more than $400 million remaining in federal funds, the audit recommended that the WVDE increase its oversight of school districts spending by adding staff. But thats unlikely to happen, the audit said. Related Schools Could Lose 136,000 Teaching Jobs When Federal COVID Funds Run Out The WVDE indicated that it has no intention of increasing capacity since the deadline to spend [federal] funds is 10 months away, said Brandon Burton, research manager for Performance Evaluation Research Division, who presented the audit. The COVID-19 relief funds, passed down from the federal government, were supposed to be used to help schools safely reopen and help students recover from pandemic-incurred academic and emotional needs. Federal and state auditors found that states across the country spent millions in COVID-relief funds on questionable purchases since 2020. Beginning in March 2020, the WVDE has received nearly $1.2 billion in money from the federal Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief funds. Burton told lawmakers that, although state and federal monitors signed off on the school districts spending plans, the lack of a fiscal monitoring system within the WVDE failed to detect problems with the spending. Consequently, there are violations that the system did not detect, he said. I think the school systems were in a panic According to the audit, there were a number of reasons as to why the WVDE failed to detect the misuse of funds and improper purchasing procedures, including a lack of staff who could monitor spending. Its a large amount of information that youre having to go through, said Burton, who added that in some counties only one person was reviewing financial transactions. Additionally, there were issues with school districts not following proper bidding procedures and buying from vendors who werent registered with the state. Schools have been permitted to purchase items from unregistered vendors, which Burton said increased the likelihood of school boards interacting with fraudulent vendors. Related COVID Funds Help Hawaii Schools Tackle Absenteeism. What Happens When They Run Out? The vast majority of [Local Education Authorities] made federal grant purchases with unregistered vendors totaling over $2.1 million, the audit said. Most of the vendors were located out of state. Melanie Purkey, WVDE senior officer for federal programs, told lawmakers that during the height of the pandemic, school districts were using the funds to quickly buy items like hand sanitizer, masks and laptops for remote learners. The procurement wasnt proper, she said. I think school systems were in a panic, and thought, We found a vendor whos going to provide this, so were going to buy it, she said. The WVDE is working on updating internal policies to emergency purchasing procedures, according to Purkey. Reviews are ongoing of how school boards spent pandemic relief funds, and the state still has more than $476 million of those funds to spend by deadline. Unspent money will be returned to the U.S. Department of Education. Del. Kathie Hess Crouse, R-Putnam, emphasized that the missteps would ultimately fall back on tax payers in counties where school boards must pay back misspent funds. Theres no consequences to them when we have to pay for that, she said. West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on Facebook and Twitter. Russian FM, delegation of Arab-Islamic foreign ministers agree on urgent need for immediate ceasefire in Gaza Xinhua) 09:35, November 22, 2023 MOSCOW, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and a joint delegation of foreign ministers from Arab and Islamic countries agreed on the urgent need to establish an immediate and sustainable ceasefire in Gaza following their talks in Moscow on Tuesday. The delegation was composed of Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki and Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Hissein Brahim Taha. All sides recognized a commonality in approaches with regard to ways in which the current crisis can be overcome, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the talks. They expressed "a joint position in favor of an early establishment of a sustainable ceasefire," and stressed the importance of ensuring the protection of civilians, the opening of humanitarian corridors, the release of hostages, and continued evacuation efforts. "While strongly condemning terrorism, the participants of the meeting emphasized the unacceptability of confronting this evil using methods of collective punishment and an indiscriminate use of force against civilian targets," the statement said. All sides stressed the need to take coordinated measures in the interests of establishing lasting peace between Israel and Palestine, it said. It was emphasized that "there is no alternative to a comprehensive political solution to the Palestinian problem based on the decisions of the United Nations and the Arab Peace Initiative," said the statement. "They noted the need to intensify international efforts aimed at creating conditions for establishing negotiations between the parties," which should result in the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, it said. They further agreed to coordinate joint action in order to support a comprehensive Middle East settlement, the statement said. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, center, talks with his defense attorney Tony Buzbee, left, during his impeachment trial. Lawyers for the Paxton whistleblowers are asking the court to force the attorney general and his top aides to sit for depositions. Sam Owens/Sam Owens/Pool via San Antonio E Lawyers for the Ken Paxton whistleblowers are moving forward with their lawsuit in Travis County after another judge cleared the way, asking the Austin-based court to force the attorney general and his top aides to sit for depositions. The whistleblower lawyers filed a motion this week to compel the depositions, calling it a last resort after they could not reach an agreement with lawyers for the Office of the Attorney General. OAGs effort to resist these straightforward depositions is nothing more than a continuation of OAGs cynical effort to deny Plaintiffs their right to access to the justice system, the whistleblower lawyers wrote. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The whistleblowers lawyers specifically want to take depositions from Paxton; Brent Webster, the first assistant attorney general; Lesley French Henneke, chief of staff at the agency; and Michelle Smith, Paxtons longtime political aide. The lawyers proposed a schedule where Paxton is deposed Dec. 12, Webster on Dec. 14, Henneke on Dec. 18 and Smith on Dec. 20. A lawyer for Paxtons office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The whistleblower lawyers filed the motion Tuesday, a week after a district court judge in Burnet County gave the green light for the Travis County lawsuit to continue. Lawyers for Paxtons office had sued the whistleblowers in nearby Burnet County to try to stop their lawsuit in Travis County, arguing they were breaking the terms of a tentative settlement agreement they struck in February. While the Burnet County judge, Evan Stubbs, first agreed to temporarily halt the Travis County case, he sided with the whistleblowers at the Nov. 14 hearing and allowed the case to proceed again. The whistleblowers Blake Brickman, Ryan Vassar, David Maxwell and Mark Penley sued Paxton in 2020, arguing he improperly fired them after they reported him to the FBI. They alleged he was abusing his office to help a wealthy friend and donor, Nate Paul. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The whistleblowers almost settled with Paxton for $3.3 million in February, but the Texas House balked at using taxpayer dollars for it and decided to investigate the underlying claims. That led to Paxtons impeachment in the House in May. The Travis County lawsuit came back to life in September after the Texas Senate acquitted Paxton in his impeachment trial, which centered on similar claims of corruption by former top deputies in his office. After the acquittal, the whistleblowers asked the Texas Supreme Court to reinstate the case and it did, sending it back to Travis County for trial. Shortly after the whistleblowers sought to restart work on the case in Travis County giving notice they planned to take depositions of Paxton and the three aides Paxtons office filed suit in Burnet County. In their latest filing, the whistleblowers lawyers say the Burnet County lawsuit was just the latest delay tactic by Paxtons side in the 3-year-old case. The lawyers asked the Travis County court to compel the depositions so that the whistleblowers may at long last pursue justice. If the whistleblowers motion is granted, it would be the first time Paxton would be required to answer questions under oath related to the allegations of bribery and corruption made against him. Paxton did not take the stand in his Senate trial in September. Advertisement Article continues below this ad A wind farm under construction off the east coast of Scotland; and a fin whale washed up on a beach in Cornwall last week The helpless body of a huge whale washed up on the shoreline is always a sombre sight. But the discovery of a dead 52ft fin whale on Newquays Fistral Beach at dawn last week was particularly depressing for locals, who have been spotting a growing number of the majestic animals off their coast in recent months. Its heartbreaking, said resident Kathryn Fuller. The increase in whale sightings off Cornwall had been greeted as a sign that marine life was thriving. But the whales death was a reminder that beachings often have a man-made cause, such as fishing, naval sonar (which, it is thought, causes whales to surface too quickly, leading to decompression sickness) or collisions with ships. These intelligent beings look so sad and helpless out of the water, says Danny Groves of Whale and Dolphin Conservation. And now there is fierce global debate about whether another factor could be at play in such incidents: offshore wind farms a controversy that has set the passionately pursued green agendas of renewable energy activists and conservationists against one another. The finger-pointing began in February with a spate of strandings and deaths of baleen whales (the name for humpbacks, fin whales and blue whales) on Americas east coast, which some blamed on huge turbines off the US seaboard. Beachgoers protesting against the installation of wind turbines in New Jersey earlier this year - The Washington Post Research into the deaths found that 40 per cent of them resulted either from ship strikes or netting entanglement. Some activists suggested that the whales had become confused because their hearing had been damaged by drilling during the construction of offshore turbines, making it more difficult for them to avoid ships. More recently, in Australia a separate campaign opposing offshore wind farms in New South Wales claimed they pose a risk to whales there too. Placards carried by protesters on beaches bore the message Stop these monsters, referring not to the leviathans of the deep but to renewable energy turbines whose rotor blades can span more than 250m more than 10 times as long as a blue whale. Such is the divisive nature of the allegations they have even become a front in Americas bitter politico-culture wars. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina in September, former US president Donald Trump suggested that wind turbines off the coast of the US are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before. Former Greenpeace Canada president Dr Patrick Moore agrees that wind farms are harmful to whales: The development of these wind farms is interfering massively with the actual known habitat of these creatures, he said in May. But Moore left Greenpeace in 1986, and has since become a frequent critic of the green movement. Today, the campaign group disavows his comments, suggesting that the whale-vs-wind farm controversy may even be a conspiracy whipped up to discredit renewables. Academics have linked these attempts [at controversy] in the US with oil and gas interests, says Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist for Greenpeace UK. Such stories, he adds, exploit the admirable concern that people have for the natural environment. Yet, he acknowledges, offshore wind needs to be sited where it will least impact wildlife. The most obvious problem is noise. Our seas are getting ever louder a 2016 estimate of global shipping noise projected a near doubling by 2030. Introducing loud underwater noise pollution from military exercises, or seismic surveys for oil and gas has a dramatic effect on [whales and dolphins] lives and wellbeing, explains Groves. It can cause them suffering, change their behaviour and drive them away from the places where they breed and feed. In some cases it can cause them to strand and die. But its not just military exercises or seismic surveys that are loud. Building huge wind farms is noisy work too. According to Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the use of pile drivers in the construction of offshore wind farms adversely affects the behaviour of whales, dolphins and porpoises to distances of up to 25 miles. They can even be injured or killed if they are too close to the source of the sound, they say. A beached whale fights for its life as the tide rises around it in 2016 theres no proof that the nearby wind farm was to blame - Stuart Aylmer/Alamy Rob Deaville, from the Zoological Society of Londons Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme, agrees: If you have porpoises or dolphins living in an area and you start driving a pile into the seabed to erect a wind turbine, that generates a lot of noise and that definitively has been demonstrated to have a dissuasive effect. It drives animals away from an area. Deaville, who investigates dead animals on the UK coast and studies the threats they face, is used to the hubbub that accompanies a high-profile stranding: Weve never been able to definitively link any of the strandings weve investigated with wind farm activity, he says. That said, theres a huge body of evidence that does demonstrate the impact of wind farms on some species of cetacean. An analysis published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the US last month called for greater investigation into how offshore wind farms affect water flows and food sources for critically endangered whales near the Massachusetts coast. For Deaville, such work is essential as part of a wider assessment of wind farms pros and cons. Its useful to have that debate as a society, he says. Nothing is cost-free. The question, then, is what happens after a wind farm is built and becomes operational, and quieter? Its a mixed picture. In some wind farms animals dont come back in numbers like before, says Deaville. In some areas, though, they might come back in greater numbers than before. The theory is that when fishing in and around wind farms is banned due to a risk of entanglement on the piles, that then acts as a reef, which lures marine species back into the areas. You get more fish, and therefore more cetaceans to feed on the fish, says Deaville. So theres no easy answer. At Newquay which has no offshore wind farm nearby there is no obvious cause behind the fin whales death. We will not know what happened to this individual until a necropsy is performed. And even then, the real cause may never be known, says Groves. Whale and Dolphin Conservation now supports the development of marine renewable energy developments in appropriate locations. However, it believes that, until impacts can be fully mitigated, new renewable energy programmes should be excluded from important Marine Protected Areas, or MPAs. Buffer zones should be created around MPAs, so as to avoid displacing whales, dolphins and porpoises from important feeding and breeding areas. says Groves. The case against wind farms may be less than clear cut, but, says Groves, What is certain is that these ocean giants help keep the seas healthy. A healthy ocean helps us fight climate breakdown. They are our allies in this struggle and offer hope, so we need to prioritise increasing their numbers, not place them in harms way. 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. LAS VEGAS (KLAS) Several Christmas tree lots are scheduled to open around the valley on Wednesday, and a lot of artificial trees will be hauled out of the closet by people who would rather decorate than deal with Black Friday. After Thursday, Thanksgiving will be just a memory as the headlong rush into the holidays hits another gear. But not everyone buys a tree off a lot. Some still go in for the tradition of cutting their own tree, and permits are available now. The closest places to cut your own tree are a couple of hours away from Las Vegas BLM land in Lincoln County north of Las Vegas or in the St. George area in southwest Utah. Permits are available online. Be sure to read the stipulations for displaying the permit for the specific site you select. Theres also the Arizona Strip the area north of the Grand Canyon and south of the Utah-Arizona border. Its rugged country, and much of the closest forested area falls in Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument or the Paiute Wilderness area off limits to tree harvesting. Tree cutting is prohibited in the Spring Mountains that means Mt. Charleston and the surrounding area. The U.S. Forest Service controls that area. In Lincoln County, the BLM is charging $5 per tree harvested with a limit of 10. The trees are single-leaf pinyon pine, Utah juniper and white fir not the Douglas fir or Blue Spruce that you usually see in Christmas tree lots. Permits sold through the St. George Field Office cost $10 each for personal-use trees. Trees are pinyon pine and juniper. Christmas trees may be harvested on all BLM-administered lands except those designated wilderness and wilderness study areas. Trees cannot be cut in the Ely District areas of Blue Mass, Lower Meadow Valley Wash, Mount Irish, Shoshone Ponds and Swamp Cedar, which are designated as areas of critical environmental concern. And if youre looking for a really big tree over 10 feet your best option might be through the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada and the Dixie National Forest in Utah. There are also permits available in eastern California, near the towns of Bridgeport and Benton. Theres also the Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona. Forest Service rules are posted at https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/htnf/passes-permits/?cid=fseprd564027. Topping a tree is not permitted, and USFS rules state that stumps left behind cannot be taller than 6 inches above bare soil with no live branches left on the stump. Be aware of weather forecasts and keep safety in mind. Take extra food and water, as well as blankets, gloves, boots, a saw, a shovel and chains. Be sure to take a tarp and ropes to secure the tree to the vehicle, and make sure the permit is visible from behind during transport. High-clearance four-wheel drive vehicles with good tires are recommended. Take a cell phone and let someone know where you are going and when you expect to return. When you get the tree home, store it in the shade until it can be placed in a heavy stand with plenty of water. Maintain the water level to keep the tree as fresh as possible. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS. It was a quick mention in police reports detailing a car crash involving Nadine Arslanian Menendez in December 2018, one in which the vehicle she was driving struck and killed a Bogota man. Easily overlooked in reports filed by both the Bogota Police Department and the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, officials indicated that Arslanian's phone records were to be subpoenaed as part of the investigation into the crash that killed Richard Koop. Those subpoenas were never issued, nor were the phone records ever delivered to investigators, The Record and NorthJersey.com found after seeking public records pertaining to the deadly crash. Nadine Arslanian Menendez and Bogota police officers speak after a motor vehicle accident on Dec. 12, 2018. When those records were requested, as well as records pertaining to any warrants issued to assist with the subpoenas, authorities responded by saying no such records exist in the Bogota Police Department or at the Bergen County Prosecutors Office. Arslanian who began dating Sen. Bob Menendez in February 2018 and married him in October 2020 did not face any charges at the time of the crash, which left 49-year-old Koop dead. What we know: Nadine Menendez hit and killed a man in Bogota in 2018 Federal bribery indictments prompt new scrutiny The incident has received attention now, though, because of its connections to the indictment of New Jersey's senior senator, his wife and three businessmen brought by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York last month. The indictment alleges that the senator, his wife and businessman Wael Hana conspired for Menendez to act as a foreign agent from January 2018 through at least June 2022 for the Egyptian government and Egyptian officials, even as he sat as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez along with his wife, Hana, Edgewater developer Fred Daibes and businessman Jose Uribe also face corruption charges, brought by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, of allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the businessmen in exchange for helping them enrich themselves and trying to get them out of trouble. Details of the Dec. 12, 2018, crash, first published by NorthJersey.com, show that Arslanian initially agreed to let Bogota police officers look at her phone. She quickly changed her mind and took the phone back. The police records don't show that any field sobriety tests were done. There is also no indication that she was questioned about drinking or using any kind of drugs. The Bogota police report, filed by Patrolman Kevin Geraghty on Feb. 25, 2019, says that on the day after the crash a subpoena was issued for the cellular phone records of Ms. Arslanian and later notes that a supplemental investigation report will be issued pending the response to the issued subpoena for Ms. Arslanians cellular phone records. Parent, fisherman, bar 'dad': Who was Richard Koop, the man Nadine Menendez killed with a car? Additional reports submitted by Patrolman Michael LaFerrera and Sgt. Thomas Riedel dont mention any subpoenas, nor does another report prepared by Officer Dennis DeAngelis of the Bergen County Prosecutors Office Fatal Accident Investigation Unit. The indictment says that a month after the crash, Arslanian was texting Hana, an Egyptian American businessman, about her lack of a car. Hana later provided her with a 2019 Mercedez-Benz C-300 convertible, the indictment says. Registration records show that the 2019 Mercedes was purchased in March of that year. The New Jersey Attorney General's Office of Public Integrity & Accountability is investigating the circumstances of the crash. 'Probably a big problem' Kim Yonta, a New Brunswick-based attorney, noted that depending on the parameters, the response time on a subpoena can take a few months because it goes to the cellphone provider. Sometimes that request is accompanied by a warrant, but it doesnt have to be, and when the records are provided they include all phone calls or messages with the dates and times. Yonta also said the subpoena would be issued by the agency investigating the incident. In this case that would be either the Bogota Police Department or the Bergen County Prosecutors Office. I remember as an assistant prosecutor having to call these companies up and be like, Where's my records? I sent this to you two months ago, she said. So that does happen. If that was what happened and it fell through the holes somewhere, that's probably a big problem. What does the Koop family say? Richard Koop, 49, was killed after a car driven by Nadine Arslanian Menendez struck him on December 12, 2018. Rosemarie Koop, the sister of the man killed that night, said it worries her and is horrific to think that five years later we still dont have information on the phone records. Koops family said they can only hope that the Attorney Generals Office can impartially look at it to find out what happened and how Koops death could be completely swept under the rug. We are grateful for the indictment bringing things to light again. We didnt think it would ever happen, Rosemarie Koop said. We dont trust anything, and we keep questioning it, she said. If you trusted the investigation you could say OK and accept it. But we just cant after so many years. We understand that true accidents happen, but when it is so one-sided an investigation, how can you determine that its a true accident? She added: Why didnt Richard get his due process? How did this stall? Richard deserves justice. Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse. Email: sobko@northjersey.com Kristie Cataffi covers local government in Bergen County. Email: cataffi@northjersey.com This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Nadine Arslanian Menendez car accident: Where are phone records? Ken Paxton and his top aides hold a press conference after the House voted to impeach him in May. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune Lawyers for the Ken Paxton whistleblowers are moving forward with their lawsuit in Travis County after another judge cleared the way, asking the Austin-based court to force the attorney general and his top aides to sit for depositions. The whistleblower lawyers filed a motion Tuesday to compel the depositions, calling it a last resort after they could not reach an agreement with lawyers for the Office of the Attorney General. OAGs effort to resist these straightforward depositions is nothing more than a continuation of OAGs cynical effort to deny Plaintiffs their right to access to the justice system, the whistleblower lawyers wrote. The whistleblower lawyers specifically want to take depositions from Paxton; Brent Webster, the first assistant attorney general; Lesley French Henneke, chief of staff at the agency; and Michelle Smith, Paxtons longtime political aide. The lawyers proposed a schedule where Paxton is deposed Dec. 12, Webster on Dec. 14, Henneke on Dec. 18 and Smith on Dec. 20. A lawyer for Paxtons office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The whistleblower lawyers filed the motion a week after a district court judge in Burnet County gave the green light for the Travis County lawsuit to continue. Lawyers for Paxtons office had sued the whistleblowers in nearby Burnet County to try to stop their lawsuit in Travis County, arguing they were breaking the terms of a tentative settlement agreement they struck in February. While the Burnet County judge, Evan Stubbs, first agreed to temporarily halt the Travis County case, he sided with the whistleblowers at the Nov. 14 hearing and allowed the case to proceed again. The whistleblowers Blake Brickman, Ryan Vassar, David Maxwell and Mark Penley sued Paxton in 2020, arguing he improperly fired them after they reported him to the FBI. They alleged he was abusing his office to help a wealthy friend and donor, Nate Paul. The whistleblowers almost settled with Paxton for $3.3 million in February, but the Texas House balked at using taxpayer dollars for it and decided to investigate the underlying claims. That led to Paxtons impeachment in the House in May. The Travis County lawsuit came back to life in September after the Texas Senate acquitted Paxton in his impeachment trial, which centered on similar claims of corruption by former top deputies in his office. After the acquittal, the whistleblowers asked the Texas Supreme Court to reinstate the case and it did, sending it back to Travis County for trial. Shortly after the whistleblowers sought to restart work on the case in Travis County giving notice they planned to take depositions of Paxton and the three aides Paxtons office filed suit in Burnet County. In their latest filing, the whistleblowers lawyers say the Burnet County lawsuit was just the latest delay tactic by Paxtons side in the 3-year-old case. The lawyers asked the Travis County court to compel the depositions so that the whistleblowers may at long last pursue justice. If the whistleblowers motion is granted, it would be the first time Paxton would be required to answer questions under oath related to the allegations of bribery and corruption made against him. Paxton did not take the stand in his Senate trial in September. While the Burnet County judge, Stubbs, allowed the Travis County case to restart last week, the more recent lawsuit in his court remains pending. Stubbs set a Dec. 14 hearing on a motion by the whistleblowers to change the venue to Travis County. With the Travis County case revived, the whistleblowers have also asked for the court to assign it to a single judge. Their lawyers made the request in a filing last week, citing the unusual characteristics and high-profile facts involved. Paxton's side has not made any recent filings in the Travis County case other than to submit a copy of the tentative settlement agreement. Lawyers for Paxton's office have been arguing that the case is already effectively resolved and that any further litigation goes against that. The whistleblower lawyers made clear to the Travis County court in a second filing Tuesday that they strongly disagree. They noted the settlement depends on a number of things that still have not happened, including legislative approval of the $3.3 million. "This case is not settled," the filing said, "and as the third anniversary of its filing has recently passed, the time has come to prepare the case for trial." WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) Tuesday President Joe Biden met with members of his cabinet to discuss ways to crack down on the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. Too many are faced with an empty chair for the first time at Thanksgiving. So many people have died, he said. This meeting follows last weeks announcement that China is agreeing to help curb the deadly drug. Mexicos president also pledged to work side by side with the U.S. Biden stated, Its a global challenge that demands global action. China says it will tell companies to stop shipments of the chemicals used to make the drug to Latin American countries, something the White House calls a step in the right direction. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said, This agreement will save lives, will save American lives. And President Xi said he was committed to helping with that. Doctor Rahul Gupta, director of National Drug Control Policy, says over 100 nations are working together to tackle this challenge. All of the countries do have to unite to make sure that were doing everything in our power to reduce and eliminate the threat of synthetic drugs like fentanyl, like methamphetamine. President Biden is calling on Congress to pass his budget request that includes funding for more programs to crack down on the flow of fentanyl into the country. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to DC News Now | Washington, DC. Editor's note: This is the first of three perspectives on policing in Delaware. In October, the Delaware ACLU filed a federal class action lawsuit against the city of Wilmington asserting that the city's violence reduction unit, known as Operation Safe Streets, not only violates the Fourth and 14th Amendments but also engages in unconstitutional and racially biased policing practices. These practices include unwarranted traffic stops, searches and arrests. While the ACLU suit is the first of its kind in Delaware, the concern about how violence reduction units operate, and the constitutionality of their practices extends far beyond the state's borders. It is a pressing issue that plagues police departments nationwide. But nowhere is this more disheartening than in Wilmington, where outdated policing methods have resurfaced following the departure of former Chief Robert Tracey. Tracey had been diligently working towards implementing data-driven reforms aligned with national best practices and constitutional efforts supported by the U.S. Department of Justice and policing experts. As we examine the implications of the lawsuit and consequences of these antiquated practices, it is crucial that we address the urgent need for reform in our justice system. By doing so, we can strive towards a future where our communities are protected, and the rights and dignity of all individuals are upheld. ACLU's federal lawsuit: Wilmington police regularly violate rights of Black people, suit claims The Delaware difference Initiated in June 1997 as a response to a surge in violence that baffled law enforcement leaders and elected officials, OSS mirrored similar programs being implemented in cities across the country. The program aimed to combat crime by adopting an aggressive policing approach targeting individuals at high risk of reoffending, specifically those on probation. Unlike other initiatives, Delaware implemented a collaboration between sworn police and probation officers. Their joint efforts encompassed monitoring probationer conditions by conducting curfew checks and home inspections. Further, the program leveraged the ability to conduct warrantless searches of probationers to crack down on illegal activities that fueled violence, which the ACLU claims is abused by these officers. Akin to stop-and-frisk, this strategy was implemented 20 years ago. But like many other professions, policing has evolved over time. Stop-and-frisk and excessively intrusive searches of probationers have been widely criticized, ranging from being perceived as biased at best to outright illegal at worst. And the thinking behind violence reduction or anti-crime squads has since changed due to the potential for unconstitutional and racially biased policing. Despite these concerns, Wilmington is standing firm. The efficacy of OSS is also debatable. According to a 2007 application for funding obtained by the Delaware ACLU, the primary goals of the program were to reduce shootings by 30%, decrease violent crime by 5%, increase technical probation violations by 15% and raise compliance with probation conditions by 30%. First, the practice of quota-based policing often poses challenges, which is why 26 states, including Virginia, Michigan and Nevada, and Washington, D.C., have outlawed it. Interestingly, just a few miles from Wilmington, police are prohibited from using quotas under Pennsylvania Law (71 Pa. Stat. 2001). Nevertheless, Delaware continues to incorporate these types of performance metrics into its program goals. Wilmington skyline Moreover, nonviolent technical violations make a significant contribution to mass incarceration in the United States, despite lacking a correlation to violent crime. These encompass a wide range of rule infractions, such as failure to maintain a stable address resulting in homelessness, unemployment, curfew violations, substance consumption and missing appointments with probation officers. According to the Council of State Governments Justice Center, almost one in four individuals incarcerated in state prisons (as of 2017) are there for technical violations, resulting in a staggering cost of over $2.8 billion. This problem is particularly prevalent in Delaware. Based on an independent analysis of available Delaware Department of Corrections and Superior Court data, we estimate that approximately 1,000 inmates are currently in Delaware prisons for technical violations, with an annual cost to taxpayers of nearly $75 million. Unfortunately, Delaware does not publish probation compliance data; however, it should be noted that violation of probation filings have decreased statewide by 33% in the past 10 years. Yet this has not resulted in a reduction in reoffending, as Delaware's three-year reoffending rate remain consistently high at around 70%. Though the number of murders in Wilmington has decreased, following a national trend, there has been a significant increase in shootings in Delaware since the inception of OSS. According to the Delaware Criminal Justice Council, a state agency responsible for funding, policy, and statistical analysis, there were 60 shooting victims in 2003. In 2022, that number rose to 106, marking a 43% increase. As of Oct. 29, there have been 98 shooting victims in the city this year. Wilmington's violent crime rate also remains alarmingly high. Last year, there were approximately 600 violent crime incidents. With a population just above 70,000, the violent crime rate was 222 times higher than the national average and 118 times higher than the nation's largest 100 cities. While social scientists argue that it is challenging to prove that a single program or initiative directly impacts violent crime unless it is geographically restricted and no other interventions exist in that area, it is evident that OSS is not effectively reducing crime or violence in Wilmington. Moreover, an independent analysis of OSS stops reveals a significant disproportionate targeting of African American individuals. Although data categorizing the race of individuals who commit violent crimes in Delaware is not readily available, it is important to note that the population of Wilmington is 56.7% Black. Additionally, 62% of individuals in jail or prison and 47% of probationers in Delaware are Black. However, of the traffic stops conducted by OSS in 2019 and 2020 that resulted in arrests, 95% of the individuals arrested were Black. These statistics alone intimate a concerning disparity in enforcement practices. It is also worth mentioning that OSS is not solely arresting individuals on probation. In 2003, only 18% of individuals arrested by OSS were on probation, a percentage that currently stands at around 20%. In short, despite stated goals of reducing shootings and violent crime, OSS is falling short of expectations and is exhibiting a troubling trend of racial bias, thus exacerbating mass incarceration. This raises the question: what is their ultimate objective? More perspective: Delaware police reforms are a step forward but far from enough The national perspective In major American cities, we have witnessed the involvement of specialized units in scandals, with reports of unwarranted harassment, abuse and even tragic loss of life. While some cities are taking steps to reduce the presence of these units, others are reevaluating their strategies. The NYPD's Street Crime Unit, infamous for the tragic shooting of unarmed Black student Amadou Diallo in 1999, was attributed to racial profiling and disbanded in 2002. Similarly, the anti-crime unit, which was involved in the Eric Garner incident and the stop-and-frisk practices deemed unconstitutional in 2013, was also deactivated. Recently, under the controversial decision of former NYPD captain and current Mayor Eric Adams, NYPD reintroduced an offshoot of anti-crime called neighborhood safety teams, consisting of officers in highly visible uniforms patrolling the citys most violent neighborhoods. While the effectiveness of these teams remains uncertain, complaints against NYPD officers have reached unprecedented levels since the rebranding. We have seen similar units broken up in police departments in Memphis, Los Angeles and Baltimore. Specialized police units in major American cities face an ongoing challenge in striking a balance between reducing crime and upholding civil liberties and community trust. While some argue that the units themselves are not the issue, but rather the officers assigned to them and the lack of supervision, successful implementation in the U.S. remains elusive. In fact, evidence suggests that these units, while occasionally achieving short-term goals, often contribute to long-term problems such as racial profiling, unwarranted harassment and corruption, ultimately undermining their intended objectives. If these programs continue, it is critical that they undergo rigorous scrutiny and reform to ensure that law enforcement efforts are effective, unbiased and truly serve the interests of all community members. Why is Wilmington persisting with OSS? In closing, despite the apparent failure in achieving its goals, Wilmington persists in maintaining OSS while other notable agencies are abandoning similar programs. This prompts our questions once again: What is the purpose of OSS and why does Wilmington continue to sustain it? In the second part of this series, we will explore how various cities have dealt with DOJ investigations into law enforcement, police consent decrees and patterns of practice lawsuits. We will also examine the implications of these experiences for policing in Delaware. Stay tuned for an insightful analysis of the intersection between law enforcement accountability and efforts aimed at improving public trust. Carmen Facciolo is a former Delaware, New York City and Maryland law enforcement executive. He is a national criminal justice policy expert, and served in both the U.S. Department of Justice and the administration of former President Barack Obama. This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Wilmington Police Operation Safe Streets: Why does it persist? The News Ron DeSantis is sliding in the polls, but his opponents dont plan to give him a breather in the crucial month of December in Iowa and beyond. Nikki Haley recently launched a $10 million ad buy across Iowa and New Hampshire beginning next month as she tries to turn the election into a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump. Trump and his team, meanwhile, continue to attack DeSantis daily in press releases and speeches, highlighting the former presidents lead in key early voting states while dismissing those who have endorsed DeSantis, like Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. On Tuesday, both camps sent out press releases promoting an NBC News article detailing infighting within Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis Super PAC. The DeSantis DiSaster Continues, Team Haley wrote. DeSantis, once seen as a Trump ally, has drawn the former presidents ire ever since he began flirting with a presidential run. Since his announcement, the relationship has continued to deteriorate, and even as Trumps team points out that their attacks on DeSantis are ultimately a fraction of what theyre doing in the primary, one thing remains clear: Theyre going to continue. We take hits at DeSantis, and well always continue to do that, no matter what, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Semafor. He made a disloyal decision to run against President Trump, and thats a decision hes going to have to live with for the rest of his life. Ron is going to get got. Some analysts believe that Haley actually needs DeSantis to stay in the race to prevent Trump from consolidating even more support a thesis Haleys team rejected in a November state of the race memo distributed to various interested parties. The memo cited polling from a firm associated with DeSantis that showed a higher percentage of his voter base would pick her as a second choice than Trump in key early states. Despite the DeSantiss teams outlandish and nonsensical claims, we would be thrilled if he packed it up before Iowa, Haleys campaign manager Betsy Ankney wrote in the memo. Given his campaign cash burn rate, we just might get our wish. Haleys team also argues that their move to ramp up attacks against DeSantis is defensive, the result of his team honing in on her in recent months: From her declaration that George Floyds murder should be personal and painful for everyone, to accusations that shes cozy with China, and beyond. Ultimately, they believe that as DeSantis has long declared it is, in fact a two-person race: DeSantis just doesnt make the cut. As far as were concerned, its Trump and Nikki, thats what all signs indicate. I think hes desperately trying to hang on, a Haley adviser said. Shelbys view One thing thats remained constant amid the primary race? That Trump is leading the charge on attacks against DeSantis. But this focus on making sure DeSantis stays down now feels more important for Haley and her fight for a (currently) distant second place against the former president. Trumps attacks may have started in large part because of the DeSantis hype as a way to knock down one of the most popular conservative lawmakers before they could pose a threat. Now, though, its more personal: As Cheung told me, they have no plans to pull back on targeting the Florida governor, even as hes struggling majorly in the polls. Thats because for Trump, politics is often personal: The former president is notorious for demanding loyalty, and has openly commented on DeSantis apparent disloyalty in deciding to run (as well as Haleys, albeit less often). To make matters worse, DeSantis and his super PAC have issued sharper criticisms of Trump than some of his other candidates, like Haley. As weve already seen, a constant barrage of Trump attacks can affect his opponents. What happens when the broader field begins to turn on DeSantis, too? The View From the DeSantis campaign The data is clear that Nikki Haley has no path to the nomination and every dollar spent on her candidacy is an in-kind for the Trump campaign, DeSantis campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said in a statement to Semafor. Ron DeSantis is the only candidate with the organization, resources, and message necessary to beat Trump in multiple early states including the first and most important state on the calendar. Thats why Team Trump continues to attack him every day. Room for Disagreement If DeSantis quits, Trump gains votes on balance. Not Haley, Nick Catoggio wrote in The Dispatch. What Haley needs is for the other normies in the field to drop out, freeing their supporters to rally behind her, while the populist candidates fight on and battle for MAGA voters. Trump prevailed eight years ago because he had the populist bloc to himself while conservative challengers divvied up traditional Republicans. Haley will try to flip the script this time, consolidating conservative voters while Trump, DeSantis, and to a lesser extent Vivek Ramaswamy hopefully split up the nationalists. Notable Fight Right , a new super PAC backing Ron DeSantis, is trying to link Nikki Haley with Hillary Clinton by highlighting comments she made praising her back in 2020, according to NBC News. The only problem? The quotes have apparently been taken out of context: The full comments make clear that it was not because of ideological commonalities or political agreement, but as a signal that more women are needed in the highest echelons of politics and government. Non-Trump alternatives are largely betting their hopes on Iowa, where Semafors David Weigel reports that the outlook remains bleak: No candidate truly threatens Trump in Iowa, he writes, and various efforts to stop him in the state are sputtering. On Sunday, President Joe Biden pardoned turkeys Liberty and Bell during the annual White House turkey pardoning ceremony, one of our most absurd and delightful national traditions. Im hoping Liberty and Bell go on to live long and happy lives, or as long and as happy as a turkeys life can be. I recognize the hypocrisy in me, an avid carnivore, hoping for joy and longevity in an animal raised for human consumption. But my average turkey sandwich didnt come from an animal with a name. As soon as you name creatures as a farmer in Minnesota named Liberty and Bell they become pets and I cant eat pets. But also, I believe we should pardon all turkeys. Not because I care about their longevity and happiness, but because I dont especially enjoy preparing or eating that particular brand of poultry. I dont believe most people do. And yet, every year in November, we collectively prepare and eat turkey. Turkey became a part of our Thanksgiving feast, we think, because in the early days of America, turkeys were native to the land, they were large enough to feed a crowd, and their eggs were inedible. In other words, they happened to be around, and no one would miss them if they were gone. Which, in my opinion, is not a good enough reason to eat something. No one would long for tarantulas should they disappear from the face of the earth, but you wont catch me chomping on one of those eight hairy legs. Related I might understand American societys insistence on serving turkey every year if it were easy to prepare. But its not. Getting turkey to taste edible requires a weeks worth of preparation at a minimum. First, you have to defrost the bird, then brine it, then stuff it, then slather it in butter and seasoning, then roast it to the exact moment of doneness. One minute more and the meat is dry. One minute less and youve given your entire family salmonella. Its the size of the bird that renders it nearly inedible in the hands of the average home cook. Thoroughly cooking the bird and not killing your guests requires heating the center of the meat to 165 degrees, while the outer perimeter of the bird far exceeds that temperature and gives the meat the texture of sawdust. I have been lucky to have been served some exceptional turkeys by the hosts of Thanksgiving dinners Ive attended, but I want better for those hosts. I want them to not have to make a months worth of preparations just for one dish. I want better for all of us. This is not my laziness talking. I am more than willing to tackle a complicated cooking project. Just last weekend, I spent two days making the worlds most complicated pie. I recently spent an entire Saturday making croissants. Last Christmas, I devoted a week to making the perfect beef tenderloin. Those were sacrifices I was willing to make for a delicious end result. But not for something that will, best-case scenario, land on the good end of average. Is there no better way? Dont suggest frying the turkey. For every one dad bragging about his turkey-frying success, there are five other dads with weary eyes telling the tale of the Thanksgiving they nearly incinerated the family home with a grease fire. The only thing worse than subpar protein is a charred house. Im sorry, but I thought we lived in America. The land of innovation. The land that brought the world electricity, the lightbulb, the automobile, the airplane, the television, the internet, and the Pop-Tart. Weve leveraged these revolutionary inventions to streamline and improve nearly everything about our modern lives. But were still eating the least among the meats on one of our most American holidays? The pursuit of the American dream demands more from us. We must innovate once more and rethink the anchor of our Thursday afternoon meal. This Is Why Kamala Harris Is Preferring Gen Z Over Millennials | Johnny Nunez/WireImage Vice President Kamala Harris has her eyes set on Gen Z and heres why. Harris launched the Fight for Our Freedoms nine-stop college tour, which took her to campuses across eight states in September and October. The Vice President and President Bidens reelection campaigns will hang on wise young voters, who were essential to their success. I love Gen Z, Harris said at a press conference, according to the Los Angeles Times. As a result of gun violence, climate change, and a rollback of abortion rights, these issues are a lived experience for Gen Zers, she said, and they are not going to be patient about us getting something done. And I love that about them. Harriss political brand and biography are aptly matched to the activism that has come to be associated with Gen Z voters born between 1996 and 2010. This generation is known to have greater racial and ethnic diversity. Frequently, Harris has cited her parents involvement in the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s as an inspiration for her interest in politics. Flamin Hot actress Annie Gonzalez, who moderated two of Harris college tour stops, said Harris family background helps her understand Gen Zs desire to take action. Shes like, I come from a family who was not afraid to go out and protest. I think thats something she understands Gen Z is not taking it lying down, Gonzalez said. Gen Z voters tend to offer a contrast to Trump, as they arent bound by party loyalty and prefer candidates who focus on issue-oriented issues, according to Lake. In a hypothetical general election race, NBC News found only 42% of voters aged 18 to 34 support Biden, while 46% support Trump. Bidens handling of the Israel-Hamas crisis was disapproved of by 70% of Democrats ages 18 to 34. In 2020, election polls showed Biden winning about 60 percent of the 18-to-29 age group. The oldest president in history, who turned 81 on Monday, has since lost the support of younger voters. Despite her unfavorable ratings with registered voters, Harris motivates young voters of color, according to her aides and advisers. She struggled to make significant progress on her initial promises, including curbing immigration from Central America and expanding voting rights protections. Harris has since taken strong stands on abortion rights, gun violence, the climate crisis, student loan debt relief, and other issues that are relevant to Gen Z to find her footing. She has a portfolio now that people do pay a lot of attention to, Celinda Lake said, a veteran Democratic strategist who was one of two lead pollsters for Bidens 2020 campaign. Developing the economies of Guatemala and Central America? I dont know that thats seen as a two-sided issue by voters. [Young people] like her style, they like her record, and they like her issues, Lake continued. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first Gen Z member of Congress, said they are holding leaders accountable for creating immersive plans. This is the most politically active generation of young people that our country has had, and so we dont need to be told what to care about, the 26-year-old said. We want to feel validated in our concerns, and we want to see our leaders present a plan on how we fix it. Victor Shi, a 21-year-old senior at the University of California, Los Angeles, served as the youngest delegate announcing Bidens candidacy at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. He recently hosted National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on his podcast, iGen Politics, which he co-hosts with former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks, and said Harris serves as a martyr for what Gen Z wants in a leader. Ive heard more people say, Im just going to tap out of the process altogether, Shi said, noting that social media has been flooded with misinformation about the conflict. According to Shi, a two-minute TikTok video cannot adequately capture the decades-long dispute, and it will require time to refute false information and adjust the administrations position. However, he continued, drawing a comparison to Trump appears to be effective. Its not satisfying to anyone I talk to, but I think just framing it in terms of that choice in 2024 has worked, he said. However, Harris age and vigor are a plus, Shi added, even though young people would ignore Biden as a message. Perhaps not many people will listen to someone like President Biden, given his age, Shi said. But having someone like Kamala Harristheres a hunger for that. Comedian Matt Rife's Netflix special premiered last week, and the backlash for his opening sequence that included a joke he said is about domestic violence has been swift. Rife, whose crowd work videos have gone viral on TikTok and catapulted him into the comedy mainstream, responded to his critics on Monday, Nov. 20, on his Instagram story, ensnaring him in further controversy. "If you've ever been offended by a joke I've told- here is a link to my official apology," Rife wrote, also including a link labeled "Tap to resolve your issue." The link directed users to a website selling products described as "special needs helmets" for children and adults. Matt Rife (@mattrife via Instagram) Social media users panned his response, with an X user writing: "Oh good. Ableism to chase the misogyny." "Matt Rife posts a link to an 'apology' but its really just thisBIG YIKES," another X user commented. Representatives for Rife did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment from TODAY.com. Here's what to know about Rife and the controversy surrounding his Netflix special, "Natural Selection." What did Matt Rife say in "Natural Selection"? Rife, who has amassed more than 18 million followers on TikTok since starting to post his crowd interactions on the app last summer, went from self-producing and crowd-funding his own comedy specials to releasing "Natural Selection" on Netflix on Nov. 15. The 28-year-old started his special, filmed in Washington, D.C., by calling nearby Maryland "so beautiful and so ratchet" and describing a time when he saw a hostess at a Baltimore restaurant with a black eye. "A full black eye. It wasnt like, 'What happened?' It was pretty obvious what happened," Rife said. "But we couldnt get over, like, this is the face of the company? This is who you have greeting people? "And my boy, who I was with, was like, 'Yeah, I feel bad for her, man. I feel like they should put her in the kitchen or something where nobody has to see her face.' And I was like, 'Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldnt have that black eye.'" After receiving mixed reactions from the live audience, Rife said: "Testing the water, seeing if yall are going to be fun or not. Just wanted to see. I figured we start the show with domestic violence, the rest of the show should be pretty smooth sailing after that." Rife then went on to say she should have been carrying "protection crystals," before making jokes about what he called "crystal girls" and women who blame astrology on their "poor decision-making skills." Matt Rife's comments about his fan base Rife also caught heat before his Netflix special premiered, when he told Variety on Nov. 14 one of the biggest misconceptions about him online is that he only has a female fan base, and that he thought his new special catered to men. One thing I wanted to tackle in this special was showing people that, despite what you think about me online, I dont pander my career to women, he said. I would argue this special is way more for guys. He added: I wanted to make this special for everybody. I pride myself on making my comedy for everybody. Its not for a specific demographic. How has the internet responded? Matt Rife (Mathieu Bitton / Netflix) Users on X were quick to call his joke in "Natural Selection" and his subsequent apology "disrespectful and distasteful," among other terms. "Matt Rife: my special is for guys... Immediately opens up with a domestic violence joke," an X user wrote. "Matt Rife opens his special with a 'if a woman could cook she wouldnt have a black eye' joke," another X user said. "Really?" "The way women catapulted Matt Rife into popularity and the second he gets a comedy special on Netflix he immediately betrays them with a joke about domestic violence crazy innit," a user on X wrote. "The girls and gays were Matt Rife's biggest demographic and he used his Netflix special to pander to toxic masculinity," another person said on X. "It feels like a betrayal." "Im crying at everyone realizing that Matt Rife isnt funny after watching his Netflix special and coming to the realization that hes only good at the crowd work he posts on Tiktok lmaoo," one X user wrote. Rife previously spoke with TODAY.com about why he chose to only include his interactions with the crowd in D.C. during the credits of his Netflix special. "That's like the No. 1 trash talk I get on the internet people think I only do crowd work. I'm like, 'OK, cool. Well then, assuming you haven't seen my other two full hour specials before, here's a third one with no crowd work in it,'" he said. "We just fit (crowd work) in for fun in the credits. I mainly just wanted to show people that I do way more than that." This article was originally published on TODAY.com A Border Patrol agent watches as a group of migrants walk across the Rio Grande on their way to turn themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Del Rio in June 2021. The Pew Research Center analyzed unauthorized immigrant data from 2021 and found that theres been a significant shift in migrants country of origin and where they choose to live in the U.S. Eric Gay, STF / Associated Press An estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants were in the U.S. in 2021, a slight increase from 10.2 million in 2019 according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. However, Texas population of unauthorized immigrants remained relatively stable at 1.6 million people. Texas remains the state with the second-highest undocumented population in the U.S. behind California, which had a reported 1.9 million unauthorized immigrants in 2021. The center notes that the report does not reflect changes in migrant apprehensions and expulsions along the U.S.-Mexico border, which began to increase in March 2021 and have since reached historic highs. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Despite no significant change in the total number of immigrants recorded in the study, the study points out that the demographics and geographical concentrations of unauthorized immigrants have changed. Although Mexico is still the most common origin country for unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., the study found that the proportion of Mexico-born unauthorized immigrants has dropped significantly since 2017. In Texas, Mexican unauthorized immigrants decreased from 73% of unauthorized immigrants in 2016 to 55% in 2021. Migrants get through concertina wire lining the banks of the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. A surge of migrants started early in the week and continued through Thursday. Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News The researchers note that general migration from Mexico to the U.S. has declined while there have been expanded pathways to lawful immigration from Mexico and other countries. Nearly every other region of the world including Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and Central America saw increasing numbers of unauthorized immigration to the U.S. The largest increases in immigration came from Central America as well as South and East Asia. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Nestor Rodriguez, a UT-Austin professor of sociology, studies various aspects of immigration. He said theres a host of reasons there are fewer unauthorized immigrants coming from Mexico, ranging from personal circumstances to increased job opportunities in certain regions of the country. Fortunately for Mexicans, there seems to be growth in the job market (there), Rodriguez said. Its not in all areas of Mexico but certainly in the industrial north and around Mexico City. Unauthorized immigrants make up 8% of Texas workforce, second only to Nevada, according to the reports labor force data. Because more people of various ethnic populations are coming to the U.S., Rodriguez said this creates wider social networks that encourage further immigration. Rodriguez says this creates more connections that motivate more people to come here and join their cousins, brothers or sisters. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Julia Gelatt, associate director of the Migration Policy Institutes U.S. Immigration Policy Program, said demographic shifts in areas with high immigrant populations arent unheard of, like the changes seen in New York Citys immigrant population in the past. A lot of cities and a lot of states across the United States have seen shifts in their immigrant enclaves over time, Gelatt said. Some of those might be more gradual shifts and some might be more rapid. California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois were the six states with the largest unauthorized immigrant populations in the nation, a consistent trend since at least 1990. Even though the states with the largest populations have remained consistent, the geographic patterns of unauthorized immigrants have changed noticeably. Back in 1990, 80% of unauthorized immigrants were living in those six states. In 2021, only 56% of unauthorized immigrants lived in those six states. The shift in geographical trends suggests that there likely are more work opportunities and resources available in other parts of the country, Rodriguez said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Even though it can be difficult to determine trends in immigration data, as unexpected factors like natural disasters or shifting government stability can largely influence immigration, Gelatt said recent data might indicate the beginning of new migration patterns. During WWII, American war correspondents sent news from the frontlines back home to the states. These journalists were often right there with the troops, slogging through mud and ducking enemy fire to provide accurate reports. However, covering the air war proved to be even more of a challenge, though not a physical one. Based out of London, journalists could only meet returning airmen after their missions to record their stories. To give war correspondents a first-hand look at the air war, the U.S. Army Air Forces' 8th Air Force permitted eight journalists to fly bomber missions over Germany in 1943. However, these men would not just be passengers along for the ride. If things got dicey in the air, as they often did, the reporters were expected to help defend their planes; they were sent to aerial gunnery school. Cronkite with the crew of a B-26 Marauder assigned to the 323rd Bomb Group (American Air Museum in Britain) In the same way that every sailor aboard a ship is a firefighter, every crew member aboard a bomber was also a gunner. The radio operator, navigator, bombardier and flight engineer all doubled as gunners when not performing their primary duties. Even the pilots could be swapped out from behind the controls and placed behind a gun if a squadron or group commander chose to fly a mission. The eight journalists selected to fly over Germany were christened "The Writing 69th" by 8th Air Force public relations officers, as a play-on-words of "The Fighting 69th" Infantry Regiment from WWI. They were also called "The Flying Typewriters" but referred to themselves as the "Legion of the Doomed." These men were Paul Manning for CBS Radio, Robert Post for The New York Times, Walter Cronkite for United Press, Andy Rooney for Stars and Stripes, Denton Scott for Yank, the Army Weekly, Homer Bigart for the New York Herald Tribune, William Wade for the International News Service, and Gladden Hill for the Associated Press. Scott flew a later mission over France (American Air Museum in Britain) In just one week, the eight journalists underwent intense training, including high-altitude survival, parachuting, and enemy aircraft identification. Of course, a critical aspect of their training was aerial gunnery, which included skeet shooting with shotguns and Thompson submachine guns to learn the concept of leading a moving target. At the end of the training, the reporters were given a written test; they all passed. On February 26, 1943, The Writing 69th flew their first mission, the bombing of a Focke-Wulf fighter aircraft factory in Bremen, Germany. Post, Cronkite, Rooney, Bigart, Wade, and Hill boarded their respective B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator heavy bombers and took to the skies. However, cloud cover over Bremen diverted the raid to its secondary target, the German U-boat pens at Wilhelmshaven. Post is the only member of The Writing 69th to be killed in action (American Air Museum in Britain) While over Oldenburg, Germany, German fighters intercepted the American bombers. Many of the reporters, including Cronkite, reportedly manned machine guns and returned fire. Rooney's B-17 was damaged by flak but made it back to England safely. Tragically, Post's B-24 was shot down by enemy fighters and exploded mid-air. He, along with eight of the 10 crewmen, were killed. Post's death effectively ended The Writing 69th. However, some of the reporters, including Scott and Manning, flew later missions during the war. Post's body was later recovered; he is buried at the Ardennes American Cemetery alongside the airmen with whom he flew. The wife of Jeremy Taylor, a supervisor for Woodbury County in Iowa, was found guilty of 52 counts of voter fraud Tuesday, Iowa Public Radio reported. Kim Phuong Taylor took advantage of Vietnamese immigrants to illegally cast fraudulent votes in an effort to aid her husbands run for the U.S. House of Representatives, prosecutors alleged. Taylor lost the GOP primary in 2020, ultimately placing third in the race. Later that year he won the race for county supervisor. Kim Phuong Taylor was indicted in January on dozens of counts of fraudulent voting and giving false information when registering and voting. Read it at Iowa Public Radio Read more at The Daily Beast. Known as the "Dutch Trump" both for his bouffant dyed hair and firebrand rhetoric, Geert Wilders' anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and anti-EU message seems to have finally swept him to first place at the polls. From calling Moroccans "scum" to holding competitions for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, Wilders has built a career from his self-appointed mission to stop an "Islamic invasion" of the West. He has remained defiant despite brushes with the law -- he was convicted for insulting Moroccans -- and death threats that have meant he has been under police protection since 2004. "I don't regret fighting for freedom," Wilders told AFP in an interview ahead of elections in 2021. "Of course I take a stand, I am under attack, my country is under attack." Nevertheless, at the sixth time of asking, Wilders appears to have finally triumphed in the polls by toning down some of his populist rhetoric and focusing on voters' other concerns. There are "bigger problems than fighting against the flood of asylum-seekers and immigrants", he said in one of the final election debates, adding he was prepared to put his views on Islam "in the freezer" to govern. The Dutch people still cared about crimping immigration but more about "whether they have more money left in their wallets". His focus was on "security and healthcare" more than opposing Islam. - 'Cruise-ship buffets' - Yet the manifesto of his PVV (Freedom Party) retained the sharp anti-immigrant tone that has become his hallmark. "Asylum-seekers feast on delightful free cruise-ship buffets while Dutch families have to cut back on groceries," the manifesto reads. Proposed immigration measures include: restoring Dutch border control, detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, returning Syrian asylum-seekers and re-introducing work permits for intra-EU workers. As for Islam, the PVV manifesto says: "the Netherlands is not an Islamic country. No Islamic schools, Korans and mosques." He proposes banning the headscarf in government buildings. On foreign policy, the PVV proposes a "Dutch first" approach that includes closing its representation in Ramallah and strengthening ties to Israel, including moving its embassy to Jerusalem. A "binding referendum" on a "Nexit" -- the Netherlands leaving the EU -- is also in the manifesto, along with an "immediate halt" to development aid. - 'Anger, not fear' - Born in 1963 in southern Venlo, close to the German border, Wilders grew up in a Catholic family with his brother and two sisters. His mother was half-Indonesian, a fact Wilders rarely mentions. He developed an interest in politics in the 1980s, his older brother Paul told Der Spiegel magazine. "He was neither clearly on the left or the right at the time, nor was he xenophobic. But he was fascinated by the political game, the struggle for power and influence," Paul Wilders said. His hatred of Islam appeared to have developed slowly. He spent time in Israel on a kibbutz, witnessing first-hand tensions with the Palestinians. He was also shocked by the assassinations of far-right leader Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and the radical anti-Islam filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004. When he heard the news of Van Gogh's murder: "I remember my legs were shaking with shock and indignation," he wrote in a 2012 book. "I can honestly say that I felt anger, not fear." Wilders entered politics in 1998 in the Liberal VVD party. During his early days in politics he started dying his brown hair blonde and learned his media-savvy ways, even as his views became increasingly silenced. - Isolated figure - Over the years he vowed not to be silenced, despite being convicted of insulting Moroccan-Dutch citizens. Indeed, that high-profile trial boosted his visibility only months after Brexit and just as Donald Trump won the US presidential race. In 2006 he quit the VVD to found his own party and in 2017 it became the second largest in parliament, falling back to third largest in 2021. By tapping into a seam of Dutch discontent Wilders also managed to push the political discourse in the Netherlands to the right. But Wilders also cut an isolated figure. He was married to a Hungarian woman, but they had no children. When not posting anti-Islamic invective on his one social media account, he posted pictures of their cats on another. His party consisted of just one person: himself. And his security meant he had little contact with the outside world. "Geert's world has become very small," his brother told Der Spiegel. "It consists of the parliament, public events and his apartment. He can hardly go anywhere else." ric/jhe/imm/acc A 2022 study in the Northeast United States showed the resurgent bald eagle population is being held back by lead poisoning. The toxin found in ammunition makes its way into the bodies of the birds and other animals when they eat the discarded tissue of creatures killed by hunters. As a result, the long-term growth rates of male and female bald eagles were depressed by 6.3% and 4.2%, respectively, according to the study published in The Journal of Wildlife Management. Bald eagles have been the countrys national bird since 1782. Just 417 known breeding pairs remained in the contiguous U.S. in 1963. The population rebounded to 10,000 in 2007 and more than 300,000, including 71,400 nesting pairs, in 2020. Banned in the United States from paint in 1977, plumbing used for drinking water in 1986, and gasoline in 1996, [lead] is still widely used in ammunition to hunt big game and predators in terrestrial habitats and in shot for small game and upland gamebirds, the study authors wrote. Environmental Health News reported that lead shot for waterfowl hunting was banned in 1991 and that California banned lead ammunition in 2019 to aid the endangered California condor. Lead poisoning is the biggest threat to the largest bird in North America, according to the National Park Service. Most hunters have no idea this is happening, Kevin Hynes, a wildlife biologist in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, told EHN. Its not on their radar, and they just dont know about it. Another issue with lead ammunition is its risks to human health. A 2009 study showed 32% of ground meat from hunter-killed deer contained at least one lead fragment. Lead exposure is particularly dangerous for young children. It can cause damage to the brain and nervous system, learning and behavioral difficulties, slowed growth, hearing problems, and headaches. Adults can suffer reproductive issues, high blood pressure and hypertension, nerve disorders, memory and concentration problems, and muscle and joint pain. The bald eagle study featured 1,232 dead or dying birds that were collected from 1990 to 2018 in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. The authors noted 30.6% had non-zero levels of lead in their tissues at the time of death and 11.3% had measurements that surpassed the criteria for toxicity. Another 2022 study, in which researchers gathered feather, blood, liver, and bone samples from 1,210 eagles in 38 states over eight years, found 46% of bald eagles and 47% of golden eagles showed signs of chronic lead poisoning. EHN reported one or two tiny pieces of lead can kill an adult bird. It really doesnt take much, Hynes told EHN. We shouldnt be killing these animals, Krysten Schuler, a wildlife disease ecologist at the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab, told EHN. This is a totally preventable source of mortality, based on how we choose to exist in our environment. Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the coolest innovations improving our lives and saving our planet. Travelers on the East Coast should expect heavy traffic and flight delays as a storm system continues to unleash rain, wind and snow throughout the day on Wednesday. The storm has already produced enough rain to cause urban flooding along Interstates 80, 81, 95 and other major highways, AccuWeather reported. As the storm strengthens later on Wednesday, however, winds with gusts up to 40 to 50 mph could cause further delays. The I-95 route from Virginia to Massachusetts is expected to experience major travel disruptions, but AccuWeather predicted that by Thursday, travelers should expect dry weather and the storm to have lessened. Best Black Friday Deals AAA forecasts that a record 55.4 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home between Wednesday and the Sunday after Thanksgiving, according to The Associated Press. There is some good news at the pump, however. Gasoline prices are down about 37 cents a gallon from this time last year, the AP reported. The national average on Tuesday was $3.29 per gallon, down from last years $3.66. The National Weather Service (NWS) said the East Coast should expect widespread rainfall and locally heavy rain to taper off by Wednesday evening. The Carolinas will see precipitation continue longer into the day. The NWS also noted that New England should expect accumulating snow throughout the day especially over northern Maine, which could see up to eight inches of snow. For the northern and central Rockies region, a white Thanksgiving is on tap, NWS predicted, as arctic air intrudes the northern tier of the country on Thanksgiving Day into Friday. Temperatures are expected to be much above average on Wednesday, followed by a drop in temperatures on Thanksgiving Day, as the cold air sinks southward by the end of the week and spreads across most of the country by the weekend save for the immediate West coast and South Florida, according to the NWS. About 2.7 million people are expected to board flights on Wednesday, according to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which expects about 2.9 million to board on Sunday after Thanksgiving. The AP reported that will surpass the previous record set by the TSA on June 30. By 2:40 p.m. EST, there were 55 cancelations and 2,127 delays for flights within, into, or out of the United States. Updated at 2:44 p.m. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Donning a winter coat isnt just a fashion statement for some pups it could be a necessity, experts say. Some dogs may be in need of an extra layer of warmth when going out in the winter, depending on their size, age and fur length, according to several veterinary experts. A lack of clothing could put some dogs in dangerous situations resulting in hypothermia or frostbite in some circumstances. How cold is too cold for a dog? Some dogs, such as Siberian huskies, are bred to be resilient to colder climates but many dogs arent. When temperatures drop below 32 degrees, some dogs may need an extra layer of protection to make sure they dont get too cold, according to Small Door Veterinary, a resource organization for pet owners. If its below 20 degrees, then Small Door Veterinary medical experts say its recommended for an owner to keep an eye on any breed. Blustering cold winds and snow on the ground are also signs your pup may be in need of some winter attire, the organization said. If youre putting on a coat to go outside, odds are good that its cold enough for your dog to need a coat as well, the organization said on its website. What type of dogs may need to bundle up this winter? Bigger dogs with dense fur are typically in good shape to make it through average winter temperatures without the need to bundle up, according to the American Kennel Club. But, several other types of dogs may need that extra layer in cold conditions. The American Kennel Club suggests considering a coat for: Smaller breeds of dogs, especially if they are short-haired Dogs whose bellies arent very high off the ground and could brush against snow or ice while walking Recently groomed dogs that usually have thicker fur Leaner, short-haired dogs Older dogs In most cases, dogs who need coats cant produce enough body heat to keep themselves warm in colder climates, according to the American Kennel Club. Those variations can also make a dog more susceptible to harmful conditions, such as hypothermia and frostbite. How to know if your dog is experiencing hypothermia or frostbite Mild hypothermia can begin when a bodys body temperature drops below 99 degrees, according to the American Kennel Club. Moderate to severe hypothermia can happen anytime a dogs body temperature is below 90 degrees, the organization said. There are several signs that the American Kennel Club warns about that indicate a dog may be experiencing hypothermia, including: Faster heart rate that starts to slow down Fatigue and slow reaction time Rapid breathing that becomes more shallow with time Dilated pupils Treatment ranges from bundling up your dog with blankets to giving them warm IV fluids at the veterinarians office, according to the organization. Frostbite also can impact dogs, typically on their ears or paws, according to the American Kennel Club. So, in some cases, putting on a pair of dog boots may also help protect your furry friend. How do I pick a good coat for my dog? While there is a wide variety of coats boasting premier fabrics and features, Small Door Veterinary medical experts say a good rule of thumb is to make sure a coat covers the dogs neck, back and belly. Its also recommended to get a coat that is waterproof and doesnt have zippers or buttons so a dog doesnt chew them off, according to Small Door Veterinary. Monitoring your dogs activities outside is also essential to ensuring their well-being. If a dog is playing outside in a coat, owners should make sure their dog doesnt get too cold or overheated, according to Small Door Veterinary. When the dog returns back inside, Small Door Veterinary suggests taking the coat off so the dog doesnt get too hot. Depending on the type of climate the dog lives in, it could be adequate to just put them in a sweater or dress them in a more resistant winter jacket, according to Hills Pet Nutrition. What if my dog hates wearing clothes? At the end of the day, if your pup despises putting on their coat, it may be best to just let them be, according to Small Door Veterinary. The stress of dressing a dog up may do more harm than good, the veterinary organization said on its website, so clothing shouldnt be forced. If a dog refuses to wear a coat, its outdoor routine may need to be adjusted in the winter to avoid harmful effects of the cold, Small Door Veterinary said. Puppies found chained to a fence are now up for adoption. Meet Wowie and Zowie Stressed dog needs home after hes returned to NC shelters twice. Wants to belong Great Dane arrived at Florida rescue starved and sick. Now resilient pup needs a home Tense opening arguments kicked off Tuesday at the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a suit challenging the states heavily gerrymandered legislative maps a case whose outcome has the potential to alter the politics within the closely watched swing state. The first major case to be heard by the courts new liberal majority has emerged as a flashpoint for the states purple politics. The three hours of arguments Tuesday morning in Madison, the capital, were preceded by partisan rancor and attacks, which continued throughout the arguments. Attorneys for 19 Democratic voters filed the suit in August directly with the Supreme Court just days after liberals formally took control of its majority for the first time in 15 years asking the bench to rule that the states legislative maps are unconstitutional and to order that new maps be drawn by March. Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats, quickly joined the suit. Experts have said the states current map is one of the most gerrymandered in the U.S. While the court is technically nonpartisan, its seven justices have nonetheless made their ideological leanings clear. During Tuesdays arguments, its three conservative members aggressively questioned Democratic attorneys over why the bench was being asked to strike down maps it agreed on just a year ago, repeatedly suggesting that the reason was political. Everybody knows that the reason were here is because there was a change in the membership on the court. You would not have brought this action right? if the newest justice had lost, said Justice Rebecca Bradley, one of the courts conservatives. Bradley was referring to Janet Protasiewicz, whose resounding April victory swung control of the court to liberals. During her campaign, Protasiewicz criticized the states maps as being unfair and rigged comments that conservatives argue amounted to her having forecast how she would rule on the issue. They have demanded that she recuse herself from the case Protasiewicz has declined to do so and some Republicans have threatened to impeach her. Image: Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz attends her first hearing as a justice (Morry Gash / AP file) That conflict has also been at the center of infighting on the court itself tensions that were again on display during Tuesdays proceedings, with justices constantly interrupting attorneys and one another. During one particularly fraught exchange over whether the court had the constitutional authority to decide on maps, Bradley talked over liberal Justice Jill Karofsky, who had interrupted her. Id like an answer to my question, justice, first, Bradley said. Are you arguing the case? The courts four liberal justices, including Protasiewicz, spent much of their time asking attorneys about the criteria and rules by which new maps would be drawn if their ruling were to mandate that. The states current map was approved last year by the state Supreme Courts previous conservative majority after Evers and the GOP-controlled Legislature couldnt agree on maps. (As is the case in many states, if the governor and the Legislature in Wisconsin cannot agree on legislative maps, the issue falls to the state Supreme Court.) Democratic attorneys have based their suit that the current maps must be thrown out largely on two claims. One is that the map is unconstitutional because it violates the state constitutions requirement that districts be contiguous a complicated and poorly defined rule mandating that legislative districts be physically adjacent to one another. Critics of the current maps note that some Wisconsin districts include islands (or detached areas) within other districts. Some have compared the states map to Swiss cheese. Justices and attorneys spent the bulk of Tuesdays arguments debating how to best define the concept of "contiguity" so that future maps comply with the requirement. The suit also argues that the state Supreme Court violated the separation of powers laws in 2022 after it approved a map that had been vetoed by Evers in 2021. Attorneys arguing in favor of keeping the current maps often brought up that the separation of powers clause couldnt have been violated because the constitution also makes clear that the decision on maps falls to the state Supreme Court if the governor and Legislature are deadlocked. Wisconsins current legislative maps heavily favor Republicans who control 64 of the 99 seats in the state Assembly and 22 of the 33 in the state Senate despite the fact that the last two presidential elections have both been decided by less than 1 percentage point in the state and the last two gubernatorial races have both been decided by less than 4 points. At stake in a ruling to throw out the current maps would be not just the maps themselves, but the fate of decades of conservative laws in the perennial battleground state, as well. A decision by the court to order new maps could put every member of the Legislature up for re-election in 2024. Such a ruling could mean that some lawmakers would have to run in new districts, in November special elections, for fresh two-year terms (including state senators, all of whom would only be partially through four-year terms). While such a ruling almost certainly wouldnt swing Republican control of either chamber to Democrats, it would likely weaken the GOPs hold in both the party has controlled each for 12 years according to recent analyses of the maps by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Associated Press. That, in turn, could help boost efforts to reverse years of conservative policies in the state on issues related to election administration, unions and abortion. New maps could also shift Republicans further away from a supermajority (the party currently has one in the state Senate and is only two seats short of having one in the state Assembly), and with it, the ability to overturn Evers vetoes. Also underlying Tuesdays tense proceedings was the growing political acrimony that resulted from Protasiewiczs victory this year. Her criticism of the maps as well as her support of abortion rights was at the center of her successful campaign, and the issues have remained hot-button topics since she was sworn in over the summer. Wisconsin Republican lawmakers began openly talking about the possibility of impeaching her just days after her April victory. State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, directed a panel of former members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to provide him with an analysis regarding whether impeachment of Protasiewicz was possible. Her refusal to recuse from the case outlined in a lengthy brief filed last month in which she explained that she had never suggested that she wouldnt hear the case fairly despite having offered various critical opinions of the states legislative maps only served to amplify those calls. Members of the secretive group assembled by Vos, however, eventually advised him to not move forward with impeachment, though Vos has yet to rule it out. He suggested last month that he could still move to do so if Protasiewicz rules against the current maps. This article was originally published on NBCNews.com Road rage at a Starbucks drive-thru led to a customer getting her car window smashed out with a gun. Channel 2s Cobb County Bureau Chief Michele Newell was outside of the Starbucks on Cobb Parkway in Smyrna Wednesday, where police say the incident started when a customer cut someone off in line. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Police said Kynesha Charles accused another customer of cutting her off. Police said the victim offered to pay for Charles Starbucks order, but Charles drove off. The victim left the Starbucks, then noticed Charles parked in a nearby parking lot. The victim told police that Charles followed her to a nearby hair store, got out of the car and smashed her back window out with a gun. TRENDING STORIES: Charles is now facing felony charges of criminal damage, stalking and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Newell talked to Starbucks customers Wednesday, who were shocked by Charles behavior. I feel like you shouldnt get really upset about it because you never know what they are going through. Jayvon Moore said. Thats definitely crazy. I feel like she went a little overboard. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] I think people should take a breath, slow down and figure out their next move and not let it be a negative one because thats somebodys life, customer Sherise Williams said The victim did exactly what police would want anyone to do in a similar situation: She called police while she was inside a business, away from the suspect. The victim was not identified. (KRON) A woman was arrested for assault and possession of a firearm last week following a disagreement with a female friend, the Vallejo Police Department said Wednesday. The incident occurred on Tuesday, Nov. 14 when a woman flagged officers down near Alabama and Sacramento Street. The woman, police said, told officers her female friend attacked her following a disagreement. The victim also told police her friend had a firearm and was currently following her in a red Honda Civic. Penthouse model accuses Axl Rose of violent 1989 sexual assault As the victim was talking to officers, the suspect vehicle drove past them and the woman confirmed the person driving was her friend the armed assailant. Vallejo PD officers executed a felony stop on the Honda and detained the suspect. A search of the vehicle revealed an unregistered firearm under the front passenger seat. The suspect was given her Miranda rights and admitted to assaulting the victim. According to police, she claimed ignorance about the presence of the firearm in the vehicle. The female suspect was arrested and transported to county jail. The firearm was seized and entered into evidence. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4. MEMPHIS, Tenn. A woman and child are dead after a crash in Quitman County, Mississippi, Monday afternoon. According to the Mississippi Highway Patrol, a 2016 Jeep Wrangler was traveling east on Highway 6 before 3:30 p.m. when it collided with a 1999 Chevrolet Malibu traveling west on the highway. Two passengers in the Malibu, identified as 43-year-old Katrina Hall of Batesville and 5-year-old Oakleigh Varnell of Sardis, were killed in the crash. Police chase ends in deadly crash in Hickory Hill MHP says the crash remains under investigation. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WREG.com. It has been seven years since Father Eddie Bernal passed away, but his wisdom about love, compassion and light remains timeless. When despair sets in, let your inner light be a guide. Lisa Krantz/San Antonio Express-News The priest has been gone for seven years, but I still look to him for guidance. Im a Methodist, so Father Eddie Bernal wasnt my priest, but as he was to so many in San Antonio, he was my friend. Eddie was the pastor of St. Benedict Catholic Church when he died unexpectedly in 2016 at the age of 66. Reading Les Miserables back when Eddie was still living, I saw him in Victor Hugos description of Monseigneur Bienvenu: He was always busy finding for himself and inspiring in others the best way of sympathizing and comforting; the whole world was to this good and rare priest a permanent subject of sadness seeking to be consoled. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Because the world is so sad and so dark that it makes us retreat to our isolated corners, we must be reminded there is light. Just as human beings are the source of darkness, we also generate light. I have a brown leather briefcase that belonged to Eddie, given to me after his death by his sister-in-law Carmen Tafolla, the former San Antonio and Texas poet laureate. In it are notepads and pieces of paper on which Eddie had written the outlines or notes for three or four sermons. Every now and then, Ill pull them out and try to imagine where he would have gone with these sermons. Eddie could use his voice as a soft hymn to privately comfort the grieving or as a public trumpet for social justice. He once said, We cant be blind to the prophets such as Jeremiah and Amos. We must be against anything that hurts the poor. After he died, a video popped up from 2012 when, in Temple Beth-El, he spoke out against an attack on a Sikh house of worship and pleaded, as he always did, for love, understanding and inclusion. Last week, I realized that two sheets of paper in Eddies briefcase were stuck to each other and Id never read the back of one. On it, Eddie had written: Advertisement Article continues below this ad We must not change the definition of mercy to make it easier or more comfortable. Mercy is mercy "Love "Compassion "Understanding "Solidarity Advertisement Article continues below this ad "Empathy "Forgiveness. Seven years removed from this world, in body if not in spirit, Eddie reminds us we have these gifts that we must offer each other no matter how difficult. We live in days lengthened by the shadows of fear and uncertainty, in a gathering darkness made more bleak by the way we feel powerless and hopeless. But at the end of the day, as in each beginning, whatever our politics or religion, if any, we have the capacity to be instruments of love, justice, understanding and peace. There are some things we control even if they wont restore someones life or ease a familys grief. Advertisement Article continues below this ad We decide who we despise; choose who we loathe; add or subtract the measure of discord in our midst. We choose to heed or ignore the voices inciting us to be afraid or hate and harm each other. Hatred doesnt barge in like an intruder; it knocks on the door and is invited in. We make the decision to be merciless or merciful. We can succumb to darkness despair, or find it within ourselves to summon the light to resist in a manner that doesnt continue the cycle of hatred and violence. The kind of light that avoids words or actions that ignore, diminish or excuse the pain, suffering and grief of others. When we possess little to share or think we have nothing to give, we still have the power to lighten a burden, brighten a mood, correct a wrong or make a child smile. Before today slides into tomorrow, exercising this power is something we can do to make the world less dark. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Its our greatest and least used power. (BCN) A female individual died Tuesday afternoon after figuring in a multi-vehicle crash in Lakeville in Sonoma County, the California Highway Patrol said. Around 2:40 p.m. Tuesday, patrol officers learned of a traffic collision on Lakeville Highway near Stage Gulch Road. Three vehicles were involved in the crash, the CHP-Santa Rosa said. According to the CHPs investigation, a Chevrolet Colorado pickup truck was traveling southbound on Lakeville Highway when its driver veered left to cross into the opposing lane. It crashed into a Toyota Tundra pickup truck that was traveling northbound on the highway. The CHP said this caused the Toyota truck to turn left into the southbound lane, causing it to collide with a Kia Sorento SUV, that was traveling to the rear of the Chevy. SMART train service delayed after crash with bicycle in Rohnert Park The Kia SUV overturned, killing its female passenger seated in front. Its driver, who suffered major injuries, had to be airlifted from the wrecked vehicle. The driver of the Toyota truck suffered moderate injuries and was transported to hospital, the CHP said. Patrol officers alleged that the driver of the Chevy truck was driving under the influence. The suspect was booked in the Sonoma County Jail on suspicion of multiple crimes. Details of the deceased passenger were not immediately available. Anyone with information about the crash is asked to contact the CHP-Santa Rosa office at (707) 588-1400. Copyright 2023 Bay City News, Inc. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KRON4. EDMOND, Okla. (KFOR) An administrator at a skilled nursing facility in the metro was shocked to find a terrified and hungry 9-year-old child, hiding behind a recliner in a residents room. Savanah Patt knew what she had to do next. She looked at me and she wouldnt talk at all. And the resident, I was like, Um, who is this? And she said, Oh, thats my granddaughter,' Savanah said. She smelled terrible, she was very dirty, she didnt have shoes. At just nine-years-old, little Renlee had been hiding in her grandmas room for a week, after a neighbor dropped her off at the facility when they found the tiny girl living alone with her older brother for weeks. Their home was a hoarded trailer in southeast Oklahoma City, which they shared with a ton of cats and dogs, according to Renlee. She also remembers holes in the floor, filth and feces. Community leaders helping families in need have dream thanksgiving For Renlee, food was scarce and so were her parents, who Savanah says are lifelong addicts, and would force Renlee to panhandle with them on street corners for drug money. They would take the food stamps and trade them for drugs, Savanah said. They hoisted her into dumpsters and they would go dumpster diving. Renlee had a case of lice so severe, she couldnt return to school until they were gone. But with no one to help the little girl get rid of them, she never returned to school that year until Savanah stepped in. I fell in love with her, said Savanah, who was thrilled at the chance to adopt little Renlee. Ten years have passed since those earlier, darker days, and Renlee can now say she has lived with her adopted family longer than she did with her birth family. Now 19, Renlees life has been transformed by the gift of adoption. I dont know where Id be without my mom, I dont, she said with tears in her eyes. I was born with meth, and heroin, and pretty much every drug you can think of in my system as a baby. But Renlee has broken the chains of generational addiction with the help of a mother who chose her. Its amazing! Renlee smiled. To just feel loved and safe. Oklahoma Association for Justice kicks off holiday season with turkey giveaway Finding Renlee all those years ago was not the only shock Savanah experienced. A couple of years after adopting her, Savanah received a phone call, asking if she also wanted Renlees older sister, then 13, who Renlee hardly knew. Cheyanne had been tossed around between relatives and acquaintances her whole life. She had been left at a Circle K gas station in Yukon, Oklahoma. Savanah said the woman Cheyanne was living with no longer wanted her. Cheyanne didnt know I was coming, and I pull up, she was sitting outside and she looks at me. I roll down the window and she said, What are you doing here? I said, You want to live with me? She said, You want me? And I said, Yeah, girl.' Savanah then became a mom of two, after also adopting Cheyanne. People are like, Oh, you saved them. No, no friends. They saved me, because having them made me want to be better, Savanah said. Cheyanne and Renlee became the first in their family to graduate high school. Renlee is now on track to getting a college nursing degree. She hopes to pour love over her patients, just like her mom did for her ten years earlier. Her finding me in a room, and now Im going to be kind of working with people like that, Renlee said. And, to complete the circle, she wants to also transform another childs life with adoption. Whether theyre clean, dirty, whatever. They deserve love too. I mean, they deserve to be happy and have a home and be safe and not have to worry about where theyre going to get their next meal, she said. Savanah replied, The attachment and bond that you get that youre choosing to love, and theyre choosing to love is so beautiful. Renlees older brother was taken in by another family. She hopes to someday reunite. At this very moment, more than 390,000 children and teens across the country are in foster care, desperately hoping to find a permanent family. November is National Adoption Month. If you would like to foster or adopt one of the thousands of Oklahoma children and teens needing a home, click here for more information. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KFOR.com Oklahoma City. Dawn Coleman (left) was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty in the death of five-year-old Cairo Jordan (right) (Indiana State Police) A Louisiana woman has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for helping stuff a five-year-old boys body inside a suitcase that was emblazoned with a distinctive Las Vegas design. Dawn Elaine Coleman, 41, of Shreveport, Louisiana, learned of her fate in court this week after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the tragic 2022 death of five-year-old Cairo Ammar Jordan. You packaged Cairo up like trash and dumped him like garbage, Judge Larry Medlock said to Coleman at her sentencing hearing, CBS Louisville affiliate WLKY-TV reported. You chose not to stop it, not to call the authorities. On 26 April 2022, a mushroom hunter discovered Cairos body inside a hard-shell suitcase with the words To Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada across it. The suitcase had been abandoned in a wooded area in rural southern Indiana, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of Louisville, Kentucky. Dawn Elaine Coleman was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the 2022 death of five-year-old Cairo Ammar Jordan (AP) An autopsy found that the little boy had died up to a week earlier from vomiting and diarrhoea that led to dehydration, Indiana State Police said. Following the discovery of his body, no one came forward to identify the boy and he did not match the description of any missing children. He was buried in June 2022 at a Salem, Indiana, cemetery after a memorial service where a police chaplain called the then-unidentified child an unknown angel. When authorities finally identified the boy, they announced that Coleman and the boys mother, Dejuane Ludie Anderson, were wanted as suspects in his death. A felony murder arrest warrant was issued for Ms Anderson in November 2022, but the Atlanta woman remains at large to this day, the prosecutors office said Tuesday. Investigators determined that Coleman was acquainted with Ms Anderson and the two women were staying with Cairo in a home together in Louisville. Police alleged that Coleman helped Ms Anderson dispose of her sons body in April 2022. Cairo Ammar Jordan (Indiana State Police) Court documents obtained by ABC affiliate WHAS reveal that Coleman told investigators she had walked into a bedroom in the home to find Ms Anderson sitting on top of her son, who was lying facedown on the mattress. She claimed that, by the time she entered the room, it was already done meaning that Cairo was dead. Coleman reportedly admitted that she then helped Ms Anderson stuff Cairos body into the suitcase and then drove with her to Indiana where they dumped it in the woods. Authorities revealed both womens fingerprints were discovered on the suitcase and cellphone data placed them at the location where the boys body was found just days earlier. The bodys body was found stuffed inside this suitcase and dumped in a rural area of southern Indiana in April 2022 (Indiana State Police) Court documents also revealed a slew of disconcerting posts on social media made by Cairos mother in the days before he was killed. I have survived the death attacks from my 5-year-old throughout the 5 years he has been alive, she tweeted on 12 April 2022. I have been able to weaken his powers through our blood. I have his real name, and he is 100 years old. Need assistance. She also wrote about plans to exorcism [sic] a very powerful demonic force from within my son, adding, just because the avatar is of what we call a child does not mean that it is actually a child. [T]here are beings that are here that are not supposed to be here that pick avatars to hide behind to play roles to steal energy and ruin lives, she wrote in another post. Dejuane Ludie Anderson (Indiana State Police) Ms Anderson is still wanted by the authorities. Coleman will serve 25 years in prison and five years probation under the terms of her plea agreement, online court records show. This crime impacted not only Washington County, but became a nation-wide story, County Prosecutor Tara Hunt said in a news release. The victim in this case was an innocent child who was barely five years old. Its always tragic when a childs life is taken. Its incomprehensible when those who should be caring for the child are responsible. A deer hunter mistakenly shot a 47-year-old woman walking her dog Sunday in Adams County. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said the woman was walking her dog on a private property when a 62-year-old hunter believed her dog to be an antlerless deer and shot at the dog. The incident happened during the opening weekend of gun deer hunting season. The woman was struck in her abdomen and was transported to the hospital by Med Flight. The incident is under investigation, according to the DNR, and it's not clear whether charges will be filed against the hunter. It was the second of two instances where someone was shot during the gun deer hunting season-opening weekend. In Forest County, a 53-year-old man accidentally shot himself in the foot Saturday while attempting to adjust his gun sling. Hunters have been reminded by conservation wardens to follow the four-step process of firearm safety TAB-K T: Treat every firearm as if it's loaded A: Always point the muzzle in a safe direction B: Be certain of your target, what's before it and what's beyond it K: Keep your finger outside your trigger guard until you're safe to shoot. The Department of Natural Resources released data on opening weekend, including the fact that hunters registered 16% fewer deer than a year ago. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: DNR says woman mistakenly shot by deer hunter in Adams County A woman sued Delta Air Lines, alleging an off-duty employee got too drunk and kissed her. The lawsuit claims flight attendants served the employee five cans of wine. It then alleges that the worker kissed the plaintiff "multiple times" and "rubbed her buttocks." A woman is suing Delta Air Lines, alleging that an off-duty employee kissed and groped her after being overserved alcohol by flight attendants. The lawsuit, filed on Friday in the US District Court of Minnesota and viewed by Business Insider, states that the woman, Alison Petri, was on a flight from Las Vegas to Minneapolis on November 17, 2022, when the alleged incident occurred. In a statement to BI on Tuesday, a Delta Air Lines spokesperson said, "The alleged assailant at the time was an employee of a Delta subsidiary but not directly employed by Delta." The spokesperson did not respond when asked what subsidiary the employee, identified in the lawsuit as Abigail Louise Trebnick-Emerson, worked for. "While we don't have any specific comment on this pending litigation, Delta does not tolerate inappropriate or unlawful behavior," the airline's statement continued. "Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and our people." REUTERS/Ginnette Riquelme According to the suit, Trebnick-Emerson boarded the flight with a "'crew' bag, indicating that she was a flight crew member," the lawsuit states. She was seated in the middle of a three-seat row, with the plaintiff in the aisle and an unnamed man in the window seat, per the suit. The lawsuit alleges that after she was served three cans of wine, Trebnick-Emerson kissed Petri on the mouth, to which Petri did not consent. After two more cans of wine, the defendant kissed Petri on the cheek "multiple times," the lawsuit states. Once the plane landed and Petri stood to gather her luggage, the employee "rubbed [Petri]'s buttocks," the suit continues. "The concept of being touched inappropriately on an airplane is really scary because it's not like other locations where you might be able to leave," Jeffrey Storms, Petri's lawyer, told Business Insider on Tuesday. "You're stuck there." According to the lawsuit, Petri walked to the back of the plane after being kissed to inform a flight attendant but the flight attendant continued serving the employee. The lawsuit claims Petri also reported the incident to gate agents and Delta Airport Customer Service and asked them to inform law enforcement. Trebnick-Emerson was initially charged with criminal sexual conduct in the fifth degree and disorderly conduct, per the suit. A prosecutor dismissed the criminal sexual conduct charge, but Trebnick-Emerson was convicted of disorderly conduct over the summer, local Minnesota news outlet KMSP reported, and sentenced to one year of unsupervised monitoring. It's unclear what month Trebnick-Emerson was convicted and sentenced. Brandon Bell/Getty Images The lawsuit also claimed flight attendants repeatedly contacted Trebnick-Emerson to warn her about the report and included screenshots of what appear to be Facebook messages between Trebnick-Emerson and the flight attendants. BI was unable to corroborate the validity of the messages independently or how they were acquired, but Storms, the attorney for Petri, told BI the flight attendants "conspired with one another" to provide what he says was misleading information to Delta investigators and law enforcement. "[The employees were] effectively trying to cover up for the passenger who was overserved and inappropriately touched my client," Storms told BI. "The attempted coverup by those employees is all well-documented in Facebook messages." "When you find out that the people who are supposed to protect you there, in fact, are willing to very quickly mobilize to cover up the acts of their colleagues, it creates an even greater sense of powerlessness," Storms continued. According to the lawsuit, when Trebnick-Emerson was leaving the airport, she fell down the escalator twice, at which point law enforcement officers were dispatched to evaluate her. Photos included in the suit appear to show her falling down the stairs. "The responding officer concluded that Trebnick-Emerson was so intoxicated that she could not care for herself, so he placed her on a medical hold and Trebnick-Emerson was transported by ambulance to Southdale Hospital," the lawsuit states. The lawsuit claims that Petri "incurred and will incur medical bills, emotional distress, embarrassment, and pain and suffering." As such, she's seeking a jury trial and $75,000, but her lawyer told BI it isn't about the money. "I'm not sure what the outcome will be monetary-wise, but that's really secondary to making Delta take this seriously and bringing awareness to the issue," Storms said. Read the original article on Insider A group of parents in the Woodland Joint Unified High School District say they have collected enough signatures for a measure on the March 5 ballot to recall school board trustee Emily MacDonald for prejudicial comments she made about transgenderism at a meeting last summer. Laura Brubaker and Karen Bayne organized the recall effort after MacDonald spoke about the social contagion of transgender identification at a June 15 board discussion of the districts PRIDE Month resolution. While I share with everyone here tremendous respect for the achievements and contributions of Americans who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, this coalition forces acceptance of every aspect of transgenderism in order to be considered an ally of the others, and that is wrong, said MacDonald, who was elected in 2022 to a four-year term. The political needs and aims of these groups have always been divergent, she continued. Women who love women have little in common with women who wish to have a mastectomy, take testosterone, and live as men. Men who love men have little in common with men who wish to take estrogen and live as women. She said the board must act with great caution in order to protect the increasing numbers of children who are experiencing transgender procedures as a result of social contagion without sacrificing the tiny number of individuals who would identify as transgender even without social contagion, education campaigns, and the social cache attached to a transgender identity in the present. MacDonalds comments incited an immediate response, which grew into a recall movement. I remember watching (the meeting) and being absolutely devastated by what she said, Brubaker, a parent of two students in the district, told the The Bee. There were members of our community who came to see the PRIDE Month resolution, including students and staff, who left that meeting in tears. A rainbow forms in the sky above a Yolo is for Everyone rally in Davis Central Park on Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, as people stand in unitiy in the wake of recent bomb threats made at Davis-area schools and the citys main library containing anti-LGBTQ language. Dozens of community members went to the next school board meeting to share why MacDonalds comments were so harmful but MacDonald was absent. You dont seem to be taking this job seriously, said Nili Kirschner, a Woodland resident and professor at Woodland Community College, to McDonald at a July 27 session that MacDonald did attend. You broke our trust, so you cant be a trustee. You should apologize, said Jessie Lauren, an area teacher and parent, to MacDonald for her abhorrent comments. Brubaker and her fellow recall organizer Karen Bayne, a former WJUHSD trustee who raised two children in the district, and whose husband is a teacher in the district, encouraged MacDonald to resign. She was very adamant that she did not want to do that, Bayne said. As a former board member, I told her that her words hurt a lot of people, and that many people felt that she did not support all students, and she said, I definitely support all students. However, at another board meeting in August, MacDonald was the sole vote against a Resolution Reaffirming Support for All Woodland Youth. At that point, said Bayne, I was all in. The Bee reached out to MacDonald and she did not respond. People told us we shouldnt do it Pursuing a recall is a costly and time-consuming. Knocking on hundreds of doors, raising funds, and rallying volunteers all require the same amount of time as any other political campaign. Some Woodland parents and community members, while equally disturbed by MacDonalds comments, wondered if it was worth the effort, especially because she is one voice on the seven-person board. People told us we shouldnt do it, and I remember thinking, So, a little bit of prejudice is okay? said Bayne. Bayne also said that MacDonalds troubling comments about ethnic studies solidified her decision to organize the recall. She called Ethnic Studies a luxury item, despite it being a graduation requirement in the state of California. Plus, as Bayne pointed out, it was a requirement at WJUHSD before the state adopted it. Ethnic Studies has a tremendous amount of support in our community, Bayne said. Weve been leaders on that front. The recall committee needed 1,078 signatures from MacDonalds district by the November 4th deadline to get the recall on the ballot. They received more than 1,300 far more than the 820 votes she received to earn her seat. The Yolo County elections office has 30 days to verify at the signatures, at which point it will formally be on the March 5 ballot. Regardless of how the district votes next spring, Brubaker and Bayne say the campaign is their way of showing the LGBTQ community that there are people in the district who support them. We started this because we thought there was a chance wed succeed, said Brubaker. But we also thought, if nothing else, we will show our LGBTQ youth that our community, a good number of us, are supportive of them. Trans rights take center stage in Yolo County MacDonald represents only a small number of Woodland constituents in Yolo County. But the move to recall her is part of a larger push back at the county level among proponents of LGBTQ rights against groups like Moms for Liberty, who support parents rights and parental notification policies that would force district staff to out trans or gender nonconforming students to their parents. The parents rights groups are not asking to be notified because they want to nurture their childs (transition), Bayne said. They want to be notified so they can do whatever it takes to stop their children from being transgender. Moms for Liberty and similar groups dont believe that gender dysphoria the condition in which a person is born into the biological sex that does not match their gender identity is a real thing. In Yolo County, the Moms for Liberty chapter president, Beth Bourne, has organized parents who think that public schools are promoting transgenderism. Bourne has a child who identifies as trans, and was recently served a restraining order on behalf the Davis Joint Union High School District. The district accuses her of harassing public school teachers in Davis, Woodlands neighbor, which has seen its own tension around the topic. A group of protesters defending trans youth gather outside the conference centers at UC Davis as controversial speaker Riley Gaines, known for her outspoken views against trans-women in sports, prepares to speak Friday, Nov. 3, 2023, during her Speak Louder Campus Tour. In August, while Brubaker and Bayne were canvassing for signatures to recall MacDonald, Moms for Liberty hosted an event at the Mary L. Stephens Davis Library about trans women in sports. Close to 30 supporters of trans rights protested outside. Inside, the events speaker, Sophia Lorey, called trans women athletes men. A library official told Lorey not to misgender trans athletes. If that happens, its not following our code of conduct and we will ask the person who says it to leave immediately. Lorey then referred to a trans women as biological men, at which point library staff asked her to leave. Davis schools and the library have since received several bomb threats. Davis also hosted a visit from a national figure against the rights of trans women, Riley Gaines, who spoke at UC Davis earlier this month. Voters need to keep a close eye on their school boards, said Brubaker, because if this can happen in our pretty heavily Democrat community, then this can happen anywhere. Binace, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange, will pay over $4bn to US officials after admitting to unlicensed money transfers, sanctions violations, and willfully failing to institute anti-money laundering protections, federal officials announced on Tuesday. The oversights allowed trading with sanctioned nations like Iran, Cuba, and Syria, and failed to institute systems to report suspicious potential transactions with terror groups, according to the Treasury Department. Binance was allowing illicit actors to transact freely, supporting activities from child sexual abuse to illegal narcotics to terrorism, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellensaid on Tuesday. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of and CEO of Binance, is also stepping down, and will pay a $50m fine after pleading guilty to related charges. He could face up to 18 months in prison. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility, the executive wrote on X. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself. Changpeng Zhao is stepping down as Binance CEO (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) Federal officials described a wide-ranging set of problems at the crypto exchange, which at times handled two-thirds of global crypto trades. It willfully enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions between American users and users subject to US sanctions, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in remarks on Tuesday. And its platform accommodated criminals across the world who used Binance to move their stolen funds and other criminal proceeds. Binance prioritized its profits over the safety of the American people. The massive penalty, one of the largest in US financial regulation history, will also go towards resolving inquiries from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of the Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. On multiple occasions, Binance leadership intentionally took steps that allowed dangerous and illegal transactions to take place, according to the Justice Department. Binance knew it served US customers, meaning it had to register with FinCen and implement anti-money laundering controls, but chose not to comply, per the DOJ. Rather than set up these protections, the company created a separate Binance.US platform in 2019, while seeking to encourage VIP customers to obscure their accounts and continue using the main exchange, officials said. Binance executives, including Zhao, made a plan to contact VIP customers and help the VIP register a new account for an offshore entity and transfer holdings to that account, the DoJ said in an announcement of the agreement on Tuesday. Binance employees also called US VIPs to encourage them to provide information that suggested the customer was not located in the United States. The company, knowing it had US customers, also failed to introduce controls that would stop them from making trades with sanctioned jurisdictions like Iran, resulting in over $898m in trades between US and Iran-based users between January 2019 and May 2022. At one point, according to the DoJ, Zhao told employees it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission, while in another instance, a compliance employee wrote in a message, We need a banner is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you. In a statement on Tuesday, Binance acknowledge making criminal violations. These resolutions acknowledge our companys responsibility for historical, criminal compliance violations, and allow our company to turn the page on a challenging yet transformative chapter of learning and growth, the company wrote. With the compliance and governance enhancements enshrined in our commitments, we can begin to share our vision for Binances exciting future and the future of the crypto industry. The company also emphasised that the resolutions dont allege Binance misappropriated user funds or engaged in market manipulation. Richard Teng, the companys former global head of regional markets, will take over as CEO, according to Binance. The massive agreement with federal regulators will also require Binance to accept the appointment of a government monitor to oversee the business and bar Zhao from involvement with the company until three years after the monitor is appointed, according to court records viewed by The New York Times. Notably, the Securities and Exchange Commission was not a part of the Binance agreement. The SEC sued Binance and Zhao in June, alleging that they used companies beneficially owned by Zhao to inflate trading prices and make money off customers, allegedly mixing customer funds with Binance money. While we take the SECs allegations seriously, they should not be the subject of an SEC enforcement action, let alone on an emergency basis. We intend to defend our platform vigorously, the company responded at the time in a statement. And, to be clear: any allegations that user assets on the Binance.US platform have ever been at risk are simply wrong, and there is zero justification for the Staffs action in light of the ample time the Staff has had to conduct their investigation, the company added in the statement. The massive settlement comes just weeks after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty in federal court of defrauding customers on his popular cryptocurrency exchange out of billions of dollars. Bankman-Frieds defence team has vowed to fight the charges. China is bleeding cash. Investors, both domestic and foreign, are bailing out of the country. More than three-quarters of the foreign cash invested in Chinese stocks in the first seven months of this year has already been withdrawn from China. More than $25 billion has exited. Moreover, last quarter foreign investors took out more money than they put in, the first such drop since statistics were first reported in 1998. Its not hard to see why. Last year, Chinas share of the global economy began to contract. The contraction is continuing at the fastest pace since the Maoist era. The Chinese economy is not growing at the 5.2 per cent pace Beijing claims for the first three quarters of this year. Last month, the country officially entered into another period of deflation, with both producer and consumer price indices in negative territory. Across-the-board price declines are obviously inconsistent with robust growth. So are other factors. In October, for instance, exports declined for the sixth-straight month. New home sales at the 100 biggest developers were down 27.5 per cent, compared to the same month last year. The property sector, representing about 20 per cent of gross domestic product and around 70 per cent of household wealth, threatens to bring down the economy. He Keng, a former deputy chief of the statistics bureau, at a conference in Guangdong province in September said that China has enough vacant apartments to house its entire population of 1.4 billion people. Some think empty flats can accommodate 3 billion. China is overbuilt, and its not just apartments. The construction binge was the result of what looks like historys biggest debt-fueled stimulus program, which was authorized in 2008 to avoid the global downturn then. Total-country debt may now amount to a worrying 350 per cent of gross domestic product. Yet however large the overhang of debt no one truly knows how much there is its evident that China cant generate enough economic output to pay back lenders. In short, the country is finally having its long-delayed 2008 crisis. The Chinese people are either lying flat opting out of society or fleeing. Many of the migrants are risking their lives by trekking through the jungle of the Darien Gap, which separates Colombia and Panama. Sam, a Chinese migrant who entered America in February at Brownsville, Texas, put it this way to Axios: Its like an animal stampede before an earthquake. Moreover, the rich are sending their funds out. For instance, the family trust of Jack Ma, a co-founder of Alibaba Group, in a regulatory filing disclosed it was selling 10 million shares for $871 million this month. Why are the Chinese abandoning ship? Xi Jinping, who revers Mao Zedong, is returning the country to Maoist-style totalitarian controls and cutting links with the outside. His campaign to force China back to the 1950s includes an assault on domestic entrepreneurs Mr. Ma has been a prominent target of the Party and, of course, foreign investors. Beginning in March authorities raided foreign research companies, such as Mintz Group, Bain & Co., and Capvision. Non-Chinese parties, due to Chinese legal requirements, are being cut off from databases such as that of Wind Information Co., Chinas largest provider of financial data. And effective July 1, the regime amended the Counter-Espionage Law. Before the changes, this law protected just secrets. Now, it covers anything related to national interests, which means everything. China, therefore, has effectively criminalised everyday business-information gathering. Apparently, Chinas regime does not want investors seeing anything other than its increasingly distorted version of reality. Businesses, as a result of Beijings harsh measures, are investing elsewhere when they otherwise would have put new money in China. Others, like Gallup and Vanguard Group, are leaving China for good. Xi knows China is in trouble, which is why he traveled across the Pacific last week to speak to about 400 business leaders in a red-flood-lit room in San Francisco on the sidelines of the APEC summit. We must not erect barriers or create a chilling effect, said Xi then. Xis China has been fast creating those barriers. His speech he received three standing ovations was filled with generalities about people-to-people exchanges, hints of future panda loans, and the flowery language that Chinese Communists adore, but, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, he did not cover trade and investment matters. And apart from some obviously cynical promises, he also did not address his aggressive foreign policies, which are frightening the foreign business community as well as domestic entrepreneurs. These days, Xi at home cannot stop talking about war, and he is making fast preparations for it. Tone deaf is how that American paper accurately characterized Xis San Francisco remarks. As a result, he hit what Politico called the Great Wall of skepticism. In the US and Europe, leaders are afraid to openly advocate decoupling from China. Instead, they publicly speak of de-risking. Chinese leaders do not see that distinction and are opposed to both moves. The reality, however, is that the de-integration of China from the world has been primarily driven by Xi Jinping himself. Foreign businesses are increasingly seeing China not as a location to manufacture for global markets but as a place to manufacture for the Chinese market only. In China, For China is the phrase describing these reduced ambitions, which means investment money will not be flowing into that country as it once did. Its clear that the four-decade China economic miracle, once fueled by foreign money and domestic enthusiasm, is now over. 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. The Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen warned allies of Israel Wednesday that their shipping in the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea is a "legitimate target". The warning comes after the Huthis on Sunday seized an Israel-linked cargo vessel, opening a new dimension in the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Helicopter-borne troops seized the Galaxy Leader and its 25 international crew days after the Huthis threatened to target Israeli shipping because of the war. The ship had been chartered by a Japanese group, and was flying the flag of the Bahamas. A photographer who collaborates with AFP said the Galaxy Leader was anchored at the rebel-controlled Hodeida port in northwest Yemen and was closely guarded. It was now flying the Yemeni and Palestinian flags. The Huthis have declared themselves part of the "axis of resistance" of Iran's allies and proxies, and have also launched a series of drones and missiles towards Israel. A video posted on X, formerly Twitter, by Huthi military media showed the commander of the rebels' naval forces, General Mohammad Fadl Abdelnabi, aboard the captured vessel. "Allies of the Zionist enemy who ensure passage through Bab al-Mandab are also considered to be a legitimate target," he said of the choke-point at the foot of the commercially vital Red Sea. "We say to the Zionist entity that Bab al-Mandab is a red line... Every civilian or military (Israel-affiliated) ship is considered a legitimate target," he added. The vital seaway is a narrow strait between Yemen and Djibouti through which a significant portion of the world's maritime traffic passes. One of the world's busiest shipping lanes, it carries about a fifth of global oil consumption. Specialist website Marine Traffic said the Galaxy Leader, a car transporter, was off the Saudi port of Jeddah on Saturday when its radar signature disappeared. Israel's military on Sunday said the seizure was a "very grave incident of global consequence", and a US military official said it was "a flagrant violation of international law". Israel said the ship had sailed from Turkey bound for India, and that there no Israelis on board. On Monday the Huthis released a video purporting to show Sunday's seizure. The footage showed masked armed men jumping onto the ship from a helicopter while the vessel was still moving, and holding crew members at gunpoint. "We will undertake combat missions until the Zionist entity stops attacking Gaza," the Huthi general said in the latest video footage on X. str-am/tp/srm/dv Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed his congratulations to Javier Milei on winning the Argentine presidential election. Source: Ukrainian Presidents Office Quote: "I am grateful to you for not trying to balance between good and evil and for immediately declaring your resolute support for Ukraine. Ukrainians saw it all. And we are very grateful to you for that." Details: Zelenskyy also extended his gratitude for the humanitarian aid to Ukraine and Milei's principled stance from the first days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian president also invited Milei to visit Ukraine. Support UP or become our patron! A flare burns off methane and other hydrocarbons as oil pumpjacks operate in the Permian Basin. Students deserve honesty, not dogma, from the State Board of Education about human contributions to climate change. But that's not what they are getting. in Midland, Texas, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2021. Under the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, companies must start producing precise measurements of their methane emissions next year or face fines. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File) David Goldman/Associated Press Hyper-partisanship that interferes with the education of Texas students, and their understanding of the world, was again on display last week in the most recent science textbook adoption process. Thats when the Republican-led State Board of Education rejected most of the proposed textbooks. The concern? Too much honesty about man-made climate change. Ignoring climate change does not make it go away. Nevertheless, board members unapologetically ignored our states newest science standards, which were approved two years ago. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Some of these standards require eighth-graders to describe how human activities can influence climate. One rejected publisher dared to ask students to write a pretend story warning family and friends about climate change. Its painfully obvious that the SBOEs opposition to seven of the 12 proposed science textbooks was due to politics and religion. Aaron Kinsey, a Midland Republican SBOE member and executive of a West Texas oil field services company, rejected a finance textbook because of how it depicted the oil market; he called a sentence describing energy conservation as necessary to achieve energy independence a half-truth. But because the SBOE rejects established climate science, a half-truth is what many of our states students will learn in their classrooms. One board member asked which country is the worlds foremost producer of oil but still needs to import additional oil. The answer, of course, is the United States, but students wont learn about that, either. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Students will live with the consequences of our present-day policies addressing (or not) climate change. How can students be thoughtful or versed in the basics of climate change the heat-trapping effects of carbon dioxide or methane, for example if their textbooks cant broach the subject? In a warming world, extreme weather, be it heat, droughts or hurricanes, will occur more frequently. And climate change poses other threats in terms of food production and coastal erosion. Students should understand why the past eight years were the hottest on record. They should realize that the power grid failure during Winter Storm Uri in 2021 contributed to at least 210 deaths and that financial losses related to the storm ranged from $80 billion to $130 billion, according to the state comptroller. Students should know that Hurricane Harvey in 2017 damaged or destroyed more than 178,000 Texas homes and inflicted about $670 million in damage to public property, such as government buildings, roads, bridges, water facilities and electric utilities, according to the state comptroller. Advertisement Article continues below this ad According to NASA, scientific evidence unequivocally proves that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate and human activity especially the burning of fossil fuels is to blame. Among the many disturbing facts NASA shares is that the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years. The National Science Teaching Association affirms that the science of climate change is firmly rooted in decades of peer-reviewed scientific literature and is as sound and advanced as other established geosciences that have provided deep understandings in fields such as plate tectonics and planetary astronomy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change leaves no space for debate: Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact. The IPCC finds the main causes of climate change are from human activity: heat-absorbing greenhouse gases released by fossil fuel combustion, deforestation, and agriculture, which warm the planet; and aerosols such as sulfate from burning coal. Because of the SBOEs actions, Texas students wont learn this. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The National Center for Science Education and the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund rated Texas a much-deserved F in 2020 for not meeting standards in climate science education. During the Nov. 17 meeting, SBOE board member Marisa Perez-Diaz, a Democrat who represents San Antonio, posited that the lack of quality science textbooks would deter critical thinking and quality materials in the future. My fear is that we will render ourselves irrelevant moving forward when it comes to what publishers want to work with us and will help us get proper materials in front of our young people, and for me thats heartbreaking. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a phone call with Argentina's newly elected President Javier Milei, congratulating him on his electoral victory and extending an invitation to visit Ukraine, Zelenskyys press service reported on Nov. 22. Zelenskyy stated that Ukraine is interested in cultivating relations with Argentina and the broader South American region. He proposed that Milei participate in the preparations for an upcoming Ukraine-Latin America summit. Read also: Zelenskyy congratulates Milei on winning presidential election in Argentina, thanks him for supporting Ukraine The Ukrainian president also expressed gratitude to Argentina's incoming leader for supporting Ukraine. They discussed Kyivs peace formula, the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine, and holding Russia accountable for its crimes in Ukraine. Read also: Ukraines foreign minister comments on Argentina presidents courtesies with Putin Firmly supporting Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity, Milei previously stated that he intends to meet with Zelenskyy within the first few months of his presidency. 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 FOX News correspondent Benjamin Hall recently sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a wide-ranging interview during his first visit to Ukraine since he was nearly killed while covering the war in March 2022. The two discussed whether Ukraines war against Russia has reached a stalemate and the Israel-Hamas war, now in its seventh week, has overshadowed Ukraines efforts. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with Fox's Ben Hall. Zelenskyy acknowledged that the Israel-Hamas conflict is a challenge for the world, but warned that ignoring Russia comes at the Wests own peril. "We gave a lot of messages to Iran not to give [Russia] drones, not to give them licenses for production and for building the new factory of production of drones," Zelenskyy said. ZELENSKYY WARNS RUSSIA WANTS TO CAUSE EXPLOSION IN THE BALKANS Per the Pentagon, Russia has relied on Iranian-supplied unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in Ukraine throughout the war to compensate for its diminishing stockpiles. READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP Zelenskyy argued that Ukraine is at "the center of global risks" and that Russia will continue to be emboldened by its actions without significant pushback from the global community. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy discusses challenges for Ukraine in the shadow of the Israel-Hamas war. Ukraines setbacks come ahead of the U.S. presidential elections, which will have profound implications for continued support of the war effort. Former President Donald Trump, the lead Republican candidate in the 2024 race, has said he could get a peace deal "very quickly" prompting Zelenskyy to invite him to Ukraine. RUSSIA PLACES UKRAINIAN WINNER OF EUROVISION SONG CONTEST ON WANTED LIST: REPORT "I invite President Trump. If he can come here, I will need 24 minutes to explain to President Trump that he cant manage this war," Zelenskyy told NBCs "Meet the Press" earlier this month. "He cant bring peace because of Putin." Continued support of Ukraines war effort ultimately hinges on an aid package passed by Congress. President Biden has called on Congress to support a $106 billion supplemental spending bill to allocate an estimated $61.4 billion for Ukraine, $14.4 billion for Israel, $13.6 billion for protection along the U.S.-Mexico border and about $10 billion for humanitarian aid. "I hope that Congress will help us, and I hope that the help of the United States will be around the Ukrainian people," Zelenskyy told Hall. "And I hope the United States will be with us against Russian terrorism." Speaking to a growing number of Americans who believe the funds would be better spent on Americans, Zelenskyy noted that much of the money goes back into the U.S. through production and jobs. DEFENSE SECRETARY AUSTIN VISITS UKRAINE AS PENTAGON URGES CONGRESS TO PASS ADDITIONAL AID TO FIGHT RUSSIA "When you produce for Ukraine and with Ukraine, you produce it also with Americans. So, the big parts will be production in your states," he said. Zelenskyy played down reports of a stalemate between Ukraine and Russia, pointing to incremental progress in the Black Sea. "Each day I think that we [have] had success," Zelenskyy said. "In Crimea, we had success in the Black Sea. We really destroyed part of the Russian fleet They dont have such total influence on the Black Sea region." Zelenskyy paid his condolences to Oleksandra "Sasha" Kushinova, a Fox News consultant who was killed alongside Pierre Zakzewski and while in the field with Hall in Ukraine last year. "I wanted to say my condolences to all the parents [and] relatives of those very brave guys, men and women who lost their lives because they really wanted to help Ukraine," Zelenskyy said. "We will never we'll never forget that." Original article source: Zelenskyy talks Israel, US elections with Fox's Benjamin Hall, and Ukraine's place among 'global risks' Kyiv "sent a lot of messages to Iran not to give (Russia) drones, not to give them licenses for production or for building a new factory for the production of drones," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall in a wide-ranging interview published on Nov. 21. Zelenskyy argued that Ukraine is at "the center of global risks" and that Russia will continue to be emboldened by its actions without significant pushback from the global community. Ukraines lack of progress on the ground in its counter-offensive comes ahead of the U.S. presidential elections, which could have profound implications for continued U.S. support for the war effort. Former President Donald Trump, the lead Republican candidate in the 2024 race, has said he could get a peace deal "very quickly," prompting Zelenskyy to invite him to Ukraine. Read also: Iran prepares to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia report Speaking to a growing number of Americans who believe U.S. funds would be better spent on Americans, Zelenskyy noted that much of the money goes back to the United States anyway through production and jobs. "When you produce for Ukraine and with Ukraine, you produce it also with Americans. So, the big parts will be production in your states." Zelenskyy also played down reports of a stalemate between Ukraine and Russia, pointing to incremental progress in the Black Sea. The United States believes that Iran is becoming an increasingly important partner to Russia but is also benefiting from the relationship. Sources say that Russia is helping Iran improve its satellite capabilities and is supplying the country with missiles, air defense systems, and military electronics. Washington previously accused Iran of supplying Mohajer-6 and other drones to Russia. According to media reports, in exchange for the arms, Russia supplies Iran with cyber warfare technology, "captured Western weapons," and assists in developing Iran's missile program. Read also: Lack of evidence so far for claims Iran sold missiles to Russia, Zelenskyy says Russia is also engaged in the production of Iranian kamikaze drones in the special economic zone in Alabuga, Tatarstan. Iran transfers materials and technologies to Russia, and continues to supply Shahed attack drones. However, Moscow officially denies this. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited an exhibition of new models of Iranian-made drones and missiles in Tehran on Sept. 20. U.S. officials believe that Iran is preparing to provide Russia with short-range ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine, U.S. newspaper the Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 21. 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 President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has thanked for the support of Ukraine at the 17th meeting in the Ramstein format and the new assistance packages for Ukraine. Source: Zelenskyy's address on 22 November Quote: "A corresponding coalition has been established the air defense development coalition. The leaders in its organization are Germany and France. I am grateful for this leadership. I am also grateful to every country that participates in these efforts, which enable our cities and villages to be more protected from Russian attacks. Not everything can be said publicly yet, but Ukraine's sky shield is getting more powerful literally every month." Details: Zelenskyy noted that soon he expects a report on the results of Ramstein by Rustem Umierov, Ukrainian Defence Minister. Support UP or become our patron! TOKYO, Nov 23 ( carscoops.com ) - Toyota's Chairman and Master Driver Akio Toyota retires from his position as the chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) which represents 5.5 million employees from 14 automakers. Toyoda is the only official who led Japan's automotive industry for three two-year terms, being appointed in 2012, 2018, and 2022. Toyoda is known for his cautious views on the mass adoption of EVs and autonomous cars, proposing a multi-pathway approach for the future of the automotive industry. Despite the criticism, Toyoda defends the slow uptake of EVs among Japanese automakers compared to rival brands, pursuing alternative routes to carbon neutrality. Speaking about the critics, Toyoda said that the general attitude in society has changed. The outgoing chairman admitted that what pushed him forward was the 5.5 million people who work on the front lines, adding that It takes time to change things. His leading role in JAMA allowed him to promote the interests of local automakers and suppliers, for a longer period than any of its predecessors. ...continue reading The Loess Hills were thick with smoke earlier this month, but it was for good reasons. Pottawattamie Conservation teamed up with other area agencies to conduct prescribed land management burns at Hitchcock Nature Center and Mt. Crescent Ski Area. A series of burns were held across the 1,500-acre park system started the week of Nov. 6 and wrapped up last Wednesday. Kylie Jacott, promotions and outreach coordinator with Pottawattamie Conservation, said prescribed burns can take place any time of year, but they are commonly performed around November when weather conditions are just right. Pottawattamie County has since issued a bun ban, which remains in effect. Its very weather-dependent, Jacott said. Were looking for specific temperatures, humidity levels, wind speed and direction our goals as Pottawattamie Conservation and how available our various fire partners are. Jacott gave The Nonpareil an up close look at the work being done as county natural resource specialists and area fire partners lit up the valleys near the Loess Hills Lodge Interpretive Facility on Nov. 15. She said the county was joined that day by volunteers from the Council Bluffs and Woodbine fire departments and Nebraskas Turkey Creek Preserve and Fontenelle Forest. We have a bunch of different fire partners that work with us every year, she said. That relationship goes back and forth. They get some training and education opportunities and we can go out and assist with wildfires, too. Matt Jones, the new Loess Hills Project Director for The Nature Conservancy in Iowa, has been working prescribed burns and fire suppression efforts across the country for more than 20 years. He was part of a burn crew at Hitchcock on Nov. 9. He said fire partnerships like the ones on display at the park are critical. Its so important to expand and grow our capacity to prescribe fire, he said. It takes a lot of time, people and resources to do these safely and effectively. Fire is a natural part of the health and restoration of prairie grassland, Jacott said, and prescribed burns help stimulate native plant growth and increase diversity by getting rid of encroaching invasive plants. Prescribed burning, especially in the prairie where were at in the Loess Hills, is super important, she said. Our prairie plants depend on fire in the same way that they depend on sunlight and water. That also means a reduction in fuel load, thus reducing the risk for wildfire. While conditions at Hitchcock were quite hot and smoky, depending on the time and location last Wednesday, the park was open and operating like normal. A couple and their dog hiked by as freshly-ignited brush lining Fox Run Ridge blazed on. A homeschool education class got a show with their lunch as they watched plumes of smoke rise up from the hills and valleys. Many guests had been curious and interested to get a close up look at the process, Jacott said. We dont close during prescribed fire, she said. Part of the reason for that is because we want the public to remember that fire is part of our natural environment, especially being in the Great Plains. Pottawattamie Conservation said in a news release that Iowa was once 85% tall grass prairie, but now less than a tenth of a percent remains. Jones said this is why maintaining the ecological health of the Loess Hills is so important. The Loess Hills are such a unique landform, Jones said. With such little remnant prairie left in Iowa, especially, western Iowa, continuing to get fire on the ground will allow these prairies to keep thriving. Pottawattamie Conservation manages six public parks and six habitat areas across the county. The organizations work includes managing the parks, providing public and public education programming and performing community outreach in schools and other areas. Jacott said they try to give the public as much notice as possible before conducting prescribed burns, and updates can be found online. Guests visiting Hitchcock Nature Center can check the parks air quality in real-time by visiting map.purpleair.com and searching the parks name. The inaugural Real World Camp for southwest Iowa students invited the 18th class of Youth Leadership Council Bluffs to work through a simulation of real-world scenarios touching on financials and the economy in which they will one day work. Held Nov. 9 at the Salvation Army, 715 N. 16th Street in Council Bluffs, the one-day camp was sponsored by TS Bank in conjunction with the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce, New Visions Homeless Services and The Charles E. Lakin Human Services Campus, according to a news release. Brandon Garrett, chief of staff with the City of Council Bluffs, addressed the 22 students with the topic of community challenges. I explained to the students that we have a major housing shortage in Council Bluffs. What we have learned is that nationally, when rental vacancy rates are below 5% to 8%, homelessness dramatically increases, Garrett said in the release. The rental vacancy rate in Council Bluffs is below 2% as of 2021 and is likely to fall lower. The city is working to alleviate homelessness by increasing the housing supply of all types. This event gave students a chance to meet area professionals in a simulated city with real-life scenarios while working within a budget. The stations included banking, health clinics, rent, utilities, grocery, law enforcement and state assistance. The Real World Camp offers everyday interactions to increase experiential learning. Community members came together to provide a meaningful and impactful program for what we hope will be future leaders in our community, Traci Dresher, TS Bank program manager, said in the release. Each year, high school juniors chosen to participate in Youth Leadership Council Bluffs are charged with producing a slogan. Appropriately, this years class chose CRE-18 Change as their motto. Child care costs, monthly bills and transportation were the biggest shock to the students and created lively discussions. Weighing the pros and cons of how to navigate adulthood is a key component of the events curriculum. "I think every high school student should have to do this, Heather Beekhuizen, New Visions Homeless Services community liaison, said in the release. It really is a powerful experience. When I talked to my son at home last night, he said it was fun but really frustrating to deal with some of the systems. He said it was just really overwhelming to have to think about all the bills to pay and the scenario of taking care of kids. I think the simulation really sunk in. Outside classroom experiences for students fosters growth in money saving habits and financial behaviors. This financial literacy program acts as a catalyst to help create lasting client and community prosperity, while enriching our local youth for generations to come. Youth Leadership Council Bluffs is a program of the Council Bluffs Chamber of Commerce designed to develop and educate youth to become socially minded, active young adults. JERUSALEM Israels Cabinet on Wednesday approved a temporary cease-fire with the Hamas militant group that is expected to bring the first halt in fighting in a devastating six-week war and win freedom for dozens of hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip, in exchange for the release of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons. The deal calls for a four-day cease-fire, during which Israel will halt its military offensive in Gaza while Hamas frees at least 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it and other militants are holding, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office said. The first hostages to be released are women and children. The government of Israel is committed to bringing all of the hostages home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, the office said in a statement. A statement released by Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, Wednesday morning said the deal includes the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons, the number of those released will be increased in later stages of implementing the agreement, and that it would allow additional humanitarian aid into Gaza, but the Israeli statement made no mention of either of these elements. The statement from Qatars Foreign Ministry described the talks that produced the agreement as a mediation by Egypt, the U.S. and Qatar for a humanitarian pause, adding that the start time of the truce will be announced within the next day. Hostage releases will begin roughly 24 hours after the deal is approved by all parties, said a senior White House official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matters. Ahead of the Cabinet vote, which came after a six-hour meeting stretching into the early morning, Netanyahu said the war against Hamas would resume after the truce expires. We are at war, and we will continue the war, he said. We will continue until we achieve all our goals. Despite his tough words, the government statement said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. A longer-term lull could lead to pressure, both international and domestic, for Israel to end its war without achieving its goal of destroying Hamas military capabilities. The war erupted on Oct. 7 when several thousand Hamas militants burst across the border into Israel, killing at least 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage. Most of the dead were civilians, while the hostages include small children, women and older people. Israel responded with weeks of devastating airstrikes on Gaza, followed by a ground invasion that began over three weeks ago. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It does not differentiate between civilians and militants, though some two-thirds of the dead have been identified as women and minors. Israel says thousands of Hamas militants have been killed. The invasion has caused vast destruction in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, displaced an estimated 1.7 million people and caused a humanitarian crisis with shortages of food, medicines, fuel and other key supplies throughout the territory. Israel has rejected growing international criticism and vowed to press ahead until it destroys Hamas military and governing capabilities and all hostages are freed. Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israels destruction, has ruled Gaza since ousting the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007. Under Wednesdays deal, Hamas is expected to release roughly 12 hostages each day. While the statement did not say when the truce would begin, Israeli media reports said the hostages could begin to be released as soon as Thursday. The return of any of the hostages could lift spirits in Israel, where the plight of the captives has gripped the countrys attention. Airwaves are filled with interviews with families of the hostages, who include babies and toddlers, women and children and people in their 80s with health issues. The families have become a powerful force in Israel staging mass demonstrations and marches pressuring the government to bring home their loved ones. They have made a central Tel Aviv square their headquarters, where evocative displays like a long white table with seats for all 240 hostages are meant to keep their plight in the public eye. But the structure of the deal could weaken Israel from various directions. Any lull would give Hamas and its shadowy leader, Yehya Sinwar, a chance to regroup after suffering heavy losses during the fighting, especially if Hamas drags things out with additional hostage releases. Israel claims to have killed thousands of Hamas fighters, though it has not presented evidence, and destroyed parts of the groups underground tunnel system. But Israeli officials acknowledge much of the groups infrastructure remains intact. A cease-fire could also add to the already growing international pressure on Israel to halt its offensive as the full extent of damage in Gaza becomes apparent. Even the U.S., Israels chief backer, has expressed concerns about the heavy toll on Gazas civilian population. Some three-quarters of Gazas population has been uprooted from their homes and are staying in overcrowded and unsanitary shelters. Many, if not most, will be unable to return home because of the vast damage in the north and the continued presence of Israeli troops there. That could lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster as people remain in shelters or are forced to live in tents through the cold, rainy winter. And in Israel, the staggered releases of hostages risks triggering divisions between families of those who are freed and those who remain in captivity. Soldiers, for instance, are likely to be among the last to be freed. Families of the soldiers, who include young women who served as spotters along the border, are likely to press the government not to resume the offensive until their loved ones return home as well. There are many families and many opinions, Hadas Kalderon, whose two young children were abducted with their father, told Israels Channel 12 TV. She said a deal could create openings for future agreements by building trust, but acknowledged there are dilemmas as hostages are selected for release. Our responsibility is to return everyone, she said. But lets be realistic. A lengthy truce could also affect Israels battle readiness. While Israeli troops are expected to remain in place and the Israeli military said its battle plans remain intact, it will be difficult and risky for the army to leave its forces stationary behind enemy lines. Asked about a cease-fire, the armys chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said: The army will know how to maintain its operational achievements. Hamas may try to declare a victory, but Sinwar will have little to celebrate. Even if he survives and Hamas maintains power, he will emerge to vast destruction that will take years, if not decades, to repair. In the meantime, fighting continued on Tuesday, with the front line of the war shifting to the Jabaliya refugee camp, a dense warren of concrete buildings near Gaza City that houses families displaced in the 1948 war surrounding Israels creation. Israel has bombarded the area for weeks, and the military said Hamas fighters have regrouped there and in other eastern districts after being pushed out of much of Gaza City. In southern Lebanon, an Israeli strike killed two journalists with Al-Mayadeen TV, according to the Hezbollah-allied Pan-Arab network and Lebanese officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. A separate Israeli drone strike in Lebanon killed four Hamas members, a Palestinian official and a Lebanon security official said. The Israeli military has been trading fire almost daily across the border with Lebanons Hezbollah group and Palestinian militants since the outbreak of the war. On Tuesday, Gaza's Health Ministry said that as of Nov. 11 it had lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of large parts of the health system. It believes the actual death toll has risen sharply above the official number of 11,000. Some 2,700 people are missing and believed to be buried under rubble, and hospitals have continued to report deaths from daily strikes, often dozens at a time. The Israeli military says 68 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive. Read more: TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) An Israeli hostage freed by Hamas said in an interview that she was initially fed well in captivity until conditions worsened and people became hungry. She was kept in a suffocating room and slept on plastic chairs with a sheet for nearly 50 days. A reader wonders if the public will be thanking President Joe Biden for relatively low gas prices. Allen J. Schaben/TNS Lets go, Biden As I write this letter, regular gasoline is on sale for $2.59 a gallon at some gas stations. Wondering when folks will be affixing those stickers of Joe Biden with the caption I did that to the pumps. Richard G. Hernandez Roy part of the 'noise' Re: New speaker faces same issues as McCarthy, Nation, Sunday: Advertisement Article continues below this ad After vehemently ranting against House Speaker Mike Johnsons bipartisan clean continuing resolution to temporarily avoid a government shutdown, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy followed by calling Johnson a good friend on Fox News. However, Johnson must be wondering: With friends like Chip Roy, who needs enemies? Roy also disingenuously rejected the noise, bluster and getting off track within the House without admitting hes been one of the primary agitators. Obviously, Roy is no stranger to hypocrisy. Stephen Shackelford, Austin Advertisement Article continues below this ad Sister city details, please Re: For healing, stand by sister cities in times of conflict, Another View, Friday: I thank Councilman Manny Pelaez for acknowledging that many San Antonians disapprove of the current Israeli governments handling of the war in Gaza and cogently explaining why he thinks we should keep our friendship status with Tel Aviv. Whats missing are any details about the difficult conversations that Sister Cities International members supposedly have. Are any active discussions about the war happening between leaders in San Antonio and Tel Aviv at this moment of crisis? Heres hoping Pelaez will follow up with more details. Advertisement Article continues below this ad We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. United Arab Emirates (UAE) are planning to build a scientific University in Mauritanias capital of Nouakchott to meet the demands of the local job market, the minister of Education of the Gulf country Ahmed Belhoul Al-Falasi has announced. The future University will be located in the East of the capital and will stretch over 23,377m2. The center will teach multiple subjects including information engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, metallurgy, oil and gas engineering. The future University will only accept 1.500 students. The UAE official did not provide information regarding the investment nor when the project will commence. He said that the future project reflects the depth of the historic fraternal relations between the two countries. As many as 37 died Tuesday November 21 at Michel-Ornano Stadium in Brazzaville on the eve of a recruitment process by the Army, Congolese authorities have announced. Thousands of youths in capital Brazzaville reportedly invaded the Stadium on Monday night to find a seat for the recruitment process organized by the Army for the following day. The 37 died as the crowd forced open the entrances of the Stadium in capital Brazzaville. A communique, by a crisis Committee led by Prime Minister Anatole Collinet Makosso to investigate the incident, indicated that at least 164 other youth were wounded. Authorities declared November 22 Day of National Mourning and took charge of medical assistance to the wounded and funerals of the dead. They also suspended the recruitment in the capital. The Army announced last week the recruitment of 1.500 youth aged between 18 and 25 to serve in various ranks of Defense forces. Congo has a population of 5.7 million people. Youth unemployment rate per a September 2023 report stands at 42 per cent. Cameroonian authorities launched Tuesday November 21 Cameroon-Chad Interconnection Project, a bilateral high-voltage (HV) interconnection project between the two countries that involves 1.556 km of new transmission lines financed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to the tune of $750 million. Gaston Eloundou Essomba, Cameroons minister of Energy launched the interconnection project that will be developed as part of a bilateral development agreement signed between the two governments utility bodies, the Societe Nationale du Transport de lElectricite du Cameroun (SONATREL) and Societe Nationale dElectricite du Tchad (SNE). The project consists in building 1,556km of new transmission lines as part of the HV, approximately 1,318km will be in Cameroon and the remaining 238km will be in Chad. It is intended to help millions of people in both countries have access to reliable and affordable electricity by enabling the supply of clean electricity available in southern Cameroon to northern Cameroon as well as Chad. In 2017, AfDB provided $316 million as partial financing for the section connecting the northern power system of Cameroon with Chad. The World Bank in June 2020 approved a $385 million credit line through the International Development Association (IDA), for the portion of the project to connect the southern and the northern power systems of Cameroon. The project is the first HV interconnector in Central Africa. King Mohammed VI has called on the members of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco to promote knowledge and harness science to achieve a sound progress that is likely to safeguard the nations identity, protect it from risks and deviations, and endow societies with inspiring diversity and intellectual pluralism. The Sovereigns call came in a message he addressed to the opening of the first session of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco in its new configuration that was chaired this Wednesday by Crown Prince Moulay El Hassan. In this message that was read out by the Academys permanent secretary, Abdeljalil Lahjomri, the Sovereign pointed out that contemporary societies are affected by rapid, intersecting social, cultural and economic transformations. They evolve through change, not stagnation. Therefore, promoting knowledge and harnessing science is what is actually at stake in order to achieve sound progress, the kind that enables you to safeguard the nations identity, protect it from risks and deviations, and endow societies with inspiring diversity and intellectual pluralism. The King argued that the progress of societies cannot be achieved without intellectual and cultural revival, and without an environment conducive to the production of knowledge. Bringing about that environment hinges on the extent to which societies contribute to cultural development, he said. He stated further that thanks to its rich and diverse cultural heritage tangible as well as intangible, Morocco was able to feature high among the countries of the world in terms of the cultural landmarks registered on UNESCOs World Heritage List. The Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco has carved out a special place for itself domestically and abroad over the three decades since its establishment in 1977, thanks to its contributions on the subject of values, which are one of the pillars of human life. As to as the main topic chosen for this session The Family and the Crisis of Values, the King commented that it is an important and relevant subject given, in particular, the disruptions even the loss sometimes of frames of reference in the world. Hence the need for thorough reflection on this fundamental issue, and for a clearheaded scientific study of current transformations and their repercussions at all levels, especially on family cohesion and social solidarity. It is a fact that addressing the question of values, together with their manifestations and underpinning factors, is one of the Academys lofty missions. This is because values play a crucial role in shaping the common principles of mankind by enhancing ones identity, valuing cultural and linguistic diversity, and strengthening them through practice and creativity, as part of the nations intellectual life and openness to civilizations and cultures, King Mohammed VI stated further, recalling that for this reason, the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco has been seeking to achieve a civilizational partnership that transcends differences and builds on close relations, interaction and understanding, while remaining open to scientific and intellectual developments, and committed to common human values and principles. In this message, the Sovereign noted that the Academy has become a beacon of cross-continental thought and research as well as a platform for honing intellectual, academic and scientific skills in all areas of the humanities and social sciences. It has contributed to developing and enriching research while highlighting the historical and cultural depth that the Kingdom of Morocco has acquired over the centuries, he emphasized, recalling that to enable the Academy to discharge its lofty mission in the best possible way, he has sought, since 2015, to reactivate it and revisit its structure. The aim was to bring it in line with the goals and stipulations of the Kingdoms Constitution, which seeks to preserve our national identity, with its Arab-Islamic, Berber and Sahrawi-Hassani components, as well as its African, Andalusian, Hebrew and Mediterranean ones, added the Sovereign. During the opening session, Mohamed Sghir Janjar, in an address on behalf of the resident members, emphasized the high regard in which the King holds this prestigious institution, and the Sovereigns concern to promote it so that it fulfills its mission and achieves the cognitive and civilizational objectives for which it was created. Referring to the theme of this session, The family and the crisis of values, Janjar stressed that the challenge of the crisis of values is no longer limited to developed industrialized societies, but also concerns other societies on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, which are undergoing profound changes, linked mainly to demographic transition, the rapid and intense exodus of people from the countryside to the cities, and the generalization of education. In the same vein, Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Senegal) emphasized, in an address on behalf of the Academys associate members, the importance of the main theme chosen for this session, noting that this subject lies at the heart of the many questions posed by the times we live in, in all countries, under all latitudes. In the reflections that will be carried out on this subject, particular emphasis will be placed on the family for the responsibility and the eminent role that fall to it, and from which it cannot shirk, he said. Rather than simply accusing the family of resigning and therefore of being a factor in the crisis of values, the session will examine above all the way in which it itself suffers the destructive impact of the economic and social crisis widespread everywhere due to neoliberal globalization which maintains the inequalities within and between Nations, Souleymane Bachir Diagne said. A firm from Manhattan, Kansas, will be entrusted with developing a new website for North Platte city government that will include the ability to pay city bills online. City Council members Tuesday voted 8-0 to authorize Mayor Brandon Kelliher to sign a contract with CivicPlus, the winner among some 20 nationwide firms making proposals. CivicPlus, founded in 1998, claims more than 12,000 local government customers in the United States and Canada. North Platte will pay $39,059 for the citys first web redesign in a decade, plus $9,788 for recurring services for a second year. City Information Systems Director Sean Pritchard and Kevin Mees, a network specialist, displayed websites CivicPlus has designed for the Nebraska cities of Papillion and Wayne and one for Arlington, Washington, near Seattle. Pritchard said a selection committee of city officials was impressed by the nice, clean look of CivicPlus websites. They also liked the ease of their site navigation, links to city social media sites, community calendar features and civic engagement through publishing and sending out city agendas and notices. Above all, the firms website infrastructure will allow residents to easily make online payments for their utility bills and other services, he said. Kelliher, who also leads Great Plains Healths IT services as chief information officer, noted that it took city staff several months to arrive at a final designer choice. Thats because Ive been a real stickler to get the payments (function) on the website to work, he said. If you need to pay your power bill or your water bill, you could do a shopping-cart process to do all that, he added. But theres a lot of complexity in the needed underlying programming. City Administrator Layne Groseth said the current city website at ci.north-platte.ne.us allows limited online bill payment. Its not very friendly to use, he said. The eventual website will let residents sign up to receive meeting agendas and other notices electronically, Pritchard said. Itll resize automatically so it can be used via laptop, tablet or smartphone. CivicPlus websites also include a banner bar near the top where vital announcements will appear, such as the date of the next council meeting, weather alerts or public emergencies. Mees said city staff opted not to purchase a separate city smartphone app, though that can be done later. At this time, we just didnt feel the cost of the app was worth what wed be getting with the app. Council members also unanimously approved the $3.82 million low bid by Myers Construction of Broken Bow to upgrade water mains on West Ninth Street from Jeffers Street to Buffalo Bill Avenue and North Adams Avenue from Ninth to 14th streets. The West Ninth project will precede the streets long-delayed widening from Buffalo Bill to just west of Sherman Avenue, matching an earlier widening from Sherman to Jeffers. City Engineer Brent Burklund said the Adams project will tie in the planned 12-inch West Ninth water main to recently completed upgrades for the Mulligan Meadows manufactured-home subdivision from 17th Street south to Madison Middle School. He told Councilman Ed Rieker, who lives near West Ninth next door to fellow Ward 4 member Mark Woods, that he expects Myers to start the water-main work in late winter or early spring. I believe theyre pretty interested in getting started, Burklund said. Im grateful that were getting this done after more than three decades, Rieker replied. This is a wonderful improvement for our neck of the woods. A separate 8-0 council vote awarded an $871,096 bid to Midlands Contracting of Kearney to upgrade water and sewer lines on East State Farm Road. They would tie into infrastructure expansion at Twin Rivers Business Park on the streets north side. In other business, the council: Gave second-round approval to ordinances annexing 158 acres between East Philip Avenue and the South Platte River for a mixed-use housing development; amend city ordinances on parking and storage of RVs on city streets; and complete action to raise occupation taxes from $10 to $500 per machine on skill games with betting capability. All three will receive final votes Dec. 5. Renewed the citys agreement with the Nebraska Department of Transportation for surface maintenance on state and U.S. highways inside city limits. Held a meeting-ending executive session to develop strategies for future sales of city-owned lots in the North Platte Business Park south of East Philip. The council gave final approval Nov. 7 to selling three lots to Hamilton Builders LLC for $15,000 each. Photo: David Ryder/Getty Images You won, Sam Bankman-Fried wrote to Changpeng Zhao, then the CEO of Binance, on the website then known as Twitter, early last December, following the collapse of Bankman-Frieds crypto exchange FTX. And for a little while, at least, it seemed that Zhao (commonly known as CZ), the founder of the largest crypto exchange in the world, had successfully assumed the mantle of cryptos reigning king. But on Tuesday, just weeks after Bankman-Fried was convicted for fraud, CZ and Binance pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the Bank Secrecy Act, admitting to failures in preventing money laundering. Both now face jail time; Bankman-Fried may be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, while CZ could get 18 months or less. While criminal charges against Binance which was founded in China but later claimed to have no official headquarters have been anticipated for more than a year, CZs position as the most powerful, and wealthiest, person in crypto still seemed assured. Yet as part of the plea agreement, CZ relinquished his CEO role, making him yet another casualty of an international regulatory effort that has now dethroned and often incarcerated virtually all of the leading figures in cryptos brief history. The graveyard of crypto CEOs is crowded. In 2014, Charlie Shrem, the CEO of an early Bitcoin exchange, pleaded guilty to his role in facilitating the operations of illicit drug marketplace Silk Road and served a year in prison. The following year, Mark Karpeles, the CEO of Japanese crypto exchange Mt Gox (the worlds largest before its demise), was arrested in Tokyo and confined to a jail cell after his company suffered a debilitating hack. Last fall, Jesse Powell, the CEO of U.S.-based exchange Kraken, stepped down amid investigations of his company. And this year, Arthur Hayes, the co-founder and former CEO of BitMEX, wrapped up a six-month term of house arrest in Miami after pleading guilty to similar charges as CZ. In June, Do Kwon, the CEO of Terraform Labs who turned fugitive after his Luna cryptocurrency crashed to zero, was sentenced to jail in Montenegro. And in September, Su Zhu, the co-founder of collapsed hedge-fund Three Arrows Capital, was arrested and sentenced to four months in prison in Singapore. November, of course, saw the conviction of Bankman-Fried and CZs guilty plea, but also the announcement by large crypto exchange Bittrex that it would shut down completely (following an August settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission), and a lawsuit by the SEC against Kraken, accusing it of operating unlawfully. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally, CZ wrote on X following news of his plea and departure. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. Rough list of Crypto main characters over the years. Add/comment. still main character killed off Mark Karpeles Brock Pierce Charlie Shrem Roger Ver Justin Sun Brad Garlinghouse Dominic Williams Chris Larsen Vitalik Buterin Dan Larimer Arthur Hayes Autism Capital (@AutismCapital) June 14, 2022 The penalties Binance agreed to pay, totaling more than $4.3 billion, are not just the largest for a crypto company but one of the biggest fines ever paid by a corporation, amounting to more than the $3.9 billion Goldman Sachs paid several years ago for its role in a Malaysian corruption scandal. To highlight Binances malfeasance, prosecutors pointed to a comment, caught in writing, by a compliance employee suggesting an unorthodox marketing strategy: We need a banner is washing drug money too hard these days come to binance we got cake for you. Prosecutors were quick to link their victories over Bankman-Fried and CZ to their ability to crack down on bad actors who tried the hardest to evade them, offshore crypto exchanges that outwardly claimed not to do business with Americans. The message here should be clear: Using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. But the list of fallen crypto companies and CEOs actually paints an even grimmer picture. Since the demise of FTX a little over a year ago, theres been an unshakeable feeling that crypto is a ghost town one full of companies that are either bankrupt, secretly insolvent, downsizing as their market potential has shrunk, or losing talent to more traditional industries. The price of Bitcoin may have more than doubled, to more than $37,000, since a year ago, but it still trades at just about half its value at its peak. And even if Bitcoin may be here to stay, for companies that remain in business, their continued survival seems to face even bleaker odds at least in their current form. One of the few major CEOs still standing is Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, which was sued in June by the SEC. Still, he struck an optimistic tone following Binances criminal plea: Todays news reinforces that doing it the hard way was the right decision, Armstrong wrote on X. We now have an opportunity to start a new chapter for this industry. why did the video feel like satire. as1one reads like "as one one" instead of "as one" Reply Thread Link I just watched it and cringed so bad when the ~rapper popped up. Also, why did that man pronounce Kings of Leon as Kings of Leon?? Reply Parent Thread Link I keep reading it as 'As A One' which makes less sense. Reply Parent Thread Link Mmm no thanks. Just read the interview and it may as well have been a love letter to Israel. Just because two of the members are ethnically Palestinian doesnt mean shit. This is an Israeli group through and through. Reply Thread Link I don't follow. Does that make Palestinian Israelis not Palestinian? Reply Parent Thread Link No, theyre Palestinian. But, they certainly dont have the same experience as Palestinians in West Bank or Gaza. Not that Im saying its better, but it IS different. The people behind this group COULD have given an opportunity to Palestinians within historic Palestine a chance at fame and fortune. But, they deliberately made sure this stayed within Israel. So, instead of a truly united group, we get this propaganda machine. Since this was created over a year ago, I just know they banked on peoples ignorance about the Middle East. But, the genocide has opened up a lot of peoples eyes, so not many are falling for this nonsense. Reply Parent Thread Link This is giving me very much Kendall Jenner's Pepsi commercial. I'm good sis. Reply Thread Link Propaganda machine in overdrive as more people are seeing the truth. Reply Thread Link oh thats not-- Reply Thread Link Israeli and Palestinian casting directors had held auditions in major cities and tiny villages throughout Israel in 2021. (Auditions could not be held in the West Bank or Gaza due to logistical challenges.) well i wonder what those logistical challenges could be theyre less a boy band and more a male pop group, given that they play instruments wouldnt that make them more of a literal boy band?? i feel like they should be trying to reclaim that term instead of going for a more vague one (male pop group tf) but whatever. sad to hear they came to LA right before oct 7 and a few of them lost loved ones tho :( Reply Thread Link I was thinking the same as you about group vs band Reply Parent Thread Link yeah "male pop group" feels more accurate to describe bands like NKOTB, nsync, Backstreet Reply Parent Thread Link the trend of boy group/girl groups with numbers in their names is spreading Reply Thread Link Industry plants FRFR! Reply Thread Link This ain't it Reply Thread Link The name makes it really disgusting. Preaching unity while one group is genociding the other is not cute. Reply Thread Link ah, propaganda shills Reply Thread Link lmao Israel saw what kpop and soft power did for South Korea... Reply Thread Link Exactly. Israel is obsessed with PR but their game is so bad. Cringey tweets and publicly going after the Hadid sisters. Reply Parent Thread Link this has truly left me speechless lmfao Reply Thread Link Forget it from a moral perspective since this industry only cares about $$$, you'd think they'd see how the general population (particularly the younger gens) has shifted in their views, that most people support a ceasefire and more and more are acknowledging this is a genocide and be able to predict these types of decisions would be wildly unpopular? Reply Thread Link I wonder if they think by flooding every channel with threats and propaganda that they'll overwhelm the masses just by sheer volume. I can definitely say I've had a somewhat hard time boycotting bc there's just so many things I have to look out for for example, luckily I have the time to research before I make purchases but others might not be as fortunate. Reply Parent Thread Link They are aware, they just think they can gaslight, blacklist and browbeat everyone into compliance. Edited at 2023-11-22 01:26 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Not surprising, Hollywood has always shown its willing to put bigotry over everything, including profits. Reply Parent Thread Link I think every voting season winds up being proof that what everyones saying on social media is often not the general consensus. Reply Parent Thread Link I honestly did not expect that THIS would be the issue that brought back Red Scare/McCarthy bullshit, but I might not be as educated on that era wrt the factors that started it. Reply Thread Link Its such a scary thing to witness, not only the genocide of an entire people but the real time denial that its happening. We can SEE this happening and people are not only denying it but punishing those that speak up. And the lesson is that this can happen to anyone anywhere. The world will allow genocide. Governments, leaders, billionaires with very real powerthey dont care to change anything so nothing will ever change. So were all in danger. Reply Thread Link Greenblatt just comes out and says he made a deal w Musk, excusing his promotion of the deadly Great Replacement conspiracy because he promised to wildly & dangerously over police pro-Palestinian rhetoric. He asserts it won't damage ADL's reputation. #DropTheJonathanGreenblatt pic.twitter.com/zWQTmBbFe4 Jacob "Dr. Lion Swan" Labendz (@Jacob_Labendz) November 21, 2023 Greenblatt bullied the WGA in to releasing a vague statement because they had not taken a side in the latest conflict. Reply Thread Link Greenblatt is a mustache twirl away from being a super villain. Fuck him Reply Parent Thread Link i cant believe there are people that still defend the anti defamation league or use it as a source Reply Parent Thread Link People look at me like I'm nuts when I say fuck the ADL but I feel like it's not hard to see just how shitty they are and that they're just a mouthpiece for Israel at this point Reply Parent Thread Link McCarthyism is back. Also I hate that this will just make it easier for actual antisemitic dickheads to claim Jews run Hollywood. Reply Thread Link Also I hate that this will just make it easier for actual antisemitic dickheads to claim Jews run Hollywood. It's already happening. All day every day my socials are filled with antisemitic garbage from white nationalists using this tragedy to try to recruit from the pro-Palestine movement. Reply Parent Thread Link why do you follow so many white nationalists? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Mmm white nationalists sharing their opinions in other people's tweets I follow, support the genocide and Zionism. Reply Parent Thread Link it's already happening, there are like...people with 3rd reich flags and stuff marching in various cities. it's actually been disturbing me greatly that official organisations are going after people for saying from the river to the sea, but not even addressing all the violence towards jewish people that's happened since oct 7th. Reply Parent Thread Link Oh 100%!! The zionists are shooting themselves in the foot here cause waaaaaaaaay too many people are gonna jump to that conspiracy which will only cause more antisemitism, distrust, and suspicions...which granted those types were always ready to dive into -__- The irony is that I think it's been mentioned before that the ones who run Hollywood have always been WASPs-y types since like the beginning. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link they leave anti-semitic fliers around my town at people's houses, and signs over the freeway. it's just more frequent now. Reply Parent Thread Link eh, is it antisemitic? if you start looking into big Hollywood studios, producers, directors, and actors/actresses... there is a definite pattern of influence Frozen Parent Thread Expand Link I hadn't even considered this and the thought it's sickening. It's 100% going to happen Reply Parent Thread Link Shame on you: Sacha Baron Cohen accuses TikTok of creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis https://t.co/bf10jAcfSy pic.twitter.com/13Simqa5Ng New York Post (@nypost) November 17, 2023 Is this because the youths are more likely to be pro Palestine??? Reply Thread Link Yeah. Israel's propaganda isn't working when people are watching dead and devastated Palestinians in the streets. The youths aren't buying it as easily now. Reply Parent Thread Link some of the most unhinged (and sinophobic) shit i've been seeing from supposed liberals age 40+ online has been that tiktok is brainwashing younger ppl into being against the genocide because the app is a ~chinese psy-op~ designed to turn the youth against america and its allies...i wish i was kidding Reply Parent Thread Link This is what I've been seeing too and honestly, this kind of shit just isn't gonna fly anymore. I don't use TikTok much but my teenage nieces and nephews are obsessed with it and there is so much pro Palestinian content that they share with me. Really articulate, well researched stuff from young people that makes my bitter, jaded self feel somewhat hopeful. Reply Parent Thread Link I've also been seeing conspiracy theories that young people are more likely to be pro-Palestine because Qatar funds American universities or something. Reply Parent Thread Link TikTok is absolutely a propaganda wing of the Chinese govt and used for these purposes... but, people supporting Palestine is not a psyop in and of itself Reply Parent Thread Link hilarious, considering China is doing their own genocidal shit in Xinjiang with the Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim I was shocked when China voted YES for the UN Ceasefire vote but it makes sense in hindsight, they don't want the world to dare focus on their own Islamophobic racist atrocities they commit since capitalists care more about preserving business ties with China -______- Reply Parent Thread Expand Link ironic coming from this racist, islamophobic pos. Reply Parent Thread Link But he was a-okay with defrauding a Roma village and using antiziganism as jokes for his shitty ass Borat film Reply Parent Thread Expand Link This is funny to me because I've seen Zionist Tiktok which is full of vile wretches. So what's he even talking about here. Noone pro Palestine is posting videos of them beating up Palestinians or laughing about dead children. So fuck him. Reply Parent Thread Link He's a racist pos Reply Parent Thread Link idk sacha, seeing bloodied, limp children being pulled out of rubble and frantically carried into hospitals every day for over a month might just be having a stronger impact on people than you might have thought. like, i promised you i'm not brainwashed, i'm outraged. Edited at 2023-11-22 02:33 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link This trash. He was the biggest name that publicly comforted Amy Schumer when she posted that Islamophobic cartoon calling all Palestinians rapists. On a post where she dismissed Palestinian children being murdered. Reply Parent Thread Link If watching a literal child cry and say he just wants to hold his own hand, after having one of his arms amputated, makes people antisemitic, I don't know what to tell you, my guy. Reply Parent Thread Link The guy who made a whole career out of playing racist stereotypes? Fuck off Reply Parent Thread Link guy who earns his bread by mocking muslims in kazakhstan btw Reply Parent Thread Link McCarthyism. TWO!! pic.twitter.com/zUviqr0peA Kaz (@KazRowe) November 21, 2023 And while it's not something recent, we can't forget how the Hadid sisters are often terrorized for being proud Palestinians, how they've lost jobs for not changing their instances and how Israel constantly harasses and genuinely seems to want their death. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! And while it's not something recent, we can't forget how the Hadid sisters are often terrorized for being proud Palestinians, how they've lost jobs for not changing their instances and how Israel constantly harasses and genuinely seems to want their death.From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! Reply Thread Link I'm going to say it - the Hadids could have chosen to downplay or not speak about their Palestinian/Muslim heritage or even just not gone by their father's last name when they were starting out because god knows the fashion industry doesn't like 'other' but instead they're easily the two most high-profile figures of Palestinian descent in the world today and they've been speaking up about Palestine since their early careers. They had the connections, they had the advantages, they could have made things easier for themselves by staying quiet but they refused to do that and used their existing rich-girl status the right way by refusing to be cowed into silence or backtracking to save their jobs (not that I would blame them for it considering Bella's struggles over the last year and the fact that an official state social media account is terrorising them- harassing seems too mild a word for what the family is being put through). They have their hearts in the right place and they'll always have my respect for that. Reply Parent Thread Link This also reminds me F*ck DJ Khalid Reply Parent Thread Link truly!!!! I knew very little about them originally, besides that they were models and one of them dated the 1D guy who beat her mom (ugh), but knowing the backlash they would face and STILL using their privilege to speak up?????? So important and so appreciated. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link big same! Reply Parent Thread Link And Susan Sarandon's been dropped by UTA now Reply Thread Link I mean if this can happen to Susan an absolute legend I really feel for the lesser known actors especially since they werent able to work for months Reply Parent Thread Link Susan has been outspoken about her political views FOREVER and very much apart of her image which makes me think they were waiting for the right moment to drop her Reply Parent Thread Link A lot of the names on the initial ceasefire list and the celebrities I've seen be most outspoken are the ones who are upcomers in the industry. I respect their bravery. Reply Parent Thread Link My guess is Sarandon got dropped for this comment There are a lot of people that are afraid, that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence as though antisemitism is not running rampant in this country. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Her comment was awful, and not even based on reality. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I do hope people remember to not see the next Scream movie, whenever it comes out. Studios are out of touch on what young people want, of course, but they do know that the internet is loud but with short memories, and many people do not have the fortitude or conviction to boycott a movie. Reply Thread Link This is my statement: Everything sucks. Stop yelling. This was not my decision to make. christopher landon (@creetureshow) November 22, 2023 And then this guy comes along Reply Parent Thread Link Does he know he can log off instead of boo hooing like a toddler and then deleting his tweet. Reply Parent Thread Link gotta love the boys club that is the los angeles horror clique staying spineless as ever yas, king!! Reply Parent Thread Link Having a pro-union profile pic while sitting on the fence is a choice for sure. Reply Parent Thread Link Spyglass, the studio behind the SCREAM films, has released a statement on firing Melissa Barrera for speaking about the genocide happening in Palestine: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, pic.twitter.com/3P4WMI25X3 DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) November 22, 2023 the studio's officially released a statement saying that her saying what's happening is a genocide/ethnic cleansing is exactly why they fired her, which is terrifying Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I do hope people remember to not see the next Scream movie, whenever it comes out I mean I don't think they will. Like even on ONTD people have the memory of goldfish. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link as someone who genuinely loves the new scream movies... or more accurately loves melissa's characters i can GUARNETEE i will not be seeing the next movie. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I was only watching the last one to see Courtney, Hayden and Melissa. Won't be seeing the next one for sure. Reply Parent Thread Link My teen is obsessed with Scream and the first thing they said after I told them the news was never watching any new ones now. So proud! Edited at 2023-11-22 02:13 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link I originally stopped watching them after Neve Campbell left but NOW I WILL WATCH ALL OF MELISSA'S SCREAM MOVIES she should SUE THEIR ASSES and just show the grotesque video of !sraeli children singing "We will annihilate them all" "the pretty and the pure" literal fascist pogrom shit as evidence or the unhinged !sraeli twitter in general lmfao Reply Parent Thread Link I posted this in the last post, but I'm 99% certain Steven Spielberg's IMDB quotes page used to say something along the lines of admitting he's a zionist and "I think Israel has the right to defend itself". Can anyone else remember seeing it? I cant imagine many movie nerds read IMDB, but I swear it was there. I specifically remember it as I was super bummed when I read it....however it's not there now at all. Only his munich interview quote is: During an interview with Roger Ebert regarding his film Munich (2005) and the response from Jewish critics that claim it depicts Israeli and Palestinian causes as morally equivalent: Frankly, I think that's a stupid charge. The people who attack the movie based on 'moral equivalence' are some of the same people who say diplomacy itself is an exercise in 'moral equivalence' and that war is the only answer. That the only way to fight terrorism is to dehumanize the terrorists by asking no questions about who they are and where they come from. What I believe is, every act of terrorism requires a strong response, but we must also pay attention to the causes. That's why we have brains and the power to think passionately. Understanding does not require approval. Understanding is not the same as inaction. Understanding is a very muscular act. If I'm endorsing understanding and being attacked for that, then I am almost flattered. Which is far better. He's had some other shitty takes about other things, but at least I no longer have to side eye his ass for the old take. I'm assuming it was an older take at least since any recent quote I can find is fairly well balanced. (He absolutely has the power to blacklist people, I just hope he doesn't) Edited at 2023-11-22 01:20 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link Spielberg had Megan Fox fired because she compared Michael Bay to be Hitler. He absolutely would blacklist people. Reply Parent Thread Link https://www.insider.com/sean-young-says-career-sabotaged-by-ridley-scott-steven-spielberg-2021-3 And now I'm back to side eyeing America's fave problematic movie elder. I know she's a hot mess, but Sean Young says he derailed her career too. Or helped at least.And now I'm back to side eyeing America's fave problematic movie elder. Reply Parent Thread Link Wasn't that proven false? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Good on Tom Cruise for supporting his agent. What's going on is really disgusting and I'm doing a hard pass on future Scream, Stranger Days, and anything to do with Amy Schuman or whatever her name is from here on out. Reply Thread Link Same. Can't believe Amu Schumer can attack black women and call Gazans/supporters of Palestine rapists/murderers and still get a career while a top agent has to be let go for nothing. Reply Parent Thread Link I've never forgotten that while she criticized Donald Trump she made a joke about Mexicans being rapist years before he ever said it. So many white woman came out of the woodwork to defend her on that. Reply Parent Thread Link As if I didnt hate her enough, I recently saw a clip where she was hosting or presenting something and for whatever reason addressing Steve O from the stage about Ryan Dunns death, then saying some shitty punch line like I know you wish itd been yourself. I was so disgusted I couldnt even bring myself to tag her to say how absolutely abhorrent she was for that, which Id never had a problem doing in the past. Just Reply Parent Thread Link iirc tom is incredibly loyal to his agent, i think he lived with her for awhile when he was a broke nobody actor? i could be thinking of his manager though Reply Parent Thread Link Rowan Blanchard posted on IG about how people have been pressured to not post about Palestine since 2018. Its obviously gotten worse since then. McCarthyism is back. Reply Thread Link Using that term in this post doesnt even make sense. These are corporations. Reply Parent Thread Link I think you need to brush up on history Reply Parent Thread Link Wow major respect for Tom cruise. Shocking how just wanting a ceasefire or calling it a genocide (rightfully so) is so shocking. Truly is a red scare. This is a pivotal moment where we all need to be diligent bc these are scary times. Reply Thread Link you not that bitch or nothing. but you still ate that lil ONE. you ate that ONE thing. queen opp and chelle reaction video stan twitter meme pic.twitter.com/Xz3iyFgyby The Memes Archive (@TheMemesArchive) November 14, 2022 now leave your cult ok tom cruise...now leave your cult Reply Thread Link LMAAAOOOO Reply Parent Thread Link Scream's director has posted. I hope there's more fallout from this boneheaded decision. i have no doubt he and the other actors have contracts with penalties (I'm guessing I don't really know) but if we're sliding back into openly blackballing people, some people are going to have to take a stand. ahkna posted this is the earlier Melissa post and I keep thinking how true it is: "There are always more consequences for doing the right thing. Always." I really think the olds (and I am one) don't really understand how powerful social media is. I was in high school during Desert Storm and we basically saw footage during Channel One with Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling and if you watched the news. Now I can pop up real time footage from people on the ground. Plus, people are more aware of the signs of gaslighting, having experienced the government lying to them, and all the bullshit that went down with Covid. The initial attack on Israel is horrifying and I truly hope everyone who lost someone finds peace and everyone who has been kidnapped is freed. But I can't believe the answer is to raze an entire city to the ground. The pic of babies in the incubator just broke something in me. And I didn't think there was anything left to make me feel worse about the state of the world. Edited at 2023-11-22 01:32 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link The babies really really hit me hard too. Glad some made it to Egypt. A small glimmer of positive news. Reply Parent Thread Link But I can't believe the answer is to raze an entire city to the ground. because you know it's about more than october 7 or hamas Reply Parent Thread Link Costa Rican migrants hold hands as they cross the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras, Mexico to Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, Aug. 21, 2023. Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News Migrants cross the Rio Grande from Piedras Negras, Mexico into Eagle Pass, Texas, Thursday, July 20, 2023. With Operation Lone Star, Texas has set up a barrier of box cars and concertina wire to deter migrants from entering the U.S. through the state. They are forced to wade the water or walk the banks to an entry point several miles south of Eagle Pass. Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News Migrants walk the Rio Grande as Texas National Guard keep guard on the banks by Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, Monday, Aug. 21, 2023. Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News Migrants walk the Rio Grande searching for a way through the concertina wire and into the U.S. at Eagle Pass, Texas, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023. Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News A group of migrants cross the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass, Texas, Thursday, Sept. 20, 2023. A surge of migrants started early in the week and continued through Thursday. Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News WASHINGTON U.S. Customs and Border Protection is looking into a string of recent migrant drownings in Eagle Pass, including an incident in which at least three people died trying to cross the Rio Grande on Saturday, an agency source said. It is unclear what prompted the inquiry or what specifically the agency, which includes Border Patrol, is probing. READ MORE: Judge bars Border Patrol from tampering with Texas border fence amid legal battle Advertisement Article continues below this ad On Saturday, a group of about 200 migrants were trying to cross the Rio Grande when about 15 of them were taken by the rivers currents, according to an incident report from the Maverick County Sheriffs Office. Three of their bodies were later found on boat ramps along the banks of the river, according to the report. They included a 21-year-old female and 19-year-old male. The third body has not yet been identified. November has been a particularly deadly month for migrants trying to enter the small border town that is now one of the most popular crossings along the southwest border. The Department of Public Safety estimates about 10 migrants have died in the last week alone as hundreds have tried each day to cross the Rio Grande, which has risen above normal water level and has seen strong currents. The federal inquiry comes at a time of heightened tension between the Biden administration and the state, especially in Eagle Pass, a focal point of Gov. Greg Abbotts border crackdown known as Operation Lone Star. Last month, Texas sued federal immigration officials in an effort to stop Border Patrol agents from cutting through razor wire the state has strung along the banks of the Rio Grande. Border Patrol has warned that the wire has increased the risk of drownings because asylum seekers are now traversing the riverbank looking for ways around. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The Department of Justice, meanwhile, has sued to force the state to remove a string of buoys Abbott deployed in the river earlier this year, with federal officials saying the floating barrier poses a threat to public safety and presents humanitarian concerns. State officials have insisted the buoy and wires are meant to deter migrants from attempting to cross in the first place. Department of Public Safety spokesman Chris Olivarez said the measures are unrelated to the recent drownings, which he said are attributable to the notoriously dangerous crossing, where it can be difficult to tell how deep the river is or how quickly it is moving. The waters very high; they underestimate the current of the river, he said. There are some parts you can walk across and others you cant. The drownings happened near a public park where the state also has lined the banks of the river with a wall of shipping containers. State troopers patrol the river from a boat ramp in the park and regularly make water rescues when migrants are caught in the rivers currents. Olivarez said DPS boats also have been deployed to warn migrants who appear to be preparing to cross from the Mexico side not to get in the water. There are so many people right now, so many migrants trying to cross at once, he said. It was a chaotic scene pretty much every single day, every single morning. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Last week, at least one child drowned when a family attempting to cross near Eagle Pass was caught in the river currents. Troopers pulled a 17-year-old male and 7-year-old female child from the water, and both were transported to the hospital, where the 7-year-old died, Olivarez said in a statement at the time. Olivarez said state troopers were unable to find another child who was with them and also swept away in the current. He said DPS boat operators have undertaken 100 rescue operations in the last week, including an instance Saturday in which troopers pulled an unconscious mother and two children from the river and were able to resuscitate them. Crude oil prices moved lower today, after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a sizeable inventory build of 8.7 million barrels for the week to November 17. This compared with an inventory build of 3.6 million barrels for the week to November 10. It also compared with an estimated inventory build of a substantial 9 million barrels, reported by the American Petroleum Institute for the week to November 17. In fuels, the EIA estimated inventory mixed inventory changes for the latest week. Gasoline stocks added 700,000 barrels in the seven days to November 17, the EIA said, with production averaging 9.4 million barrels daily. This compared with an inventory draw of 1.5 million barrels for the previous week, when production of gasoline averaged 9.4 million barrels daily. In middle distillates, the EIA estimated an inventory draw of 1 million barrels for the week to November 17. Production averaged 4.9 million bpd. This compared with an inventory draw of 1.4 million barrels for the previous week, when production stood at an average 4.8 million barrels daily. The API report on Tuesday pushed oil prices lower and they remained depressed as market players awaited the OPEC+ meeting this weekend. "Going into the long weekend the market would rather be a little bit long than short," Andrew Lipow from Lipow Oil Associates told Reuters. According to Dennis Kessler, senior VP for trading at BOK Financial Securities, the inventory build reported by the API and the contango in West Texas Intermediate will keep a lid on prices, Bloomberg reported. But its mostly a choppy trade until we see what OPEC+ is going to do, Kessler told Bloomberg. OPEC+ is meeting on Sunday to discuss market control measures and some observers expect further production cuts amid weaker benchmark prices. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency said this week it expected an oversupplied oil market in 2024 even if OPEC+ extended its current cuts. ADVERTISEMENT Right now, however, Global oil stocks are at low levels, which means that you risk increased volatility if there are surprises on either the demand side or the supply side, Toril Bosoni, head of the IEAs oil markets and industry division, told Reuters. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Oil prices plummeted by 4% on Wednesday after OPEC officially confirmed that the OPEC+ meeting scheduled for this weekend would be postponed to November 30. The U.S. benchmark, WTI Crude, crumbled by 4.37% to below $75 a barrel, to $74.55, while Brent Crude, the international benchmark, dived below the $80 a barrel threshold, at $79.12, down by 4.26% on the day. The plunge in oil prices followed a brief statement from OPEC, which said today that the OPEC+ meetings, originally planned for November 25 and 26, 2023, have been rescheduled to Thursday, 30 November 2023. Earlier today, prices started dropping after a Bloomberg report said that this weekends meeting of the OPEC+ group could be delayed. The November 26 meeting of the ministers of the OPEC+ alliance could be postponed due to Saudi Arabia expressing dissatisfaction over the production levels of the other members, delegates have told Bloomberg. The meeting may be delayed, according to the anonymous delegates who told Bloomberg that the Saudis have been in talks with the other oil producers about their output. After OPEC confirmed the report, the market turned very anxious about a potential new disagreement among the OPEC+ members about the production cuts and who would be willing or unwilling to reduce production alongside the Saudis. Before the announcement of the delay, most analysts had expected that OPECs top producer, Saudi Arabia, will extend its voluntary cut of 1 million barrels per day (bpd) into 2024, considering the latest slide in oil prices to $80 and the typically weak period for oil demand in the first quarter of every year. Market talk was also intensifying that OPEC+ could announce a deeper cut at the groups meeting in the weekend November 25-26. The market is now questioning whether other OPEC+ producers would be willing to share some of the burden of the Saudi efforts to lift oil prices. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com ADVERTISEMENT More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: EU countries continue to minimize the use of natural gas for electricity production. According to Ember, electricity generation from gas-fired power plants in the nine months of 2023 decreased by 14% (all data is compared with the same period of the previous year, unless otherwise indicated). From January to September 2022, electricity production from natural gas in the EU amounted to 380.4 terawatt-hours (TWh), but in the nine months of 2023 it only reached 325.8 TWh. Thus, in absolute terms, gas-fired electricity generation decreased by 54.6 TWh, which is comparable to electricity consumption in Romania for the whole of 2022 (57.5 TWh). Natural gas: the new normal The natural gas saving policy has been in effect in the EU since the summer of 2022. According to the initial plan, from August 2022 to March 2023, EU countries were supposed to reduce gas consumption by 15% compared to the average level for the same months in 2017-2022 through savings in industry, electricity, and the housing sector. This target was exceeded, with EU natural gas consumption falling by 17.7% between August 2022 and March 2023, compared with the 2017-2022 average, according to Eurostat. At the same time, the natural gas saving plan has been extended until March 31, 2024. As a result, declining demand for natural gas has become the new normal in the EU. On the one hand, this led to lower prices. In the first ten months of 2023, the average natural gas price at the TTF decreased by 68%, from $1,476 per 1,000 cubic meters in January-October 2022 to $470 in January-October 2023. However, the gas saving plan resulted in losses for European industry. According to Eurostat, in September 2023, the eurozone countries recorded a decline in industrial production for the seventh month in a row. The key is the decline in energy-intensive industries such as nitrogen fertilizers that use natural gas as a feedstock. Related: Oil Prices Drop Amid Report OPEC+ Meeting Could Be Delayed Thus, in Germany, Europes largest producer of chemicals and mineral fertilizers, in October 2023 the PMI Manufacturing index was at 40.8, which is far below the recession threshold of 50. Moreover, due to natural gas savings, imports of nitrogen fertilizers from Russia have jumped sharply. According to the International Trade Center (ITC), supplies of nitrogen fertilizers from Russia to Germany over the eight months of 2023 increased by 271% (to 369,200 tons VS 99,400 tons in January-August 2022). As a result, Russia's share in Germany's nitrogen fertilizer imports increased from 5.0% to 17.2%, respectively. Coal: a swan song, not a renaissance Due to savings, the share of natural gas in electricity production in the EU decreased from 19.7% in January-September 2022 to 17.6% in January-September 2023. However, the share of coal fell even more from 16.6% to 12.4%, respectively. One reason was the increase in electricity production from hydroelectric power plants (HPPs), which reduced the demand for electricity from coal-fired power plants, given their balancing role in the European market. In the nine months of 2023, thanks to improved weather conditions, hydroelectricity production in the EU increased by 11% (by 20.8 TWh), and its share increased from 10.2% to 11.8%. For example, according to the German Weather Service (DWD), in the spring of 2023 the average rainfall in Germany was 60% higher than last year, and in the summer of 2023, it was 86% higher. Coal's decline has also been driven by the ongoing phase-out of coal-fired power plants. A total of 2.5 GW of coal-fired power plants were decommissioned in France, Germany, Spain, Romania, and Greece in 2022 and the first half of 2023, according to Global Energy Monitor. As a result, by July 2023, total EU coal generation capacity had fallen to 108.7 GW, of which 69.5 GW was in Germany and Poland. Moreover, by the end of 2030, EU countries will have to decommission another 52.9 GW of coal-fired thermal power plants, so the share of coal in electricity production will be approximately halved. As a result, last year's growth in coal-fired power generation was coal's swan song rather than its renaissance. Low carbon energy: It's all about infrastructure For low-carbon energy, the commissioning of new infrastructure was critical. The decommissioning of Germany's last three nuclear reactors (Emsland, Neckarwestheim-2 and Isar-2) coincided with the start of regular power generation at Finland's Olkiluoto-3, the largest reactor in the EU (1.6 GW of net capacity). As a result, electricity generation at nuclear power plants in the EU in the nine months of 2023 decreased by only 0.2% (by 1.1 TWh). Moreover, due to a double-digit reduction in output at gas and coal-fired power plants, the share of nuclear power in the EU increased from 22.4% in January-September 2022 to 23.4% in January-September 2023. The total electricity production from solar and wind power plants in the nine months of 2023 increased by 11% (by 49.9 TWh), and their total share increased from 23.8% to 27.6%, respectively. Finally, electricity generation from biomass and rare renewables decreased by 7% (by 5.9 TWh) and 4% (by 0.3 TWh), respectively, while electricity generation at oil-fired power plants fell by 8% (by 3.9 TWh). As a result, the share of these sources decreased from 7.3% to 7.2%, respectively. Towards a new balance ADVERTISEMENT Overall, total electricity production in the EU in the nine months of 2023 decreased by 5% (by 87.6 TWh), including due to the slowdown in the European economy. Thus, in October 2023, the PMI Composite index, which measures activity in manufacturing and services, fell in the euro area to 46.5, the lowest level since November 2020 (i.e. below the recession threshold). However, the consequence is a slowdown in prices, which is also due to cheaper natural gas. In October 2023, the average wholesale electricity price in Germany was 87.3 per megawatt hour (MWh), almost half the level a year ago (157.8 per MWh in October 2022). This proves that the European electricity market, having survived the peak of the gas crisis, has reached a new balance. By Kirill Rodionov for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: November in Europe is normally the start of heating season proper. Even with a prolonged summer and a soft start to the fall, by late November, winter temperatures drop, and the heating gets cranked up. And gas prices start climbing higher. Last year, Europe lucked out with a milder-than-usual winter. This year, things look different. For now, Europes gas storage caverns are full to the brim thanks to a steady flow of U.S. LNG. But now that peak consumption season has begun, demand will rise, just like demand in Asia. And despite ample supply of LNG globally, prices could yet spike, potentially by a lot. The abovementioned ample supply has been the reason why LNG prices have softened in recent weeks. Yet the marketsespecially the European marketsvulnerability to any occurrence that can influence prices was made crystal clear earlier this week when European benchmark prices jumped after the news broke of Houthis seizing a cargo ship in the Red Sea. The ship was linked to an Israeli company, and because of this, it was widely seen as a sign of a possible escalation of the Middle Eastern war. Israels reaction was to blame Iran for the seizure, while Iran denied any involvement. Both sides used strong language in their respective statements. Following the news, gas prices in Europe added some 3%, while gas prices in the United States even shed a little, highlighting yet again the fundamental difference between being a self-sufficient producer of a commodity and being dependent on imports. Yet even with a heightened geopolitical risk in the Middle East, some in the gas trading industry believe LNG prices are unlikely to go much higher, according to S&P Global. The Commodity Insights service of the company reported this week that some traders point to supply as the reason for only a limited impact of shipping news on LNG prices. Others, however, note that shipping news has become quite important for all sorts of commodities now that movement via the Panama Canal has been restricted, and movement via the Suez Canal is perceived to have become riskier because of the Israel-Hamas war. The Panama Canal situationa result of a prolonged drought that has reduced water levels in the canalhas already pushed freight rates higher for all vessels. Not all U.S. LNG cargo goes through the Panama Canal, but shipments for Asia do pass it. However, with the new restrictions in place, some, such as South Korean buyers, have opted to replace the Panama Canal route with one that passes through the Suez Canal. With the ship seizure in the Red Sea, some buyers may get nervous about this route, too. Meanwhile, other Asian buyers of U.S. LNG are also looking for alternative routes as the limited movement in the key chokepoint between North and South America does not look like it would be resolved quickly. This would add to freight rates, too, even if the LNG supply in itself is plentiful. Speaking of supply, it may be plentiful, but as last years Freeport outage demonstrated, this abundance is one outage away from a disruption and a price spike. Last June, Freeport LNG suffered an explosion that shut the facility down for the rest of the year. It only reopened in February this year. Freeport had accounted for a tenth of European LNG imports before the blast and played a big part in the summer gas price spike. With winter temperatures coming, then, gas prices could climb higher, at least in Europe, simply because of the spike in demand and despite full storage: withdrawals from this storage have already started as is usual for this time of the year. Global prices may be more resilient, but the upside risk remains due to the shipping challenges and the heightened disruption risk in the Middle East. ADVERTISEMENT By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: To underscore its uniqueness, we have to go back to November 2022 for the last personal meeting between the leaders of the two most powerful countries at the moment, the US and China. Back then, Biden and Xi met each other on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia. This meeting in Bali was preceded by a significant period of increased tensions between the US and China following Nancy Pelosis visit to Taiwan. Pelosis trip was regarded by China as a provocation and a departure from the one China policy. As such, Pelosis visit resulted in the end of direct communication between the military of both countries. A potentially dangerous situation since it could lead to incidents developing into something much worse. This and other challenges that currently define US-Sino relations clearly illustrate a need to create a floor under US-Sino relations. But, before we look at this weeks meeting achievements, lets first briefly go back to the last official meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden in Bali and the topics that were discussed back then. Bali 2022 First, it will not come to anyones surprise that Taiwan was one of the more thorny issues that was discussed between both countries during the G20 top in Bali. Xi Jinping called Taiwan the "first red line" that must not be crossed in U.S.-China relations. Biden on his turn, seemingly tried to calm things down, stating that the one China policy - which supports both Beijings one China stance as well as Taiwans military - was unchanged. This is a policy that has often been described as strategic ambiguity, which emphasizes the mixed signal that this policy sends out. But there was definitely a lot more to discuss. North-Korea, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, investment and trade policies and artificial intelligence (AI) were also discussed amongst many other topics. Since many (if not all) of these issues remain unsolved, they were high on the list of topics that both countries needed to discuss. San Francisco 2023 So, fast forward to 15 November, a scheduled meeting between Biden and Xi took place in San Francisco. Below we provide an overview of the most important topics that were discussed and those that are key in defining the US-Sino relationship. We make a distinction between USs interests, Chinas interests and mutual interests. However it must be said that some interests also overlap. The distinction therefore is not always clear. Security, for instance, is of mutual interest, but within the realm of security both China and the US also have their own specific interests. We will conclude this report with our take on the results of the bilateral meeting between both world leaders and see to what extent progress has been made on these issues and more generally the bilateral relationship between the US and China. USs main interests Trade and investments Starting with the Trump era, the US has sought to establish a more equitable trading and investment relationship with China. For long the US has been having a huge trade deficit with both China as well as the rest of the world. In 2022 the total US trade deficit reached a record high with a reported trade deficit of almost $950 billion. According to the US department of Commerce the trade deficit with China reached a level of $382.9 billion in 2022. Moreover, trade in 2022 between the US and China grew for a third year in a row. It is therefore hard to claim that the trade relationship between the US and China has become more balanced, despite tariffs and other measures that have been implemented since 2018 to achieve such. However, just ahead of the meeting between Biden and Xi this week, China did buy an amount worth more than $3 billion of soybeans, which should be regarded as a sign of good will and a desire by China to move to a more equitable trade relationship. However, in the past China has already made promises regarding trade and opening up its economy that still need to be fulfilled. For instance by continuing to subsidize certain strategic sectors in order to undercut Western competitors as seems to be the case in the sector for electric vehicles. Furthermore, the US federal government pension fund now excludes investments in Hong Kong in addition to investments in mainland China. Additionally, the US has curbed investments flows to China in some sectors that it identifies as strategic and other sectors deemed critical to US national security. This is yet another sign that the US will continue to de-risk its relationship with China and to contain Chinas economic and technological rise. Fentanyl Another important issue concerns fentanyl. The synthetic opioid has caused havoc in many US cities and fentanyl addiction is an important death cause for US citizens between the age of 35-45. However, it is expected that China will be moving on this issue to accommodate the US in tackling the current fentanyl crisis. As such and already before the meeting took place, Biden and Xi were expected to announce an agreement which would see a crackdown form Beijing on this specific sector. Needless to say that it is in the interest of the US to reverse the current rise in fentanyl addicts. Aside from a public health perspective this topic also touches social, legal, and labour force related issues. Human rights The US has often decried Chinas stance on human rights, most notably with regard to its practices in the Xinjiang province. The US has sanctioned companies that produce goods with the help of Uyghurs. Moreover, the US will also discuss so-called exit bans. These measures ban non Chinese citizens from leaving the country in case of suspicion of criminal offenses. Moreover the US will seek to solve cases of imprisoned US citizens of which the US claims are wrongfully detained. Finally it is in the interest of the US to project its soft power to the rest of the world in order to become a more appealing strategic partner compared to its rivals. Chinas interests Trade and investments China continues to seek to turn the current tide of declining exports and reduced flows of foreign direct investments (FDI). Indeed as recently as November 2023, China reported the first contraction in (net) FDI since data has been published in 1998 with a deficit of 11.8 bn during the third quarter of this year. While the current levels of trade between the US and China are still sizable, the process of de-risking (which includes reindustrialisation) will most likely sooner rather than later result in reduced US imports from China. Territorial issues China has continued to press the US on maintaining its one-China policy and insists that the US does not interfere with its internal affairs. Furthermore, China criticizes the US for its freedom of navigation patrols in the South China sea. Additionally, China decries the US for trying to contain China within the region by setting up alliances with regional players like the Philippines and Australia. Technology Chinas Made in 2025 state-led industrial policy aims for technological independence and the ability to compete with high tech products on global markets. More specifically they aim for an increase in domestically added content of materials from 40% to 70%. The US has restricted access to certain advanced technologies to China. This also includes US allies that have been pressured by the US to restrict Chinese access to certain technologies. So as long as China is not able to produce its own cutting edge technology, it will remain dependent on what the US is willing to export. As such it is clearly in Chinas interest to regain access to some of the most advanced technologies. Mutual interests Security As mentioned above, Pelosis visit to Taiwan back in August 2022 led China to cutting direct communication lines between both armies. Moreover, the previous minister of defence of China, general Li Shangfu, was put on the US sanction list for being involved in the purchase of SU-35 combat aircraft and Russian S-400 air defence systems. US secretary of defence Loyd Austin tried to re-establish communication lines with the now missing Li Shangfu but was unsuccessful. While Li Shangfu has been expelled from the state council, his name still can be found on the website of Chinas ministry of defence and until now, no new minister of defence has been appointed yet. Re-establishing direct communication lines between both militaries remains a goal for the Biden administration and with General Li Shangfu being dismissed, new possibilities arise to re-establish these lines of communication with the clear aim to nip any chance of escalation in the bud. These (almost) incidents have increased since China has become more assertive in the region while the US continues its freedom of navigation patrols in the South China sea. But there is much more. The US seeks to convince Beijing once and for all that it should not deliver military equipment to Russia. Also the EU has sent this message to China signalling that it would have a strong negative effect on relations between the West and China. Needless to say that both trade and investments would be affected when China would actively support Russias military. Finally, the US will seek to pressure China to play a more important role in dealing with the nuclear threat arising from North-Korea. It is however questionable to what extent China has real leverage over North Korea in order to persuade it to change its posture in the region. Moreover it is also questionable whether this would be in the interest of China itself. ADVERTISEMENT But Xi has also expressed himself clearly when he said that China is not seeking to fight a cold or a hot war with anyone. While it is important to realize that this statement is at odds with Chinas territorial claims (even when Chinas claim on Taiwan is excluded) it should still be clear that China - like the US - realizes that a hot war between both superpowers would have devastating consequences and would go against the interest of both. Xi Jinping has eluded to this by repeatedly saying that nuclear wars can never be won and therefore should never be fought. But also here we see a contradiction, since China has embarked on a path to expand and modernize its nuclear weapon capabilities. China also addressed the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea and claims that the freedom of navigation patrols that the US and allies are performing are a violation of Chinese sovereignty. It will also address US weapon deliveries towards Taiwan and will seek for a US statement which would clearly denounce any attempts from Taiwan to separate itself from mainland China. Climate The most obvious mutual interest both countries share is climate change. Both countries increasingly deal with extreme weather circumstances, climate warming and pollution. Before the meeting there were already positive signs regarding this topic. This also offers hope for the next UN climate talks which will be held in Dubai this month. The US State Department and Chinas Ministry of Ecology even made identical statements regarding mutual cooperation in limiting emissions of nitrous oxide and methane. Both nations will also support global initiatives to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. AI Recent warnings from scientists and companies that are involved in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) have put the issue high on the list of security issues. Moreover, there seems to be common ground to exclude AI command and control (NC2) systems for nuclear weapons. Furthermore China has also signalled that it is interested in joining talks about norms and rules for AI. Finally, the South China morning post reported that Biden and Xi were expected to pledge for a ban on AI in autonomous weapon systems like drones. This amongst others with the aim to prevent the risk of weapon systems going their own way and all the potential consequences that could arise from this. Unfortunately, in the case of AI there will always remain an incentive to create a weapon that could tip the balance in a direct conflict with an adversary. What to expect after the Biden Xi meeting? While expectations before the meeting where modest at best, the meeting still has delivered some results. First, a floor seems to have been established regarding the US-Sino relationship. Both leaders expressed clearly that a conflict between both superpowers should be avoided. However, developments within international relations are not static or linear. As such it is likely that tensions between both powers will continue to be an important feature describing US-Sino relations. Second, both superpowers have committed to step up efforts to reduce global warming and fight climate change. Third, China has pledged to curb exports of precursors for fentanyl. Furthermore Biden announced that experts from both China and the US will meet to discuss and determine: whats useful and whats not useful, but dangerous and whats acceptable regarding AI. Xi and Biden also agreed to reopen direct communication between both militaries in order to prevent incidents that could lead to an escalation between both countries. While it is absolutely positive that both the US and China are engaging with each other via the highest diplomatic levels, it is important to realize that the current situation of strategic competition/systemic rivalry that has characterized US-Sino relations since Trump became president in 2016, wont change. As such the relationship has not materially improved. This might be illustrated best by Bidens remark at the end of the press conference where he mentioned that he still sees Xi Jinping as a dictator. Therefore we can only conclude that there is still a long way to go before we can talk about normalizing relations between China and the US. By Teeuwe Mevissen, Senior Macro Strategist at Rabobank via Zerohedge.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Crude oil prices continued their downward spiral Wednesday morning, with Brent down 4.38% at 10:45 a.m. ET, shortly after it was announced that the planned OPEC+ meeting for Sunday would be delayed until November 30. Brent crude has lost $3.61 on the day, trading at $78.84, with West Texas Intermediate (WTI) down 4.54% at $74.24, for a $3.53 loss on the day. Oil prices initially started plunging earlier today following a Bloomberg report warning that the OPEC+ meeting may be delayed. Fears that OPEC+ will further deepen cuts at its next meeting had already put downward pressure on oil prices earlier this week, but the postponement of the meeting has added further concerns over an intensifying spat among the cartels members. Saudi Arabia has expressed dissatisfaction with the production levels of other OPEC members. In June, OPEC+ agreed to limit output, with Saudi Arabia voluntarily cutting production by 1 million bpd and then extending this commitment until the end of this year. Ahead of the delayed meeting, most analysts had expected the Saudis to extend the voluntary production cuts into 2024. Africa OPEC members Angola, Congo and Nigeria were forced to commit to lower output in 2024, and the originally-scheduled November 26 meeting could potentially have pressured them to make further production cuts, as the Saudis express discontent over compliance with the deal as it shoulders the bulk of the burden. Nigeria is already pumping more oil than it was supposed to under the deal, with Africa media showing October production at 36,000 bpd above quota. If you are in OPEC+ shoes, they must be thinking that something needs to be done, Christof Ruehl, senior analyst at Columbia Universitys Centre on Global Energy Policy, told Bloomberg television. It will be more difficult for them to do something than people expect. Its hard to see how they could get on the same page, he added. ADVERTISEMENT By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The OPEC+ group may need to make additional oil production cuts to offset growing supply from the United States that has exceeded expectations, hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand told Bloomberg television in an interview on Wednesday. Demand growth is very strong, despite all the fears of a really weak macroeconomic outlook, Andurand told Bloomberg. Supply has been the issue, a lot more supply than expected. U.S. oil production has been breaking records in recent weeks, exceeding earlier forecasts. According to Andurand, Americas oil production has grown in 2023 by 700,000 to 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) more than expected. Due to higher output in the U.S. and other non-OPEC+ producers, the OPEC+ alliance may need deeper cuts to offset the higher-than-expected supply to the market, the hedge fund manager told Bloomberg. When OPEC+ producers meet next week after postponing this weekends meeting to November 30 they may need to discuss and announce deeper production cuts next year, Andurand says. The Saudis will probably want the other countries to cut as well to help support oil prices, he added. Yesterday, Toril Bosoni, the Head of Oil Industry and Markets Division at the International Energy Agency (IEA), said that the current oil market deficit will turn into a slight surplus next year even if OPEC+ leaders Saudi Arabia and Russia extend their cuts into 2024. Just last week, the IEA raised its global oil demand forecasts for 2023 and 2024, as consumption is exceeding expectations. But the agency warned that supply growth was also topping forecasts. ADVERTISEMENT For now, with demand still exceeding available supplies heading into the Northern Hemisphere winter, market balances will remain vulnerable to heightened economic and geopolitical risks and further volatility ahead, the IEA said. A deeper OPEC+ group cut combined with the Saudis and Russians rolling over their voluntary reduction would wipe out the currently expected market surplus in the first quarter of 2024, ING strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote on Monday. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Australias energy major Santos has said it expects lower natural gas production next year as its Bayu-Undan offshore gas field nears depletion. While the level of gas production for 2024 is in line with analyst expectations, at between 89 and 93 million barrels of oil equivalent, it is lower than the expected output level for this year, Reuters noted in a report. The Bayu-Undan field is located in the Timor Sea and was discovered in the 1990s. Commercial production began in 2004 with ConocoPhillips as the operator and Santos among the minority shareholders. The Australian company acquired the controlling stake in the field from Conoco in 2020. The productive life of the field was estimated at 25 years. Santos is also the majority shareholder in the PNG LNG project in Papua New Guinea. It acquired the stake after its purchase of Oil Search in 2021. PNG LNG is considered one of the lowest-cost LNG projects globally. Santos is also the developer of the Darwin LNG project, which will source gas from the offshore Barossa field. The company made the final investment decision on the Barossa project last year. First production of LNG is scheduled for 2025. The Australian company, which is the countrys second-largest gas producer, is also expanding in other directions. This week, the company announced a partnership with Japans top gas utility, Tokyo Gas, to study the production of carbon-neutral methane for marketing in Japan. Santos is committed to delivering affordable, reliable, lower-carbon energy for our customers in Australia and Asia, the companys energy solutions executive VP, Alan Stuart-Grant said. E-methane has the potential to be an important carbon-neutral fuel a direct substitute for natural gas that avoids the cost associated with new infrastructure and new industrial processes, which for many sectors are not yet technically feasible, affordable or available. ADVERTISEMENT By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The U.S. federal government has given the go-ahead to the sixth offshore wind power project in the country this week. The Empire Wind project is led by BP and Equinor will be located off the coast of New York and New Jersey and, according to the Department of the Interior, will have the capacity to power more than 700,000 homes. The two sets of wind turbinesEmpire Wind 1 and Empire Wind 2will have a capacity of over 2 MW and are scheduled to enter into operation in 2026 and 2027, respectively. The federal governments approval follows an attempt by BP and Equinor to negotiate higher prices for the electricity Empire Wind will produce with the New York authorities. The state, however, refused to hike the price it was willing to secure for the electricity produced at the two wind farms. Those additional subsidies would have cost New Yorkers an extra $12 billion, the New York Times reported in October. Following the New York Governors refusal to grant additional support for the wind farms, BP and Equinor announced a writedown of $840 million on the projects. It remains unclear whether the Empire Wind 1 and 2 will go ahead at all, given that the costs of building them is currently higher than the price secured for the electricity they would generate if completed. However, the state of New York is not giving up on its offshore wind ambitions. It will hold a new wind power tender at the end of this month, expecting bids in January next year. The tender will be open to all bidders, including companies with existing contracts with the state, such as BP and Equinor. This, Reuters reported, would allow them to resubmit their bids with higher prices. The Biden administration has a target of 30 GW of offshore wind power capacity by 2030, from close to zero to date. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com ADVERTISEMENT More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Via Metal Miner Canadian copper mining giant Ivanhoe Mines recently announced new maiden mineral resources for high-grade Makoko and Kiala deposits in its project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The company said that Makoko contains indicated mineral resources of 16 million tons (MT) at 3.55% copper. They also reported inferred mineral resources of 154 million tons at 1.97% copper using a 1.5% copper cut-off.Kiala, on the other hand, contains an indicated mineral resource of 5 MT at 3.56% copper using a 1.5% copper cut-off. Invanhoe says Makoko is the worlds third-largest and highest-grade copper discovery since Kakula in 2016. Both Makoko and Kiala lie near the Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex, which is within the Western Foreland Exploration Project. Licenses for the latter are 80 to 100% owned by Ivanhoe Mines. It was only recently that a locally registered company, Makoko S.A., received 25-year mining licenses where most of the Makoko and Kiala deposits occur. Shares for the copper mining company, which is one of the biggest producers in the world, went up immediately after the announcement of the new finds. A Major Payoff for Ivanhoe According to a statement put out by Ivanhoe Founder and Executive Co-Chairman Robert Friedland, the new find was a culmination of over twenty years of effort. The DRC exploration started off as a Greenfield project, but soon turned out to be a major copper mining success story for Ivanhoe. Indeed, reports indicate that the deposits not only contain high levels of copper, but also spectacular grades. While the Kamoa discovery happened in 2008, the Kakula discovery occurred in 2016. In just over five years, Kakula went from drill core samples to one of the five largest copper mines in the world, with by far the highest grade ores. According to Friedland, this was all thanks to the hard work of the project and operations teams. The Executive Co-chairman added that the new resource estimates for Makoko and Kiala were just scratching the surface of the the immense copper mineral potential of the entire Western Foreland basin. The exploration team, he said, was officially responsible for the largest copper discovery of the last ten years, the ultra-high-grade giant Kakula discovery, the giant Kamoa discovery, and now the fourth-largest discovery in Makoko. Ivanhoe now plans to explore the possibility of heap leaching the near-surface mineralized zone of Makoko. Doing so would not only be more cost-effective, but also a very low carbon-intensive way of producing copper cathode. So far, the mining company has discovered 38.7 MT of contained copper in measured and indicated resources as well as 9.4 MT in inferred resources across the Western Foreland shelf, including Kamoa and Kakula. Truckers Strike Has Little Impact on Copper Mining Recently, a DRC truckers strike stemming from a third-party labor dispute also put Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. in the news. According to the company, the Kamoa-Kakula Copper mine complex operations remained unaffected. Indeed, reports indicate that major shipments from this mine continued to take place without any glitches. ADVERTISEMENT In response to reports that truck drivers were not transporting the metals, the company management said that it was proactively coordinating with the DRC Government to tackle any fallout from this strike on outbound shipping. That said, they claimed they werent anticipating the strike to have any impact on the Kamoa-Kakulas future operations. Ivanhoe Mines is involved in three key projects in this region: expanding the Kamoa-Kakula copper complex, building the tier-one Platreef palladium-nickel-platinum-rhodium-copper-gold project in South Africa, and reopening the historically high-grade Kipushi zinc-copper-germanium-silver mine in the DRC. It is also said to be exploring for more copper in the Western Foreland property, which extends over 2,400 square kilometers. By Sohrab Darabshaw More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: In a tragic turn of events, authorities have reported that a woman from Florida was discovered deceased on Saturday. The grim discovery took place within a storage unit that was registered under the name of her estranged husband. This distressing development comes exactly one week after the woman was initially reported missing. Authorities discovered Shakira Yvonne Rucker's body in a storage unit owned by her estranged husband, Cory Hill, 51, on Saturday. The Winter Springs Police Department had previously issued a missing person alert after Rucker was last seen on November 11, as per CNN. Florida Woman Discovered Dead in Ex-Husband's Storage Unit Rucker's disappearance was reported to the police after she left her home, purportedly with Hill, and failed to return. The search for Rucker expanded across four counties, involving multiple law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. Winter Springs Police Chief Matthew Tracht commended his team for their tireless efforts in the search, which sadly concluded with the discovery of Rucker's body. The Orange County Sheriff's Office played a crucial role in the investigation. The breakthrough came following a report of a foul odor from a storage facility in Apopka, leading to the grim discovery. Rucker, a mother of four, suffered multiple gunshot wounds, with the shooting believed to have occurred at the storage facility. Sheriff John Mina expressed his condolences to Rucker's family, acknowledging the immense pain and suffering they endured. The case took a further dark turn with the revelation that Hill was already in custody, facing charges of attempted murder in an unrelated case involving his girlfriend and her family. Hill is now the prime suspect in Rucker's homicide, with charges pending as the investigation continues. Before her disappearance, Rucker was last seen by her children on November 11, heading to a restaurant in Polk County with Hill. Despite a phone call indicating she was returning home, she never arrived, sparking immediate concern from her family. Surveillance footage from the restaurant confirmed the couple's presence there, adding to the case's complexity, according to The Lowcountry's News Leader. Read Also: Liberian President George Weah Concedes Defeat After Provisional Results Show Challenger's Victory Shakira Rucker Discovered, Husband Silent in Florida Case The discovery of Rucker's body in a storage unit registered to Hill, coupled with his subsequent silence on her whereabouts, raised significant suspicion. Sheriff Mina criticized Hill's lack of cooperation, which prolonged the family's agony and complicated the investigation. While a motive for the murder remains unclear, authorities are piecing together the events leading up to Rucker's tragic death. Hill, with a criminal record including a 1993 murder conviction, faces multiple charges. His arrest on November 12, the day after Rucker's disappearance, for a separate violent incident further paints a troubling picture of the suspect's background. This case has cast a somber light on the issue of violent crime in the Orlando metropolitan area. Recent statistics place Orange County as one of Florida's regions with the highest rates of violent crime, underscoring the importance of robust law enforcement and community vigilance in addressing and preventing such tragedies. As the investigation continues, Rucker's family and the Winter Springs community mourn the loss of a beloved mother and resident. The law enforcement community remains committed to bringing justice for Rucker and her family, ensuring that those responsible are held accountable for their actions, Newsweek reported. Related Article: Kaitlin Armstrong Receives 90 Years Imprisonment for Killing Mo Wilson Over Love Triangle @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Oil prices dipped early on Wednesday as a report emerged that this weekends meeting of the OPEC+ group will be delayed. The November 26 meeting of the ministers of the OPEC+ alliance will be postponed due to OPEC leader Saudi Arabia expressing dissatisfaction over the production levels of the other members, delegates have told Bloomberg. The meeting may be delayed for an unspecified period of time, according to the anonymous delegates who told Bloomberg that the Saudis have been in talks with the other oil producers about their output. The Kingdom will likely try to persuade other OPEC+ members to make more cuts, hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand told Bloomberg earlier on Wednesday. Oil prices were down by 1.7% early on Wednesday as the market expects the OPEC+ meeting and the weekly U.S. inventory report from the EIA later today. Speculation is growing that OPECs top producer, Saudi Arabia, will extend its voluntary cut of 1 million barrels per day (bpd) into 2024, considering the latest slide in oil prices to $80 and the typically weak period for oil demand in the first quarter of every year. Market talk is also intensifying that OPEC+ could announce a deeper cut at the groups meeting in the weekend November 25-26. The recent weakness in oil prices has increased noise over what OPEC+ will decide to do at its meeting on 26 November. We continue to expect that Saudi Arabia and Russia will roll over their additional voluntary cuts into early 2024, ING strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote on Monday. However, what is less clear is whether the broader OPEC+ group will make further cuts, they added. ADVERTISEMENT A deeper group cut combined with the Saudis and Russians rolling over their voluntary reduction would wipe out the currently expected market surplus in the first quarter of 2024, the strategists noted. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Higher refining processing rates and continued easing of fuel export restrictions are set to boost Russias exports of refined petroleum products to a four-month high in November, according to estimates by Bloomberg. The higher fuel exports are led by a jump in diesel shipments after Russia partially lifted on October 6 a temporary ban on diesel exports that lasted just over two weeks. In October, Russias diesel exports by sea were estimated to have dropped by 11% compared to September, due to the export ban and heavy refinery maintenance. Russias seaborne diesel exports resumed shortly after the ban was lifted on October 6. The restriction was lifted on exports of diesel and gasoil delivered to seaports by pipeline, provided that the diesel producer supplies at least 50% of the diesel to the domestic market. The ban on exports of gasoline and diesel was introduced to stabilize domestic fuel prices amid soaring crude prices and a weak Russian ruble in September. Last week, Russia also removed the ban on exports of gasoline, which lasted for nearly two months. Last Friday, Russia said that domestic market saturation had been ensured over the past two months, creating a surplus of motor gasoline. The Russian Energy Ministry said it could re-impose export bans if that surplus vanished. With most restrictions now eased or lifted, Russia is on track to export in November the highest volume of fuels in four months, per Bloombergs calculations. Russian fuel shipments jumped by around 333,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first 18 days of November compared to October levels. Between November 1 and November 18, seaborne exports of fuels from Russia averaged about 2.4 million bpd, per data from analytics firm Vortexa compiled by Bloomberg. ADVERTISEMENT Diesel and gasoil shipments have surged so far this month, leading the increase in export volumes. Russian exports of naphtha and fuel oil have also risen so far this month, according to the data. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The worlds top oil fund, United States Oil ETF (NYSEARCA: USO), booked on Tuesday its biggest daily outflows since December 2016 amid heightened volatility ahead of the OPEC+ meeting which was scheduled for the coming weekend but has since been delayed. USO saw daily withdrawals of nearly $225 million, according to estimates by Bloomberg. United States Oil ETF has been the biggest and most closely watched oil-linked exchange-traded product on the market for years. USO seeks to reflect the performance of the spot price of West Texas Intermediate light, sweet crude oil delivered to Cushing, Oklahoma by investing in a mix of oil futures contracts and other oil interests. USO became in late October once again the biggest oil exchange-traded fund in the world in terms of total assets, topping WisdomTree Brent Crude Oil fund for the first time since the beginning of this year. In recent weeks, volatile oil prices have led to large inflows and outflows at USO and other commodity and cross-commodity funds, as the market is focused on demand concerns and on speculation about oil supply from OPEC+ next year. The market is eagerly expecting the meeting of the producer group, which is set to decide on oil production levels for early 2024. Speculation is growing that Saudi Arabia could roll over its unilateral production cut of 1 million barrels per day (bpd) into at least the first quarter of 2024, which is typically a low season for global oil demand. The current oil market deficit will turn into a slight surplus next year even if OPEC+ leaders Saudi Arabia and Russia extend their production and export cuts into 2024, according to Toril Bosoni, the Head of Oil Industry and Markets Division at the International Energy Agency (IEA). Global oil stocks are currently falling at a fast rate, Bosoni told Reuters on Tuesday, but the agency expects a surplus on the market early next year. ADVERTISEMENT By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Nebraska student proficiency in math and English language arts has skyrocketed as public schools recover from a COVID-19 academic slide. State test scores released Wednesday show that in the 2022-23 school year, students rebounded more than 10 percentage points in both subjects, scoring higher than pre-pandemic years. But state officials said that while the increased scores are positive, specific subgroups of students still lagged in achievement. In English language arts, 58% of Nebraska students scored proficient meaning they were either on track or advanced in the subject an increase from 47% a year prior. Proficiency in math was 61%, up from 46%. In science, 70% of students scored proficient, an increase from 66% in 2021-22. Roughly 99% of Nebraska public school students took the annual test in the 2022-23 school year, similar to participation in 2021-22. Scores for the 2020-21 school year, released two years ago, showed the first evidence of an academic slide, fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic that shuttered school buildings in March 2020. Those test scores aren't documented because more than 8,500 students did not participate in testing at the time. That and other disruptions, from quarantines to remote learning, prompted state officials to caution about reading too much into those results. Results from 2021-22, released a year ago, documented a more severe drop in scores as the state dipped below 50% in English and math proficiency. Brian Maher, Nebraska's education commissioner, said in a Wednesday press conference that the Nebraska Department of Education expected the improvement, especially because the assessment included revised English language arts standards, which were new in 2022. "When there is a new assessment or a significant change to an existing assessment, new cut scores the scores that determine levels of proficiency are set," he said. "These new cut scores better reflect student achievement in Nebraska when compared to their student peers nationally." Maher said that while the improvement is positive, the scores show there are achievement gaps for student subgroups, such as those in special education, those who are low income or those who are English learners. "Overall, (I'm) very pleased with the trend line that we have from an assessment and accountability perspective," he said. "But when I break it down into some of the subgroups, I see a lot of work to do yet as a state." The assessment shows that 27% of students with disabilities were proficient in English and 29% were proficient in math. For students who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, 43% were proficient in English and 45% were proficient in math. About 30% of English learners were proficient in English, and 33% were proficient in math. In addition to releasing test scores, state officials on Wednesday also released accountability ratings for schools and districts, labeling them as excellent, great, good or needing assistance based on state test scores and other factors. Maher said in Nebraska, 27% of districts were classified as excellent, while 40% were labeled great, 26% were good, and 7% were designated "needs support to improve." Among the 11 metro districts in Sarpy and Douglas Counties, many improved their ratings from the previous year. The Millard, Elkhorn, Springfield Platteview, Bennington and Gretna districts ranked excellent. Last year, the only district in that category was Elkhorn. The "great" ranking includes the Bellevue, Douglas County West, Westside and Papillion La Vista districts. The Ralston district improved its ranking from "needs support to improve" to the "good" category. The only district that remains in the "needs support to improve" ranking is the Omaha Public Schools. The Lincoln Public Schools also improved their ranking from "good" to "great." The assessment also recorded the number of teachers in the state, which decreased from 23,962 last year to 23,687 this year. Nebraska is still suffering from a widespread teacher shortage that's worsened since COVID-19. "It is rare that I go out and speak to a group of educators, generally superintendents, where that topic isn't a concern," Maher said. "There's a coordinated effort going on between school districts, the department of education, higher education and even others in the workforce development area ... please know that it's very much front and center on our radar." Photos: Bellevue West High School teacher surprised with Milken Educator Award, $25,000 Editors note: This story was first published in The World-Herald on the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination. Wednesday marks the 60th anniversary. * * * John F. Kennedy looked confident and at ease as he sat on a backyard patio near 90th and Hickory Streets in Omaha, surrounded by dozens of reporters, photographers and adoring Democrats. On this day in August 1959, the telegenic U.S. senator from Massachusetts wasnt running for president at least, not officially. It wouldnt be revealed until much later that in a private meeting at the home minutes earlier, JFK and statewide supporters had secretly mapped plans for him to enter Nebraskas potentially pivotal 1960 Democratic primary. At some point while the youthful pol gazed off into the crowd, a photographer hired by the Kennedy family raised his camera and snapped a picture. It was but a moment in time. But captured in that vivid frame was a photograph that would become one of the most reproduced and recognizable images of Kennedy one whose use would fatefully frame both the hopeful beginnings of his campaign and the tragic end of his life. Within months that picture would appear on JFK buttons, bumper stickers and campaign posters as he campaigned across the country. In July 1960 it was printed on delegate buttons and splashed over the convention hall as Kennedy accepted his partys nomination. It would appear on red-ribboned buttons at Kennedys Jan. 20, 1961, inauguration. And then after the awful day in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, it would appear on the prayer cards given to mourners at his funeral. John F. Kennedy was never the peoples choice in Republican-leaning Nebraska. But as the nation marks the 60th anniversary of his assassination, one can find a surprising amount of Nebraska history surrounding the nations 35th president. A number of former Nebraskans held high positions in his administration, including his special counsel, his personal secretary and the White House social secretary. Kennedy traveled to Nebraska at least 10 times, ranking among the most trips any president made to the state over his lifetime. The vast majority of Kennedys trips came as he maneuvered to capture the states convention delegates and secure his partys nomination. It was during one of the earliest of those Nebraska trips that photographer Jacques Lowe shot that iconic Kennedy picture. Its an image whose unique roots in Omaha and Nebraska and wide use were little known and until recent years largely forgotten. * * * With the approach of the 1960 election year, many considered John F. Kennedy a long shot candidate for president. His record in the Senate was undistinguished compared with the records of some of his main opponents for the Democratic nomination, Senate colleagues Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Stuart Symington of Missouri. And, of course, he was Catholic, a historic disqualifier in a national election. As Kennedy and his advisers charted a course for garnering the delegates needed to win the nomination, Nebraska would become part of their calculus. At the time, a little more than a dozen states held primary elections, most states selecting their convention delegates in caucuses made up of party stalwarts. Even some states with primaries had governors who had declared themselves candidates, fencing off their states from other contenders. Nebraska had a wide-open primary. Kennedy saw in the farm state the potential to show party leaders across the country his grass-roots appeal. Kennedy first came to Nebraska in 1957 to speak in Omaha and Lincoln, and he returned in 1958 to press the flesh at a meeting of Midwestern Democrats both visits sowing the seeds for the campaign to come. In 1959 he was ready to put together an organization. Kennedy talked to Bernard Boyle, the cigar-chomping Nebraska Democratic national committeeman and a man known for holding major political gatherings on the sweeping lawn of his home in Omahas far-west suburbs. A date was set: Aug. 9. As on most of his Nebraska visits, Kennedy was accompanied that day by Ted Sorensen, the Lincoln native who to the end served as one of JFKs most trusted advisers. Also on the flight was Jacques Lowe. Joe Kennedy, JFKs father and the patriarch of the Kennedy political dynasty, had hired the talented freelancer to shoot pictures of his family, with politics in mind. Joe Kennedy was ahead of his time in recognizing the power of pictures and words in marketing a candidate. Were going to sell Jack like soap flakes, he once declared. Lowe later called the trip to Omaha his first unofficial campaign trip with JFK. During it he would shoot among the first of tens of thousands of JFK images he would capture over the next four years. Some among the 400 Nebraska Democrats who attended the Sunday fried-chicken picnic later recalled what a beautiful day it was, the sun highlighting the red in Kennedys hair. They noticed the Bostonians accent and the funny way he pronounced the name of the state Nebrasker. But they also were wowed by his intelligence, sense of humor and charm. Kennedy had arrived well before the gathering, huddling with two dozen top Democrats on the back porch. According to an oral history Boyle later provided to the Kennedy Library, this is where Kennedy and his supporters worked out many of the nuts and bolts of his Nebraska campaign. Many of Kennedys earliest backers in Nebraska had been fellow Irish Catholics, from Omaha, including John Red Munnelly and Jim Green, who were there that day. But to show Kennedys broad appeal, it was decided Hans Jensen of Aurora, a Protestant farmer, would head the campaign. Then while comfortably seated on a stone patio, Kennedy held a press conference with local reporters. He brushed off questions about whether he would run for president, saying it had been discussed only in a general way during the private gathering. But at the same time, he talked up the Nebraska primary, calling it a key one that everyone seeking the presidency should compete in. While Kennedy fielded questions, Lowe moved around the fringes of the gathering, capturing images. On Jan. 2, 1960, Kennedy made it official, declaring he would seek his partys nomination. Less than three weeks later, he made a surprise visit to Omaha. He announced he would compete in the states primary and then challenged other Democratic hopefuls to join the race. As Kennedy campaigned around the country, many of the JFK signs and buttons that began popping up bore a striking profile of Kennedy one that Lowe shot in Omaha. Its a remarkably crisp and clear image, the sun glistening off Kennedys hair, his silhouette standing out from the reporters and photographers in the background. During the campaign, Kennedy worked hard to win over Nebraska Democrats. He set up the most extensive county organization seen to date in a Nebraska primary. He made at least five Nebraska trips after the Boyle picnic, including one that took him from Lincoln to Scottsbluff. At other times he sent brothers Robert and Edward and his mother, Rose, to campaign on his behalf. In the Nebraska vote on May 10, Kennedy won big, capturing 18 Nebraska delegates to six for all other contenders combined. But the state didnt become the proving ground he had once hoped. Possibly due to the big head start Kennedy and his machine had gotten, his opponents largely bypassed the state. Instead, it was West Virginia, a highly contested Protestant state that held its primary on the same day as Nebraska, that would propel Kennedy toward the nomination and ultimately the presidency. During the general election, Kennedy visited Nebraska only once, showing off his national security credentials at the Strategic Air Command. It was generally accepted Nebraska would go for Richard Nixon, who ultimately won 62 percent of the states votes. After the election, Lowe published a book detailing his campaign travels with JFK, featuring the Omaha image on the cover and inside. The book may have marked the first time the photo was published in its original form, including the news media members in the background. Tragically, two years later, the picture would find another use. After Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, preparations were made for a state funeral. It was Jacqueline Kennedy who chose the picture snapped in Omaha to grace the prayer cards at her husbands Mass. Over the past half-century, the pictures history had largely been lost. In fact, it may have remained lost had it not been for another horrific event: 9/11. Jacques Lowe had stowed nearly all his negatives in a vault in the World Trade Center. When the towers came crashing down, the negatives were lost. Only his contact sheets small, printed images that show what was on the negatives survived, kept at another location. As the 50th anniversary of JFKs assassination approached, the Newseum in Washington, D.C., asked Lowes estate about putting together a JFK photo exhibit. Restoration experts at the Newseum worked painstakingly to produce large, high-quality digital images from Lowes old contact sheets. When it came time to decide what pictures to put in the exhibit, one particularly stood out, said Sarah Mercier, who was the Newseum photo editor. In fact, the Omaha image was picked to be the signature for the project, featured on a large marquee at the front of the museum and used in promotional materials. The Newseum also released the picture to media outlets, which gave it considerable run leading up to the anniversary of Kennedys assassination. The Newseum liked that the Omaha picture was not only striking but featured news media members, too, Mercier said. But more than anything, she said, it was Jacqueline Kennedys selection of the picture for her husbands prayer cards a half-century ago that truly elevates its historic status. She felt it reflected something about him that she wanted people to see, Mercier said. Her making that choice really validates the image. Our best Omaha staff photos & videos of November 2023 MINNEAPOLIS An exploding population of hard-to-eradicate "super pigs" in Canada is threatening to spill south of the border, and northern states like Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana are taking steps to stop the invasion. In Canada, the wild pigs roaming Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba pose a new threat. They are often crossbreeds that combine the survival skills of wild Eurasian boar with the size and high fertility of domestic swine to create a "super pig" that's spreading out of control. Ryan Brook, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan and one of Canada's leading authorities on the problem, calls feral swine, "the most invasive animal on the planet" and "an ecological train wreck." Pigs are not native to North America. While they've roamed parts of the continent for centuries, Canada's problem dates back only to the 1980s when it encouraged farmers to raise wild boar, Brook said. The market collapsed after peaking in 2001 and some frustrated farmers simply cut their fences, setting the animals free. It turned out that the pigs were very good at surviving Canadian winters. Smart, adaptable and furry, they eat anything, including crops and wildlife. They tear up land when they root for bugs and crops. They can spread devastating diseases to hog farms like African swine fever. And they reproduce quickly. A sow can have six piglets in a litter and raise two litters in a year. That means 65% or more of a wild pig population could be killed every year and it will still increase, Brook said. Hunting just makes the problem worse, he said. The success rate for hunters is only about 2% to 3% and several states banned hunting because it makes the pigs more wary and nocturnal tougher to track down and eradicate. Wild pigs cause around $2.5 billion in damage to U.S. crops every year, mostly in southern states like Texas. They also can be aggressive toward humans. A woman in Texas was killed by wild pigs in 2019. Eradication of wild pigs is no longer possible in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Brook said. But the situation isn't hopeless everywhere and a few U.S. states have eliminated them. The key, he said, is having a detection system that finds them early and fast, and then responding quickly. Brook and his colleagues documented 62,000 wild pig sightings in Canada. Their aerial surveys have spotted them on both sides of the Canada-North Dakota border. They've also recorded a sighting in Manitoba within 18 miles of Minnesota. "Nobody should be surprised when pigs start walking across that border if they haven't already," Brook said. "The question is: What will be done about it?" Brook said Montana has been the most serious about keeping wild pigs out. It banned raising and transporting wild pigs within the state. "The only path forward is you have to be really aggressive and you have to use all the tools in the toolbox," Brook said. That could include big ground traps with names like "BoarBuster" or net guns fired from helicopters. Some states and provinces embrace crowdsourced "Squeal on Pigs" tracking programs. Scientists have also studied poisons such as sodium nitrite, but they risk harming other species. Minnesota is among states trying to prevent the swine from taking hold. The state's Department of Natural Resources is expected to release a report in February identifying gaps in its management plan and recommend new prevention steps. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is using aircraft and drones to beef up surveillance along the northern border. Minnesota was declared an eradicated state after USDA Wildlife Services shot and killed a group of pigs in 2016 that wandered off a farm and turned feral in the far northwest corner of the state but not before they began to reproduce and root up a wildlife preserve. Gary Nohrenberg, the Minnesota director of Wildlife Services, said as far has he knows, no truly wild pigs have made their way to his state yet. Feral swine have been reported in at least 35 states, according to the USDA. The agency estimates the the swine population in those states totals around 6 million. Since launching the National Feral Swine Management Program in 2014, the USDA has provided funding to 33 states, said Mike Marlow, an assistant program director. He said their goal is to eradicate wild pigs where populations are low or emerging, and to limit the damage where they're already established such as Texas and southeastern states. The program has had success in some states that had small populations like Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Washington, he said. The animals are spotted occasionally and quickly killed off in North Dakota. "I think we're making great strides toward success," Marlow said. "But eradication is not in the near future." A 23-year-old Ashland man died and a 23-year-old Bennington woman was critically injured in a rollover crash south of Mead in Saunders County on Wednesday. At 6:06 a.m., the Saunders County 911 dispatch center received a call reporting the crash along County Road 10 between County Road L and Eighth Street, Sheriff Chris Lichtenburg said in a press release. A preliminary investigation indicated that a 2010 Ford F-250 pickup truck was traveling north when the vehicle started to go off the road. The investigation found that the pickups driver, Madisyn Haack, overcorrected and then the pickup went off the road in the opposite direction. The pickup ended up rolling over and landed on its top in the west ditch. The pickups lone passenger, Bryce Budz, was pronounced dead at the scene. Haack was airlifted by a LifeNet helicopter to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha to be treated for her injuries. Alcohol and speed are believed to have been factors in the crash. Lichtenburg said Budz and Haack used seat belts. The investigation is ongoing. In addition to the Saunders County Sheriffs Office and LifeNet, Mead Fire and Rescue, Yutan Fire and Rescue, and Wahoo Fire and Rescue were also on the scene. BLOOMINGTON A 29-year-old Bloomington man was released from police custody Monday after being indicted for delivery of methamphetamine. Dallas S. Swearingen appeared in a Monday bond court hearing on a Class 2 felony charge of unlawful delivery of meth, a Class 2 felony. He was arrested Wednesday. Charging documents stated on May 10, he delivered less than 5 grams of meth to an informant for Illinois State Police Task Force Six. Assistant State's Attorney David Fitt told the court his charge is not eligible for pretrial detention, but he requested that Swearingen be ordered to not consume or possess alcohol, cannabis or any nonprescribed controlled substance. Judge Casey Costigan approved Fitt's request, and he also advised Swearingen to abide by other statutory requirements following his release. Swearingen's arraignment hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 15. Climate change fueling crime wave in Mediterraneans olive oil industry BLOOMINGTON A McLean County judge is weighing whether to allow Barton McNeil's challenge to his 1999 murder conviction to proceed after his attorneys presented what they say is new evidence that implicates his ex-girlfriend, Misook Nowlin. McNeil, 64, is serving a 100-year prison sentence after he was convicted in the suffocation death of his 3-year-old daughter, Christina McNeil. McNeil has maintained his innocence and alleged that the murder was committed by Nowlin, who was later convicted of killing her 70-year-old mother-in-law. During the hearing overseen Tuesday by Judge William Yoder, McNeil was represented by attorneys Lauren Myerscough-Mueller and Karl Leonard of the Exoneration Project and John Hanlon, legal director of the Illinois Innocence Project. Nowlin was one of three witnesses called Tuesday by McNeil's legal team, who alleged that Nowlin told her then-husband, Don Wang, that she had killed Christina. Nowlin is serving a 55-year prison sentence for strangling Wang's mother, Linda Tyda, to death in 2011. Wang could not be found to testify, the attorneys said. The court did hear from Nowlin's daughter and her daughter's stepmother, both of whom submitted affidavits in 2013 saying that Wang told them about the alleged confession. Nowlin repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during her testimony, but she did state that she never killed Christina. Michelle Spencer, Nowlin's daughter, testified that Wang told her that Nowlin had killed Christina. She said that her stepmother, Dawn Nowlin, was also present during the conversation, which took place during a celebration of life event for Wang's mother. Dawn Nowlin elaborated, testifying that Wang said his former wife had confessed after the two had gotten in an argument. Assistant States Attorney Brad Rigdon stressed that McNeil had already been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and he emphasized that the scope of the hearing was limited to the evidence of whether Misook Nowlin had confessed to Wang, who repeated the statement to others. Rigdons sole witness was Steven Fanelli, a former detective with the Bloomington Police Department, whose testimony was supplemented by footage of an interview he conducted with Wang on Feb. 16, 2012. During the interview, Fanelli asked questions about Wangs relationship with Misook Nowlin, whether she had confessed to killing Christina and whether he had shared that information with anyone. Wang answered "no" to both questions but did mention that she had said McNeil was accusing her of Christinas death. Myerscough-Mueller, one of McNeil's attorneys, then showed another portion of the interview. In it, Wang said that if Fanelli had asked him whether he thought Nowlin had the capability of killing Christina, Wang would have said yes, because he knew that she had killed his mother. Also mentioned Tuesday were child welfare records from the Department of Child and Family Services. Misook Nowlin was convicted in 1998 of felony child abuse for reported violence toward her own daughter almost two months after Christina's death. Even if this information were to be presented to a jury, Rigdon said, it would not undermine the confidence in the verdict and it does not change the outcome because it would solely be seen as hearsay upon hearsay. Following the hearing, McNeil's cousin, Chris Ross, and a handful of other friends and family members met on the main floor of the McLean County Law and Justice Center to address the media and answer questions. That was quite a hearing that we saw up there, Ross said. We certainly hope that the judge weighs all of this in and does the right thing. Larry Tyda, the husband of murder victim Linda Tyda, told reporters that it was difficult to watch Misook Nowlin on the witness stand. He said he believes that his wifes death should have never happened. When Nowlin was on trial for killing his wife, Tyda met Ross, he said. It was then that he learned for the first time about McNeil and Christina. Id like to see the judge really consider this and give this man a chance on freeing him or giving him a new trial, Tyda said. John Hanlon, director of the Illinois Innocence Project, said that if Yoder declined to grant a new trial to McNeil, attorneys would appeal to the 4th District Appellate Court in Springfield. Barton McNeil is pretty remarkable in the sense of his attitude and strength, Hanlon said. He has the truth on his side that he is innocent and so that truth manifests with in terms of continued confidence that ultimately will be exposed for everyone. Judge Yoder took the case under advisement and said he will issue a written ruling. MORE COVERAGE: 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. 22, 1923: Walter and Maude Anderson of Lincoln were granted by Judge John Bedinger an adoption decree for Reva May Hiter, age 16. She is the daughter of Mr. Anderson, but since the death of his first wife, her mother, she had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Hiter. Since Mr. Anderson's second marriage, he has desired to have his daughter at home and provision was made yesterday by the formal adoption. 75 years ago Nov. 22, 1948: Mrs. John Garrett of Hudson gave birth to three babies within an hour Thursday in Mennonite Hospital. The boys are Donald and Ronald and the girl is Connie. The Garretts have four other children all under 5 years old. 50 years ago Nov. 22, 1973: The Illinois Commerce Commission gave a conditional go-ahead to the Illinois Power Co. to construct a nuclear-powered electricity plant near Clinton. The ICC order clears the way for construction of two generating stations, scheduled to open in the early 1980s if Illinois Power can meet certain other criteria. 25 years ago Nov. 22, 1998: The McLean County Historical Society has decided to boldly go where it has never gone before: into the twisted, two dimensional landscape of Mad Magazine, whose satirical slants on everything from current events to classic music may have made it a newsstand mainstay since its inception in 1952. "Humor in the Jugular Vein: The Art, Artists and Artifacts of Mad Magazine," will be open Dec. 5 through Jan. 10 at the Old Courthouse Museum, 200 Main St., Bloomington. It is part of the historical society's new traveling exhibits program. The court approved the life sentence of Michael MacKay, a Saskatchewan man in Canada, after killing his wife, Cindy MacKay, with a deadly drink of Gatorade and strychnine on Monday. The court reported that Cindy died in February 2020 after drinking the concoction with strychnine, a toxic pesticide used to kill gophers and coyotes on farms. Court Approves MacKay's Life Sentence MacKay pleaded guilty and was convicted of a second-degree murder. A judge in Battleford, Saskatchewan, has established a joint recommendation from Crown and defense lawyers that he would serve ten years before he has a chance at parole. According to the statement, MacKay had an affair with another woman for months before he killed his wife. Before MacKay poisoned his wife, he texted the other woman, "Goodbye will likely be in the next few days." Then, the day MacKay poisoned his wife was when he drove his two daughters to school and returned to their farm to mix Gatorade and strychnine for his wife. Cindy woke up feeling unwell that day and was left with their youngest child in the house. The court said that Cindy felt something off, and while brushing her teeth, the poison took effect. MacKay called 911, and later on, the paramedics arrived. Cindy was put into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital. She was taken by an air ambulance to a hospital in Saskatoon, where she died from multiple organ failure due to poisoning. The doctors said strychnine makes a person's muscles contract intensely and painfully until the person cannot breathe and eventually dies. The medical staff contacted RCMP as Cindy's death seemed suspicious. MacKay talked to the police and suggested that her death was suicide. "Nothing can undo the pain and suffering," he said in court. He admitted his shortcomings as a husband to Cindy and as a father to his children. Tyler Mack, Cindy's brother, said that Cindy was a genuinely great person and a wonderful mother to her three children. Krista Mack, Cindy's sister, added that she was relieved when MacKay admitted that he was guilty, and she believed that he was not truly sincere in the court. She said outside the courthouse that he was faking his whole little performance in the court. Read Also: Headless Body Found in New York Beach Weeks After Irish Filmmaker Ross McDonell Vanishes Family Mourns Cindy's Death Cindy's family were all wearing red shirts in honor of Cindy as Mackay continued to spread the word in their small community that she took her own life. Her family members told the court she was a loving and compassionate mother. They also described Cindy as a talented nurse, a beloved community member, and someone who loves animals dearly. They said that her death was painful, and it left them shattered and afraid. The family also said they could not go to the farm where MacKay lives, and he was with the children while out on bail. Mack said that they feared something would happen to the children as they knew Mackay was capable of harming someone. Furthermore, he said, "If a husband can do this to his wife, what stops anybody?" Related Article: Feds Seize 10 Million Doses of Deadly Drugs, Including Heart-Shaped Fentanyl Pills @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Answer: It wasnt pleasant. Flying in on an Apache twin-engine four-seat plane in 1959, it was so windy that day, the pilot was forced to land in a field next to the runway at the Bloomington airport, then out in the country before Bloomington sprawled eastward. The plane ultimately got stuck in mud and JFK had to trudge through it for a quarter-mile to get to the tarmac. Only for the Democratic Party! he announced to a cheering crowd, still with a smile and a thumbs-up as he emerged from the field, his shoes covered in mud. The Chief Executive Officer of the InterCity State Transport Corporation, Nana Akomea has commended the Akufo-Addo government for not imposing taxes on the importation and assembly of electric cars in the country. The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta delivering the 2024 budget statement at Parliament, announced that the government, as part of its fiscal measures, has decided to waive import duties on electric vehicles designated for public transportation for 8 years. In the same vein, import duties on semi-knocked down and completely knocked down Electric vehicles imported by registered electric vehicles' assembly companies in Ghana for 8 years have also been waived. Speaking on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" show Tuesday morning, Nana Akomea was thrilled by this announcement. To him, the tax relief will be extremely beneficial to the electric vehicle industry as it will encourage major investment in the sector. "It will help and ensure that, in the next five to ten years, the electric industry in Ghana will grow", he said. 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. Featured Video On World Toilet Day which was marked Novermber 19, Safisana Ghana Limited, a waste management firm in Accra, appealed for government support to bolster effective waste management nationwide. The General Manager, Asilevi Elipklim, emphasized the plea during a sensitization program organized by the company and the Ashaiman Municipal Assembly to educate Ashaiman residents on the importance of proper sanitation and waste treatment. Mr. Elipklim, speaking to UTV news, underscored the necessity for external aid to assist waste management companies in realizing SDG goal 6, aiming for universal access to clean water and sanitation. "The theme for this year's Toilet Day celebration is "Accelerating Change". It means that, we are growing at a slow pace in achieving the SDG goal 6. The regenerative approach to sanitation and Valorisation of waste has not gained much traction in Ghana. We need to do more in terms of closing the loop for waste. We can expand our scope to achieve this if we get support from the Government, NGO's and individuals" Asilevi said. The Municipal Chief Executive, Albert Boakye Okyere, asserted that households lacking toilet facilities must take corrective action or be subject to legal consequences. " When you look at Ashaiman now, you realise there has been an improvement in our sanitation but we still have some recalcitrant residents who go against the law. Such people will not be spared. The household toilet policy is not solely funded by landlords. The Assembly and its partners pay a percentage so households who lack toilet facilities will be taken on" he said. Safisana Ghana limited is a waste management company that converts faecal matter into the generation of power. Apart from converting faecal matter into power to support the national grid, the company also produces compost fertilizer from the same faecal matter to support agriculture in the country. Source: Philipa Atanga/Court Reporter/Despite Media 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. Featured Video On November 19, 2023, the United States Government through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) collaborated with the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) for World Fisheries Day. To commemorate the day, GBC organized a special fisheries-themed edition of their popular What Do You Know? quiz. The event was held as part of the USAID-supported Feed the Future Ghana Fisheries Recovery activity, to increase the youths interest in the fisheries sector, highlight the important role the sector plays, and encourage the publics participation in protecting Ghanas fisheries and marine resources. St. Augustine's College - Winner Four senior high schools from the four coastal regions of Ghana including the Accra Academy (Greater Accra Region), Keta Senior High School (Volta Region), Ahantaman Girls Senior High School (Western Region), and St. Augustines College (Central Region) participated in the competition. The program was broadcast live on Ghana Television (GTV), the national public broadcaster and watched across the country. It was also streamed on social media platforms. St. Augustine's College won the contest, while Accra Academy, Ahantaman Girls Senior High School, and Keta Senior High School were first, second and third runners up-respectively. The winning school was awarded trophy, and all the participating schools received cash prizes ranging from 5,000 Ghana cedis for the winner and 2,000 Ghana cedis for the third runner up. Participating schools with Quiz Master The U.S. is Ghanas largest bilateral partner with over $200 million in support in the last year for agriculture, economic growth, education, governance, security, and more. USAID has worked with government officials and local stakeholders to support the implementation of directives for industrial trawlers to use sustainable fishing gear, and to help coastal communities identify solutions to help protect small scale fishing and mitigate climate change impacts. World Fisheries Day is commemorated annually on November 21, to raise awareness about the critical role that fisheries play in providing food, livelihoods. It is also a day to highlight the importance of fisheries, promote sustainable fishing practices, and acknowledge the important role of fisherfolk and fishing communities. About USAID USAID is the lead U.S. government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential. USAID has supported Ghana in increasing food security, improving basic health care, enhancing access to quality basic education, and strengthening local governance to benefit all Ghanaian people. 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. Featured Video Olam Agri, the countrys leading supply chain manager, observed this years World Childrens Day by holding collaborative activities with pupils of HAANAA K.K.M.A. Basic School in the Kpone Katamanso Municipal Area. The initiative, spearheaded by the companys Grains Business, producers of market-leading flour brands like First Choice and Royal Gold, was put together to foster awareness about child rights and responsibilities in the community and to encourage and positively influence the lives of children through mentorship. World Childrens Day is UNICEFs annual day of action for children and marks the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on November 20, 1959. This years theme is, For Every Child, Every Right. a new call to action that underscores the commitment to uphold the rights of every child everywhere in the world. Over 797 pupils and 36 staff from HAANAA Basic School were engaged by officials from the company. A key aspect of Olam Agris engagement at the Municipal Basic School in Kpone Katamanso was the highly instructive educational interactions with the pupils on personal and environmental hygiene and the special sessions in practical, hands-on baking techniques, as presented by the companys bakery team. In addition, Olam Agris Grains business seized the opportunity to provide breakfast to the children and gifted them some stationery, and various products from the company. Baibhav Biswas, Business Head of Olam Agris Grains Business, said, This event holds profound importance. By actively engaging in mentorship activities and promoting child rights education, we aim to contribute to shaping the future of these young minds. The significance lies in fostering a supportive environment where mentorship becomes a guiding force, instilling confidence, and empowering these children with the skills they need to navigate life's challenges. The school authorities, the teaching staff, and particularly the pupils expressed gratitude for Olam Agris visit and acknowledged its importance to the school and the community at large. Mrs. Doris Mensah, the Municipal Education Girl Child Coordinator, emphasized the significance of World Children's Day in promoting a culture of learning and mentorship, It is your responsibility to make your books your friends. The things you learn today will go a long way to aid your growth. We encourage you to take advantage of this day to learn about your rights and your responsibilities as a child. Olam Agri is a differentiated food, feed and fibre agri-business with a global origination footprint, processing capabilities and deep understanding of market needs built over 33 years. With a strong presence in high-growth emerging markets and products across grains & oilseeds, animal feed and protein, rice, edible oils, specialty grains & seeds, cotton, wood products, rubber and commodity financial services, Olam Agri is at the heart of global food and agri-trade flows with more than 38 million metric tonnes in volume traded annually. 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. Featured Video Ghana HIV and AIDS Network (GHANET), in collaboration with the Network of Persons living with HIV (NAP+), and other stakeholders, are organizing a health walk to among others, create more awareness HIV Self-Testing (HIVST) tool kit that was launched recently and also mark World AIDS Day (WAD) which falls on December 1. This year, the theme for the WAD celebration is Let Communities Lead and it is intended to ginger up persons who are infected and most affected by HIV and AIDS to take up roles and initiatives that can help end the disease as a public health concern by 2030. On Saturday, November 25, 2023, the walk will start from Ayi Mensa at 0600 hours and end at Peduase where there will be solidary statements from government officials, development partners and civil society organization leaders, as well as persons living with HIV (PLHIV). Special dignitaries who have been invited to participate in the walk include: Hon Dr. Kwaku Afriyie (Representative of H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on the GAC Governing Board); Hon. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu (Minister for Health), Dr. Kyeremeh Atuahene (Director-General, GAC); Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye (Director General, GHS); Dr. Leticia Adelaide Appiah (Executive Director, National Population Council); Mr. Hector Sucilla Perez (Country Director UNAIDS); Prof. Francis Kasolo (Country Representative, WHO), Mr. Daniel Craun-Selka (PEP and Hon. Jennifer Dede Afagbedzi (Municipal Chief Executive, La-Nkwantanang-Madina) who will be hosting the event. Some of the side attractions include: onsite colour splashing; onsite face painting; live brass band music; live gyama music; live instructor-led aerobics; free condom distribution; free HIV self-testing kits; social networking; photo opportunities; and kenkey party!!! Across the country, similar walks will be held in some regional capitals. The general public is invited. Background In 1988 the UNAIDS designated the 1st of December as World AIDS Day (WAD) in remembrance of persons who had lost their lives to the then ravaging HIV and AIDS menace. The day was also to be used to create awareness about the pandemic and encourage people to protect and prevent themselves from getting infected. The initiative was embraced by countries around the world and, since then, it has always been celebrated with both global and locally adapted themes. Earlier, in July this year, the Minister for Health, Hon. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, officially launched HIVST in Ghana at a ceremony that was hosted by the Mayor of Accra, Hon. Elizabeth Sackey, and chaired by Nii Ahele Nunoo III (Abolo Mantse, Ga State Atofotse) at the Omanye Aba Hall of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA). At the time of the launch, the only approved form of self-testing, as per the countrys guidelines, was the oral method. Thus, with the support of Global Fund, the Ministry of Health (MoH), through the Ghana Health Service (GHS), successfully piloted the use of Oraquick HIVST in about 50 districts. Whilst the pilot was ongoing, other HIVST methods were evaluated by the National AIDS/STI Control Programme (NACP) to expand HIVST options in Ghana. Owing to the success of the evaluations, the country has now revised its guidelines to include blood-based methods of HIVST. This revision has now opened a window of opportunity for companies such as Abbott to introduce their CheckNOW HIVST in the country, giving Ghanaians a variety of choices. CheckNOW is a blood-based method of HIVST which gives test results in just 15 minutes. It is based on a 3rd generation HIVST technology which detects HIV-1 and HIV-2 antibodies in a fingerstick blood sample. The NACP has expressed confidence that the multiplication of HIVST testing options will help the country to achieve the first 95 of the 95-95-95 UNAIDS targets. Currently, only about 72% of the estimated 354,000 persons living with HIV in Ghana know their status. This means that about 100,000 PLHIV are not aware of their status and may be inadvertently spreading the virus. 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. Featured Video South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa has welcomed the deal between Israel and Hamas for a four-day pause in fighting. The start of the pause is due to be announced within 24 hours. As part of the deal, Hamas will free 50 hostages it seized last month; Israel will release about 150 Palestinian prisoners. In a statement, Mr Ramaphosa said: "As a member of the international community that stands for peace, justice and the rule of international law in all parts of the world, South Africa welcomes the agreement reached. It is my hope that the achievement of this pause will strengthen efforts to achieve an outright end to the current conflict." South Africa's government - led by the African National Congress (ANC) - is a long-standing ally of the Palestinians. It has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by mid-December over Israel's military operation in Gaza. The government accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza. Israel has said that it is acting in self-defence. It launched a major military operation in Gaza in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas on 7 October, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 others taken hostage. Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says at least 14,000 people have been killed in the territory since Israel launched its retaliatory campaign. Source: BBC 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. Featured Video Former Head of Linguistics Dept at the University of Ghana, Professor Kofi Agyekum has cautioned the New Patriotic Party against sacking four prominent members for supporting Alan Kyerematen, an independent candidate. The four; Hopeson Adorye, a defeated parliamentary candidate, Nana Ohene Ntow, a former General Secretary, Boniface Abubakar Saddique, a former Zongo Minister and Yaw Buaben Asamoah, former Adentan MP, have been axed from the party over their conduct which, to the leadership of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is a breach of their constitution. According to a statement signed by the General Secretary, Justin Kodua Frimpong, despite their flagrant breach of the Partys Constitution particularly Articles 3(5)(A)(4) and 3(9)(1), the afore-named men still hold themselves out as members of the NPP but for the avoidance of doubt, Article 3(5)(A)(4) of the NPP Constitution enjoins all members of the Party to abide by and publicly uphold the decisions of the Party. The statement further indicated that Article 3(9)(1) of the Constitution makes it clear that a Member of the Party, who stands as an independent candidate against the officially elected member of the Party, or who joins or declares his or her support for another Political Party, or for an independent candidate, when the Party has sponsored a candidate in a general or by-election, automatically forfeits his or her membership of the Party. In line with these constitutional provisions, it is the view of the NPP that Hopeson Adorye, Nana Ohene Ntow, Boniface Abubakar Saddique and Yaw Buaben Asamoa have AUTOMATICALLY FORFEITED their membership of the Party. They are, therefore, no longer members of the Party, the statement concluded. But Professor Kofi Agyekum, popularly called 'Opanyin Agyekum', is of a strong opinion that the New Patriotic Party could have had a better way of addressing this conflict. He sought to know whether the party engaged the dismissed members before taking such a strict decision. To him, though the NPP may feel right about their action, they however should note that these persons have loved ones whose votes are as important as theirs if they want to break the eight-year governance cycle. He reproved the party stressing if they don't take care, their decision may have a big blowback on them. "They must understand that if they really want to break the eight, they should iron out their differences...Where they have reached, if they don't take care and continue their strict enforcement of their laws, the same laws will be impediment to them", Opanyin Agyekum admonished the NPP on Peace FM's morning show "Kokrokoo". 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. Featured Video The National Organizer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Henry Nana Boakye has called on former President John Dramani Mahama to rethink his 24-hour economy policy. He told NEAT FMs morning show, Ghana Montie that the NDCs flagbearer does not understand the 24-hour economy policy he is proposing. Nana B, as affectionately called in politics claimed the proposed policy by Mr Mahama is already being implemented in Ghana. He [John Mahama] doesnt understand the policy he is saying. The system is such that people can run their businesses 24 hours in Ghana already. This cannot be his policy. He said. According to Nana B, What Ghana need now is digitalization. This is why Dr Bawumia is championing that course. Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/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. Featured Video The Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Honorable Dr. Henry Kwabena Kokofu, is among those being considered as a potential running mate for Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). This portal assembles information that despite the media attention given to individuals such as Education Minister Yaw Adutwum, Energy Minister Mathew Opoku Prempeh, and Chief of Staff Frema Osei Opare, among others, regarding the running mate position, Dr. Henry Kokofu, barring any last-minute hitch, could emerge as a possible candidate. Dr. Kokofu, who has recently come to the attention of the vice president, is the dark horse in the contest, according to credible sources with close ties to Dr. Bawumia. In addition to being Ashanti, which seems to be the primary criterion for choosing a running mate, the EPA director has extensive political experience; he has served as a polling station executive, constituency chairperson, member of parliament, and now EPA director. Consequently, he is exceptionally qualified for the position. He is also said to have a calm and affable demeanor that endears him to people, a trait most required to maximize the candidates Ashanti votes. More importantly, we gather that the Vice Presidents heightened interest in Dr Kokofu is attributed to his expertise in environmental sustainability among others. Profile Hon. Dr. Henry Kwabena Kokofu, Esq is the Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the lead body that oversees and governs Ghanas environment. He was the former Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Integrated Iron and Steel Development Corporation (GIISDEC). Henry was a Member of the Parliament of Ghana and served on the Parliamentary Select Committee on Lands and Forestry from 2013 to 2017. He is currently serving on several Boards including the Petroleum Commission, Lands Commission, Ghana Maritime Authority, Environmental Protection Agency, Public-Private Partnership, and Public Investment Program Working Committee, and is the Special Envoy for the Ghana Presidency of Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF). 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. Featured Video (Photo : GIANLUCA CHININEA/AFP via Getty Images) Courtroom monitors display the defendants listening to the verdict at the maxi mafia-trial in Lamezia Terme on November 20, 2023 where some 200 people were convicted in the so-called Rinascita Scott trial against alleged members of the 'Ndrangheta mafia in the Calabrian province of Vibo Valentia and the mob's white-collar facilitators. An Italian court has handed down a landmark verdict in what has become the country's largest mafia trial in three decades. Over 200 members of the notorious 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate have been sentenced to a total of 2,200 years in prison, marking a significant blow to the criminal organization, as per CNN. Unveiling the Global Reach of Italy's Most Dangerous Mafia The trial, which began in January 2021 and unfolded in a specially constructed courtroom in the southern Italian town of Lamezia Terme, involved more than 400 lawyers representing the accused and over 900 witnesses providing testimony. The 'Ndrangheta, while less well-known internationally than some other Italian mafia groups, is considered one of the most dangerous and powerful criminal organizations in the world. Over the years, it has expanded its reach far beyond its origins in the impoverished region of Calabria, gaining control of much of Europe's cocaine trade and establishing connections with criminal entities across the globe. The verdicts in this trial represent a significant blow to the 'Ndrangheta, particularly by imprisoning leading members of the Mancuso crime family, a prominent 'Ndrangheta faction. The prosecution argued that this faction had strong links to criminal organizations in Italy, the United States, and other countries. The sentences included five life imprisonments and three 30-year sentences, underscoring the severity of the crimes committed by the convicted individuals. Among those found guilty were high-profile figures such as Giancarlo Pittelli, a former Forza Italia lawmaker, and former police chief Giorgio Naselli. The trial also saw the conviction of 42 women, a record for a mafia trial, highlighting the diverse nature of the criminal organization's membership. The charges against the accused ranged from extortion, money laundering, and corruption to usury, murder, and involvement in a criminal organization. This trial exposed the extent of the 'Ndrangheta's influence over local politics, governments, and even a former member of Italy's Parliament. It demonstrated how the criminal syndicate not only controlled the local economy but also maintained deep ties to cocaine trafficking and exerted influence through powerful politicians. This operation, known as "Rinascita Scott" or Rebirth Scott, paid tribute to a US drug agent who had relentlessly pursued 'Ndrangheta mobsters. It reflects the decades-long effort by Italian authorities to combat the influence of organized crime in the country. While such crackdowns are essential, experts warn that the 'Ndrangheta remains deeply rooted in southern Italy, making it challenging to eradicate, according to The New York Times. Read Also: House Speaker Mike Johnson Plans to Publicly Release 44K Hours of Jan. 6 Footage Ndrangheta Trial Reveals Cracks in Mafia Loyalty One notable aspect of this trial was the cooperation of some younger relatives of 'Ndrangheta families who collaborated with prosecutors, betraying their familial ties. This cooperation sent a strong message that some individuals prioritize their communities over blood ties, challenging the core of the mafia's strength. The 'Ndrangheta trial showcased the organization's ability to form alliances with law enforcement officials, institutions, and national politicians, highlighting its influence's depth and transformation into a structural component of global capitalism. In addition to the mafia members, this trial included several non-mafia individuals, including a high-ranking police official, mayors, public servants, and businessmen. This marks a departure from previous trials and underscores the need to address the broader issues that allow organized crime to thrive, such as unemployment, education, and trust in institutions. While this historic trial represents a significant step in the fight against the 'Ndrangheta, it is clear that more work needs to be done to uproot the criminal organization completely. Building trust in institutions, providing economic opportunities, and challenging the criminal mentality are all essential components of Italy's ongoing battle against organized crime. Senior state prosecutor Nicola Gratteri, who has dedicated over three decades to fighting the mafia, played a pivotal role in this operation. His relentless pursuit of justice and the collaboration of individuals willing to break with tradition have brought the 'Ndrangheta to its knees in this trial. However, the fight against organized crime is far from over, and Italy must remain vigilant in its efforts to dismantle criminal networks and create a safer future for its citizens, South China Morning Post reported. Related Article: US Claims Israel Hostage Release Deal Is Closer Than Ever; IDF Continues Pounding Hezbollah, Iran's Other Terrorist Groups @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The King and Overlord of Gonja, Jire Kuunu-bi I has enskinned Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as Konukolewura - the Chief of Unity - in recognition of the Vice President's tolerance and unifying traits. At a colourful ceremony in Damongo on Tuesday during Dr. Bawumia's visit to thank the Yagbonwura for his support and prayers following his election as flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Overlord of Gonjaland said he has observed Dr. Bawumia's character and has come to the realization that the Vice President is a unifier for all and sundry in the country. He therefore explained that the chieftaincy title "Konukolewura" which means Chief of Unity is in recognition of Dr. Bawumia's remarkable traits and also meant to encourage him. Congratulating Dr. Bawumia on his historic election as flagbearer and leader of the NPP, the Yagbonwura expressed optimism that Dr. Bawumia will progress further. On his part, Dr. Bawumia, who revealed he privately sought the blessing and prayers of the Yagbonwura before publicly declaring his interest in the NPP flagbearership contest, expressed gratitude to the Yagbonwura. "Yagbonwura, your prayers have been answered and by the grace of God, I have been elected the Flagbearer and leader of the NPP for next year's general elections." "As a son, before I went for the contest, I came to you and sought your blessings and support. It is appropriate to come back and thank you for the prayers you offered." Dr. Bawumia also assured the Yagbonwura of his unflinching loyalty and dedication. Yagbonwura, I have been your son since your days as Tulewura and I want to assure you of my continued loyalty, service and dedication as your son, the Vice President stressed. He offered to renovate the Jakpa Palace, the seat of the Gonja Kingdom, which is said to be in a bad state. 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. Featured Video In a recent interview I was asked the following question Will the North be the battleground following the election of Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and John Mahama from the North? The question came up following the election of Dr Bawumia as the presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP). The question goes beyond political competition in the north. It also brings up the issue of social identity and how it shapes electoral choices. In this specific case, how much does our ethnic identity matter when it comes to who we vote for? Does it matter if the candidate shares the same ethnicity identity with the voter? Let me first answer the question of the competitiveness of the northern regions in the coming elections and then answer the question of social identity and voter choice. The North as a battleground? Going into any election, the political strategy is to protect your home turf (stronghold) and win the swing regions (those regions whose votes have alternated between the NDC and the NPP in our eight elections). But part of election strategy is also to see how many votes you can poach from your opponents home turf. Do political parties pursue an active strategy of choosing a candidate that allows them to poach voters from their opponents strongholds? If you look at the presidential candidates chosen by the NPP and NDC over the years, I will argue that the answer is an unequivocal no. I believe the main motivation of party delegates has been the candidate they believe gives them the best chance of winning the election. Where identity has come is the selection of the running mate because our parties have generally pursued a strategy of regional balancing a presidential candidate from the south with a running mate from the north or a presidential candidate from the north with a running mate from the south. So, will the north be a battle ground? Let me answer the question this way. Has anyone paid close attention to the performance of the NPP in the northern regions, their main opponents home turf? This is captured well by Peace FMs Ghana elections database. In the Northern Region, where they have traditionally performed well, the party has increased its share of the vote from 39 per cent (1996) to 46 per cent (2020). In the Upper East Region, they have increased their share of the vote from 17 per cent (1996) to 34 per cent (2020). In the Upper West Region, they have increased their share of the vote from 11 per cent (1996) to 29 per cent (2020). In the newly created Northeast Region, they have increased their share of the vote from 12 per cent (1996) to 51 per cent (2020). The NPP has already been competing well against the NDC in the northern regions. Not that they are or plan to, but it is my opinion that they do not need to play up the ethnicity of Dr Bawumia to strengthen their hand. But as James Carville, a United States political strategist, once said all is fair, love, war, and running for president the temptation may be there to engage in identity politics. Before any of our parties succumb to this temptation lets reflect together on the second question. Do voters care about ethnicity? I dont believe they do to the extent that some believe they do. In Afrobarometer Round 7 (2017), when Ghanaians were asked the main reason for their choice of president in the 2016 election, only two per cent said it was because of a shared ethnic identity with the candidate. If ethnicity really matters, how does one explain the 2000 and 2004 losses of the late President Mills in the Central Region? Or how does one explain the improved performance of the NPP in the northern regions while competing against a candidate from one of the regions in that part of the country? The role of the running mate may be limited but I cant help but ask. If ethnicity really matters, how does one explain the NDCs loss in the Central Region in 2016 and 2020 when they had running mates from the region? Or the NPPs loss in 2008 and 2012 when the party had a running mate from the north? This for me is a clear indication that ethnicity has a very limited role in our election. What should matter? I dont deny that political parties all over the world make both overt and subtle appeals to the social identities of voters during elections. And I dont deny that some voters respond positively to these appeals. But what should matter most? The bread-and-butter issues (jobs, economy, cost of living, etc.) or our social identities? Voters will have the final say in 2024 but I hope bread-and-butter issues are what matters the most. NB: The writer is a Democracy and Development fellow at the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana). Source: graphiconline.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. Featured Video The 2024 flag bearer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has stated that former President John Mahama has nothing new to offer Ghanaians. He said the records of Mr Mahama while in government were nothing to write home about. Dr Bawumia said Mr Mahama, who is the National Democratic Congress (NDC) flag bearer for the 2024 election, had the opportunity to govern the country but he could not leave behind any meaningful legacy. Thank you tour Addressing a mammoth rally of NPP supporters in Tamale last Monday as part of his tour of the Northern Region, he (Bawumia) said as a Vice-President he had brought a lot of ideas and interventions such as the digitisation of every facet of the economy that was transforming lives and growth of the nation. "Today, John Mahama says he has new ideas and what are the new ideas. When he was a President what was he able to do in this country?" he quizzed. Dr Bawumia is touring the North East and Northern Regions to thank the delegates and all party faithful for the love shown him during the recent presidential primaries. Thousands of supporters and sympathisers of the NPP thronged the Tamale Jubilee Park for the rally. oining him on the tour included the National Chairman of the NPP, Stephen Ayensu Ntim; Majority Leader, Osei Kyei- Mensah- Bonsu; Ministers of State, government appointees, party bigwigs and parliamentary aspirants. 24 Hour economy The leader of the NDC had pledged to establish a 24-hour economy as a key pillar of his campaign for the 2024 presidential election. He argued that such a policy would contribute to economic growth and job creation, especially for the youth. However, addressing the rally, Dr Bawumia described the former President's 24-hour economy campaign promise as "laughable". He said the promise was nothing new because currently many businesses and organisations both in the public and private sectors of the economy are already operating 24 hours. "He says he wants a 24-hour economy; he doesnt even understand that promise. Today in Ghana, our hospitals, electricity company, transport companies, chop bars and many other organisations work 24 hours, our electricity company works 24 hours, dont they? Today, because of digitalisation, you can transfer money and receive money within 24 hours, so he doesnt understand his own policy. It doesnt make sense, he chastised. New ideas When given the nod in the 2024 general election, the NPP flag bearer said he would bring onboard new ideas and vision to transform the economy and create more jobs for the teeming unemployed youth. I will bring new ideas, vision and policies to transform Ghana. John Mahama is the past, Dr Bawumia is the future. If John Mahama were there, we would be having a dumsor economy. We cant have a 24-hour economy with dumsor and so vote for me in 2024, he noted. He called on Ghanaians to have faith in him and give him the mandate in the upcoming elections to enable him to transform the economy. Unity For his part, the Northern Regional Chairman of the NPP, Mohammed Samba Bantima, called for unity among the rank and file of the party to enable the party to emerge victorious in the upcoming election. He said the only way the party can break the eight is to remain united, bury our differences and work hard". Source: graphiconline.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. Featured Video 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: President Joe Biden speaks to members of the media before boarding Air Force One in Norfolk, Va., Nov. 19, 2023. Biden declared an emergency over lead contamination in the U.S. Virgin Islands water after tests on St. Croix revealed levels more than 100 times the limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Credit: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File President Joe Biden declared an emergency over lead-in-water contamination in the U.S. Virgin Islands earlier this week after tests on St. Croix revealed levels more than 100 times the limits set by the Environmental Protection Agencyamong the worst results a U.S. community has seen in decades. "On a personal level, it's been frightening and frustrating," said resident Frandelle Gerard, executive director of Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism, Inc. Officials told residents to stop using their taps and began distributing vouchers for bottled water. Lead can have devastating effects on childhood development, behavior and IQ scores. But experts consulted by The Associated Press said the frightening results may be false because they came from testing that does not meet EPA standards. "The data should be thrown into the garbage," said Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech lead and water expert who helped identify the lead problems in Flint, Michigan. If the information given to St. Croix residents turns out to be bad, it won't be the first time that's happened. Poor information often plagues communities, and they are often majority-Black communities, facing lead crises, leaving people unsure what to believe. In Flint, officials initially concealed high lead levels. When levels spiked in Newark, officials emphasized the safety of the city's reservoirs even though it is lead pipesnot the sourcethat are usually the problem. In Benton Harbor, Michigan, residents waited months for officials to confirm that filters truly work, relying on bottled water. On the Caribbean island of St. Croix, officials avoided some of those pitfalls and quickly told residents of the results. The governor declared an emergency. "This is not something that we shy away from talking about," said Andrew Smith, head of the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority. Edwards does not believe the sky-high results reflect reality and said the problem is how the samples were collected. For lead testing, workers usually take water from a household faucet. But the samples that tested so high on St. Croix were collected from the meter. "When you (unscrew) it, you are literally ripping the leaded-brass apart and a chunk of leaded-brass gets in your sample," he said. It produces artificially high results. Tom Neltner, a chemical and lead expert at the Environmental Defense Fund, agreed that testing from the water meter isn't accurate. "There's a lot of oddities" about how St. Croix's sampling was done, he said. Parents in St. Croix therefore still have no idea how much lead their kids were consuming. Here's what is known: In September, officials tested in the normal way, at faucets, following EPA lead testing rules. Those results showed the water was safe. But island residents, who had long dealt with discolored water, said the color was getting even worse in recent months. So officials took more samples, this time at the meter, to see whether the utility's pipes were the problem. It is some of these tests that first recorded astronomically high lead levels. "We were all shocked and surprised by the results," Smith said. Retesting found results were still too high. Other locations including two schools, however, were low. A more definitive answer should come soon. Local and federal officials did detailed testing to find the root cause in early November. A final report is expected in mid-December. Smith said about 3,400 homes are affected and that the utility worked with EPA on the sampling. Even though the tests didn't follow the normal procedure, EPA water expert Christine Ash said "out of an abundance of caution, we are recommending that folks who use (utility) water piped to their homes not consume the water until we're able to do further investigation to identify if there is a potential source of lead and what it might be." Fortunately on St. Croix, that doesn't include everyone. A lot of people rely on rainwater they collect in cisterns. On the mainland, in many cities, lead pipes are the main threat to drinking water. That's not the problem on the island, however. Instead, it's brass fittings that contain lead and can corrode into the water, Smith said. And regardless of the test results, the water system needs attention and fixing. Smith and his colleagues are flushing water through it. When people don't use the water, it sits and can pick up contaminants. They are also fixing how they treat their water so it is less corrosive and working to replace components that contain lead. That replacement work might take 12 to 18 months, Smith said. Plus, the island's water system is old and in the coming years, major upgrades are planned. Gerard said people on the island are overwhelmed. "There's this sense of well, what's next for St. Croix?" she said, adding that residents have endured a devastating hurricane, the pandemic and water contamination from a refinery, all in recent years. Many people gave up on tap water long ago, she said, and it's hard to know what to make of these latest developments. "As a fairly literate person, reading the reports has almost left us with more questions than answers." Many people probably don't understand just how high these lead test results are, she said. As for the temporary measure of flushing lots of water through the pipes to reduce lead, it's ill-suited to the island, she said. "We're a water conserving society," Gerard said. "Water is a precious commodity." 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. 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: Sacrificed equids from the courtyard of Casas del Turunuelo site (Badajoz, Spain). Iron Age Tartessian Culture. Yard discovered and excavated since 2017. Credit: Construyendo Tarteso, CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) The Iron Age site of Casas del Turunuelo was used repeatedly for ritualized animal sacrifice, according to a multidisciplinary study published November 22, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by M Pilar Iborra Eres of the Institut Valencia de Conservacio, Restauracio i Investigacio, Spain, Sebastian Celestino Perez of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Spain, and their colleagues. Archaeological sites with evidence of major animal sacrifices are rarely known from the Iron Age of the Mediterranean region, and there is a gap between information offered by written sources and by the archaeological record. This makes it difficult to establish a clear understanding of the patterns and protocols of this practice. In this study, researchers examine a well-preserved example of mass animal sacrifice from an Iron Age building in southwest Spain known as Casas del Turunuelo, associated with Tartessos and dating toward the end of the 5th Century BCE. The authors examined and dated 6,770 bones belonging to 52 sacrificed animals which were buried in three sequential phases. The identified animals were predominantly adult horses, with smaller numbers of cattle and pigs and one dog. In the first two phases, skeletons were mostly complete and unaltered, but in the third phase, skeletons (except equids) show signs of having been processed for food, suggesting that some sort of meal accompanied this ritual. These data indicate that this space was used repeatedly over several years for sacrificial rituals whose practices and purposes varied. This case study allows researchers to establish details about ritual protocols at this site, including the intentional selection of adult animals rather than young ones, and the importance of fire evidenced by the presence of burned plant and animal remains. Casas del Turunuelo also exhibits unique features compared to other sites, such as the high abundance of sacrificed horses. This study advances efforts to contextualize ritual animal sacrifices across Europe. The authors add, "This study highlights the role of mass animal sacrifices in the context of Iron Age European societies. Zooarchaeological, taphonomic and microstratigraphic investigations shed light on animal sacrifice practices and the Tartessian ritual behavior at the Iron Age site of Casas del Turunuelo (Badajoz, Spain)." More information: Mass animal sacrifice at casas del Turunuelo (Guarena, Spain): A unique Tartessian (Iron Age) site in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, PLoS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0293654 , journals.plos.org/plosone/arti journal.pone.0293654 Journal information: PLoS ONE 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: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain After years of working on bringing back one of the most popular extinct animalsthe dodoColossal Biosciences has found a home for its bird in Mauritius in a new partnership with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation. The Dallas-based company has previously announced it's trying to wake the Tasmanian tiger and wooly mammoth from their eternal slumber. Colossal's progress on the dodo would lead the bird back to its native home in East Africa and potentially give the company the power to save other soon-to-be extinct species, Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences. "Our goal with all the species we work on is to bring them back into their natural habitat," Lamm said. "This endorsement and collaboration from the Mauritian Wildlife is a big testament to the incredible work that not only our scientific teams are doing to bring back the dodo but the team to successfully wild them back into their natural habitats." Though Colossal still doesn't have a timetable for the dodo's return, its comeback could turn the tides for birds, like the pink pigeon, which are close to meeting the same fate, Matt James, Colossal's chief animal officer, said. The pink pigeon, a 15-inch tall herbivorous bird native to Mauritius, is also facing extinction due to habitat degradation, diseases and inbreeding, according to the Natural History Museum. "The dodo is going to help the pink pigeon," he said. "As we develop these Colossal de-extinction programs, we're identifying species that would benefit directly from those technologies. All the technologies that we're going to develop around the dodo have become tools that we can start to apply to the pink pigeon and other pigeon conservation projects." There are currently only about 500 pink pigeons left in Mauritius, according to the company. The technology Lamm, James and the Colossal team are using to resurrect its species from the dead is genomic editing technology; a method to alter the DNA of a cell or organism. By teaming up with Mauritius, Colossal thinks it will be able to advance its efforts even further, James said. "We can apply these high-quality reference genomes with no gaps to all these amazing species that exist today, like the Mauritius pink pigeon, but that's a first step," he said. "Mammalian cloning was unlocked in the late 90s but that doesn't exist today for avian species. So investing in places where we can actually use new methods to achieve cloning-like technologies for birds is really integral." The company is pursuing its dreams of bringing back the dodo with heavy backing behind it. In Janurary, Colossal landed an investment from over a dozen companies, including Dallas private equity financier Victor Vescovo and CIA-backed In-Q-Tel. Lamm said he expects Colossal to put members of its team in Maurutis next year to work with the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation and the local government. The collaboration between Mauritius and Colossal may help dispel some of the Jurassic Park comparisons the company has received in the past, Lamm said. "We've heard all of those comments over the years," Lamm said. "But we have an opportunity to do it for good reasons because when you remove an animal from an ecosystem, that ecological void is felt. We're not out to build things that shouldn't exist. We're focused on undoing the sins of the past and bringing back species to their native homes that mankind had a role in its demise." 2023 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. 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: Multiple overlapping dahliagrams. Credit: Michael Frachetti/Washington University Spurred by the current climate crisis, there has been heightened attention within the scientific community in recent years to how past climate variation contributed to historic human migration and other behaviors. Now, an international group of scientistsincluding archaeologists, historians, climate scientists, paleo-scientists, a volcanologist and othersare calling for a strengthened commitment to transdisciplinary collaboration to study past and present human-environmental interactions, which they say will advance our understanding of these complex, entangled histories. Their recommendations were published Nov. 22 in Science Advances. In doing so, the group has introduced a new tool, the "dahliagram," to enable researchers to analyze and visualize a wide array of quantitative and qualitative knowledge from diverse disciplinary sources and epistemological backgrounds. "Backed by higher-resolution data concerning past climates, environmental change is increasingly seen as a crucial factor in debates concerning social, political and economic changeand human behavior generallythrough time and space," said Michael Frachetti, a professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and a lead author of the paper. "Yet interdisciplinary attempts to cross data from history, climate science, archaeology and ecology to model past social-environmental interactions are challenged by mismatched units of measure and degrees of uncertainty," The dahliagram attempts to overcome those challenges by creating a universal and visual language to enable cross-disciplinary collaboration. Moreover, it allows researchers to compress vast amounts of data into a single, easy-to-interpret model. Named for the dahlia flower whose petals bloom in concentric arrays, the dahliagram's "petals" illustrate the relative impact of different pull and push factors contributing to human behavior over time. For example, the petals could represent the climate and environment, conflicts, politics and power, technology and resource availability. These are just examples, though. One of the benefits of the tool is that it is fully customizable to meet each study's needs. According to Frachetti, the tool is meant to stimulate conceptual thinking and promote critical engagement, dialogue and debate. It welcomes data from domains of research like history or archaeology that are not easily quantified as factors in understanding behaviors like migration. And it requires the user to think beyond simply causality and consider the unique intersection of social, economic, political and environmental conditions for each case. Dahliagram time-series modeling human movement in east Africa/southern Arabia over the past ~10,000 years. Credit: Michael Frachetti/Washington University "The tool not only allows for a more nuanced understanding of complex data, but also can be a 'gut check'a way of testing your hypotheses and assumptions," Frachetti said. Testing the dahliagram To test the capabilities of the proposed dahliagram tool, the group created three models that assess the impacts of a range of factors on local- to large-scale mobility in three pivotal regions of world history: eastern Africa, inner Eurasia and the North Atlantic. These selected case studies range in chronological scale from decades to centuries to millennia. Although the dahliagram is a universal device for human-environmental research, for the purpose of this study, the researchers focused on human mobility as a behavioral response. In each model, "movement" is placed at the center of the dahliagram while different factors are represented in a surrounding array of petals. The team synthesized volumes of research and data on each factor and then ranked it according to its influence from low to high over three concentric rings of increasing intensity. "One of the challenges to studying past phases of migration is that there's very rarely a single driver. It's usually a multitude of things that are impacting the people. Changes in the climate or access to resources could be one factor, but it's usually accompanied by something like war, new innovations, economic or political pressures, etc," Frachetti said. "The people in the Sahara, for example, have adapted to desertification for more than 5,000 years, making a simple driver for their patterned mobility, or a discrete migratory event, rather unlikely." An interesting thing happened when the team compared the dahliagram models for each of the three case studies. Although they are separated historically by hundreds of years and thousands of kilometers, unexpected parallels between the cases became obvious to the team. "Population movement within emergent empires in both Asia and East Africa appears to be rooted in similar forces of political and social identity, as well as ambitious interests to acquire regional resources and stimulate trade and connectivity," the authors write. "Environmental factors were an omnipresent concern but appear to be outweighed by factors such as conflict and sovereignty. Dahliagram time-series modeling human movemen in Inner Eurasia over the past ~5,000 years. Credit: Michael Frachetti/Washington University "The historical implications of mobility within these formative empires in their respective era and region are unique, but only when visualized in the dahliagram do we see the shared correlations across an array of factors that may produce fruitful onward investigation into their behavioral similarities at the human-environmental nexus." Overall, the group found the dahliagram to be effective in assessing population movements that occurred within richly documented historical time scales, as well as over long periods of time. "We now hope that our new dahligram approach will be applied by many scholars from different fields across the natural and social sciences and the humanities to enhance interdisciplinary investigations into the entanglements between nature and humans," said Ulf Buntgen, a professor of environmental systems analysis in the Department of Geography at University of Cambridge, U.K., and a lead author of the paper. Inspired by and built for transdisciplinary research In recent years, the academic community has embraced the concept of transdisciplinary research. Like interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research, transdisciplinary research connects scholarship from various disciplines to more fully grasp the complexity of problems and enable creative problem solving and discovery. What makes transdisciplinary research unique is that it incorporates the perspectives of non-academic stakeholders, including members of tribes and ethnic groups, historians, artists and other subject-matter experts. Translating and effectively communicating complicated findings and uncertainties across disciplines, and with non-academic stakeholders, is not without its challenges, though. In fact, the idea for the dahliagram was inspired by the group's ongoing transdisciplinary work in the "Volcanoes, Climate and History" project, which was convened by Ulf Buntgen and Clive Oppenheimer from the University of Cambridge. The dahliagram not only enables researchers to synthesize data from various sources with different metrics, it also helps ensure equity among the various contributors, Frachetti said. Moreover, the visual nature of the dahliagram is especially helpful when communicating with various stakeholders. "This tool allows us to gather communities of specialists and fairly and collectively express our knowledge in a way that is on equal footing, rather than allowing one discipline to lead the way. I think that that kind of equity is a significant component of what the dahliagram provides," he said. Dahliagram time-series modeling human movement in the North Atlantic region over the past ~1,500 years. Credit: Michael Frachetti/Washington University Ultimately, the team hopes the dahliagram will be adopted within the scientific community to stimulate further explorations of complex human behaviors by leveraging multidisciplinary team building and consensus. According to Nicola Di Cosmo, a historian and Luce Foundation professor in East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ and co-author of the study, the addition of the dahliagram will expand the analytical tools available for historical research. "Historians may be encouraged to use the dahliagram to translate into a visual representation a wealth of data from multiple sources and different disciplines and thus avoid monocausal explanations derived from limited datasets," he said. As for scientists, Frachetti said that some might initially have hesitations about the tool because it does not provide hard facts, but he hopes the community will come to appreciate the tool for what it does provide: a visualization of the facts. "The dahliagram is a contextual tool that's meant to help you question your assumptions and consider other explanations. And that's really important because even our best 'hard facts'things like tree rings and our measurements to monitor the planet's healthare conditioned by assumptions and uncertainty." More information: Michael Frachetti et al, The Dahliagram: An interdisciplinary tool for investigation, visualization, and communication of past human-environmental interaction, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj3142. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj3142 Journal information: Science Advances 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: Jason Fellman, acting director of the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center, collects water samples from the outflow of the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. Credit: Sonia Nagorski Understanding carbon transport can offer important information about a changing climate. For instance, it can help scientists measure ocean acidification or other threats increased carbon levels pose to aquatic ecosystems. But one major, and often overlooked, source of carbon in the marine environment is dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), transported from land to ocean by streams and rivers. An article published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences by John Harley and team examines, with greater spatial and temporal resolution than ever before, how DIC moves through the Southeast Alaska Drainage Basinwhich spans a coastal region shaped by glaciers, heavy rainfall, and dense rainforestinto the Gulf of Alaska. The researchers analyzed 2,455 watersheds throughout a rugged coastal region of Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon territory. These watersheds contain both large rivers and smaller streams and freshwater sources, including rainfall, snowmelt, and glacier melt. The researchers then classified the watersheds on the basis of their discharge regime, or seasonal pattern of streamflow, and whether they contain karst, a type of landscape composed of soluble carbonate rocks such as limestone. Using historic data from the U.S. Geological Survey and current DIC measurements from streams in southeast Alaska, the researchers created a model that can predict how much carbon enters these marine ecosystems each month. Their findings correlated with past estimates, but the new models offered much more precise, detailed measurements of how DIC is discharged into ocean waters. The models used in this study can be further refined and developed to help predict what DIC outputs in the Gulf of Alaska might look like in the futurevaluable information to the communities in the region that depend on fishing and other marine resources. More information: John R. Harley et al, Riverine Dissolved Inorganic Carbon Export From the Southeast Alaskan Drainage Basin With Implications for Coastal Ocean Processes, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (2023). DOI: 10.1029/2023JG007609 Provided by Eos This story is republished courtesy of Eos, hosted by the American Geophysical Union. Read the original story here. 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: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Female charity workers, who supported vulnerable women throughout and beyond the pandemic, experienced high levels of psychological distress, a new study has found. Researchers conducted 135 interviews with women across the U.K. who worked for community-based third sector organizations delivering services, support and advocacy to women and girls who were experiencing poverty, domestic abuse, homelessness or were socially isolated and disadvantaged in other ways. The findings showed women working in these kinds of services experienced trauma, exhaustion, depression, and anxiety related to the nature of the work, which were further exacerbated by high workloads and concerns about job security and funding. The research report, titled "Women Working to Support Women in the Welfare Sphere: Psychosocial Challenges," was completed by researchers from the Scottish Center for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow and the University of Cambridge. Co-author of the research, Professor Michele Burman, University of Glasgow, said, "Women workers told us about how the pandemic and lockdowns led to an increased need for their services by women who were presenting with ever more complex needs. "To respond to these increasing and multi-layered needs within the context of the pandemic, organizations had to significantly change the way they provided support by moving away from in-person contact by setting up telephone helplines, holding meetings online or even installing chatbots on their website. However, this also left professionals feeling isolated and unsupported because they couldn't see their colleagues on a day-to-day basis, and anxious because of the lack of face-to-face contact with those they supported. "All of this change at a time when many other existing networks and support fell away created a considerable emotional toll on those workers who were left to fill in the gaps." A mental health care worker described the emotional and physical toll her work carried: "I mean I think that sometimes it stays with me, you know, words that people use or phrases or, you know I mean sometimes you'll have people who just cry for, you know, 20 minutes and there's something about having the endurance just to be with that and not try and fix it because you can't. "All you can do is be one human being with another. I do think that the human aspect of it is why I am who I am and I think that that does, at times, mean that I can be very, very, I'll just say it, knackered emotionally." Professor Burman said, "As the immediate risks of the pandemic receded, we saw the deepening cost of living crisis which once again disproportionately affected women, particularly those experiencing marginalization and social isolation. She added, "The crises also emphasized the need for longer term, more predictable funding sources which in itself brings a lot of stress on staff and organizations." One manager told the research team, "It's stress-inducing, it's the money, it's the sustainability, it's that constantly having to, you know, keep going without core funding, it's the short-term nature of funding and, yeah, yeah, that's the biggest stress." The two-year study also sought to identify positive practices which support worker welfare and service delivery. Co-author Dr. Annie Crowley, also of the University of Glasgow, said the report pointed out the best ways for organizations to address these adverse working conditions. Crowley commented, "Dealing with the effects of a demanding workload along with the emotional toll this kind of work brings can't be managed by someone on their own. Rather than rely on individual self-awareness or self-care the most effective way is to have a team approach that has strong policies and mechanisms for identifying, recognising and responding to the risks of psychological distress. "Organizations should encourage acknowledgment of the potential of psychological distress as a result of this work and have open conversations about its likelihood so that it becomes normalized. We need to see leaders do more by introducing policies and procedures that reduce stress, provide supervision with regular debriefs and strategies that can help staff build resilience." The report provides nine recommendations in total including giving staff more training and raising awareness of burnout, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma in the workplace. It also highlights the need for funders to consider introducing more stream-lined application processes and better alignment of their "asks" of those applying for funds to help reduce the additional stress of the precarious funding environment of those in the third-sector. More information: Women Working to Support Women in the Welfare Sphere: Psychosocial Challenges. womensupportingwomen.uk/ 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: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain At the end of the last Ice Age, many iconic species became extinctincluding the steppe bison, the wooly rhinoceros, the Irish elk, and the dire wolf. However, one Ice Age relict, perfectly adapted to the harsh climate of the tundra environment, has survived until the present day. Muskox escaped the destiny of its Ice Age compatriots and appears to be thriving in the world of today. In new research published in Molecular Ecology, scientists investigate how the muskox mastered living on the edgegeographically, ecologically, and genetically. The muskox lives at the northern edge of the world and native populations can be currently found in Canada and Greenland. To explore the eventful evolutionary history that brough the muskox here, a team led by Dr. Patricia Pecnerova, who is a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen and Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark, analyzed whole genomes of more than 100 muskoxen. Through challenging fieldwork in the High Arctic and collaboration with local communities and organizations, the team has secured samples from the most remote places in Canada and Greenland, and even one ancient muskox sample from Wrangel Island in Siberia, which was dated to ~21,000 years ago. "Despite the wealth of genomic data that we were working with, reconstructing the muskox's past was an arduous task because life in the Arctic is complicated. A lot of the signals that we were getting from our analyses seemed contradictory," says Pecnerova, the first author of the study. "Sometimes, however we like to fit our data into simple stories, we have to admit that the history was too complex to describe with the data that we have. It should not be a surprise, though. We already know from studies of other species in the Arctic that they have experienced complex histories that included periods of retreating to refugia, even local extinctions, as well as population expansions and recolonizations," she added. What is clear from the results is that the muskox lost a big proportion of its genetic diversity in the last 20,000 years. "By using an ancient Siberian genome, we were able to put the low diversity of present-day muskox into the context of their evolutionary history," explains Edana Lord from the Center for Palaeogenetics, who led the analyses of the ancient muskox. Even the most diverse present-day muskoxen have only about a third of the diversity that the Siberian muskox had 20,000 years ago. In East Greenland, where the muskox arrived last on its long colonization journey, the level of genetic diversity is so low that there are only two variable positions for 100,000 base pairs. This makes muskox the least diverse ungulate and puts it in the range where top predators usually end. If only the white-faced muskox, the subspecies living in the Canadian archipelago and Greenland, is considered, there is only one mammal that has lower diversity and that is a particular subspecies of a Channel Island fox. Curiously, while most animals with similar levels of genetic diversity are iconic endangered species like cheetah, snow leopard or the white rhino, which number in thousands globally, the muskox is a geographically widespread species that counts about 170,000 animals. How do muskoxen thrive almost without genetic diversity? Reconstructing changes in population size through time, the researchers observed that the muskox started to decline already about 30,000 years ago, which is a time period that coincides with the maximum extent of the ice sheets covering Canada and Greenland. The slow and continued decline might have provided enough time for the most deleterious variation to be removed from the muskox' gene pool. Pecnerova explains, "The way the muskox looks, behaves, and functionsit is extremely well adapted to the harshest of environments on this planet. Now we see that even genetically, they managed to draw a winning lottery ticket. It is almost surprising that they survived until present, but the way their evolutionary history unraveled, things just worked out for them." However, whether it stays that way for the muskox is yet to be seen. It is well known that with the warming climate, Arctic species are facing new challenges. For the muskox, mild and humid winters are known to be a major risk as the animals cannot reach food through the crust on the snow. Moreover, there is already evidence of recent disease outbreaks, as pathogens and parasites are spreading further north. And with the little genetic diversity they have left, muskoxen are not particularly well equipped to adapt to these new challenges. The study was an international effort that involved 31 co-authors led by researchers at the University of Copenhagen. More information: Patricia Pecnerova et al, Population genomics of the muskox' resilience in the near absence of genetic variation, Molecular Ecology (2023). DOI: 10.1111/mec.17205 Journal information: Molecular Ecology China's diplomatic efforts in the Middle East have gained significant attention with the meeting held in Beijing on Monday. The gathering brought together foreign ministers from several critical Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and Indonesia, as per Fox News. China's Diplomatic Moves in the Middle East The primary objective of this meeting was for China to exert its influence and contribute to resolving the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed the foreign diplomats, emphasizing the high level of trust these nations have placed in China. Wang Yi underscored China's commitment to its role as a friend and brother to Arab and Islamic countries, emphasizing its consistent support for the legitimate rights and interests of these nations and the just cause of the Palestinian people. During this diplomatic gathering, one significant development was the signing of a local currency exchange agreement between the Saudi Central Bank and the People's Bank of China (PBC). This agreement amounts to 26 billion Saudi riyals, equivalent to 50 billion yuan ($6.98 billion), and is set to be effective for three years, with the possibility of extension through mutual consent. The currency swap agreement aims to enhance financial cooperation, promote the use of both currencies in trade and investment, and facilitate economic activities between the two countries. This agreement could serve as a model for other Middle Eastern nations, encouraging them to follow suit and further advance the use of the yuan in the region. This move is a significant step towards promoting the yuan's internationalization, especially in the Middle East. It may enable Saudi Arabian enterprises to use the yuan more freely in international trade, reducing their dependence on the US dollar, the traditional choice for such transactions. This shift in currency usage could also have implications for bilateral energy trading, making it easier and more efficient, according to The News. Read Also: Opinion Letters to The Guardian Stress Antisemitism on UK Campuses Must be Stopped Yuan Rises as Saudi Arabia Shifts From Dollar Historically, Saudi Arabia, a major global producer of petroleum energy, has conducted its international transactions in US dollars. However, with this currency swap agreement, there is potential for the yuan to become more prominent in bilateral crude oil exchanges. The central bank of China has pledged to prudently advance the internationalization of the yuan, an objective that China has been actively pursuing. The ease of using the yuan as a medium of exchange is crucial to this effort. The People's Bank of China is dedicated to leveraging currency swaps to support the growth of the offshore yuan market, ease trade and investment, and strengthen cooperation with other central banks in local currency settlement. In addition to the currency swap agreement with Saudi Arabia, China has also pursued similar agreements with other countries. It has signed numerous currency swap agreements worldwide, highlighting its commitment to expanding the global reach of the yuan. These efforts align with China's broader strategy to reduce reliance on the US dollar and establish the yuan as a more prominent international currency. While the currency swap agreement between China and Saudi Arabia may appear relatively small in monetary terms, its significance lies in its potential to symbolize a shift away from the US dollar, especially in the global oil trade. As China continues to strengthen its economic ties with countries in the Middle East and beyond, the yuan's internationalization is likely to gain further momentum, reshaping the landscape of international finance and trade, Insider reported. Related Article: The Guardian Removes Bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America" After TikTok Users Cite It @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. 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: The analysis revealed a strong statistical link between higher cognitive ability and having voted "Remain". Credit: TheDigitalArtist, Pixabay, CC0 (creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) A new analysis suggests that a person with higher cognitive ability may have been more likely to vote "Remain" in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and that a spouse's cognitive skills may also be linked to Brexit voting decisions. Chris Dawson and Paul Baker of the University of Bath, U.K., present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on November 22, 2023. Having higher cognitive ability has previously been associated with a greater tendency to recognize and resist misinformation. Studies have also shown that the U.K. public received a large volume of misinformation about the referendum prior to voting for the U.K. to withdraw from the EU ("Brexit"). However, while a growing body of research has investigated potential links between people's Brexit votes and socioeconomic, sociodemographic, and psychological factors, less research has addressed the potential role of cognitive ability in their decisions. Dawson and Baker analyzed data on 3,183 heterosexual U.K. couples collected as part of a large survey study called Understanding Society. They examined whether there were any links between participants' reporting that they had voted "Leave" or "Remain" and their cognitive abilityas measured by their performance on a variety of tasks. The researchers statistically accounted for other factors that could also be linked to voting decisions, such as socioeconomic and sociodemographic traits, political preferences, and a widely studied set of personality traits known as the Big Five. The analysis revealed a strong statistical link between higher cognitive ability and having voted "Remain." In addition, people whose spouse had higher cognitive ability were significantly more likely to vote "Remain." In cases where one spouse voted "Remain" and the other "Leave," having significantly higher cognitive ability than one's spouse was associated with an even higher chance of voting to Remain. The researchers note possible underlying explanations for their findings. For instance, misinformation about the referendum could have complicated decision making for people with low cognitive ability. They also suggest the need for ways to avoid such complications in the face of increasing amounts of misinformation. The authors add, "This study adds to existing academic evidence showing that low cognitive ability makes people more susceptible to misinformation and disinformation. People with lower cognitive ability and analytical thinking skills find it harder to detect and discount this type of information." 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: Thailand's Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said 134 iguanas had been captured in Lopburi alone. Thailand has captured more than 150 rogue iguanas that were rampaging through the countryside, raiding farms and damaging the local environment, officials said. The lizards are not native to the kingdom, hailing originally from Central and South America, but are increasingly popular as pets in Thailand. Environmental concerns have been raised over the activities of the herbivorous lacertilians, which are thought to be pets that have either escaped or been deliberately released into the wild. The Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) said Tuesday that 134 iguanas had been captured in Pattana Nikom district, Lopburi, around 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Bangkok. A further six were discovered in Udon Thani, in the country's northeast, and 23 more elsewhere in Thailand. "Many iguanas have been living in the wild in Lopburi province and destroying farmers' agricultural produce," a DNP statement said. "The rapidly increasing number has affected the environment and ecology systems, causing problems to local people." The cold-blooded captiveswhich can grow to more than 1.5 meters (five feet) longwill be kept at wildlife centers including one in Nakhon Nayok, northeast of Bangkok. Iguanas are not indigenenous to Thailand but have been increasingly popular as pets. The department also said around 260 people across 61 provinces have informed officials that they own iguanasmore than 3,600 lizards in total. Earlier in the week, officials banned the import of the scaly creatures over environmental concerns. Authorities said violators will face a maximum of 10 years in jail and a fine of up to one million baht. 2023 AFP 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: Predictive margins of attractiveness for three mobility outcomes by gender. Credit: Social Science Quarterly (2023). DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.13320 A pair of sociologists, one with the University of Oslo, the other with the Polish Academy of Sciences has found that men benefit more in the workplace from being attractive than women do. In their study, reported in the journal Social Science Quarterly, Alexi Gugushvili and Grzegorz Bulczak describe analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (NLSAH). Anecdotal evidence has suggested that women benefit more from being attractive, in general, than men do. And some studies have hinted that such evidence might apply to the workforce, but none have proven it to be the case. In this new effort, the researchers attempted to settle the matter by studying data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a long-term study conducted in the United States aimed at tracking the development of adolescents as they move into adulthood and assessing the factors that impact their success or failure. In this new effort, Gugushvili and Bulczak looked only at the impact of attractiveness on the degree of success. Included in the data from the NLSLH were attractiveness scores given confidentially by other volunteers. The researchers compared the scores of 15-year-old volunteers (before they were old enough to improve their looks artificially) with their success as they moved into the workforce. They also attempted to take into consideration other factors such as family background, intelligence and personality traits when measuring success in the workforce. The researchers found that attractive women had a slight advantage over other women deemed less attractive, and somewhat more so for those deemed the least attractive. But the males saw the greatest difference. Those males deemed the most attractive as a group did better than those deemed average, who in turn did better than those who were rated as the least attractive, demonstrating that attractiveness, at least for males, plays a significant role in workplace success. The researchers acknowledge that there were limitations in the data, such as the impact on success of late bloomers or other unknown factors that may have had an impact on successthus, more research is required to confirm their findings. More information: Alexi Gugushvili et al, Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility, Social Science Quarterly (2023). DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.13320 Journal information: Social Science Quarterly 2023 Science X Network 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: The bladders, with which the surfaces of many quinoa varieties are completely covered, look like small balloons on a stem. Credit: University of Copenhagen Quinoa and many other extremely resilient plants are covered with strange balloon-like "bladders" that for 127 years were believed to be responsible for protecting them from drought and salt. Research results from the University of Copenhagen reveal this not to be the case. These so-called bladder cells serve a completely different though important function. The finding makes it likely that even more resilient quinoa plants will now be able to be bred, which could lead to the much wider cultivation of this sustainable crop worldwide. The findings are published in the journal Current Biology. Looking through a microscope, it resembles a water balloon. Or a piece of glass art. But it's just a so-called bladder cell. If you wondered what it was for, you wouldn't be the first. For 127 years, even the brightest minds in plant biology believed that the fluid-filled bladders covering the leaves, clustered flowers and stems of a range of hardy plants were something completely different from what they now turn out to be. The discovery was made thanks to a new piece of research from the University of Copenhagen that completely contradicted the researchers' expectations. The new insight can probably be used to expand the cultivation of a particularly nutritious and climate-resilient crop. "Quinoa has been touted as a future-proof crop because it is rich in proteins and highly tolerant of drought and salt, and thus climate change. Scientists believed that the secret to quinoa's tolerance was in the many epidermal bladder cells on the surface of the plant. Until now, it was assumed that they served as a kind of salt dump and to store water. But they don't, and we have strong evidence for it," says Professor Michael Palmgren from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences. Video of pests (thrips) trying to attack a quinoa plant. Credit: University of Copenhagen Bulwark against pests Three years ago, a research group led by Ph.D. student Max Moog and his supervisor Michael Palmgren began studying the epidermal bladder cells of quinoa plants in ways that had never been used before. The hope was to understand the plant's mechanisms for making it resilient to salt and drought. To this end, the researchers cultivated mutant plants without bladder cells to compare their reactions to salt and drought with those of wild quinoa plants covered with bladder cells. To their surprise, the researchers discovered that bladder cells have no positive influence on the plant's ability to tolerate salt and drought. On the contrary, they seem to weaken tolerance. Instead, bladder cells serve as a barrier against pests and disease. "Whether we poured salt water on the mutant plants without bladder cells or exposed them to drought, they performed brilliantly and against expectations. So, something was wrong. On the other hand, we could see that they were heavily infested with small insectsunlike the plants covered with bladder cells. That's when I realized that bladder cells must have a completely different function," says Max Moog, now a postdoc at the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences and first author of the study. Video of pests (thrips) attacking a quinoa plant without bladder cells. Credit: University of Copenhagen When the researchers analyzed what is hidden inside the bladder cells, they did not find salt as expecteddespite having added extra salt to the plant. Instead, they found compounds that repel intruders. "We discovered that bladder cells act as both a physical and chemical barrier against hungry pests. When tiny insects and mites trudge around on a plant covered with bladder cells, they are simply unable to get to the juicy green shoots that they're most interested in. And as soon as they try to gnaw their way through the bladder cells, they find that the contents are toxic to them," says Michael Palmgren. Among other things, the epidermal bladder cells of quinoa contain oxalic acid, a compound also found in rhubarb, which acts as a deadly poison on pests. The experiments also demonstrated that the bladder cells even protect quinoa against one of the most common bacterial diseases in plants, Pseudomonas syringae. This probably happens because the bladder cells partially cover the stomata on the plant's leaves, a point of entry for many bacterial invaders. "Our hypothesis is that these bladder cells also protect against other plant diseases like downy mildew, a fungal disease which severely limits quinoa yields," says Max Moog. Juicy shoots of the quinoa plant are covered with small bladders (left). To the right is a mutant plant completely free of bladder cells. Blue arrows point to thripssmall insects that are serious pests and by which the mutant is attacked more severely. Credit: University of Copenhagen The key to extra tolerant 'super-quinoa' There are thousands of varieties of the South American crop, and the density of bladder cells on the plant's surface varies from variety to variety. But there is much to suggest that density determines how effective a safeguard the bladder cells are. "Quinoa varieties with a higher density of bladder cells are most likely more robust against pests and diseases. On the other hand, they may be slightly less tolerant of salt and drought. And vice versa. These variations don't change the fact that quinoa is generally very resistant to salt and drought. But the explanation must be found somewhere other than in the bladder cells," says Max Moog. "Due to efforts to expand quinoa cultivation around the world, the new knowledge can be used to adapt the crop to various regional conditions. For example, southern Europe has very dry conditions, while pests are a bigger problem than drought in northern Europe. Here in northern Europe, it would make sense to focus on quinoa varieties that are densely covered with bladder cells." According to Michael Palmgren, the new results provide a concrete recipe for how to breed "super-quinoa" relatively easily. "Thus far, these bladder cells have been ignored in the breeding of quinoa. If you want a crop that is extra resistant to pests and diseases, but is still tolerant of salt and drought, one can opt to breed varieties that are densely covered with bladder cells. So, we may now have a tool that allows us to simply cross-breed our way to an extra tolerant 'super-quinoa,'" says Michael Palmgren. Michael Palmgren and Max Moog from the University of Copenhagen. Credit: University of Copenhagen Epidermal bladder cells seen through a microscope. Credit: University of Copenhagen The research results add a new dimension to our knowledge about quinoa. Until now, very little was known about how the plant defends itself against attacks from hostile organisms. "Now we know, quinoa isn't just tolerant of non-biological stressors like drought and salt, but also of biological influences such as pests and pathogenic bacteria. And at the same time, we've found the secret of these odd-looking bladder cells. This research is an example of how what's established doesn't always turn out to be what's true," concludes the professor. More information: Max W. Moog et al, Epidermal bladder cells as a herbivore defense mechanism, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.09.063 Journal information: Current Biology 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: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Every day, millions of people start the day by posting a greeting on social media. None of them expect to be arrested for their friendly morning ritual. But that's exactly what happened to a Palestinian construction worker in 2017, when the caption "" ("good morning") on his Facebook selfie was auto-translated as "attack them." A human Arabic speaker would have immediately recognized "" as an informal way to say "good morning". Not so AI. Machines are notoriously bad at dealing with variation, a key characteristic of all human languages. With recent advances in automated translation, the belief is taking hold that humans, particularly English speakers, no longer need to learn other languages. Why bother with the effort when Google Translate and a host of other apps can do it for us? In fact, some Anglophone universities are making precisely this argument to dismantle their language programs. Unfortunately, language technologies are nowhere near being able to replace human language skills and will not be able to do so in the foreseeable future because machine language learning and human language learning differ in fundamental ways. How machines learn languages For machine translation, algorithms are trained on large amounts of texts to find the probabilities of different patterns of words. These texts can be both monolingual and bilingual. Bilingual training data comes in the form of human-translated parallel texts. These are almost always based on the standard version of the training language, excluding dialects and slang phrases, as in the example above. Diversity is a characteristic of all human languages, but diversity is a problem for machines. For instance, "deadly" means "causing death" in most varieties of English, and that is what appears in the training data. The Australian meaning of "excellent" (from Aboriginal English) puts a spanner in the works. If you input "Deadly Awards" into any translation app, what you'll get in your target language is the equivalent of "death-causing awards." How machines store languages The internal linguistic diversity of English, as of any other language, is accompanied by great diversity across languages. Each language does things differently. Tense, number or gender, for example, need to be grammatically encoded in some languages but not in others. Translating the simple English statement "I am a student" into German requires the inclusion of a grammatical gender marking and so will either end up as "I am a male student" or "I am a female student." Furthermore, some languages are spoken by many people, have powerful nation states behind them, and are well resourced. Others are not. "Well resourced" in the context of machine learning means that large digital corpora of training data are available. The lists of language options offered by automated translation toolslike the list of 133 languages in which Google Translate is currently availableerase all these differences and suggest that each option is the same. AI speaks English Nothing could be further from the truth. English is in a class of its own, with over 90% of the training data behind large language models being in English. The remainder comes from a few dozen languages, in which data of varying sizes are available. The majority of the world's 6,000+ languages are simply missing in action. Apps for some of these are now being created from models "pre-trained" on English, which further serves to cement the dominance of English. One consequence of inequalities in the training data is that translations into English usually sound quite good because the app can draw both on bilingual and monolingual training data. This doesn't mean they are accurate: one recent study found about half of all questions in Vietnamese were incorrectly auto-translated as statements. Machine-translated text into languages other than English is even more problematic and routinely riddled with mistakes. For instance, COVID-19 testing information auto-translated into German included invented words, grammatical errors, and inconsistencies. What machine translation can and can't do Machine translation is not as good as most people think, but it is useful to get the gist of web sites or be able to ask for directions in a tourist destination with the help of an app. However, that is not where it ends. Translation apps are increasingly used in high-stakes contexts, such as hospitals, where staff may attempt to bypass human interpreters for quick communication with patients who have limited proficiency in English. This causes big problems when, for instance, a patient's discharge instructions state the equivalent of "Your United States was normal"an error resulting from the abbreviation "US" being used for "ultrasound" in medical contexts. Therefore, there is consensus that translation apps are suitable only in risk-free or low-risk situations. Unfortunately, sometimes even a caption on a selfie can turn into a high-risk situation. We need to cultivate human multilingual talent Only humans can identify what constitutes a low- or high-risk situation and whether the use of machine translation may be appropriate. To make informed decisions, humans need to understand both how languages work and how machine learning works. It could be argued that all the errors described here can be ironed out with more training data. There are two problems with this line of reasoning. First, AI already has more training data than any human will ever be able to ingest, yet makes mistakes no human with much lower levels of investment in their language learning would make. Second, and more perniciously, training machines to do our language learning for us is incredibly costly. There are the well-known environmental costs of AI, of course. But there is also the cost of dismantling language teaching programs. If we let go of language programs because we can outsource simple multilingual tasks to machines, we will never train humans to achieve advanced language proficiency. Even from the perspective of pure strategic national interest, the skills to communicate across language barriers in more risky contexts of economics, diplomacy or health care are essential. Languages are diverse, fuzzy, variable, relational and deeply social. Algorithms are the opposite. By buying into the hype that machines can do our language work for us we dehumanize what it means to use languages to communicate, to make meaning, to create relationships and to build communities. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 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: Changes in the first-level category shopping products associated with the corona virus variants during the four waves. Sankey diagram of COVID-19 associated shopping products during the four waves. Credit: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1057/s41599-023-02183-y The ongoing COVID-19 endemic phase has brought a consistent rise in international travelers. The Credit Finance Association revealed that overseas expenditures on personal debit cards from seven credit card companies had surged by approximately 38% year on year as of the third quarter of 2023. Comprehensive insights into card usage and airport activities are crucial in understanding societal shifts during this transition to the endemic phase. Recent reports on utilizing machine learning technology to decipher evolving consumer behaviors have caused a stir. A research team led by Professor Jonghun Kam and Ph.D. candidate Jiam Song in the Division of Environmental Science and Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) applied an advanced statistical technique, Principal Component Analysis, to Big Data of online shopping-relating internet search activity volume data that is available at the NAVER DataLab platform. This study aimed to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced people's online consumption psychology and behavior. This research has been published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Logging records activities within a system or website, and data logging involves recording and storing this information. Companies leverage data logging to scrutinize product search patterns and discern emerging shopping trends. Notably, a surge in search volume for a particular product indicates increased demand, prompting companies to devise new inventory management strategies. Leading Korean search engine NAVER provides access to online shopping product search activity data through data logging. Utilizing this resource, the research team employed advanced statistical techniques such as principal component analysis (PCA) to extract major modes of search patterns over 1,800 online product search records from 2017 through 2021. Additionally, six indicators, including COVID-19 severity and government policy stringency, were used to grasp the relationship between the pandemic waves and consumption patterns. The study found that during stringent periods of external activity limitations, such as those enforced by social distancing measures and heightened health concerns following the initial COVID-19 outbreak, online searches surged in the health and daily life category-products. As time passed and government policies relaxed, people's fears about COVID-19 diminished, and online searches surged for duty-free and travel-related products. People's search patterns evolved in response to the severity of COVID-19 and changes in the government's prevention policies. The research team elucidated this behavioral shift by introducing the React, Cope, and Adapt phases within the Reacting Coping Adapt (RCA) framework. During the React phase, individuals adjusted their buying behavior in response to perceived pandemic risks. In the Cope phase, they began embracing new purchasing patterns. Finally, they established and stabilized new buying habits in the Adapt phase. Professor Kam emphasized the importance of big data, stating, "Understanding and predicting people's online consumption psychology and search patterns during pandemics and other global crises is crucial for business risk assessment and supply chain management." More information: Jiam Song et al, Evidence of the time-varying impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on online search activities relating to shopping products in South Korea, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1057/s41599-023-02183-y 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: Common pipistrelle - Pipistrellus nathusii. Credit: Christian Giese In late summer, some bat species migrate from northern Europe along the coastlines to their wintering sites in central and western Europe. Until now it was assumed that all bats traveled in the same direction during the migration. However, the reality is more complex. On the Latvian Baltic coast, a research team led by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) reconstructed the flight paths of Nathusius' pipistrelle bats using ultrasound microphones. Most animals flew southward in late summer, but on some days 20% traveled in the opposite directionpresumably due to weather conditions. More and more wind turbines are being set up along the coasts and on the high seas of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. As bats spend more time along the coastlines than expected, partially deviate onto the high seas and even fly detours, the wind turbines pose a more (deadly) danger to bats than previously recognized, the team concludes in an article in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. The Nathusius' pipistrelle (Pipistrellus nathusii) holds the long-distance world record for seasonal migration among bats. Specimens ringed in the Baltic States and Russia were found more than 2,000 kilometers away in northern Spain. This is a considerable achievement for an animal weighing only eight grams. During migration, the animals should therefore head straight for their wintering areas. Nathusius' pipistrelle bats migrate particularly along the coastlines of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Such migration corridors are like highways for migrating animals. Until now it was assumed that the bats only traveled in one direction on these highways in late summer, southwards towards their wintering areas in central and western Europe. Other patterns of traveling would cost energy, which would be sorely needed for hibernation in the wintering area. "Nathusius' pipistrelles from the Baltic region also could, in addition to their main southerly migration direction, also fly northwards to then cross the Baltic Sea westwards from Finland to Sweden," says Christian Voigt, head of the Department of Evolutionary Ecology at the Leibniz-IZW. "As bats are difficult to observe owing to their small size and nocturnal lifestyle, we had to use a special technique to reconstruct the flight routes and verify or refute this idea." Bats emit high-frequency calls inaudible to humans for foraging and for orientation at night. Such echolocation calls can be recorded using ultrasonic detectors. If several ultrasonic detectors are operated in synchrony, the spatial position of the bat can be determined from differences in propagation time resulting from different distances between the bat and the microphones. "We used a system of eight ultrasonic microphones mounted on a metal rod at a defined distance from each other and were thus able to determine the exact spatial position of individual bats," explains Jens Koblitz from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. "The flight path of each recorded bat can then be reconstructed from successive spatial positions." In this way, the team recorded the flight paths of more than 400 migrating Nathusius' pipistrelles on the Latvian Baltic coast during three summer nights. Most bats traveled southward along the coastline. However, on one day the scientists observed that 20% of the animals flew northward, whereas the majority took the obvious route southward. The reasons for this are still unclear. It is possible that unfavorable weather conditions on the migration route caused some bats to head north and opt for an alternative route. Or they only flew a short distance back along the migration corridor to wait for favorable conditions for their onward flight. "Every year we discover new interesting details about bat migration," says Gunars Petersons, professor at the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies in Jelgava. "However, I am concerned about the directional changes of the flight paths of bats, as there are more and more wind turbines along the coastlines and on the high sea, and such changes imply that the animals will be traveling for longer periods of time in these dangerous zones if they don't choose the most direct route." Thousands of wind turbines are currently in operation in countries bordering the Baltic Sea and North Sea or will be installed in the near future, as coastal locations promise strong and constant wind and therefore high energy production. As particularly migratory bats can die at wind turbines, wind energy production on the coast and the high seas is potentially in conflict with conservation objectives. "Migratory species are particularly susceptible to habitat changes, as they are dependent on each of a variety of habitats providing the right living conditions at the right moment. For the Nathusius' pipistrelle, for example, every ecological stepping stone between the breeding grounds in the north and the wintering areas is crucial," says Christian Voigt. "That's why migratory birds and bats are under the special protection of the United Nations Environment Program. Germany and many countries bordering the Baltic Sea and the North Sea have made a contractual commitment to protect migratory species. In addition to EU conservation law and national conservation law, the UN Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species requires the countries bordering the Baltic and North Seas to ensure that migratory bats can move safely between their summer and winter habitats." In their paper, the scientific team therefore calls for wind energy development at coastal sites to be carried out with great care and caution. Sufficient space should be left for migrating bats. Only then will long-distance migrants such as the Nathusius' pipistrelle reach their destination. More information: Christian C. Voigt et al, Bidirectional movements of Nathusius' pipistrelle bats (Pipistrellus nathusii) during autumn at a major migration corridor, Global Ecology and Conservation (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.gecco.2023.e02695 Journal information: Global Ecology and Conservation Provided by Leibniz-Institut fur Zoo- und Wildtierforschung (IZW) im Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. 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: This computer-generated handout image released by the European Space Agency shows the impact of the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) projectile on the binary asteroid system (65803) Didymos. Credit: ESA/AFP While preparing for the threat of an asteroid strike might seem like a hypothetical exercise, it's really not. The solar system has calmed down a lot from earlier times when impacts were more frequent. But it is only a matter of time before an asteroid heads straight for Earth. The probability of an impact is not zero. Equally as difficult as determining when one will come for us is the task of getting humanity to cooperate and prepare for it. Here's an incontrovertible fact that thoughts and prayers can't brush aside: even a modest, 500-meter-diameter asteroid can deliver a powerful blow to Earth and can deliver more than 10 gigatons of energy. If it struck land, this impact would excavate a crater 9 km across and 0.7 km deep. It could produce 4 km3 of ejecta. The ejecta would flash-heat and be propelled up into the atmosphere, only to rain down and start firestorms. If the asteroid strikes the ocean, then massive tsunamis become a powerful threat. Either way, the course of human civilization would be altered forever, which is a polite way of saying we'd be screwed. It all comes down to the size of the impactor, and there are many asteroids larger than 500 meters. (To be fair, there are also many that are much smaller.) Whoever survived the impact of a large enough asteroid would likely be thrust into a struggle for survival that rivaled the struggle our ancient ancestors faced. None of this is news to people who study asteroids, catalogue the threatening ones, and try to develop ways of not only predicting an impact but also eliminating the threat. Some of those same peopleboth scientists and politiciansheld the Planetary Defense Conference 2023 to examine all the issues surrounding an asteroid strike. Now a group of researchers have done an in-depth analysis of the conference and looked in more detail at our response. Their results are in a paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica. It's titled "Diplomatic, geopolitical and economic consequences of an impending asteroid threat." The lead author is Laura Jamschon Mac Garry, a diplomat who is also a professor at the University of Belgrano and the University del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In their analysis, the authors consider things beyond the scientific and technological response. They also consider the legal international framework, the practice of States in multilateral fora and the opinion of scholars. First off, there's nothing panicky about their approach. "An asteroid impact with Earth is a very low probability event. Yet, if it were to happen, the consequences could be devastating," the report states. We all know that. But unlike other natural disasters, we can see an asteroid coming, and we can prepare for it. That puts potential impacts in a separate category from things like Earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. The conference's premise is pretty straightforward: a 500-meter diameter asteroid is heading for Earth. It's a newly detected near-Earth asteroid found in January. Because of the asteroid's orbit, it was difficult to detect. The PDC deemed it a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) and gave it the name 2023 PDC. As follow-up observations continued, attendees learned that the odds of 2023 PDC striking Earth grew. Eventually, they determined that the asteroid would strike Earth in October 2036, giving humanity 12.5 years of lead time. That much lead time is critical. It gives humanity time to study the asteroid, determine its composition, and even send a spacecraft to study it. That all sounds good. But there's a dark side to all that lead time. "On the other hand, there was also a disadvantage associated with the extensive lead time," the authors write. Once we knew where it would strike, chaos would reign in that region. Where would everyone go? Who would take them in? Banks would fail, and the economic system would crash. Industry would collapse, and so might agriculture and food production. People would try to flee, and law and order could break down. In short, it would be a time of unpredictability and chaos. There could be war, cults, fascist dictators, and who knows what other manifestations of humanity's primitive animal side. Maybe a segment of the population would be blamed as scapegoats and rounded up into camps. All of these things have happened multiple times in humanity's history without the doomsday threat of an asteroid impact. This is not science fiction. But every time chaos and disorder stalk humanity, there are those who try to prevent the worst from happening. That's certainly true when it comes to an asteroid strike. 2011 was an important year in asteroid impact preparedness. The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) established the Action Team on Near-Earth Objects. Governments around the world became involved in developing an international response to an impending asteroid strike. Over the years, more committees were created, and plans were developed to both detect asteroids and hopefully deflect one when necessary. But all of this was mostly a scientific and technical response. Universe Today readers are likely familiar with the threat of asteroid impacts, the efforts to find all of the potentially dangerous asteroids, and missions like NASA's DART. But this new analysis digs into the societal aspect of an imminent strike beyond detecting and deflecting. Here are some of the questions the study points out that need to be addressed in advance: If evacuations are required, how will it be organized? Will it be the most vulnerable who get priority? The most productive? How will societal institutions react? Will universities, social media, religions, and others react with catastrophic thinking or with awareness-raising? Is there a responsibility to welcome other citizens in case of disaster (Internal Displacement vs. Cross-Border Displacement)? Who will pay? How and when? If we need to use an atomic warhead to destroy an impactor, how will that be organized? Will there be mistrust? This isn't a complete list, but it indicates the kind of confounding complexity we'll be staring down if an asteroid approaches Earth. Here are some others: What role will developing countries play versus the role space-faring nations will play? Will geopolitical rivals strive to gain an advantage? If we have 12.5 years of lead time, how will democracies based on four-year governing terms prepare? The authors believe that the primary issue concerns the use of a nuclear explosive device (NED.) "Because the five permanent members of the Security Council, any one of whom can veto the use of an NED in space, are nuclear powers, it would be necessary to engage in geopolitical and economic, possibly even cultural and religious, discussions," they write. This isn't a fun topic, but it does arouse a sense of duty in some. Ultimately, humanity will likely rise or fall together here on Earth. In a sense, an asteroid impact is the ultimate test for our species. Climate change is a slow-moving threat entirely of our own making. But asteroids are different. Asteroid strikes are entirely natural, and so are extinctions. If we want to survive the former and avoid the latter, we'll need to prepare as much as we can. Preparations have already begun, but this paper points out how to continue with our preparedness in realistic ways. It's worth a read. More information: Laura Jamschon Mac Garry et al, Diplomatic, geopolitical and economic consequences of an impending asteroid threat, Acta Astronautica (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2023.10.052 Journal information: Acta Astronautica Hong Kong: CE: HK-GD link will boost bay area Chief Executive John Lee Hong Kong is a vibrant and open meeting place of hearts and minds. It is also a perfect location for traders, investors and financial planners from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and ASEAN member states to meet and co-operate with one another. Hong Kong's regional connectivity is underpinned by the unique "one country, two systems" principle. On the one hand, we have resounding support from the central government and close links to the Mainland, which ensure our city's long-term stability and prosperity. At the same time, our longstanding systems governing the flows of international trade, finance, talent and ideas provide strong foundations for our role as a bridge connecting the Mainland with the rest of the world. Hong Kong's world-class business environment is buttressed by a long tradition of the rule of law, as well as the abundance of multilingual and multi-talented professionals. Under "one country, two systems", Hong Kong has a unique role to play in the far-reaching Belt & Road Initiative, first announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013. The initiative promotes cross-border infrastructure, trade, financial and cultural development through closer government-to-government, business-to-business and people-to-people connectivity. HK as super value-adder All this plays to Hong Kong's strengths, making our city a "super connector" as Vice-Chairman Mr CY Leung has already mentioned, and I will also add, as a "super value-adder" for the Belt & Road regions, including ASEAN. Hong Kong dovetails its development with national strategies. They include the National 14th Five-Year Plan, which supports our development as an international hub in eight areas, including finance, trade, shipping, innovation and technology, and cultural exchange. Allow me to highlight three key areas that I think are relevant to the topics covered in today's conference. First, about promoting people-to-people exchange in the region. Hong Kong boasts a captivating cultural blend of East and West. We have plenty of interesting and significant historical buildings, declared monuments and museums. We also have unique and fascinating intangible cultural heritage, including food and festivals, music and art. We strive to provide more workshops and special guided tours to give visitors a deeper understanding and appreciation of Hong Kong's fascinating cultural heritage. I certainly encourage our visitors here today to find time to enjoy our city's many charms and cultural attractions, and make full use of our enterprising environment to exchange with people from around the world. Since taking up the post as Chief Executive in July last year, I have led high-level business delegations to visit four ASEAN countries so far, and I hope to visit more soon. At each stop, I have been very encouraged by the warm welcome I have received, as well as the great enthusiasm to build stronger ties with Hong Kong and the GBA. I am also grateful to the governments of the respective ASEAN countries for their support of Hong Kong's bid to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). RCEP is the world's largest free trade agreement, and I am confident that Hong Kong's early accession to this group would bring great benefits to all RCEP members, including ASEAN. A well-connected city Hong Kong is committed to contributing to regional development, through our prowess in professional services, and our connectivity within the GBA. That brings me to my second point: promoting green finance and fintech. As Asia continues to drive global economic growth, different economies are seeking a sustainable means of furthering their development. Statistics show that in the next 30 years, the Asian region will require 66 trillion US dollars in climate investment. This demonstrates the immense demand for green finance. Hong Kong is a global financial centre, and an emerging hub for international innovation and technology. We aim to be at the forefront of the global green finance and fintech revolution. Among other things, we are enhancing our green fintech ecosystem. In my Policy Address, I announced that we will launch a dedicated proof-of-concept subsidy scheme for green fintech in the first half of 2024. The new scheme will promote the development of technological solutions and provide early-stage funding support for pre-commercialised green fintech. We are also working with relevant regulators and stakeholders in formulating a "Green Fintech Map". The map will provide one-stop information on the status of green fintech companies in Hong Kong and related services. With the GBA being an engine for growth in our region, we maintain close co-operation with relevant financial authorities throughout the area. In April, we organised the first "GBA Green Finance Cooperation Meeting". It brought together financial heavyweights to discuss the work directions for deeper collaboration to create a comprehensive green and sustainable finance ecosystem in the GBA. In June, our Innovation, Technology & Industry Bureau signed a landmark MoU (Memorandum of Understanding), with the Cyberspace Administration of China, on facilitating cross-boundary data flow within the GBA. It will ensure the safe and orderly flow of Mainland data to Hong Kong. By reducing compliance costs for enterprises and promoting the digital economy in the GBA, this initiative contributes to our active integration into the GBA and the overall development of the country. The third topic that I wish to highlight is on public services co-operation. Joint venture with Guangdong We have recently launched the Cross-Boundary Public Services initiative. It is our joint effort with the Guangdong Provincial Government in developing the "Digital Bay Area". It will enable enterprises and the public in both places to enjoy simple and convenient cross-boundary services. It also facilitates the provision of public services and investment in the GBA, from taxation and company registration, to talent admission and elderly services. Soon, self-service kiosks will be set up in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province respectively, for the convenience of local residents. Our target is to roll out the Hong Kong self-service kiosk in Guangzhou by the first quarter of 2024, and gradually cover all nine Mainland cities in the GBA. Alongside a new "multiple-entry visa" for foreign staff working in companies registered in Hong Kong, as well as our enhanced talent admission scheme, I am confident that these measures will help our friends in ASEAN to better grasp the development opportunities of the GBA. They will also help Hong Kong's internationally-minded professionals better leverage the advantages brought by regional co-operation. Working together, we can surely create an even brighter future for our people and our economies, when GBA meets ASEAN with one heart, and one mind. Chief Executive John Lee gave these remarks at the Greater Bay Area Conference on November 22. This story has been published on: 2023-11-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. UN special envoy urges de-escalation along Israel-Lebanon border Xinhua) 09:39, November 22, 2023 BEIRUT, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka called on Tuesday for de-escalation along the Blue Line as hostilities persist between Hezbollah and Israel, reported local media. Wronecka said in a statement that the past six weeks of clashes along the Blue Line represent the most serious violations of Resolution 1701 since its adoption in 2006, according to L'Orient Today. She highlighted the collective responsibility of the international society to urge both parties to exercise restraint, calling for a return to the full implementation of Resolution 1701, a crucial entry point to realizing the region's peace, security and stability. Wronecka underlined the severe consequences of the ongoing exchanges of fire on the Israel-Lebanon border, including numerous casualties on both sides, internal displacement of thousands, as well as material and environmental damages. She warned of the danger of miscalculation leading to a broader conflict. Two journalists and one civilian were killed on Tuesday morning in Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon, the National News Agency reported. The Israel-Lebanon border has been witnessing increased tension for over six weeks since Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets toward Shebaa Farms on Oct. 8 in support of the Hamas attacks on Israel the previous day. The rocket attacks prompted the Israeli forces to respond by firing heavy artillery toward several areas in southeastern Lebanon. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced opening an investigation into Media Matters for "potential fraudulent activity." The move comes after a defamation lawsuit filed against the left-leaning media watchdog group by X CEO Elon Musk, who accused Media Matters of manipulating data on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, as per Fox News. Media Matters Sparks Ad Exodu, Texas AG Probe When Media Matters published a report accusing X of placing ads next to "white nationalist hashtags." This report prompted a slew of advertisers, including IBM, Apple, Disney, Lionsgate, and Paramount, to withdraw their advertisements from the platform. In response, Musk vowed to unleash a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against Media Matters, alleging that the group had misrepresented the user experience to mislead advertisers. Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey also expressed interest in the matter, stating that his legal team was "looking into" the allegations. Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton has initiated an official investigation into Media Matters, signifying a transition towards greater formality. "We are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square," Paxton declared. The investigation will be carried out under the Texas Business Organizations Code and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Paxton's decision to pursue this course of action aligns with his concerns regarding the allegations against Media Matters, which he characterized as a "radical anti-free speech organization." Elon Musk, the owner of X.com (formerly known as Twitter), wasted no time in championing the investigation. In a post on the platform, Musk emphasized the potential legal consequences of fraudulent activity, stating, "Fraud has both civil and criminal penalties," according to Washington Examiner. Read Also: Opinion Letters to The Guardian Stress Antisemitism on UK Campuses Must be Stopped Media Matters in Tech Controversy Media Matters for America, founded in 2004. The organization in question is a progressive research and information center that has a dedicated focus on thoroughly monitoring, analyzing, and addressing conservative misinformation within the United States media landscape. However, the organization has found itself at the center of controversy for its recent report on X. The current dispute highlights the ongoing tension between media organizations and tech platforms. Media Matters' report alleging the placement of ads next to far-right content on X triggered the withdrawal of major brands' advertisements from the platform, further fueling the contentious legal battle. In this controversy, it is important to note that right-wing criticisms of the media are not a recent development. The investigation launched by Attorney General Ken Paxton underscores the political and legal challenges facing organizations involved in media monitoring and the ongoing debate over free speech. Paxton's decision to investigate Media Matters for "potential fraudulent activity" will undoubtedly be closely watched by both supporters and critics of the organization. As this legal battle unfolds, how it will impact the broader discourse surrounding media, social platforms, and the protection of free speech in the digital age remains to be seen, Dallas Voice reported. Related Article: The Guardian Removes Bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America" After TikTok Users Cite It @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. SARATOGA SPRINGS For almost a decade Saratoga Springs has played host to the largest gathering of pop-culture fans in upstate New York with the Saratoga Comic Con. I grew on up with a lot of this stuff and it was always in my head as a kid, said Samuel Chase, founder and organizer of Saratoga Comic Con. Before (comic book conventions) used to just be comics in a basement somewhere, he said. But now its just everything all together. Coming from a retail background, Chase started attending conventions as a vendor, but transitioned into event planning, and eventually evolving into a full-time organizer of the largest comic convention circuit in upstate New York. We run Mid-Hudson Comic Con in Poughkeepsie, so its basically just us, he said. Chase said hes proud to not only be doing something that he loves, but to be able to bring such a sizable event to the community. Ive got people from Illinois, Texas, people have flown in from California, Canada. Somebody flew in from Brazil for this con, he said. All the hotels, all the restaurants, theyre packed. You almost cant get in. Twice a year, downtown Saratoga Springs in inundated with characters from all avenues of popular culture from comic books to movies, to anime, and everything in between. Kinda in the beginning people were like, Hmmm, what is this show? (Why) are these people dressed up in the streets? Chase said. And now its just so welcome. Its like a comic con congregation, he added. The dates for Saratoga Comic Cons first event for its 10th year is set for May 4 and 5, 2024. ATLANTIC CITY Gathering for a meeting for the first time in about 3 years, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority board decided to table what looked likely to be its most controversial decision for the day Tuesday. On the agenda was a resolution to deny site plan approval for a new cannabis business at a time when the approval of cannabis applications has become routine. Tambre LLC has a plan for a class 5 cannabis dispensary at 1926 Atlantic Ave., the site of the former Los Amigos restaurant in a busy section of town. The building is within the citys expansive Green Zone, where cannabis businesses are a permitted use, close to Tanger Outlets The Walk and the citys bus terminal. It also shares a block with AtlantiCare Regional Medical Centers City Campus. That company opposed the application. The CRDA serves as the planning board for Atlantic City within the Tourism District and has seen multiple applications for cannabis businesses since legalization. City officials have supported expanding cannabis in the city, describing the new industry as a source of jobs and revenue, as well as a means for bringing new visitors to the resort. A report on hearings held on the application, posted to the CRDA website, showed medical center staff raised concerns that the lack of parking, lack of a designated loading zone and potential for additional congestion could interfere with ambulance traffic. Before the meeting, Lou Magazzu, an attorney representing Tambre principals Cheryl McDaniel and Sherry Lynn Gartino, issued a statement criticizing the expected denial, and suggesting that Lance Landgraf, the CRDAs director of planning and development, has an anti-cannabis attitude. Landgraf has supported multiple previous cannabis applications before the board. CRDA Chair Mo Bulter did not state a reason the resolution would not be voted on. He told Magazzu there would be further discussion on the matter at a later time. Later in the meeting, he said that discussion would take place another day. CRDA set to meet in person Tuesday for first time since pandemic The Casino Reinvestment Development Authority is set to meet in person for the first time since going remote for the COVID-19 pandemic, and a cannabis business is again on the agenda. Attorney Nick Talvacchia, speaking on behalf of AtlantiCare, said his clients would object to an additional opportunity for the applicant to present a case, arguing it would not be permitted under CRDA rules. The record had already been set at the land use hearing. I have never seen CRDA give an applicant an opportunity to present its case before this board, he said. Its not the way this was set up. Magazzu said he was not concerned about opening up the matter again. We have no concerns about additional facts. We like democracy, he said. Butler said the meeting was not the time to decide the matter, saying the authority needs to have further internal discussion on the issue. With a strong yes from voters in a 2020 referendum, support from Gov. Phil Murphy and the backing of Mayor Marty Small Sr.s administration, cannabis appears to be in Atlantic City to stay. There are currently two licensed businesses selling to the recreational market in the city, and one on the Boardwalk that only sells to those with medical marijuana cards. Small is a member of the CRDA board but did not attend the meeting. The board had been meeting remotely for more than three years, since the restrictions related to COVID-19 kept most public bodies from gathering in person, but gathered in one room for the first time at the Tuesday meeting. Many more cannabis businesses are in the works, with multiple Atlantic City applications working through the lengthy state approval process. This year, some on the CRDA board began to ask when enough is enough. Gov. Phil Murphy pledges $5.5 million to bolster Atlantic City's food access New Jersey will spend more than $5.5 million to address food insecurity in Atlantic City, Gov. Phil Murphy said Tuesday. A local business owner came to the meeting with the same question Tuesday. John Exadaktilos, owner of Ducktown Tavern, said businesses that serve alcohol have limits to how close they can be to other businesses and uses in the city. With the weed, it doesnt have any restrictions on space. I dont think it makes sense, he said. I sell a vice. That is a vice. He said cannabis businesses should not be located close to The Walk, churches or areas where children are present. I dont want my son walking through, smelling good or bad weed, however you distinguish it, he said. He does not want tourists to smell it either, saying the smell is already overbearing on the Boardwalk. This is something that needs to be addressed. I get it, but being as open and free as it is, its not good, he said. There have been objections to an approved cannabis business close to a church this year. In the same comments, Exadaktilos said the area between Tropicana Atlantic City and Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall needs much greater enforcement, describing a lawless situation that includes crime, drug sales, weapons and other problems. Local developer wants to build luxury apartments near Atlantic City outlets A local real estate firm wants to replace several vacant lots along Arctic Avenue near Tanger Outlets The Walk with a new luxury apartment building in Atlantic City. Its Beirut, he said. Its overpowering the residents that are there. The board also heard from Peter White, with UFCW Local 152, who spoke in support of the Tambre application, saying cannabis businesses bring good jobs to communities. In the Region Kazakh Authorities Send Mixed Signals on Using SpaceXs Starlink On November 7, Kazakhstans government approved a national accessible internet project that includes testing the use of currently-banned SpaceX Starlink technology in 10 rural schools. Kazakhstan is moving to introduce 5G technology across the country, but the government first wants to study how the privately-owned Starlink system would be used in Kazakhstan. The Telecommunications Committee of Kazakhstans Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation, and Aerospace Industry on November 17 warned citizens that, for now, it is still illegal to use Starlink. Starlink is a series of thousands of small satellites, launched into orbit by SpaceX, that can provide high-speed Internet access to most parts of the world. The Director of the Ministrys Telecommunications Committee Dias Tolegenov said use of the current version of Starlink violates current (Kazakh) legislation, as it does not meet safety requirements. Tolegenov was responding to comments from journalists that many people in Kazakhstan were purchasing and installing Starlink on their computers for personal use. Tolegenov said until technical studies on Starlink use at these schools are complete and new legislation is approved, it will be illegal for Kazakh citizens to use the system. Those selling or using the system could face a fine of 34,500 tenge (some $75). Tolegenov assured the wait would not be long and after amendments were passed regarding use of the system Kazakhstanis will be able to legally use terminals. Why Its Important: The Kazakh government is already preparing the projects next step, to expand access to Starlink to 2,000 rural schools. This project was agreed between Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry Bagdat Musin and SpaceX executive Lauren Dreyer on October 12. It is part of 2024-2027 state program that will cost some 1.5 trillion tenge (about $3.2 billion) to provide nationwide broadband Internet access at a speed of at least 100 megabits per second. Tolegenov did not detail what the study of Starlink will entail, but almost certainly it will involve the states ability to block prohibited websites and interrupt service during a national crisis. During the unrest in Kazakhstan in January 2022 that left at least 238 people dead, authorities cut Internet access in the country when violence broke out. Kazakh authorities see the necessity of having reliable high-speed internet access that reaches even the most remote parts of the country but they do not want it used to foment unrest. EU Anti-Drug Program Warns of Increase of Afghan Methamphetamines in Uzbekistan The head of the European Unions Central Asia Drug Action Program (CADAP) warned that Uzbekistan is likely to see a rise in the amount of methamphetamines coming from neighboring Afghanistan. CADAP director Ernest Robello said at a November 15 event in Uzbekistan that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was down by 95 percent since April 2022. Robello added that while there has been a decline in opium-based drugs coming out of Afghanistan, there has been a surge in other drugs coming from Afghanistan, notably methamphetamines. In May, Uzbek border guards stopped a truck entering the country from Afghanistan that was hauling 18 metric tons of pomegranate juice in plastic bottles purchased by an Uzbek company. Several of the boxes were marked with the letter M and border guards said the color of the liquid inside 48 bottles in those boxes differed from the rest of the shipment. The juice in those bottles tested positive for containing methamphetamines. Uzbek counter-narcotics officials determined the intended recipients planned to evaporate the juice in a laboratory and collect the remaining methamphetamine for sale. Uzbek border guards estimated the value of the seized methamphetamines to be tens of millions of dollars. The border guards also reported seizing more than 240 pounds of synthetic drugs in 2022, and 227 pounds during the first four months of 2023. Why Its Important: The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said in early September that Afghanistan is quickly becoming one the worlds leading producers of methamphetamines. The data on confiscated drugs provided by Uzbek border guards already show a sharp increase in methamphetamine trafficking into Uzbekistan. The situation is likely worse with the other Central Asian states neighboring Afghanistan that have much longer borders. Uzbekistans border with Afghanistan is only about 100 miles long. Turkmenistans border with Afghanistan is some 460 miles long and much of it is sparsely inhabited desert, and the border with Tajikistan is about 843 miles long, most of it running through remote and sparsely inhabited mountains. Neither of those two Central Asian countries have commented on drug seizures involving synthetic drugs. The Central Asian states have been on trafficking routes for Afghan opium and heroin headed toward Russia and Europe for more than three decades. Now Central Asia can expect to be part of new Afghan amphetamine trafficking routes to pass through the region, targeting world markets. The Latest Majlis Podcast This weeks Majlis podcast looks at gender violence in Kazakhstan after three shocking cases there dominated the news in November. In one case, police pressured a rape victim to drop her case. In another case, the rapist was the police chief. The cases, and that of a woman beaten to death by her prominent husband, have sparked new calls for greater protection for women. This weeks guests are: Khalida Azhigulova, a lawyer and international consultant on the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse; Svetlana Dzardanova, human rights and corruption researcher at Freedom for Eurasia; and Zhanar Sekerbayeva, co-founder of the Kazakhstan Feminist Initiative Feminita which focuses on lesbian, bisexual, queer, and trans women's rights. What I'm Following Finally, Gasification in Almaty A natural gas distribution system at Almatys Thermal Power Plant Two (TPP-2) was just put into operation, as part of a project to convert the coal-burning power plant to use cleaner-burning natural gas. Air pollution from coal-fired TPPs in big cities across Central Asia has been reaching dangerous levels for health. Governments in the region have been promising to transition their thermal power plants from using coal to natural gas, but nearly all these projects have yet to be realized. Almaty Deputy Mayor Askar Amrin said changing from coal to gas at (TPP-2) will cut pollutant emissions from the current 37,000 metric tons annually to 3,000 metric tons. TPP-2 is the largest TPP in Almaty Province and provides Almaty city with 60 percent of its heat and 40 percent of the citys electricity. Turkmen Authorities Prevent Journalist from Collecting International Award On November 17, Turkmen authorities prevented veteran Turkmen journalist Soltan Achilova, 74, from boarding a flight to Geneva to receive a prestigious international award. Achilova is a photojournalist who has reported on social problems and government violations of human rights in Turkmenistan. She was going to Geneva to accept the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders and speak at several public events. Customs officials at the Ashgabat airport declared the passports of Achilova, and her daughter Maya who was accompanying Achilova to Geneva, were invalid. Human Rights Watch Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia Rachel Denber posted on X (formerly Twitter) about Achilovas situation: (T)he Turkmen gov is doing more damage to its reputation than anything Achilova could have possibly said while abroad, Denber wrote. Fact of the Week Tajikistan ranks among the top 12 exporters of dried apricots worldwide. Approximately 10% of the global production of apricots is concentrated in (Tajikistans northern) Sughd province. Thanks for Reading Thanks for reading Central Asia in Focus! I appreciate you sharing it with other readers who may be interested. Feel free to contact me on X (formerly Twitter) or by responding to this email, especially if you have any questions, comments, or just want to connect about topics concerning Central Asia. See you next week for more on whats happening in Central Asia. Until next time, Bruce Taking strong note of lapses in the execution of duties by assistant commissioners and ward officers of the Pune Municipal Corporation in cracking down on illegal hawkers, the deputy municipal commissioner of the PMC anti-encroachment department has established a specialised unit, named as 'Pathak,' to enforce accountability. This squad, which comprises of five PMC employees, has been formed with the aim of monitoring the actions taken by the ward offices and reporting on their activities. This initiative is unprecedented in the sense that no such squad had been specifically created to oversee and take action against PMC workers in the past. Madhav Jagtap, deputy municipal commissioner, anti-encroachment department, PMC, said, Strict action will be taken against assistant commissioners of the ward offices if they fail to address the issue of hawkers and illegal markets in the city. Consequently, a squad named 'Pathak' has been established to inspect their performance. A primary emphasis of the Pathak squad is to scrutinise and assess the measures implemented by assistant commissioners and ward officers in addressing the persistent challenges related to encroachment by hawkers. Significantly, the squad will also keep an eye on the performance of certain officers who are on probation. Their continued tenure will now hinge on their effectiveness in addressing the issue of illegal hawkers. The escalation in the frequency of weekly markets exacerbates the problem of encroachment, as these markets encroach upon sidewalks and public areas. Concerns have been raised by citizens about the occupied spaces and the legitimacy of permissions granted to hawkers. Unlicensed street vendors frequently conduct business without the necessary permits. The lack of stringent measures against them by ward officers concerned has resulted in a surge of such activities on the streets. This not only presents difficulties for citizens who encounter occupied public spaces but also prompts concerns about the PMC's effectiveness in overseeing and ensuring compliance among street vendors. The fate of assistant commissioners and ward officers, especially those on probation, will now be intricately tied to their ability to address the long-standing issue of illegal hawkers. The creation of the Pathak squad underscores the seriousness with which the PMC is approaching the need for accountability and efficient execution of duties within its own ranks. Corri Spiegel will be paid $1.6 million in her departure from the city of Davenport for lost wages and "emotional pain and suffering." Spiegel and the city announced last week a "transition in leadership effective Jan. 2, 2024." Spiegel has led the city staff as administrator since 2015. On Friday, the mayor appointed an interim city administrator. The city on Wednesday released the separation agreement that lays out the terms of Spiegel's departure. It states Spiegel's last work day was to be Nov. 17, and her official separation would be Jan. 2, 2024. It states Spiegel would be on the status of administrative leave with pay during that time. The agreement is dated Oct. 6. A prepared City Council statement released with the agreement states that the City Council agreed to compensate Spiegel following "prolonged and documented instances of harassment by some elected officials directed at City Administrator Spiegel over the past eight years." "The behavior of elected officials is a very difficult thing to navigate for a city," the council's statement reads. "Certain actions of some current elected officials were inappropriate and wrong. Certain actions of former Alderman (Derek) Cornette and other unnamed former elected officials were inappropriate, wrong and appalling. "Due to these prolonged and documented instances of harassment by some elected officials directed at City Administrator Spiegel over the past eight years, and on the advice of in-house and independent counsel, we agreed to compensate Ms. Spiegel for these behaviors. "The amount of compensation is small when compared to what a lengthy lawsuit and an ultimate finding of wrongdoing would have cost the taxpayers." The agreement states that Spiegel will receive her regular paycheck through Jan. 2, as well as: $600,000 for lost wages to be paid with Spiegel's final paycheck. $1 million for emotional pain and suffering to be paid on Jan. 2, 2024. Asked when the City Council consented to the agreement with Spiegel, City Attorney Tom Warner wrote in an email that it was in early October. Asked why the agreement will not come before the council for a vote in a public meeting, Warner wrote: "The Davenport Municipal Code authorizes the corporation counsel to direct litigation matters and settle claims against the city. If the amount is above $50,000, the corporation counsel needs consent of the council. In my 29 years at the city, the practice under the ordinance has always been to obtain consent through an executive session, individual conversations or by email." Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, wrote in an email to the Quad-City Times that Iowa law would allow the city attorney to brief the council during a closed session on a proposed settlement and the council could suggest changes in the settlement terms. "Absent any such suggestions, I believe approval of that settlement would need to occur in a public meeting," Evans wrote. "Otherwise, the taxpayers in Davenport would have no way of knowing about legal conflicts that are resolved through settlements." In 2015, the council voted 9-1 in public meeting to approve a "succession, transition and separation" with its then-city administrator, Craig Malin. Spiegel makes $338,445 in salary and compensation, according to previous reporting earlier this year. Cornette, the former 7th Ward alderman, was first elected to office in 2021. Cornette was removed from office in early September in a 7-3 vote by the council. His removal followed a hearing in which the city staff played voicemails and videos, and gave testimony to allegations that Cornette had harassed and persistently addressed female employees inappropriately despite requests to stop the behavior and came to council meetings intoxicated. Cornette is suing over that decision, with his attorney arguing Cornette's due-process rights were violated. During the hearing, city staff played a voicemail in which Cornette can be heard telling Spiegel "love ya, babe." Warner said he told Cornette not to call city staff members babe or other pet names. Then, a second voicemail was played in which Cornette can be heard telling Spiegel, "still love ya, babe." Spiegel read an impact statement during the hearing in which she said This isnt a strip club. This isnt Tinder. This is the city of Davenport, a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar municipal enterprise. I have successfully led this organization through thick and thin for the past eight years. I am blessed to work with an extraordinary professional employee team whos dedication and commitment to this community leaves me in awe, Spiegel said. But to an elected official apparently all I deserve is to be harassed, demeaned and belittled. And this is not something I should have to do in public in front of my bosses, in front of my staff, in front of the community. The City Council statement issued Wednesday urged future councils to adopt codes of conduct for council members early on in their terms and to request the state Legislature "provide an official who is empowered to investigate and hold accountable local elected officials for their transgressions of the law, codes of conduct and employment policies in a swift and effective manner through fines, suspensions, and removals." The statement from the City Council stated that no "truly effective enforcement mechanism currently exists to stop wrongful behavior prior to liability being created for the City." "Protection of our employees from wrongful, unwanted, harmful behavior is a paramount obligation," the City Council stated. "Until elected officials can refrain from these behaviors or until we can provide this protection in an effective and timely manner, we will continue to lose great employees." Warner had also placed Alderman Judith Lee under a communication protocol in January in which she had to direct all communications through Warner. Warner in emails to Lee that the Quad-City Times previously reported on, accused Lee of inappropriately directing staff on a number of projects, including on Veterans Memorial Park, which Lee had sent persistent emails with questions and concerns about the park's construction on an old dump. Under the agreement, Spiegel agreed not to interview with local market news media outlets about her allegations of misconduct for 10 years. A news release mutually agreed to by Spiegel and Warner would be issued, according to the agreement. The City Council could also release its own statement after Spiegel agreed to its content. Matson told the Quad-City Times last week that there was an "agreement with money" between Spiegel and the city but declined to specify what was in it or how much money Spiegel would receive. He also told the Quad-City Times the City Council had already consented to the agreement, so it wouldn't come for a vote. The Quad-City Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request for such an agreement on Nov. 16, the day Spiegel's departure was announced. Matson previously declined to say when or where the council consented to the agreement and referred questions about public meeting law to Warner. Asked about why information was being released in batches, Matson previously said the city wanted to make sure information they released was correct and that the city was being "fair to everyone." Matson and Warner have called Spiegel's departure "amicable." Spiegel, 45, was named Davenport's city administrator in 2016. That followed about a year where she was the interim city administrator, a role she filled after her predecessor separated from the city. A national search for Davenport's next permanent city administrator is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2024, a process the city expects to take about six months. The council approved hiring Spiegel in July of 2016 for a base salary of $178,000. That agreement did not include a term or process for renewal. It stipulated it would remain in effect "until terminated by the employer or employee." Warner, the city attorney since appointed in 2007, announced Monday that he would retire at the end of the year. DES MOINES Ron DeSantis has received another endorsement from another prominent player in Iowa Republican politics. A group supporting DeSantis has produced a pair of campaign ads deploying his first big endorser, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. And both Reynolds and DeSantis were the target of some sharp criticism from the man DeSantis is trying to catch in the Republican presidential primary polls, former President Donald Trump. There are just more than 50 days remaining before the Jan. 15 first-in-the-nation Iowa Republican caucuses, and the campaign activity is heating up and getting a little heated. Trump takes on Reynolds, DeSantis Trump on Tuesday posted a series of videos to his official campaign account on X (formerly Twitter). Among the Festivus airing of grievances-like series of videos was one in which Trump roasted both Reynolds and DeSantis. Trump has been displeased with Reynolds ever since she first informed Trump of her plan to remain neutral in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Trumps displeasure grew earlier this month when Reynolds strayed from that plan and nearly 30 years of precedent by Iowa governors by endorsing DeSantis for president. In the one-minute video, Trump notes Reynolds unfavorable rating and his lead over DeSantis in the presidential primary polls. Kim Reynolds of Iowa has gone from a popular governor to the most unpopular governor in the entire United States of America. Not an easy feat, Trump says in the video. Her endorsement of Ron DeSanctimonious, who is 50 points down to me in the polls, has given him exactly zero bounce. Hes a wounded bird falling violently from the sky. I wonder what position Kim was promised in order to back someone who is so far down in the polls. In Morning Consults quarterly governor approval ratings for the third quarter of 2023, Reynolds approval rating was at 49% and her disapproval at 47%. The latter is the highest number in the nation, making her Americas most unpopular governor, according to Morning Consult. No. 2 on that list is DeSantis, whose numbers in Florida were 51% approve and 4% disapprove. However, Reynolds is popular among Iowa Republicans many of whom will be choosing their preferred presidential candidate in the first-in-the-nation Iowa Republican caucuses on Jan. 15. In a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll published in August, Reynolds approval rating among Iowa Republicans was 81% against 18% who disapproved. That rating was down from 86% in March, and from 93% in October of 2022, just before her re-election victory. Trump has held a consistent and commanding lead in polling on the Republican presidential primary, both nationally and in Iowa. In rolling averages of polls on Republican presidential candidates in Iowa, Trumps support is at 47% at Real Clear Politics and 44.7% at FiveThirtyEight. Second-place DeSantis is at 17.3% at Real Clear Politics and 17.5% at FiveThirtyEight, or 29.7 and 27.2 points behind Trump, respectively not 50, as Trump claimed in the video. Nationally, Trumps lead over DeSantis in the polls is 45.4 points at Real Clear Politics and 47.1 points at FiveThirtyEight. Reynolds, later Tuesday from her campaign account on X, appeared to respond to Trumps video. Its not about me. Its about our country, Reynolds posted. (DeSantis) follows through on his promises, can serve 8 years, and has a WINNING record. Hes the most effective leader Ive ever seen. If you like what we are doing in Iowa, youll love what hell do for this country! Vander Plaats endorses DeSantis Later Tuesday, Christian conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats announced he also is endorsing DeSantis for president. Vander Plaats is president and CEO of The Family Leader, an influential Christian conservative advocacy organization. Vander Plaats also said he believes if Trump is the Republican nominee, that Democrats will win the 2024 presidential election. I truly believe he may be able to win the nomination, President Trump. But I dont think Americas going to elect him president again, Vander Plaats said. And I think what we need to do is find that next generation leader. The Family Leader recently hosted its second presidential forum this year, featuring DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump declined an invitation to the event. The Trump campaign issued a statement in response to Vander Plaats endorsement, highlighting the 150 faith leaders in Iowa who have endorsed Trump and the roughly $95,000 that DeSantis campaign and supporting groups paid for advertising at The Family Leaders first presidential forum this year, in June. When you are actually the leader of a movement like President Trump is, people are willing to support you for free, the Trump campaign statement said. Iowa Democrats also criticized the Vander Plaats endorsement. We may have just witnessed Ron DeSantis accept the kiss of political death this election cycle, Iowa Democratic Party chairwoman Rita Hart said in a statement. Bob Vander Plaats endorsement pulls DeSantis even further outside of the mainstream and DeSantis has once again pandered to the most extreme fringes of the MAGA base with that endorsement. DeSantis ads feature Reynolds The super PAC backing DeSantis is taking Reynolds to the airwaves in a pair of ads that feature the governor encouraging voters to support DeSantis. The ads are part of a seven-figure ad buy in Iowa from Never Back Down. They are the first to feature Reynolds making a direct-to-camera pitch for DeSantis. In the ads, Reynolds praises DeSantis approach to leadership and says a DeSantis presidency would mirror the direction of Iowa in recent years. Getting to know Ron and Casey and their children tells me everything I need to know about why Ron is who he is and accomplishes what he does, Reynolds says in one of the ads, titled Focused. Ron is focused, principled and results driven. He gets things done. In another ad, titled Fight, Reynolds says DeSantis is fighting for our children, cutting taxes and standing up for common sense. The ads are another instance of Reynolds taking a high-profile role in DeSantis campaign as he seeks to build his support ahead of the caucuses. Reynolds has said she is going to be active on the campaign trail to help boost DeSantis support over the next two months. Reynolds joined DeSantis on Saturday as he opened a campaign office in Urbandale. About a third of DeSantis staff has moved to Iowa as the campaign has put high importance on the outcome in the state. An Iowa State University Poll, conducted by Civiqs, found 63% of surveyed likely caucus-goers said Reynolds endorsement of DeSantis made no difference in who they support. About 13% said it made them more likely to support him while 22% said it made them less likely to support him. Never Back Down Chief Operating Officer Kristin Davison said in an emailed statement Reynolds endorsement of the Florida governor was historic and has helped sway undecided caucusgoers. He has already proven he can win, fight, and lead in Florida by cutting taxes, lowering unemployment, fighting for life, and protecting parents rights and school choice, and he will do the same for the country, Davison said. Iowans have shown their support tenfold since Gov. Reynolds endorsed, with many undecided caucus goers joining her in committing to caucus for DeSantis. Nine days after a majority of Davenport voters chose to stick with incumbent Mayor Mike Matson, the city announced City Administrator Corri Spiegel will be transitioning out of her position. The two sides have apparently come to a separation agreement, which should be available to the public, but its not. Her departure was announced Thursday, and despite multiple requests by the Quad-City Times over several days, we still dont know whats going on at City Hall. City Attorney Tom Warner told us Tuesday the city is aiming for a Wednesday morning media release, the day before Thanksgiving. Residents of Davenport dont know why Spiegel is leaving her job that paid $338,445 annually. The public doesnt know what shes being paid as part of her separation agreement or any other conditions of the agreement. Why is the city paying Spiegel to leave? The announcement by the city Thursday was long on Spiegels accomplishments, but offered no explanation for her departure. We believe the document is a public record based on this passage under section 22.13 of the Iowa Code: When a government body reaches a final, binding, written settlement agreement that resolves a legal dispute claiming monetary damages, equitable relief, or violation of a rule or statute the settlement agreement and any required summary shall be a public record. Seems pretty straightforward. Iowa Freedom of Information Councils Executive Director Randy Evans agrees. He also requested the document, telling the city it has a legal obligation to supply this without delay. Mayor Matson told the Quad-City Times a financial agreement was worked out between Spiegel and the legal department with council consent, so it sounds like a binding agreement. The councils consent of that agreement should come in open session in front of the public. Matson says it wont. The vagueness of the wording transitioning out, the speed at which Spiegel was no longer in charge one day before an interim took over and the lack of transparency set off warning signs. Something has happened here and those who will pay for the separation agreement are left wondering what. Spiegel could be part of a larger exodus. Sarah Ott, chief strategy officer, is leaving the city administration to take a job in the Davenport school district. And on Monday Warner announced he would retire from the city on Jan. 2, 2024. Its not clear to what extent he helped negotiate Spiegels separation agreement. With Warner leaving, thats three key people from the administration leaving by 2024. We dont know if theyre connected, but it doesnt feel coincidental. These departures from the city administration are especially interesting given mayoral challenger Ken Crokens campaign pledge to call for the city administrators resignation, in light of the collapse of 324 Main St. May 28 that killed three people. During the mayoral campaign and with our editorial board Matson defended Spiegel and complimented her on the handling of a variety of city issues. While people dont elect a city administrator, they elect a mayor who appoints one, with council approval. The issues that led to the exodus of Spiegel surely existed before people cast their ballots. Why didnt we know? Croken criticized the city for not being transparent with its operations. The events of the past week build on that narrative. We urge the city to release the separation agreement immediately and explain to the electorate what happened at City Hall. A 21-year-old Davenport man is facing murder and child endangerment charges for the death of his 7-week-old daughter from head injuries in 2020, Davenport police said. Devion James Woods is charged in Scott County District Court with one count of first-degree murder. The charge is a Class A felony under Iowa law that carries a prison sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Woods also is charged with one count of child endangerment causing death, a Class B felony that carries a prison sentence of 50 years. According to the arrest affidavits filed Tuesday by Davenport Police Detective Cpl. Evan Obert, officers responded to an apartment on Emerald Drive to investigate an unresponsive 7-week-old at 3:53 p.m. on Nov. 20, 2020. An autopsy revealed that the child had multiple head injuries that resulted in her death. According to the autopsy, the child suffered contusions to the face, subdural hemorrhage, acute hemorrhages of the nerve roots of the cervical spinal cord and healing fractures of multiple bones. The victim also suffered superficial blunt-force injuries to her back and left arm. Woods was the sole caretaker of the child from 9:38 a.m. on Nov. 20, 2020, until the police arrived on the scene, the affidavits said. He gave police differing accounts of how he first came to notice that the child was unresponsive. A tenant in the same apartment building told police that they heard loud thumps coming from the apartment and a male yelling, including saying get up and stop crying," according to the affidavit. Woods was being held without bond Thursday night in the Scott County Jail. Woods is currently serving two years on probation in Scott County after pleading guilty to charges of second-degree criminal mischief and assault while displaying a dangerous weapon on Nov. 4, 2021. He was expected to be released from probation on Jan. 12, 2024. St. Ambrose University Occupational Therapy grad students lead yoga classes St. Ambrose University graduate students in the accredited doctor of occupational therapy program (OTD) are applying their studies by volunteering to lead yoga classes for individuals with Down Syndrome at GiGi's Playhouse in Moline. GiGi's Playhouse is a dedicated place for families to enjoy social and educational experiences and programming that sends a global message of acceptance for individuals with Down Syndrome. Held every Saturday morning through December, the entirely student-led classes focus on traditional poses, breathing and grounding practices. The yoga is part of the GiGiFIT program which introduces a new form of exercise that is often less accessible to those with Down Syndrome. Occupational therapy through yoga allows participants to set social goals for interacting with others and directional goals for following along with the flows and physical goals for the assistance needed to get into each pose. The student volunteers completed a training program through GiGi's Playhouse to lead the classes. Augustana College hosts book release event "Feasts and Festivals: The Story of Winter Traditions at Augustana College," will be released to the public just in time for the holiday season. The public can come meet some of the folks involved in the book, pick up a copy and enjoy a reception at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28, in the Gerber Center for Student Life, Augustana College, 3435 9 1/2 Ave., Rock Island. The event will also be available on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89226449714?pwd=MGNzbVJIb. Feasts and Festivals immerses the reader into the small college's traditions, some rooted in its Swedish American past, like Sankta Lucia and the Christmas Smorgasbord, and others which came to campus as the student body grew more diverse, like Kwanzaa, Dia De La Virgen and the Lunar New Year. Through short histories, archival photos and poems, this collection explores how students, faculty and staff worked to create community. Many of the entries were composed by students in an oral history course at Augustana, with book design by students in a book publishing course. The book also features winter poetry by English professor, Dorothy Parkander. Hubbell-Waterman Foundation donates $20,000 to Junior Achievement of the Heartland Junior Achievement of the Heartland has been awarded a grant to support core mission learning experiences in Scott and Rock Island counties. The $20,000 grant, provided by the Hubbell-Waterman Foundation, will help the organization foster financial literacy, work and career readiness and entrepreneurship education. JA's unique delivery system provides the training, materials and support necessary to bolster the chances for student success. Students who participate in Junior Achievement learning experiences demonstrate a significant understanding of economics and business concepts. The curriculum will impact over 21,000 students in Scott and Rock Island counties during the 2023-2024 school year. The programs are centered on financial literacy and help students gain a strong foundation for healthy money management skills. For more information about Junior Achievement programs, visit https://heartland.ja.org. Western Illinois University ranked among the best and least expensive public schools in Illinois West Illinois University was ranked 38th out of 167 public and private colleges and universities on the "Best Regional Universities (Midwest)" list in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. Additionally, WIU was one of only two public institutions in Illinois to make it to the top 50 of the Best Midwestern list. The U.S. News Best Colleges ranking includes institutions that offer undergraduate majors and master's programs. The rankings are based on various measures, including graduation and retention rates, social mobility, faculty resources, expert opinion, financial resources, student excellence and alumni giving. In other news, during an analysis of the cost of higher education in Illinois the school was recognized as the most affordable public institution to attend in Illinois for 2023. According to the analysis, the average annual cost of attending a public college in Illinois was $26,252. Among other Illinois institutions Western Illinois University stands out as the most budget-friendly public college option in the state with an annual cost of $21,466. Online applications now available for Mediacom scholarships Mediacom Communications will award $60,000 in scholarship support for high school seniors who plan to obtain further education. The scholarship program, in its 23rd year, will award $1,000 World Class Scholarships to 60 high school seniors. Scholarship recipients are given the flexibility to use the financial awards to support post-secondary college costs or vocational training from an accredited institution starting in the fall of 2024. Award selection is based on academic achievement and leadership accomplishments. Applications are due on or before the Jan. 30, 2024, and can be fond online at mediacomworldclass.com. Inquiries may be sent to scholarship@mediacomcc.com. Applicants do not have to be Mediacom customers but must live in areas where Mediacom's network delivers gigabit-speed internet service. A complete list of communities in these service areas are included with the online application. Ascentra to offer $15,000 in scholarships for 2024 school year In 2024, Ascentra Credit Union will once again award a total of $15,000 in scholarships to 15 student members to help offset the costs of attending postsecondary education through a college, university or trade program. The program includes awards for three different types of students including five $1,000 scholarships for high school student members planning to enter college; five $1,000 scholarships for non-traditional student members, 19 years and older, planning to attend higher education and five $1,000 scholarships for members entering vocational school or college with a trade program. Traditional and non-traditional students are judged on an essay, resume, awards, extracurricular activities, volunteer services and work experience. This year's 500-word essay question is, "As you prepare for the 2024 school year, how can you avoid excessive student loan debt and make informed decisions about borrowing for your education?" Entrants for the vocational or trades scholarship will need to submit a letter of recommendation from a teacher or advisor, and answer the following question in less than 75 words, "Why did you choose your specific vocational/trades program and what are your career goals in this field?" The program allows students to apply every year they are enrolled in an accredited institution of higher learning and/or trade, even if they are previous recipients of the program. For official rules and to apply, visit ascentra.org/scholarships. All entries must be submitted by the end of the day on Sunday, March 31, 2024. Oregon's landmark drug decriminalization law, which reached its third anniversary, is under scrutiny as the state grapples with a devastating surge in opioid-related deaths and growing calls for its reversal. Opioid-related fatalities in Oregon have soared to a staggering 955 this year, a stark contrast from the 280 deaths recorded in 2019 before the passage of Measure 110, which garnered 58% approval, as per Fox News. Oregon's Opioid Crisis Spurs Law Reevaluation The surge in opioid deaths has deeply affected the state's communities and has prompted many to voice concerns and call for a reevaluation of the law. Michael Bock, a private security guard in Portland, expressed his heartbreak over the drastic change, stating that before Measure 110, he rarely had to perform life-saving interventions. Still, since its passage, it has become a nearly daily occurrence. The crisis in Oregon has led to a push for legislative action from House Republicans, who argue that Measure 110 has failed the state. House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich emphasized the urgent need for meaningful change to address addiction, crime, and homelessness that are plaguing Oregon. Republican proposals include criminalizing the possession of fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine. They also advocate for offering individuals charged with drug-related offenses the option of treatment instead of incarceration, with the added provision of clearing the criminal records of those who complete treatment. In a letter to state leadership, Republicans outlined a series of actions they demand, including reinvesting funds into county probation departments, state specialty courts, and creating additional recovery resources such as treatment beds. The letter highlights the urgency of the situation, as each day, the current policy remains in place, provides more opportunities for drug dealers to exploit vulnerable Oregonians, perpetuates addiction without access to promised treatment, and exacerbates the homelessness crisis. While most House Republicans signed the letter, E. Werner Reschke, a GOP House member, did not endorse it but called on the governor to convene a special session to repeal Measure 110. State Senate Republicans also weighed in on the issue, urging the convening of a special legislative session to address the state's drug crisis and declaring a state of emergency, according to Washington Examine. Read Also: The Guardian Removes Bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America" After TikTok Users Cite It Drug Decriminalization Law Under Fire Amid Opioid Crisis Oregon's pioneering drug decriminalization law, once celebrated as a revolutionary approach, is now facing backlash amid a surge in public drug use fueled by the proliferation of fentanyl and a rise in synthetic opioid overdose deaths. Republicans are expected to propose the reinstatement of criminal penalties for drug possession during the forthcoming legislative session that begins in February, where the measure is anticipated to be a major topic of discussion. Even prominent Democrats who initially supported the law are open to amending it in light of the alarming increase in synthetic opioid deaths. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data reveals that Oregon has witnessed the most substantial rise in synthetic opioid overdose fatalities among states reporting their numbers, with a 13-fold increase from 2019 to the 12 months ending June 30. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic-exacerbated effects of the opioid crisis, there is a severe shortage of mental health professionals, and the proliferation of fentanyl is evident in cities like Portland, where public drug use occurs openly on busy streets. While the debate over the future of Measure 110 continues, the state grapples with the complex challenge of addressing addiction, drug-related crime, and homelessness amidst the ongoing opioid crisis. Public support for expanding treatment remains high, but finding effective solutions remains a pressing concern for Oregon as it navigates this multifaceted crisis, Yahoo News reported. Related Article: NYC's Sweet Truth Act Requires Added Sugar Transparency in Restaurants-But, Some New Yorkers Are Against It @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. KEWANEE, Illinois Kenji Haley celebrates Christmas once a month. His methods are a little unorthodox. Haley is the editor-in-chief of Two Roads, a digital magazine produced by the incarcerated men at the Kewanee Life Skills Re-Entry Center. "Because I literally look over every article, and I typically graph every design on it ... when it's released, it's like I've never seen it before. I look for everything. I look for every word," Haley said. Two Roads is filled with true stories collected from people throughout the State of Illinois. Each issue of the magazine takes on a different topic and allows those both within and outside correctional facilities to tell their stories. "It's Christmas. Even though I have seen the gift, I've wrapped the gift, I have the receipt to show I bought the gift, once I see that on the tablet, I pull it up and there it is," he said. "And I read it all again like I've never seen it before." Vulnerability in print Originally the Kewanee Youth Center, the facility was converted in 2017 to house men who are making their way out of the criminal justice system and back into the general public. Individuals in Kewanee transfer in from other correctional facilities to serve the remainder of their sentence before their release. While at the re-entry center, they are able to participate in vocational programs, including welding and restaurant management, academic programs and therapeutic enrichment programs such as Two Roads. The magazine's staff includes Two Roads founder Jim Estes, the Mental Health Authority for the facility; Jennifer Parrack, chief of programs for the Illinois Department of Corrections and Ricky Hamilton, a formerly incarcerated individual in Kewanee. Estes came up with the name Two Roads after reading "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. The significance of the name suggests the ability for people to make choices about where their lives will lead. The publisher, Penny Rowan, also teaches educational courses at the re-entry center. Rounding out the news team are four senior editors, four associate editors, a content editor and a house poet. Eight of these positions are held by men incarcerated in the Kewanee facility, including Haley. "I like to call us The Atlantic of the prison system because we are telling in-depth stories," Haley said. "They are really giving their lives and they are really vulnerable in expressing who they are, hoping that it is conveyed the right way." Vulnerability is a big part of Two Roads and something Haley encourages from his staff. Carlos McDougal, the house poet for Two Roads, struggled with this when starting with the magazine. "I have been locked up since I was 17 years old. I have been going on 20 years (incarcerated). I know there's things that I need to work on with communication, so Two Roads was one of the reasons I got involved," he said. "It's relieving to me." One of McDougal's first stories was about his mother, whom he lost in 2008. He fought against Haley about doing the story, not wanting to relive the pain. But after it published, he felt a sense of relief, he said. When the Father's Day edition rolled around, McDougal opened up again, writing about his father's death when he was 11 months old. "Two Roads helped me to get that weight off my shoulders, that feeling of being alone," he said. "With Two Roads, I don't feel alone anymore because we're a community." Finding the courage to write is a theme each member of the Two Roads staff can relate to. Senior Editor Hafis Haqq put up a fight when it came to writing for the magazine, but he eventually conceded and also wrote a story for the Father's Day edition. "My father is my absolute hero, so I wrote an article about my father and how I was raised. I have four older sisters, but I had the most responsibility. I wrote that in the article, I told my family about it and they read it," he said. But they weren't all pleased with what he had written. Being the older sisters, they all challenged him on his claim to having the most responsibility. "Then my four sisters said, 'You had the most what?'" he said with a laugh. "But that started a conversation and it also helped them to start following Two Roads." Haqq said his family instantly fell in love with the publication and signed up for alerts immediately. Positive feedback has come from both inside and out of correctional facilities, Haley said, telling the story of his friend Mario who was recently released from the Kewanee facility. This past spring, Mario wrote an article for the Mother's Day edition of Two Roads. That evening, he called his brother who was in the Shawnee Correctional Center. "His brother said, 'I saw your article. I loved it bro, but I already told mom. You're not going to get a chance to tell mom,'" Haley recalled with a laugh. "Right there, that feedback, was amazing." A legacy of voices Publications inside correctional facilities have been around for more than 200 years, according to research by Reveal Digital. On March 24, 1800, Hope Forlorn was published inside a New York state prison, edited by an incarcerated person. Since then, there have been more than 700 publications from all 50 states. Today there are 26 in existence, according to the Prison Journalism Project. Illinois has three such publications: Two Roads, the Dixon Digest and Statesville Speaks, representing the more than 28,000 incarcerated individuals in the state. The first edition of Two Roads was published on Nov. 1, 2018. The inscription on the cover reads, "an honest magazine, written by and for the incarcerated men and women of the Illinois Department of Corrections." Haley decided to reinforce that statement and brought in two female associate editors, Lakisha Woodard and Evelyn Jackson. Both women are living at Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln. The first edition they worked on together was published this past October. Woodard and Jackson wrote in, expressing they wanted to see an edition of the magazine focused on domestic violence in honor of October being its designated awareness month. Haley and the team agreed and gave the women 10 days to collect submissions. They came back with 23. "They were on the ground running," Haley said. Two Roads publishes on the IDOC website and is available free of charge for everyone to read. The team aims for monthly editions, but sometimes receives more submissions than they have space for. In that case, as with the Mother's Day edition, Two Roads will publish two volumes. Each issue of Two Roads focuses on a different theme. In the past, the team has covered topics including the COVID-19 vaccine, race, spirituality, addiction and Black History Month. Coming up, staff has planned issues on re-entry fears and parenting from prison. This wide range of topics allows for different people to relate to different stories and provide their own. Being able to read the stories of people in a similar situation is one reason Haley himself has been a fan of Two Roads long before he transferred to Kewanee in April 2022. "I got involved with Two Roads because I am what you consider an agent of change," Haley said. "When I saw the issues come out, I read them from head to toe. Every person's feeling, every person's thought. I always told myself I wanted to be a part of something." One of the unspoken rules with Two Roads is once someone is released from custody, another individual needs to step up and take their place within the magazine staff. Haley found himself in this position a few months after transferring into the facility. The editor-in-chief at the time was being released, and another man took his place. Haley became involved that October and received his first assignment a few months later. "I got to see the underpinnings of what it does and how it is, and my first task was in March 2023," he said. "He said, 'I'm going to do the Trauma issue and I'm going to assign you the HerStory." The Two Roads staff put out an issue every March in honor of women's history month under the name HerStory, to allow women from other correctional facilities within the IDOC system to tell their own stories. Haley had seen this issue before, but had an idea for how he could enhance it. "My venture was that I wanted to involve not only the individuals in custody, but the staff and the administration," he said. "They are also, quote unquote, doing time as well. They work the long hours and they know the ins and outs of what's going on, so my first piece was built upon making sure all voices were heard." Two Roads now has six regular contributors who are not in custody. "I said this is what I want for Two Roads. I want it to be all-inclusive," Haley said. "So my goal for each month was to have guest contributors." Those contributors have included the re-entry facility Warden James Carothers, members of the John Howard Association and Latoya Hughes, the acting director of IDOC. Having Hughes contribute is what Haley calls one of his proudest moments as editor. "It really gave us more validity," Haley said. "It really showed that what we were doing was carrying a message of hope." Reaching beyond the gates The first page of every issue of Two Roads features the same three steps: restoration, rehabilitation and re-entry. "It was unprecedented for us to put a voice out there for people to see and then for families to see individuals," Haley said. "I know at one point a lot of the work we were doing was Kewanee-based with a few outside entities. From then to now, we have reached every facility in the state." Haqq, a senior editor, agreed, saying the wider the audience, the better the chance for change. "We are ambassadors and I look at it on a much larger scale. If we can show those who are above (Warden Carothers) what this place does, then maybe (they) can be ambassadors for other places to be able to do what this place does," Haqq said. In any given month, the Two Roads team will receive 40-50 entries to be included in the next magazine. Haley said about 30 of those come on paper and the rest come via email. The addition of email has helped to increase the number of submissions and also the accessibility. Yusef Kareem Brown is currently housed at the Pinckneyville Correctional Center and sent in an article to be included in the Viewpoints edition of Two Roads. He wrote that the state gives individuals three envelopes a month and $13 to spend if they have no job. Despite the challenges, Brown promised to write monthly. "Be on the lookout for my mail always," he wrote. "Thank you for giving us the opportunity and platform to share to the world. I sincerely thank you all. You helped make me a better person." This is especially a challenge when it comes to art and photographs, Haley said. "A person who is doing 25-30 years, they don't want to give up a picture, they want to send it because we don't return those things," he said. "We want to make sure that when we receive these things, we are showing them but people are not losing the things they have." Editor Evelyn Jackson wrote about her son in a recent edition of Two Roads and included a photo of the pair. Her son lost his life to gun violence, but Jackson was able to scan in a copy of the photo to be shared in the magazine, while still retaining the physical photo for herself. "To know that she didn't have to give us that photo to show her story is huge because now she gets to share it with the community and the world," Haley said. Hope inside and out Sharing stories is especially important when people make it out of the criminal justice system and back into the world, Haley said. The overall message of Two Roads is about hope, which is why Haley plans to honor his friend Cassidy Winston in an upcoming issue. Winston never lived at the Kewanee facility, but was incarcerated for 37 years and died 43 days after he was released. But, Haley said, he lived for 43 days on the outside. And that is a story of hope. "I worked with him. I lived next door to him, and I saw him in his ups and downs. My message is you need to cherish everything you have because you never realize that anything can happen," Haley said. "Go to the cemetery and make amends. Hug your loved ones. Thank those that helped you but didn't make it all the way to help you out, because outside people have lives, too." That sense of peace is something McDougal has been realizing during his time at the facility. Before transferring to the facility, McDougal had never heard of it and was hoping to go to Centralia. His counselor suggested otherwise, and his cousin encouraged it. With that in mind, he decided to move forward with the move. "This was a blessing in disguise for me," he said. Being part of Two Roads specifically, he said, has strengthened his confidence in his writing. Staff members have come to him in the hallway to tell him how his writing has impacted them, and that has given him a sense of responsibility. "I take it seriously because I'm a writer, and to have my voice out there the way I want it to be and then to have people submit their articles ... it's very important," he said. 18 knives and one road Responsibility is a theme among the editors at Two Roads and something Haqq feels deeply. His journey to Kewanee came with many detours, but an event nearly three decades ago shaped his outlook on life, and his outlook on what he is meant to do. "In 1994, I was in a cell that got shaken down and 18 knives were found. I was in the chapel, the lieutenant came and cuffed me up," Haqq said. "I met my (cellmate), we looked at each other, and he took the weight for his knives. If he hadn't, I wouldn't be here today." Haqq was sure he would be written up for the offense, but he wasn't. His cellmate owned up to the knives and Haqq faced no punishment. That was nearly 30 years ago, and he still thinks about it every day, he said. "He showed personal responsibility in a time where he didn't have to. He set a personal example for me, which I still look up to," Haqq said. "And for years he went through heck not being able to get a job, having his cell shaken down." By seeing his cellmate own up to his actions, Haqq learned about responsibility. And through Two Roads, he learned a way to enforce it. Haqq is coming up on the end of his sentence and, upon his release, he said that he will continue the responsibility of telling and sharing stories. "Them giving what I need, what I feel I need, to better prepare for re-entry gives me a sense of responsibility to continue this after," he said. "I am connected to Kewanee. I am all about community and this is an extension of my community." Two roads diverged in a wood. After more than 30 years in the criminal justice system, Haqq soon will have the opportunity to take the one less traveled. "It's a responsibility that I'm built for. This is what I plan to do when I'm released. My acts out there are only going to be a continuation of what I do in here," he said. "I'm going to continue this in whatever community I return to." For more information: To access Two Roads visit the Illinois Department of Corrections home page. Click about Click News Select Two Roads E-zine Submissions to the Two Roads editorial staff can be emailed to: doc.tworoads@illinois.gov Letters can be sent by mail to: TWO ROADS EDITOR 2021 Kentville Road Kewanee, IL 61443 Photos: Kewanee Marching Boilermakers perform at Maple Leaf Classic (Sept. 24, 2022) A Quad-Cities man who won a $50,000 lottery prize said he initially thought his prize was much smaller. "I told my wife, 'I think I won $75 or $50. Do you want to check it?'" Rogelio Almanza said when he claimed his prize at the lottery's Cedar Rapids regional office, according to a press release. "So she checks it and she goes, 'Ro, you won! $50,000'" Almanza, 70, of Rock Island, won the 25th top prize in the Iowa Lottery's $50,000 "Super Crossword" scratch game. The winning ticket was bought at Casey's, 222 W. Front St., Buffalo, where he had stopped on the way to visit friends. He scratched the ticket at home. Once his wife, Silva, confirmed the win, he took it to a local store and asked an employee to check the ticket on the lottery terminal. Almanza said he plans to share his winnings with his family. The largest lottery jackpots in US history #15. $632.6 million #14. $648 million #13. $656 million #12. $687.8 million #11. $699.8 million #10. $731.1 million #9. $754.6 million #8. $758.7 million #7. $768.4 million #6. $1.08 billion #5. $1.1 billion #4. $1.3 billion #3. $1.5 billion #2. $1.6 billion #1. $2.04 billion South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley is reminding consumers to watch out not only for the good bargains, but shopping scams as well. This is a busy time for shopping, and it is easy to forget to about consumer scams, said Jackley. But those who prey on stealing personal and financial information are still out there. Many people have already started the holiday shopping season and scam text messages have been reported from what appears to be legitimate businesses such as UPS, FedEx and USPS. Common scam messages, which encourage the consumer to click on the link provided, are: We were unable to deliver your package, please contact us to provide further delivery details; Did you attempt to make the following purchase?; and, Weve detected potential unauthorized access to your account, contact us immediately. The Attorney Generals Offices Consumer Protection Division warns consumers that such shopping scams can happen when either making in-store purchases or online. The precautions that we encourage you to use during the rest of the year also are important during the holiday season, said Jackley. Be careful how you shop and always protect your personal and financial information from theft. People who believe they have been a victim of a shopping scam or theft are encouraged to call local law enforcement or the Consumer Protection Division at consumerhelp@state.sd.us or call 1-800-300-1986 or 605-773-4400. Consumers can also sign up for Consumer Alerts via email from the Consumer Protection Division at consumer.sd.gov. The Consumer Protection Division offers these tips on how to stay shopping safe: In-store purchases 1. Check the refund and return policies for restrictions and exceptions. 2. Are there Re-stocking Fees for returned items? 3. When buying gift cards, check for fees and expiration dates that apply. 4. Compare Prices. 5. Review warranties before purchasing. Along with those traditional shopping methods, consumers also need to proceed with caution when dealing with online retailers. Online shopping: 1. Always place orders from a secure connection If your computer isnt protected from potential malicious software, your financial information and passwords are at risk from being stolen and anything else you store on your computer or do online. 2. Avoid offers that seem too good to be true Any e-store that promises too much at too low a price should cause you to pause before going forward 3. Dont use an e-store that requires more information than necessary to make the sale. Expect to provide method of payment, shipping address, telephone number, and email address IF the merchant requests other information walk away from the sale. Never give your bank account or social security information. 4. Need to create a password for a site? make it unique. Most sites will allow you to make the purchase as a guest but if you want to create an account use a unique and strong password. 5. Is the site secure? Look for the https NOT http the s tells you website is secure and encrypted to protect your information. 6. Use a credit card to make your purchases credit cards have standard protections in place should your card information be stolen. 7. ALWAYS check the companys shipping and return policies. Know the time frames you may be up against if you need to return the product. 8. If the Terms and Conditions are buried within the site or if they are vague stop and think before completing the purchase. Smartphone shopping 1. Be sure your computer and mobile devices are current with all software updates. 2. Be cautious of social media scams. Stick to the sites that you are familiar with and do not click on unfamiliar links. 3. Research price comparison apps. There are many malicious mobile apps just ready to be downloaded. 4. Do not download apps from unknown sources. Scam message tips: 1. Never click or access the link that is provided. 2. Always go directly to the source and contact them. 3. Common ways to detect a fake message: Misspelling and poor grammar; Abnormally long numbers; Suspicious link nothing relevant to the company they say they are from; Message is urgent; and message offers a refund. 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. By Nava Thakuria After years of allegation over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) updation process in Assam, the court proceedings begin against the former State coordinator Prateek Hajela (for his involvement with a financial scam to the tune of over 155 crores), the system integrator (Wipro limited) and a subcontractor Integrated System and Services (ISS). Hajela, who had already got voluntary retirement from the service under Assam government, was recently summoned by the Kamrup (metro) additional district & sessions court to appear on 17 November, but he failed to do so. The district court in Guwahati has now fixed 6 February 2024 for the next hearing and even allowed the petitioner Luit Kumar Barman to bring the matter to the retired IAS officers notice through newspaper-advertisements. Wipro, the Indian IT company of international repute, submitted an affidavit through its representatives. However, the ISS (represented by proprietor Utpal Hazarika) was not served the summon duly and the court directed the petitioner Barman to take necessary steps. Both Wipro and ISS face serious allegations of tempering software in the process to allow thousands of illegal Bangladeshi nationals to apply for Indian citizenship. The complainant filed the petition on the basis of the report of Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on social, economic and general sectors for the year ending on 31 March 2020, where it pointed out irregularities on the NRC Assam updation process (May 2014 to October 2019). The highest audit body also recommended penal actions against Hajela and Wipro. Barman lodged a complaint at Paltan Bazar police station on 19 October 2022 against Hajela, Wipro and ISS for their suspected roles in money laundering. But he was not entertained and then approached the court of Kamrup (metro) chief judicial magistrate. But the concerned police officer-in-charge did not register the case. Even the Kamrup (metro) CJM court also refused to entertain his appeal. Then Barman went to Kamrup (metro) sessions court. Amidst the debate of NRC scam, the social media users named and shamed three Guwahati-based television scribes as beneficiaries of it. Those scribes are suspected to be involved in supplying the DEOs to ISS and subsequently benefited themselves from the illegal means. People of Assam still remember how they lavishly praised Hajela as an outstanding officer and pronounced the NRC draft as the final one, even though its yet to be endorsed by the Registrar General of India. Every social media user argued that the DEOs must be financially compensated under the laws. Expressing concern over the development, Journalists Forum Assam urged the local news channel managements to clarify that no journalist of their organisations was involved with the scam, so that the audience do not perceive the entire media fraternity as corrupt. Days back, nationalist body Bharat Raksha Manch (BRM) urged Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to approve all FIRs against Hajela to be registered against the NRC scam-stars. It also appealed to the State government to file an affidavit before the SC seeking for a complete re-verification of the NRC draft with the base year of 1951 (instead of 1971). The State unit of BRM even organised a protest demonstration in the city on 2 October demanding due legal actions against Hajela and other individuals, who are involved with the NRC updation scam. They also approached the State Governor GC Kataria with the same appeal. The petitioner however asserted that he pursues no personal enmity towards Hajela (or anyone), but he has taken it as a cause for the nation. On the next date of hearing, he plans to submit the published advertisements before the court. Amazingly, thousands of social media users extended monetary contributions for the initiative. People of Assam will expect a correct NRC so that the illegal migrants can be identified and take necessary political resolutions over them. Otherwise, Assam will remain as a place for illegal foreigners to settle, grabbing the resources meant for the indigenous families. It should be the moral responsibility for the government and individuals in power to look into the matter seriously and adopt pragmatic policies for the benefits of local communities before its too late. Colleen Curran Living Editor Follow Colleen Curran 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 Echelon Urban Wine Bar is now open Shockoe Slip. The award-winning wine bar arrives in Richmond from Todd and Aimee Henkle, owners of The Vineyards and Winery at Lost Creek, a winery in Loudoun County. The rustic modern wine bar located at 1209 E. Cary St. serves over 150 wines by the bottle and 30 wines by the glass, featuring wine from Lost Creek and Virginia, as well as domestic and international wines from around the world. Echelon also offers a menu of farm-to-table tapas-style small plates such as charcuterie ($28), corn chowder ($16) and pan-seared scallops ($23). This is the second location for Echelon Urban Wine Bar, which is named for Lost Creeks top red blend, Echelon. The first Echelon Urban Wine Bar opened in Leesburg in 2020, right at the start of the pandemic. The Henkles weathered the shutdowns of the pandemic and won Wine Spectators award of excellence in 2021 and 2022. Its very exciting because if youd have asked me if Echelon would be expanding four or five years ago, I would have said, No, Aimee Henkle said. Richmond was the perfect spot for our second location. The Henkles visited Richmond often to attend conferences for the Virginia Vineyards Association and for the Virginia Governors Cup wine competition. They were visiting Richmond for the Governors Cup, staying at the Berkeley Hotel and walked over to the Urban Farmhouse on East Cary Street for coffee. We have a fondness for Richmond and felt this was a great spot. Literally, this street with the cobblestones and the history, Henkle said. When the space at 1209 E. Cary St., which formerly housed Bistro Bobette, became available last year, the Henkles jumped at the chance to open a second Echelon Wine Bar. For over a year, the couple has been working on renovating the space. They added a new, long built-in bar along one wall and a glass wine cellar on the other. We are a wine bar. First and foremost, we want to make sure our wines are coming out at correct temperatures, Henkle said. At Echleon, wine is also served in Riedel glasses that are varietal specific. Henkle said that Echelons aim is for guests to explore and discover new wines. In that vein, Echelon offers wine by the glass ($10 to $25) or by the flight ($20-$45). We wanted to be able to introduce people to wines they might never try by the glass. Now you have a flight where you can try a Carmenere from Chile or a Pinotage from South Africa. Kevin Tate, formerly of the Henry Clay Inn and Perch, has been tapped as the chef de cuisine. The idea is tapas and shared plates. We want to encourage people to order multiple dishes and try different things, Tate said. The menu is regional American contemporary cuisine, along with Tates background in French and Pacific Rim style cooking. The dishes are meant to pair beautifully with the wine. All of the staff are trained on suggesting wine pairings with dishes. For example, the tuna tacos, which pack a little spice, pair with the Carl Graff Riesling from Germany ($13) or a lighter red like the Palladino Barbera ($13) from Italy, Henkle said. Theres also a chefs tasting and wine pairing with four courses paired with wine ($79 per person). *** Aimee and her husband are originally from the Midwest. They honeymooned in Bordeaux, France, where they were introduced to wine culture. They moved to Virginia in 2007 for corporate jobs and fell in love with Virginias wine country. In 2021, they made the leap and purchased The Vineyards and Winery at Lost Creek in Loudoun County. Lost Creek is a small winery with a family focus which produces 3,000 cases a year. We wanted to be the kind of place where you can sit down and talk to the owners, she said. Were small, organic and interested in sustainability and natural wine. Echelon aims to launch a series of wine education classes and wine tastings in the new year in the downstairs, which has been completely revamped into a dining space with its own bar. The downstairs will open up for overflow seating on Friday and Saturday evenings. It can also be rented out for special occasions. The wine bar seats 85, both upstairs and downstairs. Lost Creeks wines have won a variety of awards from the Virginia Governors Cup and the San Francisco International Wine Competition, as well as Lost Creeks 2019 Allure being named one of the top 25 red wines in Virginia by Decanter Magazine. We want to follow in the footsteps of Charlottesville, Henkle said, which was recently named Wine Region of the Year. And help put Virginia on the map. PHOTOS: Echelon Urban Wine Bar When Richmond Public Schools requested bids to rebuild Fox Elementary, which was destroyed in a fire last year, only one company bid on the project. The Richmond School Board voted Monday night to move forward with the lone bidder and award the contract to Gulf Seaboard General Contractors, Inc. for the companys proposed price of $30,437,000. Although the School Board approved the motion on a 8-1 vote, several members expressed concern about the lack of competition. Board member Kenya Gibson, who represents the Third District, noted that while she doesnt suspect any wrongdoing by the school district, shes concerned that the sole bid could indicate other improprieties, such as a collusive bidding process. It doesnt add up. I understand the complexities of the project and all of that, but at the end of the day, as a community when we find out that one person bid, it should raise eyebrows, Gibson said. Im thankful that all of us are scratching our heads a bit but I just dont know that this is something that we can solve in this moment. Dana Fox, the divisions chief operations officer, said the administration was also disappointed. Myself along with the team, we were disappointed that we received one bid really and truly, Fox said. We were hoping for at least three, two would have been great, but we received one. Theres just nothing that we can do about that. Fox said that 18 contractors and subcontractors attended a preliminary meeting but that only one contractor ultimately submitted a bid. She noted that the rebuild at Fox Elementary built in 1911 is complex given the schools historic nature and the timetable geared toward a 2025 reopening. She said many contractors who might normally bid chose not to do so. Its a contractors market, Fox said. They are cherry picking the jobs they want to do It is a historic building, it is an existing building. Its hard to get in there and get the work done quickly versus new construction. While the price tag is larger than expected, all the funds are specifically for the Fox rebuild the citys allocation, insurance money and grant funds and the $30 million price will not detract from other school projects, according to Fox. Its not unheard of to only have one bidder for a building project. In the past two years, a Henrico County ACE Center (Advanced Career Education) had only one bidder, as did Spotsylvania Middle School. The Richmond schools administration said that if the division put the project back out to bid, it would be possible and perhaps likely that it would not receive additional bids, and certainly not at a lower price. And, putting the project back out would cause a significant delay, putting in jeopardy a fall 2025 opening of the school. The beloved Richmond elementary school in the citys Fan District has remained closed since the late-night fire on Feb. 11, 2022. On July 1, 2022 the Richmond Fire Department announced the blaze at the school on Hanover Avenue was accidental and a cause was undetermined. Fox parent Amelia Boschen pleaded with the board at Monday nights meeting to move forward with the project so that the school can reopen as soon as possible. Its critical that we get the support for the rebuild and keep it on schedule so we can get back to our permanent home, Boschen said. We need to see an end to transition and be given a chance to resume long-term investment in our school and our neighborhood community. The longer we endure the limbo were currently in, the more potential there will be for folks to decide not to choose RPS for their children and for the foundations of our community to be worn down. Inside Richmonds Thalhimers department store, it was shaping up to be a normal Friday morning. The holiday season had brought in an influx of shoppers looking to cross off a few items from their lists. The usual hustle and bustle of the day took a turn when the news began to trickle in. One by one, shoppers and workers began to turn their attention to the television display. Those closest began to huddle in front of the wall of various-sized sets. Moments later, about a hundred people stood silent and motionless as a Dallas reporter delivered the news in a broken voice: President John F. Kennedy was dead. A small gray-haired woman carrying a shopping bag set it down and looked at her watch. It was 2:15 p.m. She had been watching the television set for 15 or 20 minutes, hearing about the attempt at assassination, Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Charles McDowell Jr. reported. Now, tears came into her eyes, and she picked up her shopping bag and walked away quickly. Wednesday marks 60 years since Kennedy was struck down while riding in a Lincoln Continental convertible through the streets of Dallas in a seismic event that stunned the nation and world. In a Times-Dispatch report titled Shocked, Numbed Richmond Hears the News, McDowell Jr. wrote about how Richmonders responded to the assassination. Inside the department store, people remained close to televisions waiting for any news to come in. They watched as a clergyman in Dallas prepared a prayer for the crowds who had just waved to the president. When he began his prayer, those in the store bowed their heads. At the old St. Peters Roman Catholic Church on Franklin Street, people began to file in and kneel at the altar. A taxicab driver at the bus terminal had learned of the initial reports, but not of the presidents death. Then, while stopped at a traffic light at Fourth and Broad streets, he heard the news from the radio of the car next to him. At Maggie Walker High School, Principal Harry Williams was charged with informing students. After writing out a message and sending runners to each classroom, he watched three girls cry on the stairs. Others volunteered to help the head custodian lower the flag to half staff. In a little restaurant near Byrd Park, the usually boisterous crowd fell silent as they listened to the broadcast of reporter Charles Collingwood outlining the tragic events in Dallas. For a while the only sound other than from the television was the sloshing as a waitress washed dishes behind the counter, the Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963, edition of The Times-Dispatch read. That silence continued across the city. In the barbershop of Hotel John Marshall, all chairs were turned towards the television set. The only other sounds were the clicking of scissors and the occasional buzz of electric clippers, McDowell reported. Most activities scheduled that Friday night were called off or postponed. About this story "From the Archives" is a series of stories exploring the history of Richmond and the reqion through the files of The Times-Dispatch. Have a topic you'd like us to check out? Email reporter Em Holter at eholter@timesdispatch.com and visit richmond.com to see more from our archives. While Richmond and the state favored Republican Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy held stock within the citys Black population as his campaign championed civil rights. Many of the early memorials held in the city were on behalf of Black leaders. The Richmond Crusade for Voters organized an impromptu memorial at the steps of the state capital. There, 500 people mourned the late president and heard prayers and speeches from those with several religious and civil rights organizations. Among the attendees were former City Council member and prominent civil rights activist Oliver Hill. Lynda Byrd-Harden, former secretary of the Virginia chapter of the NAACP, was at Mount Olive Elementary School in King William County when she learned of Kennedys assassination. In a 30th anniversary report issued in the Tuesday, Nov. 23, 1993, edition of The Times-Dispatch, Byrd Harden recalled children running and screaming from classrooms when news of the killing was heard. I think one of the most disappointing things for people of my generation, was that we think we may have missed all the opportunities to make a difference, Byrd-Harden said. What John Kennedy symbolized was peace and hope, the hope that people would work together in peace and harmony. 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Two people accused of operating a high-end brothel network with wealthy and prominent clients in Massachusetts and northern Virginia will remain behind bars for now, a judge said on Wednesday. Lawyers for Han Lee and Junmyung Lee agreed to a voluntary order of detention during a brief court hearing two weeks after their arrest. Magistrate Judge David Hennessy in Worcester, Massachusetts, entered the order without prejudice, which means defense lawyers can move for their release at a later date. Their attorneys declined to comment after the hearing. Authorities have said the commercial sex ring catered to politicians, company executives, military officers, lawyers, professors and other well-connected clients. Prosecutors have not publicly named any of the buyers and they have not been charged. But acting Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Josh Levy has said the investigation is ongoing and that prosecutors are committed to holding accountable both those who ran the scheme and those who fueled the demand. Prosecutors have argued Han Lee and Junmyung Lee pose a risk of flight, pointing to their financial resources and lack of ties to the community. A Homeland Security Investigations agent said in court papers filed Wednesday that authorities believe Han Lee made an astounding amount of money as the leader of the operation. It was run using websites that falsely claimed to advertise nude Asian models for professional photography, prosecutors allege. The operators rented high-end apartments to use as brothels in Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Tysons and Fairfax, Virginia, prosecutors said. Authorities say Han Lee recruited women and maintained the websites and brothels. She paid Junmyung Lee, who was one of her employees, between $6,000 to $8,000 in cash per month in exchange for his work booking appointments for the buyers and bringing women to the brothels, among other things, the agent wrote. Prosecutors believe the operators raked in hundreds of dollars through the network, where men paid upwards of $600 per hour for services. Officials say Han Lee concealed more than $1 million in proceeds from the ring by converting the cash into money orders, among other things, to make it look legitimate. Authorities seized from their apartments cash, ledgers detailing the activities of the brothels and phones believed to be used to communicate with the sex customers, according to court papers. The agent wrote investigators at Han Lees home also found items indicative of her lavish and extravagant spending habits, including luxury shoes and bags. A third person charged in the case, James Lee, was arrested in California and was ordered by a judge there to remain behind bars while he awaits trial. He has yet to appear in court in Massachusetts. From the Archives: Richmond tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is embarking on a $390 million endeavor to overhaul its radio communication system. This move has ignited a heated debate over transparency and accountability in policing. The plan involves fully encrypted police radio channels by December 2024, a dramatic shift away from a practice that has allowed the public and the press to monitor police dispatches since 1932, as per Gothamist. NYPD's Radio Encryption Sparks Transparency Debate NYPD Chief of Information Technology, Ruben Beltran, defended the move during a recent City Council hearing, citing concerns about the misuse of public access to police radio channels. He asserted that "bad actors" had exploited this open communication channel in various ways, including fleeing from police officers who could be tracked through radio transmissions. Additionally, individuals had breached the system to disrupt communications with music or their voices. At the same time, some opportunistic entities, including ambulance chasers and tow truck companies, had used the airwaves to profit from medical emergencies. "We have to stop giving the bad guys our game plan," Beltran argued during the hearing. Critics of the plan, however, contend that it will hinder transparency and accountability for law enforcement. Many journalists and photojournalists rely on police radios to cover breaking news and hold police officers accountable for their actions. They argue that public access to police radio communications has played a vital role in informing the public about incidents such as the killing of Eric Garner and other high-profile cases. Councilmember Robert Holden labeled the move to encrypted police radios as "a crime in itself," and Councilmember Vickie Paladino emphasized that there should never be a blackout of the press, according to Daily News. Read Also: Italian Officials Convict More Than 200 People as Part of 'Ndrangheta Crime Group Trial NY Senator Proposes Police Radio Transparency Act State Senator Michael Gianaris has introduced a bill, the Keep Police Radio Public Act, aimed at preserving news media's access to police radio communications while addressing concerns related to public safety. Under this proposal, credentialed news media would be allowed real-time access to police radio transmissions, while the public could listen on a 10-minute delay. Gianaris explained that the legislation is designed to strike a balance between transparency and the need for certain protections, acknowledging that the NYPD is attempting to address legitimate issues. Most police departments in the state currently have unencrypted police scanners and would only be affected if they chose to change their systems. Critics argue that the NYPD's move to encrypted police radios aligns with a broader nationwide trend, where police departments are increasingly opting for encrypted radio scanners. However, they emphasize the importance of upholding transparency and accountability in law enforcement. The debate over encrypted police radios has sparked concerns about the future of public access to vital information and the role of the press in monitoring law enforcement activities. As the NYPD's radio system upgrade progresses over the next few years, the fate of transparency in police communications remains a topic of intense discussion in New York City, Yahoo News reported. Related Article: US Claims Israel Hostage Release Deal Is Closer Than Ever; IDF Continues Pounding Hezbollah, Iran's Other Terrorist Groups @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. As the last of the clouds from Tuesdays all-day rain broke up Wednesday just in time for the 346th tribute from the Mattaponi and Pamunkey people to Virginias governor Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked for a moment of silence for the downpour. A big amen for the rain yesterday, it was a big moment and we needed it. It also allowed us to fully contain the forest fires and the wildfires that have been burning across Virginia, he said. The tribute is a celebration of one of the first treaties between settlers and Native Americans, the 1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation. It guaranteed to several of Virginias indigenous peoples access to civil courts, hunting and fishing rights and permanent possession of land within 3 miles of their towns. It ratified the 1646 articles of peace the Mattaponi signed. The treaty reunited some chiefdoms under the authority of Pamunkey chief Cockacoeske. In return, the Mattaponi and Pamunkey have offered a tribute of game to Virginia governors for 346 years. While, from time to time, thats been turkeys and at least once, some geese, for the past several years delegations from both tribes have brought deer harvested from their land. And in doing so, to contribute to a newer tradition. Those deer, after governors accept them with thanks, have gone to the Hunters for the Hungry, to be distributed to needy Virginians. Over the past three decades, theyve given out more than 30 million servings from deer they take, as well as the annual tribute. I do like venison I think I will actually get my own, Youngkin said. But he said hes not jealous that this years tribute isnt staying in the Executive Mansion. One hunter was just sharing with me that the backlog for them has reached record levels at a time when we know donations are down and costs are up at Virginia food banks, he said. The long history of peace and cooperation the tribute represents shows that when Virginians come together they can accomplish great things, Youngkin said, before accepting the deer. I am optimistic about the General Assembly session that convenes in January, Youngkin said later, now that hes met with leaders of the new Democratic majority, as well as leaders of the Republican caucuses in the House of Delegates and state Senate. We all recognize that there are real common interests, not just the General Assembly and the executive branch, not just Republicans and Democrats, not just the House and Senate, but for Virginians, he said. He said hes very concerned about Virginians cost of living and ability to afford a place to live. He added, We all agreed that working hard on the behavioral health process with Right Help Right Now, the reforms he announced late last year, continues to be a centerpiece of collaboration. Close Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, right, shakes hands with Mattaponi Chief Mark Falling Star Custalow during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, at podium, right, adresses a gathering during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and First Lady Pam Northam watch Native American dancers during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Mattaponi Chief Mark Falling Star Custalow, left rear, drums for dancers as, from left, Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Thomasson, First Lady Pam Northam and Governor Ralph Northam look on during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Then-Virginia first Lady Pam Northam, left, and then-Gov. Ralph Northam, center, share a laugh with Mattaponi Chief Mark Falling Star Custalow in November 2021 during the 344th annual tax tribute, in which the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, right, and First Lady Pam Northam were presented a "COVID quilt" handmade by Pamunkey tribal council member Debra Martin, right, during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Mattaponi Chief Mark Falling Star Custalow (center right) stands with Gov. Ralph Northam as his tribe pays their annual tax tribute to Virginia at the Executive Mansion on Wednesday. The Pamunkey brought an eight point deer as their annual tax tribute to Governor Ralph Northam and First Lady Pamela Northam at the Executive Mansion Wednesday, November 24, 2021. PHOTOS: Mattaponi and Pamunkey pay annual tax tribute The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes pay their tax annual tribute to Gov. Ralph Northam and First Lady Pamela Northam at the Executive Mansion Wed., Nove. 24, 2021. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, right, shakes hands with Mattaponi Chief Mark Falling Star Custalow during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, at podium, right, adresses a gathering during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and First Lady Pam Northam watch Native American dancers during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Mattaponi Chief Mark Falling Star Custalow, left rear, drums for dancers as, from left, Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Thomasson, First Lady Pam Northam and Governor Ralph Northam look on during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Then-Virginia first Lady Pam Northam, left, and then-Gov. Ralph Northam, center, share a laugh with Mattaponi Chief Mark Falling Star Custalow in November 2021 during the 344th annual tax tribute, in which the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond. Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, right, and First Lady Pam Northam were presented a "COVID quilt" handmade by Pamunkey tribal council member Debra Martin, right, during the 344th annual tax tribute where the Virginia Tribal Nations present the governor a gift of wild game for their taxes outside the Executive Mansion in Richmond, VA Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2021. The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes both presented the governor and first lady with deer and other gifts. Mattaponi Chief Mark Falling Star Custalow (center right) stands with Gov. Ralph Northam as his tribe pays their annual tax tribute to Virginia at the Executive Mansion on Wednesday. The Pamunkey brought an eight point deer as their annual tax tribute to Governor Ralph Northam and First Lady Pamela Northam at the Executive Mansion Wednesday, November 24, 2021. Theres not as much flowing through the 120-inch-diameter sewer pipe running under Manchester as in the days when the area east of U.S. 1 hosted aluminum foil and tobacco processing plants. Thats part of the answer to Richmonds $1 billion-plus challenge to clean up what flows into the James River. Its an answer that could cut millions from the bill. What flows into the James, when heavy rains hit the oldest 19 square miles of the city roughly, the area east of Interstate 195 north of the river and a stretch of South Richmond from the Nickel Bridge to Commerce Road moves through pipes that carry both sewage and rain draining off the streets. Thats fine most days, especially after the city spent $150 million to nearly double the amount of stuff its wastewater treatment plant can clean up before releasing it into the river, a project that went online in 2021. In really big storms the kind that, for instance, can dump 3 inches over 24 hours theres so much water flowing through pipes in the older part of the city that it fills the room-sized concrete boxes regulators at the pipes outlet ends. When theyre full, a mix of roughly 90% rain and 10% wastewater spills out and into the river. But a new unique in Virginia system of sensors and a high-tech computer model of rainfall have given the citys Department of Public Utilities a fresh look at its network of pipes. And a discovery: We have unused capacity in existing infrastructure, said Grace LeRose, DPU policy adviser. Using whats essentially extra space in the Gordon Avenue pipe means installing a gate and a controller linked to DPUs network of sensors and rain gauges. By opening or closing the gate, sewer pipes and regulators can hold water until the wastewater treatment plant can catch up, said DPU engineering manager Robert Stone. Opening or closing the gate depends on what in-sewer sensors and on-the-surface rain gauges are showing about where combined sewer flows are building up and at risk of overflowing into the river. The sensors track water flowing through the pipes and water levels in the regulators. Linking that data to what rain gauges show is happening in different parts of the city means it is possible to manage the whole system, automatically opening and closing gates as needed to keep from overwhelming the treatment plant, he said. DPU will be installing these gates and control systems on a facility in the James River Park at 22nd Street. It receives combined sewer flows from 4- and 8-foot diameter pipes running west from Manchester. It plans to install gates and controllers managed on three regulators along Gillies Creek in the eastern part of the city, as well as in regulators near the Powhite Parkway Bridge and to the east of Maymont park. That would cut overflows of combined waste- and storm-water by more than 180 million gallons by the time these projects are completed in 2027, under a state deadline set by legislation in 2020. Theres still work beyond that to do, however, including systems to stop the giant Outfall 6 from releasing some 483 million gallons of overflow a year into the James, by the General Assemblys deadline of 2035. Outfall 6 is next to the 14th Street Takeout, a ramp for kayaks or canoes on the north bank of the James. This has been looking like a billion-dollar effort, which would come on top of decades of work that amount to roughly $780 million in 2023 dollars. Thats a big reach for city ratepayers, even with state promises to help. There arent a lot of choices, for the final push to clean up the flow of combined sewers due to be completed by 2035. One option has long looked like somehow finding space for three or four more storage basins like the giant 35 million-gallon Shockoe Retention Basin, a four city block-by-one city block holding tank just to the west of Great Shiplock Park, built more than two decades ago in an early move to deal with combined sewer overflows. That kind of real estate is hard to find, Stone said. Another option to divert water flowing from downtown, Highland Park and Church Hill from the Shockoe Basin to a large new pipe running under the James and then to the wastewater treatment plant would also pose a challenge. Water doesnt flow uphill, so a massive pumping station would be needed. But the Shockoe Basin itself is looking like the answer these days. And here, some more new thinking this time focused on what the top priority for cleaning up combined sewer flow is basically about has come up with an answer that could cut significant sums from the bill to come. The basic problem, after all, is bacteria, LeRose said. And the current notion is adding an area to Shockoe Basin that could skim off some of the combined flow the more diluted portions and then zapping that water with bacteria-killing ultraviolet rays before releasing it to the river. That would create a kind of mini-treatment plant for easy-to-treat material, while directing the tougher-to-deal-with material to be held in the basin for eventual movement to the main treatment plan. We think we can maybe move down from that B in the billion-dollar price tag, Stone said. From the Archives: The James River James River James River James River James River James River James River James River James River Former Congressman Tom Perriello, D-5th, is giving a boost to Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, from the left in her bid for the Democratic Partys nomination for governor in 2025. Spanberger, a three-term member of Congress who has sought to position herself politically as a centrist, already has the endorsement of former Gov. Ralph Northam, who defeated Perriello in the Democratic primary for governor in 2017, as well as a growing list of Democratic legislators and local government officials. Thats a good sign for her, said Larry Sabato, president of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, after Spanberger announced the Perriello endorsement on Wednesday morning. Hes known and hes very much admired on the left. Currently, Spanberger is expected to face competition for the party nomination from Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, a political protege of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, but political commentators say they wouldnt be surprised to see additional candidates. Former House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, was planning a possible gubernatorial run but chose instead to run for the 10th District seat in Congress in an effort to succeed retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-10th. Perriello served one term in the House of Representatives from 2009 to 2011 after defeating Rep. Virgil Goode, R-5th, a six-term congressman who began his career as a conservative Democrat from rural Southside Virginia, but later became an independent and then a Republican. Robert Hurt, then a state senator from Chatham, defeated Perriello in 2010 and served three terms before leaving Congress in 2017, and Republicans have dominated the red-hued 5th Congressional District ever since. Im fired up that we Virginians will have a chance to elect Abigail Spanberger as our next governor! Perriello said in the announcement by Spanbergers campaign. Abigail is a leader whose service record demonstrates her willingness to do what is difficult to put her community, commonwealth and country first. Shes taken on the special interests to deliver cheaper prescription drugs, expanded broadband access and made investments in green jobs, he said. Shes been a bulwark for our fundamental freedoms while also building bridges to fight political corruption and attacks on our democracy. Perriello, 49, who grew up in the Charlottesville area, served in two diplomatic posts under then-President Barack Obama after losing his congressional seat. In the 2017 Democrat primary for governor, major Democratic donor Michael Bills backed Northam, while his wife, donor and philanthropist Sonjia Smith, backed Perriello. Bills would found Clean Virginia in 2018. After losing the gubernatorial nomination to Northam, Perriello led Win Virginia, a Democratic political action committee that helped the party flip 15 seats in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates in 2017. In 2018, he became executive director of U.S. programs for the Open Society Foundations, a grant-making network founded by international financier George Soros to promote democracy, criminal justice reform and equitable growth for communities of color and immigrants. He left the job in July. Perriello headed a group of 14 state and local officials who endorsed Spanberger on Wednesday. The group also includes Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax, who will serve in prominent leadership roles for the new Democratic majority in the House of Delegates, including as chair of the Health and Human Services Committee. Close Former Congressman Tom Perriello, D-5th, is endorsing Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, in her bid for the Democratic Partys nomination for governor in 2025. Perriello unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Partys nomination for governor in 2017. Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello gives his concession speech during his primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello gives his concession speech during his primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello gives his concession speech during his primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) (From left) Salamatu and Sheku Lahai, from Manassas, Va. but originally from Sierra Leone, cheer on their candidate during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. The husband and wife both volunteered for the campaign.(Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) (From left) Campaign volunteers Claire Wyatt, of Washington, DC, Collin Rees, also of Washington, DC, and Ian Ware, of Richmond, Va., were among the many on their phones checking the polling results during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Reporter Nomiki Konst, from The Young Turks, works as the crowd and media await poling results during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) The crowd reacts during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's concession speech at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello is introduced by his mom, Linda Perriello, before giving his concession speech during his primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Aliyah Khan, of Sterling, Va., was among the many campaign volunteers checking phones as they awaited polling results during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017."I think they've rigged it again," she said after reading that some were already calling the race for Perriello's opponent Ralph Northam. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) PHOTOS: Perriello concedes race to Northam Tom Perriello concedes Democratic primary race to Ralph Northam. Former Congressman Tom Perriello, D-5th, is endorsing Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, in her bid for the Democratic Partys nomination for governor in 2025. Perriello unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Partys nomination for governor in 2017. Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello gives his concession speech during his primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello gives his concession speech during his primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello gives his concession speech during his primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) (From left) Salamatu and Sheku Lahai, from Manassas, Va. but originally from Sierra Leone, cheer on their candidate during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. The husband and wife both volunteered for the campaign.(Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) (From left) Campaign volunteers Claire Wyatt, of Washington, DC, Collin Rees, also of Washington, DC, and Ian Ware, of Richmond, Va., were among the many on their phones checking the polling results during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Reporter Nomiki Konst, from The Young Turks, works as the crowd and media await poling results during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) The crowd reacts during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's concession speech at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello is introduced by his mom, Linda Perriello, before giving his concession speech during his primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) Aliyah Khan, of Sterling, Va., was among the many campaign volunteers checking phones as they awaited polling results during Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perriello's primary night party at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA on Tuesday, June 13, 2017."I think they've rigged it again," she said after reading that some were already calling the race for Perriello's opponent Ralph Northam. (Photo for The Richmond Times-Dispatch/ Eva Russo) From the commonwealth to the front lines, the instruments of war have arrived. Around 12,000 pounds of tactical vests, helmets and other gear have hit the ground, Marcellus said, and are being handed out to civilian first responders and moms guarding (village) perimeters due to men being called up. Those on the receiving end say the gear is already making a difference. Jenilee Bader-Ben-Shimon, 69, a U.S. Navy veteran who was stationed in Virginia for decades before she retired from military service and took a job with the city of Virginia Beach, lives in one of the Israeli villages and confirmed to the Richmond Times-Dispatch that residents started receiving shipments of the supplies earlier this week. Everyone was smiling, said Bader-Ben-Shimon, adding that the community wanted to personally thank Virginia, Miyares and Marcellus for their work. Some of the packages included personal letters from Virginia law enforcement officials expressing their solidarity with Israelis. Please accept these gifts from the Lancaster County Sheriffs Office, read a note from Lancaster Sheriff Patrick McCranie. May they provide comfort and protection as you go about serving your citizens during this most difficult time. The vests that Bader-Ben-Shimons community received came from the Henry County Sheriffs Office, said Marcellus, emphasizing that the project is not just about supporting Israel, but also about supporting Virginians abroad. It is by Virginians, and for Virginians, Marcellus said. And Marcellus noted that the generosity has persisted. Southern Police Equipment in Midlothian has continued to donate entire pallets of equipment, Virginia Tech students have volunteered to shuttle the gear to and from locations across the state, and cargo space on Israel-bound flights has been provided for free, Marcellus said. He called the network of participants an impressive global supply chain, from Virginia to the front lines. Marcellus also credited Miyares for reaching out to Virginia sheriffs and police departments and for enlisting the help of other states. Due to Miyares efforts, Marcellus said, Nevada and other states had provided tactical vests for shipment to Israel. Theyre all taking Jason (Miyares) letter (requesting surplus tactical gear), and saying lets do this, Marcellus said. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of Virginias law enforcement community, nonprofits, and Richmonds local Jewish community, the shipments of excess protective equipment have arrived in Israel for distribution to civilian first responders and kibbutzim deemed the most in need, Miyares said in a statement to The Times-Dispatch. On Thursday, it was announced there would be a truce between Israel and Hamas that would start Friday morning with 13 hostages to be freed, to be followed by more hostages being released over four days. In exchange, Palestinian prisoners held by Israel would be released in waves. Qatar and the U.S. helped broker the deal, which will also allow for increased humanitarian aid to flow into war-stricken Gaza. Gazan health officials have said more than 11,000 Palestinians have died in Israeli strikes since Oct. 7, the day that Hamas militants killed at least 1,200 people in Israel and abducted around 240 people. Officials said the truce is temporary and is for four days. From the Archives: Richmond tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels Tunnels PORTLAND, Maine Some states are steadily chipping away at longstanding bans on Sunday hunting, and there's a push to overturn the laws in Maine and Massachusetts, the final two states with full bans. Maine's highest court is considering a lawsuit asking whether the state's 19th century law, which prevents hunting big game animals such as deer, moose and turkeys on Sundays, is still necessary. In Massachusetts, where hunters are also lobbying for Sunday hunting rights, there is a renewed eff ort to change state laws forbidding the practice. Forty states have no prohibitions on hunting on Sundays. The bans stem from so-called "blue laws" that also regulate which businesses can remain open and where alcohol can be sold on Sundays. Animal welfare groups, conservation organizations and others are rallying to defend the prohibitions, but the end of the laws might be in sight. Other states such as Virginia and South Carolina have in recent years rolled back what remains of their own limitations on the Sunday hunt. Residents of states where hunting is part of the culture are divided on the subject. Some hunters argue the laws protect private landowner rights, while others say the rules take away hunting opportunities or are just plain silly. Sportsmen who oppose the laws see them as a vestige of the blue laws dating to the 17th century and limiting what activities citizens can engage in on a day governments once dedicated to prayer. Jared Bornstein, executive director of Maine Hunters United for Sunday Hunting, said allowing seven-day-a-week hunting would allow people the opportunity to harvest their own food in a state with many poor, rural communities that cannot afford soaring grocery costs. "I'm not saying that Sunday hunting is going to save the world economically, but I'm saying for a group of people, there's more of an objective benefit to it," Bornstein said. "It's a generation's last vestigial attempt to control the working class." The states that still have full or partial bans on Sunday hunting are all on the East Coast, where every fall sportsmen pursue wild turkeys and white-tailed deer with firearms and archery. Last year, South Carolina opened limited hunting on public lands on Sundays, and the year before that Virginia made a similar move. A few years prior North Carolina began to allow Sunday hunting on some 75% of its public hunting land, according to the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation. Laws were also loosened in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware in the past five years. Maine's ongoing court case, which could legalize Sunday hunting, concerns a couple who filed a lawsuit stating the "right to food" amendment in the state's Constitution, the first of its kind in the U.S., should allow them to hunt on any day of the week. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court has heard arguments in the case, but it's unclear when it will rule, said Andy Schmidt, an attorney for the couple. The state first banned Sunday hunting in 1883. In Massachusetts, where some sources date the ban all the way back to the Puritan era, a campaign to repeal it made progress before stalling in the state Legislature in 2014. Some are continuing to try to strike the law, which is "discriminating against hunters," said John Kellstrand, president of the Mass Sportsmen's Council. A new proposal to authorize Sunday hunting via bow and arrows was introduced earlier this year. In Pictures: The Tulum International Airport Tulum, Q.R. The new Felipe Carrillo Puerto International Airport of Tulum will become part of the Presidential legacy. Quintana Roo Governor Mara Lezama also says the Tulum Airport is the countrys first ever green airport. She says as of December 1, 2023, the new Tulum International Airport will be ready to serve 5.5 million annual passengers. Governor Mara Lezama tours the inside of the Tulum Airport. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. An inside ceiling is lit with sky and palm trees. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. Lezama says the airport will strengthen Quintana Roos global tourism leadership and will place the state as the only one in Mexico to have four international airports. Once Tulums airport is complete, the state of Quintana Roo will be home to the Cancun International Airport, Cozumel International Airport, Chetumal International Airport and Tulum. One of many seating areas. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. Floors are being polished inside an airport lounge. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. With four international airports, the state will have the greatest air connectivity in the country, able to receive thousands of tourists who arrive to enjoy the natural wonders of Quintana Roo. The airport offers lounger seats for travelers waiting for flights. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. A section of interior made with regional woods offering a touch of traditional Mayan construction. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. The Tulum International Airport is being built in the neighboring municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, which is where the land required was purchased from local ejidos. The airport is located about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) southwest of Tulum. A baggage carousel is nearing installation completion. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. The Tulum International Airport runway is 3.7 kilometers long, the longest in the Yucatan Peninsula. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. The Felipe Carrillo Puerto Airport of Tulum is more than 75,000 square meters of construction with a 3.7 kilometer long runway, the longest in the Yucatan Peninsula. The airport is equipped with the latest generation technology, an imposing control tower, a terminal building for passengers and one for private flights (FBO). A row of bathroom stalls inside the new airport. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. Technology used will be latest generation. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. A large viewing area from inside the airport lounger gate. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. An imposing control tower is at the center of the airports functions. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. In accordance with the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Tulum Airport is the first green airport to be built in Mexico for the protection and preservation of flora and fauna, as well as for the mitigation of environmental impacts. Hundreds of solar panels is among the considerations that makes the airport green. Photo: Courtesy Government of Quintana Roo November 21, 2023. Airlines that will offer flights to the Tulum International Airport include American, Spirit, Delta, Aeromexico, United, Viva Aerobus and Mexicos state-owned Mexicana de Aviacion, among others. Ado bus lines will be offering transportation starting December, while car rental company AVASA will be operating out of the new Tulum airport. To date, the Tulum airport has created nearly 15,000 jobs. The great Christian apologist, scholar, and novelist C.S. Lewis died 60 years ago today. Among his many memorable exchanges was one with philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe. The legacies of both would inform the faith and intellectual contributions of generations to follow. It was a night that would live in infamy. The great debater and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis was defeated by a womanand a young Roman Catholic upstart philosopher at that. Except thats not quite what happened. The indefatigable Stella Aldwinckle, chaplain of women students at Oxford University, had convinced 28-year-old Elizabeth Anscombe, a research fellow in philosophy at Somerville College, to come speak at the Socratic Club. Aldwinckle, described by Lewis student John Wain as a formidable, crop-haired woman, had founded the club six years earlier to answer the need for Oxford to have an open forum for the discussion of the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular. But first she needed a don or other senior member of the university to support the club. She asked Lewis, relatively fresh from atheism himself and just beginning his apologetics work on radio and in print. Lewis response was enthusiastic: This club is long overdue! Come to coffee in my rooms on Tuesday, and we can talk it over. The first meeting was on Monday, January 26, 1942, at 8:15 p.m. Dr. R.E. Havard, a close friend of Lewis and a fellow Inkling, presented the paper, Wont Mankind Outgrow Christianity in the Face of the Advance of Science and Modern Ideologies? Sometimes a second speaker would offer a response before the president opened the discussion to the rest of those in attendance. Even after the Monday evening meetings officially concluded at 10:30 p.m., the conversations would often continue informally into the night. The club met during the high point of Lewis apologetics work. Over the next few years, as World War II climaxed and drew to a close, Lewis broadcast the talks that would become Mere Christianity. The Abolition of Man came out in 1943, and the first edition of Miracles was published in 1947. Several classic Lewis essays began as papers delivered to the club, such as Is Theology Poetry? and Bulverism, or The Foundation of 20th-Century Thought, and were later collected in God in the Dock and The Worlds Last Night. The club would continue strong until February 1955, when Lewis moved to Cambridge and the philosopher Basil Mitchell was elected the new president. Over the next few years, its weekly meetings continued but attendance declined until it finally drew to a close in the summer of 1972, nine years after Lewis death. Lewis wrote of the need for the club in the preface to the first Socratic Digest (1942-43): In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university, there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by group hostility. Whereas at the Socratic, At the very least we helped to civilise one another. Aldwinckle had chosen well: her own energy and organization combined with Lewis generosity, wit, and adeptness in intellectual sparring made for a dynamic team. If nothing else, students could come to watch Lewis give a good show and then leave with something to think about. Lewis was not the only heavy hitter to grace the debate marquee. As befitting Oxford, some of the greatest philosophers and writers of the day spoke and sparred at the Socratic. E.L. Mascall, the venerable Anglo-Catholic theologian, took part, sometimes opening the discussion himself or participating as one of the questioners; at one event, he discussed Rational Existentialism with novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch. Dorothy Sayers, Lewis good friend and a translator, mystery novelist, and Christian apologist, was so impressed by the club that she immediately tried to start a London branch (which never got off the ground). Christopher Dawson presented on Christianity and Humanism with Western Culture, with a response by I.T. Ramsey. Scholar J.N.D. Kelly spoke on The Gospels: History or Legends? We never claimed to be impartial, Lewis wrote: But argument is. It has a life of its own. No man can tell where it will go. We expose ourselves, and the weakest of our party, to your fire no less than you are exposed to ours. Worse still, we expose ourselves to the recoil from our own shots; for if I may trust my personal experience, no doctrine is, for the moment, dimmer to the eye of faith than that which a man has just successfully defended. The arena is common to both parties and cannot finally be cheated; in it you risk nothing, and we risk all. [Preface for the first Socratic Digest, 194243] Indeed, sometimes the discussions were between interlocutors on completely different sides of a question, such as Anglican priest Austin Farrer discussing Did Christ Rise from the Dead? with Jewish mythologist Robert Eisler. Lewis himself debated philosopher C.E.M. Joad on the claims of Christianity in January 1944. During the 1940s, emotivism had been gaining in prominence. Emotivist ethics are a kind of anti-ethics: as one of its most famous and key proponents, A.J. Ayer, put it, ethical judgments are emotional valuations only, and hence nonfactual and meaningless. The statement Stealing money is wrong, wrote Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (1936), has no factual meaningthat is, expresses no proposition that can be either true or false. For Ayer, the realm of morality was disconnected from the real world. Ayers ideas took Oxford by storm, and ethics as a philosophical discipline continued its decline. Later, Richard Hare would develop this line of thinking and adjust it: for Hare, statements of value werent meaningless, but they were reflections of the principles one held, and one was responsible for living out ones principles. However, there was still no way to argue that a certain act was evil. Such ideas could only be possible in a world that had separated fact from value/opiniona world that is still very much with usand that treated nature, both human and nonhuman, as so much raw material to manipulate and upon which to impose meaning. Lewis would point his philosophical guns at emotivism and its near relations in his 1943 masterpiece, The Abolition of Man. G.E.M. (or Elizabeth as she was more familiarly known) Anscombea cigarette-smoking (shed later take up cigars instead), trouser-wearing philosophy tutor from Somerville College who also happened to be one of the most formidable thinkers of her time (Alan Jacobs) and who would become the foremost translator of Wittgensteins work into Englishwas also a staunch opponent of emotivism. Indeed, she was a devout Roman Catholic, and had been since she converted in her teens. By 1948, she had been married to fellow philosopher Peter Geach for seven years; their oldest child, Barbara, was five years old. Though Lewis enjoyed the company of sharp and intelligent women like Dorothy Sayers, poet Ruth Pitter, and his future wife, Joy Davidman, he and Anscombe never formed a friendship, though they were Oxford colleagues and could enjoy a dinner together in the company of mutual friends. We dont know what would have happened had they encountered each other more frequently, which, given their busy lives, and especially Anscombes commitments to her work and family, was not likely. The discussion on February 2, 1948, that would become legendary in Lewisiana was remarkable perhaps in part because it was not as entertaining and straight-up thrilling as many another discussion wherein Lewis, a master of instant riposte (Walter Hooper), could go at it with someone on the other side. Anscombe and he were on the same teamshe a fiercely committed Catholic, he a self-described old-fashioned, square-rigged C. of E. It was remarkable also that it put Lewis on the defensive. The young Anscombe was a bit like Lewis old tutor Kirkpatrick: she was exceptionally concerned with air-tight logical and philosophical integrity. Hence, she decided to focus her paper on what she deemed a weakness in one of Lewis arguments against their common enemy of philosophical naturalism. This was Anscombes way: to lay into those with whom she agreed, to critique those on her team more so than the other side. Glibness was her bane, and anything she perceived as slick argumentation was repellent to her. Few could be said to be more serious or honest; she held herself to the same rigorous standards. Bad arguments for the truth should be refuted, she once told her daughter, the philosopher Mary Geach Gormally. In Miracles, Lewis had argued that belief in reasons validity does not square with the belief that human thoughtbelief itselfwas the result of nonrational causes. Anscombe believed that Lewis had confused belief with grounds for a belief, and also that Lewis had confused irrational and nonrational causes: in her words, I am going to argue that your whole thesis is specious because of the ambiguity of the words why, because, and explanation. Indeed, Anscombes philosophical focus placed her in an exceedingly well-placed position to critique Lewis argument. Causation had been one of Anscombes central concerns since her teenage years. During the same period as when she was reading the lives of the English Catholic martyrs, she came upon the statement, Anything that comes about must have a cause. She thought this needed a good proof, so she tasked herself with finding an adequate one. Years later, she had come up with several, but none of them satisfied her. Meanwhile, she had been received into the Catholic Church. Though much of her philosophical work would interest nonphilosophers, Mary Gormally has noted that Anscombe was also interested in the sort of problems which only strike philosophers as problematic. Anscombe had made her case; it was time for Lewis to respond. At first, they spent a good amount of time clarifying terms. Its not unfair to suppose that the discussion likely was above the heads of most people present. Ultimately, Lewis responded by returning to his argument, thinking more carefully over his terms, and rewriting the chapter in question in the second edition of Miracles. He also suggested that Anscombe ought to succeed him as president of the Socratic Club (Of course, Dr. Havard recounted that Lewis later said to him, she is far more intelligent than either of us), though this sort of public position was not to Anscombes taste; indeed, she found public lectures far less to her liking than private discussions among colleagues, friends, and students. And though a skilled debater, her method of discussion was very different from Lewis. Indeed, Lewis colleague George Watson muses that it was his fondness for arguing both sides of a question [that] led, in some quarters, to a reputation for sophistry. No one could have accused the incredibly intense and earnest Anscombe of dallying in a spirited bout of sparring for the mere fun of it. Lewis valued not only the thrill, the cut and thrust, of debate, but also the convivial quality of sharpening: friends were comrades-in-arms, and friends would not only press the hard questions out of care and love for each other, but also challenge you to be the best you could be. If an argument could be made stronger, a friends task was to strengthen it. If the critique came not from a friend but a colleague, as Anscombe was, it was only meet for Lewis to understand the criticism and to use it to strengthen his argument, as he then did in the second edition of Miracles. Anscombe reflected on the event later, impressed that Lewis had rewritten the chapter and had proved to be not as glib as she suspected. Indeed, her exacting standards found her own work to be glibber than she liked as well! Anscombe was bemused at the reaction of people to the debate between her and Lewis: in a later note, she recognized his honesty and seriousnessboth qualities she highly prized. My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis rethinking and rewriting showed he thought was accurate. I am inclined to construe the odd accounts of the matter by some of his friendswho seem not to have been interested in the actual arguments or the subject-matteras an interesting example of the phenomenon called projection. Michael Ward, echoing a line from G.K. Chesterton, has noted that Lewis knew the difference between an argument and a quarrel. In this, Lewis imitated his hero Chesterton, himself a hugely entertaining public debater as well as good friends with those who really were on the other side of the debate. One of Lewis students, Derek Brewer, remembers that one of his most notable characteristics as a man as well as a tutor was his magnanimity, his generous acceptance of variety and difference, sure of his own standards but tolerant of others, and of others failings. He did not start out this way; indeed, it was through hard work that he became a generous debater and friend. The scholar and Cambridge literature professor George Watson attests that Lewis was the best teacher I ever had, and the best colleague. Lewis did not ask or expect me to share his convictions, says Watson, and if I were ever to be asked what I learned from him, that would be my reply: the art of disagreement. Anscombe, too, was an intrepid teacher: students would spend long hours in tutorials with her, and, notes Benjamin Lipscomb, she liked nothing better than when one of her students challenged her own or Wittgensteins ideas. Indeed, another student and eventual colleague recalled, If I wrote anything with which I thought she would agree, she attacked me more vigorously than ever. Anscombe later supervised the doctoral thesis of Roger Scruton (1973), who would describe her as perhaps the last great philosopher writing in English. Anscombe was fearless in her pursuit of the truth, not only in her work but also in her life. She became well known in 1956 for opposing Oxfords awarding an honorary doctorate to Harry Truman because of his role in the destruction of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: For men to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder, she wrote. (She coined the term consequentialism.) She argued publicly for the Catholic Churchs teachings on life; she and her husband Peter celebrated with champagne when the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae was released, and she was arrested twiceonce when nearly 70for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic. Anscombe died shortly after giving her husband a last kiss on January 5, 2001, surrounded by family. She was 81. Each of her seven children have grown into practicing Catholics. When considering how briefly to describe her longtime friend, the atheist philosopher of ethics Philippa Foot wrote in her journal a description that could very well fit Lewis himself, whose passing we commemorate today: Truthful. A lover of truth. A Christiansburg businessman once worth $14.5 million was convicted Tuesday of hiding his wealth from the Internal Revenue Service. James C. Jones Jr. was found guilty by a jury of eight charges: corruptly obstructing the IRS, evading taxes and six counts of filing false tax returns from 2013 to 2018. Jones, the owner of a private ambulance service, concealed personal assets that included four luxury, beachfront apartments in the Caribbean island of Saint Martin and a classic car collection worth about $2 million, according to evidence presented during a six-day trial in Roanokes federal court. Following the verdict, U.S District Judge Michael Urbanski allowed the 62-year-old to remain free on home confinement pending a sentencing hearing. Jones faces a maximum sentence of 26 years in prison. An investigation began in 2015, when the IRS determined that Jones had withheld taxes from the paychecks of employees of his business, Lifeline Ambulance Service Inc., but failed to turn that money over to the government. What happened next was a decade-long mission to obstruct and evade the IRS, Francesca Bartolomey, a tax attorney for the Department of Justice, told the jury in her closing arguments. Rather than write a check for the approximately $236,000 owed in back taxes, Jones took elaborate steps in an effort to persuade the IRS that he was essentially dirt poor. Witnesses told the jury that Jones made false statements on tax forms, transferred assets to foreign entities, lied about property transactions and used his business acumen to establish off-shore accounts to muddy the water. Who knows how to do stuff like that? Bartolomey said in arguing that Jones acted knowingly. Not your average Joe walking down the street. Jones testified that he never owned the Saint Martin apartments and a fleet of antique and muscle cars, and that the various government witnesses were lying and conspiring against him. Lifeline Ambulance, which provided patient transportation services and sometimes worked as a back-up for public rescue squads, is no longer in operation. Bartolomey cited a trove of evidence including a statement Jones submitted to a Saint Martin bank in which his assets were listed at $14.5 million in asking that the defendants story be rejected. That ends today, she told the jury. That ends with you. A federal judge convicted an Elliston man Tuesday of consorting with a large and unruly crowd of Donald Trump supporters who occupied the U.S. Capitol over a disputed election. After hearing four days of evidence, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper found Jeremy Daniel Groseclose guilty of obstructing an official proceeding and resisting police during a civil disorder, both felonies. Groseclose, 41, was also convicted of the misdemeanor offenses of disorderly conduct and parading or demonstrating in a Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Video footage and photographs introduced as evidence showed Groseclose in a mob of rioters that stormed the building shortly after then-President Trump urged his supporters to fight like hell against an election he claimed was stolen from him. Wearing a gas mask, Groseclose was seen on film as he climbed through a broken window next to the Senate Wing Door at about 2:24 p.m., just a few minutes after lawmakers were evacuated. He headed to the Crypt, a large circular room that is directly below the Rotunda. There, Groseclose joined a group of rioters who were trying to prevent Capitol Police officers from closing a roll-up door. Groseclose and other subjects approached the door as it was closing and tried to prevent the door from closing by placing chairs, trash cans and other objects under the door, an FBI special agent would later write in an affidavit. After forcing the door up, the crowd surged past retreating police officers. Groseclose, who was seen using his cellphone to take pictures of what appeared to be blood on the floor, spent about two hours inside the Capitol, according to authorities. The next day, the FBI received tips from two people who knew Groseclose. Both said they had seen his posts on social media that included photographs taken while in the Capitol. Given a name, federal agents were able to identify and arrest Groseclose. Groseclose will be sentenced later. He is one of more than 1,200 people from across the country and 10 from Western Virginia charged with participating in the insurrection, which lasted several hours before order was restored and Congress was able to return and certify an election won by President Joe Biden. Although Groseclose was arrested in late February 2021, it took nearly three years for his case to be heard. His first court-appointed lawyer was allowed to withdraw after the defendant became extremely critical of counsels efforts and his advice, court records state. A second attorney was appointed, and the case was continued several times due to her busy schedule representing other Jan. 6 defendants. As his current trial date approached, Groseclose again complained about his lawyer. A breakdown in the attorney-client relationship has opened and deepened over the last few weeks, Carmen Hernandez wrote in a Nov. 3 motion asking that she be allowed to withdraw. At the same time, Groseclose contacted another attorney about representing him, and started to collect money through an online fundraising site. A post to the site mentioned this nightmare that the U.S. government is putting all of us through for his non-violent and non-destructive involvement in j6. More than $35,000 was raised, according to court records. Prosecutors objected to Grosecloses last-minute attempt to switch lawyers, writing in court papers that it appeared he was attempting to delay his trial again. Cooper kept Hernandez on the case, and the bench trial began Nov. 13. A Roanoke man charged with shooting another in his home after a dispute about drugs entered a plea agreement in Roanoke Circuit Court Wednesday and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Marcus D. Williamson, 51, was indicted in February on three felony charges, first-degree murder, using a firearm in the commission of a felony and possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, connected to the Jan. 11 death of 39-year-old James L. Moore Jr. On that day, Williamson went to Moores residence in the 2300 block of Delaware Avenue Northwest, Assistant Commonwealths Attorney Jason Morgan said during Wednesdays hearing. There, Moore accused Williamson of taking drugs, Morgan said. Moore asked Williamson to strip, but Williamson refused, and the two men began to fight. Other occupants in the residence broke the men apart, Morgan continued, and Williamson went back outside, where he retrieved a firearm from his vehicle. Williamson called for Moore to come out of the residence, but when he heard no reply, he entered the dwelling again. Morgan said Williamson approached Moore, brandished the firearm, then fired a shot that struck Moores chest. When police responded to the residence, they encountered Williamson and took him into custody after a brief physical struggle, Morgan said. Moore was pronounced dead on the scene. Williamson pleaded no contest Wednesday to a second-degree murder charge, amended from first-degree in accordance with his agreement with the commonwealth. He was sentenced on that charge to 40 years in prison, suspended after he serves 12 years. He also pleaded no contest to the firearm use charge and was sentenced to three years of incarceration, the mandatory minimum sentence for the charge in Virginia. In exchange for his pleas, Williamsons firearm possession charge will not be prosecuted. Once released from prison, hell be placed on supervised probation for four years. Judge Christopher Clemens said the handgun used in the shooting, a Hi-Point .45, will be surrendered and destroyed. Morgan said Wednesday that while Moores family was not present at the hearing, it had approved the plea agreement and was accepting of the disposition. US Navy aircraft experienced a partial submersion in the shallow waters of Kaneohe Bay. The incident occurred on Monday afternoon when the aircraft overshot the runway at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Which occurred at approximately 1:57 p.m., involved a P-8 Poseidon aircraft that was in the process of landing, as per Hawaii News Now. US Navy Aircraft Mishap at Marine Corps Base Hawaii Authorities confirmed that the aircraft had nine individuals on board, all of whom successfully made it to shore uninjured. The crew was engaged in what military officials described as "routine training" at the time of the incident. The Boeing P8 Poseidon, classified as a military surveillance and patrol aircraft, is a vital component of the US Navy's reconnaissance capabilities. Aircraft expert Peter Forman weighed in on the incident, noting that several factors might have contributed to the overshoot. Forman cited the shorter runway at Kaneohe, unfavorable weather conditions, and the influence of Kona winds as potential contributors. "The pilot probably didn't put the plane down exactly where he wanted to on the runway," Forman speculated. "It's probably a combination of all those factors put together." A thorough investigation is underway to determine the exact events that led to the mishap and to evaluate the factors that played a role in it. The incident unfolded near Marine Corps Base Hawaii, located near Kaneohe Bay, when the P-8A Poseidon overshot the runway during its landing. Lt. Hailey Harms, the deputy director of public affairs at the base, reported that the accident occurred early Monday afternoon during a routine training mission, according to The New York Times. Read Also: Netanyahu Slams Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas for Claiming Israel Killed Their Own People, Not by Hamas Navy Crew Rescued From Downed Aircraft in Hawaii All nine Navy personnel on board successfully escaped from the aircraft and were rescued from an inflatable life raft floating in the water. As of late Monday afternoon, the aircraft remained partially submerged in the bay. According to Lt. Mohammad N. Issa, a spokesman for the Navy's Third Fleet, the crew members involved in the incident are assigned to a squadron based in Whidbey Island, Washington. He also noted that emergency workers had implemented a temporary floating barrier to safeguard the environment from any potential hazards posed by the downed aircraft. The P-8A Poseidon, known for its extensive wingspan of about 123 feet and a length of approximately 130 feet, is predominantly used for surveillance missions. Its role in military reconnaissance makes it a crucial asset in maintaining national security. While details surrounding the precise cause of the overshoot remain limited, it is clear that all nine individuals on board the aircraft were fortunate to escape unharmed. Marine Corps Base Hawaii, located approximately 10 miles from Hawaii's capital, Honolulu, is home to around 9,300 military personnel and 5,100 family members. In the Pacific region, the base is crucial in supporting military operations and training. As the investigation into the incident continues, both military authorities and aviation experts will closely examine the contributing factors, aiming to enhance safety measures and prevent similar occurrences in the future. The incident serves as a reminder of the importance of rigorous training and preparedness for military personnel and the continued dedication to ensuring their safety, The Sun reported. Related Article: Lloyd Austin Visits Ukraine as US Announces $100 Million Military Aid for Kyiv @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. MARION A Texas man is facing charges in Smyth County after police say he allegedly bragged about breaking a window at a U.S. Post Office in town on Sunday. Town police began their investigation after an officer discovered the busted window while on patrol. Earlier that day, police Chief John Clair said, West Virginia police were looking into a similar incident at a federal building in Bluefield. As officers began to investigate the Marion matter, Det. Brian Sexton said police got a call from Wythe County deputies, who said a man they had detained had admitted to breaking the window. Wythe County Chief Deputy Anthony Cline said the man, identified as 46-year-old Will Adrian Samuels, had stopped at a rest area in Rural Retreat, where he bragged about the vandalism and another traveler called the police. According to a complaint filed with Samuels arrest warrant, a large rock had been smashed through the interior window of the post offices entrance, also causing damage to the cover of a heating unit inside. Samuels told Wythe County deputies that he busted the window due to political reasons, the complaint says, noting that a Wythe deputy advised the Marion officer that Samuels admission was also captured on body camera footage. It is unclear what those political reasons are. This isnt the first time an area post office has been targeted out of political ire. In a much more extreme case in 2009, a man held several people hostage at the Wytheville post office. During that ordeal, he ranted to the hostages about his hatred of the U.S. government and then-President Barack Obama. Released on bond, Samuels is charged with felony destruction of property in Smyth County. According to a WVVA news report, Bluefield police are referring the West Virginia incident to the U.S. Marshals Service. Christiansburg Fire Department crews rescued three cats from a burning home in the Pilot area of the county Monday. The Montgomery County Fire-EMS Department said in a social media post that units responded to the fire shortly after 1 p.m. and found heavy smoke showing from the residence. The first engine company on scene stretched a handline, a handheld fire hose, and quickly knocked down the bulk of the fire, the post read. The department said all residents had safely exited the home and were not injured. Crews cleared the scene after about an hour. Live updates | Israel says hostage release will not take place before Friday, as talks are ongoing Israels national security adviser says cease-fire talks with the Hamas militant group are ongoing, and a hostage release will not take place before Friday Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. MARION, S.C. The Marion County Healthcare Foundation announced a $500,000 grant awarded to MUSC Health Marion to provide colorectal cancer to patients in the area. The grant will help fund state-of-the-art screening technology along with a nurse navigator for the medical center. MUSC Health Florence CEO Jay Hinesley said healthcare is changing rapidly and partnerships make a difference. Were very fortunate to have partnerships like with have with the Marion County Healthcare Foundation, Hinesley said. We thank the foundation for their generous contribution that will allow us to make a huge impact in colorectal cancer in this community. Marion County Healthcare Foundation Executive Director Pete Mazzaroni said he is excited about the program. We truly believe that we have the opportunity to establish innovative partnerships and invest our resources in programs and projects that truly will transform access to quality healthcare for the citizens of Marion County, Mazzoroni said. Chief Medical Officer of the MUSC Health-Pee Dee Division Rami Zebian, M.D. called it a great event. MUSC has that culture of neighbors caring for neighbors, he said. We have to work well with the community and this is a great example of the community helping us take care of the patients. Zebian said early detection is important and hes looking forward to more partnerships. Chief Operating Officer Jason Cox was also happy with the plans ahead. Were excited about the technology this grant is bringing to rural Marion County, Cox said. This is a generous gift. Were about to actually have state-of-the-art technology out here. The health care foundation was formed in 2010 when Marion County sold its nonprofit hospital to the former owners of Carolinas Hospital System. The foundation donated $380,000 MUSC Health Marion for 3-D mammography machinery three years ago. MUSC Health will work closely with Health Care Partners of South Carolina, a federally qualified health center, to educate the community on the importance of screenings and early detection. Early detection is key. Colorectal cancer is 100% preventable when its caught early, Executive Director of MUSC Health Marion Medical Center Shametra Myers said. Unfortunately, 37.5% of all cancers in Marion County are diagnosed in the late stage. Thats a huge problem that this grant will help us address. A nurse navigator will be hired to work directly with patients to resolve issues that might prevent them from keeping an appointment to be screened or treated for colorectal cancer. Some patients may not be able to miss work for a doctors appointment, Zebian said. They may not have insurance or child care or transportation or speak English. These are just a few examples of barriers to care that our new nurse navigator can help patients navigate. We are grateful to the Marion County Healthcare Foundation for this investment, which will allow us to transform care for colorectal cancer patients in Marion County. A pair of volunteers pray with a community member after he finishes his meal at the Community Thanksgiving on Sunday, Nov. 27, 2022 at the Seguin Events Complex - Coliseum. A robotaxi at the Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center in Singapore. (Lionel Ng/Bloomberg) By Yoolim Lee and Heejin Kim (Bloomberg) Hyundai Motor Group officially opened a heavily automated facility in Singapore that it expects to play a crucial role in its electrification strategy in the coming decades, deploying robotics and new production methods. The Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center Singapore covers seven floors and can make as many as 30,000 electric vehicles annually, according to Hyundai. It has been in operation since early this year, producing Ioniq 5 cars and fully autonomous robotaxis. The Ioniq 6 will join the manufacturing lineup in 2024. HMGICS will establish itself as one of two Hyundai Motor Group innovation pillars that will lead the companys future in the electrification era over the next 50 years, Hyundai said in a statement Tuesday. The facility will serve as a testbed for developing future mobility solutions. An Ioniq 5 is displayed in the buildings lobby, next to a Pony, the first car Hyundai rolled out in the 1970s, helping to mark the birth of South Koreas automobile industry. A feature of the 86,900-square meter (935,380-square feet) facility is a so-called cell-based production system, where humans and robots work side by side, replacing the traditional conveyor-belt manufacturing approach. Some 200 robots engage in operations such as assembly and inspection, freeing humans to focus on more creative and productive duties, Hyundai said. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong attended a groundbreaking ceremony for the center three years ago, at the time describing it as a major step forward for Hyundai and the first of its kind in the world. He said it would pave the way for more investment from South Korean companies. The building also features a 618-meter rooftop track for test driving and a smart farm where robots work on producing vegetables, some of which will be used in a restaurant scheduled to open next year. Only 1% of land in Singapore is assigned to agriculture, and the city-state imports 90% of food consumed. It aims to produce 30% of food locally by 2030. Story continues Hyundai Motor Group includes Hyundai Motor Co., Kia Corp., the luxury Genesis brand and parts and service arm Hyundai Mobis Co. Planning to produce more than 3.6 million EVs annually by end of this decade, the group is building a much larger factory in Ulsan, South Korea, capable of producing 200,000 EVs a year, and another in the US state of Georgia, with annual capacity for 300,000. This is more than a factory, said Alpesh Patel, HMGICS head of technology innovation. Its really about experimenting an entire business model. 2023 Bloomberg L.P. SIOUX CITY A Sioux City man who was found guilty of assault in connection with a fatal stabbing was sentenced Tuesday to probation. District Judge Jeffrey Neary gave Nathaniel Parker III credit for 221 days served in jail while awaiting trial and suspended a one-year jail sentence on a charge of assault causing bodily injury. Neary sentenced him to 30 days in jail on a related drug possession charge, and credited Parker for time served. Parker was placed on probation for one year. Parker, 31, was initially charged with first-degree murder for the Feb. 24 death of William Harlan Jr., who was fatally stabbed in the back seat of a car in which Parker was riding with him. A jury on Nov. 7 found Parker guilty of the lesser assault charge, a serious misdemeanor that carries a one-year jail sentence. Harlan, 48, of Sioux City, was found suffering from multiple stab wounds in an apartment at 414 11th St. and died later at MercyOne Siouxland Medical Center. He was stabbed five times -- three times in the chest and once in each arm. One of the stab wounds punctured his left lung and severed his aorta. Harlan had gotten in a car with the four men at a convenience store, and, 16 minutes later, Parker was seen pulling Harlan out of the car and onto the ground at the apartment building before carrying him inside. He was later found hiding in a bathroom in the apartment, and a bloody knife was found wrapped in a shirt above the ceiling tiles. He was arrested and found in possession of a small quantity of methamphetamine. He pleaded guilty to the drug charge prior to the murder trial. Parker testified in his own defense that the stabbing occurred in the car, but denied doing it himself. SIOUX CITY Following his wife's conviction on 52 counts of voter fraud, which government prosecutors say was meant to help him, Woodbury County Supervisor Jeremy Taylor has issued a brief statement on the matter. "While this was certainly not the outcome we were hoping for, we respect our court system that allowed the jury to hear my wifes side of the story. We are thankful for our friends, family, and community who know us best and have stood by our side," Taylor said in a Tuesday evening message sent to the Journal. "While in tonights meeting I tried to make the best decisions I could for our countys families, my first priority right now is to deal with todays results in order to be there for my own family, my wife and our children." Kim Taylor was convicted Tuesday in federal court on 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, 23 counts of fraudulent voting and three counts of fraudulent registration. Throughout the six-day trial, prosecutors said that, in 2020, Kim Taylor, who was born in Vietnam, made contact with a number of Vietnamese voters with limited English language comprehension and filled out and signed voting forms and ballots for them and their English-speaking children in an attempt to stuff the ballot box for her husband. In 2020, Jeremy Taylor ran in the Republican primary for Iowa's Fourth Congressional District. He finished nearly 31,000 votes behind now Rep. Randy Feenstra of Hull and trailed former Rep. Steve King of Kiron by almost 23,000 votes. Following Taylor's unsuccessful bid, he ran for the Fifth District Seat on the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors in November 2020 and won. Jeremy Taylor previously served as the Woodbury County Board Supervisor for District 2, winning two terms, but had to leave the seat after a January 2020 inquiry by Woodbury County Auditor Pat Gill resulted in a revocation of Taylor's voter registration. Taylor had listed a Grandview Street address, which put him in the district he represented, as his primary residence. But Gill found water bills and mortgage documents establishing Taylor's voting residence at a Christy Road address outside of District 2. Taylor, who served a single term as the Iowa House District 1 representative from 2011 to 2013, referred to the matter as "very partisan." With regard to the voter fraud trial, Jeremy Taylor was named as an unindicted co-conspirator but has not been charged. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Timmons, who was one of three prosecutors to present the federal government's case against Kim Taylor, has said he couldn't comment on any potential future indictments. The case is still being investigated. In the Epic Games v. Google trial, fresh evidence indicates that streaming music service Spotify and Google came to an apparently special and very lucrative agreement for Android-based payments. Don Harrison, the president of Google's global partnerships, testified that Spotify does not pay a commission to Google for subscriptions purchased directly via the music service's own platform. Also, it only paid a far lower cost to Google if its subscribers choose to use Google as their payment processor4%, as opposed to the standard 15%. 'Key Investment Partnerships' When Google was in its antitrust battle with Epic, it tried to keep Spotify's data under wraps as they could hurt its bargaining position with other app developers who may be hoping for more favorable prices, as reported by The Verge. Launched in 2022, the User Choice Billing program allows developers to reduce Google's Play Store commission by 4% if they use their own payment system, lowering Google's subscription service charge from 15% to about 11%. That typically ends up saving developers little or no money as they must foot the expense of payment processing themselves. And in court, Google has emphasized perks like improved flexibility rather than cost reductions. Harrison, however, claims that a bespoke agreement was necessary due to the unprecedented success of Spotify. Harrison testified, "If we don't have Spotify working properly across Play services and core services, people will not buy Android phones." Also, as part of the agreement, both sides put up $100 million in a "success fund." After Harrison spoke, Google issued a statement acknowledging his words. Google spokesperson Dan Jackson said that as part of a larger collaboration that involves significant financial expenditures and product integrations across numerous form factors, a small number of developers that engage more directly in Android and Play Store may have different service fees. "These key investment partnerships allow us to bring more users to Android and Play by continuously improving the experience for all users and creating new opportunities for all developers," he added, TechCrunch reported. Google declined to identify any other developers who had been successful in negotiating more lenient charges with the company. During the trial, it was revealed that Netflix had turned down a 10% discount offer from Google. With the removal of in-app purchases on Android, Netflix is also no longer contributing financially to Google's distribution efforts. See Also: OpenAI Staffers Threaten to Quit Unless Ex-CEO Sam Altman Is Reinstated Spotify's Involvement in the Lawsuit When it comes to in-app purchases, Spotify has been less than happy in the past. It stopped accepting payments via the App Store in the middle of 2023 to avoid Apple's 30% fee. Spotify was also one of the first and most visible members of the Coalition for App Fairness, which included Fortnite's developer Epic Games, and supported the antitrust litigation against Apple and Google. Epic, however, has kept up its legal struggle with both companies, while Spotify seems to have discovered a simpler and cheaper method to avoid litigation with Google. See Also: White House Slams Elon Musk's Support for Antisemitic Tweets on X @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. PLAINS, Ga. Rosalynn Carter was not a lawyer. But the former first lady used her powerful posts to address injustices imposed as part of the racist Jim Crow system that prevailed in Georgia courts as her husband climbed the political ladder. The most personal of those cases for Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter involved Mary Prince Fitzpatrick, who met the Carters in Georgia's Governor's Mansion and went to Washington as White House nanny to their daughter, Amy, with a felony murder conviction still on her record and the president of the United States as her parole officer. The Carters were certain that Mary Fitzpatrick, who reverted to her maiden name, Prince, was wrongfully convicted, and they stuck by her until she ultimately was exonerated. I learned firsthand about the inadequacies and inequality in our judicial system from the prisoners who worked in the mansion, Rosalynn wrote in her 1984 memoir. She described Mary as a young trusty who became a caregiver to 3-year-old Amy as part of a system that allowed certain state prisoners to take jobs in state buildings. The relationship drew considerable attention during their White House years, from 1977 to 1981. Some of it was flattering, including a People magazine profile of Prince. Much of the coverage skewed negative, including mocking skits by NBCS Saturday Night Live. After Rosalynn Carters death Sunday at the age of 96, her actions are in the spotlight again as an example of how she leveraged her power to help individual people. Jimmy Carter said Mary Prince became an integral part of our family, and when they returned to their hometown of Plains, Georgia, Prince settled there as well, helping care for many Carter grandchildren in the ensuing decades. Prince was accused of murder in Lumpkin County, Georgia, in April 1970, the same year Carter was elected governor. She and a cousin went to a bar one night. Her cousin had a gun and got into an argument with a third woman. They struggled over the weapon. Mary told People magazine in 1977 the same thing she told authorities: that she tried to take the gun from them and it went off. A man, the third womans boyfriend, was struck and killed. We didnt know it had hit anyone, Prince told People. The third woman told authorities Prince seized the weapon and fired it deliberately. Mary and her cousin were arrested the next day. Her cousin was released on bail. Mary had no money and sat behind bars for months until she met a court-appointed attorney shortly before her trial. He persuaded her to plead guilty to a murder she hadnt committed, Rosalynn wrote. She was young, Black and penniless, so she did as he told her and got a life sentence in prison. Prince told People she was under the impression I was pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter. ... The whole time in court took less than an hour. According to People, the attorney insisted he read the indictment to his client. When Jimmy Carter left the governors office in January 1975, Prince's mansion job ended and she returned to prison. The Carters remained convinced of her innocence. When I left, Prince told People, Amy really screamed. Later Mrs. Carter would come and see me at the Fulton County Jail and the Atlanta Work Release Center, where I went as a cook in 1975. She said she was excited about Gov. Carter running for president. Ive always had faith in him. I used to ask him questions about history and farming. He would tell me what different words meant in books I took from their library. When Carter won the presidency, Rosalynn Carter asked the parole board for Princes release. Jimmy Carter followed up with a request to be designated as her parole officer. The board agreed. She then worked as a full-fledged White House employee, and was able to care for her own children in Washington as well. Back in Georgia, a retrial was ordered, and prosecutors decided Prince was not guilty; she ultimately received a full pardon for the original conviction. Both Carters said later that if the bullet had struck a white man, Prince would have been executed. Not everyone framed the Carters initial relationship with Prince as positive. Black activist and author Assata Shakur cited Prince's mansion job as an extension of a racist legal system, rather than a correction of it. When Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia, he brought a Black woman from prison to clean the state house and babysit Amy, Shakur wrote, noting the trusty system did not pay fair market wages. Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. Jimmy Carter dedicated his book Sharing Good Times, published in 2004, to Mary Prince, whom we love and cherish. How to support small businesses this holiday season How to support small businesses this holiday season Buy gift cards Shop in-store Attend a holiday market or bazaar Post on social media NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. On the day before a national holiday, walking distance from Niagara Falls one of the worlds natural wonders that draws millions of people annually the peace was shattered by an explosion caused by a car crashing into an obstacle near a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection booth. Law enforcement authorities did not know what caused the explosion on the Rainbow Bridge, and U.S. and Canadian officials shut down traffic in both directions to all four international crossings between Western New York and Canada as they looked into whether an act of terror was committed on Western New Yorks doorstep. Within six hours, local, state and federal officials gave the word: It was not. Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a news conference that there is no indication of a terrorist attack. Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said the crash was a very unfortunate fatal car accident. Authorities said the cause of the incident was still under investigation. The FBI's Buffalo office said late Wednesday that it had concluded its investigation: A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified, it said in a statement. The matter has been turned over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation. Security camera video released by the U.S. government showed the car race through an intersection on a wet road, hit a low median and vault high into the air in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection area just east of the main vehicle checkpoint. The car flew for yards, twisted, then crashed into a line of booths out of the cameras view. Video from the scene showed a fire quickly spreading in the plaza and a huge plume of black smoke billowing into the sky. Other images that circulated on social media appeared to show charred remnants of a shattered vehicle strewn about the plaza. Two people inside the vehicle were killed and a customs officer was injured. The two people who died were a husband and wife, according to a person briefed on the investigation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information about the people who were killed. A Customs and Border Protection worker in a checkpoint booth was treated at a hospital for minor injuries and released, Hochul said. Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center evaluated and treated a single patient with non-life-threatening injuries from the incident, said Sean Dwyer, the hospitals marketing director. That patient, a border agent, was discharged from the hospital, Dwyer added. This vehicle basically incinerated; there is nothing left but the engine, Hochul said, noting the investigation would likely take a long time. She also said authorities identified that this is a local individual. According to two local law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation, the vehicle involved was a relatively new Bentley and the two occupants were from Western New York. Earlier in the day, they were at the nearby Seneca Niagara Casino, the sources said. They were traveling at a high speed as they approached the bridge. Investigators are looking at the possibility that the driver had a medical incident or there was a malfunction with the vehicle. After the crash, U.S. and Canadian authorities shut down not only the Rainbow Bridge, but also the Peace Bridge, Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and Whirlpool Bridge. All but the Rainbow Bridge were reopened by about 5 p.m. At Buffalo Niagara International Airport, flights continued but security was greatly heightened. NFTA police with K-9 units checked each car that entered the airport and passengers were subjected to extra screenings on one of the busiest U.S. travel days of the year. The FBI Office in Buffalo was leading the investigation. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was aiding in the investigation, along with Homeland Security Investigations. Garcia told The News that his specialty teams are involved in the investigation as well. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that U.S. President Joe Biden was aware of the incident. He and his team are closely following developments, Jean-Pierre wrote. The states U.S. senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, were briefed by the FBI. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received briefings and updated Parliament on the developments, saying officials were taking this extraordinarily seriously. Paul Edwards of England and Gloria Fiorito of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, were on their way back from the outlets in Erie, Pa., shopping for holiday gifts for their grandchildren when they noticed the commotion at the Rainbow Bridge entrance. We went on a little getaway for the night. We were looking for deals, which we found, Fiorito said. We were really looking forward to being home today. The couple got out of their car after seeing emergency vehicles at the entrance to the bridge. They approached reporters gathered at the corner of Niagara and Third streets and said they didnt know at first why the bridge was closed. Business Record Thanksgiving travel rush off to a smooth start despite snowy forecast The couple booked a hotel room for the night and said they would try again to cross the bridge Thursday. They were thankful to not be closer to the scene of the explosion. You never know what could have happened, Edwards said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Read more: Rainbow Bridge explosion kills 2 at U.S.-Canada border crossing in Niagara Falls SEOUL, South Korea North Korea claimed Wednesday it successfully placed a spy satellite into orbit with its third launch attempt this year, demonstrating the nation's determination to build a space-based surveillance system during protracted tensions with the United States. The North's claim could be independently confirmed. Observers doubt whether the satellite is advanced enough to perform military reconnaissance. But the launch still invited strong condemnation from the United States and its partners because the U.N. bans North Korea from conducting satellite launches, calling them covers for tests of missile technology. The North's space agency said its new Chollima-1 carrier rocket placed the Malligyong-1 satellite into orbit on Tuesday night about 12 minutes after liftoff from the country's main launch center. The National Aerospace Technology Administration called the launch a legitimate right of North Korea to bolster its self-defense capabilities. It said the spy satellite would help improve the North's war preparedness in the face of "the enemies' dangerous military moves." The agency said leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch at the scene. It said North Korea will launch several more spy satellites to better monitor South Korea and other areas. U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Washington strongly condemned North Korea for the launch, saying it "raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond." She said the launch involved technologies that are directly related to North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile program. South Korea said the launch would push it to suspend a 2018 inter-Korean tension-reduction agreement and resume frontline aerial surveillance of North Korea. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called the launch "a serious threat that affects the safety of the people" and said Japan lodged a protest with North Korea condemning the launch in strongest terms. According to South Korean and Japanese assessments, the rocket carrying the satellite flew from the Korean Peninsula's west coast and over the Japanese island of Okinawa toward the Pacific Ocean. The Japanese government briefly issued a J-Alert missile warning for Okinawa, urging residents to take shelter. Kim wants to modernize his weapons systems to cope with what he calls escalating U.S.-led threats. North Korea's other attempted launches this year ended in failure due to technical issues. North Korea had vowed a third launch would take place in October. South Korean officials say the delay until now likely occurred because North Korea received Russian technological assistance for its spy satellite launch program. North Korea and Russia, both U.S. adversaries that are increasingly isolated globally, expanded their relationships in recent months. In September, Kim traveled to Russia's Far East to meet President Vladimir Putin and visit key military sites, touching off intense speculation of a weapons deal. The alleged deal involves North Korea supplying conventional arms to refill Russia's ammunition stock drained in its war with Ukraine. In return, foreign governments and experts say North Korea seeks Russian help in enhancing its nuclear and other military programs. During Kim's Russia visit, Putin told state media his country would help North Korea build satellites, saying Kim "shows keen interest in rocket technology." Russia and North Korea dismissed the allegation of their arms transfer deal as groundless. Such a deal would violate U.N. bans on any weapons trading involving North Korea. Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said Tuesday's launch raises more questions than answers, such as whether the North Korean satellite actually performs reconnaissance functions and whether Russia provided technical and even material assistance. "What is already clear is that this is not a one-off event but part of a North Korean strategy of prioritizing military capabilities over economic development, threatening rather than reconciling with South Korea, and further aligning with Russia and China instead of pursuing diplomacy with the United States," Easley said. Since last year, North Korea conducted about 100 ballistic missile tests in a bid to establish a reliable arsenal of nuclear weapons targeting the U.S. and its allies. Many foreign experts say North Korea has some last remaining technologies to master to acquire functioning nuclear missiles. But the experts say that possessing a rocket that can place a satellite into orbit would mean North Korea can build a missile capable of carrying a warhead with a similar size to the satellite. In written responses to questions from The Associated Press last week, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said the North's successful launch of a reconnaissance satellite "would signify that North Korea's ICBM capabilities have been taken to a higher level." Yoon, on a state visit to the U.K., convened an emergency security council meeting during which officials decided to push for suspension of the 2018 deal. Photos: Kim Jong Un's public appearances through the years SEOUL, South Korea (AP) South Korea decided to partially suspend an inter-Korean agreement and restart front-line aerial surveillance of North Korea, hours after the North claimed to have put its first military spy satellite into orbit in violation of U.N. resolutions, officials in Seoul said. The South Korean announcement which will likely infuriate North Korea came as the North's neighbors are trying to confirm whether the launch on Tuesday evening was successful and the satellite can perform reconnaissance functions. South Korea's military said it assessed that the North Korean spy satellite had entered orbit as the North claimed. But it said it needs more time to verify whether it works. Earlier, the Pentagon said it was assessing the success of the launch, while Japan stated there had been no confirmation of the North's report on the satellite entering orbit. North Korea's state media claimed the spy satellite transmitted imagery showing space views of key military sites in the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. It didn't publicize the photos, and many experts remain skeptical about whether the North Korean satellite is advanced enough to conduct meaningful military reconnaissance. Despite questions about the launch, the United States and its allies strongly condemned it. They believe it was meant to improve the countrys missile technology as well as establish a space-based surveillance system. North Korea says it has sovereign, legitimate rights to launch spy satellites to cope with what it calls intensifying U.S.-led threats. But U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit any satellite liftoffs by North Korea, viewing them as covers for testing its long-range missile technology. Heo Tae-keun, South Koreas deputy minister of national defense policy, told a televised briefing that the Norths latest satellite launch was not only a clear violation of the U.N. resolutions but also a grave provocation that threatens our national security. Heo said South Korea decided to respond by partially suspending the 2018 inter-Korean agreement Wednesday and resuming aerial surveillance activities at the border. He added that South Korea will promptly and strongly punish North Korea if it uses the South Korean step as a pretext to launch another provocation. The 2018 agreement, struck during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the rival Koreas, created buffer and no-fly zones along the countries heavily fortified border. Under the deal, the Koreas were required to halt front-line aerial reconnaissance and live-fire exercises. They also removed some of their guard posts and land mines at border areas. The deal invited withering conservative criticism in South Korea with critics saying it significantly restricted the operation of the country's aerial surveillance assets, which are much more superior to North Koreas. They also accused the deal of heavily benefiting North Korea, because it only called for mutual reductions of conventional military strength while leaving the Norths growing nuclear arsenal intact. South Korea has no nuclear weapons. The brief Korean rapprochement period evaporated soon after the collapse of broader nuclear diplomacy between North Korea and the U.S. in 2019. North Korea has since ramped up missile tests to modernize its weapons arsenal, prompting the U.S. and South Korea to expand their defense exercises in response. When the Norths National Aerospace Technology Administration announced what it called a successful launch of its Malligyong-1 spy satellite, it said the satellite would help improve the Norths war readiness in the face of the enemies dangerous military moves. The agency said North Korea will soon launch several more spy satellites to better monitor South Korea and other areas. Leader Kim Jong Un watched the satellite launch on site. According to state media, Kim later visited the Pyongyang control center of the North's space agency, where he was briefed that the Malligyong-1 satellite would officially begin its reconnaissance mission from Dec. 1, following a period of fine-tuning. At the center, Kim was also presented with the aerospace photos of Anderson Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other U.S. military facilities in Guam, which were taken Wednesday morning, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency. It was not possible to independently confirm those images. Last December, when North Korea released black-and-white satellite photos of South Korean cities following a test launch, many experts said the imagery was too crude for a surveillance purpose. North Korea used the same satellite in its two failed launches in May and August. South Koreas military retrieved debris from the first launch and assessed at the time the satellite wasn't sophisticated enough to perform military reconnaissance. In 2012 and 2016, North Korea placed Earth observation satellites into orbit, but experts say neither has ever transmitted imagery back to North Korea. Before Tuesday's launch, South Korean officials said North Korea was likely receiving Russian technological support for its spy satellite launch program as part of the two countries' pushes to boost their partnerships. The U.S., South Korea and others accuse North Korea of shipping conventional arms to support Russia's war in Ukraine in exchange for receiving high-tech Russian technologies to enhance its own military programs. Both North Korea and Russia have denied the accusations. A spy satellite is among an array of sophisticated weapons systems that Kim wants to introduce. Experts say he would eventually aim to use his enlarged arsenal to win sanctions relief and other concessions from the U.S. when diplomacy resumes. Some civilian experts said North Koreas Malligyong-1 satellite is likely capable of only detecting big targets like warships or planes. But by operating several such satellites, North Korea could still observe South Korea at all times, they said. LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) A Lincoln, Nebraska, police officer shot and wounded a man who drove a Jeep at the officer and ran over a woman in the process, police said. The woman was hospitalized with injuries described by police as serious but not life threatening. The driver was treated for minor injuries. The officer was unhurt. Police said the officer was at a motel Tuesday looking for a man wanted for an alleged probation violation for possession of a weapon. The man pulled into the motel parking lot, and the officer approached the Jeep. Police said the 35-year-old suspect put the Jeep in reverse and rammed the police cruiser, then did it again before driving at the officer, who fired into the Jeep, striking the driver. As that was happening, a 39-year-old female passenger got out of the Jeep and was run over. She had to be extricated from beneath the vehicle. The driver is jailed on several charges, including first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault of an officer, use of a deadly weapon and resisting arrest with a deadly weapon. Yankton Press & Dakotan. November 20, 2023. Editorial: Crop Insurance And Climate Change Farmers are more directly reliant on or at the mercy of the vagaries of the weather than perhaps any other component in the Midwest economy. (However, many of those components rely on a strong farm economy to thrive.) Thus, farmers are on the front line of climate change and the impact it has on or lives. A South Dakota News Watch story in Saturdays Press & Dakotan reported that this is becoming an increasingly expensive proposition. Since 2001, South Dakota farmers have received $8.3 billion in payments from the Federal Crop Insurance Corp. specifically due to weather disasters rising significantly during that time, News Watch said. In fact, South Dakota was among the top states in the nation in receiving such payments due to weather disasters such as floods and drought. According to environmentalists, this reflects the rising economic toll of climate change. U.S. farmers received a record $19.1 billion in crop insurance payments in 2022, well above the $3 billion paid out in 2002, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG). (Also, EWG estimates that about one-third of crop insurance payments goes to dozen or so big insurance companies and their agents that sell policies and not to farmers who work the land and absorb the risk, News Watch reported.) This cost is generally supported by U.S. taxpayers, with nearly 65% of the premiums for the crop insurance program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture subsidized with federal funding, News Watch noted. Could that level of support change? With a new Farm Bill under consideration, some critics of the current structure believe that less federal funding should be devoted to this effort. They say that lessening that support would compel more farmers to alter their operations in coping with the long-term impact of climate change. With the current safety net, critics imply, farmers may have little incentive to do so. That argument may make sense to a degree, but it also points to a conundrum. Without question, the impact of climate change is challenging farmers, so reducing the amount of federal backing of crop insurance may ultimately undercut the nations ability to feed itself. Its so vitally important for the ability of farmers and ranchers to manage their risk, said South Dakota Farm Bureau Federation president Scott VanderWal. When youre so totally depending on the weather for your livelihood, you have to be able to manage that risk. In this discussion, risk is the operative word, because thats what farmers are facing increasingly as the weather becomes less predictable when a flood year is followed by a drought year, when farmland that was once reliably productive becomes a gamble year after year. If farmers dont adjust to changing climate patterns, they become increasingly reliant on insurance payments unless they change. But what significant adjustments can be made when the weather becomes increasingly unpredictable and prone to dramatic outbursts? Thus, risk is becoming an even greater variable, and that unpredictable variability is a big reason for rising crop insurance payments. Any action lawmakers consider with these payments must also factor in the heightened risk and variability that comes as climate change increases. Balance is vital, although it may be stubbornly elusive. Ultimately, crop insurance is the investment the American public is making to ensure that the industry that raises our food, fiber and fuel remains viable and strong so we dont find ourselves depending on other countries for our food like we do for energy a lot of the time, VanderWal said. Because we can feed ourselves, we dont have to worry about getting our food from other countries. Thats so incredibly important and part of our national security. END The federal government has released a new set of rules requiring nursing homes to disclose more information about their corporate ownership and management structure. The proposed rules haves already been criticized by advocacy groups for not requiring more in the way of disclosure. Nationally, many nursing homes are owned by groups of out-of-state investors who have formed limited liability corporations to operate each of their facilities. Unlike other types of corporations that publicly disclose the names of their officers, limited liability corporations typically dont disclose the names of the individuals behind them. Some of the facility owners are directly affiliated with other for-profit vendors that sell their services such as management, staffing and resident therapy to the care facilities. Such relationships have long been criticized as undermining efforts to lower costs since they provide a financial incentive for owners to move more money from the taxpayer-supported care facilities into the coffers of their self-owned affiliates. For example, over a three-year period, the nursing home chain Life Care Centers reported $1.2 billion in payments to various companies for management, staffing companies, insurance and therapy. All of those companies are owned or controlled by Life Care. Earlier this year, the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care reported that many care facilities payments to their for-profit affiliates greatly exceed the cost of the actual services provided by those affiliates. The organization noted that while the nursing home chain Pruitt Health reported to the government related-party costs of nearly $482 million over three years, it paid those same affiliates $570 million. The new rule requires that Medicaid-funded nursing homes must disclose to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or state regulators the following information: The names and titles of each member of the facilitys governing body. The names and titles of each person who serves as an officer, director, member, partner, trustee or managing employee of the facility. The organizational structure of each so-called disclosable party of the facility, along with a description of the relationship those parties have to the facility and to each other. Disclosable parties are defined as individuals who lease or sublease property to the facility, or who own at least 5 percent of the real estate, as well as individuals who provide management or administrative services, clinical consulting services, or accounting and financial services to the care facility. Although the rule requires the reporting of such information to regulators, the federal government has up to one year to make the information available to the public. Timeliness and accuracy of data questioned Because the newly reported data is to be turned over as part of a Medicaid-revalidation process that nurisng homes go through every five years, advocates have complained that care facilities that recently went through that process wont have to report the required data until 2028. The advocates had asked CMS to require that the data be reported annually, rather every five years, to ensure it isnt long out of date by the time consumers can access it. In response to those concerns, CMS has said that while it appreciates the suggestion, we are concerned about the burden on nursing homes if annual reporting was required. The agency points out that facilities will be required to voluntarily report any substantive changes in the data that is provided to regulators. Others suggested that because the new data will be entirely self-reported, CMS should publicly disclose any supporting documentation that is collected to verify the accuracy of the information. The agency rejected that idea, saying only that such information is generally not made public and we do not intend to do so. CMS also rejected calls for fines for failure to comply with the new disclosure requirements, arguing that it retains the power to shut off Medicaid money to a care facility under a variety of circumstances. With regard to the new disclosure rules, the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care said this week that CMS has taken a step in the right direction to begin to address the problem of the lack of transparency in nursing home ownership, but much more work needs to be done. The industrys primary lobbying organization, the American Health Care Association, told McKnights Long-Term Care News that while it supports transparency, more paperwork reporting will not drive quality. This has become a distraction from the real issues that impact the majority of providers, like Medicaid underfunding and workforce shortages. The AHCA said that it wants policymakers to prioritize investing in our caregivers and this chronically underfunded health care sector. Private equity firms tied to resident deaths According to the federal government, roughly 70 percent of all nursing homes nationwide are for-profit facilities a figure that includes private equity companies, which make up roughly 11 percent of all nursing home owners. CMS acknowledges studies that show nursing facility quality has declined when facilities are taken over by private equity companies and similar entities. One study by the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that that private equity ownership has increased the short-term mortality of Medicare patients by 10% suggesting 20,150 lives have been lost due to private-equity ownership over a 12-year period. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reached similar conclusions, noting that private equity companies seek annual returns of 20% or more, which can result in increased pressure to generate short-term profits through staffing reductions and cuts in services and supplies. In January 2023, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report that said CMS Care Compare website, created to provide consumers with detailed information on nursing homes, does not allow consumers to easily identify relationships and patterns related to quality across nursing homes under common ownership. For example, while owner names are listed, there is no way to easily identify what other nursing homes might have the same owner or to allow the consumer to examine quality or other patterns at nursing homes under common ownership. The GAO called on CMS to provide on its website a user-friendly list of all nursing homes under common ownership, along with information on their quality ratings, (which) would allow consumers to observe patterns in quality across facilities with common ownership. CMS has yet to provide such lists to the public. DES MOINES Its not new that Republican presidential candidates are attacking each other on social media, in ads and on the campaign trail. Thats been going on for months. But the attacks seem to have taken on a new tone in recent weeks, especially from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has started ramping up his criticism of former President Donald Trump. My colleague at the Gazette, Erin Murphy, observed the change in a recent article detailing DeSantis comments on Trump in the last week. DeSantis took a direct shot at Trump's electability at the Family Leaders Thanksgiving Family Forum on Friday, saying that the American people are not going to go there in 2024 if Trump gets the nomination. He drew a distinction between himself and Trump when he opened a new office in Urbandale, calling the former president out for criticizing six-week abortion bans in opposition to Reynolds. DeSantis and his campaign are also taking new shots at South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley with the introduction of a website intended to paint her as supporting liberal causes. The site links to instances the campaign says show Haley as pro-child mutilation, pro-censorship and pro-tax hikes. The moves signal a DeSantis that is eager to set himself apart from the field of candidates as the day of the caucuses closes in. DeSantis has been adhering to a strict message over the last few months: He pointed to his accomplishments in Florida, saying he would deliver on his promises and wield executive power to achieve conservative goals. He set himself against President Joe Biden, not necessarily his opponents. But now as he becomes more well known to potential Iowa voters, he also appears to be giving them a reason to vote against those opponents. Trump isnt backing away from the fight, either. Hes been critical of DeSantis since day one, but this week he again attacked Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on video. In a post to X, he called Reynolds "the most unpopular governor" in the United States and said her endorsement has given DeSantis "exactly zero bounce." Candidates opposing Trump have been reticent to poke the bear throughout this primary, navigating a tricky line between setting themselves apart and attacking a candidate who is still very popular among the Republican electorate. But at some point, they need to give voters a reason to vote against Trump if they want to mount a serious challenge to his massive levels of support. I expect we'll see that more and more in the next two months and beyond. Another key DeSantis endorsement DeSantis has nabbed the endorsement of Family Leader CEO and President Bob Vander Plaats, one of the few Iowa politicos whose endorsement carries significant weight. The evangelical leader endorsed the last three winners of contested Republican caucuses: Ted Cruz in 2015, Rick Santorum in 2011, and Mike Huckabee in 2007. The endorsement was not much of a surprise. Vander Plaats has been critical of Trump for a long time, criticizing his rhetoric, leadership style and position on abortion. Now its worth noting the numbers in those contests were far different than they are here. Ted Cruz was already a top contender in Iowa polling when Vander Plaats endorsed him in 2015, and 2012 featured several candidates only separated by a handful of points in the fall and winter before the caucuses. This year, DeSantis has a much higher bar to clear as he remains more than 20 points behind Trump in Iowa polls. The endorsement by Vander Plaats and Reynolds may make people give DeSantis a second look, but they wont make or break his campaign. The backing of some top Republican influencers will be helpful for DeSantis as he continues to make his case to Iowans, but the next two months will determine just how far they can carry him. What I'm reading Can endorsements from powerful Iowans rescue Ron DeSantis' campaign? (The Des Moines Register): This article explores the value of DeSantis' growing list of Iowa endorsers to his campaign, including the thoughts of Trump supporters and Iowa experts. DeSantis unveils sharper tongue with Trump critiques (Erin Murphy, the Gazette): Ron DeSantis' criticism of Trump has been becoming more direct as he tries to topple the GOP primary frontrunner. What do Iowans want? An inside look at what 20 Iowans say about their lives, government What Iowans want - Ryan Globe State, city and county food inspectors have cited Iowa restaurants and stores for hundreds of food-safety violations during the past four weeks, including insects, moldy salads, and beef that was hauled to a restaurant in buckets from a questionable out-of-state slaughtering operation. One restaurant agreed to close due to the heavy presence of cockroaches, and for the 11th time in the past 29 months, state inspectors cited a Des Moines food store for the same violation: failing to have a certified food protection manager on staff to ensure the safe handling of food. The findings are reported by the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing, which handles food-establishment inspections at the state level. Listed below are some of the more serious findings that stem from inspections at Iowa restaurants, stores, schools, hospitals and other businesses over the past four weeks. The state inspections department reminds the public that their reports are a snapshot in time, and violations are often corrected on the spot before the inspector leaves the establishment. For a more complete list of all inspections, along with additional details on each of the inspections listed below, visit the Iowa Department of Inspections, Appeals and Licensing website. Mini Supermercado La Victoria, 1638 E. University Ave., Des Moines During a Nov. 3 visit to this mini-supermarket, a state inspector cited the store for 16 violations, an exceptionally large number, particularly for a business of that type. The inspector noted that the person in charge was not a certified food protection manager, and that employees who had previously registered to take the test for certification did not pass. This was the 11th consecutive state inspection, all made during the past 29 months, that resulted in a citation for that particular violation. At the conclusion of the Nov. 3 visit, the state inspector gave the owner an additional six months, until May 2024, to have management become certified in food protection. Among the inspectors other findings: A container of tortillas in one of the coolers was adulterated with what appeared to be a mold-like substance; beef tongue and cooked peppers throughout the kitchen were stored uncovered or in broken packages where they were exposed to contamination; and cooked pork slices in the hot-holding display case was measured at 121 degrees, which was not hot enough to ensure safety. Also, multiple foods in the reach-in cooler were holding at temperatures well above the 41-degree maximum, including milk, yogurt, queso, hot dogs and shredded cheese. All of the items were discarded. In addition, multiple food items were not date marked to ensure freshness and safety, including cooked meats, corn, lard and salsa. The interior of the ice machine was soiled with debris, as was the blade of the meat slicer and the meat saw; the interior of the oven was visibly soiled with what appeared to be rodent droppings and a glue trap; the kitchens handwashing sink could not produce any hot water and there was no thin-tipped food thermometer to check the temperature of certain meats. The inspector also reported that multiple pre-packaged snack mixes near the front entrance had labels that included no information as to the common name of the product, the manufacturer or the ingredients. The inspector also observed rodent droppings in a storage area, and concluded that the walk-in cooler was not able to maintain temperatures at or below 41 degrees as required. The supermarket has been repeatedly cited by the state for numerous violations. In June 2021, the store was cited for 13 violations. In April 2022, it was cited for nine violations. In May 2022, it was cited for 11 violations. One month later it was cited for 18 violations. A month after that, 13 violations. El Sabor Peruano, 1704 E. Grand Ave., Des Moines During a Nov. 20 visit, a state inspector cited the restaurant for 16 risk-factor violations, an exceptionally high number. The inspector concluded, due to due to the significance and extent of the violations, that the person in charge had insufficient knowledge of food-safety requirements and was not fulfilling their duties as related to food safety. Among the issues noted by the inspector: The interior of the ice machine was visibly soiled with an accumulation of debris, and the handwashing sinks were not stocked with soap or paper towels and access to some of them was blocked. Also, multiple food items throughout the restaurant including cooked pasta, cooked potatoes, cooked chicken, cooked shrimp, and cooked octopus were not marked with the date of their preparation, opening or thawing; cooked rice was being held in a pot at 88 degrees; and cooked carrots were left sitting out at 79 degrees. Cooked whole chickens were stored in a hot-holding unit that was unplugged, and the chickens, which had to be discarded, had been holding at 95 degrees to 109 degrees. In addition, pans, dishware and other utensils were not being sanitized, and the inspector noted there was no food-grade sanitizer on site to sanitize any such items. The inspector also reported that two flats of raw eggs were stored at room temperature on top of the kitchen food preparation table and had to be discarded. Hidalgo Mexican Bar & Grill, 2675 100th St., Urbandale During a Nov. 20 visit, a state inspector cited the restaurant for house-made, queso-style dip that had expired 10 days before, and for buttermilk that had been expired for five days. The inspector also noted that in the bar area, the soda-dispensing gun and its holster were soiled with visible, mold-like debris, and that food in a freezer was stored in containers that had no lids to prevent contamination. The restaurant also failed to post its most recent inspection report for customers to read. Qana Zegelila Bar and Restaurant, 1800 Pierce St., Sioux City During a Nov. 20 visit, a Siouxland District Health Department inspector reported that he was unable to unable to verify the eaterys source for raw beef stored in one of the freezers. The owner told the inspector the beef was purchased from an Omaha business and showed the inspector an invoice indicating the purchase of one whole cow for $2,250. The owner stated that he went to Omaha to pick up the meat and was instructed to bring his own containers to transport it. When purchased, the meat was allegedly unpackaged and unlabeled, with no indication of it ever being inspected. The owner of Qana Zegelila reported to the inspector that he loaded the raw meat into buckets for transportation back to Iowa. The inspector contacted state officials and instructed the restaurant owner to refrain from using, moving or discarding any of the meat until further notice. The inspector also noted that cooked sauces and meats in the restaurant were not dated to ensure freshness and safety. In addition, the sauce that was used for dipping bread had been acquired from a friend at home and so, the inspector reported, it was removed from the premises. In addition, cooked butter and raw cubed beef were being stored at room temperature and were measured at 69 degrees before the staff agreed to discard it. The inspector also observed bags of food or flour throughout the facility that were stored directly on the floor. Mireilles Tropical Food Market, 4023 Floyd Blvd., Sioux City During a Nov. 16 visit, a Siouxland District Health Department inspector reported that he was unable to determine whether some of the some of the fish that was offered for sale was from an approved source. I could not see where any of the salt fish came from, he reported. Several of the food containers did not have a name of the product, address where it was made, net weight or quantity, or ingredients on the label. Several of the fish or packaged meat products did not have any label at all All salt fish is placed on hold until I can verify it is from an approved food processing facility. El Bajio, 555 Gateway SW Place, Cedar Rapids During a Nov. 15 visit, a Linn County Public Health inspector reported finding salsa and mole verde sauce that were dated Oct. 23, chamoy sauce that was dated Sept. 27, soup dated Nov. 3, and shrimp broth dated Nov. 3. All of the items were discarded as potentially unsafe. The inspector also reported a visible amount of mold on the ice chute of the soda-dispensing machine, and found that taco shells were being stored in an open cardboard box saturated with grease. In addition, five of the kitchen ceiling lights were not operational, making it dark in both the kitchen and the dishwashing area, the inspector reported. Also, the establishments food license was not posted in public view. Family Fresh Sushi, 1704 Okoboji Ave., Milford During a Nov. 15 visit, a Siouxland District Health Department inspector cited the restaurant for storing raw, unprepared sushi products, as well as raw salmon and tuna, above the ready-to-eat sushi products inside a retail cooler, risking cross-contamination. In addition, crab meat, shrimp and cut lettuce were not date marked to ensure freshness and safety. The inspector also noted that a worker was not monitoring the pH logs daily and was unsure how to utilize the pH meter to measure acidity levels. (Acidity levels are an indicator of the potential for bacteria to grow in sushi rice.) The inspector noted that although the visit took place on Nov. 15, the daily logs through Nov. 20 had somehow been completed already a fact the owner was unable to explain. The business was also unable to provide the inspector with the required letters documenting parasite destruction. While the inspector watched, a worker handled raw tuna with gloved hands, then failed to wash their hands before beginning food preparation. In addition, one worker used a knife and cutting board to prepare raw tuna, then failed to wash the items before initiating the preparation of ready-to-eat food. The inspector concluded the staff was not following all of the required procedures of the Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan that is mandatory in the preparation of sushi. The inspector cited specific issues with regard to pH calibration, cooling prepared sushi rolls prior to retail sale, and the business ware-washing procedures. The inspector also reported that frozen tuna was not removed from vacuum-sealed packaging prior to thawing, a process that helps ensure the food is safe to eat, and that the cabinets were visibly soiled with grease. In addition, the business license and most recent inspection report were not posted for the public to see. When the inspector asked a worker to properly calibrate the pH meter and properly prepare a rice slurry, the worker replied, Something is wrong with it, and was unable to complete the task without assistance from the inspector. The inspector informed the owner that since the establishment did not have the required HACCP plan, it could no longer prepare food as it had been doing. The owner agreed to temporarily close the establishment so the situation could be addressed. Mojitos Bar and Grill, 3303 S. Center St., Marshalltown During a Nov. 14 visit, a state inspector noted that cooked chicken, chorizo, and carnitas that were placed on a flat-top stove for reheating had only reached a temperature of 89 to 119 degrees not hot enough to ensure food safety. Also, rice inside a walk-in cooler was measured at 50 degrees and buckets of cut lettuce were measured 46 degrees both of which were above the 41-degree maximum. The inspector also noted that the ice machine was adulterated by a heavy buildup of brown slime on the interior edges, and the food dicer was crusted with dried food and debris. The inspector reported that not all of the workers designated as in charge were certified food protection managers, and that the handwashing sink in the kitchen was out of service with no hot- or cold-water supply. Flying insects are noted throughout the establishment, food storage and equipment-storage areas, the inspector reported. Rodent droppings are observed on shelving in the food-storage areas. Insects were observed in the spice-salt mix used for mixed drinks at the bar. The inspector also reported observing a rolling cart, with open containers of raw chicken on it, sitting in water pooled on the floor from backed-up floor drains. Clean equipment and utensils were being stored in an area where they were exposed to splashing from the standing water that had pooled on the floor, the inspector said. In addition, some of the kitchen walls were in poor repair and ceiling tiles were missing. Some of the holes in the wall had been repaired with tape that was peeling, and the floors, equipment and shelving each had a large amount of spilled food, debris, and buildup on them. Light bulbs in the ventilation hood systems are not shielded and have a large amount of dripping grease and residue, the inspector reported. The visit was in response to a non-illness complaint regarding pest control, which was substantiated by the inspector. Due to the plumbing issues, the owner agreed to voluntarily close the establishment until repairs could be made and basic requirements can be met to ensure safe food production and handling, the inspector reported. The inspector returned on Nov. 17 and reported finding live and dead insects inside containers of dried spices, bouillon powder and sugar, and made note of the heavy presence of live cockroaches in the kitchens food-preparation area and storage areas. Due to the heavy presence of cockroach-like insects in the kitchen area, the person in charge stated that the establishment would remain voluntarily closed until pest-control applications could be completed, the inspector reported. Taco Depot La Taqueria, 3801 SE 1st Ave., Cedar Rapids Following a Nov. 13 visit, Linn County Public Health Department inspector Chase Moffitt filed an inspection report that, while providing few details on the violations uncovered, indicated the establishment was shut down due to food-safety concerns. The facility will be temporarily closed due to a lack of working equipment, Moffitt reported. The walk-in cooler is not functioning properly and all food has been observed above 41 degrees. Moffitt reported that all of the food on the premises that was subject to time and temperature control for safety had to be discarded, except for cold items delivered earlier that day. The inspector also noted that an employee who was preparing food did not demonstrate food-safety knowledge, and that employees hands were not properly washed and equipment was not properly sanitized. The visit was in response to a complaint from a consumer who alleged they became ill after eating at the establishment. Moffitt reported that no complaints from the public have been received in the time frame of the complaint that was being investigated. Moffitts report does not indicate whether the complaint was deemed substantiated. The next day, Moffitt approved the reopening of the facility based on evidence that the cooler had been repaired. Carlos OKellys Mexican Cafe, 6507 University Ave., Cedar Falls During a Nov. 8 visit, a Black Hawk County Health Department inspector noted a pink growth within the ice machine and reported that the frozen-drink machine had a black buildup around the dispensing nozzle. In addition, there were dented cans of tomatoes on hand and the handwashing sink was being used to clean utensils. Blimpies / Iowa 80 Fuel Center, 390 W. Iowa 80 Road, Walcott During a Nov. 8 visit, a Scott County Health Department inspector observed that the Chesters Chicken being offered for sale within a hot-holding unit measured between 110 and 124 degrees not hot enough to ensure safety and so the chicken was discarded. Also, there were no date markings on opened bags of spinach, lettuce, meatballs and precooked eggs a repeat violation. The inspector also noted that the inside of the grilled-sandwich maker had an excess of grease and grime, and the food-preparation coolers had an excessive amount of food debris in them, as did the retail-area shelves for condiments and other supplies. In addition, the bakers food rack, the baking ovens and the loaf pans were marred by an excessive amount of food debris and grease. The employee handwashing sink was blocked by a five-gallon pail of pickle juice and two sacks of rags, and there were several cases of food stored in a freezer that were left open and exposed. La Casa Azul, 708 1st Ave., Coralville During a Nov. 8 visit, a Johnson County Public Health Department inspector discovered avocados and tomatoes that were visibly adulterated a term typically used to describe mold or spoilage inside a food-preparation cooler. The items were discarded. In addition, chicken was measured at 145 degrees after being taken off the grill, well below the 165-degree minimum. Also, house-made casserole that was made and refrigerated two days before was still above 41 degrees and was discarded, and pico that was measured at 52 degrees was discarded. The inspector also noted that there were multiple containers of spices that lacked any lids to prevent contamination and there was a heavy buildup of debris and grease on the walls around the griddle and fryer. Due to the repeat risk-factor violations, the health department issued a formal warning letter to the establishment. Asian Yummy Buffet, aka Asian Buffet, 417 A Ave., Oskaloosa During a Nov. 7 visit, a state inspector cited the restaurant for 14 risk-factor violations, an unusually high number. The inspector concluded the person in charge was not knowledgeable in proper hot- and cold-holding temperatures, cooling procedures, cooking temperatures, food storage, and sanitation practices. In addition, the person in charge was not a certified food protection manager. Due to the extent and severity of the violations found, it was determined the person in charge was not fulfilling their duties related to food safety. Cooked breaded chicken was found cooling at room temperature in large plastic tubs, and three hours after being cooked was measured at 74 degrees well outside the range to ensure safety. Cooked chicken and beef in a cooler was measured at 48 to 49 degrees, well above the 41-degree maximum, and pre-fried chicken pieces were holding at 46 degrees. Cooked chicken and noodles were not labeled or marked with any dates to ensure freshness and safety, and cooking sheets had an accumulation of a mold-like substance on them. In addition, an employee handwashing sink was obstructed with tools and equipment; employees prescription medications were stored above the food-preparation counter; open food containers were being contaminated by an accumulation of ice in a freezer; the shelving in the walk-in cooler had a heavy accumulation of food debris and a mold-like substance; and the employee restrooms were littered with empty boxes and unused equipment and were not maintained in a sanitary condition. The inspector also reported that the most recent inspection report had not been posted for customers to read. The visit was in response to two non-illness complaints one pertaining to food temperatures and one pertaining to employees preparing hot food dishes in the dining room rather than the kitchen. The latter complaint was deemed verified based on the owners acknowledgment of the practice, but the complaint related to food temperatures was deemed unverified. St. Kilda, 300 SW 5th St., Des Moines During a Nov. 7 visit, a state inspector noted the eatery did not have a verifiable date-marking system in place for a number of potentially hazardous food items. Specifically, quart containers of food in the main kitchen and several items in the prep kitchen were not labeled. Those food items included caramelized onions, pico de gallo and made-from-scratch sauces. Separately, several items in the walk-in cooler had been held for more than the maximum seven days, including roasted garlic and pico de gallo dated Oct. 22, and cooked mushrooms and roasted squash that were dated Oct. 28. All of the outdated items were discarded. The inspector also observed that the employee handwashing sink was not operational, with the faucet missing from it. Workers indicated the sink had been that way for two weeks, the inspector reported. Also, the kitchen had no sanitizing cloths in use for wiping down counters and other equipment, and no test kit to check the sanitizing solution. In addition, the most recent inspection report had not been posted for customers to read. The inspector noted that several violations such as those dealing with employee illnesses, handwashing, expired foods and the use of sanitizing solution were repeat violations. Tacos La Familia, 1610 6th Ave., Des Moines During an Oct. 26 visit, a state inspector cited the restaurant for 18 violations, an exceptionally high number. The inspector observed cooked lamb being stored at room temperature, without any temperature controls, alongside a sink used to clean utensils. The lamb was measured at roughly 120 degrees and was discarded. Inside a cooler, diced tomatoes were measured at 44 degrees, cheese at 55 degrees, and sliced tomatoes at 72 degrees. All of those items were discarded. The inspector also reported that food items throughout the facility including salsas and cooked chicken and beef were not marked with preparation dates to ensure freshness and safety. In addition, some of the clean kitchen items such as knives and container lids were visibly soiled with an accumulation of debris, the interior of the microwave oven was heavily soiled, and the meat slicer was not sanitized after cleaning. Also, the kitchens handwashing sink was being used to store items and was not stocked with soap. Tomatillos and cooked beans were being stored directly on the floor next to the sink, risking contamination from splashing water and other and debris. The inspector observed a food worker failing to use soap while washing their hands and reported that another worker was handling customers ready-to-eat tortillas with their bare hands. In addition, the kitchen had no testing kits for ensuring chlorine and other sanitizing solutions were adequately mixed; the cutting boards for both food preparation tables were heavily soiled with accumulated debris; and the shelves throughout the kitchen were visibly soiled. The restaurant was last inspected in January 2021. Fuji Japanese Steakhouse, 1614 S. Kellogg Ave., Ames During a Nov. 3 visit, a state inspector observed employees were removing, and then putting back on, their gloves without washing their hands in between. In addition, the inside of the ice machine was visibly soiled; the handwashing sink was being used to dump water and to fill water glasses; containers of food were stored on the floor in the walk-in cooler; and kitchen spoons that were in use for food preparation were being stored in stagnant water. The visit was in response to a complaint, part of which alleged inadequate pest control. The inspector reported that the manager was aware of the concern and had a pest-control company developing a remediation plan to help prevent pest control issues in the future. The inspector then closed the complaint and categorized it as unverified. Lincolns Pub, 157 W. Broadway, Council Bluffs During a Nov. 2 visit, a state inspector cited the eatery for failing to have a certified food protection manager on staff. In addition, there were no date markings on cut lettuce and tomatoes in the pizza kitchen, and no date markings on the meatballs and cream sauce in a walk-in cooler. Also, the interior of the jars holding pickled eggs were adulterated by what appeared to be mold, and so the eggs were discarded. In addition, the interior of the microwave oven was encrusted with food debris, and the inspector observed what appears to be deceased cockroaches on the floor in the pizza kitchen and dry-storage area near the prep kitchen. The inspector also reported a buildup of grease and food debris on the exterior of the fryer, the reach-in freezer, the shelves and pizza-preparation table. There was also a buildup of dust and food debris on the floors, walls, and ceilings in the food-preparation kitchen, cook line and pizza kitchen. Oyama Sushi Japanese Steakhouse, 5350 Council St. NE, Cedar Rapids During a Nov. 2 visit, a Linn County Health Department inspector observed the restaurants sushi chef washing his hands by rinsing them under water without using soap, and noted that bare-hand contact was observed with ready-to-eat food. Also, the only letters on hand documenting parasite destruction a requirement related to sushi preparation were from 2021 and 2015. In addition, cooked tempura shrimp was stored without temperature control in the kitchen. The visit was in response to a complainant who allegedly ordered a carry-out meal and received a salad with mold on it. The inspector deemed the complaint verified, yet reported there had been no complaint from the public. After discussing the complaint with the manager and employees, it was discovered that the facility had too much lettuce on hand due to over-ordering, the inspector, Chase Moffitt, wrote in the report. The kitchen manager discovered that the product was molding, so he discarded the product upon discovery No complaints were received from the public on this issue. Suggested to lower amount of product ordered and implement date marking procedure after preparation. Donuts and More, 1717 Brady St., Davenport During a Nov. 1 visit, a Scott County Health Department inspector concluded there was no certified food protection manager on staff. The inspector reported that the hot chocolate machine was marred by excess food debris, the racks inside the walk-in cooler had a black substance on them, the cooler in the front of the establishment was littered with excess food debris, the exterior of the ice machine had excess dirt on it, and the wire racks used for baking had excess food debris and leaves on them. The inspector also reported there were mouse-like droppings found in the sandwich preparation area, and by the large mixers in the baking area, and in the kitchen area along the baseboards. In addition, the stores most recent inspection report was not posted in plain sight for the public to view. McDonalds, 912 W. Highway 30, Carroll During an Oct. 26 visit, a state inspector observed an employee washing their hands without soap, and saw an employee taking out the trash and coming back to the food-preparation line to begin handling food without first washing their hands. One employee returned to the food-preparation area after a visit to the restroom and began helping a customer without first washing their hands. Inside a cooler, the inspector found commercially processed ham that was measured at 56 degrees and commercially processed eggs that were measured at 54 degrees. Both food items were discarded. In addition, the inspector noted that several items on the food-preparation line had no time stamps to ensure freshness. Those items included cheese, lettuce and tomatoes. Several items including sliced tomatoes and shredded lettuce inside a cooler were marked with a use-by date of 6:20 a.m., Oct. 25 although the person in charge stated the items were assembled at 10 a.m. that morning, Oct. 26. The inspector also made note of what appeared to be encrusted food debris inside the clean ice cream machine. The inspection was in response to a complaint from a person who alleged they became ill after eating at the restaurant. The inspector deemed the complaint unverified. Photos: Missing children in Iowa Jade Colvin Fredrick Workman Benjamin Roseland Erin Pospisil Marc Allen Eugene Martin John Gosch Kimberly Doss Colleen Simpson Daquan Nelson Alivia Beeding DES MOINES The super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds to the airwaves in a pair of ads that feature Reynolds encouraging voters to support DeSantis. The ads are part of a seven-figure ad buy in Iowa from Never Back Down. They are the first to feature Reynolds making a direct-to-camera pitch for DeSantis, who she endorsed for the Republican presidential nomination this month after months of public discord with the GOP frontrunner, former President Donald Trump. In the ads, Reynolds praises DeSantis approach to leadership and says a DeSantis presidency would mirror the direction of Iowa in recent years. Getting to know Ron and Casey and their children tells me everything I need to know about why Ron is who he is and accomplishes what he does, Reynolds says in one of the ads, titled Focused. Ron is focused, principled and results driven. He gets things done. In another ad, titled Fight, Reynolds says DeSantis is fighting for our children, cutting taxes and standing up for common sense. Ron is one of the most effective leaders Ive ever seen, because it's not about him. It's about you, Reynolds says in the ad. He will fight for you, he will fight for our future, and he will win. DeSantis campaign last week released an ad that featured Reynolds making similar appeals to the Florida governors leadership and effectiveness, using clips from her speech when she endorsed him on Nov. 6. The ads are another instance of Reynolds taking a high-profile role in DeSantis campaign as he seeks to build his support ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses. Reynolds has said she is going to be active on the campaign trail to help boost DeSantis support over the next two months. She said at a campaign stop in Davenport this month shes ready to go to bat and do everything we can to get him elected the next president of the United States. Reynolds joined DeSantis on Saturday as he opened a campaign office in Urbandale. About a third of DeSantis staff has moved to Iowa as the campaign has put high importance on the outcome in the state. DeSantis has visited 98 of Iowas 99 counties and is expected to soon finish the full tour. Recent polls of likely Iowa caucusgoers show DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley jockeying for a distant second place behind Trump. According to the FiveThirtyEight average of polls, Trump has nearly 45% of support of Iowa Republicans, while DeSantis has 17.5% and Haley has around 15%. Also on Tuesday, Trump criticized Reynolds in a video message posted by the Team Trump account on X, formerly Twitter. He said Reynolds endorsement has given DeSantis exactly zero bounce. I wonder what position Kim was promised in order to back someone who is so far down in the polls?" Trump says in the video. An Iowa State University Poll, conducted by Civiqs, found 63% of surveyed likely caucusgoers said Reynolds endorsement of DeSantis made no difference in who they support. About 13% said it made them more likely to support him while 22% said it made them less likely to support him. Never Back Down Chief Operating Officer Kristin Davison said in an emailed statement Reynolds endorsement of the Florida governor was historic and has helped sway undecided caucusgoers. He has already proven he can win, fight, and lead in Florida by cutting taxes, lowering unemployment, fighting for life, and protecting parents rights and school choice, and he will do the same for the country, Davison said. Iowans have shown their support tenfold since Gov. Reynolds endorsed, with many undecided caucus goers joining her in committing to caucus for DeSantis. A gunman opened fire at a Walmart located in Dayton, Ohio, before taking his own life, according to the authorities. The incident happened on Monday night, November 20, leaving four people injured. This violence marks at least the second death shooting at the retail company. In a separate but related incident almost 10 years ago, police shot and killed a man clutching an air rifle he discovered on the store's shelf without its packing. 4 Injured, 1 Dead According to the Beavercreek Police Department, a male suspect entered the store at 8:35 PM local time, fired shots at four persons, and then shot himself. The department reports that he died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. In a social media post, the police agency also said that no officers involved in the response fired their weapons. Capt. Scott Molnar stated in a press conference on Monday that the wounded had been sent to local hospitals for treatment. There was no information available about their current situation. The suspect has not been named, and it is unknown whether or not he was known to any of the victims at the store. "We're heartbroken by what's happened at our Beavercreek, Ohio, store. This remains a developing situation, and we're working closely with investigators on the scene," A Walmart representative told CNN on Monday night. WKEF, via ABC 6, said that customers include students from neighboring Wright State University. "It's crazy thinking that we're literally less than five minutes away where we live. They could have went to a campus and not a Walmart, and it could have been us," Wright State University student Kailie Conley stated in the interview. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives were all working together to figure out what happened that night. UPDATE: There is no active threat. A male walked into the Walmart in Beavercreek around 8:35 p.m. Monday and began firing a gun, injuring four people. The victims were transported to area hospitals and their conditions are unknown at this time. Beavercreek PD (@beavercreekohpd) November 21, 2023 See Also: New Orleans: 3 Teenage Girls Sentence to 20 Years in Prison After Carjacking, Killing 73-Year-Old Woman Shooting Incidents at Walmart Stores According to the Gun Violence Archive, this incident is one of at least 609 mass shootings that have taken place in the United States this year. The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more persons are shot, excluding the gunman. Back in September, there was a shooting at a separate Walmart, and local police said two people were killed. The victims are identified as 26-year-old James Wyatt Norton and 20-year-old Zoey Nicole Messenger, both residents of Hiram City in Georgia. Meanwhile, in 2014, another shooting occurred at the exact location at Walmart in Dayton, Ohio, as reported by CNN station WLWT. As a result of picking up an unwrapped air rifle that had been placed on top of its box inside the shop, 22-year-old John Crawford III was shot and killed by police. Outrage and demands for change followed the shooting death of the unarmed Black man. See Also: Missing Florida Woman Found Dead Inside Estranged Husband's Storage Unit @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Israels national security adviser said late Wednesday that cease-fire talks with the Hamas militant group were still ongoing, and the hostage release will not take place before Friday. Tzachi Hanegbi gave no explanation for the delay, and it was not immediately clear when the cease-fire might begin. The cease-fire agreement between the Hamas militant group and Israel had earlier been confirmed by both parties, along with Washington and Qatar, which helped broker the deal that would bring a temporary halt to the devastating war that is now in its seventh week. The Israeli government said that under an outline of the deal, Hamas will free over a four-day period at least 50 of the roughly 240 hostages taken in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and Israel will release some Palestinian prisoners in exchange. Egyptian state media say the truce will begin Thursday morning. Egypt helped mediate the cease-fire agreement, which would bring the first respite to war-weary Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 11,000 people have been killed, according to health authorities. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday he told U.S. President Joe Biden that he will press ahead with the war after a cease-fire expires. Some 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial incursion by Hamas. Currently: Truce deal raises hopes of freeing hostages in Gaza and halting worst Mideast violence in decades. How the hostage deal came about: Negotiations stumbled, but persistence finally won out. Israel unveils what it claims is a major Hamas militant hideout beneath Gaza Citys Shifa Hospital. The shadowy Hamas leader in Gaza is at the top of Israels hit list. During truce, humanitarians want more aid for Gaza, access to hostages and more time. Find more of APs coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war. Heres what's happening in the war: US DESTROYER SHOOTS DOWN BOMB-CARRYING DRONES LAUNCHED FROM HOUTHI-CONTROLLED TERRITORY DUBAI, United Arab Emirates The United States military says one of its warships in the Red Sea has shot down bomb-carrying drones launched from territory controlled by Yemens Houthi rebels. The military arm of Yemens Houthi rebels said earlier Wednesday that it launched a batch of long-range large missiles toward southern Israel, including the Red Sea city of Eilat. The Iran-backed rebel group has launched at least six aerial attacks against Israel since the conflict broke out on Oct. 7. The Houthi are staunch foes of Israel and have vowed to continue aerial attacks and hijackings of Israeli ships. The American militarys Central Command said the USS Thomas Hudner, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, shot down the drones early Thursday morning. The ship and crew sustained no damage or injury, Central Command said, but did not identify what it believed the drones were targeting. ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE IN SOUTH LEBANON BELIEVED TO HAVE KILLED SON OF HEAD OF HEZBOLLAH'S PARLIAMENTARY BLOC BEIRUT An Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon late Wednesday is believed to have killed the son of the head of Hezbollahs parliamentary bloc in Lebanon, Mohammed Raad. Hezbollah announced early Thursday that five of its fighters were killed, among them Abbas Mohammed Raad, identified by local media as the son of the legislator. The Lebanese militant group has a political wing that has long held seats in the countrys parliament. The state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli airstrike on a house in the town of Beit Yahoun late Wednesday killed four people and wounded one. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike. On Wednesday, Hamas announced that Khalil Kharraz, a commander of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas military wing in Lebanon, was killed in an Israeli airstrike the day before. Also on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed two journalists from the pan-Arab TV channel Al Mayadeen as they were reporting in south Lebanon. The Israeli military has said it is looking into the incident. The Lebanon-Israel border has seen daily exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli troops since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. While mostly limited to the border area, the clashes have stirred fears of a wider regional war. ISRAEL SAYS CEASE-FIRE TALKS ARE ONGOING AND HOSTAGE RELEASE WON'T HAPPEN BEFORE FRIDAY JERUSALEM Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus national security adviser says a planned hostage-for-prisoner swap with Hamas has been delayed until at least Friday. In a statement released late Wednesday, Tzachi Hanegbi said that contacts on the deal were continuing. The release will begin according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday, he said. The swap is to take place as part of a four-day truce expected to begin on Thursday. Hanegbi gave no explanation for the delay, and it was not immediately clear when the cease-fire might begin. NETANYAHU SAYS SPY AGENCY WILL ACT AGAINSt HAMAS LEADERS OVERSEAS JERUSALEM Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has instructed the country's Mossad spy agency to track down the leadership of the Hamas militant group living in other countries outside Gaza. I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas, wherever they are, Netanyahu told a news conference. Most of Hamas top leadership lives in exile, primarily in the Gulf state of Qatar and the Lebanese capital of Beirut. The Mossad has been accused in a series of assassinations overseas of Palestinian militants and Iranian nuclear scientists over the years. OVER A MILLION DISPLACED IN GAZA ARE SHELTERING IN UN FACILITIES CAIRO The U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that almost 1,037,000 internally displaced Palestinians were currently seeking shelter in 156 UNRWA facilities across the Gaza Strip. In its report, the aid agency said that the number of its workers killed by the ongoing conflict in Gaza stands at 108. The information in the report was valid as of Tuesday. Earlier Wednesday, UNRWAs Secretary General, Philippe Lazzarini, gave a press conference in southern Gaza warning that the suffering of Palestinians will only worsen with the coming of winter, and that the besieged territory is on the verge of a waterborne disease outbreak. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, a temporary truce was agreed between Israel and Hamas that will facilitate the release of dozens of people taken hostage during the militant groups assault on Israel on Oct. 7. The move has been welcomed by UNRWA whose leaders have continually called for a cease-fire. NETANYAHU VOWS WAR WILL KEEP GOING AFTER CEASE-FIRE JERUSALEM Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has told President Joe Biden that he will press ahead with Israels war against Hamas after a temporary cease-fire expires. Netanyahu said he delivered the message to Biden in a phone call on Wednesday. I want to be clear. The war is continuing. The war is continuing. We will continue it until we achieve all our goals, Netanyahu said. A four-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas is expected to take effect on Thursday. Hamas can extend the truce by releasing more of the hostages it is holding. But Netanyahu, along with the other members of his special war cabinet, told a press conference they will resume the war until Hamas is destroyed and all of the 240 hostages it is holding are released. ISRAEL RELEASES AWARD-WINNING PALESTINIAN POET WHO WAS DETAINED BY TROOPS IN GAZA JERUSALEM The Israeli army says it has released an award-winning Palestinian poet it detained in Gaza. Mosab Abu Toha has been contributing pieces to western media since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, painting a dire picture of its toll on civilians through his personal experience. His family announced Monday that Abu Toha had been arrested while evacuating to southern Gaza from his home in the hard-hit Jabaliya refugee camp. Abu Toha last posted to X on Nov. 15, writing: Alive. Thanks for your prayers. Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian peace negotiator and friend of the family, said Abu Toha was stopped at an Israeli checkpoint and held for two days with dozens of other Palestinians at an Israeli detention center. She says he was was accused of having Hamas connections and beaten up in custody. She said he was released on Tuesday, apparently after the case attracted international attention. The Israeli military said Wednesday that Abu Toha had been released. It gave no further details. Buttu said Abu Toha was safe in central Gaza after receiving medical treatment. The poet, whose son is an American citizen, is trying to leave the besieged territory. MASS GRAVE FOR OVER 100 PALESTINIANS DUG IN SOUTHERN GAZA KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip More than 100 bodies were buried Wednesday in a mass grave in Khan Younis, the corpses wrapped in blue plastic sheets fastened with cable ties. Medical workers placed dozens of bodies brought from various areas in northern Gaza, including Shifa Hospital, into a huge trench that was dug using a bulldozer. Workers wearing surgical masks and gloves carried the bodies to the grave and performed funeral prayers. AID TRUCKS AT GAZA BORDER AWAIT PAUSE IN FIGHTING GENEVA International aid groups that have lined up thousands of aid trucks for Gaza say theyre ready to move quickly to send in food, water and other supplies during an agreed, but yet undated, pause in fighting between Hamas and Israel. Details remain unclear about both the mechanics of getting more aid for beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza and the possible release of hostages kidnapped from Israel whose families have desperately sought their release. The entire humanitarian sector is ready to scale up once everything is set, said Tommaso Della Longa, a spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, referring to the fine print of the announced deal. Della Longa lamented bottlenecks that have confounded the scant deliveries of humanitarian aid into Gaza. He said IFRC hopes that a deal would include provisions to allow for a faster track of aid shipments. The only route for international humanitarian aid into Gaza since Oct. 7 has been through the Rafah Crossing into Egypt, and planeloads of supplies have been flown into the nearby Egyptian city of El-Arish and trucks have queued up near Gaza, where intense Israeli inspections of trucks and cargo have slowed entry. IRANIAN-BACKED MILITANT GROUP VOWS TO EXPAND CONFLICT IF US AIRSTRIKES CONTINUE WASHINGTON A major Iranian-backed militant group in Iraq has warned it may strike additional U.S. targets after U.S. warplanes killed multiple militants in response to the first use of short-range ballistic missiles against U.S. forces at Al-Asad Air Base earlier this week. U.S. fighter jets struck a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and a Kataib Hezbollah command and control node south of Baghdad on Tuesday, two defense officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide additional sensitive details of the attacks. There were Kataib Hezbollah personnel at both sites at the time of the strikes, but the officials said they could not yet confirm whether anyone there was killed. Militia officials in Iraq said the attack had killed eight Kataib Hezbollah members. Kataib Hezbollah said in a statement Wednesday that it was considering expanding the scope of targets if the U.S. military continues with its strikes, adding that the attack will not go unpunished. The dangerous back-and-forth strikes have escalated since Iranian-backed militant groups under the umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria began striking U.S. facilities on Oct. 17, the date that a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. The attacks have continued unabated since, with at least 66 rocket and missile attacks hitting U.S. facilities and wounding at least 62 service members. Associated Press writers Tara Copp in Washington, D.C., and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed. SWISS PARLIAMENT TO CONSIDER BAN ON HAMAS GENEVA Switzerlands executive branch said Wednesday it will ask parliament to ban the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The Federal Council said the government will also end contracts it has with three Palestinian non-governmental organizations. They were among 11 Palestinian and Israeli NGOs that had been under review by Swiss officials following Hamas Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Four days after the deadly rampage in Israel, the council moved to designate Hamas as a terrorist group and instructed the Foreign Ministry to consider a possible ban. The seven-member council, which includes the Swiss president, reiterated its condemnation of the attacks in the strongest possible terms and expressed its regret about the deaths of thousands of civilians on both sides of the conflict. The United States and the European Union, which does not count Switzerland as a member, have long considered Hamas a terrorist organization. INDIA URGES TIMELY AND SUSTAINED AID FOR GAZA NEW DELHI Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on the international community to provide timely and sustained humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza. Modi was speaking at a virtual meeting of Group of 20 nations on Wednesday before Indias presidency ends on Nov. 30. We agree that terrorism is unacceptable to all of us. The death of civilians anywhere is condemnable," Modi said. "We welcome the news today concerning the release of the hostages. We hope that all the hostages will be released soon. Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza a breakthrough that will facilitate the release of dozens of hostages held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory, officials said Wednesday. It is important to provide timely and sustained humanitarian assistance. It is also important to ensure that the war between Israel and Hamas does not take any regional form, Modi said. EGYPTIAN MEDIA SAY TRUCE WILL BEGIN THURSDAY MORNING CAIRO Egypts state-run Qahera TV says the Israel-Hamas truce will take effect at 10 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) Thursday. Egypt helped mediate the four-day cease-fire, which will facilitate the release of dozens of hostages captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. The deal will also see the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and the entry of more humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israeli media also reported that the truce would begin Thursday at 10 a.m. WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION DOCUMENTS 178 ATTACKS ON GAZA HEATH CARE FACILITIES CAIRO The World Health Organization has documented 178 attacks on healthcare facilities that killed 553 people, including 22 healthcare workers, since the war started on Oct. 7, the agencys regional director said Wednesday. Ahmed Al-Mandhari said in an online briefing that about 800 people, including 48 healthcare workers, were injured in the attacks, which damaged 24 hospitals and 32 ambulances. The war has forced the shutdown of 27 out of 36 hospitals and 47 out of 72 primary health care clinics across Gaza, he said. The facilities stopping providing services mainly because of a lack of fuel and attacks, he said. Hospitals must be allowed to replenish the resources they need to continue functioning, he said. We cannot keep providing drops of aid in an ocean of needs. A WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION STAFF MEMBER AND HER FAMILY ARE KILLED IN STRIKE CAIRO The World Health Organization says one of its local staff members in Gaza was killed along with her family when a strike hit the home where they were sheltering. It said Dima Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj, 29, was killed Tuesday along with her husband, their 6-month-old son and her two brothers. The U.N. health agency said in a statement late Tuesday that over 50 people were reportedly killed in the strike. It was not immediately possible to confirm the report or to determine who carried out the strike. Israel has launched airstrikes across Gaza in the war triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. Palestinian militants have fired rockets at Israel, some of which have fallen short. Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHOs representative for the Palestinian territories, said Alhaj was a wonderful person with a radiant smile, cheerful, positive, respectful. She was a true team player. Alhaj, who had worked as a patient administrator with WHO since 2019, was among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled from northern Gaza to shelter in the south. She had left her home in Gaza City and was staying with relatives. WHO said her death is another example of the senseless loss in this conflict." POPE BEGS FOR PEACE AND AN END TO TERRORISM VATICAN CITY Pope Francis has met separately with Israeli and Palestinian delegations and begged for peace and an end to what he called terrorism and passions that are killing everyone. In encounters arranged before the Israeli-Hamas hostage deal was announced, Francis met Wednesday with relatives of hostages held in Gaza following Hamas Oct. 7 raid in southern Israel. And he met separately with a delegation of Palestinians with relatives in Gaza. Speaking at the end of his weekly general audience, Francis said he heard from both how much they are suffering and the toll that the war was taking. In the audience were people holding Palestinian flags and scarves as well as small posters showing apparent bodies in a ditch and the word Genocide written underneath. Francis said: Here weve gone beyond war. This isnt war, this is terrorism. Please, let us go forward for peace. Pray for peace, pray a lot for peace. ISRAEL PUBLISHES LIST OF PALESTINIAN PRISONERS WHO COULD BE RELEASED UNDER HOSTAGE DEAL TEL AVIV, Israel Israels Justice Ministry has published a list of 300 Palestinian detainees and prisoners who could potentially be released in a hostage deal. Most of those on the list published Wednesday are teenagers arrested over the past year for relatively minor offenses, including throwing rocks or alleged incitement. None was convicted of murder, though some served sentences for attempted murder. The youngest detainee on the list is 14, and it also includes around 40 women. The detainees are to be released to their homes in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. According to the truce-for-hostages deal announced Wednesday, 50 hostages will be released over four days, likely starting Thursday, during which fighting will pause. After that, every additional 10 hostages released will result in one additional day in the pause and the release of additional Palestinian prisoners. Israel is expected to release 150 Palestinian prisoners in the first four days, though the Ministry of Justice published the list of 300 in case the deal is extended. Under Israeli law, the public has 24 hours to object to any release. EVACUATION OF PATIENTS TRAPPED IN SHIFA HOSPITAL BEGINS CAIRO The evacuation of patients trapped in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City has begun, the Palestinian Red Crescent says. The charity said 14 ambulances arrived at the hospital on Wednesday, and the evacuation has been coordinated with the United Nations and Doctors without Borders medical group. Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesperson for Gazas Health Ministry, has said there were over 250 patients at the facility, which was besieged by the Israeli military earlier this month. Over 400 displaced people sheltering in the facility have also been trapped there, he said. Israel has accused Hamas of using the hospital, the largest in Gaza, to conduct militant operations. Hamas and health officials have denied the allegation. Over the weekend, the World Health Organization coordinated the evacuation of 31 premature babies from Shifa Hospital to southern Gaza. Of them, 28 babies were later transferred to Egypt. EU OFFICIAL SAYS A HALT IN FIGHTING MUST BE USED TO FLOOD GAZA WITH AID BRUSSELS The European Unions crisis management chief has welcomed the Israeli hostage release agreement and says the halt in fighting that is part of the deal must be used to flood Gaza with desperately needed aid. We hope that the agreement on a pause of hostilities that has just been reached will allow for a substantial surge in humanitarian aid delivery into and within Gaza, Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarcic said Wednesday. We certainly hope that this will not be a one-off, he told EU lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, and called for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses throughout Gaza. The 27-nation EU is the worlds biggest aid donor to the Palestinians. Lenarcic said 15 EU aid cargo flights have been sent, with most of that aid already in Gaza, and that more is on the way. Lenarcic said getting into Gaza is extremely challenging and that fewer than 50 trucks a day make it through, a number which he described as woefully inadequate. He welcomed Israels decision to allow some fuel in, but said it only covers about one third of Gazas basic needs. BRITAIN URGES BOTH SIDES TO ENSURE HOSTAGE AGREEMENT IS DELIVERED IN FULL LONDON The British government has welcomed an agreement to release some of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and urged all parties to ensure it is delivered in full. Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the agreement was a crucial step towards providing relief to the families of the hostages and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This pause provides an important opportunity to ensure much greater volumes of food, fuel and other life-saving aid can reach Gaza on a sustained basis, he said. The U.K. will continue to work with all partners in the region to secure the release of all hostages, restore security and reach a long-term political solution which enables both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace. CHINA SAYS IT HOPES TRUCE AGREEMENT WILL EASE TENSIONS BEIJING The Chinese government says it welcomes the four-day truce reached between Israel and Hamas. We welcome the provisional truce reached by the parties concerned and hope it will help to alleviate the humanitarian crisis, de-escalate the conflict and ease tensions, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. China has been calling for a cease-fire and refrained from criticizing the initial Hamas attack on Israel that started the latest conflict. A delegation of foreign ministers from Arab nations and Indonesia held talks with Chinas foreign minister this week as they started a tour to press their case for a cease-fire with the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. RUSSIA SAYS TRUCE IS A STEP TOWARD ENDING HOSTILITIES MOSCOW The Kremlin on Wednesday hailed a deal between Israel and Hamas for a halt to the war and the release of hostages as step toward ending the hostilities. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the announcement of the deal was the first good news from Gaza in a long time. Speaking in a conference call with reporters, he noted that Russia along with most other countries had called for a truce and humanitarian pauses, adding that only on the basis of such pauses future attempts to find a lasting settlement to the problem could be made. FRANCE HOPEFUL ITS NATIONALS WILL BE AMONG THE FIRST RELEASED UNDER DEAL PARIS Frances foreign minister says shes hopeful that French nationals will be among the first hostages released as part of a truce deal between Israel and Hamas. We hope that French nationals are among them and even, if possible, among the first group that will be released, the minister, Catherine Colonna, said Wednesday on France Inter radio. We are working for that. France counts eight people missing, some of them confirmed as hostages, from the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants that ignited their latest and deadliest war. France also counts 40 killed in the attack. Colonna said that not all the hostages taken on Oct. 7 were captured by Hamas. But she said that in the course of negotiations, the militant group has said that it could assemble together all of the hostages. French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday welcomed the truce agreement. In a message on X, formerly Twitter, Macron said we are working tirelessly to ensure that all hostages are released. He also hoped the truce will enable aid to be brought in and help the Gaza people. TURKEY SAYS IT HOPES TRUCE WILL LEAD TO A LASTING PEACE ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey, a vocal critic of Israels actions in Gaza, welcomed the four-day truce as a positive development to prevent more bloodshed. A Foreign Ministry statement released Wednesday said Turkey expects full compliance with the agreement. We hope that the humanitarian pause will help permanently end the current conflict as soon as possible and initiate a process towards a just and lasting peace based on a two-state solution, it said. US STRIKES BACK AT IRAN-BACKED MILITANTS IN IRAQ BAGHDAD The United States military said Wednesday that it has carried out strikes against Iran-backed groups in Iraq that have launched attacks on U.S. forces. The U.S. Central Command said in a statement Wednesday that its forces had conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, including one on Tuesday involving the use of close-range ballistic missiles. Two officials with Iranian-backed militias in Iraq said the strikes hit three locations in the area of Jurf al-Sakhar south of Baghdad, killing eight members of the Kataeb Hezbollah militant group. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Iranian-backed militants have launched dozens of attacks on bases and facilities housing U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. While most of the more than five dozen attacks have been ineffective, at least 60 U.S. personnel have reported minor injuries. The militant groups have said the strikes are in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Qassim Abdul-Zahra reported from Baghdad. PROTESTERS INTERRUPT MEETING WITH SWEDEN'S PRIME MINISTER ROME Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted a town hall meeting with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on Tuesday, booing and heckling him when he addressed the Israel-Hamas conflict. The protesters chanted Shame on you and accused Kristersson of supporting genocide after he said Sweden condemns Hamas and supports Israels right to self-defense. Police removed some of them from the venue in Gothenburg, Swedens second biggest city. Kristersson criticized the protesters in a Facebook post after the event. When we met tonight with a few hundred Gothenburgers the meeting was disrupted by a screaming and shouting group of people who refused to respect everyone else who had come to ask questions, he wrote. These political saboteurs appeared to have come to our question-and-answer session only to shout out their anger over Sweden and the EUs political position about the conflict in the Middle East - they were particularly disappointed over the condemnation of the terror organization Hamas. Kristerssons center-right government has strongly sided with Israel in the Gaza conflict, condemning Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel and supporting Israels right to self-defense. Pro-Palestinian groups and the left-leaning opposition have accused the government of ignoring the plight of Palestinian civilians. Bob Vander Plaats, a former Sioux Cityan and influential Iowa evangelical leader, endorsed Ron DeSantis for president Tuesday, boosting the Florida governor as he goes all in on the leadoff caucus state in an effort to trip up Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Vander Plaats is the second major backer DeSantis has picked up in Iowa this month, joining popular Gov. Kim Reynolds. Evangelicals are a crucial voting bloc in Iowa's Republican caucuses. Vander Plaats, president of the Family Leader, has endorsed the eventual winner in every GOP caucus since 2008 and is potentially jeopardizing his streak by picking DeSantis, who trails far behind Trump in polls. His decision will test his sway among Iowa evangelicals, many of whom continue to support Trump. If Trump wins Iowa, he'll probably go on to be the nominee, but I don't think America is going to elect him president again," Vander Plaats told Fox News host Bret Baier. I think America would be well served to have a choice, and I really believe Ron DeSantis should be that guy, he said. "And I think Iowa is tailor made for him to win this. He pointed to DeSantis' decisive victory in his 2022 Florida re-election and his success enacting conservative legislation. Vander Plaats, who is prominent in the anti-abortion movement, has questioned the former president's commitment to an abortion ban. While Trump's three Supreme Court appointments enabled the high court to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion last year, Trump has faced blowback from anti-abortion-rights activists for refusing to commit to national abortion restrictions and for calling Florida's signing of a six-week ban on the procedure a terrible mistake. A majority of U.S. adults want abortion to be legal at least through the early stages of pregnancy, according to a July poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. DeSantis has infused his campaign with religious rhetoric and persistent outreach to white evangelicals but has said little about how he practices his own Catholic faith. He met with Vander Plaats earlier this year in Tallahassee, the Florida capital. Vander Plaats, a Sheldon, Iowa, native, served principal at Marcus-Meriden-Cleghorn High School and Sheldon High School, before president of Opportunities Unlimited in Sioux City. He then took the same role with MVP Leadership, Inc. before moving to central Iowa. In the 2010 Republican primary, Vander Plaats challenged Gov. Terry Branstad, taking 40 percent of the vote, compared to 50 percent for Branstad. In response to the Vander Plaats' endorsement Wednesday, Trump's campaign said the former president is backed by more than 150 faith leaders in Iowa and implied that DeSantis paid for the endorsement. Kim Reynolds endorsement wont save Ron DeSanctus, and neither will Vander Plaat$ endorsement, the Trump campaign statement said, using a nickname Trump commonly uses for DeSantis. Vander Plaats said his endorsement is not for sale and payments from DeSantis backers to his organization were for ads at a candidate forum in July. Trump also posted a video on social media in which he goes after Reynolds for endorsing DeSantis and expresses his former administration's support for Iowa farmers. Downtown Sioux City is returning to the days when businesses would have larger-than-life holiday displays in their store window. Only this time, Downtown Partners executive director Ragen Cote said there will be a special seasonal twist. Our holiday storefront decorating competition will also benefit local nonprofit organizations, she explained. People can vote for their favorite decorated storefront at downtownsiouxcity.com and the top vote-getter will get $500 donated toward the charity of their choice. Voting will continue now through Dec. 26. A map with participating storefronts will be included. The storefront with the most votes will be announced Dec. 29. "When I think of decorated storefronts, I always think of movies like "The Christmas Story,'" Cote said. "Wouldn't it be nice to have displays like that." Plus Downtown Partners will also be celebrating Small Business Saturday. For the sixth year, Downtown Partners will be hosting Small Business Bingo, Cote said. Get a square from each downtown business you visit. the more places you visited, the better the chance youll win some great prizes. For Dan Talmi, it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. Since he is the executive producer of the "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet," the holiday season is pretty much a year-round endeavor for Talmi. "To be honest, it feels like Christmas even in the middle of summer," he admitted with a chuckle. That's because The "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas" is gearing up for a two-month tour of North America, with shows taking place from the East Coast to the West Coast and everywhere in between. The Nutcracker 2023 "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" combines dance, classical music and Broadway-quality production values. The acclaimed live production of Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky's legendary ballet will be returning to the Orpheum Theatre, 528 Pierce St., for a 6 p.m. Sunday performance with the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra. This marks the 31st year that Talmi has presented this holiday classic, which brings together some of the ballet virtuosos from around the world. Many members of the cast are from Ukraine, which has been hard-hit by a war with Russia. As a result, the company had to reach out to artists from other countries like Japan, Italy and Turkey, "Kyiv is the birthplace of classical ballet," Talmi said. "This is why we've always gotten so many cast members from Ukraine." The Nutcracker 2023 harlequin Accompanied by the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" has become a holiday tradition. See it at 6 p.m. Sund The Nutcracker 2023 high stepper "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" conveys the message of peace and understanding through dance, said executive producer Dan Talmi. Despite the ongoing conflict, this year's cast will include Ukrainian gold medalist Karyna Shatkovskaya and the country's "honored artist" Elena Pechenyuk in principal roles. Also new to this year's production will be a character called The Herald. Representing the spirit of the forest, The Herald plays a vital role of announcing the arrival of the ballet's heroes and leading the joyous celebration of Clara, the beloved heroine. Clara will also encounter 10-foot-tall puppets and elegantly dancing couples who symbolize the five great heritages of the world. "'The Nutcracker' is the one of the best-known ballets in the world," Talmi said. "It is also flexible. I've seen 'The Nutcracker' in Florida, where they've incorporated lobsters into the story. I've seen it done in Louisville, Kentucky, complete with Kentucky Derby jockeys. "Yet when we've added characters to the show, it is keeping with the show's historic timeframe," he maintained. The Nutcracker 2023 green and red "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" is returning for its 31st North American tour with new characters and a classic story. The Nutcracker 2023 kids When it is performed at Sioux City's Orpheum Theatre, "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" will feature students from the Flux Dance Studio. One innovation that Talmi is especially proud of is incorporating young local dancers. "In Sioux City, we are partnering with the nonprofit Flux Dance Company, giving aspiring ballet students a chance to perform with professional dancers on a wonderful stage like the Orpheum," he said. Indeed, Talmi is ecstatic to be working at the Orpheum with the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Ryan Haskins. "We've worked with the your symphony in the past and it is always a pleasure," he said. The Nutcracker 2023 man and woman Featuring the music of Tchaikovsky, "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" will be performed at 6 p.m. Sunday at the Orpheum Theatre. The Nutcracker 2023 masked leaper "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" is suitable for the entire family, according to its executive producer Dan Talmi. The Nutcracker 2023 in the mist "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" brings together dancers from Italy Japan, Turkey and Ukraine for a cutting-edge retelling of the legend No matter how many times Talmi see "The Nutcracker," he still gets chills. "The first few minutes of the score are so magnificent," he explained. "You can tell why Tchaikovsky's music has withstood the test of time." The same can be said of the legendary 131-year-old ballet. "People know the story and they love it," Talmi said. "We try to keep it fresh." Specifically, "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" does that by blending classical ballet with cutting-edge circus techniques. "It is not uncommon to see three or four generations of a family at one of our shows," Talmi said. "Indeed, 'The Nutcracker' is, often, the first ballet a child ever sees." Talmi takes it as a challenge to make sure a person's first ballet leaves a good impression. "'Nutcracker! Magic Christmas Ballet' conveys a message of peace and understanding through the universal language of dance," he said. "We need more of that in the world,." The Nutcracker 2023 Featuring some of the best ballet dancers in the world, "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" is returning to the Orpheum Theatre for a 6 p.m The Nutcracker 2023 two dancers in flight Renowned for its Broadway-level production values, "Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet" is embarking on an 80-city tour, which includes a Su How to Do It is Slates sex advice column. Send your questions for Stoya and Rich to howtodoit@slate.com. Nothings too small (or big). Every week, the crew responds to a bonus question in chat form. Dear How to Do It, Im a gay man in his 20s who comes from a big family in Texas with two brothers and three sisters. We are scattered around the country, and we rarely see each other as a group except every Thanksgiving and Christmas, when we return to our rural hometown. These meetings tend to get raucous and involve alcohol. The conversations also can get very personal. My brothers and my sisters tend to talk about their dating and sex lives, and we usually dont spare a lot of detail. For example, we call one of my brothers Giant Joe because, well. This has occasionally taken partners (and in the case of two of my siblings, spouses) aback when they first visit. This year, for the first time, I will bring home a guy, Jack, for Thanksgiving. My family has known I am gay for a long time, and though my parents are religious, it was mostly a blip in our big crazy family. But I am also the only gay one, and in the past, there have been a lot of questions about how that works in the bedroom (Are you pitcher or catcher, etc.). I know that sounds bad, but it makes me feel included, and I find it funny. Jack, however, is incredibly shy. I have told him my siblings tend to stay up late after dinner and will probably get more personal than hes used tohes from a conservative familyand he shrugged it off. But I dont think he really knows what hes in for. Should I tell my family to put a lid on it this year, which might single out Jack and I even more? Should I just let Jack experience my family, crude jokes and questions included? Im not sure how to navigate this, and Im getting nervous. Outfielder Rich: What do you think about this? Is family suppressible? Stoya: Im not sure family ought to be suppressed. Advertisement Advertisement Rich: It could be futile even to try. He says asking them to put a lid on it might single him and Jack out more, which I assume is based on some kind of experience. So unless there is evidence to the contrary as wellan instance in which they exhibited the ability to handle a newbie with careId tread lightly there for fear of waking the bear that is made up of our writers family, collectively, like Voltron. Stoya: Or hed feel weirder being the exception. Rich: Right. Ive been in situations where for whatever reason, Ive felt more reserved. Not in a family scenario, per se, but, say, in a group thats mostly made up of a boyfriends friends, where talk can be explicit and for whatever reason I clam up. Ive survived. Advertisement Stoya: I think our writer can ask his family to take it easy on the boyfriend without setting him up to get teased harder. Rich: Is it just a matter of tone it down versus put a lid on it? Allowing the family to still be them, just a little mindful of the squarish guy? Stoya: I think so, yes. Advertisement Advertisement Rich: I will say that when Ive been asked to tone things down for the sake of family, I do it begrudgingly. I dont love that level of policing but I get it. Stoya: Most families dont have this frank of a discussion about sex going on regularly, but its completely normal to be nervous about taking a partner home. I think theres a middle to be struck, between keeping a lid on it and turning it down a notch. Fortunately, our writer is in the best possible position to evaluate whether his family is, in fact, a bag of dicks who will pile on at the faintest sign of discomfort. Advertisement Advertisement Rich: Youd also hope that they wouldnt be so hellbent on piling on that they wouldnt be able to take it upon themselves to tone it down when faced with a guests discomfort. I wonder if this says anything about the writers relationship with Jackwhether, in fact, coming from this family and at least rolling with its punches, if he is repressing himself for his incredibly shy boyfriend. Is this, then, a projection of some sort? A way of working out issues between them by projecting them onto his family? Advertisement Stoya: Or whether hes using the boyfriends shyness as an excuse to vent some less-than-enthused feelings about his familys intensity. Advertisement Rich: Yes indeed. Another option. You can sort of absorb the outsiders (potential) lens when introducing a stranger to your family, where everything suddenly becomes totally embarrassing (talk about teenager essence!), but youre rightthis could be a sign of bigger issues at home. Evidence pointing to this possibility is that he casts himself as the passive recipient of their good-natured ribbing in; He doesnt own up participating in it himself. I also think he could approach Jack again. The warning seems to have left him unfazed, which could mean Jacks easygoing or that, as the writer suspects, he just didnt internalize the sneak preview he was offered. Stoya: At the end of the day, everyone involved is a grown adult who can remove themselves from any situation they find uncomfortable. Jack should be shown to whatever room hes staying in and given permission to retreat there if things get overwhelming for him. Advertisement Rich: Yes. You want these introductions to go well, but if that comes with the cost of obscuring actual personalities and predilections, well, people can only hold those things in for so long. Theyll slip out eventually. And then Jack will be faced with the reality at a later date. I tend to believe that everyone should show who they are as early as possible to give people A fair warning upfront. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Stoya: I think our writer is a little ashamed of how unwoke his family can be. (Are you pitcher or catcher?) But really, in the grand scheme of social justice, giving our loved ones the chance to ask all the stupid, offensive questions is part of the normalization process. Advertisement Rich: I dont have a brother. Im trying to decide how I would feel if I did and was made aware that he was hung. I guess Id be OK with it. I guess it would be nice to know just how much brother you have. Stoya: I have no actual siblings, but I do remember all the idiotic questions my family had to get out of their system with regard to my porn career. Rich: How bad was it on a scale of excruciating to mildly annoying? Stoya: Ooohboy. Theres a scale from Dad checking my sobriety at the time of my decision on through to Incredibly Awkward Aunt expressing misguided sympathy for what she imagines porn fans to be like. Rich: Ooof. Stoya: (SPOILER: Theyre way less annoying than she is.) Advertisement Rich: Last Thanksgiving, my mother told a story about being at this restaurant and grill with her female friend and someone either mistaking them as lesbians or joking that they were (it wasnt a great storyI dont remember it vividly) and then her question was Well, am I the man or the woman? And then as I was saying, Thats not how it works! my father said basically the same thing at the same time. Stoya: Good on your dad. Advertisement Rich: It somehow annoyed me even more. Stop acting woke!!! You only know that because of me!!! Copycat! But yes, I know youre right, good on him. I was impressed while not holding it against my mother at all. Shes my motherI dont expect her to, like, read queer theory or even know what that means. Advertisement Advertisement Stoya: The thing about family, chosen or biological, is that social norms tend to go beautifully out the window. More How to Do It Recently, I was visiting my brother and sister in our home state, and we were joking about sex. That led to talk of incest, and I said I thought people took it too seriously. People marry their cousins in most of the world! It was a devils advocate kind of debate, but I could tell they were a little uncomfortable. This brings us to my problem. Since it was on my mind and I was a little buzzed, I decided to please myself to a little faux-incest porn in the guest room that night. Well, my brother used my laptop the next day, and I had only minimized the window. I watched in slow motion as he inadvertently opened it, looked at it in shock for a moment, and then closed it. I cant be sure, but I think he told my sister, because the rest of the weekend was awkward. Should I raise this with my brother and explain? If so, what do I say? Care and Feeding is Slates parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group. Dear Care and Feeding, My husband Joe and I married three years ago. He has a child from a previous marriage, Toby, 12. I have been told Toby has avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) and can only eat limited foods and brands and food prepared in highly specific ways. Joe said that he would take care of Tobys food needs. At first he was great about this. During lockdown, he was meticulous about preparing Tobys meals and driving out to find the foods and brands Toby could eat. However, as things opened up after the pandemic, this began to drop off. For the past year, I have been solely responsible for Tobys food, and this is taking a toll on me. In addition to the usual issues of trying to be a good stepparent to a 12-year-old boy, Im also pregnant. I dont know how Ill deal with this when the baby comes. So, I began to cheat a little. Instead of driving an hour to the organic foods store, I would get store-brand items and put them into the containers at home. I started using storage containers for dry goods so I could refill them with store brand without the packaging change being noticed. Advertisement Lo and behold, it worked. Until Joe came home early one day and found me putting (gasp) Kroger-brand strawberry yogurt into the (washed) container from the organic yogurt. All hell broke loose. He accused me of gaslighting him and abusing his child. I gave it right back and told him I couldnt deal with Tobys food needs anymore and that he needs to do his share like he said he would. He went shopping once, but then he stopped, and were back to where we started. Thankfully he did not tell Toby, so the jig is not up, but it remains a point of contention between us. Am I in the wrong here? Is what Im doing unethical? Food Faker Dear Food, Advertisement Advertisement Is it unethical to lie to your husband about the food you are serving his child? Great question! The answer is, of course it is unethical, what the hell is wrong with you? Well, whats wrong with you is that you have been given an impossible task that seems, to you, totally pointless, by a husband who is entirely uninterested in contributing in any way other than to yell at you when you get it wrong. Also, youre pregnant and freaking out. So its not hard to see why you rebelled! But sneaking around behind everyones back is not the way to handle this situation. Youre definitely going to get caught, as you did, but more importantly, steaming the Organic stickers off individual bananas to reuse them later is not solving the real problem here. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement It is time to sit your husband down, apologize sincerely for lying to him, and tell him it is not fair to you to be the only person in charge of Tobys food. You simply cannot handle it at this time. He must pull his weight on this family task, especially as the child youre about to have together demands more and more of your time and attention. But you must also pull your weight on understanding Tobys eating disorder. Youve been told that he suffers from ARFID, but it sounds like you dont really understand what it is thats going on with Toby or why his food requirements are so strict. Indeed, I get a real whiff of I dont believe this is real from your email, and if I can sense that through all the 1s and 0s, Toby and his dad sure can sense it in person. You attending a few of these appointments and devoting some time to understanding Tobys challenges would be just as considerate as your husbands sharing the burden of organic shoppingand would be just as appreciated, Im sure. Plus it would go some ways toward making up for your previous sneakiness. Advertisement Advertisement Want Advice From Care and Feeding? Submit your questions about parenting and family life here. Its anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.) Dear Care and Feeding, I just got back from a family vacation to Portland with my wife and 4-year-old son, Carlos. My wife and I are firm believers in giving a little bit of decision-making to our kid, so Carlos got a bit of input as to what wed go visit. Over the week and a half of vacation, we let him decide our next activity four separate times. And each and every time, he picked the hotels laundry room. He would watch the washing machines spin, giggle, sometimes point, and occasionally run around inside the laundry room, which would occupy the better part of two hours each time. Advertisement We have a washing machine at home, although hes never seemed particularly fascinated by it, and any attempt to get him to explain what was so captivating about the ones at the hotel was met with either giggles or a shrug and him saying that theyre cool. My wife has me mostly convinced that this is just a weird phase, but its strange enough that I wanted to reach out to ask if there was anything potentially dangerous about this all. Im worrying over nothing, arent I? Laundry Lover Dear Laundry, Advertisement Advertisement You are worrying over nothing. Kids get infatuated with weird shit. When I was little, I used to crank Crocketts Theme by Jan Hammer on my bedroom stereo and enact various dramatic deaths from the television show Miami Vice in slow motion. For hours! What on earth must my parents have thought? Why on earth were they letting me watch Miami Vice? Advertisement Getting trapped in some truly dumb activity is, of course, the danger of giving your children agency, especially on vacations. Thats why I recommend making such offers to small children with limited parameters, like Would you rather go to the Portland Zoo or a Portland Trail Blazers game? so that you dont end up staring at washer/dryers for two hours. But whats the harm? During a vacation full of constantly varied experiences, it makes sense a kid his age would gravitate toward a repetitive, simple, dependably enjoyable activity. He was happy, you survived your boredom, the laundry got doneand on the day, decades hence, that Carlos opens the first of his successful chain of laundromats, youll have a terrific anecdote to tell his investors. Or maybe it will just be a funny memory you and your wife share. Either way, dont sweat it. Advertisement Advertisement Catch Up on Care and Feeding If you missed Fridays column, read it here. Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group! Dear Care and Feeding, I have a 15-year-old son, Jeremy. He does quite well in school, so when he came home so angry about an assignment that he was literally waving the papers around, it was a shock. Doubly so when I saw that it was a writing assignment, and that he scored a 94 on it. He wouldnt tell me what was wrong, just insisted that I read his essay, and carefully. So I gave it a look. He had written a paper on abortion, adopting a pro-choice stance. It was pretty standard stuff, until about two-thirds of the way through. There he broke off from his argument, declaring an exception to the womans right to choose comes in the case of Assbabies. He had this long, ridiculous, and anatomically impossible claim that in some circumstances anal sex could produce a child, sourced with some of those weird tabloidy news articles about freak babies. He then went on to claim because of the complications and how since the resulting offspring are mutants, that in their case abortion shouldnt be voluntary, but mandatory. This digression took up a bit over a page, and formed a bubble that really wasnt connected to the main argument of the paper. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Jeremy claimed the portion was a test for his teacher, who had a reputation for not really reading the papers that crossed his desk. Jeremys aghast that if something so huge and obvious slipped through, chances are none of his other papers were really read either, and that his grades are essentially random. He wants me to do something about it. Advertisement Im more appalled that he wrote something so absurd and disgusting and submitted it on a school paper, and I have a small suspicion that his English teacher just thought it was funny or knew what kind of bait Jeremy set out and simply ignored it. But I dont really know, and this wasnt the first time Id heard complaints about this teacher being a sloppy gradermy older daughter made similar comments a few years back. Maybe there is something there, but I wouldnt even know where to begin looking for it in earnest, or know what to do if I did find something. Should I just let this lie? Teacher Tester Dear Teacher, Advertisement Honestly, this is hilarious. Assbabies! Hats off to Jeremy for his initiative and his concern for the quality of his own education. But please tell Jeremy that his teachers jobs are hard enough without students trying to trip them up with tricks and snares embedded in their essays and tests. Maybe this teacher read the bit about assbabies, rolled his eyes, and decided it wasnt worth getting into. Maybe he really is a lazy graderbut a 94 seems about the right mark to me for a paper that cogently makes an argument and also manages to embed some absurdist comedy. Either way, high school is short, the grades you get on your essays dont matter, teachers are underpaid, and there are better things to worry about. Suggest to Jeremy that instead of taking up arms against his teacher, he could get involved protecting reproductive rights in your town, a much more noble cause. And warn him that a society that mandates the abortion of assbabies is on a slippery slope to authoritarianism. Womens pregnancies are their own to make decisions about, free from government meddling, no matter which orifice their children are likely to emerge from. Advertisement Advertisement Dear Care and Feeding, My husband and I have two toddlers (ages three and four) and are overly worried about what is probably a low-stakes issue: milk at bedtime. Since they were old enough to stop drinking formula, we have given them a sippy cup during story time and cuddles at night. Since both kiddos are still in pull-ups, it hasnt created an issue with nighttime accidents. Also, we brush their teeth after the milk, as I know it can cause cavities. But if you do a quick internet search, youll see that milk before bed is practically demonized! We already struggle getting enough fluids in our oldest, so taking this away seems like an unnecessary burden. But we are also very worried that we are inhibiting the natural stages that come with growing up (and out of) certain things. And further, if its OK for now, when is it not? Help! Dairy Dilemma Dear Dairy, Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Yes, online parenting experts love to tell you why you shouldnt give your kids milk before bed. And what are their reasons? Well, they say it can disrupt sleep schedules or encourage stalling at bedtime. If your children are sleeping fine, and happy to go to bed when you want them to, theres no need to screw up a bedtime routine that works for your family. Why on earth would you? A working, comfortable bedtime routine is about the most wonderful thing the family of a toddler can hope for. Certainly its a lovely, restful contrast to the rest of the day, which for every toddler parent consists primarily of shrieking, chasing, weeping, and Bluey. If you begin to find that the routine isnt workingor that youre having trouble getting them out of pull-ups as school age approachesyou can revisit and reconsider. Youll of course want to give the retirement of the sippy cup the same pomp and circumstance one gives the retirement of a pacifier (that is, a ceremony befitting the state funeral of a war hero). But for now, its totally fine to snuggle n sip at bedtime. I was raised in Wisconsin, where state law mandates that all toddlers must be given an IV drip of melted butter every night, and I turned out just fine. Advertisement Advertisement Dear Care and Feeding, My stepsister got her doctorate six months ago. It is a great accomplishment, but she weasels that fact into every goddamn conversation she can. We could be talking about the weather or the state of geopolitics and she will absolutely offer her opinionAs a doctor, I think She does this every single time, and acts like it makes her opinion superior, even over people with actual experience in the subject at hand. We had a friend over who has worked for city government for over a decade, and she was explaining new city policies. My stepsister completely bulldozed over her to say she was wrong on the subject and she knew what was right because she was a doctor. I got fed up and told her that unless her doctorate was in urban planning, she might shut up and listen to the person with real-life experience. Advertisement Later, my stepsister reamed me for embarrassing her publicly, and accused me of being jealous of her because I only have a bachelors and am not even using it. I pointed out she was in the same boat as me: living at home because the cost of living is too high. Only I didnt have to take out any serious student loans and actually found a job I liked with health insurance. She called me something unpleasant and stormed off. Things are very tense at home and our parents are picking up on it. Advertisement Advertisement My stepsister has every right to be proud of what she achieved, but she doesnt need to talk down to people because of it. It has been half a year and she still does it. And with the holidays coming up, it means she is going to do it with every relative that visits. Help! Conversation Killer Dear Killer, Advertisement Advertisement As a Master of Fine Arts, I can empathize with your stepsisters desire to remind everyone of her expensive, challenging accomplishment. Yet I dont fool myself into thinking that I am actually a Master of anythingand Im certainly not declaring myself a quartermaster, getting heavily involved in steering and navigating naval vessels. It was a little bit rude of you to show your sister up in front of your city-government friend, though I certainly understand why you did it. I would not have been able to take it, either. And its not surprising to me that things are tense at your house; it sounds as if this issue has simply exacerbated a difficult situation for you both, living at home after attaining degrees that you likely expected would have you living on your own. (A bachelors degree is nothing to sniff at!) I would ask you to exercise a little more patience with your sister, who is clearly strugg-a-ling, and dealing with those struggles in an admittedly annoying fashion. It certainly doesnt help to remind her of the ways that youre better off than her, and I hope that you can be graceful about the situationafter all, its entirely possible the tables could one day turn. Advertisement Advertisement It is astonishing to me to imagine that your sister would continue declaring As a doctor after such a public comeuppance; if she does, she is a stronger, more self-confident person than I am. Youre probably just going to have to ignore this conversational tic until it fades away. Its certainly not worth arguing about every single time. If youd like a surefire way to make her stop, though, you could consider accidentally slicing off your own hand with the electric carving knife at Thanksgiving. As your lifes blood flows freely over the tablecloth and your consciousness ebbs away, youll at least have the satisfaction of saying, Hey, sis, as a doctor, what do you think I should do??!! Dan More Advice from Slate Im a single mother of a wonderfully smart, engaged, thoughtful 11-year-old boy. Over the past year he has become very clingy. If I need to leave him at my parents place unexpectedly, he gets super upset with me, and when I pick him up he cries and tells me how much hed missed me. Lately he has also started to hang on melike constantly touching me, resting his head on my shoulder, etc. Im just about at the end of my rope. Im feeling very burned out and just want to know what I can do to help stop the behavior and/or find out what has caused it. This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become. Its kind of warm in Brazil right now. President Joe Biden speaking at the annual White House turkey pardon event. Monday was Joe Bidens 81st birthday. It was also the day of the annual White House turkey pardon, a time-honored and slightly bizarre tradition in celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. But as the president stood surrounded by two massive turkeysnamed Liberty and Bellhe tried making a joke about how rare it is to receive an invitation to the White House. And things took an uncomfortable turn. Just to get here, Liberty and Bell had to beat some tough odds and competition, said Biden, explaining that the turkeys had to travel over 1,000 miles to reach the White House. You could say even harder than getting a ticket to the Renaissance tour or Britneys tour. Shes down inits kind of warm in Brazil right now. Brazil has been experiencing a severe heat waveand Bidens comments came shortly after a 23-year-old girl died while attending a Taylor Swift concert in Rio de Janeiro last week. Authorities have not announced the cause of death yet, but its likely the extreme heat had a part to play. Local news outlets reported that at least 1,000 concertgoers fainted too, as the heat index skyrocketed and made it feel like 140 degrees Fahrenheit the night of the concert. Swift postponed her remaining shows in Rio, and the citys public prosecutor initiated a criminal investigation into the young womans death. Thats likely what Biden was referencing. Related From Slate Someone Tell Biden Not to Riff on John Wayne Read More Sure, Britney Spears has been in the news lately, and maybe pop music just isnt his thing. But the gaffe comes at a time when Americans are already concerned about Bidens age as he runs for reelection in 202474 percent of voters believe Biden is too old to be running for president again. The president went on to officially pardon the turkeys without further comment on the concert in question or Brazils severe weather. The Israel-Hamas hostages-for-prisoners exchange is a more generous deal for Hamas than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said hed even consider a week ago. What changed? What impact might the deal have on the war? And will the cease-firea prominent feature of the agreementimprove Israels image in the rest of the world? Under the deal, 50 Israeli hostages will be released from Hamas hideaways and 150 Palestinian prisoners will be freed from Israeli jails. All of those freed, in this first phase, will be women or minors. This will occur over a four-day period beginning Thursday. While this goes on, the war will come to a haltno shooting, no arrests, no bombing or shelling, no movement of troops or Gazan refugees. At the same time, aid workers will bring into Gaza a flow of humanitarian supplies unseen since the war began Oct. 7. Then, as a way of extending both the peace and the number of captives released, the cease-fire will be prolonged by another 24 hours for every 10 hostages released. Since Hamas and possibly other radical groups hold an estimated 230 hostages in Gaza, the pause in fighting and the flow of humanitarian aid could potentially continue into mid-December and beyond. Advertisement Until a few days ago, Netanyahu resisted all calls for a cease-fireeven a temporary pauseunless Hamas released all hostages ahead of time. The most far-right parties in Netanyahus coalition government stuck to that position during Tuesdays debate on the proposal. However, Netanyahu himself pushed for the deal, which was also endorsed by Israels security and intelligence ministries. It easily passed the full Cabinet. Advertisement Israel has always been willing to strike lopsided deals to free hostages, and the deal struck Tuesdayafter seven weeks of negotiations instigated by Qatar, a frequent middleman in dealings with Hamaswas less lopsided than many. In 2011, Israel freed more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of a single soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been nabbed by Palestinian militants on the border of Gaza five years earlier. (The few Israeli parliamentarians who opposed the current deal also criticized the Shalit trade, noting that one of the prisoners freed, Yahya Sinwar is now Hamas political leader, ranked No. 1 on the Israel Defense Forces kill list.) Advertisement The current phase of this seemingly eternal war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants cut through the fence dividing Israel from Gaza and brutally murdered 1,200 Jews, the vast majority of them civilians. Israel responded by pounding Gaza with airstrikes and mobilizing reservists for an invasion. The IDF said it was targeting Hamas sites that were located in residential neighborhoods, in some cases beneath hospitals and schools. More than 12,000 people have been killed in these strikes so far, according to Gazas health ministry, which does not specify how many of that number were civilians. Protests erupted worldwide, most of them against Israels airstrikes. Many demanded an Israeli cease-fire, saying little about Hamas initial massacre or its continued rocket attacks; some waved flags or banners to the glory of Hamas martyrs. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement From the beginning, President Joe Biden supported Israels right to defend itselfbut also urged Netanyahu and his emergency war Cabinet, publicly and privately, to minimize civilian casualties, in accordance with international law. Not long into the war, he also urged Israel to declare a pause in the fighting so that humanitarian aid could be safely brought into Gaza and hostages could be freed. At least 10 Americans are among those held captive by Hamas and possibly other terrorist groups. Still, until just days ago, Israels leaders resisted Bidens urgings. In a fascinating Times of Israel podcast aired on Tuesday, several hours before the hostage deal was announced, Haviv Rettig Gur, the newspapers senior analyst, offered two explanations for the governments hard-line position. One stemmed from a view, held by many Zionists, that Jews need to go their own way and defend their own interests, even if it means defying the rest of the world, because much of the world will blame them, whatever they do. In this case, after the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust, much of the world expressed no sympathy or condolences but instead criticized Israel for retaliating. So, this view goes, to hell with what the rest of the world thinks. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The other explanation, according to Gur, was strategic. Netanyahu was aiming his words not at the Western world but at Hamas, telling its leaders that the Israel of Oct. 8 is different from the Israel of Oct. 6 and that it will go after them with unusually relentless force. Any conciliatory words or gestures would soften that message. However, in the end, other pressures forced Netanyahu to modify his stance. First was pressure from the United States, which he could not ignore. Biden walked a tightrope here, embracing Netanyahuwith whom he has always had a testy relationshipand backing Israel full-bore. In part, this was a sincere gesture; in part, it was tacticalthe dues needed to give him leverage. Israel would have invaded Gaza sooner, bombed more targets more intensely, and probably refused any hostage deal that didnt involve Hamas surrender, without Bidens tough-love diplomacy. Advertisement Netanyahu and the members of his emergency wartime Cabinet must have seen other ominous signs. In the past, Israel has always been able to count on the U.S. for political support and military aid, both through its lobbying firms (especially AIPAC) and the natural inclinationamong American citizens and legislatorsto align with the one democracy in the Middle East. However, the tide has shifted in recent years, as Netanyahus increasingly right-wing, sometimes-theocratic government has alienated many liberal, secular American Jews. Hamas attack at first bolstered pro-Israel feelings, even among critics. But the intensity of airstrikes, the mounting civilian casualties, and Netanyahus stubborn refusal to budge even a little toward a truceall this spurred a surge of frustration and outrage, even among Israels loyal supporters. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In recent days, support has been building in Congress for a bill that makes further aid to Israel conditional on a cease-fire, a flood of humanitarian aid in Gaza, or both. Bidens top aides have said they will not support Israel if it extends the war on Hamas to the southern part of Gaza, where many civilians have fled, as Netanyahu has said he intends to do. Biden has also told his aides to prepare sanctions and visa bans against Jewish settlers in the West Bank who have killed or forcibly evicted Palestinians. (It is appalling that the Israeli government hasnt yet arrested any of these settlers, who have immeasurably dampened the moral case that Israel has mounted in defense of its military campaign in Gaza.) Advertisement Advertisement At least as alarming to Israelis, a recent CNN poll shows that, for the first time, Democrats are more sympathetic to Palestinians (39 percent) than to Israel (35 percent). This is a massive shift from just after Hamas attack, when 48 percent sympathized more with Israel and just 22 percent with the Palestinians. Among Democrats younger than 35, the margin is starker still: 74 percent support Palestinians, while just 16 percent support Israel. Even among those older than 65, fewer than half45 percentare more sympathetic toward Israel, while a quarter lean toward Palestinians. Advertisement These trends are not only jeopardizing the near-automatic support that Israel has enjoyed in Congress for many decades. The trends are also endangering Bidens reelection campaign, as a growing number of young votersas well as Muslim voters, who have a strong presence in the battleground state of Michiganhave said they will not support him in 2024. Advertisement Netanyahu is also facing much pressure on the home front. His popularity is at the lowest point in his long political career; he is almost universally blamed for the failure in security and intelligence that allowed the Hamas terrorists to plan their attack and break through the fence on Oct. 7and hes slammed even harder for trying to shunt the blame to his security aides. Many believe that he will be ousted from power as soon as the war is over, if not sooner. However, he may believe a recovery in favor is possible if he can get the hostages freed. There is a huge demand for their release. Just four hostages have been freed in the seven weeks of fighting; just one, a female Israeli soldier, was rescued by a special-operations team. So, another approach was needed. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Qatar approached Biden about negotiating a hostage-release almost immediately after the war began, according to a senior U.S. official who briefed reporters on the process Tuesday evening. Within days, Biden formed a cell of senior U.S. officials, who talked or physically met with counterparts in Israel, Egypt, and Qatar. The official said Biden himself engaged in these talks daily, sometimes hourly. At a crucial point in these talks, CIA Director William Burns met with the intelligence chiefs of those countries to hammer out the details, many of them quite intricate. Advertisement In supporting the proposal Tuesday night, Netanyahu said that the war will resume after the hostages are all released and that his strategic aimfighting until Hamas is obliterated as a force that can ever again threaten Israel from Gazaremains intact. However, Biden has said many times that the decadeslong conflict cannot be resolved without a diplomatic solutionsome way that enables Jews and Palestinians to share or divide the land of Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank peacefully. Some U.S. officials hope that the pause in fightingwhich could last for several weeksmight provide an opportunity to explore such diplomacy. Advertisement Related From Slate Israel Must Loudly Arrest the Murderous West Bank Settlers Read More There is cause for hope and doubt on this score. On the one hand, the Sunni Arab countries in the region had settled into good relations with Israel, mainly because of their common enmity toward Iran and its Shiite proxies. When Hamas attacked on Oct. 7, the Saudis were about to enter into talks with Israel. In fact, the attack was probably motivated by a fear that the entire Palestinian cause was about to be sidelined. One of Hamas leaders boasted that the assault succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table. Most of the Arab leaders, including those in Saudi Arabia, would like to continue normalizing their relations with Israel, but cant as long as blood is flowing in Gaza, lest their own streets erupt in protest. (Many of their people are more radical and more pro-Palestinian than their leaders.) They might be persuaded to help facilitate some path to an accord. Advertisement Advertisement On the other hand, peace talks have been launched over and over almost since the creating of the Israeli state in 1948. A small number have succeeded, notably those with Egypt and Jordan, but most have collapsed before they got seriously started. A certain degree of trust is required for people to let down their guard and try to live in peace. After Hamas terrorist attack and Israels thunderous retaliation, trust is the last instinct on anyones agenda. Containment, constant vigilance, and continued skirmishes will probably persist for a long while to comeand thats assuming some diplomatic formula that can end the current violence. An appeals court has been weighing whether to scale back the gag order on Donald Trump. So far, the proceedings have really driven home the uniquely problematic nature of the most important criminal prosecution in the nations history, Robert Katzberg writes. Trumps lawyers have been making some wild arguments about what kind of conduct should be protected by the First Amendmentincluding possibly revealing the home address of a juror. Katzberg explains why Trumps self-serving misuse of the First Amendment should concern all of us. Plus: Dahlia Lithwick takes a look at how the Federalist Society isnt even conservative enough for Trump in 2024. Voting rights mess Cleanup in the democracy aisle! Clarence Thomas just made another mess for his colleagues to deal with. But Jay Willis explains that this latest attempt to destroy the Voting Rights Act is likely a bridge too far, even for this Supreme Court. What happened in Rio? Advertisement Advertisement The Eras tours enormous success screeched to a halt this weekend in Brazil when a fan died in the crowd. Taylor Swift had to cancel the show, but there are still many questions about what exactly happened, and what else could have been done. Nadira Goffe is here to explain everything we know. Advertisement Plus: It seemed like Biden was trying to reference this incident during the White House turkey pardoning ceremony yesterday. Shirin Ali recaps how it didnt go so well. Strange patriots Fox Nation honored some eyebrow-raising people in its award show for patriots. It was a deeply weird scene! Brittney McKenna shares what she saw there. A smelly lie Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Home in three days, dont wash, Napoleon is said to have written to his beloved Josephine. Luke Winkie tried to find out if theres any truth to the widely held belief that Napoleon liked smelly womenand discovered that, as far as fake historical facts go, its a real stinker. The conquered general The most redeemable Confederate general is finally getting his day in the sun. Richard Kreitner reviews an insightful, well-executed, and sorely needed new biography of James Longstreet. Hot potato Advertisement Advertisement There is only one secret to the perfect mashed potatoes. Dan Kois is here to share it with you. (He even made up his own fake metric to help you compare various mashed potato recipes over the years!) Plus: Let Ben Mathis-Lilley tell you, in detail, why there is basically never a good reason to make instant mashed potatoes. Today, Slate is SCRAPPY AND HUNGRY AND ALWAYS READY TO TAKE A BITE much like the humble cookie-cutter shark. Thanks so much for reading! Well see you one more time this week before we hop straight into a pile of buttery mashed potatoes. If Trump is elected president in 2024, he has a whole lot of alarming plans to remake the judiciary, the civil service, the Justice Department, and policing and immigration law, as we learned last week. Plus, there are plans to do away with the existing system of legal checks on executive power if the GOP secures the presidency. But lost in the shuffle may be one of the most terrifying positions of all of Donald Trumps 2024 campaign: He no longer thinks that Leonard Leo and the Federalist Societythe entities we have just started to understand as they continue to increase their influence and powerare conservative enough. In a recent piece in the New York Times (doubtless pushed by Leo himself), we learned that the old nutters are the new normies. On this weeks Amicus podcast, FedSoc biographer and observer Amanda Hollis-Brusky joined Dahlia Lithwick to try to understand whether the conservative legal movement has just wilted before our eyes. Hollis-Brusky is a professor of politics at Pomona College and author of 2015s Ideas With Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution, and co-author of 2020s Separate but Faithful: The Christian Rights Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. Advertisement Dahlia Lithwick: The New York Times reports that Donald Trump really decided he hated his White House lawyers when he wanted to overturn the 2020 election and they told him no. Is that the moment? Is that the moment at which he just starts pulling from wherever he could find people that were willing to say, Oh, yeah, this is perfectly legal, because, why not? Advertisement Amanda Hollis-Brusky: It seems to me that that is such a high-stakes moment for Trump. Its the moment in 2020 at which hes going to hang on to power or hes not. And thats also a high-stakes moment for these FedSocs who are sort of watching this happen and then listening to what the president wants. And even someone as conservative as Mike Pence has reservations about pursuing what would be a radical plan to keep Donald Trump in office and to overturn the 2020 election. Advertisement Now at the same time, theyre all rowing in the same direction. Leonard Leo starts the Honest Elections Project. Hes just trying to do it in a way that looks more legitimate. So there is an effortstate by stateto try to question the election results. And the FedSocs are deeply invested and involved in thatbut theyre not involved in it in the way John Eastman is. This is the highest-stakes moment for Donald Trump. And when he doesnt get the answers he wants, Trump goes and seeks out folks who are, as you said, far more fringy and radical in their thinking, to the point where theyre actually possibly being disbarred because what theyre proposing is actually so unlawful. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement What youre saying is that Leonard Leo is like: No, the gentlemens way to do this is just to suppress the vote. We do it within the confines of the law. Whereas John Eastman is like: Oh, Ive got a better idea! Lets just throw out the election results. And that latter just seems unseemly. Its about optics and feelings, and a very visceral sense of where the line is between the two, that is coming from inside FedSoc. Yeah, this is the gentlemens waythe gentlemens way preserves the very institutions that these folks are deeply invested in preserving. Whereas the non-gentlemens way, the John Eastman way, where he almost burns down those institutions theyre rowing in the same direction. But the gentlemens rowboats are not going fast enough for the speedboat that is Donald Trump and John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, who dont care what kind of wake theyre causing. Advertisement The New York Times piece from Nov. 1 talks about a former senior Trump administration official who runs a think tank. Theyre talking about Stephen Miller, not a lawyer. And John McEntee, not a lawyer. Also Mark Paoletta, Mike Davis; a bunch of people, some of whom are not attorneys at all. Some of them, I guess, are people who are disenchanted with the Federalist Society. But where are all these little hatchlings coming from? Advertisement Advertisement FedSoc starts as a smaller and more identifiable group of elites. But as it becomes powerful, it attracts anyone right-of-center who wants any kind of shot at being a political appointee, a law clerk, a judge, or a justice. So it becomes the gatekeeper organization. And yet there are folks who operate very much at the margins of the Federalist Society. Advertisement One thing I talk about in my second book, Separate but Faithful, is that the real fringy kind of Christian-right folks were kept out of the mainstream at the beginning of the Federalist Society. The FedSocs wanted to be taken seriously by their liberal elite law-school colleagues. So the idea that you would say Gods law over mans law and We need to get back to a Christian worldview was really kept out of the mainstream. What Donald Trump has done is make that acceptable by courting evangelicals, by going to Liberty Law School, Jerry Falwells law school. By building relationships with that Christian worldview. Because they were not actually taken very seriously even by FedSoc. And so, where are these folks popping up from? Im not saying theyre going to these Christian-worldview law schools, but there are conservative lawyers who exist at the mainstream and fringes of the Federal Society who join because they know that is synonymous with career advancement for conservative lawyersbut who arent going to play by Leonard Leos gentlemans rules. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement So much of what Donald Trump wants cannot be accomplished through the law. Which is why, as you note, so many of these folks advising him are not lawyers. And his question is going to be: How far can we push to stretch the law before its just lawless and its acknowledged by everyone as lawless? Advertisement The conservative elites who have spent four decades investing in legal institutionstheyre deeply invested in the fact that these institutions need to be seen as legitimate, as respectable. And Trump and his team right now are working very hard to dismantle that. I think that is going to be the real battle. Does the left enlist Leonard Leo and conservative lawyers in service of preserving the courts, or just point out, hey, these courts have been illegitimate for a long time, theyve just been doing it in in this more gentlemanly, acceptable wayby disenfranchising votersbut not by overtly trying to overturn the 2020 election? Or via colorblind constitutionalismbut not outright racism in the form of American First white supremacy. Advertisement I think this is going to be the interesting tension moving forward. Im really curious about whos using who. There was a funny line in the New York Times piece where it says Leonard Leo starts to cool on Donald Trump because he doesnt like that it looks transactional. Advertisement It can be transactional, but it cant look transactional. Those appearances are very important to maintaining the integrity of the law and the legal system. From my perspective, Donald Trump is all id. Hes not playing three-dimensional chess with anyone. He is just going by his emotions. And Leo and folks thought they could maneuver Trump in particular ways. And now that Trump is out of power and looking to gain power again, hes going to try to do it on his own terms. Advertisement I do think Leonard Leo is thinking through his next move right now. And I actually think Leonard Leo benefits from that story in the New York Times because it makes Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society look like normies, right? That theyre mainstream. And its Trump and these other folks who are very fringy and radical. And so when we think about the Overton windowthe window of what is normal and acceptableyou can move that by exposing people to something thats so fringy and so radical that what youre proposing looks pale in comparison. Advertisement Lets talk about the FedSoc justices. Because suddenly we live in a world in which Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the former darlings of FedSoc, are the moderate center of the U.S. Supreme Court and are seen to be pumping the brakes on even their own ideas from two terms ago. They are the ones who seem to be saying, Oh, were a lot of things, but were not crazy MAGA justices. Even insisting on the new ethics rulesthats also coming from Kavanaugh and Barrett and the chief justice. That is not coming from the far-right wing of the court. I find myself wondering if this moderate center of the U.S. Supreme Court is emblematic of the FedSoc problem youre describing, which is that these folks were seen as radical, wildly out-of-touch justices not two years ago, and suddenly theyre the new Justice Kennedy and Justice OConnor. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Related From Slate Suppose They Threw a Cage Match Between Fascism and Democracy and Nobody Cared Read More Part of the work is to normalize and legitimate ideas, and that doesnt just happen on the Supreme Court. And one of the roles that the Federalist Society has played over time is that through legal scholarship and through appearances at public events, they have kind of normalized and legitimized originalism, which 40 years ago was seen as wacky and off-the-wall. And now were in a place where, not only are we originalists, but the left is embracing and adopting originalism. Because its become the dominant discourse on the court. That didnt just happen because Supreme Court justices started issuing originalist opinions. A lot of that, what I call cultural capital, was built outside the court by these networks. When we think about Kavanaugh and Barrett as representing the new moderate centrist view on the court, thats not just a reflection of the court. Its a reflection of all of this work thats been done outside the court and how theyre able to define themselves against the fringy, now-radical, now-lunatic MAGA lawyers. America First lawyers are doing a lot of this work again, on behalf of the court and on behalf of the Federalist Society, in making their ideas seem very, very mainstream. Military officials from the Philippines and the United States announced the commencement of joint patrols in waters near Taiwan on Tuesday, November 21. This is an initiative that is likely to inflame tensions further between the Philippines and China. This year has seen a dramatic increase in the number of security-related engagements between the treaty partners, such as the decision to nearly double the number of Philippine bases the US is allowed access to (including ones that face Taiwan) and the execution of their largest-ever joint military practice in April. This three-day joint maritime and air exercise was a "significant initiative" to strengthen coordination between the two forces, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. remarked. "I am confident that this collaboration will contribute to a more secure and stable environment for our people," he posted on X (formerly Twitter). Today marks the beginning of joint maritime and air patrols a collaborative effort between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the United States Indo-Pacific Command in the West Philippine Sea. This significant initiative is a testament to our commitment to bolster the November 21, 2023 Joint Air and Sea Exercise Eugene Cabusao, spokesman for the Northern Luzon command, said the exercise will begin on Mavulis island, the northernmost point of the Philippines situated around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Taiwan. It will end at the West Philippine Sea, the name Manila gives to the area of the South China Sea that is inside the Philippines' exclusive economic zone (EEZ). According to Reuters, the US will deploy a littoral combat ship and a P8-A maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft, while the Philippines will provide three naval vessels, two FA-50 light combat aircraft, and an A-29B Super Tucano light attack jet. The report comes after Marcos warned of the dire situation in the South China Sea and the growing proximity of Chinese military forces to the Philippine shore. This is a hint that the Philippines is increasing its defense posture in response to what it calls China's "dangerous and offensive" actions in the area, which has long been considered a possible hotspot between the US and China. Jay Batongbacal, head of Manila's Institute of Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, also said that the combined patrol with the US demonstrated Manila was taking a position over the South China Sea. "It shows that the Philippines is really firming up its posture on West Philippine Sea issues." See Also: US Stands With Philippines in Worsening South China Sea Conflict With China Strained Ties Using a "nine-dash line" that extends up to 1,500 km (900 miles) south of the mainland, China claims most of the South China Sea. This line overlaps the EEZs of other nations, including Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. After a tense relationship with previous President Rodrigo Duterte, who had shifted closer to Beijing in return for infrastructure projects and investments, Marcos has strengthened ties with Washington since taking office last year. Marcos's administration has worsened tensions with China, with frequent incidents between Chinese and Filipino boats in areas claimed by both nations escalating into verbal confrontations and fears of violence. The tension was recently attempted to be alleviated by Marcos' meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. See Also: Foreign Officials Condemn China's Dangerous Behavior in South China Sea @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Folks, if you predicted on Friday that the closely watched OpenAI power struggle would end in the most pointless-seeming way possible well, just look. Late Tuesday night, four days after CEO Sam Altmans shocking ouster from the A.I. company, we found ourselves (mostly) back where we started: Altman is returning to OpenAI as its CEO, albeit not to its board of directors; Greg Brockman is once again president of OpenAI, but also will not be a member of the board; Mira Murati, who briefly took the helm as interim CEO, is just regular ol CTO again; the three researchers whod stepped down Friday in solidarity with Altman and Brockman are either back at the company or requesting to return; Altman & co. will once again operate with the backing of Microsoft, not as direct employees of the Big Tech pioneer. When it comes to the Main Characters of this saga and their loyalists, it seems most everyones pretty happy. [I]m looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft, Altman tweeted. [W]e are so back, Brockman exclaimed, sharing a selfie with his smiling team (who celebrated, according to the Informations Erin Woo, by setting off a false fire alarm at OpenAI HQ). Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear is no longer interim CEO but is deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours of work, and is glad to have been a part of the solution. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated, We look forward to building on our strong partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of AI to our customers and partners. (Brockman followed up with an expression of incredible gratitude toward Microsoft leadership.) Even MC Hammer, of all people, is psyched. Advertisement Still, as the Informations Amir Efrati put it, Its not all roses. Neither Altman nor Brockman is retaining his old board seat. In fact, the makeup of OpenAIs new board of directors isPaul McCartney voicevery strange. Predictably, most of the mutineers who ousted Altman and Brockman are gone: Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner are no longer advising the company, and Ilya Sutskever, who deeply regretted his hefty role in this mess, is back at the company but not on the board. Weirdly enough, Quora CEO Adam DAngelo is the only pre-Friday board member wholl remain on what OpenAI characterized as its initial board going forward, despite the employee letter insisting that that entire board step down. There, hell be joined by Google/Salesforce/Twitter alum Bret Taylor (whos assuming Brockmans former position as chairman) and by Larry Summers, the august and/or chronically incorrect Harvard economist who predicted to Bloomberg last year that OpenAIs ChatGPT bot could be the most important general-purpose technology since the wheel or fire. In addition, Altman will voluntarily subject himself to an internal investigation over the reasons last weeks board members chose to boot him in the first place (the specifics of which we still dont know). One can presume that DAngelos continued board presence is a means by which to retain the input of an Altman opponent to begin withalthough it also means that OpenAIs leadership, for the time being, is dominated top to bottom by white men, a classic for Silicon Valley. (For what its worth, Nadella stated that Microsoft is encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board, claiming its a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance.) Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement For a tech press corps still mourning the end of high-octane boardroom-centric TV melodramas like Succession and Billions (as well as the close of several legal proceedings against former crypto CEOs Sam Bankman-Fried and Changpeng Zhao), it was a delicious five days of C-suite intrigue, with journalists and Twitter sleuths searching around for any clue they possibly could on just what the heck happened and why. Yet for all the relief thats greeted Altman upon his return, this near-week of external investigation has surfaced some unflattering revelations. As I wrote Monday, Altmans ouster inflamed a long-simmering feud between two ideologies in the artificial intelligence space: on one side, the effective altruists deathly afraid of going too fast with A.I., and on the other, the effective accelerationists, or e/accs, who believe we arent going fast enough. This mapped out somewhat imperfectly over the OpenAI sphere: the board members who were either explicit effective altruists (Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner) or thinkers at least sympathetic to their concerns (Ilya Sutskever, Adam DAngelo), versus the inventors striving to usher in a superintelligent utopia (Altman, Brockman, their loyal staffers). Conflicting initial reports attributed Altmans ouster to his disagreements with the board over A.I. safety, OpenAIs much-celebrated role in developing high-powered A.I. tools, and OpenAIs very purpose as a onetime nonprofit that was now pursuing full commercialism. As the board sparred with OpenAI investors/employees/executives over how to move forward, reporters uncovered key details around a long-festering internal battle sparked by the sudden, massive growth of ChatGPT. The New York Times reported Tuesday 1) that Sutskever thought Mr. Altman was not always being honest when talking with the board; 2) that OpenAI execs had been locked in a stalemate with board members over who should replace the directors whod departed earlier this year, including Reid Hoffman, who was both an OpenAI founding member and a Microsoft board member; and 3) that Altman had been embroiled in conflict with board member Helen Toner in particular. Advertisement Advertisement Related From Slate The Shocking Drama at OpenAI Isnt As Stupid As It Looks Read More Lets unpack that last one. Toner is a deep effective altruist, having worked exclusively in EA-specific institutions since March 2015. Per the Times report, Altman confronted Toner a few weeks ago over a paper shed co-written for her current full-time employer, the EA-aligned Georgetown University Center for Security and Emerging Technology: Mr. Altman complained that the research paper seemed to criticize OpenAIs efforts to keep its A.I. technologies safe while praising the approach taken by Anthropic, a company that has become OpenAIs biggest rival, according to an email that Mr. Altman wrote to colleagues. If youre familiar with the lore, youll recognize Anthropic as the A.I. rival firm formed in 2020 by disgruntled former OpenAI leaders who disagreed with Altman overwait for ithis approach to A.I. development. The OpenAI CEO viewed Toners paper as dangerous for the company, especially since it was facing a government probe over the heaping amounts of data it uses to train its models; Toner defended her work as part of a legitimate discussion. Because of Altmans claim that any amount of criticism from a board member carries a lot of weight, his fellow executives, including Sutskever, pondered the possibility of booting Toner out altogetherbut then Sutskever, who shared a somewhat doomer outlook on the future of A.I., aligned himself with Toner to kick Altman out instead. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Youll notice, then, that OpenAIs current board has been purged of effective-altruist influence. (Per the CEO of A.I. company Perplexity: Effective Altruism is officially dead.) According to the Times, Toner was so devoted to the philosophy that she told OpenAI leaders, after firing Altman, that shed rather have the company implode than have it continue on a more destructive pathin fact, she said, that could be consistent with its mission of developing A.I. that benefits all of humanity. (We dont know much about the circumstances around the departure of EA-aligned board member Tasha McCauley, but according to Kara Swisher, the conflict with her went deeper thanks to her apocalyptic viewpoints.) If you take Toners word for it, her actions were merely in line with the OpenAI charter, whose tenets are evidently drilled into everyone affiliated with the firm. At the same time, what she may not have counted on was the support Altman inspired from the companys employees. As Karen Hao reported for the MIT Technology Review back in 2020, OpenAI, for all its noble aspirations, is obsessed with maintaining secrecy, protecting its image, and retaining the loyalty of its employees. Advertisement Advertisement The acceleration must continue. https://t.co/Rli6ESHo6D Patrick Blumenthal (@PatrickJBlum) November 22, 2023 This speaks to another important factor in the current battle: Altmans own ruthlessness, a core aspect of his leadership belied by his soft-spoken public appearances and requests for government officials worldwide to please regulate A.I. The timeline of his control over OpenAI, from its 2015 founding through its November 2023 rebirth, is chock-full of back-and-forth conflicts that threatened Altmans visions and goals for OpenAI, all ending with his would-be challengers packing their bags and fleeing the premises. A compact overview: Advertisement In 2018, when OpenAI co-founder and co-chair Elon Musk complained that the firm was falling behind in the A.I. competition, he proposed fully taking over the venture himself. Altman and Brockman rejected this, causing Musk to leave and pull all his planned funding for the then-nonprofitand allowing Altman to assume full OpenAI control. Advertisement Advertisement To make up for the Musk-caused cash gulf, Altman decided in 2019 to establish a for-profit arm of OpenAI that could raise more outside funding at a faster pace, allowing it to remain competitive with Big Techs A.I. adventures. However, some of OpenAIs more EA-aligned members were alarmed by this capitalistic turn; the whole reason OpenAI started as a nonprofit was so its A.I. ventures wouldnt be dangerously motivated by profit. Per the aforementioned Times report, these dissenters themselves asked the board to force Altman out before resigning to form the EA-supported rival A.I. firm Anthropic. Advertisement Advertisement Ironically, Anthropic now enjoys ample funding from Big Tech giants like Amazon, as well as an app partnership with Adam DAngelos Quora. Oh, and also: In the past few days, some OpenAI board members approached Anthropic about possibly merging the two companies, a proposal firmly rejected by Anthropic leadership. If youre keeping track at home, then, the most recent events mark the third time since 2018 that someone at OpenAI has attempted to usurp Sam Altmans power, only to give up, get out, and, in the earlier cases, establish their own competitors. (Musk, you may recall, is currently trying to make his own painfully unfunny chatbot a thing.) Its all just more confirmation, perhaps, of Ellen Huets description of the CEO in a recent Bloomberg profile: having a reputation as ambitious, cunning, even Machiavellian. No wonder, then, that so many OpenAI leaders and workers have stayed by his side since Friday, and that so few others in his orbit ever attempted to follow the path of Musk, the Anthropic founders, and Tonerbetting against Altmans position, and betting that they can take his place. This week may demonstrate yet again the folly of this approach. Why else would Ilya Sutskever help to oust Altman only to get cold feet and publicly regret his decision? Advertisement Advertisement The thing is, Altman is not entirely unsympathetic to the effective-altruist outlook on A.I. Hes spoken time and again about the need to be responsible with powerful A.I., and hes been influenced by many of the rationalist/longtermist philosophers whose A.I. musings have helped to influence the effective-altruist approach. But heres another thing: Altman has clearly determined that he is the right proper steward of the A.I. future, and no one is going to cross him in this pathespecially not now, when hes become such a public face for A.I. Nothing open about that. Did you know that the first Friday in June is National Donut Day? In fact, there are several donut (also spelled doughnut) holidays. If you are surprised that a simple sweet confection would have multiple days celebrating it, dont be. Americans consume 10 billion donuts annually, according to Dawn Foods. In fact, donut stores are an $8.4 billion industry. And donut stores are well represented by the franchise model. Sell Your Business Drive Traffic to Your Website Discover the Zoho Ecosystem Advertise Your Business Here We all know the big names like Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme and Cinnabon. But recent years have seen unique approaches to the donut franchise. From clever names to new and unusual flavors favored by millennials and Gen Z, the donut is experiencing a resurgence of popularity. And the rising popularity has potential franchise owners sitting up and taking notice. Also, the donuts franchise business model includes some mobile options for the sweet treat, plus coffee. The mobility may take the shape of a concession trailer or food truck, or a small wheeled cart. As a franchise, the small version of the donuts business is much more affordable. Criteria for Choosing the Right Donut Franchise Businesses: Our Methodology Donut franchise businesses offer a sweet and enticing opportunity for entrepreneurs. To help small business owners and aspiring donut shop proprietors select the best donut franchise for their needs, weve developed a set of comprehensive criteria. Each criterion is ranked on a scale of importance from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest importance and 1 being the lowest. Here are the key factors to consider when choosing the best donut franchise: Brand Reputation and Recognition (Rating: 10/10): The franchises reputation within the donut industry is paramount. A well-established and recognized brand can attract loyal customers and drive business growth. Location and Foot Traffic (Rating: 9/10): Choosing the right location with high foot traffic is essential for a donut shops success. A prime location directly impacts visibility and customer flow. Training and Support (Rating: 9/10): Comprehensive training programs and ongoing support from the franchisor are critical, especially if youre new to the donut business. Licensing and Certification (Rating: 8/10): Ensure that the franchise complies with all licensing and certification requirements in your area. Proper credentials demonstrate professionalism. Franchise Fees and Costs (Rating: 8/10): Consider initial franchise fees, ongoing royalties, and startup costs. While costs are important, they should align with the brands reputation and support. Marketing and Advertising Support (Rating: 7/10): Effective marketing support from the franchisor can significantly boost brand visibility and customer acquisition efforts. Exclusive Territories (Rating: 7/10): Some franchises offer exclusive territories, preventing oversaturation of competitors in your area. This can be valuable for business growth. Supplier Relationships (Rating: 6/10): Reliable and cost-effective supplier relationships can impact your bottom line but may be less critical than other factors. Technology and Tools (Rating: 6/10): Modern tools and technology can enhance the efficiency of your donut shop but may be less critical than core criteria. Menu and Product Variety (Rating: 5/10): The range and quality of donut flavors and products offered by the franchise are essential for attracting a diverse customer base. Small Business Deals Donut Franchises Here are the best donut franchises for aspiring entrepreneurs with a sweet tooth to consider: 1. Dunkin Youd have a hard time poking a hole in this one as a fantastic franchise opportunity. The trouble is, Dunkin has been so successful that much of the United States is reserved territory. That means that while you can purchase a Dunkin franchise from an owner, you cant open a new one. Wisconsin, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, North Carolina, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and all of New England is already taken. Dunkin protects its franchisees from the competition. You wont find a franchise location in those states. California, Nevada and states in the middle of the US are available. Dunkin is also planning expansions into the countrys northwestern states. The requirements to open a Dunkin franchise are similar to all donuts franchise requirements. You need $250,000 in liquid assets and a net worth of $500,000. Total startup costs ranges from $100,000 to $1.6 million. That figure depends on the cost of real estate, including how much the franchisee owns or needs to purchase. The franchise fee ranges from $40,000 to $90,000. The franchise fee varies by area of the country. 2. Krispy Kreme You are now challenged to read the words Krispy Kreme and somehow avoid Pavlovs salivating response. This business includes 4 franchising opportunities. From small to large, the fee ranges from $12,000 to $25,000. Here are the Krispy Kreme formats: Factory Store This is the complete retail sales store. This is the complete retail sales store. Tunnel Oven Shop This store has an oven, receives already-prepped donuts and finishes them with icing and/or filling, and baking. This store has an oven, receives already-prepped donuts and finishes them with icing and/or filling, and baking. Fresh Shop No oven, receives donuts ready for icing or filling. No oven, receives donuts ready for icing or filling. Box Shop receives ready-to-eat donuts from a Krispy Kreme factory store. The all-in startup costs range from $200,000 to $2.7 million. 3. Cinnabon Cinnabon includes three separate franchising opportunities. There are the Full Bakery, Express Bakery (with a smaller product line) and the concession bakery. Wanna-be donut franchisees might find the Cinnabon concession bakery franchise as tempting as a hot cinnamon roll, laced with icing. The concession bakery is designed to be used at a fair, show or market run from a concession trailer or food truck. In other words, its a great option for customers who prefer to get their food curbside. The franchise fee is $30,000. The startup costs range from $200,000 to $430,000. 4. Dixie Creme Donut Restaurant This franchise goes beyond donuts in its offering to also includes a deli. The franchise fee for Dixie Creme Donut Restaurant is $25,000. The start-up costs range from $146,000 to $400,000 for this franchising choice. As with the other donut franchises, the start-up investment costs vary according to the need for land purchase, and local building costs. 5. Honey Dew Donuts Could be that your Honey-Do list will include researching a Honey Dew Donuts franchise. This business model supports additional locations from the base of a full shop with satellite carts. The carts can be deployed for customers to place a quick order of coffee and donuts. The franchise owner can adjust his business to adapt to the sales opportunity as it presents itself. Honey Dew Donuts is currently going strong in Massachusetts. The company is eager to expand into New England states. The all-in investment cost ranges from $94,000 to $700,000. The company requires that the franchisee have $100,000 in liquid assets and a net worth of $400,000. 6. La Mars Donuts This is a relatively new donut biz that has been dominant in Kansas City and Denver. La Mars Donuts focus is on the gourmet donut market, with many of its lineup including handmade donuts. Whats unique about a La Mars location? The customers get a choice. Go through the speed line on the day that youre in a hurry. When youre not, relax in the seating area. The seating area is designed so customers can use it as an office away from home. The all-in startup fees range from $250,000 to $370,000. 7. Duck Donuts The Duck Donuts franchise is known for a unique approach providing a warm, made-to-order donut for the customer. The fee to start the franchise is $40,000. The applicant must have $150,000 in liquid assets and a net worth of $500,000. The average all-in startup costs range from $400,000 to $600,000. Duck Donuts is fairly-well established on the eastern side of the US and eagerly expanding across the country. Exploring Innovative Donut Trends In the dynamic world of donut franchises, staying ahead of the curve is essential for success. As the donut industry continues to evolve, embracing innovative trends can set your franchise apart from the competition. Here are some emerging trends that aspiring donut franchise owners should consider: Artisanal and Gourmet Donuts: Customers are increasingly seeking unique and high-quality donut flavors. Artisanal and gourmet donuts, often crafted with premium ingredients and inventive toppings, have gained popularity. Customers are increasingly seeking unique and high-quality donut flavors. Artisanal and gourmet donuts, often crafted with premium ingredients and inventive toppings, have gained popularity. Health-Conscious Options: With growing health awareness, offering healthier donut options can cater to a broader customer base. Consider including gluten-free, vegan, or low-sugar alternatives in your menu. With growing health awareness, offering healthier donut options can cater to a broader customer base. Consider including gluten-free, vegan, or low-sugar alternatives in your menu. Customization: Allowing customers to personalize their donuts with various glazes, toppings, and fillings can create an engaging and interactive experience, driving customer loyalty. Allowing customers to personalize their donuts with various glazes, toppings, and fillings can create an engaging and interactive experience, driving customer loyalty. Local Sourcing: Supporting local suppliers and using locally-sourced ingredients can resonate with environmentally-conscious consumers and build community relationships. Supporting local suppliers and using locally-sourced ingredients can resonate with environmentally-conscious consumers and build community relationships. Social Media Marketing: Leveraging the power of social media platforms to showcase visually appealing donuts and engage with customers can be a game-changer in marketing your franchise. Leveraging the power of social media platforms to showcase visually appealing donuts and engage with customers can be a game-changer in marketing your franchise. Delivery and Online Ordering: Offering convenient delivery options and an efficient online ordering system can boost sales, especially in todays fast-paced digital landscape. Offering convenient delivery options and an efficient online ordering system can boost sales, especially in todays fast-paced digital landscape. Seasonal and Limited-Time Offerings: Introducing seasonal and limited-time donut flavors can create excitement, drive foot traffic, and encourage repeat visits. Introducing seasonal and limited-time donut flavors can create excitement, drive foot traffic, and encourage repeat visits. Sustainability Initiatives: Implementing eco-friendly practices, such as sustainable packaging and reducing food waste, aligns with the growing sustainability trend. Innovative Donut Trends Description Artisanal and Gourmet Donuts Crafted with premium ingredients and inventive toppings, these donuts offer unique and high-quality flavor experiences. Health-Conscious Options Meeting the demand for healthier choices with gluten-free, vegan, or low-sugar donuts to cater to a health-aware customer base. Customization Allowing customers to personalize their donuts with a variety of glazes, toppings, and fillings for an interactive experience. Local Sourcing Supporting local suppliers and using locally-sourced ingredients to resonate with eco-conscious consumers and build community ties. Social Media Marketing Harnessing the power of social media to showcase visually appealing donuts, engage customers, and enhance marketing efforts. Delivery and Online Ordering Offering convenient delivery options and efficient online ordering systems to adapt to the digital age and boost sales. Seasonal and Limited-Time Offerings Creating excitement and driving foot traffic by introducing seasonal and limited-time donut flavors and promotions. Sustainability Initiatives Embracing eco-friendly practices like sustainable packaging and waste reduction to align with the sustainability trend. What Are the Pros and Cons of a Donut Store? According to research by IBISWorld, donuts are a growing industry. The rate of growth averages 2% per year, according to IBISWorld information. It is one of the more profitable food businesses. Revenue is steady and has low volatility. However, there is a lot of competition. In many metropolitan and high-traffic areas there is an over-saturation of donut shops either franchise or independent. So you must choose locations carefully and just as carefully, read the disclosure document. The disclosure document should let you know how your territory will be protected. Most donut franchises charge a royalty fee of 6 or 7% on gross sales. The royalty fee may be taken before or after taxes. Again, this should be part of the franchise disclosure document. And you may need the advantage of unusual offerings and eye-catching branding. Related reading: How to Open an Artisan Donut Shop. If you buy something through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more. Stories about companies failing to do market research are all too common. For instance, the 1990s saw the introduction of a soft drink with little balls of gelatin floating in it. Sounds appetizing not! Called Orbitz, the product reportedly tasted terrible too. It launched with an incoherent marketing campaign about coming from another planet. Not surprisingly, the product was a bust. Marketing professionals study such failures and try to learn from them. The point of many lessons is: if only the company had done its market research. Perhaps held some focus groups or blind taste testings. Then the company could have saved its money. Sell Your Business Drive Traffic to Your Website Discover the Zoho Ecosystem Advertise Your Business Here Conducting market research is just a good business move. Research minimizes risk and positions businesses to use precious resources wisely. And picking the right market research tools saves time and money for startups and small businesses. A good market research tool makes it much easier to gather critical information for decisions such as estimating the size of the market opportunity, how to price products and services, which brand name to use, or which advertising messages resonate with customers. Choosing the Right Market Research Tools: Our Methodology In the fast-paced world of small business and entrepreneurship, staying ahead of the competition requires more than just instinctit demands data-driven decisions. Thats where market research tools come into play, providing the insights needed to make informed choices. 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: Research Depth and Breadth (Rating: 10/10): The tool should offer a wide range of research options, from industry trends to competitor analysis and consumer behavior insights. Data Accuracy (Rating: 9/10): Accurate data is paramount for making informed decisions. Look for tools that provide reliable and up-to-date information. User-Friendly Interface (Rating: 9/10): A user-friendly and intuitive platform makes it easier for small business owners to navigate and extract valuable insights. Customization Options (Rating: 8/10): Tools that allow users to tailor research parameters to their specific needs and industry niches offer a more personalized experience. Cost-Effectiveness (Rating: 8/10): Evaluate the pricing structure and ensure it aligns with your budget while still delivering in-depth research capabilities. Competitor Analysis (Rating: 7/10): The ability to analyze competitors strategies, market positioning, and performance can be crucial for staying competitive. Industry-Specific Insights (Rating: 7/10): Consider tools that specialize in your industry, as they may provide more relevant data and insights. Integration with Other Tools (Rating: 6/10): Compatibility with your existing business software, such as CRM systems or analytics platforms, can streamline workflow. Customer Support (Rating: 6/10): Accessible and responsive customer support can be invaluable when encountering issues or needing assistance with the tool. Data Visualization (Rating: 5/10): Tools that offer data visualization features can make complex research findings easier to understand and share with stakeholders. Real-Time Updates (Rating: 5/10): For industries with rapidly changing trends, real-time data updates can provide a competitive advantage. Security Measures (Rating: 4/10): Ensure the tool has robust security measures in place to protect sensitive market data. Best Market Research Tools Here are the best market research tools to consider. Small Business Deals 1. Pew Research Center The Pew Research Center has copious data on social trends, technology usage, science and many other current topics. Register and you can get access to datasets and reports with excellent charts. Pew does a great job explaining the methodology behind its studies, with good demographic breakdowns helpful to marketing teams. Pew data can help you identify new opportunities and understand your target market. Price: Free 2. Living Facts Living Facts is a sister site to the Pew Research Center that can provide information to help you market to potential customers. The site says it is about Americans today who we are and how we live. The site has colorful image infographics, videos, and quizzes and is easy to use. Get a snapshot of consumer trends, demographics, faith, health, work and other topics about American life for your marketing plan or campaign. Price: Free 3. U.S. Census Business Data The U.S. Census is a top market research tool. Census Business Builder is a source for conducting market research targeting a single geography. Explore Census Data is helpful for segmenting customers by demographics. The U.S. Census Bureau also provides Data Gems, a collection of videos to better explain how to access census data for your business. Other tools for market research from the U.S. government include: Economic indicators: See the Consumer Price Index and Bureau of Economic Analysis for additional economic figures. See the Consumer Price Index and Bureau of Economic Analysis for additional economic figures. Income statistics: Find market rates of pay and similar data. Earnings by Occupation and Education and Income Statistics. Find market rates of pay and similar data. Earnings by Occupation and Education and Income Statistics. Money statistics: Find Money Statistics from the Federal Reserve Banks. Find Money Statistics from the Federal Reserve Banks. NAICS Codes: Look up industries by the North American Industry Classification System or NAICS system. Look up industries by the North American Industry Classification System or NAICS system. Employment statistics: See various Employment and Unemployment Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Price: Free 4. Survey Monkey To poll people for information or gather customer feedback, one of your best bets is conducting surveys. Survey Monkey is one of the most well-known tools. Its been around since 1999 and the product is mature and robust. The Basic plan is available at no charge, providing you 10 questions per survey, with up to 40 responses per survey. If you need more, you can upgrade to a paid plan. Price: Free and Paid Plans from $32 / month 5. Zoho Survey Zoho Survey is a relative newcomer to the survey software industry, but has quickly ramped up to match rivals. Zoho Survey has a free version which allows you to do 10 questions and receive up to 100 responses, per survey. Zoho has over 250 professional templates. You may need a paid version to give you the flexibility and features you need. Added plus: a full version of Zoho Survey is included at no additional charge in Zoho One subscriptions. Price: Free and Paid Plans from $20 / month. 6. Keyword Surfer The Keyword Surfer Extension from Surfer SEO is a great tool for content marketing. You install this cool tool on your Chrome browser, and then when you search in Google you can see the volume of monthly searches for various keywords. The information is right there no need to do keyword research using another tool. Keyword Surfer helps you see what terms your target audience might be searching for, so you can tailor your website pages to meet the expectations of customers. Price: Free 7. SEMrush SEMrush is an SEO (search engine optimization) tool. There are many SEO tools, but SEMRush is popular with marketers and content creators, not just SEO professionals. Its Keyword Magic tool is a powerful way to analyze a broad topic and identify niche subtopics. This helps you analyze your online presence. You can also do a gap analysis showing what keywords your main competitors are getting search rankings for and how you compare. SEMrush is a bit pricey, but extremely helpful for researching your digital presence. Price: Starts at $99.95 / month 8. Google Trends Google Trends gives a picture of what people are searching for on the web. Its one of the best tools to research market trends, and track the volume of searches on products or services over time and by geographic location. You can also gain insight into related topics and related search queries, to spot patterns and identify the terminology the user is most likely to use. Price: Free 9. Hootsuite Social media is another important place to do marketing research. Hootsuite has a reputation as a social scheduling tool. But the tool also functions as a way to track social mention activity of your brand and various search terms on channels like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The free plan is very limited with 3 social profiles and 30 scheduled messages. Most small businesses and marketers serious about social media will need a paid plan. Price: Starts at $29 / month 10. Facebook Audience Insights If you use Facebook for marketing purposes, Facebook Audience Insights is one of the best market research tools. Use it to track engagement with your content. You can learn about the demographics and behaviors of your social media fans, or those of any other Facebook page by using. Insights gives you a run down of the page views on your Facebook page, post reach, page likes, actions taken on the page and more. You can also use the Pages to Watch feature to identify and compare your pages performance with others in a similar niche. Price: Free 11. Twitonomy If you want a tool to track your social mention and engagement activity specifically on Twitter, try Twitonomy. You can also research activity involving other users and hashtags. You simply sign in for the basic service for free through connecting your Twitter account. Of course, Twitter also provides analytics tools for your own account. So if you dont want to authorize another app, you can always try Twitter Analytics for social media research. Price: Free and Paid Plans starting at $20 / month 12. Job Report Sites Need to track small business hiring and employment? Two tools are helpful for market research by brands offering employment related products and services. Paychex Small Business Employment Watch is a monthly report of job and wage data covering businesses with fewer than 50 workers. The reports break down the data by region, state, metro area and industry. The Paychex report can also be used by small businesses to benchmark worker earnings and hours by industry. ADP Employment Report offers a national employment report on changes in all U.S. non-farm private sector employment. ADP breaks out specific monthly reports on small business employment and franchise employment, by industry. Price: Free 13. NFIB Economic Trends Each month, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) issues the Small Business Economic Trends report. The report identifies trends and plans for spending by small businesses. The Small Business Optimism Index is part of the report and measures owner optimism. So it can be a great resource of market research for B2B companies that sell to small businesses. Small business owners can use it to gain a sense of how their peers are thinking. Price: Free 14. Yelp You may think of Yelp as the place to visit for reviews about your own business. But it can also be one your top tools to research competitors. Find out what other customers like about your competitors for example, to identify products or services you might want to add to your lineup. And just as importantly, find out what customers do not like about your competitors and make changes to avoid similar problems. Price: Free 15. TripAdvisor TripAdvisor is the key review site for the tourism industry. If your small business is a tourist destination, this is the site for tracking reviews of your own business. You also can do market research on competitors. You can also research similar businesses similar to yours even in other cities and even other countries. Study these reviews to figure out elements you could add to please customers who are attracted to businesses similar to yours. Or, if your business is connected to the hospitality industry, use this site to conduct market research about whats important to people in destinations and travel, or identify potential partners who cater to an audience similar to yours. Price: Free 16. Software Review Sites If youre launching or produce a software product or service, there are a number of sites that host reviews about competitors. Capterra probably features the broadest array of software categories across industries. G2 emphasizes that its reviews are always verified. TrustRadius returns vendor listings, reviews and comparisons with other software on software searches. Its a great idea to look at what people are saying about your competitors not just about what customers are saying about you. Youll get the widest range of opinions by checking all the websites. Vendors can pay for premium services, but you dont need that to do basic market research. Price: Free 17. Export Information To take advantage of export opportunities for your small business, see Export Solutions from the International Trade Association. Sections include information on learning how to export, researching foreign markets, finding potential customers and partners and more. Price: Free 18. International Franchise Association For small business owners who operate a franchise or small businesses serving franchise owners the International Franchise Association maintains a Franchise Industry Research section. Use this tool to do market research on different aspects of the franchise industry. Price: Free 19. National Retail Federation For research on the retail industry, the National Retail Federation is excellent. The Research section includes a monthly economic review with a consumer confidence index. The NRF also has a section called Retails Impact with retail stats broken down by state. Price: Free 20. Small Business Statistics The Small Business Statistics center of Small Business Trends is an essential resource to understand smaller enterprises. It has statistics on the number of small business broken down by state. It also includes information on the percentage of businesses that are small, how many people they employ, the average number of people in a small business, and statistics by industries and demographics. Price: Free 21. Pick FU Need to get fast feedback on a new product name or some marketing copy? Then PickFu is for you. PickFu says it matches you with U.S.-based consumers who share valuable feedback on your business ideas, product photos, marketing copy and more. PickFU does not have a free version, but it allows you to poll an audience by either asking for their opinion about something, or by asking them to vote for their favorite option. There are also many different demographic variables you can select, so you can reach almost any target consumer audience that is a match for your product or service. Price: Starts at $50 Maximizing Your Market Research Efforts Market research is a potent tool, but to truly harness its potential, you need a strategic approach. Heres how to maximize your market research efforts: Define Clear Objectives: Start by setting specific research goals. What questions do you need answers to? What are your objectives for this research? Target Audience Identification: Know your audience inside out. Who are your ideal customers? What are their demographics, preferences, and pain points? Choose the Right Tools: Utilize the market research tools that align best with your objectives. Each tool has its strengths; select the ones that suit your needs. Data Collection Strategy: Plan how youll gather data. Will it be through surveys, interviews, online research, or a combination? Ensure your data collection methods are unbiased. Analyze Thoroughly: Once you have data, dont stop there. Dive deep into the findings. Look for patterns, trends, and outliers that can inform your decisions. Stay Updated: Market conditions change. Make market research an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Regularly revisit your data and adjust your strategy accordingly. Competitive Intelligence: Keep a watchful eye on your competitors. What are they doing? Are there opportunities to differentiate your business? Feedback Integration: Customer feedback is gold. Use it to refine your products, services, and customer experience continually. Collaborate Internally: Share your research findings with your team. Collective insights often lead to innovative solutions. Act Decisively: Finally, dont let your research gather dust. Implement the insights youve gained into your business strategy and watch your business thrive. Key Aspect Description Define Clear Objectives Set specific research goals and identify the questions you need answers to. Target Audience Identification Understand your ideal customers, including their demographics, preferences, and pain points. Choose the Right Tools Select market research tools that align with your objectives and leverage their strengths. Data Collection Strategy Plan unbiased data collection methods, such as surveys, interviews, or online research. Analyze Thoroughly Dive deep into collected data, identifying patterns, trends, and outliers to inform your decisions. Stay Updated Recognize that market conditions change, making ongoing research essential for adapting your strategy. Competitive Intelligence Keep a watchful eye on competitors' actions and explore opportunities to differentiate your business. Feedback Integration Use customer feedback to continually improve your products, services, and overall customer experience. Collaborate Internally Share research findings with your team to harness collective insights and drive innovation. Act Decisively Implement the insights gained from research into your business strategy for tangible results. Tools Conclusion We hope you find this list of market research tools helpful. It has never been easier to conduct competitive intelligence or collect market research. As you can see, today much of it can be done online. As the holiday season approaches, Isabel Casillas Guzman, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Administrator, calls on Americans to participate in Small Business Saturday on November 25. This day, falling just after Thanksgiving is not just a shopping event but a celebration of the 33 million small businesses that form the backbone of local communities nationwide. Small businesses are the heart and soul of our neighborhoods, powering local economies and strengthening communities, Guzman emphasized. Her message resonates with the spirit of entrepreneurship and community support that Small Business Saturday embodies. Initiated by American Express in 2010 and cosponsored by the SBA since 2011, this day is dedicated to supporting local small businesses that create jobs, boost the economy, and enrich neighborhoods. Last year, a record high of approximately $17.9 billion was spent at independent retailers and restaurants on this day, according to the American Express 2022 Small Business Saturday Consumer Insights Survey. Discover the Zoho Ecosystem Drive Traffic to Your Website Sell Your Business Advertise Your Business Here The significance of Small Business Saturday extends beyond mere numbers. Its a day that puts a spotlight on the diversity of small businesses and their contribution to the economic and social fabric of communities. The day encourages shoppers to think locally and acknowledge the impact of their spending on their own neighborhoods. President Bidens economic agenda, Investing in America, has also played a crucial role in bolstering the small business sector. Since the President took office, there have been 14 million new small business applications, underscoring a historic boom in entrepreneurship in the United States. Small Business Saturday 2023 is more than just a shopping day; its a symbol of resilience and unity. It offers an opportunity for consumers to show their support for the small businesses that have been essential in driving the nations economic growth. Image: Depositphotos Dozens more will be added to the five existing wind turbines. More wind turbines will be built in Slovakia. (Source: Sme - Marko Erd) Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Share When you cross into Austria from Bratislava, immediately beyond the Slovak-Austrian border you will find yourself amidst a vast wind farm. Austria is the largest producer of electricity from wind in central Europe, operating turbines with a total installed capacity of 3500 megawatts (MW). By comparison, Slovakias wind power plants can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Their entire generating capacity is barely a thousandth of those in Austria. This could change in the near future. Plans developed by the EU and the Slovak government count on a rapid increase in the production of electricity from wind power. There are also investors who want to pour tens of millions of euros into new turbines. 1. Why does Slovakia have so few wind farms? Move is "in the interest of stability of the coalition", says minister. March against hate after the terrorist attack on Zamocka Street. (Source: TASR) Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Share The Health Ministry will scrap expert guidelines regarding gender transition at the request of the Slovak National Party (SNS) party "in the interest of the stability of the government coalition", Health Minister Zuzana Dolinkova (Hlas) said on Tuesday. The SNS party reportedly would not vote for the government programme in parliament and not suport a vote of confidence if the guidelines were not abolished. Before his departure in March, ex-minister Vladimir Lengvarsky signed expert guidance on unifying medical procedures to issue a medical opinion on gender transition. It had been approved by a 20-member expert committee a month before. Still, conservative MPs criticised Lengvarsky for the move. Related article Related article Everyday fear and discrimination continue to shape queer peoples lives, a survey finds Read more The regulation ensured a more dignified process of medical transition and healthcare for transgender people and made it possible for transgender people to change their birth number, name and surname without undergoing surgery. The previous regulation was adopted in 1981 and referred to no longer valid laws. This has made the life of transgender people and the work of doctors complicated for a long time. The new guidelines were among the demands of LGBT+ initiatives in the wake of the murders of two queer people, Juraj Vankulic and Matus Horvath, in a terror attack on an LGBT+ bar on Zamocka Street in Bratislava in autumn 2022. In a press release Dolinkova said "this issue will be dealt with comprehensively and professionally by the Health Ministry within during the adoption of the new international classification of diseases". No further details were provided. SNS has opposed the guidelines for a long time. In October, Environment Minister Tomas Taraba (SNS) made it clear the party wanted to scrap them. Related article Related article Conservatives' two proposals to erase transgender people Read more Earlier this year, a group of conservative MPs submitted an amendment that would make it impossible for transgender people to undergo a legal transition and have their birth number changed in identification documents as it can indicate their sex. At the time, Hlas chair Peter Pellegrini said the party would not back such a move, but conservative MPs are looking for a way to bring the amendment back. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/biden-xi-talks-were-just-for-show-as-real-business-was-conducted-elsewhere-at-apec-1115119460.html Biden-Xi Talks Were Just for Show as 'Real' Business Was Conducted Elsewhere at APEC Biden-Xi Talks Were Just for Show as 'Real' Business Was Conducted Elsewhere at APEC The Biden-Xi discussions on the sidelines of the APEC summit, from Beijing's perspective, were simply for show as real business was conducted elsewhere, experts said. 2023-11-21T23:08+0000 2023-11-21T23:08+0000 2023-11-21T23:06+0000 analysis us joe biden karen kwiatkowski charles ortel apec china san francisco us-china relations summit /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/11/1115035788_0:0:3136:1763_1920x0_80_0_0_1e98d472e3bb4675ba7b826b63de22a6.jpg Biden and Xi held extensive bilateral talks on the margins of the APEC Summit in San Francisco last week, during which the leaders agreed to improve communications and resume direct military-to-military contacts. Xi then delivered a speech on investing in China at a high-profile dinner attended by top American CEOs and other business and political leaders. Xi is leading a country that - unlike the United States - consistently communicates strategic goals that are aligned with China's projected finances, economic engine, and military capability, she added. "In some ways, the obsequity with which the United States played host to China reveals much more than the language used or even any agreements that may have been made," Kwiatkowski said. In contrast to Biden, the political and business leaders of San Francisco and the state of California took the opportunity to negotiate with Chinese figures very seriously, Kwiatkowski said. "The business dinner was apparently well-attended and delightful. These aspects of the meeting seem peaceful and forward looking," she observed. The larger part of the problem, she added, is that US leaders in both political parties believe they can plan and act as if the United States is not a politically divided, nearly bankrupt country, she added. Former hedge fund manager and political analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik Biden's poor performance and inability to "read cue cards" opened opportunities for China to prey on American weakness. "The San Francisco summit was a disgraceful display of bumbling weakness on home turf brought to ruin, and temporarily swept clean, by economically illiterate and arrogant, blue state simpletons," Ortel said. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231118/bidens-dictator-remark-on-xi-exposes-us-neocolonialism---russian-mp-1115041016.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231116/biden-xi-talks-modified-tone-but-not-substance-of-us-china-relationship-1115010360.html china san francisco Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International china-us summit, apec summit, chinese president xi jinping, us president joe biden, https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/battalion-of-ukrainian-ex-pows-heads-out-on-combat-mission-in-special-op-zone-1115126726.html Battalion of Ukrainian ex-POWs Heads Out on Combat Mission in Special Op Zone Battalion of Ukrainian ex-POWs Heads Out on Combat Mission in Special Op Zone The first group of the Russian battalion named after Bogdan Khmelnitsky, consisting of former Ukrainian prisoners of war, part of the operational and combat tactical formation "Cascade", has left on a combat mission, fighter Viktor Kirichansky told Sputnik. 2023-11-22T12:13+0000 2023-11-22T12:13+0000 2023-11-22T12:13+0000 russia's special operation in ukraine ukraine russia donbass pow video /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/16/1115133396_114:0:1305:670_1920x0_80_0_0_ed794478ec027cc2b2eeb66a623190a8.jpg The first group of a Russian battalion named in honor of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, consisting of former Ukrainian soldiers and part of the operational and combat tactical formation, Cascade, has departed on a combat mission, Viktor Kirichansky, one of its fighters, told Sputnik.He highlighted the upbeat, fighting mood in the group. "[Everyone] made their choice, and chose the right side". Asked whether there was any anxiety to be on the contact line, Kirichansky replied: "Well, the first time can be a bit frightening, but I think itll be all right. We'll clean up Donbass".Kirichansky noted that he had almost no combat training during his service in Ukraine. In February, the formation of a battalion named in honor of Bogdan Khmelnitsky was unveiled, consisting of ex-Ukrainian military personnel who had expressed their desire to fight on the side of Russia. At the end of October, the battalion officially joined the Russian operational and combat tactical formation called "Cascade." https://sputnikglobe.com/20231117/prisoner-of-war-tells-how-ukraines-mercs-try-to-avoid-russian-strikes-1115019158.html ukraine russia donbass Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Battalion of Ukrainian ex-POWs Heads Out on Combat Mission in Special Op Zone Battalion of Ukrainian ex-POWs Heads Out on Combat Mission in Special Op Zone 2023-11-22T12:13+0000 true PT1M09S 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International battalion group of former ukrainian pows, russian battalion, combat tactical formation https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/biden-is-in-a-freefall-as-democrats-jump-ship-1115121745.html Biden Is in a Freefall as Democrats Jump Ship Biden Is in a Freefall as Democrats Jump Ship On today's episode of The Backstory, we discussed President Biden's struggling campaign for support, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's trip to Kiev, Elon Musk suing Media Matters, and reports of Israel and Hamas coming close to a hostage ceasefire deal mediated by Qatar. 2023-11-22T11:14+0000 2023-11-22T11:14+0000 2023-11-22T11:14+0000 the backstory hunter biden joe biden 2024 us presidential election israel palestine eric adams new york city ukraine /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/16/1115121832_0:0:1920:1080_1920x0_80_0_0_ddef5d92fe092d9790610622a4f3c471.png Biden is in a Freefall as Democrats Jump Ship On today's episode of The Backstory, hosted by journalist Rachel Blevins, we discussed President Biden's struggling campaign for support, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's trip to Kiev, Elon Musk suing Media Matters, and reports of Israel and Hamas coming close to a hostage ceasefire deal mediated by Qatar. In the first hour, Rachel spoke with international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda about Ukrainian President Zelensky's claims that Russian President Putin has tried to assassinate him multiple times. This, as Kiev appeals for more funding from its Western backers, and the Russian Defense Ministry reports that Ukraine has lost over 13,000 troops in the month of November.The first hour also included political cartoonist, and co-host of The Final Countdown, Ted Rall. He discussed the latest rhetoric from New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is saying "Don't yell at me, yell at DC," as the Big Apple is hit with $4 billion and counting in budget cuts, due to the migrant crisis.In the second hour, Scott Ritter, a Former UN Weapons Inspector & WMD Whistleblower joined The Backstory to discuss the latest on Israel and Hamas nearing a hostage deal that would see each side trade dozens of women and children who are currently detained, along with a short-term ceasefire.Also in the second hour, Jim Hoft, founder of the Gateway Pundit joined Rachel to discuss the House Judiciary subpoenaing Lesley Wolf, a deputy to special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe. Jim commented on reports that 60% of the public believe President Biden helped and participated in Hunter Bidens business dealings, and what the president's current approval rating could mean for his chances at staying in the White House for another four years.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 israel palestine new york city ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Rachel Blevins Rachel Blevins News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Rachel Blevins the backstory, lloyd austin's trip to kiev, musk suing media matters, israel-hamas deal, what is happening in ukraine, who is winning in ukraine, west's support for ukraine, new york city crisis, hunter biden probe https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/bidens-broken-brain-1115121349.html Bidens Broken Brain Bidens Broken Brain US President Joe Biden confused Taylor Swift with Britney Spears while attempting to make pop culture reference during the ceremonial pardoning of Turkeys ahead of Thanksgiving. 2023-11-22T00:53+0000 2023-11-22T00:53+0000 2023-11-22T00:53+0000 americas joe biden cardi b britney spears brazil israel political cartoons sputnik cartoons ted rall taylor swift /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/15/1115118044_0:0:2000:1125_1920x0_80_0_0_194e6bec7803b559c73de281802b0209.jpg US President Joe Biden, 81, appeared to mix up pop stars Taylor Swift and Britney Spears on Monday while attempting to make a joke during the turkey pardoning tradition ahead of the American holiday Thanksgiving.Taylor Swift, one of the biggest pop star in the world right now, is currently in Brazil where a heatwave has delayed some shows and resulted in the death of one fan. Britney Spears, who released her first album in 1999, while she has received renewed attention due to a legal battle over a protracted conservatorship and a recently released tell-all book, is not currently touring.Another massive pop star, Cardi B, revealed in a social media post that she will not support Joe Bidens reelection campaign, complaining about the administrations support of Ukraine and Israel while domestic issues persist. Cardi B vocally supported Bidens 2020 campaign.Bidens age and visible physical frailty have concerned many voters, with recent polling showing that the majority of Americans think he is too old to serve another term as president. Another recent poll showed that Bidens approval rating has shrunk to 40%, the lowest of his presidency.The largest drop was among 18-34-year-olds, with the vast majority of them 70% disapproving of the administrations support for Israel. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/biden-confuses-taylor-swift-with-britney-spears-in-joke-attempt-during-turkey-pardon-1115087020.html americas brazil israel Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International joe biden gaffes, joe biden confused, biden mixes up taylor swift with britney spears The UK's Ministry of Defense said in its daily intelligence report on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday (November 21) that Russia fired dozens of Iran-made Shahed attack drones at targets around Kyiv over the weekend in an attempt to degrade Ukraine's air defenses while the Kremlin appeared to be stockpiling its supply of cruise missiles. Russian forces launched about 50 Shahed drones in waves from Kursk and Krasnodar in order to prepare the battle space ahead of a winter campaign against Ukraine, the Washington Times reported. Read Also: Finland Closes Border Crossings To Prevent Asylum Seekers From Russia From Entering Country Russia Intends to Stockpile Cruise Missiles, Drones for Winter Attack However, Whitehall's intel report added that Russia has refrained from firing any of its air-launched cruise missiles for nearly two months, saying that relying on Shahed drones in the short term would allow the Kremlin to "build up a substantial stock" of missiles. Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine 21 November 2023. Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/u5M50Sfnzr #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/aFWIQWgLoL Ministry of Defence (@DefenceHQ) November 21, 2023 "Russia is highly likely to use these missiles if it repeats last year's effort to destroy Ukraine's critical national infrastructure," the report added. Last Saturday (November 18), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he expected Russia to steadily increase the number of aerial attacks by winter, urging Ukrainians to prepare for such attacks. "It is crucial 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 on his Telegram account. Related Article: Lloyd Austin Visits Ukraine as US Announces $100 Million Military Aid for Kyiv @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/binance-ceo-changpeng-zhao-steps-down-pleads-guilty-to-money-laundering-violations-1115118206.html Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao Steps Down, Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering Violations Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao Steps Down, Pleads Guilty to Money Laundering Violations Changpeng Zhao announced on Tuesday that he would step down as the CEO of Binance after he pleaded guilty to money laundering violations, marking a stunning effort by the US government to clamp down on the cryptocurrency industry. 2023-11-22T00:19+0000 2023-11-22T00:19+0000 2023-11-22T00:17+0000 world binance janet yellen us justice department crypto currency crypto market crypto-trading exchange justice department merrick garland guilty plea /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/06/08/1111008391_0:160:3072:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_9591564fd2b0ae8744fa2d155d1c0e22.jpg Zhao detailed in a social media post that his replacement for the post would be Richard Tend, who previously served as Binances former global head of regional markets.Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do, Zhao wrote on X. Moment earlier, US Attorney General Merrick Garland revealed that the US Justice Department had secured felony guilty pleas from Binance and Zhao, and that the department would be requiring the crypto firm to pay $4.3 billion."Binance has agreed to plead guilty to willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act, knowingly failing to register as a money transmitting business and willfully violating the international Emergency Economic Powers Act," Garland said during a news conference. "The Justice Department is requiring Binance to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures."In addition to stepping down from his post and pleading guilty to willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act, the deal also required Zhao to pay a $50 million fine. Zhao, who presently faces up to 18 months in prison, will be barred from engaging in any work with Binance for a period of three years once a monitor is selected.The fine amounts were made under an agreement that reached settlements with not only the Justice Department but the US Department of Treasury and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Weighing in on the development, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen remarked that the Binance fallout was a clear message to the cryptocurrency industry against malpractice and underscored the Treasury Department is prepared to use all available tools to combat illicit finance.The Tuesday results bring an end to the department's three-year probe into Binance. US government officials have worked to clamp down on crypto elites more recently since the November 2022 collapse of FTX, of which Zhao was an investor in early on. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230609/binance-exchange-halts-us-dollar-use-as-banks-plan-blocking-in-wake-of-sec-lawsuit-1111033063.html Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International who is changpeng zhao, what did changpeng zhao plead guilty to, cryptocurrency firm binance, what are money laundering violations https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/dutch-general-election-sees-lackluster-early-voting-turnout---poll-1115146528.html Dutch General Election Sees Lackluster Early Voting Turnout - Poll Dutch General Election Sees Lackluster Early Voting Turnout - Poll Fourteen percent of Dutch voters cast their ballots three hours into the general election on Wednesday, down 1 percentage point from the pre-pandemic in-person voting in 2017, an Ipsos poll published by Dutch public broadcaster NOS showed. 2023-11-22T18:13+0000 2023-11-22T18:13+0000 2023-11-22T18:13+0000 the hague netherlands elections parliament dutch parliament dutch parliamentary election mark rutte frans timmermans ipsos polling /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/105167/76/1051677629_0:124:5440:3184_1920x0_80_0_0_1dabcb4ba67cb6f72f1662aa072b96f8.jpg The polling began at 7:30 am local time (06:30 GMT) and will close at 9 pm. A Sputnik correspondent in The Hague reported that there were no lines outside the 283 polling places set up across the city. Some of the unusual voting locations were the Madurodam miniature park in The Hague, the Anne Frank House, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. There are 26 parties vying for seats in the lower house of parliament, including the liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte who handed over the party leadership to Justice Minister Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius. Other frontrunners are the right-wing Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders and the Labor Party-Green Left bloc of former EU Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans. A survey published by the I&O Research agency on the eve of the voting put Wilders and his Party for Freedom in the lead with prospective 28 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, followed by the People's Party and the Labor Party-Green Left bloc with 27 seats apiece, and the once-favorite centrist New Social Contract of Pieter Omtzigt trailing behind with 21 seats. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231108/netherlands-to-supply-israel-with-f-35-spare-parts-despite-war-crime-risks---reports-1114817904.html the hague netherlands Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International dutch general election, dutch election, dutch parliament, dutch voting, voting in netherlands, elections in netherlands, voting in the netherlands, elections in the netherlands, polling https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/eu-drafting-security-plan-for-ukraine-amid-bloc-bickering-over-further-aid-1115125427.html EU Drafting 'Security Plan' For Ukraine Amid Bloc Bickering Over Further Aid EU Drafting 'Security Plan' For Ukraine Amid Bloc Bickering Over Further Aid Amid dwindling military and economic support for the regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky, the European Union has reportedly devised a draft paper containing security guarantees for Ukraine. 2023-11-22T09:54+0000 2023-11-22T09:54+0000 2023-11-22T09:54+0000 european union (eu) ukraine volodymyr zelensky g-7 world dmitry peskov nato membership action plan /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/16/1115122640_0:161:3071:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_664a2d221a79463d505b730f41d8f6d6.jpg Amid the specter of dwindling military and economic support for the regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky, the European Union has reportedly devised a draft paper containing security guarantees for Ukraine.With Volodymyr Zelensky sounding the alarm right and left about the prospects of Western support to Kiev decreasing to a trickle, the framework document concocted to appease Ukraines increasingly snubbed President will reportedly be central to upcoming consultations between the Group of Seven (G7) nations and Kiev.The assembled proposals are said to be built on the bilateral arrangements that Kiev hopes to wrangle out of some of its Western patrons this year. These draft EU paper purportedly contains commitments that include offering a predictable, efficient, sustainable and long-term mechanism for the provision of military equipment to Ukraine.At this point it is worth noting that EU member states have already been fast-depleting their own armed forces' stocks by arming Ukraine and fueling the proxy war with Russia. Needless to say, the European defense industry will have its task cut out for it if it takes on the afore-mentioned commitment. Furthermore, there are growing divisions within the bloc over long-term aid for Ukraine. Originally, the EU sought to allocate a mind-boggling sum of 20 billion ($21.8 billion) to cover costs of providing weapons to Kiev. However, that did not go over well with some of the member states, with some, like Germany, reportedly disagreeing with the proposed terms, as per a cited EU diplomat. Accordingly, now the sum has shrunk to a proposed 5 billion for next year, so it is reportedly hoped that member states might at least agree to that.As to the other proposals contained in the draft paper cited by the outlet, these are:Further delivery of weapons to Ukraine would continue, as per the above-cited draft paper, via the so-called European Peace Facility mechanism, which is geared to reimbursing member states for whatever they supply to Kiev. The paper is also said to lay out how the bloc could help it with its reform agenda related to gaining EU accession.Ambassadors of EU member states will purportedly be discussing the draft, seen by Bloomberg, as early as this week. Afterwards, the blocs long-lasting security commitments for Kiev will come up for scrutiny by EU states leaders in December.During the NATO summit in Vilnius in July, G7 members agreed to launch a bilateral security guarantees discussion with Ukraine. These long-lasting obligations were to cover military support, financial aid, and post-war reconstruction. While NATO powers opted to drop the Membership Action Plan (MPA) procedure for Ukraine, which outlined a list of reforms and guidelines by which the countrys application for membership might be considered, they swore off allowing Kiev membership it so coveted over fears of the alliance being drawn into a direct war with Russia.In a statement released on July 12, the G7 officially announced plans for long-term security commitments to Ukraine, which presupposed that each of the members would "focus on long-term bilateral cooperation to help Ukraine." Kiev, on its part, where corruption is almost legalized, was to carry out reforms to its security and defense sectors, judiciary, and law enforcement.Volodymyr Zelensky signed an application for Ukraine's accession to the European Union on February 28, 2022. On June 23, 2022, EU heads of state approved its candidate status. The formal decision to open membership talks with Kiev will be taken at the EU summit in Brussels on December 14-15.Ukraine Burden Fuels 'Fatigue' Mention of the draft paper comes against the bleak backdrop of Kievs failure to succeed in its much-vaunted counteroffensive, which has resulted in huge losses of manpower and NATO-donated weaponry.That, along with the huge financial 'burden' of support for President Volodymyr Zelenskys regime have been driving 'Ukraine fatigue' in both the US and in Europe. Propping up Kiev is losing support in the Congress, where the GOP-controlled House of Representatives refused to include multibillion Ukraine packages in stopgap measures to avoid a US government shutdown. In response, EU leaders signaled that the bloc would not be able to replace US aid for Ukraine. The Western press has also chimed in, acknowledging that the European and American public have grown increasingly weary of the conflict.Furthermore, the EU will reportedly be unable to provide Ukraine with the promised rounds of artillery ammunition by next spring. EU member states made an ambitious pledge in March 2023 to produce and supply 1 million 155mm (six inch)-calibre artillery shells to Ukraine in a year.As to Russias response to the provision of security guarantees to Ukraine by the United States, France and other countries, Moscow is closely monitoring information about this, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in July. At the time, he noted that it is not yet clear from official statements exactly what format of guarantees the Western nations were talking about. He added that Moscow, never heard any mention, or at least references, to the concerns that our country has repeatedly expressed about our security, which is regrettable. Peskov said that so far this process is quite one-sided, noting that it could not be viable without mentioning Russias security.Any country has the right to receive security guarantees, Moscow is not against discussing this issue, provided that Russia's security is ensured, President Vladimir Putin stated in July, emphasizing that while achieving the security of one country, threats should not be created for another country. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231113/france-halting-free-arm-transfers-to-ukraine-is-sign-of-europes-exhaustion-1114929350.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230913/ukraines-accession-to-nato-will-not-bring-peace-only-provoke-russia---sarkozy-1113352809.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/prof-zelensky-is-doomed-western-leaders-came-to-ukraine-to-test-kiev-regime-viability-1115103463.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231120/last-ditch-effort-to-revive-ukraine-story-why-murdoch-rushed-to-meet-zelensky-in-kiev-1115076201.html ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Svetlana Ekimenko Svetlana Ekimenko News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Svetlana Ekimenko ukraine's botched counteroffensive, dwindling support for ukraine, nato proxy war against russia in ukraine, european union draft paper, security guarantees for ukraine https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/four-ukrainian-unmanned-navy-boats-destroyed-in-black-sea---mod-1115127286.html Four Ukrainian Unmanned Navy Boats Destroyed in Black Sea - MoD Four Ukrainian Unmanned Navy Boats Destroyed in Black Sea - MoD The Russian armed forces have detected and destroyed four unmanned boats of the Ukrainian naval forces proceeding toward the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday. 2023-11-22T09:07+0000 2023-11-22T09:07+0000 2023-11-22T09:07+0000 russia's special operation in ukraine russian defense ministry black sea russia ukraine drone /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/09/0e/1113359843_0:160:3072:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_ab0b0308ca95613a3a5c51dbbc2daef4.jpg "On November 22, four unmanned vessels of the Ukrainian navy proceeding in the direction of the Crimean Peninsula were detected in the western part of the Black Sea. All detected targets have been destroyed," the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram. Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Western countries responded by imposing comprehensive sanctions against Moscow while also ramping up its military support for Kiev. Russian and Ukrainian delegations have engaged in several rounds of peace talks since then, but the negotiations have ultimately reached an impasse. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231107/russian-air-defense-destroys-intercepts-17-drones-over-black-sea-crimea-1114776598.html black sea russia ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International ukrainian unmanned navy boats, russian defense ministry, ukrainian naval forces https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/germany-freezes-spending-as-top-court-blocks-diverting-previously-earmarked-covid-funds-1115126226.html Germany Freezes Spending as Top Court Blocks Diverting Previously Earmarked COVID Funds Germany Freezes Spending as Top Court Blocks Diverting Previously Earmarked COVID Funds Germany's financial framework includes 29 separate funds outside the main budget, amounting to around 870 billion. With a freeze on government expenditure, the country's fiscal plans have been thrown into uncertainty, as vital projects take a hit. 2023-11-22T13:36+0000 2023-11-22T13:36+0000 2023-11-22T13:36+0000 economy europe newsfeed christian lindner olaf scholz germany free democratic party (fdp) finance ministry /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/0a/16/1102536924_0:0:3073:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_c2b7cf7c931aa1dba1a51294f8a16823.jpg Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his cabinet are contending with the aftermath of this decision that prohibits reallocating pandemic relief funds for different purposes. The verdict by the Federal Constitutional Court questions the legality of several hundred billion euros in special funds.In response, the Finance Ministry announced a freeze on almost all new spending approvals for 2023, permitting only current liabilities and exceptional new obligations, impacting all federal ministries except for certain key institutions.The court's ruling has made Berlin's financial strategy uncertain, impacting critical projects like the chip and battery manufacturing subsidies and crucial investments in the national railway network.Source: Federal Audit Court, Germany's Ministry of FinanceThe upheaval has been so consequential that senior officials have had to cancel public appearances to address the crisis. Last weeks judicial ruling stated that the 60 billion earmarked for the pandemic response cannot be repurposed for other initiatives, like advancing green manufacturing practices or boosting solar energy production.Pandemic Funds Untouched, and Its Consequences for GermanyVice Chancellor of Germany and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck has indicated that the judgment's impact could extend to other special funds, including those designed to mitigate the effects of high energy prices on households and companies.Furthermore, Finance Minister Christian Lindner faces the daunting task of incorporating at least 30 billion of new debt into a modified 2023 national budget, per sources familiar with the matter. This requirement could derail his plans to reinstate constitutional rules that limit new borrowing, a cornerstone policy of his business-friendly Free Democratic Party.Politicians ReactThe court's verdict has also ignited internal debates within the coalition government, consisting of Scholzs Social Democrats, the Greens, and the fiscally conservative FDP. During an interview with a media outlet, SPD General Secretary Kevin Kuehnert said that the party is devoted to sourcing the necessary funds to address the 60 billion shortfall created by the court's decision. Emphasizing the importance of funds for Germanys international competitiveness and climate goals, Kuehnert firmly rejected any proposals for cuts in social benefits.Overall Financial ContextGermany's financial framework includes 29 separate funds outside the main budget, amounting to around 870 billion.Interestingly, the 100 billion fund allocated for military spending is not expected to be affected by the court's ruling, as it is constitutionally protected.The process of finalizing next years federal budget, initially scheduled for completion last week, has been delayed due to the court's decision. Budget lawmakers are now planning to reconvene this week, alongside experts, to deliberate on the next necessary steps. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231030/new-economic-downturn-shows-germany-recession-bound-1114592770.html germany Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Chimauchem Nwosu https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/09/01/1113046371_0:99:1536:1635_100x100_80_0_0_9c5c627283eca931c39fe4852bbb301c.jpg Chimauchem Nwosu https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/09/01/1113046371_0:99:1536:1635_100x100_80_0_0_9c5c627283eca931c39fe4852bbb301c.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Chimauchem Nwosu https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/09/01/1113046371_0:99:1536:1635_100x100_80_0_0_9c5c627283eca931c39fe4852bbb301c.jpg europes largest economy, chancellor olaf scholz, germany's constitutional court verdict, german federal budget, vice chancellor of germany and federal minister for economic affairs and climate action, robert habeck, german finance minister christian lindner, spd general secretary kevin kuehnert. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/israel-hamas-deal-could-potentially-go-into-effect-as-early-as-thursday---netanyahu-adviser-1115121168.html Israel-Hamas Deal Could Potentially Go Into Effect as Early as Thursday - Netanyahu Adviser Israel-Hamas Deal Could Potentially Go Into Effect as Early as Thursday - Netanyahu Adviser The hostage deal between Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas could go into effect as early as Thursday if the Israeli government approves the framework overnight, an adviser to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, said Tuesday. 2023-11-22T00:38+0000 2023-11-22T00:38+0000 2023-11-22T00:36+0000 world mark regev benjamin netanyahu israel palestine-israel conflict deal us hamas /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/12/1115046518_0:161:3070:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_abff5f683151221899821c9ddb5bb678.jpg "On the assumption that the government tonight approves the framework for the release of the hostages, then a 24-hour period comes in where the supreme court hears the petitions, on the assumption that it rejects the petitions and allows the government to go ahead - which I think is a reasonable assumption - that means we can start moving on this deal on Thursday, hopefully seeing people come home immediately," Regev told UK media. He added that the vote is still pending but may happen within an hour or two. Regev further said Israel could consider extending the ceasefire with Hamas under the deal if more hostages were released. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday that the Israeli cabinet was meeting earlier in the day to discuss the deal to release hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Netanyahu said Tuesday that progress had been made in the negotiations on the release of hostages from the Gaza Strip, expressing hope that soon there will be "good news" on the matter. Earlier in the day, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said that a ceasefire agreement was close to being concluded as the movement handed over its response to Qatar and other mediators in negotiations with Israel. After that, Israeli media reported, citing an unnamed high-ranking official, that the deal would include the release of dozens of hostages in exchange for a temporary ceasefire. Qatari Foreign Minister spokesman Majed Mohammed Al-Ansari said Tuesday that negotiations between Israel and Hamas on a truce have reached the final stage, but details of the agreement have yet to be announced. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/us-to-press-israel-on-holding-settlers-accountable-for-violent-acts-1115115332.html israel Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International palestine-israel conflict, israel-hamas deal, israeli negotiations over gaza conflict https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/israel-would-prefer-dead-hostages-to-gaza-ceasefire--scott-ritter-1115145227.html Israel Would Prefer Dead Hostages to Gaza Ceasefire Scott Ritter Israel Would Prefer Dead Hostages to Gaza Ceasefire Scott Ritter Israel has agreed a truce and prisoner exchange with the Hamas movement. Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and US Marine, argued the deal was a victory for Palestine and a humiliation for the Zionist state. 2023-11-22T19:34+0000 2023-11-22T19:34+0000 2023-11-22T19:34+0000 analysis middle east gaza hamas gaza strip israel palestine-israel conflict /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/11/1115013958_0:0:3072:1728_1920x0_80_0_0_46a9614c91baf1296b0435e94235ab0c.jpg The Israeli government would rather see hostages held in the Gaza Strip dead than swap them for Palestinian women and children, a leading peace campaigner says.Qatari mediators announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement late on Tuesday.Under the deal, Israel and Hamas will observe a four-day "humanitarian pause". Hamas will release 50 women and children taken hostage in its October 7 incursion into southern Israel, while Israel will release 150 Palestinian women and children under 19 held in its prisons.That will still leave almost 200 Israelis, most of them Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, captive in the besieged Gaza Strip, where their comrades have been waging a bombing and ground campaign for more a month and a half.Some 13,000 Palestinians have been killed and 33,000 injured, three-quarters of them women, children and the elderly. Israel has revised its own death toll on October 7 down to 1,200. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik that anyone "who cares about humanity and people" should welcome the good news of the agreement.But he argued that the Israeli government never wanted to be in the position of exchanging prisoners "from a doctrinal standpoint"He pointed out that several of the hostages had already been killed in the bombing that reduced much of Gaza City and other urban areas to rubble and even during the raid by the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and other militant groups.He contrasted that with the aims of Hamas, which "made it one of their main objectives to take hostages for the express purpose of exchanging them for the prisoners being held.""Remember, the Israelis have said 'we will never agree to a ceasefire'. A ceasefire is a victory for Hamas," he added. "Israel wouldn't be making concessions if they were winning. Israel is losing."He underscored that the October 7 attack had shattered the myth of Israeli military invincibility that has underpinned the existence of the Jewish state since its creation in 1948."Israel was humiliated Their military, the vaunted IDF, was beat in a stand up fight by Hamas," Ritter said. "If you go and take a look at the record, Israeli intelligence observers had been reporting about the potential of a Hamas attack for some time now. This was incompetence. This was slop. This was the fact that the Israelis aren't as good as everybody was led to believe that they are."Meanwhile, Lebanon's al-Mayadeen News said the IDF had deliberately targeted two of its staff, reporter Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Memari, who were killed in a drone attack near the Israeli border.The IDF insisted in a statement that it only targeted Hezbollah guerrillas who have been waging a low-intensity campaign to tie down and estimated 100,000 Israeli troops in the north.The pundit slammed the "arrogance" of the Israeli claim, when "they died because Israel bombed them and because Israel isn't discerning in picking their targets."For more incisive commentary on major world events, check out our Sputnik Radio show The Backstory. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/israel-lobby-should-tread-carefully-risks-losing-influence-in-washington-1115137299.html gaza gaza strip israel Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 James Tweedie https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/1c/1080307270_0:3:397:400_100x100_80_0_0_7777393b9b18802f2e3c5eaa9cbcc612.png James Tweedie https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/1c/1080307270_0:3:397:400_100x100_80_0_0_7777393b9b18802f2e3c5eaa9cbcc612.png News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 James Tweedie https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/1c/1080307270_0:3:397:400_100x100_80_0_0_7777393b9b18802f2e3c5eaa9cbcc612.png israeli bombing and invasion of gaza, hamas attacks on southern israel, qatar brokers ceasefire deal between israel and hamas, israeli hannibal directive https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/jfk-assassination-60-years-since-shots-fired-in-dallas-1115130612.html JFK Assassination: 60 Years Since Shots Fired in Dallas JFK Assassination: 60 Years Since Shots Fired in Dallas Sixty years ago, the United States was shocked by the assassination of incumbent President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. The investigation found Lee Harvey Oswald to be the culprit. 2023-11-22T16:57+0000 2023-11-22T16:57+0000 2023-11-22T16:57+0000 us us president kennedy assassination jfk assassination multimedia john f. kennedy dallas warren commission conspiracy /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/16/1115130769_0:384:2048:1536_1920x0_80_0_0_d40bbea69650c8359e94fa0b28b19704.png According to the official account, the Warren Commission, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson, concluded in 1964 that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository building. Oswald was killed two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, fueling further speculation.The report, however, has been a subject of skepticism and alternative theories. Conspiracy theorists have blamed another shooter, the mafia, the CIA, the Cubans or/and Soviets, as well as Lyndon B. Johnson, the US vice president at the timeThe speculation has continued for several reasons. Despite the fact that US authorities have been gradually declassifiying records related to the assassination, some of the documents (around 1%) have still not been fully released, leading to public suspicion. Furthermore, some people spot inconsistencies in the Warren Commission's report. Others note the specificity of the time when skepticism towards the government was gaining momentum, fueling conspiracy theories.Kennedy's popularity among the people is another reason for widespread speculation. His charisma and the dramatic nature of hsi death have led to a cultural fascination with his assassination, causing myths to appear. Moreover, movies, books, and documentaries about the assassination have kept the public interest alive, often highlighting alternative theories. Sixty years later, the Kennedy assassination remains a subject of debate, partly due to the enigmatic aspects of the event and its significant impact on American society and politics.Check out Sputnik's gallery to learn more about Kennedy's assassination. dallas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International kennedy's assassination, president's assassination, assassination of the us president, jfk assassination, jfk's assassination, november 22, harvey oswald, lee harvey oswald, john f. kennedy, conspiracy theory, alternative theory, conspiracies, cia involvement, jack ruby, presidential limousine, dallas shooting EU Commission to Use 4-Day Truce in Gaza to Boost Humanitarian Aid Supply - Von der Leyen European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday welcomed a four-day truce agreement between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas, saying that the European Commission would do everything possible to use the deal to boost humanitarian aid delivery to the Gaza Strip. Earlier on Wednesday, Hamas confirmed that it had agreed with Israel on a four-day truce in the Gaza Strip including the cessation of all hostilities and the release of 50 Israeli hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners. Israel's cabinet said later in the day that the truce deal provided for the release of 10 Israeli hostages per day, while Israel pledged to free Palestinian prisoners as soon as the first group of hostages returned to the country. "I wholeheartedly welcome the agreement reached on the release of the 50 hostages and on a pause in hostilities The European Commission will do its utmost to use this pause for a humanitarian surge to Gaza. I have asked the Commissioner Janez Lenarcic to upscale further shipments to Gaza as quickly as possible to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza," von der Leyen said in a statement published on the European Commission's website. In addition, she praised the efforts of all sides involved in the process of mediating the agreement and called for immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas. European Council President Charles Michel also welcomed the truce agreement and praised Egypt and Qatar's efforts to broker the truce. "Hamas must release all hostages. It is also crucial to use this pause in hostilities to allow for maximum humanitarian relief to reach those in need," Michel wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi stated that Egypt would continue its efforts to achieve a lasting solution to the ongoing conflict. "I welcome the success of the Egyptian-Qatari-American mediation in reaching an agreement to implement a humanitarian truce in the Gaza Strip and the exchange of hostages for prisoners. I confirm the continuation of the Egyptian efforts to reach final and sustainable solutions that achieve justice, impose peace, and guarantee the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people," Sisi was quoted as saying by his office. Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said that her country was looking forward to further actions for the settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict. "Belgium welcomes the agreement that will free innocent women and children. This is a crucial first step that needs to be followed by further actions in compliance with international law," Lahbib said on X. UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron called on Israel and Hamas to ensure full implementation of the agreement. "This agreement is a crucial step towards providing relief to the families of the hostages and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. I urge all parties to ensure the agreement is delivered in full," Cameron said in a statement released by the UK Foreign Ministry. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna expressed hope that French citizens would also be released as part of the truce. "We have no news about eight of our citizens. Some of them are definitely being held hostage by Hamas, we have received evidence of life. We know nothing about the others. We hope for the release of all our fellow citizens, as well as for the release of all the other hostages. Children and women will be among the first batch of hostages to be released. We hope that the French will be among them," Colonna told the France Inter radio. What is required is to provide humanitarian assistance for the civilian population during the truce, Italian Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani stated. "Italian Government welcomes agreement to release 50 hostages who will finally rejoin their families after 7 long weeks. Now it is necessary to ensure that the pause in fighting is used to bring humanitarian aid to civilians," Tajani wrote on X. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/maidan-3-zelensky-has-good-reason-to-be-scared-of-regime-change---us-vet-1115140735.html Maidan 3? Zelensky Has Good Reason to be Scared of Regime Change - US Vet Maidan 3? Zelensky Has Good Reason to be Scared of Regime Change - US Vet While Ukraine was celebrating the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, President Volodymyr Zelensky confessed he fears a "Maidan 3." US military veteran and international affairs analyst Mark Sleboda explained on Sputnik's Backstory podcast why Zelensky is so scared. 2023-11-22T14:22+0000 2023-11-22T14:22+0000 2023-11-22T14:22+0000 us volodymyr zelensky mark sleboda valery zaluzhny kiev ukraine maidan nato european union (eu) world /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/07/0e/1111867520_0:82:1585:974_1920x0_80_0_0_ccc2597722a6043868de28bb10d2138d.jpg Volodymyr Zelensky knows that the writing for him is already on the wall, as the West is looking for a more convenient figure to replace him, says Mark Sleboda, an international affairs and security analyst. Hence, Zelensky has incessantly claimed in recent interviews with the Western press that "the Russians" want to stir up a "Maidan 3" in Ukraine in order to oust him."One of the important things to remember is that until that putsch, that 'revolution of dignity' backed by the US and the EU, in Ukraine's constitution it was necessitated that they remain a neutral state. They had to remain neutral. They could not join NATO. They could not join the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty organization. When the new West-backed regime seized power they, of course, completely got rid of that aspect of the Constitution," Mark Sleboda told Sputnik.While the Ukrainian president presented zero evidence to back his claims of Russia preparing a coup in Kiev, there are clear indications of the ongoing internal battle between the Zelensky cabinet and Ukrainian top brass, according to Sleboda.One of them was a famous "stalemate" interview given by Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian Armed Forces Gen. Valery Zaluzhny to the Economist, later scolded by Zelensky. Another one was a mysterious death of Zaluzhny's aide who was blasted by a grenade on his birthday on November 6. Earlier, on November 3, Zelensky unilaterally dismissed Viktor Khorenko, who was known to be close to Zaluzhny, from the post of commander of special operations forces. Likewise, the commander of the medical forces Tatyana Ostashchenko was replaced with Anatoly Kazmirchuk by the Kiev regime without consulting Ukraine's top general.This followed Zelensky's rejection to hold elections next spring even though in August the Ukrainian president hinted that the people would cast ballots despite the martial law if the West helps fund and arrange the democratic procedure. For their part, Western leaders pushed the Ukrainian incumbent leader to hold elections in 2024 no matter what. Per Sleboda, they want to get rid of Zelensky through some sort of democratic procedure to keep the appearance of legitimacy of the Ukrainian leadership.However, it seems that Zelensky does not want to make it any easier for the West: the Ukrainian president and his entourage are doing everything to prevent this power change from happening, according to Sleboda."So this type of open warfare and I believe that's why the CIA director, William Burns, was in Kiev at the end of last week on a surprise visit. And just a few days later, the US secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was in Kiev on Monday. And it all appears that the US is trying to tamp this down to prevent it from becoming too open. Trying to stop the rift from getting out of their control and becoming some type of open warfare on the streets of Kiev, within the regime itself," Sleboda underscored. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231109/ex-cia-analyst-west-preparing-for-military-coup-against-zelensky-1114845253.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231105/zelensky-vs-zaluzhnyi-ukraines-president-censures-top-commander-over-stalemate-comments-1114746026.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/prof-zelensky-is-doomed-western-leaders-came-to-ukraine-to-test-kiev-regime-viability-1115103463.html kiev ukraine maidan Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ekaterina Blinova Ekaterina Blinova News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ekaterina Blinova volodymyr zelensky, maidan, euromaidan, maidan 3, revolution of dignity, valery zaluzhny, regime change in ukraine, coup in ukraine, ukaine war, ukraine war news, ukraine war map, 10th anniversary of maidan, ukraine failed counteroffensive, ukrainian presidential elections The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, issued a community note on United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after social media users countered his claim about the deaths in Gaza in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary General- UN chief @antonioguterres pic.twitter.com/cj3EZgbSoE UN News (@UN_News_Centre) November 20, 2023 The official UN news account on X posted several quotes from Guterres's press conference on Monday (November 20) when he insisted that the world has been "witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict" since assuming the UN's top job. Casualty Count Conundrum After the post went live, it received a community note, which allowed users to provide additional context for "posts that might be misleading." In particular, X users pointed to at least two conflicts with significant death tolls either equal to or above the death toll in the Gaza Strip - the Syrian Civil War and the Yemen War, both of which have seen hundreds of thousands killed. An unnamed Israeli official told Fox News Digital that Guterres has "lost any moral standing." "He willfully ignores the thousands of civilians killed in conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, as he pursues vilification of Israel," he added. "Shame on him." On the other hand, a representative for Guterres responded by saying that the secretary-general stood by his comments, initially noting that he was responding to the "large number of civilian casualties reported so far in Gaza" and argued that the numbers cited in the community note were "still below the 11,000+ deaths counted so far in Gaza," and that the Yemeni casualties "preceded [Guterres's] term." The spokesperson also argued that Guterres was "clearly talking about the casualties among children," noting that the comment followed a list of the numbers of child casualties in various conflicts in recent years. "Although he did use the word civilians in the last sentence, the focus of what he was saying, and the statistics he provided, were about child deaths," the spokesperson claimed. Read Also: Hamas Claims 'Truce' With Israel Is Close; Israeli Officials Yet to Respond Israel's UN Envoy Tells Guterres to Resign It was also reported that Guterres stressed in his comments that he was not going to enter into "discussing the accuracy of the numbers that were published by the de facto authorities in Gaza." Guterres took office in 2017. During that year, the Syrian Civil War saw over 10,000 civilians dead. Meanwhile, the Yemen War, which began before he took office, has claimed over 377,000 deaths, with the UN itself reporting that a child died every seven minutes in the Yemen War in 2022 alone, though this included deaths due to starvation or disease. The Hamas-controlled Gazan health ministry reported over 11,000 people dying in Gaza since Israel began its bombing runs in response to the October 7 attack that killed 1,200 Israeli civilians and foreign nationals. However, the ministry number does not distinguish between combatant and civilian casualties, nor does it specify how they died, similar to the UN's figures for Yemen. Despite this, the UN maintained that the ministry's numbers have held up to scrutiny in past conflicts and have largely been proven accurate. Short memory? I think not. More likely that its the regular bias and anti Israeli approach of the Secretary General https://t.co/JPQPE1mTKn November 20, 2023 Israel's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gilad Erdan replied to Guterres's comment on X, criticizing him for the distorted numbers. "Short memory? I think not," he said. "More likely that it's the regular bias and anti-Israeli approach of the Secretary-General." Erdan has since called for Guterres to resign after accusing the secretary-general of losing "all morality and impartiality" by "[distorting] and [twisting] reality." In response, Guterres pushed back on the claim, insisting that he has "condemned, unequivocally" the October 7 attack and does not in any way endorse terrorist acts. The secretary-general's spokesperson did not respond to queries about the claims of an anti-Israel bias at the UN. Related Article: UN Chief Warns Gaza Becoming 'Graveyard for Children' as Israel-Hamas War Death Toll Tops 10,000 @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/north-korean-ballistic-missile-launch-on-wednesday-night-likely-failed---reports-1115144939.html North Korean Ballistic Missile Launch on Wednesday Night Likely Failed - Reports North Korean Ballistic Missile Launch on Wednesday Night Likely Failed - Reports North Korea launched a ballistic missile toward the Sea of Japan on Wednesday night, South Koreas Yonhap news agency reported. 2023-11-22T18:04+0000 2023-11-22T18:04+0000 2023-11-22T18:04+0000 north korea sea of japan south korea yonhap ballistic missile military north korea missile launch missile launch /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/07/12/1111976404_0:0:1761:992_1920x0_80_0_0_10a955c4d494d40ff721cbf5f9bbad9d.png According to Yonhap, it appears the launch failed.The missile followed a successful military satellite launch earlier on Tuesday. As reported by North Korean state media, the Tuesday launch occurred at the Sohae Cosmodrome, using the Chollima-1 carrier rocket. The rocket is said to have followed its planned trajectory, placing the Malligyong-1 military reconnaissance satellite into orbit. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reportedly oversaw the launch.Amid enhanced US-Japan-South Korea's strategic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, Pyongyang accuses them of increasing military tensions, pointing to large-scale exercises and more US strategic assets in the region. A summit at Camp David in August, with President Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, celebrated this cooperation. However, North Korea's media threatens retaliation against any US nuclear forces in South Korea, labeling these drills as provocative acts by Washington aimed at nuclear conflict. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/why-did-north-korea-launch-spy-satellite-1115133185.html north korea sea of japan south korea Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International north korean missile, dprk launches missile, ballistic missile, north korean weapons, north korean missiles, misisle launch https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/putin-smashes-wests-hypocrisy-on-ukraine-and-gaza-lays-bare-duplicity-of-us-led-order-1115147953.html Putin Smashes West's Hypocrisy on Ukraine and Gaza, Lays Bare Duplicity of US-led Order Putin Smashes West's Hypocrisy on Ukraine and Gaza, Lays Bare Duplicity of US-led Order President Putin took part in an extraordinary virtual G20 Summit hosted by India on Wednesday to discuss the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East, and factors standing in the way of truly effective global governance. Putins remarks highlight the differences in approach to world affairs by Russia and the United States, observers told Sputnik. 2023-11-22T18:59+0000 2023-11-22T18:59+0000 2023-11-22T19:11+0000 analysis russia ukraine israel joe biden vladimir putin g20 the united nations (un) palestine /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/16/1115146953_0:160:3072:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_a52af0012097c3bc4e0c744bc72ba59d.jpg Vladimir Putins remarks at Wednesdays G20s extraordinary summit meeting focused heavily on issues of war and peace, with the Russian leader calling for a consolidating approach to international crises.Some of our colleagues here have mentioned that they are shocked by Russias ongoing aggression in Ukraine, Putin said. Indeed, military operations are always a tragedy for specific people, specific families, and the country as a whole. And we must certainly think about how to stop this tragedy. Russia has never refused to negotiate peace with Ukraine. It is not Russia, but Ukraine that has publicly announced that it is withdrawing from the negotiation process. Moreover, the countrys leader signed an executive order prohibiting such negotiations with Russia.The world requires collective, consensus-based decisions that reflect the views of the overwhelming majority of the international community, including both developed and developing countries, Putin said, emphasizing that Russia will continue to do its part in working to ensure food and energy security, despite Western powers attempts to freeze Moscow out of the world economy.Russia, Putin said, advocates restoring the spirit of open and mutually beneficial international economic cooperation based on the UN Charter and the principles of collegial and mutually respectful joint work. It is important to achieve an effective optimization of the global economic governance system, in particular, to restart the World Trade Organization in its entirety, including its arbitration function.Exposing Wests Double StandardsAmericas unbridled support for Israeli aggression in Gaza has reminded the Global South of the Wests double standards when it comes to the appraisal of international conflicts, and the emptiness of Washingtons rhetoric about a rules-based international order, Dr. Anuradha Chenoy, a retired professor at the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Sputnik.The West has been complicit and supportive of Israeli actions and given Israel full impunity to carry out collective punishment on the Palestinian people, when they have denied food, water, and other basic facilities for days; to relentlessly bomb hospitals and civilian dwellings and infrastructure, the academic emphasized.Unipolarity vs. MultipolarityThe academic pointed to Putins G20 speech as an example of the great difference between the way Moscow sees the concept of global governance, and the way President Biden and Washington use it.Accordingly, the scholar noted, the rules-based international order being propagated by Washington and its allies is really an exercise of the US and the West defining and then deciding on the rules to the benefit of Americas national and geopolitical interests.For his part, Dr. Raj Kumar Sharma, a senior research fellow at NatStrat, a New Delhi-based security and foreign affairs think tank, says that whatever issues take center stage at the G20, the key priority for the Global South is peace, as both the Ukrainian and Gaza crises have affected the developing world disproportionately. The Global South wants the involved parties to negotiate at the table, not on the battlefield, according to the observer. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/raisi-calls-on-brics-leaders-to-use-economic-political-opportunities-to-pressure-israel-1115106201.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/pepe-escobar-will-russia-china-strategic-patience-extinguish-the-fire-in-west-asia-1115110062.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/biden-op-ed-likening-russia-to-hamas-is-result-of-his-dementia--scott-ritter-1115098537.html russia ukraine israel Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ilya Tsukanov Ilya Tsukanov News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ilya Tsukanov united states, russia, vladimir putin, joe biden, unipolarity, multipolarity, hypocrisy, duplicity, gaza, ukraine, israel, palestine, crisis, g20 https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/russian-aerospace-forces-take-delivery-of-new-batch-of-su-34-strike-jets---photos-1115128765.html Russian Aerospace Forces Take Delivery of New Batch of Su-34 Strike Jets - Photos Russian Aerospace Forces Take Delivery of New Batch of Su-34 Strike Jets - Photos First introduced into service with the Aerospace Forces in 2014, the Sukhoi Su-34 is a twin-engine, twin-seater, all-weather supersonic 4+ generation fighter-bomber/strike aircraft that has proven instrumental in Russias military operations in Syria and Ukraine. 2023-11-22T10:38+0000 2023-11-22T10:38+0000 2023-11-22T16:46+0000 military military & intelligence russia syria ukraine sukhoi united aircraft corporation rostec /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/16/1115128244_0:320:3072:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_198709958df0069453c0f5cc45fd96a4.jpg Russias United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) delivered another batch of Su-34 fighter-bombers to the military on Wednesday.The Su-34s given over to the military on Wednesday were built at the Chaklov Novosibirsk Aviation Plant in Siberia, and underwent a series of ground and flight tests ahead of the handover.We will continue to fulfill our obligations to the Ministry of Defense, ensuring the smooth production flow and timely transfer of aviation equipment, UAC director Yuri Slyusar said.The Su-34 has become an important component of the Russian Aerospace Forces strike capability, taking part in operations in Syria from 2015 onward, and in Ukraine after the escalation of the crisis with NATO in early 2022.Russia has at least 105 Su-34s in its inventory, plus at least seven modernized Su-34Ms, with the Defense Ministry planning to purchase some 76 of the modernized variants of the aircraft by 2027. An export modification of the jet known as the Su-32 exists, but has yet to be exported outside Russia.Development of the Su-34 began at the twilight of the Soviet period, with the jet first flown in 1990. The plane had a difficult development period through the 1990s and 2000s due to post-Soviet funding cutbacks, and saw several waves of modernization accounting for new technologies by the time production began. The Su-34 was born out of the Soviet and Russian militaries plans to gradually replace the Sukhoi Su-24 variable-sweep winged, twin-engined jets produced since the 1960s.The Su-34 is designed to be able to engage in both air-to-air and ground combat missions, and features an unusually wide array of armaments for aircraft of its class, including a 30 mm autocannon, and 12 hardpoints on its wings and fuselage for up to 14,000 kg of munitions, from air-to-ground bombs, missiles, and anti-ship munitions, to anti-radiation, air-to-surface and small cruise missiles. In September, a source in the Russian military revealed that a Su-34 jet had used a Kinzhal (lit. "Dagger") hypersonic missile in the special operation zone. The munition is ordinarily meant to be launched from specialized Mikoyan MiG-31K interceptor aircraft, and Tupolev Tu-22M3 strategic bombers, with its launch using the Su-34 demonstrating the jets versatility.Su-34s have a top-speed of up to Mach 1.8 fully loaded, a 1,300 km per hour cruising speed, a ferry range of over 4,000 km, and a combat radius with onboard fuel pods of 1,700 km. The jets can be refueled in midair, further increasing their range. The jets are powered by a pair of twin Saturn AL-31FM1 afterburning turbofan engines. Onboard avionics include passive electronically scanned array radar, electronic countermeasures and radio surveillance systems, and radar warning receiver. russia syria ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ilya Tsukanov Ilya Tsukanov News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ilya Tsukanov russia, su-34, sukhoi, fighter, jet, bomber, aircraft, plane, rostec, united aircraft corporation https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/stolen-glory-qatar-not-biden-did-leg-work-to-secure-gaza-truce-1115143166.html Stolen Glory: Qatar, Not Biden, Did Leg Work to Secure Gaza Truce Stolen Glory: Qatar, Not Biden, Did Leg Work to Secure Gaza Truce Qatars Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday that Hamas and Israel had agreed a four-day humanitarian pause in the month-and-a-half long Gaza conflict. Within hours, US media reported on the Biden teams heroic secret role in helping to secure the truce. But thats not the way things really went down, says Qatar-based academic Mehran Kamrava. 2023-11-22T16:05+0000 2023-11-22T16:05+0000 2023-11-22T16:30+0000 analysis joe biden middle east palestinians americans qatar israel gaza hamas foreign ministry /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/09/1d/1113784430_0:160:3072:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_e36217c803a9485e080a0721b690abda.jpg Hamas and Israel each confirmed in the early hours of Wednesday morning that a humanitarian pause and prisoner exchange deal had been reached.The surprise agreement, made possible thanks to behind-the-scenes mediation led by Qatar, is expected to include the exchange of 50 Israeli hostages (all of them women and children) and up to 150 Palestinian women, children and teenagers held in Israeli jails.The halt in hostilities is expected to start Thursday morning at 6:30 am local time, with Qatari officials saying the four-day truce could be extended.The deal will allow the delivery of hundreds of trucks-worth of humanitarian and medical aid and fuel to the besieged Gaza Strip, and should see the complete suspension of Israeli military flights over its southern areas and restrictions on flights over the north.The fragility of the agreement has been exemplified by stern warnings by Hamas that its fighters would remain at full combat readiness to protect the Palestinian people and resist the occupation, and by incendiary comments by Tel Aviv that it plans to continue the war in order to return home all the hostage, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza.Doha graciously cited Egyptian and US support during the negotiations as a factor in their success, but officials in Washington and US media immediately began a campaign of self-aggrandizement designed to talk up the importance of President Bidens secret role.Biden welcomed the agreement, saying in a statement he was extraordinarily gratified over the fact that Israeli nationals held captive by Hamas will be released, and that he appreciates the Netanahu governments commitmentin supporting an extended pause to hostilities to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinian families in Gaza.Vice President Harris put out her own statement, boasting that the ceasefire was made possible thanks to the leadership of President Biden and other leaders.In the meantime, US media began spinning exposes on the exploits of a secret cell of aides within the administration in the hostage talks, who were said to have worked furiously over the past several weeks on a web of negotiations together with Qatar and Egypt. A senior administration official told one outlet that President Biden directly and personally engaged in and invested in the talks.Biden publicly began calling for a humanitarian pause to the Gaza war in early November, but has consistently maintained that Israel has the right to defend itself and to the US-provided resources they need to protect their people. As recently as last week, the president reiterated Washingtons fervently pro-Israeli line, saying the conflict wouldnt end until Hamas no longer maintains the capacity to murder, abuse, and do horrific things to the Israelis.Stolen Glory?Much of the work was done not by the United States or by Joe Biden personally, but by Qatar, Dr. Mehran Kamrava, a professor of government at Georgetown Universitys Qatar campus, told Sputnik.The negotiations were done by the kingdoms prime minister, its foreign minister and personnel on the ground, in that order, the academic emphasized, adding that it was Doha that was responsible for much of the difficult negotiations, not the US.The scholar believes the US only joined in the ceasefire talks because the costs for Biden were getting extremely politically costly, with former president Donald Trump projected to wipe the floor with Biden if elections were held today, according to recent polling, in part due to the incumbents loss of support about the pro-ceasefire youth demographic.When [Russian President Vladimir] Putin says that Biden has been trying to monopolize the negotiations, he is in some ways correct, Kamrava said. What Biden is trying to do is to claim the credit for the difficult work that has been done by the government of Qatar.Its too early to tell how these signals are being interpreted in the Middle East. Certainly, the average person in the Middle East, the so-called street in the Middle East, sees the United States as fully complicit in Israels genocide of Palestinians. And these timid and tepid statements coming out of the White House do little to change that impression, the observer suggested.Within the region, if any credit is going anywhere, it is now going to actors like Qatar and also to Hezbollah and the so-called Resistance Front, Kamrava summarized, referring to the regional non-state actors across the Middle East, from Lebanon, Iraq and Syria to Yemen who have put pressure on Israel and its American allies to put a stop to the Gaza crisis. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/live-updates-start-of-israel-hamas-humanitarian-pause-to-be-announced-within-next-24-hours---doha-1115122318.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/putin-questions-why-world-leaders-not-shocked-by-mass-deaths-of-gaza-children-1115141393.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231120/bidens-approval-rating-reaches-record-low-of-40-poll-shows-1115063460.html qatar israel gaza Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ilya Tsukanov Ilya Tsukanov News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ilya Tsukanov united states, qatar, palestine, israel, conflict, crisis, gaza, ceasefire, truce, pause, humanitarian, negotiations, talks, joe biden, politics https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/ukraine-loses-up-to-115-soldiers-in-donetsk-direction-in-past-day---mod-1115135876.html Ukraine Loses Up to 115 Soldiers in Donetsk Direction in Past Day - MoD Ukraine Loses Up to 115 Soldiers in Donetsk Direction in Past Day - MoD Ukraine has lost up to 115 soldiers both killed and injured in the Donetsk direction over the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday. 2023-11-22T12:22+0000 2023-11-22T12:22+0000 2023-11-22T12:22+0000 russia's special operation in ukraine russian defense ministry donetsk zaporozhye ukraine ukrainian armed forces s-300 /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/06/19/1111463117_0:160:3072:1888_1920x0_80_0_0_775df4bb669b237e4b90fb46c9001ce0.jpg Over the given period, the Russian armed forces have repelled three attacks in the Zaporozhye direction, and one attack each in the Kupyansk, Krasny Liman, Donetsk and South Donetsk directions, the ministry said. Russian troops repelled three attacks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the direction of Zaporozhye, Kiev lost up to 60 servicemen and two armored vehicles during the day, the Russian Defense Ministry said.In addition, according to the ministry, the 65th mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian troops was hit near the settlement of Rabotino in the Zaporozhye region.Russian aviation and artillery destroyed a Ukrainian depot of aviation weapons and a S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, the ministry said. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/battalion-of-ukrainian-ex-pows-heads-out-on-combat-mission-in-special-op-zone-1115126726.html donetsk zaporozhye ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Sputnik International kiev loses, russian defense ministry, donetsk direction https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/us-china-chip-rivalry-finds-new-flashpoint-1115134803.html US-China Chip Rivalry Finds New Flashpoint US-China Chip Rivalry Finds New Flashpoint The semiconductor industry is being revolutionized by semiconductor packaging, which involves encasing chips in protective materials, ensuring their safety, and enabling their connection to electronic devices. When comparing this sphere within the semiconductor industry globally, it is evident that the US and China are leading in advancements. 2023-11-22T15:09+0000 2023-11-22T15:09+0000 2023-11-22T15:09+0000 economy joe biden china beijing jinping taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company (tsmc) intel micron white house /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/07/13/1111991456_0:320:3072:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_3ccbfef9c0d67496bb943c3da0664cc8.jpg The Biden administration is bent on addressing China's rapid advancements in high-tech sectors, by restricting Beijing's access to advanced semiconductor technology, specifically ultra-modern chips, while they push to ramp up domestic production of these components.An additional and more recent focus of the US strategy targets the semiconductor packaging industry. This sector, essential for enhancing chip performance, has gained prominence in the technological rivalry with China. The evolution of the semiconductor sector has highlighted advanced packaging techniques as a vital area of potential, not just in the US but globally. Despite sanctions, China has been adept at utilizing this sector to expand its influence in the global market, particularly in areas less affected by restrictions on high-end chip fabrication.Until recently, the packaging process in the semiconductor industry, which involves encasing chips in protective materials, was historically underemphasized. This task was predominantly outsourced to Asian countries, notably China, which has become a significant player in this domain. The United States currently contributes a modest portion about 3 percent of the global capacity in this area.Jim McGregor, founder of Tirias Research, emphasizes the growing importance of packaging in the semiconductor sector, stating, "Packaging is the new pillar of innovation in the semiconductor industry it will change the industry drastically." He points out that for China, focusing on advanced packaging provides an alternate route to technological progression, especially in the face of constraints in top-tier chip manufacturing. This focus could help China narrow the technological gap.Responding to these changes, the Biden administration has developed a comprehensive plan. The CHIPS and Science Act is a cornerstone of this strategy, aiming to boost domestic semiconductor production. The Act is also a move to secure the semiconductor supply chain. During recent global chip shortages, the dependence on foreign chip production, including that from China. The US sanctions against China in the semiconductor sector primarily aim to hinder Beijing's ability to develop and manufacture advanced semiconductor chips, which are crucial for a wide range of technologies, from smartphones to military hardware.Additionally, the administration has initiated a National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program with a $3 billion budget. This program seeks to establish large-scale packaging facilities in the US, intending to lessen dependence on Asian supply chains and mitigate security risks.According to White House spokeswoman Robyn Patterson, Biden has made it a priority to ensure Americas leadership in all elements of semiconductor manufacturing, of which advanced packaging is one of the most exciting and critical areas. The goal is to regain and maintain America's leadership in the semiconductor industry, not just in chip manufacturing, but also in advanced packaging. This dual approach reflects the White House's commitment to enhancing the nation's competitive edge in this critical technological field.A global comparison reveals varied strengths in technology and packaging capabilities in the semiconductor industry. While the US is enhancing its capabilities in advanced packaging, notably through the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, China, under President Xi Jinpings Made in China initiative (2015), has already established a considerable presence. Holding approximately 38 percent of the global market share in assembly, testing, and packaging, China, led by companies like JCET Group, challenges the traditional dominance of the US and other technologically advanced nations.The semiconductor sector is experiencing a significant transition, shifting focus from front-end manufacturing to advanced packaging. This shift, driven by the need for greater integration and performance in electronic devices, allows for the combination of various chip types in a single unit, leading to more efficient and economical computing systems. China has particularly capitalized on this technology, partially overcoming its limitations in advanced chip production.The sophistication in packaging technologies is enhancing performance and opening new avenues for market expansion. This trend marks a significant evolution in the semiconductor industry, with advanced packaging emerging as a critical factor in future developments and market dynamics.In the advanced packaging sector of the semiconductor industry, major companies such as Intel, TSMC, and Micron are making significant investments in their own facilities. These investments reflect the growing recognition of the importance of advanced packaging in enhancing the performance of AI chips, a key area of technological advancement. The impact of advanced packaging on AI chip production is substantial, enabling the creation of more efficient and powerful computing systems. Market forecasts and predictions indicate a robust growth trajectory for the advanced packaging sector. This growth is driven by the sector's ability to meet the evolving demands of high-performance computing, including AI applications, signifying a critical shift in the semiconductor industry's focus and investment priorities.Advanced packaging plays a crucial role in overcoming these limitations by enabling the integration of multiple 'chiplets' in a single package, enhancing performance and functionality. The future outlook for the semiconductor industry predicts significant growth and impact of advanced packaging. This technology is expected to drive innovation in chips manufacturing, particularly as demands for high-performance computing and AI capabilities increase, indicating a pivotal change in the industry's direction and focus. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230928/us-china-trade-rift-south-koreas-semiconductor-titans-treads-carefully-1113734553.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231115/biden-brand-diplomacy-us-prez-talks-up-chinas-problems-on-eve-of-crucial-xi-meeting-1114972444.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231006/us-chipmakers-warn-bidens-semiconductor-spat-with-china-could-backfire-1113973804.html china beijing jinping Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Chimauchem Nwosu https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/09/01/1113046371_0:99:1536:1635_100x100_80_0_0_9c5c627283eca931c39fe4852bbb301c.jpg Chimauchem Nwosu https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/09/01/1113046371_0:99:1536:1635_100x100_80_0_0_9c5c627283eca931c39fe4852bbb301c.jpg News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Chimauchem Nwosu https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/09/01/1113046371_0:99:1536:1635_100x100_80_0_0_9c5c627283eca931c39fe4852bbb301c.jpg chips and science act, biden administration, national advanced packaging manufacturing program, us semiconductor manufacturing, semiconductor security risks, robyn patterson, white house semiconductor policy, advanced semiconductor packaging, us-china chip conflict, semiconductor back-end manufacturing, chip assembly and testing, semiconductor industry innovation, semiconductor packaging technology, china semiconductor strategy, made in china initiative, semiconductor industry association, jcet group, china semiconductor market share, us technology transfer restrictions, huawei technologies, advanced computing technologies, us export controls, artificial intelligence semiconductors, taiwan semiconductor manufacturing co., nvidia ai chips, micron inc., intel semiconductor plants, advanced semiconductor technologies, mckinsey semiconductor report, moores law, semiconductor design, intel magdeburg plant, semiconductor supply chain. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/were-some-policemen-disguised-as-antifa-during-january-6-capitol-breach-1115147170.html Were Some Policemen Disguised as 'Antifa' During January 6 Capitol Breach? Were Some Policemen Disguised as 'Antifa' During January 6 Capitol Breach? A police officer was recorded as saying: "We go undercover as Antifa in a crowd" on the day of January 6 Capitol breach, according to footage obtained by US independent media outlet Just the News. 2023-11-22T18:59+0000 2023-11-22T18:59+0000 2023-11-22T18:59+0000 us americas donald trump tucker carlson george floyd antifa dc metropolitan police department republicans mike johnson /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e6/09/0d/1100706670_0:321:3071:2048_1920x0_80_0_0_cb2e01c94bc6491698dc08a7c9509474.jpg A video obtained by the media outlet from official sources features a DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer dressed in plainclothes and a grey jacket who talked to a fellow policeman in uniform and gave him a bottle of water.The latter appeared to be suffering from the effects of tear gas which was used against pro-Trump protestors storming the Capitol premises.Antifa is a left-wing movement that proved to be very active during the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 over the death of African American George Floyd in police custody. The summer BLM protests were accompanied by violence, arson and looting.It's unclear whether the officer in the grey jacket was referring to being "undercover as Antifa" in the crowd of protestors gathered at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or on another occasion, the media outlet remarked, adding that the DC Metropolitan Police Department did not immediately comment on the video.Initially, a snippet of the footage popped up on social media a few weeks ago. Just the News said that it had obtained "the complete footage and verified its authenticity." It was handed over to House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga). The panel is looking into the official police response to the January 6 riots. Congressional investigators believe that the alleged undercover police office is a member of the MPD's Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU).Per the media, the footage may raise questions about the January 6 events, and particularly about the role of the DC police.The Capitol breach, which translated into a nothing short of manhunt for January Sixers and Trump supporters, still triggers debate between the GOP and the Democratic Party. Republicans suspect that among pro-Trump protesters there could have been provocateurs and double agents sent by police and US federal agencies. Thus, on September 29, 2021, The New York Times reported that an FBI informant marched into the Capitol on 6 January. Earlier, Darren Beattie of Revolver News and then Fox host Tucker Carlson raised questions about the agency's role in the unrest.Most recently, new House Speaker Mike Johnson stated that 40,000 hours of January 6 footage was being posted online for public access in order to shed more light on the events of that day. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231115/january-6-shaman-says-no-investigation-opened-into-ukrainian-spy-at-us-capitol-riot-1114966177.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20211011/glaring-anomalies-why-6-january-insurrection-case-peddled-by-dems-doesnt-hold-water-1089832641.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20230124/47-year-jail-time-for-boots-on-pelosis-desk-how-january-sixers-got-draconian-treatment-1106656996.html americas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ekaterina Blinova Ekaterina Blinova News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ekaterina Blinova january 6, capitol breach, donald trump, maga, policemen, undercover police officer, footage of capitol breach, mike johnson, capitol breach footage, 40000 hours of capitol breach footage, surveillance footage of capitol riots https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/why-did-north-korea-launch-spy-satellite-1115133185.html Why Did North Korea Launch Spy Satellite? Why Did North Korea Launch Spy Satellite? The launch of North Koreas homegrown spy satellite into orbit willlikely be "positive development for the region," said Russian scholar and expert in Korean studies Andrei Lankov. 2023-11-22T13:33+0000 2023-11-22T13:33+0000 2023-11-22T13:33+0000 north korea satellite kim jong-un north korea missile launch analysis andrei lankov fumio kishida south korea pyongyang us national security council /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/16/1115123665_0:45:900:551_1920x0_80_0_0_9831e703f6d67b1ee00f9114602ab1f0.jpg Pyongyang announced on Tuesday that it had successfully launched a military reconnaissance satellite. According to North Korea's state news agency, the rocket was launched from the Sohae Cosmodrome. The Chollima-1 carrier rocket reportedly following its set course, putting the reconnaissance satellite Malligyong-1" into orbit. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is said to have observed the launch.While the launch raised anticipated alarm bells from South Korea and Japan, the emergence of North Koreas homegrown spy technology in orbit will most likely become a "positive development for the region," said Russian scholar and expert in Korean studies Andrey Lankov.Earlier, both top brass in both South Korea and Japan said that they detected the North Korean launch, with Tokyo prompted to briefly issue a J-Alert missile warning for Okinawa.The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) notified its neighbors of its plans to make a third attempt to put a reconnaissance satellite into orbit. The previous two attempts, in May and August, were unsuccessful. While the new launch was expected to take place between November 22 and December 1, it was carried out ahead of schedule.After receiving the notification, Seoul warned Pyongyang against proceeding with the launch. Japan's prime minister, Fumio Kishida, hurried to say that Tokyo was coordinating its response with South Korea and the United States. Use of ballistic missile technology would be considered a violation of UN resolutions, Kishida stated.Washington also condemned the launch, with US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson saying it raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond. South Korea has also vowed to partially suspend its 2018 comprehensive military agreement with North Korea over the satellite launch.Pyongyang, under 11 rounds of UN sanctions over its past nuclear and missile tests, is banned by the organization from conducting satellite launches, under the claim that they serve as a cover for tests of missile technology. In response, the DPRK's National Aerospace Technology Administration argued the legitimate right of North Korea to enhance its self-defense capabilities in the face of the enemies dangerous military moves.The South Korean authorities have claimed that the third launch was successful because the North has received Russian technological assistance for its spy satellite program. However, Seoul stopped short of providing any evidence. North Koreas spy satellite launch certainly did not come as a surprise for Seoul, with Pyongyangs plans the subject of discussions among Republic of Koreas top brass already on November 19. Seoul is also set to launch its own first military reconnaissance satellite on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California by the end of this month.The importance of reconnaissance systems, including space intelligence, clearly cannot be underestimated today, Dmitry Stefanovich of the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations with the Russian Academy of Sciences told Sputnik. Any country that does not have the opportunity to obtain this information on the open market, or does not have allies with such a structure in place and ready to share information is in danger of being blindsided, and, accordingly, seeks to either purchase or create it. Everyone wants to have their own space infrastructure, he added.The current successful launch of a military reconnaissance satellite by DPRK demonstrates a new level of North Korean military capabilities, emphasized Stefanovich.After the impending launch was announced, US aircraft carrier the Carl Vinson arrived at the port of Busan on Tuesday, in a show of support. However, it is Washingtons maneuvering and saber-rattling on the Korean Peninsula that has prompted the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to ramp up its defense capabilities - so the DPRK responded by boosting its missile testing.Amid the strengthening of US-Japan-South Korea so-called strategic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region, Pyongyang has repeatedly accused Washington and its allies of exacerbating military tensions, citing large-scale military exercises and increased presence of US strategic assets in the region. The three countries also held a summit hosted by President Biden at Camp David in August. It was attended by Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. While the three leaders hailed a new era of cooperation between their countries, the DPRK media warned that North Korea would reserve the right to target any US strategic nuclear forces stationed in South Korea, and characterized the recent series of drills as an intentional provocative maneuver for nuclear war by Washington. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231116/north-koreas-warning-roars-offensive-actions-promised-in-face-of-us-provocations-1114998972.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/north-korea-successfully-launches-spy-satellite--1115125226.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231114/north-korea-blasts-g7-bloc-as-cold-war-relic-that-should-be-dismantled-immediately-1114944909.html north korea south korea pyongyang Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Svetlana Ekimenko Svetlana Ekimenko News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Svetlana Ekimenko north korea news, north korea launches missile, north korea launches missile today, north korea launches missile into south korea, north korea satellite launch https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/x-ceo-asks-staff-to-be-fiscally-responsible-amid-ad-revenue-drop-1115122068.html X CEO Asks Staff To Be 'Fiscally Responsible' Amid Ad Revenue Drop X CEO Asks Staff To Be 'Fiscally Responsible' Amid Ad Revenue Drop X CEO Linda Yaccarino asked staffers to be 'fiscally responsible' as advertisers leave the platform amid antisemitism claims. 2023-11-22T04:15+0000 2023-11-22T04:15+0000 2023-11-22T04:15+0000 americas elon musk ken paxton media matters twitter ibm apple /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/05/0c/1110301569_0:107:2044:1256_1920x0_80_0_0_ecfc6618d708cccbc7116d84bc43ca14.jpg X CEO Linda Yaccarino asked staffers to be as fiscally responsible as possible in order to offset revenue losses caused by major advertisers leaving the platform.According to US media citing unnamed X employees, the comment came during an all-hands meeting about the loss in advertising revenue. Yaccarino reportedly said it in response to a question from an employee, asking what they could do to help.If you deal with contracts, if you're negotiating with anyone, just know that the pauses cause a more specific discipline and diligence as it relates to any type of spending at the company, Yaccarino reportedly replied.Over the course of the past week, multiple major advertisers including IBM, Apple, NBCUniversal and Comcast among others announced that they were pausing or outright ending advertising on the platform formerly known as Twitter. The recent exodus was brought on by a report from Media Matters that ads were running next to pro-Nazi and white supremacy content.Yaccarino previously worked as NBCUniversal's chairman of global advertising and partnerships.X has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters for defamation and fraud, claiming that it gamed their algorithm in order to make the ads appear next to those posts. According to X, Media Matters created sock puppet accounts and used them to follow both major brands and accounts that posted pro-Nazi content. That, the company says, resulted in those accounts receiving 13 to 15 times the amount of ads a typical account experiences, refreshing the page until they saw ads next to hateful content.Media Matters is also being investigated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for alleged fraud.The accusations of antisemitism grew louder when Musk replied that a user had said the actual truth when he accused Jewish communities of pushing dialectical hatred against whites.Musk then followed up that post by saying that the Anti-Defamation League attacks the majority of the West because it cannot criticize minority groups who are their primary threat.X has struggled with advertisers since Musk took over the platform last year. In July, Musk confirmed that the company was still in the red, noting that it saw a 50% drop in advertising revenue. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231121/musk-sues-media-watchdog-for-maliciously-manufactured-report-showing-ads-next-to-neo-nazi-posts-1115115774.html americas Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Ian DeMartino Ian DeMartino News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Ian DeMartino linda yaccarino, antisemitism on twitter, hate speech on x, censorship of x, free-speech, https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/zelensky-weighing-trump-peace-plan-could-be-acceptance-its-time-to-wrap-this-conflict-up-1115145762.html Zelensky Weighing Trump Peace Plan Could Be Acceptance Its Time to Wrap This Conflict Up Zelensky Weighing Trump Peace Plan Could Be Acceptance Its Time to Wrap This Conflict Up Zelenskys sudden shift toward considering a negotiated peace proposed by Trump could be belated acceptance that the conflict is unwinnable for Kiev, or it could be a dangerous gambit rooting in courting a White House rival. 2023-11-22T19:43+0000 2023-11-22T19:43+0000 2023-11-22T19:41+0000 analysis volodymyr zelensky donald trump russia ukraine peace talks peace negotiations /html/head/meta[@name='og:title']/@content /html/head/meta[@name='og:description']/@content https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e7/0b/07/1114800181_0:27:2960:1691_1920x0_80_0_0_5ae0a905b70848c44cb4ffe47ab39bcb.jpg In a recent interview with US media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signaled a belated interest in a peace proposal pitched earlier this year by former US President Donald Trump. In June, before a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive and a renewed Russian offensive, Zelensky had appeared incredulous at the suggestion of a negotiated settlement.The following month, as Ukraine was preparing to launch a highly anticipated counter-offensive, Zelensky told a US newspaper he couldnt understand Trumps statement, noting that in the four years Trump was in the White House, he didnt secure the return of Crimea - by then part of the Russian Federation following its secession from Ukraine - or the Donbass - then governed by the autonomous Peoples Republics that had not yet been recognized by Moscow - to Ukrainian control.However, the Ukrainian counteroffensive fell flat on its face, failing to secure all but the most meager of territorial gains for Ukraine at an appalling human and materiel cost, and now Russian forces have launched their own operations aimed at pushing Ukrainian forces out of claimed Russian territories.Speaking with a US television news outlet on Tuesday, Zelensky said he was ready to hear Trumps proposal."He can share it with me, the Ukrainian leader said. Yes, we can stop this war if we will give Russia Donbass and Crimea, to my mind that our country will not be ready for that such [a] peace plan. That is not [a] peace plan."The US has already funneled more than $113 billion in aid to Kiev since Russias special operation began in February 2022, according to US government statistics, and Biden has called on Congress to approve a massive $61.4 billion aid bill. On Monday, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin traveled to Kiev and declared the US would "continue to stand with Ukraine and will continue to support Ukraines urgent battlefield needs and long-term defense requirements.Michael Shannon, a political commentator and Newsmax columnist, told Sputnik on Wednesday that Zelenskys shift toward Trump was a risky intervention into US domestic politics that could seriously backfire.You can see evidence of this change in the coverage of the diplomatic portion of the conflict, he noted.The Regime Media is discussing negotiations without the previous preconditions. Zelensky can read the room and may be thinking that listening to Trump will signal an openness to alternative outcomes for the war.However, Shannon also floated the opposite possibility: that Zelensky sees this maneuver as a ploy to provoke the White House into doubling down on support for Ukraine.Buying a ticket to the Trump Circus could really backfire for Zelensky, Shannon said, noting it had the potential for completely souring Biden and causing support for Ukraine to begin drying up. He would have been better served by saying he didnt want to interfere in internal US politics.Trump is going to milk this meeting or discussion for all its worth. He will trumpet Zelenskys change as another victory for Trump foreign policy while condemning Bidens incompetence, he added. https://sputnikglobe.com/20231122/maidan-3-zelensky-has-good-reason-to-be-scared-of-regime-change---us-vet-1115140735.html https://sputnikglobe.com/20231120/us-media-acknowledges-true-situation-in-special-op-zone-1115064286.html russia ukraine Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 2023 Fantine Gardinier Fantine Gardinier News en_EN Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 1920 1080 true 1920 1440 true 1920 1920 true Sputnik International feedback@sputniknews.com +74956456601 MIA Rosiya Segodnya 252 60 Fantine Gardinier ukraine peace plan, zelensky meeting with trump, is zelensky considering peace Pope Francis was reportedly expressing deep reservations about the direction of the Catholic Church in Germany, warning that concrete steps currently being taken by the proponents of what the German congregations call "The Synodal Way" "threaten" to undermine the unity with the rest of the church. The pope addressed his criticism in a November 10 letter addressed to four German Catholic laywomen and initially published in the German newspaper Welt on Tuesday (November 21). The women were identified in the letter as theologians Katharina Westerhorstmann and Marianne Schlosser, journalist Dorothea Schmidt, and religious philosopher Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz. They were previously designated as delegates to the Synodal Way but resigned in February in protest, saying that the concept was a departure from mainstream Catholic doctrine and practice. The women wrote to the pope on November 6 expressing their concerns about the direction of the church in Germany. "There are indeed numerous steps being taken by significant segments of this local Church that threaten to steer it increasingly away from the universal Church's common path," the pope wrote. The letter was written in German but included Francis's handwritten signature. Read Also: Pope Francis Fires Texas Bishop Joseph Strickland Pope Francis's Concerns Among the main concerns the pope had was a push to set up a permanent "Synodal Council," a mixed body of clergy and laity that would govern the German Catholic congregations, which was a top priority for the Synodal Way, a controversial progressive initiative demanding significant radical changes in church structure and teaching. Francis insisted in his letter that such a "consultative and decision-making body" as currently proposed was "not in alignment with the sacramental structure of the Catholic Church." He also reiterated his letter explicitly ordering high-ranking Vatican officials to tell German bishops that the establishment of a so-called "Synodal Council" was prohibited. According to EWTN, a committee of Synodal Way leadership recently met earlier this month in Essen to lay the groundwork for the Synodal Council - which they aim to establish by 2026 - directly disregarding the papal order. Four German bishops voted in June to block funding for the preparatory committee, and a total of eight out of 27 German bishops were absent from the November 10-11 meeting. "In my 'Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Germany,' I sought not to find 'salvation' in constantly evolving committees, nor to persist in self-absorbed dialogues rehashing the same themes," Francis wrote. "Rather, I aimed to reemphasize the importance of prayer, penance, and adoration." The pope also called upon German Catholics to "engage with our brethren" in the margins, a buzzword that identified his papacy so far. Conservative German Catholics Praise Francis's 'Broadside' to the German Church Reacting to the latest papal condemnation of the Synodal Way, theologian Martin Bruske of the countermovement New Beginning said that his group welcomed Francis's letter. "The flagship of Peter has given the German Church a broadside across the bow," he wrote on New Beginning's website. "Those who do not want to hear and see this will bear full responsibility if they ultimately disappear into the maelstrom of division." Bruske added that Francis wanted to avoid confronting the Synodal Way in a coercive manner, but the letter was a "clear signal" for German Catholics to toe the ecclesiastical line. Related Article: Vatican Doctrine Office Upholds Position vs. Freemasonry @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. After spending the first half-mile at the back of the main body of the field, Trout Master circled three-wide into the far turn and reeled in 6-5 joint favourite LGs Jaxon to spring a 17-1 upset in the $110,000 Delaware Standardbred Breeders' Fund (DSBF) series final for two-year-old male trotters on Wednesday, Nov. 21 at Bally's Dover. Pat Berry kept Trout Master clear of early trouble as LGs Bluestone broke stride on the first turn, and he settled the Glidemaster-Holy Trout gelding sixth along the pegs while LGs Jaxon (Jim Morand) used :27.3 first-quarter speed to take charge from Its Oliver Now (Corey Callahan) on the first turn. LGs Jaxon rated middle splits of :58.4 and 1:29 before the sloppy going began taking its toll and Trout Master mounted his rally around stalled cover. Trout Master collared LGs Jaxon at the sixteenth pole and edged clear by a length in 2:02. Royal Beep Beep (Tim Tetrick) saved third, 3-1/2 lengths farther behind, after passing a weakening Its Oliver Now up the backstretch. Clifton Green trains Trout Master, now a two-time winner with $71,520 in career earnings, for owner/breeder Dr. William Solomon. He paid $36.40 to win. The $20,000 DSBF consolation went to Pamela Wagner's Daddy Wags, who overcame mid-race traffic to edge Jetsam by a half-length in 2:04. Trainer John Wagner drove the gelded son of Anders Bluestone-Tipsy Tiara. The final two-year-old DSBF champion will be determined Wednesday, Nov. 22 at Bally's Dover, when eight rookie pacing fillies square off in the $110,000 Ramona Hubbard, carded as the 10th of 15 races. Crystal Fashion and driver Tim Tetrick followed second-over cover to win the $25,000 Open Handicap Trot on Tuesday evening. I Get It (Victor Kirby) worked hard with two moves early in the race and set the tone early, carving out the opening quarter in :27.4. I Get It backed off to a :30 second quarter, reaching the half in :57.4. Veteran JL Cruze (Art Stafford Jr.) moved first-over past the half while Crystal Fashion shadowed second-over. I Get It fended off JL Cruze en route to the three-quarters in 1:26.1 but favoured Crystal Fashion angled three-wide at the top of the stretch and exploded late to win by a neck in 1:55.3 over JL Cruze and I Get It in third. EVM Racing LLC owns the eight-year-old millionaire son of Cantab Hall-Window Willow who is now a 33-time career winner. Crystal Fashion is trained by Chuck Crissman Jr. Bally's Dover will host the $260,000 Progress Pace for three-year-old colt and gelding pacers on Wednesday, Nov. 21. The race is scheduled for the 12th race with an estimated off time of 8:20 p.m. There is a Pick-5 carryover of $1,866.00 on Wednesday's card. Post time is at 4:30 p.m. (With files from Bally's Dover and Delaware Standardbred Breeders' Fund) Three people were displaced as the result of a fire in Gering Saturday. The Gering Fire Department received a call about a structure fire around 2:30 Saturday afternoon. Gering Fire Chief Nathan Flowers said firefighters were on scene in roughly five minutes. They discovered a fire coming out a garage at an apartment complex and quickly went to work. Flowers said that firefighters had the situation under control after about five minutes of fighting the fire. The building was empty and no one was injured. He said that the fire started when a tenant was working on a go-kart and it backfired, igniting gasoline in the garage. From there, the fire swelled and caused between $60,000-70,000 worth of damage. Seven Gering firefighters were on scene as well as five from the Scottsbluff Department. Firefighter Ministry provided temporary assistance to three occupants of the home, according to Carissa Schank, organizer of Firefighter Ministry. Seven area veterans were honored with Quilts of Valor at the Morrill American Legion post Sunday, Nov. 19. The private ceremony, limited to family and friends, drew a crowd of roughly 60 supporters. Attendees were reminded of the work that the Panhandle Blocks chapter of Quilts of Valor does in the area as they continue to distribute quilts around the area. Weve moved past the 1,000 quilt mark in October, which is kind of exciting for our group. Weve been around for about five years in the Panhandle, Panhandle Blocks Group Leader Kathy Dye said. The seven veterans served across a number of years from the Vietnam-era all the way to more modern service in the late 2000s. They served across several branches including the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps. Dixie Barber was the first to receive her quilt. She joined the Army in 1983 and was stationed around the country at bases in South Carolina and California. She was honorably discharged in 1986 and received the Army Achievement Medal. Next was Fernando Freddie Barron, who joined the Army in 2002 and was stationed overseas in Kosovo, Kuwait and Iraq before he was honorably discharged in 2004. He said he was appreciative of the work that Panhandle Blocks does and said it was important to continue to recognize veterans. I think a lot of times theyre all forgotten after the fact, and for the veteran, when you come out from that situation, you have a camaraderie that you can never get back. Its good to have a little piece of the community trying to give you some of that, Barron said. Kevin Wayne Carpenter enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1986 and would be stationed in Germany and Panama. He was also involved in Operation Desert Storm and was honorably discharged five years later as an E-5. Stephanie Kinnamons service was the most recent of anyone who was honored at the ceremony. She joined the Army in 2007 and served for two years until she was honorably discharged in 2009. During her time in the Army. she was in the 155th Engineering Battalion Company and was stationed in Cambridge, Maine. Earl Carpenter, Rumaldo Rummie Lovato and David J. Morehead were also recognized for their service in the Vietnam War era. Quilts of Valor distributes commemorative pins to veterans who served from 1955 to 1975 to recognize veterans from Vietnam who may not have received the welcome they deserved upon their return home. The pins are awarded regardless of duty station. Its not a time of our countrys history thats necessarily a proud time for us, Dye said. Its something we cant do over, but we can stand here today and do it better. Lovato served from 1969-71 and was involved in the Armys invasion of Cambodia during the war. Morehead joined the Air Force where he served from 1959-62, flying out of Bunker Hill AFB in Indiana. Earl Carpenter joined the Marine Corps where he served from 1958-64. While serving, he would see duty stations in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Laos. Panhandle Blocks continues their work making and distributing quilts to the areas veterans. Those interested in nominating a veteran can do so on the Quilts of Valor website at www.qovf.org/nominations-awards/nominate_qov_tbw_info/. Syria expressed grave concern over the escalating Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people, according to al-Baath. In a statement delivered at the General Assembly during an informal listening meeting on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, Al-Hakam Dandi, the acting charge daffaires of the Permanent Delegation of Syria to the United Nations, expressed grave concern over the escalating Israeli atrocities against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip. He asserted that these relentless acts of aggression are part of a systematic campaign to displace Palestinians from their ancestral lands and alter the demographic character of the region. Over the past six weeks, the Israeli occupation forces have unleashed a barrage of airstrikes, artillery bombardments, and naval attacks on Gaza, resulting in the tragic loss of over 13,000 innocent civilian lives. Shockingly, half of the victims are children and women, with more than 30,000 people left wounded. In addition, the number of individuals still unaccounted for has surpassed 6,000, including over 4,000 children and women buried beneath the rubble. Dandi emphasized that this brutal onslaught represents a calculated effort by the Israeli occupation to silence the Palestinian issue through mass atrocities in the Gaza Strip. While condemning, in the strongest terms, the continuous and barbaric aggression carried out by Israeli authorities against the Palestinian people, the Syrian Arab Republic also denounced the complicity of certain Western nations in concealing the indiscriminate bombings and civilian casualties. Furthermore, Dandi pointed out that these countries openly defy the resolutions adopted by the Security Council and General Assembly in recent times. The Syrian diplomat reaffirmed his countrys unwavering support for the Palestinian people in their tireless struggle to reclaim their occupied lands and establish an independent, sovereign state, with Jerusalem as its capital. He called for an immediate cessation of Israeli aggression, urgent humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza Strip, and the pursuit of international justice for Israeli officials responsible for these crimes. In the face of such tragic events, the international community must stand united in condemning these atrocities and working towards a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. Your daily brief of the English-speaking press on Syria. The military base housing United States troops in Shaddadi, Syria, was targeted in another attack on Tuesday, as reported by local Syrian media. Simultaneously, Russian airstrikes in the Homs countryside resulted in the death of six armed members of the Islamic State (IS) group. U.S. military base in Syria comes under attack The military base that hosts the United States troops in Syrias Shaddadi came under attack again on Tuesday. local Syrian media said. According to Al-Mayadeen news channels report, the American military base in the city of Al-Shadadi, located in Al-Hasakah province in northeastern Syria was targeted in a rocket attack. US forces in Iraq and Syria have been attacked with drones or rockets dozens of times in recent weeks after the Zionist Israeli regime launched its new aggression on Gaza Strip on October 7. Maersk winds down operations in Syria Danish shipping company Maersk MAERSKb.CO will from Dec. 1 no longer offer shipments to or from Syria, it said on Tuesday. Maersk said in a statement its operations in Syria are already limited as a result of international sanctions. This has recently become even more challenging logistically, and we have therefore made the decision to close our operations down completely, it said. 6 IS Fighters Killed in Russian Airstrikes on Syrian Desert Six armed members of the Islamic State (IS) group were killed in Russian airstrikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The airstrikes, which targeted the fighters position east of the central Homs province, struck areas in the al-Sukhnah desert and near the Dubaiat gas field in Homs eastern countryside, The Media Line reported. Four pro-Syrian government fighters also lost their lives in ground clashes with IS members in the same region. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a total of 544 casualties in the ongoing military conflict between Syrian and IS forces in the desert region since the start of 2023. This figure includes 37 IS members, 165 civilians, and 342 Syrian military personnel and pro-government fighters. After suffering major defeats across most of Syria in 2018, IS fighters retreated to the desert, where they have since launched attacks on roads linking the provinces of Hama and Homs with Deir-ez-Zor in the east. The ongoing conflict highlights the continued threat posed by IS in the region despite its diminished stronghold in Syria. Turkish FM accuses US, Europe of allying with PKK in Syria, slams politicized decisions of ECtHR Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan sharply criticized the United States and European countries for their support of Kurdish fighters in Syria, whom Ankara considers an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and for the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which he described as politicized rulings that interfere in Turkeys internal affairs, a Turkish media outlet reported Fidan was speaking at budget talks in parliament on Monday. Turkey considers the the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) to be an extension of the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey and much of the international community. The YPG comprises an integral part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) the Kurds de facto army in the area that spearheaded the battle to dislodge Islamic State group jihadists from the region in 2019. Unfortunately, some countries continue to support the PKK-YPG under the pretext of fighting against [the Islamic State]. We keep emphasizing that this is a strategic mistake and that they should absolutely rely on legitimate partners in the fight against [the Islamic State]. We have once again strongly emphasized that Americas cooperation with the PKK-YPG, the presence of FETO [the Gulen movement] in the US and unilateral sanctions are incompatible with the spirit of the alliance, Fidan said. FETO is a derogatory term used by the Turkish government to refer to the faith-based movement inspired by US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen as a terrorist organization. The Turkish government accuses the Gulen movement of masterminding a failed coup on July 15, 2016 and labels it a terrorist organization, although the movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity. Repression of Palestine solidarity leaves Syrians concerned for their future in Europe Syria Direct published an article which discusses how crackdowns on expressions of solidarity with Palestine in European countries, particularly France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, have raised concerns among Syrians and Syrian-Palestinians living in Europe. These crackdowns, which include the repression of pro-Palestine protests and the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, have exposed a perceived double standard and have made some individuals fear for their future in Europe. The article highlights that Syrians and Syrian-Palestinians have been joining global protests in solidarity with Palestinians, as they see similarities between the situation in Gaza and their own experiences during the Syrian conflict. However, these protests have been met with unprecedented repression, including arrests, fines, and bans in certain European countries. The repression not only affects those without citizenship but also citizens, as some European countries are considering laws that could make naturalization conditional on support for Israel and anti-Zionism could be equated with antisemitism. The article also mentions the suppression of organizations advocating for Palestinian rights, which has put Syrian civil society organizations and activists in a difficult position. Overall, the article discusses how the crackdown on pro-Palestine expressions of solidarity is causing Syrians and Syrian-Palestinians to question their safety and political freedom in Europe, raising concerns about a potential rollback of rights and increasing authoritarianism in these countries. Despite these challenges, many continue to participate in protests, driven by their belief in the causes they support. SNA Leader Assists in Prison Escape of Three Drug Dealers in Afrin, Syria An exclusive source revealed to North Press that a leader of an armed faction affiliated with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) played a pivotal role in facilitating the escape of three prisoners from the Military Hospital in Afrin, northwestern Syria. The escapees, identified as Firas Salim Salem (also known as Abu Bakr Zaid), Ali Haboush, and Wanis Ahmad, had been detained for several months on various charges, including drug trafficking. They were smuggled out of the hospital on Monday, thanks to the assistance of a Military Police leader, according to the source. The Military Police Prison in Afrin is known to hold more than 370 individuals without proper trials. This facility serves as a temporary detention center and lacks the authority to determine the fate of its inmates, as per the source. On November 17, a prison riot erupted at the Military Police Prison, allegedly orchestrated to aid the escape of several detainees with support from the Military Police faction. The riot resulted in injuries to several prisoners, including the three individuals who successfully escaped. The Military Hospital in Afrin, where the escapees were briefly held, is under the direct management of the Turkish army, according to the source. In a related incident, another source reported that a young man named Asad Muhammad Bellao was apprehended by Abu Mahmoud al-Asmar, a member of the Sultan Murad faction, in the town of Bulbul in the countryside of Afrin. Bellao was detained while attempting to cross into Turkey, and al-Asmar is demanding a $2,500 ransom from Bellaos relatives for his release. In the rural areas of Daraa, numerous clandestine prisons are operated by local militias, Orient Net writes. Militias aligned with the Assad regime in Daraa persist in committing widespread abuses against the local population. They arbitrarily arrest individuals, placing them in makeshift prisons where release is contingent upon the payment of a specified sum of money. A relative of Abd al-Rahman, currently held by a local faction in Tafas on the western outskirts of Daraa, disclosed that he has been detained for nine months. The charges against him, relating to a shop robbery in the city, stem from the shop owners claim. Abdulrahman remains in custody with an unspecified release date and an imposed fine that his family cannot afford. In a similar incident last May, a 25-year-old resident of the western countryside of Daraa, Hussein, was detained by local factions on charges of motorcycle theft. His release was contingent upon payment for the stolen bike and an additional 200,000 Syrian pounds to the jailer. Due to its inability to assert effective control over the region, the Assad regime has replaced local militia leaders with individuals having personal ties to its security branches. Consequently, the regime turns a blind eye to the arbitrary detentions carried out by these commanders, most of whom are affiliated with the security branches. Legal expert Assem al-Zoubi, in an interview with Orient Net, emphasized that these detentions lack due process, deviating from the norms outlined in the Syrian Penal Code. He asserted that labelling these detentions as imprisonment is inaccurate, as they are illegitimate and controlled by various factions or gangs. Zoubi further highlighted the existence of illegal detention centers established by militias supporting Assads campaign against the Syrian populace even after the 2011 revolution. Notably, he clarified that there is no concrete evidence confirming the existence of secret detention centers in Daraa. Private Prisons In the rural areas of Daraa, numerous clandestine prisons are operated by local militias, some of which have affiliations with military security. In Tafas, there are three such prisons, one located in the northern neighbourhood overseen by a person named al-Saidi (Maan al-Bardan). Saidi reports to Commander Abu Murshid al-Bardan, who is associated with Military Security. Another prison, situated at the Cement Corporation headquarters south of Tafas, is under the control of leader Khaled al-Tabiawi al-Zubi, a cousin of the late leader Khaldoun al-Zubi, who was ambushed and killed by Syrian security forces in August 2022. The third prison in the eastern neighbourhood is owned by Commander Habis Kiwan, affiliated with Air Force Intelligence. The lack of coordination among these prisons is attributed to factional and tribal differences, prompting each group to maintain its independent detention facility. Residents in the area have provided testimonies indicating that many cases are resolved through reconciliation after the payment of monetary sums, proportional to the value of the claim. Additionally, both parties involved contribute a sum to the jailer to cover expenses he claims to have incurred during the prisoners confinement. Beyond Tafas, prisons exist in Qusayr, Hait, and Sahm, which are administratively part of the Yarmouk Basin in the western countryside of Daraa. Qalat Busra hosts a prison controlled by the Eighth Brigade of Military Security. Despite being penalized on the European Unions list for drug dealing, leader Imad Abu Zreik owns a prison in Naseeb east of Daraa. He conducts raids and arrests individuals involved in drug dealing activities. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. DARWIN, Australia Riding horses in front of hundreds of cheering people in the United States as part of the prestigious Mounted Color Guard with the United States Marine Corps was a regular routine for her. She never would have guessed that her first time holding the U.S. flag would be thousands of miles away from home. U.S. Marine Corps 1st Lt. Bryanna M. Kessler, a lifelong horse enthusiast and Kelso High School graduate, represented Marine Rotational ForceDarwin 23 in an Australian rodeo in April. MRF-D 23 is focused on increasing interoperability with allies and partners in the region to promote a safe and prosperous Indo-Pacific. Hailing from a family of cowgirls and cowboys in Kelso, Kesslers introduction to horseback riding was through her uncle at the age of 2. This early experience on a horse ignited a lifelong passion within her. Eventually, she began taking riding lessons with her grandmother and later ventured into the competitive arena once she was old enough. Growing up, a lot of my family members had horses and competed in various disciplines, said Kessler. I traveled with my aunt and uncle on the Pinto horse circuit. My grandmother was a three-day eventer who was selected to the U.S. team for the Pan-American games. I competed in middle school and part of high school after my parents surprised me with my own horse for my 13th birthday. In addition to her love of horses, Kessler also felt a calling to serve in the military. She was undecided on the branch she wanted to join until she set her sights on the Marine Corps and enlisted on Nov. 16, 2009. My grandfather was in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and my stepdad was in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, said Kessler. Growing up, those were the two men I looked up to the most. I always knew I wanted to be in the military but I did not know it was the Marine Corps I was looking for. During her initial assignment at Camp Pendleton, California, Kessler remained connected to her passion for horses by volunteering at Stepp Stables during her off-hours. It was there that she became acquainted with a couple who allowed her to ride their horse in exchange for caring for it, ultimately bringing her two passions together. When my sergeant asked me where I disappeared to every weekend, Kessler recalled, I explained that I was taking care of a horse. He then asked if I had ever heard of the Mounted Color Guard. For two years, I tried to join the team. Finally, I got an interview and received orders to ride horses for the Marine Corps. As an official member of the Mounted Color Guard, Kessler was able to combine her two greatest passions: horses and military service. As part of a four-horseman team, the Guard who practiced in Barstow, California attended events across the country, presenting the flag to large crowds. Kessler relished the opportunity to travel and participate in these high-profile events. During my time on the team, we traveled across the U.S. and presented the American and Marine Corps flags at some of the largest events in the country, Kessler recalled. Although I never carried a flag myself because I was always the most junior member. I found the experience of presenting the flags during the National Anthem played incredibly powerful. Its one of those moments that makes you truly proud to be an American. Kessler decided to change career paths and become an officer through the Marine Enlisted Commissioning Education Program, MECEP. Upon commissioning, she was stationed with Headquarters Battalion, 1st Marine Division, and later transferred to 1st Marine Regiment. In February 2023, Kessler deployed with MRF-D 23. MRF-D is not your typical deployment, said Kessler. Growing up watching the rodeo it was always cool to see the riders who came over from other countries and competed. We have Australians riding on our pro rodeo circuit. I saw the opportunity to ride with the Australian equestrians and learn how they do things. To me, I was excited about the opportunity to be immersed in Australian culture and see how they do things there. Kessler got in contact with Annabelle Kieth who let Kessler ride on her property to practice for the rodeo. Russell Simpson who put the rodeo together also provided Kessler to practice on his land. The people here have been so welcoming and hospitable, said Kessler. Once I got in contact with the woman who became my first friend here she introduced me to her friends and they have not been able to get rid of me. Kesslers close bonds with her Australian friends symbolize the long-standing friendship between the military forces of the United States and Australia. For more than a century, the two nations have shared this bond. Kesslers skill and talent were evident as she placed first in the open barrel race hosted by the Australasian Team Roping Association on April 28, one day before the rodeo. The next day, Kessler had the opportunity to carry the United States flag in front of a crowd in Australia. Accompanying her was the Australian flag, symbolizing the close relationship between the two nations. This was a first for Kessler, and she was honored to represent her country on this special occasion. It is really hard to explain how it feels to carry the (United States) flag into an Australian arena, said Kessler. It is really cool that our friends and partners are giving me the opportunity to carry our flag next to their flag in a sport that means so much to Australians and Americans. The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, Binance, came under regulatory scrutiny earlier this year when the US Department of Justice (DOJ), along with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) cracked down on the company's lack of regulatory and legal mechanisms to prevent transactions made to fund terrorism, drug deals, and other illegal activities, as per the agencies. On Tuesday, the CEO of the company, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty and agreed on a settlement worth 4.3 billion dollars. But if you are unfamiliar with the world of crypto and want to know what is Binance, the reasons for it to plead guilty, and how this decision may impact the crypto industry in the future, then here is a quick guide. Let us take a look. What is Binance? Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao. The company was initially based out of China, then moved to Japan, and then to Malta. At present, it does not have any official headquarters. It became extremely popular and contributed to the explosion of cryptocurrency globally with its easy-to-use interface, support for a large number of cryptocurrencies, and low trading fees. Binance also has its cryptocurrency which is known as Binance Coin. Before the settlement, Binance had a market share of 40 percent for crypto spot trading, claiming the top position in the market, with the second position going to Seychelles-based OKX with 5.44 percent of the market share. Binance gained fame for building fast and breaking existing systems to reach a wider consumer base, often dipping its toes in unregulated areas, as per the allegations of the DOJ. It also led to its eventual fall. Why did Binance plead guilty? As per authorities, Binance broke US anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions with organizations the US described as terrorist groups including Hamas, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, reported Reuters. Further, the exchange also never reported transactions with websites devoted to selling child sexual abuse materials and was one of the largest recipients of ransomware proceeds, mentions the report. How will this impact the future of crypto? Just like FTX, Binance also had similar issues with regulations and legal mechanisms to correctly identify and report transactions that were being made by bad actors, and for illegal purposes. Binance admitted as much in a statement given by the company, where it said, When Binance first launched, it did not have compliance controls adequate for the company that it was quickly becoming, and it should have. Binance grew at an extremely fast pace globally, in a new and evolving industry that was in the early stages of regulation, and Binance made misguided decisions along the way. As per a report by CNN, this is a common rhetoric from companies who find themselves in a similar position. The report also featured industry experts who mentioned that the conclusion of this case should mark a more regulatory-focused approach by the US institutions, which should also push crypto companies to create proper mechanisms to identify their user base. KYC is something that is expected to become a norm in the future. Binance competitor Coinbase's CEO Brian Armstrong also wrote a long post on X, highlighting the necessity to follow the rule of law. He said, We took a lot of arrows operating here in the U.S. due to the lack of regulatory clarity, and my hope is that today's news serves as a catalyst to finally achieve that. Americans should not have to go to offshore unregulated exchanges to benefit from this technology. This industry should be built right here in America, in a compliant way, under U.S. law. Hot pot industry booms in Hechuan district, SW China's Chongqing People's Daily Online) 10:40, November 22, 2023 The hot pot industry in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality has seen a remarkable growth and gained widespread popularity. This growth was achieved through the development of various industry chains, including the production of base ingredients, seasonings, and other hot pot ingredients. Since 2022, the city's Hechuan district has set its sights on establishing a thriving hot pot industry with an output value of 100 billion yuan ($14 billion). In September 2022, the Chongqing Hot Pot Ingredient Industry Park was unveiled in Hechuan, with a planned total land area of 10 square kilometers. The efforts put into developing the hot pot ingredients industry in Hechuan have yielded positive results. In the first three quarters of 2023, the local hot pot ingredients industry chains output was valued at 23 billion yuan, a 24 percent increase. The food and agricultural product processing sectors output also rose by 10.13 billion yuan, or a 25.7 percent rise. Li Yanwu from the Chongqing Hot Pot Ingredient Industry Park said Hechuan is known as the "granary of Chongqing." It has been leading Chongqing in terms of grain production, the number of pigs slaughtered, and aquatic product output for many consecutive years. The cultivation of vegetables, Sichuan pepper, and other crops has also experienced substantial growth, ensuring an ample supply of high-quality raw materials to develop the hot pot ingredient industry. A scale model of a production base of Chongqing Meixiangyuan Industrial Group Co., Ltd., which specializes in the production of compound seasonings for hot pot. (People's Daily Online/Liu Zhengning) Chongqing Meixiangyuan Industrial Group Co. Ltd. specializes in the production of compound seasonings for hot pot. The company primarily sources agricultural raw materials from Chongqing and Sichuan Province. It has established a Sichuan pepper base in Fengjie county, Chongqing, and signed chili pepper purchase and sales contracts with enterprises in Chongqing's Shizhu Tujia Autonomous County and Youyang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County. "We adopt the order-based agricultural planting mode to promote the integration of the primary and secondary industries," Li explained. This year, Hechuan established 15 hot pot ingredient cultivation and breeding bases, contributing to rural revitalization and the discovery of more agricultural products. As the largest beef omasum production base in southwest China, Hechuan produces 35 million kilograms of beef omasum annually, accounting for about one-third of the national capacity. Chongqing Kaihong Food Co. Ltd. produces a wide range of products that cover the entire hot pot ingredients industry, with beef omasum accounting for over 60 percent of the company's offerings, according to general manager of the company, Gou Zhiqiang. Photo shows beef omasum products from Chongqing Kaihong Food Co. Ltd. (People's Daily Online/Liu Zhengning) Gou's company sources raw materials globally and distributes products worldwide. Hechuan's convenient transportation system allows for easy access to raw materials from northwest China and other countries. The processed products are efficiently distributed nationwide and to international supermarkets, according to Gou. Since the beginning of this year, Hechuan has prioritized the development of enterprise clusters as the key driver for the growth of the hot pot ingredients industry. It has introduced 46 key projects, with a total investment of 6.7 billion yuan. Out of these, 12 projects have already been completed and put into operation, nine projects have commenced construction and six projects are being expedited. A worker installs equipment at the factory of a food company in Hechuan district, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. (People's Daily Online/Liu Zhengning) The main structure of a hot pot culture street along Jialing River has been completed. (People's Daily Online/Liu Zhengning) A Chongqing hot pot museum, currently under construction, is set to open its doors to the public in June 2024. (Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun) The United States government is allegedly considering the idea of redesignating the Houthi rebels as a "terrorist" group following the hijack of a cargo ship in the Red Sea. In a statement on Tuesday, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby condemned the seizure of the cargo ship. He called it the "piracy of a ship in international waters" and accused the Houthi rebels of "recent targeting of civilians." Houthi Rebels as Terrorist Group The incident comes as the Red Sea is home to one of the most vital trade routes in the world through the Strait of Hormuz. United States President Joe Biden's administration formally removed the Houthis from the official list of "foreign terrorist organization" and "specially designated global terrorists in 2021. It was a move that reversed a decision by his predecessor, Donald Trump, during the latter's presidency. The United Nations and various aid groups criticized the designations, arguing that the restrictions they imposed complicated aid deliveries to war-torn Yemen, as per Aljazeera. The Houthi rebels are known to have the support of Iran and are in control of large parts of northern Yemen and the capital, Sanaa. The group has carried out attacks on Israel in the last few weeks, launching missiles and drone attacks while threatening to seize Israeli vessels in the Red Sea. The group's forces raided a ship known as the Galaxy Leader on Sunday and Houthi General Ali Al-Moshki later issued a statement on television. He said that Israeli ships are "legitimate targets" for the group anywhere they are. The vessel was operated by a Japanese firm and was tied to Israeli businessman Abraham "Rami" Ungar. The crew onboard the ship, which totaled 25 workers from different countries, are still taken hostage by the Houthi rebels. Kirby said that the seizure of the Galaxy Leader prompted American officials to begin a review of potential terrorist designations. He added that they would be considering other options with allies and partners as well, according to Reuters. Read Also: Hamas Claims 'Truce' With Israel Is Close; Israeli Officials Yet to Respond Hijacking of Cargo Ship in the Red Sea Following the incident with the ship, Iran has denied involvement, and the vessel is believed to have been taken to the Houthi-controlled southern Yemen port of Hodeidah. The region erupted into a civil war after the rebel group, members of the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam, took control of the capital in 2014. While a ceasefire brokered by the UN collapsed in October 2022, Yemen has enjoyed relative calm as the Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia negotiated a settlement. The nation is still considered the worst humanitarian crisis in the world as roughly 21.6 million people are dependent on aid. The Houthi's chief negotiator and spokesman, Mohammed Abdul-Salam said that Israelis only understand "the language of force" following the seizure of the ship. He said that the detention of the vessel is a practical step that proves the seriousness of the Yemeni armed forces in waging sea battle. The cargo ship's operator, NYK Line, said that the vessel did not have any cargo at the time of the hijacking. The crew members were said to have come from the Philippines, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Mexico, said the Associated Press. Related Article: Whitehall: Russia Hoarding Cruise Missiles for Likely Winter Campaign vs. Ukraine @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. 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: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Computer chip and software maker Broadcom has announced it has cleared all regulatory hurdles and plans to complete its $69 billion acquisition of cloud technology company VMware on Wednesday. The company, based in San Jose, California, announced it planned to move ahead with the deal after China joined the list of countries that had given a go-ahead for the acquisition. Broadcom is paying $61 billion in cash and stock for VMware and taking on $8 billion of its debt, making this one of the biggest technology deals ever. The announcement came soon after Microsoft acquired video game-maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, also one of the most expensive tech acquisitions in history. It took 18 months for Broadcom to get all the regulatory approvals, just days before the merger agreement was due to expire. The acquisition was able to go ahead after China's State Administration of Market Regulation said Broadcom's commitments, submitted Monday, would reduce the impact of the merger. The massive buyouts are occurring at a time of heightened anxiety because of turmoil on the global supply chain, war in Europe and the Middle East, and rising prices that have the potential to cool both business and consumer activity. Broadcom's acquisition plan earlier gained approval from Britain's competition regulator. Countless businesses and public bodies, including major banks, big retailers, telecom operators and government departments, rely on Broadcom gear and VMware software. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm and top antitrust enforcer, cleared the deal after Broadcom made concessions to address its concerns about competition. Broadcom wants to establish a stronger foothold in the cloud computing market, and VMware's technology allows large corporations to blend public cloud access with internal company networks. VMware, which is based in Palo Alto, California, has close relations with every major cloud company and provider, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. In a statement, Broadcom said it had legal greenlights in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Israel, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and "foreign investment control clearance in all necessary jurisdictions." "There is no legal impediment to closing under U.S. merger regulations," it said. There has been a flurry of such deals after technology companies' shares fell from stratospheric levels attained during the pandemic, making such acquisitions more affordable. But Broadcom's CEO, Hock Tan, has been pursuing such deals for years, building out the company with big acquisitions like Symantec for close to $11 billion in 2019, and CA Technologies for about $19 billion the year before. In an earnings call not long after the deal was announced, Tan described the plan to acquire VMWare as a "very unique opportunity to take our company and its business to the next level." 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. 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: Some of the biggest names in crypto have been hit with criminal charges in the last two years. Binance boss Changpeng Zhao has become the most powerful cryptocurrency figure to fall in a two-year period chaotic even by the standards of the notoriously volatile industry. Zhao stepped down as CEO of Binancethe largest crypto exchange in the worldafter he and the company pleaded guilty on Tuesday to sweeping US money laundering violations and agreed to fines of more than $4 billion. Here are three of the highest-profile crypto executives who have fallen foul of the law since last year: Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao Born in China in 1977, Zhao moved with his family to Canada in the 1980s and later got a degree in computer science from McGill University, according to his profile in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He founded Binance in 2017 in Shanghai, and led the company's explosive growth into the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange. An outspoken celebrity in the crypto world with 8.7 million followers on X, Zhao became the richest known figure in the nascent industry. His net worth peaked at around $65 billion in 2022, according to a Forbes index. With the prestige and wealth came increased scrutiny of Binance's operations, as prominent crypto firms around the world began to buckle under a wave of criminal investigations. Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao turned Binance into the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. The United States accused Zhao and Binance of multiple violations, including knowingly allowing transactions to militant groups such as the Islamic State and in barred jurisdictions such as North Korea and Iran. On Tuesday, they pleaded guilty. The firm has agreed to total penalties of nearly $4.4 billion, while he will pay $50 million, according to court documents. Zhao resigned as CEO of Binance and while he will reportedly retain his shares in the company, he has been banned from any involvement in its business. He is expected to face sentencing later. Forbes listed his net worth as $10.2 billion as of Wednesday. Sam Bankman-Fried If Zhao was the richest and most powerful person in crypto, Sam Bankman-Fried was easily the most famous. Born to Stanford University professors, Bankman-Fried graduated from MIT with a degree in physics. In 2019, he founded FTX, which skyrocketed to become the world's second-largest crypto exchange. Sam Bankman-Fried founded FTX, a crypto exchange that collapsed spectacularly in 2022. Along the way, Bankman-Fried built up his image as the unofficial ambassador for the cryptocurrency industry, with high-profile appearances in the media and even the US Congress. At one point in 2022, he had a net worth of $24 billion, according to Forbes. But he had been walking a dangerous pathhis team used customers' money for everything from buying posh real estate to covering risky moves by affiliate Alameda Research. It all came crashing down when these moves were revealed in the media in November 2022. Within hours, rival CZ Zhao said Binance would sell all the FTX tokens it held. It sparked a stunning collapse of FTX and Bankman-Fried's empire, his fame turning to notoriety. Arrested in the Bahamas in January, he was found guilty this month of what US prosecutors described as "one of the biggest financial frauds in American history". He faces up to 110 years in prison. During his trial, the 31-year-old admitted to making "mistakes" but denied trying to defraud anyone. South Korean entrepreneur Do Kwon (C) founded Terraform Labs, whose remarkable implosion shook global crypto markets in 2022. Do Kwon South Korean entrepreneur Do Kwon co-founded Terraform Labs in 2018, developing the cryptocurrencies TerraUSD and Luna. The Stanford grad successfully marketed them as the next big thing in crypto, attracting billions in investments and global hype. Media reports in South Korea described him as a "genius". But in May last year, the value of these currenciesmarketed as "stablecoins"plummeted, wiping out around $40 billion in investments and sending a shock wave through the rest of the industry. It led to more than $500 billion in further losses on global crypto markets, industry data suggested. Experts said Do Kwonwhose full name is Kwon Do-kyunghad marketed a glorified Ponzi scheme. Brash and outspoken on social media, Do Kwon left South Korea before the collapse and spent months on the run. He was arrested in Montenegro this year after being caught trying to catch a flight using fake Costa Rican travel documents. He faces multiple criminal charges in the United States and South Korea. 2023 AFP 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: The OpenAI logo appears on a mobile phone in front of a screen showing a portion of the company website in this photo taken on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023 in New York. Credit: AP Photo/Peter Morgan Unlike Google, Facebook and other tech giants, the company behind ChatGPT was not created to be a business. It was set up as a nonprofit by founders who hoped that it wouldn't be beholden to commercial interests. But the arrangement got complicated. While OpenAI later transitioned to a for-profit model, its controlling shareholder remains the nonprofit OpenAI Inc. and its board of directors. This unique structure made it possible for four OpenAI board membersthe company's chief scientist, two outside tech entrepreneurs and an academicto oust CEO Sam Altman on Friday. The abrupt removal of one of the world's most sought-after AI experts led to an employee revolt that has put the entire organization's future in jeopardy and underscored the unusual arrangement that sets OpenAI apart from other tech enterprises. It's exceedingly rare for major tech companies to have such a structure. Facebook parent Meta, as well as Google and others, are essentially set up the opposite waygiving founders ultimate control over the company and the board of directors through a special class of voting shares not available to the masses. The idea comes from Berkshire Hathaway, which was established with two classes of stock so the company and its leaders would not be beholden to investors seeking short-term profit. OpenAI's stated mission is to safely build artificial intelligence that is "generally smarter than humans." Debates have swirled around that goal and whether it conflicts with the company's increasing commercial success. "What was revealed with this board structure is they just idealistically thought, well, we're aligned, and we all want the same thing. And it won't become a problem because we're going to stay aligned," said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University's Tech Policy Institute. As AI technology accelerated in the last year because of new investment coming in, "I think that's where these issues erupted." The board has refused to give specific reasons that it fired Altman, who was quickly hired Monday by Microsoft Corp., which has invested billions in OpenAI. Microsoft also hired OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who resigned in protest after Altman was fired, along with at least three others. In addition, Microsoft has extended job offers to all of OpenAI's 770 employees. If enough employees accept Microsoft's offer or join rivals now openly recruiting them, OpenAI could all but disappear without a workforce. Much of its existing technology will remain with Microsoft, which holds an exclusive license to use it. When OpenAI announced that Altman had been removed, it released a vague statement saying a review found that he was "not consistently candid in his communications" with the board, which had lost confidence in his ability to lead the company. The statement did not give details or examples of Altman's alleged lack of candor. The company said his behavior hindered the board's ability to exercise its responsibilities. Kreps said the board, which "seems to be associated with the safer, more cautious approach" to AI, did itself a disservice with Altman's firing. It alienated the bulk of the company's workforce and acted in such a way that "there is no company left to implement a pro-safety philosophy." Sam Altman participates in a discussion during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023, in San Francisco. Microsoft has announced that it's hired Sam Altman and another architect of ChatGPT maker OpenAI after they unexpectedly departed the company days earlier in a corporate shakeup that shocked the artificial intelligence world. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella also tweeted Monday, Nov. 20, 2023 that the major investor in the chatbot that kicked off the generative AI craze is committed to its partnership with OpenAI. Credit: AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File After a dramatic weekend that saw one interim CEO replaced by a second interim CEO, OpenAI board member Ilya Sutskever, a key driver of the shakeup, expressed regrets for his participation in the ouster. "I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company," he posted Monday on X, formerly known as Twitter. Until Friday, OpenAI had six board members. Now the board consists of Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist; Adam D'Angelo, CEO of the question-and-answer site Quora; tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley; and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology. As recently as earlier this year, the board had more members. Those who departed the board were LinkedIn founder and investor Reid Hoffman, who co-founded another AI company last year; former Republican U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, who was briefly a 2024 presidential candidate; Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis; and Brockman, who left in the wake of Altman's dismissal. When it was founded, OpenAI's original board co-chairs were Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The board might not have found itself straddling the tensions between its nonprofit structure and the company's for-profit arm if not for a pivotal falling out in 2018 involving Altman and Musk. Musk abruptly bolted from OpenAI, ostensibly because of a potential conflict of interest between the fledgling startup and Tesla, the electric automaker responsible for a personal fortune now valued at more than $240 billion. Earlier this year, Musk tweeted his concern that Microsoft was leading OpenAI astray in a quest for ever higher profits. Musk recently launched his own AI startup, xAI, to compete with OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, among others. OpenAI's board members have not responded to requests for comment. Of the four who remain, one of the better-known members is D'Angelo, an early Facebook employee who co-founded Quora in 2009 and remains its CEO. D'Angelo first joined the OpenAI board in 2018, tweeting at the time: "I continue to think that work toward general AI (with safety in mind) is both important and underappreciated, and I'm happy to contribute to it." He's publicly waded into the possibility of AI that surpasses humans as recently as Nov. 6, when he questioned the conclusions of a Google research paper that showed evidence that current AI systems cannot generalize beyond their training data. That suggests their abilities are more limited than some scientists thought. D'Angelo posted a few months earlier that artificial general intelligence "will probably be the most important event in the history of the world, and it will happen in our lifetimes." 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. 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: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain The unofficial motto of Silicon Valley has long been "move fast and break things". It relies on the assumption that in order to create cutting edge technology and to be ahead of the competition, companies need to accept that things will get damaged in the process. However, this approach can have implications beyond just economics. It can endanger people and be unethical. As we mark the first anniversary of the release of AI chatbot ChatGPT, it's worth considering whether the big tech companies could do with moving slowly and taking care not to break anything. ChatGPT's impressive capabilities caused a sensation. But some commentators were quick to point to issues such as the potential it presented for students to cheat on assignments. More widely, the chatbot intensified a debate over how to control AI, a transformative technology with huge potential benefitsand risks of comparable significance. Let's look at Silicon Valley's record on other technology too. Social media was supposed to bring us together. Instead, it has threatened democracy and produced armies of trolls. Cryptocurrencies, touted as challenging the financial status quo have been an environmental disaster and have been vulnerable to fraud. The advent of the personal computer was supposed to make our work life easier. It did, but at the price of massive job losses which the job market took more than a decade to recover from. It's not that technologies in themselves are bad. However, the ideology within which they are developed can be a problem. And as technology permeates more and more of our daily lives, the "things" that break could potentially end up being human lives. Change of approach "Move fast and break things" could also prove to be economically wrong, making investors rush for novelty instead of value, as they did in the dot com bubble of the early 2000s. The idea assumes that although things might go wrong, we will be able to fix them quickly, and so the harms will be limited. Yet, looking at the history of Silicon Valley, this has been shown to be a problem on several counts. Identifying that there is a problem is not the same as finding its cause. Once a technology has been deployed, the environment in which it is used may be so complex that it takes years to understand what exactly is going wrong. The US justice system, for instance, has been using AI for more than a decade to assist bail decisions. These decide who should be released prior to trial against a cash bond. AI was introduced not just as a way to reduce the flight risk, of defendants going on the run, but also to tackle racial bias, where white judges might be more likely to release white defendants. However, the algorithms produced the opposite result, with fewer black defendants being released. Engineers kept on introducing new versions of the AI algorithms, hoping to reduce bias. Nothing worked. Then, in 201917 years after the system was first introduceda researcher found that the problem was not the AI itself, but the way judges were using it. They were more likely to overrule decisions that didn't fit with their stereotypes, and the problem was the interaction between the judges and the AI. Independently, each could take somewhat appropriate decisions. Together, it was a disaster. Delayed consequences Another reason why Silicon Valley's approach is risky is that the consequences of new technologies can take a long time to appear. This means that by the time we realize the harm done, it is already too late. The Dutch welfare system, for instance, has relied heavily on AI algorithms to detect fraud. It has been problematic in many regards, but in particular, it was found to use ethnic origin and nationality as an important risk factor. It took years for the full-blown issue to become apparent. And by that time, some people had been so heavily affected by the AI assisted decisions - asking them to return hundreds of thousands of euros for a simple mistake on a form - that some took their own lives. Cleaning up the mess To "move fast and break things" also means that someone else, somewhere, will be left to clean up the mess. For those who produce the technology, it's a way of abrogating responsibility for its outcomes, whether the companies realize it or not. Social media is a damning example of this. Social media's "suggestion" algorithmsalso powered by AIhave created a host of issues, from promoting misinformation and hate speech just because those things creates more engagement, to facilitating harassment and negatively affecting mental health. Yet we still struggle to curb these issues, with social media platforms refusing to take responsibility for the content they promote and benefit from. The first anniversary of ChatGPT provides us with an opportunity to look back on what lessons can be learned from previous technological advances. It helps us realize that mistakes are easier to avoid than to fix, especially where human lives are involved. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Shanafelt putting best foot forward for Peters Township November 30, 2023 6 min read Although he is a captain and leader of the Peters Township football team, Carter Shanafelt has given in to peer pressure and followed the crowd on occasion. Before he entered high school, Shanafelt was a star for the Beadling Soccer Clubs showcase team consisting of players from ... South Fayette striving to stay at the top November 27, 2023 3 min read South Fayette knows staying at the top in scholastic girls basketball is harder than getting to the pinnacle. After winning back-to-back WPIAL championships and finishing runner-up in the PIAA tournament in 2023, the Lady Lions are laboring diligently to remain among the best clubs in ... As the first thing people see when they drive through Bryan and College Station, the landscaping on Texas 6 is an important first impression. During Mondays College Station City Council meeting, councilors discussed landscaping possibilities for the future of the Texas 6 widening project. The projects scope is to widen Texas 6 from Texas 21 in North Bryan to Barron Road in College Station. Each intersection will have various improvements with construction tentatively planned for December 2024 and is estimated to take five years to complete. Emily Fisher, director of public works for College Station, presented at the meeting to discuss landscaping options. The goal of this presentation is to present options for council to consider, answer questions and receive some directions on those options that we can then pass off to TxDOT, she said. While many of the options presented by Fisher would be paid for by the Texas Department of Transporation, a couple possibilities would rely on the city of College Station to upkeep maintenance, Fisher said. With the larger areas of trees, that would be the citys responsibility. If we went with the smaller cluster of trees, that would be TxDOT, she said. Estimated installation costs varied with the University Drive intersection costing the most at $390,000, and an additional maintenance cost of $50,000 to $75,000 annually. The presentation also included three options for tree plantings. Option 3a would be around 2,500 trees with no installation costs but $200,000 to $250,000 annually for a contractor; option 3b would be around 950 trees but no installation cost and no maintenance cost; finally, option 3c would be an additional 400 trees in 28 locations that would cost $520,000 to install and cost $100,000 to $200,000 annually for a contractor. The state would install the trees for options 3a and 3b. Councilor Dennis Maloney asked the TxDOT representatives attending the meeting if it would be possible to lower maintenance costs by letting nature take over. TxDOT representatives reassured councilors they would only need to cut grass once a year. Councilor Linda Harvell also asked about irrigation for the landscaping, which Fisher said maintenance cost would include. With 3b, the plants would have an irrigation period, but that would be temporary until the plants are settled. Councilors reviewed the options and, after some discussion, Mayor Nichols advised the city to focus on options 3a and 3c only at the University Drive intersection. The whole of Earl Rudder is an exit and an entrance and people drive 5 or 6 miles through that, he said. Im supportive of 3a I think it gets us more trees. Twenty-five hundred trees for $0 looks pretty good to me. And I would want 3c [in addition]. Veterinarians are one of the first faces a young pet might see and often the last face some pets see as families say goodbye, and because many pets are seen as family, more resources are needed to support both new and old veterinarians in an emotionally draining job. Due to a wide variety of stressors and not enough resources in the job field, Texas is facing a veterinarian shortage, especially in rural areas. Alongside the duties of a veterinarian being emotionally challenging, recent veterinary graduates are dissuaded from working in rural areas due to high student loan debts and low income. Student educational debt grew 4.5 times as fast as income for new veterinary graduates in 2020, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. To lessen the impact of the shortage, Texas A&M University has a veterinary teaching hospital that prepares students for the job through hands-on learning opportunities and trips to rural areas of Texas that oftentimes dont have access to veterinary services. Val Hartwick, veterinarian and owner of Tabor Road Vet Clinic, said she recently had to stop taking new clients due to high demand. My first obligation is to them. I cant keep taking new clients and my [regular clients] cant get in with their animals for three weeks, she said. I hope that well be able to take new clients again soon. While Hartwick said most of her clients are amazing, there are some that will demand free service, which can be devastating toward people who want more than anything to help animals. Every now and then Ill have someone come in and they want you to treat their animal for free. If you dont, then you dont care about animals and all you care about is money, she said. All the veterinarians I know work ourselves to death. Veterinarians often have to help families make difficult decisions regarding their pets, leading to heartbreak both with the families and veterinarians, Hartwick said. Ive been out of vet school for 13 years now. Some animals that I saw when they were puppies are now in their later years and weve had to let them go in the end. I feel for them, she said. Theres nothing else I would want to do. That being said, its a hard job. Hartwick said she is still paying off her student loans from vet school, and although her job is her passion, money is a constant issue. One of the reasons for the shortage is that the salaries of veterinarians have become inadequate to pay student loans back, she said. Theres people coming out of vet school right now that cant even pay the interest on their student loans. Although Tabor Road is not currently hiring, Hartwick said finding veterinarians able to do the work can be challenging. I was going to hire someone and then COVID happened in March [2020] and I ended up not hiring, she said. But for my colleagues, its a problem finding veterinarians to hire. Large animal veterinarians often struggle the most due to the inherent dangers of working with larger animals and lower salary, Hartwick said. They make almost half of what a small animal veterinarian would make, she said. Large animals are just hard to work with. Its physically demanding. You will get hurt and hopefully you wont get killed, but you could. Stacy Eckman, the associate dean for hospital operations and chief executive officer at the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, said they graduate 180 veterinarian students every May. We are the only teaching hospital in the state of Texas. Students will spend an entire year, their fourth year, of their vet school in the teaching hospital, she said. They will rotate every two to four weeks through a variety of specialties in the hospital. In order to prepare students for the veterinarian work force, they will have the ability to work with faculty to ensure the best care possible for clients and their pets, Eckman said. No less than three people have interacted with that pet and that client when they come in for an appointment, she said. Students share with their faculty mentors what their plan is and then the faculty will help fine-tune that plan. The teaching hospital often will have to limit the amount of clients it has to ensure students have ample opportunity to learn while not being crowded, Eckman said. We have had to strategically outline who can be on what rotation and when to avoid getting too full, she said. If its too full, students dont get a good learning experience, but a lot of those limitations are the physical building were in. To serve rural communities in the Brazos Valley, Eckman said students meet farmers or ranchers on their land to take care of large animals such as horses, cows, goats and sheep. We have an equine community practice rotation who sees horses where they live in their pasture or barn, she said. Weve also got food animal field services who are going out there and dealing with production folks on their ranch. Once a year, the veterinary team mobilizes to natural disaster zones, including fires in Bastrop in recent years, Eckman said. We also do a big deployment every year to South Texas where we take multiple students that go down for a week to provide outreach for communities that do not have veterinarian care, she said. For the future of the industry, Eckman said she hopes to see more veterinarian schools available for training students and allow for less pressure on smaller veterinary teams. Good news may be coming soon. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a 17% job growth rate for veterinarians is expected by 2026, more than twice as fast as all other occupations. Texas Tech University in Lubbock opened its veterinary school of medicine in 2021. My hope is that, as we have new veterinarian schools that are coming online, that might alleviate some of the shortages that were having, she said. That would give everyone an opportunity for a healthier work-life balance. An oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is spreading and is threatening the health of local marine wildlife as officials are working to contain and recover more than a million gallons of oil. The incident occurred off the Louisiana coast and the U.S. Coast Guard estimated the spill to involve roughly 1.1 million gallons of oil. It was first discovered on Thursday near a 67-mile pipeline that is operated by the Main Pass Oil Gathering Co. Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill The company is owned by Houston-based Third Coast Infrastructure. The Coast Guard said that it was still working on reviewing whether or not the pipeline was the source of the oil spill. Pilots on Friday who went on reconnaissance flights saw oil moving southwest from Plaquemines Parish. In a statement on Monday, the Coast Guard noted that they deployed "remotely operated vehicles" under the surface on Friday morning. These continued to survey the pipeline with no findings of a source area at the time of the statement, as per the Washington Post. The recent spill was officially called the "MPOG11015 incident" and is the latest in an area that has experienced some of the worst offshore oil disasters in the history of the country. It comes after 130 million gallons of crude poured in 2010 into the Gulf of Mexico. It came after an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Six years prior to that incident, a hurricane toppled a Taylor Energy Platform that caused crude to leak from several broken oil wells. The lesser-known Taylor Energy spill continued without notice from 2004, causing at least 30 million gallons of oil to enter the gulf. British Petroleum paid more than $14 billion in fines and damages for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. On the other hand, Taylor Energy fought the federal government's demands to stop and clean up its spill before finally agreeing to liquidate its assets and hand over more than $400 million in a trust last year. Read Also: UN SecGen Fact-Checked by X After Comparing Deaths in Gaza with Casualties in Nearby Countries Determining the Origin of the Leak The Coast Guard posted on Facebook saying that the oil from the latest spill was "skimmed and sampled" roughly four miles southeast of South Pass, Louisiana. That was the time when they retrieved about 210 gallons of "oily-water mixture." They also retrieved more oil on Sunday about 13 miles southeast of the Parish, according to CBS News. In a social media post, Plaquemines Parish officials said that they were monitoring the incident over the weekend but have not shared further details since. The Coast Guard added that the Unified Command was working tirelessly to determine where the oil spill originated from but noted that there have been no reports of injuries or shoreline impacts so far. In the last five decades, there have been more than 44 oil spills that discharged more than 420,000 gallons each in U.S. waters. Every year, thousands of smaller leaks, a single barrel or less, occur in the region. However, the NOAA notes that even small amounts of oil can have severe impacts on local wildlife and ecosystems, said The Hill. Related Article: US Allegedly Considers Redesignating Houthi Rebels as 'Terrorist' Group After Hijack of Cargo Ship in Red Sea @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. In Hall County District Court Tuesday, Ryan Rivera-Meister entered a no contest plea to an amended charge of attempted intentional child abuse resulting in death (of a child) in relation to the death of a baby in Grand Island in 2016. The charge is a Class 2 felony offense that carries a maximum possible prison sentence of 50 years. Rivera-Meister, 27, was arrested in Guatemala in July of 2021 and was extradited to the United States. The Grand Island man was originally charged with intentional child abuse resulting in death, a Class 1B felony. The child involved was a 16-month-old boy. According to court documents, Rivera-Meister was babysitting the child on Aug. 4, 2016, at 411 E. Sunset Ave. After being taken to CHI Health St. Francis, the baby was flown to a hospital in Aurora, Colo., where he died from severe brain injuries. On Tuesday, Judge Andrew Butler ordered a pre-sentence investigation and scheduled Rivera-Meisters sentencing for 9 a.m. Feb. 26. Hall County Commissioner Pam Lancaster says some people have a misconception about the costs of the Hall County Courthouse addition the commission is planning. Some are looking at the expected price tag and calculating what it will cost per square foot, Lancaster said at Tuesdays commission meeting. But many elements go into the total cost, including remodeling, parking and furnishing the offices and courtrooms. Furnishing a courtroom is much more expensive than outfitting a house, Lancaster said. So people shouldnt look at the cost on a square-footage basis, she said. Davis Design, the projects architectural firm, was not represented at the meeting. But the boards building committee recently met with the architects via Zoom, Lancaster said. The architects recently met with local judges, who asked that all of the county courtrooms be the same size. In addition, the judges are willing to make concessions in their requests, Lancaster said. As part of the work, the old jail and the Department of Health and Human Services building will be demolished. Lancaster said those buildings could be razed in the late spring or early summer. The county will use American Rescue Plan Act funds to pay for the demolition. After the meeting, Lancaster said the board is working hard to keep the projects costs in line. In addition, the board heard a report from Jerad Reimers, who works with Rep. Adrian Smith. Reimers talked about the most common subjects in which Nebraskans seek help from Smiths office in navigating federal red tape. Most commonly, constituents seek help in securing veterans benefits, dealing with the Internal Revenue Service and obtaining passports in an expedited manner. Currently, the wait for passports has extended to eight to 10 months. The only way to cut down the wait is to drive to a passport office, but none of those offices is in Nebraska, he said. Because of the backlog, The only way to get them faster, even with congressional assistance, is to just plan ahead of time, Reimers said. Reimers pointed out that Smith continues to serve on the House Ways and Means Committee. During this session, he received the chairmanship for the subcommittee on trade. So he is the Republican leader for the trade agenda in the House, Reimers said. That provides Nebraska with the opportunity to be central in conversations regarding trade policy that are coming out of the House of Representatives, Reimers said. Its one of the reasons that the biotech corn issue with Mexico has been central to the Congressmans concerns. Smith, he said, was one of the leaders of a trade delegation to Japan, where agricultural trade was discussed, and why he has been pushing for an expanded conversation with the United Kingdom concerning trade policy as well, especially as it relates to ag products. One of Smiths legislative efforts involves trying to reduce funding for a bill that would add IRS field agents. Smith believes the IRS is currently not doing the main job for which its assigned because of so many open positions across the country. The IRS shouldnt worry about its ability to do audits and go after constituents when it cant process tax returns in the timely fashion that constituents expect, he said. Smith also recently co-sponsored a bill that would give parents a role in deciding if their public education tax dollars should stay within a district if they send their children to a private school or choose home school. Smith does not have an issue with public education, Reimers said, noting that the congressman was an educator before he went into politics. The bill instead reflects his belief that Washington exerts too much control. Commissioner Gary Quandt asked Reimers about federal funding for radios for local law enforcement and first responders. Reimers said he would look into the status of a federal grant application. On behalf of area farmers, Commissioner Scott Sorensen asked that Reimers urge the congressman to support lowering tariffs on phosphorus fertilizers. Also at the meeting, Tim Garrison of Alda asked the board to consider installing a four-way stop at the intersection of Engleman and Stolley Park roads. Traffic in that area has increased. Board members said plans to revise the Highway 30 route will change traffic in the area, but promised to look into the issue. Garrison, who lives at 4339 W. Stolley Park Road, also asked that a pair of rumble bars be removed from his neighborhood. The noise is bothering a pair of elderly neighbors, he said. In reference to Sundays death of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, Quandt recalled the visit to Grand Island by President Jimmy Carter following the 1980 tornadoes. President Carter really seemed to care about Grand Island, Quandt said. Quandt and Chairman Ron Peterson also praised the Habitat for Humanity program, in which the Carters were very much involved. Library will consolidate veterans' data At his Nov. 10 address, Grand Island Mayor Roger Steele said he appreciates the ways in which our community has revered and honored our veterans for over 100 years. I am proud that the city of Grand Island will continue to honor our veterans in many different ways, only one of which is the continuous flying of flags in their honor along Capital Avenue. I will make sure that tradition continues, he said. Steele also talked about a new program aimed at collecting information about veterans. He has asked our team of librarians at the Grand Island Public Library to utilize their skills and resources to develop a comprehensive digital collection and research tool focused on the military veterans who are laid to rest here in this veterans cemetery, or who have connections to our city. We will work to consolidate the records and data that we know is held in many different locations here in Grand Island, so that visitors to these hallowed grounds can learn more about the lives and the service given to our country by the heroes who rest here, Steele said. Our veterans collection will take its well-deserved place in our library next to the Edith and Grace Abbott collection, the Hall County Historical Society collection and the Daughters of the American Revolution collection, because we want to honor them and recognize the contributions that they have made to our city and to our country. State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Washington D.C. West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands Armed Forces Americas Armed Forces Pacific Armed Forces Europe Northern Mariana Islands Marshall Islands American Samoa Federated States of Micronesia Guam Palau Alberta, Canada British Columbia, Canada Manitoba, Canada New Brunswick, Canada Newfoundland, Canada Nova Scotia, Canada Northwest Territories, Canada Nunavut, Canada Ontario, Canada Prince Edward Island, Canada Quebec, Canada Saskatchewan, Canada Yukon Territory, Canada Zip Code Every year, fifth grade students in Benjie Willseys class get really excited about Thanksgiving. The class hosts a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at the Harris-Pruett Building and invites guests to share the meal. My invitation to the meal was sent by Whyatte Mathews and Derious Johnson. The meal was wonderful! The menu featured turkey and dressing, chicken and dumplings, green beans, corn, mashed potatoes and dessert. Willsey said the students could donate dessert, a 12-can carton of soda, or cans of green beans or corn. Any leftover canned goods will be donated to the schools food drive, Willsey said. But how do they prepare the rest of the meal? Willsey gets some help from her mother and aunts, who are experts at cooking Thanksgiving dishes. For the students, hosting a Thanksgiving meal offers a lot of opportunities to learn. Invitations are hand-written and mailed to their guests. Instructions to the guests ask them to RSVP with Willsey. The students also learn about appropriate topics for conversations. Whyatte and Derious asked me about my job, my favorite Thanksgiving memories, my hobbies and my favorite holiday dishes. They also learn about manners, such as pulling a chair out for a guest or taking their plate away. This year was the 23rd meal Willsey has had with her class. She started the tradition when she learned one year that a student had never had a traditional Thanksgiving meal. She cooked the meal that first year and shared it with her class. Since then, the event has grown. The children now invite guests. Some of this years guests included Sen. Dale Fowler, Rep. Patrick Windhorst, Harrisburg Mayor John McPeek, Saline County States Attorney Molly Wilson, School Board President Chris Penrod, Harrisburg Superintendent Dr. Amy Dixon, other school personnel, police and many others. The guests arrived at East Side Intermediate School just before 11 a.m. and gathered in the library. When their hosts and hostesses joined them, they walked to the Harris-Pruett Building for lunch. During lunch, we sat with Penrod, president of Harrisburg School Board, and his hostesses Destiny and Harley. Before the guests left, they were given a bookmark made by the students. When the guests left and students returned to school for recess, a small clean-up committee went to work in the Harris-Pruett Building. Students put away folding chairs while the cooks and servers put away food. Thank you to Mrs. Willsey and her class. It was a fun day, and I enjoyed meeting Whyatte and Derious and some of their classmates. CHICAGO A 72-year-old man leaving his nephew's birthday party in Chicago was fatally shot as he walked to his car, police and family said. Cesar Patino was a victim of a drive-by shooting while his wife was collecting their coats from a party around 10 p.m. Sunday in the Logan Square neighborhood, police said. His wife found him on the ground. "I cannot even understand," son Edison Patino told the Chicago Sun-Times. "He was just going to his car." Cesar Patino, a grandfather, was a native of Ecuador who had lived in Chicago for 40 years. "All of us loved him," Edison Patino said. "If anybody ever needed a favor he was always there for us." Photos: Pritzker Military Archives Center A federal appeals court has struck down a part of Maryland's handgun licensing law, arguing that the state cannot add more regulations to acquiring them than for other weapons. A panel of the Virginia-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 vote where it said that the law was unenforceable in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling last year. The judges of the appeals court cited last summer's ruling that loosened New York gun laws. Maryland Handgun Licensing Law It added that the government must show efforts to regulate guns are "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." Under current Maryland law, an individual needs to get a handgun license on top of all other requirements to purchase a firearm. That particular license requires a buyer to pass a handgun safety course, and a background check, and wait up to 30 days. The majority opinion of the federal appeals court said that the additional requirements place an unnecessary burden on Second Amendment rights, as per The Hill. Judge Julies Richardson, who was appointed by former United States President Donald Trump, said that the challenged law restricts the ability of law-abiding citizens to possess handguns. He noted that while the state's law does not explicitly prohibit plaintiffs from owning handguns in the future, it does so now. He continued to say that this meant that while it does not permanently bar plaintiffs from owning handguns, it deprives them of that ability until their application is approved. The ruling of the federal appeals court on Tuesday is the second in recent months that limits Maryland gun control laws. It comes after a federal judge in late September ruled that the state's restrictions on where firearms can be carried were unconstitutional. That particular case was also based on the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling. The latter has served as the foundation for dozens of suits across the United States that seek to reverse gun control legislation. The law in question was passed by Democrats in 2013 following the shooting the year prior at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. At the time that the restrictive law was passed, advocates heralded the additional requirements as a way to deal with "straw purchasers" who bought firearms on behalf of people who could not pass background checks, according to the Washington Post. Read Also: Los Angeles Faces Mounting Criticism for Its Handling of Homelessness Following Freeway Fire Incident Addressing Gun Violence The Maryland State Police said that since the additional requirements were implemented, there have been more than 315,700 permits that were issued. The federal appeals court said that the law's waiting period could be critical in which the applicants could expect to face danger. Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore expressed his disappointment in the federal appeals court's ruling on the matter. He said that he would continue to fight for the law and noted that his administration is already reviewing the ruling and considering options. In a Tuesday statement, the governor said that common-sense gun laws are crucial in protecting residents of the state from the gun violence that has terrorized communities. He added that he is determined to do more than just give out thoughts and prayers for the relatives of victims, said WTOP. Related Article: How to Prevent Gun-Related Suicides: Here's What Experts Suggest @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Low Country Health Care System is working with medically underserved people throughout Bamberg County and other counties, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Ashley L. Barnes said recently. We provide comprehensive primary care. You come in for your doctor's visits, but we also assess the needs in the community, Barnes said. Barnes gave a presentation on the federally funded, nonprofit health center before Bamberg County Council on Nov. 6. LCHCS has offices in Bamberg, Allendale, Barnwell and Aiken counties. Bamberg Specialty Services and Padgett Family Practice are its Bamberg sites. The services offered by the Bamberg Specialty Services office include an infectious disease physician and pharmacy. Padgett Family Practice is right across the street from that. We've added some additional providers since they joined us. We just did a renovation to the inside of Padgett Family, Barnes said. Property was also purchased behind the family practice office to increase parking space. We have LISW, a licensed independent social worker, and a psychiatric nurse practitioner. We have a psychiatrist that works with us on a part-time basis and we're working with different manufacturing companies and (different) companies from around to help provide services to their employees, Barnes said. Telehealth services and a mobile unit have also been added to the service lineup. LCHCS has more than 45 providers. We do see currently over 19,000 patients. In 2022, we had over 84,000 visits and over 3,700 virtual visits. ... Just to show our economic impact, we do have over 348 total jobs. We bring in about $41.5 million in income to the communities that we serve, and annual tax revenues of over $4 million, Barnes said. I would just love for anybody to contact me if you have anything that Bamberg in particular needs. We really want to be responsive to that, she said. The LCHCS can be reached by phone at 803-632-2533 or by email at www.lowcountryhealthcaresystem.com. In other business: County Administrator Joey Preston presented a progress report on Palmetto Rural Telephone Co-Ops work to expand broadband service in the county. Construction started June 26, with completion dates for Colston Road and Hunters Chapel set for January. Individuals can contact the PRTC website at prtc.us to learn more about services and pricing, or call directly at 843-538-2020. Preston said more community meetings will be held to discuss the countys development of a broadband system that will make high-speed internet affordable for underserved communities with the help of a $12 million federal grant. Well try to have at least one a month, Preston said. The administrator said work at the county courthouse is also continuing, including stabilizing the structure. That work has got to be done before some of the other work, he said. The next phase will include bidding out work to be done on the roof and windows. Preston also reported that a ceremony for the opening of the countys new health department and veterans affairs offices will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, Dec. 8. The administrator also announced that the countys EMS advisory committee will meet at 5 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 30 at the courthouse annex building. Career navigator Bartel Boone spoke about Youth Build, a community-based initiative providing youth 16-24 with career counseling, work experience, leadership development, GED prep and building construction and health care training. The S.C. Regional Housing Authority #3 was awarded a $1.5 million grant to start up a Youth Build program serving Bamberg and Barnwell counties. We focus on youth that have dropped out of high school. ... We partner with other agencies like adult ed, DSS, Denmark Tech to help them get the education they need to succeed, Boone said. Our goal is to get them back into the community, get them off the street because we seem to have an issue with that, Boone said. The initiative has an office in Barnwell County, but will be working with Amazing Grace Ministries to have a presence in Bamberg County. Theyre going to give us some room to work out of their building, probably in January, Boone said. Individuals can contact Boone at 803-450-6484 or bboone@scrha3.org for more information. County Treasurer Alice Johnson gave the August and September financial reports, stating that in August the county had $868,717.05 in income and expenditures of $914,887.18, for a negative balance of $46,170.13. When the negative bank balance at the end of July ($599,843.47) was added, the countys regular account stood at a negative $646,013.60. In September, the county had $467,489.11 in income and expenditures of $983,333.38, for a negative balance of $515,844.27. When the negative bank balance at the end of August ($646,013.60) was added, the countys regular account at the end of September stood at a negative $1,161,857.87. She said the receipt of real estate taxes and the transfer of property tax rollback funds will hopefully make October look a lot better. County Finance Director T.M. Thomas reported the general fund had year-to-date revenues as of the end of September of $1,741,358, with expenses coming in at $2,056,592, for a negative general fund balance of $315,233. He said county departments continue to operate within their budgets. Council passed two resolutions, one honoring the countys 1,300 veterans and designating Nov. 11, 2023 as Bamberg County Veterans Day, and the other honoring the South Carolina National Guard. Council heard from Bamberg County Coroner Wallace Hicks, stating the county had 144 deaths to date. Im looking at the numbers, and it concerns me. Our population is declining, and our deaths are going up due to natural deaths. A lot of our deaths in the county are cardiac arrest/heart attack, he said. Two people are accused of breaking into a pharmacy in St. Matthews. A similar burglary occurred in Elloree. Zakur Sir Nelson Tindal, 24, of Sims Street, Sumter, is charged with one count each of criminal conspiracy, malicious injury to real property valued $2,000 or less and non-violent second-degree burglary. A 15-year-old male from Sumter was also taken into custody, according to the Calhoun County Sheriffs Office. The Calhoun County break-in took place at 2:40 a.m. Nov. 16 at the St. Matthews Pharmacy, located at 708 F R Huff Drive. Burglars grabbed multiple cigars and cigarettes from behind the checkout counter, an incident report said. An alarm went off. A St. Matthews police officer responded and saw four males, all dressed in black, running from the rear of the pharmacy. The sheriffs office brought a tracking dog to the scene. The dog led its handler through residential yards to the rear of a Mack Street home. The dog found Tindal and the 15-year-old, the report claims. The others who spotted at the pharmacy remain at-large. Someone broke into Ellorees Delta Pharmacy, located at 2611 Cleveland Street, less than an hour before the St. Matthews burglary. The burglars tossed a cinder block through a window, Elloree Police Chief Shawn Murphree said. They didnt get their hands on any narcotics because everything was locked in the safe, Murphree said. The burglary was captured on surveillance video. Murphree says same vehicle was used in both burglaries. The department has not yet charged anyone in the Elloree burglary. If convicted, Tindal faces up to 10 years in prison. Investigations are ongoing in several South Carolina pharmacy break-ins in recent months. If anyone has information about these incidents, or others like them, they are asked to call Crimestoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC. Callers dont have to give their names. South Carolina State Universitys Call Me MiSTER program on Wednesday received its second $90,000 grant to boost its efforts to place Black male teachers in South Carolina classrooms. Get The Times and Democrat app today Local news has never been this personal. Free to download. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access. Provided through the Leveraging Innovation for Educator Excellence (Life2) federal grant housed at Midlands Community Development Corporation (MCDC), funds will be used to recruit and train more Black male educators for high-need schools via Call Me MiSTER. SC State Call Me MiSTER cohort members, Life2 grant partners and SC State and Clemson officials SC State Call Me MiSTER cohort members, Life2 grant partners and SC State and Clemson officials with the check from Midlands Community Develop "Strong programs like Call Me MiSTER help us to build on the legacy SC State as we continue to prepare African American teachers to diversify the districts in the state of South Carolina -- particularly African American males, said Dr. M. Evelyn Fields, dean of SC States College of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences. The partnership with Life2 helps us to accomplish that goal. SC State Call Me MiSTER cohort members Kennington Rogers and Keenean Johnson SC State Call Me MiSTER cohort members Kennington Rogers and Keenean Johnson address the audience at the Life2 grant announcement. MCDC also provided a Life2 grant in the same amount to the program in 2022. South Carolina State, you should really be proud, Dr. Lorraine Peeples, executive director of MCDC, said after SC States MiSTER cohort members were introduced. They are extremely intelligent young men. They always respond well, and what I really love about them they are hospitable. The passion they have for education -- the passion they have for working with young people is beyond what you expect out of young men at this stage of their lives, she said. In accepting the grant, SC States new director for Call Me MiSTER, Costanzo Bryant-Martin, thanked the MCDC Life2 partners, the universitys leadership, faculty and staff, and the students in SC States Call Me MiSTER cohort for their dedication to the program. I think its so important to let you all know -- as internal and external stakeholders how important you are in ensuring that this program, this department and this institution can be successful, he said. The program both educates future teachers at the collegiate level in a learning cohort and provides mentors to area high school students. Call Me MiSTER focuses on personal growth, academic excellence, character development, social competencies, goal setting, self-awareness, self-esteem, Black history, finance, leadership, and advocacy. Founded in 2000, Call Me MiSTER was established to reduce the shortage of Black male teachers in South Carolina and has since grown to include teacher education programs across the country. But the challenge persists. Bryant-Martin noted that less than 3% of all teachers in South Carolina are Black men. Nationwide, that figure is 1.3%. The thing is -- 15% of our students are African American, so we have our students here, but we dont have the representation in teachers, he said. But were changing that. Life2 is changing that. The Call Me MiSTER program is changing that. Our department and our institution are changing that. SC State has fostered students in a MiSTER cohort for more than 15 years, providing dozens of Black male educators to South Carolinas school districts. Also on the program for Wednesdays presentation were Roderick Cummings, Life2 project manager; Dr. Frederick M.G. Evans, SC State provost and vice president for academic affairs; and Clemson Universitys Dr. Roy Jones, state director for Call Me MiSTER. Dominion Energy is bringing a carrot and stick proposal to Elloree and other towns with street lights in its service area. The electric utility wants to replace Ellorees 121 mercury vapor street lights with LED lights. The work could be done in about four weeks in the first quarter of 2024. Dominion says the LED lights shine white, crisp light for better coverage, better lumen use, better color rendering and better visibility. Their reduced wattages will reduce the Town of Ellorees carbon footprint by approximately 45,192 kilowatt-hours per year the equivalent of four houses, according to the utility. Dominion is offering the Town of Elloree a $377.56 per month incentive for the next five years to make the switch. With the incentive, the towns electric bill for the street lights would go down by $183.45 per month. Get The Times and Democrat app today Local news has never been this personal. Free to download. Subscribers enjoy unlimited access. Those are the carrots. One of the sticks is that Dominion wants a 10-year contract, with no guarantees that the incentive will continue beyond the first five years. The other stick is that shortly there will be no replacement parts for the (current) lights. If they go out, you may not get them fixed, Mayor Michael Fanning told the town council during their monthly meeting on Monday, Nov. 13. Councilman Bill Brandenburg noted that Dominion did not disclose the cost of replacing burned-out LED lights as compared to mercury vapor bulbs. The council accepted the report as information. No vote was taken, but Fanning indicated its pretty much a done deal. ELLOREE TOWN COUNCIL: Variety of events scheduled in Elloree Following a successful Trash to Treasures community-wide yard sale, additional community events were announced during the Elloree Town Councils monthly meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 10. The mayor also reported that a group is seeking to place a referendum on the ballot in the November 2024 general election to create a countywide recreation department and a permanent 1 percent sales tax to pay for it. Orangeburg County is one of only three counties in South Carolina that does not have a county recreation department, he said, and the change would make the City of Orangeburgs facilities available to all county residents. ELLOREE TOWN COUNCIL: Rezoning advances plans for 100+ new homes A developer has gotten another step closer to building more than 100 new residences along Old Number Six Highway on Ellorees east side, within walking distance of the historic downtown district. Water Commissioner Jane Singh reported that 680 customers, including six new customers and two new rental customers, were billed in October. She said the wastewater system was flagged for a couple of flow violations that came from the high intake of rain. She assured customers that the violations had nothing to do with the quality of drinking water. She said that maintenance personnel have encountered grease clogs in wastewater pipes. She asked customers not to flush or pour grease down their sinks. She said the utility wants to perform smoke tests to find leaks in the utility system when money becomes available. Police Chief Shawn Murphree reported that his department responded to 85 calls for service and issued 20 citations and 44 warnings in October. He said a woman from out of town lost her cellphone in Joe Miller Park. The new K-9 was deployed on an article search and found the phone in 10 minutes. It was reported that the towns Halloween Trunk or Treat, the museums annual Lowcountry Boil, and a privately sponsored Thanksgiving dinner giveaway all drew crowds and were successful events. Residents were reminded that the annual 5K fun run is scheduled for Saturday morning, Dec. 2. Contact Kristie Anderson at Kristie@SCLakeLife.com or 803-387-9459 or Marti Stubbs at 803-532-5097 for more information. The Christmas parade is scheduled for Saturday evening, Dec. 2. For more information, visit Town Hall or call 803-897-2821. The council gave first reading to an ordinance updating the business license class schedule, as required by state law. Second and final reading will be considered at the Elloree Town Councils next monthly meeting, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 11, in the Town Hall, 2719 Cleveland St. Early arrival is encouraged. Please use the side door off Lafayette Alley. Contact Town Clerk Freda Trupiano at 803-897-2821 for more details. (TBTCO) - Tai Hoi nghi Cong uoc khung cua Lien hop quoc ve bien oi khi hau lan thu 28, du kien dien ra tu ngay 30/11 en het 12/12/2023 tai Dubai. Ngan hang Phat trien Lien My (IDB) cho biet, se tang so tien tai tro tu 50 ty USD hien tai len 150 ty USD trong 10 nam toi cho cac du an phuc hoi va giam nhe nham giai quyet cac cuoc khung hoang khi hau o My Latinh va Caribe. Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Keith Kautz will retire in March, but not because he wants to. Im not tired, Im not burned out, I dont feel like Im not useful, he told WyoFile during an interview at the supreme court building in Cheyenne. In fact, I feel the opposite. At 70, Wyoming Supreme Court and district court judges are required to retire. Many have questioned the ethics and practicality of the age ceiling, but an effort to increase it to 75 failed at the ballot box last year. Kautz believes there will be smart younger people to take his place and that hell find new opportunities, but he laments lost talents like judges Timothy Day, Michael Davis and Ed Grant, who died in 2020 after retiring from the bench a decade before. Still, Kautz said, when I signed up for the job, the age [to retire] was 70. And so Im not sour grapes. Kautz is leaving as a major case involving Wyomings two abortion bans is expected to come before the justices. Gov. Mark Gordon a defendant in that case will choose Kautzs replacement. Both he and Chief Justice Kate Fox said they have faith in Wyomings judicial system and residents respect for the court, but Kautz acknowledged the job occasionally comes with public disapproval. Kautz ascendance Kautz grew up on a farm near Huntley, Wyoming, and Lyman, Nebraska. He later applied his early lessons in the importance of work to the courtroom, he once told the Star Herald. After graduating from Torrington High School, Kautz attended the University of Wyoming, where he got a bachelors of science in 1975, followed by a law degree in 1978. Not too long after, he joined a law firm in Torrington where he worked until 1993, when Gov. Mike Sullivan appointed him to become a district court judge. Kautz was a finalist for a seat on the states highest court in 2012 and earned Gov. Matt Meads appointment in 2015. In all, Kautz has been active in Wyomings legal scene for nearly 45 years. When Mead appointed Kautz, he said the judges experience in private practice and his exemplary work on the bench for more than two decades gives me confidence that he will serve Wyoming and its citizens well on the Supreme Court. While he feasibly could make more money in private practice, Kautz said he loves being a judge. And serving on the Supreme Court is even better than hearing cases at the district level. As a trial judge, you do that by yourself. Scary. Here, its wonderful. I have four colleagues that are all smarter than me, and we have great conversations, he said. So that helps remove some of the stress. I also dont see any personal antagonism here. The admiration between Kautz and Fox was palpable as they sat next to each other for the interview. They might not have always agreed and frequently didnt but Fox said working with him made her a better justice. Its been hard, but hard in a great way, she said of working with Kautz. Because he and I have challenged each other and grown and been better because of it. And Im gonna get a little sentimental. He felt the same. Sometimes you have colleagues that push you and challenge you, he said. Its almost like theyre the devils advocate, but its that theyre doing good work. And theyre making you rise to their level. He said Fox was that for him, and I need that. And I think its made me significantly better, working with her. I think we would have been good partners all along. While they acknowledge differing approaches and philosophies, the two said they have a common passion for the rule of law and enjoy working through the process with each other. After a momentary pause, Kautz told Fox Thank you. Thank you, Fox said back, with a few tears in the corner of her eyes. Judicial scrutiny Judges must possess thick skin, Kautz said. He recalled a time when he entered a barber shop while serving as a district court judge in Torrington. One of the men there was angry over a recent decision. And I got an earful, he said. In a democracy, people get to do that, even if theyre uninformed. And so I guess there are two ways to respond. One is to yell back, namecall or even call the sheriff to hold him in contempt, Kautz said. The other, which he chose, was to explain his approach and guarantee that he did his best with the evidence presented. That wasnt satisfactory to him, but thats just the way it goes, he said. Kautz believes strongly in peoples ability to utilize free speech, but laments some of the divisive rhetoric in todays wave of politics, going far beyond the judiciary. Its unfortunate, he said. I dont think thats productive. But Im not willing, in a democracy, to say You cant have the rhetoric. So, its kind of looking at this from the big picture, not just inside the judiciary, but what do we do? Fox added that she hopes people can have a little grace for judges, whore people with hard jobs. And about attorneys, she added, theyre officers of the court, theyre people whove also sworn an oath to uphold the rule of law. And so of attorneys, I would expect a little more respect for the judiciary. Recently, Wyoming attorney Cassie Craven appeared on Fox News to say U.S. District Judge Alan Johnsons recent ruling made her case regarding a sorority into a political issue. Four other attorneys disputed her claim, backing the judges opinion that the court didnt have a role to play in this instance. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, called Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County an activist after she temporarily blocked a sweeping abortion ban from taking effect. In other states, animus toward judges has extended beyond rhetoric. After a Maryland judge was murdered, Fox released a statement that said the justices appreciate the respect Wyomingites have for the judiciary, but acknowledged that judges here and throughout the U.S. have received increasing threats of violence in recent years. Judges call balls and strikes, and they perform many services for the people of Wyoming; they should never be the target of peoples dissatisfaction with the outcome of a case, Fox stated. Recent efforts to create a law prohibiting intimidation of judges failed to pass the Joint Judiciary Committee. Members of the U.S. Supreme Court have also come under intense scrutiny over gifts given to justices something largely prohibited by Wyomings own judicial conduct code. The national court recently passed its own ethics rules. Wednesday will be dry across Wyoming, but snow will begin to move in Wednesday night and may not completely exit the state until Sunday. Get the latest on temperatures, wind, snow timing, and snow amounts in our winter storm update video. THE current financial imbalance, which has the potential to deplete the National Insurance Boards assets by 2035, is not rooted in investment issues but rather stems from the challenges posed by this countrys ageing population, the acting chief operating officer, Business Services at NIBTT, Andy Edwards has said. A New Hampshire man who had no cars or furniture and was simply seen as a caretaker of a mobile home park was found to be a secret millionaire and left the town with $3.8 million after his death. The man, identified as Geoffrey Holt, lived a simple but curious life in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Residents of the town would see the man around the area in threadbare clothes while riding his lawn mower. He would go to the convenience store and park along the main road reading a newspaper or watching cars pass. New Hampshire Man Leaves $3.8 Million for Town Holt was also known for doing odd jobs for other people and rarely left Hinsdale. While he was teaching driver's ed to high schoolers, he did not own his own car. He instead opted to have a bicycle and finally his lawn mower. The man's mobile home that was located in the park was mostly empty of furniture and had no TV and no computer. Furthermore, the leg of his bed went through the floor of his mobile home, as per Fortune. Holt's best friend and former employer, Edwin "Smokey" Smith said that the elderly man seemed to already have what he wanted in life, which was not much. Earlier this year, the man died and he was revealed to actually be a multimillionaire. Additionally, he gave all of his money away to a community of roughly 4,200 people. The elderly man's will had brief instructions, which was to give $3.8 million to the town of Hinsdale so that it would benefit the community in the areas of education, health, recreation, and culture. The chairperson of the town select board, Steve Diorio said that no one probably had any idea that Holt was that successful financially. Diorio, who would occasionally wave at Holt from his car, added that the old man did not have a whole lot of family and chose to leave his fortune to the town where he lived. The money could go far in the Connecticut River town that is located between Vermont and Massachusetts. Read Also: NYPD To Spend $390 Million on Radio System To Encrypt Officers' Communications; Plan Draws Criticism A Secret Millionaire Holt's sister, Alison Holt, said that his brother had a learning disability, dyslexia. She was also aware that her late brother had seen quiet success in investing but did not know the extent of his earnings, according to Fox News. Alison continued to say that her brother was very smart in certain ways but he struggled when it came to spelling or writing. Their father was a professor, and she believes this added pressure on her brother to feel like he was disappointing their dad. So far, there have been no formal gatherings to discuss the actual plans for the money that Holt left to the town. Some residents have already proposed to upgrade the town hall clock, restore various buildings, and buy a new ballot counting machine. Many organizations are expected to apply for grants via a trust through the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, drawing from the interest of about $150,000 every year, said the Associated Press. Related Article: 55 Million Americans Expected to Travel for This Year's Thanksgiving @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Nailah Blackman believes shes entering her creative prime. Nailah, on the eve of her 26th birthday celebrations, says she is creatively firing and feels evolved. The Sweet & Loco singer will mark the occasion with a special performance, at La Tropical nightclub in San Fernando, tomorrow night. The public is invited to purchase tickets to the festivities at the door. 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 Israel-Hamas ceasefire has been confirmed by both sides' leaders. This means that hostages will be released and the pursuit against terrorists will be halted. On Wednesday, Nov. 22, the Israeli Prime Minister's office announced that they voted to approve the temporary ceasefire, which includes the release of 50 hostages by Hamas terrorists. These hostages include children and women; they are expected to be released over four days when the war pause starts in the Gaza Strip. Israeli, Hamas Leaders Agree to Four-Day Ceasefire According to Fox News' latest report, Israel and Hamas agreed on the temporary cease-fire for humanitarian purposes. Their decision was confirmed hours after the militant leaders said that negotiations were in their final stages. Qatari negotiators also helped to close the deal between the Israeli government and the Palestinian militant organization. In the four-day ceasefire, Israel agreed to stop its pursuit of Hamas. This means that the ground invasion and airstrikes of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will be halted. Specifically, aerial surveillance by Israel in the south of Gaza will be paused for four days. Meanwhile, aerial surveillance in the north of the Gaza Strip will be halted from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. local time during the ceasefire. Israel promised that no one would be attacked or arrested in all areas of the Gaza Strip during the war pause. Aside from this, humanitarian aid will also be allowed to enter Gaza. The ceasefire is expected to allow around 300 aid trucks to enter the Gaza Strip from Egypt each day during the four-day pause. Read Also: US Considers Labelling of Houthi Rebels as 'Terrorist' Group After Hijack of Cargo Ship 1:3 Hostage Release From Hamas, Israel The Guardian reported hostages will be the top priority during the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Israeli government officials said that 50 hostages will be released by Hamas. Meanwhile, the IDF will also release prisoners in exchange. Groups of 12 to 13 hostages are expected to be released per day. "Tonight, the Government has approved the outline of the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostages - women and children - will be released over four days," said the Prime Minister's office. "The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause," it added. However, since the hostage release will be a 1:3 ratio, Israel is expected to release a total of 150 Palestinians in exchange for the 50 hostages that Hamas will release. Related Article: US Claims Israel Hostage Release Deal Is Closer Than Ever; IDF Continues Pounding Hezbollah, Iran's Other Terrorist Groups @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Ultimately, the fate of the Report of the Commission of Enquiry (CoE) into the Paria Diving Tragedy is as important as the report itself. From all indications, the Commissions report contains a cauldron of hard truths. We can easily extrapolate from comments by CoE chairman Jerome Lynch, KC, that those truths will rock many a boat. But we too agree that the public interest demands immediate public view of its contents. In the summer of 1997, Kel Mitchell and Kenan Thompson saw their goofy movie, Good Burger, hit theaters in the U.S. While the teen comedy didnt fare too well with critics, it stole the hearts of young Nickelodeon fans who, to this day, harbor fond memories of the film that invented the strawberry jacuzzi. With the sequel hitting Paramount+ today, lets dive into some good trivia about the beloved 90s comedy and find out what Eds secret sauce really tastes like Click right here to get the best of Cracked sent to your inbox. 15 An Almost Animation Brian Robbins, the director of Good Burger, became the CEO of Paramount Pictures and, in 2021, said that he was looking into creating an animated series for the studios streaming service featuring Mitchell, Thompson and the occasional talking burger. Of course, we now know that they opted for a (mostly) live-action sequel instead. 14 Proto-Ed Got Kel Mitchell On All That The film is based on a sketch from Mitchell and Thompsons Nickelodeon teen sketch series, All That. In fact, Mitchell created and did an early version of Ed for his All That audition. I remember I was a sophomore in high school, he told A.V. Club. I had finals that week. I never forget a monologue, but I forgot my monologue when I went into the audition. I froze, and then they were like, You can go out, and you can go think about it and come back in. So I said, Cool. And then I went out, and I knocked over some of the camera cords, and the camera sailed and everything, and I was like, Okay. I ruined this audition. But they thought it was funny because I played it off in a funny way because Im real physical. I came back in, and I rocked the monologue, and then they told me to do impersonations, and I did all these crazy impersonations of my uncles and people Ive seen on the street in Chicago on the bus and stuff like that. I did a dude voice, and thats where Ed was kind of born. I did that there at the audition. They were just cracking up. 13 Theres Already Been a Sequel Back in 1998, Aladdin Paperbacks published a childrens novel titled Good Burger 2 Go that takes place following the film. It was penned by Steve Holland, a writer on shows like The Big Bang Theory and iCarly, and features Ed chasing a shortchanged customer around the world while the restaurant is running out of Eds Sauce. 12 The Good Burger Reunion Sketch In 2015, Thompson and Mitchell performed a reunion sketch on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The fans reaction made the two realize a sequel might not be the worst idea. Advertisement Advertisement 11 The Milli Vanilli Effect Eds hair was based on the infamous 90s German R&B act. I remember I went to the hair room, and I saw these braids, Mitchell told A.V. Club about creating Ed for the first sketch in All That. It was like these early Brandy 90s Milli Vanilli braids. I put those on, and it came to life. From there, it was history. 10 The Soundtrack Made the Billboard Charts Featuring Mitchell performing Were All Dudes with Less Than Jake and a track called Man by the Presidents of the United States of America, the Good Burger soundtrack hit number 101 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and number 65 on Billboards U.S. Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Advertisement Advertisement 9 Mitchell Wrote Were All Dudes in a Day I remember I flew out to Florida to record with them (Less Than Jake), and they were crazy like, bouncing around on the couches and everything, Mitchell told BuzzFeed. I wrote the song in one day at a hotel in L.A., and then I did it for the producers, and they flew me out to sit down with Less Than Jake. We recorded it in one day, and they still perform it. 8 The Spicoli Effect During an oral history with Complex, director Brian Robbins (who also co-created All That) revealed some inspiration behind the Good Burger sketch. We thought wed do a sketch about that guy at the fast-food restaurant whod be just like Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Kels basically doing Spicoli, he explained. Advertisement Advertisement 7 The Keanu Effect I really liked Keanu Reeves, and he has that type of voice with Vaya con Dios and all that, Mitchell explained to Complex about creating Ed, so I took it from there and watched a lot of Saved by the Bell and mixed those into this dude voice I would do all the time in (my hometown) Chicago for my friends. 6 The Where Are They Now? Automobile Addition After the movies release, the Burgermobile was first snatched up by the International Hamburger Hall of Fame and the Hamburger Museum in Florida. In 2019, the newly renovated 1975 AMC Pacer was sold to the Hi-Pointe Drive-In in St. Louis. Advertisement Advertisement 5 Introducing Linda Cardellini It was the Freaks and Geeks and Dead to Me stars first feature film. Thats my sisters favorite role that Ive ever played! It was so much fun, she said in her one-on-one interview with A.V. Club. It was my first film, and it was a fantastic part. I got to play crazy! Nobody knew who I was, and I got the part from the table read. 4 More Meat! Mitchell said during an interview back in 1997 that, at one point, There was over 1,750 pounds of meat on the set. Thompson added that eating those burgers some of which sat around for quite a while before scenes were filmed wasnt always that great an experience. I felt sorry for the extras who had to eat them with cold, clammy fries, he said. But on screen, those burgers look good. Advertisement Advertisement 3 COVID Killed Mannys El Loco Most fans know that the film was shot at Mannys El Loco in West Covina, an establishment thats been in business since 1971 but, sadly, had to close its doors when the pandemic hit in 2020. 2 Introducing Carmen Electra (in Comedy) Yes, we might never have laughed at Carmen Electra unsuccessfully running from Ghostface in that classic opening of Scary Movie if it werent for this silly kids movie. It was my first time doing physical comedy, she told Complex about her brief appearance in Good Burger. I didnt come to L.A. to be an actress. I was a dancer and had studied my whole life to do that. She added that the movie opened the door for me to do Scary Movie and all the other goofy stuff I love to do by letting the audience know that Im willing to make fun of myself. Advertisement Advertisement Under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit. That simple musing, muttered by accountant Leo Bloom while doing the books of down-on-his-luck producer Max Bialystock, would change the pairs lives forever. That was the premise of The Producers, the tale of two guys trying to put on the worst musical in Broadway history Springtime for Hitler so that they could pocket the money from the financiers and move to Rio. The 1967 film was Mel Brooks directorial debut and is still considered by many to be his best work. After nabbing Brooks an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, The Producers became a Tony-winning musical in 2001, followed by a film of the musical in 2005. It also inspired an entire season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which saw Brooks hiring Larry David to star in The Producers on Broadway in a meta-scheme to tank the hit show and finally be free of it. In honor of the landmark comedy classics 56th anniversary, here are 56 tidbits to celebrate the occasion Click right here to get the best of Cracked sent to your inbox. 56 A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden It started out in life as just a title, Brooks has said about the genesis of The Producers. During a 1962 press conference for the musical All American, which Brooks wrote the book for, someone asked him what he was working on next. He joked, Springtime for Hitler. But that joke stuck in his head, and the idea for The Producers was born. 55 Darling Bloom, Glorious Bloom Leo Bloom is named for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist in the James Joyce novel Ulysses. I dont know what it meant to James Joyce, Brooks has said, but to me, Leo Bloom always meant a vulnerable Jew with curly hair. 54 Im Terribly Sorry I Caught You with the Old Lady As for where Bialystock came from, Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew there was a good story in the adventures of this producer that I was working for when I was 16 years old, Brooks said in the films Making of DVD extra. That producer was Benjamin Kutcher, and much like Max Bialystock, he would have sex with little old ladies to raise money for his theatrical productions. 53 There Is a Lot More to Me Than There Is to Me Brooks has said the characters are also based on himself: Max and Leo are me, the ego and id of my personality. Bialystock tough, scheming, full of ideas, bluster, ambition, wounded pride. And Leo, this magical child. Advertisement Advertisement 52 Do the Books! Do the Books! Brooks first thought of The Producers as a novel, then a play, before deciding it was a film. 51 Get on the Phone. Send Out a Casting Call. Call Every Agent in Town. I Want to See Everybody. Everybody! Brooks was aided in writing the script by TV writer Alfa-Betty Olsen, who worked as his secretary and would also cast The Producers. Advertisement Advertisement 50 Please. Please Make Audition. Make Audition All Over the Office The screenplay was written in the office of Broadway producer Lore Noto, who produced The Fantasticks! Olsen and Brooks would meet there and write, with casting also being done in the same office. 49 I Want to Be a Producer Everything was kind of makeshift, Olsen said about working with Brooks during that period. It was just so evident that Mel wanted it very much. You could feel him reaching for the brass ring. Writing The Producers was Mel creating himself; he wanted to declare himself on the world. Advertisement Advertisement 48 Ah, Rio, Rio by the Seao, Meo, Myo, Meo Some of the script was also written on Fire Island at Brooks and his wife Anne Bancrofts beach house. 47 Im Leo Bloom. Im an Accountant. Im from Whitehall and Marks Brooks met Gene Wilder backstage at a play featuring Wilder and Bancroft. Brooks told him about a screenplay he was writing called Springtime for Hitler and invited Wilder out to Fire Island for a weekend with him and Bancroft. While there, Brooks read him the first 30 pages of what would become The Producers and offered him the part of Leo Bloom before the script was even finished. It became Wilders breakout role. Advertisement Advertisement 46 Its Practically a Love Letter to Hitler! In Vanity Fairs comprehensive 2004 history of The Producers, Sam Kashner wrote, It took six years to bring the concept to the screen. Once Brooks had started to make the rounds with his 30-page treatment, he quickly found that all the major studio heads recoiled at the idea of Hitler as a comic figure. It was just too tasteless, too outrageous. So Brooks tried independent producers and found much the same reaction, until a friend set up a meeting at a coffee shop in Manhattan with an independent producer named Sidney Glazier. 45 Hes Gonna Be a Producer Assistant director Michael Hertzberg has said, Sidney Glazier was larger than life. Sidney was just loud and big. He had a huge, huge heart gigantic. So who took a risk on this crazy man with this crazy thing Springtime for Hitler? If it wasnt for Sidney, there would be no Producers, there would be no Broadway show, there would be no nothing. Advertisement Advertisement 44 I Never in a Million Years Thought Id Ever Love a Show Called Springtime For Hitler Brooks first met Glazier at a coffee shop, where he performed all the parts in his 30-page treatment. Glazier began choking with laughter and declared, Were gonna make it! I dont know how, but were gonna make this movie! 43 Its the Inner Hitler Were After. The Young Beautiful Hitler, Who Danced His Way to Glory When they took the script to Universal, they suggested swapping Hitler for Mussolini instead. Make it Mussolini. Springtime for Mussolini. Mussolinis nicer, said studio head Lew Wasserman. Brooks and Glazier refused and kept shopping it around. Advertisement Advertisement 42 Thats a Funny Name for a Play After struggling to find people to make Springtime for Hitler, Brooks and Glazier convinced Joseph E. Levine to finance the film. However, Brooks did have to compromise on the films title, as theater companies refused to have Hitler on their marquee. Thats how Springtime for Hitler became The Producers. 41 Step Two, We Hire the Worst Director in Town Levine believed in the project but was unsure about allowing the unproven Brooks to direct. Brooks agreed to direct a commercial for Frito-Lay starring Wilder and with Olsen as the casting director. After that, Levine changed his tune. Advertisement Advertisement 40 I Want That Money! Once Levine agreed to put up the other half of the money, Brooks was given 40 days to make the film on a budget of $941,000, and we couldnt go a penny over, said Brooks. 39 That Slimy, Sleazy Max Bialystock! Brooks always saw multiple Tony winner Zero Mostel for the part of Max Bialystock, but Mostel was originally uninterested. As Vanity Fair explained, He didnt want to follow up his role as the beloved Tevye (from Fiddler on the Roof) by playing a Jewish producer going to bed with old women on the brink of the grave. Fortunately, Mostels wife convinced him otherwise. Advertisement Advertisement 38 The King of Broadway! Of working with the notoriously difficult Mostel, Brooks has said, Zero Mostel was heaven and hell. When in a good mood, he was cooperative. He was ebullient, sweet, creative, and impossible. It was like working in the middle of a thunderstorm. 37 Give Me Those Books You Fat Walrus! When Brooks and Mostel would feud on set, Brooks would ask, Is that fat pig ready yet? Meanwhile, Mostel would contest, The director? What director? Theres a director here? Advertisement Advertisement 36 We Find the Defendants Incredibly Guilty Mostel was especially difficult to work with during the courtroom scene. However, Hertzberg revealed he later figured out that it was because of Mostels experience being blacklisted from Hollywood during the Red Scare. 35 Youre Not, As You Americans Say, Dragging My Leg, Are You? A year before filming The Producers, Mostel was hit by a bus and had chronic knee pain throughout much of the production. Advertisement Advertisement 34 Oh, Max, Max, I Love You Max Regarding Mostels performance, Olsen said, Film was not his medium. He didnt have a clue. But what he did on The Producers was quite nice; it was always the lowest take, the take with the least volume, the most human take, that was chosen. 33 Goodbye Forever, Bloom While Wilder had been promised the part of Leo Bloom, a young Dustin Hoffman was also considered for the role. Hoffman dropped out of the running when The Graduate came up. Advertisement Advertisement 32 Say Goodbye to Petty Clerk The Pink Panther and Dr. Strangelove actor Peter Sellers was also looked at for Bloom. He even accepted the part, but he never got back to Brooks, which led to the role going to Wilder. 31 Dont Worry. Ill Kiss It and Make It Well Despite having Brooks approval, Wilder had to audition for Mostel, who was allowed refusal of co-stars. In an interview with NPR, Wilder recalled the experience: I went to the office on a Thursday or Friday morning and knocked on the door, and Mel opened it. I saw Zero Mostel in the background. And he said, Come on in, come on in. Gene, this is Z. Z, this is Gene. And I put out my hand to shake hands with him, and he took my hand. And he pulled me up to his face, and he gave me a kiss on the lips. All my nervousness went out the window. And I think he must have done it on purpose because he understood actors and how I would naturally be a little nervous doing this. And I gave a very good reading, and then I got the part. Advertisement Advertisement 30 You Know Who I Used to Be? Wilder also credited Mostel with helping him grow as an actor. I was a very shy person in those days, and working with Zero, who was bigger than life, helped me grow, explained Wilder. Zero was a strong influence on me. Wed have lunch together a sandwich and a cup of soup and he would talk to me about the days of the blacklisting and everything he went through. And they ruined his life for a while. 29 Hysterics Have a Way of Severely Depleting Ones Blood Sugar At a TCM festival for the films 50th anniversary, Brooks recalled filming the blue blanket scene with Wilder: It was five o clock, and I said to Gene, Were gonna do the blue blanket scene. And he said, But Im not ready now. I need time. Im tired. Its the end of the day. Ive got to have energy, and I dont have it. Well, what gives you energy? Chocolate. So I ran out, and I bought Hershey bars and made him eat two. Advertisement Advertisement 28 If You Got It, Flaunt It At the same event, Brooks recalled an effort for him to recast Wilder with someone better looking. Joe Levine, after seeing one week of dailies, said, Ill give you another $50,000 to find an actor whos better looking. He didnt get it, Brooks said. 27 We Are Seeking Mr. Franz Liebkind Kenneth Mars, who played Springtime for Hitler playwright Franz Liebkind, was originally considered for the role of its director, Roger DeBris, but Mars argued for, and eventually got, Liebkind. Advertisement Advertisement 26 He Keeps Birds. Dirty, Disgusting, Filthy, Lice-Ridden Birds It was Mars idea to put bird droppings on Liebkinds helmet (as Liebkind cared for pigeons). Brooks, ever the micromanager, resisted at first but finally agreed. They even argued over how many spots would be on the helmet before eventually settling on four. 25 The Fuhrer Here Was a Painter! Brooks didnt like it when his actors improvised lines, but one of Mars made it through: Churchill and his rotten paintings. The Fuhrer here was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in von afternoon two coats! Advertisement Advertisement 24 Hes Wearing a German Helmet For the eight weeks of shooting, Mars lived in his costume stained suspenders; ratty, military-issue woolen underwear; a Nazi helmet, Vanity Fair reported. 23 Ulla Dance? When Lee Meredith was cast as Ulla, Brooks told her shed have to lose 10 pounds. I lost 12 pounds. I was petrified, she said years later. Advertisement Advertisement 22 A Receptionist That Cant Speak English. What Will People Say? To prepare for her audition, Meredith checked out a book on Swedish accents from the library the night before her audition. 21 Dont Be Stupid, Be a Smarty Brooks has an audio-only cameo in the film. He dubbed in the line, Dont be stupid, be a smarty. Come and join the Nazi Party during the Springtime for Hitler opening number. Advertisement Advertisement 20 Tonight, New York. Tomorrow, the World! Much of the movie was shot at the production center studio at 221 West 26th Street. 19 What Can We Do, Blow Up the Theatre? The now demolished Playhouse Theatre on West 48th Street was where they shot the Springtime for Hitler scenes. Advertisement Advertisement 18 Step Four: We Open on Broadway, and Before You Can Say Step Five, We Close on Broadway On November 22, 1967, The Producers had a limited opening in suburban Philadelphia. It bombed. I could have opened a Regal Shoe Store and drawn a bigger crowd, said Brooks. 17 Where Did I Go Right? The Producers had a weak opening along with mixed reviews but got a giant boost from one-time Leo Bloom contender Peter Sellers. After seeing the film, Sellers took out full-page ads in the trades, calling it a phenomenon that occurs only once in a life span. Advertisement Advertisement 16 You Have Exactly 10 Seconds to Change That Disgusting Look of Pity into One of Enormous Respect Again, Brooks won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for The Producers in 1969. It was his second Oscar, the first being for a short cartoon film called The Critic in 1964. 15 Dont Pay Attention. Hes Crazy I didnt think Id win the Academy Award, Brooks said. When Frank Sinatra called my name, I yelled from the audience, Take another look at the paper! He looked at me like I was crazy, and I didnt prepare a speech. Advertisement Advertisement 14 May I Take Your Hat, Your Coat and Your Swastikas? Despite its success, some Jewish organizations were infuriated by the films subject matter. As Brooks explained in 1968, You really couldnt blame them. People actually had relatives in the Holocaust. Decades later, another audience member got angry when The Producers hit Broadway. When he saw Brooks, he said, How dare you! I was in World War II. Brooks replied, So was I. I didnt see you there. 13 Thats Exactly Why We Want to Do This Play To Show the World the True Hitler, the Hitler You Knew, the Hitler You Loved, the Hitler with a Song in His Heart As to why he finds Hitler ripe for comedy, Brooks has explained, It is impossible to take revenge for six million murdered Jews. But by using the medium of comedy, we can try to rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths. Advertisement Advertisement 12 Dare I Say It? Frivolous Musicals The idea for a musical version originated from producer David Geffen, who had previously done Dreamgirls. Geffen called Brooks and suggested adapting The Producers for Broadway. 11 Bloom, You Know What You Are? In a 2001 interview, Matthew Broderick, who was cast as Leo Bloom on Broadway, said Wilder had always been one of his favorite actors. Advertisement Advertisement 10 Look at Me Now! Im Wearing a Cardboard Belt! In the same interview, Nathan Lane, the new Max Bialystock, said he found Mostel inspirational because, when he watched his performance, I didnt know you could do that on film, you could be that big and get away with it. 9 Think of the Tony! The Producers was nominated for 15 Tonys in 2001, winning 12 of them, including Best Musical. The lost awards resulted from several of the shows actors being nominated in the same category, including Lane and Broderick for Best Actor. (Lane won.) Advertisement Advertisement 8 Stick Your Chest Out, Shake Your Tush Susan Stroman, the musicals director, said that Ulla needed to be updated because the original Ulla was a cartoon. She explained, We had to have a blonde bombshell who is acceptable to a modern audience. We had to make Ulla a more real character and not portray her as dumb. 7 Ulla Dance Again When Cady Huffman was cast as Ulla on Broadway, Brooks told her, Dont gain an ounce. Not an ounce! Advertisement Advertisement 6 We Have an Appointment with Renowned Theatrical Director Roger DeBris Susan Stroman returned to direct the 2005 film, which brought the musical version to the big screen. 5 What You Say Is Break a Leg Mirroring Mostels knee issues during The Producers, Lane needed knee surgery just before he shot the 2005 film. Advertisement Advertisement 4 Im Back! Im Back As in the original film, Brooks had an audio-only cameo with (once more) the line, Dont be stupid, be a smarty. Come and join the Nazi Party. 3 Its the Worst Show in Town Unlike the original or musical, the 2005 adaptation wasnt a success, with many feeling that it was too stagey and better suited to the theater than film. Advertisement Advertisement 2 Hes So Crazy, Hes So Sloppy, Hes So... So... American! In 2016, Lane and Broderick reprised the roles of Bialystock and Bloom for a sketch on Jimmy Kimmel Live! where they were Donald Trumps campaign managers. A potential recount of ballots that will give Tucsons mayor and council the biggest boost in pay is back on the table. After issuing a statement last week that said a recount of the voters in Proposition 413 were not required by state law, the council on Tuesday said they will let state election officials decide whether a recount is required by law. Proposition 413 passed by 289 votes, official results released Friday show. A total of 96,799 votes were cast in the Nov. 7 election, the city said. This falls within the margins that trigger recounts, as set by state statutes. The law says a recount is required for any election with a margin of less than 1/2 of 1% (or any margin less than 0.5%). An automatic recount that was seemingly triggered was originally scheduled to last a few weeks, according to city manager Michael Ortega who informed city council of the timeline at their meeting last week. The idea was quickly scrapped. A news release sent by the city late Friday said a recount was not needed because the proposition is a local referred ballot measure that was called as a special election and administered as a special election. It went on to say state statutes that trigger recounts dont apply. As such, recount provisions, as codified in Arizona Revised Statues 16-661 through 16-667, do not apply, according to Fridays release. These recount provisions, relating to local municipal elections, only apply to elections of candidates to an elected officer rather than referred non-candidate measures, the city said at the time. In a meeting Tuesday, however, the council said it will let the Arizona secretary of states office, as well as the state attorney generals office determine if a recount is needed. At the Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday morning, District 4 Supervisor Steve Christy chided the council for its stance that the state law on recounts did not apply. He said the council should be ashamed of themselves and that today is a bad day for transparency. He then voted to approve the canvass. This obviously is a bad day for transparency when it comes to some kind of a situation where the city council and mayor are deciding to, what I determine, ignore the rules that have been laid out as far as triggering a recount, Christy said. This is a huge jump in pay, and I dont think its been successful by the populous as far as voting for a decade ... This amount theyre requesting is extraordinary. Christy initially indicated he would vote no on the certification. His vote flipped, however, after it was clarified that a recount could not be triggered until the county certified its results in the first place. District 3 Supervisor Sharon Bronson was the only opposing vote for certification. Steve Kozachik, Tucsons vice mayor, said ahead of Tuesdays online meeting that, that while he did not support rolling back the recount, proceeding with one would not change the results. In a time like this where scrutiny is all over the integrity of elections ... its probably the best look if the city at least petitions for a recount, he said. In other words, Kozachik said, let a judge decide. That way, he said, the council is checking all the boxes in the event a recount is in fact required. Prop. 413 increases the mayors annual salary from $42,000 to $97,750 and its six council members from $24,000 per year up to $76,500, a 130% and 220% boost, respectively. These salaries, which have been in place since 1999, lagged behind Tucsons median household income of $48,058 according to U.S. Census data. No criminal violations occurred in the death of a 9-year-old girl last week at a Tucson elementary school, investigators say. The Pima County Sheriffs Department said Tuesday night that it concluded its investigation into the girls Nov. 17 death. At this time no criminal violations have been identified, the department said in a news release. The girl, who has yet to be officially identified, died after a metal gate she was helping a school employee close fell on her at the end of the school day at Centennial Elementary, 2200 West Wetmore Road. The heavy metal gate fell when it disconnected from its support, school district officials have said. A GoFundMe page to help pay for the girls funeral had raised more than $30,000 by Tuesday evening. In a two-peaked tent on the University of Arizona campus, classicists cradled the spine of Homers Odyssey. In 10-minute increments, they completed a non-stop 11-hour reading of this ancient poem translated by Emily Wilson at a volume so intimate you had to tuck under the tent to hear it. The Homerathon, an annual event presented by Eta Sigma Phi (the Classics Honors Society), the Department of Religious Studies and Classics and the College of Humanities, featured classics students and teachers reading page by page the 592 pages of Homers epic Odyssey, chunked into 24 books. Throughout that recent Wednesday, graduate students, professors and undergraduates delivered lines theatrically as students on bikes and on foot strolled past. A few stopped to listen or gave curious looks before continuing their commutes. Readers switched off every 10 minutes, and every hour on the hour, volunteers delivered presentations, everything from personal digressions to readings of other ancient excerpts, to break up the readings. The Homerathon readers, made up of anywhere from five to two dozen people at a time, were sitting in two dozen white chairs, and while they anxiously awaited their turns, they studied Greek vocabulary or exchanged friendly greetings. As the day elapsed, listeners moved their chairs to avoid the midday sun. Nicholas Kaplan, a second-year UA student double majoring in information science and classics, was one of four students who stayed until the dark hour of 7:30 p.m. to complete the reading of the famous poem. As the four students rotated reading the remaining 37 pages, the annual SlutWalk highlighting victim blaming and rape culture in the U.S. was in full gear just across the walkway. Pound Town by Sexyy Red and Tay Keith resounded from event speakers while the undergraduates maintained their poetic lines of Homer. But even they couldnt help themselves from dancing and giggling along to the hip-hop beats as they inched closer to the end of Homers ancient text. Its Homerathon x SlutWalk, the crossover we needed, joked Ruby Staczek, president of Eta Sigma Phi. This was the classics majors second year helping the honor society organize the Homerathon. Staczek said she was first drawn to study classics when she read Platos Republic in high school. In college, she took an ancient philosophy class and discovered a desire to learn ancient languages and study the nuances lost in translation. Sometimes when its 12 a.m. and Im sitting studying my Greek Ill be like, I wont be able to speak this, its a dead language, Staczek said. But then therell be those moments where Im reading a famous passage in Homer and I understand why Im putting all these hours into a language that I wont be able to speak. I still think theres a lot to get out of it. University of Arizona Associate Professor Robert Groves, who teaches Greek and Latin literature, said that this all-day study of Homer is celebratory but isnt meant to position Greco-Roman culture above other facets of classical literature. One of the reasons people should care about classics is because it has been so formative for so many parts of the world, said Groves, who has been studying classics for more than 25 years. The Greeks and Romans put out ideas that have been chewed on and reinterpreted over the millennia in Europe, Africa, Asia that help explain why the world is how it is today. Its a way of understanding the way the world works, understanding the way that humans fit into the world and of digesting those things in a really fascinating, robust way, he added. Kaplan said he wished there was more attention on the vastness and nuance of what is bound by classics. Outside of Greco-Roman study, it includes Egypt, Persia and other ancient civilizations. Its a very challenging field of study, Kaplan said. Its fun for me, but the liberal arts arent necessarily these easy cop-out things. Im learning a language thats 2,500 years old. The UA Classics Department offers major emphases in Classical Civilizations and Classical Languages. Learn more at classics.arizona.edu. A selection process to replace Sharon Bronsons District 3 seat on the Pima County Board of Supervisors has been decided on, despite some heated discussion about potential interview questions. Bronson, whos been on the board for nearly three decades, announced last week that she will be stepping down from her position after suffering broken ribs in a fall at her home. The selection process is set to begin Wednesday, Nov. 22, at 9 a.m. and will last until Dec. 1, 5 p.m., the board said Tuesday in a news release. Whoever is appointed to fill Bronsons chair will hold the seat until November 2024, in which all five district seats are up for election. Applicants must be at least 18 years old and live in District 3. They must be a registered Democratic voter (as is Bronson) and provide the following: a resume, a completed financial disclosure statement and a conflict of interest affidavit. The county will also conduct background checks on all applicants. The board agreed Tuesday to review all applications by the Dec. 5 meeting. The League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson is set to hold a public forum during that meeting for all candidates. The board intends to vote on Bronsons replacement during its Dec. 19 meeting. The appointed person would complete the reminder of Bronsons term, through December 2024. During Tuesdays meeting, a heated exchange over a potential questionnaire began. Originally, a questionnaire was to be included in the required materials for applicants. Questions such as Whats the biggest challenge facing Pima County right now? and What sets you apart from the other candidates? were originally posed, among 13 others. Its original purpose, according to District 5 Supervisor Adelita Grijalva, was to help the board narrow down the applicant pool in the event a large number of applications is received. District 1 Supervisor Rex Scott first added to the discussion that some of the questions, such as If you were handed $1 million and told you could spend it on anything in the County, what would you spend it on? and others regarding specific policies shouldnt be included. District 4 Supervisor Steve Christy objected to the questionnaire altogether. Theres one question missing, and thats if you were a tree what kind of tree would be? he said. This is something thats never been done before and we do not need a questionnaire all else is fine but we do not need a questionnaire, Christy said. It looks like an agenda here for a candidate in order to fill some sort of litmus test that meets certain requirements that are attractive to certain supervisors. Bronson, in her last of 630 Board of Supervisors meetings shes attended, likened the questionnaire to Nazi Germany several times. This sounds like Nazi Germany I mean who do you want to elect, Adelita? Bronson said to the board chair. Im just so disappointed it is not a tool it is YOUR tool. Bronson did not explain her Nazi Germany reference, nor why she thinks this questionnaire was tailored for whom Grijalva wants in the position. In response, Grijalva and the supervisors removed the questionnaire from the required materials. I think that there clearly doesnt seem to be consensus on the questionnaire, I dont want to be accused of trying to manipulate this process in any way, Grijalva said. I dont want that to be something thats maligning this process or have Supervisor Bronson feeling that Im, in any way, trying to manipulate or rig whatever this process is. I dont appreciate that at all, and thats absolutely not the case. Bronson, who was first elected to the board in 1996, won re-election six times and served as the first woman appointed as chair of the board. South Africa's parliament has voted in favor of a motion that seeks to shut down the Israeli embassy located in Pretoria as well as the suspension of ties over the Middle Eastern nation's assault on Gaza. The action is seen as largely symbolic because it would be up to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's government to choose whether or not to implement it. The motion is calling for the closure of the embassy and the suspension of diplomatic relations until a ceasefire is reached. It passed on Tuesday with 248 votes in favor and 91 votes against. South Africa Votes To Shut Down Israeli Embassy It was introduced by the left-wing opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters and was supported by the ruling African National Congress. The groups that opposed the motion were members of the centrist, white-majority, largely pro-Israel Democratic Alliance. President Ramaphosa had previously said that his country believes that Israel is committing war crimes and genocide with its continuous assault on the Gaza Strip. This is the region where Palestinian authorities have said more than 14,100 people were killed due to Jerusalem's air and ground assault, as per Aljazeera. The war between Israel and the Hamas militant group in Gaza was triggered when the Palestinian armed group made a surprise attack on the former's southern region on Oct. 7. It was reported to have resulted in the deaths of roughly 1,200 people. The recent vote to shut down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria was held after Israel announced that it would recall Ambassador Eli Belotserkovsky from the region "for consultations." The African country has not had an ambassador in Israel since 2018 and has long been in support of the Palestinian cause for statehood. Several Palestinian rights groups have drawn parallels between Israeli's occupation and South Africa's decades-long apartheid regime. There have also been a growing number of international rights groups in recent years that said Israeli policies towards the Palestinians constitute the crime of apartheid. The spokesperson to the presidency, Vincent Magwenya said that Ramaphosa and the cabinet are engaged over the matter. He added that the issue remains the responsibility of the national executive, according to Reuters. Read Also: UN SecGen Fact-Checked by X After Comparing Deaths in Gaza with Casualties in Nearby Countries Supporting Palestinian Cause for Statehood The South African president and senior foreign ministry officials have been vocally critical of Israel's leadership in recent weeks. They have also called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate them for potential war crimes. Ramaphosa's latest comments regarding Israel were made in a virtual meeting of BRICS countries. It was attended by leaders of the bloc, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, said the Associated Press. Pemmy Majodina, the chief whip of the ANC, amended the last point of the EFF draft resolution to include words that require a ceasefire to be agreed by Israel. It also noted that the Middle Eastern nation needs to commit to binding United Nations-facilitated negotiations. In a social media post on Tuesday, the South African president said that they have demonstrated their grave concern at the death and destruction in Gaza. He wanted the BRICS meeting to stand as a clarion call to coordinate and strengthen actions to end the "historical injustice." Related Article: US Allegedly Considers Redesignating Houthi Rebels as 'Terrorist' Group After Hijack of Cargo Ship in Red Sea @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Tucsons Reid Park Zoo is expecting a baby zebra early next year, officials say. Anna, the former-sole female Grevys zebra at the zoo, will have its third offspring with male counterpart Ben, zoo officials said Wednesday in a news release. Grevys zebras are an endangered species, with only about 2,000 left in their home of Kenya and Ethiopia, zoo officials say. Zoo officials also announced that a new female is being added to its zebra herd. The Zoo is also welcoming Zuri, a new mature female Grevys zebra to its herd, the release said. An experienced mother herself, Zuri will be a help for Anna and her new foal once it is born. Zuri and Ben also have a breeding recommendation through the Grevys Zebra Species Survival Program (SSP), officials say. We are thrilled to have Zuri here as a new member of our zebra herd and to help Anna when the new foal is born, Nancy Kluge, Reid Park Zoos president and CEO said in the release. Zuri has a calm demeanor and will be a great presence in the habitat. Meanwhile, Haroo, an offspring of Ben and Annas, matured and was recently transferred to another zoo to establish his own herd, the release said. We are so happy for Haroo to see him thrive and enter the next significant stage of his life, Kluge said. PHOENIX A group aligned with Kari Lakes efforts to overturn the 2022 election has lost a bid to get records from a company Maricopa County uses to process ballots. In a new ruling, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge rejected the request by We The People to get access to any security camera footage of Runbeck Election Services, a firm that performs various election services for the county. We The People did not explain, and wasnt legally required to, why it wanted any videos showing items being delivered to or picked up from Runbecks facility. But Republican Lake, in her own allegations that the gubernatorial election she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs was rigged, has claimed Runbeck injected more than 35,000 ballots into the system before handing them over to the county for tabulation which Arizonas chief justice has said was a lie. Lakes attorney in that legal fight, Bryan Blehm, is also representing We The People. In seeking the documents, Blehm acknowledged that Arizonas Public Records Law applies only to officers and public bodies. But Blehm said there is an exception when a private corporation is the custodian of public documents. Unsupported conclusion The judge, Bradley Astrowsky, said thats true but only in circumstances when a public entity contracts with a private entity to perform an important governmental function and entirely outsources that function. Also, for the law to apply, the corporation would have to be in sole possession of the records because of the contract, he said. The judge said We The People did not perform an important governmental function. It accepted ballots and maintained them, he wrote. Nothing exits to suggest that Runbeck does any of the following: uses artificial intelligence or any other means to verify voters signatures; supervises Maricopa County in any of Maricopa Countys election process; administers the election; inspects any ballots; or counts any votes, Astrowsky said. Plaintiffs unsupported conclusion and desire that something be true does not make it true. Similarly, the judge said the argument about Runbeck having possession of security videos also fails. Plaintiffs cannot establish that Runbeck possesses security camera footage because of the contract, Astrowsky wrote. The contract does not require Runbeck to install or maintain any security-camera system or record or retain any security-camera footage. And he said We The People cited no authority to require the county or any independent contractor such as Runbeck to record what was going on at the facility. There was no immediate response from We The People or Blehm. Losing side must pay court costs The legal foray is going to cost the group. Astrowsky directed Runbeck and the county, which also was named as a defendant, to submit a statement of their legal costs which he will order We The People to pay. This isnt the first time the claims about injected ballots has resulted in Blehms side having to pay out. Blehm, Lake and another of her attorneys were fined $2,000 by the Arizona Supreme Court after they told the justices that the record indisputably reflects there were at least 35,563 early ballots illegally injected into the system. Chief Justice Robert Brutinel said that was a lie. None of this affects a separate public records request filed by We The People in connection with the 2022 election in which it is seeking to view images of the early ballot envelopes. Lake and her allies allege Maricopa County did not properly verify the signatures. Blehm has filed suit on behalf of Lake for the same documents, contending they are public records. Attorneys for the county, however, contend the state Election Code spells out that voter registration records shall not be accessible or reproduced by any person other than the voter. A trial judge heard those arguments but has not yet ruled. Other claim pending Blehm also filed an identical lawsuit on behalf of We The People but with a twist. In that case, he points out that the law contains a specific exemption allowing the documents release for news gathering purposes by a person engaged in newspaper, radio, television or reportorial work, or connected with or employed by a newspaper, radio or television station. We The People claims, through Blehm, it is a reportorial agency. There is, however, at least one key difference between a traditional news outlet and We the People: The latter is registered with the Secretary of States Office as a political action committee. And since the 2020 election it has reported more than $200,000 in donations, including $15,000 from Donald Trump ally Mike Lindell, who has promoted the idea that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer: Every time I pass the corner of Broadway and Wilmot, I remember that moment in 1963. It was a cool late fall day. I was traveling west and stopped at the red light. During the day, I was a student at the University of Arizona. At night, I was a disc jockey at Tucsons No. 1 radio station, KTKT. That morning, I was on my way to class. I was listening to the radio, KTKT, naturally. There was a Kinney Shoe commercial playing. In the middle of the spot, our news director, Lloyd Couch, interrupted with a bulletin. Wow, I thought, must be something important you can always wait for the end of a commercial for a news flash. It was important. He declared that shots had been fired at President John Kennedys motorcade in Dallas. More details to come, stay tuned. It sounded bad. I drove to school for my first class, Political Science with Dr. Conrad Joyner in the old Humanities Bldg. By the time I arrived, someone had rolled an old black and white TV into the room, and it was surrounded by my silent stunned classmates. Walter Cronkite appeared on the screen, and he announced, President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. He removed his glasses and looked at the clock. There was a pause, and you could tell that the veteran news broadcaster was shaken. As all of us in that room were. Dr. Joyner said there would be no class, but we could stay and watch the TV if we liked. As a radio guy, I wanted to get down to the station to see what was going on. It was located in the lower level of the Arizona Land Title Bldg. at Stone and Alameda. The three executives, my bosses, Phil Richardson, Frank Kalil and Jerry Stowe were all having a spirited discussion about what to do. I slipped in unnoticed to hear what was going on. KTKT was a great station. Twenty-four hours a day we played the hits; whatever was popular, be it Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Chuck Berry, or Percy Faith. Nobody heard of the Beatles yet; their American fame was 3 months away. The question that day was, Our president has just been assassinated. Do we continue with our same music or do something different to honor his passing? Somebody said, Maybe we can just tone the music down, no Elvis or Little Richardno rock, just pick the slow stuff on the Top Forty Survey. The answer to that was, Then we would be admitting that there was something inherently wrong with our regular format. That didnt fly. In the end, they decided to play only patriotic music for 3 days until the funeral was over the next Monday. Jerry Stowe went over to Rubitoms Record Shop and came back with a couple of patriotic albums featuring mostly orchestras and marching-type bands. Not much variety. I can only think of maybe 6 songs that qualify. You know, America the Beautiful, My Country Tis of Thee, and the like. And that was the great KTKT: 3 solid days of patriotic music The same handful of numbers, over and over again. If you were sad because our beloved president had died, when you listened to KTKT, you wanted to cry your eyes out. It was awful. Appropriate then, but awful. On Monday, Nov. 25, at 2 p.m., we resumed playing our top hits. There were some exceptions. In a company memo, we were told not to play any records mentioning Texas. Or anything by Comedian Vaughn Meador, who famously mimed members of the Kennedy family. His career was over. I have often wondered what radio stations would do today if the same event took place. Probably not what we did. Thank God. James D. Watts Jr. Tulsa World Scene Writer Follow James D. Watts Jr. 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 The University of Tulsas inaugural Switchyard Festival, held earlier this year, was a multi-day, multi-venue event, encompassing everything from discussions of banned books and racial injustice to parsing the lyrics of Bob Dylan songs and concerts by Americana music artists. The second event under the Switchyard banner will be a much more concentrated affair, focusing this time on the things we eat and understanding the how and the why behind whatever might fill ones plate. The Switchyard Food Fest will take place Thursday, Nov. 30, at Congregation Bnai Emunah, 1719 S. Owasso Ave. It will feature appearances by chef Tom Colicchio, an award-winning chef best known as the chief judge on the reality series Top Chef, and chef Sean Sherman, a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe and an authority on Indigenous American cuisine whose work earned him the 2023 Julia Child Award. The evening will open at 6 p.m. with music by Blaine Bailey and tastings of dishes from Shermans The Sioux Chef cookbook, prepared by Tulsa chef Nico Albert Williams. The main program begins at 7 p.m. and will feature conversations with Colicchio; Sherman; journalist Siddhartha Deb, whose work focuses on climate change and colonialism; and author Jori Lewis, whose most recent book, Slaves for Peanuts, is about how this humble legume profoundly influenced the slave trade in the Americas and Europe. Ted Genoways, a professor of media studies at TU, is the co-founder of the Switchyard festival and editor of the journals that accompany each Switchyard event. Genoways, who joined the universitys faculty last fall, is a poet, literary editor and a James Beard Award-winning food writer, whose books include This Blessed Earth and The Chain: Farm, Factory and the Fate of Our Food. So, yes, food was a logical choice for our second major event, Genoways said, laughing. Switchyard was conceived as a multimedia program designed to address important, complex ideas and issues in new ways. In addition to public events, Switchyard creates a podcast and publishes a scholarly journal that expand on the topics and ideas under consideration. That was really the pitch that (TU President) Brad Carson made to us, said Genoways (his wife, writer and photographer Mary Anne Andrei, also was hired by the university). He wanted us not only to teach, but to use the resources we have developed to launch the magazine and podcast along with this new festival, so that everything would work together to present intellectually rigorous content that would reach new and different audiences. Genoways said one of the main concepts behind the Switchyard concept was, while it would deal with big ideas, we also needed to address some of the challenges that exist here in Oklahoma, as well as nationally. We did that with the banned books topic, but having done that, we also hope to show the range of what we want to do with Switchyard. And few topics attract as much, or as wide-ranging, attention as food. The idea was for this really to be a celebration of food and the community it builds, but also an assessment of how our perspective on food has changed in a post-pandemic landscape, Genoways said. As we are thinking through how we are putting our communities and our food systems back together, we also need to examine what we need to do better, not only for ourselves but for the world were sharing. The conversations with the main guests will be reflections of their work that will appear in the Switchyard journal that will be officially released in conjunction with Thursdays event. Deb, whose work included the acclaimed novel The Light at the End of the World, writes about his decision to eat beef in defiance of the Hindu authority in his native India, while Colicchios essay details his career in cooking, culminating in his work as an activist on issues related to the food supply chain, restaurants and hunger relief. Other pieces in the journal include an investigative piece on pesticides and pollinators by former NPR correspondent Dan Charles and a piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Phillips on the videos he made during the pandemic of him cooking, as a way of sharing and connecting with others during those isolated times. Tulsa is vibrant and diverse with a complicated history, which I think makes it a perfect place to discuss the intersection of food, culture and history, Genoways said. Were especially proud to be partnering with Farm Aid and the Food and Environment Reporting Network, two major national organizations dedicated to these conversations. We want the event to be an upbeat, festive experience, he said, but we also hope that attendees will leave feeling energized and excited about the role that food can play in building and healing their communities. The new Tulsa World app offers personalized features. Download it today. Jimmie Tramel Tulsa World Scene Writer Follow Jimmie Tramel 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 A free 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 24, screening of the acclaimed new drama Frybread Face and Me for Native American Heritage Day is among upcoming events at Circle Cinema, Tulsas only independent, nonprofit art house theater. Frybread Face and Me will be screened as part of the Native Spotlight Series sponsored by the Flint Family Foundation. In the film, two adolescent Navajo cousins from different worlds bond during a summer together. Free frybread samples for guests will be available from Autumn Star Catering. Also, enjoy the Indian Territory large-scale portraits by Osage photographer Ryan Redcorn. The portraits will be on display in the gallery. Following the free screening, the film will continue with daily shows at regular price starting Saturday. Nov. 25. Chad Burris (Chickasaw), who has produced multiple films in Oklahoma, is a producer on "Frybread Face and Me." Joining Frybread Face and Me at Circle Cinema in the coming weeks are classic favorites like The Warriors and In the Mood for Love and major new releases including Disneys Wish and Studio Ghiblis The Boy and the Heron. Circle Cinema also will be the site of a new monthly stand-up series, Circle Cinema Comedy Nights (featuring five local Indigenous comedians hosted by Tulsa comic and artist Kels Cooper) and the debut of a new art exhibit (Reflections of David featuring 50 paintings by Tulsa artist Tyler James). More information is available at circlecinema.org. 'Wish' Opened for daily screenings Tuesday, Nov. 21. Animated adventure, rated PG. Bring the kids to see the magical new Disney animated film on opening day and enjoy fun activities from Discovery Lab in the lobby before the film. The film will show at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., with activities starting 30 minutes prior to showtime. Kids can craft their own star ornaments and learn about space with engaging guided activities. 'Napoleon' Opened for daily screenings Tuesday, Nov. 21. Epic biography, rated R. Oscar winners Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix reunite for a spectacle-filled action epic that details the checkered rise and fall of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. 'Frybread Face and Me' Free screening 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 24. Regular price daily screenings begin Saturday, Nov. 25. Not rated. Two adolescent Navajo cousins from different worlds bond during a summer herding sheep on their grandmothers ranch in Arizona while learning more about themselves and their familys past. Circle Cinema Comedy Night 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28. Tickets $7 each. The inaugural Circle Cinema Comedy Night features local Indigenous comedians in celebration of Native American Heritage Month. The event is hosted by Kels Cooper and features comics Sondra Slade, Landry Miller, Uncle Gary, Whit Deerinwater and Will Buck. CineDOOM series presents classics on 35mm film CineDOOM is a celebration of the theatrical experience at its best, showcasing masterpieces that embody grit and perfection. Co-presented by Tulsa Artist Fellowship, each screening includes an introduction by Blackhorse Lowe (curator, Tulsa Artist Fellow and award-winning filmmaker). See indie-king Harmony Korines gritty debut feature Gummo 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 30. The Warriors come back out to play 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7. On Thursday, Dec. 14, see a double feature from legendary director Wong Kar-Wai with Ashes of Time Redux and In the Mood For Love with a Chinese take-away buffet at intermission. 'Reflections of David' art exhibit by Tyler James Free opening reception 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 1. Meet the artist, see the art and enjoy live music with dj noname at the launch of the exhibit. Born and raised in Tulsa, James is a painter and designer who focuses on flow and expression through his art. With the form of abstract expression, he uses painting as a visual journal for how he expresses and understand life and the world around him. 'Dream Scenario' Opens for daily screenings Friday, Dec. 1. Comedy, rated R Ever dream about Nicolas Cage? Hapless family man Paul Matthews (Cage) finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. But when his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom in this wickedly entertaining comedy. 'A Town Called Victoria' Free screening 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 4. Documentary, not rated. The free Indie Lens Pop-Up series from PBS returns in December featuring a Zoom Q&A with filmmaker Li Lu. When the local mosque is burned to the ground in an apparent hate crime, the town of Victoria must overcome its age-old political, racial and economic divides to find a collective way forward. 'The Boy and the Heron' Opens for daily screenings Friday, Dec. 8. Animated adventure, rated PG-13. Hayao Miyazaki, the acclaimed director behind Japans Studio Ghibli, returns with his first film in a decade. The semi-autobiographical story features an all-star dub voice cast with Christian Bale, Florence Pugh, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe. A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead. There, death comes to an end and life finds a new beginning. The new Tulsa World app offers personalized features. Download it today. Jimmie Tramel Tulsa World Scene Writer Follow Jimmie Tramel 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 Beloved by many, the shot-in-Oklahoma series Reservation Dogs concluded this year. But puppy love continues, thanks to Rez Dog Resources. Rez Dog Resources partnered with Crazy Eagle Media (the Tulsa-based production company behind Reservation Dogs) and Tulsa SPCA for a mobile animal care event this month in Terlton. Rez Dog Resources (rezdogresources.com) is an animal welfare advocacy collective/fund with a mission of connecting Oklahoma tribal communities to animal resources and to support animal rescue efforts across the state. Rez Dog Resources was created by crew members on the set of Reservation Dogs, a groundbreaking and critically acclaimed shot-in-Oklahoma series that featured an all-Indigenous cast and creative team. We were filming in different communities, predominantly Native communities and in rural communities, and we would be filming and we would just see a ton of animals that were in need, Brit Hensel, who co-founded Rez Dog Resources with sister Taylor Hensel, said. We have a very animal-loving crew and so everybody kind of just said lets rally to figure out what we can do to help this dog. And that led to a partnership with the Tulsa SPCA. An initial Rez Dog Resources mobile clinic animal care event took place in Okmulgee, which was appropriate since the town was a primary filming site during the three-season run of Reservation Dogs. Terlton, a Pawnee County town with a sub-100 population, was selected for a follow-up animal care event. Why Terlton? A season one Reservation Dogs episode (Come and Get Your Love introduced the Deer Lady character to viewers) was shot in Terlton. Also, the community is near and dear to the heart of Reservation Dogs co-creator and showrunner Sterlin Harjo, according to Brit Hensel. Prior to Reservation Dogs, Harjo made a short documentary (Terlton) about the town and how a 1985 fireworks plant explosion killed 21 people one-fourth of the communitys population. When Reservation Dogs arrived in Terlton for filming, Brit Hensel said she and others on the crew learned of a problematic issue there: The area is a common dumping ground for unwanted animals. If you go to Terlton, you walk down their main street and you see stray dogs just lining that street, Taylor Hensel said. They have this overpopulation of unwanted dogs and cats, and its litters upon litters that are being born, Brit Hensel said. The community doesnt have the resources to spay and neuter these animals. Mindy Tiner, CEO of Tulsa SPCA, said 53 animals received care at the Rez Dog Resources mobile clinic in Terlton. The majority were in heat or pregnant, she said. Had we not been out there, there would have been a lot more puppies running around. It was a total win, Brit Hensel said. Spay and neuter is the No. 1 way to keep down unwanted populations and unneeded suffering in all communities for animals. Its just not something that is very accessible in most of these places, and it can be really expensive, so its a blessing that we had funding to offer that for free to communities. In addition to spay and neutering services at the mobile clinic, animals were vaccinated and received additional preventative care. We gave out a lot of dog food and really just tried to help in whatever way we could for the dogs and cats in the area, Tiner said. Reservation Dogs alums consider the venture a form of payback, Brit Hensel explained. The filmmaking industry at large, we go into these communities and we shoot and we make friends with people and we get to use peoples spaces and their homes, she said. Then the production leaves, and we all go on our way and we have this great show to offer, but Im really interested in how we can give back to the communities that have provided for us giving something in exchange for their generosity and allowing us to be in their space and film there. Brit Hensel said staging an animal care clinic in Terlton was kind of like a full circle moment for us to be able to give back to this community that has been so open with us. I think thats kind of the point of why we do this and wanting to meet people where they are and making sure that rural communities and Native communities, as they are most often forgotten, dont always feel that way. Thats the big takeaway I had this time around. Seeing the look on peoples faces of feeling valued, its really cool to be able to tell somebody we got you. Said Taylor Hensel: We really look at it as being interconnected. We are not just showing up for animals. We are also showing up for people. The well-being of animals in the community is totally a reflection on the well-being of the humans, too. So we look at it as we are bringing wellness to a community by serving the animals, but being able to interact with the people too and let them know that, hey, we are here. We exist. Here is our contact information. You are not alone. If you have a question, call us. We will come help. That is a good feeling. Rez Dog Resources is not a front-line rescue. The collective is dedicated to supporting the efforts and rescues of shelters already doing good work. Brit Hensel is appreciative of the partnership with Tulsa SPCA. When Brit and Taylor and Sterlin first talked to us about the possibility of doing this, we know there are more resources in places like Tulsa and Oklahoma City as opposed to sort of outlying areas, Tiner said. The opportunity to kind of get out there and really make a difference was really important to us. Tiner credited Brit Hensel and Taylor Hensel for putting together a mechanism to stage similar events in the future. Taylor Hensel said they absolutely want to continue arranging animal care events because this is something they are passionate about. Hopefully, said Tiner, they can make as much of a difference in other communities as they did in Okmulgee and Terlton. Said Tiner: So many times when businesses or companies come in and they do their job and go home, they dont really think about the lasting impact they can have on a community. Reservation Dogs has done something that will make a difference for years. The new Tulsa World app offers personalized features. Download it today. Curtis Killman Tulsa World Staff Writer Follow Curtis Killman 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 A Tulsa man who pleaded guilty to running over a homeless man in a wheelchair was sentenced to federal prison on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell sentenced Steven Alberto Juarez to 13 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release. Juarez pleaded guilty Aug. 11, 2022, to one count of second-degree murder in Indian Country in connection with the death of Orlando Lorenz Lays Bad, 45. Juarez, who was 19 at the time, admitted to driving his Ford Mustang at Lays Bad and other members of his family during the early-morning hours of May 20, 2022, in a church parking lot in the 2500 block of South Garnett Road. The Lays Bad family were homeless and slept in a van in the parking lot, police said at the time. The death occurred after Juarez and a friend met the Lays Bad family in the church parking lot after Juarez took Xanax and drank alcohol, according a sentencing memo filed on his behalf. Juarez and his friend left at one point but returned later to try to recover his friends cellphone. During the return visit, a fight broke out between the two groups, and Juarezs friend was hit in the face with a crowbar, according to his sentencing memo. Juarez then got into his vehicle and drove toward the Lays Bad family, with all but Orlando scattering to safety before the Mustang drove up on the sidewalk and pinned him under the car, according to the governments sentencing memo. This violent and intentional assault of a helpless man in a wheelchair is egregious, the governments sentencing memo says. Prosecutors urged Frizzell to sentence Juarez at the top end of the eight-year to 14-year prison term range stipulated in his plea agreement. Juarezs federal public defender, meanwhile, requested that Juarez be sentenced at the bottom end of the sentencing range, saying his conduct was likely the result of untreated and undiagnosed mental health disorders. Juarez has been in custody since his arrest May 20, 2022. He initially told police that his friend was driving the Mustang when it struck Lays Bad. He later changed his story to say the woman was sitting on his lap and that both were holding the wheel at the time it struck Lays Bad. Lays Bad, whose last name is spelled Laysbad in other court-related documents, was a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, and the death occurred within the Muscogee Nation reservation, thus establishing federal jurisdiction. The new Tulsa World app offers personalized features. Download it today. Randy Krehbiel Tulsa World Staff Writer Follow Randy Krehbiel 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 The Oklahoma Corporation Commission agreed Tuesday to a 2.5% cap on Public Service Company of Oklahoma residential rate increases but rejected broader revisions proposed by the Attorney Generals Office. Tuesdays decision to modify a Nov. 3 Corporation Commission order regarding PSO rates came at the end of a long and often confusing discussion that concluded with one commissioner who was opposed to the cap voting for it and one in favor of it not voting at all. For PSO customers, Tuesdays decision means residential electric bills will increase a maximum of $3.57 per month instead of $5.35. The issue Tuesday, as it often is in rate cases, was residential versus other customer classes, including industrial and business. It was also about Attorney General Gentner Drummonds stated intention of keeping a closer eye on the Corporation Commission and utility regulation. Drummond had taken the rare move of filing two motions seeking modifications to the Nov. 3 order. They can stand with me in support of lower utility bills for Oklahoma families, or they can force our residents to pay more, Drummond said in a press release before the meeting. Afterward, he issued a follow-up statement saying: I commend each commissioner for standing with Oklahoma families in support of lower utility bills. I am grateful the commissioners thoughtfully considered our argument to protect PSO residential customers. I look forward to working with the Commission on future rate cases to protect the interests of all ratepayers. In truth, the two commissioners Todd Hiett and Kim David who ultimately voted for the order that included the cap did so with great reservation; the commissioner who wholeheartedly supported it, Bob Anthony, did not vote, apparently because of deal-breakers elsewhere in the order. One of Drummonds motions would have essentially replaced the Nov. 3 order with one negotiated by Drummond, PSO and consumer organizations, including AARP-Oklahoma. The second restored only the 2.5% cap that was part of that settlement. A third motion, filed by PSO, made what were described as clean up changes to the Nov. 3 order. The Oklahoma Industrial Electric Consumers, the Department of Defense, the Oklahoma Petroleum Alliance and Walmart were among those opposed to both attorney general motions. OIEC Executive Director Tom Schroedter said Drummonds motions unfairly shifted costs to commercial customers and called the commissions Nov. 3 order just and reasonable. Particularly contentious points between Schroedter and Assistant Attorney General Chase Snodgrass were whether that rate structure constituted a subsidy by residential customers of commercial transmission and whether Drummonds proposals worked to the greater financial benefit of PSO. PSO endorsed both of Drummonds motions. Hiett, the commission chairman, said he believed rate caps are unfair but ultimately voted for the order. David said she did not not want the cap to become standard practice but also relented. David noted that PSO has another rate case on the calendar for early next year and said the cap could be reexamined at that time. The new Tulsa World app offers personalized features. Download it today. Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Chris Bernard, the president and chief executive officer of Hunger Free Oklahoma, joins Ginnie Graham this week to discuss a local and national issue that she calls "so solvable." Bernard says that food insecurity is a problem that shouldn't exist in America. So why is it such a big problem? Bernard and Graham dig into the issue and Bernard lays out some of the ways we can address the root issue. What are the costs and benefits of feeding schoolchildren? Thats a question I tried to address, as part of a bipartisan interim study in the Oklahoma legislature earlier this year. About 700,000 kids attend our public schools. Most qualify for free and reduced lunch. Many face food insecurity and count on school meals as the most reliable nutrition they receive each week. Good nutrition is essential to building strong minds and bodies, and it makes kids ready to take on the challenges of a school day. And we have an historic opportunity to do so much more for so many children. School lunch and breakfast programs are subsidized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which partially reimburses districts for meals served based on the income level of the students family. Districts use this money and their own to devise meal programs, knowing that kids grow and learn better when their nutritional needs are met. There is a powerful connection between nutrition and brain development. Over time, school lunch programs have grown more tastier and more nutritious, such as a range of 50 to 71 out of 100 on the federal Healthy Eating Index. Little Axe, for example, hired a chef to make the kind of healthy meals that kids want to eat. The Oklahoma City Public Schools district has four nutritionists on staff who survey kids and attend to meal quality. During the pandemic, federal programs expanded to feed everyone, and this was a welcome respite for working families. But with the expiration of these programs, districts are having to make tough choices. Money only goes so far. Norman Public Schools absorbed $300,000 in lunch debt last year. Other districts try to collect from families by sending notes home with kids, which can be humiliating. Others serve cheese sandwiches and water to poor kids who have to see their peers eating full meals. How can a kid learn and grow under these conditions? We can do better. Last month, the federal government expanded access to the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows districts to receive wider, but still partial, reimbursements. Oklahoma City schools use the program to forgo lunch debt altogether, at some cost to its budget. Potentially we could see lots of suburban and rural districts embrace the provision, ending lunch debt and lunch shaming and improving health and learning outcomes across Oklahoma. It just takes a little leadership from the state Legislature to help districts bridge the gap between the cost of meals and federal reimbursements. I believe we could expand lunch provisions to, say 250% of the federal poverty level, for about $20 million to $30 million. This modest investment would yield enormous gains in food security, test score and child well-being. We could do this for just a few dollars per meal served. We should have the courage to do this. I was proud to work with a bipartisan group of legislators, including Reps. Mark Lawson, R-Sapulpa, and Annie Menz, D-Norman, and Sen. Jessica Garvin, R-Duncan, in support of legislation filed last year by Jeff Boatman, R-Tulsa. Our children are worth it. Rep. John Waldron represents Tulsas District 77 in the Oklahoma House. Previously, he worked as a social studies and history teacher at Booker T. Washington High School. The new Tulsa World app offers personalized features. Download it today. North Korea's spy satellite has been launched. This is what South Korean officials announced, claiming that NoKor launched its third attempt on Tuesday, Nov. 21. Although it is still unclear if the surveillance satellite's launch was successful, South Korea was still triggered by this activity. Aside from SoKor, the alleged North Korean spy satellite mission also invites strong criticisms from the U.S., as well as its partners. South Korea Claims North Korea Launches Spy Satellite After accusing North Korea of launching its controversial spy satellite, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol decided to approve a cabinet decision on the 2018 agreement. With this, SoKor can now restore its surveillance operations along the border with NoKor, as reported by Nikkei Asia. Experts said that this could make the antagonism between the two Asian countries worse, especially since they are still at war. Before the alleged launch, South Korean military officials already warned North Korea that they would take whatever measures necessary to protect the safety of their people. "Our military will come up with necessary measures to protect the lives and safety of the people if North Korea pushes ahead with a military spy satellite launch despite our warning," said a SoKor military officer via the Associated Press. Aside from restoring its border surveillance, the 2018 military agreement with North Korea was also partially suspended. Yoon Suk Yeol argued that Pyongyang can no longer be trusted to abide by the military deal. Since the 2018 military agreement is being dismantled, South Korea can now step away from the confidence-building measures that the recent SoKor administration was taking, which allegedly disproportionately benefit NoKor. Read Also: South Korea Says Nuclear-Capable Submarines are Needed Against NoKor, China-Here's What ROK Admiral Argues NoKor Spy Satellite Violates UN Resolutions Recently, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said that the alleged North Korean spy satellite violates multiple UN resolutions. He added that this surveillance activity also raises tensions, as well as increases the risk of destabilization in the security situation of the region. Because of this, the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and other allies condemned the surveillance aircraft. As of writing, not much is known about this spy satellite. This means that it is unclear if it's integrated with advanced cameras that can deliver HD photos of U.S. and SoKor military maneuvers and installations to the North Korean regime. Related Article: North Korea Successfully Tests Solid-Fuel Engines for Intermediate-Range Nuclear Ballistic Missiles @ 2023 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Amidst the slowdown of the general real estate market, the industrial logistics real estate segment remains a bright spot driven by the steady flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Vietnam. The country has attracted over US$20 billion in FDI as of September 20, up 7.7 percent year on year, according to the Foreign Investment Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment. In addition to industry titans such as Samsung and LG, other international manufacturers continue to flock into Vietnam. In September, Apple finalized the relocation of 11 of its audio device production facilities to Vietnam, marking a significant shift in the companys global supply chain strategy. Experts from Ho Chi Minh-based private equity investment firm VinaCapital have forecast Vietnams GDP growth to rebound to 6.5 percent next year, driven by a recovery in exports, which will in turn be closely accompanied by a rebound in the local manufacturing sector output. In addition, the comprehensive strategic partnership recently set up between Vietnam and the U.S. signifies an important turning point, which will usher in a new period of development for Vietnam. Against the backdrop of the bright prospects, industrial real estate developers are ramping up efforts to expand their land bank to seize the opportunities of Vietnams expected economic rebound in 2024. There has been a recent surge in supply of industrial parks in both the northern and the southern regions of the country. According to real estate service firm CBRE, three new industrial parks spanning 528 hectares in Bac Ninh and Hai Duong Provinces, located in northern Vietnam, went into operation in Q1 of this year. Two other projects, VSIP 3 Industrial Park and Nam Tan Uyen 3 Industrial Park, in the south are expected to provide the market with more than 1,300 hectares. Furthermore, a total of 5,400 hectares of industrial park land, located primarily in Long An (40 percent) and Binh Duong (27 percent), is planned to be released in the near future, CBRE said in a report. As Vietnams for-rent logistics and industrial real estate platform, BW Industrial Development JSC (BW) is well-poised for further growth next year, given the launch of 10 new projects nationwide in 2023. These projects aim to meet the growing demand for ready-built factories and warehouses among the domestic and foreign investors that are eyeing Vietnams logistics and industrial sectors. BWs 10 new projects cover a total gross floor area of one million square meters across Vietnam. The 10 projects, covering a total gross floor area of one million square meters and strategically located in regions with excellent connectivity and infrastructure, including Hai Phong, Quang Ninh, Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong, and Dong Nai, is a testament to the firms unwavering commitment to foster Vietnam in becoming a vital link of the global supply chain. With a deep understanding of the needs of modern tenants, BW focuses on ready-built warehouses and factories that offer investors flexibility, speed to market, lower capital expenditures, and time commitments. As a result, BWs projects have garnered numerous inquiries from potential tenants and recorded high occupancy rates. BW has achieved and maintained a remarkable occupancy rate averaging 93 percent among its stabilized projects as of September 2023. The 10 major projects, which form part of BWs growth plan for 2023 and beyond, demonstrates the companys long-term goal of staying atop market developments and getting ahead of trends. The plan is strongly backed by international investors, with BW having secured an impressive approximately US$300 million from such investors in the first quarter of this year alone. BW currently has over 8.5 million square meters of industrial land in prime locations under control across 40 projects in 11 key provinces in Vietnam, with over three million square meters of gross floor area of completed or under-construction properties. With $2 billion of gross assets under management, BW is currently operating an e-commerce and last-mile delivery logistics cluster, Tan Phu Trung in Ho Chi Minh City, with several in the pipeline throughout Vietnams two key gateway cities. BWs CEO Lance Li is bullish on Vietnams economic outlook and the potential of the industrial real estate sector. With the foresight to capture Vietnams economic rebound by Q2 2024, BW has launched multiple projects this year which will meet the increasing demand of international manufacturers here, Li commented. Vietnam has been experiencing steady and stable growth, and the strong fundamentals related to workforces, location, FTAs, and economic orientation will continue to be its most significant assets for long-term growth. As a developer of for-rent logistics and industrial properties, BW will continue to maintain its position through organic development and by acquiring high-quality assets and well-situated land parcels. Officials from Ho Chi Minh City met many American firms last week to promote investment in high-tech and the green economy in the city, as part of their trip to the United States to accompany State President Vo Van Thuong to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Week 2023 in San Francisco, California. President Thuong returned to Hanoi on Sunday, concluding his four-day U.S. visit to attend APEC events and bilateral activities at the invitation of U.S. President Joe Biden. Ho Chi Minh City chairman Phan Van Mai told a meeting with U.S. investors on Thursday last week that the city is moving toward green, sustainable growth, focusing on the digital, green economy, high-tech, and semiconductor development, according to the municipal Investment and Trade Promotion Center. The city has been calling on foreign firms to invest in clean energy and green traffic projects, and get involved in developing a green Can Gio District, he said. Mai also expected to access green credit and speed up green financing growth. David Lewis, chairman and CEO at Energy Capital Vietnam, pledged to pour money into the innovation and green energy fields in Ho Chi Minh City. Patrick Sweeney, vice-chairman of the Business Executives for National Security (BENS), an American nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, said that many BENS members expect to do business in the city. They are mainly keen on such fields as technology, aerospace, defense, finance, healthcare, energy, design, and chip manufacturing. The firms expressed their hope of helping the city upskill workforces in the above-mentioned sectors. Meanwhile, Chris Ford, a member of President Bidens Advisory Council on Energy, suggested Ho Chi Minh City should enhance its innovation programs to spur socio-economic expansion. American firms believe that the city has enough potential to become Vietnams innovation hub, he said. As per the lawmaking National Assembly's Resolution 98 on special mechanisms and policies for Ho Chi Minh City's development, projects on integrated-circuit manufacturing, design technology, chip production, and clean energy, with an investment capital of VND30 trillion (US$1.2 billion) or more each are entitled to various incentives and preferential policies. During this working trip to the U.S., the citys agencies and departments signed three memoranda of understanding with the Green Alliance to bolster its green, sustainable growth, build an innovation hub for private firms in the city, and apply artificial intelligence to transport and traffic. The Green Alliance includes Energy Capital Vietnam, Saigon Telecom and Tech (Saigontel), Allotrope Partners and Maius. Speaking at a meeting with the leader of Marvell, a global semiconductor producer, chairman Mai promised to create favorable conditions for the tech company to expand its operations in the city in the future. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! As many as 61,628 enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City left the market in the year to October, according to data recently released by the municipal Department of Taxation. Among them, more than 26,500 businesses removed their registered office addresses, up 23.7 percent against the same period last year, while around 19,360 others temporarily suspended their operations. The number of businesses ceasing operations also rose more than 19 percent year on year at roughly 13,270, and some 2,400 firms completed procedures for disbandment. As a result, the number of active businesses in the southern metropolis dropped 13.8 percent over the same period last year to some 275,700. Each quarter of this year saw an average of around 20,000 businesses leave the market in the city. Statistics from the taxation department also showed that the number of newly-founded firms in the city reached a mere 36,853 during the January-October period, dipping over 12.5 percent against the last-year figure and equivalent to some 50 percent of the businesses exiting the market during the said period. Given the number of companies pulling out of the market, the city has witnessed a record high volume of retail spaces left vacant along inner-city streets over the past three years. On Dong Khoi Street, one of the busiest shopping streets in District 1, a dozen stores were closed and many retail spaces are being offered for lease. A one-kilometer-long section of Hai Ba Trung Street, another inner-city, busiest shopping street in the area, faced the same fate, with the outside of vacant buildings and other commercial properties covered with retail space advertisements. Official data from market research agencies revealed that the wave of tenants returning retail spaces shows little sign of abating in the southern city, as an economic downturn is forecast to bite further and local people have to deliberate on business plans before making any decisions at this tough time. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Dairy producer Nutifood has proposed spending over VND1 trillion (US$41.1 million) developing a pedestrian bridge across the Saigon River in Ho Chi Minh City. The company suggested commencing the project on April 30, 2025 and expected to complete it in 2027. The municipal administration assigned the Department of Transport to negotiate and sign an agreement with the sponsor to receive the funding for the pedestrian bridge. The two sides expected to sign the agreement on Thursday this week. The department will make a proposal to the municipal Peoples Committee so that the latter can ask for the municipal Party Committees approval. Nutifood would construct the bridge in line with the approved design, while the Department of Transport will coordinate with relevant departments and agencies to instruct the firm to complete procedures and appraise the project. The footbridge, when in place, will be transferred to the Ho Chi Minh City administration for management and exploitation. The pedestrian bridge would be located between Ba Son Bridge and Saigon River Tunnel. One end of the bridge would lead to Bach Dang Wharf Park in District 1 and the other end to the Thu Thiem New Urban Area in Thu Duc City. The footbridge project was expected to be a highlight of the downtown area, so the city launched a contest in 2019 to choose an architectural design for the structure. Last month, the city chose an architectural design featuring nipa palm leaf imagery proposed by a consortium of Japanese-invested Chodai - Takashi Niwa Architects and Chodai Kisojiban Vietnam. With the design of the nipa palm leaf imagery, piers would be built near the riverside to create a high vertical clearance. The design would allow pedestrians to have a good view, according to the municipal Department of Planning and Architecture. The fountain in the design matches the design of a central square in the Thu Thiem New Urban Area. The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Planning and Architecture assessed the design as special, impressive, simple, and attractive to local residents and tourists while its investment is feasible and reasonable. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Ho Chi Minh City set a target to serve six million foreign travelers next year, one million higher than this years goal, according to the municipal Department of Tourism. The southern metropolis welcomed more than 4.1 million foreign visitors in January-October this year, meeting 82 percent of the target. The number of international tourist arrivals to the city is expected to hit five million this year since the last two months of the year is the peak international travel season, especially when combined with a more favorable visa policy -- which took effect from August 15. However, the visa approval process remains time-consuming, according to the municipal Department of Tourism. The number of countries in Vietnams visa-free list is modest, at 25, much lower than that of regional neighbors. Indonesia and the Philippines currently offer visa waivers to citizens from 169 and 166 countries, respectively. Tourists from Vietnam's key source markets and potential markets have to brave high costs and long wait times to get visas to the country, so they choose other destinations instead, such as Thailand and Singapore. The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Tourism proposed the Immigration Department should shorten the time of handling and approving visa applications for large tourist groups of travel companies to create favorable conditions for them. According to travel companies, flexible visa policies with short-term visa waivers for some key markets will help increase the number of international visitors. The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism recently called on localities to promptly conduct tourism promotion programs to attract more foreign visitors during the peak travel season at the end of this year and early next year, as well as effectively take advantage of newly-issued visa policies. Promotion programs should be boosted in key, traditional, and new markets, including Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Western Europe, North America, Australia, India, and the Middle East. Earlier, the Vietnamese government issued a resolution on granting e-visas to citizens from all countries and territories. The country allowed extending the validity of e-visas granted to foreigners entering the country to 90 days from no more than 30 days for single entry or multiple entries. It also lengthen the visa-free stay to 45 days from 15 days for citizens of 13 countries, regardless of passport types or entry purposes, as long as they meet the entry requirements outlined in Vietnamese law. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Many illegal online gambling organizers have devised games that exploit users transactions through e-wallets and banking applications to easily attract players in Vietnam. There are currently many online communities on Facebook and Telegram, as well as independent websites that offer betting games based on the transaction codes of e-wallets. A Facebook group named Chan le MoMo va chan le Zalo (Odd-even MoMo and odd-even Zalo) boasting over 11,000 members is one such example. The group, self-described with phrases like 'payment in five seconds,' 'trustworthy,' and 'fair,' consistently shares enticing prizes in its posts to lure in new players. It advertises various gambling types such as odd-even, high-low, three dice total, progressive jackpot, and more. In order to take part in a bet, a player transfers a bet amount to the organizers e-wallet account, specifying the bet types such as 'C-L' for even-odd or 'T-X' for high-low in the transfer message. The outcome, whether a win or loss, hinges on the transaction code generated automatically after the successful money transfer by the player. If the result aligns with the players prior prediction, they secure a victory and receive payment; otherwise, they forfeit the bet amount. The minimum betting amount per round is VND10,000 (US$0.41) and the maximum is VND5 million ($207). Each e-wallet account is allowed to place up to 200 bets per day. N., a resident of Ho Chi Minh City, said that he participated in these online gambling activities after coming across their advertisements in online videos and through promotions by YouTubers. Its a simple game, and the result is immediate, so I placed a few VND10,000 [$0,41] bets for fun, N. said, adding that many other players were wagering amounts as high as VND1 million ($41) multiple times a day. Some websites also provide instructions on evading scrutiny from e-wallets. For instance, if a player bets VND1 million, selecting an odd number requires transferring VND1,000,011, while opting for an even number necessitates a transfer of VND1,000,012, with no transaction content required. These gambling sites also post a daily ranking board showcasing players with the highest wins, often exceeding VND1 million, which suggests that they have also wagered a corresponding amount on bets within a single day. Hypothetically, if approximately 1,000 players are spending such amounts every day, the total transactions on these online gambling sites could reach a staggering VND1 billion ($41,452) daily. In reality, this figure is often much higher. Online gambling rings create enticing advertisements and promotions, offering incentives such as initial funds for beginners, discount codes, and special prizes for transaction codes with unique numbers like four or five of a kind. These tactics are employed to attract new players and push riskier gambles to existing ones. Dealers earning from tricks Despite the enticing portrayal of high winning rates -- up to 50 percent of every bet with payouts ranging from 1.95 to 2.35 times the betting amount -- in reality, it is the dealer who consistently emerges victorious. As a case in point, in an odd-even game, the dealer sets odd numbers as one, three, five, seven, and even numbers as two, four, six, and eight. If the result is zero or nine, all players lose their money to the dealer. Players face automatic losses for various reasons, including mistakes in bet placement, such as typing incorrect betting content or betting above or below specified amounts. An expert who preferred to stay anonymous highlighted that players exceeding 50 turns are at a higher risk of losing money, even with an equal number of wins and losses. Tens of thousands of daily transactions Last month, police in Bac Giang Province, northern Vietnam dismantled a large-scale illegal gambling ring utilizing e-wallets, involving transactions totaling up to VND2.8 trillion ($116 million). Police officers uncovered the websites clmm.me and clmmz.me exploiting MoMo e-wallet accounts for unlawful gambling activities. Investigations revealed that the organizers enlisted popular YouTubers for promotion and hired many people for customer service. The criminals managed around 7,000 distinct MoMo e-wallet accounts to operate the gambling ring, attracting tens of thousands of participants who engaged in 10,000-50,000 daily transactions. The total amount of money gambled ranged from VND1 billion ($41,425) to VND3 billion ($124,275). Notably, more than 71,000 e-wallet accounts were involved in this illicit gambling operation. A challenging issue Nguyen Ba Diep, co-founder of Vietnamese mobile wallet app MoMo, said he acknowledged that many popular e-wallets and banking applications are being blatantly misused to abet crime. They [criminals] employ numerous verified [e-wallet] accounts acquired through buying, selling, or fake identities, Diep said. Additionally, they utilize devices that emulate banking applications and e-wallets on computers to automatically process bets, scan transaction codes, and reward players. He added that addressing the problem of transaction codes being used for gambling is challenging. Without a transaction code, e-wallets lack the means to differentiate one transaction from another and to search for a specific transaction within the system. Elaborating on Dieps comments, some other experts noted that cashless transactions in Vietnam are on the rise, attracting cybercriminals with advanced technological skills to exploit the trend, giving rise to issues such as online gambling rackets. E-wallet and banking entities lack the authority and expertise for effective crime identification and prevention. Instances of people renting out their identities for banned individuals to open accounts have also been reported. Vu Ngoc Son, chief technology officer of the Vietnam National Cyber Security Technology Corp, warns that criminals not only entice illegal activities but may also trick individuals into revealing personal information, installing malware, and gaining unauthorized access to devices, leading to potential theft of money from bank accounts. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! The ABC and former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann have settled a defamation action following a 2022 National Press Club speech by Brittany Higgins. Mr Lehrmann was due to take on the ABC, alongside Network 10, in the Federal Court in Sydney today after he sued over coverage of allegations he raped his former colleague Ms Higgins in Parliament House in Canberra. The ABC said it had settled on mutually acceptable, confidential terms, without admission of liability. The allegations against Mr Lehrmann remain unresolved after a criminal trial in the ACT Supreme Court collapsed due to juror misconduct, and plans for a retrial were later abandoned because of fears for Ms Higginss health. There have been no findings against Mr Lehrmann, who maintains his innocence. Mr Lehrmanns defamation action against Network 10 and journalist Lisa Wilkinson began today -both of whom attended proceedings today. The Project first aired allegations by Brittany Higgins in 2021. While the program did not name Mr Lehrmann, he later argued in a letter to Network 10 that his identity was widely trafficked as the culprit across social media. The court heard The Projects producer did not give Lehrmann ample time to respond to a program which was weeks in the making and already set in stone. The broadcast of the interview was viewed live by 725,000 people and by a further 200,000 on 10 Play before it was taken down at which time the poison would have spread, Lehrmanns barrister Matthew Richardson said. My client has been publicly maligned, as certainly the most prominent rapist, probably one of the more revolting predators in the recent history of this country. Mr Lehrmann has lost everything. A substantial award of damages will be called for, accompanied by a written judgement, particularly critical in this case, vindicating Mr Lehrmann. In court today Bruce Lehrmann said he was socially isolated after the interview aired, adding the social isolation led to some significant mental health struggles. Ive worked out who my real friends are thats for sure, which are not many, he told the Federal Court. The Federal Court this morning also rejected a push by 10 to restrict the live streaming of the trial on YouTube. Updated: ABC statement: On 9 February 2022, the ABC published a National Press Club of Australia address by Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame. Bruce Lehrmann commenced defamation proceedings against the ABC, claiming that the broadcast of the National Press Club of Australia address accused him of sexually assaulting Brittany Higgins. These proceedings were settled on terms satisfactory to Mr Lehrmann and the ABC including discontinuance of the proceedings. The ABC notes that a criminal charge of sexual assault brought against Mr Lehrmann in the ACT was later dropped. The ABC does not suggest that he was guilty of that charge. Source: ABC, The Guardian The Federal Government expects to introduce legislation this year on Prominence, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said yesterday at the National Press Club. Pressed on why the legisltation would favour one type of company over another she replied, I think there are two things that are important here. The first is that prominence was a policy that we took to the last election, to legislate a prominence framework. But secondly, were doing this as part of a broader media reform agenda to update our laws for the digital age. The reality is that smart devices, connected TVs are not what we used to have when I was growing up. Its not a box sitting in the corner. It is a smart device, which extrapolates large amounts of information. But importantly, it means that local Australian TV services have been made more difficult to find. So Id like to answer your question in this way. I talked in my Address about addressing market failure and being proportionate. This satisfies both. Not only does it ensure that we overcome this power imbalance that exists, but we also address the issue thats important from a cultural perspective. That we ensure Australians can access local television services more easily. And we know at this time, that is becoming more and more difficult, and will only be exacerbated into the future. ASTRA has expressed concerns that the Government could take control of what and how these Australians watch their TVs with new Prominence legislation. It commissioned YouGov research which found Australians dont want the government controlling the order and layout of the apps on their TV. But FreeTV Australia called those claims utterly misleading and argued theissue is about putting the viewer in full control, not being served up viewing choices based on who has paid the most money to be in the line-up. Minister Rowland rejected the suggestion the proposal was in response to market failure. I dont think this is a question of popularity and its never been characterised in that way. This is about updating the regulatory framework for the digital age. As I said, we know that these smart devices are operating in a way that makes it difficult for Australians to access local TV services. That needs to be remedied. And it needs to be remedied in the long term interests of consumers. Consumers are who were most concerned about here. And that is why we took this as an election commitment as part of a suite of media reforms. Should Free to Air TV be given prominence on Smart TV screens? Yes. Local broadcasters should be easily discoverable. No. I prefer Subscription services first. Should be a mix of both Not sure View Results Shipping containers are loaded onto rail cars at the Barbours Cut Container Terminal on Friday, June 23, 2023 in Houston. Union Pacific has launched a new service at Port Houston, allowing international shippers to put containers arriving at Barbours Cut to be loaded directly onto trains, rather than being trucked 30 miles to another terminal to be loaded onto a rail car. Brett Coomer/Staff photographer Port Houston had its busiest month for exports in October, authorities said last week, even as total tonnage was slightly down year-to-date after the ports record-breaking volumes last year. The port handled 126,011 fully loaded, 20-foot equivalent units during the month compared with 124,739 in September and 118,781 in October 2022. That brings total loaded exports primarily resins and chemicals, the port said to 1.15 million through the first 10 months of 2023, an increase of 10% compared with the same period last year. Loaded import volumes, by contrast, were down 7% for the first 10 months of 2023 compared with last year. Total tonnage through Port Houston, similarly, is down 7% year-to-date compared with 2022, port officials said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Last year was the Port of Houstons busiest, as the global economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic and congestion at the California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach spurred some shippers to turn to the Gulf and East Coasts to bypass the bottlenecks. By the end of 2022, Port Houston had become the fifth largest container port in the United States, up from seventh, handling 7% of all container tonnage. This year, some traffic has shifted back to the West Coast as congestion at those ports has eased. In another measure of the supply chain unsnarling itself, auto imports through the Port of Houston were up 50% in October compared with October 2022. But Port Houston, where container traffic has more than tripled over the past 20 years, continues to plan for growth in traffic and the physical port itself. In August, federal officials joined port officials to open the new Wharf 6 at the Bayport Container Terminal in Seabrook, a $91.6 million project that includes 1,000 feet of new container wharf. And the ongoing Project 11 the 11th major expansion of the Houston Ship Channel since the waterway was carved out of Buffalo Bayou more than 100 years ago is on track for completion in 2025. The $1 billion project will widen and deepen the ship channel to accommodate supersize cargo ships. French President Emmanuel Macron and Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara have discussed the aftermath of the coup in Niger and the "rapid deterioration" of the security situation in the Sahel at a meeting in the L'Elysee Palace in Paris. Announced for the beginning of November at the Elysee Palace in Paris, the meeting between the Ivorian and French presidents finally took place this Tuesday. Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara has been in Paris since Saturday. Not much has filtered out of the meeting, but many subjects were believed to be on the agenda, notably the issue of visas for Ivoirians. The two leaders discussed "the Ivorian internal situation" following local and regional elections in September, won by Ouattara's party, and the appointment of a new government. They discussed civil and military cooperation as well as bilateral economic relations, particularly in the areas of energy transition, transport and urban development. The future of Niger Most of the conversation was focused security issues in the Sahel, and Niger after the 26 July coup that destabilised the role of France in in West Africa. Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed France's "full support for President Mohamed Bazoum" in Niger, and recalled that "his release is a prerequisite for any negotiation with the putschists", the French presidency said after the meeting. (with AFP) Read more on RFI English Read also: Cote d'Ivoire's former prime minister Soro says he is willing to 'end his exile' Cote d'Ivoire president removes PM, dissolves government Ouattara hopes for normal relations with Mali after release of 'mercenaries' [Source] A global initiative to rescue the world's six surviving river dolphin species is being championed by 11 Asian and South American nations. On the brink of extinction: River dolphins, which dwell in vital waterways like the Amazon and Ganges, have seen a 73% decline since the 1980s due to various threats, including pollution, habitat loss and unsustainable fishing. The recent deaths of over 150 river dolphins in the drought-ravaged Lake Tefe highlight the increasing peril posed by climate change. Historic initiative: In response to the alarming decline, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru and Venezuela signed the Global Declaration for River Dolphins in Bogota, Colombia. The project, revealed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International in October, aims to combat threats to the species survival, ranging from unsustainable fishing to climate change. Reversing the decline: The declaration emphasizes eradicating gillnets, reducing pollution, expanding research and increasing protected areas. Daphne Willems, WWF lead for the River Dolphin Rivers initiative, underscored the declaration's importance to ensure the survival of all six river dolphin species. Trending on NextShark: Chinese celebrity chef sparks nationalistic uproar over egg fried rice video "Together we can drive real progress and show that a nature-positive, resilient and sustainable future is possible," Willems said. The tragedy of the baiji: The Chinese river dolphin, or baiji, met a tragic end as the first dolphin species driven to extinction by human activities. The species, whose ancient Lipotidae family called the Yangtze River home for 20 million years, was officially declared extinct in 2007. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam, coupled with noise pollution from increased human activity, dealt the final blow to the species. The baiji's extinction also marked the end of the ancient Lipotidae family, unique in its evolutionary separation from other river dolphins 20 million years ago. Story continues Trending on NextShark: Boy, 4, rescued after being thrown into well in China to recreate TV drama Conservation success stories: While the overall picture is grim, conservation efforts have shown success in some densely populated river basins. In Pakistan, collective action has nearly doubled the population of endangered Indus river dolphins over the last two decades. Similarly, the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise population has increased by 23% due to strict protection measures and conservation efforts. WWF's electronic pinger initiative in Indonesia has also proven effective in protecting river dolphins. Trending on NextShark: 79-year-old woman fulfills lifelong dream of visiting all 193 countries Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! WPA Pool - Getty Images King Charles and Queen Camilla hosted a state banquet at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday (21 November) in honour of the arrival of Yoon Suk Yeol, the South Korean President, and Kim Keon Hee, the countrys first lady. For the impressive occasion, the Queen wore a red velvet floor-length gown which was paired with sparkling ruby and diamond jewels. These included the late Queen Elizabeth II's Burmese Ruby tiara, which she commissioned the House of Garrard to make in 1973. According to the jeweller, the tiara was crafted using 96 rubies gifted on Queen Elizabeth's marriage to Prince Philip from the people of Burma. The rubies and diamonds were set in a series of rose motifs inspired by the Tudor Rose, the heraldic symbol of Britain. WPA Pool - Getty Images WPA Pool - Getty Images To complement the striking headpiece, Camilla wore a matching ruby and diamond necklace and pendant earrings. The Prince and Princess of Wales were among the attendees at the state banquet. Kate wore a stunning white gown with cape sleeves by Jenny Packham and the Strathmore Rose tiara - a historic piece seen for the first time in years. The Court Jeweller notes that this diamond tiara in a floral design originally belonged to the Queen Mother and hasn't been worn in public for decades. WPA Pool - Getty Images Since becoming Queen, Camilla has worn several pieces from Queen Elizabeth II's jewellery collection. At a state banquet held at the Palace of Versailles earlier this year, she wore the George VI Sapphire necklace and last month, Camilla opted for the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara, which was worn regularly throughout Queen Elizabeth's reign, for a dinner at London's Mansion House. You Might Also Like This image released by Amazon Prime Video shows a scene from "Saltburn." (Amazon Prime Video via AP) Associated Press The kinks and cosseted pleasures of the upper classes are on lurid display in Saltburn, Emerald Fennells aristo-gothic sexual thriller set amid Englands toniest precincts, from Oxford to the titular estate. The rich arent like you, me or any other recognizable human being in this story that adds equal parts F. Scott Fitzgerald, Patricia Highsmith and Daphne du Maurier to the martini shaker and gives it a good tumble. If Fennell doesnt quite stick the landing - if her story of striving, sexual obsession, class resentment and revenge ultimately feels puny and predictable - she certainly has fun getting there. And the audience has a good time as well. As Saltburn opens, young Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is just arriving at Oxford, where hes a shy, working-class fish out of water. He immediately identifies the alpha on campus: Felix (Jacob Elordi), a tall, handsome upperclassman who moves through life with the careless ease of oblivious entitlement. When a campus meet-cute results in Felix taking Oliver under his wing, Brideshead Revisited fans will instantly recognize an exercise in Charles-Sebastian redux; Fennell herself acknowledges the debt when its revealed that Brideshead author Evelyn Waugh based one of his characters on Felixs family. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Filmed in a squared-off format that recalls films of a vanished age, Saltburn vividly captures the constantly shifting status tectonics of college life, where so much can depend on wearing the right sweater or ordering the right drink. The social hierarchies at Oxford are portrayed as particularly vicious, especially when Oliver has the nerve to take his studies seriously. His social and academic nemesis, a snooty American kid named Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), scoffs when he discovers that Oliver has read all 50 books on the summer reading list, up to and including the King James Bible. Theres little worse in this community of the louche and larky privileged than being a try-hard. Its Felix who stands out in the group, due to not just his preternatural good looks and self-confidence, but his kindness. He sympathizes with Oliver and brings him to the family pile, called Saltburn, for summer holidays. I think I like you more than last years one, Felixs sister India (Millie Kent) tells Oliver, the faint aroma of menace perfuming the air. The foreboding will be paid off in full as the story gets weirder - even if viewers have long since sussed out whats really happening under the alternately perverse and placid surface. The fact that Saltburn is so obvious - not to mention that it has so little of real substance to say - is almost ameliorated by the sheer style of its filmmaking: Fennell, working with cinematographer Linus Sandgren and production designer Suzie Davies, creates a deliriously decadent world of inherited wealth, from the dead rellies on Saltburns walls to the Shakespeare folio Felix offhandedly points out to Oliver on the house tour. She seduces us with nearly every frame, raising the aesthetic stakes with each cocktail, karaoke session, hung-over breakfast and - in the films most notorious scene - bizarre bathroom ritual of aspiration and communion. Saltburn isnt nearly as perceptive as Promising Young Woman, Fennells astonishing 2020 debut; that films star, Carey Mulligan, is on hand here in an amusing cameo as the blowzy bestie of Felixs mother, Elspeth, played by Rosamund Pike in a note-perfect performance of a glamorous dimwit reminiscent of her similarly spot-on turn in An Education. Indeed, as long as Pike is on-screen in Saltburn - especially when shes paired with Richard E. Grant as Elspeths dotty husband, James - the film manages to be laugh-out-loud funny. (Paul Rhys, as the Mrs. Danvers-like family retainer Duncan, elicits some smiles as well.) Soon enough, though, the limitations of Fennells script become obstacles even Pikes and Grants comedic instincts cant overcome. Elordi, recently seen doing a surprisingly good iteration of Elvis Presley in Priscilla, here gets to stretch out and prove why hes such a sought-after actor: Hes handsome, sure, but he exudes thoughtfulness and charisma that transcend mere good looks. For his part, Keoghan delivers what can only be described as an impressively committed performance in a movie that, in the end, considers itself way more shocking than it really is. Nowhere is this truer than Saltburns final scene, a bravura tracking shot of a body flinging itself through space thats simultaneously beautiful and utterly empty. Thats probably the point, but Fennell has set us up to want much more. Advertisement Article continues below this ad A NANG The central city of a Nang has called for co-operation and investment programmes from Intel, Marvell Technology Group and Synopsys in building the city into a global semiconductor manufacturing centre. After an investment promotion visit in the US last week, a source from the citys leadership stressed that a Nang would offer the most favourable conditions for investors and businesses from the US working in semiconductor and AI technology. Gilberto Vargas, vice president, general manager Datacenter & AI Sales and Marketing of Intel, said Viet Nam and a Nang were seen as attractive investment destinations with young labour forces. He said Intel Products Viet Nam was one of the worlds four largest assembly and tester plants, and that Viet Nam had been listed in the Intels Digital Readiness Programme in the world that concentrated in the US, Germany, South Korea and Viet Nam (Viet Nam is the only developing country). The world technology leader had been universalising AI in promoting the Siliconomy in the world, he said. The central citys Party Secretary Nguyen Van Quang said a Nang had been luring investors in semiconductors by emphasising potential human resources, information technology infrastructure and digitalisation, as well as administration reform. Quang offered an invitation to Intels leaders for detailed plans on co-operation development of AI for the future. He also asked Intel to support a Nang in building the high-performance computer centre in the central city to serve semiconductor manufacturer and tester programmes in the coming years. In working sessions with Marvell Technology Inc and Synopsys electronic design automation company, the a Nang city leader also called for expansion of operations in a Nang from the two technology businesses. Marvell's Chief Administration and Legal Officer Mitch Gaynor said it had established two offices in HCM City with 300 employees, and the company would review opening the countrys third office in a Nang in the visit in January 2024. Meanwhile, Synopsys is operating four offices in HCM City and a Nang with 500 engineers, and Synopsys had inked a Memorandum of Understanding with a Nang in human resource development in semiconductors. a Nang also urged Synopsys to support partnership connections on integrated circuit design engineer certification in the near future. Earlier, a Nang organised investment promotion programmes in Fukuyama and Hiroshima, Japan, and with investors from Silicon Valley in health care, hi-tech industries, Artificial Intelligence (AI), education, real estate and automation at a Nang Hi-tech Park and IT Park. Universal Alloy Corporation, a leading global manufacturer of aircraft components for aerospace companies from the US, began manufacturing aircraft components at the a Nang Sunshine Aerospace. VNS HA NOI Vietnamese tuna fetched US$693 million during the first ten months, making it the third largest export among the Southeast Asian economy's seafood this year, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP). Vietnamese seafood, however, decreased by 21 per cent compared to the same period last year, amounting to just over $7.4 billion. Vietnamese shrimp, the country's best-seller, fetched over $2.8 billion, followed by catfish at $1.5 billion with both seeing lower sales during the period by 29 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively. The six largest buyers of Vietnamese tuna were the US, Israel, Thailand, Japan, Canada and Germany. While there has been recorded growth of exports to Israel, Thailand, and Germany, sales to the US, Japan, and Canada have declined, with the most significant drop in the US by 41 per cent during the first nine months of 2023. Meanwhile, in smaller markets Vietnamese tuna has been doing quite well with good growth, especially in Poland where demand has increased by 125 per cent, fetching over $4 million during the period. Among EU member countries, Poland remained among some of the fastest-growing markets for Vietnamese tuna in the last five years with exporters paying increased attention to this market. Industry insiders said while only staying in third place in Poland behind Ecuador and the Philippines, Vietnamese tuna has been gaining ground at the expense of competitors. Vietnamese tuna exports to Poland mostly consist of canned tuna, accounting for over 83 per cent, an increase of 211 per cent compared to the same period last year. Tuna exports to the UK also experienced strong growth at 48 per cent during the period, fetching over $5.5 million, mostly consisting of frozen meat, accounting for over 94 per cent of the total turnover. In comparison to the previous year, Vietnamese tuna exports to the UK have increased significantly while remaining modest at just 1 per cent of the UK's market share due to the in-effect yellow card imposed by the EU. There have been upticks in exports to Canada this year with September's figure breaking the declining trend during the first eight months of 2023. This, however, will not likely be temporary as, according to VASEP, Canadian consumers will be tightening their budget due to increased consumer credit for the remainder of the year. VNS HA NOI Vietnamese companies have increased investment to seize birds nest export opportunities to China, industry insiders said. The first batch of birds nest products was exported to China last week following a protocol signed in November of 2022 between the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Chinese General Administration of Customs (GACC). The products are processed by the AVANEST Vietnam Nutrition Joint Stock Company, one of the two Vietnamese firms that are allowed to export birds nest products to the neighbouring country. According to Tong Xuan Chinh, deputy head of the ministrys Department of Animal Health, the fact that China officially allows the import of Vietnamese birds nests opens many opportunities for the development of the birds nest farming and processing industry. Currently, 42 out of 63 provinces are engaging in bird's nest farming with over 22,000 bird's nest houses. Viet Nam's annual output is about 150 tonnes worth over US$600 million. China is the world's largest birds nest consuming market with a demand of more than 300 tonnes per year, accounting for about 80 per cent of the global consumption. Data showed that China imported 220 tonnes of birds nests in 2020, more than 300 tonnes in 2021 and 425 tonnes in 2022, mostly from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and now Viet Nam. The Khanh Hoa Bird's Nest Beverage Joint Stock Company is expected to export the first batch of pure Sanvinest Khanh Hoa Bird's Nest and post-processed products to China on November 24. To prepare for this move, the company has built a chain of high-quality bird's nest houses, aiming to achieve an output of about 30 tonnes per year. In addition, the company has invested in building two more factories to improve productivity. It will inaugurate and put into operation the Sanvinest Khanh Hoa Bird's Nest Processing Factory at the Song Cau Industrial Cluster in Khanh Vinh District. Meanwhile, a memorandum of understanding on cooperation was signed between the Birds Nest Associations of Binh inh Province, Gia Lai Provinces Quang a and Chu Se districts, An Giang and Quang Ngai provinces and AVANEST Vietnam. Under the deal, the associations will provide raw materials to AVANEST Vietnam for processing for export. Meanwhile, the firm will supply the associations with training on farming and harvesting techniques as well as management tools serving their operations. According to the Department of Animal Health, a total of 45 Vietnamese companies have registered to export birds nests to China. Of these, nine have completed the necessary documents under a protocol signed between the MARD and GACC, which specifies guidelines on the quarantine, inspection, and veterinary hygiene standards to be adhered to for exporting birds nests. VNS HA NOI The Vietnamese stock market rose on Tuesday for the second straight day, but liquidity continued to decline while foreign investors withdrew from the main southern bourse. The markets benchmark VN-Index extended its rallies to finish higher at 1,110.46 points, an increase of 6.8 points, or 0.62 per cent. The breadth of the southern market was positive as the number of gainers surpassed that of losers. In particular, 217 stocks ended up, while 91 inched lower. However, liquidity remained at low levels as the trading value on HoSE fell 7.4 per cent from the previous session to nearly VN15 trillion (US$616.6 million), which was equivalent to a trading volume of more than 712.6 million shares. The VN30-Index, which tracks the 30 biggest stocks on HoSE, also increased 5.75 points, or 0.52 per cent, to close Tuesday at 1,108.6 points. Twenty-two stocks in the VN30 basket inched higher, while five dropped and three stayed flat. The indexs bullish trend was backed by rallies in most industries. Of which, the oil and gas industry saw the biggest gain. It was followed by the construction group, with Hoa Binh Construction Group JSC (HBC) hitting the maximum daily gain of 7 per cent, Coteccons Construction JSC (CTD) soaring nearly 5.3 per cent and Viettel Construction (CTR) up 3.77 per cent. Meanwhile, stocks of the banking sector mainly traded in a tight range of under 1 per cent, except for BIDV (BID) which was up 1.85 per cent and Lien Viet Post Bank (LPB) climbed 1.63 per cent. Analysts from Saigon - Hanoi Securities JSC (SHS) said that the market would need more time to form an equilibrium area for the accumulation process. We expect an accumulation base to form above 1,100 point-level. In the short-term, if the positive recovery trend is maintained, we expect the new balance area for accumulation to likely be in the area of 1,100 -1,150 points, SHS said, noting that the recovery is technical as the VN-Index has lost its uptrend while the strong correction is likely to boost the uptrends momentum but not sustainable. On the Ha Noi Stock Exchange (HNX), the HNX-Index also increased for two days in a row. It was up 2.03 points, or 0.89 per cent, to 229.8 points. More than 98.6 million shares were traded on the northern bourse, worth nearly VN2.1 trillion. Limiting the rallies, foreign investors ran away from the market as they net sold nearly VN568 billion on HoSE. However, they still net bought a small amount of VN7 billion on HNX. VNS NEW YORK The northern port city of Hai Phong wished to accelerate cooperation with the US port to capitalise on each others strengths and make the city become a connection point with the rest of the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. The Secretary of the city's Party Committee Le Tien Chau delivered this statement during a working session with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) on November 20 as part of his trip to the US for the APEC Leaders Week. During the event, Chau also briefed the potential and strengths of Hai Phong City as a seaport hub in Viet Nam. For her part, PANYNS Director Bethaan Rooney praised Hai Phongs advantages and potential, especially in logistics and maritime transport. She said the PANYNJ was willing to study opportunities to promote cooperation with the Vietnamese port city shortly. The two sides discussed the study, construction, management and exploitation of airport, railway, logistics centre and shopping mall projects while sharing future development orientations. The event also saw a Memorandum of Understanding inked between PANYNJ and Hai Phong City and a group of Vietnamese and US investors, including Saigon Telecommunications & Technologies Corporation, Kinh Bac City Development Holding Corporation and Energy Capital Vietnam. Under the MoU, the sides will work together to study a project on building a complex of Tien Lang International Airport, Nam o Son Port, a railway system, a logistics centre and Hai Phong World Trade Centre. Hai Phong is striving to become a national logistics hub with large corporations that can compete with foreign businesses in providing high-quality seaport services. Under its revised master plan on socio-economic development by 2023, the city has set a target of achieving an annual logistics services growth rate of 16-18 per cent until 2025 and 17 per cent by 2030. Hai Phong will also diversify its logistics services to increase the value of each ton of goods going through its ports. By 2030, it plans to develop 17 specific services in the logistic services chain, including warehousing, loading and unloading, forwarding, transportation agents, customs clearance agents, and inland waterway services. Over 160 million tonnes of goods were transported through seaports in Hai Phong in 2022. The output of goods through the city's seaports is estimated to reach over 180 million tonnes by the end of this year. VNS HCM CITY Intel has confirmed they will be moving forward with their plans to expand investment in Viet Nam. The move aims to enhance Intel's existing $1.5 billion factory in the Southeast Asian electronics manufacturing hub. Speaking at the Vietnam-US Trade Forum on Tuesday, Ace Wilson, the chief financial officer of Intel Vietnam, said Viet Nam continues to be a critical part of its global manufacturing operations as demand for semiconductors grows. The company aims to diversify its factory strategy across multiple countries, and it has set a target of $10-11 billion in export turnover for the current year, he said. About 70 per cent of chip production that supports the region is expected to come from the Vietnamese factory, he added. In June, Intel decided to invest in a production plant in Germany with a total investment capital of about $33 billion as part of its efforts to expand semiconductor production in Europe. Daniel Nguyen, vice chairman of the Economic Development and Small Business Committee and Member of the Semiconductor Committee of the Oregon House of Representatives, said Viet Nam has great potential for semiconductor industry development. The US has allocated $240 million to support the semiconductor industry, with a particular focus on aiding US businesses investing in this field in Viet Nam, he added. In response to rumours about Intel shelving its planned investment in Viet Nam, a representative of the company clarified that there was misinformation from the media. Intel is still committed to further expanding its investment in Viet Nam, the representative said. Viet Nam is home to Intels largest factory worldwide for assembling, packaging, and testing chips. The Southeast Asian nation has been banking on Intel to further expand its investment in the country, especially after the US President announced deals to support its chips industry during a visit in September. Important partner Speaking at the forum, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade o Thang Hai highlighted Viet Nams consistent policy of regarding the US as one of the most important partners of Viet Nam. Viet Nam is positioning itself well to become a major manufacturing hub in the world, Hai said. Barbara Weisel, an expert in international trade law and former assistant to the US Trade Representative, said in recent years, the Vietnamese market has been growing strongly and stably. Its young, educated, and entrepreneurial workforce and its network of free trade agreements have turned the country into a leading beneficiary from the interest of many countries and companies in supply chain diversification to guarantee better resilience and economic security, she said. Thanks to the shift of supply chains and other factors, Viet Nam has recorded the biggest market share expansion in the US compared to others. The US has become the largest import market of Viet Nam, accounting for nearly one-third of the latters exports. US businesses from many sectors are heading towards the dynamic Southeast Asian market while an increasing number of Vietnamese firms, including electric vehicle producers, have also seen investment opportunities in the US, according to Weisel. Experts recommended the two countries actively work together to build concrete and detailed action plans to enhance the resilience and competitiveness of the fields that both prioritise. They also need to act quickly to generate economic benefits as global businesses are paying attention to new investments in the region and seeking to diversify supply chains. VNS The 23rd Viet Nam National Film Festival is taking place from November 21 to 25 in a Lat City, the Central Highland Province of Lam ong. Viet Nam News reporter Nguyen Binh chats with veteran script writer Banh Mai Phuong, chairwoman of Ha Noi Cinematography Association, about the Viet Nam film industry. Does Ha Noi Cinematography Association have a film competing at the festival? No, we don't have. The association has Sao Khue Studio but it has not yet received financial resources to produce film. Last year, we produced two documentaries with socialised money. But the documentaries are not sent to the festival. We are planning to carry out film and documentary making projects with socialised money. However, some of the association's members working at film studios have films at the festival this year. Hopefully, Ha Noi association will have its own film at the festival next time. Sixteen motion pictures vie for Gold Lotus Awards at the festival this year. How many pictures have you seen and what could you say about them? I have seen 13 pictures. I think that the festival this year sees a large number of good films competing. High-grossing movies are made with the express purpose of affecting behaviour and conveying family message. These movies have had social effects on a large scale and it is really a good sign for Vietnamese cinema. Movies by State-owned studios are also good, including historical themed films. The filmmakers make efforts to produce good films with limited money from State budget, and these movies provoke strong emotions. Which movie do you like the most? Can you predict the winner? I like quite a few movies. It is difficult to choose one movie as my favourite because each of them is different and they still have a few imperfections. Most importantly, the movies are attractive to convey positive social meaningful messages such as Con Nhot Mot Chong (First Look), at Rung Phuong Nam (A Song of The South), Nha Ba Nu (The House of No Man) and Nguoi Vo Cuoi Cung (The Last Wife). The festival's winners will be chosen by the jury. According to the organisation, the jury includes veteran filmmakers, writers and people working in the cinema industry. I don't know whether or not the jury will listen to public opinion for reference to choose the winners. I hope that the high-grossing movies will be honoured at the festival. You are a veteran scriptwriter, could you talk about the role of a scriptwriter in a movie? My father is scriptwriter Banh Bao. I remember a funny story that he always told his students. He went to a film college in France and he saw a slogan Director is God hanging in front of Directing Department's door. He felt self-pity. But right after that, he was very pleased seeing another slogan hanging in front of the Screenwriting Department's door "Screenwriters are the creators of God." It shows the important role of screenwriting in a movie. Can't make bricks without straw. I don't mention whether a script is good or bad; it already has the ideological themes, characters, plot and situations, and then the director and producer will develop the script with their creativity. I highly appreciate the scripts of the high-grossing movies. Their stories are good and attractive. I think that a bad story cannot help the movie to lure audience to the cinema. In short, good scripts will help to advance Vietnamese cinema. Is there a lack of good scripts for filmmakers? What do you think is needed to have good scripts? Development of Vietnamese cinema recently shows that it doesn't lack good scripts. The concept of deficiency and excess are no longer as clear as in the previous period, because there are good movies being shown in the cinemas. The point is how to make a good movie from a good script. Script writing camps and contests have been held by the State. But production and distribution are not synchronised so the good scripts are not on paper only. That is why the lack of good scripts is always an issue to be discussed. Meanwhile, non-Stated owned studios and producers are doing this well. In fact, script writers often only sell their scripts to private studios which have enough money to make a good movie with their scripts as they want to. So it is difficult to say if the Vietnamese cinema industry is lacking good scripts or not. In my opinion, one of the ways to get a good script is to tighten the relationship between literature and cinema. That will help both Vietnamese literature and cinema develop sustainably. Literary adaptation is an important trend in the world of cinema, with two directions. One is adapting literary masterpieces, and the second is adapting outstanding works from famous writers. However, for a long time in Vietnamese literature, there have been almost no writers whose works are both popular and suitable for movie production. Meanwhile, a number of movies adapted from popular literary works have been criticised and slandered by many, including those who have not seen the movies. This is not fair for the director or producer. The audience has the right to give their opinion, to debate and to like or dislike movies. But if public opinion is extreme and imposed, the only way for filmmakers and artists to avoid being criticised is not to do anything and not have any more works. At that time, Vietnamese audiences will be the most disadvantaged. You were born to an art family. Your father and your uncle were popular script writers of the cinema industry. Did they have an impact on your career? Certainly, there is a great influence because they are my teachers at Ha Noi Academy of Theatre and Cinema. We are colleagues at Viet Nam Feature Film Studio. I still remember the story they told me when I was small. In 1967 after they graduated in Script Writing at the Russian State University of Cinematography, they were sent to Vinh Linh battle in the central province of Quang Tri. Their lives were threatened by the US military's bombing. They miraculously survived a bomb attack. They thought that if they did not live to return all their knowledge they learned and the professional experience they had would be lost forever. They decided to choose one of their children to follow in their father's footsteps to continue the flow that they worked so hard to start. Up to now, I still feel very lucky to be the child who was chosen to teach and to light the fire of passion that my father and my uncle nurtured with so much enthusiasm. My family has a movie crew including my husband, a cameraman who studied at the same university with my father in Russia and People's Artist sound director Banh Bac Hai. Hai was also trained in Russia. Everything I can do today, no matter how small, is all thanks to the teaching of my father and my uncle. That reminds me to always keep the family's tradition with all gratitude and respect. VNS HA NOI The majority of serious corruption cases that have been prosecuted recently link to areas such as land, bidding, securities, corporate bonds, banking registration and healthcare, said Government Inspector-General oan Hong Phong at the ongoing meeting of the 15th National Assembly (NA) on Tuesday. Delivering a report on the anti-corruption work in 2023, he said there were signs of officials linked to businesses making illegal profits. "There are legal regulation loopholes in some fields while law shortcomings are slow to be amended and supplemented, especially in land, auctions, bidding, valuation, securities and corporate bonds," he said. According to the Government report, corruption cases are increasingly sophisticated and associated with organisations and group interests. Corrupt assets have great value and are linked to overseas factors. Corruption has been detected not only in the public sector but also in the private sector. According to the report delivered by To Lam, Minister of Public Security, the number of detected crimes related to economic management orders increased by 11.69 per cent in 2023 while crimes related to corruption and abuse of positions increased by 51.63 per cent. Le Thi Nga, chairwoman of the NA's Committee for Judicial Affairs, said violating businesses had been assisted by State officials to appropriate State assets. Most of the violations were found in registration, land, healthcare, education, public asset management, bidding, auction, bonds and money laundering. Looking into investigations of complicated corruption cases such as cases at registration centres nationwide, Advanced International Joint Stock Company, or the rescue flight case, the Judicial Committee proposed agencies better assess the causes of crimes to learn lessons and strengthen state and socio-economic management to further prevent similar incidents in the future, she said. Bo Thi Xuan Linh, NA deputy from Binh Thuan Province, said voters remained concerned and worried about petty corruption and the fact that corruption and negative phenomena were reported at inspection, examination and investigation agencies. Officials in charge of preventing and combating corruption and negative phenomena also committed violations, she said. She proposed classifying those who committed violations into groups of masterminds and followers. Group leaders must be subjected to strict penalties while those who follow the instructions of the leaders should enjoy tolerant policies. Increasing crimes Commenting on the report on preventing and combating crimes and law violations the same day, Nga from the NA's Committee for Judicial Affairs said increases in crimes had been reported in terms of the number of cases, fatality rate and property losses, showing that crime prevention and control in some sectors fell short of expectations. Crimes such as murders, robberies and property appropriation frauds, recorded sharp increases in the number of cases, Nga said. Violations in information technology, telecommunications networks, and the internet had been on the rise and continued to become increasingly complex with many new sophisticated methods and tricks. Many officials took advantage of their positions and powers to seek profit and accept bribes, she said. It was noteworthy that the above violations had been reported for many years, occurred in many places but had not been promptly detected and handled, she said. According to the report of the NA's Committee for Judicial Affairs, many took advantage of the names of businesses and law firms in the form of debt trading to confiscate assets and threaten victims by text messages and phone calls. VNS Ostia chef Travis McShane, The Blind Goat chef Christine Ha, Bludorn chef Aaron Bludorn and Picos chef Arnaldo Richards. Houston Chronicle staff photographers Professional chefs spend many hours working in a kitchen. So with most restaurants closed on Thanksgiving, it's easy to imagine that they might prefer to take the day off. Not so much. Travis McShane, chef-owner at Ostia in Montrose, said every chef he knows would rather be cooking than taking a break. For him, cooking on Thanksgiving is different. Advertisement Article continues below this ad "Cooking for your family kind of brings it back to why you like to cook in the first place," McShane said. "It's the intimacy of preparing the food for people that you love and seeing their reactions, so I'm cooking every year." Since becoming a chef, he said his family tends to add a twist to the classic Thanksgiving. This year, they are leaning into a rustic Italian meal while on Thanksgiving vacation in Mexico. They're roasting a chicken in a pizza oven, confiting turkey legs and having smashed potatoes. For her part, Christine Ha of the Blind Goat is sticking with the classics. While some sides may change year to year, a fried turkey and her broccoli rice casserole are a must. She said her mother-in-law brings traditional Korean dishes, and she sometimes makes a second turkey with an Asian soy honey glaze rub. With Vietnamese immigrant parents, Ha didn't have traditional Thanksgiving until she was in high school. Today, it's her favorite holiday. "I think what I enjoy about Thanksgiving is kind of going back to the simple traditions," Ha said. "Sometimes I feel like classics are classics for a reason." Advertisement Article continues below this ad Classic Roast Turkey, recipe from chef Aaron Bludorn of Bludorn restaurant, with Boudin Mashed Potatoes, recipe from chef Jess DeSham Timmons of Cherry Block Craft Butcher + Kitchen, Giblet Gravy, recipe from chef Ronnie Killen of Killen's restaurants, Holiday Sausage Dressing, recipe from Levi Goode, Goode Company restaurants, Candied Sweet Potatoes, recipe from chef Greg Gatlin, Gatlin's BBQ, Green Bean Casserole, recipe from chef Chris Williams, Lucille's restaurant, and All-Butter Pie Crust and Pumpkin Pie Filling from pastry chef Victoria Dearmond, Underbelly Hospitality. Photographed Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020, in Houston. Mark Mulligan/Staff photographer Aaron Bludorn, chef-owner of Bludorn in Fourth Ward, has a similar mindset. He enjoys keeping the holiday traditional, though some years his family gathers at the restaurant for Thanksgiving. The dish he looks forward to making every year is stuffing. He likes to add turkey or duck liver to his stuffing to take it to the next level. He also said people shouldn't shy away from hors d'oeuvres before the feast, such as shrimp cocktail or oysters. "I like to just make it very straightforward and as delicious as possible," Bludorn said. Mexico native Arnaldo Richards of Picos in Upper Kirby didn't start celebrating Thanksgiving until he was an adult and moved to the U.S., but every year he makes the turkey. Advertisement Article continues below this ad With family members traveling, his gathering is going from around 20 people to 12 this year. He said they stick with the classics, with his kids bringing sides. They sometimes snack on Mexican-style appetizers, but they lean into the American traditional foods. COPENHAGEN Viet Nam attaches great importance to enhancing the Comprehensive Partnership with Denmark, Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan highlighted while meeting with Speaker of Danish Parliament Soren Gade on November 21 (local time) as part of her official visit to the European country. Xuan appreciated the Danish Parliaments support for the development of the Viet Nam-Denmark ties, including the approval of the EU-Viet Nam Investment Protection Agreement in 2021. She took the occasion to call on the parliament to support the early removal of the European Commission's IUU yellow card warning on Vietnamese seafood. Gade, for his part, underscored Xuan's visit will create new impetus for the Comprehensive Partnership between the two countries, and expressed his impression of Viet Nam's economic achievements and dynamic international integration. He affirmed Viet Nam is a leading partner of Denmark in the Asia-Pacific region, and said he is willing to help Viet Nam discuss with competent authorities of the EU the lifting of the yellow card. He also recognised the positive contributions of the Vietnamese community in Denmark to the host nation, saying they have been a bridge that helps consolidate and strengthen the friendship between the two nations. At the meeting, the leaders concurred that both sides should maintain exchanges of delegations at all levels to promote political trust, effectively carry out their cooperation frameworks, as well as capitalise on their potential and strengths so as to develop the cooperative relations in a deep and effective fashion, especially in the fields of economy-trade-investment, and new areas such as green transition and renewable energy. They shared their view on the significance of the early implementation on the joint statement establishing the Viet Nam-Denmark Green Strategic Partnership which was freshly approved by the two Prime Ministers, as well as effective cooperation to carry out the Just Energy Transition Partnership between Viet Nam and international partners, particularly in the development of institutions and infrastructure, technology transfer and human resources training. Affirming inter-parliamentary cooperation is important to deepen the Comprehensive Partnership between the two countries, both leaders agreed to continue effective implementation of signed agreements, bolster coordination between the two parliaments, and enhance delegation exchanges to share information and experience in legislation, supervision, and decision-making of the countries important issues. Touching on regional and international issues of mutual concern, Gade agreed with Xuan that all disputes and differences must be handled in accordance with international law. The two leaders consented that both sides should step up cooperation and support each other at international forums, particularly the UN, as well as in the preparation and organisation of the Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 (P4G) Summit in Viet Nam in 2025. Xuan took the occasion to convey National Assembly Chairman Vuong inh Hue's invitation to visit Viet Nam to the Danish Parliament speaker. The same day, Xuan had a meeting with executives of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), during which she affirmed Viet Nam always rolls out red carpet for foreign enterprises, including CIP, to land investment in the fields of the countrys priorities such as renewable energy. Meanwhile, CIP leaders expressed their belief that CIPs offshore wind power projects will contribute to promoting Viet Nam's energy transition process, and hoped that Viet Nam will soon complete policy frames, creating favourable conditions for foreign firms to invest in the countrys energy sector. Established in 2012, CIP has mobilised some 25 billion EUR (USD), managed 11 funds, and invested in an array of green energy infrastructure projects. In Viet Nam, CIP is developing the La Gan offshore wind farm in Binh Thuan Province. VNS COPENHAGEN Vietnamese Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan and Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen held talks in Copenhagen on November 21, during which they agreed on the need to soon carry out the joint statement on establishing the green strategic partnership. Vice President Xuan, who is paying an official visit to Denmark at the invitation of PM Frederiksen, affirmed that Viet Nam always attaches importance to and wants to enhance the friendship, cooperation, and comprehensive partnership with the European country. She expressed her belief that the trip will help strengthen the comprehensive partnership and implement the freshly-established green strategic partnership for the sake of the two nations' people. Welcoming the Vietnamese delegation, PM Frederiksen stated the Danish Government treasures the friendship, cooperation, and comprehensive partnership with Viet Nam an important partner of Denmark in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in terms of trade and investment, and that it hopes to further reinforce the bilateral relations in economy, environment - climate - energy, and green development. The host leader said she believed the recently-established green strategic partnership will provide new impetus for the bilateral comprehensive partnership, particularly in the fields of sustainable development and green transition. To foster the bilateral ties in the time ahead, both sides agreed to continue increasing high-level delegation exchanges, and coordinate with and support each other at multilateral forums. Vice President Xuan thanked the Danish Government for advocating Viet Nam's hosting of the Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030 (P4G) summit in 2025. With regard to trade and investment, the two leaders agreed that their countries governments, ministries, and sectors need to encourage Vietnamese and Danish enterprises to implement investment projects in the fields matching Denmarks strengths and Viet Nam's development orientations in the time ahead such as renewable energy, marine economy, food processing, and green growth. Vice President Xuan called on the Danish Government to raise voice to prompt the parliaments of the remaining EU countries to ratify the EU - Viet Nam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA), support the European Commission (EC)s removal of its yellow card warning on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing against Viet Nam's seafood exports, and help the Southeast Asian country develop aquaculture towards sustainability. PM Frederiksen affirmed that she has always paid attention to this issue and supports the EC and Viet Nam's discussions on the removal of the yellow card. At the talks, the two leaders emphasised the need to expand green growth-oriented economic relations and bolster cooperation in green transition and climate change response, thus helping with the two governments efforts to realise the commitments to net zero emissions, made at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), and the Sustainable Development Goals. The Danish PM stated that Denmark is ready to work with Viet Nam in the new areas of green transition and just energy transition, especially renewable energy that the European country has rich experience in and financial capacity for. Appreciating Denmarks important assistance to Viet Nam to reach socio-economic development targets and the Sustainable Development Goals, Vice President Xuan stressed that the two sides should keep cooperation to effectively implement projects on energy, sustainable development, and vocational training, including the Viet Nam-Denmark Energy Partnership Programme for the 2020-25 period. PM Frederiksen spoke highly of the Vietnamese communitys integration into the local economy and society as well as their substantial contributions to the bilateral relations. She agreed with her guests proposal on continuing to give favourable conditions for Vietnamese people in Denmark to act as a friendship bridge between the two countries. Talking about regional and international issues of shared concern, Vice President Xuan highly valued Denmarks role and voice in the international arena. PM Frederiksen noted she was particularly impressed with Viet Nam's strong commitments and role at multilateral forums, and that Denmark hoped to join hands with Viet Nam to realise the Sustainable Development Goals. Both host and guest reaffirmed the importance of peace, stability, cooperation, and development in the world as well as peace, stability, safety, security and freedom of navigation in the East Sea (known internationally as the South China Sea). They voiced their support for international law and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Vice President Xuan said she hoped PM Frederiksen will pay a visit to Viet Nam soon at the invitation of PM Pham Minh Chinh. The Danish PM agreed with pleasure. VNS HA NOI Foreign minister Bui Thanh Son spoke highly of the preparations made by Laos for the ASEAN Chairmanship 2024 and emphasised that Viet Nam is ready to support Laos in successfully taking over the role. He told Saleumxay Kommasith, Laos deputy prime minister and foreign minister, while the two chaired the tenth Viet Nam-Laos foreign ministerial-level consultation meeting on Wednesday in Ha Noi. The two ministers had an extensive and substantive exchange, focusing on reviewing bilateral cooperation, preparing for high-level foreign affairs activities between the two countries in the future, and discussing measures to continue to promote cooperation between the two ministries of foreign affairs. Both sides expressed their joy at the steady and effective progress in all fields between Viet Nam and Laos in recent times. Political trust continues to be strengthened with many delegation exchanges and high-level contacts at different levels, creating a solid foundation and direction for the overall bilateral relationship. Intensified security and defence cooperation has contributed to maintaining security and stability in each country, they said. They agreed that economic cooperation has seen more positive, substantive and effective changes. In the first ten months of 2023, the bilateral trade turnover reached more than US$1.3 billion. Many key projects have been put into operation. The countries have fostered cooperation in education and training, human resource development, and strengthened communications among the young generation about the great relationship, special solidarity and partnership between Viet Nam and Laos. The two ministers highly appreciated the ministerial-level cooperation developed on the basis of the cooperation agreement between the two foreign ministries for the 2021-25 period. They also agreed to continue maintaining and promoting periodic cooperation mechanisms such as the action programme to strengthen diplomatic and economic cooperation for the 2020-25 period; cooperation programme to train and foster officials working in foreign affairs and international integration. The two sides informed each other about each country's foreign policy, and affirmed to continue to proactively share information, exchange views and coordinate stances at all channels and levels, contributing to improving international position of each country. The two sides agreed to closely coordinate and support each other at multilateral forums, especially in ASEAN and Mekong sub-region cooperation mechanisms as well as advocate ASEAN's common stance on strategic issues in the region, including the East Sea (internationally known as South China Sea) issue. VNS HA NOI The handling of citizens petitions and denunciations has been implemented methodically by the National Assembly (NA)s committees, with improvements in quality and efficiency. Duong Thanh Binh, head of the NA Standing Committees Ombudsman Commission, made the statement on Wednesday morning while the NA discussed the issues. Binh reported that this year, the number of citizens complaints sent to NAs committees increased by 1,384 compared to last year. The letters sent to administrative agencies were mainly related to land management and construction; compensation and resettlement; recognition and issuance of land use rights certificates; land disputes; management and operation of apartment buildings; investment, construction and operation of waste treatment areas and animal husbandry causing environmental pollution. Letters sent to judicial agencies were mainly related to reviewing retrial procedures and legally effective judgments and decisions. Many complicated cases were resolved decisively, strengthening the people's trust in the Party and State, and demonstrating the roles and responsibilities of NAs committees. Besides the achieved results, said Binh, the work still had some shortcomings and limitations, such as the organisation and implementation of citizen reception in some localities was not good enough. It depended on the locality's periodic citizen reception plan and the assignment of the NA delegation. To improve the efficiency of citizen reception, resolving citizens complaints and denunciations in the coming time, deputy ieu Huynh Sang, from Binh Phuoc southern province proposed the Government to review and supplement solutions to remove difficulties and obstacles. He suggested having specific measures and roadmaps to completely resolve complex and long-standing complaints and denunciations, minimising new incidents that affect social order and safety. Agencies should clarify the central, key and breakthrough solutions. Sang emphasised that it was necessary to immediately implement basic and long-term solutions, perfecting legal policies, and education on laws, and strictly handling acts of abusing the rights to complain and denounce illegal acts. He believes it is necessary to increase investment, upgrade and complete the national database on citizen reception. The resolution of complaints and denunciations must ensure interconnection from central to grassroots level and there must be a connection between Party agencies, the NA, the Government and the Fatherland Front. Information technology should be promoted in the work. Contributing opinions at the discussion, deputy Cam Thi Man, from central Thanh Hoa Province, emphasised that next year would be the peak year for arranging district- and commune-level administrative units. It will also be a pivotal year to prepare for the Party Congresses at all levels for the 2025-30 term. Therefore, Man requested the Government, ministries and localities to identify the work of receiving citizens, resolving their complaints and denunciations as the key tasks. They should promptly handle complaints and denunciations as soon as they arise, avoiding complications in political security and social order. It is necessary to raise the sense of responsibility of leaders of State management agencies in the work, especially the inspection agencies," said Man. She proposed to have solutions to firmly grasp complaints and denunciations in localities, especially the places that are having or at high risk of incidents, to coordinate for resolution. Party Committees and local governments should strengthen education on the laws to all people so that each person can fully understand policies relating to the rights and obligations of citizens in complaints and denunciations. Receiving NA deputies opinions, the Government Inspectorate, ministries and localities will continue to advise the Government and the Prime Minister on the issue. They will complete the national database on citizens complaints and denunciations, clearly defining types of applications according to resolution authority to limit duplication. VNS HA NOI Deputy Minister of Health o Xuan Tuyen attended the 42nd session of the UNESCO General Conference in Paris, France from November 20-22. On the sidelines of the conference, Deputy Minister Tuyen had working sessions with the UNESCO Director General and Deputy Director General, as well as leaders of a number of participating delegations on the promotion of bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the health care area. The 42nd session of the UNESCO General Conference opened on November 7, drawing representatives from 194 member countries, 12 associate member countries, observer countries, international organisations and non-governmental organisations. During the session, the UNESCO General Assembly approved the programme and budget for period 2024-25 period, the human resources management strategy for the 2023 - 2027 period, and UNESCO's operational strategy for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Participants also discussed many current urgent issues, contributing to promoting peace and sustainable development. Particularly, on November 21, the conference passed a resolution on the list of eminent personalities and historical events in 2023-24, which includes progenitor of Vietnamese traditional medicine Hai Thuong Lan Ong Le Huu Trac. The year 2024 will mark the 300th birth anniversary of the Vietnamese talented medic. To honour his contributions and merits to Viet Nam's medicine, culture, and folklore, Viet Nam prepared a dossier and submitted it to UNESCO for recognition, which was highly evaluated by international experts. The resolution was passed by all UNESCO members, showing the clearest affirmation of the great contributions of Vietnamese people in the fields of education, health, culture, and society, and demonstrating their spread of talent and intelligence in the international arena, he said. Deputy Minister Tuyen emphasised that famous physician Le Huu Trac was a historical figure who left a treasure of great values in the fields of medicine, culture, and education. Le Huu Trac (1724-1791), alias Hai Thuong Lan Ong, hailed from the northern province of Hung Yen. He was not only a great physician and pharmacist but also an excellent poet and writer, and a thinker with progressive thought and profound humanitarian spirit. After passing away, he was honoured as the Saint of medicine of Viet Nam. He left a large number of works, which reflect his deep knowledge, progressive thought, and pure morality, and set a bright example of medical ethics, principles, and practices for following generations. For those reasons, he was considered the progenitor of Viet Nam's traditional medicine. As the year 2024 will mark the 300th birth anniversary of Le Huu Trac, UNESCOs decision to commemorate the great physician is a recognition of his dedications to the medicine, literature, and culture of Viet Nam and the world. At the session, aside from the dossier on the Vietnamese figure, UNESCO approved 52 others. So far, UNESCO has approved resolutions honouring and commemorating the birth/death anniversaries of several Vietnamese figures, namely the 600th birth anniversary of Nguyen Trai (approved in 1980), the 100th birth anniversary of President Ho Chi Minh (1990), the 250th birth anniversary of Nguyen Du (2015), the 650th death anniversary of Chu Van An (2019), the 200th birth anniversary of Nguyen inh chieu (2021), the 250th birth and 200th death anniversaries of Ho Xuan Huong (2021), and the 300th birth anniversary of Le Huu Trac (2023). VNS COPENHAGEN Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan has a meeting with Denmarks Crown Prince Frederik in Copenhagen on November 22 (local time) as part of her official visit to the European nation. Frederik said he believes that Xuan's visit will contribute to consolidating and forging the Viet Nam-Denmark comprehensive partnership, and suggested the two sides maintain their cooperation and mutual support, and work to implement agreements within the framework of the Green Strategic Partnership approved by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen on November 1. Xuan, for her part, stressed that Frederiks Vietnam visit last year vividly demonstrated the traditional friendship and political trust of the bilateral comprehensive partnership. She called on the Royal Family and Government of Denmark to further support Viet Nam in realising the commitments of the Just Energy Transition Partnership, the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. She suggested the Crown Prince support Danish organisations, such as the green national fund, to assist Viet Nam's green transition, and encourage Danish businesses to operate in the Southeast Asian nation in the fields of renewable energy and green growth. Xuan used the occasion to thank the Royal Family and Government of Denmark for creating favourable conditions for more than 16,000 Vietnamese to integrate into host society, thus contributing to the bilateral relations. Frederik noted that he backs Danish enterprises to launch projects in Viet Nam's Mekong Delta and encourages them to expand operations to other potential areas. Host and guest shared the view that the two countries need to maintain regular cultural, educational and people-to-people exchanges, especially between youths. The same day, Xuan met with representatives from major Danish businesses spanning such areas as processing and manufacturing and renewable energy. The Danish firms lauded efforts by the Vietnamese Government, ministries and agencies in improving the domestic investment environment, and shared the view that the Viet Nam-Denmark Green Strategic Partnership will open up many opportunities for foreign enterprises to invest in sustainable development and green transition in Viet Nam. Xuan said the Vietnamese government prioritises attracting quality foreign direct investment, targeting projects using high-tech, with high added values and sustainable development. VNS HA NOI Viet Nam will wholeheartedly support Laos in successfully fulfilling its international responsibilities, including its 2024 ASEAN chairmanship, said President Vo Van Thuong on Wednesday reception for Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Laos Saleumxay Kommasith, who is in Viet Nam to co-chair the 10th Viet Nam-Laos foreign ministerial-level consultation. Thuong lauded the success and meaning of the consultation, which, he said, contributed substantially to enhancing the great friendship, special solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation between the nations. Saleumxay Kommasith took the occasion to express his gratitude to the Vietnamese Party, State, and people for consistent supporting and standing side by side with the Lao Party, State, and people. Both host and guest were pleased with bilateral cooperation achievements obtained recently, particularly the sides close coordination as well as increased high-level exchanges and mechanisms for joint works. They stressed that the Viet Nam-Laos great friendship, special solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation are unparalleled in the world and that both nations should continue to nurture and educate their younger generations to uphold the ties. Thuong thanked Saleumxay Kommasith for coordinating with Lao functional agencies to create favourable conditions for the Vietnamese community living and working in Laos. Given the rapidly changing and complex global and regional situation, they concurred on a need for the two countries to enhance information exchange and work closely together at regional and international forums. VNS HA NOI Viet Nam always treasures and gives the top priority to its special relationship with Laos, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh told visiting Lao Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith in Ha Noi on Wednesday. The PM pledged that Viet Nam will further support Laos in building an independent, self-reliant economy and a contingent of quality personnel, and emphasised the need to intensify economic connectivity and share development paths, for the sake of people. For his part, Kommasith conveyed regards from Party General Secretary and President Thongloun Sisoulith, Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone and other high-ranking leaders of Laos to Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and other high-ranking leaders of Viet Nam. He noted with pleasure the effective developments of the Viet Nam-Laos special relationship, and commended Viet Nam's valuable support to Laos during its past struggle for national independence, as well as its present cause of national construction and defence. Host and guest shared the view that the bilateral political relations have been tightened, and other cooperation areas like defence, security, economy, culture, education and training as well as collaboration between localities have received due attention and made progress. Chinh asked relevant ministries and agencies of the two countries to quickly review cooperation fields, coordinate to remove obstacles to key joint projects, and work together to bring the relationship to a new page. The leader suggested the two sides closely coordinate to implement high-level delegation exchanges and important cooperation mechanisms between the two countries, including the 46th meeting of the Viet Nam-Laos Intergovernmental Committee, and support each other at multilateral forums. Viet Nam will continue to support as much as possible to help Laos successfully assume the 2024 ASEAN Chairmanship, he promised. Kommasith informed Chinh about the results of the tenth Viet Nam-Laos foreign ministerial-level consultation meeting he co-chaired earlier the same day in Ha Noi, and noted that the two countries will maintain their close coordination and cooperation in regional and international issues. VNS HA NOI Minister of National Defence General Phan Van Giang hosted a reception in Ha Noi on Wednesday for Philippine Undersecretary of National Defence Irineo Cruz Espino, who is in Viet Nam for the fifth Viet Nam-Philippine defence policy dialogue. Giang affirmed that Viet Nam attaches great importance to consolidating and strengthening its strategic partnership with the Philippines, and is determined to work with the country to bring the bilateral relationship to a new level, for peace, stability and prosperous development in the region and the world. Emphasising the enhanced defence cooperation, the minister suggested the two sides work harder to make it more practical and effective, contributing to deepening the Viet Nam-Philippines strategic partnership. Giang used the occasion to invite leaders of the Philippine Department of National Defence (DND), armed forces and businesses to attend the Viet Nam International Defence Expo next year. For his part, Espino stressed that the DND will fully implement contents in the agreement inked by the two ministries as well as common perceptions reached by high-ranking leaders of the two countries, and expressed his hope to welcome the Vietnamese minister in the Philippines in the time ahead. Earlier the same day, the Philippine military official and Vietnamese counterpart Sen. Lieut. Gen. Hoang Xuan Chien co-chaired the fifth defence policy dialogue in Ha Noi, during which they reviewed cooperation outcomes since the previous meeting in 2019, exchanged views on issues of mutual concern at the strategic level, and agreed on defence cooperation orientations. Both noted remarkable achievements in all-level delegation exchange, and maintaining consultation and dialogue mechanisms. They spoke highly of ASEAN-led mechanisms, and pledged to make efforts to contribute to consolidating and enhancing the groupings solidarity and centrality in the regional security architecture. The officials highlighted the importance of ensuring freedom, security, and safety of navigation and overflight in the East Sea (known internationally as the South China Sea), and the need to promote commitments and the implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and soon conclude negotiations and sign a substantive, effective Code of Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (COC) in accordance with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). They concurred to foster the bilateral defence cooperation, making it more practical and effective, with a focus on delegation exchange; carry forward existing cooperation mechanisms, particularly consultation mechanisms and the defence policy dialogue; step up collaboration in training; pay more attention to cooperation in logistics; and enhance cooperation in such areas as military medicine, search and rescue operations, and defence industry. The two sides will also maintain their consultation and mutual support at multilateral forums and mechanisms, especially those led by ASEAN. VNS HA NOI Eye cancer in children is surprisingly common, sixth among the top ten cancers affecting youngsters. However, the majority of patients wait too late to seek medical treatment, leading to the necessity of removing the eyeball to preserve life in 70 per cent of cases. This situation creates a psychological barrier to social communication among children affected by this disease, Associate Professor Nguyen Tuan Hung, director in charge of the Central Eye Hospital, said. At the introduction of the paediatric ophthalmology unit under the Central Eye Hospital on November 20, Hung said that eye cancer is a specialised field in ophthalmology related to the diagnosis and treatment of all tumours on the surface of the eyeball, intraocular tumours, or tumours around the eyeball. These tumours can be benign or malignant, and if not treated and monitored, they can cause visual impairment, or even require the removal of the eyeball. Malignant eye tumours can either originate in the eye or metastasise to the eye from another organ in the body. Statistics over the six-year period from 2018 to 2022 show that each year, there are more than 1000 patients with eye cancer and other eye tumours seeking treatment at the Central Eye Hospital. The hospital is currently monitoring patients who have undergone treatment to detect and treat new tumours and recurrent tumours early. Currently, the hospital has 300 eye cancer patients. During the examinations, doctors at the hospital have provided genetic counselling and monitored families with a history of eye cancer. Currently, there is no national centre specifically dedicated to eye tumours. Most doctors working in the field of eye cancer are ophthalmologists, and patients are mostly treated at major eye hospitals nationwide. Accurate statistical data on the number of patients with eye tumours nationwide is not available. Hung believed that the establishment of the Eye Cancer Unit and Uveal Melanoma Unit is truly necessary to enhance and develop treatment methods for the eyeball preservation and achieve the best visual. According to Dr Pham Minh Chau, deputy head of the Pediatric Ophthalmology Department at the Central Eye Hospital, eye cancer originates from tumours inside the eyeball, typically affecting children under the age of six. In the early stages, the disease may not show specific symptoms, but when signs of eye misalignment such as the black pupil not in the centre or white spots on the black pupil appear, the risk of tumour development is significant. Only about 30 per cent of children are discovered early enough to preserve their eyesight. According to Chau, eye cancer has a genetic factor. Some patients with eye cancer, even as young as one month old, have been discovered with tumours and successfully treated. Statistics from the Central Eye Hospital show that the current survival rate for people with eye cancer is 93 per cent. However, most patients seek medical treatment at later stages, requiring removal of the eyeball to preserve their lives. Additionally, for cases where preservation treatment of the eyeball is considered, the large size of tumours and the lack of standardised equipment result in prolonged treatment times, leading to up to 70 per cent of patients having impaired vision even after successful treatment. VNS John Oxley: Two cities and one journey to World Heritage 13:44, November 22, 2023 By Muyang Shi, Yu Ying ( People's Daily Online Approaching York from outside, visitors are first greeted by the best-preserved city walls in the United Kingdom, a series of medieval walls that had their foundation from the Roman times. Once a formidable defense against invaders, today, the York City Walls run 3 kilometers long and welcome people from all around the world with unique views of the natural and cultural beauty from the coursing River Ouse to the magnificent York Minster. Among those who have guarded this invaluable material heritage for centuries is a Northern man born in a small town outside York, John Oxley. Having had an interest in archaeology since a young age, Oxley held the office of City Archaeologist of York from 1989 to 2019. Under his stewardship and together with his colleagues, the Chinese city of Nanjing became the first Sister City of York in half a century. Now retired and standing on top of the walls that he has looked after for 30 years, Oxley shares with Peoples Daily Online the universal values embedded in every stone of the walls around York and Nanjing, and his vision for the two sister cities as future World Heritage sites. Into the past and into China John Oxley (Photo/Lewis McCarthy) Peoples Daily Online: For three decades you have worked as City Archaeologist of York. Looking back, your journey into the past started nearly half a century ago and continues today. What was your initial focus and was Chinese history or archaeology taught in the university then? John Oxley: Indeed, my entry into archaeology came at a very early age when I was eight years old. I wrote an essay at school and the essay was entitled When I Am 20 and I wrote when I am 20, I will be an archaeologist. When I was studying at university and when I was sort of taking part in archaeological projects, there was very little contact with Chinese archaeology and the practice and study of Chinese archaeology. My interests were heavily European, I'm afraid. So I was focused very much on the archeology of post of Roman and Post-Roman Britain, and that took me through studying for a high end degree at the University of Liverpool. Peoples Daily Online: Throughout your career in archaeology, in addition to excavations of new materials, you have taken on more responsibility in managing existing sites. Can you share with us how this new interest in heritage management enabled your first interaction with China? John Oxley: So when working in York from 1989 onwards, I developed this framework for managing archaeology and developing this concept of preservation in situ, which allowed us to construct buildings through accepting the destruction of a small amount of archaeology in order to preserve the greater part of the archaeology its significance. The University of York for a long time had the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, and it ran a very prestigious course in conservation and lots of students from around the world came and studied at the Institute. So from about the mid-nineties onwards, we had a reasonably regular visit from people working in the cultural heritage management organizations within the governments of China which was developed through the 2000s. Peoples Daily Online: You mentioned that the link between your work and China can be traced back to the 1990s. What about China generated the most interest? And was there a pivotal moment that made you realize that, in addition to academic exchanges, there was much to achieve in a partnership with your Chinese counterparts? John Oxley: I think the success that I had in sort of achieving that balance was something that attracted a lot of attention from other countries and quite interestingly, a lot of attention from China, because the problems that they were talking about were very similar to the problems that we had addressed and confronted. It was precisely that problem of the senior politicians and senior officers having an agenda that was driven by developments rather than conservation and so they could see that what we achieved here in York was a program that addressed those political ambitions, but which also actually addressed the need for archaeological conservation and research. From my perspective, I became aware of the power of that link in 2010 when we hosted a visit by Professor Ruan Yisan from Shanghai and who had established his own Institute for Conservation and did a lot of work on conservation of water towns on the Yangtze River, particularly of the water towns that you've got around Suzhou and Shanghai. That sort of made me realize just how important these conversations and these interactions with academics and conservation practitioners from overseas was. A tale of two cities City of York (Photo/Hewitt and Walker) Peoples Daily Online: York formed a twin city relationship with Dijon, France, in 1953 and Munster, Germany, in 1957. In 2016, Nanjing became Yorks third sister city and the first outside Europe which led to intensive visits between the two cities. During your first visit to Nanjing, what was your impression of the city and its cultural heritage? John Oxley: I think it was in 2017 and really in many ways due to the influence of Will Zhuang here in York that we were able to develop more formal links with both Shanghai but in particular with Nanjing, and that led to the signing of a sister city agreement with the city of Nanjing that then triggered invitations to go and take part in historical and cultural exhibitions in Nanjing itself. So that first visit to Nanjing in June 2018 for me was a real eye-opener. There's one thing to read about and to look at photographs of Nanjing City walls. It's a completely different experience to go and stand on them and get a feel for the scale and the monumentality of those structures. I mean, York city walls are the best preserved medieval and earliest city walls in the United Kingdom. They are just over 3 kilometers long. Nanjing city walls are 35 kilometers long. They are nearly 30 meters high in places. They are absolutely immense structures. Peoples Daily Online: Building upon the establishment of the sister city agreement and an amicable first interaction, did you get to visit other places in China, and what were the things that caught your eye while touring these places? John Oxley: I was really interested in exploring the narratives around outstanding universal values. So, after the visit to Nanjing had finished we then visited Suzhou and went back to Shanghai, where I met various people and I talked at the Department of Architectural Studies at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, and made some really good links with the academics there. I then continued my visits, and I went to Xian and Dunhuang to look at those two locations. And you know, the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor and the Terracotta Army are both World Heritage sites but the old city of Xian within its walls is not. So, for me, I came back from that visit and my mind was just completely sort of buzzing with the possibilities of learning from that Chinese experience of how they'd use World Heritage to promote concepts of place, how they'd use World Heritage to develop a particular type of cultural tourism, and how they were using the management frameworks to deal with World Heritage in those locations. Discovering outstanding universal values John Oxley (Photo/Lewis McCarthy) Peoples Daily Online: To acquire the status of World Heritage Site, both Nanjing and York must demonstrate outstanding universal values that appeal to all of humanity. In your opinion, what are the connections between the two cities pursuits? John Oxley: We have developed and we have looked at the issue of outstanding universal value in relation to the historic core of York. And we've developed a narrative that is framed around the concept of York as an urban center for 2,000 years, which has its origins in the Roman military presence, but which then goes on to be a major administrative and ecclesiastical center and at center in the post-Roman period. Going back to Nanjing, I see a lot of similarities between the narratives that Nanjing are trying to develop in their World Heritage bid and the narratives that we are trying to develop here in Europe for our World Heritage bid as well. I think there are universal values in how both cities came to be - from an early military flashpoint closure and then gradually taking up more spaces and incorporating different parts of the landscape in smaller pieces. We could both draw on each other's experience of constructing narratives about outstanding universal value and applying them to these two places. Peoples Daily Online: In addition to the universal values reflected in the history and development of both cities, what contemporary elements do you consider equally important to the World Heritage Site application? John Oxley: The local context is incredibly important. And I'm sure from the conversations I've had with, for instance, the voluntary guides on the walls and at the City Walls Museum in Nanjing, that the pride and the sense of identity that the walls and the heritage of the city of Nanjing give to them is actually very similar, if not identical to what you get when you talk to the voluntary guides who work in the York Minster or the people who work with the Friends of York Walls. And I think here in York, the heritage of the city clearly informs the sense of identity that the people who live here have about being in York, being someone who is from the city of York. So that heritage, although it speaks to a universal audience, is perhaps in many ways more important for how the local population, how the people who live in there interact with and deal with the heritage of the city. It's that sense of identity. And I think what we're trying to do in terms of developing that World Heritage narrative of outstanding universal value in York is trying to marry the unicycle vocabulary about outstanding universal value with those concepts of local identity. Peoples Daily Online: You have shared with us the core universal values of the city walls of York and Nanjing. Looking forward, what is the next step for Yorks pursuit of World Heritage status, and, now that you have retired from the position of City Archaeologist, for you personally? John Oxley: York's World Heritage journey started in 2006 when the then Lord Mayor, Janice Hopton, asked the question, should York be a World Heritage site? And so, I was involved at the very beginning. From 2006, we established a steering group, and I've taken a leading role in that steering group. We applied in 2010 to be placed on the tentative list of the UK nomination of World Heritage but were unsuccessful. But we were also advised by the expert panel that had given advice to the governments that we should apply next time. So, we had continued our work and in 2022 our bid was successful. The United Kingdom only nominates one site every year and we are looking to have as much work done as we can to support a nomination to the World Heritage Committee in 2027. So, I see my role over the next four years as working very closely with United Kingdom World Heritage experts, but also working as closely as possible with World Heritage experts in places like China, where we already have good contacts and good networks in Shanghai, in Suzhou, in Nanjing and in Xi'an. And again, look at what we can learn from their experience, from the experience of World Heritage cities in China, both in constructing a bid and in managing a place so that we can manage the outstanding universal value of these places. (Web editor: Hongyu, Wu Chengliang) James Barnes Jr. was sentenced Friday to life without parole for the shooting death of a taco stand owner in 2020. Jason Fochtman, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer A Magnolia man was sentenced Friday to life without parole in the shooting death of a taco stand owner in 2020. James Barnes, Jr., 21, was sentenced by 359th state District Court Judge Kathleen Hamilton after a jury found him guilty of capital murder. With his actions, Mr. Barnes unleashed violence and chaos in our community, killing an innocent, good, hardworking father and husband for no reason at all, said chief prosecutor Joel Daniels. Advertisement Article continues below this ad According to information from the Montgomery County District Attorneys Office, prosecutors presented evidence Barnes had been involved in an aggravated robbery just hours before he shot and killed Miguel Flores at his taco stand in the 9000 block of Caraway Lane Dec. 6, 2020. Flores wife escaped after a struggle with Barnes, prosecutors said. Barnes fled the scene before police could arrive but was later arrested after a sergeant with the Magnolia Police Department stopped him for speeding, First Assistant District Attorney Mike Holley stated in a news release Tuesday. During a search, the sergeant found shell casings which were linked back to the murder scene. The sergeant also found clothes connecting Barnes to the attempted robbery that occurred just before the murder. Flores' DNA was later found to be present on those same pants, along with a pair of boots located in Barnes' vehicle, the release stated. Advertisement Article continues below this ad HCM CITY - The significance of social work in hospitals continues to grow, playing an increasingly vital role in medical facility operations, experts agreed yesterday at a seminar on social work in hospitals. The seminar, hosted by the Department of Medical Examination and Treatment Administration under the Ministry of Health, discussed the urgent need to standardise social work within hospitals, ensuring higher professionalism and effectiveness. It also invited feedback on amendments to a circular on the tasks and operation of social work at hospitals in the southern region. Associate Professor Nguyen Tuan Hung, Deputy Director of the Department of Personnel and Organisation at the Ministry of Health, highlighted that social work departments and groups had been established in all central hospitals in Viet Nam, with provincial and district hospitals following suit at rates of 96.8 per cent and 89.9 per cent, respectively. Over the past decade, social work activities in medical facilities made strides towards professionalisation across legal documentation, human resources, training, scientific research and practical applications. According to Hung, the organisational models for social work departments vary widely across the country, with the majority situated under departments and faculties, particularly the Nursing Department (36.8 per cent). Only 18 per cent of units currently have a dedicated social work unit, while 7 per cent have independent social work teams. Despite the progress, challenges persist. Legal documents governing social work in medical facilities exhibit limitations such as overly broad and general tasks, task overlap, and exceeding the capacities of social workers. Moreover, some leaders within the Department of Health and medical facilities show insufficient interest in social work, particularly in preventive medicine and population health. Addressing the impediments to genuine development, Luong Ngoc Khue, Director of the Department of Medical Examination and Treatment Management, noted the prevalence of part-time human resources (constituting over 60 per cent) within the social work field. The proportion of officers and employees with specialised training in social work remains low. Additionally, there is currently no standardised training program for social workers in hospitals or medical examination and treatment facilities, and competency standards are lacking. Tran Van Hung, Head of the Social Work Department at Ho Chi Minh City Medicine and Pharmacy Universitys hospital, suggested the establishment of competency standards for hospital social workers, the issuance of practice certificates akin to other medical staff, and the inclusion of additional duties, such as assessing and providing psychosocial interventions, in patients' medical records. Conference delegates recommended the establishment of social work departments in hospitals or, alternatively, the formation of Social Work Groups. These groups, not necessarily affiliated with specific departments, would allow hospitals to tailor their structures based on unique tasks, operational scales and organisational arrangements. Furthermore, there was a call to support medical staff in their social work activities, providing psychological support and coordinating resources for financial and material assistance. Simultaneously, fostering improved relationships between medical staff, patients, and their families was emphasised. In conclusion, participants agreed that the standardisation of social work activities in hospitals was crucial for ensuring professionalism, efficacy, and the overall well-being of both healthcare professionals and the patients they serve. VNS QUANG TRI The Military Command of the central province of Quang Tri, in collaboration with the Golden West Organisation of the US, on November 21 defused two war-time bombs in Huong Lap Commune, the mountainous district of Huong Hoa. After receiving information from local residents, the commands combat engineer unit promptly approached the site and isolated the area. They found that one of the bombs is a 340kg M117 and the other is a Mark 82 (MK82) weighing 230 kg. In a process controlled from afar, combat engineers separated the detonator from the part that contains the explosive of the MK82 bomb. After being removed from the bomb, the detonator was destroyed at the site. Meanwhile, the M117 bomb were moved to a safe place for later treatment. Quang Tri is the most polluted locality in Viet Nam in terms of UXOs. Landmines and bombs have killed over 3,430 people and injured 5,100 others since the war ended in 1975. So far, 34 non-governmental and 23 international organisations have joined bomb and mine clearance efforts in the province, which targets becoming the first locality nationwide to be free from wartime bombs, mines and other UXOs by 2025. VNS HCM CITY Police said they recommend that inspectors at the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) be charged with accepting bribes of up to US$5.2 million from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB). According to the Investigation Police Department for Corruption, Smuggling, and Economic Crimes (C03) under the Public Security Ministry, the bribes were taken in exchange for overlooking the extreme violations that were being committed by the lender. The C03 has recommended charging o Thi Nhan, former head of the SBVs inspection and supervision department, after it was discovered that she received bribes worth $5.2 million from SCB. Truong My Lan, chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat Group and a major shareholder of SCB, is accused of siphoning over VN1 quadrillion (US$44 billion) worth of public deposits from the bank over a period of ten years. In addition to Nhan, 16 other central bank inspectors have also been recommended for charges related to abusing their position and authority while performing their official duties. Seven other inspectors will not be charged as they have cooperated with investigators and returned the money they had unlawfully accepted, according to C03. According to C03, Nhan, as the head investigator, discovered the fraudulent activities in August 2017 but instead of taking action, falsified reports which allowed SCB to continue operating normally. This led to severe violations and Nhan even instructed her subordinates not to mention VN38 trillion worth of bad debt in their reports but rather falsify all key financial indicators of the bank. The private lender was put under special control by SBV, after facing a run in October last year, in an effort to prevent an industry-wide contagion. Earlier, the C03 reported that Truong My Lan, 66, is facing charges of bribery, violating banking regulations, and embezzlement, which caused SCB to incur a total loss of VN500 trillion. In addition, 85 other individuals are also facing charges related to embezzlement, violation of banking regulations, bribery, abuse of power, negligence causing serious consequences, and misappropriation of property. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at a meeting last year blamed the central bank for its weak management that caused the unprecedented wrongdoings at SCB. According to the police investigation, although Lan does not hold any positions at SCB, she has control over the bank as she has held a controlling stake (from 85 to 91.5 per cent) since a merger in 2012. The C03 stated that with her controlling shares, and with close relatives of hers appointed to key leadership positions at SCB, all activities of the bank basically served Lans purposes. She is accused of utilising SCB to raise capital, then directing individuals at SCB and Van Thinh Phat Group to take out loans to withdraw money. In October last year, Lan and other individuals were arrested for alleged fraud related to the issuance and trading of bonds worth VN30.1 trillion ($1.22 billion). Most of the buyers of the bond packages purchased the bonds at SCB. Truong My Lan is known as a prominent Chinese-Vietnamese billionaire in Viet Nams business community. The amount that the chairwoman is accused of misappropriating is equivalent to 6 per cent of Viet Nams GDP, local media reported. VNS According to the city plan for the rest of this decade and with a vision to 2050, confirmed at the start of the month, Danang will become a centre for high-tech and supporting industries in Vietnam. Under the plan, Danang will continue to develop green and knowledge-rich sectors. Specifically, high-tech industrial fields including microelectronics, chip and semiconductor circuits, precision mechanics, mechatronics, optoelectronics, automation, environmental tech, and new energy tech will be given a push. Nanotechnology will also become a mainstream industry. The plan also orients the development of cars, aviation, yachts, electronics, mechanical manufacturing, pharmaceutical chemistry and cosmetics, food and beverages, and fashion. Other processing and manufacturing industries with high added value are also being pushed forward. Danang strives to only take on vital projects that adhere to environmental ambitions The growth rate of the processing and manufacturing will reach an average of over 12 per cent per year. Supporting industries will be strengthened, focusing on production and supply for priority and high-tech industries, facilitating the formation and development of relevant clusters. Moreover, efforts will be made to restructure in the direction of gradually reducing land- and labour-intensive manufacturing industries with low added value and limiting and eventually eliminating manufacturing that causes environmental pollution. The city will also form new industrial parks (IPs) and clusters to bolster industrial production. In particular, Danang Industrial Park will be converted into An Don International Financial Quarter, forming a modern urban area and becoming the new economic hub of the city. At the same time, Hoa Khanh IP will be converted to meet the criteria of an eco-IP model. New IPs including Hoa Cam Phase 2, Hoa Nhon, and Hoa Ninh will be formed. In the new IPs, priority is given to attracting investment in the direction of intensive industry, forming clusters with existing IPs. As for the high-tech park, the city will soon put the functional areas of the high-tech park into operation before 2025, as well as adjust and expand Danang High-Tech Park. In addition, Danang will soon complete procedures to put Software Park 2 (phase 1) into operation. The city will also make efforts to complete the Centralised IT Park, Creative Space in Hoa Xuan ward, DanangBay IT Park, the Viettel Danang building, and others. Several new industrial clusters will be built and put into operation, such as Cam Le, Hoa Nhon, and Hoa Khanh Nam. By 2030, the city will have planned and invested in 11 new industrial areas, with a total planned area of nearly 533 hectares. The city has rejected all industrial projects fraught with environmental pollution risks. Since 2000, city leaders have adopted a strategy of not trading the environment for economic development. In 2007, Danang refused two foreign-invested steel and pulp mills with total capital of $4 billion, followed by the rejection of other projects worth hundreds of millions of US dollars. Danang focuses on production fields with a high content of technology, knowledge, and added value. The city is home to five IPs, one high-tech park, and one concentrated IT park with a total area of 2,131 ha. The existing IPs achieve an occupancy rate of 88 per cent, including four IPs reaching 100 per cent occupancy. As of present, IPs in the locality have lured in 524 projects, including 400 domestic-invested projects worth $1.32 billion and 124 foreign-invested projects valued at $2 billion. Danang High-Tech Park has created a great advantage for the city, as it is expected to become ASEANs Silicon Valley in the future. The park is one of three high-tech parks in Vietnam. Up to now, the park has attracted 28 projects, with a registered investment capital of more than $288 million for domestic projects and $702 million for foreign-invested projects. Danang aims high for regional economic standing Danang is entering a new phase of thriving development to become a major socioeconomic centre in Southeast Asia. Danang the jewel in central region crown Danang has long been known as an alluring place to live in Vietnam. However, for its long-term vision, the city targets to become a liveable city at the international level. Danang leverages strategic location for logistics growth With diverse transport infrastructure and a strategic location, Danang has set its sights on becoming a central logistics hub. Transport advance to activate development The central city of Danang is making compelling efforts in infrastructure development, focusing on projects connecting to industrial zones and promoting interprovincial links. Chairman of Ba Ria-Vung Tau People's CommitteeNguyen Van Tho hosted a meeting with representatives from Chinese display maker Beijing Oriental Electronics Group (BOE) on November 17 to discuss the upcoming BOE Vietnam Phase II smart terminal equipment project. BOE Group is a supplier of both Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. The project is set to be located in the specialised Phu My 3 Industrial Park (IP). With a total estimated investment of around $300 million, the venture will cover an anticipated land area of approximately 286,000 square meters, divided into phases 1 and 2. The project's objectives include the assembly and production of seven million computer monitors annually, 3 million televisions, 40 million electronic shelf labels (ESL), 20 million ESL module boards, 20 million plastic components, and 44.8 million surface mount technology (SMT) circuit boards. The project is scheduled for completion and operationalisation by 2026, with an expected demand for 3,300-3,500 domestic personnel and 35-40 foreign staff. Expressing his enthusiasm for BOE's choice of Phu My 3 IP, Tho stated, "We welcome BOE's interest and its selection of Phu My 3 as the company's investment destination." He further assured that the province would provide support and create optimal conditions for the investor to promptly initiate the project. To facilitate the process, Tho assigned Ba Ria-Vung Tau Industrial Zones Management Board to coordinate with relevant departments and agencies in guiding the investor through the required procedures. Having already established its first factory in Vietnam in Nhon Trach II IP in Dong Nai in November 2019, BOE Group is now expanding its operations with this second venture at the specialised Phu My 3 IP. In January 2023, Reuters reported that BOE Technology Group was planning a $400 million investment for the construction of two additional factories in Vietnam. Negotiations are said to be underway to lease land in the northern region, underlining BOE's commitment to further solidifying its presence in the country's burgeoning technology manufacturing sector. Founded in April 1993, BOE is a prominent the Internet of Things (IoT) company providing intelligent interface products and professional services for information sharing and human health. As of 2022, BOE had independently filed more than 80,000 applications to patent offices around the world. Out of the new applications, over 90 per cent were patents for inventions and more than 33 per cent were filed overseas, including in the US, Europe, Japan, and South Korea. According to the 2022 US Patent Grant Statistics Report released by IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, BOE ranked 11th in the world, making it into the top 20 for the fifth consecutive year and remaining one of the few Chinese enterprises on the list. According to the 2022 rankings for international patent applications published by the World Intellectual Property Organization, BOE ranked seventh in the world with 1,884 PCT patent applications, having been among the top 10 for seven years in a row. Foxconn gains projects worth $246 million in Quang Ninh Quang Ninh People's Committee has granted investment certificates for two Foxconn projects worth more than $246 million in Song Khoai Industrial Zone (invested by Thailands biggest industrial developer Amata) and Quang Yen Economic Zone. The city plans to establish national level I and regional level II logistics centres, as well as specialised centres, to provide efficient logistics and transshipment services. These developments are set to bolster domestic production and import-export activities in Danang and its surrounding regions, offering competitive advantages for international cargo transiting via the East-West economic corridor. By the end of 2025, ports in Danang like Lien Chieu will boast significant upgrades Currently, Danang hosts over 1,000 businesses engaged in logistics services, ranking it sixth among Vietnams top provinces and cities with a dense concentration of logistics firms. According to the citys development plan for 2021-2030, with a vision towards 2050, Danang is set to transform into a logistics hub, serving as a gateway for road, sea, and air transportation to other localities, ASEAN countries, and internationally along the East-West economic corridor. The citys logistics and transport sectors are poised for an annual growth rate exceeding 11 per cent. Leveraging its strategic location, Danang is also prioritising the development of an integrated logistics service chain. Emphasis is being placed on enhancing air and maritime logistics services, exploiting Danangs innate strengths in its multimodal logistics service system. The city plans to establish urban logistics centres catering to wholesale procurement and distribution of consumer goods, addressing the daily needs of residents in Danang and neighbouring areas. A comprehensive, integrated logistics infrastructure is being formalised to meet the burgeoning demand for goods movement in Danang, the Central Highlands provinces, and part of the East-West economic corridor traffic. This infrastructure aims to ensure seamless connectivity between seaports, airports, cargo transport hubs, and various logistics centres, thus facilitating efficient, rapid goods movement across diverse transport modes at regionally and internationally competitive costs. The citys comprehensive plan includes the development of Lien Chieu Port, a significant project that commenced in late 2022. This 450-hectare facility, designed to accommodate large vessels with capacities ranging from 30,000 to 200,000DWT, is projected to achieve an operational throughput of 50 million tons annually by 2050. The port is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2025. Vuong Dinh Hue, Chairman of the National Assembly, during his inspection of the Lien Chieu Port highlighted the projects regional impact. This investment transcends Danang, bolstering regional connectivity and playing a vital role in the socioeconomic upliftment of the area. It will alleviate pressure on existing ports and the citys urban traffic, he remarked. The NA chairman further asserted that the development of Lien Chieu Port is integral to Danangs economic strategy, which focuses on a triad of logistics, industry, and services. Additionally, Danang is developing comprehensive logistics solutions in air and rail transport, including facilities in the western region of Danang International Airport and at key intersections of national railway and road networks. These initiatives aim to bolster commercial activities, enhance air transport capabilities, and expand the airports role in the global logistics network. By 2030, the city plans significant upgrades to its aviation infrastructure, targeting a passenger handling capacity of approximately 25 million annually and establishing itself as a specialised air logistics hub. The long-term vision for 2050 encompasses the completion of a state-of-the-art logistics system, positioning Danang as a national and regional logistics centre. This strategic development aims to elevate Danang into the top tier of international seaport centres in central Vietnam and establish it as a crucial node in Vietnams maritime transport routes. Concurrently, the expansion and modernisation of Danang International Airport are planned, with a focus on diversified functional zones and high-quality services, facilitating global connectivity. Tourism sector in Danang embraces rebrand journey Taking advantage of its inherent potential, Danang is aiming to become a world-class tourism centre. Danang aims high for regional economic standing Danang is entering a new phase of thriving development to become a major socioeconomic centre in Southeast Asia. According to a master plan for the development of Danang approved this month, the citys urban space is organised into 12 subdivisions. Accordingly, the subdivision along the Han River and the East Coast covers over 6,600 hectares. Danang Bayside Subdivision is about 1,530ha, while Lien Chieu Seaport Subdivision covers 1,285ha. High-tech sub-zone and Green Core Center Subdivision have an area of almost 5,600ha and 4,780ha, respectively. The area of the Innovation Subdivision is about 3,900ha. The Airport Subdivision spans across an area of about 1,327ha, while the Hillside Urban Subdivision spreads across an area of about 2,729ha. Other areas include the High-Tech Agriculture Subdivision, the Development Reserve Subdivision, and the Western Ecological Subdivision. Meanwhile, the Eastern Ecological Subdivision covers Hoang Sa district and Son Tra Peninsula. Danang lines up fresh urban areas to match Asian standards The master plan creates a strong driving force for Danangs upcoming urban development. In particular, each subdivision represents a large-scale project. At the Hillside Subdivision, the city is calling for investment in the development of a smart urban and non-tariff complex in Hoa Vang district. At the Innovation Subdivision, appeals are getting underway for investment flows into the Hoa Xuan creative space project that will have a large software park and an associated service area in combination with residential housing. Similarly, at Danang High-Tech Park, the city is calling for the investment in a data centre, an office building complex, and IT exhibition area. At Lien Chieu Seaport Subdivision, the city is seeking funding in logistics projects, including in Lien Chieu Port and Kim Lien Cargo Terminal Logistics Centre. The six inner urban districts will be oriented for redevelopment according to the compact city model, reducing the construction density of the existing central urban core area, improving the land use coefficient, developing more urban amenities, and integrating with the transport system. Existing urban areas with a lower population density than the core ones will develop with a higher population and construction density in accordance with regulations, forming public green spaces in residential areas and public spaces in residential areas. According to the plan, the city will expand its new urban areas to the west and northwest sides. By 2030, urban areas will cover nine communes and part of Hoa Ninh Commune, with an urbanisation rate of over 90 per cent. Danang plans to develop Hoa Vang district to meet the urban standards of Grade 4. About 80 per cent of communes are eligible to become wards and to establish towns as soon as possible. By 2030, Hoa Vang will be home to 430,000 people, of which the permanent population is about 380,000. The administrative centre will be located in Hoa Phong. The goal of the plan for this decade and beyond is to build Danang into one of the major socioeconomic centres of the country and a Southeast Asian centre for startups, innovation, tourism, trade, finance, logistics, high-tech industry, IT, and supporting industries. Tourism sector in Danang embraces rebrand journey Taking advantage of its inherent potential, Danang is aiming to become a world-class tourism centre. Danang aims high for regional economic standing Danang is entering a new phase of thriving development to become a major socioeconomic centre in Southeast Asia. Danang the jewel in central region crown Danang has long been known as an alluring place to live in Vietnam. However, for its long-term vision, the city targets to become a liveable city at the international level. Danang leverages strategic location for logistics growth With diverse transport infrastructure and a strategic location, Danang has set its sights on becoming a central logistics hub. These insights were shared at a media roundtable on the importance of financial stability in attracting investment to the plastics sector held by Atradius, a major global provider of trade credit insurance (TCI) and information services. The discussion was organised on the last day of the 2023 Vietnam Plastic Expo at the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center on November 17. Representatives from Atradius Vietnam, the Vietnam Saigon Plastics Association (VSPA), and the media attended the event. The plastics industry had been experiencing an annual growth rate of 12-15 per cent over the past five years. However, the industry experienced an on-year decline of 12.2 per cent in exports in the first nine months of 2023. Chung Tan Cuong, chairman of the VSPA said, One of the key growth factors over the next few years will be to acquire more green investment. Plastics firms will need to focus more on providing comprehensive and transparent data for investors to evaluate their businesses to access these green resources. Merely producing eco-friendly products won't be enough." Many firms are actively addressing potential liquidity challenges through in-house retention and customer credit risk management, often in collaboration with financial institutions. One such option that has gained traction is TCI, which helps businesses mitigate risks and ensure financial stability. Atradius, the worlds second-largest credit insurer with a 25 per cent global market share, has been working with VSPA to understand and address the challenges firms have in securing green finance. We often refer to TCI as a shield that helps sales teams confidently sell to their clients. With TCI, plastic businesses will be able to minimise trade risk and foster sustainable growth. Moreover, TCI can enhance a company's creditworthiness, making it easier to secure financing, including green loans, said Vu Thi Duc Hanh, country manager of Atradius in Vietnam. Atradius, with its expertise in TCI and financial solutions, can provide insights into payment practices, cash flow management, and liquidity solutions, enabling plastic businesses to adopt strong credit risk management strategies, especially when considering and working with new customers. M&A still in vogue despite economic headwinds Vietnams mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market has maintained its appeal amid a challenging economic environment. Huong Trinh of BDA Partners spoke with VIRs Thanh Van about the appetite of foreign investors in Vietnams M&A market. M&A builds up steam in finance sector There are financial sector rumblings in mergers and acquisitions in Vietnam, with vast interest from overseas due to the nations robust growth prospects and rising profile as a prime investment destination in the region. The event convened over 70 on-site and 100 online participants, including global experts, government officials, and local stakeholders, to explore the multifaceted role of mangroves in environmental and community wellbeing. The workshop highlighted the roles of mangrove forests as precious resources for local communities and a significant component of blue carbon ecosystems, making them a valuable asset in the context of sustainable carbon financing and climate change mitigation. It created an opportunity for global south countries to learn good practices and share lessons and experiences relating to mangrove forest management, protection, and development. It also focussed on the inclusion of mangroves in the nationally determined contributions (NDCs), as well as harnessing the potential of mangroves blue carbon to finance their protection and restoration efforts. In his remarks, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nguyen Quoc Tri emphasised the Vietnamese governments dedication to enhancing forest management policies. He highlighted the importance of improving the effectiveness and economic value of coastal mangrove forests in the country, urging the relevant provinces to reinforce their mangrove protection and afforestation efforts. After this workshop, MARD will continue to direct specialised units to refine forestry policy mechanisms for governmental approval and develop technical guidelines. I urge coastal provinces to intensify their forest protection and coastal afforestation efforts, DM Tri stated. Ramla Khalidi, UNDP Vietnam resident representative, praised Vietnams leadership in terms of mangrove conservation. She highlighted collaborative projects undertaken with MARD, including the planting and rehabilitating of over 4,000 hectares of mangrove forests and an upcoming project financed by Canada to protect and generate an additional 600ha. She also mentioned the collaboration under the UNDPs Climate Promise, supported by the UK government, to conduct carbon stock assessments across Vietnams 28 coastal provinces, identify sustainable financing pathways, and understand the potential of high-integrity carbon markets under future implementation of the Paris Agreements Articles 6.2 and 6.4. The rapid loss of mangroves poses a severe threat to coastal resilience, biodiversity, and the livelihoods of the millions of people who depend on these ecosystems for sustenance. The restoration of mangroves is not merely an environmental imperative, it is a moral obligation to future generations, Khalidi noted. Alex White, a representative from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK said, The UK recognises the importance of mangrove forests in addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainable development, as well as their valuable role in supporting climate-resilient and nature-positive green growth. Our collaboration with the UNDP on forests, land use, and nature focuses on understanding the benefits of these important ecosystems. It is wonderful to see examples of our joint work in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Vu Tan Phuong from the Vietnam Forest Certification Office (VFCO) presented the critical role of Vietnams forestry sector in carbon storage and emissions reduction, the forestry development strategy, and greenhouse gas mitigation measures that align with the NDCs for climate targets. "The carbon market development plan focuses on creating a legal framework and infrastructure for carbon trading, aiming to engage the private sector in low-carbon economy development to leverage competitiveness," he said. Experts from Sri Lanka and Indonesia also provided insights on mangrove rehabilitation initiatives in their respective countries, emphasising the urgency of preserving these vital ecosystems in the face of the global climate challenges. Maitreyee Mukherjee, an expert from Singapore, analysed carbon markets, taxes, and emissions trading systems, highlighting their potential role in sustainable forest management and the importance of carbon credits in global environmental strategies. "Singapore was the first ASEAN country to launch a progressive carbon tax in 2019, covering 80 per cent of national carbon emissions and providing an economy-wide price signal," said Mukherjee. The Department of Forestry under the MARD presented a report on Vietnams protection and development of coastal forests 2021-2030 project, highlighting advancements in policy and technical guidelines for sustainable forest management, achievements in forest protection and afforestation, and the challenges faced, including land use issues and mangrove plantation difficulties. The workshop concluded with a consensus on the need for both global and local actions to safeguard mangrove forests. Recognising their indispensable role in biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and local economic development, participants called for enhanced cross-sectoral collaboration, sustainable financing, and the integration of mangrove conservation into national and international climate policies. UNDP regional directors visit to Thanh Hoa province On the last leg of her Vietnams visit, UN assistant secretary-general and United Nations Development Programme ( UNDP ) regional director for Asia and the Pacific Kanni Wignaraja joined leaders and people in the north-central province of Thanh Hoa to plant mangroves as one of the most effective nature-based solutions to enhance coastal community resilience to climate change and their livelihood. Minister Nguyen Chi Dung hosts outgoing UNDP Resident Representative MPI- Minister Nguyen Chi Dung hosts a reception for outgoing United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative Caitlin Wiesen on August 30. New UNDP Resident Representative pledges support to Vietnams development Ramla Al Khalidi, newly-appointed UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam, has pledged to further support Vietnams development, covering climate change response and the settlement of bomb and mine consequences. Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin (Photo: AFP/VNA) Bangkok Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on November 21 introduced a new "proactive" foreign affairs policy in which Thai envoys are expected to play a pivotal role in promoting trade, investment, tourism, and soft power abroad. The countrys Proactive Diplomacy was announced at the annual gathering of Thai ambassadors, consul-generals, commerce attaches, and investment promotion officers. According to Thai Government spokesman Chai Wacharonke, the Thai PM's speech on proactive diplomacy mentioned concrete diplomatic practices that spur the country's economy and protect the public interest. Ambassadors, envoys and commerce attaches will be core members of the so-called Team Thailand, whose primary responsibility is to support the government's efforts to promote the country's economic growth. Srettha pointed to the need to begin implementing a proactive diplomacy policy while incorporating public and business expectations regarding foreign affairs matters. The PM asked the envoys to adopt a customer-centric approach, which the government also aims to do. He emphasised the government's essential role of supporting the further improvement of Thailand's ease of doing business index and accelerate free trade agreement negotiations. Team Thailand, meanwhile, will coordinate joint work between the private and public sectors to achieve their shared goal of economic growth. The PM asked the team to communicate with both foreign investors interested in investing in Thailand and Thai investors interested in investing overseas. Thailand, RoK address issue on visa, illegal workers Thailand and the Republic of Korea (RoK) committed to solving their concern relating to tourism and illegal workers. Thai Government plans to seek 14 billion USD loan to boost economic growth Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on November 11 said that Thailand will seek 500 billion baht (14 billion USD) in loans to finance its 10,000-baht digital money handout scheme. Breaking news Houston Chronicle A Harris County jail inmate on Tuesday was charged with murder over accusations he supplied another inmate with a fatal dose of fentanyl, according to court records. Michael Barnett was charged with fentanyl murder by delivery in connection with the death of Christian Rayo, according to court documents. PROOF OF AGE REQUIRED: Texas can again require proof of age to access porn online Advertisement Article continues below this ad Rayo, 28, who also went by the name Christian Medina Banguero, died Saturday afternoon after inhaling an unspecified amount of fentanyl, according to court records. Barnett, 41, of Hockley, is accused of providing Rayo with the drugs, court documents show. The charge, fentanyl murder by delivery, is a recent creation of state lawmakers, who spent part of this year's first legislative session debating ways to combat the increase of fentanyl-related deaths in Texas. The Texas Legislature in May passed a bill that increased criminal penalties related to the sale and production of fentanyl. The law allows authorities to treat fentanyl overdoses as poisonings, which gives prosecutors the opportunity to charges dealers and others with murder. Barnett is the second known person in the Houston area to be charged with fentanyl murder. Last month, a Houston man was charged with the same crime in Montgomery County, in what officials said was a first-of-its-kind prosecution. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Barnett didn't have an attorney listed Tuesday night, and his bond hadn't been set on the murder charge. Barnett has a lengthy history of arrests dating back to 2004, according to court records. At the time of Rayo's death, Barnett was in the jail on an aggravated robbery charge, according to court records. Rayo was one of three jail inmates to die last week. Officials didn't initially indicate that drugs might have contributed to his death. Rayo's death doesn't appear to be connected to the investigation of a Harris County defense attorney who on Friday was arrested and accused of smuggling drug-laced paper into the county jail. During a press conference about the arrest of 77-year-old Ronald Lewis, sheriff's office officials said they believed at least two deaths in the jail this year, prior to Rayo, were connected to drug-laced paper. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Vice Chairman of the Peoples Committee of bInh Duong province Nguyen Loc Ha receives a delegation from the US state of Oregon led by Commissioner at Port of Portland Katherine Lam. (Photo: binhduong.gov.vn) Binh Duong - A delegation from the US state of Oregon led by Commissioner at Port of Portland Katherine Lam on November 21 paid a working visit to the southern province of Binh Duong to learn about the investment environment in the locality. Receiving the delegation, Vice Chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee Nguyen Loc Ha introduced to the guests the province's investment strategy, especially in areas such as finance, logistics, supporting industries, and high-tech agriculture. He affirmed that the province is committed to prioritising environmentally friendly and non-labour-intensive industries to create high-added value. The official said currently, there are 4,191 investment projects from 65 countries and territories with a total registered capital of more than 40.2 billion USD in Binh Duong. The province is ranked second nationwide in attracting foreign investment capital, just behind Ho Chi Minh City. He noted that the US now ranks 10th among countries and territories investing in Binh Duong, with 135 projects and a total investment capital of 1.36 billion USD, adding that the province always creates favourable conditions for US businesses including those from Oregon to invest in Binh Duong. For her part, Lam, who is also President & CEO at Bambuza Hospitality Group, highly appreciated the dynamic development of Binh Duong and expressed the wish of the Oregon government that Binh Duong will continue to create favourable conditions for US businesses, particularly those from Oregon, to expand the business and invest in the province. $84 million freeze-dried instant coffee facility inagurated in Binh Duong Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC) and Instanta Sp. on September 29 inaugurated ILD Coffee Vietnam, a joint venture freeze-dried instant coffee facility located in Binh Duong province, with an annual production capacity of 5,600 metric tonness of freeze-dried instant coffee. Binh Duong needs around 12,000 workers by year-end Enterprises in the southern province of Binh Duong are projected to recruit between 10,000-12,000 employees from now to the end of the year, with skilled and unskilled labourers accounting for about 70 per cent of the total. SALT LAKE CITY (AP) Incumbent Erin Mendenhall was leading Tuesday in her reelection bid to continue as mayor of Utahs capital in a ranked-choice contest that includes a challenge by former Mayor Rocky Anderson. Mendenhall had a significant lead over Anderson, which led the former mayor to acknowledge that it would take a lot of catching up to change the result," the Salt Lake Tribune reported. But he hadn't conceded as of Tuesday night. At Mendenhall's election night party, she told her supporters she would regroup for a second term with new energy and urgency, the Tribune reported. This election ends with voters saying loudly and clearly that they want Salt Lake City to keep moving forward together, Mendenhall said. Salt Lakers are not afraid of our incredible future. Were excited by it. This election was a repudiation of cynicism, and it was a rejection of the politics of fear. The third left-leaning choice for mayor was Michael Valentine, an activist and business owner, who was a distant third in the results. Though the position is officially nonpartisan, the city is largely Democratic in a mostly Republican state. Three of the mayoral candidates had a debate Oct. 24 that touched on several of the main issues: conserving water, fighting climate change, reducing crime and addressing homelessness. Anderson, who served two terms from 2000-2008, has criticized Mendenhall for not doing enough to alleviate the rising cost of housing. He proposed mixed income housing built by the city to help solve the problem rather than Mendenhall's approach, which involves working more closely with developers. Mendenhall defended her approach as one that is showing results. It is the first Salt Lake City mayor's race since the capital, along with a number of Utah cities instituted ranked-choice voting in 2021. The system allows voters to rank the three candidates, regardless of party. If no candidate claims a majority, the candidate who finishes third will be eliminated and voters' second- and third-choice picks will determine the winner. LOS ANGELES (AP) A man who was fatally shot by a California Highway Patrol officer in a struggle on a freeway that was captured on video was a 34-year-old from Los Angeles, officials said Tuesday. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office said Jesse Dominguez's cause of death on Sunday afternoon has not been officially determined. Dominguez had been walking in westbound lanes of Interstate 105 in south LA County, according to the CHP. An officer tried to convince the man to get off the freeway but he refused and that led to a fight, authorities said. Dominguez was carrying a taser that he used on the officer, CHP said. Following the pedestrians use of the weapon against the officer, and in fear for his safety, the officer fired his service weapon," the statement said. Dominguez was pronounced dead at a hospital. The CHP referred media inquiries to the state attorney general's office. Neither department has provided the officer's name or additional details about the altercation, including how many shots were fired and whether the CHP has a specific protocol to deal with someone wandering on the freeway. A minutelong video recorded by a bystander and posted on social media begins with an officer on top of Dominguez as the two grapple in the middle of a closed stretch of freeway. It was not clear who filmed the original video. As they struggle, a shot is fired and the officer suddenly jumps to his feet while the other man goes limp on the pavement. The officer immediately fires at least four shots at the prone man, the video shows. For the remainder of the clip, the officer keeps his gun drawn while the man lies motionless. The state attorney general's office, which did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday, is investigating the shooting in line with its policy of reviewing incidents when the deceased did not have a deadly weapon. A stun gun is not considered a lethal weapon under state law. Dominguez's family told the Los Angeles Times that he was an aspiring actor who they believe was likely experiencing a mental health episode or drug-fueled crisis when he was killed. He had been struggling with substance abuse, a serious mental health disorder and homelessness, the newspaper reported.. His family said Dominguez had been carrying a Taser for protection after threats from other residents at the sober living facility near the highway where he had been staying, the Times reported. I dont know why the officer thought to engage. If someone is walking on the freeway, something is not right. Theyre either in mental health crisis or something else is happening, Akasha Dominguez, his stepmother, told the newspaper. Highway patrol officers arent required to wear body cameras, but the agency uses in-car cameras. David Dusenbury, a retired deputy chief of police in Long Beach, California, called the video clip extremely troubling and said he hoped more footage exists to provide additional context. Based on his viewing of the video, he said the shooting did not appear to be a justified use of force, in part because Dominguez was on the ground and the officer was just a few feet away when he "fires directly into the guy. I dont like what I saw, I really dont, Dusenbury told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Dusenbury said the officer should have had backup, at least to close the freeway, and should have waited to approach Dominguez carefully and from a distance with another patrolman. If theyre wandering in traffic lanes, then youve got to conclude that theres something wrong with this individual, such as intoxication or mental health issues, he said. The California Association of Highway Patrolmen, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed. PLAINS, Ga. (AP) President Joe Biden has ordered that U.S. flags on federal government buildings and property will be lowered to half staff for five days in recognition of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 96. Biden's order calls for flags to fly half-staff from Saturday through sunset on Wednesday, Nov. 29, the day Carter will be buried in Plains, Georgia, the hometown she shared with former President Jimmy Carter. The order applies to flags at the White House, all other federal buildings and grounds, and all military and naval posts, including navy vessels, in the U.S. and its territories, along with all U.S. diplomatic, military and naval outposts abroad. Such orders are common when major federal government figures die, including first ladies. Presidential spouses, though, do not receive state funerals. Rosalynn Carter will be honored with public events beginning Monday in Sumter County, Georgia, where she and the former president were born, wed and lived most of their lives. Jimmy Carter, who is 99, remains at home under hospice care. A service for Rosalynn Carter will be held in Atlanta on Tuesday, followed by a final funeral Wednesday at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, where the Carters were members for more than 40 years after leaving Washington in 1981. She will be buried on land near the home where she and the former president have lived since 1961, with the exception of four years in the Georgia Governor's Mansion and four years in the White House. It is not clear whether Biden will attend Rosalynn Carter's Atlanta service. Former presidents and first ladies often attend the funerals of former first ladies. Biden has said he plans to deliver the eulogy for former President Carter when the time comes. BATH TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) A caregiver at a Michigan assisted living center has been charged with neglecting an 82-year-old woman who wandered outside and was found dead under snow last December. Caregivers have a responsibility under the law to act in the face of grave danger to a vulnerable person in their care, Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a news release. Colleen Kelly OConnor, 58, appeared Monday in a Clinton County court on a charge of second-degree vulnerable adult abuse. Lois Cary was a resident at Vista Springs Timber Ridge Village, an assisted living facility, northeast of Lansing. O'Connor twice saw her try to go outside while temperatures were in single digits and snow was drifting, the attorney general's office said. A snowplow driver found the victim in the parking lot around 7 a.m., partially buried in snow, the state said. Cary died of hypothermia. We will be aggressively fighting these charges, the Lansing State Journal quoted OConnors attorney, Michael Oakes, as saying. She worked for that company for years without incident prior to this lady walking out of this facility, and she continued working there for almost a year after that." The Texas Farm Bureau is poised to side with environmentalists in calling for laws against littering to explicitly apply to helium balloon releases. When the Farm Bureaus policy committee met in Waco a few weeks ago, members approved a resolution proposed by Jimmy Reed, president of the nearby Anderson County Farm Bureau, to support promoting and passing stronger anti-littering laws regarding balloon releases and plastic bag litter. The resolution will next be presented along with many others to the membership delegates at the Texas Farm Bureau annual meeting next month. Farmers and ranchers have concerns about how Mylar, latex and rubber balloons, as well as plastic bags from grocery and convenience stores, harm their livestock and crops, and conservationists have similar concerns about the harm to plants and wildlife, including birds and aquatic and marine life. Some stores that sell balloons also share the concerns with where the products they sell can end up. Lake Waco Wetlands coordinator Nora Schell said she sees similar items blow and flow into the wetlands. She sees streamers and plastic confetti there. Schell is concerned that plastic trash, streamers and balloons may harm all types of plants and creatures. Reed, who has a ranch in Anderson County, said in a phone interview that he and other farmers and ranchers in his county see the remnants of balloons and plastic bags blow across their property. We all know that what goes up must come down and sometimes what looks really pretty floating up into the sky can be harmful to livestock and wildlife when it bursts and falls back to earth, Reed said of helium balloon releases. Reed knows people who release helium balloons in groups often do so for celebrations or memorials, and he does not want to take away from the events. Nevertheless he and other Farm Bureau members are concerned. These balloons, when they fall back to the ground, they can do harm to livestock and wildlife, Reed said. Just like we have litter laws, we think its important to have the same law for balloons. He said the balloons are made from materials very similar to what plastic grocery bags are made from. Ive been seeing this for the last 20 years, Reed said. I and other ranchers and farmers find balloons in fencing, in crops, in bushes and in the weeds. Cattle will eat it, especially young calves. Reed said calves have died from eating trash, made of materials similar to the grocery bags and balloons, that blows off the highways. It is not only on land that balloon remnants and other plastic refuse cause problems, but also in waterways, lakes and oceans. Maddalena Bearzi, president of the Ocean Conservation Society in Marina Del Ray, California, said latex balloons are the most common type found in the stomachs of dead marine animals. Bearzi, who holds a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California, Los Angeles and has studied the ecology of marine mammals since 1990, said even though some balloons are labeled biodegradable, there is no such thing. The plastics in mylar balloons never biodegrade, she said by email. They only break down into smaller and smaller particles called microplastics, which can hurt marine life. Bearzi said latex balloons are made from rubber treated with various chemicals to aid manufacturing and prevent their decomposition. Latex balloons are also not considered eco-friendly and pose a serious risk to marine animals, Bearzi said. Microplastics contain contaminants that affect all forms of life in the water, from plants to animals, she said. Mindful of concerns about the impact of balloons on land and water, Jeff Logan and Jennifer Svacina, co-owners of JJs Balloons in Waco, 1412 N. Valley Mills Drive, have most of their business in inflatable art displays, not balloons for releases. Most of the balloons they sell are not free floating, Logan said. He and Svacina inflate the balloons with air and attach them to an arch or another structure. For those balloons we sell that are helium filled, mostly theyre made from biodegradable (labeled) materials, Logan said. Svacina said when she and Logan sell foil balloons, they tell their customers not to release them, but to dispose of them in the trash. QUSRA, West Bank When Israeli warplanes swooped over the Gaza Strip following Hamas militants deadly attack on southern Israel, Palestinians say a different kind of war took hold in the occupied West Bank. Overnight, the territory was closed off. Towns were raided, curfews imposed, teenagers arrested, detainees beaten, and villages stormed by Jewish vigilantes. With the worlds attention on Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, the violence of war has also erupted in the West Bank. Israeli settler attacks have surged at an unprecedented rate, according to the United Nations. The escalation has spread fear, deepened despair, and robbed Palestinians of their livelihoods, their homes and, in some cases, their lives. Our lives are hell, said Sabri Boum, a 52-year-old farmer who fortified his windows with metal grills last week to protect his children from settlers he said threw stun grenades in Qaryout, a northern village. Its like Im in a prison. In six weeks, settlers have killed nine Palestinians, said Palestinian health authorities. Theyve destroyed 3,000-plus olive trees during the crucial harvest season, said Palestinian Authority official Ghassan Daghlas, wiping out what for some were inheritances passed through generations. And theyve harassed herding communities, forcing over 900 people to abandon 15 hamlets they long called home, the U.N. said. When asked about settler attacks, the Israeli army said only that it aims to defuse conflict and troops are required to act if Israel citizens violate the law. The army didnt respond to requests for comment on specific incidents. . President Biden and other administration officials have repeatedly condemned settler violence, even as they defended the Israeli campaign in Gaza. It has to stop, Biden said last month. They have to be held accountable. That hasnt happened, according to Israeli rights group Yesh Din. Since Oct. 7, one settler has been arrested over an olive farmers death and was released five days later, the group said. Two other settlers were placed in preventive detention without charge, it said. Naomi Kahn, of advocacy group Regavim, which lobbies for settler interests, argued that settler attacks werent nearly as widespread as rights groups report because its a broad category including self-defense, anti-Palestinian graffiti and other nonviolent provocations. The entire Israeli system works not only to stamp out this violence but to prevent it, she said. Before the Hamas assault, 2023 already was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in over two decades, with 250 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, most during military operations. Over these six weeks of war, Israeli security forces have killed another 206 Palestinians, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, the result of a rise in army raids backed by airstrikes and Palestinian militant attacks. In the deadliest West Bank raid since the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, of the 2000s, Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp Nov. 9, most of them militants. While for years settlers enjoyed the support of the Israeli government, they now have vocal proponents at the highest levels of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus coalition. This month, Netanyahu appointed Zvi Sukkot, a settler temporarily banned from the West Bank in 2012 over alleged assaults targeting Palestinians and Israeli forces, to lead the subcommittee on West Bank issues in parliament. Palestinians whove endured hardships of Israeli military rule, in its 57th year, say this war has left them more vulnerable than ever. Weve become scared of tomorrow, said Abdelazim Wadi, 50, whose brother and nephew were fatally shot by settlers, according to health authorities. Conflict has long been part of daily life here, but Palestinians say the war has unleashed a new wave of provocations, disrupting even their grim routine. Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war. Settlers claim the West Bank as their biblical birthright. Most of the international community considers the settlements, home to 700,000 Israelis, illegal. Israel considers the West Bank disputed land, and says the settlements fate should be decided in negotiations. International law says the military, as the occupying power, must protect Palestinian civilians. Palestinians say that in nearly six decades of occupation, Israeli soldiers often failed to protect them from settler attacks or even joined in. Since the wars start, the line between settlers and soldiers has blurred further. Israels wartime mobilization of 300,000-plus reservists included the call-up of settlers for duty and put many in charge of policing their own communities. The military said in some cases, reservists who live in settlements replaced regular West Bank battalions deployed in the war. Tom Kleiner, a reservist guarding Beit El, a religious settlement near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, said the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks brutality cemented his conviction that Palestinians are determined to murder us. We dont kill Arabs without any reason, he said. We kill them because theyre trying to kill us. Rights groups say uniforms and assault rifles have inflated settlers sense of impunity. Imagine that the military supposed to protect you is now made of settlers committing violence against you, said Ori Givati, of Breaking the Silence, a whistleblower group of former Israeli soldiers. Bashar al-Qaryoute, a medic from the Palestinian village of Qaryout, said residents from the nearby settlement Shilo, now wearing fatigues, have blocked all but one road out. He said they smashed Qaryouts water pipeline, forcing residents to truck in water at triple the price. They were the ones always burning olive trees and creating problems, al-Qaryoute said. Now theyre in charge. Photos: Scenes from the Israel-Hamas war A fifth grade teacher deeply rooted in the Syracuse community has earned a national award for her work improving her school and environment for fellow educators. Leslie McIntosh, an English language arts teacher at Syracuse-Dunbar-Avoca Middle School, received the Milken Educator Award on Tuesday in front of a packed crowd of state officials, teachers and students. "I feel so appreciated by the people I work with, plus more," McIntosh said. "I have so much pride for our school this is really not just about me, but it's about my school. I'm just so happy and my cup is full today." Only a select group of educators around the U.S. receive the annual award, which comes from the Milken Family Foundation. The honor, which is kept secret until the actual ceremony, is usually given to early to midcareer education professionals for their achievements in the classroom. Each recipient also receives $25,000. Last week, Jacob Eitzen, a Bellevue West High School teacher, also received a Milken award. McIntosh said she didn't know much about the Milken award in general, let alone the fact that another Nebraska teacher might receive one. McIntosh, who grew up on a farm near Syracuse and attended the local high school, has been teaching fifth grade at the middle school for the last six years. Before that, she taught third grade at the elementary school. Being embedded in the Syracuse community was one of the main reasons she was chosen for the award, according to the Milken Family Foundation. "Leslie McIntosh stands as a shining example of a teacher who not only empowers her students but also uplifts her entire community through her dedication to educational improvement, targeted strategies and a genuine passion for nurturing the potential within every child she encounters," said Stephanie Bishop, a Milken foundation representative, in an official statement on Tuesday. One aspect of McIntosh's work in the community was her efforts creating a teacher professional learning community in her area. The group has resulted in increased attendance and engagement among teachers, according to a Milken press release. She also spearheads the annual weeklong summer school program known as "Summer Blast," where students participate in activities like science lab, computer coding, fine arts and more. Proceeds from the summer camp go to the school. Last year, they raised more than $10,000. McIntosh has also committed her time to improving Syracuse-Dunbar-Avoca Middle School in the last few years. When research indicated a decline in English scores at her middle school from 2020 to 2021, she developed a comprehensive school improvement plan and implemented strategies in her classroom and across the entire fifth grade. "I looked at our scores and thought, 'How can I make this better, not just academically, but what kind of creative things can we do within our classrooms and our teams to improve engagement with kids?'" she said. "I found this strategy of intentionally having conversations within the classroom, having dialogue between students. And so the students were in control of the dialogue about what they were learning so (we were) hitting on our social skills and then also hitting on our reading comprehension." Her dedication paid off: Last year, when 46% of students statewide demonstrated proficiency in English, 59% of the school's fifth graders exhibited proficiency in the subject under McIntosh, according to the Milken Family Foundation. "The success of her students shows the impact she is making every day," said Brian Maher, Nebraska education commissioner, in a Tuesday statement. "We are thrilled to celebrate her work and are excited to see what she does in the future." McIntosh said she couldn't have done any of her work without her colleagues, who make the school a phenomenal place to work. "We're so fortunate to have people who care and want to work hard for kids and for our community," she said. "We have some pretty courageous leaders in our school, on our board, in our administration and even within teachers." Photos: Bellevue West High School teacher surprised with Milken Educator Award, $25,000 Breaking news Houston Chronicle Detectives are searching for a man in connection with the May disappearance of his wife, whose body has not been found, according to the Houston Police Department. Marquise Rochard Glasper, 37, has been charged with murder, unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon and tampering with evidence in connection with the death of Crystal Lynch, 35, officials said. Court records from the charges had not been uploaded to the Harris County District Clerks website as of Wednesday afternoon. MORE HOUSTON NEWS: Daughter charged in death of her 80-year-old mother Advertisement Article continues below this ad Family members reported Lynch missing on May 7, and detectives say she was last seen the night before with her husband at an apartment in the 7700 block of West Gulf Bank Road, officials said. A witness told investigators Glasper learned Lynch had an affair with another man and that he had previously said he would hurt her if she ever had an affair. WATERLOO Police arrested a Waterloo man following a brief motorcycle chase early Wednesday. An officer noticed the Kawasaki motorcycle driving on the sidewalk without a tail light in the area of Lafayette and Rhey streets around 1:10 a.m. and attempted to stop it. The vehicle sped off and the driver dismounted about four blocks later in the 200 block of Cottage Grove Avenue. Officers found the driver hiding in a back yard, and he ran away but was detained a short time later. Police found more than 5 grams of meth and a glass pipe on the driver, according to court records. One officer received a minor injury to a hand while jumping a fence during the chase. Police arrested Jason John Cummings, 300 Linden Ave., on charges of eluding, interference causing injury, possession of meth with intent to deliver and violation of the drug tax stamp act. WATERLOO Authorities are seeking the publics help in locating a Waterloo man who allegedly fled from a halfway house where he was serving time for a robbery in Oelwein. Tyrin James Jones, 24, failed to report back to the Waterloo Residential Correctional Facility on Nov. 17, according to officials with the Iowa Department of Corrections. He had been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison in a January 2017 incident where he beat a man with a pistol and stole marijuana, according to court records. Jones was placed on work release on Oct. 12, 2023. He is described as a 24-year-old black male, 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighing 198 pounds. Anyone with information on Joness whereabouts should contact local police. Photos: Guns in Northeast Iowa crime cases WATERLOO A Waterloo woman has been arrested for allegedly dousing a vehicle in gasoline and attempting to it set on fire in 2022. Black Hawk County sheriffs deputies arrested 36-year-old Traynetta Brisha Monique Ford, 734 Wellington St., on Monday on a warrant for one count of second-degree arson. She was also arrested on a parole violation warrant and bond was set at $25,000. According to court records, Ford was involved in an argument in the 1400 block of Mulberry Street on Aug. 1. She had a bottle of gasoline and sprayed it on a person. She then sprayed it on the interior of a 2006 Buick and tried to ignite it by lighting a cigarette and throwing it in the vehicle, court records state. This isnt the first time Ford has been arrested for allegedly trying to set something on fire. In March 2017, she poured gasoline on a woman and the womans sport utility vehicle while children were inside the vehicle in the 700 block of Logan Avenue. Ford attempted to light a cigarette near the vehicle, but the woman chased her off, according to court records. She was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for arson and she was released from prison in October 2020. Safest cities in America 2023: Violent crime rate increases drive per capita cost of crime Safest cities in America 2023: Violent crime rate increases drive per capita cost of crime The 15 Safest Cities in America The 15 Most Dangerous Cities Methodology Welcome to the Arbors subdivision, where affordable living meets modern comfort. Located near Aldrich Elementary, this charming new construction ranch-style home offers an incredible opportunity to own a stylish and functional residence in a sought-after neighborhood. Boasting two bedrooms, two bathrooms on the main floor, and a spacious 1372 square feet of living space, this home is perfect for those seeking an affordable yet comfortable lifestyle. As you enter the front door, you'll be greeted by a thoughtfully designed interior that maximizes both space and functionality. The open-concept floor plan seamlessly connects the living room, dining area, and kitchen, creating a welcoming atmosphere for entertaining guests or spending quality time with loved ones. The living room provides a cozy retreat, and its proximity to the dining area makes it easy to host gatherings or enjoy family meals. The kitchen is a delightful space that blends style and practicality. Equipped with modern GE Stainless appliances, ample countertop space, and sleek cabinetry, it caters to both everyday meal preparation and culinary adventures. Whether you're cooking for yourself or a larger group, this kitchen has everything you need to create delicious meals and lasting memories. The main floor features two well-proportioned bedrooms, offering comfortable and private spaces for relaxation. The master bedroom includes an ensuite bathroom and a spacious closet, providing convenience and privacy. The second bedroom is versatile and can be used as a guest room, home office, or hobby space. Adjacent to the bedrooms is a well-appointed bathroom, ensuring convenience for both residents and guests. In addition to the main floor, this home offers an unfinished basement, presenting a blank canvas for you to customize and expand according to your needs and preferences. Whether you envision a recreation room, a home gym, or additional bedrooms, the unfinished basement offers endless possibilities for you to personalize the space and increase the home's value over time. Another standout feature of this home is the 3-stall garage, providing ample space for parking your vehicles, storing outdoor equipment, or pursuing your favorite hobbies. The garage offers convenience and protection, ensuring your vehicles and belongings are safeguarded from the elements. Outside, the property is surrounded by a well-maintained yard, offering space for outdoor activities and relaxation. Whether you're hosting a barbecue, gardening, or simply enjoying the fresh air, the outdoor area provides a serene setting for you to unwind and enjoy the beauty of nature. Nestled within the Arbors subdivision, this home enjoys a prime location with easy access to a variety of amenities. Aldrich Elementary is just a short distance away, making school commutes effortless for families. The neighborhood also offers proximity to parks, shopping centers, and dining options, providing convenience and entertainment at your fingertips. If you've been searching for an affordable new construction home that doesn't compromise on quality or style, look no further. This ranch-style residence in the Arbors subdivision offers an exceptional opportunity to own a comfortable and inviting home without breaking the bank. Don't miss out on this remarkable property - schedule your showing today and envision the possibilities of affordable living in a desirable location. View More WEST UNION Authorities seized 22 guns as well as a pound of marijuana, meth and THC products when they executed search warrants at five Fayette County addresses on Friday. Officers arrested nine people, including two teens, on drug and related charges. Agencies involved in the operation include the Fayette County Sheriff's Office along with West Union Police Department, Iowa State Patrol, Northeast Iowa Task Force, Chickasaw County Sheriff's Office, Winneshiek County Sheriff's Office, Decorah Police Department and Postville Police Department. The addresses searched were 202 S Walnut St., West Union; 317 E. Plum St., West Union; 5261 Great River Road., Clermont; 118 First Avenue N.E., Waucoma; and 103 Third St. N.E., Waucoma, according to the Fayette County Sheriff's Office. Several arrests came from the search of the rural farm property on Great River Road where officers found people using firearms as well as drugs, according to court records. When authorities searched the Plum Street address, they found two puppies kept in a small crate without access to food and water. They were malnourished and covered in feces and urine, court records state. Those arrested include: Bryan Lee Rear, 41, of West Union, charged with possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver marijuana, and operating a gathering where controlled substances are used. Joseph Timothy John Wellman, 43, of Fayette, charged with possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine, two counts of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver marijuana, and gathering where controlled substances are used. Judith Ann Green, 52, of Postville, charged with possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine, possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver marijuana, and operating a gathering where controlled substances are used. Tina Marie Schuler, 45, of West Union, charged with possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine, and two counts of child endangerment. Tina Opitz, 47, of West Union, charged with two counts of animal neglect and misdemeanor drug offenses. Nicole Alissa Kleppe, 42, of Waucoma, charged with distribution of illegal substances to a person under 18, two counts of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver marijuana, possession with intent to deliver a canibidoil, operating a gathering where controlled substances are used, two counts of Drug Tax Stamp violation, delivery of marijuana, and two counts of child endangerment. A 17 year old from Waucoma, charged and transported to Juvenile Detention for distribution to a person under 18, two counts of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver marijuana, possession with intent to deliver a canibidoil, gathering where controlled substances are being used, two counts of Drug Tax Stamp violation, and delivery of marijuana More charges are pending. The Fayette County Sheriff's Office was additionally assisted by Gunderson Ambulance Service, a West Union K-9 Officer, and the Chickasaw County Sheriff's Office K-9 Deputy. The new House speaker, Mike Johnson, gave federal workers, U.S. troops and the American people a Thanksgiving and Christmas present: no government shutdown for the rest of the year. But the way he did it probably wont make for a Happy New Year. If it makes the kids happy, then what the heck? Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told The Washington Post in a pointed reference to his House GOP colleagues. But it will make it a bigger problem down the road. Thats because Johnson -- on the job just three weeks -- only delayed another partisan spending fight over government spending levels until 2024 without resolving any of the issues that have made it so hard for the Republicans in this House to govern. When you have a three-vote majority, Johnson conceded, "you got to fight fights that you can win." Johnson and a majority of House Republicans accepted Democratic support to pass the kind of bipartisan interim spending measure that led to the downfall of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, rather than risk a shutdown six days before Thanksgiving. Nearly 100 GOP conservatives opposed the measure -- but made no move to oust Johnson. Everybody gets a mulligan, explained Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the fight to overthrow McCarthy. The bill extends federal spending at the current rate. It not only delayed a showdown over GOP demands for stiff cuts until sometime early next year but created the possibility of not just one but two such battles. Thats because the measure passed by Congress sets up two different expiration dates, one Jan. 19 for about 20% of the government and a second one Feb. 2 for the rest, including the Pentagon. And it bypasses another issue that has already created a major three-way confrontation among the Democrats who hold the White House and the Senate, the Republicans who hold the House and the Senate GOP minority: aid to Ukraine. It does not include any of the $106 billion that President Joe Biden requested for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and the border. That still must be resolved. House Republicans voted funds for Israel -- but not for Ukraine. Senate Republicans, who hold leverage because of the need for 60 votes to pass anything, want funds for both -- but also a package of measures to strengthen border enforcement against illegal entrants. And most Democrats prefer just the original Biden proposal. The reason the so-called continuing resolution was necessary is because, despite partisan promises, Congress has again not passed any of the 12 appropriations bills to fund the federal government for the year that started Oct. 1. The House passed seven, all by narrow party-line votes. The Senate passed three, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority. There are major differences: The House bills cut funds below the spending levels that McCarthy and Biden agreed to last May to extend the federal debt ceiling and prevent a governmental financial default. The Senate bills largely accept those levels. The delay is designed to give lawmakers more time to pass the 12 appropriations bills. But the differences between House and Senate versions are so great it probably wont happen on most of them. In several cases, the proposed cuts have turned off some more moderate GOP members, so House Republican leaders have even been unable to muster the normal party-line margin to bring them up for debate. In another, the House rejected the bill funding the Agriculture Department because of proposed cuts in conservation and rural development programs. And in several other cases, the leadership had to postpone final votes because it lacked the support for passage, most recently last week on the bill funding the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. If these appropriations bills arent passed by the new funding expiration dates, further interim measures might be needed. Or lawmakers will have to resort to the usual practice of recent years something Republicans vowed to prevent of rolling the outstanding measures into one giant omnibus package or perhaps two. One benefit of putting off the next spending deadline to next year is to provide time between Thanksgiving and Christmas for lawmakers to negotiate a separate bill providing aid for Israel, Ukraine and the border. A bipartisan Senate group has been working for months on a package that would force the Biden administration to take stiffer measures to control the continuing flood of illegal immigrants. Its unclear at this point if they can reach an agreement -- and whether the Democrats, in return for the stiffened enforcement, will insist on including the long-pending proposal to grant legal status to the thousands of Dreamers bought here illegally by their parents as small children. One possible scenario involves attaching those measures the Ukraine and Israel aid and the border package -- to the must-pass bill that sets Pentagon priorities for the year. Separate versions have been passed by the two houses, making it a possible legislative vehicle. Overhanging the entire process is a provision in last springs debt ceiling bill that would require additional spending cuts if lawmakers fail to pass the regular appropriations bills. Some senators -- mostly Republicans -- worry that would cut defense spending to unsafe levels. But many House Republicans would be happy if no agreements were ever reached -- and the steeper spending cuts took effect. DES MOINES In the brisk November air, Freedom and Flourish strutted, carefree, across the lawn of the Iowa Governor's Mansion on Monday at Terrace Hill as the two turkeys were spared from this year's Thanksgiving festivities. Gov. Kim Reynolds carried out the annual tradition of pardoning a pair of turkeys, declaring them "free to roam" and praising Iowa's turkey industry and its role in the Thanksgiving holiday. The turkeys, from the Moline Farm in Manson, were named after Iowa's new slogan "Freedom to Flourish." They will be sent to a non-commercial farm in southeast Iowa, the governor's office said. The birds were raised by 15-year-old Ava Moline, the daughter of Iowa Turkey Federation President Brad Moline. Ava and her brothers, Coy and Logan, co-own Golden Prairie Turkeys in Manson. The siblings are fifth-generation turkey farmers. "What I truly love about Ava and her brothers' story is it's such a great example of the Iowa farming tradition," Reynolds said. "The Molines are fifth-generation turkey farmers, and their family legacy is something we all respect." Brad Moline thanked Reynolds for her support of the turkey industry at the ceremony. "We've had some challenging years over the years, and this past one's been another one, but with their support and guidance, the turkey industry is alive and well and strong in the state of Iowa," Moline said. Iowa farmers raise about 12 million turkeys a year, according to the Iowa Turkey Federation. The industry has a $10.64 billion economic impact. The event was held virtually last year because of the prevalence of avian influenza, or bird flu, in commercial flocks in Iowa. The virus has cropped up again in counties around Iowa and other states this fall. According to the Iowa Department of Agriculture, there have been 14 cases of bird flu in Iowa flocks since Oct. 20, with three detections in commercial turkey flocks. The disease has spread this fall from wild birds migrating south for the winter, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said. The spread is "on par" with last year, but Naig said officials decided the ceremony could be carried out safely. "This is an important moment for the turkey industry," he said. "It's something that's got tradition and history to it. It can be safely done from a biosecurity standpoint." Despite the bird flu cases seen this fall, Naig said there will not be a major impact on turkey prices for Thanksgiving dinner. Prices are expected to be lower this year than last because the virus is not as widespread, and turkeys produced for Thanksgiving were processed before the uptick in cases. "Those birds have been harvested and processed and in the supply chain for quite some time now," he said. "So there really is no immediate impact on Thanksgiving." Ronald Lewis, 77, can be seen in undated surveillance footage at the Harris County Jail while visiting inmates. Photo composite courtesy of Harris County Sheriffs Office The Harris County Sheriffs Office shared an example of drug-laced paper. Identifying information was blurred by Harris County Sheriffs Office. Harris County Sheriffs Office/Courtesy of Harris County Sherif View of the Harris County Jail from the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, Tuesday, May 10, 2022, in Houston. Marie D. De Jesus/Staff photographer The arrest of a Houston lawyer and new evidence that authorities are looking for others in connection to the smuggling of drug-laced paper into the Harris County Jail has revealed how investigators uncovered the flow of contraband into the facility, according to court records. The death of two inmates after suspected overdoses prompted authorities in June to launch an investigation. As authorities dug deeper, they found a jailhouse call between Louis Santee, now imprisoned for murder, and a parolee once housed in his cell block that indicated a network of people inside the jail and out were procuring the tainted documents, according to a search warrant affidavit. A confidential informant told authorities that attorneys were the main source of the delivery, an investigator wrote in the Nov. 1 affidavit. Advertisement Article continues below this ad From August and until investigators secured the search warrant, the Harris County Sheriffs Office intercepted more than 700 sheets of paper laced with synthetic marijuana and other drugs. The arrest of a longtime defense attorney, Ronald Lewis, followed with police accusing him of sneaking about 20% of the seized sheets into the jail. From the Houston Chronicle: Harris County Jail restricting records from attorneys to clients as drug-laced paper enters facilities Lewis, 77, licensed since 1982, had few, if any clients, when authorities tied him to drug-laced paper entering the jail as far back as July. Investigators accused him of using his position as a lawyer to go to the jail and share documents with at least a dozen inmates who were not his clients. He then took CashApp payments, authorities said. Jailers have since taken steps to limit how inmates receive mail and in-person paperwork from defense attorneys. The search warrant provides insight into how the scheme worked and identifies a second lawyer, who has not been charged, as a potential source of more smuggling. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The informant told authorities that lawyers would receive paper from someone else, such as a friend or significant other of the inmate, and pass the documents, sprayed with drugs in liquid form, to inmates during their visits. The inmates on the receiving end often do not know what the papers are laced with but they call them sheets or dominos, the search warrant continued. Its just laced with something to get them high, the informant said, according to the search warrant. Everything was taken Police have sought charges against at least one other person in connection to the paper trade, according to a Chronicle review of court records. Brianna Scott, 27, was charged Nov. 1 with conspiracy to deliver a controlled substance an allegation that names at least two other people, including the second lawyer and her client, in charging documents. Deputies encountered Scott during an October sting operation in which dozens of sheets of white paper secretly marked with ultraviolet pens were sold to her at $250 each, an investigator wrote in the search warrant. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Scott told undercover deputies that she used to mail the paper to inmates but stopped and started going through attorneys instead, an investigator continued. The sheriffs office combed through more jail calls and determined Scott would often act as a go-between for the second lawyer and her client to coordinate the passing of documents, authorities said. Around the time of the undercover sale, the lawyer told Scott that everything was taken from her jailed client. Scott relayed a message from the lawyer to her client: move snail-like, according to a search warrant. Scott, when reached Wednesday, referred questions about her Harris County case to an attorney who could not be reached for comment. The second lawyer, whom the Chronicle is not identifying because she has not been charged with a crime, did not respond to texts or calls about her alleged role in the operation. Officials do not believe the smuggling scheme is widespread but that Lewis and others worked independently of each other. Inside the jail, however, numerous inmates have been tied to the illicit trade. Advertisement Article continues below this ad In bail paperwork for Lewis, authorities identified about two dozen people some of whom are jailed and others who recently wrapped up their criminal cases as co-actors in his case. Four of them have been jailed for years with pending murder cases. One of those murder defendants, Henry McCoy, is slated for trial next week. If convicted, prosecutors plan to divulge allegations that McCoy had a role in bringing drug-laced paper into the jail as far back as April, according to court documents. Jail deaths continue The bail conditions for Lewis, who is free on bond, prohibit him from contacting the families of two inmates, Robert Terry, 32, and Ramon Thomas, 30, who died at the Harris County Jail earlier this year. Medical examiner officials deemed Terrys death in May an accident with no primary cause, while Thomas experienced sudden death associated with cardiac hypertrophy in July, records show. Prosecutors have not formally tied Lewis to those deaths. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Eighteen people have died this year at the Harris County Jail, with causes ranging from complications from prior health conditions, suicide and causes that remain pending. The latest death on Saturday shows that drugs continue to enter the jail outside of the drug-laced paper that authorities have focused their attention on. Prosecutors this week accepted a fentanyl murder by delivery charge the first charge of that kind in Harris County against Michael Barnett in the Nov. 18 death of fellow inmate Christian Rayo. Barnett had been booked days before Rayos death and had managed to give him fentanyl, according to court records. The charge against Barnett is a recent creation of state lawmakers, who spent part of this year's first legislative session debating ways to combat the increase of fentanyl-related deaths in Texas. The Texas Legislature in May passed a measure that increased criminal penalties related to the sale and production of fentanyl. The law allows authorities to treat fentanyl overdoses as poisonings, which gives prosecutors the opportunity to charge dealers and others with murder. The Wisconsin Dells American Legion now has a stone monument honoring women veterans and those who served in the most recent U.S. wars. American Legion Post 187 on Wisconsin Avenue in the city unveiled the new monument on Nov. 16 to a crowd of post members, residents, and donors. No names are carved into the three-part stone memorial. The sections pay homage to women who have served and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We wanted to do something special in the middle (of the monument), Post Commander Mark Cobb said. Thats where we brought in women vets. Not many women vets are being recognized as they should be. American Legion Post 187 has 10 female members, according to Cobb. Twelve post members are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Cobb said a few of those members served tours in both wars, including the posts finance director, Dave Murray, who has three daughters who are also members of the post who served in Afghanistan. The Murray family also participated in the Wo-Zha-Wa Days parade on Sep. 17. The monuments unveiling was initially scheduled for Nov. 6 to begin Veterans Week. But due to a shipping delay resulting from an equipment malfunction, the monument was delivered to the post on Nov. 9. The post covered $5,000 of the monuments cost and received $18,000 in donations from area businesses, groups and individuals. Among the donors was Kalahari Resorts and Conventions owner Todd Nelson, Chula Vista Resort owner Mike Kaminski, the Del-Bar, Bank of Wisconsin Dells, Gregory C. Van Wie Foundation and Maurers Market. We got the order in around June of last year, Cobb said, adding the monument cost roughly $23,000. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form FILE - Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, holds an Justice Department email as he speaks with reporters Nov. 7, 2023, in Washington. House Republicans have issued a subpoena to a senior federal prosecutor involved in the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden. Jordan is calling on the assistant U.S. attorney for Delaware, Lesley Wolf, to appear before the committee by Dec. 7 to respond to allegations that she interfered in the yearslong case into the president's son. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) Families and friends of about 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring them home during a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Israel's Cabinet was convening Tuesday to consider a possible deal for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a temporary halt to Israel's military offensive in Gaza. Hamas captured the hostages in an Oct. 7 cross-border attack that killed at least 1,200 people and triggered an Israeli invasion of Gaza. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) CME Credit Statement The AAFP has reviewed Physician Health First: No One Should Care Alone and deemed it acceptable for up to 1 Live Course AAFP Prescribed credits. Term of Approval is from 12/14/2023 to 12/14/2023. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. AAFP Prescribed credit is accepted by the American Medical Association as equivalent to AMA PRA Category 1 Credit toward the AMA Physician's Recognition Award. When applying for the AMA PRA, Prescribed credit earned must be reported as Prescribed credit, not as Category 1. CME activities approved for AAFP credit are recognized by the AOA as equivalent to AOA Category 2 credit. For the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedys Nov. 22 death, Rob Reiner, 76, and Soledad OBrien, 57, interviewed experts and witnesses for their new podcast Who Killed JFK?, an event which Reiner calls the greatest murder mystery in American history. His real-life whodunit relies on new facts that came to light since the 1963 Warren Commission called Lee Oswald the lone gunman and from the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations, which said a conspiracy of unknown gunmen probably killed JFK. Reiner tells AARP what he learned in making Who Killed JFK? AARP Membership Join AARP for $12 for your first year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP The Magazine. Join Now Do you think the CIA duped the Warren Commission with a phony story that Lee Oswald was JFKs lone assassin? There are 21 witnesses who say the bullet came from the front [not the back, as the lone-gunman theory claimed]. On our podcast Robert Blakey, lead attorney for the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations, says he didnt know then that the gatekeeper assigned to that investigation, George Joannides, was a former CIA agent who headed a counterintelligence program that developed assets for the CIA. [Assets are civilians who arent CIA agents, but do secret spy work for the agency.] And one of the assets was Lee Harvey Oswald. What do you think the CIA wanted? To infiltrate pro-Castro groups to disrupt them. They told Oswald, Youre gonna open a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba committee in New Orleans. The reality is, there wasnt any. He was the only member in New Orleans. Fair Play for Cuba really was targeted for destruction by the CIA. Did Oswald know hed be used to spark an invasion of Cuba? I do believe he thought he was involved in something, but I dont think he knew exactly what it was. He got the job at the Book Depository overlooking the motorcade route weeks before, through a woman who was a CIA asset. Her sister or aunt or somebody was a mistress to CIA chief Allen Dulles. This is totally conjecture, but I think Oswald might have let somebody into the Depository that day. Breaking news Houston Chronicle A woman is accused of killing her 80-year-old mother, whom shed been caring for, at a home in northeast Houston. Suzette Annette Kefauver, 59, has been charged with murder in connection with the death of Vivian Norwood Kefauver, according to Harris County court records. Forensic examiners determined the older woman died from blunt force trauma on Nov. 17 and that shed had her spinal cord severed and her neck fractured. The determination came days after sheriffs office deputies responded to a medical call and transported the woman to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Advertisement Article continues below this ad MORE FROM HOUSTON CHRONICLE: Harris County residents still struggling to recover months after tornado Deputies noticed red marks on the womans neck, according to charging documents. Suzette Kefauver told investigators shed left the room for about seven minutes and, when she returned, found her mother leaning back on the sofa. Suzette Kefauver said she attempted to lift her mother back up by putting her hands on her neck, and then used a belt to help pull her mother up. Investigators allege, unprompted, the woman said she hadnt abused her mother. She told investigators she then asked a neighbor for help, according to court documents. The neighbor told detectives that, when Suzette Kefauver came for her help, she also said she hadnt abused her mother, which the neighbor thought was a strange thing to say. The neighbor said she came and performed CPR on Vivian Kefauver and asked Suzette Kefauver to call 911, but she didnt until asked several times, according to documents. In a follow-up interview, Suzette Kefauver demonstrated how she attempted to pull her mother up, according to charging documents. But forensic examiners allege her claims dont match up with the evidence. Advertisement Article continues below this ad US Medicare Confirms Reimbursement Price for PromarkerD Perth, Nov 22, 2023 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Proteomics International Laboratories Ltd ( ASX:PIQ ) is pleased to announce that the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published its final determination of the national reimbursement price in the United States for the PromarkerD predictive test for diabetic kidney disease. The CMS is the federal agency in the United States that is responsible for providing health coverage to more than 100 million Americans through Medicare and Medicaid. The reimbursement rate set by CMS applies to all patients accessing government-funded healthcare in the United States. Medicare covers health care costs for people over the age of 65, while Medicaid covers eligible low-income Americans. CMS is the single largest payer for health care in the United States, with Medicare and Medicaid collectively responsible for 42 per cent of healthcare spending. CMS has assigned a payment rate of US$390.75 for PromarkerD [ASX 29 September], which is to be delivered through Sonic Healthcare USA [ASX 10 May]. The rate, set by the Medicare Advisory Panel on Clinical Diagnostic Laboratory Tests, follows a period of public comment and will become effective from 1 January 2024. Proteomics International Managing Director Dr Richard Lipscombe said, "As we prepare for the US launch of PromarkerD, the CMS price is an essential component of the roll-out strategy, both because of the number of people it covers, and because many private payers follow CMS pricing." The reimbursement price comes after the American Medical Association (AMA) approved a unique CPT(R) Proprietary Laboratory Analyses (PLA) code 0385U for PromarkerD earlier this year [ASX 3 January]. Globally there are 537 million adults living with diabetes. In the United States an estimated 32 million people-or 11 per cent of the adult population-live with diabetes and in Europe 61 million (7%) live with diabetes. The total cost of diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is US$130 billion per year in the US alone, according to the US Renal Data System. The PromarkerD predictive test can identify kidney function decline in type 2 diabetes patients up to four years before clinical symptoms appear. Patients identified as at high-risk of DKD by PromarkerD could then be prescribed early therapeutic interventions such as SGLT2-inhibitors or potentially GLP-1 agonists to slow or stop the onset of disease; SGLT2-inhibitors are widely used diabetes drugs, now also indicated for the treatment of DKD, and recently the GLP-1 agonist, semaglutide (Ozempic(R)) was also found to be renal protective [ASX PIQ September Quarterly, 26 October]. Published research shows early intervention with an SGLT2-inhibitor class drug leads to a significant reduction in the PromarkerD risk scores for developing DKD [ASX 3 May]. PromarkerD has the potential to be used a complementary diagnostic test. Early diagnosis of DKD using PromarkerD could help inform doctors' treatment decisions to improve clinical outcomes for patients by increasing adoption of renal-protective interventions in patients at high risk for kidney decline, whilst lowering the likelihood of aggressive treatment in those at low risk [ASX 2 August 2022]. Reducing or delaying the progression of the disease would reduce the incidence of dialysis and kidney transplant, improving quality of life for patients and saving healthcare systems millions of dollars. About Proteomics International Laboratories Ltd Proteomics International Laboratories (ASX:PIQ) is a wholly owned subsidiary and trading name of PILL, a medical technology company at the forefront of predictive diagnostics and bioanalytical services. The Company specialises in the area of proteomics - the industrial scale study of the structure and function of proteins. Proteomics International's mission is to improve the quality of lives by the creation and application of innovative tools that enable the improved treatment of disease. Related Companies Cover Images/BauerGriffin Celebrity The former star of 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta' and her estranged husband reportedly got into a fight just around one week after a report suggested that they were 'working on their marriage.' Nov 22, 2023 AceShowbiz - Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann seemingly had another fallout. "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" alum and her estranged husband reportedly had an "extremely loud" fight that was bad enough until their child had to call police. Revealing the news was TMZ. Law enforcement sources informed the outlet that three officers and a supervisor arrived at the exes' Georgia mansion on Monday night, November 20 after the pair's young child called them for help. Luckily, cops managed to calm things down between Kim and Kroy. It remains unclear what led to the argument, but it arrived just two hours after they were spotted together leaving a barbershop in Alpharetta with some of their kids before making a stop at a nearby Starbucks. The news arrived just around one week after Kim put her married name back on Instagram despite divorcing the retired athlete. She first dropped the word "Biermann" from her page following their split, but she has changed her Instagram handle from @kimzolciak to @kimzbiermann. Hours after Kim made the silent move, Us Weekly reported that she and Kroy were "getting along." A source additionally told the publication, "They aren't technically back together, but they are working on their marriage." Kim and Kroy initially pulled the plug on their 11-year marriage by filing for divorce from one another on May 5. They called off the divorce in July, but he submitted the divorce paper again in August. In the following month, Kroy filed court documents to request permission to sell their property, noting that he and his estranged wife Kim are "financially destitute." In the docs, obtained by Page Six, he stated that they must be permitted to unload their house because the IRS has placed a $1.1 million lien on it. You can share this post! ABC TV After watching the 'Taylor Swift Night' episode, some Swifties take issues with how the show doesn't feature the pop star's actual voice but uses covers instead. Nov 22, 2023 AceShowbiz - "Dancing with the Stars" commemorated one of the world's biggest stars, Taylor Swift, in the Tuesday, November 21 episode. Titled "A Celebration of Taylor Swift", the new outing featured the remaining six celebrity dancers hitting the ballroom to dance to Taylor's biggest hits. Kicking off the night were Alyson Hannigan and Sasha Farber who danced a Cha Cha to "You Belong With Me". Judge Derek Hough praised Alyson for her charisma, adding that she improved significantly since the first episode. Guest judge and "Eras Tour" choreographer Mandy Moore, meanwhile, called Alyson fearless. Carrie Ann Inaba said that she was impressed by Alyson's confidence, but she needed more actual choreography. The judges gave the pair 29 out of 40. Following it up were Ariana Madix and Pasha Pashkov. The two opted to dance a Rumba to "Cruel Summer" and Mandy thought Ariana matched the melodic quality of the song. Bruno also loved the classic and beautiful routine, saying that Ariana was singing with her body. Carrie Ann noted that the routine was technical and lyrical, with Derek calling it a proper Rumba. The pair earned 37 out of 40. Jason Mraz and Daniella Karagach later hit the dance floor to dance a Tango to "Don't Blame Me". It was so impressive that Derek was brought to his feet, giving them a standing ovation. Carrie Ann loved that Jason was like the heart of the fire that night. As for Mandy, she described the performance with two words, grounded and epic. Jason got a perfect score for the routine. Dancing a Rumba to "August" were Harry Jowsey and Rylee Arnold. Carrie Ann appreciated that the routine had more content, but he noted that Harry still had to improve some other things. Derek, meanwhile, criticized Harry's blank space face mid-performance. As for Bruno, he thought it was a strong attempt and praised Harry for his frame. Harry got 30 out of 40. Up next were Charity Lawson and Artem Chigvintsev, who danced an Argentine Tango to "Look What You Made Me Do". Derek said that Charity had the best legs in the competition. As for Mandy, she hoped to see more of an attack. Bruno said that every line and shape had pin-point accuracy, while Carrie Ann pointed out Charity's unmatched lines and blank face. The pair got 38 out of 40. Xochitl Gomez and Valentin Chmerkovskiy opted for a Quickstep to "Paper Rings" and the judges were mind-blown. Mandy said that the routine was like poetry. Bruno loved the movement, which he dubbed light, beautiful and extremely enjoyable. Carrie Ann loved how animated and enthusiastic performer Xochitl was, while Derek said that Xochitl brought every dance to life. The judges gave her 38 out of 40. It was time for the Relay Dance where each winning couple would get three points. Ariana and Xochitl performing first, hitting the ballroom to dance a Viennese Waltz to "Lover". It was a tough call, but Xochitl and Val were eventually named as the winner. The next battle was between Harry and Alyson, who danced a Jive to "Shake It Off". The judges said that both of them did well with Derek noting that he loved the competitive atmosphere. At the end, Alyson and Sasha came out as the winner. For the final relay dance, Jason and Charity competed while dancing a Cha Cha to "Lavender Haze". Derek was impressed by both Jason and Charity, while Mandy thought that it was a clean performance. The judges named Jason and Daniella as the winner. It was time for the results. Ariana, Xochitl and Jason were safe, meaning that Alyson, Harry and Charity were the bottom three. Eventually, Harry and Rylee were revealed to be the couple eliminated that night. Meanwhile, some fans took to social media to express their disappointment after watching the "Taylor Swift Night" episode. Some Swifties took issues with how the show didn't feature Taylor's actual voice but used covers instead. "am i the only one confused that they didn't use taylor's voice??" a Swiftie questioned. "Disappointed! Why are we not using the actual songs?! Isn't it a celebration of Taylor swift?!! Not a celebration of covering her songs. She deserves better!" another raged. One person, meanwhile, suggested that it was probably due to copyright. You can share this post! Cover Images/TheNews2 Celebrity After allegedly hurting staffers at UTA with her comments on Jews living in America, the 'Dead Man Walking' actress is no longer represented by the talent agency. Nov 22, 2023 AceShowbiz - Susan Sarandon is no longer represented by a Hollywood agency following her controversial remarks. After reportedly hurting staffers at UTA with her anti-Jewish rant, the "Dead Man Walking" actress was dropped by the talent agency. On Tuesday, November 21, a spokesperson for UTA confirmed to a number of media outlets that they do not represent the 77-year-old Oscar-winning actress any longer. On the reason why, several sources spilled to Page Six that she "extremely hurt" some "staffers at UTA" with her comments on "frightened Jews." A few days prior, Susan made a controversial comment on Jews living in the U.S. when she was joining a pro-Palestine rally. During the Friday, November 17 protest in New York City, she stated, "There are a lot of people that are afraid, that are afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence." On Monday, November 20, the "Monarch" star reshared via X, formerly known as Twitter, a tweet about Pink Floyd and its outspoken frontman Roger Waters voicing their support for Palestine at their recent show. "Despite attempts by the Israeli lobby to cancel the event, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd took the stage in Uruguay, donning a Kufiyyah and advocating for an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza," the tweet read. Later on, Susan was criticized by many. Among them was former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations Aviva Klompas, who responded to Susan's anti-Jewish rant. In a tweet, Aviva penned, "When Susan Sarandon said that Jews 'are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country' she was saying that American Jews have it coming - that we don't deserve to live free from harassment and assault." Meanwhile, Muslim-American journalist Asra Nomani gave Susan insight into her Muslim family's life in the U.S. Asra elaborated via X a list of the "freedoms" that her family enjoys in the country. Near the end of her tweet, she noted, "Please don't minimize the experience of Jewish Americans by sanitizing the hell that it is for Muslims living in Muslim countries and vilifying America for the life - and freedoms - she offers Muslims like my family." You can share this post! The Ezekiel W. Cullen Building on the campus of University of Houston on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022 in Houston. Elizabeth Conley/Staff photographer A University of Houston student is being treated for tuberculosis, and other people on the school's campus may need be tested for the contagious disease. In an announcement Tuesday, the university said the student diagnosed with the disease was being treated away from campus and was no longer a health risk to others. The student's identity wasn't revealed. "The university is working closely with the Houston Health Department to identify any student, faculty or staff member who should be tested for TB infection," Jon Rusciano. interim executive director of the university's student health center, said in letter announcing the diagnosis. "The Houston Health Department determines who needs testing based on the type of exposure a student or employee has had to the sick individual." Advertisement Article continues below this ad PRICE GOUGING CASE: Major anesthesia group, tied to some Texas doctors, accused of price gouging People who have a tuberculosis infection can feel sick or weak, and suffer weight loss, fever and night sweats, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC said other symptoms may include chest pain, cough or expectorate blood. The disease is treatable with drugs. The university learned about the diagnosis from the City of Houston Health Department. Public announcements did not, however, make it clear when the student fell ill. No other students, staff or faculty members had been diagnosed with the disease as of Wednesday. But school officials said some people might receive notifications in coming days about the need to be tested because of their close contact with the sick student. Contact tracing is being done by the Houston Health Department, the university said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad "Please be assured that we are taking this situation seriously your health is of utmost importance," Rusciano said. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection that can be contagious and spread through the air. The ill student was diagnosed with active tuberculosis, which means germs are multiplying and destroying tissue in a body, according to an information sheet put out by the university. People with tuberculosis of the lung or throat can spread the infection to others when they cough, sneeze, speak or sing, the statement said. The germs can stay in the air for several hours, but the disease is rarely spread between people who have short, casual contact with an infected person. Tuberculosis cases are not unheard of in the United States, but are far less frequent than they were even 20 years ago. In 2000, there were more than 16,000 cases of the disease diagnosed in the U.S., according to the CDC. In 2020, the number of diagnosed cases had dropped to 7,171. Last year, there were 8,331 cases of tuberculosis diagnosed in the U.S., including more than 1,000 in Texas. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Tuberculosis was once one of the deadliest diseases world, causing as many as a 25% of deaths in Europe and United States from the 17th to 19th centuries, according to the CDC. In more recent years, there have been reported tuberculosis cases in Pearland, Fort Bend County and Sugar Land, though none were reported to result in widespread outbreaks. Cover Images/INFphoto.com Celebrity Despite feeling 'happy' and 'pleased' that his prison sentence is reduced, the former 'Chrisley Knows Best' star will not be able to gather with his family for upcoming holiday. Nov 22, 2023 AceShowbiz - Todd Chrisley apparently will be spending Thanksgiving behind bars. The former "Chrisley Knows Best" star reportedly is "very upset" upon learning that he cannot gather with his loved ones for the upcoming holiday. Speaking to TMZ on Tuesday, November 21, the 54-year-old former reality TV star's attorney Jay Surgent said, "Todd's very upset about his situation as his first holiday season behind bars begins and he's around other inmates instead of loved ones." Jay went on to spill that Todd and his wife Julie Chrisley's daughter Savannah Chrisley is "planning to visit both Todd and Julie in prison at some point over the holidays." One day prior, Jay spoke to RadarOnline.com about Todd staying in prison during the holiday. Jay told the outlet that Todd "feels bad he can't be home for the holidays with his family." Though so, the attorney assured, "We are working on it." During the chat, Jay revealed that Todd and Julie's appeal case is "moving forward." The attorney stated that their children have been "given some hope" that their parents will be able to be released from prison sooner than the initial dates. Jay further shared, "Todd is happy. He's pleased with how things are going. We are very pleased. It's a good sign." He additionally spilled that Todd and Julie's 26-year-old daughter "feels very satisfied" with the good news. Todd is able to get his prison sentence reduced by 2 years, while Julie gets hers reduced by 1 year. According to legal documents obtained by the outlet, the wedded couple is set to attend their hearing on March 25, 2024 in Atlanta. Previously, Todd was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and tax fraud before he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Meanwhile, Julie was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., tax fraud as well as wire fraud and slapped with a 7-year prison sentence. In January, Todd and Julie began their prison sentences at two separate facilities. While he went to FPC Pensacola in Florida, she stayed at FMC Lexington in Kentucky. They will be spending the upcoming holidays at their respective facilities. You can share this post! Instagram Celebrity The Philadelphia rapper, whose real name is Robert Rihmeek Williams, has yet to detail why he calls out the 'Love Scars' rapper publicly on his Instagram page. Nov 22, 2023 AceShowbiz - Meek Mill has lashed out at Trippie Redd for undisclosed reasons. However, after calling out the "Love Scars" rapper, Meek found himself being ridiculed by online users due to his contradictory statements. On Tuesday, November 21, the 36-year-old shared a photo of the Ohio emcee along with a lengthy rant. "@trippieredd no good out here! say less I ain't know you was comfy enough to say my name I can't wait to see you yall getting too high 'TRIPPIE REDD NO GOOD OUT HERE' don't ask why!!! I think yall scared of jail and death but let's see lol let's make you n***as show up from the streets to jail yall in the way off too much money!" he argued. "It's getting too much anyway. DO NOT CALL ME OR TEXT ME IF YOU AINT CALL WHEN PEOPLE SPEAK ON ME!" the Philly native continued. "That's is all @trippieredd I wanna look in your eyes youngbull lol and now ima sign n***as I was trying to help the hood yall really let these n***as lose these mind." Not done getting things off his chest, Meek penned on Instagram Story over a photo of Trippie, "If you f**k with me, f**k this guy right here." He went on fuming, "I ain't even know you took my name I seen you got pulled in a room by the gangstas in LA you was scared but let's see how tough y'all guys are!" "If you not ready for Philly just mind your business @trippieredd he's noooooooo good out here from Maine to Spain and I mean that!" he added. "He may worship the devil so all my god bodies watch this p***ie I can't wait to see him lol." "I'll make you cry lil p***y 300 nights you and ya man that's why he ain't been out in the city he weak and getting weaker now he hating on his own n***as lol yall n***as not even built for jail playing with a don lol it's getting unbelievable but ima come out to see if yall really ready for yall and yall family stand behind anything threat towards meek," he concluded. "let's see how strong yall are stop the violence bless up!" The last sentence has left fans baffled. In a repost shared by The Neighborhood Talk, one person commented, "Meek made all them threats then be like 'stop the violence.' " Another wrote, "Whole caption had violence ends it with 'stop the violence' chile the jokes make themselves." A third questioned, "How you say allll that then say stop the violence." You can share this post! Cover Images/KIKA Press/Janet Mayer Celebrity Defending the 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' actor following his son's scathing Instagram Story, a source claims that the 19-year-old allegations against his dad are 'far from the truth.' Nov 22, 2023 AceShowbiz - Brad Pitt isn't a "bad person," though a recently surfaced post by his son Pax suggested otherwise. The actor has been defended against "depressing" allegations by his teenage son, who called the Hollywood star "a**hole" and "despicable" among other things in the expletive-laden rant. "Brad has great respect for all of his children and it's depressing to see this dragged up," a source tells The Sun of Brad's supposed real characters. "It's frustrating to see Brad being painted as some kind of 'bad person' when it's far from the truth." Noting that the 59-year-old has been holding himself back from airing their dirty laundry, the source goes on claiming, "He chooses to keep a dignified silence and that speaks volumes." Other sources, meanwhile, confirm that half of Brad's six children, whom he shares with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie, don't see him at all. "As far as Maddox, Pax and Zahara go, the word is that they are totally in support of their mother and Brad doesn't hear from them these days at all - certainly not the boys, and it's been that way for a long time," one so-called insider spills. The source, who is allegedly close to the former couple, added, "He still sees Shiloh and the twins [Knox and Vivienne] whenever he can, though not as often as he would like." Daily Mail previously obtained and shared Pax's Father's Day post in which he blasted his "a**hole" and "despicable" dad. The then-16-year-old teen made use of his private account on Instagram to slam the "World War Z" actor in 2020. In a screengrab obtained by the site, he began his message by writing, "Happy Father's Day to this world class a**hole!!" "You time and time and again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person," Pax penned over a picture of Brad winning an Oscar award for best supporting actor for "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" four months earlier. "You have no consideration or empathy toward your 4 youngest children who tremble in fear in your presence. You will never understand the damage you have done to my family because you are incapable of doing so." The 19-year-old went on alleging his dad, "You have made the lives of those closest to me a constant hell. You may tell yourself and the world whatever you want, but the truth will come to light someday. So, Happy Father's Day, you f**king awful human being!!!" Seemingly sharing her brother's feelings, Zahara recently snubbed Brad from a sorority ceremony at Spelman College. She dropped the "Bullet Train" star's last name when introducing herself as she joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha organization. Angelina as well as her sons Maddox and Pax also attended the ceremony, which took place earlier this month, while Brad was nowhere to be seen with them. Despite Zahara's alleged estranged relationship with her dad, her pals still expect to see him on campus one day. "It was big talk when her mom helped her move into the dorm last year. So now everyone is crossing their fingers for at least a quick drive by and graduation, but that is years away," a school insider tells Page Six. You can share this post! Instagram Celebrity The 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' actress receives an online comment from the 'Close to Me' musician after sharing her new photos from a getaway to Australia. Nov 22, 2023 AceShowbiz - Sydney Sweeney apparently has attracted the attention of Diplo with her social media post. The "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" actress received an online comment from the "Close to Me" musician after she put on a busty display in her new photos and videos. On Tuesday, November 21, the 26-year-old actress uploaded a series of never-before-seen pictures and clips from her getaway to Australia. In one of the photos, she could be seen exposing her cleavage by pressing both of her upper assets, prompting them to nearly spill out of her swimming suit. The actress portraying Cassie Howard on "Euphoria" also uploaded a photo capturing her striking a pose on top of sea stacks at a beach while putting her hands up in the air. Another picture saw her standing near a number of Kangaroos, iconic wild animals in Australia, in a greenery field. In addition, Sydney released a picture highlighting a breathtaking view of the beach, its clean water and the blue sky. Aside from the photos, she let out a video documenting her sliding from a cliff down to a river. In another footage, she was seen singing with her fellow actress Kaylee McGregor in a car while they were holding microphones in their hands. For the fun day out, Sydney opted to wear a soft green bodysuit that came with two thick straps and a plunging V-neckline. She accessorized the look with a pair of black sunglasses, simple earrings and some layers of gold necklaces. At one point, she put on a white outer over the skin-tight swimsuit. Along with the snaps and clips, she wrote in the caption, "Sweet home australia." It did not take long for the post to be flooded with online responses from Instagram users. Among them was disc jockey Diplo, who penned in the comments section, "The picture of the beach is magnificent." Another joined in, "How TF you always look so good." Sydney Sweeney received a comment from Diplo in her Instagram post. A third stated, "God has his favorites fr fr." Meanwhile, a fourth noted, "I love seeing celebrities just have fun and be normal. you guys deserve to just have a fun vacation with people you love," adding a smiling face emoji. You can share this post! Remember that advertisement is all about making a product or a service unique. Even the best of the software like ChatGPT will never offer that uniqueness. So, do not feel discouraged by them as they often compromise the quality of the advertisements, said Shri Vikram Sahay, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, while delivering his keynote address at the 19th edition of the Marketing Conclave (MarCon), organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) on November 22, 2023, in Mumbai. This year MarCon explored, through 30 sessions, across four tracks, the theme of Tomorrows Canvas: Tech and the Art of Marketing. The conference was co-powered by Whistle Feed. Addressing the conferences theme topic, Shri Sahay delved into the dynamic intersection of technology and marketing, shedding light on innovative strategies to navigate the evolving landscape of digital advertising. In his keynote Shri Sahay also dwelt on advertising regulatory practices and underlined the importance of ethical marketing. Today, we have certain regulatory practices and guidelines that protect us from misleading ads, especially in education and healthcare. We must stay away from such unethical practices, he said. MarCon 2023 brought together on one platform more than 65 industry captains and subject stalwarts to explore the theme subject 360 degrees. Over 350+ agencies, 500+ leading brands and 1500 delegates took part in the conference. Speaking on unified measurement for digital platforms, Gulshan Verma, CEO of Jio Ads explained, Fundamentally, measurement is the backbone of business, translating into vital components such as your business metrics, engagement metrics, and sales figures. What further adds to this process is the perception of your brand. Introducing unified measurement transforms the landscape, where context makes all the difference. Online and physical touch points make it challenging to analyse or even apply unified measurement. Unification will happen if we are able to link business numbers and other tangibles to arrive at some sort of numeric unification or one scale of measurement for digital platforms. Talking on changing tech allowing new age marketers to connect with BHARAT, MVS Murthy, CMO Federal Bank, said, AI does not have an emotional quotient hence it cannot be sensitive towards human emotions. Only humans can understand the subtle sensitivities of any matter. While targeting Bharat, it's important we understand and acknowledge these nuances and think regional and vernacular first, it's a human emotion, we think in our mother tongue and then speak in English or any other language. Among other prominent speakers at the conclave were Tushar Vyas, President, Group M South Asia; Gaurav Verma, Vice President, Games 24 x 7; Arun Srinivas, Director & Head of Ads Business, Meta; Ranjana Mangla, Sr VP and Head of Ad Revenue, Sony Pictures Network Ltd; Sanket Narkar, Head of Marketing, Physics Wallah, and Shoumyan Biswas, Chief Marketing Officer, Tata Digital. Results of the second edition of the prestigious Digital Native Brands Awards (DNBA) were announced at a gala ceremony at MarCon today. This year there were over 150 entries for DNBA, which were distributed in 19 categories. The Awards celebrate and honour businesses and brands that have harnessed the power of digital technology, epitomize the spirit of digital entrepreneurship, and leverage technology as a core driver of their success. The Best DNB Woman Entrepreneur of The Year Award went to Ghazal Alagh, Honasa Consumer Pvt Ltd (Mamaearth) and the Best Digital Native Brand Entrepreneur Award was bagged by Manish Chowdhary, WOW Skin Science. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved acquisition of additional shareholding in CaratLane Trading Pvt Ltd by Titan Company Ltd. The proposed combination relates to the acquisition by Titan of 27.18% share capital of CaratLane (a subsidiary of Titan), on a fully diluted basis, from Mithun Padam Sacheti, Siddhartha Padam Sacheti, and Padamchand Sacheti. Titan, a public listed company, is active in several businesses through lifestyle brands, including, jewellery, eyecare, fragrances, fashion accessories, and Indian dress wear. CaratLane is a private limited company engaged in the business of manufacture and sale of gems and jewellery in India. FlyBoo Holidays, a rapidly growing player in the Indian travel industry, is thrilled to unveil its latest Television Commercial (TVC) featuring its esteemed Brand Ambassador, PV Sindhu. This captivating TVC marks the first instalment in a two-part series, and it's all about the mascot, Boo the flamingo, who's got PV Sindhu's back throughout her busy schedule and travel adventures. In this inaugural Campaign, PV Sindhu's globetrotting journey takes her from Indonesia to Denmark, India, China, and all the way to the Maldives. Despite the vast distances, her travels have been smooth and stress-free, courtesy of Boo the unwavering mascot offering constant support. The concept of Boo as a dependable mascot providing support throughout Sindhu's travels conveys the reliability and assistance offered by FlyBoo Holidays. The commercial further embodies the promise: "Just Pack Your Bags, FlyBoo got your back," encapsulating the idea of seamless support for travellers, reinforcing the company's commitment to ensuring a stress-free and enjoyable experience. Crafted by the creative minds at PAD, the TVC captures the essence of PV Sindhu's travels and the unwavering assistance she receives from Boo. The mascot adds an exclusive personal dimension to travelling by providing customized advice and solutions tailored to each traveller's needs. Commenting on this TVC, Mr. Marri Shashank Reddy, Director and Co-Founder of Flyboo Holidays Private Limited, stated, "We're excited to commence this transformative journey with PAD. The Campaign is a testament to redefining travel experiences. Through a blend of creativity and technology, we aim to leave a lasting mark on the travel industry. By nurturing meaningful connections with our customers, we confidently position ourselves as pioneers in travel solutions." Vivek Reddy, Co-founder and Creative Director at PAD, remarked, "At PAD, we are overjoyed to be selected as FlyBoo's strategic partner. This partnership not only ignites our creative passions but also empowers us to craft campaigns that will genuinely captivate and deeply resonate with their audience. We eagerly anticipate introducing innovative ideas and delivering compelling campaigns to enhance the flying solutions landscape." The Campaign is live on both Digital and traditional media platforms across national and regional channels. The latest research from Ampere Analysis finds that global pay TV penetration (the number of pay TV subscriptions relative to the number of households) will see its first yearly decline ever next year. This will follow pay TV penetration peaking at 60.3% in Q4 2023. By 2028, global pay TV penetration will have fallen by almost 4 percentage points by Amperes forecasts. Pay TV decline has been driven by North America, but all regions will be in decline by 2025 In North America, pay TV penetration has almost halved from a high of 84% in 2009 to 45% in 2023 caused by a combination of high costs and competition from a mature Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) market. Despite this decline, the annual revenue generated per user will sit at over $1,100 in 2023 across North America, the highest across any region. 2 Ampere Analysis 2023 Latin America has also shown large declines in penetration since 2016.This is largely led by Brazil, which has posted a drop of roughly 10 percentage points since its peak pay TV penetration of 42% in 2016. Although North America and Latin America are driving this shift, all regions will be in pay TV penetration decline by 2025. Growth in pay TV has come primarily from Asia-Pacific and Europe Asia Pacific and Europe have seen the highest penetration growth in recent years, with large gains coming from China Mobile after it acquired an IPTV license in 2018. This growth has mostly been driven by low-cost IPTV services, which are often bundled into broadband packages for a low or nominal cost. While these regions will also fall into decline after 2025, there are still some growth markets, such as Portugal, Serbia, Hungary which are expected to see further growth in the forecast period. Rory Gooderick, Senior Analyst at Ampere Analysis says: Growth in global pay TV uptake has been driven over the last five years by Asia Pacific and Central & Eastern Europe. However, declines coming from the Americas, which are driven by streaming competition and the high price of pay TV in North America, currently sitting at over $90 a month, will contribute to global pay TV penetration declining for the first time in 2024. However, despite the projected decline in the reach of pay TV products, cable and satellite platforms will remain a powerful force in the TV world, and important distribution partners for streaming products, as evidenced by the recent distribution deal between Disney and Charter in the US, which saw select Disney streaming services bundled into Charters TV packages. This package structure, already increasingly common in Europe and parts of Asia, offers a framework for traditional cable TV companies to transition their business into a streaming aggregation play, and stabilise subscriber trajectories. LS Digital, a new-age independent digital marketing transformation group, as part of their global expansion, announced today its foray in the UK market. Pawan Wankhede has been appointed as Business Head of UK Operations. He will focus on expanding LS Digitals skills and capabilities in Digital Marketing Transformation (DMT) to businesses in the UK market. Pawan brings over 18 years of expertise in digital marketing strategies and content. We envision LS Digital becoming a global player in Digital Marketing Transformation (DMT) space. In order to realise this vision, we have appointed an industry veteran like Pawan to take the reins of the UK operations and replicate the growth we have seen in the MEA region. LS Digital already has a significant presence in Europe, specifically in UX and CX verticals. Now we will expand our focus, with UK as the base and Pawan at the helm, to include the entire DMT solution, which comprises Media, Creative, D&I, Innovation and Tech, said Prasad Shejale, CEO & Co-founder, LS Digital on the appointment. Prior to joining LS Digital, Pawan was the CEO of VidRule, a programmatic digital marketing company, for over 7 years. A seasoned Digital Marketing entrepreneur, Pawan brings strong experience in digital media and OTT content technology, with specialisations in several forms of marketing including AdTech, Content Production & Monetization, Social Media & Display Marketing, and Mobile Marketing, to name a few. Rupak Ved, COO, LS Digital said, I am happy to welcome Pawan to the UK team. His expertise in diverse areas of the digital marketing space, especially in international markets will help accelerate growth in Europe and take it to greater levels. We perceive a great need among UK businesses for digital marketing transformation solutions. LS Digital's Transformation Framework is perfectly positioned to address the gap in the market. Pawans addition will further our growth in Digital Marketing Space in the UK. Commenting on his new role, Pawan Wankhede said, The UK stands as the largest digital advertising market in Europe, with expenditures consistently surpassing traditional channels. This surge in spending underscores a significant demand for brands to embrace a more data-driven strategy, aiming to optimize Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS). I am enthusiastic about joining the LS Digital team, recognizing the immense opportunity to guide UK brands in harnessing the robust DMT framework crafted by the company. In my role, I will be dedicated to fostering innovation, broadening our European focus, and assisting brands in setting up their Centre of Excellence (CoE). Pawan Wankhedes appointment for UK operations aligns with LS Digitals strategic plans to become a global leader in the delivery of DMT solutions. The company endeavours to focus more in Europe and UK by expanding its UX & CX business verticals to include Media, Creative, D&I, Innovation and Tech, in order to provide the entire range of its ML-based DMT solutions to brands in these markets. Nielsen today announced the appointment of Naobumi Otaki as its New Sales Director for Japan. Naobumi is an industry leader, with extensive experience in marketing, media strategy, and business operation. With his unparalleled knowledge of the media ecosystem, he will lead Nielsens Japan Advertiser and Agency team to driving sales in Japan, developing long term strategic partnerships within the industry. He will report to Aaron Rigby, Managing Director of Advertisers & Agencies, Audience Measurement Asia. Naobumi brings over 17 years of experience in marketing across multiple platforms and industries. Hes held leadership positions at several prestigious companies including Mindshare, Station, McCann Health, and K&L. Naobumi arrives at Nielsen during a time of transformation, as the business increases its focus on digital strategy and reprioritising operations to better service its clients most notably Japans leading advertisers and agencies. Aaron Rigby, Nielsen Asia Managing Director (Advertisers & Agencies) said: The appointment of Naobumi shows Nielsens commitment to driving measurement innovation and delivering the industrys growing need of measurement data. His impressive experience and skill set in the industry makes him a perfect fit for the mature market like Japan. Im looking forward to his leadership in accelerating the companys growth. Naobumi Otaki said: Im thrilled to join Nielsen and lead the team to achieve growth in one of the most prestigious markets in the world. With the media landscape changing rapidly, its an exciting time to contribute to the business as it shapes the future of media in the region. Im looking forward to working closely with Japans Advertisers and Agencies to make Nielsen their long-term strategic business partner. Octavia Johnson is a general assignment reporter for the Houston Chronicle. She can be reached at octavia.johnson@houstonchronicle.com. Before joining the Chronicle, Octavia worked as a digital content producer at WATE-TV in Knoxville, Tenn., where she became a leader in producing fast paced, audience-focused content. Octavia graduated from UNC Pembroke with a bachelor's degree in journalism before earning her master's degree in media and communications at Norfolk State University. Unilever has appointed Intel Corporations Head brand, creative, media Gayatri Makhijani Ray as the head digital hub. During her tenure, she has contributed to the B2B + B2C product portfolio of Intel India, which included SMB, PCs, AI, gaming, and cloud. She has expertise in brand marketing and strategy, B2C marketing, programmatic media buying, multi-channel marketing, Facebook marketing, display advertising, social media advertising, media buying, B2B marketing, multi-channel marketing. Ray started her career at MTV Networks, and later served in various brands such as Rediffusion Y&R, Amazon, DDB Tribal, Yahoo. New Delhi is a student hub, a plethora of young adults who come here to pursue their education and in search of their dreams. Away from their families and the comfort of their homes, these students reside as Paying Guests, or in Hostels in student hubs like Mukherjee Nagar, Rajendra Nagar, Lakshmi Nagar. More often than not, course commitments or financial challenges prevent these students from being with their families and loved ones on the most auspicious festive occasion of the year. As India celebrated the biggest annual festival- Deepawali, Indias leading telecom operator Vi embraced the spirit of inclusivity with a special initiative for young students in Delhi. Vis recent campaign Be Someones We showcases that even a small gesture is enough to make someone feel less left out, less lonely and cared for. Inspired by this concept, Vis Deepawali initiative sought to engage with and spread festive cheer amongst young students in Delhi. Vi tied up with popular RJ Naved for its Deepawali initiative in the city. RJ Naved paid surprise visits to popular student hubs/areas in Delhi and invited them to Vi's Diwali activity setup. Naved placed surprise calls to the parents of the students to pass on his Diwali wishes. He also engaged with students through multiple activities to infuse the festive spirit, like Rangoli competition and his signature "Murga" prank. Students were also engaged in a unique activity involving "Cards of Connection, a Be Someones We themed playing cards deck that had a unique challenge on each card. The cards encouraged the students to connect with their loved ones and feel connected with them despite the physical distance. In their festive ethnic attire, the students set the stage ablaze with a Ramp walk, electric dance performances, and melodious musical performances. Naved also distributed sweet boxes among the students on behalf of Vi. The added sweet twist was that three lucky students won Ticket to Home making their celebration more memorable. Extending his Deepawali Greetings to the residents of Delhi, Arvinder Singh Sachdev, Operations Director North, Vodafone Idea said, Festivals are a time for families to get together. but not everyone is as fortunate. Like thousands of Students, who travel miles away from home to Delhi with a vision to make a bright future for themselves but havent been able to go home to their loved ones. This Deepawali, Vi decided to practice inclusion and togetherness as per the cadence of our campaign Be Someones We and bring smiles to the faces of these students. On this auspicious festive occasion, we urge every citizen to do their bit and bring a little joy to someone. Together, we can ensure that everyone has a truly Happy Deepawali and no one feels left out or lonely. Be Someones We reflects the collective effort to extend the joy and warmth of Deepawali to those who may be deprived of it due to various circumstances. It underscores the commitment of Vi to share the spirit of togetherness and inclusivity with all members of society. WebEngage, a full stack Retention Operating System, today announced the elevation of Ankur Gattani to Chief Growth Officer. Gattani, who has been heading the marketing function for the B2B SaaS leader, will now also take charge of Customer Growth and Success functions in this newly constituted role, to help the company with readiness for its next growth phase. Commenting at the announcement, Avlesh Singh, Co-founder & CEO, WebEngage, said, As we gear up to enter our next phase of growth, consolidation of leadership will help us leverage emerging opportunities across the spectrum. Ankurs insights on customer needs, his experience and his unique approach have made an invaluable contribution to streamlining WebEngages marketing efforts. We are proud to have him take charge of our Customer Success function as well. Ankur will additionally be instrumental in building our account management and growth consulting practices, while also overlooking Onboarding and Customer Support. I am confident that in the coming months, he will become a guiding light and a force to be reckoned with for our team as well as our customers. Anand Lunia, Founding Partner, India Quotient, an early investor in WebEngage, said, Having known Ankur from his previous entrepreneurial pursuits, I was confident that it was just a matter of time that he would become a core member of the WebEngage juggernaut. Ankur Gattani, Chief Growth Officer, WebEngage, said, Its always Day 01 of learning new things here at WebEngage and I am super excited to embark on this new charter. As we enter this new era of growth for WebEngage, my focus will remain to continuously improve customer experience and drive growth for our customers. An IIT Bombay and IIM Calcutta graduate, Ankur joined WebEngage in 2021 to streamline the marketing function of the organisation. Under his leadership, while the business has grown immeasurably, WebEngages marketing practice has also strengthened multifold. He has also institutionalised several initiatives of the Marketing function such as its flagship education initiative EngageMint, and State of Retention Marketing Podcasts. He has taken charge of the entire growth marketing function at WebEngage to sharpen its positioning as a thought leader in retention marketing and a champion for building enduring businesses. Younion, a pioneering marketing agency that has redefined the way brands connect with their audiences, has opened its offices in two strategic locations - Delhi and Singapore. The strategic objective for opening these offices is to extend services and capabilities across different regions and geo locations. Younion is already active in India, and has planned and managed end-to-end events in Nepal, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Thailand and has executed more than 500 large-scale events, 700 mid to small-scale events, and 800+ turnkey projects. Most experiential and data-led marketing decisions are centred and controlled out of Singapore. This is true for most technology brands which form the bulk of Younions clientele. The companys leadership believes that it was only a matter of time to connect and engage with these decision makers based out of Singapore and expand Younions delivery footprint across the ASEAN/APAC region. Sharing his excitement around the launch of the Singapore facility, Shajesh Menon, Founder and CEO of Younion said, In our efforts to bring brands closer to their audiences by creating human-centred marketing experiences using data, and design and events, Singapore will play a key role. We believe that new relationships will be forged in the market using our extensive experience in technology space and different Asian geographies. He further added, We are confident that from Singapore we can help customers focused on the ASEAN region leverage strong delivery capabilities using Younions formidable strength out of India while tapping the country's skilled workforce to further build on our data- led solutions." The decision to set up the Delhi office was two-fold. One, to support and strengthen equations with existing customers, and second, to clearly move into new business verticals (other than B2B clients), especially given that Delhi is a key commercial centre and home to numerous Fortune 500 companies. Expressing his enthusiasm about Delhi expansion, Shajesh said, "Our expansion in Delhi is organic and a natural progression to our current growth trajectory. I am confident that the new office will help us take our efforts of creating unique marketing experiences for clients to a new level while enabling us to expand our geographic reach and tap new opportunities." Founded by Shajesh Menon in 2010, Younion helps brands create unique marketing experiences using data, design and marketing experiences, keeping people at the center. After several years of successfully serving several reputed global and Indian brands through the expansion drive, Younion wants to design, develop, and deliver exceptional brand experiences across the APAC region. Younion believes its immense experience with global technology companies in India and neighboring regions makes it well-positioned to cater to experiential marketing objectives of technology and non-technology brands headquartered in Singapore. The company aims to understand and align to varied cultures and learn and implement new business processes and practices while helping customers focusing on the ASEAN or APAC region leverage strong delivery capabilities using Younions formidable strength out of India. Since its inception, Younion has supported multiple brands like Google Cloud, Red Hat, Amazon Web Services, VMWare, Dell EMC, Nutanix, Microsoft, Tableau, Salesforce, Palo Alto Networks, Titan, NetApp, Juniper Networks, to name a few, creating engaging brand experiences across India and neighbouring geographies. The newly set up offices in Singapore and New Delhi will further its efforts in strengthening its presence in Asia Pacific region while fueling its growth, getting access to a diverse talent pool, and adopting a deeper understanding of local cultures and consumer trends. The company is committed to providing its clients with exceptional service and delivering unforgettable experiences that drive results. The Federal Council Bern, 22.11.2023 - On 22 November, the Federal Council approved the application for the export of 25 Leopard 2 A4 main battle tanks to their original manufacturer, Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH in Germany. Germany has given assurances that the tanks will remain either in Germany, with NATO or with its EU partners in order to meet existing shortfalls. In a letter dated 23 February 2023, the German minister for economic affairs, Robert Habeck, and minister of defence, Boris Pistorius, requested that some of the decommissioned 87 Leopard 2 A4 combat tanks be sold back to the German manufacturer, Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH. Germany has undertaken not to send the tanks to Ukraine and given assurances that they will remain either in Germany, with NATO, or with its EU partners. Parliament's decision to decommission tanks The Armed Forces currently operate 134 87 Leopard 2 A4 WE tanks, which were modernised as part of the 2006 Armament Programme. In addition, they also have 96 87 Leopard 2 A4 tanks that are not in use and have not been maintained. On 26 September of this year, the Council of States approved the Federal Decree on the 2023 Armament Programme as adopted by the National Council on 14 June as part of the 2023 Armed Forces Dispatch. At the same time, it approved the decommissioning of 25 Leopard 87 main battle tanks on condition that they be sold back to the manufacturer. Following this decision and in accordance with the provisions of the War Materiel Act, the Federal Office for Defence Procurement (armasuisse) submitted an application to SECO on 12 October for a licence to export the 25 tanks. Tanks not for Ukraine The export of tanks abroad is subject to authorisation under the provisions of the War Material Act. The export of these tanks to Germany is in line with the authorisation criteria. Of crucial importance is the fact that Germany has given assurances that the tanks will remain in Germany, with NATO or its EU partners in order to meet existing shortfalls. Address for enquiries GS-EAER Communication Service info@gs-wbf.admin.ch, +41 58 462 20 07 Publisher The Federal Council https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research http://www.wbf.admin.ch Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sports DDPS http://www.vbs.admin.ch Armasuisse http://www.ar.admin.ch/ Defence http://www.vtg.admin.ch The Federal Council Bern, 22.11.2023 - At its meeting on 22 November 2023, the Federal Council decided to propose a federal Act to Parliament banning Hamas in Switzerland. It instructed the Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) and the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) to prepare the draft legislation. The Federal Council was also briefed on the audit carried out by the FDFA on financial flows to Switzerland's NGO partners under its cooperation programme for the region. The contracts with three Palestinian NGOs will be terminated. In view of the current dramatic situation in Israel and Gaza, the Federal Council calls for respect for international humanitarian law and in particular the protection of civilians. On 11 October 2023, four days after Hamas carried out terrorist attacks from the Gaza Strip against civilians in Israel, the Federal Council decided to designate Hamas a terrorist organisation. It instructed the FDFA to explore legal options for banning the organisation. On 22 November, the Federal Council decided to draft a federal Act banning Hamas, considering this to be the most appropriate response to the situation that has prevailed in the Middle East since 7 October. The Act will provide the federal authorities with the necessary tools to counter any Hamas activities or support for the organisation in Switzerland. The Federal Council instructed the FDJP and the DDPS, along with the FDFA, to submit the draft legislation by the end of February 2024. On 11 October the Federal Council also instructed the FDFA to carry out a detailed analysis of the financial flows linked to the partner NGOs in the 202124 cooperation programme for the region. At its meeting on 22 November, the Federal Council was briefed on the results of the analyses carried out to date, which have not revealed any irregularities, as well as new control measures planned for the future. In addition, eleven partner NGOs underwent in-depth verification of their compliance with the FDFA's code of conduct and the anti-discrimination clause in their contracts. For eight of them, no evidence of non-compliance was found, and their contractual relationship with the FDFA will continue. For three others, however, instances of non-compliance were identified, leading to the termination of their contracts. Finally, at its meeting today, the Federal Council reiterated its condemnation of the Hamas terrorist attacks in the strongest possible terms. It expresses deep sorrow for the thousands of civilians who have lost their lives in Israel and across the occupied Palestinian territories since 7 October. It recognises Israel's right to ensure its own defence and security and reiterates that the protection of civilians and respect for international humanitarian law are obligations incumbent on all parties. In view of the dramatic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, the Federal Council stresses the need to ensure unimpeded humanitarian access. Humanitarian pauses are necessary for this purpose. On 1 November 2023, the Federal Council allocated an additional CHF 90 million in humanitarian aid for the region. The Federal Council reiterates the need to restore the prospect of a political framework in the region, based on the two-state solution. This approach is the only viable path towards ensuring that both the Palestinian and Israeli populations can coexist peacefully, securely and with dignity. Address for enquiries Federal Department of Foreign Affairs FDFA FDFA Communication Tel. +41 58 460 55 55 kommunikation@eda.admin.ch Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) Communication office FDJP info@gs-ejpd.admin.ch Tel. +41 58 462 18 18 Publisher The Federal Council https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html Federal Department of Foreign Affairs https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html Federal Department of Justice and Police http://www.ejpd.admin.ch Qatar on Wednesday announced the success of the mediation process, which has resulted in a humanitarian pause in the Israel-Hamas conflict. The State of Qatar, in a statement, said that the success of its joint mediation efforts undertaken with the Arab Republic of Egypt and the United States of America between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) resulted in an agreement for a humanitarian pause. The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension, the statement further said. According to the Qatari government, the agreement includes the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons. The number of those released will increase in later stages of implementing the agreement. The humanitarian pause will also allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs. The statement also said that the State of Qatar affirms its commitment to ongoing diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions, stop the bloodshed, and protect civilians. In this regard, the State of Qatar appreciates the efforts of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the United States of America in reaching this agreement Earlier, in an unprecedented vote, the Israel cabinet approved an agreement to secure the release of roughly 50 hostages who were abducted into Gaza during the October 7 terror attack. According to the Israel Prime Ministers office, the government approved the outline of the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostageswomen and childrenwill be released over four days, during which a pause in the fighting will be held. The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day of pause. The Prime Ministers office, however, stated that the Government of Israel, the IDF, and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas, and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza. Not all details of the agreement have been formally released to the public. Speaking before the Israeli Cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his commitment to ending Hamas. We will not relent in our efforts until we redeem them all, until we return them allthe boys and girls, the mothers and fathers, the young men and women, the elderly men and women, the male and female soldiersall of them. In war, there are stages, and in returning the hostages, there are stages, but we will not relent until we achieve an absolute victory and until we bring them all back. This is my sacred duty, of all of us he said. The current agreement has sparked hope of relative peace returning to the troubled region of the Middle East, which has been engulfed in conflict since the October 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel. Traverlers make their way in Terminal A at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022 in Houston. Elizabeth Conley/Staff photographer With so much hustle and bustle in airports during the holiday season, officials with Houston Airports hope its sensory rooms can give passengers some calm in the chaos. The sensory rooms aim to help travelers with developmental disorders by providing a quiet space for relaxation. "This dedicated space at Bush airport has been carefully designed to provide a calming and supportive environment through the thoughtful use of soothing lighting, noise-reducing infrastructure and seating," airport system officials said in a news release. "The interactive space is designed to help travelers who are neurodivergent and may become overwhelmed by a bustling and unfamiliar place." Advertisement Article continues below this ad The rooms can also help travelers with conditions like autism, dementia, or other sensory processing issues, according to the release. Across the country, airports have embraced sensory rooms or meditation spaces to help travelers relax. "It used to be that only the most elite travelers could get access to relaxing areas through membership with top-tier credit cards or airline elite status," Conde Nast Traveler noted in an article about the proliferation of the rooms. "But recently, calming spaces are becoming more accessible to a wider swath of travelers in hubs across the country." People check in at the American Airlines ticket counter in Terminal A at George Bush Intercontinental Airport Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022, in Houston. Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer The sensory room at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport offers passengers a controlled area with soothing lighting, noise-reducing infrastructure and seating. Officials created the space within the Mothers Room--- adjacent to the Breakfast Klub and a KPRC Travel Store--- located at Terminal A North. The Mothers Room gives moms a place to privately feed and tend to their children. Advertisement Article continues below this ad For travelers looking to access the sensory rooms, officials said the process is easy and only requires contacting the Airport Operations Center. Once passengers arrive at the Mothers Room, they will see a sign that reads "Please contact 281-230-1300 for access. At that point, an operations center team member will provide the code for guest entry. At Bush, the spaces feature lighting that encourages touch, soothing bubble tubes, soundproof walls and cozy seating that can help passengers re-center, the release said. Airport officials said more sensory rooms will be built in the expanded Terminal D at Bush as well as at the William P. Hobby Airport. The unveiling of the sensory rooms adds to the suite of services for passengers in need. Back in 2022, Houston airports opened its Companion Care Changing Rooms providing lifts, adult-sized changing tables along with private bathroom facilities. A man who has twice served time in Florida prisons -- once for assaulting a pregnant woman -- is now on the run, accused of the shooting death of his wife at a residence not far from Perdido Key. The Escambia County (Fla.) Sheriffs Office says 36-year-old Daryl Jerome Walker shot and killed his 35-year-old wife and then fled the scene in a black 2020 Hyundai Veloster with Florida tag BG10PN. He is WANTED for homicide, the sheriffs office said in a release. He is considered ARMED and DANGEROUS. Deputies responded to a residence on Meadson Road about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday on a report of a shooting. Officers arriving at the scene found the 35-year-old female, dead from an apparent gunshot wound. In 2009, Walker was convicted of aggravated battery on a pregnant woman and served two years and four months in prison. In 2018, he was again sent to prison, this time serving 14 months of a four-year sentence for DUI, carrying a concealed weapon, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, child neglect and marijuana possession. He was released in May 2022. Later in 2022, Walker was arrested for marijuana possession, attempting to elude police and resisting arrest, according to Escambia County jail records. The disposition of those charges wasnt immediately known. Anyone with information on Walkers whereabouts or spotting a vehicle matching the description is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 850-433-STOP or the Escambia County Sheriffs Office at 850-436-9620. Comedian Matt Rife has ignited controversy with his Netflix special Natural Selection, which launched Nov. 15 on the streaming service. The special kicks off with a joke about domestic violence. In what appeared to be an apology posted to his Instagram story, Rife directed anyone offended by his jokes to a link that led them to a website for special needs helmets. At the beginning of Rifes Natural Selection, he tells a story about being in a ratchet Baltimore restaurant with a friend and noticing their female server has a black eye. They wonder why the restaurant wouldnt have the server work solely in the kitchen so that customers wouldnt see her black eye. Rife jokes, Yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldnt have that black eye. Rife tells the crowd the joke was him just testing the waters, seeing if yall are gonna be fun or not. He adds: I figure if we start the show with domestic violence the rest of the show should be smooth sailing. Rife performed in Birmingham in October. The joke generated controversy on social media in the days following the streaming debut of Natural Selection, so much so that Rife took to his Instagram story on Nov. 20 to issue a mock apology. If youve ever been offended by a joke Ive told, heres a link to my official apology, he wrote alongside a link that said: Tap to solve the issue. When tapped, the link brought followers to a health website where they could purchase special needs helmets. Mocking viewers upset with his domestic violence joke by evoking special needs only added more fuel to the controversy. Variety has reached out to Rifes representative for further comment. Natural Selection marks Rifes first Netflix comedy special after becoming a viral comedy superstar on social media thanks to videos posted on TikTok and other platforms. In a recent interview with Variety, Rife spoke about how he wanted Natural Selection to appeal to both men and women since his social media videos often cater more to a female audience. One of the biggest misconceptions of things I get ridiculed online for is people are like oh, he only has a female fan base, Rife said. In the beginning yes, because I did blow up on TikTok which is very female dominantSo, I get that perspective. But when you come to the shows, I mean, its 50/50. Its couples coming out. Its groups of dudes who are coming. And thats one thing that I wanted to tackle in this special was showing people that like despite what you think about me online, I dont pander my career to women. I would argue this special is way more for guys, he continued. I wanted to make this special for everybody. I pride myself on making my comedy for everybody. Its not for a specific demographic. I think if people would just give it the chance without going into it and being like oh, only girls like him or people only like his face. If you give it an opportunity, I think youd like it. Rifes Natural Selection is now available to stream on Netflix. 2023 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission on Monday will consider an agreement to try to end months of delays in its efforts to issue licenses to companies to make and sell medical marijuana products. Brittany Peters, communications director for the AMCC, said the commissions lawyers reached the agreement this week with lawyers representing companies that have sued the AMCC. Under the agreement, the AMCC would no longer use third-party evaluator scores in deciding which companies will receive licenses. AMCCs legal team reached an agreement (Monday) that will be presented to the Commission at its meeting on November 27, and is contingent upon their ratification, Peters said in an email. The mediation agreement, which was entered in the court record and will be part of an order, provides that the Commission will no longer use the third-party evaluator scores in its licensing decisions. The AMCCs use of the scores, compiled by evaluators recruited by the University of South Alabama, has been one of the most contested issues in the efforts to issue licenses, efforts stalled by lawsuits and mistakes since June. Will Somerville, attorney for Alabama Always, a company that has spearheaded much of the litigation against the AMCC, said disregarding the scores would be the right step. Alabama Always and other companies have tried to block the use of the scores through lawsuits. The Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission has tentatively agreed not to use the scores that were the subject of litigation, Somerville said. We applaud the AMCCs decision and look forward to seeing the process move forward so that patients who need medical cannabis can begin receiving it in the near future. Alabama Always is one of about 27 companies involved in a consolidated lawsuit. Alabama Always applied for an integrated license, allowing it to cultivate, process, transport, and sell medical cannabis. The third party evaluators ranked Alabama Always 26th among 38 integrated license applicants. The AMCC can award no more than five integrated licenses under the law the Legislature passed in 2021. Alabama Always said the scoring system is flawed and fails to adequately measure essential qualifications, such as a requirement to be ready to start cultivating marijuana within 60 days of receiving a license. Alabama Always says it has spent $7 million building a cultivation and production facility in Montgomery. Alabama Always and another applicant for an integrated license, Specialty Medical Products, filed motions in court seeking a temporary restraining order to block the AMCC from using the scores. Specialty Medical Products score ranked 33rd out of the 38 integrated license applicants. You can see the scores on the AMCC website. Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge James Anderson denied the companies request to block use of the scores but said he would reserve ruling on further requests. Alabama Always and Specialty Medical Products are appealing Andersons decision. Officials with the AMCC have defended the use of the evaluators scores as a tool in helping to decide which companies will receive a license. They have noted that the commissioners have full discretion in their licensing decisions and are not bound by the scores. The AMCC awarded licenses in June but rescinded those awards after discovering mistakes in how the scores were compiled. In August, they announced the scores were corrected and awarded licenses a second time. But those awards were also rescinded after legal challenges over the process. The scores appeared to be a main factor in the license awards that were rescinded. Companies that were awarded integrated licenses and licenses as cultivators, processors, dispensaries, secure transporters, and a testing lab generally had the top scores in their categories. A total of 24 companies were awarded licenses out of 90 that applied. But no licenses were issued and now the AMCC is starting over in evaluating the applicants under new rules and a timeline adopted in October. Applicants are scheduled to make presentations to the AMCC starting next week. The timeline calls for licenses to be awarded in December. Before the licensing process stalled, AMCC officials said they hoped products would be available late this year or early next year. AMCC Chair Rex Vaughn has said there should be about a 90-day window from the start of cultivation to the availability of products. But cultivation cannot begin until licenses are issued. When the Legislature passed the medical marijuana bill in 2021, it created the AMCC to oversee seed-to-sale regulation of the industry, which is intended to operate fully intrastate. The law allows companies to make gummies, tablets, capsules, tinctures, patches, oils, and other forms of medical marijuana products. Patients who receive a medical cannabis card from a doctor will be able to buy the products at licensed dispensaries. The products can be used to treat a wide range of conditions, including chronic pain, weight loss and nausea from cancer, depression, panic disorder, epilepsy, muscle spasms caused by disease or spinal cord injuries, PTSD, and others. Alabama is one of 38 states that have approved medical marijuana, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Marty Schelper, who is president and founder of the Alabama Cannabis Coalition, said the tentative agreement sounds like progress but that product availability is overdue. Im cautiously optimistic because this legislation passed 30 months ago and were still just talking about licensing people to provide medical cannabis to the people of the state of Alabama, Schelper said. Schelper, who lobbies the Legislature on cannabis issues, said she would support amending the law to remove the caps on the number of licensees. Schelper said more competition would lower prices and increase availability. She said many patients will not be able to afford the products, which will not be covered by health insurance and will carry a special 9% sales tax in addition to regular state and local sales taxes that can be as much as 11%. The market is actually what dictates the price, Schelper said. So with more applicants being able to start a business in the state, it would lower the price to the consumer because it would be a competitive market. Prospective patients and advocates attend the AMCC meetings and have stressed the urgent need for the medication. Amanda Taylor of Cullman, who said medical cannabis can help her with spasms and pain caused by multiple sclerosis, spoke to reporters after an AMCC meeting in October. When you move the patients out of the discussions, and were not here, they kind of forget that theres faces that go along with this, Taylor said. Theres beating hearts. And theres people who are heartbroken and devastated. Not only within what we feel, but within what we have to battle with our bodies because we are lacking what is provided in these plants. Its not about getting high. It is about healing. Read more: Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission tries to fix stalled license process Weeks after it was revealed a man was fatally struck by a Jackson, Mississippi police SUV and allegedly buried without his family being notified, NBC News is reporting a homicide victim was buried in the same graveyard without his family knowing. Marrio Moore was buried in the same place and on the same day as Dexter Wade, the report states. Moore, 40, was beaten to death on Feb. 2, the report states. His sister learned of his death from an October news report on Wade that mentioned Moore had been killed and the family not notified. Moores family began inquiring about his death and burial. A Hinds County coroners office investigator said in a report that she called Marrios brother but the phone number didnt work. A police commander told the family that a detective left a card at Marrios mothers house. But neither his mother, brother nor two sisters recall being contacted by anyone responsible for reaching his next of kin, NBC News reports. Wades mother did not know for months what happened to their son, thinking their son was a missing person, attorney Ben Crump has said. Wade was buried in a paupers cemetery near the Hinds County Penal Farm in the Jackson suburb of Raymond before the family was notified of his death months later. He died the same day he left home after arguing with his mother, struck by an off-duty police officer along an interstate. Hundreds of people drove by celebrity attorney Alexander Shunnarahs office on Tuesday afternoon as he gave away 1,000 turkeys from 3 to 7 p.m. at 2900 First Ave. South in Birmingham. It was so successful last year, Shunnarah said. We gave away 500 turkeys, but even though it was awesome and we saw so many happy, thankful people, when we were done, we had to turn away a couple hundred cars that were lined up and had been waiting. I said, Thats not going to happen again. This time, he still had plenty of turkeys available at 5 p.m. as the line thinned. People arriving for a turkey frequently shouted Call Me Alabama out the window, echoing Shunnarahs famous slogan. Shunnarah is regionally known as a cultural icon for his omnipresent, meme-worthy Call Me Alabama billboards and TV commercials. Volunteers hand out turkeys in front of the office of Alexander Shunnarah in Birmingham on Nov. 21, 2023. (Photo by Greg Garrison/AL.com)ggarrison@al.com The birds cost about $28 apiece, but he wasnt concerned about the cost, as long as people have what they need for Thanksgiving, he said. Its all about giving back to the community, Shunnarah said. Hes doing a wonderful thing for the community, said Sandra Lett, who came by for a turkey with two children in the backseat. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin stopped by to greet people as they received turkeys. We know who he is and what he represents, Woodfin said. This is my favorite part of Alex - a man who cares about the community. An investigation is underway after a Birmingham shooting sent one person to the hospital. The shooting happened at 9:02 p.m. Tuesday in the 4000 block of 49th Court North. Detail surrounding the incident have not yet been made available. Sgt. LaQuitta Wade said the victim was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. No one is in custody. The Mobile priest and the 2023 high school graduate with whom he left the country for Europe this summer are now married, according to records filed with Mobile County Probate Court. Alex Crow, 30, and 18-year-old Taylor Victoria Harrison were married last Friday, according to the date on the marriage certificate. Crow and Harrison, a graduate of McGill-Toolen High School, where Crow had worked as a guest lecturer, left Mobile and traveled to Europe over the summer. They remained there for roughly four months while both the Mobile County Sheriffs Office and Mobile County District Attorneys Office conducted what would ultimately be fruitless investigations into possible wrongdoing by the former priest in the Archdiocese of Mobile. After learning of Crows departure with Harrison, the archdiocese stripped him of his duties, saying he had abandoned his assignment. The news of Crows marriage to Harrison prompted a statement from the archdiocese on Wednesday. The archdiocese says the marriage only confirms Archbishop Thomas J. Rodis decision to suspend Crow from his duties as a priest. Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi announced in July that he had suspended Alex Crow and prohibited him from acting, dressing, or presenting himself as a priest, the statement read. Archbishop Rodi additionally shared in August that he saw no way back to the priesthood for Alex Crow. The statement also indicates that Crow will likely be laicized by the Vatican, meaning he would be formally be removed as a member of the clergy. On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited Dallas, making the most of a presidential trip ahead of the 1964 presidential election. The president and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy traveled by motorcade through the city with the convertible top down. Around 12:30 p.m., the car entered Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. As the car passed in front of the Texas School Board Depository building, shots rang out, wounding Texas Gov. John Connally and striking Kennedy in the head and neck as his wife looked on. Kennedy was rushed to Dallas Parkland Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead. He was 46. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as 36th president at 2:39 p.m. that day in a ceremony aboard Air Force One. Kennedys killer was identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine. But two days later, after his arrest, Oswald was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, adding another layer of controversy and mystery to the presidents assassination. In Alabama, recently targeted by Kennedy after Gov. George Wallaces refusal to integrate state schools and colleges, residents expressed a mix of shock and grief, according to local news reports. Some people celebrated. Wallace was sitting on a stage in Haleyville when Kennedys death was announced. I may have differed with the president on political matters but this is a terrible thing and I pray the next news we hear is good news, Wallace said. Former Gov. Robert Bentley said in 2013 that he could vividly recall the chemistry lab he was in, the students he was with and the somber moments and days following the young presidents death. Bentley was 17 in 1963. Even though I was not a supporter of President Kennedy - a lot of people in Alabama werent - the shooting of the president was a tragic event, Bentley said. Whether you agree with the president or not, you honor the office. In Birminghams Municipal Auditorium, minutes after the assassination, Admiral Ben Morreell stopped in mid-speech as he is addressing American for Constitutional Action. Not by bullets or bayonets Morreell was telling the conservative grassroots organization when he was interrupted and the meeting cancelled, according to archives. And David Alsobrook, then director at the History Museum of Mobile, told AL.com in 2013 about being a 17-year-old senior at Davidson High School on that grim day. Students began to hear rumors of an assassination attempt, and shortly after they took their seats in an English class, the schools principal interrupted through the PA system. When I recall everything that came after JFKs assassination Vietnam, the assassinations of MLK Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the civil rights years, including the Selma March - its all a blur, Alsobrook said. But Nov. 22, 1963, is still razor sharp in my mind. We had no way of knowing at the time that day happened, we lost our innocence on that day. Birmingham-Southern College President Daniel Coleman, asking for $5 million in city loans for the private liberal arts college to stay open, told a City Council committee its better likely than not that the college will open for the fall if the city provides the loans. Its really important to our future to get this funding and to continue working on private funding, Coleman said. Coleman appeared before a committee of the Birmingham City Council on Tuesday afternoon, where Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin presented the plan for two $2.5 million loans from the city to the college from the citys $289 million general reserve fund. The first loan would be forgiven if Birmingham-Southern College reopens with classes in the fall. The second loan would be repayable over 20 years, secured by the campus property, which would make the city a lienholder on a second mortgage if the college closes. Council member Crystal Smitherman asked Coleman whether if the city gave the loans, the college would definitely reopen in the fall. I think its better likely than not, Coleman said. This is the big question were working on. We want to make sure the citys protected in case we didnt. This allows us to get through June, for sure. That gives us time to address these issues. The city had previously pledged $5 million contingent on the state loaning the college $30 million, but State Treasurer Young Boozer denied the colleges loan request. I really wanted the state to take some action first, said Council member Clinton Woods. Were hopeful that the state will reconsider, Coleman said. Woodfin presented the loan plan as a necessary step to keep the college open and anchor the citys planned economic development of west Birmingham. He noted that BSC has about 700 students and 292 employees. I think theres a question: Why help Birmingham-Southern? Woodfin said. Woodfin called Birmingham-Southern College an anchor institution for the Bush Hills and College Hills neighborhoods, and said the Arkadelphia exit on Interstate 20/59 is the gateway to those neighborhoods and Smithfield, where the city is planning invest with a $50 million federal grant. If Birmingham-Southern College closes, it would undermine the citys efforts to develop west Birmingham, Woodfin said. It could strike a blow to everything were trying to do west of I-65, he said. If the BSC campus closed, it would be a catastrophe similar to the closing of the former Carraway Methodist Medical Center in Norwood. That property fell into disrepair and became a blight for decades before the city found a developer to help revitalize the area. If you need further evidence of what happens when an anchor institution closed, look no further than Carraway Hospital, Woodfin said. I know some (city residents) may give you pushback, Woodfin told the City Council. But ask the residents of College Hills and ask the residents of Bush Hills how they would feel if this anchor institution closed within their neighborhoods. Woodfin highlighted a plan by Birmingham-Southern College to expand its graduate programs for workforce training, offering masters degrees in data science, computer science, cybersecurity and information systems. The new masters programs would be gradually implemented, with the first next fall, to accommodate 1,000 graduate students over the next four years, Woodfin said. We can provide a lot of workforce development in the future, Coleman said. Birmingham-Southern is good for Birminghams reputation, said Council member Valerie Abbott, who earned a masters degree from BSC. I think that Birmingham-Southern is one of our great assets and we just need to hang onto it. The committee endorsed the plan, but the budget ordinance must still be approved in a future City Council meeting. This is something we should support, Woodfin said. Im grateful for the council asking tough questions on this, but this is the right thing to do. This is something I stand on. For full coverage of Birmingham-Southern College, click here. A vehicle speeding toward a U.S.-Canada bridge from the American side crashed and exploded at a checkpoint in Niagara Falls on Wednesday, killing two people and prompting the closing of border crossings in the area, authorities said. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said there was no indication of a terrorist attack. Much remained unclear about the crash, which investigators were working to understand. Hochul said it wasnt clear whether the driver was intentionally heading for the Rainbow Bridge across the Niagara River when the vehicle hit a median and flew into the air. Based on what we know at this moment, she said, there is no sign of terrorist activity in this crash. It prompted the closing of four border crossings and raised concerns on both sides of the border. The White House said President Joe Biden was closely following developments, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said officials were taking this extraordinarily seriously. This is obviously a very serious situation in Niagara Falls, Trudeau said in Parliament before excusing himself from Question Period in the House of Commons to be briefed further. The two deceased people were in the vehicle, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Aaron Ferguson, a spokesperson for the city of Niagara Falls, New York, said the vehicle was traveling at high speed from that city and crashed into the border station. Jim Diodati, the mayor of Niagara Falls, Ontario, told The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that what happened appeared to be an isolated incident. The U.S. FBIs field office in Buffalo and other agencies were investigating the blast. Photos and video taken by bystanders and posted on social media showed thick smoke, flames on the pavement and a security booth that had been singed. Videos showed that the fire was in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection area just east of the main vehicle checkpoint. The agency had no immediate comment. Speaking to WGRZ-TV, witness Mike Guenther said he saw a vehicle speeding toward the crossing from the U.S. side when it swerved to avoid another car, crashed into a fence and exploded. All of a sudden, he went up in the air and then it was a ball of fire like 30 or 40 feet high, Guenther told the station. I never saw anything like it. The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission called the incident a serious car crash. From inside Niagara Falls State Park, Melissa Raffalow said she saw a huge plume of black smoke rise up over the border crossing, roughly 50 yards (45 meters) away from the popular tourist destination. Raffalow told AP in a message that police arrived soon after, urging visitors to disperse as they began cordoning off the street. Raghu Bhattarai said by phone that he was inside his restaurant, the Niagara Tandoori Hut, near the bridge when he heard a sound he described as a boom. A few minutes later, he saw black smoke rising. The bridge and three others between western New York and Ontario were quickly closed as a precaution, and the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport began security checks on all cars and told passengers to expect additional screenings. The safety measures tied up traffic at the airport and elsewhere on one of the busiest U.S. travel days of the year, ahead of the American Thanksgiving holiday. Trudeau said additional measures were being contemplated and activated at border crossings across Canada. In Toronto, about 100 miles (about 160 kilometers) away, police said they were increasing patrols as a precaution. New York City police were monitoring the news from Buffalo but already had boosted security at various spots because of the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday. The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission reported that all four of its crossings the others are Lewiston, Whirlpool and Peace Bridge were closed. Sanchit Chatha, his wife Reyshu and their 13-year-old daughter, Trisha, had stopped in Niagara Falls for lunch en route home to Toronto from Buffalo when they started getting news notifications about the explosion. Worried friends called, knowing the family was in the area. Trisha was concerned at seeing the bridges to Canada shut down, her mother said. She has a math test tomorrow, the mother explained as the family waited to find out when the crossings would open. About 6,000 vehicles cross the Rainbow Bridge each day, according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administrations National Bridge Inventory. About 5% is truck traffic, according to the federal data. The bridge, constructed in 1941, is just over 1,440 feet (439 meters) long and has a main span constructed of steel, according to the data. Rodney Onwu wheels luggage toward Southwest Airlines as his son, Micah, hitches a ride at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023, in Houston. Jason Fochtman/Staff photographer In its annual review of the best and worst largest airports in the United States, the Wall Street Journal ranked George Bush Intercontinental among the Top 10, and William P. Hobby Airport made the Top 5 for midsize airports in the country. The Journal based its rankings on more than 25 measures ranging from reliability and value to convenience and amenities. The categories accounted for half of the airports total with 10 accountability measures considering security line wait times and time on the tarmac, which carried the most weight overall. Its research found that no airport received a perfect score or anything resembling perfection. RANKING AIRLINES: These are the best and worst airlines at Houston airports Advertisement Article continues below this ad "Each airport is evaluated on 30 factors that span the trip, from buying a ticket to arriving at a final destination," the Wall Street Journal said in a release. "Using data from government agencies, a survey of travelers conducted by our research partner Dynata and other sources, the Journals rankings highlight the airports that boast on-time flights, short waits throughout the trip and the amenities that travelers like best." Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (Phoenix, Ariz.) mustered up enough points with 63.4 to top the list. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (St. Paul, Minn.), Los Angeles International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (Atlanta) and Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport filled the remaining spots on the Top 5 list for best airports. Bush landed seventh on the list behind San Francisco International Airport. TRAVELING WITH PETS? Why Houston airports say not to send your furry friend through security X-rays For the best midsize airports, San Jose Mineta International Airport in San Jose, Calif., held the No. 1 spot with an overall score of 71.2. Following behind it with a score of 70.4 was the San Antonio International Airport. Sacramento International Airport (North Natomas, Calif.), Indianapolis International Airport and Hobby airport received 70.0, 69.9 and 69.0 points respectively to round out the Top 5. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Forty-five United Methodist congregations in south Alabama and the Florida panhandle that filed a lawsuit against Bishop David Graves and the Alabama-West Florida Conference because they were not allowed to disaffiliate from the denomination by an end-of-year deadline have appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court. The appeal was filed Nov. 13, after Montgomery Circuit Judge Brooke E. Reid dismissed the plaintiffs request for a temporary restraining order, saying it was an internal church matter and the court did not have jurisdiction. The Supreme Court did not grant a request for an emergency review, but plaintiffs attorney Jonathan Baile told AL.com he hoped that the states highest court will still rule in favor of the churches to keep the churches right to disaffiliation from being taken from them. The lawsuit claimed Bishop Graves has delayed the disaffiliation process and wont let the 45 churches leave the denomination by the end of the year. In June, the Alabama-West Florida Conference called for loyalty from leaders and tightened the requirements for disaffiliation. After Reids ruling, the Alabama-West Florida Conference released a statement: A hearing was held on Wednesday, November 8, 2023, in the Montgomery County Circuit Court, it said. In their complaint, the plaintiffs asked the Montgomery County Circuit Court to decide matters that would have required it to interpret the United Methodist Book of Discipline and church doctrine. Relying upon principles enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and long standing rulings of law by the United States Supreme Court and Supreme Court of Alabama, the Court held that it lacked jurisdiction to interpret church doctrine, and it dismissed the case. Judge Reids ruling on Nov. 10 said, The Court is without jurisdiction to rule on such issues because the relief sought by Plaintiffs would require the Court to interpret a provision of the Book of Discipline intertwined with church doctrine. Baile, attorney for the plaintiffs, said that although Reid declined their request for a restraining order, Judge Reid clearly found factually that our clients (the churches) were harmed by the inequitable actions of the conference, he wrote to AL.com. From her ruling, you can see that she found that the Alabama West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (1) created a rule, (2) used the rule to remove your right to vote, and (3) barred the churches from disaffiliation. The testimony from the churches was very compelling. The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 31 in Montgomery County Circuit Court by 42 churches before three more joined, names Graves and his cabinet as defendants, saying the bishop is trying to run out the clock by not letting them leave the denomination and take their property with them as allowed by church law by Dec. 31. Among the churches named in the lawsuit as seeking to leave are Aldersgate of Montgomery, Armstrong of Auburn, Black Creek, Blountstown, Spanish Fort, Shalimar, Loachapoka, Flomaton, Crawford, Cypress, Daleville, Elmore, Elba, Epworth, Demopolis, Cottage Hill in Cantonment, Gulfview in Panama City, First United Methodist Church of Greenville, First Church of Mexico Beach, First Church of Fort Walton, Gulfview and Theodore. The most recent disaffiliation vote was held on Nov. 12, when eight churches including one of Mobiles largest, the 4,936-member Christ Church, disaffiliated. Last year, what had been the states largest United Methodist church, the 7,000-member Frazer Memorial in Montgomery, disaffiliated and joined a more theologically conservative denomination, the Free Methodist Church. That brought the total of churches disaffiliating from the Alabama-West Florida Conference to 248. In the North Alabama Conference, 348 churches have disaffiliated. Both conferences had more than 600 member churches before the disaffiliations. Because of a continuing denominational feud over the denominations ban on same-sex marriage and ordination of openly practicing gay clergy, the General Conference adopted guidelines for churches to leave the denomination and take their property with them after meeting financial requirements. Most of the churches that have disaffiliated have either become independent or joined more conservative denominations where traditional Christian bans on same-sex marriage are not up for debate, such as the new Global Methodist Church founded last year to welcome defecting former United Methodists. Although the United Methodist Church still holds its traditional stance banning same-sex marriage and ordaining openly gay clergy, decades of fighting on the issue prompted many conservatives to leave when a door was opened clearing the way for them to take church property with them. Graves has welcomed all those from the departing churches who want to stay United Methodist to attend a remaining church or put their names on a general church roll to be matched with a United Methodist church in the future. We are working to start new places of worship, Graves said. See also: President says Birmingham-Southern College more likely than not will return next fall with city funding United Methodist split: 8 more churches disaffiliate, including 1 of Mobiles largest United Methodists urge repeal of ban on same-sex marriage, openly gay clergy United Methodists ask for loyalty from leaders, tighten rules on disaffiliation and downsize Another 132 North Alabama United Methodist churches disaffiliate: Trussville, Helena, Gardendale Division is of the devil, United Methodist bishop says as 193 churches disaffiliate United Methodists crushed after being left behind by disaffiliating churches United Methodists plan new churches in Prattville, Orange Beach, elsewhere to replace churches that disaffiliate in split This is an opinion column. Im not sure when, but sometime back, I gave up hope the justice system could guarantee justice. Ive seen too many guilty people go free and too many innocent people go to jail. Justice was too much to hope for. Instead, I settled for answers and information. Among the court records, depositions, inquiries and findings of fact, our courts could sometimes deliver the answers the public needs, if not the outcomes. As it turns out, that might have been too much, too. You dont have to look far to see what I mean. Consider the case of Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor and the court clerk he hired that set off a firestorm. In 2021, Pryor picked a woman named Crystal Clanton to serve as one of his law clerks. These positions arent just some sort of internship. They are an express track to opportunity and jobs not unlike the one Pryor has. Its a big deal to get one, especially with Pryor.The competition for these positions is fierce. Which is why Clantons appointment was so surprising. Four years prior, New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer had been looking at incidents of racism and bigotry within the ranks of Turning Point USA, a controversial conservative organization on college campuses that would later feed the MAGA movement. Clanton was a national field director until Mayer published screenshots of text messages provided to her by a source. i hate black people, Mayer reported one of the texts saying. At the time, Clanton told Mayer she didnt remember sending that text message and that it was not an accurate reflection of her beliefs. Turning Point assessed the situation and took decisive action within 72 hours of being made aware of the issue, Turning Point Executive Director Charlie Kirk said then. Clanton left Turning Point and soon went to work for Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In recent years, Ginni Thomas has become well-known for her far-right activism and her enthusiasm for overturning a lawful presidential election. From there, Clanton attended law school and Justice Thomas vouched for her when applying for her federal clerkships. After Clanton was selected for her clerkships in 2021, members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee filed an ethics complaint against Pryor and U.S. District Judge Corey Maze, who Clanton would clerk for first. A panel of judges from the 2nd Judicial Circuit was charged with reviewing the hire. Pryor told the panel that he had done his due diligence and the judges seem to have taken him at his word. The panel dismissed the complaint. The House members balked and again asked the judiciary to get to the bottom of what happened. Accordingly, as the facts now stand, these two federal judges hired an individual with a widely reported pattern of racist and bigoted conduct, they wrote. In the eyes of the public, she will be one of these judges closest advisors with special access to the judicial decision-making process. In the eyes of the law, her work will be treated as one with their own. The House members appealed to another judicial entity, the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference of the United States. That committee ordered the 2nd Circuit to reconsider its prior decision and conduct a more thorough review. Which brings us to the present. Earlier this month, the 2nd Circuit panel refused to revisit the case, saying that its previous order was final and the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability lacked authority to overturn it. Which, as the Washington Posts Ruth Marcus notes, is bizarre, as reviewing the conduct of federal judges is the job of the Judicial Conduct and Disability Committee. But that might just be the end of it. Which leaves us, the public, with an outcome. But without answers. Not only has this process proven less than substantial, it has been notably opaque. Much of the material in question, including Pryors evidence of due diligence, is not public. As Marcus noted, not even the names of the members of one of the committees involved are public information. These committees, this process they were created to enforce the integrity of the judiciary. They exist to ensure our federal judges are beyond reproach. Instead, theyve only proven to be beyond review. When you hear of the decline of confidence in institutions, this sort of thing is where that comes from. These judges can keep this process secret. They can refuse to look any further, to not pull the cover back and show us how this works on the inside. But they cannot conceal whats already been revealed. That meritocracy is a myth. That this young woman got this job because of who she knew a Supreme Court justice who has done more than just about anybody else to undermine faith in the judiciary, and his wife, who has tried to undermine democracy. This is country club politics. And members of the club look out for each other. Everyone else is expected to accept that. How are we, the public, to have confidence in that? A new detail about the identity of the anonymous, politically minded street artist known as Banksy has been revealed thanks to a rediscovered interview from 20 years ago. BBC Radio recently uncovered a lost interview that the painter did with reporter Nigel Wrench in 2003, in which Banksy was asked if his name is Robert Banks. The mysterious creator replied by saying, Its Robbie. Wrench, who worked for the British station from the 1990s into the 2000s, came upon the recording in his belongings after listening to the BBC Radio series The Banksy Story, which premiered over the summer and chronicled the rise and influence of the artist. The 2003 interview was conducted while Banksys exhibition Turf War which he described as a celebration of vandalism was on display at a warehouse in East London. In a Tuesday special episode of The Banksy Story, Wrench told the shows host, James Peak, that he had no reason to believe that Banksy was lying about his name. No one has ever contacted me from the Banksy empire. No one ever contradicted that, Wrench noted. He added later in the interview, If it wasnt his real name, why wouldnt he just go with, Yes, its Robert Banks? I thought [after he said his name was Robbie] that it was absolutely his real name. Banksy was later described by Wrench as being a young bloke in a hoodie who had a vibe that was incredibly relaxed, totally engaged and authentic. Elsewhere in the reupped 2003 interview, Banksy delved a bit into his philosophy as an artist. Im interested in justice. Who has the right to judge anybody else? the British painter said. If youve ever fallen foul of the justice system then it turns you very skeptical about everything, so I guess I like to turn it on its head a little bit. Im into working out who really is the good guys. He rejected the notion that he is an overly political person. If you think about anything about your life for longer than a second, then you have to work out that the shoes you wear are made by somebody on a pathetic amount of money and the coffee you drink means somebody somewhere in the world is getting done over, he said. If you ever think for a second, then yeah, apparently that does make you more political than most people. I dont know, I guess people are lazy. Banksy began his career in the Bristol, England, graffiti scene, tagging buildings with politically trenchant pieces critiquing police violence, Western imperialism and consumer capitalism. He frequently turns to elaborate, clandestine pranks to needle the high-end gallery and museum scene that, while making him rich, also has served as a foil for his satirical work. (L.A. Times staff writer August Brown contributed to this report.) 2023 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Conspiracies as history doesnt crank my tractor. You know, secretive Free Masons running the country since its founding. Most JFK conspiracy stuff Ive dismissed. Occams razor often suffices. But a JFK assassination conspiracy theory recently grabbed my attention because it isnt much of a conspiracy. Its a simpler explanation than most others, which can be crazy byzantine tales. It involves Cuba, though not directly. Sure, conspiracies happen. Lincoln was killed as the principal target in a conspiracy. The Deep State is collusion. Persons in permanent government, a.k.a., the federal bureaucracy, with intelligence and law enforcement agencies as the nexus, act to protect their turf, accrue power, and line their pockets at the America peoples expense. Eisenhower flagged the military-industrial complex and Truman warned about the CIA. When Trump came on the scene, the Deep State began shedding its shadowiness. Whether through arrogance or fear or both, Deep Staters proved they existed. As Chuck Schumer famously said, You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. JFKs assassination happened 60 years ago today, November 22, in Dallas. Assassination investigators agree on very little, other than Kennedy was killed. Why JFK was assassinated and who did it are the stuff of elaborate theories, a veritable grocery store full of them. An entire industry has been created from them. All claim to have solved the 60-year-old whodunit. But most of it is highfalutin conjecture. Facts are stretched. Supposition is often presented as fact. Solving Kennedys death is bad for business. Claims the Justice Integrity Project in its November 2023 newsletter: More than 2,500 books are estimated to have been published in whole or part on the Kennedy assassination, according to Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) President James H. Lesar, who co-founded that non-profit in 1984. Pick your favorite assassination plot. Was it Khrushchev and the Soviets? The CIA? The mafia? LBJ? Castro? Maybe it was Martians on the Grassy Knoll who zapped Kennedy? Maybe it was a combo, like LBJ, the mafia, and Martians who doomed the 35th president? Was the conspiracy among nutty right-wingers and peeved anticommunist Cubans, as Oliver Stone depicted in his 1991 blockbuster, JFK? Or something like that. Oswald shot Kennedy, thats Lee Harvey. Wait. Maybe not. Some assassination investigators swear Oswald couldnt have been the trigger man, or was he just one of them? Oswald, we guess, happened to have a fondness for his Italian Carcano Fucile di Fanteria Mod. 91/38 rifle. He took it to his job the morning of Kennedys assassination just because. Oswald was employed at the Texas School Book Depository, which -- coincidentally or by arrangement? -- was on Kennedys motorcade route through Dallas. Never mind that the route had been publicized in the Dallas Times Herald and the Morning News the day before and day of the assassination. Serendipity? Yep, chance happens. But did Oswald even go to work that day? The snipers nest and Carcano found on the book depositorys 6th floor were setups. Was that an imposters handiwork, the same one who posed in the famous black and white photo allegedly of Oswald holding a newspaper and the Carcano? Oswald was just a patsy. He stated that on camera in police custody after he was nabbed following his gunning down Officer J.D. Tippet while in flight. Or was Oswald framed for Tippets murder, too? Jack Ruby, owner of a Dallas strip club, the Carousel, shot Oswald at pointblank range. The shooting was videotaped. It happened at Dallas police headquarters as Oswald was being transferred to another facility. The murder occurred in the HQs underground garage. Theres no secret why Ruby was there. He was a well-known police groupie with easy access. Hard to appreciate, but security then was lax by todays standards. Ruby was a mob hitman, dispatched by Sam Giancana and other mob bosses, claim some conspiracists. Not so, said Burt Griffin, who was a Warren Commission staffer (but wasnt the Warren Commission rigged?). Griffin was interviewed by NBC 5 Chicago for the assassinations 50th anniversary. Griffin said: "He [Ruby] thought that the shooting of the President might be part of some anti-Semitic conspiracy to blame it all on the Jews," Griffin recalled. An anti-Kennedy ad had been placed in the Dallas Morning News, the morning of the assassination, signed by an individual named Bernard Weissman. Ruby was obsessed with the ad, and that it might foment anti-Jewish sentiment. Fact is, we can fill pages with claims and counterclaims about events, persons, organizations, and motives. But theres no point. Most Americans believe the JFK tragedy resulted from a conspiracy. Oswald acting alone is scoffed at. So, here submitted is a quasi-conspiracy claim that seems plausible. Whether its true may never be known, in keeping with the assassination industrys unstated guidelines. Gus Russo, per The Mob Museum in Las Vegas, is a reporter, writer and producer for corporate media who specializes in the Kennedys campaign to kill Fidel Castro and JFKs assassination. He is a member of the Museums Advisory Council. Russo explained in a lengthy article last year at the Museums website what Oswalds motive was for the shooting. It isnt complicated. Oswald alone killed Kennedy. He did so to impress Fidel Castro. Shooting JFK -- Oswald believed with reason -- would punch his ticket to Cuba. From the article: We also learned that Oswald made his offer out of left field in the Cuban Embassy [in Mexico City], Russo added, and the Cuban agents sort of huddled together later, wondering, What do we do with this guy? What Cuban agents did, finally, per Russo, was to encourage Oswald, figuring they had nothing to lose, though believing that Oswald faced long odds. The Cubans played no direct role in the shooting. But Castro had strong motivation to want JFK dead. Jack and Bobby Kennedy, along with the CIA, ran Operation Mongoose, which aimed to murder Castro. Said Russo: They [the Cubans] made promises to Oswald, from what we were told, and again this has never been adjudicated, but I can tell you what they told us. Two sources in Mexico City who were with Cuban intelligence said that, We promised Oswald wed rescue him if he was successful. And would fly him to Havanna. That contention seems odd. Oswald, said Russo, was heading to a private airfield, where hed be picked up by a Cuban airplane. The Tippit murder thwarted his escape. The Cubans meant to dispose of Oswald. [W]e were going to dump him over the Gulf of Mexico. We didnt want to have anything to do with this guy. Why would Castro risk a fly-in to Dallas in the immediate aftermath JFKs assassination? The risk would have been great. If the news media sniffed it out, Lyndon Johnson would have had little choice but to annihilate Castro. The Soviets wouldnt have dared intervene. Said Russo: Johnson, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, and former CIA head Allan Dulles didnt want the Castro assassination operation surfaced as part of the Warren Commissions investigation. Oswalds interaction with the Cuban Embassy was squelched. At the height of the Cold War, Johnson, per Russo, feared that an Oswald-Cuba connection, however tenuous, might have sparked major war. So, there you have it. The quasi-conspiracy. For many people, the Kennedy assassination will remain a whodunit. Its assumed mythic proportions. Without that terrible day in 1963, Americas course may have been different. Maybe JFK, as his champions argue, wouldnt have escalated and sustained U.S. involvement in Vietnam as did LBJ. Maybe 58,220 American soldiers wouldnt have died there. Maybe the fractures and social convulsions caused by the war would never have occurred. Maybe. But, finally, its all speculation. J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith. He also blogs occasionally at Flyover. His X (formerly Twitter) handle is @JRobertSmith1. Image: Library of Congress UPDATE: This article has been updated to correct Gus Russos role at the Mob Museum. He did not serve on The Mob Museums Board but is, instead, a member of the Museums Advisory Council. They are two different groups with different functions within the organization. On October 7, 2023, there was a Jewish pogrom in the Jewish state. A Jewish pogrom in the Jewish state is an oxymoron, a nonsense. But the sad reality has superseded the idea of the safe national existence of the Jewish people in their own country. The revival of pogroms in the Jewish state means a return back to the tragic history of the Jewish people's past in the Diaspora. But the pogroms of October 7 were not only the deaths of 1,200 Israelis, but also a blow to the Western liberal thinking of Israelis: their failed experience of reconciliation with radical extremists and religious fanatics, whom part of the Jewish population of Israel considered potential neighbors and partners for peaceful coexistence. Israel is an oasis in the desert, surrounded by barbarians and fanatics who believe in the superiority of Muslims over non-Muslims. The conflict in this region has acquired the features of a religious war. Islamic extremists cannot accept the existence of a non-Islamic (Jewish) state. Therefore, expecting peaceful coexistence between "two states for two peoples" is as meaningless as waiting for Godot, as in the classic theater of the absurd play by Samuel Beckett. But is it enough to change the West's worldview? The West's desire to democratize the East has led to the flooding of Europe with Arab refugees. Failed attempts to establish democratic regimes in the East have created a threat to democracy in Western countries. The Arab and Muslim population in Europe is growing due to the tens of millions of Muslims who fled there from their countries, which are all independent states. These people do not assimilate in Christian countries. They consider Islam the only correct religion. To them, non-Muslims in the new countries are second-class people. Muslims who fought the European colonizers and drove them out of Asia and Africa moved to Europe after the former colonizers and began to colonize European countries themselves. Democrats in Europe and the United States believe that it is possible and necessary to rationalize religious fanatics and involve Muslim populations in the building of Western civilization. They want to rationalize the irrational. Dreams of appeasement with terrorists are still floating around in countries that consider themselves civilized, despite the efforts of the terrorists themselves to dispel these dreams. Unlike the Nazis, who hid their crimes, Hamas terrorists not only do not hide them, but, on the contrary, disseminate a film of their atrocities around the world: the film shows people being burned alive, children being beheaded, fetuses being cut from their mothers' wombs, women being raped and then murdered. At the same time, the movies show the executioners having fun documenting their atrocities. The corpses are so mutilated that identification is still in progress. Therefore, the exact number of victims of the massacre in southern Israel has not yet been finalized, the counting continues and is complicated by the fact that hundreds of people have been kidnapped by terrorists. Thirty-two children have been abducted. In one case, the corpse of a twelve-year-old girl was found to be so burned that there was nothing to bury. Therefore, at the funeral, her personal belongings were placed in her grave. Governments, organizations and individuals who do not recognize Hamas's criminal activities thereby openly declare their anti-Semitism. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrations in support of Hamas are threatening evidence of how numerous the enemies of Western civilization are. Are hundreds of thousands of Muslim demonstrators on the streets of Western cities supporting the Hamas massacre enough to convince the populations of the democratic world that a hostile, threatening civilization has infiltrated their countries? The national dialogue in Israel seems to be changing. After the complete failure of the plan for peaceful coexistence with its neighbors, the previously "obscene" word "patriot" is returning to the national lexicon and is now being pronounced with a positive connotation. Those who continue to dialogue about peaceful coexistence, about the creation of two states for two peoples, reason in terms of yesterday's peace and belong to the minority. However, sharp criticism of the policies of the state of Israel by a minority of Israelis continues despite the pogrom of October 7, 2023. It is likely the devastating effect of anti-Semitism on generations of Israelis. Although Israel was created to defeat anti-Semitism, apparently the psychological task of defeating it has proven difficult. Anti-Semitism has penetrated deeply into the soul of Israelis through several generations. It has engendered a strange self-dislike for their country, just as it had earlier in the Diaspora engendered the hatred of some Jews for their own people. Karl Marx's article "To the Jewish Question" (1843) is one of the clearest manifestations of some of the Jews' identification with the Judeophobes. Marx believed that the main result of the emancipation of the Jews should be the emancipation of humanity from the Jews. In The Jewish State (1896), Theodor Herzl criticized opponents of the plan to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, calling them "disguised anti-Semites of Jewish origin." He was the first to speak not only about the creation of a Jewish state, but also about the phenomenon of Jewish anti-Semitism. The phenomenon of Jewish self-hatred was analyzed by Theodor Lessing, a professor at the Hannover Higher Technical School, a German philosopher and publicist of Jewish origin. In 1930, he published a book entitled Jewish Self-Hatred. Lessing argued that the "tragedy of Jewish exile" in the Diaspora had undermined national pride, dignity, and self-respect. The inwardly directed aggressiveness of the individual motivated, according to Lessing, Jewish self-hatred. The term "Jewish self-hatred," coined by Lessing, became especially popular after the publication in 1986 of a book of the same name by American historian Sander Gilman. Gilman writes: "Jews see the way the dominant nation perceives them, and use cleavage to project their concerns onto other Jews for self-soothing." This projection is the creation of a dichotomy: "self-hating" Jews strive to make themselves "good" and in that sense outliers, Jews who are different from the stereotypical "bad" Jews. The self-hating Jew is copying the attitude of anti-Semites toward his people. The self-hating Jew is convinced of the inferiority of his nation's culture and seeks to borrow other people's language, other people's art, and other people's traditions. According to Gilman, the "self-hating Jew" is formed from the fusion of the images of the "mad Jew" and the "self-critical Jew." The American psychologist Kurt Lewin, a German Jew who fled to the United States as a result of the Nazis' rise to power, wrote in "Self-Hatred in the Jewish Environment" (1941): "The feeling of inferiority inherent in the Jew is nothing but evidence that he looks at everything Jewish through the eyes of an unfriendly majority. Self-hatred is the result of alienation from one's own nation and the desire to win the sympathy of non-Jews by disowning Jews. Jewish self-hatred was a neurotic reaction to the growing power of anti-Semitism. After many generations, Jewish self-hatred has seeped into the minds of some Israelis and compels them to dislike their state as much as their ancestors disliked their people. Jews are the dominant nation in Israel, but some Israelis continue to feel themselves and their country guilty, apologetic, ashamed, in short, pariahs of the Western world. Jews born in Israel feel alienated from the values of their fathers and grandfathers and feel like "indigenous outsiders" in their country. Gilman writes, "One of the most recent forms of Jewish self-hatred is a fierce resistance to the existence of the state of Israel." Such "fierce resistance" takes place in both the Jewish diaspora and in Israel. Israel hinders self-loathing Israelis and Jews of the West because its actions prevent it from gaining the popularity and love of the world public for a Jewish state that looks "unseemly" and "unrespectable." But is the October 7, 2023 Shoah enough to drastically reduce the number of Jewish anti-Semites and supporters of Western liberal consciousness in Israel? The phenomenon of Jewish self-hatred is psychologically similar to the hatred of the offspring of wealthy families for their environment. The Hungarian Marxist, one of the leaders of the Hungarian Socialist Revolution of 1919, Georg Lukacs (Gyorgy Bernat Lowinger), son of one of the richest bankers in Austria-Hungary, became a communist, an ideologue of the destruction of the world in which he was born and raised. Lukacs was one of the founders of the Frankfurt School, whose leader and Lukacs' follower Herbert Marcuse set as his main goal the struggle against Western civilization. Members of the Frankfurt School, who had escaped the Nazis in the United States, criticized all elements of Western culture, especially American culture: Christianity, capitalism, the authority of the family, loyalty to tradition, and patriotism. Does it take another Bolshevik revolution to change the minds of those fighting Western civilization? Image: David Rodrigo, via Wikimedia Commons // CC 1.0 public domain dedication Calla Mairead Walsh had a meteoric rise in the realm of progressive politics as a young teenager, which included recognition in The New York Times and by NPRshe also self-identifies as a communist and, wouldnt you know it, she was just arrested for allegedly trying to firebomb an Israeli business establishment in New Jersey: CALLA WALSH JUST GOT ARRESTED TRYING TO FIREBOMB ELBIT SYSTEMS HAHAHAHAHAH pic.twitter.com/gnUalOWrBa Swann Marcus (@SwannMarcus89) November 21, 2023 So she stans for communism and resorts to violence to get her way? How cliche and monotonous. Oh, and despite the glowing profiles in the establishment media implying laid-back intelligence, shes not very brightin her own words, shes not a leftist shes a communist. (Who has the heart to tell her that communism puts her on the left side of politics?) In a previous tweet, Walsh even asserted that communism is the only force that can actually liberate those she sees as oppressed, including wait for it the LGBTQ+ people. (Now, in the South where I am, the phrase bless her heart would be apropos.) Im not a leftist Im a communist. And communism is the only force that can liberate LGBTQ+ people. pic.twitter.com/6o5HkZPK1o Calla (@CallaWalsh) July 24, 2023 In 1934, a man named Harry Whyte sent a letter to Joseph Stalin, asking this question: Can a homosexual be considered someone worthy of membership in the Communist Party? From an article on Stalins response: Stalin did read Whytes letter, or at least a summary of it prepared by his assistants. Laconically, Stalin commented, An idiot and a degenerate. The letter was sent to his personal archive, and Whytes concerns remained unaddressed. (1934 was the same year that Stalin enacted a ban on homosexuality, one that remained in place until 1993.) Or how about this, from The Daily Beast: Fidel Castro was many things: a revolutionary, a communist, a garrulous orator. Amid the fawning encomia released upon his long-overdue death at the age of 90, it should never be forgotten that he was also an oppressor, torturer, and murderer of gay people. We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant, Castro told an interviewer in 1965. A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be. Ironically, Walshs social media is rife with pro-Cuban communism content. And as you might guess, yes, Walsh is opposed to gun violence but as you would also guess, the irony that she stands accused of firebombing certainly doesnt resonate. Image generated by AI. 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. Something very significant happened in Charleston, South Carolina, yesterday when 146 years of unbroken Democrat control over the city finally came to an end. This may have been simply a battle of a bad incumbent against a good candidate, but it may presage something more. Charleston is one of Americas oldest cities, resulting from a 1663 land grant King Charles II gave to some of his friends. Its vast harbor allowed it to benefit from the 18th-century explosion in international trade that allowed it to export rice and indigo and import virtually everything, from products to people. At one time, it was arguably the wealthiest port city in America. Because most people think of it only as the place in which the Civil War started, when cadets from the Citadel fired on Fort Sumter, few know that it was a pivotal city in the fight to liberate America from England during the American Revolution. Speaking of that Revolution, Charleston just had another one, and we can only hope it will be as pivotal. Since 1877, when Reconstruction ended, Democrats have controlled Charlestons government. Their goal, consistently, has been to subordinate blacks. Once, they did it through Jim Crow. More recently, theyve done it through leftist policies that, while framed in the language of love, have demoralized the black community in Charleston as surely as Democrat policies have done to black communities across America: Theyve encouraged the break-up of the black family, the breakdown of faith within the black community, and the erosion of consequences for criminals who tend to prey on the black community. Image: William Cogswell (cropped). YouTube screen grab. The toxic love Democrats have for blacks matters in Charleston, a city in which blacks constitute almost 22% of the population. Indeed, South Carolina, generally, has a sizable black population, with blacks making up almost 28% of the states residents. Meanwhile, Charleston has seen explosive growth, having more than doubled in size since 1980, with the city growing by 20% between 1990 and 2000, by 24% between 2000 and 2010, and by 25% between 2010 and 2020. For a city dependent on the tourist trade because its a historic gem, unconstrained growth can kill the goose laying the golden eggs. All of this brings us to the run-off election held yesterday to determine who will be Charlestons mayor. The incumbent, who was running for reelection, is John Tecklenburg, a Democrat, whos been in office since 2016. Not living in Charleston myself, I cant comment much on his governance during that time, but I can say that people I know accuse him of simultaneously blocking necessary development while allowing destructive development that affects peoples quality of life. In addition, he got into trouble in 2018 when, while he was acting as the conservator for an elderly woman, he used her money to make unsecured loans to himself and his wife (which he repaid) without seeking prior court approval. Tecklenburg, as a Democrat in good standing, also strongly supports the whole DEI, LGBTQ+, CRT, and SEL madness thats polluting Charlestons schools. Thats why he made attacking Moms for Liberty one of the central planks of his campaign. But perhaps Moms for Liberty got the last laugh. In a stunning upset, Tecklenburg lost to William Cogswell, a local businessman, a former state legislator, anda Republican, the first Republican to be elected as Charleston mayor since 1877: William Cogswell won in a nail-biter runoff election on Nov. 21, delivering a stunning defeat to incumbent Mayor John Tecklenburg after a hard-fought campaign. Cogswell declared victory shortly after 8:45 p.m. By 9:10 p.m., Tecklenburg had called him to concede, promising to help with the transition. About five minutes later, Tecklenburg was giving his concession speech his first appearance of the night at his Election Night watch party. With all precincts reporting, Cogswell had about 51 percent of the vote compared to 49 percent for Tecklenburg, the citys mayor who had been seeking his third and final term in office. Ive heard Cogswell give his stump speech, and he comes across very well: Hes a coherent speaker, radiates competence, and has a track record of being a real estate developer who can get things done working within the parameters of maintaining Charlestons all-important historical flavor. Moreover, given his past experience as a state legislator, hes stated that he can keep state money flowing to South Carolinas largest city. What happened in Charleston may have come about because citizens were tired of an incumbent Democrat who wasnt meeting the citys development needs and, finally, got the opportunity to vote for an obviously competent Republican candidate. But there may be more going on here. Here are two theories: One, although the victory was a squeaker (Cogswell won by only 569 votes), it represents a population tired of the incompetence that inevitably characterizes Democrat governance because Democrats have bad ideas. Two, we may be seeing here the effects of conservatives from across America heading to the South, which is seen by many as the last bastion of American normalcy. These new residents may be restoring conservative norms to southern urban areas that were drifting fast into the dark side of modern Democrat politics. History, which is the story of humanity, the mighty and the small, is the greatest novel ever written. Its also a classroom about everything. If you want to know a little bit about a lot of things and, perhaps, pick up wisdom along the way, history is the vehicle. That is if youre not a leftist. For leftists, history must be folded, spindled, and mutilated to force the past to conform to their current values. So it is that, in England, historians insist that a Roman emperor was transgender and that the mid-14th century bubonic plague was racist and sexist in its effect. The first rewrite concerns Emperor Elagabalus, who came to the throne in 218 AD when he was 14 and was assassinated only four years later, aged 18. Within months, according to surviving Roman records, Elagabalus went from being a minor priest to the most powerful man in the world. Think of your average know-nothing teen who goes from nobody to being a rock icon or movie star. Unless that person has a solid moral foundation and adults around him who guide him with wisdom, he almost instantly collapses into a morass of irresponsibility, arrogance, debauchery, and worse. So it was, allegedly, with Elagabalus. Roman records state that Elagabalus forced all people within Rome, no matter their faith, to worship a meteorite. He was also sexually debauched and promiscuous, even by Roman standards, which is an impressive accomplishment. His sexuality was decidedly homosexual. Image: The Emperor Elagabalus (edited), according to the left, by Jose Luiz. CC BY-SA 4.0. Homosexuality, while not banned in Rome, was viewed with disdain. Unlike the effeminate Greeks, whom the Romans both admired and disliked, Rome was an aggressively masculine culture. If one was going to engage in homosexual sex, one had to be the masculine, dominant player in that role. According to historical records, Elagabalus wanted to be a bottom, begging doctors to create a surgical vagina for him. Additionally, when it came to Roman culture, Elagabalus wasnt that fond of it, preferring to appear dressed up as an Eastern potentate in public, a decidedly feminine look. Eventually, were told that Elagabaluss debauchery, flamboyance, and hostility to Roman values, when combined with the unstable state of the throne during the Roman empires declining years, resulted in the inevitable: His own troops assassinated him, and Severus Alexander took over as Emperor. The problem with this narrative is that it came from Severus Alexanders courtiers, who undoubtedly engaged in two practices tyrants love: (1) removing all contemporaneous records of a former ruler (damnatio memoriae) and (2) rewriting the historical record to blacken a predecessors reputation. (Think of Shakespeares Richard III. Shakespeare wrote for Elizabeth I, whose grandfather had usurped Richards throne.) Whats most likely is that Elagabalus was a perfectly ordinary teen, perhaps homosexual, but not necessarily so, who, like Lady Jane Grey, found himself thrust on the throne thanks to ambitious relatives and was then executed. A real historian would know this and handle these nuances. The leftist activists masquerading as historians at the North Hertfordshire Museum in England, however, have announced that, henceforth, Elagabalus will be treated as a transgender woman and referred to as she. This is political correctness run amok. While the ancients fully understood homosexuality, transvestitism, fetishes, and sad people who wished they could have been born as the opposite sex, they completely accepted the biological gender binary and knew that those who opposed it were, at best, mentally ill. Not only is the notion of transgenderism in Rome laughable, these historians are falling into one of two embarrassing ways of thinking: Either theyre credulously accepting the word of Elagabaluss assassins, which means theyre fools, or theyre claiming as their own, as a hero of the modern era, a despised, utterly inept ruler. Its almost as crazy as elevating to sainthood a former felon who died from ingesting illegal drugs while committing a crime. Oh, well, never mind The other assault on history comes from a different group of so-called historians who have announced that, during the Black Death in mid-14th century England, structural racism killed black women. Now, before you say, There were no black women in mid-14th century England, they did, in fact, live there, although not in any significant numbers. Going back to Roman times, the British dealt with Africa, and people from Africa lived in medieval England. One graveyard in London dating back to the plague held the bodies of 634 people, three of whom were probably African women (0.5%). They were present in England, but they were statistically insignificant compared to the whole population. Nevertheless, the BBC proudly has announced that, when 145 peoples bones were dug up from emergency plague cemeteries in London, they discovered that those whom they think might be of female, Black African descent, were apparently more likely to die, although how they can determine what constitutes more like when 1/3 to 1/2 of the population died, is ludicrous. Obviously, systemic racism and sexism were at work: As with the recent Covid-19 pandemic, social and economic environment played a significant role in people's health and this is most likely why we find more people of colour and those of black African descent in plague burials. This is historical madness, which relentlessly squeezes the past into the Marxist religious doctrine of today. As even the BBC concedes, there are no population figures for black women in London [that] have been recorded This is pure fantasy based upon speculative guesswork and imaginary data, all backed by ideological fervor. For a brief window of time, beginning with the Enlightenment, history meant turning up actual evidence and trying to make sense of the past according to its own terms. Before then, history was the purview of monarchs who cherry-picked information to support their right to rule. Under leftist academic aegis, we have reverted to that pre-modern, despotic time. California's leftist legislators have passed a new measure to introduce something called "media literacy" in the public school classrooms. What could go wrong? According to the Los Angeles Times: Beginning next year, California's public school students will be required to take media literacy courses that will help them identify fake news posted online while also being able to tell the difference between legitimate news articles and paid advertising. The new instruction will slowly be integrated into the curriculum of students from kindergarten through high school under Assembly Bill 873, authored by Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October. Media literacy content will be included in English language arts, mathematics, science, history and social science curriculums. The law was necessitated by young people's growing reliance on the internet and social media platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram and X, for news and information, Berman said. Texas, New Jersey and Delaware have also passed strong media literacy laws, according to Media Literacy Now, a nonprofit research organization Teaching media literacy is a key strategy to support our children, their families, and our society that are inundated with misinformation and disinformation on social media networks and digital platforms, said Berman. We have a responsibility to teach the next generation to be more critical consumers of online content and more guarded against misinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories." Sounds fine and dandy given the younger generation's interest in TikTok, but get a load of what they really mean by that, down in the last paragraph of the story: "As we've seen too often in the last decade, what happens online can have the most terrifying of real-world impacts, Berman said. From climate denial to vaccine conspiracy theories to the Jan. 6 attack on our nations Capitol, the spread of online misinformation has had global and deadly consequences. So what this really about is propagandizing unsuspecting children into leftist certitudes, and of course, suppressing any voice that may be skeptical of COVID vaccines, global warming, or stolen elections. Anyone who does that will be labeled 'disinformation' and 'fake news' and now the kiddies are going to be taught that. Sound like the First Amendment is still operational here? What's disgusting about this whole idea is that these schools can't teach kids to be 'critical consumers' of anything. They don't teach critical thinking the way they used to, so the result is just whatever the political "narrative-makers" say is true is truth. They can go like the CDC or Dr. Anthony Fauci switching their positions again and again -- about masks, the value of lockdowns, vaccines - possibly dependent on corporate revolving-door interests and kids will be taught that that's the only truth. They quit teaching critical thinking and the liberal arts years ago. Now all that's left is their plan for creating "critical consumers" of whatever the liberal tripe in the news is. Real news, innovation and skepticism will all be dismissed as fake news and conspiracy theories, the way various partisan "fact-checking" outlets, such as Media Matters and NewsGuard put their seals of approval on or else blacklist One wonders if this new measure might just have something to do with a creepy forged alliance announced in early 2022 by the National Federation of Teachers with NewsGuard. Remember this? WASHINGTONThe American Federation of Teachers has launched a national partnership with a leading anti-misinformation tool NewsGuard to protect and champion legitimate journalism and fact-based reporting and to help educators and their students navigate a sea of online disinformation. Under the terms of the pathbreaking licensing agreement, coinciding with National News Literacy Week, the AFTs 1.7 million members, tens of millions of kids they teach, and their families, can now receive free, real-time traffic light news ratings and detailed Nutrition Label reviews, via a licensed copy of NewsGuards browser extension, whenever they search the web for news and information. For years, educators have fought battles against suspect sourcing, with their students often misled by dubious outlets and spam sites posing as news. NewsGuard offers a practical solution, alerting students and educators to those sites while also providing a valuable lesson in media literacy. NewGuard, of course, is just Media Matters in a business suit with brushed teeth minus the halitosis. They bill themselves as apolitical, but we have seen the kinds of partisan inquiries they have directed at American Thinker and looked at these clowns' resumes and know very well that they are all as far-left and partisan in their aims as the unscrupulous weasels at Media Matters, which is currently under investigation by the Texas attorney general for unethical activities. Now we learn of this unusual interest that Randi Weingarten's teachers' union has in expanding the hand of NewsGuard to the point where it becomes the propaganda arm of the school system, telling kids who dare read a conservative outlet that they are filling their minds with junk food or poison. Anyone questioning the COVID vaccine or the value of lockdowns or the fairness of elections, no matter what the facts are, will be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist by all these new "critical consumers" of news taught by NewsGuard. If they want to keep kids away from TikTok and all its bin Laden worship, that's pretty easy to do -- uninstall the app and say 'no TikTok on school grounds. But they let the cat out of the bag that their real agenda was squelching inquiry about the 2020 election, global warming, lockdowns, and other Democrat shibboleths, all things NewsGuard has the censorship bug in it to put a stop to. This is a license for leftist propaganda in schools and one more reason to pull innocent kids out of schools before they head off to the next poster-ripping session for Israel's kidnapped, disrupt Jewish students studying in libraries, or wrap themselves in the Palestinian flag. This isn't about critical consuming of news, which could be achieved by taking the time to teach kids critical thinking. It's about left-wing propaganda, in ever more insidious forms. Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License Most Americans seem to have forgotten our first war against Muslims. In the late 18th century, our objection to Islamist practice was their piracy and slaving against our ships and sailors in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1794, provoked by Algerian captures of American ships, our Congress authorized construction of the first six ships of the U.S. Navy, including the U.S.S. Constitution, still in commissioned service and now docked in Boston. In 1795, our diplomats negotiated treaties with the Muslim states of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli to pay them tribute for the privilege of free passage. But in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli, citing late payments of tribute, demanded additional money and declared war on the United States. The United States Marines defeated the Pasha forces with a combined naval and land assault. That short foreign conflict is remembered in the Marines Hymn in the words to the shores of Tripoli. Earlier, in 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson -- two prominent Founders of our country -- were in London seeking agreements with Muslim states on the North African coast of the Mediterranean Sea. On March 28th they wrote a letter to John Jay, then the American Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reporting on their difficulties: We had a conference with the Ambassador of Tripoli, at his House. The amount of all the information we can obtain from him was that a perpetual peace was in all respects the most advisable, because a temporary treaty would leave room for increasing demands upon every renewal of it, and a stipulation for annual payments would be liable to failures of performance which would renew the war, repeat the negotiations and continually augment the claims of his nation and the difference of expence would by no means be adequate to the inconvenience, since 12,500 Guineas to his Constituents with 10 pr. Cent upon that sum for himself, must be paid if the treaty was made for only one year. That 30,000 Guineas for his Employers and 3,000 for himself were the lowest terms upon which a perpetual peace could be made and that this must be paid in Cash on the delivery of the treaty signed by his sovereign, that no kind of Merchandizes could be accepted. That Tunis would treat upon the same terms, but he could not answer for Algiers or Morocco. Then the Americans asked the Muslim diplomat what justified his countrys seizures of ships and making slaves of their crew or passengers. The answer given by the Ambassador of Tripoli in 1786 was consistent with the 1988 Covenant of Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on the right of Muslims to wage war on those who professed a different faith: The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. That it was a law that the first who boarded an Enemys Vessell should have one slave, more than his share with the rest, which operated as an incentive to the most desperate Valour and Enterprise, that it was the Practice of their Corsairs to bear down upon a ship, for each sailor to take a dagger in each hand and another in his mouth, and leap on board, which so terrified their Enemies that very few ever stood against them, that he verily believed the Devil assisted his Countrymen, for they were almost always successful. That testament by the Ambassador of Tripoli as to a generic, universal, Muslim right of war against non-believers predated by 215 years the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, which killed 2,996 American civilians, and by 237 years the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians. Image: Library of Congress I clearly remember where I was on November 22, 1963, when I heard the news that President Kennedy (JFK) had been assassinated. I was in third grade class at Prince of Peace Catholic School, Lake Villa, Illinois. Sister MaryAnn was hurriedly summoned from the classroom. Ten minutes later she returned; Children, we must get down on our knees and pray for the president. Hes just been shot. Not understanding what was happening, the thought that ran through my 8-year-old mind was, I got a shot last week and nobody prayed for me. In our lives, there are a select few events that are so shocking that we remember exactly where we were, and what we were doing, when we heard the news. For my parents generation that event was Pearl Harbor (Dec 7, 1941). For Gen X (born mid 60s to late 70s) and Millennials (early 1980s to late 1990s) the event was 9-11. A few of the other shocking/significant events include the assassination of Martin Luther King (1968), Neil Armstrong walking on the moon (1969), the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion (1986), the death of Princess Diane (1997), and the horrible Hamas attack on Israel (October 2023). For Baby Boomers, that event was JFKs assassination. November 22 was a Friday. When I returned home from school, my mother had the TV tuned to CBS and Walter Cronkite. Over the next three days, the entire country was glued to our TV screens (mostly black-and-white). There was nonstop coverage of everything related to Kennedy his assassination, swearing in of LBJ, the capture and murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, preparations for the state funeral, and the funeral itself. The assassination was a big deal to my parents, so it became a big deal to me, to all of us Boomers. I didnt watch continuously but my parents did. Anytime I went into the TV room, they were watching. And with six brothers and sisters, a couple of us were always watching as well. If something important was happening, such as the state funeral, the burial procession down the streets of Washington DC, and JFKs burial at Arlington National Cemetery; we were told to sit and watch. (Sometimes parents must do that knowing years later it will be remembered.) That Sunday, we went to church; and when we returned home, we heard that Jack Ruby had killed Oswald. That shooting was replayed over and over. The next day was a national day of mourning which meant no school. The coverage continued; most of it surrounded the state funeral with all the pomp and circumstance that goes with one. I remember little John-John, JFKs 4-year old son, famously saluting his fathers horse drawn casket as it passed by. Or do I remember his salute because Ive seen the photo so often that I think I remember the salute as it happened? The JFK assassination has captivated the nation (and the world) for decades. Everything about it is questionable. Was there a conspiracy to kill the president or was it a lone, commie kook? Arguments have been both ways. However, nothing shouts conspiracy louder than the accused killer (Oswald) conveniently gets killed by a guy who conveniently has terminal cancer; and the official autopsy results (done at Bethesda) are different than what the emergency room doctors (at Parkland Memorial Hospital) testified to. Because of the many unknowns, hundreds of books have been written about the assassination and countless theories advanced the magic bullet; the grassy knoll; a lone gunman; the mafia; Fidel Castro sanctioned it; the KGB; the FBI/CIA; altered/missing autopsy report; and on and on goes the speculations. Also, many movies and numerous documentaries have been made. And the Texas Book Depository, where Oswald worked and from where he fired the three shots at Kennedy (or did he?), has been turned into a JFK assassination museum. Ive been to that museum, The 6th Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, twice; and Ive read at least five or six Kennedy assassination books, most recently was Killing Kennedy by Bill OReilly. OReilly makes a good argument that the assassination was most likely carried out by one man Oswald. Over the years, Ive teetered between a lone gunman and a conspiracy. However, in the last six years Ive moved steadily towards the conspiracy theory. Why? Because of President Trump and the treatment hes received. Think of how the powers that be the Dems and their media, the FBI, DOJ, the CIA, other intel agencies, the military hierarchy, academia, and the entire federal bureaucracy have tried to destroy one man. Weve seen beyond any doubt that the Deep State, Swamp, the government bureaucracy, whatever you care to call it, is real; and much larger and more devious than Trump or anyone else ever imagined. That leftist cabal has targeted Trump mercilessly for years. Why? Because Trumps on to them and they hate him for it. So, if the cabal can do to Trump what theyre doing; its 100% plausible (and likely) they could have done the same to Kennedy. Image: U.S. Embassy New Delhi via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0. During the war in Vietnam, thousands of people in the Vietnamese province of Cu Chi lived in an elaborate network of underground tunnels. The tunnels were used by Viet Cong guerrillas as hiding spots during combat, as well as serving as communication and supply routes, hospitals, food and weapon caches and living quarters for numerous guerrilla fighters. The tunnel systems were of great importance to the Viet Cong in their resistance to American forces, and played a major role in North Vietnam winning the war. The Cu Chi tunnels were built over a period of 25 years that began sometime in the late 1940s during the war against the French. The excavations were used mostly for communication between villages and to evade French army sweeps of the area. When the National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgency began around 1960, the old tunnels were repaired and new extensions were excavated. Within a few years the tunnel system assumed enormous strategic importance, and most of Cu Chi district and the nearby area came under firm Viet Cong control. Photo credit The secret tunnels, which joined village to village and often passes beneath American bases, were not only fortifications for Viet Cong guerillas, but were also the center of community life. Hidden beneath the destroyed villages were underground schools and public spaces where couples were married and private places where lovers met. There were even theaters inside the tunnels where performers entertained with song and dance and traditional stories. But life in the tunnels was difficult. Air, food and water were scarce and the tunnels were infested with ants, poisonous centipedes, scorpions, spiders and vermin. Most of the time, guerrillas would spend the day in the tunnels working or resting and come out only at night to scavenge for supplies, tend their crops or engage the enemy in battle. Sometimes, during periods of heavy bombing or American troop movement, they would be forced to remain underground for many days at a time. Sickness was rampant among the people living in the tunnels, especially malaria, which was the second largest cause of death next to battle wounds. Almost everyone had intestinal parasites of significance. Only about 6,000 of the 16,000 cadres who fought in the tunnels survived the war. Photo credit Throughout the course of the war, the tunnels in Ch Chi proved to be a source of frustration for the U.S. military in Saigon. The US and Australian tried a variety of methods to detect and infiltrate the tunnels but all were met with failure. Large scale ground operations involving tens of thousands of troops were launched. They ravaged rice paddies, bulldozed huge swathes of jungle, and villages were evacuated and razed. The Americans also sprayed chemical defoliants on the area aerially and a few months later ignited the tinder-dry vegetation with gasoline and napalm. By a strange twist of fate, the intense heat of the napalm interacted with the wet tropical air only to create cloudbursts that extinguished the fires. The Viet Cong guerrillas remained safe and sound inside their tunnels. Unable to win the battle with chemicals, the US army began sending men called tunnel rats down into the tunnels. Armed only with a gun, a knife, a flashlight and a piece of string these tunnel rats would enter a tunnel by themselves and travel inch-by-inch cautiously looking ahead for booby traps. The job of a tunnel rat was fraught with immense dangers. The entrance holes in the ground were barely wide enough for the shoulders. After a couple of meters of slipping and wriggling straight down, the narrow tunnel took a U-turn back towards the surface, then twisted again before heading off horizontally further. The light from the battery powered lamp wasnt enough to pierce the darkness inside the tunnels, and there was no room to turn around and retreat. The tunnel rats, who were often involved in underground fire fights, sustained appallingly high casualty rates. One of the entrance to the tunnels. Photo credit The Americans then began using German shepherd dogs trained to use their keen sense of smell to locate trapdoors and guerrillas. The tunnel people responded by washing themselves with American soap which gave off a scent the canines identified as friendly. Captured US uniforms were put out to confuse the dogs further. Most importantly, the dogs were not able to spot booby traps. So many dogs were killed or maimed that their horrified handlers then refused to send them into the tunnels. Finally, by the late 1960s, the American began carpet bombing Cu Chi destroying several portions of the tunnels along with everything else around. The gesture was militarily useless by then because the USA was already on its way out of the war. The tunnels had served their purpose. The 120-km long complex of tunnels at Cu Chi has since been preserved and turned into a war memorial park. The tunnels are a popular tourist attraction, and visitors are invited to crawl around in the safer parts of the tunnel system. Some tunnels have been made larger to accommodate the larger size of Western tourists, while low-power lights have been installed in several of them to make traveling through them easier and booby traps have been clearly marked. Underground conference rooms where campaigns such as the Tet Offensive were planned in 1968 have been restored, and visitors may enjoy a simple meal of food that Viet Cong fighters would have eaten. Photo credit Photo credit Photo credit Tourists entering tunnel system. Photo credit Booby trap. Photo credit Photo credit Besprechungsbunker / meeting room. Photo credit Making weapons. Photo credit Cu Chi Tunnel model. Photo credit Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4 After plummeting growth, the Meta-owned Threads is gaining more traction in app stores, and more users are joining the X rival platform. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently said Threads has just under 100 million monthly active users. Over four months after the initial launch, more prominent users, including the President of the United States Joe Biden, are joining the platform. Joe Bidens first post on Threads alludes to his keynotes in the 2020 presidential victory speech. He speaks about the US situation and the inflection point. Biden is the third prominent member of the White House to join Threads, following Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff, aka the second gentleman of the United States. The White House also has an official account on Threads. Advertisement Advertisement The US President Joe Biden joins Threads Kamala Harriss first post on Threads is about her travels across the US, meeting with American people and over 100 world leaders. Likewise, Emhoffs first post was focused on gender equity and countering hate of all kinds. The White House account on Threads welcomed the Presidents first post, saying, The wait is Joe-ver. Bidens decision to join Threads coincides with his 81st birthday. Former President Barack Obama also posted a birthday message to Biden. Political figures joining Threads is good news for the Meta, showing the platform is on the right track. Meanwhile, Elon Musk and X should not be happy with this. X (formerly Twitter) has been the main venue for political and prominent figures to connect with their fans and share messages. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has recently said he expects Threads to become a de facto platform for online public conversations. Meanwhile, Mosseri tries to keep Threads away from becoming a news hub, claiming the platform is not going to amplify news. While the White House said in a statement that involvement on Threads wont affect the POTUS activity on X, Musks owned platform could see itself in a critical situation. Following the recent controversies over Musks public endorsement of a supposedly anti-Semitic post, Apple decided to pull its ads from the platform for an unknown term. An information-stealing malware called Lumma or Lumma Stealer has recently rolled out a new feature that claims to be able to restore expired Google authentication cookies. Lumma was first discovered in 2022 and operates as a malware-as-a-service. Lumma Stealer uses a subscription-based plan where threat actors can rent and distribute the malware. In its most recent update, Lumma Corporate tier members who pay $1000 USD per month now have the capability to restore expired Google authentication cookies. If a threat actor gains access to these cookies, they can impersonate the user associated with the account and bypass standard login procedures. Google authentication/session cookies are small pieces of data stored on a users device that contain information related to their login session. These cookies are crucial in maintaining user authentication, allowing users to stay logged in across different pages or sessions. Cookies span various Google services, extending beyond just Gmail accounts. Threat actors who obtain valid session cookies can effectively hijack a victims Google account. Cookies have expiration dates as a security measure designed to limit the window of opportunity for attackers. The combination of expiration dates and various security mechanisms make it challenging for threat actors to exploit them successfully. Advertisement Advertisement Alon Gal, the CTO of Hudson Rock, first discovered the Lumma update that claims to be able to revive cookies. The update indicates it can extract non-expirable Google cookies from infected devices, even if the owner changes passwords. Lumma developers claim this is perhaps, the biggest update since the opening of the project. Notably, another information-stealing malware called Rhadamanthys recently announced a similar capability. When asked about this by Bleeping Computer, a Lumma agent claims the feature was copied from Lumma Stealer. Lummas latest update claims to revive expired Google authentication cookies The capabilities of Lumma Stealer have yet to be verified by Google or security researchers. As Lumma alleges, the ability to restore dead cookies using a key from restore files (applies only to Google cookies) is rather frightening. Google, seemingly aware of the threat, released an update that presented some restrictions to tokens. Consequently, Lumma countered with an update that fixed Google logs. Stealing Google session cookies opens up a whole lot of issues. Threat actors will gain direct access to Google accounts, allowing them to exploit a range of sensitive information. Moreover, an attacker could impersonate the victim, bypassing login procedures and gaining control over their email, documents, contacts, and other personalized settings. They could send emails or messages on behalf of the victim and potentially compromise other linked accounts if the victim uses their Google credentials for multiple services. So, yes, this is a severe threat. Publisher revenue is headed for a steep decline due to ad-blocking software in 2024, as revenue is estimated to fall by as much as $54 billion in the coming year. According to a recent report from ad-filtering software company eyeo (via MediaPost), the lost revenue is based on a global decline. And that it accounts for an overall 8% of the total amount spent on ads for the year. Eyeo also states however that this decline in revenue could have been worse. Ad-blocking is nothing new. But it appears to be taking quite a large toll on publishers of late. So much so that Googles own YouTube has put its own measures in place. The video streaming site recently resorted to putting up guards that attempt to protect against ad-blocking software. These anti ad-blocking walls are presented to users who try to skirt around YouTubes ads by using ad-blocking software and is YouTubes latest attempt to compensate for lost revenue. Advertisement Advertisement Interestingly, YouTube has also admitted to initiating a slower load time for viewers using an ad-blocker. Which has caused some users to uninstall the software. Eyeo CRO Jan Wittek says that after YouTubes slowdown implementation, some uninstalls did occur. Lost publisher revenue from ad-blocking could have been much higher While $54 billion certainly is a huge amount of lost revenue, that number could have been much higher if not for ad-filtering software. Theres a difference between straight up ad-blockers and software that filters ads. The latter is designed to show only non-intrusive ads. Whereas some ad-blockers can block all ads completely. Eyeo estimates that if ad-filtering software which only shows non-intrusive ads didnt exist that the lost revenue for publishers could have reached around $116 billion. More than double what its estimating for the current decline. Not all users are opposed to seeing ads Usage of ad-blockers is on the rise but that doesnt necessarily equate to users being entirely opposed to ads. Eyeos report highlights that it surveyed a number of users and asked if they were against seeing ads on the websites they visit. About 58% of users asked said they werent against seeing ads. And that in fact they were open or neutral to seeing ads as long as they werent intrusive. But this also doesnt mean that usage will slow down. As its estimated that mobile will continue to see growth in ad-block usage going forward. China-US green innovation cooperation benefits Asia-Pacific, say industry experts By Chen Yiming, Yang Yi and Shi Yuanhao (People's Daily App) 13:57, November 22, 2023 On November 13, the "Green Innovation and Sustainable Development Forum" was held in San Francisco, US. Co-hosted by the US-China Energy Council and APEC Sustainable Energy Center, the forum aimed to promote collaboration and technology sharing between China and the US. Participants emphasized the importance of both countries leading climate initiatives and sustainable development efforts in Asia and globally. (Text compiled by Liang Ruijie) (Web editor: Tian Yi, Liang Jun) Eddie the "a**hole dog" has been adopted in Texas and now gone viral on social media. Humane Society of Wichita County A dog has been going viral after a nonprofit Texas animal shelters hilarious social media post made a way for him to be adopted quickly. The Humane Society of Wichita County Facebook page wrote it was looking for someone man enough to adopt its a**hole dog named Eddie, a rottweiler and dachshund mixed breed. If Eddie had an accent, he would sound like hes from the Bronx, wearing a wife beater T-shirt and a tattoo that says MOM on his arm, the social media post said. If you got into a bar fight, Eddie would back you up and take on all five guys put his cigarette out on their forehead and not spilling a drop of his beer while doing it. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The post gained attraction with more than 25,000 likes and nearly 80,000 shares as of Wednesday. Soon, the 17-pound dog was adopted by the Brooks family who lived more than two hours away from the shelter. Very happy to say, our 'a**hole' dog has found his forever home! As long as they keep his cigarettes and beer well stocked and keep him away from bulldogs eyeing him up across the courtyard (although Im pretty sure he could easily whoop 'em), hes going to be just fine! the Humane Society social media post said. After Cleburne resident Linda Brooks shared the Facebook post saying she wanted Eddie, her daughter, Taryn Brooks, agreed they should pick him up the same day. Taryn even gave up some of her Christmas gifts so they could adopt Eddie. When we first bought him, he was super like hyper, really hyper, Taryn Brooks said. He was jumping everywhere and trying to play then a few minutes went by and then he got super cuddly and laid on my lap and just chilled. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Since then, there have been several media outlets reporting on the post made by the Humane Society. However, theres more to Eddies story. Arriving at the shelter in late October, Eddie initially was considered a sweet dog. However, just as the social media post stated, he was always ready to stand four paws on business. The Human Society of Wichita County Executive Director Cheryl Heineken told the Houston Chronicle that Eddie was fighting with other small dogs and could not be in the same kennels with them. Well put all of the small dogs together and theyll play and run around to get that energy out, she said. But we tried Eddie with a couple of different dogs, and we couldnt pair him up (with anyone). Then hed run and charge to the fence to the big dogs trying to fight them. According to Heineken, the Humane Society has encouraged their staff to be honest with people planning to adopt dogs by stating what to expect and pairing them with a pet of their choice whether the dog is a couch potato or active. So, they would take turns writing social media posts for each of their animals. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Eddie was no exception. The honesty in Eddies post got more people from different areas also wanting to adopt him, Heineken said. Although Eddie had beef with other dogs, he was calmer with humans. Even when he was adopted by the Brooks family, he was seen relaxing in Taryn Brooks' arms. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Eddie has a Facebook page called A-hole Eddie where the posts describe the family as Eddies hoomans as he goes on many adventures. Eddie even has his own T-shirts. Linda Brooks added the first proceeds from the T-shirts will go to the Humane Society of Wichita County. Its amazing. The love and support of those that need to be adopted, Linda Brooks said. We just kind of put (the social media post) out there (Tuesday) to see who would be interested. The Humane Society of Wichita County has been doing similar posts for their other housed pets. Their goal is to save as many pets who are at risk for euthanization, and take them off of the kill list. Samsung is trying to use blue phosphorescent OLED display technology in devices by the second half of 2025, according to a report from UBI Research via The Elec. That could line up with the release of Samsungs Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7, but its unclear whether the company plans to debut the technology in foldable products. Since Samsung typically releases its traditional flagship phones in January or February, the reported timeline doesnt line up with the potential Galaxy S24 or S25 series. Completely utilizing phosphorescent OLED technology, abbreviated PHOLED, would result in displays with lower power consumption. UBI Research also found, after contacting companies developing blue phosphorescent materials, that PHOLED technology likely isnt ready to go mainstream. It suspects that by using blue phosphorescent in an upcoming display, Samsung is trying to become the first to debut this technology. If this report is to be believed, it might not make sense for Samsung to release this technology with the Z Fold 7 and Z Fold 7 after all. Advertisement Advertisement This is especially possible due to the fact that the biggest issue with blue PHOLED technology is durability. Blue PHOLED displays have a lifespan of 55%, per the report, compared to current displays. Samsungs flagship AMOLED displays currently use some PHOLED materials. PHOLED is used for the red and green pixels, but the blue ones still feature older fluorescent materials. Samsungs internal goal is to make blue, red, and green pixels all with PHOLED materials by the second half of 2025. But due to the reported lower lifespan, its unclear in what capacity PHOLED could appear. Why Samsung is trying to make blue PHOLED pixels With those durability concerns in mind, its easy to wonder why Samsung is aiming for blue PHOLED pixels at all. The answer is that it all comes down to power consumption. The red and green PHOLED pixels in Samsungs current AMOLED displays have a light-emitting efficiency of 100%, which is excellent. However, the blue fluorescent pixels in those same displays feature a light-emitting efficiency of 25%. In this situation, higher is better, because a higher percentage means more light that is emitted by the pixels are viewable. Essentially, using blue PHOLED technology means a display could provide better brightness while consuming less power. Thats because less light emittance is lost through using phosphorescent materials instead of fluorescent ones. For users, the benefit is simple: using a display with blue PHOLED pixels could result in better battery life. Samsung has been working on this technology for some time, and this latest update suggests we might be getting closer a public launch. Samsung will respond to the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor chips, according to a report from FN News via SamMobile. The companys Samsung Foundry, an arm that focuses on chipmaking, will improve on AI chips with a competitive advantage. Samsung shared this information in Hong Kong at a forum for investors. Samsung Electronics has a very unique competitive advantage, said Jeong Ki-bong, the vice president of Samsung Foundry. I call it GDP. According to the report, the so-called GDP advantage represents three aspects of Samsung chipmaking. First, it references the gate-all-around (GAA) chip fabrication technology that Samsung has employed in recent production. It also includes high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging technology. Thats how you get the acronym GDP: GAA, DRAM, Packaging. While Samsung is not necessarily the only company to offer these technologies individually, Samsung executives believe they have an advantage by putting all of this together. Advertisement Advertisement Hyperscaler (large data center operators), automotive OEMs, Tesla, and other customers came to us because they wanted chips they designed, Jeong said. When asked why they came to us, they say, Samsung has all three.' Growing demand for AI results in greater performance needs Tasks and processes that utilize AI can require more performance than typical chips offer. Thats why Samsung says that it has received the largest amount of new orders in the high-performance computing (HPC) sector. The other notable sectors of Samsung Foundry development are the mobile and automotive markets. The mobile processing market is still the largest that Samsung serves, represents 54% of Samsung Foundrys estimated sales this year. HPC now slots in at 19% for second-place, with automotive sales estimated to make up for 11%. Its our mission to bring semiconductors, including power and memory, to life to the imagination, and some customers will be selling the 4 nanometer AI accelerators under development, said Jeong. The first electric vehicle company in the automotive industry, is also developing the next version of the 5 nanometer, a fully autonomous chiplet. Although Samsung is still posting slightly-sluggish sales, these positive statements come as the company goes all-in on AI chips and HPC. As more applications for AI-based products and services come to market, they may command better-performing equipment. We are already seeing large AI learning models require large amounts of onboard memory for on-device computing. If Samsungs proclaimed GDP advantage really is appealing to OEMs, it could be the key to Samsung Foundrys success. However, it will still face tough competition from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), which is currently the premier chip fabricator. The past couple of years havent been kind to the smartphone industry. Economic uncertainties and other factors have affected sales globally. Quarterly shipments hit a decade-low in Q3 2023. However, a rebound may be on the cards now. According to market research firm Counterpoint, global smartphone sales grew five percent year-on-year (YoY) in October, the first YoY growth in more than two years. Smartphone sales returned to growth in October after a two-year decline Counterpoints study reveals that the global smartphone market last posted a YoY growth in shipments in June 2021. The growth was a result of increased demand as the industry recovered from an unprecedented slowdown a year earlier due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the industry suffered from a component shortage in the second half of 2021 through to 2022. Advertisement Advertisement The economic implications of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the US-China trade war, as well as longer replacement cycles, mean smartphone shipments dropped more than 15 percent YoY in June last year. The arrival of the iPhone 14 series helped the graph rebound in September 2022 but that wasnt enough for a positive growth. The rebound was temporary too, as a 15 percent shipment decline was observed again at the end of last year. The market continued to see a YoY decline in shipments for the first nine months of 2023 too. Finally, after a streak of 27 consecutive months of YoY declines, Counterpoint reported a shipment growth in October this year. The firm attributed this growth to higher demand in emerging markets such as the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region. Huaweis comeback in China and festive season sales in India helped too. Since developed markets have a higher smartphone saturation, growth is slower in those markets. Counterpoint adds that a delayed launch of the iPhone 15 series also contributed to the shipment growth last month. The latest iPhones debuted a week later than the 2022 lineup, so the full effect of their sales was felt in October. The research firm expects the strong show in October to result in a positive YoY growth in Q4 2023. Samsung is launching the Galaxy S24 series early next year While Apple released the iPhone 15 series a week late, Samsung is unveiling the Galaxy S24 series a couple of weeks earlier than the Galaxy S23. Rumors say the company will debut the new flagships on January 17, 2024, with sales beginning on January 30. The 2023 models were launched on February 1 and hit the market on February 17. If the devices see strong demand, the market may post a YoY growth in Q1 2024. Sonos is preparing to launch its over-the-ear headphones priced between $400 and $500. These will likely compete with high-end headphones from Apple, Sony, and Bose. Sonos will potentially announce the headphones in March while targeting an April release according to Bloomberg, citing people in the know (via MacRumors). Sonos may take on Apple with its pricey headphones Sonos headphones, dubbed Duke, will directly take on Apples AirPods Max that are priced at $549. Notably, the pair of Apple headphones havent been updated since the launch. AirPods Max comes in five colors: Silver, Space Gray, Sky Blue, Pink, and Green. Meanwhile, Sonos wants to play it minimalistic with just two colors: Black and white. Advertisement Advertisement The technical details currently remain under wraps. However, the report says that Sonos is developing headphones with a focus on customization and sound adjustments through a dedicated Passport app. The company is aiming for a distinctive audio experience rather than matching technical specs. The company may also release earbuds in the future. Sonos may also launch a set-top streaming box, too Sonos may also introduce a set-top streaming box in 2024 or 2025 to take on the Apple TV. The device will be a hub for Sonos audio equipment with support for Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. Meanwhile, Sonos is developing an Android-based operating system to power up its set-top box. With Android, the device will also offer a bunch of apps and popular streaming services. The price of the set-top box may likely be between $150 and $200. Sonos is conducting talks with cable companies about possible live television offerings too. Moreover, Sonos is developing new amplifiers and in-ceiling speakers for professional installers, and a version of the Era 100 speakers for businesses. For consumers, the company may launch a new version of the Sub that will sync with the planned set-top box. This corroborates with the previous reports stating Sonos is likely to enter a new segment. (ANSA) - ROME, NOV 22 - Filippo Turetta, the 22-year-old Padua university biomedical engineering student under investigation for the November 11 femicide of his ex girlfriend, 22-year-old course mate Giulia Cecchettin, will be extradited to Italy in the next few days, Saxony-Anhalt prosecutor Tatjana Letz told ANSA on Wednesday. "The hand-over of the Italian citizen was authorised today by the Naumburg General Prosecutor's Office in , so his transfer to the custody of the Italian authorities will take place within a few days," Letz said. Turetta, who was arrested in Germany last weekend, has agreed to be handed over to Italian authorities, according to a German police statement issued to his Italian lawyer on Wednesday morning. "The German court has ordered the extradition of Filippo Turetta," Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "I would like to thank the German justice system for the speedy manner in which it has acted, our embassy and the law enforcement agencies that are working tirelessly for this goal," he added. Turetta, a 22-year-old Padua university biomedical engineering student like Cecchettin, was arrested near Leipzig on Sunday after more than a week on the run. He is currently being probed for voluntary homicide but this may change to premeditated murder on the basis of forensic tests on his car and his testimony, Venice's Chief Prosecutor Bruno Cherchi said Monday. The case has shocked the nation, in part because of the age of the victim and the alleged murderer and because of the brutality of the killing. Italy's schools held a minute's silence on Tuesday as a mark of respect for Cecchettin. On Wednesday the government presented a plan to give young people relationship education in schools as part of efforts to prevent gender-based violence and stop an alarming spate of femicides in the country. (ANSA). (ANSA) - ROME, NOV 22 - The European Commission said Wednesday that it has approved a 5.7-billion-euro Italian State aid scheme to support renewable-energy communities and self-consumers. Energy communities are legal entities that empower citizens, small businesses and local authorities to produce, manage and consume their own energy. They can cover various parts of the energy value chain, including production, distribution, supply, consumption, and aggregation. The scheme will be partly funded by the Recovery and Resilience Facility ('RRF') as part of Italy's post-Covid National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), a huge programme that seeks to make the Italian economy Greener and more modern with projects funded with the help of almost 200 billion euros in EU grants and low-interest loans. The scheme supports the construction of renewable power generation installations, as well as the expansion of existing ones. Beneficiaries are small projects, with capacity of up to 1 MW, which can access the scheme on a first come, first served basis. Environment and Energy Security Minister Gilberto Pichetto hailed the decision as a "historic turning point in the relationship between citizens and energy. "Now the renewable-energy communities will be able to become a widespread reality in our country, developing renewable-energy sources and finally making the national territory a lead player in future of the nation's energy," he continued. "Each citizen will be able to contribute to the production of renewable energy, and enjoy the economic benefits of self-consumption, thanks to the energy communities". (ANSA). (ANSA) - ROME, NOV 22 - The conflict in Israel and Palestine has gone beyond war and is terrorism, Pope Francis said during the general audience at the Vatican on Wednesday. "This morning I received two delegations, one of Israelis with relatives who are hostages in Gaza and another of Palestinians with relatives who are imprisoned in Israel," said the pope. "They suffer so much, I heard how they both suffer," he continued. "Wars do this, but here we have gone beyond war: this is not war, it is terrorism," said Francis. "Pray hard for peace," he insisted. "We pray for the Palestinian people, we pray for the Israeli people, that peace may come," concluded the Pope. (ANSA). This image of Texas taken by the GOES satellite on Tuesday shows clouds covering much of the Lone Star State after Monday's cold front moved through. High atmospheric pressure on Wednesday will result in clear skies for most areas. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration After a windy Tuesday that saw gusts reach more than 30 mph at times, high atmospheric pressure overhead will result in calmer winds and more sunshine Wednesday. Dont get too used to seeing the sun, though. A system of low pressure aloft will bring in cloud cover and the risk of showers across Southeast Texas in time for Thanksgiving. Sunny but cool Wednesday A sky-clearing high pressure system is the star of the forecast this Wednesday before Thanksgiving. If youre traveling across the Lone Star State, the weather should cooperate with your travel plans. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Well start the day with a bit of a nip in the air, with temperatures early on dropping into the 40s and similarly frigid wind chills. Despite mostly sunny skies, northwesterly winds will continue to drag cool air into Southeast Texas. Expect highs to be similar to Tuesdays, with temperatures in most locations staying largely in the upper 50s and lower 60s. Unlike Tuesday, winds will not be nearly as blustery, thanks to that high pressure system being parked nearly overhead. This temperature forecast map shows projected afternoon highs for Wednesday. Most of Southeast Texas will see temps warm only into the upper 50s despite abundant sunshine. Pivotal Weather Showers could dampen Thanksgiving The affect high pressure has on Wednesdays forecast will diminish by Thursday morning as an area of low pressure develops over northern Mexico. This feature will push showers into Southeast Texas through Thanksgiving Day. NOT SURE IF IT WILL RAIN? : Use our interactive tracker to keep updated on current road conditions and see where rain is falling Advertisement Article continues below this ad What part of the day will be most affected by scattered showers? Most forecast models suggest light rain will be most likely from the early afternoon through the evening. The greenish areas show where rain is possible in Texas on Thursday afternoon and evening as a quick-moving system of low atmospheric pressure moves nearby. For those planning to be outside on Thanksgiving, consider having an indoor plan in case a shower moves over your back yard. Pivotal Weather Will rain be heavy? Limited moisture in the middle and upper levels of the atmosphere would suggest mainly light showers through Thanksgiving. Do you need to cancel my outdoor plans for Thanksgiving? Its safe to keep whatever outdoor plans you have, but it never hurts to have an indoor alternative in case a shower rolls over your neighborhood. Rain chances Thursday will generally be hit-or-miss, meaning most of us will stay rain-free for Thanksgiving. Regardless of rain, its going to be a chilly day. Afternoon high temperatures under mostly cloudy skies will top out near only 60 degrees. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Unsettled forecast for next week Friday and Saturday look fantastic at this point as high pressure dominates the forecast. For Black Friday shoppers, sunny skies Friday will bring highs into the middle and upper 60, with a repeat of that forecast Saturday. Changes are coming, though. Our next cold front is forecast to arrive over the weekend, with rain chances creeping back into Southeast Texas as early as Saturday evening. Onshore winds in tandem with the approaching cold front Sunday afternoon will result in a few more scattered showers to wrap up the weekend. Before heading back home from your Thanksgiving destinations, plan for slower travel on Southeast Texas roads. Airport delays or cancellations dont appear likely in the Houston metro area on Sunday, but that may not be the case if youre traveling toward the Mid-Atlantic states or New England, where rain and snow are expected. Chances for showers in Southeast Texas will continue into early next week, with some models suggesting more widespread rain moving into the Houston metro area by the middle of next week. The Duke of York and his ex-wife Sarah, Duchess of York, have reached a settlement after becoming embroiled in a High Court dispute between a wealthy Turkish woman and a Turkish businessman, a judge has been told. Andrews link to the fight over money between 78-year-old Nebahat Isbilen and businessman Selman Turk emerged last year after written claims were filed. A judge Deputy High Court judge David Halpern who was overseeing the litigation at that stage had been told, in a document written by a lawyer representing Mrs Isbilen, how evidence showed money was used for purposes unconnected with Mrs Isbilen, eg, substantial sums were paid to Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and to Sarah, Duchess of York. An affidavit filed by the lawyer had said Mrs Isbilen relied on a payment of 750,000 to the personal account of Prince Andrew, which Mr Turk instructed to be made from Mrs Isbilens account with Hampden Bank, as a specific instance of dishonest behaviour by Mr Turk. A wealthy Turkish woman has reached a settlement with Andrew the Duke of York and his ex-wife Sarah, Duchess of York, a judge overseeing the latest round of a long-running High Court battle has been told (Kirsty OConnor/PA) Sir Anthony Mann has been told, in written arguments prepared by lawyers representing Mr Turk, that there has been a settlement between Mrs Isbilen and the Duke of York, and Sarah, Duchess of York. James Counsell KC, who is Mr Turks legal team, told Sir Anthony in a written case summary that Mrs Isbilen relies on a so-called agreed statement, prepared, it is claimed, as part of a settlement between herself and the Duke of York and Sarah, Duchess of York. Judges have heard that Mrs Isbilen had needed help moving assets out of Turkey after her husband became a political prisoner, and that Mr Turk had agreed to help. She alleges that he breached fiduciary obligations he owed to her and has advanced claims in deceit. Mr Turk is fighting the case. Andrew is named more than a dozen times in written case summaries (Yui Mok/PA) The hearing being overseen by Sir Anthony relates to contempt allegations made by Mrs Isbilen. She alleges that Mr Turk has breached a judges order by failing to disclose a considerable amount of information relating to the whereabouts of certain defined assets. Mr Turk disputes claims made against him and says he has done his best to co-operate and attempted to comply with the order. The dukes name appears more than a dozen times in written case summaries, prepared by lawyers on both sides, for the hearing being overseen by Sir Anthony. The mother of a 28-year-old woman shot with a machine gun in her home faced her daughters killers in court and called them monsters as they were jailed for life for the murder. Environmental health worker Ashley Dale was killed when gunman James Witham, 41, forced his way into her home in Old Swan, Liverpool, in the early hours of August 21 last year and opened fire with a Skorpion submachine gun. At Liverpool Crown Court on Wednesday, he and three other men convicted of the murder Niall Barry, 26, Sean Zeisz, 28 and Joseph Peers, 29, were all told they would serve minimum terms of more than 40 years. Reading a statement from the witness box, Ms Dales mother Julie, 46, looked at the four men in the dock and said: I hope you all understand that I will never ever forgive you, for the life sentence you have gave to me and my family. People speak about justice for Ashley but in my eyes there will never be justice, the only justice is that this would never have happened. Although I can now rest knowing that you monsters are going to pay for what you have done to me and my family and that you too have ruined your own lives and your familys lives. I hope my words haunt you all forever and you, James Witham, I hope when you go to sleep at night you too see my baby girls face as I do every single night. Ashley Dale, 28, was found with a gunshot wound in the back garden of her home in Old Swan, Liverpool in August 2022 (Merseyside Police/PA) Witham, who had his head in his hand as she spoke, left the dock for a short period after she finished reading the statement. He was jailed for a minimum of 43 years. Barry, who was described by the prosecution as the malign presence behind Ms Dales killing, was sentenced to a minimum term of 47 years. Sentencing, Mr Justice Goose said Witham and Barry were equally the most culpable for the murder, as Witham carried out the shooting and Barry provided the gun and was the protagonist. Joseph Peers, 29, said to be a foot soldier who drove Witham to the scene, was sentenced to at least 41 years and Sean Zeisz, 28, was told to serve a minimum of 42 years for actively encouraging the shooting. (l to r) Sean Zeisz, Niall Barry, Joseph Peers and James Witham have been sentenced (Merseyside Police/PA) The four men were found guilty following a seven-week trial of the murder of Ms Dale, conspiracy to murder her boyfriend Lee Harrison and conspiracy to possess a prohibited weapon a Skorpion sub-machine gun and ammunition with intent to endanger life. Mr Justice Goose said the crime had shocked both the local community and many in this country and was beyond any understanding. He told the court just after 12.30am on August 21, Witham, wearing a balaclava and carrying a Skorpion sub-machine gun loaded with 15 bullets, broke through the front door of Ms Dales home. Ms Dale was standing by the back door in the kitchen when she was hit in the abdomen, the court heard. Mr Justice Goose said: Witham wickedly fired 10 bullets towards her as she was vulnerable and defenceless. Her screams were heard by neighbours. Mrs Dale wore a necklace with her daughters name an a thumbprint (Peter Byrne/PA) The judge said it was a cruel twist that Mr Harrison had refused to help police in the investigation into his girlfriends death. He said, despite that, Ms Dales family had shown remarkable dignity as they listened to the evidence. He added: Ashley Dale was in the prime of her life when she was gunned down in her own home where she should have been safe. The jury heard a drug feud between Barry and Mr Harrison was re-ignited at the Glastonbury festival in June 2022. During the festival, Barry was heard threatening to stab Mr Harrison and Zeisz was assaulted by a group said to include Jordan Thompson a friend of Mr Harrisons and member of the Hillside organised crime group with which he was associated. Voicenotes and messages sent to friends by Ms Dale in the two months before her death were played during the trial describing the fall-out, which intensified when mutual friend Rikki Warnick took his own life in July last year. Barry and Zeisz were also given concurrent sentences for drugs supply offences and Barry was sentenced for possession of prohibited firearms and conspiracy to sell or transfer firearms. Green groups have criticised the Chancellor for tinkering at the edges of the net zero transition in his autumn statement by failing to announce enough bold reforms. In the spring Budget, Jeremy Hunt said he would respond to the US Inflation Reduction Act and the EUs Green Deal, which are both aimed at stimulating domestic investment in renewable industries such as electric car manufacturing. Last week the Treasury said it was investing 4.5 billion into UK manufacturing, which includes funding for developing zero emissions vehicles and clean energy manufacturing, and used the majority of the autumn statement to set out cuts to tax and national insurance ahead of an expected election next year. Mr Hunt said the Government would improve access to the electricity grid by changing planning laws to allow more cables and pylons to be installed, with households living near the new infrastructure offered up to 10,000 for the inconvenience. He told MPs on Wednesday: These measures will cut grid access delays by 90% and offer up to 10,000 off electricity bills over 10 years for those living closest to new transmission infrastructure. Taken together these planning and grid reforms are estimated to accelerate around 90 billion of additional business investment over the next 10 years. Environmentalists said investing in cleaner transport, retrofitting homes to make them more energy efficient and switching to renewable power generation faster would achieve the growth the Chancellor wants to see. Friends of the Earths head of policy, Mike Childs, said: With crucial UN climate talks less than a week away, there was little in this statement to boost the UKs rapidly evaporating credibility on climate change. Households near new grid infrastructure are to be offered up to 10,000 off their electricity bills (Gareth Fuller/PA) There was cold comfort for the millions of households bracing themselves for yet another winter in damp, freezing homes that they cant afford to heat. Yet again the Chancellor was silent on the need for a national drive to insulate homes the most significant measure to reduce sky-high energy bills. Ofgem, the energy regulator, is expected to raise the price cap on consumer bills on Thursday, resulting in higher costs for households come January. Peter Chalkley, director at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, welcomed Mr Hunts announcements on improving grid access and support for clean energy manufacturing but bemoaned the lack of attention on improving energy efficiency in homes, especially after the Government recently abandoned its requirement for landlords to upgrade their properties. Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer said: The Government has chosen headline-grabbing pre-election tax cut bribes over doing their job properly providing good public services and protecting citizens from harm caused by the cost-of-living crisis and the climate crisis. The country cannot afford pre-election tax cut bribes from this failed Tory Government. They mean postponing, yet again, the action we need to tackle the climate crisis action that would create new, secure, well-paid green jobs. Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said a vast scale-up of renewable energy, insulation and greener transport would boost the economy and save people money. She added: The Chancellor is completely out of step with the reality people are facing up and down this country. Today we needed to see bold leadership and a big vision for a green industrial strategy but all we got was tinkering at the edges. These small reforms will do nothing to tackle the scale of the problems our economy and climate face. 4.5bn to support UK manufacturing. Were boosting jobs across the UK, safeguarding our energy security, building health resilience and preparing for a green future. pic.twitter.com/ORyBi2HvKX HM Treasury (@hmtreasury) November 22, 2023 Jeff Knott, director of policy and advocacy at the RSPB, said the lack of any announcement for investment in UK nature makes it more difficult to restore the wildlife that has been destroyed over the centuries. He said: The natural world underpins everything in our lives, including the economy, and there is strong evidence to show that investing in nature improves our long-term economic performance. This was a chance for Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to prove that the UK Government is committed to promises made to protect and restore 30% of our land and sea by 2030. Were already one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet and political inaction is helping push our natural world to the brink. We urgently need all our politicians to speak up and act. Nature cant wait any longer. Up to 7 million will be committed to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities, Jeremy Hunt has announced. The Chancellor said the funding will be given to organisations, like the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) charity, over three years to combat a rise in antisemitic incidents in education settings. It comes after two Jewish schools in north London were vandalised with red paint last month following Hamass attack on Israel and the subsequent military retaliation. During the autumn statement, Mr Hunt expressed his horror at the attack on Israeli citizens in October and the subsequent loss of life on both sides. Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, he said: I am deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in our country, so I am announcing up to 7 million over the next three years for organisations like the Holocaust Educational Trust to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities. I will also repeat the 3 million uplift to the Community Security Trust (CST). When it comes to antisemitism and all forms of racism, we must never allow the clock to be turned back. The CST, a charity aiming to protect British Jews from antisemitism and related threats, has recorded hundreds of incidents since the attacks on Israel at the start of October. Meanwhile, the Union of Jewish Students has received many calls to a helpline set up for students to report concerns and antisemitic incidents. Karen Pollock, HET chief executive, said: We have seen a shocking rise of anti-Jewish racism on our streets, online, on university campuses and in our schools. Education is the key in combatting the worlds oldest hatred. The Holocaust Educational Trust has worked with Government for years and we thank them for their trust in us and this continued support. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: We welcome this additional support in tackling antisemitism but we are also concerned about other forms of prejudice, including Islamophobia. Schools do an excellent job in teaching pupils about different faith perspectives and the damage and prejudice caused by stereotypes based on religion. However, they are doing this in the context of sharply polarised views in wider society and amidst a barrage of misinformation and hatred on social media platforms. There needs to be a broader, society-wide effort to tackle all forms of prejudice. A Universities UK spokesperson said: Universities UK welcomes the Chancellors pledge to fund the combating of antisemitism in schools and universities. There is no place for antisemitism in universities and to tackle the issue we need to raise awareness of how antisemitism can manifest, such as through harmful tropes. Universities UK has published guidance on tackling antisemitism, as well as other forms of racism, intolerance and harassment. Girls Aloud will reunite for a 2024 arena tour in memory of their late bandmate Sarah Harding. The band announced the tour with a video which saw Nadine Coyle, Cheryl, Nicola Roberts and Kimberley Walsh reunite at a drive-in cinema where clips of the band performing their hit tracks including Sound Of The Underground, Love Machine, Call The Shots and Biology were played. The tour will be a celebration of Sarah, our music and our incredible fans, the social media announcement said. Announcing The @GirlsAloud Show arena tour next May/June 2024. A celebration of Sarah, our music & our incredible fans. On sale Fri 1 Dec, Presale Weds 29 Nov. Presale signup: https://t.co/uNLymJO9VX. We cant wait to sing & dance with you again pic.twitter.com/Kgifar5BWM Kimberley Walsh (@KimberleyJWalsh) November 22, 2023 The tour will kick off on May 18 in Dublin, hitting Manchester, Cardiff and Newcastle at the end of the month, before heading to Aberdeen and Glasgow in June, as well as Nottingham, Leeds and Birmingham. The band will perform two nights at Londons O2 before closing the tour at the Liverpool M&S Bank Arena on June 29. It comes after the death of Harding in 2021 at the age of 39, after revealing she had breast cancer which had spread to other parts of her body. In an interview with BBC News, Roberts said: Were going to do our absolute utmost to celebrate her in the most enormous, magical way. Coyle confirmed that while rumours of the reunion tour were true, there is no new music or video coming although weve shot a commercial, she said. Nicola Roberts, Nadine Coyle, Kimberley Walsh, Cheryl and Sarah Harding of Girls Aloud (Ian West/PA) Cheryl said: Making new music without Sarah would be odd, but celebrating what we made together? Fabulous. The group formed in 2002 on reality show Popstars: The Rivals and went on to achieve four UK number one singles and a Brit award for The Promise. After parting ways, the group reunited with new music for their 10th anniversary while a second reunion was planned for their 20th anniversary when Harding was diagnosed with cancer. Roberts said: Its not going to be easy for us to put a show together with four people, instead of five, while Cheryl added: It hasnt felt right, until now, to do anything without her, but now we feel strong enough, emotionally. While Coyle suggested that some of Hardings original vocals could be used in the show. A pre-sale will begin on November 29 at 9am with the general sale on December 1 at the same time. The Government is considering selling shares in NatWest to the general public in the coming year as it moves to offload its stake in the British bank, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has announced. Mr Hunt unveiled the plans in his autumn statement delivered to the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon. The retail offer would form part of efforts to reduce the Governments and therefore taxpayers stake in the bank, and mean everyday retail investors get the chance to buy a chunk. The Government currently owns a 38.69% stake in the lender after selling 1.26 billion worth of shares back to the firm in May, taking it down from around 41%. It has been gradually whittling down its shareholding following its near 46 billion bailout of Royal Bank of Scotland during the 2008 financial crisis. It rebranded to NatWest Group in 2020 under the leadership of former chief executive Alison Rose. Savers should be able to invest in the banks they use day to day. That's why we're exploring options for a retail offer of @NatWestGroup shares as part of plans to reduce the governments stake. Promoting a savings and investment culture. pic.twitter.com/DycZtB06uS HM Treasury (@hmtreasury) November 22, 2023 The Government wants to fully hand over its shareholding in the group by 2025 to 2026, subject to supportive market conditions and if sales offer value for money, it said. The move is also being presented as a way to get more people saving and investing. Mr Hunt told the Commons that it was time to get Sid investing again. The remark refers to the Tell Sid advertising campaign in the 1980s, encouraging people to buy shares in state-owned businesses including British Gas under Prime Minister Margaret Thatchers privatisation drive. Furthermore, the Treasury said that savers should be able to invest in the banks they use day to day. A spokeswoman for NatWest said: Any decisions around share sales are a matter for the Government. We welcome the Governments continued commitment to returning NatWest Group to private ownership and believe this is in the best interests of the bank and our shareholders. NatWests share price was down by more than 1% following the announcement. The King has presented honorary MBEs to K-pop band Blackpink at Buckingham Palace in the presence of South Koreas president and first lady. The special investiture on Wednesday morning for Jennie Kim, Jisoo Kim, Lisa Manobal and Rose Park from South Koreas biggest girl group was in recognition of the bands role as advocates for the Cop26 Summit in Glasgow. Charles told the group he was so glad to present the MBEs, adding that it was a marvellous thing to do so in the presence of South Koreas President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee during their state visit to the UK. The MBEs were awarded on the recommendation of the UK Government (Victoria Jones/PA) After presenting the MBEs, Charles discussed the bands recent tour and joked to the group: The great thing is that youre still talking to each other after all these years of working together. Charles then told the K-pop band: I hope I should be able to see you perform live at some point. Jennie Kim told Charles that receiving the MBE was the most honourable thing for us. The band, who became the first Korean group to headline a major UK festival during the summer, then posed for photographs alongside Charles and the South Korean president and first lady in Buckingham Palaces 1844 Room. One of the bands songs Ddu-Du, Ddu-Du, was played during the guard change at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday morning in honour of the South Korean presidents three-day state visit to the UK. The Band of the Coldstream Guards also played the popular K-pop song, Gangnam Style, by Psy and the Korean folk song, Arirang, before the investiture took place. In his state banquet speech on Tuesday, Charles paid tribute to Koreans interest in protecting the environment and singled out the K-pop group, who released their first album in 2016, for praise. He told the guests: I applaud Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rose, better known collectively as Blackpink, for their role in bringing the message of environmental sustainability to a global audience as ambassadors for the UKs presidency of Cop26, and later as advocates for the UN sustainable development goals. The King, joined by The President and First Lady of the Republic of Korea, has welcomed @BLACKPINK to Buckingham Palace, as they are awarded Honorary MBEs. The K-Pop band have been awarded the honours in recognition of their role as Advocates for the COP26 Summit in Glasgow. pic.twitter.com/8xeD4zWP3J The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) November 22, 2023 I can only admire how they can prioritise these vital issues, as well as being global superstars. Sadly, when I was in Seoul all those years ago, I am not sure I developed much of what might be called the Gangnam Style! The MBEs were awarded on the recommendation of the UK Government which first appointed Blackpink as Cop26 Advocates in January 2021. In their role as advocates, Blackpink released a series of videos aimed at encouraging young people to learn more about climate change, which Buckingham Palace said resulted in significantly increased engagement with the summit from young audiences. The band have subsequently been appointed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as global ambassadors for the UNs sustainable development goals. Laurence Foxs libel battle with two people he referred to as paedophiles on social media is to reach trial. The actor-turned-politician is being sued by former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and drag artist Crystal over a row on Twitter, now known as X, in October 2020. Mr Fox called Mr Blake and the former RuPauls Drag Race contestant, whose real name is Colin Seymour, paedophiles in an exchange about a decision by Sainsburys to celebrate Black History Month. The Lewis star who founded the Reclaim Party is counter-suing the pair and actress Nicola Thorp over tweets accusing him of racism. Just so it's been said: My libel trial against Laurence Fox starts on Wednesday next week at the Royal Courts of Justice. I am suing him for calling me a paedophile and he is suing me for calling him a racist. At the suggestion of my lawyer, I have closed replies. Crystal (@crystalwillseeu) November 17, 2023 Mr Fox said at the time he would boycott Sainsburys, accusing it of promoting racial segregation and discrimination. A trial, expected to last a week, will begin on Wednesday at the High Court in London with Mr Fox due to give evidence. The 45-year-old previously made a bid for a jury to decide the case rather than a judge, which is now highly unusual in defamation cases. However, Mr Justice Nicklin denied Mr Foxs request in a ruling in May 2022. Mr Foxs barrister Alexandra Marzec had said a jury would be better at reaching fair verdicts in light of the cultural and social context of this case, adding that judges could be subject to involuntary bias. Mr Justice Nicklin said in his written judgment: The defendant has not satisfied me that a fair-minded and informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility that a judge trying this case alone would suffer from involuntary bias. The fair-minded and informed observer must be taken to know that, faithful to his/her judicial oath, the judge in this case would be required to apply the law to the determination of the issues in the case, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. The trial before Mrs Justice Collins Rice is set to begin at 10.30am. Several people have been rescued by lifeboat crews following an attempted small boat crossing in the Channel. Details about whether there were injuries and the number of people involved had yet to be confirmed. The coastguard helicopter and the RNLI are among those who were alerted. Photographs of the scene showed groups of people being brought in to Dungeness, Kent, by an RNLI lifeboat. A group of people are brought in to Dungeness, Kent, (Gareth Fuller) One person was pictured being taken away from the shore on a stretcher. An RNLI spokesman said an RNLI lifeboat was tasked this afternoon and the rescue is ongoing. A spokesman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said: HM Coastguard is currently working with the French Coastguard who are co-ordinating the response to an incident involving a small boat in the French search and rescue region, working with Border Force and other partners. HM Coastguard will continue to work with partners to respond to those in distress around the seas and coastal areas of the UK. A group of people being helped by RNLI lifeboat following a small boat incident in the Channel. (Gareth Fuller/PA) The incident came after two migrants died earlier on Wednesday off the coast of France. A UK Government spokesperson said: Earlier today, there was an emergency response to a number of people in distress in the Channel inside French waters. Sadly, French authorities confirmed that two lives have been lost. These deaths are devastating and our thoughts are with the victims family and friends at this time. This is a tragic reminder of the extreme dangers of this evil trade and of how vital it is that we stop the boats. Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UKs refugee and migrant rights director, said: We are heartbroken by this loss of life and our immediate thoughts are with the family and friends who have lost their loved ones. The new Home Secretary must finally be the one to face up to reality. People will continue to attempt dangerous Channel crossings while they are without safe access to fair and efficient asylum procedures on each side of the water including safe routes to the UK for people whose family and other connections are here. We urge ministers to radically change their focus rather than trying to avoid all responsibility for asylum, the UK must accept its part in providing safety and encourage other countries to do the same. Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: This is yet another appalling and preventable tragedy that demonstrates yet again the urgent need for safe routes so men women and children from countries such as Afghanistan dont have to take dangerous journeys across the worlds busiest shipping lane. The Government has pledged to spend 500 million over the next two years on the computing power for AI models to help make the UK a world leader in technology. In his autumn statement, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the funding would help create new innovation centres to help make us an AI powerhouse. The Government said the key to the UK creating a world-leading AI ecosystem was access to compute, which helps develop new artificial intelligence foundation models used to power programmes such as AI-powered chatbots and powerful problem-solving and analysis tools used by scientists and researchers. The additional funding will bring the total planned investment in compute to over 1.5 billion, the Government said, which could allow researchers and start-ups to develop new AI models. When it comes to tech, we know that AI will be at the heart of any future growth. I want to make sure our universities, scientists and start-ups can access the compute power they need, Mr Hunt said. So building on the success of the supercomputing centres in Edinburgh and Bristol, I will invest a further 500 million over the next two years to fund further innovation centres to help make us an AI powerhouse. The UK hosted the first AI Safety Summit earlier this month and has launched an AI Safety Institute, which plans to work with the biggest industry firms to test and evaluate new AI models before they are released to the public. Industry expert Jonathan Boakes, managing director at tech firm Infinum, said the latest investment in AI was welcome, but more funding for education around AI was also needed. The UK Governments allocation of 500 million for AI powerhouses and a 25% tax deduction on IT expenditure shows strong support for tech innovation. But theres huge concern that this investment might not be used wisely, he said. Research shows 78% of UK businesses plan to invest in AI in the next year, but 73% feel unprepared for its integration. Success in the AI revolution demands more than just plugging gaps with cash. It requires strategic planning, workforce training, and expert collaboration to maximise the impact and prevent implementing AI for AIs sake. The rush to embrace AI carries the risk of hasty decisions fuelled by FOMO (fear of missing out), jeopardising sound judgment. While the financial boost is appreciated, it must come with clear guidelines and support from the Government to empower businesses in utilising it effectively. Families and friends of about 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring them home during a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Israel's Cabinet was convening Tuesday to consider a possible deal for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a temporary halt to Israel's military offensive in Gaza. Hamas captured the hostages in an Oct. 7 cross-border attack that killed at least 1,200 people and triggered an Israeli invasion of Gaza. Ariel Schalit/AP Families and friends of about 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring them home during a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Israel's Cabinet was convening Tuesday to consider a possible deal for the release of some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a temporary halt to Israel's military offensive in Gaza. Hamas captured the hostages in an Oct. 7 cross-border attack that killed at least 1,200 people and triggered an Israeli invasion of Gaza. Ariel Schalit/AP Palestinians pray for their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in front of the morgue of al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Adel Hana/AP A wounded Palestinian child is carried into the Nasser Hospital following an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Mohammed Dahman/AP A woman plasters photos of Israeli children from Kibbutz Afar Azza missing and held captive in Gaza, in Tel Aviv, Israel Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. The hostages, mostly Israeli citizens, were kidnapped during an Oct. 7 Hamas cross-border attack in Israel and have been held in Gaza since then. Ariel Schalit/AP A wounded Palestinian woman receives medical treatment at the Nasser Hospital following an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Mohammed Dahman/AP Black smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of Aita al-Shaab, a Lebanese border village with Israel, as it is seen from Rmeish village in south Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Tension has been rising along the Lebanon-Israel border since the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel. Hussein Malla/AP A wounded Palestinian woman is carried into the Nasser Hospital following an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Mohammed Dahman/AP Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in central Israel, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Oded Balilty/AP Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from the town of Sderot, southern Israel, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Leo Correa/AP Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, in the hospital in Khan Younis, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Fatima Shbair/AP Palestinians transport flour distributed by the U.N. during the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Hatem Ali/AP President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting on combating fentanyl, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023, in Washington. Evan Vucci/AP JERUSALEM (AP) Qatar on Wednesday announced a truce-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas that would bring a four-day halt in fighting in a devastating six-week war, win freedom for dozens of hostages held in the Gaza Strip, and also lead to the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners. Qatar's Foreign Ministry said it would announce within a day when the clock will start ticking on the truce, during which 50 hostages will be released in stages in exchange for what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinians prisoners held by Israel. Those freed by both sides will be women and children. Humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza would also increase. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The announcement came hours after Israel's Cabinet approved the deal. It capped weeks of indirect Qatari-led negotiations between Israel and Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years. The United States and Egypt were also involved in stop-and-go talks to free some of the roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas and other militants in Gaza. Hostage releases will begin roughly 24 hours after the deal is approved by all parties, said a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office made no mention of the release of Palestinian prisoners or increased humanitarian aid when it confirmed the Cabinet had approved the deal. The government of Israel is committed to bringing all of the hostages home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, the office said in a statement. Ahead of the Cabinet vote, which came after a six-hour meeting stretching into the early morning, Netanyahu said the war against Hamas would resume after the truce expires. Advertisement Article continues below this ad We are at war, and we will continue the war, he said. We will continue until we achieve all our goals. In welcoming the deal, President Joe Biden emphasized that Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure not only all hostages are released but that humanitarian assistance can be sent to Palestinians in Gaza. Biden, who is in Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the Thanksgiving holiday, said the agreement should release some American hostages, and added: I will not stop until they are all released. The Israeli government statement said that the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. A longer-term lull could lead to pressure, both international and domestic, for Israel to end its war without achieving its goal of destroying Hamas military capabilities. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The International Committee of the Red Cross said it is standing by to assist any swap in the Israel-Hamas war. Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric met with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar, as well as Qatari political leaders, earlier this week. The war erupted on Oct. 7 when several thousand Hamas militants burst across the border into Israel, killing at least 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage. Most of the dead were civilians, while the hostages include small children, women and older people. Israel responded with weeks of devastating airstrikes on Gaza, followed by a ground invasion that began over three weeks ago. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It does not differentiate between civilians and militants, though some two-thirds of the dead have been identified as women and minors. Israel says thousands of Hamas militants have been killed. The invasion has caused vast destruction in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, displaced an estimated 1.7 million people and caused a humanitarian crisis with shortages of food, medicines, fuel and other key supplies throughout the territory. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Israel has rejected growing international criticism and vowed to press ahead until it destroys Hamas military and governing capabilities and all hostages are freed. Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israels destruction, has ruled Gaza since ousting the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007. The return of any of the hostages could lift spirits in Israel, where the plight of the captives has gripped the countrys attention. Airwaves are filled with interviews with families of the hostages, who include babies and toddlers, women and children and people in their 80s with health issues. The families have become a powerful force in Israel, staging mass demonstrations and marches pressuring the government to bring home their loved ones. They have made a central Tel Aviv square their headquarters, where evocative displays like a long white table with seats for all 240 hostages are meant to keep their plight in the public eye. But the structure of the deal could weaken Israel from various directions. Any pause would give Hamas and its shadowy leader, Yehya Sinwar, a chance to regroup after suffering heavy losses during the fighting, especially if Hamas drags things out with additional hostage releases. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Israel claims to have killed thousands of Hamas fighters, though it has not presented evidence, and destroyed parts of the groups underground tunnel system. But Israeli officials acknowledge much of the groups infrastructure remains intact. A cease-fire could also add to the already growing international pressure on Israel to halt its offensive as the full extent of damage in Gaza becomes apparent. Even the U.S., Israels chief backer, has expressed concerns about the heavy toll on Gazas civilian population. Some three-quarters of Gazas population has been uprooted from their homes and are staying in overcrowded and unsanitary shelters. Many, if not most, will be unable to return home because of the vast damage in the north and the continued presence of Israeli troops there. That could lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster as people remain in shelters or are forced to live in tents through the cold, rainy winter. And in Israel, the staggered releases of hostages risks triggering divisions between families of those who are freed and those who remain in captivity. Soldiers, for instance, are likely to be among the last to be freed. Families of the soldiers, who include young women who served as spotters along the border, are likely to press the government not to resume the offensive until their loved ones return home as well. There are many families and many opinions, Hadas Kalderon, whose two young children were abducted with their father, told Israels Channel 12 TV. A lengthy truce could also affect Israels battle readiness. While Israeli troops are expected to remain in place and the Israeli military said its battle plans remain intact, it will be difficult and risky for the army to leave its forces stationary behind enemy lines. Asked about a cease-fire, the armys chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said: The army will know how to maintain its operational achievements. Hamas may try to declare a victory, but Sinwar will have little to celebrate. Even if he survives and Hamas maintains power, he will emerge to vast destruction that will take years, if not decades, to repair. In the meantime, fighting continued on Tuesday, with the front line of the war shifting to the Jabaliya refugee camp, a dense warren of concrete buildings near Gaza City that houses families displaced in the 1948 war surrounding Israels creation. Israel has bombarded the area for weeks, and the military said Hamas fighters have regrouped there and in other eastern districts after being pushed out of much of Gaza City. In southern Lebanon, an Israeli strike killed two journalists with Al-Mayadeen TV, according to the Hezbollah-allied Pan-Arab network and Lebanese officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. A separate Israeli drone strike in Lebanon killed four Hamas members, a Palestinian official and a Lebanon security official said. The Israeli military has been trading fire almost daily across the border with Lebanons Hezbollah group and Palestinian militants since the outbreak of the war. On Tuesday, Gaza's Health Ministry said that as of Nov. 11 it had lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of large parts of the health system. It believes the actual death toll has risen sharply above the official number of 11,000. Some 2,700 people are missing and believed to be buried under rubble, and hospitals have continued to report deaths from daily strikes, often dozens at a time. The Israeli military says 68 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive. ___ Jeffery reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem and Colleen Long in Washington contributed. ___ Scotlands sole oil refinery is to cease operations in 2025, its owners have announced. Petroineos, which owns the plant at Grangemouth, said it will become a fuel import terminal. The company said in a statement: The timescale for any operational change has not yet been determined but the work will take around 18 months to complete and the refinery is therefore expected to continue operating until spring 2025. The firm said the site faces significant challenges due to global market pressures and the energy transition. Petroineos said around 500 workers are employed at the site and a number of employees will remain following the move to an import-only terminal. Trade union Unite has said it will leave no stone unturned in its fight to save jobs at Grangemouth. Unites Sharon Graham said the announcement raises concerns for the livelihoods of our members at the refinery (PA) Franck Demay, chief executive at Petroineos Refining, said: This does not change anything for our operation today, where it is business-as-usual at the Grangemouth refinery. We currently anticipate continuing refinery operations until spring 2025. He added: As the energy transition gathers pace, this is a necessary step in adapting our business to reflect the decline in demand for the type of fuels we produce. As a prudent operator, we must plan accordingly but the precise timeline for implementing any change has yet to be determined. This is the start of a journey to transform our operation from one that manufactures fuel products, into a business that imports finished fuel products for onward distribution to customers. Throughout this process, our focus will remain on the safe production and reliable supply of high-quality fuels to our customers in Scotland, the north of England and Northern Ireland. As we start to make this investment in preparing for a future transformation, we are equally committed to a regular programme of engagement with our colleagues about the changes we are making to our business. The firm is also currently assessing a number of green opportunities for the site, it has said, including a bio-refinery. Climate campaigners have held protests at the Grangemouth site (Jane Barlow/PA) Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: This proposal clearly raises concerns for the livelihoods of our members but also poses major questions over energy supply and security going forward. Unite will leave no stone unturned in the fight for jobs and will hold politicians to account for their actions. Derek Thomson, the unions Scottish secretary, said: Unite continues to engage with Petroineos and we urge other stakeholders such as the Scottish and UK governments to do the same due to the implications that this proposal will have for the economies of the devolved and reserved administrations. Every option must be on the table in order to secure the hundreds of highly skilled jobs based at the Grangemouth complex for the long-term. The announcement should act as a huge wake-up call to politicians across the UK, according to the GMB union. This is a deeply worrying time for the future of the workers and communities dependent on Grangemouth, said Gary Smith, the unions general secretary. Time and again, GMB has said the UK needs a plan and not bans for better energy independence and prosperity. Todays announcement should be a huge wake-up call to policymakers across the political spectrum. The Scottish Conservatives described the situation as devastating for Grangemouth refinery staff and a hammer blow for the national and local economies. Douglas Lumsden, the partys net-zero spokesman, said the hostile attitude shown by the Scottish Government and the UK Labour Party towards oil and gas will have been a factor in the decision, although it is unclear if this is the case. They all fail to recognise the need for oil and gas such as the refinery at Grangemouth to be part of Scotland and the UKs energy mix for years to come, he said. Instead, the highly skilled workforce at Grangemouth have been delivered the worst possible news at a difficult time. The SNP-Green Government must act now. We have requested an urgent statement from ministers today in the Scottish Parliament to outline what this will mean for workers and what decisive action will be taken to support them. Willie Rennie described it as a dark day for the Grangemouth workforce (PA) Scottish Green MSP Gillian Mackay is calling for an urgent summit on the issue, saying: This is an appalling way to treat workers who only months ago were being promised that they would be part of a just transition for the site. Instead they are being told their jobs are at risk just weeks before Christmas. Sir Jim Ratcliffe and his executives must explain themselves to the community that has for 100 years worked and loyally supported this site, and fully expected a better and more sustainable future that would support generations more. I grew up less than 200 yards from the plant and I can tell you right now that workers at the plant are bewildered, betrayed and furious at finding out about this from a story on the internet long after shareholders were made aware. They have been given next to no information in fact, I broke the news to one senior union official. Scottish Liberal Democrat economy spokesman Willie Rennie called on the UK and Scottish governments to step up. He said: This is a dark day for the workers at Grangemouth. If the just transition is to be more than just a slogan, it must deliver a future for the workers and for the Grangemouth site. The Scottish and UK governments must step up now. While Friends of the Earth Scotland said staff deserve better than how they have been treated today by rich bosses in distant board rooms, blaming the Scottish Government for its failure to put concrete transition plans in place with workers. A police inspector responsible for instructing officers across Police Scotland said there was no way of telling what training officers actually received in the run-up to Sheku Bayohs death. Inspector James Young gave evidence to the Sheku Bayoh Inquiry for the second time on Wednesday. He was the national officer safety training (OST) co-ordinator for Police Scotland at the time of Mr Bayohs death. Mr Bayoh, 31, a father-of-two, died after he was restrained on the ground by six police officers in Kirkcaldy on May 3 2015. Solicitor Aamer Anwar, centre, with Sheku Bayohs family (Dan Barker/PA) The inquiry is investigating the circumstances of his death, how police dealt with the aftermath, the subsequent investigation, and whether race was a factor. Mr Young told the inquiry, in a written statement, that a new training manual had come into use from 2013 to be used across all of the former legacy forces that made up Police Scotland to ensure there was consistency across the country. But some trainers across the force preferred to use their own techniques because they did not agree with the methods contained in the manual, Inspector Young told the inquiry. Senior Counsel to the inquiry, Angela Grahame KC, took Mr Young through a statement from David Agnew, a trainer at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan, Fife, in which he outlined the best practice approach to training. Mr Agnew wrote that students (trainee police officers) were taught to be aware of the signs of positional asphyxia and they would be reminded that because somebody can speak and shout, it did not necessarily mean they were able to breathe properly. He also wrote that students would be taught to look out for behavioural changes such as suddenly stopping resistance and going limp. The inquiry heard students were also taught to be mindful of where they were placing their hands and body weight when restraining a subject. In his written statement, Mr Agnew wrote: We would teach students that the knee should be on the shoulder and we would point out that it shouldnt be on the head, shouldnt be on the neck, shouldnt be on the back or anything like that, it should always be on the shoulder that we were putting that pressure. Ms Grahame asked if what Mr Agnew had written about was similar to Mr Youngs recollection of what new recruits should be taught. Yes, he answered. Mr Young also said that prior to changes in the way officers were trained, it was not uncommon to see officers lying across the backs of violent subjects to restrain them. Ms Grahame asked Mr Young about the training received by the officers who had been on the scene at Hayfield Road in Kirkcaldy, the day of Mr Bayohs death. Police Constables Ashley Tomlinson, James McDonough and Kayleigh Good were all probationer officers on May 8 2015 and had received either initial operational training, or refresher training, in the six months since the days events. Ms Grahame asked Mr Young: Would it be fair to say Pcs Tomlinson, McDonough and Good would all have received training in relation to the 2013 manual? Mr Young replied: For some elements it is fair to say that. For the refresher elements, there is no way of telling what training they actually received because it was back at force and as I outlined in my evidence, there was that disparity across (legacy) forces. It was difficult to ascertain exactly what training they would have received in the refresher. The inquiry has heard previously that level five force, known as deadly or lethal force had been used in restraining Mr Bayoh. He was shoulder-charged and punched by Pc Craig Walker and that the upper part of Pc Walkers 25-stone body was on Mr Bayohs shoulder. Mr Bayoh died shortly after his confrontation with police. His family believe race played a part in his death, which the inquiry is investigating. The inquiry, before Lord Bracadale, continues. Sir James Dyson has been forced to defend his severely damaged reputation after an article in the Daily Mirror suggested he was a hypocrite, the inventor has told the High Court. Sir James, 76, returned to a witness box in the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday for the second day of his evidence in a libel trial against the newspapers publisher Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over an article published in January 2022. In the Daily Mirror article, journalist Brian Reade referred to the engineer as the vacuum-cleaner tycoon who championed Vote Leave due to the economic opportunities it would bring to British industry before moving his global head office to Singapore. Sir James Dyson said he did not believe he had been hypocritical (Gareth Fuller/PA) He continued: Kids, talk the talk but then screw your country and if anyone complains, tell them to suck it up. Sir James subsequently brought a claim against MGN for libel, describing the allegations in the article as a vicious and vitriolic personal attack. MGN is defending the claim, including on the basis of honest opinion. During the second day of his cross-examination, Sir James was asked about the January 2019 announcement that the Dyson company would be establishing a global headquarters in Singapore. The inventor said he did not believe he had been hypocritical, adding: I dont think it was a vote of no confidence in Britain because since Brexit I have continued to invest in Britain I have continued to do so. Adrienne Page KC, for MGN, asked Sir James why he felt like you have to spend 1 million on a lawsuit, when he had a significant public status, including an article under his name in The Telegraph newspaper rebutting the allegation he had behaved hypocritically. He said: This was a vicious and vitriolic attack on me personally We got in touch with you (MGN) and you didnt bother to reply. He continued: We offered to settle with an apology and a correction at an early stage I am forced to continue to defend my reputation which you have severely damaged. Ms Page asked Sir James: Would you describe yourself as thin-skinned? The inventor replied: No. The trial at the Royal Courts of Justice in London is due to conclude on Friday (Aaron Chown/PA) In his written evidence for the case, Sir James said the allegations represent a personal attack on all that I have done and achieved in my lifetime and are highly distressing and hurtful. He continued: Most importantly, they undermine all the work I have done trying to help young people with an interest in engineering to gain the necessary training as well as practical experience and employment opportunities in this field. After reading parts of this evidence to the court, Ms Page suggested it was a huge exaggeration and that Mr Reades article was an expression of his opinion. Sir James denied any exaggeration, adding: It is not the opinion of an honest man. At the start of the trial on Tuesday, Justin Rushbrooke KC, for Sir James, said in written submissions that the articles, both in print and online, constituted a serious and unjustified slur on Sir Jamess reputation, business and personal. He added that an honest opinion is supposed to give latitude but it is not a licence for a journalist to mislead the reader. Mr Rushbrooke also pointed out that the word screwed could be seen as meaning underhand and discreditable. But Ms Page told the court the words in the article were substantially correct and that Sir James could not dictate how the commentator posed them. She added that the article is pitched to a lay audience, against a notorious background to 2019 and he is doing it pithily. On how the reference to having screwed the country could be viewed, the court heard that this may not necessarily be limited to the potential impact on the Dyson corporation. In written submissions, she added that Sir Jamess approach to the legal claim has been markedly unreasonable, wholly disproportionate and abusive. In a statement, a Dyson spokesman said Sir James had brought the legal claim as a last resort, adding that the allegations in the article were vicious, vitriolic and attacked his personal character in the very worst way. But an MGN spokesperson said: The Mirror will vigorously defend the honest opinions of our columnists which we consider in this case to be essentially indisputable. The trial before Mr Justice Jay is set to conclude on Friday, with a decision expected at a later date. Russell T Davies has revealed that Shirley Ballas will make a guest appearance in the upcoming series of Doctor Who. The Strictly Come Dancing head judge said she is very excited for people to see her in the sci-fi show, as she appeared alongside screenwriter and producer Davies on BBC Morning Live on Wednesday. The new series of the long-running BBC show will begin over the festive period, with Ncuti Gatwa as the 15th Doctor and Millie Gibson playing his companion Ruby Sunday. DOCTOR WHO TOP SECRET EXCLUSIVE ALERT! @russelldavies63 reveals 'a scoop' that someone in the Morning Live studio will be appearing on new @bbcdoctorwho. Watch this to find out WHO it is. She's been keeping it STRICTLY a secret until now. SHIRLEY not?!!#DoctorWho60 pic.twitter.com/1oheqTYF9u BBC Morning Live (@BBCMorningLive) November 22, 2023 Morning Live presenter Gethin Jones teased Davies that there was someone else in the studio who could potentially be on Doctor Who. Davies replied: Do you mean the top secret information that Shirley Ballas is going to appear in Doctor Who? Ballas then said: The filming was one of the best days of my life. Were doing a guest appearance with Jojo (Strictly professional Johannes Radebe) where I actually get to perform with Jojo and so many other dancers on the show, so Im very, very excited for people to watch. Davies said he ensured he was on set the day Ballas was filming as there was no way we could miss it. #DoctorWho officially returns from this week! Ready to see the Doctor and Donna back in action? pic.twitter.com/9NJFMt9bym Doctor Who (@bbcdoctorwho) November 20, 2023 Ahead of the new series, three special episodes will be aired to mark the 60th anniversary of the show, with David Tennant returning as the Time Lord alongside his former companion Donna Noble, played by Catherine Tate. The first special, titled The Star Beast, will air on November 25 on BBC One and will be followed by Wild Blue Yonder on December 2 and The Giggle on December 9. After being shown a trailer for the episodes, Davies said he is excited for them to be launched, adding: I feel like weve been previewing it for years, its finally on this Saturday, at last, were there. Discussing Tennant jumping from being the 10th Doctor to the 14th in the special episodes, Davies added: Its not massively different, you dont get David Tennant to come be different because hes loved and we want him to be the Doctor of old. But he is 15 years older and there are certain moments where youll see more human touches sometimes, but you keep watching you get to the third special and theres kind of a reason why that face comes back. An animatronic head of E.T., the beloved alien left behind on Earth in Steven Spielbergs classic movie, is expected to sell for as much as $1 million at an auction held on December 14-17 in Beverly Hills, California and online. The animatronic model from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is part of a sale organized by Juliens Auctions and Turner Classic Movies, which, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. More than 1,000 props and memorabilia from some of the best-known sci-fi, fantasy, action and superhero movies and TV series will be available at the auction. The model is expected to sell for up to $1 million. - Julien's Auctions Designed by the late Carlo Rambaldi, the model has some incredibly expressive moves. Its nostrils open and close, and its veins pulsate, while cables also allow for the movement of its eyes, lips, eyebrows, forehead and tongue. This model comes from Rambaldis own collection, as did the animatronic figure of E.T. sold by Juliens Auctions last November for $2.56 million. His daughter, Daniela Rambaldi, recalls her father finding inspiration for E.T.s expressive blue eyes from their family cat Kikka, the auction house said. The story of the homesick E.T. and his bond with Elliott, the boy who finds him, Spielbergs 1982 movie won near-universal acclaim and was nominated for nine Oscars, of which it won four. The Robot featured in the TV series "Lost In Space." - Julien's Auctions Other artifacts from movie history are also up for sale, including a full Batman costume worn by Michael Keaton in Batman Returns, which has an estimate of up to $70,000, and a model of The Robot from the 1960s sci-fi series Lost in Space. This model is one of the rarest artifacts from the era ever offered at auction which also is still functional, the auction house said, since only two full-scale models of The Robot were made during the shows run. It is expected to be sold for up to $500,000. Several items of Harry Potter memorabilia are for sale, too, including robes and the half-moon glasses worn by Richard Harris playing Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The robes - screen-matched for authenticity - and glasses are anticipated to reach up to $70,000 and $20,000, respectively. And for Marvel fans, props such as Captain Americas shield, complete with battle scars, from Captain America: The First Avenger, and a helmet worn by Robert Downey Jr. playing Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War are expected to sell for up to $70,000 and up to $40,000, respectively. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com Princess Eugenie says societys obsession with post-baby weight makes her go mad, especially after welcoming her second baby earlier this year. I find it really hard to shake baby weight, Eugenie, 33, admitted during the Table Manners podcast on Wednesday, November 22. I guess society dictates that you have to shake your baby weight and all that stuff. She and husband Jack Brooksbank share two sons together. They welcomed the elder, August, in February 2021, and their second child, Ernest, this past May. Months after giving birth, Eugenie admitted shes gluten and dairy free. However, her diet isnt just to help shed the post-baby weight, its also in support of her husband. Jack gets really bad migraines, so hes gluten and dairy free, she explained, noting that a gut specialist recommended their diet. Im doing it with him. Royal Family Tree update In honor of the royal baby's imminent birth, here's a look at where Prince William and Kate Middleton fit into Queen Elizabeth II's royal family tree Despite being part of the royal family, Eugenie noted that she was able to live a quite normal life while attending university. (Eugenies father is Prince Andrew, the late Queen Elizabeth IIs second eldest son.) Courtesy of Princess Eugenie/Instagram While shes not currently a working member of the family, Eugenie did admit that being a princess caused her some grief over the years especially when it comes to her looks. I guess everybody has that if youre in the public eye, she recalled. I guess within our family, it happens at that perfect age where youre, you know, 13 years old and youve got that dorky bowl haircut and youre a bit chubby and you know, all the boys are bullying you and all that kind of stuff. Eugenie also made an offhand comment that the public scrutiny has definitely has caused a couple of issues around my relationship with having to look a certain way. However, splitting her time living in both the U.K. and Portugal offers a different kind of privacy. I can go to the supermarket in my exercise gear and my hair piled on my head and not mind, not care, she said of living in Lisbon. No one cares. January 2018 Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank Relationship Timeline After more than a decade together, Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank remain as in love as ever. After seven years of dating and doing long distance, Brooksbank proposed during a trip to Nicaragua in January 2018. The lake was so beautiful. The light was just a special light I had never seen, Eugenie recalled via [] While Eugenie hopes that Portugal is forever in terms of living half and half, she plans to have her sons be educated in London. Eugenie and her family split time between the two countries due to her husbands job working in marketing, sales and promotion with the Discovery Land Company. Eugenie and Brooksbank, 37, dated for seven years before he proposed during a trip to Nicaragua in January 2018. They got married in October of that year. With two kids, the couple has the perfect little family. Even Eugenie notes that their sons are angels. I think Ive got magic children that take after me and Jack, she joked on Wednesdays podcast. They love sleeping. By Tom Balmforth KYIV (Reuters) -European Council President Charles Michel visited wartime Kyiv on Tuesday as Ukraine marks 10 years since the start of mass protests that toppled a Moscow-backed president and set Kyiv on a resolute pro-Western course. Michel's visit to the Ukrainian capital 21 months into Russia's full-scale invasion comes weeks before Kyiv hopes the European Union's leaders will agree to launch the long process of formal negotiations for it to join the bloc. "Good to be back in Kyiv among friends," Michel wrote on social media platform X. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a video address, said aspirations to join the European Union had been a "romantic dream" in Kyiv two decades ago but had now become a "reality" and that "it is no longer possible to stop our progress". "Therefore, our candidate status and further accession negotiations should certainly result in Ukraine's full membership in the EU," he said. Maia Sandu, the pro-European president of former Soviet Moldova, which is also hoping to secure the start of formal EU accession talks next month, travelled to Kyiv and met Zelenskiy. Ukraine and Moldova have been conducting a set of reforms to win over members of the EU to further their bids amid signs of an increasingly gloomy outlook from Brussels ahead of the EU summit next month. A senior EU official told Reuters last week that the formal launch of talks next month could be "at risk", sounding a downbeat note at time when global attention has shifted from the war in Ukraine to the conflict in Gaza. On the battlefield, Kyiv's counteroffensive has not delivered the breakthrough many Ukrainians had wanted. Concerns have also grown over the sustainability of billions of dollars of vital Western economic and military assistance. With Michel in town, Ukraine's parliament on Tuesday preliminarily approved several key draft laws of anti-corruption legislation that had been recommended by Brussels to beef up Kyiv's fight against graft. The measures include expanding the staff of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and strengthening safeguards for the anti-corruption prosecutor. DIGNITY AND FREEDOM Sandu posted a video of her, Zelenskiy and Zelenskiy's wife Olena paying their respects to the scores of protesters - known in Ukraine as the "Heavenly Hundred" - who lost their lives during the revolution of 2014. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, also on a trip to Kyiv, announced a new military aid package of 1.3 billion euros that will include four additional IRIS-T air defence systems. Ukraine has been trying to build up its air defences fearing that Russia plans to conduct a second winter of air strikes on the energy system and power grid. Ukraine, which gained independence from Soviet Moscow in 1991, marks a Day of Dignity and Freedom on Tuesday to commemorate its two pro-Western, pro-democratic revolutions in 2004 and 2014. The 2014 revolution, which the Kremlin casts as a foreign-sponsored coup, prompted Russian troops to seize and annex the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and back a militant insurrection in the east. (Reporting by Tom Balmforth, Yuliia Dysa, Dan Peleschuk; editing by Alexandra Hudson) Editors Note: CNN Travels series often carries sponsorship originating from the countries and regions we profile. However, CNN retains full editorial control over all of its reports. Read the policy. Elsa, Anna, Olaf and Sven have a new home on a subtropical island in Asia. World of Frozen, Disneys first-ever themed land dedicated to the Frozen media franchise, opened at Hong Kong Disneyland on November 20. The new land at the park on Hong Kongs Lantau Island brings the fictional kingdom of Arendelle to life, including several elements from key scenes in the hit movies such as the North Mountain, Elsas Ice Palace, the snowflake-topped ice fountain and the clock tower where Anna and Prince Hans sing Love is An Open Door in the first Frozen movie. The Frozen franchise is one of the most successful in Disney history and its a testament to the power of great storytelling, Disney CEO Bob Iger said in Hong Kong at a November 16 event to commemorate World of Frozens opening. Disney Imagineers spent more than three years working on the concept and design of the new attraction. The franchise itself is just 10 years old, with the first Frozen movie coming out in 2013, followed by Frozen II in 2019, as well as several short films and TV shows. The company announced in September that it will be doubling its investment in its Disney Parks, Experiences and Products segment, with $60 billion spending planned in the next decade. While Disney is facing revenue challenges elsewhere, its international theme parks are thriving, with Iger saying in August that parks in Asia are doing exceptionally well. The Frozen Ever After ride features new animatronic figures. - Courtesy Disney In the new World of Frozen in Hong Kong, cast members playing Elsa, Anna and Kristoff will walk around interacting with guests, a departure from other lands where princesses and other characters are largely available only for photo opportunities. And instead of scheduled shows, a band will wander intermittently throughout World of Frozen playing music. Hong Kongs World of Frozen also includes two rides: Wandering Oakens Sliding Sleighs, a high-speed roller coaster that gives guests views of the Arendelle castle, and Frozen Ever After, a boat ride featuring Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Marshmallow, Sven the reindeer, Olaf the snowman and Pabbie Troll. As visitors float through Frozen Ever After, characters sing songs from the movies, including Do You Want to Build a Snowman?, Let It Go, and For the First Time in Forever, recorded by the movies original English-language cast. Michael Moriarty, managing director of Hong Kong Disneyland, called World of Frozen the most immersive attraction weve ever built. Hong Kong Disneyland's World of Frozen includes a recreation of the Arendelle Palace and other key elements from the beloved film franchise. - Courtesy Disney He added that the decision to bring World of Frozen to Hong Kong was influenced by the regional interest in the franchise and the unique natural elements of Lantau Island, where Hong Kong Disneyland is located. I think also when you look at the beautiful space that we have, with our ability to create mountains that wind together with the Lantau mountains and the scenery, to create a very specific and unique immersive environment, I think it was an easy decision that Hong Kong should be the first, Moriarty told reporters ahead of the opening. Asked how the team chose which scenes and elements to feature, Moriarty said, when you think about the scenes that really connect you with Anna and Elsa and Kristoff and Sven, we tried to recreate those. World of Frozen aims to bring the fictional kingdom of Arendelle to life. - Courtesy Disney What we have created here with the World of Frozen is this wonderfully immersive experience where you are at the center of the story, Moriarty said. In pursuit of a more immersive experience, architecture and design elements in World of Frozen are inspired by Norway, just as Arendelle was in the movies. Visitors can see the 19th-century Dragestil (Norwegian for dragon style)-inspired architecture in the storefronts located throughout World of Frozen, and the stylized floral motifs indicative of rosemaling decorative art featured on the clothing worn by cast members. The menu at World of Frozens Golden Crocus Inn also draws from Norwegian cuisine and includes a Bayside Seafood Medley in a nod to the harborside location of both Arendelle and the World of Frozen. At night, World of Frozen is alight with Elsas Ice Magic as the Ice Palace, Arendelle Castle and Friendship Fountain light up an icy blue. Hong Kongs climate, however, is very different from Norways. Snowfall is virtually unheard of here and while November is late autumn in Hong Kong, average temperatures still hit around 75 F (24 C). A ticket to Hong Kongs Disneyland includes admission to the World of Frozen, though in honor of the new land, the park has introduced a series of four new Frozen themed ticket designs showcasing Anna, Elsa, Kristoff and Olaf. Visitors can get to Hong Kong Disneyland by car or via the orange line on Hong Kongs MTR public transit system. Disney has its own train from Hong Kongs Sunny Bay station, which is plastered in World of Frozen decals to commemorate the worlds opening. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com Delegates linked to the worlds biggest fossil fuel companies and trade groups have attended UN-led climate talks at least 7,200 times over the last 20 years, according to analysis. The Kick Big Polluters Out coalition looked into the number of times delegates from the worlds top-producing oil and gas firms, and trade bodies, showed up at climate talks since Cop9 in 2003. The analysis found that representatives from trade associations representing the worlds largest polluting companies have attended Cops at least 6,581 times. The campaigners claimed that delegates do not always declare their affiliation to the organisation they work for, so the figures are likely higher. One trade organisation, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), whose members include fossil fuel giants such as BP, has been given at least 2,769 passes to attend the climate talks over the years, the research found. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has also been one of the most represented groups at the summit, and has had at least 979 passes, followed by the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE), which has had at least 558 passes. Of the top 20 trade groups identified in the study, all are headquartered in the Global North, according to the analysis. The campaigners said this underscores how organisations from countries who are most responsible for global emissions are dominating the climate talks, attempting to influence progress on climate action that most directly impacts Global South communities who have done the least to cause the climate crisis. The research also found that disclosed employees of Big Oil firms attended the conferences a minimum of 945 times with staff from the worlds five biggest oil giants, including Shell and BP, receiving at least 267 passes. Among the oil and gas employees the campaigners were able to identify, Shell was found to have sent the most staff to talks over the years, with at least 115 passes, followed by BP with 56. The Kick Big Polluters Out coalition said the varying formats of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Changes (UNFCCC) attendance lists from year to year and the failure to require participants to disclose their affiliations until recently made processing names difficult. It said the findings could, therefore, be the tip of the iceberg of fossil fuel influence, as many will not have been detected as part of this investigation. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak addresses delegates during the Cop27 summit at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, last year (Stefan Rousseau/PA) The campaign also noted that those with fossil fuel interests have also attended Cops in delegations that do not reflect their affiliation, citing BPs former chief executive Bernard Looney attending Cop27 as part of Mauritanias delegation. Brenna TwoBears, Keep It In The Ground lead co-ordinator at the Indigenous Environmental Network, said: Why did fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber indigenous peoples by 200% at Cop26? These greedy corporations cannot be allowed into the UNFCCC because fossil fuels tip the world closer and closer to extinction every day. George Carew-Jones, from Youngo youth constituency of the UNFCCC, said: The UN has no conflict of interest rules for Cops. This unbelievable fact has allowed fossil fuel lobbyists to undermine talks for years, weakening the process that we are all relying on to secure our futures. A spokesperson for UN Climate Change said it is supporting the intergovernmental negotiating process on climate change with participants nominated by parties, observers and media organisations. In order to increase the transparency of the UNFCCC process, for the upcoming UN Climate Change conference Cop28 taking place in Dubai (UAE) changes to the registration procedure have been introduced, they said. These changes include the conferences List of Participants making public all badges types not just those relating to contained delegations and observer organisations. They will incorporate information provided during registration, including new requirements such as relationship and affiliation to nominating entities. IETA said its diverse membership joins together in support of a clear mission favouring business engagement in climate action consistent with the UNFCCCs objectives through effective market-based trading systems that are fair, open, efficient, accountable and consistent across national boundaries. We encourage our members to make public their emissions and plans for addressing climate change. We are committed to serve as constructive observers of UN negotiations, honouring its guidelines for observers. The BCSE said they believe the coalitions data mischaracterises the organisations mission and record of engagement with the UNFCCC, adding that it is a clean energy and energy efficiency trade association with a sector focus on the energy efficiency, natural gas and renewable energy industries. Lizzie Stricklin, communications manager at Business Council for Sustainable Energy, said: The Business Council for Sustainable Energy has been providing constructive business engagement as an observer to the UNFCCC since the treaty was adopted and has a clear record of supporting policies to reduce emissions and increase resilience. A spokesperson for Shell said: Each year, a small number of Shell staff attend Cop to gather insights and latest policy developments, engage with stakeholders and strengthen collaborations. Shell staff attend as observers. We work to do business in a clear, open way and promote transparency throughout our industry. This includes at Cop, where the list of our attendees is publicly available. We also publish a number of transparency reports detailing our policy positions and advocacy efforts on our website. A spokesman for BP said: For the world to meet the Paris goals, it will take action from governments, companies and societies around the world. It will also take collaboration, and all voices being heard. We welcome the Cop28 presidencys call for a truly inclusive Cop bringing together everyone in support of actions that can deliver a comprehensive transformation. PA has contacted WBCSD for comment. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott speaks during a rally at the South Texas International Airport in Edinburg, TX, Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. Marvin Pfeiffer/Staff Photographer Abbotts priorities Regarding Gov. Greg Abbott refocuses on the Texas border after school vouchers sink, (Nov. 20): Gov. Greg Abbott seems hellbent for leather on destroying every shred of the democratic process left in Texas. As governor, he took an oath to uphold our state constitution. Section IX lays out the groundwork for a system of public free schools and their support. Section VI states that no law shall ever be made appropriating such fund for any other use or purpose whatsoever. But Abbott has asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to brush aside this legal requirement so his voucher scheme can be ramrodded through our state Legislature. And to any lawmaker who dares to represent the will of their constituents and oppose Abbotts illegal money grab, the governor promises to end their political careers. Those democratic niceties such as debate, collaboration and compromise are so very inconvenient. In fact, why even bother when it is easier and more effective to end a few political careers, disenfranchise a lot of Texans, and burn down the House to get what he, Greg Abbott, wants? It almost sounds (insert pearl clutch here) dictatorial. Advertisement Article continues below this ad I would say all kidding aside, but this is no joke. The governor is ignoring our state constitution, bullying elected members of his own party, refusing to serve all Texans and attempting to destroy the democratic process, all while refusing to increase funding for schools this session. Maybe its not our public schools that need to be kicked to the curb. The majority of Texans support our schools. The majority of Texans support our constitution. The majority of Texans support the democratic process. Why doesnt our governor support these things? Judith Peek Lee, Beaumont We thought we lived in a representative democracy. The Texas House, our representatives, continue to say no to vouchers. But the governor continues to insist they are getting it wrong and must keep trying until he gets what he wants. To add insult to injury, he also continues to refuse to meet his obligation to adequately fund public education until he gets what he wants. Thats a dictatorship, not a democracy. We sent our children to Catholic school. We paid for it at the same time we paid our taxes to fund public schools. This was our choice. The voucher program is nothing more than a gift to the wealthy. We applaud the stand being taken by our representatives. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Joe and Lorrie Quinlan, Houston In 2007, President George W. Bush made what was probably the last serious attempt at immigration reform. Unfortunately, he was unable to overcome fierce opposition from fellow Republicans who said it was nothing but amnesty that rewarded illegal immigrants. To Abbott, the border crisis is not a humanitarian crisis, but a criminal incursion abetted by the Biden administration. To him and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, it is simply an opportunity to rally their supporters and waste taxpayer money on nothing remotely touching on the nature of the problem. Bush wanted comprehensive border reform that saw immigrants as human beings fleeing horrible circumstances and that would have provided the country with needed workers. To Abbott and Patrick, it is a useful wedge issue with which to bludgeon the Biden administration. But demonstrating compassion doesnt win elections the way fear does. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Carl Lloyd, San Antonio Border threats Regarding As Texas Republicans warn of terrorists trying to cross the border, experts say its very unlikely, (Nov. 19): I prefer that the concern about potential threats to the safety of U.S. residents be under the watchful eyes of GOP legislators such as Rep. Michael McCaul and Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz than the expert cited in the article. Congressman McCaul has chaired the House Committee on Homeland Security for several years and currently is chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I assume he, as well as our Texas senators, have been briefed and provided much insight regarding the threats we might be subject to as a result of our border policies. The expert, Alex Nowrasteh, who is mostly cited in the article and who downplays the threats, is a libertarian advocate for open borders to and from the United States. Personally I am very pleased that GOP legislators are expressing concerns about potential threats resulting from our porous border and they are not listening to so-called experts who clearly do not share their concerns. Jim Robertson, Houston Advertisement Article continues below this ad Misleading language Regarding Houston City Council candidate Roy Morales wants return to ICE program, (Nov. 18): Your top of the fold article about Roy Morales in the City/State section of Sundays print Chronicle is totally inaccurate and misleading. First, the print headline states he is taking aim at migrants. Morales is talking about illegal immigrants, not migrants. Next, your second paragraph states he is offering a get-tough policy on local immigrants. Again, totally inaccurate and misleading. Morales is talking about illegal immigrants, not all immigrants. I find this is typical of the Chronicles extreme left-wing politics. Sadly, Im sure your misleading reporting will fool many of your readers. However, you should be aware there are a few of us who see through what you are doing. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Fentanyl poster in California Fentanyl is a leading killer in the US - contributing to 75,000 deaths last year - and the heat is on President Joe Biden to do something. He laid out plans on Tuesday to tackle "every angle" of the fentanyl crisis, calling it an "American tragedy". Many angles, though, involve China and Mexico, which lay beyond US control. And China's pledge to crack down on supplying Mexican cartels with chemicals used to make fentanyl may not be enough. "Curbing this crisis is something every American can get behind," Mr Biden said at a White House meeting on Tuesday. "It's tough stuff. People are dying." He laid out the many parts of his approach to the crisis, including expanded access to treatment and "strong international co-operation", while flanked by the country's top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and its most powerful prosecutor, Attorney General Merrick Garland. President Joe Biden described his plan at a White House meeting a week after meeting China's Xi Jinping Mr Biden also said the deal he reached last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping on limiting the export of certain chemicals from China was "critical" in stopping the flow of fentanyl into the US. Chemicals used to make the powerful opioid are flowing "unabated" from China to Mexico, according to a report released by the US Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioids in February, and China's chemical firms remain the "primary sources" of substances used to produce fentanyl. In the past, US officials have cautioned that while Chinese counter-narcotics policy is set by the central government in Beijing, enforcement is often in the hands of provincial authorities that may lack the necessary resources, or, in some cases, be susceptible to corruption. Thomas Bollyky, a former US trade official and veteran of negotiations with China, told the BBC that the central government is "capable" of effectively cracking down on chemical firms involved in the fentanyl trade. The bigger question is if "it's a sufficient priority". "Whether that's the case really has to do with broader geopolitical dynamics," Mr Bollyky added. "China has been clear that China itself does not have a fentanyl problem. They see these issues as part of the broader strategic dialogue with the US." Fentanyl contributed to the deaths of 75,000 Americans last year. President Biden said that the US would "verify" that China was sticking to the agreement. One of the synthetic opioid commission's co-chairs, Maryland Democrat David Trone - whose son Ian died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016 - said last week that the deal between Mr Biden and Xi Jinping was "worth commending" and "welcome news". "But, it represents just one step in a long journey to end this vicious drug epidemic," he added. Those vying to replace Mr Biden in 2024 are focused more on Mexico than China. Several Republican presidential candidates have publicly endorsed using force against fentanyl traffickers and laboratories, without providing exact details of how they would identify people or sites to attack in the often diffused process of making and moving the drug. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for example, has vowed to send US special forces into Mexico on "day one" of his administration if elected. Former President Donald Trump vowed to "inflict maximum damage" on cartels using special forces, cyber-war and "other overt and covert actions". Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has called the suggestions "extravagant nonsense" aimed at gaining "sympathy" among voters. His government has largely shrugged off suggestions that it is partially responsible for America's fentanyl problem. Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico's former ambassador in Washington DC, said that rising fentanyl deaths have "turbocharged" an aggressive narrative towards Mexico in US politics, which could ultimately have "dire consequences" for the relationship between the two countries. "The fact that all roads to the Republican primary now lead to the border and the pinata-bashing of Mexico is a sign of the trouble ahead," he said. "Particularly when Mexico has become the number one trading partner of the US, the largest buyer of US exports in the world and a key player in Washington's successful recalibration of ties vis-a-vis China." Joe Biden says that the US will 'verify' that China is taking action against firms that produce fentanyl precursor chemicals. Limiting supply of the drug alone will not solve the crisis, said Professor Alexandra Punch, a public health expert at Syracuse University who focuses on drug policy, adding the US must also address reducing the drug's harm. She pointed to "safe consumption" or overdose prevention centres similar to those found in countries such as Canada, which, she said, have proven "successful at decreasing mortality, decreasing HIV rates and also decreasing drug-related crime in the vicinity of where they're located". "What we're looking to solve is the mortality issue," she said. "I don't think we're going to solve the demand issue, because people are just going to find something different to use." Photograph: David Zalubowski/AP A judge has found reasonable evidence that Elon Musk and other executives at Tesla knew that the companys self-driving technology was defective but still allowed the cars to be driven in an unsafe manner anyway, according to a recent ruling issued in Florida. Palm Beach county circuit court judge Reid Scott said he had found evidence that Tesla engaged in a marketing strategy that painted the products as autonomous and that Musks public statements about the technology had a significant effect on the belief about the capabilities of the products. The ruling, reported by Reuters on Wednesday, clears the way for a lawsuit over a fatal crash in 2019 north of Miami involving a Tesla Model 3. The vehicle crashed into an 18-wheeler truck that had turned on to the road into the path of driver Stephen Banner, shearing off the Teslas roof and killing Banner. The lawsuit, brought by Banners wife, accuses the company of intentional misconduct and gross negligence, which could expose Tesla to punitive damages. The ruling comes after Tesla won two product liability lawsuits in California earlier this year focused on alleged defects in its Autopilot system. Judge Scott also found that the plaintiff, Banners wife, should be able to argue to jurors that Teslas warnings in its manuals and clickwrap were inadequate. He said the accident is eerily similar to a 2016 fatal crash involving Joshua Brown in which the Autopilot system failed to detect crossing trucks. It would be reasonable to conclude that the Defendant Tesla through its CEO and engineers was acutely aware of the problem with the Autopilot failing to detect cross traffic, the judge wrote. Banners attorney, Lake Trey Lytal III, said they are extremely proud of this result based in the evidence of punitive conduct. The judge also cited a 2016 video showing a Tesla vehicle driving without human intervention as a way to market Autopilot. The beginning of the video shows a disclaimer which says the person in the drivers seat is only there for legal reasons. The car is driving itself, it said. Judge Scott said that absent from this video is any indication that the video is aspirational or that this technology doesnt currently exist in the market, he wrote. Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor, told Reuters that the judges summary of the evidence was significant because it suggests alarming inconsistencies between what Tesla knew internally, and what it was saying in its marketing. This opinion opens the door for a public trial in which the judge seems inclined to admit a lot of testimony and other evidence that could be pretty awkward for Tesla and its CEO, Smith said. And now the result of that trial could be a verdict with punitive damages. Colin King's latest collection with Cultiver proves linen bedding isn't just for summer. Cultiver Breathable, lightweight, refreshingly crisplinen bed sheets have long been our go-to summer bedding staple. But thanks to interiors stylist Colin King's new bedding collection with the Australian bedding brand Cultiver, we're realizing we don't need to relegate our favorite bedding to off-season storage once the temperatures drop. Crafted in Portugal, the new line reimagines white, airy summer linens in rich colors (think aubergine and royal blue) and heavyweight (320 GSM) linen. The result: cozy yet elevated bed covers we'll want to snuggle up with all winterand keep within arm's reach all summer, just in case the AC get a little overzealous. Basically, we won't sleep without them. My vision for this collection was to create something timeless and versatile, with hues that transcend seasons and trends," King says. "Cultivers signature heavyweight linen has a heavy drape and thick texture, making it the ideal top layer of the bed throughout cooler months while serving as an alternative to a duvet in warmer months," he explains. Cultiver Invest in just one Heavyweight Bedcover ($575) that will serve as the star of the room, or mix and match the Repose Cushion ($170) with the Solace Throw ($280) for a pairing you can change over time. No matter which colors you choose, King assure us that we can't go wrong. "With tonal and complementing hues, I designed each piece in The Stylists Collection to layer seamlessly together, while also standing alone as a hero piece, so you can have the perfect bed covering year-round," he says. Cultiver In addition to meticulous attention to color coordination, King considered the fit and proportions of these pieces in a way only a seasoned interiors stylist would. The oversized bedcover drapes over pillows and pools onto the floor for an elegant visual effect. The cherry on top: these bed toppers are machine-washable and don't require a cumbersome insert. They may just tempt you to break up with your duvet cover. For more Real Simple news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on Real Simple. Hearst Owned "Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." To mark the 60th anniversary of JFK's assassination, we're republishing this story from 2019 on why the time travel genre is so obsessed with revisiting that day. When President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, time seemed to stand still. Shots rang out at 12:30 p.m., and in an instant, Camelot was over. In some ways, weve been trying to bring it back ever since. Over the decades that followed JFKs death, artists have grappled again and again with that generation-defining moment, through documentary film, biography, and biopic. The assassination has been depicted in works of art, in musicals, and in songBob Dylans latest ballad is a nearly 17-minute recollection of the assassination that starts 'Twas a dark day in Dallas. But one medium in particular captures Americas continued fixation with the potential of Kennedy, and all that was lost when he died in Dealey Plaza 56 years ago: the time travel story. Art Rickerby - Getty Images For storytellers, the appeal is in part that the events of that dayand their status as a pivotal moment in historyare instantly familiar to an audience. The Kennedy assassination is viewed as this watershed moment, and so it has that symbolic significance attached to it, which lends itself very well as the backdrop to a comic book, to a science fiction television show, to a feature film, because it does provide that gateway into a distinct moment in time that instantly defines the culture of the era, explains Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which is located inside the former Texas School Book Depository Building, where Lee Harvey Oswald took aim at Kennedy. You can point to this fixed geographical spot and you can say world history changed at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. That kind of precision, I think, is so important when you plot out these complicated science fiction stories. For science fiction creators, though, the appeal goes beyond its universal shorthand. That genre hinges on the question: what if Kennedy had survived? Stories that deal with time travel inevitably look at events in the past as dominos: one thing causes another, says Bridget Carpenter, the writer and executive producer of 11.22.63, a television adaptation of Stephen Kings novel about the assassination. So the event of the Kennedy assassination, narratively, is the first domino. Ben Mark Holzberg / Courtesy of Hulu What if someone had stepped in? Taken out Lee Harvey Oswald? Saved the day? Maybe we wouldnt have gone to war in Vietnam. Maybe Martin Luther King would be alive, and maybe Bobby Kennedy would, too. Would the world be better? Or just different? This very question inspires the latest entrant into the school of JFK time travel: season two of The Umbrella Academy, Netflixs popular series about a family of superheroes. A brief synopsis for the unfamiliar: The Hargreeves siblings are an X-men-esque crew, each with their own unique ability. The second season of the show, which dropped in full last weekend, begins with the family hurtling back through time. In this particular instance, time travel isnt an exact science, and so most members of the crew are scattered individually in Dallas in the years preceding JFKs assassination. COURTESY OF NETFLIX/NETFLIX When one of the brothers, Diego, who can bend the trajectory of weapons mid-air at will, realizes where and when he landed in history, he becomes almost consumed with the idea of trying to save Kennedy. He has this hero complex to prove to himself and to others that he's a crime fighter; he's a superhero, and he's worthy, show runner Steven Blackman says of the character's obsession. But Diegos brother, Number Five (he has an unusual name and is a middle-aged man trapped in a pre-teens body for reasons that arent particularly relevantdid we mention it's a science fiction series?), arrives a few days after the assassination, and finds himself in a Dallas heading toward nuclear destruction. In this parallel universe, the President is alive, but Kennedys survival so altered the timeline that it brought on a Soviet invasion, and eventually the apocalypse, in a matter of days. And so, Number Five must jump back in time once again to ensure the Kennedy assassination does indeed take place. CHRISTOS KALOHORIDIS/NETFLIX This alternate-disaster theme also runs through 11.22.63, in which the efforts of protagonist Jake Epping (an English teacher from Maine played by James Franco on the small screen) to change history go awry. He has the best of intentions when he travels through a portal back to the '60s, but learns that keeping Kennedy alive leads to disaster on an epic scale. Strangely enough, an episode of the British sci-fi series Red Dwarf, which first aired in 1997, features perhaps the most disturbing assassination-related premise. In it, JFK was saved from death, only to get impeached later on in his presidency. Kennedy eventually travels back in time himself and becomes his own assassinthe second gunmanin order to preserve his legacy. But not every reimagining of Kennedys assassination in science fiction is quite so dark. In Profile in Silver, an episode of The Twilight Zone from the 1980s revival of the iconic sci-fi series, one of Kennedys descendants living in the year 2172 travels back in time, eventually taking JFKs place at Dealey Plaza, and sending the President to the future. Another film, Timequest, envisions a world in which following a visit from a time traveler, JFK not only survives and serves out two terms, but his younger brother Bobby is also elected president, and selects Martin Luther King Jr. as his VP. All three men cheat death in that particular reimagining. This time-traveler-as-savior model is clearly rooted in an earlier generation's nostalgia for the period before Kennedy's assassination. John F. Kennedy was president during the peak of America's post-war prosperity. It was an era of optimism, excellent design, innovation, a national pride in American achievement. It's an era which Americans have been historically nostalgic for (conveniently forgetting the pain of millions of Black people living without Civil Rights), says Carpenter. What happened after Kennedy's assassination? Vietnam. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The assassination of Bobby Kennedy. The assassination of Malcom X. Nixon. When people think about making things right, it's obvious that you'd want to return to a time before all that. But what keeps successive generations of storytellers engaged in the narrative is something more compelling than nostalgia: conspiracy theories. What is the most captivating aspect of this story for people born after '63? Well, of course it's going to be the conspiracy theories, says Fagin, the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum. There's nothing more tantalizing than looking at a flickering a film projected on a wall, trying to find details in the grainy shadows and digging through secret locked files and looking for evidence, looking for some nugget of information that's never been revealed before. Indeed, the second season of Umbrella Academy features "the umbrella man," a favorite subject of JFK conspiracy theorists. The show's creator, Blackman, says he's noticed that his colleagues in Hollywood are a fertile audience for conspiracy theories. While he won't name names (and says he doesn't believe in the theories himself), he did share that a number of writers on the series think shadowy figures or forces may have had a hand in JFK's murder. Because Kennedys death was such a traumatic event, it's too big to assume this one guy pulled the trigger. And I think for science fiction geeks, such as myself, it's just a wonderful thing to go back to that time period, to think about how you can manipulate that, Blackman says. I did a tremendous amount of research with the writers, and I think we found 31 different conspiracy theories around the assassination. All different levels of credibility, but I was shocked by how many people still think it wasn't a lone gunman who killed the President, all these years later. The Kennedy legacy is now an impossible amalgamation of history and mythwhich keeps it central to pop culture, even as society becomes more divorced temporally from JFKs murder. I think the assassination, while becoming more and more distant, is still in our modern memory," says Fagin. "You can go onto the internet and see films, photographs, documentaries. It's such a part of our 20th century visual record, which has kept it in the news and in popular culture for over half a century." Jackies bubble gum pink suit. The grassy knoll. That sleek blue-gray limousine turning the corner. Those images all remain a part of our cultural consciousness because they are continually visually referenced, and the assassination is continually referenced because it is still a part of our collective memory. But the addition of time travel is what allows for creativity in a story thats been told over and over again. Bettmann - Getty Images There's only so much you can do using the assassination as a backdrop because so much of what took place in and around Dallas in the days and months before and after the assassination, is so well-documented, Fagin says, again referencing the myriad biographies, biopics, and docudramas about that day at Dealey Plaza. But with time travel, once the moment JFK was supposed to die occurs, you can do whatever you want with the remainder. You Might Also Like A model police car sits on a desk in 2021 at the Sioux Falls Law Enforcement Center. Hours before the sun rose over Champaign, Illinois, on the morning of May 19, 2021, Champaign Police Officer Chris Oberheim and his partner were called to the scene of a domestic disturbance. Darion Lafayette was there to meet them and exchanged fire with both officers, killing Oberheim. Lafayette was also killed. Within a day, the slain 44-year-old officers squad car was parked outside the department, decorated as a memorial to the father of four and 20-year law enforcement veteran. The memorial was vandalized in less than 24 hours. Erik Kaldahl was about two years into his career as a Champaign police officer when his two colleagues were assaulted. By then, he said, hed grown accustomed to verbal abuse from citizens. Bystanders had blocked him and other officers from accessing homicide victims, he said. He and his fellow officers had been ordered not to make arrests for low-level crimes like trespassing, he said, and his short-staffed department didnt bother with most accident reports. There were too many violent crimes for them to attend to fender-benders. Thats around the time Kaldahl basically threw a dart at the map to find somewhere anywhere, really that would offer him and his family more support. I didnt want to raise my daughters in a place where their dad is seen as a villain, Kaldahl said. Sioux Falls Police Officer Erik Kaldahl. He eventually landed at the Sioux Falls Police Department. He was impressed by the way Sioux Falls Police Chief Jon Thum conducted himself in a press conference after an officer-involved shooting, and felt welcomed by the local officers who explained the job in Sioux Falls. Thered be no income tax in South Dakota, he learned. Hed deal with less violent crime, and he learned hed be free to enforce the law in a way he felt he hadnt been in Illinois. This just happened to be the first one I came to and visited in person, Kaldhal said. The folks I spoke to here sold it pretty well. Police Chief Jon Thum talks about scheduling with Sergeant Jessica Speckmeier in Law Enforcement Center on Thursday, August 18, 2022, in Sioux Falls. Police hiring trends Kaldahl is far from alone. The promise of a supportive community alongside Republican-dominated politics, a lower cost of living, good schools and, for some, lax COVID vaccination policies has drawn dozens of out-of-state officers to the Rushmore State in recent years. A South Dakota Searchlight analysis found that at least 90 such officers have been granted reciprocity or a chance to earn it since 2018. That figure doesnt count migrant officers whove been sponsored but have yet to make an official reciprocity request. Taken together, the 90 officers represent more than 900 years of policing experience. There are a few ways to become a certified officer in South Dakota. An agency can hire you and send you to the law enforcement academy, where certification comes with graduation. Students at technical colleges with accredited programs can apply for reciprocity, which lets them use their degree and passage of a series of post-graduate skills tests to earn the certificate without a 13-week stint at the academy. There are two other pathways. If youve been out of law enforcement for two years, you can request a chance to test your way back in from the states Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Training Commission. Pass those tests, and the commission can take a second vote to grant you certification. If youre certified in another state, you can start the testing and weeklong reciprocity course right away, seeing the commission just once to finalize certification. Those last two pathways are the ones used by current or former officers to get a Rushmore State badge. Migrant officers sponsored by agency Sioux Falls Police Department: 19Pennington County Sheriffs Office: 10Rapid City Police Department: 8South Dakota Highway Patrol: 8Box Elder Police Department: 3Division of Criminal Investigation: 5Lincoln County Sheriffs Office: 3Faith Police Department: 2Game, Fish and Parks: 2Aberdeen Police Department: 2Gregory Police Department: 2Yankton Police Department: 2Pierre Police Department: 2Winner Police Department: 1South Dakota State Brand Board: 1Mitchell Police Department: 1Deadwood Police Department: 1Brandon Police Department: 1Butte County Sheriffs Office: 1Brookings Police Department: 1Roberts County Sheriffs Office: 1Tea Police Department: 1Brookings County Sheriffs Office: 1Bennett County Sheriffs Office: 1Hughes County Sheriffs Office: 1Lake Norden Police Department: 1Fall River County Sheriffs Office: 1Spearfish Police Department: 1Lennox Police Department: 1Freeman Police Department: 1Hamlin County Sheriffs Office: 1Custer County Sheriffs Office: 1Charles Mix County Sheriffs Office: 1McCook County Sheriffs Office: 1Clark Police Department: 1 *Does not include officers in the process of earning reciprocity The pace of officer in-migration quickened significantly since the outrage and protests sparked by the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Since that year, one in which Gov. Kristi Noem visited Los Angeles to sell the state to dissatisfied police, South Dakota law enforcement agencies have welcomed officers from San Francisco, Orange County and San Diego in California; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin, Texas; Madison, Wisconsin; and Denver, Colorado. Still more came from Midwestern or Southern states, including Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Nebraska, North Dakota and Minnesota. Some agencies, the Sioux Falls Police Department among them, have hired multiple out-of-state officers. The list of 90 includes 19 SFPD officers, and two others await a hearing before the state commission. Five members of the 11-person Box Elder Police Department are South Dakota transplants, as is one of two police officers in Lake Norden, who came from California. The chief of police in Brookings, about 40 miles southeast of Lake Norden, retired as a major from the New York State Police after 27 years and now addresses his South Dakota officers in a New England brogue. The Highway Patrol, Division of Criminal Investigation and Department of Game, Fish and Parks have also hired out-of-state officers. Everyone has their own story, said Sioux Falls Police Captain and recruiter Jon Lohr, but there are common themes. COVID mandates were a big one a few years ago, he said. Income taxes and the low cost of living continue to be major selling points, especially for those whose urban homes are sure to fetch far higher prices than similar homes in South Dakota. Ultimately, Lohr said, support from all levels of government in the state and a general pro-police sentiment are prime enticements. They recognize that theyre probably going to be moving to a little bit safer environment, where people probably have a little more positive feeling about their law enforcement and the officers that are doing the job, Lohr said. Theres another reason Sioux Falls works to be welcoming: The city and its police force are growing. Out-of-state recruits can help fill the dozen or more open positions the SFPD typically has at any given time, a number that holds steady even with the promise of a $5,000 bonus for officers who make it through their 15-month probationary period. Reciprocity process Officers certified in another state cant just walk through the doors of a South Dakota department, fill out an application and be accepted into the fold of sworn South Dakota law enforcement. Reciprocity testing involves a 200-question written test to show basic competence and three proficiency exams, in firearms, use of force and emergency vehicle operations. In addition, they need to spend a week in a reciprocity class to learn the ins and outs of South Dakota law. That process also involves a background check, according to Hank Prim, the training administrator with the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation. Prims office uses a database called the National Decertification Index to screen reciprocity candidates for suspensions and revocations of an applicants law enforcement certification. That check is separate from any background investigations conducted by the hiring agency, which typically involve calls to references and previous employers and sometimes, particularly in larger departments like the SFPD, psychological evaluations and even polygraph tests. Were trying to make sure that a bad officer isnt trying to escape another state and lay their nest here, Prim said. None of the officers granted reciprocity or eligibility for it had their certification revoked prior to their arrival in South Dakota, according to the state commission meeting minutes. The lack of a revocation isnt a guarantee of good behavior, however. The commission relies heavily on the background checks done by the hiring agencies, which may vary from agency to agency and may not flag all potential issues. The commission offered a shot at reciprocity for a Pierre police officer named Jeremiah Erickson in mid-2022, but he was let go from the department before becoming certified after picking up a drunken driving charge. The 90 out-of-state officers whove requested reciprocity or eligibility since 2018 only represent a fraction of total reciprocity requests. Tech school graduates from South Dakota and surrounding state represent a larger share of the total. Even so, the impact of the pandemic and other cultural factors is reflected in overall reciprocity certifications. The commission granted 26 requests in fiscal year 2021, which began in mid-2020. It granted 61 the following fiscal year and 65 in each of the two fiscal years that followed. On a single day in July 2022, the commission approved reciprocity or eligibility for 14 out-of-state officers. The promise of support, Prim said, is not a secret outside the states borders. That secrets come out, and thats a good thing, Prim said. Welcoming community Former Scottsdale, Arizona, officer Joseph Young joined the Box Elder force last fall. The California native and seven-year veteran of policing in the Phoenix suburb is in the process of obtaining reciprocity from South Dakotas law enforcement commission. Young followed his family back to South Dakota, where his grandparents grew up. He didnt leave Scottsdale because of increased scrutiny of law enforcement, he said, but the shifting attitudes made the decision easier. His months in Box Elder have been a culture shock for Young. Its not just the slower pace of life in the city of 11,000 or the reality of more frequent interactions at grocery stores or community events, for example with people he may have arrested or ticketed. Its the time time to meet people and get to know them between calls for service, and the time people make for him. Theres a lady I talk to almost every day whos always out and about in her neighborhood, said Young, who works the overnight shift. She jogs every night. When she sees me, she starts to talk to me every time. We never had time for that in Scottsdale. Its been a welcome change of pace, Young said. That slower pace has also meant a safer work environment. His father was part of the California Highway Patrol and didnt wear a Kevlar vest for protection during the first two decades of his career, Young said. South Dakota feels like a place where the now-standard vest feels more like a failsafe than a reminder of near-constant threat. Young was proud to work in Scottsdale and had a larger salary there, but he doesnt see himself leaving the community thats embraced him. At the end of the day, when I go home, I feel like Ive done my job more than I ever did in Scottsdale, Young said. South Dakota as retirement haven Adam Masters was going to retire in South Dakota, with or without a job in policing. The Texas native and his wife are horse people and love the Black Hills for the trails and open spaces to ride. Even so, politics and police reforms had a hand in the timing of his retirement from Austin, Texas. Masters spent more than two decades in the city, an artsy, liberal island in Texas Republican political sea, and said he enjoyed nearly all of those years. It took a while to get used to Austin when he first moved there decades ago, Masters said, but he came to love it and rarely doubted the communitys appreciation for the role of policing. The death of George Floyd and ensuing calls to defund the police shattered that certainty, Masters said. We always assumed that the silent majority still supported us and backed us, and it became apparent pretty quickly that there wasnt much of a solid majority left in Austin, Masters said. I dont want to speak for anybody else, but, based off the number of resignations and retirements, I think a lot of people felt the same way I did. The city cut funding for its police department in 2020, and elected a district attorney who ran on a platform of prosecuting officers for misconduct. Masters and his wife decided it was time to head to the Black Hills. He wasnt planning to join the ranks of law enforcement in South Dakota, but hes also young enough to keep working. In May, he took on a part-time gig as an investigator for the state Brand Board, which manages ownership inspections and investigates fraud in livestock. Masters was surprised by the number of experienced officers he met in his reciprocity class. He walked in thinking hed meet a lot of younger officers from the Midwest, but met seasoned officers from all over the country. I kind of thought I would be one of the only ones with the amount of experience that I had from as far away as I came, but that wasnt the case at all, Masters said. He hasnt regretted his decision to move to the state. Its conservative political environment suits Masters as well as the trails do police represent a very conservative-minded group of people, he said and like Young, hes been pleasantly surprised by how welcoming the state has been. We knew nobody in South Dakota, but you meet your neighbors and get to know people pretty quick, Masters said. It feels like home now. Back in Sioux Falls, Kaldahl has started to feel at home, as well. He loves the school system, has sampled chislic and looks forward to going out to hunt. That so many of his fellow officers are learning the same lessons about South Dakota at the same time has been a help. We have no family here. We had no friends, we have no ties, Kaldahl said. And Ive run into quite a few people who are going through that exact same thing. This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Migrant officers flock to South Dakota police departments Millcreek Township School Board will vote on a new bond issue Tuesday. The district plans to sell bonds in January to raise $33 million for McDowell High School renovations and other school improvements. 'We've already approved the McDowell project, and we have to issue debt because we don't have the cash to pay for that project," district Finance and Operations Director Aaron O'Toole said during a School Board finance committee meeting last week. Money from previous bond issues, in 2012, 2013, 2020 and 2022, paid for a long list of improvements at other schools and facilities. The district's existing debt from those bond issues is about $117 million. The Millcreek Township School Board will vote on a $33 million bond issue on Tuesday. The new bond issue will raise the district's total debt to just over $150 million, Jay Wenger, managing director of RBC Capital Markets, said in detailing plans for the bond issue last week. The firm is advising the district on the bond sale. "That seems like a big number, but for a district of this size, I would say it's pretty typical," Wenger said. "The number we look more to is your debt service as a percentage of the budget, and I would say that is a very manageable number. You're probably at 8 to 9% of your budget. Anything under 10% I would say is on the low side for districts across the commonwealth." The district's 2022-23 budget totaled about $114 million. After the 2024 bond issue, the district will spend from $9 million to $9.9 million annually through 2045 to repay the $150 million debt, Wenger said. The $33 million bond issue is well within state parameters for the district's debt capacity, district officials said. "We have the ability to issue up to $113 million in additional debt as of the end of last year," O'Toole said. Upcoming projects Improvements planned at McDowell High School beginning in 2024 include air conditioning and other mechanical, electrical and plumbing upgrades. Additional projects that could be funded by the new bond issue include roof restoration and mechanical, electrical and plumbing upgrades at Asbury Elementary School; window replacement at various schools; and exterior restoration of some schools, according to the resolution that would authorize the bond issue. Total cost for the projects is estimated at more than $57 million. "Basically it's a to-do list," district solicitor Tim Sennett told school directors last week. "We're not borrowing $57 million, we're borrowing $33 million, so you'll ultimately have to make a determination as to which projects you're going to move forward with. Those you don't move forward with will be subject to financing in the future. But if you don't put (projects) on the list, you can't use the (bond issue) money for them. It's an elaborate process to substitute something." Future school building expansion will be added to the list of projects that might be funded by the new bond issue. Any hope for state reimbursement? Pennsylvania school districts in the past received partial reimbursement for major construction projects from the Pennsylvania Department of Education through its Planning and Constrruction Workbook, or PlanCon, program. That program has been on hold since 2016. And it isn't likely to return, O'Toole said. "Given the fact that the state lost a lawsuit determining that districts are underfunded in the state of Pennsylvania, there's just not enough money to go around," O'Toole said. "Anything can happen, but I'm pretty sure PlanCon is going to be at the bottom of the list when it comes to funding." A Commonwealth Court judge ruled in February that the state's school funding system is unconstitutional in that it fails to adequately fund K-12 schools. Wenger agreed that the prospect of state reimbursement for renovations is dim, also considering the rising cost of construction and the increasing needs of the state's school districts. "I would be shocked if PlanCon came back the way we knew it," Wenger said. The School Board will vote on the bond issue at its meeting at the district administration building Nov. 28 at 7 p.m. In December: Millcreek School Board reverses decision and votes to proceed with McDowell renovations Contact Valerie Myers at vmyers@timesnews.com. This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Millcreek School Board to vote on bond issue for McDowell renovations Wales will learn their Euro 2024 play-off opponents as the draw is made to determine the bracket for the three remaining places at next summers finals. Rob Pages side will need to navigate the play-offs if they are to reach a fourth major tournament in eight years after Wales finished behind Turkey and Croatia in qualifying from Group D. Wales are guaranteed a home semi-final after taking their place in play-off Path A - but the draw will determine who they face in Marchs play-off rounds, while Poland and Robert Lewandowski could be waiting in the final. They will hope to join England and Scotland in next summers tournament - and Wales will know what group they would be in if they win their semi-final and final ahead of the March play-offs. Heres everything you need to know. When is the Euro 2024 play-off draw? The draw will take place from 11am GMT on Thursday 23 November. How can I watch It? The draw will be streamed live on Uefa.com and the official Euro 2024 app. How do the Euro 2024 play-offs work? There is still space for three teams to join the Euro 2024 draw, with three separate paths offering those sides who qualified for the play-offs a way into the tournament finals. Wales will play one of Finland, Ukraine or Iceland in the semi-finals before either Poland or Estonia in the final. Who could still qualify? Semi-finals Path A: Poland (1) vs Estonia (4) / Wales (2) vs TBC* Semi-finals Path B: Israel (1) vs TBC* / Bosnia and Herzegovina (2) vs TBC* Semi-finals Path C: Georgia (1) vs Luxembourg (4) / Greece (2) vs Kazakhstan (3) TBC* = one of Finland, Ukraine or Iceland How does the play-off draw work? According to Uefa, the main thing to draw is which side from Finland, Ukraine or Iceland goes into Path A and which of the other two go into Path B. The draw will also determine which winner of the semi-final hosts the play-off final. According to Uefa, if Finland are allocated to Path B by the draw, as the higher-ranked team they would play Bosnia and Herzegovina, and whichever of Ukraine or Iceland are allocated to Path B would play top-ranked Israel. If Ukraine and Iceland are both allocated to Path B, the higher-ranked Ukraine would play Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iceland would play Israel. When is the Euro 2024 group stage draw? The draw ceremony for the Euro 2024 group stage takes place on Saturday 2 December from 5pm GMT (6pm local time) in Hamburg. How to watch The Euro 2024 draw will be shown on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer from 5:15pm GMT. The draw will also be streamed live online on Uefas official website, YouTube channel and app. What are the pots? Pot 1: Germany (hosts), Portugal, France, Spain, Belgium, England Pot 2: Hungary, Turkey, Romania, Denmark, Albania, Austria Pot 3: Netherlands, Scotland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic Pot 4: Italy, Serbia, Switzerland, Play-off winner A, Play-off winner B, Play-off winner C How does the draw work? As hosts, Germany are automatically assigned to Group A. The draw will then place the remaining teams from Pot 1 into Groups B-F. The process continues with the teams from Pot 2 able to be placed into Groups A-F, and the same produces applies with Pot 3 and Pot 4. Teams will also be given a position within their group, which will determine their fixture schedule. As hosts, Germany will occupy position A1. NEW YORK (AP) Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall, nearly killed by Russian bombs while reporting in Ukraine less than two years ago, returned to the country this week to interview Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Hall has endured dozens of surgeries since the March 14, 2022, blast. He lost his right leg below his knee and part of his left foot, the eyesight in his left eye and suffered burns across his body. His two Fox reporting colleagues that day, photographer Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian fixer Oleksandra Sasha Kuvshynova, were both killed. Besides the Zelenskyy interview, Hall told Fox's Bret Baier on Tuesday that he returned to Ukraine to pay tribute to Zakrzewski and Kuvshynova. It was also an opportunity to remind people that journalism will never be stopped, despite the dangers, he said. The staggering toll in the Israel-Hamas war is another reminder. The Committee to Protect Journalists said 53 journalists and media workers have been killed there since Oct. 7, as of Wednesday. In his interview, Hall asked Zelenskyy about growing doubts among Republicans in the United States about support for Ukraine, and whether he would be willing to meet with former President Donald Trump. Zelenskyy said he would. Zelenskyy also gave Hall an award for his outstanding personal contribution to strengthening interstate cooperation, support for Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity. Lachlan Murdoch, Fox Corp. executive chairman and CEO, accompanied Hall on the trip. People incarcerated in the Los Angeles County jails will be able to call home for free starting Dec. 1, after county supervisors approved amending the existing phone contract. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Two years after promising to make phone calls free for people inside the countys seven jails, on Tuesday the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors finally approved a contract that will get it done. Starting Dec. 1, more than 12,000 inmates will be able to call home for free. The five supervisors unanimously voted without discussion to amend the existing phone contract, shifting the financial burden of the calls from inmates and their families to a pot of money known as the Inmate Welfare Fund. Previously, the proceeds of the high-priced jail calls went into the Inmate Welfare Fund, which under state law is supposed to be used mainly for the benefit and education of inmates. In recent years, that fund grew to a balance of more than $32 million as revenues both from phone calls and inmate commissary purchases outpaced expenditures. Under the new contract arrangement , up to $12.9 million per year will come out of that fund to pay for phone calls. Read more:Lawsuits target extortionate phone calls, commissary items in California jails At Tuesdays board meeting, several advocates and formerly incarcerated community members voiced support for the new phone plan during public comments. I really applaud the board, said Kent G. Mendoza-Morales, associate director of local policy at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition. Its official. Earlier this year, Mendoza-Morales told The Times how his mother used to sell stuff in alleys to help pay for phone calls and food from the commissary. On Tuesday, he thanked the supervisors for approving the contract change, adding that being in communication with your family is one of the most crucial things you can have in jail. In a statement Tuesday afternoon, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department celebrated the change as well, saying the amended contract would save families millions of dollars every year. We anticipate that free phone calls will increase the communication between inmates and their families, which can aid in rehabilitation, strengthen relationships and assist in a smoother transition when the inmate is released from custody," the statement said. "While the Sheriffs Department is committed to providing improved inmate services, it has concerns about the implementation details of this program. The statement did not offer details about those concerns. The board began seriously discussing a shift to free phone calls in 2021, with a pair of motions asking the county's chief executive office to explore how much it would cost and what funding source should cover it. At that point, county audits show, phone revenues were bringing in about $15 million per year. That money went into the Inmate Welfare Fund, along with $20 million to $30 million per year from commissary sales. Typically, the county spent between $9 million and $20 million of the fund on programs and an additional $5 million to $14 million on facility maintenance. In April, lawyers targeted the high price of phone calls and commissary items in jails across the state and sued several counties including Los Angeles. They alleged the charges amounted to an unlawful tax levied on the countys poorest residents. The lawsuit also alleged that the money has been spent on general jails issues, including salaries and office furniture, rather than services that benefit inmates. The case is still pending. Nationally, the average jail charges about $3 for a 15-minute phone call, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. In California that figure is slightly lower, about $2 per call still an impossible cost for some inmates and their families. When the supervisors took up the issue in July, several indicated they felt it was the countys duty to cover the cost of the calls but it wasnt immediately clear what funds they could use. At the time, the countys chief executive officer estimated that providing free calls would cost about $30 million per year: $15 million to cover the the calls and another $15 million to pay for programs currently being funded by the call revenue. The contract that supervisors approved Tuesday will come in at least $2 million under that, though it could be even less depending on how much phone time inmates use. Under the new plan, the county will be billed a maximum of 4.2 cents per minute when the monthly call volumes are under 9.5 million minutes and a minimum of 2.8 cents per minute when the call volumes are over 22.9 million minutes per month. The contract also includes free phone time for several hundred youths in custody of the countys Probation Department. It maxes out at just under $13 million per year, bringing the total impact on county finances to about $28 million. Bianca Tylek, executive director of the criminal justice advocacy group Worth Rises, said in an interview that she was "thrilled to finally see Los Angeles follow through with a proposal they passed two years ago." But she went on to add concerns about the per-minute costs to the county, which she said are higher than in many other jurisdictions. A 15-minute call in Los Angeles will cost the county between and 42 and 63 cents. A letter Worth Rises sent to the county says a 15-minute call in Mississippi is 60 cents, while in Maryland it is 45 cents and in Illinois is just 14 cents. "Its one of the worst free phone call contracts that weve seen," Tylek told The Times. "Theres no reason for them to be paying this much at all. Its not actually this expensive to do. Its only expensive if you poorly negotiate your contract. Times staff writer Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report. 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. Six months ago, Reah Ysa, 54, began photographing her water meter every few weeks and meticulously logging the readings in a spreadsheet after seeing a steady climb in her monthly water bills she no longer could ignore. Since moving into their three-bedroom townhouse near Montrose a year ago, Ysa and her husband have paid more than $1,900 for water, but their actual usage should have amounted to only about $1,100, according to their meter readings and payment history. The discrepancy, Ysa said, came from Houston Water charging the couple based on estimates rather than their actual usage. Five of their six most recent bills were marked "ESTIMATED," indicating the city did not read her meter during those months. The Ysas are among roughly 48,000 households about 10 percent of the city's water customers whose water usage is estimated each month, a stark contrast to 2018 when less than 1 percent of Houstonians received estimated bills. This growing dependence on estimation has led to more erroneous charges and a surge in complaints within an already strained bill dispute system, according to residents and officials. Houstons water meters are designed to automatically read household water usage and wirelessly transmit the data to the city's server through radio signals. However, aging meters and delayed replacements have caused the number of malfunctioning reading devices in a given month to more than double from 36,800 in 2020, to 91,000 in March, according to Public Works data. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Due to a staffing shortage, the department does not have enough workers to manually read meters in every case of equipment failure, so it resorts to estimating those bills based on historical data. This alone depicts one of our largest challenges today in what we're dealing with from a resource (perspective), to get reads every day and have the feet on the ground to do so, said Lisa Garrison, director of customer account services at Public Works. Because of the manual reading that has to take place from our aged inventory, we do have customers that contact us daily to dispute their bill or express concerns about their bill. Ysa said she suffered a 53,000-gallon leak last May after city workers accidentally damaged her water line. Although the city eventually reimbursed her for the $1,387 bill, she said the leak likely skewed the city's calculation, resulting in inflated estimates ever since. Public Works spokesperson Erin Jones acknowledged the current estimation algorithm is unable to eliminate the impact of one-time incidents such as water leaks, which, according to 311 call data, thousands of residents experience every month. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Houston Water is working to modify the algorithm to prevent overestimation caused by leaks and other outliers, Jones said. Meanwhile, residents like Ysa said their trust in the city has been undermined by what they believe to be inaccurate estimates. Every bill has an estimated usage on it, and they are estimating extremely high, Ysa said. The city is a government entity and we should be able to trust them, but I feel like they are trying to rip me off. Whether thats happening or not, it just feels that way. Failing meter equipment Many of Houston's electronic meters date back to 1998 when Public Works first implemented an automated reading system that, according to the department, has saved the city more than $100 million in labor and other costs. As the devices aged, however, their reliability has decreased. Advertisement Article continues below this ad In 2020, City Council approved a plan to replace its meter readers, some of which already had surpassed their 20-year life expectancy. The project initially aimed to replace 119,400 devices by the end of June 2023, but because of chip shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, only 34,600 have been replaced to date, Garrison said. Unfortunately, four months into that project beginning, the supply chain shortage was announced due to COVID, Garrison said. We are almost approximately two years behind in our plan. Currently, around 20 percent of Houston's automated meter readers are experiencing failures, unable to accurately detect and transmit household water usage data. That is a sharp increase from 2017 when, despite unprecedented equipment damage during Hurricane Harvey, the percentage of faulty readers peaked at 11 percent. Garrison said Houston Water's internal review process has confirmed inaccuracies in only 0.8 percent of all customer bills. That amounts to an average of 384 errors every month or approximately 4,600 mistakes a year. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Houston District F Councilmember Tiffany Thomas, however, said the error rate likely is much higher, noting a growing number of her constituents have reached out for help with unusual jumps in their water bills but never got their charges adjusted. That number should be a lot higher because most people, when they go through the dispute process, probably stopped at one point and didnt go through the entire process, Thomas said. It wouldnt be 0.8 percent if people actually walk through the entire process and then Public Works acknowledges theyre real errors. Last fall, a resident in Thomas' westside district started receiving estimated bills around $100 higher than usual, the council member said. One month, the resident turned off their lawn sprinklers to conserve water, but the bill came with the exact same amount as the previous month, down to the penny. Something is off for it to be a steady increase of residents requesting assistance, Thomas said. There has to be a real conversation about how these meters are clocking peoples water usage. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Rising bill concerns Equipment failures and inaccurate billing only have exacerbated the frustration for Houston water customers already struggling to comprehend their rising costs, officials say. In September 2021, the city approved its biggest rate hike in decades to raise water and wastewater costs by 47 percent and 63 percent, respectively, over five years. The Turner administration said the additional fund was necessary to comply with a $2 billion consent agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency stemming from sewage leaks that mostly occurred in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. As a result, a household consuming 4,000 gallons per month, for example, would see its bill go from $57 in 2021, to $89 by 2026. Meanwhile, residents have been dealing with a surge in water leaks due to aging pipes and extreme weather conditions. In the first eight months of 2022, Houston lost nearly 20 billion gallons of water because of leaky pipes. At the height of last year's drought, the city lost 20 percent of its total monthly water supply to leaky pipes. HUGE LOSS: Houston doubles spending to fix pipes that have leaked 20 billion gallons of water so far this year Advertisement Article continues below this ad There are multiple things happening. Its the water rate. Its the leaks. It's the meters. It's the estimates, Thomas said. And what happens is, when Houstonians see their bills go from $75 to $200 and were not even in peak summer yet, they dont know whats going on. Natalie Vega, 39, owns a three-bedroom townhouse near West University Place. Over the years, her monthly water usage has averaged around 4,000 gallons, with some seasonal fluctuations, her bills show. Last year, however, her water bills shot up over a few months, going from $42 for 3,000 gallons in April to $495 for 22,000 gallons in September. After notifying the city, Vega consulted two plumbers who found no leaks. One plumber, after manually reading the meter, suggested in a text message shared with the Chronicle that the city "had been reading the meter wrong." Despite spending hours filling out forms and contacting Houston Water, Vega said she awaits a resolution. Frustrated, she and several neighbors facing similar issues plan to hire a lawyer to address their billing problems. Natalie Vega holds her water bill at her home on Thursday, April 27, 2023 in Houston. Last year, her water bills soared over a few months, going from $42 for 3,000 gallons in April to $495 for 22,000 gallons in September. She said she and several neighbors facing similar issues plan to hire a lawyer to address their recent billing problems. Karen Warren/Staff photographer This cant be right. Theres no pool. Theres no hot tub. Theres a townhome yard, but it doesnt even have grass and theres nothing to water, Vega said. Why would they just magically decide that the bill is now several times more than what its been for years? A combination of factors, including a rising number of leaks, rate increases and aging infrastructure has led to confusion and sometimes misconceptions about the city's water billing system, District C Councilmember Abbie Kamin said. A lot of people think, even with the water rate hikes, that the city just wants more money, but as a city, we legally are only allowed to recoup water usage costs, Kamin said. And sometimes a resident would get slapped with an insane bill because nobody was aware of a leak. They would come to us, but theres a formal administrative process that we arent allowed to have any say in. Overwhelmed dispute system Right now, Houston Water handles around 43,000 monthly calls from residents about their water bills. By law, customers disputing a water charge may request an administrative review within 90 days of the bill's receipt. If unresolved, they have another 10 days to request an administrative hearing. As a last resort, customers can seek a review by the city's Water Adjustment Board, which meets quarterly. On average, of all the monthly inquiries, 269 get escalated, 74 enter an administrative review, eight reach a hearing and four cases are reviewed by the Water Adjustment Board, according to Public Works. Jones said the department has made progress improving the dispute process in recent months, including hiring 35 new customer service representatives in January, which significantly reduced wait times. Some residents, however, said the dispute process still lacks transparency and efficiency. Bradley Harmes, a 68-year-old retiree, said he experienced that firsthand when he received two water bills totaling $1,648 for 67,000 gallons in late 2022. His typical usage was just a few thousand gallons a month, his bills show. After Harmes called Houston Water to challenge the charges, city staff re-read his meter and confirmed there was a billing error, but it was not easy to get the overcharges cleared, he said. Harmes said he had to contact the department every 30 days for six months to extend a hold on his account to prevent a service cutoff. Last month, he finally received a credit for the erroneous charges. I have probably invested 20 hours of my time over the past six months trying to solve this problem, and theres just a lot of head-scratching and uncertainty, he said. Most frustrating customer service experience I have encountered. District A Councilmember Amy Peck said the dispute system frequently has failed her constituents, leaving them with lingering questions and unexplained high bills. We get constituents all the time that go through this system, and from what we can tell, almost none of them are successful every time they go through that process, Peck said. The answer they get is usually just, well, you used a lot of water this month, or you must have a leak somewhere, but thats not always the case. The city ordinance often limits Houston Water's ability to help residents, Jones said. For example, she said, the department can adjust only one unusually high bill a year for each household, and it cannot correct a customer's water charges if they wait too long to seek assistance. We're restricted to all those different things, Jones said. To make the process shorter or change the process, thats something the City Council handles. People need to go to their council member if they want to make these changes. For now, residents have to continue to grapple with a complex dispute system, which can be particularly challenging for those with demanding schedules or who are unfamiliar with how the system works, said Harmes, who worked as an insurance advisor to local governments for 40 years before he retired. A controversial sexual education book is set to be banned from a Missouri library but only after its waiting list runs out. An internal review committee determined that the controversial book Bang Like a Porn Star: Sex Tips From the Pros was too sexually explicit and should be removed from the St Charles City-County Library system. However, the committee decided the book did not need to be banned straight away, and the 20 people on its waiting list would still get to read the book. The 175-page book, published in 2018, sparked controversy after some critics deemed the book too sexually explicit for inclusion in a public library, and called for its removal. The book, which has not been publicly available for months, features interviews with several gay adult film stars and photographs detailing various sex acts. Ultimately, the library sided with the books critics and decided to ban the book from the library, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported. A controversial porn star book is set to be banned from a Missouri library - but only after its waiting list runs out (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) St Charles City-County Library CEO Jason Kuhl said in a statement that the committee found the book did, indeed, have explicit photographs that seemed unrelated to the text they should have been illustrating. The library initially purchased only one copy of the book five years ago, but had to purchase additional copies when parents began pushing for its removal so the committee could review the material. Mr Kuhl added that the book was originally purchased because it was the only item readily available at the time about sexuality and sexual health for gay men. It contains important information about health, safety and consent that are not contained elsewhere in our collection, he said. However, Mr Kuhl said library officials have since found that other books have been published that provide the same information as Bang Like a Porn Star that do not contain the explicit imagery that is superfluous to the text. Library officials said prior to the backlash surrounding the book, it was checked out several times. A wave of book bans is sweeping across the United States after a GOP-backed sensitive materials law was passed two years ago requiring school districts to create new pathways for residents to challenge sensitive materials. Since then, libraries and schools in states across the country have seen books banned for their sexually explicit material. In April, Republican lawmakers in Missouri threatened to defund public libraries in retaliation for the ACLU filing a lawsuit against a recent ban on educators providing sexually explicit material. Similarly, Florida recently began removing pornographic, violent or inappropriate books from classrooms after sweeping laws passed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. One such law, passed by Mr DeSantis in March last year, requires a certified media specialist to evaluate all books available in classrooms and libraries and punishes teachers with felony charges if non-sanctioned books are present in classrooms. That has led to teachers stripping their classroom shelves of books in fear of being prosecuted. Meanwhile, in Tennessee, the Age Appropriate Materials Act mandates schools to catalogue all titles in their classroom lest they include any inappropriate content. There were at least 1,477 attempts to ban 874 individual book titles within the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, according to PEN America. The figures mark a nearly 30 per cent spike from book challenges over the previous year. The newest gem in the ever-growing catalog of Bill Evans, the late jazz pianist, commemorates a return to his roots. European classical music is at the foundation of Evans distinctive sound, and Tales Live in Copenhagen (1964) features previously unreleased recordings from his first European tour. The vinyl version will be released for Record Store Day on Friday, Nov. 24, with the CD edition scheduled for Dec. 1. The album is record label Elemental Musics follow-up to Treasures Solo, Trio & Orchestra Recordings from Denmark (1965-1969), an engaging two-CD set of later performances. Tales contains 11 cuts, 10 of which feature Evans with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Larry Bunker. Most of the tunes had been part of the trios repertoire for some time when they arrived in Copenhagen, and their comfort level results in music filled with inventive interplay that is a marvel of syncopation and synchronicity. As always, Evans rhythmic creativity delights. There are two renditions of How My Heart Sings, and the piano sparkles with rapid stop-and-start single-note explorations that swerve, skip, spin and dance. Since this is Bill Evans, the music sings as well as swings. Waltz for Debby receives a lovely, spirited rendering, and while My Foolish Heart begins at a mournful tempo in two performances, Evans embrace of the melody soon dispels the gloom. Theres also a lyrical interpretation of I Didnt Know What Time It Was. According to the extensive, excellent liner notes, its Evans only recording of the Rodgers-Hart song. Considering the age and sources of the material, the sound quality is remarkably good. That makes it easy to enjoy Evans earliest European evocations of the many influences he distilled so beautifully, from Miles and Monk to Debussy and Beethoven. ___ AP music reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/music-reviews North Korea on Wednesday said it had put its first spy satellite into orbit and vowed further launches to defend against what it called its enemies dangerous military maneuvers. Analysts said if the spacecraft works, it could provide significantly improve North Koreas military capabilities, including enabling it to more accurately target opponents forces. The satellite, named Malligyong-1, was launched late Tuesday on a new carrier rocket, Chollima-1, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The launch of a reconnaissance satellite is the legal right of North Korea to strengthen its right to self-defense, the KCNA report said. Neither South Korea, the United States nor Japan, all of which are experiencing increasing military tensions with North Korea, could confirm the satellite had made it into orbit. But South Korea called the launch a clear violation of a UN Security Council resolution that prohibits North Korea from using ballistic missile technology. And Wednesday morning the South Korean government partially suspended an agreement it had with North Korea that limited the Souths reconnaissance and surveillance activities along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two countries. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un celebrates Tuesday night's satellite launch with workers in an image provided by state-run media. - Rodong Sinmun The rocket carrying the satellite was launched in a southerly direction and is believed to have passed over Japans Okinawa prefecture. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned the launch, referring to it as a serious situation that affects the safety of people in Japan while reiterating his commitment to continue working with the US and South Korea to respond to Pyongyangs launches. In a statement Wednesday, Seouls military said that it had been tracking preparations for the launch in close cooperation with the US. The statement said Aegis destroyers from South Korea, the US, and Japan were deployed to track the launch and information about the specifics of it were being comprehensively analyzed. Japanese Defense Minister Hiroyuki Miyazawa said his country was still trying to determine whether North Koreas satellite had reached orbit. Third satellite launch attempt Pyongyang first attempted to put a satellite into orbit in late May, but the second stage of the rocket carrying the satellite malfunctioned and it crashed into the sea. KCNA said the reliability and stability of the new engine system was low and the fuel used unstable, leading to the missions failure. A second attempt failed in August when there was an error in the emergency blasting system during the third-stage flight, a KCNA report said at the time. That rocket broke into multiple parts before falling into the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the Pacific Ocean, according to Japanese officials. In a defiant speech to the UN Security Council after the second failed launch, North Korean Ambassador Kim Song insisted that pursuing the spy satellite program was within the countrys legitimate right as a sovereign state. He denied that North Korea had been seeking to acquire intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) technology through the satellite launch. Tuesday nights third attempt was widely expected and signaled by Pyongyang, which early Wednesday vowed to launch more. North Koreas National Aerospace Development Administration would submit a plan to secure the capability to reconnoiter the south Korean region by additionally launching several reconnaissance satellites in a short span of time, KCNA said. Pyongyang said having a satellite was a legitimate self-defense measure against what it claims are a series of provocations by the US, South Korea and Japan. Earlier this week North Korea denounced the US for its potential sales of advanced missiles to Japan and military equipment to South Korea, calling it a dangerous act in a report from KCNA. North Korea said it was obvious who the offensive military equipment would be aimed at and used against. A military boost for Pyongyang Analysts said even a single satellite in orbit helps North Koreas military posture. If it works it will improve the North Korean militarys command, control, and communications or intelligence and surveillance capabilities. That would improve the Norths ability to command its forces in any possible conflict, said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Commands Joint Intelligence Center. The satellite will give them a capability that they previously used to lack that can assist them in military targeting, it can assist them in damage assessment, said Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And lessons learned from Tuesdays launch will be used in developing future satellites, Panda said. Theyre going to take what they learn with this successful launch and apply it to additional launches. They will look to have a resilient, redundant constellation of Earth observation satellites and that will make a pretty big difference for (North Koreas) overall strategic situational awareness capabilities, he said. But others cautioned that the real capabilities of what Pyongyang launched late Tuesday remain to be seen. Some suggested the North had more to lose from the Souths resumption of intelligence gathering along the border than it had to gain from the satellite launch. The surveillance drone operations Seoul may soon commence along the DMZ should produce more useful intelligence than North Koreas rudimentary satellite program, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. Russian connection? South Koreas Defense Minister Shin Won-sik last Sunday said that the North was believed to have almost resolved its rocket engine issues with Russias help. That came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had visited Russia in September, when he toured the Russian space rocket launch site alongside President Vladimir Putin. In that meeting, Putin signaled a willingness to assist North Korea in developing its space and satellite program. But Panda cautioned about making assumptions that aid and advice from Russia had made the difference for a successful third launch. It would seem unlikely to me given the timeline here that the North Koreans have already received and implemented technical assistance from Russia, he said. Lets also bear in mind that the North Koreans themselves are remarkably capable at this point. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com Pyongyang claims to have successfully launched a spy satellite named Malligyong-1 on Tuesday South Korea has suspended parts of its 2018 agreement with the North aimed at lowering military tensions. This comes after Pyongyang claimed to have successfully launched a spy satellite into space. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said the launch threatened South Korea's security. Seoul said it would resume surveillance flights along its border with North Korea, breaching a no-fly zone established under the military pact. Some analysts have said these developments could escalate tensions further. Pyongyang fired a rocket, said to contain its Malligyong-1 spy satellite, late on Tuesday and hailed the launch as a "success". On Wednesday, South Korea's military confirmed that the satellite had entered orbit but noted that it was too soon to tell if it was actually functioning, though both it and the US strongly condemned the launch. US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the move risked "destabilising the security situation in the region and beyond." Developing a functioning spy satellite is a major part of North Korea's five-year military plan, set out by its leader Kim Jong Un in January 2021. The technology could in theory enable Pyongyang to monitor the movement of US and South Korean troops and weapons on the Korean Peninsula, allowing it to spot incoming threats. It would also allow the North to plot its nuclear attacks with more precision. Kim Jong Un is said to have overseen the launch of the spy satellite North Korea's space agency, the National Aerospace Technology Administration, said the launch was an attempt to bolster the country's self-defence capabilities, in the face of "dangerous military moves" by its enemies. Pyongyang added that it planned to launch several more spy satellites "in a short space of time". Some analysts are sceptical as to whether the satellite is advanced enough to be effective. Jang Young-geun, who runs the Missile Centre at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, predicted that given past attempts, the resolution of the satellite's camera is "probably not at a level to allow for detailed military reconnaissance." Nonetheless, he said, a low resolution is "better than nothing", as an attack - regardless of the target - will need information to make it more effective. Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also reckoned that while the satellite could enhance the effectiveness of North Korea's armed forces, it could conversely have a "stabilising effect" on the Peninsula. "It could make Pyongyang act less skittishly in crises," he said. "For instance, it could use its satellites to verify that the US and South Korea were, in fact, not surging their forces to prepare for a major attack." North claims success after two failed launches This is the North's third attempt this year to put a spy satellite into orbit, after two previous attempts in May and August failed. South Korean officials said they believed Pyongyang had received technical support from Moscow, which allowed it to overcome the hurdles that had led to its previous failures. When Kim Jong Un met Vladimir Putin at the Vostochny space centre in Russia's far east in September, the Russian leader hinted he would help Mr Kim build satellites. The US and South Korea believe the North is sending Russia arms to use in Ukraine, and that Moscow may have agreed to share its military expertise in return. But Mr Panda said there was no evidence that Pyongyang had received Russia's technical assistance and implemented it. "This was North Korea's third launch attempt and they've been carrying out their own research and development on space systems for a while now," Mr Panda noted. It is unclear if Russia helped North Korea to launch a spy satellite Jo Bee Yun, an associate research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defence Analysis (KIDA), added that the time was too limited for Russia to have provided "game-changing" technology, but that "significant transfers" could be expected in the future. Mr Kim and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed the Comprehensive Military Agreement in 2018, in an attempt to de-escalate tensions between their two countries and prevent a conflict erupting. It limited military movements by both sides near the border, removed guard posts, banned live-fire drills, and created a no fly-zone. But the South Korean government had recently argued that the deal left it vulnerable to an attack, by prohibiting it from flying surveillance aircraft and reconnaissance drones along the border. Members of South Korea's National Security Council met in the early hours of Wednesday morning, followed by its defence chiefs and cabinet. All agreed the country should restart surveillance operations along the border with immediate effect and with the president's backing. This increased surveillance will allow the South to monitor North Korean outposts and long-range artillery, previously hidden behind its mountain slopes. Seoul currently relies on US spy satellites to monitor the North, but is planning to launch its first home-built model into space at the end of November. Some analysts warn that the suspension of the military pact could escalate tensions and make cross-border skirmishes more likely. Hong Min, from the Korea Institute for National Unification, pointed out that the deal had significantly reduced the number of cross-border incidents and had been successful in deterring the North. He said Seoul risked providing it with "the justification to carry out further provocations." However Jo Bee Yun of KIDA, does not believe the suspension would increase tensions, noting that Pyongyang has been regularly launching missiles since 2022. "The cycle of provocations has already resumed. South Korea had to respond sometime or another." A rendering of the proposed Adolescent Recovery and Wellness Center to be built in Cassian by the member tribal nations of the Great Lake Inter-Tribal Council. A northern Wisconsin town official is listing a planned solar panel installation as among the reasons why she and some other local officials are opposing a proposed Native youth addiction recovery center in the area. Cassian Town Chairperson Patty Francoeur said she has a background in firefighting and said the local volunteer fire department isn't equipped to deal with a fire in a building that has solar panels. She said local firefighters are trained to shut off power to a structure if they have to respond to a fire, but there may be new protocols if the structure has solar panels, as is planned for the proposed Native youth center. They can shut the power off, but theyll still have to know how to shut off the (solar) panels, Francoeur said. She also explained that local firefighters were recently trained how to respond to an accident involving an electric car. Bryan Bainbridge, CEO for the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, which is organizing the proposed development, said he believes a real reason why some local officials are opposed to the facility is because its being built by local Native American tribes. He had given a presentation about the 36-bed residential facility at a town meeting this summer and said an audience member told him to go back to the reservation. But Francouer said, From the town (boards) perspective, this has nothing to do with race. Town officials passed a resolution this fall outlining some of their concerns about the proposed facility, which included its effects on public safety and local infrastructure costs. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican whose district includes much of the Northwoods, echoed those concerns in a Nov. 15 statement. The small community of Cassian lacks the public safety infrastructure for a drug rehabilitation facility the size and scope of the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council (GLITC) proposal, he said. While I applaud GLITC for seeking to help those who have substance abuse problems, GLITC has numerous tribes that have the public safety and medical infrastructure missing in the town of Cassian. A rendering of the proposed Adolescent Recovery and Wellness Center to be built in Cassian by the member tribal nations of the Great Lake Inter-Tribal Council. Bainbridge had already addressed many of these concerns in an Oct. 31 letter to town officials. He wrote that no funding has or will ever be asked of the town to support the project. Bainbridge added that the tribes could even bring in money to the area to assist with funding infrastructure and public safety. We would welcome the opportunity to explore how we could work together to seek out additional funds to help address challenges within the town, he wrote. Bainbridge wrote that he doesnt see public safety from the facility being much of an issue, anyway, because the youth would be checked in on a voluntary basis and will be monitored by doctors, nurses and staff 24/7. Addressing why its not being built on one of the reservations, Bainbridge said the facility would serve all the tribes in Wisconsin and the site in Cassian is centrally located for all the reservations in Wisconsin. He said the land that was purchased also is ideal because of natural setting and woods, which will provide a peaceful atmosphere for those in recovery. The facility will open to children ages 13 to 17 and, while tribal youth will be given priority, it'll also be open for non-tribal youth. A rendering of the proposed Adolescent Recovery and Wellness Center to be built in Cassian by the member tribal nations of the Great Lake Inter-Tribal Council. Francoeur said there are still unanswered questions and local officials hadnt discussed possible infrastructure funding with GLITC. She said town officials feel like they havent been informed fully about the project during the process. From the towns perspective, this was already done with everything and we didnt have a say or input, Francoeur said. The project only needs approval from the county board, not the town board. Francoeur said some town officials have attended county board meetings about the project because they're concerned residents and she believes county officials are looking at the project from mostly a zoning perspective. The project has been meeting all county zoning regulations. Francoeur said the town board has hired an attorney to look into ways to stop the project. Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@gannett.com or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Rep. Tom Tiffany joins town officials in opposing Native youth center Municipalities that once provided records by email are requiring people to collect documents in person during business hours, a requirement that can pose a challenge to people with disabilities, transportation issues, and daytime jobs. Two years ago, a request for public records revealed an illegal and lucrative land deal in Webster between the town and the town treasurer. The treasurer was charged and cant hold public office in Webster again. In Nashua, a residents requests for public records won her a tax abatement after the state Board of Tax and Land Appeals found the city had assessed similar properties differently. Last year, the Concord Monitor submitted records requests to every New Hampshire city and town for its Counting Cops investigation that showed the number of police officers in the state had grown much faster in the past two decades than the population and crime rate. Editor Jonathan Van Fleet believed the information was crucial to local budget and policy decisions. As budgets and tax pressures grow, there is a conversation to be had about how our resources should be allocated, Van Fleet said. Access to those kinds of records is getting harder under new local right-to-know policies and guidance the New Hampshire Municipal Association is giving local officials. Based on the associations advice, municipalities that once provided records by email are requiring people to collect documents in person during business hours, a requirement that can pose a challenge to people with disabilities, transportation issues, and daytime jobs. The New Hampshire Municipal Association has also told public officials they can reply to requests from New Hampshire residents differently than those from out-of-state, telling Milford officials during an April training that there is some basis to read the right-to-know law as pertaining only to residents. The associations guidance is raising concerns among lawmakers, lawyers, and government accountability groups. There will be at least two bills next session aimed at strengthening the publics access to records, one in response to the associations new recommendations. I think that (associations) advice and anyone adopting such changes are completely contrary to the constitution of New Hampshire, to (the law) 91-A, and to Supreme Court law in New Hampshire, said attorney Greg Sullivan, who has represented media outlets and individuals in right-to-know cases. Its plainly wrong. The purpose of the right-to-know law is to make documents accessible to the public to ensure the utmost information is available to the public. Americans for Prosperity New Hampshire, a conservative advocacy group that objected to legislation last year that would have allowed municipalities to charge up to $25 an hour to search for records in some cases, agreed. In the end, the (New Hampshire) Municipal Association has to know that tightening access to government records is undoubtedly going to cause a legislative response, said its state director, Greg Moore, in an email. New Hampshire is considered one of the least corrupt states in America precisely because of the level of transparency and accountability that we have here and the Legislature knows that. The New Hampshire Municipal Association declined to make someone available for an interview, citing the staffs workload preparing for its mid-November annual conference. In an email, Executive Director Margaret Byrne pointed the Bulletin to sections of the right-to-know law and a 2017 state Supreme Court case involving a school district that make clear municipalities have a right to require someone to retrieve records in person, during business hours. The justices also said the districts concerns about cybersecurity threats had merit. There is no agreement, however, on the second issue, denying out-of-state residents the same access to public records as given to residents. When the New Hampshire Municipal Association advised New Durham town officials to stop emailing records requested under the right-to-know law, Rep. David Bickford filed a bill that would make clear emailing documents is an option. The law sets no residency requirements. Some municipalities do. Harrison Thorp, editor and publisher of The Rochester Voice, said he had long received public records via email from Rochester officials when the citys attorney, Terence ORourke, reversed course in April and told him hed have to review records in person, at city hall, during business hours. The reason? While Thorp writes about a New Hampshire city and his news site is registered in the state, he lives eight miles away, in Maine. As you know, (the New Hampshire right-to-know law), which pertains to a public bodies (sic) obligation to send records to a requestor, only applies to citizens of New Hampshire, wrote ORourke in an email. Based on research, it is clear that you are not a citizen of New Hampshire and the Rochester Voice is not a citizen of New Hampshire either. Unless you can provide proof of citizenship, I will no longer be providing you with governmental records. The citys right-to-know policy ties its residency requirement to a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving Virginias public records practices. The court identified New Hampshire as a state that restricts its right to public records to residents. There is nothing, however, in New Hampshires right-to-know law restricting its freedom of information protections to residents. The law references only citizens, not New Hampshire citizens. Attorney Stephen Buckley, director of the New Hampshire Municipal Associations legal services, acknowledged that in an April training session with Milford officials, saying, The statute does not define citizens. The Attorney Generals Office is even more clear in its guide to using the right-to-know law. It noted the law does not even require individuals to identify themselves when requesting records. (The law) refers to citizens, but the right-to-know law does not define this term, it wrote. Instead, the statute emphasizes accountability to the people, accessibility to the public, and the goals of a democratic society. An agency should not, therefore, require persons requesting access to public documents to demonstrate that they are citizens of either New Hampshire or the United States. The states right-to-know ombudsman, Thomas Kehr, came to a similar conclusion in a decision earlier this month. Thorp filed a complaint against the city with Kehr, asking that he find the city in violation of the right-to-know law. Kehr declined to decide that question because the underlying issue whether the right-to-know law pertains only to New Hampshire residents is undecided. Kehr noted that only the state Supreme Court, as opposed to the U.S. Supreme Court, can interpret legislators intent behind state laws. Kehr encouraged the parties to ask the Legislature or state Supreme Court to resolve the issue. The matter at hand presents the aspect of RSA 91-A that has been most in need of clarification, Kehr wrote. His decision illustrated the complexity of the question. The law would allow easier access to New Hampshire residents living abroad who have little concern for civic affairs, he wrote, and less access for immigrants, who are not citizens but have permanent residency, pay local taxes, and actively participate in civic life. The (right-to-know ombudsman) is skeptical that this result was intended by the (Legislature) when it considered the language of RSA 91-A. Rochesters current public records policy has been in place since at least 2019; Thorp said hes lived in Maine since he began writing about the city in 2017. Its unclear why Rochester raised Thorps residency now. ORourke referred questions to the citys public information officer, who was not available for an interview. Elsewhere, public officials have cited massive records requests from out-of-state advocacy groups and businesses. Several pointed to SmartProcure, which requests months or more of purchase orders, for example, to compare what communities are paying for equipment. Thorp believes city officials changed how they handle his records request because they dislike his editorials and reporting on two high-profile issues: allegations that a city councilor had sexually assaulted a current councilor and a former councilor, and a nearly $300,000 land purchase. I was so taken aback, Thorp said. I have been a journalist for 40 freaking years. I have never heard of this before. Public information belongs to all The right-to-know law, state constitution, and legal precedent are adamant and unified in forbidding an unreasonable restriction to governmental documents and proceedings. But they give public officials discretion in how they provide those records. They are not required to email documents but they can, and many do, including state agencies and some municipalities. The town of Hudsons policy, which Buckley from the New Hampshire Municipal Association referred to as a good model at his Milton training, lists four ways to make records available: printed and picked up, emailed, loaded onto a USB drive, or mailed. In October, the town of New Hampton announced on its website that it would no longer provide electronic copies of records on the advice of the association. Individuals must come to town hall to view the documents. Copies are provided for a fee, it said. Interim Town Administrator Cecile Chase referred the Bulletin to the association when asked why the town made the change. She indicated the identity of the person requesting the records could be a concern. We certainly support open government and want to provide people the documents they are requesting, she said. But you want to be able to identify who is requesting that information. I believe what (the association) said is anybody can send an email query. Do you really know who is on the other end of that email? The state Supreme Court, however, said in a 2018 opinion that a person may have legitimate reason for not disclosing their name when requesting records, and can make a request through someone else, such as an attorney. The justices cited an opinion handed down in 2008 that said: Information that is subject to disclosure under the right-to-know law belongs to citizens to do with as they choose. As a general rule, if the information is subject to disclosure, it belongs to all. Van Fleet at the Monitor said its year-long investigation into law enforcement staffing would have been impossible if municipalities had refused to email their records. As it was, nearly half refused to provide documents or didnt respond, leaving staff to track that information down in more cumbersome ways, Van Fleet said. If they are electronic records, and we live in an electronic age, to ask (public officials) to send electronic records electronically seems to make sense, he said. It doesnt seem to be too much to ask. Its like telling the post office to deliver the mail by horse and buggy. Katherine Kokko, president of Right to Know NH, which provides training and guidance on using the law, agrees the law allows municipalities to require in-person collection of records. Our position is that it is absolutely legal but we prefer to see towns using some direction and have some flexibility in how they (deliver documents,) she said. However, if this is being used as a way to make it more difficult to have access to information, it will get pushback from groups like ours. Gilles Bissonnette, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, said they are seeing an increase in municipalities requiring people to collect records in person that could be easily emailed. Using our government transparency law to force people to collect documents in person that could be easily emailed is incompatible with the laws purpose, he said in an email. This practice needlessly places a barrier to access public documents, and we hope it can be addressed at the Legislature. Rep. David Bickford, a New Durham Republican, does too. Bickford attended a September training by the New Hampshire Municipal Association and was concerned to hear its lawyer say records should not be emailed. He will introduce a bill in January that would make clear in state law that there is nothing preventing municipalities from emailing records. Though they could still decline to. I just think the Municipal Association is leading us in the wrong direction, Bickford said. We dont need to have the stumbling block of requiring people to show up in person. If they are asking you for something, just give it to them. It can be done electronically. Weve been doing that for years. This story was originally published by the New Hampshire Bulletin This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: NH Municipal Assoc. makes it harder for public to get public records BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) Slovakias new government, led by populist Prime Minister Robert Fico who ended the countrys military aid for Ukraine, won a mandatory confidence vote in Parliament on Tuesday. Of the 143 lawmakers present in the 150-seat Parliament, 78 voted in favor of the three-party coalition government that was sworn in on Oct 25. Fico returned to power and took over as prime minister for the fourth time after his scandal-tainted leftist Smer, or Direction, party won Slovakias Sept 30 parliamentary election on a pro-Russian and anti-American platform. Fico formed a parliamentary majority by signing a coalition government deal with the leftist Hlas, or Voice, party and the ultranationalist Slovak National Party. Ficos victory may mark a dramatic turnaround in the countrys foreign policy and could strain a fragile unity in the European Union and NATO. Slovakia, a country of 5.5 million people that shares a border with Ukraine, had been a staunch supporter of Kyiv since Russia invaded in February last year, donating arms and opening its borders for refugees fleeing the war. Fico has stopped the military aid. He also opposes EU sanctions on Russia and wants to block Ukraine from joining NATO. Ficos critics worry that his return to power could lead Slovakia to abandon its pro-Western course in other ways, following the example of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Fico vowed to pursue a sovereign foreign policy, promised a tough stance against migration and non-governmental organizations and campaigned against LGBTQ+ rights. After the vote, the Health Ministry announced it was planning to cancel a regulation adopted by the previous government that has simplified the process of sex changes. After two gay men were shot dead in October last year outside a bar popular with the LGBTQ+ community in the capital of Bratislava, the community asked for the simplified process. On corruption, some elite investigators and police officials who deal with such cases have been ordered to stay at home or dismissed, and the government plans to ease punishment for corruption, among other changes in the legal system. Since the previous government took power in 2020 after campaigning on an anti-corruption ticket, dozens of senior officials, police officers, judges, prosecutors, politicians and businesspeople linked to Smer have been charged and convicted of corruption and other crimes. The cases of a number of others have not been completed yet. Fico himself and his former Interior Minister Robert Kalinak faced criminal charges last year for creating a criminal group and misuse of power. Kalinak is the defense minister in the new government. Known for his tirades against journalists, Fico labeled a major television network, two nationwide newspapers and an online news website his enemies and said he won't communicate with them. The site selected for the new South Dakota State Penitentiary in Lincoln County. The state should ask for Lincoln Countys permission before building a new prison there, according to a lawsuit from a group of landowners. The lawsuit was filed in Lincoln County late last week by a recently formed group called Neighbors Opposed to Prison Expansion or the acronym NOPE for short as well as four individual neighbors aligned with the group. On Oct. 6, the state Department of Corrections announced its plans to build a 1,500-bed penitentiary in rural Lincoln County as a replacement for the antiquated penitentiary in Sioux Falls. The sites long-term use as farmland is a key point argued in the landowners lawsuit. They contend that the countys zoning master plan never envisioned and does not permit what amounts to an industrial property on the land. The lawsuit demands that the state release more information on its search for an appropriate prison site, and that the DOC be either required to request a conditional use permit from the county or seek a ruling on its right to build from a judge before proceeding with prison construction. Either option would offer landowners who were not given notice about a potential prison near their respective properties an opportunity to voice their opposition. A conditional use permit, if issued by the county, could then be appealed for review by a judge. We want to encourage the state to appear before the county planning commission, which would give us the fundamental rights that we have as landowners to appear, examine witnesses and the right of appeal, said A.J. Swanson, the Canton-based attorney representing the landowners. State: Local zoning does not apply The state contends that it neednt seek the approval of county officials, largely because of a 46-year-old opinion from former Gov. William Janklow. Janklow was serving as the states attorney general at the time, and his letter was meant to clarify a clause in the state Constitution on the states immunity from lawsuits. The Legislature shall direct by law what manner and in what courts suits may be brought against the state, the clause reads. Ten years before Janklow penned his now-disputed letter of legal guidance, lawmakers passed a bill giving counties the right to manage land use through zoning. But that law didnt specify whether county zoning rules would apply to the state. Janklows opinion, therefore, was not built on express legislative guidance or South Dakota Supreme Court precedent. Instead, Janklow wrote, it was crafted based on accepted practices and legal doctrines in place in other states, as well as the immunity clause in the state Constitution. Janklows letter, referred to in the lawsuit as the general rule, essentially says the state can assert eminent domain and sidestep county zoning laws. In the context of his letter, the state was free to build a satellite dish for its public broadcasting system in Vermillion without adhering to that citys zoning rules. The prison site lawsuit argues that Janklows general rule has never been blessed by the state Supreme Court as a controlling doctrine for disputes over land use in matters involving state entities, nor has such a right been explicitly established by lawmakers. We find no Legislative direction that the State may just do as it wishes, the complaint says. Landowners: Make the state comply Among other demands, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit want a judge to determine if Janklows guidance nearly five decades ago ought to apply, or whether the courts ought to weigh the states interests in the construction of a prison against the long-term planning goals of the county. That could take the form of a conditional use permit hearing, Swanson told South Dakota Searchlight, or be considered by a judge using a balance of interests test to determine whether the state made a good faith effort to select the best possible site. Swanson argues that by the states own request for proposal for a site which included proximity to an interstate and existing roadways the Lincoln County site falls short. The cost to build infrastructure like roads and water lines works against the states assertion that the land was a good deal for taxpayers, he said. The site is about 15 miles south of Sioux Falls. Theyre putting it way out in the country, where its even more costly, because distance and space are the primary factors in why infrastructure costs so much, Swanson said. The DOC has said the 320-acre site was the best option in part because the state already owned the land, which had previously been held in trust and leased for farming, with the lease payments used to support South Dakota schools. The DOC pledged to purchase it for $7.9 million from another state agency, the Office of School and Public Lands, to convert it from agriculture to a prison site (the money would go into a trust fund supporting schools). The DOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit on Monday, but DOC Secretary Kellie Wasko has addressed some of the issues raised by the lawsuit through public statements and letters. This site is the best choice for a modern correctional facility that supports our states public safety needs, minimizes the impact on community growth, and keeps us close to available workforce, Wasko said in a press release announcing the prison site. In a letter to Swanson now included in the court file, Wasko wrote that the states position supports the agencys ability to sidestep local zoning rules. neither zoning ordinances nor land use approvals are required for state-owned property this is not only the departments position, but the states long-standing position, Wasko wrote, in addition to citing a state law allowing the DOC to condemn private land. She also wrote that land near the city of Sioux Falls was quite difficult to find during the 15-month search for a site, and that many landowners declined to even discuss selling their land. Lawmakers set aside $323 million last winter for the penitentiary project. This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Landowners sue to put prison site in front of county zoning board By Hyunsu Yim and Soo-hyang Choi SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea on Wednesday suspended part of a 2018 military agreement with North Korea after it defied warnings from the United States and launched a spy satellite. The suspension of a clause in the agreement will see South Korea step up military surveillance along the heavily fortified border with the North. North Korea said it placed its first spy satellite in orbit on Tuesday. Photographs in state media showed what appeared to be leader Kim Jong Un watching the fiery launch of a rocket from a base. Kim was later briefed on the satellite's operations at the control centre of the space agency in Pyongyang and viewed images taken above the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam of U.S. military installations, including the Andersen Air Force Base, the North's KCNA news agency said. Kim stressed the need for more reconnaissance satellites on different orbits to give his armed forces "abundant valuable real-time information about the enemy and further promote their responsive posture", it said. The satellite would begin its reconnaissance mission on Dec. 1, after adjustments, KCNA said. South Korea's military said North Korea's military reconnaissance satellite was believed to have entered orbit, but it would take time to assess whether it was operating normally. Earlier, the Pentagon said the U.S. military was assessing whether the launch was a success. U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson called the launch "a brazen violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions". Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Reuters that U.S. Space Force data had catalogued two new objects in an orbital plane consistent with the launch from North Korea at the time stated by the North. "I conclude the objects are the spy satellite and the rocket upper stage," he said. However, South Korea's Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said the North "exaggerated" by saying Kim had viewed images of U.S. military installations at Guam, and that the satellite would only begin reconnaissance on Dec. 1, in a radio interview on Wednesday. "Even if it enters normal orbit, it takes a considerable time to carry out normal reconnaissance. Kim Jong Un was so happy that he seemed to go a little too far.... Taking photos of Guam cannot be done on the first day, if you have any knowledge of satellites," Shin said, according to Yonhap. Shin said it will take at least until the weekend to tell whether the satellite is functioning. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, in Britain on a state visit, approved the suspension of part of the agreement with North Korea. Yoon earlier led a National Security Council meeting with ministers and the intelligence chief by video link. The pact between North and South Korea, known as the Comprehensive Military Agreement and aimed at de-escalating tension between them, was signed at a 2018 summit between then South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North's Kim. Critics have said the pact weakened South Korea's ability to monitor the North's near the border while North Korea had violated the agreement. South Korea said it was suspending a clause in the agreement and resuming aerial surveillance near the border. SHOW OF FORCE The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine USS Santa Fe docked at a South Korean port on Wednesday, a day after the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrived in a show of force in response to North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes. Visiting the carrier, South Korea's Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said maritime exercises with the United States and Japan were planned to show their "strong will" to respond to any North Korean provocation, his office said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged North Korea to fully comply with U.N. resolutions, which bar its use of technology applicable to ballistic missile programmes, a spokesperson said. The foreign ministry of China, North Korea's closest ally, called on all parties to ensure peace and stability. KCNA said the Malligyong-1 satellite was launched on a Chollima-1 rocket from the Sohae satellite launch facility at 10:42 p.m. (1342 GMT) on Tuesday and entered orbit at 10:54 p.m. (1354 GMT). North Korea had notified Japan of a satellite launch after two failed attempts to put what it called spy satellites into orbit this year. RUSSIA CONNECTION Tuesday's launch was the first since leader Kim met Vladimir Putin at a Russian space facility in September, where the Russian president promised to help the North build satellites. South Korean officials said the launch most likely involved Russian technical assistance under a growing partnership that has seen North Korea supply Russia with millions of artillery shells. "Didn't the first and second attempts fail because of engine problems? This time, the biggest feature is the success of the engine... It shows that Putin's offer to help in August was not a pretence," said South Korea's Defence Minister Shin. Some missile experts, however, said it was too soon for Russian technical assistance to have been fully incorporated into the satellite or the rocket and Russia would not have shared highly sensitive and proprietary technology. "This consultation may not have been an in-depth involvement in the design but likely targeted specific challenging aspects within North Korea's planned design," said Hong Min, an expert on the North's weapons at the Korea Institute for National Unification. Russia and North Korea have denied arms deals but have promised deeper cooperation. The launch came just over a week before South Korea plans to send its first spy satellite into space on a rocket operated by the U.S. company Space X. (Reporting by Hyunsu Yim, Soo-hyang Choi, Josh Smith, Ju-min Park, Minwoo Park, Hyonhee Shin and Joyce Lee in Seoul, Liz Lee in Beijing and Satoshi Sugiyama in Tokyo; Writing by Ed Davies and Jack Kim; Editing by Gerry Doyle, Alex Richardson and Kim Coghill) South Koreas President Yoon Suk Yeol is to meet Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street to sign a diplomatic accord. Mr Yoon began his three-day state visit on Tuesday with a welcome from the King and Queen. On Wednesday, he will hold a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister and sign the long-term agreement covering defence and technology co-operation. The Downing Street Accord follows similar agreements with Singapore and Japan as the UK seeks to consolidate influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Rishi Sunak (Daniel Leal/PA) It will include a defence agreement to boost the British and Korean militaries co-operation on countering smuggling in the East China Sea which North Korea relies on to evade sanctions. South Korean first lady Kim Keon Hee will be hosted by Mr Sunaks wife Akshata Murty. Later in the afternoon, the president will receive a call from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. In the morning, Mr Yoon is to accompany the Duchess of Edinburgh for a roundtable discussion at the Royal Society on how to strengthen the role of basic science to advance humanity. He is expected to address the discussion. The president will be joined by notable UK and Korean scientists and will view highlights from the Royal Societys archives alongside the duchess. The Duchess of Edinburgh arriving with Cho Taeyong for the State Banquet at Buckingham Palace In the evening, the president and first lady, joined by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, are to attend a banquet at the Guildhall hosted by the Lord Mayor and City of London Corporation. Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch will also begin negotiations with her South Korean counterpart Bang Moon Kyu at the UK-Korea Business Forum at Mansion House on Wednesday. They will announce 21 billion of investments committed by Korean businesses in green energy and infrastructure projects across the UK. The UK secured a free trade deal with South Korea in 2019. In his banquet speech on Tuesday, the King said Koreans have created a miracle in their journey from wartime devastation to a thriving country where the industrial efficiency he witnessed during a visit in 1992 had become the epitome of technological innovation. The UK visit coincides with the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the UK and Korea, as well as the 70th anniversary of the armistice of the Korean War. Natalie Vega holds her water bill at her home on Thursday, April 27, 2023 in Houston. The story is about how more residents are experiencing problems with incorrect/high water bills as the failure rate of meter reading devices has more than doubled in the last three years. Karen Warren/Staff photographer Three Houston City Council members are trying to tighten the timeline for public works officials to change city water bills, unless it is in customers' favor. The council members said Tuesday that they are wasting little time taking advantage of a new ordinance that allows Houston City Council members to add items to meeting agendas. The change voters approved earlier in November hands new power to council members and ends the mayors unilateral power to set the council agenda, deciding which issues get a vote and which proposals do not. The agenda item, headed by council members Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, Mary Nan Huffman and Amy Peck, prohibits the public works department from correcting water bills if the error is more than three months old, unless that correction is in the customers favor, they said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad With this new power, I intend to offer items like this that make a real difference to people, Peck said Tuesday in a news release. People came to us with a problem, and now we have the ability to fix it. This is how government should work. High water charges have emerged as a flash point issue at City Hall as some customers have reported huge spikes in their bills, sometimes more than $1,000. In many cases, the Houston Public Works estimates water usage and back-charges after reading residents meters, but that can take time. Houstons water meters automatically transmit household usage to the citys server wirelessly. But aging meters and slow replacements have caused the number of malfunctioning devises in a given month to more than double from 36,800 in 2020, to 91,000 in March, according to Public Works data. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The problems led to extra charges for water customers and a flood of complaints in the departments bill dispute system. HOUSTON WATER BILLS: Houstonians battle soaring water bills as equipment failures and staff shortage complicate charges Evans-Shabazz said the measure would offer hope and relief to community members and bring a sense of consistency as the city transitions into a new leadership. Mayor Sylvester Turner is in the closing weeks of his second term and could not seek reelection. Hours after council members unveiled their plan, Turner announced that he would be releasing his own proposal to deal with high water bills for the council to consider. He said the Houston Public Works Department and the citys legal team has spent months devising changes to address community outrage over high water bills. Advertisement Article continues below this ad This extensive array of regulatory and process improvements is designed to bring customer relief, he said in a statement. He plans to unveil the proposal to the city council Dec. 6. The Public Works Department could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday on the proposed changes. Houston operates under a strong-mayor form of government that gives the mayor nearly unfettered power over the city. Whoever is in the position gets the final say over any agenda item that comes across the table. HOUSTON COUNCIL RUNOFFS: 2023 Houston Runoff Voter Guide: Mayor, Controller and City Council Advertisement Article continues below this ad Under a newly passed city charter change, three council members can now team up the same way Evans-Shabazz, Huffman and Peck did to add items to the agenda. Evans-Shabazz, Huffman and Pecks agenda item is currently under review by the citys legal department. Pecks office has not yet gotten word on when the item will be taken up for a vote, her chief of staff Elizeth Miranda said. Evans-Shabazz and Huffman face runoff challenges Dec. 9. Evans-Shabazz will face off against Travis McGee for her seat, and Huffman faces Paxton impeachment lawyer Tony Buzbee. Over the last decade, the US Supreme Court has gradually chipped away at a landmark voting rights law adopted at the height of the civil rights movement. A federal court ruling is teeing up another major Supreme Court case that could radically weaken the Voting Rights Act by blocking private citizens and civil rights groups from filing lawsuits to protect what has become Americas bedrock voting protections. On Monday, a three-judge panel with the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that determined that citizens and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP cannot legally challenge discriminatory state and local election laws. According to two of the judges on the panel, only the US Department of Justice can do so. Michael Li, senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, called the decision so unmoored from precedent that even the current ultraconservative Supreme Court is almost certain to reverse it. Under the lastest decision, voters facing discriminatory laws would have to rely only on the Justice Department to take up their case. If a highly politicised Justice Department under a Republican president hostile to voting rights declines, minority voters would be out of luck, Mr Li wrote. The result would be catastrophic. The case Arkansas State Conference NAACP v Arkansas Board of Apportionment deals with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election laws and policies that discriminate against voters based on race. Two years ago, the Supreme Courts decision in Brnovich v Democratic National Committee struck at Section 2 by making it more difficult to challenge election laws. And in 2013, the nations highest court gutted critical federal oversight measures from the 1965 Voting Rights Act to protect against discriminatory laws. That 2013 ruling struck out federal preclearance guidelines that required states with histories of racial discrimination at the polls from implementing new elections laws without first receiving federal approval. Ten years later, the Supreme Court is poised to review the latest case surrounding Section 2, after a court ruling that landed a body blow to what is left of the Voting Rights Act, according to Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project. The ability to sue has been fundamental and critical to beating back voter suppression, she said. This is unreal. At least 182 successful Section 2 lawsuits were filed within the last 40 years, including 15 that were brought solely by the US attorney general, Chief Judge Lavenski R Smith noted in his dissent. The 2-1 decision upheld a previous decision from US District Court Judge Lee Rudofsky, who was appointed by former president Donald Trump. The judge dismissed a lawsuit last year that challenged a voting map in Arkansas over allegations that the newly drawn congressional districts weakened Black voters electoral power. Judge Rudofsky gave US Attorney General Merrick Garland five days to join the case. When he didnt, the judge dropped it. Appeals court judge Judge David Stras another Trump appointee wrote that the assumption that Section 2 can be enforced rests on flimsy footing. Richard L Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, wrote that the decision was written with a wooden, textualist analysis despite recognizing that the Supreme Court and lower courts have for decades allowed such cases to be brought and that Congress intended to allow private plaintiffs to file them. The ACLUs Voting Rights Project director Sophia Lin Lakin, who argued the case before the court, called the ruling a travesty for democracy. For generations, private individuals have brought cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to protect their right to vote, she said in a statement. By failing to reverse the district courts radical decision, the 8th Circuit has put the Voting Rights Act in jeopardy, tossing aside critical protections that voters fought and died for. Barry Jefferson, political action chair of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP, the lead plaintiff in the case, called the ruling a devastating blow to the civil rights of every American, and the integrity of our nations electoral system. The plaintiffs are now exploring all available options to ensure that the rights of all voters are fully protected. Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to restore elements of the Voting Rights Act and expand voting rights protections in the wake of the 2020 election. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers across the country have enacted dozens of restrictive voting laws and laws that reshape the roles of election administration, giving power to partisan officials to do what Mr Trump and his allies failed to do in 2020. The Biden administration issued visa restrictions Tuesday against individuals running charter flights into Nicaragua from Cuba and Haiti, making good on a promise to crack down on those facilitating an unprecedented wave of Cuban and Haitian migrants using the Central American country as a springboard to the United States. The State Department did not say who exactly would be blocked from traveling to the United States, but told McClatchy and the Miami Herald that the new policy authorizes the department to take steps to impose visa restrictions on appropriate targets, including owners, executives, and/or senior officials of companies providing charter flights to Nicaragua who intend to irregularly migrate to the United States. The Nicaragua-bound trips are usually operated by travel agencies that have been known, in the case of Cuban migrants, to sell tickets in Hialeah. After securing the charters, they charge passengers thousands of dollars for the one-way trip from Havana to Augusto C. Sandino International Airport in Managua. After arriving, passengers are charged for a tourist card by the government of Nicaragua, which also assesses landing fees that can cost at least $10,000 per aircraft. Some of the airplanes are owned by U.S. companies but leased by foreign nationals and U.S. green card holders, who are not affected by the visa restrictions. The growing trend, which comes during a historic surge in U.S.-bound migrants in the hemisphere, has led critics to accuse the regime of Nicaragua leader Daniel Ortega of weaponizing migration both for profit and as a foreign policy tool against the U.S., which has issued sanctions against many of his officials. The State Departments new visa restriction policy targets those facilitating charter flights into Nicaragua that exploit migrants hoping to cross the U.S. border. This is one of several ongoing actions to end this abusive practice & protect migrants, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian A. Nichols said Tuesday afternoon on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Earlier this month, after the Miami Herald and others reported about the growing migration scheme, Nichols warned there would be consequences for those involved in the charter flights. Nicaragua has long been used as a bridge by Cubans to get to the U.S., with Venezuelan state-owned airline Conviasa running charters from Havana to Managua to help migrants reach the U.S. Mexico border. But in recent months, the crush of migrants has expanded to include tens of thousands of Haitians after Ortega suspended visa requirements for nationals of the troubled country. Paying upwards of $4,000 per person, Haitians boarded flights from both international airports in Haiti, as well as in the Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos. Once they arrived in Managua, they paid traffickers to help facilitate their journey north to the U.S.-Mexico border. Nicaraguas growing role in the ongoing migration crisis through the hemisphere has been a concern for both the governments of the United States and Mexico, and was raised in discussions this week between the leaders of the two countries when they met in San Francisco. The White House said both President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador 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 U.S. noted that nearly 300,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have come legally to the United States through a new humanitarian parole program, which has led to a dramatic and sustained drop in irregular migration at the U.S. Mexico border. Still, the hemisphere is seeing a massive flow in asylum seekers trying to make it to the border, despite efforts from the Biden administration and other regional governments to deter them. International observers have raised the alarm that record numbers of migrants are crossing the Darien Gap, a dangerous jungle that separates Colombia and Panama. Over 458,000 crossers have made their way to Panama this year, according to the statistics from the countrys government. Over half of them are Venezuelan, followed by Ecuadorians and Haitians. At the same time, a massive number of migrants are bypassing the dangerous jungle and flying directly into Central American countries. El Salvador, for example, recently slapped a $1,000 fee plus tax on passengers from more than 50 African countries and India who have been flying into its international airport, using the country as a layover on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said it will continue to deport migrants who have no legal basis for entering the U.S. During each of the past two weeks, we have conducted over thirty repatriation flights transporting thousands of individuals back to their country of origin and have repatriated over five thousand individuals directly to Mexico, DHS said. The agency noted that the administration has established pathways for migrants to legally come to the United States, including the two-year humanitarian parole program for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Still, with a backlog of over 1 million migrants waiting to receive permission to travel, many have decided to take their chances and fly to Nicaragua and then make their way to Mexico with the help of traffickers, where they then request an interview at the U.S. border using a newly launched smartphone application. Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Kristie Canegallo warned that migrants should not listen to the lies of smugglers. Individuals who cross unlawfully wont be eligible for these lawful pathways and will be removed if they have no legal basis to remain. Earlier this month, Haiti suspended the Nicaragua-bound flights. By the time of the suspension, at least 31,000 Haitians had made the journey onboard 268 flights. In response to the decision to end the flights, several flight organizers in Haiti sued the countrys Civil Aviation Authority, arguing that the decision was made unilaterally without taking into account the expenses incurred in millions of American dollars by the applicants and others. On Sunday, Ortega, who governs Nicaragua alongside his wife, Rosario Murillo, announced his countrys formal withdrawal from the Organization of American States. The State Department called it another step away from democracy. The move further isolates Nicaragua from the international community, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller wrote on X. remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Houston mayoral candidates Sheila Jackson Lee, left, and John Whitmire, right, will face a Dec. 9 runoff to see who will lead the city. Staff file photos The mayor of Houston may not have any formal authority over the citys public schools, but that doesnt mean City Halls top leader is powerless to effect change. The mayors authority over municipal resources and command of public attention can be potent tools in helping direct Houston ISD, Texas' largest school district, education policy experts say. The next mayor will be tasked with navigating a potentially awkward partnership with school leaders appointed by state education officials, rather than by Houston voters. Informally and organizationally speaking, the mayor embodies the will of the people in a city, so the mayor does have that institutional high ground and responsibility to articulate their positions, said Kenneth Wong, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg chair for education policy at Brown University. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Mayoral candidates state Sen. John Whitmire and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee have struck different tones on how to approach relations with state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles and the Board of Managers that replaced the democratically elected Board of Trustees. Both, however, said they would like to use their office to improve schools and return HISD to local control and would be willing to work with district leaders to achieve those goals. Heres more on what the candidates had to say on the HISD takeover and how they would use their office to impact public schools. John Whitmire: As HISD goes is how Houston goes Whitmire, the leading vote-getter in the general mayoral election earlier this month, has offered fewer public comments about HISD since filing an eleventh-hour bill, which ultimately failed, in March to stave off the takeover. But the longtime state senator said he has been active behind the scenes, meeting separately with both Miles and Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath to offer his opinions and lend his assistance. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Opening clear lines of communication between the mayors office and HISD would be the first step in establishing a partnership with the district, Whitmire said. If elected mayor, he said he would appoint an education adviser to brief him regularly on the school district and its impact on the city. He characterized Mayor Sylvester Turners reluctance to work with Miles as unproductive and promised that he would communicate directly with school leaders rather than shout from a distance. Turners office declined to respond to that accusation. The bottom line is the takeover has taken place, and its shameful to politicize that, politicize childrens education, Whitmire said. Lets support the students, support the administration that has got the childrens best interests at heart, and go forward. Whitmire has caught some flak from his opponents for signing on to the sweeping 2015 education legislation that ultimately led to the takeover. The senator is quick to point out, however, that some of the states most visible Democrats and takeover critics including Turner, Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis and state Rep. Senfronia Thompson also voted for the bill when they served in the Legislature. The amendment to HB 1842, which allowed the state to take over an entire school district if one campus received a failing rating five years in a row, was itself authored by Houston Rep. Harold Dutton, a Democrat. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Whitmire said the timing of the takeover, which was announced in the middle of last school year, was poor. He felt that the Texas Education Agency should have pulled out of the process after Wheatley High School, which triggered the takeover by failing state evaluations seven years in a row, improved its rating to a C. Essentially we were trying to get HISDs attention, not really expecting the process to go forward if (HISD) created a better system with a new superintendent in Millard House, who I think was doing a good job, and a newly elected board, which was doing a pretty good job, Whitmire said. Thompson said she was concerned about the consistently low performance of schools in her Senate district when she voted for the bill, and did so, like Whitmire, to get the attention of HISD leaders. She also did not expect the state to actually follow through on the threats, and said that education advocates did not rally against it at the time. Turner has denied ever even knowing about Duttons amendment, tweeting in October that legislators in the Texas House didnt know the amendment had been added to the bill and there was no discussion. Ellis, through a spokesman, said many legislators and progressive education advocates were sold a bill of goods but acknowledged it was a bad vote and reiterated his opposition to the takeover. In addition to appointing an education adviser to his staff, Whitmire also said he would assist (HISD) where possible with resources, talent and community input. Advertisement Article continues below this ad As HISD goes is how Houston goes. We have too many citizens that work in Houston and live in the suburbs, often driven by schools. I want people to work and live in Houston and have education choices that include strong public schools, Whitmire said. Wong, the Brown University professor who has studied mayoral influence on public schools, said whoever is elected mayor should be able to coordinate resources such as public safety, sanitation and social services to improve the environment of neighborhood schools. Those are the kinds of overall services that the mayor is in charge of that would have tremendous tangible impacts on schoolchildren, Wong said. Sheila Jackson Lee: To be an 'education mayor,' you have to be attentive Jackson Lee, given her capacity as a federal representative rather than a state legislator, was not directly involved with the takeover but has been one of its strongest critics, speaking at TEA forums and leading rallies against the takeover. In March, the congresswoman said she filed a federal complaint to halt the takeover, though it has not resulted in any action thus far. The education bureau did not respond to a request for an update on the status of the complaint. The congresswoman said it is still under review. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Jackson Lees outspokenness has earned her the endorsement of the Houston Federation of Teachers, which has emerged as one of Miles' fiercest opponents since he was appointed to his post. The congresswoman said she would use the bully pulpit afforded to the mayor to advocate for a return to local control, higher teacher salaries and public-private partnerships for tutoring and internet access. In order to be an 'education mayor,' you have to be attentive. I think its important that I work with parents, collaborate with PTOs listen to what parents are saying and find ways for the city to be collaborative, Jackson Lee said. Wong said the bully pulpit, which refers to an officials ability to speak publicly on an issue and be heard, is one of the most powerful tools at a mayors disposal when it comes to influencing public education. When the mayor speaks, it gets the attention of the media people listen and pay attention, Wong said. The mayor has the audience right there, so its important that the mayor regularly speaks on the state of public education in the city. Jackson Lee has also promised to hire at least one full-time staffer to handle issues related to education. She said she would use her position to lobby for philanthropic involvement in schools and improve public safety, parks and recreation and housing opportunities for public school students and their families. Jackson Lee has criticized some aspects of Miles leadership, including the decision to convert libraries in dozens of schools with mostly Black and brown students into Team Centers used partially for discipline. But the congresswoman said she would reserve judgment on his performance until he has been given more time to show results. Like Whitmire, Jackson Lee said she would be willing to work with Miles and the HISD administration if elected mayor. She has also already spoken with Miles about the direction of HISD and described the conversations as professional. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Germanys Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Niels Annen, has said that Germany appreciates the Crossroads of Peace project proposed by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Speaking at a press briefing after the Armenian-German intergovernmental session in Yerevan, Annen said that Armenia has made much effort to improve its investment environment. Many discussions are taking place on the government level. But some business associations from Germany are also involved in these talks. Everyone in Germany understands and sees that numerous efforts have been made in improving Armenias investment environment. Weve seen progress in Armenia particularly in the fight against corruption and we will make additional investments in this direction to maintain and further develop what has been achieved so far, he said. There are challenges in the region. And taking into account the general environment in the region, allow me to emphasize that any investment in the direction of improving the environment must be made through overcoming the problems in the region. We highly appreciate the Crossroads of Peace idea proposed by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, which will give many opportunities in this regard. We will once again present this to German businesses, and we hope that by taking into account the environment they will increase or continue their investments, the German official added. Says his guarantee outweighs all false promises by Congress New Delhi/Jaipur: Asserting that Modis guarantee outweighs all "false promises" made by the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday claimed that the entire state of Rajasthan is saying, Gehlot ji, koni mile vote ji! (chief minister Ashok Gehlot, you are not getting any vote). Attacking the Congress for anti-people and anti-national decisions at two poll rallies in Rajasthan, Mr Modi said anyone who speaks truth in the party is shunted out. Addressing a public meeting in Kotri of Bhilwara district, Mr Modi accused the Congress of punishing its leader Sachin Pilot after meting out the harsh treatment to his late father Rajesh Pilot. He said: Whoever said or spoke anything in front of the Congress family...is as good as finishedRajesh Pilot ji had once challenged this Congress family for good, but this family is such that after punishing Rajesh ji, they are bent upon punishing his son also," Mr Modi said while addressing a rally in Kotri. The PM apparently suggested that the late Congress leader lost favour with the Congress leadership after contesting against Sitaram Kesri for the party president's post in 1997. The former deputy chief minister has been involved in a power tussle with chief minister Ashok Gehlot and the Prime Minister has been referring to it in his poll campaigns in Rajasthan. The Prime Minister also charged that the Congress makes anti-people and anti-national decisions. Congress policy is to be soft on terrorists, rioters and criminals. Blatant corruption is the policy of the Congress. Such policies of the Congress have made Rajasthan a safe haven for crimes and criminals," he said, adding that the pride of Rajasthan is the pride of the entire country, but under the Congress rule, the culture of Rajasthan is also under great threat. The path taken by the Congress for appeasement will lead Rajasthan towards destruction. The Congress has given free rein to fanatic people here," he charged. The people of Bhilwara are well aware of how communal tension has continuously increased under the Congress government here. The Congress has given undue freedom to extremist elements here. If the Congress remains in power, there will be an increase in migration, and there will be more atrocities against women and the poor. Therefore, today, the time demands that the Congress be removed from the Rajasthan government, asserted Mr Modi. Launching an unsparing attack on Mr Gehlot, Mr Modi said that the Rajasthan chief minister does not have the right to stay in power even for a moment in the state. When ministers give clean chit to rapists in the Assembly, how can our mothers, sisters and daughters remain safe? The Congress has left no stone unturned in looting Rajasthan in the last five years," Mr Modi said. The need of the hour is to remove the Congress government from Rajasthan forever. "Your one vote for the lotus can wipe out the Congress. The lotus button should be pressed and the Congress should be wiped out," Mr Modi told the gathering. Earlier, addressing a rally in Sagwara, Mr Modi asserted that his guarantee outweighs all "false promises" made by the Congress and asked the people of Rajasthan to wipe out the Gehlot government to free the state from oppression and corruption. "Modi's guarantee," he said, "begins from where the hope from the Congress for the welfare of the poor and the public ends." "Wipe out the Congress and free Rajasthan from riots, crimes and corruption. The Congress departure is also necessary for quick implementation of the Centre's schemes," he said. Alleging that the Congress government has "committed scams" in every government recruitment in Rajasthan, he said, "There is such a business between the Congress leaders and their close ones that their children became officers and your children are selectively thrown out." In Bhilwara, Mr Modi also highlighted the water scarcity issues in the district while informing the gathering that the Centre had sent funds for various water-related projects, but the Congress misused the funds. Expressing confidence of a BJP win in the ensuing Assembly polls, Mr Modi said the people of Rajasthan should note that the Gehlot government will not return to power in the state. Rajasthan goes to the polls on November 25 and the results will be declared on December 3. During his address, the Prime Minister advocated for dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the situation Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks to the media in New Delhi, India, Saturday, May 25, 2019. (PTI) New Delhi: At the conclusion of the G-20 summit hosted by India in virtual mode on Wednesday evening, which prominently discussed both the Israel-Hamas conflict and the G-20 development agenda in its deliberations, including progress on the G-20 agenda, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitched for a two-state solution as a permanent settlement of the Israel-Palestine issue. Addressing the G-20 grouping, the Prime Minister said that while there is "zero tolerance for terrorism", the deaths of civilians in the conflict are "condemnable", particularly those of women and children. Welcoming news about the release of hostages and a "humanitarian pause" to the conflict in his remarks, Mr Modi said that the Israel-Hamas conflict should not assume a regional form and dimension, adding that "one family" (humanity) has the strength to work for peace. During his address, the Prime Minister advocated for dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the situation, adding that humanitarian assistance should "safely" reach the people in dire need of it. Mr Modi also batted for a development agenda and proposed the formation of a social impact fund for digital public infrastructure (DPI) in the Global South (developing nations), in which he said India will make an initial contribution of $25 million. He added that the decision taken by the G-20 for a repository had now fructified and that 50 DPIs from 16 countries are now part of the repository. The Prime Minister also proposed a global framework for artificial intelligence (AI) and warned against its misuse. He said "deepfakes" are a threat to all and announced that India will host an AI partnership summit next month. On the global efforts for women's empowerment, Mr Modi told the grouping how a historic decision had been taken by India in the first session in its new Parliament building to reserve 33 per cent (one-third) of seats in Parliament and state Assemblies for women. The Prime Minister pledged that the G-20 will work towards the concerns of the Global South on issues such as food and health security. While speaking about the reform of multilateral institutions, Mr Modi said in his closing remarks that there will be "just, easy and affordable climate finance" and also "transparency in debt restructuring", two issues of importance to developing nations. The Prime Minister also spoke about the need for implementation of the action plan for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He also spoke about the efforts to combat climate change and referred to the global biofuels alliance in this context. Later, at a media briefing, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said that while an "overwhelming" number of G-20 members supported a two-state solution, there was no consensus on it. Mr Jaishankar said that all 21 G-20 members, including the African Union, as well as the nine guest countries and representatives of international organisations, attended the summit. The summit was attended by leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He added that all had congratulated Mr Modi on the success of India's G-20 presidency, which ends on November 30. Mr Jaishankar said that the Ukraine issue was also raised at the summit by some members. In his remarks, Mr Putin rejected criticism of Russia by some G-20 nations in the context of the Ukraine conflict and said, "Russia has never refused peace negotiations with Ukraine". The writer is based in South India for the past 40 years. He writes on India, China, Tibet and Indo-French relations. Communist China often changes the names of the people, places and even nations. It is the case of Tibet, which is now called Xizang US President Joe Biden greets China's President President Xi Jinping at the Filoli Estate in Woodside, California, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative conference. (AP) The long-awaited meeting between the two most powerful leaders of the planet finally took place at a farmhouse on the outskirts of San Francisco on November 15. During his press conference, US President Joe Biden said that Chinese President Xi Jinping was effectively a dictator, which seemingly undid whatever good could have come out of the meeting. When asked whether he still held the view (mentioned in June) that Mr Xi was a dictator, Mr Biden answered: Look, he is. Hes a dictator in the sense that hes a guy who runs a country that is a Communist country thats based on a form of government totally different than ours. Listening to his boss, US secretary of state Antony Blinken made a telling face: He has done it again. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, was not long to respond: This statement is extremely wrong and irresponsible political manipulation, he told reporters on Thursday at a routine briefing. But Mr Xis speech at the welcome dinner remained uncontroversial: he mentioned the Belt and Road Initiative as well as the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) and proposed that China was opened to all countries at all times, including the United States. China is also ready to participate in US-proposed multilateral cooperation initiatives. He remembered his first visit to the United States: I stayed at the Dvorchaks in Iowa. I still remember their address -- 2911 Bonnie Drive. The days I spent with them are unforgettable. For me, they represent America Our two peoples are both kind, friendly, hardworking and down to earth. These are different ways of dealing with seemingly insurmountable differences. But remember Mahabalipuram? Everyone had praised the Modi-Xi encounter in 2019, and seven months later the Peoples Liberation Army entered eastern Ladakh. Though the California encounter may also end with a new confrontation (in Taiwan or the South China Sea?), one should not forget the hard realities of todays life in China, particularly in what Beijing calls the minorities areas, meaning Tibet and Xinjiang. On November 10, Xinhua reported that the State Council Information Office had just released a white paper on the governance of the Xizang Autonomous Region. But what is Xizang? As a true colonial power, Communist China often changes the names of the people, places and even nations. It is the case of Tibet, which is now called Xizang. The main objective of the white paper titled CPC Policies on the Governance of Xizang in the New Era: Approach and Achievements, is to make official the new name for the occupied territory of Tibet. It goes to highlight the CPCs guidelines for governing Tibet, showing that Beijing has brought about all-round progress and historic success in various undertakings in the region. Of course, it praises Emperor Xi: Since the 18th CPC National Congress held in 2012, Xizang [Tibet] has experienced a period of unprecedented development and huge change, bringing more tangible benefits to the people. It also gives figures: Xizangs gross domestic product reached 213.26 billion yuan (about $29.3 billion) in 2022, representing an average annual growth rate of 8.6 per cent since 2012. The length of the regions railway network had almost doubled during this period and 5G network has covered all counties and main townships there. The region had also eradicated absolute poverty. Before concluding that together with the rest of the country, people in Xizang have witnessed the tremendous transformation of the Chinese nation from standing up and becoming prosperous to growing in strength, and are now embarking on a new journey of building a modern socialist country in all respects. The word Tibet is never used in the white paper, except as an adjective such as Tibetan or in the name of an organisation or institution, such as Tibet Airlines. The Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharamsala, strongly rejected the white paper, saying that the document was unacceptable and filled with misinterpretation, misconceptions and lies. It further pointed out that this 19th white paper on Tibet consistently downplaying the regions distinct political identity by using Xizang or Xizang Autonomous Region. The CTA spokesperson, Tenzin Lekshay, called it an insult to the Tibetan people. The 32-page document talks about the aspirations of the people, but somehow the Tibetan people are missing, so we wonder what kind of aspirations they are talking about, whose aspirations they are talking about. Also worrying for Delhi, China made official the term Xizang with Indias neighbours by sending visit Wang Junzheng, the Tibetan Autonomous Regions party secretary, on a five-day visit to Kathmandu and then to Colombo. The Tibet delegation (without any Tibetans) was received at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu by Urmila Aryal, the National Assembly Vice-chairperson. Mr Wangs visit was to maintain the good momentum of high-level exchanges between two countries, a communique of the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs said. During his stay, Mr Wang met with Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Prachanda Dahal: Since we share a long border with Tibet, during the visit, our officials and the CPC delegation will discuss strengthening the bilateral ties along with implementing the agreements signed during the Prime Ministers China visit, observed Rupak Sapkota, foreign affairs relations adviser to Mr Dahal. The Xizang representatives also paid courtesy calls on vice-president Ramsahaya Prasad Yadav; later they met deputy prime minister and home minister Narayan Kaji Shrestha, minister for federal affairs and general administration Anita Devi Sah as well as Ganesh Prasad Timilsina, the chairman of the National Assembly. He also visited joint projects in Pokhara, though it was clear that the objective of the exercise was to get acceptance for the name for Xizang. That is not all. A day later (on November 14), Wang Junzheng was seen in Colombo with Ali Sabry, the Sri Lankan foreign minister, who wrote on his X handle: Pleased to meet with Wang Junzheng, secretary of the CPC of Xizang Autonomous Regional Committee in #China at the foreign ministry. Amongst other areas, we discussed potential bilateral cooperation @ChinaEmbSL [@MFA_SriLanka. This means that more nations are now using Xizang instead of Tibet. The moral of the story: Despite Mr Xis sweet words about building a community with a shared future for mankind, ancient nations like Tibet have no place in Beijings schemes. It does not augur well for humanity or for India which has a long border with Tibet. After all, President Biden had been perhaps right about the Chinese dictator. Sharmas abrupt transfer marks the premature end of his first stint in the prestigious Mantralaya In Maharashtras intricate administrative landscape, where the ebb and flow of power is often measured by the stability of key personnel, the recent and somewhat enigmatic removal of Ashish Sharma, principal secretary attached to the office of deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, has sent ripples through the babu corridors of the state. Clearly, it is not merely a routine administrative shuffle, most observers state. Given the current complexity of the politics in the state, its a view that is not unfeasible. It is highly unusual for an IAS officer, especially one posted in either the CM or Deputy CMs office, to be unceremoniously shunted out before completing a normal tenure. Sharmas abrupt transfer not only marks the premature end of his first stint in the prestigious Mantralaya but also marks his third relocation in just six months a puzzling pattern that has now invited scrutiny. With Ajit Pawar conspicuously absent from the Mantralaya, recovering from a bout of dengue, the transfer of his principal secretary has left the office in a state of inertia. Pawars silence has further fuelled the speculation. In the absence of official statements clarifying the rationale behind the move, the vacuum is filled with conjecture and whispers of power play behind the scenes. Ajit Pawar, so far, is still trying to find his feet after joining the BJP-led alliance government in Maharashtra. Though he was made deputy chief minister and his NCP faction bagged crucial portfolios, the deputy CM is still no. 3 in the pecking order. And Mr Sharmas exit seems to indicate that the current hierarchy is unlikely to change. MEA to take a maritime call The entry of a Chinese spy ship into Sri Lankan waters a while ago, despite attempts by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) to prevent it, has already underscored the delicate dance of diplomacy in the Indian Ocean region. Now a new challenge has emerged, demanding a strategic response from the MEA. The looming arrival of three oil tankers carrying Russian crude, allegedly sanctioned by the US, has created a piquant situation for the ministry. Although the transactions did not occur at major Indian ports overseen by the shipping ministry, sources have informed DKB that the potential of these ships docking at a state port raises questions about the MEAs role in shaping Indias maritime policies. In the event of sanctions and a lapse in shipping insurance, the MEA is entrusted with the critical decision of whether to allow these ships into Indian waters, especially when dealing with non-major ports. While the protocols outlined by senior shipping ministry babus shed light on the procedural intricacies involved in vessel entry, the decision to greenlight or deny entry ultimately lies with the MEA. India has, so far, played neutral in the Russia-Ukraine conflict despite attempts by the US to wean it away from its old ties with Russia. This is a test case for the MEA to walk the tightrope and find a solution that does not tilt the delicate balance. IAS officers unite against Kerala govt on transfer policy This is perhaps the first time that IAS officers in Kerala have jointly sought action against a government. The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has taken a firm stance against what it perceived as a lack of due process in the appointment, transfer and posting of IAS officers within the state government. An interim order issued by a CAT bench has directed the Pinarayi Vijayan government to refrain from making such decisions, without the prior convening of the civil services boards meeting. The CAT directive comes in response to a petition filed by the Kerala IAS Officers Association, alleging a pattern of frequent transfer and posting orders being issued without the necessary recommendations from the civil services board. The petition highlights a concerning trend: the average tenure of cadre officers is well below the prescribed minimum period of two years. Even in key roles such as district collector, secretary to the government, and head of critical departments, the average tenure has dwindled to less than a year. The tribunal observed that the Kerala government neither obeyed the Supreme Court directions nor adhered to the rules and notifications issued by the Centre in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict. It also noted that no explanation was offered as to why the Civil Services Boards meeting was not convened. The IAS officers claim that the board has become dysfunctional after only two meetings, the last of which occurred in 2015. While the tribunal has set the next hearing on January 10, the interim order has focused the spotlight on the need to adhere to established norms and procedures. The outcome of this case is being watched keenly by the babus. Microsoft has begun preparing the office place for hundreds of OpenAI employees at the LinkedIn offices in San Francisco, only two miles from the OpenAI's headquarters. Read Also: OpenAI Employees Threaten Exodus Unless the Board Resigns Microsoft is Ready to Onboard OpenAI Employees A source confirmed to CNBC that Microsoft's human resources and legal staff are already on standby for hiring and onboarding the employees from OpenAI. The report also showed that workspaces and devices are also being prepared. After the confirmation of Sam Altman's departure and news of Microsoft hiring him for a new AI division, almost 90% of the OpenAI employees threatened to leave and follow their former boss. However, recent news surfaced that there are still negotiations on Altman's reinstatement to the position with new CEO Emmett Shear asking for proof of Altman's wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella detailed that it is up to the OpenAI employees whether they want to stay in their current roles or move forward to Microsoft. "I'm open to both options," he said. Microsoft Offers Same Compensation to OpenAI Employees On the other hand, Microsoft's technology chief Kevin Scott offered a matching compensation for the hundreds of OpenAI employees who would seek jobs at their company. In an X post, Scott said that the company appreciated their desire to join Altman on a new venture. To my partners at OpenAI: We have seen your petition and appreciate your desire potentially to join Sam Altman at Microsofts new AI Research Lab. Know that if needed, you have a role at Microsoft that matches your compensation and advances our collective mission. Kevin Scott (@kevin_scott) November 21, 2023 Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that Altman, Shear, and one board member are still discussing the possible next move. While Microsoft already welcomed Altman and Greg Brockman, the future still remains unsettled for now. There are talks of the possibility of having Altman again as the CEO while some talks involve Altman as the director on a transitional board. Regardless, Microsoft seemed to be already very open to the idea of either situation. Related Article: Microsoft Welcomes Sam Altman, Greg Brockman Onboard Uttarakhand and the Himalayas are in the news once again. And the inconvenient truth rears its head once more. NDRF personnel and others at the under-construction tunnel between Silkyara and Dandalgaon on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri national highway, days after a portion of the tunnel collapsed trapping several workers inside, in Uttarkashi district, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. (PTI Photo) How many reports does it take to realise that the Himalayan region is ecologically very fragile, that it cannot be business as elsewhere in this terrain? The answer is not blowing in the wind, with apologies to Bob Dylan. It stares at you from various studies. And in the Government of Indias own statements in Parliament. Earlier this year, when land subsidence in the sacred town of Joshimath in Uttarakhand was in the news, questions had popped up in Parliament. In response to one such question, on February 2, the ministry of earth sciences had noted that: Many parts of the Himalayas have unstable and dynamic geology, which may lead to land subsidence and landslides. The Geological Survey of India has prepared landslide maps of these areas. Uttarakhand and the Himalayas are in the news once again. And the inconvenient truth rears its head once more. By the time you read this column, the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara-Barkot tunnel in Uttarkashi could well be out. Or may not be. At the time of writing, frenetic efforts are going on to rescue the labourers stuck inside the collapsed tunnel since November 12, when the nation celebrated Diwali. A part of the tunnel under construction caved in after a landslide. Food, water and other essential items sent via a pipe have helped keep the trapped construction workers alive. The good news is that the construction workers were seen alive on camera after rescuers managed a breakthrough by inserting a six-inch-wide pipe. On Day 10 of being trapped inside the under-construction tunnel, the workers finally had hot, cooked meals. This brings some cheer to their families. But there are many questions that must not be brushed away even as the focus is on the immediate priority -- the rescue operations. The tunnel, as is now widely known, is part of the Narendra Modi governments ambitious 900-km Char Dham highway project. Work on the project began in 2018. An official statement by the Press Information Bureau on February 20, 2018, when the Government of India sanctioned the Silkyara tunnel project, spells out its goal: The construction of this tunnel will provide all-weather connectivity to Yamunotri, one of the dhams (religious destination) on the Char Dham Yatra, encouraging regional socio-economic development, and trade and tourism within the country. It will reduce the travel distance from Dharasu to Yamunotri by about 20 km and travel time by about an hour. It also explicitly mentions that the project aims at construction of 4.531-km long two-lane bi-directional tunnel (along with 328m approach road) with escape passage on Dharasu-Yamunotri in the state of Uttarakhand. The question that everyone is now asking: where is that escape passage? Till date, neither the company executing the project nor any government agency has answered that question convincingly. Clearly, rescuing the trapped workers merits the maximum attention right now, but what about the future? Which brings me to the key question. Once the rescue operation is over, and hopefully the trapped workers are back with their families, how do we ensure that such calamities do not recur, not just in this project but across the entire Himalayan region? Beyond the immediate issue of rescuing the trapped workers in the tunnel, there is a larger issue that is very important. The entire Himalayan region is a high-alert, high-risk belt, and one of the climate change hotspots and must be treated accordingly. This means we need to take a pause of all construction projects in that area till a fast-track review is done, with inputs from international experts who review all the projects (not just project by project), and check if they meet international standards. The data must then be put in the public domain, says Dr Anjal Prakash, Clinical Associate Professor (Research) and Research Director, Bharti Institute of Public Policy, Indian School of Business. The second critical issue is the need to factor in local knowledge and incorporate it in the planning, and last, but not the least, there is an absolute necessity to factor in climate change. Many of the projects were planned when climate change was not a striking issue and hence need to be updated based on recent data, he adds. As someone who has done extensive field work in the Himalayan region, Dr Prakash says he perfectly understands the need for basic infrastructure and motorable roads as well as the need for national security. But how you accomplish creating this larger public good is the key. What kind of environmental clearances do these projects have? as he puts it. Take a Himalayan country like Bhutan. Their infrastructure projects need to be cleared at the highest political level with expert advice being the supreme factor in deciding about the fate of the project. Indias Himalayan region is highly seismic and a climate change hotspot. This means that there will be extreme weather like what we saw in Himachal Pradesh this summer and the GLOF (Glacial Lake Outburst Flood) event in Sikkim recently -- evaluating projects will ensure that it is executed with extreme care factoring in the terrain and environment. Otherwise, we will keep putting our people at risk, again and again, he told me. These are critical issues and they must be faced. The Uttarkashi tunnel incident, one among several disasters in recent years in the Himalayan region, only sledgehammers the dangers of too reckless construction in the name of boosting infrastructure in this geologically sensitive and ecologically fragile region. The Himalayas are the youngest mountains on this planet. The entire Himalayan region and its surrounding areas are among the most seismically active zones in the world. Landslide and related mass movement activities are common and one of the most destructive natural hazards in all mountainous terrain, including the Himalayas. Of the 11 states in the Indian Himalayan region, Uttarakhand has witnessed enhanced activities of these phenomena more than others, pointed out another study by researchers at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (WIHG) and published in the Journal of Earth Systems Science on December 15, 2021. Tectonic activity and the relative softness of rocks have made the Himalayas some of the most difficult ground to tunnel through. It is imperative that environmental concerns are given top priority. At stake are human lives. by card. Anthony Poola * A seminar on the perspective of integral ecology in India is currently taking place in Bengaluru under the auspices of Catholic bishops. In his introductory address, the Archbishop of Hyderabad said: Integral ecological care is not just a concept; it is a living expression of our love for God and our love for our neighbours, both near and far. Bengaluru (AsiaNews) A three-day national conference on the environment is currently underway (21-23 November) at Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram (DVK), Bengaluru. Organised by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) and the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India-Latin Rite (CCBI), the meeting is centred on "Care for our common home, towards an integral ecology in India". Its aim is to understand the current situation of the environment in India, the government's response, and the actions the Church and other religions can take to protect our common home. We publish large excerpts from the introductory address made by Card Anthony Poola, Archbishop of Hyderabad. Integral ecological care, as expressed in Pope Franciss encyclical Laudato Si, is a call to action that underscores the interconnectedness of all life on Earth. In Catholic teachings, it is rooted in several key principles that guide our response to the environmental challenges we face today. 1. Creation as a Gift: Our faith teaches us that the Earth is a precious gift from God. In the Book of Genesis, we read about God creating the world and declaring it good. We are entrusted with the care of this gift, a sacred responsibility. 2. Stewardship: We are called to be stewards of Gods creation, not owners. Our role is to protect and preserve the environment, recognizing that we are accountable to God for how we manage the resources entrusted to us. 3. The Common Good: Catholic social doctrine emphasizes the common good, which extends to the environment. A healthy planet is essential for the well-being of all, and it is our moral duty to safeguard it for the benefit of present and future generations. 4. Solidarity and Care for the Poor: Integral Ecological Care is an expression of solidarity with the poor and marginalized. Those who are most affected by environmental degradation are often the least responsible for it. Our faith compels us to advocate for justice and work towards alleviating their suffering. 5. Interconnectedness: Our world is an intricate web of life. Just as we are all connected through the body of Christ, all life on Earth is interconnected. When we harm one part of creation, we affect the whole. 6. Conversion and Repentance: Catholic teachings call for a conversion of heart and a spirit of repentance. Recognizing our past failures in caring for the environment, we are called to change our attitudes, behaviours, and lifestyles. In embracing the message of Integral Ecological Care, we are responding to Gods call to be responsible stewards of His creation. This call is both a moral and a spiritual one, uniting our faith with our actions to protect our common home. Laudate Deum on care for the poor and Earth, the sixth Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, captures the entire debate on climate crisis in a capsule and presents it as a point of no return. In Laudate Si adopted an outside-in approach to environmental crisis, whereas here the approach is inside-out. For, the Holy Father sees the crisis as emerging from the heart of human persons, which seeks to take Gods place. The present document brings international politics, and global initiatives to question, and makes the leaders soul search to find out where they are in their attempts to protect Earth. Pope Francis concludes with two of his oft-repeated convictions: everything is connected, and no one is saved alone (cf. n. 19). The apostolic exhortation ends with a warning that if human persons claim to take Gods place, they become their own worst enemies. In 2013, when Pope Francis assumed his pontificate on the feast of Saint Joseph, Spouse of Mary, he presented Joseph with an image of a custodian. In fact, custodian is the image of the Holy Father. Through his encyclical Laudato Si he pictured himself as the custodian of common home, and through Fratelli Tutti, as the protector of vulnerable human persons, and now at Laudate Deum, he reiterates the same, calling every one of us to be a custodian. As the Church has embarked on the final phase of the XVI General Assembly of the Synod for a Synodal Church, it is high time that we joined hands with Earth, embracing her with empathy. In conclusion, let us be inspired by the teachings of our faith to take meaningful and sustained action. Integral Ecological Care is not just a concept; it is a living expression of our love for God and our love for our neighbours, both near and far. As Pope Francis reminds us in Laudato Si, Living our vocation to be protectors of Gods handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. May this message guide us in our individual and collective efforts to care for the environment and work towards a more just, sustainable, and compassionate world. Best wishes for the Conference. Thank you for your attention. by Arundathie Abeysinghe Sri Lanka is increasingly tying its fragile economy to China. After the debt agreement with the Export-Import Bank of China, Sri Lankan President Wickremesinghe said he was ready to expand the direct corridor with China bypassing India. Xi Jinpings special envoy, State Counsellor Shen Yiqin, used her visit to the island to "lay out Chinas cards. Colombo (AsiaNews) - Sri Lanka is set to launch Phase 2 of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with China, starting with the existing China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), to include the island. Sri Lankas economic policy aims to have a direct route to China, bypassing current trade links involving Bangladesh, China, India, and Myanmar (BCIM), which are currently stalled due to political tensions between China and India. In Colombo Chinese President Xi Jinping's special envoy, State Counsellor Shen Yiqin, met with Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday to lay out Chinas cards. Shens visit follows the recent tete-a-tete between Wickremesinghe and Xi in Beijing, aimed at consolidating bilateral relations. Analysts believe that this visit is of utmost importance for the country's economic future. On 12 October, Sri Lanka reached an agreement with the Export-Import Bank of China to cover about US$ 4.2 billion of the country's outstanding debt. Sri Lanka is currently trying to finalise a plan with its creditors to secure additional aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to pursue its economic recovery. Although China has decided to remain an observer during debt restructuring talks, it will be one of the crucial players for the future of the country's economy. During his meeting with Shen, President Wickremesinghe expressed Sri Lanka's aspiration to increase cooperation with China in other fields, like tourism, agriculture, and sports, stressing that the Hambantota international port under a 99-year lease to China and Colombo Port are currently ready to expand business between the two countries. For its part, China is prioritising the extension of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) to Sri Lanka. Indeed, Mr Wickremesinghe noted that his country is prepared to embark on the second phase of the initiative, which is expected to make a more substantial economic contribution. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena also met with State Councillor Shen, highlighting the vast potential to expand China-Sri Lanka economic cooperation. He also noted that Sri Lanka values China's investments in agriculture, renewable energy, education, and infrastructure. During the meeting, the president stressed the need to maintain the Indian Ocean as a freely navigable and peaceful region, free from global geopolitical rivalries, political analysts Sachintha Tennakoon and Medhavi Attygalle told AsiaNews. Yet, the development of the BRI points instead to China's intention to strengthen its influence in South Asia. The pontiff met separately early this morning with relatives of 12 hostages held by Hamas and families from Gaza. This is not war, this is terrorism, Francis said. Do not go on with the passions that in the end kill everyone. The pause should lead to the release of the first 10 Israelis and 30 Palestinians starting tomorrow at 10 am. The fate of Asian hostages remains uncertain, including that of a Thai woman who has likely given birth to a baby in Hamas captivity. Vatican City (AsiaNews) - "This is not war, this is terrorism. Please, let's move forward for peace, said Pope Francis at the end of todays general audience in St Peter's Square. With such words, the pontiff expressed his state of mind after meeting separately with two delegations this morning, one of Israeli families with relatives held hostage in Gaza and one of Palestinian families from Gaza. Vatican Press Office Director Matteo Bruni announced this initiative a few days ago, describing the two distinct moments as an exclusively humanitarian nature to show spiritual closeness to the sufferings of each one. The two meetings took place early in the morning, before the general audience, coinciding with the announcement of a four-day truce linked to the release of at least 50 Israeli hostages and 150 Palestinian women and teenagers detained in Israel. Fighting is expected to stop in Gaza starting at 10 am tomorrow morning Hamas is expected to release the hostages in groups of 10, while Israel will release 30 prisoners at a time. According to a statement from Israel's embassy to the Holy See, the families of 12 of the approximately 240 hostages held by Hamas since 7 October have arrived in Rome. The hostages include young people like Or and Andrey, seized at the Nova Festival in the Negev desert; parents and children like Gabriela and Mia abducted while visiting a relative in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, about 4 kilometres from the Gaza border; and seniors like 75-year-old Alex, the son of Holocaust survivors, active in interfaith dialogue between Christians and Jews, committed not to forget that great tragedy. In the other meeting, Francis met with families of Palestinian. According to Israeli human rights association B'Tselem, Israel holds 4,764 Palestinians for "security" reasons (as of late September before the start of the current war), including at least 170 teenagers and about 30 women, detained for different reasons, not necessarily linked to political violence. These families "are suffering so much. I have heard how they both suffer. This is what wars do," Francis said, addressing the faithful in St Peter's Square. "Please, let us move forward for peace. Pray a lot for peace. May the Lord put his hand there, help us to solve problems and not to go on with the passions that in the end kill everyone. Let us pray for the Palestinian people, let us pray for the Israeli people, for peace. My blessing to everyone. Praying accompanies the hope rekindled lately in families by the prospect of embracing loved ones again soon. It also raises the hope that the pause for the release of hostages and prisoners and the access of humanitarian aid to the Strip negotiated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States is only a first step towards a more lasting ceasefire. Under the terms of the agreement, the pause is only a temporary, which can only be extended for a further 10 days if conditions make it possible to release more Israeli hostages and other Palestinian prisoners. After approving the agreement, the Israeli government reiterated that when the pause expires it plans to resume military operations in Gaza to dismantle Hamas. It should also be added that only Israeli hostages are mentioned in the agreement. So far, nothing has transpired about the parallel negotiations by Qatar over dozens of Thais and Nepalis kidnapped from Israeli kibbutzim near Gaza. In fact, foreign migrants are the forgotten victims of this conflict. One of them, Nutthawaree Munkan, is a 35-year-old Thai woman, who was eight months pregnant at the time of her abduction and is believed to have given birth while in captivity. Many hope that she and her newborn child will be among the first hostages to be freed. by Mathias Hariyadi The recognition was granted yesterday during the 42nd plenary session of the UN cultural organisation at its Paris headquarters. For President Widodo, it is "a source of pride and satisfaction". Language has played a key element in unifying the country since the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the Republic. Indonesians are happy about it. Jakarta (AsiaNews) The Indonesian language has recently become an official language at UNESCO. For a long time, it has been a guarantor of unity and a factor of identification for the many groups and tribes that make up the archipelago, many of whom have their own native language. "The 42nd plenary session" of the UN agency specialised in education, culture and science has "recognised our Indonesia language as an official language," said President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo late yesterday afternoon. This is a source of pride and satisfaction for all the people of the Asian nation. Following the presidents announcement, many Indonesians took to social media posting messages full of pride and patriotism over the shared Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia). "The news appeared in UNESCO's media under the title 'Recognition of Bahasa Indonesia as the official language of the General Conference' of the agency of the United Nations, President Widodo said. In Paris, where the organisation is headquartered, the Indonesian ambassador to France, Mohamad Oemar, hailed the decision, noting that the language embodies a strong spirit of belonging to the country. The diplomat stressed that Bahasa Indonesia has played its strategic influential and powerful role to unite us as a pluralistic nation. Historically, the language was one of the most important factors for unification, starting with the birth of the modern Republic on 17 August 1945, when the founding fathers Soekarno and Mohammad Hatta declared independence. Indonesia is a highly diverse country with hundreds of ethnic groups, each with its own mother tongue. In some remote areas of Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Moluccas, North Sumatra, and Papua, each village has its own language. How can a multi-ethnic society be "united"? The problem has been overcome by finding a shared basis in the Indonesian language, the national language. This was the work of dozens of young people from different ethnic backgrounds but all nationalists who, on 28 October 1928, unanimously took the Youth Pledge (Sumpah Pemuda), a declaration meant to define their identity at the Second Youth Congress. The pledge was centred on three ideas: one motherland, one nation, and a unifying language That is why today, almost a century later, Indonesians have enthusiastically embraced UNESCO's announcement, which makes Indonesian the tenth official language of the UN agency along with English, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Italian and Portuguese. Today's news: Chinese dissident journalist Sun Lin died at the hands of the police; Pyongyang puts 'Malligyong-1' military spy satellite into orbit, Seoul suspends military agreement with the North; 216 more landings, mostly women and children, of Rohingya Muslims on Indonesian coast; The murderer of Turkish journalist of Armenian origin Hrant Dink, recently released from prison, will face new charges (including terrorism). ISRAEL - PALESTINE Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement for the release of 50 hostages - Israelis or those with dual nationality - in the hands of militiamen in Gaza in exchange for a four-day pause in fighting, the first since the start of the military escalation following the attack on October 7th. Women and children will be freed. For every additional 10 hostages released, Israel intends to add a day of truce. In exchange, the Jewish state will release 150 detained Palestinian women and children from prison. Qatar and the United States brokered the agreement, which provides for the entry into the Strip of trucks with aid, fuel and medical supplies. CHINA Dissident journalist Sun Lin, originally from Nanjing and better known by the pseudonym Jie Mu, died following a police raid on his home last week. Radio Free Asia reports sources from the Chinese Human Rights Defenders, on November 17 his neighbors heard "loud noises". The man was later taken to hospital with serious injuries, where he died in the afternoon. The officers prevented the family from seeing the body. KOREA Pyongyang has announced that it has put a military spy satellite, the "Malligyong-1" reconnaissance carrier, into orbit. The launch took place yesterday from Phyongan province and, unlike two other attempts in the recent past, it was successful. The United States condemned the operation, which was witnessed by leader Kim Jong-un himself, calling it a "blatant violation" of UN sanctions. In response, Seoul suspended the military agreement with the North and resumed surveillance activities on the border. INDONESIA - MYANMAR At least 216 Rohingya, mostly women and children in terrible conditions, landed in the province of Aceh late yesterday, bringing the total arrivals of members of Myanmar's Muslim minority to over a thousand in a week. For Mitra Salima Suryono, UN spokesperson for refugees in Indonesia, there are no particular reasons for the wave of arrivals. TURKEY Ogun Samast, perpetrator of the murder of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 and recently released from prison, will have to answer to fresh charges that could reopen the doors of his cell, while the Istanbul prosecutor's office defines him as a "minor inclined to crime". Among the possible charges there is also that of having committed crimes "on behalf of an armed terrorist organization". INDIA Indian scientists deny correlation between Covid-19 vaccines and "sudden and inexplicable" deaths among young people. This is what emerges from research presented yesterday by the Indian Council of Medical Research (Icmr), on a sample of "apparently healthy" adults between 18 and 45 who died between October 2021 and March 2023. On the contrary, alcohol is among the causes high intensity physical activity. RUSSIA The leader of the satanic sect from the Russian city of Yaroslavl, Nikolaj Ogolobjak, sentenced in 2010 to 20 years in concentration camps for having carried out ritual murders of some teenagers, has been pardoned for having participated in the fighting in Ukraine. He returned home from the front with serious injuries that prevent him from working, and for this reason he was awarded a disability pension. TURKMENISTAN The dust storms in Turkmenistan do not cease, which in recent days have "buried" the entire province of Mari and a large part of that of Lebap in the southern and eastern regions. It is impossible for the inhabitants to leave the house and open the windows, so as not to fill the rooms with dust; the phenomenon is causing high peaks of respiratory diseases among the population. by Vladimir Rozanskij Since the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, Armenia's relationship with Kiev has been increasingly nurtured, also seen as a possible mediation to strengthen ties with the West. Until the ratification in recent days of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the now evident suspension of any action in favour of Russia. Yerevan (AsiaNews) - A great rapprochement has recently been taking place between Ukraine and Armenia, in the redefinition of the roles of Moscow and Yerevan in the Eurasian alliance, from which the Armenians are distancing themselves due to the lack of support in conflict with Azerbaijan. Ukrainian political observer Aleksandr Kovalenko, an expert on military issues in the "Information Contrast" group and in the Kiev security research center, commented on this evolution of relations in the context of the global conflict on his Telegram channel. Last September, the summit of the first ladies and their spouses was held in Kiev, at which the wife of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pasinyan, Anna Akopyan, also showed up. Previously she had declined any invitation to participate in public meetings in Ukraine, but this time she had accompanied a shipment of humanitarian aid for the Ukrainians, despite the fact that the Armenians themselves are in great need of support at this stage, especially for the refugees from Nagorno Karabakh . A little later, at the Granada summit, there was a direct meeting between Zelenskyj and Pasinyan, and in the Malta meeting on Crimea the secretary of the Security Council of Yerevan, Armen Grigoryan, with whom the leader had met of the presidential administration of Ukraine, Andrei Yermak. Kovalenko recalls that "in Ukrainian politics the Armenian lobby has always been very influential, more than the Azerbaijani one", and this was seen in the positions taken regarding the Karabakh issue. The point of the rest is not even that of the evaluations on the Caucasian conflict, on which the Yerevan government had laid a tombstone well before the final outcome, leaving to the Armenians of Artsakh all the responsibility of keeping tension high until the last moment. The real problem is Armenia's progressive detachment from Russia, and the new orientation towards Europe and the West, in which Kiev finds a much deeper harmony with the Armenians. This pro-Western Armenian trend originates from the 44-day war in late 2020, well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Yerevan failed to gain any real support from Moscow. From that moment on, Pasinyan systematically criticized all the initiatives of the CSTO, the Eurasian alliance controlled by the Russians, which had not lifted a finger in the conflict in Nagorno Karabakh. Since the beginning of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, the relationship with Kiev has increasingly been fueled by Armenia, also seen as a possible mediation to strengthen ties with the West; and the Ukrainians themselves insisted on separating the Armenians from the Russians as much as possible. This is a very concrete advantage, many details of which have been highlighted in recent days, among them the strong decrease in the smuggling of microchips through Armenia in favor of Russia, with great repercussions on military supplies and technologies. Since the publication of sanctions against Russia, Armenians were initially among the most active in the supply of technologies purchased abroad, while since last November 14, when Armenia officially ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, any action in Russia's favor can be considered exhausted, to the point of confirming the possible arrest of Vladimir Putin if he crossed the Russian-Armenian border, and Armenia's definitive exit from the CSTO, of which it has rejected any type of initiative and exercise. by Fady Noun Secretary General Guterres warns of a "miscalculation" on the border between Lebanon and Israel. Hochstein: restoring calm "a top priority" for both sides. The role of the Blue Helmets and resolution 1701 under discussion in the Security Council. Hezbollah looks interested in a possible cancellation. Beirut (AsiaNews) - In the latest report on the application of UN Security Council resolution 1701, which will be discussed today at the UN Security Council, and which AsiaNews was able to analyse, Secretary General Antonio Guterres says he is "concerned". The fears are related to "violations of the ceasefire along the Blue Line", the demarcation between Lebanon and Israel made official by the United Nations on 7 June 2000 to overcome hostilities. Resolution 1701 indeed remains, for Guterres, a precious international instrument that has managed to guarantee peace on both sides of the Lebanese and Israeli border since 2006. The special coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka, will explain to the Council the serious crisis situation that is underway along the Blue Line and the attacks aimed at the headquarters of the UN force (Unifil) in Nakoura. In the area just two weeks ago a Nepalese soldier from the international force was injured by an unexploded shell previously launched by the Israelis. 1701 calls for the withdrawal of Hezbollah north of the Litani River and the deployment of the Lebanese army and the United Nations Interim Force for Lebanon (Unifil) in the border region. In his report, Guterres deplores the disruption of this order and the exchange of fire between Hezbollah and other non-state armed groups on the one hand and the Israel Defense Forces on the other. He added: Although the exchanges of fire were largely limited to the immediate vicinity of the Blue Line, the danger of miscalculation and wider conflict remains. Regarding the protection of journalists and civilians, the UN Secretary General called on all parties to respect human rights and international laws. He called the death of Lebanese journalist Issam Abdallah, killed in an Israeli attack on October 13 in southern Lebanon, regrettable. A similar position should also be taken for the death yesterday of two reporters from the pan-Arab channel al-Mayadeen and a civilian who accompanied them, killed by an Israeli bombing in the Tayr Harfa sector, an assassination which aroused very strong emotions in Lebanon. Farah Omar and Rabih Maamari were "deliberately targeted" by the Israelis, the broadcaster's director general accused. Guterres' concern is shared by US President Joe Biden, who asked his envoy for Lebanon, Amos Hochstein, who arrived in Tel Aviv on 20 November, to discuss ways to prevent the conflict from spreading beyond the border region. A ccording to a US official quoted by Reuters, Hochstein will stress that restoring calm along Israel's northern border is of the utmost importance to the United States and should be a top priority for both Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah's position Guterres' report condemns UNIFIL's violations of freedom of movement. Curiously, this observation coincides with the release last week of the prime suspect in the murder of Sean Rooney, an Irish peacekeeper who was attacked in the village of Aqibiye by people close to Hezbollah. The decision was officially taken for "health reasons", but it could be a sort of message to the international UN force. Furthermore, Hezbollah has reservations about the wording of the United Nations resolution, which guarantees peacekeepers the right to conduct patrols without prior coordination with the Lebanese army. Representatives of the countries contributing to the UN force participated in a general meeting at the Unifil headquarters. We are facing serious challenges. But the role of Unifil remains unavoidable as it remains the only impartial interlocutor capable of communicating with both parties to avoid misunderstandings and miscalculations" declared spokesperson Andrea Tenenti. For Hezbollah, however, it may be time to officially draw a line under 1701, erasing it from the table. Let's be realistic: 1701 is very far from us says Mohammad Afif Naboulsi, one of the rising stars of the pro-Iranian Shiite movement. Also, what is the purpose of this resolution and the presence of the Blue Helmets here? Why am I only on the Lebanese side? asks Naboulsi, before adding: Let's put an end to the war in Gaza and everything will return to normal. However, this prospect, in his mind, means a return to the status quo that prevailed until the resolution was reached. Something that Israel itself no longer seems willing to accept. Moreover, the Jewish State is trying to take advantage of the situation to impose a new order along the borders that forces the Shiite side to strictly respect resolution 1701, something which it has only partially and loosely done so far. I'm fine, as I'm very fortunate to own my home I own, but I'm feeling the pinch on my mortgage with other inflation costs I rent and it's expensive, but it could be worse I'm seriously considering leaving the valley if something doesn't give Vote View Results Crypto firm Binance will have to pay a $4.3 billion settlement to a US Court for federal money laundering charges. Founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, more known as "CZ," pleaded guilty and agreed to personally pay $50 million, as well as step down from the job. Richard Teng, Binance's global head of regional markets, was named the new CEO. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Zhao said he "must take responsibility" for the charges against the company, stating that it was "not easy to let go emotionally" of his position. Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself. Binance is no longer a baby. It is CZ Binance (@cz_binance) November 21, 2023 According to the Department of Justice, the controversial crypto entrepreneur was accused of violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and causing a financial institution to break the BSA. He is facing one to 10 years in prison, with the sentencing scheduled for next year. Binance itself was guilty of three criminal charges: unlicensed money-transmitting business, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and a conspiracy charge. The crypto exchange platform was alleged to allow traders from sanctioned nations, like Iran, to engage in business with Americans. Binance, however, was cleared of user fund misappropriation and market manipulation. Charges Against Binance The investigations on Binance alleged that the company's "willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform." Prosecutors accused the crypto firm of processing 1.1 million transactions worth $900 million with Iranian traders between January 2018 and May 2022. Both Al Qaeda and ISIS were cited. DOJ's charges came five months after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Binance and Zhao of lying about its operations. The monthlong trial resulted in Binance's paying "one of the largest corporate penalties" the U.S. has ever acquired from a corporate defendant. Also Read: French Investors Hit Binance With A $2.4 Million Fraud Lawsuit Future for Changpeng Zhao Zhao affirmed that he will not lead another startup after Binance, instead "do some passive investing" in blockchain, AI, or biotech firms. The Canadian national founded Binance in July 2017, bringing it to its current status as the world's largest crypto exchange. Binance agreed to the resolution prohibiting Zhao from "any present or future involvement in operating or managing" for three years. Zhao will remain available to the company to consult per "the framework set out in our U.S. agency resolutions." Related Article: Binance CEO Loses Big on Terra LUNA, From $1.6 billion to $2,200 Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. As 2030 approaches, countries all over the world are working to set up a domestic SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) industry, which is the only effective way of achieving the net-zero target goal in commercial aviation by the end of the decade. Three companies recently obtained government funding that will support the UK's ambition to become a leading SAF hub. NPT The UK Government's Net Zero Strategy, introduced two years ago, includes the highly ambitious goal of becoming "a leader in zero-emission flight." To get there, Britain is focusing on SAF. The targets are straightforward: to commercialize domestically-produced alternative fuels leading up to 10% SAF by 2030 and to have at least five commercial-scale SAF-producing facilities under construction by 2025.Last summer, the Department of Transport launched a dedicated program for accelerating SAF production. It's called the Advanced Fuel Fund (AFF), and it will run until March 31, 2025. The program's second tranche, worth a total of $11.4 million (9 million), was recently awarded to Project Speedbird.Project Speedbird is a joint partnership between three important players. LanzaJet is a company that has developed a proprietary technology for converting ethanol into SAF . British Airways is a founding investor and shareholder of LanzaJet. Nova Pangaea Technologies () is another cleantech company that has developed an innovative process of turning wood residues and agricultural waste into biofuel.Project Speedbird was launched with a clear goal. It aims to produce 27 million gallons (102 million liters) of SAF per year, which will be used entirely by British Airways. According to LanzaJet, this quantity will reduce the CO2 emissions equivalent to 26,000 British Airways domestic flights (throughout the net lifecycle).It sounds easy, but it will take years to get there. Project Speedbird will only reach full production capacity by 2028. That's partially because the project involves setting up a pioneering SAF facility in the UK, which won't be ready to operate earlier than 2027. What makes it unique is that it will implement LanzaJet's proprietary ATJ (alcohol-to-jet) technology.Initially, SAF will be produced at LanzaJet's plant in Soperton, Georgia, which claims to be the first one in the world to use this particular technology. Here's how things will go: first, NPT will use its revolutionary technology to transform sustainable resources, such as agricultural waste, into second-generation biofuels. Ethanol is one of these fuels, and the one obtained by NPT will then be sent to the Georgia-based factory, where it will become SAF through the ATJ process.By 2027, the UK-based facility, which will also be larger than the one in Georgia, will take over the project's SAF production. This recent funding through the AFF competition will help Project Speedbird get to that stage and pave the way for an emerging SAF industry in the UK. Plate. Number plate. The AU 1 registration plate, famous for showing up on a Rolls-Royce in Goldfinger back in 1964, starring Sean Connery as James Bond, is now for sale. 'AU' is the chemical symbol for gold. So everything makes sense. Photo: Registrations "AU 1" is a number made of gold In the James Bond movie starring Sean Connery , the first actor to play the part of the famous spy, the number plate belonged to Auric Goldfinger's Rolls-Royce Phantom III, which featured a black-and-gold paint scheme.The so-coveted 'AU 1' number plate is now for sale by Primo Registrations, which currently has over 60 million registration plates available to purchase. Pre-auction estimates claim it should sell for over 300,000 pounds, which translates into $375,932 at the current exchange rates.The VAT and transfer fee will be included in the price. The transfer fee is usually paid for removing a plate from a car and mounting it on another one, a move that is carried out for 80.00 ($100) that must be paid to the Department of Transport.The seller also handles the complete legal aspect of the transfer and the documentation. The photos provided by Primo Registration show the plate on a 2023 Rolls-Royce Phantom. So maybe the number ends up with another Rolls-Royce after all as it did the very first time, back in the 1960s.The current record for a plate sold in the UK is 518,000 pounds ($649,108) sold back in November 2014. It was '25 O,' and it was purchased by classic Ferrari dealer and collector John Collins, who placed it on a 1960s Ferrari 250 GTO. It sounds like it was made for it. The same person also purchased the numbers 250 L and 500 FER at the same auction.The exclusive and personalized plate is not just a Hollywood classic memorabilia, but it is also a reference to gold, with the 'AU' lettering being the elemental symbol for the precious metal on the periodic table. Those letters were just right for a car used by Goldinger and Oddjob in the famous spy movie to smuggle gold out of the country. There is no 'odd job' in this transaction right here, though.The last Time AU 1 sold, it realized a huge return on investment for its then-owner, says Peter Johnson, managing director of Primo Registrations. Now, those letters would be appropriate for a Russia-made AURUS model.The Eastern European carmaker currently builds the Arsenal passenger van, the full-size luxury sedan Aurus Senat, the Senat convertible and, the Russian President Vladimir Putins state limousine.There is no age limitation on the car that can receive the James Bond-themed plate, so it can go on any car, new or classic. If the owner can afford it, that is. The two-letter, single-digit plates tend to sell for anywhere between 100,000 and 500,000 pounds (between $124,253 and $626263). Elon Musk said it could, so it is doing it. A Tesla Cybertruck was seen going into the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. People stared at the electric pickup truck that seemed willing to go for a swim. Photo: Fast KitKat | TikTok EV Can the Tesla Model 3 float as well? FSD There is, though, a production floating car SUV kWh Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that arent too choppy Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 29, 2022 People on the beach shot videos of the Cybetruck prototype going into the water in Port Aransas, Texas, and uploaded them on social media. It was Elon Musk the first to say that the pickup truck would be able to drive through water.Back in September 2022, Musk went on to explain that the Cybertruck will be "waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes and even seas that aren't too choppy." For instance, Musk said, it could go from Starbase to South Padre Island in Texas. By car, that is a whole hour's drive on land. There is no information on how fast the Cybertruck would be able to sail.In June 2016, Elon Musk tweeted that the Tesla Model S was able to float "well enough to turn into a boat." Yet he insisted that it was not actually recommended . Furthermore, warranty does not cover any damage caused by water. We are yet to see if the Cybertruck can do it as well.Still important details about the electric pickup truck, price included, are under wraps. We are most likely to find out more on November 30, when the handover event is set to take place at the Giga Texas. That would be exactly four years after Tesla unveiled the model in Hawthorne, California, with Elon Musk saying the model would go into production before the end of 2020. From that moment on, the production story was just a chain of delays. But the Gigafactory in Texas finally started rolling the Cybertruck off the assembly line in the second quarter of 2023.The model that shows up in the video uploaded on TikTok drives through shallow water, so the driver is obviously not testing its floating capability. The water barely reaches the height of the side sills. The Cybertruck comes with a ground clearance of 16 inches (40 centimeters) in the highest suspension setting.As for the beach driving, it was obvious that the experience posed no threat to the. The people who gathered around were told that they could take pictures of the exterior of the Cybertruck, but should not photograph the interior.The Cybertruck had more of a headache while going into some serious off-roading last month at the Hollister Hills SVRA near Monterey, California, an hour's drive from Tesla's headquarters in Palo Alto. Back then, the pickup truck seemed to struggle going up the obstacle called "the stairs."Days later, both the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Rivian R1T tried to show the Tesla Cybertruck how it's done and showed up in videos on social media, doing the exact same thing in the exact same location. The Ford CEO Jim Farley himself was the one who uploaded the video with the Blue Oval's pickup truck on X.Tesla never mentioned a floating function when it came to the Model 3. However, the compact sedan was seen several times driving through quite deep water without breaking a sweat. The latest such video comes from China and shows a white Model 3 "swimming" to its destination and defying the flood.But another Model 3, this time on the highway outside Mono City, California, ended up in a pond after both the driver and theBeta system ignored the sign that read "Flood" while doing 60 mph (97 kph) and not showing any sign of braking to avoid the water.Once it hit the flooded surface, the car lost traction, went aquaplaning, and slided toward the left side of the road and into a pond.There is, indeed, a car that can float. It is the YangWang U8with the IP68 level waterproof. The Chinese model built by the BYD sub-brand is equipped with an emergency floating mode, capable of preventing sinking for 30 minutes.And it is not just floating that it does. It can also move forward at 1.8 mph (3 kph) and turn wheels once it hits the water. Furthermore, it can do a 360-degree tank turn on land and water both.The U8 is an electric SUV equipped with a 2.0-liter turbocharged engine that works as a range extender. Using both electric power stored in the 49-and the 20-gallon (75-liter) fuel tank, it can drive as far as 621 miles (1,000 kilometers). On land, that is. Tesla's struggles with insurance are not new. After the "legacy" companies in charge of that started asking very high premiums to protect these battery electric vehicles (BEVs), the American automaker decided to have its own insurance enterprise. Elon Musk promised in 2019 that Tesla Insurance would be "vastly better" than anything else on the market. Four years later, Reuters shows he and his BEV maker went to the other extreme. What customers shared paints Tesla Insurance as vastly worse than other solutions. BEV Photo: 519 Kustomz SUV Photo: 519 Kustomz Photo: AC/edited by autoevolution The news outlet talked to several customers and also to people involved with themaker's insurance services and discovered some people were still paying for their totaled cars. That happened due to the time Tesla took to determine if the vehicle had to be written off or not. Ironically, Musk said the experience would be vastly better because there would be no arguments about the need to repair a BEV involved in a crash. Tesla would "repair it immediately."Mark Bova hit a median that flipped the 2018 Model S he had bought days earlier with Tesla. At the time, he also hired insurance from the company, which would cost him only $93 per month. He was taken to the hospital with back injuries that required surgery. It was only seven months after the crash that he received the compensation for his totaled car, but he is still fighting to get around $50,000 in medical bills. Bova crashed after activating Autopilot Scott Sawyer's 2021 Model Y was rear-ended on a freeway in February 2022. The truck driver had no insurance, so Sawyer had to use the one he hired with Tesla to fix his BEV. It took him seven months to get his car repaired. As if that were not enough, a minivan crashed against his Model Y while it was parked outside on August 25, 2023.If you check the pictures of the crash in Reuter's story, you'll say that it did not damage thethat much. Only the front left side of the BEV seems to have been affected: the fender, bumper, left door, and the side mirror on that door. Despite that, he would only hear from Tesla one month later and only after he filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the California Department of Insurance.Tesla's claim adjuster said the repair would cost $10,000, but Sawyer was not convinced. He wanted a body shop to take a look at the vehicle. When that happened, his car was totaled. That is only reasonable to expect if the battery pack was damaged or if his Model Y had a front casting. Tesla recently promised it would find ways to fix these components instead of having to replace them entirely which is not economically feasible. The company offered Sawyer $44,852 to settle the claim, but Reuters did not mention if he accepted the offer. He just said he will never hire Tesla Insurance again.Jonathan Garcia was traveling with his 2021 Model S for Thanksgiving in 2022 when a deer crossed his way. His car's hood and bumper got damaged. The Tesla Insurance customer tried to contact the company for three months without success. He only heard back from it after filing a complaint with the Ohio insurance department.The company's excuse was that it "did not timely communicate and process the claim" because it was facing "some staffing adjustments" at the time. It took them six months to fix Garcia's Model S. On May 17, 2023, he canceled his policy and hired another insurance company at a higher premium. He told Reuters he "would have paid a very high amount of money to not go with Tesla Insurance again."All these three customers had to wait way more time than reasonable to have their vehicles repaired or totaled. Another common trait was that they would email, call, or message Tesla Insurance daily for months, and none of these efforts made any difference. Filing complaints did the trick. According to Reuters, that has to do with "rushed and sloppy management."The media outlet discussed the situation with people involved with Tesla Insurance management. The service started in California in partnership with State National. In the past three years, this insurance company has had the worst consumer complaint record in California among the 50 top auto insurers. It is not clear how much of that bad performance can be credited to Tesla because State National also works with other companies.In the fall of 2021, Tesla hired around a dozen claim adjusters to work in an office in Draper, Utah. They would be in charge of claims from California and other states. After individually starting to work with four or five claims a day, these guys were soon having to deal with 24 cases each or even more than that. The snowball turned into a backlog of hundreds of cases. It was " physically impossible " to handle all that with the team Tesla had. To make matters worse, several claim adjusters quit.These are not the only issues Tesla Insurance presents. Customers also complain about the use of Safety Score Beta to determine their premiums. Although they start low, the software eventually makes it rise with phantom braking and warnings about false safety risks, both probably deriving from the Tesla Vision's approach. In May 2022 , I wrote about how Tesla was being sued precisely for that. Chanda Santiago told Reuters a technician drove her car without fastening the seat belt, which was recorded as another penalty for her. The media outlet tried to confirm that with Tesla but it never got any answers.In the end, the story demonstrates that the "revolutionary" insurance policy Elon Musk promised on the Q2 2020 earnings call proved to be just bad traditional service, aggravated by technological flaws. Make sure you check it for more details. The core issue Tesla Insurance was supposed to tackle remained there, undisturbed. I will talk about this in another discussion. Tesla faced headwinds in China as brake failure claims threatened to taint the carmaker's reputation. Since then, Tesla has filed lawsuits against people who claimed its cars had brake problems and won many of them. On Wednesday, the EV maker scored another victory against one of the protesters at the Auto Shanghai 2021 motor show. Although China is Tesla's main production hub and a crucial market, things have not always been warm between them. In 2020 and 2021, Tesla faced a PR nightmare in China as public opinion turned against it. Many claims of brake failure threatened to derail Tesla's plans and wreak havoc on its Chinese dreams. Although these claims have never been proven, the hysteria reached a boiling point during the Auto Shanghai 2021.Back then, a protest made the headlines after a lady climbed on top of a Tesla. Despite becoming famous, Zhang Yazhou was only there as a "plus one" to the other lady whose Tesla was involved in an accident because of an alleged brake failure. Regardless, the protest was the beginning of the worst PR nightmare Tesla faced in its short history. It also made others piggyback on the story and try to gain fame by faking brake problems with their (or others') Teslas.Seeing where this was heading, Tesla decided to stand firm and take action, that is, sue all the people who tried to become famous on its account. But things were more complicated with the Shanghai Auto Show protesters, who also sued Tesla in several lawsuits. This indicated a well-orchestrated smear campaign against Tesla, probably organized by powerful actors who wouldn't want Tesla to gain traction in the Chinese market.Tesla began to win these cases this year, as more influencers confessed they made up the brake failure stories to get more engagement. In other cases, the investigation proved that the driver mistakenly pressed the accelerator instead of the brake pedal. In May, Tesla won a breakthrough case against Zhang Yazhou , the second in a longer list.The funny thing was that Ms. Zhang had no problems with her Tesla. Instead, the other woman, whom we only know as "Ms. Li from Xi'an," claimed brake issues. Her car was involved in a crash in March 2021, and Ms. Li claimed the accident was caused by the brakes not working as they should. Tesla denied the accusation and sued the woman as it did in other cases.On Wednesday, a Chinese court ordered the woman to publicly apologize to Tesla, pay damages, and cover vehicle evaluation fees. The verdict came after a court-appointed independent agency that evaluated Ms. Li's Tesla Model 3 found no issue with its brakes. Based on local media, Ms. Li was ordered to pay 2,000 yuan (280 USD) to Tesla for damages, cover the 25,390 yuan legal processing fee, and 20,000 yuan (2,800 USD) for vehicle evaluation.Intriguingly, no new brake failure cases were reported in China this year, with the matter being almost forgotten. However, Tesla is now facing increased competition in the market from local carmakers, which might prove a lot harder to dismiss. This vehicle seems specifically designed for such missions. The INEOS Grenadier has just become a Search and Rescue Vehicle for the Scottish Rescue Station. The Grenadier will thus, replace the classic Land Rover Defender. Isn't that exactly what INEOS wanted in the first place, to replace the classic Defender? Six year ago, the INEOS Grenadier was just a project discussed in The Grenadier Pub in Belgrave Square, London, the favorite of the brands founder, Jim Ratcliffe. Six years later, it is already 12 months in production and delivered worldwide, the US included.One of them has recently been delivered to With Inshore Rescue in Scotland. The rugged off-roader will be put to good use in search and rescue missions. The volunteers who work for the lifeboat station help to protect life and property that is threatened by the sa, inland water, flooding, and various other water-related incidents in the Upper Solway and the surrounding area.Based in Glencaple, on the estuary of the River Nith in south-west Scotland, the search and rescue station had previously used a classic Land Rover Defender, which obviously aged gracefully but was not enough anymore. Now, the INEOS Grenadier will assist the refurbished boat that the organization uses on a daily basis.The Nith Inshore Rescue secretary, Peter Bryden, explains that there weren't many options they could think of for their missions. Thus, the Grenadier becomes the first blue-light emergency response vehicle of its kind in the United Kingdom.We deal with life-and-death situations, very harsh weather, and challenging terrain, he says. The way the Grenadier is engineered convinced them to choose it. And they have great expectations of it. They hope it will serve the team for the next 40 years.Meanwhile, the 2004 Defender will be auctioned off on Collecting Cars. It's got less than 17,000 miles on the odometer. It is powered by a turbocharged 2.5-liter inline-five diesel. There is no info on the powertrain of the Grenadier that has just arrived in Glencaple, but all of them, including the hydrogen fuel cell variant of the off-roader, are BMW-sourced. So there could be either the 3.0-liter six-inline turbo petrol engine or the 3.0-liter six-inline turbodiesel unit. Both are linked to the ZF eight-speed automatic transmission.The INEOS Grenadier had to be modified specifically for the missions it will be involved in. Search and rescue equipment supplier Emergency One came up with an extendable roof-mounted camera, a snorkel, unique decals, and flashing lights.Attending approximately 30 callouts per year, the Nith Inshore Rescue station currently has a crew of 24 volunteers. It also supports police, ambulance, Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), and mountain rescue services. The organization was founded more than 40 years ago, in 1981, after the drowning of a local man prompted residents to form Glencaple's own rescue service. In its latest move in the war against ad blockers, Google admitted to increasing its efforts to discourage users from using ad blocker extensions on its platforms. Google announced its adblock-limiting extension plan to finally launch in June next year. After a year of delay, the search engine platform will roll out the new "Manifest V3" extension format to replace the "Manifest V2." The Manifest V2 is the current format for Chrome extensions. Its disappearance will purge multiple filter extensions on the platform, particularly ad blockers. Several content-blocking developers have already discussed with Google about the migration to a new platform, "hopeful that the new unified platform will bring substantial benefits" to them. Google Efforts Against Ad Blocks Ahead of its Manifest V2 rollout, Google has been actively fighting content filter extensions across its platform. The tech giant is recently providing a "suboptimal viewing" experience on YouTube, interrupting ad blocker users with pop-ups to disable the filter or subscribe to YouTube's ad-free premium. Chrome browsers with built-in ad blockers, like Firefox, experience playback delays of up to five seconds. The same anti-ad blocker feature, however, is also prone to false positives, triggering playback delays to Firefox and Microsoft Edge browsers even without an ad blocker installed. Google recommends that affected users just keep "refreshing their browser" to resolve the issue. Also Read: Users Are Uninstalling Ad Blockers Due to YouTube's New Policy What's New with Manifest V3? While many of Manifest V3's changes surround ad-filtering, Google will launch several additional new features on its browser update. One of them is changes in offscreen documents to provide "DOM access for extensions to use in a variety of scenarios like audio playback." Developers will also soon have better control over the lifetime of their extension service workers as long as they receive live events. A new user scripts API will be introduced to secure user safety via the user script manager extensions from installed extensions. Google has been testing Manifest V3 this year to improve its services. Related Article: Google Tests Banning Ad Blocker Use on YouTube The annual international design competition challenges engineering students to create something that solves a problem. Called "The Life Chariot," the young Polish engineer's groundbreaking MEDEVAC solution is essentially a light off-road trailer that can attach itself to any hook-equipped vehicle, and it was designed to help medical evacuation teams in challenging environments like conflict zones and areas affected by natural disasters.Interestingly, its inventor says the trailer's low weight and off-road suspension make it safer for a wounded person to travel in than the trunk of a car (a common method used by the Ukrainian Defense Forces). With ten years of experience in designing hitchable off-road and cave rescue trailers, Piotr felt he could create a better MEDEVAC solution.The Life Chariot trailer has been designed with functionality and versatility in mind. It comes with an adjustable hitch and increased evacuation capabilities, as it can accommodate an injured person on a removable NATO-standard stretcher and two other passengers on strapped seats. The latter could be either medics or other wounded people in need of medical assistance . Moreover, the interior space is meticulously designed so that rescuers can attend to the injured while en route to medical facilities.The upper module of this evacuation vehicle aims to ensure the safety and comfort of those in need of medical care. It boasts a protective steel cage that can be covered with a fireproof tarpaulin. Access inside is made through openings on the sides and rear.The trailer ensures a smooth, comfortable ride over any kind of terrain thanks to Da Orffo's off-road suspension, which is designed for high-speed operation with gas-adjustable coilover dampers and longitudinal rocker arms. What's more, the Life Chariot boasts a robust construction, and the designer assures it is repairable under frontline conditions. Two airtight boxes and a roof rack for medical equipment are also part of the design.Piotr started to work on the Life Chariot project in March 2022 and used 1:1 scale models in virtual reality to polish up the design. Two such trailers have already been given to the Ukrainian Medical Military Unit and a Polish voluntary medic unit and have been tested on a wide range of terrains, including mountain trails, caves, forests, and mines, with the feedback used to improve the design.Piotr plans to use the money from the James Dyson award to implement further upgrades and even create new iterations of the Life Chariot based on feedback from rescuers on the front line. Currently, he is also working on adapting the trailer for mountain rescue applications. Plutonium is not a fun word to speak, hear, or write. Used to depict an actinide metal we've known about for some time, it has become synonymous with human-caused destruction on a hard-to-comprehend scale. Photo: NASA Photo: NASA Plutonium was used to form the cores of the nuclear bombs developed in the U.S. under the Manhattan Project , and later dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki (the one dropped on Hiroshima had a uranium core).That's probably why the word stirs so many negative emotions in people. Yet, as with all other things on this planet, there's nothing innately evil in it, and its maliciousness only comes from how humans choose to use the metal.You could argue that the "there's nothing innately evil in it" statement is not entirely accurate. After all, plutonium is radioactive. It's most dangerous when inhaled on account of it emitting alpha particles. These get lodged in the lungs and begin killing lung cells, resulting in deadly complications. The stuff can also enter the bloodstream and spread to other organs, causing the same kind of failure.True, but do remember plutonium can hardly be found on our planet in a natural state, and it is mostly present in our lives as a byproduct of the nuclear power industry. So, again, its maliciousness only comes from how humans choose to use the metal and its derivatives.Because of their fissile properties (they split and achieve nuclear fission in certain conditions, releasing vast amounts of energy), isotopes the likes of plutonium-239 or plutonium-241 are ideal for use in nuclear bombs. Plutonium-238, on the other hand, is ideal as a power source for, including for spacecraft.It's exactly this isotope that got NASA all excited this week, thanks to the most recent shipment of the stuff it received from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). It was a large enough quantity (one pound or 0.5 kg) for the space agency to proudly say it was now one step closer to fueling future space missions with it.Although it may seem small to the rest of us, the quantity DOE produced at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for NASA's needs is the "largest since the domestic restart of plutonium-238 production over a decade ago."NASA is using plutonium-238 as a fuel source for the so-called radioisotope power systems, and it has done so for the past 60 years. RPS for short, they are key components in some of the space agency's most high-profile missions ever undertaken (three dozen missions in all), including the Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini-Hyugens, or the still recent Perseverance Martian rover.In the rover application, the RPS comes as something called the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator. MMRTG for short, it's a reactor built by Aerojet Rocketdyne and Teledyne that turns heat from the natural decay of plutonium-238 into electricity.More precisely 110 watts of the stuff, about as much as a light bulb needs to work here on Earth, but more than enough for the Perseverance to conduct the science missions it was sent to Mars for.In another application called Light Weight Radioisotope Heater Unit (LWRHU), the radioactive material's decay is transformed into heat. That heat is used to keep the spacecraft components and systems warm enough to be able to do their thing in the cold vastness of space.Generally speaking NASA tends to use a number of LWRHU on spacecraft, depending on the needs of the mission, size of the spaceship, and so on. For instance, the Apollo 11 mission had two sets of 15 such units, while the Galileo mission relied on no less than 120 of them.That may seem like a lot, but for reference consider the fact a single LWRHU (which is about the size of a C-cell battery) consists of a single plutonium-238 pellet that outputs about 1 Watts of heat.The recent delivery of fresh plutonium-238 is seen by NASA as a milestone toward "achieving the constant rate production average target of 1.5 kilograms per year by 2026." The need for more fuel such as this arises from the fact the space agency is planning an increasing number of space missions in the coming years, including the Artemis Moon exploration program and some even bolder attempts at reaching other planets, Mars included.NASA does not say specifically for what it will use the plutonium it got this week from the DOE, but I'm pretty certain you can bet on these guys not to waste it or put it to harmful use.Just as a reminder, in 2024 alone NASA has no less than nine missions planned, including the launch of the Intuitive Machines lunar lander, the Europa Clipper, and the Blue Ghost lunar lander.We'll cover them all in the year ahead, so stay close for more exciting details about humanity's most daring space exploration projects. In the meantime, you can view the two videos below for visual details on the MMRTG and the LWRHU. The Toyota ads were blacklisted in the United Kingdom by the Advertising Standards Authority. The video ads that showed several Toyota Hilux pickup trucks will no longer be aired, while the poster version will not be shown anymore. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) claims that the two promotional videos encourage drivers to behave in ways that could damage the environment.One of the commercials, uploaded on Facebook, showed several Toyota Hilux examples driving through a forest and rivers, enjoying what the voiceover calls "one of nature's true spectacles."Meanwhile, a poster version shown at bus stops in the UK displays the vehicles accompanied by the slogan "Born to roam," which can also be heard in the video ad. ASA disliked this one as well and prohibited its use. The agency explains that the ads "presented and condoned the use of vehicles in a manner that disregarded their impact on nature and the environment."The move is one of the many rulings focused on protecting the environment coming from ASA lately. They also banned ads from Lufthansa and HBSC. The agency launched a project that focuses on climate change and environmental protection back in 2020.A spokesperson for ASA explained that the commercials should induce a sense of responsibility to consumers and to society. The Toyota ads are the first banned for failing to meet the ASA standard. It is also the first time the authority has banned a commercial for promoting off-road driving , which is nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to advertising pickup trucks and SUVs with off-road capabilities.Toyota replied to ASA, but the carmaker was unable to convince the authority that the clip does not encourage irresponsible behavior. Furthermore, they highlighted the fact that the commercial was filmed back in 2020 with The&Partnership agency, in landscapes that do not look like the UK countryside but on "private land, in Slovenia, with all the necessary permissions, in a non-ecologically sensitive environment." Toyota also recalled the brands mission to electrify its lineup, starting with the first mass-produced hybrid, the Prius, back in 1997.Meanwhile, the poster ad shown at bus stops was CGI, with no environmental impact on land whatsoever.Toyota uselessly pointed out that there are customers who buy their Hilux pickup truck specifically for the abilities it has been demonstrating off the tarmac and use them as genuine workhorses on rough terrain.But ASA was not impressed. The authority received complaints from campaign groups such as Advertising and Adore Cities, which constantly report commercials that they consider having a negative impact on the environment.Furthermore, Adfree Cities is calling for a total ban on adverts that promote SUVs. In fact, the group as the name suggests is trying to get rid of all public spaces of marketing material. Wealthy people invest in luxury yachts for various reasons. While some do it out of genuine love of being on the water, for others, it's about the appeal of sailing or about showing off their financial strength. But for the majority of owners, the allure of yachts as movable status symbols is undeniable. Photo: VisionF Yachts Moreover, for boat owners, it has become increasingly important that their leisure watercraft be an extension of their personalities, reflecting their unique style and preferences. For an international tech entrepreneur, this meant having the exterior of their boat painted in an eye-popping custom pink color.The vessel in question is the fourth and final unit in VisionF Yachts ' successful VisionF 80 series of aluminum catamarans, and its official name has not been revealed, though users commenting on social media suggest "Cotton Candy" or the "Pink Panther" would be suitable monikers. The pink hull and superstructure give the cat a gracious, sophisticated look and will surely make it stand out while it glides across the shimmering waters.In stark contrast with the third hull in the series, which boasted an all-black appearance, the new catamaran looks like it should be moored in Barbie Land and even features a matching interior with fixed furniture and pink velvet carpets.The Turkish yard was responsible for the vessel's interior and exterior design, as well as her naval architecture, while the eye-catching paintwork was realized by London-based Thurstan Design, which was also responsible for the distinctive design details. The interior decor was customized to the owner's personal tastes and seems to pay tribute to the 70s with pops of pink throughout, plush velvet carpets, and rounded sofa chairs.The majority of the furniture pieces were produced in-house by VisionF, but the yacht also includes pieces from top designer labels such as Kravet, Moro, Rove Concepts, Crate & Barrel, Farrow & Ball, and more.As for the layout, the owner didn't request any particular changes, so the catamaran features pretty much the same configuration as its predecessors. The living quarters comprise a spacious main salon that offers about 600 square feet of space for socialization and a galley on the portside hull, along with two luxurious ensuite guest staterooms forward. Meanwhile, the starboard side hull houses the large master suite, a twin-single guest cabin, and a crew cabin. In total, the vessel can accommodate up to eight guests and a crew of five.The outdoor areas are geared toward relaxation and entertaining, with a flybridge that can double as a party space, an exterior helm station, and sun pads for basking in the sun.The design also includes a small Williams jet tender, which is also pink. It is stored toward the stern, where a hydraulic platform can be lowered for easy access to the water or raised to serve as a tender garage.Apart from looks, this pink yacht also delivers in terms of performance. Equipped with twin Volvo Penta IPS 1050 drives, the VisionF 80 catamaran can achieve a top speed of 18 knots and offers a range of over 1,800 nautical miles (3,333 km). Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry called on November 21 for direct negotiations with Armenia in a mutually acceptable venue, including at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Bakus call came after what appears to be Bakus rejection of Western mediation efforts in the process of settling relations with Armenia. It also followed the announcement by Armenias Foreign Ministry that Yerevan had submitted another proposal on a peace agreement to Azerbaijan following Prime Minister Nikol Pashinians call on November 18 for intensifying diplomatic efforts to achieve the signing of a peace treaty. In its statement today the Armenian Foreign Ministry emphasized that official Yerevan is ready to re-engage in negotiations, having as a benchmark mutual recognition and respect for each others territorial integrity without ambiguities, implementation of the further border delimitation based on the [1991] Alma-Ata Declaration and the latest legitimate Soviet maps, the unblocking of the regions infrastructures based on the principles of full respect for the sovereignty, jurisdiction, reciprocity and equality of the states. It said that despite all the complications and challenges official Yerevan sees a real possibility of establishing peace between the two countries, which can be realized if there is political will on both sides, and the Armenian side has that will. The Armenian ministry stressed that one of the expressions of this will is also the fact that Armenia proposed to Azerbaijan to hold a meeting of border delimitation commissions on the state frontier between the two countries. Earlier, Azerbaijan accused Armenia of delaying its reply to Bakus proposal on a peace agreement submitted to Yerevan in September for more than two months. Stressing that Yerevan submitted its sixth proposal related to the draft peace agreement to Baku on November 21, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said: While, after receiving the latest Azerbaijani proposals, Armenia was considering them and was ready to continue negotiations on the draft agreement, on September 19 Azerbaijan carried out a large-scale military attack against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, which led to the forced displacement of the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azerbaijani leadership appeared to be avoiding meetings with the Armenian side held with Western mediation after Baku established full control over Nagorno-Karabakh in the one-day lightening offensive in September. Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev and Armenias Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian were scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the EUs October 5 summit in Granada, Spain, for talks mediated by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and European Council President Charles Michel. Pashinian had hoped that they would sign there a document laying out the main parameters of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. However, Aliyev withdrew from the talks at the last minute. 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 the EUs Michel planned to host in Brussels in late October. Most recently Azerbaijan refused to attend a meeting with Armenia at the level of foreign ministers in Washington after allegedly one-sided and biased remarks by a senior U.S. official made during a congressional hearing on Nagorno-Karabakh. That meeting had reportedly been scheduled to take place on November 20. The Armenian ministry also stressed today that the Azerbaijani side did not participate in the meetings at the level of the countries leaders first in Granada and then in Brussels. It said that those five-way and three-way meetings had previously been agreed upon, and Yerevan considered it to be more efficient to present [its latest proposals] to Azerbaijan during those meetings. Nevertheless, in order to prevent attempts to deadlock the negotiation process and achieve lasting peace in our region, the Republic of Armenia constructively conveyed its observations on the [draft] agreement, the statement said. 22 November 2023 08:30 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more The Western coalition, led by the USA, continues to put pressure on Azerbaijan, while Yerevan still remains silent on Baku's proposal of the 5th peace treaty document. Being tempted by the Indian arms, Armenia gained momentum to be militarised by France. The West's plans in the Caucasus shifted to the southern part, where Azerbaijan, preventing insidious plans of the Western forces financed by Armenian lobbies, liberated its lands from the terrorist formations and clans occupying its territory. Huge stocks of weapons and ammunition belonging to the separatist clan, discovered by the Azerbaijani army on the territory of Garabagh after successful anti-terrorist measures, hint at the careful preparation of the separatist regime for military intervention in the territory of Azerbaijan. Yerevan and Brussels have signed an agreement on the status of an EU observer mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and this comes at a time of periodic waves of criticism and condemnation from the United States of America in the run-up to the signing of a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia. However, with time, the real purpose of the mission group's arrival in the region will be revealed. Speaking to AZERNEWS, Azerbaijani political scientist Farhad Mammadov said that there is an increase in the number of observers and, to some extent, an increase in their functions. "We will find out in the near future what this consists of. But for Azerbaijan at the current stage, in the absence of a peace treaty, this activity of the EU mission on the border is negative, as it creates an illusion in Armenia of ensuring its own security and contributes to the activation of claims from the Armenian side on territorial boundaries," the expert said. Mammadov noted that the fact that Armenia was forced to withdraw its armed forces from Garabagh after the anti-terrorist measures on September 1920 does not mean that these territorial claims have disappeared; just looking at Yerevan's accusations in the International Criminal Court would be enough to understand the wishes of Armenia. According to the expert, the activities of the EU mission are not transparent, the Armenian public is not informed about the mission's main activity in the country, and there is even a rumor that the Armenian authorities themselves are not fully aware of the work of the EU mission on their territory. On the one hand, the EU wanted to pressure Azerbaijan by putting forward initiatives to impose sanctions on it; on the other hand, the EU is eyeing the energy, oil, and gas sectors of Azerbaijan. By creating observation points over the territory of Armenia, the EU, in fact, serves its own political agenda, which includes targetting Russian forces around the region. By creating an illusion of help for Yerevan, the EU is ready to accept them into its ranks and soon to extend its hand to the North Caucasus after completing its job with Armenia. It is enough to say that the European Union and Western powers have been able to unilaterally pull Armenia into their own hands, just because Armenia made unusual maneuvers to quit CSTO, and tried to completely reject Russia despite the fact that its borders are still under Russian control. According to political analyst Farhad Mammadov, this request comes from Armenia's claim that Azerbaijan in September 2022 allegedly violated the borders (Armenian-Azerbaijani) and invaded its territory, and in accordance with this, there was a request to the CSTO for assistance, to which the leaders of the body drew up a document on "assistance to Armenia," with which Yerevan itself disagreed. Referring to Russia in this issue and the Armenian-Russian relations, the expert explained that this is another step to reduce Armenia's involvement in the CSTO and their expectations of the latter. "Accordingly, we can assume that this is an element that, in the future, will be the basis for Armenia's withdrawal from the Collective Security Treaty. Participation in the CSTO is a form of allied relations between Russia and Armenia, and if they take this step, it will have a negative impact on Armenian-Russian relations." the political analyst added. Thus, Armenia entering into a mixed and complex political game related to the West and creating a serious gap between itself and Russia raises serious questions about the future of the region. Armenia may not be aware that it is playing the role of a platform for the West, but the reality is that whether it is a European Union mission, France or other forces are using it for their own purposes against Russia or to complicate the situation in the South Caucasus. It remains a priority for Azerbaijan to pursue peace and prosperity both on its own territory and for all its neighbors living in the South Caucasus region. By playing "friends" with the West, Yerevan is missing and delaying the signing of a peace treaty, which, due to "whispering" by the West, affects the peace process in the region. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 11:16 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more Minister of Energy Parviz Shahbazov had meetings with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Peter Szijjarto and Minister of Energy Csaba Lantos in Budapest. According to Azernew, at the meeting with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto, satisfaction was expressed with the outcome of the ministerial meeting on the development and transfer of green energy, and the importance of accelerating the processes related to the establishment of the joint venture was noted. It was emphasised that the transfer of a large amount of green energy from Azerbaijan will play an important role in the implementation of the "Caspian-Black Sea-European Green Energy Corridor" as an effective project. It was also noted that Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are interested in the transmission of electricity from Central Asia to Europe through this corridor. The strategic importance of the project was assessed in terms of creating a bridge between Azerbaijan and the European Union, including Hungary. The importance of supplying Azerbaijani gas to the Hungarian market was discussed at the meeting. Prospects of gas supplies from Azerbaijan on a long-term basis, as well as the development of cooperation with Hungarian companies in oil and gas projects, were discussed. The discussion of cooperation with Hungary in the field of hydrocarbons and "green energy" continued at the meeting with Energy Minister Csaba Lantos. Views were exchanged on the expansion of relations with MOL and MVM, as well as on the feasibility study (FS) process for the green energy corridor project and the transmission of electricity to Europe. It was agreed that Hungary would provide pilot support for the processes related to the European Association of Transmission System Operators of Electricity (ENTSO-E) grid connection. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 17:07 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more A portal will be created for the implementation of the "Information Security and Cyber Security Strategy of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2023-2027". A regular meeting of the Coordination Commission on Information Security was held at the State Service for Special Communication and Information Security (SCIS), Azernews reports. Referring to the information of the State Service, at the meeting the Chairman of the Coordination Commission on Information Security, Head of the State Service of Special Communication and Information Security, Lieutenant General Ilgar Musayev, approved by the Decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan "Information Security and Cyber Security of the Republic of Azerbaijan" dated August 28, 2023, "Strategy for 2023-2027," provided detailed information to the participants of the meeting. Musayev noted that the strategy was approved to protect the country's information space from threats, improve the legal and regulatory framework in the field of information security, and define the upcoming tasks in this field. Later, the discussion of the issues included in the agenda of the Coordination Commission on Information Security began. In order to effectively organise the implementation of the strategy in accordance with the agenda, discussions were held on the creation of a working group consisting of representatives of institutions responsible for the implementation of the action plan. Proposals and mechanisms to ensure regular monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of measures envisaged by the strategy were discussed, and relevant decisions were made. In the course of discussions, given the breadth of the strategy's coverage, it was decided to collect the work done in a single database and, at the same time, create an information resourcea portal to coordinate the activities of the working groups and evaluate the results. In conclusion, the chairman of the commission stated the importance of fixing the discussed issues, taking necessary measures, and preparing joint projects. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 17:16 (UTC+04:00) Qabil Ashirov Read more On November 21, representatives of Kyrgyz companies operating in the fields of textile, construction, agrarian, logistics, etc. held a familiarisation visit to Sumgayit Chemical Industrial Park, Azernews reports. The Economic Zones Development Agency (EZDA) said that EZDA Deputy Chairman Fuad Maharramov informed company representatives about industrial zones operating in Azerbaijan, favourable investment opportunities for entrepreneurs, applied tax and customs concessions, and presented the presentation of industrial zones. The representatives of the Kyrgyz companies participating in the meeting spoke about the activities of the enterprises they represent and opportunities for cooperation. At the same time, company representatives pointed out that they are interested in the implementation of business projects by taking advantage of the available favourable investment opportunities in the industrial zones operating in Azerbaijan. In the end, the guests got acquainted with the work done in the Sumgayit Chemical Industrial Park and the production processes in the electrical equipment and heavy machinery factories of the residents of the Industrial Park "STP" LLC. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 10:39 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more In accordance with the instructions of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the return of former internally displaced persons to the restored city of Lachin continues, Azernews reports. Another group of former IDPs, consisting of 21 families or 81 people, left the Gobu Park 3 residential complex in Garadagh for Lachin on November 22. 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 city of Lachin has been provided for 346 families - 1326 people. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Living in Shanghai: How to decorate a Shanghai-style apartment? (People's Daily App) 14:08, November 22, 2023 Camden Hauge, an American entrepreneur who spent the majority of her time managing her food and beverage companies, has never realized the value of nesting and being "at home." Things changed after she and her boyfriend Lucas Sin moved into their current apartment. Check out the video to get a glimpse of their charming apartment. (Source: City News Service) (Web editor: Tian Yi, Liang Jun) Hyundai takes a further step in its US venture, joining hands with driverless automaker Motional to manufacture the all-electric IONIQ 5 robotaxi. The co-development plan was made in time of Hyundai's celebration of its new innovation center in Singapore, where the IONIQ 5 will soon be built for commercial release next year. Motional reported that its first models have already arrived and ready for development tests. The company has been trying to make an autonomous version of the IONIQ SUV since March 2021. All driverless technology will be integrated to the vehicles in the assembly line. The IONIQ 5 robotaxi is one of the first SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicles that received the approval of the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. This means the EV meets the minimum performance requirement to ensure safety of its riders and pedestrians while operational. Motional ensured that the vehicles have steering wheel and pedal. Motional provides services on the Uber, Lyft, and Via around Las Vegas, Nevada. Motional and Uber plans to launch another operations set soon on Los Angeles, California. Robotaxi Controversy and Safety Issues in the US Hyundai's partnership with Motional to deploy driverless cars came in time with federal regulators have stricter supervision on automated vehicles after recent incidents. Motional's rival, Cruise, has its robotaxi operations suspended in San Francisco in response to one of its EVs hit and killed a pedestrian last Oct. 2. General Motors, Cruise's parent company, has since intervened with company affairs to avoid further incidents in the future. Cruise's founder and CEO Kyle Vogt stepped down amidst the controversies and talks of mismanagement inside the company. Also Read: GM Cruise Co-founder Kyle Vogt Resigns as CEO IONIQ 5: Specs, Performance, and Availability Hyundai's IONIQ 5 is its latest step into electric robotaxi, aimed to have zero emissions and make transportation much safer and sustainable. The robotaxi's driverless features was inspired by the design process for WRC rally cars. Each car has over 30 sensors to detect its surrounding. Moreover, the car's system itself has a backup program set when the first one fails. IONIQ 5 is Hyundai's first driverless vehicle project. Its developer Motional is the result of Hyundai's deal with automative technology supplier with Hyundai for its American customers. Related Article: Amazon Seals Hyundai Deal, to Open Online Car Sales Next Year 22 November 2023 10:57 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more Meetings in preparation for the winter season were held in three more districts of Baku (Pirallahi, Sabail, and Garadagh), Azernews reports. The press service of the Baku City Executive Power has reported that in connection with the preparation for the winter season in the districts of Baku City, activities continue to prepare for the winter season, especially for snowy weather. Special-purpose equipment for city and district municipal services has been brought to readiness, and additional measures have been taken. Responsible persons have been appointed for each district of the capital, tasked with ensuring the progress of work in preparation for winter. The meetings were attended by responsible persons of Baku City executive power, heads of district administrations, public utilities, departments and organizations, educational institutions, and other relevant structures, as well as representatives of the private sector. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 12:49 (UTC+04:00) By Asim Aliyev Baku is hosting an economic forum on the theme "Transformation of the SPECA region into a global communications hub" (SPECA-2023). According to Azernews, Minister of Economy Mikail Jabbarov noted that the SPECA week (the UN Special Program for the Economies of Central Asian Countries) in Baku is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the program. The Minister expressed confidence that the Economic Forum will facilitate the exchange of information between the program countries and support joint efforts. It was noted that SPECA is based on the goal of achieving common economic goals in the region, reducing inequality, and improving well-being in the region. Playing the role of a bridge between East and West, Azerbaijan stands out for its long-standing traditions of cross-border trade and cultural exchange. However, as trade relations within SPECA deepen, infrastructure development is needed. Increasing initiatives in this area is important for mutually beneficial cooperation. It was noted that in 2022, Azerbaijan's trade turnover with SPECA countries increased 3.6 times and reached $ 1.3 billion. And in the first ten months of this year, this figure amounted to $ 1.2 billion, which is about 16 percent more than in the same period last year. In addition, Azerbaijan has achieved positive results in terms of exports within the framework of the program. Compared to the same period last year, Azerbaijan's exports to the participating countries of the program increased by almost 82 percent in the first 10 months of this year. The possibilities for achieving higher results in this area are wide. Measures such as simplification of customs procedures, reduction of trade barriers, and optimisation of transit traffic can make an important contribution to this issue. The Minister of Economy expressed his opinion on the bilateral beneficial economic and trade partnership of our country with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan within the framework of SPECA and the existing potential in this area. The forum highlighted the important contribution of Azerbaijan's growing transport and transit potential to strengthening our country's ties with Central Asia. In this context, the importance of Azerbaijan's national priorities, a favourable business and investment climate, and the new realities created by the liberation of our territories were emphasised. Dmitry Maryasin, Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, stressed that over the past 25 years, the role of SPECA countries in world trade has increased many times, and their economies have grown noticeably. It was noted that for the sustainable economic development of the participating states in the program, it is necessary to pay increased attention to a number of issues. This includes digital transformation, eliminating problems in the supply chain, fully achieving gender equality, accelerating the transition to a green economy, and other issues. It was noted that work is underway to create a SPECA Fund. The funds that will be transferred to this fund will be used to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Hirohito Toda, Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, noted the importance of strengthening ties between the countries of the program in the fields of energy, transport, environment, customs, information and communication technologies, trade, and other areas, as well as the implementation of joint projects in the future. In his opinion, the economies of the program countries should diversify, focus on digital development, overcome the problems of climate change, ensure food security, etc., and attention should be increased. At the Forum, representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan expressed their views on cooperation within the framework of SPECA, economic and investment potential, and initiatives to develop relations in various areas. The Economic Forum continued its work with sessions on the topic "Transformation of the SPECA region into a global communications hub". During the session on Digital transformation of data and document exchange in the supply chain using UN standards", Deputy Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport of Azerbaijan, Bakhtiyar Mammadov noted that digital transformation is one of the priorities of our country in the field of digitalization, information, and communication technologies. He gave information about the construction of infrastructure, the application of modern technologies, and international cooperation in this field. Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Tajikistan Akhliddin Nuriddinzoda, Secretary General of the International Association Trans-Caspian International Transport Route Gaidar Abdikarimov, Chairman of the Central Asian Transport and Logistics Partnership Larisa Kislyakova, Deputy Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Vitaly Alexandrov and Sue Probert, Chair of the UN Centre for Trade Promotion and E-Business, stressed the importance of digital transformation and electronic document exchange in terms of effective cooperation in regional trade and also spoke about the benefits of supporting the SPECA principles of sustainable trade by the countries of the region and other related issues. At the event, a conversation was opened about the existing experience in the field of digital transformation in the participating countries, suggestions were made about the potential of partnership. The forum continued in sessions. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 13:21 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more "Yerevan is ready to participate in negotiations with Baku," the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in response to a statement by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, Azernews reports. The statement noted that the Armenian side reaffirms its political will to make efforts for the normalisation of relations with Azerbaijan as well as for the establishment of peace and stability in the South Caucasus. It should be noted that yesterday, official Baku said that Azerbaijan is ready for direct negotiations with Armenia on a bilateral basis in order to conclude a peace agreement as soon as possible. "We believe that both countries should decide together on their future relations. Both countries are responsible for the continuation of the peace process, including the choice of a mutually acceptable location or the decision to meet at the state border. We call on the Armenian side to avoid further unnecessary delays and hope that they will respond favourably to this call in order to start negotiations as soon as possible." Armenia proposed to hold a meeting of the demarcation commission on the border with Azerbaijan. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 15:10 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more Brenda Shaffer, a lecturer at the US Naval Postgraduate School and foreign policy specialist, sharply condemned the anti-Azerbaijani remarks voiced by Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Azernews reports. "Have you also spoken to the 12,000 soldiers from Armenia and their families (another 20,000) who were living in Garabagh? They were probably happy to go home," Shaffer wrote on her X page in response to the USAID head's post about her meeting with so-called "displaced" Armenians who left Garabagh. Meanwhile, Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant to the Azerbaijani president and head of the foreign policy department of the presidential administration, said earlier that USAID's work in Azerbaijan no longer has a place. "During the 30 years of occupation of Azerbaijani lands by Armenia, when millions more Azerbaijanis were subjected to notorious and bloody ethnic cleansing, the US stood on the side of the aggressor state, Armenia. Today, the same policy continues in the same form and manifestation," he said. As the permanent representative of the United States in the UN Security Council, Samata Power has never dared to raise the issue of the deplorable situation of Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs and demand the implementation of UNSC resolutions. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 14:45 (UTC+04:00) President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has participated in the opening of an exhibition called SPECA Countries Exhibition: Regional Cooperation for Sustainable Development held on Azerbaijan`s special initiative at the Baku Expo Center as part of the UN Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia SPECA week. Minister of Economy Mikayil Jabbarov informed the head of state of the exhibition. Baku hosts the United Nations Special Programme for the Economies of Central Asia SPECA week. The countries of SPECA are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Azerbaijan joined the programme, which was established in 1998, in 2002, and is one of the active members of the SPECA. The goal of the programme is to support the countries in their efforts for economic development, cooperation and integration into the world economy. The exhibition organized on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of SPECA has been launched on Azerbaijan`s special initiative. The exhibition covers an area of 4,000 square meters. The stands at the exhibition feature samples of the products of state enterprises and private companies from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. President Ilham Aliyev officially opened the exhibition by unveiling the Value that unites us installation prepared by Azerkhalcha OJSC. The installation reflects cooperation between the SPECA countries. Products manufactured by 33 companies under the Made in Azerbaijan brand are on display in the center of the Azerbaijan National Stand. The head of state viewed the Azerbaijan National Stand. Minister of Defense Industry Vugar Mustafayev informed the head of state that 88 defense products produced in the ministry`s enterprises are displayed at the exhibition. The exhibition features a special stand dedicated to National Leader Heydar Aliyev. The stand showcases a video dedicated to the 100th anniversary of National Leader Heydar Aliyev, copies of 11 books and stamps about the life and activities of the Great Leader, as well as a gold coin named 100 years and a legacy beyond that issued by AzerGold CJSC on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the National Leader. The head of state also viewed stands of other SPECA countries - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The goal of the exhibition is to demonstrate the economic potential of the participating countries, discuss opportunities for mutually beneficial partnership and strengthen regional economic cooperation among the member states. The exhibition also features Triptix carpet composition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of National Leader Heydar Aliyev, which was co-organized by the Ministry of Economy and Azerkhalcha OJSC. Following the exhibition, a business forum will be conducted for entrepreneurs. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 17:56 (UTC+04:00) Laman Ismayilova Read more With its breathtaking landscapes and diverse wildlife, Gizilagaj National Park is regarded as a true natural gem. Spanning 99,060 hectares, the park is a heaven for nature enthusiasts and wildlife lovers. The park's rich biodiversity and stunning scenery make it a perfect destination for birdwatching and simply immersing oneself in nature's tranquility. Its main attraction is certainly its vibrant population of flamingos, which gather in large numbers in this area, creating a mesmerising spectacle. Witnessing these graceful creatures in their natural habitat is an awe-inspiring experience that left a lasting impression on Flamingo Festival visitors. The festival aims to raise awareness about the importance of wildlife conservation. From master classes to a handicrafts trade fair, Flamingo Festival offered a myriad of attractions and activities for visitors to enjoy. Representatives of government agencies, non-governmental organisations, universities, and international organisations took part in the festival organised by the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources. Speaking at the event, Deputy Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Vugar Karimov said the event is the first festival in Azerbaijan dedicated to a rare species. "Flamingos are one of the rare birds of Azerbaijan, included in all three editions of the Red Book, published in 1989, 2003, and 2023. Over 10 percent of the country's territory is under special protection. Azerbaijani is home to 10 national parks, 10 nature reserves, and 24 state nature reserves," said Vugar Karimov. In his speech, Vugar Karimov hailed the inclusion of the Hyrcanian Forests in the UNESCO World Heritage List. Note that the Hyrcanian Forests also became Azerbaijan's first natural site to be inscribed on the UNESCO List. Within the Flamingo Festival, park visitors enjoy ATV riding, an art and crafts fair, an intellectual quiz, a colourful show, and tasting heartwarming traditional food. The festival guests also participated in the presentation of the 3rd edition of the Red Book of Azerbaijan and an intellectual eco-quiz. A training session on "How to survive in extreme conditions" informed nature enthusiasts about the rules of behaviour when encountering snakes. One million fry were released into the bay of the park. Azerbaijani national parks installed their stands, reflecting the flora and fauna of protected areas and the impact of climate change on biodiversity. The Flamingo Festival became a colourful event that showcases the beauty of the flamingos and the park's natural wonders. --- Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @lmntypewriterrr Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 16:16 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more Azerbaijani Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeyhun Bayramov met with a delegation led by Under Secretary of State for European Affairs Leo Docherty for Commonwealth and UN Development Affairs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the Foreign Office on 22 November 2023, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed, Azernews reports. During the meeting, the two countries exchanged views on bilateral and regional cooperation, as well as international security issues. Minister Jeyhun Bayramov stressed that Azerbaijan attaches importance to the multifaceted relations with the UK, touched upon the possibilities of further strengthening the existing partnership between the two countries in political, economic, energy, security, and humanitarian spheres, and said that activation of political cooperation is important from the point of view of defining new areas of cooperation. In addition, the sides exchanged views on the cooperation between the two countries in the fields of transport, education, and renewable energy, as well as on the possible activities of the British companies towards the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the territories liberated from the occupation. The Minister also informed his counterpart about the current situation and realities in the region, the large-scale restoration and construction works carried out in the liberated territories, the threat of mines hindering these activities, as well as the plans to establish sustainable peace in the South Caucasus region of Azerbaijan and the practical steps taken in this direction, as well as the agenda of normalization of relations with Armenia. New directions of cooperation and other topics of mutual interest were discussed at the meeting. At the same time, Minister Jeyhun Bayramov stressed that Azerbaijan attaches importance to the multifaceted relations with the UK, touched upon the possibilities of further strengthening the existing partnership between the two countries in political, economic, energy, security and humanitarian spheres, and said that activation of political dialogue is important in terms of defining new directions of cooperation. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 16:49 (UTC+04:00) Qabil Ashirov Read more The Caspian Sea stands out and is in a really good position due to the transition to production based on renewable energy sources and the availability of less intensive hydrocarbons, Azernews reports, citing bp representative Christopher Mair telling at the Caspian Technical Conference and Exhibition (SPE Caspian Technical Conference and Exhibition). He said that there is already a phenomenal export infrastructure that delivers oil and gas to the markets of Turkiye, Europe, and the world. "There is an infrastructure that can be a channel for cheaper hydrocarbons in the future, and this infrastructure can be used. If we look at the density of wind energy on the shelf of the Absheron peninsula, we see that it is about 9 thousand kilowatt-hours per square metre. This can generally be compared with the south of the North Sea, Europe and even the eastern coast of the United States. In terms of solar energy, the density of solar radiation here is about 1500-2000 kilowatt-hours per square metre, which is no different from what is observed in northern Turkiye and Spain. Currently, investments are made in large-scale solar energy projects. I believe that the Caspian region, especially Azerbaijan, has every opportunity to continue the supply of hydrocarbons, as well as low-intensity hydrocarbons, through the oil and gas pipeline, using renewable energy sources. Azerbaijan plays a special role in this field," he added. According to him, the electrification of the existing hydrocarbon production infrastructure is of great importance. "Also, the correct use of technologies can lead to cost reduction. Therefore, special attention should be paid to this issue." --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 18:30 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more "The Armenian leadership's decision not to participate in the joint CSTO meeting is regrettable," Russian Foreign Ministry press service chief Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing today, Azernews reports. "We do not believe that it meets the interests of the Armenian people and will contribute to strengthening the security and stability of this friendly country. At the same time, as we understand, our Armenian colleagues do not intend to block the work of the organization's statutory bodies and hinder the work of already agreed-upon statutory documents. In fact, this leaves the door open for Yerevan to join the follow-up work. We hope that our Armenian colleagues will use this opportunity in the not-too-distant future," Zakharova noted. Zakharova stressed that Russia is convinced that the CSTO will play an important role in ensuring regional stability in the South Caucasus. "The deployment of a CSTO monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the decision on which is still on the table, would be a weighty factor in terms of ensuring Armenia's security, unlike the EU mission, which continues to demonstrate its complete ineffectiveness and fulfill tasks that are far from the declared ones," Zakharova added. Recall that on November 14, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced his decision not to participate in the CSTO meeting on November 23 during a telephone conversation with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also reminded Yerevan that the Armenian leadership's refusal to participate in the Minsk meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) is not in the interests of the Armenian people. "The decision of the Armenian leadership not to participate in the joint CSTO meeting is certainly regrettable. We do not believe that it meets the long-term interests of the Armenian people," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. It should be noted that Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan said that they would not participate in the Minsk meeting of the CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organisation. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 18:10 (UTC+04:00) Abbas Ganbay Read more Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, commenting at a briefing today on the delivery of French "Bastion" armoured vehicles to Armenia, said that France sold illiquid military equipment to Yerevan, with Paris sending it to Yerevan because it could not sell it elsewhere, Azernews reports. The Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that arguments that the supply of such equipment to Armenia would benefit the country's security seem naive: "This armoured equipment has shown very low efficiency in real combat conditions." As a reminder, on 14 November, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a telephone conversation with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that he would not participate in the CSTO meeting on 23 November. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan said that they would not participate in the CSTO Minsk meeting. We shall remind you that Ukraine refused the Bastion armoured vehicles sent by France because of weak protection. The French publication "Ouest France" published an article a few days ago saying that these unusable vehicles were sent to Armenia. "These vehicles were originally intended for Ukraine, but Kyiv considered that these vehicles have poor protection against artillery fire and anti-tank missiles," Ouest France said. We would like to add that Yerevan received the first batch of military aid from France. The first batch of armoured vehicles for the Armenian army is already being delivered to the country via Georgia. It should be noted that Bastion armoured vehicles were originally developed for French troops in former colonial countries of Africa. And now France is looking for any way to get rid of this equipment. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Would the second installment of the Korean sci-fi action fantasy series "Alienoid" succeed in gathering movie fans, overcoming box-office failures of the first film? That is the question looming in the local film industry ahead of the film's release in January 2024. Director Choi Dong-hoon is now hoping his film series will get a second chance to receive different reviews, now that the whole puzzle of the mystery left unsolved in the first film is completed with the sequel. "I spent 1 1/2 years working on the post-production, only looking at the actors' eyes on the monitor. It felt as if they were family members who had lived together with me," he said during a press conference to promote "Alienoid 2" in Seoul on Wednesday. "I once again felt what it's like to make a movie myself while doing the post-production work." The big-budget two-part film series made its bold debut in the summer of 2022 but bombed, attracting only 1.53 million moviegoers due to largely negative reviews. The number was only one-fifth of its break-even point of 7.3 million. Written and directed by Choi, one of the most bankable filmmakers in the Korean film industry, the series revolves around a duo of android robots who must fight across time to capture escaped alien criminals in modern-day Korea and Taoist magicians who fight with each other to possess a legendary divine sword in the ancient Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) as a time portal opens between the past and modern-day Korea in 2022. The second installment begins where the story of the first film ends: Lee Ahn (Kim Tae-ri), a human girl brought to the 21st century from the past and raised by the robots, eventually restores a legendary divine sword after 10 years of her unwanted stay in Goryeo, while Mureuk (Ryu Jun-yeol), a clumsy Taoist wizard who Lee Ahn encounters in her journey to find the sword, falls into confusion after finding that a mysterious being is inside him. In the second film, Lee Ahn returns to the present with the divine sword but she is not alone. She is accompanied by Thunder (Kim Woo-bin), one of the robots, and three Taoist magicians, Mureuk, Heukseol (Yum Jung-ah), Cheongwun (Jo Woo-jin) and Ja-jang (Kim Eui-sung), leader of a secret gang, who all pursue the sword for different purposes. Lee Ahn then joins forces with her friends Thunder, Mureuk, Heukseol and Cheongwun to prevent escaped alien prisoners from detonating an extraterrestrial matter called "Haba" on Earth and save the world. The director said he put much effort into making "Alienoid 2" enjoyable even for viewers who had not seen the first part while following the original script. "In the opening of the movie, there is a summary clip that summarizes the contents of the first part," he said, adding that he kept editing the summary footage to the point where 15 versions were created. Actors said the second part will be fun as hidden secrets of the main characters are unveiled. "If the first part unfolds with several stories intertwined, the second part provides catharsis in the process of unraveling the intertwined stories," Ryu Jun-yeol said. "It will be fun if you watch the first and second parts together." Kim Tae-ri said the relationship between her and Ryu's characters changes in the second film as hidden secrets are revealed. Lee Ha-nee and Jin Sun-kyu join the cast as the customs officer Min Gae-in from the first part and a blind swordsman Neungpa, a new role in the second part, respectively. (Yonhap) 22 November 2023 18:59 (UTC+04:00) Singapore expressed interest in using Russias 5D printing technology at the talks that took place with the support of the Russian trade mission, Azernews reports, citing TASS. Among highlights in the sector I would mention the talks that took place with the support of the Russian trade mission, on using the first Russian 5D printing technology. This strategic cooperation creates synergy of Singapores technological power with Russias innovative achievements. Moreover, we actively facilitate the cooperation between a number of respected robotic companies in Russia with leading associations and companies in Singapore, including the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)," he told a forum. Singapores IT market "is very promising for cooperation with Russia," as "dozens of large and small IT companies with Russias participation in one form or another successfully operate" in Singapore, Bondarenko added. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 22:15 (UTC+04:00) Minister of Education and Science of Kyrgyzstan Dogdurkul Kendirbaeva met with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Turkey to Kyrgyzstan Ahmet Sadik Dogan and the President of Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) of the country Abdullah Eren, Azernews reports, citing 24.kg News Agency. Dogdurkul Kendirbaeva noted the strengthening of cooperation in the field of education and proposed considering the possibility of organizing two-week training courses in Turkey to improve the qualifications of teachers teaching STEAM subjects. She also raised the issue of translating Turkish books on STEAM subjects into the Kyrgyz language and adapting them for the Kyrgyz Republic. Representatives of the embassy and YTB reported that the ministrys proposals will find support. Abdullah Eren told about the scholarship program of Turkey, and also said that they were ready to allocate 50 grant places for the 2024-2025 academic year for Kyrgyzstanis who will get the highest scores at the Nationwide Testing, the Ministry of Education added. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 November 2023 23:20 (UTC+04:00) Industrial production in Belarus increased 8% over the first ten months of 2023, Azernews reports, citing Interfax "Over the past period in 2023, the industrial complex has demonstrated positive results and generally stable operation, despite sanctions pressure and other negative trends. (...) The volume of industrial production for the first ten months of 2023 reached 108% of the volume for the same period in 2022," Parkhomchik said at a joint meeting of the chambers of the Belarusian parliament on Wednesday. Parkhomchik said that exports of Belarusian industrial products to Russia in 2024 are planned to increase 7%, while to non-CIS countries, they should increase 12%. "Exports of goods and services for the first nine months of 2023 were 104.8% of the figure for the corresponding period in 2022, which is ahead of the established target parameter for this period of 103.8%. The balance of foreign trade in goods and services was positive. High growth rates for exports of goods remain at [the corresponding index was] 107.8%. In physical terms, exports of washing machines increased 4 times, cars were up almost 3 times, TVs and monitors increased 2.2 times, and petroleum products increased 2 times," Parkhomchik said. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Lois Henry is the CEO and editor of SJV Water, a nonprofit, independent online news publication dedicated to covering water issues in the San Joaquin Valley. She can be reached at lois.henry@sjvwater.org. The website is sjvwater.org. By Park Han-sol Sneaker Con, arguably the worlds largest convention show for shoe fanatics, is debuting in Seoul in October 2024. Since its founding in New York City in 2009, the event has branded itself as one of the biggest and most influential platforms for exhibiting and trading limited-edition footwear for growing numbers of sneakerheads worldwide. Throughout its run, the convention has taken place across 30 major cities around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, London, Shanghai and Sydney, attracting over 300,000 attendees each year. The inaugural Seoul edition for local sneaker enthusiasts, influencers and vendors will be launched by the content company Urban Complex, which also organizes Urban Break Asias largest contemporary urban and street art fair held every July at COEX in southern Seoul. Busy, Even Tragic Weekend for N. Oregon Coast Sheriffs and Rescuers; 1 Death Published 11/13/23 a 8:05 p.m. By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff (Garibaldi, Oregon) This past weekend was a busy one for Tillamook County Sheriff's Office (TCSO), with a mix of happy endings and tragedies. One person is dead, but at least four others were rescued in a rather wide section of north Oregon coast. (Photo courtesy TCSO) According to the TCSO, Marine Deputy Dennis Greiner in particular was involved in all four rescue efforts. Friday afternoon, TSCO received word of a stranded recreational boat in Tillamook Bay. Greiner launched a patrol boat from Garibaldi Marina to recover the boat, which had become disabled the previous day and lodged itself along the rocks just across from the Three Graces rocks on the bay. No injuries were reported. Deputy Greiner decided to remove the boat before it became a navigational hazard for other boaters, the TCSO said. With the assistance of Garibaldi Fire Departments Deputy Chief Blake Paulsen and Firefighter Brad Marugg, the boat was floated and towed back to the Marina for removal. Photo courtesy TCSO Later on Friday evening, Greiner joined in with the US Coast Guard and Netarts-Oceanside Fire Rescue into Netarts Bay, where responders rescued four adult clammers who had become stuck on a sand bar by the incoming tide. The Coast Guard used a skiff with Coast Guard rescuers Austin Brink and Aiden Hayes along with Greiner, while Netarts-Oceanside Fire launched their own watercraft. A USCG helicopter joined in as well. Rescuers found them literally in the nick of time. When the four people were located, the water was up to their necks, TCSO said. They were loaded onto the skiff and brought to two awaiting Tillamook Ambulances and transported to Tillamook Hospital for treatment of hypothermia. Photo courtesy TCSO, showing Deputy Greiner in the vehicle The north Oregon coast continued to keep first responders busy. Deputy Greiner saw even more action on Saturday, responding to a call for yet another disabled boat, this time jammed into the pilings of Tillamook Bay, not far from the Port Office. Deputy Greiner was covering a patrol shift at the time, but was still able to respond to the area, TCSO said. Once he arrived, he arranged for a good samaritan in a passing boat to tow the disabled boat to the ramp. No injuries were reported. Photo courtesy TCSO Sunday saw the darker moment in south Tillamook County, as officials received a report of a suicidal man at the Cape Lookout trailhead. This time, a small army responded, including Oregon State Police (OSP), Netarts-Fire Rescue, a USCG helicopter, and other sheriff's deputies including the agency's Search and Rescue (SAR) unit. With the primary search area within the park boundaries of Cape Lookout, OSP was the lead investigator. The search did not take long, with the helicopter crew finding a deceased male at the base of the south face of Cape Lookout, apparently having committed suicide. TCSO has not released the name of the man. US Forest Service personnel along with Greiner, OSP, SAR and fire rescue crews assisted in recovering the body, which TCSO said was extremely difficult because of stormy weather conditions and the rough terrain of the area below Cape Lookout. Tillamook 911 dispatchers were also integral to the recovery and all this weekend's incidents, TCSO said. We are grateful for all of our partner public safety agencies that respond with TCSO to calls like this every day, TCSO said on social. Also, our thoughts are with the family and friends of the deceased found at Cape Lookout. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. Hotels in Tillamook Bay - Where to eat - Tillamook Maps and Virtual Tours MORE PHOTOS BELOW Three Graces, Garibaldi (Oregon Coast Beach Connection) More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees over 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast. LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on Oregon Coast Beach Connection All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright Oregon Coast Beach Connection. Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted By Yi Whan-woo Korea will carry out more drug searches on all incoming passengers both Korean and foreign nationals who traveled to countries where drug use and drug-related crimes frequently occur, the government announced, Wednesday. The joint announcement, involving the Korea Customs Service (KCS) and the relevant ministries as well as the police and the prosecution, comes amid a surge in drug trafficking cases in Korea. The KCS said the frequency of drug searches on incoming travelers from the targeted countries will be more than doubled. However, it did not specify the countries. A scanning device that can swiftly carry out a body search in three seconds will be adopted in every international airport across Korea beginning next year. The agency will increase searches on international mail and parcels, as they are increasingly being exploited as a means to smuggle drugs into the country. In particular, the number of searches will increase by more than 50 percent for international mail and parcels coming from countries classified as having a high instance of drug-related crimes. To efficiently implement the increased frequency of searches, the government will increase 2024 spending on counter-drug activities to 23.8 billion won ($18.3 million), up 2.5 times from this year's budget. We want to ensure that we will make all-out efforts to curb the spread of drugs, the KCS said, adding, The government is committed to restoring the countrys status as a drug-free nation." This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal . The author of this post is CJ Staff Senior Associate Justice Michael Morgan will resign from the North Carolina Supreme Court in early September, shortly after the court's next official opinion day.Morgan tweeted Thursday morning.The state's highest court is scheduled to release its next batch of opinions in outstanding cases on Sept. 1. After a break of more than four months, the court will resume oral arguments on Sept. 12.Morgan's single eight-year term on the high court runs through the end of 2024. He had announced in May that he did not plan to run for re-election.Carolina Journal has reported on the prospect that Morgan, a Democrat, could run for governor. State Attorney General Josh Stein is the only prominent Democrat who has announced a gubernatorial run to date. Five Republicans have announced plans to seek the states highest executive office.The resignation will give Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, a chance to appoint Morgan's replacement. That justice will have roughly a year to serve on the court before facing the voters in 2024.Republicans hold a 5-2 majority on the court. Depending on the outcome of the 2024 election, that majority will stay put at 5-2 or move to 6-1 in the GOP's favor.Morgan tweeted on May 18.Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, announced in November 2022 that he plans to run in next year's state Supreme Court election.Morgan will turn 68 in October. Under current mandatory retirement rules, he would be forced to retire from the court no later than October 2027. Had he sought re-election, he would have been able to serve less than three full years of an eight-year term.Provisions in both the state House and Senate budget plans could have allowed Morgan to serve four more years. Both budgets would raise the judicial mandatory retirement age from 72 to 76 in the state's appellate courts.If that change becomes law, Morgan could have served almost seven years of a new eight-year term had he sought re-election.Morgan was the last current member of the NC Supreme Court elected with no party labels on the ballot. He unseated incumbent Justice Robert Edmunds in 2016 with 54% of the vote. Edmunds was a Republican.It was the only statewide appellate race on the ballot that year with no party label. Republicans swept five state Court of Appeals elections on the same ballot. With no party label, Morgan's name appeared on the first line of the ballot in his race. That was the same spot Republican candidates occupied in the Appeals Court races.Morgan was born in Cherry Point and grew up in New Bern. He earned his bachelor's degree from Duke University and a law degree from North Carolina Central University. He worked for the state Department of Justice for 10 years before an appointment in 1989 as an administrative law judge in the Office of Administrative Hearings.Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt appointed Morgan to Wake County District Court in 1994. Voters returned him to that job in 1996 and 2000. He won elections to NC Superior Court in 2004 and 2012.While Morgan will not take advantage of the potential change in mandatory retirement age for appellate court judges and justices, the change is likely to affect the state Supreme Court's top post.Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican, is five months older than Morgan. Under current law, Newby would be forced to retire by the end of May 2027. He would step down with 19 months left in his term. The next governor would appoint a replacement.With the proposed changes in the budget plans, Newby could serve his full term. He could run for a second term as chief, though he would be forced to retire in May 2031. That's just 2 1/2 years into an eight-year term. Opponents of North Carolina's new voter identification law are defending their request to reopen discovery in a federal lawsuit against voter ID. Republican legislative leaders and state election officials have argued against additional discovery.Discovery is the stage of the legal process when lawyers collect documents and conduct interviews as they prepare for trial. Discovery in the federal voter ID lawsuit ended in June 2020. At that time, a trial was scheduled for January 2021.A federal judge delayed that trial and later blocked the case from moving forward. In the meantime, the state Supreme Court ruled in April that the ID law is constitutional. Elections officials are asking for a photo ID when voters head to the polls this year for municipal elections.Now federal lawsuit plaintiffs led by the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP seek more information from the State Board of Elections.NAACP lawyers wrote in a court filing Wednesday.the document added.Thelitigation refers to the Holmes v. Moore challenge against voter ID in the state court system. Senate Bill 824 was the bill number for the ID law lawmakers approved in 2018.NAACP lawyers argued.The plaintiffs' latest court filing arrived in US District Court one week after Republican state legislative leaders and the Democrat-led State Board of Elections both objected to additional discovery.Lawmakers warned that additional discovery could delay resolution of the federal lawsuit until after the 2024 election.according to a document legislative leaders filed on Aug. 16.Lawmakers reminded the court that ID critics attempted to shut the General Assembly out of the federal lawsuit. An 8-1 ruling from the US Supreme Court in June 2022 enabled Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, to take part in the case.legislators' lawyers wrote.The document also referenced the potential impact on future elections.A stay issued in December 2021 placed the case in limbo. Plaintiffs challenging the ID law returned to federal court this year after the state Supreme Court's April ruling allowed the ID requirement to move forward.US Magistrate Judge Patrick Auld determined during a July 26 hearing that ID critics would not be allowed to request additional information or conduct interviews with lawmakers. Auld asked voter ID opponents for more information about their plans for seeking additional information from state elections officials.Berger and Moore hope Auld will decide that the case should move forward based on discovery conducted by June 2020.legislators' lawyers wrote.Berger and Moore's legal team added.Lawmakers emphasized the prospect of a lengthy court proceeding.Berger and Moore's lawyers wrote.lawmakers' lawyers warned.Purcell is the 2006 US Supreme Court precedent calling on federal judges not to issue decisionsBerger and Moore's lawyers concluded.In a separate court filing, the State Board of Elections explained its objections to reopening discovery in the case.the elections board's lawyers wrote.according to the document.the elections board's brief continued. Here are five cardiologists in the news on whom Becker's has reported since Nov. 8: 1. Sriram Naidu, MD, one of the first pioneering cardiologists to do cardiac cauterizations on a large scale in the 1970s, died Oct. 27 after contracting an idiopathic lung illness. 2. Arkansas Heart Hospital, based in Little Rock, added Hamza Rayes, MD, an interventional cardiologist who specializes in coronary and peripheral interventions, to its team. 3. Cranston, R.I.-based cardiologist Malcom Kirk, MD, was reprimanded by state health officials and ordered to pay $1,100 in administrative fees after performing an operation while positive for COVID-19. 4. In a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to practice privately, physicians still choose to continue down the path they believe is best for them. Calvin Wong, MD, a cardiologist at Pacific Cardiology in Honolulu, recently joined Becker's to discuss what makes private practice different from the employment model. 5. The Sanford Bemidji (Minn.) Heart and Vascular Center added Linda Gossett, MD, to its team of cardiologists. Sanford Bemidji Heart and Vascular Center opened in 2013 and is the only heart and vascular center in the region. A number of medical suppliers have been caught in fraud and kickback schemes this year, including Medtronic and Beach medical Suppliers. Thirteen suppliers caught in schemes in 2023: 1. Simon Orobor, owner of Devotion Medical Supply and Durable Medical Supply, which provided equipment including knee, back, shoulder and wrist braces, pleaded guilty for his role in an $11 million kickback scheme. 2. Brett Weiner and Valerie Desalvo, who owned and operated Boca Raton, Fla.-based Laboratory Marketing Services, pleaded guilty to buying and selling fake physician orders used to obtain more than $1.5 million in fraudulent Medicare payments. 3. Julian Latty, operator of Beach Medical Suppliers, and co-conspirator Jordan Thomas Broome pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud Medicare, requesting over $4 million in reimbursement and receiving over $2 million. 4. A medical equipment provider, AZ Diabetic Supply, and owner Hisham Zaghal were ordered to pay $12 million in damages and penalties after being found liable in a Medicare fraud scheme. 5. Lincare Holdings, a chemical company that provides oxygen equipment to patients with respiratory issues, agreed to pay $29 million and perform corrective actions to resolve allegations of fraudulently overbilling Medicare. 6. A Florida resident was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in an $11 million scheme to defraud Medicare by supplying fraudulent orders for durable medical equipment. Anthony Cracchiolo and a partner owned five fraudulent medical equipment companies, which they used to file $11 million in fraudulent Medicare claims. 7. Kenric Griffin, co-owner of New Horizons Durable Medical Equipment in Frisco, Texas, was convicted of a $5.1 million Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme. 8. Since 2011, Medtronic and its subsidiaries have paid more than $60 million in settlements related to kickback schemes and fraud claims. 9. The Lakewood, N.J.-based owner of a medical equipment company, Alexander Schleider, pleaded guilty to healthcare fraud for his role in a scheme to defraud Medicare. 10. A federal jury found a California woman, Tamara Motley, 54, guilty of leading a scheme that billed Medicare more than $24 million in fraudulent claims for medically unnecessary durable medical equipment and repairs. 11. A Florida business owner was sentenced to 65 months in prison for a Medicare fraud scheme involving back, knee and wrist braces. Christopher Margait previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud in 2022. 12. A medical equipment company based in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., agreed April 21 to pay $5.3 million to settle allegations of submitting false claims. The settlement resolves allegations against AdaptHealth, formerly known as QMES, and Tri-County Medical Equipment and Supply. 13. Two medical equipment suppliers were convicted of healthcare fraud with a scheme worth $3.8 million, according to the Justice Department. Meik Medical Equipment and Supply owner Ikechukwu Udeokoro, 47, and the company's manager, Ayodeji Fasonu, 56, billed Medicaid and Medicare "for hundreds of expensive patient support systems that were never provided to patients or caregivers." Warren (Pa.) General Hospital reported a data breach affecting nearly 169,000 patients. The hospital first identified the suspicious network activity on Sept. 24. After securing its network, the hospital determined that the unauthorized individual accessed its network between Sept. 15 and Sept. 23, according to a Nov. 9 Warren General Hospital data breach notice. The information affected by the breach included Social Security numbers, names, financial account information, payment card information, health insurance claims information and payment card information. According to a posting with the HHS, the breach was caused by hacking. Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System plans to roll out an IT platform that automates repetitive administrative tasks across its 17 hospitals. The health system adopted the technology from Laudio at Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital in Humble, Texas, and intends to grow it systemwide. Memorial Hermann also became a strategic investor in the company after participating in a $13 million series B funding round. "By empowering frontline leaders to spend less time on administrative work, we're giving them more time to support their teams and patients in meaningful ways," said Bryan Sisk, DNP, RN, senior vice president and chief nursing executive at Memorial Hermann, in a Nov. 21 news release. "We're excited to leverage this new platform to improve our team members' daily lives and their overall satisfaction." The platform is used by nearly 20 other health systems, including New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health and Omaha-based Nebraska Medicine. Cleveland's partnership with RIP Medical Debt has erased $33 million in medical debt for 16,000 city residents to date, Cleveland Scene reported Nov. 20. The Cleveland City Council in April approved a plan to donate $1.9 million in American Rescue Plan relief funds to RIP Medical Debt. Once completed, the initiative is expected to relieve $181 million in debt for more than 50,000 residents. To qualify for relief, residents must live in a household with income up to 400 percent of the federal poverty guidelines or have medical debt that is at least 5 percent of the annual household income. About 80% of Cleveland residents meet the criteria, according to the report. Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, Calif., is laying off workers to adjust its staffing levels. Spokesperson Aaron Byzak told Becker's on Nov. 21 that the hospital had a reduction in force "to align our staffing with hospital volume, which has been 25% lower than historical trends." The layoffs affected positions throughout the organization, including management and executives. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, a recent letter sent to staff from CEO Gene Ma, MD, dated Nov. 13 mentions that 60-day layoff notices went out to an unspecified number of employees. The letter did not specify the number of layoffs and, as of Nov. 21, no Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice had been posted on the California Employment Development Department website. Mr. Byzak told Becker's the recent layoffs are separate from the 96 layoffs reported in September. Those layoffs affected employees serving in women's and newborn services. In July, Tri-City Medical Center's board voted to indefinitely suspend labor and delivery services due to financial challenges and changes in patient referrals to inland hospitals. Hospital spokesperson Jessica Shrader told The Coast News on Nov. 17 that the most recent layoffs were not connected to the recent cyberattack at the hospital or the hospital's recent partnership with UC San Diego Health, which is set to assume hospital operations in March. Lowville, N.Y.-based Lewis County Health System is close to receiving a reimbursement for the county that could help reopen its maternity ward, CBS affiliate WWNY reported Nov. 21. The county's health and human services committee approved moving $2.5 million from this year's fund balance and $1 million per year over the next two years to repay the hospital for money it borrowed to fund a community college education center, according to the report. The plan is awaiting full approval from the full board of legislators. Lewis County Health System CFO Jeff Hellinger told the news outlet the funds will be used for general operations, but specifically maternity. Minneapolis-based Allina Health has named D'Andre Carpenter, DNP, RN, as chief nurse executive and senior vice president, according to a Nov. 21 news release shared with Becker's. Dr. Carpenter joins Allina Health from Des Moines, Iowa-based UnityPoint Health where he also served in the capacity as chief nursing officer. His appointment to the role begins Nov. 27. By Lee Hae-rin BATAM, Indonesia Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC), the operator of Incheon International Airport, seeks to develop Indonesias Batam Hang Nadim International Airport into an ASEAN gateway capable of accommodating 25 million passengers a year by 2046, its operator, PT Bandara Internasional Batam, said, Wednesday. IIAC signed a public-private partnership (PPP) with the Batam Indonesia Free Zone Authority (BT Batam), which manages the Batam airport, in a consortium with Indonesias state-owned airport operator and construction company in April 2021. The 600 billion won ($463 million) deal is IIACs first overseas airport operation and development project, under which the company will renovate, manage and develop the airports existing passenger terminal and a new passenger and cargo terminal for 25 years. Built in 1973, the Batam airport is the Southeast Asian countrys one of five international airports and can accommodate up to five million passengers in its facility renovated by Hyundai E&C in 1997. The airport had 4.2 million passengers and transported 43,800 metric tons of cargo in 2019. By year-end, it is forecast to receive four million passengers whose overwhelming 98 percent are domestic travelers. The lesser-known picturesque island city in the Riau Archipelago is Southeast Asian country's third tourism attraction after Bali and Jakarta and receives two million annual visitors, mostly from neighboring Singapore and Malaysia. Strategically located 20 kilometers from Singapore, the island emerged as Indonesias popular Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) destination hosting local and global corporate events. Batam also offers economic benefits as the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) designated by the Indonesian government, the company said. The island boasts business and income tax cuts as well as special investment incentives. The island has seen continuous economic growth, with the islanders GRDP per capita of $7,943, which is over double of Indonesias national average. The project is still in the initial stage with a 5 percent completion rate. By April next year, the airport will feature Shilla Duty Free Shop beyond the expanded security inspection area, while the warehouse will be expanded into five times the current size. The airport signage, formerly only Indonesian and English will also feature Korean to commemorate the partnership between the two countries. We expect to offer direct chartered flights between Incheon and Batam around January to February next year, and have regular direct flights by next October, said Chun Min-jae, the vice president director of PT Bandara Internasional Batam. Through the 25-year project, IIAC expects to gain a ten-fold turnover amounting to 6.4 trillion won and earn 480 billion won dividend. As Incheon airport is heavily dependent on global passengers as the countrys international air hub, The company seeks to diversify its profit structure to reduce the risk of profit loss from global issues, such as pandemics and international disputes, the company explained. Batam, on the other hand, has stable demand for domestic air travel as the Southeast Asian country consists of over 12,000 islands while the dynamic exchange among ASEAN nations forecast potential for more international air travel. The project has garnered neighboring ASEAN countries attention to the IIACs experience and know-how in airport management, according to Lee. The company is eyeing signing similar deals with international airports in Kuwait and the Philippines. The company will do its utmost to successfully manage Batam airport and win ten additional PPP deals with international airports by 2030 to make the leap to being a global airport operator, Lee said. Hutchinson (Kan.) Regional Healthcare System has named Benjamin Anderson president and CEO, JC Post reported Nov. 21. Mr. Anderson most recently served as vice president for rural health and hospitals at the Colorado Hospital Association. Previously, he was CEO of Kearny County Hospital in Lakin, Kan. Hutchinson Regional has been operating with interim chief executives since its former CEO Ken Johnson resigned in November 2022. "It is very rare when opportunity, timing, talent, and fit all come together for the good of an institution, but such is the case in the hiring of Benjamin Anderson," Allen Fee, chair of the health system's board of directors, told the newspaper in a media statement. "He is a highly regarded leader in transforming rural healthcare in Kansas, boasting extensive connections across various levels to ensure lasting success and growth for our health system." Medical City Health has named Emily Sneed, MSN, RN, as the chief nursing officer of its Lewisville, Texas, medical center. She will join the Medical City Lewisville campus after departing her current role as associate chief nursing officer at Medical City in Plano, Texas, where she has worked since 2009. Ms. Sneed will assume the role of chief nursing officer beginning Nov. 27. UChicago Medicine has promoted Mike Antoniades to the permanent presidency at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey, Ill. Mr. Antoniades joined the hospital in March and has been serving as its interim president, according to a Nov. 22 news release. He has more than 30 years of experience leading community hospitals and academic medical centers; previous titles include executive vice president and chief operating officer at New York City-based Maimonides Medical Center and president and CEO at New Brunswick, N.J.-based Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. The promotion is effective Jan. 1. From expanding healthcare access to innovation, health system CEOs have a lot on their minds as they think about the next year, as well as the next five or 10 years. Financial sustainability, retention and recruitment strategies, thoughtful adoption of technology, and meeting the demand for outpatient services were all common themes that emerged when CEOs discussed their near and long-term plans. Here is what five CEOs have told Becker's this year about their priorities both now and in the future: Pete November. CEO of Ochsner Health (New Orleans): Trying to be that place where our physicians and our caregivers want to practice because it's the right environment and they have all the resources they need. And they're excited about the mission of the organization. That's a big focus of where we need to go strategically. Certainly the digital evolution that's happened in healthcare and being very focused on that both from the perspective of finding new ways to provide care to our patients, better in different ways of providing care, using digital technology and using the technology to make it easier to practice medicine and provide care. Technology, too, can allow us to do things that we can't even imagine today in healthcare that will become possible. We're very focused on that, very focused on access. And I think we all know that healthcare is moving more to the outpatient setting. When that happens, your access is so important, and we've got to give our patients the ability to easily navigate the healthcare system. Then I'm always very focused on making sure you have the right culture and organization. So people get up and know this is where they want to work because it's the right environment and they know they're appreciated and cared for and cared about and have opportunities and that they want to stay here. And that people want to come here because we have that culture. I also certainly want to continue our efforts around innovation. We definitely will continue to focus on our risk areas and ability to take financial risk within value-based care. Then continued focus on programmatic building. We've seen this through our partnership with Houston-based MD Anderson Cancer Center, for example. Joon Sup Lee, MD. CEO of Emory Healthcare (Atlanta): The advantage we have is a bustling, diverse and growing metropolitan area. But ultimately, for us to sustain and continue with our mission, we're going have to grow our primary care, and we have to do that as rapidly as possible. We don't have enough primary care physicians as a whole, much less within the healthcare system. We also have to aggressively increase our capacity to perform outpatient care, whether that's in a formal ambulatory surgery center or a multispecialty center. And third, we are still pretty heavily concentrated in the greater metropolitan Atlanta area, and we need an ability to spread geographically. I don't think that it is practical for us to continuously build hospitals. Those imperatives for us to grow the outpatient component of primary care, as well as the geographical spread, are definitely going to require some different types of partnerships that will allow us to grow with the speed that's needed and the complexity in terms of coordinating that care. Michael Charlton. President and CEO of AtlantiCare (Atlantic City, N.J.): Goal No. 1 is what we're calling Vision 2030 to set the vision in the strategic direction for the organization. And not that finite time frame of typical strategic plans, two or three years, but really what is the next six years going to bring toward the beginning of the new decade for AtlantiCare? What's our vision of this organization? How to best serve our patients and our community given the framework of where healthcare is headed. The second key priority is how we support the well-being and the holistic well-being of our workforce. What is the workforce of the future going to look like? We deliver exceptional care to our patients, but we also make sure that our workforce is taken care of. Joyce Markiewicz, RN. President and CEO of Catholic Health (Buffalo, N.Y.): We're following our strategic plan very closely right now because, like every other health system, we've experienced financial losses. We've dealt with post-pandemic and pandemic. And it's extremely important as an organization that we continue to take care of the work that is foundational to stabilize the organization. That that piece is critical to us. But I also know that we have to do that simultaneously with looking for new opportunities and making sure that we're continuing to grow, especially outside the hospital in that ambulatory space. So we'll continue to remain focused in those areas as well. It's like conducting an orchestra. We've got to make sure that people are focused on their roles. Some of those roles are making sure that we're stabilizing our foundation, and we have other individuals that are focused on growth. Warner Thomas. President and CEO of Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.): We've set up five pillars for our strategy. One is to be the best place to work and to practice medicine. At the end of the day, we're in a war for talent in healthcare, and you've got to be the best place for physicians, for clinicians, for leaders, for nurses. And that's so important if you're going to win moving forward. You must work hard on diversity and inclusion, and build those programs. The second pillar is around how we coordinate and serve more patients. That's where access is the key. We're relentlessly focused on how we improve access for our patients, and that's through a large ambulatory expansion. We've been building new ambulatory locations throughout Northern California. But it's also building more digital access capability. It's working hard on service and, and how we continue to make navigation easier for the organization. Also as part of serving more patients and access is training the next generation. We need to expand our hiring of positions. We need to expand our training of physicians. The third pillar is to develop a connected, convenient patient experience. And our operating thesis is that successful systems in the future are going to have a large regional ambulatory platform. You must have a hospital platform as well, but the platform is critical, and you have to integrate it with a large digital platform with online appointment scheduling, analytics, to provide an integrated experience across your entire system. And this whole concept of connection means being connected to your patients all the time, not only when they're in your facilities, but when they're home, when they're traveling. Are you thinking about them? Are you being proactive in how you educate them about testing and annual physicals and annual screening? This idea of having a connected experience, a digital platform connected to a large inventory platform, is critically important. Our fourth pillar is focused around whole-person health and moving the payment system and value-based care. Continuing to transition our thinking from fee-for-service to more global payment orientation. And then finally, we must be a great community asset, improving our patient community and societal health. We're nonprofit. We're here to serve our communities, and we want to do everything we can to be part of the solution to improve health in the communities that we serve. Benjamin Anderson is headed to the helm of Hutchinson (Kan.) Regional Healthcare System but not without precautions in place, he shared via LinkedIn. Mr. Anderson ordered a lockable cellphone "jail" on Amazon to help him focus on family specifically, his four children when the workday is done. The device mounts on the wall and restricts the user's access to a mobile phone for a pre-set period of time. "I'm heading back into health system executive leadership work that has historically been very difficult for me to turn off," Mr. Anderson wrote. "It's more about my own struggle with boundaries than the work itself." Mr. Anderson isn't the only CEO to struggle with balance, particularly the pressure to make oneself available to stakeholders 24/7. Jeff Comer, PsyD, CEO of Show Low, Ariz.-based Summit Healthcare, recently discussed the problem with Becker's, attributing some of executives' chronic stress and burnout to the never-ending stream of communication. Mr. Anderson and his family will move from Colorado where he most recently served as vice president of the state's hospital association back to Kansas for the CEO job at Hutchinson Regional. He hopes his new cellphone locker will display his commitment to his kids and serve as a tangible reminder of his goal: home-life balance. "[The kids will] know they're worth it when they see their dad lock up his Apple device from 6:30pm and until they fall asleep each night," Mr. Anderson wrote. "They're worth the purchase of a landline with a phone number known by just a few people at work who would only call in case of a legitimate emergency. They're 10, 10, 9, and 8 and they've never seen this consistent boundary from their dad. I'll admit some nervousness here." "Feel free to reach out and ask how it's going, but you're less likely to catch me between supper and bedtime," he added. The motive behind the shooting that killed a New Hampshire hospital security guard Nov. 17 remains unknown days after the police identified the suspect, CBS News reports. John Madore, 33, entered Concord-based New Hampshire State Hospital and shot Bradley Haas, 63, a state security officer and former police chief who was working security at the front lobby entrance on Nov. 17, according to New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella. Mr. Haas died from multiple gunshot wounds. A state trooper on duty at the hospital fatally shot Mr. Madore. On Nov. 22, the New Hampshire attorney general's office said a U-Haul truck that was left idling in the hospital's parking lot after the shooting is linked to Mr. Madore. The suspect rented the vehicle hours before the hospital shooting; it contained an AR-style rifle and multiple magazines of ammunition, according to CBS News. The AG's office has reported that Mr. Madore was homeless and had been a patient at the hospital in 2017. The motive for the shooting is still unknown. Mr. Haas has been hailed by state leaders as a hero for his actions Nov. 17. Police said the Army veteran managed to keep the gunman in the security area, despite not having his own weapon, CBS News reports. Mr. Haas had worked at the hospital since 2019. New Hampshire State Hospital is a 185-bed acute psychiatric hospital, which has its own uniformed security force and walk-through metal detectors at entrances. Omicron is circumventing precedents set up by earlier COVID-19 strains, alpha and delta, and the two-year anniversary of its arrival is teaching a new lesson on why one mutation is continuing to dominate, The New York Times reported Nov. 21. The variant first appeared in November 2021 when researchers in Botswana and South Africa found a COVID-19 strain that was quickly emerging and spreading. The World Health Organization named it omicron, and virologists expected its path to follow the trend of previous variants by spiking then falling off after a few months. It has since evaded expectations and immunity through dozens of mutations. Compared to previous surges of COVID-19 cases, omicron was causing fewer hospitalizations but more infections overall in late 2021. As of November 2023, 100% of the circulating COVID-19 strains are omicron offshoots, according to the CDC. "It was almost like there was another pandemic," Adam Lauring, MD, PhD, a virologist at Ann Arbor-based University of Michigan, told the Times. A new omicron strain, JN.1, has become the most resistant version of COVID-19, and it's quickly growing in France. Its trajectory will depend on the public's immunity to past strains. Omicron could become a mainstay as an annual virus like the flu two years in a row, vaccine-makers have made COVID-19 shots focused on omicron descendants or it could veer in an unexpected direction, experts told the Times. Only 14% of Americans have received the latest COVD-19 vaccine, which the CDC said is below where the agency would like vaccine uptake to be. "Here's the bottom line: COVID-19 vaccine uptake is lower than we'd like to see, and most people will be without the added protection that can reduce the severity of COVID-19," the agency stated. However, the CDC underscores that while vaccine uptake has been lower overall, for those 65 and older it has been much higher around 30%. At the same time, this means that the other two thirds of the at-risk group is not vaccinated. And so far, the CDC is seeing major disparities between the groups who are getting vaccinated and those who are not. About half as many Black and Hispanic adults received the vaccine as their white counterparts. Similarly, individuals who earn a salary of less than $75,000 were half as likely to get vaccinated than those who receive higher incomes. "Even though the federal government is only able to provide COVID-19 vaccines for some populations this year (because COVID-19 vaccines are now provided through regular commercial channels)," the agency noted in its news release. "CDC is developing culturally appropriate messages and communication campaigns designed to better reach people who are disproportionately impacted." An emerging method to retrieve hearts from organ donors has the potential to significantly expand the number of hearts available for patients awaiting transplant. However, not all hospitals are on board, with many experts citing ethical and legal concerns about the definitions of life and death, The New York Times reported Nov. 22. Typically, donor hearts come from a small pool of donors who are declared brain dead but remain on life support. The new method, known as normothermic regional perfusion, expands the potential donor pool to include patients who are comatose, though not brain dead. The technique involves using a cardiopulmonary bypass machine to restore blood flow to the heart in comatose patients whose families have withdrawn life support. Because the procedure involves restarting blood flow after the heart and circulation have stopped, some ethicists and surgeons say it invalidates any previous declaration of death. Another part of the procedure sparking concern is the use of clamps to cut blood flow from the revived heart to the donor's head, which is done to limit the possibility that any trace of brain activity is restored when circulation is restarted. The method was championed by New York City-based NYU Langone Health and has since been used to recover nearly 30 hearts. It was first performed in 2020, and Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., has also embraced the procedure. Meanwhile, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital rejected it after an ethics committee review. The American College of Physicians also opposes it, saying it appears to violate "one of the ethical foundations of organ donation, the 'dead donor rule.'" The rule specifies organ retrieval must not cause death. Many experts agree the technique would dramatically expand the number of available donor hearts, though some are uncomfortable with the ethical challenges it presents. Some have even suggested the technique may make surgeons vulnerable to prosecution. In an interview with the Times, Nader Moazami, MD, a transplant surgeon who led the first procedure at NYU Langone, recognized the concerns and pointed to medicine's lack of full understanding about what happens to the brain after death. Much of the criticism, he says, comes from ethicists who don't spend time with patients stuck on organ transplant lists. "You guys can sit in your offices worried about the ethics of something, but you've never had to walk into a room where you were facing a patient with a family who's dying, who's been waiting for an organ, and who is not going to get an organ," he told the news outlet. "If you've ever experienced that in your life, you will never tell me what I'm doing is unethical." Hospital Sisters Health System, a Catholic organization based in Springfield, Ill., is removing all wooden and metal crucifixes from its hospitals' emergency departments and patient rooms. That decision is a response to "the changing healthcare landscape and the general increase in healthcare workers experiencing workplace violence," according to a Nov. 21 statement the health system shared with Becker's. The health system declined to specify if a specific event triggered the change. Safer replacements will be installed, keeping with the Franciscan standard, per the statement. "... [Our] facilities and supply chain services are working closely with our spiritual care leaders, have researched multiple options, and have identified several crosses that will be utilized for replacement and secured appropriately," a representative for the health system told Becker's Nov. 22. "As we are a large system with multiple facilities, a phased timing of safer replacements will be ongoing." Healthcare and social services report the highest rates of nonfatal workplace injuries across all sectors surpassing both manufacturing and construction by well over 100,000 incidents. As patient violence rises, individual health systems and states have taken various actions to protect their workers, from Rhode Island Hospital's anti-violence campaign to the Connecticut Hospital Association's code of conduct for patients and families. The issue has even made its way to Capitol Hill. The bipartisan Safety from Violence for Healthcare Employees Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate on Sept. 12, and if passed will make it a federal crime to knowingly assault hospital workers. Removing the crucifixes was not Hospital Sisters' first line of defense, according to the statement. All employees are given "Management of Aggressive Behaviors" training, and direct care workers go through additional intensive training to learn de-escalation skills. The system also has active shooter trainings, silent alarms, 24/7 surveillance, emergency phones, and security and law enforcement presence. "We certainly dont want to mislead anyone in thinking that we are at all moving away from our main tenets of Catholic healthcare," a representative from the health system told Becker's Nov. 22. "We continue to be a Franciscan-centered healthcare system in all policies and care delivery." Editor's Note: This story was updated Nov. 22 at 9:11 a.m. CST to include more information about Becker's inquiries to the health system, and again at 1:37 p.m. CST to reflect the system's response. The nuclear envoys of South Korea, the United States and Japan held phone talks Wednesday and condemned North Korea's launch of what it claimed to be a military spy satellite, the foreign ministry said. North Korea said it successfully launched a space rocket carrying a military reconnaissance satellite southward from the Tongchang-ri area on its west coast late Tuesday, after two failed attempts in May and August, respectively. Kim Gunn, South Korea's special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, spoke by phone with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Jung Pak and Hiroyuki Namazu, respectively, Seoul's foreign ministry said. In the phone talks, the three "strongly condemned" the launch that threatens the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in East Asia, saying it is a clear violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions banning the North from any launches using ballistic missile technologies. "They also expressed deep concern that the North carried out a deceptive launch, as it came more than an hour before the time it had previously announced, seriously jeopardizing the safety of planes and vessels this time again, as it did in the two previous launches," the ministry said. The North had notified Japan of its plan to launch the satellite between Wednesday and Dec. 1. Based on their close coordination, the three envoys agreed to take action against the North's illegal provocations together with the international community, the ministry said. (Yonhap) Ulster Bank has announced it will close another 10 branches in Northern Ireland between February and November next year A banking trade union has said it will be campaigning vigorously for banks to commit to carrying out no further branch closures in Northern Ireland in the next five years. Ulster Bank announced 10 more branch closures yesterday, reducing its presence in Northern Ireland to 25 and resulting in the loss of 21 jobs. The Commissioner for Older People for NI has said the needs of older people must not be overlooked amid the widespread shift to digital services. Between February and November, Ulster Bank will be shuttering branches in Ballynahinch, Crumlin, Downpatrick, Glengormley, Belfasts Kings Road, Ormeau Road and University Road, Lisnaskea, Lurgan and Waterside in Londonderry. But it added that there would be no reductions until 2026. Like other banks, its branch network has been cut dramatically in the last decade or more in 2011, Ulster Bank had 90 NI branches. Read more Havelock House: Local residents welcome social housing plan at old UTV offices after opposing student proposal Sean Breen, director of financial and postal services at the Consumer Council, said that while many chose to access banking through the internet, apps and phone, there were others who still relied on in-branch banking. Our research shows that 21% of consumers have seen their local bank branch close within the last three years, with 84% of consumers who had experienced a branch closure saying it had an impact on their lives, he said. He said consumers can obtain basic banking services at the Post Office, adding: The Consumer Council is continuing to monitor the impact of branch closures across Northern Ireland and is working closely with the financial sector to represent consumers. Eddie Lynch, the Commissioner for Older People for Northern Ireland, said: Banks need to acknowledge that not everyone has access to digital technology and many older people are unable to bank online for a variety of reasons. Its important that older people dont feel like they are being left behind or that their needs arent being considered. Banks should work hard to respond to the needs of our ageing society and support those who have difficulty in using or accessing online banking services. An Ulster Bank spokesperson said: We take our responsibility seriously to support the people who face challenges in moving online, so we are investing to provide them with support and alternatives that work for them. Its understood average counter transactions at Ulster Bank were down by just over half between January 2019 and January 2023. Over the same period, the number using mobile apps rose by 45%. SDLP South Belfast MLA Gary McKeown said the loss of two branches in his constituency was a concern. These branches are used by a wide range of people and are a mainstay of the local community, attracting footfall to the area which generates income for small businesses... Many older and vulnerable people struggle to access online services and their needs must also be catered for. The Financial Services Union (FSU) said the closures were a shock to members, with 52 staff in total affected though some will be redeployed. It held a meeting with the CEO of NatWest, Ulster Banks parent company, on Monday. General secretary John OConnell said: We outlined our total opposition to the announcement of closures and to staff being put at risk and called on NatWest to provide a much stronger commitment to maintaining jobs in Northern Ireland. The council of the FSU has met and passed an emergency motion committing the union to campaign vigorously against these planned closures and to campaign for a wider commitment from the main retail banks in Northern Ireland that there would be no bank branches closed for the next five years. The FSU will also engage with the Financial Conduct Authority to seek their involvement in protecting customers access to in person financial advice and cash services. While other financial institutions are committing to retaining their branch network until at least 2026 Ulster Bank have decided to cull the local banking services it provides to customers and business. It is a retrograde step and should be reversed. Discount grocer Lidl has confirmed plans for a new 8m store in Cookstown, replacing its existing supermarket in the Co Tyrone town. Around 200 jobs will be supported during the construction and development phases and 18 permanent jobs will be created in the new store. Lidl said a full planning application has been lodged with Mid Ulster District council following a successful and extensive community consultation in August, held at the existing store at Station Square. The plans submitted outline Lidl's intention to replace the existing store and relocate to a new location at Orritor Road with the new store set to be in operation by next year. The current Cookstown store opened in 1999 and was the retailers first outlet on the island of Ireland. Lidl is currently Northern Irelands fastest-growing supermarket retailer, and the new investment is the latest in a series of store developments and expansion in NI, where it has 41 stores. The new Cookstown store will include an expanded 1,670 sq m sales floor within the new 2,475 sq m building, incorporating wider aisles, an in-store bakery, toilets, baby-changing facilities and employee areas. Ivan Ryan, Lidl Northern Irelands regional managing director, said: Were thrilled to progress plans to create a new state-of-the-art store for the residents of Cookstown, providing the local community and beyond with even more access to high quality products at best-value prices. Our Cookstown store the first to be built on the island of Ireland in 1999 was one of the stores where I completed my initial training many years ago so Im delighted that our exciting plans to invest 8m in the development of a new retail facility in the town will become a reality in my tenure as regional managing director. He added: In a prime and convenient new location on the bustling Orritor Road, with modern facilities, our new Cookstown store will provide our growing number of customers with a premier shopping experience. Its poignant and fitting that plans are progressing to prepare to break ground on this project in 2024, our 25th anniversary year. This is a special project for us, and were excited to deliver this new Concept store to a very deserving community whilst also creating new jobs for the local area. We are delighted to now lodge a full planning proposal, backed by local residents and stakeholders, to deliver this significant project. A new Lidl store is set to open in early December in Strabane and last month planning permission was secured for a new Coleraine outlet at the Riverside Retail Park. The Coleraine project will include the demolition of a vacant unit to make way for a new 2,475 sq m Lidl store, supporting around 35 jobs. This month work started on creating a new, modern concept design store as part of a wider 10m investment in Carryduff Shopping Centre which will open next year. Lidl has confirmed it currently has plans to extend its network to 50 by the end of the decade. Earlier this year, Lidl Northern Ireland revealed that it spent a record 455m in the local agri-food sector, sourcing its supplies from around 60 producers in the region around 390m of which was exported to stores across the UK, Ireland and Europe. A business leader has said there have been no economic game changers There are no economic game changers for Northern Ireland in the Chancellors autumn statement, with little transformation possible without an Executive, business leaders have said. And as expected, the statement delivered no extra spending for Northern Ireland as a result of the Executives overspend last year. The Treasury said the devolved administrations were receiving over 1bn in extra funding as a result of Chancellor Jeremy Hunts spending decisions. But the share of 185m for the NI Executive will not come here, and will instead be used to repay the 297m Northern Ireland Executive overspend from 2022-23, the statement said. Details are to be confirmed, it added. In what he described as a statement for growth, the Chancellor announced cuts in National Insurance for employees, while reductions for self-employed people are to save them about 350 a year. There was a boost in the National Living Wage from 10.42 to 11.44 an hour, with the rate now applying to 21 and 22-year-olds instead of just those aged 23 and over. Alcohol duty has been frozen though tobacco duty will go up. And for business, full expensing - a scheme allowing companies to offset investment in machinery and equipment against their tax bills - will be made permanent instead of expiring in 2026, Mr Hunt announced. Suzanne Wylie, chief executive, Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Mr Hunt had indicated an ambition to drive business growth and unlock investment. "Whilst many of the measures targeted at a UK wide level are welcome, there appear to have been no economic game changers which are unique to Northern Ireland. The announcement that full expensing for companies investing in plant and machinery has been made permanent will be welcomed by the regions most ambitious firms, who are poised to invest. "Our members will also welcome the increase in the personal tax allowance, which should go some way to reducing the significant wage pressures facing four in five employers in Northern Ireland. But she said that the lack of announcements of investment zones or similar measures was particularly disappointing. What is more, commitments made in devolved areas like planning reform, business rates and grid connection, which are urgently required, cannot be acted upon locally in the continuing absence of an Executive. Today, the Chancellor made 110 business-related commitments and we will take time to work through the detail of how, precisely, they impact Northern Irelands businesses. There is a significant level of UK-wide support for SME businesses, so we are particularly interested to understand how that impacts this regions SME driven economy. Alan Lowry, NI policy chair at the Federation of Small Businesses in NI, said the body UK-wide had successfully lobbied for tax cuts for smaller businesses and action on late payments. There were also a number of welcome measures that will assist businesses in England, for which Northern Ireland may get a Barnett consequential, but which will not automatically apply here, such as continuation of reduced rates for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses. The Chancellor made the point that there are 110 measures in the statement, so we will wait to see what else emerges in the other published details, but it is clear that for Northern Ireland businesses to see similar support to those provided in England, we are going to need to see an Assembly and Executive return as a matter of priority. Neil Armstrong, tax director at accountancy firm Baker Tilly Mooney Moore in Belfast, said the changes in the statement brought limited relief. On the personal finance side, the 2% reduction in the National Insurance rate on earnings between 12,570 and 50,270 will make employees slightly better off at the end of each month. "Once implemented in January, it will allow a maximum saving of 754 per annum for employees, while for sole traders and partnerships the abolishment of Class 2 NICs and decrease in Class 4 NICs will save a maximum of 569 per annum. "These measures are a step in the right direction, but they represent only minor progress towards easing the financial pressures individuals are facing. "With the National Minimum Wage increased by 9.8%, the Chancellor has presented a combination of measures that on the surface appear significant, but in reality, include little additional relief and may in fact leave some small and medium sized businesses worse off. People who live close to new grid infrastructure will be paid under a new plan (Gareth Fuller/PA) Households that live near new power lines will be paid up to 10,000 in order to avoid local protests against the vital infrastructure. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said that he wanted to cut the delays that developers face when trying to build new steel lattice towers and other electricity transmission infrastructure. Speaking in the Commons, he set out the Governments response to a recent review by National Grids former UK chief executive Nick Winser. The review warned that the roll-out of new wind farms and nuclear plants could be meaningless without the cables to connect them to the grid and take their electricity to homes and businesses around the country. Developers have warned that new wind farms are being held up by the slow expansion of the grid (Nicholas.T.Ansell/PA) It is taking too long for clean energy businesses to access the electricity grid, the Chancellor told MPs on Wednesday. So after talking to businesses such as National Grid, Octopus Energy and SSE, we today publish our full response to the Winser review and Connections Action Plan. These measures will cut grid access delays by 90% and offer up to 10,000 off electricity bills over 10 years for those living closest to new transmission infrastructure. Taken together these planning and grid reforms are estimated to accelerate around 90bn of additional business investment over the next 10 years. Keith Anderson, chief executive of ScottishPower said: This is a much needed boost to get Britain back on track as a nation that builds infrastructure the rest of the world can envy. We were pioneers with the first electricity grids almost a century ago and these electricity superhighways are critical to bettering the lives of the nation securing more green and homegrown energy and enabling the shift to clean transport and heating. A relentless focus on people, planning and the UK pipeline is key to unlocking the massive economic growth of these investments. We welcome the Governments plans to support communities who host this vital national infrastructure and raise awareness of the positive long-term impact on society. We need to show kids they can have a film career and still stay at home His name may not be familiar to most film fans, but Mark Huffam has been instrumental in bringing huge Hollywood blockbusters to the big screen. The Ballyclare producers latest project is the Ridley Scott-directed Napoleon, which landed in cinemas yesterday. He also worked on Saving Private Ryan, The Northman, The Martian and Mamma Mia, and played an important role in bringing Game of Thrones to Northern Ireland. Napoleon producer brings Q&A screening to Strand Arts Centre on opening night of Hollywood film Speaking at east Belfasts Strand Cinema a venue close to his heart he said the local film sector had much to offer if the backing was there. He also told how he saw Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness as examples of what can be achieved when people cooperate. Theres two people youd have said could never work together, Mark said. They were well ahead of politicians elsewhere in thinking (film) could be a growth industry. I can remember going to dinner with HBO executives over Game of Thrones. There was a moment where both politicians gave their personal mobile numbers and said If theres anything we can help you with, just call. That personal touch clinched it and got us off the starting line. The rest is history. Marks first foray in the business was the short film Jumpers, starring James Nesbitt. It was to lead to something much bigger. James Nesbitt I used to give James a lift to whatever he was working on when he was a student at Ulster University, he said. When it came to putting together a very short movie, I asked him if hed be part of it. He agreed, and it wasnt long after that I took a call from Steven Spielbergs office. They were looking a producer for a war movie he was putting together. I said Aye, right. Im busy, thinking it was a prank. It wasnt. I met them in London. That was the start of Saving Private Ryan. The new Napoleon biopic is his biggest project to date. This was a fantastic challenge they often are with Ridley Scott, he joked. He storyboards the whole movie and knows exactly what he wants lots of action, lots of extras, lots of horses... just lots of everything. It was filmed during Covid. Over 2,000 people in one place, tests every day. It all needed organised. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix, who Mark described as the loveliest, most professional man Ive worked with. Hes fabulous and plays the role masterfully, though all his costumes had to be specially made to vegan standard, he said. We never set out to make a documentary. It was always going to be a cinematic adventure. We have followed the facts, though maybe not quite to the letter of the law. We did bring in a historical adviser, but even the experts dont always agree. The theme of war has followed Mark throughout his career in making movies. It all started for me with a trip from Ballyclare to Banbridge to see Star Wars. If theres any reason why Im working in movies today, thats it, he said. I grew up with war films. With Saving Private Ryan, we set out to show for the first time just what the beaches of Normandy would have been like. Mark is determined to make sure cinemas like The Strand remain in place for future generations to enjoy. I think to protect and maintain the cinemas we have is an important thing, he said. The Strand is still a place thats in my heart. Ive been going to it for years. Since Game of Thrones arrived on these shores, TV and film industry bosses have made plenty of return visits, but Mark thinks more could be done to attract the major studios. NI Screen and Invest NI have done some fantastic work and are really proactive, but they need the tools from the government, he said. We need to keep the education going. We need young people to know they can have a career in movies and TV and stay at home. Ive never lived anywhere else than Northern Ireland. Bringing film production to an area has huge benefits. They spend a lot of money quickly, and weve seen how the tourist industry has developed on the back of it. Ill always fight Northern Irelands corner. Ballyclare filmmaker said former First Minister and deputy First Minister were the driving force behind bringing Game of Thrones here Napoleon producer Mark Huffam has urged politicians to return to Stormont after saying it was the work of Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness that brought Game of Thrones to Northern Ireland. The Ballyclare film and television producer said the two men were way ahead of many, many other politicians anywhere in the world in how they engaged with senior figures at HBO to bring the hit fantasy show to film here. Mr Huffam also said he was not worried about the current state of the film and television industry here, despite high-profile setbacks for the sector, including the news last month that the Blade Runner TV sequel will no longer be filmed in Northern Ireland. Game of Thrones filming across its eight seasons saw 25 locations around Northern Ireland used for some of the iconic scenes in the HBO drama. Mr Huffam said the industry here needs the tools from a local government in order to continue growing and he feels very disappointed with the current absence of any political institutions. NI Screen and InvestNI have all been really proactive and have done fantastic work so far but they need to keep going and they need the tools from local government to keep doing so, he told BBCs Good Morning Ulster. To go back to how Game of Thrones really came here, it was the fact you had Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness who you would have said: There is two men who could never work together and they completely got behind the pitch to get Game of Thrones to come. "They completely got behind the creative industries. They were way ahead of many, many other politicians anywhere in the world going actually this could be a growth industry. "It was their involvement with the HBO senior executives who got it across the starting line. You go: If they can do that why cant we do it now? On recent cancelled projects filming in Belfast he added: I am not worried about it, it happens everywhere. "There are projects which start, they get so far down the line sometimes they become just too expensive and do not get put into production. "Sometimes there is just the creative difference and things get delayed. "We could get our message out a bit more. In the world of the UK and southern Ireland no one else per head of population has three major studio complexes. "We need to keep the education going. Everyone is realising you can actually have a career in the film and television industry and stay at home if you like. We have to keep getting the message out there we have to keep getting more people into the business. Napoleon hits UK cinemas on Wednesday with the blockbuster the latest epic from director Ridley Scott. Mr Huffam said it was the biggest film he has worked on in his career. "It was a fantastic challenge as they often are with Ridley, he said. "We never set out to make a documentary either it was always going to be a cinematic adventure. We have followed the facts, maybe not quite to the letter of the law. "For him [Joaquin Phoenix] to take on the role of Napoleon is a huge challenge but he has done the role masterfully. Ed Sheeran surprised fans during US rapper 50 Cents London O2 performance with a rendition of Shape Of You. The British superstar appeared on stage from inside a box which read there is a monster in this box to sing his 2017 hit track from his much-loved Divide album. Sheeran documented his arrival on his Instagram story, telling his 46 million followers: Right so Im off to sing, 50 Cent has invited me to the O2 to sing Shape Of You and Im going to walk on stage and go who likes In Da Club, heres Shape Of You. As he walked backstage, the 32-year-old videoed himself singing along as 50 Cent rapped 21 Questions, before Sheeran told fans: Im going on a lift! On stage, Sheeran said London, sing it loud as he performed his track with 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson. After his performance, Sheeran added: Back on our gameIm going to go back and watch the gig now with 50 Cents biggest fan, gesturing towards his security guard. Sheeran watched the show from a box at the O2, which saw him passionately sing along to 2003 hit In Da Club. It comes after it was announced no criminal charges will be filed against 50 Cent after claims he threw a microphone at a crowd during a performance at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles as part of his Final Lap tour on August 30. The office of the Los Angeles City Attorney said that the case will be closed after one year if 50 Cent has no further police contacts. 50 Cent has more than a dozen shows left as part of his Final Lap tour, which will next see him travel to Bahrain, India and Kazakhstan at the end of November before several dates in Australia. North Korea on Wednesday released photos of its leader Kim Jong-un celebrating with engineers and officials the successful launch of a spy satellite that was condemned as a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. The Korean Central News Agency released photos of Kim and the Chollima-1 space rocket, hours after North Korea claimed to have successfully placed the reconnaissance satellite, Malligyong-1, into orbit on Tuesday night. The photos showed Kim, in a jumper, observing the launch from a distance. In a group photo with engineers donning white uniforms and hats, Kim was seen holding up his right hand in an apparent celebration of the launch. Kim's daughter, believed to be named Ju-ae, who had recently accompanied her father to key inspections, was not seen in the photos. Key officials, including Kim's influential sister, Yo-Jong, were also not photographed. Experts said the rocket seen in the photos appeared to be identical in design to that used in two failed launch attempts in May and August, respectively. Multiple lines of rocket plume were seen, an indication that the rocket was powered by several clustered engines. The rocket was plastered with various logos and letters, including the words "National Aerospace Technology Administration (NATA)," "reconnaissance satellite Malligyong-1" and "Chollima-1" in Korean. The rocket also carried a logo with the English acronym "NATA," showing that North Korea's national aerospace agency has been elevated to the current status from the previous National Aerospace Development Administration. Tuesday's launch came just hours before the beginning of a 10-day launch window that the North had given Japan earlier as a safety warning, saying it would launch a satellite-carrying a space rocket sometime between Wednesday and Dec. 1. Despite the late-night launch, North Korea's main newspaper Rodong Sinmun published articles and photos of the purported success for the domestic audience on Wednesday. With the North having vowed to develop high-tech weapons, such as a military spy satellite, the reclusive regime is expected to promote the launch to shore up unity ahead of a plenary meeting of the ruling Workers' Party later this year. The North typically holds a year-end plenary meeting to review this year's accomplishments and discuss policy goals for the coming year. Pyongyang has pledged to launch several more satellites "in a short span of time" to secure its reconnaissance capabilities against South Korea. South Korea and the United States condemned the latest rocket launch as a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions banning any test using ballistic missile technology. (Yonhap) (L to R) Cheryl, Nadine Coyle, Kimberley Walsh and Nicola Roberts attend the Primrose Ball, in honour of Sarah Harding, in October 2022 Pop band Girls Aloud will take to the stage at Belfasts SSE Arena next May as part of their long-awaited comeback tour. The noughties girl group consisting of Derry native Nadine Coyle, Cheryl, Nicola Roberts and Kimberly Walsh confirmed their comeback this evening following a series of mysterious social media posts from all four members throughout the week in the style of a countdown. In a video posted on their social media channels they have now confirmed they will reunite for a new tour, The Girls Aloud Show, the second date of which will be in Belfast on 20 May. 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 "Announcing our #TheGirlsAloudShow arena tour next May/June 2024, the band posted on their official X, formerly Twitter, account. "A celebration of Sarah, our music & our incredible fans. "On sale Fri 1 Dec, Presale Weds 29 Nov. Signup: https://fanlink.to/GirlsAloudSignUp. "We cant wait to sing & dance with you again -Cheryl, Kimberley, Nadine & Nicola. The tour marks the bands first since the death of member Sarah Harding, who died following a battle with breast cancer last year. The video also lists a tour date for Dublins 3Arena on 18 May. The band are also set to release a comeback single which is widely believed to be heard and released on Friday. Earlier this week, all four women reunited to pay tribute to Harding on what would have been her 42nd birthday. They posted a picture of her on Instagram with the words: Sending love to all Sarahs fans, friends and family on her birthday today x. Tickets for The Girls Aloud Show go on sale on Friday 1 December. Actor Jason Watkins said he has taken it really personally that a report found that sepsis care has not begun to change drastically in the 12 years since his toddler daughter died of the condition. The Crown star and his wife Claras daughter, Maude, age two, died in 2011 and he has been campaigning for changes to health care. An NHS ombudsman report, released in October, found that the same serious failings are still happening a decade on from a previous document. It added that action is urgently needed as errors were outlined including: delays in diagnosing and treating sepsis; poor communication between healthcare staff; sub-standard record-keeping; and missed opportunities for follow-up care. Jason Watkins, left, and his wife, Clara Francis (Ian West/PA) On Wednesdays Good Morning Britain, Watkins, 61, said: It was a real body-blow to think that, just a few weeks ago, the ombudsmans report on sepsis care said that nothing had really changed so I took it really personally. I had a couple of really difficult days because you feel lost. I felt a bit like a victim again of sepsis, and for parents who have lost loved ones. Because people who have lost loved ones feel that; you feel that fate has dealt you a horrific blow. He also said: I do feel that the Government needs to step up in terms of a national database and a national awareness campaign, as well as funding individual trusts for sepsis. Patients should have the right to a second opinion under Marthas Rule (Jeff Moore/PA) The ombudsman report is there for a reason. And the report says its (measures to prevent sepsis) havent worked so its the Governments responsibility. The Government has committed to English hospitals introducing Marthas Rule, which gives patients the right to a second opinion if they believe their concerns are being dismissed by NHS staff. The rule was named after a coroner found that Martha Mills, who died aged 13 in 2021, would most likely have survived if doctors had identified the warning signs and transferred her to intensive care earlier. Her mother, Merope, has since campaigned for more power to be put back into the hands of patients and families. Watkins also tried to raise awareness for other parents to think about the issue. He said: As a parent you must say, Could it be sepsis? When you take your child to the GP, when you think theyve got a chest infection, which is what I did with Maude, you must be able to say that and they have to rule sepsis out first. Marthas Rule is a brilliant way of reminding people parents, doctors and nurses. 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 In response to the report Spotlight on sepsis: your stories, your rights an NHS England spokesperson said in October that the health service is working to improve the identification and management of sepsis and there have been improvements. They added: However, we know there is more work to be done and patients and families are able to escalate care for hospital patients if they see deterioration or have concerns and, as professional guidance for doctors in England sets out, it is essential that any patients wishes on this are respected. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: The safety of all patients is of vital importance, and we have made significant improvements to strengthen protections for patients including publishing the first NHS Patient Safety Strategy. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is looking at how best to update guidance on the diagnosis and response to sepsis, to ensure the best treatment is always provided quickly and we are exploring how sepsis guidance can be provided in the training of healthcare workers. We are also working closely with NHS England, the Patient Safety Commissioner, clinical experts, and patient representatives to urgently look at the implementation of Marthas Rule, and the evidence on what works to support patients and their families seeking a second opinion. NHS England have been asked for comment. A Co Down woman accused of causing suffering to 10 puppies seized at Larne Port has been ordered to appear at court or risk facing an arrest warrant. Shannon Bennett was due to appear at Ballymena Magistrates Court today where she was charged with six offences arising from the maltreatment of ten puppies but she failed to appear. Having heard evidence District Judge Nigel Broderick said he was satisfied the summons had been properly served. Bennett, from Meadowvale in Newry, faces two counts of causing unnecessary suffering to two German Shepherds and two Shih Tzu dogs; three counts of failing to ensure the needs of the German Shepherds, the Shih Tzus and six Labradors were met; and one of permitting the Labradors to suffer unnecessarily, all alleged to have been committed on April 3, this year. The facts were not opened in court but the charge sheets allege that at Larne Port Bennett was responsible for 10 dogs suffering unnecessarily. It is understood the dogs six Labradors, two German Shepherds and two Shih Tzus were seized during a multi-agency Paws for Thought operation run between the Mid and East Antrim Borough Council animal welfare officers, Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs portal staff and the PSNI. A council spokesperson said at the time: This sends out a clear message that enforcement bodies will take whatever action necessary to ensure that the welfare of animals is protected, that illegal movement will not be tolerated and that legislative requirements are met. In court today, District Judge Broderick adjourned the case to December 4 and, ordering that an adjournment notice be sent to Bennett, he warned that if she failed to attend on the next occasion there may be a warrant for her arrest. BBC Radio Foyle's morning news programme will be extended to an hour, the broadcaster has said. North West Today, which airs weekdays at 8.30am, currently broadcasts for 30 minutes. The programme has been at the centre of cuts controversy at the station, after the flagship programme from its previous two-hour slot from 7-9am. Proposed cuts to the station, which included up to 10 jobs, attracted several protests from Londonderry politicians, community figures and the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). A Save Radio Foyle campaign group was also mounted. BBC NI said the programmes longer duration would allow Radio Foyle to do more, and serve audiences better, within existing resources. It also reflects feedback from listeners and BBC staff in Foyle. Kevin Kelly, Head of News and Current Affairs at BBC NI, said it followed a review exercise which looked at the stations commitments. This is good news. It follows a detailed review exercise and fulfils a commitment that BBC NIs Director, Adam Smyth, made earlier in the year. North West Todays longer duration will complement everything that were doing to enhance digital newsgathering and output from Foyle, he said. Weve made real progress in this area and expect that to continue making even more effective use of the BBCs Foyle newsroom and helping to bring their work to a wider audience. Paul Siegert, NUJ national broadcasting officer, said: We are delighted that the BBC has seen sense and make this compromise proposed by the union. "The people of Northern Ireland made it very plain how precious this programme is to them, and we are very happy the BBC has made a commitment to Foyles continuing role as a production base for the BBCs local and region-wide content. Seamus Dooley, NUJ assistant general secretary, said ultimately this result is down to the persistence and perseverance of our members on the ground. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said: This is really good news and its entirely down to the hard fought campaign from BBC staff in Derry as well as Radio Foyles loyal listeners in the city, he said. Mr Eastwood added: This isnt the end of the matter, either. Radio Foyle needs to benefit from a serious programme of investment that enhances services in our city. Sinn Fein councillor Sandra Duffy also welcomed the news and said: I am delighted that the early morning North West Today programme on BBC Radio Foyle will be extended to a one-hour show from early next year. This reflects the huge support for local radio from listeners across the north west, and the steadfast campaign by workers at Radio Foyle to protect services at our local station. Political representatives in the city were united in making clear to bosses at the BBC and the British Government that cuts to Radio Foyle were, and remain, totally unacceptable. The people of Derry have relied on this station for news and to share local voices and stories for decades and opposed attempts by the BBC to strip away programmes. We need to see more investment in local radio stations like Radio Foyle to strengthen local media and recognise the important role it has in our communities. Earlier this year, the BBCs Director General Tim Davie stood over plans to impose cuts to Radio Foyle in Derry while also suggesting that resources need to be moved outside capital cities such as Belfast. "We have to make choices of where the audience impact is versus where our money is and where the future is going. With regards to Foyle, this is a painful saving but we believe we should be investing more in digital and be doing more across the whole of Northern Ireland in terms of developing the production sector and other things. So, we think there are better ways of using the money. Amongst other changes to the station, the Stephen McCauley Show which was presented and produced in Derry was reduced from eight hours a week to a single three-hour show. While other BBC Radio Ulster content was moved to be produced from Foyle including the Hugo Duncan programme at 1.30pm and a range of evening and weekend programming. The BBC also said its digital news provision from and about the North West has already been enhanced and will continue to develop. A Belfast school has paid tribute to one of its students after he passed away following a long and heroic battle with illness. St Marys CBGS Belfast announced the death of Eoin Monaghan, who passed away on Sunday. "It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of one of our senior students, Eoin Monaghan, after a long and heroic battle with illness, the school said on social media. Eoin passed away peacefully on Sunday surrounded by his loving family. Eoin joined St. Mary's in 2016 and he was known for always having a smile on his face and a positive outlook on life. Read more Motorcyclist in critical condition after Co Antrim crash as man released on bail Indeed, he has been described by many of his teachers in recent days as a happy, resilient and stoic young man who faced adversity with a strength that is inspirational to us all. "The thoughts and prayers of the entire St Mary's community are with Eoins parents, siblings and extended family. "Well done good and faithful servant... come and share in your Master's happiness!" (Mt.25:23)". Following the post, which included an image of Eoin, the comment section was overwhelmed with touching comments in tribute to the student. "Heart-breaking for his family, friends and school community, RIP, wrote one person, while another person wrote: Eoin fought a great battle, always with a smile, RIP Eoin. A vehicle has been completely destroyed after an arson attack in Newtownards. Credit: Presseye A vehicle has been completely destroyed after an arson attack in Newtownards on Tuesday evening. Police said the car which was parked in the Glenburn Road area of the town was targeted shortly after 10.15pm. They said no one was hurt in the incident. PSNI Chief Inspector McGrattan said: Police received a report that a Honda vehicle parked in the area had deliberately been set alight. Our colleagues from the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service attended the scene and extinguished the blaze; however, the vehicle was completely destroyed. On police arrival, it appeared that two vehicles adjacent to the Honda had also been deliberately doused in an accelerant, but were not set alight. Thankfully no one was hurt and our enquiries into this incident are underway. If anyone who was in the area at the time has information which may assist the investigation, please get in touch with officers on 101 quoting 1949 21/11/23. Medical Cannabis Close Up Cannabis With Prescription For Weeds Herbal Pot with Earphones A council has put off making a planning decision for a medical cannabis farm over concerns about the potential smell. The decision has been deferred by Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Councils Planning Committee on the change of use of an industrial unit outside Templepatrick for the production, cultivation and processing of medicinal cannabis plants. The committee agreed to postpone a decision until its February meeting to obtain further information, and the applicant Rickamore Ltd was told there would be no further extensions. Speaking at the Planning Committee this week, Alliance councillor Billy Webb proposed the deferral saying: It is an important facility. We need to have all information before us. His proposal was seconded by DUP councillor Sam Flanagan. The committee was told the officers recommendation was to refuse the application for the proposal at Rickamore Road Upper. Read more Co Antrim vape lounge owner counts former prisoners and ex-police officers among clients A report to councillors said: Given the nature of the proposal, the environmental health section was consulted and its response requested the submission of an Odour Impact Assessment and a Noise Impact Assessment. Environmental health have concluded that without suitable odour modelling having been undertaken, uncertainty exists as to whether the suggested filtration designs will be effective in preventing adverse odour impacts at nearby sensitive dwellings. In the absence of a suitable Odour Impact Assessment and Noise Impact Assessment, it is considered that the proposal has the potential to create significant unacceptable impacts on nearby neighbouring properties in respect of odour and noise. A council officer told the meeting of potential to create significant impact on neighbouring properties. Planning agent Mark Campbell said: We are determined to make this facility an efficient and earth-friendly environment. Mr Flanagan queried the choice of location. He was told that it was selected as it had been the site of an established business. Previously, it had been an egg production facility and also used for fireworks storage. Mr Campbell added: For this sort of facility, an industrial site would lead to concerns from a security point of view. He went on to say the company did not expect these concerns to be raised at this part of the application ... We have a strategy to provide a clean environment within this facility. He added his client has been engaging with the Home Office about how risks will be mitigated. Read more First legal cannabis production unit on island of Ireland to open outside Belfast Peter Reynolds, who said he is very familiar with these facilities in the UK, told the meeting this type of cannabis cultivation has been taking place in the UK since 1998 saying there has never been any complaints about odour. This is not about people smoking cannabis. These are medicines in a form of oil or medical vaporiser like an inhaler. It is the fastest growing business sector in the world. If approved, then Templepatrick will be right at the leading edge of this sector. Everybody knows that cannabis has a pungent odour. It is the first issue that is dealt with. Carbon filters have been designed to deal with this. You can stand outside a facility and not smell a single thing. I am absolutely confident that will be the position here. It is not like a farm. It is more like lab conditions. He noted it would be the first of its kind on the island of Ireland. He went on to say with carbon filters in place, there will be no odours outside. He added there would only be noise from air conditioning units which he believes would not be heard from the road. The DUPs John Smyth asked how the cannabis is grown. Mr Reynolds explained cuttings are taken from a number of mother plants and that an extract is then taken from the plants and unused matter is disposed of by composting, Mr Webb asked about the locations of similar facilities. He was informed some are in industrial estates and others are in remote locations. Principal planning officer Barry Diamond said not enough information had been received about noise and odour. We must have whatever information we need to make a full and proper assessment at this stage. Councillors Robert Foster and Alison Bennington and Mr Smyth voted against the deferral. On Wednesday, a meeting of Derry and Strabane Council was interrupted by protesters who criticised the council for not implementing a boycott of Israel and Israeli linked companies. The PSNI said enquiries were ongoing into "an online video of a verbal altercation at a meeting in the Guildhall". The Londonderry group of the DUP has said the protest raises significant questions for both the Chief Executive of the Council and the Mayor following the incident. In a statement the DUP Group said: At the Council meeting, a large number of protestors, some with their faces covered, gained access to both the public gallery and the floor of the Council chamber itself. The DUP said there was no attempt by the Mayor to challenge or restrict the activities of the protestors. "A number of the protestors appeared to enter the chamber through an entrance not accessible by the general public, they said. All this occurred despite DUP Councillors raising concerns about potential intimidation of elected representatives following an incident after last months meeting. There are significant questions for the Chief Executive of the Council to answer about the approach taken to the safety of elected representatives, whilst the Mayor needs to explain her approach. Derry and Strabane Council has been contacted for comment. The accomplice of an IRA man who killed three children when he lost control of his car after being shot by the Army in Belfast has died. John Sean-Glas Chillingworth, who was in the Ford Cortina alongside Danny Lennon on August 10, 1976, passed away peacefully in hospital on Saturday surrounded by his family. Lennon was fatally wounded while behind the wheel as he fled a gunfight with the Kings Own Royal Border Regiment. Anne Maguire had been walking along Finaghy Road North at the time with her children, including six-week-old Andrew, when the car plunged into them. The infant, who was in his pram, died instantly alongside his eight-year-old sister Joanne, who had been riding her bicycle. Their two-year-old brother John died in hospital a day later. Ms Maguire was left both physically and mentally scarred by the horrific incident and took her own life eight years later. The crash led to the founding of the Peace People movement. An online social media account dedicated to sharing information about Republican memorials and patriot dead offered condolences to Chillingworths grieving family and comrades. We are saddened to hear of the passing of An tOglach John 'Sean Glas' Chillingworth, formerly of B (Upper Andersonstown) Company, 1st Battalion, Belfast Brigade, Oglaigh na hEireann and H5 Blanketman 1977-81, Republican Memorial Tributes 32 posted on X. Our condolences to his family, friends and comrades. Chillingworth was also shot during the violent clash with the Army. A confidential Northern Ireland Office memo written the day after the incident described the security operation as carefully planned. The chairman remarked that the incident which resulted in the death of two children in Belfast had otherwise been a major success for the security forces, it stated. It had been a carefully planned operation which resulted in the death of one very dangerous gunman and the capture of another. Lennon (23) was in possession of an ArmaLite gun which had been given to him by Bobby Sands when he was killed. It is believed the hunger striker traded the firearm for a quantity of explosives from Lennon which were later used in a landmine attack. Lennons family has previously claimed the gun was partially dismantled and insisted there is no evidence he was going on an operation. Sean Lennon questioned why his brother was not arrested as he picked up Chillingworth from an address on Bearnagh Drive. He also criticised the Armys reckless decision to begin shooting on a busy road in the middle of a hot summers day when the place was full of people. Following the crash, Mairead Corrigan, Annes sister, made a grief-stricken appeal for peace on television, which prompted a series of prayer vigils and protests. Within three days she was joined by the late Betty Williams, who had arrived at the scene shortly after the tragedy unfolded. Both women were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace within months of establishing the Peace People campaign. A death notice describes Chillingworth as the beloved husband of Eileen, much-loved father of Mark, Ciarrai and the late John-Ryan, loving grandfather to all his grandchildren. Deeply regretted by his loving family circle, it adds. A Requiem Mass will take place in Holy Trinity Church at 10am on Thursday before Chillingworth is buried in Crumlin Cemetery. The inquest into the death of Gerard Jock Davison is not affected by the new Legacy Act (PSNI/PA) Progress towards starting an inquest to examine the death of a former Provisional IRA commander is continuing but it is still too early to set a hearing date, a coroner has been told. During a brief preliminary hearing in the case of Gerard Jock Davison at Laganside Courthouse in Belfast, coroner Paddy McGurgan said he was alive to pressures currently within the coronial system. Mr Davison, 47, was shot dead in the Markets area of Belfast as he walked to work in May 2015. He had been involved in a personal dispute with other republicans. Three months after Mr Davison was killed, former IRA man Kevin McGuigan was murdered in a shooting in nearby Short Strand. The hearing took place at Laganside Courthouse in Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA) Mr McGurgan is presiding over both inquests. Ahead of the inquest proceedings, material relating to the shooting must be security-vetted and distributed to the legal parties involved. A separate hearing will be needed to consider any applications made by police or the security services to redact evidence on public interest immunity (PII) grounds. Receiving an update from his counsel Philip Henry, the coroner was told that the process of disclosure of sensitive and non-sensitive files was continuing. Representing the PSNI, barrister John Rafferty said he was currently unable to offer any timeframe for completing the work on the sensitive materials. He said: This is obviously a complicated process within the context of this particular case. There are a number of other complications external to this process. You are aware of the macro-pressures which exist within the system at the moment. Mr McGurgan said: I am certainly alive to the fact that there are these pressures that are being brought to bear. In fairness, in this particular inquest at least we are not caught by the legislative guillotine. A number of inquests are proceeding in Northern Ireland against the backdrop of the Governments new Legacy Act, which states that those which have not reached the point of verdict by May 1 2024 will be discontinued. The inquest into the death of Mr Davison is not affected by the legislation as his murder occurred after April 10 1998. However, presiding coroner for Northern Ireland Mr Justice Michael Humphreys said last week that pressure to get legacy inquests completed before May meant resources within the coronial system are stretched to the limit. Mr Henry said it was too early to set a date for the Davison inquest hearing, but added we are moving in the right direction. Mr McGurgan asked the PSNI to provide an update on a timeframe over the disclosure of sensitive material within 14 days. Another preliminary hearing is scheduled for January 26. Surveillance satellite may help Pyongyang conduct precision missile strikes By Lee Hyo-jin North Korea's launch of a military spy satellite if proven to be successful in terms of its surveillance functions will pose heightened security threats to South Korea, analysts said Wednesday. While it may take a few days, if not weeks, to fully determine whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's ambition to obtain a military reconnaissance satellite has been achieved, experts said the launch itself shows a significant improvement in Pyongyang's satellite technologies. North Korea fired a rocket carrying what it claimed to be a military reconnaissance satellite "Malligyong-1" from Tongchang-ri, North Pyongan Province, at 10:43 p.m., Tuesday, according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC). The satellite was accurately placed into the designated orbit about 12 minutes after liftoff, as reported by the North's state media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday morning. The KCNA referred to the launch as the nation's "legitimate right to bolster its self-defense capabilities." Tuesday's launch marked the North's third attempt following two previous botched endeavors earlier this year. The South Korean military did not immediately verify whether the launch was a success. "North Korea made a hasty announcement about the success, which is difficult to accept at face value. We will make a judgment after further analyzing various information, including data shared by the United States," a senior defense official told reporters, Wednesday. Later in the day, the authorities said the satellite seemed to have entered into orbit. "The so-called 'military reconnaissance satellite' launched by North Korea has been evaluated to have entered orbit, based on comprehensive analysis of flight trajectory information and other data," the JCS said in a text message sent to reporters. But it added that confirmation of whether the satellite is properly functioning requires additional analysis through the coordinated efforts of relevant agencies. Shin Jong-woo, a senior researcher at the Korea Defense and Security Forum, a think tank, also said it is too early to make a judgment. "Just entering orbit doesn't mean that the launch was successful. The satellite would need to deploy its solar panels and then undergo attitude control. We will be able to hear from the North in the coming days if the satellite can actually be utilized," he said. "Otherwise, it will just be space junk." Nevertheless, Shin pointed out that Tuesday's launch indicates visible technological advancement, which may pose serious threats to Seoul's national security, as the North is expected to send up multiple spy satellites in the future. Touting the successful launch, the KCNA reported that the national space agency plans to launch more spy satellites in the near future to continue strengthening its surveillance capabilities over South Korea and other regions related to its military operation. Yang Moo-jin, the president of the University of North Korean Studies, said the North's space-based surveillance system, if properly established, will serve as the eye for North Korea in launching more accurate missile strikes. "Operational spy satellite is not only capable of obtaining real-time information about South Korea's military assets, but it would also bolster the regime's ability to conduct accurate missile strikes on targets," he said. The spy satellite's surveillance activities could stretch beyond the Korean Peninsula to key U.S. military bases in Guam and Japan. However, it remains to be seen whether its camera is advanced enough to deliver high-resolution images. Little is known about the satellite's technical capabilities, such as camera operating technology, data processing and the transmission ability of its communication devices. When the South Korean military retrieved parts of a North Korean spy satellite that plunged into the West Sea in May, authorities assessed that the device had no military utility as a reconnaissance satellite. But this time may be different, according to experts, who believe that Russia provided technological support for the latest launch. When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia's space center in September, the latter pledged to help Pyongyang modernize its satellite technology. "Kim Jong-un would not have sent millions of artillery shells to Russia just to get some technical advice," Yang said, speculating that the satellite sent up on Tuesday is equipped with enhanced imaging technology with assistance from Russia. Chang Young-keun, director of the missile center at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, commented that Russia may provide further assistance. "If North Korea continues to receive support from Russia in the future, it might explore other options such as securing or facilitating the purchase of hardware technologies necessary for accelerating satellite development," he said. US church hits out at report on conduct of pastor while at Causeway Coast Vineyard Group argues that probe didnt follow biblical prescription for reconciliation and relied on speculation rather than investigation for its findings Kathryn and Alan Scott Liam Tunney Wed 22 Nov 2023 at 22:22 The US church run by a former Coleraine pastor at the centre of a $62m fraud lawsuit has hit out at an investigation into his conduct while in Northern Ireland. Sinn Feins Stormont leader Michelle ONeill has indicated she believes devolved government in Northern Ireland may be able to be restored within the next number of weeks. Ms ONeill, who is set to become the first nationalist First Minister when the Assembly returns, was speaking to media during a visit to Bute House in Edinburgh where she met Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf. While talks continue between the DUP and the UK Government over addressing unionists concerns around post-Brexit trading arrangements, Ms ONeill said she has been kept abreast. Ive been engaged with both the British Government and the Irish government the whole way through, she said. Ive been very clear in terms of what needs to not happen what needs to not happen is that we need to be ensuring that theres nothing that does any jeopardy to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and that we need to make sure that theres nothing that unravels the deal thats been done on the (Northern Ireland) protocol in the form of the Windsor Framework. I think that its very clear to me that the discussions have been going on for 18 months now. Now is the time for a decision to be made, and I hope its the right decision and I hope its a positive decision, and I believe that that decision is imminent. Pressed on a timeframe, Ms ONeill said: The British Government and others are saying that were at the final stages. So if thats the case, then its the time for decisions to be made. And I believe that that is in the timeframe of the next number of weeks. Lets hope its a positive decision. Lets hope we can get an executive up and running, lets hope the DUP end their blockade and get back in around that executive table. During a visit to Edinburgh, Sinn Feins Stormont leader Michelle ONeill expressed regret that no ministers from Northern Ireland would be attending the British-Irish Council meeting in Ireland later this week. No Stormont ministers are currently in post while the DUP continues protest action calling for action on unionist concerns about the Windsor Framework. She called for a restoration of devolved government, adding: And lets hope we can get back to going to meetings such as the British-Irish Council meeting, to raise the issues that we have, the common ground that we have to stand up for good public services and the people that we represent collectively. Ms ONeill said it was her first in-person meeting with Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf since he came into the post. Weve already (got) strong relationships, always have had, and I want to see that continue in the time ahead, she said. I think it was important to meet this week given that later this week, there will be a British-Irish Council meeting. Unfortunately because of the political situation in the north of Ireland, the Executive will not be there. I think that its important that we get back to the juncture where we have an Executive up and running, where we have powersharing restored. Thats something that the First Minister, its an ambition he shares, he would like to see powersharing restored in the north. I wanted to give him an update in terms of where were at in terms of the political situation at home, and hopefully that in the coming weeks that a decision will be made, a positive decision by the DUP to return to powersharing. The department responsible said the money had not been reallocated to any other area of the UK Former Sinn Fein Finance Minister Conor Murphy said the DUP's boycott was hurting "workers and families" in NI One of the recent advertisements placed by the UK Government in local media declaring "Levelling Up is Here" The Government has suggested that tens of millions of pounds that Northern Ireland missed out on this week haven't been lost to other parts of the UK, but will come here in the future. The Government said on Monday that only in Northern Ireland it was withholding funding from the Levelling Up fund which is still part of a major advertising campaign in Northern Ireland that includes a full-page advertisement in today's Belfast Telegraph. The Governments blamed its decision to exclude Northern Ireland on the lack of a Stormont government. DUP MP Sammy Wilson accused the Government of operating under the cloak of economic blackmail to syphon money away from Northern Ireland to shore up Conservative seats in England. The decision also appeared at odds with the Government adverts message set against a backdrop featuring imagery of Belfast that Levelling Up is Here". The Government said yesterday that the media advertisements have continued to run as they were already working with projects handed funding earlier in the initiative. We are already working closely with projects that have been already awarded up to 120 million in the first two rounds of the fund, said a spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up. However, they indicated the money was being held back for later, and had not been lost to other parts of the UK. But it was unclear, even if power-sharing was restored, whether the funding would go towards Levelling Up initiatives, or be used to pay off Stormonts budget overspend. "The funding for this round will remain reserved for, and will be provided to, Northern Ireland it has not been reallocated to other parts of the UK, they said. However, it is right that the UK Government takes a cohesive look at where investment is needed, given the budgetary position faced by the Northern Ireland Executive and the absence of restored institutions." On Tuesday, the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland called on the Government to reverse its decision to withhold the funding. It s chief executive Roisin Wood, said: Once again, the UK Government is failing to provide appropriate investment for Northern Ireland. "Organisations in the community and voluntary sector are facing unprecedented demands on their services, and at the same time trying to navigate cuts to funding with the pressures of ever-increasing costs. "Organisations have invested heavily in preparing applications and proposals under the Levelling Up fund, and [yesterdays] announcement will come as a further blow to the sector. "The solution to the crisis in this sector will not be solved by more austerity, but by long term investment in organisations and services that work daily to change and save lives. The decision not to allocate the funding to Northern Ireland this week had provoked outrage among Northern Irelands political representatives. Both the main nationalist parties expressed surprise at Sammy Wilson's reaction, with SDLP MP Claire Hanna describing it as laughable. "The UK Government never seem to need an excuse to underinvest in Northern Ireland and the DUPs continued boycott of Stormont has handed them the perfect cover to leave our services and infrastructure to rot, she said. "Its laughable to hear the DUP talking about economic blackmail when they have been holding the people of Northern Ireland to ransom for the past year and a half." Former Sinn Fein Finance Minister Conor Murphy said the DUP's boycott was hurting "workers and families" in NI Sinn Feins Conor Murphy said NI was suffering the consequences of the DUPs refusal to re-enter the NI Executive over concerns about post-Brexit trading arrangements. "Workers and families continue to pay the price for one partys reckless boycott of the Executive. It is now time for the two-way negotiation between the British government and the DUP to end, he said. The British Secretary of State has already imposed a punitive budget on people here attacking public sector workers and services. This is yet another cynical attack on ordinary people. Ulster Unionist MLA Andy Allen said the move was unacceptable. "This is yet another example of the people of Northern Ireland being punished for a situation not of their making, he said. "It is unacceptable that the Government has taken the decision not to proceed with the latest round of funding, which could have a transformational impact for so many, due to there being no Assembly or Executive at Stormont. "I will be writing to the Minister for Levelling up to highlight my dismay at the decision and pressing for it to be reversed. Leo Varadkar made clear his view that sanctions only worked if taken on a multilateral basis (PA) Irelands premier has expressed hope that Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand will be included in the first group of hostages released in Gaza. Taoiseach Leo Varadkars comments came as Irelands Department of Foreign Affairs cautioned that there had been no official confirmation that the nine-year-old would be released as part of the deal for a four-day pause in fighting in the region. Emily, whose father Tom is originally from Co Dublin, is believed to be being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. Addressing the Dail on Wednesday, Mr Varadkar also questioned whether Israel listens to anyone anymore as he expressed doubt whether it would heed international calls to stop the killing of civilians in Gaza after the four-day pause was over. Thomas Hand has been campaigning for his daughter Emilys release (Norma Burke/PA) The ceasefire will facilitate the release of 50 hostages being held by Palestinians including, we hope, Emily Hand, and will also facilitate the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, in some cases teenage boys imprisoned for doing little more than throwing stones at armed soldiers, he said. In relation to the four-day ceasefire, that will allow humanitarian aid to get into Gaza food, fuel, medicines, water, all of the basic needs for human life. And Ireland, individually and also as part of the UN and the EU, will do anything we can to make sure that that happens and happens well. And it is our view that the ceasefire should not just last for four days, that it should be extended to allow space for there to be a peace initiative, which can bring a permanent end to violence in the region, resulting in a two state solution Israel and Palestine as secure and viable states living side by side. He added: Sadly, the Israeli government doesnt listen to us. Im not sure the Israeli government listens to anyone anymore. They used to listen to the Americans. Im not even sure if thats the case anymore. They are, as President Biden said, at risk of being blinded by rage. And its the sad reality that Im not actually sure that any action or statement by us or the European Union or the US will change the current course of action that they are on. That doesnt necessarily mean that we dont do the right thing. And we have increased our humanitarian aid to Gaza and Palestine. We have provided additional funding to the International Criminal Court so they can fund the investigation into war crimes that may have been committed in the Palestinian territories and will continue to press at UN level and EU level. Providing an update on the status of Emily, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said: The Department of Foreign Affairs welcomes the announced agreement between Israel and Hamas for a truce and the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza. Our focus in particular is on the case of nine-year old Irish citizen Emily Hand. We have worked consistently for her release over recent weeks, including through extensive contacts with regional partners. There is no official confirmation at this time of those scheduled to be released under this agreement. The department welcomes the truce agreed as part of the hostage deal. A break in hostilities is essential to allow for significant increased humanitarian access. Gazas civilian population urgently need fuel, food, water, and medical supplies, on a sustained basis and at scale. Mr Varadkar fielded questions on the Israel-Hamas conflict during Leaders Questions in the Dail. Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns reiterated her call for Mr Varadkar to back a suspension of Israels trade deal with the EU. Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns urged the Government to formally recognise Palestine as a state (Brian Lawless/PA) Taoiseach, there must be consequences if Israel is determined to continue this barbarism, she said. Mr Varadkar sought legal advice after Ms Cairns insisted a human rights clause in the EU-Israel trade deal had been breached thus providing grounds for the deal to be suspended. The Taoiseach said he had asked for the legal advice to be prepared but had not yet received it. But he made clear his view that sanctions only worked if taken on a multilateral basis. Ms Cairns also called on the Government to use November 29 International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People to formally recognise Palestine as a state. Mr Varadkar said Ireland recognised Palestine on a de facto basis but would only do so officially when it was formally established as a secure state as part of a two state solution peace deal. Pause in fighting expected to allow for exchange of captives and Palestinian prisoners Parents and relatives of children kidnapped on October 7 take part in a demonstration outside the Unicef headquarters in Tel Aviv (Getty) A hostage deal between Israel and Hamas appears to be edging closer, diplomatic sources have said. A deal would see the release of dozens of hostages being held inside Gaza and a temporary pause in the Israeli military offensive on the besieged territory. Its understood that the deal could be implemented 24 hours after it is announced. Qatars foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari separately said the two sides were at the closet point we ever had been in reaching an agreement, adding that negotiations were at a critical and final stage. It came after Ismail Haniyeh, chief of the militant groups political wing, confirmed on Tuesday morning that Hamas was close to reaching a deal on a truce and that it had delivered its response to mediators from Qatar. A Hamas official, Issat el Reshiq, told Al Jazeera that negotiations were centred on how long the truce would last, arrangements for delivery of aid into Gaza and details of the exchange of captives. Read more Israeli cabinet to consider possible deal for release of hostages held by Hamas Sources close to the negotiations said that as many as 75 civilian hostages, including dozens of children, could be released alongside a pause in the fighting. Previous attempts to get this far have fallen at the last hurdle, one diplomatic source said, adding that it was important to be cautious as so far nothing has been signed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday: We are making progress. I dont think its worth saying too much, not at even this moment, but I hope there will be good news soon. His office said he would convene his war cabinet at 6pm local time, his broader security cabinet at 7pm, and the full cabinet at 8pm. Media reports have said that it could involve a multi-day truce of up to five days, comprising a ceasefire on the ground and limits to Israeli air operations over southern Gaza. In exchange, up to 300 Palestinians would be released from Israeli jails. Negotiators have been working around the clock to secure the release of about 240 mostly Israeli hostages, including babies, who were seized on October 7 when Hamas launched its unprecedented attacks into southern Israel which killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians. So far only four female hostages have been released in deals brokered by Qatar, the US and Egypt. Pressure has mounted on the Israeli authorities from the families, who have been increasingly alarmed about the safety of their loved ones as Israel has launched a ferocious bombardment of Gaza. Sources close to the negotiators said the talks had been fraught and have not touched upon the exchange of military personnel. Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), met Haniyeh in Qatar on Monday. She also separately met Qatari authorities. The ICRC said it was not part of negotiations aimed at releasing the hostages, but as a neutral intermediary it was ready to facilitate any future release that the parties agree to. Talks of an imminent deal have swirled for days. US President Joe Biden raised hopes on Monday, saying he thought a deal to free the hostages was close. On Sunday, Israels ambassador to the US Michael Herzog told ABC Israel was hopeful a significant number of hostages could be released by Hamas. The same day Qatari Prime Minister sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told a press conference in Doha that the main obstacles to a deal were now very minor. Mr Netanyahu has faced mounting criticism for not prioritising a hostage deal. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas. In the wake of the October 7 attack the Israeli military launched a ferocious bombing campaign and imposed a crippling blockade on Hamas-run Gaza. Across the territory, there are shortages of food, water and fuel for generators to power basic infrastructure. The health ministry inside Gaza says more than 13,000 Palestinians, including 5,500 children, have been killed. The Israeli bombardment has turned much of Gaza, particularly northern Gaza where military operations have been focused, into a wasteland. Fighting has also intensified outside the Indonesian Hospital on the outskirts of Jabaliya. Health officials in Gaza said on Tuesday that hundreds of patients and displaced people are trapped inside with dwindling supplies after some 200 were evacuated the day before. Palestinian officials said an Israeli shell struck the hospital on Monday, killing 12 people. Israel denied shelling the hospital, saying its troops returned fire on militants. The Independent The far-right, anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders was headed for a massive parliamentary election victory in one of the biggest political upsets in Dutch politics since the Second World War, and one that is bound to send shockwaves through Europe. That puts him in line to lead talks to form a new ruling coalition and possibly become the countrys first hard-right prime minister at a time of political upheaval through much of the continent. The exit poll published by national broadcaster NOS said that Mr Wilders Party for Freedom won 35 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, more than double the 17 he won at the last election. Final official results were only expected on Thursday. I had to pinch my arm, a jubilant Mr Wilders said. Mr Wilders election programme includes calls for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, a total halt to accepting asylum-seekers and migrant pushbacks at Dutch borders. It also advocates the de-Islamisation of the Netherlands, although he has been milder about Islam during this election campaign than in the past. Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, known as PVV, smiles after announcement of the first preliminary results of general elections (Peter Dejong/AP) Voters said, We are sick of it. Sick to our stomachs, he said, adding he was now on a mission to end the asylum tsunami, referring to the migration issue that came to dominate his campaign. The Dutch will be number one again, Mr Wilders added. The people must get their nation back. But the politician, who has in the past been labelled a Dutch version of Donald Trump, first would have to form a coalition government before he can take the reins of power. That will be tough as mainstream parties are reluctant to join forces with him and his party, but the size of his victory strengthens his hand in any negotiations. Mr Wilders called on other parties to constructively engage in coalition talks. Pieter Omtzigt, a former centrist Christian Democrat who built his own New Social Contract party in three months to take an estimated 20 seats, said he would always be open to talks. The closest party to Wilders one was an alliance of the centre-left Labour Party and Green Left, which was forecast to win 26 seats. But its leader Frans Timmermans made clear that Mr Wilders should not count on a coalition with him. Despite his harsh rhetoric, Mr Wilders was already courting other right and centre parties by saying that whatever he would do, it would be within the law and constitution. The historic victory came one year after the win of Italian premier Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italys roots were steeped in nostalgia for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Ms Meloni has since mellowed her stance on several issues and has become the acceptable face of the hard right in the EU. Mr Wilders was long a firebrand lashing out at Islam, at the EU and migrants, a stance which brought him close to power but never in it in a nation known for compromise politics. Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, known as PVV, casts his ballot (Mike Corder/AP) Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who boasts of turning Hungary into an illiberal state and has similarly harsh stances on migration and EU institutions, was quick to congratulate Mr Wilders. The winds of change are here! Congratulations, Mr Orban said. During the final weeks of his campaign, Mr Wilders somewhat softened his stance and vowed that he would be a prime minister for all Dutch people, so much so that he gained the moniker Geert Milders. The exit poll was published as voting ended in the general election. It can have a margin of error of up to three seats but generally is accurate within one or two seats, said Ipsos, which was involved in the poll. The election was called after the fourth and final coalition of outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte resigned in July after failing to agree to measures to rein in migration. Mr Rutte was replaced by Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, a former refugee from Turkey who could have become the countrys first female prime minister had her party won the most votes. Instead, it was forecast to lose 11 seats to end up with 23. The election had been called a neck-and-neck race, but in the end Mr Wilders handily beat all opponents. The result is the latest in a series of elections that is altering the European political landscape. From Slovakia and Spain, to Germany and Poland, populist and hard-right parties triumphed in some EU member nations and faltered in others. The Israel-Hamas truce will take effect from 10am local time (8am GMT) on Thursday, Egypts state-run Qahera TV said. Egypt helped mediate the four-day ceasefire, which will facilitate the release of dozens of hostages captured by Hamas during its October 7 attack on southern Israel. The deal will also see the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and the entry of more humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israeli media also reported that the truce would begin at 10am local time on Thursday. The breakthrough agreement between Israel and Hamas has raised hopes of eventually winding down the war. 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 Now in its seventh week, the conflict has levelled vast swathes of Gaza, fuelled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank, and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East. The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar announced the deal, before Egypts state-run Qahera TV channel outlined the timing of the truce. Both countries have played a key role in mediating between Israel and Hamas. Palestinians evacuate survivors of the Israeli bombing in Rafah (AP) Fifty hostages will be freed in stages, in exchange for the release of what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will let go women and children first, and the supply of humanitarian aid flowing into the besieged territory will be ramped up. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume the war after the truce and keep fighting until we achieve all our goals, including the destruction of Hamas fighting and governing abilities and the return of all hostages. Residents in Gaza City said the fighting there had intensified overnight into Wednesday, with gunfire, heavy artillery and air strikes in central areas. (PA Graphics) Nasser al-Sheikh, who is sheltering with relatives in the Sheikh Radwan area, said of the Israelis: Apparently they want to advance before the truce. The announcement capped weeks of indirect Qatari-led negotiations between Israel and Hamas, an Islamic militant group that seized Gaza from the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority in 2007 and has governed it since. The United States and Egypt were also involved in sporadic talks to free some of the roughly 240 hostages captured by Hamas and other militants during their October 7 raid. US President Joe Biden welcomed the deal, saying Mr Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure that the hostages are released and humanitarian aid can be sent to Gaza. Qatars Prime Minister and top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Families of people believed abducted by Hamas have pleaded for their release (AP) Israel said that the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it can assist with any release. Israels justice ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible for release as part of the deal, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offences. Under Israeli law, the public has 24 hours to object to any release. The Israeli military says it has detained more than 1,850 Palestinians in the West Bank since the war began, mostly suspected Hamas members. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed there, frequently during gun battles triggered by army raids. The drawn-out process of releasing hostages will force Israel to rein in its offensive and could ultimately mean it ends the war without achieving its goal of crushing Hamas. The devastation has already galvanised international criticism of Israel, and even the US, its closest ally, has expressed concern about the heavy toll on Gazas civilians. Widespread destruction followed the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip (AP) An air strike overnight hit a residential building in the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 17 people, including children, said Ahmad Balouny, a relative of the deceased. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of two children pulled from the rubble, one of them badly burned. In northern Gaza, about 60 bodies and 200 people wounded by heavy fighting were brought into the Kamal Adwan Hospital overnight, hospital director Dr Ahmed al-Kahlout told Al-Jazeera television on Wednesday. He said the hospital is using cooking oil to keep its generator running. The Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza said 128 bodies were brought in overnight after nearby strikes, more than double the number that arrived on Tuesday night. Despite the heavy toll on Palestinian civilians, Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar will likely present the release of the prisoners seen by most Palestinians as heroes resisting occupation as a major achievement, and will declare victory if the war ends. 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 Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid including fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza, and that Israeli aircraft would limit their operations during the ceasefire. The war erupted in early October, when several thousand Hamas militants broke through Israels formidable defences and poured into the south, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking scores more captive. Israel responded with weeks of devastating air strikes on Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It does not differentiate between civilians and militants, though some two-thirds of the dead have been identified as women and minors. The ministry said that as of November 11 it had lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of large parts of the health system, but believes the number has risen sharply since then. Some 2,700 people are missing and believed to be buried under rubble. More than 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced in the war, and many, if not most, will be unable to return home because of the vast damage in the north and the continued presence of Israeli troops there. The war has also led to severe shortages of food, medicine and other basics throughout the territory. Israel cut off all fuel imports at the start of the war, causing a territory-wide power blackout. Knowing the flags of the countries you govern should be a pre-requisite for any world leader If Rishi Sunak has been left red-faced after the Irish tricolour was posted on an official Downing Street social media account to celebrate Northern Ireland culture our unionist politicians should be beetroot. We can only imagine the shade of scarlet filling the cheeks of many of our elected representatives aided by soaring blood pressure in the aftermath of the blunder which has provoked ridicule on social media. Mediahuis team at Irish Podcast Awards where they won five prizes including best daily for the Indo Daily at The Irish Podcast Awards. Pic:Mark Condren Belfast Telegraph's Graham Davison and Ciaran Dunbar at The Irish Podcast Awards where the 'Bel Tel' won Best News and Current Affairs podcast. (Pic: Mark Condren) The Belfast Telegraphs podcast The BelTel has won Best News and Current Affairs Podcast at the prestigious 2023 Irish Podcast Awards in Dublin. The BelTel, which is presented by Ciaran Dunbar, has been produced since May 2022. It specialises in crime and politics, with an aim to present the best of Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life journalism and journalists to new audiences. It regularly features the Belfast Telegraph's own journalists as guests to discuss their reporting with political editor Suzanne Breen, crime correspondent Allison Morris and Northern Ireland editor Sam McBride regular contributors. The winning podcasts focused on history, current affairs and crime. Presenter Ciaran Dunbar said: We are delighted with the award but its a team effort. The journalists are the real stars and its a win for the whole newsroom. "We hope podcasting will continue to grow. Its a very natural medium. At the end of the day we are telling stories and giving people the platform to tell their stories. 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 The BelTel took home the prize during the ceremony in the The Morrison in Dublin on Tuesday evening, beating out podcasts from the likes of The Irish Times, and The Journal to be named best for news and current affairs. Joining The BelTel in picking up a prize were other Mediahuis title, including The Irish Independent's The Big Tech Show with Adrian Weckler which won Best Business podcast. Mediahuis team at Irish Podcast Awards where they won five prizes including best daily for the Indo Daily at The Irish Podcast Awards. Pic:Mark Condren The Irish Independent also celebrated Best Wellbeing Podcast with a win for Real Health with Karl Henry as well as the coveted Best Daily Podcast for The Indo Daily. The Sunday Worlds podcast Crime World also picked up Best Commercial Strategy at the awards. Other winners also included BBC Northern Ireland for Best Factual Podcast for Alright, Pet? and The 2 Johnnies who won Best Comedy Podcast. The BelTel was also shortlisted for in the Best Crime and Best History Podcast categories. Sam McBride speaks to military historian Huw Bennett about his new book Uncivil war: The British Army and the TroublesBennett reveals how the Ministry of Defence questioned if a United Ireland was the only solution to end the Troubles The British Army arrived in Northern Ireland in 1969, to quell violence, and to support the RUC. The violence exploded and the Army found itself fighting a re-invigorated IRA, as well as having to deal with loyalists and civilian rioters. Military Historian Huw Bennetts new book Uncivil war: The British Army and the Troubles looks at this most controversial period in Northern Irelands history. The author, who is a lecturer in international relations at Cardiff University, reveals how he was obstructed in accessing evidence by many of the military authorities, even when the evidence showed the military in a positive light. Bennett has written extensively on British colonial military history. He acknowledges that Empire had some influence on Army thinking, quoting the second in command of 1st Light Infantry, saying: To the average British soldier, they [the Northern Irish] were no different to the Chinese in Hong Kong, or the Arabs in Aden, or the Malays in Singapore. They were w**s, they were not British people. British people dont behave like that The Belfast Telegraphs Northern Ireland Editor Sam McBride sat down with the historian to discuss how the Troubles began, why they escalated so quickly, and the armys role in that. North Korea fired an unspecified ballistic missile toward the East Sea, but the launch appears to have failed, the South Korean military said Thursday. The North fired the missile from the Sunan area in Pyongyang at 11:05 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It did not provide other details, adding that South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities are conducting an analysis into the launch. The latest launch came after South Korea suspended part of the 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement in response to the North's latest launch of a military spy satellite. Before the North's anticipated space rocket launch on Tuesday, USS Carl Vinson, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, visited a naval base in Busan, 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul. (Yonhap) Bangladeshs Election Commission set the country on a familiar but gravely uncertain path last week when it announced Jan. 7 as the date for the 12th parliamentary elections. The ruling Awami League is trying to consolidate its grip on power in the run-up to the general election by using state power to suppress the opposition, which faces challenges in uniting and mobilizing under this repression. As of now, its unclear whether Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her party can steer through the polls as they did in the two previous elections or whether the opposition can prevent them from holding a unilateral exercise. The announcement of the poll schedule on Nov. 15 elicited a feeling of deja vu, which was reminiscent of the 2014 general election that opposition parties boycotted. That years polls, which independent observers described as seriously flawed, saw more than half of the seats go uncontested, resulting in a de facto one-party Parliament. It was fundamentally not so different in 2018 when the opposition participated in the polls. The Election Commission connived with law enforcement agencies and civilian bureaucrats to engineer an election that delivered a resounding victory for the Awami League, which secured more than 95% of the parliamentary seats. The state apparatuses were also used to persecute the opposition in the months leading up to those polls and then to stuff ballots the night before Election Day. That resulted in legitimate voters being turned away from polling centers because others had cast ballots in their place. The 2014 and 2018 elections not only created a legislative body subservient to the executive branch led by Hasina, but they also provided her with unbridled control over the state apparatuses from law enforcement and the judiciary to the Election Commission. A supporter of the Awami League party, flanked by police officials, carries a giant portrait of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during an election rally in Dhaka, Dec. 27, 2018. [Anupam Nath/AP] But those elections did not happen in a vacuum. Bangladeshs propitious journey towards democracy, which began in 1991, suffered a jolt in 2007 when the military orchestrated a soft coup and ruled the country for about two years. In 2011, the ruling Awami League used its supermajority in Parliament which it had secured in a fair election held three years earlier to remove the provision of holding national elections under a non-partisan entity called the Caretaker Government. Thus began the countrys reverse course, resulting in todays electoral autocracy. Ironically, the caretaker provision had been inserted into the 1996 Constitution because of the then-opposition Awami Leagues relentless agitation in the streets. Bangladeshs tumultuous history showed that, starting with its first election in 1973, no election under the incumbent government had been free or fair. The caretaker system proved to be the only guardrail an effective vertical accountability mechanism against wholesale rigging of the election process. In 2014, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the opposition parties threatened to boycott the election unless the system was restored, and the party made good on its threats. However, the Awami League went ahead with the elections and fulfilled its five-year term, although the parliament lacked legitimacy. Then, with the engineered victory in 2018, Hasina became the longest-serving head of the government in Bangladesh. Ahead of that election, her archrival, Khaleda Zia, who had held the record until then of being elected three times, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on dubious charges that smacked of political vengeance. And throughout Hasinas successive rules, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances shot up, the independence of the media was severely curtailed, and critical voices were muzzled through legal and extra-legal measures. Civil society was deliberately decimated. Opposition parties were denied the right to assembly and charged with frivolous cases. The local media often refer to these as ghost cases because they describe alleged crimes that could not have been committed by the accused because they were either dead, sick or living abroad. All of these led to solidifying a culture of fear. State of play Oct. 28 marked a watershed moment in Bangladeshs politics, when a BNP rally in Dhaka was disrupted by a pre-emptive police crackdown, foreshadowing a broader clampdown on the opposition. Internet service was cut, and security forces swooped in, using isolated violence as a pretext. Subsequently, more than 10,000 BNP activists, including leaders, were arrested, and the party office was shut down. This led to widespread general strikes and transport blockades by the BNP and its allies. When the Election Commission on Nov. 15 announced the election schedule, it did so despite the ongoing strikes and transportation blockades. Predictably, 17 of the 44 parties formally registered with the EC including the BNP rejected the announcement, and only 15 publicly welcomed it, while 12 parties have yet to make any public statements. Many other political parties or organizations, which are not formally registered but have the ability to mobilize public opinion, are opposed to the schedule. Their rejections stem from their demands that the incumbent government, led by Prime Minister Hasina, resign to make way for a neutral government to oversee the election process. The demand isnt new: the BNP and other parties have had the same demand since the Awami League unilaterally removed the Caretaker Government provision from the constitution in 2011. However, whats different today is that the previous two flawed elections as well as a series of local elections held over the past years vindicated the BNPs position. Its clear that in Bangladesh, a level playing field is non-existent and state machinery acts like an extension of the ruling party. As such, the demand for a neutral government overseeing the election has become a popular demand. A recent survey by the International Republican Institute found that 69% of Bangladeshi respondents said that the prevalent system would not deliver a fair election. Moreover, this time around, the election is under heavy scrutiny by the international community, particularly the United States, which has repeatedly pressed for a free and fair election for the past two years. Part of a Great Game? The United States has long underscored the need for an environment conducive to free, fair and peaceful elections. The repeated assurances by Hasina failed to convince the U.S. and the European Union. The U.S., as a marker of its support to a free election, announced a visa policy in May, threatening to deny entry to those in Bangladesh who act to undermine democracy. In the past year, there have been intense efforts by the Biden administration to nudge the Bangladesh government towards an inclusive election. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) and his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina pose for a photograph during her ceremonial reception at the Indian presidential palace in New Delhi, Sept. 6, 2022. [Manish Swarup/AP] India, considered the linchpin of U.S. policies towards the smaller South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, has been a staunch supporter of Hasina since 2009 and has even interjected its position in Bangladeshs domestic politics. Thus, a disagreement between the U.S. and India emerged. Meanwhile, China has adopted a more assertive stance across South Asia and has gone to become a close ally of the Hasina administration a trend that India has not succeeded in containing. As part of a global polarization, Russia is also standing by the Hasina government. This contestation is a part of the geopolitical developments in the region and increasing competition in the Asia-Pacific region between the U.S. and China. Whats next? With BNPs most senior leaders either arrested or hiding to avoid arrests, U.S. Assistant Secretary Donald Lu on Nov. 13 urged three major parties the Awami League, the BNP and the Jatiya Party to hold a dialogue to solve the impasse. But even before these parties could react to the call, the Election Commission announced the date for elections, essentially shutting down any possibility of a negotiated settlement, which only shows that its acting at the governments behest. Evidently, the ruling party wants to hold the election by severely weakening the opposition, rendering it unable to participate in the election even if it wanted to, let alone accept its demand for a neutral interim government to shepherd the election. In the coming weeks, the state apparatuses will be used to ramp up the crackdown on the opposition, which faces the daunting challenge of mobilizing under a climate of repression while also hindered by Washingtons stark warning against violence. The ruling party appears to bet on the premise that opposition parties, still ununited, will not be able to muster an effective challenge if it repeats a one-sided election. It trusts that a combination of the 2014 and 2018 strategies keeping the opposition outside the election process but allowing newly minted Kings Parties to participate will allow it to retain power. But its also true that the urge among the public for a free election is greater than at any other time. The international scrutiny is also more heightened now than in 2014 or 2018, stemming from Bangladeshs increased geopolitical significance, Chinas growing presence, and the tenacious American insistence on a fair election. Now the question is whether the global community will act to prevent the disaster in the making. Its time the global powers understood that the next election may be Bangladeshs most consequential one and the last chance to reverse its authoritarian trend. Ali Riaz is a distinguished professor of political science at Illinois State University and a non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of Illinois State University, the Atlantic Council, or BenarNews. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim attends a wreath-laying ceremony at Rizal Park, in Manila, during a visit to the Philippines, March 2, 2023. A year after he took office as Malaysias prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim has solidified his power in Parliament and drawn in once-lagging foreign investment, leaving observers to believe that he may last his full term. Now, this seasoned Malaysian politician needs to use the parliamentary support hes gained to push through his reform agenda and work towards economically lifting up all citizens in this multi-racial country, while dialing back rhetoric and measures to appease religious conservatives and ethnic majority Malays, analysts said. Being able to last a whole year with a coalition government made up of disparate groups is a significant achievement, said James Chin, an Asian Studies professor at the University of Tasmania. Anwar has [in his coalition] partners from UMNO, and parties all the way from the Borneo states, Sabah and Sarawak. So, it was not easy to put together a government and make sure it survives for a year, he told BenarNews. Chin was referring to the federal coalition government that comprises Anwars own racially and religiously diverse Pakatan Harapan coalition, United Malays National Organization the grand old party that ruled Malaysia continuously for more than 60 years and state-based political coalitions. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his wife Wan Azizah arrive for the premiere of the movie Anwar: The Untold Story, in Kuala Lumpur, May 8, 2023. [Arif Kartono/AFP] Malaysia has seen years of political instability since the historic 2018 election swept Prime Minister Najib Razak and UMNO from power. Before the November 2022 general election, the Southeast Asian nation of around 34 million people, had seen a revolving door of leaders, with three prime ministers in as many years, from February 2020 until October 2022. After the Nov. 19, 2022 polls, no single party or bloc had secured a majority of parliamentary seats, although Anwars Pakatan Harapan alliance won the most. The king broke the impasse by deciding to appoint Anwar prime minister after he secured the support from his partys arch-rival, the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional coalition, a party tainted by allegations of deep corruption, and the regional blocs. Anwar was sworn in on Nov. 24, 2022, with the support of 147 lawmakers in the 222-seat house, which was equivalent to a two-thirds majority. A month shy of his first year in office, parliamentary support for Anwar crossed the two-third majority mark, when four parliamentarians from the opposition Perikatan Nasional coalition, specifically, the Bersatu party, pledged they would back his government. The pledges from these four MPs meant that they would support all government policies and initiatives, and, they said, their backing would last until the next general election. Political analyst Mazlan Ali, of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, said with the four additional lawmakers' support, Anwar is stronger. It has bolstered Anwar's backing in the lower house to 151 lawmakers, he told BenarNews. Mazlan predicted more MPs from Bersatu would switch support to Anwar, further weakening Perikatan Nasional, the opposition bloc led by ex-PM Muhyiddin Yassin. The analyst believes many Bersatu members may have lost confidence in their leadership, see the gains that political stability will bring and may also have come to believe in Anwars reform agenda. There has also been disappointment, Mazlan said, that the opposition refused to accept the governments offer to cooperate so the country could come out stronger after the battering its economy took during the COVID-19 pandemic. The four MPs said they switched support so the government remains stable, among other reasons. There were rumors that my party [Bersatu] will take over the government. Every month someone would say there would be a move similar to the Sheraton Move but it had been almost a year and nothing happened while my people in Labuan [constituency] were suffering, one of the Bersatu lawmakers, Labuan MP Suhaili Abdul Rahman, told BenarNews. Malaysian opposition leader and former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin speaks during an interview in Kuala Lumpur, July 27, 2023. [Hasnoor Hussain/Reuters] The Sheraton Move he referred to was a political plot reportedly hatched at a Sheraton hotel that led to the fall of the countrys only non-UMNO government, which was the 2018 election winner Pakatan Harapan. It is the monsoon season and roofs are flying off. [My constituents] keep complaining, and we need federal allocation for repairs, Suhaili said. People voted for me to help them improve their lives. I have to look for ways to help them. Suhaili wanted access to federal development funds. To access these funds, lawmakers have to formally request it. And an MP seen as friendly to the government has an easier time getting funds quickly, especially during emergencies like floods and other natural disasters, while opposition lawmakers have to jump through hoops to access federal money. Bersatu alleged that the four lawmakers were bribed by members connected to the Anwar administration, a claim the government hotly denied. A year of achievements In just 365 days, Anwars government has also made good on implementing reforms that previous administrations had dilly-dallied on for years. His government abolished the mandatory death penalty, decriminalized attempted suicide and has made firmer commitments to alleviate climate change. Ariff Hussaini, a 28-year-old voter from Selangor state, is impressed. He is a long-needed beacon of hope for Malaysia to turn things around and reclaim our competitive edge on the global stage, Ariff told BenarNews. Its refreshing to see such a hardworking PM [trying] to put Malaysia back on the right track, he said, when he was asked for his assessment of Anwars performance so far. The World Bank, too, may believe things are looking up for Malaysia after years of instability. Kishore Mahbubani, a distinguished fellow from the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, noted that growth estimates for Malaysia for this year and the next from the global financial institution made it one of the strongest economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Anwar has also recently announced some ambitious reforms, including new progressive taxes and subsidy cuts to target the poor more effectively. This is a vast improvement from UMNOs corrupt rule, Mahbubani wrote Nov. 2 on Project Syndicate, a website that carries expert commentaries. A man walks in front of a Tesla banner during Malaysias first-ever unveiling of the auto firms electric cars, in Kuala Lumpur, July 20, 2023. [Mohd Rasfan/AFP] The World Bank projected Malaysia would grow 3.9% this year and 4.3% next year. Azmi Hassan, a Malaysia politics analyst, said those projections reflected the countrys seeming political stability. Previous prime ministers faced internal turmoil, affecting governance and investor confidence. Anwar Ibrahim's global recognition, passionate communication, and confident leadership make him an effective salesman for Malaysia, Azmi, a senior fellow at the Nusantara Academy for Strategic Research, told BenarNews. His articulate discussions with CEOs, such as in San Francisco recently, showcase his capability to attract foreign direct investment. With figures like [Tesla founder] Elon Musk, Anwar achieves FDI by projecting Malaysia as stable under his leadership, he said, referring to the maker of electric vehicles. Tesla this year established its Southeast Asian headquarters in Malaysias Selangor state, complete with a service hub and experience center. As business publication Fortune wrote in August: Malaysia has achieved what many of its peers have failed to do: successfully enticing Elon Musks Tesla to establish a presence in the country. Malay malaise But despite these successes, Anwar has not been able to raise his popularity among the majority ethnic Malays, who comprise 70% of the population, and distrust his party and multireligious and multiethnic coalition based on the perception that they dont look out for Malay-Muslim interests. Anwars approval rating among ethnic Malays was at 24%, according to a July survey by pollster Ilham Center in six Malay-majority states. The opposition Perikatan bloc secured a landslide win in August polls in three of these states, thanks to its component Islamist party PAS which, critics said, amplified religious rhetoric in its campaign. Perikatan chairman Muhyiddin said the results were a clear indication that the people wanted change. While the results did not impact the federal government, analysts noted that Anwar needed to raise up the economically weaker Malay majority for broader support. Results of a survey released Wednesday, two days before Anwars one-year anniversary as PM, showed that his popularity was at its lowest in October compared with when he was elected. His ratings fell mainly over economic concerns, especially among the Malays and the Indian community, said the poll by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research, which surveyed 1,220 respondents from Oct. 4 to Oct. 24. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim delivers a speech during a gathering to show support for Palestinians, amid escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Kuala Lumpur, Oct. 24, 2023. [Hasnoor Hussain/Reuters] Syaza Shukri, of the International Islamic University of Malaysia, said it was imperative for Anwar to increase support among Malays. Otherwise the opposition will continue to play up the narrative that this government lacks legitimacy because they lack the support of the majority race, Syaza told BenarNews. But observers also caution that the way to garner Malay Muslim support is not through religious appeasement as some have accused Anwar of doing although the leader had railed against such policies during his election campaign. Critics note that he has expanded the role of the federal agency overseeing Islamic affairs, supported restrictions on non-Muslims using the term Allah for God, cracked down on literature perceived as provocative, banned LGBTQ-themed watches and publicly opposed gay rights. Pandering to religious conservatives The prime ministers initial commitment to moderation seems to have been sacrificed at the altar of vote gathering, critics say. Bridget Welsh, of the University of Nottingham Malaysia, said Anwars recent unwavering support for the Palestinian group Hamas after its attack on Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people was one such example. Anwars position on Hamas appears to be pandering to religious conservatives, shows a lack of nuance in foreign policy, she told BenarNews. Anwars call for a ceasefire by Israel in its occupied territory of Gaza is one shared by many people in the world, though, as the relentless aerial and ground strikes have killed more than 13,000 Palestinians, wrecked hospitals and crippled civic infrastructure, plunging the enclave into a dire humanitarian crisis, according to U.N. officials. Welsh also said there were serious concerns that Anwar had broken promises to review and cancel laws that curb free speech and stifle dissent. Instead, critics have noted that he was using some of the same laws to curtail criticism of his administration or appease conservative elements, they said. But now that he has solidified his position, some are optimistic Anwar will make good on his promises. The government has more legitimacy now, said Syaza Shukri of the International Islamic University of Malaysia. It would make it easier for it to pass bills in the Parliament. Minderjeet Kaur in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report. This photo released by the Houthi Media Center shows Houthi forces boarding the cargo ship Galaxy Leader on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. Seventeen Filipino seafarers were on board an Israeli-linked cargo ship that was seized in a helicopter-borne attack by Houthi rebels off the coast of Yemen, the Philippine foreign affairs department said Wednesday. Yemens Iran-backed Houthis took control of the Galaxy Leader cargo ship on Sunday in the southern Red Sea, describing it as Israeli-owned, according to reports. Footage released by the rebels showed a maneuver in which they dropped from the helicopter brandishing assault rifles, before quickly seizing control of the vessel and raising Palestinian and Yemeni flags. There were 17 Filipinos according to the manning agency... together with other foreigners, Eduardo de Vega, an undersecretary at the Department of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement. We are alarmed. This is not the first time Filipino seafarers were held hostage. This is connected to the war between Hamas and Israel because the ship was targeted because it was allegedly Israeli-owned although the operator was a Japanese company. The Bahamas-flagged car carrier is chartered by Japans Nippon Yusen. It is owned by a firm registered under Isle of Man-headquartered Ray Car Carriers, which is a unit of Tel Aviv-incorporated Ray Shipping, according to LSEG data, according to Reuters. The Philippines was making diplomatic representations to all foreign governments involved, he said, adding the Houthi rebels had given assurances that the foreign hostages would not be harmed. Some 25 crew members from the Philippines, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Mexico and Romania are reported to be on the ship. This photo released by the Houthi Media Center shows Houthi forces boarding the cargo ship Galaxy Leader on Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023. [Houthi Media Center via AP] Foreign affairs department spokeswoman Maria Teresita Daza said Manila was deploying an all-of-government approach to help the Filipino crew. We assure the public that everything is being done to get our seafarers back safely, said Daza. The Philippine government estimates there are 10 million Filipinos working overseas as professionals, maids, laborers and seafarers. Their remittances have traditionally propped up the economy, but many endure tough and dangerous working conditions. At present, there are about 400,000 Filipinos working in the shipping industry across the globe, from Taiwanese fishing vessels and trawlers to European cargo ships, official figures showed. Filipino seafarers have been targeted in attacks and kidnapping attempts before. In 2018, seven Filipinos were among a dozen crew members of a Swiss-owned ship who were kidnapped by pirates off the coast of Nigeria. The captives were released unharmed after a month. In 2011, Filipino seafarer Farolito Vallega, 48, was aboard a German-owned ship, MV Beluga Navigation, when he was shot and killed by Somali pirates. Data from the United Nations International Maritime Organization showed more than 5,700 seafarers have been taken hostage in various incidents globally since 2007 and subjected to prolonged captivity. On a daily basis, more than 100,000 seafarers experience anxiety while sailing in, or towards, dangerous waters, the U.N. agency said. Jeoffrey Maitem contributed to this report from Davao City, southern Philippines Priest Flavie Villanueva prays with relatives of ex-President Rodrigo Dutertes drug war victims at the Bagbag Cemetery in Novaliches, Metro Manila, June 10, 2022. The European Union offered tentative praise for steps taken by the Ferdinand Marcos administration to address human rights concerns in its latest GSP+ trade review, but urged more resolute actions to ensure accountability for extrajudicial killings under former President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs. Dutertes drug war killed more than 8,000 Filipinos during his 2016-2022 presidential term, according to government figures. It is subject of an ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Human rights concerns relate notably to extrajudicial killings of people allegedly involved in the trade and use of drugs under the previous administration, and the insufficient investigation and prosecution thereof, the European Commissions 2020-2022 review released Tuesday said. Concerns are also related to impunity around attacks, harassment, red-tagging and, in some cases, killings of human rights defenders, political opponents, members of clergy, journalists, trade unionists, environmental defenders and indigenous people, the 28-page report said. The review assesses the Philippines compliance with the conditions set under the European Union Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP+). The GSP+ agreement allows developing countries including the Philippines to have tariff-free access to the EUs market provided they comply with certain human and labor rights obligations. The commission noted that it also monitored very serious violations of the freedom of association, including the killing, intimidation and arrests of trade union members. But it cited some improvements, noting that the Marcos administration to cooperated with international rights groups and was open to changing the governments drug control policy. The new administration has shown willingness to engage with the international community on human rights, having actively participated in multiple mechanisms of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the report said. More recent positive developments include the governments new focus on prevention and rehabilitation in the war on drugs, active participation in the works of the UNHRC and the visits of several U.N. special rapporteurs, it said. The government has also made statements on its intention to fight against impunity. Former Philippine Sen. Leila de Lima (center) waves to supporters as she leaves the police custodial center at Camp Crame in Manila, Nov. 13, 2023. [Ted Aljibe/AFP] The report said the Marcos administrations more balanced anti-illegal drug approach should continue. The deficiencies in the judiciary system and in law enforcement still need to be addressed and perpetrators of human rights violations brought to justice, it said. Philippiness authorities have taken several steps to address points of concern, even if tangible results are now needed. The Marcos administration and his immediate predecessor Dutertes lawyers did not immediately respond to BenarNews requests for comment on the report. Marcos has refused to cooperate with the ICCs investigation into Dutertes drug war. We continue to defend the sovereignty of the Philippines and continue to question the jurisdiction of the ICC in their investigations here in the Philippines, Marcos said in July. The Philippines is no longer a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the ICC, after Duterte withdrew from the treaty in 2019. But the tribunals top prosecutor, Karim Khan, said the ICC has jurisdiction over the issue because Manila was still a party at the time the alleged crimes were committed. In February, the Philippines tried to block the investigation by appealing to the ICC, which rejected the appeal. EU had sent a message of impunity On Wednesday local time, Human Rights Watch issued a statement criticizing the EUs lack of transparency and effort in implementing its trade incentives in developing countries. Claudio Francavilla, HRWs senior EU advocate, said the GSP+ program had not been used to stop the killings under the former leader. The EU GSP+ report on the Philippines shows that the bloc has tolerated too many serious human rights abuses under Duterte, sending a message of impunity that now risks echoing through the Marcos administration, Francavilla said. Unless the E.U. sets clear rights benchmarks for compliance, Marcos government and other governments in the region will hardly take the GSP+ human rights conditionality seriously. Despite a few good developments in the Philippines, the GSP+ should push for actual rights reforms and accountability in the country, Francavilla said. The E.U. lobbied to drop charges against journalist Nobel laureate Maria Ressa and the release from jail of former Sen. Leila de Lima, who was Dutertes political nemesis. Ressa was cleared of tax evasion charges in September but still faces two legal cases, while de Lima was recently released on bail and faces one remaining drug trafficking charge. Progress in all aspects of bilateral relations between the E.U. and the Philippines and the continuation of the GSP+ should be linked to concrete human rights reforms and accountability, Francavilla said. The HMAS Toowoomba, a Royal Australian Navy ship, is docked at Changi Naval Base during IMDEX Asia 2023, a maritime defense exhibition in Singapore, May 4, 2023. Beijing officials have rejected allegations from Canberra that a Chinese destroyer used its sonar device near divers from a Royal Australian Navy ship in Japanese waters, causing them minor injuries. In a statement issued on Monday, Chinas defense ministry said the claims from Australian defense officials were completely untrue. China has firmly rejected Australia's accusations, said a statement by Chinese defense ministry spokesman Wu Qian. China has lodged formal representations with the Australian side. The Chinese warship Ningbo (139) was tracking, monitoring, identifying, and verifying the Australian frigate HMAS Toowoomba in accordance with international laws and regulations, Wu said. The Chinese vessel maintained a safe distance from the Australian ship and did not engage in any actions that could have interfered with the Australian Navy divers' operations. The denial came after Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a statement at the weekend that the unsafe and unprofessional interaction with a Peoples Liberation Army Navy destroyer occurred in international waters, inside Japans exclusive economic zone. On Nov. 14, divers from HMAS Toowoomba were working to clear entangled fishing nets from its propellers when a Chinese warship approached them in international waters inside of Japans exclusive economic zone. The Australian ship, an ANZAC-class frigate, was enroute to begin a scheduled port visit after conducting operations in the region in support of United Nations sanctions enforcement against North Korea, the Australian defense minister said. At all times, HMAS Toowoomba communicated its intention to conduct diving operations on normal maritime channels, and using internationally recognized signals, Marles said. Despite warnings that there were divers in the water, the Chinese ship still came closer and operated its hull-mounted sonar device, forcing the divers to surface. Some of them reported minor injuries, likely due to being subjected to the sonar pulses from the Chinese destroyer. The pulses of sound are used for imaging underwater terrain and surrounding objects but they can be dangerous for divers in the water, causing injuries ranging from hearing loss to ruptured internal organs and even brain hemorrhage. Marles said that his government has expressed its serious concerns to the Chinese government and that Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a professional and safe manner. Wu, the Chinese defense ministry spokesman, also denied allegations that the Chinese vessel had entered Japans EEZ and said there is no demarcation between China and Japan in the relevant waters. We urge the Australian side to respect the facts, stop making reckless and irresponsible accusations against China, do more to build up mutual trust between the two sides, and create a positive atmosphere for the sound development of relations between the two countries and two militaries, he said. Dangerous encounters The Chinese military has been accused multiple times of unsafe encounters with military airplanes and warships from the United States and its allies in the East and South China seas. Earlier this month, Canada said a Chinese J-11 fighter-jet launched flares directly in front of a Canadian Royal Air Force CH-148 Cyclone helicopter which was conducting routine exercises in the South China Sea, putting the safety of all personnel involved at unnecessary risk. In this image made from video provided by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, a Peoples Republic of China J-11 is seen from within three meters of a U.S. Air Force B-52 plane over the South China Sea, Oct. 24, 2023. [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command via AP] On Oct. 24, another Chinese J-11 closed within 3 meters (10 feet) of a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber during a night time intercept over the South China Sea, according to the U.S. militarys Indo-Pacific Command. The Command released video footage documenting the unsafe intercept of its B-52 bomber which was lawfully conducting routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace. A week earlier, on Oct. 17, the Pentagon released photos and video clips documenting 15 cases of what it called Chinas coercive and risky operational behavior against U.S. aircraft in the East China and South China seas during the last two years. Since 2021, China has engaged in more than 180 incidents of coercive and risky operational behavior against its assets acting lawfully in international airspace over the East and South China seas, the U.S. Departent of Defense said. The number increases to nearly 300 cases if U.S. allied and partner aircraft are included. The U.S. accused China of carrying out a centralized and concerted campaign to prevent American forces from operating safely in the skies and in the seas. Beijing has rejected all accusations, in some cases claiming that it was the U.S. who provoked the situations. North Korea said Thursday it will immediately restore all military measures halted under a 2018 inter-Korean military accord after South Korea suspended part of the tension reduction deal following the North's launch of a military spy satellite. The North's defense ministry said it will "never be bound" by the military agreement any more, effectively scrapping the deal that calls for a series of tension reduction measures along the heavily armed border, and warned that the South must "pay dearly" for its decision. "We will immediately restore all military measures that have been halted according to the North-South military agreement," the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). "We will withdraw the military steps, taken to prevent military tension and conflict in all spheres including ground, sea and air, and deploy more powerful armed forces and new-type military hardware in the region along the Military Demarcation Line," it said. South Korea must "pay dearly for their irresponsible and grave political and military provocations that have pushed the present situation to an uncontrollable phase," the North said. South Korea partially suspended the 2018 inter-Korean military accord, after North Korea launched a military spy satellite, called the Malligyong-1, on a new type of Chollima-1 rocket Tuesday night. The move allowed Seoul to immediately restore reconnaissance and surveillance operations near the border with North Korea. Defending the satellite launch as a "legitimate" exercise of a right to self-defense, North Korea denounced the South for partially suspending the agreement for "unreasonable and illogical" reasons. "Those of the 'ROK' will be held wholly accountable in case an irretrievable clash breaks out between the north and the south," the ministry said, using the acronym of South Korea's full name, the Republic of Korea. The statement came hours after North Korea fired an unspecified ballistic missile toward the East Sea Wednesday night. The South's military said the launch appears to have failed. The agreement, signed Sept. 19, 2018, under the previous liberal administration of President Moon Jae-in, calls for setting up buffer zones and no-fly zones near the inter-Korean border in a bid to prevent accidental clashes between the two Koreas. Defense Minister Shin Won-sik pushed for suspending the deal, citing its impact on limiting South Korea's aerial surveillance capabilities. North Korea had violated the accord 17 times until end-2022, and 15 violations occurred last year alone, including five North Korean drones' infiltration into the South in December, according to Seoul's defense ministry. South Korea's unification ministry denounced the North Korean defense ministry's statement as a "far-fetched" claim, and "strongly" condemned Pyongyang's threat to deploy new weapons along the border. "Seoul's partial suspension of the military accord is a just and self-defense measure that can be taken at a minimum at a time when the North has constantly violated the deal and continued its nuclear and missile threats and provocations against us," a ministry official told reporters. He warned North Korea will face an "overwhelming and stern" response by the South if it stages provocations in border areas, and stressed Seoul is also open to talks with Pyongyang to discuss ways to defuse military tensions. The official said North Korea has intent to "effectively nullify" the deal, but the South Korean government does not regard the accord as being scrapped. North Korea claimed it has successfully put a military spy satellite into orbit and vowed to launch several more satellites within a short span of time to better reconnoiter South Korea and "the region of its operational interest." The launch followed its two failed attempts in May and August and came amid suspicion that Russia may have provided technical assistance for the North's spy satellite in return for Pyongyang's supply of artillery and munitions for use in its war in Ukraine. The North said the satellite took pictures of Andersen Air Force Base and Apra Harbor in the U.S. territory of Guam on Wednesday morning. It said the satellite will officially begin its mission on Dec. 1 after a "fine-tuning process" that could take up to 10 days. Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said North Korea could resume military activities swiftly as early as Thursday, including drone-based surveillance operations and opening gun posts at its coastline. "If clashes occur between the two Koreas, North Korea could flex its military muscles simultaneously in terms of conventional arms and weapons capable of mounting tactical nuclear warheads," he added. Experts said a spy satellite will help the North stage a precision strike against targets in war situations, as it will enhance the country's surveillance capability, but many still have doubts about the North's satellite capabilities. (Yonhap) 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%. FILE - In this Jan. 31, 2019 file photo, pedestrians walk near a Northeastern University sign on the school's campus in Boston. Steve Waithe, of Chicago, a former track and field coach at Northeastern University accused of setting up sham social media and email accounts in an attempt to trick women into sending him nude or semi-nude photos of themselves pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston, prosecutors said Tuesday, Nov 21, 2023. Whether its the return of cool weather and a seasonal inclination to revisit red wines, or the range of flavors on the table from turkey to buttery squash and stuffing, Thanksgiving always makes me think about the beautiful, vibrant red wines of Beaujolais. The little sub-region in France, which is nearly equidistant from the most famous appellations in Burgundy to the north and the Rhone Valley to the south, is an increasingly reliable source for excellent French red wines at reasonable prices. Sign up for the In The Berkshires This Week newsletter Sign up I decided to reach out to my friend Mary Daire, who owns Dare Bottle Shop & Provisions, in Lenox, with her husband Ben, who I suspected is as much a Bojo groupie as I am. MATT STRAUS: Mary, I have the feeling from visiting your store and chatting with you that you love Beaujolais as much as I do. Increasingly, it seems to me like it's often an incredible value, compared with what has happened to prices a little further north, in the Cote dOr. Could you share a few thoughts in general about Beaujolais, and what you like about wines from the region? MARY DAIRE: Hi Matt! Good read. Yes, you could say that we're big fans of Beaujolais over here at Dare. Versatility: Beaujolais is a wine that makes sense in every situation, all year round, but especially perfect this time of year! Earth-driven Beaujolais is the guest of honor at our Thanksgiving table, as it plays so nicely with all of the different flavors on the menu and is insanely drinkable, with low-ABV making it a great candidate for sitting and sipping at the table for hours. Celebration: One would be hard-pressed to find a wine that exemplifies celebration as Beaujolais nouveau does. The arrival of the wine worlds latest vintage always gets us excited. Nouveau wines often are met with a bad rap in the wine industry due to their lack of structure/complexity and sometimes downright undrinkability ... but when you find a proper, nicely done Nouveau, it's hard to downplay its charm! Bang for the buck: If you're looking for affordability and variety look no further. Beaujolais is far from being just one style, and certain Beaujolais Cru can rival their neighbors to the North (looking at you Macon rouge). MATT STRAUS: Amazing. Reading your note is making me want to pour myself a short glass of Morgon with my lunch! I want to ask your opinion about the range of flavors in Beaujolais, and something specific called carbonic maceration. I sometimes find that I prefer the Beaujolais bottlings which are said to be traditionally vinified, as opposed to those made by the fermenting of whole grapes prior to crushing them. The wines that are made via carbonic sometimes seem too fruity and nonchalant to me, almost like they have a bubble gum quality to them. And I love the darker flavors of gamay noir when it goes through that traditional Burgundian vinification! Those wines sometimes seem downright leathery, more like Volnay, or even St. Joseph in the Rhone Valley. Maybe the wines I prefer lean more towards being what are sometimes called food wines, as opposed to the carbonique examples, which are great quaffers? MARY DAIRE: 100 percent. I largely prefer, and believe gamay shows its true potential more in those wines which are said to be vinified traditionally. Carbonic maceration is fun at certain times, certain wines. I do like and appreciate the historical context in regards to supplying Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France, with endless volumes of quick, quaffable, light red to match up with the rich fare served in traditional bouchons. Did you know that Beaujolais has been nicknamed Lyon's third river, for its constant wine supply? ... After the Saone and the Rhone. We're drinking a beautiful Chenas by Julien Guillet of Clos des Vignes du Maynes this evening. It's the perfect example of an elegant, nuanced balance of fruit and gentle tannins. Has a bit of the black tea that I love. It's a gem and a true testament to the potential (and merit) of certain Beaujolais Cru vineyards earning Premier Cru status in the next decade or so. The best of the Cru Beaujolais can certainly give a Burgundian pinot noir a run for its money ... Speaking of money, talking about a wine that rivals in finesse, at a fraction of the price. Cheers et bonne soiree! PITTSFIELD A local man was denied bail this week after allegedly slicing another man's neck in downtown Pittsfield. Walter Gadson Jr., 28, of Pittsfield, was taken into custody after a clerk Monday found probable cause to charge him with a felony count of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon as well as two misdemeanor charges of assault and battery and violating an abuse prevention order. The court case launched after a man was brought to Berkshire Medical Center for treatment of a laceration to his throat after midnight on Saturday, according to court documents. After authorities learned of the man's injuries, Detective Ignacio Matos was dispatched to House of Seasoning on Seymour Street, where the incident started. Matos said in his report that he watched video of Gadson walking inside the restaurant then being escorted back out a short time later by security. Gadson proceeded to get into an altercation with a 31-year-old Pittsfield man in the parking lot, according to Matos. During the fight, witnesses said Gadson allegedly "sliced [the victim's] neck with a knife and then physically assaulted" the victim's girlfriend, grabbing her by the neck. She had an active abuse prevention order against Gadson, according to court documents. Per the terms of the order, Gadson was supposed to refrain from abusing the woman and stay away from her. The order was recently extended for one year. After the assault, the woman drove the knife-wound victim to the hospital, while applying pressure to his injury, according to Matos' report. The man received treatment for his laceration, and his condition was described as "good" as of about 4 a.m. on Saturday. The Berkshire District Attorney's office asked Judge Janine Simonian to order Gadson held without the right to bail for up to 120 days pursuant to the state's dangerousness statute. Assistant District Attorney Alexander Cerbo cited Gadson's criminal record and the current allegations against him as grounds for the request. In 2013, when Gadson was 18, he was sentenced to up to six years in prison for his role in an assault that left a teenager with a stab wound to the leg, a broken elbow and head contusions. In 2018, he was arrested in Marietta, Ga. after the driver of a car he was riding in fled from a traffic stop with a police officer inside. Simonian agreed to the DA office's no-bail request and ordered Gadson held without the right to bail while his case is pending in court. Business communities, officials call for closer China-U.S. collaboration Xinhua) 15:33, November 22, 2023 CHICAGO, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Some 700 Chinese, U.S. businessmen and officials gathering in downtown Chicago Monday called for collaboration between the two countries. China and the United States need to move in the same direction, and follow through on the important common understandings reached between the two countries' presidents and translate the commitments into concrete policies and real actions, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng said in his keynote speech at the 7th Annual Gala of the China General Chamber of Commerce-USA Chicago (CGCC). To embark on a new journey from San Francisco onward, the two sides need to rise to the challenges and act on the important common understandings reached in San Francisco, Xie said at the event on the theme of "Moving Forward." "The two sides need to respect each other, co-exist in peace and pursue winning in cooperation so as to turn the San Francisco vision into reality and further improve China-U.S. relations," he said. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) earlier this month upgraded China's GDP growth forecast for 2023 to 5.4 percent, which speaks volumes about "the confidence of the international community in the Chinese economy," Xie noted. More than 7,000 Chinese companies are right now doing businesses in the United States. The Chinese-funded members of the CGCC alone have invested over 137 billion U.S. dollars in the United States, creating over 230,000 jobs. Over 230 American businesses participated in this year's China International Import Expo, taking up the largest exhibition area for six years in a row, Xie said. "China's development is a blessing for the world and the success of China and the United States is an opportunity for each other. Sanction is never a solution, but will only create more problems," he said. "It is important to follow the will of our peoples, respect market rules and uphold free trade. And absolutely say no to any attempt to politicize economic issues on the pretext of security." Xie expressed the hope that the U.S. side will provide a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies, and CGCC Chicago will "continue building bridges and providing solutions for its members, pull the strength of our two peoples and make the pie of win-win cooperation bigger so as to inject more stability into China-U.S. relations and positive energy into the world." Xie awarded U.S.-China Friendship Envoy Award to former U.S. Ambassador to China Max Baucus at the gala for his contribution to the China-U.S. relationship. In a congratulatory letter, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson congratulated CGCC-USA Chicago on another successful year of fostering Chinese investments in the U.S. Midwest and strengthening the bond between China and Chicago. China has become Chicago's top trading partner with two-way trade reaching 102 billion dollars in 2022, making a remarkable 162-percent growth in one decade, Chicago City Government statistics show. "While Chicago is entering the winter season, the U.S.-China relationship starts to see the sign of early spring," said Ni Pin, chairman of CGCC-Chicago. The way to get to peaceful coexistence and co-development "is through active engagement and open, honest dialogue, not through decoupling," he stressed. CGCC-USA Chicago is a non-profit organization representing more than 260 Chinese-funded enterprises and partners in nine U.S. Midwest states. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Health insurance industry recovers from COVID-19 pandemic with adaptive strategies By Lee Hyo-jin BERLIN, Germany As of 2022, 17 percent of Koreas 51.6 million population were aged 65 and above. The figure is expected to rise to 20 percent in 2025, according to projections made by Statistics Korea, which would make the Asian nation a super-aged society. The countrys fertility rate the average number of children a woman gives birth to in her life reached a new low of just 0.78 in 2022, much lower than the 2.1 threshold needed to maintain the population at its present level. Among the many consequences of the nations rapidly aging population and low birthrate, increased public expenditure on health care is causing concern for the Korean government. The government is struggling to come up with long-term solutions to tackle the impending fiscal burden of the nations universal health coverage system handled by the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS). However, such a phenomenon is not limited to Korea alone. Similar challenges are faced by European countries with robust health insurance systems, such as Germany and Belgium. These wealthy nations are also grappling with increased financial pressures on social security and public health services caused by a combination of increased life expectancy and a shrinking workforce. A series of interviews with officials in the health insurance industry and a lawmaker based in Germany and Belgium, organized by Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare between Nov. 6 to Nov. 12, offered an insightful glimpse into how they are trying to find answers to this issue. Germanys health insurance based on solidarity, competition Germany is widely known as the birthplace of social insurance. The worlds first health insurance scheme built on a form of solidarity was established with Bismarcks Health Insurance Act in 1883. Currently, all citizens and foreign residents are obliged to subscribe to the health insurance system under the Health Insurance Compulsory Law enacted in 2009. Almost 90 percent of the nations 83 million population are covered by the public health insurance scheme locally known as Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung (GKV) while the other 10 percent, such as high-income employees and self-employed people, are covered by a private health insurance system, or the Private Krankenversicherung (PKV). The basic premium rate for public health insurance stands at 14.6 percent, shared between employers and employees at 7.3 percent, respectively. Contributions are automatically deducted from the monthly salary of the insured. Each insurance provider may charge an additional contribution rate a maximum of 1.6 percent for supplementary benefits beyond the legally prescribed catalog. A major aspect that differentiates Germanys health insurance scheme from that of Korea is that, unlike Korea where the NHIS is the single insurer, the European nation has nearly 100 self-governing insurance corporations within the public health insurance scheme. As such, people can "shop around" to find the best deals based on what types of coverage they need. This system, German officials say, is aimed at improving the overall quality of medical services through competition among the service providers. There are large companies like Siemens which has around 1 million subscribers, and then there are small ones with about 4,000 subscribers. But this doesnt necessarily mean that the smaller ones are financially unstable, said Thomas Schepp, who manages strategies and controls at BKK Dachverband, the umbrella organization of company-owned health insurances. Proactive immigration policies In the long term, Germany has recognized the potential role of immigration to help deal with the financial burdens caused by public health expenditures due to the impending demographic cliff. By accepting immigrants especially those of working age the country seeks to increase the number of contributors to both the social security and health insurance systems. Right now, I can't give you the exact figures on how much the immigrants are contributing to the financial stability of the public health insurance scheme. But I can say that the migrant flow from Eastern Europe induced by the financial crisis of 2008 has brought positive effects (in the public health insurance scheme)," said Schepp at BKK Dachverband. Officials at Techniker Krankenkasse (TK), one of the biggest health insurance provider based in Hamburg, also believes that active immigration policies are the best answer yet to be able to respond to the demographic challenge. "We could consider raising the additional contribution rate ... But for now, the immigration policies attracting young migrants are offsetting the speed of the aging population to some extent," said Thorsten Brackert, head of corporate development at TK. Korea, a predominantly homogeneous country, is looking for skilled migrant workers to reinvigorate its stuttering economy. Yet, when it comes to foreign nationals in the public health insurance scheme, Korea's NHIS has been grappling with a rise in foreign nationals who have exploited the system in recent years. Under current laws, salaried workers of foreign nationality wishing to apply for Korea's NHIS coverage are required to live in Korea for at least six months to sign up for the program through their employers and pay monthly premiums. But their dependents spouse, children or immediate family members are not subject to such requirements and thus are eligible to sign up regardless of their duration of stay here, as long as they meet certain criteria such as income and assets. There have been many cases of foreign family members, including parents of the subscribers, visiting Korea to receive health insurance benefits such as treatment and surgery, despite not living here. Regarding the potential for exploitation of the health German system, Brackert said, I wouldnt say that such a problem does not exist at all in Germany. But I think that isn't a big issue here because foreign nationals have to live here for at least several years to become eligible for all the health insurance benefits offered." Impact of COVID-19 When asked about the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the nation's health care expenditure for the last couple of years, Schepp replied that the pandemic has dealt a heavy blow on public spending concerning health care, but with ups and downs. "While costs associated with pandemic response surged, there was a contrasting reduction in spending on non-essential health care services related to physical therapy and routine medical check-ups," he explained. Nezahat Baradari, a lawmaker of the Social Democratic Party and a member of the Health Committee, introduced some legislative efforts made by the German parliament to tackle the deficit of the statutory health insurance system, which had intensified due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. The GKV Financial Stabilization Act, which came into effect in November 2022, is aimed at reducing expenditure on pharmaceuticals and addressing the supply shortage of drugs. "Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is significant pressure on the health insurance budget. But since it is difficult to raise insurance premiums, the law was enacted to being covered from the pharmacies and the pharmaceutical industry," she said. She went on to say that the cost-containment measures implemented under the newly introduced law have reduced the money allocated to pharmacies and drug manufacturers. "There was strong opposition from pharmacy associations," Baradari said, "But if we had not taken such measures, our health insurance system would have collapsed." Health insurance is also compulsory in Belgium, a country with nearly 12 million people. The public insurance system is managed by the National Institute for Sickness and Disability Insurance (NIHDI). Unlike Korea's NHIS, however, the NIHDI does not directly handle insurance benefits but is responsible for its overall management. Every Belgian resident is mandated to choose and register with a specific health insurance fund, commonly referred to as a "mutuelle." These non-profit organizations, six in total, operate independently based on political and religious backgrounds such as socialist, Christian and liberal. People can opt for one of these associations to pay insurance premiums, which guarantees the reimbursement of most medical, pharmaceutical and hospital-related expenses. Speaking to The Korea Times, Thierry Delestrait, an official at the financial department at NIHDI, explained that his institution, which oversees a budget of three billion euros, actively engages all relevant stakeholders in the budget decision-making process to ensure stability concerning financial management. Regarding the effects of the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, Delestrait said, "Around 30 different COVID-19 measures were introduced during the pandemic. One of our primary focuses was to increase the number of hospital beds to accommodate as many patients as possible, which obviously led to a surge in medical costs." He added that predicting the future financial performance of health insurance has become more challenging due to the pandemic. "But on the bright side, we are planning to continue to utilize some of the positive sides of the pandemic response measures, such as non-face-to-face consultations and a remote health care system." Thanksgiving Day is the No. 1 day for home fires in Massachusetts. Don't be a statistic with these fire safety tips Journalist and educator R. Gustav Niebuhr, who began his career at The Berkshire Eagle in 1980 and later reshaped how religion is covered in America, has died. Zebra mussels have been detected in Onota Lake, prompting the city to warn boat owners to steer clear Addressing a packed crowd Monday night at Cheshire's new town hall, Northern Berkshire EMS President John Meaney said he believes his operation can provide response times that are comparable to Adams Ambulance Service's to start. And those times will only improve as time goes on. When Adams Ambulance Service announced it would cease operating at years end, Northern Berkshire EMS which already covers the city of North Adams and a handful of surrounding towns said it was confident it could fill the coverage gap. Were glad to hear that NBEMS has been in discussion with relevant town leaders and already has a plan in place to take on this broader coverage area, and as with other critical services for Berkshire residents in rural areas, regional consolidation seems like a more efficient and sustainable option that frankly should have been considered sooner. Yet while NBEMS certainly seems on more stable financial footing than the collapsing ambulance service for which its set to take over, the question of how to achieve funding sustainability is one that echoes beyond Adams. Given the importance of reliable and quality emergency medical services especially in a graying and mostly rural county its reasonable to wonder what the future will hold for NBEMS and other emergency medical services that are private entities relying on fundraising and reimbursements as primary sources of income, with little to no municipal support. Brian K. Andrews: When EMS calls for help a plea for financial reform The writing on the wall is clear, signaling the need for systemic reforms to safeguard the future of EMS. Bake sales and spaghetti dinners arent going to fix this problem. Folks like Brian K. Andrews, president of EMS of Berkshire County and a board member of Massachusetts Ambulance Association, will tell you the answers arent pretty. In an op-ed he recently penned for The Eagle in the wake of Adams Ambulance Services closure announcement, he called it a broken financial model. Indeed, reimbursement trends from Medicare as well as private insurers to EMS dont paint a rosy fiscal picture, and those trends are likely to get worse for EMS services bottom lines. They can try to make up the difference with fundraising, but that difference is likely to grow and in communities less able to fundraise, somethings got to give. Adams Ambulance Services demise was not particularly surprising to those who heard the services cries for help earlier this year, such as when a board member said the service was in crisis mode and noted that the organization providing emergency medical response to three small towns was operating at an annual loss of $210,000. At the time, the Adams Ambulance Services board of directors suggested their struggles stemmed partly from a lack of municipal support. Perhaps thats a fair point, although it raises another question: Why are communities relying on private entities for EMS, contrary to how they arrange for other public safety services like fire and police? When someone calls 911 whether theyre calling for a peace officer, a firefighter or an ambulance why should the system providing what many perceive as a public service rely on a private nonprofits fundraising ability? Whether its municipal contracts with private EMS services or municipal entities themselves taking over, communities and the commonwealth at large need to have a frank conversation about whats required to backstop funding sustainability for quality and responsive EMS services to all residents. The reality is that, just like for police and fire departments, providing modernized, high-quality EMS services has gotten considerably more complex and costly in recent years a trend that isnt reversing or even slowing any time soon. There are some relatively simple and easy steps the state could take to stop making it harder for EMS services to operate and make their budgets. For instance, Mr. Andrews highlights several unfunded mandates that needlessly strain EMS entities, such as Neros Law, which orders Massachusetts ambulance services to have specialized training and transportation options for injured police K-9s. If the state wants to heap on those regulatory burdens, it should at least provide the funding to make it so; instead, the law as its enforced now simply puts the financial burden on already strapped EMS entities. The Legislature should consider turning those unfunded mandates into funded ones and be cautious about further piling on further unfunded mandates without considering the consequences for ambulance services already struggling to meet modern medical response demands. Beyond these relatively smaller considerations, though, the dire financial picture for many Massachusetts EMS organizations demands a systemic rethink as to how these vital services are funded. That might mean municipalities putting up more funding for their regions private ambulance services, or it might mean municipalities treating EMS services like police and fire departments for which theyre responsible for budgeting and operation. To be clear, were not questioning or undermining the hard, life-saving work that EMS workers within these entities provide. Were simply encouraging a clear-eyed look at the countywide sustainability of a key pillar of public safety services. We dont have all the answers here, and the right answers are likely to be different across communities with varying needs and budgetary flexibility. But given the troubling trends in insurance reimbursements as well as ballooning budgets and expectations for EMS organizations, these are questions and assessments that should be made sooner rather than later hopefully before another Berkshire EMS service flatlines. Girl group BLACKPINK receives credit at state banquet By Nam Hyun-woo LONDON President Yoon Suk Yeol and King Charles III of the United Kingdom paid tributes to the cultural influences of the two countries, Tuesday, with the king praising girl group BLACKPINK during a state banquet for the visiting president. As part of his state visit to the U.K., Yoon and his wife Kim Keon Hee attended a state banquet staged at Buckingham Palace hosted by the king, where more than 300 attendees from both countries showed up to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the two countries diplomatic ties. In his speech, Yoon praised how the friendship contributed to Koreas modern development. Most importantly, the United Kingdom is the architect of modern liberal democracy, Yoon said. Most democracies are deeply influenced by British parliamentary democracy and Korea is no exception. On the basis of our shared universal values of freedom, human rights and rules of laws, Korea will stand together with the U.K. for the freedom, peace, prosperity and future of the world. Yoon especially expressed gratitude to the U.K.s sending of troops during the 1950-53 Korean War, saying with the noble sacrifice of British soldiers, Korea could establish itself as a country with political freedom, economic prosperity and flourishing culture. Yoon praised the U.K. as being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution that resulted in the progress of human civilization and a country with great achievements in literature and science through the works of William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton. When I was young, my friends and I were all fans of The Beatles, Queen and Elton John. Harry Potter books are adored by many Koreans, Yoon said. Recently, Koreas BTS and BLACKPINK are enjoying the love of Britain. The song My Universe by BTS from Korea and Coldplay from the U.K. has resonated with and been adored by young people worldwide. With members of BLACKPINK attending the banquet, King Charles also praised the cultural influence of the girl group. I applaud Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rose, better known collectively as BLACKPINK, for their role in bringing the message of environmental sustainability to a global audience as ambassadors for the U.K.s presidency of COP26, and later as advocates for the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, the King said, referring to each member by name. COP26 is the United Nations Climate Change Conference. I can only admire how they can prioritize these vital issues, as well as being global superstars. Sadly, when I was in Seoul all those years ago, I am not sure I developed much of what might be called the Gangnam Style, the King said referring to the global hit by Korean rapper Psy. King Charles also noted that the artistic creativity of Korea is one of the reasons for the country's current industrial achievements. The Republic of Koreas drive and energy continued apace, and with it, the impact on British lives. From fridges and flatscreens to smartphones and semiconductors, it is clear that the model of industrial efficiency I glimpsed in Seoul thirty years ago has become the epitome of technological creativity today, the King said. During his speech, The King quoted Korean poet Yun Dong-jus lines. Yoon quoted Shakespeare's Sonnet 104 to end his speech. According to the Independent, King Charles and Queen Camilla presented a copy of Winston Churchills book, Stemming the Tide, which was hand-bound at Royal Bindery with a bespoke dedication label. Also, other gifts included a one-off special bottle of Laphroaig whisky, and a pashmina hand embroidered with Koreas official flower, the Mugunghwa. BillOReilly.com is not available in this country. We apologize for any inconvenience. Modern retail is more customer-focused than ever before. While this may seem like an obvious, or an even adventurous statement, consider how many new technologies are available to make the shopping experience that much more personalised and frictionless. Its no surprise, because customers live in a digital world and have far more options than ever before, and so enticing someone to choose to come to your store and spend their money needs careful planning - not only to remain relevant, but to be proactive and enhance the customers shopping experience. Take a moment to consider how quickly retail has evolved over the past five or ten years. Customers no longer want to be bombarded with information or technology when they walk into a store. Despite all the technology and data-driven power at a retailers disposal, the experience for the shopper needs to be relevant and it needs to be as ergonomic as possible. Forced to adapt and innovate In South Africa, which continues to battle load shedding, retailers have been forced to adapt. When the power goes, centralised systems have become far more relevant than trying to provide alternative power to every branch in the country. With a centralised system, no power does not mean no trading. Modern stores can switch to using a battery-powered iPad, for example, and continue serving the customer. We have seen a great deal of innovation in the payments space, and this is not only in high-end shops but also to make payments easier and safer for the man and woman on the street. People simply dont carry cash if they can help it. Consider the introduction of Payshap, for example. This low-cost platform enables shoppers to pay by only providing their mobile number, while they can make instant transfers or payments of up to R3,000. This, combined with other accessibility improvements and simplifications has substantially changed the shopping experience for lower-income earners. If we look across the spectrum, mobile money, virtual cards, QR payments, Google Pay, and Apple Pay - retailers are offering shoppers so many more options to pay for their goods. Not too long ago a teller may not have known that you were removing your phone to pay for goods but tapping your device is mainstream today. South Africa has a long history of leapfrogging entire generations of technology out of circumstance and necessity. The same is true with payments - the country has skipped a generation of payment technology and embraced modern mobile payments. Its here that a modern, specialist retail software partner plays an important consultative and advisory role. At redPanda Software, for example, while payment rails are not our core business, our team of retail-minded experts studies trends closely and we are able to connect customers with providers that can make the biggest impact in their business. Another shift is that many large retailers simply dont have the appetite anymore for large, long-term projects. Instead, retailers need to be agile and adapt to customer behaviour and trends quickly. This means retailers are likely to tackle smaller projects that can add value to their businesses sooner. The speed at which these projects are executed is crucial and this is why software partners need to be technology agnostic and experienced, to arrive at solutions that are fit for a customers unique business circumstances. If we are honest, there is catchphrase fatigue in the market. For instance, there is so much talk about artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, cloud computing, and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) that many businesses glaze over and look the other way. One cant blame them, but this is where a specialist partner is valuable in that it can digest all the trends, see the relevant use cases, and then bring workable solutions to the table. There are no longer separate channels when it comes to retail systems; continuous efforts are being made to have integrated systems that allow customers to seamlessly move from one platform or device to another as they shop. This, combined with personalised journeys and experiences for each customer catapults retail firmly into the digital age. Many of these exciting features and developments are being built into South African retailers operations. With all this in mind, and as we anticipate the store of the future, retailers would do well to choose partners who appreciate that one of the most important tasks is to reduce friction for the customer. In other words, while technology will power great innovation it needs to be ambient and ready to enrich an experience when needed, as opposed to being explicit and in ones face. In a bid to bridge the gap between brands and the dynamic youth market, Student Village recently hosted an unforgettable immersion called the A to Gen-Z Youth Experience. This offered an exclusive opportunity for brands to step into the shoes of students and immerse themselves in the vibrant world of SAs youth. Click here to see what went down. Often, we claim to understand youth, but do we truly know what it's like to be a student in today's fast-paced world? Student Village answered that question by showcasing a day in the life of a student, from start to finish. On a sunny Thursday, Student Village hosted Vodacom, Channel O, Standard Bank, and Heineken SA clients, who embarked on an eye-opening journey into the life of a South African student. The day began with a thrilling taxi ride, the way students would commute. Participants had the chance to spend time at the prestigious Wits campus, gaining insight into the academic life that students lead. To truly understand student life, they also dined on campus grub, took a tour around Braamfontein, a hub for student shopping, socialising, and all things student life. The adventure culminated in a memorable night out in Greenside, providing a taste of student nightlife, the Gen Z way! This experience represents a shift from traditional market research and engagement methods. Instead of just talking about understanding youth, Student Village took a different approach by inviting brands to experience it first-hand. Gabi Goldstein, CMO at Student Village, said: "We believe that actions speak louder than words. By taking part in this experience, equipped with a student card, a map and 100 bucks, brands can truly understand what it means to be a student in today's world. The day was jam packed hanging out with students, finding new and exciting ways for brands to connect, engage and resonate with this incredibly powerful and important market. If your brand is eager to dive into the world of South African students and create tailored experiences, reach out to Jonathan Dicks at az.oc.egallivtneduts@onoj. Student Village is excited to offer bespoke A to Gen-Z experiences to help brands build stronger connections with youth and stay ahead in today's ever-evolving marketplace. Don't just claim to know youth experience it for yourself! With the imminent launch of Amazon South Africa, many entrepreneurs are waiting for the opportunity to expand their global reach on this selling platform. On 17 October 2023, the e-commerce giant opened the registration phase for sellers in South Africa . From our discussions with businesses regarding Amazon at the 2023 E-commerce Live Event, business owners are keen to understand Amazons marketplace fees compared to local e-commerce giants such as Takealot, Makro, and Bobshop. Prebo Digital, a verified Amazon Ads partner, simplifies Amazon's fee structure and sheds some light on the questions you may have. Lets dive into the fees and some information about what Amazon offers to South African sellers. Amazon fee structures Amazon's fee structure for marketplace sellers always includes two fundamental components: selling plan fees and referral fees. No matter which fulfillment method you opt for, these two fees are integral aspects of your overall expenses when selling on Amazon. Additional fees you need to take into consideration are fulfillment fees if you use any of their fulfillment options and storage fees. Below, we help you understand the fees and how they impact your business, and provide valuable insights for sellers seeking to maximise their profits in the Amazon marketplace. Selling plans There are two types of selling plans available on Amazon: individual seller and professional seller. Professional seller account On the professional plan, you pay a monthly fee and get access to useful tools and features to help you maximise your growth on Amazon. These include creating a brand store for businesses with registered trademarks, A+ Content, Amazon Ads, Amazon Analytics and Amazon Vine. Professional seller accounts also have access to broader category options compared to individual seller accounts. You can list more products in different categories, giving you more choices and opportunities for what to sell on Amazon. For professional plans, sellers can expect to pay R400 per month, but with the launch in South Africa confirmed, sellers get a massively discounted rate of R1 per month on the professional plan until 31 December 2024. Individual seller account An individual seller account is best suited for businesses that sell fewer than 40 units a month. There are limited selling tools, like options to advertise your products, and limited access to categories to choose from for selling a product. For less than 40 sales a month, you can expect to pay R10 per item sold to Amazon. Shipping fees aka fulfillment fees Amazon offers three shipping options for sellers: fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), easy ship option (ES) and self ship. Each of these options has its own applicable shipping fees. Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) With FBA, sellers keep their products in Amazon's centres. Amazon handles order fulfillment, packing, shipping, and customer service. Sellers are required to pay fulfillment fees to Amazon for every item sold. The fulfillment fee starts at R27 (excluding VAT) per unit and varies by the size of your product. To get an idea of what your specific products fulfillment fees will be, you can use this helpful calculator. If you opt for FBA, there are also monthly storage fees payable. These fees are assessed monthly and depend on the volume of storage space that is used by the seller. Inventory that has been in the fulfillment centre for more than a year will incur a long-term storage fee. Also, take note that sellers are responsible for shipping their products to Amazon's fulfillment centres by personally covering the cost of shipping their inventory to the designated Amazon facility. Amazon easy ship Unique to South Africa, the Amazon easy ship programme offers sellers on Amazon a convenient service similar to the Makro fulfillment service. Sellers pack the order and can have their packaged orders collected and shipped through an associate from Amazon's designated courier, ensuring a quick and predictable delivery experience for customers. This service also includes up-to-date shipment tracking information. Amazon's easy ship programme imposes fees for parcel shipments based on the product's value and weight. For products valued up to R500 (VAT included) with an actual weight of less than 32kg, there is a flat fulfillment fee of R20 (VAT excluded). For boxes with at least one product starting at R500 (VAT included), the fulfillment fee varies based on weight, with fees ranging from R43 for products weighing 0-250 grams to R99 for products weighing 20,001-30,000 grams. An additional fee of R5 per kilogram applies to these weight-based handling fees. The calculation considers either the actual weight or volumetric weight, whichever is greater, and rounds up to the nearest weight range. The maximum parcel length is 175 cm, with a maximum girth of 419 cm, and fees are subject to change. The examples in the Amazon easy ship guide illustrate how fees are calculated, considering the product's value, actual weight, and volumetric weight, with fees presented as VAT-excluded amounts. Amazon self ship Amazon sellers can also choose to use the self ship option, which means that as a seller, you store, package, and ship all your products. The cost for shipping your order through a third party carrier of your choice will differ from carrier to carrier. Referral fees Referral fees are a percentage of the item's selling price, and fees vary by product category. For every item sold, youll pay a percentage of the total price or a minimum amount to Amazon, whichever is greater. These fees start from 3% or min R10 and go up to 15%. Comparing Amazon's fees to Takealot, Makro and Bobshop: Takealot Similar to Amazon, Takealot charges a success fee (referral fee in Amazon terms) based on the product category, however, Takealot's fees tend to be slightly higher (up to 18% compared to Amazons 15%), making Amazon's fees potentially more competitive for some product categories. Takealot also charges a monthly seller fee of R400, fulfillment fees and storage fees, depending on your business model. You can use this Takealot fee estimator to calculate your estimated revenue. Makro Makro operates on a different model, where sellers do not pay a monthly, listing or fulfillment fee for items up to 40kg or 80cm x 70cm x 60cm. There is an undisclosed percentage of order item value referral fee applicable based on the category youre selling in. Bobshop Bobshop (previously bidorbuy) doesnt charge a monthly fee to sell on the platform but they also charge success fees based on product categories. These fees range from 2.5% (cars) to 8.75%. If you list a product in the classifieds format or list in some service-related categories, there is no referral fee, only a listing fee will then be applicable. Other fees unique to Bobshop that you need to be aware of are bobPay transfer fees and enhancement fees (if you want to promote your listing). The table below goes into more comparative detail: Integrating Amazon's fees into your pricing strategy When you choose to sell on Amazons marketplace, it is important to incorporate all fees into your pricing strategy. Research your competitors and set competitive prices that factor in Amazon's fees while still offering value to your customers. At Prebo Digital, we include the profitability analysis and pricing calculations in your launch plan. Regularly monitoring your sales and adjusting your pricing strategy is needed to maintain profitability. If you are incorporating Amazon ads, make sure your pricing accounts for both advertising fees and referral fees. About Prebo Digital Prebo Digital is a verified Amazon Ads partner, and has been growing businesses on Amazon in other countries for more than four years. Weve learned many lessons along the way that have made this onboarding process stress-free and structured for our clients. We are ready to help you succeed on Amazon. Lets get you started with the following: Getting an understanding of how Amazon works for merchants Product listing preparation Keyword research Seller account setup Launch strategy (Fulfillment method & inventory planning / Profitability analysis and pricing calculations) If you have a registered trademark, Prebo Digital can also assist you with designing your storefront and creating A+ content to make your listings stand out. The state of Texas has filed a lawsuit against Pfizer and Tris Pharma - a smaller privately held pharmaceutical company - alleging that they knowingly distributed ADHD medication to numerous children, despite being aware that the treatment was compromised due to sub-standard manufacturing practices. The legal action originated from a whistleblower complaint filed by Tarik Ahmed, who served as Tris' head of technology from 2013 to 2017. Filed in the District Court of Harrison County, Texas, the lawsuit claims that between 2012 and 2018, Pfizer and Tris engaged in manipulation of quality-control testing for the drug Quillivant XR. The tests, mandated by federal law, were allegedly manipulated to yield passing results. The lawsuit contends that accurately conducted tests often revealed the drug's failure to dissolve as intended, indicating that it might not be released in the body as expected. The legal action contended that Pfizer, even with awareness of quality-control issues, influenced Texas' Medicaid programme to include Quillivant in its roster of preferred drugs. The pharmaceutical company based in New York, along with New Jersey's Tris Pharma Inc., secured Medicaid reimbursements through "fraudulent and unlawful" statements, as asserted by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the lawsuit. Paxton further asserted that numerous Texas families reported dissatisfaction, claiming that Quillivant did not produce the intended effects. Quillivant was formulated by Nextwave Pharmaceuticals, a company acquired by Pfizer in 2012. Similar to other medications for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, it faced challenges with shortages and did not attain a significant national market share. Requests for comment from Pfizer and Tris went unanswered. Wunderman Thompson South Africa is proud to announce that their group strategy director, Parusha Partab, has been honoured with the prestigious 2023 Strategic Planner of the Year Award at the Global Women in Marketing (WiM) Awards. Parusha's exceptional strategic expertise and dedication have not only set her apart and earned her this remarkable recognition but have also secured her a position as the sole African recipient in a highly competitive field. Parusha Partab The Strategic Planner of the Year category was established to acknowledge the critical role planners and strategists play in todays increasingly complex and dynamic business landscape. This award specifically celebrates female planning and strategy specialists working on the agency side or within client organisations. Upon receiving the award, Partab expressed her gratitude. She said, Creating an inclusive environment that celebrates the achievements of women around the world is truly significant. In todays marketing landscape, marked by increasing volatility and complexity, the role of planners and strategists has never been more vital. However, throughout Africa, women are underrepresented, especially at executive levels, so this recognition is noteworthy and inspiring, and it's a shared win for my African sisters in marketing. Miles Murphy, CEO of Wunderman Thompson South Africa, also shared his thoughts on Parusha's achievement: Parusha is a real rising star. She is an exceptionally strong leader. She has built a team of formidable senior strategists at Wunderman Thompson here in South Africa working with our clients to develop break through strategies that help them win and grow. It is a real honour to call her my colleague and friend. Growing an inclusive culture that ensures that everyone from all backgrounds succeed and have a voice is what makes our business special. WiM is a community dedicated to educating, inspiring, connecting, recognising, and empowering women throughout their professional journeys. This network, known as WiM CIC, takes a holistic approach to womens education and well-being in marketing and related professions. It collaborates with organisations that align with its mission, from large corporations to charitable entities and female entrepreneurs, representing the ever-evolving marketing world. These Awards were introduced in 2010 due to the popularity of WiM events. Past recipients have included senior executives from esteemed companies such as Burberry, Google, Facebook, Hearst UK, Unilever, Diageo, IPG, SAP, Live Nation, and WPP. Over the past decade, WiM has grown into a global network of influential individuals across the marketing sector. Partab's win at the 2023 Women in Marketing Awards highlights not only her outstanding contributions to the field but also her commitment to promoting gender diversity and inclusivity within the marketing industry. Her achievement serves as an inspiration to women across Africa and around the world. CIMA members to be formally recognised as practicing finance and accounting professionals for the built environment, construction, and consulting engineering industries in South Africa. The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), the worlds leading professional body and one of the founding members of the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, is pleased to announce the recognition of CIMAs CGMA Professional Qualification by the Construction Sector Charter Council (CSCC), under Construction Code Series (CSC) 200 and 300. CIMA joins a group of prominent South African professional bodies from the health, legal, architecture, and human resources sectors recognised by the CSCC, which oversees and monitors the implementation of the CSC of Good Practice across the South African construction industry. Lenise Wagner, director of markets and performance, at AICPA & CIMA, together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, said: The recognition of CIMAs CGMA Professional Qualification by the CSCC marks a significant milestone for CIMA members working in the built environment, construction, and consulting engineering industries in South Africa. "It gives official recognition to their knowledge, skills, and competencies as strategic business partners who drive sustainable business performance for organisations operating across these industries. By choosing to hire CIMA members, employers ensure their finance teams are comprised of future-ready finance professionals, capable of adapting to the ever-changing needs of the business world. Three Minor Hotels properties have received notable international recognition for their exceptional hospitality, wellness offerings, and commitment to providing luxurious guest experiences. These properties, including The Royal Livingstone Hotel by Anantara, Anantara Bazaruto Island Resort in Mozambique, and Avani Windhoek Hotel & Casino in Namibia, exemplify Minor Hotels' unwavering dedication to maintaining the highest standards of hospitality across its global portfolio. Source: Supplied World Spa Awards The Royal Livingstone Hotel by Anantara, a member of the Minor Hotels group, has been recognised for its exceptional achievements in luxury travel and wellness tourism. The Anantara Spa at The Royal Livingstone Hotel by Anantara secured the coveted title of "Zambia's Best Safari Spa 2023" from the renowned World Spa Awards. "This honour underscores the spa's excellence within the spa and wellness tourism sector, earned through a rigorous selection process involving votes from industry experts, media representatives, and the general public," says Lindi Mthethwa, the regional director of sales and marketing. The World Spa Awards are dedicated to establishing benchmarks for exceptional standards and promoting connections between spa enthusiasts and the pinnacle of spa and wellness tourism. Source: Supplied A revitalising haven Nestled against the majestic backdrop of the Zambezi River, the spa offers an unparalleled setting for indulging in rejuvenating massages, where the splendour of nature amplifies the blissful experience. Tailored to guests' individual lifestyles and preferences, the spa embraces a holistic approach to wellness, all within the tranquil embrace of Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park. Whether guests seek authentic African therapies utilising TheraVine products or classic Western treatments that promote overall well-being, this spa provides a harmonious blend of spa, fitness, and wellness elements to enrich their stay. Conde Nast Traveller Readers Choice Awards> The Royal Livingstone Hotel by Anantara has further cemented its reputation as a top-tier luxury destination by securing the 12th position in the prestigious Conde Nast Traveller Readers Choice Awards. "This longstanding recognition, now in its 36th year, is a testament to the hotels commitment to delivering exceptional experiences to its guests. More than half a million readers participated in this years survey, rating their travel experiences around the globe to create a list of the most beloved destinations," says Mthethwa. Laurie Burr, general manager of The Royal Livingstone Hotel by Anantara, expressed his delight at the hotels exceptional achievements: "We are thrilled to receive these two outstanding awards, which reflect the dedication and hard work of our team. "These honours not only recognise our commitment to delivering unparalleled luxury and wellness experiences but also underline the timeless appeal of Victoria Falls as a premier travel destination. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all those who voted and supported us in these prestigious awards. Source: Supplied World Travel Awards In addition to the above accolades, two more properties in the Minor Hotels African portfolio were honoured in the prestigious World Travel Awards, an organisation dedicated to acknowledging, rewarding, and celebrating excellence across various sectors of the global travel and tourism industry. Established in 1993, the World Travel Awards has become a globally recognised symbol of industry excellence, with votes cast by qualified executives within the travel and tourism sectors, as well as discerning consumer travel buyers. "These awards serve as a testament to the exceptional standards upheld at every Minor Hotels property whether under the Anantara or Avani brand. As these award-winning hotels celebrate the industrys highest recognition, they are inspired to continue providing an unparalleled fusion of luxury and adventure for guests, ensuring their experiences remain at the forefront of excellence," concludes Mthethwa. Introducing the Tanzania eLibrary Project - enhancing the availability and quality of educational resources for 11 mil students One of our core missions is to grow literacy and develop healthy digital ecosystems in Africa. Part of that includes establishing a formal partnership with the Tanzania Institute for Education (TIE) to launch the Tanzania eLibrary Project. This initiative aims to enhance the availability and quality of educational resources for students throughout Tanzania over the next three years. The Tanzania eLibrary Project involves the widespread implementation of Snapplifys cutting-edge eLibrary platform in every school in Tanzania. Additionally, over 11 million students and 190,000 teachers will receive a personalised Snapplify account, enabling convenient access to a wide range of educational resources from various partner platforms. Through this collaboration, TIE will be offering Tanzanian students unparalleled access to educational resources. With an extensive collection of over 50,000 digital library books and TIE-prescribed content, students will now have access to a wealth of educational materials, promoting a continuous learning and development culture. A standout feature of our platform, known as Engage, is its accessibility. The platform ensures 24/7 availability, even in remote and rural areas. Furthermore, the content can be accessed offline after downloading, enabling students to utilise the resources on different devices, including mobile phones, bypassing any technological infrastructure limitations. What makes the eLibrary platform unique is its commitment to diversity and inclusivity. UNESCO recognised this and awarded Snapplify with the King Sejong Literacy Award for 2023 for the e-library platforms global contribution to advancing literacy. The eLibrary offers an extensive collection of titles in various African languages, supporting Tanzanian publishers and authors. By embracing indigenous literature and promoting local voices, TIE and Snapplify aim to instil a sense of cultural pride and identity among Tanzanian students. Government partnership manager, Stephen Bestbier, expressed excitement about the collaboration, stating, Our partnership with TIE aligns with our shared vision of using technology to democratise access to education. By providing students with a comprehensive digital learning ecosystem, we hope to cultivate a passion for learning and encourage academic excellence among Tanzanian youth. With the launch of the Tanzania eLibrary Project, we aim, alongside the TIE to pave the way for a brighter and more prosperous future for Tanzania, nurturing a generation of empowered and knowledgeable leaders ready to tackle tomorrows challenges. Thousands of schools have already joined the Snapplify Engage family. Register online for free today to get access to teacher benefits and other incredible educational tools. Email moc.yfilppans@olleh to chat about your specific needs and how we can work together. Find out more Snapplify Home | Engage | B2B Solutions | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn About Snapplify Snapplify is at the forefront of edtech solutions in Africa, and specialises in enabling digital learning via the largest digital education marketplace in Africa. Thousands of educational institutions across Africa use Snapplify every day to teach, learn, and access educational content. Snapplify is the largest aggregator of digital content in Africa; has the largest network of independent booksellers in Africa; and is the home of the largest community of teachers in Africa. In addition, Snapplifys education technology is used by education businesses and governments throughout the wider education ecosystem to power their edtech products and interventions. Most recently, Snapplify was awarded the UNESCO King Sejong Award for promoting mother-tongue literacy (2023), the GESS award for Higher Education Supplier of the Year (2023), an EdTech Digest Cool Tool finalist nomination (2022, 2023), the EdTech Breakthrough Award for Industry Leadership (2021); and was included on the esteemed 2021 HolonIQ EdTech 50 list honours that are indicative of the companys calibre in tech innovations. South Africa's third-biggest telecom company, Telkom, said on Tuesday that it is in exclusive negotiations with a preferred bidder on the possible sale of its masts and towers business, Swiftnet. A shopper arrives at a branch of South Africa's mobile operator Telkom at the Trade Route Mall, in Lenasia outside Johannesburg. Source: Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko Telkom, also a fixed-line phone company, said the preferred bidder is a consortium of equity investors, including a Black Economic Empowerment partner, led and managed by a reputable private equity firm. Telkom, which spun off its telecom towers and masts into a separate unit, has been exploring options to unlock value in the business, which it sees as undervalued because it is trapped in the group structure. At the same time, the operator, which is majority-owned by the government, is reorganising itself as an infrastructure company to drive strategic growth through consolidating core assets, it said. This process is expected to be in full effect by the end of 2025, Telkom said. "Once the infrastructure company structure is in place and the masts and towers transition is concluded, Telkom will consider further opportunities to realise value, including ... the minority partnerships for Openserve and a strategic equity partner for BCX," it said referring to its fibre and ICT businesses. 'Today, Gaza unfortunately is the largest graveyard in modern history' Siam By Kim Hyun-bin In a passionate plea to the international community, Waleed Siam, the non-resident ambassador of the State of Palestine to Korea, decried the dire situation in Gaza, describing it as the largest graveyard in modern history. "Forty-seven days ago, Gaza was regarded as the largest open prison or a concentration camp. Today, Gaza unfortunately is the largest graveyard in modern history," Siam said during a press conference held at the Oman Embassy in Seoul, Wednesday. Twelve ambassadors to Korea from Arab countries and members of the Arab Ambassadors Group attended the press conference in a show of solidarity with Palestine. Among them were UAE Ambassador Abdulla Alnuaimi, Qatari Ambassador Khalid Ebrahim Al-Hamar and Egyptian Ambassador Khaled Abdelrahman Hassan Abdelrahman. Expressing deep sadness and shock, Siam highlighted the ongoing attacks occurring daily in Gaza and criticized the international community for its lack of immediate action to halt the conflict. "We commend the position of other countries, Islamic nations, and friendly nations in supporting an immediate ceasefire and ending Israeli occupation not only of Gaza but the West Bank and East Jerusalem," he said. Siam cited the Israeli bombing of Gaza in recent weeks, in retaliation against the bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. He provided grim statistics, stating that over 14,000 civilians, including 5,840 children and newborns, have lost their lives, with 6,800 missing and 1.7 million Palestinians displaced. The ambassador expressed concern over the destruction and loss of life, questioning the targeting of homes, religious sites, and hospitals that hinder urgent medical care. Siam criticized Israel for seemingly enjoying immunity from international law, calling for accountability for what he said are acts of terror and ethnic cleansing against Palestinian citizens. "The fact that the members of this government openly called for the extermination of Palestinians is deeply disturbing," he said. "We find it unacceptable to label innocent civilians as terrorists and justify their targeting as an act of self-defense." Siam underscored the urgent need for international attention, especially from the United Nations Security Council, urging its members not to shield Israel. He called for condemnation and an end to the ongoing attacks. "We will do everything within our power to hold these criminal actions and ensure that those responsible will be held accountable," Siam said. Calling the conflict an asymmetric war and a war crime, Siam rejected a temporary ceasefire, asserting the State of Palestine's right to govern Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem without external interference. "We don't want a temporary ceasefire; we want to end the war. The State of Palestine will govern Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and we will not accept anything less," he declared. Siam highlighted the Arab Peace Initiative as a viable solution, expressing frustration with Israel's refusal to comply since 2002. He asserted that the initiative, which calls for Israel's withdrawal to the 1967 borders and the recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital, is evidence that Israel does not genuinely seek peace. "The solution has been on the table for many years. It's time for a Palestinian state with full sovereignty," Siam said. "We've waited 75 years; we've had enough." While no one likes to dwell on their end of life, it is an inevitability, which is why having a last will and testament is crucial. This helps ensure that loved ones who are left behind are able to handle your personal responsibilities and wishes in the ways that you would want them to. On the other hand, without a valid, up-to-date will, things may not turn out as you would have liked them to. For this reason, understanding your local inheritance laws is important, as this will help you make informed decisions when deciding how your estate should be divvied up. Surprisingly, not all countries share the same rules, and some even have some unusual ones, which require sensitive handling. In South Africa, for example, we have freedom of testation, which means we have the freedom to bequeath our assets as we choose. However, if no will is in place, affairs fall into the Intestate Succession Act which means your estate will be divided according to a set, legal formula. The United States is another one of the few countries where there is no forced heirship at all. Unlike many other nations, as a legal concept, forced heirship is almost non-existent over there, with the exception of Louisiana. As such, the majority of people in the US can distribute their assets in any manner they see fit, irrespective of whether they have descendants or not. Splitting heirs In other countries, inheritances are handled very differently. For example, in all Muslim-run countries, Islamic or Shariah law is applicable, meaning intestate succession is governed by Islamic principles. This means there are specific rules guiding the distribution of assets among beneficiaries based on the relationship between the deceased and the heirs, which may differ from common law systems. Nepal is another country that has a unique provision in its intestate succession laws. If an individual dies without a will, their property is divided equally among their children. If a child has died before the parent, the share will be passed down to the grandchildren (in the case that the child who died has children), rather than being redistributed among the surviving offspring. South Korea, on the other hand, has a system that divides assets not only among direct descendants but also among extended family, including siblings and nieces or nephews. This is a significant departure from certain other jurisdictions where the primary focus is on direct descendants alone. Restrictions on distribution In Sweden, there is a "maintenance portion" law, which means that even if a person writes a will, a certain portion of the estate has to go to the surviving spouse and children. It is the same in France where the system of forced heirship sees deceased's children being entitled to a minimum share of the estate. This minimum share is generally between half and three quarters of the estate (depending on the number of children who survive their parent). Andorra adopts the same law, where there are restrictions on freedom of disposition. There are two important compulsory restrictions on testamentary freedom in the country. Firstly, a quarter of the deceaseds estate has to be transferred to his or her children, and in the case where no children exist, to his or her ascendants. In addition, a quarter of the estate must be transferred to a surviving spouse if the said spouse does not have enough money or resources to maintain their standard of living. Half and half Singapores approach to intestate succession is a unique one, because the estate is divided between the spouse and parents, with the spouse receiving half and the other half being divided among the parents. Until recently, inheritance laws in the United Kingdom were subject to primogeniture, meaning the eldest son inherited the estate in its entirety, excluding younger siblings, irrespective of gender. This has been reformed in recent years to facilitate a more equitable distribution of any inheritance among siblings. Moreover, these days, if no will exists, UK laws distribute the estate between the immediate family members, including the spouse, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, regardless of gender. Indias Hindu Succession Act of 1956, which applies to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs, also introduced dramatic changes to the way property is distributed. It granted equal inheritance rights to daughters, which was a major departure from traditional Hindu succession practices in which sons were favoured. Finally, Africa, with its many cultures and customs, has laws that vary from country to country. In some African nations, customary law governs inheritance, with complex inheritance rules that change from one region to another. In most cases, these laws prioritise the needs of the community and family over individual ones. Be prepared In short, no two places are the same and understanding your local inheritance laws is important. To ensure that loved ones are well looked after when you pass away and to enable them to move on without the stress that winding up an estate can cause, bring in a professional company such as Capital Legacy to assist you with getting your affairs in order, or speak to your financial advisor. Atlantis Foods has announced a collaboration with On The Green Side, a plant-based food company, which will commence on 1 December 2023. Image supplied This strategic partnership is set to revolutionise the marketing, sales, distribution, and development of an exciting new range of products. Atlantis Foods stands as a trusted supplier of an extensive seafood selection to wholesalers, distinguished food service clients, and key players in the retail sector. Neil Pascall, managing director of Atlantis Foods, expressed his enthusiasm for this innovative venture, stating, "We are very excited about this innovative partnership that will usher in a new era for Atlantis Foods, symbolising a significant step forward into a more sustainable future. With our well-established footprint and large team, we are able to introduce the brand to locations previously out of their reach." Founded in 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa, On The Green Side is at the forefront of plant-based food technology, utilising High Moisture Extrusion techniques. In 2020, they introduced products to the local market, driven by a steadfast commitment to sustainability and an unwavering passion for delectable cuisine. Their plant-based protein remarkably replicates the taste and texture of real chicken, a recognition echoed by major retailers. On The Green Side's mission is to spearhead the plant-based food revolution, seamlessly merging innovation with taste for a positive environmental impact, both presently and in the future. John Uys, general manager of On The Green Side, emphasised their vision, stating, "Our vision has always been to focus on a sustainable supply of affordable protein that is accessible to consumers worldwide. For us, the choice has never been between plant-based meat replacements and animal protein. We believe there is room for both, and we feel that by combining our cutting-edge technology with the production, sales, marketing, and distribution resources of a reputable company like Atlantis Foods, we will be in a better position to execute our goal. We are really thrilled about this cooperation and believe it is a move in the right direction where we can contribute to more sustainable global protein supply chains." As part of this collaboration, Atlantis Foods will undertake the manufacturing and processing of On The Green Side's crumbed products in their partner factories located in Atlantis. This initiative will not only bolster the Atlantis community but will also serve as a pioneering model of a broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) transaction. The factory operations are wholly owned by Workers' Trusts, ensuring benefits are channelled directly to the beneficiaries, who are previously disadvantaged individuals from the Atlantis area. The partnership will culminate in the launch of a new range of plant-based crumbed products, slated for early 2024. The agreement between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on the EU Digital Identity Wallet is open to abuse and gives Brussels the ability to deny people rights and control them. According to the new European legislation, the wallets, which are to be voluntary for the time being, will include digital versions of all ID cards, driving licenses, degree certificates, and medical documentation. The European Commission insists that the system will be secure, and the current Spanish presidency of the EU is saying that this will make the EU a digital leader at a global level in protecting democratic values, but what has digitalization got to do with European values? On the contrary, the move actually threatens European values as argued by 504 academics and experts from 39 countries who have signed an open letter warning of the dangers to peoples online security and freedom. The pandemic moved us in this direction when the Covid-19 vaccine passports were introduced and limited the right to travel. The new wallet will move us much further in the direction of oppression. Having all documents in one place means that they can be confiscated in one click. This was done by the Trudeau administration in Canada when, during Covid, it denied vaccine-refusers access to their accounts and later removed insurance rights from drivers participating in the protest blockade of the capital, Ottawa. It also means that member states begin to lose the exclusive right to rescind the documentation that has been issued. Brussels will be able to do that as well. Brussels and Commissioner Thierry Breton want to go further still by introducing the digital euro currency, while Breton is the commissioner seeking to censor social media. If financial matters find their way into this wallet, greater control of peoples lives will be facilitated with the possibility of introducing a system of social credits or electronic sanctioning of those engaged in protests. Such a system will also enable the authorities to control the way people spend their money as happened in Canada and Brazil. Digital currency makes business easier, but it is also an instrument for removing our rights to privacy. The head of Polands central bank Adam Glapinski, says consumers do not want their bank to know about all their transactions and full digital centralization of transactions removes that right to anonymity. This latest EU move is also tied to the proposed treaty changes, which include the phasing out of all national currencies in favor of the euro. Not only would Poland be denied the right to conduct its own monetary policy, but the EU would also control the wallets of Polish citizens. Banks in Canada and Australia have already begun to count the carbon footprints of their clients purchases. This is just one step away from stopping them from making some transactions if certain limits are exceeded. But it is the EU, together with China, that is a leader in constructing electronic leashes on its citizens. The digital transformation of post-pandemic funds is to help push Europe in that direction too. However, the irony is that this whole process in the EU could be stalled as a result of the poor state of the digital economy in Germany. That country is way behind when it comes to access to broadband and fiber optics and without that, it will be difficult for them to manage the transfer of the masses of data involved. It is hard to talk about digital currency or digital passports in a country where there are still problems with online services and online card transactions. The stance of the Polish government on this matter is not clear, and the Nov. 28 sitting of the European Commission, at which this will be debated, is approaching fast. There is a danger that the new Polish government may just let this through. There can be little doubt that Eurocrats want to create a liberal regime in which citizens are increasingly controlled by the authorities based in Brussels. Two British companies announced plans to make a combined investment of $1.16 billion in Korea in a move to expand bilateral ties in the renewable energy sector, the industry ministry said Wednesday. Under the plan, Corio Generation, currently developing eight offshore wind power complexes in Korea with a combined capacity of 2.9 gigawatts, aims to expedite the project through the investment, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. British oil giant BP has also revealed a plan to invest in an offshore wind power complex in Korea's southern coastal region, along with a continued expansion of its investment in the country's renewable energy industry. The industry ministry said the investment package is expected to stimulate local demand for tower structures, turbines and power cables, eventually revitalizing the regional economy and fostering job creation. The ministry did not disclose the specific amount of investment from each company. "This investment is a symbol of fortifying cooperation on carbon-free energy with Britain, a leading nation in the carbon neutrality sector. We hope that this investment boosts the development of South Korea's offshore wind power ecosystem," Industry Minister Bang Moon-kyu said. The announcements were made on the margins of President Yoon Suk Yeol's state visit to Britain that began Monday. (Yonhap) Borsa Italiana non ha responsabilita per il contenuto del sito a cui sta per accedere e non ha responsabilita per le informazioni contenute. Accedendo a questo link, Borsa Italiana non intende sollecitare acquisti o offerte in alcun paese da parte di nessuno. Sarai automaticamente diretto al link in cinque secondi. Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See's secretary for relations with states, has held a Mass in Seoul in memory of early Korean martyrs, the Seoul Archdiocese said Wednesday. The Mass took place Tuesday at the Seosomun Shrine, which commemorates early Korean martyrs, with Archbishop of Seoul Peter Chung Soon-taick, Ivan Santus, a member of the Holy See diplomatic service and representatives from some 20 embassies in Seoul in attendance. Archbishop Gallagher, who is visiting Korea from Nov. 20 to 23, to mark 60 years of Korea and Holy See relations, emphasized the need to have devotion and faith to help contribute to the common good and humanity. His visit is "intended to be a concrete sign to continue the path traveled over 60 years of diplomatic relations, with the courage to trace new paths of peace," according to the Vatican. (Yonhap) Wood carving at a Christmas market. Photograph: Florian Trykowski. DZT/Florian Trykowski Artisanal treasures Immerse yourself in the holiday spirit by exploring wooden carvings from the Ore Mountains, artistic glass baubles, and unique handmade items from the region. Advertisement Advertisement With markets offering a variety of traditional and alternative goods, its the perfect occasion to find special presents for your loved ones. Leipzig: market place with Christmas market. Photo: Philipp Kirschner. Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH/Philipp Kirschner Historical highlights Dresden, home to the oldest Christmas market established in 1434, now hosts six different markets scattered around the city centre. Advertisement Meanwhile, Stuttgart boasts one of the largest Christmas Markets, where stalls compete in a dazzling roof decoration competition. Berlin has more than 100 markets including non-traditional options such as the Christmas Avenue hosted by the LGBTQI+ community, adding a unique touch to the festive atmosphere. Bremen at night. Photo: Jonas Ginter. BTZ/Jonas Ginter Regional flair Bremens Schlachte Magic market combines traditional Christmas charm with a medieval touch, offering mead, fruit wine, and craftsman demonstrations. Advertisement Aachens Christmas market celebrates its 50th anniversary, renowned for its unique Lebkuchen called Aachener Printen, a treat similar to gingerbread. Traditional gingerbread. Photo: Jens Wegener. DZT/Jens Wegener Signature food and drinks Experience the delightful childrens punch, a non-alcoholic alternative to mulled wine, and savour Nuremberg Lebkuchen gingerbread, a centuries-old speciality. Dresdens Christstollen, a bread-shaped cake rich in butter, milk, and spices, is a must-try during the holiday season. Christmas traditions In Germany, the Christmas tree takes centre stage in holiday celebrations. Families participate in the custom of Christbaumloben, praising neighbours trees and receiving small gifts in return. Christmas dinner, a time of love and connection, varies across regions, with hearty dishes like potato salad and sausages or roast goose with potato dumplings and red cabbage. Quedlinburg: Weihnachtsmarkt. Photo: Nico Reischke. Quedlinburg-Tourimus-Marketing GmbH/Nico Reischke Advent city Quedlinburg Explore the Unesco World Heritage City of Quedlinburg in the Harz Mountains, transformed into an Advent wonderland in December. The town square hosts a Christmas market against a backdrop of stunning timber-framed houses. Additionally, private courtyards open their doors for independent markets, creating a unique experience for visitors. Quedlinburg is home to the largest Advent calendar in Germany, with 24 real doors revealing stories and sweet treats. Germanys Christmas markets offer a magical journey through centuries-old traditions, culinary delights and unique regional celebrations, making it the perfect destination for a festive holiday experience. In cooperation with the German National Tourist Board A former senior banker at Irish Nationwide told the multi-million euro trial of Michael Lynn that he never met the former solicitor. Former home loans manager at the building society Brian Fitzgibbon responded they are all lies, when defence counsel put his client's position that they met and had dealings to him. Advertisement Mr Lynn (55), of Millbrook Court, Redcross, Co Wicklow is on trial accused of the theft of around 27 million from seven financial institutions. He has pleaded not guilty to 21 counts of theft in Dublin between October 23rd, 2006 and April 20th, 2007. It is the prosecutions case that Mr Lynn obtained multiple mortgages on the same properties, in a situation where banks were unaware that other institutions were also providing finance. The financial institutions involved are Bank of Ireland, National Irish Bank (later known as Danske Bank), Irish Life and Permanent, Ulster Bank, ACC Bank, Bank of Scotland Ireland and Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS). Advertisement Karl Finnegan SC, prosecuting, read evidence given by Mr Lynn at the first trial to Mr Fitzgibbon on Wednesday. Advertisement Mr Lynn gave evidence during the first trial that he met with Mr Fitzgibbon, whom he described as INBS chief executive Michael Fingleton's right-hand man, several times and that they had a good relationship. Mr Fitzgibbon told the court that he had never met or spoken Mr Lynn in any capacity. He said he had no communication channels at all with Mr Lynn. Mr Fitzgibbon agreed with Mr Finnegan that he would have the port of call to approve loan facilities up to his discretion when Mr Fingleton was not available. Olivia Greene previously told the trial that she was a senior underwriter for INBS when Mr Lynn's 4.1 million mortgage application was referred to her in late 2006 by Mark Mulcahy, Dun Laoghaire branch manager. Advertisement Discretionary limit Ms Greene said that the loan amount was outside of her discretionary limit and she discussed it with Mr Fingleton. As a result of this conversation, a loan offer was made. When asked about this loan to purchase a property in Howth, Glenlion, Mr Fitzgibbon said he didn't feel comfortable and rejected it. He said he told Mr Mulcahy there was an extra level and the loan could be presented to Mr Fingleton. He said this happened and it was agreed. Advertisement Mr Fitzgibbon agreed that his approval was noted on the loan facility to Mr Lynn for Glenlion. He said Mr Fingleton would sign very little loan documentation. Advertisement He told the jury he understood the loan was for a principal private residence and in these cases, the bank would require the first legal charge as security. Mr Fitzgibbon agreed with Mark Lynam SC defending that there was a specific dynamic within the building society and Mr Fingleton would have wanted to know about a significant loan. Mr Lynam put it to the witness that Mr Fingleton's position was that he had approved the loan. He denied this categorically and said Mr Fingleton agreed it. 'Abnormal lender' Defence counsel suggested to Mr Fitzgibbon that INBS was an abnormal lender. Advertisement He disagreed, saying the vast majority of lending was asset backed, however where it was unusual was the authority and discretion Mr Fingleton had to go outside normal procedure. He said he was aware that there would have been favoured clients. In other evidence, an employee of Danske Bank gave evidence that the institution retrieved a number of documents in response to a court order, including some records from the bank's debt collection system. He said personal email accounts were deleted three months after staff leave the institution and staff who had dealings with Mr Lynn left the institution around 10 years ago. He said no hard copy paper file was retrieved, but he could not say if it had been lost or destroyed as there was no record. He confirmed the bank has procedures in place to identify material that should not be destroyed where legal proceedings are ongoing. No internal investigations A worker from Ulster Bank's parent company, National Westminister Group, confirmed that no records of internal investigations in relation to Mr Lynn's lending were recovered on foot of a court order. She also said no emails sent or received from a Kendar Global email address were recovered following a search. The witness told defence counsel that she did not carry out the searches directly and had no personal knowledge of search parameters used. Separately, an employee of Rabobank, the parent company of ACC Bank, gave evidence about searches carried out by the institution after receiving court orders to supply documents relating to internal investigations into Mr Lynn's lendings and correspondence to and from a Kendar Global email address. He said there were no records of internal investigations about the bank's lending to Mr Lynn. He also confirmed a number of emails were recovered and provided to gardai. The trial continues before Judge Martin Nolan and the jury. TV stars Lorraine Kelly and Dermot OLeary have led the household names in daytime programming attending the 2023 ITV Palooza. The pair appeared alongside a host of famous faces from the channels biggest shows including Good Morning Britain presenters Susanna Reid, Charlotte Hawkins and Ed Balls. Advertisement In previous years, former This Morning presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby have fronted the daytime TV stars attending the event, however it was chat show host Kelly and This Morning star OLeary who were at the helm this year. Susanna Reid attending the ITV Palooza held at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London (Lucy North, PA) It comes after Schofield resigned from ITV in May, admitting to an unwise but not illegal relationship with a younger male colleague, while Willoughby stepped down from the show in October following allegations a man had plotted to kidnap and murder her. Advertisement Advertisement The event, held at Londons Theatre Royal on Tuesday, also saw Big Brother presenters AJ Odudu and Will Best attend following the final of the revived reality show on Friday, alongside My Mum, Your Dad host Davina McCall and Carol Vorderman. It comes days after the former Countdown star announced she was departing her BBC radio show following the introduction of social media guidelines. Loose Women panellist Charlene White, ITV News anchor Lucrezia Millarini and the cast of hit reality show The Only Way Is Essex were also pictured at the events purple carpet. Germany's constitutional court ruled last week that the coalition government's decision to reallocate 60 billion of unused debt from the pandemic era to its climate and transformation fund (CTF) was unconstitutional. The ruling, however, potentially also affects other off-budget funds that the country has used over the years to finance government policy in order to comply with its self-imposed debt brake restricting the public deficit to 0.35 per cent of GDP. Advertisement Here are some of the implications for the budget, the economy, German fiscal policy and German chancellor Olaf Scholz's three-way coalition: What comes next? The ruling did not directly impact the regular 2024 budget, which is due to be voted on by parliament on December 1st. Still, it means there is a funding gap for projects that were due to be covered by the CTF and other funds that may be affected by the ruling - both this year and next. Advertisement If you consider, for example, that the annulled CTF funds were due to be spent by 2027 that implies a gap in funding of about 10-20 billion per year, according to Scope Ratings. Advertisement As such, Scholz's coalition of his Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) could end up making alterations to next year's budget, currently amounting to 446 billion. The government looks set to postpone talks planned for Thursday on the 2024 budget as it struggles to figure out solutions. Some politicians from the fiscally hawkish FDP have argued in favour of cutting some social expenditure - a move to which the centre-left SPD and Greens object. The government currently looks likely to suspend its debt brake for 2023, five government sources told Reuters. That, however, does not necessarily account for the funding gap next year, and it is unclear if the government might suspend the brake again. Advertisement Germany can suspend the debt brake if it is hit by a natural disaster or "exceptional emergencies" that are beyond the control of the state and significantly affect its finances. The question is whether the current circumstances can be considered an "exceptional emergency" - and whether or not the FDP agrees to a suspension. What projects are in jeopardy? Advertisement The government has been relying on the CTF to finance much of its agenda to support industry, keep it competitive and transition towards a carbon-neutral economy. German industrial projects in jeopardy from the blow to the CTF include chip factories, decarbonised steel production and expansion of the battery supply chain, according to government sources. Projects that had been expecting state support include a planned TSMC chip plant, an expansion of an Infineon plant in Dresden and an Intel plant planned for Magdeburg. Advertisement What can happen with other special funds? There are currently 29 special funds at the federal level, with a total volume of 869 billion, according to the independent auditing institution Bundesrechnungshof. Several of these could be at risk from last week's verdict, although it is still not clear which, with the exception of the 100-billion special fund for Germany's army that is covered by a separate constitutional exemption from the debt brake. Berlin has blocked spending from the 200-billion euro Economic Stabilisation Fund for this year and wants to close it by year-end, a government source told Reuters on Tuesday. How will it affect German financial policy? Germany has in the past few years used what some analysts call accountancy tricks to get around its debt brake, which it introduced in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008/2009 to avoid excessive debt. Advertisement Advertisement The ruling indicates that Berlin in the future will have to stick more closely to the spirit of the brake, or reform it altogether. "The debt brake in its current form is not suitable for the challenges of the future, as the constitutional court ruling ... has shown," said the leaders of the SPD parliamentary groups in the Bundestag lower house, European Parliament and states. What are the consequences for the German economy? The ruling and its fallout could drag economic growth down by as much as half a percentage point next year, an economy ministry source told Reuters on Friday. Last month, the economy ministry predicted 1.3 per cent growth for next year. In the long-term, the 60 billion hole will make structural changes harder and hence increases the likelihood of a longer stagnation, ING's economist Carsten Brzeski said. Scope Ratings said it already estimated German under-investment at around 300 billion over the past decade vis-a-vis other AAA-rating economies. What will be the impact on the government? The ruling has already heightened tensions in Scholz's fractious three-way coalition, which has seen support slump since taking office nearly two years ago as it tackles a series of crises, in part due to public infighting. Just a third of voters would vote for the parties of the coalition if an election were to be held now, according to the latest survey by pollster Forsa. And some politicians from the coalition parties say they are not sure it makes sense for them to continue governing together. But the parties are likely to hammer out a compromise no matter how great their divisions, analysts say, because they would all stand to lose from a fresh election, and no workable new majority appears possible in the current parliament. Other coalitions have also faced speculation they would fall apart, say analysts, but the last time one did was in 1982, when SPD leader Willy Brandt was forced to resign after a close aide was exposed as a spy for Communist East Germany. -Reuters The Lord Mayor of Dublin has said he will use a meeting with the Israeli ambassador to Ireland as an opportunity to highlight the disgust towards what is happening in Gaza. Daithi de Roiste has been criticised for his planned meeting with Dana Erlich next week on what is International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Advertisement Mr de Roiste sid the meeting was agreed to by all group leaders in Dublin City Council. People Before Profit councillor Hazel De Nortuin said not meeting the ambassador would send a louder message that the people of Dublin do not condone the actions of the Israeli government. Ms De Nortuin told Newstalk: "We need to halt this meeting that's to go ahead, reflect on it. "I do ask the other councillors in Dublin City Council to take reflection on this as well. It's not something that we need to be doing here. It just is a poor reflection on Dublin City Council in general." Jimmy Guerin has told the High Court he was physically sick after he read Gemma O'Doherty's posts which he claims meant that he, and not his brother Martin Guerin, had been convicted of possession of child pornography. Mr Guerin, an independent county councillor and brother of murdered journalist Veronica Guerin, said when the posts were first brought to his attention he was physically sick from what I read. Advertisement I told my wife who was equally sick and my son rang and he was sick because he had read it online." Mr Guerin (64) was giving evidence before a judge and jury in his action against Ms O'Doherty, a former journalist with the Irish Independent, over the posts on Twitter (X), Facebook and her own internet video broadcast portal, Gemma.TV, on July 11th and 12th, 2019. Advertisement The Twitter and Facebook posts stated that "paedophile brother of Veronica Guerin, murdered with the involvement of gardai" had been found guilty of possession of hundreds of child sexual abuse images. The hour-long broadcast included a statement about "how the brother of Veronica Guerin" was found with large quantities of child sexual abuse images. Advertisement The posts and video did not name which brother, but it was in fact Martin Guerin (73) who pleaded guilty in 2019 to possession of child pornography, and later received a suspended prison sentence. Jimmy Guerin says the words published and broadcast by Ms O'Doherty were understood to refer to him. Ms O'Doherty admits publication but denies defamation and says her words were clearly intended and understood to refer to Martin. Mr Guerin told his barrister Ronan Lupton SC, instructed by Flynn O'Driscoll Solicitors, that he first learned about Martin having been charged with possession of child pornogaphy was from meida reports of him appearing in court in May 2019. Advertisement Martin was then ostracised by the family, he said. We could not forgive him. They were the most disgusting, heinous crimes and neither my sisters or myself have spoken to him since." He said he had de facto become the agreed spokesman for the family in relation to dealing with the media following Veronica's murder, and he attended every hearing relating to the people charged in connection with the killing. Advertisement He said he first knew of the allegedly defamatory O'Doherty posts when a man he knew from his work rang him asking if it was him referred to as the "paedophile brother" of Veronica Guerin. He believed the Facebook and Twitter posts clearly related to him as people would be aware of him, rather than of Martin, due to the fact that he was the family's spokesman. Advertisement Online video In the online video, Ms O'Doherty referred to the Guerin brother with the child pornography as having Fianna Fail connections. Mr Guerin said he had previously been active in FF, as had Veronica, but not the other members of the family. Most people would have known that and thought it was Jimmy the words referred to, he said. He believed Ms O'Doherty had made the posts and comments from malice arising out of a contribution he made in 2018 to a Fingal Council meeting from which Ms O'Doherty had sought support for her nomination in the Presidential election. He had described claims previously made by Ms O'Doherty that there was State involvement in Veronica's murder as hurtful, poisonous, unfounded and publicity-seeking. He did not think an experienced and award-winning journalist like Ms O'Doherty would make a mistake three times in 48 hours (the period in which the posts were put up). It was in fact, he said, an attempt to damage his reputation, he said. Advertisement Cross-examined by Ms O'Doherty's barrister, Feargal Kavanagh SC, instructed by Brendan Maloney and Co Solicitors, Mr Guerin said Ms O'Doherty had refused requests from his solicitors to take down the posts, apologise and pay costs and damages. Asked by counsel if he was saying Ms O'Doherty had been motivated to make the posts because he had intervened and scuppered her chances of a nomination for the Presidency, Mr Guerin said it was because he intervened, but he did not think he scuppered her chances. She was never going to get the nomination from Fingal Council anyway, he said. The court heard Ms ODoherty issued defamation proceedings against him over his council comments but these were ultimately struck out because they had been brought a day out of time. The case continues before Mr Justice Tony OConnor. Sinn Feins Stormont leader Michelle ONeill has said she believes devolved government in Northern Ireland may be able to be restored within the next number of weeks. Ms ONeill, who is set to become the first nationalist First Minister when the Assembly returns, was speaking during a visit to Bute House in Edinburgh where she met Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf. Advertisement While talks continue between the DUP and the UK government over addressing unionists concerns around post-Brexit trading arrangements, Ms ONeill said she has been kept abreast of developments. Advertisement Ive been engaged with both the British government and the Irish Government the whole way through, she said. Ive been very clear in terms of what needs to not happen what needs to not happen is that we need to be ensuring that theres nothing that does any jeopardy to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and that we need to make sure that theres nothing that unravels the deal thats been done on the (Northern Ireland) Protocol in the form of the Windsor Framework. Advertisement I think that its very clear to me that the discussions have been going on for 18 months now. Now is the time for a decision to be made, and I hope its the right decision and I hope its a positive decision, and I believe that that decision is imminent. Advertisement The DUP has been blocking powersharing at Stormont for more than a year and a half in protest at the internal UK trade barriers created by the Northern Ireland Protocol. The party has been involved in negotiations with the UK government about the Windsor Framework, which reformed the protocol and is seeking further assurances, by way of legislation, over Northern Irelands place in the UK internal market. UK Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said the talks are in their final phase but DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has cautioned that there are still gaps between their negotiating positions. Advertisement Sinn Fein vice-president Michelle ONeill during her meeting with Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf (Jane Barlow/PA) Pressed on a timeframe for the return of Stormont, Ms ONeill said: The British government and others are saying that were at the final stages. So if thats the case, then its the time for decisions to be made. And I believe that that is in the timeframe of the next number of weeks. Lets hope its a positive decision. Advertisement Advertisement Lets hope we can get an executive up and running, lets hope the DUP end their blockade and get back in around that executive table. Earlier this week, former DUP leader Peter Robinson said that unionists need to recognise that they will not get all they want from the Government in negotiations. Mr Robinson also said he believed differences could be resolved in the next couple of weeks. However, DUP MP Sammy Wilson responded to Mr Robinsons comments by stating he didnt get the impression that his party was close to a deal which would restore Stormont. Ms ONeill was meeting with Mr Yousaf ahead of a British-Irish Council meeting in Dublin later this week. The powersharing institutions at Stormont have been dormant for more than a year and a half (Liam McBurney/PA) She expressed regret that no Stormont ministers would be at the council meeting due to the powersharing impasse. The Sinn Fein vice-president said: Lets hope we can get back to going to meetings such as the British-Irish Council meeting, to raise the issues that we have, the common ground that we have to stand up for good public services and the people that we represent collectively. Ms ONeill said it was her first in-person meeting with the Scottish first minister since he came into the post. Advertisement Weve already (got) strong relationships, always have had, and I want to see that continue in the time ahead, she said. I think it was important to meet this week given that later this week, there will be a British Irish Council meeting. Unfortunately, because of the political situation in the north of Ireland, the executive will not be there. I think that its important that we get back to the juncture where we have an Executive up and running, where we have power-sharing restored. Mark Keane, the president of Pdforra, the organisation representing members of the Defence Forces, has welcomed publication of the Detailed Implementation Plan for the Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces (CoDF), but said that its recommendations need to be implemented as soon as possible. We've been very cautious in what we've said about this all along, because we've seen many false dawns. We've been here before. We've seen many reports from the high level implementation plan to the white paper on defence in 2015. So people have to understand, we've seen this before, he told RTE radios Morning Ireland. Advertisement We can't allow this report to gather dust. I know these are the findings from the Commission on Defence, that these are the implementations that they wish to implement. But we need it done as a matter of urgency. Advertisement Mr Keane said that recruiting targets were achievable if were all involved". This would require all the stakeholders to sit around the table and work towards solutions contained in the report to make the defence forces an attractive place for young people to work. While the starting salary of 37,000 was attractive, the Defence Forces still did not have premium rates of pay for hours worked, he said. What I mean by that is we still have soldiers, sailors and air crews working in excess of 70 or 80 hours a week who get no remuneration outside of the basic salary. A pilot plan will commence in December to ensure that people in the Defence Forces do not work beyond the European maximum recommended hours. It's something that we've long campaigned for. And actually it's something that this Minister has taken the steps to implement and we welcome that very much. And we find that a very positive development that the Minister has moved on that so quickly. Advertisement Mr Keane acknowledged that much work remained to be done to change the culture of the way women have been treated in the Defence Forces. We have to. We're an organisation that was very male dominated and it will take time to turn the tide to change people's lives. But we are starting. We want to change. And we very much would need to change if we are to reflect the society that we serve. We have to change our practices and the way we deliver business. The recommendations contained in the report need to happen soon, developments in Ukraine and in the Middle East show that we dont have the luxury of time on our side, whether it's cyber security or change of work practices, or the working time directive. We have to be in there and know we have to move on this very quickly". Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has expressed hope that Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand will be included in the first group of hostages released in Gaza. His comments came as Irelands Department of Foreign Affairs cautioned that there had been no official confirmation that the nine-year-old would be released as part of the deal for a four-day pause in fighting in the region. Advertisement Emily, whose father Tom is originally from Dublin, is believed to be being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. Addressing the Dail on Wednesday, Mr Varadkar also questioned whether Israel listens to anyone anymore as he expressed doubt whether it would heed international calls to stop the killing of civilians in Gaza after the four-day pause was over. Thomas Hand has been campaigning for his daughter Emilys release (Norma Burke/PA) Advertisement The ceasefire will facilitate the release of 50 hostages being held by Palestinians including, we hope, Emily Hand, and will also facilitate the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, in some cases teenage boys imprisoned for doing little more than throwing stones at armed soldiers, he said. Advertisement In relation to the four-day ceasefire, that will allow humanitarian aid to get into Gaza food, fuel, medicines, water, all of the basic needs for human life. And Ireland, individually and also as part of the UN and the EU, will do anything we can to make sure that that happens and happens well. And it is our view that the ceasefire should not just last for four days, that it should be extended to allow space for there to be a peace initiative, which can bring a permanent end to violence in the region, resulting in a two state solution Israel and Palestine as secure and viable states living side by side. Advertisement He added: Sadly, the Israeli government doesnt listen to us. Im not sure the Israeli government listens to anyone anymore. They used to listen to the Americans. Im not even sure if thats the case anymore. "They are, as President Biden said, at risk of being blinded by rage. And its the sad reality that Im not actually sure that any action or statement by us or the European Union or the US will change the current course of action that they are on. Advertisement That doesnt necessarily mean that we dont do the right thing. And we have increased our humanitarian aid to Gaza and Palestine. We have provided additional funding to the International Criminal Court so they can fund the investigation into war crimes that may have been committed in the Palestinian territories and will continue to press at UN level and EU level. Advertisement Providing an update on the status of Emily, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said: The Department of Foreign Affairs welcomes the announced agreement between Israel and Hamas for a truce and the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza. Our focus in particular is on the case of nine-year old Irish citizen Emily Hand. Advertisement We have worked consistently for her release over recent weeks, including through extensive contacts with regional partners. There is no official confirmation at this time of those scheduled to be released under this agreement. The department welcomes the truce agreed as part of the hostage deal. A break in hostilities is essential to allow for significant increased humanitarian access. Gazas civilian population urgently need fuel, food, water, and medical supplies, on a sustained basis and at scale. Mr Varadkar fielded questions on the Israel-Hamas conflict during Leaders Questions in the Dail. Advertisement Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns reiterated her call for Mr Varadkar to back a suspension of Israels trade deal with the EU. Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns urged the Government to formally recognise Palestine as a state (Brian Lawless/PA) Taoiseach, there must be consequences if Israel is determined to continue this barbarism, she said. Mr Varadkar sought legal advice after Ms Cairns insisted a human rights clause in the EU-Israel trade deal had been breached thus providing grounds for the deal to be suspended. The Taoiseach said he had asked for the legal advice to be prepared but had not yet received it. But he made clear his view that sanctions only worked if taken on a multilateral basis. Ms Cairns also called on the Government to use November 29th International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People to formally recognise Palestine as a state. Mr Varadkar said Ireland recognised Palestine on a de facto basis but would only do so officially when it was formally established as a secure state as part of a two state solution peace deal. President Yoon Suk Yeol said Wednesday that updating the Korea-Britain free trade agreement will enable the two countries' businesses to lead the global market. Yoon made the remark during a business forum attended by CEOs and business representatives from both countries during his ongoing state visit to London, as the two sides signed a joint declaration announcing the launch of negotiations to revise the FTA, which went into effect in 2021. "Over the course of the negotiations, we will actively reflect the opinions of both countries' businesspeople and set new rules in each sector, including the digital, supply chains and energy sectors," Yoon said. "We will create a playing field where both countries' businesses can run freely and ensure they can jointly lead the global market." Yoon also said the two countries will share policies and information on supply chains through the establishment of a supply chain dialogue at the minister level and the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on cooperation in semiconductors. The forum was attended by notable business executives, including Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung from the Korean side and the CEOs of ARM, Rolls Royce and Standard Chartered from the British side. In addition to the declaration on revising the FTA, the two governments signed a number of MOUs on the forum's sidelines on enhancing cooperation on semiconductors, clean energy, nuclear energy, off-shore wind power and joint defense industry exports. More than 30 MOUs were also signed between the two countries' companies and institutions, covering a wide range of advanced technology industries, such as energy, artificial intelligence, defense, bio and finance. (Yonhap) A young girl who was knocked down by a car on a street in Dublin and ended up with significant dental and facial injuries has settled a High Court action for 90,000. Jayda Rose Kane Mooney was eight-years-old when she suffered multiple facial fractures and dental trauma, including a tooth embedded in her gum and the loss of other teeth, after the incident in the Liberties area of Dublin city. Advertisement Her counsel, Finbarr Fox SC, instructed by Ferrys Solicitors, told the court the little girl was put into the air by the impact, adding the car had hit her hard. Counsel explained the girl, who thought she had a green light in her favour, had run out when she should not have, but it was their case that the driver was not keeping a lookout as was necessary. Advertisement Mr Fox said their side contended there was an unobstructed view, but the driver failed to see the girl and was allegedly not having a proper lookout. Counsel said there was not a crossing at the point where the collision happened at the junction of Thomas Street and Oliver Bond Hill, and no green light. Advertisement The girl (now 13), of Thomas Court, Thomas Street, Pimlico, Dublin, had through her grandmother, Breda Mooney, sued the driver of the car, Paul Redmond, of Portarlington, Co Laois, over the incident on May 3rd, 2018. It was claimed there was an alleged failure to drive with due care and attention and an alleged failure to have regard for the safety of another person using the roadway. It was further claimed there was an alleged failure to slow down, brake or take any other evasive action or otherwise manoeuvre the vehicle so as to avoid colliding with the pedestrian. The claims were denied. Approving the settlement, which included 75,000 in general damages and 15,000 in special damages, Mr Justice Michael OHiggins remarked that the girl had 29 appointments at the Dental University Hospital up until 2021. More than 80 people have been charged in the UK over alleged hate crimes and violence linked to pro-Palestinian protests since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Thousands of demonstrators and counter-protesters have converged on London over the past few weekends, leading politicians to pressure the Metropolitan Police to take action. Advertisement The force made nearly 400 arrests between October 7th and November 18th, 83 of whom have been charged. Scotland Yard said officers are examining images of protesters linked to disorder on Armistice Day, using facial recognition to look back on previous demonstrations and searching for suspects believed to have committed hate crimes. John Harvey, a 75-year-old protester from Hackney, east London, who threw red paint at the Israeli embassy on November 11th, will be sentenced next month after admitting criminal damage. Advertisement John Harvey is to be sentenced (Metropolitan Police/PA) Police are hunting 15 people who took part in a pro-Palestinian convoy of as many as 80 cars on Saturday. Advertisement Officers are also searching for 20 men involved in counter-protests on Armistice Day. UK prime minister Rishi Sunak condemned wholly unacceptable actions by far-right groups and Hamas sympathisers on the day, insisting all criminality must be met with the full and swift force of the law. Advertisement Mr Sunak is also looking to tighten the law to make it easier to ban marches and prosecute those glorifying terrorism, according to several newspapers. Former UK home secretary Suella Braverman wrote an article for The Times, accusing the force of showing bias in favour of left-wing protesters. She had pressed Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to ban the pro-Palestinian demonstration on November 11th, which she branded a hate march. A few days ago, a 37-year-old man was arrested in west London on suspicion of encouraging terrorism and showing support for a proscribed organisation. Advertisement Last week officers arrested a 21-year-old man in Brixton Hill on suspicion of spraying pro-Palestinian graffiti on the shutters of a shop, and a 22-year-old man on suspicion of making threats to kill while shouting antisemitic slurs in Stamford Hill. Scotland Yard said: Our teams are investigating hate crimes and offences committed at protests. We know many people continue to feel vulnerable. Updated: 1pm Israel and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days, to let in aid and release at least 50 hostages captured by militants in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. Advertisement The first truce in a brutal near seven-week-old war, reached after mediation by Qatar, was hailed around the world as a sign of progress that could ease the suffering of Gaza's civilians and bring more Israeli hostages home. Israel said the ceasefire could be extended further, as long as more hostages were freed. Hamas and allied groups captured around 240 hostages when gunmen rampaged through southern Israeli towns on October 7th. Previously, Hamas had released just four. The truce was not expected to begin until Thursday morning. The start time had yet to be officially announced as of early afternoon on Wednesday. Advertisement A statement by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office on Tuesday night said 50 women and children would be released over four days at a rate of at least 10 per day. Beyond that, the truce could be extended as long as an additional ten hostages were freed per day. Advertisement It made no mention of the release of Palestinian detainees, but Israel's justice ministry published a list of 300 names of Palestinian prisoners who could be freed. "Israel's government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal," said the government statement. Exchange Hamas said the initial 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel supplies would enter Gaza, while Israel would halt all air sorties over southern Gaza and maintain a daily six-hour daytime no-fly window in the north, it said. Israel has placed Gaza under siege and relentless bombardment since the Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 14,000 Gazans have been killed, around 40 per cent of them children, according to medical officials in the Hamas-ruled territory, figures deemed reliable by the United Nations. Advertisement Advertisement Qatar's chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters the truce meant there would be "no attack whatsoever". "No military movements, no expansion, nothing." Qatar hopes the deal "will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire, and that's our intention," he said. Pending the start of the truce, there was no let-up in fighting. As morning broke, smoke from explosions could be seen rising above northern Gaza in live Reuters video from across the fence. Israel's military released footage of soldiers shooting in narrow alleyways and said it had carried out air strikes. Its "forces continue to operate within the Strip's territory to destroy terrorist infrastructure, eliminate terrorists and locate weaponry", it said. Advertisement An Egyptian security source said mediators sought a truce start time of 10am on Thursday, though this was still awaiting confirmation from the Israelis, with Hamas seeking a few hours from the start to begin freeing hostages. A spokesperson for Israels Defence Ministry said the truce would likely take hold "sometime tomorrow". 'What truce can there be?' The truce deal is a first small step towards peace in the most violent ruction of the 75-year-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The past seven weeks have shocked the world because of the suffering of civilians on both sides, beginning with the killing of Israeli families in their homes and continuing with destruction rained down on Gaza, home to 2.3 million people. Advertisement "What truce can there be after what happened to us? We are all are dead people," said Mona, a woman in Gaza whose nieces and nephews were among those killed by an Israeli air strike that hit the home of the Seyam family. "This will not bring back what we lost, will not heal our hearts or make up for the tears we shed." Kamelia Hoter Ishay, whose 13-year-old granddaughter Gali Tarashansky is believed held in Gaza, said she would not believe reports of a deal until she got a call that the girl was freed. Advertisement "And then I'll know that it's really over, and I can breathe a sigh of relief and say that's it, it's over," she said. Both Israel and Hamas said that the truce would not halt their broader missions: "We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel," Mr Netanyahu said in a recorded message. Hamas said in its statement: "As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the look-out to defend our people and defeat the occupation." Still there was some hope of a step towards broader peace. "We hope the truce will happen and there will be good solutions, and we hope people will live peacefully, return to their homes and workplaces with stability," said Abu Jihad Shameya, displaced from north Gaza and taking refuge in southern Khan Younis. US president Joe Biden was among international leaders who welcomed the deal. Three Americans, including a three-year-old girl whose parents were killed during Hamas' October 7th attack, are expected to be among the hostages to be released, a senior US official said. Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said the agreed expansion of access for humanitarian aid should become permanent. "Whatever humanitarian access now increases as a result of this hostage deal must remain in place and must be built upon," he said. "There must at no point be a reduction in this access based on progress for further release of hostages ... Punishing the civilian population of Gaza for the holding of those hostages is absolutely not acceptable." -Reuters The far-right, anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders was headed for a massive parliamentary election victory in one of the biggest political upsets in Dutch politics since the Second World War, and one that is bound to send shockwaves through Europe. That puts him in line to lead talks to form a new ruling coalition and possibly become the countrys first hard-right prime minister at a time of political upheaval through much of the continent. Advertisement The exit poll published by national broadcaster NOS said that Mr Wilders Party for Freedom won 35 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, more than double the 17 he won at the last election. Final official results were only expected on Thursday. I had to pinch my arm, a jubilant Mr Wilders said. Mr Wilders election programme includes calls for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, a total halt to accepting asylum-seekers and migrant pushbacks at Dutch borders. Advertisement Advertisement It also advocates the de-Islamisation of the Netherlands, although he has been milder about Islam during this election campaign than in the past. Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, known as PVV, smiles after announcement of the first preliminary results of general elections (Peter Dejong/AP) Voters said, We are sick of it. Sick to our stomachs, he said, adding he was now on a mission to end the asylum tsunami, referring to the migration issue that came to dominate his campaign. Advertisement The Dutch will be number one again, Mr Wilders added. The people must get their nation back. But the politician, who has in the past been labelled a Dutch version of Donald Trump, first would have to form a coalition government before he can take the reins of power. That will be tough as mainstream parties are reluctant to join forces with him and his party, but the size of his victory strengthens his hand in any negotiations. Advertisement Mr Wilders called on other parties to constructively engage in coalition talks. Pieter Omtzigt, a former centrist Christian Democrat who built his own New Social Contract party in three months to take an estimated 20 seats, said he would always be open to talks. The closest party to Wilders one was an alliance of the centre-left Labour Party and Green Left, which was forecast to win 26 seats. Advertisement But its leader Frans Timmermans made clear that Mr Wilders should not count on a coalition with him. Advertisement Despite his harsh rhetoric, Mr Wilders was already courting other right and centre parties by saying that whatever he would do, it would be within the law and constitution. The historic victory came one year after the win of Italian premier Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italys roots were steeped in nostalgia for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Ms Meloni has since mellowed her stance on several issues and has become the acceptable face of the hard right in the EU. Mr Wilders was long a firebrand lashing out at Islam, at the EU and migrants, a stance which brought him close to power but never in it in a nation known for compromise politics. Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, known as PVV, casts his ballot (Mike Corder/AP) Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who boasts of turning Hungary into an illiberal state and has similarly harsh stances on migration and EU institutions, was quick to congratulate Mr Wilders. The winds of change are here! Congratulations, Mr Orban said. During the final weeks of his campaign, Mr Wilders somewhat softened his stance and vowed that he would be a prime minister for all Dutch people, so much so that he gained the moniker Geert Milders. Advertisement The exit poll was published as voting ended in the general election. It can have a margin of error of up to three seats but generally is accurate within one or two seats, said Ipsos, which was involved in the poll. The election was called after the fourth and final coalition of outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte resigned in July after failing to agree to measures to rein in migration. Mr Rutte was replaced by Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius, a former refugee from Turkey who could have become the countrys first female prime minister had her party won the most votes. Instead, it was forecast to lose 11 seats to end up with 23. The election had been called a neck-and-neck race, but in the end Mr Wilders handily beat all opponents. The result is the latest in a series of elections that is altering the European political landscape. From Slovakia and Spain, to Germany and Poland, populist and hard-right parties triumphed in some EU member nations and faltered in others. Israels cabinet on Wednesday approved a ceasefire deal with the Hamas militant group that would bring a temporary halt to a devastating war that has stretched on for over six weeks. Hamas will release dozens of hostages being held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Advertisement Under the deal, Hamas is to free 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it is holding in the Gaza Strip over a four-day period, the Israeli government said on Wednesday. It said it would extend the lull by an additional day for every 10 hostages released. Advertisement The government said the first hostages to be released would be women and children. A statement released by Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, on Wednesday morning said the deal includes the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons, the number of those released will be increased in later stages of implementing the agreement, and that it would allow additional humanitarian aid into Gaza. Advertisement The Israeli statement made no mention of either of these elements. Advertisement The statement from Qatars foreign ministry described the talks that produced the agreement as a mediation by Egypt, the US and Qatar for a humanitarian pause, adding that the start time of the truce will be announced within the next day. Ahead of Wednesday mornings cabinet vote, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume its offensive against Hamas after the ceasefire expires. It was not immediately clear when the truce would go into effect. Mr Netanyahu convened his Cabinet for the vote late on Tuesday. Advertisement The meeting stretched well into the early hours on Wednesday, underscoring the sensitivity of a proposal that would suspend an Israeli offensive against Hamas before it has reached its goals. Ahead of the vote, Mr Netanyahu sought to assure the government ministers that the break was only tactical, vowing to resume the offensive after the truce expires. Top security officials also attended the meeting. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP) Advertisement We are at war, and we will continue the war, Mr Netanyahu said. We will continue until we achieve all our goals. Israel has vowed to continue the war until it destroys Hamas military capabilities and returns all hostages. Advertisement Mr Netanyahu said that during the lull, intelligence efforts will be maintained, allowing the army to prepare for the next stages of battle. He said the battle would continue until Gaza will not threaten Israel. The announcement came as Israeli troops battled Palestinian militants in an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza and around hospitals overcrowded with patients and sheltering families. The deal does not mean an end to the war, which erupted on October 7th after Hamas militants stormed across the border into southern Israel and killed at least 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped some 240 others. In weeks of Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, and more than 2,700 others are missing and believed to be buried under rubble, according to Gazas health ministry. The ministry says it has been unable to update its count since November 11th because of the health sectors collapse. Gaza health officials say the toll has risen sharply since, and hospitals continue to report deaths from daily strikes, often dozens at a time. US president Joe Biden (Evan Vucci, AP) US president Joe Biden said in a statement late on Tuesday that he welcomes the agreement to release at least 50 hostages being held in Gaza and stressed that it is important that all aspects of this deal be fully implemented. Advertisement I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented, Mr Biden said. He said the agreement should release some American hostages, and added, I will not stop until they are all released. Mr Biden emphasised that Mr Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure not only all hostages are released but that humanitarian assistance can be sent to Palestinians in Gaza. Todays deal is a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination of many dedicated individuals across the United States Government to bring Americans home, Mr Biden said. Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Biden said a deal on releasing some hostages was very close. Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said on Tuesday that an agreement could be reached in the coming hours. Every hospital in England with a neonatal unit has been asked whether they have considered installing CCTV in the wake of nurse Lucy Letbys killing spree, it has emerged. In August, Letby (33), of Hereford, was sentenced to 14 whole life orders after she was convicted of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six others, with two attempts on one of her victims. Advertisement The offences took place at the Countess of Chester Hospitals neonatal unit, where Letby worked, between June 2015 and June 2016 when CCTV was not installed. Screen grab taken from Lady Justice Thirlwalls first public address as chair of the inquiry (Thirwall Inquiry/PA) One of the countrys most senior judges, Lady Justice Thirlwall, is leading the inquiry into the events, with the public hearings scheduled to start in Chester in September 2024. Advertisement On Wednesday, the Appeal Court judge said the query about CCTV suggested by some of the parents of babies harmed by Letby had been included in a wide-ranging and detailed questionnaire. Advertisement The form to be completed by both the medical director and a senior non-clinical manager asks whether there is CCTV on neonatal units and, if not, whether it has been contemplated. A short survey has also been sent to all neonatal midwives, doctors, nurses and managers to ask directly their views on the culture in their units. Launching the inquiry website on Wednesday, the Appeal Court judge said: We all know that there have been many inquiries into events in hospitals and other health care settings over the last 30 years. Advertisement The case of Beverley Allitt who murdered babies at Grantham Hospital in the 1990s comes to mind. Everyone was determined that it would not happen again. It has happened again. This is utterly unacceptable. She said she will seek to discover what recommendations were made in those inquiries, whether they were implemented and what actual difference they have made. Advertisement Lady Justice Thirlwall went on: No one can argue with the proposition that babies in neonatal units must be kept safe and well cared for. What is needed is the practical application of that proposition everywhere. In many units it will require profound changes in relationships and culture. This may not be easy to achieve but it is necessary and long overdue. Advertisement Bringing about necessary change will require the co-operation and will of all those who are involved in and who are responsible for the babies in our neonatal units from the ward to the boardroom. Advertisement The parents of the babies who were murdered or suffered injuries, some lifelong, live with the consequences every day. On top of their grievous loss they endured years of uncertainty about what had caused death or injury. And for some, uncertainty remains. All have made it plain to me that they want to do all they can to make sure that no one else suffers as they do. With the help of the inquiry team and all those who will contribute to the inquiry I will do all I can to make sure that no one else suffers as they have. It is unconscionable that this situation would ever occur again. The inquiry will cover three broad areas. Firstly, the experiences of the parents of the 17 babies who featured in the 10-month trial that Letby faced at Manchester Crown Court. Secondly, the conduct of those working at the Countess of Chester and how Letby was able repeatedly to kill and harm babies on the neonatal unit. Thirdly, a focus on the wider NHS in examining relationships between the various groups of professionals, the culture within hospitals and how these affect the safety of newborns in neonatal units. Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement over a four-day halt to the devastating war in Gaza. The truce will be accompanied by the release of dozens of hostages held by the militant group in return for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, mediators said. Advertisement The deal marks the biggest diplomatic breakthrough since Hamas October 7th attack into southern Israel ignited a war that has devastated vast swaths of Gaza and raised fears of a wider conflict across the Middle East. Advertisement The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, which has played a key role in mediating with Hamas, announced the deal without saying when it would go into effect. Fifty hostages will be released in stages, in exchange for what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will release women and children first, and the supply of humanitarian aid flowing into the besieged territory will be ramped up. Advertisement "They are lacking the essential needs to survive, to stay alive. Even if this conflict stops, people have no idea how they are going to rebuild their lives again". Our colleague Hisham in #Gaza shared this audio weeks ago. Today, the ongoing suffering is even more devastating pic.twitter.com/k6vBymfFO9 Advertisement ICRC (@ICRC) November 21, 2023 Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume the war after the truce and keep fighting until we achieve all our goals, including the defeat of Hamas. Advertisement Residents in Gaza City said the fighting there had intensified overnight into Wednesday, with gunfire, heavy artillery and air strikes in central neighbourhoods. The announcement capped weeks of indirect Qatari-led negotiations between Israel and Hamas, an Islamic militant group that seized Gaza from the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority in 2007. The United States and Egypt were also involved in stop-and-go talks to free some of the roughly 240 hostages captured by Hamas and other militants during their wide-ranging October 7th raid. Advertisement Todays outcome is the result of tireless diplomacy and relentless effort across the United States government. While this deal marks significant progress, we will not rest as long as Hamas continues to hold hostages in Gaza. https://t.co/gG2LlPMUhM Advertisement Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) November 22, 2023 US president Joe Biden welcomed the deal, saying Mr Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure that the hostages are released and humanitarian aid can be sent to Gaza. Qatars prime minister and top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent ceasefire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel said that the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it is standing by to assist any swap. Israels justice ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible for release as part of the deal, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offences. Under Israeli law, the public has 24 hours to object to any release. A man passes by a fence with photographs of hostages, mostly Israeli civilians who were abducted during the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel, in Ramat Gan (AP) As the full extent of the devastation becomes known and as hostages are released, pressure could grow on Israel to end its war without achieving its goal of crushing Hamas. Even the US, Israels chief backer, has expressed concerns about the heavy toll on Gazas civilian population. An air strike overnight hit a residential building in the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 17 people, including children, said Ahmad Balouny, a relative of the deceased. Advertisement An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of two children pulled from the rubble, one of them badly burned. (PA Graphics) Despite the massive destruction across Gaza and the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians, Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar will likely present the release of the prisoners seen by most Palestinians as heroes resisting occupation as a major achievement, and declare victory if the war ends without removing Hamas from power. In a statement, Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid including fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza. It said Israeli aircraft would stop flying over southern Gaza for the duration of the four-day ceasefire and for six hours daily in the north. The war erupted in early October, when several thousand Hamas militants broke through Israels formidable defencbes and poured into the south, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing scores more. Palestinians gather in front of a building hit by an Israeli on the Gaza Strip in Nusseirat refugee camp (AP) Israel responded with weeks of devastating air strikes on Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It does not differentiate between civilians and militants, though some two-thirds of the dead have been identified as women and minors. Advertisement The invasion has caused vast destruction in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, displaced more than 1.7 million people and caused severe shortages of food, medicine and other basics throughout the territory. Israel cut off all fuel imports at the start of the war, causing a territory-wide power blackout. Israel has rejected growing international criticism and vowed to press ahead until it destroys Hamas military and governing capabilities, and all hostages are freed. Its a running joke in Melbourne that smashed avo on toast is stopping Millennials from buying their own homes. In some parts of the world, however, the issues surrounding avocados are a lot darker and a lot farther reaching from organised crime to serious environmental effects. Mexican artist Fernando Laposse documents the rise and rise of the fruit and the devastating effects of the massive demand for it in Conflict Avocados, a new project commissioned for the National Gallery of Victorias Triennial, which opens next week. Mexican artist Fernando Laposses work examines the dark side of the avocado. Credit: Simon Schluter All of Mexicos avocados are grown in just one state, Michoacan, which is also the main habitat for monarch butterflies. Each year, the orange butterflies the key pollinators of North America migrate to a forest area known as El Rosario. As demand for avocados has increased in the United States, more land is cleared. Laposse points to a corresponding decline in the butterflies population, to the point where they are now endangered. Initially, his work was focused on the loss of that location, so crucial for biodiversity, and how demand for agricultural land contributed. 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 Weird fashions get such a hammering, particularly on social media. Pointless, Nope and Where would you wear it? are pretty typical among comments on any post with, say, an oddball Iris van Herpen, a strange Schiaparelli or anything, really, on a Rick Owens runway. Theres also a doctorates worth of theories about why so many scoffers and trolls are genuinely angered by offbeat and conceptual clothes: Bahaha!! F*&#@ing Stupid!!, for example. There are measurable levels of loathing for fashion in those !!!s. Vogue legend Anna Wintour once observed that some of us feel threatened by fashion. We feel self-conscious and judged and, in our deepest doubting selves, fear getting our fashion choices wrong which stringing that theory to its rim could mean a nope to being liked or, god forbid, even loved. Its all horribly complicated but its also this madly human tangle of psycho-social baggage that we bring, not only to our own wardrobes but crank that up and add steroids to the weird stuff academics and fashionistocrats charitably call ideas-driven fashion. If youre walking into an exhibition, or youre seeing some outlandish, extremely artistic thing being worn at an awards ceremony by a celebrity you like, explains associate professor Lauren Rosewarne of the University of Melbourne, remember youre going to bring a different set of judgments to that than something you might see in Kmart. Iris van Herpens Ananda-Maya gown, 2022, left, and Schiaparellis Look 6 from the Matador Couture collection 2021-22 can be seen at this years Triennial. Which brings us neatly back to Schiaparelli and Iris van Herpen and their spots in the National Gallery of Victorias sprawling multi-floor Triennial exhibition, opening next week. The Schiaparelli group of 20-odd surrealist-inspired accessories and gowns is by American designer Daniel Roseberry, the current creative director. His tether to the mythically visionary Elsa Schiaparelli, who established her legacy fashion house almost a century ago in Paris, is obvious. Advertisement Schiaparellis offbeat aesthetic and collaborations with artists Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray and others echo in spatters of celestial iconography and the elegant body bits strewn across Roseberrys collection. Designs by Maison Schiaparelli featuring at this years NGV Triennial: jacket (top) and jewellery bustier from the Matador Couture collection. Credit: Courtesy Maison Schiaparelli Hes cast eyes, noses and lips into gold jewels and spectacles, for example, and disturbingly witchy fingers and toe extensions. A golden face mask requires the wearer to bite into it to keep it in place, and a whaaaaat!? brooch features full-sized maternal breast with feeding golden baby attached. A model wears Schiaparelli couture for the autumn 2022 fashion show in Paris. Credit: New York Times Roseberrys work also resonates with his celebrity darling status, a golden goal since he joined the house from quirky US brand Thom Browne in 2019. He set out to dress A-listers, and did just that and more every season: Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, a string of Kardashians (who could forget Kylie Jenners lions head frock from January?). From left, Gwendoline Christie in Iris van Herpen, Kylie Jenner in Schiaparelli and Janelle Monae in van Herpen. Credit: Getty Images Lean in to the shimmering, thickly beaded gold mini gown Beyonce wore for Vogue, for example; its his miracle of haute couture craftsmanship. Or a black silk coat from his spring/summer 2022 collection (also showing at NGV), sharply schlooped into actress Gillian Andersons waistline by a cunning arrangement of gored panels (an invention of Elsa Schiaparelli), not corsetry as you might expect, with gold embellished ghost corset heavily embroidered into the front. Advertisement Enigmatic Dutch designer Iris van Herpens Triennial exhibit, Ananda-Maya from her autumn/winter 22/23 Meta Morphism collection, is equally spectacular. She created it in all-white materials with a central spindly carapace of twisting, thickly embroidered synthetic ribs anchoring tendrils of stiffened mesh that appear to roil and swirl like smoke around the body. Matching 3D printed platform shoes are spiky and white as bleached coral. The beauty is strange, utterly impractical. How would you sit in that, was overheard at van Herpens haute couture show. Only the right-sized celebrity heading up the right red carpet or the most intellectually engaged of her haute couture clients with a lazy $100,000 (Im guessing) could possibly give Ananda-Maya, or almost any other van Herpen, a fair crack at practical use as a fashion garment. An item of clothing, in other words. Bahahaha!! indeed. Clockwise from main: Iris van Herpen with a dress from her 2016 collection in her Amsterdam atelier; a staff member works with laser cut fabric frames; the Ananda-Maya gown features in this years Triennial. Credit: New York Time, Iris van Herpen On a video call with van Herpen, 39, from her Amsterdam atelier, she ranges across all the ways that mystifying fashions like hers and Schiaparellis might be, if not understood, then at least accepted with less angst by mere mortals. Even if its difficult for someone to consciously understand the concepts, even if theyre not familiar with the inspirations behind it, and if they dont know me, havent read a single interview about me, the [designs] are strong enough ... that they can still feel and translate on an emotional level, she offers. Van Herpens pale face looms, appropriately ethereal as a Renaissance madonnas, loosely framed by long unstyled hair, out of the fogged-out Zoom backdrop. Shes soft-spoken, precise, quick to smile, immediately likeable. We talk about open minds, gut feelings (the best tools to observe baffling fashions), and how marvellous it is when certain celebrities on red carpets and runways act as bridges or conduits between the aghast public and some of her wackiest (my word, not hers) iterations and out-there ideas. Advertisement Their braveness and energy brings my work to life, she says of Lady Gaga, Bjork, Zoe Kravitz, Janelle Monae and the many other brave celebrities who have ignored the scoffers and trolls and agreed to be buckled, clamped, stitched, fused, heat-bonded or moulded into the latest van Herpen. Actress Gwendoline Christie, for example, (the towering Lady Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones), once described climbing into a van Herpen as being bound up in the technology of what it is to be alive. Van Herpen and I also talk about how, in woke-speak, exhibitions such as the Triennial can offer a safe space for minds to open and gut feelings to blossom around weird-looking outfits. Which raises the mildly annoying question that journalists (not me) ask most often: Are you an artist or a fashion designer? I would not know why you have to choose, she says. It can easily be both. In history it was common for an artist to be also, for example, a scientist, but nowadays people really want to understand which box you are in. There is no box to house van Herpen. Up to 18 mind-blowing designs a season emerge from the all-engrossing collaborations she nurtures with physicists, biologists, academics, technicians, artists, architects, musicians, choreographers, filmmakers, milliners. She fuses couture craft with technologies, often in airy designs that are laboriously invented by trial and error, micro-success and micro-failure. Iris van Herpen: Im always looking for timelessness. Credit: Courtesy of the artist She was the first designer to investigate 3D printing and hand-casting. She laser-cuts, blow-torches, shreds, fuses, moulds, and creates previously unthought-of materials. She experiments with electricity, sound, water, anti-matter, magnetic fields. Once, she and Belgian artist Lawrence Malstaf shrink-wrapped models into clear plastic envelopes and suspended them from the ceiling. Post-show she was shrink-wrapped herself. Van Herpens designs invariably end up in museums and galleries more often than wardrobes. No surprise there. The point of their pointlessness as fashion designs is their payload of ideas, everything from cultural diversity to the knock-on effects of climate change, salty and snapping fresh from the zeitgeist. Advertisement But definitely my own personal zeitgeist, she corrects. Van Herpen is at pains to explain her criteria for new projects does not include the zeitgeists blips, fads and flashes-in-the-pan. Im always looking for timelessness. For example, a concept like aquatic architecture Im interested in this now will be going through an evolution in the coming 50 years. Arcing across all van Herpens work is her constant experiment with fashions core tenets, especially its traditional notions of femininity and beauty. The exploration of femininity is really key to everything I do, she says. Her designs are unarguably beautiful, but in unexpected ways. Ananda-Maya, for example, may be an exquisitely hand-crafted high-tech haute couture ode to experimental materials and the human struggle with self-realisation in a world of merging digital and physical identities (feel free to jot that down), but it is also gut-punchingly gorgeous. Loading So, gloriously stupid, or simply glorious? It depends which side of the fashion divide you land after looking closely and weighing all you now know about van Herpen with that tangle of psycho-social baggage mentioned earlier. NGV fashion and textiles curator Katie Somerville equates van Herpen, Daniel Roseberry of Schiaparelli and other brave minds like theirs to fashions equivalent of a research and development department. Like any field or industry, youve got this laboratory of ideas, Somerville says. Its those exciting, brave minds that want to explore things that havent been played with before. She and co-curator in the NGVs fashion and textiles department, Danielle Whitfield, have clocked a combined 50 years acquiring these disruptive designs that ping in the zeitgeist, mark their moment in history and, one way or another, push fashions slow, messy, back-and-forth process of evolution forward by a whisker or six. Advertisement Advertisement Eating outSandwiches Six new sandwich joints worth queuing up for (including the new home for popular Stefanino Panino) These hot new inner-north openings are sure to satisfy any lunchtime cravings. Cue the queues! Daniela Frangos November 22, 2023 Save Log in , register or subscribe to save recipes for later. You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. Save this article for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime. Got it Share As featured in the December hit list. See all stories . You might think the last thing the inner north needs is another sandwich joint. But the lunchtime queues suggest otherwise. Melburnians hunger for things betwixt bread shows no signs of abating. Whether youre after fresh or toasted, an Italian panino, banh mi or New York deli-style number, here are six new arrivals to wrap your hands, and mouth, around this summer and beyond. The Bologna at Stefanino Panino. Justin McManus Stefanino Panino, Collingwood Stef Condello, owner of Stefanino Panino, now in Collingwood Yards. Justin McManus Anyone en route to this superstar sandwich spot after peak hour knows to check its Instagram storiesfirst, lest you arrive to find the cupboards are bare. Such is the popularity of this Italian-inspired panino shop by former school teacher Stef Condello and his mum, Diana. Now the Condellos have upped stumps from Brunswick to Collingwood, bringing the Bologna (mortadella, stracciatella, pickled peppers and olives), Roma (porchetta, roasted peppers, provolone, rocket and dijon mustard), Caprese (salami, tomato, basil and buffalo mozzarella) and all their tasty friends, all sandwiched between ciabatta rolls from Natural Tucker. When it opens on Friday, November 24, the bigger site will have indoor and outdoor seating, an espresso machine and hopes of an eventual liquor licence. And queues, no doubt. Must-try sandwich: Bologna mortadella, stracciatella, pickled peppers, olives $16 35 Johnston Street, Collingwood, instagram.com/stefanino.panino Advertisement The Elvis sandwich at UGO. Fabio Risi UGO Cucina Popolare, Fitzroy The Cannoleria crew has brought its signature porchetta from its Heidelberg West paninoteca to a Fitzroy pop-up, setting up shop at a forthcoming apartment development over spring and summer. From 11am, Friday to Sunday, the team is carving slow-roasted pork, tender and herby on the inside and crisp on the outside, and serving it five ways. Get it sandwiched between semolina focaccia in the OG, perhaps, or on potato focaccia in the Elvis, dressed up with pickled capsicum, zingy lemon and creamy caciocavallo cheese. Head there earlier (8am until noon) for breakfast items such as a McUGO pork and fennel sausage and Thats Amore burrata on an English muffin and a waffle stacked with porchetta, shaved pecorino and a drizzle of honey. Finish off with piped-to-order Cannoleria cannoli and a St Remio coffee. Must-try sandwich: The Elvis porchetta, pickled capsicum, lemon and caciocavallo in a potato focaccia ($15) Open Fri-Sun, 8am-3pm, 369 Gore Street, Fitzroy, ugo.com.au Advertisement Spazio Paradiso, Carlton North Carlton North just scored a new panino shop, slinging familiar combos of Italian-style sandwiches to-go. Come for combos like mortadella, stracciatella, green split olives and crushed pistachio; and porchetta with provolone, marinated eggplant and basil pesto. Or build your own. Every sandwich is packed into chewy ciabatta from nearby Natural Tucker Bakery. Owners Jamie Georgopoulos and Meika Khong were inspired by their travels to Milan and its many sandwich shops and mercatos. As such, youll find dried plants, garlic braids and chilli peppers strung up around the no-fuss space (or spazio), plus Italian pantry staples such as taralli biscuits, tomato sugo and legumes to take home. The team is selling out as soon as 12.30pm some days, so go early. Must-try sandwich: The Godfather ham, fior di latte, marinated eggplant, tomato pesto and spinach ($16) Open Wed-Sat, 10.30am-2.30pm, 709 Nicholson Street, Carlton North instagram.com/spazio_paradiso Good Days Hot Bread, Brunswick Advertisement The Good Days crews lockdown hustle selling banh mi was cemented this winter with a dedicated hot bread shop on Sydney Road. Owner-chef Nam Nguyen has assembled a menu of classic banh mi combinations made with local and free-range meat, chicken or fish stuffed into crusty bread rolls from N Lee. Think five-spice rubbed pork belly with crunchy crackling, an umami thwack of XO-seasoned mince and fresh coriander gremolata plus a vegan version made with crisp, pressed tofu, puffed tofu crackling and mushroom pate. The minimal diner, with its laminate and stainless steel detailing, is a spin on old-school Vietnamese-owned bakeries. Its also serving eclairs with filling like pandan cream, plus Vietnamese coffee. Must-try sandwich: XO Porchetta five-spice pork belly, XO mince, pork crackling, coriander gremolata ($16) Open Mon-Fri 10am-3pm, Sat & Sun 10am-4pm, 644 Sydney Road, Brunswick, good-days.com.au Crowd favourite, the roast chicken and pesto sandwich at Donnys Deli. Supplied Donnys Deli, Brunswick Blink and youll miss this no-fuss sandwich shop, which opened near the Moreland and Sydney roads intersection over winter. Its menu of toasted sandwiches and bagels is also halal, and comes from the team behind Coburgs florist-cafe Grounds of Eden, which also supplies the bread and pastries. Find customary items such as tuna melts and Reubens, a crowd-favourite roast chicken and pesto sanga, and bagels that are a vehicle for slabs of chicken schnitzel with red cabbage and truffle mayo. The interior merges delis old and new via white tiles, PVC curtain strips and a pantry section lined with hot sauce, pickled peppers, chilli oil and bread, ready to spruce up your own sandwiches at home. Theres also Allpress coffee and Donnys merch. Advertisement Must-try sandwich: Pesto chicken roast chicken, kewpie mayo, pesto, pickles, swiss cheese and lettuce ($14) Open Mon-Fri, 7.30am-3pm, and Sat & Sun 8am-3pm, at 170A Moreland Road, Brunswick, instagram.com/donnysdeli Coming soon JollyGood, Collingwood Advertisement Yoon, Sunak promise strategic partnership across fields By Nam Hyun-woo LONDON President Yoon Suk Yeol and U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held a summit, Wednesday (local time), and signed the Downing Street Accord aimed at elevating bilateral ties to what both sides said is the "highest level of strategic ambition." The summit came on the occasion of Yoons state visit to the United Kingdom to commemorate the 140th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations. The accord is a blueprint of the future partnership of both countries that spans national security, defense, science, technology and other fields. The Republic of Korea and the U.K. are signing the new Downing Street Accord today to strengthen and deepen our collaboration across the fields of security and defense, science and technology, prosperity and trade and energy security, the accord read. This will ensure that the ties between our countries, our economies and our people are raised to the highest level of strategic ambition, to endure for this century and beyond. Comprised of 13 paragraphs and 45 tasks, the accord is a non-binding political document. It reflects the next phase of the partnership between the two countries, by determining the basic principle and the direction of bilateral relations, their common stance on major international issues and the fields of future cooperation. In the accord, the leaders agreed to elevate diplomatic relations to a global strategic partnership, so that the two countries can deepen cooperation across all fields. To this end, the leaders decided to create a new two-plus-two ministerial dialogue involving the foreign and defense ministers of both countries and work together to sign a joint Defense Memorandum of Understanding. They will conduct joint South Korea-U.K. sanctions enforcement patrols against North Korea to put United Nation Security Council sanctions into practice. Also, the two countries will establish a Strategic Cyber Partnership focused on developing key capabilities and closer coordination to counter cyber threats and strengthen collaboration with industries. Following the accord, the U.K. became the third country to hold a two-plus-two ministerial dialogue with South Korea, following the United States and Australia. Also, the Strategic Cyber Partnership is the first of its kind to be signed by the leaders of each country and connects South Koreas cybersecurity network with a member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which also includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S. In the field of science and technology, the leaders agreed to launch a digital partnership to foster collaborations in telecommunication supply chain diversification, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. The accord noted that the two countries will open negotiations to upgrade their free trade agreement to reflect the importance of emerging trade agendas, such as supply chain resilience, the digital economy, and energy cooperation. During a South Korea-U.K. business forum that took place hours before the summit, Yoon said the negotiations to upgrade the trade pact will fully reflect the opinions of the two countries business leaders and set up new norms in the digital, supply chain and energy fields to create a playground for both countries companies. The accord also included the shared views of the two countries on geopolitical issues, including the leaders strong condemnation of North Koreas nuclear and missile programs and the purported military cooperation between the North and Russia. We oppose all forms of arms transfers and related military cooperation between the DPRK and Russia, and urge the two sides to abide by relevant resolutions, the accord read. DPRK is an acronym for North Koreas official name. Yoon and Sunak also echoed their condemnation of Russias unprovoked aggression against Ukraine and the abhorrent terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas. The leaders stressed that the two countries remain committed to making progress toward a two-state solution, which refers to the proposed idea of establishing two states for two peoples. Regarding increasing tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, the leaders stressed that they oppose any unilateral attempt to change the status quo in the region and noted that peace and stability across the strait is an indispensable element in the security and prosperity of the international community. The Downing Street Accord encompasses every field of cooperation for the bilateral strategic partnership, South Koreas First Deputy Director of National Security Kim Tae-hyo said. And it will serve as a blueprint and a compass for the two countries new global strategic partnership. Nick Dyrenfurths opinion piece on why Albaneses honeymoon is over and how he can keep the romance alive is sparking much discussion with subscribers. @Dave Ocean says: The timing of the Voice in the midst of the cost of living crisis was probably a major factor in its defeat. Although I believe the Voice would have been good, for many it just looked like an out of touch government pursuing ideals at a time when the focus should have been on the economy and doing what was needed to ease the inflationary activities Labor has given the LNP an opportunity to take government at the next election through ramping up talk of immigration and blaming Labor for the predicament that we find ourselves in. The electorate doesnt seem to understand that the current housing crisis has been 20+ years in the making, but it does need to see action to reduce further interest rate rises. @Susan Sox writes: Labor will not achieve a recovery or a victory at the next election by camouflaging themselves as LNP lite Not having the guts or the stamina to take the fight to the opposition means you may not be worthy of election. Dutton is playing politics 101 from the Tony Abbott handbook and is saying no to everything, good or bad, just for the optics of making the government look unstructured and unplanned. Albanese needs to take off the gloves and hit back. Point out at every opportunity that Dutton says no every time. Put that in voters minds, at the very front of their minds, and they start seeing Dutton through a different lens and he has to start saying yes or he gets branded as a whinger. Constantly point out that the opposition has no policy on whatever the topic of the day is. @Riddley Walker says: Albanese? I thought Peter Dutton was the Prime Minister? It sure looks that way with the ALP toeing the Liberal line at every opportunity. What do you think? Let us know via the link above. A new national code regulating how universities respond to sexual violence and an independent watchdog to investigate student complaints are key planks of a draft federal plan on campus safety put to state education ministers this week. The proposal for a new student ombudsman and enhanced oversight of student residential halls has yet to be endorsed by state ministers. But after a special meeting with federal Education Minister Jason Clare on Tuesday, they agreed to release it for public consultation. Education Minister Jason Clare is pushing ahead with university governance reforms, including on student safety. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen Sanctions for universities that fail to meet these standards are also on the table, as are increased reporting requirements, with a dedicated unit proposed to monitor how universities implement the code. All students and staff should feel safe on campus and in residential colleges. More need to be done to support [them] when the worst happens, Clare said. A West Australian police officer who was hospitalised in a fall while travelling in Croatia has spoken out for the first time to thank her supporters and vowed to get back to work at the force. Ella Cutler was rushed to hospital in August after slipping and falling about 10 metres from a wall in Dubrovnik, leaving her with serious injuries including multiple fractures to her skull, spine and ribs, as well as punctured lungs. WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch with Detective Constable Ella Cutler, who was injured during a fall in Croatia earlier this year. Credit: WA Police Cutler, 26, was with an Australian man at the time and local media reported the two fell when she leaned on him. The young detective constable and her family met with WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch on Tuesday to express their appreciation for the outpouring of support in the wake of the accident. For the most up-to-date information about this fire, please visit www.emergency.wa.gov.au. A major bushfire in Perths northern suburbs is continuing to put lives and homes at risk after firefighters spent a hot night fighting the blaze. Authorities warn it is too late to leave for residents east of Pinjar Road in the bushfire emergency warning area and urge them to seek shelter. A bushfire emergency warning has been issued for an area covering several suburbs in the cities of Swan and Wanneroo, including Banksia Grove, Jandabup, Mariginiup, Melaleuca, Sinagra and Tapping. Police have arrested and charged a 37-year-old man who allegedly indecently dealt with a young girl whilst he was employed at a Banksia Grove day care centre. The incident happened on November 16 on Fairywren Way, with detectives launching an investigation after they received reports of inappropriate behaviour by a staff member at the centre. The Two Rocks man was later charged with one count of indecent dealing with a child under 13 years, two counts of possess a prohibited drug (cannabis) and two counts of possessed any drug paraphernalia in or on which there was a prohibited drug or plant. He will appear at Joondalup Magistrates Court on Friday. A 49-year-old Two Rocks man has been charged after police allegedly uncovered numerous files containing child exploitation material and bestiality on 11 separate devices at his home. The man will appear in Joondalup Magistrates Court on Wednesday to face 25 charges after detectives from the child exploitation operations squad searched his home in the coastal suburb north of Perth on Tuesday. It will be alleged a preliminary digital forensic examination revealed the child exploitation and bestiality material, while a further review uncovered covert recordings of women using a toilet, which police allege occurred while the man worked as a security guard in regional WA. Detectives also seized various controlled and prohibited weapons from the mans house, including nunchakus and throwing knives, as well as drugs and drug paraphernalia. The mans charges also include eight counts of indecent acts in public, eight counts of unlawfully installing surveillance devices, and two counts of possessing or copying an indecent or obscene article. Paul Keating coined the adage Never get between a premier and a bucket of money. A more lumbering, but equally apt, version could have been Never get between a decomposing state government and a chance to boost the polls. The Palaszczuk government has fizzed into faux outrage this past week or so over its federal counterparts decision to walk away from infrastructure projects considered inflationary, wasteful and nonessential including in Queensland. Most big-ticket infrastructure projects to be delivered by the Queensland government have gone over budget and fallen behind schedule. Credit: Brisbane Times Most of the key state government players have had a go, taking to the floor of state parliament or to press conferences and flexing their Queenslander muscles on the feds and faceless henchmen in foreign Canberra. None of the fizzers have been more colourful than Treasurer Cameron Dick, who tweeted on Thursday that the Commonwealth must treat Queensland more like Qantas and less like Qatar, a taunt recalling Catherine Kings curious decision to block Qatar Airways from flying more to Australia. Bill Shortens Melbourne electorate office has been targeted a second time in as many weeks after he called for Australians to dial down the rhetoric amid protests and rising community tensions over the Israel-Hamas conflict. The former Labor leader and current government services minister confirmed to this masthead his Moonee Ponds office had been graffitied with the slogan dial down the apartheid Bill early on Thursday morning. Bill Shortens electorate office in Moonee Ponds was graffitied on Thursday morning. Credit: Chris Hopkins Shorten had urged Australians to dial down the degree of aggro after fake dead bodies were dumped outside the electorate offices of seven Labor MPs in Victoria and Tasmania last Wednesday. Shortens office was also plastered with posters proclaiming Free Palestine and No more bodies in Gaza. Renewable energy generators could be hit with fire service levy bills up to 25 times what they currently pay, sometimes adding millions of dollars to the costs of running projects, as the state government plans to count wind turbines and solar farms in land valuations. The Clean Energy Investment Group, which advocates for investors in renewable energy, said the levy would be 10 to 25 times higher for renewable generators in Victoria if an amendment to change the laws passed parliament. The Bald Hills Wind Farm in Tarwin Lower, South Gippsland. Credit: Benjamin Preiss Because those assets are very high value, that would drastically increase the amount that the [levy] is calculated on, the groups policy director Marilyne Crestias said. Treasurer Tim Pallas introduced 12 amendments to state taxes in October, the first of which were announced in a flurry of confusion at a property industry breakfast where he revealed plans to expand levies on vacant and undeveloped land. North Koreas UN mission did not respond to a request for comment. Remote IT workers can earn more than 10 times what a conventional North Korean labourer working overseas in construction or other manual jobs earns, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said in 2022. It said teams of them could collectively earn more than $US3 million ($4.5 million) a year. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un earlier this year. Credit: KCNA/KNS/AP Reuters was unable to determine how much the scheme has generated over the years. Some of the scripts, designed to prepare the workers for interview questions, contain excuses for the need to work remotely. Richard, a senior embedded software developer, said: I [flew] to Singapore several weeks ago. My parents got COVID and I [decided] to be with family members for a while. Now, I am planning to go back to Los Angeles in three months. I am thinking that I could start work remotely right now, then I will be on board when I go back to LA. A North Korean IT worker, who recently defected, also examined the documents and confirmed their authenticity to Reuters: We would create 20 to 50 fake profiles a year until we were hired, he said. North Koreas science and technology centre, located on Ssuk island in Pyongyang. The country has sent IT workers abroad to earn cash for the regime. Credit: AP He viewed the scripts, data and documents and said it was the same thing he had been doing because he recognised the tactics and techniques used. Once I was hired, I would create another fake profile to get a second job, said the worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns. In October, the DOJ and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seized $US1.5 million in funds and 17 website domains it said were used by the IT workers to defraud businesses. North Korean developers working at US companies had hidden behind pseudonymous email and social media accounts and generated millions of dollars a year on behalf of sanctioned North Korean entities through the scheme, the DOJ said. There is a risk to the North Korea government, as these privileged workers are exposed to dangerous realities about the world and their countrys enforced backwardness, said Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea (LINK), an organisation that works with defectors. Kim Jong-un attends a launching ceremony of North Korea says a new nuclear attack submarine in September. Credit: AP Last year, the US government said North Korean IT workers were mainly located in China and Russia, with some in Africa and South-East Asia, and could each earn up to $US300,000 annually. According to his experience, the former IT worker said all were expected to earn at least $US100,000, of which 30-40 per cent was repatriated to Pyongyang, 30-60 per cent spent on overhead expenses, and 10-30 per cent pocketed by workers. Loading He estimated there were around 3000 others like him overseas, and another 1000 based within North Korea. I worked to earn foreign currency, he told Reuters. It differs between people but basically, once you get a remote job, you can work for as little as six months, or as long as three to four years. When you cant find a job, you freelance. The researchers, part of Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 cyber research division, made the discovery when examining a campaign by North Korean hackers that targeted software developers. One of the hackers left the documents exposed on a server, Unit 42 said, indicating there were links between North Koreas hackers and its IT workers, although the defector said espionage campaigns were for a select few. Hackers are trained separately. Those missions are not given to people like us, he said. Still, there is a crossover. The DOJ and FBI have warned that North Korean IT workers may use access to hack their employers, and some of the leaked resumes indicated experience at cryptocurrency firms, an industry that has been long-targeted by North Korean hackers. Fake identities Data from Constella Intelligence, an identity investigation firm, showed that one of the workers had accounts at more than 20 freelancing websites in the United States, Britain, Japan, Uzbekistan, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. The worker did not respond to an emailed request for comment. The data, collated from leaks on the dark web, also revealed an account on a website selling digital templates to create realistic-looking fake identification documents, including US driving licences, visas and passports, Reuters found. Loading The documents unearthed by Unit 42 included resumes for 14 identities, a forged US green card, interview scripts, and evidence that some workers had bought access to legitimate online profiles to appear more genuine. The Richard in Singapore who was seeking remote IT work appeared to refer to a forged profile by the name of Richard Lee the same name on the green card. The US Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. Reuters found a LinkedIn account for a Richard Lee with the same profile photo who listed experience at Jumio, a digital identity verification company. We do not have any records of Richard Lee having been a current or former employee of Jumio, a Jumio spokesperson said. Jumio does not have any evidence to suggest the company has ever had a North Korean employee within its workforce. Reuters messaged the LinkedIn account seeking comment, but received no response. LinkedIn removed the account after receiving requests from Reuters for comment. South Korea said Tuesday it will resume reconnaissance and surveillance activities around the inter-Korean border as it takes steps to suspend part of a 2018 military tension reduction deal in response to North Korea's latest launch of a military spy satellite. The presidential National Security Council (NSC) issued the statement after North Korea claimed success in its third attempt to place a spy satellite into orbit. The launch took place late Tuesday (local time) from a launch site in Tongchang-ri on North Korea's northwest coast. "The government will take steps to suspend the effectiveness of Article 1, Clause 3 of the 'Sept. 19 Military Agreement' and restore reconnaissance and surveillance operations against North Korea in the area around the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) that were carried out in the past," the NSC said, referring to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the Korean Peninsula. "Such action will greatly strengthen our military's ability to identify North Korean threat targets and its response posture," it said. The NSC argued it was taking a legitimate step to defend South Korea's security amid North Korea's repeated violations of the 2018 agreement, nuclear and missile threats, and various provocations. The fate of the rest of the agreement will depend on North Korea's future actions, it added. The Comprehensive Military Agreement, signed on Sept. 19, 2018, under the previous liberal administration of President Moon Jae-in, calls for halting all hostile military activity between the Koreas, setting up maritime buffer zones and turning the DMZ into a peace zone, among other things. Article 1, Clause 3 the section possibly subject to suspension outlines no-fly zones that were established around the MDL in November 201A8. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol led an NSC meeting from London where he is currently on a four-day state visit and was briefed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the details of the launch, according to his office. Yoon said that regardless of its success or failure, North Korea's launch was aimed at strengthening its reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities against South Korea and enhancing its intercontinental ballistic missile performance. He instructed the government to take response measures in accordance with the law and to accurately explain to the people and the international community that such measures are the minimum defensive steps needed to protect the country. He also called for thorough preparations against additional provocations by North Korea and maintaining a firm South Korea-United States combined defense posture as well as close trilateral coordination among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan. The NSC "strongly denounced" the launch as a direct violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and a threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia. "We also make clear that we are always open to dialogue between the authorities of the South and North to discuss the reduction of tensions on the Korean Peninsula," the NSC said. "The Yoon Suk Yeol government will respond sternly to any provocation by North Korea, while putting top priority on the people's safety through a strong security posture." (Yonhap) The Hague, Netherlands: Dutch anti-EU far-right populist Geert Wilders started looking for coalition partners on Thursday after a massive election win that is set to have wide repercussions in the Netherlands and across Europe. Beating all predictions, his Freedom Party (PVV) won 37 seats out of 150, well ahead of 25 for a joint Labour/Green ticket and 24 for the conservative Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom. Credit: AP The result puts Wilders first in line to lead talks to form a new ruling coalition and possibly become the countrys prime minister at a time of political upheaval through much of Europe. The vocally anti-Islam Wilders has vowed to halt all immigration, slash Dutch payments to the European Union and block the entrance of any new members, including Ukraine. We will have to find ways to live up to the hopes of our voters, to put the Dutch back as number one, Wilders said in his first response, adding that the Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch, the asylum tsunami and migration will be curbed. What is Wilders political stance on immigration? Running against immigration has been central to Wilders career, sometimes bringing him into conflict with the law. He was convicted of discrimination against Moroccans after leading a chant at a campaign rally in 2014, when he asked the crowd whether they wanted more, or fewer Moroccans. After supporters chanted Fewer! he answered: Were going to take care of that. Wilders said in 2021, when the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, that he was the victim of a witch hunt and a broken legal system. Habib al-Kaddouri, head of the organisation representing Dutch Moroccans said the distress and fear were enormous among the community following the poll. Wilders is known for his ideas about Muslims and Moroccans. We are afraid that he will portray us as second-class citizens. Having made strongly anti-EU comments in the past, he moderated his tone over the election campaign as he sought to get his party into government. He will have to work with pro-EU parties to form a coalition. But he kept to his strict anti-immigration, Dutch-first approach, winning his Party for Freedom its largest support in its 17-year existence. Its enough now. The Netherlands cant take it any more. We have to think about our own people first now. Borders closed. Zero asylum-seekers, Wilders said in a television debate on the eve of the election. Geert Wilders in Perth in 2015. Credit: James Mooney Wilders is by far the best campaigner. Even his political opponents will admit that, author Willem Post of the Netherlands Clingendael Institute think-tank said. Hes the one-liner guy, hes a bit like [former US president Donald] Trump. Loading Wilders inflammatory views on Islam have prompted death threats and he has lived under heavy police protection for years. He has called the prophet Mohammad a paedophile, Islam a fascist ideology and backward religion, and wants to ban mosques and the Koran the Muslim holy book in the Netherlands. His comments have led to sometimes violent protests in nations with large Muslim populations, including Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt. In Pakistan, a religious leader issued a fatwa against him. He visited Australia in 2015 to help launch the Australian Liberty Alliance, a party that he inspired. He said at the time the party wanted Australia to stay Australian and stood for not giving in to multiculturalism. His visit was clouded both by protests and questions about whether he would be granted a visa to enter the country. What is the Party for Freedom? The Party of Freedom was formed in 2006 as a replacement for Wilders one-seat hold in Dutch parliament. It quickly became the fourth-largest party in the Netherlands and established itself as influential. A self-proclaimed fan of nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Wilders is explicitly anti-EU, urging the Netherlands to take back control of its borders, to significantly reduce its payments to the union and to block the entrance of any new members. Orban said of Wilders likely victory: The winds of change are here! Congratulations to Geert Wilders on winning the Dutch elections! Wilders has also repeatedly said the Netherlands should stop providing arms to Ukraine, as he says the country needs the weapons to be able to defend itself. However, none of the parties he could potentially form a government with share these ideas. The politician is one of the Netherlands most recognisable figures thanks to his dyed blond mane, but little is known about his private life, except that he is married to a Hungarian-born woman and has two cats who have their own Instagram and X accounts. Australia has welcomed the breakthrough deal between the Israeli government and Hamas that includes a four-day pause in the war that has killed more than 12,000 people since October 7. The deal between the Israeli government and Hamas, negotiated with help from Qatar, the United States and Egypt, will secure the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas, as well as 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. It also allows for a significant expansion of aid deliveries into the ravaged Gaza Strip. Australian-Israeli actor Dan Mor, pictured in the 2015 film Arrowhead, said he was praying his sister-in-law would be among the hostages who are released. Foreign Minister Penny Wong welcomed it, saying she hoped it was the first step in the path to a sustainable ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. She also revealed the government has granted temporary visas to 860 Palestinians trapped in Gaza and almost 1800 Israelis to allow them to relocate to Australia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed the hostage deal involved only a halt in hostilities and that his government remained committed to eliminating Hamas. Wellington: A New Zealand man who had spent most of the last decade living in a cave before being jailed earlier this year is relieved his six-month stint behind bars is over. Im happy to be out, said the man largely known as Little John, but who also goes by John Black or John Russell Tingle. Little John has now returned to his outdoor lifestyle. Credit: Stuff Little John made New Zealand headlines last year after Stuff revealed that he had lived in a cave, on and off, for over a decade near the township of Outram, near Dunedin. It is more of a bedroom and a place where I am comfortable ... but Im still part of society, he said of his alternative lifestyle, which also included DIY dentistry and cooking cannabis pizza. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then its a duck but just like the myriad species of ducks out there, diversity also abounds in the world of mortgage broking. Lendi Group identifies and describes each broker type. Broker types Lendi and Domain home loan specialists These specialists are salaried brokers who are directly employed by Lendi Group. They enjoy scheduled appointments generated by the company and receive comprehensive support for their loan submissions from Lendi's client solutions team. Lendi home loan consultants and Aussie mobile brokers These broking professionals operate as self-employed, independent contractors. They engage with clients both face-to-face and virtually, accommodating diverse customer preferences. Aussie store brokers These brokers can be either self-employed or salaried employees affiliated with one of Aussies 225 stores nationwide. This group can either work under Aussie franchisees or independently. Aussie franchisees Another distinct broker class, these brokers have the freedom to operate independently and scale their businesses autonomously. [This is] what we would call being the CEO of your own business, said Matthew Whyte, GM for distribution growth at Lendi Group. Catering to different broker types Lendi Group offers diverse channels customised for various broker types. Our multi-channel business model ensures there are suitable avenues for brokers to explore as their goals evolve or their requirements change, Whyte said. The Pathways Program also inherently acknowledges that some ducks have a Lendi background and others with an Aussie background, post the Aussie and Lendi merger in May 2021. By the end of June, the Lendi Group successfully migrated all 1,100 Aussie brokers to the new Aussie platform, just eight months after the initial batch was moved over a little more than a year ago. The main point of difference we offer brokers is choice, Whyte said. Following the merger of Aussie and Lendi, we now have a range of opportunities across the group, from salaried broker and independent contractor roles, right through to franchise opportunities. Whyte said the program is designed to position brokers for success by guiding them into the business model that aligns with their professional and personal goals. The Lendi Group actively embraces and welcomes broker diversity. Lendi Group is a place where brokers can start their career, build their career and grow their future, with our Pathways Program giving them the opportunity to be whatever they want to be whether thats a salaried broker, a mobile broker, an online broker, a store broker, or a store owner and franchisee, Whyte said. Get the hottest and freshest mortgage news delivered right into your inbox. Subscribe now to our FREE daily newsletter. Bryan, OH (43506) Today Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. High 44F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.. Tonight Steady light rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 39F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. FBI chief says TikTok 'screams' of US national security concerns (Photo: Mike Blake/Reuters) Following the Indonesian government's shutdown of the overseas version of TikTok's e-commerce services, there are reports that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is planning to invest in a subsidiary of Indonesia's internet company GoTo Group, in a bid to resume its e-commerce operations in Indonesia. Sources indicate that ByteDance is aiming to acquire Tokopedia, the e-commerce arm of the GoTo Group, which is Indonesia's largest local e-commerce platform. The transaction could be completed in the coming weeks. It's reported that this deal is not a direct investment but rather the establishment of a joint venture between the two companies. The negotiations also involve the creation of a new e-commerce platform, a move intended to circumvent regulatory obstacles and restore TikTok's e-commerce services in Southeast Asia's largest retail market. However, these sources also mentioned that the negotiations are ongoing and could still fail. Even if successful, the agreement would require regulatory approval. A direct investment in Tokopedia by TikTok could help ease relations with the government. As of now, neither TikTok nor the GoTo Group has responded to these reports. Analysts suggest that a deal with GoTo Group, Indonesia's largest internet company, carries risks for TikTok, potentially aiding a competitor to maintain operations in the Indonesian market. However, if the transaction is successful, it could bring a powerful global social media partner to GoTo Group, potentially boosting sales and transaction volumes for both companies. In late September, the Indonesian government demanded a ban on e-commerce transactions within the same product on social media and required TikTok Shop to reorganize as an independent application within a week or face service closure. In response to regulatory pressures, TikTok announced the shutdown of its Indonesian TikTok Shop in early October. TikTok had been trying to reach out to Indonesian government officials and other social media companies to find a way to restart its e-commerce operations. Last week, Teten Masduki, Indonesia's Minister of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises, said that TikTok had initiated discussions with five companies, including Tokopedia, PT Bukalapak.com, and Blibli, to explore potential collaborations. However, TikTok is not without leverage. Although the Indonesian regulators claim the action aims to protect local small and micro businesses, the shutdown of TikTok Shop has significantly impacted local merchants, influencers, and service agencies. As reported by Wall Street Horizon, the most affected are local small and medium-sized businesses, as larger businesses or brands generally have multi-channel strategies, making the impact of closing a single channel more manageable. Smaller businesses, due to weaker supply chains and a better fit for the TikTok platform, are more significantly affected. Southeast Asia is a key region for TikTok's e-commerce expansion, with third-party data showing that TikTok's Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in Southeast Asia grew from 600 million U.S. dollars in 2021 to 4.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. Indonesia is the first and largest overseas e-commerce market for TikTok Shop, contributing half of TikTok Shop's Southeast Asian market share. TikTok aims to use Indonesia, with a population of 278 million, as a model for international expansion into markets like the United States and Europe. With Indonesia becoming the first Southeast Asian country to target TikTok, other countries in the region might follow suit, putting significant pressure on the company. Therefore, how TikTok resolves differences with governments in Southeast Asia becomes crucial. The Times previously reported that the Malaysian government is considering a policy similar to that of Indonesia, contemplating a ban on e-commerce transactions on the social media platform TikTok. This policy is a response to consumer concerns over pricing competition and data privacy issues on TikTok Shop. Vietnam has also completed a nearly five-month investigation into TikTok, finding that the platform violated several regulations regarding the storage of network information in Vietnam. The authorities have demanded that TikTok remove all content violating Vietnamese laws and prevent its re-publication, adding compliance with local laws to its community guidelines and providing information to address violations on the platform. By Abhishek Vishnoi and Ashutosh Joshi Indias Murugappa Group added $3 billion in market value Wednesday after one of the conglomerates unit announced a foray into semiconductors. The shares of the groups electric motor maker CG Power and Industrial Solutions Ltd. surged by the 20% limit to a record, prompting similar-sized rallies in two other group stocks, after saying it plans to invest $791 million in a semiconductor assembly and test facility over five years. The proposal comes against the backdrop of Indias ambition to create a robust tech manufacturing sector that has already drawn investments from Apple Inc. suppliers. The foray would also provide investors an opportunity to bet on a sector thats added trillions of dollars in stock values globally this year, but has been largely absent from the nations $3.7 trillion equity market. Murugappa Group is capable of foraying into this business, which is highly sophisticated and requires technology collaboration with global players, said Kranthi Bathini, a strategist with Mumbai-based WealthMills Securities. Still, the venture is capital intensive with a longer payback period, he said. Other group companies Tube Investments of India Ltd. and Shanthi Gears Ltd. surged 20% each, while Carborundum Universal Ltd. climbed as much as 9%. CG Power plans to fund the investment via subsidies, debt and equity contributions from partners, according to a statement. The Murugappa group, which began in the banking markets of Burma in the 1900s, operates 29 businesses and is present in 40 countries, according to its website. South Korea, the United States and Japan shared information about North Korea's launch of what it claimed to be a military spy satellite, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Wednesday. "We immediately detected, tracked and monitored the launch, and shared related information among South Korea, the United States and Japan, and we are comprehensively analyzing detailed specifications," the JCS said in a message to reporters. North Korea said it successfully launched a space rocket carrying a military reconnaissance satellite southward from its west coast late Tuesday, after two failed attempts in May and August, respectively. The JCS said that the three countries had an Aegis destroyer equipped with radar with a detection range of over 1,000 kilometers on standby in the sea areas designated by each country for joint detection and tracking among the three countries. A military official said that it was not a real-time sharing of information as such a system has not been initiated yet. The three countries plan to start operating the real-time three-way information sharing system next month. The JCS has yet to confirm whether the North's launch made the entry into orbit. "North Korea said it was successful, but we can confirm whether it has entered properly after the satellite circles the orbit a few times," a military official said. The JCS vowed to maintain the capability and readiness to "overwhelmingly respond" to any provocation by the North under the allies' solid combined defense posture, while keeping a close eye on the North's various activities. Meanwhile, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner held separate phone talks with South Korea's Deputy Defense Minister for Policy Heo Tae-keun and Japan's Director-General for Defense Policy Koji Kano to discuss the North's launch, according to the Pentagon. The officials "strongly" condemned the North's launch as a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, the Pentagon said in a press release. Ratner reaffirmed America's "ironclad" extended deterrence commitment to South Korea and Japan, it added. Extended deterrence refers to the U.S.' commitment to using the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear, to defend its allies. (Yonhap) The 7th edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit generated investment pledges worth Rs 3.76 trillion, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, said on the concluding day of the two-day conclave. Addressing the valedictory session, Banerjee said that 188 memorandum of understanding (MoUs) and letter of intent (LoIs) had been signed. Last year, the BGBS had generated investment proposals worth Rs 3.42 trillion Banerjee said that about 40 countries participated in this summit offering superb encouragement. She also acknowledged the participation of industry captains and business chambers to make it a success. Continuing with her pitch for investment, she said, We have the market, adding that Bengal was the gateway to the North East of India. It has the advantage that it shares the border with Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, she said. And Singapore, Bangkok, Malaysia are not so far. It is the future industrial destination it will be a powerhouse in the coming days, Banerjee added. On the concluding day of the summit, some industrialists and corporate houses announced investment and expansion plans in the state. Texmaco in a joint venture with a Slovakian firm would be setting up a wagon factory with a total investment of more than Rs 500 crore; Prasoon Mukherjee-led Universal Success would be investing upwards of Rs 2,000 crore in a data centre project; Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) signed an MoU for a 1000MW pump storage project. Berger Paints India, which will soon be turning 100, will be expanding. Abhijit Roy, managing director and chief executive officer, pointed out that there were four paint companies headquartered in Kolkata three went away citing issues with work culture and environment. We were the only ones who stayed behind with headquarters in Kolkata. And 15 years hence, we have kept growing to cross Rs 10,000 crore. The company has taken 30 acre land in Panagarh for further investment. Conglomerate, ITC, launched ITCMAARS, the companys super app and phygital ecosystem in Bengal. It would bring the power of digital revolution to its potato farmers, said Sanjiv Puri, chairman and managing director. The high point of the 7th edition of BGBS was, however, the Rs 20,000 crore investment over three years announced by Reliance Industries chairman and managing director, Mukesh Ambani, at the inauguration of the summit on Monday. The Chief Minister also announced policy initiatives at the inauguration such as The West Bengal Logistic Policy 2023, West Bengal Export Promotion Policy 2023, West Bengal Cable Landing Policy 2023, West Bengal Green Hydrogen Policy 2023, West Bengal New and Renewable Energy Manufacturing Promotion Policy 2023. As she closed the summit on Wednesday, Banerjee asked investors to think of Bengal as their home. It is the safest, smartest and brightest, she said. Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Girish Chandra Murmu has been elected as the Vice-Chair of the UN Panel of Auditors for the next year. This recognition underscores India's commitment to the highest standards of external audit and its active participation in shaping the global audit landscape, the CAG said in a statement. Murmu participated in the sixty-third session of the Panel of External Auditors, held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on November 20-21, 2023. The Panel of external auditors comprising heads of 12 Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) globally, oversees the external audit of the UN Secretariat, funds and programmes, and specialised agencies. The independent body, including representatives from Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Philippines, Russia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, conducts financial, performance and compliance audits of UN entities. CAG said the annual meeting served as a unique platform for collaborative discussions on various issues, including follow-up actions on the Secretary-General's response to the Panel Letter, and addressing critical concerns related to financial and management, climate change, and digital matters. In the meeting, Murmu led the discussion on critical financial and management issues affecting UN organisations, it added. In a separate meeting, Murmu along with panel members met UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, exchanging views in the areas of risk management, the challenging financial environment, and the imperative for well-structured funding strategies. The panel members emphasised the pivotal role of the UN system in guiding and managing climate finance issues, alongside expressing concerns about digital transformation. "During the meeting, Comptroller and Auditor General of India Girish Chandra Murmu was elected as the Vice-Chair of the UN Panel of Auditors for the forthcoming year," India's apex auditor added. On the sidelines of the panel meeting, the CAG of India also held a bilateral meeting with Pierre Moscovici, the First President of Cour des comptes (Supreme Audit Institution of France) to discuss the strengthening of bilateral relations between the two SAIs. Pharmaceutical firm Blue Jet Healthcare has been ordered to stop production and remove inflammable chemical goods from its premises after a fire in its factory in Maharashtra's Raigad district killed 11 labourers early this month, said the local administration on Wednesday. The action has been taken by the district administration on recommendation of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB)'s Raigad unit. Eleven workers were killed and seven others injured when a fire broke out at the company's plant in the Mahad MIDC area on November 3. The company has been ordered to stop production and remove inflammable chemical goods from its premises within a period of 72 hours, according to a notice issued by Deputy Collector (Mahad) J S Hajare. In a separate action, the Deputy Collector has asked two companies -- Sanika Chemical and V N Creative -- to stop production for causing water pollution, leading to large-scale death of fish in a drain. On November 9, thousands of fish were found dead in the drain in Temghar in Mahad MIDC. An inspection of the spot by the pollution control board revealed that two industrial units, Sanika Chemical and V N Creative, were responsible for the death of the fish, said a notice issued by Deputy Collector Hajare. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted time to several opposition parties to respond to a petition to restrain them from using the acronym INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance). A bench headed by Acting Chief Justice Manmohan also granted time to the Centre to file its reply to the public interest litigation which alleged that by using INDIA acronym, the parties were taking "undue advantage in the name of our country". "We need a week-ten days more time to put in our reply," Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma submitted on behalf of the central government. Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who represented nine political parties including Congress, Trinamool Congress, DMK and others, said there were "preliminary objections" against the petition and the Supreme Court has already dealt with the issue. On the last hearing, he had said the petition was not maintainable. The bench, also comprising Justice Mini Pushkarna, listed the matter for hearing on January 4. Petitioner Girish Bharadwaj had approached the high court earlier and sought interim order staying the use of acronym INDIA by 26 political parties and to also prohibit the use of the national flag with the acronym INDIA by the respondent political alliance. The political parties which have been arrayed as respondents are Congress, Trinamool Congress, DMK, Aam Aadmi Party, Janata Dal (United), Rashtriya Janata Dal, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), Shiv Sena (UBT), Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Lok Dal, Apna Dal (Kamerawadi). Besides, the other political parties are Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, Peoples Democratic Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Konganadu Makkal Desia Katchi (KMDK), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and Indian Union Muslim League. Revolutionary Socialist Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, All India Forward Bloc, Kerala Congress (Joseph), Kerala Congress (Mani) and Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK) have also been arrayed as respondent parties. The petition, through advocate Vaibhav Singh, stated that these parties have said that they will contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections together against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and referred to the statements of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. "... By dragging the name of our nation, Mr. (Rahul) Gandhi very cunningly presented the name of their alliance as the name of our nation and tried to show that the NDA/ BJP and Hon'ble Prime Minister Mr. (Narendra) Modi is in conflict with our own nation, that is, INDIA and this attempt of Mr. Gandhi had created confusion in the mind of common people that the upcoming general election of 2024 will be a fight between political parties or between alliance and our country. "That by creating this confusion the respondent political parties want to take undue advantage in the name of our country," the plea has said. It has said that the petitioner gave a representation to the ECI but no action was taken after which he approached the high court with the petition. In response to the petition, Election Commission, represented by lawyer Sidhant Kumar, has told the high court that it has no legal authority to regulate "political alliances" as they are not recognised as "regulated entities" under the Representation of the People Act or the Constitution. The court had issued notice on the plea in August. South Korea will partially suspend an inter-Korean agreement Wednesday to restart frontline aerial surveillance of North Korea, after the North said it launched a military spy satellite in violation of United Nations bans, Seoul officials said. The South Korean announcement which will likely infuriate North Korea came hours after the North claimed to have placed a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit in its third such launch attempt this year. The North's claim hasn't been independently verified; the Pentagon said it was still assessing the success of the launch, while Japan stated there has been no confirmation that the North Korean satellite entered orbit. But the United States and its allies still quickly condemned the North Korean launch, which they believe was meant to improve the country's missile technology as well as establish a space-based surveillance system. North Korea says it has sovereign, legitimate rights to launch spy satellites to cope with what it calls intensifying U.S.-led threats. But U.N. Security Council resolutions still prohibit any satellite liftoff by North Korea, viewing them as covers for testing its long-range missile technology. Heo Tae-keun, South Korea's deputy minister of national defense policy, told a televised briefing that the North's latest satellite launch was not only a clear violation of U.N. resolutions but also a grave provocation that threatens our national security. Heo said South Korea will respond by partially suspending the 2018 inter-Korean tension-reduction agreement later Wednesday to resume aerial surveillance activities at the border. He said the decision was approved at South Korea's Cabinet Council meeting earlier Wednesday. He added that based on the solid military alliance with the U.S., South Korea will promptly and strongly punish North Korea if it uses the South Korean step as a pretext to launch another provocation. The 2018 agreement, struck during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the rival Koreas, created buffer and no-fly zones along the countries' heavily fortified border. Under the deal, the Koreas were required to halt frontline aerial reconnaissance of each other and live-firing exercises and removed some of their guard posts and landmines at border areas. The deal invited withering conservative criticism in South Korea with critics saying it significantly restricted the operation of the country's aerial surveillance assets, which are much more superior to North Korea's. They also accused the deal of heavily benefiting North Korea, because it only called for mutual reductions of conventional military strength while leaving the North's growing nuclear arsenal intact. South Korea has no nuclear weapons. The brief Korean rapprochement period later evaporated soon after the collapse of broader nuclear diplomacy between North Korea and the U.S. in 2019. North Korea has since ramped up missile tests to modernize its weapons arsenal, prompting the U.S. and South Korea to expand their defense exercises in response. When the North's National Aerospace Technology Administration announced what it called a successful launch of its Malligyong-1 spy satellite, it said the satellite would help improve the North's war readiness in the face of the enemies' dangerous military moves. The agency said North Korea will soon launch several more spy satellites to better monitor South Korea and other areas. North Korea used the same satellite in its two failed launches in May and August. South Korea's military retrieved debris from the first launch and called the satellite too crude to perform military reconnaissance. The North's space agency said the Malligyong-1 satellite was placed in its orbit on Tuesday night, about 12 minutes after it was launched aboard the new Chollima-1 carrier rocket. But the North's neighbors said they haven't confirmed whether the launch was successful. Our understanding is that so far there is no confirmation of a satellite placed into Earth's orbit, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said. He still avoided calling the launch a failure, saying it would take a fair amount of time to verify the fate of the North's launch. Pentagon deputy press secretary, Sabrina Singh, said, we're still assessing the success of the launch. In 2012 and 2016, North Korea placed Earth observation satellites into orbit after repeated failures, but experts say neither has ever transmitted imagery back to North Korea. Before Tuesday's launch, South Korean officials said North Korea was likely receiving Russian technological support for its spy satellite launch program as part of the two countries' pushes to boost their partnerships. The U.S., South Korea and others accuse North Korea of shipping conventional arms to support Russia's war in Ukraine in exchange for receiving high-tech Russian technologies to enhance its own military programs. Both North Korea and Russia have denied the accusations. A spy satellite is among an array of sophisticated weapons systems that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wants to introduce. Experts say Kim would eventually aim to use his enlarged arsenal to win sanctions relief and other concessions from the U.S. when diplomacy resumes. Some civilian experts said North Korea's Malligyong-1 satellite is likely capable of only detecting big targets like warships or planes. But by operating several such satellites, North Korea could still observe South Korea at all times, they said. Mary Kay Inc., a global beauty brand and advocate for womens empowerment, is excited to announce its membership in the Global Shea Alliance (GSA), a non-profit industry association that designs, develops and delivers strategies that drive a competitive and sustainable shea industry worldwide. This new partnership aligns with Mary Kay's commitment to sustainability and its mission to empower women around the world. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231121605161/en/ This partnership marks a significant step in our journey to promote sustainable beauty practices. By collaborating with the Global Shea Alliance, we aim to further harness the transformative potential of shea in skincare and cosmetics," said Deborah Gibbins, Chief Operating Officer at Mary Kay. (Credit: Mary Kay Inc.). The GSA's core values are founded on promoting an inclusive value chain, fostering a pre-competitive and business-driven industry by ensuring sustainability and maintaining confidentiality in all transactions with its stakeholders. We are absolutely thrilled to join the Global Shea Alliance, said Deborah Gibbins, Chief Operating Officer at Mary Kay. This partnership marks a significant step in our journey to promote sustainable beauty practices. By collaborating with the GSA, we aim to further harness the transformative potential of shea in skincare and cosmetics. Mamatou Djaffo, President of the Global Shea Alliance, expressed her enthusiasm about the new partnership. We extend a heartfelt welcome to Mary Kay Inc, said Mamatou Djaffo. Their stellar reputation as champions of corporate social responsibility and sustainability perfectly aligns with our mission. We are thrilled at the prospect of collaborating with Mary Kay to drive substantial positive change within the cosmetics industry. Together, we aim to establish new industry standards for social and environmental responsibility, transcending beauty to empower individuals, promote sustainability, and foster a more resilient future for the millions of women who depend on shea. This exciting partnership between Mary Kay Inc. and the Global Shea Alliance in the upcoming year will spearhead initiatives aimed at enhancing the economic well-being of shea collectors and processors, as well as undertaking crucial efforts to restore degraded parklands in West Africa. Earlier this month, Mary Kay hosted Aaron Adu, GSA Managing Director, and Olawunmi Osholake, GSA Deputy Managing Director, at its manufacturing facility, the Richard R. Rogers (R3) Manufacturing / R&D Center in Lewisville, Texas, U.S.A. for a site visit followed by a meeting exploring synergies and engagement opportunities. About Mary Kay Then. Now. Always. One of the original glass ceiling breakers, Mary Kay Ash founded her dream beauty brand in Texas in 1963 with one goal: to enrich womens lives. That dream has blossomed into a global company with millions of independent sales force members in more than 35 countries. For 60 years, the Mary Kay opportunity has empowered women to define their own futures through education, mentorship, advocacy, and innovation. Mary Kay is dedicated to investing in the science behind beauty and manufacturing cutting-edge skincare, color cosmetics, nutritional supplements, and fragrances. Mary Kay believes in preserving our planet for future generations, protecting women impacted by cancer and domestic abuse and encouraging youth to follow their dreams. Learn more at marykayglobal.com, find us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, or follow us on X (formerly known as Twitter). About Global Shea Alliance The GSA is a non-profit industry association with 919 members from 39 countries including women collectors and processors, brands and retailers, ingredient suppliers, civil society, research institutions and policymakers. Through public-private partnerships, the GSA promotes industry sustainability, quality practices and standards and demand for shea in food and cosmetics. For more information, please visit https://globalshea.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231121605161/en/ Panasonic Life Solutions India News Summary Panasonic Life Solutions India (PLSIND) conducted a study to understand the impact of the interventions carried under its flagship project - holistic development of villages. One of the major impacts of this project was the highly satisfied stakeholders who benefitted from the village development project. A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine arrived in South Korea on Wednesday, one day after North Korea's latest launch of a military spy satellite. The USS Santa Fe (SSN-763), a Los Angeles-class submarine, entered the Jeju Naval Base on the southern resort island in the morning, the South Korean Navy said, coinciding with North Korea's claim of success in its third attempt to send a spy satellite into orbit the previous day. The USS Santa Fe belongs to the U.S. Navy's Carrier Strike Group 1, together with the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier that pulled into a naval base in the southeastern city of Busan on Tuesday. The South Korean Navy said it will further strengthen naval exchanges and cooperation with the United States and the combined defense posture on the occasion of the USS Santa Fe's visit. (Yonhap) State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Washington D.C. West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Puerto Rico US Virgin Islands Armed Forces Americas Armed Forces Pacific Armed Forces Europe Northern Mariana Islands Marshall Islands American Samoa Federated States of Micronesia Guam Palau Alberta, Canada British Columbia, Canada Manitoba, Canada New Brunswick, Canada Newfoundland, Canada Nova Scotia, Canada Northwest Territories, Canada Nunavut, Canada Ontario, Canada Prince Edward Island, Canada Quebec, Canada Saskatchewan, Canada Yukon Territory, Canada Postal Code OpenAI announces Sam Altman returns as CEO Xinhua) 16:51, November 22, 2023 SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- OpenAI announced late Tuesday that Sam Altman will return as CEO, days after he was dismissed by the board. "We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo," it said on X, formerly Twitter. Altman was fired last week after OpenAI's board of directors said it "no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI." Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said Monday the company would hire Sam Altman and OpenAI's co-founder Greg Brockman, who had quit after Altman's dismissal, and make them lead an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) research team. Over 700 of its 770 employees signed an open letter on Monday demanding the board to step down and reinstate Altman and Brockman, or they would leave the company. After OpenAI's announcement of Altman's return and the new board, Nadella said on X that it is "a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance." "I love OpenAI, and everything I've done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together," Altman said on X, and he looks forward to returning to OpenAI and building on the strong partnership with Microsoft. (Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun) Necessary measure for self-defense: Seoul suspends inter-Korean military accord By Jung Min-ho Seoul on Wednesday partially suspended an inter-Korean military agreement designed to ease tensions and decided to resume surveillance operations along the border with North Korea in response to Pyongyangs launch of a spy satellite. The South Korean government said it was a necessary measure for self-defense. At an extraordinary Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said North Koreas latest provocation and violation of the agreement shows it has no intention to comply with it. A partial suspension of the agreement is a necessary measure for national security and the minimum action for self-defense, he said after endorsing the proposal. It was subsequently approved in less than an hour by President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is on a state visit to Britain. North Korea said it placed its first reconnaissance satellite in orbit on Tuesday and vowed to launch more in the near future, despite South Koreas warning that such obvious violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions could lead to the official suspension of the military accord. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed later that day that the North Korean satellite entered orbit successfully. But the military advisory group said it would require further analysis to determine whether it can function as a reconnaissance satellite. North Koreas launch of a so-called military reconnaissance satellite, whether it succeeds or not, chiefly aims to develop surveillance capabilities and the performance of its intercontinental ballistic missile in a (broader) effort to materialize its nuclear and missile threats, Yoon said at a National Security Council meeting, according to the presidential office. In a statement, the council said the military accord, inked by the previous Moon Jae-in administration on Sept. 9, 2018, amid a thaw in relations, has virtually been nullified by repeated violations by North Korea nearly 3,600 times, according to military officials. The government decision immediately suspended the effectiveness of Article 1, Clause 3 of the agreement, under which the militaries of South Korea and the North should abide by no-fly zones established close to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). South Koreas military said it will resume aerial surveillance and exercises involving aircraft, including drones, in border areas without specifying a date. A helicopter carrying a commander had to land before reaching the no-fly zones, where the commander should move around by car, say, to inspect frontline bases, a high-ranking official at the Ministry of National Defense told reporters. With the no-fly zones suspended, our military assets in the air can now conduct exercises to their full capacity near the border areas. On the same day, the nuclear envoys of South Korea, the United States and Japan Kim Gunn, Jung Pak and Hiroyuki Namazu, respectively spoke by phone and strongly condemned the latest provocation by North Korea. They also expressed deep concern that the North carried out a deceptive launch, as it came more than an hour before the time it had previously announced, seriously jeopardizing the safety of planes and vessels this time again, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul said in a statement. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also condemned Pyongyang for carrying out a military satellite launch using ballistic missile technology. Any launch by the DPRK (North Korea) using ballistic missile technology goes against relevant Security Council resolutions, the statement said. The Secretary-General reiterates his call on the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea to fully comply with its international obligations under all relevant Security Council resolutions. According to military officials, South Korea is now in talks with the U.S. and Japan to conduct joint maritime drills possibly involving key strategic assets in the coming days. On Wednesday, The USS Santa Fe (SSN-763), a Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarine, arrived in Jeju Naval Base, joining the USS Carl Vinson, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that docked in Busan the previous day. "We're in consultations to conduct combined South Korea-U.S., and South Korea-U.S.-Japan maritime exercises in the southern waters of the Korean Peninsula this weekend, an official said. Ghee Happy has taken an unconventional route from conception to release. Ex-Pixar animator Sanjay Patel (Incredibles, Ratatouille) initially developed the preschool cg series with help from French animation studio Superprod and backing from Netflix. However, at the eleventh hour, Netflix decided to drop the series, leaving Patel and his team to either release the show independently or kill the project. To honor the hard work of artists who contributed to the production, Patel set up a one-man distribution team to get Ghee Happy out into the world. If we could get into a time machine and do things differently, we would have saved resources to properly distribute the show, Patel told Cartoon Brew. But what I will say is, as a creator, I am actually thrilled to learn about Youtube. (Netflix declined to comment on the legal arrangement between Patel and the company, which allowed the series to be launched on Youtube.) Lead animator and designer Chris OHara is similarly optimistic about the shows prospects now that it has landed on one of the worlds most accessible platforms. The idea of this show going on to Youtube is not something that saddens me, he said. It could have an even greater reach because its free, and the whole world is potentially the audience. There are just fewer restrictions. Ghee Happy reimagines Hindu deities as children who discover their divine powers through daily adventures at the Ghee Happy daycare center. Aesthetically based on Patels vector artwork, the show also takes inspiration from various other places, including the work of British animation director Grant Orchard. The second I saw Hey Duggee, my brain just melted down, Patel recalled. Distribution tactics wasnt the only shift that happened with Ghee Happy it also switched production techniques. The series initially started as a 2d project, but over time, it began to take shape as a cg show with a philosophy borrowed from 2d animation. OHara joined the project during the transition, and his strong 2d background was key in maintaining the shows original aesthetic spirit. OHara told us that before he joined the production, There was a lot of 2d work done. It looked amazing. It was graphic, highly stylized, and in line with the aesthetics I enjoy. So when I came on, and we pivoted to cg, the goal was to maintain this very clean graphic style in cg. OHara added, Thankfully, we were able to include similar designs to those originally in some of the 2d sequences of the show. But pivoting to cg took a lot of research, looking into all the existing art out there, and trying to translate that into animation. A lot of the art is very lavish and can be quite busy. These things, as pieces of still art, look beautiful and amazing, but when you translate that into a moving show, you have to know where you want the focus to be. The artistic success of Ghee Happy rests on the trust Patel has in his collaborators. Of OHara, he says, Hes a phenomenal filmmaker, animator, and character designer. And the fact that it all came in one human at the right time was incredible. One of OHaras suggestions, which proved vital to the shows design, was a different approach to character models. Instead of the usual 360-degee 3d model, OHara worked with Olivia de Thevenard and Tanguy Launay at Superprod to make each rotation of the character its own model. Said Patel, It was insane. That was so cool of Superprod because we burnt a lot of gas that way, but they were so excited about keeping the 2d integrity in three-dimensional space. Service studio Superprods role in the production was vital to the finished show. According to OHara, Often, service studios dont get the credit they deserve or arent afforded the creative freedom that I feel a lot of them should get. With Superprod, we had a lot of back and forth, and we wanted them to feel very involved creatively and like they could make creative decisions. Ideas coming from all angles allowed Ghee Happy to be more experimental and break the mold of a typical cg preschool show. Were going to play with frame rate here, but it wont just be 12 frames a second. Were going to put things on threes, were going to put things on fours and things on sixes, OHara explained. That requires rules. Youre not just doing it randomly. There are appropriate moments to do that. That requires a bit more guidance, perhaps. And sure, it made things a little bit more difficult there for Superprod, for a cg show to do that, but again, they always seemed very open to it and excited about it. The result is a show with characters who satisfyingly snap between poses and who can express themselves through minute details of their movement. As OHara puts it, If the Disney thing is, The illusion of life, this is the impression of life, an impressionistic visual approach to an exploration of religion. Ghee Happy interprets Hindu mythology and spirituality for preschool-aged children, a lofty but personal starting point for Patel. In his Pixar short Sanjays Super Team, Patel explored the generational divide between American Desi children and their parents who had grown up in the East. When he became a father, Patel faced complicated feelings about sharing his cultural heritage with his children. When I was making the show, I was highly aware that I was doing the same thing my father did, Patel explained. But I never wanted to be the brown guy trying to make his mixed heritage kids feel extra brown. I dont want that to be my burden because I feel like thats just a recipe for, I dont want to say rejection, but I think that can create a conflict. They see me do it, they come into my office, its full of [Desi] stuff, and they see that I am completely obsessed with it as well. But its never like, Hey, I want you to draw this deity, or Hey, lets read this book about a deity. So when it came to the show, I was clear that I wanted first and foremost to help all kids, not just brown kids, find the easiest step on this ladder [towards cultural appreciation]. The shows spiritual angle also connected with OHara as his attitudes towards religion changed. As I jumped on this show, the idea of spirituality was something that I was rediscovering through reading Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, these people that were suddenly speaking to me in my personal life, he said. It was interesting that theres a little synchronicity there. This project came along, and I was in the middle of this chapter about Shiva. One of the shows primary objectives was to make heady, philosophical themes accessible to kid audiences. I think its so important, particularly in preschool, because I think there is so much stuff out there thats just loud noises and bright colors, and its like, What gets the childs attention? versus, What can have a meaningful impact?' said OHara. Finding real meaning in the things that I make is pretty important, and I want to make sure that Im working on the right things being put out into this world, and this project felt like that. For Patel, Ghee Happy is a way of introducing young viewers to different philosophies than they are used to. When I was working at Pixar, my nieces and nephews knew everything about all the Pixar movies, but they didnt know anything about their cultural mythology, he said. By contrast, Patel explained, In Ghee Happy, there are universal ideas, but there are also ideas that are very Eastern that I didnt want to be diluted, that are unique to the Indic point of view. One example is the idea that life is linear, which is the Greek idea. When you have a finite life, everything hinges on you making the most of it. But if you have that Eastern worldview, I think Campbell calls it the Occident versus the Orient, the East (or India) would say, You know, what, dont stress, theres multiple lives here.' Existential messaging about reincarnation and the fragility of existence is difficult to square with a preschool show, but through animation, Ghee Happy communicates the big ideas. We have an interesting episode about Vishnu, the God of preservation, Patel said. The gods discovered that when he falls asleep, everything disappears, and they figured out a way to sort of wake him up and for reality to come back into being. I know its a big idea for preschoolers, but I think we pulled it off. If there is a silver lining to Netflix dropping Ghee Happy, its that the highly ambitious show is now available to a global audience free of charge. Perhaps the Eastern concept of multiple lives doesnt just apply to people, but to animation productions as well. New episodes of Ghee Happy are being regularly released on the shows Youtube channel. Marta Magnuskas 2d, hand-drawn film Misaligned is one of the years top animated shorts, and qualified for the animated short Oscars race by winning the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzigs international animated short competition. Magnuskas and her team gave Cartoon Brew exclusive access to a new making-of video in which they discuss the choices made during development and production that resulted in the films minimalist, charcoal aesthetic. More information about Misaligned can be found on the films official website. Misaligned was made with charcoal drawings on paper. It premiered during the Locarno Film Festival and was the first ever Polish animated short film to screen there. Magnuskas short is a beautiful, minimalistic study of the relationship between two people sharing a domestic space. I have a feeling filmmaking is a kind of therapeutic process for the creator, and we are sharing a big piece of our personality and our current emotional state in our films, whether we want to or not, says Magnuska. Behind the story The idea for Misaligned was loosely inspired by a short story written by Italo Calvino titled The Geckos Belly. In the story, a couple follows a daily ritual of sitting by the window and watching a gecko hunt for flies. The initial idea evolved numerous times through the development process. Its final version focuses on relationships between women and men, although the gecko remains in the story as a sort of catalyst to the events and a silent ally of the woman, who tries to reconnect with her partner. In the film, we observe sequences of repetitive actions performed by both men and women. At some point, the way they move reminds the viewer of the erratic and chaotic movement of the fly as its tracked by the gecko predator. Repetitive sequences and their increasingly rapid appearance further emphasize the growing tension between characters. Magnuska explains, I was interested in the idea of finding parallels between the observed microworlds and our macro reality. As if our daily routines are part of some bigger system where all the elements coexist and are part of the even bigger universe. Production It took three years to make Misaligned, and production companies Animoon (producer) and Atom Art (co-producer) contributed significantly to the process. The short is a Polish Film Institute Co-financed Production & Promotion. Marta has shown that unlimited passion and talent can replace large teams of artists. We are proud that Animoon could help this spark to develop. This intimate production, created with impressive precision and depth, now stands on the doorstep of Oscar nominations, shows that true art does not need grand sets to move the hearts of the audience, Animoons Grzegorz Wacawek explains. Misaligned was created by a small team of artists, with Magnuska serving as writer, director, concept artists, and primary animator. First, I was working alone on the concept of the film and on the animatic while I was often discussing and consulting the ideas with the team of producers from Animoon production company. It was a great pleasure to be able to share my ideas and discuss the progress with them. Mostly because besides the production support, the studio offered a lot of valuable creative feedback. Magnuska admits that this kind of support in making artistic choices was particularly valuable for her as its dangerously easy to lose perspective and get lost in the concept while working alone for months. I enjoy working with Animoon as I know Grzegorz Wacawek and Piotr Szczepanowicz have a background of being filmmakers, says Magnuska. They know all the stages of creating the film as a creator, not only from the production side. I appreciate that I could count on their honest feedback and their advice concerning the artistic process. Collaboration While working on the animatic, Magnuska teamed with editor Ewa Golis to organize the films structure and rhythm. The two previously worked together on Magnuskas student films. I think its quite challenging for the editor to work on the very rough animatic, where sometimes only the director knows what is drawn on the very sketchy frames. But somehow, Ewa manages to imagine what the final animation may look like. After a long process of creating the animatic, Magnuska started working on the animation with two animators, Martins Dumins and Kristine Zvirbule, from Atom Art, a Latvian co-production studio. The director animated her previous films on her own, so it was a new experience to share that work with others and have to explain her ideas. Micha Fojcik created the sound design for the film, which added definition to Magnuskas initial idea and enhanced the final images seen in the short. Visual layer I wanted to make a film using a traditional animation technique of drawing on paper. I enjoy drawing, and hand-drawn animation is the technique I feel most comfortable working with, Magnuska explains. With each new project, Magnuska tries to experience something new. This time, she used frame-by-frame charcoal drawings on paper. Its a time-consuming technique, but it adds expression to the visual, often creating unexpected results. The technique allows the artist to emphasize the sketchiness of the style, with all the imperfections, dirt, and unintended accidents defining the technique. Magnuskas main goal was to use visual means of expression rather than literal ones to depict the relationship dynamics between the protagonists, create a mood, and build up tension. Sound The films sound is, by design, as minimalistic as its aesthetic. Magnuska did not want to use a traditional soundtrack for this story. First, at the stage of the animatic, I made a very rough sound sketch that helped me later to work with the sound designer Micha Fojcik to define the key switching points of the film, the director explains. Magnuska and Fojcik worked together to figure out how to best organize the structure, build up the rhythm and the tension, and emphasize the turning points and mood changes using sound. Tension is built with increasing pace and repetition of sounds. Magnuska wanted the soundtrack to reflect the rough, sketchy character of the drawings. Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said Wednesday South Korea plans to hold joint maritime drills with the United States and Japan involving a U.S. aircraft carrier to bolster military readiness and show their resolve against North Korea's provocations. Shin visited the USS Carl Vinson, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier currently docked in Busan, 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul, a day after North Korea claimed it successfully placed a spy satellite into orbit in its third launch following two failed attempts earlier this year. "North Korea's spy satellite launch last night clearly violates U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban missile launches using ballistic missile technology and is a provocative act that hampers the national security," Shin said. Shin said South Korea plans to jointly hold bilateral maritime drills with the U.S. as well as trilateral drills also involving Japan in light of the aircraft carrier's visit to bolster their combined defense posture and show their "strong resolve" against the North's provocations. The navies of South Korea and the U.S. are expected to hold joint drills on Saturday, and they will be joined by the Japanese navy on Sunday, according to sources familiar with the matter. Rear Adm. Carlos Sardiello, commander of carrier strike group one, said USS Carl Vinson's visit demonstrates the U.S. security commitment to defending its ally using the full range of its military capabilities, including nuclear. "The U.S.-ROK alliance remains at a high level of readiness to protect the Republic of Korea (ROK) against any threat or adversary," Sardiello was quoted as saying. "The work we do with our allies like the Republic of Korea makes us stronger and is critical to deterring aggression in the Indo-Pacific region," he added. The USS Carl Vinson, which last visited South Korea in 2017, is the third U.S. aircraft carrier to visit the country this year, following the USS Nimitz's arrival in March and the USS Ronald Reagan in October. The visits came as Washington seeks to bolster its defense commitment to South Korea against evolving nuclear and missile threats from North Korea. (Yonhap) The government will push forward the easing of an additional 167 kinds of regulations, with a focus on providing more convenience for citizens and more opportunities in economic activities, officials said Wednesday. The Office for Government Policy Coordination announced the measures after successfully easing 1,600 kinds of regulations in a move that officials said is expected to result in an economic effect worth 101 trillion won ($ 78 billion). In one of the new deregulation measures, online sales of contact lenses will be allowed starting from next year. So far, contact lenses have only been allowed for purchase at offline optical shops. The government will also scrap mandating fishermen to report to police face-to-face before and after going fishing near the de facto inter-Korean maritime border, known as the Northern Limit Line (NLL). Under the eased regulation, fishing boats with tracking devices will be allowed to report their fishing activities near the NLL through a non-face-to-face method, which will greatly provide convenience for some 1,700 fishing boats. The regulation was first enforced nearly 50 years ago in an effort to prevent unauthorized defection to North Korea. The marine ministry will revise the bill in the latter half of next year. Additionally, restrictions on restaurants' hiring of foreigners will be eased to cope with growing labor shortages. So far, foreigners holding non-professional employment visas (E-9) were not permitted for employment at restaurants. "The government is mobilizing all available capabilities to ease various small but meaningful regulations to ease difficulties related to people's livelihood," Government Policy Coordination Minister Bang Ki-seon said. The government said it will continue with deregulation efforts and work with various agencies to swiftly revise related bills. (Yonhap) You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Police have referred three Russian nationals to the prosecution with detention on charges of pickpocketing wallets from passengers inside subways in Seoul on multiple occasions this month, officials said Wednesday. The pickpocketing ring is accused of snatching cash and gift cards worth some 200,000 won ($154) from passengers on Seoul's Subway Line No. 9 from Nov. 3 to 4, and stealing 394,000 won in total from passengers the following week. The ring members reportedly each undertook the roles of blocking the victim from getting off the subway, and interrupting the view of other people by following behind the victim while another suspect seized the wallet. The three suspects had conspired to commit the crime before entering the country on Nov. 1 and had plans to flee to Russia within 15 days, according to officials. Police launched an investigation after receiving a report of a robbed wallet, and arrested them inside a subway train at Myeongdong Station last week after detecting them through security cameras. They confiscated the suspects' possessions of three cell phones, 5.587 million won worth of cash, and gift certificates amounting to 1.54 million won. During police investigations, the suspects denied their wrongdoing, saying they came to Korea for the purpose of tourism and shopping, but police countered their claim, citing their subway riding history of 45 hours since their arrival. The police plan to continue their investigations by analyzing the digital forensics result of the cell phones. (Yonhap) One of the keystones of the American judicial system is the jury. The jury represents the people in the judicial process, deciding factual questions of liability in civil cases and guilt or innocence in criminal cases. In this way, juries provide a critical limit on the power of federal judges, who do not have to stand for election and have life tenure to protect their independence from outside pressure. The jurys essential role in our government is embodied in the Constitution and mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.Notwithstanding the jurys central role in the judicial decision-making process, there are certain exceptional cases where judges are authorized to act without juries.Emergency Situations.A prime example of such an emergency situation occurred when Dr.Martin Luther King went to federal court in Alabama after Bloody Sunday to obtain a court order prohibiting the state of Alabama from interfering with the resumption of the march from Selma to Montgomery. On March 7, 1965, state and local authorities had stopped a march in support of Black voting rights by beating and arresting the marchers. The federal district court held an emergency hearing and received evidence, including testimony from Dr. King. Ten days after Bloody Sunday, the court granted the order Dr. King sought, and the march was completed the following Sunday.Dr. King and the other marchers could not have waited until a jury was empaneled, evidence presented, and a verdict rendered. The situation called for quick action. Many other cases come into federal courts where the parties need almost immediate action. Litigants may challenge a law they think will be used to punish them if they take action they believe is protected by the Constitution. A plaintiff may fear the defendant will hide or dispose of disputed assets before a case can be resolved. Or a former employee may take a businesss sensitive, proprietary information with plans to use that information in direct competition against the business. These are just a few examples of when a court might find it necessary to act without having the benefit of an impartial jury.In cases where immediate action is necessary, judges must act without the assistance of juries. Congress has given judges the authority to do so through two types of extraordinary remedies: temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions.Temporary Restraining Orders.Under federal law, a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibits a person from taking certain actions or compels the person to take other actions. Most often, a TRO is issued to preserve the status quoto keep the situation the same during the time it takes to decide the lawsuit.The person seeking a TRO must show through affidavits that (1) the person is likely to prevail when the case is ultimately decided; (2) the person is likely to suffer irreparable harm without a TRO; (3) the balance of equities is in the persons favor: and (4) a TRO would be in the publics interest. A judge can issue a TRO without a hearing if the person seeking the TRO makes a sufficient case through the affidavits.In addition, because a TRO is an emergency remedy, the person seeking the TRO does not always have to give notice to the person against whom the order is sought. This option can be critical where there is reason to believe the other party may do something harmful on receiving notice that a TRO is imminent.The law nevertheless provides some degree of protection for the party against whom a TRO is issued. First, a person seeking a TRO without notice must explain to the judges satisfaction why notice should not be required in that specific case. Second, the judge can require the person seeking the TRO to post a monetary bond as further protection for the defending party. Third, a TRO can only be in effect for a short period, and no more than fourteen days. At the end of that time, if the moving party wants the order to remain in effect, the court must hold a hearing on converting the order to a preliminary injunction.Preliminary Injunctions.Like a TRO, a preliminary injunction prohibits a person from taking certain actions or compels the person to take certain other actions. A preliminary injunction requires the same legal showing as a TRO, but it has more demanding procedural requirements. A preliminary injunction may be sought after a TRO or on its own. And while a TRO lasts no longer than fourteen days, a preliminary injunction can last as long as needed to bring the case to trial.Unlike with a TRO, the party against whom a preliminary injunction is sought must be given notice of the motion before the court acts. The court must hold a hearing on the motion, and the responding party must have the opportunity to present evidence during the hearing. This is what happened with Dr. King in the example above. Because of the additional procedural requirements, a preliminary injunction is usually not issued with the same speed as a TRO.Conclusion.Courts deal with real-world situations. In the real world, sometimes waiting for a jury trial would cause one of the parties real harm. When immediate action is required, temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions give federal courts the flexibility and authority to provide meaningful relief to real people in real time. Though temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions are considered extraordinary remedies, both empower the courts to act swiftly to fulfill their obligation to protect citizens constitutional rights.Curtis L. CollierUnited States district judgechair, Eastern District of Tennessee Civics and Outreach CommitteeCarrie Brown Stefaniaklaw clerk to the Honorable Curtis L. Collierpast president, Chattanooga Chapter of the Federal Bar AssociationErienne Reniajal Lewislaw clerk to the Honorable Curtis L. Collier The Lee University a cappella group Voices of Lee will present Home for Christmas, a concert featuring both secular and sacred songs, on Tuesday, Dec. 5, at 7 p.m. in Pangle Hall. This is our gift to the community, and were so thrilled that so many are planning to attend, said Danny Murray, director of Voices of Lee. It will be a fun evening filled with A cappella Christmas Music. Voices of Lee is a 15-member ensemble characterized by a unique variety of lush vocal harmonies, along with high energy contemporary a cappella arrangements from several genres. Voices has captivated audiences throughout the United States and worldwide, performing for Christmas at the White House in Washington D.C., for David Jeremiahs Christmas on Broadway Spectacular at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, and at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Their appearances have taken them from Israel to Ontario and numerous cities in the U.S., including many of the nations largest churches. Propelled into the international spotlight on the debut season of NBCs Sing-Off, a competition for a cappella groups, Voices of Lee was selected as one of eight groups to compete and was featured on four primetime NBC network episodes. The ensemble, voted 2018 Favorite Collegiate Group, Favorite Religious Group, and Favorite Video by the International A Cappella Music Awards voting audience, has recorded 17 CD projects and the groups video recordings have exceeded 111 million views online. Pangle Hall is on the corner of Central and Church Street. Tickets for this event are free but required due to limited seating and can be reserved by calling 614-8320 or by visiting eventbrite.com. For more information about the Voices of Lee, visit voicesoflee.com/. The Collegedale Commissioners and residents are happy with the new Christmas lights decorating The Commons. David Barto, director of the Collegedale Tomorrow Foundation, bought and installed the lights at The Commons using funds from the foundation. The group has a goal of developing parks and greenways in the city and preserving, managing and enhancing the community among other things. At the commission meeting Monday night, Vice Mayor Tim Johnson said he is in favor of increasing the wow factor of the citys holiday decorations. There has been an increase in people driving by slowly and taking photos, he said. And still to come, Mr. Barto will be buying and putting up a Christmas tree at The Commons. Because the lights have attracted people to Collegedale, the city should contribute to the expense for the display of lights this year, he said. Commissioner Katie Lamb said the investment in quality lights that will last for years will actually save the city money. Mayor Morty Lloyd agreed, saying the lights are fantastic and are a refreshing change, and a draw for people to come to the city." And, he said he is in favor of having even more decorations next year. Planning for Christmas decorations down the Ooltewah- Ringgold Road corridor and around city hall will begin early next year for a more extensive display. A motion was made to pay half of the expenses for the Christmas decorations. The suggestion was also made to replace the Happy Holiday banners that the city has been using. The three commissioners who want to ramp up the decorations commented that the banners look tired. The mayor, vice mayor and Commissioner Katie Lamb were in favor of sharing the cost of the Christmas lights since Collegedale is a beneficiary. Commissioner Tonya Sadler was the only commissioner opposed to helping pay for the decorations. She said she objected because it was not in the budget this year and because it had not been included in the agenda for the commission meeting. There is a new state law that items to be discussed or voted on in a commission meeting must be advertised 48 hours before a meeting. The purpose is so people will have notice if they want to comment on an item during the time for citizen participation. City Attorney Sam Elliott told the commissioners that if the cost for the lights falls within the city managers spending limit, there is not a need for the commission to give approval. Because the majority of three are in favor of the expenditure and one against, it would be in City Manager Wayon Hines authority to have the city share the cost. The current spending limit for a city manager in Collegedale is up to $10,000 without getting board approval. A motion passed Thursday on the first reading that would replace that with an amount not to exceed $25,000. A second vote will be needed before that change goes into effect. The commissioners chose another option, which was to move the vote to the next meeting on Dec. 4. That way there is time to advertise the agenda items and a formal vote can be taken. The money has already been spent and the decorations have been put up. Collegedale Tomorrow can be reimbursed, said Attorney Elliott. There will be a public hearing for residents to weigh in at that meeting. A discussion took place about panhandling around Walmart and Regions Bank in Collegedale, where one individual is seen regularly. City Manager Hines said if a panhandler is on private property with the businesss permission, the city cannot do anything unless there is an interference with traffic. The city only has the ability to act if the business requests it. The man that is often seen at Regions and Walmart has their permission to be there, said Mr. Hines. Red Bank City Manager Martin Granum on Tuesday night told commissioners that the city had received three strong proposals for a consultant to guide the city into the future. The proposals are to do a comprehensive plan, and a small area study for use of the vacant 12 acres at the former Red Bank Middle School. The council voted to award the contract to TSW Design in the amount of $150,000 with a 10 percent contingency. The city of Red Bank has been trying to find the best use for the former school property at 3715 Dayton Boulevard for many years. City Manager Granum said that this decision will shape Red Bank for the next 100 years. The 12-acre property is in the center of the commercial downtown district of the city. In 2020, a request for proposal was issued which asked developers to propose plans that they thought were suitable. That resulted in proposals for a mix of residential and commercial spaces, but there was no agreement with the city or with the residents for what the developers proposed and that RFP was withdrawn. In February 2022, meetings were again held to discuss developing the property. The commissioners decided that they wanted to first have a comprehensive plan for the city in order to make an informed decision about that valuable site. That decision may affect how the Hamilton County School Board moves forward with the school facilities plan. The 12-acre site is one of several that could hold a new elementary school in Red Bank. Mayor Hollie Berry said that developing this plan began years ago and is in no way directed at the school board. Commissioner Pete Phillips said that all options are on the table in the citys desire to keep an elementary school inside Red Bank city limits. Other activity in the city includes the replacement of the old playground at White Oak Park. It will be replaced with a new one from Gametime. The removal of the old playground is scheduled for next Monday. That old equipment was put on the website gov.deals where it was bought for $4,500 by a non-profit organization in Virginia. They will remove all the equipment and materials and will re-use it. The new playground equipment is expected to be installed in late January. The Red Bank Christmas Festival and Parade will be held on Dec. 1 from 4-9 p.m. with the parade beginning at 7 p.m. This year 61 vendors are scheduled to be there and the Chattanooga Breakfast Rotary Club will be managing a beer tent. People will be allowed to consume beer throughout the park property during the event, said City Manager Granam. Public Works Director Greg Tate told the commissioners that every year, temporary labor is used for collecting leaves in Red Bank. In the past the labor has come from traditional employment agencies. Director Tate said he had bad experiences with most of them with people not showing up for work. The temporary employees this year will come from Project Return, Inc., a local non-profit that helps people who have formerly been incarcerated return to society. Mr. Tate said this organization mentors their clients, helps when they need transportation and sometimes provides a meal. These people are all seeking income and employment, he said. The city will pay an amount not to exceed $18,000 for this work. Appointments were made for two Red Bank boards. Jared Hueter, Kaen Ziv and Rufus Smith were all reappointed to the zoning board of appeals. And the six member non-profit citizens advisory board was completed with the appointment of Lori Kyle. This board will make recommendations for the recipients of charitable donations from the city. Chattanooga, Tenn. VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System (TVHS) will host a PACT Act Veterans Resource Fair Dec. 14 at the Residence Inn Chattanooga Near Hamilton Place. The event will be held at 2340 Center Street in Chattanooga from 2 p.m. 6 p.m. The PACT Act is a new law that expands VA health care and benefits for Veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances. Veterans will have the opportunity to learn about new benefits and start a claim. Eligible Veterans can also enroll in VA health care and learn about additional VA programs during the event. The following programs will be available during the PACT Act Fair: Veterans Benefits Administration Military2VA (M2VA) Caregiver Support Program Beneficiary Travel MyHealtheVet and more! VA Tennessee Valley Healthcare System is an integrated tertiary health care system comprised of two hospitals, the Alvin C. York Campus in Murfreesboro and the Nashville Campus, as well as more than a dozen community-based outpatient clinics located in Tennessee and Kentucky. TVHS provides ambulatory care, primary care, and secondary care in acute medicine and surgery, specialized tertiary care, transplant services, spinal cord injury outpatient care, and a full range of extended care and mental health services. The worlds first pilot plant for the cost-efficient production of green Methanol was inaugurated in the Leuna Chemical Park as part of the Leuna100 project. Behind it is a research consortium made up of the climate-tech start-up C1 Green Chemicals AG and its partners, Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES, Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT, DBI Gastechnologisches Institut gGmbH Freiberg, and the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin). The goal is to utilize a fundamentally new production process to enable the cost-efficient market ramp-up of green methanol and thus offer the container shipping industry a climate-neutral alternative fuel. Innovative process for green methanol production Green methanol production is based on a synthesis gas of carbon monoxide and green hydrogen hydrogen produced with renewable energy. The process for green methanol production in the Leuna100 project is composed of three steps: synthesis gas production, methanol production, and purification of the crude methanol produced. The innovative technology developed by C1 enables efficient low temperature- and low pressure-based methanol production. The process is made possible by the use of a homogeneous, manganese-based catalysis technology that C1 has developed in cooperation with Leibniz-Institut fur Katalyse e. V. (Leibniz Institute for Catalysis). The electricity-based and load-flexible utilization of synthesis gas production and the homogeneous catalysis for the methanol production together form the key innovation. The pilot plant sees two different technologies coupled for the CO 2 -based production of synthesis gas: Fraunhofer UMSICHT is providing new, low-temperature co-electrolysis, while DBI Gastechnologisches Institut gGmbH Freiberg utilizes a reverse water gas shift (RWGS) unit. C1 is delivering the groundbreaking catalyst as well as a reactor developed in-house for the homogeneous catalysis of methanol. Fraunhofer IWES is providing the location and infrastructure at the Hydrogen Lab Leuna and evaluating the load flexibility. TU Berlin is developing an efficient, load-flexible operating concept on the basis of a dynamic overall process model. Industry history in the Leuna Chemical Park The project is being funded by the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV) with a total of 10.4 million over the next three years. Minister for Transport, Dr. Volker Wissing, said at the inauguration: Industry history is being written today in Leuna. This project represents a milestone for the post-fossil fuel era in the shipping and aviation industries. We are proud to support this made in Germany research project with funds from the Renewable Fuels Funding Program. With its funding program, the BMDV is supporting the further development and market ramp-up of renewable fuels and thus also the achievement of climate goals in the transport sector. BASF constructed the worlds first methanol plant in Leuna in 1923. Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt, Dr. Reiner Haseloff, emphasized this historical context: The Leuna chemical complex can look back on over a century of tradition. During this time, it has consciously taken on challenges and proven its innovative strength time and again. The opportunity has now presented itself for Leuna to become the setting for the start of a whole new era. The Leuna100 project is making an important contribution to entering circular chemical production and not just in Saxony-Anhalt. Tankers, container ships, and cruise liners are currently responsible for almost three percent of global annual CO 2 emissions. The new climate strategy adopted by the International Maritime Organization in summer 2023 envisages reaching the goal of climate neutrality by around 2050. Emissions should be reduced by at least a fifth compared with 2008 by 2030 and even by at least 70 percent by 2040. Large shipping companies such as Maersk have already ordered methanol-compatible vessels, the first of which are already in use. Renewable fuels based on green hydrogen and CO 2 also represent an alternative for the aviation industry. A further processing step involving the alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) process allows the potential production of kerosene from green methanol. Christian Vollmann, CEO of C 1 Green Chemicals AG: Our innovative process offers the potential to produce green methanol more cost-effectively. We are delighted to have the opportunity to take our technology to the next level in the scope of the pilot plant and take a decisive step towards the market launch. The non-profit National Congress of American Indians organization has 145 tribal members, of which 24 are state-recognized tribes. Police have referred three Russian nationals to the prosecution with detention on charges of pickpocketing wallets from passengers inside subways in Seoul on multiple occasions this month, officials said Wednesday. The pickpocketing ring is accused of snatching cash and gift cards worth some 200,000 won ($154) from passengers on Seoul's Subway Line No. 9 from Nov. 3 to 4, and stealing 394,000 won in total from passengers the following week. The ring members reportedly each undertook the roles of blocking the victim from getting off the subway, and interrupting the view of other people by following behind the victim while another suspect seized the wallet. The three suspects had conspired to commit the crime before entering the country on Nov. 1 and had plans to flee to Russia within fifteen days, according to officials. Police launched an investigation after receiving a report of a robbed wallet, and arrested them inside a subway train at Myeongdong Station last week after detecting them through security cameras. They confiscated the suspects' possessions of three cell phones, 5.587 million won worth of cash, and gift certificates amounting to 1.54 million won. During police investigations, the suspects denied their wrongdoing, saying they came to South Korea for the purpose of tourism and shopping, but police countered their claim, citing their subway riding history of 45 hours since their arrival. The police plan to continue their investigations by analyzing the digital forensics result of the cell phones. (Yonhap) Archaeologists digging in the deserts of Saudi Arabia have discovered a giant stone hand axe that is thought to be over 200,000 years old. The team of experts made the find while surveying an archaeological site known as the Qurh Plain, which is located in the northwestern region of the country. The Quhr Plain is south of AIUIa, an ancient Arabic oasis city that includes a multitude of historic monuments and dwellings, such as stone and mud-brick houses. The city was founded in the sixth century B.C. The region surrounding AIUIa contains an ancient city named Hegra, which is Saudi Arabias first UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city dates back to the first century A.D. and was once a settlement for the Nabatean people. In the middle of the third century B.C., a Nabatean kingdom arose but became part of the Roman Empire during the first century. The Nabateans were one of the first people to inhabit the AIUIa region. However, the recently discovered stone hand axe provides evidence that proves humans occupied the area before the Nabateans. These earlier humans were from the Paleolithic period. The ancient tool uncovered at the site was around 20 inches long, four inches wide, and two inches thick. It was crafted from fine-grained basalt stone with sharp edges for cutting and chopping. It is believed to be one of the largest hand axes ever discovered. When compared to other prehistoric axes around the world, no other could match this one in size. It is still unclear what exactly the enormous hand axe may have been used for, but its strength and sharpness make it well-suited for cutting plants, wood, and animal parts. Sign up for Chip Chicks newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox. Many of us know the story of the famous Paul Revere and how he bravely warned communities outside of Boston about incoming British troops in 1775. But do you know who was considered the female Paul Revere after she rode through the streets of Putnam County, New York, to warn the Patriots about a planned British attack on a Connecticut town? It was Sybil Ludington, a brave woman who was only 16-years-old when she made her spirited ride in 1777. Sybil was born in Fredericksburg, New York, in 1761. She was one of 12 children born to Henry and Abigail Ludington. Henry was a former member of the British military who switched over to being a Patriot during the American Revolution. During the Revolutionary War, Sybils father was a commander in the county militia, and they lived on a farm between Connecticut and the coast of the Long Island Sound, which made them vulnerable to British attacks. The night of April 26th, 1777, was when Sybil made her heroic journey not long after turning 16. That night, a messenger came to her home and informed her father that the town of Danbury, Connecticut, had been attacked by British troops, as it was the location of an ammunition stockpile. Sybils father knew he needed to warn his men against the British armies and have them protect nearby homes, but his troops were scattered throughout the region at the time. So, in the middle of the night, Sybil hopped on her horse, Star, and took off into the streets to yell and warn her fathers men of the attack. Sybil bravely rode through the dark in the middle of a rainstorm and spread her message throughout Putnam County, riding approximately 40 miles, which was much longer than Paul Reveres famous journey. Sign up for Chip Chicks newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox. There will be no Christmas lights in Bethlehem this year. In solidarity with the suffering in Gaza due to the Israel-Hamas war, last week Christian leaders and municipal authorities in the West Bank city decided to cancel all public festivities. For the first time since modern celebrations began, the birthplace of Jesus will not decorate the Manger Square tree. It is not appropriate, stated local authorities. But the Bethlehem decision is only the most recent. One week earlier, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem asked Christians in the Holy Land to refrain from unnecessarily festive Christmas activities. Catholic churches in Galilee requested the same, as did the Council of Local Evangelical Churches in the Holy Land. Due to the thousands killedand in prayer for peace, said its president, pastor Munir Kakish, we will only hold traditional services and devotionals on the meaning of Christmas. The initiative, however, came first from Jordan, home to the worlds largest concentration of Palestinian refugeesmany of whom have become citizens. On November 2, the Jordan Council of Church Leaders (JCCL) announced the cancellation of Christmas celebrations. Christmas is a public holiday in the Muslim-majority nation, with many city squares and shopping malls feted with seasonal decorations. But congregations throughout the country will now forgo the traditional festivities of public tree lighting, Christmas markets, scout parades, and distribution of gifts to children. Religious services in all locations will continue. In our homes we can celebrate, but in our hearts we are suffering, said Ibrahim Dabbour, JCCL general secretary and a Greek Orthodox priest. How can we decorate a Christmas tree? The formal Jordanian Christian declaration reflected respect for the innocent victims and denounced the barbaric acts of the Israeli military. It recognized the difficult time in both Gaza and all Palestine, noting the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and places of worship. It pledged that offerings collected last weekend would be donated to Gaza. Dabbour, whose parents were refugees from the now-Israeli cities of Ramla and Jaffa in the 1948 war, was born in Amman and serves as the chairman of the Jordan Bible Society. He linked the current war to that original displacement, calling for dialogue rather than further fanaticism-inducing violence. But beyond solidarity within the depressed national mood, Dabbour said the council, representing 130,000 Christians in the Hashemite kingdom, had another purpose in the declaration. Many Muslims do not know the history of Christianity, thinking we are a people of the West, he said. But we are the sons of St. Peter, here for 2,000 years. We want to show society that we are one people. Jordans evangelicals believe they have a further obligation. We have a role to speak to our friends in the West, said David Rihani, president and general superintendent of the Assemblies of God Church of Jordan. Jesus did not teach us to blindly side with anyone against another. He cited a widely shared video of Tennessee-based pastor Greg Locke calling on Israel to turn Gaza into a parking lot and to blow up the Dome of the Rock to make room for the Third Temple and usher in the return of Jesus. Local evangelicals, Rihani said, refuse to be associated with such Christian Zionism. Adherence to the Christmas decision, however, issues from Jordanian culture. Growing up 10 miles northwest of Amman in the traditional city of Salt, a UNESCO World Heritage site, Rihani recalled that both Muslims and Christians would frequent any neighborhood wedding celebrationno invitations necessary. But if there was a funeral, any previously scheduled wedding would be either postponed or held quietly among the family. Weddings mid-war are now treated the same. The announcement was not even necessary, said Imad Mayyah, president of the Jordanian Evangelical Council (JEC). No Jordanian is celebrating anything. Founded in 2006 and representing the Assemblies of God, Baptist, Nazarene, Free Evangelical, and Christian and Missionary Alliance denominations, the JEC released its own statement on Tuesday. The Christmas holidays, when we remember the birth of our savior Jesus Christ, comes upon us while we are in the midst of a human tragedy that is ravaging our region, stated the evangelical council. In obedience to the Holy Word of God and in line with [both Christian and public sentiment, the JEC] has decided to limit the celebrations of Christmas to religious ceremonies and church prayers within our churches. The JEC also prayed for the leadership of King Abdullah and the crown prince. Last week, the king published an op-ed reiterating Jordans support for a two-state solution. In late October, he canceled a regional summit in Amman with US president Joe Biden, protesting Israels collective punishment of Gaza. On November 1, Abdullah withdrew Jordans ambassador from Israel, and two weeks later signaled that all options were on the table. Jordan was the second Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel, in 1994. The Hashemite kingdom has guarded its role as custodian of Jerusalems Muslim and Christian religious sites since 1924. It maintained this right even as it relinquished sovereignty over the West Bank in 1988. But with over 180 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or Jewish settlers in the West Bank since the war began, the foreign minister stated that any move to drive Palestinians across the Jordan River would be considered a red line amounting to a declaration of war. The Jordanian army has since fortified its positions along the border. The king has also designated the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO) to facilitate donations to the people of Gaza. Jordan has set up a military-run field hospital in the northern part of the strip, and last week sent its fifth airlift shipment in coordination with Israel and the US. Seven staff, however, were thereafter injured by Israeli shelling, which Jordan called a heinous crime. Its second field hospital has now been established in south Gaza. The JCCL statement allows each denomination to distribute its offerings to the people of Gaza through its preferred channels. Jordans Baptists and Assemblies of God churches are sending funds through the JHCO, while the Greek Orthodox will work directly through its Jerusalem patriarchate and its Saint Porphyrius church, where hundreds of Christians have been taking shelter. Rihani lauded the Gaza Christians for their longstanding role in humanitarian aid. Dabbour reiterated support for the king, who stands against the fanaticism of both sides. Israel insists on being a Jewish state, he said, while Hamas says that Palestine is for Muslims. Analysts state that the Islamist group does not have much popularity in Jordan. But as news of the October 7 terrorist atrocities spread, some Jordanians did spontaneously celebrate in the streets, distributing Arab sweets and chanting in demonstrations that followed, All of Jordan is Hamas. It is not so, even among fellow Islamists. Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose colleagues in Jordan splintered into two factions in 2015, partially over their regional affiliations in Egypt and Palestine. The now-licensed domestic group is primarily Jordanian in ethnicity, while the other still-active entity consists mostly of Palestinians. The latter called for arming the Jordanian people, while Hamass leader abroad urged Jordans tribes to enter the war. But the suffering of Palestine unites everyone, and massive demonstrations have pressured the palace. Security forces have restricted protestors from sensitive areas such as the Israeli embassy and border, but have otherwise permitted the widespread protests. Following the royal lead, Queen Rania accused Western leaders of a glaring double standard. Are we being told that it is wrong to kill an entire family at gunpoint, but its OK to shell them to death? she asked in comparison to the October 7 attack. This is a 75-year-old story, a story of overwhelming death and displacement to the Palestinian people. But how should those deaths be considered? The JCCL statement noted the innocent victims but also the pure blood of our martyrs in Gaza and entire Palestine. Does the latter imply more than just those killed as collateral damage? What do you call a family living in Gaza in a house that was inherited from their great grandparents, killed because they are refusing orders to leave? asked Rihani. Arent they defending their homes, children, and property? Bassam Shahatit, vicar general of the Melkite Greek Catholic bishop in Jordan, part of the JCCL, explained that in Arabic Christian theology the term martyr includes those who die for their homeland. The original biblical Greek word conveys the sense of testimony, with Stephen in Acts 7 illustrating the primary Christian focus on faith. But many clergy in Palestine, he said, consider resistance and liberation to be part of the national duty, with those engaged in armed defense as part of the national fabric. Yet as the regions churches call for peaceful methods to support the homeland, this topic remains sensitive with much division among many Arab people. Do they enter heaven? Shahatit asked of all who have died. This is a question for God. But though they are not Christians, we still call them martyrs. Dabbour also emphasized the Christian meaning of martyr as one who gives up their life for Jesus or the gospel. But given the popular societal use of the word as one who dies unjustly or in defense of the homeland, he cited the broad Muslim definition as one who dies for the truth. In this sense, he said, it applies to many victims in Gaza. But what is needed now, said Rihani, is condolencewith action. Referencing Romans 12:15mourn with those who mournhe said the Christian message always comes with hope. So when he sits with his children on Christmas Day, tree lit with windows closed, he will tell them the story of a baby in a manger who died on a cross. And he will emphasize that the Resurrection illustrates that Jesus suffering brought hope to all who believe in him. We hold out this hope to Gaza, Rihani said. So that the world will see their suffering and push for a peaceful solution. Observing massive pro-Palestinian rallies around the world, he senses global opinion shifting. This, perhaps, creates the opportunity for international powers to push for peace negotiations. And if the kings message is heard, said Rihani, maybe a two-state solution is coming. For Jordanian evangelicals, that would be a holiday miracle. We hope we can soon go back to celebrating, Dabbour said. God willing, the war will stop before Christmas. Editors note: A selection of CTs Israel-Hamas war coverage is now available in Arabic , among eight other languages [ This article is also available in , , and . ] Janet Maher is out of Gaza. The Palestinian wife of the Egyptian former pastor of Gaza Baptist Church had been sheltering in the Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church with her three children and 350 othersbut not her husband. Two weeks before the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Hanna Maher had traveled temporarily back to Egypt, where he had to remain after the war broke out. Despite the horrors of suffering 43 days of bombardment by herself, as CT previously reported, the family separation is the reason why Janet and her children are now safely in Egypt, reunited with Hanna. But first they had to undergo a harrowing journey that began with tearful goodbyes to a hallowed community. I spent weeks with these people and am broken by the experience, Janet said. But everyone pleaded: If you get out, tell the world about our situation. The death toll in Gaza exceeds 11,000, including more than 5,000 children, according to statistics released by the ministry of health in the Hamas-run enclave and last updated November 10. But save for the shrapnel and scattered remains of human carcasses flying over the walls of the church compound, little of this was known to the Christians inside. With no television or internet and only intermittent connection to the cell phone network, Janet and her fellow sheltering Gazans knew only the daily reality of war. Most of the day was spent trying to figure out how to procure food, with the young men tasked with trips outside to the local market. Most often, the day would begin with bombingsending the people scurrying away from windows and doors to the center of the room. Three times a week, the priest would lead morning prayers. Frequently, they would gather for impromptu singing, simply to calm their nervous spirits. Some would read the Bible; others cried alone in the pews. They would clean often. Dust and debris settled after every explosion, while most people suffered some form of illnesscoughing, fever, stomachacheswith flies everywhere, flitting about from the corpses in the street. With no breakfast or dinner, most daily meals consisted of lentil soup with occasional rice or macaroni. Water was seldom clean, though the clergy obtained some by trading available gasoline to the neighboring mosque, which used the fuel to run its well-pumping generator. Once, the priest was able to find chocolate, Janet said. It was like Christmas. But after eating around 4 p.m., the darkness settled. With no electricity, everyone moved to their mattresses for a fitful night of sleep. As 100 other people in the funeral hall of the church tucked in, Janet read Psalm 23 to her children. But she relied on the more militant realities of Psalm 91 to settle her own anxious thoughts. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, Janet recited. If you say, The Lord is my refuge, and you make the Most High your dwelling, no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent. She has ample personal experience to prove it. Before moving her family to the shelter, Janet left her apartment in search of food. Finding none at the market, she returned home. Five minutes later, a missile struck the facility, killing her neighbor. Shaken deeply by the tragedy, she also saw the hand of God in her protection. But others were not so fortunate, even inside the church. At least 20 people died when an Israeli missile, which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said targeted a Hamas command center nearby, struck just outside the church compound. Last week, an elderly man died when he ran out of medicine for his gall bladder, and a young man with a severe fever could not get to a hospital. Seeking Hamas-held hostages, Israeli forces attacked the nearby al-Shifa Hospital. That news had prompted Hanna Massad, the Palestinian former pastor of Gaza Baptist Church before Maher, to reach out to two church elders taking shelter in the Holy Family Catholic Church, with whom he maintains near daily contact. Asking about two Christians who were going to al-Shifa three times a week for kidney dialysis, he learned of their relocation south in search of a functioning hospital. And despite doctors and pharmacists sheltering at the church, an elderly man there passed away. Every day is worse than the day before, Massad reported. And if you have a serious illness, most likely you will die. Life inside is full of worrybut also encouragement. It is slightly better inside the church than outside, he said, and everyone tries to help one another. They have adopted the status of Noahs ark, Massad continued. Though the waves of violence beat against their vessel, they feel protected by the blood of Jesus. It is the same analogy Janet employed, but with a different application. Once their ark lands safely, she said, all they will find is death and destruction. Without the morbid conclusion, she had been telling this and other Bible stories to the sheltering children. Job, she communicated, had everything lost later restored by God. But privately she felt like one of Jobs friends. Maybe the destruction of Gaza, she wondered, is Gods punishment on the Christians for their lack of spiritual devotion. No, sometimes things just happen, she rebuked herself. And when in fear, dont worry about who to blame. Now outside, she has had more time to reflect. Neither Israel nor Hamas care about us, Janet said. Muslims and Christians are not guilty of anything, and the innocent people are dying. Israel would say otherwise. Janets brother is among several who received phone calls from the IDF, telling them to go south for safety. And she says the message came with a semi-threat: If anyone from Hamas enters the church, it will be bombed. Unable to sleep anyway, Christians inside Saint Porphyrius set up a nighttime vigil. And once, Muslims from the mosque came to help them beat away several strangers who tried to force their way inside. On other occasions, they fought off attempts at theft, as hungry individuals imagined the Christians might have more food than they did. Some Muslims continue to shelter inside, as the church shares with neighbors what it can. The religious fraternity is largely local, however. Janets brother told the IDF that Christians have no relatives in the south, and there are no churches to receive them. She noted that southern Muslim women cover their hair, and the men there have little experience dealing with other faiths. Fanaticism is said to have stronger roots outside the capital, Gaza City. They wont kill us, but they dont understand us, Janet said. It is a different culture, and we dont know what their reactions will be. Gazan Christians roughly number 1,000 people and largely live in the vicinity of the three churches, all in the capital. When Hamas took over the coastal enclave in 2007, that April the communitywhich then numbered about 7,000suffered a bomb attack at the Palestinian Bible Society, and in October the manager of its bookstore was murdered. Hamas condemned the incidents and promised investigations, but no one was brought to justice. By the time Hanna became pastor in 2012, the Christian population had dwindled to about 3,000. A cross-Palestine survey in 2020 found that 60 percent of Christians considering emigration were doing so for economic reasons. But while only 7 percent cited security conditions, 77 percent were worried about the presence of austere Salafi Muslims and 69 percent were worried about armed factions like Hamas. But 83 percent feared being driven from their homes by Jewish settlers, while 62 percent believed Israels goal was to expel Christians from their homeland. Somehow, none of this has impacted her childrenMathew age 10, Natalia age 9, and Timothy age 5even during the bombings, as she pulled their mattresses away from the windows. No one could sleep, except my kids, Janet said. I was astonished by their sense of peace. The youngest son would sometimes sense fear in his mother, she said, and take her hand to remind her that God would protect them. And all the while, his father was making phone calls. In contact with the Egyptian embassy in the West Bank capital of Ramallah, Hanna also pressed his Presbyterian Synod of the Nile in Egypt to intercede on his familys behalf. His hope surged as the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt opened temporarily to allow some to leave, only to collapse again when it shut once more. But the task was complicated, because while his children had Egyptian citizenship, Janet did not. Last Thursday she received word that all three of her children were on the exit list. The next day she set off to the border with her parents included, as her mothera cancer patient at the Turkish hospital in Gazawas promised transfer to Turkey, accompanied by Janets father. Later that day Janet learned her name was also added to the exit list. But how could a single mother get therein the middle of a war zonewith three young children and elderly parents, one of which was in a wheelchair? There were many steps, and it was very difficult, she said. And very risky. Finding transportation was the first challenge. They had aimed to leave at 9 a.m., but the only ride available was found two hours later: a dilapidated vehicle arranged by a friend. It took them as far as the Salah al-Din highway, the main artery running north to south. There they found a donkey cart that took them to the Israeli checkpoint. Passing through on foot with hundreds of others, they ambled for an hour as the wheelchair broke along the way. Two young Gazan men volunteered to carry the still-seated grandmother until they reached an IDF stopping point. Other young men were pulled out from the crowd, and thereafter disappeared. Families were separated in the chaos as military personnel told them to run; elderly people fell and were left behind. Dead bodies were strewn along both sides of the road. Janet recalled how at an informal checkpoint, they and all the others were told to kneel in a bombed-out crater, and Janet raised a white cloth above her head. A bulldozer was dumping sand in front of thempresumably to make a security barrierbut the children thought they would be buried alive. Four hours later, they were all permitted to continue south. Janet said she was fortunate to have cash for a taxi. She paid 500 shekels ($133 USD) for what would usually be a 30-shekel ($8) 20-minute ride to the border, only to find it closed. Fortunately, the driver was willing to drop them off at the Turkish cancer hospital in Khan Yunis, six miles back. Finding no room at the inn, the family was allowed by the hospital to stay in the waiting room because the grandmother was a patient. After a sleepless night, Janets brother called a local Muslim friend to get them another taxi to the Rafah border crossing. There, they found both good and bad news. Janets and the childrens names were posted on the exit list on the wall. Her parents names were not. Though their names had been submitted by Turkey, Israel had not yet processed cancer patient transfers, Janet said. And discovering that, somewhere back, her mother had lost her cell phone, she asked her brother to make arrangements for the parents to stay somewhere locally. There was nothing to do but go on without them. Image: Courtesy of Hanna Maher On the other side of the border, Hanna waited anxiously, no longer able to contact his family because theyd left Janets cell phone with her parents. He had already lingered all day in Rafah on Friday, only to be told by security that, as a pastor, it was not safe to stay overnight. The Sinai Peninsula has historically been a hotbed for underground Salafi Muslim extremist cells. Hanna went back 30 miles westward to Arish, returning the next morning. Inside the border crossing there was a mass of humanity, as foreign passport holders submitted their documents. Dozens of embassy personnel waited on the other side, ready to receive them. Janet and the children were the first Egyptians to exit, Hanna said, as the synod had followed her case to conclusion. Someone in the office told me: Many people have been calling me about you, Janet said. But what about the others, who have no one to help them? As they exited, Hanna saw a woman with children within the crowdbut they were so haggard and pale that he did not recognize them as his own until they were about 15 feet away. And then he shouted with joy, with tears and hugs all around. But there was still work to do. Hanna joined the synods government-coordinated outreach to southern Gaza Palestinians exiting through Rafah, and, with Janet, dropped off some blankets to those shivering in a shelter. Their appearance drew surprise, and a hint of distaste. How can you accept help from an uncovered woman? one asked her friend. Others were shocked yet reluctant to receive aid from Christians, having equated them with the actions of Israel and the United States. Continuing 90 miles west along the Mediterranean Sea, Janet finally had rest with her family at Hannas sisters house in Ismailia, 30 miles further south along the Suez Canal. And there she cried, thinking about those still sheltering at Saint Porphyrius church. And nowfinally back home in Cairoshe has told their story. What about my brother and sister? Janet asked. How can they get out? At first, the community had great resolve to stay put and wait out the war. Janet said word circulated that the Greek Orthodox bishop told the IDF he would not be the one who empties Gaza of its Christians. Their chapel is named after the fourth-century saint who evangelized the local pagans. One voice from the Catholic shelter is emblematic. We do not accept displacement from our country, our land, and our churches, stated Diana Tarazi. I will not leave the church except to the grave. But about two weeks ago, as food and fuel began running out, the emotional toll became increasingly hard to bear, Janet said. And as word filtered out to the world at large, some proposed that Israel facilitate Christian movement to the West Bankwhere many Gazans have relatives. Even if Israel agreed, this would make the Christian community not look good in front of their Muslim neighbors, Massad said. But Im starting to change my mind. His own resolve as a Gaza Palestinian wavered after speaking to church elders. In the West Bank, however, Jack Saras has not. Christians are part and parcel of the Palestinian people, said the president of Bethlehem Bible College. They were never threatened as a community by their own people, and I doubt they want to receive special treatment. Doing so would breach trust, community peace, and gospel witness. If Israel really wants to help them, Sara said, let them return to their original homes prior to their 1948 displacement to Gaza, in Israeli cities like Jaffa, Majdal, and Beersheba. Israeli ministers have asked insteaddenied as government policyfor Arab and Western nations to receive Gaza refugees. Janet compared the situation to Daniels night in the lions den: God is protecting them but has not yet removed the lions. She understands the problem if Christians receive special treatment, as well as the problem of a Gaza with no Christianity. But the people are desperate, she said. Her prayer is that the war would stop, for which she says there are also no easy answers. But she also prayed for her mother to get to Turkeyand there her mother is now, finally processed through the embassy. And if her prayer for peace fails, she asks God that the Christians can leave. If we dont die by Israeli bombing, we will die from lack of food and medicine, Janet said. Christians in Gaza want to get out, wherever they have to go. Editors note: A selection of CTs Israel-Hamas war coverage is now available in Arabic , among eight other languages [ This article is also available in . ] Home Church & Ministries Christian evangelist shot in head while promoting church service on Arizona street: police Local police are searching for answers after a Christian evangelist was shot in the head while preaching on an Arizona street last week and is now hospitalized in critical condition. Hans Schmidt, the 26-year-old outreach director at Victory Chapel First Phoenix Church, was shot while street preaching on Wednesday night before service, according to a statement on the church's website. Gina Winn, the public information officer for the Glendale Police Department, said during a press conference that officers responded to a call for service about a male who arrived at a local hospital with a severe head injury. "Initially, it was believed this was due to an assault, but it was later determined the subject had sustained a gunshot wound," Winn said. Schmidt was standing on the corner of 51st Avenue and Peoria, where he was "preaching about a church service at a local church," she added. It is unknown at this time how Schmidt was shot. "We are seeking the public's assistance in obtaining any information regarding what could have happened," she said, noting that the intersection in question is typically busy and it is likely there were people in the area when the incident occurred. "We believe there is somebody within the valley that does know something about what happened." "This is a horrible, horrible offense," Winn continued. "We have a 26-year-old who was a military medic. He is recently married. He has two small children, and he is currently in a critical state. It is imperative that the public reach out if you do have information so that we can bring justice to Hans and his family." Due to the large number of businesses within the area, Winn said detectives are reviewing surveillance footage as part of an ongoing investigation. "Our detectives are going to follow up on every lead, and based on the information they obtain regarding the investigation, they will charge appropriate charges whether that's a hate crime or not," Winn said. "It is too early to determine whether or not this was committed by somebody who was driving by or on foot or if it's related to Shannon's Law where somebody shoots a firearm round up into the air and then it comes back down," she added. The Glendale Police Department requests that anyone who knows any information regarding the incident call its non-emergency number at 623-930-3000. "One of the things that the Glendale Police Department really preaches to the public is 'if you see something, say something.' And in this instance, that's exactly what it is," Winn said, 3TV/CBS 5 reported one witness who works nearby, Paul Sanchez, reportedly saw a vehicle drive by Schmidt with people inside who screamed and cursed at him. "There was a lot of everything, really, hateful comments, people yelling at him, 'get off the street,' all sorts of mean things," Sanchez was quoted as telling the outlet. Victory Chapel posted a statement following the tragedy asking for prayers for the preacher. "He is in critical condition and in desperate need of a miracle," the statement reads. "The family remains encouraged by what they are seeing and are rejoicing." An earlier statement from the church stated that it was discovered Schmidt had been shot after a CT scan. "He began seizing and was intubated," the church stated. "There has been some movement; however, physicians are uncertain how much is voluntary and began draining fluid from his brain. He remains in critical condition, please continue praying." Schmidt's wife, Zulya Schmidt, took to social media to express her sentiments regarding her husband's critical condition. "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 in a Facebook post. "Thank you for your prayers. Believing God has the final say. I love you so much babe." Larry Dettman, a church member, told 3TV/CBS 5 that church services at Victory Chapel on the night of the incident were stopped by news of the incident. "Out of nowhere, how does this happen? There's some real evil in this world, bunch of human junk in their life and they take it out on somebody else," Dettman said. Home Politics Josh Hawley demands answers from Biden admin. regarding rule change for religious worker visas Biden 'seems to have pushed Christian missionaries to the back of the visa line,' Hawley says Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is demanding answers from the Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) regarding a recent procedural change to green card rules that he fears will effectively force foreign-born religious workers out of the United States in favor of illegal immigrants. The U.S. State Department changed its interpretation of a rule that prorated EB-4 visa allocation to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, announcing that tens of thousands of applications for neglected or abused minors from those countries were being placed in the wrong queue to await green cards, The Associated Press reported. Because religious workers are also on EB-4 visas, Hawley raised concern that the rule change will negatively impact them when they attempt to renew their residency. "It has come to my attention that a recent State Department rule created a massive backlog of employment-based, fourth preference category (EB-4) visas, which is adversely affecting faith-based employers in Missouri," Hawley wrote in his Nov. 15 letter to CA Assistant Secretary Rena Bitter. "Concerningly, the Biden administration seems to have pushed Christian missionaries to the back of the visa line and allowed illegal aliens to cut ahead of them," he continued. "It is incumbent upon your agency to provide relief to my constituents and religious organizations across the country who stand to be greatly harmed by this abrupt change in policy." Citing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, Hawley noted that of the 105,267 approved petitions awaiting approval for EB-4 visas as of March, 84,168 petitions were from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, while 866 remained for religious workers. Of the nearly 100,000 petitions from the three Central American countries, most were for "unaccompanied youth." "Almost instantly, the Departments rule added tens of thousands of petitions to the waiting list for EB-4 visas and thus created a lengthy backlog for such visas," Hawley wrote, adding that the obstacles now facing religious organizations are "unacceptable." "Sadly, it appears that religious workers are collateral damage in the Biden Administrations push to expand 'lawful pathways' for individuals who crossed the southern border illegally," he continued. Hawley demanded to know from the bureau "the specific actions your agency will take to expeditiously fix this situation." Hawley's letter was prompted by the situation facing Stephanie Reimer, who has worked with a nondenominational Christian nonprofit in Kansas City, Missouri, since 2017. Reimer told The Christian Post that she faces having to return to Canada for a year while she potentially waits a decade in the long queue caused by the rule change. She claimed the new rule could effectively push missionaries out of the U.S. altogether. "If the waitlist is 11 years, then essentially America will be losing their ability to retain long-term missionaries, because we're not able to get lawful permanent residency at the moment," she said. Reimer said that when she raised the issue with multiple lawmakers, most of them weren't aware that it was happening. "They have no idea that this has been put into place," she asserted. "So the executive branch of the government made this decision without warning. And the legislative branch of the government, as far as my conversations with them, don't know about it. And when I've talked to them, they are very concerned." As a Christian, Reimer said she's concerned to return to Canada, noting that her home country has "changed" in recent years and that she believes "it's definitely on its way to socialism, and that can produce really terrifying things." "It's a very different country than when I left it," she insisted. Reimer worries similar problems are manifesting in the U.S. For this reason, she is trying to raise awareness about her situation and those of other foreign-born religious workers in the country. "I'm afraid this could be religious persecution, and I'm concerned about where this nation is going," she added. Matthew Spaulding, an attorney with the American Immigration Lawyers Association who is representing Reimer, first sent Hawley a letter about his client's situation in May. "[T]here are many ways in which religious workers are treated less favorably than non-religious workers, for no apparent reason," he wrote, according to a copy of the letter provided to CP. "The differences have no valid basis in policy or procedure and are mostly regulatory in nature. These have to do with the ability of religious workers to remain working with their temporary visas beyond the limitations of their visas," he added. Spaulding, who noted that Congress created the separate visa category for religious workers in 1991, told CP that he has dozens of clients facing similar situations in the wake of the rule change. "Like anything else that is ultimately religious discrimination, I don't know that it's intentional but it's not paying attention to religious organizations and it's extremely harmful to them and to these religious workers," he said, adding that some of his clients are working with the homeless population and struggling immigrant communities. Spaulding noted that Reimer and his other clients have worked hard to obey the law to maintain their green card status, but said they now potentially face being passed over in favor of those who have entered the U.S. illegally. "You have to comply with the law, otherwise you can't get a green card if you fall out of status," Spaulding said. "If [Reimer] overstays, it's over. So she has to leave, whereas a person who comes across the border illegally right now is given work permits, indefinite stays, and things like that." A spokesperson for the State Department told CP that they "recognize the importance of religious ministers and workers, as well as their U.S. employers who lead faith-based institutions." "This recent change may impact some religious ministers and workers already present in the United States in R nonimmigrant status if they seek to remain in the United States," the spokesperson continued. "Such nonimmigrant religious ministers and workers may be able to utilize other existing pathways to lawfully remain in the United States while they wait for an available EB-4 visa." Home Church & Ministries Over 7,000 churches have left the UMC amid homosexuality schism More than 5,000 churches have disaffiliated in 2023 The number of congregations that have left the United Methodist Church amid the schism over the denomination's stance on homosexuality has passed the 7,000 mark. Over the weekend, the number of churches that have disaffiliated from the UMC since 2019 reached 7,286, according to UM News, with over 5,200 leaving this year alone. This total includes 366 churches leaving the Kentucky Conference, 349 churches leaving the North Alabama Conference, 334 churches leaving the North Georgia Conference, 326 churches leaving the North Carolina Conference and 317 churches leaving the Indiana Annual Conference. Of the 334 congregations that have disaffiliated from the North Georgia Conference since 2019, 261 were given approval to disaffiliate over the weekend at a special session held by the regional body. According to a statement from the conference, there are still about 440 congregations affiliated with the regional body. These include four congregations whose disaffiliation votes were not approved: The Fountain United Methodist Church at Sugarloaf in Duluth, McEachern Memorial United Methodist Church in Powder Springs, Trinity United Methodist Church of Rome and Griffin First United Methodist Church. Over the past few decades, the UMC has been embroiled in a divisive debate over whether the country's second-largest Protestant denomination should amend language from its Book of Discipline that prohibits the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of clergy in same-sex romantic relationships. Although efforts to change the Book of Discipline have failed, liberal leaders within the denomination have often refused to follow or enforce the rules, drawing the ire of many theological conservatives. At a special session of the General Conference held in 2019, delegates voted to add paragraph 2553 to the UMC Book of Discipline, a measure to allow churches to disaffiliate from the denomination. The measure is set to expire at the end of the year. While thousands of congregations across the United States have disaffiliated from the UMC under the parameters of paragraph 2553, some congregations have either had their disaffiliation votes rejected by their regional conferences or have faced other obstacles in their bid to leave. Some of those churches have filed legal action against their respective conferences, accusing them of either not properly following the disaffiliation process or arguing that the process is unfair. Earlier this month, a court in Montgomery, Alabama, ruled against 42 congregations trying to leave the Alabama-West Florida Conference, concluding that, as a secular court, it did not have the authority to intervene in the churches' complaint. "The Court is without jurisdiction to rule on such issues because the relief sought by Plaintiffs would require the Court to interpret a provision of the Book of Discipline intertwined with church doctrine," ruled the Montgomery County Circuit Court. Thousands of congregations that have disaffiliated from the UMC have joined the Global Methodist Church, a theologically conservative denomination launched as an alternative to UMC last year. Home Politics Rep. Anna Eshoo, religious liberty advocate, won't seek reelection Democrat Congresswoman Anna Eshoo of California, an elected official who has often worked with conservatives on religious liberty issues in the Middle East, won't be seeking reelection. In an announcement posted on her congressional website Monday, Eshoo said she would not seek reelection in 2024 after serving over 30 years in the House of Representatives. I do so with a heart filled with unending gratitude to you, my magnificent constituents, she stated. For three decades, you have given me your trust, and Ive given every fiber of my being to live up to this sacred trust in every way possible. Im very proud of the body of bipartisan work Ive been able to achieve on your behalf in the Congress. Sixty-six of my bills have been signed into law by five presidents. Eshoo vowed to continue my work with vigor and unswerving commitment and commended her staff for their hard work, saying that simply put, they are the best. She also spoke positively about her constituents in the 16th Congressional District of California, saying they have reinforced her belief that we are all Gods children. Descended from Assyrian and Armenian Christian families, Eshoo often spoke about religious liberty concerns in the Middle East, including the persecution of native Christian communities. During the Bush administration, she worked on legislation with Republican Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia to establish a special envoy in the State Department to focus on the plight of religious minorities in the Holy Land. In 2014, as the Islamic State terrorist group was violently invading Syria and Iraq, Eshoo told The Christian Post that she believed the mistreatment of religious minorities in the region was a genocide. What is taking place now are the same stories that my grandmothers have told me of what they witnessed, of what they endured, of the family members who did not make it because they were slaughtered, Eshoo said at the time. I don't think any president wants genocide not dealt with next to their name; it matters not whether it is a Republican administration or a Democratic administration. Eshoo championed a House resolution that condemned the actions of the Islamic State and called on the Obama administration to work with the Kurds and others to provide safe havens for persecuted Christians. Eshoo also co-founded the Houses Religious Minorities in the Middle East Caucus in 2008 along with Wolf and later co-chaired it alongside Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb. Eshoo is devoted to the most fundamental of human ideals: the right of persons to practice their faith without fear of persecution, said Fortenberry in a statement back in 2015. At this hour of their great need, the religious minorities of the Middle East need champions of her experience and dedication. I deeply respect Congresswoman Eshoo's continued leadership on the grave challenges facing these vibrant communities, as well as her desire to protect vulnerable persons in the region. In 2016, the International Religious Freedom Roundtable awarded Eshoo and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., with their Thomas Jefferson IRF International Religious Freedom Champion Award. Home Church & Ministries E. Scott Martin, Chi Alphas national director, resigns in aftermath of abuse scandal E. Scott Martin, the national director of Chi Alpha, a college ministry present on 300 campuses globally with the support of the Assemblies of God, has resigned months after the ministry was accused of enabling Daniel Savala, a 67-year-old itinerant minister and convicted sex offender, to prey on scores of young males for more than two decades. Martin's assistant confirmed with The Christian Post that his resignation was effective on Monday but didn't provide a reason for the resignation. When asked why Martin resigned, the Assemblies of God noted in a statement to CP that "we cannot provide comment on personnel matters." The Pentecostal denomination pointed to its most recent statement on the Chi Alpha controversy. "We are heartbroken to hear allegations related to Daniel Savala and the pain his reported actions caused. The Assemblies of God stands in strong opposition to the teachings and practices he followed," the denomination said. "While he did not hold credentials with the Assemblies of God and was never on staff with any Chi Alpha campus ministry, The General Council of the Assemblies of God takes matters of this nature seriously and will do everything we can to help." In June, Savala was arrested in Waco for allegedly sexually abusing the minor sons of one of his proteges in the ministry. Savala, according to KWTX, was identified as the "spiritual mentor" of Christopher Hundl, 38, the former leader of Chi Alpha's ministry at Baylor University, who was charged with allowing the itinerant leader to sexually abuse two of his family members later revealed to be his sons. According to the arrest warrant, Hundl allegedly brought the two boys to Savala's Houston home several times between the summer of 2021 and March 2022. Texas' sex offender registry records show that Savala was charged in 2012 for sexual abuse of a minor, a third-degree felony, which he committed in Alaska between 1995 and 1997. While in a sauna with Hundl and the boys, who were younger than 14 when the abuse happened, Savala allegedly instructed the boys to masturbate in front of the adult men. It is alleged that similar activity also took place in Hundl's home. The arrest records state that Savala also touched the boys inappropriately in Hundl's presence. Hundl, who is married, told officers that he met Savala while in college and was involved in a sexual relationship. Savala, he told police, acted as a "grandfather" to the two boys. In October, Savala was also charged with sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child by sexual contact by the Houston Police Department, the Waco Tribune Herald reported. In this case, a man told police in Houston, Texas, that Savala sexually assaulted him multiple times in 2005 when he was 16 years old. He alleges that a Sam Houston State University Chi Alpha youth pastor introduced him to Savala at his then-home in Houston. After he got his driver's license, he began visiting Savala twice per month for two years and the abuse took place during that period. He said on his first visit, Savala asked him about masturbation and pornography and became increasingly explicit during his visits. Savala reportedly then encouraged the then-teen to get naked with him, citing the biblical quote "naked and unashamed." Once he removed his clothes, Savala, among other things, touched his genitals. During other visits, the victim alleged Savala performed oral sex on him and asked him to reciprocate. According to its most recent statement on the scandal, the Assemblies of God warned National Chi Alpha leaders about Savala as far back as 2018. "When a report first surfaced to the General Council and National Chi Alpha in 2018 of Mr. Savala's proximity to certain local Texas Chi Alpha groups, the appropriate districts with which these campuses are affiliated were notified," the denomination said. "National Chi Alpha, which serves as a resource for locally operated chapters, made relevant Chi Alpha leaders aware of his status and warned them to cease contact and not permit students or leaders to be around him." It was further noted that when Assemblies of God officials first heard about the reports of sexual contact with college students at Chi Alpha campuses in Texas in April 2023, they launched "district and local investigations into the various allegations." Some Assemblies of God ministers have called on denominational leaders to repent and, where appropriate, resign. Pastor J.R. Armstrong of MAG Church in Orange, Texas, who has criticized Assemblies of God General Superintendent Doug Clay for making comments that he believes appear to minimize the abuse Savala is accused of perpetuating, called for ministers connected to the ministry to step down. "On Friday, Aug. 4, on the closing session of business at the General Counsel of the Assemblies of God, General Superintendent Doug Clay went on record with a statement concerning Chi Alpha Ministries. In his statement, Rev. Clay called attention to the ministry of Chi Alpha without presenting the dozens, if not hundreds, of victims of sexual and spiritual abuse as a spectrum in ministry lines, which in and of itself, [is] moral relativism at its worst," Armstrong said in an impassioned address from the pulpit of his church on Aug. 13. "Hundreds of victims of sexual abuse are not a spot on a spectrum," Armstrong said. "I, as an ordained minister in good standing with the Assemblies of God, call on Doug Clay, Donna Barrett, E. Scott Martin, Tim Barker, Don Wiehe, Gaylan Claunch, and others to speak up, take responsibility, and where necessary, to resign. And with some, that will be necessary." Home U.S. DOJ sides with church suing Oregon city for restricting homeless ministry The United States Department of Justice found that a city in Oregon has wrongfully restricted a local congregation from being able to feed the local homeless population. Last year, St. Timothys Episcopal Church of Brookings sued city officials for passing an ordinance that limited their ministry work among the local homeless due to resident complaints. Filed in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, Medford Division, the statement of interest argued that the city imposed a substantial burden on Plaintiffs religious exercise by restricting Plaintiffs from distributing meals to persons in need at a house of worship. Specifically, the DOJ cited the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, a federal law that prohibits the government from unreasonably restricting a religious groups use of their property. Courts have held that protected religious exercise includes not only services, prayers, or worship, but also the provision of housing, shelter, and other social services when motivated by an entitys sincerely held religious beliefs or mission, said the statement. The City cannot demonstrate that restricting St. Timothys meal service furthers the Citys generalized, overly vague interest in promoting public safety and welfare. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJs Civil Rights Division said in a statement on Tuesday that the department is committed to enforcing federal civil rights laws to ensure that all religious groups can freely exercise their religious beliefs. Many churches and faith-based organizations across the country are on the front lines serving the critical needs of people experiencing hunger and homelessness, stated Clarke. Discriminatory zoning restrictions that burden and limit religious organizations use of their land violate federal antidiscrimination laws. Last year, the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon and St. Timothys Church filed suit against the city of Brookings over the Brookings City Council unanimously passing Ordinance 21-O-795 in 2021. The ordinance mandates that food providers get a conditional use permit to operate in a residential zone. Even with the permit, which churches can apply for without paying a fee, St. Timothys would be limited to serving food to only two days a week. Plaintiffs now face the decision of whether to exercise their core religious beliefs or face enforcement action by the City. Plaintiffs intend to continue exercising their core religious beliefs and serving meals at St. Timothys four days per week, read the lawsuit. Plaintiffs do not intend to restrict their religious exercise to two days or fewer per week because the community need is greater than serving meals only twice per week. Brookings City Manager Janelle Howard told Oregon Public Broadcasting in 2021 that the ordinance came in response to a petition by residents who said they were negatively impacted by the food ministry. They were looking for some relief because it was becoming an impact to their particular neighborhood, whether they mentioned trespassing, littering, noise, Howard said at the time. They were asking for some kind of relief from the city. Howard also told OPB that city officials had the authority to institute the restrictive ordinance on St. Timothys because it was located in a residential zone, noting that if they had been in commercial zones, there would be no limitations to the frequency, or the hours, or the number of days a week. Yoon Sang-ki, 75, smiled when his mentor, a middle schooler around the age of his grandchildren, approved of the answer he had carefully written down on his math worksheet during a recent tutoring session offered at Jin Hyung Middle and High School in central Seoul. "I've waited nearly 60 years for an opportunity to learn," said Yoon, who could not go to middle school due to his poor background. "Now I look forward to Saturday for this class." Yoon is one of more than 1,200 students at the special school for late learners, where the average student age is 67, and the two-hour tutoring session offered every other Saturday is a special addition designed to give them extra help in their studies in math, English and other subjects. The biweekly mentoring program, introduced under an initiative of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, is also aimed at strengthening generational bonds between elders attending lifelong education institutions and middle school student mentors. This year, 108 seniors and 104 middle schoolers signed up for the October-December program launched on a pilot basis and is expected to be expanded next year to include more schools. The elderly students said the one-on-one mentor program is a way for them to review what they've learned on weekdays, which often go by too fast for them to thoroughly grasp the new concepts. "As our tutors are middle school students, it's helpful that they teach us the easy way that helped them understand the curriculum," a senior student said, asking not to be identified. Lee Bong-ye, 72, said the program was so popular that 16 people in her class of 32 wanted to join but only two were chosen. "I have classmates who are waiting their turns for this opportunity," she said. "I hope the government expands this program to support more seniors eager to learn." In Korea, nearly 2 million people, or 4.5 percent, of adults over 18 showed a literacy rate equivalent to first or second graders in elementary school. This means they lack the reading, writing and counting skills needed in everyday life, according to a survey by the National Institute for Lifelong Education in 2020. Jin Hyung Middle and High School, located in Jongno Ward, is one of 10 lifelong education institutions in the capital, which recognizes the graduates as having completed education in elementary, middle or high school. As of April, 6,622 students were enrolled in such schools in Seoul, and the number has been increasing over the past few years, from 6,091 in 2021 and 6,593 in 2022, according to data from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. In a country where elementary and middle school education is compulsory by law, and high school education is offered for free, students in institutions stipulated under the Lifelong Education Act also receive free education. Yoon Jung-nyu, 69, said she came to class after rinsing off the cabbage she soaked in brine the previous night in order to make kimchi. "I may not be top of my class, but I can't relax until I've taken my class for the day." Yoon's first and last graduation was at her elementary school in 1967. "I was a factory worker since I was 18, and started my own textile mill when I was 23," she said. Yoon hid her education background even from her closest friends, and people still make her out as a high school graduate. "My neighbors always ask me where I'm going when I set out each morning with a huge backpack," she said, laughing while recounting her memory of her new routine of going to school. Another senior, who asked not to be identified for fear of being recognized by her friends, also said learning new things every day felt like "walking on cloud nine." "I still can't forget the day I first read an English sign next to the subway station where I live," she said. The middle schoolers, most of whom it is their first time tutoring someone, were just as enthusiastic to cater to their students, often older than their grandparents. Im Hyun-jun, 14, said he brought his own worksheet that he made last night, containing math concepts and custom-made problems to help his mentee. Another mentor, Maeng Ji-eun, said she woke up two hours before class in order to watch online lectures to help explain things in an easier way for her mentee. A social studies teacher at the school, Choi Yoon-jung, said she always has a lot to learn from her students, many of whom gave up their studies to take care of their families during the country's industrialization. "Nobody sleeps during class, and all you hear during class time is the sound of jotting down notes with pencils," Choi said. As the two-hour session came to a close Saturday, Yoon Sang-ki beamed a smile while depicting his plans to share the worksheets from the mentoring program with his class Monday. "I learned so much from the past two months, and I want to share what I've learned with my classmates," said Yoon, whose goal is to attend university after completing middle and high school. Han Da-young, his 15-year-old mentor, said although she has difficulty waking up so early in the morning, she feels rewarded when she helps her mentee step-by-step to solve a difficult math problem. "I hope he continues his learning to finish high school," she said. "I'm sure he can. He's got the passion." (Yonhap) Home Church & Ministries Germany's Protestant church leader resigns, denies covering up sex abuse The head of a church body representing 20 million Protestants in Germany has resigned following allegations she neglected to take action against a man who was accused of abuse more than two decades ago. Annette Kurschus, the leader of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), Germany's umbrella organization for Protestant churches, resigned on Monday, according to an announcement. She was accused of inadequately responding to the allegations against a colleague. Kurschus denied knowledge of the abuse but announced her resignation after it was revealed the former church worker is currently under criminal investigation. "[I]n the last few days, events have accelerated. What was initially a purely local and regional matter became a case of nationwide importance," Kurschus said in a statement. "In the meantime, the situation has become so serious that there is only one consequence for me to prevent damage to my church: I am resigning from both church leadership positions." EKD is a communion of 20 regional churches in Germany spanning Lutheran, Reformed or United confessions. "I respect the step of resigning from all positions, with which Annette Kurschus shows the importance of consistent action on the issue of sexualized violence especially in the interest of those affected for the Protestant Church," said EKD Synod President Anna-Nicole Heinrich said. The allegations reportedly involve a local vicar in the church district of Siegen, located in western Germany, who is accused of "sexually inappropriate conducted toward other men" over a period of decades. The local Siegener Zeitung newspaper cited two men who claimed they submitted evidence under oath and reported that Kurschus, 60, knew about the accusations "in detail" as early as the 1990s, according to Deutsche Welle. In her resignation announcement Monday, Kurchus denied any deliberate effort to cover up the allegations or mislead the public. "This is all the more bitter because I never and I emphasize this expressly! was never about shirking my own responsibility, withholding important facts, covering up facts or even covering up for an accused," she said. "In the meantime, the question of my credibility has developed such a dynamic of its own publicly that an absurd and damaging shift has occurred: instead of being about those affected and their protection, for days now it has been exclusively about me personally. This has to finally stop. It draws attention away from those affected and from clarifying the injustice that was done to them. This is what enlightenment is all about. This clarification should be the focus." Kurschus' resignation comes at a delicate moment in the German Protestant church, which is reeling from steadily declining attendance numbers despite having largely avoided the same wave of a sexual assault claims leveled against the Catholic Church in Germany. A 2018 study by the German Bishops' Conference found more than 1,600 Catholic clergymen were alleged to have been involved in "some form of sexual attack" against more than 3,600 minors in the years between 1946 and 2014, though analysts believe the actual number of victims is significantly higher. The Diocese in Cologne released an 800-page report in 2021 that detailed over 200 alleged sexual assault perpetrators and more than 300 victims dating back to 1975. Over half of whom were under 14. Home World Israel, Hamas agree to 4-day truce; 50 hostages to be released Updated at 6 p.m. EST on Nov. 22, 2023: The scheduled release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza has been delayed until Friday. The delay comes after the Israeli government reached an agreement with the terrorist group for a four-day truce in which one Israeli hostage would be released for every three Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. President Joe Biden said three Americans are expected to be among the 50 hostages released by Hamas during a four-day truce. "The contacts on the release of our hostages are advancing and continuing constantly. The start of the release will take place according to the original agreement between the sides, and not before Friday," Israeli National Security Council Director Tzachi Hanegbi said Wednesday in a statement about the deal that was originally expected to commence on Thursday. Adrienne Watson, a National Security Council spokesperson for the Biden administration, added: "The deal was agreed and remains agreed. The parties are working out final logistical details, particularly for the first day of implementation. It is our view that nothing should be left to chance as the hostages begin coming home. Our primary objective is to ensure that they are brought home safely. That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning." Original report: Israel and Hamas have reportedly reached an agreement on a four-day truce amid the seven-week-old war sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on civilians in southern Israel. Announced Wednesday, the agreement was reached after mediation with Qatar, Egypt and the United States. The agreement could free dozens of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, the Associated Press reports. The temporary ceasefire is slated to begin Thursday morning. Hamas says 50 of the 240 hostages will be freed in stages in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly teens arrested for minor offenses. Hundreds of trucks filled with humanitarian and medical supplies will be allowed into Gaza. "I welcome the commitment that Israel has made to support an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure additional humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in Gaza," U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement. "The flow of aid must substantially increase and civilians must be protected. We also call on Hamas to release all the remaining hostages." On Tuesday, Netanyahu vowed Israel would "continue the war until" it eliminates Hamas and secures the return of all hostages. "All of the security agencies fully support [the truce]. They have made it completely clear in their professional assessment that the security of our forces will be ensured during the pause and that the intelligence effort will be maintained in those days," he said. "They have made it clear that not only will the war effort not be harmed, it will enable the IDF to prepare for the continuation of the fighting." Israel says the ceasefire could be extended if more hostages are freed. A Palestinian source told Reuters that as many as 100 hostages could be released by the end of November. The conflict began after Hamas' surprise Oct. 7 attack on the southern Israeli communities near the Gaza border that killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians. This prompted Israel to launch retaliatory airstrikes and a ground offensive in Gaza, seeking to eliminate Hamas and secure the release of hostages. Hamas-run Gaza health authorities say over 11,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began. Gaza Health officials say they have lost the inability to count the death toll because of a collapse of parts of its health system and the inability to retrieve bodies amid the conflict, according to the Associated Press. Although Hamas' death toll figure doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently said the war is "having a staggering and unacceptable number of civilian casualties, including women and children, every day." Christian leaders have taken different positions when it comes to the war. Israel says it has a right as a country to eliminate a terrorist group that has attacked its people. Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, and Israel has accused Hamas of using civilian buildings like schools and hospitals for military purposes. Calls for a ceasefire have been amplified in recent weeks as Israel is accused of conducting airstrikes and operations on schools, hospitals and refugee centers that it says are being used by Hamas. A coalition known as the Churches for Middle East Peace and American church-based leaders sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Nov. 9 calling for an immediate ceasefire and de-escalation of the Israel-Hamas war. While condemning Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, the letter argues that the massacre "does not justify further violence against Palestinian civilians." "We condemn the collective punishment imposed upon the more than 2.2 million Palestinians living in Gaza when, on October 8, the Israeli government cut off water, gas, and electricity, and all goods and supplies to the territory, putting even more pressure on a community already suffering from a humanitarian crisis more than a decade in the making," the letter reads. "We further condemn Israel's large-scale air bombardment and ground invasion that continues to have an indiscriminate and tragically disproportionate impact on civilians." Signatories of the letter include the heads and leaders of The Episcopal Church, the Reformed Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the National Council of Churches, American Baptist Churches USA and the Alliance of Baptists. The church leaders' letter argued that the actions of both Hamas and the Israeli government "in no way advance peace" and "have caused loss of life and much harm, grief, and devastation, not only to the individuals affected but also to the legitimate cause of the Palestinian people in seeking an end to the decades-long occupation and the blockade of the Gaza Strip." The letter urged the administration not to supply additional military aid to Israel and for both sides to better adhere to the Geneva Conventions and overall international law. In a full-page ad in The Jerusalem Post last month, an interfaith coalition of Christian and Jewish leaders expressed their "unlimited and unqualified" support for Israel to do "all that is necessary to defeat Hamas." The leaders urged Biden not to pressure Israel into a "premature ceasefire." The group of around 50 faith leaders included Harvest Christian Fellowship Pastor Greg Laurie, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference President Samuel Rodriguez, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, former Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former President Donald Trump's spiritual advisor Paula White. "It is not sufficient for Israel to degrade or even defeat this brutal terrorist regime, which oppresses its own people. Israel must completely destroy every Hamas terrorist, so that this evil is erased from human history," the leaders stated. "If America pressures Israel into a ceasefire, Israel's enemies will be emboldened, and Israel imperiled, long into the future." Earlier this month, multiple Evangelical church organizations from around the world signed on to a joint statement calling for a "cessation of hostilities between Israel and different Palestinian formations and supporters, including Hamas." "We condemn the attacks on civilians by Hamas. Hamas' acts of aggression and the largest killing of Jewish civilians on a single day since the Holocaust are deplorable and despicable," stated the Evangelical groups. "We note that Israel in pursuit of Hamas has caused more civilian deaths in Palestine. We condemn these further deaths of Palestinian civilians." The signatories of that letter included the Middle East and North Africa Evangelical Alliance, the Evangelical Fellowship of India, the Asian Evangelical Alliance, Alianza Evangelica Latina, the Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia, Jordan Evangelical Council, the Evangelical Alliance of Arabic speakers in Europe and Association of the Iraqi National Evangelical Churches. Home U.S. Georgia city apologizes to man arrested for holding a 'God Bless the Homeless Vets' sign at city hall A Georgia city has apologized for arresting a man who was advocating on behalf of homeless veterans in front of city hall. In a statement released Tuesday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression announced that the city of Port Wentworth, Georgia, had reached a settlement with Jeff Gray two years after arresting him for holding a sign that read God Bless the Homeless Vets in front of the city hall. As part of the agreement, finalized Monday, Port Wentworth will donate three checks totaling $1,791 each to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, Gray and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Additionally, the city issued an apology to Gray and agreed to submit a notice to the public, Port Wentworth law enforcement officers and city hall employees explaining that the area in front of Port Wentworth City Hall is a traditional public forum that may be used by members of the public for expressive activity, including demonstrations, protests, petitioning, and holding signs. Port Wentworth found out the hard way that it cant try to bulldoze my rights and get away with it, Gray said in response to the settlement. Im thankful for the outcome here, but I wont stop speaking out on behalf of myself and my fellow citizens. Video footage of the arrest on July 19, 2021, shows Port Wentworth Police Sgt. Robert Hemminger informing Gray that city hall employees had asked him to find another location to hold his God Bless the Homeless Vets sign that was not directly in front of the government building. Gray responded by declaring, Id rather not. The video footage shows Hemminger going back inside city hall after speaking with Gray and explaining to the city hall employees that technically, hes not breaking laws as he reported back on the conversation the two men had and Gray declining to relocate. Clarifying that Gray was polite, Hemminger informed the city hall employees that he would ask Gray to leave again and charge him with trespassing if he refused to vacate the premises a second time. Hemminger went back outside and asked Gray why he wanted to stand in that particular location. He replied, God put it in my heart to stand right here and spread the message God bless the homeless veterans. Hemminger reiterated what he told Gray before, that he could stand with the sign at a variety of alternative locations in the vicinity that were not city property. He said that if he didn't do so, he would be charged with trespassing. When asked if he was being trespassed, Hemminger answered in the affirmative: As of now, you are. When Hemminger asked Gray to give him his identification, Gray agreed to leave, but the law enforcement official told him, Youre not free to go now and suggested that he was playing a game. Gray was placed under arrest for obstruction because he did not give Hemminger his identification. He was released later that day without actually going to jail and was ordered to remain off city property. Nearly two years after his arrest, Gray filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia Savannah Division alleging that Hemmingers actions violated his First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. Port Wentworth is not the only city in Georgia to arrest Gray for holding a God Bless the Homeless Vets sign. The city of Alpharetta and Blackshear Police Chief Chris Wright also found themselves subject to lawsuits for doing so. The Blackshear City Council amended the city ordinance used to arrest Gray, which required individuals to receive advanced approval from the mayor or city council to demonstrate on public streets or sidewalks, earlier this year. The arrest of Gray is not the first time Port Wentworth has received national attention. In February, former Port Wentworth Police Officer Jacob Kersey filed a lawsuit against the police department, alleging that it engaged in religious discrimination against him by placing him on administrative leave for refusing to take down a Facebook post expressing support for the biblical definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Kersey resigned from the force after concluding that continuing to serve in his position would require him to compromise his deeply held religious beliefs. Home U.S. Michael Voris, founder and president of Church Militant, resigns after breaking morality clause Michael Voris, president and founder of Saint Michael's Media, which operates as a news website in Michigan under the officially registered name of Church Militant, has resigned for breaching the organizations morality clause. Church Militant/St. Michael's Media was founded as a bastion of Catholic truth and a light to the faithful in hard times. This is why we are being fully transparent with you all, the media organization began in a statement published on its website Tuesday. Michael Voris has been asked to resign for breaching the Church Militant morality clause. The board has accepted his resignation. We understand this is a shock to you all, but our founder and former CEO is stepping aside and focusing on his personal health, the statement continued. The leaders of the organization, which employs more than 40 full-time staff, chose not to disclose the nature of Voris actions. However, their 62-year-old founder, who previously admitted to engaging in sexual relationships with both men and women in his 20s and 30s, said he now has to "go away and address and work on" painful truths from his past that he described as horrible, ugly things in a statement on X. There are some very, very ugly truths from my past that I, for essentially 62 years, have avoided facing because I didn't want to. I wanted them resolved, but I understand that touching that pain is going to be a very horrible thing. And so, I am looking at what is happening right now as an opportunity, God given even, if you could call it a dark grace or black grace, that's kind of one of those pseudo theological expressions, seems to be appropriate here, he said. There are things I have to go away and address and work on. They are, again, horrible, ugly things, not going to share them. Nobody else's business except mine. The consequences of me not dealing with those, obviously, are some people's business. And that's what I'm making this video for, he continued. To be able to say that first of all, for anybody who has been impacted you have my deepest heartfelt apologies, my most sincere. There's nothing I can say to make it good. I can't. So to the extent that I can say and be completely upfront about it, that is true. In a 2017 interview with The Atlantic on Church Militant and its founder, Voris talked about the early and mid-life confusions he experienced with his sexuality. I had some early to mid-life confusions. Most of my years in my 30s, I lived a life of live in relationships with homosexual men in a large portion of my 20s. I also had frequent sexual liaisons with both adult men and adult women, he said. He also talked about his mothers struggles with mental illness and how that affected him. My mother had a mental illness, she was bipolar. Everything in the environment revolves around that mental illness. I wound up believing my parents didn't love me. I left home, I got to a career that I did really well in, and opportunities just presented themselves, said Voris, who, prior to his time at Church Militant, enjoyed a career in television broadcasting for which he received four Emmy Awards for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. I wasn't sure of who I was, he said of his life in sin. My return to the faith began when I found out my mother's cancer had returned just a few months after the original operation, stage 4. And then, in the middle of that, I get a call from my sister-in-law that my brother just suddenly died of a heart attack at 48. And I was like, whoa, this all comes to an end, he recalled. He said, despite my mom's mental illness and everything, we were extremely close, she was a beautiful, loving, caring woman. She said to me one day about three months before she died, she said, I never believed that you were homosexual or gay. I believed that you were acting out in response to the fact of how I had created this situation at home that you didn't know how to deal with it. And boy, that was the hammer, he said, recalling how he decided to change his life. Voris explained in his statement on Tuesday that he's relieved that he was being forced to confront his demons because I had written my resignation letter already a handful of times this year. Like I said, in one sense, [Im] kind of relieved. I need to conquer these demons. And I'm not talking about just acting out demons. That's a symptom. It's horrible. It's awful, it's sinful, I'm not downplaying it at all. What I'm saying is, the underlying cause of it has been too ugly for me to look at. It involves an awful lot of one sense for me like spiritual terror, and I've not wanted to go near it, he explained. I have spent the last couple of days or so talking to people who I believe can help me face this, and professionally. So I am going to, I don't want to use the word retreat. But I'm going to step away from the camera. And I'm going to go concentrate on that, Voris said. I have the obligation as a Catholic man to go present myself to God. God Love You pic.twitter.com/SBRFDP9vKD Michael Voris (@Michael_Voris) November 21, 2023 Home U.S. Ex-Victoria's Secret model who left career to follow Jesus announces cancer diagnosis A former Victoria's Secret model who left her modeling career behind and started a Christian ministry is asking for prayers following a diagnosis of stage 4 breast cancer. Nicole Weider, who gave up her career and launched the women's ministry group Project Inspired, took to Instagram on Sunday to reveal disappointing news about her health. "Please pray with me over me," she wrote. "I noticed a large lump had grown under my left breast (ignored it for a while) but then today as I felt it was enlarged I knew I needed to see a doctor immediately." "I thought it would be nothing maybe just a cyst or a piece of fatty tissue under my armpit," Weider added. "The doctor felt it and looked at it and told me it was serious enough to get a CT scan and have the images determined by a radiologist. I felt very worried the whole time but just kept telling myself to trust in God." The radiologist discovered that Weider had cancer in her left breast, which spread to her armpit area. "He told me it was good that I decided to go in, as my breast cancer had already spread. And I now have Stage 2. Because this is a holiday week, many doctor offices are closed so I'm going to a bigger hospital tonight where an oncologist will tell which next steps to do to keep it from spreading and be removed," she said. Weider posted an update Monday of her elaborating on her diagnosis as she lay in a hospital bed. The post noted that because the cancer spread to more than three places, the oncologist told her she has stage 4 cancer. "Unfortunately he said when younger people get it it's usually more aggressive since it's less common. I'm staying positive, and always trusting God. Thank you for your prayers I feel them," she continued. In the video, Weider said doctors found "two mass in my liver" and indicated that the biopsy would help figure out how fast the cancer was spreading. She asked her followers to pray for her and remained confident that prayers are working. In an interview with The Christian Post in 2018, Weider discussed why she gave up modeling and how she decided to re-embrace her Christian faith. "I realized that being a model was truly not what it was cracked up to be," she asserted. "I felt degraded, that I was never 'perfect' enough, and being judged only on my appearance was hurting my self-esteem. I realized I wanted more for my life." "I rediscovered my faith that I had as a little girl, and it changed my life because I was passionate about using my gifts for God instead of the empty modeling industry." Home U.S. Police chief abruptly retires after suspending officer for posting 'no such thing as homosexual marriage' 'What happened to me should never happen again' The longtime chief of a Georgia police department that suspended an outspoken Christian officer who voiced his views on marriage earlier this month has abruptly retired. Port Wentworth Police Chief Matt Libby announced his retirement Monday, just days after Officer Jacob Kersey resigned after being told by his supervisors he could be terminated for sharing his religious views. On Jan. 4, the department placed the 19-year-old Kersey on paid administrative leave following his refusal to take down a Facebook post from two days earlier in which he paraphrased the Apostle Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. "God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That's why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage," he wrote. Kersey told The Christian Post following that initial meeting, he was led to believe he had been terminated but said he was later given a "second chance." "I was given a second chance, 'Be silent about your Christian beliefs, don't post things like this because it leads us to believe that you might target members of the LGBT community,'" he told CP via phone Wednesday. Kersey said while he had made similar statements in the past, both on social media and in his podcast, "The Jacob Kersey Program," he was inspired after reading John Piper's book, This Momentary Marriage. "He does a really great job of talking about the imagery that Scripture uses for marriage," said Kersey. "In that post, what I did is somewhat paraphrase Ephesians chapter 5, where Paul describes marriage as a mirror image of Christ and His love for His people, His Bride, the Church. "I've looked back, and I've made very similar posts before in times past. I've shared things that the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and others have said about how marriage is only to be between a man and a woman, according to God's design for it." According to Kersey, Libby compared his quote from the Bible to using a racial slur. "My chief likened what I said to using the 'N-word,' so he equated me to the most horrific kind of racists," he said. Following his administrative leave, Kersey said the department couldn't terminate him because he did not violate any policies with his post, so they gave him his job back and told him simply, "Don't do it again." Kersey said he believes the department intended to use the reprieve to create a new policy which would result in his ultimate termination. "This is how they told me they were going to enforce it," he said. "I would be allowed to post Bible verses, however, if I gave an interpretation, opinion or explanation of those Bible verses that was offensive to someone somewhere, then I would be fired." Kersey said his decision to resign came after he realized he would be laying his life on the line to protect the "great citizens of Port Wentworth, only to be playing this game with the police department the entire time, knowing good and well I was going to be eventually fired for it." "So I decided to resign beforehand and share this story." The Port Wentworth Police Department, which serves a population of roughly 11,000 people in the metro area of Savannah, Georgia, did not return a request by CP for comment Wednesday. In Libby's letter to city manager Steve Davis, Libby did not provide any reason for his retirement other than a brief note which read in part: "It has been my honor to serve this community for over 31 years. I wish the City and the department well, and I am thankful for all the opportunities I was afforded during my career." In addition to his role as police chief, Libby also served as interim city manager in 2022, according to a local news report. Upon learning of Libby's retirement, Kersey said he believes the move was "absolutely" connected to his situation. "The police chief was forced to resign after my story made national headlines. America wants to know why," he said. In addition to demanding a public apology from the other members of the Port Wentworth police command staff, Kersey also wants to know when the city is going to address the story. "What happened to me should never happen again not in America and certainly not in Georgia," he said. Home World 'Utterly preposterous': Palestinian Authority blames Israel for music festival massacre The Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry claimed Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre at the Supernova music festival, an accusation that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as "utterly preposterous." As The Times of Israel reported Sunday, the PA asserted that a preliminary investigation by Israel Police concluded that the Israel Defense Forces were responsible for a majority of festival attendees' deaths. Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on civilian communities in Israel killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, including over 360 people at the Supernova music festival near kibbutz Re'im. Hamas kidnapped around 240 others that day. The attack prompted Israeli airstrikes and a ground offensive in Gaza seeking to eradicate Hamas and rescue hostages. The PA is the governing body of certain Palestinian regions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, resulting from the Oslo Accords, a peace agreement in the 1990s that attempted to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing a two-state solution. The PA in Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the central West Bank, alleged that Israeli helicopters bombed civilians at the festival as part of a "Hannibal Protocol." The protocol, a military order repealed in 2016, is an IDF directive regarding the use of force to prevent the kidnapping of fellow soldiers. The foreign ministry attempted to cast doubts upon Israeli accounts of the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7. "The death and destruction in the area, especially those parts of it which were videoed, showed destruction and fires that broke out in several houses because of Israeli bombardment," the PA alleged. "We demand that all media outlets and international bodies specifically scrutinize Israeli reports." Netanyahu released a video statement on Sunday in response to the PA's allegations, noting that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas previously denied the Holocaust. "Today, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah said something utterly preposterous. It denied that it was Hamas that carried out the horrible massacre at the nature festival near Gaza," Netanyahu said. "It actually accused Israel of carrying out that massacre. This is a complete reversal of truth." Netanyahu outlined his vision of a future civil administration in Gaza, one that does not deny the Oct. 7 massacre and does not promote an ideology that calls for the destruction of Israel. "That's not acceptable, and that is not the way to achieve peace," he said. According to the The Times of Israel, the PA deleted its accusations from social media. However, a document outlining the allegations was sent to diplomats and the United Nations. In a separate report, The Times noted that the media outlet Haaretz first reported that an IDF helicopter that arrived at the musical festival site may have killed some Israeli civilians. The report gained traction on social media; however, many took it out of context, according to the Times. As The Christian Post previously reported, survivors of the music festival massacre have shared their experiences of fleeing from Hamas terrorists who attacked the festival. During a special screening earlier this month, CP reporters viewed footage showing the aftermath of the massacre and clips of Hamas terrorists attacking civilians. Recently, the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, fired Samantha Pearson, the head of its campus sexual assault center, after she signed a letter denying Hamas terrorists raped women during the attack. Pearson had signed a letter titled "Stand with Palestine: Call on Political Leaders to End Their Complicity in Genocide," a copy of which was shared on social media. According to the letter, center-left New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh had repeated "the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence," with the document outlining other critiques of the lawmaker. In a Monday statement to CP, University of Alberta President and Vice-Chancellor Bill Flanagan confirmed that the university no longer employs Pearson and that the school has appointed a new interim director of the sexual assault center. "I want to be clear that the former employee's personal views and opinions do not in any way represent those of the University of Alberta," Flanagan stated. "The University of Alberta stands firmly and unequivocally against discrimination and hatred on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, national origin, and other protected categories." The president explained that the university recognizes the historical and ongoing harms of anti-Semitism, emphasizing the school's commitment to advancing a "world free of prejudice and discrimination." "The services provided by the university, particularly those supporting the well-being and health of community members, must be open and welcoming to all individuals in our diverse community," he continued. "The new leadership at the Sexual Assault Centre is committed to swiftly implementing the changes required to ensure this university commitment is upheld." As CP previously reported, a Rabbinate corps member of the IDF told the media that Hamas terrorists subjected women, girls and grandmothers to sexual violence. The woman, named Shari, said that there is evidence the terrorists brutally raped their victims until their pelvises broke. Home U.S. Thousands demand town apologize to police officer who resigned after sharing Christian beliefs Tens of thousands of people have backed a petition asking the leaders of a Georgia town to apologize after a police officer resigned for expressing his Christian beliefs about marriage on social media. Pastors and political leaders will deliver the petition on Friday. The national Christian conservative advocacy group Family Research Council announced plans to deliver petitions signed by over 20,000 people to the mayor and city council of Port Wentworth on Friday, calling for an apology to former police officer Jacob Kersey. Kersey resigned in January after being told by his supervisors he could be terminated for sharing his religious views about marriage on social media. Despite having a "spotless record," Kersey was pulled off duty and threatened with termination after he expressed his biblical view on marriage through his private Facebook account. Georgia pastors will be joined in delivering the petitions by former Congressman Jody Hice, Bishop Garland Hunt of The Father's House and former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran, who was fired in 2015 for sharing a book he wrote that included a small section highlighting his views on marriage. Cochran settled a lawsuit against the city for over $1.2 million in 2018. "God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That's why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage," Kersey wrote in a Jan. 2 Facebook post, paraphrasing the Apostle Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus. The petition calls on the town to acknowledge that it violated Kersey's First Amendment freedoms. "Kersey was bullied into resigning from the Port Wentworth Police Department," the FRC statement argues. The department placed Kersey on paid administrative leave on Jan. 4 after he refused to take down his Facebook post from two days earlier. Kersey told CP that after the initial meeting, he was led to believe he had been terminated but was offered a "second chance." "I was given a second chance, 'Be silent about your Christian beliefs, don't post things like this because it leads us to believe that you might target members of the LGBT community,'" he said. Kersey said former Police Chief Matt Libby, who since retired, compared his post to a racial slur. Ultimately, Kersey said he couldn't be terminated because he didn't violate any policies and was told not to make a post like that again. He believed the department was going to create a new policy that could result in his termination. "Kersey resigned rather than surrender his constitutional rights and in order to maintain his faithfulness to God's truth, and his integrity as a Christ-follower," the FRC statement explains. The legal nonprofit First Liberty Institute, which represents Kersey, wrote a letter to the City of Port Wentworth and its police department last month. On Jan. 13, Kersey received a "Letter of Notification" from Port Wentworth Assistant Police Chief Major Bradwick Lee Sherrod "explaining that there was not sufficient evidence to terminate him, but that the notice was not to be construed as an exhaustive finding," the First Liberty Institute's Stephanie N. Taub and Courtney Jones wrote in the letter. "The letter warned Mr. Kersey that he could be terminated for any post on any of his private social media accounts or any other statement or action that could be perceived as offensive while noting that his posts and podcasts are 'likely offensive' to certain communities. Maj. Sherrod ended the letter saying that he hoped that Mr. Kersey would 'take this situation as a learning lesson.'" First Liberty Institute argues that the department's requirement for Kersey to "censor his private, off-duty religious speech to remain employed" was "an unconstitutional violation of Mr. Kersey's rights under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment." "The City of Port Wentworth and the Port Wentworth Police Department should issue a public statement committing to respect the First Amendment rights of its police officers and announce an official change of policy," the letter adds. Kersey previously told CP that while he made similar statements in the past on social media and in his podcast, he was inspired after reading John Piper's book This Momentary Marriage. "He does a really great job of talking about the imagery that Scripture uses for marriage," said Kersey. "In that post, what I did is somewhat paraphrase Ephesians 5, where Paul describes marriage as a mirror image of Christ and His love for His people, His Bride, the Church." "I've looked back, and I've made very similar posts before in times past. I've shared things that the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and others have said about how marriage is only to be between a man and a woman, according to God's design for it." The petition in support of Kersey had surpassed 30,000 signatures, Kersey told Fox News Digital. Home U.S. Vehicle explosion at US-Canada border checkpoint investigated; NY gov. says no sign of terrorism A vehicle explosion at Niagara Falls between the U.S.-Canadian border is no longer being investigated as an attempted terrorist attack, according to reports Wednesday. The explosion was reported around 1 p.m. Eastern time at Rainbow Bridge, according to ABC News. It wasnt initially clear whether there were any confirmed injuries, but unidentified officials cited by ABC News told the outlet there are believed to be fatalities from the incident. Two people who were in the car are dead and one U.S. Border Patrol officer was injured, according to Fox News. The speeding driver was traveling on a separate road when the vehicle went "airborne" and crashed into a checkpoint at the Rainbow Bridge, officials said. The driver and passenger in the vehicle are both dead and there are no immediate signs this was a terrorist attack, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told reporters late Wednesday. "At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist attack," she said. "Let me repeat that: At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist-involved attack here at the Rainbow Bridge in Western New York. The crash happened on the U.S. side, contrary to some early reports that the driver was traveling southbound from Canada. Officials with the Niagara Falls mayors office initially believed the explosion involved a vehicle crossing from Canada into the U.S. According to initial reports, surveillance video from a security checkpoint showed the vehicle stopping at the checkpoint before authorities directed the driver to a secondary security checkpoint. The vehicle then reportedly accelerated and crashed into the secondary screening location, unidentified officials told ABC News. It was also claimed that a suitcase or briefcase was also found at the scene. Responding to the reports of the crash earlier Wednesday amid concerns the incident was an attempted terrorist attack, the governor said the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force would be monitoring all points of entry to New York. I have been briefed on the situation that occurred at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, Hochul said. At my direction, the New York State Police is actively working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to monitor all points of entry to New York. Late afternoon Friday, the governor said it was no longer believed to have been an attempted terrorist attack. All border crossings between Canada and western New York state that were closed following the fiery crash have reopened. Home Opinion American innovators need decisive bipartisan support on this policy When it's time to come out swinging in partisan political battles, everybody knows which side I'm on. But that doesn't mean we should overlook the successes we've delivered by working across the aisle. That's how we unleashed American innovation in 1980 after a decade of torpor. Now, however, the threat to innovation is gathering again at a time when breakthroughs in tech like artificial intelligence are poised to take us to unprecedented levels of well-being, health, and prosperity. We need Democrats and Republicans to come together again to protect our culture of innovation from those whose policy priorities lie elsewhere. Back in the 1970s, federal mismanagement was stifling American R&D. By the latter part of that decade, taxpayer-funded research had led to around 30,000 patents. But because the government retained the patents and licensing rights to those discoveries, companies were hesitant to take on the burdens of trying to license them and develop them into commercial products. Less than 5% of these federally backed discoveries and inventions were ever licensed for development. In 1980, a bipartisan duo of senators Democrat Birch Bayh of Indiana and Republican Bob Dole of Kansas devised a legislative solution. The Bayh-Dole Act delicately balanced the interests of the federal government, industry, and academia by decentralizing the licensing of federally-funded R&D to universities and research nonprofits, rather than overworked federal administrators. This simple fix ignited the fire of American innovation. Scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and investors collaborated to create everything from once-a-day HIV meds to Google's search engine and electronic funds transfers. But while bipartisan support for Bayh-Dole's unlocking of innovation was strong, some advocates seem to believe we can undermine its foundations without serious consequences. These advocates are urging the government to make use of Bayh-Dole's once-obscure, but now notorious, "March In" provision to seize and relicense the patents of drugs they deem too expensive. If their theory held, then the government could march in at any point on any product that benefitted from federal R&D funding. There's no surer way to kill off investment in tech development than the constant threat of taking away exclusive patent rights. This erroneous reading of march-in authority has been resoundingly and repeatedly rejected by both Republican and Democratic administrations, which have recognized correctly that Congress never intended price to be a valid criterion for triggering march-in. And while Biden administration officials rightly rejected the latest petition earlier this year, the administration concurrently announced that its standing up a new government working group to further study march-in criteria. So rather than putting the matter to rest, the administration is prolonging the debate and uncertainty. To be blunt, American innovators can't afford more ambiguity on the status of their intellectual property. With the knowledge that this working group will run through the whole of 2023, the equilibrium of industry, academia, and the public sector that's powered American technological dominance for the past four decades still faces an existential threat. As Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo correctly noted, the Bayh-Dole Act is a "cornerstone" of American innovation. The Biden administration should stand up decisively for research and entrepreneurship. The debate around misusing march-in has gone on long enough. Migrant workers with success stories become role models for those who set sights on Korea By Jun Ji-hye The Ministry of Employment and Labor, together with the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, invited 15 foreign workers who had returned to their home countries after working in Korea under the Employment Permit System (EPS). Five of them were awarded for representing successful cases based on their work experiences here, the ministry said, Wednesday. The EPS is a migration labor program, under which workers from 16 Asian countries the Philippines, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Cambodia, China, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Myanmar, East Timor and Laos are allowed to work in Korea with E-9 nonprofessional employment visas. The ministry said the invitation event was prepared to share stories of migrant workers who have successfully settled down after returning to their home countries after having worked in Korea under the EPS. The EPS, which began in 2004 to address manpower shortages of small- and medium-sized companies, will mark the 20th anniversary of its implementation next year. So far, about 940,000 workers have entered Korea to work under that system. The migrant workers with successful stories set a good example for those who are currently working in Korea as well as those who are hoping to enter Korea, Labor Minister Lee Jung-sik said during his welcome speech. During the event, Lee presented the highest award to Vietnamese worker Vu Van Giap, who had worked in the fishery sector in Korea from 2006 to 2011, and established his own business after returning to his home country. Vu Van Giap said he got to know about the EPS while he was eager to overcome poverty. I studied so hard to pass the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) and managed to enter Korea as a fishery worker in 2006, he said. In my first workplace, I was on a fishing boat to catch octopuses. It was so cold and my hands were freezing. It was hard, but I put up with it by thinking about my mother and grandmother in Vietnam. After a year, Vu Van Giap was hired by an oyster farming company, where he invented an oyster cleaner that was capable of replacing three human workers. He has since invented several more machines, and as the result of his constant efforts, his employer increased his monthly salary. My parents could build a new house and buy land in my hometown, he said. My employer the Korean couple treated me as if I was their adopted son and helped me acquire Korean citizenship, he said. But I had to return to Vietnam without acquiring Korean citizenship because my length of stay was not sufficient. I had the most valuable time in my life in Korea thanks to the warm hearts of my employer and colleagues, he added. After returning to Vietnam, he was hired by a Korean company specializing in industrial machines. The Human Resources Development Service of Korea helped him find that job under its employment intermediation program for migrant workers retuning home. After working for that company from 2012 to 2019, he eventually established his own business in 2019 that manufactures conveyor belts and other various products. At first, there were only five workers in my company, and annual sales stood only at $120,000, he said. I slept only for two to three hours a day and continued to produce samples. After four months, I saw rapidly increasing orders, and after five years of the establishment, my company now has 30 workers and annual sales of $620,000. His company has become a partner not only with Vietnamese firms but also with top Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics. I want to express my gratitude to Koreas labor ministry and the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, he said. I hope more Vietnamese workers can go to Korea and get jobs there, and develop themselves based on those experiences. Four other prizewinners were Kasno from Indonesia, who became a director for one of the leading companies in his home country after working in Korea from 2006 to 2012, and Soun Vireak from Cambodia, who became a Korean language teacher after working in Korea from 2010 to 2015. Avon Domalaon from the Philippines, who worked in Korea from 2006 to 2012, currently serves as a deputy mayor of Sorsogon City, while Sampath from Sri Lanka, who worked here from 2005 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2016, operates his own business. Later in the day, Minister Lee held a meeting with the migrant workers and discussed how the EPS can be developed. The ministry said that the invitation event will run until Friday, during which time the workers will be provided opportunities to explore Koreas culture. Home Opinion Christians, our solidarity with the Jewish people must be obvious I laid my head back in my seat, sunburnt and exhausted, as my late-night flight took off from Washington, D.C. back home to Dallas. I closed my eyes and vividly I recalled the events of the day, processing how unforgettable my experience was. Nearly 300,000 people rallied last week at the National Mall in support of Israel and against antisemitism. Im on the team at Passages, a non-profit organization that has accompanied over 11,000 young Christians to Israel over the last 8 years, connecting them with the roots of their faith and introducing them to the modern day state. I stood together with 700 Passages alumni and friends for this historic event. Over the years, I and the Passages team have attended many events alongside the Jewish community, but this day was very different. It started with a simple task: arrive at the rally early with a handful of our staff and save a spot. We dragged 100-pound boxes of signs and shirts that read, Christians Stand with Israel, ready to pass out to our group. As we stood around chatting to pass the time, our conversations slowly began to be interrupted by rally participants trickling in. Yes! Christians! Thank you for being here! Some attendees walked over and gave us high fives and some hugs; almost everyone wanted photos. It was in these early moments that I could sense today would be different than any Passages experience Id been a part of yet. As more of our group began to arrive, we realized that some of us needed to go stand farther out with our signs to help guide the rest of the group to our spot. Four of us ventured out 100 yards near the pathway to hold up signs for our group, right in the flow of rally participants. And thats when the experience became life-changing. Every 20 seconds, someone came up to thank us for our attendance today. Groups of hundreds were pointing, cheering loudly. Individuals ran up to us with tears in their eyes and embraced us. Here are just a few moments that stood out: A woman ran up insisting to take a photo with us. After the photo, she turned around and said, My mother is a Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz, she will not believe there are Christians here. Another woman embraced my friend Jamie and wept. They held each other for a powerful minute. Not many words were exchanged, but they both understood everything about the moment. A father with his grade school son read our sign, tapped his son on the shoulder, and pointed at us. I saw his mouth exclaim from a distance, Christians! They both began waving wildly in our direction. Another man came forward and exclaimed, A few brave Christians came out today! We were excited to share with him there were 700 more just behind us. His countenance changed, his shoulders dropped, and tears welled up in his eyes. We exchanged an embrace, and he walked away without words. One man walked up and grabbed my face, pulling me in for a whisper. Its not obvious that youre here. Its important. Thank you. I never saw his face before he walked away, but Ill never forget his words. Hey, I think this is what were meant to do today, I shared with my colleagues. So, we stood there the entire rally, and let the Jewish community know they are not alone. Because with every thank you, I was soberly reminded that our Christian presence wasnt obvious. As I flew home, a Jewish man's desperate embrace and wavering voice echoed in my head and my heart: Its not obvious you are here, its important, thank you. Im grateful, yet sorrowful. I am grateful because I was given this experience. Sorrowful, because it wasn't obvious that we Christians would be there. He is right. In the long history of Jewish Christian relations, Christians many times have not been there. In fact, Christians throughout history have often promoted antisemitic ideas and acts. In more recent history, many Americans were silent and apathetic during the Holocaust. And since October 7, acts of antisemitism have increased; they are up by nearly 400% in our American communities in the past year. Of course, it wasnt obvious I would be there. Im at Passages because Im motivated to help young people find a strong connection to the roots of their Christian faith; to help them understand how that spiritual root system is a part of a grander story of how a God-fearing people acted by faith to protect what is right, good and true. The next chapters of this grand story are being written today. Only with a strong root system of faith, truth, goodness, and righteousness will the next generation have the strength and courage to be bold and write a chapter we can be proud of. I acknowledge that the current moment is complex. But, evil thrives when we are unwilling to wrestle with complexity to know and live the truth. We cannot just prefer what is easy and comfortable. We cannot be unwilling to be informed and to allow confusion and fear to guide our thoughts. Its not obvious you are here, its important, thank you, I recall, once again. Lets write a different chapter in history. Together lets make it obvious we are here. Home Opinion What pastors and churches can legally do during election season The 2024 election is less than one year away. With campaign season underway, religious leaders and people of faith often ask, What are my rights when it comes to addressing political issues? There are many misconceptions about what rights and freedoms pastors and houses of worship have on political matters. Opponents of religious freedom often manipulate information to make you believe that politics and the pulpit may never converge, making faith-based organizations, churches, synagogues and everyday religious Americans fear legal ramifications if they mention or participate in politics. But the truth is, that fear isnt based on the law. Its a scare tactic by those who want to silence and suppress people of faith, and keep them from voicing their opinions and voting their values. Here are some critical facts that you need to know. 4 Things churches and pastors are legally allowed to do during elections The number of things pastors can do during election season far outweigh the number of things they cant do in both quantity and importance. 1. Its okay to speak about political issues in the Church It is a misconception that pastors cannot address political issues even hot button issues like religious liberty, abortion and same-sex marriage from the pulpit. Any person or entity that attempts to silence a pastor for addressing these issues is violating that pastors constitutional rights under the First Amendment. Pastors have every right under the First Amendment to talk about any of those issues, and theres never been any case in American history that said pastors cant do that. Historically in America and in many places around the world, government and religion have never been mutually exclusive concepts; rather, they coexist. Americas Founders saw religion as a necessary component to a healthy, moral society not a taboo topic to bar completely from the political realm; neither was political talk to be barred from churches. Sermons on politics, government and controversial issues were common at our nations founding, and popular among pastors and churches on varying sides of the political spectrum. 2. Religious leaders can educate their congregation about politics Religious leaders are tasked with equipping their congregants in works of service, and that includes representing their faith and morality in the voting booth. Pastors are fully protected when it comes to issues like educating members of their church about the political process, handing out non-partisan voter guides and flyers so members can read about each candidates positions, and even providing the opportunity for members to register to vote. 3. Inviting political candidates to speak at church is allowed Contrary to popular belief, pastors and churches can invite political candidates to address their congregation from the pulpit, as long as all the candidates in a race are included in the invitation. What if only one candidate accepts the invitation and shows up? No problem! 4. Pastors can participate in politics in their individual capacity Serving in ministry does not disqualify pastors or other religious leaders from their individual rights as U.S. citizens. Pastors can participate in political campaigns, hold office within political campaigns, and even endorse a candidate in their individual capacity as a private citizen. What religious leaders cannot do during elections According to IRS regulations, there are only two things that pastors and churches, when classified as a 501(c)(3) organization, cannot do: A church entity may not endorse one candidate over another This does not mean that a pastor in his individual capacity as an American citizen may not endorse one candidate over another. A 501(c)(3) church or organization may not, however, as an organization endorse one candidate over another or be publicly against one candidate over the other. A church may not give its money to one candidate over another This doesnt mean that pastors or church members, in their individual capacities as American citizens, cannot donate to the political campaign of their choice. They can even be the Campaign Chair for a candidate if they want. But an official 501(c)(3) organization may not donate church funds or resources to one political candidate over another. Our responsibility as people of faith to be good citizens Americans including people of faith have a responsibility to be good citizens, active and engaged in our political process. We recognize that religious freedom is indeed one of the greatest blessings bestowed to our country and the first freedom from which all other liberties flow. At the same time, however, we cannot ignore how important other civil rights such as the right to vote are to the flourishing and the betterment of our country. In Romans 13:1, Scripture commands us to be obedient and respectful of authorities and the governmental institutions around us: Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. In the American system of government, the government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. So, showing respect for authority in the United States includes us being an active part of the process and voting. In other words, we can show love for both God and country by consciously participating in our republican form of government. Part of the bargain of living in liberty is a duty to vote and making our voices heard in the public square. This election season, we encourage every religious American to vote according to their conscience and their values. Every person of faith should know this: protecting religious freedom and all our God-given liberties isnt just a battle that were fighting in the courtroom. Its a fight that we can also win if we show up at the ballot box. Originally published at First Liberty. From darkness to light: thoughts on Genesis and Jacob Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on the meaning of darkness in Genesis and why there is always hope no matter how dark things get. We have entered the month of Kislev, which heralds the onset of winter and the darkening of days. During this time, many people find it difficult to get up in the morning and become depressed as darkness falls in the middle of the afternoon. This primal fear of the dark is ascribed to Adam and Eve, the first humans, described at the beginning of Genesis. A midrash imagines them becoming frantic as darkness falls at the close of the first day of their lives, knowing that they've disobeyed G-d by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Now they are terror stricken. Adam says: 'Woe is me that because I've sinned, the world is darkening around me! The world will return to chaos and emptiness. This is heaven's death sentence upon me!' In this midrash, the first human, Adam, experiences darkness as punishment, a kind of existential shudder, as all that is familiar dissolves into the trackless night. Darkness is often a metaphor for the scariest of times, times like the present, when grief has overtaken us, as we are witness to the atrocities of families bereft of their loved ones, but in their case, through no fault of their own. The good were massacred by the worst of evils. The prophet Ovadiah, which we read in a couple of weeks, describes this scenario in his very short book, which only contains one chapter. In this book, Ovadiah gives vent to his fury against the neighbouring people of Edom, descendants of Jacob's brother Esau, interpreted in Jewish thought as representing the Roman empire, and then the Christian world. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to suggest that today, for many Jews, Esau represents the Western world, and their subterfuges, both political and religious. In verses 10 and 11, Ovadiah states: 'For the violence done to thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee, And thou shalt be cut off forever. In the day that thou didst stand aloof, In the day that strangers carried away what mattered to us more than anything, And foreigners entered his gates ... You were also one of these.' These words perfectly depict the way the West has reacted to the Jewish people, once again in their history. They stood by during the Eastern European pogroms. They stood by during the Shoah. They wouldn't allow Jews to enter their lands. Canada, a massive country, which could do with a larger population, stated at the time of the Shoah: 'How many Jews should we take? One Jew is too many.' The UK's behavior during the Shoah was even more shameful, and imbued with the type of overt anti-Semitic discourse we have recently experienced in Parliament, with the firing of the only truly philo-semitic member of the Cabinet. Fifteen years ago, on 6 October 2008, the first Jew to address the Vatican, supposedly as an honoured guest, Chief Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen of Haifa, cited these words from Ovadiah. And was greeted with approval. However, he subsequently learned that he had been tricked by the then Pope. The date was also the 50th anniversary of the death of Pope Pius XII, who had actually betrayed the Jews during the Shoah, as we have now learned conclusively from the Vatican archives. Rabbi Shear Yashuv was very angry indeed at the way he had been treated by the Catholic Church, and said so. And the present Pope has followed in the footsteps of Pope Pius, by refusing to condemn Hamas and by taking the side of the 'Palestinians', many of whom accompanied the military wing of Hamas into the kibbutzim and perpetrated some of the worst crimes, having voted for Hamas during the last elections. Not for nothing has the Roman Catholic Church, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury, in recent days been condemned as 'morally depraved' by one of our leading Jewish journalists, and social commentator for the Times, Melanie Phillips. But this is not the only lesson from the Biblical readings coming up in the next two weeks. On Shabbat we read the story of Jacob's ladder and, one week later, his struggle with the angel he encounters, after which Jacob prevails and is renamed 'Israel'. These stories are covered in Genesis 28:10 36:43. What is the meaning of the dream and these angels, depicted in Genesis 28:10-19? Many modern psychologists and psychotherapists have seen the 'ladder' story as representing the rungs of life in which a child develops in stages from babyhood, through a series of taught obligations, into a citizen worthy of our great civilization (if we are lucky!). For Midrash Genesis Rabbah, the ladder signifies the many exiles which the Jewish people will suffer before the coming of the Messiah. The first angel represents the 70-year exile of Babylonia (starting in 586 BCE). First the angel 'ascended' 70 rungs and then 'fell down', defeated by Persia. Then the angel representing Persia ascended and also fell, as did the angel representing Greece. The fourth angel, representing the final exile of Rome/Edom, whose guardian angel was Esau himself, kept climbing higher and higher. Jacob feared that this children would never be free of Esau's domination, but G-d assured him that at the End of Days, Edom too would fall down. Another interpretation of the ladder is suggested by the 1st century Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, Philo, who saw the ladder as follows: The angels represent souls ascending and descending from bodies. The ladder is the human soul and the angels are G-d's logoi, pulling the soul up in distress and descending in compassion. The dream depicts the ups and down of the life of the person who tries to live a virtuous life. The angels represent the continually changing affairs of men. We should bear in mind that Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-1164), who writes extensively about Jacob's ladder, described the angels as the gift of wisdom that G-d has implanted in us. And also, in contrast to other commentaries, he regarded the Muslim world as the fourth exile of the Jews, which had indeed forced him to flee Spain in 1139 for pastures new, as far away from Muslim influence as possible. Whatever the meaning of Jacob's dream of the ladder ascending to heaven, the Biblical text makes clear that this dream took place during the night, when Jacob lay down to sleep in Bet-El. So in this case, the dark was not wholly negative and, on the contrary, gave rise to a dream of true enlightenment. As Irish Nobel Literature laureate, Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), remarks of his own poem The Gravel Walks, 'I like the in-betweenness of up and down, of being on the earth and of the heavens.' And this line from the poem is written on his grave: 'So walk on air against your better judgement.' Hard to believe that Heaney, whose poetry is full of biblical allusions, didn't have our Jacob's ladder theme in mind when he wrote this poem! In Genesis 32:22-32, Jacob, once again at night, encounters an individual, probably an angel, with whom he wrestles until daybreak. This angel succeeds in putting Jacob's thigh out of joint, but Jacob perseveres and prevails, with the angel telling him that he, Jacob, will henceforth be known as 'Israel', 'for you have striven with G-d and with men and have prevailed.' The Haftorah Hosea 12, which is read on Shabbat, also refers to Jacob's opponent as an 'angel'. The great Rambam (Moses Maimonides 1135-1204) believed that this incident was 'a vision of prophecy', while the foremost Bible commentator Rashi (1040-1105) suggested that Jacob wrestled with the guardian angel of Esau, his older twin brother, whom Jacob had deceived. Others see this incident as Jacob wrestling with G-d Himself. Whatever the true meaning of these two incidents, the ladder reaching up to heaven and the struggle with the angel, which are open to multiple interpretations, both took place at night, and this is no coincidence. Just as night and darkness generally can be a negative time and situation for many people, on the other hand, it is also true that most dreams happen at night; many dreams are helpful to the dreamer; and sometimes dreams are ways of sorting out for us problems and difficulties in our lives, as evidenced by the transition of Jacob, a passive person who had lived until that time, as his Hebrew name suggests, through guile and stealth, into Israel. The Land will be his and he himself is now Israel, the country which struggles, but always overcomes. This transition is beautifully described in Hosea 12:4: 'In the womb he [Jacob] took his brother by the heel [akav] And by his strength he strove [sara] with a godlike being [Elokim]. So he strove with an angel and prevailed.' This passage is full of puns, in which the name Jacob, Ya'akov in Hebrew, stems from the word for 'heel', 'akav. The words 'strove' and 'godlike being' in turn become 'Israel', Yisrael, he who strives with G-d and prevails. May the State of Israel, and the Jewish people, overcome the current dreadful situation in which we are living, and emerge on the other side once again, maybe wounded and bruised, but certainly not defeated. May we all travel from darkness to light and soon welcome in the festival of Chanukah, which commemorates the triumph of good over evil. Is a ceasefire in Gaza the right way forward? Some years ago, Radio 4 ran a series of programmes presented by Michael Portillo called 'Things we forgot to remember' which looked at forgotten aspects of British and world history. The title of this series came back to my mind this week as I looked at how people are responding to Israel's current military activity in Gaza. One thing that particularly struck me is how we seem to have almost totally forgotten that Allied military activity in the Second World War, a war that is generally regarded as a conflict necessarily fought for a legitimate cause, resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties. Two examples will serve to illustrate this point. First, Operation Chastise, the 'Dambuster' raid of 16 and 17 May 1943 in which the RAF attacked the Mohne, Edersee and Sorpe dams in western Germany in an attempt to disrupt German industrial production, and therefore the German war effort, is normally remembered as a celebrated feat of British arms. What is all too often forgotten is that the subsequent flooding resulted in an estimated 1,600 civilian casualties - 600 Germans and 1,000, mainly Soviet, enslaved labourers. Secondly, fictional representations of Operation Overlord, the battle for Normandy in June-August 1944, such as the films The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan, generally depict the fighting in Normandy as if the only casualties involved were those suffered by the soldiers of the Allied and German forces. This was not the case. It has been estimated that around 19,980 French civilians were killed as a result of the battle. The historic town of Caen was particularly badly hit with some 80 per cent of the city being destroyed and some 3,000 civilians being killed. The question that these civilian casualty figures raise is whether they were justified. To use the criterion from Christian just war theory, were these deaths proportionate? As the Christian ethicist Nigel Biggar writes in his book, In Defence of War, this criterion holds that 'one is only justified in launching a military operation or persisting in it if the losses to one's own side (and to non-combatants) seem, according to a reasonable estimate, necessary to gain and efficient in gaining the military advantages aimed at.' In the case of both Operation Chastise and Operation Overlord it was believed at the time, and has been generally accepted since, that this criterion was met. The civilian casualties were unavoidable in order to gain the military advantages of disrupting German industrial production and breaking out of Normandy on the way to the liberation of north-western Europe and the invasion of Germany. Furthermore, they occurred as the result of a war that was itself necessary in order to achieve the just end of the defeat of the German armed forces and hence of Nazism. The truth of which this history reminds us (in case we needed reminding) is that wars, even just wars, do not simply affect the military personnel involved. Throughout history, and still today, they have always involved civilian casualties, including not only the civilian dead, but also those who are wounded and those who are damaged psychologically through what they have experienced and through the loss of loved ones. This truth came to my mind last week when I read the presidential address given by the Archbishop of Canterbury at last week's meeting of the Church of England's General Synod. In the course of this address he declared: ".... as a religious leader I can say that the killing of so many civilians, the extensive damage to civilian infrastructure cannot be morally justified. "When I visited Jerusalem, I joined the remarkable, extraordinary Christian leaders there, united as they never have been literally in their history, in calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. That was over three weeks ago. Thousands more innocent men, women and children in Gaza have been killed since then while thousands in Israel still mourn those killed on the 7th October, and hundreds of families still plead for the release of their loved ones. "So I repeat that call again today with renewed urgency and even more force. This bloodshed must cease, hostages must be released, and aid must reach those in Gaza in dire need. "I do not have military or political answers to this crisis. I do not speak from those perspectives. But the call for a ceasefire is a moral cry that we are hearing from people of many faiths and none. Our common humanity must find another way to achieve justice, security and peaceful co-existence for Israelis and Palestinians from now, for the future. In Christ's name, we cry out from our hearts: "No More. The killing must stop." The problem with what the Archbishop says in this quotation is that what he is asking for is essentially for the Israel Defence Force (IDF) to immediately stop its operations in Gaza. To understand why this is a problem we have to ask three basic questions about the actions of the IDF. Is it justified in taking military action in Gaza at all? If its activity is justified, has it yet achieved its aim? Is its activity proportionate in the sense outlined by Biggar? From the perspective of Christian just war theory the answer to the first question has to be 'yes.' According to a Christian understanding of the role of government based on the teaching of Paul in Romans 13:1-7 the role of governments is to combat human evil, using deadly force if necessary, and among the primary evils that governments need to combat is attacks on the lives and property of a country's inhabitants. Hamas has made it abundantly clear that, given the opportunity, they will continue to mount the same kind of attacks on Israel that took place on Oct 7 until Israel is destroyed. For example, as reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: "A senior Hamas official said in an interview aired last week that the October 7 attack against Israel was just the beginning, vowing to launch 'a second, a third, a fourth' attack until the country is annihilated." Ghazi Hamad whose comments were transcribed by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington-based think tank added in a LBC interview that "Israel has no place on our land. We must remove the country because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe." As for the October 7 attacks which left more than 1,300 Israelis in the south slaughtered and hundreds dragged into the Gaza Strip Hamad declared that "we must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again." Given that Hamad and others are saying this, and given Hamas' previous track record of attacks on Israel, the Israeli government would actually be failing in its God given duty if it did not employ the IDF to prevent Hamas having the ability to do what they have promised (in the same way that the government of Egypt has been employing its security forces to stop the threat posed by Islamic militants in Sinai). In answer to the second question, the fact that the IDF is continuing its operations means that it does not think that its activity has yet achieved its aim and given that Hamas has not yet laid down its arms and released its hostages, but is on the contrary still firing missiles into Israel and still attacking the IDF, it would appear that they are right to think this. The answer to the third question depends on whether the loss of life taking place in Gaza is necessary in order to eventually achieve the military objective of making Hamas incapable of continuing to attack Israel. No one disputes that a tragically large number of civilian casualties, including women and children, have occurred in Gaza. However, in order to prove that these deaths were not necessary one would have to show that the just objective of defeating Hamas could be achieved without these casualties taking place. It is difficult to see how this could be the case given the fact that Gaza is for the most part a densely populated urban area and that Hamas has been fighting from within the civilian population, using homes, playgrounds, schools, mosques and hospitals as bases from which to conduct its military operations. All the evidence we have indicates that the IDF has done what it could to avoid civilian casualties, whereas Hamas has done nothing to try to protect the civilian population. Hamas has built a network of tunnels to protect its own fighters, but has provided no shelters at all to protect the civilian population, one Hamas spokesman saying that it was the UN's responsibility to protect civilians. There are indeed credible reports of Hamas snipers firing on civilians trying to flee the fighting. All this being the case, the question that has to be asked of the Archbishop of Canterbury is exactly what he thinks should happen? Of course, in the long run there needs to be an agreed political solution to the status of Gaza and the West Bank, but while Hamas and other Islamic militant groups think that they can get what they want by fighting they have no incentive to enter into meaningful political negotiations to achieve such a solution. The Good Friday Agreement was only achieved in Northern Ireland when the Provisional IRA was forced to accept that it could not achieve its goal of Irish unification by force and was therefore willing to stop attacking the British security forces and disarm. This is another truth that those, like the Archbishop, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza have 'forgotten to remember.' Hamas needs to be brought to the same realisation about the futility of armed action as the IRA and from a Christian perspective Israel is justified in trying to bring this about. This means that, instead of putting pressure on Israel, the Archbishop and others need to urge the international community to concentrate on putting effective pressure on Hamas. Only in this way will a just peace be possible. Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Journey to Bethlehem: celebrating the birth of Jesus Journey to Bethlehem is a movie out in cinemas now telling the biblical story of the birth of Jesus. The live-action Christmas musical is a directorial debut for Swedish music producer Adam Anders, whose credits include the High School Musical franchise and US television series Glee. Christian Today spoke with Adam to hear about his experience of making the film and what he hopes audiences will take away from it. Why the nativity story as your directorial debut? I wanted to watch something at Christmas and there was no movie that actually told the story of Christmas, especially as a musical. I wrote an 11-page treatment for this movie and it took me 17 years to make it. I feel that my whole career has been film school and preparing to make this movie. I've actually been asked to direct before and I said no because it's such a huge commitment from a time standpoint and I've always had too many projects on at the same time. During Covid, however, I had nothing to do for six months so I sat down and finally had the time to polish the script and figure out what I wanted to do with it. I felt very strongly that this was my time to switch careers and get into directing. We had several versions of the script over the years, it's been such a roller coaster emotionally! Why did you wish to venture into directing? I've always been a storyteller, even as a songwriter I love telling stories through a song. I started as a bass player, then a songwriter and then a producer. I was always very grateful for the success I have had. My career has been great in many aspects, but there was always something missing for me. It was not until I was directing this movie that I realised this is my calling, this is what I have been looking for. It has fulfilled me creatively and it used all my talents. The process was incredibly rewarding and also very difficult. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. What research did you do for the film? There is so much that goes into it and obviously the Bible is the first place to start - Matthew one and two and Luke one and two. There is not much detail in the nativity story so although these two books were my basis for the movie, I had to fill in the blanks. I had to 'live in between' the scripture verses and uncover what Mary was thinking when this happened, what Joseph was thinking when she told him the news, and what her parents were doing. I tried to put myself in their shoes and researched what it was like to live back then. I also researched Herod and his sons and chose one son to focus on as the villain. What aspects of the biblical story interested you the most? I grew up with this story and I love Christmas. My wife and I love it, it is our favourite time of year and a very joyous time for us. There's not many stories in the Bible that I think you can frame in this way, that can be a celebration and so joyous, fun and colourful. If you want a good family movie you need a love story, a villain, and some comic relief. I looked at the story and I thought I have those things; I have my 3 stooges in the wise men to make us laugh when we need to, I have my love story in Mary and Joseph, and I have my villain with Herod. Those three poles of the story were there and for me this is a story that makes me want to celebrate Jesus' coming in the first place. It's a celebration, it's not a time to be sad and mourn. This is amazing and it should fill us with joy. As the director, how did you go about retelling a story that has been told so many times? Was it a challenge? It's always hard to tell a story when everyone knows how it ends. That's your first challenge to overcome. We know that Jesus was born, we know Mary and Joseph ended up together, but we don't know if it was for love or for duty, or what their journey was like. There was so much to dive into that I felt like I could make this interesting and compelling. Even if you know how it ends, you're coming along this journey with us. It's challenging to make a movie compelling when people already know the ending, but I think we were able to do it. What does the Nativity story mean to you personally? It means I have hope. For me personally I can't imagine life without my faith. Through hard times, even this year, the story has become more real for me as I've been telling it. It has been really interesting and I've grown closer to God, not further away, as busy as I have been. Through this process it's been a really tough period, and moving away from my family for six months to make the movie was brutal so I had to lean into my faith. This story is the beginning of our faith, this is where it all begins so it's been incredibly personal for me. I've seen the movie maybe a thousand times now through the entire production process and every time we get to the nativity I still cry! I don't think it's because I made such an incredible movie, I think it's because of the power of that moment and what it means to me. Where did filming take place? We filmed in the south of Spain, on the Mediterranean. It looks very much like Israel! What do you hope audiences will take away from the film? A deep joy, and I hope they feel better than they did before they watched it. That's really important to me. The holidays are a tough time in the world and I feel like this movie can be a light in the darkness. I really hope families will go together and see this. It was made for my family. My wife and I wrote the songs, my boys were such a big part of it. I hope the whole family can go to see what Christmas is about and feel the joy and hope that comes from that story and want to watch it over and over again. Journey to Bethlehem is out now in cinemas across the UK and Ireland. The Asia-Pacific chief of British home appliance maker Dyson on Wednesday issued an apology to Korean consumers amid growing complaints over the company's reportedly poor handling of customer service in the country. Rob Webster, head of Dyson's Asia-Pacific division, said in a Korean-language statement that he "deeply apologizes for the inconvenience caused to customers" during the repair process of damaged products. "Dyson is dedicated to doing its best for customers using our products, and as part of that commitment, we aim to resolve all currently delayed repair issues by the end of November," Webster added. The statement came amid growing frustration with the company in terms of its handling of customer service in Korea. According to the Voice of Consumers, a Seoul-based consumer advocacy group, the number of complaints related to Dyson received by a state-run consumer complaint counseling center reached 864 between January and October, up 66.8 percent from a year ago. The majority of the cases, or 62.3 percent, were related to the company's poor handling of after-sales customer service. The company has also allegedly induced consumers to practically repurchase products by unilaterally changing its internal policies after months of waiting for parts. Dyson has purportedly provided discount coupons or other small compensations under the excuse of the unavailability of parts. Dyson has decided to offer free repairs, replacement of new products or refunds during the warranty period, excluding those involving intentional customer misconduct. The company also said it has decided to reduce the cost of paid repairs for hair care products for up to two years after their warranties expire. (Yonhap) The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) decided Wednesday to impose a six-month party membership suspension on one of its members for using a word meaning a female animal to apparently refer to first lady Kim Keon Hee. Former DPK lawmaker Choe Kang-wook came under fire for using the Korean word "amkeot," which is used to refer to female animals, while comparing the government of President Yoon Suk Yeol to the animal farm in George Orwell's beast fable of the same name, during a book publishing event held Sunday. On Wednesday, the DPK decided to take an emergency measure to suspend Choe's party membership. Party leader Lee Jae-myung reportedly called for stronger measures against Choe. Choe's use of the word stirred outrage both in and outside of the DPK, with women lawmakers from the ruling People Power Party calling for the permanent expulsion of Choe. The former lawmaker was ousted from parliament in September after he was handed a suspended prison term for issuing a false intern certificate for the son of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk. He lost his seat in parliament but has kept his party membership. (Yonhap) By Choe Chong-dae For over four decades, I've had the honor of writing for The Korea Times, covering a wide array of topics. From diplomatic history to cultural exploration, democratization and philanthropy, my goal has been to offer readers a unique perspective on the world. The positive feedback from readers worldwide has underscored the importance of promoting cultural understanding through writing. In my article titled "Tribute to Whitcomb," published on Nov. 25, 2019, I highlighted the altruistic efforts of Brig. Gen. Richard S. Whitcomb (1894-1982). He served as the commander of the U.S. 2nd Logistics Support Base in Busan during and after the 1950-53 Korean War, leaving a profound impact on readers of all ages and nationalities. Whitcomb's legacy exemplified the timeless significance of selfless service and empathy. His commemorative statue was recently erected at Peace Park in Busan by its citizens. Just a year ago, I had the pleasure of receiving a heartfelt letter from Dr. Song Moon-won, honorary chairman of Hyoseong Hospital in Daegu. His warm appreciation for my column on Whitcomb's philanthropy underscored the power of storytelling to unite individuals through shared values of compassion and benevolence. Born in 1936, Dr. Song is a distinguished medical professional with an illustrious career in obstetrics and gynecology. He embodies a spirit of service that resonates with the very essence of the narrative on Whitcomb. His journey from humble beginnings to becoming a renowned figure in the field of medicine exemplifies the transformative impact of dedication and perseverance. Our recent meeting in Seoul, despite the variance in our public profiles and ages, highlighted the enriching exchange that occurs when individuals from different walks of life come together to share their unique perspectives. Obtaining a Ph.D. from the College of Medicine at National Kyungpook University in 1969, Song dedicated his career to academia. He held esteemed positions at renowned medical institutions, including chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Watertown Memorial Hospital in Wisconsin during his academic pursuit for two decades in the U.S. Upon returning to Korea in 1990, he assumed the role of an obstetrics and gynecology specialist and chairman of the medical office for foreigners at Hyoseong Hospital. During his tenure, he actively fostered relationships with the Wood Medical Clinic at Camp Walker in Daegu and the 18th Medical Command. Additionally, he played a pivotal role in advancing medical education, serving as a clinical professor at Kyungpook National University his alma mater and Keimyung University, also in Daegu. Remarkably, his family history is distinguished by a legacy of medical excellence. His father, Song Myung-do (1906-2000), was a trailblazing figure in the field of obstetrics and gynecology, renowned for his contributions as a distinguished professor at the College of Medicine in Pyongyang University. However, the outbreak of the Korean War prompted their harrowing escape from North Korea. Despite the challenges he faced, he exhibited unwavering resilience and determination, eventually establishing a thriving medical practice in Daegu. He played a pioneering role in the development of the Korean Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology when he served as chairman of the society from 1977 to the mid-1980s. This remarkable journey exemplifies the enduring dedication of the Song family to serve and uplift the community. As I reflect on the convergence of our paths and the resonance of our shared values, I am reminded that the power of storytelling extends beyond narratives. It has the potential to bridge divides, foster empathy and inspire generations to carry forward the torch of compassion and understanding. In a world that often highlights differences, our meeting stands as a testament to the universal language of empathy that unites humanity. In this era of rapid globalization and interconnectedness, let us continue to celebrate the stories that bind us together, transcending borders and generations and fostering a more compassionate and understanding world, and contribute more inspiring articles. Choe Chong-dae (choecd@naver.com) is a guest columnist of The Korea Times. He is president of Dae-kwang International Co., and director of the Korean-Swedish Association. Articol adaugat de: Cezar Captaciuc Alte articole de la acest autor: Articol adaugat de: ACTED Moldova Alte articole de la acest autor: Articol adaugat de: Chemonics International Inc. Alte articole de la acest autor: A health charity is being investigated by the Charity Commission after being found in breach of fundraising standards. The Fundraising Regulator published a report this month into Hospitals Charity , in which it said the charity had disobeyed its rules on using donations, informing donors and working with third-party fundraisers. It investigated 10 complaints from members of the public, donors, representatives of NHS trusts and others in positions linked to the NHS regarding the charitys fundraising activity in 2021. The Fundraising Regulator said it had found several serious breaches of its Code of Fundraising Practice. Hospitals Charity has not acknowledged these or demonstrated what actions it will take to comply with the code, its report reads. We have reported its non-compliance to the Charity Commission for England and Wales. The Commission said it opened a compliance case into the charity in November 2022 after concerns were raised with it. Hospitals Charity has not yet responded to Civil Societys requests for comment. The charity, which was set up in 2019, paid 22,240 to regional hospitals in the three years to August 2022 while its income in this time was 223,000, according to accounts filed with the Commission. Code breaches The Fundraising Regulator reported that the charity failed to ensure funds it raised for a particular purpose were used specifically for that cause. Hospitals Charity told donors that all funds would benefit their local hospital but the Regulator reported that it could not find any evidence that the charity had set aside funds for any specific hospital, or recorded which donations were for which hospital. We found that the charitys statements about providing equipment and beds for critical care units were misleading, its report reads. We were advised by NHS England that the nature of NHS funding means it is not possible for outside donations to pay for these. The Regulator reported that the charity had breached its code by making misleading statements that prevented donors from being able to make an informed decision. It said later statements by Hospitals Charity that donations would go to hospitals in your region were misleading. Online donors were unable to specify their region, the Regulator found, and the charity failed to explain to donors what was considered their region and provided no evidence of how it allocated funds. We did not see any evidence that the hospitals received the donations, it reported. The Regulator said it saw evidence that the charity used fundraising materials that suggested a direct working relationship between itself and the NHS and its charity partner, NHS Charities Together. These organisations have made it clear to us that this is not the case. At least one NHS trust has refused donations from Hospitals Charity. The charity removed the NHS logo from its website, the report reads. However, we have seen evidence that the charity continued to use similar materials in its face-to-face fundraising. A spokesperson at NHS Charities Together, said: The Hospitals Charity is an independent organisation that is not part of the NHS charities network or linked to a particular NHS trust or health board. The Regulator reported that a third-party agency instructed fundraisers to incorrectly tell potential donors that all of your donation goes to Hospitals Charity, when around 69p did. We found the charity had breached the code requirements around adequately training third-party fundraisers and giving solicitation statements, it said. Recommendations The Regulator asked Hospitals Charity to update its website and fundraising materials to ensure it is not misleading donors. It made several other recommendations including to: Consider whether to refund two donations intended for specific hospitals which were not passed on, and notify us of the trustees decision and reasoning. Have Memoranda of Understanding with any NHS hospitals or trusts it wishes to pass donations onto. Update the solicitation statement to include how its agents fee is calculated. Explain to us how it intends to develop an improved system of complaint handling which comprehensively records complaints and implements learning. Show us how it will manage its restricted funds, both for in-person donations and online donations. A Commission spokeswoman said: We can confirm that we have an ongoing compliance case examining concerns about Hospitals Charity, including in relation to trustees oversight of the charitys fundraising. We have liaised with the Fundraising Regulator about these matters and are aware of the FRs report. sign up to receive the free Civil Society daily news bulletin here . For more news, interviews, opinion and analysis about charities and the voluntary sector, Writing was a compulsion for investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Known for her candid and witty prose, she earned a loyal following in Malta, a small archipelago nation fifty miles south of Italy in the Mediterranean Sea. Daphnes work also made her no small number of enemies. Paul Caruana Galizia, her son, recalls witnessing jeering graffiti scrawled on the side of the road in retaliation for his mothers writing. His familys house was set on fire. Their dog was killed. Publicly, Daphne refused to be affected, writing with ever more force and conviction. Privately, her family saw the toll that the constant intimidation took on her physical and mental health. In 2017, Daphne was investigating an elaborate kickback scheme involving private business and the government when two assassins planted a bomb underneath her gray Peugeot. It exploded as she drove to the bank. She was fifty-three years old. Daphnes death was seismic for Malta, socially and politically. Protesters took to the streets, demanding that those responsible for the murder face justice; eventually, the prime minister was forced to resign. Following years of investigation, two men were arrested and pleaded guilty to carrying out the murder-for-hire. Each was sentenced to forty years in prison; a middleman was sentenced to fifteen years. Yorgen Fenech, a wealthy businessman, was arrested in 2019 aboard his yacht, on suspicion of masterminding the killing. He is still awaiting trial. During the familys campaign for justice for Daphne, Paul pivoted to a career in journalism. He joined Tortoise, a fledgling media organization in the UK, where he has likewise reported on the rich and powerful. This month, he published his first book, A Death in Malta, which reads as much as a portrait of a country as it does a reflection on the life, murder, and legacy of Daphne. Recently, Paul spoke to me from London, where he lives with his wife and son. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Why is it that you wanted to tell this story? And why now? The idea to write a book first came to me in 2019. There were a number of false starts, but the biggest problem was that it took me a long time to accept that I had to report on my own mother as I might on any other subjectmaybe some politician or whoever. When youre profiling someone who isnt related to you, youre more independent. It feels like a job. I had to track down her school friends, her boyfriends, and, of course, interview my father. There was this kind of awkwardness, so I put that kind of reporting off for months until finally I realized that it was holding up the whole book. Once I started doing that worklearning about my mother as a young girl, as a teenager, as a young womanthe book became its own reward. I remember telling myself, Even if no one reads this book, even if its a total flop, Ill at least have done this. Above all, I realized that my mother had been drowned out by all the ugly things in her life, by her own murder. I felt like she had been lost or abstracted. Of course she was a journalist and a murder victim, but she was also a really interesting person. And I wanted people to meet her in that way. What was most challenging about writing a book about the death of your own mother? Sign up for CJR 's daily email The most challenging part was interviewing my maternal grandparents. They were very private people and were obviously very badly affected by my mothers murder. It was an uncomfortable thing to ask them questions about how they brought my mother up: What was she like? Was she ever difficult as a child? It took a long, long time to get into the flow of things. But the assassination itself, which I presumed would be hard to write about, turned out in a way to be the most straightforward. By the time I started writing, a lot of progress had been made on the case, and a lot of information was available in publicly accessible documents. I was able to play the more straightforward role of reporter and say, Heres what was happening; this is the evidence. It was a total reversal between what I thought would be easy and difficult. The book is not only about your mother and her life, but also a portrait of Malta, from long before she was even born. Where did you start with your research? The first interviews I did were with my maternal grandparents. That made sense in my head, because they knew my mother from birth. But they were born in 1938, so their own earliest memories were of course from [World War II]. They also lived through Maltas decolonization. [The country gained independence from the UK in 1964.] It was through them that I started thinking that the book should tell the story of Malta in parallel to my mothers story. I began reading books and academic articles about the history and anthropology of the Mediterranean, to understand the forces that shaped not only my mother but also the country. I remember thinking, Do people really care about this history? And my editor said, The country is a character in the storya very important one. I ended up going quite far back in time because I felt there were very deep cultural questions that I needed to ask about why Maltese society is the way it is. Why did we develop the tribal politics that we have? Why is the family unit prized above everything? Why have our state institutions been so weak historically? I wanted to create what I hope is a coherent narrative about how early settlement patterns affected the countrys natural environment, and, in turn, how this affected the way future settlers would treat the country; why and how we were colonized and then decolonized. Those questions were all really relevant to the stories my mother worked on. You write that, while watching a crowd of mourners after your mothers funeral, your grandfather commented that it was the first time in his life that he felt Maltese. What do you think he meant by that? My grandfather grew up in a family that was Anglicized; they really saw themselves as part of the British Empire. They valued speaking in English. They worked in the colonial administration. Thats the world with which they aligned themselves. But then, when decolonization started happening all over the world in the sixties, all these ideas started falling away. Like in many former colonies, the community felt set adrift, like they lost their sense of place in the world. Everything that happened in Malta after independence seemed to support my grandfathers view that the country perhaps wasnt ready for independence: the political experiments of the seventies, the violence in the eighties, and then, of course, his first-born daughter being killed. After independence, life in Malta was dominated by the church and the two main political parties. People protested when those institutions called for a protest; they read the papers those institutions published. But the feeling at the funeral was a strong communal feelinga spontaneous one. There was a group of Maltese people, not called together by one of the political parties or the church, but to express a common feeling. They began singing the Maltese national anthem, and my grandfather was very moved by that. I only fully understood what this meant in November 2019 [when Fenech was charged]. I remember standing among protesters outside Parliament and thinking, Were all Maltese, and were all here because we have a sense of what we want this country to be. Do you feel like your relationship with the country changed as you wrote this book? It brought the country closer to me. I became genuinely fascinated by its development throughout history and full of admiration for what people involved in its history went through. My faith in Malta took a beating over the course of the murder and the fallout. But now Ive come to see it as a strange, difficult, but in many ways wonderful place. I have pride in being from Malta, despite everything. You write early on in the book that the limitations imposed on your mother were what made her a leading light of journalism. What was it about the social and political conditions she grew up under that made her the journalist she was? When my mother was growing up, most women didnt work outside the home. They were only allowed to be wives and mothers. That kind of limited life had no appeal to her. She saw writing as something she could do to escape that future and to change the country. Had she been in the UK or the US, she might have gone to university, studied journalism, and then joined a big newspaper. In Malta, because of the conservative conditions, she had to fight for everything: fight to work for a paper, fight to have her name on the column. She was the countrys first woman to write a column and the first journalist to write under her own name; before that, [all journalists, including men] wrote anonymously out of fear of violent reprisal. She really had to develop her own idea of journalism, because there were no role models. She had to create everything from scratch: the writing style, the interviewing style, the subjects she wanted to cover. Over her thirty-year career in journalism, she never stopped innovating. She never stopped challenging people. I think thats really extraordinary, actually. She never settled down. Our friends parents often asked us, Why is your mother still writing? Its so dangerous for you boys. She should stop. And I remember thinking, Then what would she do? If she stopped writing, she wouldnt even be our mother anymore. During the murder investigation you decided to make a career change to become a journalist. Can you tell me about that decision? In the months immediately after our mothers murder, my brothers and I were campaigning all the time for the investigation. But of course we eventually had to return to work; we couldnt afford to keep campaigning like that, and it was also unsustainable for health reasons. I had previously worked for investment funds, briefly for Facebook, and in academia. The idea of returning to any of those environments felt strange to me. I was twenty-eight when she was killed, and up to that point I had always avoided journalism because I didnt want to be compared to my mother. But in the summer of 2018, I met James Harding, who used to be the director of BBC News. He told me he was setting up a journalism company called Tortoise and asked if I might like to try working there. I said yes. Initially, my job was to help reporters work with large datasets. But over time I began doing some reporting myself, and I found that I really loved it. Its the first job Ive had that actually feels like something I want to do. It just feels right. I really love my work. I think its an enormous privilege to do something thats often fun, sometimes very demanding, but also usefulor at least entertaining to other people. I think thats not a bad place to be. I was recently speaking with a family friend whos been a journalist for many years, and she was saying, you know, Its a very tough industry, but its a whole lot better than working for a living wage. Yes. Its very true. You get to speak to interesting people about interesting things, and sometimes to terrible people about terrible things. But yes, like you said, its better than working for a living. What impact do you think your mothers work had on the journalistic landscape of Malta today? In what ways do you see her legacy? After she started writing under her own name, slowly bylines began appearing in all the other papers where the writers used to publish anonymously. She also broadened the idea of what journalism should be: that it should challenge authority and not simply report what authority says and does. She introduced the idea that journalism is on the side of the public and the journalists duty is to the reader, not to the government or the state. She became a role model for young journalists and a more vibrant media developed around her writing. By the mid- to late nineties you started seeing columnists writing more freely. After her murder, other journalists exposed more corruption related to the stories my mother had been working on at the time of her death. And as the investigation made progress, the public started to really see the reality of the social and political situation. In November 2019, when Fenech was arrested, it was like the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. The country was just set alight. I think people finally understood that [this kind of assassination] is not normal. Since then, the number of civil society groups has grown. And I think in Malta we have, now, a shared understanding that corruption and murder are bad and we dont want this to happen again. What lessons do you think journalists today can take from your mothers life and story? I think my mother wanted to create the journalism she thought the country needed. Her sources trusted her. She was loyal to her readers, and they respected that. She became a very important source of information for them. But no person should have to endure the kind of abuse and harassment she was subjected to. It happened over such a long period of time, like a frog in boiling water. None of us really stopped to take a cold look and say, This is crazy, and this is only going to end up in one place. If you look at it in retrospect, you can see the way the abuse intensified. You can count the number of libel cases filed against her; over time they went up, up, up, up, to forty-seven by the time she was killed. I think thats something we should all be aware of now. If we see a journalist being singled out like that, we should really pay attention and never again let it go any further. My brothers and I always used to say that ultimately the best way of protecting journalists who are reporting on corruption is to make sure that stories are acted upon. My mother would reveal a major corruption allegation against the government. But then it would just sit there in the public domain. Everyone would read it, but the police would never pick it up and investigate it. Nor would the courts. It left her completely exposed. And in the end, that is the reason why it was my mother who was killed rather than a police officer, a magistrate, a judge, or a politician. It was a journalist: the last functioning check on the government. That situation should never be allowed to develop. On a more positive note, though my mothers story ended horribly, it also shows the power of journalism to change lives and, in Maltas case, an entire country. And thats inspiring, I think. Yona TR Golding is a CJR fellow. Typically, workers who are injured during their commute to work arent eligible for workers compensation benefits. The New Jersey Supreme Court highlighted an exception to that rule in a unanimous decision Tuesday. The high court held that a pest control technician who was injured in a car crash while driving from home to his companys office to pick up supplies suffered a compensable injury. The opinion says when an employee, with permission from an employer, is engaged in a work-related activity or an activity that requires time and effort to benefit the employer, the employee is conducting business authorized by the employer. Henry Keim was employed as a salaried pest control technician for Above All Termite & Pest Control in Lanoka Harbor. His employer provided a vehicle for him, which he used to drive to various worksites that were assigned to him each morning via a laptop computer. Keim was allowed to keep his vehicle at his home at night. When he needed supplies, such as pesticides or rodent traps, he drove to the companys shop to pick them up. Keim testified that he usually made resupply trips every two or three days. On one morning, Keim suffered substantial injuries in a crash while driving from his home to the Above All shop to collect the supplies he needed. Keim struck his head on the interior of his work vehicle and lost consciousness. About two months after the accident he learned he had subdural hematomas that required surgery. Above Alls insurance carrier denied Keims workers compensation claim. A judge of compensation claims concluded that Keim was injured while commuting to work. The judge dismissed the claim, finding the fact that Keim was going to the shop to pick up supplies was irrelevant. The Appellate division disagreed and reinstated Keims claim. Above All appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the Workers Compensation Act creates a bright-line coming and going rule whereby injuries sustained while commuting to and from work are not compensable. The high courts opinion says legislation adopted in 1979 created four rules governing when an employee is considered to be in the course of employment: the premises rule, meaning the employee is at his or her workplace; the special mission rule, meaning the worker was running an errand for the benefit of the employer; the paid travel time rule, meaning the worker was being paid for the time spent traveling to the job site; and the authorized vehicle rule, meaning the employee was using a vehicle authorized by his employer for business purposes. Keims trip to the Above All shop to pick up supplies falls within the gambit of the authorized vehicle rule, the Supreme Court said. The employer had instructed its employees to stop by the shop to pick up supplies when needed in an effort to minimize travel time and keep a robust appointment schedule. Attorney Richard B. Rubenstein, managing partner with Rubenstein Berliner & Shinrod in Livingston, filed an amicus brief supporting Keims petition on behalf of the New Jersey Advisory Council on Safety and Health. Rubenstein is co-chairman of the advocacy group and author of the Lexis-Nexis Practice Guide to New Jersey Workers Compensation. The case has broad implications for any worker who operates a work vehicle and whose work is centered outside of the home base of the business, Rubenstein said in an email to the Claims Journal. In an economy which is transforming before our eyes, with remote workers making up a much greater proportion of the workforce, the Keim case was momentous. Rubenstein said while defense counsel and the judge of compensation claim found the 1979 statute opaque, he found the law to be crystal clear. An accident arises in the course of employment when it occurs while the employee is doing what a man so employed may reasonably do within a time during which he is employed, and at a place where he may reasonably be during that time,' he said, quoting Bryant v. Fissell, a 1913 decision that was also cited in Tuesdays decision. This case is important because any other result would leave workers who take home their employers vehicles for their employers profit or convenience without medical or disability coverage if an accident should befall them, Rubenstein said. This donut hole can be catastrophic for a worker, and departs from the intention of the Legislature to mandate coverage for drivers of motor vehicles in New Jersey. Top photo is courtesy of Above All Termite & Pest Control. AKRON, Ohio A man who once operated a daycare with his wife at their Macedonia home was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to multiple charges in connection with sexually abusing and exploiting children. William Lupica, 72, will not be eligible for parole until he is 102 years old, according to Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh. He also was designated as a Tier III sex offender. Prosecutors say investigators discovered Lupica had collected hundreds of sexually explicit photos of teenagers and young children while he and his wife ran the daycare from their home. Some of the photos showed Lupica touching children sexually, prosecutors say. Lupica pleaded guilty on Oct. 10, 2023, to two counts of rape, two counts of gross sexual imposition, two counts of pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor or impaired person, and four counts of illegal use of a minor or impaired person in nudity-oriented material or performance. Family members of the victims spoke Tuesday before Lupica was sentenced, the Akron Beacon Journal reports, saying he had violated their trust. I first thought, no way, one mother said, the Beacon Journal reports. Then the police showed me the nude pictures of my daughter. Senior class: Majority of China's 'new middle-aged and elderly' embrace hobby learning People's Daily Online) 09:33, November 22, 2023 A recent report jointly released by Tencent and other institutions reveals that over 70 percent of China's "new middle-aged and elderly" have participated in or are currently enrolled in courses related to hobbies, enriching their lives, according to Beijing Youth Daily. The report defines this group as those nearing retirement or already retired, with stable finances and ample free time and energy to pursue fulfilling material and spiritual lives. It highlights that their top three motivations for hobby-oriented learning are satisfying intellectual curiosity, improving life quality, and expanding social circles. Online courses have increasingly become their preferred method of learning new skills and knowledge. Older people learn to play the erhu at a university for older adults in north China' s Tianjin municipality. (Photo/Xinhua) In the past three years, the "new middle-aged and elderly" who have enrolled in courses have joined an average of 2.7 types of courses, with nearly half spending 500 yuan ($68.65) to 2,000 yuan annually on their hobby courses, the report states. According to the report, compared to younger individuals, the "new middle-aged and elderly" demographic shows interest in a wide array of subjects, such as traditional Chinese opera, photography, health regimens, and personal image management. In particular, courses on health and physical exercise continue to see high demand among middle-aged and elderly individuals. The report indicates that subjects like etiquette and handicrafts also exhibit significant growth potential. The market for hobby education targeted at the Chinese middle-aged and elderly population is valued at over 30 billion yuan, with promising prospects, notes Edu Insight, a Chinese research platform specializing in online education. As the industry is still in its early stages of development, competition remains relatively low. The major service providers are primarily elderly care institutions and traditional education service organizations catering to this age group. Interestingly, these hobby-oriented courses for seniors are also attracting younger individuals seeking low-cost, stress-free hobby classes. In response to this trend, numerous universities for older adults have expanded their enrollment age requirements to include all ages. A 16-week course at a university for older people in Shanghai, priced at only 500 yuan, has been described as "fantastic" and has garnered significant attention from young people. In Beijing, a university offering a variety of courses for older people has reported a substantial increase in applicants aged 20 to 25. (Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun) Arms exports have deep geopolitical implications By John Burton Much attention is being paid to North Koreas arms deals with Russia, including the supply of artillery shells and other equipment to support Moscows offensive against Ukraine. But South Koreas sizable arms sales overseas have drawn less scrutiny. Seoul views the arms industry as a new source of economic growth as it challenges the dominance of the U.S., Russia, France, China and Germany in weapons exports. South Koreas arms sales have already grown by around 70 percent over the past decade and it accounts for 2.4 percent of global arms exports compared to 5.2 percent for China and 4.2 percent for Germany. It now ranks as the worlds ninth-biggest arms exporter but wants to be the fourth largest by 2027. A decline in Russian arms exports due to its war in Ukraine could help South Korea meet that goal. South Korea is carving out a niche as an arms supplier to other middle powers. Such deals increase Seouls diplomatic clout since arms sales are a key coin of the realm in international relations. The downside is that it could potentially drag South Korea into conflicts. The Ukraine war and shifting geopolitics are providing a new opportunity for South Koreas arms export push. Last year, it signed deals worth $17 billion, more than twice as much as in 2021. Most of that was accounted for by a $14.5 billion deal with Poland. The agreement with Warsaw will provide an interesting test case of whether Seoul can avoid potential pitfalls in its weapons diplomacy, since Poland is a NATO frontline state confronting a resurgent Russia. It is not an exaggeration to say that South Korea could become one of Polands biggest arms suppliers. The deal includes a thousand K2 Black Panther tanks, more tanks than in the armies of the U.K., France, Germany and Italy combined. They will replace Polands current tank force of nearly 600 aging German Leopard and modified Soviet-era tanks. South Korea will directly deliver 180 tanks, with the rest to be manufactured in Poland under license from 2026. Also included in the deal are 672 K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers, with two-thirds to be locally produced, to replace Polands current force of 600 mainly Soviet-era artillery units. South Korea will supply 288 K239 Chunmoo multi-rocket launchers that will be mounted on Polish infantry fighting vehicles, larger than its current force of around 175 units. In addition, Poland will buy 48 Golden Eagle FA-50 fighter jets to replace the MiG-29 and Su-22 fighters it sent to Ukraine since South Korean aircraft are less expensive and can be delivered more quickly than the American F-16 fighter, which is the mainstay of the Polish Air Force. Seoul and Warsaw see mutual benefits from the mammoth arms deal. It gives a big boost to the South Korean defense industry, while giving Poland access to South Korean technology that will help expand its own arms manufacturing. South Korea is viewed as an attractive partner due to its swift delivery times, competitive prices and attractive credit terms, while its close cooperation with the U.S. military means much of its domestic equipment is of high quality and meets NATO standardization requirements. Another advantage that South Korea enjoys is that it is seen by some other countries as a more reliable arms supplier than the U.S., whose weapons sales are often subject to political calculations and conditions. That worry has also been a driving force behind the expansion of South Koreas defense industry itself since Seoul has been concerned about its heavy dependence on American weaponry. The same factors that led Poland to choose South Korea as a main arms supplier could result in growing orders from around the world. South Koreas Hanwha Ocean, for example, is one of the finalists, along with Japan, to win a $45 billion deal to supply Canada with new submarines. It also hopes for possible submarine sales to Poland and the Philippines. One purpose of President Yoon Suk Yeols globe-trotting trips this year, including to the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Lithuania, Indonesia and India, is to tout South Korean military sales. But South Koreas emergence as a global arms dealer carries with it political and strategic implications. Closer identification and cooperation with NATO countries, including selling arms to them, runs the risk of South Korea becoming entangled in what is shaping up as a new Cold War. Yoon is promoting values diplomacy in supporting the U.S. in its growing confrontation against Russia and China. Arms exports look to be a key component of that foreign policy. While previously more than half of South Korean arms exports went to other Asian countries, including the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, the bulk will now go to global hot spots in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Such deals imply future military cooperation between Seoul and its defense customers in what is becoming a more dangerous world. John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant. Firms, municipalities, academia support coexistence with migrants By Park Jae-hyuk Safety guidelines and warning messages written in multiple languages are nothing new anymore at Koreas domestic shipyards that have been relying more heavily on migrant labor. Near the entrance to a welding factory on SK oceanplants main yard in Goseong County, South Gyeongsang Province, guidelines on safety gear are written in six languages along with pictograms. The shipbuilding subsidiary of SK ecoplant, which also exports substructures of offshore wind turbines, is no different from its competitors, in terms of struggling to secure welders and painters from Asian countries, amid a shortage of Korean workers. Due to the labor shortage, we have hired many workers from Thailand for welding and painting jobs, Jeon Myung-woo, senior managing director of SK oceanplant, said earlier this month at the companys shipyard. We are looking for additional workers from Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and China. Hanwha Ocean, which also hung warning messages written in seven languages in every corner of its shipyard on Geoje Island, South Gyeongsang Province, adopted a virtual reality spray-gun training system that supports various foreign languages for painters, most of whom come from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries. Voice guidance in foreign languages is also available thanks to artificial intelligence technology, a Hanwha Ocean employee said last month at the companys shipyard located near many Asian food restaurants and grocery stores. A senior official of HD Hyundai, the parent firm of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries and Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, noted that the typical image of foreigners wandering around shipyards has already changed from Caucasian ship owners to Asian shipbuilding workers. Residents of Yeongam County, South Jeolla Province, are already used to living together with foreign workers at Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries shipyard, he said. It may take time for Ulsan residents to become familiar with foreign workers at HD HHIs shipyard, but the residents will accept the workers for the city and the shipbuilding industry to survive. Remaining obstacles In early 2022, some Ulsan residents opposed the deployment of Afghan refugees to HD HHIs shipyard, urging the government to prevent their children from going to local elementary schools with Korean students. News outlets published reports earlier this year about an increasing number of foreign shipbuilding workers quitting their jobs and leaving the shipyards. This apparent trend has raised concerns that the government will be unable to keep track of migrant workers. A recent survey by the Korean Metal Workers Union also showed that six out of 10 migrant workers at Koreas domestic shipyards hope to change their jobs due to their low wages and tough labor conditions. Measures for foreigners to take root As part of efforts to overcome the prejudice against migrant workers, HD HHI recently organized a vigilante group consisting of foreign employees, working in collaboration with the Ulsan Dongbu Police Station. HD Hyundais affiliates are also running support centers that offer translation and administrative services and handle complaints, in order to prevent foreigners from working in bad conditions. Samsung Heavy Industries gave permanent positions to some foreign welders, unlike most other major shipbuilders that ask their subcontractors to send migrant laborers to shipyards. Hanwha Ocean is running a coordinator program to ask foreign workers familiar with Korean culture and the language to help their colleagues from abroad to adapt. The Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Association, a lobby group for domestic shipbuilders, rewarded two foreign workers for their contribution to Koreas shipbuilding industry during the celebration of the 20th Shipbuilding and Offshore Day in September. This was the first time for foreigners to be among the prize winners of the annual event. Considering the fact that the inflow of foreign workers cushions negative impacts caused by the declining population, outside of capital areas, municipalities have looked to encourage better ways to live together with migrants. Ulsan, which saw an increase in its population this year for the first time in seven years, formed a council to listen to complaints from foreign workers and help them adapt to Korea, learn Korean and get medical services. The city government of Geoje, which is home to the shipyards of Hanwha Ocean and Samsung Heavy, has kept trying to host a support center for foreign workers, which is under the supervision of the labor ministry, although the plan ended in failure this year due to the central governments budget shortage. During our meetings with shipbuilding industry officials, they mentioned difficulties in communicating with foreign workers as the biggest problem, so we plan to teach basic Korean language and culture to foreign workers, the city government official said. Complaints about the language barrier at domestic shipyards prompted professors at Seojeong University in Yangju, Gyeonggi Province, to publish a book in September on Korean words used in welding jobs. The professors who taught foreign students are also set to publish another book regarding Korean words used in painting-based jobs. The main purpose of our book is to help foreign workers do their jobs after understanding behavioral verbs, the authors said in an introduction to the book. We used as many images as possible for the readers to understand Korean words and expressions more quickly. According to the government, 12,339 foreign nationals holding E-7 or E-9 visas were sent to shipyards during the first three quarters of this year. As the government has eased visa rules throughout this year for shipbuilders to satisfy the increasing global demand for vessels, more migrant laborers are expected to join domestic shipyards next year. LG Energy Solution is accelerating its drive to create more jobs and improve working conditions for its employees. The battery maker, recognized as one of the top 100 employers for job creation by the government in September, has actively undertaken diverse steps to upgrade the quality of its workplace. To enhance employee convenience and accessibility, it has set up 101 outpost offices across the country, including remote areas such as Jeju Island. It has also extended its one-year parental leave to two years, while strengthening paid leave for pregnant workers and operating in-house kindergartens. Of its in-house kindergartens, the Ochang Energy Plant kindergarten occupies about 2,000 square meters, the largest such facility operated by a private company in the Cheongju area. It has implemented pay raises for two consecutive years from 2021 despite the sluggish economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also operates in-house medical centers in its three operation bases in Seoul, Daejeon and Ochang. Thanks to its efforts, LG Energy Solution was the only Korean company named in the Great Place to Work (GPTW) list this year. The GPTW is an international agency that evaluates various organizations based on employee experience every year. LG Energy Solution has become one of the most desirable companies in Korea among young workers, said a company official. On top of improving working conditions, we will continue to award our workers boldly who demonstrate outstanding performance. The number of LG Energy Solution workers reached 12,000 in the second quarter of this year, a sharp rise from 7,500 in 2020 when it became an independent corporate entity. Ninety-eight percent of employees at the company are permanent workers. (Advertorial) Korea's transport ministry said Wednesday it has imposed fines on Vietnam Airlines and Aero Mongolia on charges of violating the country's aviation law. Vietnam's flag carrier was slapped a fine of 25 million won ($19,296) for a lengthy wait with passengers aboard. On July 14, the airline's plane, which departed from Hanoi, temporarily landed at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, before arriving at Gimhae International Airport in Korea's southeastern port city of Busan. The aircraft stayed in Incheon airport's movement area for more than five hours with passengers aboard while preparing for takeoff. Under the Aviation Business Act, an international aircraft cannot wait in the movement area with passengers aboard for over four hours. The Mongolian flag carrier was imposed a 10 million-won fine for operating the Incheon-Ulaanbaatar route since July 1 without approval. "To protect air traffic users, we will manage and oversee foreign airlines so they will thoroughly comply with aviation regulations," a ministry official said. (Yonhap) By Park Jae-hyuk STX, a trading company owned by APC Private Equity (APC PE), launched a new platform named TrollyGo, Wednesday, for buyers and sellers worldwide to carry out transactions for raw materials and industrial goods online. The COVID-19 pandemic led a large number of companies to seek digital transformation, but business-to-business trading platforms still tend to handle certain types of commodities only, APC PE CEO Ashley Hong, the chair of STXs board of directors, said at a press conference. During the pandemic, some Korean firms opened online platforms for trading certain types of goods, such as steel. STX emphasized that TrollyGo is the worlds first platform allowing international transactions for a wide range of raw materials and industrial goods. The new platform features a user interface similar to those of e-commerce platforms for ordinary consumers. For customers who want to keep their transactions confidential, however, TrollyGo allows buyers and sellers to conceal the prices of goods from other users. The platform also enables buyers and sellers to chat with each other for negotiations. We transplanted our offline operation directly to the online platform, Hong said. The chairwoman explained that STX began preparing for the launch of TrollyGo in 2018, considering the immaturity of the raw material industrys digitalization. We actually want our competitors to open similar platforms, so that the raw material industry can guarantee transparent transactions and reduce unnecessary transaction costs, she said. Although STX Group disbanded after its liquidity crisis in 2013, the companys name still reminds many people of the group's shipbuilding and shipping businesses. To make people aware that STX has also been engaged in the trading business for more than four decades, the company spun off its shipping business into STX Green Logis in September. There is a rumor that the spinoff is intended for APC PE to sell the shipping unit, but Hong denied the speculation. She said that the private equity firm is not considering its divestment from STX yet, citing the long duration of the fund that had been raised for APC PE to acquire STX in 2018 from the creditors led by the Korea Development Bank. 115167500 Binance's VIP users were granted a set of special privileges, including an early heads-up from the crypto exchange if they were under investigation by law enforcement, according to the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the U.S. and stepped down from his post on Tuesday as part of a $4.3 billion settlement. The plea deal resolves a multi-year investigation into the world's largest crypto exchange. Treasury alleged in a 92-page order that Binance had "developed a process to notify VIP users if they became the subject of a law enforcement inquiry," in a setup where Binance was effectively serving as a lookout for its top-tier customers. The process, as described by FinCEN, was relatively simple. Members of Binance's VIP team were instructed to contact the user under investigation by "all available means" including sending texts and calling to inform customers, for example, that their account had been frozen or unfrozen. According to the consent order, Binance's VIP team staff were warned not to be too obvious in their tips. "'We cannot in any circumstances directly tell the user to run/withdraw, we can get sued or undertake personal liability. Giving a strong hint[,] such as your account is unlocked/your account has been investigated by XXX is usually a good enough hint of severity,'" the company told the VIP team, the order said. Binance's "VIP Program" caters to higher volume, commercially important users and offers incentives such as competitive trading fees and higher limits on order volume to try to keep these patrons happy and loyal. According to FinCEN, internal reports from Binance indicated that in 2019, VIP customers "consistently accounted for between two-thirds and three-quarters of both trading volume and trading revenue on Binance.com, adding that "Binance thus had significant commercial motivations to go to great lengths to support these VIP users." Despite rules forbidding people in the U.S. from trading on the platform, users in the U.S. "represented a crucial element of the VIP userbase," at some points accounting for as much as 20% of all transaction fees on the exchange. FinCEN found that Binance helped U.S. customers, including the most commercially lucrative U.S. Enterprise Users in Binance's VIP program, to circumvent the ringfencing policies the exchange itself had put into place to comply with local laws. One such approach included encouraging users to alter know-your-customer documentation to give the false impression they were not in the U.S., as well as using a virtual private network, or VPN, to cover a user's geographic footprint, "even though Binance would know that the user was, in fact, located in the United States." "These users were so valuable to Binance that personnel were instructed not to off-board them," read the FinCEN report. In Dec. 2020, a member of Binance's VIP team wrote, "We will not be restricting the top 100 [users] (even after sending them emails [about restrictions applicable to U.S. users who remained on Binance.com]). They will be managed by your [VIP] team. [The CEO's] idea is that they should have enough time to create or find new non-US entities," the consent order stated. FinCEN said that Binance ultimately executed on this plan and took additional steps to conceal its retention of U.S. users. CNBC's Christina Wilkie contributed to this report. By Ko Dong-hwan Genesis BBQ in the United States has donated to American veterans of the Korean War with money collected from the franchise's American restaurants and from the headquarters in Korea, the fried chicken franchise said Wednesday. The company donated $10,000 to Honor Flight Network, a non-profit organization in the U.S. that transports American veterans to Washington D.C. for free to honor and celebrate their services in the war. The donation campaign began on Veterans Day in the U.S. on Nov. 11 when the franchise's restaurants in the U.S. launched a discount event for American soldiers who retired or are still serving. Beneficiaries enjoyed a 25 percent discount in participating BBQ restaurants across the U.S. Operators of the participating restaurants then separately pooled a charity fund in an amount corresponding to how much their restaurants collectively sold under the campaign. They donated the funds to the company's headquarters. The company added the extra money to make the entire fund $10,000 before donating it to Honor Flight Network. "We are glad to have expanded our market to the U.S. and be given this opportunity to express our gratitude to the U.S. veterans," an official from the company said. "Our brand will keep paying society back with meaningful philanthropic activities in other countries as well." The company has already been offering exclusive discounts to police officers and firefighters in the U.S. in a campaign to spread a culture that pays due respect to patriots. On Nov. 15 the company received a plaque from the New York Police Department in recognition of its campaign and contribution to keeping Korean communities in New York City safe. Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, smiles as he plays bridge following the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, May 5, 2019. Warren Buffett donated more than $870 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock to four family foundations before Thanksgiving, assuring investors in a letter that the conglomerate is "built to last." The 93-year-old legendary investor donated 1.5 million Class B shares of his conglomerate to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his first wife. He also gave 300,000 Class B shares to each of the three foundations run by his children: the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation. "They supplement certain of the lifetime pledges I made in 2006 and that continue until my death (at 93, I feel good but fully realize I am playing in extra innings)," Buffett said in a statement. He made similar donations on Thanksgiving eve last year. The "Oracle of Omaha" pledged to give away the fortune he built at Berkshire, the Omaha-based conglomerate he started running since 1965. Buffett has been making annual donations to the same four charities since 2006. Berkshire owns a vast array of well-established businesses, ranging from its crown-jewel Geico insurance to BNSF Railway to about 6% of Apple. Shares of the conglomerate have gained nearly 17% this year after hitting an all-time high in September. Berkshire is built to last In his letter, the longtime investing icon affirmed to Berkshire shareholders that the empire he has cultivated over the past six decades will stand the test of time, even without his oversight. "In the short-term, Berkshire's distinctive characteristics and behavior will be supported by my large Berkshire holdings. Before long, however, Berkshire will earn whatever reputation it then deserves," Buffett said. "Decay can occur at all types of large institutions, whether governmental, philanthropic or profit-seeking. But it is not inevitable. Berkshire's advantage is that it has been built to last." Greg Abel, vice chairman for non-insurance operations at Berkshire, has been named Buffett's successor. Buffett has sung Abel's praises, noting that he's taken on most of the responsibilities. Buffett's three children are the executors of his will and the named trustees of the charitable trust that will receive nearly all of Buffett's wealth. "My children, along with their father, have a common belief that dynastic wealth, though both legal and common in much of the world including the United States, is not desirable," Buffett said. "Moreover, we have had many opportunities to observe that being rich does not make you either wise or evil." UBS has identified the stocks set to benefit from the growth of next-generation "solid-state" battery electric vehicles. Solid-state batteries are viewed as a potential breakthrough technology because they can store more energy than lithium-ion batteries and charge faster. While researchers have known about the technology for decades, commercialization on a large scale has not yet proved possible. That could be about to change, however. Toyota earlier this year said its work on solid-state batteries could allow its electric vehicles to travel up to 1,000 kilometers on a single charge when they debut between 2027 and 2028. Shares of the Japanese automaker soared on the news. Toyota's targets for solid-state batteries are about double the capacity of the longest-range Tesla vehicles. UBS analysts say Toyota is one of the few car companies with the capability to build a "vertically integrated model" for EVs, including advanced battery technology. The automaker's planned transition to solid-state batteries for its EVs by the late 2020s makes the company's stock an attractive investment, according to the investment bank. In addition, as other Japanese automakers like Nissan and Honda also aim to mass produce solid-state batteries by around 2030, the analysts expect more companies along the supply chain to be identified. The table below shows some of the global stocks best positioned to capitalize on the shift to solid-state batteries, according to UBS: UBS named Toyota Industries , which has already partnered with Toyota Motor on developing lithium-ion batteries, as another stock that could benefit from the shift to solid-state batteries. Investors should take note that as the world's largest forklift manufacturer, shares of Toyota Industries are currently valued on its materials handling equipment business rather than its battery manufacturing division. UBS analysts led by Kohei Takahashi said in a note to clients on Oct. 31 that they expect Toyota Industries shares to rise by 12% to 13,400 Japanese yen ($90) over the next 12 months. Other Japanese companies cited by UBS as potential winners include Mitsui Mining & Smelting , which produces sulfide-based solid electrolytes, and cathode materials supplier Sumitomo Metal Mining . Analysts at Morgan Stanley also note that Mitsui's products are utilized in the manufacture of semiconductor chips typically used to run AI software. "Over the medium to long term, we will be keeping a close eye on whether there is a further expansion in sales of electrolytic copper foil and what occurs with HRDP (a special carrier used for mounting next-generation semiconductor chips) and solid state batteries for EVs," said Morgan Stanley analysts in a note to clients on Nov. 10. CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report. U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at Filoli estate on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Woodside, California, on Nov. 15, 2023. Kevin Lamarque | Reuters BEIJING U.S. President Joe Biden's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week has set a bottom line in the relationship which reduces uncertainty for businesses, analysts said. Biden and Xi met for the first time in about a year in San Francisco on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference. "I think there's a lot of consensus coming out of this summit," Wang Dong, executive director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding at Peking University, told reporters Tuesday. "What you get from this summit is a very clear signal the two countries, they are committed to what we can call recouple, in a way, on the basis of reciprocity and mutual respect," he said. "I think this is very important for both countries and indeed for the global economy as well." In essence, the U.S. and China are working out what it means to cooperate where they can. watch now "I think for U.S. businesses the hope is that this kind of new tone can translate into a new normal for the economic relationship, where there's a mutually beneficial relationship where China plays by the rules and the United States and China can get back to a more normal economic footing, have some of these tariffs and retaliations drop away," said Jake Colvin, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Foreign Trade Council. He said he participated in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in San Francisco last week. In conversations with Xi, Biden did not budge on export controls, enacted out of national security concerns. But a White House readout said "the leaders affirmed the need to address the risks of advanced AI systems and improve AI safety through U.S.-China government talks." The two sides also agreed to restore military-to-military talks, which have been on a hiatus for more than a year. "For the business community, the meeting demonstrates that full decoupling is off the table and that investment in China remains permissible, at least in non-sensitive industries," Gabriel Wildau, managing director at Teneo, said in a note Friday. "The meeting signals that both leaders want to avoid a downward spiral and cooperate where interests align," he said. The Biden administration has sought to restrict U.S. investment in, or business with, Chinese companies that are developing advanced tech that could support military development. But U.S. officials have pointed out the vast majority of trade and consumer-related business isn't affected. Top-down messaging As with U.S. official visits to China this year, the Biden-Xi meeting spurred action, such as the resumption of more flights between the two countries. For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, a direct flight headed for Washington, D.C., took off from Beijing on Tuesday, state media reported. "I heard stories from dozens of decisionmakers telling me their versions of how their personal experiences with Chinese interlocutors had suddenly changed: promises of imminent licenses long thought dead, clarity on anti-espionage rulings, higher-level access to Chinese decisionmakers, favorable treatment by the Chinese media, and the like," Ian Bremmer, president of consulting firm Eurasia Group, said in a note Monday. Mastercard on Monday announced its joint venture in China received approval from the People's Bank of China to begin processing domestic payments. The venture waited nearly four years since its application to begin preparations was approved in principle. Wedding versus marriage After meeting Biden, Xi spoke at a dinner with top U.S. business executives in which he said the fundamental question was whether the two countries are "adversaries or partners." "I was very heartened by the fact that there were so many companies that were invested in the U.S. and China having a positive relationship," said Blueshirt Group managing director, Gary Dvorchak, who attended the dinner. "In a negative U.S.-China environment a lot of those companies could have stayed away. Why do I want my CEO having a picture with Xi Jinping?" he said. "It would have been very easy for the whole thing to be massively negative and not have people show up." Looking further out, Dvorchak compared the dinner to a wedding. "The happy day is a happy day. How is the marriage?" Upcoming election risk Over the weekend, Eurasia Group said it's more likely now that the U.S. and China will see a "managed decline" in their relationship through the end of 2024, and a lower likelihood of "serious deterioration." But the consulting firm sees zero chance of a "substantial improvement." The U.S. presidential election is scheduled for November 2024. The democratically self-ruled island of Taiwan is due to hold its elections in January. Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory, with no right to independently conduct diplomatic relations. The U.S. recognizes Beijing as the sole government of China but maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan. "Whether this positive atmosphere can last very long is in doubt with [the] coming next year's presidential election," said Jin Canrong, deputy dean, professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China. He described the Biden-Xi summit as "very good," with some consensus, but noted that in the long term, managing the relationship is "a very hard job." From a long-term point of view, there's some doubt within the Chinese public about how the consensus achieved can be implemented, "because our impression is that the record of the U.S. side [fulfilling] their promise is very bad. They promise every day but do nothing," Jin told reporters Tuesday." He is also deputy director of the Center for American Studies at the Renmin University of China, and holds other positions. No 'splashy deliverables' Long-standing issues for U.S. business operations in China remain, and deals aren't made overnight. Despite media reports saying the Chinese government might use the Biden-Xi summit as an opportunity to announce a commitment to resuming purchases of Boeing's 737 Max aircraft, no such news has materialized. Boeing did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. "This meeting didn't result in any splashy deliverables," Colvin said. "It was successful in putting a floor under the relationship and setting a new tone for cooperation and for problem solving." "But I think for companies there's still going to be a focus on derisking and diversifying supply chains," he said. "Ultimately they will make their decisions based on the reality on the ground in China." Exterior of a long-range Boeing 737 MAX 10 at the Farnborough Airshow, on 18th July 2022, at Farnborough, England. Boeing said on Wednesday that the U.S. aviation regulator has cleared it to begin certification flight testing of its 737 MAX 10, the largest version of its bestselling jet aimed at seizing the top of the narrowbody market. Boeing shares rose 1.1% in midday trade. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that it granted type inspection authorization for the 737 MAX 10. Type inspection authorization is typically associated with the kickoff of the certification process, made after the FAA has examined technical data. The milestone allows FAA pilots to participate in flight testing needed to certify the plane for normal operations, three Boeing executives wrote in a letter to employees on Wednesday. "This is a significant milestone as we work to get the 737-10, the largest airplane in the 737 MAX family, certified to enter passenger service with operators around the world," Mike Fleming, Boeing's senior vice president for development programs, 737 program head Ed Clark, and testing lead Wayne Tygert wrote in the letter. The 737 MAX 10 is Boeing's answer to the A321neo made by European rival Airbus, which has dominated the lucrative top of the single-aisle market in battles against Boeing's MAX 9. Boeing executives last said in October that its schedule for the MAX 10, which calls for the jet to be certified and the first aircraft delivered in 2024, is still on track. "Safety will dictate the certification timeline" for the MAX 10, the FAA said in a statement confirming type inspection authorization. The MAX 10 has so far logged more than 400 flights and almost 1,000 flight hours during Boeing's test program. Boeing's MAX 7 - the smallest entrant of the 737 MAX family - is still awaiting FAA certification, expected by the end of 2023. First delivery slipped from this year to 2024, the company announced in July. Protesters lift placards as they rally in Tel Aviv on November 18, 2023 to demand the release of Israelis held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 attack by Hamas militants, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian armed group. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a humanitarian pause, allowing 50 civilian hostages in the Gaza Strip to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, according to the government of Qatar. Following mediation by the U.S., Qatar and Egypt, Israel's government and Hamas militants have agreed to a temporary cease-fire that will last four days and could be extended, the ministry of foreign affairs in Qatar said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. "The humanitarian pause will also allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs," Qatar said, adding that the start of pause will be announced in the next 24 hours. "The agreement includes the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons," the ministry said. More people could be released in the later stages of the agreement, the ministry added. The major diplomatic breakthrough comes after weeks of conversations between the U.S., Qatar, Israel, Egypt and Palestinian militant group Hamas. Hamas infiltrated southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people, including foreigners, and taking about 240 hostages into Gaza. In response to the terror attack, Israel launched air, sea and ground attacks on the coastal enclave which is run by Hamas. More than 14,000 Palestinians have so far been killed, according to Gaza's media office which is run by Hamas. Israeli cabinet members approved the deal just after 3 a.m. Wednesday in Jerusalem and said it would be the "first stage" of hostage release. Before Qatar's announcement, a senior U.S. administration official said late Tuesday the initial tranche of 50 hostages will be released over four days, during which Israel will pause its bombardment of Gaza to ensure their safe crossing. The first wave of hostages could include three Americans, including one toddler, the official said. The deal has built-in incentives to get more hostages out over time. The Israeli government said in a statement following the cabinet vote that as part of the deal, "the release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause." Separately, Hamas said in a statement that Israel had agreed to release 150 Palestinian women and child prisoners. Neither Qatar nor Israel mentioned the number of Palestinians who would be released in exchange for the hostages held by Hamas. U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed news of the deal. The four-day pause in fighting will allow for more humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza where civilians are living in dire circumstances without sustained access to food, water, fuel and electricity. An average of 42 aid trucks per day have been sent into Gaza since Oct. 21. Israel made it clear in its statement following the vote that the war would not end until all hostages were released and Hamas eliminated. "Outside there is a lot of nonsense talk, as if after we cease (fire), for the release of the hostages, we will stop the war," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in opening remarks ahead of the cabinet meeting. "I would like to clarify, we are at war, and we will continue to fight, continue to fight until we reach all our goals." CNBC's Joanna Tan contributed to the report. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz (not pictured) in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv , Israel , 28 October 2023. The Israeli government voted Tuesday night to accept a deal that would release some hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. The vote came just after 3 a.m. on Wednesday morning in Israel following more than six hours of discussion between Israeli cabinet members. In a statement, the Israeli government said it approved "the first stage" of hostage release, which will free 50 of the roughly 240 hostages that Hamas currently holds. It said that the first tranche of hostages would be women and children, who will be released over the course of four days. During that four-day time period, Israel agreed to halt its bombardments to ensure their safe passage. The statement also said that the war will continue. "The Government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza," the Israeli government said. The Israeli government noted that as part of the deal, it will agree to extend the temporary cease-fire one additional day for every additional ten hostages that Hamas releases. A statement from Hamas said that in exchange for the 50 freed hostages, Israel will release 150 Palestinian women and children prisoners. A senior Israeli official told NBC earlier on Tuesday that the Palestinian prisoners did not directly kill Israelis themselves but rather played supporting roles in the crimes. Israel did not address this part of the deal in its statement. Per Israeli policy, families of the victims of the Palestinian prisoners would have 24 hours to appeal their release to the Israeli Supreme Court. That means that no deal signed tonight will be able to take effect and is therefore not final until at least that 24-hour window is over. Rebecca Picciotto Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group in Shanghai China on Dec. 5th, 2017. Alibaba's regulatory filings last week revealed Ma is looking to sell 10 million shares at a value of around $870 million. Those plans were revealed in a regulatory filing on Nov. 16, the day Alibaba released its September quarter earnings. Ma has not sold a single share, Alibaba's Chief People Officer Jane Jiang told employees in an internal memo seen by CNBC. Alibaba's stock is currently trading below the company's actual value, Jiang said, citing this as a reason Ma has not cut his stake. Alibaba founder Jack Ma held off on plans to trim his stake in the Chinese e-commerce giant after the share price fell. As part of its earnings release, Alibaba said it would no longer proceed with a spinoff of its cloud computing business, something investors were closely monitoring. This sent shares tumbling around 9%. However, the plans to sell shares were made in August and coincidentally were made public on Nov. 16, Jiang said. In August, Alibaba's U.S.-listed shares were trading as high as $101. On Wednesday, they closed at $78.94. That would mean if Ma sold 10 million shares, it would net around $789.4 million, significantly lower than the $870 million he was seeking. Jiang added that Ma's plan to sell down his stake at a higher selling price shows his confidence in the business. Alibaba was not immediately available for comment. Ma and his empire were targeted by Beijing as part of a broader crackdown on China's technology sector that sought to reign in the power of its domestic giants. The Alibaba founder has dedicated his time to teaching and research in areas such as agricultural science. Alibaba has gone through a historic shakeup this year in which it split the company into six business groups and changed its CEO. Sam Altman will return as CEO of OpenAI, the startup tweeted early Wednesday morning. The move follows immense pressure from employees and investors on the board that ousted him less than a week ago. Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will join OpenAI's board, the Microsoft-backed startup said, with Taylor holding the chair position. Adam D'Angelo, co-founder and CEO of question-and-answer startup Quora, will remain on the board. Concurrent with Altman's return, Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley and co-founder Ilya Sutskever were removed as board members. All had been involved in pushing out Altman, although Sutskever later walked back his support for the coup and remains an OpenAI employee as of Wednesday. "We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this," OpenAI said in the message on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted Wednesday at 1 a.m. ET. On Monday, hundreds of employees, including Sutskever, signed a letter saying that if the board didn't resign and bring Altman back, the overwhelming majority of employees would move to work with him at Microsoft. Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, said in an X post Monday that Altman and his co-founder Greg Brockman would join Microsoft to form a new AI lab. Preparations for that lab were already underway when the announcement from OpenAI came early Wednesday. That followed an announcement late Sunday that OpenAI had hired ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as Altman's interim replacement. Originally, the board had said OpenAI technology chief Mira Murati would assume that role, but she soon joined the parade of employees calling for Altman's return. "[W]ith the new board and w satya's support, i'm looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft," Altman wrote in a post of his own on X. Nadella applauded changes OpenAI made to its board in an X post. "We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance," Nadella wrote. "Sam, Greg, and I have talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI leadership team in ensuring OAI continues to thrive and build on its mission. We look forward to building on our strong partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of AI to our customers and partners." The rapid reinstatement of Altman began to look like a possibility on Saturday as news surfaced that a group of prominent investors, including Microsoft, Tiger Global, Thrive Capital and Sequoia Capital were working to reverse the board's decision from a day earlier. None of those firms had board seats, and they were caught unaware by the decision. "OpenAI has the potential to be one of the most consequential companies in the history of computing. Sam and Greg possess a profound commitment to the company's integrity, and an unmatched ability to inspire and lead. We are excited for them to rejoin the company they founded and helped build into what it is today," Thrive said in a statement Wednesday. Celeste Maloy speaks during the 2nd Congressional District Republican primary debate for outgoing Rep. Chris Stewart's seat, Friday, Aug. 4, 2023, in Farmington, Utah. Republican Celeste Maloy won Utah's 2nd Congressional District seat on Tuesday, defeating Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe, the Associated Press reported late Tuesday. Maloy is a supporter of former President Donald Trump who served as chief legal counsel for U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart, whose resignation set off a special election in the district. Stewart, who stepped down because his wife was ill, endorsed Maloy to succeed him. He represented the district, which covers Salt Lake City and rural communities in southern and western Utah, for a decade. Maloy won a three-way GOP special election primary in September, defeating Trump critic and former state Rep. Becky Edwards. Maloy faced a lawsuit claiming she was ineligible to run as a Republican due to issues with her Utah voter registration. Maloy did not vote in the 2020 and 2022 federal elections in Utah. She was living in Virginia at the time to work for Stewart. Her Utah voter registration was marked inactive as a consequence and the state was in the process of deleting it, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Maloy updated her Republican voter registration a day after the special election filing deadline, according to the Tribune. Maloy told a Utah radio program she did not realize her registration was inactive. She said she did not vote in Utah's past two federal elections because she was worried her absentee ballot would be flagged as fraudulent. "I didn't want my absentee ballot from out of state to get flagged as a fraudulent vote," Maloy told KSL NewsRadio. "I didn't want my boss to be answering any questions about my vote." A Utah district judge ultimately threw out the lawsuit claiming Maloy was ineligible to run. An undated photo of a signage at Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings' headquarters in the Southeast Asian city-state. Singapore's Temasek Holdings warned that scammers are allegedly trying to sell financial investment products or instruments to unsuspecting individuals while posing as agents of the firm's office in Shenzhen, China. "We have been alerted to a scam in China that involves the impersonation of Temasek in Shenzhen, using our registered office name 'Temasek Holdings Advisors (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.' / ' () '," Temasek said in a statement Wednesday. With a net portfolio value of 382 billion Singapore dollars ($284.5 billion) as of March 31, Temasek Holdings is one of two Singapore state-owned investment companies, along with the more traditional sovereign wealth fund GIC. It is an active investor and shareholder with three offices in mainland China in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Temasek maintains a total of 13 offices in nine countries outside of Singapore. "The scammers fraudulently claim to represent our Shenzhen office and solicit money from individuals on the premise of paying them back with commissions," Temasek said. "This is a scam and is not associated with Temasek in any way. Temasek does not directly sell any investment products or financial instruments in China. We have not authorized any third party to do so on our behalf," the Singapore investment company added. "We reserve all rights to pursue legal action and remedies against any person or company that impersonates Temasek and/or infringes our intellectual property," Temasek said. From fake Apple and Ikea stores and knock-off Disneylands to counterfeit milk powder, medicine and food, China struggles with counterfeits which have in recent years led to adverse health effects or swindled victims out of huge sums of money. Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported Tuesday that Myanmar has transferred a total of 31,000 suspects to Chinese authorities to date in a crackdown on phone fraud originating from northern Myanmar that targeted mainland Chinese. By Ko Dong-hwan POSCO Group's charity campaign celebrated its 10th year with Chairman Choi Jeong-woo, executives and representatives of donors and partners earlier this month, according to the country's leading steelmaker, Wednesday. POSCO 1% Foundation, the conglomerate's charity, saw 22 guests joining the event at POSCO Center in Seoul, Nov. 8. At the gathering, the foundation declared further broadening of its services for those with financial poverty, children of multicultural families and those leaving orphanages to live on their own in inadequate conditions. Since 2013, the foundation has collected almost 90 billion won ($69 million) from 35,000 donors and shared it with over 303,000 people. Until now, it stands as the country's biggest non-profit charity foundation joined by executives and employees of a private firm. "One of our businesses, My Little Charity, allows our participating executives and employees to select certain entities they personally had in mind to help out and we register them as our charity targets," said an official from the group. "Such initiative has impassioned our colleagues' interests in social contributions." The conglomerate's philanthropic activities range from building common halls for vulnerable groups to providing special devices for people with disability and supporting young adults in finding jobs. The foundation's POSCO Steel Village project has been erecting welfare facilities for seniors and physically disabled people for free in Pohang, Gwangyang, Incheon and Seoul with "the world's warmest steels." Each year the foundation seeks some 2,600 orphans aged 18 to 27 who were forced to leave their orphanage facilities in accordance with laws and are pressured to find jobs and new homes on their own. Since 2020, the foundation has also helped over 150 patriots with permanent injuries with robotic limbs, wheelchairs visual aids and hearing aids. Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images When there was a companywide protest at OpenAI after its CEO Sam Altman was ousted, software startup CEO Arjun Bansal began fielding increased calls from customers asking for help to lessen their use of OpenAI's GPT large language models. At his startup Log10, Bansal oversees the production of tools that third-party developers can use to build LLM-powered applications. Since the OpenAI drama unfolded, Bansal told CNBC the startup's instability was a reason customers cited. "People have been reaching out on how they would go through that process of being able to fine-tune different models or try out different providers with minimal disruption to how their code is set up," Bansal told CNBC. "It is a very unprecedented situation, that a company of this size with this very unusual governance structure has gone through so much change in just over a weekend." A spokesperson for OpenAI declined to comment but said the startup's services are working again following three hours of issues. OpenAI's board of directors fired Altman Friday after determining he was "not consistently candid in his communications" with them, according to a statement. After a long weekend of negotiations that appeared to result in reinstating Altman at the company, ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear announced he had been appointed interim head, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the software maker would hire Altman, along with fellow OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and their colleagues. watch now However, more than 90% of OpenAI employees signed a letter to the company's board demanding that they resign, or staffers might choose to leave. Now, Shear is reportedly considering leaving if the board doesn't provide evidence of their reasoning for firing Altman in the first place. Bansal is one of several startup entrepreneurs who told CNBC they or their customers are considering relying less on OpenAI's GPT family of LLMs in the days since the board pushed out Altman. "There's definitely people taking it quite seriously," Bansal said. One founder of an AI startup, who asked not to be named in order to discuss internal matters, said he uses multiple application program interfaces from OpenAI and has considered switching to offerings from Anthropic, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI executives with backing from Amazon and Google . The startup founder said he considered alternatives over the weekend after Altman was ousted, and their concerns grew stronger once OpenAI announced it had selected Shear as Altman's successor. Shear is a Silicon Valley veteran, having founded livestreaming platform Justin.tv in 2007 that eventually evolved into Twitch, a popular streaming site for gamers. Amazon acquired Twitch for almost $1 billion in 2014. The source, who previously worked alongside Shear, said Shear is "very smart" and admires his integrity. watch now But he's not sure if Shear is the right person to lead a company like OpenAI that's at the forefront of the world's AI boom. Martin Kon, president and chief operating officer of Cohere, which also provides LLMs for use in applications, said in a Tuesday statement that he's seen an increase in inquiries since OpenAI's drama unfolded. "Enterprises value certainty, as the significant increase of inbound inquiries we've seen this week demonstrates we are still early in enterprise AI adoption, and companies are taking a hard look at how much they value cloud flexibility and independence from big tech," Kon said. But some startups are struggling to incorporate multiple LLMs into their applications. One founder CNBC spoke with said Anthropic has a waiting list, so that even if people are clamoring to use its services, they might not be able to do so right away. While there are a variety of LLMs available to use, including open-source options such as Meta's Llama 2 AI software, the consensus is that the GPT-4 model is the most capable of performing complicated tasks at an affordable price. OpenAI lowered its fees earlier this month. OpenAI employees try assuring clients Although the tech industry has credited OpenAI for popularizing the use of AI software that analyzes written text and produces human-like copy, the company now finds itself in a defensive position. OpenAI employees are trying to assure customers that they are committed to them. "We are still fully committed to our incredible community of developers and users," Srinivas Narayanan, whose profile lists him as an OpenAI vice president, wrote on X Tuesday. "The API team is here. The ChatGPT team is here," wrote Steven Heidel, a member of OpenAI's technical staff, in a post Tuesday. "We are all still fully committed to our developers and users." Nadella attempted to quell concerns during an interview with CNBC's Jon Fortt Monday evening. "Quite frankly, Microsoft has all the capability to just do that on our own but we chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI and we want to continue to do so," the CEO said. Check out the companies making headlines in premarket trading. Nvidia The chipmaker rose slightly after surpassing Wall Street estimates for third-quarter earnings . Nvidia reported an adjusted profit of $4.02 per share on $18.12 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG expected earnings of $3.37 per share and $16.18 billion in revenue. The company noted that export restrictions to countries including China could hit sales in the fourth-quarter, however. HP Shares of the PC maker slipped nearly 2% after the company posted lackluster fiscal fourth-quarter results. HP earned 90 cents per share, excluding items, on revenue of $13.82 billion. Those earnings per share matched an LSEG consensus estimate, but revenue was slightly below consensus. Autodesk The software company fell roughly 7% in premarket trading after issuing disappointing fourth-quarter earnings guidance. Autodesk expects earnings per share to range between $1.91 and $1.97. That's below a StreetAccount forecast of $2.01 per share. Piper Sandler downgraded Autodesk to neutral, noting that "it may take time to build investor confidence" in the company's growth forecast. GoDaddy Shares of the web domain company rose 2.3% after RBC Capital Markets upgraded GoDaddy to outperform from sector perform. The investment firm described the company as a "durably growing cash machine with a dash of AI" and that expectations for GoDaddy in 2024 appear too low. Virgin Galactic Holdings The aerospace stock pulled back roughly 6% after downgrade to underweight from Morgan Stanley. Analyst Kristine Liwag said she sees "limited opportunities for share price accretion during this upcoming lull period" as the company pauses space flights to save cash. Clorox The consumer product company added 1.3% on the back of an upgrade to neutral from underweight by JPMorgan. The bank said there is upside potential to consensus expectations for the company going forward. VinFast Auto The automotive stock gained 4%. A day earlier, Wedbush Securities initiated coverage at outperform accompanied by a $12 price target, which would see shares double. Analyst Dan Ives noted the company is "well-positioned to generate a durable product portfolio for electric transportation globally while creating a strong ecosystem to generate profitable growth over the coming years." Deere Shares fell 6.6% after the agricultural equipment maker issued net income guidance between $7.75 billion and $8.25 billion for fiscal 2024. That fell short of the $9.31 billion expected from analysts polled by StreetAccount. CNBC's Alex Harring, Michelle Fox and Jesse Pound contributed reporting The explosive growth of Temu, the U.S. arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo , could spell trouble for some major retailers, according to Bank of America. Temu offers products directly from manufacturers worldwide, allowing it to keep costs and prices low. It generated sales of around $12 billion in 2022, equivalent to 12% of Target's sales, according to the Wall Street bank's analysis of credit card data. Just six months ago, Temu's sales were only 4% of Target's. Consumers have welcomed Temu's rapid growth, but competitors are likely to lose market share and could see smaller profits in the near future. "Retailers targeting young adults at low price points are particularly vulnerable," said Bank of America's analysts, led by Thomas Thornton, in a note to clients on Nov. 17. The analysts say Temu's growth has been fueled by aggressive advertising using influencers, social media and search, with daily active users reaching 40% of Amazon's level. Retailers at risk The BofA analysts say retailers competing on price alone are particularly exposed to Temu's disruption. They suggest Old Navy and Kohl 's private brands are "at risk of being out-priced." Fashion-oriented companies like Revolve , Urban Outfitters , and American Eagle could also be undercut on price, the bank said. European retailers aren't immune to Temu's disruption either. Bank of America believes online fashion retailers like Boohoo and Asos are vulnerable to losing their market share, while H & M is more exposed than Zara parent Inditex , which can leverage supply chain speed and higher prices. Despite the broad risks to Western retailers, Bank of America cautioned that Temu's rapid expansion may not be sustainable in the long term if the appetite for losses and ad spending by its parent wanes. However, Pinduoduo is expected to grow ad spending again in 2024, which could help Temu avoid slowing down in the medium term, the analysts said. Insulated retailers In the United States, the analysts suggest Walmart and Target have advantages that should insulate them. Those include long-standing consumer trust, perception of product quality, and ease of access. Bank of America also thinks Five Below will be resilient as its value proposition goes beyond price. Just like the grocers, Five Below's in-store experience creates urgency and drives repeat visits in a way online shopping does not, the analysts said. Separately, analysts at UBS investment bank also see Temu's growth in a similar vein. "Overall, we think the risk that Temu will significantly disrupt many of these retailers is limited," the Swiss bank's analysts wrote in a note to clients on Nov. 20. UBS said Costco , ULTA , Home Depot , Lowe 's, and auto part retailers were the "most insulated" from the rise of the Chinese e-commerce app. CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Group of 20 (G20) nations has to think about ways to stop the war in Ukraine, describing it as a "tragedy." Addressing the virtual G20 summit hosted by India on Wednesday, Putin said that Russia had never refused to participate in peace talks with Ukraine, according to comments reported by news agency TASS. Instead, Putin once again blamed Ukraine for previous peace talks failing, and then claimed there is a law in Ukraine prohibiting discussions. "Of course, we must think about how to stop this tragedy. By the way, Russia has never refused peace negotiations with Ukraine; it was not Russia, but Ukraine that publicly announced that it was withdrawing from the negotiation process. And moreover, it was a decree, a decree of the head of state, was signed prohibiting such negotiations with Russia," Putin said, TASS reported. Putin used the word "war" to describe the conflict in Ukraine, diverging from Moscow's usual mantra of calling the invasion a "special military operation." He said: "I understand that this war can't help but be shocking. But the bloody coup in Ukraine in 2014, which was followed by the Kyiv regime's war against its own people in Donbas - is that not shocking?" Russia claims a 2014 uprising against the then pro-Russian leadership in Ukraine was a "coup" orchestrated by foreign countries. The uprising acted as a catalyst for Ukraine's deeper split from Russia, after which Moscow supported pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, a region known as Donbas. A photo of a natural gas flare burning near an oil pump jack at the New Harmony Oil Field in the U.S. on June 19, 2022. U.S. crude prices declined Wednesday after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries delayed a pivotal meeting on production cuts that was scheduled for the weekend. The West Texas Intermediate contract for January fell about 5% to $73.85 a barrel in the morning, but clawed back most of those losses. U.S. crude ultimately settled at $77.10 a barrel, down 67 cents or .86%. The Brent contract for January fell 49 cents, or .59%, to settle at $81.96 a barrel. OPEC said in a statement that the meeting of energy ministers is delayed until next Thursday. The organization did not provide a reason, but Saudi Arabia is struggling to convince Angola and Nigeria to accept lower output targets, delegates told Bloomberg. There was growing anticipation among traders that OPEC and its allies, called OPEC+, might implement additional production cuts, which pushed prices higher late last week and early this week. But compliance is a major challenge for OPEC+ because many countries have an incentive to not stick with their production quotas, said Tamas Varga, an analyst with PVM Oil Associates. "Compliance will be weak going forward," Varga said. He pointed to Russia in particular, which needs to finance its war in Ukraine Oil prices have fallen precipitously from September highs as record non-OPEC production collides with demand concerns in China, where exports have fallen six months in a row. "It's undermining the Saudi efforts to get the price really back to $100 a barrel plus," John Kilduff, an oil analyst at Again Capital, told CNBC's "Power Lunch" Wednesday. U.S. data underlined that picture on Wednesday. Crude production stands at an estimated 13.2 million barrels per day, a record level and 1.1 million bpd higher than the same period last year, according to data released by the Energy Information Agency. Domestic crude inventories, excluding the strategic reserve, increased by 8.7 million barrels for the week ending Nov. 17. Meanwhile, finished gasoline supplied declined by 469,000 barrels from the prior weak, implying softening demand in the U.S. Kilduff said U.S. crude could test $70 a barrel and possibly drop to the low $60-a-barrel range, particularly if there's a mild winter in the northern hemisphere. While the supply and demand picture may irk OPEC, it will help U.S. consumers' pocketbooks. Gas prices in the U.S. are falling and forecast to hit $3.25 per gallon on average Thursday, according to GasBuddy. That would be the cheapest price for fuel on Thanksgiving day since 2020. OPEC+, for its part, has already taken 5.16 million barrels per day off the market since 2022. This includes 3.66 million bpd from the group and 1.5 million bpd in voluntary cuts from Saudi Arabia and Russia. Despite those deep cuts, Brent has fallen below $80 a barrel in recent weeks. Goldman Sachs believes OPEC will use its pricing power to keep Brent in a range of $80 to $100 a barrel. Most analysts view OPEC+ extending the current cuts into 2024 as the most likely scenario, though they would not rule out the possibility of deeper cuts given current market conditions. Israel and Hamas also agreed to a four-day ceasefire Wednesday to facilitate the release dozens of hostages held in Gaza. Oil spiked in October on worries that the war could spread throughout the Middle East, though traders increasingly view a regional conflict as unlikely. OPEC has blamed speculators for the recent drop in crude prices, arguing that market fundamentals are strong. But investors simply aren't buying OPEC's narrative right now, Varga said. "Investors do not really believe that the fourth quarter of the year and the first one or two quarters of next year will be as tight as OPEC as been implying," Varga said. Sun Africa LLC, a joint venture involving Sterling & Wilson Renewable has been awarded an order worth $2.2 billion in Nigeria's power sector, sources with knowledge of the matter told CNBC-TV18. Share Market Live NSE The unit, along with the Nigerian Government have announced a collaboration to enhance the country's power landscape, Nigeria's power minister Adebayo Adelabu said. A definitive agreement between the parties is yet to be signed. Sun Africa has committed to delivering 961 MWp of Solar PV generation infrastructure and 455 MWh of battery energy for which the total contract value will be around $2.2 billion. According to Adelabu, the move will addresses Nigeria's increasing power demand, supporting economic and energy sustainability objectives. Financing partners like ING Bank and Citi, backed by US-EXIM Bank, will actively support this venture, committing up to $10 billion over the years, the minister said. Adelabu also said that the collaboration with Sterling & Wilson Renewable is pivotal, ensuring successful execution of the project's initial phase. The renewable energy transformation project in Nigeria is expected to have four phases worth over $10 billion. Sterling and Wilson Renewable will be a contendor for Phase 2 of the project as well. A backup / fail-over center in Nigeria is being planned for the second phase, sources said. Out of the total $2.2 billion order, $1.5 billion - $2 billion could come to Sterling and Wilson Renewable. Sources also add that the award could have double-digit margins and could be executed over the next 1.5-2 years after signing of the agreement. Shares of Sterling and Wilson are locked in a 5% upper circuit at 314.80. The stock is up 16.5% so far in 2023. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) Filipino journalist Patricia Evangelista's book "Some People Need Killing" is among the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2023. "Some People Need Killing" is a memoir of Evangelista's on the ground experiences covering for Rappler the bloody drug war of former President Rodrigo Duterte. READ: Through "Some People Need Killing," Patricia Evangelista reminds us how leaders can use language to justify brutality Evangelista told CNN Philippines' The Final Word on Oct. 25 that she wrote the book to make sure a record of Duterte's anti-drug campaign existed for reference of future generations. "I want them to remember what happened," Evangelista said. "I want them to see the names and see the faces. Imagine the lives that were lost and imagine the lives that were lived." "I want people to remember that stories matter and that they can refuse the story," she added. The journalist also shared that while she did not receive threats to her life during her drug war coverage, the vivid scenes of death took a toll on her mental health. "We are not cameras. We absorb everything," she said. "You take what you get in the field and you carry it for the rest of your lives." In a post on Wednesday, Evangelista said she was "incredibly grateful and more than a little stunned" after knowing that her book got into the New York Times' list. "I wrote more than 90,000 words. I can't quite find any for right now," she wrote. "Some People Need Killing" was also included in TIME Magazine's Top 100 Must-Read Books of 2023. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 22) The Bureau of Customs (BOC) has launched the eTravel Customs System, a unified digital data collection platform aimed at simplifying passenger experience in airports. "Travelers and crew members can now utilize a user-friendly and single web portal which integrates the border control requirements of the Bureau of Immigration (BI), Bureau of Quarantine, Bureau of Customs, and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)," the BOC said in a statement Wednesday. "This collaborative initiative aims to optimize border control, enhance health surveillance, and facilitate economic data analysis," it added. The system launched at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 1 on Tuesday is a joint effort with the BI, BSP, the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), and the Department of Information and Communications Technology. "Notably, its key feature is the Electronic Customs Baggage and Currency Declaration interface, formerly part of the BOC's I-Declare System, introduced on June 29, 2022," the BOC said. "The eTravel Customs System will play a pivotal role in ensuring the security of our borders and fostering a seamless travel experience for all," said Customs chief Bienvenido Rubio. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved on third and final reading a measure aimed at preventing the smuggling and proliferation of contrabands inside prison facilities. House Bill 9153, or the Contraband Detection and Control System Act, seeks 40 years imprisonment and 10 million in fines for inmates found in possession of illegal substances, merchandise, and other contrabands. The contraband detection and control system will be created by government agencies and local government units. It will include handheld and walk-through metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and K9 units. Items considered as contraband are illegal drugs, firearms, explosives, alcohol or intoxicating beverages, cigarettes, tobacco products, vapes, currency and monetary instruments, electronic communication devices, and luxury items. Also tagged as contraband are items that can threaten the safety, security, or health of persons in the correctional institution, and any item that can be used for planning, aiding, or executing the escape of inmates. The bill also penalizes any person who shall introduce, convey or attempt to introduce dangerous drugs, firearms and explosives. They will face imprisonment ranging from 20 years and one day to 40 years, and a fine of not less than 5 million but not more than 10 million. Any public official, jail authority, or employee found in violation will also be given the additional penalty of perpetual absolute disqualification from holding public office and forfeiture of all retirement benefits and accrued leave credits. In a statement, House Speaker Martin Romualdez said the bill will have a "chilling effect" on persons deprived of liberty (PDLs). Surigao del Norte 2nd District Rep. Robert Ace Barbers the principal author of the bill also said it will hinder inmates involved with drugs inside and outside prison. "[It] will put a stop to their nefarious activities, where they are transacting drug deals even inside prison," he added. 2 UK wind power firms plan to invest W1.5 tril. in Korea By Lee Min-hyung Korean business leaders deepened their partnerships with the United Kingdom in the areas of technology, energy and culture on the sidelines of the Korea-U.K. business forum, a Seoul-based business lobby said Wednesday. They accompanied President Yoon Suk Yeol on his three-day state visit to the U.K. The business delegation, consisting of some 100 leaders of Korea's top business conglomerates and promising mid-sized companies, exchanged ideas on how to enhance bilateral ties with their partners in the European country. The business leaders included Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Euisun and LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo. Both sides agreed to boost cooperation particularly in state-of-the-art technologies, clean energy and global supply chains during the forum, co-hosted by the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) and the U.K. Department for Business and Trade. Celebrating the 140 years of diplomatic relations between Korea and the U.K., we expect the forum to provide momentum for both countries to prepare for a bright future for the next 140 years, FKI Chairman Ryu Jin said in an opening address. First and foremost, Ryu underscored the importance of stepping up bilateral partnerships in the high-tech industry amid escalating fears of global supply disruptions. Ryu said both countries can tackle the ongoing war for technological dominance by leveling up their tech exchanges. The head of the FKI also stressed the need to strengthen cooperation between the two nations in sustainable industries to jointly address more crucial environmental agendas amid rapid global warming. The U.K. holds a competitive edge in renewable energy, while Korea is also famous for its technological prowess in clean energy used to manufacture eco-friendly cars, such as hydrogen and electric vehicles. He also said both sides can create new possibilities by stepping up collaboration in producing cultural contents. According to Koreas Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the business delegation inked 270 billion won ($208 million) worth of contracts with their U.K. counterparts on the sidelines of the forum. The Korean firms involved in the areas of energy, artificial intelligence, construction and defense, signed a total of 31 memoranda of understanding during the event. On a national level, the trade authority signed the Clean Energy Partnership with its U.K. counterpart for more bilateral partnerships in carbon-free energy sectors, such as offshore wind power and hydrogen. They also agreed to deepen their ties in developing advanced nuclear reactors. Under the partnership, both sides agreed to open a high-ranking dialogue channel and discuss the agenda of carbon neutrality annually, according to the trade authority. The ministry also said two U.K.-based energy firms, such as CORIO and BP, decided Wednesday to invest 1.5 trillion won to build offshore wind power facilities in Korea's southern coastal areas. The authority expected the investment to help boost the growth of the nation's renewable energy industry. The Korean business delegation will continue to accompany Yoon on his upcoming trip to Paris on Thursday to make a final pitch for Korea to host the World Expo 2030 in the southern port city of Busan. Member countries of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) will cast their ballots in the French capital on Nov. 28 to choose the host city of the event. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, November 23) Former President Rodrigo Duterte is not prohibited by any law should he plan to resume his political career, former PDP-Laban leader Johnny Pimentel said Wednesday. "Under our Constitution, one term is applicable only to the president. In this case, he'll (Duterte) be running as vice president, there is no prohibition," Pimentel told CNN Philippines' Politics As Usual. "We are in a democracy. Therefore, every citizen, everyone is entitled to file that certificate of candidacy as long as they are qualified," the Surigao del Sur lawmaker added. The 1987 Constitution states that the president is elected by direct vote by the people for a term of six years. He is not eligible for reelection and may only hold office for one term. Edna Co, former dean of the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance, echoed Pimentel's position, saying it is not unprecedented for a former president to return to politics. "Pwede naman yun [It can be done]. We have not had that except in the case of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She ran for Congress after her term as president. That's a possibility, we cannot count that out. It's the choice of the former president," Co said. While it is Duterte's characteristic to be unpredictable, Co and Pimentel said anything can happen when it comes to the former president. "If we notice, maraming sinasabi [he says a lot of things] which is why he can change his mind and this can change," Co noted. "Only time can tell if he's serious [about] running for vice president," Pimentel said. In a TV interview Monday evening, Duterte said he would return to politics if his daughter, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte, is impeached over the 125-million confidential fund controversy, which she allegedly spent in just 11 days. READ: Marcos: VP Duterte does not deserve impeachment "Alam mo, 'pag ginawa niyo iyan, babalik ako sa pulitika. Mapilitan ako, either I run for senator or I will run for vice president maski matanda na ako," he said. [Translation: You know what, if you pursue that, I will return to politics. I will be forced to either run for senator or I run for vice president even though I'm already old.] Kalibo, Aklan (CNN Philippines, November 22) The Provincial Government of Aklan has relaxed its travel restrictions for tourists of Boracay Island. Aklan Governor Jose Enrique Moraflores released an executive order signed on Nov. 15, lifting the need to submit "hotel vouchers" online before visiting the world-class island. In February 2022, Aklan required travelers and returning residents to secure hotel vouchers or tourist QR codes via its AKQUIRE System before they are allowed entry or re-entry into the province. Travelers needed to present proof of identification, confirmed hotel bookings, negative RT-PCR test, round trip flights, and other travel details, in order to get a tourist QR code. The provincial government said it decided to remove the requirements as its COVID-19 cases has been "at a minimum." Would you like to receive our news updates? Signup today! 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Shipbuilder targets Southeast Asia, Middle East, Latin America By Park Jae-hyuk ULSAN Foreign employees at domestic shipyards have been prohibited from naval ship construction zones, despite the Korean shipbuilding industrys heavy reliance on migrant labor. Starting in December, however, dozens of foreign workers will participate in the construction of warships at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) shipyard in Ulsan. Around 60 proven Filipino workers holding E-7 visas will join the construction of corvettes to be exported to their homeland, HD HHI Executive Vice President Park Yong-yeol, head of naval and special ship production and planning, told reporters at the companys shipyard, Monday. They will also learn from us about how to build naval ships. The unusual personnel exchange is a result of the shipbuilders attempt to focus more on exporting naval ships than selling its warships to the Korean Navy. According to HD HHI, the Philippines asked the Korean firm to build 10 naval ships, including two corvettes, to modernize the countrys navy. On Wednesday, Philippine Flag Officer-in-Command Toribio Dulinayan Adaci Jr. visited HD HHIs shipyard to attend a ceremony to celebrate the beginning of the construction of the corvettes for the Southeast Asian country. HD HHI Senior Executive Vice President Joo Won-ho, head of naval & special ship business unit, said the companys export of naval ships must be increased for the business unit to achieve its goal of generating 2 trillion won ($1.5 billion) in annual revenue by 2030. He also said that demand for naval ships is growing from Southeast Asia and the Middle East amid intensifying geopolitical tensions, as well as from Latin American countries in the wake of the retirement of submarines they imported from Germany. Choi Tae-bok, the business units director of strategic communication, who was a former naval officer, emphasized that it is impossible to make enough profit from selling warships to the Korean Navy, due to the soaring construction costs. From an industrial perspective, Korea needs strategies to upgrade its naval ship sector, he said. To show its ability to build warships, HD HHI allowed reporters to look around the interior of the newly-built Aegis destroyer named after King Jeongjo the Great of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). Journalists were also able to see the exterior of the Korean Navys next-generation frigate, the Chungnam, which is also called a mini-Aegis ship. The floors and important weapon systems of the two ships were covered to prevent any damage before actual operations. After multiple test operations, they will be delivered to the Korean Navy next year. HD HHI explained that the Jeongjo the Great destroyer is equipped with advanced defense and strike systems, compared to the previous Aegis destroyer. It also has the ability to detect, trace and intercept the enemys ballistic missile on the sea. Given that the Korean Navys Aegis system reportedly succeeded in tracking the North Korean rocket launched on Tuesday, the planned deployment of the Jeongjo the Great destroyer is expected to help strengthen South Koreas national defense. HD HHI also seeks to participate in a project to build submarines for the Canadian Navy. The company has developed various submarine technologies, such as a power supply system using lithium batteries. The projects size is too big for a single company to undertake, so domestic shipbuilders and the government should organize a team to win the order, Joo said. In response to a question about HD HHIs plan to enter the U.S. naval ship market, he answered that the company is considering various options, including the acquisition of an American shipbuilder, investments in a local firm and the establishment of a local subsidiary. A group of nonfiction writers has filed a class-action suit against OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly infringing on their copyrighted materials by training the AI chatbot ChatGPT on their written works and academic journals without their consent. The suit one of several filed against the AI platform provider that make a similar complaint comes as OpenAI ends a tumultuous five days with the reinstatement of Sam Altman as OpenAI's chief executive. His return was spurred by employees, investors, and allies rallying to his defense after his ouster by the company's board of directors last week. Julian Sancton, author of the New York Times bestseller Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgicas Journey Into the Dark Antarctic, is the principal plaintiff named in the suit, which accuses OpenAI and Microsoft of blatantly ignoring copyright laws for their own financial gain. OpenAI and Microsoft have built a business valued into the tens of billions of dollars by taking the combined works of humanity without permission, the lawsuit, filed by law firm Susman Godfrey LLP, alleged. Rather than pay for intellectual property, they pretend as if the laws protecting copyright do not exist. The suit cites the years of conception, research, and writing spent by authors on their works which OpenAI uses without their permission as its basis for infringement. Sancton, for instance, spent five years and tens of thousands of dollars traveling around the world to complete research for his bestselling book, according to the lawsuit. Meanwhile, its become part of a dataset used to train ChatGPT, and thus excerpts from it as well as a massive corpus of copyrighted material have been reproduced without permission or compensation, according to the lawsuit. In training their models, Defendants reproduced copyrighted material to exploit precisely what the Copyright Act was designed to protect: the elements of protectible expression within them, like the style, word choice, and arrangement and presentation of facts, the suit alleged. Further, while OpenAI is worth a fortune, neither OpenAI nor Microsoft pays compensation to the authors for their intellectual property, the plaintiffs argue, making the basis of the OpenAI platform nothing less than the rampant theft of copyrighted works, according to the suit. The plaintiffs are asking to be rewarded damages and restitution as well as that the defendants be forced to permanently refrain from the current infringement of their rights. Neither Microsoft nor OpenAI immediately responded to separate requests for comment. Precedent-setting cases The lawsuit is not the first to challenge the use of copyrighted materials in ChatGPT and other OpenAI-based platforms, which users can search for source material that the platform mines from published works. However, so far no judge has given artists or creators a clear victory in their cases, though they have paved the way for this potential. The suit also is one of only a handful of such cases to name Microsoft alongside OpenAI as a defendant. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, the technology of that powers its Bing Chat bot; in return, OpenAI exclusively uses Microsoft as a cloud partner. At the same time, the two are competitors with OpenAI licensing its technology to others not to mention that they've been embroiled in a CEO tug-of-war for the last week. In a separate class action lawsuit against AI-generated image service providers Stability AI, Midjourney, and DevianArt, a US district judge ruled that determining whether generated images may be in direct violation of copyright laws is not plausible at the moment. However, the judge in response to a motion to dismiss the case filed by the image service providers gave the plaintiffs permission to amend their submission on how the companies violated any copyright laws, thus potentially paving the way for a win in the future for those claiming copyright infringement. Another class-action lawsuit has challenged the legality of GitHub's Copilot AI-driven coding assistant due to the AI having been trained on public GitHub repositories. Creators who posted code under open source licenses on GitHub claim that the technology violates their rights. A decision in that case, filed in a US District Court in San Francisco on behalf of potentially millions of coders, is pending. If comments on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, are any indication, the court of public opinion also is split on whether copyright infringement lawsuits are valid at a time when technology, particularly AI, is evolving so quickly. A tweet by X user Mike (@OneGodel) suggested that people who think copyright should be upheld in light of AI advancements are living in the dark ages, to which user Cutesy Carrot (@Carrot_breath) tweeted back, If you ever made something of value you would know that copyright is good. Small Business Saturday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday are real sales days, but Travel Tuesday really wants to be part of the crowd. The event is now in its seventh year and scheduled for November 28th, out to tempt travelers with bigger and better discounts on travel. Travel Tuesday is starting to get some cred. It may not be at the top of your shopping list, but according to Hoppers data, the national travel shopping event historically has more deals on travel than any other day in the post-Thanksgiving sales week. In fact, Travel Deal Tuesday has more deals than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined according to Hayley Berg, lead economist at Hopper. "Travel Deal Tuesday has consistently become one of the best days of the year to book travel so for anyone eyeing trips for 2024, November 28th will be a great day to score a good deal!!, Berg told ConsumerAffairs. Since its Travel Tuesdays time to shine, Berg thinks airlines will beat last years 2 million buy notifications that Hopper registered on Travel Deal Tuesday an average of 20 deals per second on this travel holiday, 42% more than the average day! And, as one mega-traveler told ConsumerAffairs, if youve never taken the time to check out Travel Tuesday, its worth the effort. "I know of someone who found an excellent deal for a round-trip flight on Frontier from New York City to Chicago for $75. That's the best Travel Tuesday deal I've seen for a one-off flight, Liam Hunt, director at GoldIRAGuide, told us. Youve got to think 'experience' when it comes to Travel Tuesday Austin Lowe, president of Travelpass.com says Travel Tuesday is about more than the transactional nature of trip-planning. We see it as an opportunity to emphasize the experiences that are more readily available as opposed to other times of the year, Lowe told ConsumerAffairs. This could be college students experiencing their first time away from home or families seeking an affordable opportunity for a memorable reunion. Travel Tuesday ensures the emotional aspects of travel arent compromised by high costs. To Lowes point, Hoppers Berg is forecasting amazing cross-section deals this year with discounts of up to 80% off trips to Hawaii, Orlando, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and more. The company promises that it has over 120 hotels, 30 tourism boards and several airlines already committed to offering deals on November 28th. Among those are airlines such as Aer Lingus, Air New Zealand, Explore Azores Islands, Fiji Airways, French Bee, Porter Airlines, SATA Azores Airlines and Singapore Airlines. The hotel deals are particularly impressive with discounts like 50% off all hotels in Bali and Madrid, 40% off all hotels in Phoenix, and 35% off all hotels in Paris. How to stay on top of the deals As far as airlines deals go, most are holding their cards close to their chest, but Julie Ramhold at Dealnews suggests that travelers do three things to stay in the loop for Travel Tuesday specials: Sign up for emails. Be ready to pull the trigger because deals can sell out quickly. Check out your favorite providers. Lowe added a couple of suggestions of his own. One is to opt for refundable rooms first. Secure a hotel reservation while continuing to keep a pulse on other deals, even going past Travel Tuesday and closer to the actual dates of your trip, he suggests. Explore alternative booking channels like platforms with multi-supplier providers, travel agents or member discounts. The big hack I share with all travelers is calling into platforms directly, as some of the best unadvertised deals, including those for the holidays, are often available over the phone. How to keep from being disappointed Ramhold says that theres two gotchas that are lying in the weeds on some of the Travel Tuesday deals: Blackout dates and the fine print. Reading the fine print has always been important, but it's even more so now. You should be aware of any cancellation policies and procedures, should an issue come up and you're unable to keep your booking, Ramhold said. Many companies have stopped being lenient with their cancellation policies as the global pandemic emergency has ended, so it's important to know what your options are if you have to cancel your trip. Another hoodwink is artificial (or fake) discounts the latest shopping challenge. Hunt says hes found that airlines will frequently discount a specific travel route for a specific period rather than an open-ended discount. Bear in mind that many of the listed prices on airline websites are slashed, but these pre-promotional prices are artificially raised to give the illusion of a discount. I recommend checking out Flyertalk and blogs such as ThePointsGuy to find authentic deals on airfare on Travel Tuesday. Sam Altman and OpenAI's board have opened discussions to bring back the former CEO of the ChatGPT owner, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Talks are happening between Altman and at least one board member, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, the report said. Altman could return as a director on a transitional board and the talks also involve some investors of the artificial intelligence startup. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The company fired Altman in a surprise move on Friday and before the weekend was over, OpenAI investor Microsoft hired him and Greg Brockman, another co-founder of the startup. But things appeared fluid, as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told media on Monday "irrespective of where Sam is, he's working with Microsoft" and that governance at OpenAI needed to change. Altman's ouster started a revolt at the company. Nearly all of its more than 700 employees threatened to quit in a letter demanding the resignation of the board and reinstatement of Altman and Brockman. Nadella told CNBC he was open to staff staying at OpenAI or coming to the Windows maker. OpenAI interim CEO Emmett Shear has told people close to the company that he does not plan to stay if the board cannot clearly convey the reason for Altman's ouster, the Bloomberg report said on Tuesday. Some investors in OpenAI are considering suing the company's board, sources told Reuters on Monday, on worries that they could lose millions of dollars they invested with the potential collapse of the hottest startup in the rapidly growing generative AI sector. Other than Quora's D'Angelo, OpenAI's four-person board consisted of Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner and OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever as of Friday. (Reuters) As anyone who has faced off against the despicable Duolingo owl on the daily knows, learning another language can be tricky. It would at least be a little easier if it was simply a situation of learning the right words and swapping them out to create an Osaka-ready sentence. Instead, there are so, so many possible ways to shit the bed when it comes to moving from one language to another. Youd think that this knowledge would cause huge, global companies to, at the very least, shoot proposed translations to a handful of citizens in the country of question as a means of double-checking. But over and over again, they do not. In particular, here are five massive translation missteps made while trying to expand food empires 5 McDonalds Launches the Big Pimp Pixabay Keep your flippin hand strong. It turns out you can run into trouble even when translating something that is, essentially, nonsense. If youre McDonalds, and youre looking to expand your global power, its only natural that you would do so on the heels of your greatest warrior: the Big Mac. Now, as far as the word big goes, no problem. Thats something most languages are going to have worked out at some point in their development. Whats a little tougher is translating Mac, which is basically a repurposed nickname. A shortening of a surname which, by definition, doesnt have a direct translation. The easy path would be to leave the name as is, and have the French word for Big Mac be Big Mac but in a French accent. Instead, they tried switching it to Gros Mec. Gros, because, well, thats big in French. Mec is where they made the mistake. While, I assume, going for something phonetic, but Frenchier, they accidentally stumbled upon the word for pimp. Meaning their most famous sandwich was now known as the Big Pimp. Advertisement 4 KFC: Finger-Eating Good Pixabay Chicken is a pretty important part of the phrase chicken fingers. Diners across the globe agree: Its not cool to eat human meat. A preference that I think no one is particularly trying to upset. Even if, from a purely logical view, we are indeed nothing but red meat packed onto a series of bones and operated by electric crackles, we try not to think about that fact. Take it from me: If you think about it too much that way, you end up with a Zoloft prescription. Chickens, on the other hand, are not tugging any heartstrings. Even in the tier list of animals we feel bad about eating, theyre hurt by the fact that theyre sharp all over and not particularly personable. So when launching in China, KFC had a pretty clear path to success: Tell everyone you are serving delicious chicken, and dont make people think about cannibalism. A path they unfortunately, failed to stay on thanks to a mistranslation of their famous slogan, Finger-lickin good. The version they plastered up around China instead said, Eat your fingers off. More of the command of a demon occupying your body than a fast-food chicken-slinger. Advertisement 3 Pepsi Promises Necromancy Pixabay Turns out grandma just needs a little corn syrup. Advertisement Something fairly important in advertising should you want to avoid lawsuits is that what you promise has at least a 0.00001 percent chance of being possible thanks to your product. Because of that, you generally dont want to advertise effects that are impossible without the assistance of not only magic, but powerful, dark incantations. Was that Pepsis intent when advertising in Japan? I doubt it, but thats the claim they inadvertently made all the same. They were attempting to launch a new campaign centering around their popular slogan Come Alive! Youre in the Pepsi Generation. Inhibiting the worldwide effectiveness of that slogan was a translation error that took it in an entirely different, necromantic direction. The message they ended up sending out in China (though there are claims of other countries as well) was this: Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back From the Dead. Advertisement To be fair though, that might not hurt sales if youre suddenly sending everyone to the local cemetery with a two-liter bottle and hopes of the worlds weirdest family reunion. 2 Delicious Ke-Kou-Ke-La Pixabay Delicious candle horse! Sometimes you dont need to go far to beef it big-time in translation terms. Coca-Cola found this out the hard way when they did nothing more than try to phonetically translate their name for the Chinese market, giving them the name Ke-Kou-Ke-La. On a purely auditory level, it seems like a perfectly reasonable choice. Unfortunately, how languages work is that combinations of sounds and syllables have meanings, some much older than soda. Advertisement Advertisement Instead of sounding out a soft drink, they found that theyd constructed a brand new, unsettling phrase. In one dialect, it meant bite the wax tadpole. Strange, and not inspiring thoughts of refreshment, but maybe not fully appetite-ruining. The translation in another dialect, though, female horse stuffed with wax, well, that sounds like something out of NBCs Hannibal, not a convenience store shelf. Theyd regroup and change it to ko-kou-ko-le which means happiness in the mouth. Youre telling me you were that close the whole time to a literally perfect opportunity and instead you were like, Wax-filled horse, nice? When David Brent described being 39 years old as being in my 30s, are we sure Ricky Gervais knew the line was a joke? The provocative British stand-up star will put an exclamation mark on his record-breaking Armageddon tour with a Netflix special by the same name, which is set to premiere on December 25th, a date clearly chosen to allow Gervais to make his signature snarky comments about the Christian religion for promotional purposes. Gervais current act has been one of his most successful thus far, as one show back in May earned a Guinness World Record for highest-grossing single stand-up performance in history. Worth noting about the accolade, however, is that Gervais, like anyone who earns a place in the record-keeping companys annual tome, had to both apply and pay for the honor. Despite his carefully curated public persona as an iconoclast who thumbs his nose at ego, pomp and circumstance, appearances are, apparently, very important to the British lord of the edge. Following the special announcement and an appropriate number of Jesus jokes from Gervais, the 62-year-old stand-up answered a question from a fan wondering whether they could watch Armageddon with their grandparents, writing back, Depends. Do they enjoy watching a middle age man swearing, joking about the holocaust and pretending to wank off a paedophile? To which Twitter has responded, Does your elderly brain think that its still 2003? Advertisement Obviously, the established definition of middle-aged changes from person to person, but the defining characteristic of the category should be, you know, that its near the middle of an average persons life? Somehow it seems unlikely that a 124-year-old Gervais will look back on the Armageddon tour as his midlife crisis and laugh at the vanity record he bought for himself. In the hours since Gervais snuck in the self-unaware self-evaluation into his self-promotion, fans and haters alike have been taking turns dunking on him for thinking that four years before the official retirement age in the U.K. is middle-aged. And, for a man so known for his caustic celebrity criticisms at so many Golden Globes ceremonies, its only fair for his followers to give it right back to him during his Golden Years. Its a universal constant: No matter who you are or where you come from, when you get bonked on the shin, its cursin time. In fact, swearing across all cultures tends to have a lot of linguistic similarities because, on a human gut level, certain sounds just feel more profane. Whats more interesting, though, are the ways in which the way we swear is different. Some cultures have hilariously specific means of insulting and outbursting. 4 Dutch Swearing Is Weirdly Disease-Based Get cancer is honestly a pretty good insult, and youll probably hear it as a tourist doing touristy things in the Netherlands. You might also be called a cancer sufferer or cancer whore, which are both more confusing and downright upsetting for entirely different reasons, or hear someone yell at their outdated cancer phone or tell you to quit your cancering about tulip prices. Its not just cancer you might also be told to get cholera or typhoid off but man, those people really hate cancer. And its not all that clear why. Of course, theres plenty of cancer in the Netherlands, but no more than many other European countries. Sure, they suffered the Plague along with everyone else, but not uniquely so. Dutch linguist Dick Smakman (the origins of whose interest in why things are called what they are can only be guessed at) chalks it up to a fairly inexplicable national obsession with cleanliness and fear of germs, which notably dont cause cancer. Wed try to explain that to some Dutchmen, but theyd probably just tell us to get whooping cough. 3 Quebec Is All About the Catholic Church English speakers enjoy a good goddamn, but French Canada has turned it into an art. In fact, an entire category of profanity common in Quebec would skate on by every censor outside the province. For instance, tabarnak is equivalent to the fuck-word, and you got to hand it to them on that one because tabernacle would be really fun to scream when you stub your toe. Other sacres, as the obscenities related to the Catholic Church are called, include calisse (chalice), osti (host, or communion wafer) and ciboire (the container that holds the host). They can even be modifiers; for example, calling a guy a jagoff is one thing, but calling him a jagoff of the host means hes a serious jagoff. Advertisement So what does Quebec have against the Church, aside from the obvious stuff? It actually has more to do with their affinity for the Pope than animosity, at least in the past. The province used to be one of the most Catholic places in the world, with more than 90 percent of the population regularly attending Catholic services, in large part because the Church was there for them when they couldnt stop rebelling against the government in the 1800s. That doesnt do a lot to explain why Catholic terminology would be considered bad, but hey, everyone loves genitals, and those are considered indecent, too. It all changed in 1960, when a competent government was finally installed, so many young Quebecers today dont even know what a tabernacle is, much less why your mother is one. Advertisement 2 The Japanese Swear With Pronouns Japanese is unique among world languages in that it doesnt contain a lot of profanity. Fortunately, thats because it doesnt need to. Japanese culture places such a heavy emphasis on politeness and respect that there are all sorts of ways to be passive-aggressive that wouldnt even register to a foreigner. Hell, bowing too reverently or not reverently enough could earn you a lifelong grudge. Advertisement One of those ways is with the second-person pronoun, i.e. you. Its customary in Japanese not to use it all and instead call someone by their own name like theyre not even in the room, which sounds weird to us but is vastly preferred over navigating the minefield that is all the different ways to say you in Japanese. They all imply some specific degree of familiarity and relative placement on the social ladder, so if you goof up (or youre trying to send a message), you might call your waiter your royal highness or the president bro. In either case, youre making enemies. Just in time for the holidays, one of the OG Simpsons creators, director David Silverman, has shared what is likely the very first Homer strangles Bart illustration, dating all the way back to the Tracey Ullman days. Barts siblings dont seem too broken up about the corporal punishment, mocking their brother with their own GAAAAHHHH! faces. This one is from a 1988 episode called Family Portrait. Click right here to get the best of Cracked sent to your inbox. Its the latest throwdown in the Should He Strangle or Shouldnt He? controversy surrounding The Simpsons. It started earlier this fall when the show aired an episode with Homer showing off his grip strength, enhanced by years of strangulating his son. See, Marge? Strangling the boy has paid off! But Homer seemed to be signaling a new era when he declared, Just kidding, I dont do that anymore. Times have changed. Media reported that a new day had dawned on the long-running comedy, but the shows producers were quick to nix that idea. Not only was Homer still in the asphyxiation business, The Simpsons accused news outlets of exploiting Homers enlightened parenting skills for clicks. Advertisement Advertisement Simpsons co-creator James L. Brooks jumped into the fray as well. Dont think for a second were changing anything, he told PEOPLE. Nothing's getting tamed. Nothing, nothing, nothing. He'll continue to be strangled(if) you want to use that awful term for it. It isnt clear what less-awful term Brooks has in mind. Choked? Gagged? Throttled? Pick your euphemism but the bottom line remains the same: Bart will continue to be loved by his father in a specific way. Despite creators insistence that neck grappling will continue to be a show staple, IGN pointed out that the show, consciously or unconsciously, has moved away from that particular aggression. In fact, Homer hasnt strangled the boy since Season 31, which aired between 2019 and 2020. Now it seems were guaranteed to see it again. Its the same phenomenon that compels Dave Chappelle to keep telling trans jokes -- once the world says something is off-limits, a certain kind of comic mind has to go there. Its in the DNA, that same gene that practically forced Gilbert Gottfried to tell those awful airline jokes just days after 9/11. Maybe Im self-destructive, maybe Im just plain stupid, he said on the Good One podcast. But if someone tells me dont do something, then I want to do it. Silverman appears to be cut from the same cloth as he doubles down on choking as comedy. It wont be the last time I draw this The Australian federal government has released the 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy with a focus on protecting the countrys most vulnerable citizens and businesses. At first glance, the strategy covers a lot of ground, and the government will need to work hard and fast to ensure some of all the actions proposed are put in place before the next big breach. As previously reported, the cyber strategy is based on the idea of six cyber shields to provide an additional layer of defence against cyber threats. These shields aim to create strong businesses and citizens, safe technology, world-class threat sharing and blocking, protected critical infrastructure, sovereign capabilities and resilient region and global leadership. I don't believe that the programs described in the first 'shield' (strong citizens and business) can either be operationalised, or for programs that do already exist, be scaled up to deliver within a meaningful timeframe. While I have significant general concerns regarding the wholly inadequate funding for the 2030 strategy, these concerns become particularly relevant with respect to this first 'shield', KordaMentha executive director, cybersecurity Tony Vizza told CSO. On top of $2.3 billion already being spent on cybersecurity, the government has committed $586.9 million to execute the seven-year strategy. The money will go towards the following: $290.8 million to provide support for small and medium businesses, build public awareness, fight cybercrime, break the ransomware business model, and strengthen the security of Australians' identities. $4.8 million to establish consumer standards for smart devices and software. $9.4 million to build a threat-sharing platform for the health sector. $143.6 million to strengthen critical infrastructure protections and uplift government cyber security. Growing our sovereign cyber capabilities by investing $8.6 million to "professionalise" the country's cyber workforce and accelerate the cyber industry. $129.7 million investment in regional cooperation, cyber capacity uplift programs, and leadership in cyber governance forums on the international stage. The federal government had shared earlier this week an 18.2-million investment to help small and medium businesses improve cybersecurity resilience and response to cyber-attacks, also part of the strategy. Given the federal government claims that there are 2.5 million small businesses operating in Australia today, this equates just more than a takeaway coffee's worth of cyber assistance for each small business over the next seven years. It's a pittance and it's nowhere near enough, Vizza said. The delivery of the strategy The Australian cybersecurity strategy has most, if not all, aspects of cybersecurity covered but there are a lot of things to focus on and the timelines for the delivery of each is not clear. The 28-page action plan details each action the strategy proposes and the departments that will be involved, but not by when each is expected to be in place. It only states some will commence immediately, and the plan will be reviewed every two years. A lack of concrete steps to deliver the strategy worries some in the industry. The strategy aims high and aspires to meet the needs of as many stakeholders as possible. It's often said in aiming to please all, you please none. I feel that this outcome is highly likely here and as a result, we will see a failure of this Strategy to achieve many of its stated outcomes, Vizza said. Australia's top cybersecurity leaders and their teams have been recognised at this year's CSO30 Awards at an exclusive, invite-only event in Sydney. The CSO30 Australia Awards is aligned to Foundrys global awards programme and celebrates the leading individuals and organisations delivering cybersecurity initiatives that have changed the way the business is protected. Along with their cybersecurity initiatives, nominees were also evaluated based on how they collaborated with and influenced their stakeholders to improve cybersecurity and resilience within the enterprise. Judges also assessed their contribution to the wider cybersecurity community beyond their organisations. This year the CSO30 recognised two individuals with Business Value and Leadership awards for demonstrating outstanding leadership and business value in cybersecurity. In the Business Value category, Dan Maslin, Group Chief Information Security Officer at Monash University, took out the top award. Richard Heron, Global Chief Information Security Officer at Frontier Software, was highly commended by the judges in this category. Daniela Fernandez Palacios, Head of Information Security at PayPal; Cathy OSullivan, Editor-in-Chief APAC CIO & CSO, and David Geber, General Manager, Information Security, REST. Foundry In the Leadership category, Daniela Fernandez Palacios, Head of Information Security at PayPal, took out top place. David Geber, General Manager, Information Security from REST, was also highly commended. The United States "strongly" condemns North Korea's latest launch of what it claims to be a space launch vehicle, the White House said Tuesday, calling it a "brazen" violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. The North launched a rocket carrying a claimed military reconnaissance satellite southward from the Tongchang-ri area on its west coast on Tuesday (Korea time), according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, following two failed attempts in May and August. "The United States strongly condemns the DPRK for its launch of a space launch vehicle (SLV) using ballistic missile technology, which is a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, raises tensions, and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond," National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. DPRK stands for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "This space launch involved technologies that are directly related to the DPRK intercontinental ballistic missile program," she added, urging "all countries to condemn this launch and call on the DPRK to come to the table for serious negotiations." President Joe Biden and his national security team are assessing the situation in close coordination with allies and partners, she said. The spokesperson also reiterated that the door for diplomacy has not closed. "But Pyongyang must immediately cease its provocative actions and instead choose engagement," she said. "The United States will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and the defense of our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies." The State Department did not confirm whether the North's launch was successful, saying the U.S.' government assessment is still ongoing. "We condemn the DPRK's unlawful launch of a military reconnaissance satellite today," Matthew Miller, the department's spokesperson, told a press briefing. "This launch utilizes ballistic missile technology, which includes space launch vehicles, it violates multiple UNSC resolutions, and we will continue to work with the international community to send a strong signal to the DPRK that its actions will only intensify its isolation as it undermines stability and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula," he added. The North's latest launch drew keen attention amid speculation that Russia might have provided the North with military technology in return for the North's supply of military equipment and munitions to help Moscow's war against Ukraine. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said that she is not aware if the North's launch had anything to do with Russia's assistance. "I'm not aware of anything to do with this launch and Russia," she told a press briefing. "All I can tell you is that we are aware of the space launch vehicle that North Korea launched, I believe is today." On Monday, USS Carl Vinson, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, arrived at a naval base in Busan, 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul, in an apparent show of readiness against the North's launch preparation. South Korea is also preparing to place its first military satellite mounted on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Nov. 30 a move that some said might have put pressure on Pyongyang. The North has been striving to secure a space-based reconnaissance asset as part of key defense projects unveiled at the eighth congress of its ruling party in early 2021. Observers said that the North appears intent to secure intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets as it is far behind the allies in ISR capabilities despite its focus on developing an array of formidable weapons systems, including submarine-launched ballistic missiles and tactical nuclear arms. (Yonhap) Vulnerability in Citrix's software, known as Citrix Bleed, was exploited by a ransomware group, LockBit 3.0, to attack aviation giant Boeing and other organizations. Last month, Russia-based ransomware group LockBit 3.0 claimed responsibility for the attack on Boeing. Subsequently, it removed Boeing's name from the leak site and extended the deadline from November 2 to November 10. However, talks between Boeing and LockBit 3.0, if any, were not successful, as the latter published about 50GB of data allegedly stolen from Boeing's systems. LockBit is believed to have hacked as many as 800 organizations in 2023 alone. "We are aware that, in connection with this incident, a criminal ransomware actor has released information it alleges to have taken from our systems," Boeing said in a statement. "We continue to investigate the incident and will remain in contact with law enforcement, regulatory authorities, and potentially impacted parties, as appropriate." According to some estimates, US organizations hit by LockBit paid the ransomware gang as much as $90 million as ransom between 2020 and mid-2023. Since its formation in 2020, LockBit has emerged as one of the world's biggest hacking groups. Advisory based on data shared by Boeing Based on the data "voluntarily shared" by Boeing, a cybersecurity advisory was issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the FBI and Australian Cyber Security Center. "Citrix Bleed, known to be leveraged by LockBit 3.0 affiliates, allows threat actors to bypass password requirements and multifactor authentication (MFA), leading to successful session hijacking of legitimate user sessions on Citrix NetScaler web application delivery control (ADC) and Gateway appliances," said the advisory. Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks in New York City as she announces the deployment of new resources to combat online hate and directs Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services to develop a Media Literacy Tool Kit for K-12 Schools to provide critical training and resources to youth. Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks in New York City Israel's government and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. Officials from Qatar, which has been mediating secret negotiations, as well as the U.S., Israel and Hamas have for days been saying a deal was imminent. Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 hostages, taken when its fighters surged into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. A statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting. For every additional 10 hostages released, the pause would be extended by another day, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. "Israel's government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal," said the statement. Hamas said the 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children who are held in Israeli jails. The truce deal will also allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza, the Palestinian group said in a statement. Israel had committed not to attack or arrest anyone in all parts of Gaza during the truce period, it added. U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed the deal. "Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released," Biden said in a statement. The Qatar government said 50 civilian women and children hostages would be released from Gaza in exchange for the release "of a number of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons". The starting time of the truce would be announced within the next 24 hours, it said in a statement. Israel's justice ministry posted a list of about 300 Palestinian prisoners slated for release, a publication that appeared intended to allow for any last-minute legal challenges. The accord is the first truce of a war in which Israeli bombardments have flattened swathes of Hamas-ruled Gaza, killed 13,300 civilians in the tiny densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to authorities in Gaza. But Netanyahu said Israel's broader mission was unchanged. "We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel," he said in a recorded message at the start of the government meeting. Hamas said in its statement: "As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the look out to defend our people and defeat the occupation." Three Americans, including a 3-year-old girl whose parents were among those killed during Hamas's Oct. 7 attack, are expected to be among the hostages to be released, a senior U.S. official said. In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the U.S., Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, Israel's government has said. Israeli media said the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. Implementing the deal must wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, reports said. Kamelia Hoter Ishay, the grandmother of 13-year-old Gali Tarshansky, who is believed to be held in Gaza, said she would not believe reports of a deal until she got a call that the teenager was freed. "And then I'll know that it's really over and I can breathe a sigh of relief and say that's it, it's over," she said. Qadura Fares, head of the Commission for Prisoners' Affairs in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, told Reuters that among more than 7,800 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel were about 85 women and 350 minors. Most were detained without charges or for incidents such as hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers, not for launching militant attacks, he said. Qatar's chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be working inside Gaza to facilitate the hostages' release. He said that the truce means there would be "no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing." Al-Khulaifi added that Qatar hopes the deal "will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire. And that's our intention." Hamas has to date released only four captives: U.S. citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct. 20, citing "humanitarian reasons," and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct. 23. The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel had died. "We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death," Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel. As attention focused on the hostage release deal, fighting on the ground raged on. In the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, an Israeli drone strike killed five Palestinians and wounded others in the Tolkurm camp, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. Mounir Al-Barsh, director-general of Gaza's health ministry, told Al Jazeera TV that the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City. Israel said militants were operating from the facility and threatened to act against them within four hours, he said. On Tuesday, Israel also said its forces had encircled the Jabalia refugee camp, a congested urban extension of Gaza City where Hamas has been battling advancing Israeli armoured forces. WAFA said 33 people were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on part of Jabalia. In southern Gaza, Hamas-affiliated media said 10 people were killed and 22 injured by an Israeli air strike on an apartment in the city of Khan Younis. Reuters could not immediately verify the accounts of fighting on either side. (Reuters) The case against Michael Darling, the Gloversville man accused of killing his estranged wife, is not expected to proceed until next year following an abrupt adjournment at a scheduled sentencing last month. Attorney Joseph Giannetti, representing Darling in Montgomery County Court on Tuesday, requested time to review the voluminous discovery filed in connection with the indictment against his new client and to file any motions as needed before the matter moves forward. Not saying that there will be motions, but just allowing us the opportunity to make them if we deem it appropriate, Giannetti said. Montgomery County District Attorney Lorraine Diamond reaffirmed her previous request for an Outley hearing to consider allegations Darling was not truthful during a pre-sentence investigation conducted by the probation department after he accepted a plea offer this summer. In the 1993 New York state case People v. Outley, the appellate court addressed whether a court could impose a sentence higher than that promised at the time of a guilty plea, if the defendant violated a post plea, presentence, condition. That remains our request, Diamond said. In August, Darling, 44, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, admitting to causing the death of his estranged wife, Kristine Howland Darling, by gunshot wound at her home in Fort Johnson on Feb. 7, 2019. The plea bargain carried a recommended sentence of 17 years in state prison followed by five years of post-release supervision. Due to the allegations connected to the pre-sentencing report, Diamond now plans to seek an enhanced sentence of 25 years in prison, which is the maximum for the manslaughter charge. Judge Chad Brown set a schedule to accommodate each of the requests while giving the defense attorney and his client an opportunity to review and discuss the criminal case. You have an attorney, I would encourage you to talk to attorney Giannetti, Brown said to Darling. If you have questions, discuss them with him. Darling spoke only to answer questions from the judge before he was led out of the courtroom to return to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, where he has been held since May. Any motions by the defense will be due by Dec. 22 and any response will be due by Jan. 5. The next appearance in the matter, which could include an Outley hearing, is set for 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 23. A new sentencing date has not been set. Darling was expected to have already faced sentencing on Oct. 20. The case was abruptly adjourned in court that day by Brown due to several legal filings from Darling seeking to dismiss his attorney and obtain new counsel. The judge relieved the defendants previous attorney from the case and provided time for him to secure a new lawyer. Over a dozen of the victims family and friends were present in the courtroom for the scheduled sentencing. They acknowledged their disappointment over the development, but said they were willing to wait to see justice served as part of a properly completed case. Darling was indicted earlier this year on charges of second-degree murder, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and two counts of tampering with evidence. It is alleged that Darling killed his estranged wife and then prepared false physical evidence by staging the crime scene to appear as a suicide attempt. He is also accused of concealing a cell phone, believing it would be sought by officials as potential evidence. Darling originally reported the death as a suicide. Family and friends had suspicions about her death since it occurred, which they shared with law enforcement. Those suspicions were publicly surfaced by Megan Rizzo, a lifelong friend of the victim, on Facebook at Seeking Justice for Kristine Howland in January 2021. The investigation culminated in a grand jury indictment on May 26. Darling was allegedly tipped off to the proceedings and went into hiding before he could be taken into custody. Tips from the public led to his apprehension in a wooded area off Riceville Road in Mayfield on May 27. Darling had been in federal custody shortly before the grand jury was convened and local officials had intended to complete the proceedings to take him into custody prior to his release. Authorities were not given advance notice of his early release on May 8. A welfare check at Darlings home in Gloversville led to federal charges after pipe bombs were discovered there on Feb. 12, 2021. He pleaded guilty to illegally possessing firearms and unlawful possession of six pipe bombs in federal court in October 2021. In March 2022, Darling was sentenced to what was supposed to be a three-year term in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Kristine Howland Darling grew up in Gloversville and graduated from Gloversville High School, her obituary read. She was an employee at the Wilkinson Residential Health Care Facility in Amsterdam. She left behind a daughter. Leaders of the BRICS bloc of developing nations and other countries they have invited to join from next year discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Tuesday, but failed to agree a joint declaration. The virtual talks organised by current BRICS chair South Africa were the first between the group's leaders since Israel invaded Gaza in retaliation for a deadly raid by militant group Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7. BRICS comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. In August the grouping agreed to admit Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates from January, in a move aimed at accelerating its push to reshuffle a Western-dominated world order it sees as outdated. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told Tuesday's talks that diplomats did not have sufficient time to draft a declaration. "We've called upon all parties to exercise maximum restraint," Ramaphosa said in his summary of the discussions. "We affirmed ... that a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be achieved by peaceful means." Different leaders emphasised different points in their remarks. Argentina's Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero said his country recognised Israel's right "to legitimate self-defence while strictly respecting humanitarian international law," while China's Xi Jinping appeared to show more sympathy for the Palestinians. "The root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli situation is the fact that the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, their right to existence, and their right of return have long been ignored," Xi said. Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the crisis on the failure of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. "We call for joint efforts of the international community aimed at de-escalating the situation, a ceasefire and finding a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And the BRICS states... could play a key role in this work," Putin said. (Reuters) The case that involves the so desperately sad death of Nicola Bulley has shone the brightest light on policing's relationship with the media since the Leveson Review in 2012. The College of Policing, in reviewing the case, has unearthed a strain in the relationship between the media and the police felt across the country. Many parts of this important relationship have cooled. We have heard reports from journalists who struggle to have constructive conversations with press offices, and policing colleagues have spoken of hostile approaches taken by some in the media. There can be a reluctance by officers to provide appropriate briefings to support police investigations, and a lack of acknowledgment of care needed when sharing information about police operations. All of these issues boil down to a common theme, a lack of trust. Mutual suspicion can create scenarios where decisions are taken that are not in the public interest. Many parts of this important relationship have cooled, writes CHIEF CONSTABLE ANDY MARSH (pictured) The case that involves the so desperately sad death of Nicola Bulley has shone the brightest light on policing's relationship with the media since the Leveson Review in 2012 A crew from Lancashire Fire and Rescue service search the River Wyre for Nicola Bulley in February Many of these calls are taken, not by press officers and frontline journalists who work together regularly, but by operational cops and news editors. People in roles that often rarely interact and yet are the ones who have to make difficult judgments from sometimes different perspectives. More than 30 years in policing has shown me the pressure that colleagues and journalists are under as they work towards a shared aim of giving the public factual, timely information. In recent years, this pressure has increased. The impact of social media on society and policing has grown dramatically. Our review shows how information about a missing person was shared and viewed hundreds of millions of times on social media channels. The scale in this one case shows the potential for information and misinformation to become a common truth, something that is only just being acknowledged within policing and other public sectors. It should not be underestimated. The financial restraints for press offices and newsrooms mean the challenges get even harder and the relationship even more important. Our communities rely on authoritative information from policing, scrutinised by accredited journalists and the media organisations they work for, to provide a trusted source to inform them of what is happening. The media holds a uniquely essential role for the police by both reporting on our public appeals for information whilst also holding us to account. We should never go back to the days where the stench of corruption hung heavily around relationships between some in the police and the media. But it appears the pendulum may have swung too far. Finding the right balance will require effort and acceptance on all sides. Police chiefs and the College of Policing stand ready to help rebuild the trust that is required. Because, as our recent review proves, without it the public will be less well served. The only fly in the ointment of the late Queen's enjoyment of Windsor Castle was the proximity of Heathrow. The closeness of the world's busiest airport caused the BBC anxiety when staging King Charles's Coronation Concert at the castle in May. Organisers feared the event might be compromised by the Civil Aviation Authority because of the dozens of planes flying overhead during the performances of Lionel Richie and Take That. The CAA agreed to the use of lasers and drones and, to the delight of the Beeb, diverted the flight paths of all Heathrow-bound planes on the night. Perhaps a posthumous condolence to the late Queen? She had joked that the late President Ronald Reagan had asked: 'Ma'am why did you build the castle so close to the airport?' The closeness of the world's busiest airport caused the BBC anxiety when staging King Charles's Coronation Concert at Windsor Castle in May Organisers feared the event might be compromised by the Civil Aviation Authority because of the dozens of planes flying overhead during the performances Recalling childhood meals with the late Queen, Princess Eugenie said she and her sister Beatrice had two sets of table manners. 'We had table manners: A was when we were with granny, and table manners Z was when we were at home,' she recalls. Mum Fergie didn't supervise their meals with HM but she was eagle-eyed at home. 'It was always like, 'We can't have knees at the table,' says Eugenie. 'If I had a knee [sitting up against] the table, mum would say, 'Are they invited to lunch?' Might dad Andrew have been having his own knees up at Woking's Pizza Express? Recalling childhood meals with the late Queen, Princess Eugenie said she and her sister Beatrice had two sets of table manners Bit of a miaow fest between Emily Maitlis and Sam McAlister after the latter's announcement that her book Scoops which includes Andrew's car crash interview was being adapted into a Netflix film, starring Gillian Anderson as Maitlis. Emily then crowed that Amazon's rival drama had secured Ruth Wilson to play her. Sam, who bristled when her role as the Newsnight producer who landed the Andrew exclusive wasn't clarioned by Emily, has now announced: 'The adaptation of my book was actually announced back in February...' Girls! Bit of a miaow fest between Emily Maitlis and Sam McAlister after the latter's announcement that her book Scoops which includes Andrew's car crash interview was being adapted into a Netflix film The BBC's security expert Frank Gardner reminded radio listeners of the perils of a live broadcast from home yesterday when he was forced to cut short his explainer on the Gaza hostages situation. 'Can you hold for one second?' he asked Radio 5 Live's host Naga Munchetty during their discussion. 'I'm about to get done by a traffic warden here. I'm just popping out. I'm so sorry. Forgive me for that.' Naga quickly recovered her poise. 'Frank, you know what? I'll let you go. You deal with that. I'll go to the news. Dearie me.' Just the ticket Naga! Naga quickly recovered her poise and let BBC's security expert Frank Gardner go as he was 'about to get done by a traffic warden' Spy biographer Ben Macintyre has defended historical inaccuracies in The Crown and the film Napoleon, saying they should be treated the same as historical novels which add new colour to an old canvas. And he cites the least accurate 'historical' film of all time as being Ken Russell's surreal Lisztomania starring Roger Daltrey as the 19th century Hungarian composer, Ringo Starr as the Pope, Rick Wakeman as Thor and ends with a spaceship attack by a zombie Richard Wagner (Paul Nicholas) dressed as Hitler. She described her chiropractor grandfather, William Flickinger, as 'touchy feely' A woman has launched a gut-wrenching investigation into sexual abuse committed by her own grandfather as she attempts to track down dozens of his victims. Photojournalist Amanda Mustard, who was raised on a Christmas tree farm in rural Pennsylvania, described William Flickinger as a 'touchy, feely grandpa.' She is now a central figure in HBO's upcoming documentary Great Photo, Lovely Life: Facing A Family's Secret, which has been nine years in the making. In it, Amanda delves into the serial abuse carried out by her grandfather as she 'reveals decades of secrecy and coverups rooted in shame and self-deception and discovers the dysfunction lurking in her own family.' Photojournalist Amanda Mustard, who was raised on a Christmas tree farm in rural Pennsylvania, described William Flickinger as a 'touchy feely grandpa' During the investigation, Amanda sits down with Flickinger, who was reportedly attracted to girls as young as four years old, for 'stark, confessional interviews' The harrowing trailer begins with footage taken during Amanda's work trips as she explains how her career has helped shape her views: 'I love that I get to make exposing the truth about something a part of my job. 'I had this new language to describe things that for my whole life I thought were just normal. 'Like the way that some men treated me and my body, that was actually assault. 'Or my touchy, feely grandpa is actually a pedophile.' Speaking about viewing old family footage featuring her grandfather, who worked as a local chiropractor, she continued: 'When I watch these tapes, I see a man with a serious problem who knows that he's not gonna get caught.' During the investigation, Amanda sits down with Flickinger, who was reportedly attracted to girls as young as four years old, for 'stark, confessional interviews.' She asked whether there was anybody that he ever felt like he could talk to about it, to which he simply sighed. And, when Amanda posed the question of whether he thought God had forgiven him, he said: 'Absolutely.' Elsewhere, it becomes clear that Amanda's relationship with her mother has been strained over the abuse and 'the complexities of the silence that followed' Speaking about viewing old family footage featuring her grandfather, who worked as a local chiropractor, she continued: 'When I watch these tapes, I see a man with a serious problem who knows that he's not gonna get caught' Amanda's mom candidly said: 'Of course I feel responsible. She's my kid, and I've always wanted to protect her' Elsewhere, it becomes clear that Amanda's relationship with her mother has been strained over the abuse and 'the complexities of the silence that followed.' Amanda's mom candidly said: 'Of course I feel responsible. She's my kid, and I've always wanted to protect her.' Turning to address her daughter directly, she added: 'If you stay angry and can't forgive somebody, you're drinking the poison yourself. You've got to let go.' But this seemingly did not sit well with Amanda who later declared: 'I would like to not have my relationship with my mom end.' The documentary sees the tenacious photojournalist posting dozens of letters to people who had previously used her grandfather as a chiropractor. The documentary sees the tenacious photojournalist (pictured as a child) posting dozens of letters to people who had previously used her grandfather as a chiropractor Flickinger, who had his chiropractor license revoked in 1982, served a modest prison sentence in 1992 - prior to that only getting two years probation for committing statutory rape The notes read: 'I'm writing to you as you may have been a past patient of William Flickinger, and I'm in the process of taking accountability for my grandfather's actions.' Amanda tearfully concludes: 'If I can be the one to step forward and on the record, say, "He did this. You can't deny it," it's the very least that I can do.' Flickinger, who had his chiropractor license revoked in 1982, served a modest prison sentence in 1992 - and prior to that only received two years probation for committing statutory rape. HBO's Great Photo, Lovely Life: Facing a Family's Secret will air on December 5. As Americans get ready to sit down with their family and friends for Thanksgiving dinner this year, there is one topic many of them hope to avoid: politics. For those who would prefer their turkey without a heated debate, TikTok creator Neko Ashi has revealed her brilliant hack for keeping the peace this holiday season. 'So Thanksgiving is coming soon, and you're dreading people arguing over politics. C'mon people! I have a solution for you,' she said at the start of her 30-second video. Instead of asking guests to not bring up politics and hoping that they oblige, she came up with a fitting punishment for those who broke her rule. TikTok creator Neko Ashi has revealed her brilliant hack for avoiding arguments about politics at Thanksgiving dinner She advised announcing at the beginning of dinner that anyone who brings up politics will be seated at the children's table and have to entertain them for the rest of the night (stock image) 'Announce at the beginning of dinner that anybody who brings up politics in any way, shape, or form will be seated at the children's table,' she advised. To add insult to injury, they will also 'be responsible for entertaining the kids for the rest of the night.' 'That should keep their mouths shut,' she said. She ended the video by wishing everyone a 'Happy Thanksgiving.' 'The holidays are stressful enough. Don't let politics make them worse!' she added in the caption. The hack would likely work in big households, but one commenter noted that they didn't have any young children at their celebration. A few also pointed out that the younger generations could be worse than the adults when it came to starting political debates. 'We don't have any kids. My Gen Z son would rip his nana apart if she tried it so she's smart enough to keep her trap shut (hopefully),' one person responded. 'The holidays are stressful enough. Don't let politics make them worse!' she added 'Our kids' table is full of tweens who talk more about politics than the adults do! Gen Alpha is fierce!' someone else added. 'I refuse to people. That solves the problem. No peopling,' another joked. Roughly six out of 10 voters want to avoid discussing politics this Thanksgiving, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll that was released on Monday. Only 29 per cent of people are looking forward to discussing the state of the country with their family and friends this year, compared to the 61 per cent who are firmly against it. 'A healthy dose of "zip it" will be on the menu as voters acknowledge that if they plan on "talking turkey" over the big meal, it will be about the food and not about politics,' Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said of the results. And it's something that the majority of Democrats and Republicans can agree on. The survey found that the answers were similar across all groups, regardless of age and political affiliation. A heated debate has broken out on the web over the 'influencer inflection' - with some people posting videos mocking the 'irritating' voice used by online stars and others encouraging them to 'stop making fun of women's speech.' Over the last few months, many people online have noticed that a lot of social media stars tend to speak in a similar tone, and they began furiously discussing the topic online. But when one women started to post parody clips poking fun at how they talk, it divided the web, leaving some people in hysterics and others, especially influencers, outraged by the jokes. It all started when a doctor named Natalya Toryanski uploaded a series of TikToks in late October that saw her taunting the way that social media stars speak and act. A debate has ensued over the 'influencer inflection' - with some people mocking the 'irritating' voice used by online stars and others telling them to 'stop making fun of women's speech' It all started when a doctor named Natalya Toryanski uploaded a series of TikToks in late October that saw her taunting the way that social media stars speak and act In her vidoeos, she talked in an over-the-top, valley-girl like tone and made sure to drag out certain syllables and took exaggerated pauses between each word While Natalya (left) insisted her videos weren't directed towards 'anyone in particular,' many people started tagging online sensation Emma MacDonald (right) in the comment section 'The cadence of every bland influencer recommending a product,' she wrote in one of her videos, which got more than half a million views. 'Hi you guys, I just wanted to show you this body glow that I've been obsessed with lately,' Natalya said in an over-the-top, valley-girl like tone. She made sure to drag out certain syllables and took exaggerated pauses between each word. 'Oh my god I'm so glowy. I'm obsessed with it. It's so good you guys. You guys need to get it, seriously,' she continued, before making a series of kissy faces and winks towards the camera. In another TikTok, she made fun of social media stars who post 'outfit of the day videos.' 'Hi you guys, I just wanted to show you what I'm wearing today before I leave the house and run so many errands, oh my god,' Natalya, dressed in black leggings and a brown tank top said. She then told the audience that the entire look was from Kim Kardashian's brand SKIMS, while again speaking in the overstated voice. While Natalya insisted that her videos weren't directed towards 'anyone in particular,' many people started tagging online sensation Emma MacDonald in the comment section. One person even uploaded a TikTok comparing Natalya's posts to some that Emma shared in the past, while pointing out the similarities. Natalya is seen left and Emma is seen right TikTok users then began flooding Emma's videos with messages about Natalya's impersonation During an episode of her Love Ya, Bye podcast - which she runs with her sister, Maggie MacDonald - Emma, 22, spoke out about the criticism she received following Natalya's parody One person even uploaded a TikTok of her own comparing Natalya's posts to some that Emma has shared in the past, while pointing out a slew of similarities. TikTok users then began flooding Emma's videos with messages about Natalya's impersonation. The influencer admitted that she got so upset by the backlash that she had to take a break from social media '[NATALYA] WAS SO ACCURATE,' one person wrote underneath one of Emma's Outfit Of The Day videos. 'I thought she was exaggerating but I can't unhear it now,' someone else said. 'POV you're here from the other girls video and it's so real,' added another user. 'I love that we're all collectively. here. and. appreciate. the. accuracy,' read a fourth comment. During an episode of her Love Ya, Bye podcast - which she runs with her sister, Maggie MacDonald - days later, Emma, 22, from Boston Massachusetts, spoke out about the criticism she received following Natalya's parody. The influencer, who has more than 846,000 followers on TikTok and 372,000 on Instagram, admitted that she got so upset by the backlash that she had to take a break from social media. 'I was having a stressful week with social media this past week, I wasn't feeling drawn to posting because people were being so mean to me on TikTok,' she said. 'It was so overwhelming Every TikTok I posted [recently] has over a million views and so many comments, so many people are coming to my page because I'm the only one getting openly tagged in [Natalya's] videos. 'It was kind of a lot so I took a break from posting for a little bit. When you get so many comments, obviously I'm not blind to it, I see it all, and it was a lot for me. But in the end, Emma - who is engaged to Boston Celtics player Payton Pritchard - said she was feeling really 'inspired again' after stepping away Following Natalya's viral videos and Emma's reaction, an argument about the way influencers speak ensued. One TikToker, named Audra, said, 'Can we not make fun of women's speech?' Natasya then posted a video addressing some of the people who were slamming her for her videos, which she captioned, 'Hot take: Women can poke fun at other women' 'I had a weird week. But instead of dwelling on it I decided to not go on social media and spent a lot more quality, real-life time off my phone. 'I was in New York and didn't focus on content there, I focused on just chilling and enjoying it. Being on vacation without work was nice, it felt good to take a break for a bit.' In it, she said: 'To say that a woman is completely exempt from criticism, to say that a women could not be subject to criticism by another woman simply because we are of the same gender is insane and I don't agree with that at all' Her sister, Maggie, 27, then added, 'People were really s**ting on you. First it started off with videos about how influencers talk as a whole, but then all the comments were [directed to] you.' But in the end, Emma - who is engaged to Boston Celtics player Payton Pritchard - said she was feeling really 'inspired again' after stepping away. 'I do think you need to take a step back in order to gain that momentum again,' Maggie told her. 'It comes in waves. Maybe all that stuff was meant to happen so you could take a step back and rethink your life and your presence on social media.' Following Natalya's viral videos and Emma's reaction to them, a massive argument took over the web regarding the way that influencers speak. 'Maybe in the year of the Barbie movie can we just not make fun of women's speech?' one TikTok user, named Audra, scathed in a video shared amid the drama. 'I know a lot of y'all think it's not that deep but it is that deep. Synonymizing women's speech with annoying, frivolous, and stupid speech is tired.' She added, 'Now that women, who were largely blocked out of the dignified labor market, have managed to create an industry for themselves where they can make a descent living, we're gonna pathologize their speech? Come on y'all.' Other online stars, including Heather Hurst (seen) have also weighed in, with some even admitting that they noticed they speak with the 'influencer inflection' The vlogger spoke out about it during one of her recent OOTD TikToks. She stopped after she caught herself using the tone of voice, and admitted, 'I'm doing the influencer inflection' Natasya then posted a video addressing some of the people who were slamming her for her videos, which she captioned, 'Hot take: Women can poke fun at other women.' In it, she said: 'This is gonna make some of y'all mad but... To say that a woman is completely exempt from criticism, to say that a women could not be subject to criticism by another woman simply because we are of the same gender is insane and I don't agree with that at all. 'Whenever a woman pokes fun at something another woman does, people are like, 'This is internalized misogyny, the system is out to get us, why are women being pit against each other' all this s**t. But no. 'I just pay attention to what people do regardless of gender and make fun of it how I see fit.' Other online stars have also weighed in, with some even admitting that they noticed they speak with the 'influencer inflection' after Natalya's videos brought it to light. Heather Hurst, a New York-based vlogger, spoke out about it during one of her recent OOTD TikToks. In the middle of the video, she stopped after she caught herself using the tone of voice. Another TikToker, named Jess Alexander, also posted a video on the subject. She said, 'The worst part is, sometimes I do it, and it drives me bananas' Jess added: 'We do this thing, we mimic what we see. I hear stories about little American children who watch Peppa Pig and then they have American accents' 'I'm doing the influencer inflection,' she told her followers. 'I really need somebody to [study] linguistics in the online world and how [being an influencer] affects people's speech patterns. 'Even though I spend most of my time in real life with people and don't talk like that, I find myself speaking like that when I'm in an online environment. It's really strange.' Another TikToker, named Jess Alexander, also posted a video on the subject. 'The worst part is, sometimes I do it, and it drives me bananas,' she said. 'I'm even paranoid right now that I'm doing it. 'We do this thing, we mimic what we see. I hear stories about little American children who watch Peppa Pig and then they have American accents. 'Are all of us gonna stop talking like TikTok influencers now? I don't want to do that. I can't even talk anymore, the pauses that I take in sentences... I need to get off of this app and watch more TV and talk to more strangers so I can get away from this and stop talking like this.' A speech pathologist named Erin Hall actually spoke to Vice about the phenomenon long before Natalya's videos. Back in 2021, she explained, '[Influencers are] over-enunciating compared to casual speech, which is something newscasters or radio personalities do. 'They're also trying to keep it more casual, even if what they're saying is standard, adding a different kind of intonation makes it more engaging to listen to.' A linguistics professor, named Naomi Baron, added, 'Changing of pacing - that gets your attention.' The Israeli government voted on Wednesday to back a deal to release some of roughly 240 Israeli hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza in exchange for a multi-day truce and the freeing of a greater number of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Here is what we know about the hostages. Who are the hostages? Gunmen from the Palestinian group Hamas took about 240 hostages and killed 1,200 people when they raided Israel on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli government. The hostages were from communities, including collective farms, called kibbutzim and military bases in southern Israel as well as people attending an outdoor music festival. In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the U.S., Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, Israel's government has said. According to Israeli media and the Israeli government, up to 40 hostages being held are children, including a 10-month-old baby and preschoolers. Also among those taken were soldiers, elderly people and people with disabilities. What has happened to the hostages? Hamas has to date released four captives: U.S. citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct. 20, citing "humanitarian reasons," and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct. 23. Israeli forces freed one hostage, Ori Megidish, a soldier, in their ground invasion of Gaza on Oct. 30. The Israeli military said earlier this month that it recovered the bodies of two hostages in Gaza City, including 19-year-old soldier Noa Marciano. The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, announced late on Tuesday the death of another Israeli hostage but did not identify the individual. Where are the hostages being held? Hamas has said it has hidden the captives in "safe places and tunnels" in Gaza. Israel says the group has a vast underground network where it stores weapons, commands operations and uses tunnels to move its fighters. Lifshitz, an 85-year-old grandmother who was freed by Hamas, said that after she was seized, she was taken into underground tunnels that she compared to a spider web. The Israeli military has said it found evidence that some hostages were held at or under hospitals. The Israel Defence Forces said on Sunday that Marciano, the soldier whose body was recovered, was killed by Hamas within Al Shifa hospital. The military released video that it said also showed militants forcing two hostages into Shifa hospital on Oct. 7. What have conditions been like for hostages? Lifshitz said her captors separated hostages into small groups. She said she and a few others with her slept on mattresses on the floor of the tunnels. Doctors provided care and Hamas ensured conditions were hygienic, she said. In a video released by Hamas in October, a 21-year-old French hostage was shown having her injured arm treated by a medical worker. Hamas released another video in October that showed three women hostages denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said they were used for "cruel propaganda." How have Israelis reacted to the hostage taking? Family members and thousands of supporters have pressured the Israeli government to prioritise freeing the hostages, fearing they could be killed in Israel's retaliatory assault on Gaza. A five-day march culminated on Saturday with some 20,000 people on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway calling on the government to win their freedom. Many Israelis blame the government for being blindsided by the Hamas assault. Netanyahu has vowed to bring the hostages home. (Reuters) A woman whose lung collapsed claims a 'careless' medic sent her home because he 'just wanted me out the door' of a busy treatment centre in London. Olivia Smith was glammed-up and enjoying a night on the town enjoying cocktails with friends when she suddenly felt a distinctive pain in her chest. The 22-year-old, having suffered two previous lung collapses, including one where the organ shrank 'to the size of testicle', was confident she was experiencing a third. But a medic at a London urgent treatment centre dismissed the social media marketer's symptoms as she 'looked fine' failing to spot clear signs her lung had collapsed on X-rays, Ms Smith claimed. Giving in, she returned home only to be forced to return as her symptoms worsened. Medics who saw Ms Smith the second time discovered her lung had shrunk by 80 per cent and were shocked she had been sent initially sent home. Olivia Smith was glammed-up and enjoying a night on the town enjoying pornstar martinis with friends when she suddenly felt a distinctive pain in her chest Despite being confident she had suffered a collapsed lung, having experienced two other similar collapses, she was initially sent home by a medic only receiving the treatment she needed the next day. Here she pictured with a chest drain to help re-inflate her lung Ms Smith, examining her initial x-ray after being sent home, said she couldn't understand how the doctor couldn't have spotted something was wrong with her lung. The image shows her collapsed right lung circled in yellow in comparison to the functioning left one (on the right of the image) Ms Smith's ordeal started on October 21 while she was out in Shoreditch celebrating her friend's birthday. But shortly after ordering cocktails she felt a 'distinctive pain' that she was confident was caused by her lung collapsing, a condition technically called pneumothorax. 'I ordered myself a pornstar martini and as soon as I ordered it I just felt the pain, it came on really suddenly,' she said. 'I texted my boyfriend who was at the other end of the table saying I was 70 per cent sure my lung had collapsed but not to tell anyone. 'We were with 20 people, and I didn't want all of my friends panicking or thinking I was overexaggerating.' What are the symptoms of a lung collapse? A lung collapses, medically called a pneumothorax has variety of symptoms. The common symptoms area sudden shortness of breath and chest pain. This pain may be sharp and become worse with coughing and breathing. Patients can also experience a dry cough. In some cases, where air has leaked into the muscles and skin in the chest wall, patients may notice a swelling and 'bubble wrap' sensation as they press on their chest. If the leak of air from the lung is very large people can also feel faint or lightheaded. Advertisement Making a swift exit, she attended the urgent treatment centre Queen's Hospital in Romford, East London, run by the Partnership of East London Co-operatives (PELC). While not part of the NHS, PELC is contracted to run some urgent treatment centres on behalf of the health service. After being sent for an X-ray, Ms Smith said she waited three hours at the 'overcrowded' centre only to have her concerns dismissed by a doctor. An unnamed medic told her there was no sign of a lung collapse on the scan results and advised her to go home and only return if the pain got worse. Ms Smith recalled: 'I felt frustrated, I knew that he didn't know what he was talking about. 'There was no point in trying to win the battle, and I couldn't even talk properly. It was 1am, people were waiting behind me, and I looked okay to him. 'I had make-up on and I was standing up alright and putting on a bit of a front. I think he just wanted to dismiss me.' She added that his priority seemed to be to get rid of her. Ms Smith added: 'This person just wanted me out the door. I was exhausted. I asked him what it was and he couldn't answer me, I just felt defeated.' Before leaving the hospital, she took a picture of the X-ray. Looking at home it when she got home, she was shocked that the medic had apparently missed such clear signs that something was wrong with her lung. 'It's obvious to every doctor. It's obviously deflated, he was being careless. He just didn't believe me,' she said. 'I was crying. I had to leave all my friends out having fun to try to get my lung resolved, and someone tried to tell me it had not collapsed when I knew it had. 'He didn't look at the X-ray properly and I don't even think he knew what he was looking for. If he knew, he would've seen it.' As the pain worsened, Ms Smith returned to Queen's Hospital urgent treatment centre the next day. The 22-year-old was out enjoying cocktails with friends and her boyfriend Callum Murphy, 28, when she felt a distinctive pain in her right chest She said a repeat X-ray showed the lung collapse had gotten worse, shrinking to just 20 per cent of its original size. Medics were 'shocked' she hadn't already been treated in A&E, Ms Smith said. She was then whisked away to the NHS St Bartholomew's Hospital in central London, where she had to be treated for 10 days before the lung had recovered enough for surgery. 'I'm grateful for the NHS but why did I have to deal with a doctor who doesn't know what he's talking about?' she said. 'I don't know this, but I reckon I would've had my surgery sooner as there might have been a space. But I will never know. 'This is the only doctor or nurse that I've had to deal with that hasn't believed me.' Ms Smith said it was a huge shock to have her lung collapse again, after having surgery to fix the issue nine months prior. Medics have yet to determine the cause of the social media marketers repeated lung collapses but she said tests are underway to see if it could be linked to her endometriosis 'My right lung collapsed for the first time the day after my 21st birthday,' she said. 'The next day I had this heart pain while I was opening my presents, it felt like I was having a heart attack.' Ms Smith's second collapse was worse, with the lung shrinking to a twentieth of its capacity. 'My lung collapsed again the day before New Year's Eve. I was at my boyfriend's and I was talking to my mother-in-law and I just got out of breath all of a sudden,' she said. 'I went to A&E the next day and my lung had collapsed to five per cent capacity so it was smaller than a man's testicle, it was tiny.' About one in three people who suffer a pneumothorax go on to suffer another lung collapse within a year, according to the NHS. Pneumothorax can be caused by various respiratory conditions, congenital defects in the organ that are only cause issues later in life, or traumatic injury. However, in many occasions it is spontaneous with no apparent cause. READ MORE: Mystery as fully intact fly is found buzzing around inside a Missouri man's INTESTINES during a routine colonoscopy The above image, which the patient gave permission to share, shows the fly as it was found inside his intestines. It did not move when it was prodded Advertisement It occurs when air leaks from the organ and becomes trapped between the chest and the lung, preventing it from inflating fully. Medics have so far failed to determine the cause of Ms Smith's condition but she said she is undergoing tests to see if it is linked to her endometriosis. Endometriosis is a condition where tissue, similar to that found in the womb, grows in places where it shouldn't. This most commonly happens in the other parts of the reproductive system, like the ovaries and fallopian tubes, where it can cause immense pain. But cases where it occurs other parts of the body, such as the lungs or diaphragm, can cause breathing difficulties and lung collapse. This type of endometriosis, called thoracic endometriosis, is very rare and women often struggle for years, sometime decades, to get diagnosis. Ms Smith said she initially went to the urgent treatment centre as that she had done in the past for previous lung collapses before being referred to A&E. She has since filed a complaint about her ordeal. A PELC spokesperson said: 'We are very sorry to hear this patient was unhappy with the service she received at our urgent treatment centre and we apologise for any anxiety or distress she may have experienced. 'We are unable to discuss individual cases but we always strive to provide the highest quality care and all complaints received are thoroughly investigated so any issues raised can be addressed and any lessons learned can be fully implemented to help drive improvements.' The spokesperson added PELC's urgent treatment centre at Queen's Hospital 'can get extremely busy at times, with high demand during peak periods.' But they added: 'All patients are medically assessed as soon as possible following arrival so they can be prioritised in line with clinical needs to ensure that those who need care most urgently can be seen first.' Hospitals in Beijing and Liaoning are 'overwhelmed with sick children' Scientists today called for vigilance and transparency from China amid reports of a mystery cluster of pneumonia which has eerie similarities to the early Covid outbreak. Hospitals in Beijing and 500 miles northeast in Liaoning are 'overwhelmed with sick children' with unusual symptoms that include inflammation in the lungs and a high fever but no cough, according to local news reports. Dr Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, told DailyMail.com the news was 'alarming'. She said we should 'hold all countries to that same standard', referencing China's history of covering up new outbreaks, which happened in 2003 with the original SARS and in 2019 with Covid. A news clip taken from FTV News appears to show a busy hospital waiting room in China with children receiving intravenous drips Dr Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease physician who is part of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said testing and making those results public was crucial, adding in a post on X that the illness 'could be anything'.Dr Neil Stone, an infectious diseases specialist doctor at the University College Hospital in London , wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter: 'The last time I saw reports of an outbreak of undiagnosed pneumonia in China thought, naa...no big deal. [It] won't amount to much. 'That was in December 2019. Not making that same mistake again.' The alert around China was issued late on Tuesday via ProMed - a large, publicly available global surveillance system that monitors infectious diseases. It was a ProMed notification back in December 2019 that brought Covid to the attention of the world. Taiwanese outlet FTV News reported that hospitals were being 'overwhelmed' with sick children in the latest outbreak. It added that 'parents questioned whether the authorities were covering up the epidemic.' But there is a suspicion the new outbreak could be related to mycoplasma pneumoniae, also known as walking pneumonia, which is reportedly growing in China as the country goes into its first winter without strict Covid lockdowns in place. The US and UK also saw spikes in infections like RSV and flu after pandemic rules lifted. Hospitals in Beijing and almost 500 miles northeast in Liaoning are among those 'overwhelmed with sick children,' according to local news reports. Dr Nuzzo told DailyMail.com: 'Seeing an increased number of people presenting at any hospital is, of course, alarming. 'It may not be out of the ordinary, we do tend to see [increases] seasonally, so it's really too early to say. 'But any time we see people going to the hospital, we have reason to be concerned about it.' State-run media outlet Sixth Tone reported that one-tenth of patients are coming from out of town because they cannot access bronchoscopies in their hometown. The Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that more than 3,500 cases of 'respiratory infection' had been admitted to the Beijing Children's Hospital at the start of October, Radio Free Asia reported. A staff member at the Beijing Friendship Hospital pediatrics department said there is a 24-hour wait for emergency cases to be seen. 'They're still dealing with calls we took yesterday,' the worker said. 'They haven't even started on today's calls yet there are at least 1,000 people waiting in the queue ahead of you. 'The calls coming in today won't get seen until tomorrow... We're taking more than 1,000 calls a day.' According to state-run Haibao News, the Childrens Hospital of Capital Institute of Pediatrics had so many patients on Tuesday that the outpatient desk stopped accepting new patients by the afternoon. At that point, 628 people were waiting in line to see a doctor at the emergency department. Elsewhere, FTV News said: 'The situation in Liaoning Province is also grim.' The lobby of Dalian Children's Hospital is reportedly full of sick children receiving intravenous drips. There are also long queues of patients at the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital and the Central Hospital. A staff member of Dalian Central Hospital said: 'Patients have to wait in line for two hours, and we are all in the emergency department and there are no general outpatient clinics.' Some school classes have been canceled altogether. Not only are all students sick, but teachers are also infected with pneumonia. Mr Wei, a Beijing citizen, told FTV News: 'Many, many are hospitalized. They don't cough and have no symptoms. They just have a high temperature (fever) and many develop pulmonary nodules.' An editor's note by ProMed said: 'This report suggests a widespread outbreak of an undiagnosed respiratory illness... It is not at all clear when this outbreak started, as it would be unusual for so many children to be affected so quickly. 'The report does not say that any adults were affected, suggesting some exposure at the schools. 'ProMed awaits more definitive information about the etiology and scope of this concerning illness in China.' Pneumonia is an infection that affects one of both lungs, which can be deadly. The air sacs in the lungs may fill with fluid or pus. Generally, pneumonia is not contagious, but the respiratory viruses and bacteria that lead to it are. Walking pneumonia, which typically affects younger children, causes a sore throat, tiredness and a cough that can last up to months. It is called walking pneumonia as symptoms are usually mild enough for patients to continue walking around. In serious cases, the illness can become pneumonia. On Friday evening, Sun Rui rushed her three-year-old daughter, who had a temperature of 103 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), to the Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital in Tongzhou District, Beijing, state-run media outlet Sixth Tone reported. She was forced to wait alongside 'hundreds' of other parents for 13 hours to be seen by a physician, who diagnosed her daughter with mycoplasma pneumonia. Local media outlets reported last month that hospitals across China were seeing skyrocketing infections. Zhou Huixia, director of the children's medical center at the Seventh Medical Center of the Chinese PLA General Hospital, told China Daily: 'It is the first wave of mycoplasma pneumoniae infections since most Covid-19 containment measures were lifted at the beginning of this year. 'The wave has appeared particularly ferocious since the National Day holiday in early October. Compared to previous years, we found more patients with mixed infections, drug resistance and lobar pneumonia.' Lobar pneumonia affects one or more sections - lobes - of the lungs. Infection numbers are due to peak in November, but concerns about antibiotic resistance are growing. Mycoplasma pneumoniae is becoming more and more resistant to macrolides, a class of drugs commonly used to treat pneumonia. A study published in February last year found that macrolide resistance was seen in more than 80 percent of mycoplasma pneumoniae in children hospitalized by the bacteria in China. So far, very few children have died from walking pneumonia. Dr Hua Shaodong, a paediatrician at the Beijing Childrens Hospital, told China Daily: 'There is a steady number of patients developing severe cases, but there are very few critical cases, and there are no related deaths so far. 'The average days in [the] hospital for hospitalized patients is around seven to 14 days.' Wang Quanyi, deputy director of the Beijing CDC and chief epidemiologist, said that influenza, adenovirus and RSV are the top three respiratory infectious diseases in children at the moment. On December 30, 2019, a ProMed 'RFI' (request for information) post - the same type as the pneumonia alert - was the initial warning of the Covid outbreak in Wuhan, China. READ MORE: Men less likely to become teachers or nurses due to gender bias It's thought to be because this allows women to be seen as more confident A wealth of research shows that women apologize far more often than men - even when they've done nothing wrong. And now a new study shows that, at least in the workplace, they've been saying sorry all wrong. According to new research by scientists at the University of Arizona, apologizing in an assertive, typically masculine way will get you further in the workplace. In a series of four studies, researchers asked 800 male and female participants to judge a series of different written apologies written by real people. Participants were asked to consider how genuine they thought the apology was, and whether it would make them more or less inclined to want to work with the apologizer. They found that women who used more assertive, 'masculine' language were rated more highly. They identified the same pattern: assertive apologies from women received more 'likes' and positive comments from tweeters. Sarah Doyle, study author and a professor in the Department of Management and Organizations at the University of Arizona, said: 'We found that women delivering masculine-style apologies benefited because they were seen as enhancing their perceived competence.' Women who apologized with more assertive language received better responses, and men who used more feminine language gained more sympathy for being seen as 'sensitive' The first of several studies involved examining 87 apology tweets from celebrities like Lizzo, Kevin Hart, Tyler Posey, and Kendra Wilkinson. Dr Doyle said that tweets violating gender stereotypes received an average of 17,000 more likes on the platform and more positive sentiments from the public. In the second study, 336 working adults were asked to imagine their accountant had emailed them apologizing for a mistake on their taxes. Participants were randomly assigned to groups classified by the accountant delivering a stereotypically masculine or feminine apology. The subjects were then asked to rate how likely they were to keep working with the accountant. The researchers found that participants were more likely to keep using a female accountant who delivered a typically masculine apology. Interestingly, breaking gender stereotypes appeared to be equally beneficial for men. Men who apologized like women were eight percent more effective. 'The men delivering apologies with more stereotypically feminine language were seen as having greater interpersonal sensitivity that enhanced their perceived benevolence or warmth,' the study authors said. Dr Doyle said: 'It's important to mention that we did not find that men and women are penalized for giving a stereotypical apology.' 'Rather, they benefit from giving a counter-stereotypical one. Thus, any apology is likely to be better than no apology at all.' The team hopes to use the results to examine how communication can be improved beyond apologizing. 'Much of the literature suggests women apologize too much and men don't apologize enough,' Dr Doyle said. 'It's not just about whether people should apologize more or less, but how we can construct apologies differently. It's what you include in that apology that's really going to matter.' If left untreated, syphilis can affect the eyes, inner ear or central nervous system 5 women in the same area developed eye problems in the first 6 months of 2022 An unusual cluster of syphilis infections in patients' eyes has cropped up in Michigan, health officials have said. Five women from southwest Michigan contracted syphilis eye infections after having unprotected sex with the same man who they'd all met online, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report. Syphilis is a potentially deadly sexually transmitted bacterial infection that spreads via skin-to-skin contact with an infected wound - called a chancre - which develops around the genitals. But if left untreated, the bug that causes it can travel to the eyes, inner ear or central nervous system. Syphilis, caused by the bacteria Treponema pallidum, is notoriously tricky to diagnose. Syphilis in the eye only occurs in four percent of people with the infection Five women from southwest Michigan contracted syphilis eye infections after having unprotected sex with the same man all of them had met online Symptoms are similar to other conditions - a runny nose and sore throat. Sufferers develop sores, though these start small in size, so often go ignored. Unlike other sexually transmitted diseases that only affect the eye if it comes into contact with infected fluid, syphilis bacteria can travel through the bloodstream. It can travel to other organs and bodily systems, including the nervous system, where it can cause stroke, and the eyes, which can result in blindness. According to the CDC, eye syphilis can involve any part of the organ, but it typically causes inflammation of the middle layer of the eye. Symptoms may include red eyes, eye pain, sensitivity to light, abnormal eye movements, eye floaters (spots in vision that look like black or gray specks or strings that drift across the eyes), and blurred or lost vision. In January 2022, a man went to the emergency department complaining of genital ulcers. He was not tested for syphilis, according to the latest CDC report. One of his female sexual partners was referred to the hospital by an ophthalmologist in March 2022 after she complained of blurred vision and feared she was going blind. She also had genital ulcers, which were wrongly diagnosed as herpes, and treated with an antiviral drug. Experts say this is a common mistake. Herpes is roughly 10 times more common than syphilis. Roughly 55,000 Americans are diagnosed with syphilis every year, compared to 1.6 million cases of chlamydia - the most common STI. In April 2022, another female patient was admitted to the same hospital with headaches, mild hearing loss and worsening blurry vision and double vision. She had also been sleeping with the same man. In May, a further female partner of the man went to a doctor with a full-body rash and peeling skin on the palms of her hands. She also had spots drifting through her vision and a sensitivity to light. A fourth woman received a diagnosis of eye syphilis in June, and a fifth case was spotted in a hospital ophthalmology clinic in July. All of the women were between the ages of 40 and 60. The man in question was contacted repeatedly by telephone and text message by disease intervention specialists at the Michigan Health Department. He provided minimal information and said he had failed to respond to officials due to traveling. He did turn up to an appointment in May 2022 and was found to have no obvious signs of the infection as his sores had healed. He was diagnosed with early latent syphilis - where the STI has occurred in the past year. Households living near new pylons could get 1,000 a year off their energy bills under Government plans. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt today said the Government was publishing an 'action plan' to halve the time to build new energy grid infrastructure. In his Autumn Statement today, Hunt said this plan could knock up to 10,000 off energy bills for properties near new energy infrastructure, spread over 10 years. The pylon premium: Government plans would pay homeowners for living near new power lines Government documents say the payments could be made to those living near to 'new transmission infrastructure', such as pylons and substations. Some households could be tempted, as they struggle under the weight of typical energy bills of 1,834-a-year. How much would this save me on energy bills? Knocking 1,000 a year off energy bills would slash the current average bill of 1,834 a year by 54 per cent. That would last for 10 years under current Government plans, which have not been finalised. Why would government pay to discount energy bills? The Government wants the UK to create more renewable energy, which requires more infrastructure to connect it to the energy grid. In August the Government's Electricity Networks Commissioner Nick Winser published a report on how this could be done. The Chancellor's promise to knock money off energy bills for homes near new power lines is a response to this report. The Winser report said that communities often lose out from new energy infrastructure, which can be disruptive when built and then ugly afterwards. The report said that 'residents of properties close to new overhead lines should receive a defined direct payment' for new visible infrastructure. The Government is set to publish more details later today. Elon Musk has sued a Left-wing pressure group after it alleged X, formerly known as Twitter, was putting adverts next to anti-Semitic content. The billionaire who bought the social media site for 38billion last October has accused Media Matters of potential fraudulent activity after the group revealed adverts from tech companies including IBM, Apple and Oracle had appeared alongside pro-Nazi content. The media watchdogs reports sparked a furious backlash from advertisers who have pulled their advertising in recent days. In a lawsuit filed in Texas, Musks legal team accused Media Matters of distorting how likely it is for ads to appear beside extremist content on X, suggesting the methods used did not represent how real users experience the site. Media Matters knowingly and maliciously manufactured side-by-side images depicting advertisers posts on X Corps social media platform beside Neo-Nazi and white-nationalist fringe content and then portrayed these manufactured images as if they were what typical X users experience on the platform, the complaint said. Legal fight: Elon Musk (pictured) has accused Media Matters of potential fraudulent activity after the group revealed adverts had appeared alongside pro-Nazi content Media Matters designed both these images and its resulting media strategy to drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp. Walt Disney, Comcast and Warner Bros have all cut ties with X since the reports first emerged. Meanwhile, the European Commission has told staff to pull advertising because of an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech. The lawsuit calls for a judicial order forcing Media Matters to remove its analysis from its website. But Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, stood by its claims. This is a frivolous lawsuit meant to bully Xs critics into silence, Carusone said. Founded in 2004, the Washington-based non-profit organisation focuses on flagging conservative misinformation. But Ted Boutrous, partner at law firm Gibson Dunn, said: This lawsuit is riddled with legal flaws, and it is highly ironic that a platform that touts itself as a beacon of free speech would file a bogus case like this that flatly contradicts basic First Amendment principles and targets free speech by a critic. This has all put huge pressure on Xs chief executive Linda Yaccarino. On Monday, she said: Heres the truth. Not a single authentic user on X saw IBMs, Comcasts, or Oracles ads next to the content in Media Matters article. Throughout the self-proclaimed civilised western world, the ruling classes have banded together to denounce Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October and have rallied around Israels right of self-defence as it bombs Gaza to smithereens. But this is not the first time we have been told to accept a bloody war against an oppressed people in the name of the oppressor nations self-defence. King Charles IIIs recent four-day trip to Kenya has stirred memories of one of the worst atrocities of Britains brutal colonial era. From 1952-1960, faced with an anti-colonial uprising, loyal British forces engaged in the extensive collective punishment of 1.5 million Kenyans all in self-defence. Such was the brutality of the period that the British attorney general in 1957 described the situation as distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany. The Mau Mau uprising, known to the British at the time as simply the Emergency, was a poorly-equipped insurgency against the might of British imperialism, which was met with an unprecedented campaign of internment, torture, rape, forced labour and indiscriminate killing. The British government didnt talk about democracy or International Law no, this was an old fashioned, unvarnished colonial war. But in all respects other than the stinking hypocritical language, the present war in Gaza is just that too: a colonial imperialist war, intended solely to destroy the spirit of resistance among the Palestinians, as the British attempted to break the Kenyan people in the 1950s. The violence of the oppressed British media played a key role in exaggerating the cruelty of the Mau Mau, whilst underplaying and hiding any distasteful acts by loyalists. The capitalist media boldly maintains this time-honoured tradition of lies and slander even today, as evidenced countless times during Israels current war on Gaza. From the very beginning of the uprising, British newspapers were swamped with lurid and often completely fabricated descriptions of Mau Mau violence, inspired by scandalising reports handed out by the government. One government report described Mau Mau fighters as terrorists insatiable for blood who murdered children in the sight of their mothers. Such a statement could have been lifted verbatim from todays descriptions of Palestinians in the capitalist press! Bourgeois newspapers loyally echoed this message, proclaiming the Mau Mau to be barbaric, savage, bestial or merciless. British media played a key role in exaggerating the cruelty of the Mau Mau, whilst underplaying and hiding any distasteful acts by loyalists / Image: public domain The death toll from Mau Mau attacks was also grossly exaggerated by the press, giving the impression that thousands of white Kenyans had been killed in various unsavoury ways. Official reports, however, put the real number of white Kenyans killed from 1952-1960 to be less than 100, the majority of whom were soldiers killed in combat. Anthropologist Robert Edgerton notes that, during the eight year insurgency, more white civilians were killed by traffic accidents in Nairobi than by the Mau Mau. Official estimates put the total number of loyalist casualties at less than 2,000. The violence of the oppressor While the Mau Mau were certainly guilty of killing innocents, this pales in comparison to the brutality of the British. Officially, the British government claims that around 10,000 Kenyans were killed by loyalist soldiers. This includes over 1,000 people killed by hangings, which were carried out at a rate that was unprecedented for the period. At the height of the uprising, 50 Kenyans were being hanged every month, many on charges as vague as rebellion. Only a minority of those executed by the British were charged with murder. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. As historian Caroline Elkins points out, there is no record of how many non-combatants died as a result of torture, malnutrition, abuse and forced labour. Elkins estimates the number of deaths as a result of the British response to the uprising could be as high as 300,000. We would likely also know more about the scale of the killings conducted by loyalist forces if the colonial officials in Kenya had not conveniently destroyed three-and-a-half tons of confidential documents shortly after the end of the uprising. Added to the unrecorded deaths of Britains torture victims are the countless deaths from Britains indiscriminate bombing campaign of rural areas considered Mau Mau hotspots. Over the eight years of the conflict, the Royal Air Force dropped a total of 50,000 tons of bombs and fired two million machine gun rounds from planes into forested areas as part of Operation Mushroom. This campaign of blind destruction mirrors Israels current devastation of Gaza, with Israel dropping 18,000 tons of bombs within the first three weeks of the current conflict. The British ruling class cannot claim a shred of credibility as it makes noises about International Law and protecting civilians, although we hardly need to go back to the 1950s to convince ourselves of that. Taking even the most conservative estimates of Britains death toll and ignoring the uncountable casualties, loyalist forces killed five or six times as many Kenyans as the Mau Mau. It is more than likely, however, that British kills outnumbered the Mau Maus by more than 100:1. All of this was conducted under the mantra of self-defence. Since 2008, the UN estimates that Palestinian deaths outnumber Israeli deaths by 20:1 as a result of the conflict. Such behaviour is not the product of a civilised, democratic state defending itself in Kenya as in Palestine, it is the product of a one-sided war to crush an oppressed people who dare to fight back. Britains Gulag The bombing and murder of civilians was, however, only one piece of Britains reign of terror in Kenya. Perhaps even more insidious was the forced internment of practically the entirety of Kenyas native Kikuyu people, who made up the bulk of the Mau Mau a total of 1.5 million people. Here is one metric in which Israel today has outdone its British forebears. Currently, over two million people are held hostage by Israel in Gaza alone, along with another three million in the West Bank. The majority of the Kikuyu were interned through the process of so-called villagisation, hailed by the British imperialists as the introduction of a European way of life for the primitive Kenyans. Without warning, their homes and farms were burnt down by colonial soldiers often with the families still inside and any who survived this were forced into patrolled camps that they were unable to leave. The bombing and murder of civilians was only one piece of Britains reign of terror in Kenya / Image: public domain Much as in Gaza today, access to key resources such as food and water was heavily restricted. This was intended to break the spirit of any Kikuyu who had hopes in the Mau Mau, but had the predictable side effect of killing huge numbers due to disease and malnutrition. Far worse than the fate of those in the villages, however, were the conditions that awaited those suspected Mau Mau members or sympathisers that ended up in the pipeline a series of concentration camps specialising in different degrees of forced labour and mental and physical torture. The pipelines supposed rehabilitation system produced by far some of the most disgusting and inhuman behaviour that imperialism is capable of, even by Britains shockingly low standards. A former inmate describes the regular interrogations by British officers as follows: If a question was not answered to the interrogator's satisfaction, the subject was beaten and kicked. If that did not lead to the desired confession, and it rarely did, more force was applied. Electric shock was widely used, and so was fire. Women were choked and held under water [Men] were dragged behind Land Rovers, whipped, burned and bayoneted Some police officers did not bother with more time-consuming forms of torture; they simply shot any suspect who refused to answer, then told the next suspect, to dig his own grave. When the grave was finished, the man was asked if he would now be willing to talk. Alongside the beatings, sexual abuse, castration, burning and forced labour, Mau Mau suspects were also subjected to vicious psychological tortures. Christianity was enforced, with preachers regularly broadcasting religious propaganda throughout the camps, denouncing traditional Kikuyu beliefs. Prisoners were also often forced to sing God Save the Queen, whilst being beaten by British officers. The pipelines widespread and monstrous regime of terror was forced upon as many as 320,000 people over the course of the uprising, leaving physical and emotional scars on an entire generation, which still exist today. Enlightened and humane Just as today, while British loyalists massacred and humiliated Kenyan civilians with an inhuman brutality, not one shred of regret was shown by the British ruling class or its Conservative cronies in government. Terence Gavaghan, in charge of overseeing the rehabilitation of the Mau Mau, described the process of physically and psychologically torturing a suspect until they admit any links with the group as enlightened, humane and Christian-based. Undoubtedly today he would have used the phrase rules-based international order. Similarly, Kenyas British attorney general at the time, Eric Griffith-Jones, drafted laws sanctioning unjustified beatings as long as they were not reported, writing: If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly. These are the gentleman-war-criminals, who still today fill the enlightened halls of the Houses of Parliament and the Knesset. They have the decorum to talk about humanity and dignity, whilst they murder and plunder. And most importantly, these officials were not the animalistic terrorists that launched an anti-colonial uprising! Crocodile tears in Kenya On his trip to Kenya, whilst shedding a few crocodile tears about his deepest regret and the painful aspects of British colonial policy during the Mau Mau uprising, King Charles III could not even bring himself to utter a perfunctory apology. And indeed, there is good reason why he cannot offer an apology for the policy British imperialism conducted in the midst of the Mau Mau uprising, for the simple reason that that policy has not ended. Whether in Palestine or in Kenya, such crimes will always continue as long as imperialism exists / Image: Cpl Jamie Hart, Wikimedia Commons The reality is that the civilised forces of British imperialism in Kenya today have been linked to countless murders and sexual assaults, as well as widespread explosive and chemical damage to farmlands and villages right down to the modern day. So, no, Charles III cannot apologise for crimes that British imperialism is still committing in present day Kenya, and when it has no compunction in its allies committing crimes that, after all, are not so dissimilar from its own crimes. Fundamentally, whether in Palestine or in Kenya, such crimes will always continue as long as imperialism exists. The subjugation of the oppressed does not concern itself with democratic values, the rules-based order, or the question of who shot first. The horrors of British imperialism in Kenya show the unvarnished face of the capitalist class, once the sham of liberal democracy is stripped away. This is the true nature of the war that is being fought against the people of Gaza, and the attempts to present it in more palatable terms are nothing but the purest hypocrisy from the mouths of a rotten capitalist class that is prepared to do far worse. 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Blog Archive: Dec 2023 (5) Nov 2023 (150) Oct 2023 (155) Sep 2023 (150) Aug 2023 (155) Jul 2023 (155) Jun 2023 (150) May 2023 (155) Apr 2023 (150) Mar 2023 (155) Feb 2023 (140) Jan 2023 (155) Dec 2022 (156) Nov 2022 (150) Oct 2022 (155) Sep 2022 (150) Aug 2022 (155) Jul 2022 (154) Jun 2022 (150) May 2022 (155) Apr 2022 (150) Mar 2022 (155) Feb 2022 (140) Jan 2022 (156) Dec 2021 (156) Nov 2021 (150) Oct 2021 (155) Sep 2021 (150) Aug 2021 (155) Jul 2021 (155) Jun 2021 (150) May 2021 (155) Apr 2021 (150) Mar 2021 (155) Feb 2021 (140) Jan 2021 (155) Dec 2020 (155) Nov 2020 (150) Oct 2020 (158) Sep 2020 (150) Aug 2020 (130) Jul 2020 (124) Jun 2020 (120) May 2020 (124) Apr 2020 (120) Mar 2020 (124) Feb 2020 (116) Jan 2020 (125) Dec 2019 (126) Nov 2019 (120) Oct 2019 (124) Sep 2019 (120) Aug 2019 (125) Jul 2019 (124) Jun 2019 (120) May 2019 (123) Apr 2019 (121) Mar 2019 (124) Feb 2019 (112) Jan 2019 (125) Dec 2018 (126) Nov 2018 (120) Oct 2018 (124) Sep 2018 (121) Aug 2018 (124) Jul 2018 (125) Jun 2018 (120) May 2018 (124) Apr 2018 (121) Mar 2018 (124) Feb 2018 (112) Jan 2018 (123) Dec 2017 (124) Nov 2017 (124) Oct 2017 (141) Sep 2017 (135) Aug 2017 (138) Jul 2017 (137) Jun 2017 (134) May 2017 (138) Apr 2017 (135) Mar 2017 (139) Feb 2017 (129) Jan 2017 (143) Dec 2016 (135) Nov 2016 (138) Oct 2016 (142) Sep 2016 (128) Aug 2016 (133) Jul 2016 (136) Jun 2016 (138) May 2016 (164) Apr 2016 (311) Mar 2016 (348) Feb 2016 (320) Jan 2016 (348) Dec 2015 (314) Nov 2015 (338) Oct 2015 (363) Sep 2015 (358) Aug 2015 (399) Jul 2015 (374) Jun 2015 (331) May 2015 (337) Apr 2015 (319) Mar 2015 (320) Feb 2015 (271) Jan 2015 (286) Dec 2014 (254) Nov 2014 (238) Oct 2014 (287) Sep 2014 (267) Aug 2014 (259) Jul 2014 (260) Jun 2014 (238) May 2014 (241) Apr 2014 (228) Mar 2014 (240) Feb 2014 (217) Jan 2014 (263) Dec 2013 (226) Nov 2013 (254) Oct 2013 (256) Sep 2013 (252) Aug 2013 (263) Jul 2013 (261) Jun 2013 (251) May 2013 (250) Apr 2013 (221) Mar 2013 (193) Feb 2013 (164) Jan 2013 (157) Dec 2012 (155) Nov 2012 (240) Oct 2012 (526) Sep 2012 (411) Aug 2012 (394) Jul 2012 (284) Jun 2012 (229) May 2012 (213) Apr 2012 (213) Mar 2012 (253) Feb 2012 (269) Jan 2012 (298) Dec 2011 (273) Nov 2011 (219) Oct 2011 (204) Sep 2011 (201) Aug 2011 (236) Jul 2011 (217) Jun 2011 (211) May 2011 (206) Apr 2011 (215) Mar 2011 (215) Feb 2011 (186) Jan 2011 (215) Dec 2010 (107) Nov 2010 (98) Oct 2010 (55) BART trains have felt more congested in recent weeks as the Bay Area transit service has trimmed the number of cars in use. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle You can see it and feel it while riding Munis 49 buses or during weekday morning trips on BARTs Blue Line trains to San Francisco. Lots of people seem to be taking transit again. The standing-room-only, shoulder-to-shoulder crowds seen riding the regions two largest transit operators in recent months contrast with the ghostly sights of near-empty train cars and buses during the height of the pandemic. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Neither Muni nor BART have fully recovered the ridership they lost after stay-at-home orders, almost four years ago, dropped their use to all-time lows. Nor do the agencies expect to reach that milestone anytime soon, given the enduring prevalence of hybrid and tele-work in the Bay Area that have siphoned off office commuters. Rather, the overcrowding on Muni and BART is more the product of post-pandemic commute patterns that have settled, and, in BARTs case, the strategies transit officials are employing to retain and attract more riders. Commuters at the Powell Street BART Station board a train in San Francisco. Trains have felt more congested in recent weeks. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle Muni is among the transit systems in the region closest to recovering its ridership from 2019, when its buses and light-rail trains carried roughly 700,000 passengers on weekdays. San Franciscos flagship transit network was at almost 70% of its pre-pandemic ridership as of September though the recovery has not been even across all Muni lines. Muni Metro rail lines oriented toward connecting people to Market Street from outer neighborhoods and bus routes that traverse downtown, once overwhelmed with riders, remain some of Munis lowest ridership lines. These days, youre most likely to see crowded buses on crosstown routes such as the 24, 22, 49 and 29 buses that either dont serve downtown or are popular among students. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Perpetually packed lines such as the 22-Fillmore and 49-Van Ness are among 10 routes that have emerged more popular than they were before the pandemic. The two lines are also believed to have the highest rate of ridership recovery in the country, according to Jeffrey Tumlin, director of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni. The agency stopped restoring pre-pandemic Muni service earlier this year, citing projected major budget shortfalls later this decade. Transit officials, instead, are reducing frequencies on lower-ridership lines to run more buses and address overcrowding on Munis best-performing lines. Commuters wait for a Muni bus on Market Street in San Francisco. Some Muni lines have ridership numbers at or higher than 2019 levels. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle In January, for example, Muni will run more weekday buses on the 24, 29, 38R, 44, 48 and 49 lines that will be taken from less-crowded routes such as the 5-Fulton and 9-San Bruno buses. The transportation agency is operating 121% of pre-COVID service on the L-shaped 22-Fillmore route, which has recovered about 110% of its 2019 weekday ridership just to keep up with demand, Tumlin said. Headway management, in which bus operators coordinate running their routes in timed intervals, has also helped make Muni transit more reliable than before the pandemic, Tumlin said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Meanwhile, BART trains became noticeably more crowded in September, when officials at the regional rail agency started running shorter, six-car trains on most lines. The strategy saves BART, which has recovered 45% of its 2019 ridership, roughly $12 million annually in power costs. But the change is directed primarily at making riders feel safer on trains. The reasoning: People are less likely to commit crimes or antisocial behavior, such as using drugs, if train cars have more bystanders in them. The agency says the shorter trains, paired with more patrolling police officers, have made an impact in reducing crime while improving reliability. The number of trains delayed by BART police responding to incidents dropped by 40% in October compared with May, when the agency operated 10-car trains. Advertisement Article continues below this ad While BART trains have felt more packed lately, ridership numbers havent changed too much. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle We are seeing in the data that the strategys working, and that the riders are accepting it and liking it, said Alicia Trost, BARTs chief communications officer. BART, in recent weeks, started running lengthier trains on the Blue Line to Dublin/Pleasanton and Red Line to Richmond during morning and afternoon commute hours to address overcrowding during morning commute hours. The most crowded trains in BARTs Blue Line saw an increase in the number of passengers per car with shorter trains from 64 people to 120, according to BARTs crowding data. Still, that figure remains far below the passenger loads from 2019, when BARTs busiest trains had 180 people inside each train car. Things were so empty for so long at BART. Now that were running shorter trains, theres just more people per car, and some people define that as crowded, when in fact theyre nowhere near crowded and theres plenty of standing room, Trost said. It definitely means that you may not be getting a seat, especially if you ride in the center core of the system, but theres (still) plenty of space to spread out. 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. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talks during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco last week. The following day, the OpenAI board ousted Altman, accusing him of not being candid with them in his communications. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle Less than a week after a stunning ouster by the board of OpenAI, Sam Altman is back as CEO, he and the company said Tuesday night on X, formerly Twitter. We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam DAngelo, the company wrote on the site. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this. Summers is a former U.S. treasury secretary and new member of the board. Taylor, who was previously co-CEO of Salesforce, is also new to the board. DAngelo, the founder of Quora, was a member of the previous board during Altmans Friday night ouster. Taylor also chaired Twitters board during the tumultuous period when now-owner Elon Musk tried to back out of the deal to buy the company, eventually shepherding through the sale. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Altman said on X that i love openai, and everything ive done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together, confirming the change. He had already accepted a role at Microsoft, OpenAIs largest investor, along with OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who quit shortly after Altman was pushed out. Altman continued: when i decided to join (Microsoft) on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and (with) satyas support, im looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with (Microsoft). Brockman wrote on X Tuesday night that he was Returning to OpenAI & getting back to coding tonight posting a photo of himself and what appeared to be OpenAI staff saying we are so back. Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, has expressed his support for his companys partnership with OpenAI and Altman since the news broke that he was suddenly no longer with the company. On Tuesday evening, he reposted Altmans message, saying, We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance. He said he, Altman and Brockman had agreed they have a key role to play along with the (OpenAI) leadership team in ensuring (OpenAI) continues to thrive and build on its mission. We look forward to building on our strong partnership and delivering the value of this next generation of AI to our customers and partners. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Altman on Friday went from being the de facto spokesperson for artificial intelligence, speaking onstage at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation event in San Francisco about the technology just a day before, to suddenly being no longer affiliated with the company. OpenAIs board posted a message accusing him of not being candid with them in his communications, initially installing Chief Technical Officer Mira Murai as interim CEO, before pivoting and announcing former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear in the role. That appeared to be short-lived, with Shear writing on X that he was deeply pleased by this result, after ~72 very intense hours of work. Coming into OpenAI, I wasnt sure what the right path would be. This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved. Im glad to have been a part of the solution. In a stunning reversal after Altman was apparently forced out, the companys research head Ilya Sutskever wrote on X Monday I deeply regret my participation in the boards actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything weve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company. Altmans ouster was met with an outpouring of support for him on X, as well as attempts by CEOs, including Salesforces Marc Benioff, to lure the companys talent away. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Hong Kong: Asia-Pacific Business Forum opens The Asia-Pacific Business Forum 2023 opened today, with delegates meeting to discuss how businesses are decarbonising their operations and scaling up sustainability initiatives around Asia and the Pacific. Speaking at the forums opening session, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said decarbonisation and green transition require a huge amount of investment. He added that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government is committed to working with the business sector to realise green transformation in the city and contribute to progress on decarbonisation regionally. Estimates have indicated that Asia alone will need US$66 trillion in the coming three decades, he said. It is clear that governments cannot fund them on their own. The private sectors resources must be effectively mobilised. The two-day forum, themed An Asia Pacific Green Deal for Business: Driving the Green Transformation, is jointly organised by the United Nations Economic & Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the ESCAP Sustainable Business Network, with support from the Hong Kong SAR Governments Environment & Ecology Bureau. It brings together government officials, entrepreneurs, investors, private sector enterprises and academics from around the region. Secretary for Environment & Ecology Tse Chin-wan will tomorrow give a keynote address on Hong Kongs quest for carbon neutrality before 2050. This story has been published on: 2023-11-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. 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. Robin Williams played a single father masquerading as an elderly female housekeeper in the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire. Director Chris Columbus recently revealed the late actor improvised most of his lines. Archive Photos/Getty Images Robin Williams relentless improvisation required the makers of the 1993 comedy Mrs. Doubtfire, to shoot nearly 2 million feet of film, according to a recent interview with director Chris Columbus for the movies 30th anniversary. Early on in the process, he went to me, Hey boss, the way I like to work, if youre up for it, is Ill give you three or four scripted takes, and then lets play, Columbus told Business Insider about working with Williams. By saying that, what he meant was he wanted to improvise. And thats exactly how we shot every scene. We would have exactly what was scripted, and then Robin would go off and it was something to behold. Based on the 1987 Anne Fine book Madame Doubtfire, the San Francisco-set film captures the late Williams at the height of his popularity, playing the out-of-work actor and divorced father Daniel Hillard, who disguises himself as an elderly female housekeeper to spend time with his three children. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Columbus said Williams would typically do one take after another, only stopping when the cameras ran out of film. This was after he sat in the makeup chair for five hours before shooting every scene as Mrs. Doubtfire. It got to the point that I had to shoot the entire movie with four cameras to keep up with him, Columbus recalled. None of us knew what he was going to say when he got going, and so I wanted a camera on the other actors to get their reactions. Chris Columbus appears on the red carpet before the SFFilm Awards at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in 2021. The director revealed that he has roughly 972 boxes of footage, including outtakes and unreleased scenes, of Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle But there was one particular crew member who may have suffered most. More Information Mrs. Doubtfire (PG-13) is available to stream on Disney+. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The poor script supervisor, Columbus said. Remember, this is the early 1990s, she wasnt typing what he was saying. She was handwriting it and Robin would change every take. Often, he would literally give us a completely different take than what we did doing the written takes. The movie was a blockbuster hit, earning more than $440 million worldwide and ranking as one of the most popular theatrical releases of 1993, second only to Jurassic Park. Columbus attributed much of the success to Williams, whose comedic style breathed life into the film. Chronicle critic Peter Stack gave the movie the highest Chronicle rating upon its November release, a Little Man jumping out of his chair. Robin Williams appears onstage at the 2012 Comedy Awards in New York. Director Chris Columbus recently said the late actor improvised most of his lines in the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire. Charles Sykes/AP The film, which Columbus described as a love letter to San Francisco, remains a beloved classic to this day, largely due to its realistic depiction of divorce and single fatherhood. Advertisement Article continues below this ad When Williams unexpectedly took his own life in 2014 at his Marin County home at age 63, fans flocked to the Mrs. Doubtfire house at Steiner Street and Broadway in Pacific Heights to pay their respects to the actor whose exceptional talent is evident in his diverse roles, from the 1987 film Good Morning, Vietnam to 1989s Dead Poets Society and 1997s Good Will Hunting, which earned him an Academy Award for best supporting actor. Columbus, who was living in San Francisco at the time the film was shot, said there are roughly 972 boxes of footage, including outtakes and unreleased scenes, sitting in storage that could become a documentary about the making of Mrs. Doubtfire. Jessica Longs daughter holds a photo of Cedar, the goat she raised that was auctioned in the Shasta County Fair before her family had a change of heart and took him back. Lezlie Sterling/Sacramento Bee I, Cedar, may be as dead as the narrator of the film Sunset Boulevard. But from my warm and dry pen in caprine heaven, I can still hand down a hard lesson for my fellow Californians: Never, ever, let the government get your goat. The story of my short life is a parable of these head-spinning times, when cruel is the rule, and mercy is as rare as affordable housing. The circumstances of my death also raise questions about the responsibilities of children, the harshness of animal husbandry and the excesses of law enforcement. Advertisement Article continues below this ad But the hardest question is the most straightforward: Who killed me? There are many suspects in this hiricide. Did I die because of the young child who raised me? Until shortly before my death, I was under the care of a 9-year-old girl in Shasta County, who decided to enter me in last years Shasta County Fair. What she didnt seem to understand was that county fairs arent all fun and fried dough. Entering me into the fair meant I could be auctioned off for slaughter. Advertisement Article continues below this ad And thats what happened. I was auctioned, for $902, to state Sen. Brian Dahle, who was the Republican candidate for governor in 2022. When it was time to hand me over, the 9-year-old cried and refused to let me be taken away. Was my death the fault of fair officials? Dahle, as purchaser, was willing to cancel the sale he knows what its like to get slaughtered, having lost to Gavin Newsom by 19 points. My former owners mother begged for my life, saying she was willing to buy me back. But fair officials insisted that rules were rules, that farm animals arent pets and that I had to be carved up. My death, the fair CEO said in an email, would also teach that little girl, and all children, life lessons specifically that making an exception for you would only teach youth that they do not have to abide by the rules that are set up for all participants. Was it the long arm of the law? Advertisement Article continues below this ad I used to stare across the pasture and wonder about the life of sheep. After the fair, I finally went on the lamb. Instead of handing me over for slaughter, my owners mom took me away and placed me at a Sonoma County farm that could care for me. The fair insisted this was grand theft and called the Shasta County authorities. Crime levels are high in that county, but the sheriffs office devoted resources to getting a warrant and sending deputies well outside of their jurisdiction, 200 miles southwest to Sonoma, to bring me back to Shasta County. They didnt read me my rights or give me an extradition hearing. Was it another management failure by Gov. Newsom? The governor has declared that the death penalty will no longer be carried out in his state. But his office didnt stop my execution. When the deputies got me back to Shasta County, they turned me over to fair officials, who had me slaughtered, without a trial before a jury of my fellow goats. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Are state legal officials, and the courts, not to blame? Not only did the legal system fail to protect me, it has stood in the way of justice for my death. After my execution, the 9-year-old girl and her mom sued the fair, claiming a violation of the Fourth and 14th Amendments, and of state laws allowing minors to back out of contracts. You might think state officials, for PR reasons, would settle the case quickly, perhaps with an apology that emphasized their supposed commitments to children and to the right to choose. Instead, state Attorney General Rob Bonta who needs to increase his name recognition in advance of an expected run for governor in 2026 recently countersued the girls mother, demanding that she pay all legal costs associated with the case. When government officials are willing to treat a child and mother like that, you cant back down. You have to be even more stubborn than a goat and cultivate a fierce gruffness. Looking back, I wish I could have behaved like the big, third goat in the childrens story The Three Billy Goats Gruff, who, when a troll tries to gobble him up, doesnt negotiate. Instead, he pokes the trolls eyes out with his horns. When the authorities come for your goat, or someone else you dont want to give up, dont get got like me. Think of me, Cedar the Goat, and keep defending the rights of children, the rights of animals and your right to poke the eye of anyone who would punish you for holding on to another living thing. Six weeks after meeting Britney Spears, J Balvin is finally revealing what happened the night he and Maluma enjoyed a late-night sushi dinner with her at private club Zero Bond in Manhattan's Noho neighborhood. 'We told her how proud we are about her,' the 38-year-old Grammy nominee told E! News on Tuesday. 'You know, like she's part of us, and we were in love with her. No matter what position you are in music you gotta give respect for what they have done.' J (first name Jose) said he would 'absolutely' collaborate with the 41-year-old Grammy winner and remarked: 'I saw her in really good spirit.' At first, Britney wrote that she 'had no idea who these boys were' but three days later she gushed of the Colombian reggaeton stars: 'Holy s*** it just hit me. I can't believe I met these 2! Holy smokes!' Spilling the beans! Six weeks after meeting Britney Spears (M, pictured October 11), J Balvin (L) is finally revealing what happened the night he and Maluma (R) enjoyed a late-night sushi dinner with her at private club Zero Bond in Manhattan's Noho neighborhood The 38-year-old Grammy nominee (pictured November 9) told E! News on Tuesday: 'We told her how proud we are about her. You know, like she's part of us, and we were in love with her. No matter what position you are in music you gotta give respect for what they have done' Meanwhile, 29-year-old Maluma (born Juan Luis Londono Arias) had gushed of his Spears encounter: 'Quien asi como yo en el amor?' or 'Who like me in love?' The talented twosome have collaborated on four songs - Con Flow Matalo (2012), X Remix (2018), Que Pena (2019), and Porfa Remix (2020). Zero Bond - aka 'Oh, Bond' - stretches over 20K square feet on two floors and it was originally founded by Scott Sartiano in 2020. Membership costs varies depending your age - folks under 28 pay a $750 initiation fee and $2,750 annually, folks 28-45 pay a $1K initiation fee and $3,850 annually, and over 45 pays a $5K initiation fee and $4,400 annually. The semi-retired pop star's critically-acclaimed memoir The Woman In Me has spent an impressive three weeks atop the New York Times' Bestsellers Non-Fiction list. Simon & Schuster paid Britney a $12.5M advance (25% of the net profits) to pen the 288-page tell-all with three alleged ghostwriters - Ada Calhoun, Sam Lansky, and Luke Dempsey. Last month, Deadline reported that 'buyers are circling' Spears' autobiography to make bids on the rights to make a potential limited TV series based on the book. On the personal front, the Hold Me Closer hitmaker's third husband Sam Asghari filed for divorce from her in August after just 13 months of wedded bliss, but he did sign a prenuptial agreement. J (first name Jose) said he would 'absolutely' collaborate with the 41-year-old Grammy winner and remarked: 'I saw her in really good spirit' At first, Britney wrote that she 'had no idea who these boys were' but three days later she gushed of the Colombian reggaeton stars: 'Holy s*** it just hit me. I can't believe I met these 2! Holy smokes!' Meanwhile, 29-year-old Maluma (born Juan Luis Londono Arias) had gushed of his Spears encounter: 'Quien asi como yo en el amor?' or 'Who like me in love?' Members only! Zero Bond - aka 'Oh, Bond' - stretches over 20K square feet on two floors and it was originally founded by Scott Sartiano in 2020 Glimpse inside: Membership costs varies depending your age - folks under 28 pay a $750 initiation fee and $2,750 annually, folks 28-45 pay a $1K initiation fee and $3,850 annually, and over 45 pays a $5K initiation fee and $4,400 annually (2022 stock shot) Congrats! The semi-retired pop star's critically-acclaimed memoir The Woman In Me has spent an impressive three weeks atop the New York Times' Bestsellers Non-Fiction list Flying off the shelves! Simon & Schuster paid Britney a $12.5M advance (25% of the net profits) to pen the 288-page tell-all with three alleged ghostwriters - Ada Calhoun, Sam Lansky, and Luke Dempsey Would you watch? Last month, Deadline reported that 'buyers are circling' Spears' autobiography to make bids on the rights to make a potential limited TV series based on the book (pictured Tuesday) Cat Deeley has opened up about the long COVID symptoms she suffered when she contracted the virus and how she combated them with visits to an infrared sauna and a -118 degree cryochamber. The presenter, 47, is reportedly set to replace Holly Willoughby on This Morning following a string of well-received appearances with co-host Rylan, who is set to replace Philip Schofield. Speaking to Women's Health UK about her ill health prior to the breakfast television gig, Cat said: 'After I had Covid, I was left with aches and pains in my hands, and doctors couldnt help so I started looking for other things. 'The symptoms that I had were a bit like MS, achy joints, no strength in my hands, and a weird thing that happened when I looked down there's a nerve at the back of your neck and it almost felt fizzy, electric. 'I saw that they often treat MS patients with oxygen tanks as it helps with rejuvenation. I found a place locally that has one, and they also have a red light sauna and a cryochamber, and I was like "in for a penny in for a pound"!' Wow: Cat Deeley, 47, opened up to Women's Health UK about her long COVID symptoms which she combated with visits to an infrared sauna and a cryochamber Exciting year ahead: The presenter is reportedly set to replace Holly Willoughby on This Morning following a string of well-received appearances (pictured here in the infrared sauna) Brr! Cat braves the -118 degree cyrochamber - almost 30 degrees colder than the lowest-ever recorded Antarctic temperature The former Stars In Their Eyes presenter will spend a full 45 minutes in the sauna, so she has to do things to keep herself entertained. She explained: 'I have to read a magazine. So, I've got my glasses on, at the same time I try and put my legs up the wall. Completely naked. I meanthank God, no one can see me. 'And then I sit there for 45 minutes, get incredibly sweaty, have a shower, wash my hair and then jump in the cryo tank.' Cat then spoke about how her innocent daily habit ended up doing real and expensive damage. 'I had been drinking hot water and lemon in the morning for about twenty years, first thing, before I had even had a coffee or anything.' Cat recalled. 'I had read it was really good for you, it made me feel good, and it made my tummy feel great. But, I went to see my dentist and she was literally like, "What have you done to the enamel on the front of your teeth?" 'And I was like, "Nothing, I don't even eat sweets, I am much more of a cheese person. It turns out that the hot water and lemon had taken all the enamel off the front of my teeth. I had to have composite bonds on them to replace it. Read the full Cat Deeley interview on the Women's Health UK website. Composites: Cat accidentally eroded the enamel from her front two teeth with her daily lemon and hot water habit Married: Cat and Patrick Kielty, 52, tied the knot in a private ceremony in Rome on 30 September and share two children (pictured 2021) Family of four: Cat and Patrick have sons Milo, 7, (left) and James, 5, together and the family lives in London Cat was a guest presenter on Lorraine between 2020 and 2021. She hosted U.S. dance competition reality show So You Think You Can Dance? from 2006 to 2022. The presenter lives in London with her husband - comedian Patrick Kielty - and their two children, having previously lived in Los Angeles. She and Patrick share sons Milo, 7, and James, 5. President John F. Kennedys motorcade travels through Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Associated Press 1963 Memorabilia of Jacqueline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy are for sale in the gift shop of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. Brenan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images 2013 A film crew records frightened onlookers covering their children after three shots ring out in Dealey Plaza at 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 22, 1963. Cecil Stoughton/MCT 1963 A picket fence atop the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza stands in the area that is often cited by conspiracy theorists as an alternative or additional location for a shooter in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images 2013 The sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository building is where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed President John F. Kennedy. Tom Pennington/Getty Images 2013 Like millions of Americans, I have been haunted by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the 60 years since he was murdered on a Dallas street. The shooting happened while Kennedy, Texas Gov. John Connally, their wives and two Secret Service agents were riding in a 1961 Lincoln Continental, past the banal exterior of the Texas School Book Depository and through a park called Dealey Plaza. Today, the plaza is oddly pleasant if you dont know what happened there. Advertisement Article continues below this ad My 29-year-old son, a student of Robert A. Caros books on President Lyndon B. Johnson, and I decided to visit Austin, Texas, to see the LBJ Presidential Library and his nearby ranch in the Texas hill country. I suggested that we depart Texas from Dallas, so I could show him Dealey Plaza. He agreed. I hadnt been there in 38 years. Dealey Plaza is virtually unchanged from Nov. 22, 1963. The so-called Grassy Knoll is there, intact, save for a new fence where some people erroneously assert that some of the shots were fired. People hawk books and pamphlets there now, a jarring commercial counterpoint to the still-somber scene. The Texas School Book Depository is now the Dallas County Administration Building, and, on the sixth floor, is a museum dedicated to the assassination. There is a reason why theres a museum there: Its where, no doubt in my mind, Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed the president and wounded Gov. Connally. Exhibits display Jack Rubys fedora and the tan suit worn by Detective Jim Leavelle, cuffed to Oswald when Ruby killed the assassin live on national television. Advertisement Article continues below this ad One can see through now-streaked glass down Elm Street, where, 88 yards away, Oswald fired his last shot into Kennedys head. The wavy window glass was like a clouded prism; the 60 years takes the span of time and imagery and distorts it. It was just yesterday for some, forever for others. It is most likely that Oswald cooked up this catastrophe in the dank warehouse of his own mental state, an attempt to be, in his mind, a historic revolutionary figure like his hero, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Persuasive evidence exists that Oswald may have told someone of his plans, likely at the Cuban or Russian embassies in Mexico City six weeks before the assassination. To this day, the Central Intelligence Agency withholds useful information about that trip. Why? In Dealey Plaza and on the sixth floor, I heard truly ridiculous assertions. Advertisement Article continues below this ad A teenager announced, There is no way that he could have fired seven shots in four seconds. That would be three shots in about six seconds, and, yes, for Oswald, a U.S. Marine marksman using a telescopic rifle, a fading target going 11 miles per hour was a rather easy shot. Behind the Grassy Knoll fence, a woman pronounced, This is where the shots actually were fired. No credible photographic or physical evidence supports this. On the sixth floor, in the southeast corner of the building, visitors can see a surreal recreation of Oswalds grimy snipers nest. I walked my son around the plaza, pointing out where one critical moment after the next happened. Here is where a Dallas steamfitter saw Oswald fire the last shot. Here is where the presidents car disappeared behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. Here is where on Elm Street, at Zapruder film frame 313, a military bullet crashed into Kennedys head. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Someone has painted an X on the street where Kennedy died in front of young families. You can see them in the films, their parents shielding their children. Years later, one of those children described seeing what he thought was confetti coming from the car. In a macabre traffic dance, people take selfies on the exact spot in the street where John F. Kennedy died. I didnt see people in their 60s or older doing this, because they remember the moment and where they were when they heard about Kennedy. I vividly remember it as a 3-year-old. My mother, her friend and her daughter, were at our house watching the CBS soap opera As The World Turns. What I recall, fragmentally: The screen going black. Mom and her friends screamed and cried. My father came home from work during the day. Me saying, repetitively, Kenny dead. I had no idea who Kenny was. Advertisement Article continues below this ad But I knew something was terribly wrong. As my son and I entered the Book Depository, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. The scene was eerily similar to Nov. 22: sunny, low 70s, high noon, the brilliant light, the green grass and the trees, the red brick building, the milling crowds. I felt like I was walking in the Zapruder film, an unwanted virtual reality. In the snipers nest, overhead light fixtures appeared to be original, the scuffed wooden floors stained with oil, with exposed pipes in the ceiling. In the adjacent window, there was essentially Oswalds view: a winding street somewhat obscured by oak trees, cars drifting away. I looked at Oswalds perch, then sat on a bench and wept. My son approached me, picked me up, and said quietly, lets get the hell out of here. A man in his 70s was on the elevator with us. He looked at me. He wasnt weeping. VIT-AP University holds 56th National Library Week Amaravati: VIT-AP University hosted a programme on the occasion of 56th National Library Week celebration in the campus. Prof Padmini, a retired faculty member from the Department of Library and Information Science and former Principal of SV University College of Arts, Tirupati, was the chief guest at the event and she spoke about the importance of libraries and said that during the freedom struggle the libraries played a key role in motivating people towards striving for India's independence. FICCI-Meta XROS fellowship concludes new delhi: Leading industry association FICCI in association with Meta today successfully concluded its one-of-its-kind initiative the XR Open Source (XROS) Fellowship programme for Indian developers. The programme supported 100 developers working on XR technologies by enabling them to contribute to the open-source XR projects in collaboration with leading institutions and companies in XR who were project partners to the program. Over 65 per cent of the developers are from smaller cities and towns across India and about 20 percent of the selected fellows are women developers. The Fellows worked on open source metaverse projects across a number of use-cases including spatially powered smart wearable devices, 3D atlas of human anatomy helping the medical ecosystem understand the human anatomy in a 3D world, VR accessibility toolkit to aid accessibility for specially-abled individuals in immersive experiences, an Indic metaverse with heritage site tours and cultural experiences and viable web solutions for AR and VR to enable immersive experiences across a wide variety of hardware form factors. Blue collar workforce struggles new delhi: There is a big difference between the number of people looking for blue-collar jobs and the number of job openings. 67 per cent more people are actively looking for jobs, but there has only been a 61 per cent increase in available jobs, according to data by WorkIndia, India's leading tech-enabled blue-collar recruitment platform. It is our mission to provide meaningful livelihoods to the blue-collar workers of India, and we will continue working towards the same, said Nilesh Dungarwal, co-founder and CEO of WorkIndia. The initial share sale offering of pen maker Flair Writing Industries was fully subscribed on the first day of bidding on Wednesday, ending the trade with 2.17 times subscription. The Initial Public Offer (IPO) received bids for 3,13,20,310 shares against 1,44,13,188 shares on offer, according to data available with the NSE. The part for Retail Individual Investors (RIIs) attracted 2.86 times subscription while the quota for non-institutional investors got subscribed 2.78 times. The category for Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) received 53 per cent subscription. Flair Writing's IPO has a fresh issue of equity shares aggregating up to Rs 292 crore and an Offer for Sale (OFS) of equity shares worth up to Rs 301 crore by promoters and promoter group entities. At present, promoters and promoter group entities own 100 per cent stake in the company. The issue has a price band of Rs 288-304 a share. Flair Writing Industries Ltd on Tuesday said it has mopped up Rs 178 crore from anchor investors. Proceeds of the fresh issue will be used for setting up a manufacturing facility for writing instruments at Valsad district in Gujarat; funding the company's capital expenditure and subsidiary Flair Writing Equipments Pvt Ltd (FWEPL). Besides, the proceeds will be used to support the working capital requirements of the company and subsidiaries FWEPL and Flair Cyrosil Industries. Also, the money will be used for payment of the loan and general corporate purposes. The company, which owns the over 45-year-old flagship brand 'Flair', is among the top three players in the overall writing instruments industry with a market share of about nine per cent as of March 2023. It manufactures and distributes writing instruments, including pens, stationery products, and calculators, and has also diversified into manufacturing houseware products and steel bottles. Nuvama Wealth Management Ltd (formerly known as Edelweiss Securities Ltd) and Axis Capital Ltd are the book-running lead managers to the IPO. State-owned Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) has mobilised Rs 643 crore from anchor investors. The company has allotted 20,10,19,726 equity shares to 58 funds at Rs 32 apiece, which is also the upper-end of the price band. Goldman Sachs, Integrated Core Strategies (Asia), Societe Generale, GAM Star Emerging Equity, BNP Paribas Arbitrage, Copthall Mauritius and Moon Capital Trading are among the anchor investors, according to a circular uploaded late night on Monday on BSE. In addition, domestic mutual funds and insurance companies that participated in the anchor book included HDFC Mutual Fund (MF), ICICI Prudential MF, SBI MF, Kotak MF, DSP MF, Sundaram MF, SBI Life Insurance Company, SBI General Insurance Company, Max Life Insurance Company and Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance Company. The Rs 2,150-crore maiden public issue, with a price band of Rs 30 to Rs 32 per share opened for subscription on November 21 and will conclude on November 23. This is the first public issue by a public sector enterprise after Life Insurance Corporation's IPO in May last year. IREDA would issue up to 40.31 crore fresh shares to mobilise around Rs 1,290 crore at the upper-end of the price band. Besides, the government of India, currently the sole shareholder, will offer up to 26.88 crore shares in an offer-for-sale (OFS) in a bid to collect Rs 860 crore. Proceeds from the fresh issue will be used for augmenting IREDA's capital base to meet its future capital requirements and onward lending. Half of the issue size has been reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 35 per cent for retail investors, and the remaining 15 per cent for non-institutional investors. IREDA is a mini Ratna firm with administrative controls with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. The organization offers a comprehensive array of financial products (fund and non-fund-based) associated services, from project inception to post-completion, for renewable energy projects and related activities like equipment manufacturing and transmission. BOB Capital Markets Ltd, SBI Capital Markets Ltd, and IDBI Capital Markets & Securities Ltd are the book-running managers for the issue. The shares of the company will be listed on the BSE and NSE. Shad Darshan are six philosophical systems in Vedic and post-Vedic schools of thought Shad Darshan, which translates to "Six Philosophies" in Sanskrit, refers to the six classical schools of Indian philosophy that have played a crucial role in shaping the intellectual and spiritual landscape of ancient and medieval India. These philosophical systems, each with its unique perspective and emphasis, provide diverse insights into the nature of reality, consciousness, and the purpose of human existence. Let's explore a brief introduction to each of the Shad Darshan schools. Nyaya Darshan: The Science of Logic and Reasoning Nyaya, meaning "logic" in Sanskrit, is a system that focuses on the analysis of reasoning and logic. It provides a structured approach to understanding and validating knowledge through inference, analogy, and deduction. Nyaya philosophers, known as Nyayaikas, seek to establish a systematic methodology for discerning truth and knowledge. Vaisheshika Darshan: The Atomic Theory of Matter Vaisheshika is a philosophical system that delves into the nature of the physical world. Founded by the sage Kanada, it explores the concept of atomism and classifies the various elements of the universe. Vaisheshika proposes that everything in the material world is composed of distinct, indivisible atoms. The philosophy also addresses the concept of karma and its role in shaping individual destinies. Samkhya Darshan: The Enumeration of Reality Samkhya is one of the oldest schools of Indian philosophy attributed to Sage Kapila. It focuses on enumerating the fundamental components of reality. Samkhya identifies the dualistic nature of existence, distinguishing between Purusha (consciousness) and Prakriti (matter). The philosophy aims to liberate the individual soul (purusha) from the entanglements of the material world by understanding the true nature of reality. Yoga Darshan: The Path to Union Yoga, popularized worldwide as a system of physical and mental practices, is deeply rooted in the philosophical framework of Yoga Darshan. Attributed to Sage Patanjali, this system outlines a path to self-realization and union with the divine. Yoga includes ethical guidelines (yamas and niyamas), physical postures (asanas), breath control (pranayama), and meditation. The ultimate goal of Yoga Darshan is to achieve a state of inner tranquillity and spiritual enlightenment. Mimamsa Darshan: The Science of Rituals Mimamsa, also known as Purva Mimamsa, is a school that concentrates on the interpretation of Vedic rituals and sacrificial ceremonies. The Mimamsa philosophers, called Mimamsakas, meticulously analyze the Vedas to understand the correct performance of rituals and the implications of these actions. The philosophy emphasizes the importance of adhering to Vedic injunctions for individual and societal welfare. Vedanta Darshan: The End of Knowledge or ultimate knowledge Vedanta, meaning "the end of the Vedas," is a philosophical system that interprets the Upanishads, the concluding part of the Vedic scriptures. Vedanta explores the nature of ultimate reality (Brahman) and the relationship between the individual soul (Atman) and the cosmic consciousness. Advaita Vedanta, one of the most influential schools within this system, teaches the non-dualistic nature of reality, asserting that the individual soul and Brahman are ultimately one. Shad Darshan represents a rich tapestry of philosophical thought in ancient India, offering diverse perspectives on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and spirituality. Each school within this framework contributes unique insights, providing seekers with a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of existence and the paths to self-realization. The enduring legacy of Shad Darshan continues to inspire philosophical inquiry and spiritual exploration in contemporary times. (The writer is a spiritual guide; views are personal) Illegal migrations can lead to social and political tensions in the host country which can be a real problem in the long run The current times are not merely of wars and armed conflicts, but also of infiltration. Britain hosts illegal immigrants, which costs the country 8 million pounds a day merely to feed them. Due to a clash between Burmas rebels and the countrys army, reportedly at least 50,000 if not a lakh Burmese have entered India and have penetrated up to Manipur and Mizoram, some up to as far as Delhi. One estimate says there are up to 175,000 illegal immigrants in the UK. Ukrainians by the thousands have rushed into Poland over the last year and a half, while many others are knocking on Germanys doors. Being of European stock, they are not unwelcome, whereas the immigrants entering the UK are from Rwanda, and are positively unwanted. A third category of potential migrants are ready to flee the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in Israel and Hamas, but they are scrupulously unwanted by even the most zealous Islamic countries. Europe, over the last decade or more, has been talked about as possibly becoming Eurabia shortly. Yet, when many Syrians were fleeing their own country to escape bombing by their regime, several member countries of the European Union led by Germany, and then Chancellor Angela Merkel were ready to welcome them. Merkel might have perhaps been moved to sympathy by her own experience as an East German whose government killed thousands of its citizens for wanting to flee to the West. India has suffered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh to the tune of some 20 million of the latters citizens living illegally in India. As if this was not troubling enough, Pakistan has lately become sick with impending bankruptcy. It is reported that its not so well-off citizens survive on one meal a day. When even that meal disappears, would they not be tempted to dash the Indian border? The citizens of Pak-occupied Kashmir feel oppressed, and some of them feel that it is their right to become Indian citizens because their Maharaja (Hari Singh, the erstwhile princely ruler of Jammu & Kashmir) had acceded to India in 1947. It was the Pakistani Mujahideen who had occupied their territory forcibly. There is no counter-answer to this claim. Books have been written on migration, some of which contend that most peoples of the world have migrated from somewhere at some stage of history. One notable book is Migrants by Sam Miller. India certainly attracted waves of migration over the centuries due to its prosperity compared with Central Asia. However, that does not justify further illegal entry into India. An almost uninterrupted flow of migration into the European Union has been changing Europes domestic politics since the last decade or even more. Today, Europe, and particularly Southern Europe is exposed and vulnerable to pressure to migration from the Middle East and North Africa, a region referred to as MENA. Unlike the Republican Party and its leader Donald Trump, not everyone in the USA objects to migration from Cuba or Mexico. The reason may be that they are predominantly white. Nationality is often defined as those people whose hearts can beat together. On the other hand, there are US citizens who realize that allowing migration from any sundry country with varying racial stock will lead to conflict. Consequently, there is a growing reluctance to further immigration. But again, there is a divide between the Republicans and the Democrats, the latter generally favouring immigration as an addition to their votebanks. The United Kingdom, in the aftermath of World War II, allowed free immigration from their Asian colonies as well as their Caribbean ones. In recent years they have begun to regret what their predecessors did in response to their temptation to procure cheaper labour. The French experience has been bitterer because up to ten per cent of the immigrants into the country are Algerians whose hearts beat often in contradiction to those of the European French. The Netherlands and Belgium are also inconvenienced by immigrants of a similar kind, while Germany has a large number of people from Turkey, who are not welcome. Although they have been called guest workers, the truth is that once an outsider settles in a host country for a few months, it is virtually impossible to make him or her quit. Canada and Australia have virtually limitless space, and to expand their economies, have liberal policies on immigration. What the cost of building multiracial or multicultural societies will be, only time will tell. A political scientist would take a political view that in due course, two or three communities in the same country can lead to not only social tension but also political competition. The current clash in West Asia is not the only example. The Indian experience of 75 years ago led to a partition, whereby 35 per cent of the land area became another country. Years ago, Nigeria fought a bitter civil war between the North Muslims and Southern Biafra Christians. The Christian East Timor separated from the rest of Islamic Indonesia because of a clash of cultures. Those dealing with migrants should bear these undeniable aspects of history in mind before framing policies. (The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal) Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a problem driven by misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medicines, including antibiotics and antivirals Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and become resistant to (or no longer respond to) medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death. As a result of drug resistance, medicines become ineffective, and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat. That is why AMR ranks among the top ten global health threats worldwide. Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a problem driven by misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medicines, including antibiotics and antivirals, and results in critical medicines losing effectiveness to treat infections, said Thomas Joseph, Head, AMR Awareness, Advocacy and Campaigns, World Health Organization (WHO), at a recent pre-conference meet of 22nd International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA). AMR is associated with 5 million deaths a year. Besides this, there is a huge burden of morbidity and healthcare expenditure that can affect household welfare severely. The World Bank estimates that Global GDP could fall by $1 to $3.4 trillion annually after 2030 due to AMR, he added. The World Bank estimates that an additional 24 million people will be forced into extreme poverty by 2030 if no action is taken on AMR today. Drawing attention to World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) which is celebrated between 18-24 November every year, Thomas cautioned that All stakeholders should realize that if we do not act now, we could go back to a pre-antibiotic era, when even simple infections become untreatable. Personal experience of surviving AMR Vanessa Carter, an AMR patient survivor, One Health advocate, Chairperson of the WHO Taskforce of AMR Survivors, and founder of The AMR Narrative was one of the speakers at the 3rd Annual Global Media Forum on AMR, hosted by Global AMR Media Alliance in lead up to WAAW 2023. She shared her eye-opening personal experience of her battle with AMR In 2004, I was 25 years old. I had a severe car accident in Johannesburg, South Africa, and ended up in a hospital with a lot of massive injuries. I had been resuscitated on the side of the road, I was put on life support, I had multiple fractures in my face- a broken jaw and a broken nose- and also lost one eye. I also had a head injury, major abdominal injury, fractured pelvis, neck, and back injury. But the most complicated injuries were to my face, and it took me 10 years to recover from them, during which time I have had 4 different facial prosthetic implants, said Vanessa. But the worst was yet to come. Six years into the accident and after her fourth implant, one day, while getting into her car, Vanessa saw moisture seeping all over her face. It was pus oozing out from her 4th implanted prosthetic. She underwent emergency surgery, and the doctors did debridement and reconstructive surgery to fix up the damaged tissue. Two weeks later, the infection returned. She got more tissue reconstruction done. But the infection kept on returning and it worsened over time. This went on for the next 11 months during which she was kept under the care of several specialist surgeons. Vanessa was eventually diagnosed with a highly antibiotic-resistant form of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection. She could not undergo any more surgeries for one year, as the doctors had to wait for the tissue to recover. I had to cover my face as I looked terrible. My face was very red, full of fluid and swollen. I could not wear my artificial eye. I could not go to fetch my child from school because the kids would get scared looking at me, she recalls. I lost ten valuable years of my life between 25-35 years of age, being in and out of hospital, and not being able to look in the mirror without seeing a changed face. I nearly got a bloodstream infection and sepsis and almost died. But I am also living with a severe disability now- facial disfiguration which was partially caused by the accident but exacerbated by the fact that we could not treat this infection. When I learned about antibiotic resistance, it came as a surprise why it was not a common knowledge even though it is such a widespread global threat, she shared in the forum. This is first part of two-part series on AMR. To be continued... (Shobha Shukla and Bobby Ramakant lead the editorial team of Citizen News Service and are on the Board of Global AMR Media Alliance (GAMA) and Asia Pacific Media Alliance for Health and Development, APCAT Media; views are personal) With the easy availability of techniques to manipulate, copy, and share digital files, nothing is sacrosanct. What looks like a genuine photo may be a deepfake Our recent skirmishes with deepfake videos have left us all wary of trusting our eyes. These incredibly convincing videos use advanced AI technology to morph the faces of prominent figures on top videos originally featuring other people. These videos are easy to disseminate over social media. And boy, do they seem real!There has been a radical shift in recent times over how we receive and process information. Gone are the days when we had to wait to get our news from newspapers and TV channels. Today, we feed on a constant stream of unverified information from our social networking websites and our WhatsApp forwards. This news is available at our fingertips, served in palatable formats that take seconds to grasp. There is no background, no finer minutiae to discern, and definitely no verification of authenticity. One clicks to see and one click to forward.As a result, these spread like wildfire. There is global concern about deepfakes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called upon the media to spread awareness about the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI) to create deepfakes. He has emphasised the need of tagging digital products at source, creating accountability at the level of generation of any videos. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called for a joint global alliance on AI safety. The US President has issued an executive order on AI, a first-of-its-kind action from the government to tackle some challenges posed by AI, including plans on how to identify if an image is real or fake. Joe Biden's order calls for a new set of government-led standards on watermarking AI-generated content, to check deepfakes.Though deepfakes have been around for several years, the problem has become grave of late because sophisticated techniques for altering photos and videos have become so accessible that deepfakes have become commonplace. They can be used by criminals and scamsters to the detriment of citizens, to spread fake news and incite hatred, even violence.AI is ubiquitous and it is changing the world very fast. It has limitless potential but also poses some unique threats. Biden said, AI is all around us. To realise the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology. His order is a first step that seeks to ensure that AI is trustworthy, not deceptive and helpful, not destructive. The order is meant to guide how AI is developed so that developers can profit without jeopardising user safety. Using the Defense Production Act, the order directs AI companies to share safety test results and other information with the government. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has been asked to create standards to ensure that AI tools are safe and secure before they are released for public use. The Commerce Department is to issue guidelines to digitally watermark AI-generated content to help differentiate between authentic creations and those generated by software.Stamp papers, documents, currency notes and some fancy photographs and paintings carry watermarks to establish genuineness. These are created at the wet stage of making paper. Similarly, a digital watermark is embedded at the time of creating digital content. A digital watermark is like a digital signature that is embedded into a digital file to identify its originator or owner. This mark can be a code, logo, text or a unique sign that identifies the contents owner and also helps to prove its authenticity.A digital watermark has to be very creative, a way of altering a file that is not noticeable to the user. It might be difficult to embed a watermark within a text file. However, it is quite easy to do it for audio, video and image formats by changing a few bits, without making a noticeable difference in the music, movie or photo.Like watermarks on paper currency or documents, digital watermark helps distinguish between a real object and a fake one and also ascertain who owns it. It can track the online use of the file and warn the creator against unauthorised access and use. Digital watermarks can check the spread of fake images to some extent but cannot control it.Though digital watermark may not be a solution to deepfakes, it is an important tool to fight against piracy and unauthorised access and distribution of digital files. With the invention of easy techniques to copy and share digital files, companies and businesses are facing a huge challenge to safeguard their valuable content and content creators. But if a watermark is embedded into the master copy of a DVD movie, then all copies of that disc carry a unique identification. If a licence holder distributes them outside his authorised jurisdiction, the watermark provides a trace.Digital watermarking also helps companies in content tracking and monitoring its distribution and usage across various consumers and platforms. This can help them make more informed decisions about their marketing, advertising and distribution strategies. By ensuring that their content is protected from unauthorised use, businesses can maintain greater control over their brand identity.Watermarking technology is a simple solution that holds promise. But it may not be enough on its own. It is naive to accept this as a foolproof protection against piracy and deepfakes. It is very easy to remove a watermark that is toward the edge of an image; it can simply be cropped out of the picture. Further, there are apps available that can remove most watermarks in just a few clicks. This is why a digital watermark cannot offer complete protection.The Distill scientific journal defines AI Safety as The goal of long-term artificial intelligence (AI) safety is to ensure that advanced AI systems are reliably aligned with human values that they reliably do things that people want them to do.A sustainable solution to deepfakes should be able to balance the needs of AI companies with consumer rights and that will require a bouquet of practical solutions like a digital watermark. That will require cooperation from online platforms and search engines to voluntarily decide to allow only those contents that bear a watermark. This is a larger issue and calls for strict adherence to ethics in the business of AI development. (The writer is Additional Chief Secretary in Govt of UP. Views are personal) By embracing transformative approach to upskilling youth, we can ensure that they not only thrive but also lead us toward a more sustainable future In a world marked by rapid evolution and constant change, it is imperative to recognise the significance of preparing our youth for the future. With over 1.8 billion individuals aged between 10 and 24, as highlighted by the United Nations, the potential of this demographic to drive progress and transformation is immense. But it is equally important to acknowledge the challenges they face in a job market that is constantly in flux. The statistics are revealing: in 92 countries, nearly three out of four young people aged 15-24 lack the emerging skills needed for employment, as per estimates by the Education Commission and UNICEF. This challenge is particularly pronounced in developing countries where access to education and resources can be limited. This glaring disparity underscores the urgency of providing our youth with skills that are not only relevant but also adaptable, transcending borders and empowering. Let's consider India, a nation with a vast talent pool in the information and technology sector. India has the potential to become a hub of technology and innovation, expanding beyond its role as one of the biggest IT exporters globally. However, it is imperative to transition from merely acquiring new skills to creating well-rounded individuals with the capacity to address social issues. Changemakers Mindset: Fostering a Changemakers mindset leveraging entrepreneurial thinking and problem solving is essential to equip the next generation for the 21st century's challenges and opportunities. Global leadership programs and initiatives offer a unique platform to instill this mindset in young students. By immersing them in a curriculum that emphasises on innovation and entrepreneurial thinking around some real life challenges, we can prepare students to excel in the 4th Industrial Revolution. Programs aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals provide students with a sense of purpose and responsibility, reinforcing the importance of changemaking in creating a more sustainable and socially conscious future. Nurturing Digital Skills: Technology is a crucial tool for transformative education. It connects students to a wealth of knowledge and experts worldwide, enabling innovative problem-solving. Beyond job readiness, it empowers youth to address pressing issues using advanced tools like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR). The focus should shift to a holistic, interdisciplinary education, preparing youth for a tech-centric future in various sectors even in traditionally non-technical fields like medicine or psychology. Beyond the Classroom: Learning extends beyond the confines of a traditional classroom. Students acquire knowledge and skills through experiential opportunities, such as engaging in projects centred around environmental sustainability, social justice, and community involvement. Empowering Youth: Involving youth in shaping their own education is crucial. Instead of imposing a strict, top-down approach, a more flexible, bottom-up method is desirable. This means listening to the ideas and opinions of young people about what they're learning. By equipping youth with new skills, we empower them to pass on their knowledge to the next generation in their communities. This results in a collaborative system where everyone has a role in making sure young people gain valuable skills. The path to equipping our youth for the future is multifaceted. It involves fostering a changemakers mindset, nurturing digital skills, emphasising socio-emotional growth, empowering youth to take charge of their education, and extending learning beyond the classroom. By embracing these transformative approaches to upskilling our youth, we can ensure that they would lead us toward a brighter, more sustainable future. (The writer is Founder & chief mentor 1M1B (1 Million For 1 Billion), views are personal) A presentation ceremony of the Strategy "Uzbekistan - 2030" took place here at the Embassy of Uzbekistan. The event was attended by diplomats, representatives of academic and analytical circles, and media workers from Uzbekistan and India. In September, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the President of Uzbekistan signed the Decree "On the Uzbekistan - 2030 Strategy". The document is designed for the next seven years and includes 5 priority areas containing 100 goals. They define all the important tasks of the socio-political and socio-economic development of the country. At the conference, representatives of academic and research centers in India paid special attention to the role of the Uzbekistan-2030 Strategy at the current stage of the country's development. In particular, Skand Ranjan Tayal, the former Ambassador of India to Uzbekistan, noted that Uzbekistan has been going through a consistent stage of development in recent years, and in the course of these changes, solutions to pressing problems are being found to ensure the interests of ordinary people. Sanjay Kumar Pandey, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a leading expert on Central Asia, acknowledged that the Uzbekistan-2030 Strategy is a programme adopted after achieving the lofty goals set in the Action Strategy and the Development Strategy. These important documents serve as the basis for great successes in all spheres of life in New Uzbekistan. Professor Shahid Taslim, head of the Department of Foreign Languages at Jamia Millia Islamia Central University, founder of the first Uzbek language courses in India, noted that the process of change taking place in Uzbekistan in recent years is increasing the interest of Indian youth in learning the Uzbek language. For example, about 300 young students are studying Uzbek at Jamia Millia Islamia. As the Israel-Hamas conflict rages on, Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned on Wednesday that insecurity and instability in West Asia are matters of concern. He emphasised the need to ensure that the Israel-Hamas conflict does not escalate into a regional conflict. Addressing the G-20 Leaders summit, he stated, Terrorism is unacceptable to all of us. Modi stressed that the death of civilians, regardless of the location, is condemnable, and he also welcomed the news of the release of hostages in West Asia. The summit was held in virtual mode. Significantly, the meeting came on a day Israels Cabinet approved a temporary ceasefire with the Hamas group. Moreover, the virtual meeting of G20 leaders took place a day after leaders of the BRICS grouping held an extraordinary meeting on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Prime Minister Modi, in his opening remarks, said in the last few months, new challenges have emerged and the situation of insecurity and instability in West Asia is a matter of concern. The virtual meeting was attended by leaders such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, and Chinese Premier Li Qiang, among others. Our coming together shows that we are sensitive to all issues and standing together for their solution. We believe that terrorism is unacceptable to us. The death of civilians, wherever it may be, is condemnable. We welcome the news of the release of hostages. We hope all hostages will be released soon, Modi said. He asserted that it is imperative that humanitarian assistance reaches on time and in a continuous manner. It is important to ensure that the Israel-Hamas war does not take the shape of a regional conflict, Modi said. Highlighting the challenge posed by Artificial Intelligence(AI), Prime Minister Modi said it should reach people and must be safe for society. He said there are growing concerns across the world on negative use of AI. He said, Indias thinking is clear, we have to work together on global regulation of AI. We must understand dangers posed by deepfakes to society and individuals. Addressing the G20 leaders, he said, When on November 16 last year, Indonesian President Joko Widodo handed the ceremonial gavel to me, I had said we will make G20 inclusive, ambitious, action-oriented and decisive. In one year, we have together achieved this. All of us together have taken the G20 to newer heights, he said. In this world full of mistrust and challenges, it is this trust that binds us together. In the last year, we have expressed confidence in One Earth, One Family, and One Future. Moving away from controversies, we have worked with unity and cooperation, PM Modi said. I can never forget that moment when in Delhi all of us welcomed the African Union into the G20. This message of inclusivity given by the G20 to the world is unprecedented. It is a matter of pride for India that under its presidency, Africa was given a voice. In the last year in the G20, the Global Souths voice has also been heard, Modi said. ThePM asserted that the G20 has increased confidence in multilateralism, and global governance reforms have been given a direction. Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday ahead of the summit, Indias G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said the deliberations will witness excellent participation from leaders of the grouping. Kant described the virtual summit as rare and exceptional, which would give Modi an opportunity to interact with world leaders for a second time during Indias G20 Presidency before it passes on to Brazil in December. Noting that several challenges have emerged since the September G20 summit, Kant had said development would be the primary focus of the virtual meeting, and leaders might engage in discussions on a myriad of other issues. People wait in a line to enter a gun store in Culver City (Los Angeles County) in 2020. A California appeals court has reinstated a law allowing researchers to obtain records of all purchases of guns and ammunition in the state. Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated Press A California law allowing researchers to obtain records of all purchases of guns and ammunition in the state, blocked by a judge last year in a suit by gun advocates, has been reinstated by a state appeals court, which said the studies provide valuable information on reducing deaths and violence from firearms. Gun dealers in California are required to provide the state attorney generals office with records of every proposed firearm purchase, including the buyers name and criminal and mental health records, to enable a state background check. The case involved a separate law requiring the attorney general to share the records with researchers at UC Davis, which became one of the few places it was studied after Congress prohibited federal funding of gun research in 1996. After then-Attorney General Xavier Becerra stopped providing the records to UC Davis, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in 2021 requiring Becerras successor, Rob Bonta, to resume record-sharing. But in a suit by the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation and other groups, San Diego County Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal halted enforcement of the law last November, saying it violated the privacy rights of gun purchasers. Advertisement Article continues below this ad That ruling has now been reversed by the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego. Any intrusion on a gun owners privacy by providing the purchase records to academic researchers, the court said, must be weighed against the public value of learning more about weapons purchases and their effects. Bontas office, in defending the law, presented a legitimate countervailing interest promoting research informing policy decisions aimed at preventing or reducing firearm violence and presented detailed declarations from several individual researchers explaining the importance of and need to use personally identifiable data to conduct that research, Justice Julia Kelety wrote in a 3-0 ruling Friday allowing the state to resume enforcing the law. Among other findings, she said, the UC Davis researchers determined that in the first week after the purchase of a handgun, the rate of suicide by means of firearms among purchasers was 57 times as high as the adjusted rate in the general population. Kelety said Bontas office also cited research showing that gun buyers with records of alcohol-related crimes, such as drunken driving, posed a higher risk of gun violence findings she described as incredibly important for shaping fair and effective gun policy and even for personal decision-making for those considering whether to purchase a handgun. The court also cited Californians approval in 2016 of Proposition 63, which, among other provisions, banned possession of large-capacity gun magazines and required background checks for buyers of ammunition. The voters, Kelety said, acknowledged both the large number of lives lost, and the high costs associated with medical care and lost productivity resulting from various forms of firearm violence in recent years. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Bonta applauded the ruling. Research and data are vital in our efforts to prevent gun violence in California and provide a clear path to help us save lives, he said in a statement Tuesday. The courts decision is an important victory for science, said Garen Wintemute, a professor of medicine at UC Davis and director of its California Firearm Violence Research Center, which the Legislature established to conduct the studies. Were glad to be able to return to that important work, which will improve health and safety here in California and across the country. In a crucial development on Wednesday evening, a multi-agency operation to rescue 41 men trapped in the Silkyara tunnel reached a promising stage. Ambulances were poised for action, and a specialised ward at a local health centre stood prepared for potential medical attention. As of 6 pm, an official update from Delhi reported that a significant progress was made, with up to 44 metres of an escape pipe successfully inserted into the debris of the collapsed section of the tunnel in Uttarakhands Uttarkashi district. Earlier, officials said the American-made auger machine had to drill through a 57 metre stretch of debris to reach the workers, who were trapped when a portion of the under-construction tunnel collapsed 10 days back. By this count, just 13 metres of debris remained to be drilled through. Drilling from the Silkyara-end was put on hold Friday afternoon when the auger machine encountered a hard obstacle around the 22-metre mark, creating vibrations in the tunnel that caused safety concerns. The drilling resumed around midnight Tuesday. As the machine drills through, six metre sections of steel pipes, just under a metre wide, are pushed into the escape passage. Once the pipeway reaches the other end, the trapped workers are expected to crawl out. A National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team was spotted entering the tunnel in the evening. A team of 15 doctors, including chest specialists, has been deployed at the site in anticipation of the evacuation. Twelve ambulances were on standby at the spot, and the plan was to keep a fleet of 40 ready. A helicopter was also expected to be earmarked for the operation. A special ward to accommodate all evacuated workers was readied at the community health centre in Chinyalisaur. All hospitals in the district as well as AIIMS, Rishikesh are on alert, officials said. Relatives of workers who have spoken to them through a new six-inch pipeline inserted late Monday through the rubble expressed optimism. Today, we were taken inside the tunnel and we spoke to our family member. Sonu repeatedly told me not to worry now and that we would meet soon, Devashish, whose brother-in-law is among the 41 workers, said. We called him on Diwali but could not reach him. His colleagues told us that his mobile phone was damaged. Later, we saw his name in the newspaper and learnt that he was trapped inside the tunnel, he said. At a media briefing in Silkyara around 4 pm, Bhaskar Khulbe, a former advisor with the Prime Ministers Office, was upbeat, saying that another six-metre section of the rescue pipe had been inserted over the past hour. Hopefully the next two-three hours will be comfortable in terms of assembling for the next push and attaining what all of us are waiting for, he said. Officials had said earlier that the stretch between 40 and 50 metres was the most crucial one. Asked to spell out a timeline for workers evacuation, Khulbe had said, We hope to celebrate Bagwal with them, possibly meaning Igas, a festival celebrated in the Garhwal region after Diwali. This year Igas will be celebrated on Thursday. Several alternative plans are also in motion if the horizontal drilling from the Silkyara end fails. Officials said about nine metres of horizontal drilling had taken place from the Barkot end of the tunnel - a much longer process that could take several days. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami once again on Wednesday morning for updates on the rescue operation. First visuals of the trapped workers were captured early Tuesday with the help of an endoscopic camera sent through the new six-inch pipeline. In a statement, the government said the second lifeline was functioning efficiently, ensuring an ample supply of food items like rotis, sabzi, khichdi, daliya, oranges, and bananas in the tunnel. The tribal-dominated region at the Odisha-Jharkhand borders had to wait for over a century to catch a glimpse of trains and realise their dreams until the lands daughter, as well as daughter-in-law, was enthroned as the President of India. President Draupadi Murmu benevolently flagged off the operation of trains on Tuesday, connecting her native place, Rairangpur, with her in-laws place, Badampahar, a mere distance of 32 km. Moreover, the region gained connectivity in one go with important cities, including neighbouring Jamshedpur, Ranchi and Kolkata, providing ample scope for the economic development of the entire fossil and mineral-rich region. Before embarking on her first train ride as President between her Sasural and Maika, the President graciously flagged off three trains: BadampaharTatanagar local EMU, Badampahar-Rourkela Weekly Express, and Badampahar-Shalimar Weekly Express. On the occasion, Murmu said the development of any area depends on its connectivity. Be it rail, roads, or postal services, all these services make peoples lives easier, the President said, addressing the gathering at Badampahar Railway station. The project received a boost due to the understanding of the regions needs by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who had previously served the State as an Odisha cadre IAS officer. Besides Vaishnaw, Odisha Governor Raghubar Das, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and top functionaries of the Odisha Government graced the emotional moment for the area. All these trains pass through Murmus native town, Rairangpur, in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. There was not been a single mail/express train to Rairangpur station except for freight mobilisation by the national transporter. Local people had been demanding mail/express trains connecting Badampahar and Rairangpur for over decades. Isi ko Sapna Sakar Hona Boltey Hai Hum. (We have realised our dreams). Jo koyi Nahi kar paya aaj hamari ghar ki beti ne kar diya (Our daughter has done what none could do), said Shailendra Patra, a resident near the station, who had come to watch the glimpse of Murmu as well as the trains. It has come as a boon for students and job aspirants of Badampahar/Rairangpur area who will now have easy access to premier educational institutes and corporate houses in West Bengal and further connectivity to other cities of opportunities like Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, etc. These trains will pass through the mineral-rich areas of Odisha, industrial areas of Jharkhand, and will facilitate faster connectivity with the State of West Bengal. People from nearby areas will also be able to avail this train service for visiting Kolkata and Howrah for various purposes, said a railway spokesman. Better connectivity will boost the growth and development of Mayurbhanj District of Odisha. This new train will also encourage tourists from West Bengal and Jharkhand to explore and enjoy the picturesque landscape and dense jungles, added the railways in a statement. Making a departure from convention, Murmu became the first President of India not to take the Special President Suite Train but travelled in a normal passenger train. She also laid the foundation stone for the redevelopment of Badampahar Railway station. Historically, a rail line was built by the Tatas in 1922 for the transportation of iron ore from Badampahar ore area to the steel production unit at Jamshedpur. The same tracks have now been upgraded for use by passenger services. In other separate events, Murmu also virtually inaugurated the new Rairangpur Postal Division and released a Commemorative Special Cover of Rairangpur Postal Division. The President further said that despite the increasing trend of cell phones and courier services, India Post has not lost its relevance. She added that the Union Government is taking various initiatives for the development of tribal communities. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday said that its door-to-door programme to tell the truth behind party leader Sanjay Singhs arrest is getting widespread support from the public which was convinced that the AAP was being troubled for being vocal to the ruling dispensation. The party said enthusiasm among workers due to public support climbed high and workers would soon reach every home in Uttar Pradesh. In a statement, the AAP said that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government is going to lose the 2024 elections and due to frustration of anticipation of losing election, it is trying to put opposition leaders in jail. Since Tuesday, AAP has been running a door-to-door campaign in every district of UP and distributing pamphlets having its policy and reasons for Sanjay Singhs arrest. The party said that due to the common man joining this campaign, the enthusiasm has increased manifold. On Wednesday, eastern assembly speaker Neera Saxena and district secretary Neeraj Gupta led the campaign in Lucknow where pamphlets were distributed in several localities. Concerned over the continuously increasing crimes in Uttar Pradesh, especially in incidents of murder, rape, kidnapping and crime against women, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president and former minister Ajay Rai on Tuesday attacked the Yogi Adityanath government, charging that maha jungle raj was prevalent in the state. Expressing anger over the brutal murder of the rape victim in Kaushambi in broad daylight by hacking her with an axe on Monday, Rai said that seeking justice in Yogi raj was equivalent to risking ones life. Rai said that the fear of law among criminals had completely ended. Every day fearless criminals are committing new crimes due to which the people of the state are feeling unsafe, he said. Condemning the Kaushambi incident, Rai said that the 20-year-old girl had filed a case of rape against the accused three years ago, and the accused and his brother had come out on bail due to weak perusal of the case in the court by the government. He said the accused were constantly intimidating and threatening the girl while pressuring her for an agreement and when the girl did not yield to the pressure, the accused brutally murdered her by chopping her with an axe in a crowded place in broad daylight. This incident shows the failure of the police system in the state and the prevalent jungle raj and the high spirits of the criminals, the UPCC chief said. Rai said that between 2017 and 2021, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of incidents of murder after rape or gang rape. He said according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data of 2021, maximum cases of crimes against women were registered in Uttar Pradesh, which was a proof of jungle raj prevailing in the state. Describing Chief Minister Yogi Adityanaths questioning of the law and order situation in Rajasthan during an election rally as ridiculous, Rai said that both crime and criminals were rampant in Uttar Pradesh, crimes were increasing wildly and the chief minister was unable to stop, but instead of taking steps, he was making false propaganda before public. The UP Congress president said that the biggest reason for increasing crime in the Yogi government was that the criminals were getting protection from the government. In all the incidents of Hathras, Unnao, Lakhimpur Kheri, Lucknow, Kanpur and other places, the criminals and the accused are getting the protection of the government at the behest of the senior leaders, he charged. Rai alleged that the government and administration had made continuous efforts to save the accused in the Hathras case while in the Unnao incident, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its government tried till the last breath to save the criminals. He said the government was still standing with the criminals in the Lakhimpur Kheri incident while cover-up continues in the case of murder of a woman and her daughter by burning them under the influence of a bulldozer in Kanpur. The UPCC chief said that inaction of the government had boosted the morale of criminals and they were freely striking at their will and targeting females and others. he Thinkers Club arranged a discussion over the Zoom platform to assemble opinions about the necessity of reforms in the procedure of elections in the country . It was the 88th webinar of the club presided over by its president Barada Prasanna Das. Former Chief Secretary of the State Sahadeb Sahoo was the chief guest of the meet. Professor Dr Surya Narayan Mishra was the guest of honour, while convener and ADR of Odisha Election Watch Ranjan Mohanty was the chief speaker. Convener of Odisha Bichar Manch Dr Harihar Kanungo was the chief analyst. The dignitaries and intellectuals said that it is necessary to amend the existing obsolete provisions in the election process of the country. Except for CEC TN Seshan, the rest of the commissioners were working as the puppets of the Government and the ruling party, they said. It is unfortunate that, none of the political parties is taking interest to amend the election procedures. All are involved in grabbing power by any means, slammed former Chief Secretary Sahoo. If the prevailing situation continues, the dissatisfied citizens will go for revolt and blood shedding cannot be avoided, warned Sahoo, insisting on the efficiency of the Election Commissioners. He demanded that competent persons be engaged as CEC. Prof Mishra said that section 324 of the Constitution needs to be modified. At the same time, the mindset of the politicians and the voters need to be totally changed. Following the instruction of Ranchi Deputy Commissioner (DC), Rahul Kumar Sinha, on Tuesday, a meeting of District Advisory Committee PC and PNDT chaired by Civil Surgeon (Sadar) Ranchi, Dr Prabhat Kumar. During the meeting approval was given news registration for seven ultrasound clinics. Deputy Superintendent Sadar Hospital Ranchi, Dr AK Khaitan, Assistant Nodal Officer PC and PNDT Ranchi, District Public Relations Officer Ranchi, Dr Prabhat Shankar, PC and PNDT Coordinator, Rakesh Kumar Rai and all members were present in the meeting of the District Advisory Committee. The following decisions were taken by the Advisory Committee of PC and PNDT in the meeting organized as per the instructions of the DC. Approval was given to nine ultrasound clinics for renewal. Instructions were given by Civil Surgeon (Sadar) Ranchi to take action against those clinics which are unregistered and any unqualified person is doing ultrasound work. Instructions were given to the concerned officer to publicize the whistleblowing scheme. During the meeting Civil Surgeon (Sadar) Ranchi instructed all the concerned officers to strictly inspect all the ultrasound institutes. In the representations received for doctor contribution, the doctor contribution was unanimously approved by the committee. It was unanimously decided by the committee that Form-C should be issued to those USG institutions whose renewal has not been approved. A PhD scholar of AIIMS-New Delhi was arrested on Wednesday from the Hauz Khas area of the national capital on the charge of raping a woman by giving her sedatives, impregnating her and then terminating her pregnancy, police said here. The woman, in her complaint filed at the Kavi Nagar police station, claimed that she got in touch with the accused through a matrimonial site and they were supposed to get married. However, the accused and his family members started demanding Rs 25 lakh in cash and an SUV. When their demands were not met, they postponed the wedding date on the pretext of examination, the complainant told the police. After this, the accused and his brother-in-law reached the woman's residence in Ghaziabad and raped her after serving a cold drink laced with sedatives. They also recorded some objectionable videos of the woman, Assistant Commissioner of Police Abhishek Srivastav said. The woman claimed the accused had threatened to make the video viral on social media and forced her into physical relations. When she became pregnant he got the pregnancy terminated and refused to marry her, the police official said. The ACP said the accused was arrested from his residence in Delhi's Hauz Khas on Wednesday. An FIR has been lodged against him and 11 others at Kavinagar police station on November 2, he said, adding the rest of the accused would be nabbed soon. In a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, on Sunday, said that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was busy campaigning for the elections when he should be focusing on the safe rescue of eight labourers from Uttar Pradesh who are trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand. It is the responsibility of the BJP government to safely rescue all the workers trapped in the tunnel in Uttarkashi. In this hour of crisis, our standing with the families of the eight labourers of Uttar Pradesh along with other trapped labourers will boost their morale, he wrote in a post on X. It is expected that the UP chief minister, who is busy in the election campaign, will call an emergency meeting and take a decision as soon as possible, he added to the post written in Hindi. On the ninth day of ongoing rescue operations to free 41 workers trapped inside the tunnel, the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) launched a rescue effort on four distinct fronts, assigning each sector to a different agency. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari also reached the site on Sunday to personally oversee and coordinate the ongoing rescue operations. The tunnel collapsed at around 5:30 am last Sunday. The rescue operations have been underway for over a week now with 41 labourers trapped inside with limited food and communication. Eight of them are from Uttar Pradesh. With time running out, officials began preparations to drill a vertical hole from the top of the hill. 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. Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav will lay the foundation of the memorial and park spreading over more than eight acres for party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav in his native village Saifai in Etawah district on Wednesday. The architecture of the memorial is inspired by the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC which honours former US president Abraham Lincoln. The foundation stone of the memorial will be laid by Akhilesh Yadav on November 22, the birth anniversary of Mulayam Singh Yadav. Akhilesh Yadav said the party would get the memorial built by 2027 the year Uttar Pradesh will see its next assembly election. Sharing details of the proposed memorial, senior SP leader Uday Pratap Singh said the memorial-cum-park would come up on a land parcel of 8.3 acres, out of which 4.5 acres would be set aside for the park. He said the plan of the memorial would reflect folk culture while giving a glimpse into the life and times of the SP patriarch, his ideology and his politics for which an art gallery and a museum would also be built. The Delhi Government has notified its app-based bus aggregator scheme aiming at reducing intra-city usage of private vehicles and pollution. The Delhi Motor Vehicles Licensing of Aggregator (Premium Buses) Scheme was notified after the approval of Lt Governor VK Saxena. Through the scheme, the government seeks to encourage the middle and upper-middle class to switch to public transport. Under the scheme, an aggregator will be required to ensure the safety and security of women passengers and provide a rapid response mechanism, including a panic button on its app that should be functional at all times and have modalities of API-based integration with law enforcement agencies. The license holder shall ensure that the acquisition of CNG buses shall not be more than three years old from the date of notification of the scheme. Subsequently induction of any new bus, the prevailing emission norms, BS-VI must be compliant, either Air-Conditioned CNG or electric buses. After January 1, 2025 the induction of electric buses only shall be allowed, no CNG operated bus even if having BS-VI compliance shall be allowed to induct under this scheme, reads the gazette notification. The scheme will permit dynamic pricing of the base fare that will not be less than the peak fare of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) air-conditioned buses. The notification of the Delhi Motor Vehicles Licensing of Aggregator (Premium Buses) Scheme, 2023, marks a historic moment for the national capital, Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said while commenting on the notification. IKEA opened a location on San Franciscos Market Street in August, but the presence of the popular brand hasnt lifted all businesses in the area. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle After recently moving to San Franciscos Mid-Market neighborhood, Tyren Caines was pleasantly surprised to find a new IKEA just down the street from his Trinity apartment complex. With all the challenges, especially here on Market Street, I was shocked, he said on Monday as he sought out a dining table before his mother and daughter arrive for Thanksgiving. I mainly shop online, but online makes everything look better than in reality, he said. Its great to see things in person before you buy. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Since its Aug. 23 opening at 945 Market St., IKEA has attracted enthusiastic shoppers, although hopes that Swedish meatballs and affordable housewares would magically revitalize the blighted blocks around it may have been overblown. Even inside the store, its unclear just how successful it is. IKEA opened in downtown San Francisco with hopes of revitalizing the surrounding neighborhood. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle On a recent weekday, IKEA seemed to have about one sales associate for every three or four shoppers a ratio implying that the corporate parent expected more customers and there were no lines at the checkout counters, a contrast to the more bustling Emeryville IKEA. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Still, its not the dead as a doorknob scene described by some commentators on social media, in posts that were sensationalized by British tabloid the Daily Mail as proving that the IKEA is desolate. Local experts said that the new store is injecting some energy into the area. For many years that building sat there empty and was a dead spot on the street, said Steve Gibson, executive director of the Mid-Market Business Association and Foundation, a nonprofit focused on the economic development of Market Street from Fifth Street to Van Ness Avenue. Now its activated; every day there are a lot of people going in and out. Thats all positive. Our challenge is to turn some of those people into customers for other businesses on Mid-Market. That is a huge challenge. Indeed, some neighboring stores said they hadnt benefited from the new stores presence. Marlon Billalto, manager of the Melt, a sandwich shop a couple of doors away from IKEA, had expected a major bump in business and hired three more staffers, who turned out not to be needed. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The first week (that IKEA opened) was hella customers, but after that, it was the same as ever, he said. Security guards stand at their station at the entrance to the IKEA on San Franciscos Market Street. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle Likewise, at the Shiekh shoe store, manager Omaro Bastides said sales were unchanged, though hed hoped for more customers from IKEAs arrival. IKEA does not share sales figures for individual stores, so its hard to assess how well its doing. We are happy to report that in the first 30 days since opening, IKEA San Francisco has welcomed 120,000 visitors, said IKEA spokesperson Carla Soto in an email. As construction on the sidewalks clear and the meeting place welcomes new neighbors like Saluhall and Hej!Workshop, we are expecting foot traffic to increase. Advertisement Article continues below this ad The IKEA store is the anchor, and currently sole tenant, for a forthcoming mall called the Meeting Place, which is still seeking tenants, with a sign outside offering spaces from 5,000 to 40,000 square feet. As Soto mentioned, the mall will include Saluhall, a 23,000-square-foot Nordic food court. Ingka Centres, IKEAs sister/parent company, said Saluhall, which it described as a nonconventional foodhall, will open in March. Hej!Workshop, a co-working space on the top floor is still expected in the first quarter, according to New York firm Industrious, which will run it. Our San Francisco meeting place has always been intended as a sustainable mixed-use destination that brings people together for multiple reasons, Ingka Centres wrote in an email. We continue exploring opportunities to make our meeting place even more tailored to the needs, demands and tastes of local communities and see what more we can offer. IKEAs block of Market between Fifth and Sixth streets, while hardly teeming with pedestrians, appears clean and well maintained with city crews washing the sidewalks and a visible presence from Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that hires people, many of them formerly incarcerated, as sidewalk ambassadors to help streets feel safe and welcoming. Gibson, whose nonprofit oversees the citys Urban Alchemy contracts, said it now has four ambassadors on the block, warranted by the extra IKEA foot traffic. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Despite reports that it was empty, the new IKEA in downtown San Francisco isnt devoid of customers. But a recent trip showed that it isnt swamped with them either. Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle We want to make sure for these new people who are coming that its a good, positive experience, Gibson said. IKEA is still flanked by numerous shuttered storefronts. Were talking with property owners around IKEA about ways to activate their empty buildings to add more reasons for people to come, Gibson said. Thats a very slow process. A block away on Market between Sixth and Seventh, his group is leasing the ground floor of a building where it will provide subsidized spaces to arts organizations for a year. Because IKEA is there, it makes these other things more possible, he said. The chance of success is higher because IKEA is a bigger attraction. Mission Bay resident Don Cecil headed to the new Mid-Market IKEA on Monday to replenish his dwindling supply of knives and forks, plus other household items. I think its rightsized for San Francisco shopping, he said of the store, which is about one-third the size of sprawling suburban IKEAs and focuses on items scaled for cramped city apartments. This is a great example of what retail might look like post-pandemic. The largest Panchayat in the State is the Assembly. This Mahapanchayat is higher than the temple, mosque and Gurudwara. This Mahapanchayat is for all irrespective of their caste, religion and class. This is a Mahapanchayat not only for the general public of Jharkhand but also for the water, forests, land, tribals and even animals. Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren reiterated this at the 23rd Foundation Day of the Assembly. He also said that policies are made from here. Bills are passed. Apart from the general public, discussions are also held here for the animals of the state. From this it can be estimated what is the importance of Assembly, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. He further said that whoever comes here, thousands and lakhs of people together send them here as a representation of themselves. There is a lot of hope and expectation from the person who reaches here. The one who reaches here keeps everyone's voice in the House. The Chief Minister said that the real definition of democracy comes from the functioning of the legislators only. Therefore, we have to run such institutions with utmost seriousness. We will have to work together to fulfill the expectations of the state. Governor CP Radhakrishnan also expressed his views on the occasion of Assembly Foundation Day. He first expressed his gratitude to former Prime Minister Bharat Ratna Atal Bihari Vajpayee for the formation of Jharkhand. He further said that I too had voted as a member of the Lok Sabha at that time and I am proud of it. The Governor said that the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly has a glorious history and the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly has been organizing this program every year on its foundation day. Earlier this meeting used to operate from the HEC building. Now Jharkhand has its own assembly building. This temple has been inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I express my gratitude to him for this. In his address during the Foundation Day, Assembly Speaker Rabindranath Mahato said that it is a matter of great pride that the PM started the Vikas Bharat Sankalp Yatra from Ulihatu village of Birsa Munda. For a developed India, it is important to take care of federalism and parliamentary democracy. Because these are the two basic structures of the Indian Constitution. In such a situation, it is necessary that the government also becomes accountable to the voice of the public. By winning on the basis of majority, the government cannot turn away from the public's questions. The House is a place where the government can be forced through questions. So that work is done in public interest. For this, everyone, be it the ruling party or the opposition, needs to be alert. The state is a mineral rich area. In such a situation, it should be kept in mind that the Center should have a monopoly on the exploitation of minerals and the money received from it. So that proper development can take place. Development is possible only when the ideology of cooperative federalism is followed. In the last four years, many important decisions were taken in this assembly session. Which includes Sarna Dharma Code, Reservation Amendment Bill 2022, definition of Jharkhandi local persons and the resulting culture and bill to extend other benefits to local persons and planning law. These have been such bills in which the difference between for and against was erased. This bill should take legal form soon. Under the planning policy, employment has been provided to fifty thousand youth so far. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Tuesday said the Supreme Courts ruling has paved the way for Chhattisgarh Police to probe the larger conspiracy angle into the 2013 Naxalite attack that killed 32 people including top Congress leaders. The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against the Chhattisgarh Police probe into an FIR alleging a larger conspiracy in the horrific Jheeram Valley attack. A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra dismissed the NIA plea and said: Sorry, we will not like to interfere. Dismissed. Later, Baghel in a post on X hailed the apex court decision and said it is like "opening the door of justice for Chhattisgarh". The Jheeram incident was the biggest political massacre in the worlds largest democracy wherein we lost 32 people including senior Congress leaders, he said. The NIA investigated it, a commission also investigated it but no one probed the larger political conspiracy behind the incident, he said. When Chhattisgarh Police started the investigation, NIA approached the court. Today the path has been cleared. Now Chhattisgarh Police will investigate. Who had hatched what conspiracy with whom? Everything will become clear. Once again a tribute to the martyrs of Jheeram, Baghel said. On May 25, 2013, Naxalites attacked a convoy of Congress leaders at Jheeram Valley in Darbha area of Bastar district, killing 32 people, including then state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, former leader of opposition Mahendra Karma and former Union minister V.C. Shukla. The deadly ambush took place when political campaigning for Assembly elections was on and the Congress leaders were returning after taking part in a rally in Bastar district. The police then lodged an FIR into the incident. The NIA took over the probe. After completing its investigation, the NIA filed a charge-sheet and a trial commenced. On May 26, 2020, another FIR was lodged and complainant Jitendra Mudliyar, a Congress leader, sought a probe into the larger conspiracy angle behind the incident. Mudliyar is the son of Congress leader Uday Mudliyar, who was also killed in that attack. The NIA later filed an application in a special (NIA) court in Jagdalpur seeking directions to the police not to proceed with the investigation in the fresh FIR and hand over all documents pertaining to the FIR to it. The special court rejected the NIA application in 2020, after which the agency moved the High Court, which also rejected its plea last year. The NIA then moved the Supreme Court, which pronounced the ruling on Tuesday. BJP on Wednesday targeted the AAP led Delhi government on the issue of alleged corruption in Delhi Jal Board(DJB) and demanded a judicial probe. Terming Arvind Kejriwal an "outright dishonest and useless" chief minister, the BJP also alleged he is only concerned about benefiting his friends in liquor business and using public money for self-promotion and not the welfare of people. The BJP's attack came a day after the Supreme Court pulled up the Delhi government for not providing funds for the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridors to Alwar and Panipat and said if the dues were not paid within a week, the funds allocated by the AAP government for advertisements will be transferred to the project. Tiwari said the objective of the establishment of Delhi Jal Board in 1998 was that this board would prepare its own basic infrastructure and would meet its expenses from its own revenue. Delhi government will provide financial resources only for big plan head schemes. Tiwari said the proof of how the Kejriwal government, which has shown the dream of providing water to every house, has deceived the public. Today 1350 MGD water is needed in Delhi while the availability is only 950 MGD. It is regrettable that in almost 9 years of rule, Kejriwal has not made any efforts to increase the availability of drinking water and Delhi is still a victim of tanker mafia. Tiwari said in the last 5 financial years, Delhi Government has given loans and grants worth Rs 12,700 crore to Delhi Jal Board, but there is no accounting of this money. He further said said CAG has written about 22 letters to Delhi Jal Board to get the accounts audited but the Kejriwal government has not paid any heed to it. Calling Kejriwal an "outright dishonest and useless" chief minister, BJPnational spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia, meanwhile, targeted Kejriwal and said, "The Supreme Court's comment that came yesterday is a matter of concern for every citizen." Latching on to the top court's observation, BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia targeted Kejriwal and said, "The Supreme Court's comment that came yesterday is a matter of concern for every citizen." "It shows that Kejriwal waived Rs 144 crore to benefit his friends in liquor business. He can commit liquor scam of worth thousands of crores of rupees, use Rs 50 crore of public money in building 'Sheesh Mahal' of his dreams which was also a scam, made a budgetary provision of Rs 1,150 crore for self-promotion," he alleged. "It shows that Kejriwal waived Rs 144 crore to benefit his friends in liquor business. He can commit liquor scam of worth thousands of crores of rupees, use Rs 50 crore of public money in building 'Sheesh Mahal' of his dreams which was also a scam, made a budgetary provision of Rs 1,150 crore for self-promotion," he alleged. The RRTS project entails semi-high speed rail corridors connecting Delhi to Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, Alwar in Rajasthan, and Panipat in Haryana. BJP spokesperson said the RRTS is an 82-kilometer corridor being constructed from Delhi to Meerut through which common people would be able to reach Meerut "in 60 minutes from Delhi". Track and trace system will be implemented in the state for liquor supply: Dy CM Chandigarh: Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala on Tuesday said that a track and trace system will be implemented for liquor supply in the state to monitor all types of activities related to liquor sales, production, and movement. Chautala was presiding over the review meeting of the Excise and Taxation Department regarding the implementation of Track and Trace System for liquor supply in the state. He said that in the Haryana Excise Policy 2023-24, a provision was made to implement this QR-based track and trace system. Keeping in view the said goal, a QR-based Track and Trace System has been developed by the NIC, Haryana. This Track and Trace System will help to regulate and monitor the movement of liquor, capture the production and supply of liquor products on a real-time basis, and will also ensure the protection of Government revenue. PGIMER doctors develop new technique to diagnose Cushings syndrome Chandigarh: Professor Sanjay Kumar Bhadada, Head, Department of Endocrinology, PGIMER, Chandigarh said that doctors have developed a new technique to diagnose Cushings syndrome. The academy has accomplished another milestone as the Endocrinology Department, in collaboration with Department of Nuclear Medicine, developed Ga 68 CRH PET-CT, a novel imaging modality for the diagnosis of Cushings disease. The technique has been developed for the first time in the world and PGIMER has already applied for its patent. Doctors from both departments have worked together and collaborated to develop a novel imaging modality Ga 68 CRH PET-CT for the diagnosis of Cushings disease and this innovative technique has been developed for the first time in the world. The effort, which took five long years, is a result of the hard work of the team of doctors, excellent research facilities here at the Institute and a will to work for the betterment of patients, he added. Hry Skill Development Mission launches Ideathon Haryana 2023 to promote entrepreneurship and startup ideas among students Chandigarh: The Haryana Skill Development Mission on Tuesday launched Ideathon Haryana 2023 to promote entrepreneurship and startup ideas among students of ITIs, HSDMs Training Centres, polytechnic colleges, and other educational institutions and the general public. Interested participants can register until December 1; the last date for submitting ideas is December 15. The announcement of awards will be made for the 21 winners from Haryana, receiving prize money totaling more than Rs. 4 lakh. Candidates who have valid Parivar Pehchan Patra can participate in this competition, said Dr Vivek Agrawal, MD, HSDM. Mobile app Share and Salute Chandigarh launched Chandigarh: The Mobile App Share and Salute Chandigarh was formerly launched by Justice Ritu Bahri, acting Chief Justice, Punjab and Haryana High Court-cum-Patron in Chief, State Legal Services Authority, UT, Chandigarh in a function organized in Chandigarh Judicial Academy on Tuesday. The Mobile App Share and Salute Chandigarh has features for seeking legal aid for filing/defending cases in Chandigarh; seeking legal aid/relief in Permanent and Continuous Lok Adalat; details regarding Legal Aid Clinics; new initiatives of District Legal Services Authority, UT, Chandigarh as well as details about the schemes of Chandigarh Administration. Haryana invites applications for the Unemployment Allowance Scheme on SARAL Portal Chandigarh: The Directorate of Employment Haryana has started the process for inviting applications under Unemployment Allowance Scheme from educated unemployed individuals via the user-friendly SARAL portal https://saralharyana.gov.in/ from November 1, 2023. An official spokesperson from the Employment Department said that applicants interested in availing themselves of the scheme's benefits can submit their necessary documents by November 30, at the respective employment offices. He further added that applicants can apply online through the Saral portal and reach out for detailed information by contacting the Directorate's helpline number, 1800-180-2403 from Monday to Friday between 10 AM to 5 PM. Clear stand on new national education policy: SAD to CM Chandigarh: Punjabs former Education Minister and senior SAD leader Daljit Singh Cheema on Tuesday asked Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to clear the Governments stand on the new national education policy, being implemented by the State Higher Education Department despite it being discriminatory towards Punjabi language and culture. It is shocking that even as the Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal governments had refused to implement the new education policy in its present form, Punjabs Higher Education Department was holding meetings with University administrations to implement the new policy, which has been framed with the idea of one country, one language and one syllabus, said Cheema adding, It is also aimed at reducing the influence of regional languages and culture. PSPCL launches industrial facilitation cell Chandigarh: To prioritize and streamline services for the industrial sector, Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) on Tuesday launched the Industrial Facilitation Cell (IFC) to be monitored by the office of PSPCL chairman-cum-managing director. The initiative aims to promptly address and resolve issues faced by industrialists related to the release of new connections, extension of load, and other power-related matters, said the states Power and PWD Minister Harbhajan Singh ETO, adding that the establishment of IFC comes as a response to demands raised by industrialists during the series of meetings with AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann. Volvo buses from Shimla to Delhi will no longer cross Pinjore Kalka Parwanoo HRTC Shimla: The Volvo buses of the Himachal Road Transport Corporation plying from Shimla to New Delhi will no longer cross through Pinjore, Kalka and Parwanoo, HRTC officials said on Tuesday. The decision has been taken by the corporation after considering the demand of the commuters who complained that the buses are stuck in traffic leading to delay in their journey by one to two hours. It has come to our knowledge through feedback received from the commuters that while going from Kalka, Pinjore and Parwanoo, Volvo buses get stuck in traffic jam in which one-two hours are wasted and the passengers insisted that Volvo buses should be ply from Parwanoo-Kalka- Pinjore bypass, said Managing Director, HRTC, Rohan Chand Thakur on Tuesday. These changes have been made for the convenience of the commuters and travelling in Volvo would save about two hours in reaching New Delhi and passengers will be able to catch metro service and flights, avoiding the traffic jam in Delhi, he added. As per the office order, Volvo buses plying from Shimla to Delhi at 9:45 am will not enter Chandigarh city while the buses at 1:45 pm will not go to the Chandigarh bus stand and instead would divert to Zirakpur from Tribune Chowk in Chandigarh. The Volvo buses from Delhi to Shimla at 9:36 pm and 10:30 pm will not enter Chandigarh, it added. Punjab Vidhan Sabha Session on November 28 Chandigarh: Punjab Vidhan Sabhas official spokesperson on Wednesday said that the Punjab Governor has summoned the Punjab Vidhan Sabha to meet for its fifth session on Tuesday, November 28, 2023, at 2 pm in Punjab Vidhan Sabha Hall, Vidhan Bhavan at Chandigarh. Karnataka Vidhan Sabha delegation visits Punjab legislative assembly Chandigarh: To get firsthand information about the National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) project specifically implemented for the first time in Punjab Legislative Assembly, a delegation from Karnataka Vidhan Sabha, led by its Speaker UT Khader Fareed, on Wednesday visited Punjab Legislative Assembly. Punjab Vidhan Sabha Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan informed the delegation that the entire work of the House, including functioning of the sessions, is being accomplished in a completely digital and paperless manner. A digital wing has been set up to make the functioning hi-tech and connect it with modern tools of communication like IT in digital wing Cell, NIC Cell, Hi-Tech Training Room (Neva Service Centre), Hi-Tech Control Room, Network Control Room, he added. Rs 3,816-cr works approved to improve power supply Chandigarh: Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) will carry out intensive system improvement works for loss reduction under the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS). Works of Rs 3,816 crore have been approved under the detailed project report (DPR) for loss reduction, which shall improve the quality and reliability of power supply to the consumers of Punjab through system strengthening works, said the state Power Minister Harbhajan Singh ETO on Wednesday. He said that segregation of 227 Kandi mixed feeders, bifurcation of 1146 feeders, new distribution transformers with HT/LT line on 1614 feeders, reconductoring of HT/LT line on 1799 feeders will be done under infrastructure works for loss reduction and 40 new 66 kV substations including compact GIS substations, among others. Punjab VB nabs BDPO for taking Rs 15k bribe in his office Chandigarh: Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) on Wednesday apprehended a Block Development and Panchayats Officer (BDPO) Vipan Kumar Sharma, posted at Batala in Gurdaspur district, red-handed while accepting a bribe of Rs 15,000. Spokesperson said that the arrest of the BDPO was made following a complaint lodged by Happy Gill, a resident of Sekhwan village in Gurdaspur district. The complainant alleged that the accused BDPO had demanded Rs 40,000 as a bribe from his wife, who is sarpanch of village Sekhwan, to clear a bill amounting to Rs 1.33 lakhs related to purchase of cement used in the development works in the village. The complainant added that the deal had been struck at Rs 30,000, and the BDPO had taken Rs 15,000 on November 20, and was demanding the remaining amount. Govt steps up efforts to enhance Rail connectivity: Hry CS Chandigarh: Haryana Chief Secretary Sanjeev Kaushal on Wednesday said that the State Government is actively preparing to formulate an ambitious plan for the enhancement of the state's rail network. After presiding over the 26th Board of Directors (BoD) meeting of Haryana Rail Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (HRIDC), the Chief Secretary, who is also chairman of the corporation, said that to spearhead this initiative, a dedicated committee has been instituted, comprising officials from pivotal departments, including Town and Country Planning (TCP), Public Works/Buildings and Roads (PW/B&R), Industries and Commerce, Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC), Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), Haryana Mass Rapid Transport Corporation (HMRTC), and Haryana Infrastructure and Industrial Development Corporation Limited (HIHMCL). Kurukshetra elevated track project, with a budget exceeding Rs 225 crore, is slated to be completed by February 2024, he added. Hry Police and RBI organise training programme on identification and control of fake currency Chandigarh: In a joint initiative by Haryana Police and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), a state-level training programme was conducted at Haryana-112 auditorium focusing on 'Identification of Fake Currency and Overall Control on its Circulation. Additional Director General of Police, Cyber OP Singh, participated as the chief guest, shedding light on the challenges of identifying fake currency and cyber security issues. Police department officials along with state Investigating officers participated in this training programme. Singh stated that the possibility of human error in identifying fake notes is relatively high, so they must be identified using software-based machines. During this, he emphasised the importance of artificial intelligence. Srivastava stressed the significance of a strong action plan to reduce the circulation of fake currency and the imperative need for public awareness. He highlighted the ongoing efforts by RBI to prevent fake currency from entering the market, urging bank employees to adhere strictly to RBI guidelines and not return fake notes but report them promptly. 26 Deptts in Hry upload 141 DBT schemes on State Portal Chandigarh: The Haryana Chief Secretary Sanjeev Kaushal on Wednesday said that out of the 83 schemes implemented by various departments of the State Government, benefits from 74 schemes have been notified under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Scheme and have been linked to the Aadhar Card. These schemes should also be operated through Parivar Pehchan Patra, added Kaushal. Presiding over the third meeting of the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Advisory Board, the Chief Secretary said that as on date, 26 Departments have uploaded 141 DBT schemes on the State DBT portal. Out of total 141 schemes, 83 are State Schemes and 58 are Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS).Kaushal said that the State Government has effectively identified a cumulative total of 36,74,833 ghost/duplicate beneficiaries from the fiscal year 2014-15 to 2022-23. This strategic initiative has yielded substantial notional savings amounting to Rs. 7,822.69 crore. Haryana's start-up policy shows results at IITF Delhi Chandigarh: Haryana government's start-up scheme, which was launched to motivate the states youth to implement their novel ideas and adopt entrepreneurship and become self-reliant, has started showing results and is now gaining prominence amongst the youth, said the government official spokesperson on Wednesday. He said that taking advantage of this state governments initiative; the youth of Haryana are stepping forward to become entrepreneurs. Some young entrepreneurs of the State are participating in the India International Trade Fair (IITF) 2023 bring held at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi and they have showcased their products at the Haryana Pavilion. In the IITF at Pragati Maidan, innovative start-ups from Haryana, including small businesses associated with MSMEs from different parts of Haryana are showcased. These start-ups not only provide solutions to problems of environmental pollution and traffic jams but also contribute towards solving life style related health issues. Among them is an e-cycle developed using modern technology, contributing to both health and environmental awareness. In a shocking incident, a Class-X student suffered critical injuries after he was reportedly stabbed by a junior in Puri on Wednesday. The accused minor, a Class-VIII student of Police Line High School in Puri, fled from the spot after committing the crime. The victim was going to school when he was attacked by the minor boy with a knife. He suffered injuries in his hand and was rushed to the District Headquarters Hospital. Though the exact reason behind the attack was not established yet, sources said the two boys used to get into fights and past enmity led to this act of revenge. Family members of the victim, however, claimed that they were not aware of any previous enmity. The Kumbharpada police of Puri reached the spot and started an investigation. The BJP and the Congress on Tuesday criticised the AAP Government here following the Supreme Court remarks and claimed it was running only based on propaganda and there was no development work in its model. Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said strict action by the apex court to seize the advertising budget of the Kejriwal government is a significant blow to the Delhi government. Bidhuri said in July, after the reprimand from the Supreme Court, the Delhi government had assured that it would contribute to the construction of the rail transit transport system between Delhi and Meerut. The BJP leader said it is surprising that even after the assurance given in court, the Delhi government has not released funds of Rs. 565 crores for this project this year, he said. This is not only the contempt of court but also shows how the Delhi government is acting recklessly and against the rules. Therefore, the court had to decide that if funds were not released within a week, the advertising budget would be seized. On November 28, the Delhi government will have to explain in court what it has done in this direction, Bidhuri said. Delhi Congress president Arvinder Singh Lovely said it was shocking that the Supreme Court had to scold the Delhi Government for non-payment of the states contribution of Rs 415 crore to the Rapid Rail project, and threatened to transfer Delhis advertisement funds to the project, if the Delhi Government did not fulfil its financial obligation to the Rapid Rail project. Congress member and party's block president Manoj Patel was beaten up by some persons in Panagar assembly constituency. Congress leaders have submitted a memorandum to the Superintendent of Police (SP) in a case related to their one of the party workers thrashed in Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur district demanding quick action into the matter. Notably, the Congress worker, who is the party's block president, Manoj Patel was beaten up by some persons in Panagar assembly constituency under the jurisdiction of Ranjhi police station area on the night of November 16 before the assembly polling in the state. Thereafter, in view of the incident, the Congress leader and Candidate from the seat, Rajesh Patel had filed a complaint against two persons accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at Ranjhi police station. But when the action was not taken yet, Patel along with party workers submitted a memorandum to Jabalpur SP on Monday demanding immediate action into the matter. "The incident that occurred with our Block President Manoj Patel at around 1 am on the intervening night of November 16 and 17 was done under the protection of the BJP candidate Sushil Tiwari (Indu Tiwari) and at his behest. Apart from this, when Tiwari, who has been an MLA for the last 10 years, was visiting around the booths of our area on the polling day, he showed the video to our workers that threatened them. I cannot imagine that despite being an MLA, he did such a petty thing," Congress candidate Rajesh Patel said. The Congress candidate reached the SP office and demanded immediate action from the district administration and the police administration into the matter. "The police have assured us to take action. If action is not taken in a day or two, we will come again and we will be forced to stage a protest. The Police administration will be held responsible for that," Rajesh Patel added. On the other hand, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Bhagat Singh Kotharia said that Congress leaders submitted a memorandum for action in the case related to the assault of their party worker. The matter was being investigated and action would be taken accordingly. "People belonging to the Congress party have submitted a memorandum for action about the assault case of their party worker. The matter is being investigated by Ranjhi police station and we will take action on the basis of facts that come to light in the probe. The congress workers also showed the video of the incident. We have watched the video and it will be investigated too. After that the action will be taken based on the facts in the probe," the officer said. Uttarakhand Congress leader Manish Khanduri has said that the party will contest the Lok Sabha polls on the issues of public interests. Interacting with the mediapersons at Rajiv Bhawan here on Tuesday he said that on the orders of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Karan Mahara, district conventions are being organised in all parts of the State. These conventions are being organised in view of the Lok Sabha elections. He said that district conventions have already been organised in organisational districts of Devprayag, Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Pauri and the block presidents, booth presidents, Nagar presidents, party candidates in the Vidhan Sabha elections and office bearers of the party unit are taking part in these conventions. Khanduri said that the party is preparing strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in the State. He disclosed that the women safety, price rise, unemployment, one rank one pension, Agniveer scheme, increasing corruption and pathetic law and order conditions are some of the major issues on which the party will focus in the Lok Sabha elections. He averred that the party will go to the people with the issue of atrocities on women and Ankita Bhandari murder case. Khanduri said that the people of the State are fed up with the mal administration of the BJP government and are now eager to get rid from the misrule of the party. The spokesperson of the party Garima Dasauni and Sheeshpal Singh Bisht were present on the occasion. Brahmananda Narayana Multi-speciality Hospital,Jamshedpur (a unit of Narayana Health), welcomed the esteemed addition of Dr. Akhlaque Ahmed to its cardiac team. Dr. Ahmed brings with him an outstanding track record in Cardiac Care, marked by a wealth of expertise and a fervent dedication to advancing cardiac healthcare. Dr. Ahmeds experience and expertise in Advanced Cardiac Care shall further strengthen the Cardiac Sciences department at BrahmanandaNarayana Multi-speciality Hospital, JamshedpurExpressing enthusiasm about joining the hospital, Dr. Ahmed stated, "I am thrilled to be part of BrahmanandaNarayana Multi-speciality Hospital, Jamshedpur, dedicated to excellence in patient care and the advancement of cardiac healthcare in the State. Together, we will strive to enhance the well-being of our community by delivering high-quality cardiac care." Vinit Raj, Facility Director at BrahmanandaNarayana Multispeciality Hospital, Jamshedpur remarked, "Dr. Ahmed's addition to BNMH aligns with our hospital's mission to provide exceptional healthcare services to the community, further elevating our commitment to excellence." Dr. Ahmed's educational journey started with pursuing an MBBS from Darbhanga Medical College followed by a Gold Medal in MD (Internal Medicine) at DMCH, Darbhanga. He subsequently pursued his specialized training in cardiology at Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS), Lucknow, earning a DM degree. Renowned for his patient-centred approach, Dr. Ahmed exhibits a profound passion for delivering comprehensive and compassionate cardiac care. His expertise spans across interventional cardiology, clinical cardiology, non-invasive cardiology, and paediatric cardiology, showcasing a commitment to specialized areas within the field. by Simon Rodriguez On September 11, Dominican President Luis Abinader announced the closure and militarization of the border with Haiti at a press conference at the National Palace in Santo Domingo. The decision was one of several retaliatory measures in response to the construction of the Pittobert irrigation canal on the binational river known as the Dajabon River or Massacre River. The first question for the president came from long-time journalist Ramon Colombo. I dont know what it is, but Haiti is not [a] country. And we are, Colombo stated. In his response, the president reiterated this sentiment. The Massacre River was named after a slaughter of French buccaneers by Spanish colonizers in the 18th century. The Dominican government alleges that the canal, whose construction it has attributed to various actors, including businessmen and politicians, and, at other times, to anarchists, violates the 1929 Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Arbitration between the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti. The alleged violation stems from a lack of consultation between both sides and the diversion of the river. The treaty states that both states have the right to use in a just and equitable manner said rivers and other watercourses for land irrigation and other agricultural and industrial purposes. The Dominican states handling of the dispute threatens Haitis sovereignty and economic well-being, driving Haitians, including those of the diaspora, to fiercely rally in support of the canals construction. There is evidence that the project has been promoted for more than a decade with the knowledge of the Dominican State. A study by the Dominican National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INDRHI) in 2021 recognized that the Pittobert canal, demanding a flow of between 1.5 and 3 cubic meters per second, would be still below the extractions made on the Dominican side, and that two-thirds of the Dominican agricultural land irrigated with this rivers water is located upstream of the canal under construction. Based on this technical evaluation, a declaration of the binational commission composed of representatives of both foreign ministries in May 2021 admitted that the project does not consist of a diversion of the river channel. The INDRHI study established several key facts to understand why the Dominican State does not resort to arbitration, which is the mechanism provided for in the 1929 treaty to resolve disputes. Of the 729 square kilometers covered by the river basin, 374 square kilometers are in Haiti. INDRHI counted ten irrigation canals on the Dominican side, with a total operating flow of 3.22 cubic meters per second, while the Pittobert canal would be the first connected to the binational river from the Haitian side. The report called for technical cooperation and the joint adoption of measures to optimize water use and preserve the river basin, and was endorsed by the signatures of the then ministers of Environment and Agriculture. At the end of May 2021, extreme right-wing sectors criticized the Dominican government for its willingness to agree to share the river. In response, the government scaled down the scope of the agreement and disbanded the binational technical commission. Two years later, it imposed sanctions to halt canal construction: the Dominican government closed the border and militarized it, suspended the delivery of visas to Haitian citizens, and sanctioned individuals accused of supporting the project. Furthermore, two infrastructure projects aimed at reducing the flow of the river to render the Pittobert canal useless were announced: the reactivation of the La Vigia canal, the construction of the Don Miguel dam, and the construction of a dam at the headwaters of the Artibonito River, Haitis largest river, which originates in the Dominican Republic. The outcomes of these measures differed from those sought by the Dominican government. Haiti saw a massive mobilization of volunteers defending and completing the canal, including financial solidarity campaigns from the diaspora. These actions bolstered protests against the de facto government of Ariel Henry, who after weeks of hesitating, was forced to publicly defend the canal. The mobilization in Ouanaminthe, a border town in northeastern Haiti along the Massacre river, also generated a delayed reaction of support from the opposition group called the Montana Accord. The same group had called for a transitional government back in early 2022, following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021 which plunged Haiti into political paralysis and a deepening insecurity crisis. The allocation of the canal to anarchists perhaps alludes to the popular spontaneity of the movement in defense of the canal, even though it constitutes a project designed in 2011 by the Cuban state-owned company DINVAI. A former director of INDHRI stated that requests by the Haitian state to use water from the binational river for irrigation were rejected in 2013, 2015, and 2017. In 2018, construction began. In April 2021, Dominican soldiers raided Haitian territory illegally to stop the project. Under pressure from the Dominican government, construction was halted shortly before the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, until August 2023, when a peasant movement, with the participation of the Assembly of Communal Sections (ASEC), relaunched the construction. Reports from Haiti indicate a strong popular mobilization and a festive mood with hundreds of volunteer workers and massive vigils, following threats from the Dominican government. Beyond the nationalist agitation on both sides of the border, both Jesuit priests working on the Dominican border and Dominican social and leftist organizations have spoken out in defense of fair use of the waterway by both countries and have denounced plans for mining exploitation in the same Dominican border province of Dajabon. A concession of more than 9,000 hectares for gold extraction was recently granted to the Canadian company Unigold, which later added another Canadian company, Barrick Gold, to the project. This mining activity consumes and pollutes enormous amounts of water. Overlapping Agendas of Hydro-hegemony, Immigrant Expulsion, and Interventionism The defense of the canal is understood by many in Haiti as a defense of their sovereignty and part of the struggle to overcome a food security crisis that was further exacerbated by the border closure. It has been incorporated into the protests demanding the removal of Ariel Henrys de facto government. In the Dominican Republic, spokespersons for the center-right Dominican Liberation Party and the conservative Peoples Force have accused the Abinader government of acting on electoral calculations. Haitian academic Maismy Mary Fleurant characterizes the Dominican policy for the binational rivers as oriented by the search for hydro-hegemony or an abusive and unilateral use, completely disproportionate and unequal that is in violation of international law and bilateral agreements. The strategy of reducing the flow of the river to prevent the operation of the Pittobert canal is opposed by Dominican farmers downstream who claim that they would also be harmed. The Dominican governments retaliations have also become friendly fire for agricultural producers who depend on exports to Haiti and on the precarious Haitian immigrant labor force. According to Dominican authorities, more than 61,000 Haitians were expelled or voluntarily crossed into Haiti in the first twelve days of the border closure. The Dominican Migration Institute estimated at the beginning of 2023 that some 700,000 Haitians were living in the Dominican Republic. Although official figures are inconsistent, they tend to indicate that more than 300,000 deportations to Haiti have taken place during the current administration. Human rights organizations consider that these expulsions violate Dominican laws and human rights agreements signed by the Dominican State, affecting pregnant women, unaccompanied children, immigrants with regular migratory status, and Dominicans of Haitian descent. In this context, the September 26 communique of the OAS general secretariat stated that Haiti and the Dominican Republic have equal rights of use over the Dajabon or Massacre river and that its water resources are vital for both and called for a negotiated solution. This did not go down well with the Dominican Foreign Ministry, which responded that the river is part of Dominican territory and therefore inalienable, while the binational dialogue is conditioned upon the necessary institutional capacities and the effective control of its territory demonstrated by the Haitian State. In this sense, the Dominican Foreign Ministry mentioned the imminence of a multinational security and support mission in Haiti, to restore public order and institutionality. Thus, the foreign military occupation of Haiti is presented as part of the solution to the impasse. The link between the canal conflict and the Dominican governments support for the military occupation of Haiti was also raised in President Abinaders speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2023: The problem of Haiti is no longer in Haiti we strongly support the responsible position of US President Joe Biden the Security Council must urgently authorize the security mission. The Dominican president welcomed the willingness of the governments of Kenya, Jamaica, and The Bahamas to send troops. The Ideological Fog Hides a Shared Environmental Vulnerability In his speech at the UN, Abinader showed a satellite image of the island: One can perceive a palpable and heartbreaking difference: a green and flourishing half corresponds to the Dominican Republic, which has prioritized the conservation and sustainable management of its natural resources. He continued, The other half, devoid of that rich forest cover, reflects Haitis dramatically deforested landscape. The speech reflected deep-seated prejudices against the Haitian people as agents of environmental depredation. According to Global Forest Watch, the Dominican Republic had a net loss of tree cover of 2.5 percent between 2000 and 2020, losing 68,000 hectares of trees. In the same period, Haiti had a much smaller loss of 3.4 thousand hectares, a loss of 0.29 percent. Haiti has forest cover of 29 percent, whichalthough less than that of the Dominican Republicis almost equal to the world average. The myth of the desertic Haiti has been dismantled in the scientific field, but it remains firm in the Dominican racial imaginary. It is a central aspect of the dispute over the use of water from the binational river, since the supposed destructive character of the Haitian people is invoked as an obstacle to the shared use of water for irrigation. This attitude is not exclusive to the right wing. A Dominican group whose leaders were leftist student activists in the 1960s and 1970s issued a statement calling for the restoration of the devastated areas (of Haiti) by the irrational use of its inhabitants (sic). Six weeks into the sanctions against Haiti, it is clear that they have failed to achieve their stated objectives. Construction of the canal has not stopped and discontent is growing among Dominican border communities over the economic cost of binational trade. Showing elements of crisis, the Dominican government, after announcing that it would reopen the border, proposed on October 9 the opposite: increased border militarization, indefinite immigration closure of the border and indefinite suspension of visas, along with a partial resumption of trade, limited to the export of food and medicines to Haiti. One of the measures appears to be unrelated to the canal: a program of state subsidies for agricultural mechanization to reduce the number of Haitian workers in the country. The Dominican president subsequently declared to a group of construction businessmen that the days of foreign labor are numbered in the Dominican Republic. In the early morning of October 11, when the partial reopening of the border was scheduled, a fire broke out in the binational market of Dajabon. Right-wing organizations and Dominican gang members had publicly threatened to sabotage a reopening of the border on October 8. The partial resumption of Dominican exports to Haiti encountered another obstacle: a boycott by Haitian buyers. Finally, in announcing the long-prepared national pact on October 26, the Dominican government established an explicit articulation of all these aspects of its Haiti policy: promotion of foreign intervention for the rescue of Haiti, massive expulsion of Haitian immigrants, and control of binational water resources were among the main strategies for the preservation of the nations territorial and demographic integrity. Although the government aspired to present the document as the result of a national consensus, the pact was not subscribed to by the main electoral contenders of Abinaders Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), The Massacre River was named after a slaughter of French buccaneers by Spanish colonizers in the 18th century. In 1937, the river was witness to another massacre of Haitians and Black Dominicans by the Dominican State. The struggle for water, characteristic of this time of climatic crisis, once again makes it the axis of conflict. The vulnerability to extreme climatic phenomena is shared by the two countries, and the need to conserve a shared environment and natural resources indispensable for life requires cooperation between the two states. But, as Marx once wrote, the tradition of all dead generations oppresses like a nightmare the brains of the living. This article is syndicated in partnership with the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). The Food Safety and Drug Administration (FDA) department has started the sampling process to identify Halal certified food products being sold in Dehradun. The department started the process on the directions of the State government after Uttar Pradesh recently banned the production, storage, distribution and sale of food products with Halal certification. The department started the sampling process of various products on Wednesday under the supervision of FDA Joint Commissioner, Dr RK Singh. He said that the department has received some complaints about hoarding claiming to sell food products having Halal certification and on the labels of a variety of food products, dairy products, sugar, bakery, peppermint, oil and snacks among others. He said that he has issued instructions to all respective in-charges and designated officers across the State. He said that a team of Senior Food Safety Ranjag Singh, Sanjay Tiwari and Santosh Singh of FDA Dehradun checked the shops and stores located at Clock Tower. However, the team found no food with Halal certification at that time. Besides this, the team took 12 food samples and sent them for testing, added Singh. He said that the department will continue the sampling process and take appropriate action if Halal certified products are found in the market. A two-day national symposium was held on Tuesday on The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023: The Discovery and Synthesis of Quantum Dots at the Guru Ghasidas University (GGU). The symposium stressed on developing the university as an innovate research centre. In the inauguration function, Vice-Chancellor Professor Alok Kumar Chakrawal said that to become a great researcher, patience, dedication and continuous efforts were required. He stressed that an inquisitive nature and pithy questions on every point bring factuality to research. He expressed his confidence that GGU will be established as the best institute in the field of research in the coming times. The Vice-Chancellor said that Quantum Dot is working effectively in the field of medical care including Artificial Intelligence. Throwing light on the shape of various glass pigments used in ancient times, Professor Arun Sawant, former Vice-Chancellor of Rajasthan University, said that quantum dots create different colors based on shape. Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Awardee, Professor P.S. Mukherjee of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, discussed the use of quantum dots in various fields and explained in detail about carbometallic compounds. Prof T.S. Pal, a former professor at IIT Kharagpur, said nanotechnology and quantum dots have brought about a radical change in the field of medicine and technology. Chief Minister Hemant Soren today said that the Government (at the Centre) seem to have no good sensitivity towards labourers, trapped in the under construction tunnel in Uttarkashi. He said that the safety of workers should be kept in top priority in such big construction projects. Talking to media persons outside the State Secretariat here on Wednesday the CM said that our officers are there waiting for the labourers to receive them after rescue. But, its a matter of concern that in these projects safety and precaution is very important. You must be aware that in last few years not one but several accidents like this have happened in Uttarakhand. In a similar accident several labourers of Jharkhand became victims and they lost their lives. Again such an accident has taken place, he said. The CM said it has been several days that the labourers are trapped in the tunnel. There is no surety of what will happen. Only providing food, water is not enough. You can imagine what kind of mental trauma they (labourers) are facing at the moment. In such projects it is a must to make a contingency plan, but the situation is such that experts from offshores may be called. It is a matter of concern, he said. Whatever has happened has happened. There is nothing we can do except waiting. But, I think that the kind of sensitivity the government (Centre) should have is lacking there, he said. Notably, following the instructions of Chief Minister Hemant Soren, a three-member team from Jharkhand had reached the spot and talked to the workers from Jharkhand who were trapped in the tunnel under construction between Silkyara and Dandalgaon on Brahmakamal and Yamunotri National Highway in Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand. The team had also taken information about the matter from Uttarakhand Disaster Management. Uttarakhand Disaster Management had shared the list of 40 workers with the delegation and control room, which includes a total of 15 workers from Jharkhand, out of which two from Giridih, three from Khunti, three from Ranchi and one worker from West Singhbhum have been confirmed with their families. Talks have taken place. According to the delegation of Jharkhand, all the 15 workers of Jharkhand trapped in the tunnel under construction are safe. Officials and family members have also talked to the workers through a pipe and the workers have informed that they are safe. The representatives talked to Vishwajit Kumar Verma and Subodh Kumar Verma of Birni block of Giridih district. Food and oxygen are being supplied through pipes to the workers trapped in the tunnel. It is expected that it will take one more day to rescue the workers. The State Migrant Control Room is trying to contact the families of all the workers. Zap IT CEO Bhuvanesh Pratap Singh, Joint Labour Commissioner Rajesh Prasad and Joint Labour Commissioner Pradeep Robert Lakra have gone to Uttarakhand to know about the condition of the workers trapped in the tunnel and to provide them assistance. The Uttarakhand High Court (HC) has directed the State government to file a report about the labourers trapped in the under construction tunnel in Silkyara in Uttarkashi district till December 2. The bench of officiating chief justice Manoj Kumari Tiwari and Justice Pankaj Purohit asked the government about the measures it is taking to save the lives of the trapped labourers while hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on the subject on Wednesday. In response the government counsel said that all life saving medicines are being provided to the labourers and the rescue operation is being monitored by the Prime Minister, chief minister of Uttarakhand and union transport and highways minister. He said that all the 41 labourers are safe. The PIL has been filed by Samadhan NGO of Dehradun. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday welcomed the remarks made by the Supreme Court of India in which the Court has validated the Haryana Government's endeavors in addressing pollution stemming from stubble burning. In a statement, the Chief Minister extended his thanks to the farming community for their dedicated efforts in successfully addressing this challenging task. Emphasizing the Haryana government's serious approach to the issue of stubble burning, he highlighted the collaborative efforts with farmers, which have resulted in substantial success in reducing incidents related to stubble burning. Terming pollution a health-related concern, he said that it should not be politicized and urged for collective efforts to address this issue, emphasizing the need for a non-political approach. Regrettably, he pointed out that certain political parties and neighbouring state governments were engaging in politics on this matter. He highlighted a recent incident where schools had to be closed due to pollution, underscoring the urgency of collaborative action to prevent such situations from recurring. Khattar highlighted the relentless efforts undertaken by the government to combat stubble burning, resulting in a significant decline in incidents in Haryana compared to previous years. In contrast, Punjab has experienced an alarming increase in such incidents. He provided statistics to underscore the positive trend in Haryana, stating that in 2021, there were 5993 reported incidents, which decreased to 3233 in 2022 and further reduced to 1986 in 2023. This reflects a commendable 39 percent reduction in stubble burning incidents between 2022 and 2023 in Haryana. In stark contrast, Punjab reported a substantial increase in stubble burning incidents, reaching 31932 in the year 2023. This stark difference between Haryana and Punjab is a major contributor to pollution in the Delhi NCR region. He emphasized that the consistent decline in stubble-burning incidents in the state is a testament to the success of the Haryana government's initiatives in raising awareness among farmers about crop residue management. Highlighting the government's unwavering commitment to achieving the goal of zero stubble burning, he said that the Haryana government has not only launched awareness campaigns discouraging stubble burning but has also provided a financial incentive of Rs 1000 per acre for farmers adopting non-burning practices and effectively managing crop residue. Additionally, the Agriculture Department is actively supplying farmers with various machines and equipment to facilitate efficient stubble management. In its campaign against illicit liquor from November 11 to November 20, Haryana Police registered 444 FIRs, resulting in the arrest of 436 individuals. Director General of Police Shatrujeet Kapur said that "the sale of illegal liquor is a serious offense that will not be tolerated in Haryana. Those who engage in this activity will face the consequences of their actions, he added. Kapur said that to curb the sale of illegal liquor, multi-level monitoring is being implemented, resulting in the arrest of offenders. This campaign will continue indefinitely to deter those involved in the illicit liquor trade.. Senior officials in the state are actively monitoring liquor vendors, ensuring effective communication and immediate apprehension of offenders. Regular video conferences with district officers contribute to coordinated efforts and meaningful actions to tighten the grip on those selling illegal liquor. Highlighting the recent successes of the campaign, Kapur disclosed that during the specified period, the police team recovered 11368 country bottles, 1,449 English bottles, 774 beer bottles, 2,352 liters of liquor, and 354 liters of raw liquor. He issued a stern warning to liquor vendors, urging them to refrain from succumbing to greed and engaging in the illegal sale of liquor. The police department will take decisive action against violators, ensuring that no individual is above the law. The DGP appealed to the public to promptly report individuals involved in the illegal production and sale of spurious liquor. Assuring confidentiality, he stressed the importance of community cooperation in ensuring timely and effective law enforcement actions against offenders. The Karnataka state assembly will implement the UP model of digitisation of the state assembly. Karnataka assembly Speaker UT Khader Fareed along with officials of the assembly visited the Uttar Pradesh assembly on Tuesday. The Karnataka assembly delegation headed by Speaker Khader Fareed had come to get a firsthand account of the digitisation of the entire process and conduct of the proceedings of the UP assembly. The visit by the Karnataka speaker is significant as Bengaluru is considered to be the information technology (IT) capital of India. Khader Fareed was particularly interested to know as to how the UP assembly had flawlessly implemented the e-vidhan software for the digitisation of the state assembly. Proceedings of the UP assembly are almost totally paperless and the last two annual budgets were also paperless. The chairman of the Karnataka legislative council was also scheduled to visit Lucknow. His programme was however cancelled. UP Vidhan Sabha Speaker Satish Mahana apprised the Karnataka assembly speaker of the process of digitisation and e-vidhan implementation by the UP assembly. Mahana told the Karnataka speaker that the entire proceedings of the UP assembly are paperless and all the members of UP assembly participate in assembly proceedings through digital process. Mahana said in the second phase of digitisation, the assembly and parliamentary constituencies and media would be digitally linked with the state assembly. Khader Fareed appreciated the implementation of the e-vidhan by the UP assembly. He said he along with his officials would again visit the UP assembly to understand the detailed process of digitisation of the assembly proceedings and later implement it in his home state. The Karnataka speaker also took a round of the digital gallery where the history of the UP assembly is on display since its inception. He also visited the digital corridor of the UP assembly where the photos of all members of the UP assembly and important policies and programmes are on display. Impressed by the achievements of the UP assembly, Khader Fareed said undoubtedly UP Vidhan Sabha was the best state assembly of India, as it was equipped with the latest version of information technology. MG (Morris Garages), a British automobile brand with a 100-year-old legacy, on inaugurates sales and aftersales outlet for car buyers in the city of Bhopal. Spread across 4000 and 5100 sq ft, the showroom and workshop of the dealership are equipped with premium interiors clubbed with a digital environment that resonates with the preferences of the modern, urban buyer who is tech-savvy and an auto enthusiast. The customers can experience vehicles from the MG line-up - Hector, Gloster, ZS EV, Astor and Comet EV in the showroom located in Bagmugaliya and get premium service at the workshop located in Ratanpur Sadak. Commenting on the inauguration, Gaurav Gupta, Deputy Managing Director, MG Motor India, said, "The year 2023 marks the momentous year for us as we commemorate a century of automotive excellence, our commitment to fortify our network stands unwavering. These few years have given us good headway, and we have established a robust sales and service network across the country, with 12 touchpoints in Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh offers a market potential for SUVs and EV, and customers can experience all our products."Commenting on the inauguration, Sanjay Thakkar, Dealer Principal, MG Bhopal and Chairman and Executive Director, Landmark said, We are delighted to begin our partnership with MG from Bhopal. With MGs technologically advanced products, customer-centric approach coupled with our understanding of the customer needs we together endeavor to provide superior ownership experience for our customers. This will help us cater to the evolved mobility requirements of our customers across the region. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) intensified its investigation into the attacks on the Indian consulate in San Francisco by Sikh extremists earlier this year, conducting raids at 14 locations across Punjab and Haryana on Wednesday. The Ministry of Home Affairs entrusted the counter-terrorism agency with this responsibility. In a detailed statement released on Wednesday, the NIA revealed that the raids yielded incriminating documents linked to the accused involved in the attacks on March 19 and July 2, 2023, on the San Francisco consulate in the US. The central probe agency highlighted the seriousness of the incidents, describing them as criminal trespass, vandalism, damage to public property, and attempts to harm consulate officials and set the building on fire through arson. The locations raided by NIA today were spread across the districts of Moga, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, Mohali, and Patiala in Punjab, and Kurukshetra and Yamunanagar in Haryana. The crackdown led to the seizure of digital data containing information related to the accused persons, along with other incriminating documents, read the NIA statement. The agency had sent a team to San Francisco in August to investigate the case, releasing images of 10 probable suspects the following month. These suspects were accused of criminal trespass, damage to public property, and attacking consulate officials, causing fear among the staff and community. The NIA emphasized that its investigation aimed to identify and prosecute the attackers and the assailants of the attacks and send a strong message to such anti-Indian elements. The Indian consulate in San Francisco faced two attacks in quick succession this year, drawing widespread condemnation from US legislators. On March 19, pro-Khalistan protesters damaged the consulate and attempted to set it ablaze, raising pro-Khalistan slogans and installing two Khalistani flags inside the premises. The 2 July attack, captured in a purported video, displayed the words Violence Begets Violence and featured news articles related to the death of Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down outside a Vancouver gurdwara on June 18. Nijjar's killing sparked a diplomatic row between India and Canada, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggesting a potential link between Indian agents and Nijjar's death in September, a claim India dismissed as absurd and motivated. The NIA's ongoing efforts include crowd-sourcing information to identify and collect details about US-based entities and individuals involved in these violent incidents. The agency has identified individuals connected to the conspiracy behind the repeated attacks, including both Indian and foreign nationals. Premises of AAP MLAs Associate Searched The NIA, on Wednesday morning, conducted searches at the premises of Sarabjit Singh Kang a former leader of Lok Insaf Party, and currently a close associate of Aam Aadmi Partys MLA from Payal Manwinder Singh Giaspura. While the NIA team remained tight-lipped about the specifics of their investigation, Kang maintained that the searches were related to verifying his links with Chacha Baghel Singh in the USA. It has been learnt that the NIAs interest was piqued by a video featuring Kang live with Chacha Baghel Singh of the USA, prompting surprise checks at residential and professional premises in Bahomajra village near Khanna and surrounding areas. The federal investigative agencys team concluded their operation after approximately two hours, emphasizing that the searches aimed to inquire about potential connections between Kang and individuals with hardline stances residing in foreign countries. Kang, interacting with the media, said that the NIA sleuths searched his premises for about two hours, focusing on his alleged links with Baghel Singh in the US. He informed that he had provided the investigators with complete information about his social and business activities, along with details of his relatives settled in the USA. Chhattisgarh Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan voiced concern over the long waiting hours at the Jagannath temple in Puri and the alleged negligence of the temple administration in addressing the issue. Harichandan drew the attention of the temple management committee and the state government to the plight of the pilgrims and devotees. The Governor, who hails from Odisha, was on a visit to the state to attend the birth anniversary programme of Dr Harekrushna Mahatab. He told the media that it was very painful to see devotees standing for long hours in queues to have a darshan of Lord Jagannath. While people are made to stand for five to six hours in scorching sun and rain, there is no arrangement for them. It is the responsibility of the administration to take care of the elderly, he said. A High Court in Nairobi has extended its orders blocking the deployment of Kenyan police officers to Haiti. The ruling was issued on November 16, shortly after the parliament approved a request by the government to authorize sending 1,000 officers to Port-au-Prince. The High Court has temporarily blocked the deployment of Kenyan police [ File Photo] On October 2, the UN Security Council approved the U.S.-drafted resolution for a year-long Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti, whose mandate would include the protection of critical infrastructure and to provide operational support to the Haitian National Police, including through joint security operations. The deployment has been rejected by the Haitian people, who have taken to the streets in mass protests against foreign occupation. On October 9, the High Court in Nairobi issued a conservatory order halt on the planned deployment until a legal challenge brought by the Thirdway Alliance party could be heard. The partys leader, Ekuru Aukot, has contested that the mission is in violation of Kenyas constitution, and is not backed by any law or treaty. Despite there being a court order against deployment dated 25 October 2023 by Justice Enock Mwita, a belligerent and politically-expedient parliament went ahead to deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti. Kenya has no leadership but puppets of [the] USA, France, and Canada, Aukot posted on the social media platform X. from the Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service To make productive use of crop residue and to prevent stubble burning, Punjab Energy Development Agency (PEDA) on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with GAIL (India) Limited, paving the way for setting up of 10 Compressed Biogas Projects (CBG) and other new and renewable energy projects in the State. The MoU was signed by PEDA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Amarpal Singh and Executive Director (Business Development and E&P) of GAIL (India) RK Singhal in the presence of New and Renewable Energy Sources Secretary Dr Ravi Bhagat. Congratulating GAIL (India) Limited and PEDA for signing this MOU for setting up 10 CBG projects, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann also asked PEDA to provide fulsome support and cooperation to GAIL. The states New and Renewable Energy Sources Minister Aman Arora said that the pact will help the State to manage five lakh tons of paddy straw per annum and generate clean energy out of it. Punjab is an agrarian state and it has immense potential for crop residue-based CBG plants, he said. NRES Secretary Dr Bhagat said that with the implementation of these 10 projects, at least three lakh tons of paddy straw in around 1.25 lakh acres is expected to be prevented from being burnt. These projects will also create around 50 rural entrepreneurs for the supply of paddy straw to these plants, further generating employment for over 500 persons by these rural entrepreneurs, he added. PEDA CEO Dr Amarpal Singh informed that the CBG produced from these projects will generate direct employment to more than 250 persons and indirect employment of about 600. He added that PEDA will facilitate GAIL for land locations and statutory clearances. GAIL India executive director RK Singhal said that they will develop projects in the field of New and Renewable Energy Sources. GAIL (India) Limited will be initially setting up 10 CBG projects with an investment of about Rs 600 crores producing 35,000 tons of biogas (CBG) and about 8,700 tons of organic manure annually. These projects will create around 100 rural entrepreneurs for the supply of paddy straw to these plants. The possibility to establish other New and Renewable Energy Projects in the state will be explored, he added. To provide better connectivity in the development of PM Mitra Mega Textile and Apparel Park, the Yogi Adityanath government is preparing to connect Atari village with a four-lane road. This Mega Textile and Apparel Park is being developed in Atari village located in Malihabad, spanning an area of approximately 1,100 acres. It is noteworthy that the development of this park is likely to provide employment opportunities to 1 lakh youth. The state government expects investment of more than Rs 10,000 crores in this project. There are plans to equip this park with state-of-the-art facilities to make it globally competitive. Through the development of the Park, the state government aims to fulfill all the needs of traders related to the textile industry under one roof, reducing the industrys costs. Manufacturers will be provided with a basic infrastructure according to standards for exports. As per the guidelines received by the additional chief secretary, Handloom and Textile Industry department, a four-lane road of 14.280 kilometre will be constructed between outer ring road (Ratha underpass) to PM Mitra Park and a 8.8 kilometre road from Ratha underpass to IIM will be widened at a cost of Rs 454.34 crore. This proposal was sent to the Public Works Department, Lucknow, by the chief engineer (Central Region) on November 2 for which the inspection is underway at the headquarters level. The Atari village of Lucknow has been selected keeping in mind the connectivity with Lucknow, Sitapur and Hardoi. Railway connectivity is also excellent, with Malihabad Railway Station just 16 km away and Lucknow Railway Station 40 km far. Moreover, the Lucknow international airport is 45 km from the Atari, the dedicated freight corridor Kanpur node is at a distance of 95 km and Dadri Terminal is at a distance of 500 km. Also, the Inland Container Depot is located 111 km away in Kanpur. The park is proposed to be developed on PPP mode with core infrastructure to be constructed with Rs 500 crore, while a provision of Rs 300 crore has been made for manufacturing units. Notably, the construction of the park is divided into three parts to provide modern facilities - common infrastructure, social infrastructure and premium space. The common infrastructure includes a road network, 24x7 power supply, water supply, warehouse, zero liquid discharge effluent treatment plant, training and skill development facility, administrative building, product display facility and testing laboratory along with exhibition centre etc. Similarly, social infrastructure includes worker hostels, housing zones, medical facilities, commercial and recreational facilities, open spaces and parks, security, etc. Likewise, premium space includes industrial plots and plug and industrial sheds. A day after the Aam Aadmi Party led Punjab Governments healthcare model Aam Aadmi Clinics got international recognition, the state Government on Tuesday appealed to the Central Government to release the Ayushman Funds, which has been accumulated to the tune of Rs 621 crores. Notably, the Central Government has stopped releasing grants to the Punjab state under the Ayushman Scheme since December 2022. The appeal was made by the states Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr Balbir Singh, who described the international award as a proud moment. Punjabs Health and Family Welfare Department has received first prize for its submission titled, Strengthening last mile delivery of drugs: A case study from Punjab,in the Global Health Supply Chain Summit held in Nairobi from November 14-16. Of total 85 countries that participated in the Summit, at least 40 countries have evinced keen interest in visiting Punjab to see the Aam Aadmi Clinics and understand how 84 essential drugs and 40-plus diagnostics are being made available closer to households and without any cost to the patients, said Dr Balbir. If delegates from 40 countries want to come here to see our healthcare model to replicate in their countries, the Centre Government should also support us and should release the funds for the welfare of the people, he said, adding that the Punjab Government had even written a letter to the Central Government to consider the Aam Aadmi Clinics as a state scheme and wont use Ayushman funds for this scheme. The Health Minister, however, said that there is no dearth of funds from the Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to upgrade the healthcare facilities in the state. Our CM Saab has always asked me not to worry about funds and just focus on the upgradation of healthcare infrastructure and ensure that nobody should face any kind of hassle in availing any treatment at government hospitals, he said. dr Balbir said that 100 more Aam Aadmi Clinics are ready to be thrown open to the public, while the Chief Minister has also given the go-ahead to set up 70 additional Aam Aadmi Clinics at underserved Kandi areas including Hoshiarpur, Pathankot and Gurdaspur. To ensure the availability of medicines at government health facilities, the Chief Minister has also given approval to purchase medicines, he said, while adding that nobody will have to purchase medicines from private pharmacies. Dr Balbir said that an amount of Rs 550 crores is being spent for the upgradation of around 40 secondary care health facilities including district, sub-divisional hospitals and Community Health Centres (CHCs). The upgraded buildings of all the hospitals will be equipped with ultra-modern medical facilities including Intensive Care Units (ICUs), Ventilators, X-rays, Ultrasound, etc and people no more have to visit private hospitals to avail world-class healthcare facilities, he added. Pertinently, there are 664 Aam Aadmi Clinics 236 in urban areas and 428 in rural areas functioning in the State and all of them are IT-enabled with end-to-end digitization of registration, doctor consultation, investigations, and prescriptions. This results in a five-step patient journey and thus reduced turnout time from patient registration to prescription. Over 70 lakh patients have availed free treatment at these clinics so far. During his sixth day of campaigning in poll-bound Rajasthan on Wednesday, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath came down heavily on the Congress Party led government for the worsening law and order situation in the state. Yogi Adityanath said, Two years ago in Jodhpur, the streets witnessed the alarming sight of individuals brandishing naked swords and engaging in riotous activities. A bulldozer would have crushed these rioters if they had been in Uttar Pradesh, but the Rajasthan government remained silent. Yogi urged support for Atul Bhansali in Jodhpur city, Devendra Joshi in Sursagar, and Mahendra Singh Rathore in Sardarpura. Reflecting on events that took place in Jodhpur a couple of years ago in which swords wielding rioters went on a rampage on the streets of the city, he lashed out at the Ashok Gehlot government for its studied silence on the disturbing incident. He emphasised that had such rioters been in Uttar Pradesh, they would have been swiftly dealt with by his bulldozer. Expressing concern over unleashing of anarchy to secure vote banks, he criticised the current administration, labeling it as a government of curfews and riots. The chief minister lamented Gehlot governments indifference to the killings of revered saints in Alwar and Jodhpur, urging voters to consider these issues while casting their votes. He also highlighted the success of the water scheme implemented by the BJP, emphasising its impact in providing clean water nationwide. Yogi sought votes for MLA and Nokha candidate Bihari Lal Vishnoi. He said that the party, having foreseen its its defeat in the polls, was spreading rumors since yesterday that I was not coming to hold the rally here. People were calling, and I informed them that the second public gathering was taking place in Nokha. We were devotees of Lord Shri Ram. I had made a promise, and I had come to Nokha again to fulfill it. Meanwhile, recognising Bikaner and Rajasthan for their significant role in producing high-quality sweets and snacks, he lamented the leaks of examination papers, suggesting that a double engine government in Rajasthan would have prevented such occurrences. Criticising the influence of mafias in the state with the support of the political power, he called upon the people to elect a government that would build their future rather than vote for someone out of sympathy. In Jaipur, he urged the residents of Didwana to support BJP candidate Jitendra Singh Jodha. He said, The money that Modi sends gets distributed in Jaipur itself and does not reach the eligible beneficiaries. Yogi Adityanath highlighted the shift in dynamics, noting that in the past, terrorists carried out indiscriminate attacks causing harm to innocent lives. Presently, wrongdoers are aware that their actions will have consequences. Drawing a sharp contrast with the Congress, he accused them of bringing poverty, chaos and distrust to the country while praising PM Modi for safeguarding the dignity of every individual. Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam as an initiative to honour and respect women. PM Modi worked to ban triple talaq forever, he said. The chief minister also visited the Ratangarh Assembly constituency, urging voters to support BJP candidate Abhinesh Maharshi. Yogi Adityanath emphasised the potential for development in Rajasthan with the formation of a double engine government. Noting the historical connection between Gorakhpur and Ratangarh, he criticised the Congress for its failure on multiple fronts, asserting that it had lost public trust. Yogi Adityanath highlighted the Congresss inability to control criminal elements, emphasising their unsuitability for governance. He praised Abhinesh Maharshis dedication during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he selflessly served people risking his own safety, while continuing the fight against the Congress. A heritage rally was organised from Khandagiri square to the Hatigumpha cave of Udayagiri-Khandagiri twin hills to celebrate the World Heritage Week. Organised by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) Bhubaneswar Circle in collaboration with the Khandagiri Anchalika Parishad, the Khandagiri Baristha Nagarika Sangha and the Jayadev Walkers Club, it was participated by about two hundred students of different schools, local residents, personnel of Archaeological Survey of India and others. The rally marched with placards and slogans highlighting the significance of the week long observation and importance of conservation of heritage sites. The rally was flagged off by former Vice Chancellor of Utkal University of Culture Professor Amiya Kumar Pattanaik in presence of other dignitaries. Prof Patnaik, who joined as chief guest, underscored the need of local community participation in conservation and management of the more than two thousand years old twin hills Jain monuments. President of Orissa Environmental Society Dr. Sundara Narayana Patro, former Superintending Archaeologist Dr Kora Prasad Padhy, Administrative Officer of ASI Kalpana Das and several other prominent persons also addressed the meeting. Views were expressed in favour of according the status of World Heritage Site to the Khandagiri-Udayagiri twin hills because of its special significance of earliest rock-cut architectural monument value. Discussions were also made on the status and the immediate conservation and management need of the important monuments in Odisha, and this year's theme "The Living Heritages". A quiz programme was conducted by historian Prof Nirad Baran Khuntia, on various aspects of heritages, partipated by the students. The meeting was presided over by vice president of Khandagiri Anchalika Bikash Parishad Basant Kumar Mishra. Making an appeal to the farmer unions, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday urged them to cease road blockades in the State, citing undue harassment to the common man. Expressing concern about the inconvenience caused by the road blockades, the Chief Minister also cautioned them that such actions could turn the public against the unions. Mann emphasized that the farmer unions must refrain from disrupting the routine lives of citizens for their vested interests. Asserting his commitment to open dialogue, Mann said that his office, residence, Punjab Bhawan, Punjab Civil Secretariat, and the office of the Agriculture Minister are always open for discussions with the unions. However, the Chief Minister strongly criticized the farmer unions for their irresponsible behaviour, deeming road blockades and harassment of the common man as unwarranted and undesirable. He cautioned that if the unions persist in such actions, they risk losing public support. Mann called on the unions to understand the sentiments of the common man and cease practices that cause inconvenience. Mann emphasized the need for sensitivity from the unions regarding the challenges faced by the public due to road blockades. He reiterated his willingness to engage in discussions with all sections of society and encouraged the farmer unions to opt for dialogues with the Government instead of resorting to disruptive measures that adversely impact the common man. Farmers prepare for 3-day dharna in Chd; Responds to CMs remarks In a resolute stand against the State Governments apathy, farmers from Punjab are set to unleash a three-day protest in Chandigarh from November 26 to 28. The Sanyukta Kisan Morcha, undeterred by Chief Minister Bhagwant Manns appeals or cautionary remarks, on Wednesday, declared to go ahead with its plans to hold the dharna to fulfill its several demands, including The meeting attended by farmer stalwarts like Buta Singh Burjgill, Harinder Singh Lakhowal, and Joginder Singh Ugrahan was aimed at finalizing the preparations for the upcoming protest, which is expected to draw farmers from various parts of Punjab to voice their long-standing demands and address issues related to pending police cases for burning their paddy residue, and red entries in revenue records against farmers, among others. Sanyukta Kisan Morchas chief spokesperson Ruldu Singh Mansa, addressing the media after the meeting, outlined the prolonged plight of farmers, tangled in a web of legal skirmishes, including police cases and ominous red entry records. He also highlighted the primary demands that include the waiver of farmers debts, legal guarantee for Minimum Support Price (MSP), compensation for crops damaged due to unseasonal rains in Punjab, and compensation for losses incurred due to stubble burning. The consensus reached in the meeting was unequivocal proceed with the Chandigarh dharna and be prepared for a fight. The meeting didn't mince words; it was a litany of grievances, a testament to the farmers desperation, and a declaration of war against bureaucratic callousness. The demands etched in the farmers manifesto resonate with their long-standing cries for justice loan waivers, iron-clad legal guarantees for Minimum Support Price (MSP), compensation for crop losses due to adversities, and redressal for the battered crops. The farmers leaders justified the protest as a last resort, an act of desperation, compelled by the deafening silence on their issues. The three-day protest includes a strategic approach, where on the first day, that is November 26, the agitators plan to march towards the Chief Minister's residence, and on the next day, they aim for Punjab Raj Bhavan. The farmer leaders claimed that preparations for the November 26 protest were complete, to raise issues related to MSP, withdrawing cases against the farmers. As per plans, the farmers would march from Tribune Chowk towards Chandigarh on November 26, and stage a sit-in wherever they are stopped, making it clear that the streets will be choked if their demands are not met. At the same time, the farm leaders made it clear that they would engage in discussions during the dharna. An official letter, if received for a meeting, would be presented during the discussion, and a collective decision would be made regarding lifting the dharna or removing the blockades, he added. Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Tuesday called upon the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene urgently and direct the prompt notification of the appointment of two distinguished Sikh lawyers Harmeet Singh Grewal and Deepinder Singh Nalwa as judges in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The appeal came after the clearance of their appointments by the Supreme Court collegium. Expressing his dismay, Sukhbir highlighted the apparent discrepancy in the approval process. While the names of three other lawyers were greenlit for judgeship in the same list, the recommendations for Harmeet Singh Grewal and Deepinder Singh Nalwa were conspicuously withheld by the Union Government. Sukhbir stressed the need to ensure non-discrimination against the Sikh community and other minorities in judicial appointments. He referred to the Supreme Court's observation, which criticized the Central Government's selective approach, sending a disconcerting message to the Sikh community. Highlighting that such bias has occurred in the past, Sukhbir emphasized the importance of giving due weightage to the recommendations of the Supreme Court collegium. He urged the government not to withhold any names on extraneous grounds and promptly notify the appointments of Grewal and Nalwa to the Punjab and Haryana High Court. SAD president emphasized that this step would not only align with the spirit of justice but also demonstrate the government's commitment to a fair and unbiased judiciary, free from discriminatory practices. An incident of theft took place in Jagannathpur temple of Ranchi on Monday night, when thieves took away several important items along with cash from the priest's room inside the temple premises. The thieves stole Rs 20,000, sound system, pen drive and decorative items from the priest's room in the Jagannathpur temple complex. They carried out the theft in a vicious manner. The thieves entered the priest's room by cutting the window grill with a cutter machine. The surprising thing is that at the place in the temple complex where the priest's room is, the window is at a height from the ground. Despite this, the thieves easily entered inside by cutting the grill of the window and stole it. On Tuesday morning it was revealed that theft had taken place in the temple premises. This information was given to Dhurva police. Police reached the spot and investigated the temple premises. During this, Dhurva Police Station In-Charge, Vimal Nandan Sinha said that CCTV cameras have been installed in almost part of the Jagannathpur temple complex. The Station In-Charge said that the thieves are being identified with the help of CCTV footage. He said that while the thieves were carrying out the incident, they might have been captured in the CCTV camera. He said that whoever has committed this incident will be arrested soon. Meanwhile, in another incident a criminal has been murdered in Lalpur police station area. The deceased has been identified as Nitesh Laha. The murder took place two days ago and the dead body was found on Tuesday. The unknown criminals first strangulated Nitish and then slit his throat. Police reached the spot and took custody of the body and sent it for post-mortem. Nitesh had murdered his wife on July 3, 2021. He had committed that murder over dowry. The police arrested him on July 30, 2022 and sent him to jail. Nitesh had come out of jail on bail only a few days ago. Police have started investigating the case but till now it is not known who has committed the murder and why. However, the accused of murder is being levelled against the mother, brother and brother-in-law of the deceased. Acharya Balkrishna has said that he has talked with those connected to the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya regarding the use of ghee made from the Badri cows of Uttarakhand for rituals in the temple. Addressing the media in Haridwar on Tuesday, he said that the Punganur cow breed gained fame when it got associated with the Tirupati Balaji temple. I thought of Uttarakhands Badri cow which is small in size and gives one to three litres of milk. I have talked to various persons connected to the Ram Mandir because I believe that if the ghee made from the milk of the Badri cow is used in the Ram Mandir, it will not only popularise this breed but also have other positive impacts. If this happens, it will help protect this cow and address migration from the mountains- which is a major problem faced in the State. This will also benefit the people of the State economically, he said. Balkrishna further said that Patanjali recently sent relief materials to Nepal. There are some people who bring negativity into Indo-Nepal relations. However, when we sent about 60 tonnes of materials in eight trucks to Nepal we saw the people there raising slogans praising the Government of India. We were happy that our effort helped strengthen the friendship between the two nations. He said that the Yog Gram in Haridwar has so far successfully helped lakhs of people overcome various diseases and health conditions using naturopathy, Ayurveda and holistic healing. Before 2017, the Uttar Pradesh Police faced challenges using traditional methods to solve crimes, often taking years to catch culprits. But with the Yogi Adityanath governments commitment to zero tolerance for crime, the police force has embraced smart policing by installing 7,22,161 CCTVs at 3,21,635 locations across the state. This shift has made investigations quicker and revealed 1,355 incidents that might have gone unnoticed. The move towards technology is helping the police keep the state safer and respond faster to criminal activities. Making these claims here on Tuesday evening, an official spokesman of the government claimed that along with making the cities of UP convenient, smart security arrangements are also the priority of the Yogi government. To ensure the safety of the states cities, the government is employing multi-level monitoring through the Integrated Control Command Center (ICCC). Simultaneously, the UP Police is engaging in smart policing practices to combat crime by installing CCTV cameras throughout the state. This initiative extends to connecting police stations with CCTV to facilitate transparent justice for the people. The spokesman said that under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi, the UP Police proactively integrated itself with CCTVs, proving instrumental in unveiling heinous crimes and apprehending criminals. The pilot project commenced in the Gorakhpur zone, where, with public cooperation, 46,478 CCTV cameras were strategically installed. This initiative exposed approximately a hundred incidents in the Gorakhpur zone, including cases of dacoity/robbery, murders, kidnapping, rape, theft, distortion and other offences. Following this success, the UP Police launched a widespread campaign, installing 6,28,283 CCTVs at 2,48,116 locations across the state in just five months, demonstrating the governments commitment to leveraging technology for enhanced security and transparency. During the campaign, a total of 1,83,561 CCTVs were installed across seven commissionerates in the state, encompassing 79,135 locations. Prayagraj Commissionerate took the lead by installing the highest number of CCTVs, totaling 56,920 at 29,188 locations, followed by Gautam Buddha Nagar Commissionerate with 31,244 CCTVs at 11,523 places. The Kanpur Nagar Commissionerate secured the third position, where 30,746 CCTVs were installed at 11,275 locations. Additionally, across the states eight zones, 4,44,722 CCTVs were deployed at 1,68,981 locations. This comprehensive CCTV network, part of the UP Polices smart policing initiative, was pivotal in exposing 1,355 cases of heinous crimes statewide. These cases include 209 instances of dacoity/robbery, 82 murders, 46 cases of kidnapping/kidnapping for ransom, 32 cases of rape/molestation, 574 cases of theft/homicide and 412 other offences. Notable revelations include Ghaziabad commissionerate leading in dacoity/robbery cases, Gautam Buddha Nagar revealing four murder cases and 39 theft cases. Agra zone exposed the highest number of dacoity/robbery cases at 50, Meerut led with 18 cases of murder, Agra with 18 cases of kidnapping/ransom, Varanasi with 12 cases of rape/molestation, 179 cases of theft/extortion, and 70 other cases. Relief Therapeutics Holding SA / Key word(s): Personnel Relief Therapeutics Announces CEO Transition 22-Nov-2023 / 08:40 CET/CEST Release of an ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. Relief Therapeutics Announces CEO Transition GENEVA (NOV. 22, 2023) RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA (SIX: RLF, OTCQB: RLFTF, RLFTY) (Relief, or the Company), a biopharmaceutical company committed to delivering innovative treatment options for select specialty, unmet and rare diseases, today announced that its current chief executive officer (CEO), Jack Weinstein, will be stepping down as part of a leadership transition. The company is pleased to announce that Michelle Lock, a highly experienced pharmaceutical executive and current independent member of Reliefs Board of Directors, will be assuming the role of CEO on an interim basis. Michelle has been an active and insightful member of our Board of Directors. Her deep understanding of our organization and her extensive leadership experience in both biotech and big pharma settings make her an ideal leader for Relief. We are excited to have Michelle continue on the Board of Directors and step in as our new CEO. said Raghuram (Ram) Selvaraju, Chairman of the Board of Directors. I want to extend our gratitude to Jack for his dedication and the important contributions he made over the years. added Dr. Selvaraju. Ms. Lock previously held executive roles as chief operating officer of Covis Pharma Group and senior vice president and head of Europe and International at Acceleron Pharma Inc. She has nearly 30 years of biopharmaceutical strategic, operational and commercialization experience and spent 24 years with Bristol-Myers Squibb. Her appointment as interim CEO of Relief is effective immediately. In response to her appointment, Ms. Lock commented, I am honored to step into the role of CEO of Relief. This company has a strong legacy of bringing significant value to patients, and I am excited to lead our talented team as we continue to advance our pipeline. I am committed to driving our company on a path of innovation and enhanced patient impact. The Company is looking forward to a new chapter under Michelle Locks leadership. ABOUT RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Relief Therapeutics is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to advancing treatment paradigms and delivering improvements in efficacy, safety, and convenience to benefit the lives of patients living with select specialty and rare diseases. Relief Therapeutics' portfolio offers a balanced mix of marketed, revenue-generating products, our proprietary, globally patented Physiomimic and TEHCLO platform technologies and a targeted clinical development pipeline consisting of risk-mitigated assets focused in three core therapeutic areas: rare metabolic disorders, rare skin diseases and rare respiratory diseases. In addition, Relief Therapeutics is commercializing several legacy products via licensing and distribution partners. Relief Therapeutics' mission is to provide therapeutic relief to those suffering from rare diseases and is being advanced by an international team of well-established, experienced biopharma industry leaders with extensive research, development and rare disease expertise. Relief Therapeutics is headquartered in Geneva, with additional offices in Balerna, Switzerland, Offenbach am Main, Germany and Monza, Italy. Relief Therapeutics is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the symbol RLF and quoted in the U.S. on OTCQB under the symbols RLFTF and RLFTY. For more information, please visit our website www.relieftherapeutics.com or follow Relief Therapeutics on LinkedIn and Twitter. CONTACT : RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA Jeremy Meinen Chief Financial Officer contact@relieftherapeutics.com Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Relief to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. A number of factors, including those described in Relief's filings with the SIX Swiss Exchange and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), could adversely affect Relief Therapeutics. Copies of Relief Therapeutics' filings with the SEC are available on the SEC EDGAR database at www.sec.gov. Relief Therapeutics does not undertake any obligation to update the information contained herein, which speaks only as of this date. The chairperson of Uttarakhand State Commission for Women (USCW) Kusum Kandwal said that the ideal of gender equality is being realised on the ground with men and women now enjoying equal rights and opportunities. She said this while addressing the Women Scientists Conclave-2023 organised by Uttarakhand Science Education and Research Centre (USERC) on Wednesday in Dehradun. During the conclave, 13 young women scientists were felicitated by USERC in recognition of their distinct contributions in multiple realms like science, technology, applied science, STEM, social science and traditional science. Kandwal further said that it is time to impart culture-based education to future generations through women in order to eradicate vices that have eaten their way deep into the body of the society. Addressing the gathering, the director of USERC Anita Rawat said, Women's participation is imperative for the sustainable, comprehensive and synchronised advancement of any community. Presently, our endeavour is to reconcile scientific principles with societal considerations and integrate traditional knowledge. USERC has endeavoured to establish a platform where women can contemplate, innovate, present, progress and strive towards enduring resolutions. The ultimate objective of this gathering is to promote inclusive and accessible education of superior quality, gender parity and the empowerment of women and girls. The former chairman of Uttarakhand Public Service Commission J M S Rana also addressed the congregation. He said that the women are engaging in exemplary works within their respective fields by integrating traditional Indian science with contemporary science and technology. The vice- chairman of Uttarakhand Rural Development and Migration Commission D S S Negi said while addressing the conclave that the significance of women in both the social and economic sectors could hardly be overstated. The women of Uttarakhand are actively contributing to the sustainable development of the region as well as the preservation of its natural resources, he added. The governor lieutenant general (retd) Gurmit Singh said that women empowerment will play a key role in making Uttarakhand a developed State of the country in this decade. He was participating in the sixth convocation ceremony of the Swami Rama Himalayan University as the chief guest on Tuesday. Expressing happiness that 14 out of 15 scholars getting PhD degrees and receiving gold medals are girls, the governor said it shows that women are taking a lead in every sphere. The governor expressed confidence that under the leadership of women the State will achieve new heights in development. Singh exhorted the students to adopt the three mantras of intrinsic power, skill of being happy and selfless service and termed them as trident of Lord Shiva. He said that the students are leaders in themselves and like a warrior they should face the challenges posed by life. Appreciating the university for setting up a cancer research institute and establishing a hill campus in village Toli, the birthplace of Swami Ram, the governor said the campus will play a pivotal role in rural development and preventing migration. He urged students to serve the nation and society with dedication, emphasising SRHU's esteemed position as an institution of repute. The governor commended the enthusiasm of all students and expressed satisfaction in witnessing the rich cultural display during the ceremony. He praised the increasing academic excellence of female students and paid tribute to the brave soldiers through a floral tribute at the wall of valour. The vice-chancellor of the university, Rajendra Dobhal highlighted the university's illustrious history, and stressed the importance of education as a means of self-awareness, empowerment and transformation. The convocation saw 644 degrees conferred, distributed across various disciplines, including medical sciences, nursing, biosciences, yoga sciences, management studies, and science and technology. In the programme 21 meritorious students were honoured, with special recognition for academic excellence, research contributions, and Swami Rama best graduate award. The event concluded with the lighting of a lamp in front of a portrait of SRHU founder Swami Ram. On Tuesday, a massive turnout of crowds greeted Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as people gathered on rooftops and at rallies to watch and listen to him. Chief Minister Yogi was in Rajasthan, seeking votes for Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming elections. The Bhilwara rally of Yogi Adityanath, especially, attracted an impressive gathering of over 50,000 people. The chants of Bulldozer Baba, ;Yogi-Yogi, and Dekho-Dekho Sher Aaya echoed through various rallies. Throughout the day, the chief minister addressed five rallies, actively campaigning and seeking support for BJP candidates. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, during his address, highlighted the emergence of the mafia, which has hindered development in the state over the last five years. He contrasted this with the situation in Uttar Pradesh, where he stated that those inciting riots have faced consequences. Uttar Pradesh ke dangayi narak lok ki yatra par gaye hain. Ab unhein manushya lok nahi milne wala (UP's rioters have gone on a journey to hell. They will never come to the human world again), he remarked. While addressing a public meeting in support of BJP candidate Banshilal Katara in Dungarpur, Chief Minister Yogi highlighted the transformative impact of the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh. He noted the significant illumination of Ayodhya with the lighting of lakhs of lamps during the Deepotsav celebrations year after year since the BJP came to power. Contrasting it with the state of affairs in Rajasthan, Yogi expressed concern over the plight of the people of the state in the past five years, emphasising the states previous trajectory of development under the leadership of the double-engine government. Chief Minister Yogi pointed out that Rajasthan now faces challenges, including the burden of the highest electricity, petrol and diesel prices. He shared the international acclaim received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is welcomed with great respect during his visits abroad. This is the honour of 142 crore Indians. Now the hideouts of terrorists and their masters are being destroyed. Curfew-riots are the identity of Congress. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, while urging the public to support BJP candidate Narpat Singh Rajvi in Chittorgarh, instilled pride in the rich heritage of Chittorgarh and Mewar. This land has a history of bravery and valour for hundreds of years, he said. During his address, CM Yogi fondly remembered iconic figures such as Maharana Pratap, Maharana Sanga, Panna Dhay, Maharani Padmini and Mirabai. He also discussed Udai Sagar Lake. Even a horse like Chetak had developed the qualities of divinity, he said. Chittorgarh Fort, visible from the venue, was also discussed. In a bizarre incident, a youth identified as Rohit Kumar reportedly committed suicide after facing pressure from some individuals to convert to Islam. The incident took place in the Auraiya district last Saturday but only came to light after a video went viral on social media. In the video, Rohit stated that the accused, Sattar and Salmann, had filed a false case against him, and were pressuring him to marry a Muslim girl and convert to Islam. Rohits family members allege that Sattar and Salman filed a case against Rohit under the POCSO Act after he refused to accept Islam. However, before committing suicide by consuming poison on last Saturday, Rohit expressed his emotional state through a video message. The complaint in this regard has been filed at the Vidhuna police station of Auraiya district and the police nabbed one accused. Rohits mother, Sarojini Devi, a resident of Barke Purva village, has filed the complaint in which she said that Rohit and Sattar were good friends and they used to visit each other quite often. In the course of visits, Rohit got acquainted with Sattars daughter. She alleged that Sattar wanted to get his sister married to Rohit. Therefore, he along with Salman and Bunty Khan pressured Rohit to accept Islam but Rohit refused to leave the Hindu religion. The accused then lodged an FIR against Rohit at Sahar police station in Auraiya September 6 last, accusing Rohit of kidnapping and raping his minor sister. They also named Anuj and Aryan Khan in the FIR for assisting Rohit in the kidnapping. Based on the FIR, the police then arrested Rohit under POSCO Act. However, the sister of the deceased said that the girl who was claimed to be a minor by Salman was an adult. After spending some time in jail, started earning his living by driving an e-rickshaw. On November 15, Sattar, along with Salman, Bunty Khan, Dulli Khan, Tunnan Khan and Vakil Khan reached Rohits house with weapons in their hands to pressurise Rohit to convert to Islam. They even threatened him that his parents too would be sent to jail if did not convert to Islam. Sarojini Devi claimed that the villagers intervention saved her familys life but Sattar and his associates continued to press Rohit to accept Islam. On last Saturday evening, Rohit narrated his entire ordeal in a video and then consumed poison. He accused Sattars family members of torturing him in the video. The police confirmed the incident and acknowledged Rohit Kumars viral video where he had stated that he was being pressured to convert to Islam. Rohit was in jail under POCSO and was also charged under section 376 of IPC. However, he was released on bail on 3rd November on the orders of the High Court. He was being pressured to convert so he consumed poison on November 18 and died during treatment. One person has been arrested. Others are being looked for, police said. Police registered a case against Sattar, Salman, Bunty, Vakil, Dulli and Tunnan Khan under sections 147, 506, and 306 of Indian Penal Code along with section 3/5(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Act. According to Auraiya Superintendent of Police Charu Nigam, one accused has been arrested and the rest are being looked for and the matter is being investigated. Farmer leaders in Punjab on Wednesday accused the Centre and the state government of not making proper arrangements for stubble management and said it is vehicular and industrial pollution which affects the air quality in Delhi and not farm fire. They also said the governments should guarantee minimum support price on alternative crops such as maize and pulses to wean away growers from the water-guzzling paddy crop, which is not even native to Punjab. Their remarks came a day after the Supreme Court, while hearing a matter related to stubble burning, observed farmers are being made "villains" and that they have not been heard. A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia had also suggested why should there be any purchase under the minimum support price (MSP) system from farmers who indulge in crop residue burning, irrespective of the fact that citizens and children were affected due to pollution. Bharti Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) general secretary Sukhdev Singh Kokrikalan Wednesday said neither the Centre nor the Punjab government is doing anything concrete on the stubble management issue. "Not only crop residue management machinery in sufficient numbers along with manpower, incentives should also be given to farmers for management of paddy straw, Kokrikalan said. He said Punjab farmers are unnecessarily being blamed for pollution in Delhi, asserting that it was vehicular and industrial pollution which plays a major role in polluting air in the national capital region. "Punjab has no role in Delhi pollution," Kokrikalan said, questioning how then the air quality index can be better in an area in Punjab where stubble is burnt in comparison to AQI in the national capital. He said that if the governments ensure proper and adequate arrangements for stubble management, then action can be taken against any farmer burning paddy straw. "If the governments cannot make required arrangements, then farmers should not be blamed, he said. The farmer leader said the governments should take action against factories which emit smoke that cause air pollution instead of farmers. "The suggestion was being made that farmers who burn stubble should not be given MSP. But there is no action against factories which emit smoke. Why are fines not being imposed and cases being registered against such erring factories, he asked. Bharti Kisan Union (Lakhowal) general secretary Harinder Singh Lakhowal sought financial incentive to farmers to curb stubble burning. "Farmers should be given financial incentives for the management of stubble, he said. Paddy straw burning in Punjab and Haryana is considered one of the reasons behind the alarming spike in air pollution levels in the national capital in October and November. As the window for wheat cultivation - a key Rabi crop - is very short after paddy harvest, some farmers set their fields on fire to quickly clear off the crop residue. A day after farmers blocked a stretch of the national highway in Jalandhar, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Wednesday asked the farm unions not to turn people against themselves by blocking roads. Farmers under the banner of Samyukt Kisan Morcha blocked the Jalandhar-Phagwara section of the Jalandhar-New Delhi National Highway near Dhanowali village for an indefinite period on Tuesday, seeking a hike in sugarcane prices. Mann said if the farmers do not shun the practice of blocking roads every time their demands are not met, a day will come when people will stop sympathising with them. "My request to the farmer unions is not to turn common people against you by blocking roads for every issue. For holding talks with the government, there is Punjab Bhawan in Chandigarh, the Secretariat, the office of the agriculture minister and my office and residence but not the roads. If this attitude remains, then the day is not far when you will not find people for 'dharnas'... Understand the feelings of people, said Mann in a post on X in Punjabi. The ongoing farmers' protest has affected the movement of vehicles from Jammu, Pathankot, and Amritsar via Jalandhar towards Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Nawanshahr and Delhi. With police diverting traffic towards alternative roads, the commuters had a harrowing time. The protesting farmers put up a tent in the middle of the road and spent the night on the highway demanding an increase in the assured prices of sugarcane from Rs 380 per quintal to Rs 450 per quintal. The protesters said they will not end the protest till their demand is met. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday that the recent violent outbreaks in Kosovo were unacceptable and perpetrators must be brought to justice. I count on all sides to reduce tensions and to refrain from escalatory actions, he said during a visit to Serbias capital Belgrade, after his stops in Bosnia and Kosovo, on the second day of his trip in Western Balkans, Stoltenbergs trip reflects Western concerns over the stability of the volatile Balkan region that went through a series of wars in the 1990s. Serbia and Kosovo witnessed a spike in tension following two violent incidents in May and September as the war raged in Ukraine. Western allies fear Russia could try to spur Balkan trouble to avert attention from its aggression on Ukraine. In May, Serb demonstrators in northern Kosovo clashed with NATO peacekeeping troops. In September, a Kosovo policeman and three Serb gunmen were killed in a shootout after about 30 masked men opened fire on a police patrol near the Kosovo village of Banjska. The two incidents have prompted NATO to beef up its peacekeeping presence in Kosovo. Stoltenberg said on Monday that NATO was considering deploying additional peacekeeping troops. The NATO head said in Belgrade that some of the 93 troops wounded in clashes with Serb demonstrators had life-changing injuries. This is unacceptable, the facts must be established. The perpetrators must face justice, said Stoltenberg. I welcome that Serbia is prepared to cooperate in these efforts. Stoltenberg also urged Serbia and Kosovo to engage constructively in a European Union-mediated dialogue that is aimed at normalizing relations between the former foes. Serbia does not recognize Kosovos 2008 declaration of independence. Both Serbia and Kosovo have been previously warned by EU diplomats that refusal to compromise jeopardized their chances of joining the EU. Serbias President Aleksandar Vucic said at a joint press conference with Stoltenberg that tensions in Kosovo were the result of increased pressure by the government there on the ethnic Serb minority. Only Serbs are under threat in Kosovo, Vucic insisted. Serbia has pledged to prosecute the alleged ringleader of the armed group behind the September shootout in Kosovo. Belgrade has denied allegations it orchestrated the incident. Stoltenberg also called for increased cooperation with Serbia and the resumption of joint military training exercises, saying that NATO respected Serbias decision to remain militarily neutral. Belgrade has maintained friendly relations with Russia and refused to join Western sanctions against Moscow, which has backed its bid to retain claim on Kosovo. (At least 10 people died after an illegal gold mine collapsed Monday in the South American country of Suriname, authorities said. Police, military officials and rescue crews were dispatched to the mine, which is located in the countrys rural southern region. The miners are believed to have built their own tunnels to search for gold, a common occurrence in Suriname, officials said. It wasnt immediately clear what caused the collapse. Theres still a lot of uncertainty, said President Chan Santokhi. Its important that we now get the situation under control. Santokhi was attending a government budget meeting when the incident occurred, forcing him to interrupt those speaking saying, Something terrible is going on. Suriname is known for its gold mines, with US and Canadian companies. Informal gold mining also has increased in recent years. Progressive (NYSE:PGR Get Free Report) had its price objective raised by analysts at Piper Sandler from $186.00 to $188.00 in a research note issued to investors on Monday, Benzinga reports. The brokerage presently has an overweight rating on the insurance providers stock. Piper Sandlers price target suggests a potential upside of 16.19% from the companys previous close. Other analysts have also recently issued research reports about the company. Citigroup raised Progressive from a sell rating to a neutral rating and boosted their price target for the stock from $120.00 to $158.00 in a research report on Tuesday, October 17th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price objective on Progressive from $146.00 to $149.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research report on Monday, October 2nd. Barclays boosted their price target on Progressive from $107.00 to $109.00 and gave the company an underweight rating in a research note on Thursday, August 17th. Jefferies Financial Group boosted their price target on Progressive from $163.00 to $167.00 in a research note on Friday, October 6th. Finally, Morgan Stanley boosted their price target on Progressive from $160.00 to $164.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research note on Monday. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have assigned a hold rating and ten have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $161.47. Get Progressive alerts: Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on Progressive Progressive Stock Performance Shares of PGR stock opened at $161.81 on Monday. Progressive has a 1-year low of $111.41 and a 1-year high of $162.85. The company has a current ratio of 0.33, a quick ratio of 0.33 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.41. The company has a market capitalization of $94.67 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 35.10, a P/E/G ratio of 1.16 and a beta of 0.43. The stocks fifty day simple moving average is $150.57 and its 200-day simple moving average is $137.37. Progressive (NYSE:PGR Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Friday, October 13th. The insurance provider reported $2.09 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.71 by $0.38. Progressive had a return on equity of 17.36% and a net margin of 4.67%. The business had revenue of $15.71 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $15.66 billion. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Progressive will post 5.33 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Insider Buying and Selling In other Progressive news, insider Daniel P. Mascaro sold 1,570 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $140.39, for a total transaction of $220,412.30. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 31,706 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,451,205.34. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In other news, insider Daniel P. Mascaro sold 1,570 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 18th. The stock was sold at an average price of $140.39, for a total value of $220,412.30. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 31,706 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,451,205.34. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, CFO John P. Sauerland sold 12,000 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Thursday, August 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $130.46, for a total value of $1,565,520.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 297,507 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $38,812,763.22. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 69,021 shares of company stock valued at $9,594,007. 0.34% of the stock is owned by company insiders. Institutional Investors Weigh In On Progressive Several hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of PGR. Aspire Private Capital LLC acquired a new stake in Progressive during the first quarter worth approximately $18,597,800,000. Creative Financial Designs Inc. ADV increased its stake in Progressive by 95.0% in the second quarter. Creative Financial Designs Inc. ADV now owns 195 shares of the insurance providers stock valued at $26,000 after acquiring an additional 95 shares during the last quarter. Harbour Investments Inc. increased its stake in Progressive by 109.1% in the third quarter. Harbour Investments Inc. now owns 207 shares of the insurance providers stock valued at $29,000 after acquiring an additional 108 shares during the last quarter. Sunbelt Securities Inc. bought a new position in Progressive in the first quarter valued at approximately $31,000. Finally, Exos TFP Holdings LLC increased its stake in Progressive by 270.0% in the first quarter. Exos TFP Holdings LLC now owns 222 shares of the insurance providers stock valued at $32,000 after acquiring an additional 162 shares during the last quarter. 83.66% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. About Progressive (Get Free Report) The Progressive Corporation, an insurance holding company, provides personal and commercial auto, personal residential and commercial property, general liability, and other specialty property-casualty insurance products and related services in the United States. It operates in three segments: Personal Lines, Commercial Lines, and Property. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Progressive Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Progressive and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Everest Group (NYSE:EG Get Free Report) had its price objective lifted by investment analysts at Raymond James from $455.00 to $460.00 in a report issued on Monday, Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has a strong-buy rating on the stock. Raymond James price objective suggests a potential upside of 13.02% from the companys current price. Other analysts have also recently issued research reports about the company. Wells Fargo & Company increased their target price on Everest Group from $452.00 to $461.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 17th. The Goldman Sachs Group initiated coverage on Everest Group in a research report on Friday, September 8th. They set a buy rating and a $449.00 target price on the stock. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods lifted their price objective on Everest Group from $450.00 to $460.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a report on Wednesday, November 15th. Jefferies Financial Group lifted their price objective on Everest Group from $429.00 to $449.00 in a report on Friday, October 6th. Finally, Citigroup raised their target price on shares of Everest Group from $408.00 to $447.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Monday, October 9th. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of Buy and a consensus target price of $458.00. Get Everest Group alerts: Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on Everest Group Everest Group Price Performance EG stock opened at $406.99 on Monday. Everest Group has a 1-year low of $318.03 and a 1-year high of $416.78. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $388.94. The company has a quick ratio of 0.38, a current ratio of 0.38 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.27. The stock has a market capitalization of $17.66 billion, a PE ratio of 7.56, a P/E/G ratio of 0.19 and a beta of 0.58. Everest Group (NYSE:EG Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The company reported $14.14 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $10.18 by $3.96. The business had revenue of $4.02 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.83 billion. Everest Group had a return on equity of 21.85% and a net margin of 15.57%. As a group, analysts anticipate that Everest Group will post 55.6 earnings per share for the current year. About Everest Group (Get Free Report) Everest Group, Ltd., through its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance and insurance products in the United States, Bermuda, and internationally. The company operates through Reinsurance Operations and Insurance Operations segments. The Reinsurance Operations segment writes property and casualty reinsurance; and specialty lines of business through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies in the United States, Bermuda, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Everest Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Everest Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. November 21, 2023: A Russian shipyard in Crimea was attacked by Ukrainian missiles, which heavily damaged the nearly completed Karakurt-Class Corvette Askold. It appears that Askold was so heavily damaged that it will never enter service unless it goes back to a shipyard for extensive repairs. The Russian Navy was planning on putting 16 Karakurts into service for use in the Black Sea and the Baltic as well as the landlocked Caspian Sea. The Caspian is accessible for small ships via canals. Several Russian shipyards are built along these inland waterways that have access to the ocean without being on or near the coast. This provides these facilities with protection from attack by ocean-based warships. With one Karakurt heavily damaged in a Crimea shipyard thats one less able to enter service in 2024. So far only four Karakurts are in service with another eight in various states of readiness to enter service in 2024. All 16 Karakurts could be in service by 2026. The first one entered service in 2018 but various shortages and losses because of the war in Ukraine slowed the introduction of the Karakurts, especially in the Black Sea, which is an active war zone. Karakurts are 860-ton corvettes that are 67 meters (220 feet) long and armed with eight VLS cells for cruise or anti-ship missiles. There is a 76.2mm gun and an air defense system armed with anti-aircraft missiles with a range of 20 kilometers. There is a CIWS (Close-In Weapons System) for protection from cruise missiles. There are no torpedoes and no anti-submarine capability. The Karakurts can attack land targets or ships at sea. Karakurts have a crew of 60 and a top speed of 55 kilometers an hour. An Orlan UAV is carried for surveillance and reconnaissance. Endurance is 15 days at sea before needing resupply of fuel and other necessities. CAE Inc. (TSE:CAE Free Report) (NYSE:CAE) Analysts at Desjardins boosted their FY2024 earnings per share estimates for shares of CAE in a research note issued to investors on Wednesday, November 15th. Desjardins analyst B. Poirier now forecasts that the company will post earnings per share of $1.22 for the year, up from their prior estimate of $1.18. Desjardins has a Buy rating and a $35.00 price target on the stock. The consensus estimate for CAEs current full-year earnings is $1.20 per share. Desjardins also issued estimates for CAEs FY2026 earnings at $1.71 EPS. Get CAE alerts: Several other research firms have also recently commented on CAE. National Bankshares lowered their price target on CAE from C$38.00 to C$36.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, November 15th. TD Securities reduced their price objective on CAE from C$39.00 to C$38.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, November 15th. Royal Bank of Canada reduced their price objective on CAE from C$37.00 to C$34.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, November 15th. CIBC boosted their price target on CAE from C$37.00 to C$38.00 in a research report on Thursday, August 10th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets boosted their price target on CAE from C$35.00 to C$37.00 in a research report on Thursday, August 10th. Seven equities research analysts have rated the stock with a buy rating, According to MarketBeat.com, CAE has a consensus rating of Buy and an average price target of C$36.15. CAE Trading Down 0.7 % CAE stock opened at C$28.66 on Monday. The stock has a market cap of C$9.12 billion, a PE ratio of 30.49, a P/E/G ratio of 1.76 and a beta of 1.97. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of C$30.42 and a 200 day moving average price of C$30.10. CAE has a 52 week low of C$25.44 and a 52 week high of C$33.87. The company has a current ratio of 0.94, a quick ratio of 0.71 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 71.38. CAE Company Profile (Get Free Report) CAE Inc, together with its subsidiaries, provides simulation training and critical operations support solutions in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Africa, and Rest of Americas. It operates through three segments: Civil Aviation, Defense and Security, and Healthcare. See Also Receive News & Ratings for CAE Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for CAE and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. AXS Investments LLC grew its stake in shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) by 9.2% during the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 8,256 shares of the financial services providers stock after buying an additional 696 shares during the quarter. AXS Investments LLCs holdings in JPMorgan Chase & Co. were worth $1,201,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Nordwand Advisors LLC bought a new position in shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. during the first quarter valued at about $30,000. Sageworth Trust Co grew its stake in shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. by 266.7% during the first quarter. Sageworth Trust Co now owns 407 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $53,000 after buying an additional 296 shares during the last quarter. Robbins Farley grew its stake in shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. by 54.2% in the first quarter. Robbins Farley now owns 475 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $62,000 after purchasing an additional 167 shares during the last quarter. Miller Wealth Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the second quarter worth about $67,000. Finally, Guardian Wealth Advisors LLC bought a new stake in shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the first quarter worth about $70,000. 68.94% of the stock is owned by institutional investors. Get JPMorgan Chase & Co. alerts: JPMorgan Chase & Co. Price Performance Shares of JPM opened at $152.99 on Wednesday. The company has a market capitalization of $442.30 billion, a P/E ratio of 9.13, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.84 and a beta of 1.12. The company has a quick ratio of 0.90, a current ratio of 0.90 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.25. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $145.36 and a 200 day moving average of $145.45. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has a twelve month low of $123.11 and a twelve month high of $159.38. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Increases Dividend JPMorgan Chase & Co. ( NYSE:JPM Get Free Report ) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Friday, October 13th. The financial services provider reported $4.33 earnings per share 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 the consensus estimate 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% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $3.12 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that JPMorgan Chase & Co. will post 16.67 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 31st. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 6th were given a $1.05 dividend. This represents a $4.20 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.75%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, October 5th. This is an increase from JPMorgan Chase & Co.s previous quarterly dividend of $1.00. JPMorgan Chase & Co.s payout ratio is 25.07%. Insiders Place Their Bets In other JPMorgan Chase & Co. news, General Counsel Stacey Friedman sold 4,310 shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. stock in a transaction that occurred on 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 of the companys stock, valued at approximately $7,739,145.50. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. 0.79% of the stock is currently owned by insiders. Wall Street Analyst Weigh In Several analysts recently issued reports on JPM shares. Oppenheimer raised their target price on JPMorgan Chase & Co. from $233.00 to $243.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Thursday, November 16th. StockNews.com started coverage on JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating on the stock. Royal Bank of Canada reissued an outperform rating and issued a $158.00 target price on shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a research note on Friday, September 8th. BMO Capital Markets raised their target price on 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. Finally, Evercore ISI raised their price objective on shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co. from $158.00 to $167.00 in a report on Thursday, October 5th. Nine analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and ten 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 a consensus target price of $168.80. View Our Latest Report on JPM 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. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding JPM? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for JPMorgan Chase & Co. Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for JPMorgan Chase & Co. and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Boston Partners trimmed its holdings in Kirby Co. (NYSE:KEX Free Report) by 33.0% during the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 27,523 shares of the shipping companys stock after selling 13,572 shares during the quarter. Boston Partners holdings in Kirby were worth $2,118,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in KEX. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its stake in Kirby by 1.8% during the 1st quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 99,767 shares of the shipping companys stock worth $7,202,000 after buying an additional 1,756 shares during the period. American Century Companies Inc. acquired a new position in Kirby during the 1st quarter worth approximately $201,000. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan Trust Fund acquired a new position in Kirby during the 1st quarter worth approximately $392,000. MetLife Investment Management LLC raised its stake in Kirby by 33.4% during the 1st quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC now owns 38,864 shares of the shipping companys stock worth $2,806,000 after buying an additional 9,734 shares during the period. Finally, Rhumbline Advisers raised its stake in Kirby by 1.9% during the 1st quarter. Rhumbline Advisers now owns 164,306 shares of the shipping companys stock worth $11,861,000 after buying an additional 3,103 shares during the period. 94.93% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Kirby alerts: Wall Street Analyst Weigh In KEX has been the topic of a number of research reports. StockNews.com initiated coverage on Kirby in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Stifel Nicolaus upped their price target on Kirby from $90.00 to $100.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Thursday, September 14th. One analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Kirby currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $90.50. Kirby Stock Performance Shares of KEX opened at $77.31 on Wednesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34, a quick ratio of 1.09 and a current ratio of 1.88. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $80.28 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $78.26. The firm has a market capitalization of $4.57 billion, a P/E ratio of 23.43, a P/E/G ratio of 1.74 and a beta of 1.24. Kirby Co. has a 52 week low of $60.14 and a 52 week high of $87.52. Kirby (NYSE:KEX Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 26th. The shipping company reported $1.05 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.02 by $0.03. The firm had revenue of $764.77 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $795.43 million. Kirby had a return on equity of 6.50% and a net margin of 6.56%. The companys revenue for the quarter was up 2.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $0.65 EPS. Equities analysts forecast that Kirby Co. will post 3.7 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Insiders Place Their Bets In other Kirby news, VP Amy D. Husted sold 1,019 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, September 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $84.58, for a total transaction of $86,187.02. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now directly owns 7,053 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $596,542.74. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. In other news, VP Amy D. Husted sold 1,019 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, September 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $84.58, for a total value of $86,187.02. Following the completion of the transaction, the vice president now directly owns 7,053 shares of the companys stock, valued at $596,542.74. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, Director Richard Ross Stewart sold 3,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $85.72, for a total value of $257,160.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 24,660 shares of the companys stock, valued at $2,113,855.20. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 53,609 shares of company stock valued at $4,444,514. Corporate insiders own 1.50% of the companys stock. About Kirby (Free Report) Kirby Corporation operates domestic tank barges in the United States. Its Marine Transportation segment provides marine transportation service and towing vessel transporting bulk liquid product, as well as operates tank barge throughout the Mississippi River System, on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, coastwise along three United States coasts, and in Alaska and Hawaii. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding KEX? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Kirby Co. (NYSE:KEX Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Kirby Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Kirby and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Boston Partners reduced its position in shares of DHT Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:DHT Free Report) by 15.7% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 133,229 shares of the shipping companys stock after selling 24,752 shares during the period. Boston Partners holdings in DHT were worth $1,136,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. A number of other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of DHT. Tucker Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in DHT in the first quarter valued at $25,000. IFP Advisors Inc purchased a new stake in DHT in the 2nd quarter valued at about $38,000. Clear Street Markets LLC purchased a new stake in DHT in the 1st quarter valued at about $50,000. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC increased its stake in shares of DHT by 51.5% during the 2nd quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC now owns 6,296 shares of the shipping companys stock valued at $54,000 after acquiring an additional 2,140 shares during the last quarter. Finally, LSV Asset Management purchased a new position in shares of DHT during the 2nd quarter worth about $55,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 59.26% of the companys stock. Get DHT alerts: Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of equities research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. Stifel Nicolaus downgraded shares of DHT from a buy rating to a hold rating and set a $11.00 target price for the company. in a report on Thursday, October 19th. Jefferies Financial Group reissued a hold rating and set a $10.00 price objective on shares of DHT in a research note on Wednesday, August 9th. StockNews.com started coverage on DHT in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating on the stock. Finally, TheStreet downgraded shares of DHT from a b rating to a c+ rating in a research report on Monday, November 6th. DHT Stock Performance NYSE:DHT opened at $10.12 on Wednesday. DHT Holdings, Inc. has a twelve month low of $7.30 and a twelve month high of $12.13. The firm has a market capitalization of $1.65 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 8.80 and a beta of -0.15. The company has a current ratio of 2.28, a quick ratio of 1.80 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.38. The firms fifty day simple moving average is $10.25 and its 200 day simple moving average is $9.32. DHT (NYSE:DHT Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Monday, November 6th. The shipping company reported $0.19 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.20 by ($0.01). The company had revenue of $89.09 million during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $89.77 million. DHT had a return on equity of 17.89% and a net margin of 32.14%. DHTs quarterly revenue was up 61.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.03 EPS. As a group, equities research analysts expect that DHT Holdings, Inc. will post 1.03 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. DHT Cuts Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, November 28th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, November 21st will be given a $0.19 dividend. This represents a $0.76 annualized dividend and a yield of 7.51%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 20th. DHTs dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 66.09%. About DHT (Free Report) DHT Holdings, Inc, through its subsidiaries, owns and operates crude oil tankers primarily in Monaco, Singapore, and Norway. As of March 16, 2023, it had a fleet of 23 very large crude carriers. The company was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding DHT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for DHT Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:DHT Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for DHT Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for DHT and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Lido Advisors LLC cut its stake in Tenet Healthcare Co. (NYSE:THC Free Report) by 13.8% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 2,936 shares of the companys stock after selling 469 shares during the period. Lido Advisors LLCs holdings in Tenet Healthcare were worth $239,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Global Retirement Partners LLC raised its holdings in Tenet Healthcare by 434.4% in the 2nd quarter. Global Retirement Partners LLC now owns 326 shares of the companys stock valued at $27,000 after acquiring an additional 265 shares in the last quarter. Nvwm LLC acquired a new position in Tenet Healthcare in the 1st quarter valued at $30,000. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. raised its holdings in Tenet Healthcare by 46.3% in the 4th quarter. Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. now owns 629 shares of the companys stock valued at $31,000 after acquiring an additional 199 shares in the last quarter. EverSource Wealth Advisors LLC raised its holdings in Tenet Healthcare by 236.7% in the 1st quarter. EverSource Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 559 shares of the companys stock valued at $33,000 after acquiring an additional 393 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Belpointe Asset Management LLC raised its holdings in Tenet Healthcare by 94.1% in the 1st quarter. Belpointe Asset Management LLC now owns 588 shares of the companys stock valued at $35,000 after acquiring an additional 285 shares in the last quarter. 93.56% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Tenet Healthcare alerts: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities analysts have recently issued reports on the company. Cantor Fitzgerald lifted their price target on Tenet Healthcare from $76.00 to $94.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research note on Thursday, September 14th. The Goldman Sachs Group decreased their price target on Tenet Healthcare from $98.00 to $85.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. Stephens lifted their price target on Tenet Healthcare from $87.00 to $89.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 1st. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their price target on Tenet Healthcare from $91.00 to $81.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, November 17th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada reduced their price objective on Tenet Healthcare from $87.00 to $72.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, October 31st. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating, fourteen have assigned a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of Buy and a consensus target price of $84.31. Tenet Healthcare Stock Up 1.9 % Shares of THC opened at $66.16 on Wednesday. The company has a market capitalization of $6.72 billion, a PE ratio of 15.28, a PEG ratio of 2.91 and a beta of 2.19. Tenet Healthcare Co. has a 12 month low of $42.99 and a 12 month high of $85.40. The stocks 50-day moving average price is $60.13 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $70.10. The company has a current ratio of 1.43, a quick ratio of 1.34 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 5.18. Tenet Healthcare (NYSE:THC Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Monday, October 30th. The company reported $1.44 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.20 by $0.24. The firm had revenue of $5.07 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.02 billion. Tenet Healthcare had a return on equity of 25.34% and a net margin of 2.33%. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 5.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $1.44 EPS. On average, analysts anticipate that Tenet Healthcare Co. will post 5.83 EPS for the current year. Tenet Healthcare Profile (Free Report) Tenet Healthcare Corporation operates as a diversified healthcare services company. The company operates through three segments: Hospital Operations, Ambulatory Care, and Conifer. Its general hospitals offer acute care services, operating and recovery rooms, radiology and respiratory therapy services, clinical laboratories, and pharmacies. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Tenet Healthcare Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Tenet Healthcare and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Lido Advisors LLC lowered its stake in Nabors Industries Ltd. (NYSE:NBR Free Report) by 25.4% in the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 2,666 shares of the oil and gas companys stock after selling 909 shares during the period. Lido Advisors LLCs holdings in Nabors Industries were worth $248,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. BlackRock Inc. lifted its position in shares of Nabors Industries by 8.8% during the 3rd quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 1,696,916 shares of the oil and gas companys stock worth $172,152,000 after purchasing an additional 136,874 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its stake in Nabors Industries by 8.6% during the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 750,842 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $76,173,000 after acquiring an additional 59,309 shares during the period. State Street Corp increased its stake in Nabors Industries by 15.2% during the first quarter. State Street Corp now owns 479,970 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $58,512,000 after acquiring an additional 63,266 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its stake in Nabors Industries by 5.3% during the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 292,061 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $35,604,000 after acquiring an additional 14,612 shares during the period. Finally, Contrarius Investment Management Ltd increased its stake in Nabors Industries by 392.7% during the second quarter. Contrarius Investment Management Ltd now owns 283,476 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $26,372,000 after acquiring an additional 225,940 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 80.39% of the companys stock. Get Nabors Industries alerts: Insider Buying and Selling In related news, Director John P. Kotts sold 4,975 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $125.13, for a total transaction of $622,521.75. Following the sale, the director now directly owns 4,787 shares in the company, valued at approximately $598,997.31. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. 7.09% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders. Nabors Industries Trading Down 1.8 % NBR stock opened at $93.23 on Wednesday. Nabors Industries Ltd. has a 1-year low of $83.05 and a 1-year high of $190.90. The firm has a market cap of $882.42 million, a P/E ratio of -9.03 and a beta of 2.76. The businesss 50 day moving average is $111.46 and its 200-day moving average is $107.19. The company has a current ratio of 1.82, a quick ratio of 1.54 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 4.56. Nabors Industries (NYSE:NBR Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The oil and gas company reported ($5.40) EPS for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of ($0.20) by ($5.20). The business had revenue of $744.14 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $757.64 million. Nabors Industries had a negative return on equity of 18.63% and a negative net margin of 2.35%. Equities analysts anticipate that Nabors Industries Ltd. will post -10.03 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth NBR has been the topic of several research reports. Susquehanna boosted their price target on Nabors Industries from $112.00 to $125.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 4th. Royal Bank of Canada lowered their price target on Nabors Industries from $140.00 to $130.00 and set a sector perform rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, October 27th. Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on Nabors Industries from $175.00 to $165.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, October 30th. Finally, StockNews.com started coverage on Nabors Industries in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $140.00. View Our Latest Analysis on NBR Nabors Industries Company Profile (Free Report) Nabors Industries Ltd. provides drilling and drilling-related services for land-based and offshore oil and natural gas wells in the United States and internationally. The company operates through U.S. Drilling, International Drilling, Drilling Solutions, and Rig Technologies. It provides tubular running, wellbore placement, directional drilling, measurement-while-drilling (MWD), equipment manufacturing, and rig instrumentation services; and logging-while-drilling systems and services, as well as drilling optimization software. Read More Receive News & Ratings for Nabors Industries Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Nabors Industries and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Lido Advisors LLC acquired a new position in CAVA Group, Inc. (NYSE:CAVA Free Report) in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The firm acquired 5,105 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $209,000. Other hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the company. Glassman Wealth Services bought a new position in shares of CAVA Group during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $28,000. Barclays PLC bought a new position in shares of CAVA Group during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $250,000. Jennison Associates LLC bought a new position in shares of CAVA Group during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $27,229,000. LPL Financial LLC bought a new position in shares of CAVA Group during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $415,000. Finally, Dakota Wealth Management bought a new position in shares of CAVA Group during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $312,000. Institutional investors own 61.83% of the companys stock. Get CAVA Group alerts: CAVA Group Stock Down 1.4 % NYSE CAVA opened at $33.40 on Wednesday. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $32.64. CAVA Group, Inc. has a 52 week low of $29.05 and a 52 week high of $58.10. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth CAVA Group ( NYSE:CAVA Get Free Report ) last released its earnings results on Tuesday, November 7th. The company reported $0.06 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($0.01) by $0.07. The company had revenue of $175.55 million during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $171.49 million. CAVA Group had a negative return on equity of 13.72% and a negative net margin of 1.12%. The firms revenue for the quarter was up 26.1% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities research analysts expect that CAVA Group, Inc. will post 0.1 EPS for the current year. Several research firms recently commented on CAVA. Jefferies Financial Group cut their target price on CAVA Group from $54.00 to $48.00 in a research report on Tuesday, October 3rd. Robert W. Baird raised their price target on CAVA Group from $50.00 to $58.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a report on Wednesday, August 16th. Loop Capital initiated coverage on CAVA Group in a report on Thursday, September 14th. They set a hold rating and a $40.00 price target for the company. Raymond James initiated coverage on CAVA Group in a report on Friday, November 17th. They set a market perform rating for the company. Finally, Wedbush raised their price target on CAVA Group from $33.00 to $35.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a report on Wednesday, November 8th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have issued a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $47.00. View Our Latest Research Report on CAVA CAVA Group Profile (Free Report) CAVA Group, Inc owns and operates a chain of Mediterranean restaurants. The company offers salads, dips, spreads, toppings, and dressings. It sells its products through whole food markets and grocery stores. The company also provides online food ordering services. Cava Group, Inc was founded in 2006 and is based in Washington, District of Columbia. Featured Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CAVA? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for CAVA Group, Inc. (NYSE:CAVA Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for CAVA Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for CAVA Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Lido Advisors LLC purchased a new stake in shares of CMS Energy Co. (NYSE:CMS Free Report) in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund purchased 3,875 shares of the utilities providers stock, valued at approximately $228,000. A number of other institutional investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in CMS. AMI Investment Management Inc. purchased a new stake in CMS Energy during the first quarter valued at about $203,000. Cetera Advisor Networks LLC grew its position in CMS Energy by 15.3% during the first quarter. Cetera Advisor Networks LLC now owns 4,179 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $292,000 after acquiring an additional 555 shares during the period. Cibc World Market Inc. purchased a new stake in CMS Energy during the first quarter valued at about $3,914,000. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its position in CMS Energy by 6.1% during the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 982,606 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $68,724,000 after acquiring an additional 56,659 shares during the period. Finally, Blair William & Co. IL grew its position in CMS Energy by 2.6% during the first quarter. Blair William & Co. IL now owns 6,561 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $459,000 after acquiring an additional 168 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 95.98% of the companys stock. Get CMS Energy alerts: CMS Energy Trading Down 0.6 % Shares of CMS opened at $56.82 on Wednesday. The company has a market capitalization of $16.58 billion, a P/E ratio of 22.37, a P/E/G ratio of 2.45 and a beta of 0.39. CMS Energy Co. has a one year low of $49.87 and a one year high of $65.72. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.88, a quick ratio of 0.51 and a current ratio of 0.90. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $54.80 and a 200 day moving average price of $57.46. CMS Energy Announces Dividend CMS Energy ( NYSE:CMS Get Free Report ) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The utilities provider reported $0.61 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $0.63 by ($0.02). The business had revenue of $1.67 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $2.11 billion. CMS Energy had a net margin of 9.61% and a return on equity of 10.49%. The companys revenue for the quarter was down 17.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $0.56 EPS. Sell-side analysts forecast that CMS Energy Co. will post 3.1 EPS for the current fiscal year. The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 3rd will be paid a dividend of $0.4875 per share. This represents a $1.95 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.43%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 2nd. CMS Energys payout ratio is currently 76.77%. Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of research firms have issued reports on CMS. Barclays lowered their price target on CMS Energy from $58.00 to $55.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, October 24th. StockNews.com assumed coverage on CMS Energy in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a sell rating for the company. Guggenheim decreased their target price on CMS Energy from $61.00 to $54.00 in a research report on Monday, October 9th. Royal Bank of Canada decreased their target price on CMS Energy from $71.00 to $64.00 and set a sector perform rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, September 6th. Finally, UBS Group decreased their target price on CMS Energy from $66.00 to $59.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 4th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, CMS Energy currently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $61.50. Get Our Latest Report on CMS Energy Insider Buying and Selling at CMS Energy In other CMS Energy news, SVP Brandon J. Hofmeister sold 1,667 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $56.27, for a total transaction of $93,802.09. Following the sale, the senior vice president now owns 61,765 shares in the company, valued at $3,475,516.55. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. In other CMS Energy news, SVP Brandon J. Hofmeister sold 1,667 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $56.27, for a total transaction of $93,802.09. Following the sale, the senior vice president now owns 61,765 shares in the company, valued at $3,475,516.55. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, Director John G. Russell sold 19,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, November 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $55.53, for a total value of $1,055,070.00. Following the sale, the director now owns 169,899 shares in the company, valued at approximately $9,434,491.47. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 25,667 shares of company stock worth $1,423,372 over the last quarter. 0.40% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders. About CMS Energy (Free Report) CMS Energy Corporation operates as an energy company primarily in Michigan. The company operates through three segments: Electric Utility; Gas Utility; and Enterprises. The Electric Utility segment is involved in the generation, purchase, transmission, distribution, and sale of electricity. This segment generates electricity through coal, wind, gas, renewable energy, oil, and nuclear sources. Further Reading Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CMS? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for CMS Energy Co. (NYSE:CMS Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for CMS Energy Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for CMS Energy and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. There are many reasons for Yemens multiple economic and political problems, of which the clearly dominant one is its epic level of corruption. Corruption worldwide is monitored and measured in the annual Transparency International Corruption Perception Index. The Index measures corruption on a 1 (most corrupt) to 100 (not corrupt) scale. The nations with the lowest scores are currently Yemen (score of 17). Syria (13), South Sudan (13) and Somalia (12). The least corrupt nation is currently Denmark, with a CPI of 90, followed by Finland and New Zealand, each with 87. Nations with the most corruption tend to be poor and chaotic. The opposite applies to nations with low levels of corruption. Yemen has been identified as a chronic and long-term victim of corruption. One side effect of the chaos and corruption is the absence of a public health system. That means children do not receive vaccines for common, and sometimes fatal, childhood diseases like measles. This disease had been eliminated in nations with a nation-wide health system that makes it possible to vaccinate enough (often all) children to eliminate certain diseases, like measles. Worldwide there are many nations where measles persists because too many children are not vaccinated. Measles is sometimes fatal for the unvaccinated and so far, this year 60 Yemeni children a month have died from measles. Even more children die each from a cholera epidemic that started in 2016 and continues. Most of the Islamic terrorists in Yemen belong to AQAP (Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) or the much smaller and more violent ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). Both Islamic terror groups operate in the south and east. AQAP sometimes cooperates with southern separatists. AQAP and most southerners are Sunni Moslems while the rebels are Shia. Most southerners just want peace and some prosperity. There are enough devoted separatists in the south to provide sanctuaries and support for AQAP. Yemen has Saudi Arabia to thank for the decline in weapons smuggling over the last year. The Saudis were subject to years of Shia rebel attacks on Saudi targets using cruise and ballistic missiles smuggled in by Iran. This was expensive for Iran and getting more difficult and expensive because of increased anti-smuggling efforts, A major reason for rebels agreeing to a ceasefire was a decline in Iranian support due to lack of funds plus unrest at home. The Iranian weapons, cash, advisors and smuggling network supercharged the Shia rebels, enabling them to keep fighting the more numerous and better armed force arrayed against them. Iran has been openly supporting the Shia rebels since 2014 and later admitted that less visible support had been supplied since 2011. Information based on interceptions by American and other warships in the naval blockade of rebel-controlled coastlines indicates that Iranian smuggling of weapons to the rebels continues but at a lower intensity and consists mainly of infantry weapons rather than cruise and ballistic missiles used to attack Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are negotiating directly with the Iranians about the fighting in Yemen and how to reduce it. This is part of an effort, brokered by the Chinese, to improve relations between the Saudis and Iran and reduce the tensions in the Persian Gulf and Yemen. All this smuggling cost Iran a lot of money, both for the smuggled cargos and personnel including shipyard technicians to modify the boats to carry smuggled cargo. The crews of these boats are also well paid for the risks of getting caught and jailed. Iran has been short of cash since economic sanctions were revived in 2020 and increased in 2022 because of Iran support for Russian forces in Ukraine. There were also higher costs for preparing the boats and bonuses for the crews limiting the amount of smuggled cargo that reaches the Yemen rebels. Those expenses were one of the reasons for the nationwide anti-government protests which began in September 2022 and continue. The IRGC (Islamic Republic Guard Corps), which guards the religious dictatorship that has ruled Iran since the 1980s, also handles Irans many foreign wars including Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and now Ukraine. Iran controls the leadership of the Yemen rebels, in large part because Iran supplies weapons. With that weapons pipeline disrupted during the last three months, the rebels responded by observing a ceasefire with their many opponents. IRGC leaders were reluctant to give up gains made in Yemen and are unsure when or if they can revive support for the Yemeni Shia because of the growing economic sanctions on Iran as well as the demands of supporting Russia in Ukraine. Because of the sanctions imposed in 2017, the Quds force saw its budget cut by half ever since. This meant major reductions in Quds activities in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Yemen was always the least expensive Quds operation and did not suffer noticeable aid cuts after 2017. Yemen was the only IRGC operation that was able to attack arch-enemy Saudi Arabia directly and that counted for something. The Yemen operation was allowed to continue. This was only possible if the smuggled weapons from Iran kept getting through. The Iranian weapons smuggling has now been greatly reduced. This sharply limits Irans ability to directly attack Saudi Arabia by arming Shia rebels in Yemen. The Shia rebels in Yemen received over a thousand ballistic missiles and UAVs between 2016 and 2021. Most of the ones fired were aimed at southwestern Saudi Arabia. Less than one percent of those UAVs and missiles hit anything of consequence in Saudi Arabia. Since then a few more have been fired at Israel and been intercepted by Israel and the US Navy. Iran sought to carry out a similar campaign against Israel using Iran-backed militias in Syria. That hasnt worked so far because Israeli intelligence capabilities and airstrikes have been much more effective in Syria than Saudi efforts in Yemen, despite the facts that Israel and Saudi Arabia have similar aircraft, smart bombs and air defense systems. Iranian smuggling efforts have been less effective over the last few years because the international naval blockade has been detecting and intercepting more of the Iranian smuggling efforts. The Saudis had already put a stop to cross country smuggling via Oman. The Iranians have not tried to revive it, in part because Oman has backed the halt to Iranian smuggling. It wasnt just weapons smuggling the Saudis helped stop; there is also khat produced in Yemen and smuggled into Saudi Arabia. Khat production has been a major problem for Yemen as well as the Saudis. Much of the Yemeni agricultural crisis is caused by the fact that Yemen's economic situation has been rapidly deteriorating since the late 20th century. This is largely because the government has done nothing to address the problems of overpopulation, water shortages and khat. The last item is a narcotic plant that is chewed fresh, requires a lot of water to grow and is worth a lot of money in Saudi Arabia where it is illegal and has to be smuggled in. While Yemen contains most of the only arable land in the Arabian Peninsula, only one percent of Yemen is suitable for agriculture. Rather than produce food, most Yemeni agricultural production is of khat and nearly all of that is smuggled into Saudi Arabia. In the last year Saudi Arabia has increased its efforts to halt khat smuggling and that has had some success. During the first half of 2023, 26 tons of khat and a ton of the more potent, as a narcotic, hashish was seized and destroyed before it could get to Saudi Arabia. Hashish is a concentrated form of cannabis, produced by removing the sticky resin, which is the most narcotic portion of the cannabis plant. Put simply, khat is for relaxation while hashish is for intoxication, it will get you high and largely unable to function. Saudi Arabia bans both khat and hashish as harmful to the welfare of the population. Most khat and hashish is consumed by young (adolescent and early 20s) Saudi males and expatriate workers. Alcoholic beverages are specifically banned by Islamic scripture while khat and hashish are not. Alcoholic beverages are bulkier and leave a scent of alcohol in your breath while khat and hashish do not. Khat and hashish do have harmful side effects as they reduce inhibitions and the ability to safely operate vehicles or machinery of any kind. While the Saudi border guards are seizing more khat and hashish from Yemen, some always get through and most of the customers in Saudi Arabia can afford to pay more when supplies are short. The U.S. Navy planned to retire its four SSGNs (cruise missile firing nuclear submarine) by 2028. In March 2011 one of these SSGNs was used in combat for the first time, firing 93 of its 160 cruise missiles at Libyan targets. At the time those four SSGNs were designated for retirement by 2026, a date that as eventually extended. The navy had a plan for replacements, even though there was very little money for new ship types. To deal with that the navy sought to build some modified Virginia SSNs (nuclear attack subs) by adding a 30-meter (94 foot) section to the hull, which would contain 26 cruise missiles. Virginias already carry 16 of these, but the SSGN models would have a more respectable 40-42. Fifteen stretched Virginias would carry the same number of cruise missiles but spread among more ships. A Virginia SSGN would cost about 25 percent ($500 million) more than a Virginia SSN. The older SSGNs made an impressive combat debut in 2011 when most of the a hundred or more Tomahawk cruise missiles launched in one day came from the SSGN Florida. These missiles hit targets in the North African nation of Libya. While this was the first time an SSGN saw combat, it was not the first-time nuclear subs fired missiles in a combat situation. American SSNs have fired Tomahawks several times. The USS Florida was one of four Ohio class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) converted to cruise missile submarines (SSGN). The USS Florida and the other three SSGNs entered service over the last five years. Each of these Ohio class SSGNs carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, along with space for 66 commandos, usually Navy SEALs, and their equipment. The idea of converting ballistic missile subs to SSGNs, rather than scraping them to fulfill disarmament agreements, has been bouncing around since the 1990s. After September 11, 2001, the idea got some traction. The navy submariners backed this proposal, because all American nuclear subs they lost a lot of their reason for being with the end of the Cold War. The United States had built a powerful nuclear submarine force during the Cold War, but with the rapid disappearance of the Soviet navy in the 1990s, there was little reason to keep over a hundred nuclear subs in commission. These boats are expensive, costing over a billion each to build and over a million dollars a week to operate. The four Ohio class SSBN being converted each had at least twenty years of useful life left in them. The idea of a sub, armed with 154 highly accurate cruise missiles, and capable of rapidly traveling under water, ignoring weather, and avoiding observation at a speed of over 1,200 kilometers a day, to a far-off hot spot, had great appeal in the post-Cold War world. The ability to carry a large force of commandos as well was also attractive. In one sub you have your choice of hammer or scalpel. More capable cruise missiles are in the works as well. Whether or not this multi-billion-dollar investment will pay off remains to be seen, but it certainly worked off Libya in 2011 And then theres the new Tomahawk. The RGM-109E Block IV Surface Ship Vertical Launched Tomahawk Land Attack Missile weighs 1.2 ton, is six meters (18 feet) long, has a range of 1,600 kilometers, getting there at a speed of 600-900 kilometers an hour, flying at an altitude of 17-32 meters (50-100 feet) and propelled by a jet engine generating only 600 pounds of thrust. Accuracy is on a par with JDAM (10 meters/ 31 feet). The Block IV Tomahawk can be reprogrammed in flight to hit another target and carries a vidcam to allow a missile to check on prospective targets. Russia and Turkey continue to keep troops in Libya despite agreeing to withdraw their troops. Both nations want to protect their interests in Libya with sufficient guarantees that their economic agreements will be respected. The UN and NATO oppose this because the Libyan Tripoli faction wants to legitimize an illegal treaty signed by them in 2019 granting Turkey some of Greeces offshore oil and natural gas rights in an area between Libya and Turkey. This treaty ignored existing, and internationally recognized, Greek claims on that area. Turkey and Greece are both NATO members and NATO backs Greece in this matter. Turkey wont withdraw its forces from Libya until a new national Libyan government assures the Turks that the illegal agreement is confirmed by a national Libyan government. Many people in both factions do not want to be stuck with a treaty that the UN and NATO consider illegal. Russia is no friend of NATO and is currently at war with NATO-backed forces in Ukraine. Turkey is also a NATO member, but most other NATO members see the Turks as a liability for NATO because of its cooperation with Russia. The problem there is the absence of any legal mechanism for that because, when NATO was founded, the threat to everyone was the USSR, which became Russian after 1991 and just as troublesome. Turks and Russians are troublemakers in Europe and Libya is a foreign branch of that mischief. Right now, the Russian presence in Ukraine is more of a problem than the few Russian troops left in Libya. The Russians remain in Libya to look after deals they made with one of the Libyan governments to obtain oil exploration opportunities. Exploiting these opportunities will have to wait until the Ukraine War is over. Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks to the media in New Delhi, India, Saturday, May 25, 2019. (PTI) New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted that there is zero tolerance against terrorism, highlighting that the loss of innocent lives, particularly among children and women, is unacceptable while speaking about the Israel-Hamas conflict during his closing statements at the virtual G20 Summit. Modi noted a consensus on various points among world leaders, stressing the necessity of a two-state solution for a lasting resolution to the Israel-Palestine issue. He underscored the importance of diplomacy and dialogue as the sole path to resolving territorial and political crises. "We all condemn terrorism and violence," Modi stated, emphasising the urgent need for the restoration of regional peace and stability in West Asia. Addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, he called for the swift and secure delivery of human assistance, welcoming the news of the release of Israeli hostages. Assuring support, Modi conveyed the G20's readiness to provide all possible assistance, expressing confidence in the organisation's unified effort guided by the principle of "vasudhaiva kutumbakam" for global peace, stability, and prosperity. He also pledged the G20's commitment to meeting the expectations of the Global South, expressing hope for progress on reforming multi-lateral development banks and global governance. Modi concluded by affirming transparent steps toward debt restructuring in alignment with the likely agenda under Brazil's presidency. NDRF personnel prepare to enter the Silkyara Tunnel during the rescue operation of 41 workers trapped inside the tunnel for 10 days, in Uttarkashi district, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (PTI Photo) Dehradun/Uttarkashi/New Delhi: As rescue work enters the final stretch at the partially collapsed Silkyara-Barkot Uttarkashi tunnel, hopes are high that if the ongoing horizontal drilling remains unhindered, rescuers will reach the 41 trapped workers by Thursday morning, officials said. Meanwhile, ambulances were on standby and doctors were summoned to the disaster site as a multi-agency effort to rescue 41 men trapped in the partially collapsed tunnel appeared close to success on Wednesday evening. At a press briefing around 4 pm, officials at Silkyara said another six-metre section of the rescue pipe had been inserted as an auger machine drilled through debris from the collapsed stretch of the tunnel. Going by the figures given earlier in the day, this indicated that 45 metres of the escape passage had been created out of the estimated 57 metres stretch of debris beyond which the workers have been trapped for the last 11 days. In Delhi, a press release reporting the progress till 2 pm said the steel pipe had been inserted up to the 42-metre mark. It said 67 per cent of the auger drilling was completed. Once the pipe, which is a little under a metre wide, is inserted, workers can crawl out through it. A team of 15 doctors, including a chest specialist, has been deployed at the site in anticipation of the evacuation. Twelve ambulances were on standby at the spot and the plan was to keep a fleet of 40 ready. A helicopter was also expected to be earmarked for the operation. A makeshift eight-bed hospital has been set up in the vicinity of the under-construction tunnel on the Char Dham route. At the Silkyara briefing, former advisor with the Prime Minister's Office Bhaskar Khulbe was upbeat, saying that another six-metre section of the rescue pipe had been inserted over the past hour. "Hopefully the next two-three hours will be comfortable in terms of assembling for the next push and attaining what all of us are waiting for," he said, referring to the continuing process of pushing in steel pipe sections. Earlier in the day, Union ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) additional secretary Mahmood Ahmed had said that the complete focus of the rescue operation is now on horizontal drilling from both ends of the 4.5 km tunnel that crumbled down under a huge landslide early in the morning on November 12. Mr Ahmed said that the auger machine being used for horizontal drilling pushed 18 metres of additional 800 mm steel pipeline after drilling restarted on Wednesday. "Drilling resumed at around 12.45 am today. If it remains unhindered, we will be able to get some good news late tonight or tomorrow morning," said Mr Ahmed. Uttarakhand government's nodal officer and secretary Neeraj Khairwal said that similar to video communication made earlier with trapped workers, the NDRF and SDRF teams have set up an audio channel for regular communication. "First to speak to the trapped workers were doctors who tried to know about their health conditions. Some of them complained of constipation, following which they were sent medicines. Psychiatrists are also speaking to them to understand their mental health conditions. They are upbeat and motivated after a special food pipeline was set up and told about the efforts being made to rescue them safely." According to Mr Khairwal, sufficient food items have reached the trapped workers after initial hiccups in delivering cooked food. "They are also being provided undergarments, towels, tooth brushes and other possible items that can be delivered through the food pipeline," said Mr Khairwal. In the crime, the fraudsters mentally harassed the woman, forcing her to send her entire life savings to secure pre-arrest bail in the smuggling case. Hyderabad: A 40-year-old woman lost Rs 1.59 crore, including deposits and insurance paid to her upon her husbands recent demise, to cyberfraudsters, who conned their victim by impersonating police and government authorities and accusing her of being involved in narcotics trafficking. In the crime, the fraudsters mentally harassed the woman, forcing her to send her entire life savings to secure pre-arrest bail in the smuggling case. She made an RTGS transaction, as directed by the fraudsters, transferring the entire money in one go, despite the bank flagging the transaction as potentially fraudulent. The police said that the woman, who works for a private firm, lost her husband and received an insurance payout. In August, she received a call from a person claiming to be from a courier company, stating that a parcel containing illegal drugs was shipped under her name. Upon pleading her innocence, she was redirected to another person, who claimed to be a Mumbai Police officer. The officer said a parcel containing illegal narcotics being sent from Mumbai to Taiwan was intercepted and she would face serious charges. Upon pleading with them, she was directed to break all her bank deposits and transfer them to one of her accounts. Later, they instructed her to make an RTGS transaction of Rs 1.59 crore to an account shared by them, to prove her innocence. The case was reported to the Rachakonda Cybercrime wing in August 2023 and the police arrested two suspects whose accounts were used in the fraud, reverting Rs 20 lakh to the victim after due court proceedings a few days ago, a senior official of Rachakonda police said. The police traced the fraudsters account holder to Gujarat and arrested the holder and an associate, both of whom were found to be decoys. The duo had supplied their bank account on a commission basis and the same was used by the kingpin to loot the victim, the police said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during a public meeting ahead of Rajasthan Assembly elections, in Sagwara (PTI) New Delhi/Jaipur: Asserting that "Modis guarantee" outweighs all "false promises" made by the Congress, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday claimed that the entire state of Rajasthan is saying, "Gehlot ji, koni mile vote ji!" (chief minister Ashok Gehlot, you are not getting any vote). Attacking the Congress for "anti-people" and "anti-national decisions" at two poll rallies in Rajasthan, Mr Modi said anyone who speaks truth in the party is shunted out. Addressing a public meeting in Kotri of Bhilwara district, Mr Modi accused the Congress of punishing its leader Sachin Pilot after meting out the harsh treatment to his late father Rajesh Pilot. He said: "Whoever said or spoke anything in front of the Congress family...is as good as finishedRajesh Pilot ji had once challenged this Congress family for good, but this family is such that after punishing Rajesh ji, they are bent upon punishing his son also," Mr Modi said while addressing a rally in Kotri. The PM apparently suggested that the late Congress leader lost favour with the Congress leadership after contesting against Sitaram Kesri for the party president's post in 1997. The former deputy chief minister has been involved in a power tussle with chief minister Ashok Gehlot and the Prime Minister has been referring to it in his poll campaigns in Rajasthan. The Prime Minister also charged that the Congress makes anti-people and anti-national decisions. "Congress policy is to be soft on terrorists, rioters and criminals. Blatant corruption is the policy of the Congress. Such policies of the Congress have made Rajasthan a safe haven for crimes and criminals," he said, adding that the pride of Rajasthan is the pride of the entire country, but under the Congress rule, the culture of Rajasthan is also under great threat. "The path taken by the Congress for appeasement will lead Rajasthan towards destruction. The Congress has given free rein to fanatic people here," he charged. "The people of Bhilwara are well aware of how communal tension has continuously increased under the Congress government here. The Congress has given undue freedom to extremist elements here. If the Congress remains in power, there will be an increase in migration, and there will be more atrocities against women and the poor. Therefore, today, the time demands that the Congress be removed from the Rajasthan government," asserted Mr Modi. Launching an unsparing attack on Mr Gehlot, Mr Modi said that the Rajasthan chief minister does not have the right to stay in power even for a moment in the state. "When ministers give clean chit to rapists in the Assembly, how can our mothers, sisters and daughters remain safe? The Congress has left no stone unturned in looting Rajasthan in the last five years," Mr Modi said. The need of the hour is to remove the Congress government from Rajasthan forever. "Your one vote for the lotus can wipe out the Congress. The lotus button should be pressed and the Congress should be wiped out," Mr Modi told the gathering. Earlier, addressing a rally in Sagwara, Mr Modi asserted that his guarantee outweighs all "false promises" made by the Congress and asked the people of Rajasthan to wipe out the Gehlot government to free the state from oppression and corruption. "Modi's guarantee," he said, "begins from where the hope from the Congress for the welfare of the poor and the public ends." "Wipe out the Congress and free Rajasthan from riots, crimes and corruption. The Congress departure is also necessary for quick implementation of the Centre's schemes," he said. Alleging that the Congress government has "committed scams" in every government recruitment in Rajasthan, he said, "There is such a business between the Congress leaders and their close ones that their children became officers and your children are selectively thrown out." In Bhilwara, Mr Modi also highlighted the water scarcity issues in the district while informing the gathering that the Centre had sent funds for various water-related projects, but the Congress misused the funds. Expressing confidence of a BJP win in the ensuing Assembly polls, Mr Modi said the people of Rajasthan should note that the Gehlot government will not return to power in the state. Rajasthan goes to the polls on November 25 and the results will be declared on December 3. Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao at a public meeting at Parigi in Mahbubnagar on Wednesday. (Photo By Arrangement) Hyderabad: Chief Minister and BRS party president K. Chandrashekar Rao on Wednesday declared that "there was no way" TPCC chief A. Revanth Reddy would become the next Chief Minister of Telangana, adding that the "Congress would not even win 20 seats in the elections" to the state Assembly. Chandrashekar Rao also warned that the Congress threat to do away with the Dharani portal was "not just a serious issue but a matter of life and death for farmers" of Telangana. Chandrashekar Rao, addressing a BRS meeting in Kodangal, from where Revanth Reddy is contesting against BRS P. Narender Reddy, said any talk of Revanth Reddy becoming the Chief Minister "is fake," adding "people like him are a curse and a plague for the state and should not be in politics." He said there was no point in people wasting their votes on Revanth Reddy or the Congress, which, in any case, was not going to come to power in the state. He further said Revanth Reddy was facing a merciless defeat in the Kamareddy constituency and urged the people of Kodangal to also defeat him. Rao is contesting from Kamareddy and Gajwel, winning the latter seat in the 2014 and 2018 elections. In Kamareddy, he will face Revanth Reddy who will contest Kamareddy in addition to Kodangal and the BJPs K. Venkata Ramana Reddy. Calling Revanth Reddy "a foul-mouthed person with no boundaries and one who heaps abuse on others," Chandrashekar Rao said: "He is a big land grabber, but says Congress will throw Dharani into the Bay of Bengal. He is a thief who was caught with `50 lakh while trying to bribe BRS MLAs and has no shame despite being thrown in prison; and he claims going to prison was like earning a medal. His own party leaders say he sold tickets for the elections." Chandrashekar Rao said the people of Kodangal should think if they wanted a person like Revanth Reddy or "Narender Reddy, who worked hard for the people and brought a hospital, bus depot to the constituency with KTR adopting the constituency." Addressing a series of public meetings in Tandur, Kodangal, Mahbubnagar and Parigi constituencies, he repeatedly stressed that Congress plans to scrap Dharani would directly impact the Rythu Bandhu scheme and its disbursals. "How will Rythu Bandhu funds come if Dharani is removed? This is not just a serious issue but a matter of life and death for farmers. Since so much is at stake, everyone must think about this seriously. Congress says it will bring back the old system, which means there will again be patwaris, the old story of middlemen and corruption. We got Dharani with great difficulty, ensured 24-hour power and Congress says it will remove these too," he said. Chandrashekar Rao, addressing Congress leaders claims about Rao trying to cling to power, said: "They are fools, idiots, I am not fighting for any post. The goal is to have a poverty-free Telangana, a fully literate Telangana, and we are fighting for these. I have been CM twice already with the blessing of the people. The dream is to make Telangana no.1 on all fronts. This fight is being fought with that commitment." In Parigi, the BRS president said the elections were coming at a point just when farmers lives started changing for the better. "If they get free power and Rythu Bandhu for another 10 or 15 years, farmers would be able to take care of themselves and invest their own money in agriculture. The day that happens is when the Bangaru Telangana dream will be fulfilled," he said. He also said people should not make voting choices in haste or based on promises made by parties in the fray, but by evaluating the candidates and the track record of parties the candidates belong to. Juxtaposing the BRS' governance over the past 10 years against the 50-odd years of Congress rule before the formation of Telangana, Rao urged people not to vote for the Congress, "which will undo everything the BRS government did for the people in its two terms so far." Accounting for around a third of the Telangana electorate, of 3.14 crore voters, there are 75 lakh landowning farmers and 25 lakh tenant farmers in the state, as per the Dharani portal. (Representational Image: PTI) Hyderabad: The contenders for the Telangana hot seat in the upcoming state Assembly elections are leaving no stone unturned, by highlighting welfare schemes and promising more support, in canvassing votes of one of the biggest vote banks: farmers, who are one-crore strong. Accounting for around a third of the Telangana electorate, of 3.14 crore voters, there are 75 lakh landowning farmers and 25 lakh tenant farmers in the state, as per the Dharani portal. To garner these votes, the BRS is banking on its pro-farmer policies of Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima, and 24-hour free power, among others, that have been implemented over the past nine-and-a-half years of its tenure. The BJP leaders have been highlighting the PM-Kisan scheme and the fertiliser subsidies implemented by the Centre. The Congress is banking on its Chhattisgarh model of governance, under which financial aid, on the lines of BRS Rythu Bandhu, is extended to farmers. A major difference is that the Congress government there provides aid to tenant farmers and agriculture labourers too, besides landowning farmers. A major poll expectation of the farming community is a crop loan waiver, which was among the major promises of the three parties in the run-up to the 2018 Assembly elections. While the BJP and Congress promised Rs 2 lakh loan waivers each, the BRS promised Rs 1 lakh. It was widely speculated that the implementation of Rythu Bandhu in May 2018, along with the promise of a loan waiver, turned the farmers votes pink, in support of the BRS. However, in stark contrast, the BRS and BJP manifestos do not make a mention of crop loan waiver this time around. Only the Congress has promised a loan waiver, of up to Rs 2 lakh. The BRS promised to enhance Rythu Bandhu's aid from Rs 10,000 per acre at present to Rs 16,000 per acre in phases, but only for landowning farmers, with tenant farmers and labourers excluded from the purview of the scheme. The Congress promised to extend Rs 15,000 per acre per year to farmers and tenant farmers starting from December 2023, if elected to power, in addition to Rs 12,000 per acre per year to agriculture labourers. The Congress and BJP, targeting the BRS over alleged misdeeds in land acquisition, promised to replace the Dharani portal, in a major poll plank. The Congress promised to implement the Bhumata portal, while the BJP is calling its portal Mee Bhoomi. The Congress has also promised interest-free crop loans of up to Rs 3 lakh, 24-hour free power to agriculture, a comprehensive crop insurance scheme, and a bonus of Rs 500 for paddy per quintal. The BJP has promised investment support of Rs 18,000 per acre to farmers, besides Rs 2,500 to small and marginal farmers to enable them to procure seeds and fertilisers. It further promised free crop insurance to farmers through PM Fasal Bima Yojana, Rs 3,100 for paddy, and required market intervention funds for turmeric. It also promised the allocation of free Indian milk-yielding cows to willing small and marginal farmers, the development of Nizamabad as a first-of-its-kind Nizamabad Turmeric City, and the constitution of a national turmeric board. TPCC president Revanth Reddy at a public meeting at Gajwel on Wednesday. (By Arrangement) Hyderabad: After BRS chief K. Chandrashekar Rao declared in Kodangal on Wednesday that TPCC chief A. Revanth Reddy would not become the next Chief Minister and that the Congress would not secure more than 20 seats, Revanth Reddy hit back at Rao, saying he was "ready to face any punishment if the Congress gets even one seat less than 80". Addressing public meetings in Nizamabad (Rural), Narayankhed, Gajwel and Kukatpally on the day, Revanth said that Congress will seek votes showing the Sriramsagar project, questioning if Rao was ready to seek votes for the Kaleshwaram project or Medigadda barrage. "If KCR has guts, he should accept this challenge," Revanth said, lashing out at Rao for dubbing Indiramma Rajyam as a "regime of poverty and starvation". "Indiramma Rajyam means the government of the poor, while BRS Rajyam means the government of doras (feudal lords) and thieves. KCR deceived poor people saying he would give them double bedroom houses, but he only built a 150-room Pragathi Bhavan for himself," Revanth said. Defending the Indiramma Rajyam by claiming it was a regime of welfare and development, Revanth said: "Congress governments have built houses for the poor. We waived farmers' loans, paid minimum support prices, gave titles to podu lands and provided reservation to STs. Ours was not a government of robbers or feudal lords. But BRS leaders collected commissions, involved in sand and land mafia. They should be chased away." Revanth said that the people of Gajwel wanted to discard Rao, due to which he "fled" to Kamareddy. "Not just Kamareddy, KCR will be defeated by the people of Telangana even if he flees to Kanyakumari," he said. Revanth, alleging that Rao "drowned people of Gajwel constituency in Mallannasagar project" in return for electing him twice, urged them to retaliate by pushing "KCR into Konda Pochammasagar reservoir or drown him in Ranganayakasagar reservoir" for neglecting them. Revanth said that no one in the world could compete with Rao in lying and cheating. He said that Rao had promised to complete the Basaveshwara and Sangameshwara projects within a year, but failed to do so even after nine years. 25 CAPITAL LINK Families of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip protest outside the ministry of defence in Tel Aviv (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP) DOHA: Qatar confirmed on Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement on a four-day humanitarian pause in exchange for the release of 50 hostages in Gaza. "The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension," Qatar's foreign ministry said in a statement. "The agreement includes the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons, the number of those released will be increased in later stages of implementing the agreement," it added. Qatar has been engaged in weeks of intense, behind-the-scenes negotiations aimed at freeing some of the 240 hostages held in Gaza in return for temporary ceasefire and access for humanitarian aid. Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza's militarised border on October 7 and staged the worst attack in Israel's history. Israel says the attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and that around 240 people were taken hostage, among them elderly people and children. In response, Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which the Hamas government says has killed more than 14,100 people, thousands of them children. Qatar said the deal had been undertaken with Egypt and the United States as well as Hamas and Israel and would include "the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs". Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told AFP the release of the 50 hostages held by Hamas would be staggered over the four-day truce. "The truce begins and then every day within the four days we will have a number of hostages coming out... and that number should reach 50 by day four," he said. The expectation was that the initial 50 women and children hostages released by Hamas would be followed by further releases to extend the initial four-day truce. "If by then the Palestinians can commit to an additional number then the truce can be extended," Ansari said. "It will take some time to get all the civilians out within these parameters, it will take some time also to... ascertain how many we have left," he said. The temporary cessation of hostilities would not come into effect immediately and would "need some time to be prepared on the ground". The exchange will be facilitated by Red Crescent workers on the ground, as well as officials from Israel, Hamas and Qatar, Ansari added. Shares of Aptiv PLC (NYSE:APTV Get Free Report) have earned an average recommendation of Moderate Buy from the fifteen research firms that are covering the stock, Marketbeat.com reports. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation and twelve have given a buy recommendation to the company. The average 12 month target price among brokerages that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $127.63. Several analysts have recently weighed in on APTV shares. Piper Sandler raised shares of Aptiv from an underweight rating to a neutral rating and dropped their price target for the company from $82.00 to $80.00 in a research note on Friday, November 3rd. Royal Bank of Canada reduced their price objective on shares of Aptiv from $130.00 to $113.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a report on Friday, November 3rd. StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of Aptiv in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating on the stock. Citigroup lowered their price objective on shares of Aptiv from $162.00 to $156.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, October 11th. Finally, Morgan Stanley lowered their price objective on shares of Aptiv from $100.00 to $90.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research report on Tuesday, November 14th. Get Aptiv alerts: View Our Latest Stock Report on Aptiv Aptiv Price Performance Shares of APTV opened at $80.83 on Wednesday. The firm has a market capitalization of $22.86 billion, a PE ratio of 10.10, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.99 and a beta of 2.06. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.58, a current ratio of 1.81 and a quick ratio of 1.29. Aptiv has a 1-year low of $71.01 and a 1-year high of $124.88. The companys fifty day moving average price is $90.39 and its 200-day moving average price is $97.02. Aptiv (NYSE:APTV Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 2nd. The auto parts company reported $1.30 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.23 by $0.07. Aptiv had a net margin of 11.54% and a return on equity of 13.91%. The business had revenue of $5.11 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.09 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted $1.28 earnings per share. The companys revenue was up 10.8% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts predict that Aptiv will post 4.73 EPS for the current year. Insider Transactions at Aptiv In related news, CFO Joseph R. Massaro sold 1,900 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Friday, September 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $101.87, for a total value of $193,553.00. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 206,773 shares of the companys stock, valued at $21,063,965.51. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Corporate insiders own 0.41% of the companys stock. Hedge Funds Weigh In On Aptiv Several institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the company. Vanguard Group Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Aptiv by 1.2% during the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 28,817,851 shares of the auto parts companys stock worth $3,449,785,000 after purchasing an additional 340,939 shares during the period. BlackRock Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Aptiv by 2.4% in the 2nd quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 22,256,811 shares of the auto parts companys stock valued at $2,272,198,000 after purchasing an additional 522,041 shares in the last quarter. State Street Corp lifted its position in Aptiv by 3.4% during the 2nd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 10,441,884 shares of the auto parts companys stock worth $1,066,012,000 after buying an additional 344,113 shares in the last quarter. Impax Asset Management Group plc lifted its position in Aptiv by 10.7% during the 3rd quarter. Impax Asset Management Group plc now owns 6,790,225 shares of the auto parts companys stock worth $668,843,000 after buying an additional 656,845 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC raised its holdings in Aptiv by 2.1% during the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 5,734,978 shares of the auto parts companys stock worth $583,947,000 after purchasing an additional 120,302 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 89.13% of the companys stock. Aptiv Company Profile (Get Free Report Aptiv PLC engages in design, manufacture, and sale of vehicle components worldwide. The company provides electrical, electronic, and safety technology solutions to the automotive and commercial vehicle markets. It operates in two segments, Signal and Power Solutions, and Advanced Safety and User Experience. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Aptiv Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Aptiv and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. In an unanticipated move, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, unveiling a substantial $100 million military aid package. This marked his first visit to the Ukrainian capital since April 2022, sparking strategic discussions and reinforcing American commitment to the region. Reinforcing long-term support During his visit, Austin engaged in pivotal discussions with key Ukrainian figures, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, and Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi. He sought to reassure and fortify Ukrainian leadership with unwavering resolve, unequivocally stating, The United States of America stands in solidarity with you. Our commitment spans the long road ahead. Get alerts: The aid package unveiled by Austin holds strategic significance, encompassing indispensable anti-tank weapons, crucial air-defense interceptors, and an additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). These meticulously chosen provisions serve as a testament to Americas unwavering dedication to enhancing Ukraines defensive capabilities in the face of relentless Russian aggression. Strategic concerns and congressional debates Despite the considerable support extended since Russias incursion in February 2022, apprehensions persist regarding the consistency and depth of the ongoing aid to Ukraine. Emerging geopolitical dynamics, notably the escalating Israel-Gaza conflict, have injected uncertainty concerning the uninterrupted flow of assistance earmarked for Ukraines defense. Within the corridors of the U.S. Congress, discussions have escalated, amplifying the ongoing debate surrounding aid distribution revealing a rift in perspectives and priorities. On one front, theres a chorus advocating for a continued and potentially heightened focus on supporting Ukraine, recognizing the pressing need to fortify the nations defenses against Russian aggression. Conversely, theres a distinct emphasis on directing support towards Israel, underlining the complexity of simultaneous commitments to different global allies. This divergence in congressional opinions and policy priorities sparks a broader conversation encompassing the allocation of taxpayer funds and the delicate balance required to sustain and reinforce multiple international alliances simultaneously. The deliberations in Congress signify a fiscal debate and a fundamental ideological struggle grappling with allocating resources and strategic international engagements in a rapidly changing global landscape. Ensuring regional stability Amid escalating tensions, Austins visit underscores the importance of sustaining Ukrainian defense capabilities. The ongoing conflict in Ukraines eastern regions and recent successes in territories like the Kherson region pose challenges as the cold weather sets in, potentially hampering significant military advancements for both sides. Austin acknowledged Ukraines readiness for winter combat, indicating expectations of heightened Russian aggression. The necessity of continuous aid to prevent Russia from gaining strategic leverage and the potential consequences of reduced support for Ukraine has been highlighted by experts. Secretary Austins visit and the announced aid package symbolize a critical juncture in U.S.-Ukraine relations amidst evolving geopolitical dynamics. The pledge of sustained American backing amplifies the significance of international support in fostering regional stability and deterring further conflict. As discussions within the U.S. Congress persist, the decision regarding continued aid to Ukraine remains a focal point, shaping not only the immediate security landscape but also the broader geopolitical balance. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. increased its position in Teradata Co. (NYSE:TDC Free Report) by 27.5% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 73,326 shares of the technology companys stock after acquiring an additional 15,832 shares during the period. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. owned about 0.07% of Teradata worth $3,916,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Other large investors also recently modified their holdings of the company. Raymond James & Associates grew its holdings in shares of Teradata by 4.8% in the second quarter. Raymond James & Associates now owns 121,533 shares of the technology companys stock worth $6,491,000 after acquiring an additional 5,618 shares during the period. Barclays PLC grew its holdings in shares of Teradata by 114.3% in the first quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 126,647 shares of the technology companys stock worth $5,101,000 after acquiring an additional 67,557 shares during the period. Mackenzie Financial Corp grew its holdings in shares of Teradata by 18.1% in the second quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp now owns 72,418 shares of the technology companys stock worth $3,890,000 after acquiring an additional 11,092 shares during the period. Louisiana State Employees Retirement System grew its holdings in shares of Teradata by 9.3% in the second quarter. Louisiana State Employees Retirement System now owns 29,500 shares of the technology companys stock worth $1,576,000 after acquiring an additional 2,500 shares during the period. Finally, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings Inc. bought a new stake in shares of Teradata in the second quarter worth $204,000. Institutional investors own 91.02% of the companys stock. Get Teradata alerts: Insider Buying and Selling In related news, insider Margaret A. Treese sold 9,148 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $47.36, for a total value of $433,249.28. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 79,801 shares in the company, valued at $3,779,375.36. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. In other Teradata news, insider Margaret A. Treese sold 9,148 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $47.36, for a total transaction of $433,249.28. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 79,801 shares in the company, valued at $3,779,375.36. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CEO Stephen Mcmillan sold 7,500 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 10th. The shares were sold at an average price of $46.21, for a total value of $346,575.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 510,497 shares in the company, valued at $23,590,066.37. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last three months, insiders have sold 30,316 shares of company stock worth $1,395,176. Corporate insiders own 0.92% of the companys stock. Teradata Price Performance NYSE:TDC opened at $47.48 on Wednesday. The company has a current ratio of 0.83, a quick ratio of 0.82 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 4.56. The company has a market capitalization of $4.64 billion, a P/E ratio of 77.84, a P/E/G ratio of 2.46 and a beta of 0.99. Teradata Co. has a 12 month low of $31.83 and a 12 month high of $57.73. The businesss 50-day moving average is $44.90 and its 200 day moving average is $47.71. Teradata (NYSE:TDC Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Monday, November 6th. The technology company reported $0.42 EPS for the quarter, hitting analysts consensus estimates of $0.42. The company had revenue of $438.00 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $435.84 million. Teradata had a return on equity of 39.28% and a net margin of 3.39%. The firms revenue for the quarter was up 5.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the business earned $0.10 earnings per share. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Teradata Co. will post 1.05 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Analysts Set New Price Targets TDC has been the subject of several recent research reports. TheStreet lowered Teradata from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a report on Thursday, August 17th. Citigroup boosted their price target on Teradata from $55.00 to $62.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. Craig Hallum boosted their price target on Teradata from $50.00 to $66.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Tuesday, August 8th. Morgan Stanley upped their price objective on Teradata from $51.00 to $74.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 8th. Finally, Barclays dropped their price objective on Teradata from $47.00 to $46.00 and set an underweight rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, August 8th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have issued a hold rating, six have issued a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Teradata presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $57.67. View Our Latest Stock Analysis on TDC Teradata Company Profile (Free Report) Teradata Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides a connected multi-cloud data platform for enterprise analytics. The company offers Teradata Vantage, a data platform that allows companies to leverage their data across an enterprise, as well as connects various sources of data to drive ecosystem simplification and support customers on their journey to the cloud through an integrated migration. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Teradata Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Teradata and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Fastly, Inc. (NYSE:FSLY Get Free Report) has received a consensus rating of Hold from the eleven analysts that are currently covering the company, Marketbeat reports. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have issued a hold rating, three have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating on the company. The average 1-year price objective among brokers that have covered the stock in the last year is $17.65. Several analysts recently issued reports on the company. Morgan Stanley increased their price objective on Fastly from $18.00 to $19.00 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a report on Thursday, August 3rd. Raymond James reaffirmed a strong-buy rating and set a $25.00 price objective on shares of Fastly in a report on Thursday, October 5th. Citigroup lifted their target price on shares of Fastly from $8.00 to $10.00 and gave the company a sell rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 29th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada upped their target price on shares of Fastly from $11.00 to $12.00 and gave the company an underperform rating in a research report on Thursday, August 3rd. Get Fastly alerts: Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on FSLY Insider Buying and Selling Institutional Trading of Fastly In other news, CEO Todd Nightingale sold 233,270 shares of the firms stock in a transaction on Thursday, November 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $16.24, for a total transaction of $3,788,304.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 1,422,056 shares of the companys stock, valued at $23,094,189.44. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink . In other Fastly news, CEO Todd Nightingale sold 233,270 shares of Fastly stock in a transaction on Thursday, November 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $16.24, for a total value of $3,788,304.80. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,422,056 shares of the companys stock, valued at $23,094,189.44. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website . Also, insider Artur Bergman sold 87,225 shares of Fastly stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $23.94, for a total transaction of $2,088,166.50. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now directly owns 6,236,231 shares of the companys stock, valued at $149,295,370.14. The disclosure for this sale can be found here . In the last 90 days, insiders have sold 619,227 shares of company stock worth $11,055,653. Corporate insiders own 7.60% of the companys stock. Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the business. Cetera Advisor Networks LLC grew its stake in Fastly by 2.7% in the 2nd quarter. Cetera Advisor Networks LLC now owns 24,123 shares of the companys stock worth $380,000 after buying an additional 625 shares in the last quarter. Ameritas Investment Partners Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Fastly by 7.5% in the 2nd quarter. Ameritas Investment Partners Inc. now owns 9,797 shares of the companys stock valued at $154,000 after purchasing an additional 680 shares in the last quarter. US Bancorp DE boosted its stake in shares of Fastly by 23.5% in the 1st quarter. US Bancorp DE now owns 4,270 shares of the companys stock valued at $76,000 after purchasing an additional 813 shares in the last quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Fastly by 6.5% in the 2nd quarter. Principal Financial Group Inc. now owns 13,773 shares of the companys stock valued at $217,000 after purchasing an additional 837 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Arizona State Retirement System boosted its stake in shares of Fastly by 2.7% in the 3rd quarter. Arizona State Retirement System now owns 32,544 shares of the companys stock valued at $624,000 after purchasing an additional 844 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 65.65% of the companys stock. Fastly Stock Performance Shares of Fastly stock opened at $17.43 on Wednesday. The stock has a market cap of $2.28 billion, a PE ratio of -14.06 and a beta of 1.32. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $16.97 and a 200-day simple moving average of $17.45. The company has a quick ratio of 3.85, a current ratio of 3.85 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.49. Fastly has a 12 month low of $7.15 and a 12 month high of $24.31. About Fastly (Get Free Report Fastly, Inc operates an edge cloud platform for processing, serving, and securing its customer's applications in the United States, the Asia Pacific, Europe, and internationally. The edge cloud is a category of Infrastructure as a Service that enables developers to build, secure, and deliver digital experiences at the edge of the internet. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for Fastly Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Fastly and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Haidilao International (OTCMKTS:HDALF Get Free Report) and CAVA Group (NYSE:CAVA Get Free Report) are both consumer cyclical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, risk, analyst recommendations and earnings. Insider & Institutional Ownership 61.8% of CAVA Group shares are held by institutional investors. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term. Get Haidilao International alerts: Valuation & Earnings This table compares Haidilao International and CAVA Groups gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation. Gross Revenue Price/Sales Ratio Net Income Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Ratio Haidilao International N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A CAVA Group $681.47 million 5.57 -$58.99 million N/A N/A Analyst Ratings Haidilao International has higher earnings, but lower revenue than CAVA Group. This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Haidilao International and CAVA Group, as provided by MarketBeat. Sell Ratings Hold Ratings Buy Ratings Strong Buy Ratings Rating Score Haidilao International 1 0 1 0 2.00 CAVA Group 0 4 7 0 2.64 CAVA Group has a consensus target price of $47.00, indicating a potential upside of 40.72%. Given CAVA Groups stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe CAVA Group is more favorable than Haidilao International. Profitability This table compares Haidilao International and CAVA Groups net margins, return on equity and return on assets. Net Margins Return on Equity Return on Assets Haidilao International N/A N/A N/A CAVA Group -1.12% -13.72% -0.97% Summary CAVA Group beats Haidilao International on 5 of the 8 factors compared between the two stocks. About Haidilao International (Get Free Report) Haidilao International Holding Ltd., an investment holding company, engages in the restaurant chain operation and delivery businesses. The company through operates through Restaurant Operation, Delivery Business, and Sales of Condiment Products and Food Ingredients segments. It also operates a Haidilao branded Chinese cuisine restaurant that offers hot pot cuisine. In addition, the company is involved in logistics and wholesale trade activities; management consultation; financial management; provision of food research, development, and technology services; and trading businesses. It owns and operates restaurants in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. The company was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People's Republic of China. About CAVA Group (Get Free Report) CAVA Group, Inc. owns and operates a chain of Mediterranean restaurants. The company offers salads, dips, spreads, toppings, and dressings. It sells its products through whole food markets and grocery stores. The company also provides online food ordering services. Cava Group, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is based in Washington, District of Columbia. Receive News & Ratings for Haidilao International Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Haidilao International and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd. grew its position in Worthington Industries, Inc. (NYSE:WOR Free Report) by 7.6% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 6,791 shares of the industrial products companys stock after buying an additional 481 shares during the quarter. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd.s holdings in Worthington Industries were worth $472,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in the company. BlackRock Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Worthington Industries by 13.0% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 4,571,279 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $235,012,000 after purchasing an additional 526,776 shares during the last quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Worthington Industries by 0.4% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 3,328,906 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $171,139,000 after purchasing an additional 12,047 shares during the last quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP grew its holdings in shares of Worthington Industries by 2.1% during the 1st quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 2,290,559 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $148,081,000 after purchasing an additional 47,258 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its holdings in shares of Worthington Industries by 18.1% during the 1st quarter. State Street Corp now owns 2,010,543 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $103,362,000 after purchasing an additional 307,667 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC grew its holdings in shares of Worthington Industries by 4.1% during the 1st quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 591,969 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $38,271,000 after purchasing an additional 23,452 shares during the last quarter. 45.30% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Worthington Industries alerts: Worthington Industries Trading Up 0.2 % WOR opened at $66.15 on Wednesday. Worthington Industries, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $48.16 and a fifty-two week high of $77.42. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.16, a current ratio of 1.95 and a quick ratio of 1.17. The firm has a market capitalization of $3.31 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 11.39 and a beta of 1.35. The companys 50 day moving average price is $63.60 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $65.64. Worthington Industries Dividend Announcement Worthington Industries ( NYSE:WOR Get Free Report ) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, September 28th. The industrial products company reported $2.06 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $2.04 by $0.02. Worthington Industries had a net margin of 6.14% and a return on equity of 17.66%. The firm had revenue of $1.19 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.23 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $1.61 EPS. The companys revenue for the quarter was down 15.3% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, research analysts predict that Worthington Industries, Inc. will post 5.55 earnings per share for the current year. The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be issued a dividend of $0.32 per share. This represents a $1.28 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.93%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 14th. Worthington Industriess payout ratio is 22.03%. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. TheStreet lowered shares of Worthington Industries from a b rating to a c+ rating in a report on Monday, October 2nd. StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of Worthington Industries in a report on Monday. They set a buy rating on the stock. View Our Latest Stock Report on Worthington Industries Worthington Industries Company Profile (Free Report) Worthington Industries, Inc, an industrial manufacturing company, focuses on value-added steel processing, laser welded solutions, electrical steel laminations and manufactured consumer, building and sustainable mobility products in North America and internationally. It operates through Steel Processing, Consumer Products, Building Products, and Sustainable Energy Solutions segments. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding WOR? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Worthington Industries, Inc. (NYSE:WOR Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Worthington Industries Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Worthington Industries and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd. increased its position in shares of UMH Properties, Inc. (NYSE:UMH Free Report) by 15.9% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 32,960 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock after acquiring an additional 4,517 shares during the period. Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. Ltd.s holdings in UMH Properties were worth $527,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Several other large investors have also made changes to their positions in UMH. Raymond James & Associates boosted its position in shares of UMH Properties by 9.4% during the 1st quarter. Raymond James & Associates now owns 58,369 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $1,435,000 after acquiring an additional 5,025 shares in the last quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp boosted its position in UMH Properties by 5.2% in the first quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 373,985 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $9,197,000 after buying an additional 18,507 shares in the last quarter. Citigroup Inc. boosted its position in UMH Properties by 7.7% in the first quarter. Citigroup Inc. now owns 12,773 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $314,000 after buying an additional 911 shares in the last quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC boosted its position in UMH Properties by 55.2% in the first quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC now owns 23,163 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $570,000 after buying an additional 8,238 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Rhumbline Advisers boosted its position in UMH Properties by 1.3% in the first quarter. Rhumbline Advisers now owns 53,796 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $1,323,000 after buying an additional 702 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 71.65% of the companys stock. Get UMH Properties alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of brokerages have weighed in on UMH. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of UMH Properties in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a sell rating on the stock. Wedbush raised their target price on shares of UMH Properties from $19.00 to $20.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Friday, August 11th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has issued a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $20.50. UMH Properties Price Performance UMH stock opened at $14.02 on Wednesday. The company has a fifty day moving average price of $14.15 and a 200-day moving average price of $15.16. The company has a market capitalization of $930.90 million, a P/E ratio of -58.42, a PEG ratio of 4.24 and a beta of 1.28. UMH Properties, Inc. has a 52-week low of $13.26 and a 52-week high of $18.87. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.72, a quick ratio of 6.17 and a current ratio of 6.17. UMH Properties Dividend Announcement The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be paid a dividend of $0.205 per share. This represents a $0.82 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 5.85%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 14th. UMH Propertiess payout ratio is currently -341.67%. UMH Properties Profile (Free Report) UMH Properties, Inc, which was organized in 1968, is a public equity REIT that owns and operates 135 manufactured home communities containing approximately 25,700 developed homesites. These communities are located in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia. Recommended Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding UMH? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for UMH Properties, Inc. (NYSE:UMH Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for UMH Properties Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for UMH Properties and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Corteva (NYSE:CTVA Get Free Report) and PureBase (OTCMKTS:PUBC Get Free Report) are both basic materials companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, risk, earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation, institutional ownership and profitability. Analyst Recommendations This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Corteva and PureBase, as provided by MarketBeat.com. Get Corteva alerts: Sell Ratings Hold Ratings Buy Ratings Strong Buy Ratings Rating Score Corteva 0 4 15 0 2.79 PureBase 0 0 0 0 N/A Corteva presently has a consensus target price of $65.44, indicating a potential upside of 41.41%. Given Cortevas higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Corteva is more favorable than PureBase. Valuation & Earnings Gross Revenue Price/Sales Ratio Net Income Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Ratio Corteva $17.34 billion 1.88 $1.15 billion $1.30 35.60 PureBase N/A N/A N/A $0.00 -89.78 This table compares Corteva and PureBases top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation. Corteva has higher revenue and earnings than PureBase. PureBase is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Corteva, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks. Institutional and Insider Ownership 80.6% of Corteva shares are held by institutional investors. 0.1% of Corteva shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term. Profitability This table compares Corteva and PureBases net margins, return on equity and return on assets. Net Margins Return on Equity Return on Assets Corteva 5.38% 7.47% 4.40% PureBase N/A N/A N/A Summary Corteva beats PureBase on 10 of the 10 factors compared between the two stocks. About Corteva (Get Free Report) Corteva, Inc. operates in the agriculture business. It operates through two segments, Seed and Crop Protection. The Seed segment develops and supplies advanced germplasm and traits that produce optimum yield for farms. It offers trait technologies that enhance resistance to weather, disease, insects, and herbicides used to control weeds, as well as food and nutritional characteristics. This segment also provides digital solutions that assist farmer decision-making with a view to optimize product selection, and maximize yield and profitability. The Crop Protection segment offers products that protect against weeds, insects and other pests, and diseases, as well as enhances crop health above and below ground through nitrogen management and seed-applied technologies. This segment provides herbicides, insecticides, nitrogen stabilizers, and pasture and range management herbicides. It serves agricultural input industry. The company operates in the United States, Canada, Latin America, the Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Corteva, Inc. was incorporated in 2018 and is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. About PureBase (Get Free Report) PureBase Corporation, an industrial mineral and natural resource company, provides solutions to the agriculture and construction materials markets in the United States. It offers PureBase Shade Advantage WP, a natural mineral plant protectant that reduces sunburn damage to plant tissue exposed to UV and infrared radiation. The company also provides humic acid products; and private labels product for other agricultural companies. It exports its products to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The company was formerly known as Port of Call Online, Inc. and changed its name to Purebase Corporation in January 2015. Purebase Corporation was incorporated in 2010 is headquartered in Ione, California. Receive News & Ratings for Corteva Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Corteva and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. From the early days of Gribbin Construction, established in 1963 by brothers Joe, Eamon and Liam, the business has evolved over the decades into an innovative and dynamic construction company, specialising in the design and build of bespoke timber-frame homes and off-site modular construction. In 2000, nephews Mark and Niall Gribbin became current Directors of what is now named Setanta Construction and have grown the business from strength to strength, expanding into new markets and developing an extensive client base. Theyve also made significant business improvements over the years, not least by investing in a new 30,000 sq. ft purpose-built factory and offices, on a 15 acre site at Ronan Valley Business Park, Magherafelt to accommodate the continued growth of the business. Since then, the business has transformed into a leading construction company that works to deliver prestigious projects for clients including Developer Paddy McKillen, of Claridges Hotel, London and The Richard Rogers Art Gallery, Aix-en-Provence, France. According to Mark: Its incredible to think how far the business has come, not simply because of the amount of time thats passed, but because of all the small wins and big successes over the past 60 years, you really do realise what has been achieved by us all. Acknowledging the core family values that still remain to combine a sense of tradition, teamwork and shared goals, he added: Our continued success has been made possible by the people around us and were fortunate to have an entire team of outstanding, highly skilled and reliable tradespeople, subcontractors and workplace professionals and as we look back over the decades, we extend a sincere thank you to all of them, including our clients. ABOVE: Mr. Brendan Walls, Senior Joiner with current Directors of Setanta Construction, Mark and Niall Gribbin. A business steeped in a history of developing sustainable construction practices and delivering green solutions, Setanta are long-time champions of energy efficient construction. Experts in the built environment, their use of modern technology and traditional craftsmanship combine for a perfect solution to the challenges faced within the industry. Mark says: Were recognised for our sustainable approach and we aim to play a key role in helping to drive transformational change throughout the sector by trying and testing new methods of construction. He continued: Our innovative approach to delivering high quality, energy efficient buildings have progressed from more traditional building techniques to using specialist offsite manufacturing solutions, where the planning, design and construction process is managed by our in-house team for a more streamlined and efficient service. Last year, Setanta Construction launched a pilot test project, SoLow passive homes, which when finalised has the potential to change how affordable homes are built for future generations. They enlisted the support of Ulster Universitys Centre for Sustainable Technologies Research team and recruited a family of four who are currently undertaking a live research monitoring study of their SoLow Passive House, which is due to complete mid next year. The first research of its kind anywhere in Ireland, the live study will provide valuable insights into the different building components and technologies used to control factors such as air quality, temperature fluctuations and energy usage. According to Niall Gribbin, Joint Director at Setanta Construction: Weve a lot of confidence in this project and were currently in discussions with various organisations including housing associations, so thats incredibly exciting. We want to engage and connect with NIs key influencers and stakeholders to help inspire, educate and promote more action towards sustainable construction. Looking towards the future and building on the success of the past 60 years, as well as learning from the challenges of today, Niall says: Well continue to work on residential and commercial construction projects and customise any project to suit the needs of our client. The shift towards Passive House construction is picking up pace and theres a definite push for more sustainable construction methods throughout the industry. Finally he added: There are significant challenges facing the industry including skilled labour shortages, rising fuel prices, concerning delays in infrastructure projects and many broader economic pressures, but the construction industry in Northern Ireland has proven its resilience many times and with the increasing use of new technologies and demand for off-site manufacturing, were hopeful for the future. Leading construction company, Henry Brothers, has received an award for Environmental Best Practice at the Green Apple Environment Awards. Designed to recognise organisations across the world that show innovation and commitment to being environmentally responsible, Henry Brothers received the prestigious accolade for its work on SportPark Pavilion 4, built for Loughborough University. Ian Taylor, Managing Director at Henry Brothers Construction, said: It is fantastic to have been recognised on an international level for our efforts to help Loughborough University decarbonise its estate. Having achieved Passivhaus Classic accreditation, widely regarded as the most challenging energy efficiency and comfort standards in the world, SportPark Pavillion 4 adds to our already impressive portfolio of sustainable builds. This accolade is testament to the dedication of our staff to make a meaningful impact on the communities in which we operate and further strengthens our commitment to net zero. In 2022, Henry Brothers launched its Journey to Net Zero strategy, outlining its ambitious plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 2% each year by 2030. The award, which was presented at the Houses of Parliament, builds on these commitments and affirms the companys dedication to sustainable partnerships. Joel Callow, Founding Director of Beyond Carbon Associates, worked alongside Henry Brothers to obtain Passivhaus Classic accreditation for the build. Joel said: We are delighted that one of our favourite Passivhaus projects has won this prestigious award. A notable achievement for Henry Brothers and setting a great example both for the region and nationally, as Sportpark Pavilion 4 is one of the very few certified Passivhaus office buildings in the UK. Great leadership by Loughborough University. For more information, visit henrybrothers.co.uk 'We are shocked and distressed by the terrible violence now being inflicted on the people of Gaza' Derry's Bloody Sunday Trust is a signatory to an open letter signed by Irish Civil Society organisations to United States President Joe Biden voicing opposition to the war in Gaza. The organisations collectively represent more than one million people across the island of Ireland. The letter stated: "Dear President Biden, "We write this open letter as representatives of Irish civil society organisations with a collective membership of more than one million people across the island. "We write to you as a President of the United States of America who has embraced your Irish heritage and who celebrates your connection with Ireland as a fundamental part of your personal and political identity. "We mourn, without reservation, the taking of all civilian life, in Israel, in Gaza, and across the occupied Palestinian territory; and we condemn all actions which deliberately target or recklessly and indiscriminately endanger civilians, including hostage-taking, and all acts of collective punishment against a population under siege. "We are shocked and distressed by the terrible violence now being inflicted on the people of Gaza. As we write, the number of Palestinians killed has climbed beyond 11,000 people; more than 4,600 of those are children. More than half of all homes in Gaza are now either completely destroyed or damaged. Meanwhile, essential humanitarian aid trickles into Gaza at a fraction of the level before this war started. Hospitals, UN facilities providing safe shelter, schools, ambulances, and refugee camps have all been targeted by Israel with devastating consequences. "Ireland has a long history of supporting the cause of sovereign statehood and justice for the Palestinian people, arising, we believe, from our own experience of colonialism and occupation. In the context of the current onslaught on the innocent people of Gaza, increasingly described as genocide, the outpouring of support in Ireland for the cause of the Palestinian people has never been greater. Roads you travelled during your visit here, streets you walked, your ancestral home of Ballina, are decked in Palestinian flags and echo to the sound of rallies calling for a ceasefire and justice for Palestinians. "The strength of feeling in the population is unambiguously reflected in statements issued by leaders across the entire political spectrum and institutions of the Irish state. "An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has stated that this violence resembles something more approaching revenge. He has described Israels actions in Gaza as collective punishment. Our President, Michael D Higgins, has also spoken out, saying To announce in advance that you will break international law and to do so on an innocent population.....reduces all the code that was there from the 2nd World War on protection of civilians and it reduces it to tatters. "International law is clear: the right of self-defence allowed to an occupying power does not include the collective punishment of civilians; massive bombardment and the cutting off of water, food, medicines and fuel; and it does not include the destruction of life and property on an unprecedented scale. The occupying power, Israel, has complete responsibility for the welfare of the population under occupation; its safety and welfare comes before all other considerations. "The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, has warned all parties of their responsibilities under law and the consequences for those who breach them. There must, equally, be no political interference with the work of the Court. We agree with the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, when he says these events did not happen in a vacuum, and when he acknowledges the decades-long suffocating occupation and dispossession imposed on the Palestinian people. "The United States is Israels most powerful ally. We ask that at this moment, you reflect on, and honour your Irish identity. Honour the lived historical experience of your Irish ancestors and those of many Irish Americans, who, like Palestinians, lived life under a settler-colonial occupation before they left this island. We ask that you demand an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to bring an end to the death and destruction; secure full access to all humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza; and commence a political process leading to a just outcome which meets the legitimate demands of the Palestinian people for self-determination, and thus ensuring peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike. "President Biden, you are in a position to make this a pivotal moment, to bend the arc of history towards justice, and thereby leave a legacy for the ages. This cycle of death and destruction must be brought to an immediate end; you have the power to do that. The British Tory party's Autumn Statement will not mean much for struggling families, according to SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood MP. Mr Eastwood said: "The Autumn Statement wont even begin to touch the sides of abject need in communities across Northern Ireland. "After more than a decade of pay restraint, austerity and cuts to public services that people know the best way to change their circumstances is to get rid of this Tory government." He added: "Its hard to bear the whooping and hollering of Tory MPs as if theyve delivered some magical cure to the challenges facing working people when the truth is that the greatest source of financial stress and immediate pressure on households across our communities is thirteen long years of Tory government. Pay restraint, austerity, the decimation of public and community based services have been the hallmarks of consecutive conservative governments. But now they expect to sit back and be congratulated for changes to national insurance that will be balanced out for most by the bleak financial outlook. The Tories may desperately want it but theres been no outbreak of Economic-Stockholm-Syndrome in places like Derry, Belfast or Newry. No new support for people hammered by the cost of living crisis, no new ideas to maximise the benefits of dual market access for Northern Ireland, nothing that reflects the unique challenges facing people here. People arent stupid and they wont be taken in by the thin veneer of spin on this statement. The best way that working people can change their circumstances is to get rid of this government. A Belfast boy who inspired a campaign to change organ donation laws in Northern Ireland has passed the milestone of 2,000 days on a transplant waiting list. Seven-year-old Daithi Mac Gabhann is battling hypoplastic left heart syndrome and needs a new heart. His father Mairtin has used the occasion to urge people to sign up to the NHS organ donor register. Most adults in Northern Ireland are now considered potential organ donors after Daithis Law came into effect last year. The Organ and Tissue Donation (Deemed Consent) legislation changed the way consent is granted. Adults are now deemed to have given consent as a potential organ donor after their death unless they choose to opt out or are in an excluded group. Daithi, who was awarded the freedom of Belfast earlier this year, has been on the waiting list for a heart transplant since 2018. In June he was temporarily suspended from the transplant waiting list, a decision which his father Mairtin said broke our hearts. Mr Mac Gabhann said: Transplant is currently Daithis only hope of survival and to have that taken away from us was devastating. Thankfully after all or nothing surgery in July of this year, Daithi is now back and active on the waiting list. This was a lesson to us of how fragile Daithis condition can be, and how quickly circumstances can change for the worse. Although Daithi is currently stable, we feel that time is still not on his side. Mr Mac Gabhann added: Please, take the two minutes and consider joining the NHS Organ Donor Register. Encourage your family to sign up, regardless of age. Please dont give up on Daithi and our campaign. While Daithis Law is in place, we must continue to take action. We are very proud that Daithis Law is in place and saving lives, but as a society we can do more. No amount of money can save my sons life, but words and discussions can. Share your organ donation decision with loved ones, and lets work together to save more lives. There are currently 47 children across the UK on the transplant waiting list for a new heart. MPs at Westminster last year progressed the stalled legislation on the opt-out donation system in Northern Ireland because the political impasse at Stormont meant local Assembly members were unable to convene to pass the regulations. Earlier this year Daithi received the Points of Light award which he given personally from Rishi Sunak when the Prime Minister visited Belfast. The Prime Ministers claims of there being no sense of a border in the Irish Sea ring hollow, MPs have heard. Unionists have been critical of post-Brexit trading arrangements, claiming the deal struck with the EU has distanced Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. Following further negotiations with the European Union earlier this year, Rishi Sunak contended that the Windsor Framework removed this sense of a border in the Irish Sea from the Northern Ireland Protocol. Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis disputed this on Wednesday during Northern Ireland Questions in the House of Commons. He said to Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris: Does the Secretary of State accept that for as long as there are customs declarations, physical searches and ID checks for businesses moving goods from Great Britain into Northern Ireland, even in the green lane, then the Prime Ministers view of there being no sense of a border in the Irish Sea will ring hollow? Mr Heaton-Harris responded: Im afraid, with the greatest respect to (Mr Gullis), I do not accept that. When we agreed to the Windsor Framework we committed a certain number of EU laws being maintained in Northern Ireland which has been of economic benefit to Northern Ireland even up to this point and will continue to be in the future. He said that businesses involved in the arrangements believe they are simple and very straightforward. The Government remains in dialogue with Northern Irelands largest unionist party, the DUP, over concerns around the framework. The DUP is refusing to participate in devolved government at Stormont until it is satisfied that unionist concerns around the framework have been addressed. While there have been suggestions from the DUP and the Government that the talks are nearing the final stages, no further details have been disclosed. DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson praised Mr Gullis for his excellent question, adding in the Commons on Wednesday: Our objective is to ensure that Northern Irelands place in our biggest market the United Kingdom is restored and protected in law. Will the Secretary of State work with us to ensure that where goods are moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland they are not subject to EU customs processes that are neither necessary or fair or right, and that save for animal health and the risk of smuggling that there should not be checks on those goods? Mr Heaton-Harris replied: I very much enjoy working with him on a regular basis to try and achieve the aims that he has put out. I would say we have gone a long way in the Windsor Framework in this place so far, but I look forward to continued engagement with him in the next few days because we do need to find a resolution to these issues that also means that we can reform Stormont and deal with other domestic issues in Northern Ireland. MBABANE The Prime Minister (PM), Russell Dlamini, has outlined his five-year plan to Cabinet ministers. This took place during the first Cabinet meeting yesterday. The PM and Cabinet ministers meet every Tuesday to deliberate on issues of government. These meetings include, but not limited to, deliberating on different draft Bills before they are tabled in Parliament by line ministers, deliberating on policies, strategic plans, among other governmental issues. The meeting was chaired by the PM, who is the official chairman of these meetings. Confirmed Government Spokesperson Alpheous Nxumalo confirmed the meeting and further stated that the PM took the opportunity to outline his terms vision. Cabinet met for the first time today, Tuesday, November 21, 2023 (yesterday). The PM took the opportunity of the Cabinet meeting and outlined his vision for the next five years, he said. Nxumalo said the PM would also take the nation into confidence and brief it on his vision. According to sources, the PM tasked all the ministers to ensure that they aligned with all the points that were raised during the recent Sibaya, which the King stated should be used to inform policies each ministry had, in ensuring they fulfilled their mandate. Improving service delivery and ensuring timely turnaround of all government projects and services was also among the many discussions that the PM highlighted. HIGHLIGHTS Tesla is reportedly looking into entering Indias EV market. The production unit could be established in India by 2025. It is considering Gujarat as one of the locations for its first Indian production unit. Elon Musks Tesla is one of the most tech-laden cars and car enthusiasts have always looked out for it. Sadly, Tesla is yet not available in India and fans have been hoping that it will come soon, even engaging with Musk himself on X (formerly Twitter). But it turns out that these wishes could come true sooner than anyone expected as word on the internet is that Tesla could arrive in India by next year, 2024. Lets find out more. According to a Bloomberg report, Tesla is currently looking into entering Indias EV market. For this, the company is currently in talks with the Government of India. It is trying to come to an agreement with the government that allows the company to ship Tesla cars to India as soon as 2024. The media reports also suggest that Tesla could be looking to set up a manufacturing unit in India itself and is making arrangements for the same. Also read: Musk meets PM Modi in New York and discusses the potential arrival of Tesla in India The production unit could be established in India by 2025. During this years Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, we might get a better picture of Teslas plans as it is considering Gujarat as one of the locations for its first Indian production unit, along with Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. All of these states currently have a well-established ecosystem for electric vehicles and their export. The company, however, is yet to finalise a state. Back in June 2022, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that they plan on making significant investments in the country and even plan on visiting India in 2024. Now reports suggest that Musk plans on making an initial minimum investment of $2 billion in India. In addition to this, the company even plans on buying more auto components from India itself which will be worth as much as $15 billion. We even hear that after the production of its EVs is in place in India over the coming decade, it could also produce its battery packs in India to further lower the cost. Also read: Elon Musk says X, formerly Twitter, might charge all users a small monthly payment However, there has been no official confirmation yet and the plans could obviously change. We should wait for an official confirmation before we start dreaming of Teslas on the Indian roads. HIGHLIGHTS The Samsung Galaxy A15 4G has been spotted on NBTC certification database. On the NBTC certification listing, the Galaxy A15 4G carries the model number SM-A155F/DSN. It could come packed with a 5,000mAh battery. The Samsung Galaxy A15 4G smartphone recently made its appearance on the Geekbench and FCC certification platforms. Now, the Galaxy A15 4G has been spotted on Thailands NBTC certification database, hinting at the imminent launch of the device. The NBTC listing of the upcoming A-series smartphone has been spotted by MySmartPrice. Also read: Samsung Galaxy A15 4G appears on FCC certification with 25W charging support Credit: MySmartPrice On the NBTC certification listing, the Samsung Galaxy A15 4G smartphone model carries the model number SM-A155F/DSN. Also read: Samsung Galaxy A25 5G India launch seems imminent as its support page goes live: Check expected specs The listing doesnt reveal anything about the upcoming Galaxy A15 4G smartphones specifications. Lets take a look at the expected specifications of the Samsung Galaxy A15 smartphone. The Galaxy A15 is expected to come packed with a 5,000mAh battery with 25W fast charging support. It will likely run on Android 14. The Galaxy A15 smartphone model will likely feature a 6.6-inch LCD display with a Full HD+ resolution and 480 nits peak brightness. The upcoming Galaxy A15 4G smartphone model is expected to pack an octa-core Helio G99 SoC coupled with a Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. Also, the Galaxy A15 4G is expected to come with 4GB of RAM. Moreover, the Samsung Galaxy A15 4G smartphone model is expected to come with dual SIM, MicroSD card, and NFC support. The Samsung Galaxy A15 will come as a successor to the Galaxy A14. The Galaxy A14 comes in both 4G and 5G variations. The Galaxy A14 4G runs on an octa-core Helio G80 SoC, while the 5G variant is powered by the Dimensity 700 chipset. For photgraphy, the Galaxy A14 4G model houses a triple-camera setup, featuring a 50MP primary camera. On the front, it features a 13MP selfie camera. HIGHLIGHTS The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone has been spotted on the BIS certification website. The Samsung S24 series will likely be announced in January next year. The S24 Ultra could be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. As 2024 approaches, so does the highly anticipated release of the Samsung Galaxy S24 series. This upcoming flagship lineup is expected to include the Samsung Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus, and Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone models. Recently, it was rumoured that the S24 series will likely be announced in January next year. Now, the Galaxy S24 Ultra model has made its appearance on the BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) certification website. On the BIS listing the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone carries the model code SM-S928B/DS, reports Gizmochina. Also read: Samsung Galaxy S24 will reportedly launch earlier than you thought: Details here Credit: Gizmochina Based on the listing, it seems like the smartphone is in line with the expected launch date. Also read: Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: Display, battery, camera & more leaked So far, rumours suggest that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone will likely feature a 6.8-inch WQHD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Also, it is expected to offer a peak brightness of 2,500 nits. This device could be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. For photography, the upcoming Ultra smartphone model is expected to house a 200MP 1/1.3-inch primary sensor offering up to 100x zoom, a 12MP Sony IMX564 ultra-wide side, and a 10MP Sony IMX754+ telephoto lens. Also, it will likely come packed with a 5,000 mAh battery with 45W charging support. Recently, it was reported that Samsung aims to make the Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24+ and Galaxy S24 Ultra the smartest AI phones ever. Moreover, a Samsung executive recently confirmed that the tech giant will support satellite connectivity for emergency services starting next year. This probably indicates that the upcoming Galaxy S24 series, which is expected to launch early next year, will likely feature two-way satellite connectivity for emergencies. The Thomson OP MAX 4K LED Smart Google TV (2023) review is a feature-rich 4K HDR TV that punches above its weight. Its IPS LCD panel delivers excellent colour accuracy and should be great for viewing content in well-lit rooms. The dynamic range and contrast you get from the IPS panel are not enough for an impactful HDR experience, but thats perhaps to be expected of all TVs in the affordable price segment. Thomson OP Max 4K LED Smart Google TV (2023) is an LED LCD TV that comes with a promising spec sheet bedecked with features like a TQ LED panel (not QLED) with narrow bezels, support for Dolby Vision and HDR10+, 40W audio with Dolby Atmos and more. Do these features converge to deliver a meaningful viewing experience? Lets answer that and more in our review! Thomson OP MAX 4K LED Smart Google TV (2023) Review: Specifications Model number: 55OPMAXGT9030 Display Panel Size: 55-inch Display Panel Type: LED LCD (IPS LCD) Display Panel Resolution: 3840 x 2160 4K UHD Display Refresh Rate: 60Hz Supported HDR Formats: Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10, HLG Speakers: 40W Audio formats: Supports Dolby Atmos and DTS TruSurround Software: Google TV ( Android TV 11) HDMI Ports: 3x HDMI (one with ARC) Other connectivity options: 2 USB 2.0 ports, Dual Band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, AV Input, Digital Audio, Antenna Processor: Quad Core Cortex A53, Mali G52 Built-in RAM and storage: 2GB + 16GB MRP 59,999; Best Price: Rs. 33,999 Thomson OP MAX 4K LED Smart Google TV (2023) Review: Design and Remote This Thomson OP MAX 4K LED TV features a fairly standard design, which you can also find in other TVs manufactured by SPPL. The feet are made of high-quality polycarbonate and can effectively support the TV on a table. All frequently used ports are side-facing, making them easily accessible. The metal chassis on the rear is solid and durable, while the narrow bezels on the front are non-distracting. While the design may not be considered premium, it seems quite appropriate in this price segment. The remote control is again the standard TV remote that we get on other SPPL TVs or from brands like Blaupunkt, Thomson and Kodak. It can connect to the TV via IR or Bluetooth. The build quality of the remote feels a bit flimsy but it is quite comfortable to use. There are dedicated keys to summon Google Assitant, to change user profiles and to switch inputs. The white colour of the D-PAD and Home button further make the remote easier to use in a dark ambience. The best part is that you get a customizable Daily Key as the fourth App hotkey that you can map to any app of your choice! Thomson OP MAX 4K LED Smart Google TV (2023) Review: Performance and Software This Thomson TV offers decent performance configuration for the price which includes quad-core processor, 2GB RAM and 16GB storage of which 11GB is free for users. It is not however a fast TV and feels particularly sluggish while multitasking say when you are playing content and are trying to switch picture modes simultaneously. Or when you are trying to fast-forward a movie. Thomson uses Google TV software with minimal customisations. The standard Google TV perks like Google Assistant, Integration with the Google Home app, Chromecast Built-in, and others work well. We didnt face any issues casting from popular apps on Android phones and iPhones. Also Read: RGB to PHOLED 8 Different Types of OLED Display Technologies You Should Know About Thomson OP MAX 4K LED Smart Google TV (2023) Review: Picture Quality Thomson markets this TV as TQ LED, but it is important to note that this is not a QLED TV but a standard 4K LED TV. It comes with an IPS LCD panel with wide viewing angles and we measured a contrast ratio of 1250:1 in movie mode (SDR) which is also the most colour accurate preset. The peak white in movie mode closely approaches D65, but the overall colour temperature tends to be warmer than the standard D65. As a result, many users may find themselves leaning towards the Standard or Vivid modes, even though these modes are regrettably not very accurate in terms of colour representation. For this review, we have tested the TV in movie mode using Spectracal C6 HDR2000 Colorimeter and Calman Ultimate software. The panel can reproduce 100% of the sRGB colour space and 93.4% of the DCI-P3 colour space. We also recorded 72.4% BT2020 coverage in UV terms. These are really good numbers for an affordable TV and comparable to what we usually see on affordable QLED TVs. The colour accuracy on the TV in SDR (movie mode) is rather great. We measured a delta error of less than 3. The luminance however doesnt strictly follow the standard gamma 2.4 or 2.2, which is perhaps to make the most of the limited panel brightness. Bright SDR scenes were handled quite well. In the dark scenes, we noticed that shadow details were a little crushed in both SDR and HDR content. Speaking of HDR, this TV supports popular HDR formats like Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and HDR10. In HDR10, the colour accuracy is again excellent with an average delta error less than three. We recorded a maximum brightness of almost 350 nits, which is standard in this price segment. The blacks are noticeably raised and the TV struggles to deliver impactful HDR highlights. Even subtle details like shadows on faces get clipped. During our perceptual testing, we noticed that the skin tones were natural in both HDR10 and SDR content. In Dolby Vision content, we noticed a slight red tint on fair skin tones. The colour of the grass and sky felt accurate in both SDR and HDR content. Overall, the picture quality exceeded our expectations. The panel is quite good at reproducing colours accurately, but expectedly falls short when it comes to dynamic range in luminance. Note: The first Thomson OP MAX 4K LED LED TV we received had some glaring issues with picture quality in Dolby Vision and with colour performance in SDR/HDR. Thomson then replaced our review unit with a new model. The findings mentioned above pertain to the updated unit. Also Check: What are MicroLED displays? How are they better than OLED or mini LED displays? Thomson OP MAX 4K LED Smart Google TV (2023) Review: Gaming and Audio The TV lacks gamer-centric features and a dedicated game mode. However, for casual gamers, the response time with consoles should suffice. In our testing with the PS5, gameplay was generally smooth. The HDR experience, however, is not particularly impactful. The Dolby Atmos audio on the TV is underwhelming, which prompted us to switch it off for improved dialogue clarity. The Audio gets fairly loud but doesnt feel well-balanced. For an immersive audio experience, you will need to invest in a soundbar. Should you buy it? The Thomson OP MAX 4K LED Smart Google TV (2023) review is a feature-rich 4K HDR TV that punches above its weight. Its IPS LCD panel delivers excellent colour accuracy and should be great for viewing content in well-lit rooms. The dynamic range and contrast you get from the IPS panel are not enough for an impactful HDR experience, but thats perhaps to be expected of all TVs in the affordable price segment. If you are into gaming, the TCL T6G in this segment should serve you better. AWS's generative AI functions support Taiwan startups innovation The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has changed many aspects of our lives. In particular, the launch of generative AI at the end of 2022 has created a large wave of technological innovation, leveraging text, images, music, videos, programming codes, and other data to create high-quality outputs. Applications include creation of coherent and smooth poems, business proposals with intricate details, even awe-inspiring movie scripts. Generative AI is enhancing creativity in AI technologies and creating more room for growth for startup teams as they seek opportunities for success. Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted the "2023 AWS Kaohsiung Industry Summit" on November 8, 2023, inviting key opinion leaders from the industry, government, academia, and research institutions, as well as experts from AWS Asia and Southeast Asia, to engage in dialogues on international trends in sustainability and future urban development. Robert Wang, Managing Director for AWS in Hong Kong and Taiwan, gave the opening speech based on the theme of "Connecting Kaohsiung with the World." Kaohsiung Mayor Chi-Mai Chen also spoke at the event to welcome the guests of the event. At the summit, Dean Samuels, Chief Technologist at AWS ASEAN also announced that AWS will connect AWS Joint Innovation Centers (JIC) in Kaohsiung with JICs in Singapore, Hong Kong and India to provide comprehensive support for local startups to find room for growth and accelerate technological developments in the southern Taiwan. During an exclusive interview after the event, Samuels also shared his experience in promoting cloud services to customers since joining AWS in 2012. He has witnessed the rapid development of technologies driven primarily by data, which has become a major trend that empowers digital transformation in different industries. With immense potential for business development made possible by generative AI, the benefits of generative AI will soon be recognized by senior business executives. The tremendous processing power of generative AI in natural language processing has given rise to many application paradigms, including a soaring number of mainstream applications for processing text and images. The business model powered by this technology forms a huge incentive for businesses to invest vast resources, hence starting a new wave of competition in the market. Samuels has identified changes directly attributable to generative AI in three fields. The first is its use in improving the efficiency of business operations. The results are particularly prominent for programming tasks in software projects because programmers can use natural language commands to direct generative AI to produce codes and accelerate the software development process. For instance, the management consulting company Accenture uses the AWS code generator called Amazon CodeWhisperer to accelerate coding efficiency. It reduces the development efforts of the Velocity team by up to 30% so that they can focus on improving security, quality, and performance. Amazon CodeWhisperer is a very effective tool and the best exemplification of the technology. The second important field is the creation of new user experience. The most evident example is the innovation of service chatbots. The chatbots designed with traditional AI in earlier periods immediately underwent immense changes made possible by generative AI. Instead of the Q&A generated by standardized keyword searches with "traditional" AI, generative AI now uses predictive mechanisms and technologies to create a smooth and effective user experience similar to conversing with a real human. He provided an example of generative AI in an online travel platform that allows consumers to describe their vacation plans in any way they wish, no matter how far-fetched their ideas are. For example, if one customer specifies "a carefree walk on the beach at 30C," the generative AI would automatically generate and recommend detailed travel plans. It can shorten the time required for travelers to plan their journeys and make traveling more convenient and easier. The third field is creativity. He took Generative BI (business Intelligence) in Amazon QuickSight as an example. Generative BI in Amazon QuickSight allows business teams to interact with data in natural language. Business users can create and share compelling data stories, while business analysts can build, refine visuals, and build complex calculations by simply asking QuickSight Q. For example, It can even use the analysis of product sales data in the past 12 months to recommend plans for improving product sales, and thereby create functional reports and graphs for business analysis. It helps decision makers take direct measures to promote product sales and inspires creativity for product ideas within the company. AWS Generative AI Technologies and Resources to Help Startups Take on Cross-Industry Development AWS is committed to supporting the development of startups. Samuels advises startup teams to enhance their capacity for technological development after taking the time to conceptualize their creative products and services. They can save time by familiarizing themselves with the diverse range of generative AI functions and tools launched by AWS. As generative AI technologies involve switching, selection, and use of several AI foundation models, and require the integration of different programming tools, developers must spend time on building their basic technical capabilities. He recommends a full range of technical training courses on generative AI organized by AWS, or joining the AWS startup accelerator to access related resources, including credits for providing startups with AI foundation model applications and a variety of computing services. They will also have access to services from AWS technical experts, as well as market exposure and marketing support. AWS will continue to help startups build optimal environments for generative AI development and help startups in Taiwan take the lead in generative AI innovation. Stellantis deepens ties with CATL, considering joint battery plant in Europe European automaker Stellantis and Chinese battery giant CATL announced that they have signed a non-binding MoU for the LFP battery supply in Europe. The pair is also considering building a joint battery plant in the region. According to an announcement on November 21, the MoU outlined a long-term collaboration between the two companies to build a technology roadmap and identify opportunities to strengthen the battery value chain. CATL will provide Stellantis LFP battery cells and modules locally in Europe to power the carmaker's EVs. The duo is also considering forming a joint venture with equivalent contributions, the announcement said. Reuters reported that Maxime Picat, Stellantis's global head of purchasing and supply chain, said the two companies plan to build a new gigafactory in Europe to produce LFP batteries. While declining to reveal possible locations for the new plant, Picat said Stellantis will increase LFP battery adoption on different car segments to enhance affordability, according to Reuters. Stellantis and CATL said the latter will offer LFP batteries to the automaker's passenger cars, crossovers, and EVs in the small and mid-sized SUV segments. CATL has expanded in Europe to supply local customers. The company has begun making batteries at its German plant since December 2022. It is constructing another factory in Hungary with a planned annual production capacity of 100GWh. CATL has said it will manufacture the Shenxing battery, a superfast charging LFP battery, at the two European plants. Stellantis aims to reach 100% passenger battery EV sales mix in Europe by 2030. According to China-based The Paper, the European carmaker has said it will launch EVs with lower-cost LFP batteries domestically. NCM ternary batteries have dominated the European EV market. Subscriber content preview SEATTLE A small pair of commercial buildings at 4224-4234 University Way N.E. recently sold for a little under $4.8 million, according to King County records. The sellers were two LLCs associated with Don Kennedy Real Estate, which had owned the duo for decades. . . . Subscriber content preview Photos by Tim Griffith [enlarge] LMN incorporated terracotta panels into the buildings facade to complement surrounding campus structures. Seattle architecture firm LMN is celebrating the recent completion of Clifton Court Hall at the University of Cincinnati. This new interdisciplinary education building co-houses six departments in the College of Arts and Sciences in a modern structure with a distinctive terracotta-paneled facade. . . . Subscriber content preview SEATTLE As planned, Downtown Emergency Service Center has acquired a former auto-sales lot in Lake City, where it's proposing a 120-unit supportive housing project. King County recorded the $6.5 million sale last week. The seller at 12051 Lake City Way N.E. was Hynes Holdings LLC, which had owned the property for decades. Brokers were not announced for a land sale worth about $156 per square foot. . . . MBABANE Deputy Director Pharmaceutical in the Ministry of Health, Fortunate Bhembe, is accused of having initiated an irregular advance payment to Avapharm for the purchase of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. It is alleged that the drugs were never delivered, resulting in the financial detriment of the government amounting to E121 168 700. Bhembe, who is currently on suspension, is alleged to have initiated the advance payment in the absence of a purchase order, contrary to the procurement procedures. The allegations against Bhembe were forwarded to her by the Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health, Khanya Mabuza. As per the correspondence signed and issued by the PS, Bhembe is being called upon to answer on seven allegations of possible misconduct against her. For purposes of this payment, you are alleged to have misrepresented to the accountant general that there exists a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Avapharm and the Government of the Kingdom of Eswatini, for the former to supply antiretroviral (ART) drugs when in fact, the MoU was by and between the Eswatini Government and Swazipharm, Mylan Laboratories and Royal Science Technology Park (RSTP) for the establishment of a joint venture company to be known as Avapharm (PTY) Limited for purpose of setting up and operating a manufacturing and packaging facility for the products used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, reads one of the accusations against Bhembe. It is further alleged that Bhembe purportedly misdirected government funds and procured sharp containers, 20 litres of plastic buckets and 10 litres of plastic buckets, which amounted to E12 088 248. Wastage This is said to have led to an oversupply, thus resulting to a loss and wastage of government funds, since these items demand was low. In another allegation, Bhembe stands accused of allegedly failing to properly administer and follow procurement procedures in the administration, storage and distribution of drugs. This act purportedly committed by Bhembe is said to have led to inaccurate quantification of the required drugs and medicines to the financial detriment of government which amounted to E83 082 520.66. Your alleged conduct of allowing suppliers to supply drugs and medicines with a shelf life below 18 months which endangered the lives of emaSwati, reads one of the seven accusations against Bhembe. She is also accused of having failed in her duties as head of pharmaceutical department, responsible for the procurement, storage and distribution of drugs and medicines to public health facilities, to ensure that there were no drugs shortage in public health. Bhembe is said to have also allegedly failed and/or neglected, as the head of pharmaceutical department, to note and initiate disciplinary action against Central Medical Stores (CMS) officers, namely; Nelisiwe Jele, Yoliswa Zwane, Brenda Mhlanga and Pholile Maphalala, who allegedly colluded with suppliers to receive drugs and medicines, which were about to expire. According to the correspondence inviting Bhembe to give explanation, it is further alleged that she failed to take disciplinary action against Gcina Dlamini and Jabulani Dlamini who are said to have colluded with suppliers to repackage and relabel drugs and medicine. The PS informed Bhembe that the above acts, as alleged to have been committed by her, amounted to misconduct. Bhembe was informed to forward her responses to the PS. The deputy director pharmaceutical, has filed an application for joinder in the interlocutory application that was filed by Sincedile Dlamini, which is currently pending in the Industrial Court. She entreated the court to interdict and restrain the chairman of the Civil Service Commission (CSC), PS in the Ministry of Health and the auditor general (AG) from continuing with the disciplinary process that has been instituted against her. It is further her plea to the court that it should declare the conduct of the respondents of continuing with the disciplinary action against her based on evidence and/or material derived from a report compiled by Funduzi Forensic Services, to be in violation of the court order that was issued by the Industrial Court on June 16, 2023 and to be in contempt. The allegations against Bhembe are annexed to her application. The matter is still pending in court. MBABANE Some teachers and members of a schools administration are among 10 suspects responsible for leaking the EGCSE papers. The over three teachers were responsible for the subjects which were leaked. Following the leakage of the Eswatini General Certificate of Secondary Education (EGCSE) papers, learners will be resitting the examination from November 27 to November 30, 2023. The papers to be re-written are Religious Education (RE) Paper I and II, Mathematics Paper III and IV, Physical Science Papers II and IV and SiSwati Paper III. Giving an update on the preliminary investigations into the leakage, Examinations Council of Eswatini (ECESWA) Registrar Dr Mandla Dlamini said police were finalising charges to be preferred against the perpetrators. Investigations Dlamini stated that during investigations, the implicated teachers confessed and owned up to being the source of the leakage. He said they allegedly committed the acts as a well coordinated syndicate, with a distributor, agents and candidates. He declined to name the school where the teachers are from. Dlamini said the implicated teachers tried to cover their tracks by refraining from sharing the original examination papers and scribbling the questions and topics on pieces of paper, before making arrangements for distribution. He said they also reached out to a number of candidates across the countys four regions, who confessed to having had access or receiving contents of some of the question papers before sitting the examination. According to the registrar, after the teachers copied the examination questions and topics and scribbled them on pieces of paper, they then sent these to the distributor, whose role was to compile and type the examination questions and topics. He stated that the typed questions and topics were then saved as PDF files, which were then distributed to the agents within the examination centres in all the four regions of the country, for varying amounts. Dlamini said the agents were clear on their mandate, as they only sold the questions and topics to peers who were willing to pay. Candidates who were not forthcoming with the payments were denied any chance or access to the information, the registrar said. Some of the papers were sold between E300 and E400 and in some instances, where candidates could not afford the fees, they formed groups and contributed varying amounts, ranging from E25 to E30 in order to get access to the examination information. During their findings, the registrar said with the SiSwati Paper III, it was proven beyond reasonable doubt that the candidates were well-guided on the topics contained in the examination paper. He added that for instance; They were given information on the story, poem and cultural event which would appear in the examination. Guided In the Religious Education Paper I and II, the candidates were also well-guided on the topics and questions that were contained in the examination paper. On the Mathematics Paper III and IV, the teachers involved also provided workings and answers over and above leaking and circulating the papers. The answers were circulated via WhatsApp. With the Physical Science Paper IV, which was an alternative to the practical paper, the registrar stated that a number of candidates had access to the confidential information that was sent to centres. Reached for comment, Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati confirmed that the matter was reported by ECESWA. Vilakati said investigations were still ongoing. The cost of keeping the pension age at 66 is a price most workers are prepared to pay, the Taoiseach has insisted. Leo Varadkar was defending the move to increase PRSI rates over the next five years to bolster the Social Insurance Fund. Mr Varadkars comments came as he was pressed on the issue by Sinn Feins Pearse Doherty during Leaders Questions in the Dail. Mr Doherty accused the Government of disrespecting workers by not giving them the option of retiring and claiming the state pension at the age of 65. The Sinn Fein TD insisted his party would offer that option if it was in government. PRSI rates for employers, employees and the self-employed will all incrementally increase under the Government plan. The rates will increase by 0.1 of a percentage point next year and by the same the following year. In 2026 and 2027 there will be 0.15 percentage point increases, with a 0.2 uplift in 2028. We did take a decision that we wouldnt raise the pension age beyond 66, other countries are doing that, reflecting the fact that demographics are changing, but weve decided not to raise the pension age to 67, and that comes at a cost, Mr Varadkar told the Dail. And well have to cover that cost by increasing, very gradually, employers, self-employed and employees PRSI over the course of the next number of years. And weve set out the schedule as to how that will be done. With the first increase of 0.1% in October of next year, and in a full year that will cost the average worker about 45 or 50 euros. That is the cost of not raising the pension age. And that is a cost I think that most people will be willing to bear. Mr Doherty accused the Government of letting down workers. Workers need to know that government will treat them fairly and protect their rights, he said. But lets be clear this is a government and indeed two parties that actually legislated to increase the retirement age to 68, it was only Sinn Fein and public pressure at the last election that put a stop to that. And people have been waiting now for years for the government to outline a very clear road map and hoping that that road map would tell them that they have the right to down tools at the age of 65 if they choose to, but they will be sorely disappointed today. Because what this government is telling that brickie, that hairdresser, that waitress is that you dont have the right to retire at the age of 65. That they have, again, let you down, that this government has fudged their responsibility and they are abandoning workers in this regard. Mr Doherty said research had demonstrated that it was possible to put the Social Insurance Fund on a sustainable footing and still provide an option for people to claim a pension at 65. Mr Varadkar accused Sinn Fein of expressing phoney passion on the issue, as he highlighted that the party backed a pension age of 66 in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein voted for the pension age to be 66 in Northern Ireland, he said. Why should people in Northern Ireland have a different retirement age than people in the Republic of Ireland? Is it because there are two Sinn Feins? It just doesnt make sense. In response, Mr Doherty claimed the Taoiseach was embarrassing himself with his comments. Fianna Fail politicians have warned of the threat of deepfakes as they called for the Electoral Commission to create a strategy to tackle the misuse of artificial intelligence in political campaigning. Deepfakes are digitally manipulated images, video and audio that are designed to create fake material featuring the likeness of an individual, often to misrepresent their views or speech. Senator Malcolm Byrne will table the motion which also calls for a national awareness campaign on AI and technological change. Mr Byrne, who is the party spokesman on higher education, innovation and science, said while AI has plenty of positives, the technology also brings challenges. One of our biggest concerns is around the potential impact of the misuse of AI through misinformation, disinformation, and particularly deepfakes on elections and referenda. He said deepfakes had been used in recent elections in Slovakia and Argentina. Speaking to reporters in Dublin, Mr Byrne further hypothesised that a deepfake of an Irish political leader saying something controversial could emerge during upcoming elections. The difficulty is once a video comes out and theyre sufficiently believable, it can be shared on social media thousands of times, and even when the denial is then published, you will still have people who will say: Oh well, look, you know, this wasnt a deepfake, this was really what he or she actually believed. And you can imagine, you know, the crucial days before an election or indeed in a referendum, how something like that could have an impact. Mr Byrne accepted that disinformation and misinformation had been factors in previous elections but said deepfakes had turbocharged the threat. The Government has established an AI Advisory Council, appointed of an AI Ambassador and plans to establish an AI cluster to support enterprise development in the sector. We also believe within the Oireachtas there is a need to set up a special committee to look at artificial intelligence and explore its impacts right across all areas of society. He said the education system also needs to change due to opportunities that AI present. Mr Byrne added: The most important piece of legislation that the European Union will enact this decade is the AI Act and its critical, we believe, that that takes a people-centred approach, that it focuses on a risk-based approach that minimises the risk, that it places serious obligations on the tech companies to ensure that they assess the potential risks of rolling out AI in any area. Senator Lisa Chambers said technology companies have a responsibility to protect users from the misuse of AI. Yes, we intend to regulate that sector and yes, we intend to legislate and to ensure that theres protections. They dont need to wait for that to do the right thing. There is a moral and an ethical responsibility on the part of social media companies to protect their users and to ensure that they dont infringe on the integrity of our electoral process. They have tools to do that. They dont need to wait for the regulation. Mr Byrne, who said he did not think Fianna Fail had used generative AI to create public-facing material, said his party would pledge not to misuse the technology. Tanaiste Micheal Martin has instructed Department of Defence officials to prepare legislation to remove the UN Security Councils ability to veto the deployment of Irish troops abroad, in a move described by opposition politicians as an attempt to undermine the states neutrality. The triple-lock system requires approval from the Dail, Government and either the UN Security Council or General Assembly for the deployment of more than 12 defence forces members on overseas operations. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council China, France, Russia, the UK and the US have the power to veto the adoption of any Council resolution. During a series of statements in the Dail on the report of the Governments consultative forum on international security policy, Mr Martin said: In effect, this triple-lock system hands the five permanent Security Council members a veto of our national sovereign decision to provide troops to peacekeeping missions. He added: The implications of this for Ireland and our current policy is simply something we have to take seriously. We cannot just revert to soundbites. We have to be honest about the fact that in respect of many of the worst crises internationally, where rapid, impartial and decisive international action is desperately needed, the Council has not been able to act. He said Ireland cannot ignore the systemic challenges facing the Security Council, adding this was most evident in how difficult it is to agree or renew UN peacekeeping mandates. It would therefore make sense, I believe, to amend our existing legislation in a manner which would allow us to respond to crisis situations with more agility and in making these important decisions, we are not surrendering our sovereignty. I have therefore instructed officials at the Department of Defence to prepare legislative proposals without delay that would govern the future overseas deployment of our defence forces. These could, for example, allow us to deploy personnel to multilateral missions overseas, where these are organised by a regional organisation such as the European Union or African Union or where the host country is requesting such support from the international community. While these proposals might not necessarily always include a role for the UN Security Council, they will of course remain fully consistent with the principles of the UN charter and international law. By making this change in the future, we would be removing the veto power of the Security Council members over Irelands engagement, while safeguarding the essential link with international law and good governance. Sinn Fein defence spokesperson Matt Carthy described the proposal as a fundamental shift in Irelands foreign policy that would radically undermine Irish neutrality as we know it. Mr Carthy said it was evident that the consultative forum was not a genuine exercise in public debate and was rather an attempt by Government to reshape public opinion. He said: There is clearly an agenda within Government that seeks to reframe the definition of Irish neutrality and to undermine the principle of Ireland having an independent foreign policy. The opposition spokesman accused Mr Martin of repeatedly trying to undermine the triple lock prior to the consultative forum taking place. Opponents of Irish neutrality and weve heard this repeatedly during the forum often claim that it, and particularly the triple lock, leads us beholden to Russia or China. But those opponents are not against Ireland being beholden to others when it comes to foreign policy, they simply want to chose who we are beholden to. Irish neutrality means not being beholden to others at all. Mr Carthy said there was an argument made at the forum that Russias actions in Ukraine determined the need to remove the triple-lock requirement in favour of a common European foreign policy or complete alignment with NATO. He added: If anyone had questions about the absolute necessity for Ireland to maintain an independent foreign policy, those questions were answered the day that the President of the European Commission and European Parliament landed in Tel Aviv and gave unequivocal support to Israel as it embarked on its ferocious illegal assault on Gaza. That position does not and would never represent the views or the values of the Irish people, and it reinforced the need to ensure that no European office holder can ever speak for Ireland without our direct consent and agreement. Mr Carthy, who noted that the triple lock allows for approval from the UN General Assembly rather than the Security Council, said the Tanaiste needed to answer the question of what mission the Irish troops had been prevented from participating in under the current system. A parliamentary question raised by Louth TD Ruairi O'Murchu to the Tanaiste and Minister for Defence Micheal Martin has shed light on the release on bail of one of the men accused in the murder of Private Sean Rooney. The news came to light on 15th November, following a Lebanese media report announcing the release of the suspect who had been in Lebanese custody. The case against the accused individuals is set to resume in Beirut on 15 December. In response to O'Murchu's question, the Tanaiste provided a detailed reply on the government's actions and concerns surrounding the release. The Tanaiste revealed that the Department became aware of the release through Lebanese media and immediately initiated inquiries to confirm the facts. The individual in question was reportedly released on bail for medical reasons, accompanied by the payment of a financial bond. The Tanaiste said that efforts are ongoing to obtain more details about the circumstances of the release. He also said he met with the deceased soldier's mother on 20th November to provide updates on the investigation's progress. In his statement, the Minister emphasised the government's commitment to ensuring justice for Private Rooney, asserting that he had conveyed this determination to his Lebanese counterparts and the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. He also stated that the government has engaged the services of a Lebanese legal firm to represent Irish interests during court hearings. The Tanaiste concluded by stating that: Given that this matter is now before the Lebanese judicial system, it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time. However, I can assure the House that my Department, the Embassy in Cairo, the Honorary Consulate in Beirut and I will continue to monitor developments very closely. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. 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%. The people of Cork have been asked to turnout in massive numbers this Saturday for what will be the citys seventh weekly rally in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. At a press conference in the Imperial Hotel held on Tuesday morning, Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign (CPSC), demanded a total ceasefire not just a humanitarian pause. We think its particularly important at this stage [that people take to the streets] because there is the possibility that there might be a temporary ceasefire announced in the next couple of days, however, that would be completely unacceptable it has to be a permanent ceasefire, co-chair of CPSC, Martin Shiel, told The Echo. And the international community, including Ireland, can play a particular important role here in pushing for a political settlement. Mr Shiel said the rallies in Cork city over the past six weeks have seen upwards of 1,000 people marching each week. There has been a really strong reaction from Irish people to this. From our viewpoint, its almost like were not organising this at all, its that people are just demanding that there be protests. Six weekends in a row with over a thousand people marching on an issue. When has that last happened? Socialist Party TD for Cork North Central, Mick Barry, speaking at the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign (CPSC) press conference at the Imperial Hotel in Cork on Tuesday. Picture: Cian O'Regan. The rally on Saturday takes place at 1pm, with the group assembling outside the City Library on Grand Parade. Co-chair of CPSC, Kathy Glavanis, is hoping people will once again show support. Weve been really very pleased with the way in which the people of Cork have come out and supported our demos and rallies for the last six weeks and we hope that theyll be there on Saturday, she said. Meanwhile, Socialist Party TD for Cork North Central, Mick Barry, said a total ceasefire is needed now to end the bloodshed. We need far, far, far more than a so-called humanitarian pause of a few days duration. What we need is a complete and total ceasefire an end to the bloodshed, an end to the massacres... w ere calling on the people of Cork to come out in massive numbers now this Saturday to demand exactly that and add to the pressure thats building all around the world, he said. Sinn Fein TD for Cork South Central, Donnchadh O Laoghaire, described it as crucially important that people support Saturdays rally. The slaughter that is happening in Gaza is absolutely heartbreaking we need a ceasefire. The slaughter that is happening of countless, innocent people is unconscionable, he said. Izzadeen Alkarajeh, owner of the popular Izz Cafe speaking at the Cork Palestine Solidarity Campaign (CPSC) press conference at the Imperial Hotel in Cork on Tuesday. Picture: Cian O'Regan. Izzadeen Alkarajeh, owner of the popular Izz Cafe, described Israeli action in Gaza as a savage assault. The population of Gaza are showing remarkable resilience. We need a total ceasefire and a lifting of the blockade with freedom of movement, he added. Palestinian campaigner, Rola Hamed-O Neill, who was also at the press conference, added: Were asking for an immediate ceasefire now in Israel and Palestine and also were asking for humanitarian and medical aid to be able to enter Gaza." Also taking place this weekend, Clonakilty For Gaza will hold a candle-lit rally in solidarity with the people of Gaza on Saturday at 5pm in Clonakiltys Astna Square. A spokesperson for Clonakilty For Gaza, Dominic Carroll, said: Every protest in every town in every country is fused into a single, worldwide demand for a ceasefire. We encourage the people of Clonakilty and surrounding areas to add their voice to the call for an immediate end to the war. A CORK mother whose daughter is set to feature on this years Late Late Toy Show has said she is brimming with pride ahead of her childs appearance on the highly anticipated annual show. Lottie ODriscoll-Murray, (12), from Shanakiel, is involved in the 2023 edition of the Toy Show, which airs tomorrow. Speaking about the audition process, Lotties mother Celine said after submitting an application, Lottie was asked to attend an in-person audition last month. We got called to go to Dublin on October 9. Lottie auditioned in RTE and then on October 20, we got the call to say that they wanted her to be a part of the show. She was beaming sure thats everyones dream, isnt it? It was a very proud moment, she said. There was a lot of excitement in the home! And while the all-important theme of the Toy Show is under wraps, as are the specific details of Lotties involvement, Celine said her daughter is greatly looking forward to appearing on the show. She also confirmed that pre-show jitters havent kicked in, saying: Shes not one bit nervous! Celine said friends and family at home and abroad cant wait to tune in on Friday. My brother is having my family around at his [to watch the Toy Show]. Lottie ODriscoll-Murray, (12) from Shanakiel, is involved in the 2023 edition of 'The Late Late Toy Show'. We were over in Boston there for Halloween we were over with [Lotties] aunt. Shes going to watch it on the RTE Player, Celine said. Celine said the past few weeks have been busy for Lottie, who is a First Year student at Gaelcholaiste Mhuire AG, in the lead up to the big night. We were up there [in Dublin] three Sundays in a row and shes after becoming great friends with the other kids. Its all go but its all worth it! The 2023 Toy Show will be Patrick Kieltys first since taking over as Late Late Show host in September. A 21-year-old Skibbereen man kicked the door of the local cathedral and when the sacristan took a photograph of him, to show to gardai, the young man shouted, I am 17 its porn to be recording me. Dylan Fahey, of Hillcrest, Skibbereen, County Cork, also threated the sacristan, who is in his 60s, that he would burn him out of his house. Mr Fahey, who is now 23, pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to a charge of threatening to cause criminal damage. Judge James McCourt imposed a sentence of 12 months, backdated to when the accused went into custody, two months ago, with the remainder of the sentence suspended from now. Judge McCourt said, I dont regard drunkenness as a mitigating factor. You have uttered apologies and written a letter, showing insight and remorse. You would not have behaved in this manner if sober. If you behave like that when drunk, you should stop drinking. When shown CCTV, you accepted it showed things as they were. In mitigation, you pleaded and you showed remorse. You have a supportive family and have shown an ability to work. Sergeant Padraig O Conchuir outlined the background to the incident: The accused kicked the door of the cathedral in Skibbereen and was then followed by the sacristan, who used his phone to take a picture of the accused from the street, when Dylan Fahey was in a chip shop. Sgt O Conchuir said the accused man shouldered the sacristan and put him off balance on the street. Dylan Fahey was out celebrating his 21st birthday that night, in May 2021. He later fled to the UK and Spain and was arrested two months ago in Tipperary, shortly after his return. Emmet Boyle, defence barrister, said of the incident, This would not have happened if he was sober. His apology to this man is unreserved. He insulted this mans dignity. THE well-known Cork advocate for the elderly, Paddy OBrien, has been honoured by the Irish Heart Foundation (IHF) for his tireless fundraising work. Mr OBrien was presented with the Fundraiser Supporting the Irish Heart Foundation award at the recent IHF inaugural National Volunteer Conference. The Irish Heart Foundation supports people who have been affected by heart disease and stroke. The charity said its work would not be possible without the passion and commitment of their amazing volunteers and fundraisers, including Paddy OBrien. Mr OBrien became a voluntary social worker at the age of 14 while he worked as a messenger boy, running errands for elderly people. At just 18 years of age, he organised concerts at a number of health institutions, including the former mental health institution on the Lee Rd. Mr OBrien went on to be a voice for the elderly, and for more than 60 years he has led many campaigns highlighting social issues affecting their lives. In 1977, he started the popular Over-60s Talent Competition. The competition was the biggest social event in Ireland for senior citizens at the time, bringing great joy and happiness to so many people, as well as raising money for the Irish Heart Foundation each year. Mr OBrien continues to hold concerts in nursing homes, and he regularly represents the Irish Heart Foundation at local events in the Cork area. Congratulating Mr OBrien and thanking all those who generously give of their time volunteering and fundraising for the Irish Heart Foundation, its CEO, Emma Balmaine, said the gift of time is the most precious gift we can give to others. Thank you for giving your precious time to volunteer with us at the Irish Heart Foundation and for helping to support our members to rebuild their lives after a heart event or stroke, she said. WHEN I expressed a bit of unease about puberty blockers in a recent conversation about transgender people, a secondary school teacher said I sounded like someone from the bad old repressed days in Eire, when gay people were either ridiculed or vilified or just misunderstood. This teacher undoubtedly knows what shes talking about, being at the coalface dealing with adolescents every day. There are a couple of pupils in her school who are transitioning. I dont know any transgender people, but that is no excuse for denying their reality. I took the teachers criticism on the chin. And Ive been listening to Fr Ted co-creator, Graham Linehan, on Irish radio. He also wrote The IT Crowd, Black Books and other comedies. He has been promoting his memoir, Tough Crowd, and talking about his controversial stance as an anti-transgender activist. It has, he claims, destroyed his career and wrecked his marriage. Yet, a Newstalk poll found that nearly half the population doesnt believe teenagers who wish to transition should be given puberty blockers. The research, carried out by Amarach, found that a similar proportion of people do not believe children should be offered gender-affirming care, such as counselling and hormone replacement treatment. The survey found that 49% of people believe teens who wish to transition should not have access to puberty blockers, while 27% do and 24% dont know or prefer not to say. It seems theres a lot of uncertainty and no doubt ignorance about this contentious issue. Graham Linehan seems like an unlikely contender for the role of the angry activist that he has become. I used to know him in Dublin years ago when he was a sharp and funny film critic for Hot Press magazine. A tall, lumbering guy with jet black hair, he was quite gentle, self-deprecating and good company. Now, he has put himself in a position that has attracted much hate on social media. This from a guy who never liked religious people having control over my life and co-wrote Father Ted as a result. But if that was meant to be a stab at the church, it was actually very benign. Even my parents (who were good Catholics) smiled at the clever and funny Craggy Island sitcom that sent up priests and piety. On Newstalk last week, Graham said Fr Ted was never meant to be overly satirical or hard-hitting. His co-writer, Arthur Matthews had relatives that were priests, whom he liked. There were priests in the school Graham attended and he had no problems with them. In other words, the two writers werent on a mission to tear down the church if it meant hurting religious people that they respected. Graham however, has, in many peoples eyes, abandoned tolerance for something bordering on fanaticism around the whole transgender issue. Being entrenched makes it difficult to tease out the issues at stake. But he was in emollient mode on Newstalk, unlike on RTE Radios This Week recently when he admonished the interviewer for not covering the transgender story as a journalist and instead, leaving it up to him, a comedy writer. Yes, Graham was combative in that interview, very much on the defensive. On Newstalk, he said the charge of transphobia or bigotry... (is) enough just to get anyone to pull the plug. He was talking about a big blow to his career. He got a phone call one day asking him if hed like to direct a series (which is on TV now) called Only Murders In The Building with Steve Martin and Martin Short. Thrilled to be involved in a project starring Martin, whom Graham worshipped, it was a rare bit of good news for the writer and his wife. But very soon after the call, Graham was told someone else had stepped in. He believes he lost a potentially important gig, due no doubt to being described as a bigot as soon as his name was attached to the project. Transgenderism is a highly contentious issue. But for those of us who think its just the latest topic in the culture wars, we should realise that transgender people have been documented in many indigenous, Western and Eastern cultures and societies from antiquity until the present day, according to the American Psychological Association. However, the meaning of gender nonconformity may vary from culture to culture. Theres no single explanation for why some people are transgender. Many experts believe biological factors such as genetic influences and prenatal hormone levels, early experiences, and experiences later in adolescence or adulthood may all contribute to the development of transgender identities. Graham, through concern for women and children, has cornered himself into an intransigent position. Hes not the only one, given the ignorance of some of us. By Cillian Sherlock, PA The operator of Dublin Airport has warned that a continuation of its current passenger cap could have an impact on charter flights for major sporting events such as the Six Nations and the 2024 Uefa Europa League final in Dublin. DAA chief executive Kenny Jacobs said the airport is fully compliant with its current cap of 32 million passengers per year but said the limit is leading to tough conversations with airlines. Appearing before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport, Mr Jacobs said DAA will be making a planning submission to lift the passenger cap by 25 to 40 million as quickly as possible but added it will take a while. In the meantime, Mr Jacobs said DAA is managing down capacity by taking away growth incentives for airlines and taking out transit passengers. He said there would be further difficult choices for general aviation and charter flights, for example around major sporting events. We may be saying you need to go to Shannon, Cork, Belfast because we are managing to the 32 million. He said scheduled commercial flights have to take priority over chartered flights. Mr Jacobs told the committee members that caps on passenger numbers do not work for sustainability and warned that 16,000 jobs that could be created around Ireland would be lost. DAA launched a 25 per cent discount on airport charges for new, quieter and cleaner aircraft this year (Brian Lawless/PA) Caps dont stop flying, they just move the flying somewhere else, he said. He said a cap on passenger numbers would reduce connectivity and move flights to other hubs such as Manchester and Edinburgh. He added: Caps dont work for sustainability, and they dont work for moving capital city traffic to regional airports. Mr Jacobs also said fares would go up and sustainability would go backwards as airlines would not place newer, quieter and more fuel-efficient aircraft in Ireland. He said: We are now turning airlines away, we are turning growth away. Asked by Green Party TD Steven Matthews how a previous announcement from Dublin Airport that it had welcomed 32.9 million passengers in one year was not a breach of the cap, Mr Jacobs explained that the planning laws allow for the exclusion of transfer passengers. He said the cap was about surface access of passengers who travel to the airport in a vehicle. Mr Jacobs said DAA was confident in its position that this was the correct interpretation of the planning restriction. On noise, Mr Jacobs apologised that some communities were not consulted around flights between August last year and February this year. He told members that there had been a 50 per cent reduction on noise in 2023 when compared with 2019. He said: We take noise very, very seriously. Dublin Airports north runway opened in 2022 (Brian Lawless/PA) Mr Jacobs said the use of the north runway had led to a 99 per cent reduction in the use of the crosswind runway on windy days, which routed flights over Whitehall, Beaumont and Santry. DAA also launched a 25 per cent discount on airport charges for new, quieter and cleaner aircraft this year. The chief executive said Dublin Airport had insulated 150 homes from noise, out of more than 200 eligible. He added: I see us insulating probably a couple hundred homes in the years ahead. Mr Jacobs said 38 homes very near the end of the runway had been bought out at 30 per cent above the market price. He told Mr Matthews that DAA was looking at getting a limit of 65 night-time movements changed to a noise quota, adding: Thats a much better option. The north runway opened in 2022. In 2019, there were more than 100 aircraft movements between 11pm and 7am. The DAA chief executive said it was totally inappropriate that fewer night-time flights were happening than when Dublin Airport was operating such flights from one runway. Mr Jacobs said Dublin Airport was a good neighbour in Fingal and that it had a 10 million euro community engagement fund. He also told the politicians that Dublin Airport aims to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. He said this would be achieved by reducing carbon emissions by 51 per cent by 2030 and converting 100 per cent of the airports light fleet to LEVs by 2025. Mr Jacobs said he expects Dublin Airport to submit a further planning application for an even higher passenger cap in the future. Germany, the birthplace of the Christmas market tradition dating back to the 15th century, continues to enchant locals and visitors with its magical holiday festivities. In 2023 the country boasts around 3,000 Christmas markets, each opening its festive stalls in late November. These markets offer the perfect opportunity for an atmospheric stroll through festively decorated alleys, where the air is filled with the aromas of traditional German treats. Thuringia: Stollen. Photograph: Meeta K Wolff. Thuringer Tourismus GmbH/Meeta K Wolff Culinary delights Indulge in the rich flavours of German classics such as Bratwurst and Reibekuchen (potato fritters served with apple sauce) or savour the warmth of mulled wine and punch. The markets are adorned with tempting delights like gingerbread, candy apples, Christmas Stollen, and hot chestnuts, providing a feast for both the eyes and the taste buds. Wood carving at a Christmas market. Photograph: Florian Trykowski. DZT/Florian Trykowski Artisanal treasures Immerse yourself in the holiday spirit by exploring wooden carvings from the Ore Mountains, artistic glass baubles, and unique handmade items from the region. With markets offering a variety of traditional and alternative goods, its the perfect occasion to find special presents for your loved ones. Leipzig: market place with Christmas market. Photograph: Philipp Kirschner. Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH/Philipp Kirschner Historical highlights Dresden, home to the oldest Christmas market established in 1434, now hosts six different markets scattered around the city centre. Meanwhile, Stuttgart boasts one of the largest Christmas Markets, where stalls compete in a dazzling roof decoration competition. Berlin has more than 100 markets including non-traditional options such as the Christmas Avenue hosted by the LGBTQI+ community, adding a unique touch to the festive atmosphere. Bremen at night. Photograph: Jonas Ginter. BTZ/Jonas Ginter Regional flair Bremens Schlachte Magic market combines traditional Christmas charm with a medieval touch, offering mead, fruit wine, and craftsman demonstrations. Aachens Christmas market celebrates its 50th anniversary, renowned for its unique Lebkuchen called Aachener Printen, a treat similar to gingerbread. Signature food and drinks Experience the delightful childrens punch, a non-alcoholic alternative to mulled wine, and savour Nuremberg Lebkuchen gingerbread, a centuries-old speciality. Dresdens Christstollen, a bread-shaped cake rich in butter, milk, and spices, is a must-try during the holiday season. Der Weihnachtsmarkt am Augustusplatz. Leipzig Tourismus und Marketing GmbH/Philipp Kirschner Christmas traditions In Germany, the Christmas tree takes centre stage in holiday celebrations. Families participate in the custom of Christbaumloben, praising neighbours trees and receiving small gifts in return. Christmas dinner, a time of love and connection, varies across regions, with hearty dishes like potato salad and sausages or roast goose with potato dumplings and red cabbage. Quedlinburg: Weihnachtsmarkt. Photograph: Nico Reischke. Quedlinburg-Tourimus-Marketing GmbH/Nico Reischke Advent city Quedlinburg Explore the Unesco World Heritage City of Quedlinburg in the Harz Mountains, transformed into an Advent wonderland in December. The town square hosts a Christmas market against a backdrop of stunning timber-framed houses. Additionally, private courtyards open their doors for independent markets, creating a unique experience for visitors. Quedlinburg is home to the largest Advent calendar in Germany, with 24 real doors revealing stories and sweet treats. Germanys Christmas markets offer a magical journey through centuries-old traditions, culinary delights and unique regional celebrations, making it the perfect destination for a festive holiday experience. In cooperation with German National Tourist Board Podcast: Exclusive interview with Renewcell CEO WAKEFIELD The new acting CEO of embattled Swedish textile recycler Renewcell speaks exclusively to Tom Bithell for the latest episode of our Ecotextile Talks podcast. Magnus Hakansson, who was appointed by the board of directors to replace Patrik Lundstrom, says the company needs brands to step up with orders for its Circulose pulp. But he insists that the company, which this week launched a strategic review in a bid to secure additional funding, offered the industry its best hope for circularity. "Renewcell is uniquely positioned to fulfil the task of circularity for the fashion industry and if the big well-known brands, actually want circularity, this is their best opportunity," Hakansson said. He accepted that Circulose's price premium was a factor in the lack of interest from brands but argued that it was unavoidable at this stage in the company's development. Hakansson argued that, in an industry marked by "tough, tough demands from purchasers to decrease costs", a shift in attitude was needed at the very top. "Without that push from the top in the big brands, I don't think it will happen whether we have a small or a big premium," he said. "Without clear guidance from the top, it will likely not happen but once they have that leadership, it will probably happen quite fast, because we are the only alternative out there." The December edition of our Ecotextile News magazine - out next week - includes an eight page report on the challenges facing Renewcell and the implications for the scaling of next gen materials. Read an extract HERE. Subscribe to our podcasts and radio shows by following us on Apple, Google, Spotify and Amazon Music, to automatically get alerts when we launch a new Ecotextile Talks Behind the News podcast. 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. The U.S. Coast Guard is searching off the Louisiana coast for the source of a leak in a 67-mile-long pipeline that has spilled over 1 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. When the leak started has not been specified, but it was first reported by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at 9:10 a.m. on Nov. 16, according to The Hill. The pipeline is owned by Main Pass Oil Gathering Company, which closed the pipeline earlier that same day around 6:30 a.m., as reported by The Guardian. Main Pass Oil Gathering Co. is owned by Third Coast Infrastructure, a company based in Houston, that has joined a Unified Command with the Coast Guard and the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinators Office to respond to the crude oil spill. However, officials have not yet determined a responsible party for the spill. Overflight teams observed visible oil Friday moving southwest away from the Louisiana shore. Three skimming vessels are working to recover oil on the surface, the Coast Guard shared in a statement. On Saturday and Sunday, overflights observed intermittent surface sheens. Additional surface observations are ongoing with two Coast Guard cutters on scene and additional overflights. According to officials, the spill, which happened about 20 miles out from the mouth of the Mississippi River, has not yet affected the shoreline, Nola.com reported. But some pelicans have been found with oil on their bodies, and officials are concerned about how the spill could impact vulnerable wildlife in the area. There are endangered and threatened species in Louisiana waters. Most of the coastal Louisiana is wetlands and marshes, and thats typically considered really sensitive to oil, Doug Helton, emergency operations coordinator for NOAA, told WWL-TV. NOAA is assisting with the spill response. Matt Rota, the senior policy director for Healthy Gulf, said one of the biggest concerns is how the oil spill may impact endangered sea turtles. This incident is larger than the average oil spill, The Hill reported. In the past 50 years, about 44 oil spills have each leaked over 420,000 gallons of oil in the U.S., and many other smaller oil spills of one oil barrel or less occur each year. At an estimated 1.1 million gallons, this oil spill is much larger, although an oil spill of any size still threatens the environment. The cause of the leak remains under investigation, but the incident comes amid increasing scrutiny of fossil fuel development in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists have been particularly concerned about the critically endangered Rices whale, a recently discovered type of baleen whale that lives in the Gulf of Mexico. Continued oil and gas development in the Gulf represents a clear, existential threat to the whales survival and recovery, scientists shared in a 2022 letter to the Biden administration, as reported by CBS News. The governments Natural Resource Damage Assessment on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill estimates that nearly 20% of Gulf of Mexico whales were killed, with additional animals suffering reproductive failure and disease. 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. A loud freight train travels within a few feet of a residential complex and next to train cars filled with coal in Denver, Colorado on Nov. 20, 2015. Kathryn Scott Osler / The Denver Post via Getty Images Sounds affect our daily lives, from birdsong and soothing melodies to jackhammers and jet engines. People who live in urban environments are often affected by noise pollution, but, due to systemic injustice, some are impacted more than others. And it not only affects humans, but wildlife as well. A new study by acoustic ecologists from Colorado State University (CSU) has found that marginalized communities are subjected to more urban noise that is louder, and that this exposure has been associated with negative outcomes for humans and wildlife. Understanding how systemic biases influence local ecological communities is essential for developing just and equitable environmental practices that prioritize both human and wildlife well-being. With over 270 million residents inhabiting urban areas in the United States, the socioecological consequences of racially targeted zoning, such as redlining, need to be considered in urban planning, the authors of the study wrote. We found strong evidence to indicate that noise is inequitably distributed in redlined urban communities across the United States, and that inequitable noise may drive complex biological responses across diverse urban wildlife, reinforcing the interrelatedness of socioecological outcomes. The study, Inequalities in noise will affect urban wildlife, was published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Sara Bombaci, one of the authors of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology at CSU, said that, because people derive benefits from wildlife and nature, ecological degradation compounds the injustices against people living in areas that were formerly redlined, a press release from CSU said. Redlining is now illegal, but it was the practice of discriminatorily denying services or loans to residents of non-white neighborhoods. We need to be thinking more about how these systemic injustices and problems are manifesting to shape ecology and evolution, Bombaci said in the press release. The researchers looked at the distribution of urban noise in 83 cities in the United States across historical racial divisions. They also examined hundreds of studies on how noise impacts wildlife. The findings of the study the first to evaluate noise inequality in redlined communities were that louder levels of noise are more commonly found in redlined urban areas, and that they detrimentally affect urban ecosystems in proportion to their volume. Beginning in 1933, grades were assigned to neighborhoods by the government-sponsored Home Owners Loan Corporation based on wealth and race. Neighborhoods deemed grade A were richer and whiter, while grade D neighborhoods with residents from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds had red lines drawn around them. In 1968, redlining was made illegal, but disparities endured in these communities due to decades of divestment. The research team found that there was a 17 percent higher maximum level of noise in grade D neighborhoods than in grade A neighborhoods. Grades C and D neighborhoods were also more often found to have maximum noise levels higher than the level known to lead to physical pain, hearing loss and stress in humans. This is directly linked to structural racism, Bombaci said. Theres a clear signal that ties directly to whether these communities were redlined. Effects on human health caused by noise pollution include insomnia, stress, hypertension and an increased risk of stroke and heart disease. Persistent loud noise is taxing on wildlife as well. It can affect animal communication, distribution, community structure, foraging, fitness, movement, mating and reproduction. Noise can cause animals to avoid particular areas and can cause some species to be more vulnerable to predators. Denver is one of many cities that are working toward equitable urban planning in order to improve access to green space and parks in underserved communities. Bombaci pointed out that noise should be a consideration in those plans. If were adding green space without mitigating impacts of noise, we might not be fully recognizing the benefits of these green spaces, Bombaci said in the press release. Bombaci added that continued noise pollution means wildlife may not recover in urban green spaces, but urban planning, noise mitigation and conservation funding can be helpful. The National Medical Commission (NMC) today, Wednesday, November 22, released a public notice addressing several issues related to the Foreign Medical Graduates (FMGs) or Indian students pursuing medical education from foreign countries. In the recent past, there have been several issues in relation to the FMGs. The public notice addressed points like required internship period for the FMGs, academic mobility programme for students, time limit to qualify FMG exam, validity of medical degree obtained from Philippines and so on. The clarifications released by the apex medical education regulator have received mixed responses from the medical community. While some of the concerns pertaining to the FMG community have been addressed, a few students are still left in confusion. FMG transfer allowed for Ukraine students within next three months "In continuation to the earlier scheme dated 15th September, 2022 namely Academic Mobility Program, NMC has decided to extend such scheme as a one-time measure to the FMGs returning from Ukraine to avail the benefits of said scheme and complete their remaining medical course", says the notice. The public notice stated that the option of transfer/migration/mobility shall be available within 3 months from the date of issue of this public notice, i.e, November 22. Reacting to this development, Deepak Kumar, a 2021-batch student from Ternopil National Medical University, Ukraine, said, We are very happy that finally NMC has addressed the issue. We have been continuously protesting for six months. We visited NMC, met the Union Health Minister, protested at Jantar Mantar and finally our demands have been addressed. NMC also clarified that we can clear the FMG examination within 10 years of completing our degree which is good news. Many parents and students from different states also supported us in our fight. We also want to thank Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya and Anil Radadiya sir from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for cooperating with the students and fulfilling our demands, the student added. Philippines FMGs eligibility certificate issue yet to be addressed? On the other hand, the students currently pursuing their degree from the Philippines say that their concerns have not been resolved in the new public notice released by the NMC. To recall, the validity of medical degrees of the Indian students pursuing their medical courses in the Philippines has been in question ever since the National Medical Commission (NMC) released the Foreign Medical Graduate Licentiate (FMGL) Regulations 2021. As per the regulations, the medical degree acquired in the Philippines has become invalid to practise in India. This especially poses risk of employability for students who were already studying in the country before the guidelines were released by the apex body for medical education in India. The new guidelines do not add any solution to our problems and are basically repeating the regulations released in 2021. Because of these regulations, students who had taken admission in the Philippines before 2021 are stuck with no options. All the students should be treated equally as we are also Indian citizens. If the NMC has allowed transfers to Ukraine students, they should give us a one-time exemption from these regulations to save our future. This is not our fault as the regulations were released in the middle of our academic course, said Samunder Singh Rajpurohit, who took admission into a medical college in the Philippines in 2020. The public notice released on Wednesday states that FMGs who were studying BS Course or had taken admission in Bachelor of Science (BS) Course at the time of publication of FMGL Regulation in 2021 are not not eligible. However FMGs having taken admission in MD Course on or before 18.11.2021 are eligible to complete the course and subsequently write FMG Examination in India, the official notice added. However, even these FMGs would be required to undergo one year of internship in order to compensate for the deficiency in their training from parent foreign medical college followed by CRMI after obtaining provisional registration, since their course is of 48 months, unlike 54 months MBBS course in India. More than 200 pigs from Denmark allowed to enter Mexico Mexico's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has approved the safe import of 220 pigs from Denmark. Prior to this development, the animals had been inspected by Mexican officials in Denmark. Senasica veterinarians traveled to the country to verify the sanitary condition of the pigs, a move that minimised the risk of introducing exotic pests or diseases. The 160 females and 60 males of the Yorkshire, Landrace, Duroc and Pietrain breeds, between eight and 16 weeks of age, were then transferred to breeding farms in Jalisco, Mexico, after their arrival and inspection. Years earlier, Mexico's National Service for Agri-Food Health, Safety and Quality (Senasica) and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration (DVFA) reached an agreement to import Danish live pigs for breeding into Mexico under the Verification at Origin scheme in 2014. In 2015, the first import of 27 Danish animals to Mexico took place and since then, Denmark has sent 1,552 pigs to the country. For years, Mexican and Danish veterinary services have been exchanging technical and scientific knowledge on preventive programmes to reduce the risk of introducing pig outbreaks and diseases. Mexican specialists have attended training courses in Denmark on issues related to the health and safety of swine production, as well as the actions taken by the Danish health authority to reduce the risk of African swine fever entering its territory. - Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Mexico) Renewable Energy Generation Hub at Andreas Airfield A community consultation is being held next week (November 29) in Andreas regarding the potential for a renewable energy generation hub at Andreas Airfield. The company, IPV Flexgen is working with the landowners of Andreas Airfield and evaluating the potential for a generation hub that could produce up to 25% of the electricity required by the Isle of Man. The proposed privately funded project would incorporate a mix of renewable energy technologies to provide greater levels of daily power availability and grid stability. The technologies under consideration are: Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Ground-Mounted Solar Photovoltaics (Solar PV) On shore Wind Technology Battery Storage The AD plant and the Solar PV will be the cornerstones of the project, which it says will provide greater energy sovereignty and local economic growth. AD is a process in which bacteria break down organic matter such as grass or manure in the absence of oxygen. Energy FM spoke to Ed Jessamine, Managing Director of IPV Flexgen who explained the benefits of an AD plant compared to other renewable energy options, along with a route to market it would give farmers if the project goes ahead. The AD plant would produce methane which can be used for generating electricity. IPV Flexgen has carried out a series of planning evaluations and believes that Andreas Airfield is an ideal site for both energy and commercial development. The company would like to have an open dialogue with the local community to see if its ideas are something that the community might welcome. The community meeting will be held at Andreas Community Hall on Wednesday, November 29 at 7:30pm. Videos Android 14, the latest version of Googles mobile operating system, arrived on October 4 . Since then, it has slowly started rolling out to some newer phones, tablets and foldables. Android 14s user-facing enhancements broadly fall into four categories: accessibility, customization, privacy and security. Below, is a list of all of the updates biggest features, along with instructions on how to access and enable them. To compile this how-to, I used a Pixel 8, so what follows reflects how things are done on stock Android. On some phones and tablets, certain options may be located in other parts of the operating system or require a slightly different process to turn on. Even if thats the case, the instructions here should help you find your way around. And if you want to find out when (or if) Android 14 will arrive on your device, check out our dedicated guide. In short, many manufacturers, including OnePlus and Nothing, are still finalizing their first stable Android 14 builds, and they may need more time to complete bug and quality assurance testing. At the bottom of this how-to, you will also find information about Googles ongoing QPR betas, which include bug fixes and enhancements the company is testing ahead of its first Android 14 Pixel Feature Drop. Accessibility Flash notifications Two screenshots of Android 14's flash notifications feature. The second screenshot shows the two different color notifications. (Screenshots by Igor Bonifacic / Engadget) New to Android 14 are flash notifications, a feature that allows the OS to trigger your phones camera flash or brighten the screen when notifications arrive or an alarm goes off. This is particularly helpful to people who may be hard of hearing. Previously, support for flash notifications was spotty on Android, with some manufacturers most notably Samsung offering it while others did not. Users can enable flash notifications from their devices Settings menu. Swipe down from the top of your phones screen to access the Notification Shade, then swipe down again to expand the Quick Settings. Tap the cog icon on the bottom of right of the screen to access the main Settings menu. From there, tap Notifications, then Flash notifications. Two toggles allow you to enable camera and screen flashes independently of one another, and, if you tap Screen flash, you can also tweak the color of the flash, with Pixel phones offering 12 different options. Improved support for hearing aids Screenshots of Android 14's new dedicated Settings page for hearing devices (Screenshots by Igor Bonifacic / Engadget) Flash notifications arent the only new Android 14 feature for those who may be hard of hearing. In Android 13 and prior, Google grouped hearing aids in with other Bluetooth devices. Now, the former have their own dedicated page within Android 14s settings. To access the page, open the Settings app, scroll down and tap Accessibility, then scroll down and tap Hearing devices. Here you will find an option for pairing new hearing aids with your phone, and a toggle that allows you to add dedicated shortcuts for said device. On Pixel devices, users can both add an accessibility button that lives on the side of their phones screen, and configure the volume buttons so that when you hold down both, your phone will take you directly to the hearing devices menu. Theres also a toggle that Google notes should improve compatibility with telecoils and reduce unwanted noise. Larger fonts Screenshots of Android 14's display size and text menu (Screenshots by Igor Bonifacic / Engadget) For visually impaired users, Google has added support for larger fonts and smarter scaling. On Pixel devices, Android can now make text up to 200 percent larger where before the maximum was 130 percent. The new system is built around non-linear scaling, so text that is already big such as titles and headings wont increase in size as much as other, smaller elements. To increase the size of text and interface elements on your phone, open the Settings menu, then tap Display, followed by Display size and text. In addition to two sliding scales that allow you to change the size of fonts and everything on screen, this page features two toggles that you can turn on to bold all text and enable high contrast fonts. The first time you tweak your phones font size settings, Android 14 will automatically add a font size settings option to the final page of the quick settings menu. You can access this menu by swiping down from the top of your phones screen to bring down the notification shade. Swipe down again to see the full quick settings menu. To edit the order in which menu items appear, tap the pencil icon that appears when the full quick settings menu is on screen, and then hold and drag the tiles you wish to move. Better pinch to zoom functionality Two screenshots showing off Android 14's new magnification settings. (Screenshots by Igor Bonifacic / Engadget) In addition to more robust font scaling, Android 14 features a redesigned magnifier tool that allows users to quickly customize how much of the screen theyd like to see enlarged. The panel offers four different magnifier sizes and the option to enable diagonal scrolling. It also includes a scale you can use to increase or decrease the zoom level. To enable the panel, open the Settings menu, tap Accessibility followed by Magnification. As with flash notifications, you can bind the magnifier tool to an on screen accessibility button or both volume buttons. Customization More wallpaper and lock screen customization Two screenshots of Android 14's new customization (Screenshots by Igor Bonifacic / Engadget) Although technically not new to Android 14, its more than likely that the two wallpaper features Google previewed at I/O 2023 will arrive on most non-Pixel handsets alongside Android 14. The new features allow users to create custom wallpapers with up to 14 of their favorite emoji or with the help of a built-in AI image generator. The new customization settings are accessible directly from the homescreen. Long press the home screen and tap the top option, Wallpaper & style to open the relevant menu. From there, you can find the new AI and Emoji wallpaper options by tapping More wallpapers. Both options are situated at the top of the interface. The AI option has a few limitations worth keeping in mind. To start, you must select a theme. As of this article, there are 12 on offer. Additionally, Google doesnt currently allow you to write a prompt from scratch. Instead, each theme comes with a few parameters that the user can define, and here again the options are limited to the ones Google gives you. The new lock screen customization options are accessible from the top of the Wallpaper & style screen. Tap Lock screen, and then drag your finger or thumb either left or right to scroll through the different options. To tweak the color and size of the clock, tap Clock color & size. For additional tweaks, including the new option to add up to two shortcuts to your phones lock screen, scroll down the interface. Regional preferences Two screenshots of Android 14's new regional preferences menu, which allows users to set their preferred temperature scale and first day of the week. If youre an American who lives abroad (or a foreigner who finds themselves frequently visiting the US), Android 14 allows users to set system-wide preferences for whether apps should display temperatures in Celsius or Fahrenheit or treat Sunday or Monday as the start of the week. Additionally, once you set those preferences, Android 14 knows to carry them over between backups. Separately, the OS offers more robust support for gendered languages like French and German. To set your regional preferences, open the Settings menu, tap System, then Languages, followed by Regional preferences. When I sat down to write this story, searching for Regional preferences using the Settings apps built-in search feature did not point me in the right direction. If you run into a similar issue, follow the menu flow described above. Privacy and security Data protection Android 14 makes it easier to see how advertisers and other third parties are using your data and thereby decide if you want to restrict your app permissions with a new monthly notification that details any data sharing changes the apps on your phone may have made in the past 30 days. You dont need to enroll in these to start seeing them, though a footnote on Googles website notes this feature is only available for certain apps. End of support for older apps Android 14 doesnt allow users to install apps that make use of application programming interfaces (APIs) that date back to and before Android 5.1. Googles reasoning for this is that a lot of malware programs target vulnerabilities found in older and outdated APIs. In practice, this is mostly likely to affect older games that havent been updated in more than a few years. That said, if you have a Lollipop era app or game installed on your phone when you go to download Android 14, it will continue to work even after your phone starts running the new OS. More nuanced photo and video sharing A screenshot of Android 14's new data protection notification, which allows you to limit the photos an app can access. (Screenshots by Igor Bonifacic / Engadget) Borrowing a page from iOS, Android 14 adds more nuanced sharing options for photos and videos. Now, when an app requests access to your media files, you can choose to give it access to all, none or only some of your photos and videos. Previously, this was an all or nothing proposition. You should see a new prompt reflecting the redesigned permissions the first time an app asks for access to your photos and videos. If at any point you change your mind, you can review all of your app permissions from the Settings app. After opening the menu, tap Apps, then tap the name of the program you want to review (you may need to tap See all apps to find the specific one youre looking for), followed by Permissions and then Photos and videos. If you plan to change the permissions for more than one app, theres a helpful See all apps with this permission option that will appear toward the bottom. Separately, Google has also tweaked Androids Share Sheet. With Android 14, developers can add custom share targets to the interface, and the OS can pull in more app data to better inform the priority of actions. In theory, this should make the Share Sheet more consistently useful. PIN enhancements With Android 14, the humble pin has received a pair of enhancements. First, theres a new option that allows you to disable the animation that plays on the lock screen when you input your PIN. In theory, this should make it harder for onlookers to spy your code. Second, theres a new auto-confirm option that makes it so you dont need to tap Ok after tying out your PIN, thereby reducing the time it takes to open your phone. For security reasons, this is only available with six-digit PINs. Both options are found in the Enhanced PIN privacy section of the Security settings menu. The auto-confirm unlock is enabled by default when you set a six-digit PIN. Everything else Battery life Android 14 doesnt include any tentpole battery-related features like Marshmallow did with Doze . Nonetheless, Google claims the OS should be less of a power hog, thanks to refinements the company made to how the software handles background tasks, downloads and uploads. Health Connect integration Google Health Connect (Google) In late 2022, Google released Health Connect , a platform it jointly developed with Samsung to enable health and fitness apps to more easily share data between one another without compromising on user privacy. With Android 14, Health Connect is integrated directly within the operating systems Settings. Its accessible from the Privacy page of the dashboard. Ultra HDR Lastly, Android 14 includes built-in support for Googles new Ultra HDR picture format. The format embeds a high dynamic range tone map directly within the metadata of an image. On devices with HDR-compatible displays, Google says Ultra HDR will produce images with more vibrant colors and contrast. The nifty thing about the format is that its fully backward compatible with most devices. thanks to the fact it makes use of the .jpg extension. On devices with SDR displays, the viewer will see a regular SDR image. What about the next two Pixel Feature Drops? The Pixel 8 retains a matte finish on its frame while the Pixel 8 Pro features polished sides. (Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget) As mentioned above, Google is currently conducting two quarterly platform release (QPR) betas . For the uninitiated, these see the company testing tweaks that will eventually arrive as part of future Pixel Feature Drops. Google is expected to release the first one before the end of the year and the one after that in March. You can take part in the QPR1 and QPR2 betas by enrolling in the Android Beta for Pixel program . Once the first Android 14 Pixel Feature Drop arrives, Ill update this article to detail whats new since the release timing of specific features can change. In the meantime, what follows is a non-exhaustive list of the changes Google has been testing. Credit for spotting many of these goes to former XDA Developers reporter Mishaal Rahman . QPR1 The highlight of the first beta is a redesigned Software updates page that is easier to find and brings together system, app and Play Store updates in one place. Considering the amount of taps it currently takes to manually check for updates, this is a welcome change. Another notable enhancement sees Google tweaking the Pixels built-in Clock app to add weather information to the world clock page. This change is carried over to the apps optional widgets. QPR2 As for the second beta, the highlight here is a per-app screen recording option. This is a change Google has been teasing for a while, and it looks like its finally on its way early next year. Elsewhere, QPR2 adds an outline to the volume slider, making it easier to see just how loud your phone is at any given moment. Some people have also reported that QPR2 reduces the amount of time it takes to install software updates anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. You may not be able to use the chatbot right away, even if you're enrolled in the Insider program. Folks who are still sticking with Windows 10 (or who cant install Windows 11 on their machine) may now be able to check out one of the most buzzed about features in years on their machine. Just a few days after Microsoft confirmed it would bring Copilot to Windows 10 , users with eligible devices can install a Release Preview build that includes access to the generative AI-powered assistant. Youll need to be enrolled in the Windows Insider tester program to install the preview build and potentially try out Copilot on Windows 10 Home or Pro. Theres no guarantee youll get access to the chatbot immediately either. Microsoft says It may take time for your device to be confirmed as eligible for Copilot on Windows so it may not show up right away. To get swift access to Copilot when it's confirmed your machine is eligible, Microsoft suggests turning on the Get the latest updates as soon as theyre available by going to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update. To run Copilot, your system will need at least 4GB of RAM and a display adapter that supports a resolution of at least 720p. Microsoft notes that the preview of the chatbot is only available in select markets (i.e. North America, and some areas of Asia and South America) for now, so you may be locked out on a geographical basis. Microsoft Copilot in Windows 10 (Microsoft) There are some other quirks that may preclude you from checking out Copilot on Windows 10. It wont work if you position your taskbar on the left or right of your display. Youll need to have the taskbar in a horizontal orientation. Copilot isnt fully compatible with multi-monitor setups either. Youll only see the icon on your primary display. In addition, Copilot wont be available on Windows 10 Pro machines that are managed by an organization for the time being. To fire up Copilot when its available on your device, click the icon that appears on the right side of the taskbar. Through the chatbot, you can ask questions, manage Windows features and interact with documents. As The Verge notes, Copilot works slightly differently on Windows 10, if only because some Windows 11 features arent available. Several key apps in the newer OS have their own generative AI-based features baked in . Washington, DCDecember 16, 2023, marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, a key event in the American Revolution. Author Jack Warren, Jr. discusses the impact of the Boston Tea Party and much more about the revolution in his all-encompassing book, Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution. He takes a profound look into British America, the Revolutionary War, the birth of a new nation, what freedom truly means, and how the events of the past hold significant importance even in modern society. View the book trailer at https://bit.ly/FreedomBookTrailer The Boston Tea Party was an incident in which American patriots threw over 300 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor to protest unfair taxation from the British. Afraid that the British parliament would hold too much power if they could impose taxes, colonists began to revolt. One action they took was making it impossible for British goods to be sold in the colonies. "Patriot leaders were determined not to allow the tea to be sold in the colonies," Warren recalls in Freedom. "Three tea shipsthe Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaverarrived in Boston Harbor. Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the three ships to leave Boston without unloading their cargo. British Admiral Montagu ordered the Royal Navy warships in the harbor to prevent the ships from sailing. Boston patriots were equally determined to prevent the tea from being unloaded." This event and many others reveal the bravery, intelligence, and spirit of the American patriots. Beginning in the British Colonies of America, Freedom delves deep into what planted the seeds for revolution, the Revolutionary War, important figures, and the ideals that the new nation was built upon. "It tells the pivotal story of the courageous men and women who risked their lives to create a new nation based on the idea that government should serve people and protect their freedom," Warren says. Accompanied by a vast collection of full-color reproductions of paintings of the colonies, people, battles, and maps, as well as a multitude of quotes from America's founding fathers, Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution is accurate, detailed, and truly captivating. 'FREEDOM' has also won the Literary Titan Gold Book Award. This prestigious accolade is a tribute to books that represent extraordinary achievement in the literary world. "Jack Warren "seeks in this substantial volume to explain why the American Revolution still matters" and "draws on diverse voices and highlights the impact of the war on a wide range of people in this comprehensive and lavishly illustrated account." ---Publisher's Weekly Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution, ISBN 9781493071708, $59.99, 456 pages, Lyons Press, 2023. Available on Amazon and www.AmericanRevolutionInstitute.org/Freedom About Jack D. Warren, Jr.: Jack Warren is chief executive of The Foundation of American Ideals and editor-in-chief of The American Crisis, a magazine of history and commentary. A native of Washington, D.C., his work focuses on the enduring achievements of the American Revolution and the ideals shaped by our revolutionary experience. He has been studying and reflecting on American history since he learned to read. A graduate of the University of Mississippi and Brown University, he is an author and lecturer and is actively involved in historic preservation and promoting effective history education. During the summer of 2020, he sat beside a statue of George Washington to talk to protestors about why we have honored Washington and ought to honor him stillWashington challenged a world that was grotesquely unfree and laid the foundations of free societywhile protecting the statue from vandalism. He and his wife, Janet, have three grown children. He is an editor of The Papers of George Washington, a long-term team project to collect, edit, and publish all of Washington's extant papers. From 2004 to 2021 he was executive director of the Society of the Cincinnati, where he was founding director of the American Revolution Institute. His books include America's First Veterans, The Presidency of George Washington, and A Covenanted People: The Religious Tradition and the Origins of American Constitutionalism. He was the featured speaker on Washington in a series of history dialogues for members of Congress and published in David Rubenstein's The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians. He has also appeared on the PBS NewsHour, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, American Presidents, and NPR's All Things Considered Media Contact: For a review copy of Freedom: The Enduring Importance of the American Revolution or to arrange an interview with Jack Warren contact Scott Lorenz of Westwind Book Marketing at scottlorenz@westwindcos.com or by phone at 248-705-2214. Reach Lorenz on Twitter @abookpublicist. BUTTE, Mont. -- While most of us have been enjoying a much tamer autumn than usual, not everyone agrees--just ask your local hunters. "My family--I have a family of hunters... it's all we ate when I was a kid," said Breane Lindvall of Philipsburg. Lindvall is one of those hunters, being a Montana native who's spent much of her life with rifle in hand and game in her sights. Lindvall and her family of five live off the elk that they hunt, and she says that just two can last them an entire year. But with this fall's warmer temperatures, higher humidity, and lack of snow, those elk have yet to enter their winter range. And that's made maintaining the Lindvall way of life a challenge. "The elk are up high... they're not really coming out of the timber because they don't have much of a reason to," Lindvall said. "They've got feed in the trees... the weather is good, the conditions are good. They can hide better." "It's been a struggle," Lindvall continued. "You can't track them. You're kind of guessing at this point." And with only a week left in the late rifle season, time is running out. But hope may be on the horizon. Temperatures in the teens and twenties with a fresh pack of snow are the ideal conditions for hunting, and that's exactly what's in the forecast this Thanksgiving. It may be a last-minute scramble, but that's better than nothing. "There have been times when you shoot an animal on the last day, and in the last hour, or in the last minute," Lindvall said. "It happens all the time, so we do have hope." "But you just have to keep trying," Lindvall continued. "You don't know what's out there when you're sitting on the couch." If the weather does indeed cooperate, perhaps it'll be venison instead of turkey on the Thanksgiving dinner table for Montana hunters this holiday. Rolling out labels which identify food products with more than 50% of its ingredients from overseas could bolster UK food production, NFU Scotland has said. The idea would help also help underpin UK food security and self-sufficiency, the union explained at today's AgriScot, Scotland's biggest winter agricultural event. The new labelling initiative, which would have to be backed by government, retailers, processors and the food service sector, would 'properly recognise' the UK's production standards. The union said it had started discussions with politicians around a label that could identify food products where more than 50% of ingredients had been sourced from outside the UK. Greater transparency on where food had been sourced from would allow consumers to make more informed choices, NFU Scotland said. Speaking to an industry seminar at AgriScot, the union's president, Martin Kennedy said: As an industry we are extremely proud of what we produce and how we produce it, but sadly when it comes to generating a return, it doesnt stack up. A labelling initiative could allow us to better inform our consumers about the origin of all the food and drink they are purchasing and allow them to make informed decisions. "I firmly believe that this is where we could see governments and industry working together like never before." Mr Kennedy said it was a 'huge frustration' to see UK produce, raised and grown to some of the highest standards, being undermined by imports that failed to meet or match UK standards. He said: I believe loyalty to domestic production from all parts of the food chain can be supported by legislative change to labelling and that would enhance our ability to keep producing food profitably and locally. However, the success of any labelling initiative would be dependent on it being applied across the UK. This would be a real game changer in terms of supporting our own food producers." Ariana DeBose has urged others to "never stop believing" in their dreams. Ariana DeBose has urged fans to keep reaching for their dreams The 32-year-old actress started out as a contestant on 'So You Think You Can Dance?' in 2009 before taking on small Broadway roles but now has an Academy Award and has encouraged others to work hard for their dreams to come true. She told People: "Never stop believing. You know, your dreams don't work unless you do. It's hard in the world that we live in, but your dreams have possibility, they always do, never give up on them. Sometimes in order to be re-inspired, you have to choose a different path and you never know where it's going to take you. But it's always led me to really interesting places." The 'West Side Story' actress voices the leading role of Asha in the new Disney musical animation 'Wish' and recently revealed why she "cried like a baby" when she landed the part. She told Movie Web: "They came to me shortly after 'West Side Story' had premiered, and I hadn't really won anything. I was just excited that ''West Side Story' had come out, and it looked like I was going to have the opportunity to make more work. "Then they called, and Chris Buck [the director] was like, 'We want to make this movie with you.' I was like, amazing, what is it? Because they hadn't really told me, but then they explained what the story was going to be, and I cried like a baby because I was a Disney kid growing up. "I can tell you definitively that so many of our previous Disney princesses and heroines inspired me while in the booth. I could hear the echoes of 'Mulan' and 'Cinderella'. I would go, 'Alice would have said that' or 'Raya, there you at girl!'" Logan Lerman is engaged. Logan Lerman and Analuisa Corrigan are engaged to be married The 'Percy Jackson' star, 31, and his longtime artist girlfriend Analuisa Corrigan have confirmed he popped the question. Alongside a snap of the pair looking loved-up in Polaroid pictures and a video capturing her dazzling engagement ring, the future bride announced on Instagram: Thats Mrs Logie to you. And the 'Bullet Train' star commented: Love you sweetie. The pair are said to have been dating for around four years. In 2021, Logan gushed over his partner on her 27th birthday: "Yesterday was my best friends birthday. She truly makes every day better and brighter. I wake up every morning feeling like the luckiest guy in the world knowing I have this one in my life. This bday we learned how to ski. Heres to many more adventures together. Love you, Anita. Although they've kept their relationship largely out of the spotlight, Logan revealed they were long-distance for a while when he lived in Los Angeles and she was in New York City just as the COVID-19 pandemic was starting. However, she ended up relocating to be with him. Her article in Architectural Digest noted: "Then, the pandemic happened in the midst of visiting her boyfriend, the actor known as Logan Lerman, from New York, so she wound up staying with him in Los Angeles." Sharon Stone has confirmed she gave Leonardo DiCaprio a big break by paying his wages to get him into one of her films. Sharon Stone gave Leonardo DiCaprio a big break in the early days of his career The 65-year-old 'Basic Instinct' star appeared opposite DiCaprio in her 1995 Wester 'The Quick and the Dead' and she's now revealed studio bosses weren't interested in hiring the lesser-known actor so she offered to cover his salary to secure him the role. The revelation was first uncovered in an article by The Hollywood Reporter, and Stone has now admitted it's true. In a post on Instagram, she wrote: "To be clear about the Hollywood Reporter article: Yes, I paid @leonardodicaprios salary out of mine." However, she dismissed speculation she did the same for Russell Crowe but Sharon explained she did get the start date delayed to give the actor time to get to set. She added: "No I didnt pay @russellcrowes, but I did ask for the film to be delayed two weeks so we could get him here from Australia, and our producer @mikemedavoyup agreed to the delay. And to cover those expenses." Stone previously revealed she'd fought to keep DiCaprio in the film in her book 'The Beauty of Living Twice', revealing she had high hopes for the 21-year-old actor. She wrote: "This kid named Leonardo DiCaprio was the only one who nailed the audition, in my opinion: he was the only one who came in and cried, begging his father to love him as he died in the scene." DiCaprio, 49, was recently asked about being helped out by the actress and he told E! News he will always be grateful to her. He said: "I've thanked her many times. I don't know if I sent her an actual, physical thank-you gift, but I cannot thank her enough... it's incredible. She's been a huge champion of cinema and giving other actors opportunities, so I'm very thankful." Susan Sarandon has been dropped by top Hollywood agency UTA amid her anti-Semitism storm. Susan Sarandon has been dropped by top Hollywood agency UTA amid her anti-Semitism storm The 77-year-old Dead Man Walking actress has stunned her industry and fans by spending the past few weeks raging against Israel and is now under fire for her latest outburst in the wake of the October 7 massacre by Hamas, after saying Jews are getting a taste of how it feels to be Muslim in America. Page Six has now reported she has been dropped from UTA as several staffers were extremely hurt by her comments. A UTA spokesperson told the outlet the agency is no longer representing the star, who has been a client of the agency since 2014 and whose beloved movies include Thelma and Louise. Susan made her controversial comment about Jews after she attended a string of rallies in New York tackling the Israel-Hamas conflict during which she also joined in the chant From the river to the sea. It is a war cry used by pro-Palestinian activists and Hamas that many have blasted as an anti-Semitic demand for the destruction of Israel. Susan said at a recent demonstration: There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country. She has also come under fire online for retweeting posts on X celebrating Pink Floyds outspoken frontman Roger Waters, 80, who has spent years being accused of anti-Semitism. Susan took to X to highlight an appearance by Roger at an event in Uruguay, and resent one post that said: Despite attempts by the Israeli lobby to cancel the event, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd took the stage in Uruguay, donning a Kufiyyah and advocating for an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Muslim-American journalist Asra Nomani is among those slamming Susan for her remarks and stance on the war. She listed the privileges enjoyed by her family in the US after she said on X: Hi there @SusanSarandon. Let me tell you what it means to be Muslim in America. The reporter added: Please dont minimise the experience of Jewish Americans by sanitising the hell that it is for Muslims living in Muslim countries and vilifying America for the life and freedoms she offers Muslims like my family. Go, live like a Muslim woman in a Muslim country. You will come back to America and kiss the land beneath your feet. Susan is known as a left-wing campaigner known for her protests with Jane Fonda against the Iraq war, as well as her support for former US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and her climate change stand. Last year, she shared a now-deleted Twitter post comparing police gathered at the funeral of slain NYPD detective Jason Rivera to fascists. Making new waves with its world premiere at BFI Flare, the critically acclaimed, landmark feature-length documentary Tramps! from Kevin Hegge (She Said Boom: The Story of the Fifth Column, Sundowners) goes deep into the heart of Britains New Romantics scene, tracing how a group of outsiders transformed London's underground art and music communities and its enduring influence and impact across the globe. Tramps! A decade in the making, this groundbreaking film follows how the New Romantics AKA the Blitz Kids became one of the most iconic cultural movements. Now, this radically important new documentary makes its UK debut on digital on 11 December 2023, courtesy of Bohemia Media. In the 1980s, following the 70s punk movement, a fresh wave of art students and fashion enthusiasts emerged in East London, breathing fresh life into British art, fashion, music and film and welcoming in a new era with the birth of the New Romantics. Tramps! explores the evolution from squatted communes in the 1960s, to 70s punk, leading to the flamboyant Blitz Kids and the seminal New Romantics in the 80s. The film takes us to the places, from The Blitz to Hell and introduces the faces, from the hugely influential Leigh Bowery, Mark Moore, Derek Jarman, Boy George, Marilyn, Steve Strange and Rusty Egan to the lesser-known but integral players in the movement. Figures such as John Maybury, Duggie Fields, Princess Julia, BodyMap founders Stevie Stewart and David Holah, Scarlett Cannon, The Roxy nightclub founders Susan Carrington and Andrew Czezowski, Les Child, Jeffrey Hinton and the great, late Judy Blame, tell their fascinating tales in brand-new interviews, alongside rarely seen archive footage and proudly highlights LGBTQIA+ stories often erased from history. The documentary examines how the long-established sense of hedonism was unexpectedly disrupted by the AIDS crisis, with some elements transitioning from the underground to dominate the mainstream through rave culture in the 1990s. Focusing on the vibrant personalities that defined this movement and celebrating queer club culture, Tramps! revives one of the UKs most iconic scenes and features a pulsating electronic soundtrack by Electrelane's Verity Susman and Wire's Matt Simms. Meet Tramps! a one-of-a-kind documentary that celebrates the people and places at the forefront of a pivotal subculture whose influence can still be seen the world over today. UK digital release 11th December from Bohemia Media by Matt Shine for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on A 20 per cent reduction in corporate tax can attract 14 times more foreign direct investment (FDI) to Bangladesh and result in a six-fold rise in government revenues, according to a survey by the Foreign Investors' Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). In Bangladesh, the corporate tax rates range between 20 per cent and 45 per cent now. In the last three national budgets, the non-listed companies' tax rate in the stock market has been reduced by 2.5 percentage points. A 20 per cent reduction in corporate tax can attract 14 times more FDI to Bangladesh and result in a six-fold rise in government revenues, a survey by the Foreign Investors' Chamber of Commerce and Industry found. Reduced tariff rates imply lower import costs for foreign investors that want to bring in raw materials or components for production, it noted. Reduced tariff rates imply lower import costs for foreign investors that want to bring in raw materials or components for production, the survey found. The FICCI report, titled Catalysing Greater FDI for Vision 2041: Priorities for Building a Conducive Tax System in Bangladesh, was handed over to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at a recent event in Dhaka. If the tax rate is increased by 20 per cent over the next 10 years, then GDP may only rise by less than 6 times, and revenue collection may increase by less than thrice, the report indicated. An increase in the tax rate may lead to a higher growth in both FDI and revenue, while a reduction in the tax rate could result in an even greater increase in both, domestic media outlets cited the report as saying. The Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, on the other hand, feels a 30 per cent depreciation of the local currency could result in a 30 per cent rise in customs duty. Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS) During a masterclass at the 54th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa, Bollywood actor Sunny Deol got emotional as he spoke about his film career. He shared that after the success of his movie Gadar, he had no work for several years. Sunny discussed his experiences with his directors Anil Sharma, Rajkumar Santoshi and Rahul Rawail.During a conversation with Rahul, Sunny Deol was asked about his journey in Bollywood which started with the movie Betaab in 1983. In response, the actor expressed his gratitude for his good fortune and admitted that he tends to get overly emotional, which can be a challenge for him.He further expressed his gratitude for starting his career with director Rahul, who gave him the opportunity to act in three films, some of which were successful while others were not. However, these films still hold a special place in people's memories. Despite the massive success of his film Gadar, the actor faced a period of struggle as he was not offered any scripts or roles. Although he did a few films during this time, there was a gap of 20 years. Nevertheless, he never gave up and continued to move forward. His goal was to become an actor, not a star, and he was inspired by the films his father had made and wanted to act in similar films.Adding to this, filmmaker Rajkumar Santoshi said, "I believe that the industry has not done justice to Sunnys talent. But God has done justice." This statement by him left Sunny Deol in tears.After a gap of 27 years, Rajkumar Santoshi and Sunny Deol are teaming up for Lahore 1947, which will be produced by Aamir Khan. The duo has previously collaborated on successful films such as Ghayal (1990), Damini (1993), and Ghatak: Lethal (1996). As Kartik Aaryan marks his 33rd birthday, it's not just a celebration of another year but also a reflection on his remarkable journey in the film industry. Starting as an outsider, he rose to fame with hits like Pyaar Ka Punchnama and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, and earning critical acclaim for recent ventures like Satyaprem Ki Katha. In Filmfare's November 2019 cover story, Kartik opened up about his struggles in the film industry before getting his big break. He shared, "I read about the auditions of Pyaar Ka Punchnama (PKP) on one of the FB walls. I had no money to make a portfolio. So I cropped my pictures from the college album and sent it to them. They called me for the auditions. The process carried on for six months. Finally, Punchnama happened. My monologue from the film went viral. It was on everyones phone. It was trending everywhere on FB as well. Its funny that the same platform, which led me to the Punchnama audition, brought me fame. People started calling me the monologue boy. The film became a sleeper hit."Describing his relentless efforts, Kartik mentioned travelling extensively for hours thrice a week in pursuit of opportunities. Despite securing brief roles in advertisements, monetary limitations were a constant challenge. When he didnt have enough money for a portfolio, he improvised by cropping his face out of group photos. All this while, he skipped college to attend auditions, keeping his endeavours hidden from his parents.The turning point arrived when Kartik landed a part in Pyaar Ka Punchnama. Excited about the news, he called his mother from Andheri railway station to share the breakthrough moment. Even after this success, he reportedly continued to live in a flat shared by 12 individuals until his third film. Despite his burgeoning career, his mother insisted on him completing his college degree, leading to him writing exams where fellow students in the hall were more interested in clicking photos with him.Currently, Kartik has several projects lined up for release in the upcoming year, including Kabir Khan's Chandu Champion. BLACKPINK attended the event as advocates for the United Nations' sustainable development goals and as ambassadors for the UK's COP26. The banquet was also attended by various dignitaries, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and members of the British Royal Family. During his speech, King Charles III expressed his admiration for BLACKPINK's efforts in making a positive impact on the world. He commended Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, and Rose for their role as ambassadors for the UK's Presidency of COP26 and their advocacy for the United Nation's sustainable development goals, particularly in promoting environmental sustainability to a global audience. The King also acknowledged their hard work and praised how they prioritise these important issues despite their international stardom. BLACKPINK attended the event as advocates for the United Nations' sustainable development goals and as ambassadors for the UK's COP26. The banquet was also attended by various dignitaries, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and members of the British Royal Family.During his speech, King Charles III expressed his admiration for BLACKPINK's efforts in making a positive impact on the world. He commended Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, and Rose for their role as ambassadors for the UK's Presidency of COP26 and their advocacy for the United Nation's sustainable development goals, particularly in promoting environmental sustainability to a global audience. The King also acknowledged their hard work and praised how they prioritise these important issues despite their international stardom. As they received recognition from King Charles III, the members exchanged glances and wore joyful smiles, adding to the splendor of the banquet with their elegant evening gowns. See Also: Blackpinks Jisoo and Ahn Bo-hyun confirm break-up. Heres the reason behind the split As they received recognition from King Charles III, the members exchanged glances and wore joyful smiles, adding to the splendor of the banquet with their elegant evening gowns. BLACKPINK members Jisoo, Jennie, Rose, and Lisa were honoured guests at the South Korea-UK State Banquet held at the Buckingham Palace on November 21.The banquet was organised to strengthen cultural ties between the two countries during the visit of South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee to the UK. As Kartik Aaryan rings in another year of stardom, it's impossible to overlook the phenomenon that has made him more than just a Bollywood actor - his dedicated and ever-growing fan base. Today, on his birthday, let's delve into why Kartik Aaryan is hailed as the ultimate fan-made superstar. Recently honoured with the prestigious title of 'Rising Global Superstar' at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne, Kartik Aaryan's recognition transcends borders, marking him as a global icon. The bankable actor also celebrated the success of his latest blockbuster, 'Satyaprem Ki Katha,' with a special screening for his fans, creating unforgettable moments of fan interaction. Here are some noteworthy instances that exemplify Kartik Aaryan's incredible fan connect: Fan tattoo on his birthday: A fan's dedication reached new heights when she inked Kartik Aaryan's name and birthday on her shoulder. This extraordinary gesture speaks volumes about the profound impact the actor has on his admirers. Kartik poornima fast: Female fans have turned Kartik Poornima into a tradition of devotion. Keeping a fast on this auspicious day for the actor showcases the deep connection fans feel with Kartik, making it a heartfelt gesture that goes beyond the realms of conventional fandom. Post-screening proposal: The magic of Kartik Aaryan extends beyond the screen, evident in a fan proposing to him after a film screening. This candid and emotional moment reflects the genuine affection fans harbour for the superstar. Fan frenzy under his building: Two crazy female fans standing under Kartik's building, screaming his name, captured the essence of fan craze. The actor's prompt response to meet them showcases his appreciation for the love and support he receives. Stalking Kartik's mother: A crazy fan's unconventional approach saw her stalking Kartik's mother, expressing her desire to be the future daughter-in-law. This incident showcases the extremes to which some fans go to convey their affection for the actor. Holi Celebration in the USA: Kartik's popularity knows no bounds, as seen during his visit to Dalice, USA, for the Holi festival. Mobbed by adoring fans, the actor became the center of a joyous celebration, suggesting his international fan following. As Kartik Aaryan blows out the candles on his birthday cake, it's clear that his journey in the film industry is celebrated with the unwavering love and admiration of his fans. Here's to celebrating the ultimate fan-made superstar and the countless memorable moments that define his extraordinary connection with those who make his stardom shine even brighter. Happy Birthday, Kartik Aaryan! Hack Crimes Online Update: Amazon miniTV - Amazon's free video streaming service, recently released crime thriller series, 'Hack Crimes Online' is being lauded for its gripping narrative which unfolds the suspenseful chase between cunning cybercriminals and detectives. Based on a novel by India's acclaimed cyber-crime investigator, Amit Dubey, the story takes place in the backdrop of the bustling city of Mumbai and draws light on the perilous world of cybercrime. Starring Vipul Gupta and Riddhi Kumar in lead roles, the series is streaming on Amazon miniTV for free. While getting candid about her bond with the team, Riddhi talked about her co-actor Vipul Gupta, and how he was a constant guide and support for her throughout this journey. She expressed, "I think Vipul just like his character is a very strong-willed, empathetic, and a soft person. In the series, he plays ACP Ashutosh, a mentor who is very calm and constantly works to improve himself and the people around him. Working with him was a wonderful experience because he is much more senior but he never made me feel like a subject of comparison. He was always there to teach and support us, we used to do our lines together before the scenes and have our lunch or dinner together whenever possible. He was available to discuss, share, and put his input into the scenes to create a better version." Adding to this she further shared her experience of working with Amazon miniTV and Friday Storytellers. "My experience with Friday Storytellers was amazing and so was with Amazon miniTV. Specifically when it came to promotional activities, getting affiliated with Amazon miniTV was great, as I liked the way they have taken up their promotional campaign, especially in terms of getting hacked. When it comes to Friday storytellers, I was looking forward to working with them. As an actor, you always have a list of people you admire and want to collaborate with and they were definitely on my list. When I got to know that I had to audition for a show for them, I was very excited. They always come up with different types of content that are relatable, educational, and at the same time very inspiring. Our show talks about crime, ranging from teenage bullying, and drugs to terrorism and bank scams, along with our finale which is about national security," she shared. Directed by Parmeet Sethi, Hack Crimes Online is currently streaming exclusively on Amazon miniTV available on Amazon's shopping app, on Fire TV, and on Play Store. Tara Sutaria is one of the prettiest actresses in Bollywood, but recently she left everybody in awe with her gritty, raw, and intense outing in her solely-led film 'Apurva'. The actress won a unanimous shower of praise, from media critics to industry seniors as well as the audiences, who loved her in this completely new avatar. Taking to social media, Tara shared an extremely intense and powerful clip from the shoot of the film Apurva and everybody who has seen the film is going to remember that scene because it was definitely one of the most impactful scenes of the film that really gets etched in our memory. Sharing the video, the actress wrote, "SO many people have told me this was the part that they were most taken by in APURVA... The first time my character does the unthinkable to protect herself.. We shot this in one go and used the first take in the film. This was possibly one of my favourites to film and i think it encapsulates what apurva is all about in one shot! @nix_bhat how you said " cut it!!! " at the end made me so happy sir!!!! Shouldering the film solely, she truly underwent a drastic transformation from being the sexiest girl on the block into a warrior fighting for her survival with an into an intense and gritty outing. With Apurva she has cemented her position as one of the packages of her generation with great talent for acting, unmatched good looks and various other talents and skills in various dance forms and singing. Tara Sutaria and Apurva both continue to win love from the audiences as Apurva trends on number one, on the platform of its release till now also Tara gets named amongst the top most popular celebrities of the week after release. Brad Pitt Son Pax Jolie-Pitt: In a shocking turn of events, days after Hollywood star Brad Pitt made his love affair public, his adopted son Pax Jolie-Pitt's scathing old views against his father went viral on social media, where he branded the actor as a "world-class a**hole". The 19-year-old youngster in 2020 on Father's Day ranted on Instagram Stories, claiming his father, Brad, made his kids "tremble in fear" and also called him a 'despicable' person. Pax was 16 at the time. However, the 59-year-old Hollywood icon has now hit back at his adopted son and responded to his allegations as a "depressing" smear. Brad Pitt reacts to son Pax's allegations As per an international media outlet, The Sun, an insider close to the Bullet Train actor said, "Brad has great respect for all of his children, and it's depressing to see this dragged up. It's frustrating to see Brad being painted as some kind of 'bad person' when it's far from the truth." On the other hand, Page Six quoted another close source of Pitt saying it's unfortunate that his people try to bring his kids into things. "It's been a long seven years and it's unfortunate when people unnecessarily raise issues from so far in the past ... and don't take into consideration the impact it has on the whole family," it reported. Angelina Jolie Accuses Brad Pitt Of Choking One Of Their Kids During Their Midair Fight; Latter REACTS The source also mentions that Brad Pitt has not publicly discussed his children in the media regarding his 2016 divorce from Angelina Jolie or their ongoing custody dispute, and he intends to maintain his silence on the matter. "He chooses to keep a dignified silence and that speaks volumes." However, sources reveal that half of his children have not kept any contact with him. Brad and his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, 48, have six kids together. They adopted Pax, plus Maddox, now 22, and Zahara, 18, and also have three biological children: Shiloh, 17, and 15-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne. What did Pax say in his Father's Day post? The source's comments came after screenshots of Pax's old Father's Day post surfaced online. His Instagram account is allegedly private. He reportedly hit out at Brad, shared his photo accepting his Oscar, and wrote, "Happy Father's Day to this world class a-hole!! You time and time again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person." "You have no consideration or empathy toward your four youngest children who tremble in fear when in your presence. You will never understand the damage you have done to my family because you're incapable of doing so," he added. "You may tell yourself and the world whatever you want, but the truth will come to light someday. So, Happy Father's Day, you f-king awful human being!!!" he concluded the post. Even Angelina Jolie had earlier accused Brad of physically and verbally abusing them in 2016. However, Pitt has maintained his innocence. Iran's 'Zombie Angelina Jolie', Sahar Tabar Reveals Viral Image Was Fake, Shows Her Real Face Recently, Jolie and Pitt's daughter, Zahara, dropped the surname Pitt during her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority induction at Spelman College and introduced herself as "Zahara Marley Jolie." Mansoor Ali Khan Booked For Offensive Remarks Against Trisha: The All Women Police Station at Thousand Lights, Chennai, filed a case against actor Mansoor Ali Khan for his derogatory remarks against actor Trisha. This action followed a day after the National Commission for Women (NCW) asked the Tamil Nadu police to initiate legal proceedings against Mansoor Ali Khan. Mammootty's Film 'Kaathal - The Core' Faces Ban In Gulf Countries, Reasons Speculated Around LGBTQ Content According to the police statement, Mansoor was charged under IPC sections 354 (A) and 509, based on a complaint filed by the NCW. The commission on Monday took suo motu cognisance of the issue and urged the Tamil Nadu DGP to register a case against the actor and apply IPC Section 509 B along with other applicable laws. Even amid significant criticism, Mansoor Ali Khan refused to apologise to Trisha. Chiranjeevi Konidela, Lokesh Kanagaraj, and numerous others condemned his remarks. Amidst the controversy, Mansoor Ali Khan held a press conference at his Chennai residence yesterday. He addressed the ongoing issue with Nadigar Sangam, citing their alleged lack of a fair hearing and the threat of suspension as his primary concerns. He addressed the ongoing issue with Nadigar Sangam, citing their alleged lack of a fair hearing and the threat of suspension as his primary concerns. Claiming support from the people of Tamil Nadu, Mansoor questioned the necessity of an apology, asserting that his side of the story remains unheard. He sarcastically expressed his delight over the extensive coverage of the incident, and he mentioned disappointment with the choice of images used by certain English newspapers. During the conference, Mansoor diverted attention to cinematic depictions, questioning whether rape sequences in movies are misconstrued as reality, highlighting the lack of questioning in that regard. Despite attempts to reach out to industry figures like Nasser and Vishal, Mansoor Ali Khan expressed disappointment at the lack of response. He issued a four-hour ultimatum for Nadigar Sangam to retract their statement. Mansoor Ali Khan's Disrespectful And Misogynistic Comment A few days ago, a controversial video capturing actor Mansoor Ali Khan's repugnant remarks about actress Trisha at a press conference set social media ablaze, drawing vehement condemnation from the actress herself. Trisha, known for her role in 'Leo,' slammed her co-star, stating, "A recent video has come to my notice where Mr.Mansoor Ali Khan has spoken about me in a vile and disgusting manner.I strongly condemn this and find it sexist,disrespectful,misogynistic,repulsive and in bad taste. He can keep wishing but I am grateful never to have shared screen space with someone as pathetic as him and I will make sure it never happens for the rest of my film career as well. People like him bring a bad name to mankind." Dhruva Natchathiram First Review: Vikram's Movie Gets Praise For Visual Brilliance And Vinayakan's Performance Mansoor Ali Khan reportedly said during a press conference, "When I heard that I was acting with Trisha,I thought there would be a bedroom scene in the film. I thought that I could carry her to bed just like I did with other actresses in my earlier movies. I have done so many rape scenes in a number of movies, and it's not new to me. But these guys didn't even show Trisha to me on the sets during the Kashmir schedule." Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - Deveron Corp. (TSXV: FARM) ("Deveron" or the "Company"), a leading agriculture services and data company in North America, is pleased to report results for the three months ended September 30th, 2023. Revenue grew to $7,718,602 in Q1/2024 from $7,189,494 in the similar period. Full financial results are available at www.sedarplus.ca. Additionally, the Company announces the implementation of the next phase of its cost optimization program as it continues to integrate its Canadian and US lab network. Utilizing technology and processes from its Canadian lab across the US network, the Company expects to achieve annual run rate savings of $900,000. Deveron expects to achieve these savings effective December 1st, 2023. The Company believes additional areas of cost synergies exist and will be addressed throughout FY 2024. First Quarter 2024 Financial Highlights Soil fertility testing activity saw a strong 21% increase, however this was largely offset by declines in soil carbon collection, testing volumes and revenue resulting in modest overall growth for the period. Fertility testing continued to rise in the quarter as Deveron's influence and value-add focus led to an increase in samples both from current customers as well as new customers coming onto the platform. The Company saw an improvement in gross margin percentage due to these increasing volumes, enhancements in the Company's overall cost structure, and operational leverage within the Company's lab assets. Ongoing variability in carbon markets slowed Deveron's organic growth rate in the quarter as the adoption of carbon programs was slower than the market originally indicated. With this continued volatility in underlying carbon markets, the Company plans to scale back its network investment in carbon and concentrate on fertility testing and ancillary laboratory volume where growth remains unencumbered and robust. The Company's gross margin percentage improved by 5% year over year to 65% from 60% in the similar period in F2023. The Company achieved 81% gross margin in data insights, up from 67% in the similar period in F2023. The Company's gross profit grew 16% year-over-year to $5,014,534 from $4,320,407 in in the similar period in F2023. Non-IFRS EBITDA Loss improved 11% year-over-year to ($907,090) from ($1,014,610) in the similar period in F2023. "Deveron achieved strong organic growth in our fertility products, despite headwinds in some of our ancillary business lines," said David MacMillan, President, and CEO of Deveron Corp. "As we look into Q2, the busiest quarter of the year, soil testing volume across our four laboratories continues on a record pace. Fertility soil testing remains a unique opportunity for the company, enabling us to drive volume, capitalize on operational leverage, and enhance EBITDA margins over time. Our ancillary business units in carbon data collection faced headwinds. Our partners' sell through of carbon testing to end users has fallen short of our indicated expectations. While we believe carbon will be an important business line in the future, due to these challenges, we have decided to focus our strategy and prioritize fertility. Following the end of the quarter, we implemented steps from a cost perspective to streamline our technology teams and realize synergies at our Canadian laboratory network. As we examine and plan for the rest of the fiscal year, we feel confident in the trends we see in our core fertility business. We have taken steps to become a leaner operation, further capitalizing on the operational leverage that exists in this business. We continue to be very optimistic about the outlook for our fertility business." Summary of Financial Results Results of Operations For the three months ended September 30th, 2023 September 30th, 2022 % Change Data Collection $1,215,090 $746,211 63% Data Insights 6,503,512 6,443,283 1% Total Revenue 7,718,602 7,189,494 7% Gross Profit 5,014,534 4,320,407 16% Gross Profit Margin % 65% 60% 5% Operating Expenses 10,838,817 8,917,932 22% Adjusted EBITDA (Loss)* (907,090) (1,014,610) 11% Net Loss (5,975,946) (4,785,775) -25% Weighted Average Common Shares Outstanding 142,087,346 122,807,335 Per Share: Net Loss (0.04) (0.04) *Non-IFRS measure. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("Adjusted EBITDA") should not be construed as alternatives to comprehensive loss or income determined in accordance with IFRS. Adjusted EBITDA does not have any standardized meaning under IFRS and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. The Company defines Adjusted EBITDA as IFRS net loss excluding interest expense, depreciation and amortization expense, share-based payments, income tax expense, integration costs, one time acquisition costs, and impairment of goodwill, property, plant, and equipment and right-of-use assets (ROU). The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is a meaningful financial metric as it measures cash generated from operations which the Company can use to fund working capital requirements, service future interest and principal debt repayments and fund future growth initiatives Adjusted EBITDA (Loss) Calculation For the three months ended September 30th, 2023 September 30th, 2022 IFRS Net Income (Loss) $(5,975,946) $(4,785,775) Less: Interest 891,300 1,130,931 Less: Depreciation & Amortization 1,807,979 2,158,729 Less: Share Based Payments 291,936 293,255 Less: Acquisition and integration costs 154,015 - Less: Income Taxes 151,663 188,250 Change in NCI put obligation (1,771,963) - Non-IFRS Adjusted EBITDA (loss)* (907,090) $(1,014,610) First Quarter 2024 Operational Highlights Deveron Provides Spring Volume Numbers and Corporate Update On July 25th, 2023, Deveron announced record spring fertility sampling and testing volumes across our US and Canada lab networks between January 1st, 2023, and June 30th, 2023. Soil fertility acres collected increased by 24% to 355,866 from 268,800 in the first half of 2022. Fertility samples analyzed in the United States grew by 12% year-over-year to 53,204 from 46,844 in 2022. In Canada, the company analyzed 125,201 samples. The Company expects an increase in lab volumes in the second half of the year. In addition, the Company announces that, further to its press release of May 2nd, 2022, it has achieved an additional $1.5 million in annualized cost synergies. These cost savings have been achieved by centralizing the Company's procurement process and leveraging its network's increased buying power for consumable raw materials used in the lab process. Deveron Announces Appointment of CFO On September 11th, 2023, Deveron announced the appointment of Akshay Shirodker, as CFO of Deveron Corp. Akshay is a seasoned finance executive with proven ability to drive financial excellence and operational efficiency. To date his career has spanned various leadership roles, with his most recent position being, the Head of Finance and Operations at Opencare, a revenue generation technology platform for dental practices across North America, where he guided the company to profitability and helped double the platform's patient marketplace revenue. Prior to this, he played a pivotal role in the successful M&A efforts at UXP Systems, an identity management platform transforming how consumers interact with tier-1 telecommunications providers, culminating in its acquisition by Amdocs. Akshay is a Chartered Professional Accountant earning his CPA designation during his tenure at KPMG. Deveron Announces Private Placement of Convertible Debentures On September 25th, 2023, the Company announced a non-brokered private placement of convertible debentures (the "Debentures") at a price of $1,000 per Debenture for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $2,000,000. Deveron Places No, 30th on The Globe and Mail's Fifth-Annual Ranking of Canada's Top Growing Companies On September 29th, 2023, the Company announced it placed No, 30th on the 2023 Report on Business ranking of Canada's Top Growing Companies. Canada's Top Growing Companies ranks Canadian companies on three-year revenue growth. Deveron earned its spot with three-year growth of 1307%. Subsequent to Quarter End Deveron Announces Closing of Private Placement of Convertible Debentures On October 5th, 2023, the Company announced that further to its press release of September 25th, 2023, the Company had closed the first tranche of a non-brokered private placement through the issuance of 1,750 unsecured convertible debentures at a price of $1,000 per Debenture for gross proceeds of $1,750,000. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering to refinance the Company's outstanding promissory note and for general working capital. Deveron Corp Announces the Launch of PFAS Testing Service On November 1st, 2023, the Company announced the launch of a new testing service analyzing Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances ("PFAS") in soil, water, compost and other matrices. PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals that have gained significant attention due to their widespread use and potential environmental and health concerns. The Management's Discussion and Analysis for the period and the accompanying financial statements and notes are available under the Company's profile on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca. This news release is not in any way a substitute for reading those financial statements, including the notes to the financial statements. About Deveron: Deveron is an agriculture technology company that uses data and insights to help farmers and large agriculture enterprises increase yields, reduce costs and improve farm outcomes. The company employs a digital process that leverages data collected on farms across North America to drive unbiased interpretation of production decisions, ultimately recommending how to optimize input use. Our team of agronomists and data scientists build products that recommend ways to better manage fertilizer, seed, fungicide, and other farm inputs. Additionally, we have a national network of data technicians that are deployed to collect various types of farm data, from soil to drones, that build a basis of our best-in-class data layers. Our focus is the US and Canada where 1 billion acres of farmland are actively farmed annually. For more information and to join our community, please visit www.deveron.com/investors or reach us on Twitter @Deveron. Philip Linton VP Corporate Development plinton@deveron.com Tel: 647-622-0076 This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of that phrase under Canadian securities laws. Without limitation, statements regarding future plans and objectives of the Company are forward looking statements that involve various degrees of risk. Forward-looking statements reflect management's current views with respect to possible future events and conditions and, by their nature, are based on management's beliefs and assumptions and subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific to the Company. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. The following are important factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements: changes in the world-wide price of agricultural commodities, general market conditions, risks inherent in agriculture, the uncertainty of future profitability and the uncertainty of access to additional capital. Additional information regarding the material factors and assumptions that were applied in making these forward looking statements as well as the various risks and uncertainties we face are described in greater detail in the "Risk Factors" section of our annual and interim Management's Discussion and Analysis of our financial results and other continuous disclosure documents and financial statements we file with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities which are available at www.sedarplus.ca. The Company undertakes no obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. The Company relies on litigation protection for forward-looking statements. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188334 Vancouver, British Columbia and Princeton, New Jersey--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - Xybion Digital Inc. (TSXV: XYBN), a global, low-code SaaS company that enables digital transformation in life sciences and health organizations, the acceleration of new drug development and enables organizations to maintain employee health and safety, today reported financial results for its second quarter ending on September 30, 2023. Financial references are expressed in US dollars unless otherwise indicated. Please refer to the MD&A and Financial Statements posted onto SEDAR (www.sedarplus.ca) for information relating to non-IFRS measures and risk factors. Financial Highlights for Q2 2024 - September 30, 2023: Adjusted EBITDA (non-IFRS measure) of $631,086 in Q2 2024, compared to $(1,452,748) in Q2 2023, an increase of 143.4% . Adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.8%, as compared to (37.1)% in Q2 2023. (non-IFRS measure) of $631,086 in Q2 2024, compared to $(1,452,748) in Q2 2023, an . Adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.8%, as compared to (37.1)% in Q2 2023. Recurring revenue from Subscriptions and Maintenance for Q2 of 2024 increased by 3.9% to $2.66 M, as compared to $2.56M in Q2 of 2022 from Subscriptions and Maintenance for Q2 of 2024 to $2.66 M, as compared to $2.56M in Q2 of 2022 Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) at Q2 2024 increased by 3.2% or $.33 million to $10.67 million, as compared to $10.34 million at Q2 2023. (ARR) at Q2 2024 or $.33 million to $10.67 million, as compared to $10.34 million at Q2 2023. Overall quarterly revenue increased by 2.3% to $4.00 million, as compared to $3.91 million in Q2 2023. to $4.00 million, as compared to $3.91 million in Q2 2023. Net income of $334,893 in Q2 2024, compared to a net loss of $(1,224,637) in Q2 2023, an increase of 127.3%. of $334,893 in Q2 2024, compared to a net loss of $(1,224,637) in Q2 2023, an As of September 30, 2023 the Company had $6,831,804 million in cash on the balance sheet and zero debt. "As I recently reported, I am pleased that we returned to our profitable growth trajectory in our Q3 and Q4 for the fiscal 2023 and that this has continued through Q2 of fiscal year 2024," stated Pradip Banerjee, CEO of Xybion. "During this time we have been executing our strategy of managing our existing business and carrying out selective acquisitions to offer more comprehensive solutions to our clients," continued Dr. Banerjee. "I am pleased to report that on November 16th we completed the acquisition of Autoscribe, a globally recognized LIMS software provider, headquartered in the United Kingdom, with additional operations in the United States and Australia. Autoscribe LIMS provides multi-industry domain solutions, easy to use and configure software that is currently used by over 140 customers. This acquisition aligns with Xybion's vision of fast-tracking lab digitization and information management SaaS solutions to simplify lab operations and speed up innovation," concluded Dr. Banerjee. Non- IFRS Financial Measures EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin are non-IFRS financial measures. EBITDA is defined as net income or loss before net finance expenses, depreciation and amortization expense and income tax expense. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net income or loss before income taxes, net finance costs, depreciation and amortization, Paycheck Protection Payment (PPP) loan forgiveness, one-time Reverse Takeover (RTO) expenses and stock-based compensation, and Adjusted EBITDA Margin is defined as the percentage of Adjusted EBITDA to revenues. Since the Company capitalizes its operating leases as right of use assets, the amount of amortization related to these right of use (ROU) assets was not added back to earnings in determining Adjusted EBITDA. We believe that Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin are useful measures of financial performance because they provide an indication of the Company's ability to seize growth opportunities in a cost-effective manner and finance its ongoing operations. Each of these non-IFRS financial measures are not recognized measures under IFRS and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. These measures are unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Rather, non-IFRS measures are provided as additional information to complement financial statements by providing further understanding of our results of operations from management's perspective. Accordingly, these measures should not be considered in isolation nor as a substitute for analysis of our financial information reported under IFRS. About Xybion Digital Inc. Xybion is a global SaaS company that helps enterprise life sciences organizations accelerate new drug development into approved medicines that may save lives and keep employees safe. We digitize drug research and development, laboratory testing, regulatory approvals, and pharmaceutical manufacturing on a single, unified cloud platform that is cost-effective, ready to deploy, and easy to use. Xybion has over 160 clients in 29 countries using its software to accelerate timelines, improve compliance, expand capacity, minimize operating risks, and reduce expenses while keeping employees safe. Learn more about Xybion at https://www.xybion.com/ For further information: For more information regarding Xybion Digital Inc., please contact Pradip Banerjee, Chief Executive Officer, PBanerjee@xybion.com, 609-512-5790 x122 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. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements ("forward-looking statements") in this news release may contain forward-looking information concerning relating to the release of financial results, plans related to the Company's business and other matters that may occur in the future, made as of the date of this news release. In making the forward-looking statements included in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including with respect to the timing of such release. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual events or results to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as a number of important factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the expectations expressed in them. Such factors include, among others, the risks described in disclosure documents filed by the Company on SEDAR. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law and may not be offered or sold in the "United States", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188330 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - Canter Resources Corp. (CSE: CRC) (OTC Pink: CNRCF) (FSE: 6O1) ("Canter" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its news release dated November 13, 2023, it has completed the acquisition of Altitude Ventures Corp. ("Altitude") pursuant to the terms of an amalgamation agreement dated November 10, 2023 (the "Amalgamation Agreement") among Canter, Canter's wholly-owned subsidiary, 1447235 B.C. Ltd. ("Subco"), and Altitude (the "Transaction"). The Transaction was completed by way of a three-cornered amalgamation under the Business Corporation Act (British Columbia) among Canter, Subco and Altitude. Pursuant to the Transaction, Altitude amalgamated with Subco and the holders of shares of Altitude (the "Altitude Shares") each received one common share of Canter (a "Canter Share") for every one Altitude Share. The Company issued a total of 18,020,001 Canter Shares to the shareholders of Altitude as consideration for all of the outstanding Altitude Shares pursuant to the Transaction. The amalgamated company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canter. No finder's fees were paid in connection with the Transaction. Altitude holds the sole option to acquire a 100% interest of the 23,000-acre lithium exploration project located in the Columbus Salt Marsh Basin, Esmerelda County, Nevada, USA, being the "Columbus Lithium-Boron Project". In addition, Altitude holds a 100% interest in certain Beaver Creek lithium occurrences located in the town of Lincoln, Montana, USA, being the "Beaver Creek Property". For additional details regarding the Columbus Lithium-Boron Property and the Montana Property, see the Company's news release dated November 13, 2023 available on the Company's SEDAR+ profile at www.sedarplus.ca. About Canter Resources Corp. Canter Resources Corp. is a Canadian junior mineral exploration company advancing the Columbus Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada, USA, the Beaver Creek Lithium Property in Montana, USA, and the Puzzle Lake Property in Saskatchewan, Canada. The Company is preparing for a Phase I drill campaign at Columbus to test a highly prospective lithium-brine target and plans to leverage the Company's critical metals targeting database to generate a portfolio of high-quality projects with the aim of defining mineral resources that support the domestic clean energy supply chain in North America. For further information, contact: Hani Zabaneh Chief Executive Officer Canter Resources Corp. info@canterresources.com The securities to be issued pursuant to the Transaction have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, United States persons absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This news release will not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor will there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release. The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the business of the Company, references to the potential of the Columbus Lithium-Boron Property and the Montana Property and related matters. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of Canter Resources Corp., including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, volatility of commodity prices, risks associated with the uncertainty of exploration results and estimates, currency fluctuations, dependency upon regulatory approvals, the uncertainty of obtaining additional financing and exploration risk. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188335 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The GSMA, in partnership with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), today announced the launch of GSMA DXAF's Digital Transformation Leaders' CxO Summit (22-23 November 2023) in Malaysia. The two-day summit, held at the JW Marriott Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, brings together key government policy makers and leading figures from across the mobile and technology sectors to discuss Malaysia's, and more broadly Asia Pacific's, key digital transformation needs to ensure social and economic prosperity over the next decade. By 2030, mobile's contribution to the Asia Pacific (APAC) economy is expected to reach almost one trillion dollars (approximately $990 billion), driven largely by digital transformation improvements and increased take-up of mobile services. According to the GSMA's recently published Mobile Economy APAC 2023 Report, APAC will have around 1.4 billion 5G connections by the end of the decade, accounting for two-fifths (41%) of total mobile connections. This growth will be driven by the concerted efforts of leading governments to integrate mobile-enabled technologies into many aspects of society, rapid network expansion in many countries, and a fall in the average price of 5G devices. As a leading country in digital infrastructure, services, applications and platforms in a fast-growing digital ecosystem in Southeast Asia, Malaysia was selected to host GSMA APAC's 3rd Digital Transformation Leaders' CxO Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia this year. Given 5G's importance to the region, the key focus of the two day summit will be on how to achieve "Intelligent Digital Transformation in the 5G Era", with attendees discussing key issues including what's needed to driving digital transformation in Malaysia and how to unlock value from and monetise 5G. Discussions will focus on opportunities and challenges related to commercial strategies, technological developments and industry promotion policies to accelerate sector wide intelligent digital transformation in the 5G era. Alongside Malaysia's mobile network operators, keynote speakers include: Malaysia's Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital, Mr. Ahmad Fahmi Mohamed Fadzil; CEO of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, Ts. Mahadhir Aziz; CTIO of Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), Shamsul Izhan Abdul Majid; and Co-CEO, DNB Datuk Ahmad Zaki Bin Zahid. We are pleased to share that Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and Global Digital Innovation Network (GDIN) will be working together to enrich Malaysia's ecosystem with digital transformation use cases, best practices, and digital opportunities. This collaboration aims to advance the country's digital economy via GDIN's extensive network and experience as a catalyst for global technology innovation. Ts. Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), said: MDEC supports the Government's move in unlocking the digital technology's potential for a better future, with MDEC playing a pivotal role in Malaysia's digital economy. Our mission as a catalyst is to build a digitally inclusive nation where innovation knows no bounds. MDEC actively strengthens the technological ecosystem, offering crucial support and resources to cultivate innovation, foster growth, and drive digital transformation. Through fostering a dynamic collaborative environment, MDEC is committed to propelling Malaysia toward a future characterised by cutting-edge advancements and sustainable digital development. I hope that this collaboration shapes a limitless digital future, transcending technological boundaries. Julian Gorman, Head of Asia Pacific, GSMA said: "Digital transformation in Asia Pacific is evolving rapidly, and 5G technology is set to revolutionise industries, businesses, societies and nations at large. We are honoured to be hosting such a diverse gathering of industry leaders, experts, and visionaries in Malaysia this week, who are driving the evolution of the digital ecosystem. We hope this event serves as a catalyst for new partnerships, groundbreaking innovations, and a deeper understanding of the transformative power 5G technology can bring when it comes to achieving a digitally connected and resilient future for Asia-Pacific." The summit will also focus on many of the topics discussed in the GSMA's latest 'Digital societies in Asia Pacific: Harnessing emerging technologies to advance digital nations' report, and how they can be achieved. The report explores the concept of "digital nations" and the aspiration of governments in Asia Pacific to integrate digital technologies and services into every sector of the economy, to achieve sustainable and inclusive economic growth. There are five key components of a digital nation: infrastructure, innovation, data governance, security and people, and the maps the aspirations of governments in the region, including Malaysia's, to these components. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1882833/4415661/GSMA_Logo.jpg Contact: GSMA Press Office, pressoffice@gsma.com View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/gsma-and-malaysian-government-bring-together-top-policy-makers-and-industry-experts-at-key-summit-to-discuss-asia-pacifics-digital-transformation-needs-301995272.html Dubai, United Arab Emirates--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - Taurus Consulting, a Dubai-based company specializing in financial consulting, today announced its plans to expand its team. The company is seeking to fill several positions in its sales and onboarding departments, emphasizing the need for candidates with international sales experience and strong communication skills. Taurus Consulting, Logo. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/10132/188321_77fa4778c4ac5b8e_001full.jpg About the Positions Taurus Consulting is opening positions for Sales Managers, Onboarding Specialists, and International Market Analysts. The roles require individuals with a proven track record in sales, the ability to effectively communicate across diverse cultures, and a keen understanding of the financial consulting and AI sectors. The company values candidates who are eager to engage in a dynamic work environment and have a strong drive for professional growth. Company Culture and Values The recruitment drive underscores Taurus Consulting's commitment to maintaining a vibrant company culture that aligns with its foundational principles and mission. The company seeks individuals who not only bring technical expertise and experience but also resonate with the firm's ethos of innovation, teamwork, and commitment to excellence in the financial consulting and AI domains. Tommaso Zapparrata, with permission. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/10132/188321_figure.jpg Taurus Consulting was founded by Tommaso Zapparrata, born in 1986 into a family of entrepreneurs in the province of Catania. Zapparrata's early exposure to the trading world, through his brother Rocco, laid the foundation for his interest in financial markets. Over the years, he has combined his passion for trading with his entrepreneurial spirit, leading to the formation of several successful ventures, including SWISSTECH Consulting and Goldman Tech Valley Srl. Zapparrata's journey reflects a blend of industry experience and personal dedication to the field. Company Evolution Since its inception, Taurus Consulting has carved a niche in financial consulting and AI-driven algorithm trading. The firm's approach to integrating advanced technologies with traditional financial consulting practices has positioned it uniquely in the market. As it moves towards expanding its operations in the Arab countries and other European regions, such as Spain and France, the company aims to deepen its market reach and enhance its service offerings. Joining the Taurus Consulting Team Individuals interested in joining Taurus Consulting can learn more about the available positions and application process on the company's website. The firm is looking for candidates who are ready to contribute to its growing team and help further its mission in the evolving landscape of financial consulting and AI. About Taurus Consulting Taurus Consulting is a Dubai-based company specializing in financial consulting, AI, and algorithm trading. Founded by Tommaso Zapparrata, the company combines traditional financial expertise with cutting-edge technological innovation, catering to a diverse clientele. With a focus on expanding its global footprint, Taurus Consulting continues to explore new markets and opportunities in the financial sector. Contact: https://taurusconsultingfzco.com/ contact@taurusconsultingfzco.com To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188321 SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - The Strategic Organizing Center, a shareholder of Starbucks and coalition of labor unions including the Service Employees International Union, said Tuesday that it has nominated three director candidates - Maria Echaveste, Joshua Gotbaum and Wilma Liebman - for election to the Starbucks Board of Directors at the upcoming 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The Strategic Organizing Center or SOC alleged that the Board's current approach likely jeopardizes its ability to fulfill its fiduciary duties to investors and has resulted in arguably one of the most glaring and destructive examples of human capital mismanagement corporate America has seen. Therefore, SOC believes change is needed at the Board level. Its nominees can bring fresh perspectives and the right expertise to help improve oversight and safeguard the best interests of Starbucks' shareholders, customers and employees. In a separate press release, Starbucks confirmed that it has received a notice of nomination by Strategic Organizing Center Investment Group of three director candidates for election to the Starbucks Board of Directors at its 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. Starbucks said the Board's Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee will review SOC Investment Group's proposed director nominees and the Board will present its formal recommendation regarding director nominees in the Company's proxy statement and other materials to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Starbucks shareholders are not required to take any action at this time. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. BEIJING, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Leaders of BRICS countries gathered on Tuesday for an extraordinary virtual summit on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Speaking at the summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an immediate ceasefire as the first step to realizing lasting peace and security. Prevent humanitarian disaster The parties to the conflict must end hostilities and achieve a ceasefire immediately, stop all violence and attacks against civilians, as well as release civilians held captive, Xi underscored. Humanitarian corridors must be kept secure and unimpeded, and more humanitarian assistance should be provided to the population in Gaza, Xi said. The collective punishment of people in Gaza in the form of forced transfers or the deprivation of water, electricity and fuel must stop, said Xi. He urged the international community to act with practical measures to prevent the conflict from spilling over and endangering stability in the Middle East. To help alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, China has provided $2 million of emergency humanitarian assistance through the Palestinian National Authority and United Nations (UN) agencies, and emergency humanitarian supplies worth 15 million yuan ($2.1 million), such as food and medicine, to the Gaza Strip with the help of Egypt. China will provide more supplies and assistance according to the needs of the people in Gaza, Xi said at the summit. China's peace efforts Since the outbreak of the latest Palestinian-Israeli conflict, China has been working actively to promote peace talks and a ceasefire, Xi said. As the rotating president of the UN Security Council this month, China has taken active actions to build consensus and push the Security Council to take further meaningful action on the situation in Gaza. On November 15, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2712, calling for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip "for a sufficient number of days." The resolution was the first product of the Security Council on Gaza after the conflict escalated on October 7. A joint delegation of foreign ministers from Arab and Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Palestine, and the secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, are on a two-day visit to China, which began on November 20. The delegation has chosen China as the first leg of a tour to push for an end to hostilities between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The foreign ministers of Arab and Islamic countries spoke highly of China's long-standing just position on the question of Palestine and expect China to play a greater role in ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, resolving relevant issues and achieving fairness and justice. "There can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine," Xi said on Tuesday. https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-11-21/Xi-attends-BRICS-virtual-summit-on-Palestinian-Israeli-issue-1oUUfulBaMg/index.html View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/cgtn-china-speaks-up-for-peace-justice-at-brics-summit-on-palestinian-israeli-issue-301995418.html Indonesian Ambassador to France, Andorra, and Monaco, Mohamad Oemar delivering his remarks on the The 42nd Session of the General Conference of UNESCO PARIS, FRANCE, Nov 22, 2023 - (ACN Newswire) - The 42nd Session of the General Conference of UNESCO, held in UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from November 7-22, has generated positive results for Indonesia. During the election of Members of the Executive Board of UNESCO on November 15, Indonesia was voted by 154 out of 181 countries and elected as the board's member for the 2023-2027 period.In electoral group IV, Indonesia competed with eight other countries in the Asia-Pacific region for six allocated seats on the UNESCO Executive Board. The eight countries are Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, South Korea and Sri Lanka, and the six elected included Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Australia.In his remarks, the Indonesian Ambassador to France, Andorra and Monaco, and Indonesia's Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, Mohamad Oemar, expressed gratitude for the unwavering support from UNESCO member countries. "Indonesia is committed to being actively involved and collaborating with other member countries to ensure progress and sustainability in various fields that UNESCO focuses on," he said.Oemar underlined that UNESCO's mission, dedicated to promoting global peace and the prosperity of humans, is recognized as a valuable milestone by Indonesia, which highly values the principles of pluralism, multilateralism, and international cooperation, which are the keys to success in responding to world challenges, including achieving sustainable development goals in all areas of competence mandated by UNSECO.During the Intergovernmental Council of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) election on Thursday, November 16, Indonesia was also elected as a council member for 2023-2027, with Oemar noting that Indonesia's election as a member is momentum for the country to take a strategic role in navigating the transformation of media and policies through UNESCO."Indonesia is committed to continuing to actively participate, holding dialogue, and collaborate with other member countries in responding to issues of media and technology development and the making of communication and media policies in UNESCO forums," the ambassador remarked.As the council's member, Indonesia will take part in determining policy suggestions, monitoring and vision for freedom of expression, access to information, and digital transformation to ensure fundamental freedom is guaranteed, both online and offline, in line with international standards.Lastly, the Indonesian language has also been designated as an official language of the UNESCO General Conference, based on adopting Resolution 42 C/28 during the Plenary Meeting of the 42nd Session of the UNESCO General Conference on Monday, November 20. Indonesian became the 10th official language, with English, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Italian, and Portuguese.Oemar stated that the Indonesian language has more than 275 million speakers while delivering Indonesia's proposal presentation, adding that the curriculum has entered 52 countries, with at least 150,000 foreign speakers currently. He emphasized that improving awareness of its language was part of Indonesia's global effort to develop connectivity between nations and bolster cooperation with UNESCO. In addition, it is also part of Indonesia's commitment to cultural development at the global level.Reported by Lintang Budiyanti, Raka AdjiEdited by Anton Santoso, Copyright (c) ANTARA 2023Source: Indonesian Delegation to UNESCO General ConferenceCopyright 2023 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. SurgeGraph releases its highly-anticipated, cutting-edge new feature called Product AI. Product AI is a product review article generator designed to streamline affiliate content creation for affiliate marketers. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - SurgeGraph, the leading SEO AI writing tool, is proud to announce the launch of its groundbreaking new feature, Product AI. This cutting-edge addition to SurgeGraph's Longform AI tool is designed to empower users in crafting high-quality, SEO-optimized bottom-of-the-funnel content effortlessly. Cannot view this video? Visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mB0P0JHB3E Product AI is engineered to streamline the creation of product roundups, single product reviews, and product comparisons, allowing users to generate content at unprecedented speeds. By harnessing the power of Product AI, affiliate marketers can now bid farewell to the time-consuming process of product research and article writing. "Product AI is a game-changer for content writers and affiliate marketers alike. With its lightning speed and precision, users can effortlessly showcase the hottest, high-conversion products, scaling their affiliate revenue and eliminating the need for tedious research," said Sara Salim, spokesperson for SurgeGraph. To celebrate the momentous occasion, SurgeGraph is offering complementary access to Product AI for users with a SurgeGraph subscription. Those interested can visit their website for more information: https://surgegraph.io/. In conjunction with the Product AI launch, SurgeGraph is releasing a major version update, Parsley (3.0), featuring a revamped Content Writer. The upgraded Content Writer boasts a super sleek, user-friendly interface, offering a seamless workflow, enhanced customization options, and an overall improved user experience. This latest release adds to SurgeGraph's proven track record of innovative new feature launches. Just last month, SurgeGraph introduced Content Vision, an image generation feature that further solidified its commitment to simplifying content creation. The company's roadmap promises more exciting features in the near future. About SurgeGraph SurgeGraph is a leading SEO AI writing tool that helps marketers grow their traffic fast through high-quality and SEO-optimized blog posts. With the main goal of helping users accelerate content velocity, SurgeGraph continues to revolutionize the content publishing landscape with features like Product AI and Content Vision. Contact Info: Name: Sara Salim Email: hello@surgegraph.io Organization: SurgeGraph Website: https://surgegraph.io To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188204 LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Rio Tinto has reached a court approved settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of a suit brought in 2017 concerning disclosure of the impairment of Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique or RTCM reflected in Rio Tinto's 2012 year-end accounts. The company will pay a US$28 million penalty to settle the charges. Former chief executive Tom Albanese has also reached a settlement with the SEC and will pay a US$50,000 penalty, without admitting to or denying the allegations related to books and records and internal controls. Rio Tinto settled claims brought by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission in 2022 and the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority in 2017 relating to the same RTCM impairment. The U.S. Court who approved the SEC settlement previously dismissed a related private putative securities class action in 2019. An appeals court affirmed the dismissal. RTCM was acquired in 2011 and divested in 2014. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Press contact: Victoire Grux Tel.: + 33 6 04 52 16 55 Email: victoire.grux@capgemini.com The share of executives recognizing the business case for sustainability has tripled in the last year The improved understanding of the ROI hasn't translated into increased investment yet, however the last 12 months saw significant progress in sustainability roadmaps and shifts in business models Paris, November 22, 2023 - In a context of record high temperatures and with climate disasters on the rise1, three times more executives across industries are now clear on the business case for sustainability compared to last year. A growing number also acknowledge the benefits of incorporating sustainable business practices and processes, according to a new report from the Capgemini Research Institute, 'A World in Balance 2023'. However, limited concrete impact can be achieved if investment levels remain unchanged. Climate disasters and regulatory pressure driving the sustainability business case Now, in its second year, the report found that 63% of executives agreed that the business case for sustainability is clear. This percentage has tripled in comparison to the summer of 2022, when only 21% of executives agreed. In addition, the percentage of executives that claim the cost of sustainability initiatives outweighs the benefits, has dropped from 53% to 24% and those that felt sustainability initiatives are a financial burden has declined by more than half (from 53% to 22%). The increase in extreme weather events affecting every continent and their rising associated cost is certainly playing a significant role in this shift in perception. In addition, the report found that regulatory pressure and expected ROI are key motivating factors for adopting environmental and/or social sustainability strategies and initiatives: three-quarters (74%) of executives hope to increase future revenue (up from 52% in 2022), and 64% cite compliance with current regulation (up from 51% in 2022). Businesses focused on key foundations in 2023, but critical areas such as investment or reporting are still lagging Organizations have significantly progressed in defining their sustainability roadmaps since last year: 61% of executives now say their company has a defined priority list of sustainability initiatives to implement in the next three years (up from 49%), and 57% shared that their organization is in the process of redesigning its business/operating model to be more sustainable (up from 37%). Despite this positive shift, limited impact is to be expected without increased investment in terms of mitigatory action against climate change. In 2023, the average annual investment in environmental sustainability initiatives and practices as a share of annual revenue of companies across industries has only increased by 0.01 percentage point compared to last year. Organizations are also continuing to fall short in terms of reporting, especially in measuring and collecting scope 3 emissions. The share of executives that say their organization has the ability to measure and collect data on scope 1 and 2 emissions has remained unchanged, year on year. For scope 3 emissions, the share has even declined from 60% in 2022 to 51% in 2023. Similarly, action around sustainable product design has seen limited to no movement. More executives are also using third parties to audit sustainability data (54%, up 4 points since last year) but paradoxically, fewer are doing the same to disclose and benchmark progress. "The summer and fall of 2023 were the most disturbing in terms of record high temperatures across continents, and extreme weather events bringing unprecedented damages. The consequences of climate change are becoming impossible to ignore, and so is the future cost of not taking action," says Cyril Garcia, Head of Global Sustainability Services and Corporate Responsibility and Group Executive Board Member. "What we really need to see in the months to come is companies investing in future-proof sustainability measures and pivoting their business models to build sustainable products and services. It's now or never for organizations: only those who will have invested early enough and put sustainability at the center of their strategy will be able to truly realize the benefits." Social sustainability moves up the corporate agenda Over half of executives (56%) say their organization is increasingly focused on the social dimension of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG), with organizations' own employees being the primary beneficiaries. However, the research revealed that organizations could do more to support workers in the supply chain, with almost two thirds (64%) of executives saying their organization considers the ESG ratings and environmental pledges taken by suppliers during supplier selection but only 38% saying they only work with suppliers who pay a living wage. A greenwashing perception gap The report also found a perception gap between executives and consumers when it comes to greenwashing, with only 17% of executives saying that they believe consumers are concerned by the risk of greenwashing, while 33% of consumers globally believe organizations and brands are greenwashing their sustainability initiatives. Consumers in India (45%) and Canada (43%) are the most suspicious of sustainability claims, and in the UK the least (16%). Likewise, Generation Z is far more suspicious of such claims (50%) than boomers (18%). Ultimately, 49% of consumers never, rarely, or only sometimes trust an environmental claim about a purchase they are considering, with skepticism rising to 65% among Gen Z consumers. Generative AI is expected to be a core focus within sustainability strategies Organizations are pinning their hopes on digital technology and, in particular, generative AI, to help them achieve their sustainability goals, with over half (59%) of executives believing it will play a key role in their organization's sustainability transformation efforts. In parallel, the same proportion of executives (57%) say their organization has started to take steps to mitigate the environmental impact of using generative AI models. Methodology: For this research, the Capgemini Research Institute conducted a survey of 2,151 executives, employed at 718 organizations each with more than $1 billion in annual revenue across 13 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the US) and in 11 industries, in August and September 2023. Executives surveyed were director level and above and 50% were from corporate functions, such as strategy, sustainability, sales and marketing; 50% were from value chain functions, such as product design, R&D, procurement, and logistics. The Capgemini Research Institute also conducted a global survey of 6,500 consumers over the age of 18 across the 13 countries. To get access to the report, click here: https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/sustainability-trends-2023 About Capgemini Capgemini is a global leader in partnering with companies to transform and manage their business by harnessing the power of technology. The Group is guided every day by its purpose of unleashing human energy through technology for an inclusive and sustainable future. It is a responsible and diverse organization of nearly 350,000 team members in more than 50 countries. With its strong 55-year heritage and deep industry expertise, Capgemini is trusted by its clients to address the entire breadth of their business needs, from strategy and design to operations, fueled by the fast evolving and innovative world of cloud, data, AI, connectivity, software, digital engineering, and platforms. The Group reported in 2022 global revenues of 22 billion. Get The Future You Want | www.capgemini.com About the Capgemini Research Institute The Capgemini Research Institute is Capgemini's in-house think-tank on all things digital. The Institute publishes research on the impact of digital technologies on large traditional businesses. The team draws on the worldwide network of Capgemini experts and works closely with academic and technology partners. The Institute has dedicated research centers in India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was recently ranked #1 in the world for the quality of its research by independent analysts. Visit us at https://www.capgemini.com/researchinstitute/ 1 A recent study estimates that from 2000 to 2019, weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and heat waves cost $2.86 trillion globally, averaging $143 billion annually, and that the global cost of climate damage will be between $1.7 trillion and $3.1 trillion per year by 2050 (Nature Communications, "The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change," September 29, 2023) Attachment SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Fund for Women, a nonprofit funding gender justice and human rights work, is proud to introduce a groundbreaking initiative aimed at identifying and fueling nascent feminist movements across the world. This tool, the Gender Justice Data Hub (GJDH), merges the latest technical tools with feminist values to recognize, support, and elevate emerging movements to instigate lasting change. At the heart of Global Fund for Women's mission has always been the unwavering commitment for gender justice and human rights by providing grants to support feminist movements worldwide. The introduction of the GJDH represents a purposeful stride forward in achieving this mission. The Gender Justice Data Hub harnesses cutting-edge data analysis techniques to identify and monitor emerging gender justice movements. Using algorithmic and statistical analysis on an extensive real-time dataset, it detects movements as they evolve. The GJDH combines the power of technology with profound, context-specific human analysis. What sets the GJDH apart is its feminist perspective. It scrutinizes data through the lens of gender equity and intersectionality. The tool is designed to identify global feminist movements in their infancy, when early support can catalyze waves of change. This early backing amplifies the efforts of these emerging movements, attracting more attention and resources, setting off a ripple effect that spreads awareness, solidarity, and momentum. By nurturing these movements from their inception, Global Fund for Women seeks to create lasting change and gender equality on a broader scale. The GJDH leverages data from 195 countries, collected by a network of 200 local researchers. This data serves as the foundation for monitoring global protests and movements. The Global Fund for Women-created Social Movements Index is applied to the dataset to identify potential movement hotspots. Invaluable grassroots insights from gender justice advisors and activists are instrumental in interpreting this data. Since its founding, Global Fund for Women has mobilized over $250 million to grassroots movements for change. Global Fund for Women extends an invitation to all to join this journey. Together, we can empower emerging feminist movements, working collaboratively to create a more equitable and just world. Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281293/Global_Fund_for_Women_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/global-fund-for-women-unveils-the-gender-justice-data-hub-gjdh-to-find-and-fund-emerging-feminist-movements-worldwide-301995734.html Conroy Gold & Natural Resources Plc - Drill Results from Clay Lake Gold Target PR Newswire LONDON, United Kingdom, November 22 22 November 2023 Conroy Gold and Natural Resources plc ("Conroy Gold" or "the Company") FURTHER DRILL RESULTS FROM THE DERRYHENNET SECTION OF THE CLAY LAKE GOLD TARGET 41.5 metre gold zone at 0.5 g/t gold intersected with grades up to 3.1 g/t gold recorded Continuity of gold stockwork zone demonstrated to the Northeast Gold stockwork zone remains open to the Northeast and Southwest Conroy Gold and Natural Resources PLC (AIM: CGNR) is pleased to announce assay results from a further three drillholes in the Derryhennet section of the Clay Lake gold target in the Longford - Down Massif. The results included a 41.5 metre gold zone at 0.5 g/t gold with grades up to 3.1 g/t gold. The drillholes reported are part of a step out drilling programme on the Company's C1/19 Mines Royal option in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The drilling programme is being carried out in conjunction with the Company's Joint Venture partner, Demir Export A.S ("Demir Export"). The Clay Lake gold target is situated in the north eastern section of the 65Km, district scale Orlock Bridge gold trend, which the Company has discovered. It extends for over 3Km in length and is, in places, 2Km in width and has a gold-in-soil footprint covering over 220 hectares which is the largest gold-in-soil target identified to date in the Longford-Down Massif. The Clay Lake gold target is divided into five sub areas or sections; Camagh, Cargalisgorran, Derryhennet, Listarkelt and Tivnacree. (The Derryhennet section is approximately 1.2Km in length and 2Km in width and covers over 100 hectares). Previous drilling, by the Company, in the Derryhennet sub area has yielded outstanding results. These included what is believed to be the longest continuous gold-in-bedrock intersection in the British Isles - 100m @ 0.6 g/t Au. This intersection included 11.5m @ 1.5 g/t Au and 10.3m @ 1.4 g/t Au. Other drilling results at Derryhennet have included 63m @ 0.6 g/t Au (including 9.0m @ 1.5 g/t Au), and 52.5m @ 0.5 g/t Au. The current step out drilling programme comprises of eight drillholes (c.2,000m). One drillhole in the programme which included 40.5m @ 1.2 g/t Au has already been reported (as announced 6 March 2023). The assay results now reported include a 41.5 metre gold zone grading 0.5 g/t gold intersected in one drillhole with grades going up to 3.1 g/t gold and have also demonstrated continuity of the gold stockwork zone to the Northeast. The gold stockwork zone remains open to the Northeast and Southwest. Intercepts from these further three drillholes include: CGA-22-002 41.5m @ 0.5 g/t Au inc. 0.5m @ 3.1 g/t Au from 21.0m 1.0m @ 1.0 g/t Au from 78.0m 1.0m @ 0.5 g/t Au from 141.0m 2.0m @ 0.7 g/t Au from 162.0m 1.0m @ 0.5 g/t Au from 157.0m 8.0m @ 0.6 g/t Au from 280.0m CGA-22-006 / CGA-22-006A 2.0m @ 0.7 g/t Au from 27.0m 1.0m @ 0.5 g/t Au from 53.0m 18.0m @ 0.4 g/t Au from 65.0m 2.5m @ 0.5 g/t Au from 114.0m 1.5m @ 0.5 g/t Au from 169.0m 0.5m @ 0.7 g/t Au from 204.5m 1.0m @ 0.4 g/t Au from 220.0m 0.5m @ 1.3 g/t Au from 280.0m 1.0m @ 0.3 g/t Au from 314.0m CGA-22-007 2.0m @ 0.6 g/t Au from 5.0m 2.5m @ 0.4 g/t Au from 37.0m 1.0m @ 0.6 g/t Au from 42.5m 6.2m @ 0.6 g/t Au from 92.5m 1.0m @ 0.7 g/t Au from 106.0m 1.0m @ 0.3 g/t Au from 133.0m 1.0m @ 0.5 g/t Au from 159.0m 8.0m @ 0.7 g/t Au from 216.5m 0.5m @ 0.7 g/t Au from 230.0m (Only intercepts of 0.3 g/t or greater are presented) All samples were analysed by ALS (OMAC Laboratories) Loughrea using Au-ICP21 (Au by fire assay and ICP-AES 30g sample). The eight drillhole step out programme is ongoing with four drillholes remaining to be completed and assayed. Overall the drilling results on the Derryhennet sub area of the Clay Lake gold target indicate potential for high tonnage and gold content. Further results will be reported in due course. This release has been approved by Kevin McNulty PGeo, who is a member of the Company's technical staff and holds a BSc/MSc in Geology and Remote Sensing, in accordance with the guidance note for Mining, Oil & Gas Companies issued by the London Stock Exchange in respect of AIM Companies, which outlines standards of disclosure for mineral projects. Professor Richard Conroy, Chairman, commented: "The step out drilling programme on the Derryhennet section of the Clay Lake gold target is highly encouraging with additional wide zones of gold mineralisation intersected further indicating the overall gold potential of the Clay Lake gold target". For further information please contact : Conroy Gold and Natural Resources plc Tel: +353-1-479-6180 Professor Richard Conroy, Chairman Allenby Capital Limited (Nomad) Tel: +44-20-3328-5656 Nick Athanas/Nick Harriss Peterhouse Capital (Broker) Duncan Vasey Lothbury Financial Services Tel: +44-20-7469-0930 Tel: +44-20-3290-0707 Michael Padley Hall Communications Tel: +353-1-660-9377 Don Hall Visit the website at: www.conroygold.com OTTAWA (dpa-AFX) - The Japanese yen weakened against other major currencies in the pre-European session on Wednesday. The yen fell to 2-day highs of 186.51 against the pound and 168.56 against the Swiss franc, from yesterday's closing quotes of 186.04 and 167.90, respectively. Against the U.S. and the Canadian dollars, the yen dropped to 2-day highs of 149.00 and 108.58 from Tuesday's closing quotes of 148.39 and 108.30, respectively. The yen edged down to 162.44 against the euro, from yesterday's closing value of 161.88. If the yen extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 189.00 against the pound, 171.00 against the franc, 152.00 against the greenback, 111.00 against the loonie and 165.00 against the euro. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Relief Therapeutics Holding SA / Key word(s): Personnel Relief Therapeutics Announces CEO Transition 22-Nov-2023 / 08:40 CET/CEST Release of an ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. Relief Therapeutics Announces CEO Transition GENEVA (NOV. 22, 2023) - RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA (SIX: RLF , OTCQB: RLFTF , RLFTY ) (Relief, or the Company), a biopharmaceutical company committed to delivering innovative treatment options for select specialty, unmet and rare diseases, today announced that its current chief executive officer (CEO), Jack Weinstein, will be stepping down as part of a leadership transition. The company is pleased to announce that Michelle Lock, a highly experienced pharmaceutical executive and current independent member of Relief's Board of Directors, will be assuming the role of CEO on an interim basis. "Michelle has been an active and insightful member of our Board of Directors. Her deep understanding of our organization and her extensive leadership experience in both biotech and big pharma settings make her an ideal leader for Relief. We are excited to have Michelle continue on the Board of Directors and step in as our new CEO." said Raghuram (Ram) Selvaraju, Chairman of the Board of Directors. "I want to extend our gratitude to Jack for his dedication and the important contributions he made over the years." added Dr. Selvaraju. Ms. Lock previously held executive roles as chief operating officer of Covis Pharma Group and senior vice president and head of Europe and International at Acceleron Pharma Inc. She has nearly 30 years of biopharmaceutical strategic, operational and commercialization experience and spent 24 years with Bristol-Myers Squibb. Her appointment as interim CEO of Relief is effective immediately. In response to her appointment, Ms. Lock commented, "I am honored to step into the role of CEO of Relief. This company has a strong legacy of bringing significant value to patients, and I am excited to lead our talented team as we continue to advance our pipeline. I am committed to driving our company on a path of innovation and enhanced patient impact." The Company is looking forward to a new chapter under Michelle Lock's leadership. ABOUT RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Relief Therapeutics is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to advancing treatment paradigms and delivering improvements in efficacy, safety, and convenience to benefit the lives of patients living with select specialty and rare diseases. Relief Therapeutics' portfolio offers a balanced mix of marketed, revenue-generating products, our proprietary, globally patented Physiomimic and TEHCLO platform technologies and a targeted clinical development pipeline consisting of risk-mitigated assets focused in three core therapeutic areas: rare metabolic disorders, rare skin diseases and rare respiratory diseases. In addition, Relief Therapeutics is commercializing several legacy products via licensing and distribution partners. Relief Therapeutics' mission is to provide therapeutic relief to those suffering from rare diseases and is being advanced by an international team of well-established, experienced biopharma industry leaders with extensive research, development and rare disease expertise. Relief Therapeutics is headquartered in Geneva, with additional offices in Balerna, Switzerland, Offenbach am Main, Germany and Monza, Italy. Relief Therapeutics is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the symbol RLF and quoted in the U.S. on OTCQB under the symbols RLFTF and RLFTY. For more information, please visit our website www.relieftherapeutics.com or follow Relief Therapeutics on LinkedIn and Twitter . CONTACT : RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA Jeremy Meinen Chief Financial Officer contact@relieftherapeutics.com Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Relief to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. A number of factors, including those described in Relief's filings with the SIX Swiss Exchange and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), could adversely affect Relief Therapeutics. Copies of Relief Therapeutics' filings with the SEC are available on the SEC EDGAR database at www.sec.gov . Relief Therapeutics does not undertake any obligation to update the information contained herein, which speaks only as of this date. COPENHAGEN (dpa-AFX) - Danish consumers expressed a pessimistic approach in November, despite their confidence having improved slightly from October, figures from Statistics Denmark showed on Wednesday. The consumer confidence index rose to -10.3 in November from -11.2 in the previous month. The slight improvement in November was mainly attributed to the strengthening of the assessment of the family's current financial situation, the expectation of the family's future financial situation, and the desire to buy, the survey said. Consumers' views towards their own financial situation in the next twelve months remained positive in November, and they rose to 5.2 from 2.5. However, opinion regarding the general economic situation of the country over the next year worsened to -5.8 in November from -4.6 a month ago. Households expect prices to rise more slowly over the next twelve months, and they also expect a rising trend for unemployment, the survey said. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. DXC to develop existing platform to drive new business opportunities in new markets WARSAW, Poland, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- DXC Technology, a leading Fortune 500 global technology services provider, will support Polish Payment Standard (PSP) in the expansion of its mobile payment system, BLIK, into Romania and Slovakia. DXC will modernize and adapt the BLIK central system to meet payment standards in Romania and Slovakia. DXC will ensure BLIK is able to handle transactions in Romanian Leu and Euros, and can connect to the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) system. Continuing a nine-year relationship, DXC will use software engineering to help develop PSP's essential activities, adapting the existing system to serve the fastest-growing e-commerce segments in Romania and Slovakia, and providing daily technical support. One of the largest payment systems in Poland, BLIK is at the forefront of driving a new era of digital payments in the region. Between July and September 2023, BLIK facilitated 455 million transactions worth 63 billion PLN ($15.7 billion USD). "BLIK is highly regarded in Poland and we have confidence that our solution will easily meet the requirements to integrate with other large European banks. This will help us grow the number of users engaging in e-commerce payments," said Dariusz Mazurkiewicz, President at Polish Payment Standard. "We are pleased to have the support of an experienced partner in DXC that can help us implement our plans." PSP is a joint venture between six leading Polish banks (Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Santander Bank Polska, ING Bank Slaski, mBank and PKO Bank Polski) and Mastercard. BLIK, introduced in 2015, is a key part of Poland's shift towards a common payment system. It allows customers to use their mobile phones to withdraw cash from more than 20,000 ATMs and facilitates hundreds of thousands of digital payment transactions. "This is a major project for Polish and European banking. As a trusted partner, we will help PSP innovate the BLIK solution on a global scale to achieve international success," said Michal Burda, Country General Manager at DXC Technology Poland. Forward Looking Statements All statements in this press release that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute "forward-looking statements." These statements represent current expectations and beliefs, and no assurance can be given that the results described in such statements will be achieved. Such statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements, many of which are outside of our control. For a written description of these factors, see the section titled "Risk Factors" in DXC's upcoming Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023, and any updating information in subsequent SEC filings. No assurance can be given that any goal or plan set forth in any forward-looking statement can or will be achieved, and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements which speak only as of the date they are made. We do not undertake any obligation to update or release any revisions to any forward-looking statement or to report any events or circumstances after the date of this report or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events except as required by law. About DXC Technology DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) helps global companies run their mission-critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. The world's largest companies and public sector organizations trust DXC to deploy services to drive new levels of performance, competitiveness, and customer experience across their IT estates. Learn more about how we deliver excellence for our customers and colleagues at DXC.com. About BLIK BLIK is a common standard for mobile payments. Currently, virtually every customer of domestic payment institutions offering a mobile application has the opportunity to use BLIK in mobile banking applications. Polish Payment Standard (PSP) is responsible for the development of the system. PSP is constantly developing BLIK's capabilities so that the system is as functional as possible for its users. The shareholders of PSP are: Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Santander Bank Polska, ING Bank Slaski, mBank, PKO Bank Polish and Mastercard. For more information, please see: https://blik.com/ CONTACT: Aleksandra Andreasik-Binkowska, DXC Media Relations Poland, a.andreasikbinkowska@dxc.com Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281743/DXC_Technology_Company_Polish_Mobile_Payment_System_BLIK_to_Mode.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/polish-mobile-payment-system-blik-to-modernize-and-expand-into-romania-and-slovakia-with-dxc-technology-301994061.html ZURICH, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Sygnum today announces a major addition to its institutional crypto sector indices product portfolio - the Sygnum Crypto Multisector Index Linked Certificate (ILC). The first institutional Crypto Multisector Index combines key crypto sectors into a single portfolio to conveniently enable broad, liquid access to the digital asset megatrend Provides exposure to multiple crypto sectors from a single entry-point, including Layer 1 and 2 protocols, DeFi, Web3 and Gaming and Metaverse Leverages a rules-based approach for maximum transparency Exploring crypto investments beyond Layer 1 The Sygnum Crypto Multisector Index Linked Certificate is designed to give professional and institutional investors broad and intelligent exposure to the digital asset megatrend and expanding decentralised ecosystem. It builds on Layer 1's foundation blockchain protocols and adds exposure to a diverse set of crypto sectors formulated via a rules-based methodology: Layer 1 - Foundation blockchain protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum - Foundation blockchain protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum Layer 2 - Protocols that drive Layer 1 performance and scalability like Polygon and Arbitrum - Protocols that drive Layer 1 performance and scalability like Polygon and Arbitrum DeFi - Decentralised versions of traditional financial services like Aave and Uniswap - Decentralised versions of traditional financial services like Aave and Uniswap Gaming and Metaverse - Blockchain-based games platforms and immersive virtual worlds like Gala and Sandbox - Blockchain-based games platforms and immersive virtual worlds like Gala and Sandbox Web3 - Decentralised internet and applications enabling user data control like Chainlink and COSMOS Sygnum leveraged its crypto community involvement and regulated digital asset banking experience to launch the first institutional, rules-based crypto sector indices framework in December 2022. You can download the report and view the indexes in full here. The emerging importance of crypto sectors Sygnum's Asset Management team tracks and monitors more than 20,000 crypto protocols. This number is being constantly expanded by innovative new use-cases, significant levels of venture funding and top talent joining the industry. As the numbers of new use cases grow, so does the complexity of analysis and the technical understanding required of investors to make informed market entry and investment decisions. A sector-based investment approach reduces this complexity and provides professional and institutional investors with an advanced toolset to make more informed investment decisions. The Sygnum Crypto Multisector Index Linked Certificate analyses and arranges tokens with comparable use cases and value-drivers into "sectors" that have been shown to deliver significant dispersion in terms of performance. The key advantages of a Sygnum index-based sector crypto investment strategy include: Relevance - comprehensive coverage of the growing ecosystem across the most established use cases Reduced risk - by avoiding exposure to single-token project-related elements Increased transparency - full visibility of underlying holdings and daily liquidity Simplicity - broad, rules-based digital asset megatrend exposure from a single entry-point Trust - leverage the technical and investment experience of a global digital asset banking group Sygnum's Deputy Group CEO and Chief Asset Management Officer, Fabian Dori says "The true potential of digital assets will be realised through the growing number of applications, built on top of the foundational protocols like Bitcoin, that are already moving into many parts of the economy. Our Crypto Multisector Index provides access to the full spectrum of this digital asset megatrend in a rules-based, comprehensive, and trusted manner." To build the institutional-grade solution, Sygnum partnered with Chartered Investment Partners as an established provider of structuring services for innovative investment products. Sygnum Bank AG is the key custodian and broker. About us Sygnum is a global digital asset banking group, founded on Swiss and Singapore heritage. We empower professional and institutional investors, banks, corporates and DLT foundations to invest in digital assets with complete trust. Our team enables this through our institutional-grade security, expert personal service and portfolio of regulated digital asset banking, asset management, tokenisation and B2B services. In Switzerland, Sygnum holds a banking licence and has CMS and Major Payment Institution Licences in Singapore. The group is also regulated in the established global financial hubs of Abu Dhabi and Luxembourg. We believe that the future has heritage. Our crypto-native team of banking, investment and digital asset technology professionals are building a trusted gateway between the traditional and digital asset economies that we call Future Finance. To learn more about how Sygnum's mission and values are shaping this digital asset ecosystem, please visit www.sygnum.com Media contact: Dominic Castley, Chief Marketing Officer dominic.castley@sygnum.com +41 58 508 21 01 Sygnum Bank AG Uetlibergstrasse 134a 8045 Zurich Switzerland Disclaimer : This document was prepared by Sygnum Bank AG. This document may contain forward looking statements and may be subject to change. The opinions expressed herein are those of Sygnum Bank AG, its affiliates, and partners at the time of writing. The document is for informational purposes only and contains general material. It is for use by the recipient only. It does not constitute any advice or recommendation, an offer or invitation by or on behalf of Sygnum Bank AG to purchase or sell assets or securities. It is not intended to be used as a general guide to investing and should be used for informational purposes only. When making an investment decision, you should either conduct your own research and analysis or seek advice from an expert to make a calculated decision. The information and analyses contained in this document have been compiled from sources believed to be reliable. However, Sygnum Bank AG makes no representation as to its reliability or completeness and disclaims all liability for losses arising from the use of this information. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2099115/4418148/Sygnum_Logo.jpg View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/de/pressemitteilungen/sygnum-launches-first-institutional-crypto-multisector-index-301995238.html SITA Secure SD-WAN will enhance connectivity, security, and operational efficiency across Qatar Airways' international offices and destinations DOHA, Qatar, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Qatar Airways has partnered with SITA to transform the airline's global network infrastructure with state-of-the-art secure access service edge (SASE) solutions that boost connectivity, operational efficiency, and security. As part of the transformation SITA will deploy its Secure SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network), SITA Connect Go, which offers agile, scalable, and secure access to airline systems and applications, by connecting infrastructure outstations and airports to Qatar Airways' hybrid cloud infrastructure, and to the airline's partner systems. Qatar Airways is among the first airlines globally to adopt SITA Connect Go, which is a new Secure SD-WAN solution designed specifically for the air transport industry. The solution was developed in partnership with Versa Networks, the recognized SASE leader. It offers a software-based solution that allows multiple airlines, ground handlers, and tenants to digitally transform at their own pace. By leveraging SITA's network solution, Qatar Airways will achieve significant strategic benefits. These include: Cost optimization resulting from faster connectivity and streamlined operations. Higher capacity bandwidth with multiple connection types managed centrally with holistic network performance visibility. SD-WAN gateways providing compatibility, ensuring a smooth transition to the new network architecture and the flexibility to innovate with new digital products and services that improve the passenger experience. Mr. A.T. Srinivasan, Qatar Airways Group CIO, said: "Qatar Airways is always looking for innovative technology solutions that will enable the group to optimize day-to-day network operations with increased speed, reliability, security, and flexibility - thereby enabling best-in-class connectivity across key operations. We are committed to continually improving operations and the passenger experience, and to procuring systems that will serve as a solid foundation for future innovation." Hani El Asaad, President, Middle East & Africa, SITA, said: "We are delighted to collaborate with Qatar Airways, an industry leader renowned for its commitment to innovation and excellence. Data and connectivity remain the backbone of our industry, and ensuring fast, secure, and reliable connections is crucial to optimizing airline operations and improving the passenger experience. This partnership marks a significant milestone in the evolution of air travel technology, exemplifying our dedication to transforming travel and transport through cutting-edge solutions." About SITA SITA is the air transport industry's IT provider, delivering solutions for airlines, airports, aircraft and governments. Our technology powers more seamless, safe and sustainable air travel. With around 2,500 customers, SITA's solutions drive operational efficiencies at more than 1,000 airports while delivering the promise of the connected aircraft to customers of 17,000 aircraft globally. SITA also provides technology solutions that help more than 70 governments strike the balance of secure borders and seamless travel. Our communications network connects every corner of the globe and we bridge 45% of the air transport community's data exchange. In 2023, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) approved our near-term and long-term emission reduction targets. These science-based targets are pivotal in guiding our climate actions to curtail greenhouse gas emissions effectively. We are also developing solutions to help the aviation industry meet its carbon reduction objectives, including reduced fuel burn and greater operational efficiencies. SITA is 100% owned by the industry and driven by its needs. It is one of the most internationally diverse companies, providing services in over 200 countries and territories. For further information, go to www.sita.aero About Qatar Airways A multiple award-winning airline, Qatar Airways won the 'World's Best Business Class' for the tenth time at the 2023 World Airline Awards, managed by the international air transport rating organisation, Skytrax. The airline continues to be synonymous with excellence, also taking home, Best Airline in the Middle East, World's Best Business Class Lounge and World's Best Business Class Lounge Dining at the prestigious awards held during the 2023 Paris Air Show. Qatar Airways is an unprecedented seven-time winner of the "World's Best Airline" voted by Skytrax (2011, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2022). Qatar Airways currently flies to more than 160 destinations worldwide, connecting through its Doha hub, Hamad International Airport, voted by Skytrax as the 'World's Best Airport' in 2021 and 2022 consecutively. This year, Hamad International Airport has been ranked by Skytrax as the second-best airport in the world, and received the 'Best Airport in the Middle East' accolade for the ninth time in a row, as well as 'World's Best Airport Shopping'. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2283038/SITA_Qatar_Airways.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2102113/SITA_LOGO.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/qatar-airways-selects-sita-to-transform-network-infrastructure-301995169.html Kofola is pursuing other traditional brands. With the announced acquisition, Kofola wants to enter the beer segment with a regional presenceKofola CeskoSlovensko is buying a majority stake in Pivovary CZ Group, which develops the traditional beer brands Holba, Zubr and Litovel. The beverage family can thus enter another category at the regional level in which it can use its business, distribution and marketing know-how. Completion of the transaction, which is subject to the approval of the competition authorities, is expected early next year."At Kofola we have learned to develop traditional and local brands with a strong story. When the opportunity arose to invest in breweries that produce brands with a long history, backed by honest craftsmanship and modern production facilities, we didn't hesitate. We believe that the experience of our people can help their development," explains Jannis Samaras, CEO of the Kofola Group.Pivovary CZ Group is the fifth largest brewing group in the Czech Republic, with its annual production this year exceeding 800 thousand hl, of which more than a third of the beer is destined for export markets. The company employs almost 500 people in its breweries in Hanusovice, Prerov and Litovel. The Holba, Zubr and Litovel brands have been brewed here for more than 130 years using traditional methods and the highest quality ingredients, mainly from local sources. Thanks to this, they are extremely popular with customers and independent experts, as evidenced by an unrivalled number of prestigious international and domestic awards."The quality of our beers is not only the result of careful adherence to traditional technological procedures of Czech beer production, but also the result of the expertise and skill of our employees. Respect for tradition, the skill of our people, the high technological level of our breweries, sources of quality water and raw materials, especially from local suppliers, are the basis of our success, potential and commitment for the future," says Ing. Jaromir Dvorsky, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Pivovary CZ Group. "We are committed to preserving the craft brewing tradition, stable relationships with customers, suppliers and employees, and corporate social responsibility. These were all important criteria in the sale negotiations. We are glad that we have found a partner who will help us to maintain and further develop the quality of our beers and at the same time strengthen their business expansion," explains Jaromir Dvorsky. "I would like to thank our employees and business partners, without them we could not have achieved such success," he adds.The new acquisition will enable the Kofola Group to grow in another stable segment with export potential. Considering the specifics of the beer market and with humility towards the art of the breweries' employees, Pivovary CZ Group will remain an independently managed segment of Kofola."Although we are not primarily concerned with direct synergies with our existing non-alcoholic business, the beer industry also has some common features with the beverage industry. Our goal is to support the art and quality of Czech breweries. It would be a shame if traditional Czech brands were to fall into the hands of foreign investors," explains Rene Musila, one of the founders and COO of Kofola Group, who will head the beer segment after the acquisition is completed.In addition to the family-owned beverage company, two minority shareholders are behind the acquisition of Pivovary CZ Group. Kofola CeskoSlovensko a.s. will become a 51% owner of the brewery company, the other co-shareholders are the investment group RSJ (29%) and USOVSKO a. s. (20%)."The entry into local breweries is another piece of the puzzle of our long-term strategy of private equity funds and we are glad that we could join forces with a company with such a reputation as Kofola," comments on a new cooperation Matej Kumstyr, asset manager of the investment group RSJ. The group manages a broad portfolio of investments in the Czech Republic and abroad and focuses, among other things, on supporting Czech and regional prospective companies.The parties have agreed not to disclose the price of the transaction. The transaction is valid subject to one condition precedent, which is the approval of the competition authorities. Completion of the transaction is expected early next year.Presentation is available for download here: https://investor.kofola.cz/data/content/130/dokumenty/project-breweries-presentation-22-11-2023.pdf BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - German stocks traded slightly higher on Wednesday after Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day truce that would see the Palestinian group release dozens of hostages taken on October 7. Nvidia's outlook beat expectations, though the chipmaker predicted decline in sales to China. The benchmark DAX was up 43 points, or 0.3 percent, at 15,943 after finishing marginally lower the previous day. Fresenius Medical Care rose about 2 percent after raising its annual earnings outlook. Also, the world's leading provider of products and services for individuals with renal diseases has resolved a legal dispute with the U.S. government. Thyssenkrupp jumped over 7 percent. After reporting fiscal 2023 net loss of 2.0 billion euros, the industrial engineering and steel company said it sees profit and higher sales in RY24. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Chris Caldwell Delivers Inspirational Keynote on AI and Climate Change at Trinity College Dublin Chris Caldwell Delivers Inspirational Keynote on AI and Climate Change at Trinity College Dublin DOUGLAS, Isle of Man, Nov. 22, 2023stands out as a beacon of insight and innovation. As a distinguished clean tech investor, renewables entrepreneur, and podcast host, Caldwell recently returned to his alma mater, Trinity College Dublin, to deliver a lecture that is nothing short of a masterclass in the intersection of technology and environmental stewardship. His presentation, was a value added supplement to the "Conversations on Climate" podcast series, and masterfully unravelled the complex dance between artificial intelligence (AI) and climate change, inviting us to reshape our understanding of technology's role in shaping our planet's future. Marking 24 years since his graduation, Caldwell's homecoming was a deep dive into the "Paradox of Attention" that defines our era. He adeptly dissected the dual nature of AI - as a beacon of hope and a harbinger of environmental challenges - guiding the audience through a labyrinth of societal impacts and technological advancements. Caldwell highlighted the path AI has carved in the fight against climate change, showcasing its role in expediting decarbonisation and pinpointing deforestation with unprecedented precision. Yet, he bravely ventured into the less trodden paths, discussing AI's hidden costs - its energy demands and carbon footprint - often overlooked yet critically important. His message resonated with clarity and urgency: AI mirrors our collective values and decisions. It's a tool, not a tyrant, shaped by our collective will and priorities. At this pivotal moment, our choices in harnessing AI and technology will decisively shape our environmental legacy. This lecture at Trinity College Dublin is more than an intellectual exercise; it's a clarion call to action. It beckons us to engage more thoughtfully with the technologies we create and the principles we instil in them. In Caldwell's own words, "AI is not our saviour or our destroyer; it is the reflection we cast in the digital world." About United Renewables: United Renewables, at the forefront in the renewable energy sector, is dedicated to providing a diverse array of green energy solutions including solar, wind, hydro, and bioenergy. Our commitment lies in fostering sustainable futures, reducing global carbon footprints, and empowering communities through innovation and environmental stewardship. As a leading provider, we actively engage in climate dialogue, partnering with industry pioneers and academic experts to shape a resilient and cleaner world for all. About the Conversations on Climate Podcast: United Renewables' "Conversations on Climate" podcast, now heralding its second season, is a beacon for those seeking enlightenment and actionable insights on climate change. By amalgamating the intellect of academia with the pragmatism of industry, the podcast crafts a narrative both compelling and instructive. From the strategic intricacies of game theory to the pioneering strides in algae-powered innovations, and ESG, the show is a testament to the multifaceted approach required to address global challenges. Season 2, a rich tapestry of expert insights providing professionals with a strategic guide to tackle the complexities of climate challenges. This series, conceived by United Renewables CEO Chris Caldwell, flourishes through its collaborative partnership with the dynamic Alumni Energy Club of the London Business School. For anyone who's interested in navigating their way through the climate conundrum, this podcastis for you. Stay abreast of the latest episodes by activating your notifications on the Conversations on Climate Channel. Watch the Conversations on Climate podcast on YouTubeor Podcastand for all related articles go here. Conversations on Climateis a joint production of United Renewables and the London Business School Alumni Energy Club. Conversations on Climatebrings world-leading thinkers from business and academia together to share their expertise on the subject of climate change. Guests include Sir Andrew Likierman, Julio Dal Poz, Professor Jean-Pierre Beno it , Professor Ioannou, Tara Schmidt, Professor Dan Cable, Professor Zoe Chance, Professor Lynda Gratton, Tom Gosling, Eduardo Famini Silva, Dr. Linda Yueh, Yariv Cohen, Francois Ortalo-Magn e , Professor Randall Peterson, Matt Winning, Abel Martins Alexandre, Dr. Marcel Olbert, Professor Jane Stoutand Professor Rupert Merson. CONTACT Isabella Hawke - Sales and Marketing Consultant COMPANY United Renewables PHONE +447624457139 EMAIL IIhawke@unitedrenewables.co.uk WEB unitedrenewables.co.uk/resources A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c42b4548-89d1-4f4f-b4b7-0bab79b4b0a7 CHICAGO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ --Electric light commercial vehicle market size is projected to grow from 333.6 thousand units in 2022 to 3,919.3 thousand units by 2030, at a CAGR of 36.1%., according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets. Factors such as rising demand for zero-emissions commuting and government support for low-emission vehicles through subsidies and tax breaks have resulted in automakers embracing EVs and the expansion of the electric light commercial vehicle market. Government bodies are supporting zero emission vehicles over petrol or diesel automobiles due to growing worries about increased pollution by the automotive industry. People have acknowledged the importance of promoting zero-emission vehicles in order to prevent pollution. Government agencies in several countries are proposing attractive plans and incentives to entice and encourage individuals to acquire ELCVs, such as substantial discounts, reduction in taxes, lower road charges for zero emission vehicles, and others. Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=80041214 Browse in-depth TOC on "Electric Light Commercial Vehicle Market". 15 - Tables 20 - Figures 53 - Pages Electric Light Commercial Vehicle Market Scope: Report Coverage Details Market Size 3,919.3 thousand units by 2030 Growth Rate CAGR of 36.1% Largest Market Europe Market Dynamics Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities & Challenges Forecast Period 2022-2030 Forecast Units Volume (Thousand Units) Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, and Trends Segments Covered Vehicle Type, Propulsion Type, and Region Geographies Covered Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America Report Highlights Updated financial information / product portfolio of players Key Market Opportunities Development of wireless EV charging technology for on-the-go charging to fuel market Key Market Drivers Reducing prices of ELCVs batteries will increase demand for ELCVs by making them cost effective "E-Pickup Trucks is expected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period." E-pickup trucks is expected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period. Electric pickup trucks are generally more cost-effective to operate and maintain compared to traditional gasoline-powered pickup trucks. Their lower fuel costs and reduced maintenance requirements can lead to significant savings for businesses and consumers over time. Many governments worldwide are implementing policies to promote the adoption of electric pickup trucks, such as tax breaks, subsidies, and preferential treatment in urban areas. These incentives make electric pickup trucks more affordable and attractive to businesses and consumers. Additionally, Battery technology is continuously improving, resulting in batteries with higher energy density, enabling electric pickup trucks to travel longer distances on a single charge. OEMs such as Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Stellantis are launching new ELCVs models for instance, in May 2022, Tata Motors launches e-cargo transport solutions with the all-new Ace EV. Additionally, Tata Motors Partners with Amazon, BigBasket, Flipkart and their logistics partners for green intra-city deliveries Signs Memorandum of Understanding to deliver 39,000 Ace EVs. Also, In January 2023, the electric mobility arm of Jupiter Wagons Ltd, debuted two electric light commercial vehicles for India the Jem Tez and the EV Star CC. "FCEV segment will grow at significant growth rate during the forecast period." During the forecast period, the FCEV segment is expected to grow at significant growth rate during the forecast period. FCEVs are being used for urban logistics applications, such as waste collection and last-mile delivery. This is due to their zero emissions and quiet operation, which makes them ideal for use in urban areas. Also, FCEVs are also being used for cold chain transportation applications, such as refrigerated light electric trucks and vans. This is due to their ability to operate at low temperatures and their long range. Moreover, as governments continue to support zero-emission vehicles and the e-commerce and urban logistics sectors continue to grow, FCEVs are expected to play an increasingly important role in the electric light commercial vehicle industry. Manufacturers are also developing ELCVs by FCEV propulsion such as in September 2022, Hyundai and Iveco launched the Iveco daily fuel cell electric van in Hannover. With increasing interest from large multinational energy firms to transition to cleaner fuels and the strong commitment of several major OEMs such as Toyota and Hyundai, there are efforts to push the development and deployment of FCEVs. Hence the FCEV segment will grow during the forecast period. "North America to be the fastest growing market for electric light commercial vehicle during the forecast period." The North American region is one of the most well-established ELCV markets in the world. Countries such as the US and Canada have a high demand for ELCVs across some of their states. Although there are not many unified regulations for the development of ELCVs, different states offer varying amounts of subsidies, tax rebates, and other incentives for ELCVs buyers and manufacturers. The region is also home to many top ELCVs manufacturers, such as General Motors, Ford and Others. These companies have worked together to cater to the ELCVs demand in the region along with other foreign players. The ELCVs market in Canada is expected to grow at a significant rate due to new regulations which are encouraging the demand for ELCVs. Top ELCVs battery providers and startups have partnered with OEMs in the North American ELCVs market. GM, for instance, has partnered with LG Chem for their ELCVs batteries. Such development will drive the growth of North America ELCVs market in the forecast period. Inquire Before Buying: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_BuyingNew.asp?id=80041214 Key Market Players: The Electric Light Commercial Vehicle market is dominated by established players such as BYD (China), Ford Motor Company (US), General Motors (US) Mercedes-Benz (Germany), and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. (Japan). Recent Developments In May 2022, General Motors announced the sale of Zevo 400 by 2023. It is a mid-sized electric van designed for short and frequent trips and has ADAS features. It also offers a range of 250 miles. In July 2022, Toyota Motor Corporation announced a partnership with Suzuki Motor Corporation, Daihatsu Motor Co., and Commercial Japan Partnership Technologies (CJPT) to build mini commercial electric vans. In June 2022, Renualt launched Master E-Tech Electric, equipped with a lithium-ion battery of 52 kWh and a motor capacity of 92 kW. It also offers a range of 126 miles. In June 2022, General Motors announced the supply of 150 Zevo 600 electric vans to FedEx out of 2,500 ordered Zevo 600 electric vans for delivery purposes. In March 2022, BYD and Shell announced the improvement of charging infrastructure for BEV and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) owners in China and Europe. The agreement will allow members access to 275,000 charging points through the Shell network. Get 10% Free Customization on this Report: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestCustomizationNew.asp?id=80041214 Browse Adjacent Market: Automotive and Transportation Market Research Reports & Consulting Related Reports: Electric Commercial Vehicle Market - Global Forecast to 2030 Electric Utility Vehicle Market - Global Forecast to 2027 Industrial Vehicles Market - Global Forecast to 2028 All-terrain Vehicle Market - Global Forecast to 2028 About MarketsandMarkets: MarketsandMarkets has been recognized as one of America's best management consulting firms by Forbes, as per their recent report. MarketsandMarkets is a blue ocean alternative in growth consulting and program management, leveraging a man-machine offering to drive supernormal growth for progressive organizations in the B2B space. We have the widest lens on emerging technologies, making us proficient in co-creating supernormal growth for clients. Earlier this year, we made a formal transformation into one of America's best management consulting firms as per a survey conducted by Forbes. The B2B economy is witnessing the emergence of $25 trillion of new revenue streams that are substituting existing revenue streams in this decade alone. We work with clients on growth programs, helping them monetize this $25 trillion opportunity through our service lines - TAM Expansion, Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy to Execution, Market Share Gain, Account Enablement, and Thought Leadership Marketing. Built on the 'GIVE Growth' principle, we work with several Forbes Global 2000 B2B companies - helping them stay relevant in a disruptive ecosystem. Our insights and strategies are molded by our industry experts, cutting-edge AI-powered Market Intelligence Cloud, and years of research. The KnowledgeStore (our Market Intelligence Cloud) integrates our research, facilitates an analysis of interconnections through a set of applications, helping clients look at the entire ecosystem and understand the revenue shifts happening in their industry. To find out more, visit www.MarketsandMarkets.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Contact: Mr. Aashish Mehra MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Visit Our Website: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/electric-light-commercial-vehicle.asp Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/electric-light-commercial-vehicle-market-worth-3-919-3-thousand-units-by-2030---exclusive-report-by-marketsandmarkets-301995613.html CHICAGO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Waterproofing Admixtures Market by Type (Pore Blocking Admixtures, Crystalline Admixtures, Densifier), Application (Residential, Commercial, Infrastructure), and Region (Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, MEA, South America) - Global Forecast to 2028", size was USD 5.3 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 8.0 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 7.4%, between 2023 and 2028. The market is projected to grow because of the growing infrastructural projects. Waterproofing admixtures plays crucial role in the various infrastructural project such as highways, roads, streets, parks, dams, mass transit and airports, waste management building, and others. In addition, due to increasing population, urbanization, innovations, technological advancements and changing consumer preferences the demand for waterproofing admixtures can increase due to infrastructural projects. Browse in-depth TOC on "Waterproofing Admixtures Market" 154 - Tables 64 - Figures 198 - Pages Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=89487868 Crystalline admixtures are projected to register the highest CAGR, in terms of value, of the global Waterproofing admixtures during the forecast period. These crystalline admixtures are known for their excellent waterproofing performance. These admixtures form a resilient network of crystals within concrete, effectively sealing even the smallest cracks and pores, thus ensuring long-lasting protection against water intrusion. Notably, their self-healing capabilities further distinguish them, as they react with moisture over time to create new crystals that mend minor concrete damage. Thus, they are widely used in application such as residential, commercial, and infrastructure, which will increase demand for them in the future. Commercial is estimated to be the largest application of the Waterproofing admixtures, in terms of value, during the forecast period. In the upcoming years, it is anticipated that the use of Waterproofing admixtures in commercial applications will continue to grow. Because the commercial buildings are typically subjected to more wear and tear than residential buildings. Also, water penetration can cause significant structural damage to commercial buildings, which can lead to costly repairs and downtime. Therefore, demand for durable and long-lasting waterproofing solutions in the commercial application. Request Sample Pages: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=89487868 Asia Pacific is estimated to be the largest market for the Waterproofing admixtures market, in terms of value, during the forecast period. The adoption of Waterproofing admixtures in various industrial sectors has been increased due to the government initiatives and heavy investments in infrastructure development. Moreover, The Asia-Pacific region is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, with strong economic growth and rising disposable incomes. This is creating a favorable environment for the growth of the waterproofing admixtures market. Accordingly, Asia Pacific will be the largest market for waterproofing admixtures market during forecast period. The key players profiled in the report include Sika AG (Switzerland), Saint-Gobain S.A. (France), Mapei S.p.A. (Italy), Fosroc, Inc. (UAE), Penetron (US) Dow inc. (US) Xypex Chemical Corporation (Canada), and RPM International Inc. (US). Browse Adjacent Market: Building and Construction Market Research & Consulting Related Reports: Waterproofing Systems Market - Global Forecast to 2027 Waterproofing Membranes Market - Global Forecast to 2025 About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets has been recognized as one of America's best management consulting firms by Forbes, as per their recent report. MarketsandMarkets is a blue ocean alternative in growth consulting and program management, leveraging a man-machine offering to drive supernormal growth for progressive organizations in the B2B space. We have the widest lens on emerging technologies, making us proficient in co-creating supernormal growth for clients. The B2B economy is witnessing the emergence of $25 trillion of new revenue streams that are substituting existing revenue streams in this decade alone. We work with clients on growth programs, helping them monetize this $25 trillion opportunity through our service lines - TAM Expansion, Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy to Execution, Market Share Gain, Account Enablement, and Thought Leadership Marketing. Built on the 'GIVE Growth' principle, we work with several Forbes Global 2000 B2B companies - helping them stay relevant in a disruptive ecosystem. Our insights and strategies are molded by our industry experts, cutting-edge AI-powered Market Intelligence Cloud, and years of research. The KnowledgeStore (our Market Intelligence Cloud) integrates our research, facilitates an analysis of interconnections through a set of applications, helping clients look at the entire ecosystem and understand the revenue shifts happening in their industry. To find out more, visit www.MarketsandMarkets.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Contact: Mr. Aashish Mehra MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Research Insights: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/waterproofing-admixtures-market.asp Visit Our Website: htps://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/waterproofing-admixtures.asp Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/waterproofing-admixtures-market-worth-8-0-billion-by-2028--exclusive-report-by-marketsandmarkets-301995620.html CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Japanese yen weakened against other major currencies in the European session on Wednesday as European stock markets traded higher, on signs of easing Middle East tensions after Israel and Hamas announced a ceasefire, during which at least 50 Israeli and foreign hostages are due to be released. The deal includes the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails in exchange for 50 people held captive by Hamas in Gaza since the armed group that rules the enclave stormed southern Israel on October 7. Also, for every 10 additional hostages released, an extra day of truce will be observed. Meanwhile, the traders focus their attention towards the U.K. finance minister's budget update. Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt will deliver the 2023 Autumn Statement later today, outlining the government's fiscal plan for the year ahead. Hunt suggested that he will cut taxes on business to support economic growth. His options to cut taxes are limited as public debt now remains close to 100 percent of gross domestic product, which is the highest since 1960s. The announcement is due at around 7.30 am ET. Nvidia's outlook beat expectations, though the chipmaker predicted decline in sales to China. The safe-haven currency or the yen started falling from the Asian session today. In the European trading now, the yen fell to a 5-day low of 187.03 against the pound and a 2-day low of 168.74 against the Swiss franc, from yesterday's closing quotes of 186.04 and 167.90, respectively. If the yen extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 189.00 against the pound and 171.00 against the franc. Against the U.S. and the Canadian dollars, the yen dropped to 2-day lows of 149.36 and 108.83 from Tuesday's closing quotes of 148.39 and 108.30, respectively. The greenback may test support near 152.00 against the greenback and 111.00 against the loonie. The yen dropped to a 2-day low of 162.73 against the euro, from yesterday's closing value of 161.88. On the downside, 165.00 is seen as the next support level for the yen. The yen slipped to a 6-day low of 97.77 against the Australian dollar and a 2-day low of 89.94 against the NZ dollar, from early highs of 97.08 and 89.58, respectively. The yen is likely to find support around 99.00 against the aussie and 91.00 against the kiwi. Looking ahead, U.S. weekly mortgage approvals data, Canada manufacturing and wholesale sales data for October, US. durable goods order for October, weekly jobless claims data, U.S. University of Michigan consumer sentiment for November, U.S. EIA crude oil data and U.S. Baker Hughes oil rig count data are due to be released in the New York session. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Video-Workshop: Das kleine Einmaleins der Charttechnik In diesem kostenlosen Video-Workshop von Stefan Klotter lernen Sie alles uber Charttechnik. Lassen Sie sich diesen kostenfreien Workshop nicht entgehen! Hier klicken (From left to right) Representatives from CITIC Telecom CPC, Mr. Chris Fung (Senior Vice President of Engineering & Services), Mr. Taylor Lam (Chief Strategy Officer), Mr. Jacky Kwok (Chief Commercial Officer) and Mr. Ivan Lee (Vice President of Information Technology Services & Data Science), officiate at the launch ceremony of TrustCSI 3.0 HONG KONG, Nov 22, 2023 - (ACN Newswire) - CITIC Telecom International CPC Limited (CITIC Telecom CPC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited (SEHK: 1883), is proud to announce the launch of TrustCSI 3.0, a groundbreaking cybersecurity solution that uses AI to revolutionize Security Operations Center (SOC) and helps companies to operate securely in the intelligence era. Powered by its unparalleled experience in cybersecurity and forward-thinking SOC4Future strategy, which reshapes the core capabilities of SOC, TrustCSI? 3.0 transforms cybersecurity from passive defense to proactive guardianship, enabling enterprises stay ahead of today's evolving threat landscape.TrustCSI 3.0 combines CITIC Telecom CPC's industry certified security expertise, with cutting-edge AI capabilities to deliver enterprise-grade protection across industries. With a strong emphasis on compliance and vendor neutrality, CITIC Telecom CPC's project management ability is widely recognized. This innovative security service strengthens the trust between CITIC Telecom CPC and its customers, offering comprehensive and proactive digital protection in the market, and positions the company as a Trusted TechOps Security Enabler.Mr. Taylor Lam, Chief Strategy Officer of CITIC Telecom CPC, said, "With TrustCSI 3.0, we empower enterprises to prepare themselves and proactively react to the evolving threat landscape and effectively protect their data while safeguarding their business throughout their digital transformation journey. Driven by our SOC4Future strategy and decades of security experience, we are redefining holistic enterprise protection and positioning ourselves as the Trusted TechOps Security Enabler for enterprises, providing them with the tools and expertise needed, like AI-Red/Blue Cybersecurity Practices, to safeguard their operations against emerging threats."Redefining Cybersecurity and Resilience with SOC4Future Strategy and AI EmpowermentTrustCSI 3.0 uses CITIC Telecom CPC's decades of deep security knowledge and practical services experience to revolutionize SOCs. It follows CITIC Telecom CPC's "ReDEFINED SOC4Future" strategy that encompasses four key elements:-- Proactive Security Approach - AI-Red/Blue Cybersecurity Practices-- AI-Powered Cybersecurity Framework-- Enhanced Dual SIEM Operations-- "SOC-as-a-Service" paradigmStrengthening Proactive Security With AI-Red/Blue Cybersecurity PracticesTrustCSI 3.0 leverages the proactive security approach with AI-Red/Blue Cybersecurity Practices, enhancing the cybersecurity cycle from reactive defense to proactive guardianship. It offers an advanced automated penetration testing tool that uses machine learning to enhance the information-gathering phase and exploit vulnerabilities concurrently. It vastly improves enterprise-wide threat awareness and response effectiveness by replicating real-world cyberattack and defense scenarios.The AI-Red/Blue Cybersecurity Practices cover the entire service stack, from staff training, offensive and defensive drills to network protection solutions, security strategy and service consultation. The Red Team conducts comprehensive AI-powered assessments and simulations, while the Blue Team offers all-encompassing defense services, ensuring a holistic approach to cybersecurity.-- (Case studies) A China-based global supplier of aluminum wheels and chassis and a conglomerate in China are already using this service to fortify their security and defense platform. It is helping them meet current industry standards and fully complying with "National Cybersecurity Exercises".AI-Powered Cybersecurity FrameworkIn the evolution of a cybersecurity service framework, intelligence and automation are no longer choices but crucial values for customers in an all-around way. CITIC Telecom CPC's AI-driven solutions and automation accelerate threat identification, enrichment, hunting, containment, and remediation. Combining this "Tech" capability and proactive "Operational" approach reduces opportunities for threat actors to infiltrate while enabling enterprises to respond rapidly. The future-ready and intelligent framework has four service pillars:1. Identify and PredictA suite of comprehensive assessment and identification services covering systems, applications, network infrastructure, and critical assets services improve threat identification and prediction. Harnessing the power of algorithm and AI, together with other enhanced capabilities, the AI Penetration Test efficiently identifies and mitigates security risks at an early application development stage while assessing security resilience against various attack scenarios.2. ProtectSASE for dynamic network security, UTM, NGFW, WAF, and IPS for network and application access control, and cloud email security offer comprehensive protection to enterprises. A dedicated team of security professionals manages everything from incident consultation, solutions design and implementation to configuration and ongoing device management. This comprehensive approach ensures the continuous improvement of the customers' security infrastructure.3. DetectRound-the-clock managed security, reinforced by certified SOC and dual SIEM platforms, EDR solutions, and AI-enabled User and Entity Behavior Analysis, helps enterprises swiftly identify and respond to cybersecurity events.4. Respond & RecoverSecurity Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR), Security Incident Response (IR), and Threat Hunting services minimize resolution time and human error, with cloud-based Backup and Disaster Recovery services driving rapid recovery and robust business continuity.Driving Cybersecurity Capabilities with Enhanced Dual SIEM OperationsSecurity matters to all data, not just some. So, CITIC Telecom CPC's self-developed world-class SOCs utilize advanced technologies with Dual SIEM to revolutionize threat intelligence management by accelerating AI-driven detection and feedback to emerging threats. They provide enterprises with critical assessment for threat monitoring or immediate protection.The Dual SIEM operations encompass a wide array of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) capabilities. They aggregate and cross-correlate threat intelligence data to identify and illuminate potential threats, increase the speed of searches, boost security visibility, and improve cost management.Future-proofing Cybersecurity and Compliance with SOC-as-a-Service at its CoreThe latest SOC-as-a-Service (SOCaaS) model helps enterprises enjoy cost-effective, SOC-managed security capabilities from different SOCaaS service offerings. Using the latest security technologies, a team of dedicated experts will monitor, detect, and respond to threats 24/7, all without the expensive cost of building and staffing your own SOC.CITIC Telecom CPC's "SOCaaS" approach delivers unparalleled security analytics and monitoring capabilities via self-deployed and managed 24x7 SOCs in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. These fully managed SOCs use a "global-local" approach with certified professional expertise for customized security solutions worldwide to safeguard their operations, providing customers with peace of mind.Mr. Brook Wong, Chief Executive Officer of CITIC Telecom CPC, said, "CITIC Telecom CPC TrustCSI 3.0 embodies our motto of 'Innovation Never Stops'. Through continuous innovation, cutting-edge technologies and a customer-centric approach, we strive to be the trusted partner that enables enterprises to navigate the dynamic digital landscape confidently. By embracing AI-led technology, we continue to enhance our Cloud-Network-Security Solutions, providing enhanced resilience and unwavering peace of mind enterprises across various industries. Looking ahead to 2024, we remain dedicated to empowering enterprises with intelligent and proactive cybersecurity solutions that redefine industry standards."To know more information about TrustCSI 3.0, please visit:https://www.citictel-cpc.com/en-hk/trustcsi3About CITIC Telecom CPCWe are CITIC Telecom International CPC Limited ("CITIC Telecom CPC"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited (SEHK: 1883), serving multinational enterprises the world over by addressing their specific ICT requirements with highly scalable tailored solutions built upon our flagship technology suites, comprising TrueCONNECT private network solutions, TrustCSI information security solutions, DataHOUSE cloud data center solutions, and SmartCLOUD cloud computing solutions.With the motto "Innovation Never Stops," we leverage innovative technologies, embracing AI, AR, Big Data, IoT, and other cutting-edge emerging technologies to transform technical potential into business value for our customers. As an enterprise digital transformation partner, we strive to help our customers achieve industry-leading positions, high agility, and cost-efficiency through digitalization.With our Global-Local capabilities, we are committed to providing our customers with one-stop-shop ICT solutions with superior quality. Having a worldwide footprint across nearly 160 countries and regions, including Asia, Europe and America, Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, our global network resources connect over 165 points of presence (POPs), 60+ SDWAN gateways, 21 Cloud service centers, 30+ data centers, and three dedicated 24x7 Security Operations Centers (SOCs). We are certified with a series of international certifications, including SD-WAN Ready, ISO 9001, 14001, 20000, 27001, and 27017, to ensure our services compliance with international standards and resources for enterprises. We offer local professional services, superior delivery capabilities as well as exceptional customer experience and best practices through our global presence and extensive industry know-how, becoming a leading integrated intelligent ICT service provider to enterprise customers.For more information, please visit www.citictel-cpc.comMedia Contacts:Catherine YuenCITIC Telecom CPC(852) 2170 7536Email: catherine.yuen@citictel-cpc.comSource: CITIC Telecom CPCCopyright 2023 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Aurrigo International Plc (AURR.L), a provider of transport technology solutions, said on Wednesday that it has signed a project agreement with International Airlines Group, S.A. (IAG.L), for the deployment and demonstration of Aurrigo's autonomous aviation solutions at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport or CVG. The deployment of Aurrigo's vehicles under the deal is valued at $0.29 million. The deal is expected to start an evaluation and simulation phase in November 2023 and run for three months, followed by a demonstration phase and an initial deployment. 'It is the Board's expectation that this will then lead to the likely deployment of a small fleet during H1 2025 at CVG. As with Aurrigo's UK partnership with IAG, it will involve the Auto-DollyTug baggage vehicle and Aurrigo's Auto-Sim aviation operations simulation software,' Aurrigo said in a statement. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Charming Guangdong" Photography Exhibition took place in Cairo, Egypt, on November 19th (local time), alongside a promotion conference showcasing the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area World-Class Tourist Destination. Nearly 200 guests from various fields, including politics, business, tourism, media and universities from both China and Egypt, experienced the unique charm of Guangdong at the event. The event forms part of the "2023 Charming China-Cultural Exhibition from Guangdong" event, and is hosted by the Information Office of the People's Government of Guangdong Province, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Guangdong Province, and the China Cultural Center in Cairo. It is organized by Nanfang Media Group, and supported by GDToday, Egypt China Trade Center, and Guangdong Photographers Association. Hisham Zaazou, former Minister of Tourism of Egypt, said at the event that Egypt and China have carried out a lot of cooperation, and both countries should continue to have more cooperation, especially in tourism. Dr. Mohamed Elsherbeiny, a tourism consultant for the Egyptian tourist authority, stated that China and Egypt are both countries with ancient civilizations, and the exchanges between the two countries can be traced back to the ancient Silk Road. He pointed out there are now 16 routes from the country's capital, Cairo, to China, including a direct flight from Guangzhou to Cairo once a day. "Egypt welcomes the Chinese and is eager to maintain a good friendship with China," said Elsherbeiny. Guangdong, located in the southernmost part of the Chinese mainland, is adjacent to Hong Kong and Macao to the south, while the Nanling Mountains stretch across its northern region. Facing the vast South China Sea, this region enjoys a mild climate resembling perpetual spring. Serving as a pivotal crossroads connecting the eastern and western regions of China, Guangdong is constantly evolving and experiencing new developments. Over a millennium ago, the Maritime Silk Road originated from this very region. Treasures such as the Cantonese language, Cantonese Opera, Cantonese cuisine, lion dances, dragon-boat racing, Lingnan arts, Yingge Dance, Wing Chun Kuen, congou tea, and other iconic elements have been the hallmarks of this ancient land, increasingly reaching out to the world. The "Charming Guangdong" Photography Exhibition was divided into three parts: "Rivers and Seas Converge in Guangdong, Where Everything Coexists Harmoniously," "Global Economic and Trade Connections Drive Innovation and Entrepreneurship," and "Lingnan Customs Mingle in Stunning, Affluent, and Fortunate Locales." With over 50 outstanding photographic works, the exhibition spotlighted Guangdong's economic and trade development, customs, cultural heritage, natural scenery, and ecological environment to guests and audiences. During the exhibition, a special guided tour was held for dozens of Egyptian teachers and students from the Confucius Institute at Ain Shams University. They were amazed by the beautiful scenery and expressed their wishes to visit Guangdong soon. Samar Salah, a Chinese teacher from the university, said that she learned a lot about Guangdong through the event, and she thought the exhibition with Chinese and Arabic illustrations made it very easy for the audience to learn more about Guangdong. Noura Gamal, an Egyptian student from the Institute and a marine animal lover, was super excited when she saw the photo of a Chinese White Dolphin at the exhibition. She said she couldn't wait to go to Guangdong to see the Chinese White Dolphin with her own eyes. Confucius Institute students Kerolos Emad and Ahmed Ayman also told GDToday that they are very interested in Guangdong's beautiful landscape, rich culture and colorful folk customs and really want to visit Guangdong one day. At the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area World-Class Tourist Destination Promotion Conference, participants were able to experience the abundant cultural and tourism resources, authentic customs, and vibrant urban ambiance of Guangdong and the GBA through the presentation of the intangible cultural heritage of Lingnan, a promotional video featuring Guangdong, an introduction by outstanding guides, and on-site interactive exchanges. During the conference, Deng Hong, Deputy Director of the Information Office of the People's Government of Guangdong Province, presented Hanfu to the China Cultural Center in Cairo, showcasing the charm of traditional Chinese culture and enhancing communication and exchanges between the people of China and Egypt. Furthermore, similar activities have been held in Italy and will also be held in Malaysia in late November, in a bid to promote cultural exchanges and mutual learning between China and countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia, showcasing the profound cultural heritage of Chinese civilization and the charm of Lingnan culture to the world. Video - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281575/1.mp4 Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281567/image_5000393_41334063.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281568/image_5000393_41334786.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281569/1.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281570/2.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281571/3.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281572/4.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281573/5.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281574/6.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/charming-guangdong-photography-exhibition-amazes-egyptian-audience-in-cairo-301995809.html CHICAGO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The LEO Terminals Market is projected to grow from USD 6.0 billion in 2023 and is estimated to reach USD 17.7 billion by 2028; it is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.9% from 2023 to 2028 according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets. The reflecting a notable Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.9%. between 2023 and 2028. Notably, North America is anticipated to hold the most substantial share of the LEO terminals markets in 2023. Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=45523154 Browse in-depth TOC on "LEO Terminals Market" 216 - Tables 58 - Figures 256 - Pages LEO Terminals Market Report Scope: Report Coverage Details Market Revenue in 2023 $6.0 billion Estimated Value by 2028 $17.7 billion Growth Rate Poised to grow at a CAGR of 23.9% Market Size Available for 2019-2028 Forecast Period 2023-2028 Forecast Units Value (USD Million/Billion) Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, and Trends Segments Covered By platform, vertical, and frequency. Geographies Covered North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of World Key Market Challenge Threat of data interception, unauthorized access, and cyberattacks Key Market Opportunities Growing demand for connectivity from developing countries Key Market Drivers Increasing demand for cost-effective, high-speed connectivity "By Platform, mobile segment is expected to register the highest market share during the forecast period " Based on platform, the LEO terminals market has been segmented into fixed, portable, and mobile. The LEO terminals market has experienced unprecedented growth, largely driven by the deployment of LEO satellite constellations by major players such as SpaceX's Starlink, OneWeb, and Amazon's Project Kuiper. These constellations have redefined global connectivity, offering high-speed internet, data transmission, and communications services to diverse user groups, ranging from remote communities to urban centers. " By Vertical, government & defence segment is projected to record the highest CAGR growth" Based on vertical, the LEO terminals market has been segmented into commercial and government & defense. The miniaturization of LEO terminals has made satellite communications economically and potentially viable for widespread use in the commercial, civil, government, and military sectors. Continuous reduction in the cost of LEO terminals, increased demand for LEO terminals across verticals, and a rise in the number of satellite launches are expected to fuel the growth of the LEO terminals market worldwide. "By frequency, ku-band would have the highest market share growth during the forecast period" Based on frequency, the LEO terminals market has been segmented into C-band, L- & S-band, X-band, Ka-band, Ku-band, VHF/UHF-band, EHF/SHF-band, Q-band, and multi-band. LEO terminals are used for voice and data services, television, DTH broadcasting, digital satellite news gathering (DSNG), VSAT, and other applications. The selection of a frequency band depends on factors such as coverage requirements, data transmission speed, regulatory considerations, and the specific needs of industries and applications within the LEO terminals market. Inquiry Before Buying: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_BuyingNew.asp?id=45523154 " North America is expected to hold the highest market share in 2023." Based on region, the LEO terminals market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. The global market is on an upward trajectory, driven by the increasing demand for high-speed internet, the surge in remote work and learning, and the emergence of new LEO satellite constellations. In this landscape, North America is poised to lead the market during the forecast period due to the presence of key industry players, such as SpaceX (US), EchoStar Corporation (US), and Kymeta Corporation (US), investing significantly in LEO satellite constellations. Europe is another significant market with a strong demand for high-speed internet connectivity, particularly in rural areas, where LEO terminals offer an affordable and reliable solution. Asia Pacific is also projected to witness rapid growth as developing countries seek advanced technologies such as LEO terminals to enhance internet connectivity. Similarly, Latin America and the Middle East & Africa are expected to experience substantial market expansion, addressing the connectivity needs of underserved regions Key players in the market are focusing on developing advanced LEO terminals that are capable of delivering high-speed connectivity to remote and underserved regions. These players include SpaceX (US), Kymeta Corporation (US), L3harris Technologies, Inc. (US), EchoStar Corporation (US), and Thales (France), among others. Get 10% Free Customization on this Report: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestCustomizationNew.asp?id=45523154 Browse Adjacent Market: Aerospace and Defence Market Research Reports Research Reports &Consulting Related Reports: Satellite Internet Market by Orbit (LEO, MEO/GEO), Connectivity (Two-Way Service, One-Way Service, Hybrid Service), Vertical (Commercial, Government and Defense), Frequency, Download Speed and Region - Global Forecast to 2028 5G From Space Market by Components (Hardware and Services), Application(Enhanced Mobile Broadband (Embb), Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communication (Urllc), Massive Machine-Type Communications (Mmtc)), Vertical and Region - Forecast to 2028 Satellite Communication (SATCOM) Equipment Market by Solution (Products and Services), Platform (Portable, Land Mobile, Land Fixed, Maritime), Technology (SOTM/COTM, SOTP), Vertical, Connectivity, Frequency and Region - Forecast to 2028 About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets has been recognized as one of America's best management consulting firms by Forbes, as per their recent report. MarketsandMarkets is a blue ocean alternative in growth consulting and program management, leveraging a man-machine offering to drive supernormal growth for progressive organizations in the B2B space. We have the widest lens on emerging technologies, making us proficient in co-creating supernormal growth for clients. Earlier this year, we made a formal transformation into one of America's best management consulting firms as per a survey conducted by Forbes. The B2B economy is witnessing the emergence of $25 trillion of new revenue streams that are substituting existing revenue streams in this decade alone. We work with clients on growth programs, helping them monetize this $25 trillion opportunity through our service lines - TAM Expansion, Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy to Execution, Market Share Gain, Account Enablement, and Thought Leadership Marketing. Built on the 'GIVE Growth' principle, we work with several Forbes Global 2000 B2B companies - helping them stay relevant in a disruptive ecosystem. Our insights and strategies are molded by our industry experts, cutting-edge AI-powered Market Intelligence Cloud, and years of research. The KnowledgeStore (our Market Intelligence Cloud) integrates our research, facilitates an analysis of interconnections through a set of applications, helping clients look at the entire ecosystem and understand the revenue shifts happening in their industry. To find out more, visit www.MarketsandMarkets.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Contact: Mr. Aashish Mehra MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Visit Our Web Site: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/leo-terminal-market.asp Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/leo-terminal.asp Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/leo-terminals-industry-worth-17-7-billion-by-2028---exclusive-report-by-marketsandmarkets-301995671.html Continuing to Drive Hong Kong's Industrial Revitalization Process HONG KONG, Nov 22, 2023 - (ACN Newswire) - The Federation of Hong Kong Industries ("FHKI") hosted the 2023 Young Industrialist Awards of Hong Kong ("YIAH") and Industrialist of the Year ("IOY") Award presentation ceremony on November 17th. Mr. Michael Wong, the Acting Financial Secretary of the HKSAR Government, attended the ceremony as the Guest of Honour. Dr. Chow Bok-Hin Felix, Executive Director and CEO of Niche-Tech Semiconductor Materials Limited (together with its subsidiary referred to as "Niche-Tech," stock code: 8490.HK), was honored with the Young Industrialist Awards of Hong Kong 2023. This recognition reflects the market's acknowledgment and confidence in the development of Niche-Tech. The Young Industrialist Awards of Hong Kong were established by FHKI in 1988 to recognize young industrialists aged 21 to 45 who have achieved outstanding success in their respective industries. With this year's awardees included, a total of 257 YIAH recipients have been recognized. The selection criteria for the YIAH not only emphasize market recognition of products and technologies but also highlight the importance of assisting in the industry's transformation and upgrading. The goal is to promote the process of industrial revitalization in Hong Kong, aiming to achieve sustainable development. Niche-Tech is a technology company dedicated to the research, development, manufacturing, and sales of semiconductor packaging materials. It was co-founded by Dr. Chow Bok-Hin Felix and his father, Professor Chow Chun-Kay Stephen, in 2006. Niche-Tech went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's GEM board in 2018, becoming the largest bonding wire manufacturer in Hong Kong and the second-largest domestic brand supplier in the Mainland market. The company's market share in encapsulation adhesive for Mini-LED display applications exceeds 20%, ranking first. With Dr. Chow's extensive industry experience and efficient leadership, Niche-Tech has focused on independent innovation, customer and market needs, and the direction of technological trends. The company has successfully developed domestically produced materials with stable quality and excellent performance, covering various products such as precision bonding wires, high polymer encapsulants, and chip bonding materials. Niche-Tech provides competitive choices and innovative solutions for specialized customers in power devices, IC packaging, LED packaging, and more. Dr. Chow stated, "The award presented by FHKI is not only as a personal accomplishment but also as recognition of my team's contributions to the semiconductor advanced materials sector and society at large. I will continue to lead the team in propelling technological innovation in the field of new materials. We also plan to foster further cooperation with Hong Kong research institutions and universities to bolster the competitiveness of domestic products." Driven by the rapid development of the industry and the semiconductor localization, Niche-Tech places even greater emphasis on innovative research and development. The company invests significant resources in building high-standard technological platforms and cultivating a talented team. It closely monitors market demands, proactively adjusts development strategies, and successfully propelled the company into the supplier system of leading enterprises in the power device market through the introduction of newly developed bonding wire products. With years of efforts, Niche-Tech has been recognized as a national high-tech enterprise, "specialised and sophisticated" Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise of Guangdong Province, and a national-level specialised and sophisticated - Little Giant enterprise. Gradually, it has emerged as a prominent player in the segmented market, earning significant market recognition. The "Dual Carbon" strategy and the upgrading of Insulate-Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) products in the new energy field have brought new opportunities for the semiconductor industry. Moving forward, Niche-Tech will continue to strengthen its research and development innovation capabilities, accelerate product iteration, and continually optimize its product line and market layout. By forming an effective integrated development system and implementing a long-term development strategy, the company aims to consistently increase market share, enhance competitiveness, and continue driving the localization of the semiconductor industry in China as well as the industrial revitalization process in Hong Kong. Copyright 2023 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. Video-Workshop: Das kleine Einmaleins der Charttechnik In diesem kostenlosen Video-Workshop von Stefan Klotter lernen Sie alles uber Charttechnik. Lassen Sie sich diesen kostenfreien Workshop nicht entgehen! Hier klicken JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - In a major breakthrough in the nearly seven weeks old bloody conflict in the Middle East, Israel and Hamas have reached a deal that will allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza, and 150 Palestinian women and teenagers held in Israeli jails. Both the parties have agreed to stop fighting for four days to implement the deal, brokered mainly by Qatar. Israeli government has offered to add an extra day in truce if Hamas releases additional 10 hostages each day. Israel Defense Forces have not yet finalized the exact timing for the pause of military operations in Gaza. As the truce is expected to take effect in the next 24 hours, the Israeli forces continued attacks in the Gaza Strip. The badly needed deal is the result of weeks of negotiations by the leaders and top diplomatic officials of the United States, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and China. Israel's cabinet approved the deal early Wednesday morning. U.S. President Joe Biden thanked Qatar's Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi for their critical leadership and partnership in reaching this deal. He appreciated the commitment that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have made in supporting an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure the provision of additional humanitarian assistance to Palestinian families in Gaza. Two American hostages were released in late October. 'Today's deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released,' Biden said in a statement. The 50 women and children whom Hamas agreed to release are among 239 hostages it abducted in a surprise attack carried out in Israeli cities on October 7. Around 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, were killed in the militant attack across the border, while around 12,700 people lost their lives in Gaza in retaliatory attacks by Israel Defense Forces. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on Hamas to release all the remaining hostages. Ursula said she has asked the European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic to upscale further shipments to Gaza as quickly as possible to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the enclave. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Video-Workshop: Das kleine Einmaleins der Charttechnik In diesem kostenlosen Video-Workshop von Stefan Klotter lernen Sie alles uber Charttechnik. Lassen Sie sich diesen kostenfreien Workshop nicht entgehen! Hier klicken Astellas, Bayer, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Kite Pharma, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and other biopharma leaders advance digital innovation for more customer-centric engagement BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV) today announced that leaders from Astellas, Bayer, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Kite Pharma, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and more will be among the speakers at Veeva Commercial Summit, Europe on November 28-29 in Madrid, Spain. Life sciences professionals will come together to share how they are advancing digital strategies across sales, medical, and marketing to bring new treatments to patients. One of largest gatherings of life sciences leaders in Europe, Veeva Commercial Summit will host over 1,300 industry professionals across more than 100 sessions. Astellas, Bayer, and GSK will headline the opening keynote joining Chris Moore, president of Veeva Europe on stage. Veeva will showcase Veeva Vault CRM, the next generation of CRM for life sciences, with companies sharing how they are advancing field engagement to deliver on-demand information to healthcare professionals (HCPs) and fostering better connections with clinical. Forward-thinking life sciences companies will headline the event's main keynotes, including: Astellas , standardizing customer and deep key opinion leader (KOL) data globally to drive consistent field engagements and improve collaborations with the scientific community. , standardizing customer and deep key opinion leader (KOL) data globally to drive consistent field engagements and improve collaborations with the scientific community. Bayer and GSK , enhancing their commercial foundation to lead omnichannel, precision engagement. and , enhancing their commercial foundation to lead omnichannel, precision engagement. Ferring Pharmaceuticals and Novo Nordisk , connecting their content approach across marketing and medical to lead highly personalized engagement. and , connecting their content approach across marketing and medical to lead highly personalized engagement. Kite Pharma and Novartis, measuring medical impact more effectively to link medical outcomes to company success. A panel with practicing physicians, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and Veeva experts will close the event, highlighting the evolving needs of KOLs and HCPs. They will discuss how the industry is moving toward more responsive customer-centric engagement to bring the right medicines to the right patients. "Developing service-oriented HCP relationships is key to creating better patient outcomes as real-time communication increases with the growth of complex therapies," said Chris Moore, president of Veeva Europe. "We are excited to bring the industry together, creating a network of shared learnings that can spur ideation and innovation to advance life sciences." The event is open exclusively to life sciences professionals. Register and stay up to date on the agenda and program details at veeva.com/eu/Summit. Additional Information To register for Veeva Commercial Summit, visit: veeva.com/eu/Summit Connect with Veeva on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/veeva-systems About Veeva Systems Veeva is the global leader in cloud software for the life sciences industry. Committed to innovation, product excellence, and customer success, Veeva serves more than 1,000 customers, ranging from the world's largest biopharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. As a Public Benefit Corporation, Veeva is committed to balancing the interests of all stakeholders, including customers, employees, shareholders, and the industries it serves. For more information, visit veeva.com/eu. Veeva Forward-looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements regarding Veeva's products and services and the expected results or benefits from use of our products and services, including certain of our new solutions and applications that are still under development or not generally available. These statements are based on our current expectations. Actual results, availability, and any future events relating to these products and services could differ materially from those provided in this release and we have no obligation to update such statements. There are numerous risks that have the potential to negatively impact our results, including the risks and uncertainties disclosed in our filing on Form 10-Q for the period ended July 31, 2023, which you can find here (a summary of risks which may impact our business can be found on pages 38 and 39), and in our subsequent SEC filings, which you can access at sec.gov. Contact: Jeremy Whittaker Veeva Systems +49-695-095-5486 jeremy.whittaker@veeva.com Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1488285/Veeva_Systems_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/veeva-european-commercial-summit-gathers-life-sciences-industry-leading-the-next-generation-of-commercial-excellence-301995271.html VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (the "Company" or "Algernon") (CSE: AGN) (FRANKFURT: AGW0) (OTCQB: AGNPF), a Canadian clinical stage pharmaceutical development company, is pleased to announce that it has signed a Letter of Intent ("LOI") with Seyltx Inc. ("Seyltx"), a privately owned U.S. based drug development company, to acquire Algernon's NP-120 ("Ifenprodil") research program for USD $2M cash and a 20% common share equity position in Seyltx. The transaction is subject to certain conditions including, inter alia, Seyltx financing and the negotiation and execution of a definitive agreement, which is expected to occur within the next 90 days. Seyltx plans to conduct an Ifenprodil Phase 2b chronic cough study as soon as possible. As stated in the LOI, Algernon's clinical management team will be available to provide support, oversight and management of the study. Ifenprodil is an N-methyl-D-aspartate ("NMDA") receptor antagonist specifically targeting the NMDA type subunit 2B (GluN2B), which prevents glutamate signaling. Ifenprodil is Algernon's lead research program and represents a novel first-in-class potential treatment for chronic cough. It is thought to interfere with central signalling in the brain, suppressing the urge to cough. "We are very pleased to have signed this LOI with Seyltx," said Christopher J. Moreau, Algernon's Chief Executive Officer. "With the U.S. FDA advisory panel recently voting 12 - 1 against approving Merck's chronic cough drug candidate gefapixant, citing a lack of efficacy, it is very important to continue moving Ifenprodil forward as a potential global treatment of chronic cough." Algernon's Phase 2a Study Data Algernon's decision to advance to a Phase 2b cough study was based on positive data previously reported from the Company's proof of concept Phase 2a study of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("IPF") and chronic cough, where Ifenprodil showed a significant reduction in cough count. Patients with IPF are usually excluded from trials in refractory chronic cough ("RCC"), and cough in this population is regarded as extremely difficult to treat. Key Data: The geometric mean 24-hour cough counts were reduced by 32.0% at 4 weeks (p = 0.023) and 39.5% at 12 weeks (p = 0.001) compared to baseline (p = 0.023) and 39.5% at 12 weeks (p = 0.001) compared to baseline The geometric mean awake cough counts were reduced by 30.2% at 4 weeks (p = 0.038) and 37.4% at 12 weeks (p = 0.002) compared to baseline (p = 0.038) and 37.4% at 12 weeks (p = 0.002) compared to baseline Algernon previously announced on January 14, 2022, that it had received positive feedback from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at its pre-Investigational New Drug (pre-IND) meeting for its investigation of Ifenprodil solely for the treatment of chronic cough. About Chronic Cough Chronic cough is defined as a cough lasting for more than eight weeks in duration and in the United States cough continues to be one of the most common reasons that adults consult medical doctors. Some cases of chronic cough are so debilitating that quality of life is severely impacted leading to depression, anxiety, urinary incontinence, dysphonia, sleep interruption, vomiting, and even rib fractures further adding to the decay in socio-familial dynamics. Chronic cough is believed to be the result of a hypersensitivity of the cough reflex within the neuronal circuitry that governs the urge to cough, wherein one or more aspects that regulate cough are over-active to stimulus, triggering a cough at abnormal levels. Trials of cough suppressants ("Antitussives") have shown differences in response that may reflect differing pathological processes driving cough in different patients. Experimental Antitussives (like gefapixant and camlipixant) often only engage a single receptor, while the overall cough response is governed by multiple receptors triggered by a large variety of stimuli. A compound acting centrally in the brain, like ifenprodil, where all peripheral messages are sent and coordinated, may achieve a better outcome than what has been achieved by others in clinical trials. Chronic Cough Market According to Data Bridge Market Research analyses, the global chronic cough market was valued at USD $6.15B in 2021 and is projected to grow up to USD $11.38B by 2029. Merck & Co. obtained the rights to gefapixant, a P2X3 receptor antagonist, as the lead asset in the acquisition of Afferent Pharmaceuticals in 2016. At the time, gefapixant had interim data from a Phase 2b study in RCC. The deal was worth up to USD $1.25 billion. Bellus Health, which was advancing camlipixant, its own novel P2X3 receptor antagonist, closed a deal on June 16, 2023 with GSK plc which bought all the outstanding shares in Bellus for USD $14.75 per share in cash with a total deal value estimated at USD $2 billion, confirming the need for better therapies for chronic cough. About NP-120 (Ifenprodil) NP-120 selectively inhibits GluN2B receptors which diminish excitability of neurons and prevent the relaying of information along neuronal circuitry, including the cough reflex. NP-120 may also inhibit the neuroplastic enhancement of central and peripheral cough response neurons. About Seyltx Inc. Seyltx is a U.S.-based Delaware C-corporation focused on rapidly accelerating development of therapeutics that have established human safety and efficacy data. Seyltx is addressing underserved medical conditions that affect significant portions of the global population by selectively modulating neuronal receptors in the central nervous system that control pulmonary diseases. About Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. Algernon Pharmaceuticals is a Canadian clinical stage drug development company investigating multiple drugs for unmet global medical needs. Algernon Pharmaceuticals has active research programs for IPF with chronic cough, and chronic kidney disease, and is the parent company of a newly created private subsidiary called Algernon NeuroScience, that is advancing a psychedelic program investigating a proprietary form of DMT for stroke and traumatic brain injury. CONTACT INFORMATION Christopher J. Moreau CEO Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. 604.398.4175 ext 701 info@algernonpharmaceuticals.com investors@algernonpharmaceuticals.com www.algernonpharmaceuticals.com Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its 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. CAUTIONARY DISCLAIMER STATEMENT: No Securities Exchange has reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to product development, licensing, commercialization and regulatory compliance issues and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will", "may", "should", "anticipate", "expects" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. 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. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include the failure to satisfy the conditions of the relevant securities exchange(s) and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulations. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by applicable law. NEW YORK, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of regulated markets for trading 12,000 U.S. and international securities, today announced Nuclear Fuels Inc. (CSE: NF; OTCQX: NFUNF), an uranium resources company with a focus on critical metals and uranium properties, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Nuclear Fuels Inc. upgraded to OTCQX from the Pink market. Nuclear Fuels Inc. begins trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "NFUNF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com. Upgrading to the OTCQX Market is an important step for companies seeking to provide transparent trading for their U.S. investors. For companies listed on a qualified international exchange, streamlined market standards enable them to utilize their home market reporting to make their information available in the U.S. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws. Securities Law USA acted as the company's OTCQX sponsor. About Nuclear Fuels Inc. Nuclear Fuels is building America's uranium resources with a focus on critical metals and uranium properties in Wyoming, Labrador and Arizona. In Wyoming and Arizona Nuclear Fuels is exploring and developing ISR uranium resources with a pathway to production through defining uranium resources at Kaycee. In Labrador, the company is working to expand historic high grade uranium discoveries, (6.7-1% U) as well as high grade heavy rare earth showings (up to 2% Ni). About OTC Markets Group Inc. OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates regulated markets for trading 12,000 U.S. and international securities. Our data-driven disclosure standards form the foundation of our three public markets: OTCQX Best Market, OTCQB Venture Market and Pink Open Market. Our OTC Link Alternative Trading Systems (ATSs) provide critical market infrastructure that broker-dealers rely on to facilitate trading. Our innovative model offers companies more efficient access to the U.S. financial markets. OTC Link ATS, OTC Link ECN and OTC Link NQB are each an SEC regulated ATS, operated by OTC Link LLC, a FINRA and SEC registered broker-dealer, member SIPC. To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com. Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed Media Contact: OTC Markets Group Inc., +1 (212) 896-4428, media@otcmarkets.com ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, Nov 22, 2023 - (JCN Newswire) - Hitachi Energy, a global technology leader that is advancing a sustainable energy future for all, unveiled today theHyFlex demonstration unit, its Hydrogen Power Generator in Gothenburg, Sweden. During an event held with Hitachi Energy's technology partner, PowerCell Group, around 100 senior representatives from companies in various industries took part in the demonstration.This innovative solution is an integrated and scalable plug-and-play generator for temporary or permanentinstallation, where power grid connections are impractical, and diesel generators are not an option. The medium-power variant provides power for temporary installations and is designed for 400-600 kVA. The high-power variantcaters to permanent installations and will provide 1 MVA or more per unit and can be installed in parallel to meet the customer's specific power needs.HyFlex is completely emission-free, producing only AC power, usable heat, and water. In comparison, a 1 MVA diesel generator running at full load combusts roughly 225 kg of diesel and emits 720 kg of CO2 emissions per hour.Key applications include construction sites in remote locations or noise- and pollution-sensitive cities; mining sites topower the increasing number of electrically powered equipment like dump trucks and excavators; data centers, hospitals, and hotels that require an emergency backup supply of power and/or heat; and shore-to-ship applicationsat ports to sustainably power ships at berth as an alternative to diesel generators."We are delighted to unveil this pioneering solution that decarbonizes hard-to-abate applications," said Marco Berardi, Head of Grid & Power Quality Solutions and Service at Hitachi Energy. "As the transition to Net Zeroprogresses, more and more industries are looking for reliable ways to reduce their environmental impact and improve operational performance."Hitachi Energy is developing a Hydrogen Power Generator demonstration unit with Gothenburg-based fuel cellmanufacturer PowerCell Group. PowerCell has provided the power modules and know-how in fuel cell integrationand Hitachi Energy has the balance of plant and expertise in power electronics, batteries, cooling, intelligent control, and systems integration.Hitachi Energy expects to launch a movable variant of this eco-friendly generator for temporary deployment in late 2024 and the permanently deployable variant in 2025.With the unveiling of this breakthrough technology, Hitachi Energy now has a complete solutions portfolio across the green hydrogen value chain. In addition to hydrogen-to-power solutions, the portfolio includes power-to-hydrogen (or grid-to-stack) solutions for electrolyzer systems that optimize the entire power supply, from the high-voltage grid connection to the DC stack terminals of the electrolyzer.Hitachi Energy has already provided a grid-to-stack solution for a 20 MW electrolyzer in Sweden and is providing a similar solution for a 20 MW project in Finland. As the hydrogen ecosystem is gearing up for gigawatt-scale projects, Hitachi Energy is well positioned as a partner of choice to provide optimal power supply systems that deliver the highest efficiency, reliability, and power quality.About Hitachi EnergyHitachi Energy is a global technology leader that is advancing a sustainable energy future for all. We serve customers in the utility, industry and infrastructure sectors with innovative solutions and services across the value chain. Together with customers and partners, we pioneer technologies and enable the digital transformation required to accelerate the energy transition towards a carbon-neutral future. We are advancing the world's energy system to become more sustainable, flexible and secure whilst balancing social, environmental and economic value. Hitachi Energy has a proven track record and unparalleled installed base in more than 140 countries. Weintegrate more than 150 GW of HVDC links into the power system, helping our customers enable more wind and solar. Headquartered in Switzerland, we employ more than 40,000 people in 90 countries and generate business volumes of over $10 billion USD.https://www.hitachienergy.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/hitachienergyhttps://twitter.com/HitachiEnergyAbout Hitachi, Ltd.Hitachi drives Social Innovation Business, creating a sustainable society through the use of data and technology.We solve customers' and society's challenges with Lumada solutions leveraging IT, OT (Operational Technology)and products. Hitachi operates under the business structure of "Digital Systems & Services" - supporting our customers' digital transformation; "Green Energy & Mobility" - contributing to a decarbonized society through energyand railway systems, and "Connective Industries" - connecting products through digital technology to provide solutions in various industries. Driven by Digital, Green, and Innovation, we aim for growth through co-creation with our customers. The company's consolidated revenues for fiscal year 2022 (ended March 31, 2023) totaled10,881.1 billion yen, with 696 consolidatedsubsidiaries and approximately 320,000 employees worldwide. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at https://www.hitachi.com.Source: Hitachi, Ltd.Copyright 2023 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. Company Targets Historically Reported 1970's Knockeen Trench Site with 1.8m Wide Bedrock Spodumene Bearing Pegmatite Dike Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Global Battery Metals Ltd. (TSXV: GBML) (OTCQB: REZZF) (FSE: REZ) (the "Company" or "GBML" or "Global Battery Metals"), an international critical mineral exploration company focused on growth-oriented lithium and battery metal projects, is pleased to announce it has received an approved trenching permit from Ireland's Geoscience Regulation Office (GSRO) in relation to a short program of trenching at its Knockeen lithium pegmatite project. The Company intends to open up a shallow trench for a total of 50 metres in total length, approximately 1 - 2m deep and up to 1 - 1.5m in width (see Figure 1), in order to confirm a previously announced historical spodumene bearing pegmatite dike in bedrock (see news release dated January 18, 2023), and anticipates this will enable 3D visualization of the 1.8m wide pegmatite reported from that time. The trench is designed to cross cut the pegmatite dike and then expose 10 - 20m along its strike length in order to then collect approximately 30-40 assay samples from the trench over the next 5-10 business days (see Figure 2). The trenching will also assist in the interpretation of the dike encountered in the 2023 summer drilling program. Work on this small footprint of field area will be undertaken in close association with the landowner's approval. Figure 1: Knockeen Lithium Pegmatite Project The Company intends to open up a shallow trench for a total of 50 metres in total length to confirm a previously announced historical spodumene bearing pegmatite dike in bedrock. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7080/188272_lrh_pl1597_trench%20location%20map_figure1.png The approved permit is for up to 10 shallow trenches for a combined length of up to 200m for a period of up to two years on PL 1597. However, the current work is focusing on this single trench pegmatite target at this time. The permit was issued based on the full set of GSRO screening criteria being assessed and approved. The current phase of detailed exploration work returns to an area where a forty-year-old historical company report1 described a trench excavated at Knockeen Townlands on PLA 1597 which, uncovered in bedrock, exposed a 1.8m wide spodumene-bearing pegmatite dike. However, no detailed laboratory assays or geological maps of the trench were reported at that time. Historical prospecting around the trench also reported the occurrence of up to 10 large boulders of spodumene bearing pegmatite at surface. This work will help inform 2024 exploration planning. Michael Murphy, CEO of Global Battery Metals, stated: "With the goal of confirming lithium mineralization in our first round of exploration achieved, the Company will expedite additional exploration efforts to further define identified lithium mineralization. Knockeen has a storied history, and after drilling consistent, near-surface lithium intersects, we believe that trenching will augment our growing dataset, which can help to enhance this exciting developing lithium project." With first phase drilling recently concluded at Knockeen (see news release dated November 15, 2023), GBML has succeeded in identifying a new Lithium-Cesium-Tantalum (LCT) pegmatite system of significance, importantly recording 24 intervals of lithium bearing spodumene pegmatites intersected across nine holes drilled. The spodumene pegmatites range in width between 0.10m up to 0.63m (true width) with the highest values grading up to 2.57% Li2O. Detailed prospecting and rock sampling across Knockeen in late 2022 and early 2023 identified up to 66 samples containing the lithium bearing mineral and returned Li2O% lithium contents ranging up to 3.75 % Li2O / 17,410 ppm Li. Figure 2: Knockeen Lithium Pegmatite Project - Close Up of Trench Location The trench is designed to cross cut the pegmatite dike and then expose 10 - 20m along the strike length To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7080/188272_lrh_pl1597_trench%20location%20map_figure2_v2.png Geology & Structure The property lies along part of a 135km long regional structural trend of known lithium-bearing pegmatite bedrock occurrences, situated along the south-eastern margin of the Leinster Granite Massif and centred on the Aclare and Moylisha occurrences which were discovered during 1960s and 1970s and are currently being explored by Blackstairs Lithium (under the Ganfeng - International Lithium joint venture). This trend is focused along and within a broad regional NE-SW trending structural zone termed the East Carlow Deformation Zone (ECDZ) which runs for over 135km along the SE flank of the Leinster Granite Massif between Dublin in the NE and north of New Ross to the SW. A recent detailed regional structural review and interpretation by the company using remote sensing data and regional geophysical data sets confirmed that PLA 1597 lies within the key ECDZ structural zone. The Knockeen target area lies directly within this zone as it passes through the northern margin of the Backstairs Granite Pluton whilst the southern part of the license is cross cut by a splay of the ECDZ which passes south westwards along the southern margin of the Backstairs Granite Pluton. This southerly splay has been termed the North Wexford Deformation Zone (NWDZ) and provides a second highly prospective trend for the focus for ground exploration activities Several target areas have already been identified for detailed prospecting and mapping which will commence over the coming months. About the Leinster Lithium Project Located south of Dublin in the counties of Wicklow and South Carlow, the Leinster Lithium Project consists of 16 prospecting license areas covering approximately 525km situated along strike to nearby Blackstairs Lithium's Avalonia Project (297km joint venture between Ganfeng Lithium Co. Ltd. and International Lithium Corp.). All of GBML's license holdings are located within or along the important East Carlow Deformation Zone, which is interpreted to control the emplacement of an existing LCT pegmatite field at the Blackstairs Mountains. With first phase drilling concluded at Knockeen, GBML has succeeded in identifying a new and structurally controlled LCT pegmatite system of significance, importantly recording 24 intervals of lithium bearing spodumene pegmatites intersected across nine holes drilled. The spodumene pegmatites range in width between 0.10m up to 0.63m (true width) with the highest values grading up to 2.57% Li2O. No drilling has ever been carried out at the Knockeen Prospect previously and intersecting lithium bearing pegmatites in all of the holes drilled so far is considered a major technical success for the Company. Prior surface exploration activities identified and confirmed expansive surface boulder trains of lithium pegmatite lithologies in a number of areas across the Company's property, with recent assay results of 66 rock samples analyzed by ALS Laboratories earlier this year returning Li2O% lithium contents ranging up to 3.75% Li2O / 17,410 ppm li. Responsibility to the Environment All mineral exploration activities in Ireland take place under the auspices of the GSRO, a division within the Government Department of the Environment, Communications & Climate Change. Exploration is governed under the framework of both Irish and EU legislation that has been implemented to ensure that the environment is protected during exploratory work. Prospecting license holders must comply with all of the relevant legislation. The Company is pleased to confirm that it adheres to the highest standards of good practice in relation to its ongoing exploration activities having completed a detailed GSRO "Appropriate Assessment" process prior to commencement which was reviewed, approved and signed off by the appropriate oversight authorities. GBML's Directors understand that social license is key to unlocking positive exploration outcomes by following low impact / low sound / low disturbance exploration program best practice for environmental sensitivity. Competent Person All scientific and technical information in this announcement has been prepared under the supervision of and reviewed and approved by EurGeol Vaughan Williams, M.Sc., P.Geo., (Principal of Aurum Exploration Services currently providing exploration services to GBML and to LRH Resources Limited), a "qualified person" within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101. Quality Assurance/Quality Control Quality Assurance/Quality Control ("QA/QC") of drill core samples and associated assay results are monitored by GBML through a QA/QC protocol which includes the insertion of blind standard reference materials, blanks, and duplicates at regular intervals. Core is drilled in HQ core diameter and each 3 metres of core recovered is orientated by the drilling contractor on completion of each run drilled. Drill core is laid out in strong core boxes and transported by Company geologists from the drill rig to GBML's secure logging facility. Drill core is then logged using an established logging procedure capturing detailed lithological data as well as measuring all structural elements using a Reflex IQ Logger for accurate orientation of all contacts and structures. The core is marked up for sampling and sawn on site using a diamond core saw. Half core samples are then bagged and secured using plastic cable ties and the samples are then securely transported to ALS Laboratory ("ALS") facilities in County Galway, Republic of Ireland. Samples are analyzed for lithium as well as multi- elemental trace elements using the specific LCT pegmatite analytical suite ME-MS89L offered by ALS. ALS also performs its own internal QA/QC procedures to assure the accuracy and integrity of results. GBML is unaware of any drilling, sampling, recovery, or other factors that could materially affect the accuracy or reliability of the data referred to herein. About Global Battery Metals Ltd. GBML is an international mineral exploration and development company with a focus on lithium and other metals that comprise and support the rapid evolution to battery power. GBML currently maintains economic interests in three battery metal projects: (1) an option to acquire up to a 90% interest in the Leinster Lithium Property and drill program currently underway in Ireland; (2) a 100% interest in the drill-ready Lithium King Property in Utah; and (3) a 55% stake in Peru-based Lara Copper Property, which has over 10,000 metres of drilling. As previously disclosed, Minsur S.A., a Peruvian mining company, entered into an option agreement with GBML and Lara Exploration Ltd. to acquire the Lara copper property for staged payments of USD$5.75 million. GBML will retain a 0.75% net smelter royalty. GBML's common shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV: GBML); Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE: REZ); and are quoted on the OTC Markets (OTCQB: REZZF). Global Battery Metals Ltd. Michael Murphy BA, MBA, MSc., ICD President & CEO T: 604-649-2350 E: MM@gbml.ca W: www.gbml.ca Neither the 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. Cautionary Statement Regarding "Forward-Looking" Information This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, without limitation, statements relating to the future operations and activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. 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. Forward-looking statements in this news release relate to, among other things, the Company's exploration plans at the Leinster Lithium Project, including the trenching program and results therefrom. 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 the Company, 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, and the receipt of any required regulatory approvals. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these items. Readers are urged to refer to the Company's reports for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects, publicly available at SEDAR+, the Canadian Securities Administrators' national system that all market participants use for filings and disclosure, at www.sedarplus.ca. The Company 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. ________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Report titled "1975-76 - Discovery of Spodumene Pegmatite Float" by Irish Base Metals Limited To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188272 REDMOND (dpa-AFX) - Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) said on Wednesday that it will invest $500 million to expand its hyperscale cloud computing and AI infrastructure in Quebec over the next two years. This investment will also increase the size of Microsoft's local cloud infrastructure footprint by 750 percent across Canada. Microsoft noted that the new investment will expand its computing capacity by around 240 percent over the next three years. 'It will also accelerate the pace of AI innovation and enable Quebec organizations to further build on the significant capacity already in place across the province,' the company added. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. JERUSALEM (dpa-AFX) - A young staff member of the World Health Organization and her family members have been killed in Israeli bomb attack in Gaza. Dima Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj, 29, her husband, their six-month old baby boy, and her two brothers were killed when her parents' house in southern Gaza was bombed on Tuesday, WHO said. Dima was staying in her parents' house in the south after being evacuated from Gaza City. More than 50 family and community members sheltering in the same house also reportedly died in the attack. Dima had been working with WHO since December 2019. She was a patient administrator at the Limb Reconstruction Centre, a critical part of the WHO Trauma and Emergency Team. The death of Dima and her family is the latest example of civilians being killed in their homes, at their workplaces, in hospitals, while evacuating, or sheltering in schools. The humanitarian community and UN family have lost more than 107 members since the Israel-Hamas conflict started on October 7. This includes two doctors who were working for MSF and 108 UNRWA officials. WHO called for urgent ceasefire after an attack on Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza killed three doctors and a patient companion. As a four-day truce is expected to take effect in the next 24 hours, the Israeli forces continued attacks in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that nine people were killed in attacks on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza on Wednesday morning, and more than 60 others were killed in a another attack targeting the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Video-Workshop: Das kleine Einmaleins der Charttechnik In diesem kostenlosen Video-Workshop von Stefan Klotter lernen Sie alles uber Charttechnik. Lassen Sie sich diesen kostenfreien Workshop nicht entgehen! Hier klicken Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Delta Resources Limited (TSXV: DLTA), Delta Resources is a junior exploration company focused on its Delta 1 Gold Deposit in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada which was selected as the Discovery of the Year. Our Delta 1 Gold property has garnered much interest. We closed a bought deal financing in late May 2023 for $10M CAD. Our continued exploration program into 2024 is fully financed with approximately $7.0M currently in the treasury. Since our discovery hole in October 2023 (5.92 g/t Gold over 31.0 Metres), we have drilled approximately 20,000. Other results include 2.06 g/t over 65.8M, 2.16 g/t over 97.5M, 4.32 g/t over 26.2M, 6.49 g/t over 10M, 1636 g/t and 697 g/t over 1M. We are planning an additional 5,000-10,000 metres of follow up drilling beginning in early January 2024. The Delta Gold property straddles the Trans- Canada Highway approximately 50kms West of Thunder Bay, Ontario with easy road access, abundant electricity, and cellular coverage. Delta Resources, will be participating in the Deutsche Goldmesse Fall Conference, which will take place on November 24 and 25 at The Westin Grand Frankfurt. Members of the Delta Resources Limited management team will be taking meetings throughout the day, and will also present at 1:30 CET on November 24th to an audience of European investors. An online registration form is available, and Investors can register to attend at: https://deutschegoldmesse.online/investor-registration-2/ Kai Hoffmann, Managing Director of Soar Financial Partners, remarks, "Following two virtual, and four in-person events, Deutsche Goldmesse has established itself as Germany's premier investment conference in the resource space. Being from Germany myself and working solely in the junior mining space for the last 12 years, I understand what German and European investors are looking for. This is why I have focused on bringing together a selective group of impressive and diverse companies, keynote speakers, influencers, HNW investors, asset & fund managers, media partners and more. I am excited to offer this boutique event once again, exclusive to the junior mining sector." About Delta Resources Limited Delta Resources Limited ("Delta" or "the Company") (TSXV: DLTA) (OTC PINK: DTARF) (FSE: 6GO1) is a junior exploration company focused on its Delta 1 Gold Deposit in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada which was selected as the 2022 Discovery of the Year in Ontario. Delta closed a bought deal financing in late May 2023 for $10M CAD. The Company's continued exploration program into 2024 is fully financed with approximately $7.0M currently in the treasury. Since it's discovery hole in October 2022 (5.92 g/t Gold over 31.0 m), Delta drilled approximately 20,000 at Delta-1, expanding its gold inventory. Results include 2.06 g/t over 65.8m, 2.16 g/t over 97.5m, 4.32 g/t over 26.2m, 6.49 g/t over 10m, 1636 g/t and 697 g/t over 1m. The Company is planning an additional 5,000-10,000 metres of follow up drilling beginning in January 2024. The Delta Gold property straddles the Trans-Canada Highway approximately 50kms West of Thunder Bay, Ontario with easy road access, abundant electricity, and cellular coverage. Delta Resources, will be participating in the Deutsche Goldmesse Fall Conference, which will take place on November 24 and 25 at The Westin Grand Frankfurt. About Deutsche Goldmesse Deutsche Goldmesse is Germany's largest mining investment conference, based out of Frankfurt- one of Europe's most important financial capitals. The conference brings together leading minds in the industry to foster new business opportunities and facilitate valuable relationships. The exclusive two-day event showcases industry-leading keynote speakers and up to 35 carefully considered companies in a range of commodities and stages from explorers to producers. Hosted by Soar Financial Partners, Deutsche Goldmesse provides a platform where company management can connect with a vast network of European institutional and HNW investors, retail investors, analysts, influencers, newsletter writers, media, and other local partners. For further information: Delta Resources Limited frank candido 15149695530 fcandido@deltaresources.ca www.deltaresources.ca FRANKFURT, Germany, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Slenergy, a leading innovator in the renewable energy industry, celebrates significant success in Europe with its ground-breaking iShare-Home one-stop residential energy solution. The iShare-Home solar system debuted in Germany this May, and a tailored version was introduced to Italian households in Milan this October. Designed to tackle current challenges in the residential solar energy landscape, Slenergy's iShare-Home system offers capacities ranging from 4-15 kW. This one-stop solution, distinguished by standardized system design, modular product design, easy installation and smart energy management, incorporates PV modules, hybrid inverter, energy storage, cable set, mounting structure and smart monitoring system. In a solar industry driven by a promising future, innovative technology and robust competition, Slenergy distinguishes itself through unmatched local service and unprecedented one-stop solution with product reliability as its core. The company ensures superior reliability by leveraging its cutting-edge smart factory. As a new entrant in PV backed by a decade-long expertise in electronics, Slenergy is dedicated to advancing the industry through precision manufacturing. The company has redefined the manufacturing landscape by introducing an industry-leading automated production line grounded in lean principles that surpasses conventional mechanization. Situated within Slenergy's 380-mu industrial park, the 68,000 m2 smart factory serves as a center of seamless automation. Beyond advanced automation, Slenergy's manufacturing process rests on two additional pillars: a robust process control system and high-level vertical supply chain integration. By linking to materials at the deepest industry level, Slenergy's control system enables comprehensive recording and analysis of manufacturing data. The vertical integration of the entire supply chain optimizes efficiency in the manufacturing process and speed to delivery. Slenergy's smart factory rigorously implements risk control strategies across all phases, including incoming materials, production, inspection and quality sampling. Through real-time system-level quality control in the entire production process, Slenergy closely monitors the manufacturing process to uphold quality commitments. This comprehensive quality approach, monitoring both the system and products, is critical for fulfilling Slenergy's pursuit of excellence while delivering consistently high-quality products. With the successful achievements of its iShare-Home solution in Europe, Slenergy is realizing its vision of driving the global transition toward renewable energy. As the company expands internationally, its pioneering smart factory ensures the high quality of its one-stop systems. Through continued innovation in the new energy sector, Slenergy promises to advance energy independence and reduce carbon footprints by providing reliable, affordable and sustainable energy solutions. Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyj1X0mgdiM Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2090526/logo_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/slenergys-smart-factory-enhances-product-reliability-in-the-renewable-energy-landscape-301995889.html FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) - The European Commission stated that it has fined Rabobank 26.6 million euros for participating in a cartel concerning the trading of certain Euro-denominated bonds, together with Deutsche Bank. However, Deutsche Bank was not fined as it revealed the cartel to the Commission under the leniency programme. The Commission's leniency programme gives companies the opportunity to disclose their participation in a cartel. Deutsche Bank received full immunity from fines for revealing the cartel, thereby avoiding a fine of almost 156 million euros. The products concerned by the cartel are Euro-denominated SSA bonds and Government Guaranteed bonds traded in the European Economic Area. Between 2006 and 2016, the two banks, through some of their traders, exchanged commercially sensitive information and coordinated their trading and pricing strategies. The Commission's investigation started in May 2017 following an immunity application under the 2006 Leniency Notice submitted by Deutsche Bank. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Sale proceeds delivers a combination of cash, shares and a multi-year exploration expenditure commitment. Enables EML to focus on developing the high-grade Emily Manganese Project, Minnesota, while retaining an economic interest in the Nevada silver assets. TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Electric Metals (USA) Limited ("EML" or the "Company") (TSXV:EML)(OTCQB:EMUSF) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an option and acquisition agreement (the "Option Agreement") with Altair Resources Inc. ("Altair") for the sale (the "Transaction") of up to 100% of its Nevada silver assets, including the Corcoran Canyon gold-silver project, the Belmont gold-silver project and the Belmont North gold-silver project (collectively, the "Assets" or the "Project"), located in the Tonopah District in Nye County, Nevada. Pursuant to the Transaction, Altair, which is an arm's length party to EML, will have the right to acquire up to a 100% interest in the Assets through the acquisition of EML subsidiary, North American Silver Corporation ("NAS"), by making payments to EML and its subsidiary of cash and common shares of Altair ("Altair Shares"), and the expenditure of funds on the Project, as per the following payment schedule (all currency references are to Canadian Dollars): Within 30 days of announcing the Option Agreement - $440,428 cash payment. On or before 1 st anniversary of the Option Agreement $617,072 in Project expenditure, $472,500 cash payment and $500,000 in Altair Shares. anniversary of the Option Agreement $617,072 in Project expenditure, $472,500 cash payment and $500,000 in Altair Shares. On or before 2 nd anniversary of the Option Agreement $2,400,000 in Project expenditures, approx. US$96,343 cash payment and $1,500,000 in Altair Shares . anniversary of the Option Agreement $2,400,000 in Project expenditures, approx. US$96,343 cash payment and $1,500,000 in Altair Shares . On or before the 3 rd anniversary of the Option Agreement $2,750,000 in Project expenditures and $2,000,000 in Altair Shares . anniversary of the Option Agreement $2,750,000 in Project expenditures and $2,000,000 in Altair Shares . On or before the 4th anniversary of the final approval of the plan of operations for the Project $3,000,000 in Project expenditures and $2,500,000 in Altair Shares. If Altair elects to execute all Option Agreement tranches, EML will receive over $1.0 million in cash and $6.5 million in Altair shares. Additionally, Altair will have invested nearly $9 million in project expenditures. Altair will have the right to earn a (a) 70% interest in the Assets until the end of the 3rd anniversary of signing the Option Agreement; and (b) 100% interest in the Assets until the end of the 4th anniversary of signing the Option Agreement. Furthermore, following the completion of the first anniversary payments as more particularly described above, at any time thereafter Altair shall have an option to accelerate the acquisition of the 100% interest in the Assets by forgoing the other requirement payments and making a onetime payment of $6,000,000 (plus, if not paid already under the terms of the Option Agreement, the US$96,343 required payment). During the earn-in period, Altair shall be the operator of the Assets under direction of EML's technical director and shall manage and execute all exploration programs and spending on the Project. A shareholder agreement will govern the respective rights of the parties should Altair not earn a 100% interest in the Assets. The parties have also entered into an investor rights agreement which will govern EML's ownership interest in Altair and will include the right of EML to nominate one board member of Altair until the end of the second anniversary of the Option Agreement, and thereafter, shall have the right to nominate one board member until such time as its ownership interest in Altair is less than 5% of the issued and outstanding shares. The investor rights agreement, among other things, also give EML rights to members of a technical committee to be formed. Gary Lewis, EML Group CEO commented, "The sale of our Nevada silver assets comes after much deliberation as we balance the need for focus and continued investment in our high-grade Emily Manganese Project, with the realities of trying to advance and develop two prospective mineral projects." "But strategy is about making choices, and we feel we have delivered the right balance for EML shareholders by retaining an economic interest in the silver projects, without the need for additional funding or potential dilution. EML will also maintain a degree of oversight over the assets, through our representation on the Altair board and through the ongoing involvement in the Project of our Technical Director, Dr. Ian Pringle." About Electric Metals (USA) Limited Electric Metals (USA) Limited (TSXV:EML)(OTCQB:EMUSF) is a U.S.-based mineral development company with manganese and silver projects geared to supporting the transition to clean energy. The Company's principal asset is the Emily Manganese Project in Minnesota, which has been the subject of considerable technical studies, including a National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report - Resource Estimate, with over US$28 million invested to date. The Company's mission in Minnesota is to become a domestic U.S. producer of high-purity, high-value manganese metal and chemical products for supply to U.S. energy, technology and industrial markets. With manganese playing a critical and prominent role in lithium-ion battery formulations, and with no current domestic supply or active mines for manganese in North America, the development of the Emily Manganese Project represents a significant opportunity for America, the State of Minnesota and for the Company's shareholders. In addition, the Company owns and operates the Corcoran Silver-Gold Project and the Belmont Silver Project in Nevada, with the former also having been the subject of a National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report - Resource Estimate. Neither the 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. For further Information please contact: Gary Lewis, Group CEO & Director: (647) 846 5299 - gl@electricmetals.com Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on EML's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information relating to, among other things, the completion of the Transaction and transfer of the ownership of NAS, the future operations of the Assets, and the payment of the various fees and expenditures by Altair. While EML considers these statements to be reasonable based on information currently available, they may prove to be incorrect. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors include risks related to Altair fulfilling the agreed upon conditions, regulatory risks, including risks related to financing, capitalization and liquidity risks with respect to certain conditions of the Transaction. Please refer to EML's public disclosure record on SEDAR at www.sedar.com for additional risks that may affect EML. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is made as of the date hereof, and EML is not obligated, and does not undertake, to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein. At the applicable time, the issuance of the Altair Shares shall be calculated at the market value of the Altair Shares on the lesser of (i) the five-day volume weighted average trading price of the Altair Shares on the exchange on which such shares trade (the "TSXV") on the fifth day immediately prior to date of issuance of such Altair Shares; and (ii) the price per Altair Shares in the most recent financing, provided that in each case such price shall not be less than the maximum discounted price permitted by the policies of the Exchange and provided further that in no case shall the price at which any of the Altair shares is issued be less than $0.10. The issuance of such Altair shares will be subject to Altair's receipt of Exchange approval. In the event that Altair shares cannot be issued, a cash payment will be required as the alternative. SOURCE: Electric Metals (USA) Limited View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/808261/electric-metals-usa-limited-announces-option-and-acquisition-agreement-for-the-sale-of-nevada-silver-assets-to-altair-resources-inc NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Duke Energy Marsha Smith's role? To support the smart grid efforts in Indiana, technology that helps ensure reliable power for customers At 29, U.S. Army veteran Marsha Smith hung up her uniform to pursue another goal: to become an electrical engineer. With support from her husband, family and the GI Bill, she enrolled in classes at American Military University. Then Smith learned she was pregnant. It was a lot to take on at once - juggling schoolwork, motherhood, a household and a job, but she was determined to persevere. "When we had our daughter, Harley, I questioned if now was the best time to do this," she said. "But I needed an education to attain my goal of becoming an engineer. So, I took it a day at a time." Smith graduated in 2022, with both practical experience and a job offer at Duke Energy in Plainfield, Ind., where she interned in college. She found a natural fit in Grid Management, where she works today, alongside other engineers who implement smart technology that helps ensure customers have power when and where they need it. The smart grid can reroute service around problems, reducing the likelihood a customer is impacted by an outage. This self-healing technology helped avoid more than 1.4 million outages in 2022, saving over 7.2 million hours of customer outage time across the six states Duke Energy serves. From engineers who operate power plants to lineworkers who connect customers to the grid, Duke Energy employs nearly 2,400 military veterans, Director of Talent Acquisition and Workforce Development Ron Wages said. "They help make us better," said Wages, who inspires his team of recruiters to work with military organizations as they seek skilled workers with diverse backgrounds and experiences to lead the company to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. "Veterans understand the importance of safety, adherence to process and procedure and exhibit an inherent active caring for the team member next to them," Wages said. "This is the foundation of providing safe, reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy." Smith, a former battle captain in the Army's tactical communications network, knows the importance of reliable service. She offered air support to service members in the Middle East as they maneuvered through Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and the country of Bahrain, east of Saudi Arabia. "Sharing intelligence data is critical to successful missions on the battlefield," she said. "That's not possible without the ability to communicate." After her deployment to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom, Smith served two tours in South Korea, one spent protecting the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea. "Meeting so many diverse people of other backgrounds, nationalities and ethnicities taught me to adapt, to understand people's unique needs and how best they receive information," Smith said. "There's also that camaraderie factor. You support your team when they need help." Her colleague, electrical engineer Gary Fry, joked that Smith's ability to bring the team together is rare among engineers. "We have an eclectic group," Fry said. "And some of us are what I like to call 'pencil heads,' meaning we're more technically minded than we are social. Marsha's got an attention to detail, while also being energetic and bubbly, so her being adept at both helps keep our group engaged." An engaged workforce fuels success, said Rick Grant, vice president of grid operations at Duke Energy. In the same way veterans are supported by an employee resource group called Together We Stand, which aims to ease the transition to civilian life, the company offers support to team members like Smith who come in through internships and co-ops. These programs help the company make more informed hiring decisions, while students glean insights into what it would be like to work at Duke Energy. "An interview is a two-way street," Grant said. "In the same way our teams are evaluating if someone is a good fit, the students get to see behind the curtain. They meet other engineers, work with them on projects and learn new skills while experiencing what our culture is like - the intangibles you don't get by researching a company on the internet. That's as attractive as anything we have to offer." As an intern, Smith took the opportunity to listen and ask questions. She viewed it as a bunch of small windows to show people that she could be an asset to the team. Mike Simms noticed. As manager of grid management in the Midwest, he recruits engineers. "We've hired a lot of talented engineers from that program, including three of the eight engineers on my team," Simms said. "They've all done well, and in learning and developing new skills, they've earned promotions to higher roles in Grid Management. And other engineering groups hire, too. It's been an excellent feeder pool for full-time hiring." In addition to Smith's work on the smart grid in Indiana, she provides day-to-day operations support for Duke Energy's Distribution Control Center, where a team of about 90 people communicates with customers and technicians in the field. "We assist the DCC by investigating equipment failures or researching customer issues, fixing what we can remotely or ensuring the right team gets out there," Smith said. "It really suits my personality." Her passion for the work began as a high schooler in the Four Corners of New Mexico. Smith's dad was a construction manager at an energy company who worked with other engineers. She had an interest in electronics, how parts come together to make something work. Smith's role as an electrical engineer is a blend of both integrated project management and system interface functionality. That's not to say it was easy, she said, reflecting on societal expectations that urged her to embrace a different path. "The women in my family haven't explored a degree in something as technical as electrical engineering. Many were stay-at-home moms," Smith said. "So, there's a natural inclination to question if I can be both a great mom and a successful engineer. I realize now that my journey has been to challenge my own mentality. Because at one point, I thought I'd never get here." View original content here. View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Duke Energy on 3blmedia.com. Contact Info: Spokesperson: Duke Energy Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/duke-energy Email: info@3blmedia.com SOURCE: Duke Energy View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/808439/after-the-army-she-followed-her-dream-charted-a-new-career Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Hispania Resources Inc. (TSXV: ESPN) ("Hispania" or "the company"), a mineral exploration company focused on Spain, is pleased to announce that it has completed on November 10th the acquisition of the Otero Property, after a period of negotiation and execution with the vendor. The acquisition of the Otero Concession located in Castille y Leon, Spain. The Property is officially known as: "C.E. SEGOVIANA OESTE" (n registro minero de Segovia 864-A-11, also known as "Otero") and consists of 5 km2 (500 Hectares) made up of 16 mining claims. The property has a mining history dating back to Roman times with many features consisting of mineral operating work sites and drill evidences readily available. Hispania acquired the Otero property through the liquidation of Siemcalsa, a former mineral enterprise owned by the administration of Castille y Leon. Hispania was able to proceed quickly and won the bid for Otero at a price of just under 1,000,000 Canadian Dollars. "We are extremely happy to have acquired a property of the quality of Otero. I personally have known about the property for some time, and was pleased to know that Siemcalsa was open to receiving offers on it late last year," commented Norm Brewster, CEO of Hispania. Hispania completed diligence and negotiations over the past 9 months and has now acquired the property formally. "The Otero property has the capability to be an incredible opportunity, as evidenced by its history, dating back to the Roman periods. We look forward to working on this copper, zinc, silver rich property and working with our local stakeholders in Spain who are supportive of our acquisition," commented Mr. Brewster. The Otero property hosts a Cu-Sn-Zn-Au-W polymetallic Skarn deposit. The base is a high-temperature calcic skarn strongly retrograded by tectonic effects. The genetic sequence is as follows: Chloritization Chlorite alteration (Clo +Fl +Qtz + Late mineralization (remobilization) Mineralization contained in the Central Portion and the most important Levels follows M Level (68 % of total resources) I level 2.5 Mt @ 0.70 % Cu 1.0 Mt @ 0.22 % Cu 26g/t Ag 2.36 Cu equiv 12 g/t Ag 2.05 Cu Equiv. 1.46 % Zn 0.47% Zn 0.23 %SnO2 0.18% SnO2 0.04%WO3 0.21%WO3 +0.9 Mt inner potential +0.7 Mt inner potential +0.4Mt external potential 3.8 Mt Total 1.7 Mt Total There is additional potential for up to 10 Mt The property has a Mining Permit good until 2042. Work carried out by a combination of former owners, Siemcalsa being the final one show that the deposit will be accessed by a surface ramp as follows. The deposit will be accessed by a ramp Ramp length 2,700 M Slope 13.5% Portal ramp at 1,068M elevation for operating the central Zone of the deposit between 1,050 m and 700 m elevation Metallurgical work carried out by Charter showed good recoveries of Cu. (88%) Zn (89.7%) Ag (68.1%) and WO3 by flotation. Scheelite is recovered by flotation of sulfide tails with finer grinds Hispania has shared data on Otero with a Canadian geology company who can conclude a NI 43-101 shortly, after an additional visit to Spain, as needed The Highlights for Otero are: Siemcalsa has been the only owner of the Exploration rights good until 2042, Hispania has now purchased them. A permit of this nature generally would take 3-5 years to procure. Cu-Sn-Zn-Ag-W polymetallic Skarn deposit. Multidisciplinary mining research (cartography, geochemical, geophysics test etc.) supplemented with 133 diamond drill holes on a 40 by 40 m grid. It has a consistent and coherent 3D geological model with tabular morphology. The deposit has a N135 degree E general orientation and a dip of 35-40 degrees to the SW. There are 6 mineralized levels of different entity but extensive continuity. The mineralized levels have been correlated over 2,065 m to 610 m depth. The deposit is open to the West, in depth and regionally. There are 8 other mineralized skarns in the area. Maps and Exhibits Otero De Herreros distance from administrative centres To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8711/188270_1dd44f626449586f_001full.jpg Otero De Herreros surrounding Infrastructure To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8711/188270_1dd44f626449586f_002full.jpg Certain Capped Drill Targets (available to twin) To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8711/188270_1dd44f626449586f_003full.jpg About Hispania Resources Inc. Hispania Resources Inc is a mineral exploration company focused on mining opportunities in Spain. Hispania is currently focused on developing the long-term mining potential of its core asset, the Zinc, Copper, Lead enriched Puebla de la Reina ("PBR") property in the low-risk and historic mining district of Extremadura in Southwest Spain. The management of Hispania contains industry veterans who have more than 120 years of mineral exploration and production experience in multiple jurisdictions and have successfully managed multiple international mining companies. This includes in Spain, where some of the team was responsible for the founding and building of Iberian Minerals, with the continued support of the local and regional governments, including the well-developed and sophisticated transportation and mining infrastructure. For more information on Hispania Resources Inc., visit: http://HispaniaResources.com/. Contact Information For more information or interview requests, please contact: Norman Brewster - Chief Executive Officer Norm@HispaniaResources.com (416) 970-3223 Rahim Allani - Director Rahim@HispaniaResources.com (416) 457-0549 Forward-Looking Information This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information can be identified by words such as: "intend", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will" and similar references to future periods. Examples of forward-looking information include, among others, the expected commencement of work on the PBR project, the expected meetings with local drilling firms, as well as information relating to Hispania. Although Hispania believes that, in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate, the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because Hispania can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, the risk that the future plans of Hispania may differ from those that currently are contemplated Additional risks include those disclosed in the Filing Statement, which are incorporate herein by reference and are available through SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, except as required by law. This news release is not an offer of the securities for sale in the United States. The securities described in this news release have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended) absent registration or an exemption from registration. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state in which where such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. Neither the 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 news release. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION DIRECTLY, OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188270 Dassault Aviation, Major Patron of Maubuisson Forest near Paris (Saint-Cloud, France, November 22, 2023) - Dassault Aviation is proud to be a Major Patron of Maubuisson forest (Val d'Oise, Paris Region), which today saw the launch of its 2023-2024 planting campaign. The campaign was launched in the presence of Cyril Alavoine, Sub-Prefect of Argenteuil, Valerie Pecresse, President of the Ile-de-France Regional Council, Marie-Christine Cavecchi, President of the Departmental Council, and Bernard Tailly, President of the Plaine de Pierrelaye-Bessancourt joint development association (SMAPP). With a million trees of 30 different species to be planted on an uncultivated plain, the Maubuisson project is unprecedented in the Paris region. This 3,310-acre forest will not only benefit the 100,000 inhabitants of the seven neighboring towns, but also the 12 million people who live in the Paris region. Historically present in Val d'Oise, in Argenteuil and now in Cergy, Dassault Aviation is particularly pleased to support this project. "As the One Forest Summit 2023 reminded us, forests play a very valuable role in preserving biodiversity and regulating the climate by sequestering large volumes of CO 2 . Being a Major Patron of Maubuisson forest is in line with our policy to reduce our environmental footprint. We are taking a set of measures to reach Net Zero emissions by 2050, in keeping with our commitments. We are exploring several avenues to drastically reduce the CO 2 emissions of our Falcon business jets, including the use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) that we regard as a very promising solution. We are also focusing our efforts on the circular economy, energy frugality at our plants, and reducing our industrial emissions", said Eric Trappier, Chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation. * * * Dassault Aviation's CSR policy is built on several pillars, including : Use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF): SAF can avoid between 80% and 90% of total CO 2 emissions across the life cycle compared with fossil jet fuel. It helps to reduce other harmful emissions such as particulate matter and sulfur oxides. Falcon business aircraft are certified to be compatible with SAF containing up to 50% non-fossil compounds. The Falcon 10X will be "100% SAF" compatible as soon as it enters into service. Aviation innovation, as a source of gains for our aircraft in terms of aerodynamics, weight and engine efficiency. Dassault Aviation coordinates and participates in numerous scientific and technological projects in the framework of French, European and international programs (France Relance recovery plan and France 2030 - SESAR - Clean Aviation, etc.). Optimization of flight operations thanks to systems such as FalconEye, which allows aircraft to land in very poor weather conditions and avoids diversions, and FalconWays, which allows pilots to adjust their flight plan in real time. Energy frugality and reducing industrial emissions, with new, more energy-efficient buildings, optimized energy use, installation of solar cells, more efficient production processes, transitioning to electric or hybrid vehicles, home-working, remote conferencing, logistics hubs, etc. NB: Dassault Aviation is included in the Financial Times' Climate Leaders 2023 ranking that recognizes the 500 European companies to have achieved the greatest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Circular economy, through the optimization of raw material use, sourcing recycled materials, and waste reclamation. Offsetting emissions by financing projects to stock CO 2 . NB: as a corporate patronage project, the Maubuisson project is not included in our offsets. ABOUT DASSAULT AVIATION: With over 10,000 military and civil aircraft PRESS CONTACTS: Corporate Communications Stephane Fort - Tel.: +33 Mathieu Durand - Tel.: +33 HD photos: mediaprophoto.dassault-aviation.com HD videos: mediaprovideo.dassault-aviation.com Attachment Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Ridgeline Minerals Corp. (TSXV: RDG) (OTCQB: RDGMF) ("Ridgeline" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the completion of its 2023 diamond core drill program totaling 2,034 meters ("m") at its Selena silver ("Ag") - lead ("Pb") - zinc ("Zn") - gold ("Au") carbonate replacement ("CRD") exploration project in Nevada. The program totaled five drill holes ranging from 125 m to 690 m depth and targeted shallow-oxide CRD mineralization in the Upper Chinchilla Zone as well as testing for the first time beneath Chinchilla for stacked mineralization at depth (Figure 1 & Table 1). Drill samples have been regularly submitted to the lab for analysis over the past six weeks with assay results expected to be released in December 2023. Mike Harp, Ridgeline's Vice President, Exploration commented, "This year's program had two primary objectives, upgrade the known Upper Chinchilla Zone and test prospective carbonate host horizons at depth for new discoveries. Results so far have confirmed the high-grade nature of the Upper Chinchilla Zone, and we are encouraged by the level of alteration observed in new potential host horizons at depth. We look forward to updating shareholders as assays are received over the coming weeks." Summary of SE23-049 & SE23-050 (assays pending) Drillhole SE23-049 intersected the Upper Chinchilla Zone horizon over a roughly 9 m thick interval at depths consistent with nearby drillhole SE21-024 (Figure 2). 2.7m of total core loss was encountered in the middle of the aforementioned 9 m interval which is interpreted as a collapse breccia zone or cave resulting in no core recovery. Drilling beneath the upper zone intersected multiple stacked zones of CRD style alteration ranging from 1-5m thickness extending down to 665 meters downhole. (see core photo in Picture 1) Picture 1: Core photos of CRD alteration and corresponding shortwave UV "BBQ Rock" at depth in SE23-049. Tracking of fugitive calcite is a proven vectoring technique and indicator of proximity to a CRD system To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_002full.jpg Drillhole SE23-050 intersected the Upper Chinchilla Zone horizon over a roughly 25 m thick interval at depths consistent with nearby drillholes SE21-025 and SE22-045 (Picture 2 & Figure 2). Drilling beneath the Upper Chinchilla Zone intersected intervals of CRD style alteration ranging from 1-3m thickness down to 400 meters downhole as well as UV fluorescing "BBQ Rock" (fugitive calcite) vein breccia intervals down to 600m depth. (see core photo in Picture 3) Picture 2: Representative core and shortwave UV photo of the Upper Chinchilla Zone SE23-050. Note the lack of "BBQ Rock" fugitive calcite veins, which typically occur on the margins of the CRD system To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_003full.jpg Picture 3: Core and Shortwave UV photo of "BBQ Rock" (fugitive calcite veins) at depth in SE23-050. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_004full.jpg Previously Announced 2023 Drill Results SE23-048: 0.9 m grading 720.3 g/t Ag, 12.0% Pb, 0.1% Zn, 0.4 g/t Au (or 1,133.6 g/t Silver Equivalent "AgEq") within 10.9 m grading 94.1 g/t Ag, 1.3% Pb, 0.7% Zn, 0.2 g/t Au (or 182.9 g/t AgEq) starting at 85.3m true vertical depth ("TVD") (Figure 2) And: 0.6 m grading 3.6 g/t Ag, 2.4% Sb, 0.1 g/t Au starting at 240 m TVD And: 3.6 m grading 0.5 g/t Ag, 1.2% Sb, NA g/t Au starting at 247 m TVD See October 12, 2023 Press Release HERE within 10.9 m grading 94.1 g/t Ag, 1.3% Pb, 0.7% Zn, 0.2 g/t Au (or 182.9 g/t AgEq) starting at 85.3m true vertical depth ("TVD") (Figure 2) SE23-047: 4.6 m grading 55.2 g/t Ag, 1.2% Pb, 7.2% Zn, 0.2 g/t Au (or 421.1 g/t AgEq) and 2.8 m grading 205.8 g/t Ag, 1.4% Pb, 0.3% Zn, 1.4 g/t Au (or 386.1.1 g/t AgEq) within 60.7 m grading 69.8 g/t Ag, 0.6% Pb, 1.3% Zn, 0.4 g/t Au (or 175.2 g/t AgEq) starting at 93.8 m TVD (Figure 2) See October 12, 2023 Press Release HERE within starting at 93.8 m TVD (Figure 2) SE23-046: 7.3 m grading 64.2 grams per tonne ("g/t") Ag, 0.8% Pb, 2.9% Zn and 0.1 g/t Au (or 219.4 g/t AgEq") Assays in SE23-046 are from the top of the Upper Chinchilla Zone prior to the hole being abandoned due to bad ground conditions in a mineralized breccia zone. See October 12, 2023 Press Release HERE Silver Equivalent Calculation: Metal Prices ($20 Ag, $0.90 Pb, $1.25 Zn, 1800 Au, no recovery factor applied) Silver g/t + (Gold g/t * (Gold Price/ Silver Price)) + ((22.0462* Lead Price)/ ((1/31.1035) * (Ag Price)) * Lead %) + ((22.0462* Zinc Price)/ ((1/31.1035) * (Ag Price)) * Zinc %) Table 1: Collar table of all 2023 drill holes Drillhole ID Azimuth Dip Total Depth (m) SE23-046 266 -51 127.0 SE23-047 270 -49 200.0 SE23-048 269 -86 332.0 SE23-049 026 -63 689.0 SE23-050 010 -75 686.0 Selena Project Selena is located in White Pine County, Nevada, approximately 64 kilometers ("km") north of the town of Ely, NV. The Project shares a property boundary with the Butte Valley project, a US $33M earn-in agreement between Freeport-McMoRan and Falcon Butte Minerals. The 100% owned project is comprised of 39 square kms of highly prospective exploration ground including Ridgeline's shallow-oxide 2020 Ag-Au Pb-Zn Chinchilla discovery. Subsequent drilling has continued to highlight the potential for high-grade CRD type mineralization (Ag-Au-Pb-Zn Cu) between Chinchilla and the Butte Valley Cu-Au-Ag porphyry located directly west of the property. (View the Selena VRIFY Deck Here) Figure 1: Plan view map showing locations of SE23-046 to SE23-050 as well as previous highlight drill results at the Chinchilla Zone To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_005full.jpg Figure 2: Long-Section C-C' showing 2023 drilling. Assays pending on SE23-049 and SE23-050 To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_006full.jpg QAQC Procedures Samples are submitted to American Assay Laboratories (AAL) of Sparks, Nevada, which is a certified and accredited laboratory, independent of the Company. Independent check samples are analysed by Paragon Geochemical Labs (PAL) of Sparks, Nevada. Samples are prepared using industry-standard prep methods and analysed using FA-PB30-ICP (Au; 30 g fire assay) and ICP-5AM48 (48 element Suite; 0.5 g 5-acid digestion/ICP-MS) methods. AAL also undertakes its own internal coarse and pulp duplicate analysis to ensure proper sample preparation and equipment calibration. Ridgeline's QA/QC program includes regular insertion of CRM standards, duplicates, and blanks into the sample stream with a stringent review of all results completed by the Company's Qualified Person, Michael T. Harp, Vice President, Exploration. Technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Michael T. Harp, CPG. the Company's Vice President, Exploration, who is Ridgeline's Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 and responsible for technical matters of this release. About Ridgeline Minerals Corp. Ridgeline Minerals is a discovery focused precious and base metal explorer with a proven management team and a 204 km2 exploration portfolio across six projects in Nevada and Idaho, USA. More information about Ridgeline can be found at www.RidgelineMinerals.com. On behalf of the Board "Chad Peters" President & CEO Further Information: Chad Peters, P.Geo. President, CEO & Director Ridgeline Minerals Corp. +1 775 304 9773 cpeters@ridgelineminerals.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. Cautionary Note regarding Forward-Looking Statements Statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts are "forward-looking information" or "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "Forward-Looking Information") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-Looking Information includes, but is not limited to, the anticipated benefits of the Earn-In Agreement and the transaction contemplated thereby. The words "potential", "anticipate", "meaningful", "discovery", "forecast", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "plan", "historical", "historic" and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify Forward-Looking Information. Forward-Looking Information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by the Forward-Looking Information. In preparing the Forward-Looking Information in this news release, Ridgeline has applied several material assumptions, including, but not limited to, assumptions that TSX Venture Exchange approval will be granted in a timely manner subject only to standard conditions; the current objectives concerning the Project can be achieved and that its other corporate activities will proceed as expected; that general business and economic conditions will not change in a materially adverse manner; and that all requisite information will be available in a timely manner. Forward-Looking Information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of Ridgeline to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the Forward-Looking Information. Such risks and other factors include, among others, risks related to dependence on key personnel; risks related to unforeseen delays; risks related to historical data that has not been verified by the Company; as well as those factors discussed in Ridgeline's public disclosure record. Although Ridgeline has attempted to identify important factors that could affect Ridgeline and may cause actual actions, events, or results to differ materially from those described in Forward-Looking Information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that Forward-Looking Information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on Forward-Looking Information. Except as required by law, Ridgeline does not assume any obligation to release publicly any revisions to Forward-Looking Information contained in this news release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188360 Manal AlDowayan is one of Saudi Arabia's most significant contemporary artists, recognised internationally for her work that spans participatory practice, photography, sound and sculpture The artist interrogates traditions, collective memories and the status and representation of women The Saudi Pavilion is commissioned by the Ministry of Culture's Visual Arts Commission This will mark Saudi Arabia's fourth participation in the Biennale Arte, and is the third National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia to feature woman artists Artist Manal AlDowayan in Venice, 2023.Courtesy of the artist and the Visual Arts Commission,the Commissioner for the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Manal AlDowayan will represent Saudi Arabia at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, taking place from 20 April to 24 November 2024. The Saudi Pavilion is commissioned by the Ministry of Culture's Visual Arts Commission. AlDowayan is one of Saudi Arabia's most significant contemporary artists working internationally. Her work, which spans various mediums including photography, sound, sculpture, and participatory practice, interrogates traditions, collective memories and the status and representation of women. AlDowayan acts as a critical witness to the cultural and social metamorphoses sweeping her home country, and her work in turn navigates a territory where the personal and the societal overlap. Her works explore themes such as invisibility, active forgetting, and collective memory. Through her decades-long practice, AlDowayan's art resonates with audiences around the world, fostering connection, interaction, and engagement. She is best known for participatory installations such as Suspended Together (2011) and Esmi-My Name (2012), which are the result of participatory workshops offering channels for thousands of women in Saudi Arabia to reflect on social customs relating to the position of women in Saudi Arabia and further afield. Commenting on her participation, AlDowayan says: "My approach to art over the last two decades has given me the chance to be part of a transformation that is taking place in my country.The Biennale Arte 2024 presents a rare opportunityto represent where I stand in my practice, positioned in the context of my community, my country, and the world as a whole." More recently, AlDowayan performed From Shattered Ruins, New Life Shall Bloom at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in August 2023. There, she invited visitors to navigate the space which featured a landscape of totems topped with porcelain rolls filled with texts and images depicting narratives that have upheld structures around women for generations. In a conclusive collective gesture of protest against a history of control, participants destroyed the scrolls - ultimately stripping the words and images of their power and encouraging solidarity in the face of fragmentation of action and the need for a multipolar approach when it comes to helping women and girls around the world. Dina Amin, Chief Executive Officer of the Visual Arts Commission says:"At the Visual Arts Commission, our goal is to bring to the forefront the talent that resides within our country and to look for ways to nurture, amplify and celebrate it on local, regional and international stages.We are proud to be showcasing Manal AlDowayan's work at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, an important international platform for exchange." This will mark Saudi Arabia's fourth participation at the International Art Exhibitions of La Biennale di Venezia and is the third National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia to feature woman artists. A concept and further details surrounding AlDowayan's installation will be announced at a later stage, but the artist revealed that the Saudi Pavilion will reflect on the Biennale Arte's overarching theme. Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, will bring together artists to reflect on the differences and disparities conditioned by areas such as identity, nationality, race and gender, amongst others. The exhibition will be on view from 20 April to 24 November 2024 at the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia's permanent space at the Arsenale, Sale d'Armi, Venice, Italy. Manal AlDowayan for The National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia, commissioned by the Visual Arts Commission, 20 April - 24 November: saudipavilion.org Press contacts: Rania Habib at Pelham Communications rania@pelhamcommunications.com Annabel Hoyng-Van der Meijden at Pelham Communications annabel@pelhamcommunications.com Press kitlink here. About Manal AlDowayan AlDowayan is one of Saudi Arabia's most significant contemporary artists working internationally. Her work, which spans various mediums including photography, sound, sculpture, and participatory practice, interrogates traditions, collective memories and the status and representation of women. AlDowayan's work has been exhibited regionally and internationally in institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, USA (2023); the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada (2023); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA (2023); Misk Art Institute, Saudi Arabia (2023, 2022); Setouchi Triennale, Japan (2022); Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE (2023); Diriyah Biennale, Saudi Arabia (2022); Taehwa River Eco Festival, Korea (2021); V&A Museum, UK (2021); British Museum, UK (2021); Desert X AlUla, Saudi Arabia (2020); The Nobel Museum, Sweden (2019); the Aga Khan Museum, Canada (2018); Royal College of Art, UK (2018); Abu Dhabi Art, UAE (2017); Institut du Monde Arabe, France (2017); the Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE (2016); Santander Art Gallery, Madrid (2016); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA (2015); Prospect New Orleans, American Biennial, USA (2014); Gwangju Museum of Art, South Korea (2014); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar (2014); and in a Collateral Event at the Biennale Arte in 2009 and 2011, among others. Her works can be found in the collections of the British Museum, UK; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; the Centre Pompidou, France; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim, USA. She participated in the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, USA (2015), and the artist-in-residence programme at the Delfina Foundation, UK (2009). She holds an MA in Contemporary Art Practice in Public Spheres from the Royal College of Art, London. She also received a research fellowship from New York University Abu Dhabi (2014). Born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia in 1973, AlDowayan currently lives and works between London, Dhahran and Dubai. Website: https://www.manaldowayan.com/ Instagram: @manaldowayan ManalAlDowayan About the Visual Arts Commission: The Visual Arts Commission is one of 11 sector-specific commissions under the Ministry of Culture. Founded in 2020, it is leading the development of the visual arts sector in Saudi Arabia. The Commission is working to nurture the talent of art enthusiasts, practitioners, and professionals in the Kingdom, and support the production and exhibition of artwork in all its forms, locally and internationally. To learn more about the Visual Arts Commission, please visit www.visualarts.moc.gov.sa/en and the commission's page on Twitter @MOCVisualArts About the Ministry of Culture: Saudi Arabia has a vast history of arts and culture. The Ministry of Culture is developing Saudi Arabia's cultural economy and enriching the daily lives of citizens, residents, and visitors. Overseeing 11 sector-specific commissions, the Ministry is leading a cultural transformation to develop an abundant ecosystem that nurtures creativity, unlocks the economic potential of the sector and unleashes new and inspiring forms of expression. Find the Ministry of Culture on social media: Twitter @MOCSaudi About the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia: The National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia supports and celebrates the Kingdom's artistic and architectural community. It serves as a meeting space for dialogue between creative minds, and an exchange of concepts and ideas. The pavilion provides a permanent home for research and ideation from the nation's leading cultural voices. To learn more about the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia, please visit www.saudipavilion.org and on Instagram: @saudipavilion. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2a91498e-5d3e-41fa-91e4-de6dd610be50 MedBright AI Investments and The Ken Sperling Lecture Series Support Medical Economics Lectures at Yale University Medical School VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / MedBright AI Investments Inc. (the "Company" or "MedBright") (CSE:MBAI)(OTCQB:MBAIF)(FSE:1V7) is pleased to announce it, along with The Ken Sperling Lecture Series, will be supporting and participating in medical economics lectures at Yale University School of Medicine. The Ken Sperling Lecture Series was founded in honor of Ken Sperling, who advised federal lawmakers and the Obama administration on the development and implementation of the 2010 health care reform law and was a pioneer in health insurance exchanges in the United States. His legacy continues with a twice annual lecture series and symposia for the house staff at Yale Medical School focused on a range of topics associated with the economics of healthcare in the US. Amongst other topics, the series will address the impact AI is having on healthcare services in the US. "I am excited to participate in working to support the house staff at Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale University Medical School," said Michael Dalsin, Chair of the MedBright AI Investment . "We share the same commitment to create lectures and symposia on the topic of Healthcare Microeconomics, especially as we see a wide array of applications using artificial intelligence in the business of healthcare." About Yale School of Medicine Yale School of Medicine educates and nurtures creative leaders in medicine and science, promoting curiosity and critical inquiry in an inclusive environment enriched by diversity. About MedBright AI Investments Inc. MedBright AI is a capital allocator focused on investing in healthcare technology companies. The team at Medbright prides themselves on unparalleled access to opportunities, as well as structuring unique and advantageous investments. Medbright's mission is to construct a portfolio of synergistic investments to generate superior returns for shareholders. MedBright will focus on significant near-term and midterm high-quality opportunities with strong return potentials while maintaining commitment to governance. MedBright AI Investments Inc. Alnoor Nathoo, Chief Executive Officer (587)-899-6967 Email: investors@medbright.ai Cautionary Statement Regarding "Forward-Looking" Information This release includes certain statements and information that may constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical facts, including statements regarding future estimates, plans, objectives, timing, assumptions or expectations of future performance, including without limitation, the Company's plans to generate returns for its shareholders through its portfolio of investments, are forward-looking statements and contain forward-looking information. Generally, forward-looking statements and information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "intends" or "anticipates", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "should" or "would" or occur. Forward-looking statements are based on certain material assumptions and analysis made by the Company and the opinions and estimates of management as of the date of this press release, including that the Company will be able to generate returns for its shareholders. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Important risks that may cause actual results to vary, include, without limitation, the risk that the Company's portfolio of investments will not generate returns for shareholders. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, forward-looking information or financial out-look that are incorporated by reference herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. SOURCE: MedBright AI Investments Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/808219/medbright-ai-investments-and-the-ken-sperling-lecture-series-support-medical-economics-lectures-at-yale-university-medical-school BOSTON, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Sapphiros, a platform company dedicated to building the next generation of consumer diagnostic technologies, is proud to announce it has entered into a distribution agreement with Cencora, Inc. (NYSE: COR), formerly AmerisourceBergen Corporation. Under the agreement, Cencora will distribute the Sapphiros GoToKnow COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Tests to pharmacies across the United States. This strategic partnership promises to enhance accessibility and convenience for those seeking reliable COVID-19 testing solutions nationwide. In the future, Cencora will also have access to the future Sapphiros technologies including a fully disposable, low-cost multiplexed molecular diagnostics platform, additional rapid lateral flow tests for diseases beyond COVID-19 and the Satio novel blood collection patch coming in early 2024. "This is a significant milestone for our company and further validates Sapphiros's unique and transformational technologies," said Mark Gladwell, CEO of Sapphiros. "We are honored to partner with Cencora to bring this product as well as future innovative product offerings directly to patients across the United States enabling the consumer to directly access their diagnostic results and manage their health." About Sapphiros Sapphiros, backed by KKR and Neoenta, is a privately held consumer diagnostics platform company. Sapphiros's portfolio of capabilities and technologies includes novel sample collection, next generation diagnostics, computational biology, and printed electronics, which help consumers access important diagnostic results globally. Knowing Now Moves Us About Cencora Cencora is a leading global pharmaceutical solutions organization centered on improving the lives of people and animals around the world. We partner with pharmaceutical innovators across the value chain to facilitate and optimize market access to therapies. Care providers depend on us for the secure, reliable delivery of pharmaceuticals, healthcare products, and solutions. Our 46,000+ worldwide team members contribute to positive health outcomes through the power of our purpose: We are united in our responsibility to create healthier futures. Cencora is ranked #11 on the Fortune 500 and #24 on the Global Fortune 500 with more than $250 billion in annual revenue. Learn more at www.investor.cencora.com For further information: Sapphiros, press@sapphiros.com Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2283196/Sapphiros.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1895080/4418411/Sapphiros_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/sapphiros-and-cencora-formerly-amerisourcebergen-corporation-enter-into-distribution-agreement-301995538.html The "REACH and RoHS Compliance: Protecting Revenues with Advanced Compliance" training has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. REACH and RoHS have been referred to as "one of the most complex regulations in the history of the EU" Do not miss this 2-day seminar to find out why. What are REACH and RoHS Compliance Training and Regulations? This 2-day seminar will go into the specifics of the REACH and RoHS regulations, provide case studies, and share lessons learned so your organization can benefit from the mistakes of others. We will review the latest on both directives and will draw out key developments and key dates (if applicable) with particular emphasis on requirements for US firms. REACH and RoHS conformity have banned problematic toxic and environmentally hazardous elements such as lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominated diphenylether (PBDE) in quantities not exceeding a maximum of 0.1 percent by mass in products and new phthalate additions as a 2019 amendment. Restrictions of the use of certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Registration, Evaluation Authorization and Restriction of Chemical Substances (REACH) are European requirements on chemicals and chemical substances used in products. REACH is required by the EU for products containing chemical compounds. It is also required by US exporters for all suppliers exporting products to the EU. Even though you may not be an exporter, you may have to still comply with these regulations. Companies shipping parts or products into Europe must comply with EU REACH and RoHS regulations. EU REACH creates increased risk of product recalls or bans that must be proactively addressed to ensure continued market access. Products containing harnesses, hydraulic components, rubber, or PVC are at a higher risk of containing restricted materials. REACH applies to solvents, fragrances, metals, alloys, pigments, dyes, fertilizers, cosmetics, detergents, polymers, electronic equipment, furniture, textile toys, etc. Objectives of Learning: Understanding your organization's liability under RoHS and REACH. Review case studies. Discuss lessons learned applications to ensure full compliance. RoHS and REACH guidelines REACH Registration of Substances Introduction to REACH Articles and REACH Substances of Very High Concerns (SVHC) Supply chain communication Compliance enforcement Basics of RoHS Background and content of RoHS Responsibility for RoHS International requirements of RoHS Material testing methods Build and manage RoHS/REACH compliance programs Reporting to management and government agencies An introduction to Global RoHS/REACH legislation, WEEE. Conflict Minerals, Anti-trafficking regulations, and CA Proposition 65 Methods of regulatory data collection Compliance consulting on company real world scenarios 10.0 RAC CREDITS RAPS This course has been pre-approved by RAPS as eligible for up to 10 credits towards a participant's RAC recertification upon full completion. Who Should Attend: This online seminar in REACH RoHS Compliance Training will provide extremely helpful assistance to all professionals in the following domains: Automotive Electronics Medical devices Chemical Toys Industrial machinery Manufacturing Professionals Anyone new to RoHS and or REACH and need to understand the regulations Anyone responsible for RoHS and REACH compliance Quality Managers Environmental Managers Purchasers Buyers Agenda Day 1 (10:00 AM 04:00 PM EST) REACH Registration of Substances Introduction to REACH Articles and REACH Substances of Very High Concerns (SVHC) Supply chain communication Compliance enforcement Basics of RoHS Background and content of RoHS Responsibility for RoHS International requirements of RoHS Day 2 (10:00 AM 02:00 PM EST) A Process for Protecting Revenues 10 Steps to building a RoHS/REACH compliance program Determining best practices for collecting data Managing legacy systems and parts Improving data collection by using Jig 101, IEC 62474, IPC 1752 Understanding 3rd party compliance software platforms Manual and automated data collection Building management reports for sourcing decisions Incorporating compliance into standard business practices Building templates for policy and procedures Incorporating compliance processes into ISO 9001:2015 documentation Building a documented system for proof of due diligence Implementing a RoHS/REACH compliance maintenance program REACH SCIP database New UK versions of RoHS and REACH Conducting compliance audits Speakers: Kelly Eisenhardt Co-Founder and Managing Director BlueCircle Advisors LLC Ms. Eisenhardt is Co-Founder and Managing Director at BlueCircle Advisors LLC, a consulting firm that provides strategy and programming to address product compliance risks, sales and revenue protection, and compliance and sustainability practices throughout the supply chain. With 20 years' experience in IT and Compliance Software Development, her former roles include: Executive Director of Environmental Programs, at Fair Factories Clearinghouse; Environmental Compliance Manager and Design for Environment programs at EMC Corporation; and Director of Product Management at PTC Corporation for Windchill Product Analytics an environmental compliance software. She is a journalist for industry trade publications such as 3BL, JustMeans, Social Earth, CSRwire, Ethical Performance, and CSR@Risk with a focus on trends in product compliance, supply chain transparency, and corporate social responsibility. In 2015, she traveled with Asia Pulp and Paper to Indonesia and Sumatra to research and write about the company's zero deforestation efforts and social responsibility programs. In May 2016, she delivered her paper on "Advancing Product Design with Environmental Compliance," at the IEEE/ISCPCE conference in Anaheim, California. She is currently on assignment with an IT infrastructure company to build Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs specializing in anti-trafficking compliance, sustainability programming and reporting, and cybersecurity compliance for supply chains. For more information about this training visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/6k2teo 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. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122212419/en/ Contacts: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com 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 GCEX GCEX Receives Operational VASP Licence from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority 22-Nov-2023 / 15:29 CET/CEST The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. NEWS RELEASE BY GCEX Singapore, Singapore | November 22, 2023 08:40 AM Eastern Standard Time GC Exchange FZE (GCEX), part of the GCEX Group, has been granted an Operational VASP Licence for VA Broker Dealer services from Dubai's Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA). GCEX, which opened its Dubai office in July 2022 and received its MVP (Minimal Viable Product) Preparatory License from VARA in February 2023, can now start market operations as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) in the Emirate of Dubai, enabling brokers, hedge funds, family offices and professional traders to access its deep liquidity in digital assets and range of technology solutions. GCEX facilitates institutional access to digital assets through its proprietary XplorDigital trading solutions, which comprises of a technology-agnostic platform covering regulation, regulated custody, the safety of funds, tier 1 liquidity and technology (both back-end and front-end). GCEX only partners with regulated institutional digital custody and staking providers and always segregates client funds. Mehtap Onder, Managing Director, GCEX in Dubai, commented, "VARA is leading the way in the global digital asset industry, and we are extremely proud to be one of the first firms to receive a VASP Operating Licence to provide Virtual Asset Broker-Dealer services and the first firm to gain approval to operate with a client money account, highlighting our focus on client protection. "Being a regulated entity in the region is important to us - it's the ideal way to demonstrate our commitment to adhering to international standards and implementing robust processes, with transparency and investor protection at the core of our offering. This is a major milestone for our business and is critical to GCEX's growth strategy, enabling us to have a stronger presence in the region." GCEX Group enables institutional clients to access deep liquidity in FX and CFDs on digital assets, as well as digital assets spot trading and conversion as well as a broad range of trading solutions. Headquartered in London, with multiple offices across the globe, GCEX is regulated by the UK's FCA and registered with the Danish FSA. True Global Ventures are investors in GCEX. For further information, please visit gcexmena.com or LinkedIn About GCEX Founded in 2018, GCEX is a pioneering regulated digital prime brokerage with a best-of-breed digital asset and FX platform for institutional and professional clients. GCEX has partnerships with Tier 1 trusted Liquidity Providers, leading counterparties and regulated digital custody asset institutions. GCEX offers a wide range of products and technology solutions including White Labels. GCEX is a trading name of GC Exchange Limited, GC Exchange Fondsmglerselskab A/S, GC Exchange A/S and GC Exchange FZE. GC Exchange Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales (No11382809) with registered address at 75 King William Street, London, EC4N 7BE provides FX and CFDs products. GC Exchange Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 828730). Digital asset services are provided by GC Exchange A/S, a company incorporated in Denmark (CVR 43088777) with address at Amager Strandvej 390, 2770, Kastrup. GC Exchange A/S is authorised by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority as a Currency Exchange (FTID 45020) and registered as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (FTID 17524) under the AML regulation. GC Exchange Fondsmglerselskab A/S, a company incorporated in Denmark (CVR 43345052) with address at Amager Strandvej 390, 2770, Kastrup. GC Exchange Fondsmglerselskab A/S is authorised and regulated by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority as an Investment Firm to offer FX and CFD products. GC Exchange FZE is incorporated as a Limited Liability Free Zone Establishment under the Dubai World Trade Center Authority with registration number 1896. GC Exchange FZE has been granted a Virtual Asset Service Provider Licence by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority. For more information visit: https://www.vara.ae/ About VARA Established in March 2022, following the effect of Law No.4 of 2022, VARA is the competent entity in charge of regulating, supervising, and overseeing VAs and VA Activities in all zones across the Emirate of Dubai, including Special Development Zones and Free Zones but excluding the Dubai International Financial Centre. VARA plays a central role in creating Dubai's advanced legal framework to protect investors and establish international standards for Virtual Asset industry governance, while supporting the vision for a borderless economy. Contact Details Wigwam PR for GCEX Vanessa Green vanessa@wigwampr.com Dissemination of a CORPORATE NEWS, transmitted by EQS Group. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. BEDFORD, NS / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Silver Spruce Resources, Inc. ("Silver Spruce" or the "Company") (TSXV:SSE) along with its partner Colibri Resource Corp. (TSX.V:CBI)(OTC:CRUCF) ("Colibri") are pleased to announce jointly the discovery of new Gold-Silver showings on the Diamante property which include assays to 3.52 g/t Au and 197 g/t Ag from outcrop grab samples. Sporadic surface exploration since 2011 has resulted in several surface showings comprised of epithermal precious and base metal mineralization (Au-Ag+/-Cu-Pb-Zn) (Figure 1). Recent exploration at Diamante has been focused on Diamante II and includes property wide geological mapping, evaluation and sampling of historical showings, collection and analyses of 49 steam sediment samples, and assay of 60 outcrop samples. Highlights of the 2023 work to date is the discovery of new mineralized showings in the southern and northern parts of the concession. Assays of 3.52 g/t Au and 121 g/t Ag from one showing and assays of 0.122 g/t Au and 197 g/t Ag from a second showing are on the southern part of the property in the area of Calton and Southern target areas which incudes a past sample of 39.8 /t Au and 109 g/t Ag. In the northern part of the Diamante II concession, samples returning assays of .818 g/t Au (5.07 g/t Ag) and 0.749 g/t Au (2.13 g/t Ag) are located approximately 250 metres northwest of the historical Mezquite-Raizudo showing which includes a sample which returned an assay of 5.64 g/t Au. A component of the field work completed to date has been geological mapping and evaluation of historical showings. Confirmation of the historical showings includes a sample which returned an assay of 3.34 g/t Au and 20 g/t Ag from the Calton target area. Ian McGavney, President & CEO of Colibri commented: We are very pleased with these new results which significantly expands the footprint of known mineralization on the Diamante II concession. We will be continuing this early stage exploration approach and anticipate that our further geological mapping, prospecting, and continued evaluation of historical showings will provide the structural and alteration framework in which to interpret the extensive epithermal mineralization system evident on the property. We are also modeling, evaluating, and interpreting work previously completed, including the 2022 drilling, with the objective of prioritizing drill targets for a second drill program planned for early 2024. The Diamante property is comprised of the Diamante I and Diamante II concessions which contain numerous historical artisanal and small scale mining sites. Colibri and Silver Spruce commenced exploration on the Diamante property during 2021 and during 2022. Colibri, as operator, and Silver Spruce completed the first-ever drill program on the Diamante property at the prioritized El Pillado and La Prieta targets located on Diamante I. Highlighted results included 2.48 grams per tonne ("g/t") Au and 56.7 g/t Ag over an intersection length of 9.0 metres ("m") from La Prieta and 0.26 g/t Au and 184.5 g/t Ag over an intersection length of 6.0 m from El Pillado. In addition, both target areas exhibited highly anomalous levels of base metals in highlighted drill assay intervals. Figure 1 - Rock Sampling Map, Assay Highlights and Target Areas on Diamante II About the Diamante Property The Diamante Property is located within a belt of epithermal Au-Ag mineralization hosted by the Sierra Madre Occidental Volcanic Complex (Figure 2). Major gold mining operations in the area of the Diamante property include Alamos Golds' Los Mulatos Mine as wells as Agnico Eagles' El India and Pinos Altos Mines. The Diamante project is located approximately 12km km northeast of Minera Alamos' Santana Au development project (Figure 2) which is anticipated to commence commercial production within the next quarter. The Property is located approximately 170 km southeast of Sonora state capital Hermosillo and approximately 10 km northwest of the town of Tepoca. The property is accessed directly from Sonora state Highway 16. The 1,057-hectare Diamante Property is located adjacent to the Company's Jackie property (Figure 3) which covers 1,130 hectares. The Diamante property hosts a number of historical showings (Figures 1, 3 and 4) and combined with mineralization on the Jackie property exhibit the geological characteristics of epithermal low to intermediate sulfidation Ag-Au (Pb-Zn), high sulfidation Au-Cu, and potential transition zones within and peripheral to porphyry style Au-Cu mineralization. Figure 2. Regional Map of Sierra Madre Occidental Deposits showing Silver Spruce property locations. Figure 3. Sonora claim packages including Silver Spruce /Colibri's Diamante I and II and Jackie, and Colibri's El Mezquite, showing property-wide gold assays from rock sampling programs. Figure 4. Diamante I - Surface Gold Samples and Target Areas Au equivalents presented in this news release were calculated using metal prices of US$1660 per ounce Au, US$18.65 per ounce Ag, US$1.32 per pound Zn, and US$0.83 per pound Pb. No metal recovery factors were used. Qualified Person Jamie Lavigne, P. Geo and a Director for Colibri is a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release. Greg Davison, PGeo, Silver Spruce VP Exploration and Director, is the Company's internal Qualified Person for the Diamante Project and has reviewed the technical content of this press release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"), under TSX guidelines. About Silver Spruce Resources Inc. Silver Spruce Resources Inc. is a Canadian junior exploration company which has signed Definitive Agreements to acquire 100% of the Melchett Lake Zn-Au-Ag project in northern Ontario, 100% interest in the Mystery Au project near recent discoveries by Sokoman Minerals Corp. and New Found Gold Corp. among others in the Exploits Subzone Gold Belt, Newfoundland and Labrador, 100% interest in the Pino de Plata Ag project located 15 kilometres west of Coeur Mining's Palmarejo Mine in western Chihuahua, Mexico and up to 50% interest in Colibri Resource's Diamante Au-Ag project located from 5 kilometres to 15 kilometres northwest from Minera Alamos's Nicho deposit in Sonora, Mexico. Silver Spruce signed a 50:50 joint venture agreement with Colibri on the nearby Jackie Au project. Silver Spruce Resources Inc. continues to investigate opportunities that Management has identified or that have been presented to the Company for consideration. Contact: Silver Spruce Resources Inc. Greg Davison, PGeo, Vice-President Exploration and Director (250) 521-0444 gdavison@silverspruceresources.com Michael Kinley, CEO (902) 402-0388 mkinley@silverspruceresources.com info@silverspruceresources.com www.silverspruceresources.com 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. Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains "forward-looking statements," Statements in this press release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors. Such factors include, among others, the inherent uncertainties associated with mineral exploration and difficulties associated with obtaining financing on acceptable terms. We are not in control of metals prices and these could vary to make development uneconomic. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release, and we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this press release are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions will prove to be accurate. SOURCE: Silver Spruce Resources Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/808328/silver-spruce-provides-diamante-exploration-update-new-showings-discovered-rock-sample-assay-highlights-of-352-gt-au-and-197-gt-ag RALEIGH, NC / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / As consumers continue to focus their attention online, companies around the globe are looking for ways to stand out. In addition to social media, content creation, and other forms of marketing, press release distribution is a valuable resource brands can use to maximize their message. Newswire, an industry leader in press release distribution, continues to help companies of all sizes and industries tap into the power of press releases to improve their online presence and reach their target audience. "In today's digital landscape, a well-crafted and newsworthy press release remains an effective tool companies can use to stand out in a crowded marketplace," said Jennifer Hammers, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Issuer Direct. "But, in order to reap the benefits of a well-executed press release distribution strategy, marketing professionals should keep certain best practices in mind when developing and publishing content." In Newswire's recent blog post, the award-winning company offers seven press release distribution best practices which include: Identify a newsworthy angle. Follow the proper press release format. Optimize your content for SEO. Choose the right distribution channel. Support campaigns with media pitching. Use multimedia promotion. Analyze results. To learn more about these press release distribution best practices and Newswire's industry-leading press release distribution services, visit newswire.com About Newswire Newswire is a media technology company that provides its clients with the Press Release Optimizer, which consists of press release distribution, media databases, media monitoring, and newsrooms that power the Media Advantage: greater brand awareness through earned media, increased online visibility through greater SEO recognition, and more sales inquiries through targeted digital marketing campaigns. Through its disruptive Press Release Optimizer, relentless commitment to customer satisfaction, and passion for customer performance, Newswire is automating media and marketing communications for large and small businesses seeking to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time for the right purpose. To learn more about Newswire and its Press Release Optimizer, visit Newswire.com and discover why our customers have named us #1 for Customer Satisfaction and Ease of Use for four years in a row. For more information, visit http://www.newswire.com. Newswire is a wholly owned subsidiary of Issuer Direct, a leading communications and compliance company, providing solutions for both Public Relations and Investor Relations Professionals. For more information, please visit www.issuerdirect.com. Contact Information: Jennifer Hammers Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing jennifer.hammers@issuerdirect.com 919.481.4000 SOURCE: Newswire View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/808131/newswire-offers-7-press-release-distribution-best-practices-to-follow Huzhou, China--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - On November 17th, The 2nd ECI International Eco-Village (Yucun, China) Innovation Forum 2023 Yucun Dream Gala kicked off in Yucun, Tianhuangping Town, Anji County. Experts and scholars from all over the world jointly discussed the international experience of green rural innovation and development, and jointly launched the global rural ecological civilization development initiative of "Green Wishes, Shaping the Future." Group photo of participating guests To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8457/188374_f7c179291472580e_001full.jpg At the Gala, Dayu Village signed contracts with Tsinghua University Academy of Fine Arts, International Business School of Beijing Foreign Studies University, Bamboo Industry Institute of Zhejiang A&F University, and School of Design of Huzhou College, coupling the talent training in colleges and universities with the revitalization of rural talents. Tsinghua University Academy of Fine Arts will jointly build Tsinghua University Aesthetic Education Workstation (Anji Station) and New Life Art Museum in Dayu Village, and jointly hold "Anji Mountain and River Art Season" and "International Young Artists Forum" to reshape rural aesthetics based on Dayu Village. The International Business School of Beijing Foreign Studies University will establish a "Yangtze River Delta Representative Office" and a "practice base for international students" to join hands with Dayu Village to transport international talents for rural revitalization and help promote international brands. The School of Design of Huzhou College focuses on "green design" to empower the development of Dayu Village and rural revitalization, and plans to form a "four-in-one" co-construction system of "learning theory together, doing activities together, building positions together and solving problems together." The Bamboo Industry Institute of Zhejiang A&F University will help Liujiatang Village in Shangshu Township to create the "First Village of Bamboo Travel in China," and jointly build the doctoral workstation and postgraduate training base of the Bamboo Research Institute, and make great efforts to promote nature education and bamboo industry-related training. During the Gala, preparations for the "Global Village Chief Forum" were officially launched. In the future, Dayu Village plans to invite "Global Village Chiefs" to talk about the beautiful possibilities of modern villages and contribute wisdom to building a global rural ecological civilization. Company: IECIA (International Entrepreneurs, Creatives and Innovators Association) Contact: Lijun Jia Email: seven@eci-academy.com Tel: +86130 6264 6939 Website: https://global.eciawards.org/#/ To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188374 Increase in the adoption of hemodialysis services, surge in cases of renal diseases, especially end stage renal disease (ESRD), and increase in awareness regarding hemodialysis in developing countries drive the growth of the global hemodialysis market. PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research published a report, titled, "Hemodialysis Market By Product And Service (Equipments, Consumables, Drugs, and Services), Type (Conventional Hemodialysis, Daily Hemodialysis, and Nocturnal Hemodialysis), and Dialysis Site (In-Center Dialysis and Home Dialysis): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2023-2032" According to the report, the global hemodialysis industry generated $76.9 billion in 2022 and is anticipated to generate $111.8 billion by 2032, witnessing a CAGR of 3.8% from 2023 to 2032. Request Sample of the Report on Hemodialysis Market Forecast 2032- https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/4660 Prime determinants of growth Rise in prevalence of kidney failure and end stage renal disease (ESRD), technological advancement in hemodialysis devices, surge in geriatric population who is vulnerable to kidney failure, and increase in demand for hemodialysis device & services drive the growth of the global hemodialysis market. However, risks and complications associated with dialysis are hampering the hemodialysis market growth. On the contrary, high growth potential in developing countries and increase in R&D regarding hemodialysis products are expected to offer remunerative opportunities for the expansion of the hemodialysis market during the forecast period. Report coverage & details: Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2023-2032 Base Year 2022 Market Size in 2022 $76.9 billion Market Size in 2032 $111.8 billion CAGR 3.8 % No. of Pages in Report 390 Segments covered Product and Service, Type, Dialysis Site and Region Drivers Rise in prevalence of end stage renal disease (ESRD) Rise in awareness regarding hemodialysis Increase in the incidence rate of diabetes and hypertension Shortage of kidneys for transplantation Opportunities High growth potential in developing countries Rise in adoption of key strategy Restraints Risks and complications associated with dialysis Economic Downturn Analysis: Impact of Recession in 2023 on the Hemodialysis Market Startups and smaller businesses in the hemodialysis sector, which often rely on loans or investments to fund their operations and expansion, may face challenges in obtaining affordable financing. This can hinder their ability to invest in R&D, product innovation, and market expansion. Furthermore, the recession does not affect the demand for hemodialysis products & services and pharmaceuticals, as hemodialysis serves as a life-saving treatment for patients with kidney failure. Want to Explore More, Connect to our Analyst- https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/connect-to-analyst/4660 The services segment to maintain its dominance during the forecast period By type, the services segment held the highest market share in 2022, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the global hemodialysis market revenue and is estimated to maintain its leadership status during the forecast period, owing to the high adoption of hemodialysis services, and the high number of hemodialysis service provider. The consumables segment is projected to attain the highest CAGR of 4.8% from 2023 to 2032, owing to increase in usage of hemodialysis consumables by hemodialysis patients and surge in demand for hemodialysis consumables. The conventional hemodialysis segment to maintain its dominance during the forecast period By type, the conventional hemodialysis segment held the highest market share in 2022, accounting for nearly three-fifths of the global hemodialysis market revenue and is estimated to maintain its leadership status during the forecast period, owing to the high adoption of conventional hemodialysis and performed only three days a week, so there is no more risk of other complications. The nocturnal hemodialysis segment is projected to attain the highest CAGR of 4.7% from 2023 to 2032 due to its various advantages such as it is done at night, so patients are free in the day to pursue other activities and improves the health of the patient. The in-center dialysis segment to maintain its dominance during the forecast period By dialysis site, the in-center dialysis segment held the highest market share in terms of revenue in 2022, accounting for more than four-fifths of the global hemodialysis market revenue, owing to patient does not require any medical training and majority of hemodialysis devices manufacturing companies are engaged in developing dialysis centers in various regions. The home dialysis segment is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 5.4% from 2023 to 2032 and is likely to dominate the market during the forecast period, owing to its various advantages such as patient can adjust session schedules in the day or at night by letting the treatment fit around the patient timetables and rise in number of people choice for home dialysis options for dialysis treatment. For Procurement Information- https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/4660 North America to maintain its dominance by 2032 Region-wise, North America held the highest market share in terms of revenue in 2022, accounting for more than half of the global hemodialysis market revenue, owing to robust healthcare infrastructure, presence of key players, and rise in healthcare expenditure. However, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the fastest CAGR of 5.7% from 2023 to 2032 and is likely to dominate the market during the forecast period, owing to rise in kidney failure cases, unmet medical demands, and high population base. Leading Market Players: - Asahi Kasei Corporation B. Braun Melsungen AG Baxter International Inc. DaVita Inc. Diaverum Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA Nikkiso Co., Ltd Nipro Corporation Rockwell Medical Technologies Inc. TORAY INDUSTRIES, INC. (TORAY MEDICAL CO., LTD.). The report provides a detailed analysis of these key players in the global hemodialysis market. These players have adopted different strategies such as adopted acquisition, agreement, expansion, merger, partnership, product launch, product approval to increase their market share and maintain dominant shares in different regions. The report is valuable in highlighting business performance, operating segments, product portfolio, and strategic moves of market players to showcase the competitive scenario. Comprehensive Healthcare Industry Research Studies: mHealth Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2032 Biomaterials Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2032 Flow Cytometry Market- Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2032 Healthcare IT Market - Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2032 MRI System Market- Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2032 About Allied Market Research: Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Wilmington, Delaware. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domains. AMR offers its services across 11 industry verticals including Life Sciences, Consumer Goods, Materials & Chemicals, Construction & Manufacturing, Food & Beverages, Energy & Power, Semiconductor & Electronics, Automotive & Transportation, ICT & Media, Aerospace & Defense, and BFSI. We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry. Contact David Correa 1209 Orange Street, Corporation Trust Center, Wilmington, New Castle, Delaware 19801 USA. Toll Free: +1-800-792-5285 Int'l: +1-503-894-6022 UK: +44-845-528-1300 Hong Kong: +852-301-84916 India (Pune): +91-20-66346060 Fax: +1-855-550-5975 help@alliedmarketresearch.com Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com Follow Us on: LinkedIn Twitter Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/hemodialysis-market-to-reach-111-8-billion-globally-by-2032-at-3-8-cagr-allied-market-research-301995345.html CHICAGO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A complex and dynamic environment will continue to define the Industrial Control Security market in the future, with a particular emphasis on managing increasing cyber threats, guaranteeing regulatory compliance, and embracing novel technologies to improve the overall security posture of critical infrastructure. To keep ahead of new threats, industrial sector organisations will need to invest in cybersecurity measures and adapt on a constant basis. The global Industrial Control Security Market size is projected to grow from USD 17.8 billion in 2023 to USD 25.1 billion by 2028 at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.1% during the forecast period, according to a new report by MarketsandMarkets. Integration of IT and OT systems driving expansion in ICS security solutions. However, a shortage of skilled analysts for analyzing critical ICT systems may hinder market growth. Browse in-depth TOC on "Industrial Control Security Market" 300 - Tables 40 - Figures 300 - Pages Download PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=1273 Scope of the Report Report Metrics Details Market size available for years 2017-2028 Base year considered 2022 Forecast period 2023-2028 Forecast units Value (USD Million/USD Billion) Segments Covered Component, solutions, services, security type, verticals and regions Geographies covered North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America Companies covered Major vendors in the global ICS security market include Cisco (US), ABB (Switzerland), Lockheed Martin (US), Fortinet (US), Honeywell (US), Palo Alto Networks (US), BAE Systems (UK), RTX (US), Trellix (US), Check Point (Israel), Darktrace (UK), Kaspersky Lab (Switzerland), Tenable (US), Belden (US), Sophos (UK), CyberArk (US), Claroty (US), Dragos (US), Nozomi Networks (US), Cyberbit (US), Forescout (US), Radiflow (Israel), Verve Industrial Protection (US), Applied Rosk (Netherland), Positive Technology (US) Based on the component, services segment is expected to grow at a highest CAGR during the forecasted period. Integrating and administering solutions across company activities requires ICS security services. Over time, these services support businesses by monitoring and guaranteeing the seamless operation of ICS security systems. The need for these solutions is being driven by the increasing use of cloud computing and virtualization across businesses in different nations. Additionally, solution installations support businesses in controlling the number of partners, suppliers, and vendors by enabling real-time analysis of dynamic network interactions. Request Sample Pages @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=1273 By solution, the encryption segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Encryption is the process of converting plain text to cipher text using an encryption algorithm, which may be symmetric or asymmetric. The data encrypted can be deciphered only with an encryption key. Encryption protects the data at rest, in transit, or in process. Encryption is critical to the communication channels through which ICS send/receive sensitive data to keep critical infrastructure functioning. Encryption safeguards data while it's in transit, opening up lines of communication for secure permission and preventing hacking by nefarious entities. For instance, communications to and from operations centers, power generating systems, distribution substations, and residential "smart grid" networks are all protected by encryption while traveling over the electrical grid. Government agencies and critical infrastructure organizations frequently require encryption. The NIST Framework recommends using strong encryption to increase the cybersecurity of vital infrastructure. By region, Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The Asia Pacific region is highly concerned over the increasing security spending due to the ever-growing threat landscape on industrial systems. Moreover, the Asia Pacific region also has vast manufacturing facilities, which exhibit high demand for security measures. The variety of the region's economies, societies, and technological advancements is reflected in the vital infrastructures of the Asia Pacific area. The area is seeing significant development potential in ICS security due to the implementation of effective government policies and technical improvements. Sector-specific cybersecurity, R&D, and public-private partnerships (PPPs) have been the main drivers of growth in the area. Initiatives taken by governments across countries in the Asia Pacific are expected to promote future ICS security market growth. For example, The Government & Critical Infrastructure APAC 2022 online event was a signature community designed to accelerate public-private collaboration on industrial control system threats and cyberattack defense of critical assets. Top Key Companies in Industrial Control Security Market: Cisco (US), ABB (Switzerland), Lockheed Martin (US), Fortinet (US), Honeywell (US), Palo Alto Networks (US), BAE Systems (UK), RTX (US), Trellix (US), Check Point (Israel), Darktrace (UK), Kaspersky Lab (Switzerland), Tenable (US), Belden (US), Sophos (UK), CyberArk (US), Claroty (US), Dragos (US), Nozomi Networks (US), Cyberbit (US), Forescout (US), Radiflow (Israel), Verve Industrial Protection (US), Applied Rosk (Netherland), Positive Technology (US) are the key players and other players in the ICS security market. Recent Developments In March 2023, Fortinet Inc. expanded its OT security solutions with products like the FortiGate 70F Rugged NGFW, FortiDeceptor Rugged 100G breach detection device, FortiPAM Privileged Access Management, and FortiSIEM enhancements. These offerings bolster OT defense with real-time response and privileged access management while integrating threat analysis tools. In May 2023, Wipro and Palo Alto Networks extended their partnership to offer a robust Zero Trust OT Security Solution for manufacturing, electric utilities, and transportation industries. In December 2022, Dragos partnered with Cisco to enhance industrial network cybersecurity. Their integrated solution combines the Dragos Platform with Cisco ASA firewalls, offering comprehensive visibility, threat prevention, and compliance for IT and OT environments, bolstering defense against evolving threats. In November 2022, Honeywell introduced Advanced Monitoring and Incident Response (AMIR), a comprehensive cybersecurity solution for industrial control systems. Leveraging Honeywell's expertise in security and automation, AMIR enhances threat detection, incident response, and security monitoring. In September 2022, Dragos partnered with Palo Alto Networks to integrate the Dragos Platform. It will help joint customers proactively prevent unknown cybersecurity threats that impact information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) environments. Inquire Before Buying@ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_BuyingNew.asp?id=1273 Industrial Control Security Market Advantages: Protection against malware, ransomware, and other cyberattacks that may interfere with or harm vital industrial processes is offered by industrial control security systems. Measures for industrial control security aid in preventing illegal access to vital control systems. Unauthorised access may result in sensitive information theft, process manipulation, or unauthorised control. Strict regulatory requirements for the security of vital infrastructure apply to several industries. Organisations can adhere to industry-specific rules and standards by putting Industrial Control Security solutions into practise. Through the identification of vulnerabilities, evaluation of threats, and implementation of countermeasures to lessen the probability and effect of security incidents, Industrial Control Security solutions help to mitigate risk. Technologies for the early detection of abnormalities or odd activity are frequently included in security solutions for the industrial control sector. Early detection enables quick action and problem solving before problems get worse. Real-time danger detection is aided by industrial control systems that are continuously monitored. Industrial Control Security solutions help organisations minimise potential damage by enabling rapid and effective responses in the event of a security incident. Industrial Control Security solutions offer safe methods for remote monitoring, maintenance, and troubleshooting without jeopardising system security as remote access to industrial systems becoming more common. Industrial control security procedures safeguard private information and guarantee its secrecy. This is especially crucial for industries where private information breaches could have detrimental effects. Report Objectives To describe and forecast the global ICS security market by component (solutions and services), security type, vertical, and region. To forecast the market size of five main regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America. To analyze the subsegments of the market concerning individual growth trends, prospects, and contributions to the overall market. To provide detailed information on significant factors (drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges) influencing the market's growth. To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders and provide the competitive landscape details of major players. To profile the key players of the ICS security market and comprehensively analyze their market shares and core competencies. Track and analyze competitive developments, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A), new product developments, and partnerships and collaborations in the market. Browse Adjacent Market: Information Security Market Research Reports & Consulting Browse Other Reports: IDaaS Market - Global Forecast to 2028 Zero Trust Security Market - Global Forecast to 2028 Security Service Edge Market - Global Forecast to 2028 Digital Signature Market - Global Forecast to 2027 Container Security Market - Global Forecast to 2026 About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets has been recognized as one of America's best management consulting firms by Forbes, as per their recent report. MarketsandMarkets is a blue ocean alternative in growth consulting and program management, leveraging a man-machine offering to drive supernormal growth for progressive organizations in the B2B space. We have the widest lens on emerging technologies, making us proficient in co-creating supernormal growth for clients. Earlier this year, we made a formal transformation into one of America's best management consulting firms as per a survey conducted by Forbes. The B2B economy is witnessing the emergence of $25 trillion of new revenue streams that are substituting existing revenue streams in this decade alone. We work with clients on growth programs, helping them monetize this $25 trillion opportunity through our service lines - TAM Expansion, Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy to Execution, Market Share Gain, Account Enablement, and Thought Leadership Marketing. Built on the 'GIVE Growth' principle, we work with several Forbes Global 2000 B2B companies - helping them stay relevant in a disruptive ecosystem. Our insights and strategies are molded by our industry experts, cutting-edge AI-powered Market Intelligence Cloud, and years of research. The KnowledgeStore (our Market Intelligence Cloud) integrates our research, facilitates an analysis of interconnections through a set of applications, helping clients look at the entire ecosystem and understand the revenue shifts happening in their industry. 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Contact: Mr. Aashish Mehra MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/industrial-control-systems-security-ics-market.asp Visit Our Website: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ Content Source: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/industrial-control-systems-security-ics.asp Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/industrial-control-security-market-worth-25-1-billion-by-2028---exclusive-report-by-marketsandmarkets-301995725.html Changing consumer preferences, particularly among younger generations, and the rising demand for convenient ready-to-drink options are anticipated to drive the growth of the global flavored alcohol market during the forecast period. The Europe region held the majority of the market share in 2022. PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research has recently published a report, titled, "Flavored Alcohol Market by Type (Vodka, Rum, Whiskey, Wine, Beer, Others), by Flavor (Pineapple, Passion Fruit, Black Currant, Lime, Apple, Cherry, Others), by Distribution channel (Supermarket/Hypermarket, Specialty Retailers, Convenience Stores, E-Commerce, Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2023-2032". According to the report, the global flavored alcohol market generated $1.2 trillion in 2022, and is anticipated to generate $1.8 trillion by 2032, witnessing a CAGR of 4.6% from 2023 to 2032. Request Sample Report:https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/271770 Prime Determinants of Growth The flavored alcohol market is thriving due to shifting consumer preferences, notably among millennials and Generation Z, who seek unique beverage experiences with flavors providing novelty and excitement. This demand for diverse options, including fruity, spicy, herbal, and unconventional blends, fuels market expansion as producers continuously introduce new flavor profiles. However, restrictions on specific additives due to health concerns and the need to comply with stringent labeling standards and age verification processes impact product availability and marketing efforts, which may hamper the flavored alcohol market growth in the coming future. On the contrary, the convenience of RTD cocktails and pre-mixed beverages appeals to modern consumers valuing convenience. This trend presents a substantial opportunity for growth and market expansion. Report Coverage & Details: Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 2023-2032 Base Year 2022 Market Size in 2022 $1.2 trillion Market Size in 2032 $1.8 trillion CAGR 4.6 % No. of Pages in Report 280 Segments covered Type, Flavor, Distribution Channel, and Region Drivers Changing consumer preferences, particularly among millennials and Generation Z Growing demand for RTD beverages Opportunities Expanding market for ready-to-drink (RTD) beverages Increasing interest in diverse flavor profiles, offering an opportunity for producers to introduce novel and unique alcoholic beverage options. Restraints Stringent regulations on specific additives, labeling standards, and age verification COVID-19 Scenario The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the growth of the global flavored alcohol market. The pandemic significantly altered consumer behavior, with lockdowns and social distancing measures leading to a surge in at-home alcohol consumption. Flavored alcohol, especially in the form of Ready-to-Drink (RTD) beverages like canned cocktails and hard seltzers, gained popularity as a convenient, pre-mixed option for home consumption. Moreover, the pandemic accelerated the growth of e-commerce in the alcohol sector, with consumers shifting to online platforms, resulting in increased retail sales. This shift is also driving active players in the food and beverage industry to develop new products, providing customers with diverse options in the alcoholic beverage market. Buy This Report (280 Pages PDF with Insights, Charts, Tables, and Figures) @ https://bit.ly/47qzHcI Type: Whiskey Sub-Segment to Grab Highest Share in the Forecast Period The whiskey sub-segment of the global flavored alcohol market accounted for the largest share of 26.4% in 2022 and is projected to continue its dominance by 2032. This dominance is attributed to several key drivers, including ongoing innovations in whiskey products, featuring diverse flavors and enhanced product quality. Global manufacturers have increased investments in whiskey product research and development, promoting whiskey as a protein source with improved digestibility. Additionally, the affordability of whiskey for the global middle-class population also contributes to the growth of the sub-segment. Flavor: Pineapple Sub-segment to Grow Significantly in the Forecast Period The pineapple sub-segment of the global flavored alcohol market accounted for the largest share of 24.9% in 2022 and is projected to witness substantial growth by 2032. The prominent growth of the sub-segment is mainly due to the pineapple's tropical and fruity profile which holds wide consumer appeal, with its sweet and tangy taste making it a favored choice for flavored alcoholic beverages. Distribution Channel: Specialty Retailers Sub-Segment to Grow with the Highest CAGR in the Forecast Period The specialty retailers sub-segment of the global flavored alcohol market accounted for the largest share of 35.2% in 2022 and is projected to witness substantial growth with a CAGR of 5.4% during the forecast period. The prominent growth of the sub-segment is due to the rising popularity of specialty retailers as they offer a diverse array of alcoholic beverages, providing customers with a convenient one-stop shopping experience. Region: Europe Market Grabs Highest Share in 2022 The flavored alcohol market in the Europe region accounted for the highest share of 33.6% in 2022 and is expected to grow significantly during the forecast period. The dominance of the region in the flavored alcohol market can be attributed to the increasing interest of millennials in craft beers, characterized by a desire for fresh and innovative tastes, coupled with the inviting ambiance of microbreweries and brewpubs. Enquire Before Buying: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/271770 Leading Players in the Flavored alcohol Market: Austria Juice TOSHEV Symrise AG Givaudan ADM Kerry Group Cargill Inc. Dakini Health Foods MANE Castel Group The report provides a detailed analysis of the key players of the global flavored alcohol market. These players have adopted different strategies, such as new product launches, collaborations, expansion, joint ventures, agreements, and others to increase their market share and maintain their dominance in different regions. The report is valuable in highlighting business performance, operating segments, product portfolio, and strategic moves of market players to showcase the competitive scenario. Trending Report in the Food and Beverages Industry: Alcohol Ingredients Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2021-2030 Alcohol E-Commerce Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2021-2030 Alcohol Enzymes Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2020-2031 Alcohol Gummies Market: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast 2020-2030 About Us Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain. We are in professional corporate relations with various companies, and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry. Contact: David Correa 5933 NE Win Sivers Drive #205, Portland, OR 97220 United States USA/Canada (Toll Free): +1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022 UK: +44-845-528-1300 Hong Kong: +852-301-84916 India (Pune): +91-20-66346060 Fax: +1(855)550-5975 help@alliedmarketresearch.com Web: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/reports-store/food-and-beverages Follow Us on Blog: https://www.dailyreportsworld.com/ Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/flavored-alcohol-market-to-reach-1-8-trillion-globally-by-2032-at-4-6-cagr-allied-market-research-301995902.html BANGALORE, India, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- RF Power Semiconductor Market is Segmented by Type ( RF Power Amplifiers , RF Passives, RF Duplexers , RF Switches ), by Application (Consumer, Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Medical, Telecommunication and Data Communication): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2023-2029. It is Published in Valuates Reports Under the Category of Electronic Components . RF Power Semiconductor Market is projected to reach USD 34660 Million in 2029, increasing from USD 18720 Million in 2022, with a CAGR of 8.7% during the period of 2023 to 2029. Get Free Sample: https://reports.valuates.com/request/sample/QYRE-Auto-19D4632/Global_RF_Power_Semiconductor Major Factors Driving the Growth of RF Power Semiconductor Market: The market for RF power semiconductors is expanding rapidly because of the growing need for fast wireless communication, especially since 5G networks are being installed all over the world. The market is growing due to factors such as the rising number of Internet of Things devices, improvements in satellite communication, and the growing use of RF Power Semiconductors in automotive applications. Furthermore, as defense and aerospace technologies continue to advance and as demand for effective power amplification and signal processing grows, there is an increasing need for RF Power Semiconductors worldwide. These developments highlight the critical role that RF Power Semiconductors play in advancing communication infrastructure and connectivity solutions. Buy Now for Single User: https://reports.valuates.com/api/directpaytoken?rcode=QYRE-Auto-19D4632&lic=single-user TRENDS INFLUENCING THE GROWTH OF RF POWER SEMICONDUCTOR MARKET: The RF Power Semiconductor market is expanding due in large part to the growing implementation of 5G networks. Higher frequency bands and more powerful signal processing are needed for the shift to 5G technology, which calls for sophisticated RF Power Semiconductors for increased dependability and efficiency. RF Power Semiconductors are likely to see a sharp rise in demand as 5G networks spread over the world, enabling the higher data rates and more connectivity that come with this next-generation wireless technology. The market for RF power semiconductors is significantly influenced by the Internet of Things (IoT). Smart homes, wearable technology, and industrial Internet of Things applications are just a few examples of the growing number of connected devices that depend on RF Power Semiconductors for wireless communication. Another significant factor propelling the RF Power Semiconductor market's expansion is satellite communication. High-performance RF Power Semiconductors are essential for the effective amplification and transmission of signals in the growth of satellite networks used for communication, broadcasting, and earth observation. Given the growing importance of satellite technology in applications such as remote sensing and worldwide connectivity, there is projected to be a surge in demand for dependable and high-power semiconductors in satellite communication systems. The market for RF Power Semiconductors is expanding as a result of improvements made to wireless infrastructure, such as base stations and communication towers. Higher power density, more efficiency, and better thermal management RF Power Semiconductors are becoming necessary as wireless networks adapt to meet the needs of rising data traffic and connection. The aerospace and defense industries offer the RF Power Semiconductor market substantial development prospects. For electronic warfare, satellite applications, radar systems, and communication gear, these industries need reliable and powerful semiconductors. The significance of RF Power Semiconductors in guaranteeing mission-critical operations is highlighted by the requirement for safe and effective communication in defense and aerospace applications. The market for RF power semiconductors is also being impacted by the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. An essential component of wireless charging systems for electric cars is RF power semiconductors. The need for effective signal processing and power amplification in EV charging infrastructure is driving the expansion of RF Power Semiconductors in the automotive industry. View Full Report: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-19D4632/global-rf-power-semiconductor RF POWER SEMICONDUCTOR MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS APAC is the largest area in the world in terms of market size for RF power semiconductors, and it is predicted to have tremendous growth potential for businesses operating globally. The main driver propelling the APAC region's growth in the worldwide RF power semiconductor market is the region's well-established electronics sector. Moreover, the cheap costs of development and production in APAC nations like China, Malaysia, and Taiwan fuel the expansion of the RF power semiconductor industry in the area. Get Regional Report: https://reports.valuates.com/request/regional/QYRE-Auto-19D4632/Global_RF_Power_Semiconductor By Company Infineon Technologies Ampleon Qorvo Wolfspeed (Cree) Ampleon Netherlands Broadcom EPC Fujitsu Semiconductor Integra Technologies MACOM Microchip Technology RFHIC Sumitomo Electric Device Innovations Toshiba WIN Semiconductor Get Customized Report: https://reports.valuates.com/request/customisation/QYRE-Auto-19D4632/Global_RF_Power_Semiconductor SUBSCRIPTION We have introduced a tailor-made subscription for our customers. Please leave a note in the Comment Section to know about our subscription plans. SIMILAR REPORTS - RF Power Semiconductor Devices for Mobile Wireless Infrastructure Market - Semiconductor Equipment Used RF Power Supply Market - All Solid State RF Power Supply market is projected to reach USD 1235 million in 2029, increasing from USD 500 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 9.4% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - RF Power Market - High Power Semiconductor Bar Chip Market - RF Power Systems Market - Power Semiconductor market was valued at USD 46070 million in 2022 and is anticipated to reach USD 66420 million by 2029, witnessing a CAGR of 5.3% during the forecast period 2023-2029. - Blocker Plate for Semiconductor Equipment market is projected to reach USD 31 million in 2029, increasing from USD 21 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 5.0% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - Semiconductor Gas Panel Market - High Resolution Semiconductor ICP-MS System Market - Semiconductor Grade Isopropyl Alcohol Market - Semiconductor Pellicle market is projected to reach USD 1998.1 million in 2029, increasing from USD 1209 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 7.1% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - Semiconductor IP Licensing market is projected to reach USD 1149.5 million in 2029, increasing from USD 765 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 6.7% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - Hydrofluoric Acid (HF) for Semiconductor Market - Semiconductor SOD (Spin-On Dielectric) Market - High Reliability Semiconductor Devices market is projected to reach USD 3612.3 million in 2029, increasing from USD 2550 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 5.0% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - Cable and Cable Assemblies for Semiconductor Equipment market is projected to reach USD 488.3 million in 2029, increasing from USD 344.1 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 5.1% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - Semiconductor Bellows market is projected to reach USD 114.5 million in 2029, increasing from USD 87 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 4.3% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - Semiconductor Spare Parts market is projected to reach USD 67290 million in 2029, increasing from USD 45650 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 5.6% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - Semiconductor Particle Counter Market - General Analog Semiconductor market is projected to grow from USD 86860 million in 2023 to USD 108460 million by 2029, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 3.8% during the forecast period. - Semiconductor Epoxy Molding Compound market is projected to reach USD 3119.3 million in 2029, increasing from USD 2248 million in 2022, with the CAGR of 4.7% during the period of 2023 to 2029. - Semiconductor Test Handler market is projected to grow from USD 2069 million in 2023 to USD 4172.1 million by 2029, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.4% during the forecast period. - Semiconductor Liquid Filters market size is estimated to be worth USD 444.89 Million in 2022 and is forecast to a readjusted size of USD 876.32 Million by 2029 with a CAGR of 11.8% during the review period. - Semiconductor Wafer Polishing and Grinding Equipment market was valued at USD 274.4 million in 2022 and is anticipated to reach USD 354.7 million by 2029, witnessing a CAGR of 3.3% during the forecast period 2023-2029. - AMC Filters for Semiconductor market is projected to reach USD 559.6 million by 2028 from an estimated USD 399.2 million in 2022, at a CAGR of 5.8% during 2023 and 2028. - Semiconductor OHT (Overhead Hoist Transport) market is expected to reach to USD 719 million in 2023, with a positive growth of %, compared with USD 669 million in 2022. Backed with the increasing demand from downstream industries, Semiconductor OHT (Overhead Hoist Transport) industry is evaluated to reach USD 1246.2 million in 2029. The CAGR will be 9.6% during 2023 to 2029. ABOUT US: Valuates offers in-depth market insights into various industries. Our extensive report repository is constantly updated to meet your changing industry analysis needs. Our team of market analysts can help you select the best report covering your industry. We understand your niche region-specific requirements and that's why we offer customization of reports. With our customization in place, you can request for any particular information from a report that meets your market analysis needs. To achieve a consistent view of the market, data is gathered from various primary and secondary sources, at each step, data triangulation methodologies are applied to reduce deviance and find a consistent view of the market. 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CONTACT US: Valuates Reports sales@valuates.com For U.S. Toll-Free Call 1-(315)-215-3225 WhatsApp: +91-9945648335 Website: https://reports.valuates.com Blog: https://valuatestrends.blogspot.com/ Pinterest: https://in.pinterest.com/valuatespins/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/valuatesreports https://reports.valuates.com/sitemap/html/reports/50 https://reports.valuates.com/sitemap/html/reports/51 https://reports.valuates.com/sitemap/html/reports/52 Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1082232/Valuates_Reports_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/rf-power-semiconductor-market-size-to-grow-usd-34660-million-by-2029-at-a-cagr-of-8-7--valuates-reports-301995907.html Boehringer Ingelheim today announced the acquisition of privately-held T3 Pharmaceuticals AG ("T3 Pharma"), a clinical stage Swiss biotech company, for an amount of up to 450 million CHF. T3 Pharma has developed a proprietary therapy platform that uses live bacteria to deliver immune-modulating proteins to cancer cells and tumor micro-environments. Despite the significant transformation of the cancer treatment landscape by immunotherapies, long-term remissions only occur in 15-20% of cancer patients. Boehringer Ingelheim aims to considerably increase this rate by utilizing complementary immuno-oncology platforms such as T-Cell Engagers (TcEs), oncolytic viruses, and cancer vaccines, which have the potential to turn cold tumors into hot ones, extending the benefits of immunotherapy to more patients in need. T3 Pharma's pioneering technology will bolster Boehringer Ingelheim's array of novel immune-modulatory cancer treatments, reinforcing the company's oncology strategy to transform the lives of people affected by cancer. "The acquisition of T3 Pharma will significantly expand our immuno-oncology pipeline portfolio and is synergistic with many of our existing R&D programs. This will bring us closer to achieving our vision of driving a paradigm shift in cancer care treatments," said Michel Pairet, Member of the Board of Managing Directors at Boehringer Ingelheim with responsibility for the Innovation Unit. "We are extremely proud of the work of T3 Pharma's team and very excited to continue and accelerate the successful development of our bacterial delivery platform as part of Boehringer Ingelheim. Being integrated with our partners at Boehringer will enable us to realize the full potential of our platform to fight solid cancers," said Simon Ittig, CEO of T3 Pharma. T3 Pharma has developed a unique platform using engineered Yersinia enterocolitica bacteria to deliver bioactive proteins directly and selectively into the tumor micro-environment, while sparing healthy tissues. The bacteria can be loaded with multiple immune-modulatory proteins of choice, enabling the design of immuno-oncology combination therapies in one single agent. Boehringer Ingelheim is adopting a comprehensive approach to cancer therapy development including both cancer cell-directed and immuno-oncology approaches. This strategy aims to enable smart combinations that deliver life-changing and best-in-class treatments that may offer the greatest benefit for people affected by cancer. To make this ambition a reality, the company is constantly exploring emerging science cooperating with a growing global network of leading academic and industry partners and by investing in startup companies via its Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, which was among the main investors of T3 Pharma. T3 Pharma is headquartered in Allschwil near Basel, Switzerland, where it was founded with financial backing from both corporate and institutional investors. Operations of T3 Pharma will be kept in the Basel region following the acquisition. Please click on the following link for 'Notes to editors' and 'References' https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/science-innovation/human-health-innovation/boehringer-acquires-t3-pharma View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122693786/en/ Contacts: Media Contacts Harro Ten Wolde Global Head of Media Relations Boehringer Ingelheim Email: harro.ten_wolde@boehringer-ingelheim.com Phone Number: +49 (6132) 77-181352 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Connected Home recently launched smart hotel solutions, aiming to provide cost-efficient solutions to the hospitality sector in Saudi Arabia. The smart hotel solutions have already been implemented in select hotels in Astana, Kazakhstan. Connected Home is currently in active negotiation process with several hotel chains in Saudi Arabia to renovate their hospitality system, which includes smart check-ins, automated personalized guest experience, IT and communication infrastructure, staff mobility and other connected all in one tool services. Connected Home was selected as one of the "2022 Emerging Startups" from the New East region by Emerge Tech conference in USA and participated in Hero Acceleration program at Draper University in USA. The company's focus is on the Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain. Mukhtar Kuanyshbaiuly, CEO of Connected Home has also recently signed a contract with Barakat company on distribution their smart hotel solutions in Dubai. Connected Home innovative approach is made possible through technologies that work on the controller (PLC), which the team developed independently: they wrote the software, used details from America and China, tested for several years and improved the quality of the software and hardware. The main goal of Connected Home is safety, resource saving and smart comfort. They plan to introduce more than 10 thousand smart hotel solutions by the end of the year. Under the leadership of CEO Mukhtar Kuanyshbaiuly, Connected Home has grown from its inception to a seven-figure revenue entity, emphasizing security, comfort, sustainability, and health through its IoT-based offerings to top construction and development companies in Central Asia and now in Middle East with ambitious plans to enter USA market in the near future. Photo: Founder of Connected Home Mukhtar Kuanyshbaiuly To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7633/188407_4defbcbf54e65b0a_001full.jpg Contact Connected Home Mukhtar Kuanyshbaiuly +7 747 508 8800 https://connectedhome.kz pr@stankeviciusmgm.com To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188407 AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A+ (Superior) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings (Long-Term ICR) of "aa-" (Superior) of the main rated insurance subsidiaries of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd. At the same time, AM Best has affirmed the Long-Term ICR of "a" (Excellent) of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd (Zurich) (Switzerland) (a non-operating holding company). The outlook of the FSR is stable, whilst the outlook of the Long-Term ICRs is positive. The Credit Ratings (ratings) reflect Zurich's consolidated balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its strong operating performance, very favourable business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM). The positive outlook of the Long-Term ICR reflects the continued resilience of the group's balance sheet strength, underpinned by strong operating returns from Zurich's various profit centres. Over the past several years, the group's pricing actions, risk selection and natural catastrophe exposure management, have led to an improvement in the performance and reduced volatility of its property/casualty portfolio. In addition, the group's life operations provide it with a solid earnings stream, supporting internal capital generation. The group's balance sheet sensitivity to market risk reduced following the sale of its Italian life and pensions back-books in December 2022, and is expected to reduce further once other announced transactions are completed, in particular the disposal of its German life insurance back-book. Zurich's balance sheet strength is underpinned by its risk-adjusted capitalization, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), which was at the strongest level at year-end 2022. The group's balance sheet strength benefits from excellent liquidity and good financial flexibility, with demonstrated access to financial markets. The strength of the group's balance sheet, including its robust liquidity and asset-liability management, is expected to continue to provide resilience to external economic pressures. The group reported a solid Swiss Solvency Test (SST) capital adequacy ratio of 266% estimated at 30 September 2023. Despite recently announced anticipated share buy-back and mergers and acquisitions transactions in the Unites States and India, the group's SST ratio is expected to remain very strong and well-above its minimum target level. Zurich's strong operating performance is supported by a highly diversified earnings profile by geography across its life, non-life and investment operations. Furthermore, operating results are enhanced by the consistent fee-based income derived from Zurich's non-claims management services for Farmers Exchanges (a leading mutual insurance group operating in the United States), which accounted for over a quarter of Zurich group's net income in 2022. The group had solid combined ratios of 93.5% and 93.4% in 2021 and 2022, respectively (as calculated by AM Best, under IFRS 4). The company-reported combined ratio for the first half of 2023 was 92.9% (under IFRS 17). The group's life insurance operations also are profitable and have benefited from the portfolio shift toward capital-efficient insurance products. The majority of life profits are represented by policy charges and fees, which are stable relatively. Zurich is one of the world's largest insurance groups, with excellent diversification by geography and product. The group maintains strong competitive positions in Europe and the United States, a strong presence in Latin America and selective positions in Asia Pacific. Zurich's ERM has strengthened in recent years, with an increased emphasis on accountability and oversight across the organisation. In AM Best's view, the group has appropriate mechanisms in place to manage its complex and large-scale operations. The FSR of A+ (Superior) and the Long-Term ICRs of "aa-" (Superior) have been affirmed with a stable outlook of the FSR and a positive outlook of the Long-Term ICR, for the following subsidiaries of Zurich: The Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland Empire Fire and Marine Insurance Company Empire Indemnity Insurance Company Universal Underwriters Insurance Company American Guarantee and Liability Insurance Company American Zurich Insurance Company Universal Underwriters of Texas Insurance Company Steadfast Insurance Company Zurich American Insurance Company Zurich American Insurance Company of Illinois Colonial American Casualty Surety Company Rural Community Insurance Company Zurich Insurance Company Limited Zurich American Life Insurance Company This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Performance Assessments, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2023 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122291561/en/ Contacts: Valeria Ermakova Associate Director, Analytics +44 20 7397 6269 valeria.ermakova@ambest.com Christopher Sharkey Associate Director, Public Relations +1 908 882 2310 christopher.sharkey@ambest.com Mahesh Mistry Senior Director, Analytics +44 20 7397 0325 mahesh.mistry@ambest.com Al Slavin Senior Public Relations Specialist +1 908 882 2318 al.slavin@ambest.com The "Netherlands Existing Upcoming Data Center Portfolio" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This database report offers comprehensive coverage of the Netherlands data center market portfolio, delivering valuable insights into the colocation data centers within the region. According to statistics from the Dutch Data Center Association (DDA), an impressive 20% of all Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in the Netherlands can be attributed to the data center and cloud computing sectors. Moreover, the imminent rollout of 5G connectivity is expected to further accelerate investments in the Netherlands' data center infrastructure. As of December 2022, the Netherlands boasted a population of over 17 million residents, with an internet penetration rate exceeding 96%. Remarkably, more than 90% of the population actively engages with social media platforms. Geographically, the city of Amsterdam plays a pivotal role in the Netherlands data center market, contributing to over 70% of the existing white floor area. When it comes to key operators within the Netherlands Data Center Market, prominent names such as Equinix, Digital Realty (Interxion), and EdgeConnex collectively account for over 40% of the rack capacity, underscoring their significant presence and influence in the region. The data points covered in the database across each facility are mentioned below: Detailed Analysis of 115 existing data centers Detailed Analysis of 4 upcoming data centers Locations covered: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Eemshaven, Groningen, Eindhoven, Oude Meer, Hengelo, Almere, Aalsmeer, Naaldwijk, Nieuwegein, Apeldoorn, Woerden, Steenbergen, Utrecht, Hilversum, Dronten, Ede, Enschede, Meppel, Zwolle, s-Hertogenbosch, Roermond, Arnhem, Goes, Wormer, IJsselstein, Markelo, Waalwijk, Deventer, Hague, Leeuwarden, Alphen aan den Rijn, Hoogersmilde, Zuidbroek, Lelystad, Loon op Zand, Roosendaal, Mierlo, Ugchelen, Megen, Tjerkgaast, Maastricht, Haarlem, Ittervoort, Gemert, Middenmeer, Limburg. Existing white-floor space (square feet) Upcoming white-floor space (square feet) Current IT load capacity (2022) Future capacity additions (2023-2025) Retail Colocation Pricing Quarter Rack (1/4) Half Rack Cabinets (1/2) Full Rack Cabinet (42U/45U/47U/etc.) Wholesale colocation (per kW) pricing EXISTING DATA CENTERS (115 Facilities) Market Snapshot Location (Region/Country/City) Facility Address Operator/Owner Name Data Center Name i.e., (Wormer or ZW1) Core Shell Area (White-Floor Area) Core Shell Power Capacity (IT Load Capacity) Rack Capacity Year of Operations Design Standards (Tier I IV) Power/Cooling Redundancy UPCOMING DATA CENTERS (4 Facilities) Investment Snapshot Location (Region/Country/City) Investor Name Area (White-Floor Area) Power Capacity (IT Load Capacity) Investment ($ Million) Electrical Infrastructure Investment ($ Million) Mechanical Infrastructure Investment ($ Million) General Construction Services Investment ($ Million) Announcement Year Project Status (Opened/Under Construction/Announced Planned) Active or Expected Year of Opening INVESTORS/OPERATORS COVERED Equinix Digital Realty EdgeConneX Colt Data Centre Services CyrusOne QTS Realty Trust NorthC Global Switch NTT Global Data Centers Serverfarm Keppel Data Centres Switch DataCenters Previder Iron Mountain Interconnect Dataplace Smartdc Datacenter.com Cellnex Serverius Bytesnet Atom86 maincubes ITB2 Greenhouse Datacenters BIT Orange Business Services Lumen Technologies GTT (interoute) NIKHEF Hosting IPTP Networks Red Bee ColoHouse DataOne Cogent Communications Datacenter Groningen Gyro Centre DataCenter Fryslan Data Center Almere Global Switch Microsoft Google For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/cmulmn 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. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122408669/en/ Contacts: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com 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 ESSILORLUXOTTICA AND MONCLER ANNOUNCE AN EXCLUSIVE LICENSING AGREEMENT Charenton-le-Pont, France and Milan, Italy (November 22, 2023 - 6:00 pm CET) - EssilorLuxottica and Moncler have announced today the signing of an exclusive licensing agreement that includes the design, production, and global distribution of Moncler eyewear. The agreement will be in effect from January 2024 until December 2028, with an automatic renewal option for an additional five years. The first Moncler Lunettes collection produced with EssilorLuxottica will be Fall-Winter 2024, available from September 2024. Leveraging EssilorLuxottica's consolidated experience and constant innovation, the partnership will further elevate the Moncler Lunettes collections, known for their perfect blend of functionality and contemporary aesthetics, with a mix of frames suitable for both city and mountain living. Moncler Lunettes new eyewear will be available at Moncler boutiques and moncler.com, EssilorLuxottica stores, and through selected opticians worldwide. Remo Ruffini, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Moncler S.p.A., commented: "With the introduction of the new Moncler Lunettes collections, Moncler's style will seamlessly merge with EssilorLuxottica's know-how in eyewear, delivering a product at the forefront of design, innovation, and quality." Francesco Milleri, Chairman and CEO at EssilorLuxottica, stated: "We have long admired Moncler as a brand that shares our equal passion for innovation and style, not to mention our 'born in the mountains' heritage. Our teams are thrilled to embark on this journey to design and develop a unique eyewear collection that truly reflects the special Moncler brand." NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / International Paper Company Originally published in International Paper's 2022 Sustainability Report Community investment We mobilize our people, products and resources to address critical needs in the communities where our employees live and work. Our Vision 2030 target challenges us to improve the lives of 100 million people by decade's end through initiatives that address unmet basic needs. To deliver on that promise, we engage our employees and partners across four signature areas: education, hunger, health & wellness and disaster relief. Through a combination of locally driven support, grant funding and national and global collaborations, we work together to address basic needs, provide access and fill gaps that enable people to build stronger, more resilient communities. To track, measure and analyze our impact, we team with our nonprofit partners to employ standardized metrics and reporting that quantify the number of lives improved through our volunteers and contributions. $20M In 2022, International Paper contributed nearly $20 million worldwide to support charitable organizations aligned with our signature causes, positively impacting more than 10 million people. In 2022, International Paper contributed nearly $20 million worldwide to support charitable organizations aligned with our signature causes, positively impacting more than 10 million people. 12,000 In 2022, International Paper employees generously supported our communities through more than 12,000 volunteer hours across 23 U.S. states and nine countries. We're proud of our volunteers' contributions, including those of hourly employees. Our signature causes: How we're making a difference Education: We focus on literacy from birth through third grade because reading skills form the foundation of all childhood learning. We focus on literacy from birth through third grade because reading skills form the foundation of all childhood learning. Hunger: We partner with food banks and other agencies to address hunger and food security for children, families and seniors. We partner with food banks and other agencies to address hunger and food security for children, families and seniors. Health and Wellness: We engage our employees and work with agencies to promote healthy living habits and achieve measurable improvements in health and wellness. We engage our employees and work with agencies to promote healthy living habits and achieve measurable improvements in health and wellness. Disaster Relief: We partner with agencies to help communities prepare for and recover from natural disasters, and we use our Employee Relief Fund to support our affected colleagues. Spotlight: Fighting global hunger Through our long-standing partnership with Feeding America, in 2022 we contributed $630,000 to food banks and pantries in 200 U.S. communities. We donated 250,000 boxes to support Feeding America's event held in conjunction with the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. We also continued to support The Global FoodBanking Network through a 4-year, $1 million commitment that supports 175 food banks around the world. Helping the helpers In Indiana , employees with our Indianapolis Urban Cluster volunteered with Gleaners Food Bank to assemble and fill 600 Family Meal Boxes which is equivalent to 12,500 meals. , employees with our Indianapolis Urban Cluster volunteered with Gleaners Food Bank to assemble and fill 600 Family Meal Boxes which is equivalent to 12,500 meals. In Virginia, our Wreaths Across America mission remembers fallen U.S. veterans by providing in-kind donations of customized shipping boxes, as well as funding and transportation for more than 2 million wreaths to Arlington National Cemetery. our Wreaths Across America mission remembers fallen U.S. veterans by providing in-kind donations of customized shipping boxes, as well as funding and transportation for more than 2 million wreaths to Arlington National Cemetery. In Chile , we provided Fundacion Ave Fenix, a local organization in Graneros focused on access for people with disabilities, with a sensory playground, and partner with The Global FoodBanking Network to distribute 1,500 metric tons of produce to over 1,700 community organizations serving nearly 350,000 people. , we provided Fundacion Ave Fenix, a local organization in Graneros focused on access for people with disabilities, with a sensory playground, and partner with The Global FoodBanking Network to distribute 1,500 metric tons of produce to over 1,700 community organizations serving nearly 350,000 people. In Canada, our Grand Prairie, Alberta mill helped Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science and Technology (WISEST) place 47 11th grade young women and genderdiverse individuals in Science, Engineering and Technology labs at the University of Alberta and the Northern Alberta Institute for Technology (NAIT). $3M In 2022, our employee giving and company matching gift programs generated nearly $3 million to help people in need throughout our communities. A closer look: The Period Poverty Program Lack of access to adequate menstrual health management supplies and education affects 500 million women and girls globally. Our award-winning Fighting Period Poverty in Our Communities program provides period care kits containing supplies for women and girls who have no access to these products. In 2022, in conjunction with International Women's Day and Menstrual Hygiene Day, we joined forces with Procter & Gamble's Always brand to expand awareness and impact. We hosted 45 packing events to distribute 25,000 feminine care kits internationally, resulting in more than 600,000 units of product provided to women and girls who need them most. International Paper was awarded an inaugural Diversity, Equity and Inclusion award from the American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA) for this initiative. About International Paper International Paper (NYSE: IP) is a global producer of planet-friendly packaging, pulp and other fiber-based products, and one of North America's largest recyclers. Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., we employ approximately 39,000 colleagues globally who are committed to creating what's next. We serve customers worldwide, with manufacturing operations in North America, Latin America, North Africa and Europe. Net sales for 2022 were $21.2 billion. Additional information can be found by visiting InternationalPaper.com. Read more View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from International Paper Company on 3blmedia.com. Contact Info: Spokesperson: International Paper Company Website: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/international-paper-company Email: info@3blmedia.com SOURCE: International Paper Company View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/809007/how-international-paper-is-making-a-difference Finsbury Growth & Income Trust Plc - Transaction in Own Shares PR Newswire LONDON, United Kingdom, November 22 For immediate release 22 November 2023 FINSBURY GROWTH & INCOME TRUST PLC (the "Company") MARKET PURCHASE OF COMPANY'S OWN SHARES The Company announces that it has today purchased 148,620 of its own shares ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 823.10 pence per Ordinary Share. Such shares will be held in treasury by the Company. The transaction was made pursuant to the authority granted at the Annual General Meeting of the Company held on 17 January 2023. Following this transaction, the total number of Ordinary Shares held by the Company in treasury is 24,336,154; the total number of Ordinary Shares that the Company has in issue, less the total number of Ordinary Shares held by the Company in treasury following such purchase, and therefore, the total number of voting rights in the Company is 200,655,149. The figure of 200,655,149 may be used by shareholders as the denominator for calculations of interests in the Company's voting rights in accordance with the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules. For and on behalf of Frostrow Capital LLP Company Secretary For further information, please contact: Victoria Hale Frostrow Capital LLP Tel: 020 3 170 8732 NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION (IN WHOLE OR IN PART) IN, INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE SUCH RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION. FRANKFURT, GERMANY / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Atlantic BidCo GmbH ("Atlantic BidCo" or the "Bidder") has secured more than 95% of the shares in Aareal Bank AG ("Aareal Bank") and plans to initiate a squeeze-out of the remaining minority shareholders to acquire all remaining shares of Aareal Bank. The management board of Aareal Bank has been informed of this intention by Atlantic BidCo. Atlantic BidCo as of November 22, 2023 holds approx. 90.71% of the shares in Aareal Bank. According to the current status (today 2pm), the public delisting tender offer (the "Delisting Offer") by Atlantic BidCo to the shareholders of Aareal Bank has been accepted for approx. 4.31% of the shares in Aareal Bank. The acceptance period for the Delisting Offer expired at midnight (CET) on November 21, 2023. The final results will be published on November 24, 2023. The completion of the Delisting Offer is expected to take place on December 8, 2023. After the completion of the Delisting Offer and thus having reached the stake of 95% of the share capital of Aareal Bank, Atlantic BidCo will request pursuant to section 327a para. 1 sentence 1 of the German Stock Corporation Act that Aareal Bank's shareholder meeting resolves to transfer the shares of the minority shareholders of Aareal Bank to Atlantic BidCo as the majority shareholder against payment of an appropriate cash compensation. The amount of the cash compensation will be determined at a later date. Atlantic BidCo is a non-controlled company indirectly held by funds which are respectively advised, managed or controlled by Advent International, L.P. ("Advent"), and Centerbridge Partners, L.P. ("Centerbridge"), and CPP Investment Board Europe S.a r.l., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board ("CPP Investments"), as well as other minority shareholders. The revocation of admission of the Aareal Bank shares to trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange became effective upon the expiry of the acceptance period of the Delisting Offer. Thus, the last trading day of the Aareal Bank shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange was November 21, 2023. Media Contacts of the Bidder Olaf Zapke, FGS Global, Tel +49 170 764 1971, olaf.zapke@fgsglobal.com Julia Caspers, FGS Global, Tel +49 151 16 23 15 45, julia.caspers@fgsglobal.com Roland Klein, Kekst CNC, Tel +44 7776 162 997, roland.klein@kekstcnc.com Isabel Henninger, Kekst CNC, Tel +49 174 940 9955, isabel.henninger@kekstcnc.com Information about Shareholders of the Bidder About Advent International Founded in 1984, Advent International is one of the largest and most experienced global private equity investors. The firm has invested in over 415 private equity investments across 42 countries, and as of June 30, 2023, had EUR 85 billion in assets under management. With 15 offices in 12 countries, Advent has established a globally integrated team of over 295 private equity investment professionals across Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on investments in five core sectors, including business and financial services; technology; health care; industrial; and retail, consumer and leisure. For over 35 years, Advent has been dedicated to international investing and remains committed to partnering with management teams to deliver sustained revenue and earnings growth for its portfolio companies. Advent has a well-established track record in the European financial services sector with growth investments in leading payment companies like Nexi, Nets and Concardis Payment Group (both now part of Nexi), Worldpay, Planet and Addiko, an international banking group focusing on Southeastern Europe. The investment in Aareal Bank follows Advent's acquisition of a 30% stake in Aareon in 2020, the leading pan-European provider of innovative software solutions for the real estate sector, and a subsidiary of Aareal Bank. Advent's approach is to provide significant support to management teams by assisting with operating resources and expertise from its Portfolio Support Group and third-party Operating Partner program. For more information, visit: Website: http://www.adventinternational.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/advent-international About Centerbridge Centerbridge Partners, L.P. is a private investment management firm employing a flexible approach across investment disciplines - private equity, private credit and real estate - in an effort to develop the most attractive opportunities for investors. The Firm was founded in 2005 and as of June 30, 2023 has approximately USD 36 billion in capital under management with offices in New York and London. Centerbridge is dedicated to partnering with world-class management teams across targeted industry sectors and geographies. Centerbridge has a strong track record investing in financial services and real estate in Europe, with investments including BFF Banking Group, which is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange; Williams & Glyn in partnership with RBS; auxmoney GmbH, the German digital credit platform; and Phoenix Holdings, listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, amongst others. Globally, Centerbridge has invested over USD 20 billion in financial services and over USD 9 billion in real estate. For more information, please visit www.centerbridge.com About CPP Investments Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Fund in the best interest of the more than 21 million contributors and beneficiaries of the Canada Pension Plan. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, investments are made around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure and fixed income. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm's length from governments. At September 30, 2023, the Fund totalled C$576 billion. For more information, please visit www.cppinvestments.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. ______ Important Notice This publication is for information purposes only and neither constitutes an invitation to sell, nor an offer to purchase, securities of Aareal Bank. The offer document published by Atlantic BidCo after approval by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt fur Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht) is the sole binding document with regard to the terms and other provisions relating to the Delisting Offer. Investors and holders of securities of Aareal Bank are strongly recommended to read the offer document and all announcements in connection with the Delisting Offer as soon as they are published, since they contain or will contain important information. The Delisting Offer will be made exclusively under the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, especially under the WpUG and the German Stock Exchange Act (Borsengesetz - BorsG), and certain provisions of the securities laws of the United States of America applicable to cross-border tender offers. The Delisting Offer will not be executed according to the provisions of jurisdictions other than those of the Federal Republic of Germany or the United States of America (to the extent applicable). Thus, no other announcements, registrations, admissions or approvals of the Delisting Offer outside of the Federal Republic of Germany have been filed, arranged for or granted. Investors in, and holders of, securities in Aareal Bank cannot rely on having recourse to provisions for the protection of investors in any jurisdiction other than the provisions of the Federal Republic of Germany or the United States of America (to the extent applicable). Subject to the exceptions described in the offer document as well as any exemptions that may be granted by the relevant regulators, a public tender offer will not be made, neither directly nor indirectly, in jurisdictions where to do so would constitute a violation of the laws of such jurisdiction. The Bidder reserves the right, to the extent legally permitted, to directly or indirectly acquire further shares outside the Delisting Offer on or off the stock exchange. If such further acquisitions take place, information about such acquisitions, stating the number of shares acquired or to be acquired and the consideration paid or agreed on, will be published without undue delay, if and to the extent required by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany or any other relevant jurisdiction. To the extent any announcements in this document contain forward-looking statements, such statements do not represent facts and are characterized by the words "expect", "believe", "estimate", "intend", "aim", "assume" or similar expressions. Such statements express the intentions, opinions or current expectations and assumptions of the Bidder and the persons acting jointly with the Bidder. Such forward-looking statements are based on current plans, estimates and forecasts, which the Bidder and the persons acting jointly with the Bidder have made to the best of their knowledge, but which they do not claim to be correct in the future. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict and usually cannot be influenced by the Bidder or the persons acting jointly with the Bidder. These expectations and forward-looking statements can turn out to be incorrect, and the actual events or consequences may differ materially from those contained in or expressed by such forward-looking statements. The Bidder and the persons acting jointly with the Bidder do not assume an obligation to update the forward-looking statements with respect to the actual development or incidents, basic conditions, assumptions or other factors. SOURCE: Atlantic BidCo GmbH View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/809021/atlantic-bidco-has-secured-more-than-95-of-shares-in-aareal-bank-ag--intention-to-initiate-aqueeze-out-of-minority-shareholders Redde Northgate Plc - Transaction in Own Shares PR Newswire LONDON, United Kingdom, November 22 NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OR REGULATIONS OF SUCH JURISDICTION 22 November 2023 REDDE NORTHGATE PLC ("Redde Northgate" or the "Group" or the "Company") Transaction in Own Shares Redde Northgate plc (LSE:REDD) announces that on 22 November 2023 it purchased the following number of its own shares to be held in treasury: Class of shares : Ordinary shares of 50p ("shares") Number of shares purchased : 50,000 Weighted average purchase price paid : 361.125 pence per share Highest purchase price paid : 362.25 pence per share Lowest purchase price paid : 360 pence per share Following the above transaction, the Company's issued share capital consists of 246,091,423 ordinary shares of 50p each, of which 16,765,071 shares are held in treasury, and 1,000,000 preference shares of 50p each which do not carry any rights to vote. Therefore the total number of voting rights in the Company is 229,326,352 which may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in the Company under the FCA's Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules. In accordance with Article 5(1)(b) of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 (the Market Abuse Regulation) as incorporated into UK domestic law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, the schedule below contains detailed information about the purchases made by Numis Securities Limited on behalf of the Company as part of the Company's buyback programme. Schedule of Purchase - Individual Transaction (as at 22 November 2023) Number of shares purchased Transaction price (GB pence per share) Time of transaction Transaction reference number Venue 25,000 25,000 360.00 362.25 09:31:13 15:52:11 00067851107TRLO0 00067868702TRLO0 LSE LSE Notes This announcement is made in accordance with the requirements of Listing Rule 12.4.6. For further information contact: Buchanan David Rydell/Jamie Hooper/Hannah Ratcliff +44 (0) 207 466 5000 Notes to Editors: Redde Northgate is the leading integrated mobility solutions platform providing services across the vehicle lifecycle. The Company offers integrated mobility solutions to businesses, fleet operators, insurers, OEMs and other customers across seven key areas: vehicle rental, vehicle data, accident management, vehicle repairs, fleet management, service and maintenance, vehicle ancillary services and vehicle sales. The Company's core purpose is to keep its customers mobile, whether through meeting their regular mobility needs or by servicing and supporting them when unforeseen events occur. With its considerable scale and reach, Redde Northgate's mission is to offer a market-leading customer proposition and drive enhanced returns for shareholders by creating value through sustainable compounding growth. The Group aims to achieve this through the delivery of its strategic framework of Focus, Drive and Broaden. Redde Northgate services its customers through a network and diversified fleet of over 120,000 owned and leased vehicles, supporting over 600,000 managed vehicles, with more than 170 workshop, body shop and rental locations across the UK, Ireland and Spain and a specialist team of over 6,000 automotive services professionals. Further information please visit the Company's website: Edmonton, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Grizzly Discoveries Inc. (TSXV: GZD) (FSE: G6H) (OTCQB: GZDIF) ("Grizzly" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the first assay results for rock samples collected from the newly staked mineral claims in the Marshall Lake to Eholt area of Greenwood. These are some of the first geochemical results from several batches of samples, that the Company expects to receive additional results for over the coming months, for work conducted at the Marshall Lake area, Midway, Sappho-Lexington, Imperial and Beaverdell target areas within the Greenwood Precious and Battery Metals Project. In addition, results will also be forthcoming from prospecting and sampling that have been conducted at the Robocop Property following up on copper-cobalt anomalous soils identified in work over the last two years. Highlights: A total of 92 rock grab samples were collected from outcrop and mineralized dump material across the new claims staked in August (highlighted in blue in Figures 1 and 2) yielding 21 samples with >0.5 grams per tonne (g/t) gold (Au) up to 154.5 g/t Au, along with high silver (Ag) up to 205 g/t Ag and high copper (Cu) up to 8.44 percent (%) Cu (Figures 1 and 2). Rock grab samples from showings and mineralized dumps in the Marshall Lake area returned 11 samples with >0.5 g/t Au up to 154.5 g/t Au including 4 samples with >8.95 g/t Au up to 154.5 g/t Au. The high Au values are often accompanied by high Cu in the 0.1 to 0.6% range. The anomalous values are associated with high sulphide material in what appears to be gossanous skarnified sedimentary rocks (Figure 3). Rock grab samples from the exploration areas of the Great Laxey showing and west of the Emma showings returned significant Cu values with up to 1.235% Cu and 8.44% Cu respectively. The area west of the Emma showings and old workings has also provided grab samples with high Au and Ag values including 4 samples with 2.13 g/t Au up to 17.55 g/t Au, 107 g/t Ag up to 205 g/t Ag and 0.98% Cu up to 8.44% Cu (Figures 1 and 2). Sulphide mineralization at Great Laxey and west of the Emma historical workings is associated with skarnified sedimentary rocks and intrusions. The west Emma area may also show alteration patterns consistent with intermediate to high sulphidation epithermal mineralization. Brian Testo, President and CEO of Grizzly Discoveries stated "We are excited with the new results to date from the new mineral claims and we are planning follow-up exploration including extensive soil and rock sampling programs along with ground geophysical surveys. Much of newly staked ground has seen little exploration and evaluation since the 1990's. We also are looking forward to pursuing a number of high grade gold - silver - copper showings and historical mines with drilling in the New Year along with additional exploration for significant battery metal prospects in our current 165,000+ acre land holdings in the Greenwood District. We have barely scratched the surface in terms of exploration!" Figure 1: Initial Gold Results Rock Sampling 2023 - New Mineral Claims. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4488/188469_adeba71f44d88bb7_002full.jpg Figure 2: Initial Copper Results Rock Sampling 2023 - New Mineral Claims. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4488/188469_adeba71f44d88bb7_003full.jpg Figure 3. Sulphide mineralization in disturbed outcrop and dump material Marshall Lake. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4488/188469_adeba71f44d88bb7_004full.jpg As the Company awaits drilling permits from the BC Government, significant ground based prospecting and sampling programs have been executed at the newly staked Marshall Lake claims as well as at a number of other exploration target areas including Midway, Imperial, Sappho-West Lexington and Beaverdell areas (Figure 4). A total of more than 800 rock samples and 3,800 soil samples have been collected during the 2023 field season. Results will be announced as they are received and interpreted over the coming weeks. Update on Drilling: Drilling will initially be focused at the historical Midway Mine (Figure 4) but the intent is that eventually the Company will complete new drilling in 2024 at Midway, Imperial, Copper Mountain (Mable Jenny, Coronation and Prince of Wales targets), and potentially the Sappho areas, depending upon the timing of the receipt of drill permits, additional funding and weather permitting. We eagerly await drilling permits from the BC Ministry of Energy Mines and Petroleum Resources. The permit applications were submitted initially in January-February of this year and the Company is now awaiting final comments and any required conditions or changes resulting from the recently completed 30 day notification periods. Archaeological and biological surveys are being conducted where required. Summary of 2023 Exploration at Greenwood: An extensive rock and soil sampling program along with new geological mapping during 2023 has been conducted in preparation for drilling. The work has yielded two new showings identified near the historical Midway Mine including up 5.64 g/t Au from a showing 400 m to the north of the Midway Mine and a second showing along an apparent fault structure with 4.19 g/t Au from a grab sample collected about 375 m to the west of the Midway Mine. At least 6 new areas with anomalous gold (> 100 ppb Au), silver or copper in soils have been identified across the Midway Mine Property with the results from follow up exploration in progress (See Company News Release Dated October 12, 2023). A summary of all the Midway results will be provided once all the results are received. Figure 4: Grizzly active exploration target areas 2023. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4488/188469_adeba71f44d88bb7_005full.jpg To date, gold-silver-base metal mineralization appears to be related to veins and stockworks at contacts between altered ultramafic-carbonate rocks (listwanites) in contact with diorite intrusions in a complex structural setting, with the intersections of structures playing a key role in the localization of alteration. At the historical Imperial Mine area, a total of 50 new rock grab and rock chip samples were collected from the Imperial showing area, with 6 samples returning greater than 1 (g/t) gold (Au) up to 12.1 g/t Au and 8 samples retuning greater than 40 g/t silver (Ag) up to 469 g/t Ag (Figure 4). The samples define a targeted north - south strike length of over 170 m for future drilling. The samples show significant amounts of lead (Pb), zinc (Zn) and Cu with several samples yielding greater than 2% combined base metals (See Company News Release Dated October 12, 2023). Geological mapping is in progress and ground geophysical surveys are planned prior to conducting drilling at this target. The Copper Mountain area continues to yield excellent results from a number of showings including the Coronation and Prince of Wales historical mines along with the Mabel Jenny area (Figure 4). A total of 9 of 14 rock grab and chip samples collected this year from a new zone discovered late in 2022 has yielded greater than 1 g/t Au up to 13.75 g/t Au (along with up to 61.9 g/t Ag) and up to 0.475% Cu and 2.93% Zn (See Company News Release Dated October 12, 2023). The discovery was made along a new logging road cut late in 2022 and appears to demonstrate quartz vein stockwork mineralization in an altered diorite over a strike length of more than 400 m when combined with anomalous samples from 2022. Geological and prospecting crews have concluded prospecting, geological mapping, rock and soil sampling within the Greenwood Project area and have conducted an initial pass at the new mineral claim area staked August 1, 2023 (See Company News Release dated September 7, 2023). A number of existing showings and parts or extensions to known showings have been acquired with the staking of the new mineral claims including but not limited to Marshall Lake, Sylvester K, the Great Laxey, Eholt and lands adjacent to and surrounding the historical Phoenix Mine. Results from the initial sampling programs on these new claims will be released as they are received. The geological and prospecting crew has made several discoveries of sulphide, quartz vein zones and skarn on the new claims (Figures 1 and 2). Sulphide showings associated with skarn at Marshall Lake hosted in Triassic Brooklyn Formation sedimentary rocks including limestone that has been intruded by diorite. The showings have been trenched and bulk sampled in the past (1960's to 1970's) yielding significant copper, silver and gold. Little to no modern exploration has been performed at the Marshall Lake target as well as a number of other showings in the Brooklyn sequence such as the Great Laxey. The goal is to have a pipeline of high priority precious metal and battery metal targets that are all permitted and ready for a long 2024 drilling campaign in order to prioritize these assets into those that can deliver future mineral resources with additional drilling, eventually leading to some form of economic studies and scenarios that might be able to take advantage of local toll treating opportunities that exist in the Greenwood - Republic region. Quality Assurance and Control Rock and soil samples were analyzed at ALS Global Laboratories (Geochemistry Division) in Vancouver, Canada (an ISO/IEC 17025:2017 accredited facility). Gold was assayed using a fire assay with atomic emission spectrometry and gravimetric finish when required (+10 g/t Au). Rock grab and rock chip samples from outcrop/bedrock are selective by nature and may not be representative of the mineralization hosted on the project. The sampling program was undertaken by Company personnel under the direction of Michael B. Dufresne, M.Sc., P.Geol., P.Geo. A secure chain of custody is maintained in transporting and storing of all samples. The technical content of this news release and the Company's technical disclosure has been reviewed and approved by Michael B. Dufresne, M. Sc., P. Geol., P.Geo., who is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. ABOUT GRIZZLY DISCOVERIES INC. Grizzly is a diversified Canadian mineral exploration company with its primary listing on the TSX Venture Exchange focused on developing its approximately 72,700 ha (approximately 180,000 acres) of precious and base metals properties in southeastern British Columbia. Grizzly is run by highly experienced junior resource sector management team, who have a track record of advancing exploration projects from early exploration stage through to feasibility stage. On behalf of the Board, GRIZZLY DISCOVERIES INC. Brian Testo, CEO, President Suite 363-9768 170 Street NW Edmonton, Alberta T5T 5L4 For further information, please visit our website at www.grizzlydiscoveries.com or contact: Nancy Massicotte Corporate Development Tel: 604-507-3377 Email: nancy@grizzlydiscoveries.com Neither the 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. Caution concerning forward-looking information This press release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This information and statements address future activities, events, plans, developments and projections. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information. Such forward-looking information and statements are frequently identified by words such as "may," "will," "should," "anticipate," "plan," "expect," "believe," "estimate," "intend" and similar terminology, and reflect assumptions, estimates, opinions and analysis made by management of Grizzly in light of its experience, current conditions, expectations of future developments and other factors which it believes to be reasonable and relevant. Forward-looking information and statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause Grizzly's actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information and statements and accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed thereon. Risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to vary include but are not limited to the availability of financing; fluctuations in commodity prices; changes to and compliance with applicable laws and regulations, including environmental laws and obtaining requisite permits; political, economic and other risks; as well as other risks and uncertainties which are more fully described in our annual and quarterly Management's Discussion and Analysis and in other filings made by us with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and available at www.sedar.com. Grizzly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information or statements except as may be required by law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188469 - Following $60m Series B, Volt expands global footprint beyond UK, Europe and Brazil - Integration with PayTo brings a best-in-class PayTo payment experience to Australian consumers - Megatix named as first Australian company to implement Volt's real-time payment technology Voltthe global real-time payments platform, today announces its expansion into Australia following a period of sustained growth for the UK-headquartered fintech company. Following Volt's $60m funding round earlier this year, this development marks the latest step in its ambitious growth plans to meet market demand for real-time payments across the globe. Having already established itself across the UK and Europe, and expanding its global footprint by entering the South American market via Brazil in 2021, with a network of more than 5,000 banks, Australia represents a significant milestone for Volt and the account-to-account (A2A) payments industry. Volt's gateway will be integrated with PayTo, an Australian digital payment platform that enables consumers to authorise and control payments directly from their bank account. While the adoption of real-time payments in Australia is still relatively new, with debit and credit cards dominating the payment landscape, there is appetite for new and innovative payment methods. A recent report from Cognizant found that Australia is the second leading market in the adoption of new payments technology, following China, with Juniper Research reporting the value of open banking payments will reach $330bn globally by 2027. The first merchant in Australia to integrate Volt's technology is Megatix, one of the country's fastest growing ticketing platforms. The self-service ticketing platform is well established in the market and partners with some of Australia's most high profile events and venues by providing technology that enables safe and secure purchase of tickets to its customers. Thanks to Volt's real-time payment capabilities, Megatix customers in Australia now have the ability to select 'Instant Bank Transfer' as a payment option at checkout. Not only does this help vendors to bypass costly credit card fees, but it also offers customers a more secure, fast and seamless payment option. Additionally, with real-time payments Megatix, and its vendors, receive payments much quicker thus improving cash flow and business efficiency. Reflecting on the news, Tom Greenwood, Founder and CEO of Volt, said: "I am incredibly excited to finally introduce our technology to the Australian market and begin our journey into the APAC region. Our goal at Volt is to revolutionise the payments sector and create a solution that significantly benefits not only merchants who use our technology but their customers as well. Australia is fast becoming a key market for many global businesses and similarly to Brazil when we launched there, our introduction into this fast-growing market will be transformative to the payments space Roshan Odhavji, CEO of Megatix, added: "Our goal is to be at the forefront when it comes to creating an innovative ticketing platform and we have found the perfect payment technology partner in Volt to do just that. With Volt's industry leading real-time payment capabilities, we're now able to offer our customers a slick checkout experience, and be the first in the market to do so. Thanks to open banking and Volt's technology, we're able to improve the payments process immeasurably for our customers, such as eliminating costly chargebacks associated with payments which have been a historic pain point for our vendors Volt will also be establishing a physical presence in Australia, looking to make a number of significant hires to manage and grow the Australian market, in the very near future. ENDS - About Volt Founded in 2019, Volt is building the infrastructure for global instant payments. Today, its open payments gateway allows merchants and PSPs to process transactions securely between accounts held at more than 5,000 banks in the UK, the EU and Brazil. Volt's unique aggregation model provides unrivalled open payments reach and maximises the speed, security and resilience of transactions. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122965340/en/ Contacts: Sophie Barocas sophie.barocas@archetype.co KAUNAS, Lithuania, Nov. 23, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Global IoT networking equipment manufacturer, Teltonika Networks, has recently announced its initiative to cut the average price of its industrial network switches by an average of 30% starting with January 2024. This announcement follows in the footsteps of the company's recent launch of its first-ever managed switches, the TSW202 and TSW212. Teltonika Networks has stated that it now considers its switch portfolio to be of sufficient size for rapid expansion and growth in this product segment. This is planned to be achieved by implementing more assertive pricing while maintaining the products' ease of use and top-quality and reliability, adhering to the highest European standards. "As demand for our industrial network switches is rapidly growing, we know that it's crucial to make them scalable to all our existing and future partners," says Teltonika Networks Head of Sales, Vytautas Sventickas. "Therefore, this new pricing strategy is being implemented to make our devices affordable to all Teltonika Networks partners and clients and guarantee the best value in the market, hands down." About the TSW network switch series Teltonika Networks launched its first industrial network switches in 2020 with its TSW series. Presently, its product portfolio consists of 8 unmanaged switches and 2 managed switches. All TSW products are plug-and-play devices engineered with easy installation in mind, featuring extra compact design, DIN rail mounting options, a wide input voltage range, and numerous RJ45 Ethernet ports for high-bandwidth data throughput. Designed for industrial use, they also feature sturdy aluminium housing and resistance to vibrations, humidity ranging from 10% to 90% (non-condensing), and extreme temperatures from -40 C to 75 C. Individual products in the TSW series are tailored to meet and satisfy different market needs by focusing on specific strengths and features. Those include PoE+ capabilities, enhanced compactness, scalability, and performance, and offering different PoE power budgets, voltage ranges, and bandwidths. About Teltonika Networks Teltonika Networks is a global manufacturer of IoT connectivity equipment with over 25 years of market experience. Our industrial networking products provide seamless connectivity, simple integration, and remote management capabilities to your IoT networking solutions. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/teltonika-networks-announces-a-30-price-cut-to-its-industrial-network-switches-301995925.html WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil futures settled lower on Wednesday after data showed a notable increase in crude inventory in the U.S., and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) postponed a key meeting by four days. OPEC and allies, collectively known as OPEC+, were scheduled to meet on Sunday (November 26) to decide, among other things, their stance on output cuts. The meeting is now postponed to November 30th. OPEC has not given any reason for the postponement. The group is expected to announce additional production cuts. According to reports, Saudi Arabia is finding it tough to convince Angola and Nigeria to accept lower output targets. West Texas Intermediate Crude oil futures for January ended down $0.67 or about 0.86% at $77.10 a barrel, after having tumbled to $73.85 a barrel earlier in the day. Brent crude futures settled at $81.96 a barrel today, losing $0.49 or about 0.59%. Data released by Energy Information Administration (EIA) this morning showed crude inventories, excluding the strategic reserve, increased by 8.7 million barrels in the week ended November 17th, substantially higher than an expected increase of about 1.2 million barrels. The EIA data also showed that gasoline stockpiles surged 749,000 barrels last week, as against forecasts for a drop of about 150,000 barrels, while distillate stockpiles fell by 1.02 million barrels in the week, against expectations for a 761,000-barrel decline. Copyright(c) 2023 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Propelled by the increasing focus on rare diseases and the overall expansion of the biopharmaceutical industry, the demand for antibody discovery services is skyrocketing. This comprehensive report delves into the antibody discovery market forecast, company share analysis, competition intelligence, DROT analysis, market dynamics and challenges, and strategic growth initiatives. NEWARK, Del., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Market Study of Antibody Discovery Market by Phage Display from 2024 to 2034 The global antibody discovery market is anticipated to reach a valuation of US$ 7,652.2 million in 2024, driven by the increasing incidence of chronic diseases. The trend is expected to create new opportunities for the market, leading to a projected CAGR of 7.2% between 2024 and 2034 and reaching a total valuation of approximately US$ 17,142.7 million by 2034. Empower Informed Decision-Making: Preview Our Comprehensive Antibody Discovery Market Research Report Before You Buy One of the major factors contributing to the growth of the market is the collaborations between pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, and academic institutions, which have become more common, facilitating the pooling of resources and expertise for antibody discovery. Research and development efforts are increasingly focused on multifunctional antibodies that can target multiple pathways or antigens simultaneously, expanding therapeutic possibilities. Antibodies play a crucial role in diagnostics, and the expansion of diagnostic applications, such as in the detection of biomarkers and infectious agents, contributes to the growth of the antibody discovery market. Advances in understanding of immunology, particularly the role of antibodies in immune responses, drive the identification of novel targets and the development of antibodies for various therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. Single cell antibody sequencing technologies enable the characterization of individual B cells, providing insights into diverse antibody repertoires and facilitating the discovery of rare and potent antibodies. Combinatorial antibody libraries, which involve the generation of diverse antibody variants, contribute to the identification of antibodies with improved binding affinity and therapeutic properties. Increasing attention to pediatric medicine has led to the development of antibody therapies specifically designed for children, addressing the unique challenges and requirements in this patient population. The success of immunotherapies, especially in oncology, has prompted exploration into other therapeutic areas, such as autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases, broadening the application of antibody based treatments. Key Takeaways from the Market Study Global antibody discovery market was valued at US$ 7,158.3 million by 2023-end. From 2019 to 2023, the market demand expanded at a CAGR of 8.4%. The market in China is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.5% through 2034. By method, the phage display segment to account for a share of 41.0% in 2024. From 2024 to 2034, antibody discovery market is expected to flourish at a CAGR of 7.2%. By 2034, the market value of antibody discovery is expected to reach US$ 17,142.7 million. "Increased understanding of the role of antibodies in neurological disorders has spurred research and development efforts to discover antibodies for conditions like Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis" says Sabyasachi Ghosh (Associate Vice President at Future Market Insights, Inc.) Antibody Discovery Market Research Report Coverage Attribute Details Estimated Market Size in 2024 US$ 7,652.2 million Projected Market Valuation in 2034 US$ 17,142.7 million Value-based CAGR 2024 to 2034 7.2 % Forecast Period 2024 to 2034 Historical Data Available for 2019 to 2023 Market Analysis Value in US$ million Key Regions Covered North America Latin America Western Europe Eastern Europe South Asia and Pacific East Asia The Middle East & Africa Key Market Segments Covered Method Antibody Type End User Region Key Countries Profiled The United States Canada Brazil Mexico Germany France France Spain Italy Russia Poland Czech Republic Romania India Bangladesh Australia New Zealand China Japan South Korea GCC countries South Africa Israel Key Companies Profiled Danaher Corporation Eurofins Scientific Evotec Twist Bioscience Charles River Laboratories Genscript Technology Corporation Biocytogen Sartorius AG Fairjourney Biologics S.A Creative Biolabs Understand global, regional, and country-level parameters with growth opportunities, historical data (2019-2023), and forecasts (2024-2034). Buy this report today! Competitive Landscape Prominent players in the antibody discovery market are Danaher Corporation, Eurofins Scientific, Evotec, Twist Bioscience, Charles River Laboratories, Genscript Technology Corporation, Biocytogen, Sartorius AG, Fairjourney Biologics S.A, and Creative Biolabs, among others. Recent Developments In July 2022, Bio Techne executed a substantial acquisition, incorporating Namocell into its portfolio. The strategic move not only broadens the array of products of the company, but also diversifies its capabilities into gene therapy development, cell engineering, cell line development, single cell genomics, and antibody discovery. In 2020, AbCellera announced a multi year strategic research collaboration and licensing agreement with Eli Lilly and Company for the discovery of antibodies targeting up to nine therapeutic targets selected by Lilly. Purchase this report now to get key companies with their Revenue Forecast, Volume Forecast, Company Ranking, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, Trends, and Pricing Analysis. More Valuable Insights Available Future Market Insights offers an unbiased analysis of the global antibody discovery market, providing historical data for 2019 to 2023 and forecast statistics from 2024 to 2034. To understand opportunities in the antibody discovery market, the market is segmented on the basis of method (phage display, hybridoma, and others), antibody type (humanized antibody, human antibody, chimeric antibody, and murine antibody), and end user (pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, research laboratory, and academic laboratory), across seven major regions (North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia & Pacific, East Asia, and Middle East & Africa (MEA)). The healthcare team at Future Market Insights offers expert analysis, time efficient research, and strategic recommendations with the objective to provide authentic insights and accurate results to help clients worldwide. With a repertoire of over 100+ reports and 1 Million+ data points, the team has been analyzing the market lucidly in 50+ countries for over a decade. The team provides a brief analysis on key trends including competitive landscape, profit margin, and research development efforts. About the Author: Sabyasachi Ghosh (Associate Vice President at Future Market Insights, Inc.) holds over 12 years of experience in the Healthcare, Medical Devices, and Pharmaceutical industries. His curious and analytical nature helped him shape his career as a researcher. Identifying key challenges faced by clients and devising robust, hypothesis-based solutions to empower them with strategic decision-making capabilities come naturally to him. His primary expertise lies in areas such as Market Entry and Expansion Strategy, Feasibility Studies, Competitive Intelligence, and Strategic Transformation. Holding a degree in Microbiology, Sabyasachi has authored numerous publications and has been cited in journals, including The Journal of mHealth, ITN Online, and Spinal Surgery News. Explore FMI's Extensive Coverage in the Healthcare Domain: Analyzing Generic Oncology Drug Sales Forecast in Europe and MENA by Large and Small Molecules, 2023 to 2033. - Review the report overview and request a complimentary sample report Forecast in Europe and MENA by Large and Small Molecules, 2023 to 2033. - Body Composition Monitor and Scale Market Analysis by Bio-impedance Analyzer and DEXA Products from 2024 to 2034. - Review the report overview and request a complimentary sample report Analysis by Bio-impedance Analyzer and DEXA Products from 2024 to 2034. - At-home Food Sensitivity Test Market By Blood and Tissue Sample Tests from 2024 to 2034. - Review the report overview and request a complimentary sample report By Blood and Tissue Sample Tests from 2024 to 2034. - Veterinary Ultrasound Scanner Market Analysis by Digital Imaging Technology, Analog Imaging Technology, and Contrast Imaging Technology from 2023 to 2033. - Review the report overview and request a complimentary sample report Analysis by Digital Imaging Technology, Analog Imaging Technology, and Contrast Imaging Technology from 2023 to 2033. - Analysis of Medical Cart Market Forecast by Metal, Wood, and Plastic in North America from 2024 to 2034. - Review the report overview and request a complimentary sample report About Future Market Insights (FMI) Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in Dubai and has delivery centers in the United Kingdom, the United States, and India. FMI's latest market research reports and industry analysis helps businesses navigate challenges and make critical decisions with confidence and clarity amidst breakneck competition. Our customized and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. A team of expert-led analysts at FMI continuously tracks emerging trends and events in a broad range of industries to ensure that our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers. Contact Us Nandini Singh Sawlani Future Market Insights Inc. Christiana Corporate, 200 Continental Drive, Suite 401, Newark, Delaware - 19713, USA T: +1-845-579-5705 For Sales Enquiries: sales@futuremarketinsights.com Website: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com LinkedIn| Twitter| Blogs | YouTube Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1197648/3531122/FMI_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/untapped-potential-antibody-discovery-market-to-surge-to-us17-14-billion-by-2034-as-pharmaceutical-giants-focus-on-orphan-drugs--future-market-insights-inc-301995877.html Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - RIWI Corp. (TSXV: RIWI) (OTC Pink: RWCRF) (the "Company" or "RIWI"), a global trend-tracking and prediction technology firm, reported its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2023. All figures are reported in U.S. dollars unless otherwise indicated. RIWI's financial statements are prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"). RIWI Highlights for the three months ended September 30, 2023 - in US Dollars: RIWI earned $1,144,838 in revenues in the third quarter of 2023 compared to $773,674 for the three months ended September 30, 2022, an increase of 47.97%. That revenue consisted of $438,224 in transaction revenue, $324,165 in recurring revenue and $382,449 in project-based revenue. RIWI experienced a net profit of $14,288 and positive operating cash flow of $77,629 for the three months ended September 30, 2023, as compared to a net loss of $323,655 and net use of cash of $163,994 for the three months ended September 30, 2022. RIWI's recurring revenues in the third quarter of 2023 increased by $291,265 compared with the third quarter of 2022. RIWI signed 17 new client contracts in the three months ended September 30, 2023, including contract signings with 11 new RIWI customers. RIWI introduced a new measure, Adjusted EBITDA, as of Q3 2023. Adjusted EBITDA is meant to provide investors with better visibility into the operating business of RIWI as it nets out non-operating expenses. All RIWI project-based customers have been migrated to the new RIWI platform with the exception of long standing time-series customers. We expect all remaining customers will migrate to the new platform in 2024. RIWI strengthened its leadership team by hiring a new head of its International Development customer segment. RIWI has an impactful history of helping humanitarian aid organizations collect actionable data in hard-to-reach areas or conflict zones where displaced citizens are most vulnerable. RIWI management is of the view that investing in this sector is both aligned with the Company's values and good for business. RIWI launched RIWI Communities as a global network of approved and validated partners to extend the reach of RIWI, both in terms of audience and in terms of capabilities. RIWI Communities enables RIWI to deliver broader solutions to customers including: social media listening, passive spending data and search data from targeted user groups, telephone surveys, in-person surveys, and qualitative surveys. In the third quarter of 2023, RIWI delivered four customer projects using RIWI Communities. RIWI's work has been cited by publications, which include reports by the Bank of Canada, the Public Policy Forum, and The World Bank; and articles in The Journal of Social Psychology and Asia Times. Highlighted RIWI data and research noted in these publications include: perceptions of Ukraine's travel ban; Canadian consumer expectations; the rise of polarization in Canada; assessing the political leanings of Argentina's population; local and international support for governmental leadership in regards to China-US relations; and, the evaluation of public attitudes toward migration. "The RIWI strategy is coming together as we build a sustainable long-term business. The result of that strategy is the first profitable quarter for RIWI in nine quarters," says Greg Wong, Chief Executive Officer at RIWI. Despite the strong performance of Q3, management is anticipating a challenging Q4 amid turbulent market conditions and continued investments in data quality. Management is working diligently to achieve consistent and positive operating cash flow and profitability in 2024." RIWI CORP. Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Income and Comprehensive Income For the three and nine months ended September 30, 2023 and 2022 (Unaudited and expressed in U.S. dollars) Three months ended Nine months ended September 30 September 30 2023 2022 2023 2022 Revenues (Note 10) $ 1,144,838 $ 773,674 $ 3,274,493 $ 2,039,752 Operating expenses General and administrative (Note 11) 461,906 496,487 1,488,159 1,530,997 Technology costs (Note 11) 479,265 361,218 1,361,012 887,123 Sales and marketing (Note 11) 214,095 294,029 718,735 881,711 Total operating expenses 1,155,266 1,151,734 3,567,907 3,299,831 Operating loss before other income (expense) (10,428 ) (378,060 ) (293,414 ) (1,260,079 ) Other income (expense) Interest income, net 23,553 9,405 66,427 20,161 Gain on asset disposal - - 971 - Other expenses (Note 11) - - (37,228 ) (78,338 ) Total other income (expense) 23,553 9,405 30,170 (58,177 ) Net income (loss) before income taxes 13,125 (368,655 ) (263,244 ) (1,318,256 ) Income tax recovery/(expense) 1,163 45,000 (12,601 ) 161,842 Net income (loss) and comprehensive income (loss) for the period $ 14,288 $ (323,655 ) $ (275,845 ) $ (1,156,414 ) Net income (loss) per share Basic and diluted $ 0.00 $ (0.02 ) $ (0.02 ) $ (0.06 ) Weighted average number of common shares outstanding Basic 18,004,428 18,004,428 18,004,428 18,004,428 Diluted 18,004,428 18,004,428 18,004,428 18,004,428 RIWI CORP. Condensed Consolidated Interim Statements of Financial Position As at September 30, 2023 and December 31, 2022 (Unaudited and expressed in U.S. dollars) September 30, 2023 December 31, 2022 Assets Current assets Cash and cash equivalents $ 2,433,550 $ 2,350,718 Accounts receivable 592,122 835,886 Unbilled revenue (Note 10(b)) 119,226 64,463 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 41,936 90,578 Total current assets 3,186,834 3,341,645 Property and equipment (Note 5) 3,123 4,688 Right-of-use assets (Note 6) - 17,874 Intangible assets (Note 7) 160,815 192,167 Goodwill (Note 7) 291,074 291,074 Total assets $ 3,641,846 $ 3,847,448 Liabilities Current liabilities Accounts payable and accrued liabilities $ 265,238 $ 341,475 Current portion of lease obligations (Note 9) - 22,024 Deferred revenue (Note 10(b)) 241,738 298,430 506,976 661,929 Deferred tax liability 35,011 37,337 Total liabilities 541,987 699,266 Shareholders' equity Share capital (Note 8) 4,940,930 4,940,930 Contributed surplus (Note 8) 2,705,453 2,477,931 Accumulated deficit (4,546,524 ) (4,270,679 ) Total shareholders' equity 3,099,859 3,148,182 Total liabilities and shareholders' equity $ 3,641,846 $ 3,847,448 Approved and authorized for issuance on behalf of the Board on November 22, 2023. "Greg Wong" (signed) Greg Wong Chief Executive Officer "Annette Cusworth" (signed) Annette Cusworth Chair of the Audit Commitee RIWI's unaudited interim Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended September 30, 2023, are available via RIWI's website at https://riwi.com and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. About RIWI RIWI is a global trend-tracking and prediction technology firm. On a monthly or annual subscription basis, RIWI offers its clients tracking surveys, continuous risk monitoring, predictive analytics and ad effectiveness tests in all countries - without collecting any personally identifiable data. https://riwi.com RIWI CORP. Signed: "Greg Wong" Greg Wong, Chief Executive Officer For more information, please contact investors@riwi.com Neither the 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. CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: Information and statements contained in this news release that are not historical facts are "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation that involves risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking information included herein is made as of the date of this news release and RIWI does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update forward-looking information unless required by applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information relates to future events or future performance and reflects management of the Company's expectations or beliefs regarding future events. This forward-looking information is based, in part, on assumptions and factors that may change or prove to be incorrect, thus causing actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by forward-looking information. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188482 NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Eagle Bay Resources Corp. (CSE:EBR) ("Eagle Bay" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it intends to undertake a non-brokered private placement offering of up to 2,272,727 flow-through units (each, a "FT Unit") at a price of $.011 per FT Unit to raise aggregate gross proceeds of up to $250,000 (the "Offering"). Each FT Unit will consist of one common share in the capital of the Company, to be issued as a "flow-through share" within the meaning of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (each, a "FT Share"), and one common share purchase warrant (each, a "FT Warrant"). Each FT Warrant shall entitle the holder to purchase one common share (each, a "FT Warrant Share") in the capital of the Company, issued on a non-flow-through basis, at a price of $0.13 per FT Warrant Share for a period of two (2) years from closing of the Offering (the "Closing"). The Company will use the gross proceeds from the sale of the FT Units to incur eligible "Canadian exploration expenses" that will qualify as "flow-through mining expenditures" as such terms are defined in the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the "Qualifying Expenditures") related to the Company's Cap property located in British Columbia, Canada on or before December 31, 2023. All Qualifying Expenditures will be renounced in favour of the subscribers effective December 31, 2023. All securities issued pursuant to the Offering will be subject to a statutory hold period of four (4) months and a day from the Closing in accordance with securities laws. Any participation by insiders in the Offering will constitute a related party transaction under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101") but is expected to be exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101. The Closing remains subject to several conditions including receipt of subscriptions and regulatory approval, if required. The securities offered have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or any state securities laws, and may not be offered, sold or delivered, directly or indirectly, in the Unites States, its possessions and other areas subject to its jurisdiction or to, or for the account or for the benefit of a U.S. person, unless an exemption from registration is available. This news release is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities of the Company in any jurisdiction. About Eagle Bay Resources Corp. Eagle Bay Resources Corp. is a Canadian exploration company specializing in the acquisition and development of high potential rare earth elements (REE's) and niobium properties. Eagle Bay Resources is publicly listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange ("CSE") under trading symbol "EBR". On Behalf of the Board of Directors EAGLE BAY RESOURCES CORP. Sean Charland Chief Executive Officer Tel: 604.681.1568 Email: info@eaglebayresources.com Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements with respect to the expectations of management regarding the use of proceeds of the Offering, that the Company will renounce the Qualifying Expenditures within the date set out herein, closing conditions for the Offering, the expiry of hold periods for securities distributed pursuant to the Offering and that exemptions from the requirements of MI 61-101 will be available to the Company. Forward-looking statements are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the statements, including risks related to factors beyond the control of the Company, including, but not limited to: changes in general economic conditions or conditions in the financial and capital markets; uncertainties related to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future; business and economic conditions in the mineral exploration industry generally; the supply and demand for labour and other project inputs; changes in commodity prices; changes in interest and currency exchange rates; risks related to inaccurate geological and engineering assumptions; risks relating to unanticipated operational difficulties (including failure of equipment or processes to operate in accordance with the specifications or expectations, unavailability of materials and equipment, government action or delays in the receipt of government approvals, industrial disturbances or other job action and unanticipated events related to health, safety and environmental matters); risks related to adverse weather conditions and geopolitical risk and social unrest. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. SOURCE: Eagle Bay Resources View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/809199/eagle-bay-resources-announces-private-placement-offering-of-flow-through-units-to-raise-gross-proceeds-of-up-to-250000 If you have a passion for capturing moments and want to turn it into profit, starting your own photo business could be the perfect avenue for you. However, setting up and organizing a successful photography business requires careful planning, creativity, and a solid foundation. So, lets take a look at the essential first steps that will give your enterprise a better start. Define Your Niche Before diving into the world of professional photography, its crucial to identify your niche. Determine the type of photography that resonates with you the most, whether its wedding photography, portraiture, food photography, or something entirely unique. Specializing in a specific genre will help you stand out in a saturated market and attract the right clientele. Create a Business Plan A well-crafted business plan is the roadmap to success. It outlines your goals, target market, pricing strategy, marketing plan, and financial projections. Conduct thorough market research to identify your ideal clients, understand their needs, and tailor your services accordingly. Additionally, include a detailed analysis of your competitors and how you plan to differentiate yourself in the market. Invest in Equipment and Software Depending on your niche, you may need a professional camera, lenses, lighting equipment, tripods. Software also requires thorough consideration. For example, theres plenty of known programs for portrait photo processing. At the same time, something like IDs requires a Passport Photo Maker or a similar passport photo software. Research the best options within your budget and ensure that you have backup equipment for emergencies. Build an Impressive Portfolio Whether you are aimed at becoming a wedding photographer, an ID photo maker, or a specialist in any other branch of photography, your portfolio must also reflect that. Aim for a cohesive collection of images that highlight your expertise and creativity. As you gain experience, update your portfolio regularly to showcase your best work. Establish an Online Presence Strong online presence is crucial for the success of any business. Create a professional website to showcase your portfolio, services, and contact information. Utilize social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to engage with your target audience, share your work, and build a loyal following. Remember to optimize your online presence for search engines to increase your visibility. Set Up Efficient Workflow Systems Efficiency and organization are key to running a successful photography business. Develop a streamlined workflow that includes client inquiries, booking, contracts, scheduling, and post-processing. Utilize project management tools and customer relationship management (CRM) software, such as ShootQ or Pixieset Studio Manager, to automate and streamline your processes, saving you time and effort. Price Your Services Competitively Determining how to price your photography services can be challenging. Research industry standards, consider your experience and overhead costs, and evaluate your target markets willingness to pay. Remember to account for your time, equipment, editing, and other factors when setting your prices. Regularly review and adjust your pricing as your skills and reputation grow. Provide Exceptional Customer Service Exceptional customer service is the key to establishing a loyal client base and generating positive word-of-mouth referrals. Be responsive, professional, and attentive to your clients needs. Deliver your work on time and go the extra mile to exceed their expectations. Building strong relationships with your clients will lead to repeat business and referrals. Organizing and running your own photo business requires a blend of creativity, business acumen, and organizational skills. Remember to continuously improve your skills, stay updated with industry trends, and provide exceptional customer service. With determination and perseverance, your passion for photography can become a thriving business venture. Good luck! Wachstumsfonds Deutschland, a venture capital (VC) fund of funds and key building block of the German Federal Governments Future Fund, held the final closing at EUR 1 billion. The fund, which aims to strengthen the European and German venture capital ecosystem received support from the Future Fund, KfW Capital, and more than 20 investors including insurers, superannuation funds, foundations, asset managers and large family offices such as Allianz, BlackRock, Debeka, Generali Deutschland AG, Gothaer Versicherung, HUK-Coburg, the RAG-Stiftung, SIGNAL IDUNA, Stuttgarter Lebensversicherung a.G., Tecta, and Wurttembergische Lebensversicherung AG. Read more on VCWire.tech, our new website dedicated to the tech venture capital industry. FinSMEs 22/11/2023 Islam has provided guidelines and principles for all aspects of a Muslims life, including finances and business. When it comes to trading and investing, Muslims have to adhere to certain Islamic laws and practices. Here are some of the key trading rules for Muslims. Is Trading Haram? As a Muslim, your first question will be whether trading is Haram. The linked article on is trading Haram looks at the topic in more detail, but the main principles you need to consider are below. Avoid Riba (Interest) One of the most important principles in Islamic finance is the prohibition of Riba, generally interpreted as interest. Taking or paying interest is considered haram (forbidden) in Islam. So, Muslims are not allowed to invest in bonds, fixed deposits, or any interest-bearing financial instruments. They need to avoid leveraged trading as well where interest may be charged. Avoid Forbidden Products and Services Muslims should avoid investing in or facilitating the sale/production of products and services considered haram in Islam. This includes alcohol, tobacco, pork products, conventional banking services, gambling, pornography, weapons, etc. So, they have to screen any potential investments to ensure the underlying business is halal. Pay Zakat on Trading Gains Muslims who meet the minimum threshold of wealth are required to pay 2.5% of their wealth annually as zakat (obligatory charity). So, any profits or trading gains are subject to zakat. Muslims must calculate and pay zakat on the market value of their trading portfolio each year. Trade Ethically Islam promotes ethical trading practices void of manipulation, greed, speculation, and other unethical means. Traders have to avoid short-selling, day-trading, investing in derivatives and futures which are considered too risky. They should also not engage in insider trading, front running, pumping and dumping, and other deceptive tactics. Avoid Gharar (Uncertainty) Gharar refers to excessive uncertainty or ambiguity in contracts or transactions. Trading in instruments, assets, or contracts where the underlying asset, price, or delivery terms are not clear amounts to gharar. So, options, forex trading, and short-selling, which involve such uncertainty, are discouraged in Islamic finance. Adhere to Halal Standards Halal means permissible according to Islamic law. Muslims have to ensure their entire trading process and portfolio adheres to halal standards. This means working with licensed Islamic brokers, using Islamic accounts to avoid interest, and investing in stocks/sectors that are shariah-compliant. Consider Investment Objectives The objectives of Muslim investors should align with Islamic principles of promoting ethical businesses, public interest, and the real economy. Investments should avoid sin sectors and focus on ethical companies. Speculative trading for quick gains is discouraged. Avoid Excessive Risks Taking on excessive risks in trading is equated to gambling, which is haram. So, traders have to avoid highly leveraged instruments and trades that entail disproportionate risks. While normal market risks are allowed, deliberate risk-taking for quick gains would violate Islamic principles. Muslims have to trade ethically, screen investments, avoid prohibited sectors/instruments, pay zakat, and minimize speculation in order to comply with Islamic finance rules. With the availability of Islamic accounts, screening tools, and halal brokers today, Muslims have more shariah-compliant trading options. The Islamic trading principles encourage responsible practices. You think you are great? You are just a tiny little brute that is nothing without me, Vanessa Kirby as Empress Josephine tells Joaquin Phoenixs Napoleon Bonaparte in Ridley Scotts new film, Napoleon. The words perhaps sets the tone that the film, Napoleon, wished to take while defining its titular subject. For all the magnificent war drama that expectedly packages Napoleon Bonaparte as a warrior-strategist par excellence and an emperor aroused by power play, Hollywood titan Scott also finds Napoleon to be an egocentric tyrant with a seemingly confused mind that needs constant prodding. Thats where Scott positions Josephine as the psychologically sturdier half of a power-hungry couple, brimming with self-assurance and never missing half a chance to mock her all-powerful hubby. The reimagined tale of Napoleon and Josephine, however, doesnt seem to be going down well with all audiences, just as rest of the film. Indeed, few films in recent times have polarised audiences as much as Napoleon. Reactions may have ranged from epic to outrageously enjoyable to Ridley Scotts best film since Gladiator in the United States and the UK (understandable, given Ridley Scotts British roots), but French critics and historians seem far from impressed. Barbie and Ken Under the Empire, wrote the daily Le Figaro, describing the Phoenix-Kirby duo. Historian Patrice Gueniffey told Le Point that Scotts Napoleon was very anti-French and very pro-English, adding that the character has been imagined as an an ambitious Corsican ogre and a sullen boor who is disgusting with his wife. Social media reviewer Mehdi Omais said the film felt like a Wikipedia page. Movie buffs have by now learnt not to take history lessons from Hollywood historicals, so we will gloss over factual inaccuracies that Scotts film manufactures in order to pump up the drama, such as Napoleon firing on the pyramids during his military expedition to Egypt or witnessing Marie-Antoinettes execution in Paris. But historical howlers put aside, what has grabbed attention of many fans in the West is how Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa seem insistent on portraying Napoleons life as a spectacular caricature and little else. Scott has spoken about the perils of producing big-budget historicals in the time of comicbook cinema which perhaps explains his irreverent approach while imagining Napoleon. English films, however, has a long history of irreverence. An early example worth note would be Caesar And Cleopatra starring Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains in the title roles with Stewart Granger as Cleopatra loyalist Apollodorus. The 1945 historical, based on George Bernard Shaws play of the same name, retained much of the master playwrights hallmark comic nonchalance while setting up drama and romance around its protagonists. Unlike many later-day historicals, Caesar And Cleopatra wasnt silly despite its lightweight approach to history. Technically a British production, the lavish film, in its run-up to release, was widely publicised as the latest of Vivien Leigh who, despite her British origin, was by then being counted among Americas sweethearts following the global success of Gone With The Wind in 1939. Caesar And Cleopatra retained much of Shaws witty tone while imagining what follows when an aging Julius Caesar takes over the Egyptian Capital city of Alexandria. More of a costume drama with gentle rom-com vibes than a sombre historical epic, the film narrates how the young princess Cleopatra learns the ropes of politics under Caesars tutelage. The historical as a rom-com has always been a favourite money-spinner for Hollywood. The idea isnt a bad one when it comes to films where history is merely used as backdrop to tell a fictional tale. John Maddens 1998 hit Shakespeare In Love would be an example. The entertaining film finds its premise in an imaginary romance that brews between playwright William Shakespeare, essayed by Joseph Fiennes, and Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), a fictional heroine based on the character he created in his play, Twelfth Night. Marc Norman and Tom Stoppards screenwriting blends fictional events and characters with real figures such as Queen Elizabeth I, playwright Christopher Marlowe, Elizabethan actor Ned Alleyn and renowned impresario of the era Philip Henslowe. In Hollywoods historical screenplays, where facts are never sacrosanct, humour is an easy device to explain complex relationships or situations. Paul WS Anderson tried it in his 2011 release, The Three Musketeers, while giving the adventures of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and DArtagnan a suitable spin to connect with new-age audiences. In his 1994 directorial, The Madness Of King George, Nicholas Hytner used humour to make up for altered facts, while narrating a sensitive story of the insanity of King George III, following which his aids try to run the country without royal participation. Ridley Scott tries serving history with a tinge of humour, too, in Napoleon, especially in the chemistry his titular hero shares with Josephine. The impact is only partial, because the relationship drama hardly gets space to develop amidst the films cramped screenplay that has a runtime of close to 160 minutes. Still, the Joaquin Phoenixs on-screen equation with Vanessa Kirby remains among the more enjoyable bits in Scotts new film. Irreverence and humour seem to work best in historicals when Hollywood goes on a socio-political analysis spree. Random recall would bring to mind W, Vice, America: The Motion Picture or Elvis & Nixon films that cast a critical gaze at the American system in the same way as Armando Iannuccis 2017 dark comedy The Death Of Stalin portrays a satirical picture of internal power politics in Soviet Union of 1953, following the death of Joseph Stalin. Hollywoods streak of irreverence while imagining history extended to World War II, too, when Quentin Tarantino outrageously imagined Hitlers slaughter at a movie premiere in the 2011 release, Inglourious Basterds. Scott was perhaps driven by similar ideas to set up a satire quotient around Napoleon. Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who loves to write on popular culture. Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange, is in trouble. The company has been accused by the United States government of aiding militant groups such as Hamas, sanctions violations and facilitating human and narcotics trafficking. The companys CEO, Changpeng Zhao, on Tuesday (21 November) pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money laundering laws and sanctions violations. He also agreed to pay more than $4.3 billion to settle the charges, reported NBC News. How is Binance tied to Hamas and sanctioned actors? What next for the crypto exchange? Lets take a closer look. Charges against Binance Binance, which makes up for about half of all crypto activity, admitted to failing to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, US anti-money laundering law, and not implementing reporting programmes for suspicious transactions, according to Associated Press (AP). The US Treasury Department said in a statement it has taken unprecedented action against the global trading platform for violating anti-money laundering laws. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Binance was guilty of consistent and egregious violations of US anti-money laundering and sanctions laws. Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform, Politico quoted Yellen as saying. According to the Treasury Departments statement, Binance willfully failed to report over 100,000 suspicious transactions from several sanctioned groups, such as Hamas military arm, Al-Qassam Brigades; Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, various criminal ransomware hackers and users operating in US-sanctioned nations like North Korea and Iran, reported NBC News. As per Politico, a senior Treasury official said that most of the sanctions programmes involved Iran. In February 2019, Samuel Lim, Binance Holdings then-chief compliance officer, acknowledged the crypto exchange was being used to channel funds to Hamas, telling a colleague that terrorists usually sent small sums, as per a Bloomberg report. The colleague responded by text that Hamas could barely buy an AK47 with 600 bucks, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commissions (CFTC) March lawsuit against Binance revealed. CFTC, which has been probing the case for years, alleged Binance did not enforce an effective anti-money laundering programme to detect terror financing, as per Hindustan Times (HT). ALSO READ: Why Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange, is in trouble Penalty on Binance Binances over $4 billion settlement is the largest penalty in Treasury Departments history, reported NBC News. Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) will get $3.4 billion of the fines by Binance, while the Office of Foreign Assets Control will receive $968 million, noted Bloomberg. According to the settlement agreement, Binance will be monitored for five years and significant compliance undertakings, including to ensure Binances complete exit from the United States, AP reported citing the Treasury. Under this third-party monitorship, which will be supervised by FinCEN, the Treasury will reportedly have access to Binances books and records. Binance CEO steps down CEO Changpeng Zhao has stepped down from the post. He pleaded guilty in a federal court in Seattle on Tuesday and agreed to pay a $50 million penalty. He will shell out an additional $150 million fine to the CFTC, while Samuel Lim will pay a $1.5 million penalty, reported Politico. As per Bloomberg, US Attorney General Merrick Garland alleged Zhao wilfully violated federal law that requires financial institutions to guard against money laundering and terrorist financing. Announcing his resignation as Binance CEO, Zhao, in a post on X, confessed he made mistakes and must take responsibility. He said Richard Teng, the companys former global head of regional markets, will replace him as the CEO. Zhao will continue to be a shareholder of the company. Binance is no longer a baby. It is time for me to let it walk and run, Zhao wrote. I know Binance will continue to grow and excel with the deep bench it has. Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself. Binance is no longer a baby. It is CZ Binance (@cz_binance) November 21, 2023 Zhaos sentencing is slated for 23 February, but it is expected to be delayed, reported AP. The development comes less than a month after Zhaos biggest crypto rival, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX, was convicted of fraud. What next for Binance? Binance was launched in 2017 and soon gained prominence by offering a cheap way to trade thousands of different tokens, as per the Politico report. The companys market share surpassed its rivals and Zhao emerged as a leading figure in the crypto industry. Binance said in a blog post it takes responsibility for its mistakes, adding that it is optimistic about the future. The company also admitted in a statement of not having appropriate compliance controls. When Binance first launched, it did not have compliance controls adequate for the company that it was quickly becoming, and it should have, Forbes cited its statement as saying. These resolutions acknowledge our companys responsibility for historical, criminal compliance violations, and allow our company to turn the page on a challenging yet transformative chapter of learning and growth, Binance said, as per NBC News. With the compliance and governance enhancements enshrined in our commitments, we can begin to share our vision for Binances exciting future and the future of the crypto industry. We are confident that Binance will emerge as a stronger company as we lay the foundation for the next 50 years. People have been talking about the ozone layer since the 1980s. The ozone layer around 15 to 30 kilometres above the Earth protects humanity from the Suns harmful ultraviolet rays. After scientists sounded the alarm about the ozone layer depleting and its harmful consequences for human beings, humanity banned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) commonly found in refrigerants, sprays and solvents. Since then, many studies have claimed that the ozone layer has regenerated and said that it could even become whole again in a few decades. But now, a new report says that might not be the case. But what does the report say? And what does this mean for humanity? Lets take a closer look: What does the report say? The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. It analysed monthly and daily ozone changes at different altitudes and latitudes within the Antarctic ozone hole from 2004 to 2022. The team, led by Hannah Kessenich, PhD candidate at the University of Otago, New Zealand, discovered far less ozone in the centre of the hole over the Antarctic compared to 19 years ago. The researchers found the ozone hole had in 2022 depleted at its core by 26 per cent compared to 2004, as per Down To Earth. It also found that, over the past four years, the hole was remarkably massive in size and long-lived. Our analysis ended with data from 2022, but as of today the 2023 ozone hole has already surpassed the size of the three years prior late last month it was over 26 million square kilometres, nearly twice the area of Antarctica, said Kessenich. As per CNN, the study found that the hole in the ozone layer grows during the spring and shrinks during the summer. It reached record dimensions from 2020 to 2022. This means that the hole is not only larger in area, but also deeper throughout most of spring, said Kessenich. The study also added that CFCs are likely not the only things to blame for the depletion of the ozone lawyer. The researchers also said noted that the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer which regulates the production and consumption of man-made chemicals known to deplete the ozone has been indisputably successful. We made connections between this drop in ozone and changes in the air that is arriving into the polar vortex above Antarctica. This reveals the recent, large ozone holes may not be caused just by CFCs, Kessenich added. Six of the last nine years have had really low ozone amounts and extremely large ozone holes, study co-author Annika Seppala of New Zealands Otago University told AFP. What might be happening is something else is going on in the atmosphere now possibly because of climate change and thats masking some of the recovery, she added. What does this mean for humanity? As per Yahoo.com, Kessenich in the study warned that the public is under the impression that the problem of the ozone layer has been fixed. When I began my work in 2021, I expected, like many of us, that the ozone hole was healing, she told Yahoo News Australia. But the data shows that is not the case. The researchers said that understanding ozone variability is important because of the major role it plays in the Southern Hemispheres climate. We all know about the recent wildfires and cyclones in Australia and New Zealand and the Antarctic ozone hole is part of this picture. While separate from the impact of greenhouse gases on climate, the ozone hole interacts with the delicate balance in the atmosphere. Because ozone usually absorbs UV light, a hole in the ozone layer can not only cause extreme UV levels on the surface of Antarctica, but it can also drastically impact where heat is stored in the atmosphere, said Kessenich. As per Yahoo.com, the study has warned that the change in heat distribution could modify wind patterns and surface climate. But some remain sceptical of the findings. As per Down To Earth, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has predicted that the ozone layer will mend by 2060. The major UN-backed assessment in January found that the agreement was working. It projected the ozone layer should be restored to 1980 levels over the Antarctic by around 2066. Smaller holes over the Arctic were projected to recover by 2045, and for the rest of the world in around two decades. NASA has also said that the ozone layer is regenerating. Martin Jucker, a scientist at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales in Australia, is among the doubters. He told CNN, Existing literature has already found reasons for these large ozone holes: Smoke from the 2019 bushfires and a volcanic eruption (La Soufriere), as well as a general relationship between the polar stratosphere and El Nino Southern Oscillation. We know that during La Nina years, the polar vortex in the stratosphere tends to be stronger and colder than usual, which means that ozone concentrations will also be lower during those years. The years 2020-22 have seen a rare triple La Nina, but this relationship is never mentioned in the study. ABC quoted Jucker as pointing out that the study did not incorporate data from 2019 and 2002. Those events have been shown to have strongly decreased the ozone hole size, so including those events would probably have nullified any long-term negative trend in ozone concentratios, Jucker added. It is questionable how the authors can remove 2002 and 2019 from the record but not 2020-22, given that all of these years have been shown to be dominated by very special and rare events, Jucker said. The outlet quoted University of Leeds atmospheric scientist Martyn Chipperfield as saying, The atmosphere is a complex system and many factors can lead to changes in the thickness of the ozone layer. We need to remain vigilant on [ozone-depleting] compounds but, as the paper shows, also be aware of the impact of other factors such as climate change. Leading ozone scientist Susan Solomon, who was not involved in the research, told AFP that the study should be viewed through the lens that the past few years have been quite unusual. Solomon led previous research showing that 2020s ozone hole was made 10 percent wider by the massive Black Saturday wildfires in Australia. The gigantic eruption of the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Haapai volcano off Tonga in 2022 is also believed to have affected recent ozone levels. Clearly, more study is needed to determine who is right. With inputs from agencies November is coming to an end in a little over a week. It is Wednesday (22 November) and the day is full of some big developments. A virtual G20 Summit is on the cards which India is hosting before its presidency concludes by the end of the month. The Supreme Court will hear important pleas today, including one related to the Womens Reservation Bill. Today marks 60 years since United States president John F Kennedy was assassinated in downtown Dallas, Texas. His killing continues to generate widespread speculation across the world. Returning to the present-day happenings, heres a simple overview of what to expect today. Virtual G20 Summit Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair the G20 summit virtually to take stock of the New Delhi Declaration adopted in September during the in-person summit. The leaders of the worlds largest economies will also follow up on the myriad decisions taken during the New Delhi Summit. Indias G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said earlier that while development will be the main agenda of the meeting, the leaders of the G20 grouping may delve into other issues. The virtual summit will provide an opportunity not only to discuss the implementation of the leaders declaration but also for the leaders to share views and enhance cooperation on critical challenges that we confront and address gaps in global governance, reaffirm our existing commitment to SDGs and move toward a reinvigorated multilateral system that is better positioned to positively impact peoples lives, Kant was quoted as saying by PTI. There is uncertainty over the presence of US president Joe Biden at the virtual summit. Chinese premier Li Qiang will attend the virtual G20 Leaders Summit instead of President Xi Jinping. He had not visited India to attend the in-person summit either. However, Russian president Vladimir Putin is set to take part in the virtual conclave after skipping the in-person meeting in New Delhi in September. Busy day for Supreme Court The Supreme Court will be hearing a review petition challenging its verdict upholding various provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The apex court will only address issues related to PMLA on certain parameters. The top court will also hear a plea seeking the immediate implementation of the Womens Reservation Act before the country holds general elections next year. Previously, the court said it would be very difficult for it to quash a portion of the law as per which the legislation will come into effect only after the Census. PM Modis roadshows The prime minister has a jam-packed schedule today. Besides attending the virtual G20 Summit, he will be campaigning in poll-bound Rajasthan. Modi is expected to hold roadshows in Jaipur and Jodhpur. The Assembly elections are slated for 25 November in the desert state, with the counting of votes on 3 December. DK Shivakumars plea before HC Karnataka High Court will hear state deputy chief minister DK Shivakumars plea against the sanction granted by the previous BJP government to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to prosecute him in a disproportionate assets case. This came after the CBI informed the division bench of the HC about the apex courts order that said the application filed by the CBI seeking vacation of stay and the appeal pending before it (be disposed) as expeditiously as possible and preferably within two weeks. Netherlands general elections The Netherlands goes to polls today to elect a new Parliament. Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Ruttes government collapsed in July over the row of the entry of asylum-seekers in the country, paving way for snap elections. Dilan Yesilgoz, from conservative VVD Party; Frans Timmermans, who has a combined ticket for the Labour and Green Left Parties; Pieter Omtzigt from the party called New Social Contract; and Freedom partys Geert Wilders are the main contenders for Ruttes job. Born this day It is the birth anniversary of Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav. The first phase of SPs Desh Bachao, Desh Banao yatra will conclude today, coinciding with the late leaders birthday. Poet George Eliot, choreographer Saroj Khan, Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo, tennis players Billie Jean King and Boris Becker were also born on this day. Germany is considering a ban on sex work, more than two decades after legalising it. The development comes amid harsh warnings that the country is quickly becoming the brothel of Europe. This is because leading politicians believe the nation is attracting sex tourists from around the world. Lets take a closer look. Germany mulls ban on prostitution German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday said that he has always been morally outraged by men purchasing sex. He added that the sale of sex is not acceptable and should not be normalised. According to DW, during a question-and-answer session in the German parliament, Scholz said, I dont think its acceptable for men to purchase women. It is something that as always morally angered me and we have to do all we can to clamp down on it. He did not respond directly to a demand from opposition conservative lawmakers to prosecute people who purchase the services of sex work, but said that sex work was often linked to abuse, violence and criminal structures, adding that he would welcome a discussion on how to combat that, the report said. The Christian Democrat/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) proposed the ban, claiming that the 2002 law failed in its aims of giving sex workers more rights and recognition under German law. The government, however, later backpedalled, with Germanys families minister Lisa Paus stating that there were no plans to change the current laws, according to the German report. She highlighted that the law is intended to strengthen the legal position of sex workers, is under evaluation until 2025. The brothel of Europe Selling sex was legalised in 2002 by a previous centre-left government. It aimed at giving the now 250,000 sex workers working in the country employment rights, access to welfare benefits and the right to sue clients who refuse to pay for services. However, promoting it was considered immoral and was a criminal act until 2002, as per DW. Leading politicians have claimed that in practice, the vast majority of sex workers in the European nation are not afforded these increased rights and protections. According to Dailymail, Dorothee Bar, the deputy leader of the parliamentary group for CDU/CSU, said that almost all of the sex workers working in Germany are foreigners and do not have documents. Therefore, pimps and human traffickers have been the biggest beneficiaries of the legalised sex industry. There can be no real equality as long as we accept that hundreds of thousands of women are treated like slaves. It is an offence against human dignity that we urgently need to end, Bar told Bild, adding, Germany has become the brothel of Europe. The women are mistreated in the worst possible way by their clients and pimps. Calls for Nordic model According to DW, the conservative party in the Bundestag wants to adopt Nordic Model, wherein customers can be prosecuted for buying sex, and sex workers are not punished. The model is implemented in several countries, including Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Canada, France, Ireland and Israel. Dailymail report explains that law was initially enacted by Sweden in 1999, which found street prostitution was reduced by half by 2008. Other countries followed were Norway, Iceland, Canada, France, Northern Ireland. The proposed legislation would see brothels being shut down, and a ban on the renting of apartments to sex workers. These measures, according to Bar, would reduce but not eradicate sex work in the country. The debate Organisations representing sex workers are not happy with the proposals. They claim there is no evidence that Nordic model helps women or lowers sex work, according to Dailymail. The Professional Association for Erotic and Sexual Services, which represents brothels and independent sex workers, said punishing customers would only make the work more dangerous. According to the UK-based media outlet, it said, Since Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce a sex purchase ban 25 years ago, there have been no studies to suggest that the Nordic model has been a success. It is always remarkable to see the means by which the opponents of procuring sex try to realise their moral ideas at the expense of the rights of sex workers, customers and brothel operators and ultimately at the expense of a tolerant, free and rights-based society. With inputs from agencies The Israel-Hamas war continues its Day 47 and there are huge developments. At a time when Israel has agreed to a four-day ceasefire with Hamas in exchange for 50 hostages, a delegation of foreign ministers from Arab League countries is set to visit India and meet with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. Reports have stated that Saudi Arabia foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Jordanian deputy prime minister and foreign minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, and Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki will make their way to New Delhi and discuss the ongoing tensions in West Asia and a deteriorating situation in Gaza. What is the Arab League? What is their agenda for this meeting? We get you all these answers and much more. The Arab League, explained The Arab League, formally known as the League of Arab States, is a 22-member organisation founded to promote regional cooperation and resolve disputes. It was formed in March of 1945 with the broad mission of improving coordination among its members on matters of common interest. Initially, it had six members Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. However, with the passage of time, it has grown to a grouping of 22 countries. According to its charter, the members agreed to seek close cooperation on matters of economics, communication, culture, nationality, social welfare, and health. They renounced violence as a means to settle conflicts between members. Interestingly, the charter of the Arab League has an annex on the issue of Palestine. It affirms Palestinian independence and states that even though the outward signs of this independence have remained veiled as a result of force majeure, an Arab delegate from Palestine should participate in [the leagues] work until this country enjoys actual independence. However, the League has been widely seen as toothless, as it has no mechanism to compel members compliance with its resolutions. This has led many to criticise the collective with NYU Associate Professor Mohamad Bazzi telling American think-tank CFR that the organisation is a glorified debating society. Also read: How OIC-Arab League Summit on Israel-Hamas war exposed regional divisions rather than solidarity for Palestine The Arab Leagues stance on the war The Israel-Hamas war has put the focus back on Palestine and the world is looking to how the members of the Arab League respond to the situation. Earlier in October, the members of the League met in Riyadh and condemned the Israeli forces barbaric actions in Gaza. However, it stopped short of approving punitive economic and political steps against the country. The members of the League in its final declaration rejected Israeli claims that it was acting in self-defence and demanded that the United Nations Security Council adopt a decisive and binding resolution to halt Israels aggression. Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the time had said that he holds the occupation (Israeli) authorities responsible for the crimes committed against the Palestinian people. We are certain that the only way to guarantee security, peace and stability in the region is to end the occupation, siege, and the settlements, he said of Israels actions in Gaza and the West Bank. The collective has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in actions, the lifting of the siege in Gaza and the unimpeded access for humanitarian aid. They have also called for a relaunch of the peace process to enable the establishment of a Palestinian state, alongside Israel. India, Arab League and the war It is now being reported that a delegation of the Arab League will visit India this week to discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Their visit to New Delhi comes on their way back from China where they held discussions with Chinas top diplomat, Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Speaking of their visit to Beijing, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said: We are here to send a clear signal: that is we must immediately stop the fighting and the killings, we must immediately deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza. He further stressed the need for international mobilisation and added that the resolution issued by the UN Security Council on 15 November calling for extended humanitarian pauses in Gaza was appreciated but insufficient. Following their Beijing leg, the Arab League foreign ministers will meet S Jaishankar and take up discussions on the Israel-Hamas war. India has been pressing for more international efforts to diffuse the situation in the Gaza Strip and has been facilitating urgent humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine. Earlier too, members of the Arab League have engaged with New Delhi on the war. In October, S Jaishankar discussed the crisis with his counterpart from the UAE Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The two foreign ministers deliberated on the evolving situation during a phone conversation. Following this, Arab Leagues Ambassador to Delhi Yusuf Mohamed Jameel told Wion that he had got assurances from India that its position on the Palestine issue remains unaltered. Our friends in India always assure us that the only solution is the peace solution, the two-state solution with borders of 1967, and this is the main issue, he was quoted as telling Wion. India has strong ties with the Arab World. There are vital Indian investments in countries stretching from Oman and Saudi Arabia to Egypt, Sudan and beyond. Moreover, India has large expatriate community in the Arab world, who have, over many generations, contributed to the countries of their residence. Moreover, Indias total bilateral trade with the Arab world stands at over $162 billion, and covers a variety of goods and services, from oil to infrastructure and telecommunications to consumer goods. It is home to more than seven million Indians and caters to 60 per cent of Indias crude oil imports. India has been walking the diplomatic tightrope on the Israel-Hamas war. After condemning the 7 October attacks, dubbing them as terrorist strikes, New Delhi has called for the upholding of humanitarian law and pressed for the discussion and adoption of a two-state solution. With inputs from agencies The Israel-Hamas war has divided the world. And the divisions are clear. Leaders of the group of BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa met virtually on Tuesday (21 November) to discuss the ongoing war and it was apparent that the collective was unable to reach a unanimous decision on the situation. The meet titled Extraordinary Joint Meeting on the Middle East situation was attended by leaders of the participating countries Brazils Lula da Silva, Russias Vladimir Putin, Chinas Xi Jinping and South Africas Cyril Ramaphosa. PM Narendra Modi, however, didnt attend the meet, and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar attended in his stead. But why is it that PM Modi skipped this extraordinary joint meeting? What was discussed at the meeting? The BRICS meet on Israel-Hamas war The meet on Tuesday was called by current chair of the grouping, South Africa, who has been quite vocal against Israels action in the Gaza Strip. Earlier, a majority of the countrys lawmakers had also voted in favour of the closure of the Israeli embassy and the cutting of diplomatic ties until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. At the start of the summit on Tuesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa accused Israel of war crimes and genocide in Gaza. In his opening remarks, he said, The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide. Notably, South Africa had last week had called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an investigation in what it called Israels genocide. Its cabinet had called on the ICC to issue an arrest warrant against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Putin and Xi, who were also in attendance at the meet, struck a more cautious note in their statements. Both the leaders called for a ceasefire and the release of civilian hostages. The Russian president in his remarks blamed the crisis on what he called failed diplomacy by the United States. All these events, in fact, are a direct consequence of the US desire to monopolise mediation functions in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, Putin said while appearing on teleconference from the Kremlin. He called for a ceasefire in Gaza, the freeing of hostages and the evacuation of civilians from the Gaza Strip. Chinas Xi Jinping added his voice to the calls for ceasefire telling the summit: All parties in the conflicts should immediately cease fire and hostilities, stop all violence and attacks targeting civilians, and release civilian detainees to avoid more loss of lives and suffering. Xi said: The root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli situation is the fact that the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, their right to existence, and their right of return have long been ignored. Indias stance at the BRICS meet Attending the meet in place of PM Modi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar contended that the immediate crisis was triggered by a terrorist attack and none should compromise where terrorism is concerned. He, however, also stressed on the two-state solution India has long been a proponent of the two-state solution and has pressed on Israel and Palestine to sit down on these talks. Union Minister S Jaishankar said at the summit, Where terrorism itself is concerned, none of us should or can compromise with it. Hostage taking is equally unacceptable and cannot be condoned. Subsequent developments have deepened our concern even more as we witness large scale civilian casualties and a humanitarian crisis. We strongly condemn any death of civilians. Representing PM @narendramodi at the extraordinary joint meeting of BRICS. https://t.co/JV6CReUhug Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) November 21, 2023 He further added, We welcome all efforts of the international community towards de-escalation. Right now, there is an urgent need to ensure that humanitarian aid and relief effectively and safely reach the population of Gaza. It is also imperative that all hostages are released. The foreign minister also emphasised that Prime Minister Modi had spoken to several leaders in the region and across the world in this context. We believe that the concerns of the Palestinian people must be addressed in a serious and sustainable manner. This can only happen with a two-state solution that is based on peaceful coexistence, he stated. PM Modis absence at the BRICS meet But why is it that PM Modi skipped the BRICS meet on the Israel-Hamas war. Sources in the government told The Print that the PM could not join the virtual meeting as he had prior commitments and was on the campaign trail the state of Rajasthan will go to polls on 25 November and PM Modi has been campaigning for his party. But even otherwise, it made sense for PM Modi to steer clear of the meet considering the position India has taken on the current war. Many geopolitical pundits would note that New Delhis stance on the Israel-Hamas war is closer to that of the United States and other western countries. India also abstained from the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) vote on a resolution that called for a ceasefire, one that all other BRICS-plus members voted for. A person familiar with the developments had then said In the absence of all elements of Indias approach being covered in the final text of the resolution, we abstained in the vote on its adoption. Our vote was guided by Indias steadfast and consistent position on the issue, the person added. However, Indias abstention at the vote was seen by many as a pro-Israeli stance. Through the war, India has done a diplomatic tightrope walk on the Israel-Hamas war. At the beginning, following the 7 October attacks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the terrorist attack and expressed solidarity with Israel. This was followed by a call between the leaders of India and Israel PM Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu on 10 October following which the former posted on social media: People of India stand firmly with Israel in this difficult hour. India strongly and unequivocally condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Two days later, the Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi in a weekly press briefing said: Our policy in this regard has been long standing and consistent. India has always advocated the resumption of direct negotiations towards establishing a sovereign, independent and viable State of Palestine living within secure and recognised borders, side by side at peace with Israel. Indias position during this entire crisis has truly been nuanced. While issuing support for Israel and condemning terror attacks, it has also sent aid to Gaza, including medical and disaster relief. Even before the crisis erupted, India has supported the socio-economic welfare of the Palestinian people. Its interesting to see if the BRICS-plus meet has any impact on Indias hosting of the foreign ministers of the Arab League this week. With inputs from agencies As the Russia-Ukraine war rages on, the number of deaths and losses of equipment continue to pile up. Now, a new report from the UK ministry of defence estimates that Moscow has lost a truly staggering number of troops and battle tanks since its war with Kyiv began. But what has Russia lost exactly? And how is Ukraine doing? Lets take a closer look: Russian losses pile up The Eurasian Times reported that ministry estimates that the war has cost Russia 400,000 troops. The ministry, replying to a query in UK Parliament, pegged Russias troop losses at 300,000 plus another 100,000 from contractors like the Wagner Group. The Independent quoted James Heappey, minister of state for the armed forces, as saying, We estimate that approximately 302,000 Russian military personnel have been killed or wounded, and tens of thousands more have already deserted since the start of the conflict. The number of personnel killed serving in Russian PMCs is not clear, he added. Russia have utilised several PMCs and volunteer units in Ukraine to augment Russian military forces, but the deaths of personnel from these organisations are not reflected in Russian official military death tolls. Moscow has also lost around 2,400 main battle tanks. That works out to approximately 15 per cent of its pre-war inventory. Most of these tanks are newer variants. A greater proportion of the losses will be from the more advanced T-90s, T-80s, and T-72s, with a significant amount of backfilling or regeneration of armored capability being done through the use of bringing back into service legacy equipment, the Army Technology report said. Russia has thus far lost over 7,117 armoured vehicles (including the tanks) as well as 1,300 artillery systems. Another 93 fixed-wing aircraft, 132 helicopters, 320 uncrewed aerial vehicles, and 16 naval vessels have been destroyed in the conflict. We also estimate that over 7,117 Russian armoured vehicles, including nearly 2,475 main battle tanks, 93 fixed wing aircraft, 132 helicopters, 320 unmanned aerial vehicles, 16 naval vessels of all classes, and over 1,300 artillery systems of all types have been destroyed since the start of the conflict, Heappey added. But Kyiv says Moscows losses are far steeper. As per The Independent, Kyiv claims Moscow has lost 313,470 military personnel in the conflict thus far. It claims Russia lost 5,388 tanks, 10,171 armoured personnel carriers, more than 8,500 artillery and guided rocket systems, as per Eurasian Times. It also says it has relieved Moscow of 650 fixed- and rotary-wing platforms and over 5,600 Unmanned Arial Vehicles since the war began. As per Business Insider, fighting in the southeastern city of Avdiivka has increased the Russian number of troops being killed or injured by 90 per cent. The UK ministry of defence pointed to Avdiivka as a major offensive effort by Moscow and added that Russias troops in the city and said that Moscows troops in the city likely suffered some of Russias highest casualty rates of 2023 so far. As per Army-Technology.com, Russia is losing hundreds of troops per day in the city. However, anyone hoping that the Kremlin will take notice and perhaps halt the war is mistaken. The New York Times quoted Russia experts as saying Putin is unlikely to be daunted by the ever-increasing casualties. Army-Technology.com quoted experts as saying that the conflict has set Russias forces back by three decades in terms of personnel and equipment. What about Ukraine? Newsweek quoted Russias Sergei Shoigu as claiming that Kyiv lost 13,700 troops this month alone. The defence minister also claimed that Ukraine lost 1,800 units of tanks and other heavy weaponry this month. The New York Times quoted US officials in August as pegging Ukrainian troop deaths at 70,000 since the war began. Another 100,000 to 120,000 have been injured. A senior Ukrainian sergeant in Donetsk told BBC in August that young troops are dying by the dozens daily. Newsweek quoted a US Defence Intelligence Agency assessment as saying that Kyiv lost 124,500 to 131,000 troops in battle overall. These included 15,500 to 17,500 dead and 109,000 to 113,500 wounded. It is important to note that these are estimates as neither side has officially confirmed their losses since the war began. No place in Ukraine safe The website quoted the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine as saying the civilian toll had crossed 10,000 including over 550 children. Another 18,500 civilians have been wounded since the start of the conflict. Ten thousand civilian deaths is a grim milestone for Ukraine, said Danielle Bell, head of the monitoring mission. The Russian Federations war against Ukraine, now entering into its 21st month, risks evolving into a protracted conflict, with the severe human cost being painful to fathom. Nearly half of civilian casualties in the last three months have occurred far away from the frontlines, she added. As a result, no place in Ukraine is completely safe. With inputs from agencies Forget your K-dramas or saas-bahu serials. If you are yearning for drama, the tech world is where you need to turn your attention. Its been a few days of chaos and upheaval at OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, following the firing and now re-hiring of its CEO Sam Altman. On 22 November, OpenAI in a statement said that it has an agreement in principle for Altman to return alongside a new board composed of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam DAngelo. We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam DAngelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this, wrote OpenAI on its official account on X. But a lot has happened since his initial sacking on late Friday night. If you are trying to catch up on what has gone down since then or just catching your breath, heres a rundown of everything thats happened. After all, OpenAIs ChatGPT isnt able to give us the summary. 17 November Altmans Fired Drama began to unfold at the San Francisco-centred firm when OpenAIs board of directors put out a statement that Sam Altman would step down as CEO and leave the board of directors. The board had then said that it no longer had confidence in his ability to continue leading. In the same announcement, it was also said OpenAIs CTO Mira Murati would also serve as the CEO of the company. Later that day, the board also said that Greg Brockman, OpenAIs president, will be stepping down as chairman of the board and will remain in his role at the company, reporting to the CEO. To this, Brockman said in a post on X that he and Altman were shocked and saddened by what the board did. At the time of his firing, the 38-year-old Altman had acknowledge his exit, but said nothing about the boards accusations. 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 Interestingly, Brockman in an elaborate post on X revealed the chain of events that led to his ouster. He wrote that Altman had received a text from board member Ilya Sutskever asking to talk at midday Friday. When Altman joined the meeting, the whole board, excluding Brockman, was on the call and he was told by Sutskever he was being fired. Satya-Nadella-led Microsoft, which is a major investor in and partner with OpenAI, reacting to Altmans firing said: As you saw at Microsoft Ignite this week, were continuing to rapidly innovate for this era of AI, with over 100 announcements across the full tech stack from AI systems, models and tools in Azure, to Copilot. Most importantly, were committed to delivering all of this to our customers while building for the future. 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. Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world. Beyond Altman and Brockman, it was reported that three senior researchers at OpenAI were resigning: Jakob Pachocki, director for research; Aleksander Madry, who was heading a team looking at the potential risks of AI; and Simon Sidor, a researcher with seven years under his belt at OpenAI. 18 November Drama unfolds The day after Altmans firing, an internal memo sent to staffers at OpenAI revealed the reason behind the move. OpenAIs chief operating officer Brad Lightcap while terming the move to be a surprise, also put a stop to rumours that something more sinister lurked behind Altmans firing, saying the boards decision was not made in response to malfeasance or anything related to our financial, business, safety, or security/privacy practices. Simultaneously, Altman suggested that he was planning to launch a new venture. Meanwhile, at OpenAI, the move to bring Altman and Brockman back began to gather steam, with even employees threatening to quit if the former CEO was not reinstated. 19 November Negotiations continue to get Altman back On Sunday, negotiations to reinstate Altman continued with the 38-year old himself posting this message on X: I love the openai team so much. A New York Times report stated that negotiations had focused on how OpenAIs board of directors might be restructured. Also, they were discussing who would replace the members who had decided to fire Altman if they stepped down themselves. The New York Times further reported that Boba tea and McDonalds were on the menu for the negotiating parties. However, by Sunday night, it appeared that no breakthrough could be achieved with OpenAI board members Sutskever, Adam DAngelo, Helen Toner, and Tasha McCauley reaffirming their decision to fire Altman, saying it was the only path to advance and defend the mission of OpenAI. They continued: Put simply, Sams behaviour and lack of transparency in his interactions with the board undermined the boards ability to effectively supervise the company in the manner it was mandated to do. 20 November A new beginning Early in the day, Altman posted an image of him, indicating that his return to OpenAI seemed unlikely. first and last time i ever wear one of these pic.twitter.com/u3iKwyWj0a Sam Altman (@sama) November 19, 2023 In the hours that followed, a twist emerged in this drama when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman, Brockman, and other OpenAI employees will be joining the companys new advanced AI research team. Nadella added that Altman will serve as the CEO of the new advanced AI research team. the mission continues https://t.co/d1pHiFxcSe Sam Altman (@sama) November 20, 2023 Simultaneously, as this news broke, Twitch co-founder Emmet Shear took to X to announce that he got a call inviting him to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become the interim CEO of OpenAI. Notably, on this day, Sutskever also expressed his regret for participating in the boards decision to remove Altman and vowed to do everything in his power to reunite the company. Other employees at OpenAI also penned a letter, issuing an ultimatum to the remaining board members of OpenAI asking them to either step down from their positions or face a mass exodus of OpenAI staff to Sam Altmans new venture at Microsoft. 21 November Its not a done deal yet But if you think that it was all a done deal, think again. The Verge reported that Altman and Brockman were considering going back to OpenAI if the board members who ousted Altman stepped down. At the same time, Nadella also indicated openness to Altmans return to OpenAI, rather than joining Microsoft as initially announced. Irrespective of where Sam is, hes working with Microsoft, Nadella then said. 22 November Hes back! Things took another turn when OpenAI announced the return of Sam Altman. If official, he will be OpenAIs fourth CEO in five days. Shortly after the announcement, both Altman and Brockman posted the news on their X profiles. Altman wrote, I love openai, and everything Ive done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. When I decided to join msft (Microsoft) on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satyas support, Im looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft. Brockman, on the other hand, posted this image. we are so back pic.twitter.com/YcKwkqdNs5 Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 22, 2023 Reacting to all the twists and turns in this saga, Helen Toner, who was a key board member in the initial move to oust Altman, simply said: And now, we all get some sleep. No one knows what will happen next not even ChatGPT but we do know that this will be remembered for a long time in the world of tech. With inputs from agencies It has been 11 days since 41 workers got trapped inside a partially-constructed tunnel at Silkyara in Uttarakhands Uttarkashi district after parts of the structure collapsed following a landslide last Sunday. Here is a look at the timeline of the disaster and the rescue efforts that unfolded. 12 November The labourers get trapped as portions of the Silkyara-Dandalgaon under construction tunnel on the Brahmkhal-Yamunotri highway collapse following a landslide at around 5.30 am on the day of Diwali. Rescue efforts are launched by the district administration and arrangements made to supply oxygen, electricity and eatables to the trapped labourers through air-compressed pipes, reported PTI. Multiple agencies, including the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), Border Roads Organisation (BRO), project executing agency National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), join the rescue efforts. 13 November Contact is established with the trapped workers through a pipe meant to supply oxygen to them and they are reported to be safe. Rescue efforts continue as Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami visits the site. Not much progress is made in removing the debris accumulated on the collapsed part of the tunnel as fresh rubble keeps falling from above, further complicating the task of the rescuers. As a result, the debris accumulated in an area of around 30 metres spreads to 60 metres. A strategy is devised to stabilize the loose soil inside the tunnel applying the method of shotcreting (spraying concrete) and then insert large-diameter steel pipes through the rubble to prepare an escape passage for those trapped. 14 November Steel pipes of a diameter of 800 and 900 mm are brought to the tunnel site to be inserted through the rubble with the help of an auger machine for horizontal digging. However, the efforts suffer a setback when more rubble falls from the cavity created by the cave-in and causes minor injuries to two labourers. Meanwhile, a team of experts begins a survey of the tunnel and surrounding areas for soil testing. The trapped workers are supplied food, water, oxygen, electricity, and medicines as some of them complain of nausea and headache. 15 November Dissatisfied with the performance of the first drilling machine, the NHIDCL asks for a state-of-the-art American auger machine, which is airlifted from Delhi to speed up the rescue efforts. 16 November The high-performance drilling machine is assembled and installed. It starts working past midnight. 17 November Working overnight, the machine drills about 24 metres through the rubble by the afternoon and four MS pipes with a length of six metres each are inserted. The process comes to a halt when the fifth pipe hits an obstacle. Damage to the machine is also reported. Yet another high-performance auger machine is flown down from Indore to assist in the rescue efforts following a request from the NHIDCL. In the evening, the NHIDCL reports that around 2.45 pm on Friday, during the positioning of the fifth pipe, a big cracking sound was heard in the tunnel and the rescue operation suspended immediately. The sound creates panic among the rescue team members. An expert involved in the project warns about the possibility of further collapse in the vicinity. Subsequently, the drilling and pipe-pushing activity is stopped. 18 November Drilling does not resume on Saturday as experts feel that the vibrations created by the diesel-driven 1,750-horse power heavy-duty American auger inside the tunnel might cause more debris to collapse, posing a risk to the lives of the rescue personnel. Alternative options are explored by a team of officials from the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) and experts who decide to work on five evacuation plans simultaneously, including vertical drilling through the top of the tunnel to rescue trapped labourers. 19 November Rescue work at the site was virtually on hold Sunday as the agencies involved in the effort continued to work simultaneously on multiple approaches to reach the trapped men. The Road, Transport and Highways Secretary Anurag Jain said that the government has undertaken a five-option action plan to rescue the workers. The government is giving multivitamins, antidepressants and dry fruits to the trapped workers. Fortunately, there is light inside because the electricity is on. There is a pipeline, and thus water is available. There is a four-inch pipe, which was used for compression. Through that, we are sending food from day one, PTI quoted him as saying. On Sunday, the rescue team pushes in a second six-inch wide tube up to 39 metres stretch into the rubble. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari reviews the rescue operations and assures that whatever is required to save the 41 trapped workers will be done and keeping the morale of workers and their family members high should be everyones collective responsibility. He was accompanied by CM Dhami, who said the rescue operation is challenging as the soil strata in the Himalayan region is not uniform. If the auger machine works properly, we will be able to reach them (victims) in the next 2-2.5 days Gadkari said, as per ANI. 20 November International tunnelling and underground space association president Arnold Dix conducted a survey at the collapse site on Monday to aid in the rescue efforts. According to ANI, Dix specialises in underground and transportation infrastructure from construction risk to more technical issues associated with the actual safety performance from an operational safety perspective. Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks to CM Dhami over the phone to take stock of the situation. Assuring the families of the trapped workers that they will be rescued soon, CM Dhami on Monday said officials are in touch with the relatives of the trapped workers so that they do not face any inconvenience. The state government said it will bear the travel, food, lodging expenses of relatives of the 41 workers trapped inside. Leader of Opposition in the Uttarakhand Assembly Yashpal Arya demands a CBI probe into the factors that led to the unfortunate incident. 21 November The six-inch lifeline pipe successfully reaches the men confined inside. Till now, a four-inch tube was being used to supply oxygen and other survival items. According to officials, food items like dalia, khichdi, sliced apples and bananas can be sent in through the new and bigger pipeline. Also, mobile phones and chargers could be sent to the workers. The stranded workers have been asked to engage in activities like yoga, walking and have encouraging conversations among themselves and with their loved ones. First visuals of the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel emerged on Tuesday. In the video released by the rescue agencies, the workers wearing yellow and white helmets are seen receiving food items sent to them through the pipeline and talking to each other. Officials watching them on a screen are heard giving instructions, asking them to clean the lens. The workers are told to come near the camera and use walkie-talkies, apparently sent down earlier. The camera is then pulled back up so that water can be released under pressure to clean the pipeline. Stalled rescue operation to evacuate them through an escape passage cutting across the debris was resumed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to CM Dhami on Tuesday, the second day in a row. The prime minister said it is our top priority to rescue all the workers safely, Dhami posted on social media. According to Anshu Manish Khulko, director of NHIDCL, informed, We have cleaned the pipe, adding that fruits like oranges, bananas and medicines were sent to the 41 workers, who are said to be in a healthy state. For dinner, they received solid food items such as veg pulao and matar paneer. It is believed to be their first proper meal since they have been stranded inside. 22 November Mobile chargers were sent inside the collapsed section. Road and Transport Technical Secretary, Mahmood Ahmed said 800 mm-diameter pipes are being pushed using telescoping method, as per ANI. He said, After that, we will do further drilling inside it with the American auger machine. These are crucial hours in the rescue operation. Ahmed further said that it will take 30 to 40 hours to rescue trapped workers if drilling goes smoothly. A huge machine stuck on the way on Tuesday reaches the Silkyara tunnel site today and will facilitate in proceeding further with the operation. With inputs from agencies The United States is witnessing a mysterious respiratory disease in dogs. Over four states have reported cases of this illness that the Oregon Department of Agriculture has dubbed as an atypical canine infectious respiratory disease. According to veterinarians, the illness has resulted in hospitalisations and even death in older dogs or those with health issues, reported New York Times (NYT). What is known about this unusual respiratory illness? How can dog owners in the US protect their pets? Lets find out. Dogs become sick in US While not much is known about the illness yet, veterinarians say dogs usually get a cough that may last a few weeks. It then leads to pneumonia and further respiratory issues, as per The Washington Post report. Some pneumonia cases advance rapidly, making dogs sick within 24 to 36 hours. The symptoms of this unidentified respiratory illness in dogs include coughing, sneezing, eye or nose discharge, lethargy, blue or purple gums due to lack of oxygen, and troubled breathing, reported Fox News. These symptoms are similar to kennel cough but usually last longer. The cause of the disease remains an enigma. The respiratory illness afflicting mans best friend seems to be resistant to conventional antibiotic treatments. The Oregon Veterinary Medical Association said that over 200 cases of this mysterious disease have been reported in the state since mid-August. Although the total number of cases is not known, the illness has infected canines in New Hampshire and several northeastern states, such as Colorado, Indiana, Illinois, Washington, Idaho and California. The director of Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory has confirmed to CNN of reporting a mysterious canine illness. Unfortunately, right now, nobody knows what it is, veterinarian Dr Mike Hutchinson told CBS News Pittsburgh. Dogs with this illness are also testing negative for other common respiratory diseases. Based on the epidemiology of the cases reported at this point, the cases appear to share a viral etiology, but common respiratory diagnostic testing has been largely negative, Oregon State Veterinarian Dr Ryan Scholz told the American Veterinary Medical Association, as per CNN. ALSO READ: What is Brucella canis, an incurable dog disease jumping to humans in the UK? How serious is it? Dogs usually recover from a respiratory disease on their own or through antibiotics but this is not always true with the latest illness, Dr Kurt Williams, director of the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine at Oregon State University, told NYT. In these dogs, either it lingered for longer or it took a downward spiral and led to very serious outcomes, including death, he added. Speaking to AP, Williams said canines have died but it is hard to put a number on how many died from a severe form of the infection. Dr Lindsey Ganzer, a veterinarian in Colorado, told The Washington Post that at least 35 cases have come to light at her hospital, of which four turned fatal due to severe pneumonia. According to Ganzer, there was one common factor among the infected dogs: They spent time in places full of other canines, such as doggy day care, dog parks, and so on, reported NYT. Dogs might be transmitting the pathogen to each other in close settings, such as during play, or by air, noted The Washington Post. Researchers in the US are scrambling to figure out the reason behind this mysterious illness. Dr David B Needle, a pathologist at the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, told CNN: Fatalities do not seem to be a large part of the syndrome we are investigating, with rare animals developing acute and sometimes fatal pneumonia after the longer chronic disease. We think these may represent secondary infections. Needles coworkers at the University of New Hampshires Hubbard Center for Genome Research have been probing the disease for nearly a year, reported AP. What can dog owners do? Experts suggest pet owners should not worry but exercise caution. The website of Oregon Veterinary Medical Association says that this unidentified disease is unusual but periodic outbreaks of Canine Infectious Respiratory Disease Complex (CIRDC) can occur in a dog population. It asks pet owners to contact their veterinarian if their furry friend shows symptoms such as coughing, sneezing, nasal and/or eye discharge, and lethargy. When that happens (dogs show these symptoms), you should see your veterinarian because were going to treat those symptoms. And for viruses, theres really no good anti-viral on the market. However, we can support the symptoms sometimes by nebulising them or giving them some support, fluids, things that they need, veterinarian Hutchinson said, as per CBS News. Veterinarian Williams told AP that dog owners must ensure their pet has got all the necessary vaccines. New Hampshires Needle urged pet owners to decrease contact with other dogs, as per CBS News. Just like with other respiratory pathogens, the more contacts your dog has, the greater the risk of encountering a dog thats infectious, Time magazine quoted the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association as saying. As per the CNN report, pet owners should avoid letting out their sick dogs and contact their vets. Dogs should be kept away from communal water bowls shared by canines. With inputs from agencies Billionaire Elon Musk is climbing up the controversy ladder by reigniting the longstanding pizzagate conspiracy theory on his social media platform, X. The move comes just several days after he received massive backlash and faced advertiser exodus for boosting antisemitic theory. The internet moguls 160 million followers are currently being encouraged to believe the three-year-old conspiracy theory and baseless allegations that it is connected to Media Matters. About pizzagate conspiracy theory Pizzagate is an anti-Hilary Clinton conspiracy theory that was spread ahead of the 2016 US presidential election on 4chan, Reddit, Twitter, and other platforms, according to CNN. It was claimed that Clinton, a then-presidential candidate, and other prominent Democrats operated a child sex trafficking out of a pizza restaurant in Washington, DC. The report stated that because of the blatantly false claims, Edgar Maddison Welch, the self-appointed investigator, fired an assault rifle inside the restaurant in December of that year. Welch later pleaded guilty and received a four-year prison sentence, although nobody was hurt. Elon Musk-Media Matters row On Monday, a user on X attempted to link the founder of Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit organisation, to the owner of the so-called Pizzagate restaurant. Musk then gave the message a boost by responding to it with the single word, Weird. Weird Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2023 The entrepreneurs amplification of the theory coincides with a developing dispute between Musk and Media Matters because the organization released a report claiming that advertisements from major corporation such as Apple, IBM, Oracle and Bravo, were displayed alongside antisemitic and pro-Hitler content on Musks microblogging platform. This had prompted major companies, including Disney, Paramount and NBCUniversal, Apple and IBM to pull advertising from the platform, reported CNN. According to The Independent, Musk denied claims that he is antisemitic and called the organisation evil. Media Matters is pure evil https://t.co/gIV1rHO9d7 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2023 He called the report misleading and it has taken necessary steps to combat antisemitism and discrimination on his platform. On Monday, he also filed a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters. According to the media report, he and other executives said that Media Matters study methodology for identifying the content that was affixed to firm advertisements did not accurately reflect how average users interacted with the site. An X representative told The Independent that the firm did not deliberately position the advertisements next to the postings made by the antisemitic accounts, which have since been demonetised, making it impossible for advertisements to appear on their profiles. The accounts havent been deleted, though. In a statement released on Monday in response to Musks campaign against the organisation, Media Matters president Angelo Carusone described the lawsuit as meritless and described it as 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, the organisation said. Musks antisemitic post Musk this week endorsed the assertion that Jewish communities incite hatred against Whites by agreeing with an antisemitic remark on X. The Tesla-owner faced backlash from the White House and others for engaging with an antisemitic conspiracy theory. 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, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to CNN. According to The Independent, Musk later responded to the accusations, saying nothing could be further from the truth. I wish only the best for humanity and a prosperous and exciting future for all. For those unversed, this came after his scandal several days after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, where he was forced to take down a post where he amplified an account that is widely accused of anti-Semitism and promotes unreliable information in its videos. With inputs from agencies These days, everyone seems to be afraid of Artificial Intelligence. From Joe Biden freaking out after seeing the latest Mission Impossible movie to a faction of the OpenAI board concerned about putting humanity in danger and people in general worrying that their jobs could soon be obsolete. But others think AI will be of help to humanity. Like this new report which says that AI could soon make a four-day workweek possible and for no decrease in pay. Lets take a closer look: What does the report say? The study was published on Monday by the Autonomy campaign group by Luiz Garcia, Lukas Kikuchi and Will Stronge. The study, entitled GPT-4 (Day Week): Great Britain Edition, looks at the impact AI that is large language models (LLMs) could have on lives and livelihoods in the United Kingdom. As per Computer Weekly, the paper says AI, if used properly, could allow nearly 9 million people in the UK to enjoy a four-day workweek by 2033. Meanwhile, another 28 million could find their work hours decreased by 10 per cent by the same period. The nine million people comprise around 28 per cent of the UKs labour force, while the 28 million account for around 88 per cent of workers. As per The Independent, the study used data about the population and workforce as well as an artificial intelligence exposure index which examines how different jobs would be affected by AI and a prediction about productivity. As per Euro News, Autonomy based its predictions on the 1.5 per cent annual productivity benefit from AI given recently by Goldman Sachs. It also used information from the US Department of Labors Occupational Information Network (O*NET). It simulated two situations: AI reducing working hours by 20 per cent without affecting workers pay Examining the number of workers that AI could increase the productivity of while maintaining their wages and reducing their workweek by 10 per cent. Will Stronge, director of Research at Autonomy, said on its website, Our research offers a fresh perspective in debates around how AI can be utilised for good. A shorter working week is the most tangible way of ensuring that AI delivers benefits to workers as well as companies. If AI is to be implemented fairly across the economy, it should usher in a new era of four-day working weeks for all. The study suggested four-day workweeks could be implemented in the following places by 2023: London Wokingham Elmbridge Wandsworth St Albans Westminster London alone would see 89 per cent of its labour witness a 10 per cent decrease in working hours. Thirty-three per cent of workers 1.5 million by 2033 could find themselves working for 20 per cent less time thanks to AI increasing productivity by 20 per cent. As per The Independent, this is due to London and its surrounding areas having a high number of white-collar jobs. As per The Independent, the jobs most likely to see a decrease in working days and working hours are lawyers, financial managers, customer service representatives, office and general clerks, accountants and auditors, investment fund managers, first-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers, management analysts, market research analysts and marketing specialists. Sales representatives of services, except advertising, insurance, financial services and travel, bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks, general and operations managers, search marketing strategists, treasurers and controllers, receptionists and information clerks, human resources specialists, as well as primary school teachers, except special education, and secondary school teachers, except special and career/technical education also make the cut. Will Stronge, director of Research at Autonomy, said on its website, Our research offers a fresh perspective in debates around how AI can be utilised for good. A shorter working week is the most tangible way of ensuring that AI delivers benefits to workers as well as companies. If AI is to be implemented fairly across the economy, it should usher in a new era of four-day working weeks for all. Such a policy offers the possibility of avoiding mass unemployment (and all the social and political effects of this), reducing widespread mental health illnesses as well as physical ailments associated with overwork and creating significant additional free time for democracy, leisure consumption and social cohesion in general, the study said. In the case of the UK where work-related stress, anxiety and depression constitute one of the most significant labour market issues today these wellbeing factors cannot be emphasised enough when it comes to the productivity question. Thus, we can expect a great deal of extra productivity-enhancing side effects of the shorter work week, outside of the AI-augmentations we have modelled. The report thus recommends that public and private sector employers take advantage of this significant opportunity, to become world leaders in the take up of workplace AI as well as improve the lives of well over nearly thirty million people, the study concluded. As per The Guardian, Autonomy did a similar study in the US. That research concluded that around 35 million Americans could also enjoy a four-day week by 2033. It stated that around 128 million workers, 71 per cent of the workforce, could see their working hours decrease 10 per cent. In Massachusetts, Utah and Washington, at least a fourth of workers could have four-day weeks. The newspaper quoted Stronge as saying, Too many studies of AI, large language models, and so on, solely focus on either profitability or a jobs apocalypse. This study tries to show that when the technology is deployed to its full potential, but the purpose of the technology is shifted, it can not only improve work practices, but also improve work-life balance. What I think would be really impressive would be a robust AI industrial strategy, with automation hubs where trade unions, industry and experts in this tech get together to say: Were going to boost productivity, and this is also going to be something which delivers for the workers, Stronge added. However, sceptics abound. As per Computer Weekly, the Ada Lovelace Institute in October noted that the benefits of LLMs were unproven and remain speculative. It also highlighted the dangers around issues plaguing AI such as prejudice and racism and data leaks. It also noted that the public sector would like adopt LLMs simply because they are new instead of being the answer to humanitys problems. With inputs from agencies The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday carried out raids at 14 locations in Punjab and Haryana to unravel the conspiracy behind 19 March and 2 July attacks on the Indian Consulate in San Francisco earlier this year. National Investigation Agency today conducted raids at 14 places in Punjab and Haryana in a bid to unravel the complete conspiracy behind the March 19, 2023, and July 2, 2023 attacks, involving criminal trespass, vandalism, damage to public property and attempts to cause hurt to the officials of Indian Consulate in San Francisco and set the Consulate building on fire through acts of arson, NIA said in a statement. The NIA raided location spread across the districts of Moga, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, Mohali and Patiala in Punjab and Kurukshetra and Yamunanagar in Haryana. The crackdown led to the seizure of digital data containing information related to the accused persons, along with other incriminating documents, the statement added. The NIA has been probing the case with the aim to identify and prosecute the attackers and send a strong message to such anti-Indian elements. A team of the NIA had visited San Francisco in August 2023 to probe the incidents of attacks on the consulate. As part of its investigation, the NIA has crowdsourced information to identify and collect information about US-based entities and individuals involved in these violent incidents, added the statement. With inputs from agencies Indias engagement with the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8) has expanded in the last few years, adding that appropriate institutional frameworks with countries in the grouping are also being established for closer business-to-business cooperation external affairs minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday said on Wednesday. Speaking at the 2nd CII India Nordic Baltic Business Conclave https://t.co/1ryN0qAkYE Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) November 22, 2023 Addressing the second CII India Nordic Baltic Business Conclave in the national capital, Jaishankar said, Our engagement with the NB8 countries has expanded clearly in the last few years. We opened our embassies in Tallinn in December 2021 and in Vilnius this year in March. He said that India will be opening a resident embassy in Latvia very soon. Moreover, he said, Finland has opened a consulate in Mumbai. Delighted to participate in the 2nd CII India Nordic-Baltic Conclave 2023. Thank the visiting dignitaries from the region for attending. Indias relations with Nordic-Baltic countries are truly promising and this Business Conclave is a testimony that others too hold this view. pic.twitter.com/DuFKOThfWi Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) November 22, 2023 Jaishankar highlighted the increase in mobility between India and Finland. Direct flights between India and Finland and India to Denmark are facilitating mobility between our countries. Appropriate institutional frameworks with NB8 countries are also being established for closer business-to-business cooperation. With Finland, we have established sustainability partnerships, digitalization, and education dialogue, the external affairs minister said. Jaishankar also noted the relations with Denmark, stating, With Denmark, our green strategic partnership is strengthening and facilitating collaborations in water solutions, wind energy, green hydrogen, and agriculture. We also look forward to stronger cooperation with the Faroe Islands and with Greenland. 18 nations and 19 major global companies have joined Indias leadership for industry transition with Sweden the lead IT initiative, which he said has clearly borne fruit in the last few years. More than 260 Swedish companies are in India, working in innovation, in construction, in defence, and in clean technology, he said. Saab, the Swedish Aeroplane Corporation, is going to set up a manufacturing facility in India, he said. Meanwhile, India and Iceland are working closely on harnessing geothermal energy in Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh. Similar projects are being planned for Northeast India. Efforts are on to establish a centre for excellence in cold and warm water fisheries. We have also forged strong cooperation with Norway to harness the potential of the blue economy, wind, and geothermal energy, as well as polar studies, green shipping, water management, space, and health, Jaishankar said. With the Baltic nations, India has been conducting official-level interactions and is seeking to explore new avenues for stronger cooperation in e-governance, cyberspace, the internet of things, startups, defence technology, supply chain, and logistics. There is clearly, however, much more work to be done, Jaishankar said. The second CII India Nordic Baltic Business Conclave is significant as it reflects the growing awareness of the two regions about the possibilities and opportunities in cooperation, the Union Minister said. This certainly speaks of a more globalised era, but from Indias perspective, it also speaks of an expanding footprint. The Baltic Sea and the Arctic region have re-emerged in strategic prominence, and conversations about future connectivity and logistics have business implications as well, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement. Notably, the NB8 countries collectively represent an economy of more than USD 2 trillion, with a population of about 33 million and a high standard of living. Jaishankar further recalled the first two India-Nordic Summits that were held in Stockholm in April 2018 and in Copenhagen in May 2022, respectively. On these occasions, our leaders underlined the importance of a rule-based multilateral trading system, as well as an open and inclusive international order for global prosperity and growth, he said. They discussed vital issues relating to global security, economic growth, innovation, digital transformation, and climate change. We certainly noted the role of Nordic countries as innovation leaders in global growth. Now, along with the Nordic nations, the Baltic states too are at the forefront of innovations, start-ups, tech applications, and digital progress, he added. Leading intelligence sources in India have dismissed as baseless the Financial Times story from November 22 that claimed, through unidentified sources, that US authorities had foiled a plan to assassinate a Sikh separatist in their nation and had warned India over possible government involvement. The U.S. embassy in New Delhi and the foreign ministry had not released a statement at the time this news was published. According to The Financial Times, the sources did not specify if the plot was thwarted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or whether the plotters abandoned it as a result of the protest to India. According to the story, President Joe Bidens June greeting of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his state visit prompted the protest to be sent to New Delhi. Sources claimed, Nothing was shared with the Indian government and the story is baseless. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the leader of the outlawed pro-Khalistan group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), on its books, but that doesnt mean we should grab a pistol and start murdering people. We follow our own strategy and setup for case investigation and probing, they declared. Pannun is named as an accused in several cases, and we are investigating his case via various means. We are genuinely following the situation and have dispatched Letter Rogatories (LR) to several nations, according to sources. After Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed in Parliament that a foreign agent was involved in the murder of Khalistan separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, ties between India and Canada has suffered. He went so far as to say he had intelligence inputs and proof that Nijjars death might have been orchestrated by the Indian government. Both sides expelled diplomats in retaliation for these claims, which New Delhi has categorically refuted. On June 18, Nijjar was shot and killed outside a Gurdwara in Surrey, Canada, by unidentified assailants. He was the leader of the outlawed Khalistan Tiger Force, and in 2020, the Indian government classified him as a terrorist under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Additionally, Interpol has repeatedly issued red corner notices against him. CNN-News18 has already reported that no actionable intelligence on NIjjar was shared by Canada on the case, despite the National Security Advisers (NSA) communication with his counterparts at least 20 times. CNN-News18 had earlier reported how Pannun is being funded by Pakistans ISI, citing top intelligence sources. The Jammu and Kashmir government Wednesday sacked four government employees, including a policeman and a doctor, citing their involvement in terror activities. The four Jammu and Kashmir government officials have been terminated from services in accordance with 311 (2) (c) of the Constitution of India which empowers the government to take such actions in the interest of national security. Who are 4 govt employees sacked by J&K government? The Jammu and Kashmir government did not reveal specific details about the nature of the terror activities in which these individuals were allegedly involved. The government employees terminated include a doctor, a police constable, a teacher, and a lab bearer in the higher education department. 1- Dr Nisar-Ul-Hassan, Assistant Professor (Medicine), SMHS Hospital Srinagar 2- Abdul Majeed Bhat from Kupwara, a Constable in Jammu and Kashmir Police 3- Abdul Salam Rather from Kulgam, Laboratory bearer in Higher Education Department 4- Farooq Ahmad Mir a teacher in Education Department from Kupwara. The general administration department of the J&K government has also issued seperate orders stating that the lieutenant governor is satisfied after considering the facts and circumstances of the case and the basis of information available that their activities are such as to warrant dismissal from service. The dismissal of the four government officers follows J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinhas policy of zero tolerance against terrorism. Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha, after considering the facts and circumstances of these individual cases and on the basis of the information available, is satisfied that the activities of the following persons are such as to warrant their dismissal from their service, the order read. In the last three years, the Union Territory administration has invoked 311 (2)(c) of the Constitution to sack more than 50 employees, who were allegedly drawing a salary from the public exchequer, however, they were helping Pakistani terror outfits, providing logistics to terrorists, propagating terrorists ideology, raising terror finances and furthering secessionist agenda, officials said. With inputs from agencies A former soldier from Myanmar was sentenced to ten years in prison by a district court in Mizoram on Wednesday for attacking a couple and trying to kill the wife. Min Aung was found guilty and sentenced by Champhai district additional and sessions judge Sylvie Zomuanpuii Ralte. Min Aung was a soldier from Myanmar who sought refuge in the district in 2022. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for trying to kill the woman and an additional three years for seriously hurting the couple. Additionally, it fined Aung a total of Rs 3,000 in the two cases. If the convicted man does not pay the fine, he will serve an additional three months in prison. Aung had decamped with a gun from Myanmar and fled to Mizoram in 2022. He was lodged at a relief camp in Champhais Zote village. In September that year he forced his way into the room of a Myanmar refugee couple in the relief camp and ordered them to buy alcohol and drugs for him. When the couple refused to comply stating that alcohol and other substances are strictly prohibited inside the relief camps, Aung attacked the woman with a machete. The womans husband tried to stop him and the accused attacked him too, inflicting grievous injuries to the couple. The accused escaped from the crime scene but was caught by volunteers of Young Mizo Association (YMA), who handed him to the police. The YMA also filed an FIR in connection with the incident. (with inputs from agencies) Within a decade, every second or third youth out of ten in the international workforce would be an Indian, the Ministry of External Affairs Secretary (West), Sanjay Verma said on Wednesday. Addressing the third edition of the Spain-India Forum in New Delhi on Wednesday, he said while underscoring the migration mobility agreement Within a decade or so, every third or every second youth out of ten in the international workforce would be an Indian. So here what Im directly referring to is the migration mobility agreement, which we are struggling for the Spanish government to consider. #WATCH | Delhi: At Spain India Forum, Ministry of External Affairs Secretary (West) Sanjay Verma says, Within a decade or soon, every third or second youth out of 10 in the international workforce will be an Indian. Im directly referring to the migration mobility agreement pic.twitter.com/5O9HPo3azT ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 India has signed the migration mobility agreement with Portugal, the UK, Germany, Italy and Austria. Verma said Austria is supposed to be one of the most difficult countries to deal with on migration issues. So if we can do it with several other countries, I think its Spain. If you are pushing the Spanish language, then you cant say, all right, we will stop it. Migration doesnt work. It just doesnt land up. He further stressed the need to take hard calls. I think we will have to all get-up and take hard calls. The proposed observatory is a fantastic idea. I will personally keenly follow what its outcomes will be, need to be shared and could be a model for other countries as well. The MEA secretary also highlighted that India is adding almost USD 500 billion to the economy every 18 to 20 months. Our demographic profile, the averages being around 30, is also fulfilling both the demand and supply sides of the economic equation, not just for ourselves but for the world, he added. He further stressed that the Indian youth are better equipped, skilled and linguistically gifted. For example, the demographic deficit, which will visit several parts of the world, particularly Europe, its there where Indians can come in because our youthful population aspirational better equipped, better skilled, interculturally more comfortable and linguistically gifted, he stated. Leading to this, Verma highlighted the importance of the Spanish language. And in that context, the Spanish language becomes important. You have our support in sort of landing that in a much larger or getting a much larger footprint in India. Because the Indian youth will move. It is a matter of time. Later, Juan Ignacio Entrecanales, Chairman of Spain India Council Foundation expressed delight to be there at the inauguration of the third edition of the Spain Indian Forum. The previous two were held in Madrid in 2014 and 2017 and were focused on sustainable infrastructure and renewable energy. Expediting efforts for safe evacuation of the workers, the Uttarakhand government on Wednesday intensified rescue operations at the Silkyara Tunnel in Uttarkashi where 41 workers remain trapped. About 67 per cent augur drilling has been completed to give emergent safe passage to the rescue team and 42 metre horizontal pipe have been drilled through in the tunnel, according to a government press release. The 2 km section of the tunnel, which completed concrete work ensuring the safety of the workers, is the focus of the rescue efforts. In this secured portion of the tunnel, electricity and water supply are operational, and provisions, including cooked food and medicines, are being delivered through additional pipelines of 6-inch diameter in addition to existing 4-inch lifeline, added the release. Video communication has been established with the workforce, which further boosted the morale of the trapped workers. Various government agencies have been mobilised, each assigned specific tasks to ensure the safe evacuation of the workers. National and International tunnel experts are present at site to advise on rescue operation. Key updates on rescue operations: NHIDCL Lifeline Efforts: The second lifeline for food distribution is functioning efficiently, ensuring an ample food supply like roti, subzi, khichdi, daliya, oranges, bananas in addition to supply of medicines and other essentials like clothes such as T-Shirt, under garments, tooth paste, soap etc. Modified communication system with wire connectivity has been developed by NDRF/SDRF through which clear communication is made. People inside reported at morning that they are safe. The old lifeline service point/talking point (RHS) has been shifted from the existing point to a safer place and protected. To give emergent safe passage to the rescue team, an escape passage by way of box culverts, pipes for a length of 67 meters has been completed. Horizontal Boring by NHIDCL NHIDCL has resumed horizontal boring from the Silkyara end to rescue workers using an Augur boring machine. As on date, 42 meter of pipes has been inserted. Fabrication of a protective canopy for the drilling machine is underway. Vertical Drilling for Rescue by SJVNL SJVNLs machine for the vertical rescue tunnel construction has arrived at the site, and has been installed. Horizontal Drilling from Barkot Side by THDCL THDC has initiated the construction of a rescue tunnel from the Barkot end, with four blasts already completed, resulting in a 9.10 meter drift. Efforts are being made to carry out three blasts per day. Perpendicular-Horizontal Drilling by RVNL Equipments for micro tunnelling required for horizontal drilling to recue labourers has reached site. Additional back up machines are in transit. Vertical Drilling Toward Barkot End by ONGC ONGC is mobilizing machinery from the USA, Mumbai, and Ghaziabad for vertical boring. Drift Tunnel by Manual-Semi Mechanized Method by Joint Team of THDCL/Army/Coal India and NHIDCL: Work is underway to create a drift inside the tunnel, with a safe channel established from 180 meters to 150 meters. The Army is mobilizing box culverts for this purpose. Fabrication of 08 frames has been completed. Road Cutting and Supportive Work by BRO: BRO has completed construction of approach road for vertical drilling by SJVNL and RVNL. BRO is also building approach road for ONGC with geological surveys conducted by ONGC. On 12 November, a portion of under-construction tunnel collapsed due to debris falling in a 60-meter stretch on the Silkyara side, where 41 workers were trapped. Five agenciesONGC, SJVNL, RVNL, NHIDCL, and THDCL were pressed into service with specific responsibilities, working collaboratively with occasional task adjustments for operational efficiency to rescue workers. 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. With inputs from agencies The Indian Navys latest indigenous stealth guided missile destroyer, Imphal (Yard 12706), scored a Bulls Eye in her maiden Brahmos firing at sea. Interestingly, it is for the first time that the test-firing of the Extended Range Brahmos missile took place by a warship before its commissioning. This underscores Indian Navys unwavering focus on Combat Readiness, AatmanirbharBharats growing shipbuilding prowess and assured reliability of indigenous weapons and platforms. The Indian Navy received its third Project 15B stealth guided missile destroyer, the Imphal, on 20 October, 2023. It has been meticulously built at the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), Mumbai. What is Imphal (Yard 12706)? The Project 15B destroyer program is a continuation of the successful Kolkata-class (Project 15A) destroyers, commissioned over the last decade. Imphal follows in the footsteps of her predecessors, Indian Naval Ships Visakhapatnam and Mormugao, which were commissioned into service in the past two years. Who has designed Imphal (Yard 12706)? Imphal (Yard 12706) has been designed by the Indian Navys Warship Design Bureau (WDB) and is a testament to Indias prowess in indigenous shipbuilding. It stands as one of the most technologically advanced warships globally. Special features of Imphal (Yard 12706) The guided missile destroyer boasts a displacement of 7,400 tons and has ab overall length of 164 meters. This makes it a potent and versatile platform. The Imphal is equipped with state-of-the-art weapons and sensors, including surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, and torpedoes. Propelled by a Combined Gas and Gas (COGAG) propulsion system consisting of four gas turbines, Imphal is capable of reaching speeds exceeding 30 knots (approximately 56 km/h). The vessel has remarkable indigenous content, accounting for approximately 75 per cent of its components. These include the Medium Range Surface-to-Air Missiles (manufactured by BEL, Bangalore), BrahMos Surface-to-Surface Missiles (produced by BrahMos Aerospace, New Delhi), Indigenous Torpedo Tube Launchers (crafted by Larsen & Toubro, Mumbai), Anti-Submarine Indigenous Rocket Launchers (also from Larsen & Toubro, Mumbai), and a 76mm Super Rapid Gun Mount (manufactured by BHEL, Haridwar). With inputs from agencies Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday said India welcomes the deal reached by Israel and Hamas to release 50 hostages and pause fighting for four days. We welcome the news of the release of hostages. We hope all the hostages will be released soon, PM Modi said during the G20 Virtual Summit. We believe that terrorism is unacceptable to all of us. The death of civilians is condemnable regardless of where it happens, the Prime Minister added. Before the dawn of Wednesday, Israel and Hamas announced that they had agreed to the terms of a Qatar-brokered deal that would see 50 Israeli women and children released in exchange for a four-day ceasefire. Hamas has approximately 240 people in its captivity which it abducted into Gaza during its 7 October terror onslaught. As per the decision, all the 300 Palestinian prisoners will be released only on condition that Hamas frees 100 living hostages Israeli citizens or Israeli residents from Gaza and ensure their safe return to Israel. Also Read: Israel will give Hamas 10 days ceasefire window to return hostages, has no intent to end war The war cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Minister Benny Gantz will decide the identity of prisoners to be released in each phase, taken from the list provided. Also, they have been authorised to determine the timing of each phase. The statement from Israeli government cleared that immediately after the end of the pause in fighting needed to secure the release of the hostages, fighting will resume in the Gaza Strip to destroy the military and organisational capabilities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and to create the conditions for the return of all the hostages. With inputs from agencies Eight school children fell off an autorickshaw and were left severely injured after the vehicle collided with a speeding lorry in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday morning. The entire accident was captured on a CCTV camera positioned nearby. The autorickshaw-lorry accident took place near the Sangam Sarat Theatre junction. The injured school students were rushed to a nearby hospital where they are undergoing treatment. Warning: Viewer discretion advised A report by ANI said the students were from Bethany school. "An auto collided with a truck at Sangam Sarat Theatre junction in Visakhapatnam. Eight school children were injured and shifted to the hospital," DCP Srinivasa Rao said. #WATCH | Andhra Pradesh: Eight students were injured in an accident when their auto collided with a lorry near Sangam Sarat Theatre in Visakhapatnam. The injured have been shifted to the hospital. Further details awaited. pic.twitter.com/MrcfwJzyfW ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 "Four of them have been discharged. Three students are undergoing treatment. One student's situation is critical," DCP Rao said. With inputs from agencies As the Russia-Ukraine war unfolded in February 2022, Germanys staunch support for Ukraine came with significant consequences. The nation, heavily reliant on Russia for its energy requirements, faced severe supply disruptions due to Moscows actions. This compelled Germany to swiftly seek costly alternative sources. Determined not to encounter a similar vulnerability with China, Germany sought to limit investment guarantees for Beijing to 3 billion, despite China being its largest trading partner. In a strategic move to diversify trade and ensure a stable supply of essential raw materials, Africa emerged as a crucial component of Germanys supply chain. In August last year, the president of Germanys Federal Trade Associations (BGA), Dirk Jandura told the DPA press agency that The African continent is the continent of opportunities. It is developing faster and more dynamically in parts than all other world regions. Its importance as a reliable and long-term trading partner for Germany and Europe is growing. President of the German Institute for Economic Research Marcel Fratzscher in an interview with the Rheinische Post newspaper in February this year that the ongoing conflict already bled around 100 billion from the German economy which is equivalent to about 2.5 per cent of the countrys GDP. The root cause was of course reliance on Russian energy. Investieren Sie in Afrika Thats the German for Invest in Africa, a country whose businesses have an impressive global presence, but its investments in Africa account for less than 1 per cent of the German FDI. In a study How effectively do Germanys foreign trade and investment promotion schemes support investment in Africa? conducted by KfW Research major industrialised nations such as France, UK and US invest four to seven times more in Africa compared to Germany. The paper, which was published in September 2020 further, said, investment portfolios of German companies in Africa have stagnated for almost 20 years. Over the same period, investment by French firms has nearly quadrupled, while UK and US direct investment portfolios also grew significantly, although they have recently declined again. Chinese investment, however, showed the fastest growth, expanding by a factor of 40. Accordingly, the significance of German enterprises for African economies is shrinking. The Russia-Ukraine war has served as a wake-up call for Germany, prompting a realisation of the imperative to diversify its trade relationships instead of relying on a limited group of nations. In the just concluded G20 Compact with Africa Summit in Berlin on Monday German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that African countries should benefit more from their wealth of raw materials and the country also pledged to invest 4 billion in African green energy projects until 2030. The Compact with Africa, which was launched under the German G20 presidency to promote private investment in Africa in 2017, includes Egypt, Ethiopia, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia. Despite the presence of over 800 German companies in Africa, their presence was predominantly limited to South Africa. Surprisingly, their overall investment in the continent remains minimal. In 2014, out of the nearly 1 trillion in global investments by the German economy, only a meagre 7 billion found its way into Africa. At the heart of Germanys Marshall Plan with Africa lies a fundamental principle: enhancing the prominence of the private sector. This strategic proposal advocates for a shift away from traditional developmental aid, instead proposing a noteworthy surge in private investment. The goal is clear to drive continuous economic development throughout the African continent. Outlining Germanys vision for the future, Chancellor Scholz emphasized the necessity of importing significant volumes of green hydrogen. This strategic move is essential for Germany to achieve its net-zero emissions goal by 2045, and Africa is envisioned as a key source for this crucial element. Notably, the importance Chancellor Scholz has given to Africa can be gauged from the fact that the German chancellor has already undertaken five official trips to Africa since assuming office in late 2021. A Reuters report said that German trade with Africa was 60 billion last year, which is a fraction of its trade with Asia but up 21.7 per cent in 2021. Chinese footprint in Africa Chinas impact on African investments is profound. Over time, China has consistently deepened its commitment to the African continent, solidifying and expanding its influence. The China-Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies sheds light on a notable surge in Chinese FDI annual flows to Africa. Commencing at a humble $75 million in 2003, this amount skyrocketed to a remarkable $5 billion in 2021, highlighting the substantial expansion of Chinas economic influence in the region. Since 2013, as per a study from China-Africa Research Initiative, Chinese FDI flows to Africa have surpassed those from US. In 2021, the top five African destinations for Chinese FDI were the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Guinea, South Africa and Kenya while American investment was concentrated in different nations including South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Republic of the Congo. Perhaps China was more audacious, perhaps they have more vision and perhaps they trusted the potential in Africa, Moussa Faki, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, said as per a Euronews report. COVID-19 hit African economy Like in any other continent in the world, Africa was badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic not just its people but also its economy. In November 2021, an EY Attractiveness Report on Africa, Reset for growth: fast forward rightly analysed the impact: Africa, along with the rest of the world, was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and witnessed one of its worst economic recessions in 50 years, heightened by weak health care systems and infrastructure. Overall GDP contracted by 2.4% in 2020, less than the 3.6% contraction in global GDP, 6.7% in the Eurozone and 4.3% in the Americas. Few countries were able to avoid the pandemics impact. Across Africa, East Africa was most robust, with Tanzania and Ethiopia growing fastest in 2020. Southern Africa was greatly affected, with South Africa registering the highest number of COVID-19 cases in 2020, pushing the economy into deep recession. The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a severe blow to FDI in Africa, leading to a substantial contraction in 2020. The region experienced a sharp decline, with FDI decreasing by half, marking it as the most severely impacted area on a global scale. Germany means business in Africa The recent G20 Compact with Africa summit in Berlin, held this month, witnessed active engagement from African leaders, German businesses, and top German officials. Germanys fresh approach to Africa appears poised to create a mutually beneficial scenario, holding the potential for positive impacts on the global economy. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstposts views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On 31 October 2023, the local police and personnel of Pakistans infamous intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) stopped Baloch students from carrying books in University of Turbat. The incident wasnt reported in the local or Pakistans national media due to complete censorship in Balochistan but a video of the incident went viral on social media. The video showed that that some Baloch students were attacked by the armed police personnel. They were heckled, pushed back and the police personnel could be seen trying to snatch their books. However, the Baloch students managed to avoid any clash with the armed personnel though they were provoked to do so. This video of University of Turbat students being restricted from carrying books sparked a stormy reaction from Baloch society kicking off a student protest. Baloch students started their protests through a sit-in outside the campus to convey their message to the university administration. Responding to this protest, the university authorities directed by the Pakistan deep state blocked the entry of Baloch students as well as Baloch faculty in not only the premises of University of Turbat but directives from Islamabad ensured that the Baloch faculty wasnt allowed to enter other universities also. Professor Manzoor Baloch, a senior faculty from university of Balochistan was barred from entering into University of Turbat on 13 November this year. He was also not allowed to take part in an academic programme that was supposed to take place in University of Turbat. Manzoor Baloch posted a video message to share his plight and concerns. He categorically said that his lecture was primarily related to academic issues but he stopped so to ensure that there was no interaction with Baloch students. Meanwhile, according to ground reports, police had opened indiscriminate firing on peaceful students of Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Science in Balochistan on 16 November, 2023. University of Agriculture, Water & Marine Sciences (LUAWMS) is a government university located at Uthal in Lasbela District in Balochistan. The students had gathered to protest over the non-availability of basic facilities in the campus. Instead of addressing their grievances, the armed personnel opened direct fire on students. According to the student leaders, dozens of Baloch students had sustained bullet injuries and many had become unconscious due to tear gas shells that rained on the campus. About 50 students were arrested by the local authority and taken to police stations in Uthal and Lasbela. Sameer Baloch, a young student of LUAWMS is one of those who are missing as ISI picked him up like many others. Given the past record of more than 20,000 Balochis missing after being picked up by security forces, the fate of most Baloch students hangs in balance. There is a distinct pattern now where the Pakistani security personnel pick up young Baloch students, slap bogus charges on them and put them in jail. A very few are fortunate to come out of the prison. In fact, a large number of Baloch students go missing. There are hundreds of families who have been searching for these missing students which are suspected to have been the victim of the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Pakistani authorities. Meanwhile, the central spokesman of the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO) has said in his statement that educational institutions throughout Balochistan have been militarised and handed over to gunmen, where they inflict the worst violence on students whenever they want. Pakistan authorities were victimising the unsuspecting Baloch students through brutality and coercion. The central spokesperson of BSO said that students were shelled, and the administration also issued a dictatorial order to vacate the hostels. On 27 October last month a Baloch student, Fareed Baloch, of the Punjab University (PU) was abducted by ISI and local police in broad daylight from the gate of the New Campus. The video of his abduction was also posted on social media which went viral. Luckily, he was saved and police revealed his arrest and charged with fake FIR. But there are several other Baloch students who were picked up from Punjab University campus and have never returned back. Hundreds of students had been expelled from various universities of the Punjab province. Many Baloch students have been attacked by Jamaat-e-Islami activists and other radical Islamists in Punjab. Targeting Balochi female students through secret cameras The local Baloch leaders recount with horror the 2019 scandal in Balochistan University. A number of professors had found out secret cameras and microphones in bathrooms of both male and female students. They were purportedly installed by the ISI and the Baloch students were blackmailed to work secretly for Pakistan authorities as well as for sexual favours. The issue had created an uproar in the Balochistan assembly. The then vice chancellor of the University Dr Javed Iqbal had to resign. Though the news was censored to a large extent but The Tribune (a Pakistan-based newspaper) managed to publish some details on 20 October, 2019 in a story titled, Balochistan University VC steps down as FIA probes harassment case. It said, The university and Dr Iqbal have been receiving widespread criticism after students claimed that CCTV footage was being used by the administration to blackmail female students for sexual favours. Along with the CCTV cameras on campus, the students have said they were being monitored through additional cameras and microphones placed in washrooms and smoking areas. The universitys professors and staff members confirmed to the media that they have seen these secret cameras. According to the ground reports, the fallout of this incident is that thousands of girls have been taken out of the university by their parents due to safety concerns. This is a major blow for Baloch population and especially women who are already on the bottom of the ladder in terms of education standards. The local Baloch leaders suspect that this scare has also been created deliberately to ensure that Baloch youth should avoid campuses and remain uneducated. Earlier on 27 February this year, Baloch students were attacked in Quaid-e-Azam university in Islamabad. Many of them sustained serious injuries. In July 2023, after a suicide attack killed a police officer in Turbat, hundreds of Baloch students were picked up illegally by the Pakistani authorities in retaliation. This led to widespread protests, but the Pakistani establishment remained undeterred clearly indicating that its brutal crackdown on Baloch students would continue unless they get their homeland an independent Balochistan. The writer is an author and columnist and has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstposts views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Why would a scientist be interested in roses or for that matter lavender? The fact is that these flowers when taken through a gentle process known as hydro steam distillation, yield aromatic oils that have considerable commercial benefit. Indeed these substances are the key to successful perfumery industries in other countries. The fragrant rose or botanically speaking Rosa damascena was originally grown in India and Egypt where it was used to make rose water. A favourite scent of the Romans, it has been used for cosmetics, fragrances, edibles, and even with some help from bees to make honey. France was typically the leader in rose and lavender oil production in earlier times. From the 1920s, however, another country, tucked away in a distant corner of Europe, began to enter this business. Bulgaria is a small country with a GDP of $86 billion (nominal, 2022). However, in recent years it has overtaken France to become the world leader in lavender and rose oil production. The exports of these aromatic oils account for around 7% of the overall Bulgarian GDP, which is substantial. A region in the central part of the country in the foothills of the Balkans mountain range, with a mild four season climate, has come to be known as Bulgarias Rose Valley. This small area of around 100 sq km, with very particular microclimate characteristics has been found to yield flowers with an extraordinary propensity to yield oils that are prized the world over. Considering the diversity and yet, inscrutable way in which Nature choses to bestow its gifts on us, many of the climatic, soil and water characteristics of central Bulgaria are approximated in a small area of southern Kashmir, notably Pulwama district, and in Bhaderwah, Doda and Kishtwar districts in the Jammu region of the Union Territory. Amidst the stunning landscapes of Kashmir and the fields of Bulgaria, a beautiful story unfoldsa tale of fragrant blooms that transcend borders and captivate our senses. Lets embark on this aromatic journey, exploring the intertwined stories of these two places. The climate and soil in Kashmir being much like in central Bulgaria, it is found that the constituents of the aromatic oils in both these regions are very similar. Key ingredients like citronellol and rose oxide, which gives rose oil its unique scent, are nearly the same in both, with Kashmir at 35.7% and Bulgaria at 40.6%. Other components like geraniol (30.2% in Kashmir and 20.5% in Bulgaria) and its isomer nerol (8.8% in Kashmir and 5.8% in Bulgaria) also match up closely. A technical point is relevant. The human nose is a far more sensitive detector of fragrances than the most advanced analytical spectrometers. Any particular aromatic oil is prized in the commercial market because of greater and lesser amounts of minor constituents (not just the above four major compounds). This is why natural oils smell different from oils that are made by merely mixing synthetic citronellol, rose oxide, geraniol and nerol in the above ratios. The striking similarity between Kashmiri and Bulgarian oil is brought out by the additional fact that even at the level of barely detectable microconstituents, the oils are comparable. At this stage, the two stories diverge. Bulgaria has a 100 year lead time over Kashmir in terms of standardizing its aromatic oil industry, establishing cooperatives, putting in place regulatory measures and maintaining strict quality control measures. It could do all of this despite its widely different forms of government over the past century. Because of this head start, it is today able to sell branded products that command prices as high as Rupees 1 crore for a single kilogram of rose oil extracted from say 30 to 40 quintals of rose petals. In contrast, the Kashmir product is just the oil in its raw form that is sold as such in the open market by individuals. Because it is not branded, and little effort is put into quality control, prices are much lower. Pulwama district is at the heart of our aromatic oil production effort. The production of 80 to 100 kilograms of rose oil each year has transformed the local economy. This success has attracted a diverse group of entrepreneurs, hill farmers, and job-seekers who have been drawn in by the magic of rose cultivation. The Aroma Mission or Purple Revolution launched by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research has brought lavender into the national spotlight. CSIRs Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine Jammu (IIIM) has been implementing various farmer and industry oriented hand holding projects for production, collection and post-harvest processing. Its Field Station in Bonera in the above mentioned Pulwama district is spread over 80 hectares and has significantly extended CSIRs outreach into the region. Despite all this, and because of the lack of competitive commercialisation, as employed in Bulgaria, a single litre of lavender oil from Bonera sells for just Rupees 10,000, with one hectare of land yielding around 50-60 liters of oil. How do we make the Bharatiya rose and lavender smell sweeter than the Bulgarian ones, in terms of the commercial and social benefit? This is the question. One answer may be found in Bulgarias rise to prominence in the aromatic oil industry. It overtook France a century ago because labour costs were lower there. It is here that Kashmir could become competitive with our labour costs being even lower than in Bulgaria. At present the labour costs in France, Bulgaria and Kashmir are (in Indian rupees), 3500, 600, and 400. We also need to improve our yield to match the Bulgarian oil content of 0.057% to 0.058%. If these factors are understood and controlled, and also the procedures made more systematic, Kashmir has the makings of becoming the world leader in lavender and rose oil production. But it is a long and difficult road for us. Other factors also come into play. The name Pulwama has altogether different connotations for most Indians, and any large scale effort to draw the local population into an internationally competitive industry is bound to have pronounced beneficial effects on the morale of a people badly scarred by 75 years of strife and killing. Already the CSIR based efforts have provided employment opportunities for women while farmers have responded enthusiastically in terms of lifting plants from the Field Station and cultivating them independently. There is yet another aspect to developing our aroma oil industry in Kashmir to international standards. Roses and lavender, of oil standard, do not grow in Darbhanga or Thiruvananthapuram. They grow only in a small area of a small valley that is called Kashmir. And yet, because of the high value attached to this specialist crop, we have the makings of an economy that can rival and beat an entire European country. Diversity is our primary asset and by concentrating on just aromatic oils, Kashmir might well be able to become an economic powerhouse. This argument has been developed further in my book called Bharat: India 2.0 that calls for a redefinition of an India of 28 states as a Bharat of 75 states. Kashmir, in such a scheme, would be one such state, independent of Jammu, Ladakh, Baltistan and Gilgit, not to talk of Chitral. In a small state, the attention of the people and their leaders could well be focused on one or a small number of niche products that would compete internationally with todays world leaders, in the case of rose and lavender oil for example, with Bulgaria. One can see aromatic oils play their part with hydroelectricity, fruit farming and tourism as core ingredients of a successful economy for a small state called Kashmir. In essence, this fragrant tale is one of intertwined destinies, where natures beauty meets human creativity. The symphony of scents from Kashmir and Bulgaria echoes with tradition, innovation, and economic promise, resonating with fragrance and flavor lovers around the world. Its in these blossoms that the fragrance industry finds its most precious notes, drawn from a bouquet that knows no borders. The author is in the Indian Institute of Science and has authored a book Bharat: India 2.0. Views expressed here are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstposts views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The India-Australia relationship has seen meteoric growth since the turn of the century, with defence and security cooperation increasing in concert with stronger ties in other areas. Their converging security interests due to the rise of the Indo-Pacific as a strategic construct, shared concerns in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), and a shared threat perception with respect to China have led to numerous domains in which India and Australia cooperate. India and Australia have had frosty relations for the most part since their diplomatic relationship began in the 1940s. However, the early 2000s saw vigour in defence cooperation engagements between the two countries. In 2006, the two countries signed a defence framework agreement (Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Cooperation), laying down key elements of defence cooperation, including terrorism, information sharing, and extradition. Then, in 2009, the India-Australia Joint Declaration on Security was signed, adding new areas of cooperation and committing to strengthen others amidst an overall upgrade of their relationship to a strategic one. In 2014, the Framework for Security Cooperation was signed, declaring converging political, economic and strategic interests between the two countries, with their main bilateral exercise AUSINDEX beginning in 2015, with others taking shape. Today, with the Indo-Pacific geopolitical construct achieving primacy in strategic imaginations, the larger view behind the India-Australia relationship has become about building effective regional partnerships. The relationship converges around Chinas threat to the Indo-Pacific regional order amid rising Chinese economic, political, diplomatic and military influence. Indias threat perception concerning China has grown since heightened tensions at the Line of Actual Control, which has led to strains in India-China relations since the border issue significantly impinges on Indias perceptions of China. Strained relations with China and has also brought into focus Indias economic dependence on China and efforts to pursue some form of diversification of trade baskets. This has resulted in pursuing free trade agreements with several alternative markets, including between India and Australia, through the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement. Another factor that has brought India and Australia together is shared concerns in the IOR. Australia seeks to secure the IOR as it is crucial to the maritime trade and sea lines of communication upon which it depends. This is reflected in the Foreign Policy White Paper 2017, stating, [v]alue chains drive the shipping of millions of containers annually through the straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok a few hundred kilometres north of Australia. In 2016-17, 42 per cent of Australias exports by value were from Western Australia (the state that faces the Indian Ocean). These exports are the raw materials and manufacturing inputs Australia ships to Asia and elsewhere, and this continued economic income requires regional stability. The shift of Australias concern from supporting US military action and the Global War on Terror to its immediate surroundings was clearly outlined in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR). It emphasises that Australia is a significant Indian Ocean state with the longest Indian Ocean coastline, and it has by far the largest area of maritime jurisdiction. The DSR also recognises that Australia cannot defend itself against higher threat levels. So, its alliance with the United States and other key partners is still central to Australias defence strategy and the DSR mentions India and Japan specifically, in addition to the US. In 2020, then Australian prime minister Scott Morrison and his Indian counterpart Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the bilateral relationship to newer heights. The 2020 joint statement underscores the convergence of India and Australias regional strategic visions. For instance, both share common concerns regarding the strategic, security and environmental challenges in the Indo-Pacific. That translates to a commitment to increase navy-to-navy cooperation and enhancing civil maritime cooperation between law enforcement agencies and coast guard cooperation. But it also means working in various other formats regionally, multilaterally, and in multilateral arrangements to support a regional architecture in line with their shared values and interests. A common area of cooperation is the IOR, translating to commitments to strengthening institutional relationships with organisations like the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, the Indian Ocean Rim Association and the International Maritime Organization as an element of their bilateral cooperation. Among several other agreements, the Morrison-Modi meeting led to two defence agreements and an overall upgrade of their bilateral relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. One agreement focused on logistics interoperability and the other concerned defence science and technology research. The Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) allows complex military engagement and greater combined responsiveness to issues like regional humanitarian disasters. The MLSA has allowed closer cooperation, for instance, by enabling a stronger maritime surveillance network in the IOR. The science and technology implementing arrangement facilitates improved collaboration between defence science and technology research organisations, allowing a framework for Indian and Australian organisations to also co-develop defence capabilities. Since 2021, India and Australia have expanded policy dialogues to foreign and defence 2+2 ministerial meetings. The 2021 ministerial dialogue committed to enhancing the scope and complexity of their military exercises, and engagement activities in the defence sector. The most recent defence policy dialogue indicates their intention to build partnerships in the co-development and co-production of defence equipment, exploring the Indian defence industry as a potential site for the Australian Armed Forces in its shipbuilding and maintenance plans. The India-Australia relationship was long considered underdeveloped, but socio-cultural links, a deeper economic relationship, and convergent interests in the Indo-Pacific have led to closer defence and security arrangements. Their bilateral partnership and interactions through the Quad aim to build advanced and interoperable defence forces which can respond effectively across domains. Since India is a significant security guarantor in the IOR and has close historical, economic and social links with Australia a deeper defence relationship is ideal and translates to a burden-sharing approach in the region. As a result, Indian and Australian security postures have converged, translating to stronger bilateral defence and security cooperation, and in minilateral formats like the Australia-India-Japan trilateral and the Quad, comprising other partners like Japan and the United States. Bharat Sharma is a research analyst in the Indo-Pacific Studies Programme and Josiah W Neal is an Australian researcher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstposts views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Lets talk about the EU and its Hungarian headache. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban is on the war path again. His latest target is Ursula Von Der Leyen, president of the European Commission. Orbans Hungary is the rebel among the EU member states. Its the closest to Russia, distrusts Ukraine, and opposes most of the EUs policies. On issues ranging from migration to rights for the LGBTQ+ community, Orban has been at loggerheads with the EU over all these issues and more. I am deeply convinced that we must say no to the Brussels model of Europe. We have to say no because it is unsustainable, it has no future. I am convinced that today Brussels is destroying Europe and is leading it to its demise. They put a new nail into its coffin every day, said the Hungarian prime minister. That speech was from Saturday, a day after Orban announced a national consultation. Its a non-binding, informal survey that is going to be circulated in Hungary whereby citizens will be asked what they think about several EU policies. The exercise wont really have any legal repercussions. Its mostly a message to the EU that Hungarians stand with Orban and against them. At least thats what Orban hopes the results will show. And hes sparing no effort to ensure Hungarians turn against Brussels. We will resist the crazy ideas of Brussels bureaucrats, we will resist the migrants invasion, we will resist gender propaganda, and we will resist the illusions over the war (in Ukraine) and Ukraines unprepared EU membership, said Orban. On Monday, the signs cropped up all over Hungary to show Von Der Leyen alongside Alex Soros, son of George Soros. The billionaire behind the Open Society Foundations. The Soros family has been accused of meddling in politics. In countries around the world, they are known to fund the opposition to right-wing conservative governments which makes them reviled by Orban and other conservative leaders. Putting Alex Soros next to Von Der Leyen is a clear message. That she is also an enemy. Next to their photos is a message in Hungarian. It roughly translates to Lets not dance to the tune they whistle! This is Orbans latest attack against Brussels. And it specifically targets Von Der Leyen for the first time. But thats the only new thing about it. Viktor Orban has done this before with Leyens predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker. In 2019, Orban took out attack advertisements against Juncker as well. Back then, he put Junkers photo next to that of George Soros. In 2019, the slogan was everybody has the right to know what Brussels is planning!. So Mondays advertisements are a repeat. Orban is trying to recreate the Hungary versus EU and Soros battlelines. But why? Orban says he doesnt want Brussels to have free reign. Neither over migration nor over support for Ukraine. Or anything really that he disagrees with. Which is a long list. But despite his grievances, Orban wants the benefits of EU membership. He insists that he wont leave the bloc. Instead, he plans to hamper EU policies and he will try and change the group from the inside. Our task, our calling, is to prevent this. We must prevent it. Our interest is that the union should remain together. It should remain together as it was so hard to put together. We must not leave the union but change it. And it is only possible if radical changes happen in Brussels, said Orban. So what do Brussels and Von Der Leyen think about all of this? Apparently, not much. Reports say Von Der Leyen was completely unfazed when she heard about the aforesaid advertisements. An EU spokesperson later said: Lets be clear. We know this is not the first time. Its probably not the last time. We have business to do. We have crises to manage. We have policies to implement. Which can be understood as: We dont have time to deal with that nuisance in Budapest. Orban may be a perpetual thorn in the EUs side, but is it safe to just ignore him? Like it or not, he is leading an EU nation. He does have a say. And if hes training his guns on Leyen, the EUs unity and any shred of legitimacy are both at risk. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstposts views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Elon Musks EV company Tesla is set to introduce its most affordable model, priced at 25,000 Euros, as a two-door car in Germany, as per a report by Moneycontrol. Sources indicate that after the German launch, the same electric vehicle will be subsequently introduced in India, although Tesla has not officially confirmed its entry into the Indian market. The American multinational automotive and clean energy company is expected to begin importing some of its models into India starting next year. While specific details about the models intended for the Indian market remain limited, insider information suggests that the Model Y Crossover will be the first Tesla model made available in the country. The Model Y, based on the Model 3 sedan platform, is a battery-electric mid-size crossover SUV manufactured by Tesla Inc. since 2020. Positioned as a smaller and more affordable alternative to the mid-sized Tesla Model X, the Model Y also provides an option for a seven-passenger seating capacity with its available third-row seats. Despite the lack of an official announcement regarding its India plans, Teslas move aligns with statements made by Trade Minister Piyush Goyal. Goyal previously mentioned that Tesla is looking to double the number of components it imports from India. Visiting Teslas manufacturing facility in Fremont, California, Goyal expressed pride in the increasing significance of Indian auto component suppliers in Teslas electric vehicle supply chain. In September, Goyal revealed that Tesla aimed to source components valued between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion from India in the current year, building upon the $1 billion worth of components imported the previous year. Recent reports also suggest that Tesla will start importing its EVs in India, once the union government reduces the import duties on CBU EVs in the country. Tesla is also set to start manufacturing its EVs in India in a couple of years, after it builds its production plant with an initial investment of $2 billion. (With inputs from agencies) Changpeng Zhao, one of the biggest figures in the cryptocurrency world and CEO of Binance, has resigned and pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money laundering laws as part of a substantial $4.3 billion settlement, resolving a lengthy investigation into the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange. This resolution with the Justice Department, forming part of a broader settlement involving various U.S. agencies, addresses criminal charges related to operating an unlicensed money transmitter business, conspiracy, and breaching sanctions regulations. In a tweet, Zhao, widely known as CZ, acknowledged his resignation, stating, Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. As part of the settlement, Zhao is personally paying $50 million and is prohibited from any involvement with Binance. The uncertainty surrounding Zhaos future is heightened by U.S. sentencing guidelines, which suggest a prison term of 10 to 18 months for the charges he faces. Prosecutors are reportedly seeking an 18-month prison sentence. Changpeng Zhao, with the moniker CZ, founded Binance in Shanghai in 2017 and quickly became a significant player in the crypto space. Despite the recent setback, Zhao had been vocal about Binances ambitions, stating earlier this year that the platform aimed to operate at the same level as financial institutions that had been around for centuries. Zhaos guilty plea and the resulting settlement represent a stark contrast to Binances earlier claims of progress in global regulatory compliance. The company had emphasized its commitment to strengthening client checks and building the best security and compliance team in the crypto industry. Born in China and later moving to Canada, Zhaos global journey included stints in Tokyo and New York before establishing Binance in Shanghai. The exchanges rapid expansion made it the worlds largest crypto exchange within six months. Despite the recent challenges, Binance, which still accounts for about half of global crypto trading volumes, has appointed Richard Teng, a senior executive who joined in 2021, as the new CEO. Zhao expressed confidence that Teng would lead Binance through the next phase of security, transparency, compliance, and growth. The extent to which Zhao will retain control over the numerous entities associated with Binance remains unclear. (With inputs from agencies) Elon Musks social media platform, X will donate all its advertising revenue associated with the conflict in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza, The announcement was made by Musk on X. This decision comes amidst intense fighting between the Israel Defence Force and Hamas, the ruling authority in Gaza, resulting in over 13,000 casualties due to Israeli bombardments in the densely populated Gaza Strip. X Corp will be donating all revenue from advertising & subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2023 The conflict has left major hospitals, including Al Shifa in Gaza, nearly non-functional, facing critical supply shortages. Israel asserts that Hamas uses these facilities to conceal military command posts and fighters, a claim denied by both Hamas and hospital staff. Last month, Musk also revealed that his satellite network, Starlink, would provide connectivity to recognized aid organizations in Gaza. This support became crucial after communication and internet services were disrupted in the region. Starlink, developed by Musks SpaceX, aims to provide low-cost internet access to remote areas and plans to deploy as many as 42,000 satellites in its mega constellation. However, X has been grappling with a decline in advertiser support, with concerns arising about ads appearing alongside controversial content, including pro-Nazi materials and hate speech. Major companies, such as IBM, NBCUniversal, and Comcast, parent company of NBCUniversal, have ceased advertising on X. Musk responded to concerns about fund allocation, stating that funds would be tracked and go through the Red Cross/Crescent to ensure they do not reach the Palestinian terror group Hamas. We will track how funds are spent and go through Red Cross/Crescent. Better ideas are welcome. We should care about the innocent regardless of race, creed, religion or anything else, he said. We will track how funds are spent and go through Red Cross/Crescent. Better ideas are welcome. We should care about the innocent regardless of race, creed, religion or anything else. Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 21, 2023 Despite these philanthropic efforts, Musks controversial posts, including recent endorsements of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, have contributed to heightened tensions on the platform. Advertisers remain cautious due to concerns about the platforms content and Musks controversial statements, leading to legal actions against organizations reporting such issues. (With input from agencies) Senior government officials have disclosed that the Union government is set to hold discussions with senior executives from social media and other internet companies this Thursday to address the escalating issue of deepfakes on the internet, as per a report in the Economic Times. The meeting, scheduled between representatives from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and executives from internet firms, is expected to focus on establishing a standard operating procedure (SoP) with guidelines for handling deepfake content. An official familiar with the matter stated, Deep-fake is classified as impersonation and misinformation under Rule 3(2)(b) of the IT Rules and therefore has detailed provisions on the action to be taken. For the time being, we will come out with an SoP for intermediaries on the action to be taken. The DIA (Digital India Act) may contain detailed provisions on dealing with newer technologies such as deep fake, while requesting anonymity. Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had previously announced plans to convene with social media and internet intermediaries to devise strategies for curbing the spread of deepfake photos and videos. He emphasized that platforms must make sufficient efforts to combat such content, and the existing safe harbour clause in the IT Act would not apply if platforms fail to do so. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the deepfake issue last Friday, citing an alleged video showing him performing the traditional Gujarati dance, Garba, and singing. Modi expressed concerns about the potential harm caused by misinformation spread through deepfakes, labelling it a serious threat. He recommended that deepfake content include disclaimers for viewers, revealing that he had proposed a similar idea to the OpenAI team. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued an advisory to social media and internet intermediaries, urging them to take strict action against any deepfake content in accordance with the provisions outlined in the IT Rules and IT Act. (With input from agencies) Microsoft is actively discussing governance changes with OpenAIs board, aiming to enhance its structure and prevent unexpected strategic moves. OpenAI recently fired CEO Sam Altman, leading to investor calls for his reinstatement, with Microsoft open to his return under specific conditions. The software giant is seeking to address perceived governance issues that led to Altmans dismissal. Proposed changes may involve expanding the board size and raising the experience threshold for members, sources familiar with Microsofts considerations revealed on condition of anonymity. Microsoft, as OpenAIs major investor, is contemplating reinforcing its existing deal, which mandates board approval for mergers. The recent attempt by the OpenAI board to merge with Anthropic did not involve Microsofts approval, prompting the company to enhance protections and broaden scenarios where it has veto or notification rights. Having invested approximately $13 billion in OpenAI, Microsoft is awaiting the emergence of a new board to initiate discussions on governance changes. Negotiations between Altman, OpenAI board members, and interim CEO Emmett Shear are underway to explore the possibility of Altmans reinstatement. Implementing changes as desired by Microsoft is expected to be a part of the evolving process following the resolution of Altmans return and the fate of the current board. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized the need for significant governance changes at OpenAI, regardless of whether Altman returns or assumes a role overseeing a new AI research unit at Microsoft. Nadella expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of prior notification from OpenAIs board regarding Altmans termination. In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Nadella stated, Surprises are bad, and we just want to make sure things are done in a way that will allow us to partner well. He stressed the importance of changes occurring in collaboration with Microsoft to avoid unexpected developments. Microsoft is also considering the possibility of placing one of its executives on OpenAIs board. However, the company will carefully weigh the desire for increased control against potential regulatory challenges that may arise from direct involvement in the startup, according to sources familiar with Microsofts thinking. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on the matter. The Information reported on OpenAIs outreach to Anthropic on Monday. (With input from agencies) A pioneering woman entrepreneur in Coimbatore claims to have achieved a significant milestone by designing Indias first indigenous hovercraft capable of traversing both land and water. Supritha Chandrasekar, the Managing Director of Eurotech Pivot Solutions Private Limited, asserted that the trial run of the hovercraft boat was successfully conducted on Coimbatore Sulur Lake, as per a report by news agency ANI. #WATCH | Tamil Nadu: Woman Entrepreneur designs cost-effective hovercraft boat in Coimbatore (21/11) pic.twitter.com/0WdGDZZV8C ANI (@ANI) November 21, 2023 This innovative hovercraft is characterized as an amphibious vehicle, demonstrating its ability to operate seamlessly across various terrains. Chandrasekar emphasized that the hovercraft was developed under the Made in India initiative, presenting a cost-effective solution compared to international alternatives. She highlighted the versatility of the product, stating that it has potential applications for the Indian Navy, Air Force, Army, NDRF rescue operations, and various national services. The hovercraft boasts an impressive speed capability, capable of reaching 100 km/h on road surfaces and 80 km/h on water. Chandrasekar further revealed that the vehicle has a payload capacity of one tonne, with future plans to construct a larger 16-meter-long hovercraft accommodating 24 seats. This technological achievement marks a noteworthy contribution to Indias innovation landscape and has the potential to address diverse operational needs across different sectors, ranging from defence to emergency response. The successful trial run in Coimbatore signifies a significant step forward in the development of indigenous hovercraft technology for the nation. (With input from agencies) Three doctors have been killed in the latest Israeli strike on Al Awda Hospital, one of the last remaning functional hospitals in Northern Gaza. Two of the three deceased doctors, Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Dr Ahmad Al Sahar, were from French medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Both the MSF doctors were in the facility when it was hit on the third and the fourth floors. Other medical staff, including those from MSF were have also been injured in the strike. MSF has regularly shared information about Al Awda as a functioning hospital and the presence of its staff in Al Awda to warring parties. GPS coordinates were also shared with Israeli authorities, MSF said in a statement. We condemn this strike in the strongest terms and yet again call for the respect and protection of medical facilities, staff and patients, MSF said. Till 21 November, 2023, more than 200 patients were still admitted in Al Awda and were unable to receive the level of care they need, claimed MSF. These patients must be urgently and safely evacuated to other hospitals that are still functioning although all hospitals in Gaza have been working beyond their capacities since October due to ongoing shortages, attacks and extremely high caseload, it said. Seeing doctors killed next to hospital beds is beyond tragic, and this must stop now, MSF said, adding that the attacks on medical facilities are a serious violation of International Humanitarian Law, and this has become systematic in the past weeks. MSF has been working in Al Awda since 2018, providing reconstructive surgeries for adults and trauma surgeries for children. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) mourned the deaths of three doctors and a patient companion at Al Awda who were reportedly killed in an attack on the hospital on Tuesday. .@WHO stands in solidarity with health workers at Al Awda Hospital in North Gaza, as well as colleagues at @MSF, and mourns the deaths of three doctors and a patient companion who were reportedly killed in an attack on the hospital today. Reportedly, many were additionally pic.twitter.com/5Ppmlmy57v WHO in occupied Palestinian territory (@WHOoPt) November 21, 2023 Earlier on Wednesday, Israel and Hamas backed a deal to free about 50 hostages from Gaza in return for a four-day ceasefire and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners - the first lull in a conflict that began on 7 October and has killed thousands of civilians. What's Israel-Hamas deal? In the initial stage of the deal mediated by Qatar, Hamas will free 50 Israeli women and children held in Gaza. In a statement posted on Telegram, Hamas said, in return, Israel has agreed to release about 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and children. In a second stage that could see the halt in fighting extended, the release of every 10 additional hostages by Hamas will lengthen the pause in fighting by one day, a statement by the Israeli prime ministers office said. The humanitarian pause will also allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs, Qatars government said in a statement early Wednesday. The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension," it added. With inputs from agencies Following the North Korean defiance of warnings from the US and its allies and its successful launch of a spy satellite, South Korea moved on Wednesday to suspend a part of the military accord it had signed with Pyongyang in 2018 . North Korea declared on Tuesday that it had successfully launched its first spy satellite into orbit, and it promised to do so again soon. Images released by North Korean official media purportedly showed the countrys leader Kim Jong Un witnessing the dramatic rocket launch from a base. Aiming to defuse tensions between the rivals, the Comprehensive Military Agreement was signed in 2018 during a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and former South Korean President Moon Jae-in. However, some have demanded that it be repealed, arguing that Pyongyang has blatantly broken the pact and that Seouls capacity to keep an eye on North Koreas activities along the border has been undermined. The South Korea Defence Ministry announced that it would be resuming aerial surveillance close to the shared border and suspending a provision of the agreement as of 3 p.m. (0600 GMT). South Korea and Japan, which first reported the launch, could not immediately verify whether a satellite was in orbit. The Pentagon said the US military was still assessing whether the launch was a success. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, in Britain for a state visit, approved the decision to suspend part of the inter-Korean agreement. Yoon earlier led a National Security Council meeting with ministers and the intelligence chief by video link. Meanwhile, North Koreas KCNA state news agency said the Malligyong-1 satellite was launched on a Chollima-1 rocket from the Sohae satellite launch facility at 10:42 p.m. (1342 GMT) on Tuesday and entered orbit at 10:54 p.m. (1354 GMT). KCNA cited North Koreas National Aerospace Technology Administration. North Korea had notified Japan it planned to launch a satellite between Wednesday and 1 December, after two failed attempts to launch what it called spy satellites this year. South Koreas military said it believed the latest rocket carried a reconnaissance satellite. Aegis-system equipped destroyers from South Korea, Japan and the United States were in position to track the launch vehicle and share information. Japanese broadcaster FNN reported a test on sharing information on Tuesdays launch failed because of technical problems. The three countries have boosted military cooperation to respond to North Koreas missile threat. On Wednesday, the US nuclear-powered submarine USS Santa Fe docked at a South Korean port, a day after the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrived in a show of force against North Koreas nuclear and missile programs. US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson called the satellite launch a brazen violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and said it raises tensions, and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for North Korea to fully comply with U.N. resolutions and urged Pyongyang to return to dialogue, a spokesperson said. Tuesdays launch is the first since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Vladimir Putin at Russias modern space facility in September, where the Russian president promised to help Pyongyang build satellites. South Korean officials have said the latest launch most likely involved technical assistance from Moscow under a growing partnership that has seen North Korea send millions of artillery shells to Russia. Some missile experts, however, said that it was too soon for Russian technical assistance to have been fully incorporated into the satellite or the rocket and that Moscow would not have shared highly sensitive and proprietary technology. This consultation may not have been an in-depth involvement in the design, but likely targeted specific challenging aspects within North Koreas planned design, said Hong Min, an expert on the Norths weapons development at the Korea Institute for National Unification. Jeffrey Lewis, a missile expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said it is much too early for the North to have integrated Russias assistance. Maybe the Russians gave them some advice, but its normal for countries to launch and learn, Lewis said. Russia and North Korea have denied conducting arms deals, but are publicly promising deeper cooperation. KCNA said Kim Jong Un personally observed the launch, which came just over a week before South Korea plans to send its first spy satellite into space on a rocket operated by the U.S. company Space X. After the May launch attempt, South Korea retrieved the wreckage of the satellite from the sea and said an analysis showed it had limited use as a reconnaissance platform. With inputs from agencies The Chinese government has been attempting to close mosques outside of Xinjiang, which has been under fire for years for its treatment of Muslim minority. This expansion has reached the Ningxia region and Gansu province, areas with significant Hui Muslim populations. According to Times of India, citing the Human Rights Watch report, which uses satellite imagery, public records, and firsthand testimonies, these closures are a component of an official plan known as consolidation. Local authorities have begun closing mosques and changing their architectural designs to better fit the Chinese style. This is part of the Communist Partys broader initiative to exert greater control over religious practices and minimise potential threats to its authority, added the report. Since 2016, President Xi Jinping has advocated for the Sinicization of religions, leading to intensified crackdowns, particularly in Xinjiang. This region is home to over 11 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. A United Nations report from the previous year suggested that Chinas actions in Xinjiang, including the establishment of extrajudicial internment camps holding at least 1 million Uyghurs, Huis, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz, might constitute crimes against humanity. Human Rights Watchs findings reveal that mosque closures, demolitions, or conversions for secular purposes are occurring in areas outside Xinjiang as part of a broader clampdown on religious expression. The report mentioned that the Chinese Foreign Ministry has not immediately responded to inquiries about the report and its policies towards Muslim minorities. The first reference to the idea of mosque consolidation was found in an April 2018 internal party document that was disclosed to US media as part of the Xinjiang Papers. This document prohibited the construction of new mosques in an effort to decrease the overall number of mosques and urged state authorities to oversee the maintenance and development existing Islamic religious facilities. According to The Guardian report, both David Stroup of the University of Manchester and Hannah Theaker, a lecturer at the University of Plymouth, pointed out that removing the ablution facilities practically makes these structures unfit for worship, even though they dont look like it. It is estimated that since 2020, over 1,300 mosques in Ningxiaroughly one-third of all mosques registered have closed. Mosques that have been closed or destroyed because of their unofficial status are not included in this number. Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch, criticised the governments actions, stating that the closures and destruction of mosques represent a systematic effort to suppress Islam in China, contradicting the governments claim of merely consolidating mosques. In Ningxias Liaoqiao and Chuankou villages, all seven mosques had their domes and minarets dismantled, and three main buildings were demolished between 2019 and 2021, as evidenced by online videos and satellite imagery. Additionally, the ablution hall of one mosque was internally damaged. A March 2018 document from Yinchuan, Ningxias capital, also referenced the policy of consolidating mosques. It outlined a strategy to control the number and size of religious venues and encouraged mosques to adopt Chinese architectural styles, suggesting that combining mosques could address the issue of their abundance. In Gansu province, local governments have documented efforts to consolidate mosques. For instance, in Guanghe County, predominantly Hui, 12 mosques were deregistered, five were closed, and another five were improved and consolidated in 2020, as per the governments annual yearbook mentioned in the report. An imam from Ningxia interviewed by Radio Free Asia explained that the mosque consolidation policy requires merging any mosques within 2.5km of each other. He expressed concerns that this policy would lead to a decline in religious participation among younger and middle-aged people, eventually eroding the Islamic faith and leading to the sinicization of Muslims. There have also been reports of mosque closures or alterations in other parts of China, occasionally sparking public protests. In May, in Nagu town, Yunnan province, residents clashed with police over the planned demolition of a mosque dome. With inputs from agencies Though they urged it should be extended and serve as a first step towards a complete halt of hostilities, Arab foreign ministers hailed an agreement on Wednesday for a temporary truce between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza. At a London media briefing, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan declared that the deal, which calls for the release of hostages and increased aid to the Gaza Strip, should eventually result in the restart of negotiations for a two-state solution. Israel and Hamas reached a temporary ceasefire agreement on Wednesday that calls for a four-day ceasefire, the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza, the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel, and the introduction of humanitarian aid into the enclave. Humanitarian aid should continue and grow, according to Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, and it shouldnt subsequently be dependant on additional captive releases. Whatever humanitarian access now increases as a result of this hostage deal must remain in place and must be built upon, he stated. This access cannot at any time be restricted in light of the hostages continued release It is wholly unacceptable to punish Gazas civilian populace for taking those prisoners. On October 7, 240 captives were taken by Hamas terrorists who broke through the border into Israel, murdering 1,200 civilians and Israeli soldiers. This marked the start of the conflict. (With agency inputs) The Australian Government has issued hundreds of temporary visas to Palestinians amid ongoing Israeli bombardment on Gaza. Foreign Minister Penny Wong however have read the situation as still very difficult for Gazans. According to reports, as many as 860 visas have been approved between October 7 and November 20. However, only 67 people, including Australians and their families, have successfully crossed into Egypt via the Rafah border. Wong appreciated assistance from the United States, Qatar, and Egypt in facilitating these crossings. Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan criticised the lack of transparency regarding the visa scheme, urging the government to provide details on the process, basis for approval, and security checks. To this, Minister Wong reassures that visa recipients undergo standard security checks by Australian authorities. The conflict stems from Israels response to Hamas actions on October 7, leading to a recent agreement for a four-day humanitarian pause. Qatar announces the release of 50 hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israel. Wong considers the ceasefire a crucial step and emphasizes Australias consistent call for the release of hostages, humanitarian access, and protection of civilian lives. When asked about a sustainable ceasefire, Wong expresses the desire for one, stressing the need for balanced steps. She acknowledges progress with the recent agreement but remains deeply concerned about civilian casualties and condemns Hamass actions. (with inputs from agencies) Pakistan has come under fire for imposing an exit fee on Afghan refugees who flee Talibans persecution in the country. Cash-strapped Pakistan targets refugees who wait to leave the country to move to Western nations under resettlement schemes. Each refugee is charged about $830. Western diplomats and the United Nations have condemned the move, describing it as shocking and frustrating. Talking to The Guardian, a senior Western diplomat said, I know it is very tough economically for Pakistan but really, to try to make money off refugees is really unattractive. The diplomat added, The issue has also been raised by the two UN agencies in the lead on this mess, the [UN refugee agency] UNHCR and [International Organization of Migration] IOM. It has also been raised in capitals and headquarters. I suspect everyone has also passed the message to their [Pakistani contacts]. Pakistans unprecedented move comes after the country set November 1 as a deadline for Afghan refugees to leave. After the expiration of the deadline, Pakistan began the mass deportation of undocumented Afghans. Thousands of Afghans with expired visas or incorrect documents have been living in Pakistan since 2021 after the Taliban took over Afghanistan hoping to restart their work in Western nations. Most are still eligible to settle in Western countries on humanitarian grounds. While the UK government has planned to settle 20,000 people from Afghanistan, the Biden-led government in the US has agreed to settle 25,000 Afghans. As per the rules, Afghan refugees can only pay the amount of $830 via credit card even though most of them do not have access to credit cards. Another diplomat said, This makes it worse as it should be paid by refugees and most of them dont have credit cards. I think we need a cooperative approach of working together to help the refugees and we expect Pakistan would help. When officials flagged their concerns about the exit fee, they were told that the initial plan was to charge $1,000 but the amount was later reduced to $830. It is very bizarre and I personally find it very frustrating. If Pakistan wants to facilitate the process of the settlement of refugees in the West then they should not make it more complicated with such absurd conditions. What is the justification for this exit permit fee? To make a lot of money? the diplomat added. China has asked countries to remain calm and restrained after North Korea said that it has successfully launched a spy satellite, sparking condemnation from countries like the US and South Korea. All parties concerned should remain calm and restrained, look squarely at the crux of the problem, adhere to the general direction of a political settlement, and do more to help ease tensions, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing when asked about the launch. On Tuesday, North Korea said it had placed its first spy satellite in orbit, vowing to add more in the future. The move prompted South Korea to suspend part of a military agreement it signed with Pyongyang in 2018 after the isolated North defied warnings from the United States and its allies and launched a spy satellite. North Koreas KCNA state news agency said the Malligyong-1 satellite was launched on a Chollima-1 rocket from the Sohae satellite launch facility at 10:42 p.m. (1342 GMT) on Tuesday and entered orbit at 10:54 p.m. (1354 GMT). KCNA cited North Koreas National Aerospace Technology Administration. Pyongyang had reportedly informed Japan about its plans to launch a satellite between 22 November to 1 December. South Korea says that the latest rocket fired is carrying a reconnaissance satellite. Aegis-system-equipped destroyers from South Korea, Japan and the United States were in the position to track the launch vehicle and share information. With inputs from agencies A county government in China has implemented a new system of fines targeting citizens who neglect basic household chores, sparking a nationwide debate. Puge county in Sichuan province, southwest China, has introduced fines ranging from 5 to 20 yuan for various behaviors, including failing to make beds or leaving dishes unwashed. This initiative, titled Fine Standards for the New Countryside for Human Settlement Environment, outlines 14 categories of behavior subject to penalties. Aside from the previously mentioned fines, theres a 5-yuan penalty for intact spider webs and fines ranging from 3 to 10 yuan for clutter or feces in courtyards. The government emphasizes that fines will double for repeat offenses. The vice-director of the village stated that while the fines are still in the drafting stage, the primary objective is to tackle the prevalent issue of dirty, messy, and disorderly living conditions in rural homes. Acknowledging that fines alone may not effectively address these problems, the vice-director explained that they are being used as a deterrent. The government intends to reinvest the collected fines back into the community, with specific plans to purchase items like brooms or basins for penalized households. Addressing concerns about the spread of disease due to poor living conditions, a staff member mentioned that Puge county is not the first to impose such fines, emphasizing the difficulty of changing detrimental habits in impoverished regions. The Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, where Puge county is located, often receives attention in Chinese state media for its economic challenges and poverty alleviation efforts. Public opinion on the fines is divided. Some criticize the governments intrusion into citizens lives, questioning the need for inspections on tasks as personal as bed-making. Others, however, argue that these penalties are justified in the context of rural revitalization and poverty alleviation. One observer was quoted in a report saying the town is making money the right way, and fines are king. Supporters of fines however were quoted saying that they believe due to the challenging circumstances in impoverished areas, external forces like fines might be necessary to bring about positive changes in customs and habits. (with inputs from agencies) Czech President Petr Pavel signed into law on Wednesday an economic package comprising numerous measures aimed at implementing budget cuts and heightened taxes to manage the growing budget deficit. The presidents signature marked the final step in the process, as the government proposal, previously approved by parliament, officially became law. This legislation entails increased taxes on alcoholic beverages and medicine in the Czech Republic, a nation renowned for its beer culture. Additionally, businesses will face higher corporate taxes. Prime Minister Petr Fiala had emphasized the necessity of these austerity measures, citing the escalating debt as a threatening factor. Pavel said the current situation is unsustainable. According to the government, the measures should reduce the budget deficit by 97 billion Czech crowns ($4.3 billion) next year and 2025 by 150 billion ($6.7 billion). As a result, the deficit of 3.5% of the gross domestic product expected for this year should drop to 1.8% next year and to 1.2% in 2025. Corporation tax will go up by two points to 21% while property tax for individuals will be also hiked, as well as the tax on alcohol, tobacco and betting. Value-added tax will have two rates, 12% and 21%, instead of the current three 10%, 15% and 21%. Medicines will move from the 10% rate to 12%, while people will pay 21% VAT on their beloved beer in bars. The package is a compromise reached by Fialas five-party ruling coalition that took over after defeating populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis and his centrist ANO movement in the 2021 parliamentary election. The opposition condemned the changes and said it planned to take the matter to the Constitutional Court, the highest judicial power in the country, while the labour unions called for a day of protests and strikes on Monday. With inputs from AP. An Italian man who is believed to have killed a 22-year-old woman inciting outrage in his native country is to be extradited, a German court ruled on Wednesday. German news agency dpa reported that the extradition of the 21-year-old suspect was announced by the Higher Regional Court in Naumburg, in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Filippo Turetta, the suspect, was taken into custody in Halle after being apprehended over the weekend in the vicinity of Leipzig, in the east. Turetta consented to the extradition, according to the court. He wont be released from custody until the Italian authorities receive him. The exact date of the extradition was not immediately known. According to dpa, Italy requested his extradition on Tuesday. Police in Germany over the weekend arrested Turetta, who had been on the run since Nov. 11, when he was last seen fighting with 22-year-old Giulia Cecchettin, hitting her in a physical attack that was captured by roadside video cameras. Cecchettins body, reportedly with multiple stab wounds, was found wrapped in plastic on Saturday in a ditch near Lake Barcis, in the province of Pordenone north of Venice. Italian newspapers had been consumed with the search for them both, given multiple reports from friends and family that Turetta had refused to accept Cecchettins decision to end the relationship. Cecchettins sister, Elena, said she had been concerned about Turettas possessiveness of her sister but never imagined he could hurt her. The fate of Cecchettin, who had been due to graduate university Thursday with a degree in engineering, had dominated news reports for a week and led to an outpouring of anger when her body was finally found. (with inputs from The Associated Press) Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend the virtual G20 Leaders Summit. The development comes amidst a diplomatic standoff between India and Canada over Trudeaus allegation of Indian involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a designated terrorist in India. According to the schedule released by the Canadian Prime Ministers officer for Wednesday, the PM will attend the meeting virtually that is being hosted by India. Trudeau keeps alleging Indian agents involvement in Nijjars killing. The accusation has deteriorated relations between the two countries. Meanwhile, the G20 Virtual Summit gets underway today at 5:30 pm. The summit will witness a major gathering of world leaders. 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. The virtual summit will address key issues, select outcomes and review developments that have taken place since the conclusion of the New Delhi G20 Summit in September. Earlier, the Speaker of the Canadian Senate Raymonde Gagne skipped the Presiding Officers Summit of Parliaments of G20 nations that began in Delhi on October 12. On November 12, Justin Trudeau reaffirmed his allegation of Indian involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a designated terrorist in India. Trudeau accused New Delhi of violating the Vienna Convention by kicking out 40 diplomats at a time when his country had reached out to the former and other global partners to get to the bottom of the murder. However, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) responded by saying that no international norms were violated in India, seeking parity in the mutual diplomatic presence in New Delhi and Ottawa. On November 16, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar responded to Trueadus claim emphasising that the Canadian side was yet to provide evidence to back its claims on the Nijjar killing. Following the G20 Leaders Summit that took place here in the national capital on September 9-10 this year, considerable progress on major G20 priorities as well as outcomes have been made. For instance, the G20 consensus on tripling renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and doubling the global rate of energy efficiency improvement by 2030, which was committed to by G20 Leaders in Delhi for the first time, are the key expected outcomes of COP28. With inputs from ANI. The Israeli Cabinet on Wednesday approved a cease-fire deal with the Hamas militant group that would bring a temporary halt to a devastating war that has stretched on for over six weeks and release dozens of hostages being held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. As part of the deal, Hamas is to free 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it is holding in the Gaza Strip over a four-day period, the Israeli government said on Wednesday. It said it would extend the lull by an additional day for every 10 hostages released. The Israeli government said the first hostages to be released would be women and children. Ahead of Wednesday mornings Cabinet vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume its offensive against Hamas after the cease-fire expires. It was not immediately clear when the truce would go into effect. Netanyahu convened his Cabinet for the vote late on Tuesday. The meeting stretched well into the early hours on Wednesday, underscoring the sensitivity of a proposal that would suspend an Israeli offensive against Hamas before it has reached its goals. Ahead of the vote, Netanyahu sought to assure the government ministers that the break was only tactical, vowing to resume the offensive after the truce expires. Top security officials also attended the meeting. We are at war, and we will continue the war, Netanyahu said. We will continue until we achieve all our goals. Israel has vowed to continue the war until it destroys Hamas military capabilities and returns all hostages. Netanyahu said that during the lull, intelligence efforts will be maintained, allowing the army to prepare for the next stages of battle. He said the battle would continue until Gaza will not threaten Israel. The announcement came as Israeli troops battled Palestinian militants in an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza and around hospitals overcrowded with patients and sheltering families. The deal does not mean an end to the war, which erupted on October 7 after Hamas militants stormed across the border into southern Israel and killed at least 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped some 240 others. TOLL IN GAZA In weeks of Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, and more than 2,700 others are missing and believed to be buried under rubble, according to Gazas Health Ministry. The ministry says it has been unable to update its count since November 11 because of the health sectors collapse. Gaza health officials say the toll has risen sharply since, and hospitals continue to report deaths from daily strikes, often dozens at a time. The Health Ministry in the West Bank last reported a toll of 13,300 but stopped providing its own count on Tuesday without giving a reason. The Health Ministry toll does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants but has not provided evidence for its count. In southern Lebanon, an Israeli strike killed two journalists with Al-Mayadeen TV, according to the Hezbollah-allied Pan-Arab network and Lebanese officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. A separate Israeli drone strike in Lebanon killed four Hamas members, a Palestinian official and a Lebanon security official said. The Israeli military has been trading fire almost daily across the border with Lebanons Hezbollah group and Palestinian militants since the outbreak of the war. The Benjamin Netanyahu government Wednesday released a detailed Cabinet decision on the truce agreement, saying the entire exchange of hostages and pause of fighting will be limited to a maximum of ten days from the end of the first phase. Before the dawn of Wednesday, Israel and Hamas announced that they had agreed to the terms of a Qatar-brokered deal that would see 50 Israeli women and children released in exchange for a four-day ceasefire. The Palestinian terrorist group has approximately 240 people in its captivity which it abducted into Gaza during its 7 October terror onslaught. Israel-Hamas deal The decision of Israels Cabinet lays out the framework for the deal approved by the government with Hamas and includes three annexes. 1 A recommendation from National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, 2 A classified document that was presented to the Cabinet but not published, 3 A list of 300 Palestinian security prisoners eligible for release in the deal. What does the decision say about release of hostages? As per the decision, all the 300 Palestinian prisoners will be released only on condition that Hamas frees 100 living hostages Israeli citizens or Israeli residents from Gaza and ensure their safe return to Israel. Release of hostages in two stages As per the decision, the release of hostages from Gaza will take place in two stages, with several phases in each stage. First stage to take place in four stages As per the decision, in the first stage, Israel will release 150 Palestinian prisoners once 50 hostages are returned to Israel. This will take place in four phases, with at least 10 hostages being released in each phase. The first part will last four days during which there will be a pause in the fighting, the decision added. Prisoners released in Second stage only after hostages return Israel According to the decision, in the second stage, Israel will release up to a further 150 Palestinian security prisoners if up to 50 additional hostages are returned to Israel. The Israeli government said the same ratio of Palestinian prisoners to Israeli hostages from the first part will continue in the second stage, with each additional phase containing the release of at least 10 hostages. For each additional release of 10 hostages there will be an additional pause in fighting of 24 hours, it said. Again, in the second stage, prisoners will only be released once the hostages are back in Israel. Fighting will resume immediately The statement from Israeli government cleared that immediately after the end of the pause in fighting needed to secure the release of the hostages, fighting will resume in the Gaza Strip to destroy the military and organisational capabilities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and to create the conditions for the return of all the hostages. Who will decide on which to be released? The war cabinet of PM Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Minister Benny Gantz will decide the identity of prisoners to be released in each phase, taken from the list provided. Also, they have been authorised to determine the timing of each phase. In addition, they can decide on the end of the phases, and the entire exchange and pause in fighting is limited to a maximum of ten days from the end of the first phase, the decision said. Also, the decision clarified that any Palestinian prisoners on the list who have not been released by the end of the exchanges will not be freed. With inputs from the Times of Israel Hours after North Korea announced the successful launch of the Malligyong-1 spy satellite, state media on Wednesday reported that Kim Jong Un reviewed photographs of major US military bases received from the countrys first spy satellite. Kim watched the aerospace photos of Anderson Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other major military bases of the US forces taken in the sky above Guam in the Pacific, which were received at 9:21 a.m. on November 22, state-run news agency KCNA said. The state media had earlier reported that the Malligyong-1 satellite was launched on a Chollima-1 rocket from the Sohae satellite launch facility at 10:42 p.m. (1342 GMT) on Tuesday and entered orbit at 10:54 p.m. (1354 GMT). KCNA cited North Koreas National Aerospace Technology Administration. Tuesdays launch is the first since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Vladimir Putin at Russias modern space facility in September, where the Russian president promised to help Pyongyang build satellites. South Korean officials have said the latest launch most likely involved technical assistance from Moscow under a growing partnership that has seen North Korea send millions of artillery shells to Russia. Some missile experts, however, said that it was too soon for Russian technical assistance to have been fully incorporated into the satellite or the rocket and that Moscow would not have shared highly sensitive and proprietary technology. This consultation may not have been an in-depth involvement in the design, but likely targeted specific challenging aspects within North Koreas planned design, Reuters quoted Hong Min, an expert on the Norths weapons development at the Korea Institute for National Unification, as saying. Jeffrey Lewis, a missile expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told Reuters it is much too early for the North to have integrated Russias assistance. Maybe the Russians gave them some advice, but its normal for countries to launch and learn, Lewis said. Russia and North Korea have denied conducting arms deals, but are publicly promising deeper cooperation. With inputs from agencies Foreign ministers of the Arab world are expected in India this week to discuss humanitarian aid for civilians trapped in Gaza amid the Hamas-Israel war, according to emerging reports. The Arab world ministers, who will be on their way back from the China leg of their trip that aims to end the military operation in the Gaza region, will hold talks in India in the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modis emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy as the way to end the crisis. The delegation is expected to include Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki. The primary agenda for the foreign ministers visit is to engage in discussions concerning the ongoing crisis in West Asia. They will be holding a meeting with External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar. The delegation was earlier in China and is expected to travel to other global capitals as well. Since the October 7 attack by Hamas, resulting in the death of 1,200 Israelis as per official figures, Israel has responded with major retaliation, reportedly killing over 13,300 Palestinians in Gaza so far and also cutting off all essential supplies to the besieged enclave. India has welcomed international efforts aimed at de-escalating the conflict and facilitating urgent humanitarian aid to the people of Palestine. New Delhi has condemned the October 7 attack, pointing to its policy to oppose terrorism in all its forms but also advocated adherence to international humanitarian law. India has also called for the unconditional release of all Israeli hostages who are in Hamas custody. In a display of solidarity, New Delhi has dispatched humanitarian aid to Palestine, delivering 70 tonnes of disaster relief material, including 17 tonnes of medicines and medical supplies in two instalments. The interim government of Pakistan has recommended the names of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and 28 others to be placed on the Exit Control List (ECL) to prevent them from fleeing the nation. According to a report by Dawn, a subcommittee of the federal Cabinet recommended placing the names of Khan, the chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, and 28 others on the ECL in the Al-Qadir Trust case. The case alleges that Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi received billions of rupees and land worth hundreds of kanals from Bahria Town Ltd for legalising Rs 50 billion that was identified and returned to the country by the UK during the government led by him. Earlier today, the Supreme Court of Pakistan accepted a bail application from the jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan submitted by his lawyer, a day after another court declared his trial on charges of leaking state secrets. A decision will come in the next hearing after arguments from both sides, lawyer Naeem Panjutha said in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. However, no date has been set yet for the hearing. Naeem added that the apex court will seek input from the government on the application. The 71-year-old was jailed on August 5 for three years jail for unlawfully selling state gifts during his tenure as prime minister from 2018 to 2022. His lawyer said the Supreme Court had accepted the bid for bail. With inputs from PTI Prime Minister Mateusz Morawieckis already narrow chances of retaining his position of power have been further damaged by the opposition parties in Poland rejecting his attempts to work with them to create a coalition government after last months election, MPs said on Wednesday. Although it won the Oct. 15 election, Morawieckis nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party was unable to secure a majority. His supporter, President Andrzej Duda, offered him the initial opportunity to form a new administration. Along with PiS, Morawiecki has called on other parties to form a wide Coalition for Polish Affairs and promised to carry out their policy recommendations. Morawieckis appeal has not gained traction, but opposition MPs claimed to have received letters inviting them to participate in coalition discussions. PSL ran for office as a member of the Third Way alliance, which also includes the liberal Civic alliance (KO) and the New Left in a pro-European coalition government. Szymon Holownia of Third Way was elected as the new speaker of the lower house Sejm, demonstrating that these three parties can control a majority in the assembly. The far-right Confederation party, which was predicted to support PiS in a coalition before the election, is the sole party still in parliament. However, a less favourable outcome meant that PiS would not have won a majority even with its backing. Parliament shall choose a new government if Morawiecki fails to secure a vote of confidence. Donald Tusk, the head of the KKK, has been nominated as the prime minister by the Third Way alliance, which is about to seize power. (With agency inputs) Pope Francis claimed that the conflict has evolved from a war to terrorism during his separate meetings on Wednesday with Palestinian and Israeli families who had relatives in Gaza and hostages held by Hamas. Shortly after the early-morning sessions in his home, Francis gave spontaneous remarks to his Wednesday general audience in St. Peters Square. He claimed he had firsthand knowledge of how both sides are suffering in the dispute. Wars have this effect. Here, though, weve moved past conflicts. This isnt combat. Its terrorism, he declared. In order to avoid going ahead with passions, which in the end, kill everyone, he begged for prayers from both sides. Later on Wednesday, both parties were scheduled to have separate press conferences. The discussions and the popes remarks occurred just hours after Hamas and the Israeli government decided to exchange at least 150 Palestinian prisoners for the release of at least 50 terrorist hostages, permit humanitarian relief, and silence the gunfire in Gaza for at least four days. Since the Hamas attack on October 7, which killed 1,200 people, largely civilians, according to Israeli counts, Israel has placed Gaza under siege and unrelenting bombardment. Since then, over 13,000 Gazans have died, with over 40% of them being children, according to medical professionals in the enclave ruled by Hamas. The UN has certified these data as credible. (With agency inputs) US President Joe Biden welcomed the agreement to release a minimum of 50 hostages held in Gaza, emphasising the importance of the full implementation of all aspects of the deal. According to the Israeli government, the outline of the agreement stipulates that Hamas will release at least 50 of the approximately 240 hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attack over four days. Qatar, serving as a mediator with Hamas, later confirmed the deal, announcing that the start time would be disclosed within the next 24 hours, and the agreement would last for four days. I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented, said Biden, who was in Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Biden said the agreement should release some American hostages, and added, I will not stop until they are all released. Biden emphasized that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure not only all hostages are released but that humanitarian assistance can be sent to Palestinians in Gaza. Todays deal is a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination of many dedicated individuals across the United States Government to bring Americans home, Biden said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before the Cabinet voted early Wednesday that the war would continue even if a deal was reached. Israel, the United States and Qatar have been negotiating for weeks over a hostage release that would be paired with a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the entry of more humanitarian aid. Israel says Hamas uses civilians and hospitals as shields, while critics say Israels siege and relentless aerial bombardment amount to collective punishment of the territorys 2.3 million Palestinians after Hamas Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. With inputs from AP. According to Ukrainian officials, Russias military seems to be putting in fewer soldiers and less weapons in the fight for the destroyed eastern town of Avdiivka, which is seen to be a gateway to the Donetsk regions capital. According to Oleksandr Shtupun, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, there have been less airstrikes and ground attacks on Avdiivka, a town that had roughly 32,000 residents prior to the war and has been under Russian siege for more than a month. There are still about 1,500 people living there. Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles, Shtupun said on Russian television. Such claims are refuted by Russia. According to Vitaliy Barabash, the chief of Avdiivkas military administration, battle was engulfing an industrial area, but Ukrainian forces were maintaining their positions. Significant defences were built after separatists backed by Russia temporarily took control of Avdiivka in 2014. Our boys are still being targeted by the enemy, he stated to NV Radio. Drones are their primary area of interest. And once more, drones. Ukraines military said there also had been an uptick in the number of Russian attacks on nearby Maryinka, a town where control has been disputed for months. Avdiivka is seldom mentioned by Russia in its daily military briefs. In its most recent dispatch, the Russian ministry of defence stated that its forces were targeting communities south of Avdiivka, though it did not provide many specifics. (With agency inpits) On Wednesday, South Korea terminated a portion of a 2018 military pact with North Korea for launching a spy satellite in defiance of US warnings. South Korea will increase military surveillance along the heavily fortified border with North Korea as a result of an agreement condition being suspended. North Korea reported on Tuesday that it has launched its first spy satellite into orbit. Images published by official media purportedly showed leader Kim Jong Un witnessing the dramatic rocket launch from a base. Later, Kim received a briefing on the satellites operations at the space agencys control centre in Pyongyang and saw photos of American military installations, such as the Andersen Air Force, taken above the Pacific territory of Guam. The statement emphasised that Kim wanted to provide his armed forces with abundant valuable real-time information about the enemy and further promote their responsive posture by putting more reconnaissance satellites in different orbits. After modifications, the satellite would launch its surveillance mission on December 1, according to KCNA. The military of South Korea stated that although it would take some time to determine whether North Koreas military reconnaissance satellite was in orbit, it was thought to have done so. The US military was determining whether or not the launch was successful, the Pentagon had earlier stated. The launch was described as a brazen violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions by Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council. During an official visit to Britain, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol gave his approval to the suspension of a portion of the agreement with North Korea. Earlier, via video link, Yoon presided over a National Security Council meeting that included ministers and the head of intelligence. The Comprehensive Military Agreement, which aims to reduce tension between North and South Korea, was signed during a summit in 2018 between Kim and then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in. (With agency inputs) Swedens Defense Minister, Pal Jonson, has emphasized the urgency of the countrys NATO membership, citing the need to counter Russias threat. Expressing frustration over the prolonged approval process, Jonson remains optimistic about eventual approval from Turkey and Hungary. We do not want to write off Russia as a threat because Russia has shown evidence of endurance [in Ukraine]. So we have to stick to it and we do that in the best way by strengthening our national weaknesses and becoming fully integrated into NATO as soon as possible, Jonson told the Guardian. In May 2022, Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO following Russias invasion of Ukraine. While Finland formally joined in April this year, Sweden awaits approval from Hungary and Turkey. Jonson, speaking in Helsinki, stated that NATO allies strongly supported Swedens application, emphasizing Swedens contribution of important military resources and better strategic depth. Despite assurances from Turkeys President Erdogan, the decision on Swedens accession protocol faces delays. Hungarys intentions also remain uncertain, despite earlier statements by Prime Minister Orban. Jonson, from the Moderate party, remains optimistic about Swedens NATO future, affirming, Were going to form an alliance, and I have no doubt that it will happen. Regarding recent unrest near the Russian-Finnish border, Jonson stressed the importance of the relationship with Finland, stating it contributes to regional security and stability. The night before the Nordic Defence Cooperation (Nordefco) summit in Stockholm, Jonson highlighted its significance. Defense ministers from Nordic and Baltic regions convened for the first time to discuss security arrangements, addressing critical infrastructure, defense cooperation, and assisting Ukraine. Taiwan again reported Chinese military activity around the island on Wednesday, with 11 aircraft crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait as the islands election campaign kicked into high gear. Taiwan reported Chinese military activity surrounding the island on Wednesday, as 11 aircraft crossed the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait. This development came as the election campaign intensified on the island. Taiwan governed democratically but claimed by China as its territory. Taiwan has been lodging complaints for the past four years regarding regular Chinese military patrols and drills near the island. Beijings actions are perceived as an attempt to exert pressure on Taipei over its sovereignty claims. As presidential and parliamentary polls are scheduled for January 13, candidates are required to register with the election commission this week. On Tuesday, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), seen by Beijing as separatists, registered its presidential ticket. However, the opposition is currently grappling with internal disagreements about a potential joint bid. The Taiwan defence ministry said that it detected J-10 and J-16 fighters, H-6 bombers and early warning aircraft, conducting overseas missions starting early Wednesday afternoon. Eleven of those aircraft crossed the Taiwan Straits median line flying in airspace to the centre and southwest of the island, working with Chinese warships to carry out joint combat readiness patrols, the ministry added. The straits median line had previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides and which Chinese planes now regularly fly over. Taiwan sent its own forces to monitor, the ministry said. Chinas defence ministry did not answer calls seeking comment. China says its activities near Taiwan are aimed at preventing collusion between Taiwan separatists and the United States and to protect Chinas territorial integrity. Taiwans government, which has repeatedly offered talks with China, rejects Beijings sovereignty claims and says only the islands people can decide their future. Taiwans main opposition party, the Kuomintang, traditionally supports close ties with Beijing, and has pledged to re-open dialogue with China should it win the election. Wit inputs from Reuters. Former US President Donald Trump has long praised a particular kind of foreign leader men he describes as tough and strong, even if they have not measured up to their countries democratic norms. The former president and GOP front-runner is now celebrating the newly elected leader of Argentina, Javier Milei, a wild-haired, chainsaw-wielding, self-described anarcho-capitalist dubbed the madman by his admirers. A very special congratulation to Javier Milei on a great race for president of Argentina, Trump exulted in a video posted on Tuesday on his social media site that echoed an earlier statement. I am very proud of you. You will turn your country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again! Mileis resounding win gives Trump a new potential ally if he wins the White House again and underscores his enduring influence on global politics in the near-decade since he launched his first bid for the presidency. Its also the latest example of the potency of right-wing populism that flirts with authoritarianism, and an anti-incumbency fever that has spread across much of the world. Its just so much easier to be a populist than it used to be, said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist and co-author of How Democracies Die. Levitsky cited several global trends that have reshaped both Argentine and US politics. Among them: the repeat economic shocks the world has suffered since 2008, the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and the reach of social media. Rising populism and anger at the perceived establishment could shape not just next years US presidential election, but votes across the world. The United Kingdom, Mexico, India, Pakistan and Taiwan are all expected to vote on new leaders in 2024. Voters want figures from recognizably outside the political establishment who basically want to punch the establishment, Levitsky said. Milei often stoked comparisons to Trump during his campaign, praising him in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and promoting unproven theories about election fraud in his own race before he won. Many of Mileis supporters made Make Argentina Great Again hats and T-shirts a common sight during the campaign, echoing Trumps slogan. He spoke of taking a chainsaw to government and abolishing Argentinas Central Bank and key ministries including those of health and education just as Trump has proposed slashing government agencies criticized by some conservatives His calls to purge the political caste from Argentinas government follow Trumps calls to drain the swamp and obliterate a deep state he claims is against him in Washington. Milei won all but three of Argentinas 24 provinces, and his opponent conceded even before the electoral authority began announcing the preliminary results. But prior to winning the runoff election, he promoted unproven claims of irregularities in the elections first round, suggesting that they put the result in doubt. He also vowed in a radio interview on Monday to privatize state-run media outlets that covered him negatively and which he deemed a covert ministry of propaganda. Trump continues to promote lies about the election he lost to President Joe Biden and has attacked media outlets he deems unfriendly as enemies of the people. There is definitely a feeding off each other, said Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli, the director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization. She said both men are products of the same economic and social forces. Sanchez-Garzoli, who went to Argentina to observe the elections, described broad discontent with the political order across the region as liberal democracies fail to meet the basic needs of their populations. That is driving a sense of disillusionment and mass polarization, she said, especially among younger generations who have responded by saying, Lets burn it down and go with something completely different. They feel that this person is different so somehow it has to be different, she said. Beyond sharing policy goals, she said, Trump and Milei are also stylistically similar both seen as celebrities who project a sense of machismo and thrive on being as outlandish as possible, to keep ratings going. What Trump did was he broke the rules of how you talk about things, she said. I think he made it OK to go after your opponents in a very no-holds-barred, no respect, exterminate them at any point way, which, she said, wasnt the kind of rhetoric you saw to this level in Latin America before. Its unclear if Trump and Milei might forge a friendship, as Trump did with another South American leader, Brazils ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, who was once labelled the Trump of the Tropics. Bolsonaro, who made visits to the US as president and spent time at Trumps Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, also ran unabashedly a pro-Trump campaign that emulated the former presidents tone and style. He, too, made unsupported allegations of fraud after his loss last year, which culminated in an attack on the Brazilian Capitol eerily reminiscent of the January 6, 2021, assault in the United States. But while Trump is now the front-runner for the Republican nomination, Bolsonaro was barred from running for any political office until 2030 for abusing his power. Trumps campaign did not respond to questions about whether he and Milei had spoken since Mileis victory or whether they intend to. But Trump has long had an affinity and respect for authoritarian leaders and populist strongmen, explaining, at times, that the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. Among the leaders hes praised are Hungarys Viktor Orban, Chinas Xi Jinping, Russias Vladimir Putin and North Koreas Kim Jong Un. He has been particularly enamored of late by Orban after an interview in which the Hungarian leader blasted the Biden administration and said the only path to ending the war in Ukraine would be Trumps re-election to the White House. Speaking Saturday at an event in Fort Dodge, Iowa, Trump spent several minutes praising Orban, saying he was very honored by the comments from a man he called one of the strongest leaders. Hes a very strong man, very strong, powerful man, and one of the most respected leaders in the world. Tough. No games, right? Hungary, Trump said of the country, which European Union lawmakers last year declared was no longer a democracy and had instead become a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy under the leadership of its nationalist government. Trump also continued to praise Xi, describing him as a man who looks like a piece of granite, right? Hes strong like granite. Hes strong. Hes a fierce person. Now the press doesnt like it when I say good things about (him), but what can I say? Trump went on. He runs 1.4 billion people with an iron hand. He has used similar language to describe Putin, drawing criticism from his rivals in the GOP primary. The former President has long defended his use of such language, insisting his comments are statements of fact, not flattery. If I say a certain leader is smart thats controlling a big part of the world, the press gets upset that I say smart because thats a good thing. No no, he said. These are very smart people. The haunting echoes of war, once thought to be left behind in Mariupol, Ukraine, have reverberated across the lives of Ukrainian refugees now seeking solace in southern Israel. Tatyana Prima, a 38-year-old survivor of the Mariupol devastation, fled with her family to Ashkelon only to find herself confronted once again by the harrowing sounds of conflict on October 7th, as Hamas militants launched an attack, according to a report. Since Russias invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, over 45,000 Ukrainians have reportedly sought refuge in Israel, as reported by the Central Bureau of Statistics and aid groups. For many, the move was an attempt to rebuild shattered lives, yet the eruption of war in Israel has cruelly thrust them back into a cycle of trauma. In the coastal city of Ashkelon, Prima, like others, faces a constant barrage of airstrikes and shelling, triggering memories of Mariupols relentless bombardment. As per the report, the war in Israel has reshaped daily existence for these displaced Ukrainians. Despite the reassurance provided by the Iron Dome defense system, the emotional toll is profound. Community support groups, a lifeline for many, have migrated online due to restrictions on in-person gatherings in buildings with bomb shelters. The isolation compounds the already challenging journey of recovery from past traumas. The conflicts ripple effects extend beyond borders. Families are separated, communication reduced to text messages from bomb shelters, and the emotional toll on individuals like Veronika Chotari, unable to reunite with her daughter, underscores the human cost of these ongoing conflicts. (with inputs from The Associated Press) The U.N. refugee agency urged Pakistan on Wednesday to stop deporting undocumented Afghan refugees during the harsh winter months, while authorities kept searching homes and evicting Afghanis who had not yet fled behind. In the midst of a dispute with Kabul over accusations that it harbours militants hostile to Pakistan, Islamabad declared last month that it would deport over a million undocumented refugees, the majority of whom were Afghans. Since October 1, more over 370,000 Afghans have left Pakistan. The U.N. refugee agency urged Pakistan on Wednesday to stop deporting undocumented Afghan refugees during the harsh winter months, while authorities kept searching homes and evicting Afghanis who had not yet fled behind. In the midst of a dispute with Kabul over accusations that it harbours militants hostile to Pakistan, Islamabad declared last month that it would deport over a million undocumented refugees, the majority of whom were Afghans. Since October 1, more over 370,000 Afghans have left Pakistan. Thousands of Afghans have fled to Pakistan in order to escape being deported because they fear for their lives should they return to the Taliban-ruled country after the frantic and disorderly withdrawal of western forces led by the United States in 2021. International organisations and refugee agencies have not received any encouragement from Islamabad to reevaluate its deportation plans thus far. According to a court decision released on Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has accepted a plea submitted by human rights activists asking for the deportation to be stopped. The petition will not be heard just yet. (With agency inputs) US fighter aircraft struck two operations centers belonging to Iraqi Hezbollah in response to attacks on US bases that have escalated alongside Israels operations against Hamas in Gaza, two defense officials said. They said attacks on US bases included the first use of a short-range ballistic missile against US troops, which happened on Tuesday. The US fighter jets struck Kataib Hezbollah operations center and a Kataib Hezbollah Command and Control node near Al Anbar and Jurf al Saqr, south of Baghdad, on Tuesday, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide additional sensitive details of the attacks. There were Kataib Hezbollah personnel at both sites at the time of the strikes but the officials said they could not yet confirm whether anyone there was killed. The US strike followed another immediate, unplanned retaliatory strike by an AC-130 gunship that was in the air when the Iranian-backed militants fired two short-range ballistic missiles at Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq late on Monday evening. The gunship was able to locate the origin of the missiles, and fired on several militants who had fled in a vehicle. The officials said the US is trying to communicate that it does not seek wider conflict but that the Iran-backed attacks against American forces must stop, and that the US will take further action if needed. To date, US bases in Iraq and Syria have been struck 66 times since October 17, the day a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. The United States of America (USA) is all set to mount a missile wall in the Pacific Ocean, based largely out of Islands in Japan, Taiwan and Philippines in 2024 to counteract an ever-aggressive China. According to a report in Asia Times, General Charles Flynn, Commander of US Army Forces Pacific, said the US would deploy new intermediate-range missiles including Tomahawks and SM-6s to the Pacific region in 2024. He was speaking at stated at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. General Flynn pivoted the decision on Chinas rapidly growing military capabilities and its aggressive and belligerent stance that was tipping the regional and global geopolitical equilibrium. The US move has been enabled by the fact that it withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019 in reaction to Russias intransigent non-compliance to the pact. Most Pacific allies wary, Japan likely host According to Asia Times, Thailand was trying hard to keep China placated. Moreover, China has already harassed Philippines and the latter may not want to escalate things since it is vulnerable to a blockade by China. Also, the country has sub-par military capabilities. Australia has so far not been very keen to get into the US-China muddle, while South Korea, as cited by Asia Times, may want to keep Chinas big market to bargain with North Korea. Japan, on the other hand, is the most suitable hosting place for the missile wall since it has taken on China unequivocally and has also started beefing and boosting its own defences and military strength, including missiles, by almost doubling the defence budget. Japan has made no secrets about its intentions that the move it specifically to counteract China. With the Israeli government and Hamas agreeing on Wednesday to a four-day pause in fighting to permit the release of 50 hostages being held in Gaza in exchange for nearly 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails, the Almagor Terror Victims Association has said it will file a petition in the High Court of Justice this afternoon against the governments deal to secure the return of 50 hostages taken by Hamas. The truce will also facilitate the much needed entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. In a letter to Justice Minister Yariv Levin, Almagor founder Meir Indoor together with board member Dr. Aryeh Bachrach have written that the organization believes, the same landmines and surprises in the agreement were (present) in almost every other (hostage) deal in the past. The terror victims group has demanded to see the list of prisoners Israel is contemplating releasing as part of the new deal, which the Justice Ministry has now published on its website. The publication gives members of the public the chance to appeal against the release of specific prisoners. A large number of the Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails 287 of the 300 security prisoners scheduled for release are all young men aged 18 and under most of them held for rioting and rock-throwing in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. The other 13 prisoners are adult women, most of them convicted of attempted terror stabbings. Israels justice ministry has released the list of 300 Palestinian prisoners slated for release, the publication intending to allow for any last-minute legal challenges. The organization has also demanded to see all details of the commitments Israel is making to Hamas regarding restrictions on combat during the ceasefire period, including the cessation of intelligence gathering, as well as the delivery of fuel and other supplies which may help Hamas conduct terror operations against residents of Israel. Additionally, they called on Levin to disclose the general commitments Israel is making to Hamas that have been given directly or through a third party. The High Court will hear any petition filed during the course of today and is widely expected to reject it, as it did with petitions against the Shalit deal in 2011. The White House has expressed concern that Iran may provide Russia with ballistic missiles for use in its ongoing war against Ukraine, a development likely to be disastrous for the Ukrainian people, a US national security official said. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby pointed out that Iran has already been providing Russia with unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, guided aerial bombs and artillery ammunition, and may be preparing to go a step further in its support for Russia. He highlighted a September meeting in which Iran hosted Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to show off a range of ballistic missile systems, sparking. Concern in the United States. We are therefore concerned that Iran is considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles now for use in Ukraine, Kirby told reporters during a conference call. In return for that support, Russia has been offering Tehran unprecedented defence cooperation, including on missiles, electronics and air defense. Kirbys warning came as President Joe Bidens request for more than $61 billion in emergency US funding to continue to support Ukraines defense remained stalled in Congress. The additional aid for Ukraine is part of a larger $106 billion funding request from the Democratic president that also would support Israel, Taiwan and the US operations on the border with Mexico. A growing group of lawmakers in the Republican Party, which controls the House of Representatives, opposes sending more money to Ukraine. Kirby and other top US officials have been urging Congress to pass aid for Ukraine, saying existing funding is drying up. He also noted Irans announcement earlier this year that it had finalized a deal to buy Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, and said Iran is looking to buy additional military equipment from Russia, including attack helicopters, radars and combat-trainer aircraft. In total, Iran is seeking billions of dollars worth of military equipment from Russia to strengthen its military capabilities, Kirby said. Russia has also been helping Iran develop and maintain its satellite collection capabilities and other space-based programs. He said the burgeoning military partnership between Iran and Russia is harmful to Ukraine, Irans neighbours in the Middle East and quite frankly to the international community. At the direction of the Russian government, Kirby said the Wagner mercenary group was preparing to provide an air-defense capability to either Hezbollah or Iran. He said the US would be watching to see whether that happens and was prepared to use counterterrorism sanctions authority against Russian individuals or entities that might make these destabilizing transfers. Russia has used Wagner in the past when it has wanted to be able to deny involvement, especially in foreign military operations. The US says the Kremlins reliance on Iran, as well as North Korea countries largely isolated on the international stage for their nuclear programs and human rights records shows desperation. That comes in the face of Ukrainian resistance and the success of the global coalition in disrupting Russian military supply chains and denying replacements for weapons lost on the battlefield. The White House has said Russia has turned to North Korea for artillery. US officials say Iran has also provided Russia with artillery and tank rounds for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States and other countries have taken steps to thwart the potential supply, sale or transfer involving Iran and ballistic missile-related items, Kirby said. The US has also issued guidance to private companies about Iranian missile procurement practices to make sure they arent inadvertently supporting Irans development efforts. Last May, the White House said Russia was interested in buying additional advanced attack drones from Iran for use in the war against Ukraine after it used up most of the 400 drones it had previously purchased from Tehran. A US intelligence finding released in June asserted that Iran was providing Russia with materials to build a drone manufacturing plant east of Moscow as the Kremlin looks to lock in a steady supply of weaponry for the war. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar has stated that under the Tinubu-led administration, Nigeria is witnessing huge investments. Commenting on the G20 Compact with Africa (CWA) Conference Tinubu is attending in Germany during an interview on Channels TVs Politics Today, Tuggar reeled out some achievements they've recorded.He said; Quote Today there was a signing of a $500m agreement between Union Bank and a German group GWX for the financing of a green energy project. There was another agreement between a Nigerian group and a German group. You know Germany is in need of energy due to the shortage of energy supply since the Ukraine-Russian war began. These are very few of the things that have been happening. You have also looked at what is going on in other places with the Nigerian private sector because of the confidence that has been reinstilled in the private sector activities by the Tinubu administration. Within the last two weeks Aliko Dangote signed a $500m contract with an investment firm. BUA signed another $500m contract with IFC. Then you have the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority signed a $500m agreement with IFC. Within the last two weeks you can easily say $2 billion. Nigeria is witnessing huge investments under the Tinubu administration. The Drama Ends: Sam Altman to Return as CEO of OpenAI News oi -Kabir Jain In the ever-evolving OpenAI drama, Sam Altman is set to return as the CEO of OpenAI, overcoming recent boardroom controversies that led to his abrupt firing. The development comes after widespread backlash and internal unrest within the company. Altman's reinstatement is accompanied by the return of former president Greg Brockman, who resigned in protest of Altman's dismissal. Board Restructuring and New Appointments Late Tuesday, OpenAI released a statement confirming an "agreement in principle" for Sam Altman to resume his role as CEO. The new board will consist of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. Notably, D'Angelo, a holdover from the previous board, was part of the initial decision to remove Altman. The inclusion of Taylor and Summers aims to bring stability to OpenAI's governance. i love openai, and everything ive done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satyas support, im Sam Altman (@sama) November 22, 2023 Microsoft's Influence and Expanded Board With Microsoft having invested over $10 billion in OpenAI, there is an expectation for the tech giant to secure a seat on the expanded board. Altman himself is also anticipated to be part of this larger board, ensuring representation and alignment of key stakeholders. The expanded board, expected to consist of up to nine members, will play a pivotal role in reshaping OpenAI's future direction. Employee Revolt and Investor Perspectives Following Altman's initial dismissal, OpenAI faced internal upheaval as employees threatened to defect to Microsoft along with Altman and Brockman unless the board resigned. Thrive Capital, a significant investor, expressed support for Altman's return, deeming it "the best outcome for the company, its employees, those who build on their technologies, and the world at large." Thrive partner Kelly Sims highlighted the potential impact of OpenAI, calling it one of the most consequential companies in computing history. Helen Toner's Concise Response Helen Toner, a key board member involved in the decision to remove Altman initially, responded with a succinct statement: "And now, we all get some sleep." The comment suggests a sense of relief and resolution within OpenAI following the recent tumultuous events. Path to Resolution Sam Altman's return as CEO marks a significant twist, especially considering the board's initial decisiveness in removing him. The nonprofit board had shown determination, even appointing two CEOs in three days to avoid reinstating Altman. However, employee revolt and internal pressures prompted a reevaluation of the situation. Interim CEO's Role During the crisis, Emmett Shear, who was appointed as interim CEO, played a vital role by requesting documentation or proof to support Altman's termination. His threat to resign if such proof was not presented exemplifies the complexity of the situation. Shear expressed satisfaction with the outcome, stating that it maximized safety and served the interests of all stakeholders. Microsoft's Perspective and Future Stability Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged discussions with Altman and expressed agreement on the return being a "first essential step" to establish a more stable and effective governance structure within OpenAI. We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance. Sam, Greg, and I have talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI leadership team in ensuring https://t.co/djO6Fuz6t9 Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 22, 2023 Nadella emphasized the need to avoid surprises in the future, indicating a desire for increased transparency and collaboration. The Unfolding Story and Ongoing Developments As the OpenAI saga continues to evolve, the return of Sam Altman brings a semblance of stability to the organization. The reshaped board and upcoming governance changes will likely play a crucial role in determining the future trajectory of OpenAI. Via Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications Mon Monday 47 /27 More sun than clouds. Highs in the upper 40s and lows in the upper 20s. Mesa County officials will be able to double the number of mental health patients they can serve in order to help them get the treatment they need, and save the county money in the long run. That will be possible thanks to three contracts county commissioners approved Tuesday with three different providers, all of whom are working with the county and sheriffs office to provide needed services. The aim for each, as with the countys efforts to improve access to mental and behavioral health services overall, is to keep people out of jail and area hospitals, and help free them from homelessness. The contracts, each for no more than $275,000, are being funded entirely from a $3.5 million Colorado Department of Human Services grant the county received earlier this year. The countys efforts in addressing behavioral health is multifaceted. It involves helping people recently released from jail to get the services they need to keep them from recidivism, special teams working with law enforcement on 911 calls that result in them getting treatment rather than being arrested, and providing call-in services to help connect people with services that are available around the Grand Valley. This program has been very successful in the fact that its gone beyond what we expected, Lisa Mills, the countys behavioral health manager, told commissioners. Were still working on the data it will take us three years to get solid data to show that we are hitting the markers that we had anticipated when we started but weve shown anecdotal success. Mills said that when the multiagency collaboration, or MAC, teams were started last year, they have received more than 300 referrals, primarily from area hospitals and first responders. Capt. Todd Sorenson, head of the support services division in the sheriffs office, said deputies are quickly learning which 911 calls are more about behavioral health issues rather than criminal, and are bringing in MAC teams to diffuse situations quickly and without incidents. This has been a very rapid cascade of successes, Sorenson told the commissioners. The sheriffs office and behavioral health are really jelling at levels faster than I would have anticipated. Its reaching deeper into the patrol division. These guys, they accept change quick once they understand the vision, and they just took off running. Sorenson said the programs are helping the sheriffs office from not wasting resources so they can focus on law enforcement instead of mental or behavioral health matters. As a result, the 553-bed Mesa County Detention Facility is at more than 80% of capacity, near its targeted inmate population. We cant just do it with law enforcement, Sorenson said. We can also include fire and EMS, and those guys are starting to get excited about this, too. If we can avoid these unnecessary transports ... if we have case management in place, it allows us to avert all of that, and at a huge cost savings. Exclusive Elf + Red Cross Socks For Donors Through Nov. 30 For many, watching the classic holiday movie Elf has been a heartwarming tradition for 20 years. This November, the American Red Cross is encouraging people to add a new tradition as the holiday season begins: Spread cheer with a blood or platelet donation. Donations are critical to the blood supply as the holiday season draws near a time when blood donations often decline. Donors of all blood types are urged to give, especially type O blood donors and those giving platelets. To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the film Elf, and create holiday cheer, all who come to give through Nov. 30 will receive an exclusive pair of Elf + Red Cross socks, while supplies last. For more details, visit RedCrossBlood.org/Elf. It feels good to give a gift to someone else that truly means something. Those wishing to help patients receive lifesaving transfusions can book a blood or platelet donation appointment by using the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visiting RedCrossBlood.org or calling 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767). Upcoming Valley County blood donation opportunities: Glasgow Tuesday, Nov. 28: 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., VFW, 1222 U.S. Highway 2 W. Wednesday, Nov. 29: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Frances Mahon Hospital, 621 3rd St. S. Wednesday, Nov. 29: 11 a.m. - 5:15 p.m., VFW, 1222 U.S. Highway 2 W. Hinsdale Thursday, Nov. 30: 1 p.m. - 6 p.m., Hinsdale Legion Hall, 1 Montana St. How to donate blood A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required at check-in. Individuals who are 17 years of age in most states (16 with parental consent where allowed by state law), weigh at least 110 pounds and are in generally good health may be eligible to donate blood. High school students and other donors 18 years of age and younger also have to meet certain height and weight requirements. Amplify your impact volunteer! Another way to support the lifesaving mission of the Red Cross is to become a volunteer blood donor ambassador at Red Cross blood drives. Blood donor ambassadors help greet, check-in and thank blood donors to ensure they have a positive donation experience. Volunteers can also serve as transportation specialists, playing a vital role in ensuring lifesaving blood products are delivered to nearby hospitals. For more information and to apply for either position, contact or visit redcross.org/volunteertoday. By For the Courier Pictured is the Irle Elementary food haul that was raised during the week's Cat-Griz Brawl of the Wild Contest, organized by the Glasgow High School Business Professionals of America. Though the Montana Grizzles won on the field Nov. 18 against the Montana State Bobcats during the Brawl of the Wild Contest, the real winner off the field was the Valley County Emergency Food Bank in Glasgow. The local Business Professionals of Am... Courtesy Photo / For the Courier Valley County 4H members were the servers at the Festival of Trees event on Nov. 17. Pictured is Buddy Cole delivering a plate of delicious prime rib dinner at the Elks Lodge. Courtesy Photo / For the Courier Glasgow High School was represented by students and advisors at the Montana Key Club Youth Conferences held in Great Falls Nov. 5 through 7. Pictured left to right are Aspen Probert, Hannah Holinde, Advisor Carla Swenson, Kiwanis Advisor Charles Wilson, Gabe Proctor, Lt. Gov. Connor Whitmer, Pres. Daniel Berry, Mason Swenson (former Lt Gov, now in Circle K in college), and Michael Aho. Estonia and United States sign an agreement on the protection of classified information Republic of Estonia - Ministry of Foreign Affairs 21.11.2023 Yesterday 20 November, Estonian Ambassador Kristjan Prikk and Michael Laychak, Director of the Defense Technology Security Administration at the Department of Defense, signed the agreement on classified information between the two countries at the Estonian embassy in Washington. The agreement sets out the conditions for the exchange and protection of classified information in Estonia and in the United States. Ambassador Prikk said at the signing that whereas the first analogous agreement between Estonia and the United States was signed as early as 2000, we have now taken the next step. "While Estonia's cooperation with the United States has been excellent in every area, the new agreement reflects a further expansion of cooperation between our two countries. The new agreement helps to improve the exchange of classified information, especially in foreign relations, cybersecurity and cooperation between police structures. The agreement also provides additional possibilities for Estonian companies who would like to expand to the US market and take part in classified tenders," the ambassador added. The agreement on the protection of classified information is an international agreement aimed at providing maximum mutual protection for the state secrets of both Estonia and the United States in line with international law. Estonia has agreements of this kind with 32 close partners. The first analogous agreement between Estonia and the United States was signed in 2000 but it only covered the principles of the protection of the classified military information of the two countries. The new agreement establishes the grounds for the exchange of all classified information. The agreement will be registered at the UN Secretariat and published in Riigi Teataja after it has entered into force. Additional information can be found on the website of the Estonia National Security Authority, which is supervising the implementation of the agreement - https://nsa.valisluureamet.ee NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Philippines and France Forge Stronger Diplomatic Bond for Future Collaboration Republic of the Philippines - Department of Foreign Affairs PARIS, 18 November 2023 -- The Philippines and France marked a significant step for the two countries' diplomatic relations with the successful conclusion of the 3rd Philippines-France High-Level Political Consultations Meeting held in Paris, France on 17 November 2023. Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Bilateral Relations and ASEAN Affairs Ma. Theresa P. Lazaro led the Philippine Delegation and co-chaired the Political Consultations with the Director for Asia and Oceania of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs Benoit Guidee. Director Guidee underscored that the Philippines and France "share the same belief and respect for the UN Charter, sovereignty, multilateralism and in peaceful settlement of international conflicts which makes a strong basis for the partnership" between the two countries. Undersecretary Lazaro thanked France for hosting the Political Consultations and expressed her optimism that the meeting would pave the way for enhanced bilateral cooperation and regional collaboration. The two Heads of Delegations exchanged views on how to further strengthen and diversify bilateral defense and security cooperation through working- to high-level interactions, capacity-building initiatives, including maritime-related engagements and exchanges. They also underscored their respective country's commitment to upholding the international rules-based order in the maritime domain, in particular freedom of navigation. "The Philippines and France both have deep-rooted maritime traditions, which provide a strong foundation for maritime cooperation. Despite our geographical distance, our shared interests in the maritime domain have brought us closer together," said Undersecretary Lazaro. Both countries also explored opportunities to build on existing cooperative arrangements to combat transnational crimes. This includes cooperation to combat cyber threats and, at the same time, enhance cybersecurity. Undersecretary Lazaro and Director Guidee also took stock of the results of the sectoral committee meetings held after the last Political Consultations in 2021, and discussed opportunities for closer cooperation and productive partnerships in the areas of trade and investment, energy, science, technology & innovation, health, culture and people-to-people exchanges. END NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address November 21, 2023 By Jim Garamone , DOD News Hicks: DOD Is Becoming More Agile The Defense Department is making progress in becoming more agile, and leaders are driving change, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told the Defense Writers' Group today. She said programs like the "replicator" initiative are the future for the department. The idea is to speed programs from basic research to fielded, military capabilities. Replicator will begin with all-domain, "attritable" autonomy to help overcome China's advantage in mass. China has more ships, more missiles and more forces than the United States. Replicator will focus on fielding thousands of self-piloting ships and uncrewed aircraft within the next two years. DOD officials often talk about the "Valley of Death" for ideas and capabilities. After research and tests, the capabilities hit the valley of death and often never get fielded. Replicator is an example of what the department must do on a large scale to stay ahead of potential threats like those emanating from China and Russia. These new capabilities require new doctrines and new uses and new cultures really to operate. And the U.S. military is positioned to capitalize on this and move forward. Hicks said DOD would be further along the road to modernization and change if it weren't for the problems caused by Congress passing continuing resolutions rather than military appropriations. Defense officials work hard to build trust with Congress, Hicks said. "But ... trust is a two-way street," she said. "And we are really being challenged to trust that our partners in Congress can get done what they need to do for us to achieve those ends." Hicks said this is true with the request for a supplemental appropriation to fund aid to Ukraine, Israel and Indo-Pacific expenditures. Hicks said there is strong bipartisan support for this. The department is also facing the continuing resolution challenge, she said. Congress is unable to agree on appropriations for the fiscal 2024 budget and has passed continuing resolutions that fund the government at the fiscal 2023 level. "We've gotten used to getting by CR to CR, but it's with significant consequences," she said. "We estimate we've lost probably a total of about four years' worth of progress on our modernization efforts. In the ... nearly 11 years that we've been dealing with CRs, that is a cost you can't buy back; you just can't buy back time." The CRs stop new programs from beginning. They halt advanced procurement for shipbuilding and much, much more. Even with these problems, Hicks said innovative work is happening in the department. "I think there has been phenomenal work that's happened across the department," Hicks said. "One of the great things about our defense system is that innovation happens all across it." The innovation continues, as does innovation in America's commercial sector. "All of that should improve our agility, but to tap into that we have to be able to have predictable, reliable and appropriately strategically driven resources, and we have to be able to have the leadership in place," she said. "All of that really impacts our ability to meet our potential." Hicks said strong U.S. alliances and partnerships are key. "We need to leverage that alliance structure that both is so valuable an asymmetric advantage for the United States and something we know the Chinese are very worried about," she said. "We have made incredible progress there. I don't think anyone could look at the U.S.-Philippine defense relationship a couple of years ago and have expected us to achieve the kinds of agreements that we now have the ability to bring South Korea and Japan together with the United States." The Australia-United Kingdom-United States defense agreement, the growing relationship with India and the centrality of U.S. ties to the nations of Southeast Asia show there is "lots of really positive momentum and real gains there," Hicks said. Leadership is important in continuing this process, Hicks said. There has to be consistency in the message to those pushing these processes, programs and strategies forward. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Foreign Affairs Council (Development), 21 November 2023 European Council / Council of the European Union Main results Current Affairs The Foreign Affairs Council, in its development configuration, was briefed about the situation in Ukraine, aid to Palestine, implementation of the Gender Action Plan III and follow-up to the EU-CELAC Summit. Pilar Cancela Rodriguez - State Secretary for International Cooperation of Spain - chairing the meeting on behalf of High Representative Borrell, provided an update on the state of play of EU support to the reconstruction of Ukraine , with a special focus on the security and resilience aspects, and the broader context of the EU's security commitments to Ukraine stressing the need to adopt the Facility as swiftly as possible to ensure stable and predictable financing for Ukraine's reconstruction. Ministers were also updated on the Commission's review of ongoing development cooperation with Palestine. They stressed the need to ensure humanitarian aid access to the Gaza strip. On the occasion of the adoption of a joint report by the European External Action Service and the European Commission on the mid-term evaluation of the Gender Action Plan III, Minister Cancela Rodriguez, together with Commissioner for International Partnerships Jutta Urpilainen, informed the ministers about the implementation of the plan during its first 2 years (2021-22) and announced that it will be extended until 2027. Minister Cancela Rodriguez also gave a brief follow-up to the EU-CELAC Summit organised in Brussels on 17-18 July 2023, welcoming the signature of the "EL PAcCTO" Europe-Latin America Assistance Programme against Transnational Organised Crime, which is the main flagship in the field of justice and security in EU cooperation with Latin America. The discussion also touched upon the state of play of the Global Gateway Investment Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean. Informal exchange with World Bank President Ajay Banga The exchange took place via videoconference in the context of the ongoing reform of the multilateral development banks, in the wake of the Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (Marrakesh, 9-15 October) and ahead of the Climate COP28 in Dubai (30 November - 12 December). It provided an opportunity to focus on President Banga's strategic vision and ambitions for the World Bank , on strengthening partnerships, including with the EU, and on enhancing action on climate change and biodiversity. The meeting with Ajay Banga was the first in his tenure as World Bank President. Team Europe engagement in complex environments in Africa Over a working lunch, Ministers exchanged views on the Team Europe engagement in complex environments in Africa. The discussion focused on the emerging "belt of instability" from the Gulf of Guinea to the Indian Ocean, with a specific emphasis on the Sahel, aiming to work towards a common understanding of the challenges in those environments and to share ideas for a coherent Team Europe approach. Ministers also touched upon the situation in the Horn of Africa, which is marked by acute insecurity and significant humanitarian needs with on-going conflicts in Sudan and Somalia. Humanitarian needs in Ethiopia also remain high due to the effects of climate events, conflicts and intercommunal violence, and disease outbreaks. The discussion among Ministers contributed to a common understanding of the challenges for EU engagement in complex environments and facilitated the exchange of initial ideas for a coherent, integrated but differentiated Team Europe approach in these countries. Global Gateway Forum Furthermore, under any other business, Minister Cancela Rodriguez and Commissioner Urpilainen briefed Ministers about the Global Gateway Forum, which took place in Brussels on 25 and 26 October. During the Forum, a range of agreements and investment commitments in the areas of green energy, research and education, critical raw materials and transport corridors were signed with partners from across the globe. Also under AOB, Commissioner Urpilainen welcomed the signature, on 15 November, of the Samoa Agreement, which replaces the Cotonou Agreement NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bahrain: second EU-Bahrain Political Dialogue takes place in Manama European External Action Service (EEAS) 21.11.2023 EEAS Press Team On 20 November, the second Political Dialogue between the European Union and the Kingdom of Bahrain was held in Manama, Bahrain, in the framework of the Cooperation Arrangement between the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bahrain. The Political Dialogue was co-chaired by the EEAS Deputy Secretary-General for Political Affairs Mr. Enrique Mora, and the Undersecretary for Political Affairs at the Bahraini Ministry of Foreign Affairs, H.E. Shaikh Abdulla bin Ahmed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa. The Political Dialogue focused on EU-Bahrain bilateral relations in the context of the Joint Communication for a Strategic Partnership with the Gulf and followed up to the 27th EU-GCC Joint Council held on 10 October, in Muscat. The parties also discussed recent developments, including Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, the ongoing war against Hamas, Gulf regional security, as well as the situation in Yemen and Syria. In addition to the political consultations, the two sides convened the two Senior Officials (SOM) working groups meetings on trade and global affairs. In this framework, the EU and Bahrain held in-depth, technical discussions on economic diversification; green transition and climate; development cooperation and humanitarian aid; education; research; innovation and space cooperation; and security and counterterrorism. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Xi calls for immediate cease-fire, stresses two-state solution Global Times 'The collective punishment of people in Gaza must stop' By Chen Qingqing Published: Nov 21, 2023 09:51 PM Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday attended the BRICS extraordinary virtual summit on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, saying it is imperative that the parties to the conflict must end hostilities and achieve a ceasefire immediately. The summit is the first time since the group's expansion in August. Xi laid out in an opening address three urgency and imperatives including the parties to the conflict must end hostilities and achieve a ceasefire immediately, stop all forms of violence and attacks against civilians and release civilians held captive, and it's also imperative to ensure humanitarian corridors and stop collective punishments targeting the Gaza population. The international community must act with practical measures to prevent the conflict from spilling over and endangering stability in the Middle East as a whole. With similar or aligned positions on the Palestine issue, those countries, representing the Global South, are delivering a collective voice, helping to advance a diplomatic solution to the crisis and underscoring the constructive role of the Global South in addressing hotspot issues today, experts said. This "BRICS voice" is fundamentally different from that of the US and the West, some experts said. As the US has not yet prevailed upon Israel for a cease-fire in Gaza, the Arab world and developing countries are showing growing disappointment toward it and pinning more hope on BRICS - a platform amplifying developing countries' voices on world affairs. Although one or two single summits may not be enough to solve he conflict directly, the collective appearance and consistent claim of developing countries will be helpful to find a road map for Israeli-Palestinian peace on the basis of a "two-state solution," including the concept of promoting peace and realizing a peaceful coexistence with more specific proposals, experts said. Xi told the BRICS extraordinary virtual summit on the Palestinian-Israeli issue that the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli situation is the fact that the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, their right to existence, and their right of return have long been ignored. "I have emphasized on many occasions that the only viable way to break the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in the two-state solution, in the restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine, and in the establishment of an independent State of Palestine." he said. There can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine, Xi said. The virtual summit on the Palestinian-Israeli issue on Tuesday was chaired by South Africa, which also invited leaders from the group's new members, including Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Tuesday for a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said regional states and members of the BRICS group of countries could be involved in efforts to reach such a settlement, Reuters reported. In televised comments to a virtual BRICS summit, Putin once again blamed the Middle East crisis on the failure of US diplomacy in the region, according to the media report. "Before the BRICS expansion, there was a consultation mechanism inside the group on Middle East affairs. On such a major hotspot issue, BRICS countries surely need to formulate a voice that is different from the US and the West," Wang Youming, director of the Institute of Developing Countries at the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing, told the Global Times on Wednesday. Particularly, because the US has not urged Israel to enact a cease-fire as a growing number of innocent civilians are being killed in the conflict, it is necessary for the Global South to stand together to show their attitude when their positions are similar or aligned on the Palestine issue, Wang noted. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also urged on Tuesday the international community to agree on urgent and concrete actions to end the suffering in Gaza and establish a path towards a just and peaceful resolution of this conflict. In October 18, the UNSC failed to adopt a resolution put forth by Brazil that would have called for humanitarian pauses to allow full, safe and unhindered access for United Nations agencies and their partners, due to a veto cast by the US. Some experts believe that Global South countries are generally on the side of justice, more sympathetic and supportive of the Palestinians and condemning Israel's indiscriminate killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Through the BRICS mechanism, the collective appearance of the Global South is of great significance, and while it may not necessarily solve the conflict, the unity of developing countries is important, they noted. Given the current circumstances, it is very timely and very important that we meet and speak up for justice and for peace on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, Xi said. China's role During the summit, Xi also said China calls for early convening of an international peace conference that is more authoritative to build international consensus for peace and work toward an early solution to the question of Palestine that is comprehensive, just and sustainable. The summit came as Beijing just host an Arab-Islamic foreign ministers' delegation and maintained close communication with other UN Security Council permanent members, for example, France. Vice President Han Zheng and Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met and held talks with the delegation respectively. China highly commends the efforts for peace and the call for justice made by the Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit and supports the joint ministerial follow-up committee in playing a greater role, Mao Ning, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday. The delegation made China its first stop for international mediation, which reflects their trust in China and the tradition of mutual understanding and support between the two sides, Mao said. China has provided humanitarian assistance to help ease the humanitarian plight in Gaza. This includes $2 million of emergency humanitarian assistance provided through the Palestinian National Authority and UN agencies, and emergency humanitarian supplies worth 15 million yuan ($2.1 million), such as food and medicine, to the Gaza Strip with the help of Egypt, Xi said. China will provide more supplies and assistance according to the needs of the people in Gaza, he added. In the eyes of Arab nations, China is seen as upholding justice. China stands for justice and peace, Sun Degang, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Tuesday. "We condemn attacks on civilians. Second, we have an image of having no self-interest in the Middle East, and the visit of delegations from Arab and Islamic countries to China reflect their recognition of this," Sun said, noting that China does not seek sphere of influence or proxies in the Middle East. This means China could play a significant role in de-escalating the conflict between Israel and Palestine, he said. In contrast to the constructive role of China, the US has not exerted enough pressure on Israel to enact a cease-fire, nor has it made any positive moves to resolve the crisis through diplomatic means, experts said. "It has disappointed the Arab world, and this pushes developing countries to pin their expectations on the BRICS mechanism," Song Wei, a professor at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times on Tuesday. The BRICS summit will reach a basic consensus on whether the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved in such a peaceful way. The UN expects more of the BRICS mechanism, hoping that the BRICS mechanism will play a greater role in de-escalating the situation and pushing forward a cease-fire, she said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Sudan: Brutal, targeted attacks on civilians must stop ICRC - International Committee of the Red Cross Patrick Youssef is regional director for Africa at the International Committee of the Red Cross. He has just returned from Sudan, where he met representatives of the government and of the Rapid Support Forces. As the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate, he is sounding the alarm News release 21 November 2023 Sudan Despair and violence have taken over in Sudan. Recent discussions in Jeddah have not resulted in a ceasefire - quite the opposite. Military activity is increasing in many parts of the country. A devastating humanitarian crisis is developing right in front of our eyes. Non-stop, brutal, targeted attacks on civilians are among the main features of this war. Our message is clear: these attacks must stop. Weapons bring power. But that power imposes a responsibility on the warring parties - indeed, an obligation - to respect and protect the civilian population, as required by international humanitarian law. This war has resulted in countless deaths and forced almost seven million people to flee the fighting. ICRC and Sudanese Red Crescent teams receive daily calls for help. Families are asking us to help them evacuate the sick, the wounded or members of their families, because they fear they will be arrested if they move on their own. Some report that members of their families have disappeared. Others describe desperate shortages of food and water. The price of a standard food basket has risen by 60% since April 2023, leaving some 20 million people facing acute food insecurity. In Darfur, western Sudan, fighting has reached critical levels, affecting the populated areas of the main towns: Al Jeneina, Zalingei and Nyala. Military operations are seriously affecting the functioning of hospitals and depriving people of electricity and telecommunications. Despite the dangers, we are making every effort to ensure that no-one is abandoned in the areas where we are operating. This week, we sent a surgical team and medical supplies to Al Jeneina University Hospital, where war-wounded patients are in urgent need of treatment. We are constantly reminding all parties that they must allow the sick and injured to obtain medical care. In particular, this means refraining from harming people who are not participating in the fighting and allowing enemy wounded to receive treatment. Today, at the request of the parties to the conflict, we have returned over 60 prisoners to their families in Nyala, southern Darfur. We are grateful that we could help reunite those families after months of separation. All these operations underline the importance of the ICRC's neutrality and of its ability to work with all parties. But the response is still very limited. Humanitarian organizations can no longer tolerate being prevented from responding to the immense needs in Sudan. International humanitarian law requires all parties to facilitate humanitarian operations. Simplifying the administrative formalities would be a first step towards this. We therefore reiterate our appeal to all sides, to take concrete, practical steps in line with the commitments they made during the talks in Jeddah. The people of Sudan have suffered enough. The time has come to guarantee a neutral, impartial humanitarian environment, and to provide aid that will truly meet people's needs. History has shown that if belligerents comply with the laws of war, there is more hope of peace and reconciliation. About the ICRC The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a neutral, impartial and independent organization with an exclusively humanitarian mandate that stems from the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It helps people around the world affected by armed conflict and other violence, doing everything it can to protect their lives and dignity and to relieve their suffering, often alongside its Red Cross and Red Crescent partners. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Anti-Tank Missile Found Under a Baby's Crib; IDF Precise Operations Against Terrorist Targets in Gaza Continue IDF Press Release Press Release 21.11.23 IDF As part of the IDF's activities in Gaza over the last day, IDF aircraft struck approximately 250 Hamas terror targets. Among the targets struck were dozens of terrorists, rocket launchers, and terrorist infrastructure. Overnight, IDF troops directed a fighter jet to strike a rocket launch post from which rockets were fired toward central Israel yesterday (Monday). The post was located near a residential area of the civilian population. In addition, IDF ground troops located a significant weapons stockpile in the residence of a senior Nukhba terrorist in Gaza. Furthermore, IDF ground troops located an anti-tank missile hidden under a baby's crib. Attached is video footage of the IDF's activity in the Gaza Strip: https://bit.ly/3GfzGwd Attached is video footage of the strikes in the Gaza Strip: https://bit.ly/3SOwOOs Attached is video footage of the precise strike on the launching post embedded in a civilian area: https://bit.ly/3sLmuwb Attached are photos of the weapons found during the combat: An anti-tank missile found hidden under a baby's crib NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Resistance forces hit 9 Zionist tanks in Gaza IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Nov 21, 2023 Tehran, IRNA -- Palestinian resistance forces have hit nine Zionist tanks in Gaza Strip, according to local media. Palestinian Shahab News reported on Tuesday that Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, hit nine Zionist tanks on different parts of the battle. Al-Quds Brigades have also targetted three Zionist personnel carriers and an armored vehicle. This comes simultaneous with reports from Zionist media which said that a large number of Zionist forces killed or injured in Gaza have been carried out of the battle field by helicopters. The Zionist media have admitted that the Zionist Army has faced serious resistance in Gaza which has led to the injury of hundreds of their forces. The Zionist Army have launched a massive aggression against Gaza, perpetrating brutal massacre in the Palestinian region. At least 13,300 civilians, including women and children, have been killed in 46 days of the Zionist aggression of Gaza 9341**2050 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Yemen Ansarullah sets condition for releasing Israeli ship IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Nov 21, 2023 Tehran, IRNA -- A member of the Supreme Political Council of Yemen has responded the United States' demand for the releasing of a seized Israeli vessel, emphasizing that the massacre of the people of Gaza must be stopped first, and then they can speak about the release of the ship. According to a Tuesday report by the IRNA, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi wrote on his X (Twitter) account in response to the US request for releasing the Israeli ship and its crew members: In case that the United States and the Zionist regime halt the massacre of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and allow the delivery of water, medicine, and food into Gaza; then, they can discuss about the Israeli ship. He also underscored that whatever the Yemeni Navy and Coastal Defence Forces carried out (concerning the seizure of the Israeli ship) is in line with the reciprocity principle. Previously, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller addressed a press briefing, "The Houthi seizure of the motor vessel Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea is a flagrant violation of international law. We demand the immediate release of the ship and its crew and we will consult with our allies and UN partners as to appropriate next steps." On Sunday, the Yemeni Navy and Coastal Defence Forces succeeded in seizing the Israeli cargo ship in the Red Sea and imprisoned 52 crew members of the vessel, announcing that the move was the beginning of further retaliatory measures against the Israeli regime. 4208**7129 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Al-Houthi: No talk about captured ship before aggression on Gaza ends ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency Tue / 21 November 2023 / 12:48 Member of the Supreme Political Council in Yemen, Mohammad Ali al-Houthi, said on Tuesday that the United States and Israel cannot bring up the file of the captured Israeli ship known as "Galaxy Leader" before putting an end to the killing of Palestinians in Gaza. Tehran (ISNA) - On his account on X (formerly Twitter) , al-Houthi considered that once the United States and the Zionist regime stop killing Palestinians in Gaza, and enter water, medicine, and food to the besieged Strip, then they can discuss the file of the captured Israeli ship. Al-Houthi made it clear that the operation that had been conducted by the Yemeni navy and resulted in the capturing of the Israeli ship "aligns with the principle of reciprocity." He accompanied his post with an image of US President Joe Biden that says "Killer of Premature Babies." Earlier, the political bureau member of the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, Ali al-Qahoum, pointed out on Monday that the capturing of the Israeli ship in the Red Sea by the Yemeni Armed Forces was part of "Yemen's declared participation in the Al-Aqsa Flood Battle." Al-Qahoum confirmed to Al Mayadeen the continuation of the major Yemeni operations with drones and ballistic missiles with ranges of up to 2000 km, while adding that the strikes target vital, economic, and military targets belonging to the Zionist entity and that these strikes have achieved their goals. "Our major operations against the occupation entity will continue until victory for Palestine and Gaza, and the demise of Israel as a result of the expansion of operations," he stressed. The Yemeni official concluded his statement by saying, "We will not stand idly by watching Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and international and American collusion supporting the entity." End Item NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hamas: Resistance close to reaching truce deal with Israel in Gaza ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency Tue / 21 November 2023 / 11:14 Hamas confirmed on Tuesday that the movement was nearing a truce agreement with the Israeli occupation. Tehran (ISNA) - Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh says the Resistance group delivered its response to Qatari officials about tuce in Gaza, according to a statement posted on Telegram. "We are close to reaching a deal on a truce," Haniyeh said, according to the post, adding that the Resistance group delivered its response to Qatari officials. This comes after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement announced that its Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah, discussed with Haniyeh the situation in Gaza and negotiations related to the prisoner exchange deal. Israeli media reported on Monday that "these are crucial hours, and this time we are closer to a prisoner exchange deal." The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation published on Monday that Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has given the green light for a prisoner exchange deal with the Palestinian Resistance. US President Joe Biden told reporters Monday he believes a prisoner swap deal between the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza and the Israeli occupation is close. "I believe so" were the US President's words when questioned on the matter. Meanwhile, the White House said the negotiations were in the "endgame" stage, but refused to give further details, saying it could jeopardize a successful outcome. "We believe we're closer than we've ever been, so we're hopeful," National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. "But there's still work to be done. And nothing is done until it's all done. So we're going to keep working on this." Kirby added that arrangements were still being made on all sides. End Item NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address At an informal video conference of foreign affairs ministers, Lithuania's Foreign Minister Landsbergis warns about Russia's wish to use the situation in Gaza to spread false narratives Republic of Lithuania - Ministry of Foreign Affairs Created: 2023.11.21 / Updated: 2023.11.21 10:39 On 20 November, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis took part in an informal video teleconference to discuss the situation in Israel and the Middle East region. The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, briefed foreign ministers on his visit to Israel, Palestine, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. EU foreign ministers discussed the situation in the region, the EU's involvement in preventing the spread of the conflict in the region and relaunching the Middle East peace process. "Russia seeks to use the situation in the Gaza Strip to spread false and harmful narratives about the West and to strengthen its influence in the Middle East and other regions. The EU must be united, continue its cooperation with the Arab states and the US and seek a more active role in relaunching the Middle East peace process," Landsbergis said. Landsbergis stressed the need for EU countries to support Israel in the fight against terrorism and emphasised Israel's right to defend itself in compliance with international humanitarian law. The head of Lithuania's diplomacy urged the EU to take additional measures to combat terrorist groups and actively seek the release of hostages. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Data on interceptions of aircraft completed near the Baltic States' borders on November 13-19, 2023 Republic of Lithuania - Ministry of National Defence 2023-11-21 International cooperation | Security and defense policy On November 13-19 NATO Air Policing Mission Detachment fighter aircraft were scrambled four times to intercept aircraft of the Russian Federation violating flight rules in international airspace over the Baltic Sea. On November 13 aircraft of the NATO Air Policing Mission in the Baltic states detachment were scrambled to intercept one IL-20 flying in international airspace out of a location to Kaliningrad and back. It had no pre-filed flight plan, without using the onboard transponder and not maintaining radio communication with the regional air traffic control centre. On November 15 NATO Air Policing fighter jets intercepted one IL-20 fling in international airspace from and back to Kaliningrad. It had no pre-filed flight plan, not using the onboard transponder and not maintaining radio communication with the regional air traffic control centre. On November 15 NATO Air Policing fighter aircraft were scrambled to identify and escort one IL-20 flying through international airspace from and back to Kaliningrad. The flight had no pre-filed plan, the crew kept the onboard transponder switched off and were not marinating radio communication. On November 17 NATO fighter jets identified and escorted one IL-20 flying via international airspace from Kaliningrad to mainland Russia. It had no pre-filed flight plan, its onboard transponder was switched off, the crew was maintaining radio communication with the regional air traffic control centre. During the same scramble the NATO aircraft also intercepted one AN-26 on its way from mainland Russia to Kaliningrad. It had no pre-filed flight plan, had the onboard transponder switched on and maintained radio communication with the regional air traffic control centre. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NATO Secretary General in Skopje: the Western Balkans is essential to the security of Europe NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 21 Nov. 2023 Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addressed the Assembly of the Republic of North Macedonia in Skopje on Tuesday (21 November 2023), marking the first such address since the country joined NATO. In his address, Mr Stoltenberg said the Western Balkans is essential to the security of Europe. He thanked North Macedonia for its commitment to the security of the Alliance, including valuable support to NATO's KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. The Secretary General welcomed North Macedonia's help for Ukraine: "Here, in this Assembly, you are united in denouncing Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine." North Macedonia became a member of NATO in March 2020, following the Prespa agreement, which Mr Stoltenberg said "contributed to good neighbourly relations, and a brighter future for the people of North Macedonia." The Secretary General added that North Macedonia is an example of a successful multi-ethnic society: "You demonstrate to the region and to the whole world that it is possible for different ethnic and religious groups to live together in peace," he said. Speaking earlier following a meeting with Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski, the Secretary General said: "NATO can rely on North Macedonia and North Macedonia can rely on NATO. The Alliance guarantees your security. You are covered by NATO's air policing. Fighter jets from Greece and Italy patrol your skies to keep you safe. This is NATO solidarity in action." Mr Stoltenberg also warned that authoritarian states are seeking to undermine our freedom and way of life, including in the Western Balkans. He said: "Our response must be to work even more closely together in NATO. Through our military presence and our cooperation with Allies and partners, we are a strong force for stability in the region." While in Skopje, Mr Stoltenberg is also meeting with President Stevo Pendarovski, and the President of the Assembly, Talat Xhaferi. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Secretary General underlines the importance of NATO's partnership with Serbia NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 21 Nov. 2023 On Tuesday (21 November 2023), NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had discussions in Belgrade with President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia. Mr Stoltenberg and President Vucic addressed the latest security developments in the Western Balkans, NATO's role in the region, and strengthening Serbia's partnership with the Alliance. The Secretary General called on Belgrade and Pristina to engage constructively in the EU-facilitated dialogue, as this is the only path to a lasting peace and stability. Mr Stoltenberg stressed the importance of NATO and Serbia's partnership: "Serbia is an important regional actor and a long-standing partner of NATO. A good example of our cooperation is the joint work we have done over the past 10 years through NATO's Science for Peace Programme, in different fields, including energy and environmental security, advanced technologies, and cyber-defence." The Secretary General also highlighted the role of NATO's KFOR peacekeeping mission: "For two decades, KFOR has ensured a safe and secure environment in Kosovo for all communities. We will continue to do so impartially, and in line with our UN mandate. In May, our KFOR troops were attacked. Ninety three of them were wounded, some suffered life changing injuries. In September, we saw another outbreak of serious violence in Kosovo, this is unacceptable. The facts must be established, the perpetrators must face justice. Therefore I welcome that Serbia is prepared to cooperate in these efforts." The Secretary General also discussed with Predident Vucic the possibility of resuming joint military exercises, and training for civil preparedness: "We would welcome the possibility of resuming these kind of exercises in the future, and I look forward to further strengthening our cooperation." While in Belgrade, Mr Stoltenberg also met with Serbia's Prime Minister Ana Brnabic and saw the latest examples of NATO-Serbia scientific cooperation. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Polish-American relations strengthen security on NATO's eastern flank Poland - Ministry of National Defence 21.11.2023 "We talked about Polish-American cooperation in the context of the war in Ukraine and, in the context of the Russian aggression in Ukraine. I would like to emphasize very strongly that Polish-American relations are crucial for the security of our country and the entire NATO's eastern flank. One can say that Poland is the most important ally of the United States on the eastern flank of NATO, as evidenced by approximately 10,000 American troops are stationed on Polish soil. Before 2015, there were only a few or several dozen soldiers" - said Mariusz Baszczak, Minister of National Defense after a meeting with the United States Secretary of Defense. On Tuesday, November 21, the head of the Ministry of National Defense met with the United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. They discussed, among others, bilateral military cooperation and the security situation in the region. I presented our view regarding the emphasis on NATO. I stated that any competition between the EU and NATO in the context of security is very bad for security. I also want to emphasize very strongly that from the point of view of Poland's security, it is very important that national states, and not some imaginary European army, are responsible for defense, and that their [national states] responsibilities are not transferred to the level of the European Union. This would be very dangerous should the letter of treaties change. There will be a vote on this topic in the European Parliament this week. The transfer of these competences from the national level to the European level threatens the security of our homeland, Poland - emphasized the head of the Ministry of National Defense. During a meeting with soldiers in Rzeszow, the Minister of National Defense and the US Secretary of Defense thanked them for their service, allowing for the stream to aid to Ukraine,defending herself against Russian aggression, can flow without inrerruptions. The airport in Rzeszow is a symbolic place due to the cooperation of Polish and American soldiers, and strategically important from the point of view of assistance being provided to Ukraine fighting the Russian invasion. This is where a significant portion of support is sent, coming from, among others, Poland and the United States. Thanks to great relations with the United States, the Polish Army is equipped with modern weapons. Examples include Abrams tanks, but also Himars launchers. We talked with Lloyd Austin about Apache helicopters, which will commence their service in the Polish Armyed Forces next year. Polish pilots are already undergoing their training in the USA. It is worth emphasizing that not all allies of the United States have the opportunity to obtain this most modern equipment. We can point here to the IBCS system, supporting Patriots. This is a system that is exclusively the United States Army and the Polish Army are equipped with. Also, the latest version of Abrams tanks will only be used by the Polish Army and the American Army. This is proof of our close cooperation - noted Minister M. Baszczak after the meeting. *** Poland was and is a key ally of the United States. Proof of this is the presence of American troops in Poland and the multi-faceted cooperation of both our countries. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hamas says it has 'responded' to Qatar, Egypt concerning ceasefire agreement Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 9:43 PM Hamas has said it has provided a response to Qatar and Egypt concerning the potential of a ceasefire between the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement and the Israeli regime, which has brought Gaza under an unrelenting war. In a statement on Tuesday, Hamas' Arab and Islamic Relations Office said it had provided Qatari and Egyptian officials with the response a day earlier. "Talks [concerning a potential ceasefire] have been going on under Qatar and Egypt's supervision for a month now," the statement read. "The Israeli enemy, however, keeps procrastinating," it noted, adding, "Whenever we got close to temporary ceasefire, it (the enemy) went back to square one." Also on Tuesday, senior Hamas' official Izzat al-Rishq told Al Jazeera that the details of the deal would be released by Qatar and Egypt "in the coming hours." He emphasized that any agreement was necessarily based on the conditions of the Palestinian resistance. Rishq further confirmed that Israel, especially the regime's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been obstructing the ceasefire talks. More than 14,000 people have been killed in the brutal Israeli war against Gaza since October 7 when the regime launched the military campaign in response to a resistance operation on the same day, which killed some 1,200 Israeli settlers and military forces. The Hamas' statement also strongly refuted the Israeli regime's claim that the movement ran a "command center" underneath the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which has taken the brunt of the Israeli assaults on the territory's healthcare system. "The enemy's claim about the existence of [Hamas'] tunnels underneath the hospital is a farce that no one believes," the movement said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South African parliament votes in favor of shutting down Israel's embassy Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 8:10 PM South African legislators have voted in favor of closing Israel's embassy in the African country to express their solidarity with Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, which has been under brutal Israeli assaults for weeks. Lawmakers passed the motion to shut down the occupying regime's diplomatic mission in Pretoria with 248 votes in favor and 91 votes against on Tuesday, the culmination of weeks of criticism by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's administration of Israel's genocidal war against the war-torn Palestinian enclave. The action, which was brought by the leftwing Economic Freedom Fighters, the third-largest opposition party and backed by the ruling African National Congress party, is largely symbolic as it will be up to Ramaphosa's government whether to implement it. Lawmakers of the centrist, white-majority Democratic Alliance party, which is largely pro-Israel, opposed the motion. Earlier, Ramaphosa had stressed that his country believed Israel was committing war crimes and genocide in the tightly blockaded enclave, where more than 14,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed since October 7, when Israel unleashed its war machine against Gaza. Ahead of the parliamentary voting, Israel recalled its ambassador to South Africa, Eliav Belotserkovsky, "for consultations." "Following the latest South African statements, the Ambassador of Israel to Pretoria has been recalled to" back to the occupied territories "for consultations," said a statement by Israel's ministry of foreign affairs posted late Monday on X, formerly known as Twitter. Last week, Pretoria announced that it had referred Israel's "genocide" in the Gaza Strip to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for an investigation, with its cabinet calling on the ICC Monday to issue an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Given that much of the global community is witnessing the commission of these crimes in real-time, including statements of genocidal intent by many Israeli leaders, we expect that warrants of arrest for these leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should be issued shortly," said South African minister in the presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, on Monday. On November 7, South Africa's International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor also called for the Hague-based ICC to hold Israel accountable for violations of international criminal law over its crimes in Gaza. "The murder of children, of women and the aged by Israel is an act that should have resulted in the International Criminal Court issuing an immediate arrest warrant for key decision makers including Mr. Netanyahu, who is responsible for violations of international criminal law," she said at the time. Israel like the United States is not a member of the ICC. It refused to cooperate with the court in 2021 over the war crimes investigation into the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Israel orders evacuation of Jordanian hospital in Gaza: Jordan Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 6:57 PM The Jordanian government has announced that the Israeli regime forces ordered a Jordanian field hospital set up in the Gaza Strip to be evacuated as it continues its genocidal attacks on the Palestinian territory. The government of the neighboring Arab country, which is situated on the eastern border of the Palestinian West Bank territory, announced on Tuesday that Israel had ordered the evacuation of the hospital. However, Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher al Khasawneh added on state media that the Arab country will not evacuate. He said Jordan's army was beefing up its presence along the border in view of the ongoing massacre and developments in Gaza. The Jordanian hospital and other hospitals in Gaza had been shelled by Israeli forces last week. Jordan's Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, reported then that the hospital staff faced an unexpected shelling, resulting in injuries to seven hospital staff members and causing casualties among dozens of Palestinians who were seeking medical aid. Safadi emphasized the critical role of the field hospital, which has been in operation since 2009. He portrayed it as possibly one of the only remaining hospitals in northern Gaza providing essential services. He said despite the challenges in maintaining the hospital's operational status and ensuring a continuous supply of necessary medical equipment through weekly airdrops, Jordan remains committed to keeping this vital facility running for the thousands of Palestinians who rely on it due to the absence of other medical facilities in the region. In the meantime, a spokesperson for Gaza's health ministry announced that the hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip, which borders Egypt in Rafah, were in no better shape than the other hospitals across the besieged Palestine territory. Ashraf al-Qudra said hospitals could not provide proper health care due to the shortages. The occupant forces have cut water, power, fuel, food and medicine to Gaza. He cited one of the hospitals saying because it has lost its resources and is about to run out of fuel, it will stop working "The occupation displaced the medical staff, and some were killed or injured," he said. "The hospital has also turned into a shelter, with scores of casualties in its corridors and yards." Al-Qudra urged for the allowing medical delegations to enter the Gaza Strip, evacuate those who are injured and establish field hospitals to tend to those in critical conditions, stressing the need to establish a "secure humanitarian corridor to deliver medical aid and fuel to Gaza's hospitals." UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said the number of civilians killed in Israel's war on Gaza has been "unparalleled and unprecedented" since he took office in 2017. Medical authorities in Gaza said on Tuesday that the death toll from the Israeli attacks on the enclave since Oct. 7 had reached more than 14,300. This includes upwards of 5,800 children. Children make up virtually 47 percent of Gaza's 2.3 million population. UNICEF has labeled the Gaza Strip "a graveyard for thousands of children." It has also described the situation in Gaza as "a growing stain on our collective conscience", calling the rate of children casualties "simply staggering." Save the Children says more children have been killed in Gaza than in all other conflicts around the world since 2019 combined. In related news, Egypt received 28 premature infants from the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing, Health Minister Khaled Abdel Ghaffar announced on Monday. "Twenty-eight premature infants arrived today at the Rafah land port," Abdel Ghaffar said that in a statement posted on the ministry's Facebook page. Abdel Ghaffar said, "The infants are currently being transferred to hospitals equipped with medical teams and state-of-the-art facilities to provide the necessary medical services for them," without providing further details. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society announced on Sunday that its teams evacuated 31 premature infants from Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza to the Emirati Hospital in Rafah after being besieged by the Israeli army, forcing those present to evacuate. The supervisor at the neonatal intensive care unit at the Emirati Hospital, Mohamed Salama, told the media earlier on Monday that "today, 28 premature infants out of the 31 who arrived at the hospital yesterday from Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza left to continue their treatment in Egypt." Salama noted that three infants remained in the hospital, with two of them staying at the request of their families for the stability of their health. The Apartheid Zionist Israeli regime forces launched their relentless air and ground attacks on Gaza after the Palestinian resistance group on Oct. 7 in response to 7-decade intensifying atrocities by the occupant forces. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Israel's killing of key resistance figures will fail to undermine Palestine's fight for liberation Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 6:51 PM Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says the Israeli regime's killing of key figures of the resistance movement Hamas would not undermine Palestine's fight to free itself from occupation and oppression. In a message to the head of Hamas politburo, Ismail Haniyeh, on Tuesday, Amir-Abdollahian offered his condolences on the martyrdom last week of acting Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmad Bahar in an Israeli attack on Gaza and said that the assassination will further expose the ugly face of the Israeli regime. "As it has been proven in the past, the absence of such great men would not dent the resolve of the Palestinian people, but would even make the resilient and oppressed nation more determined to continue their path toward the liberation of their homeland," he said in the message. The top Iranian diplomat described Bahar as a "revolutionary politician and an indefatigable warrior" and said that his assassination would accelerate the collapse of the Israeli regime. Hamas on November 18 confirmed the death a day earlier of Bahar, 76, who was a member of the group's political bureau and had served as deputy speaker and acting speaker of the Palestinian parliament. Unconfirmed reports have suggested that he had been injured in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza early last week. More than 14,000 people have been killed in Israel's brutal military campaign against Gaza since October 7 when the regime launched aggression against the territory in response to a Hamas operation on the same day which killed some 1,200 Israeli settlers and military forces. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 108 staff members killed in Israeli bombardment of Gaza since Oct. 7: UNRWA chief Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 6:36 PM The United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) says at least 108 employees have been killed since the Israeli regime launched its relentless war on the Gaza Strip last month. The UN agency's commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement on Tuesday that nearly 67 UNRWA installations had been hit, 17 of them directly. "Most of them were in the middle areas and in the south, where people were promised safety," the UN official noted. "We cannot even protect people under the United Nations flag," he added. Elsewhere in the statement, Lazzarini also said that 176 displaced people sheltering in UNRWA installations were reported killed and at least 778 injured. This includes the most recent attacks on two UNRWA schools. The remarks come as the people of Gaza are not safe anywhere: not at home, not under the UN flag, not in a hospital, not in the North, and not in the South. Figures show at least 1.7 million people - almost 80 percent of the population - are displaced from their homes and moved into half of the Gaza Strip. More than 900,000 people are sheltering in UNRWA installations, including in the north. More United Nations aid workers have been killed in Gaza than in any other single conflict in the organization's 78-year history. Observers say this was a stark reminder that humanitarian staff from global agencies have not been spared from Israel's relentless bombardment of the besieged strip. UN offices around the world recently lowered their flags to half-mast and UN staff held a moment of silence to mourn and honor their colleagues killed in Gaza. "They will never be forgotten," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who led the minute of silence from UN headquarters in New York last week. WHO warns alarm about the humanitarian situation in Gaza Meanwhile, the World Health Organization has sounded the alarm about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. It warns about the risk of disease outbreak as Israel continues its relentless bombing in the Palestinian territory. A WHO spokesperson has said that three hospitals in Israeli-besieged Gaza had requested help with evacuating patients and that planning had started. Hospitals have come under bombardment in Israel's war on Gaza and all hospitals in the northern part of the enclave have effectively ceased functioning normally. WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said evacuations were a last resort. "It's robbing the entire population of the north of the means to seek health (care)," he told a Geneva press briefing. The Palestinian Health Ministry has announced that all hospitals in northern Gaza went out of service, and coordination is underway to evacuate the besieged Indonesia Hospital. Separately the ministry stated that 259 injured people, several civilians and medical personnel are still inside Al Shifa Hospital and there is no date yet for their evacuation. Despite international calls for the protection of hospitals, Israel keeps targeting medical facilities in the Gaza Strip. On Monday, it was the turn of the Indonesia Hospital where at least a dozen people were killed in an Israeli attack. The spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry has asked international bodies to take action against Israeli crimes. It has been over one month and a half since Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza. The regime is relentlessly pounding the besieged strip with airstrikes and shelling, keeping Palestinians there in a perpetual state of pain and suffering. Dozens of Palestinians are killed in fresh Israeli attacks targeting civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including a school hosting displaced people. The Gaza death toll has surpassed 14,000, most of them women and children. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address France stoking 'new war' in S Caucasus by supporting separatists, Azerbaijan's president Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 5:47 PM Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has accused France of preparing the ground for a "new war" in the south Caucasus through supporting separatists, warning that Paris is "destabilizing" the region. Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict over Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region, a mountainous area that Baku reclaimed in September following a lightning offensive that routed Armenian forces in 24 hours and made the separatists agree to lay down weapons, under a Russian-mediated ceasefire. "France destabilizes not only its past and present colonies, but also our region, the South Caucasus, by supporting separatist tendencies and separatists, arming Armenia, encouraging revanchist forces in Armenia and preparing the ground for unleashing a new war in our region," said Aliyev in written comments read out by his foreign policy advisor, Hikmet Hajiyev, at an international conference - titled "Decolonization: Women's Empowerment and Development" - in Baku on Tuesday. The Azerbaijani president stressed that France is doing this by "pursuing a militaristic policy", accusing Paris of continuing a policy of neocolonialism and committing "most of the bloody crimes in the colonial history of humanity." Aliyev added that talks about "fictitious ethnic cleansing in other countries" instead of "apologizing for the atrocities it has committed." France, which is home to a large Armenian diaspora, is regularly criticized by Azerbaijan for what it claims to be harboring "pro-Armenian bias" in the Caucasus countries' territorial conflict. Although several rounds of EU-mediated peace negotiations have been held between Baku and Yerevan, almost no progress has so far been made, yet both countries' leaders have said a comprehensive peace agreement could be signed by the end of the year. This is while Aliyev refused to attend peace talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Spain last month, citing purported French bias. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had been scheduled to join the European bloc's chief Charles Michel as mediators at those talks. France has recently agreed on future contracts with Armenia to supply it with military equipment "to help ensure its defenses," French foreign minister Catherine Colonna said on October 3 during a visit to Yerevan. Last week, Azerbaijan also refused to participate in normalization talks with Armenia that were planned in the United States this month over what Baku said was Washington's "biased" position. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address BRICS leaders call for immediate ceasefire in Gaza amid Israel's brutal war Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 5:45 PM The leaders of the BRICS nations have called for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip during an extraordinary summit of the bloc, as Israel continues its deadly bombing campaign in the besieged enclave. The BRICS leaders made the appeal during a virtual meeting hosted by South Africa on Tuesday, aimed at discussing the situation in Gaza and finding a solution to the ongoing war. Addressing the summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an "immediate" ceasefire in Gaza, stressing the need for convening an "international peace conference" to work toward an early solution to the question of Palestine that is "comprehensive, just and sustainable." He went on to say that there could be "no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine". Xi further noted that humanitarian corridors to Gaza "must be kept secure and unimpeded, and more humanitarian assistance should be provided to the population in Gaza." "The collective punishment of people in Gaza in the form of forced transfer or water, electricity and fuel deprivation must stop," he added. Russian President Vladimir Putin also called on the international community to implement a truce in Gaza and resolve the ongoing conflict through diplomacy. He also urged regional governments and the BRICS alliance to join forces in the pursuit of a diplomatic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "We want the international world to work together to defuse the situation, implement a truce, and resolve the Palestinian-Israeli problem through diplomacy. Additionally, the region's nations and the BRICS states may be crucial to this effort," Putin told the summit. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who chaired the meeting of the BRICS group, said Israel was committing war crimes and "genocide" in Gaza. "The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide," Ramaphosa said. He also called for an "immediate and comprehensive ceasefire" and the deployment of a UN force "to monitor the cessation of hostilities and protect civilians." Ramaphosa further urged all countries "to desist from fueling" the conflict and stop supplying weapons to the warring parties. "Let this meeting stand as a clarion call for us to combine our efforts and strengthen our actions to end this historical injustice," he said. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also called on all nations to cease weapon exports to Israel, emphasizing that the "brutal crimes" unfolding in Gaza demand a collective effort to bring them to an end. He also reiterated Saudi Arabia's rejection of the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, calling for collective efforts to stop the deterioration of the humanitarian conditions in the blockaded territory. The Saudi Crown Prince further stated that the kingdom demands the start of a serious and comprehensive peace process to establish a Palestinian state along the borders of 1967. "The Kingdom's position is constant and firm; there is no way to achieve security and stability in Palestine except through the implementation of international decisions related to the two-state solution," he said. The BRICS group of countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa -- are expected to issue a joint statement after the talks. Representatives from Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates -- countries that are all due to join the group in January 2024 -- were also invited to the talks aimed at a "de-escalation" of the ongoing war in Gaza. Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to the occupying regime's intensified crimes against the Palestinian people. According to the Gaza-based health ministry, at least 13,300 Palestinians have been killed in the strikes, most of them women and children, and injured around 31,000 others. Tel Aviv has also imposed a "complete siege" on Gaza, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Dozens killed as Israel bombs school sheltering civilians in northern Gaza Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 4:08 PM Dozens of Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in new Israeli attacks targeting civilian infrastructure in northern Gaza, including a school hosting displaced people. According to local Palestinian media reports, the targets included a school hosting displaced Palestinians in a school in al-Faluja, an area west of Jabalia, in northern Gaza on Tuesday morning. In overnight raids, the Israeli army bombed nine homes in Beit Lahia town in the north of the Gaza Strip, causing casualties. And, at least 25 Palestinians were killed in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. Meanwhile, the reports also said that telecom services were completely cut off in Gaza City, and areas in the northern Gaza Strip, following the Israeli bombing of the telecom towers. This comes amid a complete cut-off of communication and internet services in the areas of Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, as Israel targets communications towers. The Palestinian Ministry of Education has called on countries and institutions across the world to protect the right of Palestinian children to life and education in the face of Israeli atrocities. The ministry made the call on the occasion of World Children's Day. It said the killing of children and students in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank violates all norms and conventions. Iran's foreign minister has also called for immediate and practical international measures to protect the lives of Palestinian children. Israel has killed more than 5,600 children, including 3,000 students, in the war on Gaza since October 7. The UN chief has warned that the blockaded territory is becoming a graveyard for children. Algeria, and Turkey leaders condemn Israeli crimes in Gaza Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have held talks in Algiers. Speaking to reporters afterward, Tebboune described the situation in Gaza as "a human tragedy caused by the heinous crimes of the occupation". "We affirm the right of the Palestinian people to establish their state with al-Quds as its capital, on the borders of June 1967," he said. For his part, Erdogan accused Israel of committing war crimes and also called for a "just peace based on the two-state solution". It's been over one month and a half since Israel launched its deadly war on Gaza. The regime is relentlessly pounding the besieged strip with airstrikes and shelling, keeping Palestinians there in a perpetual state of pain and suffering. Thousands of buildings, including hospitals, mosques, and churches, have also been damaged or destroyed in Israel's relentless air and ground attacks on the besieged enclave. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in fresh strikes targeting civilian infrastructure. Hospitals are not spared from Israeli bombardment either. Doctors Without Borders has expressed concern about the situation at Al-Shifa Hospital, one of the hardest-hit health facilities since the war began. The Gaza death toll has surpassed 13,300, most of them women and children. Around 70 Israeli troops have been killed since the regime launched a ground offensive in Gaza. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hezbollah 'in war with Israel', Muslim world must do more for Gaza: Deputy chief Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 3:34 PM A high-ranking official with Lebanon's Hezbollah says the popular resistance movement is in a state of war with Israel, calling on Muslim world and Arab countries to do more for Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip than just delivering food. Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, made the statement in a ceremony in the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Tuesday as the Israeli regime's brutal onslaught on Gaza has so far claimed more than 13,000 innocent lives. "Hezbollah is an integral part of the resistance in the region and is in a state of war with Israel," Sheikh Qassem said, adding, "Israel aims to terrorize Palestinians and force them to abandon the resistance by massacring the people in the Gaza Strip." Stressing that the Israeli regime seeks to crush the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, the Hezbollah official said, "The Arab and Islamic countries must contribute, even a little, to disturbing and hurting the occupation as providing supplies and food to the people of Gaza is not .. enough to exonerate them." Sheikh Qassem said there was information indicating that the Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza are "able to withstand for a long period of time," adding, "The resistance's victory will be achieved through the occupation's inability to achieve its goals." The Hezbollah official underlined, "As long as the aggression against the Gaza Strip continues, there exists the possibility of the persistence of war, and all possibilities depend on the developments on the ground." The deputy secretary general of Hezbollah also pointed to the recent operation carried out by the Yemeni Armed Forces south of the Red Sea, during which an Israeli ship was seized and its entire 52 crew members onboard were detained. Sheikh Qassem hailed the operation as a "courageous act" and stressed that it was "the beginning of a very big blow that will affect the Israeli economy." Hezbollah has reportedly fired more than 1,000 rockets, mortars, missiles, and drones at Israel since October 8, a day after the besieged Gaza Strip came under heavy shelling by the occupation regime. In early November, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said all options were on the table against Israel, urging the Zionist regime to stop its aggression against Palestinians in Gaza immediately. Israel unleashed a bombardment campaign against Gaza on October 7, after the Palestinian resistance groups launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm in response to decades of violence against Palestinians. According to the Gaza-based health ministry, at least 13,300 Palestinians have been killed in the strikes, most of them women and children, and injured around 31,000 others. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Seizure of Israeli ship just the beginning of retaliatory naval battle against regime, warns Yemen Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 10:52 AM A Yemeni official has stressed that the recent seizure of an Israeli ship in the Red Sea is just the start of a series of retaliatory naval operations in response to Israel's brutal aggression in the besieged Gaza Strip. Hezam al-Assad, a member of the political bureau of the Ansarullah resistance movement, told al-Araby al-Jadeed podcast that the seizure of the Israeli ship by the Yemeni forces on Sunday "is just the beginning of upcoming naval operations that will target Israel's naval vessels, battleships, or commercial ships." His remarks came as the Yemeni armed forces announced the seizure of an Israeli ship in the Red Sea and the detention of dozens of its crew members on Sunday. Israeli media confirmed the regime's ownership of the confiscated ship. The vessel goes by the name of 'Galaxy Leader.' Al-Assad stressed that Yemen's involvement in the war in Gaza is "a pure Yemeni decision", noting that some coordination is taking place with the axis of resistance. The official stressed that "our naval forces are on a high alert and are monitoring the sea", adding "each Israeli vessel, whether military or commercial, will be targeted as long as the people of Gaza are being bombed." He further announced that camps are being established in several parts of the country where volunteers who are interested in fighting as part of Operation al-Aqsa Storm will receive training. "We are ready to build a Yemeni army dedicated to participating in the defense of the people of Gaza. If the countries that have borders with Palestine allow us access, they will find thousands of people flocking to them." Al-Assad's remarks echoed that of the Yemeni information minister in the National Salvation Government. Deifullah al-Shami said on Sunday that all the Israeli ships at the Red Sea "would be legitimate targets" for the Yemeni armed forces. Al-Shami stressed that Sana'a has "information on all Israeli ships that pass through the Red Sea." Ansarullah spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam also said that Israel must stop its aggression on Gaza so the conflict does not spill over to other areas in the region. Meanwhile, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, the spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, called on all countries to withdraw their citizens working as crews on any ships owned or operated by Israeli companies or carrying the Israeli flag. In a televised speech broadcast live on November 14, the leader of Ansarullah called on Arab countries and the Muslim world to adopt a clear stance in the face of Israel's atrocities in Gaza. He said the Yemeni forces are keeping a watchful eye on any Israeli ship in the Red Sea, and in the Bab el-Mandab Strait in particular, as well as Yemeni territorial waters. Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the territory's Palestinian resistance movements waged the surprise Operation al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians. The Israeli aggression has so far killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, most of them women and children. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Qassam Brigades spox: Israeli aggression will disappear, unlike resistance fighters' willpower Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 7:56 AM The spokesman for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas resistance movement, has praised the perseverance of resistance fighters in the face of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza, saying the Tel Aviv regime's aggression will eventually disappear but the willpower of the Palestinian resistance will never diminish. "Bitter confrontations are going on with Zionist forces in several neighborhoods of the Gaza Strip. Al-Qassam Brigades fighters have destroyed 60 Israeli military vehicles, including 10 armored personnel carriers, over the past three days in the Gaza Strip," Abu Obeida said in a statement. He explained that his comrades have managed to carry out several qualitative offensives against Israeli troops, saying the operations have inflicted heavy casualties on enemy forces, leaving scores of them dead and injured. "Our fighters directly targeted an enemy military personnel carrier in the al-Tawam neighborhood with a [guided] missile. The three Israeli soldiers onboard got out to flee and were subsequently targeted with anti-personnel munitions," Abu Obeida noted. He added that several Israeli soldiers have been killed in friendly fire, emphasizing that the occupying Tel Aviv regime only pursues destruction and mass murder of civilians in Gaza. "The Zionist enemy is in a state of utter chaos and indecisiveness. The crimes it perpetrates are a clear manifestation of its uncertainty about victory in the Gaza war," Abu Obeida said. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israel has killed at least 13,300 Palestinians in Gaza, including 5,600 children and 3,550 women, since the regime waged the war on the besieged enclave on October 7. A spokesperson from the ministry said they have evacuated at least 200 patients from the Indonesian Hospital. The evacuations come as Israeli tanks encircle the hospital - the last remaining medical facility in northern Gaza. The World Health Organization has condemned the attacks on the Indonesian Hospital, with its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying he was "appalled" at the situation. On Thursday, a group of UN experts, including several special rapporteurs, said Israel's assault on Gaza pointed to "genocide in the making." In a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza earlier this month, seven UN special rapporteurs warned that the Palestinian people were at "grave risk of genocide." The UN's food agency has called for a halt to hostilities in the Gaza Strip, home to some 2.3 million people. "Existing food systems are collapsing, and to reach those in need, WFP and our partners need increased access and resources like fuel, gas, and connectivity," the World Food Programme said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hamas says any 'truce deal' must be on terms of Palestinian resistance Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 7:37 AM The head of Hamas' political bureau says the Palestinian resistance movement "is nearing" a truce agreement with Israel, and that any ceasefire deal must be on the terms of Palestinian resistance. "We are close to reaching a deal on a truce," Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement on Tuesday. Hamas, he added, had delivered its response to Qatari officials, who are brokering the indirect negotiations between the Gaza-based group and the Israeli regime. Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq also told Al Jazeera TV that the details of the deal will be released by Qatar and Egypt "in the coming hours." The truce would last for multiple days and see the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza as part of a prisoner swap deal, he said. Rishq emphasized that any agreement is necessarily based on the conditions of the Palestinian resistance. He further said Israel, especially the regime's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been obstructing the ceasefire talks. Tel Aviv was looking for negotiations under the continued aggression to break the will of the resistance, something which will never happen, according to the Hamas official. He also said that the truce deal was agreed upon by all the resistance brigades in Gaza through phone calls and they always stand "united whether it is on the battlefield or in making political decisions." Two sources familiar with the truce talks told AFP that a tentative deal includes a five-day ceasefire on the ground and limits to Israeli aerial assaults over southern Gaza in return for the release of between 50 and 100 Israelis held captive by Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance group. Under the agreement, some 300 Palestinians are also expected to be freed from Israeli jails, among them women and children. Israel waged the bloody war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm in the occupied territories. Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed 13,300 Palestinians, including 5,600 children and 3,550 women, and injured more than 31,000 others. It has also imposed a "complete siege" on the coastal sliver, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US, Philippines launch joint sea and air patrols Announcement comes after President Marcos visits U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. By Jason Gutierrez for BenarNews 2023.11.21 -- The Philippines and United States began long-anticipated joint sea and air patrols off the Southeast Asian archipelago on Tuesday, in a show of bilateral muscle-flexing in the face of perceived Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. The three-day patrol started off the Philippines' northernmost islands near Taiwan and were to move toward South China Sea (West Philippine Sea) waters within Manila's exclusive economic zone, officials said. Filipino forces have engaged in some tense confrontations at sea lately with the China Coast Guard and Chinese maritime militia ships in disputed waters around Second Thomas (Ayungin) Shoal, where the Philippines keeps a ship grounded as a military outpost. "Today marks the beginning of joint maritime and air patrols - a collaborative effort between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the United States Indo-Pacific Command in the West Philippine Sea," Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in a statement Tuesday. He announced the launch of the patrols after returning to Manila on Monday from a U.S. tour where he attended the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco and met on Friday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He also visited the headquarters of the U.S. military's Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. "This significant initiative is a testament to our commitment to bolster the interoperability of our military forces in conducting maritime and air patrols," Marcos said, adding he expected the joint patrols to "enhance regional security and foster a seamless partnership with the United States in safeguarding our shared interests." The joint patrols are part of a series of events agreed to by the governments of both nations that have been allies since they signed their Mutual Defense Treaty in 1951. "The activity will commence in the vicinity of Batanes and will end in the West Philippine Sea," said Col. Xerxes Trinidad, spokesman for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), referring to the country's northernmost island province, which is a few hundred kilometers from Taiwan. The patrols involve three navy ships and three fighter-jets from the Philippine military, which were to be joined by one littoral combat ship and one aircraft from the American side. No other details were released. Marcos, who won the presidency last year, has sought to reverse the foreign policies of his predecessor, ex-President Rodrigo Duterte. Marcos is the son of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, who was a staunch ally of the U.S. at the height of the Cold War. While in office (2016-22), the staunchly anti-American Duterte distanced Manila in its policy toward Washington and sought closer ties with Beijing and Moscow. He ignored a 2016 international arbitration ruling that invalidated China's sweeping claims to the South China Sea, in exchange for Chinese investment pledges. Duterte subsequently adopted a more nationalistic tone before leaving office last year, but analysts have said that it was a case of too little too late. Earlier this year, the Marcos administration angered China by agreeing to grant U.S. military forces access to more bases in the Philippines. Beijing responded at the time by accusing the U.S. of provoking China by encircling it with military bases. China views Taiwan as a renegade province. Stop in Honolulu Over the weekend in Hawaii, Marcos and Philippine military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner met with Adm. John Aquilino, the top American commander for the Indo-Pacific region. Marcos also mingled with the large Filipino expat community. On Sunday (local time), the president gave a speech in Honolulu during which he announced that the Philippines would now seek bilateral agreements with two other Southeast Asian claimants to the sea region - Vietnam and Malaysia - because, he said, negotiations between the ASEAN bloc and China for a code of conduct in the South China Sea were moving too slow. The situation in the South China Sea "has become more dire" with China's increasing encroachment on the Philippines' maritime boundaries, forcing his government to seek new partnerships with allies so peace can hold, Marcos said. China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, including waters within the exclusive economic zone of Association of Southeast Asian Nations member-states Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. On Friday in San Francisco, Marcos met with Chinese President Xi in a bid to ease bilateral tensions after a series of standoffs in the strategic waterway during which Chinese coast guard and militia ships have stepped up efforts to block Philippine vessels from delivering supplies to Manila's military in Second Thomas Shoal. Marcos said he requested the meeting "to voice to the Chinese leader his concern on some of the incidents that were happening between Chinese and Philippine vessels, culminating in an actual collision," the Philippine Presidential Communications Office said in a statement Saturday. In his speech from Honolulu, Marcos noted that Philippine resupply missions to its outpost in the contested reef had been "subjected to coercive tactics and dangerous maneuvers" by the Chinese coast guard backed by its maritime militia. "So, I have said it before and I will say it again, the Philippines will not give a single square inch of our territory to any foreign power," he said, while emphasizing that the arbitration award in 2016 supported the Philippine position and rejected Chinese claims to nearly the whole of the sea region. "We will insist on the preservation of the sovereignty and integrity of the country, while working closely with international partners in the bilateral, regional, and multilateral settings in developing rules and processes to address these challenges," Marcos said. Ron Lopez in Manila contributed to this report. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news outlet. 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China rejects Australia's accusation of unsafe sea conduct Beijing denied its warship emitted sonar pulses causing injuries to Australian Navy divers in waters near Japan. By RFA Staff 2023.11.21 -- Beijing officials have spoken against allegations that a Chinese destroyer operated its sonar device near divers from the Royal Australian Navy's HMAS Toowoomba, causing them minor injuries. The denial came after Australia's Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a statement at the weekend that the "unsafe and unprofessional interaction" with a People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) destroyer occurred in international waters, inside Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Last Tuesday, divers from HMAS Toowoomba were working to clear entangled fishing nets from its propellers when a Chinese warship approached them. The ANZAC-class frigate had been in the region conducting operations in support of United Nations sanctions enforcement against North Korea. "At all times, HMAS Toowoomba communicated its intention to conduct diving operations on normal maritime channels, and using internationally recognized signals," the statement said. Despite warnings that there were divers in the water, the Chinese vessel still came closer and operated its hull-mounted sonar device, forcing the divers to surface. Some of them reported minor injuries, "likely due to being subjected to the sonar pulses from the Chinese destroyer." The pulses of sound are used for imaging underwater terrain and surrounding objects but they can be dangerous for divers in the water, causing injuries ranging from hearing loss to ruptured internal organs and even brain hemorrhage. Marles said that his government "has expressed its serious concerns to the Chinese government" and that "Australia expects all countries, including China, to operate their militaries in a professional and safe manner." 'Completely untrue' China's defense ministry on Monday evening responded to the Australian defense minister's statement, saying the claims were "completely untrue." "China has firmly rejected Australia's accusations," said a statement by Chinese defense ministry spokesman Wu Qian. "China has lodged formal representations with the Australian side." According to Wu, the Chinese warship Ningbo (139) was "tracking, monitoring, identifying, and verifying the Australian frigate HMAS Toowoomba in accordance with international laws and regulations." "The Chinese vessel maintained a safe distance from the Australian ship and did not engage in any actions that could have interfered with the Australian Navy divers' operations," the spokesman added. Wu also denied that the Chinese vessel had entered Japan's EEZ as "there is no demarcation between China and Japan in the relevant waters." "We urge the Australian side to respect the facts, stop making reckless and irresponsible accusations against China, do more to build up mutual trust between the two sides, and create a positive atmosphere for the sound development of relations between the two countries and two militaries," he said. Dangerous encounters The Chinese military has been accused multiple times of unsafe encounters with military airplanes and warships from the United States and its allies in the East and South China seas. Earlier this month, Canada said a Chinese J-11 fighter jet launched flares directly in front of a Canadian Royal Air Force CH-148 Cyclone helicopter which was conducting routine exercises in the South China Sea, "putting the safety of all personnel involved at unnecessary risk." On Oct. 24, another Chinese J-11 closed within 3 meters (10 feet) of a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber in a night time intercept over the South China Sea, according to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. The Command released video footage documenting the unsafe intercept of its B-52 bomber which was "lawfully conducting routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace." A week before that, the Department of Defense (DoD) released photos and video clips on Oct. 17 documenting 15 cases of what it called China's "coercive and risky operational behavior" against U.S. aircraft in the East China and South China seas in the last two years. The Pentagon said since 2021 China has engaged in more than 180 incidents of "coercive and risky operational behavior" against its assets acting lawfully in international airspace over the East and South China seas. The number increases to nearly 300 cases if U.S. allied and partner aircraft are included. The U.S. said China is carrying out "a centralized and concerted campaign" to prevent U.S. forces from operating safely in the air and in the sea. Beijing has rejected all accusations, in some cases claiming that it was the U.S. who provoked the situations. 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Embezzlement case shines light on Vietnamese corruption Experts say the US$12.5 billion scandal is just 'the tip of the iceberg.' By RFA Vietnamese 2023.11.21 -- A recent multi-billion dollar embezzlement scandal in Vietnam is just the "tip of the iceberg" in the country's corrupt banking system - and the government is ill-equipped to address it, experts told Radio Free Asia. Last week, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security released the conclusion of its investigation that found that Truong My Lan, the chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat Group, or VTP, had embezzled 304 trillion dong (US$12.5 billion) by using "ghost companies" and the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank, or SCB, the group's affiliate bank. The case is considered to be one of the biggest corruption cases in Vietnam ever and the value of the known embezzled funds amounts to about 6% of Vietnam's GDP. In its report released on Nov. 17, 2023, the ministry's Police Investigation Agency recommended prosecuting 86 people involved in the case, including Lan, who should face charges of bribery, embezzlement and violating banking regulations. Police also recommended prosecuting dozens of staff from SCB Bank and companies under the VTP Group for embezzlement and violating banking regulations, and two SCB staff and a former acting chief of the Inspectorate and Supervision Department under the State Bank of Vietnam for dereliction of responsibility. Additionally it was found that in handling this case, inspectors were bribed to falsify their findings. Structural problems There are formidable structural problems in Vietnam's banking system, Vietnam-based economic expert Bui Kien Thanh told RFA Vietnamese. "Apart from the SCB scandal, real estate is another bubble that can pop [at any time] in Vietnam," he said. "Banks give many loans [to real estate companies]. Big groups often borrow loans worth seven or eight times more than their asset value. No country's [banking system] operates in that way." He said the apparent bubble indicates that the government is mismanaging the banks. "And when the bubble bursts, the SCB story of US$12 billion would be just the tip of the iceberg only," he said. According to the investigation conclusion, Van Thinh Phat Group established more than 1,000 companies, including subsidiaries and member companies both inside and outside Vietnam, many of which specialize in banking, stock investment, and real estate. A large number of these "ghost companies" were established just to take money from SCB bank for Lan's use, according to the investigation conclusion. SCB Bank and Van Thinh Phat Group's subsidiaries were connected to each other through forms of cross-ownership, economics expert Nguyen Huy Vu told RFA. "Via SCB's banking system, SCB's capital and bonds of Van Thinh Phat Group's subsidiaries are mobilized to be used for the Group's projects. This created extremely high risks for depositors and [bond] investors." After the prosecutions and arrests of Truong My Lan and a series of other VTP leaders, many SCB depositors and those who bought VTP Group's bonds and other products and services via SCB, took to the streets and gathered at SCB offices to demand their money back. VTP victims continue to hold demonstrations. They have even created their own groups on the social media platforms of Facebook and Zalo. 'Like a pawn shop' Thanh explained that the case shows weaknesses in the Vietnamese banking system. "Vietnam has over 30 banks, but [these banks] do not provide proper professional training to their employees," he said. "The operation mostly focuses on mortgage lending, but actually functions like a pawn shop," he said. "Bank employees do not really study whether the project is feasible and can repay the loan, they only look at the mortgages in the borrowing applications." He said such lax oversight is common in the Vietnamese banking system. "As a result, [the loss] could be not just $12 billion but many more tens of billions of dollars that haven't yet been discovered." The Ministry of Finance estimates that the total bad debts of 28 banks increased by 52 percent in the third quarter of 2023 and some banks' bad debts increased by two or three times, according to a report in the Inspection Newspaper, an official publication from the Government Inspectorate. The government is clearly aware of bad debt but hasn't been able to manage it effectively or efficiently, said Thanh. "The government hands it over to the Vietnam Asset Management Company, but [they]cannot handle it. In brief, the State Bank has not fulfilled its role of examining and inspecting banks." Corruption in the banking system The high-profile case has grabbed much public attention, prompting many to question the government's management role given the enormity of the embezzlement tand that it occurred over a long period. "The investigation conclusion shows the horrific level of crime committed by Van Thinh Phat Group," Dang Dinh Manh, who worked as a lawyer in Vietnam for more than 20 years and currently resides in the United States, told RFA. "However, what caught my attention the most was the legal aspect of the case. Accordingly, a series of legal barriers to ensure healthy control of business operations have all been effectively nullified by Van Thinh Phat with the collusion of more than a few government officials." The conclusion of the investigation agency said that all 18 members of an investigation delegation led by Do Thi Nhan, former chief of the Inspectorate and Supervision Department under the State Bank of Vietnam, had received bribes to change their inspection results and cover SCB Bank's wrongdoings. As the delegation leader, Nhan received a bribe worth US$5.2 million, it said. "Perhaps the inspectors who received bribes in the Van Thinh Phat case had also committed crimes while inspecting other enterprises previously, but there were no mechanisms to stop them from doing that until the Van Thinh Phat case was discovered," Manh said. Thanh also expressed concern over the quality of the State Bank's inspection and monitoring activities. "Letting banks operate dishonestly without following the law is very harmful and dangerous," he said. "Allowing the abuse of bank ownership to borrow money without any limits ... does not follow the Law on Credit Institutions." According to Thanh, corruption is quite rampant in banking inspection activities in Vietnam and likely extend beyond the SCB case. "Many other banks may have been in similar situations but have not been discovered." Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Azerbaijan Offers To Hold Direct Peace Negotiations With Armenia, Including On Border By RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service, RFE/RL's Armenian Service November 21, 2023 Azerbaijan has offered to hold direction negotiations with Armenia on a peace treaty at a mutually acceptable venue, including along the state border between the two countries. "Azerbaijan is ready for direct bilateral negotiations with Armenia for the early conclusion of a peace agreement," Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said on November 21. "We believe that the two countries should decide the future of their relations together." The statement also said the responsibility for the continuation of the peace process, including the choice of a mutually acceptable venue, "or the decision to meet at the state border," lies with the two countries. It urged the Armenian side to "avoid new unnecessary delays." Yerevan has not responded to Azerbaijan's offer. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had several rounds of peace talks under EU mediation before Baku launched a lightning offensive in September that ended three decades of rule by ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan has indicated in recent days that it rejected France and the United States as mediators because of their "pro-Armenian" bias. Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant to the Azerbaijani president, said Armenia "must understand that the roots of peace are here and not in Washington, Brussels, and Paris." The statement from Baku on November 21 follows the announcement by Armenia's Foreign Ministry that Yerevan submitted its sixth proposal on a peace agreement to Azerbaijan following Pashinian's call on November 18 for "intensifying diplomatic efforts to achieve the signing of a peace treaty." Armenia "remains committed to concluding and signing a document on normalization of relations based on previously announced principles," the Armenian Foreign Ministry said. In recent public statements Pashinian urged the Azerbaijani leadership to publicly commit to the three key principles for achieving peace that he said were agreed upon by the parties during several rounds of Western-mediated negotiations in 2022 and 2023. The principles are recognition of each other's territorial integrity, the delimitation of the countries' borders based on the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration, and the opening of regional trade, transportation, and communications while respecting sovereign jurisdictions. In an interview with RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service, Toivo Klaar, the EU's Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia, said Brussels is looking for "rapid steps" toward the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Some member states are concerned that normalization is taking too long, Klaar said in the interview on November 20. "We don't see any reason why the process of normalization cannot be quicker. The fact that there is no fighting, the fact that there are no daily reports of shooting or selling on the border does not mean that the things are normal," he said. "What is important is to move from this present situation of absence of fighting to actual normalization, which means signing of the peace treaty, which means opening of communications, which means delimitation of the border and distancing of forces so that there is really a sense of security," he said. He added he believes that it is in Baku's hands to demonstrate that the process can be fast and substantial. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/azerbaijan-offers- peace-talks-armenia-border/32694282.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Stoltenberg Emphasizes NATO's Vigilance, Readiness As He Wraps Up Tour Of Western Balkans By RFE/RL's Balkan Service November 21, 2023 NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg says the alliance closely monitors what Russia is doing in the western Balkans but currently sees no military threat to any NATO member in the region. Speaking on November 21 in Skopje on the last stop of a tour of the western Balkans, Stoltenberg noted NATO's military presence in Kosovo and ties it has with Sarajevo and Belgrade as he touted the alliance's readiness. "We are ready to step up quickly and do whatever it takes to defend every ally against any threat, yet we are not seeing anything which would come as a threat against any NATO ally," he said during a joint press conference with Prime Minister Dimitar Kovecevski, who agreed that there is no threat from Russia to the security and stability of North Macedonia and the region. Kovacevski said, however, that the country and NATO are fighting against Russian influence in the region. "Influence of third countries, including Russian influence, exists in the region, and they are always able to find like-minded people in individuals, in certain political parties and in certain organizations," he said. But the attempts to destabilize the country are outmatched by the institutions of North Macedonia and those of the NATO member states, he said in response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's statement that there is information that Russia has a plan for destabilization of the Balkans. Stoltenberg said the response to authoritarian states that want to undermine freedom, spread misinformation, sow divisions, and undermine democracy must be "to work even closer together in NATO through our military presence and our cooperation with allies and partners because we are a truly great force for stability in the region." The NATO chief arrived in North Macedonia from Serbia. He also visited Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. Earlier in Belgrade, Stoltenberg said NATO and Serbia are looking into the possible resumption of joint military exercises. Serbia, which has declared its neutrality but has close traditional ties with Moscow, stopped its participation in multinational military exercises after the beginning of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February last year. "We discussed the possibility of resuming joint military exercises," Stoltenberg said at a joint news conference with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. "This does not undermine the neutrality of Serbia, which has made it clear that it stays militarily neutral, outside military blocs," he said, adding that Belgrade remains an important regional actor and a long-term partner for NATO, giving as an example Serbia's participation in the 30-member alliance's Partnership for Peace program. Vucic described Serbia's cooperation with NATO and the alliance-led KFOR peacekeeping mission to Kosovo as good and correct, adding that he will ask his government to consider resuming Belgrade's participation in joint exercises "with NATO and other partners." Tensions between Kosovo and Serbia increased after an attack by an armed group on the Kosovo police in the village of Banjska in northern Kosovo on September 24, when one Kosovar police officer and three attackers were killed. Responsibility for the shoot-out was claimed by Milan Radoicic, the former vice president of Belgrade-backed Serbian List, the largest ethnic Serb party in Kosovo. Radoicic was briefly detained in Serbia and later released pending further proceedings. NATO announced an increase in its KFOR force days after the shoot-out in Banjska. Stoltenberg said on November 21 that the perpetrators of the attack must be brought to justice. "We welcome the fact that Serbia is ready to cooperate," Stoltenberg said. Vucic said Serbia welcomes the KFOR's stepped up presence in Kosovo, claiming that only ethnic Serbs there have been attacked since 2001. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-serbia-possible-joint- military-exercises-kosovo/32693924.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Navy P-8A Poseidon Aircraft Overshoots Runway, Ends Up in Hawaiian Waters - Reports Sputnik News 20231121 WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - A US Navy P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft overshot a runway and ended up in shallow water just off Hawaii's coast, US Third Fleet officials said. In adverse weather conditions, a Navy surveillance aircraft experienced an overshoot of the runway and ultimately ended up submerged in Kaneohe Bay. All nine personnel on board evacuated the plane safely with no immediate injuries, the report said, citing Marine Corps Base Hawaii spokesperson. "At approximately 2 p.m. local (Hawaii), a US Navy P-8 Poseidon overshot the runway on landing at Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, and ended up in nearby water," military officials said. The crew members are still being medically assessed. An investigation will be launched in connection with the incident, and it is unclear what the next step will be to recover the aircraft, the official said. The P-8A Poseidon stands as a linchpin in the operational prowess of the United States Navy. Equipped to transport an arsenal of torpedoes and cruise missiles, this aircraft executes missions ranging from antisubmarine and antisurface warfare to intelligence gathering. According to an official communication from the Third Fleet of the US Navy, the P-8A Poseidon, stationed at Whidbey Island, Washington, was deployed in a detachment capacity, actively contributing to maritime homeland defense efforts. Earlier this year, a P-8A, patrolling the skies over the South China Sea encountered a close interception by a Chinese fighter jet. The encounter witnessed the Chinese aircraft closing in to a distance of merely just over 150 meters. The P-8 aircraft is not exclusive to the US Navy, with other military forces such as Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Norway, and India also incorporating this platform into their aviation fleets, as indicated by Boeing sources. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The UK government has issued a statement condemning the unlawful seizure of MV Galaxy Leader by the Houthis in the Red Sea. 21 November 2023 A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: The United Kingdom condemns the unlawful seizure of MV Galaxy Leader by the Houthis in the Red Sea and we call for the immediate, and unconditional, release of the ship and its crew. Iran has long provided military and political support to the Houthis. We have made it clear to Iran that it bears responsibility for the actions of its proxies and partners. Iran must actively restrain these groups to prevent the conflict escalating across the region. The UK is committed to ensuring the safety of shipping in the region, including through our contribution to the International Maritime Security Construct (IMSC) and Combined Maritime Forces (CMF). Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Department of Public Information . News and Media Division . New York 21 November 2023 The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General. ** Secretary-General's Travels Good afternoon, everyone. The Secretary-General is in Santiago, Chile. Today, he will meet with the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Jose Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, and with the UN country team. He will also have a town hall meeting with the staff in Chile, and this evening he is set to attend a dinner hosted by the Foreign Minister, Alberto van Klaveren. Tomorrow, the Secretary-General will take part in the G20 virtual [Leaders'] Summit, which is being hosted by the Government of India. And on Thursday, he will head to Antarctica. He will be accompanied by President Gabriel Boric. ** Gaza Yesterday, about 40 trucks carrying medical equipment, alongside 180 doctors and nurses, entered Gaza from Egypt. This equipment and medical personnel are intended for the establishment of a second Jordanian field hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, with a capacity of 150 beds. Also yesterday, the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, in north Gaza, came under attack, reportedly resulting in at least 12 fatalities, including patients and their companions, alongside many injuries. This is the fifth time the hospital has been hit since the start of hostilities. Hospitals and medical personnel are specifically protected under international humanitarian law and all parties to the conflict must ensure their protection. Hospitals must not be used to shield military objectives from attack. The Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Lynn Hastings, yesterday appealed to all parties to the conflict to protect Palestinian and Israeli children and their rights. As of 10 November, 4,506 Palestinian children were killed and about 1,500 have been reported missing, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reports that as of 19 November, nearly 930,000 internally displaced persons are now sheltering in 156 UNRWA installations across all five governorates of the Gaza Strip, including in the north. ** Disarmament And we have a statement related to disarmament. The Secretary-General welcomes the successful conclusion of the fourth session of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction, which took place from 1317 November 2023 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. He commends the participating States of the Conference, under the presidency of Libya, on their constructive engagement towards the elaboration of a future treaty and their commitment to multilateral diplomacy at a time of heightened tensions and the acute humanitarian crisis in the Middle East region. He encourages them to continue their work during the intersessional period, and supports their continuing efforts to pursue, in an open and inclusive manner, the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear-weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. ** Sahrawi In Algeria today, the UN launched the Sahrawi Refugee Response Plan, covering the next two years 20242025. The Plan calls for $214 million to ensure food stability, a reliable water supply as well as to address the nutritional requirements of people living in camps in Tindouf. Funding will also be used to enhance educational access, offer protection services and to improve and promote the health of the men, women and children living there. The Plan also includes measures to diversify livelihood activities. Led by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), the new Plan encompasses a robust and sustainable alliance of all 28 humanitarian actors on the ground to meet the needs of Sahrawi refugees. Our colleagues note that donors have demonstrated steadfast solidarity with the Sahrawi refugees by providing critical humanitarian support. However, they say that despite this support, operations there remain underfunded. With the Response Plan launched today, the UN renewed its call to fund operations to provide humanitarian assistance to Sahrawi refugees. ** Ukraine The Security Council this morning heard briefings in closed consultations on Lebanon. This afternoon, at 3 p.m., the Security Council will hold a meeting on the maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine. Miroslav Jenca, the Assistant Secretary-General for Europe, Central Asia and Americas at the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, and the World Food Programme Country Director in Ukraine, Matthew Hollingworth, are expected to brief Council members. Also from Ukraine, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that relentless attacks in front-line areas continue. In the east of the country, in the town of Selydove in the Donetsk region, overnight attacks yesterday and today hit multiple locations, including a hospital. Two civilians were killed and several more people were injured, according to the national authorities. Our humanitarian partners tell us that the injured received medical assistance and other patients were evacuated to nearby towns. The hospital premises sustained significant damage but remains operational. Still in the front-line area of the Donetsk region, humanitarian partners provided health assistance to nearly 600,000 people between January to October of this year, mostly by pre-positioning and distributing medicine and medical equipment to health facilities ahead of the winter. And last week, the World Health Organization supported an inter-agency convoy to the Donetsk region, delivering much-needed assistance to some 12,500 people in the communities of Marinka and Vuhledar, which have been particularly affected by intensified hostilities. ** Afghanistan/Pakistan The International Organization for Migration (IOM), together with humanitarian partners, are delivering a range of critical aid at border crossing points between Pakistan and Afghanistan in response to the hundreds of thousands of forcibly returned Afghans. According to IOM, nearly 375,000 Afghans have left Pakistan in the past two months primarily through the Torkham and Spin Boldak border crossings. IOM noted that the number of border crossings has dramatically increased from 200 daily to 17,000 since Pakistan's "Illegal Foreigners' Repatriation Plan" set a 1 November deadline for the "voluntary return" of all undocumented Afghans in Pakistan to their country of origin. Critical aid including shelter, water, sanitation, essential household items, health care, protection and nutrition services, as well as cash to cover basic needs, transportation and food is being provided by the IOM-led border consortium. The International Organization for Migration warns that the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan is exceptionally difficult, and needs are only likely to increase as winter approaches. IOM stresses that the international community must increase its support at a time when funding for the Afghan population is rapidly declining. ** Chad The World Food Programme announced that in December it will be forced to suspend food assistance to internally displaced people and refugees in Chad, who fled from Nigeria, the Central African Republic and Cameroon, due to insufficient funds. And from January, this suspension will be extended to 1.4 million people across Chad including new arrivals from Sudan. According to WFP, millions in Chad already face acute food insecurity and malnutrition particularly children due to a confluence of calamities including the impact of the climate crisis, global economic headwinds that drive up food and fuel prices, declining agricultural production and intercommunal tensions. The unfolding refugee crisis piles further pressure on food insecure communities that already struggle to get by. A recent WFP food security assessment revealed that 40 per cent of internally displaced people have poor food consumption a major decline from 14 per cent in 2022. Many of them are resorting to desperate measures, such as selling their belongings or begging. To ensure continued support to crisis-affected populations in Chad over the next six months, WFP urgently requires $185 million. ** Senior Personnel Appointment We have a senior personnel announcement. Today, the Secretary-General is appointing Ramtane Lamamra of Algeria as his Personal Envoy for Sudan. Mr. Lamamra brings more than four decades of experience in politics, international affairs and diplomacy. He held several high-level governmental positions in Algeria, including serving as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Foreign Affairs and as Minister of State and Diplomatic Advisor to the President. Since 2017, Mr. Lamamra has been a member of the High-Level Advisory Board of the United Nations Secretary-General on Mediation. Lots more online. ** World Television Day Today is World Television Day. This Day is not so much a celebration of TV, but rather the philosophy which it represents, that is, a symbol for communication and globalization in the contemporary world. ** Financial Contribution And some good news to report: in the past few days, Oman has paid its regular budget dues in full. We thank our friends in Muscat for taking us to 139 fully paid-up States. ** Questions and Answers Deputy Spokesman : Over to you. Yeah, Maggie? Question : Hold on. Thanks, Farhan. Sorry. So, back to Gaza. First, any new fuel deliveries to announce yesterday? Because only half of the amount came on Sunday. It's supposed to be 140,000 litres every 48 hours, and you announced 70,000 yesterday. Deputy Spokesman : Yeah. And that is as much as I have for now. If we get more fuel deliveries, we'll let you know. But the ones that came in as of last night, there was nothing further to report. Of course, over the course of today, there may be more coming in, and we would probably get that information later this evening. Question : Okay. And then on the Jordanian field hospital, can you tell us, like, where it's going to set up? I assume in the south. Do you know near what town? Deputy Spokesman : The idea is to set it up in Khan Younis. So, as you know, there's the large Khan Younis camp in southern Gaza. Question : And will it just be handling traumatic war injuries or will it provide care for chronic illnesses, maternity? Deputy Spokesman : Well, as you heard from the briefing yesterday, there are certain specialized facilities that only the larger hospitals can provide. So this would be for other facilities. As I mentioned, it'll be 150 beds, but that's still just essentially chipping away at the very large number of needs that we have. Question : I'm sorry. I didn't quite understand what you meant. What is the field hospital going to do? Trauma only? Deputy Spokesman : It'll deal with trauma and injuries, but it'll deal with more basic things that can be handled in terms of what a field hospital can do. The sort of facilities that larger hospitals like the Al-Shifa Hospital can provide are harder to replicate elsewhere, which was explained to you, I believe yesterday. Question : So are these Jordanian military doctors and nurses? Deputy Spokesman : I don't have the details of what the medical personnel will be, but some, as you know, some medical personnel went over last night. Question : Okay. Deputy Spokesman : Yes. Kristen, and then Dezhi. Question : You mentioned the Security Council briefing on Lebanon. Do you have any readout from Under-Secretary-General [for Peace Operations], [Jean-Pierre] Lacroix, on the situation on the Israel-Lebanon border? What's the feeling about how things are there, especially given two journalists were killed? Deputy Spokesman : Well, you've seen what we've been saying about this. We're very concerned about the potential for further escalation. The Security Council heard from Mr. Lacroix, and they also heard from Joanna Wronecka, the Special Coordinator for Lebanon. And, of course, we're investing our efforts into making sure that there is no further escalation along the Blue Line. To that extent, we are worried about some of the recent exchanges of fire that have happened across the Blue Line. You mentioned the deaths of the two journalists and Imran Riza, our Humanitarian Coordinator there, did say in a tweet just earlier today his concerns about this. And, of course, we, as always, believe that journalists should be kept out of harm's way and deplore any killings of journalists. Question : Thank you. Just a quick follow-up. Do you have, like, any idea of how many, with the extent of the barrages back and forth and who's firing and how much? Any kind of quantitative assessment report? Deputy Spokesman : Well, we've been reporting from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). We've been reporting on the exchanges of fire. Obviously, any amount of activity is of concern for us. But at the same time, as we've reported many times in the recent weeks, once there's a dialogue amongst the parties, we've been able to restore calm to the area, and we certainly hope that the parties take it seriously the need to deescalate tensions at the Blue Line. Dezhi, and then we'll go to Morad. Question : I have many questions, so please bear with me, Farhan. First, we know that in the past few days, we got this news that Hamas and Israel is very close to a deal. And this deal might release hostages in exchange of several days of truce or ceasefire or whatever you name it. But what I want to know is, given the fluid situation there, is the UN ready to utilize these couple of days of, you know, ceasefire to deliver humanitarian aid? Or, do you still have to coordinate with the Israeli Government to, you know, to deliver those aids inside Gaza? Deputy Spokesman : Regarding that, of course, it's a little bit premature to talk about. But certainly, what we are doing is trying to make sure that we are ready, so if there is any pause in fighting, which is what we've been asking for, we would be able to deliver humanitarian aid more effectively. So we're putting in place arrangements, including through discussions with the needed authorities. Question : So basically, if there's the announcement, UN would be ready, like, right there. Right? Deputy Spokesman : That is what we are trying to do. Obviously, it depends somewhat on actions by the parties on the ground. But this is what we've been calling for, and the Secretary-General has been calling for this for many weeks. And he's doing that so that once it happens, we can provide the aid that's needed. Question : Okay. On the same topic, but different news. The BRICS [Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa] country leaders, they just held a joint meeting on the situation in Gaza. We know these are, I would say, the most important emerging economies in the world. What do you think is the significance of these countries? They have one voice on the situation there. Deputy Spokesman : Well, it's important whenever there's any group of nations or regional group or other sorts of agglomerations of different nations that are pushing the parties towards the direction of greater peace and an end to hostilities. So we appreciate any help along that line. Question : You know, China actually calls for a convening of an international peace conference that is more authoritative, to build international consensus for peace and work towards an early solution to the question of Palestine that is comprehensive, just and sustainable. What's the position of the UN on this proposal? And will the UN support if there's a peace meeting? Deputy Spokesman : Well, we don't speak for nations, and ultimately, this would be a meeting among nations. So we'll see whether that gathers the support that's needed. But certainly, we want all nations to work together as much as they can towards getting the parties to end the fighting that's happening right now. Ibtisam, sorry, and then Morad. So sorry about that, Ibtisam. Question : No worries. So just a follow-up on your Gaza answer regarding the fuel. I think you were asked yesterday or Stephane [Dujarric] was asked yesterday about the minimum amount that you need for your operation yesterday, and I didn't hear you saying what you need, because... Deputy Spokesman : Well, the minimum amount was basically about twice the amount that we had received yesterday. And so we're trying to have that to be double that, about [140,000 litres] as opposed to [70,000]. Question : And what you are receiving, is it on a daily basis? Like, are you receiving every day this? Deputy Spokesman : We're trying to get fuel every day. But I cannot confirm that we've received anything so far today. Question : Okay. So my question is on also the West Bank and the arrest and attacks on Palestinian farmers, the arrest of hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. I have asked you in the past about that, and you said you'll get back to me on an answer. And it included also reports about torture and other issues. Deputy Spokesman : Yeah. We're very concerned about reports of arrests in the West Bank. We've been looking into all of the various accounts, including accounts in which there have been attacks on West Bank families. Those are being reported, including through the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Mr. [Tor] Wennesland's office, and we're looking into this. But Mr. Wennesland made it very clear that there's a real worry of having further deterioration of the situation in the West Bank, given the circumstances throughout the region. Morad? Question : Thank you, Farhan. Just follow-up on Gaza. Do you know why the UN is so far unable to put a plan ready in case of this agreement reached for a truce? The window will be very short, four days, and still yet from your answer, UN is not ready. Deputy Spokesman : We intend to be ready once the time has come. So we are working with the parties ultimately to make sure that we can get aid as soon as there is any cessation of hostilities on the ground. Evelyn? Question : Thank you, Farhan. In Ukraine, who bombed the hospital in Donetsk? Deputy Spokesman : We don't have any forensic capabilities, but, obviously, there's only a limited number of parties who have that capability. Jordan, and then we'll go back to Kristen. Question : I'm sorry. I came two minutes later. I don't know if you cover what my question. My question if the USG [Under-Secretary-General] for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs has met with the Palestinian families, prisoner families or not? And if you can also tell us about her programme today because she's supposed to meet with Palestinian Government. Thank you. Deputy Spokesman : Yeah. We actually provided some of this information yesterday. If you got this, we had sent an email on this. But what I can... I'll just read this out to you for the record. One second. Question : I'm talking about today's programme, Farhan, today. Deputy Spokesman : Yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you what we've said on this. Hold on one second. Hold on. I'm just trying to find this... Alright. So, basically, on Sunday, Rosemary DiCarlo, the Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and other senior Israeli officials, including from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And she also met at that point with families of the hostages being held in Gaza. Yesterday, she held further meetings with Israeli interlocutors and UN colleagues on the ground, and then today, she should be in Ramallah, and will be meeting with Palestinian interlocutors. And we'll try to give you further details about the meeting she's holding today once her trip has wrapped up. Kristen? Question : Sorry. That may have been my answer, but is there any more you can tell us about her goal in being there? Is she working? Is she involved at all in the captive discussions? Or what is she trying to bring to the table for the UN? Deputy Spokesman : Well, there's nothing to say about those discussions. Regarding Ms. DiCarlo's efforts, of course, she's meeting both with Israelis and Palestinians in her own efforts to deal with the situation on the ground. During this, I'd spoken with her just about an hour or so ago, and she was accompanied by Tor Wennesland, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. And with that, I shall bid you adieu till tomorrow. Have a good afternoon. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UNHCR concerned at adverse effects of Pakistan orders for undocumented foreigners to leave UNHCR - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 21 November 2023 UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is raising concerns over Pakistan's announcement for undocumented foreigners to leave, as the orders have adversely affected Afghan nationals including registered refugees and others with valid documents. Since Pakistan's announcement of the plan on 3 October 2023, an estimated 374,000 people have returned to Afghanistan - mostly in fear and haste. We are witnessing an exponential increase in arrests, detentions and deportations of Afghans in Pakistan. Mass arrivals back to Afghanistan are adding to the ongoing humanitarian crisis as winter temperatures start to dip - in some locations the minimum already reaching -4C . Many Afghan returnees are vulnerable, including women and children who could lose their lives in a harsh winter if left without adequate shelter. UNHCR has visited different locations in Pakistan in the past two weeks, meeting Afghans on the move and local authorities. Afghans interviewed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province - known as KP - in the northwest, and Balochistan province in the southwest of the country, including registered refugees, said they were leaving in a rush, fearing arrest and detention. All registered Afghan refugees are exempt from the Government's orders, but the announcement and follow-up actions, including reports of intimidation by local authorities and evictions by landlords, have created a sense of panic. The ongoing pressure to return has caused severe distress within the communities despite the assurances received from the Government of Pakistan. We have been reiterating our call that any return to Afghanistan should be voluntary, safe and dignified, irrespective of legal status in Pakistan. We have urged the Government of Pakistan to put in place a screening mechanism to identify individuals in need of international protection. UNHCR is offering support to Pakistan to put in place a system that addresses the legitimate concerns of the Government of Pakistan as well as Afghans seeking safety on its territory. UNHCR welcomes statements from Pakistani authorities at different levels to initiate legal actions against those who have been involved in extortion and mistreatment of Afghans who are on the move as a result of the Government's order. We are also seeking further discussions to help address the challenges faced by Pakistan while upholding the rights of all Afghans on its territory. Those arriving now at border points inside Afghanistan are exhausted and in need of emergency assistance. Many have complained of harassment, extortion and mistreatment. Desperate women and children are among those who were not given a choice but to pack and leave. In Afghanistan, UNHCR staff and humanitarian partners are scrambling to monitor and provide assistance to the large-scale influx of returning Afghans arriving at two official border crossings with Pakistan - Torkham, in Nangarhar province, and Spin Boldak, in Kandahar province. It is a daunting task on top of the ongoing humanitarian crises in Afghanistan affecting over two thirds of the population. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Gaza's children running out of time: Water shortages spark disease alarm UNICEF This is a summary of what was said by UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder - to whom quoted text may be attributed - at today's press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva 21 November 2023 GENEVA, 21 November 2023 -- "If children's access to water and sanitation in Gaza continues to be restricted and insufficient, we will see a tragic - yet entirely avoidable - surge in the number of children dying. "It is also now raining in Gaza. Combined, children face a serious threat of mass disease outbreak. It will be lethal. "It's important to remember the emergency threshold of a minimum amount of water per person per day - be it in war or famine-like conditions - is 15 litres. That is, to drink, to clean, to cook - all critical to prevent waterborne and other infectious diseases. "And yet there are parts of Gaza, particularly the north - where estimates state there are around 700,000 people - where people struggle to access as little as three litres per day. On the same days, none at all. "Let's be clear: the control of fuel and the access to water is to control whether thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of children live or die. "And this is not a footnote: more than 5,350 Palestinian children have reportedly already been killed. The death toll among children is sickening. Grief is being embedded into Gaza. "This then is a stark warningwithout sufficient fuel, without sufficient water, conditions for children will plummet. "Meanwhile, at least 30 Israeli children are still being held hostage somewhere in this hellscape. They must be released. It is abhorrent to think of their fear; the torment their families are enduring. It must end. "The potential for the widespread loss of life in Gaza is significantly exacerbated by the fact that around 800,000 children in Gaza are displaced. "They are desperately - often vainly - seeking safety in densely packed shelters. "On average, there is one shower unit for every 700 people at UNRWA shelters. And a single toilet for every 150 people. Queues take hours. Think of what that means for adolescent girls. "Without enough fuel, we will see the collapse of sanitation services. "We have then a perfect storm for the spread of disease. The perfect storm for tragedy: a desperate lack of water; faecal matter strewn across densely packed settlements; unacceptable lack of latrines; severe constraints on handwashing, personal hygiene and cleaning. "Already we're seeing almost 10 times the monthly average of reported cases of diarrhoea among children under the age of 5, in addition to increases of scabies, lice, chicken pox, skin rashes and respiratory infections. "What must happen: Permit the supply of water and sanitation materials and equipment for the emergency repair and operation of critical water and sanitation services, including production, treatment and distribution. Immediately provide safe and unimpeded access to a daily supply of fuel that meets all the needs for the operation of critical water and sanitation facilities; and We need a humanitarian ceasefire; safe and unimpeded humanitarian access; and the immediate and safe release of all abducted children. "Without these, an indifferent world will watch the death of countless children in Gaza." ##### NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Gaza crisis: aid agencies warn of 'tragic, avoidable surge' in child deaths 21 November 2023 - A "tragic...entirely avoidable surge" in child deaths is expected in Gaza where some 160 youngsters are already being killed every day, UN humanitarians warned on Tuesday, after six weeks of aerial bombardment by Israeli forces in response to the 7 October Hamas terror attacks on southern Israel that claimed 1,200 lives and some 240 hostages. "About 160 children are killed every day; that's one every 10 minutes," said UN World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Christian Lindmeier, echoing concerns from the UN Children's Fund about the serious additional threat of a mass disease outbreak in the enclave. "If youngsters continue to have restricted access to water and sanitation in Gaza, we will see a tragic yet entirely avoidable surge in the number of children dying," UNICEF spokesperson James Elder told journalists in Geneva, who noted that more than 5,350 Palestinian children had reportedly been killed, according to the enclave's health authorities. "The death toll among children is sickening," Mr. Elder said. "Grief is becoming embedded in Gaza. So this then is a stark warning: without sufficient fuel, without sufficient water, conditions for children will plummet." The UNICEF spokesperson added that at least 30 Israeli children are still being held hostage "somewhere in this hellscape", before appealing for their immediate release, to spare them "their fear (and) the torment" their families have endured. Hospital evacuation planned Speaking to journalists in Geneva, WHO's Mr. Lindmeier explained that "every 10 minutes, two children are injured", while youngsters and their families caught up in the conflict have been dying "in terrifying circumstances". According to the UN health agency, around 180 babies are born every day in the war-shattered enclave. More than 20 of them need specialized care, just like the infants from Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where 31 premature and low-birthweight babies in intensive care were evacuated over the weekend. The original number of infants was 33 but two died "because of the lack of care available to them," Mr. Lindmeier said. Highlighting the dire situation all over Gaza where "less than half" of the enclave's hospitals and clinics now function "in any capacity", the WHO official said that plans were continuing to evacuate the remaining 200 patients and 50 health workers from Al-Shifa hospital, as a desperate, last resort. Facing 'certain death' "When these people - the doctors, the nurses, the patients - are asking to be evacuated, that's really the last resort," he said, adding that it meant "that the situation on the ground has grown so dire that the only other alternative is facing what they think certain death". The WHO spokesperson explained that such evacuations were extremely complicated and dangerous, requiring coordination with Israeli Defense Forces and with Hamas "to get to a safer place inside Gaza". The evacuation teams will "need time, they need preparation, they need specialized equipment, they need safe passage", Mr. Lindmeier said. Almost no water, fuel, food According to the UN health agency, Gaza is now home to thousands of injured and critically ill people. There has been a sharp increase in diseases such as diarrhoea, and respiratory infections, along with "almost no water, fuel, food, electricity, or medical supplies". Some 72,000 cases of upper respiratory infections have been reported in displacement shelters with close to 49,000 cases of diarrhoea and over half of these among children under age five. This compares with a pre-war monthly average of 2,000 cases in 2021, 2022 Arrival of medical staff and equipment Speaking later in New York, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said around 40 trucks carrying medical equipment, alongside 180 doctors and nurses, entered Gaza on Monday for the establishment of a second Jordanian field hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. The facility will have 150 beds. He also reported that the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, came under attack on Monday. Twelve people were reportedly killed, including patients and their companions, and many others were injured. This marked the fifth time the hospital has been hit since the start of hostilities last month. "Hospitals and medical personnel are specifically protected under international humanitarian law and all parties to the conflict must ensure their protection. Hospitals must not be used to shield military objectives from attack," he said. The UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, further reported that nearly 93,000 displaced people are sheltering in 156 of its facilities across all five governorates in the Gaza Strip, including in the north. UN at the ready Meanwhile, international media have been reporting on the possibility of a deal between Israel and Hamas that would involve a hostage exchange and a cessation of fighting for four or five days. Asked about UN humanitarian response in the event of a possible ceasefire, Mr. Haq said it was "a little bit premature" to talk about the issue. "But certainly, what we are doing is trying to make sure that we are ready, so if there is any pause in fighting, which is what we've been asking for, we would be able to deliver humanitarian aid more effectively," he said. WHO staff member killed The World Health Organization (WHO) mourned the death of a staff member who was killed in Gaza on Tuesday. Dima Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj, 29, worked as a patient administrator at the Limb Reconstruction Centre, a critical part of the WHO Trauma and Emergency Team, and had been with the UN agency since December 2019. Ms. Alhaj had evacuated from Gaza City to her parents' house in the south, which was bombed on Tuesday. She was killed alongside her husband, six-month old son, and two of her brothers. Reportedly, over 50 family and community members sheltering in the same house also died. "She was a wonderful person with a radiant smile, cheerful, positive, respectful. She was a true team player. Her work was crucial, and she had been requested to take on even more responsibilities to support the Gaza sub-office and team," said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territory. He expressed deepest condolences to her mother and father, a long-serving medical specialist in Gaza, as well as to her family and many friends. WHO noted that the humanitarian community and the UN have suffered losses since the start of the conflict. Two doctors from the medical charity MSF were also killed on Tuesday while UNRWA has lost 108 colleagues to date. "The death of Dima and her family is another example of the senseless loss in this conflict," said WHO. "We plead again with all those who hold in their hands the power to end this conflict to do so." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UNRWA Situation Report #34 on the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (All information is valid as of 19 November 2023 at 22:30 local time) UNRWA 21 Nov 2023 Key points The Gaza Strip Almost 1.7 million people have been displaced across the Gaza Strip since 7 October. As of 19 November, nearly 930,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are now sheltering in 156 UNRWA installations across all fve governorates of the Gaza Strip, including in the north. Nearly 770,000 IDPs are sheltering in 99 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 evacuation orders were 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 18 November, Israeli Authorities authorized the entry of 120,000 litres of fuel that will be used over two days and will only cover half of the daily critical needs. UNRWA has been informed that 120,000 litres of fuel will be delivered every two days. Without the amount of fuel needed to implement all the necessary humanitarian operations, o UNRWA is forced to handle a reduced number of aid trucks carrying humanitarian aid crossing daily into Rafah; o people will only have two thirds of their daily needs of clean drinking water; o large parts of Gaza will continue to be fooded with sewage, further increasing risks of disease; o 70 per cent of solid waste will not be removed, posing a major health hazard. According to the logistics cluster, on 18 November, 30 aid trucks entered Gaza, followed by another 69 trucks the following day. As of 19 November, a total of 1,268 aid trucks had entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing. Of these, 200 were UNRWA trucks, carrying food, water, medical supplies and other essential non-food items. The West Bank, including East Jerusalem On 19 November, several overnight Israeli Security Forces (ISF) operations were reported across refugee camps in the West Bank. The ISF conducted a search and arrest operation in Jenin refugee camp. An exchange of fre took place between Palestinians and ISF. One Palestinian with special needs was killed at the entrance of the camp and around fve Palestinians were injured. Damage to infrastructure by ISF bulldozers was once again reported. The operations in Jenin City and refugee camp lasted for over 12 hours, impacting UNRWA operations and service delivery in the camp. Four UNRWA schools remained closed and provided remote learning, impacting over 1,600 students. On the same night, ISF conducted an operation in Balata refugee camp, Nablus, for the second night in a row. An exchange of fre took place between Palestinians and ISF. Six Palestinians, including one minor were reportedly injured with live ammunition. Several camp residents were detained. Damage to public infrastructure and private property was also reported. The operation lasted until the morning, impacting UNRWA operations and service delivery in the camp, including disrupting the school day for over 2,500 students at four UNRWA schools in the camp. On the same day, the ISF conducted a search and arrest operation in and around Qalandia refugee camp, located close to Qalandia checkpoint. An exchange of fre took place between Palestinians and ISF. Two Palestinians were reported injured and one was detained. Another ISF operation was carried out in Dheisheh refugee camp, Bethlehem. An exchange of fre took place between Palestinians and ISF, resulting in the killing of one Palestinian. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Air Force, Coast Guard partner for rescue exercise Published Nov. 21, 2023 By Senior Airman Courtney Sebastianelli 23rd Wing Public Affairs MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. (AFNS) -- The 347th Operations Support Squadron at Moody Air Force Base partnered with U.S. Coast Guard Station Mayport, Florida, Nov. 17, for a simulated water rescue of a downed pilot during exercise Mosaic Tiger 24-1. Bad weather off the coast of Jacksonville and Saint Johns River stopped the actual exercise rescue from happening, but the relationship built during the planning process will help future joint operations between the two services. "As we train, we can't be singular in our approach," said Air Force Tech. Sgt. Michael Mendes, 347th OSS group weapons and tactics load master. "We have to work together to seamlessly merge, and since our HH-60Ws [Jolly Green II] don't get maritime training as often, it was a valuable experience for our Airmen to integrate with another branch. Training with the Coast Guard allowed us to test and improve our proficiency in how we communicate and respond to maritime rescues." Moody AFB rescue Airmen used the Mosaic Tiger readiness exercise as a way to get ready for future real-world deployment cycles. During the week, they worked with three different Coast Guard Stations: Mayport, St. Petersburg and Cape Canaveral each provided safety boats, simulated hoist operations and the personnel in the water. When life or death is at stake, especially for an over-water rescue, understanding joint team concepts ensures service members at every level can seamlessly integrate to move quickly and efficiently. Joint commanders can then leverage the unique capabilities of each branch to choose the right rescue package and save lives. According to the Air Force guide titled The Joint Team, or the Purple Book, joint integration requires effective coordination among the military branches. The guide outlines how U.S. forces are required by national command authorities to respond on short notice to unpredictable crises in a joint force capacity. Despite weather interference, the Air Force and Coast Guard were able to train for just that purpose. "This training opportunity benefits both sides by giving our respective crews new encounters with environments and capabilities," said Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Tim Mathis, USCG STA Mayport unit supervisor. "Complacency can be the divider between failure and success, and exposing search-and-rescue resources to fresh scenarios deepens the well to draw from when the call comes in real time." The search-and-rescue community is a tight-knit group of professionals, regardless of their branch of service. During the remainder of the day, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen worked to establish effective communication practices and demonstrate joint team integration when faced with real-time situations. Mendes said mission success depends on how well integrated forces can merge to streamline communication and overcome differences in execution methods. There is overlap between the Air Force's search and rescue mission and the Coast Guard's commitment to ensuring maritime safetyboth of which came together to produce an effective outcome during a rescue need. "We benefit from working with the Air Force by working through a different set of scenarios that we may not usually see or expect," Mathis said. "This promotes real-time risk assessment and evaluation that is essential to growing as first responders. The opportunity to develop a universal standard or response cannot be understated as more resources are available to respond in any given situation." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group Arrives in Busan, Republic of Korea US Navy 21 November 2023 BUSAN, Republic of Korea -- USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70), the flagship of Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 1, arrived in the Republic of Korea (ROK) for a scheduled port visit, Nov. 21. "An aircraft carrier port visit demonstrates the United States' commitment to the alliance between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea," said Rear Adm. Carlos Sardiello, commander, CSG-1. "Cooperation between the U.S. and Republic of Korea navies is critical to maintaining peace and security in Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula." The visit to Busan demonstrates U.S. commitment to the region further enhancing relationships with ROK leaders and the local population. Additionally, the visit provides the opportunity for CSG-1 sailors and civilians to rest and recharge while being able to experience the Republic of Korea. "Port visits by U.S. ships are routine in the Republic of Korea," said Capt. Matthew Thomas, commanding officer, USS Carl Vinson. "We are honored to be guests, and our crew looks forward to cultural exchange, including several community relations events, alongside the people of the Republic of Korea." During the port visit, Vinson is scheduled to host ship tours for several U.S. and ROK dignitaries, conduct multiple key leader engagements ashore, and well participate in community outreach and sporting events. CSG-1's visit highlights the strength of the U.S. - ROK partnership. "We are honored to pay a port visit to the Republic of Korea, especially in a year marking the 70th Anniversary of the Armistice and the establishment of the United States-Republic of Korea alliance," said Capt. Winston Scott, commander, Carrier Air Wing TWO. "Our sailors look forward to participating in professional engagements and community service projects while meeting and engaging with the local community of South Korea." Prior to the Busan port call, the CSG-1 participated in Multi-Large Deck Event and Annual Exercise 2023 in the Philippine Sea. Both exercises provided the strike group the opportunity to work and train alongside allies and partners to include the Royal Australian Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the Philippine Navy as an observer. In order to bolster their combined warfighting readiness, participants engaged in various events comprising enhanced maritime communication tactics, anti-submarine warfare operations, air warfare operations, and replenishments-at-sea, among others. CSG-1 is a multiplatform team of ships and aircraft, capable of carrying out a wide variety of missions around the globe from combat missions to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief response. CSG-1 is currently deployed to U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations in support of free and open Indo-Pacific. U.S. 7th Fleet is the U.S. Navy's largest forward-deployed numbered fleet and routinely interacts and operates with allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region. For more news from CSG 1, visit http://www.dvidshub.net/unit/CSG1 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Force Attacked at Iraq Air Base, Responds by Hitting Iranian-Backed Proxies By Carla Babb November 21, 2023 U.S. forces struck and killed Iranian-backed proxies who earlier had launched a close-range ballistic missile against al-Asad air base in Iraq on Monday. It was the first time a ballistic missile had been launched against U.S. forces in the Middle East since a surge in attacks began on October 17, and the first time U.S. forces have retaliated with a strike in Iraq. It marks an escalation from the previous attacks over the past month, as ballistic missiles can be much more powerful and carry much more destructive payloads than the rockets and drones used in previous attacks. U.S. Central Command said the ballistic missile attack caused eight injuries to U.S. personnel and minor damage to infrastructure. The Pentagon said American forces were able to locate an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of personnel involved in the attack. An AC-130 gunship crew then conducted a "self-defense strike" in retaliation, killing three enemy fighters. 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 have told VOA. More than 60 rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces have come since October 17. Most of those attacks 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 injured dozens of U.S. military personnel, with injuries ranging from traumatic brain injuries to minor injuries such as shrapnel or perforated eardrums. Officials say those injured have since 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. In addition to today's AC-130 strike in Iraq, U.S. fighter jets have carried out three rounds of strikes targeting four facilities in Syria used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their proxy groups. 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 200 more people hostage. Israel's retaliatory strikes and ground offensive has caused thousands of deaths. 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, the Houthis and Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed proxy militias, from expanding the Israel-Hamas conflict. 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 air strikes against Iranian-backed facilities in Syria, much like the strikes carried out by U.S. forces in recent weeks. The last time Iran or Iranian-backed proxies used ballistic missiles against U.S. forces in Iraq was in 2020 following a U.S. attack in Iraq the killed Iranian Quds force leader Qassem Soleimani. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Newly Assertive Central Asia Rejects 'Russia's Backyard' Label By Navbahor Imamova November 21, 2023 Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev bewildered Vladimir Putin and his entourage when, during a November 9 briefing in the Kazakh capital, he addressed the visiting Russian president in his native tongue. While Tokayev spoke in Kazakh for less than 30 seconds, the gesture made a point: Kazakhstan is not Russia. Moscow is a strategic ally and neighbor with a shared past, but Kazakhstan is a sovereign nation. "It takes courage," Azamat Junisbai, professor at Pitzer College, remarked in a posting on X. "That President Tokayev made a point of delivering even a small part of his message in Qazaq is meaningful and appreciated by those who know the context." Junisbai's posting, using the native rather than the more familiar Russian spelling for the language, itself reflected the former Soviet republic's determination to establish its own identity apart from Moscow. Changes in perception slow in coming Tokayev and other Central Asian leaders, especially Uzbekistan's Shavkat Mirziyoyev, have been traveling the world, signing major investment deals and hosting international summits at home, promoting their development agendas and visions for the region. Yet many in the West have been slow to acknowledge the trend, including major news publications such as Reuters, Deutsche Welle, The Wall Street Journal and Time, all of which have recently referred to Central Asia as "Russia's backyard." Bloomberg, for example, covered the French president's visit to Central Asia this month with an attention-grabbing "Macron Lands in Putin's Backyard Seeking New Friends and Uranium." Central Asian and some Western researchers take offense at the phrase, which they increasingly see as evidence of a colonial and condescending way of understanding a region that has its own history, culture and trajectory. "Bloomberg reducing Kazakhstan/Central Asia to 'Putin's backyard' is just a new level of ignorant, insulting, and unethical journalism," wrote Akbota Karibayeva, a doctoral student from Kazakhstan at George Washington University, on X. Asel Doolotkeldieva with the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, also reacted on X: "Bloomberg didn't even bother to write the country's name. Kazakhstan is just a 'backyard.' So tell me, how this Western imperial discourse is different from the Russian imperial discourse on Central Asia? How better you are?" Eric Rudenshiold said in a recent Washington roundtable, "Central Asia is not a flyover zone. It is a destination." The former National Security Council director for Central Asia under the Biden and Trump administrations is now a senior fellow at the Caspian Policy Center in Washington. Central Asia wants 'strong commitment' Speaking remotely from Tashkent on the same panel discussion, Uzbek scholar Akram Umarov argued that countries seeking to boost relations with Central Asia need to appreciate that emerging identity. "Central Asia is focused on its own development," he said. "It wants a strong commitment and longstanding interest from its partners, including the United States." Part of that identity is forged by Central Asia's location in a "tough neighborhood" landlocked and surrounded by Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan while standing at the crossroads between eastern and western Asia. "We cannot change our geography, which always matters. You deal with what you have, so we need to be pragmatic," Umarov said. His Kazakh colleague Iskander Akylbayev added that Central Asia is more than simply an area connecting larger, more powerful states, but one that aims to transform itself into a commercial hub. Kazakhstan, one of the world's top 12 oil producers, "does not just want an energy-oriented cooperation. It wants to become a knowledge-based economy," Akylbayev said, stressing the importance of regional connectivity, which could lure more investment to Central Asia and boost its image. But the reality is more complicated, according to Uzbek and Kazakh officials, who acknowledge that the region's leaders are deeply affected by a fear of Russian aggression and a lingering distrust of the U.S. and the EU. Central Asian governments find themselves hedging, seeking an elusive balance. Speaking on background with VOA about Central Asia's predicament, a Biden administration official echoed this concern: "How do you move your goods and push for your interests when you are surrounded by Russia, China, Iran and Afghanistan?" Openings for the U.S. Rudenshiold sees the five Central Asian states "working together and breaking free from their former isolation to connect to a more global future a process that has created significant new openings for the United States." China, the Gulf states and the EU are promising to invest billions that Central Asians hope will free them from "Russia's stranglehold." America's pledge pales by comparison, Rudenshiold noted in his recent article for the Caspian Policy Center. Kazakhstan is eager to develop a "Middle Corridor" through which East Asian goods can be transported to the West via its territory, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. Double-landlocked Uzbekistan is desperate to access seaports. Turkmenistan wants a trans-Caspian gas pipeline to facilitate the sale of its main resource. "Washington is missing out on a critical opportunity to assist the region," Rudenshiold said. "U.S. diplomats and development experts are sending the right messages to Central Asian capitals, but they don't have sufficient resources to follow up." But how to convince the U.S. Congress that the region is worth investing in? It seems to some like a mission impossible, especially when many lawmakers at least partly informed by reports describing the region as a backyard still view Central Asian republics as vassals of Russia and China. U.S. lawmakers could start by scrapping the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, Rudenshiold suggested. The law, adopted nearly 50 years ago originally to restrict trade with the Soviet Union, still blocks some countries from achieving most-favored nation trading status with the United States. While the U.S. cannot replace Central Asia's neighbors as trade partners, it can enable Central Asians "to do business on their own terms, not dictated by Moscow and Beijing," Rudenshiold said. Rights advocates counter that repealing Jackson-Vanik and awarding more trade benefits would be unwarranted before the region shows more progress on establishing the rule of law. They note that Central Asian states still pursue authoritarian practices, jail journalists, restrict nongovernmental organizations and religious freedom, and maintain harsh anti-LGBTQ legislation. Rising regionalism According to Edward Lemon, president of the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs and professor at Texas A&M University's Bush School of Government and Public Service, "the most significant change in foreign relations in Central Asia over the past decade has been rising regionalism." "Visa regimes have been relaxed, borders reopened, trade surged and intraregional migration has increased," Lemon told VOA. However, he says, Central Asian leaders still do not act as a cohesive group. "Doing so would certainly increase their bargaining power." Lemon added that while striving to overcome the label of "Russia's backyard," "all have maintained strong ties with Moscow, which have not substantially changed since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address WFP operations risk grinding to a halt in Chad as refugees flee Darfur killings World Food Programme 21 November 2023 N'DJAMENA -- The United Nations World Food programme (WFP) is today warning of a looming halt to its food and nutrition assistance to 1.4 million crisis-affected populations in Chad - including newly arrived Sudanese refugees - due to funding constraints. This comes as aid agencies scramble to respond to a fresh wave of refugees fleeing an unimaginable humanitarian crisis unfolding in neighbouring Darfur amid reports of mass killings, rapes, and widespread destruction. In just the last six months of conflict in Sudan, as many refugees have fled into Chad as had crossed the border in the preceding 20 years starting from the outbreak of the Darfur crisis in 2003. This brings the total number of refugees in Chad to over a million, making the country host to one of the largest and fastest-growing refugee populations in the whole African continent. "This forgotten crisis has metastasized as the world's eyes are on other emergencies. It is staggering but more Darfuris have fled to Chad in the last six months than in the preceding 20 years. We cannot let the world stand by and allow our life-saving operations to grind to a halt in Chad," said Pierre Honnorat, WFP's Country Director in Chad. "You can see the fear and despair in people's eyes as they cross the border with nothing but harrowing tales of violence. Collectively we must find a way to support the women, children and men who are bearing the full brunt of this crisis. Cutting our assistance is simply not an option because it will have untold consequences for millions of people, jeopardizing years of investment in fighting hunger and malnutrition in Chad," Honnorat warned. Dwindling funding and soaring immense humanitarian needs, is forcing WFP into making brutal choices. In December, WFP will be forced to suspend assistance to internally displaced people and refugees from Nigeria, Central African Republic, and Cameroon due to insufficient funds. From January this suspension will be extended to 1.4 million people across Chad - including new arrivals from Sudan who will not receive food as they flee across the border. Millions in Chad already face acute food insecurity and malnutrition - particularly children - due to a confluence of calamities including the impact of the climate crisis, global economic headwinds that drive up food and fuel prices, declining agricultural production, and intercommunal tensions. The unfolding refugee crisis piles further pressure on food insecure communities that already struggle to get by. In August this year, WFP was only able to assist 1 million of the 2.3 million it had targeted, leaving 1.3 million without assistance at the peak of the lean season when hunger bites the hardest. Malnutrition is also a major concern, with 1.36 million - or 8.6 percent of children under five suffering from malnutrition. The situation among refugee communities is even more concerning, with 90 percent of new arrivals, 77 percent of pre-existing refugees, and 67 percent of local communities reporting poor or borderline food consumption according to the latest Emergency Food Security Assessment conducted in Eastern Chad. "Cutting assistance paves the way for crises of nutrition, crises of instability, and crisis of displacement," Honnorat warned. A recent WFP food security assessment revealed that 40 percent of internally displaced people have poor food consumption - a major decline from 14 percent in 2022. Many of them are resorting to desperate measures such as selling their belongings or begging. To ensure continued support to crisis-affected populations in Chad over the next six months, WFP urgently requires US$185 million. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Readout of Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines's Travel to Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda November 21, 2023 Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines travelled to Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on 19-20 November. The DNI was joined by Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee and Special Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for African Affairs Judd Devermont. DNI Haines met with Rwandan President Kagame and Congolese President Tshisekedi to secure commitments from both leaders to de-escalate tensions in eastern DRC. Acknowledging the long history of conflict in this region, Presidents Kagame and Tshisekedi plan to take specific steps to reduce current tensions by addressing the respective security concerns of both countries. The steps are drawn from previous arrangements reached with the support of neighbors under the Luanda and Nairobi processes. The U.S. government welcomes, and intends to monitor, these DRC and Rwandan steps towards de-escalation, and plans to support diplomatic and intelligence engagements between both countries to foster greater security and prosperity for the Congolese and Rwandan peoples. ### NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hamas announces truce deal with Israeli regime, warns hands of resistance 'on the trigger' IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Nov 22, 2023 Tehran, IRNA -- Palestinian resistance movement Hamas says it has reached a temporary ceasefire with the Zionist regime, warning the occupying entity that the resistance fighters' hands will remain on the trigger. "After difficult and complicated negotiations over many days, we announce, with the help and success granted by Allah Almighty, the reaching of the agreement of a humanitarian truce (a temporary ceasefire) for a duration of four days with diligent and appreciated Qatari and Egyptian efforts," Hamas said in a statement early on Wednesday. The truce deal, according to the statement, stipulates the cessation of fire from both sides, the stopping of all military activities of the occupation army in all areas of the Gaza Strip, and the halt of the movement of its military vehicles infiltrating the Gaza Strip. "As we announce the reaching of the truce agreement, we affirm that our hands will remain on the trigger, and our victorious brigades will remain on the lookout to defend our people and defeat the occupation and aggression," Hamas asserted. The statement also said that the truce includes the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian, relief, medical, and fuel aid into all areas of the Gaza Strip, without exception. It also includes the "release of 50 of the occupation detainees, women and children under 19 years old, in exchange for the release of 150 women and children under 19 years old from among our people from the occupation prisons, all according to seniority," the Palestinian resistance movement added. 4354**7129 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address BRICS leaders call for immediate ceasefire in Gaza IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Nov 22, 2023 Tehran, IRNA -- The leaders of the BRICS countries, in the final statement of their meeting, which was held in the form of a video conference with the presence of the main members, at the suggestion of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic President of Iran, called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. In their statement, the heads of the BRICS countries called for an independent and transparent investigation into the war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip in accordance with international standards and emphasized that the dire humanitarian situation, especially in the Gaza Strip and other occupied Palestinian territories, is a cause for concern. In this statement, the heads of the BRICS countries also condemned the brutal actions against the Palestinians, called for the immediate release of the hostages, and supported efforts to immediately end hostilities, protect civilians, and send humanitarian aid to Gaza. "We condemn violent actions against civilians, including war crimes, attacks on civilian infrastructure, as well as all provocative and destructive actions," it added. In the final statement of the meeting of the leaders of the BRICS countries, it is stated: "We demand the establishment of an immediate humanitarian, durable and stable ceasefire that will lead to the cessation of hostilities, the establishment of peace and security in the Gaza Strip based on international laws and the United Nations Charter." This statement further addea that emphasizing the importance of preventing the escalation of the conflict in the Gaza Strip, "We call on all parties involved to exercise maximum restraint and call on those who have influence over them to end the conflict and immediately establish a ceasefire and establish peace." At the end, the heads of the BRICS countries, by condemning any forced migration of Palestinians individually or collectively from their lands, either to Gaza or to neighboring countries, emphasized that a just and permanent settlement of the conflict between the Zionist regime and Palestine is possible only through peaceful means. 2050 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Egypt calls for pressure on Israel to obey UN resolution on Gaza ceasefire People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 09:41, November 22, 2023 CAIRO, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday urged the international community to pressure Israel to comply with the recent UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for reaching an immediate ceasefire and establishing humanitarian corridors across the war-stricken Gaza Strip. Sisi's remarks came during an extraordinary virtual summit of the leaders of the BRICS group on the Palestinian-Israeli issue and the current situation in Gaza, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement. "Egypt has opposed and condemned the killing of civilians from all sides, and at the same time it denounces, in the strongest terms, the targeting of civilians and civilian facilities, particularly hospitals," Sisi said in a video speech. He said that "the international community bears humanitarian and political responsibility to save civilians in Gaza and to end these inhumane practices." 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 14,000. Adopted in mid-November, the UNSC Resolution 2712 called for humanitarian pauses and corridors in Gaza to allow relief supplies into the besieged Palestinian enclave. Hundreds of humanitarian aid convoys donated by Egypt and other countries and international organizations have been sent to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing between Egypt's North Sinai and the besieged Palestinian enclave since Oct. 21. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South African parliament votes to close Israeli embassy, suspend diplomatic ties People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 09:36, November 22, 2023 CAPE TOWN, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The South African parliament on Tuesday voted in favor of a motion to shut down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria and suspend all diplomatic relations with Israel until it agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. A total of 248 members of the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, voted in favor of the non-binding motion, while 91 lawmakers opposed it. The motion was tabled by the opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters, and was backed by the ruling African National Congress. The parliament said the measures will be in place until Israel agrees to a ceasefire and participates in UN-facilitated negotiations. The vote came after Israel recalled on Monday its ambassador to South Africa, Eliav Belotserkovsky, "for consultations." Also on Tuesday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa chaired a BRICS extraordinary virtual summit on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. South Africa announced last week that it had referred Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes investigation. Its cabinet also called on the ICC to issue arrest warrants for all those involved, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this month, South Africa recalled all of its diplomats from its embassy in Israel. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hezbollah retaliates strongly against Israel after Tel Aviv's killing of al-Mayadeen journalists Iran Press TV Wednesday, 22 November 2023 3:23 AM The Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah has retaliated strongly against the Israeli regime over Tel Aviv's fatal targeting of journalists belonging to Lebanon's al-Mayadeen television network. The retaliation took place on Tuesday following the Israeli regime's killing earlier in the day of al-Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and camera operator Rabie al-Memari, who were reporting on violence along Lebanon's border with the occupied territories. "In a resolute response, the resistance carried out a series of 10 intensive operations targeting Israeli sites and bases," Lebanon's al-Manar television network reported. The network identified some of the targets hit during Hezbollah's response as a force affiliated with the Israeli military intelligence on the outskirts of the al-Manara settlement, a gathering of enemy troops within a residence in the Avivim settlement, the Beit Hilal military base, the Jal al-Deir site, the al-Malkieh site, and the vicinity of the Notoa settlement. The targets were hit with missiles, including surgical strike ones, al-Manar said, reporting affliction of some casualties among the enemy's ranks. Earlier in the day, Hezbollah had released a statement, pledging reprisal over the regime's killing of the journalists. "We assert that this aggression and the accompanying martyrdom of fellow citizens will not go unanswered...," it had said. The Israeli regime has been waging sporadic attacks on southern Lebanon since October 7, when it launched a devastating war against the Gaza Strip. The Israeli attacks have sparked a firefight between the regime and Hezbollah. More than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed in the brutal Israeli war against Gaza, which the regime started after an operation staged by the territory's resistance groups that killed some 1,200 Israeli settlers and military forces. According to al-Manar, Hezbollah's Tuesday operations were also meant as "a show of solidarity with the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip...[and] a robust endorsement of their courageous and honorable resistance." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Operation Iron Swords - Day 46 - 21 November 2023 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 ither a martyr or a projected martyr.. This is the condition of the people of the Gaza Strip. At least 14,128 Palestinians, including more than 5,840 children, have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since October 7, the Gaza Press Office said. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The Hamas-run government said 3,920 women were among the dead, with more than 33,000 more people wounded. The Palestinian Government Media Office in Gaza said the number of missing people had risen to more than 6,800 [nearly doubl the 3,750 previously reported], including 1,800 children still under the rubble. The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that the number of wounded as 31,000 [previously announced as 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 had reported the death of 375 soldiers and officers, 58 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. Israeli army (IDF) announced 19 November 2023 the death of five of its soldiers during ground battles in the Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of casualties since October 7th to 378 and raising the number of troop deaths there to 64 since the ground war began. 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 According to some estimates, Hamas is holding nearly 210 of the 240 hostages, while Palestinian Islamic Jihad is holding the remaining 30. About 40 Israelis remained missing. The main points known about the hostage deal so far: Minimum of 53 hostages will be released, mostly children and their mothers, with potential of the total number released reaching 8p hostages 10 hostages will be released every day 4-day ceasefire in the Gaza Strip 150 Palestinian prisoners will be released, mostly women and minors The first hostages would be released on Thursday. hostages to be released does not include foreigners who do not have Israeli citizenship. the Israeli army will refrain from flying over the Gaza Strip for six hours each day, during the first days of the truce, in order to allow Hamas to locate the other hostages who are being held by Hamas terrorists and Islamic Jihad. Israel will release approximately 150 Palestinian prisoners, women and children, held in its prisons, and who do not have Jewish blood on their hands. The agreement would also include the entry into the Gaza Strip, including in the north, of 100 to 300 trucks of food and medical aid as well as fuel. 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. Hamas previously announced that the number of prisoners it held was between 200 and 250 Israelis, and others of other nationalities, during the Al-Aqsa Flood battle launched by the Al-Qassam Brigades on the 7th of last October. Hamas indicated that among the detainees were high-ranking military personnel and that it wanted to exchange them for more than 6,000 Palestinian prisoners, including children and women, in Israeli prisons, but Tel Aviv did not show seriousness in concluding such a deal. The movement released 4 female prisoners for humanitarian reasons, two women holding American citizenship, in response to Qatari mediation efforts, and two Israelis, with Egyptian-Qatari mediation. The Palestinian Prisoners Information Office reported that the number of administrative prisoners has surpassed 2,200 prisoners, marking the highest count since the establishment of the Captive Movement. The Office attributed this to the mass arrest campaigns carried out by the Israeli occupation since October 7. It added that the number of arrests has surpassed 3,000, pointing out that the occupation has put a significant number of arrestees in administrative detention without any charges filed. Since last October 7, the Israeli army had launched an arrest campaign in the West Bank , including the occupied city of Jerusalem, during which it arrested about 3,000 Palestinians, in addition to more than 5,000 detainees before that date, according to institutions concerned with prisoner affairs. So far, since the beginning of the war, more than 1,850 wanted persons have been arrested throughout the Judea and Samaria Division and the Bekaa and Emekim Division, about 1,100 of whom are affiliated with Hamas. During the night, the security forces operated in Bayoush and the Bekaa and arrested 26 wanted persons, seven of whom are affiliated with Hamas. Abu Hamza, the spokesperson for al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, announced the death of an Israeli captive, Hanna Katsir, held by the Resistance group, asserting that the delay tactics of the Israeli occupation were the cause of her death. In a statement released through his official channel on Telegram, Abu Hamza announced her death, stressing that the Zionist entity bears full responsibility for this incident. He further stressed that the Israeli occupation is responsible for the lives of Israeli captives, especially in light of "the brutal and relentless bombing on every inch of the Gaza Strip." A Palestinian official in the Palestine Liberation Organization accused Israel of acting like a "gang" due to its abusive and retaliatory practices against Palestinian prisoners in occupation prisons. The head of the organizations Prisoners Affairs Commission, Qaddoura Fares, said in an interview with Anadolu Agency that the occupations measures to abuse prisoners inside prisons have nothing to do with the state of war and have nothing to do with security, and are only for revenge, which was and still is the master of the situation. He pointed out that Israel, since the Battle of Al- Aqsa Flood on October 7, has been pursuing a policy of starving prisoners and confiscating belongings, blankets, mattresses and pillows. Fares pointed out that "the most dangerous" is the physical assault on prisoners, where they are beaten with batons by about 10 jailers on all parts of the body, regardless of their health status or age. He added that the jailers have a green light to abuse prisoners, and if one of them is killed, no jailer will be subjected to accountability, investigation, or investigation. He added, "The Israeli government has released the special prison units who enter the departments with their machine guns for the first time in the history of the prisoner movement." Qaddoura pointed out that the prisoners have a feeling that they are being lured into a group confrontation in order to be justified in shooting and killing them. Fares pointed out that the prisoner's rooms are crowded with detainees without mattresses or blankets, some of whom sleep on the floor with the onset of winter. He explained that each room contains about 10 prisoners, while its capacity is 6 people, and they are provided with food that is barely enough for just two people. He pointed out that the majority of the prisoners have lost 5 to 10 kilograms of their weight since October 7, and are prohibited from shaving their heads or chins. He stated that any prisoner who objects to something is isolated and severely beaten, adding, "There are prisoners who suffered fractures and wounds and no treatment was provided to them, including those who needed 15 stitches and were not given painkillers or wound disinfectant." Among the punitive policies, according to Fares, is that the Prison Service confiscates all the prisoners possessions, books, photos, and memories, and throws them in the garbage. Social media pages have circulated clips many times showing the Israeli authorities treating prisoners by beating, insulting, and stripping them of their clothes. Fares says, This is documentation by the soldiers themselves, all of which was collected and delivered to international bodies, ambassadors, and consuls, in order to expose Israels practices and stop these violations. Regarding the position of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Palestinian official said, The silence of the International Committee disturbs us. He added, "We told them that since Israel prevents you from carrying out your role, you must speak out and issue a statement explaining who is preventing you, or you must leave and announce that there is no need for your presence because Israel prevents you from carrying out your mission." He stressed that issuing an explanatory statement from the Red Cross might attract international public opinion and put pressure on Israel, but the International Committee has remained silent so far. Regarding the prisoners of the Gaza Strip, Fares says, Israel keeps the matter secret, as there is no information about it. This is the behavior of the gang, and it may have hidden intentions, such as exposing the Gaza prisoners to a harsh investigation, then killing them, and claiming that they were killed on the battlefield and kept their bodies. The head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh , confirmed that reaching a truce agreement with Israel was imminent. Haniyeh said in a statement, The movement delivered its response to the brothers in Qatar and the mediators, and we are close to reaching a truce agreement, without further details. For his part, Hamas leader Izzat al-Rishq told Al Jazeera that the details of the agreement will be revealed in the coming hours, explaining that "the brothers in Qatar are the ones who will announce the details of the truce agreement." Member of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ), Khalil Al-Hayya , said that the movement submitted its response to the latest proposal regarding a truce in the Gaza Strip yesterday to Qatar and Egypt , and that the movement is awaiting the response of the Israeli side, indicating that if the occupation does not want this truce, it will place hundreds of obstacles in front of it. Al-Hayya explained - in a press conference - that the occupation "continues to lie and fabricate plays to justify targeting hospitals and infrastructure in Gaza," saying that "the occupation's announcement of the existence of tunnels in Al-Shifa Hospital is a farce that no one believed." The Hamas leader added that the occupation seeks to push the people of Gaza to move south and then out of the Strip towards Egypt, stressing, There will be no displacement or departure, and our people in Gaza are clinging to their land, calling for the Rafah crossing to remain open to bring in all the necessities of life into the Strip . Regarding the field battles and confrontations with the occupation army, Al-Hayya said, The enemy did not achieve any field achievement on the ground other than committing war crimes and horrific massacres, adding, Netanyahu and the Israeli army will not be able to achieve any achievement and we are confident of their defeat. Al-Hayya stated that the food supplies entering Gaza do not equal 10% of the Strips needs, and added that the occupation forces are working to put the health system in northern Gaza out of service. Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir sharply criticized the prisoner exchange deal to be concluded with the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ), considering that it will bring disaster to Tel Aviv. I am very upset because they are talking about a deal that could bring us disaster, said Ben Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party. He continued that rumors say that the State of Israel will once again make a very big mistake in the "Shalit deal" method, referring to the exchange deal with Hamas that took place in 2011, and included more than 1,200 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for soldier Gilad Shalit . Ben Gvir added, "You remember that we released Shalit, and we released the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar , and his friends, and we brought this problem to ourselves." Ben Gvir continued that, unfortunately, Minister in the War Council Benny Gantz and Minister Without Portfolio Gadi Eisenkot are dragging the government into a bad area. It is noteworthy that Ben Gvir is not a member of the Israeli Military Ministerial Council. The Israeli media has increasingly covered the issue of prisoners in the Gaza Strip , and what the occupation army achieved in its ground operation in the Strip, as a former reserve general expected that the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) would dictate its conditions regarding the expected prisoner deal, while a political analyst believes that the armys failure turned out to be greater than Expected. Channel 12 quoted Reserve General Mehran Brozanvir, who was an economic advisor to the former chief of staff, as saying that he is not sure that the head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar , is under pressure, as some are trying to portray, adding that if there is a deal, it will be planned. To her, I fear that he is the one dictating his conditions to us. He stressed that the army must double the pressure on Hamas and begin an attack towards the south, as he believes that Hamas has not been broken, adding, If we give Sinwar a chance to dictate his conditions in the first deal, we will have a lot ahead of us (..) We are facing a difficult matter, and it is not easy at all. Especially since we are dealing with an organization that will not hesitate to kill those who kidnapped us. Meanwhile, Channel 14 quoted him as saying that there is a very large information gap regarding the kidnapped persons and those who arrest them, and that while Hamas is concluding the first deal regarding a number of detainees, it is not only thinking about it, but also thinking about the next deal, and this means providing the opportunity For her to regain her strength. In the same context, Adi Karmi - a former senior employee in the Israeli internal security service ( Shin Bet ) - said that anyone who thinks that Hamas will soften its positions or move towards a political solution if we do not start the battle is wrong, noting that the negotiations with Hamas to complete the Gilad Shalit deal took 5 years. Years of manipulation and psychological tricks, as he put it. For his part, political analyst Yotam Zimri strongly criticized the Israeli occupation army, and said in an interview with Channel 14 that the matter did not stop at the major intelligence failure related to assessing the enemys capabilities, but rather it was gradually discovered that there was a major failure regarding the armys capabilities and qualifications. Like him, former head of the operations department, Reserve General Giora Eiland, believes that the army has not yet succeeded in neutralizing the tunnels in Gaza, adding, As long as there can be saboteurs in the hundreds and perhaps more, and as long as there is combat equipment underground, this is a challenge that must be met. Find a way to overcome it. Another speaker believed that the goal of eliminating Hamas military force would not be achieved without dismantling lower Gaza, in reference to the tunnels. He added, Certainly, we do not want to reach a direct confrontation between a fighter from the IDF and an elite terrorist face to face inside the tunnel. According to his expression. Meanwhile, military correspondent Alon Ben David believes that his country will be a country waging a war for months, and perhaps years, to come. The Hannibal Protocol (also called the Hannibal Directive), a procedure used by the Israeli army to prevent the capture of its soldiers, even if it means killing them, so this protocol allows the bombing of the positions of captured soldiers . It was drafted by 3 high-ranking officers, and it remained a secret protocol until its adoption in 2006. The Israeli army is considered the only one in the world that uses this procedure, despite the repeated internal criticism it faces, which believes that it does not provide protection for its forces in the field. The "Hannibal" Protocol sparked widespread controversy in the Israeli entity, as its opponents describe it as a "brutal option" that risks the lives of prisoners who could be saved. Israel has implemented the Hannibal Directive on numerous occasions since 1986, and the most devastating implementation was in Rafah in 2014. Of the 11 Israelis to whom the protocol was applied on 7 occasions, only one soldier survived. Opinions differ on whether this military protocol was called Hannibal, and on who specifically coined the term. There are those who believe that the term is applied to the way in which the historical leader of Carthage, Hannibal Barca, ended his life, when he chose to poison himself rather than fall prisoner into the hands of the Romans. Its development and formulation dates back to the conclusion of the prisoner deal called Galilee between Israel and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine movement led by its Secretary-General Ahmed Jibril in 1985, during which he exchanged 3 Israeli soldiers for 1,150 Palestinian prisoners. After that, the Hannibal Directive system was officially introduced in 1986, 5 months after the Lebanese Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers (Youssef Fink and Rafael Al-Sheikh), and the ensuing prisoner exchange operations were described as unbalanced, and the soldiers were thus directed Israelis must obstruct the kidnapping of their colleagues at all costs. The protocol was drafted - at the time - by Yossi Peled, head of the IDF's Northern Command, in cooperation with a committee consisting of retired General Uri Or, former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, commander of the IDF's Northern Command, Amram Levin, and former National Security Advisor General Colonel Yaakov. Amidror. For more than a decade, military censors prevented journalists from reporting on this protocol, or even discussing its subject, and the full text of the directive was never published, claiming that doing so might weaken the morale of the Israeli people. From the IDF's point of view, the concept of "better a dead soldier than a captured soldier" was the core of the Hannibal Protocol doctrine. The directive specified the steps the army should take in the event of a soldier being kidnapped, and its stated goal was to prevent soldiers from falling into enemy hands, even If necessary, kill them. Operational Update Statement by the IDF spokesman, Brigadier General Daniel Hagari : "We have a moral and ethical obligation towards the families of the abductees. We have the upper hand in every battle, we will continue to eliminate Hamas terrorists everywhere. We will continue to expose more hospitals in Gaza. In the north, we eliminated several anti-tank squads that tried to fire missiles into our territory. We are in high readiness for defense and attack." Fighters of the Magellan unit fight in the Gaza Strip and attack using weapons and precision missiles such as the Gil missile and the guided weapon 'Steel Sting' which was used for the first time in combat. The gradual advance of two Israeli armored divisions, the 162nd and the 36th, continued into the Jabalya refugee camp, the Zeitun neighborhood and other neighborhoods in the north and east of Gaza City. Hamas battalions in these areas had been degraded less during the fighting thus far and therefore the resistance there was fiercer. Concurrently, the sniper and RPG fire against IDF units continued, As part of ongoing IDF ground operations in the Gaza Strip, the 162nd Division, in collaboration with the IAF, operated in preparing the battlefield in the area of Jabalia. The attacks on terror targets included support from fighter jets and UAVs. During the battle, the division struck three tunnel shafts in the area of Jabalia, in which terrorists were hiding. Division 162 completed the encirclement of Jabalia tonight (Tuesday) and is prepared for the continuation of the attack. Terrorists were eliminated and infrastructure was destroyed. The 401st Brigade engaged terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip, during which they killed terrorists and directed aircraft to attack from the air. In addition, the forces located and destroyed rocket launchers. The troops from the Nahal Brigade killed dozens of terrorists over the past few days with support of tanks and UAVs. Additionally, combat squads of the 551st Brigade, in collaboration with special forces, operated north of Jabalia in order to eliminate the terror targets in the area and clear a path for divisional forces and neutralized terrorist targets in the area. During the operation, troops killed dozens of terrorists with air support, captured enemy weapons in various locations, including private houses and childrens bedrooms, and located and destroyed tunnel shafts. As part of the IDF's activities in the Gaza Strip, IDF aircraft attacked about 250 targets of the terrorist organization Hamas in the last day. Among the targets are dozens of terrorists, missile launchers and various terrorist infrastructures. During the night, the fire canopy of the Gaza Division directed a combat helicopter that destroyed a rocket launching station, which launched rockets into the Gush Dan area yesterday (Sunday). The position was placed near a residential area of a civilian population. IDF aircraft identified and struck three armed terrorist cells in the area of the border with Lebanon. In addition, IDF fighter jets struck a number of Hezbollah terror targets, including military infrastructure and structures used for directing terrorist activity. A short while ago, terrorists fired mortar shells at an IDF post in northern Israel. No injuries were reported. IDF artillery is currently striking the source of the fire. Three anti-tank missile launches from Lebanese territory toward the area of Metula in northern Israel were identified. No injuries were reported. In response, IDF soldiers are striking toward the source of the fire in Lebanon. In addition, combat team fighters of the Harel Brigade located a cache of weapons in the house of a Nakhaba terrorist in the Gaza Strip, and a combat team of the 14th Brigade located an anti-tank missile hidden under a baby bed. From the early hours of the morning, reserve forces operated under the direction of the Shin Bet in an operation to counter terrorism in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. During the operation, engineering vehicles and IDF forces breached roads and roadblocks, revealing charges on the sides of the road intended to harm our forces. In addition, at the end of searches, weapon parts and ammunition were found, and suspects will be interrogated. The forces arrested a wanted man, a military operative in the Balata camp who is suspected of trafficking weapons. During the activity, suspects threw stones and threw explosives at the forces, who responded by firing. In addition, reserve forces also operated in an operation to thwart popular terrorism in the village of Burka in the Binyamin Brigade. As part of the operation, the forces are interrogating many suspects, and have arrested a number of wanted persons active in Hamas. So far, the forces have confiscated dozens of illegal vehicles and also located many weapons, including an air gun, David's slingshot, batons, spikes, laser and knives. In addition, the forces located incendiary and propaganda materials of the terrorist organization Hamas. The forces continue their activity in the village at this time as well. In Kfar Hussan in the Etzion Brigade, two wanted men suspected of throwing stones at vehicles near Beitar Illit were arrested a few days ago. During searches for weapons in Kfar Sabah El Khir in the Menashe Brigade, an M16 rifle, an improvised explosive device sniper weapon, ammunition and military equipment were found. In addition, in an operation to arrest Wanted in Kabatia in the Menasha Brigade directed by the Shin Bet, six wanted were arrested, including those suspected of shooting at IDF forces and of being active in Hamas. The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon - Hezbollah launched a series of operations against Israeli military targets in northern occupied Palestine as the entity continues its war on Gaza and expands its crimes in Lebanon. During the day, the Islamic Resistance group released separate statements announcing a series of operations against Israeli military bases and targets along the Lebanese-Palestinian border. Hezbollah reiterated that the operations are in support of Gaza and Palestinians, as well as in retaliation for a list of Israeli crimes in Lebanon and against civilians in the country. Starting with one of the most significant operations since the start of the round of confrontations on October 8, the Lebanese Resistance targeted at 4:15 pm a site of an Israeli military giant, specialized and responsible for developing the entity's most sophisticated anti-air systems. In a first of its kind, Hezbollah targeted a Rafael systems' production plant in "Shlomi" with undisclosed weapons, in response to an Israeli aggression targeting an aluminum factory in Nabatieh, south Lebanon, last week. The weapons firm is a co-producer and creator of the Iron Dome, David's Sling, Trophy for military vehicles, and the newly introduced laser-based system, the Iron Beam. The Resistance confirmed that the site received direct hits, with smoke seen rising from the location. Hezbollah started the operations at around 6:40 am, targeting using appropriate weapons a house in the "Metulla" settlement where an Israeli intelligence force was stationed. The Resistance confirmed direct hits. Moreover, the Hadab al-Bustan Israeli base was attacked with appropriate weapons at 9:50 am, the Islamic Resistance said in a statement, confirming that the operation was successful. Around two hours later, at 11:45 am, Hezbollah announced targeting al-Raheb Israeli military site using appropriate weapons, adding that direct hits were achieved. The Resistance continued its operations during the day, targeting Jal al-Deir and al-Malikiyah Israeli bases, at 2:30 pm and 3:50 pm respectively, in addition to targeting a Merkava tank near "Netu'a" military site at 4:05, all using appropriate weapons. Hezbollah said in three separate statements that all launches succeeded in hitting their targets. Hezbollah fighters also attacked a gathering of military soldiers in Bayad Bliad base at 4:50, while the Resistance confirmed direct hits. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced it targeted the US bases of Ain al-Assad and al-Shadadi in Iraq and Syria respectively, using appropriate weaponry. The Resistance confirmed that both bases were directly hit. In a statement, the group emphasized that the operations against the two bases come in response to the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the people of Gaza, as the brutal aggression on the Strip continues for the 46th consecutive day. Ain al-Assad base was targeted for the first time with a ballistic missile, according to a security source in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. The source said, "Ain al-Assad base was hit by a ballistic missile carrying highly explosive materials." The Islamic Resistance in Iraq issued a statement confirming that its targeting of the American occupation base in the west of the country came in response to the crimes committed by the enemy against our people in Gaza. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq launched missile and drone attacks in recent weeks on American bases in Syria and Iraq. The Iraqi resistance had previously confirmed that these attacks came to express its support for the Palestinian people and because of America's involvement in massacres and crimes against the people of Gaza. Military and strategic expert Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi - in his analysis to Al Jazeera - said that the Israeli occupation army may turn Gaza City and its north into cantons, so that it can allocate forces to each region after securing its two sides in each region. Al-Duwairi explained that this matter is one of the scenarios proposed, but it depends on the course of the ground battle currently taking place in light of the intensification of battles from zero distance in the Beach camp, west of Gaza City, and elsewhere. He stressed that the Al-Qassam Brigades - the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) - had prepared its defense plan based on the worst scenario of dividing Gaza and its north into cantons, before confirming that the occupation army was awaiting more fierce and ferocious battles in the Jabalia camp, Hay al-Tuffah and Gaza. "The Old Battle of Gaza" was called the decisive battle. He referred to the Israeli advance that took place in Ezbet Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip and its arrival in the Sheikh Zayed Towers area, pointing out that the vehicles were forced to stop upon reaching populated areas, and were trying to search for side streets to avoid advancing along Salah al-Din Street. According to Al-Duwairi, the strike forces of the Al-Qassam Brigades are located in the Al-Shujaiya and Al-Tuffah neighborhoods, east of Gaza City, and are considered one of the strongest defensive formations, which prompts the occupation army to avoid taking this main road as a path for vehicles and tries to make its advance on it calculated. The matter also applies to the western area of Salah al-Din Street, in the presence of the Jabalia camp, which is known for the strength of its fighters and constitutes a weak point for Israeli vehicles. He pointed out the need for the Al-Qassam Brigades to pay attention to the activity of the occupation army during the truce period - the announcement of which is imminent - as the latter seeks to strengthen and restore the forces, replace others in their place, and compensate for its shortages, as well as searching for and reaching tunnels. He stressed the need for the resistance in Gaza to take all measures to prevent any of these actions that the occupation army is seeking during the truce, "even if it requires breaking the temporary ceasefire." He agreed with the statements of IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari about the presence of fierce resistance in the Shati and Jabalia camps, but he did not agree with him regarding the announced numbers of killing only 16 officers and soldiers within 3 days, while Al-Qassam spokesman Abu Ubaida said that the brigades destroyed 60 military vehicles within 72 hours. As for the Shawaz device that Abu Ubaida spoke about in his last speech, Al-Duwairi explained that it was a local manufacture for the Al-Qassam Brigades and was developed repeatedly until it reached the seventh generation, which is smaller and more effective, and is characterized by light weight and ease of transportation. He explained that it works using an electrical circuit and penetrates steel by 38 centimetres, as it contains 3.5 kilograms of explosives. Regarding the missiles that struck various areas in Israel from Gaza and southern Lebanon, he pointed out that it was a new confirmation by the Al-Qassam Brigades to manage the battle according to its vision and conditions, and to force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a temporary truce that includes a partial exchange of prisoners. He stressed that in asymmetric warfare, if the weak party does not lose, it is victorious, and if the strong party does not win, it is defeated. Satellite images obtained by Al Jazeera showed that the Israeli occupation army forces had taken schools sheltering the displaced as a concentration area and barricaded vehicles, at a time when fighting was intensifying and Palestinian resistance operations in Gaza against the invading forces were increasing. According to photos dating back to November 14, Israeli forces took the Carmel and Beach schools as a positioning point for vehicles, each of which is 400 meters away from Al-Shifa Medical Complex . Regarding the reason for this, the military and strategic expert, Major General Fayez Al-Duwairi, says that all the schools of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees ( UNRWA ) have turned into shelters for the displaced, and that is why the occupation forces deliberately place their vehicles near them. He added that the aim of this was to prevent the fighters of the Al-Qassam Brigades , the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement " Hamas " from attacking vehicles and tanks due to the presence of large numbers of Palestinians, indicating that the latter did not attack the Rantisi Children's Hospital until after it had been evacuated of the displaced and turned into a positioning point for the occupation forces. Regarding the pictures that showed the presence of a concentration of vehicles at the intersection of Omar Al-Mukhtar and Al-Jalaa Streets in Gaza, as well as dirt barriers near the wastewater treatment plant, Al-Duwairi suggested that the goal was to choose an area where there would be freedom of vision and movement, and freedom of safety, in addition to using them in any new situation. As for the specific Al-Qassam attack that targeted Al-Rantisi Hospital and the introduction of the martyrdom unit, the military expert explains that field data determine the type of attacks, pointing out that the hospital square has become a mobilization point for Israeli forces at the level of vehicles and individuals. He added that Al-Qassam fighters monitored these Israeli vehicles and determined their types, before launching several different attacks after completing the intelligence information. He stressed that the nature of the target and field conditions required this number of fighters. In his latest words, Al-Qassam spokesman Abu Ubaida revealed that 25 fighters from the Al-Qassam elite forces carried out a complex attack targeting the occupation forces at Al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza, where they finished off 4 soldiers who got off a troop carrier near the hospital from zero distance. As for the breakthrough made by the IDF in Izbat Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip and their arrival to the outskirts of Jabalia, Al-Duwairi downplayed the step because the distance they entered, which was approximately two kilometers, was considered soft land and there were no buildings there. Regarding the launching of rockets towards Tel Aviv, which was described as one of the largest attacks targeting the city, the military expert stated that the area covered by the sirens exceeded 2,000 square kilometers, which is equivalent to 7 times the area of ??the Gaza Strip. He stressed that the message that Al-Qassam wanted was twofold: the first was military, that the General Staff was still capable of managing the battle despite the destruction, and the second was political, stating that negotiations regarding the issue of prisoners detained in Gaza were being conducted from a standpoint of equality and the ability to extract rights. Regarding the IDF, the military expert said that Tel Aviv mobilized 5 military divisions for the Gaza battle, which means 45% of the combat capacity of the occupation army, compared to 25% for the northern front with Lebanon, while 30% remains, of which 10% is allocated to the West Bank and the rest is a strategic reserve. It is estimated that there are 3 Israeli divisions in Gaza, with each division having 350 combat vehicles, which means the presence of between 1,000 and 1,100 various vehicles, including tanks and troop carriers, reinforced by the Givati, Golani, and paratroopers brigades. He pointed out that Al-Qassam announced the complete or partial destruction of 290 Israeli vehicles, meaning that the occupation lost 80% of the equipment of one of the three military divisions and it was out of service. Regarding the implications of the Lebanese Hezbollah attack on one of the occupation army barracks in the north, Al-Duwairi believes that the party wanted to convey a message that it is immersed in fighting by using the Burkan missile, which has a strong effect. Israel is circumventing international humanitarian law to justify its bombing and targeting of civilian facilities and hospitals during the war it is waging in the Gaza Strip.It does this by presenting unproven evidence claiming that weapons and combat equipment were seized in these institutions, which were transformed into military barracks for the Palestinian resistance, according to the Israeli armys claims. In light of the Israeli air force and artillery bombardment of civilian facilities in Gaza, the Israeli military establishment says that it is doing so in accordance with what is permitted by international humanitarian law. The terminology and interpretations of this law are exploited, which permit, if solid evidence and evidence are available, the targeting of any civilian facility or hospital if it loses its civilian character and is used for military purposes. Durgham Saif, professor of international law and lecturer at Al-Quds University Abu Dis, explains that international law, which includes many flexible and imprecise terms, allows in rare cases to target civilian facilities and hospitals in times of war. This will happen "if these facilities lose their civilian character and are used by the armed resistance for military purposes, provided that the state and its army prove this with conclusive evidence," and this case does not apply to what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip. Saif told Al Jazeera Net: "The Israeli army is bombing hospitals, institutions and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, without proving with conclusive evidence that they have been turned into resistance barracks or are being used for military purposes, and it is targeting them without losing their civilian character." He added, "Not only that, but during the war on Gaza, Israel continues to bomb and destroy residential squares and populated areas, without proving the presence of military personnel and gunmen inside them, in accordance with international humanitarian law, which emphasizes the necessity of adopting the criterion of proportionality regarding civilians in residential neighborhoods and the possibility of the presence of military personnel among them." To clarify what international humanitarian law stipulates regarding dealing with populated areas in times of war, Saif asks, Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that in a residential neighborhood there is a soldier, is it permissible to bomb and target him? According to the criterion of proportionality, if there is one soldier among thousands of civilians, the attacking army has no right to He bombed the residential neighborhood, under the pretext of achieving military objectives. The professor of international law pointed out that the Israeli army takes advantage of loopholes and interpretations in international humanitarian law to carry out its attacks on populated areas, civilian facilities and hospitals in Gaza, since there are no determinants in terms of proportionality and numbers between what is civilian and what is military, and when is permitted and when bombing and raids are prohibited according to the criterion of proportionality. He confirms that Israel is carrying out its air and ground operations in civilian areas in the Gaza Strip under the pretext of military needs. In the context of the Israeli armys approach to circumventing international law and the Rome Statute from 1998 during war and battles, and to justify continuing to target civilian facilities, he says that Israel is promoting that it has proof and evidence whose authenticity and credibility are already questionable. He added that the Rome Statute is considered the bible adopted by the International Criminal Court in granting powers to the Public Prosecutor to open investigations against any country committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. He explained that Israel seeks to circumvent these conventions by claiming that these facilities have lost their civilian character and are being used for military purposes and have been transformed into headquarters for the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ). In the war on Gaza, the professor of international law says, The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will have to open an investigation against Israel for committing war crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, as it became clear through military operations that there are latent intentions on the part of Israel to eliminate part of the people of the Gaza Strip. In anticipation of the scenario of opening international investigations and avoiding international trial and accountability, Dargham Saif revealed that Israel has formed special military judicial units that accompany army forces during the course and developments of the war on Gaza. He attributed this measure to the fact that "Israel seeks to protect its forces participating in the war by providing them with local legal cover and avoiding appearing before the International Criminal Court, by claiming that it will investigate and prosecute any soldier who committed any crime in Gaza." With this expected action by Israel, which is preparing a scenario for a mock trial of a group of its soldiers on charges of committing crimes in Gaza and violations of international law, Saif says, Israel will continue to circumvent international law until after the war to close the door to prosecuting and trying its soldiers in front of the court, claiming that it brought them to trial. The international law professor believes that any trial of any Israeli soldier before the Israeli judiciary will be formal and sham, and that the penalties issued by the Israeli judiciary will be so. He explained that this measure comes in the context that if a country brings its soldiers to trial for committing war crimes, the International Criminal Court cannot prosecute them in international forums. Saif reinforced this proposition with the press briefings conducted by the Israeli army spokesman daily, stressing that they are directed primarily to the International Criminal Court, and carry messages stating that this army has evidence and proof to reinforce its claims regarding the bombing of civilian facilities and hospitals under the pretext that they have lost their civilian character due to their use for military purposes. He questioned this evidence that justifies targeting populated areas, hospitals, and civilian facilities, and described the allegations of seizing weapons, weapons, and videos of the presence of groups of Israeli detainees in the Al-Shifa Complex, as weak and ridiculous. The international law professor stressed that Israel has not proven with conclusive evidence that the Shifa Complex was used as a military barracks, and that the alleged weapons seized inside the complex were used by the resistance, and that the presence of Israeli detainees in the medical complex for treatment is considered a positive point in favor of Hamas in its treatment of detainees in accordance with what international conventions stipulate. He stressed that, according to the provisions of international humanitarian law, claiming to have seized weapons in any civilian facility or hospital is not enough to justify targeting and bombing it. The army is required to prove with conclusive evidence the validity and credibility of this evidence. Saif stressed that all Israeli evidence is weak and the International Criminal Court cannot adopt it as evidence that allows the Israeli army to target civilian facilities and hospitals in Gaza. ) The Swiss newspaper Le Tan said that since the beginning of its operation in the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Israel has regularly published pictures and video clips with the aim of proving the presence of Hamas in the place, but military analyst Jean-Marc Rikli from the Geneva Center for Security Policy calls for caution and confirms that Israel finds it difficult to convince. , especially in the current climate of uncertainty. Although Israel showed what it said was a video from a surveillance camera in the hospital dating back to October 7, showing members of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) transporting two hostages in Shifa, a Nepalese and a Thai, it confirmed that Hamas had dug a tunnel 55 meters long and 10 meters deep. meters below the hospital, but that is not evidence. Jean-Marc Rikli says, This channel (i.e. the tunnel) remains very mysterious, and the pictures taken by the Israeli army show a tunnel leading to a door, but we do not know what is behind it, as he put it. This does not mean that there is nothing under this hospital - as the newspaper says in a report by Alain Jacotier - but so far we have not seen the command center that the Israelis were telling us so much about, and therefore there are only pictures of the bags containing assault rifles and grenades on display. Army. The report added, In international law, whoever attacks a protected place such as a hospital, under the pretext that the enemy is using it for his operations, must prove that his action is legitimate, as the expert explains, who estimated that the evidence provided by Israel in Al-Shifa Hospital is not conclusive. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admitted that Israel was the one that built the shelters and dug the tunnels under Al-Shifa Hospital 40 or 50 years ago, in an interview on the American CNN channel. This came in response to the questions of broadcaster Christiane Amanpour, who asked him about Israels claims that there is a headquarters for the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) under Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Barak answered these questions by saying that it has been known for many years that there are shelters built by Israeli contractors under Al-Shifa Hospital and used as a headquarters for Hamas, and the intersection of several tunnels is part of this system, as he put it. In response to Barak, Amanpour said: Are you saying that this place was built by Israeli engineers? Did I make a mistake? Barak replied, "We helped build these shelters probably 40 or 50 years ago (during the periods of occupation control over the former Gaza Strip), to provide more space for hospital operations within the limited area of the university campus." Bystanders European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned on Tuesday that the Union was facing increasing feelings of hostility from the Islamic world and beyond due to accusations of bias towards Israel and double standards towards the war in Gaza , which could harm its reputation. Borrell said that the European Union must show more sympathy regarding the losses suffered by Palestinian civilians in the Israeli war. He added that this can be achieved by sending stronger calls to deliver aid to Gaza and renewing the effort to establish a Palestinian state within the framework of the two-state solution . The European Union faced accusations of bias from Arab countries as it did not deal with Israel's war on Gaza with the same standards that it applied to Russia's war in Ukraine, and did not condemn the Israeli war in the same way it condemned Russia's war. Borrell responded to these criticisms, saying that human lives have the same value in all places, and that the European Union unanimously urged immediate humanitarian truces to deliver aid to the Palestinians in Gaza, and quadrupled its humanitarian aid to the Strip. Borrell's statements came after a 5-day tour in the Middle East, during which he visited Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. The European Commission confirmed that there is no evidence that its development aid funds to the Palestinians go to the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ), while the European Union gave the green light to continue providing development assistance. The Commission stated that its program to provide development aid to Palestine and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees ( UNRWA ) will continue without delay. However, a European official stated that projects worth a total of 75 million euros, related to infrastructure for drinking water distribution in Gaza, could no longer be implemented due to the ongoing war in the Strip. This came after the European Commission suspended development aid to Palestine worth 691 million euros in the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, under the pretext of not funding the Hamas movement directly or indirectly. Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice President of the Commission, said, The reviews did not find any indications that Hamas benefited from European Union funds. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also said that the review was necessary in the wake of Hamas attack on Israel, adding that they are working to determine their future support for the Palestinians in light of the changing and evolving situation, she said. Le Monde newspaper said that two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip , who have been living for 16 years under a merciless siege, and for 6 weeks under bombardment and operations by the Israeli army, find themselves deprived of everything and doomed to wandering, and demanded an end to this destruction. The newspaper pointed out that no one cares about the fate of these people, and even Israel's Western allies do not disagree with it in considering that the price these residents pay in the end is "acceptable." The newspaper explained - in its editorial - that evidence of the elimination of the leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ), the declared Israeli goal, has not yet emerged, even though the Israeli army has taken control of areas in the northern half of Gaza. As for the pictures of the destruction, they are visible to everyone who wants to see them. Everywhere Israel reached there was a destroyed infrastructure, in addition to the deaths of thousands of people, to the point that the American administration no longer denied the casualty figures. Despite the sabotage of water and electricity networks, roads, schools, hospitals and all aspects of life, the Israeli authorities confirm that there is no spirit of revenge in what they are doing, denying the possibility of the presence of a terrorist or a tunnel to destroy. The newspaper wondered how to describe this systematic action carried out by Israel, which threatens a new phase of its operation, if this time it targets the large city of Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip, and always under the heading of chasing Hamas leaders who turned out to be not in the northern region, which has turned into Fields of rubble where thousands of people were trapped. Le Monde concluded that civilians, deprived of everything, were left alone and lost, tragically, in temporary camps, making them recall once again the trauma of the Nakba, which was represented by their forced displacement that began in 1948. Axis of Resistance The Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, Major General Hossein Salami, said that the Zionists are waiting for a ceasefire because they are in a crisis, but the Americans do not allow this. During a speech before the meeting to mobilize university professors in Tehran, the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps referred to the events in Gaza and the crimes of the Zionists, saying that the Al-Aqsa Flood operation destroyed everything that America, the West, and the Zionists had, stressing that what America did was by using soft war and the media to impose Its false values on the world collapsed after the Al-Aqsa flood. He continued: The true identity and nature of America, the West, and the Zionists were revealed to the whole world in the events after the Al-Aqsa flood. The Zionists are waiting for a ceasefire because they are in a crisis, but the Americans do not allow that. The inflammation and anxiety among the Zionists is more deadly than what you see in Gaza, and the people of Gaza are in peace and do not fear anything. Major General Hossein Salami said : America, the West, and the enemies thought that Iran would suffer an imbalance without recovery, but this year everyone witnessed how the balance has returned and the extent to which the Islamic Republic enjoys power. The Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps affirmed: No matter how much they try to change the system of the Islamic Republic, their attempts will fail, and the system is quickly regaining its balance, and this is an integral part of this system. Major General Salami said: Today, Iran is the focal point of political developments in the region, and all eyes are directed to it to see how it manages this game, and this is the basic element of our strength. He continued: Achieving power is achieved through science, and wisdom and knowledge are the basic elements of our progress, and no country will gain the respect it deserves until it becomes a cradle of thought and science. Allied for Democracy A senior Israeli official indicated, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that warnings reached Netanyahu this year, stating that internal tensions in Israel will encourage Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas to launch military attacks. The newspaper reported that Major General Amit Sa'ar, head of the research unit of the Military Intelligence Service "Aman," appealed to Netanyahu on March 19 to stop passing the judicial amendments in the Knesset (Parliament), one week before these amendments were passed, which were later retracted. But the decline was temporary, and Netanyahu returned to approving the amendments in batches. The second time Israeli intelligence warned Netanyahu was last July 16, that is, a week before the reasonableness clause was passed. This clause means that the Supreme Court will not be able to overturn the governments decisions, as it used to do in the past when it overturned decisions that it considered unreasonable. Critics considered this clause, and opponents accused Netanyahu of trying to make the Hebrew state tyrannical. An article in the American New York Times stated that attacks by Jewish settlers, which are becoming more violent day by day on villages in the West Bank , have forced at least 16 Palestinian communities, containing more than a thousand people, to flee their homes since the attack by Izz Brigades fighters. Al-Din Al-Qassam, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ), attacked Israel on October 7th. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli settlers have launched more than 250 attacks in the West Bank. So far, 200 Palestinians have been martyred, 8 of them at the hands of settlers and the others during clashes with Israeli forces. In the article in the American newspaper, Ali Awad - a Palestinian writer residing in the West Bank - narrated part of the suffering of his family and the people of his village of Tuba, south of the city of Hebron , inhabited by 80 Palestinians. He said that over the years they have been suffering from repeated attacks by Israeli settlers on their village to force us to leave our land, adding that these attacks have increased in intensity since the Hamas attack on Israel last month, so much so that he no longer knows how long he and the rest of the residents will be able to live there. Under the guise of the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip , settlers have begun to storm West Bank villages, threaten Palestinians, demolish their homes, and target their sources of livelihood. Awad went on to recount the incidents that the people of his village and other neighboring villages were exposed to, saying: The settlers were raiding homes and harassing us relentlessly, sometimes several times a day. Less than a week after the war, according to a video clip published by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, an armed settler came to the village of Al-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills, approached a group of unarmed Palestinians who were walking after Friday prayers and shot them. Awad confirmed this in article. Villagers were quoted as saying that the settlers threatened to shoot the residents if they did not evacuate their homes within 24 hours. On October 30, settlers set fire to several homes in Khirbet al-Safai, a village less than a mile east of Tuba. The Palestinian journalist said that the people of the village of Umm al-Khair, adjacent to his village, informed human rights activists that armed settlers wearing military uniforms detained people there at gunpoint, forced them to condemn Hamas, and threatened to kill them if they did not raise Israeli flags in the village. Awad explains that the attacks they are exposed to are part of a long series of attempts to force them to leave their homes, and that the threat is not limited to settlers only, but that successive Israeli governments have also tried to get rid of them over the past decades. Awad stated that the Israeli army classified his village, and other villages in the Masafer Yatta area, as land designated for military training called Firing Range 918. He pointed out that there is a government document indicating an intention to displace the residents living there. He continued that Israel tried various methods to force them to leave, "including enacting policies that prevent us from building homes in our village and not allowing us to connect to the main electricity grid or water infrastructure." He expressed his belief that the settlers living near his village were the ones who stabbed his uncle, attacked his cousins ??with stones, and set fire to a stock of fodder sufficient for their flocks of sheep for a year. He said that the Supreme Court in Israel issued a ruling last year allowing the state to evacuate about 1,200 Palestinians from their homes, including residents of his village. He added that they remained steadfast in the face of the pressures exerted on them, and refused to give up their land and way of life. But he added in a sad tone that the settlers' attacks in recent weeks had weakened their resolve, and "we have always felt that the army's actions, by demolishing our homes and preventing us from freedom of movement, were closely linked to the settlers' harassment." With the start of the war more than a month ago, it seemed as if the settlers and the military had merged into one entity. The settlers, whom we knew from years of harassment in our villages, suddenly turned into soldiers in the reserve forces or civilian security teams affiliated with the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir . It appears that the new reserve soldiers in the region - and the Palestinian journalist is still talking - are now receiving their orders from local settler soldiers or security teams, as they conduct joint patrols in Palestinian villages. The author of the article revealed that Israeli government ministers are working to fan the flames. In the last five weeks alone, residents of 5 villages in the South Hebron Hills were forced to pack their belongings and flee their homes. If the situation does not change, Awad says, he fears that the next turn will be against his village, Tuba. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Binance and CEO Plead Guilty to Federal Charges in $4B Resolution Tuesday, November 21, 2023 For Immediate Release Office of Public Affairs Binance Admits It Engaged in Anti-Money Laundering, Unlicensed Money Transmitting, and Sanctions Violations in Largest Corporate Resolution to Include Criminal Charges for an Executive Binance Holdings Limited (Binance), the entity that operates the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.com, pleaded guilty today and has agreed to pay over $4 billion to resolve the Justice Department's investigation into violations related to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), failure to register as a money transmitting business, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Binance's founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Changpeng Zhao, a Canadian national, also pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program, in violation of the BSA and has resigned as CEO of Binance. Binance's guilty plea is part of coordinated resolutions with the Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). "Binance became the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed - now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history," said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. "In just the past month, the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted the CEOs of two of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges in two separate criminal cases. The message here should be clear: using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal." "Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform," said Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen. "Today's historic penalties and monitorship to ensure compliance with U.S. law and regulations mark a milestone for the virtual currency industry. Any institution, wherever located, that wants to reap the benefits of the U.S. financial system must also play by the rules that keep us all safe from terrorists, foreign adversaries, and crime or face the consequences." "A corporate strategy that puts profits over compliance isn't a path to riches; it's a path to federal prosecution," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. "Today's charges and guilty pleas - combined with a more than $4 billion financial penalty - sends an unmistakable message to crypto and defi companies: if you serve U.S. customers, you must obey U.S. law." "Changpeng Zhao made Binance, the company he founded and ran as CEO, into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by targeting U.S. customers, but refused to comply with U.S. law," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri of the Justice Department's Criminal Division. "Binance's and Zhao's willful violations of anti-money laundering and sanctions laws threatened the U.S. financial system and our national security, and each of them has now pleaded guilty. Make no mistake: when you place profits over compliance with the law, you will answer for your crimes in the United States." "Binance's crimes gave sanctioned customers unfettered access to American capital and financial services," said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division (NSD). "This prosecution is a warning that companies that do not build sanctions compliance into their services face serious criminal penalties, as do the executives who lead them." "From the beginning of its existence, Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao chose growth and personal wealth over following financial regulations aimed at stopping the laundering of criminal cash," said Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman for the Western District of Washington. "Because Changpeng Zhao knowingly operated a financial platform without basic anti-money laundering safeguards, the company caused illegal transactions between U.S. users and users in sanctioned jurisdictions such as Iran, Cuba, Syria, and Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine - transactions for which Binance profited with significant fees." "Binance's activities undermined the foundation of safe and sound financial markets by intentionally avoiding basic, fundamental obligations that apply to exchanges, all the while collecting approximately $1.35 billion in trading fees from U.S. customers," said Chairman Rostin Behnam of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). "American investors, small and large, have demonstrated eagerness to incorporate digital asset products into their portfolios. It is our duty to ensure that when they do so, the full protections afforded by our regulatory oversight are in place, and that illegal and illicit conduct is swiftly addressed. When, as here, an entity goes even further, deliberately avoiding to employ meaningful access controls, intentionally avoiding knowing customers' identities, and actively concealing the presence of U.S. customers on its platforms, there is no question that the CFTC will strike hard and aggressively." "When you put growth above compliance, you end up in hot water," said Chief Jim Lee of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI). "Our team of investigators uncovered that Binance disregarded anti-money laundering Know Your Customer laws, failed to register as a money transmitter, and willfully violated U.S. sanctions tied to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. When you do so, your business becomes a playground for bad actors. Hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit proceeds from ransomware variants, darknet transactions, and various internet-related scams moved through Binance in an attempt to evade detection by law enforcement." According to court documents, Binance admitted to prioritizing growth and profits over compliance with U.S. law. Binance launched in 2017 and focused on attracting high-volume customers, including U.S.-based customers. Binance quickly became the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, with the greatest share of its customers coming from the United States. As a result of serving U.S. customers, Binance was required to register with FinCEN as a money services business and to implement an effective AML program that was reasonably designed to prevent Binance from being used to facilitate money laundering. Binance chose not to comply with U.S. law and failed to implement controls and procedures to prevent money laundering. Binance also did not implement controls that would have prevented U.S. customers from conducting transactions with customers in sanctioned jurisdictions, despite knowing that the system it used to match customers for transactions would necessarily cause transactions in violation of IEEPA. Instead of complying with U.S. law, in 2019, Binance announced that it would block U.S. customers and launched a separate U.S. exchange, Binance.US. Despite this announcement, Binance took steps to maintain a substantial number of U.S. customers. In particular, Binance focused on retaining valuable "VIP" customers, which were responsible for a large portion of Binance's trading volume and revenue. These VIP customers were critical to Binance's business because they helped provide the necessary liquidity to facilitate trades of digital assets. For example, Binance executives, including Zhao, made a plan to contact VIP customers and help the VIP register a new account for an offshore entity and transfer holdings to that account. Binance employees also called U.S. VIPs to encourage them to provide information that suggested the customer was not located in the United States. Binance also did not implement the core components of an effective AML program: Binance did not implement comprehensive know-your-customer (KYC) protocols or systematically monitor transactions, and Binance never filed a suspicious activity report (SAR) with FinCEN. For years, Binance allowed users to open accounts and trade without submitting any identifying information beyond an email address. Binance began requiring all users to provide KYC information in August 2021 but allowed users who had not provided KYC to continue trading on the exchange until May 2022. Between August 2017 and October 2022, U.S. users, including VIPs, conducted trillions of dollars in transactions on the platform, generating over $1.6 billion in profit for Binance. As Binance's internal communications showed, Binance's compliance employees recognized that Binance did not have protocols to flag or report transactions for money laundering risks, which employees recognized would attract criminals to the exchange. As one compliance employee wrote, "we need a banner 'is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you.'" Due in part to Binance's failure to implement an effective AML program, illicit actors used Binance's exchange in various ways, including conducting transactions for mixing services that obfuscated the source and ownership of cryptocurrency; transferring illicit proceeds from ransomware variants; and moving proceeds of darknet market transactions, exchange hacks, and various internet-related scams. Binance also knew that U.S. sanctions laws prohibited U.S. persons - including its U.S. customers - from trading with its customers subject to U.S. sanctions, including customers in comprehensively sanctioned jurisdictions, such as Iran. Binance knew that it had a significant number of users from comprehensively sanctioned jurisdictions and a substantial number of U.S. users and that its matching engine would necessarily cause U.S. users to transact with users in sanctioned jurisdictions in violation of U.S. law. Nonetheless, Binance did not implement controls that would prevent U.S. users from trading with users in Iran; and, because of this intentional failure, between January 2018 and May 2022, Binance willfully caused over $898 million in trades between U.S. users and users ordinarily resident in Iran. As part of the plea agreement, Binance has agreed to forfeit $2,510,650,588 and to pay a criminal fine of $1,805,475,575 for a total financial penalty of $4,316,126,163. Binance has also agreed to retain an independent compliance monitor for three years and remediate and enhance their anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance programs. Binance separately has also reached agreements with the CFTC, FinCEN, and OFAC, and the Department will credit approximately $1.8 billion toward those resolutions. The Department reached its resolution with Binance based on a number of factors, including the nature, seriousness, and pervasiveness of the offense, as a result of which Binance processed billions of dollars of cryptocurrency transactions for U.S. persons and caused U.S. customers to engage in transactions in violation of U.S. sanctions. Binance did not make a timely and voluntary disclosure of wrongdoing, but it received partial credit for its cooperation with the Department's investigation, and it has taken steps to remediate its compliance program. Binance did not receive full credit for its cooperation because it delayed producing relevant evidence, including recorded meetings in which Binance executives discussed U.S. legal requirements. Accordingly, the total criminal penalty reflects a 20% reduction off the bottom of the applicable U.S. sentencing guidelines fine range. In addition, according to court documents, Zhao, Binance's founder, owner, and CEO, admitted that he understood that Binance served U.S. users and was thus required to register with FinCEN and implement an effective AML program. Zhao knew that U.S. users were essential to Binance's growth and were a significant source of revenue and knew that an effective AML program would include KYC protocols that would mean that some customers would choose not to use Binance. Zhao told employees it was "better to ask for forgiveness than permission," and prioritized Binance's growth over compliance with U.S. law. Without an effective AML program, Binance caused transactions between U.S. users and users in jurisdictions subject to U.S. sanctions. These illegal transactions were a clear and foreseeable result of Zhao's decision to prioritize Binance's profit and growth over compliance with the BSA. IRS-CI is investigating the case. The case is being prosecuted by Bank Integrity Unit Deputy Chief and National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team Deputy Director Kevin Mosley and Trial Attorney Elizabeth Carr of the Criminal Division's Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS), Trial Attorneys Beau Barnes and Alex Wharton of NSD's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section (CES), and Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) Mike Dion for the Western District of Washington. Trial Attorney Julia Jarrett, formerly of MLARS and currently an AUSA for the District of Oregon, and Trial Attorney Matthew Anzaldi, formerly of CES and currently with NSD's National Security Cyber Section, made substantial contributions to this investigation and prosecution. MLARS's Bank Integrity Unit investigates and prosecutes banks and other financial institutions, including their officers, managers, and employees, whose actions threaten the integrity of the individual institution or the wider financial system. The Criminal Division has surged resources to the Bank Integrity Unit, which has imposed over $12 billion in penalties on financial institutions for sanctions violations over the last decade. NSD's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section investigates and prosecutes individuals and corporations for violations of export control and sanctions laws, in addition to other national security crimes. NSD continues to expand its corporate enforcement efforts - including growing the ranks of prosecutors dedicated to this work and establishing a Chief Counsel and Deputy Chief Counsel for Corporate Enforcement. Topics: Cybercrime National Security Components: Office of the Attorney General Criminal Division Criminal - Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section National Security Division (NSD) Office of the Deputy Attorney General USAO - Washington, Western Press Release Number: 23-1323 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks Announcing Binance and CEO Guilty Pleas to Federal Charges in $4B Resolution Tuesday, November 21, 2023 Location Washington, DC United States Binance Admits It Engaged in Anti-Money Laundering, Unlicensed Money Transmitting, and Sanctions Violations in Largest Corporate Resolution to Include Criminal Charges for an Executive Remarks as Delivered Good afternoon. I am joined today by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and CFTC Chairman Russ Behnam. We are here today to announce that the Justice Department has secured felony guilty pleas from the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, and from its founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ. Separate from the criminal enforcement actions the Justice Department is announcing today, Secretary Yellen and Chairman Behnam will also announce civil regulatory enforcement actions that the Treasury Department and the CFTC are taking against Binance. While criminal and civil enforcement actions are subject to different legal standards, this collective effort represents the whole of government approach that we are taking to combat corporate crime. Binance has agreed to plead guilty to willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act, knowingly failing to register as a money transmitting business, and willfully violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. These laws ensure that our financial institutions are not available to designated terrorist organizations, drug traffickers, and sanctioned nation-states that threaten public safety and our national security. The Justice Department is requiring Binance to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and forfeiture. This is one of the largest penalties we have ever obtained from a corporate defendant in a criminal matter. The Justice Department is also imposing a monitorship as well as reporting requirements on Binance as part of today's resolution. Moving forward, Binance must file the suspicious activity reports that were required by law. The company is required to review past transactions and report suspicious activity to federal authorities. This will advance our criminal investigations into malicious cyber activity and terrorism fundraising, including the use of cryptocurrency exchanges to support groups such as Hamas. While this historic plea is an important measure of accountability, we know that corporations only act through the individuals who run them. That is why we have also filed a felony charge against, and secured a guilty plea from, Changpeng Zhao for willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act. As CEO of Binance, Zhao willfully violated federal law that requires financial institutions to guard against money laundering and terrorist financing. Zhao, who resides outside of the United States, entered his plea in person in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington earlier today. In August 2017, Zhao founded Binance as a platform where users could trade in cryptocurrency. But from the very beginning, Zhao and other Binance executives engaged in a deliberate and calculated effort to profit from the U.S. market without implementing the controls required by U.S. law. Zhao and Binance attracted and built a substantial U.S. customer base. Almost two years after Binance's founding, Zhao told senior management that the U.S. market represented 20 to 30% of the company's potential revenue. Serving these U.S. customers meant that Binance was a U.S. financial institution. U.S. financial institutions must comply with U.S. law. Zhao and other senior management at Binance understood this. They understood that the company was required by U.S. law to register with the Treasury Department as a money services business. And they understood that they were required by U.S. law to implement an effective anti-money laundering program. They failed to do either. Instead, they concluded that complying with U.S. law would stifle their efforts to grow Binance's profits, market share, and trading volume. So, rather than comply, Binance facilitated billions of dollars of unregulated cryptocurrency transactions. It willfully enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions between American users and users subject to U.S. sanctions. And its platform accommodated criminals across the world who used Binance to move their stolen funds and other criminal proceeds. Binance prioritized its profits over the safety of the American people. In part because of the crimes it committed, Binance became the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Now Binance is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history. Binance employees knew and discussed that the company was serving thousands of users in sanctioned countries. And they knew that facilitating transactions between U.S. users and users in sanctioned countries would be in violation of U.S. law. But they did it anyway. Binance enabled nearly $900 million in transactions between U.S. and Iranian users. And it facilitated millions of dollars in transactions between U.S. users and users in Syria and in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Binance's own compliance personnel also knew that the company's anti-money laundering procedures were inadequate and would attract criminals to the platform. In a February 2019 chat, one compliance employee wrote that they needed a banner that said: "is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance; we got cake for you." By failing to comply with U.S. law, Binance made it easy for criminals to move their stolen funds and illicit proceeds on its exchange. For example, between August 2017 and April 2022, there were direct transfers of approximately $106 million in bitcoin to Binance.com wallets from Hydra. Hydra was a popular Russian darknet marketplace, frequently utilized by criminals, that facilitated the sale of illegal goods and services. Binance only stopped processing Hydra transactions in April of 2022, when the Justice Department and our German law enforcement partners seized control of the Hydra marketplace and shut it down. From February 2018 to May 2019, Binance processed more than $275 million in deposits and $273 million in withdrawals from Bestmixer. Bestmixer was one of the largest cryptocurrency anonymizing services in the world before it was shut down for money laundering. Binance also did more than just fail to comply with federal law - it pretended to comply. In June 2019, Binance publicly announced that it would block U.S. users from Binance.com and launch a separate U.S. exchange. That exchange, Binance.US, would register with the Treasury Department and serve the U.S. market. Binance blocked some U.S. users on Binance.com and redirected them to the U.S. exchange. At the same time, however, Binance continued to allow some of its most important, high-volume U.S. users to remain on the unregistered Binance.com exchange. At the direction of Zhao and other senior leaders at Binance, employees encouraged their high-volume U.S. users to conceal their U.S. connections, including by creating new accounts that obscured their locations. As Zhao himself said in a September 2019 chat: "If we blocked US users from day 1, Binance will be not [sic] as big as we are today. We would also not have had any US revenue we had for the last 2 years." He then added: "better to ask for forgiveness than permission." Over a year after Binance publicly announced that it was blocking U.S. users, an internal monthly company report attributed 16% of its total registered user base to the United States. That was more than any other country on the unregulated Binance.com platform. In the next monthly report, Binance removed the United States label and recategorized U.S. users with the label "UNKWN" - short for "unknown." In October 2020, users labeled as "UNKWN" represented approximately 17% of Binance's registered user base. Binance and Zhao profited significantly from their violations of federal law. That they are facing accountability for their crimes is due to the hard work of the extraordinary public servants at the Department of Justice. I want to thank the Criminal Division's Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section; the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section; and the United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington for their excellent work. I also want to thank Secretary Yellen and her team at the Treasury Department, including IRS Criminal Investigation, as well as CFTC Chairman Behnam and his team for their extraordinary partnership in this matter. In just the past month, the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted the CEOs of two of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges in two separate criminal cases. The message here should be clear: Using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor. It makes you a criminal. This Justice Department has no tolerance for crimes that threaten our economic institutions and undermine public trust in the fairness of those institutions. And we will hold accountable the individuals who commit and profit from them. I am now pleased turn the podium over to Secretary Yellen. Speaker: Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Topics: Cybercrime National Security Component: Office of the Attorney General NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Department of the Navy releases inaugural Cyber Strategy US Navy - Press Release 21 November 2023 WASHINGTON -- Today, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro released the inaugural Department of the Navy Cyber Strategy. The strategy features seven distinct lines of effort focused on enhancing the naval services' cyber posture in alignment with the National Defense Strategy and Department of Defense Cyber Strategy. "This inaugural strategy builds on years of lessons learned from cyber domain operations across the globe," said Secretary Del Toro. "We are focused on aggressively enhancing our cyber enterprise, while fostering cooperation and collaboration with our allies and partners." The seven lines of effort in this strategy are improve and support the cyber workforce; defend enterprise IT, data, and networks; secure Defense Critical Infrastructure and weapon systems; conduct and facilitate cyber operations; partner to secure the Defense Industrial Base; and foster cooperation and collaboration. "Our strategy reaffirms our commitment to warfighting excellence within cyberspace," said Chris Cleary, Department of the Navy Principal Cyber Advisor. "We are prioritizing the defense of our cyber enterprise and data while conducting and facilitating cyber operations across the globe." The Office of the Principal Cyber Advisor and Office of the Chief Information Officer jointly developed the strategy, ensuring it covers all facets of the Department of the Navy's cyberspace activities. "Achieving a competitive advantage in the cyber domain is critical to strengthening our maritime dominance" said Jane Rathbun, Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer. "The Cyber Strategy sets the DON on a course to more effectively defend our Information Ecosystem and emphasizes the importance of our cyber workforce." Read the full text of the Department of the Navy Cyber Strategy here: https://dvidshub.net/r/irstzr NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address South Korean Top Brass Says North Korea Launched Military Spy Satellite Southward Sputnik News 20231121 MOSCOW (Sputnik) - North Korea has carried out the previously announced launch of a military reconnaissance satellite, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said on Tuesday. North Korea has notified its neighbors that it plans to launch a rocket carrying a military satellite toward the Yellow Sea and East China Sea, raising alarm bells from South Korea and Japan. In response to this announcement, Seoul issued a stern warning to Pyongyang cautioning against proceeding with the planned launch, additionally issuing a sail warning in South Korean waters. "We strongly warn North Korea to immediately stop the 'military reconnaissance satellite' launch, preparations of which are under way," said Kang Ho-pil, chief director of operations at South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Monday. He went on to emphasize that if North Korea proceeds with the launch despite the warning, the South Korean military is prepared to take necessary measures to ensure the safety of its citizens. However, North Korea launched "a military reconnaissance satellite" in the southern direction ahead of the previously announced schedule, the JCS said. Japan's Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, also addressed the situation, revealing that Japan is coordinating its response with South Korea and the United States. He highlighted that any use of ballistic missile technology would be considered a violation of UN resolutions. This is North Korea's third attempt to put a reconnaissance satellite into orbit, following two unsuccessful attempts earlier this year in May and August. The launch was expected to take place between November 22 and December 1. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Korea Says Spy Satellite Successfully Launched By William Gallo November 21, 2023 North Korea said it successfully placed its first spy satellite into orbit late Tuesday and vowed to launch several more in a "short span of time." The country's official Korean Central News Agency said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch from a site in Tongchang-ri on the west coast. "The carrier rocket 'Chollima-1' flew normally along the preset flight track and accurately put the reconnaissance satellite 'Malligyong-1' on its orbit at 22:54:13, 705s after the launch," KCNA reported. U.S. and South Korean officials have not publicly confirmed whether the satellite reached orbit but condemned the launch as a provocation that violates United Nations Security Council resolutions. In response, South Korea also announced it would partially suspend a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement meant to reduce tensions along the border. North Korea's launch was not a surprise. Earlier Tuesday, North Korea informed Japan that it planned to fire a satellite launch vehicle in the direction of the Yellow Sea and East China Sea during a nine-day window starting Wednesday. However, the North's launch, which occurred just about an hour before that window was to begin, triggered brief shelter warnings in parts of southern Japan, before it was determined that the launch vehicle had splashed safely into the ocean. Past failures It was North Korea's third attempted spy satellite launch this year. Previous attempts, in May and August, ended in failure because of rocket problems. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on North Korea's nuclear program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said he could not independently confirm whether Pyongyang's latest attempt succeeded. "But based on where we see the ionospheric disturbance it appears to have been 'more successful' than the previous two attempts," Lewis said on the social media website X, formerly Twitter. If the satellite made it into orbit, the community of visual satellite observers will spot it, he added. Military usefulness Last year, North Korea said it planned to launch "a lot" of spy satellites into orbit to provide real-time information on what it called the "aggression troops" of the United States and its regional allies. The significance of such developments is unclear. North Korea has not revealed how many spy satellites it intends to keep in orbit simultaneously. Analysts are also uncertain about the quality of the imagery they will produce. After retrieving parts of a North Korean spy satellite and space launch vehicle that plunged into the sea in May, South Korea's military said it assessed that the device "had no military utility" as a reconnaissance satellite. "However, I think even a satellite with rudimentary capabilities could still be a first step, or could modestly improve North Korea's situational awareness," said Tianran Xu, an analyst who focuses on Northeast Asian security and missile systems for the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network. "And if this launch succeeds, it means this could be a beginning." North Korea has placed at least two satellites into orbit - the latest in February 2016 - but neither are believed to be working. Pyongyang claimed those launches were part of its peaceful space development program. The United States and its allies condemned those launches as thinly disguised tests of long-range missile technology. North Korea is banned from any ballistic missile activity under multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions. Russian help During a September meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Russia's Far East, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to confirm Moscow was helping Pyongyang build satellites. However, the exact nature of any cooperation remains unclear, since it may be too early for North Korea to have incorporated much of the help, Xu said in an interview with VOA. "Even if there is some substantial Russian aid coming - either in satellite technology, sensor technology, or in the launch vehicle itself - if it's that substantial, they may choose to use the knowledge ... for their next launch," Xu added. South Korea response South Korea, which had repeatedly warned the North against moving ahead with the launch, announced it will resume reconnaissance and surveillance activities around the border. Such missions had been suspended under the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA) between Seoul and Pyongyang. The agreement set up buffer zones and no-fly zones and banned other military activity along the inter-Korean border. But North Korea has repeatedly violated the agreement in recent years. On Wednesday, South Korea's Cabinet approved the partial suspension of the CMA, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported. "The fate of the rest of the agreement will depend on North Korea's future actions," said the statement by the South Korean National Security Council. After it was signed, U.S. military officials in South Korea were publicly supportive of the CMA, saying it was helping to reduce tensions along the border during a period of sensitive diplomacy. That diplomacy was short-lived, though, and North Korea soon intensified its weapons tests, verbal threats and cross-border provocations. Some analysts fear that a unilateral South Korea withdrawal from the agreement could lead to misunderstandings and miscalculations, increasing the chances of a clash with North Korea. But any abrogation of the CMA "will be the result of deteriorated inter-Korea relations and escalatory steps by North Korea, not the cause," said Sydney Seiler, who until earlier this year was the National Intelligence Officer for North Korea in the U.S. National Intelligence Council. "The only question left for Seoul in such a scenario is how to manage the messaging and any domestic political blow-back," Seiler, who is now a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told VOA. North Korea has not publicly responded to South Korea's decision to suspend parts of the CMA. Earlier Tuesday, a North Korean state media editorial defended the country's space program as a "war deterrent" that will help promote a "strategic security balance" in the region. The North Korean editorial, written by an aerospace technology researcher, slammed South Korea's upcoming launch as an aggressive and "extremely dangerous" military provocation. Later this month, South Korea plans to launch its first domestically built spy satellite, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address European organisations and national authorities to help Belarusian media in exile to continue their work in Europe Council of Europe Council of Europe Strasbourg 21 November 2023 The Council of Europe has held the Second Workshop for Belarusian journalists in exile. The issues that were discussed included professional solidarity and cooperation among journalists in exile and national and international associations, support to Belarusian journalists through European mechanisms, ways for Belarusian independent media to circumvent censorship, and how Big Tech can help Belarussian media. Workshop participants adopted the conclusions of the event, where they said: "The authorities in Belarus intensify legal and political pressure that makes it impossible for independent journalists and media to report without fear of reprisal on political, economic and social developments in the country. As a result of the ongoing oppression, the remaining significant and politically influential independent news media, professional journalists and other media actors have either stopped reporting on sensitive issues and/or fled into exile and are currently based in several member states of the Council of Europe, in particular Poland and Lithuania." They stressed that the Belarusian media in exile are an important instrument of countering disinformation and propaganda for their audiences at home and abroad. "The online media attempt to reach their audience at home from abroad despite blocking of access to their websites by the authorities. They provide significant input into strengthening the will of the Belarusian civil society for freedom and democracy." Belarusian journalists in exile who participated in the workshop have outlined the roadmap for future actions and co-operation with the Council of Europe, other European organisations, international associations of journalists, national authorities, internet intermediaries and civil society. They have called on these key stakeholders to do everything possible to allow Belarusian media in exile continue their work. This support can range from providing political support, facilitating visa procedures and relocation, providing financial assistance, to accrediting Belarusian journalists with professional journalistic associations, facilitating the distribution of the Belarusian content through independent media channels and enabling internet algorithms that would distinguish between Russo-Belarusian propaganda content and that created by bona fide independent media. The workshop participants have also called on their fellow journalists to fully respect ethical standards of journalism. The workshop, on 20 and 21 November, was supported by the Justice for Journalists (JFJ) Foundation (U.K.), and held in cooperation with the Council of Europe Contact Group on co-operation with representatives of Belarusian democratic forces and civil society and the Belarusian Association of Journalists. The first workshop for Belarusian journalists in exile was held in Strasbourg in March 2023. In March 2022 the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers decided to suspend all relations with the authorities of Belarus and to enhance the organisation's relations with Belarusian civil society and the opposition in exile, with particular emphasis on Belarusian youth, independent media and human rights defenders. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Comment by Minister Tsahkna on the decision of Russia and Belarus to veto Estonia's OSCE Chairmanship Republic of Estonia - Ministry of Foreign Affairs 21.11.2023 Comment by Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna on the decision of Russia and Belarus to veto Estonia's OSCE Chairmanship in 2024. It is regrettable that due to the veto imposed by Russia and, at their instigation, Belarus today in Vienna, Estonia's candidacy for the Chairmanship of the OSCE in 2024 was not confirmed. With its actions, Russia is blocking the work of the entire organisation because for years now, Moscow has prevented the organisation from adopting its budget, holding official OSCE events, and extending foreign missions, resulting in the end of all OSCE foreign missions in Ukraine, which has been subjected to Russia's aggression. Because of Russia and Belarus, we now find ourselves in a situation where a mere six weeks before the new year, the OSCE does not have a confirmed chairmanship, even though Estonia has been the joint candidate of the European Union since 2020. As Russia is violating all fundamental principles of the OSCE with its bloody war of aggression, it is unacceptable to subject to Moscow's demands and blackmail, including its wish that the next country to hold the OSCE Chairmanship is not a NATO member. At this moment, instead of looking for solutions that would please Moscow, we must isolate Russia in every way on the international arena. Estonia continues to hold the position that the OSCE must stand resolutely for its fundamental values and concessions to the aggressor should be ruled out. OSCE grew out of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), which has always aimed to advance dialogue between the East and the West. This way, the OSCE has never comprised only like-minded countries. Although the activities of the OSCE have been beset by confrontations from the start, the organisation has never faced a graver crisis than now. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China to boost talks, cooperation with Europe after ties with US stabilize Global Times By Yang Sheng and Xu Yelu Published: Nov 21, 2023 09:16 PM China and the EU, as well as major European powers like France, are going to increase communication and boost cooperation, with analysts saying on Tuesday the China-US tensions have been eased to a certain degree after the San Francisco summit, and this will pave way for Europe to be more pragmatic when developing ties with China. Due to disruption and interference from Washington, the EU and some of its members are unable to have fully independent policy-making capability when dealing with China. After China-US ties have stabilized, the China-EU ties will have new opportunities to seek breakthroughs on some long-standing problems, such as the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). The two sides will also explore cooperation on handling challenges caused by the Ukraine crisis and the Palestine-Israel conflict, said experts. Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday called on his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, to carry forward the traditional China-France friendship and push the relations to a new level, the Xinhua News Agency reported. According to Bloomberg on Tuesday, French Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna will head to China this week to smooth relations after a European anti-subsidy probe championed by Paris into Chinese electric vehicles raised trade tensions between the two sides. The French top diplomat will argue for a balanced relationship that respects the EU's sovereignty, according to a diplomatic source, who asked not to be identified in line with government rules. The EU investigation, which began in September, has led to concerns of "a potential tit-for-tat tariff war" at a time when European leaders are seeking to boost economic independence without losing access to the Chinese market, said Bloomberg. Apart from the ties with France, Politico reported on November 10 that "the first EU-China summit in four years has been tentatively scheduled for December 7-8," an anonymous EU official said, as Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market of the EU, became the latest senior EU commissioner to visit China to lay the ground for the meeting. Those are the dates that both sides are working toward but they still need to be formally announced, the official said. Another senior EU diplomat who asked for anonymity said that the dates of the get-together hosted by China were not yet fully final. Song Luzheng, a Chinese scholar residing in France and a research fellow at the China Institute of Fudan University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the current diplomatic activities and those that are going to happen next between China and the EU are long-planned, but the timing is also interesting because after the China-US summit in San Francisco, some obstacles and interruption that used to trouble the China-EU relations will be weakened. "The US is always the biggest source of negative impacts that could interrupt the development of China-EU relations, and since the Biden administration is now making efforts to manage the tension [with China], it would be a chance for the EU leaders to seek breakthroughs in the cooperation with China," Song noted. Gao Jian, an expert on European studies at Shanghai International Studies University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that "Although China-EU relations have fluctuated due to the impact caused by the US, the two sides have never departed from the general direction of equality and mutual benefit. The strong resilience and multi-faceted dynamism of China-EU relations remain strong. We can expect a steady growth of China-EU economic and trade relations and closer ties between the two markets." Push for cooperation During the call with Macron on Monday, Xi said that China is ready to maintain high-level exchanges with France, make sure the next meeting of the China-France high-level dialogue mechanism on people-to-people exchanges is successful, push for new progress in bilateral cooperation in such areas as education, culture and scientific research, and promote friendly exchanges between the two peoples. Applauding France's active participation in the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation and the sixth China International Import Expo, Xi said China is glad to see the entry of an increasing number of French products into the Chinese market and welcomes more investment of French enterprises in China. Macron said that under the current international situation, it is of great significance for France and China to maintain strategic communication and cooperation. The French side is willing to take the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and China next year as an opportunity to intensify high-level exchanges with China, and deepen exchanges and cooperation in such fields as economy, trade and aviation, as well as people-to-people and cultural exchanges. "Hopefully, with the increasing exchanges between China and France, as well as the EU, the two sides can restart negotiation of the CAI which has been frozen due to political reason, and since the global recovery is still fragile, the two major economies need to bring the world more positive and encouraging news," Song said. Apart from economy and trade, China and European partners will also likely deepen cooperation and coordination on geo-political hotspot issues, experts noted. For most EU members, the Ukraine crisis has directly affected their economy and security, while the ongoing conflict in Gaza may affect their internal stability with potential influx of refugees from the region, Song said. "China is respected by Middle Eastern countries, especially the Arab and Islamic nations, and it's also a responsible and influential major power, the EU and France will need to seek cooperation with China in these fields." Exchanging views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the two heads of state said during the call that it is imperative to avoid further deterioration of the Palestinian-Israeli situation, especially the emergence of a more serious humanitarian crisis. They agreed that the two-state solution is the fundamental way to solve the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli conflicts, Xinhua reported. Say no to protectionism Noting that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership, Xi said China and the EU should remain partners for mutually beneficial cooperation in a volatile and intertwined world. It is hoped that France will play a constructive role in promoting the positive development of China-EU relations, the Chinese president said. France hopes to communicate closely with China at the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai and continuously cooperate to address global issues such as climate change and biodiversity protection, said the French president. Besides, France is ready to promote the further development of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the EU and China in a spirit of mutual respect, mutual benefit and cooperation, he said. China's development in the field of new energy is based on the law of the market economy, as well as China's far-sighted strategic planning and the reality that China has to face during its development, so China has a solid and powerful industrial advantage, Gao said. "This advantage is not the result of the so-called government intervention or unequal competition, nor will it affect China-EU economic cooperation," Gao told the Global Time, saying that as a unified international organization and economic entity, the EU will not and should not violate the basic principles and positions of free trade between China and Europe only because of the requests from some individuals or its member states. Protectionism will bring negative effects to globalization as well as China-EU free trade, and it will not benefit the industrial development in specific field for both sides, as the exchanges and cooperation are needed for both sides to better research technologies and develop products, experts noted. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China opposes any external forces interfering in internal affairs of Central Asian countries: Chinese top diplomat Global Times By Global Times Published: Nov 22, 2023 11:44 AM Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held the first China-Uzbekistan foreign ministers' strategic dialogue with Uzbekistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bakhtiyor Saidov on Tuesday in Beijing, in which the two sides held comprehensive and in-depth communication. Wang said that China opposes any external forces interfering in the internal affairs of Central Asian countries under any pretext. At the invitation of Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Bakhtiyor Saidov is visiting China from November 19 to 22, according to China's Foreign Ministry.a The two sides reached broad consensus on implementing the important consensus reached by the two heads of state and strengthening the synergy of development strategies, and jointly announced the establishment of a strategic dialogue mechanism between the two countries' foreign ministers. Wang stated that China and Uzbekistan are friendly neighbors with a shared destiny. Regardless of how the international situation changes, the bilateral relationship has always maintained healthy and stable development, and has maintained its vitality. China is willing to work with Uzbekistan to make good use of the new platform of China-Uzbekistan foreign ministers' strategic dialogue, advance all-round mutually beneficial cooperation and speed up the building of a China-Uzbekistan community of shared future, Wang noted. During the meeting, Wang called on the two sides to consolidate the belief of solidarity and mutual trust, advocating and practicing real multilateralism, promoting the development of global governance toward a more fair and reasonable direction. Wang also stressed the importance to build an engine for common development, as well as cultivating public opinion toward an everlasting friendship. Wang called for further strengthened cooperation in counter-terrorism, drug enforcement, combating transnational organized crime, and cyber and biological security. China opposes any external forces interfering in the internal affairs of Central Asian countries under any pretext, Wang stressed. Saidov said that Uzbekistan cherishes the solid mutual trust between the heads of state of the two countries and the friendly neighborly relations between the two sides. Uzbekistan supports a series of global initiatives proposed by China and will continue to adhere to the one-China principle, firmly support each other, and deepen strategic mutual trust, Saidov said. On the Palestinian issue, Saidov highly appreciated China's impartiality in hosting and support its insistence on the "two-state solution," to jointly promote a fair resolution. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hegemonic mentality behind US media hype of 'China threat' theory: experts Global Times By Liu Xuanzun Published: Nov 21, 2023 07:40 PM US media on Monday claimed that the era of total US submarine dominance over China is ending, a move Chinese experts said on Tuesday is yet another hype of the "China threat" theory motivated by the US hegemonic mentality. China is narrowing one of the largest gaps dividing the US and Chinese militaries as it makes advances in its submarine technology and undersea detection capabilities, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Monday. The WSJ report claimed that China launched early this year a nuclear-powered attack submarine with a pump-jet propulsion system instead of a propeller, marking the first time this noise-reducing technology used on the latest US submarines had been seen on a Chinese submarine. Citing satellite images, the WSJ said China's manufacturing base for nuclear-powered submarines laid out hull sections larger than the hull of any existing Chinese submarine a few months earlier, and that the plant was expanded with a second modern construction hall in 2021, indicating plans to boost output. China has also built or nearly finished several underwater sensor networks in the South China Sea and other regions around the Chinese coast, similar to the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) developed by the US during the Cold War to detect Soviet subs, giving it a much better ability to detect enemy submarines, the WSJ said. The WSJ highlighted the Chinese People's Liberation Army's (PLA) efforts in finding enemy submarines by adding patrol aircraft and helicopters as well as conducting anti-submarine warfare exercise with warships. China has not publicly announced most of the developments mentioned in the US media report, so they are little more than mere speculations based on open information that could be false or misleading, a Chinese military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Tuesday. However, it is logical that China would rightfully continue to develop its underwater national defense capabilities in order to safeguard its national security, sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests, and other countries are in no position to make irresponsible remarks, the expert said. The report talked about "US submarine dominance," which exposes the US-style hegemonic mentality that only the US can have absolute advantages over others, the expert said. The WSJ report also linked China's submarine developments to the Taiwan question, claiming that a greater threat to US submarines would complicate the task of sinking ships in the attacking PLA fleet in case of a PLA reunification-by-force operation. "The US needs far more resources, such as patrol aircraft and attack submarines, to locate, track and potentially target a new generation of quieter Chinese submarines," the WSJ quoted a former US Navy officer as saying. Such rhetoric again hypes the "China threat" theory aimed at demonizing, isolating and containing China, and it creates excuses for the US to expand its military budget and for US arms firms to make more profits, analysts said. It is totally wrong that the US should militarily interfere in the Taiwan question, which is an internal affair of China, experts said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address It would be a huge foreign policy mistake for Argentina to cut ties with major countries like China or Brazil: FM spokesperson Global Times By Global Times Published: Nov 21, 2023 06:21 PM China's foreign ministry on Tuesday said there is a misunderstanding concerning Argentine President-elect Javier Milei's foreign policy. The ministry noted that It would be a huge foreign policy mistake for Argentina to cut ties with major countries like China or Brazil. "No country can develop economic and trade cooperation without diplomatic relations. China is an important trading partner for Argentina, and the elected Argentine government attaches great importance to relations with China, especially bilateral economic and trade cooperation," Mao Ning, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Tuesday during a press briefing. Mao's remarks were in response to a media question on Milei's foreign policy, saying that RIA Novosti reported that during an interview on Monday, Diana Mondino, Senior Adviser of Argentina's President-elect Milei, said cooperation with the Chinese government will be stopped when asked if she would support and encourage trade with China. "Based on what I have read, your description of her statement is somewhat different from the interview published on the RIA Novosti website. Mondino said in the interview that some in the world misread President-elect Milei's foreign policy. No countries could step out of diplomatic relations and still be able to engage in economic trade and cooperation. As I stressed at Monday's press conference, China-Argentina relations have shown a sound momentum of development," said Mao. China is Argentina's second largest trading partner and largest agricultural export market. The two economies are complementary and there is huge potential for cooperation. China is ready to work with Argentina to push for steady and long-term growth of bilateral relations, Mao said. On Monday, Mao said that China congratulates Argentina on a smooth presidential election and congratulates Milei on his election as the President of Argentina. "Over the past 50-odd years since China and Argentina established diplomatic relations, our two countries have treated each other with mutual respect and equality and pursued mutual benefit. Bilateral relations have shown sound momentum of growth. To further grow China-Argentina relations is a widely shared consensus among people across the social spectrum of both countries and has brought tangible benefits to both peoples," said Mao. She noted that China values its relations with Argentina from a strategic and long-term point of view and stands ready to work with Argentina to continue nurturing friendship, contribute to each other's development and prosperity through win-win cooperation, and keep relations on a steady and sustained track of growth for the benefit of the two peoples. In the first 10 months of 2023, bilateral trade stood at $15.15 billion, according to statistics from the General Administration of Customs. In 2022, trade between China and Argentina totaled $21.36 billion, up 20.0 percent year-on-year. On October 31, the Ministry of Economy of Argentina announced that it will again use the Chinese currency to repay part of its IMF debt. The ministry will repay about $3.4 billion in foreign debt and interest to the IMF in the near future, part of which will be paid with the equivalent value in yuan under a bilateral currency swap agreement between the central banks of the two countries. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning's Regular Press Conference on November 21, 2023 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People's Republic of China 2023-11-21 17:30 At the invitation of the government of the Republic of India, Premier of the State Council Li Qiang will attend the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit on November 22. CCTV: You just announced that Premier Li Qiang will attend the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit. Can you tell us China's expectation for this summit? Mao Ning: The G20 Summit held in New Delhi in September reached important common understandings on adopting actions through partnerships. In the face of the volatile international situation and sluggish economic recovery, it is all the more important for the G20 to reinforce partnership, address global challenges through cooperation and make positive contribution to world economic recovery and global common development. China hopes that the virtual summit can pool consensus and send positive signal to this end. CNR: It is reported that the delegation of Arab-Islamic foreign ministers visited China yesterday. Could you share with us the outcomes of the visit? Mao Ning: On November 20, the delegation of Arab-Islamic foreign ministers led by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan visited China. The delegation also included Foreign Ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Palestine and Indonesia and Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Vice President Han Zheng and Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met and held talks with the delegation respectively. China highly commends the efforts for peace and the call for justice made by the Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit and supports the joint ministerial follow-up committee in playing a greater role. The delegation made China its first stop for international mediation, which reflects their trust in China and the tradition of mutual understanding and support between the two sides.a The Chinese side outlined our proposal on addressing the current crisis in Gaza and resolving the Palestinian question: The pressing task now is to fully implement relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly and reach an immediate ceasefire. It is critical to abide by the international law, especially international humanitarian law. China opposes any forced displacement and relocation of Palestinian civilians. Any arrangement concerning the future and destiny of Palestine must be based on the consent of the Palestinian people and accommodate the legitimate concerns of regional countries. Any potential way to address the current situation must not deviate from the two-state solution and should be conducive to regional peace and stability. The UN Security Council needs to heed the call of Arab and Islamic countries and take responsible actions to deescalate the situation. As this month's rotating president of the Security Council, China will continue to strengthen coordination with Arab and Islamic countries to build consensus and galvanize more meaningful Security Council action on the situation in Gaza. The Palestinian question is at the heart of the Middle East issue. Without a just settlement of the Palestinian question, durable peace and stability will remain elusive for the Middle East.a The foreign ministers of Arab and Islamic countries spoke highly of China's long-standing just position on the Palestinian question and commended China's work as the rotating Security Council president to make possible the first Security Council resolution since the current conflict broke out. They look forward to closer coordination with China to prevent the crisis from spreading and restart the peace talk process. Global Times: At the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, President Xi Jinping mentioned China's economic situation several times. He emphasized that we "have the confidence in, and even more capability of achieving long-term and stable growth" and "invite friends from business communities across the world to invest in China". We also noted that in the first 10 months of this year, China's actual use of foreign investment dropped by 9.4 percent year-on-year and foreign media reported that some foreign companies intend to move industrial chains out of China. What's your comment? Mao Ning: President Xi Jinping pointed out in his speech at the APEC CEO Summit that China remains the most powerful engine of global growth, and willagenerate one-third of global growth this year. Just as some friends from the business community have said, China has become a synonym of the best investment destination, and that the "nextaChina" is still China. The reason why China is the place to go for the global business community lies in the strong resilience, ample potential and strong vitality of its economy, the fundamental national policy of reform and opening up and the huge Chinese market. At APEC, President Xi Jinping stressed again that China will improve the mechanisms for protecting the rights and interests of foreign investors, further shorten the negative list on foreign investment and fully ensure national treatment for foreign investors. All of this sends out a strong message about China's continued expansion of opening up. The "nextaChina" is still China. We invite businesses from across the world to invest and cultivate success in China. KBS: I have two questions. First, the DPRK announced it will launch a military reconnaissance satellite. The ROK government believes it to be against UN Security Council resolutions. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, what is China's comment? Second, ROK President Yoon Suk Yeol stressed several times that China plays an important role in curbing DPRK provocation and upholding peace and stability in northeast Asia. What role will China play in resolving the issues concerning the DPRK? Mao Ning: On your first question, we have noted relevant reports. We also noted the frequent appearances of US strategic bombers and aircraft carrier battle groups lately in the area of the Korean Peninsula. I want to stress that continued deadlock in the situation on the Peninsula does not serve any party's fundamental interests. China urges relevant parties to face up to the crux of the Korean Peninsula issues, stop engaging in confrontation and pressuring, take concrete steps to pursue a political settlement of those issues and maintain peace and stability on the Peninsula. On your second question, about China's role in the issues concerning the Peninsula, I would like to stress again that the history and crux of the Korean Peninsula issues are clear. China is not the focal point of the issues. It is the US that holds the key to resolving them. As a responsible major country, China is committed to peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula and the process of seeking a political settlement of the Peninsula issues. China will also keep working actively for stability and resumption of talks as well as the early realization of lasting peace and security on the Peninsula.a Kyodo News: It's reported that Natsuo Yamaguchi, chief representative of Japan's political party Komeito, will visit China tomorrow and meet with Chinese officials. What's your expectation for the visit? Mao Ning: We welcome Komeito Chief Representative Natsuo Yamaguchi and his delegation to China and hope that the conversations and exchanges between the two sides will help improve and grow China-Japan relations. Bloomberg: You mentioned that China has put forward a peace proposal for Gaza. Can you tell us a little more about that? Mao Ning: During the Arab-Islamic foreign ministers' joint visit to China, we outlined our proposal on addressing the current crisis in Gaza and resolving the Palestinian question. Put simply, we believe the pressing task now is to fully implement relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly and reach an immediate ceasefire. It is critical to abide by the international law, especially international humanitarian law. China opposes any forced displacement and relocation of Palestinian civilians. Any arrangement concerning the future and destiny of Palestine must be based on the consent of the Palestinian people and accommodate the legitimate concerns of regional countries. The ultimate answer toathe Palestinian question lies in delivering on the two-state solution. NHK: After consultation among the parties, China-Japan-ROK Trilateral Foreign Ministers' Meeting will be held in the ROK. How does China view the significance of the trilateral cooperation and what's China's expectation for the meeting?a Mao Ning: The trilateral cooperation serves the common interests of our three countries and is beneficial to regional stability and prosperity. The three sides are in contact on matters related to this meeting. China Review News: RIA Novosti reported that during an interview on November 20, Diana Mondino, Senior Adviser of Argentina's President-elect Javier Milei, said cooperation with the Chinese government will be stopped when asked if she would support and encourage trade with China. What's your comments on that? Mao Ning: Based on what I have read, your description of her statement is somewhat different from the interview published on the RIA Novosti website. Mondino said in the interview that some in the world misread President-elect Milei's foreign policy; that no countries could step out of diplomatic relations and still be able to engage in economic and trade cooperation; and that it would be a huge foreign policy mistake for Argentina to cut ties with major countries like China or Brazil. China is Argentina's important trading partner. According to Mondino, the newly elected Argentine government values its relations with China, especially the business ties between the two countries. As I stressed yesterday from this podium, the bilateral relations between China and Argentina have shown sound momentum of growth. China is Argentina's second largest trading partner and the largest export market of agricultural products. The economic complementarity between our two countries means there is great potential for cooperation. China stands ready to work with Argentina to keep our relations on a steady course forward. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China's New Subs and Sonars Challenge Supremacy of US Silent Hunter Fleets Sputnik News 20231121 Ilya Tsukanov The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surpassed the US Navy in total number of warships in late 2021. Technologically too, China has made major strides, including in the area of submarine construction and detection. These advances have sparked concerns from observers that America's powerful fleets could be left dead in the water in a crisis. The PLAN's military and technological prowess against the US Navy in the field of submarine construction and anti-submarine warfare is progressing apace, and the "era of total US submarine dominance" over the People's Republic of China is reaching its end. That's the conclusion reached by one of America's top cited business newspapers in a piece focused on the Asian nation's scientific and industrial advances for naval warfare. China, the paper pointed out, is gradually "narrowing" the gap between itself and the United States in the highly complex fields of submarine technology and undersea detection. These developments not only threaten the Pentagon's regional strategy of hemming China into its home ports, but could challenge US naval supremacy globally over the long term. Earlier this year, for instance, research by the US Naval War College's China Maritime Studies Institute pointed to Chinese advances in efficient nuclear reactors, quiet-running pump-jet propulsion systems and internal quieting devices, the latter based on "imitative innovation" of Russian technology, predicting that the PLAN's latest nuclear-powered subs will be much harder to track than before. Additionally, analyses of satellite photos of the Huludao Shipyard in Liaoning, northeastern China taken last year showed the construction of sections of submarine hulls larger than anything US analysts have ever seen in a Chinese sub, along with what seemed to be plans to increase production capacity. US media citing leaked US Navy intelligence already sounded the alarm about China's impressive shipbuilding capacity this past fall, which at 23.2 million tons per year, compared with 100,000 tons per year in the US, gives the People's Republic the ability to build warships at a rate some 200 times greater than the US in a pinch. On top of that, the PLAN's rapid construction of a vast network of underwater sensors in the South China Sea and other areas along the Chinese coast known as the "Underwater Great Wall", to look out for sub, surface warship and aerial activity, means that the Pentagon will find it more difficult to place its warships, subs and aircraft in areas around the Asian nation. The Underwater Great Wall's construction is reportedly nearing its completion, and includes a vast network of passive and active sonar sensors, plus remote controlled underwater and surface drones which can look out for enemy activity. China is reportedly also "getting better" at finding silent-running US attack and cruise missile subs sneaking around near its home waters, combining buoy and drone-based monitoring with the use of patrol aircraft and helicopters, for example. In addition are the PLAN's growing number of exercises with Russia, which, it can be assumed not only increases the Chinese Navy's ability to coordinate with its northern neighbor in the event of an emergency, but allows it to learn from the Russian Navy's half century-plus year experience as a major global naval power rivaled only to the US. "The implications for the US and our Pacific allies will be profound," former US Navy officer Christopher Carlson said, pointing to the headaches the US Navy will face, and the additional resources it will need, to locate and keep track of China's new generation of quiet-running nuclear subs. Strategically, the outlet noted, maneuvers that the US once took for granted, like the ability to approach close China's home shores, will now no longer be a given, with the PLAN's nuclear-powered attack subs able to pick off approaching American warships before they could reach Taiwan in a crisis, for example. On top of that is the Chinese sub-based ballistic missile threat to the US homeland -a threat Washington has long been used to meting out, but not experiencing itself, in relation to the Asian giant. "Finding a boat this quiet is going to be really hard," Carlson said of the Chinese sub threat, predicting the new Chinese boats will probably be about as quiet as the Project 971 Shchuka-B (NATO reporting name Akula, or "Shark") class fourth generation nuclear-powered attack subs which the Soviet Union and then Russia started fielding in the 1980s and 1990s. China's fleet of 79 submarines includes at least 16 nuclear-powered attack and ballistic missile subs, including six Type 093 (NATO reporting name Shang class) attack subs and six Type 094 (NATO reporting name Jin) ballistic missile boats operating "near-continuous" patrols between Hainan Island and the South China Sea. But Carlson warned that the Asian nation could build up to triple the current US rate averaging 1.2 subs per year. Costly as Aircraft Carriers, Difficult to Build "Submarine-building is the pinnacle of technological excellence in economics and industry, and only a few countries have mastered the technologies which China has now broken into - France, Britain, the Soviet Union/Russia, and the United States," Vasily Dandykin, a veteran Russian military analyst and retired Russian Navy Captain 1stRank, told Sputnik. Several factors account for the US' slowing pace when it comes to the construction of new submarines, according to the observer, starting with Washington's decision to rest on its laurels after the end of the Cold War, to the drop in the number of high-class specialists in the field. "The downtime" in the US' submarine-related programs resulted from "complacency after the collapse of the Soviet Union," when "not just America, but also Europe rested on their laurels," according to Dandykin. "The Americans have the world's largest military budget, which exceeds those of all other countries in the world. That means that somewhere they got carried away with such gigantic and expensive projects which did not justify their cost," the analyst said, pointing to out of control spending on novelties like the $8 billion-per ship Zumwalt class of destroyers. "There were a lot of such projects that sucked up a lot of money. And now it turns out that all of these experiments boil down to the fact that they're 10 years behind Russia in the creation of a new fourth-generation strategic nuclear submarine," made possible, according to the analyst, thanks to the backlog of revolutionary Soviet sub designs that Russian builders have been able to develop and build on. "The 'downtime' that occurred had an impact in this area, not just with submarines, but the construction of the surface fleet, the entire American fleet. Here, without a doubt, China's pace has been impressive, first and foremost in terms of the construction of large ships for the surface fleet. But I think they will push themselves and try to build up their nuclear submarine fleet as quickly as possible," Dandykin predicted. As far as China's subs themselves go, Dandykin pointed out that for the moment, the majority of the PLAN's fleet still consists of diesel-electric subs, and for them to reach the same technological level as the US, as they have already done when it comes to ships like universal landing ships and destroyers, will take time. The PLAN's current nuclear-powered ballistic missile-launching subs belong to the second generation at best, in the retired naval officer's estimation, and the newest efforts are aimed at the creation of third-generation vessels. Accordingly, Dandykin believes US efforts to hype up the "Chinese threat" are "a little disingenuous," and designed mainly to lobby for the allocation of even more resources for US sub-building efforts - a titanic effort equivalent, more or less, to the construction of an aircraft carrier in both technological and financial terms. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address North Korea conducts rocket launch as US carrier docks in Bosan: Seoul Iran Press TV Tuesday, 21 November 2023 6:40 PM South Korea says the North conducted a rocket launch on Tuesday, on the same day a US carrier strike group docked in the South's largest port. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff JCS said the military "detected at 10:43 pm (1343 GMT) one alleged military surveillance satellite." It said a North Korean rocket flew above international waters off the Korean Peninsula's west coast and then over the Japanese island of Okinawa toward the Pacific Ocean. Tokyo briefly issued a J-Alert missile warning for the southern region of Okinawa, urging residents to take shelter inside buildings or underground. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's office posted a message on X: "North Korea has launched a suspected ballistic missile." State minister of defense Hiroyuki Miyazawa, said Japan was "analyzing whether it is a failure or a success. We are unable to say anything with certainty." South Korea claimed that the launch was Pyongyang's third attempt this year to put a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit. The office of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is in London for a state visit, said Pyongyang appears "pretty confident that it'll be a success, though we have to wait and see whether that'll be the case." Pyongyang has yet to comment on the report. North Korea's reported launch comes as the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrived at South Korea's port city of Bosan as part of an agreement between Washington and Seoul to promote the "regular visibility" of US military assets in the country, the Ministry of Defense said in a news release Tuesday. It said the deployment signals a "combined defense posture" against North Korea. Citing a Japanese Coast Guard spokesman, Stars and Stripes, said the military was notified by Pyongyang of a scheduled launch over the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and east of Luzon, Philippines, between Wednesday and Dec. 1. The US carrier group is the third Navy carrier to visit the peninsula so far this year. It is capable of carrying roughly 5,000 sailors and 70 aircraft, according to the Navy. The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan also visited Busan in October to drill with the South Korean and Japanese navies. North Korea warned back then that the US is increasing provocations of a "nuclear war" by deploying nuclear-capable bombers to the region. It said that US nuclear assets stationed in the Korean peninsula will become Pyongyang's "first targets for destruction" in the event of an actual conflict. The country has been under harsh sanctions by the United States and the United Nations Security Council for years over its deterrent nuclear and ballistic missile programs. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address N Korea launches satellite despite international warnings The launch comes a day after Seoul said it detected activities indicating a launch. By Lee Jeong-Ho and Alex Willemyns for RFA 2023.11.21 -- North Korea said Tuesday it "accurately" launched a spy satellite into orbit, drawing a strong rebuke from the United States, which called the launch a threat to "stability and prosperity on the Korean peninsula." The launch follows the South Korean military's warning on Monday that it detected new activities from the North which appeared to be signs for a satellite launch. "North Korea launched what it claims to be a military reconnaissance satellite in a southern direction," South Korea's Joint Chief of Staff said in a statement late Tuesday. The JSC has yet to provide details, including whether the test was successful, the location of the launch, or any flight data related to the launch. However, Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency claimed that the satellite was successfully launched into orbit. "'Chollima-1' flew normally along the scheduled flight trajectory and accurately entered the reconnaissance satellite 'Wangli-1' into orbit at 22:54:13, 705 seconds after launch," KCNA said. "The launch of a reconnaissance satellite is [North Korea's] legal right to strengthen its right to self-defense and will greatly contribute to firmly enhancing the war readiness of the Republic's armed forces in line with the safety environment created in the country and surrounding areas due to the enemy's dangerous military maneuvers," the news agency said. American condemnation U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States could not verify KCNA's claim but condemned the launch as dangerous. "I cannot confirm that assessment. It is still something that's ongoing inside the United States government," Miller said, before declining to comment on the security implications of Pyongyang possessing such a spy satellite. "I can say that we condemn the DPRK's unlawful launch of a military reconnaissance satellite today," he added, saying it "violates multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions" by using ballistic missiles and "undermines stability and prosperity on the Korean peninsula." Rocket technology can be used for both launching satellites and missiles. For that reason, the U.N. bans North Korea from launching a ballistic rocket, even if it claims to be a satellite launch. In August, North Korea failed for the second time to launch a satellite, three months after an unsuccessful first attempt. South's warnings On Monday, the JCS's chief director of operations, Kang Ho-pil, strongly urged North Korea to cease the launch, vowing that Seoul would take the necessary counter measures. South Korea is most likely to suspend the effectiveness of the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement, a military source, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Radio Free Asia late Tuesday. The person did not elaborate. The two Koreas have agreed to halt what the other has defined as hostile actions toward one another near the border, but the North has conducted a number of provocations, violating the agreement. Critics in South Korea, thus, have long argued that the deal has already become ineffective, only serving to restrict Seoul's operational and surveillance capabilities. South Korea's defense minister Shin Won-sik told reporters last month that the agreement has limited the South's surveillance capability against North Korean provocations. North Korea has been solidifying its ties with Russia, and South Korea's National Intelligence Service said earlier this month that it is likely to have received help in obtaining satellite launch technology from Moscow. The launch comes as South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol is in London for his state visit to the United Kingdom, where he pledged to advance Seoul's security ties with London. North Korea has a history of provocations when South Korean presidents are abroad, seemingly to challenge Seoul's response capabilities and the efficiency of its systems in the president's absence. Jay Park contributed reporting for RFA Korean. Willemyns reported from Washington. Edited by Elaine Chan and Mike Firn Copyright 1998-2016, 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UK and Republic of Korea to enforce sanctions against North Korea through joint sea patrols A new Accord signed between the UK and Republic of Korea will strengthen our joint ability to enforce sanctions against North Korea. 21 November 2023 A new Accord signed between the UK and Republic of Korea (ROK) will strengthen our joint ability to enforce sanctions against North Korea, and work to prevent development of its illegal weapons programme. The Accord will be signed by the Prime Minister of the UK and the President of the ROK during his state visit to the UK. The Accord demonstrates the increased ambition of the already strong UK-ROK diplomatic partnership, which marks its 140th anniversary this year. A new Accord signed between the UK and Republic of Korea (ROK) will include a defence agreement between the UK and Republic of Korea (ROK) that will see both nations jointly enforce United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions on North Korea (DPRK) for the first time. The agreement, which forms part of the Downing Street Accord, will be signed by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Yoon Suk Yeol during his State Visit this week. The Accord affirms that the UK and the Republic of Korea will work closely on defence and security, collaborating in science and technological innovation, and boosting trade and investment opportunities. The DPRK relies on smugglers in order to bypass international sanctions, many of which were introduced to block imports and exports which could be used to support its nuclear weapons programme. A significant amount of this smuggling takes place in the East China Sea, where Royal Navy ships have previously deployed and captured evidence of this activity. Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said: The UK is leading the way in supporting our Korean friends in countering North Korea's aggressive posturing and ensuring the safety and security of the Indo-Pacific. Deepening the ties between the Royal Navy and Republic of Korea Navy, our bilateral defence relationship has never been stronger. The agreement will support closer relations between the Royal Navy and ROK Navy during future cooperation to counter this activity, and will support the security of the Indo-Pacific region. Foreign Secretary David Cameron said: The UK and the Republic of Korea have built a strong relationship of trust and respect over many years - this year we celebrate the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between our two countries. And Britain has a long history of standing with the ROK in its commitment to democracy in the region. This agreement - signed 70 years after the Korean War Armistice - is a truly unique step in the strengthening of our work to secure the security of the Korean Peninsula and the region. We are proud, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, to be at the forefront of international sanctions enforcement activity. This includes upholding international commitments to curtail North Korea's illegal weapons programmes. The UK is fully committed to meeting its obligations as a permanent UNSC member to enforce sanctions resolutions, and routinely conducts maritime monitoring operations focused on vessels which could be involved in the illegal transfer of goods and resources. The Royal Navy maintains a persistent presence in the Indo-Pacific, as reaffirmed through this year's refreshed Defence Command Paper, with two offshore patrol vessels - HMS Spey and HMS Tamar - deployed in the region. Further activity involving both the Royal Marines and British Army is also currently being planned for 2024. After a highly successful Ex IMJIN WARRIOR in October of this year at the Korean Combat Training Centre, the UK will further expand its commitment to this bilateral exercise in 2024, while the ROK-led Exercise Ssang Yong will see a significant uplift in the number of Royal Marines taking part. The UK and ROK will commit to a breadth of security and defence cooperation as part of the Accord, which will also include sharing information to more efficiently tackle maritime threats in the Indo-Pacific, and the signing of a Strategic Cyber Partnership committing our nations to working together to tackle cyber threats. The Accord will also deliver an important milestone in UK-ROK defence relations, with the signing of a joint Ministerial Statement Of Intent to establish a new Defence Partnership for Industrial and Capability Cooperation. The partnership will open a detailed dialogue between our Defence and procurement officials, enabling greater integration between our export and capability requirements, including industrial collaboration and supply chain integration. It will strengthen our future joint defence exports, with British and Korean industry working together on projects with selected third countries, and will allow for greater collaboration on shared industrial development and R&D. During the State Visit, the President will be joined by The Duke of Gloucester to lay a wreath at the Korean War Memorial in London, in memory of those who gave their lives in the conflict - with 2023 marking 70 years since the armistice was signed. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Statement from NSC Spokesperson Adrienne Watson on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's Space Launch November 21, 2023 The United States strongly condemns the DPRK for its launch of a space launch vehicle (SLV) using ballistic missile technology, which is a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, raises tensions, and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region and beyond. This space launch involved technologies that are directly related to the DPRK intercontinental ballistic missile program. The President and his national security team are assessing the situation in close coordination with our allies and partners. We urge all countries to condemn this launch and call on the DPRK to come to the table for serious negotiations. The door has not closed on diplomacy but Pyongyang must immediately cease its provocative actions and instead choose engagement. The United States will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and the defense of our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies. ### NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Transcript of Press Briefing on the India-Australia Foreign Ministers' Framework Dialogue (November 21, 2023) India - Ministry of External Affairs November 21, 2023 Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Good afternoon. Thank you all for joining us for the special media briefing on the occasion of the 14th Foreign Ministers' Framework Dialogue between India and Australia. We are delighted to have with us, External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar as well as the Foreign Minister of Australia, Senator, Excellency Penny Wong. I would request both Ministers to make brief opening remarks after which we'll take a few questions. Please note there is a very hard stop we have, so the number of questions will be limited. Sir the floor is yours. Dr. S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister: Friends from the media, first of all let me welcome my friend, Foreign Minister Penny Wong on her second visit to India as Foreign Minister, this year. As you know, we have just concluded the 14th Foreign Ministers' Framework Dialogue. We had a very good discussion which really covered a very large number of subjects. Essentially on the bilateral side, we took stock of where our ties are, we reviewed the progress made on different initiatives, especially the follow-up to the first Annual Summit which took place between our Prime Ministers this year, in May. There is, I can say without exaggeration, a real momentum in the India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Our Prime Ministers actually exchanged visits this year. Prime Minister Albanese was in India again in September for the G20, and I would really also on that note like to thank Foreign Minister Wong for Australia's strong and consistent support given to us in the context of our G20 presidency. Yesterday, Raksha Mantri ji and I held the 2nd India-Australia 2+2 Foreign and Defence Ministers' Dialogue, along with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong. And this, again, as you would be aware, is a format we have with select partners. It is reflective of the growing and deepening engagement between our two countries, and I must say it was a very productive 2+2. Where India and Australia are concerned, I can say that there have really been many firsts in our relationship this year. We have made a new beginning with the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement entered into force, and this is the first year that we are seeing its impact, which has been very positive on our trade. As I said, we saw the first Annual Summit. There were two visits by the Australian Prime Minister. When our PM went to Australia, we established Little India in Sydney. We saw Consulates, new Consulates General on both sides. The Australians in Bengaluru, we are opening ours in Brisbane. More direct flight connections, the opening of the first Australian University campuses in India. An agreement on mutual recognition of educational qualifications, migration and mobility arrangement. So as you can see, every facet of this relationship is actually on the move. Today, amongst other things, we also discussed and highlighted the importance of moving on the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, the CECA negotiations. We spoke of the way forward for greater mobility of our students and professionals, and we are committed, both of us, to ensuring that we build more trusted, reliable and resilient supply chains in the Indo-Pacific so that there is broader and inclusive growth. As part of the 2+2, and as again part of our own dialogue today, we had an extensive discussion on security issues. We shared growing convergences with Australia, and at the heart of it is really, a shared commitment to a free, open, inclusive, prosperous and rules-based Indo-Pacific region, based on UNCLOS, as the constitution of the seas. Minister Wong and I also spoke about terrorism, radicalism and extremism. Again, you would all know that we have cooperated very closely in forums, including the FATF. In terms of regional and global issues, we discussed, understandably in great detail, what is the current situation in West Asia or the Middle East. We spoke on our region, that is, South Asia. Minister Wong spoke to me about their region, particularly the Pacific area. We discussed South-East Asia, ASEAN, where we actually approach it literally from the two ends, and of course the larger Indo-Pacific region as well. What I do want to stress is that as liberal democracies, as Quad partners, we will continue to work towards a rules-based international order. We will support freedom of navigation in international waters, promote connectivity, growth and security for all while respecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states. So let me conclude once again by thanking Penny, Minister Wong, for her presence in India today, and I know she will speak about it, but I, in anticipation, want to say that I accepted her kind invitation to visit Australia for an important event which will take place next year. So thank you, and may I request Penny if you will make your remarks. Penny Wong, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Australia: Thank you very much, Foreign Minister - or External Affairs Minister Jaishankar. Can I say it's fantastic to be here in New Delhi again, and it's wonderful to have had the opportunity over a couple of days in the 2+2 and also today in the Foreign Ministers' Framework Dialogue to have the opportunity to engage directly with Jai. Jai was actually the first counterpart I met after being sworn in as Australia's Foreign Minister, and I think we are...he is the person, or the counterpart with whom I've met most in the period I've been Australia's Foreign Minister. I think it's some 11 times if you include bilaterals, trilaterals, the Quad and other fora that we've met since, met in 2023. This has been a milestone year in our partnership, and it's critical for the net region. We are, as Dr. Jaishankar said, we are comprehensive strategic partners, we're also Quad partners, we share traditions, we also share an interest in the sort of region we live in, an Indo-Pacific that is peaceful, stable and prosperous, in which sovereignty is respected, and where all countries can benefit from a strategic equilibrium. We can only build and sustain this region by working with others, and I can't emphasise sufficiently how important we see India to that project. I thank Jai for his kind comments about our support on the G20, we certainly did want to ensure we worked with India as much as we were able to make this a successful, make it a successful G20 year. India is also hosting the Quad meeting early next year, so we equally would want to work with India to ensure that, that is as successful and positive as it can be. Today we did discuss many issues. We discussed, amongst other things, our work in the Indian Ocean region, how we can collaborate on shared challenges, climate change, maritime security, the health of the oceans, and either...we're at either end, literally, of the Indian Ocean, and we have the largest Indian Ocean coastlines of any nation, so we share a lot. So it's central, defining both of us, and it brings us together. So as Jai referenced, I am pleased to confirm today that Australia will host the Indian Ocean Conference in Perth in February of next year. It's an opportunity to discuss practical solutions for the key challenges facing the region, and I also look forward to welcoming him, welcoming Jai to Australia, not only for that, but for Raisina Down Under, an event in Canberra which will follow soon after the Down Under version of the Raisina Dialogue. We discussed today the momentum we are seeing in our economic engagement, educational links, and people ties more broadly. We're obviously working hard to expand this cooperation, including through a new 1.5-track strategic dialogue. Today I also announced an Australia-Indian audio-visual co-production agreement which has come into force, which we are very interested in, and which will, we hope, open up new markets and allow more Australian and Bollywood films and series to reach new audiences. There's a lot we can discuss, but I want to close the opening remarks by again reiterating my thanks to Jai for his intellectual contribution to multilateral and regional issues, for his personal engagement, and for ensuring that he is such a competent and insightful partner for us as we continue to grow this very important bilateral relationship. Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Thank you, Honourable Ministers. If I could open the floor for questions. Please introduce yourself and the organisation you represent. Rishabh: Hello, Ministers. This is Rishabh from Times Now. My question is to External Affairs Minister, Dr. Jaishankar. Dr. Jaishankar, in the meeting yesterday and today with your counterpart, was the Israel-Hamas conflict discussed? And I would take this opportunity to even ask a question to you, Senator. Senator, if we can ask, was there commonality between the status that India and Australia take on Israel-Hamas war, or are there divergence as well between the two countries on this very topic, Israel-Hamas conflict? Dr. S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister: Well, you know, we've had different occasions to put out our position, because as you know, since October 7th, there have been numerous conversations at the Prime Minister's level, at my level. The spokesperson has also spoken. So let me sort of stitch it all together and in a way summarize what is our position. There are different aspects of the very complex and challenging situation that we face today. One, of course, is terrorism, what happened on October 7th. And we think, nationally as well as the international community, that we should never compromise terrorism, we should be very clear about it. So there is that basket, and to it also the hostages issue. There's a second set of issues, and this is the humanitarian crisis that we see in Gaza today. The need for humanitarian assistance, which is very urgent, and the observance of international humanitarian law there. So that's the second set of issues. And the third set of issues relate to the rights and the future of the Palestinians. That, you know, that too has to have a solution. And that solution, in our view, and in the view of many countries in the world, can only come from a two-state solution. So today, I would say the consideration of the situation in West Asia is, if you have these three broad sets of issues, we have to find a way by which all of them are addressed. You know, when we hear one asserted at the expense of another, that is not really going to lead to a way forward. So I think the challenge for all of us, collectively, is that how do all these facets of what is clearly a complicated issue, you know, which has a history to it, how do we deal with all of them? I think that is really what we discussed. And my impression is that, you know, the Australian position is very similar to ours, but I would leave Minister Penny Wong to speak for herself. Penny Wong, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Australia: Thanks very much, and thank you for the question. You know, the first point I'd make is, we are seeing a humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is dire, I've described it as catastrophic, and human suffering is widespread, and the world is rightly engaged on this issue. In terms of what Jai has just said, we share the view, that what occurred on October 7th was an act of terrorism, and it needs to be unequivocally condemned. We share the view, that the hostages should be released, and we repeat our call for that. On the humanitarian crisis, we have taken a very clear view, which we've articulated publicly about the importance of international law, the need for Israel to observe in its actions, international law, including the protection of civilians and on the...there's more I can say about that, but I'd refer you to my other public remarks, and on the Palestinian, on the aspirations of the Palestinian people, I think what this shows us is that we do need a political solution. We do need to get to a point where we see both Israeli and Palestinian peoples living in peace and security behind international borders, and that progress to a two-state solution is required. I think that is clear from what has occurred. Now, we have made other comments, including in relation to humanitarian pauses only being the first step, and made the obvious point that all of us would like to see the next steps towards a ceasefire, but it can't be one-sided, and I've made those comments publicly previously. Thank you. Sudhi Ranjan: Sir, Sudhi Ranjan from Bloomberg, Sir. Question to both of you. Was the Quad, the proposed Quad summit discussed between the two Ministers, and also, Senator, did you discuss the issue in Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone, where one of your Navy divers have been injured because of a Chinese destroyer? Thank you, Sir. Dr. S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister: Yes, we did discuss the Quad at some length, and as the Minister noted, the first time I actually met her as Minister, because I met you before you became a Minister as well, was actually at a Quad meeting in Tokyo, which was your first day, if I remember rightly, or second day. But the point which we agreed on, is that the Quad has made enormous progress in the last few years. In fact, every meeting has added to the agenda of the Quad, to the substance of the Quad, so there's really a very broad range of issues today that we are cooperating on. But that said, there is a natural inclination to push the envelope, to find new convergences, to explore fresh areas of cooperation, and a lot of our conversation today, because we are preparing really for a Quad meeting sometime early next year. And our discussions really centered around what more could we do to add to the Quad. I think we had some ideas between us, which we'll of course see in due course when the Quad meets. Penny Wong, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Australia: Well, thank you. We do require one of the important components or aspects of our partnership with India is obviously our partnership in the context of the Quad. And rightly, that had occupied a fair degree of our discussion, as Dr. Jaishankar has outlined, and we look forward to the next meeting, and we look forward to the Quad's continued contribution to the region we want to live in and to the betterment of the peoples of the region. In relation to the incident to which you refer, I'd make a few points. The first is that the safety and wellbeing of Australian Defence personnel is our utmost priority. The second point I'd make is, to again reiterate that we have raised our serious concerns with the Chinese authorities following what was, we regard as unsafe and unprofessional interaction with the PLA Navy destroyer. I would again make the point that these events occurred within Japan's EEZ and in international waters, and Australia's principal position is that we expect all countries, including ourselves, to operate militaries in a safe and a professional manner. Yeshi Seli: Good afternoon, this is Yeshi Seli from the New Indian Express. Senator Wong had mentioned yesterday that China for both India and Australia was the biggest trade partner and the biggest security anxiety. Can you elaborate a bit on that? And security, and caused security anxiety also. Penny Wong, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Australia: I'm not sure I used the phrase anxiety, but that's okay. Look, I think one of the things we do share is, we are both countries in a region, obviously, India is substantially larger than we are, a region which is undergoing a lot of change, and we want to be part of shaping and influencing that change. We use the phrase peaceful, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific. China has a slightly different formulation, but they essentially have the same objective. We also recognize that China's importance and place in the region and globally, and we continue to engage with China. Certainly, we both have a very substantive economic relationship with China, and China is a country with whom we will continue to engage. The way in which we describe it is, we will cooperate where we can in the areas where we can, we will disagree where we must, and we will engage in our national interests, and that is the way in which we have described our approach to the relationship with China. Speaker: My question is to Foreign Minister Jaishankar. Sir, was a diplomatic standoff between India and Canada discussed? Dr. S. Jaishankar, External Affairs Minister: Well, I don't know if that's the word I would use, but did we discuss issues between India and Canada? Yes, I spoke about it to Minister Wong, and as you know, Australia has a good, strong, close relationship with both of us. So I felt it was important that Australia get our perspective on the issue, and you know that from our point of view, the key issue is really the space which has been given to extremism and radicalism in Canada. So therefore, the short answer is, yes, we discussed it. Yes, I spoke to her about our perspective, and she did listen to me very carefully. Penny Wong, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Australia: I do always listen to the External Affairs Minister carefully. Look, I'd point you to my previous comments in relation to this matter, which I've responded to it on a number of occasions. Thank you. Kallol: Minister Wong, this is Kallol Bhattacharjee from The Hindu. Since we talked about the two-state solution, I wanted to get back to it and ask you for the two-state solution would you also clarify your position as far as the Israeli settlements are concerned or what's really Australian position on the Israeli settlements that are eroding the Palestinian territory over the years and also would you prefer Israel to go back to the 1967 borders? Penny Wong, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Australia: First, the matter of borders, I think by definition is a subject of negotiation in the context of a two-state solution. But on the issue of settlements, yes I can be very clear that Australia has under this government, asserted it, expressed its view that the settlements are contrary to international law and I'm helpful to progress towards a two-state solution. Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: I think we are out of time Sir, and thank you all for joining us. Thank you very much for joining us. Good afternoon. Please wait for the Ministers to leave. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Transcript of Press Briefing by the Presidency on the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit (November 21, 2023) India - Ministry of External Affairs November 21, 2023 Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Very good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for joining us for the special media briefing on the occasion of the G20 Virtual Summit that is being hosted by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi tomorrow, as the chair of the G20. To give us a sense of how we approach this very important event, we have the privilege of having with us here Shri Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa; also joining us on the dais, Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary and Shri Ajay Seth, Secretary (DEA). Sir, may I request Sherpa Sir to say opening remarks and then perhaps we will take a few questions. Shri Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa: Let me welcome you all to this pre-Summit press conference, which is being held ahead of the G20 Leaders' Summit. Now, the Leaders' Summit will be held tomorrow from 5:30 PM onwards under the chairmanship of the Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. All of you are aware that the 18th G20 Leaders' Summit was held in New Delhi successfully on 9th and 10th September, 2023. It saw the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders' Declaration. The New Delhi Leaders' Declaration demonstrated the commitment of the G20 leaders to address global challenges in a very ambitious, inclusive, decisive and action-oriented manner. We had 83 paras in our declaration. There were 87 outcomes and 118 documents were attached to it. That means there were almost...with outcomes and documents, we had 205 Actions on which we had to pursue action. At the closing session of the Leaders' Summit, Prime Minister had suggested to the G20 leaders that the leaders would reconvene virtually towards the end of India's G20 presidency period to take forward the guidance provided by the participating leaders in their interventions and also give an impetus to implementing the Summit's outcome. The Prime Minister has been particularly focused on implementation of the Leaders' Declaration and all our Ministries...we've held several rounds of meetings with our Ministries to pursue action on all the Leaders' Declaration and on a vast range of areas, Declaration has been taken both domestically and internationally. This Virtual Summit will be the second time the Prime Minister will be hosting the leaders of the G20 within a span of just over two and a half months. This is something very rare and rather exceptional. No other presidency has had a physical meeting of all the leaders and then a virtual meeting. In addition to all this, as you all are aware, the Prime Minister has hosted two sessions of the Voice of Global South Summit this year which was co-ordinated by the Foreign Secretary. So, actually, India has held four such meetings in a single year with the participation of over 150 world leaders which clearly demonstrates the convening power of India and the leadership of the Prime Minister at the global level. The Virtual Summit of the G20, being held tomorrow, will also be a major gathering of world leaders since the conclusion of the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly High Level Week and the SDG Summit. Throughout the G20 presidency, India has worked to ensure that the concerns of Global South receive due cognizance. We've also seen the inclusion of African Union as a permanent member of G20. Since our successful hosting of the G20 Leaders' Summit on 9th and 10th September and the unanimous adoption of the New Delhi Leaders' Declaration, the world has actually witnessed a succession of events and several new challenges have emerged. While development will be the core agenda and we'll focus on the development issue, the Leaders may discuss many other issues and the Virtual Summit will provide an opportunity not only to discuss the implementation of the Leaders' Declaration, but also for the leaders to share views and enhance cooperation on critical challenges that we confront and address gaps in global governance, reaffirm our existing commitment towards the Sustainable Development Goals and move towards a reinvigorated multilateral system that is better positioned to positively impact people's life. I would merely like to say that after our Summit, we had the meeting of the Finance Track, on which Secretary (DEA) will speak on, in Morocco and we had the Volume-II submission of the Independent Expert Group. But the progress has been made on a number of other issues on the substantive side. We've achieved very substantive outcomes and I would merely point to just a few things on which progress has been made. Firstly, on the G20 consensus on tripling of renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and doubling the global rate of energy efficiency improvement by 2030. These are expected to be the key outcomes of COP28. So what has happened is that many of the SDG Action Plan led to further discussion on Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations and at the UN SDG Summit that was taken forward. What we decided on Green Development Pact here will drive the outcomes of the COP28 and we have seen...the first (inaudible) committee of the Green Hydrogen Innovation Centre would be held during COP28. As a result of India's advocacy, Global Initiative on Digital Health has been able to garner commitment for contribution of US$44.5 million and based on G20 Artificial Intelligence Principles, UNESCO Ethical AI Guidelines and India's Responsible AI for All Principles; work on creation of framework has been initiated by MeitY. As you are aware, for the first time Artificial Intelligence in G20 was discussed at the Leaders' level in New Delhi. On financing issues Mr Ajay Seth will talk about but I would merely say that the Action Plan on SDG is being taken forward and the 2030 G20 New Delhi update on SDG was finalised on 13th November. It is a comprehensive report on the progress made by G20 with respect to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. The principles on Lifestyle for Sustainable Development are being socialised both at COP28 and also among the youth by International Energy Authority. There is a lot of further action, I don't want to get into too much details. I would merely say that we have excellent attendance at the Virtual Summit. We have leaders from almost all countries participating and the guest countries will also be participating and the international organisations. So between the physical meeting held on 9th and 10th September and the Virtual Summit we will have almost all the leaders of the world who would be participating and I would merely say that we look forward to very detailed deliberations by the leaders tomorrow. With these few words, I will hand over the mic to Mr. Ajay Seth, Secretary (DEA). Shri Ajay Seth, Secretary (DEA): Thank you Sir. A very good afternoon to all of you and let me share the context primarily from the perspective of the financing. As you recall that from the very beginning of the year 2023, the agenda proposed by India found a very positive support from all the member countries. First the Ministers in February meeting in Bengaluru supported it, thereafter the second meeting in Washington, a very significant amount of several areas where the support came in, including the starting of the work on evolution of the World Bank Group. Then the July meeting, the third meeting of Finance Ministers and Governors in Gandhinagar, on several key issues agreements were reached. Thereafter when Leaders met in New Delhi in September, the contribution of various working groups; not just in Finance Track but several working groups under the Sherpa Track; a kind of a momentum which was created led to endorsement and a support much much beyond what the different working groups were in a position to arrive at. As a result the agreements reached, the endorsement obtained were much more, significantly more, than the sum total of the parts. That's a kind of a momentum which got created. And in the Finance Track if I can mention, just one particular aspect, if you recall that in the July meeting of Finance Ministers and Governors, there were still few things which were in the making. For example the work on MDBs, the work of the Independent Expert Group, the work on synthesis paper on Crypto Assets. Leaders took all that into account and the kind of a momentum which was coming, the support which was coming from other groups led to very significantly larger scope of endorsement which the leaders had provided. At the same time they assigned and they expected some more work to be done by the Ministers and Governors when they were expected to meet at Marrakesh, roughly about a month after their (inaudible); and that meeting if you recall in Marrakesh, the Ministers and Governors built upon that momentum and the guidance which the Leaders had provided, and there the report of the Independent Expert Group was welcomed, how to take that forward was agreed upon, similar manner in other areas the agenda which was there, the momentum was provided. Since then between October post-Marrakesh and in the past four to five weeks, several of you were with us when the webinars were done in Sushma Swaraj Bhawan, there to deliberate upon the guidance which the Leaders had provided, how to take that forward within our own country as well as in other international fora and including in the G20 fora and that found support not just within the country but also the international speakers who had participated in those webinars. Now tomorrow, we expect that when the Leaders will be meeting again, again build upon that momentum and get further guidance so that when India hands over the presidency, it will be a strong momentum to the agenda which has been hugely influenced by the perspective of the developing countries and to take that forward. I will stop here. Thank you. Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Thank you very much Sir. We are going to open the floor for questions. Please introduce yourself and the organization that you represent and we will probably take a few questions together. Siddharth: Good evening everybody. I am Siddharth from Bloomberg. My question is to Mr. Kant. Will Mr. Putin and Joe Biden be attending tomorrow's sessions? Sidhant: Sir Sidhant from WION. To Sherpa Sir. Sir, how does India plans to strengthen the presidency of Brazil who will be the next President. And to the Foreign Secretary Sir. Sir, the presence of the Chinese side, the representation, did we send the invite for the person who has been deputed or for the President Xi Jinping? Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: How do you know who has been deputed? Sidhant: The Chinese side has announced. Abhishek: Sir Abhishek from CNN News 18. Sir my question is regarding this latest West Asia crisis, that Israel and Hamas war. So will that also be in the agenda when the Leaders will be having conversations? Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: The current conflict? Abhishek: Yeah, the current conflict. Siddharth: Hi Siddharth from Money Control. Just want to understand; since Mr. Kant, you said this is a rare event, a Virtual Summit. Can we expect some sort of official statement at the end of it or would it just be a sort of taking stock of all the events which have occurred so far during India's presidency. Thanks. Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: What do you mean, statement? Siddharth: Well, a communique or something. Surbhi: Hello this is Surbhi from Business Today. I just wanted to understand that in the backdrop of the diplomatic issues between India and Canada, would it also have an impact on the G20 talks tomorrow? Thank you. Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: In what way? As you know this is a multilateral event. What is your specific query? Surbhi: No, I just wanted to know that there has been talk about the Five Eyes Alliance and everything. So is there going to be any discussion on that as well? Yeshi Seli: Yeshi Seli from the New Indian Express. Is the Canadian Prime Minister expected to take part? You said most people are coming. Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary: I think on the question of participation and there have been a range of queries with regard to the specific participation, from a country, about a particular leader. You know as Sherpa Sir mentioned in his opening remarks, we are expecting a large majority of G20 leaders to be present at the Virtual Summit tomorrow and I think after the Summit is over, you would see for yourself the participation, its quality, the range of discussions about which you would all be briefed after the tomorrow's Summit. I think it is better that the specifics of the extent of participation, the ecosystem of discussions, the agenda which were put forth in the discussion as shared with you, once that is over. But suffice to say at this stage that we expect large majority of leaders to participate in the discussions tomorrow as has been the case even in the Summit in September this year, where you saw a very high quality participation from the world leaders at the physical Summit. We don't expect tomorrow's Summit to be any different in so far as that is concerned. With regard to the conflict, whether the conflict will come up for discussions or not tomorrow, again I don't think it would be correct for us to really prejudge what issues would be raised by the Leaders at the Virtual Summit tomorrow. But I think it is important to mention that, and you would all know this, that G20 has focused centrally on the developmental priorities and to the extent the development space, space relating to development financing, other aspects of development and economic growth are impacted by developments elsewhere in the world; they do tend to come up for discussions but the nature of those discussions essentially varies from how each leader would look at it. But again, as I said, it is not our space to prejudge what each leader would say at the discussions tomorrow. I think on the communique part, Sir (inaudible). Shri Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa: So let me just say to what Foreign Secretary just said that there will be excellent participation and I think we should... tomorrow again, Finance Minister, EAM will be briefing all of you, so I think we should wait on what the Leaders say. What the Leaders say, we can't prejudge at this stage. So we should await that and then tell you how it will shape up and we will be interacting with all of you after the Summit is over. So we will keep you fully informed after that. But I can assure you that as the Foreign Secretary said, there will be excellent participation. Shri Vinay Kwatra, Foreign Secretary: There was a question relating to contribution with the Brazilian presidency going forward. As is in the G20 tradition, I think the current presidency of the G20 stays in very regular and intense touch with the succeeding presidency, both in terms of working closely with the incoming presidency, in shaping out as to what the priorities of the G20 during their presidency would be. And as you know, there is a Troika system, which is a very active tradition-based system which works in the G20. It's very productive. It gives at one level a very strong element of continuity, not just of agenda items, but even of the conceptualization process, the thought process that goes behind in structuring; for example, our presidency and we'll be sharing it with the Brazilian presidency. Of course, it is for the Brazilian presidency to work out the specifics of their presidency, but we are already in very close touch with them, and I think that process would continue through and through under the framework of Troika, and any other bilateral consultative mechanism that might be there between India and Brazil. Shri Arindam Bagchi, Official Spokesperson: Sorry, I think we'll close here. Thank you very much for all for joining and see you tomorrow, 5:30 in the afternoon. This is a closed meeting, but we'll try to bring you, parts of Prime Minister's opening remarks. See you tomorrow. Thank you all, to the members on the dais for joining us. Good evening. Thank you. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 2nd Joint Working Group meeting of India-UK Electric Propulsion Capability Partnership held in New Delhi India - Press Information Bureau Ministry of Defence Posted On: 21 NOV 2023 4:42PM by PIB Delhi The 2nd India-UK Electric Propulsion Capability Partnership Joint Working Group meeting took place in New Delhi on November 21, 2023. The meeting was co-chaired by Joint Secretary (Naval Systems), Department of Defence Production Shri Rajeev Prakash and Director, Ships Operations and Capability Integration, Defence Equipment & Support Rear Admiral Steve McCarthy. During the meeting, both sides discussed issues of the Electric Propulsion Partnership like finalisation of Statement of Technical Requirements (SOTR), Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) procedures, maintenance, Manning Philosophy and System Integration requirement. ***** ABB/Savvy (Release ID: 1978509) NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address INDIA-USA JOINT EXERCISE VAJRA PRAHAR COMMENCES IN UMROI, MEGHALAYA India - Press Information Bureau Ministry of Defence Posted On: 21 NOV 2023 3:13PM by PIB Delhi 14th Edition of the Indo-US Joint Special Forces exercise "VAJRA PRAHAR 2023" commenced at the Joint Training Node, Umroi today. The US contingent is represented by personnel from the 1st Special Forces Group (SFG) of US Special Forces. The Indian Army contingent is led by Special Forces personnel from the Eastern Command. Exercise VAJRA PRAHAR is a joint exercise conducted between Indian Army and US Army Special Forces. It aims at sharing best practices and experiences in areas such as joint mission planning and operational tactics. The first edition was conducted in the year 2010 in India and the 13th edition of the Indo-US Joint Special Forces exercise was conducted at the Special Forces Training School (SFTS), Bakloh (HP). The current edition is being conducted in Umroi Cantonment, Meghalaya from 21st November to 11th December 2023. During the course of the next three weeks, both sides will jointly plan and rehearse a series of Special Operations, Counter Terrorist Operations, Air Borne operations in simulated conventional and unconventional scenarios in mountainous terrain. Key highlights include 'Combat free fall insertion of troops from stand-off distances', 'Water borne insertion of troops', 'Precision engagement of targets at long ranges', 'Combat air controlling of fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft' besides 'Airborne insertion and sustenance of troops'. Exercise VAJRA PRAHAR has evolved as a mechanism to exchange ideas and share best practices between the Special Forces of both the nations. It is also a platform to enhance inter-operability and strengthen defence cooperation between the armies of India and the United States of America. _________________________ SC/VBY/VKT (Release ID: 1978458) NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address IRGC holds tactical exercise in southeast Iran IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Nov 22, 2023 New York, IRNA -- The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) started its tactical exercise in Iran's southeastern province of Kerman on Tuesday. The event is underway in the presence of Iran's Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri. During his trip to Kerman province, Major General Bagheri reviewed the combat power and defense readiness of the armed forces by visiting units of the army, IRGC, and police. 9376**7129 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Diplomat: Iran doesn't seek to instigate war but prepared to defend itself ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency Tue / 21 November 2023 / 11:10 Iran's United Nations envoy said Tehran is not seeking to instigate any regional wars and would only get involved in the Israel-Hamas conflict if its national security interest is threatened, but he warned that an increased US presence in the region leaves it more exposed to an attack. Tehran (ISNA) - Iran's permanent representative to the UN, Saeid Iravani, told Al-Monitor that a beefed up American military presence in the Middle East is not a deterrent for Iran to enter the war if need be. Iravani said that Washington's increased military posture in the region, boosting allies' missile defenses, dispatching aircraft carriers and a submarine, is not equivalent to deterrence. "Surprisingly, military experts contend that when a military power positions its facilities and forces near a conflict zone, it signifies a display of strength without necessarily intending to engage in the conflict. This positioning can actually leave them exposed to potential harm and attacks," he said. He also said the increased attacks in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are evidence of how the "Resistance Front" operates "as an interconnected system with shared overarching objectives while maintaining independent national strategies." For instance, he added, "During the fight against the ISIS, the Palestinian faction of the Resistance Front opted not to engage in combat against ISIS in Syria and Iraq as it did not align with their primary focus. This decision was acknowledged and accepted by other components of the 'Resistance Front,'" he argued. He said that Tehran has no intention to instigate a war. "Pre-emptive war finds no place in the national defense doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the Iranian armed forces bear the responsibility of defending the nation whenever its national security or vital interests face threats from any external party or power. Iran does not seek to instigate any war but remains prepared to defend itself in response to varied threats, adapting its response according to the nature of the threat and the geographical context," he said. Asked about a Reuters story last week that revealed that the Iranian leadership turned down a request from Hamas to lend a hand in the fight, Iravani repeated Iran's position against Israel as "an enduring threat not only to the Islamic world but also to the broader region and the globe," adding that Iran would continue to boost Hamas' support. Iravani reiterated that Iran was neither involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel nor had prior knowledge of it despite Israeli allegations that Tehran was involved. "The operation caught the occupying regime off guard, striking them unexpectedly," he said. In the aftermath of the war, "the most viable and realistic solution would involve governance in Gaza by elected Palestinian leaders chosen by the people of Gaza themselves. Decisions about Gaza should be made autonomously by its residents, without external imposition or interference from other entities. No one has the right to take a decision on behalf of Gazans," Iravani concluded. The Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York emphasized 21 points concerning their view of the Gaza war, including arguments that "defending Israel has become a costly endeavor" for the Washington and that Hamas has seen "increased support from the people of the West Bank" following the Oct. 7 attacks. End Item NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address E3 spread false information regarding Iran's commitments to JCPOA: Iravani IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Nov 22, 2023 New York, IRNA -- Iran's Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani has said that the E3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) representatives purposefully spread misleading and false information regarding Iran's commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and its peaceful nuclear program. Iravani made the remarks in letters sent to Secretary-General of the UN Antonio Guterres and President of the Security Council of the UN SArgio FranAa Danese on Tuesday (21 November 2023) local time. Below is the full text of Iravani's letter: Upon instructions from my Government, I am writing to you regarding the joint letter dated 14 November 2023 from the Permanent Representatives of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council (S/2023/875). In the letter, the representatives of these three countries (E3) made unfounded accusations against Iran, alleging violations of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) while disregarding their own blatant violations of the Resolution. In rejecting these allegations, I wish to state the following points: In its joint letter, the E3 purposefully spread misleading and false information regarding Iran's commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and its peaceful nuclear program. The E3 falsely accused Iran of non-compliance with JCPOA commitments, deliberately overlooking the root causes of the current JCPOA situation. Iran's decision to take remedial measures was in full accordance with its inherent rights under paragraphs 26 and 36 of the JCPOA and was a response to the US' unlawful unilateral withdrawal from the agreement on 8 May 2018, and the subsequent failure of the E3 to uphold their commitments. The objective behind Iran's decision, made a full year after the US' unlawful withdrawal and the E3/EU's inability to fulfill their sanctions-lifting commitments, was crystal clear: to restore a balance in reciprocal commitments and benefits under the JCPOA. This became imperative as the JCPOA hinged on Iran's nuclear-related commitments in exchange for the comprehensive lifting of sanctions, including those imposed unlawfully by the US and EU, as well as removing obstacles to Iran's international economic, commercial, and financial cooperation. The evident nature of this fact in no way provides a valid justification or basis for the E3 to refrain from implementing their commitments. The Islamic Republic of Iran has always complied with its commitments under the Comprehensive Safeguard Agreements (CSA) and has rendered maximum cooperation to enable the IAEA to implement its verification activities in Iran efficiently. Regarding the modified Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements, it should be reminded that accepting the implementation of modified Code 3.1 was among the transparency and confidence-building measures, as reflected in paragraph 65 of Annex I of the JCPOA. As a part of Iran's decision to stop implementing all voluntary transparency measures beyond its Safeguard Agreement, the implementation of modified Code 3.1 was ceased. However, it should be underlined that Iran continues to implement Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements in full cooperation with the IAEA. Iran in no way has enriched uranium above 60%. Iran's cooperation with the IAEA in clarifying the origin of uranium particles containing up to 83.7% U-235 enabled the Agency to confirm that no diversion has taken place in this regard. In his September 2023 report (Gov/2023/39), the IAEA Director General acknowledged Iran's explanation for the origin of such particles, and the Agency confirmed that it has not found any indication of the accumulation and collection of nuclear material enriched above 60% or diversion of declared nuclear material. In November 2022, Iran notified the IAEA of its intention to enrich uranium in Fordow through advanced centrifuges. This decision was made in the context of remedial measures by Iran in response to non-compliance with the JCPOA commitments by other sides and in full accordance with its rights under the NPT and CSA. Furthermore, as already declared by Iran to the IAEA, the production of uranium metal is a part and parcel of the fuel for research reactors with medical purposes. The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly emphasizes that States parties to the NPT shall not be prevented from exercising and enjoying their inalienable rights under the Treaty to develop research, production, and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in full conformity with articles I and II of the Treaty. The E3's failure to implement its sanctions-lifting commitments specified in paragraph 20 of Annex V of the JCPOA on Transition Day (18 October 2023) constitutes an unjustifiable unilateral action. This unlawful action serves as a clear and explicit example of substantial non-performance of their commitments, thereby violating both the JCPOA and UNSC Resolution 2231 (2015). The E3's invocation of the JCPOA Dispute Resolution Mechanism (DRM) by referring to their letter dated 14 January 2020, in response to Iran's remedial measures from May 2019 onward, is totally misleading and irrelevant. As already stated, Iran's decision was a lawful and legitimate response, by its rights under paragraphs 26 and 36 of the JCPOA, to the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA and re-imposition of its illegal sanctions. Therefore, characterizing the E3's decision not to fulfill their Transition Day sanctions-lifting commitments as a reaction to Iran's lawful remedial measures is entirely illogical and inexcusable. The E3/EU's failure to uphold their commitments under paragraph 20 of Annex V of the JCPOA, coupled with the US' inability to fulfill its commitments as stipulated in paragraph 21 of Annex V due to its unlawful unilateral withdrawal on May 8, 2018, has entitled the Islamic Republic of Iran to exercise its legitimate rights under paragraphs 26 and 36 of the JCPOA. Iran was then left with no other option than refraining from implementing its commitments under paragraph 22.1 of Annex V of the JCPOA. As communicated to all Permanent Representatives and Observers of the Member States to the United Nations by the Secretariat on 19 October 2023 (NV SCA/4/23 (09)), in accordance with paragraphs 3, 4, and 6 of Annex B to UNSCR 2231 (2015), effective 18 October 2023, all unwarranted restrictions on ballistic missile-related activities and transfers to/from Iran, including the asset freeze on individuals and entities listed in 2231, automatically terminated. Consequently, any restrictions imposed at the national or regional level based on UNSCR 2231 (2015) are now null and void. The Islamic Republic of Iran stands prepared to resume the full implementation of its commitments under the JCPOA once all other participants fulfill their commitments in their entirety. Iran engaged in good faith and serious negotiations to conclude the Vienna talks. Unfortunately, the United States and the E3 failed to appreciate the opportunity, swayed by their domestic politics and paradoxical anti-Iranian policies, as well as their unrealistic demands. I should be grateful if you would circulate the present letter as a document of the Security Council. Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration. 6125**9417 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address November 21, 2023 Release Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III's Call With Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder provided the following readout: Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant spoke today to discuss Israel's operations against Hamas. The Secretary emphasized U.S. support for Israel and the importance of preventing regional escalation. He discussed the criticality of increasing and sustaining humanitarian aid and protecting civilians in Gaza. https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3596291/ NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address PM Netanyahu on the Return of the Hostages: "We are currently advancing. I do not think that it is necessary to belabor the point, not even now, but I hope there will be good news soon." Israel - Prime Minister's Office The 37th Government 21.11.2023 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today , met with soldiers of the 8101 Reserve Battalion - the Alexandroni Brgade, which came off the line along the eastern section of the Lebanese border a few days ago. The Prime Minister was briefed by Battalion Commander Lt.-Col. (Res.) Ma'ayan Feldman on the battalion's activity in the northern sector in recent weeks and heard from the commanders about their impressions and experiences regarding the mobilization of reserves for lengthy operational duty. The commanders shared the battalion's fighting spirit, will and commitment of all those serving to continue working for, and contributing to the security of the State of Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [translated from Hebrew]: "I am here with Golani soldiers and commanders, with great spirit. They were just fighting in the north, are training here at Elyakim, and are going back. This is simply the spirit of a winning army. We are currently advancing on a very strong and pro-active defense in the north in order to achieve a crushing victory in the south. The first goal is eliminating Hamas; we are not stopping until this is carried out. The second goal is the return of the hostages. I do not think that it is necessary to belabor the point, not even now, but I hope there will be good news soon. The third goal is to ensure that was in Gaza does not recur. We want to restore security. We will work for, and achieve, the restoration of security in both the south and the north. The main tool that we have is the spirit of the people of Israel, which is expressed by the soldiers and commanders from all parts of Israeli society, and is simply very powerful. I want to salute you and tell you that we are continuing to victory. You have our heartfelt gratitude; tell your families." Also participating in the visit were the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, Tzachi Braverman, and the Prime Minister's Military Adviser, Maj.-Gen. Avi Gil. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Myanmar junta troops arrest and stab 6 men to death This week, Mandalay villagers have found the bodies of 18 people previously arrested by junta forces. By RFA Burmese 2023.11.21 -- Villagers in central Myanmar recovered the bodies of six people who were stabbed to death, locals told Radio Free Asia. On Friday, junta troops arrested the group in Mandalay region on suspicion of being resistance fighters in local People's Defense Forces. The victims are from Madaya and Patheingyi townships, including 25-year-old Min Nge Tar, as well as Thaung Yin and Poe Htaw, who were both about 40 years old and from Kin village. Three brothers, 18-year-old Ko Tun, 22-year-old Ko Pyone and 25-year-old Ko Mone, from Patheingyi's Tha Yet Kaing village were also killed. On Saturday, a dead body with stab wounds was found near Tha Yet Kaing village, a Kin villager who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals told RFA. "When [junta soldiers] asked them where they were from, they said that they were from Kin village. So [the first three men] were arrested and accused of being in People's Defense Forces," he said. "The three brothers from Tha Yet Kaing village were arrested for riding a motorcycle with three men. The next day, all the bodies were found in the same place." In Sagaing, Yangon and Mandalay regions, the military regime has placed tight restrictions on men riding motorbikes in an effort to reduce attacks from resistance groups. Junta troops often raid Kin village on suspicion of hiding resistance fighters, so some of the residents have left the village, locals told RFA. To avoid suspicion, some men and their families have moved closer to Tha Yet Kaing village, which is about 6.5 kilometers (four miles) away from Kin village. The three Kin villagers who were arrested and killed are people who moved with their families close to Tha Yet Kaing village and were fleeing the junta's raids, they added. Calls by RFA to Mandalay region's junta spokesperson Thein Htay went unanswered on Tuesday. On Thursday, fighting near Pin Lel Inn village attracted the presence of a junta convoy. The group arrested 11 men who were sitting in a tea shop in Aung Kan Thar village and another man from Pwe Sar Kone village. Junta soldiers shot and killed all 12 men, locals said. As of Nov. 20, nearly 4,200 civilians have been killed across the country after the 2021 military coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Karenni officials: 200 university workers are safe after evacuation Myanmar's junta alleges the teachers and staff members were being detained after recent fighting. By RFA Burmese 2023.11.21 -- More than 200 civilians evacuated from a university during recent fighting in the Kayah state capital in eastern Myanmar are being provided health care at a safe location, Karenni officials told Radio Free Asia. The military junta has alleged that the civilians, which include teachers and the rector from Loikaw University, were being detained against their will. "Some of them seem to be in a good mood, but some others said they are missing their family members," said Banyar, the director of the Karenni Human Rights Organization. "We have told them that we will proceed in accordance with rules and regulations." Fighting began in Loikaw in eastern Myanmar on Nov. 11 when the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, or KNDF, targeted junta bases and a prison in the city. Junta troops retaliated with airstrikes and shelling, killing 20 civilians, according to the Karenni Human Rights Organization. The KNDF announced on Nov. 15 that they had successfully occupied the university, where two battalions of military junta soldiers had been stationed. The soldiers had frequently raided and shelled nearby villages, according to KNDF Chairman Khun Bedu. Regime spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun said the attack on Loikaw University was a "barbaric act" and alleged that Karenni troops had killed some teachers and taken other teachers hostage. Khun Bedu denied these accusations, saying the attack was carried out only because soldiers were stationed there. A Karenni National Progressive Party official told RFA that junta troops used some university staff members and students as human shields during the fighting. They were evacuated to a secure place and no one has been tortured or killed, he said. "We are working to allow them to go to their destinations safely," he said. "We are not using them as human shields like the military did." On Monday, the KNDP published a recorded video clip on its social media page with statements from the university's rector and several teachers. Some of the university staff members were being questioned about possible junta associations, said Banyar, who goes by one name. Legal action may be taken against some of them, he said on Monday. He did not provide specific details. Artillery attacks and air strikes Karenni forces launched their offensive this month after their northern allies' "Operation 1027," during which rebel groups won control of three major cities in Shan state. The Karenni Humanitarian Aid Initiative on Tuesday said air strikes and artillery attacks killed 68 civilians between Nov. 11-19 in Loikaw and Shan's Pekon township. Victims included 10 children and 18 women, the group said. The information was gathered from the Karenni Human Rights Organization and media reports, they said. A humanitarian volunteer for Karenni displaced persons told RFA that the actual casualty toll may be higher. "We cannot get some figures from the frontlines of battles," the volunteer said. "As the military was being defeated in the battles, they carried out air strikes on civilian targets and shot people dead." RFA attempted to contact Myint Kyi, junta spokesperson for Kayah state, but phone calls went unanswered. Neither the junta nor Kareni forces have stated total casualty tolls from the fighting that began on Nov. 11. Elsewhere in Myanmar, a People's Defense Force in Chin state said they have occupied a military outpost at Kennedy Peak between Kalay and Tedim townships. About 30 junta soldiers had been stationed at the outpost since the February 2021 military coup. "We began to attack this outpost at 4 a.m., and totally controlled the camp at around 6 a.m.," an official from PDF Zoland told RFA. "It was the highest mountain in northern Chin and strategically important. So we captured it." RFA attempted to contact Kyaw Soe Win, the social affairs minister and junta spokesperson for Chin state government, for his response but was unable to reach him. Translated by Aung Naing. 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address S Korea, UK to upgrade ties, vow to jointly address global challenges Both sides to sign MOU on chips, boosting Biden's alternative supply chain with less reliance on China. By Lee Jeong-Ho for RFA 2023.11.20 -- South Korea and the United Kingdom are set to elevate their ties to a "Global Strategic Partnership," which could deepen collaboration on a variety of issues ranging from security to economic fronts. South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will adopt the bilateral "Downing Street Accord" Tuesday, the South's Presidential Office said in a statement. Yoon has been on a four-day state visit to the U.K. since Monday, serving as the first foreign head of state to be invited for a state visit by King Charles III since his coronation. The accord will highlight Seoul and London's "joint stance on issues on the Korean Peninsula, including North Korea's nuclear program." Both sides will collectively respond to global issues such as the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East, and growing tensions in the Indo-Pacific, said the statement on Tuesday. The two countries pledged to cooperate under the framework of multilateral platforms like the UN Security Council, the Group of 20 , and the Group of Seven to "strengthen the rules-based order in the international community," it added. Putting their words into action on the security front, Seoul and London are planning to expand joint military drills. According to the statement, they are set to hold joint maritime patrols to strictly enforce the U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea. The statement came as South Korea actively reiterates its stance on global security issues, encompassing the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the delicate issue of Taiwan. Under the trilateral framework with the United States and Japan, South Korea issued a stern warning against Russia, North Korea and Hamas in San Francisco last week, highlighting the expanding scope of its role in defending global security challenges that extend beyond Asia. To address global security challenges, it is crucial for South Korea to partner with key European nations like the U.K. Last year, South Korea officially established its Diplomatic Mission to NATO. Europe also needs an Asian ally to address security issues in Asia, such as the challenges posed by China. A significant area where the two nations could collaborate is in cyberspace. The two countries will strengthen their capabilities to "respond to cyber threats through the signing of a Strategic Cyber Partnership," the statement said. Economic Ties South Korea and the U.K. also intend to further strengthen their economic and technological cooperation, from semiconductors to space technology. The Presidential Office statement said that Seoul and London will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on bilateral semiconductor cooperation to establish a stable supply chain for the future. Additionally, it added that Yoon and Sunak will explore economic cooperation in future industries including artificial intelligence, digital technology, nuclear and space technology, biotechnology, quantum technologies, and renewable energy. The effort to enhance cooperation in areas such as semiconductor production and future industries adds weight to U.S. President Joe Biden's strategy to create an alternative global supply chain that knits democratic nations closer together while requiring less of China's input. Cutting dependence on Chinese components and resources is seen as a derisking exercise for businesses given that Beijing has intertwined politics with economics and imposed measures on countries that make political decisions contrary to its interests. Edited by Elaine Chan 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address S Korea suspends inter-Korean military deal, resumes surveillance The countermeasure move comes after the North's satellite launch, breaching a U.N. ban. By Lee Jeong-Ho for RFA 2023.11.21 -- South Korea has suspended a landmark military agreement with the North to resume surveillance activities near the border between the two states, a countermeasure to Pyongyang's illegal satellite launch that violated the United Nations Security Council resolution. South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday endorsed his Cabinet's approval of a motion of the suspension, according to a statement from the South's Presidential Office. The decision follows close on the heels of North Korea's satellite launch despite international warnings late Tuesday. The North's state-run Korean Central News Agency later reported that it has successfully put its spy satellite into orbit. Pyongyang's provocative move, also drew strong rebuke from Seoul's ally, the United States, which chastised North Korea for undermining stability on the Korean peninsula. Rocket technology can be used for both launching satellites and missiles. For that reason, the U.N. bans North Korea from launching a ballistic rocket, even if it claims to be a satellite launch. "North Korea ignored repeated warnings from us and the international community and launched a so-called 'military reconnaissance satellite' last night," South Korea's Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said at an emergency cabinet meeting in Seoul Wednesday. "This is a grave violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibit any launch by North Korea using ballistic missile technology and a direct provocation that threatens our security." The prime minister said the launch also shows the North's clear defiance of the military agreement signed on Sept. 19, 2018 to reduce hostility and build trust on the Korean peninsula. "We came to the conclusion that tolerating any further restrictions on our military's intelligence and surveillance activities in the border area in accordance with the September 19 Military Agreement would significantly reduce our readiness and lead to a situation where we would be unable to protect the lives and safety of our citizens," Han said, noting that Seoul is suspending the effectiveness of the some parts of the agreement until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored. While the prime minister did not elaborate on the exact parts of the deal that Seoul was suspending, his remarks suggested South Korea was likely to resume reconnaissance and surveillance operations against North Korea in the area around the military demarcation line. Han said restrictions spelled out in the agreement have limited South Korea's ability to identify North Korean artillery attacks and train its armed forces to prepare for them, leaving them vulnerable should a surprise attack from the North occur. "The immediate resumption of reconnaissance and surveillance activities along the Military Demarcation Line through the partial suspension of the September 19 Military Agreement will greatly enhance our military's ability to identify threat targets and respond to North Korean threats." The two Koreas have agreed to halt what the other has defined as hostile actions toward one another near the border, but the North has conducted a number of provocations, violating the terms of the agreement. Critics in South Korea, thus, have long argued that the deal has already become ineffective, only serving to restrict Seoul's operational and surveillance capabilities. North Korea has been solidifying its ties with Russia, and South Korea's National Intelligence Service said earlier this month that it is likely to have received help in obtaining satellite launch technology from Moscow. The launch comes as Yoon is in London for his state visit to the United Kingdom. North Korea has a history of provocations when South Korean presidents are abroad, seemingly to challenge Seoul's response capabilities and the efficiency of its systems in the president's absence. Edited by Elaine Chan 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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Extraordinary BRICS summit Vladimir Putin took part in an extraordinary BRICS summit on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, being held via videoconference. November 21, 2023 17:40 The Kremlin, Moscow The extraordinary BRICS summit on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (held via videoconference) was attended by President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil Luiz Lula da Silva, President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping, President of the Republic of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, and Minister of External Affairs of the Republic of India Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. The states invited to join the association were represented at the summit by President of the Arab Republic of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ebrahim Raisi, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, President of the United Arab Emirates Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship of the Argentine Republic Santiago Andres Cafiero. * * * Speech by the President of Russia President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Ramaphosa, colleagues, friends, We think the initiative of the President of South Africa, as the current chair of BRICS, to convene an extraordinary summit to discuss the escalation in the Gaza Strip, has come at the right time. The thousands of deaths and mass expulsion of civilians, the humanitarian disaster unfolding in the area are causing deep concern. Just now, one of our colleagues spoke of the deaths of a large number of children. It is terrible, but when you watch children being operated on without anaesthesia, it certainly evokes intense feelings. And all of that is, in fact, happening as a consequence of the United States' aspiration to monopolise the mediation role in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement process and block the activities of the Middle East Quartet of international mediators. This is history's way of demonstrating that attempts to single-handedly cut the "Palestinian knot" are unviable and counterproductive. Because of the sabotage of UN decisions, which clearly called for the establishment and peaceful coexistence of two independent and sovereign states - Israel and Palestine - more than one generation of Palestinians has grown up in an atmosphere of injustice, and Israelis cannot fully guarantee the security of their state either. Russia's stance is consistent and independent of momentary conditions. We urge the international community to join efforts aimed at de-escalating the situation, negotiating a ceasefire and achieving a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The BRICS states and the countries in the region could play a key role in this work. For this reason, it is particularly significant that our colleagues from Middle Eastern countries, which received invitations to become full members of the BRICS this year, are joining our meeting today. I would like to take this opportunity to respectfully acknowledge their efforts to normalise the situation. In particular, I am referring to the Peace Summit hosted by Egypt and the joint Arab-Islamic extraordinary summit in Saudi Arabia. It is worth noting that all BRICS countries have similar positions on the need to collectively reach long-term and durable settlement of the long-standing Palestinian-Israeli problem. This was reflected during voting on the draft resolution on a humanitarian truce in the UN General Assembly and in discussing a UN Security Council resolution on the Middle East settlement process, which was adopted for the first time in the past seven years. Although this resolution contains merely an appeal for humanitarian pauses rather than a full ceasefire, we consider the very fact of its approval a step in the right direction. I would like to emphasise that such humanitarian pauses and, better still, a full ceasefire are essential to continue the efforts to free hostages and evacuate civilians and foreigners from the Gaza Strip. I must express again my deep gratitude to President [of Egypt Abdel Fattah] el-Sisi, and all our Egyptian colleagues for their help in resolving many challenging issues linked with receiving and sending home the Russian citizens that had left the conflict area. Of course, by all accounts, the most urgent goal is to reach a truly long-term and sustainable truce. I agree with my Brazilian colleague that it is important that other states not get drawn into a war in the Middle East and that the conflict not spread in any way, as is preserving the fragile peace between religions. In this context, we consider it extremely useful to continue discussing subsequent developments in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in BRICS. If there are no objections, colleagues, we will initiate possible contacts, including via videoconference, concerning these issues during Russia's upcoming BRICS presidency next year. In general, the new format of emergency online summit meetings suggested by President [of South Africa Cyril] Ramaphosa appears to be quite promising. Importantly, this applies not only to the Middle East settlement but to other urgent global and regional issues. Thank you for your attention. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Press statements following Russian-Tajikistani talks Following the Russia-Tajikistan talks, Vladimir Putin and Emomali Rahmon made statements for the press. November 21, 2023 16:00 The Kremlin, Moscow President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr President, friends, ladies and gentlemen, The official visit of the President of the Republic of Tajikistan to the Russian Federation is taking place in a friendly and business-like atmosphere, which is entirely in keeping with the character of the strategic partnership and allied relations between our countries. This year, we marked the 30th anniversary of the signing of the fundamental Russia-Tajikistan Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance. I have spoken about this quite recently. I think it came into force on November 17, 1993. A great deal has been done to advance our relations over these years. At today's talks, we paid special attention to economic interaction. Russia is traditionally one of Tajikistan's largest trade partners. Last year, trade went up by 18.3 percent to reach almost US$1.5 billion. I would like to emphasise the record 67 percent growth in food supplies coming from Tajikistan, including fresh vegetables and fruit. Our country is one of the leading investors in Tajikistan's economy. Over 300 companies with Russian capital are operating in Tajikistan. National currencies are playing a growing role in transactions between our countries. The ruble's share in commercial deals in the first six months of this year has reached an impressive 83 percent. We are consistently developing sustainable channels of interaction between our credit and banking institutions. Since last year, Russian and Tajikistani citizens have been able to make cross-border money transfers via the Bank of Russia's Faster Payment System. The business community is playing an active role in developing bilateral relations. Established in 2022, the Business Council has vigorously joined these efforts. During the discussion of energy cooperation, it was noted that Russia almost fully meets the Tajikistani economy's demand for oil products. Importantly, energy sources are supplied without export customs duties. Gazprom Neft, the owner of five oil depots and 44 petroleum stations, is actively operating in Tajikistan. Our country is also helping Tajikistan develop its electricity generation capacities. Thus, the Sangtuda Hydroelectric Power Plant built with Russia's participation, generates over ten percent of electricity that Tajikistan consumes. The RusHydro Group is helping Tajikistan operate and upgrade the existing generating capacities. It intends to take part in designing and engineering new hydro energy stations. We see good prospects in the mining industry. Russian companies are interested in cooperating with their Tajikistani partners in uranium prospecting and production, as well as rare and rare earth metals, including lithium. Incidentally, Rosatom has recently completed a major project to rehabilitate a uranium processing industrial facility in Tajikistan and is ready to work with the country on other aspects of using uranium for civilian purposes, first and foremost, in medicine. We spoke about this during our talks today as well. As you know, about a million, or probably a bit more Tajikistani citizens live and work in Russia. They are making a big contribution to the development of the Russian economy and hold the most diverse jobs. Importantly, by transferring money home, they are seriously helping their own economy. I would like to emphasise that our agencies are trying to provide citizens of Tajikistan in Russia with decent working conditions and social protection. In addition, a representative office of the Moscow Multifunctional Migration Centre has been working in Dushanbe since last year. It facilitates interactions between migrant workers and employers in Moscow and its suburbs. I would like to note that the President of Tajikistan is paying special attention to the promotion and support of the Russian language and culture in Tajikistan. Our countries cooperate in the humanitarian area, in culture and education. As I said, in Tajikistan, Russian has constitutional status as a language of interethnic communication, and Russia is striving to help create favourable conditions for studying it. I will recall, in this context, that on September 1 last year, Mr Rahmon and I took part in the ceremony to open five schools with instruction in Russian in Dushanbe and other cities of Tajikistan. About 5,500 schoolchildren are already studying at these schools in the Russian academic programmes, and we are planning together to establish a centre for gifted children at one of these schools, in Dushanbe. In addition, we are trying to meet the requirements of our Tajikistani partners for textbooks in Russian. We sent over 70 Russian teachers to work in Tajikistan this year under the project, "Russian teacher abroad." During the current talks in the expanded format, the President of Tajikistan suggested training Russian language teachers in Tajikistan. Of course, this is a very good idea to expand the study of the Russian language on such a broad scale. I would like to note that over 35,000 Tajikistani students are now studying at Russian universities, their branches in the republic, and at Russia-Tajikistan (Slavonic) University. This academic year, about 900 state grants have been allocated to meet the republic's requirements. Next year, we will increase this quota - one of the biggest or probably the biggest for the CIS countries - to 1,000 places. Discussing current regional and global issues, we talked about our interaction in the CIS, the CSTO, the SCO and the UN. Of course, we analysed the security issue in Central Asia, primarily in the context of Afghanistan. We agreed to continue deepening our defence, military-technical, counterterrorism and antidrug cooperation. In general, we will continue working to maintain peace and stability in Central Asia. We intend to continue actively using the potential of the 201st Russian military base in the republic. I will meet the President informally this evening as well. We will have an opportunity to review today's meetings. The President of Tajikistan has a busy agenda, including meetings with the Government of the Russian Federation. Mr President, I would like to thank you for accepting our invitation and for coming to Moscow today with such a representative delegation. Thank you for your attention. President of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon: Ladies and gentlemen, friends, I would like to begin by thanking President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin for the invitation to pay an official visit to the Russian Federation. We view the current visit as an important step on the path to further expanding our countries' strategic partnership and allied relations. It is gratifying that Tajikistani-Russian cooperation today maintains stable dynamics. As President Putin said, we have had substantive talks both at the highest level and in the delegation format. For my part, I would like to stress that the talks were held in a traditionally constructive and trusting atmosphere. We discussed key issues of bilateral interaction and current regional and international issues of mutual concern. In the year of the 30th anniversary of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, we praised the current level of cooperation between our countries, spoke in favour of stepping up collaboration in trade and the economy and reached an agreement on boosting this area in the coming years. Issues related to expanding investment cooperation have also been discussed. In this regard, we agreed to launch major investment projects in various sectors of the economy. To this end, Tajikistan has created a favourable investment climate, and there are also several free economic zones functioning. Interstate cooperation with Russia in the field of financial information has reached a qualitatively new level. Mutual settlements in national currencies have increased to 82 percent. The highlight of the talks was energy cooperation, as well as industrial cooperation with a focus on the metallurgical, mining, textile, food and pharmaceutical industries. Given the huge hydropower resources available, our country is actively developing green energy. Tajikistan has 13,000 glaciers, which account for 60 percent of water resources in Central Asia. Our country ranks eighth in the world in total hydropower reserves, and second in per capita terms. Today, Tajikistan generates 98 percent of its electricity at hydroelectric power plants, that is, from renewable green energy sources, and ranks sixth in the world. We intend to double the capacity to produce clean energy as an important foundation for promoting a green economy. Tajikistan also has opportunities for deploying energy-intensive production capacity using green energy for minimal impact on the environment. We are ready to develop constructive and mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia in these areas. About 800 mineral deposits and indications of possible mineral deposits have been discovered in Tajikistan. These include critical mineral and raw material resources that are in high demand today. We are inviting Russian companies to cooperate in developing them. We discussed in detail the prospects for cooperation on developing oil-and-gas deposits. The possible joint reclamation of former uranium production sites in Tajikistan is viewed positively from both sides. Rosatom is Tajikistan's main partner in this respect. We agreed that the agricultural sector was a promising area for cooperation. We emphasised our willingness to expand exports of eco-friendly agricultural products from Tajikistan to Russia. We also noted the expansion of cooperation in tourism. We emphasised the growing interest of Russians wanting to travel to Tajikistan as tourists, and thus, the increase of their number. During the talks, we were pleased to note the positive results in humanitarian cooperation, which is currently on the rise. In October 2022, Russia successfully hosted Days of Culture of Tajikistan, while Tajikistan cities held Days of Culture of Russia last summer. We discussed our plan to start building the Mayakovsky Russian Academic Theatre in Dushanbe as soon as possible. We gave a positive assessment to our productive cooperation in education and healthcare. We noted the successful operation of five general education schools built by Russia in Tajikistan, which were officially launched last year. We were pleased to note the start of the implementation of our joint project with the President of Russia on building an education centre for gifted children in Tajikistan. We focused on the study of the Russian language, which has constitutional status as a language of interethnic communication in Tajikistan. I will also mention that Russian language study is mandatory at all levels of the education system, starting from kindergarten, in over 4,000 schools. Today, 2.5 million children are studying in the republic's education system. Considering the shortage of textbooks and teaching guides in Russian, as well as teachers trained to teach in Russian, we have expressed interest in continuing to work together in these areas. We supported efforts to expand the practice of sending Russian teachers to Tajikistan under the Russian Teachers Abroad project, which today comprises 72 teachers working in our country. All of the above economic, cultural and educational issues will be thoroughly reviewed at the upcoming Intergovernmental Commission meeting in Moscow. We attach great importance to promoting and strengthening interregional ties, with 80 federal and economic entities in Russia today cooperating with Tajikistan. We believe that further expansion of our interregional relations geography will help promote trade, as well as economic and other relations between our countries. I am confident that it also facilitates efforts to strengthen friendship and mutual understanding between our peoples. Interparliamentary cooperation is showing positive dynamics, and we are seeing the ties between the legislative bodies of our countries become more intensive. I want to mention the importance of interaction between our countries in security matters. I would like to express special gratitude to the law enforcement agencies and security services of the Russian Federation for the cohesive work and the coordination of interaction with the relevant agencies in Tajikistan. Our countries are closely cooperating in countering terrorism, extremism, acts of radicalism, drug-trafficking, cybercrime and other forms of cross-border organised crime. During our talks, we spoke in favour of stepping up our cooperation at the UN, the CIS, the SCO, the CSTO and other international and regional associations. We also discussed regional and international matters. In the context of the situation in Palestine, Tajikistan regards the implementation of the UN resolutions on this issue as the only appropriate solution. The importance of creating an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders needs specific mention. Having experienced the horrors of a civil war, our country is consistently advocating the use of solely political and diplomatic means to resolve all problems and conflicts. I would like to emphasise that we are satisfied with the outcome of today's dialogue. During the talks Tajikistan and Russia have reaffirmed their commitment to tap the existing potential in order to take our relationship to a qualitatively higher level. Again, I want to sincerely thank President Putin and all our Russian friends for their hospitality and warm welcome. I have invited the Russian President to pay an official visit to Tajikistan at any time convenient for him. Thank you very much. Vladimir Putin: Thank you. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russian-Tajikistani talks Vladimir Putin and President of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon, who has arrived in Russia on an official visit, held talks in the Kremlin. November 21, 2023 15:30 The Kremlin, Moscow The talks began with a one-to-one discussion between the leaders. Senior Russian officials attending the talks include Deputy Prime Minister, Chair of the Russian Section of the Intergovernmental Commission for Economic Cooperation between Russia and the Republic of Tajikistan Marat Khusnullin, Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin and Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin. The consultations continued over a working breakfast with the participation of the delegations. Following the talks, Vladimir Putin presented a Russian Federation state decoration, the Order For Service to the Fatherland, III degree, to the President of the Republic of Tajikistan. A package of documents was signed following the talks, including a Plan for Industrial Cooperation between the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies of the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Action Plan for transport cooperation between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Tajikistan for 2023-2025. In addition, a number of interdepartmental documents was signed on cooperation in various spheres, as well as an agreement between the Kurchatov Institute National Research Centre and the National Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan on research, science and technology cooperation. Following the Russian-Tajikistani talks, Vladimir Putin and Emomali Rahmon made press statements. The agenda of the talks includes the current state and prospects for further development of mutually beneficial cooperation in trade, the economy and culture, as well as other key aspects of bilateral strategic partnership, and current regional and international issues. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address In Ukraine, Russia's Military Has A Manpower Problem. Now It's Becoming A Political Problem. By Mike Eckel November 21, 2023 A group of women wearing winter coats gathered outside a municipal building in the northwestern Russian city of Cherepovets last month. In a video published on the Russian social-media platform VK, one woman reads aloud an appeal to President Vladimir Putin, complaining that their husbands had been issued "illegal orders." Others stand holding signs that read: "We request demobilization" and "Bring our men home." "Help our guys, please," the women chant in unison. The women's appeal was prompted by the plight of their husbands, deployed to fight in Ukraine with the 347th Motorized Infantry Regiment, a unit in which Dmitry Yashnikov served beginning during Russia's mobilization in September 2022 until he was badly wounded about three months ago. "Nobody is eager to fight. Everyone wants to go home," the 41-year-old said in an interview with RFE/RL's North.Realities. "We've been stuck in this mess for a year now. Everyone is tired and wants to return to peaceful life." The grumblings, while not widespread, are already causing political headaches, a reflection of a problematic circle that Russian leaders are struggling to square: Russian's military has a manpower problem in Ukraine. Putin's mobilization order 15 months ago sent tens of thousands of men to the front lines to try and reverse Russia's struggling invasion. But the bloodletting continues, and the longer it goes on, the more men are needed. And the more men that are needed, the more likely a second mobilization becomes. Which the Kremlin wants to avoid four months before a presidential election that Putin is expected to run in again. "The Kremlin is still trying to 'buy blood' instead of mobilization," said Pavel Luzin, an expert on the Russian military and a scholar at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. "In this way, the Kremlin is almost at the fork: it crucially needs a cease-fire, but it also tries to be prepared for the worst scenario when there will be massive mobilization together with the economic mobilization," he said. "It's clear from their actions that the Kremlin would prefer to offer large sums of money for volunteers, raid the Russian prison system, restaurants, or other gatherings for manpower, rather than [do] another round of mobilization," said Dara Massicot, who researches the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The bloodletting for both Russia and Ukraine is unrelenting. Russian casualties -- killed and wounded -- since February 2022 are estimated at around 302,000, according to British officials. Ukrainian casualties have been pegged at around 180,000 as of this summer, according to unnamed U.S. officials. So how do you get more Russian men into the system without another mobilization? "I'm pretty sure [Putin] knows the situation quite well, and it's alarming when it comes to manpower in Ukraine," said Pentti Forsstrom, a retired Finnish Army lieutenant colonel and professor at the National Defense University in Helsinki. Conscription Breakdown In September 2022, amid indications that Ukraine was inflicting greater losses than Russian commanders had foreseen, the Kremlin took the drastic step of ordering mobilization, calling up around 300,000 military reservists and other eligible men, known informally as "mobiki." Overall, the mobilization process was shambolic. For wide swaths of Russian society, it was also shocking. Since then, Russian recruiters and registration officers have been tinkering with the antiquated systems set up to handle the country's conscription and enlistment system. Under conscription, all men between 18 and 27 are obliged to serve one year in the armed forces, resulting in hundreds of thousands of men being absorbed during each of the two biannual conscription periods. It's a decades-old system known for its inefficiency and corruption. Recruiters have sought to modernize computer systems to track eligible men, and lawmakers moved to set up a digital database that makes it easier to serve draft papers, both for conscripts and for those eligible for mobilization. The system relies on an existing national government web portal called Gosuslugi, which Russians use to do things such as pay taxes or apply for pension or disability benefits. Under a law passed earlier this year, a person can be penalized for ignoring draft notices, regardless of whether they use Gosuslugi. Punishments include being banned from leaving the country or being prohibited from driving, getting a home, or registering a small business. Recruitment By Other Means Under current law, however, conscripts are not allowed to serve outside of Russia's borders, nor are they allowed to serve in combat. Still, military planners have tried to come up with other ways to tap that pool of trained soldiers. That includes recruiters pressuring or coercing men concluding their service year into immediately signing volunteer contracts to enlist. Military planners have dangled economic incentives to great effect. Mobilized recruits and volunteers are supposed to receive the same pay and benefits as professional armed services personnel who have signed contracts. The monthly salary is a minimum 195,000 rubles ($2,115) -- nearly three times the average monthly wage. In Russia's poorer regions, that's an eye-catching sum. The Kremlin also provides substantial survivor benefits for relatives of soldiers killed in action: more than $140,000, a sum that dwarfs the lifetime earnings for the average Russian man. Another estimate put the total amount of payments, subsidies, and other benefits provided to a soldier's kin at more than $170,000. "Recall that the Russian government has made being killed in the war a windfall for a soldier's family," Aleksandr Golts, a veteran Russian military reporter now based in Sweden, wrote in a recent analysis. It's unclear exactly how many men have voluntarily signed contracts. Earlier this month, Dmitry Medvedev, the former president who is now the deputy chief of the Russian Security Council, said 410,000 men had signed up since January, a number that experts say likely includes prison inmates and migrant workers from other countries. Military planners have also utilized stop-loss clauses -- the involuntary extension of soldiers' contracts -- which went into effect for an unknown number of volunteers and mobiki last September. At a meeting with reporters earlier this month, Putin echoed what some lawmakers had said previously: mobiki would be obliged to serve until the end of the "special military operation," the Kremlin euphemism for the war. Wagner 2.0 Officials have also employed other tools. Last year, the Defense Ministry looked to the private mercenary company Wagner, whose well-paid fighters were seen as more competent and better-trained, to lead the charge in several places, including the Donetsk region city of Bakhmut. In addition to competent fighters, Wagner's founder, the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, was also given the green light to recruit thousands of prison inmates. Those inmate units were widely seen as cannon fodder, poorly trained and frequently deployed in infantry waves to overwhelm Ukrainian positions. In the wake of Prigozhin's death in August, Wagner was more or less absorbed by the Defense Ministry and other paramilitary entities, like the National Guard or the Chechen militia known as Akhmat. Military planners have recruited soldiers through other informal volunteer units, under different systems: one collectively known by the Russian acronym BARS and the other through an entity called Redut. These units, many of which are organized through obscure Defense Ministry entities, are also ostensibly private mercenary groups like Wagner used to be, but smaller, more disparate, and with various funding sources. The Way Home Fueling the ire of soldiers' wives and mothers is another tool that military commanders have relied on: not rotating out exhausted units with fresher ones or allowing extended leaves of absence. In early September, a Telegram channel with around 400 subscribers called The Way Home, published instructions for people to write to elected politicians in order to ask for the rotation of their sons or husbands. The channel has since exploded in popularity. On November 12, it published a manifesto in which it called for "complete demobilization, political stability, and a decent life for every citizen of Russia." It's unclear who is behind the channel; organizers could not be reached for comment. Since then, protests and public appeals similar to what happened in Cherepovets have started popping up. In Moscow earlier this month, the authorities rejected an application for a public demonstration. In response, dozens of women -- some holding signs reading "It's time for the mobilized to come home" -- staged a spontaneous rally alongside an authorized demonstration hosted by the Communist Party. Police cordoned the group off after about five minutes. In the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, the authorities rejected an application by another group to hold a demonstration on November 11, citing concerns over the COVID-19 virus. St. Petersburg officials blocked a demonstration requested for November 26. The outbursts of dissent hinge mainly on the question of bringing soldiers back from Ukraine. Few, if any, express outright opposition to the war. One woman identified only as Nina posted a video on The Way Home in which she said she supported the war, framing it using the same false trope that the Kremlin has used to justify it: that Russia is fighting "fascism." "Personally, I'm not opposed to the special military operation. I don't support the idea of making peace with fascism," she said. "But it's completely unfair that they have been carrying out the duties of professional military personnel for the 14th month, indefinitely and permanently, just like slaves." It's clear the authorities are moving to keep the dissent from morphing into something bigger. In Krasnoyarsk and another Siberian city, Kemerovo, police officials visited some of the protest organizers ahead of rallies, threatening possible punishment if they went through with them. In Novosibirsk, officials held a closed-door meeting with soldiers' wives, reportedly warning them not to hold public protests. State media outlets were allowed to attend the meeting; independent journalists were not. "The goal is to make sure these families feel intimidated, watched, and alone," Massicot said. "They don't want them to show regional or national solidarity or even form those bonds." "The Russian authorities will allow some very carefully managed pressure releases like what you see in Novosibirsk," she added. "They do not want wives or mothers banding together across regions or taking inspiration from each other. They want to keep them siloed." Mobilization 2.0? There's been virtually no public discussion about the prospect of a new mobilization; Russian casualty figures are never discussed by state media. Still, the possibility has seeped into some corners of society. survey by the polling company Russian Field showed 58 percent of respondents opposed the idea, while just 32 percent were in favor. The poll surveyed 1,611 Russians by telephone during the last week of October. For the moment, Russia's manpower problems mean its forces won't be able to make substantial battlefield movements, stuck instead with what military experts call "positional warfare." "They don't have the manpower to conduct any sort of major offensive operations. Only small things, a battalion or a regiment or at the brigade level, just to keep the contact with the Ukrainians," Forsstrom, the Finnish analyst, said. Given the unpopularity of a new mobilization, the Kremlin is expected to avoid it, or any mention of it, in the run-up to the March election. After that, however, the chances for a second mobilization increase markedly. "The second wave of mobilization will come," Forsstrom predicted. "It will come right after the presidential election, before the summer. They could have at least a few weeks of training before going to the front, and the summer campaign begins, when [mud season] ends, when the roads are drivable. Then it will happen." Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-manpower-problem-protests- politics/32694046.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Moscow Court Issues Arrest Warrant For Pussy Riot Member Tolokonnikova By RFE/RL's Russian Service November 21, 2023 The Moscow City Court on November 21 issued an arrest warrant for a founding member of the Pussy Riot protest group, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, on a charge of "insulting believers' religious feelings." The court's ruling came three weeks after a lower court in Moscow refused to issue the arrest warrant for the activist, who is currently outside of Russia. In late March, the Interior Ministry added Tolokonnikova to its wanted list without saying what exactly she was wanted for. Media reports said then that Tolokonnikova was wanted for unspecified online comments. In December 2021, the Russian Justice Ministry added Tolokonnikova to its registry of "foreign agents." Russian authorities have used the controversial law on "foreign agents" to stifle dissent. Pussy Riot came to prominence in 2012 after three of its members were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" for a stunt in which they burst into Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral and sang a "punk prayer" against Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time and campaigning for his subsequent return to the Kremlin. Tolokonnikova and bandmate Maria Alyokhina had almost completed serving their two-year prison sentences when they were freed in December 2013 under an amnesty. The two dismissed the move as a propaganda stunt by Putin to improve his image ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics that were held in the Russian resort city of Sochi. While in prison, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were recognized as political prisoners by domestic and international rights watchdogs. Amnesty International named the two activists prisoners of conscience due to "the severity of the response of the Russian authorities." After the Pussy Riot stunt, Russian authorities adopted a law criminalizing what it characterized as "insulting believers' religious feelings." Alyokhina and another Pussy riot member, Lyusya Shtein, fled Russia last year amid pressure from the authorities over their public protests against Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Several members of the protest group were sentenced to up 15 days in jail several times in 2021-22 over taking part in protest actions and unsanctioned rallies. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-pussy-riot-tolokonnikova- arrest-warrant/32693857.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. Bars Two Members Of Russian Military For 'Gross Violations Of Human Rights' By RFE/RL November 21, 2023 Two Russian soldiers whose unit was linked to war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha were barred from entering the United States, the State Department said. The sanctions, announced on November 20, targeted Colonel Azatbek Omurbekov and Russian Guard Corporal Daniil Frolkin. Their unit, the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, was honored by President Vladimir Putin in April last year, around the same time that Ukrainian officials linked the brigade to alleged crimes committed in Bucha and the town of Andriyivka. The State Department imposed the travel ban on Omurbekov, also known as the "Butcher of Bucha," for his involvement in "gross violations of human rights," namely multiple extrajudicial killings of unarmed Ukrainian civilians from Andriyivka, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in the news release. Frolkin was sanctioned for the extrajudicial killing of a single unarmed Ukrainian in Andriyivka, the department said. "As a result of today's action, Omurbekov, Frolkin, and their immediate family members are ineligible for entry into the United States," Blinken said. Omurbekov was the commanding officer of Russia's 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade when Russian forces controlled Andriyivka in Ukraine's southeastern Donetsk region. Omurbekov later led the brigade to Bucha, where the State Department determined that the brigade "killed, beat, dismembered, burned, and conducted mock executions of civilians." After accounts of the brigade's brutality emerged, the Kremlin responded by issuing a statement indicating that Russian President Vladimir Putin had honored the brigade and that the Russian Defense Ministry had promoted Omurbekov and praised his leadership, according to Blinken. The reports that Omurbekov and Frolkin were involved in gross violations of human rights have been documented by NGOs and independent investigations and are credible, Blinken said. By barring Omurbekov and Frolkin, the United States "reaffirms its commitment to upholding human rights, acknowledging the injustice experienced by victims and survivors," Blinken said, adding that Washington is committed to promoting accountability for Russia's abuses and atrocities against Ukrainians. Omurbekov and Frolkin's whereabouts are unknown, though both are believed to still be in service. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-military-barred- ukraine-rights-violations/32693302.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Opening statement by Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation General of the Army Sergei Shoigu at Defence Ministry Board Session 21.11.2023 I would like to start with the situation in the special military operation zone. The Russian Group of Forces continue to engage in active defence, confidently hold positions along the entire line of contact, gradually improving the situation. The enemy units are continuously inflicted with a fire defeat that prevents AFU servicemen from moving forward. All attempts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to conduct landing operations in Kherson direction were unsuccessful. Thanks to the preemptive and professional actions of Russian servicemen, Marines and Special Operations Forces of the Ukrainian troops suffer enormous losses. Since the beginning of the month, the enemy has lost more than 13,700 people, about 1,800 units of various weapons and military equipment. Realising the futility of attempts to break through Russian defence, many Ukrainian servicemen surrender. In turn, Russian servicemen courageously act in the most difficult conditions of the combat situation and effectively perform tasks. Russian troops continue to reduce the offensive potential of the enemy in all directions. Now, we shall move to the agenda. First, let's consider how the tasks of improving the military training of students are addressed. During the implementation of the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation, the first stage of work was completed a military training centres will be opened in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Today, nine higher educational institutions bid to open military training centres, including in Lugansk People's Republic. The number of regions covered by military training will increase to 82, and the number of military training centres will reach 137. The civilian higher school provides significant support in achieving the goals of the special military operation. About 20,000 students from more than 400 universities of the country participate in volunteer activities and humanitarian missions. This year, they donated more than 700 litres of donor blood, which made it possible to provide emergency medical care to 1,400 of Russian wounded servicemen. More than 600 blood donations were made at Admiral Ushakov Maritime State University, Penza State University, Bryansk State University of Engineering and Technology and Russian State Agrarian University named after K.A. Timiriazev. More than 10,000 sets of the most modern bandaging materials were transferred to the military units located on the line of contact. Teachers of military training centres conduct additional classes on military training with government officials and mobilised citizens. In total, more than 20,000 people passed it. More than 1,000 quadrocopters and FPV-drones have been assembled at universities, which are used with high efficiency in groups of forces. Students made more than 50,000 square meters of camouflage nets, which will allow servicemen to cover several battalions at once. In this regard, I would like to note Omsk State Technical University, where the students work almost seven days a week. More than 9,000 children of participants in the special military operation have been granted preferential admission to higher educational institutions. 113 people were admitted to Lomonosov Moscow State University, 123 people to Far Eastern Federal University, and 128 to Don State Technical University. Students of Russian universities show high patriotism and civic responsibility. 3,933 of them took academic leave to participate in the special military operation. The servicemen are fighting very decently, I think that everyone saw this in the process of reporting last week. Today, they perform tasks on the front line side by side with experienced fighters, many of them have been awarded state awards and received promotions. Aleksey Viktorovich Lyalin was awarded the Order of Courage and appointed to the post of reconnaissance platoon commander with the assignment of the military rank of officer, Corporal Aleksandr Sergeevich Meshchersky was awarded the medal For Bravery, Corporal Aleksandr Sergeevich Zavoloka was awarded the St. George Cross of the IV degree. And such examples are far from isolated. Students at the front line communicate with their relatives, friends, as well as classmates and teachers of their universities during teleconferences. More than 200 people have already taken part in them. This work will continue. Without a doubt, the courage and bravery of these people deserve the highest praise, and I am sure that they will become a good example for their agemates. I would like to thank all those who are actively involved in this very important work. Today, we will discuss the prospects for the creation of new military training centres. The main tasks of this year are aimed at the operational equipping of the Groups of Forces with weapons, hardware, ammunition, and material. Compared to the beginning of last year, there has been a 4.9-, 3-, and 16-fold increase in the scope of delivery of the main rocket and artillery weapons, armoured vehicles, and unmanned aerial vehicles to the Russian Armed Forces, respectively. There has been a 12-fold increase in supplying weapons, and a 5-fold increase in supplying precision long-range missiles. In the interests of the special military operation, the tasks of the state defence order are updated regularly, two or three times a month, and the delivery of the necessary arms and hardware is monitored on a daily basis. With a twofold increase in the volume of funding for the state order in relation to the basic indicators, the plan for the current year will be fulfilled by at least 98 per cent. As a result of the additional budget allocations in 2024, the procurement and repair of weapons and military hardware will also be on the rise. In the current situation, it is necessary to ensure the advance delivery of weapons, military and special hardware to the troops and to increase the production capacity of the defence industry enterprises to produce and repair the most demanded models. We must be proactive in modernising existing weapons and developing advanced weapons, and then testing them in the special military operation. It remains a major task to maintain all components of the strategic nuclear forces in constant readiness. At the end of the meeting, there will be a discussion on the implementation of the 2019-2025 activity plan of the High Command of the Russian Navy. Since 2018, the fleets and the Caspian Flotilla have seen the addition of more than 130 ships, combatant craft, and support vessels. Particular attention is being paid to building up naval strategic nuclear forces. The Navy has already received three of the latest Borei-A nuclear-powered submarine cruisers. The state trials of the strategic nuclear-powered submarine Imperator Aleksandr III, assigned to the Pacific Fleet, are about to finish. The portion of current ships within the nuclear triad has reached 100%. In addition, the submarine force is to receive this year three modern multi-purpose boats equipped with the Kalibr missile systems. Another important mission is to build multi-mission ships with high-precision missile systems designed to defeat critical infrastructure and maritime targets, including aircraft carriers and surface action groups. The frigate Admiral Golovko, which is to be equipped with Zircon hypersonic missiles, is currently undergoing state trials. By the end of the year, the number of long-range precision weapon carriers will exceed 40. During the special military operation, modern missile weapons proved highly effective. More than 270 missile strikes were carried out, striking more than 330 targets. This year there has been a threefold increase in supplying missiles for the benefit of the Groups of Forces. The construction of short-range naval vessels will be continued. Two multipurpose corvettes and a small missile ship have joined them. Three more small missile ships and a mine countermeasure ship are due to arrive by the end of the year. A series of strategic deterrence measures in the Baltic and North seas - Ocean Shield 2023 - have been implemented. Detection and tracking of mock enemy ships were practised, as was live missile and artillery firing. The Russian navy performed combat duty tasks to deter NATO Naval Forces in the World Ocean. During 2023, there were over 50 sea trips, with a combined distance of over 200,000 nautical miles. The Finval 2023 exercise was designed to practice deploying the Pacific Fleet all-arms forces to protect the Northern Sea Route. We continued the practice of joint patrols with foreign vessels in operationally important areas of the World Ocean. In April, joint patrols were conducted with the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, and from July to August, joint patrols were conducted with the PLA Navy (PRC). The elements of manoeuvring, controlling, and interacting were practised. In general, the intensity of fleet combat training increased 1.2 times this year. The efforts to reorganise the fleets and the Caspian Flotilla under the direct command of the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy are nearing completion. This will introduce unified approaches to planning the deployment and preparation of the Navy in modern conditions, and will make it possible to manage the fleet and fleets more effectively. The implementation of the Main Command of the Navy's Activity Plan in the current year has increased the combat capabilities of the fleets and the Caspian Flotilla, bringing the level of modern military and special hardware to 74%. Department for Media Affairs and Information NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kiev Loses Over 13,700 Soldiers, About 1,800 Weapons, Equipment Units in November - Shoigu Sputnik News 20231121 MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Ukraine has lost over 13,700 soldiers and about 1,800 units of various weapons and military equipment since the beginning of the month, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday. "In total, since the beginning of the month, the enemy has lost over 13,700 people, about 1,800 units of various weapons and military equipment," Shoigu told a Ministry board meeting. All attempts by the Ukrainian armed forces to conduct a landing operation in the Kherson direction are unsuccessful, Shoigu said. "All attempts of the Ukrainian armed forces to conduct a landing operation in the Kherson direction were unsuccessful. Thanks to the proactive and professional actions of our military personnel, units of the marine corps and special operations forces of Ukrainian troops are suffering significant losses," Shoigu told a Ministry board meeting. Additionally, the Russian armed forces are holding positions along the entire line of combat contact in the military operation zone, gradually improving their positions, the minister said. Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces Maintaining all components of the Russian strategic nuclear forces in constant readiness is an important task, Sergei Shoigu said. "An important task remains to maintain all components of the strategic nuclear forces in constant readiness," Shoigu told a Ministry board meeting. The share of modern ships in the Russian nuclear triad has reached 100%, Shoigu said, adding that the Russian submarine forces will be equipped with 3 modern multipurpose vessels with Kalibr missile systems. Procurement, Repairs of Weapons, Equipment for Russian Military The volume of procurement and repairs of weapons of the Russian military will increase in 2024, Sergei Shoigu said at a Ministry board meeting. "Taking into account additional budget allocations in 2024, the volume of procurement and repairs of weapons and military equipment will also increase. In the current conditions, it is necessary to ensure the advanced supply of weapons, military and special equipment to the troops, as well as to increase the production capabilities of enterprises of the military-industrial complex for the production and repair of the most popular units," Shoigu told a Ministry board meeting. Russian Ships Contain NATO Forces in Ocean Russian ships conducted more than 50 voyages in 2023 as part of measures to contain NATO forces in the ocean, Shoigu said. "Russian ships performed combat service tasks to deter NATO naval forces in the ocean. In 2023, more than 50 voyages were completed, over 200,000 nautical miles were covered," Shoigu told a Ministry board meeting. A Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hou vows to wait for Ko 'until the last minute' as registration deadline looms ROC Central News Agency 11/21/2023 09:30 PM Taipei, Nov. 21 (CNA) Kuomintang (KMT) presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih () said Tuesday he would wait for the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) nominee Ko Wen-je () "until the last minute," as stuttering negotiations over a joint opposition ticket entered the 11th hour. The TPP and KMT remain deadlocked over the order of a joint ticket ahead of a Nov. 24 registration deadline but Hou said he remained committed to cooperating with Ko and called on the TPP nominee to follow suit. The TPP and KMT appeared to be close to a deal after agreeing on Nov. 15 to convene a three-person panel to determine the joint ticket's order based on nationwide polls. However, talks broke down on Nov. 18 following disputes over how to assess the polls, with definitions of the margin of error a particular source of contention. Hou proposed Tuesday that Ko appoint two polling experts, while KMT Chairman Eric Chu () and former President Ma Ying-jeou () of the KMT each appoint one to review the nine previously reviewed polls again on Wednesday. The entire review process will be publicly broadcast with the aim of gaining public trust, Hou added. Hou, who has yet to name a running mate, said he was willing to accept the role of vice president if the review process determined Ko should top the ticket. In response, Ko told the press that the TPP would hold a press conference on Wednesday morning to address KMT's latest proposal. When asked whether he would only accept the top spot on the joint ticket, Ko said only that he hoped both sides would choose a combination that maximizes the chances of winning. The opposition candidates will face off in the Jan. 13, 2024 election against Lai Ching-te () of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, who polls suggest will ride a plurality to victory in any three-way race. On Monday, Lai, the incumbent vice president, named Taiwan's representative to the United States Hsiao Bi-khim () as his running mate. (By Chung Yu-chen) Enditem/ASG NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hou vows to wait for Ko 'until the last minute' as registration deadline looms ROC Central News Agency 11/21/2023 09:01 PM Taipei, Nov. 21 (CNA) The appointment of former Prime Minister David Cameron as the U.K.'s new foreign secretary will not change the country's "clear-eyed" approach to China, the head of the British Office in Taipei said Tuesday. "The foreign secretary has made clear that his approach to the region and China-related issues is very much in keeping with our approach as it has been over the last few years," Representative John Dennis said during a media gathering. Over the past years, it has been "a real challenge" to try and have a relationship with a "much more aggressive China," said Dennis, the U.K.'s de facto ambassador to Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations. According to Dennis, China "poses an absolutely epoch-defining challenge to the type of international order that we want to see, both in terms of security and values." "And that while we will engage with Beijing on global challenges such as climate change and AI [artificial intelligence], huge global challenges, where there are attempts by the Chinese government to force the Chinese Communist Party to coerce or create dependencies, then sure as goodness we're going to push back," Dennis said. To sum up, the representative said "China can't be ignored, but we've got to be clear-eyed about it, absolutely clear-eyed about it, in our engagement." Taiwan's foreign ministry spokesman Jeff Liu () told reporters in Taipei on Nov. 14 that it is "inaccurate and inappropriate" to term Cameron as "China-friendly or pro-China," given that the role of foreign minister and foreign policy was centered on pursuing a country's best interests. Liu added that Taiwan welcomed the appointment of Cameron, a former prime minister and seasoned politician. Taiwan is looking forward to deepening relations with the U.K. together with the new foreign secretary based on an existing solid foundation, Liu added. Meanwhile, speaking during Tuesday's media gathering, Dennis, who took office in December 2020, said bilateral trade and economic ties have continued to surge during the past three years. Last year, U.K.-Taiwan bilateral trade hit a record high at 8.6 billion pounds (US$ 10.78 billion), according to Dennis. "Taiwan is now the U.K.'s 5th largest trading partner in the Asia Pacific Region and the U.K. is Taiwan's 3rd largest trading partner in Europe," Dennis said. On Nov. 8, the U.K. and Taiwan signed the UK-Taiwan Enhanced Trade Partnership (ETP), marking "a significant moment for our bilateral trade relationship," Dennis said. Calling the ETP "the next significant step" in terms of bilateral trade relationship, and a culmination of many years of work, Dennis said it was a "new and innovative form of trading arrangement" and a "strong demonstration of the commitment shown on both sides to grow and deepen mutually beneficial relationship." Dennis said the ETP set up three priorities for future bilateral cooperation, namely, two-way investment, digital trade, and energy and net-zero emissions, adding that all of them offer opportunities for both Taiwanese and British businesses. "Including these areas in the ETP will ensure we are setting the right foundation for the future of our trading relationship and provide further confidence for businesses to invest," Dennis added. (By Joseph Yeh) Enditem/ASG NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S. lawmakers call for resolution of F-16 backlog to Taiwan ROC Central News Agency 11/21/2023 12:49 PM Washington, Nov. 20 (CNA) United States Representative Robert Wittman and 23 other Republican Party lawmakers have called on the U.S. Department of Defense to resolve the backlog of upgraded F-16 fighters that have yet to be delivered to Taiwan. "Taiwan urgently needs these new and upgraded aircraft, and a stronger, more resilient Taiwan will improve stability across the Taiwan Strait," the group of lawmakers wrote in a letter addressed to Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall on Nov. 16. The letter initiated by Wittman, vice chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, was disclosed in a statement released by his office Monday. According to the lawmakers, the F-16 Block 70/72 and F-16V retrofit program under the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) cases "constitute US$12.7 billion of the total US$14.3 billion backlog of military equipment that Taiwan has purchased from the U.S." The delays for full completion of the F-16V retrofit program were approaching three years, while the F-16 Block 70/72 delivery had been delayed by over 15 months, they said. With China mounting "an increasingly aggressive pressure campaign against the island that continues to intensify," the group described the programs as critical to improving Taiwan's self-defense capabilities in the near-to-mid term. "We stand ready to work with you to ensure that both FMS cases are not further delayed," they said, adding that the U.S. cannot afford to over-promise and under-deliver to its closest friends. The group also called on the Air Force Secretary to provide a report on the overall schedule for both F-16V upgrades and production of all F-16 Block 70/72 aircraft by Dec. 18. Separately, House China Select Committee Chair Mike Gallagher and six other lawmakers, all Republicans, sent a letter Sunday to congressional leaders including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for more resources for the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan. Their letter came after U.S. President Joe Biden made a nearly US$106 billion request for emergency funds in late October intended to arm Israel and Ukraine, reinforce the U.S.-Mexico border, and counter China's influence in developing countries and the Indo-Pacific region. That House's response to that funding plan has been disrupted by the dysfunctional majority Republican Party caucus, which spent three weeks to oust and then vote for a speaker, and has been unable to unify behind any spending bills. The letter said that deterring the threat of the Chinese Communist Party must go further than the Biden administration's request. It called for more resources for Foreign Military Financing for Taiwan, funding for the U.S. Indo Pacific Command, investments in critical munitions lines, and expanded use of Presidential Drawdown Authority for Taiwan. (By Chiang Chin-yeh and Ko Lin) Enditem/ls NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Lai hypes Taiwan-related content of San Francisco summit to whitewash separatist image: spokesperson Global Times By Global Times Published: Nov 21, 2023 06:58 PM Lai Ching-te, deputy regional leader of Taiwan island, and some individuals in the island of Taiwan have taken content out of context and hyped media reports which claimed that the mainland "has no plans to attack Taiwan in the coming years." Lai attempted to downplay and deny the harmfulness and danger of "Taiwan independence" activities, and whitewash their image of troublemakers and war instigators disguised as "pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence," Chen Binhua, spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, said in a statement on Tuesday. Chinese President Xi Jinping elaborated on China's principled position on the Taiwan question during his summit meeting with US President Joe Biden in San Francisco last week. He pointed out that the Taiwan question remains the most important and most sensitive issue in China-US relations. The Chinese side requested the US side to abide by the one-China principle, oppose "Taiwan independence," stop arming Taiwan, stop interfering in China's internal affairs, and support China's peaceful reunification. However, in recent days, Lai has taken the content related to Taiwan question out of context and maliciously hyped it. Chen said that by hyping the reports, Lai and some individuals in the island are creating excuses for continuing provocations, attempting to confuse public opinion and deceive voters. The Taiwan question has always been the most important and sensitive issue in China-US relations, Chen emphasized in the statement. It is hoped that the compatriots in the island of Taiwan can clearly recognize that "Taiwan independence" and peace in the Taiwan Straits are incompatible, firmly oppose "Taiwan independence," and promote the return of cross-Straits relations to the correct track of peaceful development, Chen said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UK and South Korea to agree new partnership to redefine and strengthen ties for next generation A major long-term agreement that will redefine the relationship between the UK and a critical Indo-Pacific partner will be signed by the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic of Korea this week. 20 November 2023 Leaders to agree new Downing Street Accord, deepening cooperation between the UK and the Republic of Korea, and strengthening ties with the critical Indo-Pacific partner State visit by President Yoon Suk Yeol will see the launch of negotiations on an upgraded Free Trade Agreement and flagship semi-conductor partnership to secure robust supply chains for the future Partnership will also focus on increasing technology sharing, defence cooperation and supporting regional security at sea, on land and in cyberspace Visit brings A21 billion investment into the UK with South Korean firms backing renewables and infrastructure projects across the country, plus a further A3bn worth of trade A major long-term agreement that will redefine the relationship between the UK and a critical Indo-Pacific partner will be signed by the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic of Korea this week. The Downing Street Accord, which follows the signing of similar partnerships with Singapore and Japan earlier this year, will deepen the relationship between the UK and South Korea, and see the two countries step up cooperation on technology, defence and security. President Yoon Suk Yeol will begin his three-day state visit this morning (Tuesday), which will include a bilateral with the Prime Minister and signing of the Accord at Downing Street tomorrow. The visit coincides with 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the UK and Korea, as well as the 70thanniversary of the armistice of the Korean war. Trade and investment is expected to be a key focus of the visit, with the Prime Minister set to host key Korean investors at Downing Street this evening, and Trade Secretaries from both countries preparing to sign an agreement to launch the negotiations for an upgraded modern, world-leading Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on Wednesday. A future-proofed FTA, fit for the technology driven landscape of the coming decades, will pave the way for new digital trade and rules of origin chapters and look to streamline existing complex arrangements, as well as digitising customs procedures. Already the world's 13th largest economy, the Republic of Korea has around 45 million middle class consumers and an import market expected to grow by 45% by 2035. Trade between both countries has more than doubled since the first FTA was agreed in 2011, with the exchange of goods and services now worth A16bn a year. The launch of negotiations comes as South Korean businesses commit more than A21 billion of new investment into the UK, backing renewable energy and infrastructure projects across the country, and a further A3bn worth of trade. The trade and investment boost will support more than 1500 highly skilled jobs. The major investment pledge fires the starting gun on the Government's flagship Global Investment Summit being held in London next week. The investment also underpins a new Clean Energy Partnership between the UK and Korea, which will drive efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally. The partnership will also see accelerated collaboration on a large scale, small scale and advanced civil nuclear reactors, reinforcing resilience on energy grid infrastructure, and exploring opportunities on hydrogen collaboration and offshore wind. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said: Long term, global partnerships are vital to our prosperity and security, both today and in the future. As two nations focussed on innovation, harnessing new technologies and defending the international rules-based order, the UK and Republic of Korea are natural partners. Through our new Downing Street Accord, we will drive investment, boost trade and build a friendship that not only supports global stability, but protects our interests and lasts the test of time. These close ties have already propelled A21 billion of investment between our countries, and I know a Free Trade Agreement fit for the future will only drive further investment, delivering on my promise to grow the economy and support highly skilled jobs. The future-focussed Accord also includes agreements to work closer together to harness the potential of critical technologies like AI, quantum and semiconductors to create jobs and unlock economic growth, alongside up to A4.5 million in joint research funding, led by the Royal Society. It comes after the UK handed over the baton for next year's AI Safety Summit to South Korea to co-host the 2024 conference, following the inaugural Bletchley Park summit earlier this month. Innovate UK will also invest more than A8.5 million, matched by Korean agencies, creating joint innovation programmes with the Republic of Korea, driving the development and commercialisation of critical technologies, including for the first time - semiconductors. This investment will improve the supply chain resilience of semi-conductors, which are essential to everyday technology, including phones, computers, cars and hospital equipment. for the long-term. Defence cooperation and shoring up the security of the Indo-Pacific is also expected to be on the agenda for this week's visit, with both countries' militaries pledging to step up joint training and operations to create the most comprehensive exercise regime between the UK and any partner other than the US. Under the Accord, the Republic of Korea is also expected to agree to join with British ships on sanctions patrols, authorised by the UN Security Council, to uphold of the rule of law in the region. The DPRK relies on illegal smugglers in order to bypass international sanctions, many of which were introduced to block imports and exports which could be used to support its nuclear weapons programme. The enforcement action will be the first bilateral sanctions action the two nations have conducted together against the DPRK, and paves the way for multilateral sanctions operations with the US and other allies in the future. That enforcement action will be underpinned by new defence and cyber partnerships, which will strengthen defence industry and intelligence agency ties. The cyber partnership will bolster both countries' ability to detect, disrupt and deter malicious actors, while the defence partnership will improve industrial collaboration and supply chain integration, allowing for greater defence capability development. Science ministers from both countries are also expected to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding on space cooperation, bringing our space industries closer together and paving the way for joint space endeavours. The UK and South Korea will work together on satellites, tackling space debris and earth observation technology. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Minister Ng discusses economic recovery through modernized free trade agreement at Rebuild Ukraine Business Conference Global Affairs Canada News release November 21, 2023 - Ottawa, Ontario - Global Affairs Canada Canada's support for Ukraine is unwavering. The Government of Canada is committed to the people of Ukraine and the country's economic recovery and reconstruction in the face of Russia's military aggression, which has displaced millions and killed thousands of Ukrainians, disrupted the worldwide economy and worsened global problems such as food and energy security. Today, the Honourable Mary Ng, Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade and Economic Development, reaffirmed Canada's ongoing support of Ukraine as she joined Taras Kachka, Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine and Trade Representative of Ukraine, in a discussion at the 2023 Rebuild Ukraine Business Conference in Toronto. The conference brought together policymakers, industry experts, businesspeople and representatives of non-profit agencies to discuss opportunities for Canadian and Ukrainian businesses to enhance collaboration and grow their trade ties, and thereby contribute to rebuilding Ukraine. During her meeting with Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, Minister Ng highlighted how the modernized Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA) will offer a comprehensive framework for supporting bilateral trade with and investment in Ukraine. The agreement will underpin Canada-Ukraine commercial ties during Ukraine's reconstruction and beyond and better position entrepreneurs and enterprises to do business togetherawhether exporting goods or services, making investments or creating other commercial partnerships. New and updated chapters in the modernized agreement include commitments on services, investment, temporary entry for businesspersons, digital trade, inclusive trade, labour and environment. Quotes "We will support Ukraine in its fight for freedom and democracyafor as long as it takes. When Ukraine prevails, Canada and Canadian businesses of all sizes will be there to support its rebuilding. The modernization of CUFTA reaffirms our commitment to our Ukrainian friends and supports long-term stability, security and economic recovery in Ukraine. It will provide our Canadian businesses with the best possible access to Ukraine's markets to do so." - Mary Ng, Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade and Economic Development Quick facts In early 2024, Minister Ng will lead a Canadian business delegation to Ukraine to help facilitate trade and investment opportunities. In 2021, total bilateral trade between Canada and Ukraine reached its highest point ever at $447 million ($220 million in exports and $227 million in imports). This figure dropped to $422 million in 2022 ($150 million in exports and $272 million in imports), largely due to the effects of Russia's illegal invasion and aggression. The original CUFTA entered into force on August 1, 2017, and immediately eliminated tariffs on 86% of Canada's merchandise exports to Ukraine. The remaining tariffs will be eliminated on January 1, 2024. On September 22, 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed the modernized CUFTA in Ottawa. Bill C-57 will enact and amend legislation to implement the modernized CUFTA in Canada's domestic law. Once the bill receives Royal Assent, the Government of Canada will complete the necessary steps to bring the modernized agreement into force. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Canada has provided more than $9.7 billion in multifaceted support. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Statement by President von der Leyen on the 10th anniversary of the Euromaidan protests, via video message European Commission Statement 21 November 2023 Brussels Ten years of dignity. Ten years of pride. Ten years of striving for freedom. The cold November nights of Euromaidan have changed Europe forever. Even if back then, Europe did not realise it. A whole nation took to the streets, and spoke with one voice. You said: Ukraine belongs in Europe. And our future belongs to us. And that is why the people of Ukraine wrapped themselves in European flags - defying the snipers and the riot police. You decided to be masters of your own future. And this is why Putin attacked you. With the occupation of Crimea. With the destabilisation of Donbass. And then in 2022, with the full-scale aggression against your country. Russia's war against Ukraine's freedom has lasted ten long years. Not only for the people of Crimea and Donbass, but for so many Ukrainians. Like Roman Ratushnyi, who was still in high school when the protests began. He stood against the Berkut police in the Maidan. Then as an activist, he stood against oligarchs and corruption. And finally, Roman stood against Russian troops, paying the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield. But his dream lives on. And today, Ukraine is closer than ever to fulfilling that dream. Your Parliament has adopted far-reaching reforms, on all the seven steps that will lead you towards our Union. And we, at the European Commission, have proposed to start accession negotiations. Today, it is clearer than ever: The future of Ukraine is in the European Union. The future that the Maidan fought for, has finally just begun. Slava Ukraini, and long live Europe. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Minister of Foreign Affairs: Latvia will continue to support Ukraine's energy sector Republic of Latvia - Ministry of Foreign Affairs 21.11.2023 On 21 November 2023, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Krisjanis Karins, participated in a G7+ Foreign Ministers video meeting. During the meeting, Krisjanis Karins informed the participants about Latvia's assistance to Ukraine's energy sector, both in recent months and in the near future, through the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism. The Minister of Foreign Affairs stressed that Latvia would help Ukraine to get through the upcoming winter. In addition to the high-voltage equipment and materials already sent to repair Ukraine's damaged energy infrastructure, the Ministry of Economics of Latvia plans to send 32 diesel generators to Chernihiv by the end of this year, mainly for educational institutions. The Foreign Minister also elaborated on Latvia's involvement in the reconstruction of Chernihiv Oblast. The G7+ Foreign Ministers' video meeting discussed the planned support for the reconstruction of Ukraine's energy infrastructure. The meeting was also attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, who briefed the participants on the current energy situation in Ukraine and potential energy challenges in the coming winter. Information The format G7+ Foreign Ministers was established in early November 2022 to coordinate support for Ukraine's energy infrastructure and humanitarian needs. The U.S. Department of State took the initiative to coordinate the G7+ format. The G7 countries, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Romania, Norway, Sweden, the European External Action Service, the European Commission, the United Nations Development Programme, the Energy Community, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the World Bank currently participate in it. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The President to Ukrainians: We will do our utmost to help Ukraine join the EU President of the Republic of Lithuania November 21, 2023 President Gitanas NausAda addressed the people of Ukraine on the 10th anniversary of the Maidan Revolution. In his address, the Lithuanian leader stressed that ten years ago, as they rose to defend their European choice, united in their desire for justice, freedom and democracy, Ukrainians proved to be an unstoppable force. According to the President, thanks to the efforts of the courageous Ukrainian people, who did not abandon their positions, a new state of Ukraine was born during those cold months. "Today, despite Russia's brutal war of aggression, Ukraine is moving ever closer to Europe. The opening of accession negotiations in December is yet another milestone. The people of Lithuania will be waiting for you. We will support you. And we will do everything to help you join the European Union and NATO," Gitanas NausAda pointed out. The President's Communication Group NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Germany Pledges 1.3 Billion Euros In Additional Military Aid To Ukraine By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service November 21, 2023 Germany has pledged a further 1.3 billion euros ($1.42 billion) in military aid for Ukraine that will include another four powerful IRIS-T air-defense systems as well as artillery ammunition, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced during a visit to Kyiv on November 21. Germany, the second-largest contributor of defense assistance to Kyiv after the United States, has already provided Ukraine with three modern IRIS-T systems, the last of them delivered last month. Pistorius, who arrived in Ukraine early on November 21 on a surprise visit to reaffirm continued military aid to Ukraine's war effort from Berlin, announced the fresh package of military aid for Ukraine after a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov. Earlier, Pistorius, whose visit coincided with the 10th anniversary of the start of the Euromaidan protests, laid flowers at Maidan Square in central Kyiv. "I am here again, firstly to pledge further support, but also to express our solidarity and deep bond and also our admiration for the courageous, brave and costly fight that is being waged here," Pistorius said on X. Pistorius's visit, his second since becoming defense minister earlier this year, comes a day after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's trip to Ukraine, during which he reiterated that America was in "for the long haul" in its support for Ukraine as it continues to battle Russian troops. Washington on November 20 announced a $100 million package of weapons and equipment for Kyiv. The United States has given tens of billions of dollars in military and other aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia's unprovoked invasion in February last year. The visits by Pistorius and Austin to Ukraine came amid an increase in Russian air strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets as the war-wracked country braces for an expected rise in attacks on the country's energy infrastructure during the cold season. On November 21, Russian troops launched four missile strikes on Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk. One civilian was killed and six others were wounded in the strikes, which hit the main hospital in the city of Selydove and the Kotlyarevska mine, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. "Two hospital buildings were damaged and six civilians were wounded," Klymenko said, adding that one person was killed and four administrative buildings were destroyed in the strike on the mine. All 39 miners that were underground at the time of the strike have been brought to the surface, he added. Separately, the military said Ukraine's air defenses shot down 10 out of 11 Iranian-made drones and one cruise missile launched by Russia early on November 21. "An Iskander-K cruise missile and 10 attack UAVs were destroyed by air-defense forces," the military said, adding that Russia also launched four S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles. With reporting by AFP Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-pistorius-germany- aid-russia-donetsk-strike/32693434.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ukraine's 'First Counteroffensive' Began With Euromaidan, Zelenskiy Says On 10th Anniversary By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service November 21, 2023 KYIV -- Kyiv's first counteroffensive against Russia's influence occurred a decade ago, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on November 21 as Ukraine marked the 10th anniversary of the Day of Dignity and Freedom -- the start of the Euromaidan protest movement that culminated with the ouster of Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. "Ten years ago, we opened a new page in our struggle. Ten years ago, Ukrainians conducted their first counteroffensive -- against lawlessness, against attempts to deprive us of a European future, against our being enslaved," Zelenskiy said in a video address to mark the 10th anniversary of the start of what is known in Ukraine as the Revolution of Dignity. Foreign dignitaries including European Council President Charles Michel, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius have traveled to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials on the occasion -- and also to discuss continued support for Kyiv from its allies in the face of Russia's ongoing full-scale invasion. "Good to be back in Kyiv -- among friends,"Michel said on X, formerly known as Twitter, posting a picture of himself shaking hands with the European Union's Ambassador to Ukraine, Katarina Mathernova, at Kyiv's railway station. Together with Zelenskiy and first lady Olena Zelenska, "I honored all those who stood for freedom and those who made the ultimate sacrifice," Sandu wrote on X. Thousands of protesters gathered in Kyiv's Independence Square -- Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Ukrainian -- on November 21, 2013, to voice their outrage at Russia-backed Yanukovych's move to scrap plans to sign an Association Agreement with the EU and his decision to build stronger relations with Russia. The protest, which came to be known as the Euromaidan, expanded, despite several attempts by security forces to disperse it, and culminated with Yanukovych's fleeing to Russia in February 2014. One hundred and seven people were killed by security forces -- most of them in February 2014 -- and 2,500 others were wounded. The protesters who were killed came to be known in Ukraine as the Heavenly Hundred. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to Yanukovych's downfall by ordering the occupation of Crimea and fomenting anti-Kyiv sentiment across eastern and southern Ukraine, and war between government forces and Russia-backed fighters broke out in much of the Donbas in April 2014. "I am here again, firstly to pledge further support," Pistorius said as he started his second Kyiv visit, adding that he also wants to "express our solidarity, our deep solidarity and admiration for the courageous, brave, and costly fight that is being waged here." Low-intensity war continued in eastern Ukraine for eight years despite cease-fires and inconclusive mediation attempts by the West, until February last year, when the Kremlin unleashed an all-out unprovoked invasion of Ukraine that is about to enter its 22nd month. Ukraine earlier this year started a counteroffensive to liberate territories occupied by Russia, but progress has been inconclusive so far. The Kremlin on November 21 described the 2014 Ukrainian revolution that resulted in the ouster of Yanukovych as a Western-sponsored coup. In his address, Zelenskiy praised Ukraine's progress toward gaining membership in the European Union. "Year after year, step by step, we do our best to ensure that our star shines in the circle of stars on the EU flag, which symbolizes the unity of the peoples of Europe. The star of Ukraine," he said. With reporting by AP, AFP, Reuters, and dpa Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-euromaidan- anniversary-zelenskiy-russia-war/32693681.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. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Statement by Russian Defence Ministry 21.11.2023 Today, at around 12:00 Moscow time, the Kiev regime's attempt to carry out a terrorist attack by an fixed-wing UAV against facilities on the territory of the Russian Federation was foiled. The Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down by the air defence systems on duty over Rostov region. Department for Media Affairs and Information NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ukraine's resilience and the support of its international partners will remain strong: UK statement at the UN Security Council Statement by Ambassador James Kariuki at the UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine. 21 November 2023 Thank you, President. I also thank Assistant Secretary-General Jenca and Mr Hollingsworth for their briefing. Russia continues its relentless attacks on Ukraine's ports and grain infrastructure. It is a deliberate attempt to strangle the Ukrainian economy, with total disregard for the impact on food. It follows Russia's cynical withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, driving up global food prices and risking the lives of the world's most vulnerable. The cost of Russia's war to global food supplies is staggering. In just one month, Russia destroyed over 280,000 tonnes of grain - enough to feed over a million people for a year. Agriculture production costs have increased, and landmines have reduced the land available to farm. In front-line oblasts, households involved in agricultural production have reduced by a quarter. As well as its attack on food, Russia is repeating its strategy of attacking critical infrastructure in winter, attempting to break resolve by depriving the Ukrainian people of electricity, heat, water and vital medical services. Russia will not succeed. Ukraine's resilience and the support of its international partners will remain strong. The United Kingdom will continue to work with Ukraine and our partners to ensure Ukraine is able to export its grain. The 'Unity Facility', launched last week between Marsh McLennan's UK division and the Ukrainian Government, will provide affordable shipping insurance for grain and other critical food supplies globally from Ukraine's Black Sea ports. Ships are sailing and Ukraine's grain is being exported. This week, the UK hosted a Global Food Security Summit galvanising action to tackle the causes of food insecurity and malnutrition and unlock our diverse resources for a more resilient, food-secure future. We welcome Ukraine's summit next week, which will drive support for the Grain from Ukraine initiative. As my Foreign Secretary said in Ukraine last week, Russia thinks it can wait this war out and that the West will eventually turn its attention elsewhere. This could not be further from the truth. The UK and our partners will support Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes for them to achieve victory and a just peace. I thank you. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Andriy Yermak had a phone call with Jake Sullivan President of Ukraine 21 November 2023 - 22:27 On the Day of Dignity and Freedom, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak had a phone call with National Security Advisor to the President of the United States Jake Sullivan. The interlocutors noted that on this day 10 years ago, the Ukrainian people demonstrated their unity and aspiration for freedom and European values. Andriy Yermak and Jake Sullivan discussed preparations for the USA - Ukraine Defense Industrial Base Conference to be held in Washington D.C. on December 6-7. The parties also discussed the results of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit held in San Francisco and noted the importance of the visit of U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Ukraine. In the framework of the ongoing dialogue with the allies, the Head of the Presidential Office briefed the U.S. Presidential Advisor on the situation on the battlefield. Andriy Yermak particularly emphasized the importance of bolstering Ukraine's air defense in the winter period, when Russia is expected to increase terrorist attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities. Andriy Yermak thanked the President of the United States, his administration, both houses of the U.S. Congress and the American society for their firm and unwavering support of Ukraine in its fight against the Russian aggressor. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the ceremony dedicated to the Day of the Air Assault Forces: Air Assault Forces are the bravery that influences the entire battle for our independence President of Ukraine 21 November 2023 - 19:32 On the occasion of the Day of the Air Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented high state awards, battle flags, ribbons of the Presidential Honorary Award "For Courage and Bravery" and conferred honorary titles upon the brigades. The ceremony, which took place at the Mariyinsky Palace in Kyiv, was also attended by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. "Today is the professional day of our Air Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This is the day of tens of thousands of extremely strong warriors, without whom it is simply impossible to imagine a reliable defense, who are always in very difficult areas of the front and whose bravery is always of strategic importance for Ukraine. This is the courage that affects not only a single battle for the sake of our state, but the entire battle for our independence," the President said in his speech. The Head of State noted the high efficiency of interaction between the air assault brigades and other units of the Defense and Security Forces to protect Ukraine and destroy the occupiers. "Both in 2014 and after February 24, the servicemen of the Air Assault Forces were among the most combat-ready and efficient in the Defense Forces," Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized and added that over 10 thousand servicemen of the Air Assault Forces were awarded state awards during the full-scale war. The participants also observed a minute of silence to honor the feat of the Air Assault Forces servicemen who gave their lives for the sake of the Ukrainian state and people. The President congratulated the military on their professional day and presented them with state awards. "Today, on the Day of the Air Assault Forces, it is a special honor for me to present state awards to the paratroopers - soldiers, sergeants, officers - and to present combat units with battle flags, honorary titles and insignia. On behalf of all Ukrainians, I thank the entire staff of our Air Assault Forces and especially those commanders who take care of the lives of their soldiers, and I wish everyone strength and victory - the victory of Ukraine," Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. In particular, the Head of State awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine and presented the Order of the Gold Star to Junior Sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Andriy Holovko. In February 2023, he prevented an enemy assault maneuver by detecting an enemy tank in a forested area and destroying it with a Javelin ATGM. Later, Andriy Holovko destroyed seven units of the occupiers' armored vehicles and the tank crew, disrupting the offensive and forcing the enemy to retreat. The title of Hero of Ukraine and the Order of the Gold Star was also awarded to Senior Sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Andriy Vodopyanchuk. The commander of the air assault platoon repeatedly proved himself during the defense of settlements in Kharkiv and Donetsk regions. In particular, he led the personnel of assault units, destroyed enemy equipment and manpower, and provided first aid to his comrades. In October 2022, he was seriously wounded during close-up action and tank fire, but in January 2023, he returned to service and took over the training and coordination of young warriors. Later, he took an active part in repelling an offensive in the Serebrianka Forest. The Head of State also handed over the orders to the family of the reconnaissance platoon's Chief Sergeant Ivan Bank, who was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. Ivan Bank took part in the battles for the liberation of Kyiv and Kherson regions, conducted reconnaissance of enemy positions and firing points, destroying the occupiers' equipment. In September 2022, in Kherson region, the Chief Sergeant came under mortar fire and sustained multiple shrapnel wounds incompatible with life. The family members of the fallen Hero of Ukraine, Junior Sergeant Dmytro Shkurov, who had been defending Ukraine since September 2021, also received the Gold Star from the President. He was a squad leader of an air assault platoon. In November 2022, he led a battle in Donetsk region and coordinated the unit's collective weapons. At night, between shelling, Dmytro Shkurov decided to move the bodies of his fallen brothers-in-arms to a neighboring position to preserve them. He carried five bodies of the warriors on his own, but when he returned for the next one, he hit an explosive device and was killed. Thanks to the efforts of the Junior Sergeant, the bodies of his brothers-in-arms were handed over to their families. Volodymyr Zelenskyy also handed the order to the wife of Senior Sergeant Oleksandr Leunov, who was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. In March 2022, in Kharkiv region, during the breakthrough of the occupiers' convoys, the Senior Sergeant at the head of the unit engaged in combat and destroyed enemy tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. This stopped the enemy's advance and prevented the encirclement of our troops. However, an enemy tank hit the BTR-80, with Oleksandr Leunov inside, and the sergeant sustained wounds incompatible with life. In addition, Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented the Presidential Cross of Military Merit to Junior Sergeant Oleksandr Fisun, who has been defending the territorial integrity of Ukraine since February 24, 2022. He took part in defensive and assault operations and repulsed Russian assaults in Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk regions. He repeatedly performed the duties of the senior in the position of the unit and engaged in combat with enemy infantry, skillfully leading the actions of the personnel. He constantly participated in the evacuation of wounded servicemen, in particular, he personally carried the wounded for more than 5 kilometers across the field, thus saving the lives of the defenders. The servicemen were also presented with the Orders of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, I-III classes, the Orders "For Courage", II and III classes, and the Order of Princess Olga, III class. The Honorary Insignia of the President of Ukraine "For Courage and Bravery" was awarded to the 122nd separate airmobile battalion of the 81st separate airmobile brigade of the Air Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In order to recognize the high professionalism, military merit, courage and bravery of the personnel of the military units, Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented battle flags to the 82nd separate air assault brigade of the Air Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 148th separate artillery brigade of the Air Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the 135th separate command and control battalion of the Air Assault Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The President also conferred honorary titles upon the brigades of the Air Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Thus, the 80th separate air assault brigade was awarded the honorary title "Halytska". The 81st separate airmobile brigade will bear the honorary title "Slobozhanska". The 95th separate air assault brigade was given the honorary title "Poliska" and the 79th separate air assault brigade was given the honorary title "Tavriyska". Other participants of the event were Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhny, Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba, Minister of Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov, Commander of the Air Assault Forces Maksym Myrhorodskyi, Deputy Heads of the Presidential Office Roman Mashovets, Ihor Zhovkva and Andrii Sybiha, and Ambassador of Germany to Ukraine Martin Jaeger. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address European integration is not a path of gifts, so Ukraine is doing its part - Volodymyr Zelenskyy following the meeting with the Presidents of the European Council and Moldova in Kyiv President of Ukraine 21 November 2023 - 18:30 Ukraine is implementing the recommendations necessary for a political decision to start negotiations on membership in the European Union and expects a positive result by the end of this year. This was stated by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a meeting with media representatives after negotiations with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the Republic of Moldova Maia Sandu in Kyiv. "In the ten years since the beginning of Maidan, Ukrainians have covered a significant part of our path to the EU. The whole of Europe believed in Ukraine and understood us. Ukrainians managed to guarantee the preservation of freedom for the whole of Europe," the Head of State emphasized. Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed confidence that the visit of the President of the European Council and the President of Moldova to Kyiv on the Day of Dignity and Freedom symbolizes that Ukraine's success on the European path is a success for its neighbors as well. "Our cooperation with Moldova, including economic cooperation, has already proved that we, together with our partners, are able to strengthen our region, our Europe and effectively counter Russian attempts to spread aggression and poverty," he said. The President informed that during the meeting with Maia Sandu, he discussed how to increase opportunities for the two states, in particular, in terms of security and jobs for citizens of Ukraine and Moldova. "I am confident that the people of Moldova, together with all of us, together with the whole of Europe, will achieve social justice and long-term, stable economic growth," Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. For her part, Maia Sandu emphasized that the people of Ukraine and Moldova have chosen the democratic European path of development. She called on all EU countries to support membership negotiations for Ukraine and Moldova at the next European Council meeting in December in Brussels. "With EU enlargement, two things are most important - unity and speed. Unlike the Russian strategy to divide and conquer, our most powerful defense is unity, we must speak with one voice, demonstrating that our collective will is unshakable and inviolable. This is not just a strategic choice, it is a matter of survival and European stability," the President of Moldova said. During his meeting with the President of the European Council, Volodymyr Zelenskyy discussed Ukraine's progress in implementing the European Commission's recommendations for starting negotiations on EU membership. "Ukraine realizes that any country's path to the EU is a path of merit, not gifts. Ukraine is doing its part. We believe that the European Union will be willing to meet us halfway - as promised - so that by the end of the year, in December, the result will be a political decision to start negotiations on accession and bring the process of full integration closer," the Head of State emphasized. For his part, President of the European Council Charles Michel noted Ukraine's progress in moving closer to the EU and said that this reform process should continue. According to him, the European Union will continue to support Ukraine, as the Russian war poses a threat to European security as well. Charles Michel is convinced that the enlargement of the European Union will make it stronger and will create new opportunities to protect fundamental values. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address When freedom of one nation prevails, other free nations of Europe always prevail as well - President of Ukraine during the meeting with European leaders in Kyiv President of Ukraine 21 November 2023 - 17:58 The Ukrainian people, defending the integrity of their state, preserve the integrity of the entire European Union, a united and peaceful Europe. This was stated by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy during an extended meeting with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of Moldova Maia Sandu on the occasion of the Day of Dignity and Freedom. Greeting friends of Ukraine in Kyiv, the Head of State noted that Ukraine cannot be separated from Europe, and Ukrainians proved it. "They also proved that in Europe the fates of peoples are closely linked. And when the freedom of one nation prevails, other free peoples of Europe always prevail as well," he said. According to the President, this was the geopolitical meaning of the Ukrainian Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity, and now it is the meaning of the fight of Ukrainians for their state and its independence. "By defending their freedom, Ukrainians are also defending freedom for their neighbors in Europe. By defending our European choice, we are defending the European choice for our friends, for Moldova, for Georgia, for other neighbors, for Belarus, for our entire region. And by defending our integrity, we preserve the integrity of the entire European project - a united and peaceful Europe," Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. According to the Head of State, today Ukraine's optimism about European unity has become even stronger than it was ten years ago. "Together with you - together with all our partners in Europe - we have shown how strong our continent is and how powerful our freedom is. And European values will never lose, because we will not lose," he said. The President noted that despite all the difficulties, Ukraine is bringing its European dream closer to realization. "We have obtained candidate status. We are fulfilling the recommendations of the European Commission to start accession negotiations in full and in a quality manner. We are doing everything that is required of us. We expect that our partners in the EU will fairly assess our work and progress and make the objectively necessary positive decision to start negotiations with Ukraine, which we dream of and which we and the whole of Europe deserve so much," Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized. President of the European Council Charles Michel, for his part, noted the EU's support for Ukrainians in their fight for European values, which began ten years ago on Independence Square during the Revolution of Dignity. "Our European future will be safer with Ukraine in the EU. We have made a very important decision by deciding to grant Ukraine and Moldova the status of candidate countries," he emphasized. Charles Michel invited the presidents of Ukraine and Moldova to a meeting in December. According to him, it is very important that both countries prepare for future membership. "In December, we have to make a decision on the next steps. We have to ensure that the goal of this expansion process is not just more numbers, but also more effectiveness, more ability to defend common values," he added. President of Moldova Maia Sandu noted that Kyiv symbolizes resilience and hope. She emphasized that the losses suffered by the Ukrainian people during the Revolution of Dignity and the losses suffered today as a result of the Russian war protected Ukraine's independence and protect Moldova. "Moldova will stand firmly with Ukraine. We will host Ukrainian citizens, invest in resilience and solidarity. We will unite efforts around Ukraine. We are part of the international community that wants to hold Russia accountable," emphasized Maia Sandu. In her video address on the occasion of the Day of Dignity and Freedom, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen noted that ten years ago, the entire Ukrainian nation took to the streets and declared with one voice that Ukraine belonged in Europe. And it was precisely because of the desire of Ukrainians to choose their own path that Russian President Putin decided to launch aggression against Ukraine: first through the war in Donbas, and then through a full-scale invasion. According to her, despite the war, Ukraine is closer than ever to the dream of a European future that people fought for on Maidan. In her video message, President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola emphasized that the courage, dedication and heroism of Ukrainians in the fight for freedom and democracy during the Revolution of Dignity and in opposing Russian aggression is an inspiration to Europeans. She noted that the European Parliament is one of Ukraine's biggest supporters and will continue to insist that negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU begin this year. In his video address on the occasion of the Day of Dignity and Freedom, President of the Republic of Lithuania Gitanas NausAda said: "Today we honor the Heavenly Hundred Heroes who paid the ultimate price for Ukraine's bright European future. We pay tribute to all the defenders who have continued to fight for Ukraine for all these ten years, and their sacrifice and dignity will never be forgotten." He emphasized that today, despite the aggressive Russian war, Ukraine is getting closer to Europe. "The start of accession talks this December will be another event that we all look forward to," Gitanas NausAda said, adding that they, for their part, will do everything to help Ukraine join the EU and NATO. In his video message, President of Poland Andrzej Duda noted that after the start of Russia's full-scale aggression, Poland called for the immediate granting of candidate status to Ukraine, and recently the European Commission recommended starting accession negotiations with Ukraine. "This is a great success, but also a tremendous challenge. I want to assure you that Poland will stand firmly by your side and support you in your fight against the aggressor. We will help you on your way to the EU and NATO, because we want to see you in our European family as soon as possible," Andrzej Duda said. Congratulating Ukrainians on the tenth anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity, President of the Government of Spain Pedro SAnchez said in a video message that the Ukrainian people have been defending their fundamental right to independence for the past ten years. He urged to continue the reforms necessary to join the European Union and emphasized that Ukraine would be welcome in the European family. "We will be happy to see you in the EU and we will support Ukraine for as long as it takes," Pedro Sanchez assured. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Andriy Yermak had a conversation with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Holy See President of Ukraine 21 November 2023 - 17:52 Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak had a phone call with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Holy See. Andriy Yermak and Pietro Parolin discussed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Bring Kids Back UA initiative, which has already been supported by many countries. It is one of the integral elements of the concept of implementing the Ukrainian Peace Formula, in particular, the clause on the return of deported children and the release of civilian hostages and prisoners of war. The Head of the Presidential Office invited representatives of the Holy See to take part in the first meeting of the international coalition of countries for the return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia to be held on December 8 in Kyiv. Andriy Yermak expressed gratitude to Vatican City for the participation of its representative in the meeting of national security and political advisers in Malta. He also noted the agreement of Cardinal Pietro Parolin to lead a solemn service in one of the largest churches in Rome, Sant'Andrea della Valle, this Thursday on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Ukraine - the Holodomor-Genocide of 1932-1933. According to him, this is a significant sign of closeness on the part of the Holy See and readiness to continue to support Ukraine in its sacred struggle for freedom and dignity. "Ukraine clearly perceives this fact as an important signal to the international community, which, like Vatican City, should recognize this tragedy as a criminal act of genocide by the totalitarian Soviet-Russian regime," said Andriy Yermak. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address President had bilateral meetings with Charles Michel and Maia Sandu President of Ukraine 21 November 2023 - 16:23 President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy held bilateral meetings with President of the European Council Charles Michel and President of the Republic of Moldova Maia Sandu, who are on a visit to Ukraine. The Head of State thanked the President of the European Council for the visit on the Day of Dignity and Freedom and noted the importance of the assistance for Ukraine in the time of full-scale Russian invasion. "I am pleased with all the results of our great work. Of all of us - the parliament, the government - in implementing all the recommendations (of the European Commission - ed.). We really look forward to a powerful decision in December," Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The President of Ukraine emphasized that our country also counts on continued financial and military assistance. During the meeting with the President of Moldova, the Head of State emphasized the importance of further development of joint infrastructure projects. The leaders discussed expanding opportunities for Ukrainian exports, in particular through the territory of Moldova. "Ukraine and Moldova have a common goal - membership in the European Union. And they are moving together to realize this goal. It is very symbolic that now, ten years after our Revolution of Dignity, we stand together. Together, we are delivering results for our countries and strengthening both our region and the whole of Europe," Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. The heads of state emphasized the importance of developing regional cooperation. The presidents discussed security issues and the challenges facing Ukraine and Moldova in the winter. The leaders coordinated steps on bilateral cooperation in the energy sector. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Russian Federation must be held accountable for all violations of the rights of Ukrainian children, as stated at the United for Justice: War Crimes against Ukrainian Children conference in Toronto President of Ukraine 21 November 2023 - 13:35 Ukraine is doing everything to ensure punishment for Russia's mass forced deportation of Ukrainian children. This was emphasized by representatives of our country at the United for Justice: War Crimes against Ukrainian Children conference in Toronto, held on World Children's Day. The event was organized by the Office of the Prosecutor General, the Embassy of Ukraine in Canada and their partners with the participation of Global Affairs Canada as part of the implementation of the national action plan Bring Kids Back UA approved by the President of Ukraine. Massey College and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights are also among the organizers of the conference. Ukraine was represented by a delegation including Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, Deputy Minister of Justice Iryna Mudra, MP Lesia Zaburanna and Advisor - Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation Daria Herasymchuk, along with Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada Yuliya Kovaliv and her team. According to Andriy Kostin, the violation by the Russian Federation of all possible laws and basic rules of humanity in relation to Ukrainian children, like all other crimes, must automatically entail responsibility. "This is a prerequisite for political stability and the restoration of international peace and security," he said. In her speech, Daria Herasymchuk emphasized that Ukraine is committed to upholding the law and protecting children. "We care about the safety of Ukrainian children and do everything possible to protect them, and we are ready to speak up for them when they are deprived of their own voice by the Russians. Only together can we do everything to protect the children of Ukraine today for the sake of any other child in the world tomorrow. After all, today these are children of Ukraine, and tomorrow it can be any child from any country in the world," she said. During the discussions, experts from governments and the NGO sector discussed how to stop the deportation and forced displacement of Ukrainian children by Russians, return abducted children home, and bring all those involved to justice. The representatives of Ukraine and foreign partners emphasized the importance of international support and cooperation in returning Ukrainian children to their homeland with the active participation of the NGO sector. The conference was opened with a video message from Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak and a speech by Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada MAlanie Joly. The conference was also attended by former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Irwin Cotler, Massey College Principal Nathalie DesRosiers and Chair in Human Rights at Massey College Payam Akhavan. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Austin: Ukraine Fight Has Implications Across Europe, Asia as China Watches Western Resolve By Carla Babb November 21, 2023 U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is warning that if Russia is successful in Ukraine, China will be emboldened to use military force to expand its territory in the Indo-Pacific. "We can't live in that kind of world," Austin told U.S. troops at a military installation in eastern Poland Tuesday after a surprise stop the day before in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. "If you're another autocrat, say China, and you want to take over more ground [and] more territory, and you saw what happened in Ukraine and there were no consequences to be paid, you'd feel pretty good about it," Austin said. Austin also warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue his push to overrun sovereign democracies in eastern Europe if he isn't shut down in Ukraine. "Putin won't stop if he takes Ukraine," Austin said. "The next thing is he's rolling across the Baltics ... and the next thing you know, you and your comrades will be on the frontlines fighting against a Putin that we should have stopped, or Ukraine could have stopped early on." Austin comments echo many concerns voiced by NATO allies in eastern Europe since the invasion began. Eastern European nations like Estonia, Romania and Poland have hosted increasing numbers of U.S. troops and weaponry, while also building up their own defenses to deter Russian aggression. Austin spoke with Poland's Minister of Defense Mariusz Blaszczak while visiting the Polish base, which officials asked to remain unnamed because of the major role it plays in pushing U.S. and Western military aid into Ukraine. "This matters, because people are trying to survive on the other end," Austin said. "There are people dying every day." Austin's trip to Kyiv on Monday was a display of Western solidarity amid increasing concerns that support for Ukraine could be waning as U.S. attention is directed to the conflict in the Middle East. U.S. Congress has yet to fund additional assistance to Ukraine, which in turn has caused the Pentagon to start sending smaller military aid packages to Kyiv in an effort to make the funding they have left last longer. During the visit, Austin announced a new U.S. aid package of up to $100 million from the Pentagon's weapons stockpiles, including an additional HIMARS artillery rocket system and more munitions. Prior to the announcement, he spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and members of his cabinet about the immediate winter fight and planning for future security assistance. Monday marked the defense secretary's first visit to the Ukrainian capital since April 2022, shortly after the nearly two-year war began. Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February of that year, calling the war a "special military operation." "We don't want to live in a world where an autocrat can wake up and ... take over his neighbor's property," Austin said Tuesday. The U.S defense secretary will host another round of talks of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group virtually from the Pentagon on Wednesday. The Pentagon says more than 50 nations are expected to participate in the talks, which help Ukraine's partners coordinate military aid sent to Kyiv. Defense officials say the U.S. will provide a steady stream of security assistance throughout the winter, and Austin told reporters on Monday he expects the Ukrainians to be "aggressive" in the weeks ahead. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address NEW YORK, Nov. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Previously announced changes to the name, ticker symbol, investment objectives and guidelines, and portfolio manager lineup for PIMCO Dynamic Income Strategy Fund (the Fund) became effective today. Pacific Investment Management Company LLC (PIMCO), the investment manager of the Fund, expects that the changes will reduce the Funds focus on investments linked to the energy sector in favor of a primarily income-oriented objective and broader, multi-sector credit mandate, which PIMCO believes has the potential to strengthen secondary market demand for the Funds common shares. Prior to today, the Fund was named PIMCO Energy and Tactical Credit Opportunities Fund and its New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol was NRGX. For additional information, including a summary of the Funds revised investment objectives and principal investment strategies, please refer to the Form 8-K filed by the Fund on September 22, 2023, which is available on the EDGAR Database on the SECs Internet site at http://www.sec.gov. For more information about the Fund, please see the Funds website at: https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/closed-end-funds/dynamic-income-strategy-fund . About PIMCO PIMCO was founded in 1971 in Newport Beach, California and is one of the worlds premier fixed income investment managers. Today we have offices across the globe and 3,000+ professionals united by a single purpose: creating opportunities for investors in every environment. PIMCO is owned by Allianz S.E., a leading global diversified financial services provider. Closed-end funds, unlike open-end funds, are not continuously offered. After the initial public offering, shares are sold on the open market through a stock exchange. As with any stock, the price of a closed-end funds common shares will fluctuate with market conditions and other factors. The price received when shares are sold may be more or less than the original investment. Shares of closed-end funds may trade at a premium to their net asset value. Shares of closed-end funds frequently trade at a discount from their net asset value. Whether a closed-end funds (including the Funds) common shares trade at a premium or a discount, and the extent of such premium or discount, is a result of a variety of factors and cannot be predicted. Closed-end funds may be leveraged and carry various risks depending upon the underlying assets owned by a fund. Investment policies, management fees and other matters of interest to investors may be found in each closed-end fund annual and semi-annual report. Except for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements. These statements may involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the performance of financial markets, the investment performance of PIMCOs sponsored investment products and separately managed accounts, general economic conditions, future acquisitions, competitive conditions and government regulations, including changes in tax laws. Readers should carefully consider such factors. Further, such forward-looking statements speak only on the date at which such statements are made. PIMCO undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statement. This material has been distributed for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy or investment product. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without express written permission. PIMCO is a trademark of Allianz Asset Management of America LLC in the United States and throughout the world. PIMCO Investments LLC, 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, is a company of PIMCO. 2023, PIMCO. For information on the PIMCO Closed-End Funds: Financial Advisors: (800) 628-1237 Shareholders: (844) 337-4626 or (844) 33-PIMCO PIMCO Media Relations: (212) 597-1054 NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC (KSF) and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until January 2, 2024 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Barclays PLC (NYSE: BCS), if they purchased the Companys securities between July 22, 2019 and October 12, 2023, inclusive (the Class Period). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. What You May Do If you purchased shares of Barclays 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 (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nyse-bcs/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by January 2, 2024 . About the Lawsuit Barclays and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws. The alleged false and misleading statements and omissions include, but are not limited to, that: (i) contrary to false public assertions, the Companys former CEO, James Staley, had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, was reportedly aware of Epsteins criminal activities and may have even sexually assaulted a victim who had previously been trafficked by Epstein; (ii) if discovered, the relationship and potential criminal activity could bring reputational, legal, and financial harm to Company; (iii) the Companys response to an inquiry by the British Financial Conduct Authority regarding Staley's relationship with Epstein was materially false; (iv) when the Company became aware of information contradicting its response to the inquiry, it failed to update the response so that it would be accurate, or otherwise take any meaningful action; and (v) as a result, the Companys statements about its business, operations, and prospects, were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. The case is Merritt v. Barclays Plc, et al., 23-cv-9217. About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is one of the nations 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 http://ksfcounsel.com/ . Contact: Pune, India, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global wedding photography market size was USD 20.44 billion in 2022 and is set to expand from USD 21.83 billion in 2023 to USD 36.80 billion by 2030, exhibiting a CAGR of 7.74% over the study period. Recent years have recorded a growing demand for destination weddings. In addition, there has been a rising demand for unique favors and custom decorations, which is propelling the global market growth. Fortune Business Insights provides this information in its research report, titled Wedding Photography Market, 2023-2030. Get a Free Sample Research PDF: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/request-sample-pdf/wedding-photography-market-106309 List of Key Players Profiled in the Wedding Photography Market: Michael Anthony Studios Inc. (U.S.) Lin & Jirsa Photography (U.S.) Matt Mason Photography (U.S.) Kevin Mullins Photography (U.K.) Kellie Jane Creative (U.S.) Emma- Jane Photography (U.S.) Gideon Photography (U.S.) De La Teja Studio (U.S.) Ramit Batra (India) KnotsbyAMP (India) Report Scope & Segmentation: Report Attributes Details Forecast Period 2023-2030 Forecast CAGR 7.74% 2030 Value Projection USD 36.80 Billion Market Size in 2022 USD 20.44 Billion Historical Data 2019-2021 No. of Pages 170 Report Coverage Revenue Forecast, Company Profiles, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors and Latest Trends Segments Covered By Type By Coverage By Format By Region Regions Covered North America Europe Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East and Africa Wedding Photography Market Growth Drivers Adoption of Photography as Hobby among Different Age Groups to Support the Market Growth Growing Number of People Employed in Photography to Boost Product Demand Report Coverage: The report offers an insight into the key trends in the market. It further gives an account of the major factors propelling the business landscape over the coming years. The report also covers the pivotal steps deployed by leading companies in gaining strong industry footings. Drivers and Restraints: Market Value to Rise with Surging Employment in Photography The global wedding photography market growth is being propelled by an increase in the number of people employed in the sector. Several photographers undertake freelancing projects. This is due to greater employment flexibility offered by freelancing. However, the rising usage of smart devices such as tablets and smartphones would affect the standalone digital camera demand, hindering industry expansion to some extent. Browse Detailed Summary of Research Report: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/wedding-photography-market-106309 COVID-19 Impact: Wedding Postponements Impacted Industry Expansion during the Pandemic Period The COVID-19 pandemic led to the postponement of weddings considering the enforcement of travel and lockdown measures. Several couples opted for smaller weddings considering the restrictions on large gatherings. This led to a sharp drop in product demand during the pandemic period. Segmentation: Traditional Wedding Photography Segment Registered Key Share Due to Soaring Demand for Traditional Bridal Party Photographs By type, the market is segmented into artistic wedding photography, traditional wedding photography, natural wedding photography, and others. The traditional wedding photography segment recorded a major market share in 2022. This was due to the growing consumer preference for traditional bridal party photographs. Full Coverage Segment to Record the Highest CAGR Driven by Rising Demand for Luxury Packages On the basis of coverage, the market is segregated into partial coverage and full coverage. The full coverage segment is set to depict the highest CAGR over the study period. The growth can be attributed to the soaring demand for luxury and deluxe wedding packages. Digital Format Segment to Surging Demand For Digital Wedding Images On the basis of format, the market is fragmented into digital and printed. The digital segment to witness fastest CAGR during the forecast period. This is due to the surging demand for digital wedding images and the soaring smartphone penetration. Based on geography, the market has been studied across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and the Middle East & Africa. Get a Quote Now: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/get-a-quote/wedding-photography-market-106309 Regional Insights: Asia Pacific to Lead the Market due to Favorable Government Initiatives The Asia Pacific market is set to record dominating share in the market. This is due to the enforcement of favorable government policies in the region. For instance, the government of India is keen to promote the Indian wedding tourism sector to couples abroad. The North America wedding photography market share accounted for the second-leading position. This is on account of the soaring disposable income and growing wedding expenditure in the region. Competitive Landscape: Leading Companies Undertake Numerous Growth Strategies to Meet Rising Consumer Demand Companies in the wedding photography space are keen to deploy a range of expansion strategies for keeping up with the trending themes on social media platforms. These moves are being adopted to meet the soaring consumer demand. Some industry players are launching online portals for reducing the gap between accessibility and preference. Detailed Table of Content: Introduction Research Scope Market Segmentation Research Methodology Definitions and Assumptions Executive Summary Market Dynamics Market Drivers Market Restraints Market Opportunities Emerging Trends Key Insights Overview of the Parent/Related Markets Industry SWOT Analysis Qualitative Analysis (in relation to COVID-19) Impact of COVID-19 Supply Chain Challenges Potential Opportunities due to COVID-19 Global Wedding Photography Market Analysis, Insights and Forecast, 2019-2030 Key Findings / Summary Market Size Estimates and Forecast By Type (Value) Traditional Wedding Photography Artistic Wedding Photography Natural Wedding Photography Others By Coverage (Value) Full Coverage Partial Coverage By Format (Value) Digital Printed By Region (Value) North America Europe Asia Pacific South America Middle East & Africa TOC Continued...! Speak to Our Expert: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/enquiry/speak-to-analyst/wedding-photography-market-106309 Key Industry Development: January 2023: Folscher Photography entered the market by offering a diverse wedding photography services in South Africa. Read Related Insights: Photobook and Album Market to Hit USD 4.39 Billion by 2030 | With a CAGR 3.9% Demi Fine Jewelry Market Size to Hit USD 5.32 Billion by 2030 | 189 Pages Research Report Smartwatch Market Size to Worth USD 77.22 Billion by 2030 | With a 14.84% CAGR About Us: Fortune Business Insights delivers accurate data and innovative corporate analysis, helping organizations of all sizes make appropriate decisions. We tailor novel solutions for our clients, assisting them to address various challenges distinct to their businesses. Our aim is to empower them with holistic market intelligence, providing a granular overview of the market they are operating in. Address: Fortune Business Insights Pvt. Ltd. 9th Floor, Icon Tower, Baner, Mahalunge Road, Baner, Pune - 411045, Maharashtra, India. Phone: US: +1 424 253 0390 UK: +44 2071 939123 APAC: +91 744 740 1245 Email: sales@fortunebusinessinsights.com Follow Us: LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter Attachment Chris Caldwell Delivers Inspirational Keynote on AI and Climate Change at Trinity College Dublin DOUGLAS, Isle of Man, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a world awash with information, Chris Caldwell stands out as a beacon of insight and innovation. As a distinguished clean tech investor, renewables entrepreneur, and podcast host, Caldwell recently returned to his alma mater, Trinity College Dublin, to deliver a lecture that is nothing short of a masterclass in the intersection of technology and environmental stewardship. His presentation, was a value added supplement to the "Conversations on Climate" podcast series, and masterfully unravelled the complex dance between artificial intelligence (AI) and climate change, inviting us to reshape our understanding of technology's role in shaping our planet's future. Marking 24 years since his graduation, Caldwell's homecoming was a deep dive into the "Paradox of Attention" that defines our era. He adeptly dissected the dual nature of AI as a beacon of hope and a harbinger of environmental challenges guiding the audience through a labyrinth of societal impacts and technological advancements. Caldwell highlighted the path AI has carved in the fight against climate change, showcasing its role in expediting decarbonisation and pinpointing deforestation with unprecedented precision. Yet, he bravely ventured into the less trodden paths, discussing AI's hidden costs its energy demands and carbon footprint often overlooked yet critically important. His message resonated with clarity and urgency: AI mirrors our collective values and decisions. It's a tool, not a tyrant, shaped by our collective will and priorities. At this pivotal moment, our choices in harnessing AI and technology will decisively shape our environmental legacy. This lecture at Trinity College Dublin is more than an intellectual exercise; it's a clarion call to action. It beckons us to engage more thoughtfully with the technologies we create and the principles we instil in them. In Caldwell's own words, "AI is not our saviour or our destroyer; it is the reflection we cast in the digital world." About United Renewables: United Renewables, at the forefront in the renewable energy sector, is dedicated to providing a diverse array of green energy solutions including solar, wind, hydro, and bioenergy. Our commitment lies in fostering sustainable futures, reducing global carbon footprints, and empowering communities through innovation and environmental stewardship. As a leading provider, we actively engage in climate dialogue, partnering with industry pioneers and academic experts to shape a resilient and cleaner world for all. About the Conversations on Climate Podcast: United Renewables' "Conversations on Climate" podcast, now heralding its second season, is a beacon for those seeking enlightenment and actionable insights on climate change. By amalgamating the intellect of academia with the pragmatism of industry, the podcast crafts a narrative both compelling and instructive. From the strategic intricacies of game theory to the pioneering strides in algae-powered innovations, and ESG, the show is a testament to the multifaceted approach required to address global challenges. Season 2, a rich tapestry of expert insights providing professionals with a strategic guide to tackle the complexities of climate challenges. This series, conceived by United Renewables CEO Chris Caldwell, flourishes through its collaborative partnership with the dynamic Alumni Energy Club of the London Business School. For anyone who's interested in navigating their way through the climate conundrum, this podcast is for you. Stay abreast of the latest episodes by activating your notifications on the Conversations on Climate Channel. Watch the Conversations on Climate podcast on YouTube or Podcast and for all related articles go here. Conversations on Climate is a joint production of United Renewables and the London Business School Alumni Energy Club. Conversations on Climate brings world-leading thinkers from business and academia together to share their expertise on the subject of climate change. Guests include Sir Andrew Likierman, Julio Dal Poz, Professor Jean-Pierre Beno it , Professor Ioannou, Tara Schmidt, Professor Dan Cable, Professor Zoe Chance, Professor Lynda Gratton, Tom Gosling, Eduardo Famini Silva, Dr. Linda Yueh, Yariv Cohen, Francois Ortalo-Magn e , Professor Randall Peterson, Matt Winning, Abel Martins Alexandre, Dr. Marcel Olbert, Professor Jane Stout and Professor Rupert Merson. CONTACT Isabella Hawke Sales and Marketing Consultant COMPANY United Renewables PHONE +447624457139 EMAIL IIhawke@unitedrenewables.co.uk WEB unitedrenewables.co.uk/resources A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c42b4548-89d1-4f4f-b4b7-0bab79b4b0a7 Wilmington, Delaware, United States, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Transparency Market Research Inc. - The global roofing market was estimated at a value of US$ 190 billion in 2020. It is anticipated to register a 4.9% CAGR from 2021 to 2031 and by 2031, the market is likely to attain US$ 322 billion by 2031. The global market is being driven by the building and construction sector's growing need for roofing. A sizable number of producers are active in the world market. In order to meet customer demands, these firms are raising their capital investments and placing a greater emphasis on research and development activities and enhanced product quality. Grab Sample of this Research Report@ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=4234 The global expansion of residential, commercial, and non-commercial construction projects has led to a robust growth in the roofing market. Key Findings of the Market Report The growing infrastructure construction activities brought on by the global population explosion are the cause of the roofing market's increase. Rapid urbanization in developing nations, an increase in building and construction activity worldwide, and technological developments in roofing materials are the main factors driving the global market. The building and construction industry in both developed and emerging nations is expected to take on more projects, which will expand demand for roofing. Bitumen, granules coated in ceramic, clay, sand, fiberglass, concrete, and polycarbonate are roofing materials that are frequently utilized in the construction of both residential and commercial structures, including offices, hotels, and schools. Market Trends for Roofing During the forecast period, rising industrial activity and increasing urbanization will support the growth of the global roofing market. In this sector, manufacturing enterprises from China and India are becoming more prevalent. Materials for roofing are a crucial part of building. The expansion of the residential and commercial construction industry as well as the rise in consumer disposable income are factors driving the growth of the global market. The construction industry's consistent rise in developing nations propels the global market. Global Market for Roofing: Regional Outlook Various reasons are propelling the growth of the roofing market throughout the region. These are: The growing construction activity in Asia Pacific is a primary element driving the global market growth. The growing population, industrialization, and increased construction activity in the region are propelling the global market, which could present growth prospects for market players. Manufacturers in the Asia Pacific region have a profitable presence in this industry. Growing infrastructure development initiatives and residential, commercial, and non-commercial building projects are driving the roofing market in nations like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait. Manufacturers that operate in growing nations like China and India can benefit greatly. By satisfying the growing demand from the expanding building and construction sector, manufacturers in the roofing business are reaping large rewards. Market growth is probably going to come from restoration projects combined with industrial expansion in North America and Europe. Growing consumer awareness of energy efficiency, cutting-edge technology, and environmentally friendly roofing materials is helping the North American market to grow. Customize this report according to your needs@ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=4234 Global Roofing Market: Key Players To remain competitive, manufacturers within the global roofing market use a variety of strategies. Many businesses concentrate on product innovation, creating cutting-edge roofing materials with enhanced sustainability, energy efficiency, and durability. They can meet changing client needs and comply with strict laws by using this strategy. Manufacturers employ deliberate pricing tactics, such offering competitive prices or combining services, in order to draw in budget-conscious customers and protect their market dominance. The following companies are well-known participants in the global roofing market: Atlas Roofing Corporation GAF Duro-Last Roofing Inc. Certain Teed Corporation Brass Monier Building Group Services S.A. Johns Manville Firestone Building Products Company IKO Industries Ltd. Owens Corning TAMKO Building Products Inc. Carlisle Some prominent developments by the players in this market are: Company name Key Developments Atlas Roofing Corporation Atlas Roofing announced project New Horizons, a new $200 million shingle production facility in the Midwest, in April 2023. The 500,000-square-foot plant will be built on a 150-acre tract of land in the City of Clinton, where the business broke ground a few months later in August. GAF In 2022, a deal was reached by GAF to buy over 100 acres of land in Bureau County, Illinois, which would eventually house a 450,000 square foot plant that will produce the company's EnergyGuardTM product line. Saint-Gobain In 2021, Saint-Gobain stated that it plans to construct a new gypsum logistics facility through its building goods subsidiary CertainTeed LLC. This facility will be incorporated into the rehabilitation of a vacant Superfund site located along the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida. Global Roofing Market Segmentation Product Bituminous Roofing Metal Roofing Tile Roofing Application Residential Commercial Non-Commercial Region North America Europe Asia Pacific Middle East & Africa Latin America Enquire Before Buying@ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=EB&rep_id=4234 Browse More Reports by TMR: Synthetic Diamond Market - Synthetic Diamond Market to Reach USD 43.7 Bn by End of 2031; Rising Demand in Industrial Applications and Low Cost of Synthetic Diamond as Compared to Natural Diamonds Metal Powder Market - Metal Powder Market to Reach USD 12.1 Bn by 2031: TMR Study About Transparency Market Research Transparency Market Research, a global market research company registered at Wilmington, Delaware, United States, provides custom research and consulting services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insights for thousands of decision makers. Our experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools & techniques to gather and analyses information. Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports. Contact: Nikhil Sawlani Transparency Market Research Inc. CORPORATE HEADQUARTER DOWNTOWN, 1000 N. West Street, Suite 1200, Wilmington, Delaware 19801 USA Tel: +1-518-618-1030 USA Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453 Website: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Blog: https://tmrblog.com Dublin, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Vitrification Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Specimen (Oocytes, Embryo, Sperm), By End-use (IVF Clinics, Biobanks), By Region (Europe, Asia Pacific, MEA, North America), And Segment Forecasts, 2023 - 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global vitrification market size is expected to reach USD 24.25 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 16.74% from 2023 to 2030 The development of vitrification was spurred by advancements in fertility preservation procedures. This innovative technology provides specimen preservation solutions that not only shorten preservation time but also reduce exposure to cryoprotectants. This has accelerated the adoption of vitrification devices, resulting in the market's profitable revenue growth. Delaying parenthood is primarily coupled with sociodemographic aspects, including career/education goals, the rising influence of women's empowerment movements, lack of a partner, and financial barriers, which are the primary reasons for driving the market growth. Several studies have reported a lack of a suitable partner as the most common reason for not having a child till the age of 30 to 40 years. In addition, as per a CDC report, in the U. S., the average age of women having their first child has increased over previous decades. Moreover, a CDC report titled National Health Statistics Report, published in January 2023, showed that the average age at first birth for women and men aged between 15 and 44 years in 2015-2019 was 23.7 & 26.4, respectively, which was higher than the average age at first birth for women and men in 2011-2015. In addition, the average age at first birth was found to be the highest for non-Hispanic Asian women, which was 28.4. This has increased the demand to preserve oocytes and sperm to address infertility issues at older ages and further propels the market growth. According to the CDC, around 6.1 million women in the U. S. aged between 15 and 44 years face issues staying or getting pregnant. Moreover, according to IVF Australia, around 16.66% of couples in Australia have infertility in their reproductive age. The increasing cases of infertility further propels the demand for fertility preservation services and drives market growth. In addition, legal endorsement of same-sex marriage and a rise in single parenthood in numerous nations have raised the demand for cryopreservation of eggs & sperm, resulting in increased demand for vitrification services. Countries, such as Japan, are providing financial help to women seeking egg freezing. According to the American Cancer Society, experts recommend egg freezing or embryo freezing to women with cancer to preserve fertility, further increasing the demand for fertility preservation services. These are indicators of increased acceptance of fertility preservation in society, which are driving the overall market growth. However, risks associated with fertility preservation protocols and procedures are anticipated to hamper the market growth to a considerable extent. Vitrification Market Report Highlights By specimen, the oocytes segment accounted for the largest share of 41.94% in 2022. The efficacy of the method has been proven by increased rates of oocyte survival and pregnancies, along with increased live births. Such advancements in oocyte vitrification techniques are anticipated to drive the segment growth The IVF clinics end-use segment accounted for the largest share of 59.96% in 2022 due to the extensive utilization of equipment and supplies in these end-use settings. Vitrification technology has substantially enhanced the reproductive health space in terms of IVF success rate and the number of freezing cycles for oocytes & embryos Europe held the largest share of 39.87% in 2022. This is mostly due to its long-standing involvement in the field of Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART). The predicted revenue share of this region has also been influenced by the existence of many major companies across Europe Key Attributes: Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 130 Forecast Period 2022 - 2030 Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2022 $7.1 Billion Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2030 $24.25 Billion Compound Annual Growth Rate 16.7% Regions Covered Global Market Dynamics Market Driver Analysis Increase In Delayed Childbearing/Parenthood Social Acceptance Of Fertility Preservation Techniques Rising Awareness About Reproductive Health Increase In Prevalence Of Infertility And Infecundity Market Restraint Analysis Technical And Ethical Challenges Of Fertility Preservation Low Risk-Benefit Ratio Business Environment Analysis PESTEL Analysis Porter's Five Forces Analysis COVID-19 Impact Analysis Device Benchmarking Competitive Landscape Vitrolife Genea Biomedx NidaCon International AB Minitube IMV TECHNOLOGIES GROUP (Cryo Bio System) The Cooper Companies, Inc. (A CooperSurgical Fertility Company) FUJIFILM Corporation (FUJIFILM Irvine Scientific) Biotech, Inc. Kitazato Corporation Shenzhen VitaVitro Biotech For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ij8lw6 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. Attachment A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on this link RIYADH, November 22nd, 2023 Elevatus, the premier AI-driven recruitment software, is delighted to announce a strategic partnership with Global Ventures, an international, MEA-focused venture capital firm. This partnership signifies Global Ventures' adoption of Elevatus' unified and comprehensive recruitment platform. The primary objective of this collaboration is to deliver elevated value and efficiency across candidate management, talent sourcing, internship program recruitment, and centralized communication with stakeholders. Global Ventures backs global-minded founders leading growth-stage companies and using technology to transform emerging markets and the world. This integration will empower Global Ventures to create a branded career page that attracts top talent, centralizes recruitment processes across departments, matches candidates to the right roles, assesses candidates remotely through AI-powered video assessments, and onboards new hires through personalized journeys in mere hours. Nina Carpio, HR Director at Global Ventures, commented: "Our decision to collaborate with Elevatus stems from our commitment to excel in a competitive market. Elevatus state-of-the-art recruitment solution enables us to streamline and enhance our hiring processes in order to attract the best regional and global talent. This partnership also reflects our belief in the digital future of work, where intelligent and sophisticated recruiting solutions support businesses in hiring, assessing, and retaining a talented employee base." Elevatus' turn-key technology platform seamlessly orchestrates every facet of the recruitment cycle, empowering the venture capital firm to centralize its candidate database, access top talent from a pool of 2,000 job boards, streamline its annual internship programs, and engage with stakeholders, all within one integrated solution. This will enable them to reduce the time-to-fill from the industry standard of six weeks to a matter of days. Moreover, the automation of manual processes, such as email communication, will result in a reduction of one full workday's workload. Yara Burgan, Founder and CEO at Elevatus, added: "At Elevatus, we are dedicated to pioneering HR tech innovation to meet the evolving needs of leading organizations like Global Ventures. Our partnership underscores our commitment to delivering tailored solutions that centralize, optimize, and streamline recruitment processes through advanced state-of-the-art technology. We empower organizations to excel in the competitive landscape by harnessing the full potential of HR tech innovation and setting new standards in recruitment." By adopting Elevatus' user-friendly and holistic solution, Global Ventures is better able to attract and onboard high-caliber talent, offering an immersive recruitment experience within the venture capital investing sector. Further information Johanna Lawson-Dick j.lawsondick@thoburns.com +44 (0) 7539 031841 Notes to Editors About Elevatus: Elevatus is an integrated solution that automates the entire recruitment process, from creating job requisitions to onboarding new hires. Elevatus has helped hundreds of companies from all around the world streamline their recruitment through the power of AI, cutting-edge technologies, and advanced solutions. Allowing them to recruit more talented workforces, secure a paperless recruitment process, and transform their existing tech stack into a unified recruiting powerhouse. About Global Ventures: Global Ventures is an international venture capital firm, investing in founders and ideas scaling across emerging markets. Global Ventures backs global-minded founders that are leading growth-stage companies and using technology to transform emerging markets. Portfolio companies include: Abhi, Altibbi, Enhance Fitness, Hive, Helium Health, Paymob, Proximie, Pyypl, RedSea, Sympl, Tabby, Tarabut, Moniepoint, and Zid. More information can be found at https://www.global.vc/ Dublin, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "North America Mini And Midi Horizontal Directional Drilling Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Machine Type (Pile Driver), By Application, By Machine Size, By Parts Type, By Tooling, By End-use, By Region, And Segment Forecast, 2023 - 2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The North America mini and midi horizontal directional drilling market size is estimated to reach USD 5.64 billion by 2030 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.9% from 2023 to 2030 The growing energy demand, particularly for natural gas, has prompted industry participants to process and employ highly efficient extraction techniques to obtain optimum yields. Increasing exploration and production activities in the region are anticipated to steer the horizontal directional drilling (HDD) industry, which is expected to further drive the demand for HDD over the forecast period. The production and extraction of unconventional gases in the U. S. since 2006 has not only created a sustainable impact on the gas supply in North America but has also triggered fundamental changes in the oil & gas market. Shale reserves and tight gas are expected to account for most of the natural gas exploration from 2023 to 2030. This is expected to boost oil & gas drilling activities in the region using mini & midi HDD machines. The growing demand for broadband services in North America is expected to drive investment in the optical fiber cable network. The next-generation broadband technologies, such as FTTx and LTE, are expected to increase the deployment of optical fiber cables in the region. The North America market for mini and midi HDD is projected to witness substantial growth owing to rising oil & gas exploration and rapid growth of the telecommunication industry. North America Mini And Midi Horizontal Directional Drilling Market Report Highlights In terms of machine type, the utility vibratory plow segment held the largest revenue share of 26.40% in 2022 and is further expected to witness steady growth over the forecast period. This machine drills underground to install flexible conduits at an appropriate depth, creating a path to pull pipeline or fiber cable through. These machines are used in the telecommunication industry for fiber cable installation and in the O&G industry for pipeline installation In terms of region, the U. S. is projected to grow at the fastest CAGR of 6.3% throughout the forecast period. The region is expected to witness more than 500 offshore projects dedicated to petrochemical and refinery pipeline installations by 2027. The U. S. is North America's most significant seamless oil and tubular product consumer. The growth of offshore HDD machines and their ability to drill in increasing water depths has boosted the demand for mini & midi HDD machines. Mexico is likely to display a substantial growth rate during the projected period In terms of application, the offshore segment held the largest share of 67.90% in 2022 owing to increasing exploration and production of oil and gas from offshore fields. On May 1, 2023, QatarEnergy announced an expansion in its offshore oil exploration activities, which has necessitated the demand for HDD machines in Canada in collaboration with Exxon Mobil Corporation In terms of machine size, the mini segment is anticipated to register the fastest CAGR of 6.7% over the forecast period. Significant companies are involved in manufacturing mini-HDD machines specifically designed for smaller conduits and pipeline installations. In 2023, AT&T Intellectual Property collaborated with BlackRock, Inc. to install fiber optic internet cables in Florida metro areas. This project has necessitated the use of mini-HDD machines and aimed to expand their 5G wireless networks across the United States Based on parts type, the rigs segment held the largest revenue share of 32.40% in 2022 owing to the application of underground utility installation, which includes installation of pipelines, cables, and conduits without disturbing the surface in industries such as construction and telecommunication for infrastructural development In terms of tooling, the transition rod segment held the largest revenue share of 27.13% in 2022 due to its ability to effectively manage the lateral and torsional stresses generated during deep-hole RC drilling. Transition bars are used under the stress of HDD projects for stress redistribution. The HDD drive collars, chucks, and subs segment has emerged as the fastest-growing segment In terms of end-use, the oil & gas extraction segment held the largest revenue share of 33.86% in 2022. This growth is attributed to the application of HDD in oil and gas exploration and production from onshore fields for various exploration and production activities carried out in the region Key Attributes: Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 108 Forecast Period 2022 - 2030 Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2022 $3.5 Billion Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2030 $5.64 Billion Compound Annual Growth Rate 5.9% Regions Covered North America Market Dynamics Market Driver Impact Analysis More economic, reliable, and efficient trenching as compared to other technologies Increasing Oil & Gas Drilling Activities Market Restraint Impact Analysis Lack of skilled personnel High capital cost of mini & midi HDD machines Industry Challenges Damages due to cross-bore technique Industry opportunities Rise in the Growth of the Telecommunication Industry Business Environment Analysis: North America Mini & Midi Horizontal Directional Drilling Market Industry Analysis - Porter's PESTEL analysis Impact of COVID-19 on North America Mini & Midi Horizontal Directional Drilling Market East European Geopolitical Implications on the North America Mini & Midi Horizontal Directional Drilling Market Global Mini & Midi Horizontal Directional Drilling Market, 2018 - 2030 (USD Million) Competitive Landscape Recent Developments & Their Impact Analysis, by Key Market Participants Financial Performance Product Benchmarking Company Market Positioning Company Heat Map Analysis Market Share Analysis Strategy Mapping Expansions Mergers & acquisitions Collaborations New facility/product launches Company Profiles Barbco, Inc. Creighton Rock Drill Ltd. Direct Horizontal Drilling, Inc. Ellingson Companies Ferguson Michiana Inc. Horizontal Technology, Inc. Inrock Drilling Systems, Incorporated Kondex Corporation U.S.A. Laney Directional Drilling Co. Mccloskey International Mclaughlin Group, Inc. Midwest Underground Technology, Inc. Prime Horizontal The Charles Machines Works, Inc. (Ditch Witch) The Toro Company Vector Magnetics LLC Vermeer Corporation Vision Directional Drilling Vmt Gmbh Gesellschaft Fur Vermessungstechnik Machine Type Estimates & Trend Analysis Utility Vibratory Plow Utility Tractor Pile Driver Foundation Machines Boring Machines Others Application Estimates & Trend Analysis On-Shore Off-Shore Machine Size Estimates & Trend Analysis Mini Midi Parts Type Estimates & Trend Analysis Rigs Pipes Bits Reamers Tooling Estimates & Trend Analysis Transition Rods HDD Drill Rods HDD Paddle Bits HDD Drive Collars, Chucks, and Subs HDD Swivels & Pulling Equipment Others End-use Estimates & Trend Analysis Oil & Gas Extraction Utility Telecommunication For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/ygogu4 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. Attachment Dublin, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma - Pipeline Insight, 2023" clinical trials has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report provides comprehensive insights about 18+ companies and 20+ pipeline drugs in Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma pipeline landscape. It covers the pipeline drug profiles, including clinical and nonclinical stage products. It also covers the therapeutics assessment by product type, stage, route of administration, and molecule type. It further highlights the inactive pipeline products in this space. Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a subtype of a family of aggressive cholangiocarcinomas, tumors that arise from cholangiocytes of the biliary tree. Cholangiocarcinoma is defined by anatomic location and can arise throughout the biliary tree: distally, peri-hilar region, or intrahepatic. This report outlays comprehensive insights of present scenario and growth prospects across the indication. A detailed picture of the Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma pipeline landscape is provided which includes the disease overview and Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma treatment guidelines. The assessment part of the report embraces, in depth Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma commercial assessment and clinical assessment of the pipeline products under development. In the report, detailed description of the drug is given which includes mechanism of action of the drug, clinical studies, NDA approvals (if any), and product development activities comprising the technology, Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma collaborations, licensing, mergers and acquisition, funding, designations and other product related details. Report Highlights The companies and academics are working to assess challenges and seek opportunities that could influence Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma R&D. The therapies under development are focused on novel approaches to treat/improve Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma. Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma Emerging Drugs Chapters This segment of the Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma report encloses its detailed analysis of various drugs in different stages of clinical development, including phase II, I, preclinical and Discovery. It also helps to understand clinical trial details, expressive pharmacological action, agreements and collaborations, and the latest news and press releases. Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma Emerging Drugs CTX-009: Compass Therapeutics CTX-009 is a bispecific antibody that simultaneously targets Delta-like ligand 4 (DLL4) and vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A). This next generation angiogenesis inhibitor has completed a Phase I dose escalation and expansion study, and a Phase Ib study in combination with chemotherapy. As a monotherapy, CTX-009 demonstrated clinical benefit in heavily pre-treated patients who had progressed after prior therapy with chemotherapy regimens containing VEGF blockers such as bevacizumab and ramucirumab. Several clinical responses were observed in patients with advanced colorectal cancer and in patients with gastric cancer. Additional durable responses were also observed in the combination study with chemotherapy in patients with cholangiocarcinoma. Currently, the drug is in Phase II/III stage of Clinical trial evaluation for the treatment of Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma. Zanidatamab: Zymeworks Zanidatamab is an investigational bispecific antibody, based on Zymeworks' Azymetric platform that can simultaneously bind two non-overlapping epitopes of HER2, known as biparatopic binding. This unique design results in multiple mechanisms of action including dual HER2 signal blockade, increased binding and removal of HER2 protein from the cell surface, and potent effector function leading to encouraging antitumor activity in patients. Zymeworks, along with collaborators Jazz and BeiGene, are developing zanidatamab in multiple Phase I, Phase II and pivotal clinical trials globally as a targeted treatment option for patients with solid tumors that express HER2. Currently, the drug is in Phase II stage of Clinical trial evaluation for the treatment of Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma. KIN-3248: Kinnate Biopharma KIN-3248 is a small-molecule kinase inhibitor that targets cancer-associated alterations in the FGFR2 and FGFR3 genes, which are among the most commonly identified oncogenic drivers detected in solid tumor cancers. KIN-3248 aims to address the primary driver-alteration and clinically observed and predicted FGFR 2/3 mutations that drive resistance to current FGFR2- and FGFR3-targeted therapies in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC). In preclinical studies, the company observed inhibitory activity across a broad range of clinically relevant mutations that drive acquired resistance. The company believes that by addressing these mutations and broadly covering FGFR isoforms, the drug may be able to meaningfully increase the duration of response (DoR). Currently, the drug is in the Phase I stage of its development for the treatment of Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma. Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma: Therapeutic Assessment This segment of the report provides insights about the different Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma drugs segregated based on following parameters that define the scope of the report, such as: Major Players in Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma There are approx. 18+ key companies which are developing the therapies for Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma. The companies which have their Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma drug candidates in the most advanced stage, i.e. Phase II/III include, Compass Therapeutics. Key Questions Answered How many companies are developing Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma drugs? How many Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma drugs are developed by each company? How many emerging drugs are in mid-stage, and late-stage of development for the treatment of Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma? What are the key collaborations (Industry-Industry, Industry-Academia), Mergers and acquisitions, licensing activities related to the Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma therapeutics? What are the recent trends, drug types and novel technologies developed to overcome the limitation of existing therapies? What are the clinical studies going on for Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma and their status? What are the key designations that have been granted to the emerging drugs? Key Players Compass Therapeutics Zymeworks Kinnate Biopharma Hutchmed InnoCare Pharma Medivir AB Amgen Basilea Pharmaceutica Virogin Biotech Ltd. Lisata Therapeutics Key Products CTX-009 Zanidatamab KIN-3248 HMPL-453 ICP-192 MIV-818 Bemarituzumab Derazantinib VG161 LSTA1 Phases Late stage products (Phase III) Mid-stage products (Phase II) Early-stage product (Phase I) along with the details of Pre-clinical and Discovery stage candidates Discontinued & Inactive candidates Route of Administration Products have been categorized under various ROAs such as Oral Intravenous Subcutaneous Parenteral Topical Molecule Type Products have been categorized under various Molecule types such as Recombinant fusion proteins Small molecule Monoclonal antibody Peptide Polymer Gene therapy Product Type Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma Report Insights Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma Pipeline Analysis Therapeutic Assessment Unmet Needs Impact of Drugs Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma Report Assessment Pipeline Product Profiles Therapeutic Assessment Pipeline Assessment Inactive drugs assessment Unmet Needs For more information about this clinical trials report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rmbdy3 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. Dublin, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "ZILOSUL Emerging Drug Insight and Market Forecast - 2032" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report provides comprehensive insights about ZILOSUL for osteoarthritis in the six major markets. A detailed picture of the ZILOSUL for osteoarthritis in the 6MM, i.e., the United States, EU4 (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) and the United Kingdom, along with Canada, and Korea for the study period 2019 -2032 is provided in this report along with a detailed description of the ZILOSUL for osteoarthritis. ZILOSUL (Pentosan polysulfate sodium) (PPS) is a semi-synthetic drug manufactured from the wood chips of European beech trees. Extracted glucuronoxylans are sulfated to produce a negatively charged product that mimics glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). GAGs are complex carbohydrates that play a regulatory role in the body by interacting with proteins involved with inflammation. The report provides insights about mechanism of action, dosage and administration, as well as research and development including regulatory milestones, along with other developmental activities. Further, it also consists of future market assessments inclusive of the ZILOSUL market forecast analysis for osteoarthritis in the 6MM, along with Canada and Korea, SWOT, analysts' views, comprehensive overview of market competitors, and brief about other emerging therapies in osteoarthritis. ZILOSUL Analytical Perspective In-depth ZILOSUL Market Assessment This report provides a detailed market assessment of ZILOSUL for osteoarthritis in the six major markets, i.e., the United States, EU4 (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) and the United Kingdom, along with Canada and Korea. This segment of the report provides forecasted sales data from 2025 to 2032. ZILOSUL Clinical Assessment The report provides the clinical trials information of ZILOSUL for osteoarthritis covering trial interventions, trial conditions, trial status, start and completion dates. Report Highlights In the coming years, the market scenario for osteoarthritis is set to change due to the extensive research and incremental healthcare spending across the world; which would expand the size of the market to enable the drug manufacturers to penetrate more into the market. The companies are developing therapies that focus on novel approaches to treat/improve the disease condition, assess challenges, and seek opportunities that could influence ZILOSUL dominance. Other emerging products for osteoarthritis are expected to give tough market competition to ZILOSUL and launch of late-stage emerging therapies in the near future will significantly impact the market. A detailed description of regulatory milestones, and developmental activities, provide the current development scenario of ZILOSUL in osteoarthritis. This in-depth analysis of the forecasted sales data of ZILOSUL from 2025 to 2032 will support the clients in the decision-making process regarding their therapeutic portfolio by identifying the overall scenario of the ZILOSUL in osteoarthritis. Key Topics Covered: 1. Report Introduction 2. ZILOSUL Overview in Osteoarthritis 2.1. Product Detail 2.2. Clinical Development 2.2.1. Clinical studies 2.2.2. Clinical trials information 2.2.3. Safety and efficacy 2.3. Other Developmental Activities 2.4. Product Profile 3. Competitive Landscape (Marketed Therapies) 4. Competitive Landscape (Late-stage Emerging Therapies) 5. ZILOSUL Market Assessment 5.1. Market Outlook of ZILOSUL in Osteoarthritis 5.2. 6MM, Canada and Korea Analysis 5.2.1. Market Size of ZILOSUL in the 6MM, Canada and Korea for Osteoarthritis 5.3. Country-wise Market Analysis 5.3.1. Market Size of ZILOSUL in the United States for Osteoarthritis 5.3.2. Market Size of ZILOSUL in Germany for Osteoarthritis 5.3.3. Market Size of ZILOSUL in France for Osteoarthritis 5.3.4. Market Size of ZILOSUL in Italy for Osteoarthritis 5.3.5. Market Size of ZILOSUL in Spain for Osteoarthritis 5.3.6. Market Size of ZILOSUL in the United Kingdom for Osteoarthritis 5.3.7. Market Size of ZILOSUL in Canada for Osteoarthritis 5.3.8. Market Size of ZILOSUL in Korea for Osteoarthritis 6. SWOT Analysis 7. Analysts' Views 8. Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/c91yam 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. Dublin, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Liposomal Cyclosporine A Emerging Drug Insight and Market Forecast - 2032" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report provides comprehensive insights about liposomal cyclosporine A for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome (BOS) in the seven major markets. A detailed picture of the liposomal cyclosporine A for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome in the 7MM, i.e., the United States, EU4 (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) and the United Kingdom, and Japan for the study period 2019-2032 is provided in this report along with a detailed description of the liposomal cyclosporine A for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome. The report provides insights about mechanism of action, dosage and administration, as well as research and development including regulatory milestones, along with other developmental activities. Further, it also consists of future market assessments inclusive of the liposomal cyclosporine A market forecast analysis for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome in the 7MM, SWOT, analysts' views, comprehensive overview of market competitors, and brief about other emerging therapies in bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome. Drug Summary Liposomal Cyclosporine A for inhalation (L-CsA-i) is a novel liposomal formulation of cyclosporine A developed for inhaled delivery to the lungs. Calcineurin inhibitors (CNIs), like cyclosporine A, are highly potent immunosuppressive drugs and a cornerstone of lung transplant medicine. L-CsA-i is administered via a drug-specific Investigational eFlow Technology nebulizer system (PARI Pharma GmbH). The investigational drug-device combination is designed to deliver L-CsA-i to the site of disease in the lung. L-CsA-i is currently being evaluated to treat BOS in patients aged 6 years and older in the BOSTON clinical development program, which comprises five ongoing or planned trials. These include the pivotal Phase III BOSTON-1 and BOSTON-2 studies in adults with BOS after lung transplantation, the open-label extension BOSTON-3 study, the safety and exploratory efficacy BOSTON-4 study, which is also the first to evaluate the treatment in adults with BOS after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant, and the BOSTON-5 safety study evaluating L-CsA-i in pediatric patients. Liposomal Cyclosporine A Analytical Perspective In-depth Liposomal Cyclosporine A Market Assessment This report provides a detailed market assessment of liposomal cyclosporine A for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome in the seven major markets, i.e., the United States, EU4 (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) and the United Kingdom, and Japan. This segment of the report provides forecasted sales data from 2027 to 2032. Liposomal Cyclosporine A Clinical Assessment The report provides the clinical trials information of liposomal cyclosporine A for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome covering trial interventions, trial conditions, trial status, start and completion dates. Report Highlights In the coming years, the market scenario for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome is set to change due to the extensive research and incremental healthcare spending across the world; which would expand the size of the market to enable the drug manufacturers to penetrate more into the market. The companies are developing therapies that focus on novel approaches to treat/improve the disease condition, assess challenges, and seek opportunities that could influence liposomal cyclosporine A dominance. Other emerging products for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome are expected to give tough market competition to liposomal cyclosporine A and launch of late-stage emerging therapies in the near future will significantly impact the market. A detailed description of regulatory milestones, and developmental activities, provide the current development scenario of liposomal cyclosporine A in bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome. This in-depth analysis of the forecasted sales data of liposomal cyclosporine A from 2027 to 2032 will support the clients in the decision-making process regarding their therapeutic portfolio by identifying the overall scenario of the liposomal cyclosporine A in bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome. Key Questions What is the product type, route of administration and mechanism of action of liposomal cyclosporine A? What is the clinical trial status of the study related to liposomal cyclosporine A in bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome and study completion date? What are the key collaborations, mergers and acquisitions, licensing and other activities related to the liposomal cyclosporine A development? What are the key designations that have been granted to liposomal cyclosporine A for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome? What is the forecasted market scenario of liposomal cyclosporine A for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome? What are the forecasted sales of liposomal cyclosporine A in the seven major countries, including the United States, Europe (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom), and Japan? What are the other emerging products available and how are these giving competition to liposomal cyclosporine A for bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome? Which are the late-stage emerging therapies under development for the treatment of bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome? Key Topics Covered: 1. Report Introduction 2. Liposomal Cyclosporine A Overview in Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 2.1. Product Detail 2.2. Clinical Development 2.2.1. Clinical studies 2.2.2. Clinical trials information 2.2.3. Safety and efficacy 2.3. Other Developmental Activities 2.4. Product Profile 3. Competitive Landscape (Late-stage Emerging Therapies) 4. Liposomal Cyclosporine A Market Assessment 4.1. Market Outlook of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 4.2. 7MM Analysis 4.2.1. Market Size of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in the 7MM for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 4.3. Country-wise Market Analysis 4.3.1. Market Size of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in the United States for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 4.3.2. Market Size of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in Germany for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 4.3.3. Market Size of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in France for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 4.3.4. Market Size of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in Italy for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 4.3.5. Market Size of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in Spain for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 4.3.6. Market Size of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in the United Kingdom for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 4.3.7. Market Size of Liposomal Cyclosporine A in Japan for Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome 5. SWOT Analysis 6. Analysts' Views 7. Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/k7rvrl 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. ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IBN (InvestorBrandNetwork), a multifaceted communications organization committed to connecting companies with the investment community through its dynamic portfolio of 60+ brands, is delighted to announce its re-engagement as the Official Media Partner for The Microcap Conference . Organized by DealFlow Events, The Microcap Conference is scheduled to take place from January 30, 2024, to February 1, 2024, at the renowned Caesars Atlantic City Hotel & Casino, located at 2100 Pacific Avenue, Atlantic City, NJ. The Microcap Conference will serve as a crucial platform for investment, education and collaboration within the microcap sector. This eagerly awaited event builds upon two decades of DealFlow Events' experience in hosting exceptional conferences that cater to the U.S. financial markets. The conference's distinguished attendees will include senior microcap and private company executives, institutional and retail investors, business leaders from brokerage, law, and accounting firms, investor relations professionals, and more. The conference will feature specialized programming geared towards the microcap space, fostering business efficiency and forging lasting relationships with industry peers. In its capacity as the media sponsor for the event, IBN will harness its comprehensive corporate communications solutions to enhance the conference's visibility through an impressive array of strategic tools and influential digital channels. This approach aims to expand the reach of invited speakers, event sponsors and the conference itself, leveraging the power of multi-brand social media technologies and IBN's expansive syndication network. Furthermore, IBN will provide a complimentary syndicated article for each presenting company to amplify their reach. With a coverage network extending to 5,000+ syndication partners and a diverse array of online channels, IBN will be further extending the conference's digital presence. Steven Dresner, CEO of DealFlow Events, commented, "At DealFlow, we are pleased to once again collaborate with IBN for our January event. As the market leader in corporate communications, IBN has always greatly improved our outreach and ensured seamless media coverage at our conferences. We are tremendously excited about our event in January and appreciate IBN's continued support." Jonathan Keim, communications director for IBN, added, "The upcoming conference will offer highly specialized educational and networking opportunities. Our team is excited to be part of the three-day event as we always have an exceptional time at the conferences organized by DealFlow Events. Over the next couple of months, we will be collaborating closely with their team to maximize visibility among our investor audiences." For registration details, please visit The Microcap Conference Tickets . About IBN IBN consists of financial brands introduced to the investment public over the course of 17+ years. With IBN, we have amassed a collective audience of millions of social media followers. These distinctive investor brands aim to fulfill the unique needs of a growing base of client-partners. IBN will continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients. Through our Dynamic Brand Portfolio (DBP) , IBN provides: (1) access to a network of wire solutions via InvestorWire to reach all target markets, industries and demographics in the most effective manner possible; (2) article and editorial syndication to 5,000+ news outlets ; (3) Press Release Enhancement to ensure maximum impact; (4) full-scale distribution to a growing social media audience; (5) a full array of corporate communications solutions ; and (6) total news coverage solutions. For more information, please visit https://www.InvestorBrandNetwork.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the InvestorBrandNetwork website applicable to all content provided by IBN, wherever published or re-published: http://IBN.fm/Disclaimer Staten Island, NY, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For a fifth consecutive year, the Tunnel to Towers Season of Hope is set to fulfill its commitment to DO GOOD and honor the sacrifices of Americas heroes. This year, the foundation vows to deliver 40 mortgage-free homes to deserving recipients nationwide by Christmas Eve, bringing the total to over 200 mortgage-free homes for the year. The fifth annual Season of Hope begins with the Tunnel to Towers Foundations pledge to pay off the mortgage on the Clarksville, Tennessee home of Chief Warrant Officer 3 Stephen Dwyer. Dwyer tragically lost his life on November 10, 2023, along with four fellow crew members when their Blackhawk helicopter crashed while conducting aerial refueling training over the Mediterranean Sea. Dwyer came from a military family. Both of his parents were graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and he followed in their footsteps and received his commission in 2009 from the Military Academy. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Air Medal with Combat Device among many others, for his service. He left behind his wife, Allie, and three boys. Tunnel to Towers Chairman and CEO Frank Siller delivered the news to his wife telling her Tunnel to Towers would be paying off the mortgage on their Clarksville home by the end of the year. "As families eagerly anticipate celebrating the holiday season together, Allie and her boys must navigate a future without their beloved husband and father. I hope the promise that they can remain in the home they once shared will offer them some stability in this uncertain time," said Siller. The Tunnel to Towers Gold Star Family Home Program honors the legacy of those who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving our country. The Foundation provides a mortgage-free home to surviving spouses with young children. Thanks to the generous support of Americans across the country this year the Tunnel to Towers Foundation will deliver over 200 mortgage-free homes to families across all of our programs: the Fallen First Responder Home Program; the Smart Home Program; and the Gold Star Family Home Program. Learn more about Tunnel to Towers' mission and please consider supporting Americas heroes by donating just $11 per month to Tunnel to Towers at T2T.org , About the Tunnel to Towers Foundation Born from the tragedy of 9/11, the Tunnel to Towers Foundation carries out its mission to do good, by providing mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children and by building specially adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. Tunnel to Towers is also committed to eradicating veteran homelessness and helping America Never Forget September 11, 2001. Visit T2T.org to learn more and follow Tunnel to Towers on Facebook, X, and Instagram. Attachment SARASOTA, Fla., Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rightworks, the only intelligent cloud service provider delivering solutions purpose-built for accounting firms and professionals, brings together accounting firm leaders and staff from across the country to discuss advancing the profession through technology, education and community. Inspire 2023 offers engaging keynotes and information-packed sessions focused exclusively on helping firms thrive in a world of security threats, increasing compliance demands, overwhelming technology choices and ongoing staffing shortages. Its never been more important for leaders within the accounting profession to work together and help solve persistent challenges that plague firm owners, said Darren Root, Chief Strategist at Rightworks. Our Inspire conference offers an established forum where everyone can share best practices and identify innovative ways to elevate the profession through AI and other advanced technologies. Author and CEO of Marketing AI Institute, Paul Roetzer, among keynote speakers As rapid advancements in artificial intelligence present accounting firm leaders with the opportunity to reimagine and future-proof their business models, AI technologies offer the ability to build smarter organizations that are more efficient, profitable, innovative and client-centric. Leveraging artificial intelligence for accounting will be discussed in several sessions including an event keynote Beyond ChatGPT: Transforming accounting firms with artificial intelligence, delivered by Speaker Paul Roetzer. Roetzer is founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute and co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing and the Future of Business. Other sessions include: AI now: Learn 5 things you can do now to create efficiencies this busy season Implementing Smart Team Management: Creating a culture that keeps people Strategic packaging: A case study on how one firm increased revenue by 10% Expanding business beyond payroll in today's world of work Its the law: Building and getting the most from your WISP Empowering your future through technology outsourcing Firm management: Learn how Canopy goes beyond the traditional practice management solution Seasons: Learning how to deal with change The future of the cloud platform: Rightworks OneSpace, Connect and Academy Tax workflow automation panel (featuring SurePrep and Thomson Reuters) The BOSS model: Executing the foundation of advisory services Mindful metrics: Master the right KPIs to manage todays firm and create greater value for tomorrow Successfully adding advisory services for your clients Fireside chat with Joel and Darren: Exploring the future of the modern accounting firm Planning and executing a wholistic security strategy You are NOT an imposter: Understanding your value Inspire runs November 28-30, 2023, at the Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, Florida. Registration is available through November 24. Visit our Rightworks Inspire 2023 page to learn more about the conference. Click here for the full agenda. Connect with Rightworks Visit our newsroom, read our blog and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. About Rightworks Rightworks is the only intelligent cloud provider offering a unified portfolio of advanced technology solutions purpose-built for accounting firms and professionals. Access to our always-here firm improvement communityRightworks Academyamplifies the value. Our customers partner with Rightworks to modernize and elevate their firms, protect client data, and maximize revenue potential. Media contact: Angel Flores 603-565-2194 aflores@rightworks.com MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bird Construction Inc. (TSX:BDT) is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a construction management contract for the Seneca Polytechnic Health & Wellness Centre Project (the Seneca Health & Wellness Centre) and a new multi-year task order under the previously announced Port Hope Area Initiative (PHAI) Master Construction Contract (MCC) by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories ("CNL"). The value of the awards exceeds $130 million. A dynamic multi-storey health and wellness complex, the Seneca Health & Wellness Centre will be a destination for students and employees to support their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness. In alignment with Senecas commitment to sustainability, many green practices will be incorporated, including mass timber, rainwater harvesting, solar energy, geothermal energy, renewable building materials, green roofing, and operational sustainability. This complex will also serve as the new home for the Seneca Student Federation. The newly awarded task order by CNL expands Birds responsibilities on approximately 400 sites in the municipality of Port Hope. Bird will be responsible for the engineering, design, procurement, and remediation and restoration activities for the sites where Bird has been performing remediation activities since late last year. Birds expanded responsibilities in Port Hope reinforce the Companys growing presence in environmental remediation and the nuclear sector. There remains a significant pipeline of work under the overarching MCC announced in 2022, which gives Bird the opportunity to bid on over one billion dollars in environmental remediation work. "We are pleased to continue growing our innovative and sustainable portfolio of projects in Ontario. From kicking off our collaborative approach with Seneca to deepening our roots in Port Hope, we strive to foster impactful community relationships and uphold our commitment to a strong client focus," noted Mr. Teri McKibbon, President and CEO of Bird. "Securing these awards advances our strategy to build consistent, multi-year revenue streams and to make lasting impacts on post-secondary education while actively contributing to a more sustainable future. This press release contains forward-looking information (as defined in applicable Canadian securities legislation) that involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements to materially differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. The Toronto Stock Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information, contact: T.L. McKibbon, President & CEO or W.R. Gingrich, CFO Bird Construction Inc. 5700 Explorer Drive, Suite 400 Mississauga, ON L4W 0C6 Phone: (905) 602-4122 About Bird Construction /NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/ VANCOUVER, Nov. 21, 2023 - First Mining Gold Corp. ("First Mining" or the "Company") (TSX: FF) (OTCQX: FFMGF) (FRANKFURT: FMG) is pleased to announce that due to demand, the Company has upsized its $5 million non-brokered private placement financing, previously announced on October 26, 2023, to approximately $10 million (the "Offering"). The Company has closed the first tranche of the Offering and issued 63,993,000 units of the Company (the "Units") at a price of $0.125 per Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $8 million (the "First Tranche"). First Mining expects to close the remainder of the Offering on or about December 7, 2023. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company (each, a "Common Share") and one-half of one Common Share purchase warrant (each whole Common Share purchase warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to acquire one Common Share at an exercise price of $0.20 per Common Share at any time prior to the date which is 36 months following the closing date of the First Tranche. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering to advance its Springpole and Duparquet gold projects, as well as for general working capital and corporate purposes. All of the securities issued under the First Tranche are subject to a statutory hold period of four months and one day in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws. The Offering remains subject to the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the final approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX"). This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons (as such term is defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. About First Mining Gold Corp. First Mining is a gold developer advancing two of the largest gold projects in Canada, the Springpole Gold Project in northwestern Ontario, where we have commenced a Feasibility Study and permitting activities are on-going with a draft Environmental Impact Statement ("EIS") for the project published in June 2022, and the Duparquet Project in Quebec, a PEA stage development project located on the Destor-Porcupine Fault Zone in the prolific Abitibi region. First Mining also owns the Cameron Gold Project in Ontario and a portfolio of gold project interests including the Pickle Crow Gold Project (being advanced in partnership with Auteco Minerals Ltd.), the Hope Brook Gold Project (being advanced in partnership with Big Ridge Gold Corp.), and a large equity interest in Treasury Metals Inc. First Mining was established in 2015 by Mr. Keith Neumeyer, founding President and CEO of First Majestic Silver Corp. ON BEHALF OF First Mining Gold Corp. Daniel W. Wilton Chief Executive Officer and Director Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation, including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "plans", "projects", "intends", "estimates", "envisages", "potential", "possible", "strategy", "goals", "opportunities", "objectives", or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this news release relate to future events or future performance and reflect current estimates, predictions, expectations or beliefs regarding future events and include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) the completion of the remainder of the Offering and the timing thereof; (ii) the total gross proceeds to be raised under the Offering; (iii) the intended use of the net proceeds of the Offering; (iv) the receipt of all regulatory and stock exchange approvals; (v) the Company's plans with respect to advancing its portfolio of gold projects; and (vi) Feasibility and permitting activities related to the Springpole Project. All forward-looking statements are based on First Mining's or its consultants' current beliefs as well as various assumptions made by them and information currently available to them. 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 the respective parties, 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: failure to obtain final approval from the TSX; failure to close the remainder of the Offering; the Company's business, operations and financial condition potentially being materially adversely affected by the outbreak of epidemics, pandemics or other health crises, such as COVID-19, and by reactions by government and private actors to such outbreaks; risks to employee health and safety as a result of the outbreak of epidemics, pandemics or other health crises, such as COVID-19, that may result in a slowdown or temporary suspension of operations at some or all of the Company's mineral properties as well as its head office; fluctuations in the spot and forward price of gold, silver, base metals or certain other commodities; fluctuations in the currency markets (such as the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar); changes in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formations, pressures, cave-ins and flooding); the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining; employee relations; relationships with and claims by local communities, indigenous populations and other stakeholders; availability and increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development; title to properties.; and the additional risks described in the Company's Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2022 filed with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities under the Company's SEDAR+ profile at www.sedarplus.ca, and in the Company's Annual Report on Form 40-F filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and on EDGAR. First Mining cautions that the foregoing list of factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive. When relying on our forward-looking statements to make decisions with respect to First Mining, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. First Mining does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made from time to time by the Company or on our behalf, except as required by law. SOURCE First Mining Gold Corp. Vancouver, November 21, 2023 - Scorpio Gold Corp. (TSXV: SGN) ("Scorpio Gold" or the "Company") announces that, further to the Company's press release on November 8, 2023, the consolidation of the outstanding common shares of the Company (each, a "Common Share") on the basis of one post-Consolidation Common Share for every nine pre-Consolidation Common Shares is anticipated to be made effective for trading purposes on Friday, November 24, 2023 (the "Effective Date"). It is anticipated that the Common Shares will begin trading on the TSX Venture Exchange on a post-Consolidation basis at market open on the Effective Date. The new CUSIP of the Common Shares will be 80918M302 and the new ISIN will be CA80918M3021. Shareholders with physical certificates will receive a letter of transmittal from Computershare Trust Company of Canada, the Company's transfer agent. All registered shareholders will be required to send their certificate(s) representing pre-Consolidation shares, along with a properly executed letter of transmittal, to the Company's transfer agent, in accordance with the instructions provided in the letter of transmittal. Shareholders who hold their shares through a broker, investment dealer, bank or trust company should contact that nominee or intermediary on the procedures for processing the Consolidation of their shares, and for determining their post-Consolidation positions. Further details regarding the Consolidation are provided in the press release of the Company dated November 8, 2023. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Scorpio Gold Corp. Chris Zerga President and Chief Executive Officer Tel: 775-753-4778 Email: scorpio@scorpiogold.com Website: www.scorpiogold.com 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. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements with respect to the Company. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results suggested by the forward-looking statements. In addition, the forward-looking statements require management to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. There is significant risk that the forward-looking statements will not prove to be accurate, that the management's assumptions may not be correct and that actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Generally forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "anticipate", "will", "expect", "may", "continue", "could", "estimate", "forecast", "plan", "potential" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release may include, but are not limited to, the issuance of Common Shares in settlement of the amounts owing under the Debentures and the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange to the settlement of the interest payment on the Debentures in Common Shares. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect including, but not limited to, the inability to obtain the requisite TSX Venture Exchange approval The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof or the dates specifically referenced in this press release, where applicable. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any forward-looking statements that are contained or incorporated in this press release. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188338 KELOWNA, Nov. 22, 2023 - Metalex Ventures Ltd. (TSXV: MTX) (the "Company") announces that its 100% owned A1 claim block shows potential for hosting lithium mineralization. Quebec For close to 20 years Metalex has quietly made a substantial investment in central Quebec. We recognized that central Quebec not only had substantial geological potential to host precious metal, base metal and diamond deposits but was also significantly underexplored. Over this period the Company has built a comprehensive geochemical dataset, collecting nearly 10,000 heavy mineral samples covering almost 400,000 square kilometres. The area is shown in Figure 1. Heavy mineral samples are a powerful technique to explore for a variety of commodities. A large 10 kilogram sample of fine material within stream gravels is collected in the field. At the CF Minerals laboratory ("CFM") the sample undergoes sequential concentration using specific gravity and magnetic techniques to produce small fractions with specific physical properties in which pieces of mineralization or indicators associated with mineralization are concentrated. Analysis of these fractions for metals or diamond indicators provides insight into mineralization up stream and up ice of the sample location. Due to the concentrating effects of both the collection and processing methods mineralization can often be detected tens of kilometres away. So far, this work has resulted in the staking of several areas for a variety of commodities. Metalex's current claim blocks are shown in Figure 1. Also shown in Figure 1 are the commodities of interest for each claim block. As Metalex has retained the concentrate fractions, it is possible to re-analyze them should new commodities become of interest. The increased demand for lithium is a prime example. Research conducted at CFM shows that spodumene (the lithium-containing mineral in pegmatites) reports to one of the concentrate fractions. Analysis of this fraction at ALS Chemex in North Vancouver using the ME-MS89L technique has been used to detect lithium. Lithium Metalex's A1 claim block is located in the vicinity of significant lithium discoveries made by Patriot Battery Metals' Corvette property and Winsome Resources' Adina property (see Figure 2). Both of these properties host lithium deposits in pegmatites. Re-analysis of previously collected samples indicates that the A1 claim block hosts lithium in pegmatites (Figure 3). Lithium contents are elevated in the northern portion of the claim block. Field work confirmed that there are extensive outcrops of pegmatite in this portion of the property and an initial rock sampling program was undertaken. Additional work on this claim block will be undertaken next year to define the bedrock source. With sample coverage of nearly 400,000 square kilometres, Metalex has a substantial advantage in locating additional lithium deposits. It is believed that this is the most comprehensive geochemical dataset of the region. Gold Metalex has staked five claim blocks for their gold potential. Substantial work has been undertaken on these this year. Claim block A5 has had its maiden drill program, with five holes drilled testing geophysical conductors up ice of anomalous gold in heavy mineral samples. Locations of the drill holes are presented in Figure 4, along with the geophysical conductors being tested. Samples from these holes were prepared at CFM prior to being sent to ALS Chemex for analysis. Results are expected shortly. Claim blocks A1 and A2 have also had an airborne EM survey flown by Geotech Airborne Geophysical Surveys ("Geotech"). Soil samples have been collected down-ice from the detected conductors to determine whether one or more of these are the source of the gold in down-ice samples. Claim block B1 has not yet had an airborne geophysical survey flown, but soil samples have been collected to better isolate the source of gold mineralization. Base Metals Metalex engaged Geotech Airborne Geophysical Surveys to fly an airborne electromagnetic and magnetic survey over its B3 claim block. Geochemical results from the claims suggest that they host nickel-copper-cobalt mineralization. This airborne survey will assist in drill targeting. The survey flights have been completed and the results of the survey are awaited. Summary Quebec is a prime jurisdiction for mining, frequently ranked in the top ten regions globally in terms of investment attractiveness by the Fraser Institute survey of mining companies. Metalex, recognizing not only the attractive investment climate in Quebec but also the prospective and underexplored nature of central Quebec, has made a substantial investment in building a unique geochemical dataset over nearly 400,000 square kilometres. This dataset provides Metalex a substantial advantage in identifying new mineralized areas, including lithium. Budgeting for the re-analysis of the existing samples for lithium is underway. The Company looks forward to receiving the drill results targeting gold at claim block A5. In addition, field programs this fall (over 1,000 samples collected) on a number of claim groups focused on moving targets forward to the drill testing stage. Metalex looks forward to receiving these results which will allow the drilling to be prioritized. A busy season in Quebec lies ahead in 2024. The technical information and results reported here have been reviewed by Mr. Chad Ulansky P.Geo., a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, who is responsible for the technical content of this release. Signed, Charles Fipke Charles Fipke Chairman FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: Certain of the statements and information in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the expected use of proceeds of the private placement. Further, any statements or information that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "plans", "estimates", "intends", "targets", "goals", "forecasts", "objectives", "potential" or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements or information. The Company's forward-looking statements and information are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management as of the date of this press release, and other than as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements and information if circumstances or management's assumptions, beliefs, expectations or opinions should change, or changes in any other events affecting such statements or information. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information. 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. SOURCE Metalex Ventures Ltd. November 22th - Vancouver, British Columbia - Lake Winn Resources Corp. ("Lake Winn" or the "Company") (TSXV:LWR) (FSE:EE1A) is pleased to announce results and summarize work from its Little Nahanni Pegmatite Project ("the Project") located in western Northwest Territories (NWT). The Project is 100% owned by Lake Winn and covers 9682.5 hectares (96.82 km2) of ground that covers the prolific Little Nahanni Pegmatite Group, a lithium-bearing pegmatite dyke swarm. Summarized Activities from 2023 The Little Nahanni Pegmatite Project was expanded by over 380% through the staking of ten mineral tenures (7182.5 ha). Rock and chip sampling was completed in the central and southern parts of the Little Nahanni Pegmatite Group dyke swarm. Soil sampling was completed along the edges of the dyke swarm to expand and delineate the extensions of the dykes into areas of cover. An Airborne Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) geophysical survey was flown in early 2023, with results now fully processed and interpreted. Detailed geological mapping was conducted over parts of the Little Nahanni Pegmatite dyke swarm to refine dyke geometries and evaluate drill targets. Field surveying was completed to ground truth historical drill pads and evaluate future drill sites. GeologicAI was contracted in early 2023 to scan historical drill core in order to obtain high-resolution drill core photos, and hyperspectral and XRF data. "2023 was an incredibly productive year for Lake Winn, with the completion of a robust and multi-faceted exploration program designed to aid in the discovery of additional lithium-bearing pegmatite dykes and advance the property to a drill-ready stage" stated Lake Winn's CEO, Patrick Power. "Our team is confident in putting together a larger scale program through the winter for the upcoming field season, which will include diamond drilling to test target high-priority areas that we identified this season." A total of 67 rock, 944 soil, 468 line-km of airborne SQUID surveys and geological mapping were completed during the 2023 field season. Field work was focused in the central and northern parts of the Little Nahanni Pegmatite Group dyke swarm, which has seen very limited systematic historical exploration. Highlights and discussion of this work are described in the following paragraphs. Rock and Chip Sampling Highlights (Figure 1) Peak value from spodumene-bearing pegmatite dykes was 3.52% Li A 10 m composite sample across an outcropping dyke returned 1.77% Li 2023 chip sampling highlights include: 2.11% Li2O over 1.70 m 1.62% Li2O over 3.10 m 1.52% Li2O over 3.00 m 1.90% Li2O over 1.62 m Rock samples collected from a 3-10 m wide spodumene-bearing dyke that can be traced over an 800 m strike length returned an average grade of 1.52% Li Click Image To View Full Size Rock sampling was mainly conducted in the southern part of the Little Nahanni Pegmatite dyke swarm. Historical work in this area is limited so field sampling was focused on evaluating the tenor of the spodumene-bearing pegmatite dykes. Lake Winn was highly successful in sampling numerous dykes in this area and identified multiple targets that warrant diamond drilling. Crews sampled numerous mapped spodumene- and lepidolite-bearing pegmatite dykes, which returned strongly elevated lithium values from nearly all samples collected in 2023. Lateral continuity in the southern part of the dyke swarm was also found to be exceptional. Individual dykes, ranging from one to ten metres in width and containing high spodumene content, were traced over strike lengths in excess of 800 m (see Figure 5). The southernmost portion of the known dyke swarm is an intriguing target on the property as there is evidence that the lithium-bearing dykes continue further southeast below cover; however, these extensions were never followed up by historical operators. Soil Sampling Highlights (Figure 2) Soil sampling successfully delineated the extension of dyke swarms that extend under cover into areas that have never been explored. 944 soil samples were collected in 2023 with a peak value of 730 ppm Li 565 soil samples returned greater than 100 ppm Li. 113 soil samples returned greater than 200 ppm Li. 7 soil samples returned greater than 500 ppm Li. Click Image To View Full Size Soil geochemical sampling was primarily focused along the eastern and southern margins of the known pegmatite dyke swarm. This sampling yielded highly elevated lithium-in-soil values along strike of known dykes and was successful in delineating the potential extensions of known pegmatite dykes under cover. Geophysical Surveying Highlights (Figure 3) Identified the Alpha PrimeAnomaly. A previously unidentified 7 km-long, 100 m-wide, linear geophysical anomaly that lies outside of the known dyke swarm. This anomaly coincides with elevated lithium-in-soil anomalies and is considered a high-priority follow up target for future exploration programs. Click Image To View Full Size Geological Mapping Highlights (Figures 4 and 5) Geological mapping was highly successful in refining the geometries of known pegmatite dykes within the Little Nahanni Pegmatite Group dyke swarm. Future targeting will focus on the highest density dyke swarms that show the greatest potential for broad pegmatite dyke intercepts. Click Image To View Full Size Click Image To View Full Size The Little Nahanni Pegmatite Group belongs to the rare-metal Lithium-Cesium-Tantalum (LCT) pegmatite dyke series of pegmatite dykes. Mineralization on the property is hosted within the Little Nahanni Pegmatite Group dyke swarm, a high-density swarm of metre-scale dykes (up to 10 m) that can be traced along strike for over 15 km and covers a zone over 200 m wide. Over 7 km of these dykes can be traced on Lake Winn's claims. To date, over 200 lithium-bearing pegmatite dykes have been identified within the swarm. Lithium minerals within the dyke swarm consist of spodumene, found as coarse grains up to 30 cm long and in concentrations of up to 70%, and lepidolite. Additional elevated values of tantalum, cesium and tin mineralization are also present within these dykes. Community Outreach and Engagement with Naha Dehe Dene Band Lake Winn travelled to Nahanni Butte, Northwest Territories to meet with the Naha Dehe Dene Band (NDDB) to present and discuss the Little Nahanni Pegmatite Project. "I was incredibly pleased with Lake Winn's first-ever visit to the community of Nahanni Butte. We had a wonderful introductory meeting with NDDB and look forward to continuing to grow the relationship between Lake Winn and the community in Nahanni Butte. I would like to thank Chief Vital and his team for their time and for hosting us in their beautiful community." - Patrick Power, CEO The Company would like to thank Archer, Cathro & Associates (1981) Limited for their geological support and field crews, and Capital Helicopters (1995) Inc. for their transportation support, which both contributed to the success of the 2023 field program. QA/QC Analytical work for all samples was completed by ALS Canada Ltd., with sample preparation in Whitehorse, Yukon and geochemical analyses in North Vancouver, BC. Samples were fine crushed before a 250-gram split was pulverized to better than 85% passing 75 microns. Multi-element rock sample analysis for 48 elements was determined for all samples by the ME-MS81 procedure, which involves lithium borate fusion prior to acid dissolution and ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Mass Spectrometry) analysis. Soil sampling analysis was completed via ME-ICP41, which analyzed for 36 elements using Aqua Regia digestion with ICP-AES (Inductively Coupled Atomic Emissions Spectroscopy). Lithium results received from ALS were reported in Lithium (Li) ppm. A conversion to Lithium Oxide (Li2O) was made, which is equal to Li*2.153. Results referenced in this release represent highlight results only and also include samples collected in 2016. Technical information in this news release has been approved by Kelson Willms, P.Geo., a senior geologist with Archer, Cathro & Associates (1981) Limited and a qualified person for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101. About Lake Winn Resources Lake Winn Resources Corp. is a mineral exploration company focused on advancing the 100% owned Little Nahanni Pegmatite project ("LNPG") is located in western Northwest Territories near the Yukon Border. The project covers 9682.5 hectares that includes a major portion of a 13 km-long, and up to 500 m wide, lithium, cesium, and tantalum ("LCT") pegmatite dyke swarm. The project has had historic drilling and channel sampling that confirm significant lithium, tantalum, cesium, and tin. The Company was recently issued a 5-year Type-A Permit to conduct exploration on the Property. The permit is inclusive of camp construction, drilling, trenching, and channel sampling (see Press Release date May 9th, 2023). ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF Lake Winn Resources Corp. Patrick Power, President & CEO +1 (604) 218-8772 info@lakewinn.ca www.lakewinn.ca Neither the 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. Cautionary Statement Regarding "Forward-Looking" Information This news release contains "forward-looking statements" including but not limited to statements with respect to Lake Winn's plans, the estimation of a mineral resource, and the success of exploration activities. In this release, it is not certain if the discovery will be economic or not as this depends on many factors. Forward-looking statements, while based on management's best estimates and assumptions, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Factors that could affect our plans include our potential inability to raise funds as intended, and in such event, we may require all funds raised, if any, to be used for working capital rather than the intended uses as outlined. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward?looking statements. Lake Winn undertakes no obligation or responsibility to update forward?looking statements, except as required by law. Copyright (c) 2023 TheNewswire - All rights reserved. Paul Soubry is a successful business leader. President and CEO of New Flyer Industries -- the largest bus manufacturer in North America -- he is often called upon to speak at university commencements and various business conferences. Regardless of the event, a portion of every speech I have ever heard him make focuses on the people he works with. These comments are not merely a casual acknowledgement, but a heartfelt description of their fundamental importance to the success of the company.When was the last time you heard a political leader at any level speak about public servants in the same way? When have you heard any political leader, as part of his or her stump speech, make the links between our quality of life and the hard work of public servants?Soubry's speeches embody everything he has learned at his multi-billion dollar company. He runs a tight efficient organization, keeps a close eye on the bottom line and doesn't shy away from hard decisions. When the economy slows down and layoffs are necessary, he makes the cuts, but never gleefully, never casually, always with consideration of the hardship that this will cause.Soubry understands organizational culture, those elements of an organization that reach beyond rules and policy. He knows that for New Flyer Industries to function at peak efficiency and produce products of the very highest quality he needs ethical, responsible leadership at every level in the organization. He knows that to get the very best out of his people they must know they are valued.Every day millions of public servants go to work doing the business of a county, city, state or country. Sometimes they perform acts of great heroism, but most often, they simply do their jobs to the best of their ability. The archives of the Innovations in American Government program provide thousands of examples of public servants who are creative, hardworking and focused on delivering the many services that make it possible for a complex society to function.Yet our public dialogue about public service is unrelentingly negative. Public servants are described as a cost, a drag on the economy or as unaffordable and disposable. Unfortunately, none of this is new nor is it easy to change. In our rush to modernize public systems, we must keep in mind that along with new approaches, new technologies and new organizational forms we must develop a new message.In their excellent book, If We Can Put a Man on the Moon , John O'Leary and William Eggers make a fundamentally important point when they say "take it to the people." Political leaders are more responsive to public opinion than conventional wisdom would have you believe. In a world where citizens are challenged daily by rapid change, where we are exposed to and threatened by events in ways we never thought possible, our appreciation of the value of public service suffers.If we want public service to be better, more responsive and to utilize a range of new organizational models in a more transparent environment, we must do more than simply identify the risk-averse nature of public servants and exhort them to change. We must challenge the conventional view of public work. We must reawaken public understanding of the vital roles played by millions of individuals across the nation who make it possible for a large and complex society to achieve the very high standard of living we all expect.When I last spoke with Paul Soubry he had just come out of a board meeting where they had made a decision to pave and landscape the employee parking lots. His rationale for the expenditure: "I want our people to realize that they are valued from the moment they drive on the property."What is the message being conveyed by our governments to those who work for all of us? Brolly and Bolt partner to revolutionize auto insurance for ride-sharing drivers Graphic Online Business News Nov - 22 - 2023 , 14:17 Brolly, a pioneering insurtech company in Ghana, has teamed up with global ride-sharing giant Bolt, to launch a groundbreaking pay-as-you-go auto insurance service for ride-sharing drivers. This strategic partnership allows Bolt drivers in Ghana to access flexible, affordable insurance directly through the Bolt driver app, a move set to significantly enhance the financial stability and safety of drivers. The partnership introduces a 'pay small-small' option, which is pay-as-you-go coverage suted to the African economic environment. This enables drivers to pay for their auto insurance on a daily or weekly basis. The innovative approach adopted by Brolly deviates from the traditional model of hefty upfront premium payments, making comprehensive auto insurance more accessible and aligned with drivers income patterns The CEO of Brolly, Bernard Baah emphasized the transformative nature of this collaboration: "Our focus at Brolly is to make insurance coverage more accessible by aligning premium payments with customers' income patterns. By joining forces with Bolt, we're able to extend our innovative solution to thousands of drivers, giving them the confidence to go about their business. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where insurance penetration has stagnated at around 1%, this partnership could be a game-changer. Brolly, a Techstars-backed company, aims to address the issue of affordability, which is a significant barrier to higher insurance coverage in the region. The introduction of 'pay small-small' auto insurance, underwritten by Allianz, is tailored to meet the unique needs of the African market. The Country Manager for Bolt in Ghana, David Nikoi highlighted the benefits for their drivers: "Our drivers are at the core of our service, and we're constantly looking for ways to enhance their experience and provide added value. Collaborating with Brolly is a step forward in our commitment to supporting our drivers' well-being and financial stability. The first phase of the partnership focuses on insurance, with plans to expand into flexible vehicle repair payments in the near future. Before this alliance, Brolly successfully piloted the pay-as-you-go insurance model with over 2000 ride-sharing drivers, setting the stage for a broader rollout across other African markets. Bolt, since its entry into the African market in 2016, has been on a constant quest to enrich the lives of its partner drivers. This partnership with Brolly not only furthers this mission but also marks a significant step in enhancing the financial and operational landscape for ride-sharing drivers across Ghana and potentially, the rest of Africa. Cedi depreciation decimates Ghana's export/import values despite overall trade surplus Kweku Zurek Business News Nov - 22 - 2023 , 10:50 The mid-year trade report released by the Ghana Statistical Service has revealed that Ghana is grappling with a notable decline in the value of exports despite achieving a trade surplus of GH 2.4 billion in the first half of 2023. The report, which offers a comprehensive overview of Ghana's international trade dynamics, highlights the need for adaptive trade policies in response to currency fluctuations. While the overall trade balance appears positive with a significant surplus, a closer examination in US dollars terms reveals a concerning trend. Imports in the first half of 2023 are reported to be US$1.1 billion lower than the corresponding period in 2022, and exports have also seen a decrease of US$1.7 billion. The report said this significant disparity underscores the urgency for trade policies that can flexibly adapt to currency fluctuations, ensuring a more robust and sustainable trade environment. The report emphasized Ghana's efforts to diversify exports, particularly in food products. However, it noted that cocoa products and edible fruits and nuts still account for a staggering 80.3 percent of total food product exports. Additionally, despite attempts to broaden the import portfolio, ten food items imported in the first half of 2023 constitute over 50 percent of all imported food items. A positive aspect highlighted in the report is the surge in intra-African trade during the first half of 2023, where Ghana's exports outpaced imports from the continent. While African countries are the destination for 22.0 per cent of all Ghana's exports globally, the report suggests untapped potential for intra-African trade, particularly within the ECOWAS region. Surprisingly, ECOWAS represents less than half of Ghana's intra-African trade for both imports and exports. This indicates a significant potential to harness the benefits of ECOWAS trade agreements, presenting numerous trade possibilities within the regional bloc. Despite these positive trends, the report points out Ghana's heavy reliance on gold exports, constituting over 43.1 per cent of all exports. Mineral fuels and oils account for an additional 20.9 per cent. The concentration of refined petroleum imports (35.3%) highlights a more varied import portfolio compared to exports. As Ghana navigates the ever-changing international trade terrain, the report calls for proactive decision-making to explore opportunities, mitigate vulnerabilities, and pave the way toward a more resilient and prosperous future. Actress Omotola calls out Turkish airlines for not showing Nollywood movie on a flight Graphic Showbiz Showbiz News Nov - 22 - 2023 , 18:38 Popular Nollywood actress, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde has called out Turkish Airlines after allegedly failing to show any Nigerian movie during her 40-hour flight. The actress accused the airline of blatant disrespect and discrimination against African travelers. She took to her Instagram page yesterday to express her disappointment with the airline. The thespian wrote, Dear @turkishairlines, like many other Foreign companies you might be discriminating against African Destinations and Travelers and that needs to stop. (Read Sugar daddies competing with young men for their girlfriends unfair Berla Mundi) The Obvious Lack of details or Respect shown towards African paying customers spilled to on ground staff relationship. As if my 40hrs Long flight was not enough, an unexplained hop in Uganda that wasnt in my booking almost ran me nuts. All Movies from Turkey, Asia, Bollywood, Middle East and of course, Hollywood onboard. Not one Nollywood Movie! African Travelers Sometimes pay higher fees to other parts of the globe, so I wonder; Why Blatant Disrespect and Discrimination? By any means necessary, GH artistes must make their music heard globally -Shatta Wale Graphic Showbiz Showbiz News Nov - 21 - 2023 , 14:40 Renowned Ghanaian Dancehall artiste, Shatta Wale is urging his colleague musicians to put in the necessary work and efforts to make global impact with their music. According to him, there are a number of challenges that have impeded the rise of Ghanaian artistes on the competitive global stage among which include lack of conducive policies, infrastructure, and resources. (You are going too far with your actions, Quophi Okyeame admonishes Shatta Wale) The Incoming crooner explained that these prevailing challenges have prevented major global music industries from investing and partnering in Ghanas music industry. Shatta Wale raised these concerns in a Facebook post today, calling for the urgent need to improve regulatory frameworks, invest in modern infrastructure, and strengthen intellectual property rights and licensing to solve these issues to change the present narrative. It is time for us to work together to create an enabling environment that attracts major global investments and propels our music industry to unprecedented heights, contributing to our national identity and economy," part of the post reads. Read his full post: Thinking aloud on a Tuesday afternoon!!! I write this with deep concern about the challenges that have prevented major global music industries from investing and partnering with our beloved industry in Ghana. It is clear that the lack of conducive policies, infrastructure, and resources have hindered our growth and potential on the international stage. We must urgently address this by improving regulatory frameworks, investing in modern infrastructure, and strengthening intellectual property rights and licensing. It is time for us to work together to create an enabling environment that attracts major global investments and propels our music industry to unprecedented heights, contributing to our national identity and economy. Let us rally together as stakeholders in the Ghanaian music industry and collaborate to open the doors of opportunity for our industry. By any means necessary, we need to put in efforts to make sure our music is heard globally as Ghanaians. Lets act now and fast (sic). Yao Gomado, MP Akan Constituency Graphic.com.gh Personality Profiles Oct - 12 - 2023 , 13:15 Yao Gomado is a Ghanaian politician and member of the Seventh Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana representing the Akan Constituency in the Oti Region on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress. Early life and education Gomado was born on October 20, 1966 and hails from Dodo-Dompa in the Oti Region of Ghana. Yao Gomado passed his Common Entrance Examination in 1978 which enabled him to obtain his Ordinary Level and Advanced Level. He then proceeded to have his Electrical Engineering Practice in 1982, C&G Institute London, Part Two Electricals (Electrical Engineering Technician) in 1983, Class Two Marine Electrical Engineer (Marine Electrical and Automation Engineering) in 1987, Class Three Marine Engineer (Shipboard Marine Engineering Practitioner) in 2012, Converteam A Series Maintenance (Dynamic Position Maintenance) in 2013, Dynamic Positioning (Ship Dynamic Positioning Maintenance) in 2013, Shipboard Dynamic Position (Dynamic Position Maintenance) in 2013, Professional Development Certificate (Project Management) in 2014, Marine Surveyor (Hull & Machinery) (Shipboard Marine Surveyor) in 2015, Mini-MBA (Corporate Governance) in 2015, Class One Electro Technical (Marine Electro-Technical Engineering) in 2016, Corporate Member (Engineering Practitioner) in 2017, Shipboard Internal Auditor (ISM-ISPS-MLC) in 2018 at Regional Maritime Academy and Post Graduate Diploma (Strategic Management) in 2019 at Regional Maritime University. Career Gomado worked at Volta Lake Transport Company Limited, Akosombo, Ghana as the Assistant Electrical Engineer during his National Service period. He worked with Neptune Ship Management PTE Ltd in Singapore as a Junior Marine Electrical Engineer. He again served as the Marine Electrical Engineer of PSM Perkapalan SDN BHD in Malaysia. Yao Gomado also worked with the Paccship Management PTE in Singapore as the Marine Electrical Engineer. He finally worked with the Oceanwave Maritime & Engineering Consultancy Limited as their technical director. Political life Gomado contested and won the NDC parliamentary primaries for Akan Constituency in the Oti Region of Ghana. Gomado won in the 2020 Ghanaian general elections on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress with 19,317 votes (58.69%) against Alhaji Rashid Bawa of the New Patriotic Party who had 13,300 votes (40.41%) to join the 8th Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana. Gomado refused the use of the government assigned Toyota V8 to provide water for his constituency. He again mortgaged his four-year salary to get grader for road repairs in his Akan Constituency. Gomado also assured and promised to improve standard of education in his constituency. Committees Gomado is a member of the Judiciary Committee. He is also a member of the Environment, Science and Technology Committee of the Eighth (8th) Parliament of the Fourth Republic of Ghana. GES Director-General visits PLC workshop centres in Volta Region Daily Graphic Education Nov - 22 - 2023 , 07:47 The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Dr Eric Nkansah, visited the Professional Learning Communities (PLC) workshop centres at the E.P.C. Mawuko Girls Senior High School and Sogakope SHS last Friday. The workshops in the Volta Region, which was for the southern sector of the country, marked the beginning of such in a series of PLC workshops across the country which started on November 6 and would be rounding up on November 24, 2023. The PLC training began with the coming together of 320 master facilitators from all 16 regions, with support from the National Council of Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) and the National Teaching Council (NTC). This was followed by school-level PLC workshops across the Greater Accra, Eastern, Central, Western, Western North, Volta and Oti regions. In all, 1,435 school-level coordinators from SHS, SHTS and STEM schools attended the workshop. These school-level coordinators received training on the PLC Handbook Two on the New Standards-Based Curriculum for all SHS/SHTS/ STEM schools. Training for the northern and middle sectors started last Monday, November 20 and will end on November 24, 2023. It involves 1,350 school-level coordinators from the Ashanti, Bono, Bono East, Ahafo, Northern, Savannah, North East, Upper East and Upper West regions. The training is a follow-up to the successful roll-out of the PLC Handbook One which took place in May 2023. Transform universities into entrepreneurial-centred institutions Prof. Anamuah-Mensah Justice Agbenorsi Education Nov - 22 - 2023 , 07:38 Universities in the country have been urged to transform themselves into entrepreneurial-centred institutions to prepare the teeming youth to establish their own businesses. Speaking at the 15th Congregation of the Zenith University College (ZUC), a degree-awarding institution under the mentorship of the University of Cape Coast, the Chairman of the Universitys Council, Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, said providing the youthful population with workplace skills in various university programmes would help the establishment of more businesses to provide more jobs and rake in the needed revenue to transform the economy. The problem of graduate unemployment is becoming increasingly unmanageable. The population of the youth is increasing alarmingly and their demand for good education and jobs continues to grow. The universities and other tertiary institutions are being called to transform themselves into entrepreneurial institutions to provide workplace skills in their programmes for our youth and prepare them to be career-ready to establish their own businesses, he said. Congregation A total of 135 Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree candidates and 22 Bachelor of Law candidates graduated from the university. The university has, since 2013, produced a total of over 2,500 graduates made up of 101 Master of Business Administration graduates, over 2,400 Bachelor of Business Administration graduates and 22 Bachelor of Law graduates. The Chairman noted that educating the youth to thrive in the ever-changing complex world required a drastic transformation of the countrys tertiary education system. The Overall Best Student award went to Samuel Amoah Gogoe, a Bachelor of Business Administration and Accounting graduate. Prof. Anamuah-Mensah said in an economy characterised by labour market inefficiencies, skills gap and inadequate harnessing of technologies, there was a need to fine-tune the tertiary education structure to respond to the needs of the country and the global trend. The former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), further suggested that tertiary institutions expand their faculties to include visiting fellows, entrepreneurs-in-residence, investors-in-residence, policymakers, top chief executive officers and national figures. To ensure high-quality output, the Rector, Stephen Takyi-Asiedu, said ZUC was focused on the continuous improvement of all aspects of its operations, which included re-tooling the teaching and learning processes, improvement of student service and the recruitment and training of the teaching and the non-teaching staff. The College, he said, was also engaged in the continual review of its programmes to make them market driven. Our commitment to academic excellence has been unwavering. We've diligently worked on enhancing the academic rigour of our programmes through robust quality assurance processes. This dedication ensures that our graduates leave Zenith not only with a degree but with the knowledge and skills needed to excel in their respective fields, he added. He called on the government to assist private universities, including the school, to reduce the pressure on the public institutions. Advise In a speech read on his behalf, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Prof. Johnson Nyarko Boampong, urged the graduates to guard against complacency and focus on applying all the knowledge and skills acquired at Zenith University College to be prosperous. British High Commission Accra commemorates 75th birthday of King Charles III Graphic.com.gh Nov - 22 - 2023 , 15:00 The British High Commission in Accra is commemorating the 75th birthday of His Royal Majesty King Charles III with a climate sustainability-themed party on Wednesday. It is the Kings official birthday; the first since he took the throne in May this year. UK to celebrate Ghanas show of leadership to tackle climate change as a global crisis. The UK-Ghana enduring partnership to be highlighted in a climate exhibition of practical sustainability solutions. The British High Commissioner to Ghana, Harriet Thompson and husband, Nick Thompson will on Wednesday November 22, 2023 host over 800 guests in honour of the 75th birthday of His Royal Highness King Charles III, at their residence in Cantonment. Invited guests include Ghana's Minister for National Security Albert Kan-Dapaah, Government officials, Political party leaders, Chiefs, members of diplomatic missions, British-Ghanaian diaspora, colleagues and friends. The celebration will highlight His Majesty The Kings commitment and advocacy on biodiversity and the environment. It is also intended to showcase the strong UK-Ghana partnership and interventions made to tackle some of the pressing issues of climate change. There will also be an exhibition to highlight innovative solutions by companies to address the climate sustainability gaps. This partnership rooted in our shared values and a common vision for a sustainable future, reaffirms the dedication of both nations to tackle the global crisis together. Speaking ahead of the event, the British High Commissioner to Ghana, H.E. Harriet Thompson said: It is such an honour to celebrate the Kings official birthday, his first since he took the throne and the first Kings Birthday Party in seventy years. His Majesty the King is well known for his lifelong commitment to addressing climate change. Ghana, like many other countries, has been affected by climate change, characterised by unpredictable weather patterns, rising sea levels, and temperatures, including recent dam spillage that has displaced over 40,000 people in the Volta region; to which the UK has committed an initial amount of 250,000 to support. But Ghana is demonstrating leadership in the climate space through its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) initiated as part of The Paris Agreement at COP21. The recent commitment to establish the Vulnerable twenty (V20) secretariat in Ghana, launch of the Ghana Energy Transition and Investment Plan, protection of marine life, forest conservation, and climate smart agriculture practices including in the cocoa sector are testament to Ghanas commitment. To GREAT Campaign proudly supporting us, our gold sponsors, Aqua Africa and Stanbic Bank and all other sponsors, I extend my heartfelt gratitude for your unwavering support. Your commitment fuels our success, and we are honoured to have you as dedicated partners in our journey. The UK is committed to a brighter, cleaner, greener planet and will continue to collaborate with Ghana in its journey towards sustainability, including supporting Ghana to implement its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Israel and Hamas agree to pause fighting for release of 50 hostages BBC Nov - 22 - 2023 , 14:07 Israel and Hamas have agreed a deal to release 50 hostages being held in Gaza during a four-day pause in fighting. Now for some diplomatic reaction to the deal struck between Israel and Hamas will see the first break in fighting since 7 October. The prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani - who helped broker the truce - said in a statement he hoped it would pave the way for an end to the war. UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the deal was a "crucial step" towards releasing hostages and providing humanitarian relief in Gaza, while French President Emmanuel Macron said work is being done "tirelessly" to free all hostages. The truce was also welcomed by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, the EU and countries including the US, Jordan, Russia, China, Egypt, France and Germany. On Wednesday morning, Israel confirmed its ground and air operation in Gaza is continuing, before the pause starts. Hamas says 150 Palestinian women and teenagers will be released from Israeli jails under the deal. Up to another 150 Palestinians could be released - as well as another 50 hostages from Gaza - after the initial four-day pause. Israel's government insists that this isn't the end of the war, reiterating its commitment to "complete the elimination of Hamas. Israel began attacking Gaza after Hamas fighters crossed the border on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 others hostage Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 14,000 people - including more than 5,000 children - have been killed in Israel's campaign - BBC I am committed to working with Huawei and other partners to transform lives - Rebecca Akufo-Addo Ghana's First Lady, Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo, has assured Huawei and other industry partners of her commitment to work closely to help bridge the gender divide and transform the lives of Ghanaians. The first lady said this when she addressed the Huawei 2023 Sustainability Forum, which was part of the 3rd Edition of the Corporate Sustainability Development (CSD) Forum held in Dongguan, China, on November 21, 2023. In her address, Mrs. Akufo-Addo celebrated Ghana's groundbreaking role in the energy sector and highlighted Ghana's achievement as the first West African nation to establish a 404MW floating Hydro-Solar hybrid plant managed by the Bui Power Authority at Banda in the Bono Region. Showcasing Ghana's commitment to sustainable development, the First lady emphasised the project's significant impact on Ghana's energy infrastructure and job creation agenda in the Bono Region. Over 800 people, including women, have been trained and employed at the Bui Cashew Limited factory which relies on the energy produced from the Hydro-Solar hybrid plant to fuel its heavy machinery and enhance efficiency and productivity. About the Ghana HSH Plant and the Cashew Project The plant makes use of Huawei's Smart Photovoltaic (PV) Solution that is; the smart inverter solution, Battery Energy Storage Solution (BESS) and the Smart Transformer Station (STS) to store and ensure stable and reliable supply of electricity when water levels of the Bui Dam are low, especially during the dry season. Bui Cashew Limited, is a cashew factory which covers an expansive area of about 2000m2 and has the capacity to produce 6-8 tonnes of cashew nut a day. The world is going green Speaking about the broader context of sustainability, Mrs Akufo-Addo noted, "The world is going green, and projects such as the hydro-solar hybrid plant show that Ghana is on the right path towards the realisation of a sustainable and eco-friendly digital future." Mrs Akufo-Addo expressed her gratitude for Huawei's substantial contributions to Ghana's economic growth stating that the partnership has contributed in the training of over 6000 students and traders in a period of two years. "I can truly say that my offices experience working with Huawei has been encouraging. Together, we have worked tirelessly in building the skills capacity of females in rural areas. Over 6000 students and traders have been trained in a period of two years," she said. The First Lady welcomed the dynamism introduced by the cashew factory initiative, and expressed confidence in its potential to further improve the success of the partnership and commended key partners of the programme including Meinergy- owners of the factory, Bui Power Authority, and Huawei, for their collective efforts in supporting employment opportunities, particularly for women. "I would like to commend the Bui Power Authority, Meinergy who owns the factory, and Huawei for contributing their quota in support of this initiative to create employment opportunities for Ghanaians, especially women," she said. Mrs. Akufo-Addo concluded her address by reaffirming her office's commitment to working closely with Huawei and other industry partners to bridge the gender divide and transform the lives of Ghanaians. About Huawei 2023 Sustainability Forum The Huawei 2023 Sustainability Forum was hosted by Huawei and aimed at highlighting innovative global sustainable development projects, that leverage digital applications for sustainability in remote locations. The forum, organized in collaboration with international organizations, governments, think tanks, and industry stakeholders, showcased Huawei's advanced technologies and their contributions to the environment and business world. This year's event is the 3rd edition of the Corporate Sustainability Development (CSD) Forum held in Dongguan, China, on November 21, 2023. This year's forum also showcased other sustainable innovations around the world powered by Huawei technology. In Brazilian state of Amazonas, where Huawei partnered a regional telecoms operator Veloso Net to build stable networks that provide coverage in more than 90 remote cities with residents who previously had no wireless access thereby boosting the local digital economy. In Pakistan, under the Smart Villages initiative which aims to modernize isolated rural communities in Pakistan and drive sustainable digital growth and development. Adams Mahama murder case: Afoko takes third plea in 8 years Justice Agbenorsi Nov - 22 - 2023 , 07:21 Gregory Afoko, the farmer alleged to have murdered former New Patriotic Partys Upper East Regional Chairman, Adams Mahama, will on December 5 this year take his plea at a differently constituted High Court in Accra. On the scheduled date, the court presided over by Justice Maries-Louis Simmons would determine whether or not Asabke Alangdi (already convicted and sentenced to death on the charge of conspiracy) would be tried alongside Afoko on the charge of murder. This would be the third time in eight years that Afokos plea on murder and conspiracy would be taken. In April this year, a seven-member jury of a court presided over by Justice Merley Afua Wood, a Justice of the Court of Appeal sitting as an additional High Court judge, returned a final verdict which unanimously found Asabke Alangdi guilty on the charge of conspiring with Gregory Afoko to kill Mahama in 2015 but returned a 4 - 3 verdict of not guilty on the charges of conspiracy to commit murder and murder for Afoko. By the verdict, the two were not guilty of the offence of murder. Alangdi was, however, guilty of the offence of conspiracy to commit murder, leading the court to proceed to pass the mandatory sentence of death on Alangdi but he has since appealed the decision. Hearing Afoko was set to take his plea last Monday by the court presided over by Justice Simmons. However, when the case was called, the prosecution led by Marina Appiah Opare told the court that the previous trial court inadvertently omitted to order the retrial of Alangdi on the charge of murder. Afokos lawyer, on the other hand, challenged the decision of the prosecution to retry Alangdi on the charge of murder without an order or retrial from the previous court. Consequently, Justice Simmons adjourned the matter to December 5 this year to decide whether both accused could be tried on the charge of murder for the accused to take their pleas. Brief facts The brief facts of the case were that on May 14, 2015, Gregorys brother, Paul Afoko, and Kwabena Agyepong, then national chairman and general secretary, respectively, of the NPP arrived in Bolgatanga for a meeting. It stated that the deceased organised some thugs to violently attack the two, scuttling the planned meeting at the Azumsolon Guest House, for campaigning against the flag bearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and also not notifying him of the meeting. The situation, according to the prosecution, was later brought under control by the police, adding that the accused, who was then upset, confronted Mahama but was chased out by thugs. Another group It also noted that Gregory and Asabke formed another youth group in their bid to protect persons perceived to be against Nana Akufo-Addo. It said the accused persons held series of meetings with the youth and on May 20, 2015, they laid ambush at Mahamas residence with a substance suspected to be acid. The deceased returned home around 11:10 p.m. in his pick-up vehicle with registration number NR 761 14, and immediately he parked the vehicle in front of his house, the suspects went close and signalled him to roll down the glass. The deceased identified the suspects to be party members and rolled down the glass to talk to them. Suddenly, the suspects poured the substance suspected to be acid on his head, face and other parts of his body and fled on a motorbike. The deceased started screaming for help and his wife, Hajia Zenabu Adams, went to his aid and managed to bring him out of the vehicle, the prosecution added. According to the prosecution, Mahamas wife also sustained burns on the right side of her chest and breast while assisting her husband. It said when she enquired about what had happened to her husband, he told her Gregory and Asabke had attacked him. Mahama died while being airlifted to Accra for treatment. Gregory, who was later picked up, led the police to Asabkes fathers house. The police later located Asabkes house but he had then absconded with his wife, abandoning their baby in the process. A post-mortem report on Mahama said he died of shocked lungs and extensive acid burns. Bono farmers schooled on climate change Biiya Mukusah Ali Nov - 22 - 2023 , 07:04 Forty farmers and people in agribusiness in the Bono Region have undergone a two-day training to enhance their skills in accessing climate information services. The training was aimed at helping them to contribute to efforts to reduce the devastating effects of climate change on agriculture and agribusiness. The training workshop was organised by the Research Extension Farmers Linkages Committees (RELCs) in partnership with the Bono Regional Department of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), with funding from Accelerating the Impact of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA). The overall aim was to support farmers and other agriculture value-chain actors to be able to assess climate-related information, in order to take preventive actions to reduce climate change effect on food production. Partnership In an interview with the Daily Graphic on the sidelines of the workshop last Thursday, the Communications Officer of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture Ghana (IITA), Reginald Ofori Kyere, said his organisation was working in partnership with governmental and private institutions to support farmers to adopt and mitigate climate change effects. Participants He said over the years, the IITA outfit had collaborated with the Crop Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CRI-CSIR) and the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMeT), to provide farmers with improved seeds and weather forecast. Mr Kyere explained that climate change had made it difficult for farmers to predict rainfall and rain patterns to start planting. He said due to such frustrations, the IITA had resolved to use technology and other state and private institutions to assist farmers to manage the situation. Mr Kyere said it was crucial to educate farmers to adopt improved seeds, when to plant, detailed information on rainfall pattern and expected duration of rain among others, in order not to lose crops. Pests, diseases He said the organisation had, in partnership with the CRI-CSIR, introduced improved crop varieties which were resistant to drought and could withstand pests and diseases. Mr Kyere added that farmers needed knowledge such as good agriculture practices and planting methods, which were climate smart and climate information services to help them to overcome the devastative effects of the climate change. He explained that the workshop was one of the series being organised across the country to encourage active participation, enhance interaction and bring decision making in technological development dissemination closer to farmers and agribusiness. Mr Kyere said organising such training workshops had effectively enabled researchers and extension officers to provide demand-driven services to farmers and other agriculture industry players. Advice For his part, the Head of the Climatology Unit of GMeT, Jeremiah Zusika Lazia, advised farmers to adhere to weather forecasts and other best agriculture practices to enhance production. He said the adherence to such practices would help farmers to identify types of crops to cultivate for each crop season. Mr Lazia said the GMeT used such forums to educate farmers to understand the technicalities in their broadcast. He also advised the farmers to practise mulching and avoid burning of their farmlands, in order to contain moisture in the soil. Mr Lazia also urged farmers to ensure that they had more stocks on their farmlands to conserve moisture. He said plans were far advanced for GMeT to broadcast weather forecasts in local languages. Bui Power, Berlin university sign agreement on renewable energies Diana Mensah Nov - 22 - 2023 , 06:10 The Bui Power Authority (BPA) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Berlin Technical University (TU Berlin) to implement a professional education on renewable energies in Ghana (PROREG) programme. The partners will work with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the University of Energy of Natural Resources (UENR) to implement the programme. The MoU was one of three cooperation agreements signed between BPA and three other institutions as part of a working visit of some Ghanaian officials to Germany. Led by the Board Chairman of BPA, Kwasi Ameyaw-Cheremeh, the delegation included Ghana's Ambassador to Germany, Gina Blay; the Chief Executive Officer of BPA, Samuel Kofi Ahiave Dzamesi, who signed the agreements on behalf of the authority, and the Director of Renewables, BPA, Wisdom Ahiataku-Togobo. The delegation visited Berlin, Germany, to seek cooperation and agreement to build the capacity of BPA staff for the implementation of their mandate as renewable energy leaders. Collaboration Under the first MoU, BPA will collaborate with TU Berlin, KNUST and UENR to implement PROREG with support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). BPA technical staff seeking to pursue higher educational programmes in Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy courses will also have the opportunity to undertake academic disciplines related to the work and mandate of BPA at any of the three universities. On the other hand, TU Berlin staff will also support in developing practical models and appropriate research topics for BPA technical staff. The second MoU, signed with the Distance Learning Institute of the Berliner Hochschule fur Technik (DLI), saw both parties agreeing to fully cooperate to build the capacity of BPA technicians who cannot advance degree programmes, as well as non-technical staff working in the field of finance, procurement, communication and energy law. The third MoU was signed with the Berlin School of Technology of the SRH Berlin University of Applied Science (BST-SRH). Under this agreement, BPA will cooperate with BST-SRH to promote a systematic exchange of experts and students between BPA and BST to contribute to the development of renewable energies through the development of academic and research activities based on the existing cooperation of BST-SRH with KNUST and the UENR. This partnership would enable Ghanaian students to enrol in Master's programmes offered by the BST-SRH. It will also promote the participation of engineers and experts from BPA and other institutions in Ghana in the winter and summer schools offered by the BST-SRH on relevant topics in Finance, Procurement, Energy Law, Communication and Human Resource Management, among others. The delegation also travelled to Rathenow to visit a Sunfarming company where solar PV farms are integrated with agriculture to provide a conducive environment for vegetable and crop farming under solar panels and for animal farming for ducks, geese, fowls and cattle, among others. Impression The Board Chairman of BPA and the CEO of BPA were both impressed with such method of farming and agreed to collaborate with Sunfarming to set up a prototype at a Bui Generating Station. The delegation also met with the German Ministry for Environment and Economic Affairs, who showed interest in investing in BPA. The Germans lauded BPA for its achievement in the deployment of renewable energy in Ghana and promised to extend support to BPA through their development agencies. For his part, Mr Dzamesi called for support in the construction of western rivers in Ghana to enable BPA to deploy solar for the hybridisation of hydro power to ensure uninterrupted generation of solar power during the day and hydro at night. CTVET trains 19,062 under TVET Voucher Project Severious Kale-Dery Nov - 22 - 2023 , 08:34 The Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET) has trained 19,062 master craft persons and apprentices since 2018 under the Ghana TVET Voucher Project (GTVP). Out of the over 19,000 beneficiaries, 13,883, representing 73 per cent are females, while the remaining 5,179 are males. Additionally, 9,226, representing 48 per cent of them are apprentices and 9,736 master craft persons, representing 52 per cent. Ghana TVET Voucher Project The Head of Corporate Affairs for CTVET, Albert Opare, disclosed this in an interview after an official visit to the Dabokpa Technical Institute in Tamale in the Northern Region. The GTVP is a project under the Ghanaian-German Financial Development Cooperation, co-financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through KfW Development Bank, and the Government of Ghana, with the CTVET being the implementing agency. Mr Opare added that a total of 128 training providers participated in the GTVP at 285 training centres throughout the country, while about 100 trade associations supplied the master craft persons and apprentices for the training. He explained that the government planned to expand the project even further, and had secured additional funding of $60 million from the World Bank and 40 million Euros from the German Government through KFW Bank to train at least 50,000 more beneficiaries over the next five years. The GTVP provides demand-driven training vouchers to CTVET-registered master craft persons, their apprentices and workers. The vouchers are used to fund competency-based training (CBT) courses in CTVETaccredited training institutions for certification in the National Proficiency Levels I and II, as well as Certificate I and II respectively, he said. Skills areas Mr Opare told the Daily Graphic in an interview that the beneficiaries received the training in skills areas such as automotive repairs, cosmetology, garment, welding, consumer electronics, plumbing, electrical installation, block laying and furniture making. He said in addition to the training provided, the GTVP project had had a positive impact on the TVET system in the country. Mr Opare mentioned that numerous training institutions had been encouraged through the project to register with CTVET and were keen to achieve official accreditation for CBT implementation. He explained that as a result of that it had led to trade associations and informal sector training providers being encouraged to register with CTVET. Furthermore, through the project, Ghana has witnessed the CBT approach being implemented on a large scale for a large number of Ghanaian youths. Moreover, we have witnessed the modernisation of traditional apprenticeship system through the implementation of the project, he said. Mr Opare explained that the project had strengthened CTVET as the regulatory body for TVET in the country. At Dabokpa, the Director-General of the CTVET, Dr Fred Kyei Asamoah, who presented certificate, to trainees at the Dabokpa Technical Institute under the project, commended the trainees for availing themselves to develop their skills. Fish festival opens in Accra Emelia Ennin Abbey Nov - 22 - 2023 , 08:27 The fourth edition of the Fish Festival has been held in Accra with operators in Ghana's fisheries industry displaying hundreds of fish products and inputs. There were also deliberations on various topics focusing on transforming and growing the aquaculture sub-sector to increase domestic fish production, reduce imports, and create job opportunities along the fisheries value chain. The two day event was themed: developing Ghanas blue economy for sustainable fisheries management and national development. It aimed at highlighting the pivotal role the fisheries sector played in the economic development of the country. The free-to-attend festival at the Black Star Square in the Greater Accra Region apart from serving as an exhibition platform for fishing and aquaculture inputs, fish products, also offered patrons the opportunity to buy fresh and processed fish from a fish market. Significance Speaking at the forum, the Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Moses Anim, said the festival was part of activities to mark the 2023 international world fish day celebration. He said it was to serve as a platform to educate the public on aquaculture and marine fisheries, foster learning and networking, and promote business partnerships among value chain actors. Additionally, he said it was also to recognise the vital contributions of fishers and aquaculture operators, and deliberate on the opportunities and challenges in the development of Ghanas blue economy. Challenges not over The President of the Ghana National First Traders and Processors Association, Regina Solomon, said although some gains had been made in the fisheries sector such as reduction of child labour and addressing post harvest loses through interventions that make it possible for fish processors to add value to their products, there were still a number of challenges that needed to be addressed. We have challenges. All is not well. There are no fish. Our fishermen do not catch fish when they go fishing. Fishers are hungry, we have seen fishers losing their lives along all the four fishing regions in Ghana. This has been the worst period in the history of fishing in this country, she said. She was also worried about illegal fishing practices and urged all fishers to shun such activities and also indicated that members of the association would not patronise fish sourced through illegal means. Some of the illegal activities include: fishing with light, use of chemicals, use of unapproved fishing nets, not submitting of fish data to the fisheries commission, throwing bycatch into the sea, transhipment among others. Law enforcement Madam Solomon called for strict enforcement of the fisheries laws to save the country's fishing industry from collapse. Some fishing communities such as Prampram, Teshie and Nungua have indicated that they would not allow illegal fishing in their jurisdictions but when you go to some fishing communities such as Apam, illegal fishing is the order of the day. There are fishing communities where fishers used to do illegal fishing under the cover of darkness. Now they do it in broad daylight. They do not hide their generators anymore. How can we all practice for some to do illegal activity and enrich themselves while others suffer. She also urged the Ministry and the Fisheries Commission to come out with the number of women serving on premix committees in the various fishing committees. We have heard there are 12,000 premix committee members. We want to know how many women are involved, she said. The Chairman of the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Council, Nana Jojo Solomon, urged the government to introduce police visibility in the communities where illegal fishing was ongoing. He explained that the police visibility would help combat illegal unreported and unregulated fishing. GRNMA bemoans challenges in health sector Doreen Andoh Nov - 22 - 2023 , 06:23 Inadequate logistics, essential medications and vaccines have been identified as some of the challenges affecting quality healthcare delivery in the country. Others include poor infrastructure, obsolete equipment, unsatisfactory conditions of service and the lack of accommodation in some areas, the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association (GRNMA) has said. The President of the association, Perpetual Ofori Ampofo, was speaking at their 16th quadrennial national delegates congress in Accra yesterday. The five-day conference is on the theme: "Investing in nursing and midwifery: A strategic response to the right to health." Situation The president said those challenges were the reasons for health disparities in the country, including access, which she said deprived people of their basic human right to quality health care. "Indeed, we seem to be far away from changing this narrative, and it is a source of worry as many practitioners are migrating to high income countries," she said. Mrs Ofori-Ampofo said while it was clear that the country might not achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly Goal Three, by 2030, the government must not relent in creating a more robust and resilient healthcare system with well-motivated nurses and midwives, who are the largest health workforce and critical players in quality healthcare delivery. "It came as a surprise when the restoration of vehicle import duty waiver for all healthcare professionals, instituted by the Kufour administration and scrapped by the Mahama administration, only considered doctors," she said. The president described the decision as unacceptable and unfair and, therefore, entreated the government to restore the waiver. Commendation The Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, whose speech was read on his behalf by the Chief Director of the ministry, Alhaji Hafiz Adam, commended the association for their hard work in spite of the challenges in the sector. He pledged the ministrys resolve to ensure better working conditions for all healthcare workers in the country. The Country Representative of the WHO, Prof. Francis Kasolo, said while Africa only had three per cent of global health workforce, including 30 per cent of trained nurses and midwives employed, it was saddled with 75 per cent of the global disease burden. He said investment in nursing and midwifery was critical to health improvements. Prof. Kasolo, therefore, urged the government and other stakeholders to address the concerns of members of the GRNMA to help improve health outcomes in the country. For example, there is the issue of migration and huge unemployment of qualified nurses. I would like to say thank you for the way you have been delivering despite the many challenges, serving in remote areas, he said. Help resolve Bawku conflict - Nayiri urges Vice-President Mohamed Fugu Nov - 22 - 2023 , 08:25 The Overlord of Mamprugu, Naa Bohagu Abdulai Mahami Sheriga, has appealed to the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, to use his influence to help resolve the protracted chieftaincy-related conflict in Bawku. He said he was confident that the Vice-President, who was recently elected as the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), could help bring together the feuding factions in the long-standing conflict that had caused havoc for decades in the once peaceful town. Naa Sheriga said the conflict was taking a toll on the people of Bawku, the immediate neighbouring communities and the larger Mamprugu Traditional Area, and that it was about time deliberate efforts were made to find a lasting solution to the dispute. The traditional ruler further urged Dr Bawumia to visit the chiefs and people of the various areas engaged in the conflict, especially in Bawku, and try to encourage peace among all the factions. The Nayiri made the appeal when the Vice-President paid a courtesy call on him at his palace in Nalerigu last Monday as part of his tour of the Northern and North East regions. Background There has been recurring chieftaincy dispute in Bawku and its environs, characterised by violent clashes that have claimed hundreds of lives over the years, while property running into millions of Ghana cedis has been lost to the violence. Historians say the dispute is over the rightful ownership of the Bawku skin, referred to as na'am. At the peak of every one of the renewed clashes, socio-economic activities are grounded in the once busy commercial town. Blessings While congratulating the Vice-President on his election as the flag bearer of the governing party, Naa Sheriga prayed and wished him well in the 2024 presidential election. The Nayiri conferred the title "Bigangna" on the Vice-President, which refers to a person who does not discriminate. Naa Sheriga explained that the title was befitting of the Vice-President because of the character he had demonstrated in office. Gratitude Dr Bawumia expressed gratitude to the traditional ruler and his elders for their prayers and encouragement. He pledged to use his influence and wisdom to help find a lasting solution to the conflict in Bawku. Thank you tour The NPP flag bearer is touring the North East and Northern regions to thank delegates and party faithful following his victory in the two rounds of the NPP presidential primary. Thousands of supporters and sympathisers of the NPP thronged the forecourt of the Nayiri Palace in Nalerigu, capital of the North East Region, to cheer Dr Bawumia. He was joined on the tour by the National Chairman of the party, Stephen Ayensu Ntim; the Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah- Bonsu; Ministers of State, government appointees, party bigwigs and parliamentary aspirants. Local content confab opens - Energy Minister calls for deeper collaboration Justice Agbenorsi Nov - 22 - 2023 , 08:00 The Local Content Conference and Exhibition has been opened in the Western Regional capital, Takoradi, with a call on stakeholders in the petroleum upstream sector to collaborate more among themselves to help realise the agenda to promote local participation in the oil and gas industry. Opening the exhibition yesterday, the Minister of Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, said as an emerging oil producer, Ghana could only achieve success through cooperation. There is no disagreement between us in pursuit of shared objectives; only a balance of interests of all stakeholders can lead to success of all parties. I think that our 10 years experience of local content implementation shows that we can achieve great success through cooperation, Dr Prempeh said. Conference Under the auspices of the Petroleum Commission, the Local Content Conference and Exhibition is organised each year to, among others, deliberate on issues affecting upstream petroleum operations in Ghana and its derivative, local content. The conference, which brings together international oil companies (IOCs), international service companies, indigenous Ghanaian companies (IGCs), is on the theme: Ten years of Local Content in Ghanas Upstream Petroleum Industry; Achievements, Challenges and Prospects. This years conference, starting from Tuesday, November 21 to Friday, November 24, marks 10 years since the Petroleum (Local Content and Local Participation) Regulations, 2013 (L.I. 2204) came into force. More than 1,000 participants from Ghana, Nigeria, the Gambia, Uganda, Angola, Senegal and Trinidad & Tobago and Europe, among others, are participating in the conference. The Graphic Communications Group Ltd is the media partner of the event. Strides The energy minister said since the local content regulation came into force, about 20 per cent of value of contracts had been awarded to Ghanaian companies. Dr Prempeh added that Springfield, an indigenous Ghanaian exploration and production (E&P) company, drilled and successfully discovered in deepwaters, the Afina-1X in 2019. While commending that feat, Dr Prempeh said it demonstrated the increasing capacity of Ghanaians to take charge of the exploitation of the countrys hydrocarbon resources, especially in the wake of the energy transition. It is this success, among others, that we are celebrating, 10 years after the passage of our local content regulations, he said. Dr Prempeh said through the concerted efforts of government and the Jubilee partners, there had been an addition of 30,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) to the countrys production profile aside from the Eban and Akoma discoveries, contributing immensely to the countrys gas potential with the increase in the proven gas reserves. The approval of the Pecan Field Plan of Development, the energy minister mentioned, would also add to the stream of opportunities available to indigenous Ghanaian companies with expected in-country fabrication of over 3,000 tonnes of FPSO top side refurbishments, and subsea installations, stressing that all the opportunities for the project would be made available to companies operating in the country. I have charged the Petroleum Commission to ensure that the contract opportunities in current and future developments are spread among all capable Ghanaian companies and competent Ghanaian professionals, Dr Prempeh added. Platform For his part, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Petroleum Commission, Egbert Faibille Jnr, said the commission intended to use the conference to provide a unique platform for all stakeholders in the upstream petroleum sector to interact, network and provide solutions to advance local content development in the country. He said the commission, together with the various stakeholders, would take stock of activities over the past years and acknowledge achievements and challenges with the aim of recalibrating to achieve more strides. We will also identify our challenges and come up with ideas and strategies to address such challenges, and then identify the prospects to harness for the mutual benefit of all stakeholders, he said. Ministerial Council meeting on climate change underway in Accra Timothy Ngnenbe Nov - 22 - 2023 , 06:15 Ministers responsible for environment, science and climate change from 12 West African countries have converged on Accra to explore ways to help the sub-region build resilience against global climate crisis. The fifth Ministerial Council meeting is being held ahead of the 28th UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP28) to strengthen inter-governmental collaboration in the sub-region and also rally other stakeholders for climate action. The ministers would discuss ways to leverage technology and scientific research to reduce emissions, as well as promote adaptation and mitigation to climate change. The meeting is spearheaded by the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany. It is being attended by ministers from Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Benin, Cape Verde, Cote dIvoire, the Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Togo. Collective action At the opening session in Accra yesterday, the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI), Dr Kwaku Afriyie, said state and non-state actors should work together to leverage scientific research, innovation and sustainable practices to reduce carbon emissions and harness the potential of green hydrogen. He said the African continent was the hardest hit by climate change. "Our collective effort to fight this common security threat will go a long way to win the battle against climate change. We can only win this battle when we think globally and act regionally," the minister added. He said the meeting could not have come at a better time, especially when the world was getting ready for CO28 in Dubai. "As we get ready for this conference where governments will engage in multilateral discussions on how to limit and prepare for future climate change, we should be reminded as African players - both state and non-state actors, that our continent has been and is still being hit hard by climate change, the minister said. Commitment Dr Afriyie said the countrys commitment to winning the battle against climate change was evidenced in the update of the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) strategy in 2022, under the Paris Agreement. "The update covers 19 policy areas which were translated into 47 adaptation and mitigation programmes of action," the minister said. He further said that the NDCs and climate policies by the government would foster social inclusion by focusing on youth and women to ensure greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions. It could also lead to avoidance of at least 2,900 premature deaths per year from improved air quality by 2023 and create over one million decent and green jobs. The minister commended WASCAL for its leadership in championing climate resilience in West Africa. He described the partnership between WASCAL and Germany in providing relevant knowledge and technologies on climate change as key to combating the crisis. Collaboration The Chairman of WASCAL Council of Ministers, Prof. Bourema Kansaye, said given that climate change had exposed Africa to threats of food insecurity, migration and vulnerabilities, it was important for all hands to be on the deck to help deal with those challenges. He underscored the need for civil society organisations (CSOs), research institutions, state and non-state agencies to come together and work towards tackling the menace. National Security impounds smuggled vegetable oil, owner arrested Emmanuel Bonney Nov - 22 - 2023 , 12:00 National Security operatives yesterday impounded a truckload of smuggled gallons of vegetable cooking oil from Togo into the country by land. The truck, with registration number AC 8143-23 and the inscription King of Kings, had the gallons of oil concealed in a black polythene and covered with bags of rice. A woman, said to be the owner of the items, was subsequently arrested by the security operatives. The smuggling of the oil into the country is a violation of the ban on the importation of vegetable oil by land. Context In a circular dated October 9, 2023, the Office of the Commissioner of the Customs Division of GRA, reminded all Commanders of the policy to regulate the palm oil sector. It directed the commanders to restrict the importation of refined vegetable oil to the sea port (Tema and Takoradi) and discontinue the implementation of the ECOWAS ETLS concessions on reformed oil imported from Togo. All deputy commissioners and sector commanders are to ensure strict compliance with this directive, the circular stressed. Scene The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Tree Crops Development Authority (TCDA), William Agyapong Quaittoo, who dashed to see the items and the suspect in Accra yesterday, told the media that following the ban, a circular was issued by the Ministry of Finance through the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA). The GRA, he said, also sent circulars to all commanders indicating that the government had placed a ban on the importation of vegetable oil by land. Importation of vegetable oil should all go through the ports, either through the Tema Port or the Takoradi Port. This is because investigations have proved that most of the people who import the vegetable oils into the country avoid paying the required taxes, he said. Mr Quaittoo explained that research had shown that about $4.5 million was lost in revenue per month by those who engaged in the importation of vegetable oil. Such illegality, he added, was also killing the businesses of vegetable oil manufacturers in the country. Manufacturers The CEO of the Tree Crops Development Authority, whose office supervises oil palm used in the production of such vegetable oil, said the local manufacturers had GRA officers sitting in their manufacturing centres, so whatever they produced was seen by the officers for the required tax to be paid on them. Meanwhile, those who import these vegetable oil into the country avoid paying the taxes. They smuggle the oils into the country and are able to sell at a very cheap price at the detriment of those who produce in the country. When this happens, it affects the value chain down to the oil palm producers, the service providers and the transporters because they are unable to sell their goods, he said. Mr Quaittoo said the impounded product, named AICHA, was one of products that was usually imported from Togo and that it was affecting the local palm oil industry. Following that, he added that the TCDA made a case to the President and the Economic Management Team based on which Cabinet approved the ban of vegetable oils into the country by land. So all those who have to import oil into the country must go through the port, where they will be seen by the GRA and other officers so that they can pay the appropriate taxes, Mr Quaittoo added. Facility Again, Mr Quaittoo said people who imported from Togo were using a facility called ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) as an alibi. Togo is a country that is not qualified for that concession and so all those that import vegetable oil from there, with AICHA being one of them, and coming through the ETLS concession are engaged in wrong doing. And that is why we are saying that everybody that would import oil, whether from Cote dIvoire, Togo or wherever, must go through the ports. This is a clear case of somebody who has smuggled vegetable oil from Togo and has covered it with this rice, Mr Quaittoo said. The CEO of TCDA said the authoritys research had shown that about 7,000 tonnes of the vegetable oil were imported into the country through illegal means per month. The tax calculated, he added, was $4.5 million per month. Mr Quaittoo said the owner of the products had no documents covering them and so did not know the quantity of the gallons of oil until after investigations. He said before the implementation of the ban on importing oil by land, enough notices were served, with the deadline being October 18, this year. Resource MMDAs works departments - IET-Ghana President charges govt Emmanuel Bonney Nov - 22 - 2023 , 07:53 The government has been called upon to adequately resource the works departments of the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs). This is to enable the departments and the assemblies to execute their mandates effectively. The President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology-Ghana, Henry Kwadwo Boateng, who made the call, named the resources to include vehicles and schmidt hammer or rebound hammer used to carry on site checks of concretes. That, he said, was in addition to other quality assurance tools, including personal protective equipment, drones for surveillance and effective monitoring, scanners, odometers, and external back-up hard drives, adding that if you resource them and they are unable to perform, then you have a cause to question their work. Mr Boateng told the Daily Graphic that the main issue had to deal with vehicles to move around the various sites daily because our development is such that if you leave a developer a week or two without checking on what he or she is doing, by the time you get to their site they would have got to the roofing level. He said a lot could be done to help the works departments of the MMDAs to function optimally. I would appreciate the efforts made by the government as it has done a lot of recruitments for the assemblies, especially in the works departments. It has brought built environment professionals that include construction technologists or building technologists, civil engineers, quantity surveyors and spatial planning officers, he said. Outsourcing works Mr Boateng said most assemblies, however, did not have architects, stressing that the situation was not helpful because architects were crucial in the built environment. He said the assemblies could outsource work in areas they did not have the professionals or other experts to complement the efforts of the works departments. At a ceremony to induct 55 newly qualified architects, the Minister of Works and Housing, Francis Asenso-Boakye, urged MMDAs to consider outsourcing the issuance of development and building permits to relevant professional bodies within the built environment space. That, he said, would enhance town planning and reduce challenges such as flooding and the recent phenomenon of the collapse of buildings in the country. Mr Boateng said one assembly should not have engineers only or quantity surveyors, you must have an architect, a quantity surveyor, engineer and a spatial planning officer so that it would be balanced to form a strong team to properly scrutinise designs that come before them before permits are issued. He said post permit supervision was very important. Structure This means that if you want to put up your structure, before you set up the building lines, we must come and do inspection (to check) whether where you have positioned the structure is the same on the block plan. We must also look at the foundation that was approved to see whether it is what has been done, he said. The IET President said each of the 13 stages in building construction must be certified by the works department before a developer could continue with their project. When all that was done, he said, officers, who approved of collapsed buildings, could then be held responsible. Inciteful broadcast: Commission has power to take all appropriate measures against Onua FM,TV - NMC Graphic.com.gh Nov - 21 - 2023 , 23:23 The National Media Commission (NMC) has extended the final warning to Onua FM and Captain Smart to Friday, November 24, 2023 after which the commission says it may act without any further reference to Media General, owners of Onua FM and television station. The extension of the deadline follows a response Onua FM/TV sent to the NMC in a letter dated November 20, 2023, in respect of the final warning the NMC gave the media house last week over the said inciteful broadcast by one of the presenters of the media house, Captain Smart. Related: NMC issues final warning to Onua Radio/TV and Captain Smart over inciteful broadcast The NMC last week issued a final warning to Onua Radio/TV and Captain Smart over an inciteful broadcast. The NMC had stated that Onua TV/FM through its presenter Captain Smart had carried an inciteful broadcast in which Captain Smart directly insulted the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) and other Commanders of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) and described them as beasts. Captain Smart had claimed that the military officers embezzle monies meant for soldiers on peace keeping operations but offered no evidence to back his claims, the NMC stated. "This was as dangerous as it was unprofessional," the commission added. The commission in its letter made reference to a similar incident in 2022 where in a letter dated December 8, 2022, it drew the attention of Onua TV/FM to the use of the station to promote violence against the state and the managements lack of capacity to address same. The NMC said it was of concern that the behaviour persists after attention was drawn to it and the management was not instituting any measures for any internal gatekeeping to help prevent re-occurence. NMC statement issued Tuesday night (November 21, 2023) In a press statement signed and issued by the Executive Secretary of the NMC on Tuesday night (Nov 21), the NMC indicated that the management of the media house had sought to challenge the final warning issued last week (November 14). "We consider your letter a red-herring strategy to avoid taking responsibility for your actions. Yet, we are prepared to extend our deadline to Friday, November 24, 2023 after which we may act without any further reference to you," the NMC stated in the latest press statement on the issue. Attached below is a copy of the full statement RE: RE: FINAL CAUTION AGAINST INCITEFUL BROADCAST Your letter of November 20, 2023 does not address the regulatory directives contained in ours of November 14, 2023. Instead, you raise three extraneous issues which we address below: Ownership of station: You argue in your letter that the Commission's letter addressed to the Board Chairman of Media General is not properly directed as Onua TV is a registered entity under MG Television Ltd, and as such is a separate legal entity with its independent Board of Directors. Our checks at NCA show that upon your request, NCA by a letter dated November 17, 2023, approved the transfer of the authorisation for Onua FM and Onua Tv to Media General. So on record, Media General is the holder of the frequency authorisation. Your claim that a separate legal entity is in control outside the approved entity has major legal implications that we are duty bound to bring to the attention of NCA in addition to the subject matter of our original correspondence. Since you are familiar with the Electronic Communications Act, 2008 (Act 775) you must be aware of the consequences. Mandate of NMC: Article 167(b) of the Constitution (1992) empowers NMC to take all appropriate measures to ensure the establishment and maintenance of the highest journalistic standards in the mass media, including the investigation, mediation and settlement of complaints made against or by the press or other mass media. (Emphasis added). Your lawyers should have no difficulty in explaining this to you, i.e, that the Commission has power to take all appropriate measures and that the mediation and settlement constitute an inexhaustive list of tools the Commission may use to achieve its object. Ordinarily, we would not say more beyond this. However, since this is the second time you have willfully submitted yourselves to a misreading of the law, we feel obliged to point out to you that the law could not have intended that when we are faced with a broadcaster inciting mutiny within the armed forces as you are doing, we should be constrained by complaints settlement procedures. You know the story of Nero fiddling while ancient Rome burned. The National Media Commission will not do that today when in Niger, Chad, Guinea, Gabon, Burkina, Sudan and twice in Mali there have been military insurrections. Transmittal of correspondence: We are unable to treat this as priority until the substantive directives contained in our letter of November 14, 2023 have been carried out. We consider your letter a red-herring strategy to avoid taking responsibility for your actions. Yet, we are prepared to extend our deadline to Friday, November 24, 2023 after which we may act without any further reference to you. Yours faithfully George Sarpong Executive Secretary BIRDD to institute BUSIA Award Samuel Duodu Politics Nov - 22 - 2023 , 10:10 The Busia Institute for Rural and Democratic Development (BIRDD), a think tank that promotes education, democracy and rural development, is to introduce an award called the Best University Student in Africa (BUSIA) Award. The scheme, which is to commence at the Department of Sociology of the University of Ghana, Legon, is to honour the memory of Professor Kofi Abrefa Busia, the foundational head of the department who was also the first African Professor at the University of Ghana (UG). The Executive Director of BIRDD, Anane Agyei, made this known during a courtesy call on the head of the Sociology Department,UG, Dr Alhassan Suleimana Anamzoya. The institute congratulated Dr Anamzoya on being appointed head of the Department, which Prof. Busia headed from 1950 to 1957. The institute also presented a copy of Busias biography to Dr Anamzoya. Mr Agyei appealed for support to procure more copies of Busias biography and other publications to the department and other academic institutions to enable the youth to learn about Prof. Busia and emulate his high sense of patriotism. Dr Anamzoya expressed appreciation for the BIRDDs visit and gift, which he described as inspiring. He noted that it was pertinent to preserve the legacies of Dr Busia to enhance national development. He also praised the BUSIA Award concept and said it was a welcome idea. He pledged his departments willingness to collaborate with the BIRDD to promote academic excellence in Ghana. Busia Dr Busia, born on July 11, 1913, and died on August 28, 1978, was a politician and a scholar. He administered the Republic of Ghana as an executive prime minister from 1969 - 1972. His governance is noted for massive rural development as he sought to industrialise the rural areas for holistic national development. His period of stewardship is also remembered as a watershed for democratic governance as the regime promoted free speech, parliamentary opposition and respect for human rights, among other things. As a scholar, Busia became the first African to have held a professorship in Ghana. He also held professorships in many institutions of higher learning in Europe and the Americas. Among the notable Ghanaian politicians he nurtured was John Agyekum Kufuor, the second President of the Fourth Republic of Ghana. Public workshops will inform task force comments on the BLM's RMP draft Making sure the Bureau of Land Management hears the perspectives and concerns of the public when it comes to the Resource Management Plan (RMP) draft for the Rock Springs Field Office is a priority for many people and organizations, both locally and around the state. To that end, public workshop meetings were held in Sweetwater County last weekend to gather feedback for a task force appointed by Governor Mark Gordon. The workshops were facilitated by the University of Wyoming's Ruckelshaus Institute. "Our role is to be a neutral convener to bring people into conversation with each other around natural resource issues," Melanie Armstrong, the director of the Ruckelshaus Institute, explained. "We're really honored that the governor asked us to facilitate this process in order to gather as many voices [as possible] to provide input on how the governor will respond to the proposed changes to the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan." Members of the governor's task force were also present at the meeting, including local representatives. The task force includes Chairman Joel Bousman, a retired Sublette County Commissioner; Wyoming Senate President Ogden Driskill; Wyoming House Speaker Albert Sommers; Jim Magagna of Stock Growers Association to represent livestock; Mike McGrady of Sisecam USA to represent mining; Colin McGee of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming to represent oil and gas; Kayla McDonald of the Sweetwater Economic Development Coalition to represent tourism and economic development; Josh Coursey of Muley Fanatics Foundation to represent sportsmen and hunting; Alec Underwood of the Wyoming Outdoor Council to represent conservation; Ron Wild with Rocky Mountain Power to represent renewable energy and utilities; Sweetwater County Commissioner Taylor Jones to represent motorized recreation; and Sweetwater County Commission Chairman Keaton West to represent local government. "So when you're speaking today, know that the listening ears that are listening to you are primarily members of that task force," Armstrong told the meeting attendees. "They will also be reaching out to you, trying to gather ideas for different groups that they represent, in order to ensure that as many perspectives as possible are informing their work on that task force." Meeting presentations Hundreds of people across the county turned out for the workshop meetings last weekend. The Green River workshop took place Saturday morning at the Western Wyoming Community College Green River Center. Additional meetings took place in Rock Springs on Friday and Farson on Saturday afternoon. The meetings were organized by the Ruckelshaus Institute along with the UW College of Agriculture, Life Sciences, and Natural Resources; the UW School of Energy Resources; and the Wyoming County Commissioners Association. Representatives working with these organizations spoke at the beginning of the meeting to go over information for the public to consider and to help the workshop attendees better understand the RMP. Nolan Rap, the Natural Resource Policy Advisor with the governor's office, reiterated that those hosting the meeting were not with the BLM, and explained that they wanted to get honest, good-faith input. "This process really is to inform this task force so that we can give the BLM a package that shows what the people that live work and recreate what for our public lands," he said. Rap also pointed out that while the workshop would inform the task force for their comments, it is also still important for individual members of the public to make individual substantive comments to the BLM as well. Temple Stoellinger, a faculty member at UW who has worked on land use plans in Wyoming in the past, spoke at the meeting to present context for understanding the governmental processes overseeing things like resource management plans. Stoellinger noted that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process requires the BLM to review and respond to substantive comments. Responses to comments can be in the form of making changes or modifications to the plan, proposing new alternatives, or giving an explanation of why the comments don't require a specific action in response. The importance of comments being substantive in order for the BLM to respond was reiterated by Stoellinger. She pointed out that "postcard campaigns" and numerous comments repeating the same basic message will be responded to collectively, not individually, and that commenting is not a form of voting on an alternative. Substantive comments should be clear, concise, personal, and relevant to the analysis of the proposal. "It's helpful to be solution-oriented and provide those specific examples rather than just merely opposing," Stoellinger said. "So give them what you would like to see, what you would like to have happen, instead of what you don't want to have happen." Understanding the RMP is crucial to being able to make comments in response to it, so Micah Christiansen, the Natural Resource Counsel for the Wyoming County Commissioners Association, spoke about how to understand the plan draft. He admitted that it is huge and said his printer jammed 172 pages into the over 1,300-page document. His recommendation to everyone was to print the first 36 pages of the plan, which include an executive summary, a glossary of terms, and a table of contents. He also recommended treating the document like a book club and finding someone else to look over it with. "Unfortunately, you can't learn it through osmosis," Christensen said. "We're going to have to actually read it, and your comments are going to be a lot better for it by reading it." Christensen went over the statements of purpose and need, which set the groundwork for the plan, and explained the four alternatives. He also explained that the final draft can be a combination from all of the alternatives. "From that range we can take certain pieces from all the alternatives that work and we can work together and we can build something different," he said. Workshop concerns After hearing this information about the RMP, attendees at the workshop meeting were split into smaller breakout groups of roughly 15 to 20 people in order to have direct discussions and chances to provide comments to be passed on to the task force. "What we're looking for is what you think are the priorities that should be in this management plan," Steve Smutko from the UW School of Natural Resources explained. "Not what you don't like, but what you want to see." One of the breakout rooms included County Commissioners Island Richards and Robb Slaughter, Senator John Kolb, Representatives J.T. Larson and Cody Wylie, management staff from Rocky Mountain Power, and a number of concerned citizens. Those in attendance were asked to consider and give answers to the questions: What about these lands is important to you? If you were writing the RMP, what would you prioritize to support the things that are important to you? Given all that, what advice would you give to the Task Force on how to balance the priorities? What other comments would you like to share with the task force? Some of the major areas of concern that workshop participants identified were economic impact, access, future development of resources, the impact on tax revenues, using local science and data to inform decisions, maintaining multiple use, keeping internal consistency in the RMP, and finding a way to balance priorities. One overarching concept discussed by participants was the idea that the RMP draft uses "a broad brush," as Commissioner Slaughter put it, when it may need a scalpel. Slaughter said Wyoming has a history of stewardship and that many of the management practices in place have been working, so rather than trying to change things dramatically, the plan should focus on surgically changing specific things. Those who weren't able to attend the workshop meetings are still invited to answer the same questions and submit feedback to the task force online at https://www.uwyo.edu/haub/ruckelshaus-institute/rmp-meetings.html. These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales. Xiaomi sub-brand Redmi has today started teasing the upcoming Redmi K70E smartphone, which is now confirmed to arrive by the end of the month alongside the K70 and K70 Pro. As always, the K series is Redmi's highest-end. This time around, the K70E is confirmed to be powered by the just-unveiled MediaTek Dimensity 8300 SoC. The word comes straight from Redmi's official teasers, so there's no denying it. This isn't any 8300, though, it's the 8300-Ultra. What that "Ultra" stands for is, for now, anyone's guess. Sometimes in such cases it's little more than a branding exercise, other times there are slightly more substantive changes, time will tell. Redmi K70E official teasers We've previously seen the K70 in a benchmark with the same chipset, by the way. Redmi is playing up the K70E's performance, revealing that a prototype scored 1,526,328 points in AnTuTu. Furthermore, after about an hour of gaming in "an open-world game" at 25 degrees Celsius, the phone was still managing 58.86 FPS. This one clearly seems to be positioned towards avid gamers who can't afford Xiaomi's flagship line. This being 2023, the new phone can't escape the AI scourge, and indeed there will be generative AI on board to help you with real-time closed captions as well as generating sentences and photos based on prompts. Source (in Chinese) International Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro to come in LTE and 5G versions The Redmi Note 13 series was recently introduced in China, and the lineup is slowly but surely crawling towards an international launch. There is a Redmi Note 13 Pro with 5G support and a Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, and now we learn Xiaomi is preparing another version of the phone limited to LTE network support. Redmi Note 13 Pro Both devices were certified with the NBTC, Thailand's telecommunications regulator. The certification clearly says Redmi Note 13 Pro and Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G, indicating two different phones. Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro with LTE and 5G on NBTC The Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro model number with LTE hasn't come across before so we are unsure what to expect beyond the chipset change. Redmi Note 13 Pro The Note 13 Pro in China has a 6.67 OLED with a 1220p resolution and up to 120 Hz refresh rate. The main camera on the back has 200 MP resolution, while the 5,100 mAh battery supports 67W charging. Quite the combination for a midranger that had a starting price in China below $200. Via The government of Guam managed to spend about $1.7 billion in local tax revenue and federal dollars in fiscal 2022, according to financial statements released by the Office of Public Accountability on Tuesday. The audit was finalized nearly five months after the statutory deadline for the government to close out its books on fiscal 2022. A full $105 million in surplus revenue reported last October was confirmed by the audit, but lawmakers have already earmarked the entire sum for various programs, the report notes. GovGuam spending in fiscal 2022 was made up of about $896 million in local taxes and other revenue, and $997 million worth of program revenue, which includes federal funding. Just over a quarter of total expenses went towards public health, one quarter was spent on education, and a tenth was spent on the third biggest cost, public safety. Fiscal 2022s spending is considerably lower than the $2.1 billion worth of funding that GovGuam managed in fiscal 2021when operations were buoyed by over $1.1 billion in federal money in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Flagged About $11.2 million worth of federal spending was flagged in fiscal 2022, down considerably from the $41 million reported in fiscal 2021. Costs were flagged due to failures to comply with federal controls on how they were meant to be, and associated reports on spending. Notably, about $5.9 million worth of Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery funds, discretionary money provided to the governor under the American Rescue Plan, had a significant deficiency in meeting procedures meant to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. Another $2.1 million worth of Education Stabilization Funding from the federal government was not properly monitored when provided to a sub-recipient of the money. Public Auditor Benjamin Cruz told the PDN last month that part of the ridiculous delay of the audit was caused by agencies that were taking too long to account for and comment on federal spending that auditors flagged. But the OPA on Tuesday said the major cause of the delay was due to GovGuam switching over to the services of auditing firm Ernst & Young. Deloitte & Touche, which handled GovGuams books previously, went out of business on Guam. OPA in a release stated that all agencies are put on notice that the GovGuam-wide audit is expected to be finalized by March 31 of next year. This will ensure the Guam Legislature and other stakeholders have audited information in time for the FY 2025 budget preparation, the office stated. A new financial management and information system for GovGuam will hopefully speed up future audits, but not for fiscal 2023. After several procurement attempts, GovGuam finally awarded a new FMIS contractor to develop and deploy a new FMIS for the primary government. It is a five-year contract with a go-live date of January 8, 2024 for the core financial systems, OPA stated. However, data for fiscal 2023 is still being maintained on the 30-year old AS400 computer system. In a continued effort to expand the islands neuroscience expertise on Guam, Guam Regional Medical City recently welcomed three new neuroscientists: neurosurgeons Dr. Scott C. Dulebohn and Dr. Luc Jasmin, and neurologist/sleep specialist Dr. Naho Hattori. GRMC has been working extremely hard to grow services that address important unmet needs impacting our community. We have a vision to serve as a regional center of excellence for neurological diseases and believe that the highest quality of care for these complex problems will be delivered when specialized personnel and equipment are organized into one team, Dr. Alexander Beau Wielaard, GRMC chief executive officer, said in a statement. Wielaard said GRMC wants the whole community to know that GRMC partners closely with its EMS colleagues to accept all patients with suspected stroke emergencies in hopes of improving access to our team when timing is critical. Dr. Scott C. Dulebohn Dulebohn joins GRMC as a full-time neurosurgeon with over 25 years of expertise in pain and minimally invasive surgeries. He has recently been appointed to serve as GRMCs director of the Neuroscience Center. In his career, Dulebohn developed emedicine.com, which became the largest online textbook for medicine in the world and integrated with the National Library of Medicine. Dulebohn also co-founded StatPearls, an online and mobile application board review for all fields of medicine. His expertise includes treating brain and spine trauma, bleeding, tumors, aneurysms, fractures, and infections; carotid disease; back and leg pain; neck and arm pain; cervical spine disease; carpal tunnel; and other compressive neuropathies. Dr. Luc Jasmin Jasmin joins the GRMC team after serving as a neurosurgeon in the United States since 2006. Before becoming a neurosurgeon, he was an assistant professor in neurology for 14 years. Jasmin is the president of the Painless Research Foundation, a non-profit international research organization dedicated to eliminating pain through translational research, education, and advocacyprimarily for cancer pain, neuropathic pain, and post-operative pain. His expertise includes brain injury surgery, spine surgery, brain tumor surgery, and irradiation therapy for tumors, pain, and abnormal movements, amongst other specialties. Dr. Naho Hattori Hattori is a full-time neurologist, sleep specialist, and newly appointed as the hospitals Stroke Medical director, who last served as an attending neurologist at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California. She earned her medical degree at the University of Antigua School of Medicine in St. Johns, Antigua, and completed her neurology residencies in Florida and California, and her Sleep Medicine Fellowship at the University of North Carolina. Hattoris expertise includes stroke, seizures, dementias, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons disease, ALS, headaches, and sleep disorders such as sleep apnea. GRMCs Neurosciences team also includes neurointerventional radiologist Dr. Scott Shay, who continues to offer 24/7 access to advanced neurointerventional stroke procedures for the entire community; Jennifer Artero, RN, who recently joined the hospital as its Stroke Program coordinator (a position previously held by Elisabeth Collins, DNP, APRN-NP) and is working closely with Collins during the transition; and Dr. Justin Hale, GRMCs former neurologist/sleep specialist, who has relocated to the U.S., but remains tied to GRMC to assist with stoke code coverage. Those seeking neuroscience services at GRMC will need a referral from their primary care physician or other specialist before making an appointment. For more information about GRMCs neuroscience specialists and services, visit www.grmc.gu. You can also contact the Referral Management Office at (671) 633-GRMC (4762) or email refer@grmc.gu. Seaman recruit Mjay Pelayo, a Navy sailor from Yigo, is a student at the Navy Technical Training Center Meridian in Naval Air Station in Mississippi. Pelayo is a 2022 graduate of Simon Sanchez High School and joined the Navy three months ago. The reason why I joined the Navy is to help me improve myself with both discipline and maturity, Pelayo said. I also wanted more opportunities and to travel to more places around the world. I am the first in my family to join the U.S. Navy. At NTTC Meridian, instructors teach sailors to be combat-ready warfighters, while providing the tools and opportunities for continuous learning and development. Through this training, Pelayo is learning the skills needed to be a yeoman. As a yeoman, Ill be processing various correspondence, awards and reports for the commands leadership and its sailors, Pelayo said. To succeed in the military, Pelayo relies upon skills and values like those found in Yigo. I learned in Yigo to take things one day at a time because I used to rush things in my life, but I realized thats a bad habit, so I learned to relax and take my time, said Pelayo. NTTC Meridian is committed to developing dedicated and motivated sailors and Marines. Following boot camp, they provide entry-level A school training to students in administration and supply ratings. It is one of the more than 1,640 subordinate learning sites that serve as a part of the Naval Education and Training Command domain. With 90% of global commerce traveling by sea and access to the internet relying on the security of undersea fiber optic cables, Navy officials continue to emphasize that the prosperity of the U.S. is directly linked to trained sailors and a strong Navy. Serving in the Navy means Pelayo is part of a team that is taking on Americas focus on rebuilding military readiness, strengthening alliances and reforming business practices in support of the National Defense Strategy, according to a news release. The Navy is not just important to the U.S., but to the rest of the world by maintaining everyones freedom and democracy, said Pelayo. Opportunities to achieve accomplishments during the military service are within reach for Pelayo. My proudest accomplishment is when I graduated from boot camp, he said. It made me realize that I made it through 10 weeks of intense training and it was all worth it in the end. Pelayo takes pride in serving the U.S. as he continues to perform missions. Serving in the Navy means a lot to me, said Pelayo. It means I get to be a part of something bigger than myself. I also do this for myself to have a better future. Pelayo also expresses gratitude for those that have supported him in making his career in the Navy possible. I would like to thank both of my parents, especially my mom, added Pelayo. I couldnt do it without her, and Im very grateful to have a mom like her. Hundreds of residents would have a chance to also celebrate Thanksgiving with traditional turkey and all the sides as The Salvation Army continues its longstanding tradition of preparing Thanksgiving meals for the homeless and other members of the community. The Thanksgiving meals would still come in boxes or balutan style. Salvation Army and volunteers will be heading out to the streets early Thursday morning starting at 5:45 a.m. or 6 a.m. to hand the Thanksgiving meals to those who need it. They will be in specific areas in the north, central and south, where the homeless and the needy usually are located. They include areas in Tamuning, Mongmong-Toto-Maite, Hagatna, Barrigada, Harmon, Dededo, Yona, Ipan-Talofofo, Inalahan and Hagat. For many years, The Salvation Army has provided a Thanksgiving meal for those in need, as we believe in giving hope to the homeless and those in need. Just seeing the smiles on their faces and expressions of gratitude is enough to continue this tradition, Lou Hongyee, administrative services director for The Salvation Army and its Lighthouse Recovery Center, told the Pacific Daily News on Wednesday. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, The Salvation Army has not held its signature Thanksgiving luncheon, where hundreds, if not thousands, of people have their meals in one place, where food was served by volunteers. Many of those luncheons were held at the Chamorro Village in Hagatna, but the pandemic paused that. God willing, and with the help of the community, we will bring back the Thanksgiving luncheon at Chamorro Village or at another venue. The event has always been well attended by hundreds of people, and we always have more than enough volunteers to assist us, Hongyee said. Recipients of the Thanksgiving balutan would have sliced turkey, sliced ham, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, pancit, red rice, stuffing, pumpkin cookie, and water. Hongyee said Salvation Army has enough volunteers as staff and a church group, will be distributing the meals. For this years Thanksgiving meals, Salvation Army received a $5,000 donation from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, among others. Quality Distributors also donated thousands of pounds of rice and other goods for Salvation Armys food pantry. We want to thank everyone who has helped us throughout the year by supporting our programs. The continued support of the community gives us the opportunity to do what we do, Hongyee said. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. The government of Guam would have to use local tax dollars for lease payments on a number of northern schools this fiscal year because Guam has not received federal money that covers the costs of hosting migrants from Micronesian islands with Compacts of Free Association with the U.S., according to officials. Guam has been receiving between $14 million and $17 million in so-called Compact impact money since 2003, but not anymore, starting this fiscal year. The law that provided those reimbursements for COFA host communities such as Guam, Hawaii, the CNMI and American Samoa expired in September. GovGuam has historically used about $5.7 million worth of Compact impact funds to cover the lease payments on four northern schools, including Okkodo High School. Del. James Moylan on Monday told media that theres no Compact impact money included in a temporary budget that will keep the federal government afloat until late January. He said hes still working to get a short-term extension on payments for Guam locked in, as Congress debates long-term funding for the U.S. government. While the COFA agreements were renewed, reimbursements so far have not continued. Money from the General Fund will be used to pay for school leases in the meantime, Adelup spokesperson Krystal Paco-San Agustin told the Pacific Daily news Tuesday. The governor had asked for the provision in GovGuams fiscal 2023 budget, and the first payment will come in fiscal 2024. The General Fund is the repository of local income tax and business tax collections. Besides Okkodo, lease payments for Liguan Elementary School, Adacao Elementary School, and Astumbo Middle School were all funded with Compact impact money. There are still a few years of payments left, as GovGuam began a 20-year lease-to-own deal on the schools back in 2008. Education Superintendent Kenneth Swanson told the PDN that the Guam Department of Education does not have any hand in cutting the check, as the lease is held by GovGuam, not the school system. Thats a real challenge for the Department of Administration in the governors office because thats where those things were arranged, Swanson said. Besides the lease payments, north of $8 million worth of Compact impact money went towards education, public health, and public safety in the past. According to Moylan, the decision to cut off Guam and other COFA host communities from direct funding was made in fiscal 2022, and Guam did not get a seat at the discussion table. The federal government has moved towards extending more federal benefits, like Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income to COFA migrants, said Moylans Chief of Staff Bobby Shringi. That solution was more palatable to states like Oregon, which are now bigger destinations for COFA migrants. Shringi said that was not an equitable solution for Guam, which had a unique situation and needed further assistance with public safety costs and other areas. An amendment Moylan has introduced in other spending packages for the government would renew the reimbursements, but will have to survive final debate in Congress. If that does not work out, Moylan has also introduced a bill that would extend Compact impact funding up until 2043. The delegate said the House Natural Resource Committee will hopefully call for a hearing on the measure early next year. We know what the funding needs (are), we have good communications with the chairman and the committee, and were going to make sure that happens for the people of Guam, Moylan said. Shringi added that the extension of more federal benefits to COFA citizens may open the door for Guam residents to get monthly SSI checks, among other benefits. Youre basically seeing COFA migrant who moves to California, to Arkansas, to Hawaii qualifies for certain types of benefits that everyone in this room does not on Guam, he said. Paco-San Agustin said the governor has repeatedly called for Guam to have a seat at the COFA negotiation table. Unfortunately, she has been told, along with other state governors, to effect change through the congressional process, she said. This is an uphill battle given our non-representation in the Senate but we have worked with our delegate and others to make our case. Whatever is decided in Congress, Paco-San Agustin said, GovGuam was in a better financial picture under the Leon Guerrero-Tenorio administration with continued government surpluses. Sen. Chris Barnett listens to testimonies presented on Bill 185 during a public hearing before lawmakers of the 37th Guam Legislature in Hagatna on Nov. 20, 2023. Ron McNinch is a longstanding member of the Guam community and frequently gives his opinion on a wide range of topics. Haiti - Justice : The judicial system paralyzed throughout the country The magistrates standing in Haiti began a work stoppage at the beginning of the week in the 5 courts of appeal, the 18 Courts of First Instance (TPI) in Haiti and the special labor court. The strike was announced by the "Collectif des Magistrats Debout d'Haiti" (COMADH) which condemned the non-compliance of as discrimination in terms of salaries and social benefits between standing magistrates (those who plead) and seated magistrates (them who render court decisions). The Collective denounced the advantages that sitting Magistrates receive, among other things, debit cards equivalent to a third of their salary, service allowances of a value similar to half of their monthly fees, fuel vouchers of 16,000 gourdes, prepaid phones For several years, the union has been carrying out long work stoppages to demand decent working conditions. In March this year, the justice system was completely paralyzed due to a strike by bailiffs and court clerks in all 18 jurisdictions and caused considerable damage to litigants. This new strike comes a month after the start of the judicial year and shortly after the launch of a program aimed at reducing prolonged preventive detention which affects more than 80% of prisoners... TB/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... The replacement for gang leader Isca Andrice shot in the neck Tuesday, November 21, 2023, David Ganier aka "Black Alex Mana" who proclaimed himself Chief of the Belekou district after the death of Chief Isca Andrice https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-40974-haiti-news-zapping.htmlwas shot in the back of the head by one of the gang members : James Edmond alias "Bendji", who becomes the new leader, according to our sources. A crook arrested Tuesday January 21, 2023, Wilner Jean, a crook actively sought by the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police, was arrested by agents of the Economic and Financial Affairs Bureau in Delmas 19. He is accused of having defrauded a total amount of US$18,000 to the detriment of several victims. Comments by Dennis Francis "I thank the Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean Victor Geneus for having warmly welcomed me. We had a constructive exchange on the multifaceted crises affecting Haiti. We agreed that a long-term solution is essential," emphasizing the need "to restore a culture of democracy in the country, for which improved security is essential," declared Dennis Francis, President of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Exhibition : Opening of a restitution-sale Friday, November 24, the Art Center invites you to the Maison Dufort at 3:00 p.m. for the opening of a restitution-sale of the works of 7 artists, produced as part of the Fund for Visual Creation 2023 of the Art Center, financed by Swiss Cooperation in Haiti. The Exhibition will be open until Thursday, November 30, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. 20th edition of the 4 Chemins Festival The French Ambassador to Haiti Fabrice Mauries and Fabien Cayla Director of Institut Francais En Haiti, participated earlier this week in the launch of the 20th edition of the 4 Chemins Festival (Nov. 20 - Dec. 2nd) by Guy Regis at the Center d'Art. The French Embassy in Haiti is one of the partners. 20 years of support for the theater scene, artistic life and live performance in Haiti. The Embassy will continue this partnership: a duty, a requirement and a pleasure. To find out more about the Festival visit the website : https://festival4chemins.com Programming : https://festival4chemins.com/programmation-2023/ World Television Day (Video) Tuesday, November 21, on the occasion of World Television Day, UNESCO joined forces with the National Telecommunications Council (CONATEL) and the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communication to celebrate this day around the theme around the theme : "Acceleration of digital technology and development of audiovisual media" in the presence of media owners and bosses from both the public and private sectors, heads of press associations and operators in the sector. HL/ HaitiLibre Published on 2023/11/22 | Source Korean movies opening today 2023/11/22 in Korea: "12.12: The Day", "Big Sleep", "Usury Academy" and "She's From Another Planet" Advertisement "12.12: The Day" (2022) Directed by Kim Seong-su With Hwang Jung-min, Jung Woo-sung, Lee Sung-min, Park Hae-joon, Kim Sung-kyun, Nam Yun-ho,... Crank-in: 2022/02/17 Synopsis On December 1979, Seoul had been enduring a harsh winter before the upcoming spring. After the assassination of President Park, martial law has been declared. A coup d'etat bursts out by Defense Security Commander Chun Doo-gwang (Hwang Jung-min) and a private band of officers following him. Capital Defense Commander Lee Tae-sin (Jung Woo-sung), an obstinate soldier who believes the military should not take political actions, fights against Chun Doo-gwang to stop him. The conflict between the two grows while military leaders are holding their decision and Defense Minister is gone. In the midst of chaos, the spring of Seoul that everyone longed for heads to unexpected direction. "Big Sleep" (2023) Directed by Kim Tae-hoon-XI With Kim Young-sung, Choi Joon-woo, Lee Rang-seo, Kim Ja-young, Hong Suk-bin, Song Yo-sep,... Synopsis On a winter morning on the way to work, Gi-yeong finds Gil-ho sleeping on the wooden bench in front of his house. Gil-ho is a teenager who has run away from home because he can no longer face the domestic violence he suffers there. Gi-yeong, who seems tough but has a tender heart, lets Gil-ho stay in his house for a few days and Gil-ho comes to trust Gi-yeong. It seems that Gi-yeong must have recognized his own dark past in Gil-ho. However, as Gil-ho's friends visit, conflicts happen between Gi-yeong and Gil-ho. Big Sleep is a film for grown-ups: It is about characters who seek salvation and healing in daily life. This story of a loser taking care of someone weaker than he is both touching and compelling. The two leading actors delicately pull off the high and low levels of emotions thoughtfully designed by the director. Big Sleep desperately grabs the drama of care and new life. JUNG Hanseok 27th Busan International Film Festival "Usury Academy" (2023) Directed by Hwang Dong-seok With Yoo Seon-ho, Kang Mina, Yoo In-soo, Shin Soo-hyun, Lee Chan-hyeong, Lee Il-jun,... Synopsis Step into the thrilling world of high school student Kang-jin as he fights against debt collectors and the oppressive harassment of Nam-yeong, who masquerades as a model student. With each day feeling hopeless and bleak, Kang-jin's life takes a dramatic turn when he stumbles upon a lost envelope of money belonging to Rang. Using this newfound wealth, he takes a stand against Nam Young's girlfriend Da-yeong. But when Nam-yeong discovers Kang-jin's actions, he strikes back by stealing his money and issuing dangerous threats. With nowhere to turn, Kang-jin confides in Rang, who reveals a secret knowledge of the debt-collecting world. Together, they embark on a thrilling journey of power and control, as Kang-jin takes his first steps into the world of loan sharks. "She's From Another Planet" (2022) Directed by Goo Sang-bum With Baek Seo-bin, Shin Yeon-suh, Seo Ji-young-I, Kim Young, Choi Hoon-jae, Ji Woong-bae,... Synopsis Na-eun believes she is a cosmic being. She has been trying to communicate with space at noon in a park. Seok-min (plaving by Baek Seo-bin) is an unemploved young man who has been looking for a job. He goes to the park to take revenge after his close friend was hospitalized because of injuries caused by Na-eun but falls for her when he sees her. Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news Login Sign Up New Ad-free Subscriber Login Email Password Password Username Subscribe to our daily NewsLetter Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password or receive our NewsLetter. Stay logged in Lost password Contact Korean Movie | 2013 Drama Directed by Jang Hyeon-sang () Written by Jang Hyeon-sang () 93min | Release date in South Korea: 2013/10/17 Synopsis Known loser Ha-neul gets together with psycho Myeong-ho! School leader Chi-woo's sandbag and shuttle Ha-neul. Everything changes when Myeong-ho transfers to his school in the start of the senior year. Ha-neul's life changes with everyday with his new friend. Meanwhile, Ha-neul meets a sexy girlfriend named Se-jin at Myeong-ho's luxury birthday party and has the honor of becoming her boyfriend. With Ha-neul's gift of drawing, Jae-yeol's quick thinking brain that earns him first place in the school and Myeong-ho open an adult site of their own. It's the perfect match. WOW. Meanwhile, Man-sik, a stalker who has a crush on Myeong-ho's girlfriend Ah-reum keeps approaching Myeong-ho who loses the USB containing important information regarding their adult site... Ha-neul's reputation is ruined as the school finds out about the site and Chi-woo dreams of revenge... Their final flight takes place now... Source Thursday, Nov. 30 Book Discussion Group, reading The State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library. Books are available for checkout at the library. This event is free and open to everyone. Using Artificial Intelligence for Small Business, a Community Ed. class, 6 - 7:30 p.m., HHS Library, to learn how different A.I. tools can help with marketing, branding, sales and more. Cost is $10. For full info and to register, go to http://www.blueponyk12.com/community-ed . Pinochle Thursday, 1 - 3 p.m., North Central Senior Center. People of all levels and abilities can call Heather, 406-265-5464, or just show up to play. Block Party, 3:30 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library, with a time for building and playing board games. This is free and open to the public. Friday, Dec. 1 Hi-Line Nativity Festival, 2 - 9 p.m., The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1315 Washington Ave., with a viewing of Nativity sets from around the world along with art and sculptures depicting Jesus life and ministry. This event is free and open to the public. Havre High Close Up Tamale Sale order deadline, end of day, with delivery Dec. 10. Cost is $25 for a dozen and $7 for ancho tamale sauce. Message, call or text Lindsey Ratliffe 406-590-8835. Yarn Circle, 4 - 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library. This program is free and open to the public. All crafts are welcomed. Refreshments will be provided. Saturday, Dec. 2 Live Nativity Drive-thru, 5 - 7 p.m., United Methodist Church. Drive through from the north end of the alley behind the church. Volunteers will be depicting the traditional Nativity scene, along with live animals. The community is invited to contemplate the moment and the season from their cars or on foot. This event is free and open to the public. Sunday, Dec. 3 Piano & Pipes Concert, 2 p.m., First Lutheran Church, 303 6th Ave., with a selection of music shared by many musical groups from around the community. This event is free and open to the public, but non-perishable food or cash donations for the food bank are appreciated. Cottonwood Farmers Union Local 145 meeting, 1 p.m., Beaver Creek Perk, 137 2nd St. Monday, Dec. 4 Pool in the backroom, Monday-Friday, 1 - 3 p.m., North Central Senior Center, 2 2nd St. W. Tuesday, Dec. 5 Havre High School Choir concert, 7 p.m., High School Auditorium. HHS concerts are open to the public. Admission is free to activity card holders or $5 to general public. Burgers and Bingo fundraiser, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m., Bingo starts 6:30 p.m., Eagles Club. Dinner proceeds and some proceeds from bingo, go toward Eagles Club projects. Tuesday Bingo, 1 - 3 p.m., North Central Senior Center, 2 2nd St. W. Cost is $1/card for the afternoon. Pays 100% of amount paid in. Open to community members 18 and older. Just Breathe, with relaxing coloring, puzzles, music and refreshments, 4 - 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library. This weekly event is free and open to the public. Wednesday, Dec. 6 Winter Storytelling, a free family event that includes soup and biscuits, 6 p.m., Kills At Night Center in Hays. Coffee Club Wednesdays, 10 - 11:30 a.m., North Central Senior Center. Drop-ins and newcomers welcome. Books and Babies, 10:15 a.m., Havre-Hill County Library. Children aged 0-5 and caregivers are encouraged to attend but all are welcome. This program is free and open to the public. Storytime, 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library, with a craft to follow. This program is free and open to the public. Thursday, Dec. 7 Grace Break: Mini Self-Care Workshop, a Community Ed. class, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m., HHS Library, to learn easy strategies to manage everyday lifes ebb and flows as well as tangible tips to implement in life. Cost is $10. For full info and to register, go to http://www.blueponyk12.com/community-ed . Christmas Cake Decorating, a Community Ed. class, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m., Henny Penny Cupcakes, 234 4th Ave., decorating a unique Santa Claus cake using buttercream and icing tips on an 8-inch cake to take home. Cost is $22. For full info and to register, go to http://www.blueponyk12.com/community-ed . Pinochle Thursday, 1 - 3 p.m., North Central Senior Center. People of all levels and abilities can call Heather, 406-265-5464, or just show up to play. Block Party, 3:30 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library, with a time for building and playing board games. This is free and open to the public. Friday, Dec. 8 Puss in Boots Christmas Panto, a Christmas comedy production from Montana Actors Theatre. Door and Backstage Lounge open 6:30 p.m., play begins 7 p.m., MSU-Northern Little Theatre. Yarn Circle, 4 - 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library. This program is free and open to the public. All crafts are welcomed. Refreshments will be provided. Saturday, Dec. 9 District 4 HRDC Winter Wonderland, 1 - 3 p.m., HRDCs Fireside Room, 2229 5th Ave., with fun and games for the family. All activities are free of charge. Neon Night, an 80s tribute party hosted by Joplin Commercial Club, 8 p.m. - 1:30 a.m., Joplin Hall. Cost is $25/couple, $15/individual or $40/family, for entrance and the nacho bar. The night will include a DJ, black lights, live music and door prizes for the best dressed in 80s-style or neon attire. Money raised will help paint Joplin Hall. Puss in Boots Christmas Panto, a Christmas comedy production from Montana Actors Theatre, Door and Backstage Lounge open 6:30 p.m., play begins 7 p.m., MSU-Northern Little Theatre. AHA Basic CPR and First Aid (Heartsaver), 8:30 a.m. - noon, HHS Library. This course teaches infant, child and adult CPR and First Aid. Cost is $50. For full info and to register, go to http://www.blueponyk12.com/community-ed . Monday, Dec. 11 Havre Middle School Choir concert, 7 p.m., High School Auditorium. HMS concerts are open to the public, and admission is free. The North Central Hangar of the Montana Pilots Association monthly meeting, 7:30 p.m., terminal, Havre City-County Airport. Havre Dog Park Board monthly meeting, 6 p.m., Great Northern Inn Conference Room. For info, call Jessica, 719-216-5057. Pool in the backroom, Monday-Friday, 1 - 3 p.m., North Central Senior Center, 2 2nd St. W. Tuesday, Dec. 12 Burgers and Bingo fundraiser, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m., Bingo starts 6:30 p.m., Eagles Club. Dinner proceeds and some proceeds from bingo, go toward Eagles Club projects. Tuesday Bingo, 1 - 3 p.m., North Central Senior Center, 2 2nd St. W. Free today. Open to community members 18 and older. Just Breathe, with relaxing coloring, puzzles, music and refreshments, 4 - 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library. This weekly event is free and open to the public. Wednesday, Dec. 13 Alzheimer's/Dementia Support Group, 4:30 - 6 p.m., Havre-Hill County Library. This is a bi-monthly meeting for caregivers. For info, call 406-390-1551 or 406-301-3758. (CNBC) Binances VIP users were granted a set of special privileges, including an early heads-up from the crypto exchange if they were under investigation by law enforcement, according to the U.S. Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the U.S. and stepped down from his post on Tuesday as part of a $4.3 billion settlement. The plea deal resolves a multi-year investigation into the worlds largest crypto exchange. To read this article: We're a family of seven living in Georgia where Andrew's working as a professor at GSU. You can read more about us here According to the latest data from YTK Unemployment Fund, unemployment levels among its members remained stable in October, mirroring the figures from September. However, a notable increase in unemployment rates compared to the same period last year has been observed, particularly in regions like North Ostrobothnia, Pirkanmaa, and Uusimaa, which are typically seen as economic strongholds in Finland. Persistent Unemployment Despite Stable Monthly Rates YTK, Finland's largest unemployment fund, reported a 6.0% unemployment rate among its members in October, a slight decrease from 6.1% in September. However, this rate marks a 0.9 percentage point increase from the previous year. Factors contributing to this uptick include the downturn in the construction sector and a slowdown in industrial order books. Auli Hanninen, CEO of YTK Unemployment Fund, expressed mixed feelings about the current unemployment situation. "It's positive that unemployment didn't rise last month, but we would have preferred to be at last year's levels. Unfortunately, the current economic climate doesn't support that," she said. In October, YTK disbursed a total of 54.6 million in unemployment benefits, a significant increase from the 42.9 million paid out in October 2022. The majority (93.8%) of these payments were based on continuation or adjusted benefit applications, with the remaining 6.2% for initial claims, indicative of new unemployment cases. Regional Disparities in Unemployment Rates The surge in unemployment is particularly pronounced in three populous regions Uusimaa, Pirkanmaa, and North Ostrobothnia which are crucial contributors to Finland's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In Uusimaa, the unemployment rate has risen by one percentage point compared to October 2022, by 1.2 percentage points in Pirkanmaa, and by a substantial 1.6 percentage points in North Ostrobothnia. These figures represent significant changes, amounting to approximately a 20% increase in the unemployment rates of these regions. In contrast, Varsinais-Suomi, a region used for comparison, witnessed a relatively smaller increase of only 0.4 percentage points during the same period. Hanninen highlights the unusual trend of rising unemployment in traditionally successful economic regions. "Unemployment has particularly increased in regions that have been strong economically. Exceptions to this trend are Pohjanmaa and Aland, with Pohjanmaa experiencing only a 0.3 percentage point increase in its unemployment rate over the year, and Aland actually seeing a decrease of 0.4 percentage points," she explained. This data from YTK Unemployment Fund underscores the evolving landscape of Finland's labor market, particularly in its usually robust economic regions, signaling a need for attention and potential policy adjustments to address these rising unemployment challenges. HT According to Helsingin Sanomat , Puumalainen on Tuesday wrote in a statement that he has evaluated the draft government decision and related documents from the viewpoint of judicial review, concluding that there are no judicial grounds for proceeding to prepare the decision as proposed. DEPUTY CHANCELLOR of Justice Mikko Puumalainen has blocked a government draft proposal to step up measures at the border between Finland and Russia. The ruling was issued on grounds that the documents failed to sufficiently guarantee that the decision would not undermine the genuine and effective opportunity to seek international protection, a right that is afforded under the Finnish constitution, EU law and European Convention on Human Rights. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP) and Minister of the Interior Mari Rantanen (PS) on Tuesday said the government will take another approach to its ongoing work on measures to bring under control the situation on the eastern border. The chancellor of justices office has ruled that we cant move forward on this basis. It doesnt mean that this is it, but the preparatory work continues. There are other approaches, and the work continues, the premier was quoted saying to reporters in the Parliament House on Tuesday by YLE. He conceded that the ruling does delay the decision-making process slightly, though. Rantanen on Tuesday viewed that the proposed measures were tough but necessary. The preparatory work continues because its our duty to guarantee the safety of Finns. In that regard, we cant stand idly by, she was quoted saying by the public broadcasting company. Orpo and Rantanen refrained from shedding light on both the rejected measures and the approach to be taken by the government. Helsingin Sanomat wrote that government sources told it earlier yesterday that the government is intent on closing the entire eastern border for asylum seekers based on the strong impression that tough measures are required to respond to the influence campaign by Russia. The sources indicated that the decision will not fall through for lack of political will as long as the judicial justification is found and practical issues are addressed. The Salla and Vartius border-crossing points registered 41 and 20 asylum seekers, respectively, on Tuesday. Hans-Michael Gros, the captain in charge of the border-crossing point in Salla, Lapland, told the newspaper that the situation has followed the same pattern as at other border-crossing points: Russian officials are directing people arriving at the border to Finland. The Vartius border-crossing point was closed briefly a handful of times also yesterday after Russian border officials allowed undocumented migrants into the border zone. Aleksi Teivainen HT A Finnish research and industry consortium, led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, has inked a significant agreement with Lockheed Martin to develop advanced signal intelligence technologies. The three-year project, initiated on November 21, 2023, aims to enhance methods for detecting and classifying elusive radar and telecommunications signals, marking a substantial step in Finland's defense technology capabilities. The consortium comprises notable Finnish organizations such as Patria, Harp Technologies, Aalto University, and Tampere University. Sauli Eloranta, head of VTT's Safe and Connected Society research area, highlighted the project's goal to amalgamate the technological strengths and expertise of all parties. This collaboration is anticipated to yield cutting-edge solutions and pioneering knowledge in electronic intelligence, beneficial for both domestic and international defense industries. This project is not only a technological venture but also a strategic move to bolster Finland's knowledge and self-sufficiency in defense technology. It aims to update expertise, attract new students to the field, and eventually transfer this knowledge to defense corporations. Lockheed Martin's indirect industrial cooperation projects with Finnish universities and businesses are seen as an opportunity to foster long-term partnerships and advance collaborative efforts. The start of this collaboration is a significant milestone for VTT and Finland. We're eager to explore more partnership opportunities with Lockheed Martin in the future, said Eloranta. He emphasized the potential of this technology partnership to further strengthen Finland's already robust defense technology expertise and encourage cooperation with other defense sector players. One of two indirect industrial cooperation projects led by VTT, this initiative focuses on developing signal intelligence technologies, with another project aimed at advancing millimeter-wave imaging technology slated for commencement in early 2024. As part of the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet program, the consortium's role is pivotal in ensuring Finland's technical preparedness throughout the program's lifecycle. The collaboration with Lockheed Martin also includes communication facilitation with various Finnish stakeholders. Jim Mlynarski, Industry Development Lead at Lockheed Martin, expressed admiration for VTT's problem-solving focus and the high quality of research, which he noted was competitively on par with U.S. universities. As the project progresses, VTT aims to not only meet but exceed Lockheed Martin's expectations, leveraging its global partnerships, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and business acumen to unlock new opportunities worldwide. We are excited about our collaboration with Lockheed Martin. We believe this project aligns perfectly with our in-house expertise and offers a great opportunity to showcase our services to other potential partners in North America, said Timo Jaakkola, a client manager at VTT. HT Pardee endures Covid, nursing costs, looks to regional expansion UNC Health Pardee survived Covid, a new state law that has shifted day surgeries away from hospitals and contract nursing costs that dropped the most recent fiscal year into the red. This past year has been a challenging year across the health care continuum but its also been a very rewarding year, hospital President and CEO Jay Kirby told the Henderson County Board of Commissioners last week in his annual update on the operations and financial performance of Pardee, which is owned by Henderson County and operated by UNC Health. Pardee has added physician practices and satellite clinics, greatly increased advanced care for cancer and cardiac patients and drafted a strategic plan for regional expansion. Here are highlights of the hospitals serves for the year ending last June 30 and Kirbys comments: Births up 21 percent: That has nothing to do with birth rate in Henderson County. It probably has more to do with the conditions outside of Henderson County, where Transylvania, Highlands-Cashiers, Polk County and other areas do not have OB services in their markets so they seek care at the institutions who do provided these services. That has nothing to do with birth rate in Henderson County. It probably has more to do with the conditions outside of Henderson County, where Transylvania, Highlands-Cashiers, Polk County and other areas do not have OB services in their markets so they seek care at the institutions who do provided these services. Physician practices grow: The limiting factor that we have today in bringing new providers into our communities is space. Just as any burgeoning community, were going to need more space to do medical care. The limiting factor that we have today in bringing new providers into our communities is space. Just as any burgeoning community, were going to need more space to do medical care. Day surgeries migrate: When the legislature in its wisdom adopted Medicaid expansion it also moved towards reducing certificate-of-need laws, which will now allow freestanding imaging centers, freestanding surgery centers. The reduction is not a reduction in surgeries in Henderson County but it was the location. When the legislature in its wisdom adopted Medicaid expansion it also moved towards reducing certificate-of-need laws, which will now allow freestanding imaging centers, freestanding surgery centers. The reduction is not a reduction in surgeries in Henderson County but it was the location. Serving the customer base: If youre going to be a community that serves Henderson County, you better be good at three things because 62 percent of the people that seek care at Pardee Hospital hold a Medicare card: You better be good at orthopedics, you better be good at cardiac and you better be good at cancer because the 65 and older crowd uses those a lot more. If youre going to be a community that serves Henderson County, you better be good at three things because 62 percent of the people that seek care at Pardee Hospital hold a Medicare card: You better be good at orthopedics, you better be good at cardiac and you better be good at cancer because the 65 and older crowd uses those a lot more. Surgery success stories: Pardees board-certified fellowship-trained breast surgeon is the busiest breast surgeon in Western North Carolina and we have one of the busiest bariatric surgeons in the region. Our cardiac STEMI (ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction) program has gone from doing less than 50 interventions a year to this year doing over 1,800, and so that is bringing advanced care close to home. Nursing costs spike five-fold The big hammer on the financial side since mid-2020 has been a quintupling of the cost of hospital nursing labor, the primary reason Pardees operating margin for the 2022-23 fiscal year dropped to minus-1.21 percent despite a 7.6 percent gain in gross revenue (to $316 million). Despite the best efforts of (BRCC president) Dr. Leatherwood and the folks at Blue Ridge Community College, A-B Tech and Western Carolina, there are still not enough nurses to go around to care for the amount of folks that are coming into the healthcare system, Kirby said. During the peak of Covid admissions, we had to make a decision. Were we going to pay $160 an hour for nursing as opposed to much lower rates in the $27 to $30 range that we normally pay. Given the math, Kirby asked out loud how this would work. I went to our board and said weve got two choices: We can either pay these rates and keep the doors open and beds open, or we can shut down beds and shut down services, because every patient that we see were gonna lose money on, he recalled. And it was close to being an admonishment of me for asking that question because our board overwhelmingly said, Were not going to abandon our community at this time. A regional provider The way forward as a financially sound, quality-driven provider, Kirby said, is to continue to expand Pardees service footprint and offer the advanced care services that a growing and aging community demands. Yes, we are here first and foremost for the citizens of Henderson County, he told commissioners. And what I hear from the citizens of Henderson County is we want to bring advanced care closer to home. That means bringing state-of-the-art cardiovascular, oncology, general surgery and neurology so that people dont have to travel to Asheville and Greenville. To do that, though, Ive got to pull primary care referrals from across a region and become a much larger regional provider. Thats why the newly developed strategic plan eyes expanded infrastructure to support regional development. We have been embraced and welcomed with our presence in Transylvania County, Kirby said. We are going to look into the South Asheville market and our priorities will be Henderson and Transylvania and anything south of I-40. In all the blather from politicians and media personalities following Israels indecisive election, it is possible to see two ideas that might provide a map to the countrys future. One is the equalizing of the burdens between the haredim and the rest of us. Prominent in the explanation of Yair Lapids 19 Knesset seat victory are the mass demonstrations that occurred during the summer of 2011. That was hardly a united movement. Chants and signs demanded too great a variety of injustices to be corrected. What was clear, however, was that there were few if any haredim among the marchers. Lapids campaign, especially since the election, has emphasized the injustice of the haredi freedom from military or national service, as well as the substantial sums going to a population that is not working and paying taxes. The haredim are not living high on the hog. The payments made to families via several sources, not all of them transparent, provide a bare minimum, in crowded, unaesthetic neighborhoods, small flats, and lots of children. In total, however, a lot of money goes to a growing population that is arrogant in claiming to preserve the society through prayer and the study of archaic texts that do not hold the keys to current problems. The other idea has been given a boost by two individuals of high prestige, well placed in the military and Likud establishments. One is General Yaakov Amidror, currently serving as National Security Adviser, who went public with the warning that construction in West Bank settlements is losing Israel the support of its most important friends. Its impossible to explain the issue of settlement construction anyplace in the world. . . . Its impossible to explain this matter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel or even to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Construction in the settlements has become a diplomatic problem and is causing Israel to lose support even among its friends in the West. Such comments have not ended Amidrors career. Currently he is engaged, along with Americans, in arranging the upcoming visit of President Obama. Prime Minister Netanyahu has chosen to confirm that Amidror said something like the media is reporting, without extensive comment. On the same wave is Dan Meridor, a second generation member of the Likud elite, at various times Knesset Member and holder of ministerial portfolios. He is widely respected for his thoughtful opinions despite having lost a seat in the Knesset due to the right wing onslaught in the primaries that also unseated other Likud moderates. Meridor has come out against further construction in the West Bank, outside of the major settlement blocs. He would continue building in neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and in settlements that Israel is bound to maintain, but cease further construction in the scattered settlements that are least defensible politically, and provide no tangible benefits to Israel. Meridor is far from certain that his idea will produce any response from the Palestinians. He is doubtful that a Netanyahu government will offer Abbas anything moreor even as muchas Abbas rejected in 2009. He also suggests that the Palestinians may not be willing to accept anything an Israeli government can offer. His eyes are on international politics beyond the Palestinians, and what Israel should do in order to support a reasonable and defensible strategy in the presence of Arab hostility. Neither the Lapid nor the Amidror-Meridor ideas may survive the current maneuvering toward an Israeli government. If Netanyahu chooses the easy road of coalescing with the haredim and enough hangers-on to give him a bare majority, the secular middle of Israel can forget about equalizing the burdens between the haredim and themselves. And if Netanyahu includes Jewish Home in his coalition, Israelis concerned about an international initiative can forget about a moderate settlement policy. On the other hand, Netanyahu is a four-star politician, skilled in finding the wind and sailing accordingly. Among the reasonable guesses is a large government with Lapid, Jewish Home and the haredim, but with commitments to reducing the benefits of the haredim and making an effort at talking with the Palestinians. It is possible to see an implementation of something that Amidror and Meridor could sell to Europeans and Americans. And if not, one can imagine pressure building, Lapid on the outside making an issue of the haredim, along with international pressure against settlements that combine to increase the tension on Netanyahu and shorten the life of his government. Lapid has threatened that he will be the next prime minister if he must serve as leader of the opposition. Likudniks have ridiculed him as a freshman politician who has jumped higher than his pupik. So far Lapid appears to be holding firm to his demands that the price of joining the government is serious action to reduce the benefits of the haredim. He would be a formidable annoyance if not in the government. Netanyahu wants him on the inside. Perhaps Bibi is thinking of LBJs comment about a problematic antagonist (J. Edgar Hoover), Its probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in. Netanyahu also wants the haredim inside his tent, for pretty much the same reason. There is no simple solution either for the haredim or the Palestinians. Even an aggressive effort could not bring the haredim into the economic mainstream in less than a generation. Most of the men have no education that would help them find productive employment. Most of those over the age of 30 already have lots of kids and may be too set in their routines to expect serious training for secular employment. Too great and too quick a reduction in their benefits could cost more in the budget supplements necessary for welfare and the police than is saved from direct payments to the haredim and their academies. Also a possibility, and consistent with Netanyahus skills and previous practice, is to include all of the above in his tent, on the basis of promises that he keeps in small part, if at all. If that happens, and Lapid quits in frustration part way through the governments tenure, he will have tarnished his reputation and join the substantial club of promising Israeli centrists who tried, failed, and retired early from any aspiration to leadership. There are lots of possibilities. A wise observer should avoid predictions. Ira Sharkansky is professor emeritus, Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mumbai, Maharashtra, India Business Wire India As the year comes to an end, its time to indulge in the last leg of festivities. The flagship e-commerce initiatives of the Tata GroupTata CLiQ, Tata CLiQ Luxury, and Tata CLiQ Palette are hosting their annual and much-anticipated Black Friday Sale that will feature exciting offers across a spectrum of categories, including apparel, beauty, accessories, footwear, home, jewellery, watches, and more, allowing consumers to shop from their favourite brands as they welcome the holiday season. The sale is live on Tata CLiQ and Tata CLiQ Luxury from November 22nd to November 27th and on Tata CLiQ Palette from November 17th to November 27th. Gopal Asthana, Chief Executive Officer, Tata CLiQ, said, The Black Friday Sale has always been an exciting time as we look at providing consumers with never-seen-before offers on leading global and Indian brands across a wide range of categories. Our efforts are focused on providing our customers with a curated range of brand and products and an elevated shopping experience. As we work towards establishing ourselves as the preferred platform for lifestyle, luxury, and beauty, we are elated to announce this years Black Friday Sale on Tata CLiQ, Tata CLiQ Luxury, and Tata CLiQ Palette. With a variety of enticing offers across different categories, we are confident that this will delight consumers as they shop for the holiday season. We are expecting the momentum of the festive season to continue right through the Christmas and New Year and are, thus, anticipating the upcoming Black Friday Sale to end on a triumphant note yet again. Tata CLiQ, Indias leading e-commerce destination, is driving the proposition of Thank God Its Black Friday', signalling a sense of exhilaration for the extraordinary shopping adventure consumers can embark on with this sale. The sale promises to offer blockbuster deals on the latest styles and collections from leading brands across fashion and lifestyle. Starting November 22, customers can enjoy up to 85% off on their favourite brands, along with added benefits such as free shipping, additional coupons, and bank offers. Step into the holiday season with an elevated style quotient, as leading menswear brands including Jack & Jones, Levis, and U.S. Polo Assn. are up to 80% off, and brands like AND, Forever 21, Only, Vero Moda, and more in womenswear are up to 80% off. Aldo, Adidas, Puma, Woodland, and more in the footwear category for men and women are up to 70% off. The gadget and jewellery categories, too, will be up to 85% off. If one is looking to buy a new timepiece, now's the best time to shop, as popular brands in the watch category like Daniel Wellington and Fossil are up to 4050% off. Tata CLiQ Luxury, Indias premier luxury lifestyle platform, has attractive offers on the most coveted luxury brands across categories. It invites consumers to celebrate their journey by rewarding themselves with thoughtful and mindful luxury finds. Enjoy up to 4050% off on leading brands like Calvin Klein, DKNY, Guess, and Tommy Hilfiger in the accessories section. In the handbags category, luxury brands like Aspinal of London and Mulberry will be up to 30% off and also have a coupon offer. In addition, Liu Jo will have a minimum of 50% off. Add luxury watches to the splurges, as brands like Earnshaw, Just Cavalli, Maserati, and Michael Kors will have offers one cant miss. If one is looking to refresh their wardrobe, explore trendy styles from brands like Calvin Klien, Columbia, Gant, Forever New, Tommy Hilfiger, and True Religion in apparel, which will be up to 4060% off, and avail similar offers on footwear brands like Aldo, New Balance, and Puma Prime. In the kids category, consumers can avail 3050% off on brands like Boss Kids, Choupette, Jordan, and Karl Lagerfeld Kids. The Indiluxe segment, which features prominent Indian labels, will have offers one cant resist on brands like Andamen, Ganga Fashions, Masaba, Ritu Kumar, and Scakhi. Apart from this, Joules by Radhika and Neeta Boochra in jewellery, Label Sephyr and Rosso Brunello in footwear, and Da Milano & Outback in accessories will also have offers. For beauty and fragrance enthusiasts, pamper yourself with luxury brands like Bvlgari, Chopard, and Yves Saint Laurent, which have offers one cant miss. One can also avail of gifts with purchases from brands like Bobbi Brown, Clinique, Estee Lauder, Forest Essentials, and Tom Ford. If one is looking at purchasing jewellery this season, fine jewellery brands like De Beers Forevermark and Zoya have special offers, and Swarovski, Ted Baker, and Just Cavalli are up to 70% off in the fashion jewellery segment. For eyewear enthusiasts, brands like Hugo Boss, Jimmy Choo, and Kate Spade have up to 3050% off, while Dolce Gabbana, Prada, Ray-Ban, Tom Ford, and Versace have special offers. In the home category, Dyson, Le Creuset, Noritake, Spread Spain, and Starbucks have offers. Flexnest and Powemax in the fitness section are up to 50% off. Tata CLiQ Palette, Indias beauty matchmaker, is enthused about its annual Black Friday Sale and has rightly called it the Black FriYAY Sale. The sale offers a bigger and bolder palette of top beauty products at amazing prices, allowing customers to indulge in an exceptional Black FriYAY shopping experience by exploring and treating themselves to their favourite beauty products. Dressing up for any kind of celebration is not complete if your makeup essentials are not on point. Whether you plan to add to your existing makeup collection or refurbish it for the year, its time to check up on the makeup category at the Tata CLiQ Palette, which has offers on brands like Anastasia Beverly Hills and Lakme. One can also avail exciting gifts on purchases from Bobbi Brown and M.A.C. Get ready to shop for your favourite fragrances at never-seen-before prices, as brands like Armaf, Guess, Skinn by Titan, and Jaguar will be up to 2055% off. The fragrance factor is as important when it comes to the bath and body too. Products in this segment are also up to 2040% off, and it includes brands that have had an enduring appeal like Bioderma, Kimirica, Nivea, The Body Shop, and Vaseline. The Black FriYaY Sale couldnt be timelier, as it will also see the onset of the winter season. This makes it even more imperative to stock up on skincare products, and Tata CLiQ Palette is offering brands like Biotique, Garnier, L'Oreal Paris, Minimalist, Neutrogena, and Pilgrim up to 1040% off. Since hair care is equally crucial during the winter season, customers can explore the best of hair care and hair colour products from Dr. Batra's, Toni & Guy, Schwarzkopf, and Wella are up to1050% off. Leading banks are also participating in the sale with a 10% instant discount on ICICI and Federal Bank credit cards from November 22 to November 27 on Tata CLiQ and Tata CLiQ Luxury and from November 17 to November 27 on Tata CLiQ Palette. *T&C apply Shop here https://www.tatacliq.com/ https://luxury.tatacliq.com/ https://palette.tatacliq.com Nashik truly shines as an ideal wedding destination, thanks to its good connectivity, delightful weather and Nashik being the wine capital of India. It's often called the "California of India," showcasing its diverse charm and allure. With its rich cultural heritage and stunning landscapes of Sayadri hills, Nashik offers a breath-taking backdrop for couples seeking a truly memorable and picturesque wedding celebration. Adding to its charm is the Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa, a perfect venue for destination weddings. Recently, Fashion Chronicles along with Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa Nashik celebrated the launch of Wedding Whispers with a dazzling star-studded two-day wedding show at the property. The event was a blend of creativity by six renowned designers and the presence of Bollywood celebrities like Richa Chadha, Mouni Roy, Shiv Thakare and others. The two-day event also featured the unveiling of the 'Wedding Studio,' a specialized wedding consultation studio offering a comprehensive virtual tour encompassing all aspects of weddings. This unique studio provides live kitchen experiences for food tasting, highlighting the hotel's diverse culinary offerings. Richa Chadha James Ferreira and Jatish Ghai walking the ramp Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa Nashik makes for the perfect wedding destination for several reasons. It boasts the city's largest ballroom space (8500 sq feet) and expansive lawns (51,000 sq. ft.) against the scenic Pandavleni hills backdrop. With 224 beautifully designed rooms, including 18 spacious suites, it's renowned for offering timeless settings to make weddings truly unforgettable. The hotel's architecture is also perfect for stunning pre-wedding photoshoots. With separate venues available for each day's ceremony and an array of grand decor options, the hotel promises to curate an enchanting and personalized wedding experience for every bride and groom. The hotel also features an award-winning spa and salon, ensuring couples look and feel their best on their big day. Jatish Ghai, General Manager with his team at the launch On the culinary front, the hotel's team of gastronomic experts is ready to curate a delectable menu tailored to your preferences. Their customized menus catered to individual tastes, promising an exquisite culinary journey, be it an intimate cocktail reception or a lavish buffet dinner. Understanding that every love story is unique, Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa Nashik is dedicated to tailoring weddings to individual preferences. Each couple is assigned a dedicated wedding expert and Chef, ensuring their special day unfolds seamlessly. Godavari ballroom 'Wedding Whispers' at Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa Nashik is set to be an exclusive and unforgettable destination wedding experience, promising to bring dreams to life and celebrate love in a magical setting. Disclaimer: This article is a paid publication and does not have journalistic/editorial involvement of Hindustan Times. Hindustan Times does not endorse/subscribe to the content(s) of the article/advertisement and/or view(s) expressed herein. Hindustan Times shall not in any manner, be responsible and/or liable in any manner whatsoever for all that is stated in the article and/or also with regard to the view(s), opinion(s), announcement(s), declaration(s), affirmation(s) etc., stated/featured in the same. In one of the largest corporate penalties in US history, the cryptocurrency exchange firm Binance was slapped with a $4.3 billion penalty for breaking the US anti-money laundering laws. Apart from being involved in illicit financing, the world's largest crypto firm has reportedly failed to disclose over 1 lakh suspicious transactions with militant groups including Hamas, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Smartphone with displayed Binance logo and representation of cryptocurrencies are placed on a keyboard in this illustration(REUTERS) Binance will pay $1.81 billion within 15 months, and a further $2.51 billion forfeiture as part of the deal. While announcing his dissociation from Binance as its CEO, Changpeng Zhao said on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that he had made mistakes and must take responsibility. US Attorney General Merrick Garland said "Binance did more than just fail to comply with federal law. It pretended to comply." Open door for laundering drug money According to The New York Times report, Zhao and other top officials in Binance made a wide-ranging effort to evade laws which bar companies from doing business with criminals and people who face economic sanctions. The court documents said that the Binance platform was accessible by customers situated in Iran, Syria and Cuba countries which face US sanctions. The court papers further said Binance gave opportunities to some important customers to access the platform even after they were earlier booted out over concerns that they were involved in criminal activities. Is washing drug money too hard these days? Come to Binance, we got cake for you, one employee of the crypto firm said while explaining how the platform kept an open door for people laundering drug money, according to government officials cited by NYT. Transactions from Hamas The US government's Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which has been probing the case along with other agencies for years, alleged in March that Binance failed to implement an effective anti-money laundering programme to detect terror financing. It claimed that few Binance employees acknowledged potentially illegal activities facilitated by the platform. The CFTC also said in its March lawsuit that one of the employees received information in 2019 about transactions by Hamas on Binance. The employee explained to a colleague that terrorists usually send small sums as large sums constitute money laundering'. Other criminal charges The case also involved the use of a platform to enable the selling of child sexual abuse materials as well as being one of the largest recipients of ransomware proceeds. The Karnataka government has decided to waive arrears to the tune of 389 crore of 'Kuteera Bhagya', 'Bhagya Jyoti' and 'Amruta Jyoti' scheme beneficiaries who were either getting power free of cost or at a highly subsidised rates, Energy Minister K J George said on Tuesday. Karnatakas energy minister KJ George. ALSO READ | Kumaraswamy has become laughing stock: DK Shivakumar on allegations of screening adult films It has already merged these three schemes with its ambitious 'Gruha Jyoti' scheme offering free electricity up to 200 units to residential power connections. "Earlier, beneficiaries of 'Kuteera Bhagya' and 'Bhagya Jyoti' were getting 40 units and 'Amruta Jyoti' beneficiaries 75 units. We have decided that those getting 40 units will now get 50 units plus 10 units and those getting 75 units will get an additional 10 per cent," George told reporters. ALSO READ | Satish Jarkiholi will be a CM: Karnataka Cong MLA kicks up fresh row "There were huge arrears of 389 crore of the beneficiaries of 'Kuteera Bhagya', 'Bhagya Jyoti' and 'Amruta Jyoti' schemes. I spoke to the Chief Minister (Siddaramaiah) and he decided to waive it," the Minister explained. George also told reporters that the government had called tenders for solar substations and seven bidders have been shortlisted who will provide 750 MW. ALSO READ | Will retire if proved that I have taken money for transfers: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission has fixed a rate of 3.17 per unit, the Minister said, adding, many farmers at Pavagada in Tumakuru district have come forward to provide 8,000 acres of land to those generating solar power. Punjab Police and the Border Security Force (BSF) recovered 5.2kg of heroin dropped by a drone which sneaked into Indian airspace from Pakistan on Wednesday. Punjab Police and Border Security Force personnel who recovered 5.2kg of heroin dropped by a drone which sneaked into Indian airspace from Pakistan on Wednesday. The heroin was recovered from a field near the Attari-Wagah border near Amritsar. (HT Photo) The heroin, packed in a black bag, was recovered from a field near the Attari-Wagah border at 8.30am. Also read: Punjab Police arrest 3 linked to Pakistan-based terror module Senior superintendent of police (rural) Satinder Singh said the joint search operation was launched after a tip-off. A police team, led by deputy superintendent of police (Attari) Gurinderpal Singh Nagra, conducted the search along with a BSF team near Attari village. Five packets of heroin were recovered. Our teams are working to ascertain the identity of the accused who had to retrieve the consignment, the SSP said. Nagra said a case was registered under the NDPS Act at the Gharinda police station. Sources said the drone returned to Pakistan after dropping the consignment. Last year witnessed some ominous developments regarding Chandigarh and Punjab:(i) As per the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966, both Punjab and Haryana deputed their employees to Chandigarh administration but they were governed under the Punjab Civil Services Rules. Ignoring this, the Union Government implemented Central Service Rules from April 1, 2022. (ii) Allocation of land in Chandigarh to Haryana for its new assembly building was announced on July 9, 2022, in the Northern Zonal Council meeting. Perturbing developments followed. Haryana offered land in Panchkula (Saketri village) in lieu of the land in Chandigarh (July 13, 2023) and the Chandigarh administration asked for an alternate site or 620 crore (September 21, 2023). The Open Hand at the Capitol Complex is the city emblem for Chandigarh. Le Corbusier, the citys architect, visualised it as a symbol of peace and reconciliation, of acceptance and unity among humans. An open hand signifies that a person is willing to give as well as receive. (HT file photo) These decisions obviously dilute Punjabs claim over Chandigarh. The allocation of land to Haryana in Chandigarh is incredulous as Punjabs claim over Chandigarh has been upheld by various awards and accords. So, why have an assembly in a city that eventually is to be transferred to Punjab? A brief revisit to the creation of the present state of Punjab justifies apprehensions. The states, except Punjab, were reorganised on linguistic basis with effect from November 1, 1956. Consequently, there was a long-drawn-out agitation for a Punjabi-speaking state. On April 23, 1966, the Government of India appointed the Punjab Boundary Commission with Justice JC Shah as chairman and S Dutt and MM Philip as members. The commission, with a split-decision, recommended that Kharar tehsli (including the Chandigarh Capital Project) be included in the Hindi-speaking state. Dutt, in his dissenting note stated: I regret that I am unable to agree with the recommendations which my colleagues propose to make about Kharar tehsil including Chandigarh. In my view, Kharar tehsil as a whole, with the exception of Kalka police station, should be merged with the proposed Punjabi state; the area of Kalka police station should be merged with Himachal Pradesh. The recommendations were considered controversial as (i) Punjabi was the dominant language in the rural areas of Kharar tehsil, (ii) Chandigarh was carved out by uprooting Punjabi-speaking villages of Kharar tehsil, and (iii) according to established precedent, Punjab being the parent state had a legitimate right over the capital. Right of Punjab on Chandigarh The Government of India did not accept the commissions recommendations in toto. According to the Punjab Reorganisation Act, 1966: (i) The territories which will form a new state of Haryana include Pinjore kanungo circle and Manimajra kanungo circle of Kharar tehsil; and (ii) A new Union Territory of Chandigarh shall be formed comprising Manimajra and Manauli kanungo circles of Kharar tehsil. The rest of Kharar tehsil remained in Punjab. Thus, the Union Territory of Chandigarh was carved out of greater Punjab on November 1, 1966. Since then, it has been the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana. Punjab went through turmoil due to various factors, including its claim over Chandigarh from the late 70s to the early 90s. The government took many decisions to resolve the issues. One of them was the governor of Punjab taking over as the administrator of Chandigarh, though it remained the capital of both states. It is indicative of the right of Punjab on Chandigarh. This is continuing since June 1, 1984. Another decision was the Rajiv-Longowal Memorandum of Settlement on July 24, 1985. According to this accord: The capital project area of Chandigarh will go to Punjab. A commission will be constituted to determine the specific Hindi-speaking areas of Punjab, which should go to Haryana, in lieu of Chandigarh. The actual transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab and areas in lieu thereof to Haryana will take place simultaneously on January 26, 1986. This led to the constitution of multiple commissions: Justice KK Mathew Commission (January 25, 1986), Justice ES Venkataramiah Commission (April 2, 1986) and Justice DS Desai Commission (June 20, 1986). These commissions could not identify any contiguous Hindi-speaking areas for transfer, as had happened earlier with the Prime Ministers Award (January 29, 1970), giving Chandigarh to Punjab in lieu of 105 Hindi-speaking villages and two cities (Abohar and Fazilka) to Haryana. Festering wound for 57 years! The concluding paragraph of the Shah Commission Report of 1966 is highly imperative: Agitation for setting up of separate linguistic states in the territory of Punjab raised its head more than 18 years ago, and it is unfortunate that strong passions have been aroused on that problem. Punjab has been at the forefront among the states of India in war, and in the times of peace it has led all other states in agricultural production, and parts of the state are humming with small-scale industry. We fervently hope that after the dust of conflict has settled. Contrary to 18 years, the wound of Chandigarh is festering for 57 years! Over the years, both states, responsibly located many state-level offices in their cities, SAS Nagar and Panchkula, both territorially contiguous to Chandigarh. But suddenly the demand of Haryana for land in Chandigarh is being processed! Both states need their capitals. It falls on the Centre to resolve this sensitive issue. In case of other states, the capitals remained with the parent state and none paid any territorial compensation. Thus, Chandigarh should be transferred to Punjab and liberal central grant be given to Haryana to build its own capital, as done for other states. Anything else amounts to playing with the sentiments of people with unknown motives. The governments need to be cautious. Recently propped-up issues are likely to result in accusations claiming injustice to Punjab and may be used to arouse sentiments to vitiate the environment with unpredictable repercussions. Political parties need to be vigilant that any flare-up of sentiments does not push Punjab backwards. Let us not fall prey to those who have been exploiting sentiments of Punjabis, resulting in suffering not only to Punjab but the whole country. Hopefully, in national interest and for justice, these new irrational decisions would be revoked soon, and efforts revived to amicably resolve pending issues between Punjab and Haryana. Dr Baldev Singh Dhillon is a former vice-chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, and Dr Jai Rup Singh is the founder vice-chancellor of the Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, and former vice-chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Views expressed are personal The counter-intelligence team of Punjab Police have arrested three men in Bathinda who were linked to a Pakistan-based terror module. The trio was arrested near Gobindpura village on the periphery of Bathinda city on Tuesday afternoon. Following a tip-off that the accused were carrying arms and ammunition, a police team was deputed along the Sirhind canal. (Representational photo) Rajbhupinder Singh, Raman Kumar and Jagjit Singh were in touch with three persons accused of terror-related charges lodged in Sangrur jail and they were conspiring to target unnamed religious figures. Also read: Five Punjab districts contributed nearly 50% of stubble burning cases this season State police chief Gaurav Yadav took to X to share that eight weapons, nine magazines and 30 cartridges were recovered from the accused. Yadav said the three arrested men were linked to Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)-controlled terror modules in Pakistan. According to the first information report (FIR) at the cantonment police station, the trio was arrested near Gobindpura village on the periphery of Bathinda city on Tuesday afternoon. Assistant inspector general of police (AIG), state counter-intelligence, Avneet Kaur Sidhu said that preliminary probe found the arrested accused had brought weapons from Madhya Pradesh and were tasked to carry out targeted killings in Punjab to create panic. Investigation is on to unveil linkages in the crime and the recovery of more weapons is expected, she added. Kulwinder Singh, Harcharan Singh and Sultan Singh, who are in Sangrur jail under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act have also been named in the FIR under Sections 115 (abetment of offence punishable with death), 109 (punishment of abetment, if the act abetted, is committed in consequence), 379 (punishment for theft) of the Indian Penal Code and the Arms Act. Following a tip-off that the accused were carrying arms and ammunition, a police team was deputed along the Sirhind canal connecting the villages. Investigators said the accused were travelling from Puhli village towards Bathinda city in an Alto car without a registration number plate. On checking the car, five .50-bore pistols and three .30-bore pistols were recovered. The accused were using a stolen car, the police said. Rajbhupinder is a resident of Dikh village in Bathinda, Rama belonged to Guru Harsahai in Ferozepur, while Jagjit is from Faridkots Dhilwan Khurd village. The new president of Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, is demanding that Indian soldiers maintaining defence equipment given by India leave his country forthwith. In November 1988, IL-76 airlifted the entire Indian Army contingent that took part in Operation Cactus launched to help thwart attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government in Maldives. (PTI) Thirty-five years ago, his country was in serious trouble. Eighty armed rebels and mercenaries had managed to gain control of Maldives capital Male, including major government buildings, the port and TV and radio station. They had surrounded the national security headquarters to make a forced entry. The then president, Abdul Gayoom, went into hiding to escape capture. Early on November 3, 1988, his foreign secretary contacted foreign nations, including India, seeking urgent assistance. Maldives was in panic. Let me narrate subsequent events and how we carried out Operation Cactus. 9am: While rushing to the cabinet secretariat for a meeting, then army vice-chief Lt Gen SF Rodrigues summons me (I was a Brigadier in the military operations directorate) to the operations room to discuss the Maldives situation and to send a military force. We have no maps. I put up naval charts on the map board and start reading available material on Maldives. 50 Para Brigade at Agra is told to prepare for a short notice contingency task. 10.30am: The operations room starts receiving visitors for the cabinet meeting with service chiefs and vice-chiefs, secretaries, intelligence chiefs and our high commissioner in Maldives, who is on leave in New Delhi. 11am: The cabinet meeting starts with the arrival of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. All possible geo-political, strategic and military scenarios, implications and risks involved in launching an operation are discussed over the next two hours. No other nation is willing to send troops to Maldives. Our PM approves the plan for immediate airlift of the Para Brigade in a long-distance, high-speed IL-76 aircraft from Agra. If this force cannot land at Halule (airport for Male), it will return to Trivandrum, Kerala. The next morning, it will attempt a para landing in a smaller AN-32 aircraft. 1pm: The army and air force vice-chiefs ask Group Captain Ashok Goel and me to leave for Agra immediately. We will brief contingency force commanders and accompany the force till it lands in Maldives. Any change in situation will be intimated at Agra or before leaving Indian airspace. 5.45pm: The contingency force leaves Agra for a non-stop 3,000-km flight. The Para Brigade team is led by its commander, Brigadier Bulsara. The IL-76 team, comprising Friendly One and Friendly Two, is led by commanding officer, 44 Squadron, Gp Capt Anant Bewoor. 8.45pm: While flying over Trivandrum at 37,000ft, we are informed, No message from New Delhi. The flight continues. At 9pm, having missed lunch and feeling hungry, I take my packet out of the brief case and share it with a Para officer. In Delhi, my wife is informed that I have gone to Agra for an urgent work. 9.50pm: Friendly One raises ATC Halule on radio. At its request, the ATC switches its runway lights on and then off. Are we in luck? When Friendly One closes in and is only 200m above sea level, the runway lights are switched on again. Inside the aircraft, the tension and silence is palpable. Friendly pilots land their heavy IL-76; switch off lights but keep the engines on. Cargo doors are opened. Soldiers jump off to take position on both sides of the runway. Male is only 500m across a sea channel. Its lights are visible. In 20 minutes, the runway is fully secured. Brig Bulsara and commanding officer, 6 Para, start work on troop movement in civil boats to Male. A vessel, MV Progress Light, with rebels on board, is noticed rushing out of Male harbour. A rocket is fired. The vessel is damaged but continues to chug along and gets lost in the darkness. 11.45pm: Friendly One and Two, with me on board, start the flight back to Trivandrum. Paratroopers spread out in Male to take control and look for President Gayoom. November 4, 3.30am: Male is fully under control of Indian paratroopers. Gayoom is located and his security ensured. He rings up Prime Minister Gandhi to thank him for the prompt assistance in saving him and his country. Over the next 36 hours, MV Progress Light with rebels on board and carrying hostages, including the mother-in-law of a Maldives minister, is intercepted by Indian Navy ships. It is forced to surrender with crew, rebels and hostages. In Parliament, Gandhi states, I am proud to report that our troops have carried out their assigned task in an exemplary fashion in the highest traditions of the Indian armed forces. While shaking hands with the navy chief, he tells him: Good job Admiral! But I doubt if the Maldives minister of education, Ahmad Mujuthaba, will forgive the Indian Navy for rescuing his mother-in-law. The writer is Panchkula-based former chief of the Indian Army and can be reached at vedmalik@gmail.com. The Delhi high court on Wednesday directed news portal The Wire to take down a defamatory article linking Delhi chief secretary Naresh Kumars son Karan Chauhan to a case pertaining to enhanced valuation of a land, acquired by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for the Dwarka Expressway road project. The Delhi high court questioned the basis on which the report was published and said that there must be a semblance of truth in the allegations. (File) The order was pronounced by a bench of justice Sachin Datta. While reserving the verdict, the high court had questioned the basis on which the report was published adding that there must be a semblance of truth in the allegations. Show me the basis What is the material on the basis on which you made these allegations? Today I need to see what is the balance of convenience. Show me that there is a semblance of truth in your allegation. As a member of the press, is there no law against sensationalism? You can indulge in exaggeration? the bench told The Wires counsel Sarim Naved. The dispute had begun when southwest Delhis district magistrate (DM) Hemant Kumar overturned a 2018 decision of the additional DM of granting 41.52 crore for the 19 acre land in dispute based on a valuation of 53 lakh per acre and instead awarded 353 crore compensation on May 15, 2023 to two individuals Subhash Chand Kathuria and his brother Vinod Kathuria. The article alleged that one of the beneficiaries of the 19 acre land, Subhash Chand Kathuria was father-in-law of Aman Sarin, promoter of a realty firm, Anantraj Limited, who had close business links with Karan Chauhan. Kumar had approached the high court also seeking to direct the Wire and its reporter from publishing, commenting, communicating, circulating defamatory material including false and libellous posts against Kumar and his family members on Google and Twitter and also other media outlets and a minimum compensation of 2.05 crore for defaming him. He, in the interim, had also sought for taking down the tweets containing unwarranted and defamatory allegations. During the hearing on Tuesday, Kumar appearing through senior advocate Maninder Singh argued that the article was published to enable a quarter to get active on social media to target his image by re-tweeting. He also added that one of the foundations of the Wire publishing the article was the role that Kumar played in getting the inquiries in the Delhi excise policy case. The article was published so that social media gets active to target my reputation. I am not a political person. He was instrumental in getting these inquiries in the excise policy done and bringing the trust of profit and the SC (Supreme Court) has now said that there seems to be at least 350 crore bribe which the ED has been able to show in the excise scam. I dont want to say anything but this seems to be one of the foundations for the article, Singh further added. Yesterday, Kumar had submitted that pursuant to the overvaluation coming to light by way of an inspection on May 18, Kumar immediately took cognisance of the entire issue and directed the divisional commissioner Ashwani Kumar to monitor the case on a fortnightly basis and had later asked the directorate of vigilance to inquire into the matter. Eight times I had coordinated the entire exercise from May 18 to October 20, Singh said, adding that it was on Kumars behest that the case was referred to CBI, the officer was transferred to Andaman Islands and was later suspended. He also submitted that the DMs award was set aside by the Delhi high court on October 31, 2023. The Wire, appearing through advocate Sarim Naved said that there were government reports which the chief secretary had suppressed. If such orders are passed, how will we question civil servants and governments? I am not responsible for re-tweets, the counsel had added. Delhis vigilance minister Atishi had last week recommended removal of Kumar and the divisional commissioner Ashwani Kumar from their post after receipt of a complaint from chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. While alleging prima facie complicity of Kumar in the land acquisition matter, she in her probe report had stated that the initial inquiry into the excessive compensation hike was not initiated suo moto by Kumar but they were forced to do it after the matter was flagged by NHAI. The CM had forwarded a report recommending Kumars suspension and immediate removal to lieutenant governor (LG) Vinay Saxena, but the same was rejected by the LG on Sunday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday targeted the Congress over dynastic politics saying late Rajesh Pilot once challenged the Gandhi family and his son Sachin Pilot is still paying for it. He also said chief minister Ashok Gehlot will never form the government in Rajasthan again. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed multiple election rallies in poll-bound Rajasthan on Wednesday. (PTI) Modi addressed multiple election rallies in poll-bound Rajasthan on Wednesday. He said any leader who dared to speak the truth which was unpalatable for the Gandhi family, his or her political career was finished. The Congresss leaders from Delhi are challenging the young people here who have faith in Lord Devnarayan. They are saying that (Ashok) Gehlot will be chief minister againlook at the arrogance of the Congress leaders in Delhi If anyone dares to speak the truth in Congress which is unpalatable to the family, then rest assured that persons political career is over, Modi said while addressing an election rally in Jahazpur in Bhilwara district. Lord Devnarayan is the god of the Gurjar community to which Congress leader Sachin Pilot belongs. In the last elections, the Gurjars had voted for the Congress in the hope that Pilot would be CM. There is a significant presence of Gurjars in the seven assembly constituencies in Bhilwara district. Citing the example of Rajesh Pilot, Modi said, Rajesh Pilot once challenged the Gandhi family for the benefit of the party he later backed down but the family punished Rajesh Pilot and is also punishing his son Rajesh Pilot passed away but the Congress party is taking out its anger against his son. In Sagwada, he said, I am making a prediction from this sacred land of Mavji Maharaj who made accurate predictions. I am predicting that not only this time, but never again will Ashok Gehlot form the government in Rajasthan. Wherever Congress people are going to seek votes, they are getting only one answer from children, elderly, women and youth, Gehlot ji, koni mile vote ji, Modi said. In Jahazpur, Modi added that Congress was going to suffer such a massive defeat in the elections which they would never have imagined. Calling the Congress anti dalit, Modi said in Jaipur he saw election posters of Congress that missed party president Mallikarjun Kharges photos. There was a photo of the CM but not of the state Congress president. There was a photo of a Congress MP but not of the Congress president who is a Dalit Kharge ji is such a senior Dalit leader, if you had put his photo, it would not have cost you your job, Modi said. Modi said for development of any country and state, policy and decision making play a crucial role. But Congress is such a party that makes anti people policies and takes anti national decisions. Congresss policy is to be soft on terrorists, rioters and criminals and to indulge in corruption. These policies of Congress made Rajasthan top in crime in the country Congress misrule did not even spare minor girls, the incident in Kotdi shamed the entire country, said Modi referring to a minor who was gang raped and burnt alive in a kiln in Narsinhpur village in Kotdi sub district in August this year. Modi blamed the Congress for appeasement, corruption, poor law and order and paper leaks which, he said, had destroyed the hopes and aspirations of lakhs of youth. Mentioning the lal dairy Modi said CM Ashok Gehlots son has said that Congress government will not return to power in Rajasthan. In Sagwara town in tribal dominated Dungarpur district, Modi cautioned people against voting for other parties. The Bharatiya Adivasi Party, floated ahead of the assembly elections, has put up candidates in the Dungarpur and Banswara assemblies. In 2018 too, the Bharatiya Tribal Party was launched ahead of the assembly polls and had contested and won two seats. Modi said voting for other parties would mean voting for Congress. He said the other parties were contesting polls as part of the strategy of the Congress. Dont make this mistake. Last time too they fooled you. This time they have come with a new name, he said. Modi said Congress never bothered about tribals. He mentioned the schemes of the BJP government for tribal welfare. He said his government formed a new ministry for tribal welfare and increased the budget outlay. He said a new campaign has been launched by the BJP government with an outlay of Rs24,000 crore which will change the lives of the tribal community. Like British considered Indians slaves, Congress treated tribals in the same way. Congress has insulted the simple and truthful tribal people, he said. He added, Be very wary of the Congress. Congress is neither with the tribals, Dalits, poor, nor the marginalised. Congress is reduced to being a salve of one family, he said. Congress spokesperson Swarnim Chaturvedi said PM was making uncalled for comments. He said in Congress all leaders are respected and all have freedom to speak their mind. In Rajasthan, the work done by the Congress government and the track record of fulfilling promises will ensure that the Congress will return to power in the state, he said. A National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Tuesday sentenced three men to four to five years of rigorous imprisonment for supplying high quality Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) smuggled from Bangladesh. The agency had earlier charge-sheeted four accused in the case. The case was initially registered by ATS U.P. unit in December 2019, following the recovery of fake currency notes with a total face value of 2,49,500, from the possession of Murad Alam in Ghaziabad. (For representation) NIA officials, in a note to media persons on Tuesday, said the NIA special court in Lucknow convicted and awarded punishments to Murad Alam, Tausif Alam and Sariful Islam. All three have been sentenced to 4 and 5 years of rigorous imprisonment (RI), along with fine or one month of simple imprisonment in lieu thereof, for separate offences registered under various sections of IPC and UA(P) Act, the note said, adding the sentences would run concurrently. The case was initially registered by ATS U.P. unit in December 2019, following the recovery of fake currency notes with a total face value of 2,49,500, from the possession of Murad Alam in Ghaziabad. The officials said the NIA took over the investigation after re-registering the case in February 2020. They said the NIA investigations had revealed that Murad Alam had received an FICN consignment from Tausif Alam and had carried it for delivery to Shahnawaj Ansari. The consignment was supplied to Tausif Alam by the accused Sariful Islam, who had contacts in Bangladesh from where he used to procure fake currency notes. They said further investigations had established that all the accused persons were members of the FICN Supply network, and the fake currency notes were purportedly smuggled from across the border. They said the accused had conspired to smuggle, sell and procure FICN, and kept it in their possession before further circulating and supplying it to persons/consignees in different parts of the country. AGRA In anticipation of Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the ongoing Braj Raj Utsav at the railway ground in Mathura on November 23, the additional director general (security) conducted a comprehensive review of the security measures on Wednesday. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath is poised to extend a warm welcome to the PM in the sacred land of Lord Krishna. Prime Minister Narendra Modi (HT Photo) The strategic briefing, held at Mathuras Police Lines, witnessed the presence of key figures -- including ADG (Agra Zone) Anupam Kulshrestha, DM Shailendra Singh, and SSP Mathura Shailesh Pandey. Given the high-profile nature of the visit, officials issued essential directives to ensure the seamless execution of security protocols. Scheduled to participate in the later half of the day on November 23, PM Modi is expected to partake in the Braj Raj Utsav, where Hema Malini, renowned actor and MP from Mathura, will deliver a presentation on the birth anniversary of Meera Bai at the venue situated on the railway ground in Mathura. While the minute-to-minute program of the PM is eagerly awaited, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has already conducted a thorough inspection of the venue, reviewing preparations for the significant event. Notably, the visit follows CM Yogis recent tour of prominent temples in Mathura-Vrindavan. The Braj Raj Utsav, organised by the U.P. Braj Teerth Vikas Parishad and the tourism department, spans from November 14 to 27, encompassing the celebration of Saint Meera Bais 525th birth anniversary. The upcoming program featuring Hema Malini and PM Modi promises to be a highlight of this cultural extravaganza. Of paramount importance is the visits timing, occurring just three days after the Allahabad High Courts directive for the advancement of the Banke Behari Temple Corridor. All eyes are on the Prime Minister, as the declaration of the initial budget for the corridor, including land acquisition, is yet to be made by the state government. Furthermore, Mathuras historical significance, anchored in the Sri Krishna Janmbhoomi and the pending cases related to Janmbhoomi and Shahi Eidgah Mosque at the high court, adds layers of intrigue to PM Modis visit. With the nation gearing up for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the PMs visit is closely watched for potential implications on various fronts. Pic Caption: Officials conducting a briefing at Police Lines in Mathura on Wednesday, finalizing security measures ahead of PM Modis visit. Photo Credit: HT. Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh on Wednesday said that normalcy has been restored in many parts of the strife-torn state in the past one-two months except for a few incidents of violence. Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh. (File Photo) The northeastern state has been roiled by ethnic clashes between the Meitei community, which is dominant in the Imphal Valley, and tribal Kukis, who are in majority in some hill districts, since May 3 and the violence has claimed at least 181 lives and displaced around 50,000 people. Normalcy has been restored in many parts of the state in the past one-two months except for some one-two incidents... We should not indulge in crime and together we should try to restore peace and normalcy in Manipur, Singh told journalists in Imphal on Wednesday. In a fresh round of violence, two persons from the Kuki community including an India Reserve Battalion (IRB) soldier was killed by unidentified miscreants at Haraothel in Kangpokpi district on Monday. The incident in Haraothel, in which two persons, including an India Reserve Battalion personnel, was killed, is very shocking. I condemn this kind of hate. Police have started mass combing operations in the Haraothel area in the past two days to nab the culprits and I hope they will do their job, Singh said. The CM said that security has been reinforced in areas of the state bordering Myanmar due to the recent unrest in the neighbouring country. Last week, over 5,000 Myanmar residents, including some army personnel, had crossed over to India in Mizoram following clashes between pro-democracy rebel outfits and Myanmar army. Due to the prevailing situation in Myanmar we have reinforced our security forces to the border. Apart from Assam Rifles, state police, Border Security Force and Central Reserve Police Force personnel have been deployed. We are monitoring the situation very strictly, said Singh. PRAYAGRAJ Within 48 hours of the brutal daylight murder of a 19-year-old rape victim in a village in the Mahewaghat area of Kaushambi district, police arrested one of the four accused following a late-night encounter on Wednesday. The arrested suspect, identified as Ashok, sustained bullet injuries to his legs, while his three brothers managed to escape. The injured accused in police custody. (HT Photo) ADG Zone Bhanu Bhaskar and IG Range Chandra Prakash visited the village, meeting the victims family late Tuesday night. Officials assured the grieving family of justice and issued directives to subordinates for expedited action against the culprits. Accused Pawan Nishad and his brothers Ashok, Prabhu, and Lokchand fled after the murder. Circle Officer Manjhanpur Abhishek Singh and his team combed riverbanks and wetlands. On Wednesday night, the police received intel that the accused were hiding in a boat on the Yamuna River near Ram Nagar sand ghat. Police surrounded the ghat, urging the accused to surrender, but they opened fire. In the exchange of gunfire, one of the accused sustained injuries, while the others escaped. ASP Samar Bahadur stated that the injured assailants identity was yet to be established. Meanwhile, a somber atmosphere has enveloped the village following the brutal murder of the 19-year-old rape victim. The victims father and family members are inconsolable. According to the victims father, she was the second of four children and had bravely lodged an FIR against the accused despite threats. The victims family claimed that Pawan, recently released on bail, pressured her for a compromise. Complaints made thrice at the police station went unanswered. On Monday, while returning home after filing a fresh complaint, Pawan and his brothers attacked the victim and her sister-in-law with an axe, leading to the victims death. Former IPS officer and president of Azad Adhikar Sena, Amitabh Thakur, strongly condemned the heinous murder. He pledged to visit the victims family on Thursday, demanding justice from police officials. A day after notifying the enhanced quota for reserved categories in government jobs and admissions in educational institutions, the Bihar state cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal to forward the recommendations to the Centre for including amended reservation acts in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, said additional chief secretary, cabinet, S Siddharth. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. (File Photo) This is part of the proposals which the state cabinet, chaired by chief minister Nitish Kumar, discussed and approved in consultation with his cabinet colleagues on Wednesday. A total of 40 agenda, including two impromptu proposals, were discussed and given assent to by the cabinet, said Siddharth, adding that one of the impromptu proposals sought to reiterate the demand for special states status to Bihar to address the concerns of financial disparities that were found during the recently conducted caste-based enumeration. Detailing the reasons for inclusion of increased quota for the deprived sections in the Ninth Schedule, Siddharth clarified that the acts, which increased reservations to 65% in jobs and admissions, would enjoy immunity for judicial review if they are included in the specified schedule. Another senior officer said that any kind of legislation, seeking to hike reservation beyond 50% bar is subject to judicial review unless granted immunity through the constitutional amendment. Currently, the state of Tamil Nadu has 69% reservation and nobody is able to challenge its provision as the same has been included in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, he added. The cabinet ministers also unanimously resolved to rake up the demand for special status to the central government yet again to address the outcomes of the caste-based economic survey, which found about 94 lakh families across all castes below the poverty line (BPL). As a follow up action to the survey, the state government has decided to dole out a sum of 2 lakh to one of the family members in instalments for jobs, 1 lakh each to 63,850 homeless and landless families for purchase of land and 1.20 lakh for construction of house, 1.20 lakh to each of 39 lakh families living in huts and 2 lakh to each of the extremely poor families for continuos livelihoods scheme. Siddharth said that all the schemes, mulled to address the economic disparities highlighted by the caste-based enumeration would cost around 2.50 lakh crore. The state government has been demanding special status since 2010 and the last formal demand was made in 2017, but there is no response from the Centre on it. The then central government had set up Raghuram Rajan committee on Bihars demand for special status in 2013. The committee had submitted its report, yet the central government did not take any action with regard to Bihars demand, said the ACS. DA hike to employees, pensioners approved The cabinet approved 4% increase in dearness allowance to the employees and pensioners of the state government with effect from July 1. Staff and pensioners, who together account for nearly 10 lakh, will be getting 46% DA in place of prevalent 42%. The state government will incur an annual cost of 966 crore for payment of additional DA. Bihar logistics policy approved The state cabinet also approved the draft of Bihar logistics policy 2023, which was proposed by the state industries department. The policy envisages various kinds of incentives and capital subsidy to the investors in building logistics parks, multi-modal logistics park and other associated installations. 1,810-cr plan approved for Kajra solar plant The cabinet gave its assent to the energy departments investment proposal for setting up 185MW solar power project at Lakhisarais Kajra. The project will also have battery-based energy storage facility for 253.85KWh capacity. The proposal, entailing an investment of 1,810.34 crore, seeks to arrange 80% of the investment as loan from financial institution on the governments guarantee, while rest of the amount ( 362.07 crore) would be arranged from the states internal resources. Bihar State Power Generation Company Limited (BSPGCL) will execute the project. Former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Wednesday attacked the Nitish Kumar government over the suspected hooch deaths in Sitamarhi and Gopalganj earlier this week. Jitan Ram Manjhi in Patna (PTI) Why are you (Nitish Kumar) distributing death to Dalit people in instalments through spurious liquor? Why dont you ask people to stand in a queue and kill them like General Dyer did, Manjhi said in a post in Hindi on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday. If you have failed to stop deaths due to poisonous liquor, then what is the relevance of the liquor prohibition act? At least you should learn from Gujarat, the former CM said. This is not the first time Manjhi has raised his voice against the liquor ban in Bihar, which was imposed in April 2016. He claimed liquor is freely available across the state and hooch tragedies are taking place in large numbers. On November 17, five people from three villages in Sitamarhi district died allegedly after consuming spurious liquor. On November 19, five persons died in a suspected hooch tragedy in Gopalganj district. The Gopalganj district administration had claimed all of them died due to different diseases. However, on Wednesday, kin of one of the deceased, Tinku Ram, lodged an FIR with Baikunthpur police station against one Krishna Rai and 10 others, alleging that Rai was asking them not to lodge case and forcing them to sign a paper saying the death was due to some disease. The BJP, which sent a delegation to Gopalganj to meet the victims family, also attacked the government over the suspected hooch deaths. Rajya Sabha member and former deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi said the state government has completely failed in implementing the policy of complete prohibition. On one hand, the police administration is earning huge income by helping the liquor mafia and on the other hand, to hide the death due to poisonous liquor, it is registering death due to unknown disease in the records so that the dependents do not get compensation, Modi alleged. The ruling JD(U) called Manjhis allegations baseless. He is making statements scripted by BJP, said JD(U) spokesperson Himraj Ram. Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Kumar on Wednesday hit back at Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, saying the Cabinet nod to send a proposal to the Centre demanding special status for the state was akin to flogging a dead horse with the sole motive of doing politics before elections. Sushil Kumar Modi in Patna. (HT file) When the 14th Finance Commission has rejected the very concept of special category status and it cannot be given to any state, the cabinet nod to send proposal to the Centre is a mere political stunt. The dead horse cannot run, no matter how much it is flogged, said Modi, who was earlier the deputy CM of Bihar for nearly a decade and held the finance portfolio. Modi said the Narendra Modi government at the Centre had already given Bihar a special package to compensate and much more. What could the special status to the state achieve? The RJD-JD-U government doesnt want to accept it. Bihar gets the highest share through devolution of central taxes. It gets 1.02 crore every year, he said. He said that when Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad were powerful ministers at the Centre, they could do nothing to get Bihar the special status, though there was provision at that time. Congress is part of the Grand Alliance (GA) government in Bihar and it should answer why it could not ensure special status to Bihar during the tenure of former PM Manmohan Singh between 2004 and 2014, Sushil Modi said. He said that the Raghuram Rajan committee formed by the then finance minister P Chidambaram at the behest of Nitish Kumar had also turned down the special category status demand of Bihar. Bihar BJP president t Samrat Choudhary also said Nitish Kumar should spare Bihar from such empty rhetoric. Out of the states budget of 2,61,000 crore, states share is mere 32,000 crore. Rest is the Centres help. You will keep playing this till election and not allow Bihars development. Now, in the interest of Bihar, you need special rest, he said. Few relationships have transformed as dramatically in the past decade as the one between New Delhi and Canberra. Despite having no real structural bilateral conflicts, India and Australia remained strategically distant for much of their history, largely a function of the wider global environment of the Cold War. Even in the 1990s, as Delhi began investing in ties with the West in general and the United States (US) in particular and started looking East, Canberra remained somewhat neglected. Australia didnt work hard enough to understand a changing India, its complex neighbourhood and its security needs. But in a process that began haltingly in the 2000s but achieved unprecedented momentum after 2014, both the westward and eastward tracks of Indian foreign policy finally converged in Australia. As the anxieties about Chinas behaviour grew, Delhis strategic community woke up to the fact that Australia was both an Asian power with serious equities in the Indo-Pacific maritime theatre and a key western power by virtue of its historical and racial links as well as its integration into the US-led political and security architecture. This unique combination gave it more strategic weight. For Australian foreign policymakers, as China began explicitly interfering in its domestic politics and weaponising economic linkages, Indias value as a strategic partner grew. Delhis growing proximity with Washington DC enhanced trust levels. The presence of the Indian diaspora in Australia made it incumbent on the foreign office to understand India better. And for both countries, trade opportunities beckoned as supply chain diversification (away from China) and partnerships became the mantras of international politics. To get a sense of the qualitative shift in recent years, consider these. One, there is more high-level political engagement than there has ever been. Two, leaders have developed trust levels where conversations can work through differences. Three, the two countries work together in Quad. Four, India and Australia have a substantive even if interim trade pact. Five, they have a shared interest in keeping the Pacific Islands and East Asia peaceful, and stable. And six, the defence relationship has got a boost with Australias participation in the Malabar exercises. The 2+2 dialogue involving the foreign and defence ministers this week in Delhi consolidated all these trends, opened new avenues of cooperation, and further cemented a critical partnership. To unlock technology leadership and drive an organisational impact, the Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIM Lucknow) joined hands with Emeritus to launch the Chief Technology Officer Programme. Graduates/Diploma holders/Postgraduates with a minimum of 10 years of work experience are eligible to apply for the programme which is set to start on December 30, 2023. According to an official press release by Emeritus, the 10-month Chief Technology Officer Programme is curated for new and evolving CTOs and CIOs, seasoned technology leaders as well as business owners who wish to drive a positive technological impact at the organisations. We are confident that this programme will help these C-Suite leaders with actionable, objective insights to not just play catch-up in this rapidly evolving business world but enable alignment, smarter decisions and robust performance for their teams, drive innovation within their organisation and achieve long-term sustainable business growth. We are excited to partner with prestigious institutions such as IIM Lucknow to drive this growth among CTOs and thereby their organisations, said Mohan Kannegal, CEO, India and APAC, Emeritus. Also Read: ISB and Emeritus launch 40-week online Chief Digital Officer Programme According to the press release, the programme module includes Data Strategy, and Data Science Pipeline, Innovating for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics at the Cutting Edge, Leading in Generative AI, Blockchain, and Metaverse, Mastering Cloud Strategy and Adoption, Digitalization of Value Chain, Addressing Algorithmic Bias and Ethical Considerations Sustainability and imperative of ESG Cybersecurity among other topics. Graduates/Diploma holders/Postgraduates with a minimum of 10 years of work experience are eligible to apply for the programme which is set to start on December 30, 2023. According to the website, the programme fee is INR 4,65,000 + GST. Online classes by IIM Lucknow faculty to facilitate flexible learning and a 3-day campus immersion for networking with CXO peers along with a capstone project, business simulations and case studies are some of the features of the programme. Participants will be awarded a certificate of completion and IIM Lucknow's Executive Alumni Status on successful completion of the programme, mentioned the press release by Emeritus. Also Read: IIM Lucknow offers a full-fledged PG program in Sustainable Management For more information, visit the official website. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked higher education institutions to organise various activities, including reading the Preamble, webinars to celebrate Constitution day 2023 on November 26. Constitution Day 2023: UGC asks universities to celebrate Samvidhan Divas (File Photo) An important part of the celebration is reading the Preamble to the Constitution and reaffirming our commitment to uphold its ideology. A provision has also been made on MyGov portal to 'Read the preamble' online and download a certificate. Other activities including talks/ webinars on Constitutional values and fundamentals of the Indian Constitution may also be organized, UGC Secretary Professor Manish R Joshi said in a letter addressed to Vice Chancellors and Principals. The commission has also asked to upload details of these events, including photos and videos on the University Activity Monitoring Portal (UAMP) on uamp.ugc.ac.in. About Constitution Day The Indian Constitution Day or Samvidhan Divas is observed on November 26. On that day, in 1949. the Constitution of India was adopted by the Constituent Assembly. After gaining independence from the British Rule, the Constituent Assembly took the task of drafting the Constitution of this newly-formed nation. Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar chaired the assembly while Dr. Rajendra Prasad was its president. Dr. Ambedkar completed the draft of the Indian Constitution in 1948 and presented it in the assembly. The draft was adopted on November 26, 1949 with some amendments. The Constitution came into force on January 26, 1950. Karnataka Examinations Authority, KEA has declared Karnataka PGCET Result 2023. Candidates who have appeared for Post Graduate Common Entrance Test can check their MBA, MCA, and MTech results through the official website of KEA at kea.kar.nic.in. Karnataka PGCET Result 2023 declared at kea.kar.nic.in, direct link here Karnataka PGCET was held on September 23 and 24, 2023. On the first day, the test was conducted a single shift from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm and on the second day, PGCET was held in two shifts from 10.30 am to 12.30 pm and from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm. The provisional answer key was released on September 29 and objections were invited from candidates ahead of revised and final answer keys. The final answer key was released on November 19, 2023. Karnataka PGCET Result 2023: How to check To check the results, candidates can follow the steps given below. Visit the official website of KEA at kea.kar.nic.in. Click on Karnataka PGCET Result 2023 link available on the home page. Enter the login details and click on submit. Your result will be displayed on the screen. Check the result and download the page. Keep a hard copy of the same for further need. Karnataka PGCET is held for admission to MBA/ MCA/ M.E/ MTech/ MArch courses at participating institutions of the state. For more related details candidates can check the official website of KEA. The 109th Indian Science Congress (ISC) will be held from January 3 to 5, 2024. Lovely Professional University, for the second time, will host the event which will see the gathering of people to foster knowledge exchange within the scientific community. Scientists, scholars, and policymakers from across the country and abroad of various disciplines will attend the 109th Indian Science Congress, to share their knowledge, expertise and experience with the scientific community. The Global Perspective on Science and Technology for a Sustainable Future will be the theme for the upcoming ISC event which aims to emphasise the role of global cooperation and innovation in addressing the challenges of the modern world. Various diverse scientific sessions, plenary talks, and interactive workshops will be featured at the event, according to a press release by Lovely Professional University (LPU). Also Read: British Council and the University of the Arts London announce grant scheme for sustainable fashion 2024s Indian Science Congress will serve as an invaluable platform for our young scientists and researchers to showcase their innovative work. We believe this experience will inspire a renewed spirit of inquiry and innovation, propelling India's scientific community to greater heights, said Dr. Ashok Kumar Mittal, Founder Chancellor of Lovely Professional University (LPU) and Rajya Sabha Member. According to the press release by LPU, scientists, scholars, and policymakers from across the country and abroad of various disciplines will attend the 109th Indian Science Congress, to share their knowledge, expertise and experience with the scientific community. Amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, multiple celebrities have been cancelled over insensitive or offensive social media posts. Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on November 7, killing more than 1,000 people and taking over 240 hostages to the Gaza strip. Israel responded with multiple airstrikes. Mia Khalifa and Melissa Barrera were among multiple celebrities who were cancelled over insensitive or offensive social media posts (miakhalifa/Instagram and melissabarreram/Instagram) Here is a list of Hollywood celebrities who have been cancelled due to their offensive comments on the conflict: Angelina Jolie Angelina Jolie was criticised for not taking sides and reacting neutrally to the situation. "Palestinian and Israeli livesand the lives of all people globallymatter equally," she wrote in an Instagram post. Citing her work as a UN refugee agency ambassador, she said more humanitarian aid should be delivered to the Gaza Strip. "The few aid trucks that are entering are a fraction of what is needed, and the bombings are causing desperate new humanitarian needs daily," she said. Amy Schumer Amy Schumer has been outspoken on social media about the conflict. Amy previously wrote on Instagram that she is a "proud Jewish Woman" and said she has "lost so many friends these last few weeks but feel powerful and free knowing I stand for the truth and will fight for it always." Another post she shared was an archival footage of Martin Luther King Jr. condemning anti-Semitism and expressing support for Israel. Later, his daughter Bernice King responded saying, Certainly, my father was against antisemitism, as am I. He also believed militarism (along with racism and poverty) to be among the interconnected Triple Evils. I am certain he would call for Israels bombing of Palestinians to cease, for hostages to be released and for us to work for true peace, which includes justice." Amy later said on Instagram that he is "accepting love and feedback, and clarified her point. "What I want is EVERY HOSTAGE BACK. I want safety and freedom from Hamas for Palestinians and Israelis. I want safety for Jewish people and Muslims as well. Everyone. Just like you. I want peace," she said. "You will never see me wishing harm on anyone. Saying I'm Islamophobic or that I like genocide is crazy. So here you go by popular demand. Comments on," she added. Debra Messing Debra Messing was slammed online after attending the March for Israel rally in Washington, DC, on November 14. Over 290,000 people attended the event at the National Mall. Debra called the Israel-Hamas conflict "madness," before adding, This is terrorism. But we will win. We always have." "We are strong, resilient and devoted, and we will not lose ourselves," the actress said. "We will worry for our global Jewish family and also hurt for the innocent Palestinians used as human shields by Hamas. We will work to eviscerate Hamas and also pray for a free and flourishing Gaza, she added. She continued: "We will remember and work for the release of the 240 hostages, as well as for the safety of the 2.2 million Gazans also held hostage by Hamas. We will pray for the success of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] for a war Israel did not start, did not want, but a war Israel will win. Because we must. I know you are alone, I know you are afraid, I know you feel abandoned by people you thought were friends. Looking out today I know we are not alone, because we have each other." Debra was blasted for not properly acknowledging the Palestinians killed in the conflict. Gal Gadot Israeli actor Gal Gadot came under fire for reportedly organising a screening of a graphic footage that was collected from Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack. The audience will comprise famous Hollywood figures in Los Angeles and New York. Mark Ruffalo Actor Mark Ruffalo was mocked on social media after sharing a petition to "End child bloodshed" in Israel and Gaza on October 19. Mia Khalifa Adult film star Mia Khalifa was blasted for calling Hamas terrorists freedom fighter on social media. "Can someone please tell the freedom fighters in Palestine to flip their phones and film horizontal," the 30-year-old said on social media. Noah Schnapp Stranger Things actor Noah Schnapp came under fire for his statement on the conflict. He told his Instagram followers, in part, You either stand with Israel or you stand with terrorism. Selena Gomez While Selena Gomez did condemn the violence against innocent civilians, she also said that believes her post will not make a difference despite being one of the most followed people on the Internet. She had thus remained silent on the matter for a long time. Fans reminded her that with millions of followers, she could have definitely made a difference, as opposed to what she suggested. Susan Sarandon Susan Sarandons attendance at the #March4Palestine rally in Washington D.C divided her followers. Sharing a photo of herself on stage, she wrote, You don't have to be Palestinian to care about what's happening in Gaza. I stand with Palestine. No one is free until everyone is free." Timothee Chalamet Actor Timothee Chalamet was slammed for appearing in a Saturday Night Live! skit that featured a joke about Hamas. Melissa Barrera Actress Melissa Barrera has been dropped from Spyglass Medias Scream VII because of a series of social media posts on theIsrael-Hamas conflict that she shared. She was fired in the wake of her posts where she expressed support for the Palestinian cause. She also criticised Israeli actions that followed the Hamas attack. After a long time, the Twilight stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are back in the news. Ten years after they split, the director Catherine Hardwicke shared that Kristen, unexpectedly crashed Robert's 37th birthday celebration a few months ago, specifically during his birthday month of May. The director of the 2008 hit series, recently appeared on Mondays podcast episode of Happy Sad Confused. In an segment of the podcast, she said that she and the actress Toni Collette attended Robert's party without receiving an invitation and that they later learned that Stewart had done the same. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart go to prom in Twilight. Kristen Stewart surprises at ex-Robert Pattinsons birthday Disclosing the details, Catherine Hardwicke said Strangely enough, I went to Robs birthday party recently. I kinda crashed with my friend Toni Collette, who had just done a movie with him,. For the unversed, Toni collaborated with the Twilight fame for the movie Mickey 17 scheduled to release in 2024. Declaring that their unplanned reunion was a blast for everyone, she said We had a fun thing, and then Kristen crashed it too. That was just a few months ago, and it was just like, Oh my god! We all hugged each other like, this is so crazy and cool. No bad blood between the exes Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson The Twilight director recounted every detail she could recall, from Kristen ringing the doorbell to check if anyone was home, to Robert warmly welcoming her inside, and Kristen's surprised expression upon seeing Catherine. This unexpected reunion marked a memorable moment for the cast of Twilight. When Kristen walked into Robs birthday, shes like, Catherine? Robs birthday? Whats going on?' she continued. I go, I kinda crashed it with Toni. And she goes, Well, I crashed it too.' Why did Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson break up? Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson were romantically linked from 2009 to 2013, mirroring their on-screen character growth. However, in July 2012, Stewart was seen kissing director Rupert Sanders putting a strain on their relationship. However, later a source revealed to People, She wasnt having an affair with Rupert. It was just a fleeting moment that shouldnt have happened. She never meant to hurt anyone. Shes a good person who just made a bad choice. But in 2013, after a brief reconciliation, the couple announced their separation. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's personal life update As of now, Kristen is engaged to writer and actress Dylan Meyer. The duo started dating in 2019 and are getting stronger in their relationship. In contrast, Robert is looking forward to the arrival of his first child with his girlfriend, Suki Waterhouse, whom he has been dating since 2018. BTS and BLACKPINK have long ruled dominant on the K-pop charts, with unrivaled global musical influence and fanbase. However, an upsurge of talent from the fourth and fifth generations is reshaping the industry and grabbing the world arena in an incredibly short period of time. Among these rising stars are ADOR and Hybe's NewJeans. This five-member girl group has recently etched their names in history, breaking new ground as the first 4th generation K-pop act to claim a Billboard Music Award. Here are the net worth and the top endorsements of the group. NewJeans(BBMA) When did NewJeans debut? NewJeans is a K-pop group comprising Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin, and Hyein. The band operates under ADOR, which is a subsidiary of Hybe. NewJeans debuted in July 2022. What is NewJean's net worth? This is a frequently asked question because it is widely assumed that K-pop celebrities, particularly those in extremely popular groups like BTS, Blackpink, and EXO, earn large sums of money. However, the reality may differ for rookie groups, as many K-pop stars are bound by strict agency contracts. Payment is subject to certain terms and conditions. Sometimes, the early years, including the debut, are both challenging and breakthrough moments. For NewJeans, these are definitely their breakthrough years. A lot of their payment comes from being the brand face of luxury houses. Despite the lack of formal confirmation and the possibility of fluctuations, Minji is said to have a net worth of $1.5 million, according to several publications. Meanwhile, Danielle is said to have earned $500,000 for writing lyrics for some of NewJeans' songs. According to various sources, as a brand face for several prominent luxury companies, Hanni's exact net worth remains undisclosed, but she is believed to be at the peak of her success. Hyein was a part of the child band USSO before joining NewJeans. Hyein's net worth is also estimated to be around $1.5 million USD. Haerin debuted as a trainee when she was just 13 years old. With NewJeans' evident success, her brand recognition is exploding. NewJeans brand endorsement list NewJeans collective: Levis Minji: Minji was named global ambassador for the renowned French luxury brand Chanel in three categories: beauty, fashion, and watches and jewelry. Hanni: Hanni is the brand face for Gucci and Giorgio Armani Beauty. She joins the star-studded list of stars such as Cate Blanchett, Sydney Sweeney, and Tessa Thompson in representing the luxury house. Danielle: Apart from debuting with the British fashion luxury Burberry, Danielle is also the brand face for Yves Saint Laurent Beauty. Hyein: The maknae of the group joined hands with French luxury Louis Vuitton and also appeared for the Paris Fashion Week, representing the brand. She joins BTS J-Hope on the list. Haerin: Haerin was roped in as the brand ambassador for DIOR jewelry, fashion, and beauty. For the unversed, Blackpinks Jisoo has already served as the brands global face for a long time now. A Subway visit became a startling experience for a Georgia woman seeking an affordable meal. She didn't realize she had unintentionally paid about 100 times the normal amount for a Subway sandwich and, therefore had to endure a difficult and drawn-out process to make up for the loss of money. Here is what unfolded. Subway Sandwich(Subway Website) Woman's $7 sandwich turns into a $7,000 expense When Vera Conner, a Georgia resident, placed her order on October 23, she expected to pay a reasonable $7.54 for her typical Italian sub. She was surprised to find an unexpected $7,105.44 tip included with her usual sandwich, which included salami, pepperoni, and ham. Upon carefully reviewing the bill and running repeated calculations, she discovered that the payment amount matched the final six digits of her phone number. Speaking to NBC news, Vera said When I looked at my receipt, I was like oh my God! I thought this number looks familiar, it was the last six numbers of my phone number. Who would leave a tip like that?" Vera said that when she entered her phone number to make sure she got her Subway loyalty points, the screen changed and turned the amount into a tip. Connor speculates that she might have made a mistake when entering her phone number into the Subway loyalty program card machine. What's even more interesting is that Connor didn't know what had happened until she noticed this big mistake after going through the receipt. Conner reported that in order to fix the problem, she called her bank, the Subway store, and even went in person to the sandwich restaurant. Her tension further escalated when she received a bank denial over the complaints filed. I thought it would be an easy fix ... then I got the denial from the bank, Thats when I started worrying. The manager at Subway told her that her bank would have to handle the situation. Later, Bank of America announced that the refund request was denied and that it was necessary to submit it again since the actual amount of the sandwich was still pending. Conner's situation eased after a week-long battle when she was eventually granted a "temporary credit" for the charge. You hear all the time that you should use your credit card instead of your debit card so that these things dont happen, Im even getting mad at the bank because Im like how did they not think $7,000 was suspicious at Subway? Former actor Vichitra, who has acted in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada movies, recently said on Bigg Boss Tamil 7 that a casting couch experience made her quit acting two decades ago. She said that despite filing a complaint with the union, no action was taken against the perpetrators. While she mentioned that it was not on the sets of a Tamil film, a section of social media users believe that she was talking about the 2001 Balakrishna-starrer Bhalevadivi Basu. (Also Read: Mansoor Ali Khan booked by Chennai police for alleged derogatory remarks against Trisha; actor refuses to apologise) Vichithra recounted in detail what happened 20 years ago to make her quit acting(Instagram) I had never faced this in Tamil cinema The actor said that the reason she quit working in movies was because in 2000, a lead actor and the men on the films team had misbehaved with her. There was a party, where I met a very famous hero. He didnt even ask my name, and asked me to come to his room. I was shocked because I didnt understand what kind of gesture that was. I went back to my room and slept, but I began facing issues during the shoot. Ive never faced such issues in Tamil cinema, she said. They touched me inappropriately on sets Vichitra claimed that they were shooting outdoors one day in a dense area where a commotion takes place. I felt someone touching me inappropriately and at first I thought it was a mistake, she said, adding, When I caught the guy and took him to the stunt master, he slapped me in front of the entire unit. It left me with bruises. I couldnt tell my parents, so I told my friend who encouraged me to complain to the union. They would bang on my doors at night Vichitra claims that the situation got so worse during the outdoor shoot that men from the unit would get drunk and bang on the doors at night. My husband was the manager of the 3-star hotel we were staying at. Him and his team did their best to keep me safe and would change my rooms every day. I still remember the banging noise and how scared I felt back then. My husband wasnt even my friend then, he did it out of kindness, she said. The union asked why I didnt approach the police Once back home, Vichitra says she complained about the incidents to the union, who asked her why she didnt approach the police. The incident was talked about in newspapers back then, she claims, adding, It was an ugly procedure and I met lawyers. No one came to the court hearings and my wounds had healed by then. The head of the union asked me to forget everything and get back to work. I thought my career was over but my husband questioned why I even wanted to work in an industry that didnt respect me. He was the only one who stood by me through the court ordeal. Netizens believe its a Telugu film While Vichitra did not reveal the language of the film she was shooting for, many believe shes talking about Balakrishnas Telugu film Bhalevadivi Basu, based on her description of the scenes. Some even unearthed clips of the scene they believe she was talking about. South Koreas top actor, Lee Jong Suk is in talks for a new romance K-drama alongside Sweet Home fame actor Go Min Si. The highly anticipated drama, tentatively titled 'I'm Against My Romance,' is said to be in development under the direction of the acclaimed Lee Eung Bok. The director is renowned for his works in shows like Descendants of the Sun starring Song Joong-Song Hye Kyo, and Guardian: The Lonely and Great God aka Goblin starring Gong Yoo and Kim Go Eun. Lee Jong Suk and Go Min Si(Instagram) Lee Jong Suk and Go Min Si to star in 'I'm Against My Romance On November 22, Lee Jong Suks agency briefly responded to the reports stating his involvement in the new K-drama. According to his representatives, the actor has been presented with the opportunity to take on the lead role in 'I'm Against My Romance' and is currently contemplating the offer. In the next K-drama, Lee Jong Suk has been offered the part of Kim Tae Kyung. Choi Hyun Wook from Twinkling Watermelon had previously been offered this part, but the star turned it down because of schedule conflicts. 'I'm Against My Romance plot Characterized as an impulsive individual with a strong sense of justice and compassion, Kim Tae Kyung is the lead character in the story. The drama's storyline explores the topic of whether getting back in contact with an ex marks the beginning of a new relationship or its continuation. On the other hand, negotiations are in progress about Go Min Si's possible casting as Hong Je Bi, the female lead of the show. For the unversed, Go Min Si and director Lee Eung Bok have previously worked together on projects like Jirisan and The Sweet Home. Hong Je Bi is a teacher who is aware that she might not be Kim Tae Kyung's ideal match, yet she finds it hard to break up with him. Cast of 'I'm Against My Romance The highly anticipated K-drama is penned by Kim Eun, who is well-known for her part in Something in the Rain. Go Min Si's casting decision would be her third partnership with director Lee Eung Bok after the two collaborated on Sweet Home and Mount Jiri. The much-awaited drama I Am Against My Love is scheduled to debut on tvN in 2024. The global platform on which the drama will be presented is currently under wraps. When you have had a year like Vikrant Massey's, when both professional and personal things have worked out beautifully, you are bound to be happy. Actor Vikrant Massey plays the lead role in the recently released film 12th Fail. The actor's latest film, 12th Fail, has emerged as a sleeper hit, with rave reviews pouring in. And on the personal front, he announced that he is expecting his first child with wife Sheetal Thakur. "I am relieved. My heart is full, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Especially when people are walking out after seeing the film, they thank us for making this film. That is what matters the most. I am really happy with the way they have given this film a heartfelt hug," he says. Considering that he was the only recognisable face in the film, did he feel the pressure even more, and responsible for the film's fate? He adds, "I don't think it's just because of me the film has done so well. It was an ensemble, and they were equally responsible. It would be stupid of me to sit back and say 'I am the only sellable face in the film' The story was bigger than the stars, or anybody in this film." His film career started with Lootera in 2013. 2023 also marks a decade since he stepped into films. And there have been two things said about Bollywood time and again- 'it's like a big family', and 'the big bad world of Bollywood'. Which side did he get to experience? "I think it is one of the most democratic, robust, progressive communities. I won't call it a family though," quips the 36-year-old. He says people have backed him. "I did around 25 films in 10 years. There was a Haseen Dillruba, and also a Death In The Gunj, a Mirzapur, Criminal Justice. I think people have really supported me, including writers, producers and directors. If they didn't recognise my talent, I would not be here. I would not have it any other way, as I wanted to prove my consistency first. I definitely do not want to be one of those actors who were one or two film wonders. I prioritised consitency and taking each day as it comes. I wouldn't want it sooner. The idea was always to win people's trust, and not just get their attention," Massey smiles. Two army Captains and two soldiers were killed, while another officer and soldier were wounded, in a fierce gunbattle with heavily armed terrorists that started on Wednesday morning and continued late into the night inside a dense forest in Rajouri district of Jammu & Kashmir, officials aware of the matter said. Security personnel at the site of the encounter in Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district on Wednesday. (ANI) The officers killed in action were both Captains of the 63 Rashtriya Rifles, while a Havaldar of 9 Para (Special Forces) and a soldier also lost their lives, the officials said, asking not to be named. The wounded included a Major of 9 Para (Special Forces) and a soldier. Their identities were not disclosed as of late Wednesday night. The encounter broke out between security forces and terrorists believed to be two or three in number in Bajimaal area in Kalakote tehsil of Rajouri district on Wednesday morning after officers from the army and Jammu & Kashmir police acted on an intelligence input and launched a cordon-and-search operation in the area. The first contact with terrorists was established at Solki by the 63 Rashtriya Rifle troops around 9am. Immediately, a cordon and search operation was launched, said an army officer, who asked not to be named. In the ensuing search operation, troops were fired upon by terrorists in which two Captains of the 63 RR and 9 Para (Special Forces) respectively, besides a Havaldar of 9 Para (SF) and a soldier were killed. READ | J&K: Pak terrorist killed in encounter with security forces in Rajouri A Major of 9 Para (SF) and another soldier, who were wounded in the gunfight, were evacuated to the Command Hospital in Udhampur. They are stable, the officer said, adding that the operation was still underway as of late on Wednesday night. A cordon has been put in place around the area and the operation will resume at first light on Thursday, the officer quoted above said. He added that the operation has been intensified with induction of additional troops. Its a group of terrorists that were known to be operating in the area for a while and are heavily armed. Security forces had been looking for them over the past month now. This morning the troops established contact with them, the officer said. In a post on X, the Nagrota-based White Knight Corps of the army said that based on specific intelligence, joint operations were launched in the Kalakote area of Gulabgarh forest in Rajouri on Sunday. Contact established on 22 Nov and intense firefight ensued. The terrorists have been injured and surrounded and operations are in progress, amidst acts of valour and sacrifice by own brave hearts in trying to prevent collateral damage to women and children in the highest traditions of Indian Army. White Knight Corps salutes the supreme sacrifice, it said. The Indian Army, however, did not issue any statement on the operation till Wednesday night. READ | Three soldiers injured in gunfight with terrorists in Rajouri Operation is still in progress. Information will be shared after termination of operation, defence spokesperson Lt Colonel Suneel Bartwal said. The unnamed official quoted above, however, emphasised that it was a bad day for the forces. An intelligence official familiar with the operation details said that the commandos of the 9 Para (Special Forces) and officers and men of the 63 RR and 54 RR were leading the charge when they came under fire. A senior police official from Kalakote said that the encounter took place in an area that had a dense forest and treacherous mountainous terrain, which have proved to be challenging for the security forces. The encounter area is located near Baji Sahab Darbar on Bravi Link Road in Kalakote. The area is around 95km from the Line of Control, which indicates that the terrorists were guided to this place and appear well-entrenched by now with logistical support from sympathisers. Treacherous mountains, dense jungles and alpine forests have made things tough for the security forces, he added. Locals quoted by news agency PTI said that a cordon and search operation has been going on in the area since Sunday to track down terrorists believed to be in the region. Due to the operation we were asked to stay back at home and not venture out. Our children stayed back at home and did not attend the school, a villager told PTI. Last week, a terrorist was killed in an encounter with security forces in forest area of Budhal in Rajouri district. On September 13, two decorated army officers a Colonel and a Major and a Deputy Superintendent of Police were killed in an encounter with terrorists in Anantnag district. On September 12 and 13, security forces had gunned two terrorists in Narla area of Rajouri district. On September 11, Northern Army commander Lt General Upendra Dwivedi had said that nearly 200 terrorists were waiting to cross the LoC from Pakistan. They are waiting to infiltrate our territory, but our alert troops are deployed at the borders and we are trying to eliminate them there itself, he said at the time. Since January this year, the two border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, south of Pir Panja range, have witnessed a spike in terrorism and related activity. The two districts have witnessed three major terror attacks on January 1 at Dhangri, April 20 at Tota Gali in Poonch and May 5 in the Kandi forests of Rajouri. In the three attacks, the terrorists killed 10 soldiers and seven civilians. (With inputs from PTI) Two families, separated by mere 6 kilometres, living in similar match-box housing, find themselves bound by a similar predicament that is testing their capacity for love and compassion. Seemadevi Kumbhar and Sunita Gangadhar Gajengi delivered their babies three months apart at two of Mumbais famed public hospitals, King Edward Memorial and Jerbai Wadia Hospital. Both have alleged that their infants were swapped with another at the hospital. Authorities at both, KEM and Wadia, refused to comment saying the matter was under investigation. (Pic for representation) While one of the families is on the cusp of getting to the truth on December 4, the other family faces a longwinded fight to be reunited with their biological child. What is certain is this: they do not want to live with the niggling doubt that the child they walked out of the hospitals with is not theirs. Kumbhar had a C-section delivery at KEM Hospital at Parel on September 26 and the nurse at the station told her brother-in-law that she had delivered a boy. However, half hour later the family was handed over a baby girl. Her husband Sunil who works as a freelance AC-repair technician filed a complaint with the Bhoiwada police station and the family refused to take the baby home. As the police investigation dragged on, Kumbhar had to spend two months in the hospital mothering the infant shes not sure is hers. Ive been taking care of the baby like shes my own right from the beginning and feeding her, said Kumbhar, but the doctors and nurses at the hospital treated me poorly. They forced me to sign papers saying that I was responsible for the child. On November 3, the Bombay High Court ordered the Bhoiwada police to send a DNA sample of the baby, whom the family calls Priya, to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Kalina. The court also asked the family to take the baby home in the meantime. The FSL verdict will be revealed in front of the High Court judges in the presence of the family and KEM Hospital authorities on December 4. For Sunita Ganjengi who delivered her baby on June 7, also by C-section, at Parels Wadia Hospital, there is proof twice over that the baby girl she is nursing is not hers. Ganjengi delivered at 9.34 am but was shown the infant two hours later, and too briefly. The family was told that the infant, born at a healthy 9 pound, had somehow swallowed water while still in the womb and had to be admitted to the NICU. We were finally allowed to see her properly only after 9 days, says Gajengi whose husband works as a tailor. The couple have a 16-year-old daughter but had been trying for a second child for several years including undergoing several rounds of expensive IVF treatment that has depleted their savings. The baby, named Chinni by the family, is very cute but she doesnt look like any of us, says their older daughter. Pressing ahead with their instinct, the Gajengi family got the babys DNA tested at private lab on August 7 which delivered the earthshattering news. Then began their attempt to lodge a complaint with the Bhoiwada police which refused to entertain them. On September 27, the family ran another DNA test through a private lab which reached the same conclusion as the first test: Baby Chinni was not their biological child. After the second test we wrote several letters to the ACP, then the DCP and then the police commissioner, and only then the police registered an FIR on November 14, recalled the harried Gangadhar Gajengi. On Monday, the Bhoiwada police station requested the family to provide photographs of the mother, the entire family and the newborn, raising hope that some resolution was in sight. We have no idea how or why the hospital would switch our baby, and thats not for us to speculate. All we want is our baby, said Gangadhar Ganjengi, all the while reassuring that they were treating the child they had brought home with the utmost care. The baby is not at fault. Were taking care of her just as we would were she our biological child, he said. For both families, these days are fraught with stress and high emotion, their feelings of betrayal clashing with the affection they feel for the infant they have brought home. This one, she feels very hot all the time but she doesnt cry much, only when she is hungry, says Seemadevi Kumbhar dandling baby Priya on her knees. She looks lovingly at the childs face who looks back unblinkingly, and says, It doesnt matter to me if its (her biological child) a girl or a boy, but all I want is my husband and his familys doubts to be dispelled. She will have to wait until December 4 for that. For the Gangadhar family, once they found out in September that baby Chinni is not theirs, only one thing has been weighing on their minds: how to get their biological child, be it a girl or a boy, back. Authorities at both, KEM and Wadia, refused to comment saying the matter was under investigation. Wadia Hospital CEO Dr Minnie Bodhanwala went on to say that there was no substance to the Kumbhar familys allegations despite the two DNA reports. We deny these allegations and it would not be appropriate to comment at this stage. We will wait for the police findings, she said. The dean of KEM hospital, Sangeeta Rawat, too said she would not comment as the matter was sub-judice. Two youngsters were reportedly thrashed to death by a mob for allegedly trying to steal mobile phones, in Odishas Bargarh district on Tuesday, police said. The incident took place in Sahutikra village when four youngsters allegedly tried to snatch mobile phones from college students who were returning home.(HT File) A third youngster, who was also assaulted by the mob, is critical and undergoing treatment, police added. The incident took place in Sahutikra village when four youngsters allegedly tried to snatch mobile phones from college students who were returning home. READ | Man lynched after he stabs girls grandfather to death in Ambedkar Nagar village A police officer at Bargarh said: After the college students informed their parents about the snatching bid, the villagers caught the four youngsters. The officer, who did not wish to be identified, added: While one of the youngsters managed to escape, the remaining three were mercilessly beaten up by the crowd. One of them died on the spot and another succumbed to injuries at a local hospital. The third one is battling for his life. The youngster who died on the spot was identified as Bijay Bag of Pandiripathar village. Police said a probe is underway. The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against the Chhattisgarh Polices separate probe into a first information report alleging larger conspiracy in the 2013 Jheeram Ghati Maoist attack that killed 29 people, including some leaders of the state Congress unit. On May 25, 2013, Maoists attacked a convoy of Congress leaders at Jheeram valley in Darbha area of Bastar district (HT) A bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud, found no reason to differ from the views taken by the subordinate courts that had earlier rejected the federal agencys plea that no separate probe by the state police was required in the matter. Sorry, we would not like to interfere. Dismissed, the bench, which also included justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, told additional solicitor general SV Raju, who was appearing for the NIA. READ | Jheeram Ghati attack: Chhattisgarh HC stays investigation into fresh FIR by state police Raju, on his part, had pressed that the larger conspiracy angle into the incident should also be investigated by the NIA as the main FIR of the case is investigated by the same agency. According to the ASG, the proper course of action for a court was to issue a direction to the NIA for further investigation instead of a separate probe by the state police. He said when the Chhattisgarh police refused to hand over the records to the NIA, the agency moved the trial court, which rejected the plea in 2020. Thereafter, the high court also dismissed the plea against the trial court order on March 2, 2022, Raju added. Opposing the NIAs contention, senior advocate ANS Nadkarni and advocate Sumeer Sodhi, appearing for the Chhattisgarh government, said the state had initially requested the NIA to investigate the larger conspiracy angle of the incident but they refused. The state government then requested the Centre to entrust the probe of a larger conspiracy to the CBI as NIA had refused to probe. The Centre refused to hand over the probe to the CBI. Then what could the state government do? It asked the police to register the FIR and investigate the larger conspiracy angle, Nadkarni said. The bench also heard advocate Sudiep Srivastava, the counsel for the complainant Jitendra Mudaliar, on whose complaint the FIR was lodged. Mudaliar, a Congress leader, had in May 2020 lodged the FIR Sections 302 (murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC at Darbha police station, demanding a probe into the larger conspiracy angle in the incident. Mudaliar is the son of Congress leader Uday Mudaliar, who was also killed in the Jheeram valley attack. Applauding the court order, Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel, said it is like opening the door of justice for Chhattisgarh. The Jheeram incident was the biggest political massacre in the worlds democracy wherein we lost 32 people including senior Congress leaders, he posted on X (formerly Twitter). Noting that the case was investigated by the NIA and a commission, but no one looked into the larger political conspiracy behind the incident, the CM said: When Chhattisgarh Police started the investigation, NIA approached the court to disrupt it. Today the path has been cleared. Now Chhattisgarh Police will investigate this. Who had hatched what conspiracy with whom? Everything will become clear. Once again a tribute to the martyrs of Jheeram. On May 25, 2013, Maoists attacked a convoy of Congress leaders at Jheeram valley in Darbha area of Bastar district, killing 29 people, including then state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son, former leader of opposition Mahendra Karma and former Union minister Vidyacharan Shukla. The deadly ambush by heavily armed Maoists had taken place when political campaigning for the assembly elections was on, and Congress leaders were returning after taking part in a Parivartan rally in Bastar district. The Bastar police then lodged an FIR into the incident at Darbha police station and the NIA subsequently took over the probe into it. After completing its investigation, the NIA had filed the chargesheet, in which the trial commenced. After Mudaliar got a separate FIR lodged into the aspect of larger conspiracy, the NIA filed an application in the trial court in Jagdalpur, seeking to restrain the state police from proceeding in the investigation into the fresh FIR. The agency sought a direction for the state police to hand it over all documents pertaining to the second FIR. However, the special court rejected the NIAs application in 2020 following which the agency approached the high court, which also rejected its plea last year. The NIA subsequently approached the Supreme Court. The rescue efforts intensified at the Silkyara Tunnel collapse site in Uttarakhand by Wednesday night, with about 30 ambulances and a team of 15 doctors standing prepared at the tunnel spot to rescue the 41 workers trapped during the November 12 collapse. Additionally, a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team entered the tunnel equipped with rescue gear. National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel prepare to enter into the tunnel as rescue operation moves into its final phase, for workers trapped in the Silkyara under construction road tunnel, days after it collapsed in the Uttarkashi district of India's Uttarakhand state on November 22, 2023.(AFP) The government's horizontal drilling reached about 67 per cent completion, having inserted the escape pipeline to a distance of 45 metres, with a remaining 12 metres to reach the area where 41 workers are trapped behind the rubble. The trapped workers are within an area measuring 8.5 metres in height and 2 kilometers in length, part of the built-up portion of the tunnel, which offers safety features like electricity and water supply. ONGC is coordinating the mobilisation of machinery from the USA, Mumbai, and Ghaziabad for vertical boring, as per government statements. It has been more than 10 days since the workers were trapped in the partially collapsed under-construction tunnel in Uttarkashi district. Drilling from the Silkyara-end halted on Friday afternoon due to an obstruction encountered by the auger machine near the 22-meter mark, causing safety concerns due to vibrations. However, drilling resumed around midnight on Tuesday. Early on Tuesday, initial visuals of the trapped workers were captured using an endoscopic camera sent through a new six-inch pipeline. These workers hail from Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, and Assam. The second lifeline system efficiently ensured a continuous supply of food items such as rotis, sabzi, khichdi, daliya, oranges, and bananas within the tunnel. Latest developments of rescue efforts here -In a video shared by news agency ANI, NDRF personnel were observed entering the tunnel equipped with rescue gear such as stretchers. The NDRF personnel were seen carrying oxygen cylinders at Uttarkashi's Silkyara tunnel, aiding the ongoing rescue operation. -As the drilling machine progresses, six-metre sections of steel pipes, slightly under a metre wide, are inserted into the escape passage. The expectation is that once the pipeway reaches the tunnel's other end, the trapped workers will be able to crawl out. -A special train coordinated by Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) and Indian Railways (IR) transported equipment from Karambeli in Gujarat to Rishikesh in Uttarakhand, covering a span of 1605 km to assist in the rescue of the trapped workers. According to official details, the train journeyed between New Sanand and New Khatauli on the DFC alignment, covering 1075 km in 18 hours and 38 minutes on November 21 and 22, 2023. It maintained a maximum permissible speed of 95% throughout the DFC stretch, arriving at Rishikesh station at 9.00 am on Wednesday. -During a media briefing in Silkyara around 4 pm, Bhaskar Khulbe, a former advisor with the Prime Ministers Office, expressed positivity, mentioning the insertion of another six-meter section of the rescue pipe in the last hour. -When questioned about a timeline for the workers' evacuation, Khulbe expressed hope, saying, We hope to celebrate Bagwal with them, referring to Igas, a festival observed in the Garhwal region post Diwali. This year, Igas falls on Thursday. - Five agencies Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVNL), Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), and Tehri Hydro Development Corporation Limited (THDCL)have been collectively collaborating and occasionally adjusting tasks for operational efficiency, the government said. -The Jharkhand government intends to airlift its workers, part of the 41 trapped in Uttarakhand's Silkyara tunnel, once they are rescued, news agency PTI reported. Among those trapped, 15 workers are from Jharkhand. Readiness after workers are out As quoted by news agency ANI, Bisan Singh Panwar, Ambulance Technical Staff, said, We have oxygen cylinders available in the ambulances. Once workers come out, their vital organs will be checked. A total of 30 ambulances have been arranged so far. Out of 30 ambulances, there are 8 advanced life support ambulances and 22 BLS ambulances. It has been instructed to us that remain alert as rescue operation might be completed by night. A team of 15 doctors, including chest specialists, has been stationed at the site in anticipation of the evacuation. A helicopter was also anticipated to be assigned for the operation. A 41-bed hospital was prepared on Wednesday at the Community Health Centre in Chinyalisaur in this district to attend to the 41 trapped laborers once they are rescued. Officials mentioned that all hospitals in the district, along with AIIMS, Rishikesh, are on alert. (With inputs from agencies) The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will undertake a safety audit of all 29 under-construction tunnels across the country to ensure safety and adherence to the highest quality standards, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said on Wednesday. A general view shows the entrance of the under-construction Silkyara road tunnel in Uttarkashi.(AFP) NHAI officials along with a team of experts from Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) as well as other tunnel experts will inspect the ongoing tunnel projects and will submit a report within seven days, the ministry said. The announcement comes in the backdrop of the collapse of the under-construction Silkyara Tunnel in Uttarkashi on November 12, trapping 41 workers. With a total length of about 79 km, the 29 under-construction tunnels are spread across the country with 12 tunnels in Himachal Pradesh, six in Jammu and Kashmir, two each in Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, and one each in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, and Delhi. NHAI also signed a memorandum of understanding with Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL). As part of the agreement, KRCL reviews design, drawing, and safety aspects related to tunnel construction and slope stabilisation of NHAI projects. KRCL will also conduct safety audits of tunnels and if required, suggest remedial measures. In addition to this, KRCL will organise training programs for capacity building of NHAI officials. This agreement will remain in effect for a period of two years, the ministry said. According to the ministry, NHAI had signed a similar agreement with DMRC in September to provide services for reviewing planning, designing, construction and maintenance of tunnels, bridges and other structures on National Highways across the country. The initiatives highlight NHAIs resolve to create a safe & seamless National Highway network and collaborate with government organisations to share best practices for the enhancement of transport infrastructure, contributing towards the goal of Nation Building, it added. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on reiterated his concern about deepfakes, which create ultra-realistic visuals, and echoed the call for global regulations on artificial intelligence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the G20 virtual summit, in New Delhi, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (PTI) Speaking at the opening of a virtual summit of G20 nations, of which India holds the presidency, PM Modi said, The world is worried about the negative effects of AI. India thinks that we have to work together on the global regulations for AI. Understanding how dangerous deepfake is for society and individuals, we need to work forward. We want AI should reach the people, it must be safe for society. Under the leadership of India, the virtual G20 Summit is convened after the successful 18th G20 Leaders' Summit in New Delhi on September 9 and 10. The summit resulted in the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders' Declaration. During the closing session, PM Modi proposed a virtual reconvening towards the end of India's G20 presidency to look into the advancements. Also read- Wait till Nov 24: Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Centre's actions against deepfakes Key points on AI and deepfakes from PM Modi address We must understand dangers posed by deepfakes to society and individuals, PM Modi said. India's thinking is clear, we have to work together on global regulation of AI, PM Modi told G20 leaders. There are growing concerns across the world on negative use of AI, said PM Modi at G20 virtual summit. Artificial Intelligence (AI) should reach people and must be safe for society, PM Modi added. On release of 50 hostages held in Gaza, PM Modi said,"...We welcome the news of the release of hostages. We hope all the hostages will be released soon...." Israel's cabinet has approved a temporary ceasefire with Hamas, marking the first pause in the six-week war. The ceasefire aims to facilitate the release of hostages captured by Hamas during its October 7 attack in southern Israel. Additionally, the agreement involves the release of Palestinian prisoners by Israel and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza. Indias G20 Presidency will continue till November 30. Welcome to our live blog coverage of the assembly elections in five states Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Mizoram. The democratic process is in full swing, with Rajasthan gearing up for the crucial voting day on November 25, while Telangana is set to cast its votes on November 30. Meanwhile, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Mizoram have already exercised their electoral rights. A police officer stands guard as women voters wait in queue to cast their votes at a polling booth during Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, on the outskirts of Bhopal. (PTI) In the lead-up to the Rajasthan assembly elections, a significant political event unfolded as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former chief minister Vasundhara Raje took the stage together at an election rally. This development is noteworthy, as it is seen by many as an effort to convey a united front within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The rally, held on Tuesday, marked the first instance of Modi and Raje sharing a platform since the announcement of the elections. Raje, a prominent figure in the BJP, is speculated to be in the running for the chief ministerial position should the party emerge victorious in the state. As the electoral drama unfolds across these diverse states, stay tuned with us for real-time updates, analysis, and insights into the political dynamics shaping the outcomes. Haridwar: Reacting to the Supreme Court's rebuke over misleading advertisements and remarks against modern medicines, yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Wednesday claimed a group of doctors was carrying out "propaganda" against yoga, Ayurveda. He said his company, Patanjali Ayurveda, wasn't spreading lies. Baba Ramdev (File) "Since yesterday, on different media sites, one news story has gone viral that the Supreme Court (SC) reprimanded Patanjali. SC said that if you do false propaganda, then you will be fined... We respect SC. But we are not doing any false propaganda," he said at a press conference in Haridwar. He said they were ready to face any punishment if proven guilty of propaganda. "A few doctors have formed a group that continuously does propaganda against yoga, Ayurveda, etc... If we are liars, then fine us 1000 crore, and we are also ready for the death penalty. But if we are not liars, then punish the ones who are really spreading the false propaganda. For the past 5 years, propaganda has been going on, targeting Ramdev and Patanjali," he added. The apex court on Tuesday ordered the Centre to devise a mechanism to stop misleading advertisements that claim to have cures for diseases. It also reprimanded Baba Ramdev and his company for making disparaging remarks against modern medicine. A bench headed by justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah said, This is blatant infraction of law what you (Patanjali) are doing. We will take it very seriously if you keep doing this and even impose a cost to the extent of 1 crore on every product". Also read: SC rebukes Patanjali for attempt to discredit allopathy, warns of hefty penalty The court made the observation in response to a petition filed by the Indian Medical Association seeking directions against publication of misleading advertisements. The doctors' body had also petitioned against advertisements that question the efficacy of allopathic medicines. IMA had made Patanjali Ayurveda one of the respondents to the petition. Patanjali Ayurveda, one of the country's biggest FMCG companies, had issued an advertisement in July last year, questioning the benefits of allopathy. "We want to find a real solution to the problem of misleading advertisements making false claims that it can cure a particular disease, said the bench, also comprising justice PK Mishra. Also read: SC notice on Baba Ramdev plea to club FIRs over Covid-19 allopathy comment The IMA had accused the yoga guru of making false statements against modern medicine. It also accused him of maligning doctors and creating doubts about allopathy in the minds of the masses. Patanjali claims to have a permanent solution for lifestyle disorders, incurable, chronic and genetic diseases, skin diseases, arthritis, cervical spondylitis, asthma, among others which is an infraction of law," its lawyers told the court. The court posted the matter to February 5. With inputs from Abraham Thomas, ANI The Food Safety and Drug Administration (FSDA) of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday launched a crackdown on halal-certified products, as it raided several stores in Lucknow, Gorakhpur and Basti, seizing a number of items for testing to ascertain if the state governments ban on their production, storage, distribution and sale was being complied with. HT Image According to FSDA assistant commissioner SP Singh, legal action will be initiated against the stores on the basis of the results of the testing, which will be carried out under the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006. A halal certification indicates that the product is prepared in accordance with the Islamic law and is unadulterated. On Saturday, the state government banned the production, storage, distribution and sale of halal-certified products in the state with immediate effect. Export products, however, were kept out of the purview of the ban. The move came a day after Lucknow police booked four organisations over alleged extortion in the name of providing halal certificates to retail products. On Monday, the state government handed over the probe into the matter to the special task force. In Lucknow, authorities on Tuesday raided Spencers Retail Private Limited at Ashiana Emerald Mall, where it seized five packets of 500 grams of organic items, valued at approximately 800 and bearing an unauthorised Halal certificate, FSDA officials said. Likewise, authorities raided Spice Metro Cash And Carry Wholesale near BBD College and seized 50 packets of Chaat Masala and 42 packets of Garam Masala worth approximately 3,900 and 4,400, respectively for bearing unauthorised Halal certificates, the FSDA officials added. Inspections were also carried out at other stores like Best Price near LuLu Mall in Shaheed Path and Vishal Mega Mart at Burlington Square. While no food items with unauthorised Halal certificates were recovered from these stores, they were warned against selling such items in the future, an FSDA official said, seeking anonymity. In Gorakhpur, officials inspected products at City Mall. They also raided Orion Mall and seized 18 packets of spices and cosmetic items, FSDA officials said. In Basti, FSDA officials raided a wholesale dry fruit shop in Gandhi Nagar and seized 12 bags of honey and some pastes bearing unauthorised halal certificates. The Bihar government on Tuesday notified the increase in caste-based quota in education and government jobs, from 50% to 65%, joining only a handful of other states such as Tamil Nadu where the quantum of such reservation exceeds 50%. The statement also said that chief minister Nitish Kumar said that based on the findings of the caste-based survey report, 2 lakh will be provided as a one-time financial assistance to the 94 lakh families who earn less than 6,000 per month in the state (HT File) The gazette notification came days after governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar, on November 18, gave his assent to two bills the Bihar Reservation of Vacancies in Posts and Services Amendment Bill and the Bihar Reservation (Admission In Educational Institutions) Amendment Bill, 2023 that seek to increase the reservation, setting the stage for a potential shake-up of heartland politics that could elevate caste as a key poll plank for next summers general elections. On analysis of data collected during caste-based survey 2022-23, it is apparent that large section of backward classes, scheduled caste and scheduled tribe need to be promoted for them to catch up to satisfy cherished aim in the Constitution of equality in opportunity and status, the government said in its gazette notification. members of SC/ST and other backward classes have remained deprived and marginalised for centuries. Though affirmative action has led to improvement in their life to certain extent, the ultimate goal of equality has not yet been achieved. It further strengthens the perception that in addition to measures already in place, the State is required to take further measures to accelerate ultimate object of proportional equality, it added. In a statement later, the chief ministers office said: Provisions of the hiked quotas in state government jobs and educational institutions should be implemented in letter and spirit for the benefit of those who need it. The statement also said that chief minister Nitish Kumar said that based on the findings of the caste-based survey report, 2 lakh will be provided as a one-time financial assistance to the 94 lakh families who earn less than 6,000 per month in the state. Of these families, those who are homeless will be provided a financial assistance of 1 lakh each for purchasing land for the construction of their houses, it added. The two bills raised the quota for Scheduled Castes (SC) from 16% to 20%, Scheduled Tribes (STs) from 1% to 2%, Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs) from 18% to 25% and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from 15% to 18% to elevate the total quantum of caste-based reservations to 65%. To be sure, the total quantum of reservation in jobs and educational institutions will stand at 75%, after taking into account the 10% quota for economically weaker sections (EWS). The bills were passed unanimously in the assembly on November 9, after the government tabled a detailed analysis of the states landmark caste survey that showed that marginalised castes were significantly worse off economically and socially than general categories, who were found to be over-represented in government jobs and among the educated sections. The proposal to hike reservation benefits may well end up before the courts since it breaches the 50% ceiling fixed by the Supreme Court in the 1992 Indra Sawhney (famously known as Mandal Commission) case. Tamil Nadu, at present, has a law providing for 69% reservation for identified classes. Although a challenge to this law remains pending before the top court, it has been saved so far on the ground that the law received a presidential assent in 1993 and was also put in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, which provides only limited scope of judicial review. A November 2022 judgment by the Supreme Court, ratifying the 10% EWS quota, had also weighed in on the 50% ceiling on reservation. The majority verdict at that time held that the 50% ceiling on reservation is not inviolable or inflexible, marking a paradigm shift from the thumb rule that has governed reservations in India, preventing states from enforcing quotas that take the proportion above 50%. The 3-2 view noted that the 50% ceiling applied only to the provisions of the Constitution that existed at that time and cannot extend to the 2019 amendment to any subsequent law. AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday defended his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi -- accused of threatening a police official in Hyderabad -- saying the officer had asked the latter to conclude his election speech five minutes before the permitted duration. "The law is permitting and you tell us to stop it five minutes before?" he said. The BJP, however, attacked the Owaisi brothers, reminding them of the police's might for those on the wrong side of the law. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Akbaruddin Owaisi(ANI file photo) The Hyderabad police registered a case against AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi under section 353 (obstructing official duties) of the Indian Penal Code. "If the time was 10:01 pm, you have all the right to stop us. When five minutes were left, why did he come to the podium?... The law is permitting and you tell us to stop it five minutes before?... One could react if it's 10:01 pm...What's this behaviour? One could say a lot in five minutes. For a speaker, opening and concluding statements is important," said Asaduddin Owaisi, hours after his brother's speech went viral. Slamming Akbaruddin Owaisi's behaviour, the BJP said those in uniform can display their power by hitting "10 batons and counting only one". "Be it Asaduddin Owasi or Akbaruddin Owaisi -- they only try to instigate others and violate the principles of the Constitution... When the sons of Bharat Mata (Mother India) come wearing uniform and hit 10 batons and count only one (das dande marte hain aur ginte ek hain), then people get to know the power of the uniform and those who give such remarks also get to know their stature (haisiyat)....No one is above the law. If the uniform comes into action, their arrogance would completely vanish," said BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia. Also read: No one can stop me: Akbaruddin Owaisi, brother of AIMIM chief, threatens cop Akbaruddin Owaisi allegedly threatened a police officer after the latter asked him to conclude his speech within the time limit stipulated by the Model Code of Conduct. Addressing a campaign in Hyderabad's Lalitabagh on Tuesday, Akbaruddin Owaisi asked the policeman to leave the venue and said he could make him run from the police. "Do you think that after facing knives and bullets, I got weak, still there's lots of courage in me. Five minutes are left and I'll address five minutes, no one can stop me. If I give a signal then you'll have to run, shall we make him run? This is what I'm saying, they come like this to weaken us," Owaisi said. Akbaruddin Owaisi is an assembly poll candidate from Telangana's Chandrayangutta constituency. Telangana will go to polls on November 30. The results will be declared on December 3. Stick must also follow the carrot, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday, asking the Punjab government to take stringent steps against farmers who continue to light farm fires despite a restraining order by the top court, adding both the state and central governments should keep all politics out while ensuring enforcement of measures to stop stubble burning that has become a major source of air pollution in the national capital region every winter. Stubble set on fire at a farm in Ludhiana on Monday. (Gurpreet Singh/HT Photo) No section of society can say we will do whatever we want even at the cost of the health of people. Its not acceptable. They cant go on burning fires... Stick must also follow the carrot...The bottom line, according to me, is money. Somehow, they (farmers) are not showing the sensitivity that its (farm fires) affecting people and children so long as they are making some extra money, a bench, led by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, remarked as it continued monitoring the progress of its previous orders in the matter. The court remained emphatic that farmers trying to gain monetarily by stubble burning must be deprived of all incentives. READ | Punjab to honour farmers who shunned stubble burning, says speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan During the last hearing on November 10, the court told the Centre and the governments of states neighbouring the national capital to take steps and stop farm fires, stating that a carrot and stick policy approach a balance between incentives and penalties was necessary to stop stubble-burning incidents. Fearful of the courts censure, Punjab clamped down on the fires on November 9 and 10, but with the court shut for a week for Diwali, the number of fires peaked. They are now declining again because most of the harvest in the state is done. To be sure, ahead of Tuesdays hearing, Punjab has been aggressive in filing FIRs (though most do not name anyone) and fining farmers, although it isnt clear how much of the money is actually collected. The bench, also comprising justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, directed the Punjab government to recover the environmental cess of 2.62 crore imposed on farmers for lighting farm fires. While emphasising that farmers violating court orders should be identified and penalised suitably, it also acknowledged that depriving errant farmers of MSP for paddy or other crops could be a complex issue. READ | Spike in farm fires in Punjab, 932 FIRs so far The court further directed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab to consider providing enhanced financial assistance to the farmers for hiring machines for stubble management instead of expecting more subsidy from the Centre. You have to do it. If other states can do it, why cant you do it? [But] you dont want to spend even a penny, the court told Punjabs advocate general Gurminder Singh. In its order, the bench asked the state government to come back with a response on why the latter cannot pay for fuel and manpower to the farmers hiring machines from the custom hiring centres while the government could pick up the stubble to be used appropriately. We have put it the state government why they cannot subsidise and pick up the byproducts that may compensate for the subsidies, the order recorded. The bench also took on record the submission of the Centre made through attorney general R Venkataramani that 88.7% of stubble burning cases have been reported from Punjab in 2023 but fines have been imposed only in a little more than 20% of such cases. The Centre added that largest share of funds that is over 45% of the total has been released to Punjab under its crop residue management and maximum number of machines have also been supplied to the AAP government but only 50% straw is being managed so far. Senior advocate Aparajita Singh appearing as amicus curiae along with senior advocate ADN Rao also highlighted inadequate enforcement by the Punjab government. Gurminder Singh claimed that there is a 29% reduction in farm fires in 2023 and 984 FIRs have been lodged against the landowners, besides over 1,000 flying squads being constituted to check and put out farm fires. He maintained that as of November 20, six districts in Punjab were completely free from stubble burning incidents (which is understandable as the harvest is mostly complete). According to Punjab, a higher MSP for alternate crops to wean state farmers off paddy and crop diversification along with an additional subsidy from the Centre could help. At this point, the bench urged both the Centre and the Punjab government to consider the long-term effect of growing paddy that can make land arid. The effect on the quality of land can be disastrous. We are not experts, but you can consider everything. The bottom line is that both the Centre and state must keep aside their politics, added the court, fixing December 7 as the next date of hearing. In its order, the bench also asked Centre and governments of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to constructively participate in the meetings chaired by the Union cabinet secretary to consider steps to bring down high levels of pollution gripping Delhi. The court asked the committee headed by the cabinet secretary to consider suggestions for utilising the stubble, which it said is turning out to be a profit-making venture for big farmers. The committee was further asked to work on growing alternate crops pointing to the disastrous consequence of growing paddy that can turn Punjab into a dry land. To be sure, Punjab, responsible for the majority of stubble fires, has shown little interest in clamping down on them, with the chief ministers own constituency, Sangrur, seeing a high number of farm fires in the state. Farmers in Punjab, and also in Haryana, Rajasthan, and parts of Uttar Pradesh (although to a much lesser extent in the three states), burn stubble of their paddy crop after harvesting it to get their fields ready quickly for the next crop. As the temperatures dip, Delhis air becomes heavier and is catalysed by slow winds that change direction all of which along with stubble fires push the air quality into hazardous levels. The court on November 7 maintained that it is going to monitor the issue so that residents in Delhi are not left gasping for breath due to bad air. It is time that something is done as of yesterday than postponing it and we do believe that matter requires immediate attention and court monitoring irrespective of the fact whether it improves or not in the next few days, the order of the day read. It had then asked the cabinet secretary to convene a meeting of all the stakeholders to chalk out a strategy to control pollution. In its previous hearings earlier this month, the court listed out certain short-term and long-term measures to control farm fires in Punjab. With technology available now, information is forthcoming to be utilised to control the farm fire where the exact location of farm fire can be immediately detected. How to proceed with it and what measures are to be taken are administrative in character and the function of the court is to make sure that the administrators perform the task assigned to them, the court order on November 10 stated. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a case in connection with allegations of illegal mining in Sahibganj district of Jharkhand by Pankaj Mishra, an aide of chief minister Hemant Soren, people familiar with the development said on Tuesday. CBI filed a case in connection with allegations of illegal mining in Sahibganj district by Pankaj Mishra, an aide of chief minister Hemant Soren (ANI) A first information report (FIR) was registered on Monday based on a preliminary enquiry (PE) which was launched in August on the orders of Jharkhand high court. Mishra, who has already been investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering probe pertaining to alleged illegal mining, along with Pavitra Kumar Yadav, Rajesh Yadav, Sanjay Kumar Yadav, Bacchu Yadav, Sanjay Yadav, and Suvesh Mandal have been named by CBI in the FIR. It is alleged that the accused were involved in the pilferage and illegal extraction of stone at Nimbu Pathar in Sahibganj. READ | ED witness in Jharkhand illegal mining case turns hostile in court Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) spokesperson Supriyo Bhattacharya refused to comment on the development. I do not have any information in this regard, Bhattacharya said. Party general secretary and state coordination member Vindo Pandey did not respond to phone calls. Earlier, the high court on August 18 had ordered CBI to register a preliminary enquiry to probe into the allegations of illegal mining against Mishra. The order came on a petition filed by a local resident, Bijay Hansda, alleging that for the last two-and-a half years, stone mafias were mining illegally in connivance with government officials, including mining officials of his district. He further alleged that they were using earthmoving machines and carrying out blasts which resulted in cracks in the houses of villagers. READ | Jharkhand CM Soren skips second ED summon, moves Supreme Court Hansda further alleged that he had seen illegal mining being done in the presence of Mishra but his complaints to district officials did not result in any action. ED had also told the high court that Mishra controls the illegal stone mining and their transportation in Sahibganj. Ordering the CBI director to initiate PE into the allegations, the high court had remarked: The court finds that there are sufficient materials of illegal mining in the district of Sahibganj that too on the behest of one Pankaj Mishra the court finds in view of the counter-affidavit filed by the respondent State of Jharkhand that the investigation is only an eyewash so far the illegal mining is concerned. The Congress on Tuesday released its manifesto for the upcoming assembly polls in Rajasthan, promising a law guaranteeing the minimum support price (MSP) for farmers, an expansion of reservation for marginalised castes in line with the findings of a caste survey, and security guards in every village and ward to ensure womens safety Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge with Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and party leaders releases the party's manifesto for the State Assembly elections, in Jaipur.(PTI) The manifesto pledged that if the Congress comes back to power, it will create one million employment opportunities, including 400,000 government jobs, and build a new scheme to recruit people at the panchayat level to ease employment access. The party also promised to conduct the caste survey that was announced by chief minister Ashok Gehlot and notified by the state social justice and empowerment department on October 8, and an expansion of the upper limit of free medical treatment limit under the Chiranjeevi Health Insurance Scheme from 25 lakh to 50 lakh. Our government has delivered 96% of the promises made in the 2018 manifesto. Our 2023 manifesto is also a road map towards Mission 2030 and making Rajasthan one of the top states, for which social security has been our priority in both the manifesto and the seven guarantees, Gehlot said after launching the document. The party earlier announced seven guarantees for the state 10,000 annual allowance to the woman head of the family, a law for the old pension scheme, expansion of the subsidised cylinder scheme to over 10 million families, purchasing cow dung at 2 per kg, 15 lakh insurance per household for damages due to natural disaster, free laptops for the fresh college-goers, and English medium school-education for all students. The Congress manifesto on Tuesday committed to enact a Minimum Support Price Guarantee Act on the lines of the recommendations of MS Swaminathans National Commission on Farmers (NCF) in 2004. On November 19, HT had reported that the party may propose a law that will penalise anyone who doesnt purchase agricultural produce at MSP, ensuring fair returns to the farmers. The party also announced an interest-free agricultural loan facility of up to 2 lakh to all farmers from cooperative banks, expansion of 12 agricultural missions outlined under the state agriculture budget, and a detailed Plan for the staggered implementation of the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project (ERCP). Days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised subsidised LPG cylinders at 450 to each Ujjwala scheme beneficiary, the Congress committed to further reduce the cost of gas cylinders to 400, in addition to its earlier promise of providing every household under the National Food Security Act and those below the poverty line with LPG cylinders at 500. The Congress never lies about its promises. But PM Modi keeps seeking sympathy and the BJP failed to keep any of their commitmentPeople will never believe them. Congress will surely return to power this time, said Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge. State assembly speaker CP Joshi said that the party will also implement a small traders credit card scheme similar to the kisan credit card scheme which will provide interest-free loans up to 5 lakh to small traders, shopkeepers, and young entrepreneurs, promoting economic growth. The Congress also pledged to expand the scope of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by guaranteeing 150 days of employment annually from the current 100 days and also include auto and taxi drivers under the states landmark gig workers law. Both laws were introduced in the state assembly session in July this year. While the latter aims to provide social security to gig workers and allow them to air any grievance, the former one ensures a minimum income to the marginal people in the rural and urban areas and also a minimum pension of 1,000 per month in case of aged, disabled, or single women. To ensure womens safety in the state, the Congress also proposed the installation of CCTV cameras in public spaces, the appointment of security guards at every village and urban ward, reducing the average investigation time in sexual harassment cases, and setting up womens courts on the lines of womens police stations for addressing legal matters concerning women. Joshi also announced a monthly coupon for women to travel for free on state-owned buses, the expansion of free smartphones with an internet scheme, a scheme for special leave to be availed by women during their menstrual cycle, and 33% reservation for women in cooperative institutions. For the development of Dalits, other backward classes, and tribal people, the party announced a slew of proposals such as establishing an equal opportunities commission, modification of the reservation percentage aligning with the actual number of population that would be enumerated in the caste survey, and a monthly 3,000 scholarship to children of SC/ST, OBC, minority, and economically weaker sections to support their school education. The manifesto also promised to implement a robust minority development policy in consultation with community leaders, and constitute an empowered committee to study the social, economic, and educational conditions of minorities. The BJP criticised the manifesto. The Congress manifesto is a lie. It again reflects the partys attempt to cheat the peopleIt is only an attempt by Gehlot to come back to power. But all will go in vain, said state BJP chief CP Joshi. The President of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, extended warm congratulations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the successful culmination of India's G20 Presidency. Prime Minister Narendra Modi(File photo) Taking to X, she expressed appreciation for the inclusivity and effectiveness of debates under India's leadership. Notably, Von der Leyen welcomed the African Union's historic participation as a full member in today's (Wednesday) proceedings, adding a significant layer of diversity to the discussions. In her post, Von der Leyen said, "Congratulations @narendramodi for a successful Indian @g20org Presidency. I welcome @_AfricanUnion's 1st participation today as a full member! This makes our debates even more inclusive & effective. @EU_Commission looks forward to working with the Brazilian @g20org Presidency." The inclusion of the African Union as a full member marks a milestone for the G20, enhancing the diversity of perspectives and voices in the global forum. Von der Leyen emphasised the positive impact of this development on the inclusiveness and effectiveness of ongoing discussions. ALSO READ| UNICEF says Gaza world's 'most dangerous place' for children: To survive Furthermore, the European Commission President expressed the EU Commission's anticipation of collaborating with the Brazilian G20 Presidency, underscoring continuity in international cooperation. The virtual G20 Summit was held under the chairmanship of PM Modi. The 18th G20 Leaders' Summit was held in New Delhi on September 9 and 10. It saw the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders' Declaration, which demonstrated the commitment of the G20 leaders to address global challenges in an inclusive, decisive and action-oriented manner. PM Modi, in his inaugural address of the first session of the Global Leaders' Summit on September 9, announced that the African Union has been made a full member of the G20. Following a successful G20 Summit, India passed the ceremonial gavel of the G20 presidency to Brazil on September 10. Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed unwavering faith in Brazil for leading the Group of Twenty (G20) presidency with dedication and vision and has also assured all possible cooperation from Brazilian President Lula da Silva. Brazilian President Lula da Silva thanked India and Prime Minister Modi's efforts in conducting the G20 Summit and set forth three priorities under his country's presidency of the grouping. These, the Brazilian President said, "include social inclusion, the fight against hunger, energy transition, sustainable development and the reform of global governance institutions." While Indonesia held the G20 presidency last year, Brazil holds the presidency after India. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Wednesday suspended its director of Aerosports, Capt. Anil Gill, over graft allegations. Officials, however, clarified that the investigation was still in process. The suspended officer had been accused of corruption three times in his eight-year stint in DGCA. (File Photo) The suspension came days after the DGCA transferred Capt Gill from the department of flight training (FT) to Aerosports. There is zero tolerance to malpractices. Any such issue will always be dealt with the strictest measures in accordance with the law, aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said. Capt. Gill did not respond to HT. ..a disciplinary proceeding against Capt. Anil Gill, Director posted in Directorate of Aerosports in DGCA Headquarters is contemplatedthe President in exercise of the powers conferred by sub-rule.. hereby places the said Capt. Anil Gill posted in the Directorate of Aerosports under suspension with immediate effect, the suspension order said. The order clarified that during the suspension period Capt. Gill, will have to be in Delhi and will not be permitted to leave the headquarters without obtaining the previous permission of the undersigned. Gill, who has been accused of corruption three times in his eight-year stint in DGCA was shunted out as the director of Flying Training (DFT) following the latest anonymous complaint. As DFT, Gill was authorised to approve FTOs, where training is necessary for someone to become eligible for a commercial pilot licence. 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, the complaint alleged, the FTOs that could not pay the bribe Gill sought sold their aircraft at nominal prices to the companies linked to him. 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. HT had reported that another anonymous email received on November 1, alleged that Gill forcefully made a company named Skynex Aeroflight Solutions (an approved FTO by DGCA) to send him to the Czech Republic for training on Piper PA-28 Aircraft, which was not required for his role. The Jammu and Kashmir government has terminated the services of four government employees, citing their involvement in terror activities. The decision was made in accordance with sub-clause (c) of the proviso to clause (2) of Article 311 of the Constitution of India, which empowers the government to take such actions in the interest of national security. Several employees and officers have been sacked by the J&K administration in recent years over alleged links with terrorists. (AFP) The terminated employees include a doctor, a police constable, a teacher, and a lab bearer in the higher education department. The government, however, didn't disclose specific details about the nature of the terror activities in which these individuals were allegedly involved. In separate orders issued by the general administration department, the government said that the lieutenant governor is "satisfied after considering the facts and circumstances of the case and the basis of information available" that their activities are such as to warrant dismissal from service. The sacked employees have been identified as Ab. Salam Rather from Kulgam, a lab bearer in the higher education department; Abdul Majeed Bhat from Kupwara, a constable in J&K police; Dr Nisar-Ul-Hassan, assistant professor (medicine) SMHS Hospital in Srinagar; and Farooq Ahmad Mir from Kupwara, a teacher in the education department. In the last three years, the Union Territory administration has invoked 311 (2)(c) of the Constitution to sack more than 50 employees, who were allegedly operating in shadows within the government and drawing a salary from the public exchequer, however, they were helping Pakistani terror outfits, providing logistics to terrorists, propagating terrorists' ideology, raising terror finances and furthering secessionist agenda, officials said. The Supreme Court has urged the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) not to routinely issue directions for a re-valuation of the assets of a corporate debtor, underlining that the tribunal has limited powers to issue such directions only under exceptional circumstances. In its judgment, the top court noted that there was no justification for the NCLT to order a re-valuation. (File photo) A bench of justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah added that the NCLT ought to remain cognisant that any order of re-valuation would impede the course of quick resolution and therefore, such orders could be passed only when there are cogent reasons to justify embarking on the extraordinary course. It is now well-settled that it is well within the CoCs (committee of creditors) domain as to how to deal with the entire debt of the corporate debtor. In this background, if after repeated negotiations, a resolution plan (RP) is submitted, and has been approved by the CoC with a majority vote, such commercial wisdom was not required to be called into question or casually interfered with, held the court in its judgment on Tuesday. Citing the relevant provisions of the court order came while setting aside an order of re-valuation, passed by NCLT in September 2021 and affirmed by NCLAT in January 2022(IBC), the bench highlighted that the adjudicating authority (NCLT) has jurisdiction only under Section 31(2) of the IBC, which gives power not to approve only when the resolution plan does not meet the requirement laid down under Section 31(1) of the Code, for which a reasoned order is required to be passed. The IBC, under sections 30 and 31, requires a resolution professional to ascertain measures of due diligence and care before approving it. Also Read: 2013 Maoist attack: Top court junks NIA plea against police probe We may state that the NCLTs jurisdiction and powers as the Adjudicating Authority under the Code, flow only from the Code and the Regulations thereunder...If a matter where the facts are stark comes to light, the same would have to necessarily be dealt with by the NCLT within the four corners 43 of the Code itself, having due regard to the extant circumstances. It is for the NCLT to exercise power strictly within the domain permitted by the Code, it noted. The court order came while setting aside an order of re-valuation, passed by NCLT in September 2021 and affirmed by NCLAT in January 2022. The tribunals orders kept a resolution plan for ACIL Limited in abeyance while directing the official liquidator to carry out a re-valuation of the assets of the corporate debtor. In its judgment, the top court noted that there was no justification for the NCLT to order a re-valuation when no objection was raised by any quarter with regard to any irregularity, either by the RP or the or the CoC, in finally approving the resolution plan, which was sent to the NCLT for approval. Thus, if the CoC, including the financial creditors to whom money is due from the corporate debtor, had undertaken repeated negotiations with the appellant with regard to the resolution plan and thereafter, with a majority of 88.56% votes, approved the final negotiated resolution plan of the appellant, which the RP, in turn, presented to the NCLT for approval, unless the same was failing the tests of the provisions of the Code, especially Sections 30 & 31, no interference was warranted, it held. Taking note of the fact that the resolution plan has been in a stalemate since the NCLT order in 2021, the court directed the tribunal to pass an order on the approval application within three weeks. New Delhi: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has directed Congress to explain the design and placement of an advertisement in the Dainik Bhaskar newspaper, which was placed like a news item with a view to disorient the electors. The notice was issued to Congresss Rajasthan state president Govind Singh Dotasra in response to a complaint filed by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) on Tuesday. The Election Commission of India. (Representative file photo) The EC has also constrained Congress from utilising this format, content, language and placement of advertisement in the interim period. Dotasra has to respond by 3 pm, November 23. In its notice, the EC noted that the advertisement, placed in the SkyBus or Masthead location, by Congress in Rajasthan is missing the election symbol. [T]he concern of distortion on level playing field is even more exaggerated in this case compared to a BJP advertisement from March 2021, against which Congress had complained, the EC said. However, in the notice, the EC also noted that the placement, design and content of advertisements in print media, prior to 48 hours of the date of poll, do not require clearance from the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC). Prior to 48 hours of the date of poll, advertising is entirely controlled by the respective political parties with financial implication, the EC said. Political parties are permitted and expected to issue advertisement subject to accounting, and, clear citation, to identify political advertisements as such. Also Read: EC issues show cause notice to BJP over AAP complaint The advertisement was published just five days before the scheduled assembly elections in Rajasthan. BJP had taken umbrage to advertisements published in leading national dailies, including Times of India and Dainik Bhaskar, on November 20 which read, Rajasthan mein Congress ki leher [Congress sweeps Rajasthan], HT had earlier reported. The BJP had called for the EC to refrain Congress from publishing any election related advertisements, to file an FIR against Congress, and to mandate Congress to issue a public apology in the same newspapers. It has also called the EC to take action against newspapers that carried the advertisement and asked them to publish an apology and a clarification. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has issued a show cause notice to Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Virendra Sachdeva over derogatory posts sent from BJP Delhis official accounts. AAP had filed a complaint on Nov 16 over a video that the BJP Delhis official Facebook and X accounts posted on Nov 5. (Representative file photo) The action comes in response to a complaint by the Aam Aadmi Party. Sachdeva has been asked to provide an explanation by 8pm on November 23 on why action should not be taken against him for the violation of the model code of conduct. The EC noted that it was prima facie of the view that the tweet and the post AAP had complained about were in violation of the model code of conduct. It noted that as a national party, the BJP and its Delhi unit are expected to exercise caution through verification of facts before publishing and disseminating such content in public domain. The model code of conduct has been in effect since October 9 due to the assembly elections in the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana. Also Read: AAP accuses BJP of violating model code of conduct in complaint to EC In its notice, the EC noted that it had been issuing advisories to political parties to maintain high standards of electoral campaign and cited its May 2 instructions about the plummeting level of public discourse during campaigning, maintaining of expected level of dignity by star campaigners, recognised National and State Political Parties. AAP had filed a complaint on November 16 over a video that the BJP Delhis official Facebook and X accounts posted on November 5. BJP trying to create a parody is a mean and ugly attempt to tarnish the image of the Honble Chief Minister and AAP without any basis whatsoever amounting to public abuse, denigration and vilification of the Honble Chief Minister, the complaint had said. The EC noted that the public tend to believe statements by a national party to be true. Such belief is bound to affect the outcome of the elections, the notice said. BJP complains to EC against Congress Meanwhile, the BJP filed a complaint against the Congress on Tuesday for publishing an advertisement in leading national dailies on November 20 which read, Rajasthan mein Congress ki leher [Congress sweeps Rajasthan]. The BJP has called for a notice to be issued against Congress and for the EC to refrain Congress from publishing any election related advertisements. It has also called on the EC to file an FIR (first information report) against Congress and for the party to issue a public apology in the same newspapers. It has also called the EC to take action against the newspapers that carried the advertisement and asked them to publish an apology and a clarification. Calling it a misleading and mischievous advertisement, the BJP said that the Congress had designed the advertisement to mislead voters into thinking that it is a news/opinion published by the News paper [sic] Agency after a survey. The advertisement was published just five days before the scheduled assembly elections in Rajasthan. The publishers [sic] byline has deliberately been printed in a font size, so miniscule, that it is impossible for the reader to know the publisher of advertisement, the complaint filed by BJPs Mansukh Mandaviya, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Om Pathak and Amir Malviya read. The BJP cited section 171G of the Indian Penal Code (false statement in connection with an election) and the Norms of Journalistic Conduct, 2022, in its complaint. Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax department authorities on Tuesday conducted simultaneous searches in the residences and offices of industrialist and former Telangana MP G Vivek and his relatives in Hyderabad and Mancherial, people familiar with the matter said. The searches by the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax department are linked to the freezing of a bank transaction worth 8 crore of G Viveks firm Visakha Industries by the Hyderabad police on November 18, based on a complaint (HT Archives) Vivek, who represented Peddapalli parliamentary constituency between 2009 and 2019, had been with the Bharatiya Janata Party for a long time and was the chairman of the BJP manifesto committee in Telangana. He resigned from the party and joined the Congress on November 1. He is contesting as Congress candidate from Chennur assembly constituency in the November 30 assembly elections. As per the affidavit submitted by him to the Election Commission, Vivek, who owns Visakha industries, a popular Telugu television channel V6 and a newspaper Velugu, is the richest of all the candidates contesting the assembly polls with a net worth of over 606 crore. A police official familiar with the development said on condition of anonymity that different teams of ED and I-T carried out the searches for five hours, starting 6 am in the residence of Vivek at Somajiguda in Hyderabad, besides his offices at Begumpet and his camp office at Mancherial. The searches are linked to the freezing of a bank transaction worth 8 crore of Viveks firm Visakha Industries by the Hyderabad police on November 18, based on a complaint. The police identified that the money came into the companys account from an unknown source on November 13 and it was immediately transferred to another firm owned by the ex-MP. On instructions from the Election Commission, the police visited IDBI Bank Basheerbagh branch and enquired about the alleged transaction and froze the transaction. Police had also informed the Income-Tax department and joint director, Directorate of Enforcement of Hyderabad zone. The former MPs supporters staged a protest against the I-T raids outside his residence in Mancherial. They raised slogans against the Centre for allegedly targeting Vivek, days ahead of the assembly elections. Raids were also conducted on the residences of Viveks relatives, including his brother Vinod, who is also contesting as Congress candidate from Bellampalli. The ED and I-T sleuths reportedly checked the records. While Vivek was away in the election campaign, the ED and I-T authorities collected details from the other inmates and left the place after obtaining their signatures, the police official quoted above said. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday said it has provisionally attached assets worth 752 crore in connection with its ongoing money laundering probe into the National Herald newspaper associated with the Congress party. The Enforcement Directorate logo The immovable properties worth 661.69 crore attached under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) include the National Herald House in Delhi, the Nehru Bhawan in Lucknow and the National Herald office in Mumbai, all owned by the Associated Journals Limited (AJL), which publishes National Herald. The National Herald is published by AJL and owned by Young Indian (YI) Private Limited. Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are majority shareholders of YI, holding 76% shares in all. ED is probing allegations of irregularities in transactions involving AJL and YI. READ | Petty vendetta tactics: Cong response to ED action in National Herald probe ED has issued an order to provisionally attach properties worth 751.9 crore in a money-laundering case investigated under PMLA. Investigation revealed that AJL is in possession of proceeds of crime in the form of immovable properties spread across many cities of India such as Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow to the tune of 661.69 crore and Young Indian is in possession of proceeds of crime to the tune of 90.21 crore in the form of investment in equity shares of AJL, the agency said in a statement. Among other cities where immovable properties of AJL were attached include Indore, Patna and Panchkula, people familiar with the development said. The Congress described the development as vendetta carried out by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the middle of five-state elections. READ | National Herald case: ED conducts raids at about dozen locations Senior Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi called the ED action reflective of the BJPs desperation to divert attention from certain defeat in the ongoing elections in five states. These petty vendetta tactics shall not frighten the Indian National Congress in any way, he added. EDs probe under PMLA is based on an Income Tax department investigation, completed in 2017, which was based on a private complaint filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in 2012. Swamy accused the Gandhis of using party funds to purchase AJL and said 90.21 crore were transferred from AICC to AJL at zero interest; that Young India Private Ltd (YI) received 92 million shares of AJL; and that Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra purchased additional shares to gain full control of the company. AJL was founded in November 1937 by Jawaharlal Nehru and published the National Herald, Qaumi Awaz in Urdu and Navjeevan in Hindi. Income Tax proceedings, initiated in 2017 revealed that YI purchased the 90.21 crore interest free loan given by AICC to AJL by allegedly making a payment of only 50 lakh to the former. Investigators said YI was founded in November 2010, just 23 days prior to assignment of the 90 crore loan, with a nominal capital of 5 Lakh. Young India did not even have any funds of its own for purchase of the loan of 90 crore of the AICC, the IT department said. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are majority (76%) shareholders in YI. The Congress has repeatedly said that the transaction was done to help save the newspaper and pay the salaries of journalists and staffers at a time when AJL faced huge debts. It argues that the decision helped revive the organisation and blames the central government of raking up an old issue to target the Gandhi family and for political vendetta. The ED has questioned Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and other senior Congress leader as part of its probe in the case, In its statement on Tuesday, the financial crimes probe agency alleged that AJL was given land on concessional rates in various cities of India for the purpose of publishing newspapers, but it closed its publishing operations in 2008 and started using the properties for commercial purposes. AJL had to repay a loan of 90.21 crore to All India Congress Committee (AICC). However, AICC treated this loan as non-recoverable from AJL and sold it for 50 lakh to a newly incorporated company - Young Indian - without (the latter having) any source of income to pay even 50 lakh, ED said. By their action, the shareholders of AJL as well as donors of Congress Party were cheated by the office bearers of AJL and Congress Party, ED alleged in its statement. The probe, ED said, revealed that after purchasing the loan of 90.21 crore from AICC, YI demanded either repayment of loan or allotment of equity shares of AJL to it. AJL held an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) and passed a resolution to increase share capital and issue fresh shares worth 90.21 crore to YI. With this fresh allotment of shares, shareholding of more than 1,000 shareholders was reduced to a mere 1% and AJL became subsidiary company of YI. YI also took control over properties of AJL, the ED statement added. The Congress contested the allegations. PMLA action can only be consequential to some predicate or main offence. There is no transfer of any immovable property. There is no movement of money. There are no proceeds of crime. Indeed, there is no complainant who claims to have been cheated: not a single one. This is a prefabricated structure of deceit, lies and falsehood, of by and for the BJP, to divert, distract and digress in the middle of elections, Singhvi said. Officials aware of the matter said the ED investigation found that AICC advanced loans worth 90.21 crore to AJL over a period of time. In November 2010, YI was incorporated with Gandhi family loyalists Sam Pitroda and Suman Dubey as its founding directors with 5 lakh share capital. However, a loan of 1 crore was received by it from a Kolkata-based company, which is being treated as a shell company by ED, so that it can enter into a transaction with AICC for takeover of AJL. Meanwhile, the officials quoted above said, AJLs registered office was shifted to Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in Delhi. Washington: The US shared inputs on a nexus between organised criminals, gun runners and terrorists during the course of recent discussions, and relevant departments were examining them, India said on Wednesday -- hours after the Financial Times reported that American authorities thwarted a plot to kill Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on US soil. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun (File) The Joe Biden administration, too, confirmed that the US, at the senior most levels, raised the concern with India and expected those deemed responsible to be held accountable. India, according to the US, was surprised and concerned when the issue was raised, and told Washington DC that this was not government policy and will investigate the matter. The remarks by the ministry of external affairs (MEA) came in response to the report in the London-based newspaper which also suggested that the US warned India against any involvement in a plot to kill Pannun, a Sikh extremist the government of India officially designated as a terrorist but who also happens to be a dual American and Canadian citizen. READ | NIA books Gurpatwant Singh Pannun for videos threatening Air India During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others. The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow-up action, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said. Bagchi added that India took such inputs seriously as it impinged on Indian national security interests as well. Issues in the context of US inputs are already being examined by relevant departments. The FT report said it was unclear whether the developments led the plotters to abandon their plan of killing Pannun, or whether FBI intervened and foiled a scheme. One person familiar with the situation said the US protest was issued after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a high-profile state visit to Washington in June, the report added. The development came two months after Canada said there were credible allegations linking Indian agents to the murder of another Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a Vancouver suburb. New Delhi has denied the charges and said there was no proof to back the allegations. On Wednesday, FT reported on the American message to India, adding that US federal prosecutors have also filed a sealed indictment against one of the perpetrators of the plot in the New York District Court. The US justice department hasnt unsealed the indictment. READ | NIA seizes assets of Khalistani extremist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in Punjab We are treating this issue with utmost seriousness, and it has been raised by the US government with the Indian government, including at the senior most levels. Indian counterparts expressed surprise and concern. They stated that activity of this nature was not their policy, US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. The statement came in response to HTs question about the allegations, whether the US can confirm either having such a conversation with India or whether it has any specific asks from India on the issue. Based on discussion with senior US government officials, we understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable, the statement added. An earlier statement by an NSC spokesperson also underlined that the safety and security of American citizens was paramount. The US State department did not comment on the issue We do not comment on diplomatic, law enforcement, or intelligence discussions with our partners. Upholding the safety and security of US citizens is our highest priority, a spokesperson said. In September, Canadas Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on the floor of the Canadian parliament, said that there were credible allegations linking agents of the government of India to the killing of Nijjar, another designated terrorist who happened to be a Canadian citizen. Trudeaus charge led to a major diplomatic rupture between Canada and India, besides raising questions in other western capitals including Washington, which is both Ottawas closest ally and a fellow member of the Five Eyes alliance, the worlds premier intelligence network. The US asked India to cooperate with Canadian authorities and expressed its concern. India termed Trudeaus allegations absurd, said this was not government policy, and added that if Canada had something specific to offer, Indian would be willing to look at it. New Delhi also used the moment to expose what it saw as Ottawas permissive environment for terror, violence and organized crime under the rubric of free speech. Both Pannun and Nijjar are pro-Khalistan separatists with a history of supporting secessionism, inciting violence, and mobilising funds for extremism. Just this month, on November 4, Pannun, the head of the banned outfit Sikhs for Justice, warned Sikhs against travelling on Air India flights on and after November 19, and threatened that Air India would not be allowed to operate. This week, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed a case against Pannun under various sections of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. India and the US have been careful not to allow Canadas allegations to interrupt the momentum in bilateral ties. The relationship has built on the momentum of Prime Minister Narendra Modis state visit to Washington DC in June. In September, President Joe Biden visited Delhi for the G20 Summit where US support played a key role in helping the presidency arrive at the leaders declaration. External affairs minister S Jaishankar then visited Washington where he met national security adviser Jake Sullivan, secretary of state Antony J Blinken, secretary of defence Lloyd Austin and is understood to have had private conversations with top US intelligence community figures. In November, both Blinken and Austin visited Delhi for the annual 2+2 dialogue to deepen strategic and defence ties. And last week, Indian commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal was in San Francisco, where he participated in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework ministerial and represented India, an invited guest country, at the APEC summit. US ambassador to India Eric Garcetti has also said that Modi invited Biden to be the chief guest at the Republic Day ceremony on January 26 next year, where he may attend the Quad Leaders Summit. While there is no official confirmation of the visit, those familiar with the conversations suggest that it remains on the table and will be contingent on Bidens schedule and domestic and international commitments. After the Supreme Court rejected the NIA's petition regarding the investigation in the Jheeram Ghati massacre case, former Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh Raman Singh asserted that the matter will be investigated immediately after the formation of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state. Former Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh. (File Photo)(HT_PRINT) The counting of the votes for the Chhattisgarh Assembly polls will be held on December 3. The apex court on Tuesday rejected the National Investigative Agency's (NIA) plea against the Chhattisgarh police's probe into the Jheeram Ghati killings of Congress leaders in the state in 2013. "The Congress government remained here (Chhattisgarh) for 5 years. The person who kept talking about having evidence in his pocket for five years did not bring out all those documents for 5 years. In the coming time, the BJP government will be formed and this matter will be investigated immediately," Raman Singh said on Tuesday. A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra rejected the NIA appeal in connection with the 2013 Jheeram Ghati massacre. On a complaint by the son of a deceased Congress leader, an FIR was lodged by the State Police on allegations that the NIA had failed to investigate a larger political conspiracy. Additional Solicitor General SV Raju appeared for the NIA. Advocates ANS Nadkarni and Sumeer Sodhi represented the State of Chhattisgarh and told the Court that the NIA had never investigated the "political conspiracy" angle since 2013 and had in fact closed the case. The Supreme Court was informed that even the previous political regime in 2016 had written to the Central Government to initiate a CBI investigation since the NIA had not done its job. Senior Congress leaders, like Vidyacharan Shukla, Nandkumar Patel, Mahendra Karma and many others, including security forces personnel, were killed after their convoy was attacked by Naxals in Jheeram Valley in Bastar district on May 25, 2013. (ANI) The government may consider introducing a new law to deal with deepfakes and misinformation, Union minister of state electronics and technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar, said on Tuesday. Separately, the IT ministry has called two meetings with executives of social media firms, on Thursday and Friday. Deepfakes are a very important, clear and present danger to Indian internet users, said Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar (AP) The meeting on Thursday, to be held in Rail Bhawan, will focus on the issue of manipulated images and videos. The meeting on Friday, called by Chandrasekhar, will focus on general compliance with IT rules. Although the internet and artificial intelligence are empowering, they are being used to cause harm, to cause chaos in society, to cause disorder, to incite violence, the minister said. Deepfakes are a very important, clear and present danger to Indian internet users, Chandrasekhar said. READ | IT Ministry summons social media companies over deepfakes We have already worked very hard and created the IT Rules in April 2023. We will continue to create a framework, including but not limited to, if necessary, a new legislation to ensure that deepfakes or misinformation at large do not pose a threat... to the safety and trust of 1.2 billion Indians who will be on the Indian internet, he told ANI news agency. The IT rules were notified in February 2021 and had a rule that mandated all intermediaries, not just social media platforms, to remove any material that showed a user in full or partial nudity, or depicted them in a sexual act, or impersonated them, including through morphed images. All intermediaries are mandated to remove such content within 24 hours of receiving a complaint from the user or someone on her behalf. In April this year, the IT rules were modified to allow a government-notified fact checking unit to identify any fake or false or misleading information about the business of the central government. READ | PM raises concerns over tech misuse, deepfakes The IT ministry on November 20 asked all social media companies with more than 50 million users in India to attend a meeting on November, two days after IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said his ministry would call them to brainstorm about deepfakes. On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed concern over misuse of technology and artificial intelligence to create deepfakes and said the media can play a role in raising awareness 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 on November 8. In an advisory issued in February, the ministry had 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. Parts of southern Indian states, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, witnessed heavy rainfall on Wednesday, with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicting further rainy spells throughout the upcoming days this week. Puducherry and Karaikal regions endured continuous rain over the last 24 hours, forcing the respective governments to declare a school holiday for Wednesday. Parts of Tamil Nadu witnessed heavy rainfall on Wednesday.(ANI) IMD forecast said that cyclonic circulations over Tamil Nadu could result in moderate to heavy rainfall accompanied by thunderstorms and lightning in Kerala over the next five days. Additionally, the IMD predicted isolated heavy rain in south interior Karnataka on Thursday and Friday. The weather department has issued an orange alert for two districts in Kerala, Idukki and Pathanamthitta, and a yellow alert for several other districts on Wednesday. An orange alert signifies rainfall between 12 cm to 20 cm, while a yellow alert indicates heavy rainfall ranging from 6 to 11 cm. Tamil Nadu On Wednesday, a Chennai MTC bus got stuck in a Moolakkothalam subway, requiring joint efforts from the Transport Department and Corporation workers to dislodge it. An ANI video showed the subway inundated with rainwater as the bus remained stranded while traffic flowed alongside. According to IMD data on X, rainfall recorded in parts of Tamil Nadu are as follows: Dharapur recorded 17cm, followed by Avinashi and Andipatti with 14cm each, Parangiprttai with 13cm, and Watrap with 12cm. The forecast from the Chennai regional meteorological center for Thursday suggests light to moderate rainfall across Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Karaikal areas, accompanied by thunderstorms and lightning at specific spots. Heavy rain is likely to occur at isolated places over Nilgiris, Coimbatore, Tirupur, Dindigul, Theni, Madurai, Sivaganga, Virudhunagar, Ramanathapuram, Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli, Tenkasi and Kanyakumari districts of Tamilnadu & Karaikal area. Friday's prediction said heavy rain is likely to occur at isolated places over Nilgiris, Coimbatore, Theni, Tenkasi and Tiruvallur districts of Tamilnadu. The forecast further anticipates light to moderate rain with thunderstorms persisting across Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Karaikal until November 28. Rain in Puducherry, Karaikal Heavy rainfall in Puducherry and Karaikal regions disrupted daily life and caused flooding in low-lying areas, resulting in traffic congestion. Puducherry received 5 cm of rainfall within the last twenty-four hours ending at 8.30 am, while Karaikal saw 9 cm of rainfall, IMD data said. Chandra Priyanka, the former Transport Minister and current AINRC legislator, toured the rain-affected zones in Cottucherry, her constituency in the Puducherry Assembly, news agency PTI reported. Efforts involving earth movers were initiated to clear canals and facilitate smoother drainage of floodwater. Kerala rain As heavy rains persisted in various parts of Kerala, IMD issued an orange alert for two districts on Wednesday: Idukki and Pathanamthitta. Alongside, a yellow alert was issued for all other districts except Kannur and Kasaragod in the state. The downpour on Tuesday caused challenges for pilgrims heading to the hilltop shrine of Lord Ayyappa in Sabarimala, part of the annual Mandalam-Makaravilakku pilgrimage in Pathanamthitta district. The rainfall also led to flooding in numerous roads and hilly areas across Thiruvananthapuram district, PTI reported. IMD data further said that Thritla in Kerala registered nine centimetres of rainfall, while Kalamassery, Chittur and Pattembi reported eight centimetres rain. Seethathode witnessesed seven centimetres of rainfall. Chennai: Dr SS Badrinath, founder and chairman emeritus of Sankara Nethralaya in Chennai, which ensured affordable eye care to millions of people, passed away on Tuesday. He was 83. In 1978, Dr SS Badrinath, along with a group of doctors, set up Sankara Nethralaya a non-profit eye hospital in Chennai to provide free eye care for the poor. (ANI) He is survived by wife Dr Vasanthi Badrinath, a pediatrician, and two sons Ananth and Seshu. Condoling his demise, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Badrinaths contributions to eye care and his relentless service to society have left an indelible mark. Deeply saddened by the passing of Dr. SS Badrinath Ji, a visionary, expert in ophthalmology and founder of Sankara Nethralaya. His contributions to eye care and his relentless service to society have left an indelible mark. His work will continue to inspire generations. Condolences to his family and loved ones. Om Shanti, Modi wrote on X, formerly Twitter. A renowned vitreoretinal surgeon, Badrinath received the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri in 1996 and 1983, respectively. In 1978, he, along with a group of doctors, set up Sankara Nethralaya a non-profit eye hospital in Chennai to provide free eye care for the poor. While Sankara Nethralaya has five centres in Chennai, it also provides services in Kolkata, Andhra Pradesh and Assam. According to the institute, in 1998, it created a record when doctors performed the largest number of Corneal Transplant Surgeries in the country. Nethralaya had performed 402 corneal transplants from the 536 eyes received. In a paper published in 2020 in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology on the model of Sankara Nethralaya, Dr Badrinath and other authors said that they began with free camps at hospital premises. They expanded with the help of national and international NGOs. Community camps were organised, and patients were brought to the hospital, treated, and taken back to their villages. The patient didnt have to pay anything through this process. Such outreach initiatives are essential and played a major role in the elimination of avoidable blindness in our country through screening, he said in his paper. A major breakthrough in the history of blindness eradication in the country was introduced by Netralaya through its Mobile Eye Surgical Unit which is a sterile surgical facility that can travel to remote locations and perform cataract surgery on-site. His zeal for digitization of healthcare put to shame many of those who were half his age, said political commentators and a doctor, Sumanth Raman adding that along with late Dr V Shanta of the Chennais Cancer Institute, they symbolised an era where healthcare was about compassion not commerce. Chief minister M K Stalin recalled that late Indian lawyer Nanabhoy Nani Palkhivala signed all his assets to Nethralaya. Dr Badrinathas importance can be seen from that. It is a huge loss to the medical field, Stalin said. Born in 1940 in Chennai, Sengamedu Srinivasa Badrinath completed his medical education from the life insurance money following his parents death. He graduated from the Madras Medical College, Madras, in 1963 and pursued his residency, internship and fellowships in New York and Boston. He returned to India in the 1970s. He worked in the Voluntary Health Services (VHS) in Chennai and practised ophthalmology in private hospitals. After Dr Badrinath operated on Kanchi pontiff Chandrasekarendra Saraswati Swamigal in 1974, he was encouraged by the mutts Sri Jayendra Saraswathi Swamigal to start an eye-care hospital for the underprivileged. The Kanchi Mutt on X spoke of his devotion and service to the society. In 1978, Dr Badrinath along with a group of doctors established Sankara Nethralaya (meaning an eye temple, as a unit of the Medical Research Foundation). Since then the not-for-profit eye hospital in Chennai has been offering free treatment for the poor. But, the technological advancements, clinical expertise and quality healthcare made Sankara Nethralaya a choice for everyone. People from across the country travel for eye treatments and surgeries. Dr Badrinath then built the hospital entirely through donations which they continue to receive. Sankara Nethralaya has five centres in Chennai and provides services in Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Kolkata. The hospital has also been offering academic courses and fellowships. A vitreoretinal surgeon, he quit active practice in 2019 and had age-related ailments. ..... "He said, 'I am good. You people go home. I will come,' a visibly relieved brother of one of the 41 workers stuck inside a collapsed tunnel in Uttarkashi said on Wednesday. Uttarkashi: Visuals of workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi district, released by rescuers on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023.(PTI) Vikram Singh Yeri, brother of trapped worker Pushkar Singh Yeri, told news agency PTI that fruits and other food items were sent to the workers inside the tunnel. He further said that his brother asked for a mobile charger. "He said -'I am good. You people go home. I will come.' Fruits and other food items were sent through the pipe. He has asked for a mobile charger," Yeri said. The rescue operation, involving local authorities and specialized teams, has been ongoing to reach the workers trapped inside for more than 10 days and ensure their safe extraction. Drilling with the American auger machine resumed at the Silkyara tunnel overnight to prepare an escape passage for the 41 workers, reported PTI. Meanwhile, the director of the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL) announced that the location for vertical drilling to rescue 41 workers trapped inside the collapsed Silkyara Tunnel has been identified. Khulko said, "The location for vertical drilling has been identified. Road work for vertical drilling on the hill above the tunnel is almost complete. More than 350 meters of road construction work is complete. BRO (Border Roads Organisation) is building a road from both Silkyara and Barkot sides, which is almost complete." International tunnelling expert Arnold Dix, who is part of the Uttarkashi tunnel rescue team, expressed optimism, saying, "I just want 41 men home to their families, and I don't want any of you hurt. My feeling is we are going to get that. My feeling is we are going to get 41 men home and none of you guys hurt as well." The drilling operations faced a setback on Friday when the auger machine hit a hard object, leading to a temporary suspension. The resumption of drilling with the auger machine is expected to expedite the rescue efforts. India on Tuesday backed a two-state solution to resolve the decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict and bring lasting peace to the troubled region where war erupted again after Hamas militants launched an audacious assault against Israel on October 7 and the West Asian nation responded with a massive bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar meets with Australian Foreign Minister Senator Penny Wong in Delhi (ANI) The solution was also backed by Australia after a bilateral meeting between foreign ministers S Jaishankar and Penny Wong, who said they had discussed the West Asia crisis during their talks. Jaishankar and Wong, who met in New Delhi for the 14th India-Australia Foreign Ministers Framework Dialogue, told a media briefing that the two-state solution a recognised Palestinian state alongside Israel was the way forward, even as the two leaders condemned the Hamas attack as an act of terror and called for observance of international humanitarian law in Gaza. The two ministers made three broad points in relation to the ongoing developments in West Asia: there can be no compromise on terror; there is an urgent need for humanitarian assistance in Gaza, which has been hit hard by Israeli attacks; and there is the issue of rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people. READ | Brics demands immediate truce in Gaza One of the issues relates to the rights and future of the Palestinians, and that too has to have a solution, Jaishankar said. And that solution in our view, and in the view of many countries, can only come from a two-state solution, he added, in response to a question during a joint press briefing with Wong after the dialogue. The Australian foreign minister spoke on similar lines. On the aspirations of the Palestinian people, I think what this shows us is that we do need a political solution. We do need to get to a point where we see both Israeli and Palestinian peoples living in peace and security behind international borders. And that progress to a two-state solution is required, she said. The Foreign Ministers Framework Dialogue took place a day after the 2nd India and Australia 2+2 dialogue between the defence and foreign ministers of the two countries. Developments in West Asia figured in the discussions on Monday too. READ | Israel-Hamas war: India welcomes international efforts for humanitarian pauses Jaishankar described the situation in West Asia as complex and challenging. Today the consideration of the situation in West Asia is if you have these three broad sets of issues (terrorism, humanitarian crisis and future of Palestinians) ...we have to find a way by which all of them are addressed, he said. When we hear one asserted at the expense of the other, that is not really going to lead to a way forward. I think the challenge for all of us collectively is how do we deal with all of them. That is really what we discussed. My impression is that the Australian position is very similar to ours. Wong described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as dire and catastrophic. Human suffering is widespread and the world is rightly engaged on this issue, she said. We share the view that what occurred on October 7 was an act of terrorism and it needs to be unequivocally condemned. We share the view that the hostages should be released and we repeat our call for that. On the humanitarian crisis, we have taken a very clear view which we have articulated publicly the importance of international law and the need for Israel to observe in its actions international law including the protection of civilians, she said. Wong also said that Israeli settlements in the region were contrary to international law and unhelpful to progress towards the two-state solution. A two-state solution has been the consistent position of India and many other countries. But the problem is how to get there and have a viable and sovereign state of Palestine, said Anil Trigunayat, a West Asian affairs expert and a former ambassador. Other key issues discussed by the two leaders included the India-Canada row; peace, prosperity and security in the Indo-Pacific region, and the way forward for the Quad grouping that includes the US and Japan. We discussed issues between India and Canada. Australia has a good, strong and close relationship with both of us. I felt it was important that Australia get our perspective on the issue. The key issue really is the space given to radicalism and extremism in Canada, Jaishankar added. The next Quad meeting is scheduled for early next year, he said. Every meeting has added to the agenda and substance of the Quad. There is a natural inclination to push the envelope to find new convergences to explore fresh areas of cooperation. We are preparing for a Quad meeting sometime early next year and our discussions centred around what more could we do to add to the Quad. The strategic partnership is making great strides, he said. Concluded the 14th India-Australia Foreign Ministers Framework Dialogue with FM @SenatorWong. The strategic partnership is making great strides. Our frequent high level engagements, growing trade, investment and economic cooperation and robust people to people ties are big contributors. Discussed our close collaboration in trilateral, quadrilateral and multilateral formats. Also exchanged perspectives on our regions, Indo-Pacific and West Asia, Jaishankar later wrote on X. At the 2+2 dialogue on Monday, the talks centered around deepening military cooperation in critical areas including anti-submarine warfare and air-to-air refuelling, security in the vast Indo-Pacific region amid Chinas rising influence, hydrography cooperation and strengthening ties in sectors such as critical minerals, space, education, and science and technology. The two sides also discussed pressing geopolitical issues, including the crisis in West Asia and the war in Ukraine. New Delhi: India has resumed e-visa services for Canadian nationals, two months after it suspended the facility following a diplomatic spat with Canada triggered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus claim of a potential link between Indian government agents and the killing of Khalistani leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, people aware of the matter said on Wednesday. India has resumed e-visa services for Canadian nationals after two months. (File photo/Reuters) The two countries also carried out tit-for-tat expulsions of senior diplomats in September. Trudeau had then said there are credible allegations of a potential link between Indian government agents and the killing of Nijjar in June, a claim that was rejected by the Indian side as absurd and motivated. The Canadian claim further damaged bilateral relations which were already at an all-time low. The development came a little more than a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Trudeau at the meeting on the margins of the G20 Summit in Delhi that India expects Ottawa to cooperate in tackling pro-Khalistani elements on Canadian soil who are promoting secessionism and inciting violence against Indian diplomats. India has been deeply concerned about Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten Indias sovereignty and territorial integrity. Also Read: Indian consular camps arranged across Canada under heavy security The issue came up during a bilateral meeting on Tuesday between external affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Australian counterpart Penny Wong. We discussed issues between India and Canada. Australia has a good, strong and close relationship with both of us. I felt it was important that Australia get our perspective on the issue. The key issue really is the space given to radicalism and extremism in Canada, Jaishankar said at a joint press briefing with Wong after the 14th India-Australia Foreign Ministers Framework Dialogue. Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was shot dead in the parking lot of Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in the town of Surrey in British Columbia on June 18. Nijjar was earlier designated a terrorist by the Indian government for his involvement in pro-Khalistan activities. In a speech to Canadas House of Commons on September 18, Trudeau said he wished to inform the House of an extremely serious matter that he had discussed with opposition leaders. Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Canada is a rule-of-law country. The protection of our citizens and defence of our sovereignty are fundamental, he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said that the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas should not escalate into a regional conflict, condemned both terrorism and the death of civilians, welcomed the news of the release of Israeli and American hostages, and expressed the hope that all hostages will be released soon. Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers opening remarks at the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit on Wednesday. (ANI) Speaking at a virtual meeting of G20 leaders, the final major event during Indias presidency of the grouping, Modi reiterated Indias careful and balanced position on the conflict, asserting that terrorism was unacceptable, and the death of civilians anywhere was condemnable. We welcome the news of the release of hostages today, and hope for the swift release of all hostages. Ensuring the timely and continuous delivery of humanitarian aid is imperative. It is also crucial to ensure that the conflict between Israel and Hamas does not take on any kind of regional form, Modi said, drawing attention to the instability in West Asia. READ | PM Modi condemns civilian deaths in Israel-Hamas war: This is the time' His comments came on a day the two warring sides, with help from the US, Qatar and Egypt, agreed to a four-day ceasefire in Gaza as a part of a wider package deal that involved the release of a set of hostages in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. They also come in the backdrop of rising global outrage against Israels response to the Hamas terror attacks. It is important that humanitarian assistance reaches [Gaza] in a timely manner, Modi said in his opening remarks at the virtual leaders summit, a follow up to the in-person summit held in New Delhi on September 9-10. India hands over the G20 presidency to Brazil on December 1. The war erupted after Hamas militants launched an audacious assault against Israel on October 7 and Tel Aviv responded with a massive bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza. India has condemned the terror attack, but also highlighted the need to protect civilian lives in the Gaza strip, and reaffirmed its support for a two-state solution to resolve the decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict and bring lasting peace to the troubled region. The clouds of crises that we are witnessing today, as One Family, we possess the strength to work towards peace. From the point of view of human welfare, we can strengthen our voice against terror and violence, and for humanity. Today, India is prepared to walk together shoulder to shoulder, to meet the expectations of the world and of humanity, Modi said. One Family, One Earth, One Future has been the theme of Indias G20 presidency. READ | PM Modi discusses West Asia, Israel-Hamas war with Iranian president In his address, Modi also touched upon the implementation of digital public infrastructure (DPI) in the countries of the Global South, the challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI) and the need for its regulation, challenges related to environment and climate crisis, women empowerment, sustainable development goals and Africas inclusion in G20 under the Indian presidency. To implement DPI in the Global South, I propose the creation of a social impact fund. India will make an initial contribution of $25 million to this fund. I hope you all will join this initiative, the PM said. The need to regulate AI was a key message in his address. Its negative application is a cause for concern for the world, Modi said, adding, We need to work together towards AI regulation. Deepfake is dangerous for society and individuals. We want AI to reach the people and it must be safe for society. India will host the Global AI Partnership Summit in December, he said, asking the G20 member-states to support the initiative. There is a major international push towards AI regulation, with the US administration unveiling an ambitious executive order to ensure the responsible use of the new technology, the UK hosting an international summit on AI which saw Indias participation, the US and China agreeing to discuss AI, and G7 drawing up a set of principles on AI in recent months. Modi also said Indias aspirational district programme exemplified progress in sustainable developments goals at the local level. I invite the G20 countries and the Global South to study the programme. You will see how this campaign has helped transform the lives of 25 crore people. The programme seeks to transform 112 underdeveloped districts in the country by tapping into their strengths. The PM also recounted Indias G20 journey. When I was handed over the gavel, I said we will together make G20 inclusive, ambitious, action-oriented and decisive. We made that happen and we have taken G20 to newer heights. In a climate of mistrust and challenges, it is mutual trust that has bound us together. It is a matter of pride that Africa got a voice under Indias presidency. It was a message of inclusivity to the world. The virtual summit was an opportunity to assess what has been done since the in-person summit in September, people tracking Indias G20 presidency said. The joint leaders declaration unveiled at the G20 Summit in September was seen as a key diplomatic achievement for India given the differences over the Ukraine conflict, which previously held up joint statements at all ministerial meetings. The declaration said that, in line with the UN Charter, all countries must refrain from the use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of any state. Without naming Russia, it emphasised the importance of sustaining food and energy security and called for a cessation of military destruction or other attacks on infrastructure. There have been past instances of a country holding the G20 presidency hosting more than one summit. Italy, which held the presidency in 2021, organised an extraordinary leaders summit on Afghanistan some months after the Taliban assumed power in Kabul. Modi also extended his best wishes to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as Brazil takes over the G20 presidency. The PM hoped that G20 would move forward with a human-centric approach. Jammu: Four army men including two officers were killed and two injured in an ongoing encounter with well- entrenched and heavily armed terrorists, believed to be two to three in numbers, in a dense jungle in Kalakote area of Rajouri district on Wednesday morning, said officials. The area where the encounter is ongoing is a dense forest on a treacherous mountain. (PTI) The encounter broke out between terrorists and security forces in Rajouri districts Bajimaal area near Bravi in Kalakote Tehsil on Wednesday morning after Indian Army and Jammu and Kashmir Police acted on an intelligence input and launched a cordon and search operation in the area. The first contact (with terrorists) was established at Solki by the 63 RR troops around 0900 hrs (9am). Immediately, a cordon and search operation was launched, said an army officer, who insisted anonymity. In the ensuing searches, the troops were fired upon by terrorists in which two captains of the 63 RR and 9 Para (Special Forces) respectively besides a Havaldar of 9 Para (SF) were killed. A major of 9 Para (SF), who was grievously hurt in the chest and arm, was evacuated to command hospital in Udhampur. He is stable, said the officer. The officer said the operation was still on till Wednesday evening, a cordon has been put in place and it will resume at the first light tomorrow, he added. Its an old group of terrorists, which is moving around in the area. The security forces had been looking for it (the group) for over a month now. This morning, the troops established contact, he said. The terrorists are heavily armed and they are not freshly infiltrated terrorists because operations for the past over a month were on to neutralise them, said the officer. He, however, said that it was a bad day for the forces. Also Read: 5 LeT terrorists killed in Kulgam encounter An intelligence official said, the commandoes of the 9 Para Special Forces and officers of the 63 RR and 54 RR were leading the charge when they came under fire from the terrorists. Additional reinforcements have been rushed to the area. However, the Army is yet to issue a statement on the operation. Defence spokesperson Lt Col Suneel Bartwal said, Operation is in progress. Information will be shared after termination of operation. Earlier this morning, police in a brief statement stated, Encounter has started between terrorists and joint forces Army & JK Police in Bajimaal area of Dharmsal in Rajouri district. Two terrorists are believed to be trapped. Further details to follow. A police officer from Kalakote said, The area where the encounter is raging, is a dense forest on a treacherous mountain. It is located near Baji Sahab Darbar on Bravi link road in Kalakote. The area is far away from the line of control, around 95 kms, which indicates that the terrorists were guided to this place and are well entrenched now with the logistical support of sympathisers. Treacherous mountains, dense jungles and alpine forests are making things tough for the security forces, he added. Last week, a terrorist was killed in an encounter with security forces in forest area of Budhal in Rajouri district. On September 12 and 13, security forces had gunned two terrorists in the Narla area of the same district. On September 11, Northern Army commander Lt General Dwivedi had informed at the North Tech Symposium that nearly 200 terrorists were waiting to across the LoC in Pakistan. They are waiting to infiltrate but our alert troops are deployed at the borders and we are trying to eliminate them there itself, he had said. Since January this year, two border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, south of the Pir Panjal range, have witnessed a spike in terrorism. The twin border districts witnessed three major terror attacks on January 1 in Dhangri, on April 20 at Tota Gali in Poonch and on May 5 in the Kandi forests of Rajouri. In the three attacks, the terrorists killed 10 soldiers and seven members of the Hindu community. Two Army personnel were killed during an encounter between security forces and terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district on Wednesday, PTI reported, citing officials. One officer was injured and has been shifted to a hospital. (PTI) According to the police, the encounter broke out between the terrorists and joint forces of the Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police in the Bajimaal area of Dharmsal, following a cordon-and-search operation. In the gunbattle, one officer and a soldier lost their lives, officials said. One officer was injured and has been shifted to a hospital, they added, according to PTI. Last week on Friday, security forces killed five Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists in south Kashmirs Kulgam district in one of the fiercest gunbattles this year in the Union Territory. According to officials, several of them were involved in attacks on Pandits and migrant labourers earlier this year. 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. 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. According to police, more than 40 terrorists were so far killed in the Valley this year. Kolkata: The Kolkata police filed a petition before a Calcutta high court division bench on Wednesday challenging a single bench order which permitted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to hold a rally at Esplanade on November 29, government officials said. The Bengal BJP leadership has requested Union home minister Amit Shah to address the rally. (Representative photo) With eyes on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Bengal BJP leadership has requested Union home minister Amit Shah to address the rally for which preparations are on to ferry party supporters from the districts in trains and buses. Shah, however, has not yet confirmed whether he will address the rally, BJP leaders said on Wednesday. Acting on a petition filed by BJP, the single bench of justice Rajasekhar Mantha allowed the rally on Monday and observed that Kolkata police cannot discriminate s while issuing permission for political events. The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) holds a rally on July 21 every year at the same location, the BJP said in its petition. Also Read: Family moves court after man dies in Kolkata police station The BJP moved the single bench after the Kolkata police raised objections saying movement of traffic will be paralysed if Esplanade remains blocked for hours. How can the police allow only TMC to hold rallies at Esplanade and stop BJP, Congress and Left parties? We will fight it out at the division bench. The Kolkata police will suffer another blow in court, Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said. TMC leaders dismissed BJPs criticism, citing the 2021 assembly poll results. It was Shah who announced during (the last election) campaign that BJP would win more than 200 (of 294) seats in Bengal. His party could not even win 80 seats. BJP should stop dreaming about winning elections, TMC Rajya Sabha member Santanu Sen said. The police did not comment on the court case. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan held a meeting with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in Bhopal on Tuesday, ahead of the counting of votes for the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections on December 3. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan(PTI) Chouhan said, "We held discussions with the candidates and also prepared for the counting day." Earlier on Tuesday, re-polling at a polling booth in Kishupura village in Madhya Pradesh's Ater constituency in Bhind district was held following the orders of the Election Commission of India (ECI). The ECI ordered re-polling at booth number three under polling centre number 71 in Kishupura village in the district on Sunday. The re-polling is being done after Madhya Pradesh Cooperative and Public Service Management Minister Arvind Singh Bhadoria filed a complaint and requested a repoll at more than half a dozen polling stations. On the complaint of Minister Bhadoria, the Returning Officer (RO) of Ater Constituency, Parag Jain conducted the investigation and recommended re-polling at a polling booth to District Election Officer Sanjeev Shrivastava. The action was taken against polling agents Satendra Singh Bhadauria, Santosh Singh and their two unknown associates for violating the secrecy of voting, violating the Model Code of Conduct, obstructing government work and influencing the voting work. On the other hand, Presiding Officer Satish Kumar, Polling Officer Yogendra Singh Bansal, Polling Officer Pankaj Jayant posted at the polling booth were suspended. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arvind Singh Bhadoria, who is also the sitting MLA from Ater, is contesting against former MLA Hemant Katare of the Congress party. Voting for the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly took place on November 17 with a 71.16 per cent voter turnout. The second phase of the Chhattisgarh assembly elections took place on the same date. The counting of votes is scheduled for December 3. In line with the Supreme Court's advice, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday suggested the Punjab governmnt to follow measures as adopted by his government in order to manage the longstanding issue of farm fires. He also urged against politicising the issue while disagreeing with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's comments on the issue. Women carrying dry straw walk past the burning paddy stubble in a field at a village near Patiala on Thursday. (ANI Photo) The (Supreme Court) Statement, especially where they said that Punjab Government should learn from Haryana, it is clear that the Government of Punjab has not given much attention to this issue and adopt the measures that they should have... In Haryana, we are providing every kind of help to the farmers so that they don't burn stubble and they have stopped too. I thank the farmers of Haryana that they stopped it... These are not the topics of politics. The CM of Delhi should also understand this. The political statements made by him are not appropriate, Khattar said while calling for a collective approach in dealing with the issue. The Haryana CM's statement came after the Supreme Court lambasted at the Punjab government for failing to manage burning of stubble, one of the factors of air pollution in Delhi-NCR, while observing that farmers are being made a villain as they are not being heard in the court. Why doesnt the Punjab government make the process of crop residue 100% free? To burn it, all the farmer needs to do is light a matchstick. Machine for the management of crop residue to farmers is not everything. Even if the machine is given for free, there is diesel cost, manpower, etcThe state of Punjab should also take a cue from the state of Haryana in the manner in which financial incentives are given, the court said. Responding to Khattar's statement, Punjab minister Harpal Singh Cheema accused Haryana of increased stubble burning, whereas, defending his government for bringing down the cases of farm fires by 70%. Recalling the period of green revolution, Cheema said Punjab provided for the country when there was a scarcity of crop production. And now the ground water level in the state has gone down, giving rise to an imminent problem for the stateWhy is the Centre not helping farmers?, the Punjab minister asked, adding, Haryana CM Khattar should stop doing politics on this and should stand with the farmers. Notably, Punjab reported a total of 513 incidents of farm fires on Tuesday, a sharp jump from year-on-year data on the same day, which was 168 in 2021 and 243 in 2022. This year, the total number of such incidents reached over 35,500 since September 15. Earlier, Haryana AAP vice-president Anurag Dhanda alleged the Khattar-government of managing the number of farm fire incidents instead of actually addressing the issue. The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday lashed out at the Gandhi family and accused it of appropriating the legacy of the Congress party, the freedom struggle and the property of a paper that was associated with it, the National Herald. BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad. (File Photo) A day after the enforcement directorate attached the property associated with the newspaper, former Union minister and senior BJP leader, Ravi Shankar Prasad said allegations that the government was witch-hunting the opposition party are unfounded. The Congress family is commerce through illegal means, he said addressing the media at the party headquarters. The BJP would like to ask a straight question to Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, as to how action against rank dishonesty, loot of public money is a negation of democracy ? Prasad said responding to the Congresss statement that the EDs action is a murder of democracy. Lashing out at the Gandhi family for allegedly misusing the assets of the newspaper, he said the family appropriated the fight for Independence. Then based on that they established a dynastic rule. Referring to the formation of a company, Young India, which was then used to usurp the assets of the paper as a new low in the democracy of India, he went on to add, The family does not only control the legacy of the party and the freedom struggle, but also the moveable and immovable property as well. The BJP leader said the Congress party family must pay for its sins. Even as he dismissed the oppositions charge that the investigation agencies were being misused by the government, he said, When Modi was the CM of Gujarat, he was called to the investigation for three days for many hours, but he went. Did the BJP workers throng the investigation centre ? Nawaz Modi, the estranged wife of Raymond's managing director Gautam Singhania, has accused the billionaire industrialist of assaulting her and one of their daughters in a fit of rage two months ago, reported Economic Times. The alleged incident, which Nawaz claims occurred on September 9, is said to be one of three instances of assault she endured at the hands of Singhania. Singhanias announcement through a post on Instagram came a day after a series of videos posted by Nawaz Modi-Singhania sitting on a dharna outside the gates of JK Gram in Thane gained wide circulation (HT Archives) The allegations come against the backdrop of Singhania's recent announcement of their separation. The ET report suggests that Singhania has indicated plans to seek legal recourse to protect his family's interests in light of these allegations. "In the interest of my two beautiful daughters, I would like to maintain my family's dignity, and I will refrain from offering any comment. Please respect my privacy," the report quoted Singhania as saying. The industrialist, aged 58, and Nawaz Modi, who is the daughter of solicitor Nadar Modi, tied the knot in 1999 after an eight-year courtship. Singhania last week announced separation from Nawaz, saying the two have decided to pursue different paths. "This Diwali is not going to be the same as many in the past," Singhania, chairman and managing director of textiles-to-real estate conglomerate Raymond Ltd, said in social media posts. "It is my belief that Nawaz and I will pursue different paths from here on." An earlier ET report suggested that Nawaz Modi has demanded 75% of Singhania's $1.4 billion net worth for herself and their two daughters in a family settlement following their separation. Nawaz Modi Singhania has reportedly demanded 75% of his $1.4 billion net worth for herself and their two daughters in a family settlement following their separation. While Singhania has tentatively agreed, he has proposed creating a family trust where he would be the sole managing trustee, a term Nawaz finds unacceptable, according to the report. Singhania's net worth is reported to be over 11,000 crore. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday said that it carried out raids at 14 locations in Punjab and Haryana in connection with its probe into the attacks on the Indian Consulate in San Francisco earlier this year, an official spokesperson said. NIA arrests 38-year-old man accused in Sri Lankan human trafficking case. (HT Archive)(File) The spokesperson said that the raids were carried out at locations across the districts of Moga, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, Mohali and Patiala in Punjab and Kurukshetra and Yamunanagar in Haryana. These places located in north India were raided to unravel the complete conspiracy behind the attacks on March 19 and July 2, involving criminal trespass, vandalism, damage to public property and attempts to cause hurt to the consulate officials and set the building on fire through acts of arson, the spokesperson said in a release. The spokesperson added that digital data containing information related to the accused persons, along with other incriminating documents, was seized during the raid. The NIA is probing a case it had registered following an attack on the Indian Consulate in San Francisco during the intervening night of March 18 and 19 when some pro-Khalistani entities allegedly trespassed into the consulate and tried to burn it down. On July 2, a few persons had again attempted to set the Consulate building on fire. The NIA has been probing the case with the aim to identify and prosecute the attackers and the assailants of the attacks and send a strong message to such anti-Indian elements, the spokesperson said. A team of the NIA had visited San Francisco, USA in August to investigate the incidents of attacks on the consulate. As part of its investigation, the NIA has crowd-sourced information to identify and collect information about US-based entities and individuals involved in these violent incidents, the spokesperson said. Akbaruddin Owaisi, the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader and brother of party president Asaduddin Owaisi, on Tuesday openly threatened a police officer after he was asked to follow the model code of conduct, which was put in place in view of the Telangana assembly elections. The police inspector asked Owaisi to stop his speech, which he was exceeding, at a campaign in Hyderabad's Lalitabagh. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Akbaruddin Owaisi.(ANI) "Do you think that after facing knives and bullets, I got weak, still there's lots of courage in me. Five minutes are left and I'll address five minutes, no one can stop me. If I give a signal then you'll have to run, shall we make him run? This is what I'm saying they come like this to weaken us," the AIMIM leader said. Akbaruddin Owaisi is a candidate from the Chandrayangutta constituency, an AIMIM stronghold. The party has been winning from this constituency in the last two assembly elections. Telangana will go to polls in a single phase on November 30. The counting of votes for Telangana, along with those of four other poll-bound states, has been scheduled for December 3. (With agency inputs) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday spoke to Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and enquired about the progress of the Uttarkashi tunnel rescue work which entered the 11th day. The chief minister posted on X, former Twitter, that he informed PM Modi about the progress made in the last 24 hours. As efforts are on to reach the trapped workers, now the agencies are trying to keep them alive by providing solid, hot food. On Tuesday evening, the workers were provided with pulao and matar paneer. In a major breakthrough on Wednesday morning, a location for the vertical drilling was identified. Border Roads Organisation made roads near the tunnel site facilitating the passage of a machine that got stuck yesterday. Rescue operations going on at the Uttarkashi tunnel where 41 workers have been trapped since October 12. (PTI) 11th day of Uttarkashi tunnel rescue work: Here are the latest updates 1. 41 workers have been trapped after the tunnel caved in on October 12. Since then, they have been trapped there as the rescuers have been trying to reach them. 2. Family members have spoken to the trapped workers through radio and pipes. On Tuesday, the trapped workers were fed with hot cooked food. 3. "The location for vertical drilling has been identified. Road work for vertical drilling on the hill above the tunnel is almost complete. More than 350 meters of road construction work is complete. BRO is building a road from both Silkyara and Barkot sides which is almost complete," Director of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation, Anshu Manish Khulko said. 4. On Monday evening, the rescuers laid a 6-inch pipe to provide food to the trapped men. But they were only provided with bananas, oranges and medicines. Mobile chargers were also sent through the pipe. 5. On Tuesday evening, they were given veg pulao, matar-paneer, and chapatis with butter. 6. An endoscopy camera was sent into the tunnel to capture visuals of the trapped workers for the first time since the collapse. 7. The drilling work stopped last Friday evening after the US auger machine developed a snag. On Tuesday night, the drilling resumed. 8. An official said on Tuesday that good news is expected in the next 40 hours as the rescue work which could not make a breakthrough in the last 9 days made some positive developments starting from Monday night. 9. ONGC, SJVNL, RVNL, NHIDCL, and THDCL are overseeing the entire rescue work. 10. 800 mm-diameter pipes were now being pushed in instead of 900 mm through the telescoping method. The Supreme Court on Wednesday was told that the promise of pre-election freebies by political parties is a corrupt practice and bribe under the Representation of the People Act. The Supreme Court.( (HT PHOTO)) A bench headed by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud was also informed that per-election freebies is equivalent to bribe and is a ground for declaring an election to be void. Senior advocate Vijay Hansaria, appearing for the petitioner, said, "Under section 123 of the RP Act, 1951 'bribery' is deemed to be corrupt practice for the purpose of the Act. The expression 'bribery' has been defined to mean any gift, offer or promise by a candidate or his agent or by any other person with the consent of a candidate or his election agent of any gratification with the object of inducing an elector as a reward to his candidature... Thus, the promises made by the political party is nothing but a bribe within the meaning of Section 123 (1)(A) of the RP Act, 1951, which is a corrupt practice, and if other conditions mentioned in the said section are fulfilled, is a ground for declaring the election to be void under Section 100(1)(b) of the Act." Hansaria, arguing for petitioner on pleas including the one filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay opposing promises of such handouts by the parties during polls, told the bench that two-judge bench 2013 verdict of the top court in the matter of S Subramaniam Balaji vs Government of Tamil Nadu and others required reconsideration. ALSO READ| US- Canada border closed after vehicle explosion on bridge, FBI responds The apex court in that judgement had noted that after examining and considering the parameters laid in section 123 of the Representation of People Act(RPA), it arrived at a conclusion that the promises in the election manifesto cannot be read into section 123 for declaring it to be a corrupt practice. The hearing in the matter remained inconclusive and will continue Thursday. The apex court had earlier said that the issue of freebies promised by the political parties during election campaigns requires extensive debate, and referred the case to a three-judges bench. The top court is seized of a batch of pleas against freebies promised by political parties. One of the pleas filed by Upadhyay sought direction to seize election symbols and deregister political parties that promised to distribute irrational freebies from public funds. The plea had claimed that political parties arbitrarily promises or irrational freebies for wrongful gain and to lure voters in their favour is analogous to bribery and undue influences. It claimed that promise or distribution of irrational freebies from public funds before elections could unduly influence the voters, shake the roots of a free and fair election, and disturb the level playing field, besides vitiating the purity of the election process. Karauli/Bharatpur: In Kasauli village in Rajasthans dry district of the same name, the prospect of a poor monsoon scares Sita Meena. Scant rain means we have to leave our village for work, she said. Fortunately, 2023 was better in terms of monsoon rains in eastern Rajasthan and Meenas family did not have to migrate to Gujarat for work. Some others from the village did, though, as growing two farm crops in a year is difficult in the region compared to well-irrigated western Rajasthan. In villages across eastern Rajasthan such as Bharatpurs Sunari , locals complained of the government not taking care of water bodies to improve falling groundwater levels. (Shutterstock) Meena said water for drinking and irrigation is a poll issue and admitted that the level of ground water, extracted through borewells, is getting lower. In villages across eastern Rajasthan such as Bharatpurs Sunari , locals complained of the government not taking care of water bodies to improve falling groundwater levels. One-fourth of the village pond has been encroached by village strongmen. We have complained several times but nothing has happened, said Bekhu Ram Jatav, 74, a Dalit. According to the national ground water board, 90% of the blocks in Karauli district, where Meena lives, were over-exploited in 2022 with average water available at 550 feet below the surface. Of the 270 blocks in Rajasthan, the board declared 70% as over-exploited . In our village, water is available at 600 to 800 feet, Meena said. Except Dholpur, which falls in the catchment area of river Chambal flowing from Madhya Pradesh and has the Ram Sagar Dam, the ground water level in most districts of eastern Rajasthan is low, according to the board. READ | Rajasthan elections: Water crisis and shortage of teachers among key issues in Bhopalgarh The Rajasthan governments data shows that the states total irrigated farm area in 2021-22 was 11.76 million hectares as compared to 10.71 million hectares in 2018-19 with the maximum increase in western parts of the state. For instance, the total irrigated land in Bharatpur division that falls in the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project area and covers six districts, increased from 1.43 lakh hectares to 1.45 lakh hectares during this period. In the same period, irrigated farm land area in Sikar division having five districts increased from 8.8 lakh hectares to 9.8 lakh hectares. At Peepal Ki village in Dausa district, Lekhraj Gujjar said that poor availability of water is the reason for low crop production and backwardness of the region. Western Rajasthan is doing better in agriculture due to irrigation through the Indira Gandhi canal and eastern Rajasthan has suffered as there is no irrigation facility, he said, blaming the Congress government for not working on the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project over the last five years. ERCP POLITICS According to the Rajasthan water resources department,the state, the largest by geographical area in the country, holds only 1.16% of Indias surface water and 1.72% of the ground water with significant regional disparity in water availability. Only the Chambal river basin adjoining northern Madhya Pradesh, has surplus water and the then BJP government in the state headed by Vasundhara Raje announced a plan to use this water through inter-basin transfers to 13 districts of eastern Rajasthan districts to provide irrigation facility to 2.8 lakh hectares of farmland. READ | Rajasthan elections: Drinking water crisis, poor road conditions major issues in Nagar constituency According to the detailed project report, ERCP is to cover 23.67% of Rajasthans area and 41.3% of the states population. In 2018, the Central government gave in-principle approval to the project and then CM Raje demanded the project to be declared as a national project so as to get substantial funding from the Central government. After the BJP lost the 2018 elections, the politics over who would implement the 40,000 crore project that covers 83 assembly seats in the region started. In the 2018 assembly election, the Congress won 48 of these seats, and the BJP, 35 . READ | Rajasthan Congress MLA threatens dharna over drinking water issue in Barmer While the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government has blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government for not declaring ERCP a national project, the BJP has accused the state government of not initiating the project in five-years of their rule. Chief minister Ashok Gehlot claimed that in rallies in 2018, prime minister Narendra Modi promised national project status to ERCP. I want to ask Gajendra Singh ji, why his ministry has not followed up on the promise of the PM, Gehlot said at an election rally in Karauli last week. Union Jal Shakti minister, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat has repeatedly accused the Rajasthan government of failing to submit requisite documents to get the status. In July , the Jal Shakti Ministry informed Parliament that it has received no formal proposal in the prescribed format from the Rajasthan government about the project, which was appraised by the Central Water Commission and approved by the Advisory Committee on Irrigation and Flood Control of the ministry. Rajasthan technical education minister and Congress candidate from Bharatpur, Subhash Garg said the Jal Shakti Minister (Gajendra Singh) doesnt want the project brought by former CM and BJP leader Vasundhara Raje to materialise. The Gehlot government has sanctioned 13,000 crore for the project, whose work orders have been released. Now the people have to decide who is working in their interest, he said. Hitting back at the ruling Congress, Shekhawat accused Gehlot of doing politics over the project. The BJP has always been keen on the project but the Gehlot government kept the project in cold storage for five years and is now doing politics over it. They have not submitted the requisite documents and the CM is doing only politics over the project. The Congress is trying to mislead the people, he said. BJP MLA and spokesperson Ram Lal Sharma said the Congress has always misled the people. The ERCP project was BJPs project and it will come on ground after a few months with the formation of the BJP government in Rajasthan, he said. In the manifesto, the BJP has promised to implement the project with the help of the central government. Political analyst Manish Godha said the ERCP has become the core issue in eastern Rajasthan, especially for the Congress. Water is an emotional issue in Rajasthan in every election. The Congress has been trying to make it a political issue and the BJP is reacting to it. The verdict in these 13 districts will decide which partys version the people believed in, he said. On ground, villagers can be heard blaming the Congress for not initiating any work on the project for five years. When the state government can spend thousands of crore of rupees for freebies to woo voters before elections, why didnt it start work on ERCP, which would have improved lives of lakhs of people here? Meena asked. Allahabad high court's Chief Justice Pritinker Diwaker has made an explosive allegation against the collegium in his retirement speech, saying he was transferred out of the Chhattisgarh high court in 2018 to "harass" him. Allahabad high court's retired chief justice, Pritinker Diwaker. Diwaker retired on Tuesday. In his retirement speech, Diwaker accused the collegium of having "ill intention" while issuing the order of his transfer. Former chief justice of India Dipak Misra was the head of the collegium at that time. In uncharacteristically strong remarks, Diwaker also said Misra "showered on me some extra affection for reasons still not known to me". "On March 31, 2009, I was elevated to the Bench. I discharged my duties as a judge in Chhattisgarh High Court till October 2018 to the satisfaction of one and all, and particularly to the satisfaction of my own inner being. Now, a sudden turn of events descended upon me when then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra showered on me some extra affection for reasons still not known to me which entailed my transfer to Allahabad High Court, where I assumed my office on October 3, 2018," he was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. He said even though the transfer order was issued to harass him, the "bane turned into a boon" as he received support and cooperation from fellow judges in the Allahabad high court. "My transfer order seemed to have been issued with an ill intention to harass me. However, as fortune would have it, the bane turned into a boon for me because I received immeasurable support and cooperation from my fellow judges as well as from the members of the Bar, he added. Earlier this year, Justice Diwaker was recommended for the post of the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court by the collegium, currently led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud. He took oath as Allahabad HC's chief justice on March 26, 2023. I am highly thankful to the present Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, who rectified the injustice done to me," Diwaker said. Justice Diwaker started his legal career as a lawyer in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. He became a senior advocate in 2005 and was elevated as a judge of the Chhattisgarh High Court in 2009. With inputs from PTI The Supreme Court on Tuesday reprimanded yoga instructor Ramdev and his firm Patanjali Ayurved Limited over misleading advertisements making unverified claims to cure all kinds of diseases, and for making disparaging remarks against modern medicine and discrediting proponents of allopathy. In June 2020, Ramdev held a press conference announcing that his company had developed a cure for Covid-19 (HT) A division bench headed by justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah also asked the Union government to come out with a comprehensive mechanism to stop such misleading advertisements. This is blatant infraction of law what you (Patanjali) are doing. We will take it very seriously if you keep doing this and even impose cost to the extent of 1 crore on every product, the bench, also comprising justice PK Mishra, said. The strongly-worded reprimand against the yoga instructor came as the court was dealing with a petition filed by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), seeking an order against all misleading advertisements claiming to have a cure for all ailments and discrediting doctors in the process by doubting the efficacy of allopathic medicines. The petition made Patanjali a respondent, referring to its July 2022 advertisement in leading newspapers claiming that health benefits from allopathy are nowhere to be seen and those dependent on it are suffering from hellish pangs of adverse health effects. Stating that it did not intend to enter into the allopathy vs ayurveda debate, the bench asked the Centre to come out with a comprehensive solution to deal with all kinds of misleading claims. We want to find a real solution to the problem of misleading advertisements making false claims that it can cure a particular disease, the bench said and asked additional solicitor general (ASG) KM Nataraj to deal with the issue in a holistic manner so that citizens are not misled by these false claims. The court posted the matter to February 5 next year. Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya, representing Patanjali, said the petition has tried to suppress many facts and presented selective statements by the company and Ramdev. Poovayya also assured the court that the firm will not publish any misleading statement or make any casual statement to the press on the issue agitated in the petition. The IMA in its petition, filed in August last year, reproduced a series of blatantly false statements made by Ramdev and accused him of running a concerted campaign to malign doctors and create doubts in the minds of people about allopathy. Patanjali claims to have a permanent solution for lifestyle disorders, incurable, chronic and genetic diseases, skin diseases, arthritis, cervical spondylitis, asthma, among others which is an infraction of law, senior advocate PS Patwalia, appearing for IMA along with advocate Prabhas Bajaj, said. The doctors association argued that such unabated misinformation campaign against allopathy is continuing with complete inaction and indifference by the state authorities. Section 3 of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectional Advertisements) Act, 1954, prohibits any advertisement claiming the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of any of the diseases involving lifestyle diseases. Patanjalis claim to eradicate asthma was in direct contravention to the Drugs & Cosmetics Rules, 1945, the petition added. The IMA also submitted in the court that while every commercial entity such as Patanjali has a right to promote its own products, the continuous, systematic and unabated spread of misinformation regarding allopathy should stop. In June 2020, Ramdev held a press conference announcing that his company had developed a cure for Covid-19. Later, the Centre issued a notice to Patanjali, asking it not to make such false claims. At another public event in May 2021, during the peak of the second wave of pandemic, Ramdev called allopathy a stupid and bankrupt science and falsely claimed that over 1,000 doctors have died after taking both doses of the vaccine. The IMA had also registered criminal cases against Ramdev and Patanjali over his false claims in several states. The yoga instructor had approached the Supreme Court in a separate proceeding seeking consolidation of all criminal cases at a single place. A defamation suit filed by the IMA against Ramdev is pending before the Delhi high court. In January this year, Ramdev filed an affidavit before the top court pointing out that in June 2021, he had hailed practitioners of modern medicine as Gods envoys and appealed people to get vaccinated. Senior BJP leader B S Yediyurappa on Wednesday accused the Congress of deceiving the people of Karnataka by not implementing its five pre-poll guarantees after coming to power. The former Karnataka CM also urged the people of Telangana not to fall for the Congress party's "lies and empty promises". BS Yediyurappa (ANI)(HT_PRINT) Addressing reporters here, he said the ' Karnataka model' is Congress' election model in other states. The Congress had promised five guarantees to voters in Karnataka and won the elections in May this year. It is selling the"Karnataka model" in Telangana and other poll-bound states, he said. "The party has, in fact, hoodwinked the people in Karnataka after winning the elections as its government has failed to implement the guarantee schemes," he added. "The Congress manifesto includes six guarantee schemes only to cheat the voters of the state. I appeal, request the people of Telangana not to get cheated by Congress party's lies and empty promises," he said. Dehradun: The state government on Wednesday told the Uttarakhand High Court that all 41 trapped labourers in Uttarkashi tunnel were safe and healthy and that they will likely be rescued within 30 hours given the progress in the horizontal drilling through the auger drilling machine. A rescuer brings food items for the workers trapped inside the under-construction tunnel between Silkyara and Dandalgaon. (PTI) Prabha Nathani, counsel of the petitioner said that the state government informed the court about the efforts being made to rescue the workers at multiple levels. State government informed the court that all workers are safe and healthy and given the progress in horizontal drilling, it is likely that workers will be rescued within 30 hours or so. The government also informed the court that food and medicines are also being provided to workers through a pipe. The hearing happened around 12.30 pm. The court has now fixed the next hearing in the case on November 24, she said The division bench of Acting Chief Justice Manoj Kumari Tiwari and Justice Pankaj Purohit was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a Dehradun-based NGO Samadhan through its president Renu Sarkar. On Monday, HC issued notices to Centre, the state government and other relevant authorities to file their responses on the efforts being made to rescue 41 workers trapped inside a collapsed tunnel in Uttarkashi by November 22. Also Read: Light at end of tunnel: Workers safe amid op The PIL alleged that the November 12 Silkyara tunnel collapse incident on Char Dham All Weather Road Project on Yamunotri National Highway is not just an accident or disaster, but a gross criminal negligence by State government, which has failed to ensure safety measures at the tunnel site. The PIL alleged that there was a total absence of appropriate rescue equipment, necessary tools, accessories, rescue pipes that could have been kept there at the tunnel site before starting the project. The PIL alleged that There is a total failure of State (government )in timely emergency/ crisis response and preparedness to assure the safety of workers at hazard prone tunnel construction project site at Silkyara Uttarkashi The petition pointed out that the state government has also failed to learn safety lessons from many similar accidents at tunnel sites located in higher Himalayan regions in the past. The PIL has demanded the constitution of a special investigation team (SIT) comprising capable, committed and responsible young professionals to monitor the total compliance of SOPs and directives of the HC Court followed by regular on-site inspections to ensure the complete effective functionality of safety measures followed by timely field reports to HC. . Chennai Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin on Tuesday praised the late AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa for deciding that the states CM should be the chancellor of the state-run music and fine arts university. Addressing the convocation of the Tamil Nadu Dr J Jayalalithaa Music and Fine Arts University here, MK Stalin said that only if chief ministers are chancellors, universities can grow. (PTI) Addressing the convocation of the Tamil Nadu Dr J Jayalalithaa Music and Fine Arts University here, Stalin said, Only if chief ministers are chancellors, universities can grow and they will grow. His statement hinted at his opposition to the governors position as chancellor of universities. The statement comes a day after the Supreme Court questioned Governor R N Ravi for sitting on 12 bills based on Tamil Nadus petition. The bills includes a legislation to curtail the governors powers as chancellor and give that power to the chief minister of the state. The Governor on November 13 returned 10 bills to the state, and in a special assembly session on November 18 the Stalin-led government readopted them. As chancellor, the governor also appoints vice-chancellors to state universities. This is the contention of a second petition by the Tamil Nadu government in the Supreme Court challenging the notification of the governor who added a UGC nominee in the search committee for three universities in Tamil Nadu. The Tamil Nadu Music and Fine Arts University was established by Jayalalithaa in 2013 when she was chief minister. Following her death in office, her successor Edappadi Palaniswami renamed it in 2019 as The Tamil Nadu Dr J Jayalalithaa Music and Fine Arts University. That if its in the hands of others, it may fall apart. That is why back in 2013 Jayalalithaa decided that the chief minister should be the chancellor of this university. We have to appreciate her for this, said Stalin. I appreciate her with all my heart while thinking of todays situation. Stalin also announced that the government grant for the university would be increased to 3 crore from 1 crore from the next financial year to the Dr J Jayalalithaa Tamil Nadu Music and Fine Arts University. The United States is treating a reported plot to kill a Sikh separatist on American soil with utmost seriousness and has raised the issue with the Indian government "at the senior-most levels," the White House said on Wednesday. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the chief of banned outfit Sikhs for Justice (SFJ). The Financial Times reported, citing unnamed sources, that US authorities thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States and issued a warning to India over concerns the government in New Delhi was involved. The paper identified Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who says he is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, as the target of the foiled plot. The report comes two months after Canada said there were "credible" allegations linking Indian agents to the June murder of a Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a Vancouver suburb, something India has rejected. India's anti-terror agency filed a case against Pannun on Monday stating that he warned flag carrier Air India passengers in video messages shared on social media this month that their lives were in danger. Asked about the FT report, White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Indian counterparts had "expressed surprise and concern" and "stated that activity of this nature was not their policy." "We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable," she said. The issue is a highly delicate one for the Biden administration, which has been working to develop close relations with India given shared concerns about China's rising power. India's foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said when asked about the FT report that Washington had shared "some inputs" that were being "examined by "relevant departments." Bagchi said the inputs pertained to the "nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others." "India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well," he said. The Financial Times said its sources did not say if the U.S. protest to India resulted in the plot being abandoned, or if it was foiled by the FBI. It said the protest was registered after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was welcomed on a state visit by President Joe Biden in June. Apart from the diplomatic warning to India, U.S. federal prosecutors have also filed a sealed indictment against at least one suspect in a New York district court, the FT said. The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment. Pannun, like Nijjar, is a proponent of a decades-long but now fringe demand to carve out an independent Sikh homeland from India called Khalistan, a plan New Delhi sees as a security threat due to a violent insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s. India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) registered a case against Pannun under charges related to terrorism and conspiracy, among others. It stated he threatened in video messages to not let Air India operate anywhere in the world. The case comes against the historical backdrop of a bombing in 1985 of an Air India aircraft flying from Canada to India that killed 329, and for which Sikh militants were blamed. Pannun told Reuters on Tuesday that his message was to "boycott Air India not bomb." He told Reuters on Wednesday he would let the U.S. government respond "to the issue of threats to my life at the American soil from the Indian operatives." "Just like Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar's assassination by the Indian agents on Canadian soil was a challenge to Canada's sovereignty, the threat to (an) American citizen on American soil is a Challenge to America's sovereign(ty)," he said. Pannun is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, which India labelled an "unlawful association" in 2019, citing its involvement in extremist activities. Pannun was listed as an "individual terrorist" by India in 2020. The police on Tuesday booked four men, all brothers, for hacking to death a 19-year-old rape victim near her residence in Kaushambi district of Uttar Pradesh, officers familiar with the matter said. The four accused, including the man accused of raping the victim in 2022, have been absconding and a search operation has been launched to nab them, the officer added. Prime accused Ashok Nishad, who allegedly assaulted the victim with an axe, was also granted bail six months ago in a murder case, said police (Getty Images) Police said the woman had accused Pawan Nishad (22) of raping her three years ago, when she was a minor, on the pretext of marriage. According to the complaint lodged by the victims family, Pawan and his three brothers Ashok Nishad, Prabhu Nishad and Lokchand Nishad have been harassing the woman since then to withdraw the case. The victims sister-in-law, who witnessed the crime, said the incident took place around 5 pm on Monday when they were returning home after lodging a harassment complaint against the accused. Ashok and Pawan Nishad, along with two of their brothers, surrounded us outside our house. They again pressured my sister-in-law to withdraw the rape case. When she refused, they started abusing us and Ashok attacked her with an axe, she said in the police complaint. An eyewitness, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: No one dared to rescue the victim out of fear of the accused. People locked themselves in their homes as the accused issued threats while brandishing the axe used in the crime. Mahewaghat station house officer Rajnikant Rajput said, based on the complaint, they have booked all four accused, who have been absconding since, under Sections 302 (murder) and 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace) of the Indian Penal Code. Three police teams, including a Special Operation Group, have been set up to nab the accused and we are conducting in Kaushambi and areas bordering Prayagraj, Fatehpur and Chitrakoot, superintendent of police (Kaushambi), Brajesh Kumar Srivastava, said. An officer familiar with the case said one of the accused, Pawan Nishad, was arrested in May 2022 after the victim accused him of raping her on pretext of marriage. He, however, was recently granted bail and returned to the village around 15 days back. Prime accused Ashok Nishad, who allegedly assaulted the victim with an axe, was also granted bail six months ago in a murder case, the officer added. A probe is also underway into allegations of police negligence, the officer said. Rescuers involved in the operation to evacuate 41 workers, who have been trapped inside an under-construction tunnel in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand for past 10 days, on Tuesday started welding work on steel pipes in order to restart the horizontal drilling through debris using the US-made auger machine, people familiar with the matter said. Rescue personnel work with a driller during the operation to extricate trapped labourers, in Uttarkashi (AFP) Officials maintained that digging horizontally through the debris of the collapsed section of the Silkyara tunnel remains the focus of the rescue mission, involving various central and state agencies. They added that work on other rescue options, such as drilling vertically from above to reach the trapped workers, was also underway. Fabrication of a protective canopy for the drilling machine is underway, with modifications to the augur diameter and welding of the pipeline in progress, the Union ministry of road transport and highways said in a release. READ | Uttarakhand tunnel collapse: What are the 5 plans to evacuate trapped workers? The horizontal drilling work was halted since Friday as the bearings of the US-made auger machine got damaged after drilling 22 metres through the debris. The heavy-duty machine also encountered a hard boulder, forcing officials to think of other options amid deaf of more boulders falling. To fit the 900-mm [diameter] pipes with 800-mm pipes and push them through the rubble to create passage for the trapped workers using the auger machine, the welding work is underway, Uttarkashi district disaster management officer (DDMO) Devendra Patwal said. For the safety of the workers and machines involved in the rescue operation, we have taken several measures. A portion of the 4.5-km-long tunnel being built between Silkyara and Dandalgaon on the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri National Highway part of the Char Dham all-weather road project caved in around 9.30 am on November 12 following a landslide, trapping 41 workers inside. The collapsed section is 270 metres from the mouth of the tunnel from the Silkyara side. READ | Rescuers release video of workers trapped in Uttarakhand tunnel via endoscopic camera On Tuesday, a video clip captured by an endoscopic camera sent in through a new six-inch wide pipeline brought much-needed hope to relatives of the trapped workers. The horizontal drilling option involves inserting 800mm- and 900-mm diameter steel pipes as the machine drills through. The workers can then crawl out of the pipeline. A technician from Trenchless Engineering Services Private Limited (TESPL), the firm that provided the auger machine, said they have begun the welding process for the drilling process. Four pipes, each measuring 6 metres in length, are already inside. The welding process for the fifth pipe is underway, he said, requesting anonymity. Officials familiar with the matter said that a new set of bearings of the auger machine has been brought from Mumbai to set the machine in action. The SJVNL [public sector undertaking] has also provided two fast welding machines to increase the pace of the overall drilling process, one of the officials said, also declining to be named. READ | Uttarakhand tunnel collapse: Trapped 41 workers suggested to walk, do yoga, and talk to each other Meanwhile, SJVNLs machine for vertical rescue tunnel construction arrived at the site on Tuesday and its installation was underway. The second-best rescue option involves drilling more than 80 metres vertically from above the tunnel to reach the two-kilometre built-up stretch where the workers are now confined. Drilling from the tunnels Balkot end is another alternative on which the rescue agencies are working, officials said. Drilling parallel tunnels is also being considered. Explaining the options, Bhupendra Singh, RVNL (Rail Vikas Nigam Limited) official who is involved in rescue operation, said: The SJVNL will vertically drill 1.2 metre to the depth of 85-90 metres to rescue the trapped men at 320 metres of the tunnel. Approach road for this has been made. Work on this will begin tomorrow (Wednesday). We (RVNL) will horizontally drill 1.2 metres to the depth of 168-170 from side using micro tunneling method. It will meet the tunnel at 280-300 metres of the tunnel. It will act as live-saving tunnel and emergency escape in the future. He added: The Tehri Hydroelectric Development Corporation (THDC) will construct a small-diameter rescue tunnel from Barkot end using the conventional method (drill and blast method). ONGC will do a vertical hole at the end portion of the 2-km stretch where workers are trapped. The NHIDCL will try to drill through the debris using the auger machine from the Silkyara side. They have already penetrated through 22 metres of debris. In a recent development to the long-standing probe into the affairs of the Congress-run National Herald newspaper, the Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday attached assets worth 751 crore linked with its publisher Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and its holding company Young Indian Limited (YIL). The National Herald's office in Delhi's ITO(Sanchit Khanna/HT File Photo) The National Herald's office in Delhi's ITO, the Nehru Bhawan in Lucknow's Kaiserbagh and the Herald House in Mumbai are the immovable assets attached by the probe agency. Associated Journals Ltd. (AJL) is in possession of proceeds of crime in the form of immovable properties spread across many cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow to the tune of 661.69 crore...and Young Indian (YI) is in possession of proceeds of crime to the tune of 90.21 crore in the form of investment in equity shares of the AJL," the ED said in a statement. What is the National Herald case? The National Herald was established and edited by Jawaharlal Nehru before he became India's first Prime Minister. The paper suspended its operations in 2008 after it incurred a debt of over 90 crore, which was allegedly not repaid. In 2012, senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy filed a complaint against Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi accusing them of criminal misappropriation of funds and setting up of YIL in 2010 to buy the AJL's debt using the party's funds. In his complaint, Swami alleged that the Young Indin firm only paid 50 lakh to appropriate the 90.25 crore the AJL owed to the Congress. Under the Income Tax Act, no political organisation can have financial transactions with a third party. Swamy also alleged that the Gandhi family committed fraud by running a passport office on land given by the government to AJL only for publishing newspapers, and earning rental income worth millions of rupees. Apart from Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, late Congress leaders Motilal Vohra and Oscar Fernandes, entrepreneur Sam Pitroda and journalist Suman Dubey are also named in the case. ED's probe since 2016 The financial probe agency took cognisance of a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case, the ED started its investigation into the AJL and the role of various Congress leaders. The agency alleges the accused - which includes ex-Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Motilal Vora - 'used proceeds of crime', in the form of land illegally allotted to AJL in Haryana's Panchkula - and pledged it to get a loan from a Syndicate Bank branch in Delhi to construct a building in Mumbais Bandra area. Congress accuses BJP of political vendetta The Congress has maintained the YIL was formed 'with the aim of charity' and not for profit. It has also accused the BJP of political vendetta describing the matter as a strange case of alleged money laundering without any money. Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday of October in Canada while it is marked as a national holiday on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and this year, Americans are all set to give thanks and celebrate Thanksgiving holiday with their families on Thursday, November 23, 2023. Thanksgiving is deeply rooted in the history of America and its religion and cultural traditions where Americans believe that their Thanksgiving is modelled after the 1621 harvest feast shared by the English colonists of Plymouth, Massachusetts, later known as the Pilgrims and the Native American Wampanoag people. Why did the Pilgrims celebrate the first Thanksgiving? Know the complete story (Photo by Twitter/mike_dahlen) The festival was observed in the manner of a feast that brought together the two peoples to express gratitude for the assistance provided by the Wampanoag Native Americans and in celebration of the Pilgrims having survived a harsh winter and struggle with disease and lack of food when they arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Mayflower in 1620. The history from the perspective of Native Americans predates this feast and is overshadowed by colonisation, disease, violence and land theft while marking a moment of interaction between settlers and indigenous people. European settlers, carrying diseases that devastated indigenous populations, made it easier for colonisers to seize lands while instances of warfare, massacres and forced displacement further tainted the relations between settlers and Native Americans. Hence, the Thanksgiving feast, although a diplomatic interaction, is still controversial as some do not consider it as a tradition of warmth and harmony but rather an alliance prompted by mutual defense concerns while the holiday remains contentious due to its historical inaccuracies, cultural appropriation and painful associations for indigenous communities. The conventional story of Thanksgiving, often taught in schools, has it that the Wampanoag, particularly Squanto who had learned English after being captured and taken to Europe, played a crucial role in helping the Pilgrims adapt to their new environment by returning to his homeland and serving as an interpreter and guide for the settlers. He taught the Pilgrims essential skills, such as planting corn, using fish as fertiliser and hunting leading to a successful harvest for the Pilgrims in the fall of 1621. To celebrate their newfound prosperity and express gratitude for the help received from the Wampanoag, Pilgrims organised a three-day feast and this event is now commonly referred to as the first Thanksgiving where the celebration included feasting on deer, fowl and fish, as well as native fruits and vegetables since it was a communal event that brought together the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, fostering goodwill and cooperation between the two groups. The first Thanksgiving is often seen as a symbol of the spirit of gratitude and cooperation between different cultural groups but while it wasn't an annual tradition at that time, the idea of Thanksgiving as a time to give thanks for a good harvest and the blessings of the past year eventually evolved into the American Thanksgiving holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. It wasnt until 1863, during the American civil war, that President Abraham Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving Day that was to be held each November and the holiday was annually proclaimed by every President thereafter. However, after a joint resolution of Congress in 1941, President Franklin D Roosevelt issued a proclamation in 1942, designating the fourth Thursday in November (which is not always the last Thursday) as Thanksgiving Day. Today, Thanksgiving is celebrated to say thanks and recognise the sacrifices and blessings of the past year as with more urbanisation, Thanksgiving became a day for people to get together with their friends and family to celebrate the day with a scrumptious feast. The holiday moved away from its cultural roots to allow immigrants of every background to participate in a common tradition. Endometriosis is a health condition characterised by the growth of tissue resembling the uterine lining outside the uterus, resulting in intense pelvic pain and fertility problems hence, the one with endometriosis should stick to the foolproof measures given by the expert. Endometriosis wreaks havoc on ones overall well-being, affecting not only your body but also your emotions and mental state. 5 tips to follow to manage endometriosis (Shutterstock) In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Dr Madhulika Singh, Consultant Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Ankura Hospital in Pune, shared, Each day presents a fresh set of obstacles, from agonising pelvic pain to unwelcome weight gain, the irregular menstrual cycle and troublesome bowel issues. The symptoms of this condition are such as excessive menstrual cramps, abnormal or heavy menstrual flow and pain during intercourse, painful bowel movements and/or urination, chronic pelvic pain, abdominal bloating, nausea, fatigue, and infertility. It is crucial to consult with your doctor before attempting any home remedies for endometriosis. If you or someone you know is grappling with this condition and searching for effective strategies to alleviate its symptoms then follow these tips suggested by Dr Madhulika Singh to manage endometriosis: Eat fruits and vegetables to maintain overall well-being. They contain higher levels of essential nutrients and fiber that promote feelings of fullness for longer periods compared to refined carbohydrates and fatty foods. Also, have omega-3 fatty acids which not only reduce the risk of endometriosis but also improve brain function and emotional well-being. Maintaining adequate water intake is a crucial practice with numerous advantages for your health. By staying properly hydrated, you can lower the likelihood of experiencing bloating, a frequent consequence of endometriosis. Additionally, sufficient hydration can alleviate cramps and enhance your overall well-being. So, drink enough water every day. Stick to a regular exercise routine to reduce pain and improve overall health. Weight management is another crucial aspect of exercise as obesity can negatively impact hormonal health. Losing weight can alleviate pain and symptoms for many women. Furthermore, exercise directly impacts hormone production by reducing estrogen levels and stimulating the release of endorphins. Since estrogen contributes to the development of endometriosis, engaging in regular exercise may potentially slow down or halt the progression of this condition. Make getting a good night's sleep your top priority. Many women with endometriosis struggle to achieve a peaceful night's rest. Lack of sleep among women with endometriosis resulted in heightened levels of depression, bladder pain, and an overall decline in their quality of life. Get a minimum of 8 hours of sleep per day. The pain extends beyond the physical realm, taking an emotional toll as well. To alleviate this burden, calm the mind through practices such as meditation and deep breathing. Meditation can effectively alleviate symptoms of chronic pain and depression in women with endometriosis. Dr Madhulika Singh concluded, Living with endometriosis can be a constant battle, both physically and emotionally. It often feels like a secret struggle, with the pain and symptoms hidden behind closed doors. Endometriosis not only affects physical health but also disrupts relationships, careers, and personal goals. Recognizing these emotional impacts is essential in supporting those affected by endometriosis holistically. Mental health support should accompany medical treatments. Understanding that living with endometriosis goes beyond just physical pain, it is necessary to create a supportive environment for those impacted by this condition. If you or your loved one is having endometriosis then it is essential to adhere to a well-balanced lifestyle to control symptoms of endometriosis. The recent crisis at OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, appears to be reaching resolution in a full circle. The co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, faced termination from the board, leading to two interim CEOs within a week before Altmans reinstatement. Sam Altman, left, appears onstage with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at OpenAI's first developer conference, on Nov. 6, 2023, in San Francisco.(AP) Microsoft, OpenAIs major investor holding a 49% stake, expressed dissatisfaction with Altmans ouster. With the backing of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Altman received an offer to join Microsoft. Now that Altman is back at OpenAI, questions arise about the shifting power dynamics and the impact on Microsofts AI goals. Analysts and investors weigh in on the situation: Microsoft misses chance to strengthen its own AI unit? Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor: "While he'll (Microsoft CEO Nadella) no doubt be pleased about the fact that order has been restored at OpenAI, in which Microsoft is a major investor, there might be an element of disappointment that he hasn't snapped up the Silicon Valley superstar Altman after all. Also read: Satya Nadella's reaction as Sam Altman returns to OpenAI Future of OpenAI and Microsoft partnership? Kelvin Wong, an analyst at OANDA: "This latest boardroom tussle has shown that Altman has the full backing of Microsoft as a person and as long as he remains in charge of OpenAI, and there should not be any negative spillover effects between the partnership of OpenAI and Microsoft. Altman and Brockman are also more suited to collaborate in start-up culture given the infancy of AI at this juncture without any red-tape hindrances from an MNC such as Microsoft. Ipek Ozkardeksaya, an analyst at Swissquote Bank: "His ousting upset to a point that company's existence was put to question. Now, the outcome could be frustrating for Microsoft. Even though Microsoft benefits generously from ChatGPT's uprise, OpenAI remains a satellite unit, and integrating Altman in an internal MSFT team would've made sense. Will Microsoft consider for a board seat in OpenAI? Mak Yuen Teen, director of Center for Investor Protection at National University of Singapore Business School: "There may be good reasons why Microsoft does not have a board seat. It may even be to protect Microsoft from anti-trust actions or conflicts as Microsoft itself has its own AI unit. "It (Altman's return) may put an end to the turmoil on the surface for now but there may continue to be deep governance issues that remain. "Sam Altman seems awfully powerful and it is unclear that any board would be able to oversee him. The danger is the board becomes a rubber stamp. Altman and (Microsoft CEO) Nadella may have pushed to allow Altman a much freer hand." Daniela Hathorn, an analyst at Capital.com: Microsoft... had openly supported Altman's return over the weekend. Still, the tech giant now wants a seat on the new board that will need to be formed over the coming months, as it wants to avoid any further surprises. (Inputs from Reuters) When Timothy Manuelides went scuba diving North of Port Hardy in Canada, he came across something unexpected- two baby mola fish swimming together off the coast of British Columbia in Canada. Manuelides shared the incredible footage of the Mola with the Marine Education & Research Society, which posted it on Facebook. Two mola fish swimming. (Facebook/@Marine Education & Research Society) Marianne Nyegaard, a marine biologist specializing in ocean sunfishes and a research associate at the Auckland Museum in New Zealand, said, "They look to me like very young Mola mola the belly curve still has that angular look to them, which is the last remnant of the babyness," in a Facebook post. Marine Education & Research Society, in the caption of the post, informed, "You may note that the Mola on the right has an injury on their tail. These juveniles were about 60 cm (1.9 ft) across. The video also gives you a sense of how fast Mola are. They are often erroneously thought to be slow because, when at the surface, they are sunning to warm up from being in colder, deeper water. They can also be fairly stationary at the surface to present themselves for parasite removal by birds like albatross. The other fish species in this video are Widow Rockfish and Yellowtail Rockfish." Take a look at the video of the Mola here: This post was shared on October 23. Since being posted, it has garnered close to 7,000 views. The share also has several likes and comments. Check out what people are saying about this post here: An individual wrote, "Super cool. At first, I thought they were swimming towards the camera." A second shared, "How exciting! Love the video. Such unique looking fish- I saw a huge one in the Mediterranean." "Amazing!" said a third. A fourth asked, "Approximately what size were these ones?" Taiwan again reported Chinese military activity around the island on Wednesday, with 11 aircraft crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait as the island's election campaign kicked into high gear. Representational picture(AFP) Democratically-governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained for the past four years of regular Chinese military patrols and drills near the island, as Beijing seeks to pressure Taipei over its sovereignty claims. Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary polls on Jan. 13 and candidates have to register with the election commission this week in order to take part. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which Beijing views as separatists, registered its presidential ticket on Tuesday, though the opposition is mired in disagreement about a potential joint bid. Taiwan's defence ministry said that starting early Wednesday afternoon it had detected J-10 and J-16 fighters as well as H-6 bombers and early warning aircraft carrying out overseas missions. Eleven of those aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait's median line flying in airspace to the centre and southwest of the island, working with Chinese warships to carry out "joint combat readiness patrols", the ministry added. ALSO READ| Pope Francis says Israel-Hamas war has become terrorism The strait's median line had previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides and which Chinese planes now regularly fly over. Taiwan sent its own forces to monitor, the ministry said. China's defence ministry did not answer calls seeking comment. China says its activities near Taiwan are aimed at preventing "collusion" between Taiwan separatists and the United States and to protect China's territorial integrity. Taiwan's government, which has repeatedly offered talks with China, rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future. Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang, traditionally supports close ties with Beijing, and has pledged to re-open dialogue with China should it win the election. Arab foreign ministers welcomed an agreement for a temporary truce between Israel and Gaza militant group Hamas on Wednesday but said it should be extended and become a first step toward a full cessation of hostilities. Workers unload humanitarian aid at Egypt's al-Arish Airport on November 22.(AFP) The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan told a media briefing in London that the agreement, which includes hostage releases and stepped-up aid into the devastated Gaza Strip, should also ultimately lead to a resumption of talks for a two-state solution to the wider Israel-Palestinian conflict. Under Wednesday's temporary ceasefire deal, Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said the humanitarian aid should be sustained and expanded, and it should not become contingent on further hostage releases. READ | 'Israel doing 'dirty work' for Arab countries that might govern Gaza': Israeli envoy "Whatever humanitarian access now increases as a result of this hostage deal must remain in place and must be built upon," he said. "There must at no point be a reduction in this access based on progress for further release of hostages ... Punishing the civilian population of Gaza for the holding of those hostages is absolutely not acceptable." The conflict began on Oct. 7 when Hamas gunmen and other militants burst across the border into Israel, killing 1,200 civilians and Israeli soldiers, and taking about 240 hostages. Israel responded with a heavy bombardment and then invasion of the Gaza Strip, killing more than 13,000 Palestinians, including at least 5,600 children, according to Gaza's Hamas-run government. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from northern Gaza to the south. The Arab foreign ministers are leading a so-called contact group of mostly Muslim countries which are lobbying Israel's major allies and the U.N. Security Council to bring about an end to the Gaza war and move towards a permanent solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. 'CHOICE' After trips to China and Russia, they visited Britain and France on Wednesday where they met the British and French foreign ministers and French President Emmanuel Macron as they seek to push for a U.N. Security Council resolution on humanitarian relief for Gaza. READ | EU faces growing Muslim animosity over Gaza war stance: Foreign policy chief "We intend to put the Security Council in front of a choice: are they going to be complicit in the starvation and deprivation of the people of Gaza or are they willing to enforce the basic principle that civilians must not be affected by military conflict," Prince Faisal said in his strongest comments on the war to date. "I must believe that our partners in the West and in the East will take our opinions into consideration. If they don't, that will certainly be an important signal to us as well." Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the contact group was pushing to ease a vetting process demanded by Israel that has restricted the amount of aid entering Gaza through the Rafah crossing. Egypt has said deliveries of relief to Egypt must be scaled up inside Gaza, lobbying hard along with other Arab states against any mass displacement of Palestinians fleeing Israel's offensive. "Current conditions are dismal. First of all the displacement of those in the north to the south, the volume of people, the lack of shelter, the lack of sanitation, the potential risks of disease spreading," Shoukry said. "All of this ... cannot be a manner to incite further displacement out of Gaza." The contact group ruled out any Arab security force in Gaza after the war, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said. "We're not going to clean Israel's mess," he said, adding that any talk about the "day after" in Gaza had to be linked to a broader plan that incorporates the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he said the possibility of an explosion of conflict was "getting higher every day". "That has to be a plan with an endgame, with timelines, with a mechanism for implementation, with guarantees, and the whole world has to be behind it and the U.S. will have to play a leading role," Safadi said. At least four people were killed in an Israeli strike on the village of Beit Yahoun in south Lebanon on Wednesday evening, three sources told Reuters. A soldier gestures as an Israeli artillery unit in Upper Galilee in northern Israel fires toward southern Lebanon on November 22, 2023.(AFP) Violence along the border broke out after militant group Hamas's Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel. Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah - a Hamas ally - have exchanged rocket fire in fighting that has steadily escalated. READ | Two journalists killed in south Lebanon; Lebanese PM blames Israel In a statement, the Israeli military said its fighter jets struck Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon, and that its troops and aircraft hit two cells that fired at Israeli troops or attempted to launch rockets into Israel The Israeli military did not immediately provide comment on reports that four people had been killed. The Brics grouping on Tuesday called for an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas while expressing its deep concern over the dire humanitarian crisis triggered by the raging conflict between the two sides. President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, President of China Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pose for a BRICS family photo.(via REUTERS) We reiterated our strong support for regional and international efforts aimed at achieving an immediate cessation of hostilities, ensuring the protection of civilians and the provision of humanitarian aid, the Brics (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) grouping said in a Chairs Summary issued after an extraordinary meeting on the situation in the Middle East with particular reference to Gaza. India said the Israel-Hamas conflict, triggered by the October 7 terrorist attack, was causing immense human suffering in Gaza while welcoming the efforts of the international community towards de-escalation and drawing attention to the urgent need to ensure that humanitarian aid and relief reached the Palestinian city. It is also imperative that all (Israeli) hostages are released, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said. We believe that there is a universal obligation to observe international humanitarian law. We are all aware that the immediate crisis was triggered by the terrorist attack of October 7. Where terrorism itself is concerned, none of us should and can compromise with it. The minister was virtually addressing the extraordinary joint meeting. He was representing Prime Minister Narendra Modi who could not attend the meeting due to other commitments. The Brics grouping emphasised the importance of preventing further destabilisation and escalation of violence, including the spillover of the conflict in the region and called upon all parties to exercise maximum restraint. Along with the need for restraint and immediate humanitarian support, India also emphasises the peaceful resolution of conflicts through dialogue and diplomacy, Jaishankar said in his address. India has adopted a nuanced approach towards the developments in the Middle East. Other Brics members have taken a hard line on the raging war. The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his opening remarks. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide. The atrocities that we have witnessed are the latest chapter in a painful history of suffering, oppression, occupation and conflict going back more than 75 years, he added. An AFP report from Johannesburg quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping as saying that there can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine. Jaishankar said India believed that the concerns of the Palestinian people must be addressed in a serious and sustainable manner. This can only happen with a two-state solution that is based on peaceful co-existence. We have been consistently supportive of international efforts towards this end. Earlier in Delhi, India and Australia backed the two-state solution to resolve the decades-old conflict and bring lasting peace to the troubled region. Over the years, India has supported the socio-economic welfare of the Palestinian people and strengthening of their national institutions. Our developmental partnership is geared towards these objectives. We continue to provide assistance both bilaterally and through the UN, Jaishankar said at the Brics summit. The international community is facing a complex situation with many dimensions, he said. We have to address them all and yet have to prioritise. Our endeavour should be to both make a difference on the ground immediately while also creating conditions for lasting solutions, Jaishankar added. The special meeting was convened by South Africa and included countries that will soon be a part of the grouping: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Toronto: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he re-emphasised how important it is to abide by the rule of law and to engage constructively with each other when we have issues of concern while participating at the virtual G20 summit hosted by his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on Wednesday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes part in a photo opportunity during the Fall Economic Statement on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada on Tuesday. (AP) Trudeaus comments came in Ottawa and in the context of continuing friction between India and Canada over the killing of Khalistani figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia on June 18. Trudeau told media that Ottawa had been working closely with our allies, including the Americans, since the middle of this summer on the Nijjar matter. Obviously, we continue to engage with India in, hopefully, constructive ways. We hope India will continue to take these real concerns seriously, he added. Trudeau also welcomed the ceasefire in Gaza announced by the Israeli Government and said that issue was also discussed at the summit. The reality is this humanitarian pause is what Canada and others have been calling for for weeks now, he said. Trudeaus participation was also confirmed by the Canadian prime ministers office (PMO) as it features on his itinerary for November 22. A senior Indian official also confirmed that Trudeau will be part of the event which is being hosted and chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This will be the first time in over two months that any Canadian Cabinet minister, let alone the PM, will take part in an Indian or India-led event. The virtual event follows the in-person leaders summit in New Delhi on September 9 and 10. It is expected to deliberate on the Delhi Declaration that was adopted at the summit and will be the final meeting under Indias presidency of the G20 which is till the end of this month. Problems between Canada and India became apparent at the bilateral meeting between Modi and Trudeau in New Delhi, which was far from amicable. Trudeau, at the time, raised the importance of respecting the rule of law, democratic principles, and national sovereignty, according to a readout from the Canadian PMO. That was a precursor to Trudeaus statement in the House of Commons on September 18 that there were credible allegations of a potential link between Indian agents and the killing of Khalistani figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18. Those accusations cratered relations between the two countries as each expelled a diplomat each in the immediate aftermath. India also indefinitely suspended issuing visas to Canadian nationals, though issuance in four categories was resumed in October. India also sought parity in diplomatic presence leading to 41 Canadian diplomats leaving the country, in what Canada described as a mass expulsion. Meanwhile, an Early Progress Trade Agreement (EPTA) between India and Canada appears to be in limbo as Canada has said Ottawas focus in the relationship was on securing New Delhis cooperation in the investigation into Nijjars killing. A messy dispute broke out on Wednesday over whether Pope Francis used the word "genocide" to describe events in Gaza, with Palestinians who met with him insisting that he did and the Vatican saying he did not. Pope Francis looks on, on the day of the weekly general audience in Saint Peter's Square at the Vatican, November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane(REUTERS) The opposing versions emerged at an afternoon press conference with 10 Palestinians who met the pope on Wednesday morning at his Vatican residence. That meeting followed a separate one with Israeli relatives of hostages in Gaza. "When we shared the stories of the families that have been killed (in Gaza) he mentioned 'I see the genocide'," said Shireen Awwad Hilal, who teaches at the Bethlehem Bible College. "It was very clear, the word genocide did not come from us. It came from His Holiness, Pope Francis," she said. But a statement sent by Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, in response to question texted by a reporter, said the opposite. "I am not aware that he (the pope) used such a word. He used terms that he expressed during the general audience and words that in any case represent the terrible situation that is being lived out in Gaza," Bruni's statement said. Other participants at the Palestinian news conference concurred that they had heard the pope use the word genocide. "We were all there. We heard it and no one has a hearing problem," Hilal said when pressed by reporters. The participants said the pope was very informed about the situation in Gaza and the lack of water, medicine and basic necessities. 'TERROR SHOULD NOT JUSTIFY TERROR' Israel has placed Gaza under siege and relentless bombardment since Hamas militants attacked southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 14,000 Gazans have been killed, about 40% of them children, according to medical officials in the Hamas-ruled territory, figures deemed reliable by the United Nations. A photo made available by the Vatican Media shows Pope Francis speaking with a family member of Palestinians who are currently living through the war in Gaza at the Vatican on November 22.(AFP) The Palestinians at their news conference said the pope condemned Hamas' action as terror, with more than one quoting the pope during the meeting as saying "terror should not justify terror". Earlier on Wednesday, in unscripted words at his general audience, Francis said the conflict had gone beyond war. "This is what wars do. But here we have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism," he said. He asked for prayers so that both sides would "not go ahead with passions, which, in the end, kill everyone". Israel's Ambassador to the Vatican Raphael Schutz said he did not want to refer directly to what the pope had said but added: "There is a simple distinction, one side is murdering, raping, and does not care about those on their own side. The other side is engaged in a war of self-defence." Schutz was speaking at a news conference with Israeli families who had met the pope. Most said they were not aware of the pope's comments because they happened after the meeting. During the general audience, a group of Palestinians in the crowd held up pictures of bodies wrapped in white cloth and a placard saying "the Nakba continues". Nakba is the Arab word for catastrophe and refers to the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in the 1948 war that surrounded Israel's founding. The meetings and the pope's comments came hours after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days to allow in aid and release at least 50 hostages captured by militants in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. Elon Musk's social media firm X Corp will donate all revenue from advertising and subscriptions associated with the ongoing war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and in the Hamas-controlled region, the tech billionaire announced on Tuesday. Tesla CEO and X Corp owner Elon Musk.(Reuters) X Corp will be donating all revenue from advertising & subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza, Musk said in a social media post. When a user raised concerns about the possibility of donated amount ending up in the hands of Hamas militants, Musk, while calling for better ideas to help victims, said the company would track how the funds are spent. We will track how funds are spent and go through Red Cross/Crescent. Better ideas are welcome, he said. We should care about the innocent regardless of race, creed, religion or anything else. Another social media user posted a purported video of a Hamas militant claiming that the group uses the Palestinian Red Crescent building as an area to operate. here is a Gaza Ministry of Health employee admitting that the Red Crescent is used by Hamas for their terrorist activities, the user claimed. To this, Musk said, Ok, what is a better way to help kids in Gaza? Maybe just direct purchase of pediatric medical supplies? The announcement came hours before Israels Cabinet approved a temporary ceasefire with the Hamas militant group in a truce deal that includes freeing dozens of hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip. The deal calls for a four-day cease-fire, during which Israel will halt its military offensive in Gaza while Hamas frees at least 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it and other militants are holding, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office said. The first hostages to be released are women and children. The government of Israel is committed to bringing all of the hostages home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, the office said in a statement. Finland's prime minister said Wednesday that the country will close all but its northernmost border crossing with Russia, following a surge in migrants which Helsinki claims Russia is intentionally pushing. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (AFP) Since the beginning of August, around 700 asylum seekers have entered Finland without a visa over its 1,300-kilometre (800-mile) border with Russia. "The government has today decided to close more border posts. Only Raja-Jooseppi station will remain open," Prime Minister Petteri Orpo told a press conference. After seeing a surge in migrants seeking asylum on its eastern border in November, Finland last week shut half of its eight crossings to Russia. "Unfortunately, these measures have not been able to stop this phenomenon," Orpo said. The government said that "it is clear that foreign authorities and other actors have played a role in facilitating the entry of persons crossing the border into Finland." "The situation also involves international crime," the government said in a statement. ALSO READ| Car explosion at US-Canada border was an attempted terror attack: Report In October, the Finnish border guard sounded the alarm about a change in Russia's policy, as it began allowing migrants without proper documentation to cross the border. "This is a systematic and organised action by the Russian authorities," Orpo said on Monday. Border crossings will be closed starting Friday and will initially remain closed until December 23. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has rejected allegations that Russia is deliberately pushing migrants to the Finnish border. "Finnish authorities are beginning to make clumsy excuses, warming up Russophobic sentiments," she said in a statement. - 'Hybrid attack' - Orpo called the "instrumentalisation of migration" an attempt to "influence the internal situation and border security in Finland and the EU." Finland's interior ministry said Wednesday that the influx of migrants from Russia "poses a serious threat to national security and public order." "We do not accept this kind of action," Orpo said. Orpo stated that the current legislation also permits the complete closure of the entire border, but as of now, the necessary conditions have not been met. Polish President Andrzej Duda on Monday labelled Russia's actions as a "hybrid attack" and likened it to the situation at Poland's eastern border with Belarus. The EU has claimed Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko pushed tens of thousands of migrants across its border to Poland in retaliation for sanctions in 2021. "Finland can absolutely count on Polish political support on the one hand, but also on sharing our experiences," Duda said. - Border fence - Finland's relationship with its eastern neighbour soured following Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- prompting Finland to accede to the US-led NATO alliance in April. Moscow warned the Nordic country of "countermeasures" after the move. Anticipating that Moscow could use migrants as a means of political pressure, Finland modified its laws in July 2022 to streamline the construction of a robust barrier along its eastern border. In February, Finland started the construction of a planned 200-kilometre fence. The barrier will be three metres (10 feet) tall with barbed wire at the top, with particularly sensitive areas equipped with night vision cameras, lights and loudspeakers. However, only three kilometres have been completed so far and most of the border remains as uninhabited wilderness secured by only light wooden fences. The Finnish defence forces have been called in to aid in the construction of temporary barriers around some of the border crossing points. France wants the European Union to impose sanctions against top Hamas leaders following the Palestinian group's October 7 attacks on Israel, a senior French official said Wednesday. France's flag(AFP) France "is pushing for sanctions at the European level against senior Hamas figures, individually, because for the moment ... the European Union only condemns the organisation as a whole," Laurence Boone, secretary of state for European affairs, told AFP on the sidelines of an international meeting in Madrid. The idea would be to "specifically target certain individuals" with "mainly financial" sanctions such as an asset freeze, she added without specifying who should be targeted. READ | US issues second round of sanctions on Hamas, members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard France also wants EU sanctions slapped on people linked to Hamas and its ally, Lebanon's pro-Iran Hezbollah, like the sanctions the bloc has imposed on some Iranians over their role in the war in Ukraine. The EU in February imposed sanctions on seven Iranian firms which make drones used by Russia to strike targets in Ukraine. France's proposal could be adopted by EU foreign ministers in December, Boone said. It has the backing of Germany and Italy, according to her entourage. The United States in October imposed sanctions against 10 "key" members of Hamas based in Gaza, Sudan, Turkey, Algeria and Qatar who are involved in financing the group's activities. Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip following the October 7 attack by Hamas that Israel says killed 1,200 people. The group took 239 hostages. Gaza's Hamas-run government says more than 14,100 people have been killed in Israel's aerial and ground offensive since -- two thirds of them women and children. Turkey on Wednesday said it hoped a deal between Israel and Hamas to free hostages and pause the fighting and bombardment in Gaza can help bring a full end to the war. Israeli soldiers work on armored military vehicles along Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel.(AP) Turkey has been an increasingly vocal critic of the soaring civilian death toll of Israel's military response to the militants' October 7 attacks, the deadliest in Israel's history. In the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the bloodiest ever Gaza war, Palestinian militants are set to release 50 women and children kidnapped in southern Israel. The Turkish foreign ministry said the deal, brokered with Qatar and Egypt's help, was "a positive development in terms of easing the bloodshed to some extent". ALSO READ| There is a situation at the border with Finland, Russia says. Then, explains "We hope that this humanitarian pause will help to completely end the conflict as soon as possible and initiate a process towards a just and lasting peace on the basis of a two-state solution," the ministry said. It urged "full compliance with the agreement", adding that it should lead to an "increase in the amount of humanitarian aid allowed to enter Gaza". Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the attacks, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw 240 hostages taken to Gaza. Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which, according to the Hamas government in the territory, has killed 14,100 people, mainly civilians that included thousands of children. India has restored e-visas for Canadian citizens across all categories starting from Wednesday. HT Image A release issued by Indias High Commission in Ottawa on Wednesday morning stated that All e-visa services have been restored with effect from November 22 and will be applicable for Canadian citizens holding regular/ordinary Canadian passports. Holder of any other category of Canadian passport will need to apply for regular paper visa, the release added. The opening of e-visas, which can be applied for online, is the latest relaxation in visa issuance for Canadian citizens after they were temporarily suspended on September 21, in the aftermath of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus statement in the House of Commons that there were credible allegations of a potential link between Indian agents and the killing of Khalistani figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia on June 18. While e-visas remained available for 165 countries, Canada was not on the list. Issuance of e-visas had only been resumed for Canadians in December last year after being suspended when the COVID-19 pandemic started in the spring of 2020. On October 26, India had resumed visa services in four categories: entry, business, medical and conference visas. In a release prior to that relaxation, the High Commission of India had said it, along with the Consulates General in Toronto and Vancouver were constrained to suspend visa services temporarily because of safety and security considerations. The turmoil in bilateral ties that followed Trudeaus statement led to both countries expelling a diplomat each since. In October, 41 Canadian diplomats were pulled from India after New Delhi said they would lost diplomatic immunity if they remained in station. Canada described that act as mass expulsion of its diplomats, while India has argued it wanted parity in the numbers of diplomats. Nijjar, the secessionist group Sikhs for Justice or SFJs principal operative in British Columbia, was gunned down in the parking lot of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara that he headed in the town of Surrey in the province of British Columbia. While India accused Nijjar of being a terrorist, the accusations against him were never tested in a Canadian court. Canada is yet to provide any evidence of New Delhis involvement in the killing. Iraq on Wednesday condemned a flurry of US air strikes on its soil targeting Iran-backed groups Washington holds responsible for attacks on its troops as a violation of its sovereignty. Image for representation.(AFP) Government spokesman Bassem al-Awadi said the pre-dawn strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday were carried out "without the knowledge of Iraqi government agencies" and constituted an "unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty". But he also criticised the Iran-backed groups that the Pentagon says have carried out at least 32 separate attacks on US targets in Iraq since October 17. "Any armed action or activity outside the military institution is deemed condemnable and an unlawful endeavour that jeopardises the national interest," he said in a statement. Officials and experts around the world are seeking to independently verify North Korea's claim this week that it successfully launched its first spy satellite, an effort that South Korea asserts likely included Russian aid. A rocket carrying a spy satellite Malligyong-1 is launched, as North Korean government claims, in a location given as North Gyeongsang Province, North Korea in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on November 21, 2023. (via REUTERS) With the late-night launch on Tuesday, North Korea appears to have overcome the technical problems that sent two previous attempts with its new Chollima-1 rocket plunging into the sea. WHAT ARE THE CAPABILITIES OF NORTH KOREA'S ON-ORBIT SPY SATELLITE? What remains unconfirmed, however, is whether its payload, the reconnaissance satellite Malligyong-1, is operating in orbit, and whether the North received any outside help. It may take some time to determine whether the satellite is in operational orbit, is sending signals, and what its capabilities are, analysts said. "To assess the success of this launch, it is crucial not only to determine whether the projectile entered orbit but also to secure the ability to adjust and conduct reconnaissance from that orbit," said Hong Min, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification. "This includes verifying the capability to take pictures with optical cameras and transmitting them appropriately to the satellite centre." ALSO READ| Turkey's Erdogan on Hamas war: Force Israel to comply with international law HOW COULD THE SPY SATELLITE BE USED? North Korea has not shown imagery of the satellite, but photos released by state media from a visit leader Kim Jong Un made this year to a production facility showed small, solar-powered satellites that are most likely similar to the one launched on Tuesday, said Vann Van Diepen, a former U.S. government weapons expert who works with the Stimson Center in Washington. "It's likely that this is a relatively small, optical satellite that is going to have relatively low resolution," he told Reuters. "But even a relatively low-resolution satellite is better than not having a satellite, which is their current situation." Such a satellite is unlikely to provide the North with detailed intelligence on specific weapons systems in South Korea, for example, but it would still be useful for identifying things such as large troop movements, Van Diepen added. To launch a more-capable satellite, North Korea will most likely need to develop a larger rocket, which it appears to be doing, he said. After the first failed test, South Korea recovered some of the Chollima-1 wreckage - including, for the first time, parts of a satellite, which it said had little military value. IS RUSSIA HELPING? South Korea's spy agency has said North Korea may have overcome technical hurdles with the help of Russia, which in September publicly pledged to help Pyongyang build satellites. Many experts expressed doubts, however, that Moscow could have provided game-changing assistance in the roughly two months since then. "It's much too early for the North Koreans to have integrated any assistance Russia may have agreed to supply," Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said in a post on the social media platform X. "Maybe the Russians gave them some advice, but it's normal for countries to launch and learn." Chang Young-keun, a professor at Korea Aerospace University, said it would have been impossible for the North to rebuild a satellite with Russian technology or hardware assistance within that time. "But Russia could have offered some analysis on previous failures and telemetry data," he said. Replacing parts, improving software, system integration, and test runs can't typically be done quickly, but Russian support could still be valuable in key areas such as improving the satellite's capabilities or resolving the combustion instability that plagued an earlier launch, said Lee Choon-geun, a rocket expert at South Korea's Science and Technology Policy Institute. DO NORTH KOREA'S LATEST SATELLITE TESTS HAVE TIES TO MISSILE PROGRAMS? The United States and its allies called North Korea's latest satellite tests clear violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions, which prohibit development of technology applicable to North Korea's ballistic missile programs. U.N. resolutions - passed with Russia's support - also ban any scientific and technical cooperation with North Korea in nuclear science and technology, aerospace and aeronautical engineering and technology, or advanced manufacturing production techniques and methods. The Chollima-1 seems to be a new design and most likely uses the dual-nozzle liquid-fuelled engines developed for Pyongyangs Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which has roots in Soviet designs, analysts said. However, although the space launch vehicle (SLV) probably uses the same RD250-like engines as North Korea's ICBMs, there are design differences between the two, Lewis said. "North Korea is no longer shy about testing ICBMs, so no - this really is an SLV," he said. In the first truce between Israel and Hamas amid the war going on for over six weeks, the Israeli government on Wednesday approved a deal of ceasefire in which 50 women and children would be freed by Hamas. This, however, is not the end of the war, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before his war cabinet voted on the deal. The war will go on until Hamas is eliminated and all hostages are freed, Netanyahu said. "We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel," Netanyahu said before the meeting. Israel will stop its bombardment in Gaza for four days in exchange for 50 hostages held captive by Hamas.(AP) Officials from Qatar mediated the deal between Israel and Hamas. Netanyahu said US President Joe Biden had helped to reach the agreement so that it included more hostages and fewer concessions. Israel-Hamas ceasefire: What we know 1. This will be the first pause in the ongoing bombardment. Humanitarian aid will also get access into Gaza owing to this halt. 2. In the four-day halt, 50 women and children would be freed by the Hamas. 3. Though it was not clear when the truce would go into effect, the hostages could be freed starting on Thursday. 4. The Israeli government said it would extend the lull by an additional day for every 10 hostages released. 5. In the statement released by Hamas in which it welcomed the humanitarian truce, it said 150 Palestinians would be released from Israeli jails as part of the deal. Both sides confirmed the agreement following an all-night meeting. Netanyahu said it was a difficult decision but the right one. Netanyahu faced resistance from his war cabinet as some believed that the agreement would give "too much" to Hamas. Who are the hostages? About 240 people were taken hostage by the Hamas after they attacked Israel on October 7. The hostages were mainly people who attended the music festival that Hamas targetted. In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the U.S., Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, Israel's government has said. Hamas so far released four captives: US citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on October 20, citing "humanitarian reasons," and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on October 23. Israeli forces freed one hostage, Ori Megidish, a soldier on October 30 during their ground invasion. The Israeli military said earlier this month that it recovered the bodies of two hostages in Gaza City, including 19-year-old soldier Noa Marciano. (With agency inputs) Hours after reaching an agreement to observe a humanitarian truce after a six-week-long conflict, Israel released a list of Palestinian prisoners and detainees slated for release in exchange for the release of 50 hostages held captive by Hamas. The list has names of 300 Palestinian detainees, 150 females and minors that Israel has agreed to free during the initial four-day pause. Israel soldiers transfer detained Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip(AFP/Representative Image) A total of 287 out of 300 detainees are males aged under 18 and under, most of them held for rioting and rock-throwing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the Times of Israel. 13 of them are adult women largely held for attempting to terror stabbing. Meanwhile, Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed his support for the hostage agreement acknowledging the understandable, painful and difficult misgivings. Earlier after a six-hour meeting, Israel's war Cabinet approved the deal brokered with the international efforts by Qatar, Egypt and the US. According to the White House, the hostage release will begin roughly 24 hours after the deal is approved by all parties. The Israeli government statement said that the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue fighting against Hamas after the truce is over, a longer-term lull could lead to pressure, both international and domestic, for Israel to end its war without achieving its goal of destroying Hamas' military capabilities. Israel-Hamas war: According to a report by AFP, the hostage release deal and truce between Israel and Hamas became possible due to the efforts put up by the US Central Intelligence Agency, Israel's overseas spy agency Mossad, Egyptian intelligence, and leaders in Doha, Cairo, Washington, Gaza and Israel. Egypts state-run Qahera TV has claimed that Israel-Hamas truce will take effect at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) Thursday, according to a report by AP.(AFP) Here are the key points of the hostage release deal. Four-day truce after weeks of war between Israel and Hamas 50 hostages held by Hamas, to be released Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli jails. Egypts state-run Qahera TV has claimed that Israel-Hamas truce will take effect at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) Thursday. Some of the hostages being held by Hamas, are citizens of the U.S., Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal. According to a report by Reuters, up to 40 hostages being held are children, including a 10-month-old baby and preschoolers. Turkey's president Tayyip Erdogan said that he may travel to Egypt soon and discuss how to speed up the evacuation of patients from Gaza, broadcaster Haberturk and other Turkish media reported as per news agency Reuters. Speaking to reporters on his plane returning from a trip to Algeria, Tayyip Erdogan said that the Islamic world must act in a spirit of unity and solidarity on Gaza. Israel-Hamas War: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gestures as he attends a press conference.(Reuters) "I may arrange a trip to Egypt as soon as possible," he said. We will talk about what steps we can take and how can we pave the way for the evacuation of patients, he added. Many of the sick have already been brought from Gaza via Egypt to Turkey, AFP reported. Tayyip Erdogan said the Islamic world must act in a spirit of unity and solidarity and be a "single fist" on Gaza. When that fist hits the table with all its force, it will not be possible for Israel to continue its occupation or oppression, asserting that efforts must be made to ensure a ceasefire, deliver sufficient aid to Gaza and rebuild the city, using economic, political and diplomatic means. "We must force Israel to comply with international law and be held accountable for its actions," he added. The head of the United Nations children's agency on Wednesday called the besieged Gaza Strip "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child," and said that the hard-won truce deal between Israel and Hamas was not enough to save their lives. Israel-Hamas War: Palestinian children look outside a window in the aftermath of an Israeli raid in Tulkarm, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.(Reuters) UNICEF's executive director Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council that over 5,300 children have reportedly been killed in Gaza since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, accounting for 40 percent of the deaths. "This is unprecedented," said Russell, who had just returned from a trip to southern Gaza. "I am haunted by what I saw and heard." Russell welcomed a deal reached Wednesday by Israel and Hamas to free hostages and pause ferocious fighting and bombardment in Gaza. Some 240 people -- ranging from infants to the elderly -- were taken captive during the October 7 attack by Hamas militants that killed about 1,200 in Israel, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities. But Russell said that a pause is not enough and called for "an urgent humanitarian ceasefire to immediately put a stop to this carnage." "For children to survive..., for humanitarian workers to stay and effectively deliver..., humanitarian pauses are simply not enough," she said. Russell said that an additional 1,200 children are believed to remain under the rubble of bombed-out buildings or are otherwise unaccounted for. "In addition to bombs, rockets, and gunfire, Gaza's children are at extreme risk from catastrophic living conditions," Russell added. "One million children -- or all children inside the territory -- are now food insecure, facing what could soon become a catastrophic nutrition crisis." UNICEF estimates that acute malnutrition in children could increase by nearly 30 per cent in Gaza over the next months. Also addressing the Security Council, the head of the United Nations Population Fund, Natalia Kanem, drew attention to the plight of Gaza's pregnant women, with some 5,500 expected to deliver babies under appalling conditions in the coming month. "At a moment when new life is beginning, what should be a moment of joy is overshadowed by death and destruction, horror and fear," said Kanem. The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad has announced that a 76-year-old Israeli, Hanna Katzir from Nir Oz, has died. Katzir and her adult son, Elad, were captured during the October 7 Hamas attack. The terror group had previously said they did everything to care for her and her fellow hostages. The announcement comes shortly after Hamas and Israel reached a tentative deal to free some hostages from Gaza. The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad has announced that a 76-year-old Israeli, Hanna Katzir from Nir Oz, has died (Facebook) We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death, Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel. In light of this announcement, we renew our affirmation of renouncing our responsibility towards our enemy prisoners in light of the barbaric and frenzied bombing of every inch of the Gaza Strip, the spokesman added, according to The Messenger. Earlier this month, videos of Katzir circulated by Islamic Jihad were accompanied by a message saying the group would release her, as well as another 12-year-old boy, on humanitarian and medical grounds While it has been reported that as per a tentative deal Hamas will release some of the hostages, when the truce will begin is unclear. "Details on when the pause starts are still unclear," a source told CNN. Some Americans, too, are expected to be among those who will likely be released. The Americans include a three-year-old girl named Abigail, and two other women. The terms of the deal say that Israel must agree to a five-day pause in its offensive to have the hostages released. Hamas said they would release 50 hostages, including babies, toddlers [and] mothers." "The Israelis rightly insisted that Hamas must ensure, and as did we, the release of all women and children," a senior administration official said, according to New York Post. "US and Israel "believe[s] that the number of hostages in this category being held by Hamas are higher than 50, and the deal has also been structured to incentivize releases beyond the 50, even in this initial phase, the official added. The temporary ceasefire could reportedly be extended if Hamas releases more than 50 hostages. Exhausted by weeks of worry and vigils, Gilad Korngold drew just a measure of comfort from the foreign-mediated deal between Israel and Hamas to return some hostages held in the Gaza Strip. A soldier walks in front of of images of Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the October 7 attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel, during a protest to ask for their release in Tel Aviv on November 22, 2023. (AFP) He still awaits word that any of his seven relatives, including his three-year-old granddaughter, who were seized by Palestinian gunmen during an Oct 7 killing spree in south Israel, are named on the list of 50 women and children slated to go free, possibly as soon as Thursday. Korngold's son, Tal, would presumably not qualify. His daughter-in-law Adi and grandchildren Nave and Yahel presumably would, as would Adi's mother Shoshan, her aunt Sharon and her niece Noam. But there is no guarantee of their inclusion. Nor is their health condition or location clear. Hamas has said that dozens of the around 240 hostages have been killed during Israel's Gaza counter-offensive. Some of the hostages are held by Palestinian groups other than Hamas, though it governs Gaza. "We need to know they are alive, if they're okay. It's the minimum," 63-year-old Korngold said in the temporary home to which he moved after his nearby village was ravaged by Hamas. "I want everybody back. But I think - and it's a very tough decision - but I think the children and women must be (first). they're most fragile. You know, they need to get out." Such sentiments have been echoed by family members of some of the other Israelis likely to be left out of the current deal, under which the Gaza war will be suspended for four days, and 150 Palestinian security prisoners freed. The 50 recovered hostages would represent around half of women and children held. Israel has offered to extend the pause in fighting further - a day for every additional 10 hostages handed over. But, for now, not even the first release roster has been made public. ALSO READ| Kim Jong Un saw US military bases from new spy satellite? North Korea says Korngold, another three of whose relatives were killed outright by the Hamas marauders, has been campaigning daily to promote the hostage issue in Israel and abroad. The stress means he struggles to rest. "I need to take sleeping pills. Strong ones, so (I get) at least four or five hours of sleep. If not, I cant handle it," he said. "Nobody can imagine how we feel. Imagine that your kid instead of sleeping in the bed with a blanket ... is underground, deep, in deep tunnels. She's three years old, my girl, my granddaughter." So far just five hostages have been recovered alive. One of them said Hamas had held her, and two-dozen others, in a buried warren of tunnels. Those secret passages, which serve as subterranean Hamas citadels, are a focus of Israel's heavy military strikes. As part of the hostage deal, Israel agreed to allow more humanitarian aid, and some fuel, into the besieged Gaza Strip. Korngold chafed at that idea as long as the most vulnerable of hostages remained in captivity. "We ask: Release the children and the women at once. It's impossible to bargain with children," he said. "No food, no gasoline, no diesel, nothing. Children and women must be released immediately." Prince William and Kate Middleton attended a state banquet at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, November 21. The event was held in honour of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is currently on a 3-day trip to the UK along with First Lady Kim Keon Hee. The Prince and Princess of Wales were joined by King Charles, Queen Camilla, Prince William, and other members of the royal family. Almost 170 guests were also present at the royal banquet. Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales and Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, attend the State Banquet during the state visit of the President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife Kim Keon Hee, at Buckingham Palace in London, Britain November 21, 2023. Yui Mok/Pool via REUTERS(via REUTERS) Kate looked as elegant as ever, wearing a dazzling white gown with gold embellishments by one of her favourite designers, Jenny Packham. However, the most striking element of her ensemble was the rare 100-year-old tiara Strathmore Rose Tiara. It once belonged to the Queen Mother. Although the late Queen Elizabeth II inherited it, she never once wore it publically throughout her lifetime. It was long speculated to adorn the head of a royal bride but it never reappeared until Kate decided to wear it last night. ALSO READ: King Charles recalls Prince William's proposal to beloved daughter-in-law Kate Middleton during Kenya visit The floral, diamond-encrusted diadem's worth is estimated to be about half a million pounds, according to Express. Kate's ensemble also included a pair of white opera gloves and diamond drop earrings, which belonged to Queen Elizabeth, and her honours- the Royal Family Order and her Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order sash and star. According to People, Kate and Prince William greeted the president and the first lady at their hotel on behalf of King Charles on Tuesday morning before travelling to Horse Guards Parade for a ceremonial welcome. During the state banquet, the K-pop girl group BLACKPINK were invited as special guests. King Charles praised them saying, It is especially inspiring to see Koreas younger generation embrace the cause. I applaud Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rose, better known collectively as BLACKPINK, for their role in bringing the message of environmental sustainability to a global audience as Ambassadors for the U.K.s Presidency of COP 26, and later as advocates for the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. The Swiss government will draft a law to ban Hamas, designating it as a terrorist organization, according to a statement. Palestinian group Hamas' top leader, Ismail Haniyeh.(Reuters / File) Once approved by parliament, the law will bring Switzerland in line with the US and the European Union. Being classified as a terrorist organization would shut out Hamas out of the Swiss financial system and potentially deal a blow to its funding. ALSO READ| Wadi Al-Salam cemetery is the world's largest graveyard. What we know On Wednesday, Switzerland also ended its cooperation with three Palestinian non-governmental organizations, without naming them, saying there were breaches of conduct and anti-discrimination policies. The investigation, ordered after Hamass deadly attack against Israel on Oct. 7, found no instances of suspect financing though. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un viewed photos of US military facilities in Guam from a new spy satellite which was launched into orbit, the states official media claimed as per news agency Bloomberg. Kim Jong Un saw aerospace photos of Anderson Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other major military bases of the US forces taken in the sky above Guam in the Pacific, the Korean Central News Agency reported after North Korea fired a rocket into space which was closely watched by the US, Japan and South Korea. North Korea leader Kim Jong Un is seen. (AP) The countries have not confirmed if any satellite was deployed or operational as officials and experts around the world are seeking to independently verify North Korea's claim. This comes after North Korea two previous attempts which were unsuccessful. Pyongyang had then quickly admitted failure saying that the satellites had experienced engine problems shortly after takeoff and fell into the sea. But this time, North Korea heralded what it said was a successful launch of its new Malligyong-1 satellite which would formally start its reconnaissance mission from Dec. 1 after some fine tuning, it said. Kim Jong Un said an array of spy satellites is needed to closely monitor military maneuvers of the US imperialists and their vassal armies, which are endangering the regional situation, KCNA reported. While Seoul believed that the spy satellite would not be of expert nature but it could help North Korea in understanding targets as it has designed missiles deliver nuclear strikes in South Korea and Japan. Earlier this month, North Korea tested new engines for intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Hong Min, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said, "To assess the success of this launch, it is crucial not only to determine whether the projectile entered orbit but also to secure the ability to adjust and conduct reconnaissance from that orbit. This includes verifying the capability to take pictures with optical cameras and transmitting them appropriately to the satellite centre." Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday expressed confidence that G20 will continue to move forward with a "human-centric approach" under Brazil's G20 Presidency and that members of the grouping will give priority to food security, health security and sustainable development. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the G20 virtual summit in New Delhi, India, on Wednesday, November 22, 2023. (HT Photo)(Hindustan Times) In his closing remarks at the virtual G20 summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also expressed confidence that G20 will continue to work for the expectations of the Global South. He extended his good wishes to Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for G20 Presidency and said he is confident that "G20 will continue to move forward with a human-centric approach". The Prime Minister said India will extend its full support for the success of Brazil's G20 Presidency. He also said that G20 members will come together in the spirit of 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam' to pave the way forward for global peace and stability. "We will continue to work for the expectations of Global South. We will give priority to food security, health security and sustainable development. Along with climate action, we will work towards just, easy and affordable climate finance," the Prime Minister said. The virtual G20 Summit was held under the chairmanship of PM Modi. ALSO READ| Wadi Al-Salam cemetery is the world's largest graveyard. What we know The 18th G20 Leaders' Summit was held in New Delhi on September 9 and 10. It saw the unanimous adoption of the G20 New Delhi Leaders' Declaration which demonstrated the commitment of the G20 leaders to address global challenges in an inclusive, decisive and action-oriented manner. At the closing session of the Leaders' Summit, PM Modi had suggested to the G20 leaders to reconvene virtually towards the end of India's G20 presidency period to take forward the guidance provided by the participating leaders in their interventions. India assumed G20 Presidency on December 1, 2022, and it will continue till November 30. Pope Francis on Wednesday met separately with Israeli relatives of Hamas hostages and Palestinians with family in Gaza, while warning the ongoing conflict could result in "a mountain of dead". Pope Francis meets with Palestinians whose relatives are stranded in Gaza, amid conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at the Vatican (via REUTERS) At the end of his weekly audience at the Vatican, the 86-year-old pontiff called for prayers for peace, saying of both groups: "They suffer so much and I heard how they both suffer." "Wars do this, but here we have gone beyond wars. This is not war, this is terrorism," he added, without specifying whether he was referring to the October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas or Israel's military operation in Gaza launched in response, or both. The Vatican said last week the pope hoped to show his "spiritual closeness" during the private meetings, which it said would be "exclusively humanitarian in nature". Each delegation told press conferences in Rome following the meetings that they believed Francis could use his moral influence to help them. Hamas gunmen carried out on October 7 a cross-border attack, the worst in Israel's history, that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government. Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups also took an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage, among them elderly people and young children. In retaliation, Israel launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which the Hamas government said has killed 14,100 people, mostly civilians and thousands of them children. "Let us pray that the difficulties resolve themselves in dialogue and negotiation and not with a mountain of dead on each side," Francis said in a video message released Wednesday. ALSO READ| Vladimir Putin's olive branch? Russian leader says this on Ukraine tragedy' Rachel Goldberg, whose 23-year-old son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped by Hamas, told journalists the pope "has a lot of influence". "He's very respected in the Muslim world, in the Jewish world, really irrespective of religious background. So I think that when he speaks the world really listens." Palestinian Yousef Lalkhoury said the pope was capable of asking for a "just peace" for his people. "We have urged him to visit Gaza because we believe he can stop the war," Lalkhoury said. Short of freeing all the hostages, the Israeli delegation said it hoped Francis could push for the Red Cross to be allowed access to them. - 'Broken heart' - Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war. "I'm not counting hostages being freed in this deal until I see them walk over the border and see them embraced safely," said Goldberg, who was among 12 families of hostages represented in the meeting with the pope. Muhamed Halalo, an IT manager from Gaza who lives in Belgium, was one of 10 Muslim and Christian Palestinians who met with Francis. "I have a broken heart, my eyes full of tears," he said as he described how his entire extended family had been wiped out in a strike that killed 30 people. Israeli Adav Kipnis said his parents were murdered during the October 7 attack and seven of his family members were kidnapped. "We don't know if those captured are alive, if they are injured... Give us information if they are even alive and being taken care of," he said. The Palestinians present claimed the pope used the word "genocide" during their meeting to describe what was happening in Gaza. "I am not aware of him using that word," Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told AFP, adding that he had been present at the meeting. The pope "used the terms he used to express himself during the weekly audience and words that in any case represent the terrible situation in Gaza", Bruni said. The pope has never described it as genocide in public. "He spoke to us about what he already knew about Gaza, and he's the one who described what's happened as a genocide", Shireen Hilal from Bethlehem insisted. "He said that terror cannot or should not justify terror". The FBI is investigating a vehicle explosion at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing between the US and Canada as an attempted terrorist attack, Fox News reported citing unnamed sources. Explosives were in the vehicle at the time and two people who were in the car have died while a border officer was injured, the report claimed. Rainbow Bridge Explosion: The site of explosion is seen. The sources also told Fox News that the vehicle was driving from the US to Canada and was attempting to drive toward the border officer building. All bridges are closed in the area. Government buildings have also been evacuated. International border crossing points between Canada and US have also been shut, it was reported. There are four ports of entry between Canada and US near Niagara Falls, as per US Customs and Border Protection. A spokesperson for the Niagara Falls mayors office told CNN, We dont really know too much just that there was a vehicle trying to come into the US and they shut down both sides of the bridge." The bridge was reported closed at 11:51 a.m. because of the crash. What FBI has said on the car explosion so far? The FBI said in a statement, The FBI Buffalo Field Office is investigating a vehicle explosion at the Rainbow Bridge, a border crossing between the US and Canada in Niagara Falls. The FBI is coordinating with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners in this investigation. As this situation is very fluid, that's all we can say at this time, it added. What New York and Ontario authorities said? Earlier, authorities in New York state said that they were "closely monitoring" the incident on Rainbow bridge. State agencies were on site, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said. Ontario premier Doug Ford said that law enforcement teams in Canada were actively engaged in assessing the situation. Russia has sent the first vessels carrying grain to Africa free of charge, President Vladimir Putin told an online gathering of the Group of 20 leading economies on Wednesday. Russian president Vladimir Putin speaks during a video address.(AP) Russia pulled out of a U.N.-backed deal in July that had allowed safe passage for Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea, but Moscow has since pledged to help developing countries that rely on Russian and Ukrainian grain exports. In his comments to the G20 meeting, Putin also said a large share of global economic activity was shifting to Asia and Africa, and he called for a bigger role for developing nations in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Russia's parliament approved a federal budget on Wednesday that increases spending by around 25 per cent in 2024-2026 and devotes a record amount to defence. Russian lawmakers attend a session at the State Duma, the Lower House of the Russian Parliament in Moscow.(AP) The budget was passed unanimously by the Federation Council the upper chamber of the Russian parliament and will be sent to President Vladimir Putin to sign it into law. The budget for 2024-2026 was developed specifically to fund the Russian military and to mitigate the impact of 17,500 sanctions on Russia, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said after the lower chamber approved it on November 17. Under the budget, the country's largest, defence expenditure is expected to overtake social spending next year for the first time in modern Russian history. It comes as the Kremlin is eager to shore up support for President Vladimir Putin before a March presidential election. Record low unemployment, higher wages and targeted social spending should help the Kremlin ride out the domestic impact of pivoting the economy to a war footing but could pose a problem in the long term, analysts say. The budget is about getting the war sorted in Ukraine and about being ready for a military confrontation with the West in perpetuity, said Richard Connolly, an expert on Russia's military and economy at the Royal United Services Institute in London. This amounts to the wholesale remilitarisation of Russian society, he said. Ukrainian troops face "difficult" defensive operations on parts of the eastern front with bitter winter cold setting in, but forces in the south are still conducting offensive actions, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday. Russia-Ukraine War: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses a media conference.(AP) Russian troops launched offensives on different sections of the front line in Ukraine's east this autumn, trying to advance on the devastated town of Avdiivka and in the northeast between the towns of Lyman and Kupiansk. "Difficult weather, difficult defence on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Donetsk and Avdiivka fronts. Offensive actions in the south," Zelenskiy said on Telegram messenger. Snow and freezing temperatures that stood at about minus 5 degrees Celsius during the day on Wednesday and were expected to drop lower may further complicate operations on the battleground, where fighting is moving to an attritional phase. Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, controls nearly a fifth of Ukraine. Kyiv launched a counteroffensive to retake occupied territory this summer, but has not forced a major breakthrough. Since mid-October, Avdiivka, where the front line has changed little since the first war erupted in 2014 between Kyiv and Russian-backed militants, faced waves of attacks followed by temporary lulls, according to the Ukrainian military. After one such lull the day before, the head of the "Tavria" military command said on Wednesday that Russian troops had "dramatically increased" the number of assaults and airstrikes. "Our defenders are steadfastly holding the defence in the Avdiivka direction," Commander Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said on Telegram. Ukrainian forces continued the offensive on the southeastern Melitopol front, he added. In their morning readout on the battlefield, the General Staff said troops were also holding onto the bridgeheads secured on the eastern side of the River Dnipro that was occupied by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion. Reuters could not independently verify the frontline reports. Toronto: The secessionist group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has given a call to pro-Khalistan elements to picket Air Indias outbound flights from the Canadian airports in Toronto and Vancouver on December 1. Air India passenger aircraft are seen on the tarmac at Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport in Mumbai, India. (REUTERS) The call from SFJs general-counsel Gurpatwant Pannun came soon after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed charges against him and the separatist organisation under several sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act on November 20. Pannuns assertion and threats have triggered a high alert as well as investigations by security forces in Canada, India and other countries where Air India flies, a release from NIA had said. Pannun reaffirmed the boycott call against Air India on Tuesday evening, adding, Yes, operation of Air India is a continuing threat to the Sikh lives. However, travel agents contacted by the Hindustan Times have said that the call from SFJ has not had any significant impact on Air Indias bookings in Canada, as yet. Earlier this month, he had released a video warning Sikhs, in Punjabi, Dont fly Air India after November 19, your lives may be in danger. That sentence was repeated twice. In a statement issued along with the video, Pannun called for a Global blockade of the airline from Vancouver to London. In a statement on Thursday, Pannun said he was calling for a boycott of the airline and not issuing a threat. However, Indias High Commission in Ottawa has formally raised the threat with the Canadian government and the matter is being investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadas Transport Ministry and agencies have heightened security for Air India flights at Canadian airports. The targeting of Air India is reminiscent of the circumstances leading up to what remains the worst incident of terrorism in Canadian history. On June 23, 1985, the bombing of Air India flight 182, the Kanishka, by Khalistani terrorists, led to loss of 329 lives, while two baggage handlers in Tokyos Narita airport died from a blast from a bomb on another airplane. The day continues to be commemorated in Canada as the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism. However, extremist groups continue to venerate the person considered the mastermind of the attack, Talwinder Singh Parmar. In fact, in June this year, pro-Khalistan elements took out a rally in his memory to the memorial for victims of the Air India terror attack in Toronto. South Korea on Wednesday suspended part of a 2018 military agreement with North Korea after Pyongyang defied warnings from the United States and drew Western condemnation by launching a spy satellite. President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol (via REUTERS) The suspension of a clause in the agreement will see South Korea step up military surveillance along the heavily fortified border with North Korea. Pyongyang said it placed its first spy satellite in orbit on Tuesday. Photographs in state media showed leader Kim Jong Un watching the launch of a rocket from a base. Kim was later briefed on the satellite's operations at the control centre of the space agency in Pyongyang and viewed images taken above the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam of U.S. military installations, including the Andersen Air Force Base, North Korea's KCNA state news agency said. READ | South Korea to suspend part of 2018 pact with North Korea after satellite launch North Korea followed the satellite launch by firing an unspecified ballistic missile toward the sea east of the Korean peninsula late on Wednesday, but that appeared to have failed, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing the South Korean military. The G7 foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and the EU condemned the satellite launch and called for a "swift, united, and robust" international response, particularly by the U.N. Security Council. A G7 statement reiterated condemnation of alleged North Korean arms transfers to Russia and expressed deep concern about the potential for any transfer of nuclear- or ballistic missile-related technology to North Korea. U.S.-led efforts to boost U.N. sanctions on North Korea have failed in recent years due to opposition from veto-wielding China and Russia. READ | North Korea fires 'spy satellite', South says. Take cover, Japan to residents KCNA said Kim stressed the need for more reconnaissance satellites on different orbits to give his armed forces "abundant valuable real-time information about the enemy and further promote their responsive posture." The satellite would begin its reconnaissance mission on Dec. 1, after adjustments, KCNA said. South Korea's military said the satellite was believed to have entered orbit, but it would take time to assess whether it was operating normally. The Pentagon has said the U.S. military was assessing whether the launch was a success. Jonathan McDowell, of the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Reuters U.S. Space Force data had catalogued two new objects in an orbital plane consistent with the launch from North Korea. "I conclude the objects are the spy satellite and the rocket upper stage," he said. The launch came just over a week before South Korea plans to send its first spy satellite into space on a rocket operated by the U.S. company SpaceX. South Korea's Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said North Korea had "exaggerated" by saying Kim had viewed images of U.S. military installations at Guam. "Even if it enters normal orbit, it takes a considerable time to carry out normal reconnaissance," Yonhap quoted him as saying. "Taking photos of Guam cannot be done on the first day, if you have any knowledge of satellites." Shin said it would take at least until the weekend to tell whether the satellite is functioning. The suspended North-South pact, known as the Comprehensive Military Agreement and aimed at de-escalating tension between them, was signed at a 2018 summit between Kim and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Critics have said the pact weakened Seoul's ability to monitor North Korea while Pyongyang had violated the agreement. SHOW OF FORCE In response to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, the U.S. nuclear-powered submarine USS Santa Fe docked at a South Korean port on Wednesday, a day after the arrival of the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier. On a visit to the carrier, Defence Minister Shin said maritime exercises with the United States and Japan were planned to show "strong will" to respond to any North Korean provocation, his office said. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged North Korea to fully comply with U.N. resolutions, which bar its use of technology applicable to ballistic missile programmes. The foreign ministry of China, North Korea's closest ally, called on all parties to ensure peace and stability. KCNA said the Malligyong-1 satellite was launched on a Chollima-1 rocket from the Sohae satellite launch facility at 10:42 p.m. (1342 GMT) on Tuesday and entered orbit at 10:54 p.m. (1354 GMT). North Korea had notified Japan of a satellite launch after two failed attempts to put what it called spy satellites into orbit this year. RUSSIA CONNECTION Tuesday's launch was the first since leader Kim met Vladimir Putin at a Russian space facility in September, where the Russian president promised to help the North build satellites. South Korean officials said the North Korean launch most likely involved Russian technical assistance under a growing partnership that has seen Pyongyang supply Russia with millions of artillery shells. "Didn't the first and second attempts fail because of engine problems? This time, the biggest feature is the success of the engine... It shows that Putin's offer to help in August was not a pretence," Shin said. However, some missile experts said it was too soon for Russian technical assistance to have been fully incorporated and doubted Russia would have shared highly sensitive and proprietary technology. Russia and North Korea have denied arms deals but have promised deeper cooperation. A humanitarian emergency is unfolding at one of Russia's checkpoints on the Artic border with Finland as hundreds of migrants were stranded in freezing temperatures, Moscow said. Reports claimed that over 500 asylum seekers have crossed from Russia to Finland since November, mostly from Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. But Finland has accused Russia of pushing them there deliberately. Moscow has denied these claims. Migrants stand in a line in front of Finnish Border Guards at the international border crossing at Salla, northern Finland.(AFP) "There is a situation at the border with Finland, at the Salla checkpoint, which can be described as a humanitarian crisis," the head of Russia's Murmansk region bordering Finland, Andrey Chibis, said as per news agency AFP, adding, About 300 people from more than 10 foreign countries have been waiting not for hours, but for days to cross the border. Finland is not letting them in, he said, sharing a video on social media showing cars and vans on the side of a at night and a group of people in a tent. The Salla checkpoint is still open but Finland shut down four of its border crossings with Russia last week. Earlier, Finland had accused Moscow of trying to destabilise the country in retaliation for it joining NATO. In April, Finland joined the Western-led NATO military alliance, prompting Moscow to warn of "countermeasures". The UN refugee agency on Wednesday urged Pakistan to halt deportation of undocumented Afghan refugees during the harsh winter season, as police continued to search homes and expel Afghanis who had not already left. Afghan refugees at a makeshift camp near the Afghanistan-Pakistan Torkham border in Nangarhar province, days after their deportation from Pakistan.(AFP) Islamabad last month announced it would expel over a million undocumented refugees, mostly Afghans, amid a row with Kabul over charges that it harbours anti-Pakistan militants. Over 3,70,000 Afghans have fled Pakistan since Oct. 1. "UNHCR is calling upon the government of Pakistan to halt these mass numbers of returns during this harsh season of winter because the cold in Afghanistan is really deadly and it can take lives," the agency's regional spokesman, Babar Baloch, told Reuters TV in an interview. "We're talking about desperate women, children and men being on the move, leaving Pakistan in droves," he said. The agency has said the Afghans' return should be voluntary and that Pakistan should identify vulnerable individuals who need international protection. Police personnel test biometrics of Afghan refugees during a search operation to identify alleged illegal immigrants, on the outskirts of Karachi on November 17,(AFP) Pakistan is home to over 4 million Afghan migrants and refugees, about 1.7 million of whom are undocumented. Many came after the Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021, and a large number have been present since the 1979 Soviet invasion. Pakistani police have been searching door to door in refugee settlements for those who have not left voluntarily, beginning with the port city of Karachi, where hundreds of thousands of Afghans live. Anyone remaining may be forcefully expelled. Thousands of Afghans have gone underground in Pakistan to avoid deportation, fearing for their lives if they return to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan following the hasty and chaotic withdrawal of US-led western forces in 2021. Islamabad has thus far not entertained calls by international organizations and refugee agencies to reconsider its deportation plans. Pakistan's Supreme Court has admitted a petition filed by rights activists seeking to halt the deportation, which is yet to be taken up for a hearing, a court order issued on Wednesday said. Authorities in New York are "closely monitoring" an incident on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, New York governor Kathy Hocul said in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Rainbow Bridge Explosion: The Rainbow Bridge is seen. The Rainbow Bridge connects the two countries across the Niagara River. The state agencies are on site, the governor informed as US media reported that all four international border crossings between the United States and Canada in Western New York were closed due to an incident involving a vehicle at the Rainbow Bridge. The Rainbow Bridge is one of four border crossings connecting Ontario to New York. The others are Lewiston, Whirlpool and Peace Bridge. The FBI is investigating the vehicle explosion at the border crossing between the United States and Canada, the US law enforcement agency said in a statement as per news agency Reuters. The FBI is coordinating with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners in this investigation. As this situation is very fluid, thats all we can say at this time," it said. The CEO of the Buffalo & Fort Erie Public bridge authority said, Currently all four international bridges over the Niagara River are closed as the incident is being investigated, said CEO Ron Rienas. Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, which borders New York, said, Our provincial law enforcement is actively engaged in assessing the situation. He informed, "They are working with local law enforcement and are providing support as required. Photos and videos widely shared online showed a security booth which was burnt after the explosion. A 27-year-old man was taken to Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital with minor injuries, including back pain and minor cuts but his condition is not severe, Fox News reported. In response to the vehicle explosion, the Niagara Falls International Airport is increasing security at the airport and rail system, reports suggested. The United States on Wednesday carried out retaliatory precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq, the US military said. Military vehicles of U.S. soldiers are seen at the al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq.(Reuters / File) "U.S. Central Command forces conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq," a statement from the US military said. "The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, including the one in Iraq on November 21, which involved use of close-range ballistic missiles," the statement added. The strike reportedly hit a vehicle belonging to a pro-Iranian group in a convoy travelling through Abu Ghraib, 30 kilometers west of Baghdad. The Pentagon earlier confirmed an attack by Iran-back militias against US and coalition forces at Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq's Western Anbar province. The airbase hosts forces of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq. Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said that the attack resulted in eight injuries and some minor damage to infrastructure. "Immediately following the attack, a US military AC-130 aircraft in the area conducted a self-defense strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of Iranian-backed militia personnel involved in this attack. This self-defense strike resulted in several enemy KIA (killed in action)," Ryder said. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters in Washington that US forces "have been attacked approximately 66 times since October 17 -- 32 separate times in Iraq and 34 separate times in Syria." Singh said the militants were targeted in Iraq "because the AC-130 was able to determine the point of origin from where the close-range ballistic missile was... fired to the base" and then tracked the militants in their vehicle. One Iranian-backed fighter was killed in the strike while three others sustained injuries, reported AFP citing a source from the Hashed al-Shaabi. President Joe Biden declared an emergency over lead-in-water contamination in the U.S. Virgin Islands earlier this week after tests on St. Croix revealed levels more than 100 times the limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency among the worst results a U.S. community has seen in decades. US President Joe Biden during a meeting to accelerate efforts to counter the flow of fentanyl into the United States in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. The Biden administration's decision to remove a Chinese organization from a sanctions list as part of a deal to combat the fentanyl crisis marks an unusual concession to Beijing's complaints over US trade restrictions. Photographer: Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg(Bloomberg) On a personal level, its been frightening and frustrating, said resident Frandelle Gerard, executive director of Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism, Inc. Officials told residents to stop using their taps and began distributing vouchers for bottled water. Lead can have devastating effects on childhood development, behavior and IQ scores. But experts consulted by The Associated Press said the frightening results may be false because they came from testing that does not meet EPA standards. The data should be thrown into the garbage, said Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech lead and water expert who helped identify the lead problems in Flint, Michigan. If the information given to St. Croix residents turns out to be bad, it won't be the first time that's happened. Poor information often plagues communities, and they are often majority-Black communities, facing lead crises, leaving people unsure what to believe. In Flint, officials initially concealed high lead levels. When levels spiked in Newark, officials emphasized the safety of the citys reservoirs even though it is lead pipes not the source that are usually the problem. In Benton Harbor, Michigan, residents waited months for officials to confirm that filters truly work, relying on bottled water. On the Caribbean island of St. Croix, officials avoided some of those pitfalls and quickly told residents of the results. The governor declared an emergency. This is not something that we shy away from talking about, said Andrew Smith, head of the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority. Edwards does not believe the sky-high results reflect reality and said the problem is how the samples were collected. For lead testing, workers usually take water from a household faucet. But the samples that tested so high on St. Croix were collected from the meter. When you (unscrew) it, you are literally ripping the leaded-brass apart and a chunk of leaded-brass gets in your sample, he said. It produces artificially high results. Tom Neltner, a chemical and lead expert at the Environmental Defense Fund, agreed that testing from the water meter isn't accurate. There's a lot of oddities about how St. Croix's sampling was done, he said. Parents in St. Croix therefore still have no idea how much lead their kids were consuming. Heres what is known: In September, officials tested in the normal way, at faucets, following EPA lead testing rules. Those results showed the water was safe. But island residents, who had long dealt with discolored water, said the color was getting even worse in recent months. So officials took more samples, this time at the meter, to see whether the utility's pipes were the problem. It is some of these tests that first recorded astronomically high lead levels. We were all shocked and surprised by the results, Smith said. Retesting found results were still too high. Other locations including two schools, however, were low. A more definitive answer should come soon. Local and federal officials did detailed testing to find the root cause in early November. A final report is expected in mid-December. Smith said about 3,400 homes are affected and that the utility worked with EPA on the sampling. Even though the tests didn't follow the normal procedure, EPA water expert Christine Ash said out of an abundance of caution, we are recommending that folks who use (utility) water piped to their homes not consume the water until we're able to do further investigation to identify if there is a potential source of lead and what it might be. Fortunately on St. Croix, that doesn't include everyone. A lot of people rely on rainwater they collect in cisterns. On the mainland, in many cities, lead pipes are the main threat to drinking water. That's not the problem on the island, however. Instead, it's brass fittings that contain lead and can corrode into the water, Smith said. And regardless of the test results, the water system needs attention and fixing. Smith and his colleagues are flushing water through it. When people don't use the water, it sits and can pick up contaminants. They are also fixing how they treat their water so it is less corrosive and working to replace components that contain lead. That replacement work might take 12 to 18 months, Smith said. Plus, the islands water system is old and in the coming years, major upgrades are planned. Gerard said people on the island are overwhelmed. Theres this sense of well, whats next for St. Croix? she said, adding that residents have endured a devastating hurricane, the pandemic and water contamination from a refinery, all in recent years. Many people gave up on tap water long ago, she said, and it's hard to know what to make of these latest developments. As a fairly literate person, reading the reports has almost left us with more questions than answers. Many people probably dont understand just how high these lead test results are, she said. As for the temporary measure of flushing lots of water through the pipes to reduce lead, it's ill-suited to the island, she said. We're a water conserving society, Gerard said. Water is a precious commodity. Marin County, California, has extended its face mask mandate until March 2024 in a proactive move to combat the resurgence of diseases, particularly COVID-19. The health order, applicable to all entering hospitals, emphasizes the importance of face masks regardless of vaccination status. U.S. President Joe Biden removes his face mask prior to awarding the Medal of Honor to retired Army Captain Larry Taylor for conspicuous gallantry during the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2023.(REUTERS) As COVID-19 cases surged nationwide over the summer, recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlights elevated infection rates in states across the Great Lakes and northern Midwest regions. Amidst global debates on the efficacy of face masks, a comprehensive review by the Royal Society in the UK in August unequivocally supported their role in reducing COVID-19 infections. However, this preventive measure has faced opposition from several prominent Republicans. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for instance, signed a law prohibiting government agencies from enforcing mask mandates in the state. In contrast, Marin County's decision aligns with its commitment to public health. The mandate carries potential penalties, including misdemeanours or jail time, for non-compliance. County officials clarified that the order aims to safeguard individuals in high-risk healthcare settings and curb the spread of respiratory viruses like RSV, influenza, and COVID-19. "The intent of the order is to protect individuals in these high-risk healthcare settings and limit the spread of seasonal respiratory viruses," stated Marin County officials. The mandate applies to all individuals in patient care areas, with exemptions for children under age 6 and those with valid medical reasons. While Marin County reinforces its commitment to public health, other regions in California, such as Huntington Beach, have taken a different stance, banning masks in the future after a lengthy city council meeting. While temporary mask requirements have been implemented in various U.S. locations this year, a federal mask mandate remains improbable. Officials emphasize that the choice to wear masks will continue to be a personal decision, alongside other preventive measures like vaccinations, at-home testing, and treatments. Jeff Nesbit, assistant secretary for public affairs for health and human services, reiterated in September, "To be clear, the rumours of a federal mask mandate are not true." The focus remains on providing a range of tools for individuals to protect themselves from the impact of COVID-19. A former employee of a California Taco Bell has sued the company for forcing her to quit after she reported a group sex act that took place at the restaurant during a Christmas party last year. A Taco Bell restaurant in New York, US.(Bloomberg) Alana Bechiom filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on 15 November, claiming that she was harassed and threatened by associates of her former co-workers who were fired for engaging in the sex act in front of other guests at the party. The company that owns the franchised Taco Bell location did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Taco Bells public relations office said in a statement, While we dont own or manage this location, the franchisee who owns and operates this restaurant has shared that they take these claims very seriously. ALSO READ| Study exposes ineffectiveness of chemical used against hospital superbugs in US According to the lawsuit, Bechiom was invited by her supervisor to a potluck-style Christmas party at the Taco Bell on 18 December 2022. She brought a bowl of guacamole to the event, which she found to have the windows and the surveillance cameras covered with wrapping paper. Her supervisor also provided alcohol to the employees, some of whom were overserved. Bechiom said she stepped outside for a moment and came back to see a shocking sight a co-worker was having sex with his wife in front of everyone at the party. Bechiom also alleged that the co-workers wife was kissing two other women at the same time: her manager and another co-worker. Bechiom was shocked, disgusted and outraged by the scene, the lawsuit said. She ran out of the restaurant, but returned to get her guacamole bowl. She then saw that her manager and the other co-worker who were involved in the sex act were vomiting, one in the trash and the other in her guacamole bowl. Bechiom reported the incident to Taco Bell human resources and the Colorado-based company that owned the franchised location, Alvarado Restaurant Nation. She said the manager and the other employees who participated in the sex act were terminated. ALSO READ| High stakes legal battle - Trump sues media outlets for $1.5B over false reporting However, Bechiom said she faced retaliation from associates of her fired co-workers, who threatened her and broke her car window. She said her employers did not protect her, but instead tried to transfer her to another location. Bechiom eventually quit her job. Her lawsuit seeks damages from her employers for creating a hostile work environment that forced her to resign. The case is still pending as of Tuesday. The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) has launched a lawsuit against 20 media outlets, including Newsweek, Hollywood Reporter, and CNBC. The crux of the matter revolves around reports alleging that TMTG suffered a $73 million loss since the launch of Truth Social, a social media platform owned by former President Donald Trump. Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump greets Texas National Guard soldiers, troopers and others at a luncheon, Sunday, Nov. 19, 2023, in Edinburg, Texas. (AP) TMTG vehemently denies these claims, describing them as "an utter fabrication." Lawyers for the organization argue that the reports represent an "unprecedented and seemingly coordinated media campaign" aimed at damaging TMTG's reputation and disrupting its financial standing, particularly concerning its anticipated merger with Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC). The coordinated effort, as alleged by TMTG, has raised eyebrows, with the media outlets all reporting the same false number within a remarkably short timeframe. The company contends that this media campaign is a deliberate attempt to jeopardize the merger between DWAC and TMTG, a deal that has faced numerous delays. DWAC's scepticism about TMTG's financial health was evident in a recent SEC filing, citing doubts about TMTG's ability to meet liabilities. The merger, originally planned in October 2021, has faced setbacks, with a new deadline set for December 31, 2023. Despite the legal turmoil, the financial details disclosed in the SEC filing indicate Truth Social's struggle. In 2022, the platform recorded an operating loss of $23 million and net sales of $1.4 million. The first half of 2023 showed an operating loss of $7.6 million, with net sales of $2.3 million. Since its inception, TMTG has recorded a total net loss of $31.5 million until June 30, 2023. The legal battle is not only a fight for reputation but also a bid for financial stability. With damages sought at $1.5 billion and injunctive relief demanded to prevent further publication of defamatory statements, the lawsuit underscores the high stakes involved. Stuart Seldowitz, a former White House advisor to ex-President Barack Obama, has issued a half-hearted apology for harassing a vendor. The video of Seldowitz's vile Islamophobic remarks at a halal cart vendor in New York City went viral, drawing major criticism. On Tuesday, Gotham Government Relations, a Manhattan-based lobbying firm cut all ties with Seldowitz. The firm said in a statement that his actions were vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the standards we practice at our firm. The man, identified by internet sleuths as Stuart Seldowitz, reportedly served under President Barack Obama (@itslaylas/X) However, Seldowitz was blindsided by the lobbying firm's statement, saying that he hadn't worked with them for a very long time. I had a high opinion of the people at Gotham up until I found out that they had issued this statement. I considered the people at Gotham to be friends, and I haven't had a chance to speak to them, or to try to speak to them as to why they felt the need to issue this statement, Seldowitz told City & State New York. In reference to the viral videos, Seldowitz said that he hadn't seen them but believed it was him. It is quite possible that it's me. I mean, I've not seen the video, but I believe it's probably me, he told the outlet. Seldowitz also issued a muted apology for his ill behaviour. I regret the whole thing happened and I'm sorry, he said, adding, But you know, in the heat of the moment, I said things that probably I shouldn't have said. The former White House advisor explained that he wanted to discuss the current affairs surrounding the Israel-Hamas war with the vendor. However, he became offended when the vendor did not reciprocate his condemnation of Hamas. Seldowitz explained, I went to the food cart expecting to buy a soda and I had an understanding that most of the food cart guys in New York are Egyptian. Seldowitz continued as per the outlet, So I said to him, this is a tough time to be an Egyptian in New York. And he said why? And I said, because of what happened on October 7, with Hamas. And he said, well, I approve of Hamas or I like Hamas or something like that. He added, If I had to do it all over again, I would not have raised the religious aspect. I don't think I'm an Islamophobic guy. I've spoken up for equal treatment of Muslims on numerous occasions with numerous different people. A recent study from the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom has unveiled unsettling news for hospitals relying on potent disinfectants. The research, focusing on the bacterium Clostridioides difficile, reveals that the high-concentration bleach commonly used may not be as effective as once believed. High-concentration bleach may not be effective against superbugs, study finds.(AP) Superbugs, highly virulent bacteria resistant to most antibiotics, infect over 2 million Americans annually, causing at least 23,000 deaths. Hospitals, in an effort to combat these microscopic foes, often turn to robust disinfectants. However, the study suggests that at least for C. difficile, the prevalent use of chlorine-based cleaning products may not be delivering the expected results. Tina Joshi, co-author and associate professor in Molecular Microbiology at the University of Plymouth, emphasizes the urgency of the situation, stating, "With incidence of anti-microbial resistance on the rise, the threat posed by superbugs to human health is increasing." The study focused on C. difficile, a bacterium affecting half a million Americans annually and causing 29,000 deaths in the U.S. alone. The shocking findings revealed that even at clinically in-use concentrations, high-concentration bleach failed to damage C. difficile spores. When exposed to bleach, the spores on surgical scrubs and patient gowns remained completely unaffected, posing a significant challenge to traditional disinfection methods. Also Read | U.S. faces winter wave as COVID hospital admissions climb in 14 states "Understanding how these spores and disinfectants interact is integral to practical management of C. diff infection and reducing the burden of infection in healthcare settings," says Joshi. The study underscores the need for disinfectants and guidelines that evolve in tandem with bacterial resistance, urging a reevaluation of current disinfection protocols globally. As antimicrobial resistance escalates globally, the study's call for tailored disinfectants and guidelines becomes more pressing. The battle against superbugs demands innovative solutions, emphasizing the importance of research that adapts to the ever-evolving world of bacterial evolution. A 3-year-old American girl who lost her parents in a Hamas attack and was taken hostage by the terrorist group is among the 50 hostages who are expected to be freed as part of a deal with Israel. Her family hopes that she will be reunited with them by her birthday on Friday. Orphan Abigail may be home for her 4th birthday after Israeli-Hamas agreement(From family) Abigail Mor Idan was with her father Roy Edan, a photojournalist, and mother Smadar Edan, when they were shot and killed by Hamas in their home in south Israel on Oct. 7. Abigail managed to escape from her fathers bloodied arms and ran to a neighbors house, where she was later abducted by Hamas. Her aunt Liz Hirsh Naftali, who lives in Los Angeles, told CNN on Tuesday night that the family has been anxiously waiting for news about Abigail for seven weeks. The one thing that we all hold on to is that hope now that Abigail comes home, she comes home by Friday, she said. Friday is her 4th birthday. We need to see Abigail come out and then we will be able to believe it. She said she hopes that Abigail is being cared for by the woman who was with her when she was kidnapped, along with her three children. ALSO READ| Study exposes ineffectiveness of chemical used against hospital superbugs in US And I hope that Abigail is being taken care of and left [alone] and that the deal will follow through and these hostages will be back home with their families in the next couple of days. Abigail is one of the three American hostages who are set to be released under the agreement that was reached on Tuesday, which also includes two women. President Biden said in a statement that he will not rest until all the American hostages are released. Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released, he said. A senior administration official also told CNN that the deal is designed to ensure the release of all the hostages. We are determined to get everybody home, the official said. The way the deal is structured, it very much incentivizes the release of everybody. The deal involves a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and Israel, which will start at 10 a.m. local time on Thursday, according to Egypts state-run Qahera TV channel. Egypt mediated the negotiations between Hamas and Israel. ALSO READ| Former Taco Bell employee sues the Los Angeles fast food chain for harrowing group sex act at Christmas party In exchange for the cease-fire, Hamas agreed to release 50 women and children hostages, while Israel agreed to release a similar number of Palestinian prisoners, who are also women and children. The cease-fire will provide some relief to Gaza, where more than 11,000 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and many more are suffering from the lack of food, water, electricity and medicine. The senior official told CNN that the cease-fire could be extended if Hamas agrees to release more of the 240 Israeli hostages that it holds. US authorities have thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States and issued a warning to India over concerns the government in New Delhi was involved, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the chief of banned outfit Sikhs for Justice (SFJ). There was no immediate response from Indias foreign ministry on the report. The development comes two months after Canada said there were credible allegations linking Indian agents to the June murder of a Sikh separatist leader in a Vancouver suburb. India has rejected Canadas accusations. According to the report, the target of the plot was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American and Canadian citizen who is the leader of Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a US-based group that is part of a movement pushing for s separate homeland for Sikhs called Khalistan. According to people aware of the matter, they did not reveal whether the protest to New Delhi led the plotters to abandon their plan, or whether the FBI intervened and foiled a scheme already in motion. Few allies of the US were informed about the plot following the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh separatist killed in Vancouver in June. In September, Canadas Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had said that there were credible allegations linking New Delhi to Nijjars killing. Also Read:India not ruling out probe, told Canada to share evidence: Jaishankar on Hardeep Nijjar killing A person aware of the developments said the US protest was issued after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington in June. Apart from the diplomatic warning, a sealed indictment was filed by US federal prosecutors against at least one alleged perpetrator of the plot in a New York district court, people familiar with the case mentioned. The US justice department is contemplating on whether to unseal the indictment and make the allegations public or wait for Canada to finish its investigation into Nijjars killing. People familiar with the proceedings added that one person charged in the indictment is believed to have left the US further complicating the case. There was no response from the US justice department and FBI, the report stated. The National Security Council however said that the US does not comment on ongoing law enforcement matters or private diplomatic discussions with our partners but added, Upholding the safety and security of US citizens is paramount. The details of the Pannun case was shared by Washington with a wider group of allies after Trudeau publicly gave details of the Vancouver killing. Calling it absurd, India has rejected Canadas claims about New Delhis possible involvement in Nijjars murder. Indias external ministry refused to comment on the development, the report by FT stated. Pannun declined to say whether US authorities had warned him about the plot, saying he would let the US government respond to the issue of threats to my life on American soil from the Indian operatives, he was quoted to as saying by FT. The threat to an American citizen on American soil is a challenge to Americas sovereignty, and I trust that the Biden administration is more than capable to handle any such challenge, Pannun had told FT. Pannun had issued a video released on 4 November, in which he warned Sikhs to stop flying on Air India planes on and after the said date, citing potential threat to their lives. Pannun said, as quoted by FT, that he was not making a violent threat against the airline. Russian president Vladimir Putin told the Group of 20 (G20) that it was necessary to think about how to stop "the tragedy" of the war in Ukraine. Moscow has never refused to participate in peace talks with Kyiv, he asserted, addressing G20 leaders for the first time since the start of the war. The Kremlin chief said that some leaders had said in their speeches that they were shocked by the ongoing "aggression" of Russia in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin at G20: Russian president Vladimir Putin participates in a G20 summit via videoconference in Moscow, Russia.(AP) Yes, of course, military actions are always a tragedy, he said, adding, "And of course, we should think about how to stop this tragedy. By the way, Russia has never refused peace talks with Ukraine." I understand that this war and the loss of life cannot but shock. Isnt the bloody coup in Ukraine in 2014, followed by the war of the Kyiv regime against its people in Donbass, shocking? Isnt the extermination of the civilian population in Palestine, in the Gaza Strip, shocking today? Isnt it shocking that doctors have to perform operations on children, abdominal surgeries, and use a scalpel on a childs body without anesthesia? Isnt it shocking that the Secretary-General of the United Nations said that Gaza has turned into a huge childrens cemetery, he said on the Israel-Hamas war. Vladimir Putin skipped previous G20 summits in New Delhi and Nusa Dua, Indonesia, sending Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov instead. The Russian leader addressed the 2021 and 2020 summits from Moscow and last attended a G20 gathering in person in Osaka, Japan, in 2019. On global economy, Vladimir Putin said, Now the situation in the global economy and in the world as a whole requires collective, consensus decisions that reflect the opinions of the overwhelming majority of the international community - both developed and developing countries. The world is undergoing processes of radical transformation. New powerful centers of global economic development are emerging and strengthening. Wadi Al-Salam cemetery in Iraq is the world's largest graveyard. More than six million bodies including those of prophets, kings, scientists, are buried in the cemetery, spread over an area of 917 hectares. According to UNESCO, burials have been taking place in the cemetery for more than 1400 years. Wadi Al-Salam which translates to Valley of Peace in English, is located in the city of Najaf(X(formerly Twitter)) Wadi Al-Salam, which translates to Valley of Peace in English, is located in the city of Najaf and accounts for 13 per cent of its total area. Muslims from across the world visit the cemetery to pay their tributes to their loved ones buried there. The official website of UNESCO shares the big cultural importance of the cemetery. According to the website, the cemetery "stands as a witness to a unique or at last an exceptional example of a cultural tradition." ALSO READ| Amid diplomatic stand-off, Canadas PM to take part in virtual G20 leaders summit hosted by India today According to UNESCO, burials have been taking place in the cemetery since the middle ages. Reportedly, the cemetery involved different kinds of burials like lower graves and high graves. Burials were also done inside vaults. Notable persons who were buried in Wadi Al-Salam cemetery UNESCO notes that the kings of Al-Hira and it's leaders from Al-Sassani Era (637-226) were buried in the cemetery. Moreover, Sultans, princes of the state of Hamdania, Fatimia, Al-Buwayhyia, Saffawayia, Qajar,and Jalairiyah also had their burials in the cemetery. The shrine of Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib is also located here. Other highlights of the Wadi Al-Salam cemetery King Charles III welcomed South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on the first day of his state visit to the United Kingdom. The South Korean President is on a three-day state visit to the country. President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol listens as Britain's King Charles III speaks at the state banquet at Buckingham Palace in London, Britain November 21, 2023. (via REUTERS) During his speech at the state banquet in Buckingham Palace, King Charles hailed South Korean culture and shared his admiration for K-pop bands Blackpink and BTS. He also hailed South Koreas political and economic advances over the years. I applaud Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rose, better known collectively as Blackpink, for their role in bringing the message of environmental sustainability to a global audience. I can only admire how they can prioritize these vital issues, as well as being global superstars, said Charles during his speech. Charles also made a reference to South Korean superstar Psy whose song "Gangnam Style" had become a major hit some years ago. Sadly, when I was in Seoul all those years ago, I am not sure I developed much of what might be called the Gangnam Style! joked Charles. ALSO READ| Double than agreed, Israel set to release 300 Palestinian detainees; list out The banquet was also attended by Prince William, Kate Middleton, and UK's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Yeol's wife Kim Keon Hee was also present by his side during the feast. During the meet, South Korean President highlighted how in his youth, he was a fan of British musicians including the Beatles, Queen and Elton John. Yeol's visit is important for safeguarding UK's strategic interests amid China's rise and growing influence in its neighbourhood. China is also known for its support to North Korea which is a major rival of South Korea. The South Korean president will engage in a meeting with Sunak on Wednesday, with the talks focusing on trade, technology and defense. Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, resigned from his position and pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money laundering laws. This move comes as part of a historic $4.3 billion settlement to resolve a long-running investigation into Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao leaves federal court in Seattle, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023, after pleading guilty to violations of U.S. anti-money laundering laws.(AP) The settlement, one of the largest corporate penalties in US history, includes a personal payment of $50 million from Zhao. Prosecutors detailed Binance's breach of US anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, revealing the failure to report over 100,000 suspicious transactions involving organizations categorized by the US as terrorist groups, including Hamas, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The fallout from the settlement marks another significant blow to the cryptocurrency industry, which has faced increasing scrutiny and investigations. Who is Changpeng Zhao? Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ, is a Chinese-Canadian business executive and the founder of Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Zhao started his career in the financial industry, working at various companies including Bloomberg Tradebook, Fusion Systems, and others. He became involved in the cryptocurrency space in 2013, working on various projects related to blockchain and cryptocurrency. In July 2017, Changpeng Zhao founded Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange that quickly gained popularity for its user-friendly interface, a wide range of supported cryptocurrencies, and low trading fees. Binance quickly became one of the largest and most influential cryptocurrency exchanges globally, attracting a large user base due to its innovative features and aggressive expansion strategies. Under Zhao's leadership, Binance introduced its native cryptocurrency, Binance Coin (BNB), which became a significant player in the cryptocurrency market. Despite Binance's success, the platform has faced regulatory challenges in various countries, prompting Zhao to adapt the business to comply with different jurisdictions' requirements. "Binance made it easy for criminals to move their stolen funds and illicit proceeds on its exchanges," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Tuesday. "Binance also did more than just fail to comply with federal law. It pretended to comply." What's next for Zhao? The Justice Department, which negotiated the settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Treasury Department, is seeking an 18-month prison sentence for Zhao, the maximum suggested under federal guidelines, the New York Times reported. Vanderbilt University law professor Yesha Yadav said while the fine was extremely large it appeared manageable for Binance, reported Reuters. Zhao is worth $10.2 billion, according to Forbes. "He still has enormous wealth," said Robert Frenchman of Mukasey Frenchman LLP. "He isn't likely to spend too much time in a U.S. jail. He retains his ownership stake in Binance, a company that has now resolved some of its biggest legal issues." (With inputs from agencies) Accor is set to open Mercure Tokyo Haneda Airport on 26 November 2023. The hotel is conveniently located within a 10-minute drive of Haneda Airport, a gateway to Japan with several international and domestic flights daily. Under the design concept of "Tokyo Eclectic", Mercure Tokyo Haneda Airport fuses pieces of ancient Tokyo, with the Tokyo of the future, while providing a creative space where design blends traditional Japanese handicrafts with Mercure's signature European style, creating a new yet nostalgic experience. The hotel also features decor inspired by Japanese subcultures, such as manga, anime, and electronics, throughout the hotel. The locally inspired property offers guests a range of facilities and services including 363 guestrooms, a restaurant, a bar, a fitness center, three meeting rooms, a lounge, and a crew lounge to provide a comfortable stay for guests travelling for leisure or for business. The design of the restaurant and bar, Brasserie s'envoler, located on the first floor, is a modern take on a traditional Japanese teahouse. The menu offers traditional French favorites such as Pate de Campagne and steak frites with a local flair. The 2nd floor houses a fitness center with state-of-the-art equipment, three meeting rooms ranging in size from 17 m to 53 m and two lounges including a dedicated crew lounge where crew guests can relax and enjoy a drink after a long day of travel. Accor currently operates 21 properties (5,085 keys) in Japan under several brands, including Pullman, Swissotel, Mercure, Novotel, ibis, ibis Styles and ibis Budget. Mercure Tokyo Haneda Airport will become the 9th Mercure hotel in Japan and will join a collection of over 900 Mercure addresses globally across over 60 countries. Hotel website Perowne International is delighted to announce its appointment as the global PR representative for Hotel Casa Lucia in Buenos Aires, which marks the first venture outside of Spain for the beloved Unico Hotels'. Bound by family ties to Argentina, Unico Hotelier Pau Guardans has long adored the vibrancy of the city and been enchanted by the country's dramatic landscapes, lively culture, and rich cuisine. Casa Luc i a's launch in January 2024 will bring a new luxury accommodation and exceptional Unico service to Argentina's capital. A transformed landmark, in the beating heart of Buenos Aires Casa Lucia is housed within the historic Edificio Mihanovich, once the tallest building in Latin America, designed to offer spectacular views of the Rio de la Plata, resembling a lighthouse meant to welcome those arriving to Buenos Aires for the first time. Helmed by Unico's dedicated team, the hotel will stay true to its roots and serve as a welcoming beacon for locals and international travelers alike. Radiating Argentina's warmth, the team at Casa Lucia aims to offer exceptionally personalised service, introducing guests to the city's best under-the-radar experiences and destinations, as well as insight into Buenos Aires' stories past and present. Located on the storied and stylish Calle Arroyo, a charming curved road famed for its elegant French architecture and renowned for hosting Buenos Aires's top fashion houses and art galleries. Calle Arroyo runs through the heart of the Recoleta, a neighborhood home to elaborate historic palaces, chic shops, and cultural landmarks including the Recoleta cemetery where the iconic Argentine first lady, Eva Peron, is laid to rest. "I have always been in awe of Argentina because it's a country that has everything: mountains, oceans, deserts, and ice, and because it's the beloved home of much of my family," explains Pau Guardans, CEO of Unico Hotels. "Between the storied Edificio Mihanovic that will house Casa Lucia and its location on the elegant Arroyo Street, this was an unmissable opportunity for Unico Hotels to expand beyond Spain." Classic charm finds contemporary elegance Guests arriving at Hotel Casa Lucia are immersed at once into a celebration of Buenos Aires. More than a lobby, the lively entrance features a large-scale bespoke mural from local mixed media artist Cristina Codern, and is designed to capture the energy of Argentina. Bringing together the latest creative talent from local design and architectural houses, the year-long refurbishment was led by Buenos Aires-based firm Torrado Arquitectos, alongside the interior design team from South American design firm Fernanda Schuch Studios. The hotel's 142 rooms and suites feature sleek furnishings that contrast and complement its historic roots, as well as contemporary art from award-winning Argentine artist, Cristian Mohaded whose work is featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and at the Musee Les Arts Decoratifs in Paris. Taking full advantage of sweeping views, many rooms and suites feature balconies with outdoor showers, sun loungers, outdoor dining, giving guests the chance to savor the sight of the city and Rio de la Plata. A new culinary destination is born Poised to introduce a new culinary destination to the city, Casa Lucia will open with Cantina Restaurant, a vibrant new hotspot drawing inspiration from authentic Argentine aromas and flavors, whilst capturing the essence of the land with fresh, local ingredients. An homage to the country's famed cuisine and renowned wines, guests may savor the sharp flavors of Cantina Restaurant in its luminous dining room, or in one of six rooms with private service and natural light. Next door, Le Club Bacan, a spirited cocktail bar helmed by Cocktail Master Martin Suaya, will bring an energetic new gathering place for locals and travelers alike to the fashionable neighborhood. It will offer over 400 varieties of Argentine wine curated by Master Sommelier Aldo Garcia and music from Buenos Aires' best DJs. A sanctuary in the city Promising guests a sanctuary in the city, Casa Lucia will be home to a luxurious spa comprising three treatment cabins, a state-of-the-art gym, and an elaborate 16 meter pool framed by mirrors, and towered over by the spectacular photography of artist Marc Zimmerman. Hotel website ONYX Hospitality Group, a prominent player in the Asian hospitality industry, has achieved a significant milestone with the signing of Amari Vientiane in Laos, marking the group's second Amari brand property in the country, complementing Amari Vang Vieng. The signing ceremony took place on 16th November 2023 at Tang Chareon (TCR) Group's office in Laos, with Mr. Houa Sengaroun, Chairman of Tang Chareon (TCR) Group, Mr. Pheutsapha Phoummasak, President of Asia Investment, Development & Construction Sole Co., Ltd., and Mr. Yuthachai Charanachitta, CEO of ONYX Hospitality Group, reaffirming ONYX's commitment to expanding its presence in Southeast Asia. Amari Vientiane, scheduled to open in 2024, promises an impressive array of world-class facilities, including all-day dining, 248 well-appointed rooms, a rooftop executive lounge, a specialty rooftop restaurant, rooftop bar, extensive banqueting facilities including a ballroom and meeting rooms, a state-of-the-art gym, Breeze Spa, a main pool, a children's pool, a kids' club, and ample parking. Notably, this exceptional property's location is a mere 4.8 kilometres from Wattay International Airport, ensuring unparalleled convenience for travellers and making it an ideal choice for those seeking a seamless and stress-free arrival experience. Headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand, ONYX Hospitality Group has earned a renowned reputation in the Southeast Asian hospitality industry over five decades. With a brand promise of 'A Tailored Approach to Hospitality,' ONYX aligns its business with local market expectations and partner goals, focusing on three key pillars for sustainable growth: Corporate excellence, Owner partnerships, and Product standards. This approach enables them to effectively expand businesses, deliver internationally recognised standards, and cultivate long-term relationships with visionary partners. As ONYX Hospitality Group continues to expand its portfolio of hotels, resorts and serviced apartments across Southeast Asia, they are poised to operate over 50 properties by 2025. This expansion includes the recent opening of Amari Raaya Maldives and the upcoming launch of Amari Colombo Sri Lanka. Furthermore, properties under brands such as Amari, OZO, and Shama are in the pipeline, solidifying ONYX's commitment to offering diverse and exceptional experiences to travellers. Hotel website RADEK CAIS appointed as Multi-Property General Manager of Le Royal Meridien Doha, Agora Autograph Collection, and on the horizon, the glamorous Palais Vendome, Doha, a Luxury Collection located at the doorsteps of the iconic 7-Star ultra-luxury mall Place Vendome in the vibrant urban hub of Lusail, State of Qatar. In the opulent and vibrant realm of Lusail, Qatar, where luxury and glamour intermingle, Team One takes immense pride in introducing the distinguished Radek Cais as Multi-Property General Manager for the prestigious Le Royal Meridien Doha, Agora Doha Autograph Collection, and up and coming Palais Vendome, a Luxury Collection Hotel, all located at the doorsteps of the iconic 7-Star ultra-luxury mall Place Vendome. With experience in the luxury hotel business spanning continents and a Master's Certificate in Hospitality Management from the illustrious Cornell University, Cais brings exceptional expertise in luxury business acumen. His odyssey spans continents in renowned establishments in Canada, China, Latvia, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Abu Dhabi Transitioning from the esteemed "House of Astor" The St. Regis Chengdu, Cais brings his "make the everyday exquisite" appeal to Lusail. His dynamic leadership has led to accolades such as the Top 3 Luxury Hotel spot in Greater China Conde Nast Traveler and the St. Regis 2022 General Manager of the Year. Notably, Cais spearheaded successful launches of The Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi Grand Canal and The Nile Ritz-Carlton in Cairo. In China, his legacy shone through iconic establishments such as the 7- star Wanda Reign on the Bund in Shanghai, The Ritz-Carlton Tianjin and St. Regis Chengdu Fortune Hotels, a member of the ITC hotel group, announced its newest signings, a brownfield resort located in the picturesque area of Uthandi, Chennai and an over 100-room conversion hotel in Hosur, just an hours drive from Bangalore. The two strategically located hotels, scheduled to open in a few months, add strength to the Fortune Hotels portfolio of 64 alliances across 54 cities of India. It is good to be on the path of expansion as envisaged by us early on. Both the Hosur & Chennai properties are poised to be fantastic additions to our portfolio thereby strengthening our footprint in the enchanting state of Tamil Nadu. The choice of these locations was driven by their immense growth potential and strategic advantages. With these key additions, we once again demonstrate our dedication to providing guests with exceptional experiences in newer locations while maintaining the legacy of our existing properties. Mr. Samir MC, Managing Director, Fortune Hotels Fortune Beach Resort ECH Chennai in Uthandi, is appealingly sited on the Golden beach-one of the cleanest, beautiful and most sought-after beaches in Chennai. With aesthetically designed, spacious and well-appointed rooms, multiple food and beverage outlets including an all-day diner and a trendy bar and lounge the resort is sure to become a splendid getaway for family and friends. To cater to the ever growing socials in this area, the it will also house a spacious banquet hall along with sprawling lawns and an array of other modern day facilities essential to extend a warm and comfortable experience to both city residents and travellers seeking an unparalleled blend of both style and elegance. Fortune Hosur will have 107 stylish rooms and suites and a host of modern facilities designed to suit the present- day business traveller on a short or long stay. Hosur is home to a flourishing manufacturing industry that attracts a wide range of corporate and business travellers throughout the year. Undergoing refurbishment as per Fortune brand standards, the majestic hotel, conveniently located in the industrial town of Hosur is being prepped to add that perfect zing to guest stays. A delightful all-day dining outlet, a speciality restaurant, relaxing bars, a rejuvenating spa and an outdoor swimming pool will add to the oomph of the place. Additionally, multiple banquet venues, make the hotel a coveted venue to host corporate events and memorable social functions. As Fortune Hotels continues to grow and grow its offerings in south India it will now have 6 alliances in Tamil Nadu- one each in Vellore, Ooty, Tiruppur, Madurai, Chennai and Hosur. About Fortune Park Hotels Ltd Fortune Park Hotels Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of ITC Ltd. and is India's leading chain of first-class, full-service business and leisure hotels, with 64 signed alliances and over 4800 rooms, across 54 cities in the country. Fortune Hotels brand philosophy is driven by its objective to provide contemporary accommodation to business and leisure travellers through its wide range of accommodation in pertinent destinations, with emphasis on personalized service at great value. Convenient locations, excellence of cuisine, efficient service and competitive pricing have made the Fortune Hotels chain popular amongst discerning travellers. Fortune, a member of ITCs hotel group has a number of clearly defined sub-brands bringing instant recall, so that guests can easily match their requirements with the chains offers. The sub-brands under which the hotels are being operated by the chain are Fortune Select, Fortune Park, Fortune Inn, and Fortune Resort. For more information, visit: itchotels.com/fortunehotels The vibrant autumn seems to have just arrived, but suddenly we welcome the early winter with the arrival of the Minor Snow solar term. As we step into Taiping Lake in this early winter, the lake water has just shed its restlessness from the autumn and is filled with a beautiful harmony of stillness and movement. Between sunrise and sunset, Taiping Lake enters its golden period. The clouds, sandy beaches, and Chinese tallow trees vividly express the beauty of early winter. The sky remains blue, as does the night sky and the lake water, which continue to be the underlying colors of Taiping Lake. The white clouds float aimlessly, appearing ethereal like immortals, while the vast starry sky resembles clusters of white-hot stars, extending the poetic atmosphere of daytime and waiting for the dawn to bring about the rising mist once again. With the sun breaking through the mist once more, Taiping Lake continues its cycle of blue, golden, and intertwining clouds, continuously producing a picturesque scenery that resonates with poetry and painting day after day, round after round. Vast and misty Taiping Lake Vast and misty Taiping Lake Vast and misty Taiping Lake Source: anhuinews.com 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%. Subscribers to Register-Star or The Daily Mail are eligible to receive full access to HudsonValley360. If you have an existing print subscription, please make sure your email address on file matches your HudsonValley360 account email. Mount Greylock School Committee Looks at New Library Policy WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. The Mount Greylock School Committee last week began the process of enacting an updated and expanded district policy on library material selection and review. The 1,500-word proposed policy came to the full panel via its policy subcommittee and would appear to replace two existing policies, titled "Library Materials Selection and Adoption" and "Library Resources," that add up to about 800 words on the topic. The proposed policy received a "first read" at the School Committee's Nov. 14 meeting. No action could be taken on the proposed rules until after a second read at a subsequent meeting. The new policy would spell out collection priorities for the libraries in all three district schools and explains in general terms the criteria that should be used for selecting materials for specific reading levels, from "easy fiction picture books" to "young adult/adult" fiction and nonfiction. It also spells out the procedure for review of library materials in the event that the district receives a written complaint from a member of the school community. According to the proposed policy, the superintendent annually would appoint a "Materials Review Committee" consisting of one school or district administrator, two teachers from the district, one librarian from a town library in Lanesborough or Williamstown, two community members (one from each of the member towns) and, in the event of a complaint at material at the middle-high school, a Mount Greylock Regional School student. The six- or seven-person review committee would weigh the merits of the complaint, look at reviews of the library material in question and make a recommendation to the superintendent, who then would issue a written decision. Although the School Committee did not intend to discuss the merits of the proposed policy until after the second read, the policy subcommittee did receive one bit of feedback at last week's meeting. Steven Miller, noting that the proposed policy specified that material that survives the review process could not be challenged again for five years, suggested that a parallel provision be added that would keep material reviewed as a result of a community member's complaint from being added to the library's collection for at least five years. That suggestion received support from other committee members who expressed an opinion on the suggestion. A relatively brief (96-minute) monthly meeting for the regional school committee included what could be its final vote on the use of proceeds from a $5 million capital gift the middle-high school received from Williams College in 2016. The gift, which has been used for a variety of purposes by the district in the intervening years, has covered more than $5 million worth of expenses during that time since the college has managed the district's money as part of the overall college endowment, which generally has appreciated in value over the last seven years. At the Nov. 14 meeting, the School Committee decided to take the money out of active management and, essentially, liquidate the remainder of the capital gift. "We are expecting to use all of the Williams College gift over the course of the next year in connection with the field and track project as well as trailing responsibilities," Assistant Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the committee. "In that time, if the college's endowment were to take an unexpected downturn, it would put our ability to fund the project at some risk. "It makes sense to let the college know we would like to protect the funds from any risk. It also means we'd be removing it from the potential reward. The vote here tonight is to vote to authorize the school district to reach out to the college and say, 'Please take all the funds out of active management,' so we will know exactly what we have available when we need it over the course of the next 12 months." The vote does not affect a separate Williams College capital gift, given to Williamstown Elementary School when it was built in 2002. Over the years, the Williamstown Elementary School Committee and, later, the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee after regionalization, have had access to proceeds from that gift to address upkeep at the elementary school. For years, Mount Greylock and town officials envisioned a similar "building renewal" fund for part of the proceeds from the $5 million gift to the middle-high school (at the time, a separate district from the elementary schools). But in March , the School Committee decided to move forward with the field and track project with the intention of using all the remaining funds in the Williams capital gift. The meeting also included the School Committee's annual reorganization vote. Christina Conry, Carolyn Greene and Miller were re-elected as chair, vice chair and secretary, respectively, on 6-0 votes with committee member Ursula Maloy not in attendance. Greene also last week gave the committee a report from the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. She said the statewide body took no action on a number of controversial resolutions that the Mount Greylock panel discussed at its October meeting. Greene described the resolutions session at the early November conference in Hyannis as "bonkers." "It was long, people were agitated, some people were impatient, people were calling for the whole thing to be adjourned," said Greene, a longtime Mount Greylock delegate to the state association's meetings. "I haven't seen anything like it. A lot of the resolutions were tabled and not taken back up." Greene reported that based on feedback from her colleagues at the October meeting, she submitted a proposed amendment to an MASC resolution that would have recommended all districts in the state, "adopt the position of [diversity, equity and inclusion] coordinator to work towards an anti-racist school system." "There were amendments to the amendment and amendments to the amendment to the amendment," Greene said. "And it got so crazy, no one knew what to do with it. "Everyone was on board with the idea that districts should be accountable [on DEI issues]. One of the messages that came out of it was: The focus should really be on equity. Diversity and inclusion is good, but the focus curricularly and policy-wise and in terms of leadership there should be an equity officer in every school because everything comes down to equity, whether it's literature or social studies or the budget. "People wanted to take 'anti-racist' out of the resolution altogether. And these were Black school committee members saying, 'This is not about race. This is about equity.' Good discussions, but heated a little bit." Greene said the MCAS conference also tabled a resolution that would have called on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to immediately enact a moratorium on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. She said there was more agreement on one part of that resolution, which would have taken a stand against the MCAS tests being used as a requirement for high school graduation. "Massachusetts is one of eight states that uses a standardized test as a requirement for graduation," Greene said. "One of the keynote speakers, who is the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, lobbied quite heavily to dispense with MCAS as a requirement for graduation, as did several other speakers." National Grid Prepared for Thanksgiving Week Storm WALTHAM, Mass. National Grid is preparing for storm activity that is expected to impact Massachusetts Tuesday evening through Wednesday, bringing hazardous wind gusts and a mix of rain and snow into the region. Rain, snow and gusting winds have the potential to bring down trees and limbs and knock down power wires, causing power outages in impacted locations. Currently, the forecast is predicting hazardous wind gusts of up to 55 mph in some coastal areas, with a coating of a few inches of snow in areas of higher elevation in Western and Central Massachusetts before it changes to rain. The storm is projected to depart by late Wednesday, and calmer weather is expected for Thanksgiving. "National Grid is closely monitoring the weather forecasts, and we have crews and personnel in place across Massachusetts ready to respond to any impacts this storm may bring during this holiday week," said Tim Moore, Vice President of Electric Operations for New England. National Grid is preparing for this storm by securing additional field-based crews and personnel as part of the company's emergency response operations and preparedness activities. This includes overhead line, forestry, contractors, underground, damage assessment, wires down, transmission, and substation workers. As forecasts evolve, the company will continue to assess resources needs. Crews will begin the restoration process when it is deemed safe to conduct work. For example, it is not safe to work in an elevated bucket during periods of increased wind gusts. The company has been preparing for the storm and continues monitoring the weather and communicating with local officials, first responders, and life support customers. The company offers the following tips and reminders: Customers Should Stay Connected: Report power outages at www.nationalgridus.com or call 1-800-465-1212. Use your mobile device to track outage information and storm-related safety tips through National Grid's mobile site, accessible at www.ngrid.com/mobile. Like National Grid on Facebook and follow them on Twitter and Instagram; latest storm and restoration updates will be posted. Track outages and estimated restoration times at www.nationalgridus.com/outage-central To stay connected during storms and outages, text to 64743 using any of the below commands. REG to sign up for text alerts OUT to report an outage SUM followed by your town, county, or state to get a summary of outages in your area HELP for the complete list of commands Stay Safe: Never touch downed power lines, and always assume that any fallen lines are live electric wires. If you see one, report it immediately to National Grid or your local emergency response organization. Power problems can sometimes interrupt public water supply systems or disable well pumps, so it's an excellent idea to keep a supply of bottled drinking water handy, as well as some canned food. People who depend on electric-powered life support equipment, such as a respirator, should let National Grid know. To register as a life support customer, call the company's Customer Service Center at 1-800-233-5325. Check on elderly family members, neighbors, and others who may need assistance during an outage. Electric Safety: If you use a generator to supply power during an outage, be sure to operate it outdoors. Before operating generators, disconnect from National Grid's system by shutting off the main breaker located in the electric service panel. Failure to do this could jeopardize the safety of line crews and the public. If you lose power, turn off any appliances that were on when the power went off, but leave one light on so you will know when power is restored. Gas Safety If you suspect a natural gas leak: Expect Traffic Delays on West Street in Pittsfield Thursday PITTSFIELD, Mass. Expect delays Thursday morning on West Street due to MountainOne Thankful 5K road race. The eighth running of the MountainOne Thankful 5K currently has more than 400 registered walkers and runners to take to the road on Thanksgiving morning at 9:00AM from Berkshire Community College. Drivers are asked to be aware of the increased activity along the half mile stretch from Meadow Ridge Ave to Berkshire Community College. Online registration for the event closes at 5pm on Tuesday, Nov. 21 at www.zippyreg.com. In store registration will be held at Berkshire Running Center on Wednesday from 12pm-5pm. There is no day of registration although pre registered runners can pick up their bib the morning of the race from 7:30-8::30AM. The 5K course will start on West Street just past the college and lead the attendees through the parking lots of the campus and then will be out on West Street between the college and onto Meadow Ridge Avenue. Once the runners turn down Woodland Ave they will return and follow the course back to West St and then finish in the parking lot of the Patterson Field House. Pittsfield Police Department will be on site to also provide support for a safe passage for all participants. The Berkshire Running Foundation also left flyers in the mailboxes of the homes that the 5K passes. Expectations are the race will be completed shortly after 10:00AM. When it comes to doing laundry, there are quite a few steps to consider. One must do regular tub cleans and system checks, load and unload clothes from the machine, and finally fold everything and store them away in the closet. Because this process can be a bit tedious and time consuming, we tend to avoid or put off washing until the weekend, when we typically have more time on our hands. But, what if you could get more of that time back by investing in a washer that is an absolute game-changer when it comes to doing laundry, all thanks to inverter technology? There is simply no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to laundry care, as different lifestyles demand diverse laundry needs. But one thing remains consistent: while lives get busier, we need appliances that give us the support we need to do it all, with time to spare. Understanding this deeply, Samsung introduces the new and improved Top Load Washing Machine powered by inverter technology. It features shorter wash cycles and lower energy consumption, providing you a quieter, more efficient laundry process. This washer not only caters to a variety of fabric types but also offers flexible wash cycles to meet unique laundry requirementssetting a new industry standard for laundry systems. The All-New Samsung Top Load Washing Machine is designed to provide an efficient laundry solution across all lifestyles. Whether you're a fitness enthusiast in search of a thorough cleanse for your activewear or a fashion-savvy individual who values delicate fabrics, this washer is engineered to elevate your laundry experience. Harnessing the power of inverter technology, this washing machine allows you to do more with its increased capacity for larger and more diverse loads. Supported by an industry-leading 20-year warranty, it stands to modernize your laundry system, providing substantial savings without compromising quality and performance. Discover how the Samsung Top Load Washing Machine addresses the ever-evolving laundry needs of different lifestyles: Deeper clean Samsung's Ecobubble technology allows individuals to enjoy a deeper level of cleanliness and care for their garments. The technology effortlessly dissolves detergent in water and transforms it into soft bubbles, ensuring fabrics are thoroughly submerged. While the powerful wash removes stubborn stains, the gentle bubble action safeguards delicate fabrics, giving your clothes the utmost care and making sure they stay in pristine condition. Rapid results Fast-paced lifestyles demand swift and powerful laundry solutions. The Samsung Top Load Washing Machine rises to the occasion with the Super Speed feature, completing laundry in just 31 minutes40% faster than standard cycles. This speedy wash cycle in no way compromises the quality of the clean, and even contributes to reducing water consumption by 20%. Hygiene standards A thorough and intensive clean is a paramount for health-conscious individuals. This washer introduces the Hygiene Steam feature, providing an impressive 99.99% sanitization rate. This cycle uses a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius to clean everyday stains and soiling at ease, while a higher 60-degree Celsius setting takes on even the most stubborn and oily marks. Long-term savings Energy efficiency and sustainability is non-negotiable for any household. The Top Load Washing Machine delivers that with Samsungs Digital Inverter Technology (DIT). This conserves up to 70% of energy while giving a powerful and quiet performance. DIT also offers the industry's longest motor warranty, extending up to an impressive 20 years. The Samsung Top Load Washing Machine revolutionizes your laundry experience with the power of inverter technologyand is wholly designed to meet the needs and lifestyles of modern households. It transcends the role of a traditional washing machine; establishing a new standard for efficiency, all the while providing the peace of mind that comes only with a 20-year warranty and its unmatched performance in your laundry room. Upgrade to the Samsung Top Load Washing Machine today. Visit samsung.com/ph to know more! Global technology leader Epson has released its inaugural Sustainability Report for Southeast Asia. This milestone publication highlights Epson's unwavering commitment to making a positive environmental and social impact across the region. The report chronicles Epson's progress in markets such as the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand from the last fiscal year covering April 2022 to March 2023 and underscores the company's pledge to drive continued impact and further positive change throughout the region in the years to come. At a global scale, Epson is taking action in contributing to all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to further embrace responsible corporate citizenship. Epson Southeast Asia is concentrating its efforts on five key (SDGs) that resonate most with its business operations and areas where it can make the most significant impact. These include SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals). In the Philippines, Epson has made remarkable strides in addressing climate change mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across all aspects of its business operations. This includes adopting renewable electricity use, cutting down emissions in production, and minimizing emissions throughout the value chain. In January 2021, Epsons factory in the Philippines was the first among Epson's manufacturing factories in Southeast Asia to begin operating at 100% renewable energy ahead of the 2023 global deadline. Epson Philippines is also deeply committed to supporting local communities and conservation efforts. It is dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace, implementing unconscious bias training for all employees, and promoting equal opportunities. The initiative will be embedded into Epsons onboarding program for new employees as well as training for hiring managers. The company will also be closely monitoring the impact of this training to ensure its continued efficacy, and will continue to drive programs that aim to foster growth and contributions for every individual. The company continues to partner with World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which supports marine conservation projects such as coral reef and mangrove restorations in Southeast Asia. This collaboration emphasizes Epson's dedication to biodiversity protection and fulfilling its social responsibility. In the Philippines, Epson is working with communities in Palawan to implement the Mangrove Restoration Project to support and restore the areas biodiversity and marine ecosystem health, while strengthening capacity among the local communities in long-term maintenance and management of their resources and natural environment. "At Epson Philippines, we are fully committed to creating a lasting positive impact on our environment and society. Our Sustainability Report demonstrates our dedication to driving sustainable practices and innovative solutions that benefit not only our customers but also the communities we serve, said Masako Kusama, Epson Philippines Corporation President and Director. Epson's trailblazing sustainable technologies are revolutionizing various industries, including printing, projection, and manufacturing. Epson's Heat-Free inkjet printers contribute to environmental conservation by reducing energy consumption, minimizing waste, and promoting responsible consumption. The company's EcoTank printers reduce power consumption by up to 85% and generate up to 85% less carbon dioxide compared to laser printers. These sustainable technologies help organizations shrink their environmental footprint while maintaining top-notch performance. Epson's digital textile printing technology also offers substantial environmental benefits compared to traditional analogue textile printing, reducing excess production, water consumption, and improving working conditions. With the growing importance of sustainable solutions across various industries, Epson Philippines is poised to play a pivotal role in transforming the local textile industry. Epson Southeast Asia remains committed to creating a more sustainable future in the region. The company will continue to focus on driving impact within its business operations, value chain, and through partnerships and collaborations. By engaging all countries in the Southeast Asia region, Epson aims to work towards its regional goals and create a lasting positive impact on the environment and society. Nissan Philippines reaffirmed its commitment towards the electrification of the automotive sector in the Philippines as the company co-presented the 11th Philippines Electric Vehicle Summit with the theme Plug in and Accelerate, which was held from October 19 to October 21, at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City. Nissan displayed the Nissan LEAF and the Nissan Kicks e-POWER at the event, demonstrating the innovative technologies of the company when it comes to the electrification of their vehicles. The Nissan LEAF particularly highlighted the V2X technology which showcased the bi-directional charging features of the vehicle, showing potential of how the Nissan LEAF can discharge power to other sources. The Nissan Kicks e-POWER display, on the other hand, highlighted the various components of the engine which showcased the advantages of a hybrid EV. This is an offering of Nissan to those who want to slowly transition to owning full EV. Reinforcing commitment to Ambition 2030 The participation of Nissan went beyond displaying their line-up of electronic vehicles, as the company had their executives take to the stage to reinforce the Ambition 2030 of Nissan. Isao Sekiguchi, Nissan ASEAN President and President of Nissan Motor Thailand, shared Nissans strategic approach towards its Ambition 2030 of achieving carbon neutrality. Nissan also arranged a panel entitled Energizing the EV ecosystem; Advancing an electrified future, which brought together different industry experts within the sector to facilitate discussions on advancing EV adoption in the country. The members of the panel include Automotive Association of the Philippines President (AAP) Augustus "Joe" Ferreria, Business Development Manager for E-Mobility of Phoenix Contact (SEA) Pte. Ltd. Henry Low, Head of Mobility Infrastructure of AC Mobility Holdings Inc. Carla Buencamino, and Nissan Philippines President Juan Manuel Hoyos. The panel was moderated by mobility expert and influencer, James Deakin. Energizing the EV Ecosystem. The panel discussion provided insights on how the Philippines can move forward towards its EV adoption ambitions. From L-R: Augustus Ferreria, President of the Automotive Association of the Philippines, Carla Buencamino, Head of Mobility Infrastructure of AC Mobility Holdings Inc., Henry Low, Business Development Manager for E-Mobility of Phoenix Contact (SEA) Pte. Ltd., Juan Manuel Hoyos, Nissan Philippines President, James Deakin, mobility expert and influencer. The members of the panel provided their assessments on the current situation of the sector, and shared insights on what are changes needed to be done by various industries within the sector to accelerate EV adoption in the country. We are determined to help create a carbon-neutral society and accelerate the global effort against climate change. We aim to do this by reducing our environmental impact from our operations to our products, and by collaborating with like-minded organizations to facilitate efforts to advance EV where we are present, said Isao Sekiguchi, President of Nissan ASEAN and Nissan Motor Thailand. Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Roisin OConnors email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Malaysias governement has warned that a Coldplay gig taking place today (22 November) will be shut down if the band misbehaves, although it rejected calls from conservative Muslims to cancel the show. Protests led by the countrys opposition bloc have objected to Coldplays Kuala Lumpur show over the bands support for the LGBT+ community. Frontman Chris Martin is known for waving Pride flags during his performances, while his bands concerts are frequently decorated in rainbow colours. Communications and digital minister Fahmi Fadzil said he does not foresee any problems with Coldplays first concert in Malaysia, although security has been beefed up for the show that is expected to bring some 75,000 people to a stadium outside the capital. When asked if a kill switch to cut off power supply to the stadium would be used, Fahmi said: Yes, its one of the things we have discussed with the organiser. The prime minister has also said the band, you know, is very supportive of Palestine. So, we are upbeat about the concert today. Malaysia introduced a kill switch measure following the uproar sparked by British rock band The 1975, where frontman Matty Healy criticised the countrys anti-LGBT+ laws and kissed a male bandmate on stage. The Kuala Lumpur festival was later suspended and The 1975 have reportedly been banned from performing in the country ever again. Last month, Healy defended his actions in a 10-minute speech delivered during a gig in Dallas, Texas. He argued that The 1975 didnt waltz into Malaysia but were booked by festival organisers who were aware of the bands political views and stage show. He said that kissing his bandmate Ross McDonald was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government but an ongoing part of The 1975 stage show which had been performed many times prior. Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up Had the band omitted any routine part of the show to appease the Malaysian authorities bigoted views of LGBTQ people, Healy claimed, it would have been a passive endorsement of those politics. As liberals are so fond of saying, silence causes violence, use your platform so we did that. And that is where things got complicated, he said. Matty Healy of The 1975 sparked uproar after kissing his bandmate onstage at a festival in Malaysia (Photo by Mauricio Santana/Getty Images) (Getty Images) Coldplays concert in Indonesia last week was marred by violent clashes between riot police and conservative Muslims protesting the bands record of support for the LGBT+ community. More than 200 conservative Muslims demonstrated outside the Gelora Bung Karno stadium in Jakarta, where the band were performing on Wednesday (16 November), and demanded the event be cancelled. The demonstrators reportedly held a large banner that said: Reject, cancel and disband Coldplay concerts. Protesters said the bands pro-LGBT+ stance was in conflict with the countrys faith and morals. The same protest group had also organised demonstrations last week at multiple sites in Jakarta, including outside the British Embassy, the Associated Press reported. Once again citing the bands support for LGBT+ rights, which they said clashed with their beliefs, various Islamic groups called for the cancellation of the bands inaugural concert in predominantly Muslim Indonesia. At least 4,000 security officials were deployed in and around the Coldplay venue. Local police said the demonstrators calling for the cancellation of the concert did not have permission to stage a rally. Additional reporting by agencies Were not women, were hell, chant the titular witches in the National Theatres spine-tingling new musical, red flames flickering behind them as they send intricate harmonies rising into the smoke-filled air. Its not the kind of scene youd normally find in a family Christmas show. But its typical of this brilliant take on Roald Dahls bestseller, one thats uncompromisingly creepy, weird, witty and smart enough to scrub away the misogynistic, antisemitic undertones of Dahls story while letting its dark heart beat stronger than ever. The unlikely dream team behind The Witches has serious grown-up theatre credentials: playwright Lucy Kirkwood (book and lyrics) is known for brainy hits like play-turned-Channel 4 series Chimerica, while cult musical theatre writer Dave Malloy (music and lyrics) usually riffs on works by Rachmaninoff or Tolstoy. Together, they give the storys central nightmare a new, sharp 21st-century focus. These witches arent horrifying because theyre wig-wearing older women, theyre horrifying because they look just like everybody else their grotesque hatred of children (and their alien purple skulls) hidden in plain sight. After his parents death, 10-year-old Luke has a love-shaped hole in his life and the story that follows is full of hard-learnt lessons about who he can trust to fill it. His rebellious Norwegian Gran (Sally Ann Triplett) might have spooky iron-grey plaits and tattered black skirts, but she turns out to be his most powerful ally as he battles pastel frock-wearing witches and stares down his own mortality. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} North Korea claimed to have successfully put its first military spy satellite into orbit in a launch the US has sharply criticised as a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. South Korea and Japan confirmed Tuesdays launch, but were not able to immediately verify if it was a success. Experts have also questioned whether the launch, which comes after two previous failed attempts, will achieve North Korean leader Kim Jong-uns objectives of enhancing his nuclear-armed countrys ability to conduct pre-emptive strikes and monitor the US, South Korean and Japanese troops. The launch also comes just months after Russian president Vladimir Putin had pledged to help Pyongyang in its space programme during his meeting with Mr Kim in a rare September summit. The Malligyong-1 reconnaissance satellite was sent into orbit on a Chollima-1 rocket at 10.42pm local time on Tuesday, according to North Koreas state media KCNA. The launch from the Sohae satellite launch facility accurately put the reconnaissance satellite into orbit at 10.54pm, it said, citing North Koreas National Aerospace Technology Administration. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watches a rocket launch from a launching center in North Korea (AP) Mr Kim oversaw the launch, which was carried out earlier than the nine-day warning window Pyongyang notified Japan about. The launch was condemned by the UN which has prohibited North Korea from such launches due to its nuclear missile development. UN chief Antonio Guterres strongly denounced the launch and called on North Korea to return to the path of denuclearisation. Any launch by [North Korea] using ballistic missile technology is contrary to the relevant Security Council resolutions, he said. The White House said the launch is a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions, raises tensions, and risks destabilising the security situation in the region and beyond. Japan has criticised North Korea for the launch and prime minister Fumio Kishida said it was a violation of UN Security Council resolutions. We have lodged a stern protest and condemned North Korea in the strongest terms, Mr Kishida said. North Korea leader Kim Jong-un at what the country said is the launch of the Malligyong-1, a military spy satellite, into orbit (AP) Japan said North Koreas frequent missile launches are a threat to regional peace and safety. During the launch of the satellite, Japan resorted to its emergency broadcasting system to warn residents in nearby Okinawa prefecture to take cover inside buildings or underground. South Koreas president, who is currently on a visit to the UK, moved to suspend a part of a military agreement it signed with Pyongyang in 2018 aimed at de-escalating tensions in the Korean peninsula. The South Korean defence ministry said it would resume aerial surveillance activities near its border with the North. The countrys officials also noted that the latest launch attempt likely incorporated technical assistance from Russia as part of a growing partnership in exchange for military equipment, a claim denied by both North Korea and Russia. North Korea defended its launch, calling it a legitimate right for strengthening its self-defensive capabilities and war preparedness. It pledged to launch several reconnaissance satellites in a short span of time to secure the capability to reconnoitre the south Korean region. Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said questions remain over the efficacy of the satellite. State-controlled media claims of a successful launch do not mean the satellite will actually perform meaningful reconnaissance functions, Mr Easley said, while pointing out that North Korea had declared it would attempt a third launch anyway. Moreover, public denials from Pyongyang and Moscow about sanctions-evading military cooperation do not mean that Russia isnt providing assistance for North Koreas spy satellite programme. Marco Langbroek, a satellite expert at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, told Reuters while observational satellites launched by the North did achieve orbit in 2012 and 2016, it is not known whether they were ever truly functional. Both had burned up in the atmosphere this year. The countrys two earlier attempts this year resulted in embarrassing and costly failures, with the satellites breaking up during early stages of the launch. South Korea salvaged debris from the failed first launch in May and said the satellite had no military utility. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} India has resumed electronic visa services for Canadian nationals after a two-month pause amid heightened diplomatic tension with Ottawa over the killing of a Sikh separatist leader. The electronic visa services were back in order on Wednesday, in a move seen as Indias bid to de-escalate the crisis, which saw both nations expel each others diplomats and raise travel advisories. India issues electronic visas for tourism, medical, and business purposes for Canadian nationals. The visa suspension was lifted just hours before Indias G20 virtual summit, which is likely to be attended by Canadian president Justin Trudeau on Wednesday. It would be prime minister Narendra Modi and Mr Trudeaus first interaction since the two countries exchanged barbs over the death of Canadian national Hardeep Singh Nijjar a designated terrorist in India. New Delhi had suspended all categories of visa services in September after Mr Trudeau accused the Indian government of being involved in the death of Nijjar, who was shot dead by masked gunmen in June in Surrey, outside Vancouver. India has vehemently denied what it called an absurd allegation, arguing it wasnt the governments policy. The Narendra Modi government last month partially restored visa services in four of the 13 categories, including entry, business, and medical visas. Owing to the bitter feud, Canada was forced to remove 41 diplomats from India after New Delhi threatened to revoke their diplomatic immunity. Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the government wasn't ruling out an investigation if Canada had a reason to make such allegations. "Please share evidence with us. We will look at anything you have to offer," he reiterated at an event in the UK last week. The foreign minister emphasized that Canada had not shared any evidence with India so far to support its allegation. Last month the foreign minister hinted at the resumption of visa services, adding that at the time it was not safe for diplomats to issue visas. If we see progress there, I would very much like to resume the issue of visas, Mr Jaishankar had said. My hope would be that it would be something which should happen very very soon. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The rescue work at a collapsed tunnel in Indias northern Uttarakhand state where 41 workers have been trapped since 12 November may take up to 15 days, an official said. In a major relief to their family members, a video of the trapped men captured by an endoscopic camera was shared by the Uttarakhand government authorities on Tuesday. This was made possible with the help of a six-inch-wide pipeline that was drilled into the tunnel through the debris on Monday. Through this lifeline, the workers received their first easy-to-digest hot meals in nine days. Anurag Jain, a government official at the road transport and highways ministry, said on Tuesday that the rescue operation may take between two to 15 days, according to News18. The authorities formulated a fresh five-point rescue plan for the trapped men inside on Tuesday. The focus is now on the horizontal drilling that will create a shaft, said Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain, a member of the National Disaster Management Authority. This is not an easy challenge, so we are exploring every option. All the teams are working on it, that is the only assurance I can give. Cant establish the timeframe, he said, adding that the next 36 hours were crucial. Rescuers have drilled about halfway through fallen debris, an official said on Wednesday. The men have access to light, oxygen, food, water and medicines. Rescue workers have drilled through 32m (105ft) of an estimated 60m (197ft) that must be cleared to push through a pipe wide enough for the men to crawl out, said Deepak Patil, a retired army officer heading the rescue effort. First images emerged on Tuesday from within the tunnel, showing workers in white and yellow hardhats standing in the confined space and communicating with rescuers. Authorities have not said what caused the tunnel collapse, but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods. Efforts to bring the men out have been slowed by snags in drilling in the mountainous terrain. The workers have now been trapped for 10 days inside the tunnel in the north Indian state. The men were working on the Char Dham highway, one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects of Indian prime minister Narendra Modis Hindu nationalist government, which aims to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites in the mountains through 890km (550 miles) of roads at a cost of $1.5bn (1.2bn). The Uttarakhand authorities have also sought help from Thai cave experts who rescued children from a flooded cave in 2018 in Thailand. In addition to the national and state disaster management agencies, a robotics team from Indias Defence Research and Development Organisation is also present on the scene. Workers had previously complained of nausea and anxiety. Antidepressants have been sent to the trapped men. The Indian Express quoted Dr Abhishek Sharma, the psychiatrist who is overseeing the mental health of the workers, as saying: Weve kept constant contact, suggesting activities like yoga, walking, and encouraging conversations among them to maintain high morale. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The Government has pledged to spend 500 million over the next two years on the computing power for AI models to help make the UK a world leader in technology. In his autumn statement, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the funding would help create new innovation centres to help make us an AI powerhouse. The Government said the key to the UK creating a world-leading AI ecosystem was access to compute, which helps develop new artificial intelligence foundation models used to power programmes such as AI-powered chatbots and powerful problem-solving and analysis tools used by scientists and researchers. The additional funding will bring the total planned investment in compute to over 1.5 billion, the Government said, which could allow researchers and start-ups to develop new AI models. When it comes to tech, we know that AI will be at the heart of any future growth. I want to make sure our universities, scientists and start-ups can access the compute power they need, Mr Hunt said. While the financial boost is appreciated, it must come with clear guidelines and support from the Government to empower businesses in utilising it effectively Jonathan Boakes, Infinum So building on the success of the supercomputing centres in Edinburgh and Bristol, I will invest a further 500 million over the next two years to fund further innovation centres to help make us an AI powerhouse. The UK hosted the first AI Safety Summit earlier this month and has launched an AI Safety Institute, which plans to work with the biggest industry firms to test and evaluate new AI models before they are released to the public. Industry expert Jonathan Boakes, managing director at tech firm Infinum, said the latest investment in AI was welcome, but more funding for education around AI was also needed. The UK Governments allocation of 500 million for AI powerhouses and a 25% tax deduction on IT expenditure shows strong support for tech innovation. But theres huge concern that this investment might not be used wisely, he said. Research shows 78% of UK businesses plan to invest in AI in the next year, but 73% feel unprepared for its integration. Success in the AI revolution demands more than just plugging gaps with cash. It requires strategic planning, workforce training, and expert collaboration to maximise the impact and prevent implementing AI for AIs sake. The rush to embrace AI carries the risk of hasty decisions fuelled by FOMO (fear of missing out), jeopardising sound judgment. While the financial boost is appreciated, it must come with clear guidelines and support from the Government to empower businesses in utilising it effectively. Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} 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. Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} One million gallons of crude oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to harm endangered species that live there. The spill was first detected on Friday by the US Coast Guard, who said overflight teams had observed visible oil on the surface of the water and intermittent surface sheens over the weekend. Officials said the origin of the leak appeared to be near the 67-mile long pipeline system owned by Main Pass Oil Company, a subsidiary of Houston-based Third Coast Infrastructure LLC, which is located around Plaquemines Parish, in Louisiana, southeast of New Orleans. In an update on Monday the agency said that three skimming vessels were working to recover oil on the surface and that remotely operated vehicles would continue to survey the pipeline if weather conditions permitted. The coast guard also said that the volume of discharged oil was currently unknown but that the potential release from the affected pipeline could be up to 1.1 million gallons. The Coast Guard continues to oversee the coordinated effort to mitigate the impact of the oil discharge, the agency said in a statement. The Unified Command is coordinating with federal, state and local agencies to ensure the safety of the public, protect the environment, and respond to the incident. There have been no reports of injuries or shoreline impacts at this time. The coast guard said that a marine safety information broadcast was transmitted to vessels in the area. This situation remains dynamic, and changes should be expected as further assessment and oil spill recovery operations develop, the transmission said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency of the US Commerce Department, is helping oversee the incident. According to NOAAs Office of Response and Restoration, in the last 50 years, at least 44 oil spills that discharged more than 420,000 gallons each have occurred in US waters. US Coast Guard overflight teams observed visible oil on the surface of the water (US Coast Guard) If estimates about the volume of the spill are correct, it will be more than three times this amount. NOAA notes that even small amounts of oil spilled in the ocean can have severe impacts on local wildlife and ecosystems. NOAAs emergency operations coordinator, Doug Helton, told WWL-TV the impact of the oil, rather than its volume, was of most concern. "There are endangered and threatened species in Louisiana waters. Most of coastal Louisiana is wetlands and marshes, and thats typically considered really sensitive to oil," Mr Helton said. "Even if this doesnt make it ashore, it doesnt mean that this is an incident that we can just ignore. There are a lot of things that live out in the gulf." Among the species that authorities are most concerned about are sea turtles and whales. The Kemps Ridley the worlds most endangered species of sea turtle was last year found hatching just north of the spill at the Chandeleur Islands for the first time in 75 years. Gulf of Mexico oil spill (US Coast Guard) The species is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, meaning they are at "extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. According to NOAA, Rice Whales fewer than 100 of which are thought to remain are the only baleen whales known to inhabit Gulf waters. Scientists have previously warned that pipelines are a major risk to their existence. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster remains the largest known aquatic oil spill in US history. The well took five months to seal, by which time some 134 million gallons had spilled into the Gulf. Seventeen people were injured and 11 workers disappeared. Their bodies were never recovered. The disaster also killed up to 105,400 sea birds and resulted in a record $20.8 billion settlement with BP, Anadarko, Transocean and Halliburton, the operators of the platform. The Independent has approached Third Coast Infrastructure LLC for comment on the spill. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Brad Pitts son called him a world class a**hole and f***ing awful human being in a scathing Fathers Day post. Pitt, 59, shares six children with former wife Angelina Jolie: sons Maddox, 22, and Pax, 19, daugters Zahara, 18, and Shiloh, 17, as well as twins Vivienna and Knox, 15. Pax lashed out at the Fight Club actor in a Fathers Day post shared on his private Instagram account three years ago, according to a MailOnline report. Happy Fathers Day to this world class a***hole, Pax reportedly addressed a message to his adoptive dad. You time and time and again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person. You have no consideration or empathy toward your four youngest children who tremble in fear when in your presence, the teenager captioned a photograph of Pitt accepting the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2020, Pax, then 16, wrote: You have made the lives of those closest to me a constant hell. You may tell yourself and the world whatever you want, but the truth will come to light someday. So, Happy Fathers Day, you f***ing awful human being!!! (Getty Images) A source told MailOnline that the message was posted from a private Instagram account belonging to Pax and described the rant against Pitt as unusual since Pax never says much about his parents on the profile. The Independent has contacted Pitts representatives for comment. The report comes days after Pitt and Jolies daughter Zahara, who was adopted in 2005 from Ethiopia, dropped her fathers last name during a sorority induction ceremony at Spelman College, an American liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. In a video obtained by Essence, the 18-year-old undergraduate reportedly identified herself as Zahara Marley Jolie notably choosing to omit her famous fathers surname. Jolie, who was married to Pitt for two years, filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences, days after an alleged physical altercation between him and their oldest son Maddox, then 15, while they were onboard a private jet in 2016. Following an FBI investigation into the child abuse allegations, Pitt was cleared of all charges. However, a detailed account of what transpired on the private plane was made public last year, after FBI records were leaked to the press. According to the documents, the Maleficent actor told investigating officers that Pitts actions during the flight from France to Los Angeles frightened their children, aged between 8 and 15 at the time. Jolie also said that Pitt allegedly lunged at one their kids after they called him a prick, adding she had to hold him back in a choke hold. According to the report, Pitt told Jolie that one of the children looked like a f***ing Columbine kid, referring to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, during which two 12th graders Eric Harris and Dylan Kelbold gunned down 12 children and a teacher in Colorado. Jolie and Pitt are still locked in a bitter custody battle for their six children, three of whom were adopted by the Maleficent star. Pitt later formally adopted Maddox, Pax, and Zahara as well. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Sarah Paulson has revealed how her relationship with Holland Taylor was destined to be. During an appearance on The View on 21 November, the 48-year-old actor opened up about her long-term partnership with the Two and a Half Men star, 80. I actually had her picture on my refrigerator for 10 years before we were together, which sounds strange, Paulson told The View panelists Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Sara Haines, and Alyssa Farah Griffin. The American Horror Story alum explained how she was at dinner with Taylor, actor Allison Janney, and the late screenwriter Buck Henry when the actors posed on top of a Lamborghini parked outside of the restaurant. Henry then snapped the picture and sent them all copies of the photo. It was on my refrigerator in my little apartment in West Hollywood for 10 years, Paulson said. There she was in my kitchen. When asked by co-host Behar if she had a crush on Taylor at the time, the Emmy winner maintained that she didnt but admitted that maybe something was percolating and it was unbeknownst to me. The Ratched star went on to describe how her relationship with Taylor has helped make her a better person. I am thrilled and feel very lucky to be with a person who is smarter, wiser, wittier than I, Paulson said, before adding that the Legally Blonde star just makes my life better in every possible way. [She] helps me want to be a better person and a more realised person and she just also makes me feel seen, which I think is the most important gift you can give to any person, Paulson shared. When the longtime couple went public with their romance in December 2015, they quickly raised eyebrows for their 31-year age gap. However, Paulson and Taylor have continued to gush over each both on social media and on the red carpet. At the 74th annual Emmy Awards, Paulson and Taylor were praised as couple goals when fans noticed they seemed to be mouthing you look beautiful to each other on the red carpet. Speaking to E! News on the red carpet, the Oceans 8 star revealed that the awards ceremony was special because she was attending alongside her girlfriend. Im here with Holland, my partner, whom I love. And thats it! Paulson said. Although the pair have kept details about their relationship private, Taylor did reveal to People how their very tight, close relationship was strengthened during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, Sarah and I didnt need to be brought closer together, she said in August 2020. We have a very tight, close relationship within each others thoughts. We share everything thats going on. Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Thanksgiving feasts are about to begin, but theres one important thing to consider when the holiday is done: What do you do with all the leftovers? Thursday is just one day away and many Americans are already in planning mode, from buying the turkey to decorating their home for guests. While much of the work begins on Thanksgiving morning, with the fast-paced schedule of cooking dinner, perhaps an even bigger task is trying to finish all the servings of stuffing, turkey, green bean casserole, steamed vegetables, and pies that were leftover from Thanksgiving. Some people may opt to eat their leftovers separately, but why not combine all the Thanksgiving food to create an even bigger dish? Here are five fun meals you can create with your Thanksgiving leftovers this year. Turkey Soup The cold months are fast approaching, so a warm bowl of soup is perfect comfort food for the winter. Begin this dish by bringing your broth to a boil and adding in different seasonings, such as salt and pepper. Then, spice up your soup by adding some of your Thanksgiving leftovers. According to Martha Stewart, one simple recipe for turkey soup calls for eight cups of turkey stock which can be made with turkey bones and water. Then add one and a half cups of shredded cooked turkey leftover from Thanksgiving, as well as leftover vegetables and seasonings used to cook for the holida - lemon wedges, chopped dill, three small carrots, salt, and pepper. The recipe also calls for one non-Thanksgiving-related ingredient: three dried wide egg noodles. After the stock has been seasoned, add the noodles and carrots and return the pot to a boil. Then reduce the heat and simmer until the carrots are tender and the noodles are al dente, which will take about four minutes. Stir in the cooked turkey and let it simmer for about a minute, before sprinkling dill and serving the soup with a lemon wedge on the side. Pot pies A beloved pot pie dish usually consists of meat cooked inside a flaky pastry. However, this pot pie doesnt necessarily have to be filled with chicken or veggies, as you can instead make the savoury meal with the help of some leftovers. One recipe from Bon Appetit - called the Leftover-Turkey Pot Pie - includes a range of Thanksgiving foods, such as half a cup of leftover vegetables, one and one-half cups of cooked turkey, one and one-fourth cups of turkey gravy, and the optional cranberry sauce for serving. (Getty Images/iStockphoto) Other ingredients include one tablespoon of unsalted butter; one tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil; one cup of chopped onion; six ounces of button mushrooms; kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper; one cup of thinly sliced, peeled carrots; one teaspoon of chopped fresh thyme; one-fourth cup of thawed, frozen green peas; one tablespoon of chopped, fresh Italian parsley; one large egg white; one nine-inch pie crust and all-purpose flour. For cooking, begin by putting one tablespoon of butter and one tablespoon of extra-virgin olive oil in a skillet over medium heat, before adding a cup of chopped onion. Cook for for seven minutes, before adding mushrooms with the stems trimmed and caps cup in half. Sprinkle some salt and pepper and stir for about four minutes. The recipe then calls for adding carrots to the skillet and covering it for two minutes. After that, add the leftover cooked vegetables, cooked turkey, turkey gravy, and thyme. As you bring the mixture to a boil, season it with salt and pepper and mix in the parsley and thawed green peas. Then pour the mixture into a glass pie dish and wait for it to cool, which will take about 30 minutes. For the next step, gently brush the rim of the pie dish with one large beaten egg and a teaspoon of water. Now that the filling has cooled down, add the pie crust to the top of the filling and fold the edges of the dough. As you preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, brush the top of the pie with the egg mixture. Then make three to four small slits in the centre before pressing parsley leaves onto the crust. The pie will bake for about 30 to 35 minutes. Casseroles A casserole, whether its filled with green beans or sweet potatoes, is a fan-favourite dish for Thanksgiving. But when the holiday is done, why not create your own casserole out of the stuffing and turkey thats left in the fridge? The Pioneer Woman, also known as foodie Ree Drummond, has one receipe for a casserole called the Thanksgiving Leftover Casserole. Luckily, it allows for all the Thanksgiving leftovers to be used in one dish. The ingredients include four cups of stuffing, four cups of chopped turkey, one and one-half cups of green beans, one and one-half cups of gravy, three cups of mashed potatoes, one large egg yolk, one cup of shredded Monterey jack cheese, and cranberry sauce for serving. Before cooking the dish, begin by preheating the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and buttering the bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Add the stuffing into the dish to create a crust for the casserole. From there, layer the turkey and green beans over the stuffing and pour the gravy on top. Combine the egg yolk and mashed potatoes into another bowl, and pour the mixture over the turkey. Once youve sprinkled cheese onto the dish, cover it with foil, place it on the third rack of the oven, and bake for about 20 minutes. Once 20 minutes have passed, uncover the dish and cook for another 20 to 25 minutes. After taking the dish out of the oven and letting it cool for 10 minutes, the casserole can be served with cranberry sauce. Sandwiches Whether its during a lunch break or at dinner with friends, any type of sandwich makes for a great meal. Instead of buying the lettuce and tomatoes for your usual sandwich, now you have the opportunity to turn your Thanksgiving leftovers into a delectable sandwich. (Getty Images/iStockphoto) In the recipe for Delishs Best Thanksgiving Sandwich - which makes two sandwiches - the ingredients include two tablespoons of mayonnaise, one tablespoon of Dijon mustard, four slices of toasted sourdough bread, two cups of roasted turkey, half a cup of mashed potatoes, half a cup of cranberry sauce, half a cup of stuffing, one fourth cup of warmed gravy, and one fourth cup of baby spinach. To prepare the sandwich, begin by mixing mayo and mustard into a small bowl and spreading it on one side of the two pieces of bread. Add one cup of turkey, one-fourth cup of mashed potatoes, two tablespoons of cranberry sauce, and one-fourth cup of stuffing onto the bread slices. Finish off each sandwich with two tablespoons of gravy and spinach, before placing the second piece of bread on top - making the ultimate Thanksgiving sandwich. Quiches Although the savoury pastry is typically filled with cheese and meat, make the quiche your own with the help of Thanksgiving leftovers. According to the Food Network, one recipe calls for a nine-inch frozen pie shell. To make the quiches filling, assemble one cup of crumbled stuffing, one cup of chopped turkey, one cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese, one-fourth cup of parsley leaves, kosher salt and pepper. For the custard in the dish, youll need one and one-fourth cups of half and half, three large eggs, one-fourth teaspoon of grated nutmeg, kosher salt, and ground black pepper. To make the quiche, begin by partially baking the empty pie shell without the filling - which you can do by following the directions on the package. Then, create your filling by sprinkling the turkey and stuffing into the pie shell, topping it off with parsley and cheddar. Next, season the dish with salt and pepper. For the custard, mix the half and half, nutmeg, salt, and pepper in one bowl. Finally, pour the mixture over the filling. Set the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and let it bake for about 35 to 45 minutes. Give the quiche at least 30 minutes to cool, and serve! Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Gen-Z-ers reportedly want older generations to ditch leggings for flared pants. For years, Gen-Z has actively campaigned against the millennial-beloved skinny jeans, but it seems as though now they have found a new target to charge with crimes against fashion: leggings. These leg-hugging, often jet-black pants have long been a versatile item in any persons wardrobe, but young people have reportedly replaced them with yoga pants, also known as flared leggings. Influencers including Emma Chamberlain have championed the style, which saw a resurgence during the pandemic when athleisure was at its peak. These flared leggings take a page out of the early 2010s in their shape and style, but set themselves apart by their stretchier, softer fabrics that make them more lounge-friendly. They are typically sold in solid colors, with the early 2010s penchant for absurd patterns and neon hues staying in the past for good. The flared legging versus yoga pants debate has officially commenced, LOfficiels Hannah Amini wrote. Millennials old enough to have owned a pair (or two, or three) of the bedazled waistband VS Pink pants hold steadfast to yoga pants, while Gen Z claim the re-discovery of flared leggings. Lululemon reportedly weighed in on the debate with a poll on X, formerly known as Twitter, that asked their followers to vote between leggings and yoga pants. The winner of the popularity contest was yoga pants by a longshot. Although Gen-Z typically favours baggier silhouttes, the flared hem and Y2K pedigree give the yoga pant a chic, versatile edge. Amini noted, They perfectly bridged the gap between comfortable workout gear and everyday-appropriate attire. In a video, TikTok user Hannah Brown who was seen sporting black leggings tucked into ankle socks and low sneakers in true late 2010s fashion asked viewers, Hot girls on TikTok, what are we wearing to run errands? After receiving an influx of replies and suggestions, Brown decided to compile all the responses in a video that showed viewers a list of hot girl errand outfits. In the majority of the feedback she received, she was told to ditch the leggings and socks combo in favour of flared pants. Commenters advised her to head to affordable spots like Aerie, or more luxe options like Bleusalt to find the flared leggings of her dreams. In a follow-up video, Brown noted that Gen-Z typically styles these flared leggings with clog-like shoes, like Birkenstocks or the low-top Uggs popularised by supermodel Bella Hadid. She opted to use the Aerie flared leggings, which have a v-like waist detailing that enhances the wearers hourglass figure or creates the illusion that it exists. Today senior editor Francesca Cocchi cosigned the yoga pant resurgence and noted her preference for Aeries version of the popular pant: I truly live in these yoga pants or what the cool kids call flare leggings. Ive owned countless yoga pants and leggings from various brands over the years (going all the way back to my high school gymnastics days), but this is by far the most comfortable and flattering pair Ive tried. Flared leggings or yoga pants are the cozy loungewear update that reportedly havent caused too much of an uproar amongst millennials, and are arguably not as divisive as skinny jeans. Theyre far too comfortable to hate on. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Jamal Hinton and Wanda Dench went viral seven years ago when the 66-year-old grandma accidentally texted the stranger inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner. Now, the two have forged a lifelong friendship as their Thanksgiving tradition continues, and have even become business partners. Back in 2016, the Arizona grandmother texted the number she thought belonged to her grandson. Instead, she accidentally messaged then 17-year-old Hinton, who documented the mix-up in a series of viral tweets. Rather than ignore the unknown number, the two sent each other selfies. Youre not my grandma, Hinton replied, before asking if he could still come to Thanksgiving dinner. Of course you can, Dench responded. Thats what grandmas do feed everyone. That Thanksgiving, Hinton actually made the trip from Tempe, Arizona, to Mesa to join the Dench family for dinner. The unlikely friends have celebrated together ever since. Now, their viral friendship has even inspired an upcoming Netflix movie, an alkaline black water brand, and a partnership with Airbnb. On 1 November, the 24-year-old shared a selfie with Dench on Instagram in honour of their special announcement. To celebrate our eighth Thanksgiving together (yes, eight!), were partnering with @airbnb this year to host a couple extra seats at our table, Hinton captioned the post. Booking for our favorite holiday tradition opens November 14 at 11am MST at the link in our bios. Join us! For just $16, Hinton and Dench are offering a one-night stay with them at a home in Prescott Valley, Arizona, on Thanksgiving. According to Airbnb, the booking price is a special nod to the year they spent their first Thanksgiving together. The booking period has already closed, meaning one lucky person will be spending the holiday with the viral pair. Some may recognise us from our viral text mishap that led to our first Thanksgiving together back in 2016. And eight years later, were practically family, the listing reads. To commemorate our lasting friendship, were excited to become Airbnb Hosts and welcome new guests into our holiday tradition, creating meaningful connections in the process. Our unexpected friendship may have started accidentally, but our love for meeting new people has kept it going strong almost a decade later. Thats why this year, were expanding our annual tradition and inviting new guests to spend Thanksgiving with us at Wandas home - because thats what grandmas do: feed everyone. A lot has changed since 2016, when Dench accidentally texted Hinton inviting him to Thanksgiving. In 2020, Dench and her husband Lonnie were both diagnosed with Covid-19 but Lonnie was sent to the hospital with pneumonia. Sadly, her husband passed away that year but Dench, her grandson, and her daughter met up with Hinton and his girlfriend, Mikaela, to keep the tradition alive. Hinton also made sure to send their support for Dench during the difficult time. I heard some rustling at my front door, and I opened it up and Jamal and Mikaela were dropping off a whole bunch of food and gifts and stuff, Dench previously told Today. A week after his passing, Hinton shared a heartwarming video of himself and his girlfriend at lunch with the couple, and captioned the tweet: We miss you Lonnie. Dench has also revealed how her relationship with Hinton has taught her that friendship has no age limit. Jamal taught me that age made absolutely no difference, she told Today. She recalled one time when she and her husband ate dinner with Hinton and his girlfriend at a restaurant, and the couples lost all track of time. Thats when it dawned on me that there doesnt have to be a generation gap to have friendships, she explained. So now I look at a lot of young people in a different light than I used to and I make it a point to talk and get to know them. Hes changed my life a lot, I know that. In 2022, Hinton announced on Thanksgiving that he and Dench had gone from family to business partners. The friends launched an alkaline black water brand together, called Black MP. From year one as strangers, to year seven as family but now BUSINESS PARTNERS! Hinton captioned a selfie of the pair holding up their alkaline black water. Im very thankful for my family, friends, fans. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} In true performer form, Jennifer Lawrence comically played off a wardrobe malfunction outside Saks Fifth Avenue at a Dior event on 20 November. Lawrence, 33, welcomed guests to Diors Carousel of Dreams celebration in honour of their collaboration with the Manhattan department store for their holiday windows. The No Hard Feelings actor was asked to speak and lead the official countdown to the light show next to Saks CEO Marc Metrick and Delphine Arnault, the CEO of Christian Dior. Lawrence may not have been anticipating any more than pops of applause from the crowd, but her belt buckle had other plans last night. As she approached the podium beside Metrick and Arnault, a loud crackle rang through the microphone in front of her, causing her to jump. The sharp volume of the microphone, in tandem with her startled reaction, threw her Dior belt for a loop the buckle burst open. In a video published by W Magazine, the Silver Linings Playbook star can be heard saying, Thank you... Oh my god, as her black belt flings off her waist. Lawrence immediately covered her mouth, giggling with flushed cheeks. Im so sorry that was so loud and my belt popped off, she said. However, the on-screen regular quickly calmed down and shifted back into character to get on with the unveiling. Ive had the honour of being a part of the Dior family for quite some time now, she said. Looking around, this feels like the perfect place to celebrate the holidays. Three... two... one... lets light up the night, Lawrence continued with Metrick, turning to watch the beautiful blue hues fill the store front. Fireworks shot out of the roof as professional dancers in all-black chiffon twirled about in the road. A few online viewers couldnt tell what actually happened or why Lawrence was so taken aback. Yet, others reveled in her minor wardrobe malfunction, laughing it off with her and complimenting her composure. Haha she wanted to laugh so much, a fan noted, while another curious TikTok user asked: What is it that falls? Her belt, W Magazine replied, prompting the confused viewer to add: Oh, my gosh. lol. I watched it 10 times trying to figure it out. Some fans thought the entire address seemed scarily similar to a scene that would happen in one of the Hunger Games movies. No joke its giving capital hunger games vibes, one person confessed. Another agreed: Shes a part of the capital now. In accordance with the start of the holiday season in the Big Apple, Macys exhibited its 2023 holiday window displays on 16 November. The theme of the holidays seems to be carousels this year with Macys revealing vibrant cases of animated animals brought to life, sitting under the rotating ride. Candy cane wall paper was wrapped around objects in the cases while glistening green pines lined the outer edges. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Watch as Thanksgiving balloons are inflated on Wednesday, 22 November, before floating through New York City for Thursdays Macys parade. Twenty-five balloons will be on display through the streets of the city, including a Beagle Scout Snoopy and a Pikachu. The parade will also feature 31 floats, 18 celebrities, 11 marching bands, and six balloonicles, Macys said. The first Macys parade was held in 1924 when New York City store employees put on a show in the hope that it would inspire people to shop - it even included live animals in the show. Inflatable characters were introduced in 1927 when artist and puppeteer Tony Sarg designed a Felix the Cat balloon. Tomorrows events will start at 8.30am ET and end around noon. The route will run south from West 77th Street & Central Park West on the Upper West Side to Macys Herald Square in the Garment District. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A mother sparked online debate after she was photographed breastfeeding her child during a ride at Disney Worlds EPCOT. Meredith Barnyak and her husband Jeremy had travelled to Florida along with her mother and stepfather to introduce their children Graham, 3, and Poppy, 1, to the most magical place on earth, Walt Disney World. The family had been on a ride, with Ms Barnyak holding Poppy in her arms when the one-year-old began to squirm. She would just pull on my shirt and I thought, OK, its dark out. Were all humans. Were all honestly going to enjoy the ride a lot better and youll be happier being fed, Ms Barnyak told Today. She added that it was normal for her to breastfeed her daughter whenever she needed it, which so happened to be the Frozen Ever After ride. I am a pretty big proponent of any way you can feed your baby you should be able to do it in any place. On a lot of Disney rides, theres a camera that usually snaps photos of the riders, and when the camera went off on the Frozen Ever After ride, Ms Barnyak said she felt mortified. She laughed to the outlet, 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. Her cousin Jo Goddard - who runs the womens lifestyle website, Cup of Jo - asked Ms Barnyak if she could post the photo from the ride to her Instagram page. Ms Goddard posted the photo with the caption, My cousin @meredithbarnyak being an absolute MOM on this Disney ride. Ms Barnyak thought the photo was funny and didnt care that it was going on social media. 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. But among comments with messages of support, were comments expressing concern that bordered on mom-shaming. Not to be a stick in the mud but this seemskinda dangerous?? one commenter wrote. Am I overestimating the thrill level on this ride? The rest of the adults seem to be clinging on pretty tight! Another added that Ms Barnyak breastfeeding her daughter on the ride was stupid, dangerous, and irresponsible, while another commented that the mother had ruined the photo for other ridegoers with her breastfeeding. Others defended Ms Barnyak, pointing out the double standard mothers face. 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! someone wrote. But, when we see a mother doing as she knows best, we are so prone to be more critical. The mother found herself surprised by the negativity, pointing out that her entire was strapped in safely with seatbelts, and her husband could be seen holding their three-year-old son Graham tightly in his arms. Both of them had been holding their children securely. I guess if you look at this picture, it might look like its an intense ride. But its a boat ride, she explained to the outlet. Theres no seatbelts. Its a very nice relaxing ride except that there is a drop that you dont see coming because its dark. And thats what that photo was taken. Ms Barnyak added that she wouldnt have breastfed her daughter if the ride was anything but safe. If anything, I felt like it was actually more secure because she was in one place versus me having to juggle her moving around. I wouldnt have breastfed my child if it was a roller coaster, she said. According to the Disney Parks website, the Frozen Ever After ride is family-friendly, safe, and appropriate for people of all ages and any height. The ride is reportedly slow with little to no drops. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The Duke and Duchess of Sussex would not turn down a Christmas invitation from the royal family if they were asked, reports claim. Senior members of the family traditionally gather to spend the festive period at Sandringham House the late Queens country estate in Norfolk. It is understood that Harry and Meghan are open to joining the royals, having last done so in 2018 when they were photographed walking to church alongside the Prince and Princess of Wales. However, no arrangements have been made yet for the Duke and Duchess to attend the Christmas and New Year festivities, according to a source close to the couple. I cant imagine the Sussexes would decline an invitation to spend time with His Majesty. As of yet, there have not been any invitations for the holidays, a source told The Sunday Times. Prince William, Kate (L), pictured with Harry and Meghan in 2018 (PA) A Christmas invitation would mark a move towards reconciliation after claims of animosity between Harry, Meghan and the royals. But another insider told the MailOnline that an invite for the Sussexes may not go down well with the family. They said it would be bizarre to think that Harry and Meghan could waltz back in and allow bygones to be bygones if only someone would be good enough invite them. It seems as if they are really doubling down on their reconciliation strategy. Which begs the question, why now? Could it be that they have realised moaning about how awful being a member of the Royal Family is, isnt such a great strategy after all? Harry and Meghan left royal duties in 2020. Since their departure, the couple has discussed the difficulties they faced within the royal family in their Netflix docu-series and during a sit-down interview with Oprah. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their interview with Oprah Winfrey (PA Media) Harry also released his tell-all memoir Spare, which had a string of claims including Prince William attacking him as well as describing the hardships Meghan faced while part of the family. Last week Meghan was seen walking down Hollywoods red carpet for Variety's Power of Women Awards after extracts were published from a new book detailing Harrys alienation from his family. Omid Scobies book Endgame, which is published on 28 November, describes a new palace drama. According to the book, it dives deep into the current state of the British monarchy, an unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the throne, a Queen willing to go to dangerous lengths to preserve her image, and a prince forced to start a new life after being betrayed by his own family. The book claims: Queen Elizabeth IIs death ruptured the already-fractured foundations of the House of Windsor, and dismantled the protective shield around it. With an institution long plagued by antiquated ideas around race, class and money, the monarchy and those who prop it up are now exposed and at odds with a rapidly modernizing world. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} On Thursday 23 November, Americans will be hard at work to prepare their Thanksgiving dinner, with foods on the menus ranging from a roasted turkey to a green bean casserole. Aside from the dishes served in the lavish feast, which can vary based on families cultures and traditions, Thanksgiving is also the annual holiday for people to commemorate all that theyre grateful for. In the midst of planning the big meal, theres also a huge range of ingredients that need to be purchased at your local grocery store. However, since Thanksgiving Day is a federal holiday in the US, some stores will be completely shut down on the holiday. For example, both Target and Walmart announced permanent closures on the holiday in 2020, with the policy remaining in place ever since. The outbreak of the pandemic had initially pushed these chains to close their doors on Thanksgiving, in order to limit crowding and spread out the shopping season. However, that doesnt mean that all grocery stores will remain closed on Thanksgiving Day. In fact, there are some retailers that you could make your way to on the morning of the holiday, in preparation for your annual feast. Once Thanksgiving Day comes to a close, many stores will be reopening on Friday. From there, shops be operating during their earlier or usual business hours, in preparation for some of the biggest sales of the year. Here are when stores open and close on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday in the US. Whole Foods If youre looking for some fresh produce to cook up a storm, then youre in luck, as Whole Foods is set to be open during the holiday season. However, they will run on a limited schedule, and hours of operation may vary, so be sure to check your local store. Whole Foods stores will be open on Black Friday, with hours of operation depending on location. Costco All Costco stores in the US will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, as noted by the retailers official site. Costco Warehouses will reopen on Friday, with hours depending on store locations. The retailer has already started some of its online sales for Black Friday, with some in-store sales going from 24 November through 27 November. Walmart The retail giant will be closed on the holiday, before reopening the next day for Black Friday, an annual shopping occasion filled with store deals. Walmarts usual hours are from 6am to 11pm every day, but opening times on Black Friday are based on stores locations. Target The beloved retail store will also be closed on Thanksgiving Day before reopening the next day for Black Friday. Hours of operation for the day after Thanksgiving vary based on the stores location. Trader Joes Stores will be closed on 23 November in observance of the federal holiday. Trader Joes stores will reopen on Black Friday, with hours of operation depending on each store. Wegmans While Wegamans will be open on Thanksgiving, hours of operation are limited. For example, one Wegmans store in Brooklyn, New York, will be closed at 4pm, instead of at 11pm like it usually does. Opening and closing times for Wegmans can vary based on the location of the store. Although most Wegmans stores are expected to reopen at 6am on Black Friday, specific opening and closing times vary for each location. Starbucks Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Starbucks told Country Living that stores will be open on Thanksgiving Day. While its usual hours of operation are from 6am to 9pm, stores opening and closing times on the holiday vary based on location. Although Starbucks is expected to operate from 6am to 9pm on Black Friday, specific hours vary for each store. Aldi According to Aldis official website, all stores will be closed on Thanksgiving Day. Aldi will be reopening on Black Friday, as its hours of operation are usually from 8.30am to 9pm. However, specific opening and closing hours vary for each location. Dollar General The low-priced retailer will be open from 7am to 10pm on Thanksgiving Day but times may vary depending on location. You can find out more on the day by heading over to the stores website. Dollar General is expected to be open during its usual hours during Black Friday, with specific closing and opening times based on location. CVS A representative with CVS told ThePioneerWoman.com that most, but not all, CVS locations will be open on Thanksgiving. To check your local store, be sure to head over to the CVS website. On Black Friday, CVS locations will be open during its regular hours. Dunkin Donuts The beloved coffee chain will be open on Thanksgiving Day but with limited hours. Opening and closing times of stores on the holiday vary based on location. Dunkin Donuts with reopen on Black Friday, with its usual hour of operation based on each store. Walgreens Most Walgreens stores will be closed on 23 November this year, according to a press release shared by the brand on 16 November. While this is the first time that Walgreens has closed its doors on the holiday, some 24-hour stores will still be open during certain hours on Thanksgiving Day, depending on store location. Walgreens stores will reopen on 24 November, with opening and closing times depending on the location of the store. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants to ensure that travellers enjoy their Thanksgivings, by sharing clear guidelines for which holiday foods can be brought on planes and which need to be packed in a checked bag. According to the airport security, which is expecting more than 26.8m people to travel between 22 November to 2 December for Thanksgiving, travellers can transport certain solid food items for the holiday in their carry-ons - including pies, cakes, stuffing mix and casseroles. This also means that popular Thanksgiving foods such as marshmallows and sweet potatoes can be transported in a carry-on - as can your turkey. Who are we kidding, we know you always travel with extra room in your carry-on just in case you need to transport the Thanksgiving piece-de-resistance. So fear not, the cooked avian creature can tag along in your carry-on at the airport, TSA explained elsewhere on its website, adding that any "stuffing concoctions" you've created can as well. However, Thanksgiving dinner accompaniments such as cranberry sauce, gravy, and wine all need to be packed in a checked bag, according to TSA, as they are not solids. TSA explains how to travel with food for Thanksgiving (Stock) Basically, if you can spill it, spray it, spread it, pump it or pour it, (say that three times fast) then its not a solid and should be packed in a checked bag, the security agency explains. In addition to outlining which foods can and cannot be brought by a passenger onto the plane, TSA also reminded people travelling for Thanksgiving not to try packing their electric carving knife, or regular knife, in a carry-on. Should be a no-brainer, wouldnt you think? TSA writes. Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York Show all 15 1 / 15 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York Performers walk in front of Macy's Tom Turkey float in the Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York AP Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York The Ronald McDonald balloon is inflated Getty Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York Sinclair's DINO balloon flies as the parade passes down 6th Avenue Reuters Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York An NYPD officer stands by AP Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York The Charlie Brown balloon flies in the parade Reuters Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York A marching band takes part in the parade Reuters Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York A balloon flies in the parade Reuters Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York A performer in the parade AP Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York The Ronald McDonald balloon flies in the parade AP Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York A clown performs in the parade Reuters Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York The Olaf balloon is inflated Getty Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York Flag wavers take part in the parade Reuters Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York Clowns on roller blades perform in the parade Reuters Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York The Charlie Brown balloon is inflated Getty Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade takes place in New York The Tom Turkey float is in place to start the parade Reuters The same rule applies to corkscrews only if they have a blade, as some corkscrews are carry-on approved. As for ice, TSA advises following the 3-1-1 rule, which limits the amount of liquid that can be brought on a plane. According to TSA, to abide by the guideline, the ice needs to remain frozen. For those looking for a way to pass the time because of flight delays, or if you get bored during the holiday, the airport security agency recommends downloading the MyTSA app, which includes a Can I bring feature that lets you type in any item with the app letting you know if it should be checked or carried in a carry-on. Security agency says turkeys are allowed in check-in bags (Stock) You can use it to play a game with your relatives by asking them to guess if an item should be packed in a checked or carry-on bag and using the app to provide the correct answer, TSA jokes. Food aside, TSA wants all travellers to remember the necessity of getting to the airport early, which means two hours prior for a domestic flight and three hours prior to an international flight. What is Thanksgiving? Only a turkey gets to the airport in the last minute during the Thanksgiving travel period, TSA explains. Dont be a turkey! Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} On Saturday, 11 November, the US will honour military veterans of the United States Armed Forces for Veterans Day. Every year, millions of Americans take 11 November off to celebrate soldiers for what used to be called Armistice Day. However, this year, the holiday falls over the weekend, meaning businesses will observe it on Friday 10 November and state and federal buildings will be closed. First enacted by President Woodrow Wilson, Armistice Day was meant to celebrate the Germany and the Allied Nations call for a truce to end World War I. The cease-fire took place on 11 November, at exactly 11am, according to the History.com report. In 1926, Congress passed a bill making Armistice Day an annual national holiday. Years later, Alvin J King from Emporia, Kansas, lobbied to have the name changed to Veterans Day. King did not serve in the US Armed Forces, but his stepson had during World War II. Motivated by his stepsons death, King garnered the support of local officials and veteran service organisations, who eventually helped him get in front of politicians in Washington DC alongside his wife. In 1954, President Dwight D Eisenhower signed off on the name change, officially instituting 11 November as Veterans Day. Congress proceeded to pass what is referred to as the Uniform Monday Holiday Act in 1968, ensuring federal employees would receive three-day weekends to observe key holidays. This meant that Veterans Day would be switched to the fourth Monday in October. Yet, most states continued to honour the day on 11 November. Recognising the significance of the original date, President Gerald Ford signed a law officially making 11 November Veterans Day, and if the day were to be a Saturday, the Friday before would be taken off, or the Monday after if it were a Sunday. Though the law recognises specific federal holidays, this does not mean that individuals working for private businesses are required to have work off. From Veterans Day to Christmas, here are the dates of the 2024 federal holidays. New Years Day: Monday, January 1 Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Monday, January 15 Presidents Day: Monday, February 19 Memorial Day: Monday, May 27 Juneteenth National Independence Day: Wednesday, June 19 Independence Day: Thursday, July 4 Labor Day: Monday, September 2 Indigenous Peoples Day (also observed as Columbus Day): Monday, October 14 Veterans Day: Monday, November 11 Thanksgiving Day: Thursday, November 28 Christmas Day: Wednesday, December 25 Other important days to note: Valentines Day: Wednesday, February 14 St Patricks Day: Sunday, March 17 Good Friday: Friday, March 29 Easter: Sunday, March 31 Passover: Monday, April 22 For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Computer chip and software maker Broadcom has announced it has cleared all regulatory hurdles and plans to complete its $69 billion acquisition of cloud technology company VMware on Wednesday. The company, based in San Jose, California, announced the plan after China joined the list of countries that had given a go-ahead for the acquisition. The announcement came soon after Microsoft acquired video game-maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, in one of the most expensive tech acquisitions in history. It took 18 months for Broadcom to get all the regulatory approvals. The massive buyouts are occurring at a time of heightened anxiety because of turmoil on the global supply chain, war in Europe and the Middle East, and rising prices that have the potential to cool both business and consumer activity. Broadcom's acquisition plan earlier gained approval from Britains competition regulator. Countless businesses and public bodies, including major banks, big retailers, telecom operators and government departments, rely on Broadcom gear and VMware software. The European Commission, the EUs executive arm and top antitrust enforcer, cleared the deal after Broadcom made concessions to address its concerns about competition. Broadcom wants to establish a stronger foothold in the cloud computing market, and VMwares technology allows large corporations to blend public cloud access with internal company networks. VMware, which is based in Palo Alto, California, has close relations with every major cloud company and provider, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. In a statement, Broadcom said it had legal greenlights in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Israel, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and foreign investment control clearance in all necessary jurisdictions. "There is no legal impediment to closing under U.S. merger regulations, it said. There has been a flurry of such deals after technology companies' shares fell from stratospheric levels attained during the pandemic, making such acquisitions more affordable. Broadcom's CEO, Hock Tan, has been among the most aggressive buyers, building out the company with big acquisitions in recent years like Symantec for close to $11 billion in 2019, and CA Technologies for about $19 billion the previous year. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The King has presented honorary MBEs to K-pop band Blackpink at Buckingham Palace in the presence of South Koreas president and first lady. The special investiture on Wednesday morning for Jennie Kim, Jisoo Kim, Lisa Manobal and Rose Park from South Koreas biggest girl group was in recognition of the bands role as advocates for the Cop26 Summit in Glasgow. Charles told the group he was so glad to present the MBEs, adding that it was a marvellous thing to do so in the presence of South Koreas President Yoon Suk Yeol and First Lady Kim Keon Hee during their state visit to the UK. After presenting the MBEs, Charles discussed the bands recent tour and joked to the group: The great thing is that youre still talking to each other after all these years of working together. Charles then told the K-pop band: I hope I should be able to see you perform live at some point. Jennie Kim told Charles that receiving the MBE was the most honourable thing for us. The band, who became the first Korean group to headline a major UK festival during the summer, then posed for photographs alongside Charles and the South Korean president and first lady in Buckingham Palaces 1844 Room. I applaud Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rose ... for their role in bringing the message of environmental sustainability to a global audience as ambassadors for the UKs presidency of Cop26, and later as advocates for the UN sustainable development goals The King One of the bands songs Ddu-Du, Ddu-Du, was played during the guard change at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday morning in honour of the South Korean presidents three-day state visit to the UK. The Band of the Coldstream Guards also played the popular K-pop song, Gangnam Style, by Psy and the Korean folk song, Arirang, before the investiture took place. In his state banquet speech on Tuesday, Charles paid tribute to Koreans interest in protecting the environment and singled out the K-pop group, who released their first album in 2016, for praise. He told the guests: I applaud Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rose, better known collectively as Blackpink, for their role in bringing the message of environmental sustainability to a global audience as ambassadors for the UKs presidency of Cop26, and later as advocates for the UN sustainable development goals. I can only admire how they can prioritise these vital issues, as well as being global superstars. Sadly, when I was in Seoul all those years ago, I am not sure I developed much of what might be called the Gangnam Style! The MBEs were awarded on the recommendation of the UK Government which first appointed Blackpink as Cop26 Advocates in January 2021. In their role as advocates, Blackpink released a series of videos aimed at encouraging young people to learn more about climate change, which Buckingham Palace said resulted in significantly increased engagement with the summit from young audiences. The band have subsequently been appointed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as global ambassadors for the UNs sustainable development goals. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A drug dealer who was arrested after the death of a Cambridge University student has been jailed for four-and-a-half years. Officers tracked down and arrested Benjamin Brown after 20-year-old Keshava Iyengar was found dead in a friends room at Trinity College in Cambridge on March 13 2021, Cambridgeshire Police said. An inquest concluded that the death of Mr Iyengar, who had taken an overdose of anti-anxiety medication, was drug-related. Cambridgeshire Police said it was not possible to prove that Browns actions caused the death of Mr Iyengar, but that he was sentenced for supplying and possessing drugs. It is not possible to prove that Browns actions caused the death of Keshava, but you can say with certainty that drugs ruin lives and there is a reason why some can only be prescribed by a medical professional Dc Dan Harper, Cambridgeshire Police A police investigation had uncovered messages on Mr Iyengars phone from a drug dealer called Lean Xan Man. The dealer described himself as a pharmacist selling a variety of prescription-only drugs through Instagram and Snapchat. Officers identified Lean Xan Man as Brown, 32, of Byrefield Road, Guildford, Surrey. He was arrested on July 27 2021 and a search of his home uncovered drugs, more than 15,000 in cash and sticky labels with his business logo, Cambridgeshire Police said. The force said Brown pleaded guilty to two counts of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs, one count in the supply of class B, two counts in the supply of class C, possession of class A and possession with intent to supply class C. He was sentenced on Friday at Huntingdon Law Courts to four-and-a-half years in prison, Cambridgeshire Police said. The force said the sentencing judge described Browns drug-dealing business as substantial, sophisticated and lucrative. He said that, through greed, Brown had profited from the vulnerabilities of others dependent on prescription medication for conditions such as anxiety. Detective Constable Dan Harper, who investigated the case, said: Brown was running a huge operation from his bedroom in Surrey, which had tragic consequences. It is not possible to prove that Browns actions caused the death of Keshava, but you can say with certainty that drugs ruin lives and there is a reason why some can only be prescribed by a medical professional. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The countrys top scientists were never told about the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, despite Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak claiming they were consulted, the pandemic inquiry has been told. In potentially damaging testimony, Englands chief medical officer Sir Chris Whitty said he and Sir Patrick Vallance, the Governments former chief scientific adviser, were never told about the plan, adding: I think we should have been. And Englands former deputy chief medical officer, Professor Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry that he first heard about Eat Out to Help Out on television and said the scheme didnt feel sensible to me. Sir Chris said he raised objections to Number 10 about how the issue was handled, adding this was aimed at the centre. Earlier this week, Sir Patrick told the inquiry he would be very surprised if Rishi Sunak, then chancellor, had not learned about objections to his plan to help the hospitality industry. In evidence submitted to the inquiry, Mr Sunak said he (did) not recall any concerns about the scheme. During Prime Ministers Questions on Wednesday, Mr Sunak was asked about Sir Patricks comments that advice on the plan had not been sought, and about Mr Johnson later saying scientific advice was sought at all steps in the Covid crisis. Mr Sunak said: It was the case that the Government took advice from scientific advisers and, again, thats exactly what this inquiry will go over. Under questioning from Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, on Wednesday, Sir Chris said: My written statement makes clear there was no consultation. Mr Keith said: I need to put to you that in his witness statement, Boris Johnson says It was properly discussed, including with Chris and Patrick, do you agree with that? Sir Chris replied: On this one, neither Patrick nor I can recall it and I think we would have done. He continued: I made fairly firmly to Number 10, not to the Prime Minister, the view that it would have been prudent, lets put it that way, for them to have thought about discussing it (the EOTHO scheme) before it was launched. And this was aimed at the centre. I was unsurprised that the Treasury and many other ministries were coming up with those schemes it is perfectly legitimate. Number 10 held the ring and so it may well be correct that the Prime Minister was under the impression we had been consulted, but it was not the fact that we were consulted and that difference, I think, is probably worth just highlighting. Sir Jonathan was also asked whether he was consulted on the scheme. Absolutely not, the first I heard about it was on TV, he said. When asked what view he would have taken had he been consulted, Sir Jonathan added: Had I been consulted I wouldnt have made any distinction between Eat Out to Help Out and any other epidemiological event that brought different households into close contact with each other for the purposes of socialising, eating and consuming alcohol. But I would have said this is exactly encouraging what weve been trying to suppress and get on top of in the last few months. So it didnt feel sensible to me. The inquiry also heard about Sir Jonathans instinct which told him in mid January 2020 that the new virus found in China would lead to a global pandemic. But Sir Jonathan, known for his quirky metaphors during pandemic-era press conferences, said that he agreed with Sir Chriss approach to wait for more data before sounding the alarm. Im the one who chases the ball, Chris is the one who would look at the ball first and make a more qualified and thoughtful decision about whether it was worth chasing, he said. There is that difference, and I understood entirely that I was conveying my instincts at that point. But I think Sir Chris was entirely right, given his much more profound experience of government, that he knew when to press buttons that I didnt. In any case, I was subordinate to Chris, and I respect the chain of command, so I was perfectly content with the response that I received. And it wouldnt have been possible to kind of wake up Sage and wake up Cobra because I was getting a bit excited about something based on instinct and there wasnt a lot of data at that point. However, he did say that measures introduced to curb the spread of the virus in March arrived not a day too soon, and with hindsight could have been introduced sooner. Elsewhere, Sir Patrick also told the inquiry the second lockdown in November 2020 was not inevitable though ministers did not have much choice by the time it came around. By the time it got to the stage of the second lockdown, given the principal aims of ministers to minimise mortality, I couldnt see many options, he said. However, Sir Chris added if measures such as a circuit-breaker to limit contact were introduced earlier in September, or tiered restrictions were imposed earlier and had time to work, there remains the possibility that the second lockdown might not have been necessary or might not have been as long. I dont think I ever saw anybody on the record, or anybody sensible, aiming for it (herd immunity) as a goal Sir Chris Whitty He said the fact the third lockdown was in response to the spread of a new variant meant there were very limited options, but that the onerous second lockdown was not necessarily inevitable had previous decisions been different. Regarding the first lockdown, Prof Whitty said the UK was already in deep trouble and could not afford to wait to see if earlier measures would bring the R number for the rate of infection below one. He explained: It wasnt just a matter of trying to pull it down just below one. It was really trying to shrink this wave as fast as possible. So I think I dont recall any serious debate that said at this point lets wait. I think the debate at this point was the numbers here are looking reasonably stark. Sir Chris also told the inquiry that making herd immunity via people catching the infection a policy goal at the start of the pandemic was inconceivable. He said he argued against the idea and it was never a Government aim. Former senior adviser to then-prime minister Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, has dismissed as bullshit the insistence of Matt Hancock, former health secretary, and other ministers, that herd immunity was not considered. Mr Cummings has said herd immunity by Sep was literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings until it was ditched. Speaking to the inquiry, Prof Whitty said it would have been very dangerous to adopt such a plan. He said public debate about this led to considerable confusion where there was a large amount of chatter by people who had at best half understood the issue. Sir Chris explained it would have been inconceivable to make herd immunity through natural infection as an actual policy goal as it would have led to extraordinarily high loss of life. People in risk categories, such as older people, people with disabilities and people with immunosuppression, had a very significant risk of mortality, he added. He said: I dont think I ever saw anybody on the record, or anybody sensible, aiming for it (herd immunity) as a goal. Sir Chris also told the inquiry: Putting in restrictions in mid-March 2020 were the antithesis to Boris Johnsons whole philosophy, but he made the move as he recognised how dire things were getting. Sir Chris was not convinced that all parts of the Downing Street machinery were seized of the urgency of action against coronavirus in early March 2020. Elaborating on which part of the system may not have fully understood, Sir Chris said: I think actually it was a relatively widespread lack of understanding of where we were going to head. I think the people who had been heavily involved in looking at this, and you know certainly Mr Cummings, and many others, I think had realised by now that this was heading in a very difficult direction. But I dont think everybody in the building did. Everyone wanted to avoid closing schools but it became clear keeping them open did not look like a safe option. Sir Chris said comments he made on the risk of behavioural fatigue where people would stop adhering to restrictions were his most prominent communications error. He said he was told off by his behavioural science colleagues for his phrasing. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Four men have been jailed for more than 170 years between them after a council worker was executed in her own home. Environmental health worker Ashley Dale was killed when gunman James Witham, 41, forced his way into her home in Old Swan, Liverpool, in the early hours of August 21 last year, and opened fire with a Skorpion submachine gun. At Liverpool Crown Court on Wednesday, Witham, Niall Barry, 26, Joseph Peers, 29, and Sean Zeisz, 28, were all given life sentences with minimum terms of between 41 and 47 years for Ms Dales murder, as the court heard that what the group did to the 28-year-old amounted to an execution. Ashley Dale, 28, was found with a gunshot wound in the back garden of her home on 21 August last year (Merseyside Police/PA) Witham, of Huyton, was jailed for a minimum of 43 years, while Barry, of Tuebrook, who was described by the prosecution as the malign presence behind Ms Dales killing, was sentenced to a minimum term of 47 years. Peers, of Roby, said to be a foot soldier who drove Witham to the scene, was sentenced to at least 41 years, and Zeisz, of Huyton, who was accused of organising and encouraging the attack with Barry, was told to serve a minimum of 42 years. The four men were found guilty following a seven-week trial of the murder of Ms Dale, conspiracy to murder her boyfriend Lee Harrison and conspiracy to possess a a prohibited weapon a Skorpion sub-machine gun and ammunition with intent to endanger life. Clockwise from top left: Joseph Peers, James Witham, Niall Barry and Sean Zeisz, who have been jailed for Ms Dales murder (PA) Ms Dales death was one of three fatal shootings within the space of a week in Liverpool in August last year. Nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel died when Thomas Cashman, 35, chased a convicted drug dealer into her home in Dovecot the day after Ms Dales murder, and Sam Rimmer, 22, was killed in Dingle on 16 August. It can now be reported that two of the men convicted of murdering Ms Dale, Zeisz and Barry, were named as potential suspects in the shooting of Olivia, as well as Ian Fitzgibbon, 28, who stood trial for Ms Dales murder but was found not guilty. Olivia Pratt-Korbel was shot dead in her own home a day after Ms Dales murder (PA Media) Ms Dales killing came in the wake of a feud between Barry and Mr Harrison, which started years before over the theft of drugs and was re-ignited at the Glastonbury festival in June 2022, heard the jury. During the festival, Barry was heard threatening to stab Mr Harrison and Zeisz was assaulted by a group said to include Jordan Thompson a friend of Mr Harrisons and member of the Hillside organised crime group with which he was associated. Voicenotes and messages sent to friends by Ms Dale in the two months before her death were played during the trial describing the fall-out, which intensified when mutual friend Rikki Warnick took his own life in July last year. During the four mens sentencing, the court heard Ms Dale was in her living room wearing her pyjamas and watching TV when a man wearing a balaclava smashed through her front door holding a machine gun. When Ms Dale tried to flee, gunman Witham pursued her, ignoring her screams, heard the court. What Witham did can properly be described as an execution. Ms Dale (right) with her mother Julie (Merseyside Police/PA Wire) Passing sentence, Mr Justice Goose concluded that the motive of the killing was a deep-seated drugs feud between Barry and Harrison. The murder was planned by the four men, he said, adding that Witham wickedly fired the fatal shot at Ms Dale as she was vulnerable and defenceless, before leaving her to die while she screamed. He described Ms Dales murder while in the prime of her life as brutal and beyond understanding. Witham had admitted manslaughter, claiming he was acting alone and believed the house was empty when he went to Leinster Road in the early hours and fired 10 shots downstairs, one which fatally struck Ms Dale, and five in an upstairs bedroom. During the trial, the prosecution alleged Witham was the fall guy and was lying to get his co-defendants out of it. Ms Dale with her father Steve Dunn (PA) Mr Harrison, who did not co-operate with police following his girlfriends death, was out on the night of the murder and has since spent time in Dubai, the court heard. Following the sentencing, senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Cath Cummings said that a group came together to seek revenge for longstanding drugs disputes, which resulted in the brutal and senseless murder of Ms Dale in the safest place she thought she would be, her home. She said: As James Witham stormed into Ashleys home that night, wearing a balaclava, firing from a Scorpion sub-machine gun, he took away Ashley, an ambitious, bubbly, charismatic, young woman. The community rocked, her family and friends left devastated. While [the family] will never get over losing their Ashley following todays result I and the rest of the Team hope they will find some comfort in the knowledge that those responsible will spend the rest of their life behind bars. She added: Let today be a clear message that Merseyside Police and communities of Merseyside will not tolerate the actions of those who are intent on destroying lives. Together we will be relentless in identifying those who carry or use firearms ensuring those individuals or groups are removed from our streets. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Sir James Dyson has been forced to defend his severely damaged reputation after an article in the Daily Mirror suggested he was a hypocrite, the inventor has told the High Court. Sir James, 76, returned to a witness box in the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday for the second day of his evidence in a libel trial against the newspapers publisher Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) over an article published in January 2022. In the Daily Mirror article, journalist Brian Reade referred to the engineer as the vacuum-cleaner tycoon who championed Vote Leave due to the economic opportunities it would bring to British industry before moving his global head office to Singapore. He continued: Kids, talk the talk but then screw your country and if anyone complains, tell them to suck it up. Sir James subsequently brought a claim against MGN for libel, describing the allegations in the article as a vicious and vitriolic personal attack. MGN is defending the claim, including on the basis of honest opinion. During the second day of his cross-examination, Sir James was asked about the January 2019 announcement that the Dyson company would be establishing a global headquarters in Singapore. This was a vicious and vitriolic attack on me personally ... We got in touch with you (MGN) and you didnt bother to reply. We offered to settle with an apology and a correction at an early stage ... I am forced to continue to defend my reputation which you have severely damaged Sir James Dyson The inventor said he did not believe he had been hypocritical, adding: I dont think it was a vote of no confidence in Britain because since Brexit I have continued to invest in Britain I have continued to do so. Adrienne Page KC, for MGN, asked Sir James why he felt like you have to spend 1 million on a lawsuit, when he had a significant public status, including an article under his name in The Telegraph newspaper rebutting the allegation he had behaved hypocritically. He said: This was a vicious and vitriolic attack on me personally We got in touch with you (MGN) and you didnt bother to reply. He continued: We offered to settle with an apology and a correction at an early stage I am forced to continue to defend my reputation which you have severely damaged. Ms Page asked Sir James: Would you describe yourself as thin-skinned? The inventor replied: No. In his written evidence for the case, Sir James said the allegations represent a personal attack on all that I have done and achieved in my lifetime and are highly distressing and hurtful. He continued: Most importantly, they undermine all the work I have done trying to help young people with an interest in engineering to gain the necessary training as well as practical experience and employment opportunities in this field. After reading parts of this evidence to the court, Ms Page suggested it was a huge exaggeration and that Mr Reades article was an expression of his opinion. Sir James denied any exaggeration, adding: It is not the opinion of an honest man. At the start of the trial on Tuesday, Justin Rushbrooke KC, for Sir James, said in written submissions that the articles, both in print and online, constituted a serious and unjustified slur on Sir Jamess reputation, business and personal. He added that an honest opinion is supposed to give latitude but it is not a licence for a journalist to mislead the reader. Mr Rushbrooke also pointed out that the word screwed could be seen as meaning underhand and discreditable. The Mirror will vigorously defend the honest opinions of our columnists which we consider in this case to be essentially indisputable MGN spokesperson But Ms Page told the court the words in the article were substantially correct and that Sir James could not dictate how the commentator posed them. She added that the article is pitched to a lay audience, against a notorious background to 2019 and he is doing it pithily. On how the reference to having screwed the country could be viewed, the court heard that this may not necessarily be limited to the potential impact on the Dyson corporation. In written submissions, she added that Sir Jamess approach to the legal claim has been markedly unreasonable, wholly disproportionate and abusive. In a statement, a Dyson spokesman said Sir James had brought the legal claim as a last resort, adding that the allegations in the article were vicious, vitriolic and attacked his personal character in the very worst way. But an MGN spokesperson said: The Mirror will vigorously defend the honest opinions of our columnists which we consider in this case to be essentially indisputable. The trial before Mr Justice Jay is set to conclude on Friday, with a decision expected at a later date. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Police are hunting 20 men involved in counter-protests as hundreds of thousands of people attended a pro-Palestinian demonstration in London on Armistice Day. The Metropolitan Police said there were several incidents of violent disorder across the capital, including around Whitehall, on November 11. Scotland Yard has released images of the men, who detectives are investigating for a range of alleged offences including inciting racial hatred, racially aggravated public order offences and assault on police officers. Counter-protesters clash with police in Parliament Square (PA) Speaking at a press interview with The Independent, Detective Sergeant Matt Simpson said that 11 November had been a really difficult and busy day, and that a number of officers had been assaulted in the course of their duties. Wee looking through CCTV, collecting it all in, and the team are going through and trying to identify who has committed offences. Its a case of slowly going through it frame by frame to identify the offenders, he said. Explaining their process in carrying out arrests, he added that officers are occasionally unaware a crime has taken place until it has been reviewed later on camera, which leads to further arrests post-incident. The Met confirmed that they would be using the term counter-protester to describe the group involved in the disorder at Whitehall, given that they were reacting to the news regarding the pro-Palestinian march. (PA) Commander Kyle Gordon said: Public order policing doesnt end when the event is over, and since remembrance weekend our teams have been working around the clock to identify those involved in any criminality that took place on the day. Theyve trawled through hundreds of hours of CCTV footage and are continuing to review evidence to help with enquiries. We need the publics help to track down these men, who we want to speak to in connection with a range of offences. As with any public order event, we know that people may have travelled from outside of London, so were asking for people across the country to take a look at those pictured and get in touch if they recognise anyone. The force said it made 145 arrests on the day for offences for possession of weapons, criminal damage, public order, inciting racial hatred and possession of drugs. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A woman was killed in front of a number of children at a property in South Gloucestershire, with a man arrested on suspicion of murder. Police were called to an address in Wedmore Close in Kingswood at around 3.50pm on Monday, after receiving reports of a serious assault. Upon arrival, they found a woman with significant injuries but despite the best efforts of paramedics, she was pronounced dead at the scene at around 4.30pm. A post-mortem examination is yet to take place while a 43-year-old man, who was known to the victim, was arrested from within the property. In a statement, police said that a number of children were inside and were thankfully unhurt, yet are understandably distressed about the situation. Chief Inspector Dan Forster said a number of children were inside the property (Avon and Somerset Police ) They are currently being looked after by a family member and are being supported by specially trained officers. Neighbourhood Policing Chief Inspector Dan Forster, of Avon and Somerset Police, said: Our Major Crime Investigation Team will carry out a full investigation into what happened. At this time, the incident is being treated as an isolated one involving people known to each other. A cordon is currently in place to protect the scene and to allow crime scene investigators to carry out a forensic examination of it. Residents of Wedmore Close can expect this cordon to be in place for at least a couple of days as all the necessary inquiries are completed. To provide reassurance to them, and the wider community, neighbourhood officers will be carrying out increased patrols in the area over the coming days. Incidents like this are very rare but when they do happen, we know they cause significant concern so wed urge anyone with worries or questions to speak to an officer or contact their local neighbourhood policing team. He added that the Professional Standards Department had been notified and a mandatory referral will be made to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) to assess the forces response to the incident. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} An armed policeman who crashed while racing to the scene of the Streatham terrorist attack has said he failed due to split-second error and let people down. Pc Paul Fisher, 46, was behind the wheel of an unmarked BMW X5 when he lost control and ran in to the back of a taxi drivers Toyota before hitting a Ford Fiesta and a wall. The police car which Fisher was driving did not have its blue lights on at the time because they had accidentally been switched off by one of the occupants, his trial at Southwark Crown Court heard. I failed that day. I let people down and I can only apologise for that Pc Paul Fisher The vehicle, which did have its siren on, had been switched to arrival mode and only had flashing rear red lights displayed, the court was told. Fisher, who denies dangerous driving, was responding along with two other armed officers in his vehicle to the stabbing spree carried out by terrorist Sudesh Amman in February 2020. The 20-year-old grabbed a large kitchen knife from a hardware store on Streatham High Road in south London and stabbed two members of the public at random. Little over a minute later, he was shot dead after pivoting to charge at two undercover police officers. Fisher was on a surveillance operation at the time of the crash, monitoring Amman after his release from jail 10 days earlier. The drivers of the two vehicles which Fishers car collided with a man and a woman were left with minor injuries, the court heard. The female officer travelling in the back of the police car suffered a cut head, and Fisher was bleeding from the ear after the crash. Fishers passengers did not have time to fasten their seatbelts, jurors heard. The officer described the moment he found out the terrorist had begun stabbing people as pandemonium. In a statement given to police, Fisher, who joined the force in 2010, said he believed Amman might be wearing a suicide vest and wanted to get to the scene quickly. He continued: The radio operator said hes stabbing people. I had to use my driving skills to the maximum of my ability to literally save lives. I believed he would continue to stab people seconds can make a difference. The whole way through the drive I had images of someone attacking people on Streatham High Road Pc Paul Fisher Fisher raced to the scene from Gipsy Hill Police Station, reaching speeds of more than 80mph, before his vehicle crashed on a bend, the court heard. He said: I remember braking for the bend but the vehicle seemed to drift. I started emergency braking and steering to the right in an attempt to avoid the vehicle. The next thing I remember there was dust everywhere which had come from the airbags. The vehicle was still moving and there was a second impact. I was, and still am, annoyed with myself. I failed due to split-second error. Giving evidence on Wednesday, Fisher said: At no point did my colleagues turn around and say Paul youre driving too fast. If my colleagues had said youre driving too fast I would have stopped. It was my mistake, I failed that day. I let people down and I can only apologise for that. Asked by prosecutor Ben Lloyd if he wanted to get to the scene of the stabbing at whatever cost, Fisher replied: I do not accept that. He added: The whole way through the drive I had images of someone attacking people on Streatham High Road. The trial continues. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The heartbroken mother of one of the four boys whose bodies were pulled from the wreck of a submerged car has said her nightmare will never end amid fears the teenagers lay undiscovered for days. A major police search operation was launched on Tuesday after Harvey Owen, Jevon Hirst, Wilf Fitchett and Hugo Morris were last heard from on Sunday morning following a camping trip to Snowdonia National Park in north Wales amid fears the teenagers lay undiscovered for days. Among their concerned parents was Crystal Owen, the mother of Harvey, who wrote on social media of how she was frantic with worry, after believing they had been staying at a friends grandfathers house, not on a camping trip. She spoke to the BBC as she was travelling from their hometown of Shrewsbury on Tuesday morning, telling the broadcaster she was on her way to help with the search. The heartbroken mother of Harvey Owen (pictured) whose body was pulled from the wreck of a submerged car has said her nightmare will never end (North Wales Police/PA Wire) However, the first piece of devastating news broke when North Wales Police announced they had found the teenagers silver Ford Fiesta. The car appeared to have left the road on the A4085 at Garreg, near Tremadog, and was found overturned and partially submerged in water. Then, at 4:30pm on Tuesday, North Wales Police confirmed four bodies had been recovered from inside the vehicle. Clockwise from top left: Wilf Henderson, Hugo Morris, Jevon Hirst and Harvey Owen were last seen travelling in a Silver Ford Fiesta on Sunday in the Harlech/Porthmadog area (PA) As tributes poured in from across their community in Shropshire, Harveys devastated mother again posted on social media, her worry replaced by a nightmare. She wrote: I feel like Im in a nightmare I wish I could wake up from, but Im not. I just wanted to say I do appreciate peoples kindness, but no amount of messages is going to help me overcome this. Nothing will make this nightmare go away. Superintendent Owain Llewellyn said searches of the area where the car was found were continuing, including the recent deployment of underwater specialists. He added the road would remain closed as police investigations remain ongoing. The scene in Gwynedd, North Wales, where police officers were searching for the four teenage boys (PA) Ms Owen previously described all four boys, who had been studying for their A-Levels at Shrewsbury College, as sensitive, intelligent lads. Staff at the Dough and Oil restaurant where Harvey worked also paid tribute to him. In a post on Instagram, they described him as easy-going, warm, funny, gentle, bright, hardworking and humble. Jevon Hirst, who is one of four teenage boys found dead after they vanished on a North Wales camping trip (Supplied) He gave it his all, developing a passion for dough and had dreams of one day opening his own bakery, they said. Before shifts, or on his break, youd often find him listening to music or his head in a book unusually for his age enjoying the likes of The Doors and Jack Kerouac, always keen to chat and discover something new. Our love, thoughts and condolences go out to Harveys family and to those of his friends, their lives full of promise cut so tragically short. Wilf Fitchett, who is among the teenage boys whose bodies were found following a camping trip to Snowdonia National Park in north Wales (North Wales Police/PA Wire) Maddi Corfield, the girlfriend of Wilf, posted a tribute online, writing: I love you so much, Im going to miss you forever. The sweetest and most loving boy Ive ever known. I hope you know how much I love you, gorgeous. Thank you for all the time youve spent with me thank you for loving me endlessly. I promise Ill do the same for you, my sweet, sweet angel. She added: I cant imagine my world without you. Im missing you so much already, but I am going to enjoy life the way you wouldve wanted, the way that you made me feel. A photo of the four teenagers who died in a car crash in in Snowdonia, North Wales, by candles and a sympathy card inside Shrewsbury Abbey (PA) Her mother, Lisa Corfield, 37, said on Facebook: I am absolutely heartbroken for Maddi and all of the families involved. Wilf was such a lovely, kind lad and treated Maddi in a way only a mother could hope her daughter be treated. In the teenagers hometown of Shrewsbury several churches were open for prayer and reflection, while Wednesday evenings Christmas lights switch-on had been postponed by the town council. Huge Morris, who was among the boys whose bodies were found in an overturned car partially submerged in water (North Wales Police) Superintendent Owain Llewellyn added: Our thoughts remain with the families at this extremely difficult time, and I would like to thank the public for their continued patience and understanding. The areas MP Daniel Kawczynski said: On behalf of all constituents in Shrewsbury and surrounding villages, I would like to extend my deepest condolences and sympathy to the families and friends who have been tragically affected by this terrible loss of life. The whole country were desperately hoping Jevon, Harvey, Wilf, and Hugo would be found safe and well and this news is devastating. Trinity Churches Shrewsburys memorial space for the boys (PA) This news is truly heartbreaking, and my thoughts go out to all those affected by this tragic news. Shrewsbury Colleges Group, where the boys were A-level students, offered deepest condolences to the family and friends of the teenagers and said it had put in place a range of support measures to help those affected. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sent his condolences to the families, telling the Commons: I know the thoughts of the whole House will be with the family and friends of the four teenagers who died in a car accident in North Wales. First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford said it was devastating news to hear of the boys deaths. My thoughts are with their family and friends during this incredibly difficult time as they deal with the unimaginable, he added in a post on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Up to 7 million will be committed to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities, Jeremy Hunt has announced. The Chancellor said the funding will be given to organisations, like the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) charity, over three years to combat a rise in antisemitic incidents in education settings. It comes after two Jewish schools in north London were vandalised with red paint last month following Hamass attack on Israel and the subsequent military retaliation. During the autumn statement, Mr Hunt expressed his horror at the attack on Israeli citizens in October and the subsequent loss of life on both sides. Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, he said: I am deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in our country, so I am announcing up to 7 million over the next three years for organisations like the Holocaust Educational Trust to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities. We welcome this additional support in tackling antisemitism but we are also concerned about other forms of prejudice, including Islamophobia Geoff Barton, general secretary of ASCL I will also repeat the 3 million uplift to the Community Security Trust (CST). When it comes to antisemitism and all forms of racism, we must never allow the clock to be turned back. The CST, a charity aiming to protect British Jews from antisemitism and related threats, has recorded hundreds of incidents since the attacks on Israel at the start of October. Meanwhile, the Union of Jewish Students has received many calls to a helpline set up for students to report concerns and antisemitic incidents. Karen Pollock, HET chief executive, said: We have seen a shocking rise of anti-Jewish racism on our streets, online, on university campuses and in our schools. Education is the key in combatting the worlds oldest hatred. The Holocaust Educational Trust has worked with Government for years and we thank them for their trust in us and this continued support. I am deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in our country Chancellor Jeremy Hunt Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: We welcome this additional support in tackling antisemitism but we are also concerned about other forms of prejudice, including Islamophobia. Schools do an excellent job in teaching pupils about different faith perspectives and the damage and prejudice caused by stereotypes based on religion. However, they are doing this in the context of sharply polarised views in wider society and amidst a barrage of misinformation and hatred on social media platforms. There needs to be a broader, society-wide effort to tackle all forms of prejudice. A Universities UK spokesperson said: Universities UK welcomes the Chancellors pledge to fund the combating of antisemitism in schools and universities. There is no place for antisemitism in universities and to tackle the issue we need to raise awareness of how antisemitism can manifest, such as through harmful tropes. Universities UK has published guidance on tackling antisemitism, as well as other forms of racism, intolerance and harassment. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A McDonalds branch has banned teenagers from entering the restaurant at night after staff faced abuse from young customers. The fast food restaurant in Fort William, in the Scottish Highlands, said it was not an easy decision but it had to ensure the safety of its staff and customers. The ban, which will come into force on Saturday, will mean under-18s will not be allowed in the store after 6pm. Police Scotland said it was aware of incidents of anti-social behaviour and was working to find meaningful solutions for young people in the community. A spokesman for the branch said it would not tolerate abuse towards its employees. The statement said: Due to recent events we have had to make the decision to not allow under-18s into the store after 6pm. This has not been an easy choice; however, we must put the wellbeing of our staff and customers first. We will not tolerate or normalise abusive behaviour towards our staff. Having tried various tactics and compromises with the culprits, we are left with no choice but to make a rule that effects all young people of Fort William, based on the actions of a few. As the nights get colder we want to be a safe and warm place for the young people of Fort William, but we cannot do this at the cost of our safety. I have met with local police today and they have agreed that this is the best plan of action for us currently. We hope to revise this decision in future. A Police Scotland spokesperson said: We are acutely aware of the disruptive effect that anti-social behaviour has on the community in Fort William Local officers work closely with partners to address these issues and find meaningful solutions to direct our young people away from harmful behaviours. It is worth stressing that the vast majority of young people do not come to the attention of police but we know that a small minority do sometimes become involved in anti-social behaviour and their actions can have a negative impact on the lives of local residents We are committed to encouraging people away from this kind of behaviour but will take appropriate action where incidents are reported and offenders identified. Anyone who has concerns about anti-social behaviour in their area is encouraged to contact police by calling 101 as promptly as possible. Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Nigel Farage referenced the time he survived a plane crash during Tuesday nights episode of Im a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here. In the lead-up to the general election in 2010, Farage suffered a punctured lung, two chipped vertebrae, several fractured ribs and a fractured sternum after the aircraft plunged to earth. At the time, the controversial politician was the leader of Ukip and was beginning his Brexit campaign to encourage the nation to back the Leave campaign to exit the European Union. In an interview with The Sun, he confirmed that the injuries he has sustained in previous accidents will mean that he is exempt from some of Im a Celebs physical challenges. Anything involving weightlifting, Id be out because Ive obviously had some quite serious physical injuries and neck reconstructions and goodness knows what else, the 59-year-old said. So they are fully aware that Im a little bit damaged when it comes to bodily structure. But having said that, I can still do most things. In Tuesdays episode of Im A Celebrity, Farage explained to his campmates why he is exempt from certain trials in the competition. This Morning presenter Josie Gibson asked: What were you doing at the time when you were flying a plane, where were you going? A light aircraft lies in a field at Hinton Airfield after crashing on May 6, 2010 in Brackley, England (Getty Images) Nigel admitted: Being an idiot, flying a banner. Fred asked: What was on the banner? A Brexit message, obviously Farage replied. Fred asked: What was the message? Nigel said: Vote for independence or something like that. I dont recall being unconscious, but I do recall the explosion, the plane flipping over, being stuck in there, everything broken every rib front and back, split sternum, punctured lung it was bad, Nigel said of his injuries. Nick asked: How long were you hospitalised for? Nigel said: Not as long as I should have been, I discharged myself, I got bored. Farages appearance on the hit show has already proved controversial, thanks to his well-documented right-wing views on topics such as immigration and the gender pay gap, with some fans threatening to boycott the series. Im a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! airs Sunday to Friday at 9pm and Saturday at 9.30pm on ITV. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} 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. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Sinn Feins Stormont leader Michelle ONeill has said she believes devolved government in Northern Ireland may be able to be restored within the next number of weeks. Ms ONeill, who is set to become the first nationalist First Minister when the Assembly returns, was speaking during a visit to Bute House in Edinburgh where she met Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf. While talks continue between the DUP and the UK Government over addressing unionists concerns around post-Brexit trading arrangements, Ms ONeill said she has been kept abreast of developments. Now is the time for a decision to be made, and I hope its the right decision and I hope its a positive decision, and I believe that that decision is imminent Michelle O'Neill Ive been engaged with both the British Government and the Irish government the whole way through, she said. Ive been very clear in terms of what needs to not happen what needs to not happen is that we need to be ensuring that theres nothing that does any jeopardy to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and that we need to make sure that theres nothing that unravels the deal thats been done on the (Northern Ireland) protocol in the form of the Windsor Framework. I think that its very clear to me that the discussions have been going on for 18 months now. Now is the time for a decision to be made, and I hope its the right decision and I hope its a positive decision, and I believe that that decision is imminent. The DUP has been blocking powersharing at Stormont for more than a year and a half in protest at the internal UK trade barriers created by Brexits Northern Ireland Protocol. The party has been involved in negotiations with the Government about the Windsor Framework, which reformed the protocol and is seeking further assurances, by way of legislation, over Northern Irelands place in the UK internal market. Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has said the talks are in their final phase but DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has cautioned that there are still gaps between their negotiating positions. Pressed on a timeframe for the return of Stormont, Ms ONeill said: The British Government and others are saying that were at the final stages. So if thats the case, then its the time for decisions to be made. And I believe that that is in the timeframe of the next number of weeks. Lets hope its a positive decision. Lets hope we can get an executive up and running, lets hope the DUP end their blockade and get back in around that executive table. Earlier this week, former DUP leader Peter Robinson said that unionists need to recognise that they will not get all they want from the Government in negotiations. Mr Robinson also said he believed differences could be resolved in the next couple of weeks. However, DUP MP Sammy Wilson responded to Mr Robinsons comments by stating he didnt get the impression that his party was close to a deal which would restore Stormont. Ms ONeill was meeting with Mr Yousaf ahead of a British-Irish Council meeting in Dublin later this week. She expressed regret that no Stormont ministers would be at the council meeting due to the powersharing impasse. The Sinn Fein vice-president said: Lets hope we can get back to going to meetings such as the British-Irish Council meeting, to raise the issues that we have, the common ground that we have to stand up for good public services and the people that we represent collectively. Ms ONeill said it was her first in-person meeting with the Scottish First Minister since he came into the post. Weve already (got) strong relationships, always have had, and I want to see that continue in the time ahead, she said. I think it was important to meet this week given that later this week, there will be a British Irish Council meeting. Unfortunately because of the political situation in the north of Ireland, the executive will not be there. I think that its important that we get back to the juncture where we have an Executive up and running, where we have powersharing restored. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The British father of 12-year-old twins who were murdered in the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel says he has been left broken by their deaths. Gavin Heller, who lives in north London, said the unfathomable, unimaginable, unspeakable has happened to my gorgeous children. His son and daughter Yannai and Liel Hetzroni-Heller were killed during the bloody Hamas attack on the Kibbutz Beeri. The siblings were raised in Israel by their great aunt, who was also killed in the attack. UK-based relatives of those who were murdered or kidnapped during the attack are being supported by family liaison officers attached to the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command. In a statement issued through the force, Mr Heller said: I am utterly devastated by the news of my childrens deaths in Israel; it has broken me. Yannai and Liel had their entire lives ahead of them, but they were cruelly and brutally murdered on that fateful October 7. My life will never be the same. There are no words that can ever or will ever explain this pain and brutality. The unfathomable, unimaginable, unspeakable has happened to my gorgeous children, and the world has turned against humanity. Israeli media has reported that the children were held hostage by Hamas gunmen in a building that caught fire during a stand-off with Israeli forces. All we can do now is pray that the world comes to its senses and understands that 'never again' is now Gavin Heller, father of victims Yannai and his great aunt were buried at a ceremony on November 15, at which some of Liels belongings were also buried in the absence of her body. Days later some of her remains were identified. Mr Heller added: Heartbroken and horrified. Theres, for certain, no worse way to leave this world than to be violently murdered by a terrorist; all because they were Jewish. Lives have been torn apart in the worst way. Liel wasnt even buried as there werent enough fragments of her. Her toys were buried instead of her body. Too few moments were shared with them and I cannot believe this is how their story ends. I will forever hold my precious Yannai and Liel in my heart. May they both be at peace, together in heaven. All we can do now is pray that the world comes to its senses and understands that never again is now. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A police inspector responsible for instructing officers across Police Scotland said there was no way of telling what training officers actually received in the run-up to Sheku Bayohs death. Inspector James Young gave evidence to the Sheku Bayoh Inquiry for the second time on Wednesday. He was the national officer safety training (OST) co-ordinator for Police Scotland at the time of Mr Bayohs death. Mr Bayoh, 31, a father-of-two, died after he was restrained on the ground by six police officers in Kirkcaldy on May 3 2015. The inquiry is investigating the circumstances of his death, how police dealt with the aftermath, the subsequent investigation, and whether race was a factor. Mr Young told the inquiry, in a written statement, that a new training manual had come into use from 2013 to be used across all of the former legacy forces that made up Police Scotland to ensure there was consistency across the country. But some trainers across the force preferred to use their own techniques because they did not agree with the methods contained in the manual, Inspector Young told the inquiry. Senior Counsel to the inquiry, Angela Grahame KC, took Mr Young through a statement from David Agnew, a trainer at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan, Fife, in which he outlined the best practice approach to training. For the refresher elements, there is no way of telling what training they actually received because it was back at force and as I outlined in my evidence, there was that disparity across (legacy) forces. It was difficult to ascertain exactly what training they would have received in the refresher Inspector James Young, Police Scotland Mr Agnew wrote that students (trainee police officers) were taught to be aware of the signs of positional asphyxia and they would be reminded that because somebody can speak and shout, it did not necessarily mean they were able to breathe properly. He also wrote that students would be taught to look out for behavioural changes such as suddenly stopping resistance and going limp. The inquiry heard students were also taught to be mindful of where they were placing their hands and body weight when restraining a subject. In his written statement, Mr Agnew wrote: We would teach students that the knee should be on the shoulder and we would point out that it shouldnt be on the head, shouldnt be on the neck, shouldnt be on the back or anything like that, it should always be on the shoulder that we were putting that pressure. Ms Grahame asked if what Mr Agnew had written about was similar to Mr Youngs recollection of what new recruits should be taught. Yes, he answered. Mr Young also said that prior to changes in the way officers were trained, it was not uncommon to see officers lying across the backs of violent subjects to restrain them. Ms Grahame asked Mr Young about the training received by the officers who had been on the scene at Hayfield Road in Kirkcaldy, the day of Mr Bayohs death. Police Constables Ashley Tomlinson, James McDonough and Kayleigh Good were all probationer officers on May 8 2015 and had received either initial operational training, or refresher training, in the six months since the days events. Ms Grahame asked Mr Young: Would it be fair to say Pcs Tomlinson, McDonough and Good would all have received training in relation to the 2013 manual? Mr Young replied: For some elements it is fair to say that. For the refresher elements, there is no way of telling what training they actually received because it was back at force and as I outlined in my evidence, there was that disparity across (legacy) forces. It was difficult to ascertain exactly what training they would have received in the refresher. The inquiry has heard previously that level five force, known as deadly or lethal force had been used in restraining Mr Bayoh. He was shoulder-charged and punched by Pc Craig Walker and that the upper part of Pc Walkers 25-stone body was on Mr Bayohs shoulder. Mr Bayoh died shortly after his confrontation with police. His family believe race played a part in his death, which the inquiry is investigating. The inquiry, before Lord Bracadale, continues. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Watch as the Office for Budget Responsibility holds a press conference following Jeremy Hunts autumn statement. The chancellor announced tax cuts, tighter welfare rules and further measures aimed at getting more people into work on Wednesday 22 November. His speech, delivered to the Commons, is the governments main opportunity outside of the Budget to make tax and spending announcements. Mr Hunt used the statement to introduce changes aimed at reviving both the UKs struggling economy and the Tories election chances. The chancellors package in full contains 110 measures he hopes will boost growth. Mr Hunt announced the national living wage will rise by 1.02 to 11.44 from April, with the policy extended to cover workers aged 21 and over for the first time, rather than 23 and over. It means the lowest paid will receive a boost of 1,800 a year. Meanwhile, welfare recipients who do not find a job within 18 months will be forced to undertake work experience under plans to get more people into employment. Those who do not comply with the rules will have their benefits, including access to free prescriptions and legal aid, cut off. Mr Hunt also confirmed alcohol duty will be frozen until 1 August next year, meaning no increase in duty on beer, cider, wine or spirits, while tobacco duty will increase. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Britain has said the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands is not up for negotiation, after Argentinas newly-elected president promised to get them back. Javier Milei, who won a resounding victory in Argentinas presidential election on Sunday, said Buenos Aires had "non-negotiable" sovereignty over the Falklands, the archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean which is known as Islas Malvinas in Argentina. Mr Milei said during a TV debate in the run-up to the election that we have to make every effort to recover the islands through diplomatic channels. On Tuesday a spokesperson for prime minister Rishi Sunak said: The UK has no doubt about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, and indeed South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The UK government will continue to proactively defend the Falkland islanders right to self determination. Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, also responded with a tweet saying the Falkland Islands are British. That is non-negotiable and undeniable. He added: 99.8 per cent of islanders voted to remain British and we will always defend their right to self-determination and the UKs sovereignty. The Falklands has been a British overseas territory since the 19th century, but Argentina has also claimed sovereignty over the islands. The remote group of islands was at the centre of an armed conflict in 1982 when Argentine forces invaded and briefly occupied the territory. While British forces reclaimed the Falklands in just two months, the war claimed the lives of 255 British servicemen, three islanders and 649 Argentine personnel. In a 2013 referendum, 99.8 per cent of 3,500 people in Falkland Islands voted in favour of remaining a UK overseas territory. Asked about the islands in the TV debate, Mr Milei had said: What do I propose? Argentinas sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands is non-negotiable. The Malvinas are Argentine. Now we have to see how we are going to get them back. It is clear that the war option is not a solution. "We had a war - that we lost - and now we have to make every effort to recover the islands through diplomatic channels." In an interview with the daily La Nacion, he proposed that the UK hand over the Falklands to the South American country in a similar way to how Hong Kong was given back over to Chinese rule in 1997. The populist leader, who has called himself an anarcho-capitalist and expressed admiration for Margaret Thatcher the British prime minister during the time of the Falklands conflict also said the views of those living on the islands cannot be ignored. Earlier this year, Argentina walked away from a 2016 cooperation pact and called for new talks over the sovereignty of the island. At a G20 meeting in New Delhi, Argentina foreign minister Santiago Cafiero told then-UK counterpart James Cleverly that his government was abandoning the pact. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson has called for asylum seekers to be sent to remote Scottish islands if the governments Rwanda deportation plan fails. The controversial MP called for those arriving in the UK via small boats to be housed on the Orkney Islands, which he said would be perfect for people fleeing persecution. Asked about reports the Home Office had considered sending migrants to the Falkland Islands as a backup to the Rwanda scheme, Mr Anderson said it was a bit far to go and not fair on the islanders. And he added that despite the cold, if people are genuinely escaping war or persecution then a nice Scottish island with a few outbuildings would be suitable. It comes after the Supreme Court ruled that Rishi Sunaks plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful because of deficiencies in the countrys asylum system. Judges found that sending anyone to the African country would be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as there was a real risk they could be returned to their home countries to face persecution or other inhumane treatment. Mr Sunak said this was not the outcome we wanted and has vowed to change UK law to declare Rwanda a safe country and get flights started. A report in The Times said Mr Sunak had rejected Home Office proposals to send migrants to the Falkland Islands as a back-up, after it conducted extensive work on the idea. Lee Anderson last week called on the government to ignore the Rwanda court ruling and get planes in the air (CHP) Asked about the Falklands Islands idea, he told GB News: Theres a better option: We can keep them on British soil if you like. Weve got the Orkneys or some remote Scottish island. I know its a bit parky up there this time of year. But if people are genuinely escaping war or persecution then a nice Scottish island with a few outbuildings would be suitable. Mr Anderson said Britain is beautiful and stressed the go-to nature of some parts of Scotland. Id like to be able to afford a place up there, he added. The outspoken Tory said that after building safe accommodation on the islands it would be job done. Mr Anderson said: The Falkland Islands, I think its a little bit far to go and its not fair on the Falkland Islanders who have got their own problems at the moment with their sovereignty, with Argentina. But if people are genuinely escaping violence or persecution then a nice little island in the north of Scotland is perfect. Last week, Mr Anderson said the Rwanda ruling was a dark day for the British people and said ministers should just put the planes in the air now and send them to Rwanda. My take is we should just put the planes in the air now and send them to Rwanda and show strength, he said. I think we should ignore the law and send them straight back the same day, he added. Downing Street refused to condemn the Tory deputy chairman for suggesting ministers ignore the judgment. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Rachel Reeves has called time on Rishi Sunaks government, declaring that the ravens are leaving the tower as she highlighted The Independents revelation that Saatchi & Saatchi was no longer backing the party. The shadow chancellor used The Independents disclosure that Richard Huntington, strategy chief of the advertising firm that helped Margaret Thatcher become prime minister, to attack the cruel Conservatives and forecast a Labour election victory in response to Jeremy Hunts autumn statement. Ms Reeves told the Commons: The ravens are leaving the Tower when even Saatchi and Saatchi are saying the Tories are not working. Her comment was a reference to Saatchi and Saatchis famous 1979 election poster attacking unemployment under the then Labour government which featured a picture of a long dole queue with the slogan Labour Isnt Working. Ms Reeves lashed out at Jeremy Hunts budget, saying the chancellor had lifted the lid on thirteen years of economic failure. She said the Tories had held back growth, crashed the economy, increased debt, trashed public services, left businesses out in the cold, and made life harder for working people. And she said the British people would conclude the economy simply isnt working. Our country cannot afford five more years of the Conservatives, Ms Reeves said. She added: They have held back growth, crashed our economy, increased debt, trashed our public services, left businesses out in the cold, and made life harder for working people. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves speaking after Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt delivered his autumn statement (PA) Earlier this month. Mr Huntington wrote in The Independent that Britain desperately needs saving from five more years of stagnation, cruelty and despair and Labour is almost certain to win the next election. In his autumn statement, Mr Hunt cut national insurance for 27 million workers and promised to attract 20bn more business investment each year for the next decade. The chancellor promised 110 measures to unleash growth in the private sector, as he revealed that the Office for Budget Responsibility had significantly downgraded its growth forecasts, with the economy now expected to grow just 0.6 per cent this year and 0.7 per cent in 2024. But in a stinging response, Ms Reeves said: What has been laid bare today is the full scale of the damage that this government has done to our economy over thirteen years. And nothing that has been announced today will remotely compensate. (The Independent) Mr Huntingtons intervention was hugely symbolic and the latest in a long list of coups for Ms Reeves and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. It comes after Conservative grandee Ken Clarke praised Rachel Reevess work as shadow chancellor who also had a ringing endorsement from former Bank of England governor Mark Carney. Saatchi & Saatchi has been closely associated with the Conservatives after helping deliver three successive election wins for Ms Thatcher, but the Tories later moved to the breakaway M&C Saatchi. Mr Huntington lashed out at the divisiveness of the current Conservative party but warned Sir Keir still has to prove he can be an effective leader like Ms Thatcher. He said that while Labour was set to be the biggest party, there was still a question over whether Sir Keir can pull off a majority or even a landslide unless he creates real public enthusiasm for his party. Mr Huntington said the crucial difference between Tony Blairs landslide in 1997 and today was cynicism about the idea of effective government. He wrote: In 1997, people believed that the UK government could deliver. In 2023, they dont believe that any government has the power to make the slightest bit of difference. Mr Huntington said that while the Tories scrap for votes through a deliberate strategy of divisiveness ... Labour could spend the next year restoring British peoples belief in the basic concept of effective government. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Rishi Sunak is planning a series of new immigration crackdown measures, as he prepares for fresh Conservative party anguish over record-high migrant numbers. With the prime minister under huge pressure to get on top of illegal arrivals, official figures to be published on Thursday are expected to show net migration has surged to unprecedented levels. Mr Sunaks government is said to be ready to cut the number of relatives foreign health and social care workers are allowed to bring with them to only one. Tory ministers are also reportedly considering ditching the shortage occupation list, thus making it more difficult for British employers to bring in overseas staff to fill gaps. A move to raise the minimum salary requirement for foreign worker visas from 26,200 to about 31,000 could also be brought in more quickly than planned. No 10 said it was examining options to cut net migration levels. Mr Sunaks spokesperson said: This is something that we are actively looking at. Increasing the minimum salary threshold for foreign workers could be announced as soon as Thursday, according to The Times. The newspaper reported that the Home Office, under the former home secretary Suella Braverman, had been pushing for a ban on foreign health and care workers bringing dependants, despite objection from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). But No 10 is thought to be keen on a compromise by restricting the number of dependents to one on health workers visas. Sunak is set to come under fresh pressure from Tory MPs on immigration (PA) Madeleine Sumption of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University said the shortage occupation list is bringing people into really low-paid jobs. She added: If the salary threshold was much higher, that wouldnt be the case anymore and there might be more of an argument for [it]. Net migration hit a record high of around 606,000 last year. But this weeks figures from the Office for National Statistics are expected to show a new milestone of 700,000. Meanwhile, Mr Sunak is under pressure from his own MPs to set out a workable, revised plan B to send asylum seekers arriving on small boats to Rwanda. The prime minister will soon publish a new updated agreement with Rwanda in a bid to address the courts concerns around refoulement the potential for refugees rejected by the central African country to be sent back to the country they are fleeing. The Tory leader will also try to come up with emergency legislation that he says will enable parliament to unequivocally declare Rwanda a safe destination for asylum seekers. A leading lawyer told parliament earlier this week that the planned new treaty with Rwanda would be a historically worthless piece of paper. Lord Carlile argued that Rwanda had been found to be unsafe on the facts by the Supreme Court. Why doesnt the government see that the proposal of a treaty with Rwanda would produce a document which would be yet another historically worthless piece of paper? The former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption has said the Rwanda plan is probably dead. He said it would be constitutionally extraordinary for the prime minister to change the facts by law by declaring Rwanda safe. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Watch as South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol attends a banquet at the Guildhall along with the Lord Mayor of the City of London Professor Michael Mainelli on Wednesday, 22 November. It was the latest engagement in the South Korean leaders state visit, following his talks with Rishi Sunak at Downing Street. Mr Yoon met the UK prime minister to sign a diplomatic accord which he hopes will help promote freedom, peace and prosperity around the world together, describing his invitation to Number 10 as an honour and a privilege. His state visit began with a welcome from the King and Queen on Tuesday. King Charles III said in a banquet speech that Koreans have created a miracle in their journey from wartime devastation to a thriving country where the industrial efficiency he witnessed during a visit in 1992 had become the epitome of technological innovation. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} South Koreas President Yoon Suk Yeol was welcomed at Downing Street to sign a diplomatic accord which he hopes will help promote freedom, peace and prosperity around the world together. Prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty greeted Mr Yoon on the steps outside No 10 on Wednesday afternoon. Mr Yoon, who began his three-day state visit on Tuesday, described it as an honour and a privilege to be at Downing Street and said he was looking forward to talks with Mr Sunak to modernise a free trade agreement (FTA). Your state visit underlies the deep partnership and friendship between our two countries and the signing of the Downing Street Accord today strengthens that friendship Rishi Sunak Through a translator, he said: Today we are going to sign a historic Downing Street Accord and, as allies and as friends who have shed blood together in the Korean War, I believe that there is no other areas that we cannot further deepen our co-operation including economic partnerships, science and technology. The leaders are to sign a long-term agreement covering defence and technology co-operation. The Downing Street Accord follows similar agreements with Singapore and Japan as the UK seeks to consolidate influence in the Indo-Pacific region. It is set to include a defence agreement to boost the British and Korean militaries co-operation on countering smuggling in the East China Sea, which North Korea relies on to evade sanctions. Mr Sunak told Mr Yoon: Your state visit underlies the deep partnership and friendship between our two countries and the signing of the Downing Street Accord today strengthens that friendship. From defence and security to trade and technology, we already co-operate in lots of different areas. But that co-operation will also be matched by the private sector by our agreement to upgrade and strengthen our FTA and the very welcome 20 billion-plus of investment from Korean companies into the United Kingdom. That investment is a huge vote of confidence in the UK and a symbol of our close co-operation. I am looking forward to discussing all of these things with you this afternoon. Mr Yoon also met with Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer on Wednesday. A Labour spokesman said Sir Keir and the visiting president agreed on the need to boost UK-Korean trade and investment, while also discussing the ongoing need for closer co-operation on security. At a tense time in the world and in the region, (Sir Keir) Starmer reiterated Labours strong commitment to Korean security and they agreed that Britain and Korea must seek to strengthen security ties to face down new and modern threats, the party said, in a readout of the talks. The state visit began with a welcome from the King and Queen on Tuesday. Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch began trade negotiations with her South Korean counterpart Bang Moon-kyu at the UK-Korea Business Forum at Mansion House on Wednesday. They are set to announce 21 billion of investments committed by Korean businesses in green energy and infrastructure projects across the UK. The UK secured a free trade deal with South Korea in 2019. In his banquet speech on Tuesday, the King said Koreans have created a miracle in their journey from wartime devastation to a thriving country where the industrial efficiency he witnessed during a visit in 1992 had become the epitome of technological innovation. The UK visit coincides with the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the UK and Korea, as well as the 70th anniversary of the armistice of the Korean War. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} South Koreas President Yoon Suk Yeol is to meet Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street to sign a diplomatic accord. Mr Yoon began his three-day state visit on Tuesday with a welcome from the King and Queen. On Wednesday, he will hold a bilateral meeting with the Prime Minister and sign the long-term agreement covering defence and technology co-operation. The Downing Street Accord follows similar agreements with Singapore and Japan as the UK seeks to consolidate influence in the Indo-Pacific region. It will include a defence agreement to boost the British and Korean militaries co-operation on countering smuggling in the East China Sea which North Korea relies on to evade sanctions. South Korean first lady Kim Keon Hee will be hosted by Mr Sunaks wife Akshata Murty. Later in the afternoon, the president will receive a call from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. In the morning, Mr Yoon is to accompany the Duchess of Edinburgh for a roundtable discussion at the Royal Society on how to strengthen the role of basic science to advance humanity. He is expected to address the discussion. The president will be joined by notable UK and Korean scientists and will view highlights from the Royal Societys archives alongside the duchess. In the evening, the president and first lady, joined by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, are to attend a banquet at the Guildhall hosted by the Lord Mayor and City of London Corporation. Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch will also begin negotiations with her South Korean counterpart Bang Moon Kyu at the UK-Korea Business Forum at Mansion House on Wednesday. They will announce 21 billion of investments committed by Korean businesses in green energy and infrastructure projects across the UK. The UK secured a free trade deal with South Korea in 2019. In his banquet speech on Tuesday, the King said Koreans have created a miracle in their journey from wartime devastation to a thriving country where the industrial efficiency he witnessed during a visit in 1992 had become the epitome of technological innovation. The UK visit coincides with the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the UK and Korea, as well as the 70th anniversary of the armistice of the Korean War. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The death of a 10-year-old boy who had severe asthma was contributed to by neglect and there were multiple failings in his medical care, an inquest has concluded. Essex area coroner Sonia Hayes said the death of aspiring medic William Gray, from Southend, was avoidable, the law firm that represented his family said. William suffered a near-fatal asthma attack on October 27 2020 which he survived. He was discharged after four hours and the severity of the incident was not correctly recorded, law firm Leigh Day said. William died seven months later, on May 29 2021, after going into cardiac arrest caused by a respiratory arrest resulting from his asthma. Today is bittersweet because, while the coroners conclusion gives us some closure, this is the final stage in saying goodbye to our son, brother, grandson, great-grandson, nephew and friend Christine Hui A 10-day inquest in Chelmsford, which concluded on Wednesday, identified a string of failings in his care that amounted to neglect, Leigh Day said. This included his discharge from Southend Hospital after four hours on October 27 2020, failing to recognise the seriousness of his condition. Concerns were also raised about his GP surgerys failure to conduct annual asthma reviews and carry out medication reviews, and to recognise an absence of preventer inhalers despite repeated requests for other medication or referral to secondary care. Lawyers for Williams family said the coroner found there was a lack of sufficiently trained asthma nurses and they did not follow British Thoracic Guidelines. Phone calls with nurses lasted a matter of minutes, were not meaningful and did not ask the most rudimentary questions, the law firm said. On the night of Williams death, his mother Christine Hui made two 999 calls. Leigh Day said the coroner found that at the time of the first call, it was likely that William was having a severe asthma attack, and a category one ambulance should have been dispatched. The law firm said that the coroner found that when paramedics arrived on scene adrenaline was not administered and, on the balance of probabilities, this would have affected the outcome in this case. The coroner is to write with her concerns to the ambulance service, asthma and allergy services at Essex Partnership University NHS Trust and The Joint Royal Colleges Ambulance Liaison Committee. Ms Hui described her son as a funny, caring little boy who liked to make jokes and had a heart of gold. He was adored by his friends, she said. He had dreams of working in medicine as a doctor or a paramedic because he saw the care he was given, and he wanted to do that for others. Today is bittersweet because, while the coroners conclusion gives us some closure, this is the final stage in saying goodbye to our son, brother, grandson, great-grandson, nephew and friend. We believed that Williams asthma was controlled but now we know that wasnt the case. We accept the coroners findings and will assess what further actions need to be taken once we have reviewed them Melissa Dowdeswell, East of England Ambulance Service Parents know their children best and should trust their instincts. If you feel something isnt right, question it. There is nothing that can take away the grief our family feels but it is our hope that another family will hear our story and it could prevent a further tragedy. Julie Struthers, a solicitor at Leigh Day, which represented Williams family, said what happened was a real tragedy. She said there were a substantial number of failures by multiple healthcare professionals in his care, and the case showed the importance of improving asthma treatment for children nationwide. Diane Sarkar, chief nursing and quality officer for Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust which runs Southend Hospital, said that our heartfelt condolences go out to Williams family. Wed like to assure them that we are committed to learning from this terrible loss and that since his death in 2021 we have brought in numerous changes to improve patient care as a direct result of learning from Williams case, she said. Melissa Dowdeswell, chief of clinical operations at the East of England Ambulance Service, said: Our heartfelt condolences go out to Williams family and our thoughts remain with them at this difficult time. We accept the coroners findings and will assess what further actions need to be taken once we have reviewed them. Since this tragic case we have significantly increased the numbers of staff able to perform intubation and these numbers continue to rise with an expansion of advanced paramedics within the trust. A spokesperson for Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT) said: Our heartfelt sympathies remain with Williams family, friends and loved ones following their very sad loss. We continue to work with our partners across the health and care system to ensure children with complex needs and their families receive the best possible care and support. We will be reviewing and acting on the coroners findings. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A large U.S. Navy plane remained in a Hawaii bay Tuesday, the morning after it overshot a runway and landed in the water, raising concern about environmental damage and questions over how the military would remove the aircraft. All nine people aboard the P-8A were uninjured when the plane, flying in rainy weather, overshot the runway Monday at a Marine Corps base in Kaneohe Bay outside Honolulu. Crews set up a temporary floating barrier to protect the environment, and an investigation is underway, Navy spokesperson Lt. Mohammad N. Issa said in an email Tuesday. The P-8A is often used to hunt for submarines and for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. It is manufactured by Boeing and shares many parts with the 737 commercial jet. Residents near the bay were eager to hear plans for the massive plane's removal and were worried about possible damage to the coral reef in the area, along with harms from fuel and other chemicals. The plane landed about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) from an ancient Hawaiian fishpond, said Hiilei Kawelo, executive director of Paepae o Heeia, the organization that cares for the pond. The plane in the water is concerning, she said. It's directly upwind from our fishpond. Kawelo said she understands removing the plane is a big undertaking but is hopeful the military will at least defuel it in a timely fashion like today. Navy officials didn't immediately answer questions Tuesday about extraction plans, environmental concerns and how the plane ended up in the water. The area where the plane landed near the base isn't accessible to the public, but Kawelo said she is familiar with the broader reef that extends in the bay, which is abundant in small fish and octopuses. Im hoping that it landed on a sandy patch that didnt house any coral," she said. "But our coral reefs are absolutely critical and important for the ecosystem. They are the foundation for life in the ocean. Wayne Tanaka, executive director of Sierra Club of Hawaii, said he wants the state to hold the Navy accountable for any damage. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources is expected to conduct a damage assessment after the plane is removed, department spokesperson Dan Dennison said. The plane is adding to the community's distrust for the military, Tanaka said, noting a massive fuel storage facility that sickened 6,000 people when it leaked jet fuel into a Pearl Harbor drinking water well in 2021. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The handoff was quick and seamless, a coffee cup containing the DNA of a suspected Russian spy swapped for an identical one in a hallway exchange between a CIA operative and an FBI agent. The move was textbook spycraft, but everything else about the scenario was extraordinary: The handoff went down within the bowels of CIA headquarters, and the suspected mole was one of the agencys own but so was the man tasked with catching him. The target was Harold Jim Nicholson, a charismatic career spy and devoted single dad whod been working for the CIA for 16 years. Hed end up serving even more time than that in prison. The CIA colleague whod swiped the coffee cup from his desk was John Maguire, a former Baltimore cop whod carved out a counterrorism niche within the spy agency. Maguire had been recalled from overseas by CIA superiors banished to HR as punishment, hed thought, for rejecting a posting in Pakistan in autumn 1995 before being called into a secret meeting at Langley, asked if hed accept an unidentified job, then whisked to an off-site location. There, in an FBI safe house in an unprecedented interagency spy-catching collaboration, he learned the details of the ask: Someone within the CIA was sneaking secrets to the Russians. Nicholson was the likely culprit. Maguire was to get Nicholson to hire him as his righthand man, spy on him from within his own department, then nail him with evidence so they could lock Nicholson up for treason. By the summer of 1996, Maguire was working next to the suspected spy. There were times when I just wanted to stab him in the neck at his desk and just say, F*** it, hes dead. Its over. Here, Maguire, now retired from the agency, tells The Independent. Harold James Jim Nicholson, a longtime CIA officer and father of three, was described as smooth and crafty and mercenary by the man who was tasked with catching him (FBI) He resisted the urge, however and in just a matter of months, using an arsenal of tricks from old-school detective work to info-seeking liquid lunches, Maguire pulled it off. A spy had never been used to catch a spy at Langley before, and theres been no public announcement of any such feat since. After more than two decades behind bars, Nicholson was released from prison on 24 November. He was sentenced in 1997 to 23 years and 7 months for conspiracy to commit espionage one of the highest-ranking CIA officers ever convicted of the offence. But the turncoat spy wasnt done; from prison, he duped his youngest child a son in his mid-20s who worshipped his dad and long believed hed been railroaded into continuing his traitorous relationship with the Russians. They were caught and both convicted, the younger Nicholson avoiding jail time with a plea deal while his father was slapped with eight more years. The disgraced CIA man was also transferred from his cushy Oregon facility to the hardcore Colorado prison colloquially known as Supermax from which hes scheduled to walk free after Thanksgiving. Jim Nicholson was what they call a double hitter: There was his first crime, which he got caught for, went to prison, and then from prison organized his second one, author Bryan Denson, who interviewed Nathaniel Nicholson, Maguire and other players extensively for his 2015 book The Spys Son, tells The Independent. Denson believes the release is a gut-check moment for the spy, who turned 73 just days before he walked free. Maybe Jim is a better person than he proved himself to be there for a bit, and maybe he will show fealty for his family and want to, you know, put his grandchildren on his knee and be that guy but hes going to be a pauper if he does it, Denson tells The Independent, noting that Nicholson, like any convicted spy, will be legally barred from profiting off of his crimes. Maguire, who has more firsthand experience of Nicholson and his personality, is convinced hes going to run. Hes not going to stay here, says Maguire, who remains incredulous that the US government never used Nicholson as a bargaining chip to get back Americans imprisoned in Russia like Brittany Griner and Paul Whelan. Hell be gone in a couple of weeks. Nicholsons lawyer, contacted by The Independent, said neither he nor his client could comment before the release and did not yet respond to a follow-up request. The Bureau of Prisons confirmed he was released 24 November, two days earlier than scheduled. Very few turncoats have been released from prison in recent years Robert Hanssen died behind bars earlier this year and Aldrich Ames remains serving a life sentence without parole. Ana Montes, who spied for Cuba and was released in January, moved to Puerto Rico, and Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel, moved there after his 2015 release. After covering Nicholson for years and literally writing the book on him, Denson says the spys next steps remain a big question to me. Does he just get himself plucked by the Russians and go back to Moscow where the moneys waiting for him? Denson says. Or does he stay here and do right by his family? Because Nicholson, when it comes down to it, betrayed everyone and everything in his life that he purported to hold dear: His country, his colleagues, his career and, most importantly, his family and his children. Nicholson was arrested in 1996, on the eve of his 46th birthday, and sentenced to more than 23 years in prison but he then co-opted his son into continuing his relationship with the Russians while he was behind bars (FBI) Its all a far cry from the life Nicholson imagined as he idolized James Bond while growing up on Air Force bases with a former Army cryptographer mother, Betty, and Air Force serviceman stepfather, Marvin Nick Nicholson. Bettys first husband and Jims biological father had walked away from the family, and Marvin married her when Jim was seven, formally adopting the child. Inspired by his familys military history and the spy stories he devoured, a young Nicholson enrolled in ROTC during college at Oregon State, where he met his future wife, Laurie, who would later give birth to the couples three children. Nicholson worked in military intelligence but left the Army in 1979 and held a civilian job briefly, before joining the CIA the following year. He hauled his growing family to various posts abroad. From the Philippines to Romania to Thailand, his marriage grew ever more tumultuous with allegations of cheating on both sides; by 1992, Laurie, fed up with her husbands selfish ambition and infidelity, had returned to the US and filed divorce papers. She later told Denson that one of Jims greatest faults was that he had somehow accustomed himself to champagne tastes on a Budweiser budget, he writes in The Spys Son. Two years later, Nicholson walked into the Russian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, where he was stationed, the CIA under the impression he was trying to recruit their intelligence chief. Instead, the veteran operative offered his own services to the SVR (the Russian foreign intelligence department that preceded the KGB) for payment just weeks after infamous CIA turncoat Ames was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Nicholson, Denson writes in his book, figured that with Ames out of the way, the SVR might be in the market for another highly paid mole inside the CIA. They were. So began a deeply damaging double-cross that would continue, in various guises, for more than a decade. In the immediate, however, Nicholson pulled off some of his most damaging work. With primary custody of his children, he moved the family back to Virginia in 1994 and began working as an instructor at the CIAs training facility, colloquially referred to as The Farm. There, he gathered intelligence on the upcoming recruits and sold it to the Russians, rendering the future US spies effectively useless going forward. He was also photographing and summarizing top-secret files and reports to pass along, everything from information about US policy to foreign cables to debriefings of Ames that could prove useful to the Russians. By 1996, US intelligence had realised it had a problem and was frantically trying to root out the mole. Thats when the higher-ups tapped Maguire, who was miserable at his temporary Langley desk assignment after years of exciting and efficacious field work. Hed been recalled from overseas as authorities zeroed in on Nicholson as the mole unaware that higher-ups were readying him for a mammoth in-house espionage challenge, he says. Theres a reason that HR is only on the second floor, he jokes You cant even jump out of the window high enough; youll land in the bushes, break your legs and then youll be in HR in a wheelchair. Hes the type of no-nonsense guy who cracks those jokes in between explaining how he took down one of the most damaging spies in history. He learned the details in the safe house after passing a polygraph from the first-string, varsity officers people that know their s***. Eventually, says Maguire, The lead agent said, Weve got another Ames. Nicholsons son, Nathaniel, travelled in his stead to meet-ups with Russians in exotic locales but was spared prison through a plea deal after his arrest (Nathan Nicholson) He was instructed to get [Nicholson] to pick you to be his deputy and use the position to surveil and snare him and fast. Youve got to catch that f****r in a year; we cant afford to wait five years, Maguire says another high-ranking superior told him at a later meeting. Youve got to catch him doing something. Real-life espionage, he says, is not some swashbuckling James Bond thing, although he noted that Nicholson, who was enamoured with 007 as a child, himself was a real womanizer, known for being tall, dark, handsome, and very smooth, very, very, crafty. The spywork itself was more mundane, a methodical mind game of four-dimensional chess, and you have to plan and role play, Maguire says. What I had to do for this was essentially an operational meeting for eight to nine hours a day and not make a mistake and not mess up, says Maguire all the time watching for clues that Nicholson might be readying to do something operational. I needed to make sure I didnt miss anything, he tells The Independent. It was very stressful an enormously straining mental exercise. Nicholsons MO included targeting younger officers and collecting background information on them to share with the Russians, so that they would be vulnerable to being convinced to share information themselves later down the track on overseas missions. He was a clever guy and a mercenary son of a bitch, because he didnt care what happened to those kids, those young officers theyre working for a guy whos set up a target package on them so they can be approached later in their careers, he says. Ive never seen that before. Nicholsons predecessor, Ames, executed horrible crimes, Maguire says but he didnt headhunt in the building, And we know Jim was headhunting in the building. So was Maguire, though and his efforts paid off after a liquid lunch in Georgetown in October 1996, not long before Nicholson was scheduled to make an overseas trip. He had a six-pack of beer on the floor of the car, and Im drinking beer in his car on the way back to the building; were driving around in rural Virginia, and I say, Are you lost? And he goes, No, no, no, and theres a place out here, this is one of the days when they release unique runs of stamps. Nicholson hopped out at a rural post office, bought stamps, got back in the car, and they returned to Langley, Maguire triggering a meeting with the FBI to tip them off that it seemed his boss was readying to do something operational. They just bet the farm on that night, and they had a tremendous amount of manpower deployed and prepared, Maguire says. And sure enough, he went out late at night, left his house, left his kids at home alone and went out and they actually caught him in the act mailing something, and then that was the stamp that he bought and he licked it, so there was DNA on it. And he threw it in the mailbox, and before the sun came up that thing was processed and in the evidence system, and then the real postcard went back in the mailbox and went on its way to the overseas address, and he established a direct link to the KGB. Nicholson was arrested on the eve of his 46th birthday and sentenced in June 1997 to 23 years and seven months in prison. His childrens lives had been uprooted unceremoniously, the family home in Virginia turned upside down before the oldest, Jeremi, who was in college in Oregon, flew his younger sister, Star, and brother, Nathaniel, back to the West Coast. Nicholson, who turned 73 recently, served as overseas case officer and instructor at the CIAs training facility before taking up a position at Langley, where his righthand man was tasked with spying on him to prove his treason (NCSC) The youngest Nicholson was just 12 when his father was arrested, and the spys mother and stepfather refused to believe their feted, patriotic scion had done any wrong. Along with the children, theyd visit the imprisoned ex-CIA officer at the Oregon facility where he was sent, and it was there that Nathan recalled his father apologising and explaining that hed just wanted to help you kids out, Denson writes in The Spys Son. Nathan never let go of the memory of that painful heart-to-heart, Denson writes. Seeing his dad so sorrowful, head literally hung low, churned in his young mind. He convinced himself that the government must have pressured him to confess even to his own kids that he spied for Russia. Nathan followed his fathers footsteps into the Army, but an injury sidelined his military career and he returned to Oregon, where he enrolled in community college in 2005, visiting his father in prison every other Saturday. Nicholson had been cooking up ways to resume contact with the Russians, and it wasnt long before he enlisted his son. During one visit, he told Nathan that his old friends in Moscow were holding an account open in his name, and that together they might be able to make some early withdrawals, Denson writes. Jim had lost his freedom in service to the Russian Federation, and now he felt it was Russias turn to help support his kids while he was away. He wanted to know if Nathan was willing to serve in his stead on the outside. His youngest agreed on the spot soon establishing contact with the Russians by walking into the consulate in San Francisco, before travelling to meetings in far-away locales from Mexico to Cyprus, passing messages and accepting money between 2006 and 2008 before he was caught. The younger Nicholson, at 26 years old, narrowly avoided jail in a plea deal that helped him build the prosecutions case against his father, who received an additional eight years. I think his heart was really, for a time, broken when he realized, finally, what his dad had done, Denson, a fellow Oregonian who now considers Nathan a friend after extensively interviewing him for the 2015 book. His dad made it sound like it was no big deal and this is, of course, coming from Nathan himself. [His dad] made it sound like he was just doing him a little favour, but he had to be secretive. I think, in his heart, Nathan probably knew that it was wrong, but hes a guy who is a pleaser, Denson says. He loves his close circle of friends and family and shows it Nathan Nicholson is a fundamentally decent man. Denson and Maguire, both fathers, could not believe the spy had coopted his son into crime. That was the most mercenary thing, Maguire says, adding: He used his son and destroyed the basis of trust that a kid has with their father. That ruthless streak and demonstrated fairweather loyalty only supports Maguires theory that Nicholson will high-tail it out of America as quick as his treasonous feet can carry him. Hell behave himself for a couple of weeks, hell get a plan together and figure out what he wanted to do, says Maguire, adding that every officer has a long-term contact break plan that investigators never uncovered among Nicholsons things. He is a traitor he made his bed. He is a spy. He doesnt believe in the country. He hates the system, and he signed up with an enemy nation, he says. And if thats where he wants to have his allegiance, then ship him there and get a good innocent man back. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Buffalo Niagara International Airport has reopened to arriving international flights and departures following a car explosion that occurred at the US-Canada border in Niagara Falls on Wednesday, according to the US Department of Transportation. It had been closed earlier in the afternoon as officials investigated the cause of the blast. The incident occurred shortly before 12pm. Authorities say that the vehicle had attempted to cross the US border into Canada using Rainbow Bridge. When a border patrol officer directed the car into a secondary lane for searching, it sped up, went airborne over an 8-foot fence, crashed, caught on fire and then exploded. Two individuals who were inside the car died. One border patrol officer was injured, but transported to a nearby hospital and then released. The driver was from western New York. Officials have not released identifying information for the driver or passenger. Theres no indictation that the vehicle had explosives inside. Speaking to CBC, James Diodati, mayor of Niagara Falls Ontario in Canada, said the incident appeared to be an isolated one. New York Democratic Gov Kathy Hochul headed to Buffalo to meet with law enforcement officials. Buffalo is a city in New York at the Canadian border. At my direction, the New York State Police is actively working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to monitor all points of entry to New York, she said in a written statement. During a news conference, Ms Hochul said that there is no evidence to show that the incident was terrorist-related. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that four border crossings into the US from Canada were closed as an investigation into the incident continued. The probe is being led by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. We are taking this extraordinarily seriously, Mr Trudeau said before excusing himself from a session of parliament. Mr Diodati said that Rainbow Bridge could be closed for quite some time. As of 5.30pm ET, three out of the four bridges on the border, The Whirlpool Rapids Bridge, The LewistonQueenston Bridge, and Peace Bridge had been reopened. Amtrak services between New York State and Canada have been temporarily suspended. A spokesperson for The White House told The Independent that President Joe Biden is closely monitoring the situation. He is spending Thanksgiving, taking place tomorrow, in Nantucket, Mass. So far, 21 flights have been delayed at the Buffalo airport, according to FlightAware, which tracks that information. About 100 flights take off from the facility daily. Vehicles coming into the airport will undergo security checks. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority said travelers should give themselves additional time when arriving to the airport. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A Fox News contributor was ridiculed online after claiming that the price of a turkey in the run-up to Thanksgiving had gone up to an extortionate $90. Former United States Representative Jason Chaffetz was mocked on X after his bold claim about the price of holiday birds which, he said, was due to president Joe Bidens economic policies. The remarks came during a special cost-of-living segment of Hannity, hosted by Kaleigh McEnany, in which price increases on everyday items were discussed. This is Bidenomics in action, Ms McEnany said, before turning to Mr Chaffetz for his reaction. Attacking the Biden administrations policies and the resulting price hikes, Mr Chaffetz said: We went to go buy a turkey today, it was $90 for a turkey. The price of stamps is up 32 per cent in the last four years, but its all a choice by Joe Biden. Thats what Bidenomics is. Fellow commentator Brian Brenberg added: I hope Jasons turkey was made of steak, because thats a lot of money for a turkey. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), the average price for a 16-pound turkey is $27.35 at $1.71 per pound down 5.6 per cent from last year. The AFBF added that the total cost of an average Thanksgiving dinner in 2023 was less than the record highs seen in 2022 at $65.05 but, at an average of $61.17, was still reflective of historically high costs. Following Mr Chaffetz claim, social media users were also quick to express their shock and disbelief, though many were not as sympathetic as his colleagues on Fox News. What kind of turkey were you buying? The country? wrote one user, with another replying with a picture of a world map and writing call me crazy, but thats a bargain. Another wrote: I just paid $14 for a 16lb turkey. Was his made of gold or something? Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko said Mr Chaffetzs claim gave him the same vibes as when New York Times columnist David Brooks said that an airport meal with a glass of liquor had cost him $78. This is why Americans think the economy is terrible, Mr Brooks wrote back in September. Mr Brooks later addressed the post on X, saying that he had screwed up and had not meant to cause offence to those living paycheck to paycheck. Mr Brooks gaffe was referenced by other users responding to Mr Chaffetzs claims, with one writing this is what happens when you let a man named David Brooks be your InstaCart shopper. Mr Chaffetz later took to X himself, posting a picture of a nearly 23-pound premium young turkey bought from Meiers for $114.02. Happy Thanksgiving, he wrote. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The Biden administration issued a warning to the Indian government over its possible involvement in a plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader on American soil, according to a report. The alleged plot, which targeted New York-based lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, was thwarted following an intervention by the US authorities, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing multiple people familiar with the case. The report comes just two months after Canada accused New Delhi of being involved in the killing of a Canadian national associated with the Sikh separatist movement in Surrey, British Columbia. Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi on Wednesday said: During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others. The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow-up action. Mr Bagchi added that India takes such inputs seriously as it also impinges on our own national security interests. Earlier on Wednesday India finally restored e-visas for Canadian citizens following a lengthy diplomatic spat over the accusation, made by prime minister Justin Trudeau in parliament, which India described as absurd. The new report from the Financial Times said it was unclear whether the alleged plot against Mr Pannuns life was abandoned after Washingtons intervention, or if it was actively thwarted by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Indian officials expressed surprise and concern when informed about the incident, the White House said in a statement, adding that US authorities were treating the issue with the utmost seriousness. Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Washington had raised the issue with the Indian government, including at the senior-most levels. They stated that activity of this nature was not their policy ... We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable, she added. Washington reportedly informed a wider group of allies of the attempt against Mr Pannun following Mr Trudeaus September statement. Mr Pannun is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, an activist group that is linked to the movement for a separate Sikh state, known as Khalistan, to be carved out of Indias Punjab. A member of the United Hindu Front organisation holds a banner depicting Gurpatwant Singh Pannun (AFP/Getty) He has come under scrutiny for a series of social media posts targeting the Indian government, including one which appeared to threaten flights operated by Air India. India sees the Khalistan movement as a threat to its national security and Mr Pannun had previously been designated a wanted terrorist by the Indian government. On Tuesday a new case was registered against him by Indias National Investigation Agency (NIA) over the Air India video. Mr Pannu told the FT he would let Washington respond to the issue of threats to my life on American soil from Indian operatives. The threat to an American citizen on American soil is a challenge to Americas sovereignty, and I trust that the Biden administration is more than capable of handling any such challenge, he added. The warning sent by Washington to the Indian government came after prime minister Narendra Modis state visit to Washington in June, according to the report. Federal prosecutors have separately filed a sealed indictment in a New York district court against at least one suspect involved in the plot, it said. One person charged in the indictment is believed to have already left the US, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the proceedings. The Indian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A three-year-old girl is among three American hostages expected to be released in the landmark deal struck between Israel and Hamas, with the little girls family clinging onto hopes that she will be home for her fourth birthday on Friday. The Israeli government approved a truce agreement brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt on Wednesday to secure the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas in the 7 October attacks on Israel which left 1,400 Israelis dead. Under the terms of the deal, 50 hostages many of them women and children would be freed by Hamas in exchange for a four-day pause in Israels air and ground campaign in Gaza. An unknown number of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons will also be released as part of the agreement, The Independent has learned. US National Security Council officials told reporters in a briefing call on Tuesday that three American citizens are expected to be among the 50 hostages released. These include two unnamed American women and three-year-old Abigail Edan. Abigail was kidnapped during Hamas surprise 7 October attack when militants stormed into her kibbutz in southern Israel and slaughtered her parents Roy Edan, 43, and Smadar Edan, 40. The couples two other children aged 10 and six survived after hiding for hours inside the family home. For the last seven weeks, little Abigail has been held captive in Gaza with her family desperately begging for her safe return. Abigail Edan is shown in this family hand out photo (AP) A senior administration official confirmed that the little girl who will turn four years old on 24 November is expected to be among the 50 hostages released. US officials believe around 10 Americans are currently being held captive in Gaza. For the 10 unaccounted for Americans we have one child, a three-year-old girl named Abigail I actually think her birthday, I think shell be four on November 24 and we have two women, said the official. So those are the three that would be in this category. He added that this is what officials hope to be the first phase of the deal as the Biden administration continues to work to release all American hostages. So we have three of the missing unaccounted for Americans, we have three in that category, including the young girl whose parents were killed on October 7 just an absolutely horrific story. And I cant even imagine the state of a three-year-old girl in this situation, but that is what we anticipate, he said. Now, the little girls family is desperately hoping that the deal is honoured by Hamas militants and that she will be released in time for her fourth birthday. Elizabeth Naftali, Abigails great aunt who lives in Los Angeles, spoke to CNN as news of the deal broke saying that she is staying hopeful that the family will be reunited soon. Well I am hopeful, our family is hopeful and its been 45 days since Abigail was abducted, taken to Gaza, she said. 45 days ago, her mother and father were murdered by Hamas terrorists, this little three-year-old is somewhere in Gaza. I hope she is with the mother that was taking care of her at that time with her own three kids. And I hope that Abigail is being taken care of and left, and this deal will follow through and these hostages, these children, will be back home with their families in the next couple of days. Ms Naftali said the last 45 days had been excruciating for the family. Its excruciating we have spent the last seven weeks, seven weeks, worrying, wondering, praying, hoping, she said. Abigail has a sister who is six, a brother who is 10, these two children saw their parents both be murdered. They spent 14 hours in a closet on 7th October, hiding. A woman plasters photos of Israelis missing and held captive in Gaza, in Tel Aviv, Israel (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) The one thing that we all hold onto is that hope that Abigail comes home, she comes home by Friday. Friday is her fourth birthday and theres nobody that is giving up hope, its just that we actually need to see Abigail come out then we will be able to believe it. The release of the group of hostages is expected to begin on Thursday morning, according to Israeli media, a senior Hamas official and Egypts state-run Qahera TV. Following the release of the first 50, there are hopes that additonal hostages will also walk free with around 240 people believed to have been taken captive back on 7 October. The Israeli government said that an extension of the truce agreement is possible, consisting of an additional 10 hostages being released for every additional day of a pause on fighting in Gaza. President Joe Biden celebrated the deal and thanked Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar and President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt for their critical leadership and partnership in reaching it. And I appreciate the commitment that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government have made in supporting an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure the provision of additional humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinian families in Gaza, he said in a statement released by the White House. I look forward to speaking with each of these leaders and staying in close contact as we work to ensure this deal is carried through in its entirety. It is important that all aspects of this deal be fully implemented. Mr Biden, who travelled to Israel to meet with Mr Netanyahu last month, continued: As President, I have no higher priority than ensuring the safety of Americans held hostage around the world. Israeli soldiers operate in a location given as Gaza, amid the ongoing ground operation of the Israeli army (via REUTERS) Thats why from the earliest moments of Hamass brutal assault my national security team and I have worked closely with regional partners to do everything possible to secure the release of our fellow citizens. He added: Todays deal is a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination of many dedicated individuals across the United States Government to bring Americans home. We saw the first results of that effort in late October, when two Americans were reunited with their loved ones. Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released. Only four hostages have so far been released by Hamas militants in the seven weeks since they were kidnapped in Israel and taken into Gaza. On 20 October, an American mother and daughter, Judith and Natalie Raanan, were the first to be released. Days later, two elderly Israeli women, Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifschitz, 85, were also freed. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A man who lived a life of modest means recently passed away and donated millions of dollars to a small New Hampshire town. According to the Associated Press, Geoffrey Holt was working as a caretaker of a trailer park in Hinsdale, a small town of about 4,000, 60 miles southwest of Concord, at the time of his death on 6 June. He was 82. He spent the last 15 years living off Social Security checks, his friend, Edwin Smokey Smith, told CNN. When he died, he left his life savings a whopping $3.8m to the town to improve areas of education, health, recreation and culture. Hinsdales poverty level is currently around 12 per cent. The median family income is about $72,000. The funds came from a trust he established in 2001. The account was passed along to the mans friend and was donated to the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, to towns administrator Kathryn Lynch, told CNN. Community members, schools and other organisations can apply for grants up to $150,000 per year. Officials were notified of the donation in September. The town already has several ideas for how it wants to invest the funds, including an electronic voting machine and fixing the town hall clock, Ms Lynch told CNN. Mr Holt was a committed voter, the friend said. At one point, he also taught drivers education. Officials have toyed with the idea of setting up an online course in his honour. According to the AP, the man wore threadbare clothes, drove a lawn mower and owned almost no furniture or computer. His fortune primarily came from investments and jobs he worked throughout his life. When he asked Mr Smith, the trailer park owner and former state legislator, what to do with the funds, he told him to remember the town, the AP reported. Its not clear why the millionaire chose to live frugally. His sister, Alison Holt, 81, told the outlet that her brother didnt need a lot to be happy and didnt want to draw attention to himself. Close Smoke billows from Niagara Falls explosion as two people dead in vehicle blast Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Police in Niagara Falls have warned the public about the dangers of misinformation about the deadly crash at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing. Kurt and Monica Villani, both 53 and from Grand Island, New York, were killed last Wednesday when their speeding Bentley rammed into the border crossing, which connects the US and Canada. The blast instantly sparked fears of a terrorist attack, but officials later ruled this out. Now, investigators are still working to piece together what caused the deadly crash with authorities probing the possibility of a mechanical failure on the car or a medical emergency involving the driver. Police are also using 3D scanning technology to help create a digital crash scene. While information remains scant, Niagara police chief of police hit out at the rampant speculation which is causing significant and unnecessary anxiety within the local community. We saw an immense amount of misinformation and speculation on both mainstream and social media platforms, which created significant and unnecessary anxiety in the community, he said. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} New Yorks governor says that there is no sign of terrorism in the violent vehicle explosion that left two people dead and injured a border guard at the Rainbow Bridge crossing between the United States and Canada in New York near Niagara Falls. Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that there was no evidence of any terror planning and that an investigation would continue to look into what happened. This vehicle basically incinerated, there is nothing left but the engine. it is going to take a long time for our federal law enforcement partners to piece together the real story, she told a press conference and said no threats had been made against the region. The pieces are scattered over 13, 14 booths so it is a large scene. Based on what we know at this moment there is no sign of terrorist activity. This is a local individual. Its a Western New York resident who was most likely in that vicinity prior to the high speed, high rate of speed, extraordinarily high rate of speed that led to the crash into the median that sent the vehicle airborne. She added: We need to dial down the temperature, all is well, we are still investigating but based on the preliminary investigation there is no sign of terrorism in this horrific explosion. FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Matthew Miraglia also told reporters that there was no indication of terrorism. We do have someone in mind for it and were working through it through the JTTF, he said in reference to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. We do not have any derogatory information on this person that weve identified, were scanning his social media, theres nothing there, were still running a full investigation so thats a preliminary assessment, Agent Miraglia said. We feel, at this point, this might be just something that occurred, theres no larger picture here to look at for now. Debris is scattered about inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls (AP) Instead, investigators believe the crash involved a local New York man and his wife who had ill-fated plans to attend a KISS concert over the border in Canada on Wednesay night. The couple, who have not been identified but are said to live in western New York, were travelling in their speeding Bentley when the car rammed into the crossing, law enforcement sources told CNN. The sources said that the couple were planning to cross the border to go to a KISS concert in Toronto that night. But, the concert was cancelled earlier in the day due to frontman Paul Stanley being taken ill with flu. The pair instead headed to a casino not far from the border, CNN reported with the crash then unfolding when the couple left the casino in their Bentley. Surveillance footage captured the vehicle driving at high speed and exploded as it crashed near a security checkpoint at the Rainbow Bridge crossing on Wednesday morning. The car became airborne during the incident and crashed into a cement pillar. A suitcase was found near the vehicle but did not contain any explosives, officials told The New York Times. A 27-year-old Border Patrol agent was taken to Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital with minor back pain and minor cuts, according to Fox News. Rainbow Bridge: Surveillance footage shows car speeding moments before explosion Video showed black smoke billowing from the scene of the crash, while debris could be seen scattered inside the customs plaza where an inspection booth was completely destroyed. The Peace Bridge, Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, Whirlpool Bridge, and Rainbow Bridge were all also closed in both directions at the request of US officials. Later on Wednesday all of the bridges apart from the Rainbow Bridge were reopened to traffic. Eye witness Mike Guenther told WGRZ-TV that he saw a vehicle speeding towards the US border crossing when it swerved to avoid another vehicle, crashed into a fence and exploded. All of a sudden he went up in the air and then it was a ball of fire like 30 or 40 feet high, Mr Guenther told the station. I never saw anything like it. Earlier, City of Niagara officials said that the incident involved a vehicle trying to enter the US, with the FBI Field Office in Buffalo describing the incident as an explosion. While terrorism is believed to have been ruled out, it remains unclear whether the crash was intentional or accidental with investigators said to be probing the possibility that the driver may have suffered a medical emergency. The Rainbow Bridge connects the US and Canadian cities of Niagara Falls and is located less than a mile from the famed waterfalls themselves. Law enforcement personnel block off the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls, N.Y. (AP) As this situation is very fluid, thats all we can say at this time, the FBI Buffalo office said on X. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority increased security systemwide. Travellers at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport underwent additional screenings, while vehicles were put through extra security checks. The Buffalo and Niagara Falls Airports are fully operational. We advise travelers to give themselves time for these extra precautions in addition to holiday travel, the agency said on X. The airport was closed to international arrivals for several hours before being re-opened. Amtrak temporarily suspended rail services between the US and Canada, while police in Toronto have increased patrols in the city out of an abundance of caution. Smoke billows from Niagara Falls explosion as two dead in Rainbow Bridge blast (Reuters) The White House is closely monitoring the situation and law enforcement is on-scene and investigating, a White House official told The Independent Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had been briefed by Canadas National Security and Intelligence Advisor on the situation. We are in contact with the US Officials. The Minister of Public Safety, RCMP and CBSA are fully engaged and providing all necessary support, the prime ministers statement read. Dominic LeBlanc, Canadas Minister of Public Safety, told reporters it was too early to speculate on the explosion. #FBI Buffalo statement on investigation at the Rainbow Bridge: pic.twitter.com/jRaGLL8sU8 FBI Buffalo (@FBIBuffalo) November 22, 2023 Obviously any time a piece of infrastructure as important as a border crossing sees violent circumstances it is a cause of concern for the government of Canada and the United States, he said. Until we have more accurate information it is not responsible (to speculate). The Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo has announced that it was closing until after Thanksgiving Out of an abundance of caution at the advice of police. Close Biden pays tribute to former first lady Rosalynn Carter: She brought so much grace to office Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Rosalynn Carter, the wife of former president Jimmy Carter, died at the age of 96 on Sunday. The Carter Center announced the former first ladys death just two days after she entered hospice care at the couples home in Plains, Georgia. Rosalynn is survived by her husband, four children, 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a legacy of mental health advocacy. Jimmy Carter, 99, who is also in hospice care, paid tribute to his wife in a statement saying: Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me. The Carter Center said there was no update on Mr Carters health. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation ordering flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and all federal government buildings from 25 November until sunset on the day of interment. A formal funeral will take place on Wednesday 29 November in Plains. Members of the public are invited to pay respects as Carter lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A New York City food truck worker who was racially abused and threatened by a former Obama administration official says he is terrified of reprisals. Mohamed Hussein, 24, told The Independent how former National Security Council adviser Stuart Seldowitz ridiculed his religion, taunted him about his immigration status and threatened his family in Egypt during three separate encounters at the Adam Halal Food Cart on New Yorks Upper East Side. Mr Hussein recorded Mr Seldowitz as he unleashed a torrent of abuse, and the videos have since gone viral after they were posted to social media. On Wednesday NYPD sources told The Independent that Mr Seldowitz had been taken into custody on charges including hate crime. Former Obama official racially abuses Halal food vendor in NYC He adamantly denied making pro-Hamas statements, as Mr Seldowitz has since claimed. I was terrified, I just kept quiet, he said, speaking in Arabic as food truck owner Islam Moustafa translated. Mohamed Hussein, 24, was racially abused by former Obama national security adviser Stuart Seldowitz (Bevan Hurley ) The first encounter took place on the morning of 7 November, when Mr Seldowitz allegedly pushed open the food truck window on the corner of East 83rd St and 2nd Ave while staff were preparing to open for the day. Mr Seldowitz asked where the vendor was from, to which he responded Egypt. You guys support Hamas, youre a terrorist, and you guys like killing Jewish people, Mr Seldowitz says in one of the videos. Mr Seldowitz returned to the food truck on three further occasions over the following three weeks to harass staff, the owner said. Former White House and State Department officail Stuart Seldowitz admitted to being the man caught on video delivering a tirade of racist abuse to a New York food vendor (Twitter: Itslaylas) Mr Hussein told The Independent: He cursed me out and cursed the prophet Muhammad and then threatened he was going to do something to my family back in Egypt. Mr Moustafa, the food truck co-owner, told The Independent he was 100 per cent confident that the racist remarks were unprovoked and his staff had been trying to defuse the situation. I think the video is very clear. Hes trying to act like the victim. He [Seldowitz ] is a smart official who knows how to play with words but I think the video speaks for itself, said Mr Moustafa. But even if he had said something, imagine going that low, and talking with that much hate about religions? Mr Hussein shared the cellphone footage with a friend, which went viral after it was posted to X/Twitter on 21 November. Islam Moustafa said he hoped to see the incident prosecuted as a hate crime, and was considering taking a civil lawsuit against Stuart Seldowitz (Bevan Hurley) In the video Mr Seldowitz, who worked on Israel-Palestine policy for the US State Department, can be heard insulting the Prophet Muhammad and berating the vendor over the Israel-Hamas war. If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what, it wasnt enough. It wasnt enough, he said. Mr Seldowitz asked Mr Hussein if he knew about Egypts feared intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. Mukhabarat in Egypt will get your parents, Mr Seldowitz told the vendor. Does your father like his fingernails? Theyll take them out one by one. Mr Seldowitz has since offered a muted apology, telling the City & State New York that he was not Islamaphobic and regretted raising the religious aspect. Mr Moustafa told The Independent that his staff member was fearful of retribution after Mr Seldowitzs identity had been confirmed. Now hes even more scared because he knows the guy has some power and status and connections. Mr Moustafa said he initially thought the abusive customer had been homeless or mentally ill. I thought he was just a random guy in the street, that he wasnt feeling well and was maybe having some mental issues. But once we learned he was a government official and a consultant at big firms, I was very offended. As much as I feel bad for him that he has that much hate inside him, I dont accept what he says. Its not freedom of speech, its a hate crime. Mr Moustafa said staff had reported Mr Seldowitzs remarks to the NYPD after the first incident, but they had failed to not send officers out to take a statement. He said a customer contacted the NYPD after Mr Seldowitz spewed insults at his staff member on a separate occasion. They said we get insulted all the time, you can just insult him back. After the footage went viral on Tuesday, NYPD officers returned and took statements from the vendors. A spokesperson for the NYPD confirmed to The Independent that Mr Seldowitz was taken into custody on Wednesday on charges including aggravated harassment, hate crime, and stalking. A hate crime probe into the incidents is ongoing, the spokesperson added. Mr Moustafa previously said he hoped to see hate crime charges brought against Mr Seldowitz. Its very offensive and insulting and I hope this falls under a hate crime and he gets charged. As Muslim-Americans its very insulting to talk like that about our prophet. Maybe some other religions consider it freedom of speech, we dont consider it freedom of speech. Coming from an official, its even more insulting. The food truck had been in business for nearly eight years, and never had any disputes with customers or issues with police, Mr Moustafa said. Customers and community members had been in contact to offer their support since the video went viral, he said. One passerby brought coffee to the staff members as he chatted to The Independent. Mr Moustafa told The Independent he had moved to the United States from Egypt more than 20 years ago, and had never experienced this kind of racism. This country has been great to us and I dont feel any racism here. I love America. I respect all religions. Everybody has a choice. Hopefully the gentleman will get help, and hopefully well get some justice. Mr Seldowitz was until recently the Foreign Affairs Chair at Gotham Government Relations. President David Schwarz told City & State New York that he had cut all ties with Mr Seldowitz, and would represent the vendor pro bono if he wanted to file a lawsuit. Mr Moustafa told The Independent he was interested in pursuing civil legal action against Mr Seldowitz, and would look into taking him up on the offer. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A pilot flying a single-engine plane has been killed after crashing into a strip mall parking lot and burst into flames on Tuesday evening. The crash happened just before 6pm in front of the popular Mamas Daughters Diner in Prestonwood Park off West Park Boulevard in Plano. Despite crashing into the mall parking lot where most businesses were still open, no injuries were reported on the ground. However, the pilot, who was the sole passenger in the small Mooney M20 plane, died in the accident. He has not been publicly identified, pending notification of his next of kin. An unoccupied parked vehicle was also destroyed in the fire. Aerial footage of the smashed plane in the parking lot (Fox News) Dramatic videos by witnesses and local reporters captured roaring flames and black smoke rising into the air, with firefighters battling to extinguish the blaze. One witness said she was inside the nail salon next door to the diner when she heard a loud boom right outside. When I came out, there was a lot of smoke, and later I heard a noise again, Kiu Nguyen told CBS News. "It was so scary. An extensive investigation is now under way by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board to determine how the crash unfolded. The plane crashed less than half a mile away from the Air Park-Dallas Airport, a small single-runway airport in the middle of the busy suburban area, though it is unclear if the aircraft was trying to land there. The plane caught fire as it crashed into the parking lot (CBS) We do not know where the aircraft was destined, whether they were going to this landing strip that is really close or Addison [airport]. We dont really have that information right now, Plano Fire Department Lt Daniel Daly told reporters. A flight record obtained by NBC Newsshows that the small plane approached the area from the west before making a large loop around the Air Park-Dallas Airport. Witnesses who had listened to the air traffic control communications told the outlet that the pilot sounded lost and confused before the crash. Firefighters can be seen extingushing the flames at the scene (CBS) Shawn Anderson, a witness who was driving by at the time, said he noticed the plane flying in an unusual manner. The plane made a turn like he was going up but didnt look right, Mr Anderson told CNN. When he looked back, the plane had crashed and a huge plume of black smoke was rising into the air, he said. The Independent has contacted the FAA and the NTSB for further information. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} US consumer safety authorities have warned Americans against deep frying whole turkeys this Thanksgiving to save houses from fire incidents. The US Consumer Products Safety Commission shared a compilation of videos to warn against the consequences of cooking the bird using the popular frying technique. The compilation of three videos shared by the safety commission shows hot oil pouring over and setting things in the vicinity of the cooking set up on fire. "Cook the turkey, not your home," it captioned the post on X, formerly known as Twitter. The video shows plumes of smoke erupting before the vessel filled with oil catches fire after the raw bird is dropped from above. The fire then spreads uncontrollably, often engulfing the entire room. In one clip, a person is seen trying to douse the blaze with water, which instead results in the fire spreading all over the room. "Fry your turkey safely. Stand by your pan," the safety commissions said, adding that "unattended cooking" was the major cause of home fires. Dropping raw and unthawed turkey into a vessel of smoking hot oil is one of the common causes of house fires during the festive season. Deep-frying the bird caused an average of five deaths, 60 injuries, and over $15m in property damage every year, Newsweek reported, citing the New York City Fire Department. Around 1,600 fires, more than any other day of the year, have been reported annually on each Thanksgiving, the safety commission added. "Every 6pm news broadcast in America should open with this video," it quipped. "Bird is huge and frozen. Oil is too high and too hot. Fryer is indoors or too close to the home...So don't do any of that." The safety commission advised people to read the instructions available with the fryer and to follow them closely. "If you want to skip oil altogether, there are infrared turkey fryers. Whatever you use, never leave your food cooking unattended," it advised. Americans should have a working fire extinguisher and smoke alarms while cooking, it added. The Chicago Fire Department earlier this month demonstrated the dangers of dropping a frozen turkey into a fryer without taking precautions and urged Americans to do it safely. Never fry a turkey on your deck or in or near any structure such as a garage. Make sure your turkey is thawed and that the oil is at the appropriate temperature. Enjoy and stay safe," the department said. Close Trump zips his lips to camera after leaving New York court during civil fraud trial Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} 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. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Hundreds of Missing Cow posters which appear to mock hostages in the Israel-Hamas war have sprung up on campus at the University of Pennsylvania. The posters, which have appeared in many locations throughout the campus, include a photo of a cow silhouette with Beef Dinner written on it. They also offer a reward of a box of chalk and a can of beer for finding the missing cow. The posters have attracted criticism because they appear to resemble the Kidnapped posters, designed by Israeli artists Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid, which display the names and faces of people who are being held hostage by Hamas terrorists. In a post on X, StopAntisemitism accused the posters of mocking kidnapped Israelis and comparing hostage victims to cows. The university said it is working to identify those responsible for hanging up the Missing Cow posters, which they described as crude and deplorable. Penn Public Safety is actively working to identify the individuals responsible for hanging crude, deplorable posters on campus, a university spokesperson said. The university added that the posters were immediately removed and that disciplinary action would be taken against those responsible. Meanwhile, a person associated with the effort told The Daily Pennsylvanian the posters were not intended to be antisemitic, and they were merely a joke to promote veganism. The format of the poster was an unintentional mistake that we now realize could be misconstrued, the unidentified person said in an email. They added the posters did not mean to allude to the kidnapping of Israeli hostages by Hamas. It is not known who is responsible for putting up the posters, but members of the animal rights organisation The Anonymous for the Voiceless were seen on campus on the day the posters appeared. However, the group has denied any involvement, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported. Another row over antisemtitism has erupted at the University of Pennsylvania (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) Animal rights advocates have been criticised in the past for comparing meat-eating and slaughter of livestock to the Holocaust. In 2003, animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were widely criticized for their Holocaust on Your Plate campaign which juxtaposed harrowing images of people in concentration camps with disturbing pictures of animals on farm. The Missing Cow posters are the latest development in a row over antisemitism that erupted at UPenn following Hamas attack on Israel. A number of megadonors including Jon Huntsman Jr and Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan vowed to halt their donations to the university unless its president, Elizabeth Magill, resigned after the college hosted a Palestine Writes Literary Festival to which polarising figures such as Professor Marc Lamont Hill were invited. Mr Hill was ousted from CNN in 2018 after calling for an end to what he said was Israels ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and supporting a free Palestine from the river to the sea. Following the event, more than 4,000 people signed an open letter to Ms Magill, saying that platforming of outright antisemitism without denunciation from the university is unacceptable. Organisers of the festival have denied that it embraced antisemitism. At the time, the university disavowed the event, but supported its right for it to be held on campus, saying in a statement that we unequivocally and emphatically condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values. The statement continued: As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values. But in the wake of Hamas attack on Israel, which saw more than 1,400 Israelis killed and over 14,000 Palestinians killed in retaliatory airstrikes, many megadonors argued that the universitys response was not enough and urged fellow UPenn alumni to close their checkbooks until the institutions leadership resigned. Ms Magill later addressed the backlash, and condemned the attacks by Hamas on Israel, adding: Hateful speech has no place at Penn. No place. I categorically condemn hateful speech that denigrates others as contrary to our values. Israel and Hamas announced that a deal, brokered by Qatar and the United States, had been reached to free 50 hostages during a four-day ceasefire. Dozens of children and their mothers held captive in Gaza since Hamass brutal incursion into Israel on 7 October will be freed via Egypt, according to the agreement. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Three people were arrested Tuesday in connection with the shooting of a Spanish right-wing politician earlier this month. Alejandro Vidal-Quadras, 78, was shot in the face in broad daylight on a Madrid street on Nov. 9. He remains hospitalized. The National Police forces press department said two suspects were detained in southern Spains city of Lanjaron and the third in the city of Fuengirola. The department declined to provide more details. Spanish state news agency EFE and other media outlets said none of the three was suspected of having fired the shot that hit Vidal-Quadras, who helped Spain's far-right Vox party. The National Court is investigating the shooting as a possible terrorist attack. Police told The Associated Press earlier this month that Vidal-Quadras had raised the possibility he was targeted because of his ties with Iran's political opposition. Investigators were exploring a potential Iranian link but so far have no found evidence of one, police told the AP. Vidal-Quadras has been aligned for decades with the Iranian opposition in exile. In January, Irans Foreign Ministry imposed sanctions on him and others with ties to the exiled opposition group known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, accusing them of supporting terrorism and terrorist groups. EFE said the two people arrested in Lanjaron were a Spanish man and his partner, a British woman. A man detained in Fuengirola, also a Spaniard, was was arrested in connection with a motorbike used in the shooting, the news agency reported. Vidal-Quadras was an important member of Spains conservative Popular Party and also a European Parliament member before he helped found Vox. He has not been active in politics for several years but maintained a public role as a media commentator and columnist. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Dutch far-right populist leader Geert Wilders, who has called for a referendum on leaving the EU and vowed to stop all immigration to the Netherlands, has won a shock victory in parliamentary elections held on Wednesday. The victory for Mr Wilders, sometimes dubbed the Dutch Donald Trump, is sending shockwaves across Europe and represents a dramatic lurch to the right for a country once seen as a beacon of tolerance. The anti-Islam politician will now seek to form a new ruling coalition to become the country's first far-right prime minister. With 98 per cent of votes counted on Thursday morning, Mr Wilders Freedom Party (PVV) had won 37 seats out of 150, well ahead of 25 for a joint Labour/Green ticket and 24 for the conservative Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of outgoing prime minister Mark Rutte. The Freedom Party will still need to form a coalition government, but has already more than doubled the 17 seats it won at the last election. I had to pinch my arm, a jubilant Mr Wilders said in a victory speech. Voters said, We are sick of it. Sick to our stomachs, he said, adding he was now on a mission to end the asylum tsunami, referring to the migration issue. The Dutch will be No 1 again, he said. The people must get their nation back. Immigration the issue that triggered the collapse of Mr Ruttes cabinet after 13 years in power has been one of the dominant talking points in the election campaign. Mr Rutte was the countrys longest-serving prime minister, but faced a steady decline in popularity. Mr Wilders election programme called for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, a total halt to accepting asylum-seekers and migrant pushbacks at the Dutch borders. The populist with dyed blonde hair said in a television debate during the election campaign: Its been enough now. The Netherlands cant take it any more. We have to think about our own people first now. Borders closed. Zero asylum seekers. A self-proclaimed fan of Hungarys far-right Victor Orban, Mr Wilders is also explicitly anti-EU, urging the Netherlands to significantly reduce its payments to the bloc, and to stop the entry of any new members. He has also repeatedly said the country should stop providing arms to Ukraine, saying it needs the weapons to be able to defend itself. None of the parties he could potentially form a government with shares these ideas. Mr Wilders called on other parties to engage in coalition talks, although both the VVD and the upstart centrist New Social Contract party the Freedom Partys most likely partners have raised serious concerns about working with the far-right. Pieter Omtzigt, a former centrist Christian Democrat who built up the New Social Contract party in just three months to take 20 seats, said he would always be open to talks. Frans Timmermans, the leader of an alliance of the centre-left Labor Party and Green Left, which was seen winning 25 seats, said Mr Wilders should not count on a coalition with him. We will never form a coalition with parties that pretend that asylum seekers are the source of all misery, Mr Timmermans was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. And in the coming days and weeks we will increasingly see how difficult, how important, how essential our task is to stand up for the Netherlands where we exclude no one, to stand up for the Netherlands where we embrace everyone to stand up for the Netherlands, where we do not look at what your background is, what your religion is, what your skin color is, he added. Hungary's nationalist prime minister on Wednesday congratulated Mr Wilders, saying the "winds of change are here". Congratulations to Geerts Wilders and the PVV for their spectacular performance in the legislative elections which confirms the growing attachment to the defence of national identities, said French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. It is because there are people who refuse to see the national torch extinguished that the hope for change remains alive in Europe, she added. Spains far-right politician, Santiago Abascal, added: More and more Europeans demand in the streets and at the polls that their nations, their borders and their rights be defended. Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister of Italy, said, "a new Europe is possible. In 2016, Mr Wilders said he wanted to ban all Islamic symbols, mosques and the Quran, although in this election campaign he has been seeking to soften his image in the hope of entering government, which some voters said they liked. He said recently that opposing Islam remained at his partys core but concerns over the cost of living, improving care for the elderly and limiting immigration were what he focused on now. His enduring popularity since he created PVV in 2006 has pushed ruling parties over the years to give the Netherlands one of Europes toughest immigration policies. Abroad, his comments about the prophet Mohammed and calls for the Quran to be banned led to sometimes violent protests in countries including Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt. He was convicted of discrimination after insulting Moroccans at a campaign rally in 2014. Death threats against him mean he has lived under heavy police protection for years. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Residents from a small Icelandic town under threat from a volcanic eruption have described their apocalyptic existence as they fear for their future. Last Friday, thousands of Grindavik residents were ordered to leave as the town was rocked by hundreds of earthquakes. The small fishing town is 34 miles from Reykjavik and is home to the famous tourist attraction the Blue Lagoon. Many have been unable to return to the danger zone to collect their belongings, as earthquakes continue to strike the town. Andrea varsdottirs whole life is in Grindavik and she has no idea if or when she will be able to return (Provided) Grindavik resident Andrea varsdottir, 46, told The Independent: Everything just seems so unreal, I feel like Im in a dystopian movie. Im just waiting to wake up from this nightmare. The mother was getting ready to go into Reykjavik to celebrate her son Bjorgvin Hrafnars 16th birthday when their house started to shake on Friday. Some of them [the earthquakes] were like a big truck had driven past your house, the bigger ones were like the same truck had hit your house, she said. Everything was shaking so bad, the floors were going up and down. The family planned on staying overnight at her mothers home, but they were alerted en route that they were going to be evacuated so only had their overnight bags and had left their cats behind. Ms varsdottir made the difficult call to return home to get her cats and medication but was stopped at a checkpoint on the main road Grindavikurvegur. Fortunately, the mother was granted special permission to return to collect her tablets and three pets before heading back. Ms varsdottir is living with her two sons Bjorgvin Hrafnar and orgeir Ulfar in her mothers two bedroom apartment (Provided) Like other Grindavik residents, Ms varsdottir was allowed to return home on Monday to collect her belongings but had to obey a 10-minute time limit. She is now living with her 16 and 14-year-old sons in her mothers cramped one-bedroom apartment. Describing the surreality and sadness of leaving her home, she said: I was crying non-stop when we got to Grindavik, we were allowed to drive into town. We had ten minutes, you dont have the mental capacity to think, I was in panic mode, I just grabbed what I could see. I grabbed all of the clothes I could think of but I left one of the packed suitcases behind. A police officer pulls a barrier to block the road leading to the fishing town of Grindavik, (REUTERS) The children do not yet have to return to school as they recover from the shock, but it remains unclear where they will go, explained the mother. The distraught mother works as the director of a local and public school library and explained the families entire existence is in Grindavik. Her home of eight and a half years is still standing but some have fallen to the ground due to the strong quakes. It was really hard to see the state of some of the houses and streets. My house seemed fine but this area is really unstable. The familys three storey home (Provided) Now the mother has to decide whether she wants to eventually move back to the town, if it isnt destroyed by the volcanic eruption. She says residents have accustomed to living with earthquakes, but living on an active volcano fissure is a different story. I love living in Grindavik, its a really nice close-knit town but now comes the fear if we get to move back, do we want to move back? she said. This area is really unstable. Do we want to experience evacuation again? Siggeir varsson, 38, is another Grindavik resident who does not know if he will be able to return to his family home. Siggeir varsson had just forked out thousands to renovate his kitchen (Provided) The teacher had planned to meet his brother and sister-in-law but after the earthquakes stuck on Friday his brother-in-law urged them to come sooner. Ive seen a lot Earthquakes but this is something Ive never felt before. The sources were 2km away from our house. Things were falling down from shelves, I was standing in the kitchen I thought, can I even put pans on the stove. Alongside his wife and youngest daughter, orgunnur Julia,10, they grabbed their two cats and left. Siggeir varsson and his wife Soffia Sveinsdottir are trying to remain positive despite not knowing if they will be able to return home (Provided) The 38-year-old says he and his wife, Soffia Sveinsdottir, 39, have been fortunate as his sister-in-law has a spacious house with spare rooms. Mr varsson was allowed to return on Sunday and was able to fill two cars with their items. It was like going into an apocalyptic movie. The town was empty and lifeless. There were cracks everywhere. It was very weird to walk into the house, it looked exactly the same the lights were still on. Other houses are cracking in two, my house was fine, but a few metres up the road they are ruined. Siggeier and Soffia with their children Emilia Snros, 16 and orgunnur Julia, 10 (Provided) As a born-and-bred Grindavikian, the fatherof-two is trying to remain positive and not think about lava flowing through his home. Im trying to think of this as extension of a holiday, Im watching movies, drinking beer and trying to stay positive and keep my mind from things I have no control over. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} As an imminent eruption looms thousands of Iceland residents await their fate as their town could be wiped out within days. Thousands of earthquakes rocked the southwestern peninsula of Reykjanes on Saturday 11 November leading semi-molten rock to ravage below the surface as the tremors caused a 15km long dyke to form, cracking the community in two as the ground was pushed upwards. Some 3,400 residents from the town of Grindavik which lies on the path of the expected fissure vent eruption were forced to evacuate, they described the apocalyptic scenes of their much-loved home town as they briefly returned to collect their belongings. The whole population waits in limbo as they fear the fate of their close-knit community, many have already lost their homes whilst others do not know if their residencies still stand as earthquakes have continued to strike. Iceland Volcano (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) The displaced population have moved across the country as fellow Icelanders have offered their spare rooms and summer homes. Since, volcanologists have noted a change in the stage of the eruption, making it more likely to come over the next few days. Tamsin Mather, a professor of Earth Sciences from the University of Oxford told The Independent the most troubling challenge to overcome is the uncertainty of when the eruption will come. She said: Its being very well managed in my opinion but it could accelerate very quickly as the heightened state of activity continues. When is it expected to erupt? The Iceland Civil Defence noted very clear signs of magma along the dyke less than 1km below the surface, report RUV. Viir Reynisson, director of Civil Defence told the state broadcaster: The likely time of something happening along the dyke, especially in the centre, if it happens, is within days not weeks. If this continues without an eruption the chance of one decreases with time pretty rapidly. But then we see the changes at Svartsengi which introduce possibly the next stage of this. The area near the Svartsengi power plant, about four km north of Grindavik, has entered a new eruption phase, an Icelandic volcanologist has suggested. Race against time to protect Svartsengi power plant from lava (Screengrab/ RUV) The land near the power plant is swelling as a chamber some 4.5 kilometres below the surface fills with magma at a rate of around 50 cubic metres per second, according to Professor Thorvaldur Thordarson. The land is rising much faster now. This happens simultaneously because the magma is creating space and thus raising the surface of the earth, Professor Thordarson told Iceland Monitor. It is still unclear when the eruption will take place as Grindavik evacuees remain on tenterhooks. Professor Mather added the eruption could happen suddenly but the Icelandic Met Office are knowledegable, well-resourced and working through the night to alleviate any danger. How dangerous would an eruption be? In the worst-case scenario, an eruption could obliterate the entire town, wiping out schools, workplaces and cherished family homes. However, two walls are being built around the Svartsengi geothermal plant to divert the potential lava flow away from the plant which provides hot water used for heating for 30,000 people, says RUV. Professor Mathers said: The lava could have an impact on the power station, the town and infrastructure. I really hope there are no fatalities or injuries as they have done everything to avoid that. Problems could arise if the lava flows towards the power station and the towns infrastructure, she added. The civil defence said in a conference earlier today that the risk of an eruption remains high but they cannot quantify the exact risks, say RUV. Iceland is highly susceptible to natural disasters because it lies on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge a divergent plate boundary where the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate are moving away from each other. Aerial view taken on February 28, 2021 shows the "Bridge between Continents", a footbridge linking the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, near the town of Grindavik on the Reykjanes peninsula (AFP via Getty Images) The country has 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 aeroplane engines. Professor Mathers, an expert in Iceland volcanology explained there are multiple factors that could affect the impact of an eruption. She said: Speculation isnt terribly helpful but once the eruption starts, they will be able to think about the contours and the direction of the lava flow. It is hard to predict the flow path until the eruption starts, she added. The best case scenario would be for the eruption to take place in the base of a valley, so the lava flows and does not travel far, said Professor Mather. The worst case would be for the eruption to occur on high ground so the lava can flow down over a vast area. Multiple factors could impact how destructive the explosion is, including the wind direction which influences where pyroclastic material and ash will blow. Sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide will also come up in an eruption which can affect air quality across a widespread area, added Professor Mather. Scientists say an eruption would likely produce lava but not an ash cloud. What would happen to residents? Civil protection authorities told Associated Press that even if there is not an eruption soon, its likely to be months before it is safe for residents evacuated from the danger zone to go home. In a worst-case scenario, if the eruption does happen close to the town of Grindavik it could devastate the entire town, as earthquakes have already destroyed homes. This image taken with a drone shows cracks at an intersection in the town of Grindavik, Iceland (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) The Icelandic Civil Defence told their state broadcaster the possibility of residents returning home to clear their homes, many have already been able to collect necessities and pets. Johanna Lilja Birgisdottir, a senior psychologist at Grindaviks social services department revealed the towns plan for displaced schoolchildren to RUV. She said in a conference this morning there are two possible solutions: for the children to attend school where their family is staying or for school children to group together and attend schools in different parts of Reykjavik from next Wednesday. Currently, Grindavik residents can apply for short-term accommodation through a government portal, where they can stay until mid-January. What would an emergency response be? An emergency response is already underway as magma intrusion measurements predict an eruption could arrive in days. Once an episode starts, the area will be monitored for decades to come and emergency teams and experts will respond to risks as and when they come as once an eruption begins, they are better placed to track the likely disruption, explained Professor Mathers. As it stands, Grindavik residents will not be able to return home as the magma intrusion is carefully monitored along the 15km dyke For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The White House said on Tuesday it was concerned that Iran might be providing Russia with ballistic missiles for use in its war against Ukraine. Moscow is already receiving Irans help with Shahed drones, guided aerial bombs, and artillery ammunition and may be gearing up to go a step further in its support for Russia, said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby. Moscow has received hundreds of Shahed drones that the Russian military used against Ukraines energy facilities and other key infrastructure. "We are therefore concerned that Iran is considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles now for use in Ukraine," Mr Kirby told reporters. Vladimir Putin, in return, is offering Tehran unprecedented defence cooperation, including on missiles, electronics and air defence", he said. The White House official cited a September meeting when Iran hosted Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu to show off a range of ballistic missile systems. Mr Putins war in Ukraine has also led Moscow to deepen ties with Iran. Iran also has reportedly shared its drone technology with Russia, which built a facility to produce them. In return, Moscow is expected to offer Iran advanced -35 fighter jets and other modern weapons. Mr Kirby said Iran was looking to buy additional military equipment from Russia, including attack helicopters, radars and combat-trainer aircraft. "In total, Iran is seeking billions of dollars worth of military equipment from Russia to strengthen its military capabilities," the NSC official said. "Russia has also been helping Iran develop and maintain its satellite collection capabilities and other space-based programmes." The burgeoning military partnership between Iran and Russia is harmful to Ukraine, Irans neighbors in the Middle East and "quite frankly to the international community," he said. The warning from White House comes at a time when Joe Biden is pushing for more than $61bn in emergency US funding to continue to support Ukraines defence, which has remained stalled in the Congress. The additional aid for Ukraine is part of a larger $106bn funding request from the Democratic president that also would support Israel, Taiwan and the US operations on the border with Mexico. The Russian president has shown desperation by increasing reliance on Iran, as well as North Korea, the two nations largely rejected on the international stage for their nuclear programs and human rights records, according to the US. This will help Russia restock its ammunition reserves as it is facing depletion of its stock in a lengthy invasion of Ukraine, which it had anticipated to be a shorter operation. The White House has said Russia has turned to North Korea for artillery. Close Kyiv suffers largest ever drone attack by Russia leaving five wounded For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Ukrainian president Volodmyr Zelensky has vowed that his countrys forces will not back down despite a difficult counteroffensive and a recent spate of Russian attacks. Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu claimed this morning that Russia was advancing in all directions on the frontline. While the claim cannot be verified and is likely to be exaggerated, it speaks to a fear among western military experts that Russia could begin to make gains in 2024 owing to a deeper arsenal of weapons and personnel compared with Ukraine. Over the past month, Russia has launched a large mechanised assault on Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine in the first signs of their renewed assault, though they have made negligible territorial gains. In an interview on Thursday, Mr Zelensky admitted that he was not satisfied with Western support and that Ukraine didnt get all the weapons we wanted. He said: We are losing people, I'm not satisfied. We didn't get all the weapons we wanted, I can't be satisfied, but I also can't complain too much. Look, we are not backing down, I am satisfied. We are fighting with the second (best) army in the world, I am satisfied. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Ukraine may not be able to meet domestic and export demand for wheat in the years to come if Russias attacks on its export routes and facilities continue, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. If attacks on food infrastructure and the blockage of sea export routes continue, it will dramatically impact the agricultural production outlook over years to come, and may, in a worst-case scenario, lead to wheat production being unable to meet domestic and export demand, said the WFPs Ukraine director Matthew Hollingworth on Tuesday. Since mid-July this year, there have been 31 documented attacks on Ukraines grain production and export facilities, according to an upcoming report by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), said Mr Hollingworth. Of these, 28 of these attacks were in Odesa oblast alone. The province has critical Black Sea and the Danube River terminals essential for global trade, the top official told the UN Security Council (UNSC). Countering the charges, Russias UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia told the UNSC that Moscow only targets military infrastructure and not civilian facilities a claim that has been questioned by Kyiv, its allies and independent experts monitoring Russias full-scale invasion. Before the war, Ukraine comprised nine per cent of global wheat exports, 15 per cent of maize and 44 per cent of sunflower oil, said Mr Hollingworth. The UN has blamed Russias invasion for sparking a worsening global food crisis that has trickled on to a domino effect on Asian and African nations reeling after the Covid-19 pandemic. Russia was actively preparing to steal grain supplies and starve the Ukrainian population of food for months before Vladimir Putin ordered last years invasion, according to new evidence compiled by human rights experts. When Russian tanks did roll across the border on 24 February 2022, they deliberately targeted grain-rich areas and food production infrastructure first, found the recent report by international human rights law firm Global Rights Compliance. UN officials are trying to revive the Black Sea grain deal, which Russia quit in July, a year after it was brokered by the UN and Turkey. Moscow complained that its own food and fertiliser exports faced obstacles and said not enough Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need. However, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned earlier this month that it will be difficult to revive the Black Sea deal, under which nearly 33 million metric tons of Ukraine grain were exported. This comes as Russian forces hit port infrastructure in Ukraines southern city of Odesa on Tuesday evening, the regional governor said. The invaders hit the port infrastructure of Odesa. People were not injured, Odesa governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram. Russia used -31 missiles, the southern military command said on Telegram. It also reported strikes on the Belgorod-Dniester district in the region, with missiles hitting open surface and administrative buildings. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Vladimir Putin has scaled back his assault on Avdiivka, said Kyivs military officials who also warned that the attacks have not fully stopped yet. Mr Putin is pouring in fewer troops and equipment in an attempt to seize the battered but strategic Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk oblast that has largely been occupied by Russia. Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles, said Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun. Avdiivka, that has a vast coking plant, has seen fierce fighting and is now down to just 1,500 residents compared to its pre-war population of about 32,000. The invaders are not abandoning their plans to surround Avdiivka. Eight attacks were repelled today, the spokesperson said. Russia is likely planning its third wave of attacks in a similar bid it made for Bakhmut last year. Ukrainian forces are continuing to hold their positions, said Vitaliy Barabash, the head of Avdiivkas military administration. The enemy continues to press on our boys. The main focus for them is drones. And drones again, he said. The long-contested town of Maryinka nearby has also started seeing a surge in the number of Russian attacks. Russia has not detailed its military operations and objectives for Avdiivka in daily updates, but in the latest development, it said its troops were attacking villages south of Avdiivka. Mr Putins troops have continued to fight and occupy Ukraines eastern regions in a slow advance and at the cost of thousands of its troops ever since the launch of the full-scale invasion last year. In the southern theatre of war, Russian forces struck port infrastructure in the Black Sea city of Odesa with missiles, regional officials said on Monday. Russias ministry of defence said marines were stopping all attempts by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to carry out amphibious landings on the Dnipro islands and the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro river in the Kherson region. Despite the rain and snowy weather conditions, experts monitoring the war said troops on both sides continue to carry out their military operations in eastern and southern Ukraine. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Fifty hostages, including dozens of children, will be released from captivity in Gaza after a deal was reached between Israel and Hamas marking a major breakthrough after weeks of fraught negotiations. Under the agreement, which was brokered by Qatar and the US, at least 50 Israeli civilians including the children and their mothers will be released via Egypt during a four-day pause in hostilities. The Independent understands that there will also be an exchange of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons but details were not yet finalised. Diplomatic sources told The Independent this deal can be expanded to see the release of 85 women and children in total. Sources said Israel is willing to extend the much-needed humanitarian ceasefire by a day for every 10 additional hostages released by Hamas. The first release of hostages is expected on Thursday. A senior US administration official said that the text of the deal runs to five or six pages and that the pause in military activity contained within would result in a real surge in humanitarian supplies. The official added that three US citizens a three-year-old girl and two women are expected to be included in the release. The US official said that the process towards a deal has been gut-wrenching and it has been long and fraught. Many attempted agreements have fallen at the last hurdle according to those close to the negotiations. At least 240 people, including the elderly, sick, and children the youngest just 10 months old have been held in Gaza since 7 October when Hamas militants launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel killing 1,200 people. Among the captives are believed to be at least two British citizens, 10 Americans, and Israeli soldiers. In retaliation, Israel has launched its heaviest bombardment ever of the Hamas-controlled strip which health authorities in the enclave say has killed more than 14,000 people including 5,600 children. The intense bombing and a ground operation into Gaza have increasingly worried families of the hostages who fear their loved ones may be killed in the fighting. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said part of the deal agreed includes visits by the Red Cross to hostages who have not yet been released, as well as the supply of medicine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (AFP via Getty Images) But Mr Netanyahu said Israel will continue its war against Hamas, even with a temporary ceasefire. "We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages, and ensure that nobody in Gaza can threaten Israel," he said. The Israeli prime minister said the intervention of US President Joe Biden had helped to improve the tentative agreement so that it included more hostages and fewer concessions to Hamas. Among the stumbling blocks has been Israel's concerns that a ceasefire will be used by Hamas militants to regroup. The other issue is the location and access to the hostages. The Independent understands Israel believes dozens are being directly held by Hamas, but there could be more 150 hostages being held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other militant groups in the strip. There have been splits in the Israeli cabinet over a deal with some of Mr Netanyahus hardline coalition partners opposing some of the terms of the deal. But in the end it was not enough to stop it being agreed. Mr Netanyahu acknowledged that the cabinet faced a tough decision, but supporting the truce was the right thing to do. Israeli officials initially publicly dismissed deals involving a ceasefire saying they want the unconditional and immediate release of all the hostages. However, Mr Netanyahu has come under increasing pressure from the families of the hostages who have expressed concerns that that the primary objective is a military one in Gaza not to secure the quickest release of their loved ones. Pressure has further mounted on the Israeli authorities after the Israeli military announced they had found the bodies of two female hostages. The families of hostages have been demonstrating for weeks for their loved ones to be brought home (Amir Cohen/Reuters) On Tuesday there was hope and relief among the relatives of those held captive who have gathered for multiple weeks in what is now known as hostage square in central Tel Aviv to demand the immediate release of their loved ones. Gil Dickmann, a cousin of Carmel Gat, 39, who was abducted by Hamas from Kibbutz Berri near Gaza, has taken a lead role representing the families in their fight for a hostage deal and has even appeared in the Knesset to directly appeal to lawmakers. Speaking to The Independent as the deal was being finalised, he said the families were nervous but mostly optimistic. We know were not going to see all the hostages coming home right now, but it feels as if this deal opens the door to the next deal, he said. The most important thing in such matters is trust. Having a deal signed and completed is a very important sign for optimism for the next deals. What could go wrong is that the deal will collapse midway but of course, we are not going to stop until they all come back home. This was a concern raised by diplomatic sources involved in the talks. The ceasefire is expected to be used as a pathway to work on further negotiations and the release of more hostages. This could be scuppered if either side violates terms of the truce. US President Joe Biden has said that work has been going on for weeks to bring hostages home (Reuters) There were also concerns about Israels northern border with Lebanon where there have been intense exchanges of fire with Lebanon militant group Hezbollah , a staunch ally of Hamas. On Tuesday in southern Lebanon, an Israeli strike killed two journalists with Al-Mayadeen TV, according to the Hezbollah-allied Pan-Arab network and Lebanese officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel's offensive on Gaza has caused widespread destruction and displaced more than 1.7 million people, according to Palestinian health authorities. The frontline of the war has shifted to the Jabalia refugee camp, a dense warren of concrete buildings near Gaza City in the north of the enclave that houses families displaced in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Israel has bombarded the area for weeks, and the military said Hamas fighters have regrouped there and in other eastern districts after being pushed out of much of Gaza City. Israel's chief military spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said forces had continued operations through the day in Gaza and completed an encirclement of Jabalia, "which is a significant combat area", adding that troops had also "deepened combat" in the nearby Zeitoun district of Gaza City. He said the army was focused on fighting and the deal with Hamas would not affect its gains in Gaza, where Israel says it now controls much of the north. "The military will know how to maintain its military achievements in Gaza while preparing for the next stages of the war," Hagari told a televised briefing on Tuesday evening. The fighting in Jabalia has raged around two nearby hospitals, trapping hundreds of patients and displaced people sheltering inside. A strike on Tuesday hit inside one of the facilities, al-Awda, killing four people, including three doctors, the hospital director told Al-Jazeera TV. Israel has said in recent days it would focus its attentions on south of Gaza. John Kirby, US National Security Council spokesperson, said that Washington did not support Israel's planned offensive south if they do not have a "cohesive plan" to protect the civilian population that evacuated from the north. "It's even more incumbent upon the Israelis to make sure before they begin operations down there that they have factored in ways in which they can protect those civilians who have moved at their urging to the south. Andrew Feinberg contributed to this story For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Watch as relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas hold a press conference after a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Wednesday 22 November. At least 50 hostages will be freed by Hamas during a four-day ceasefire under a new deal brokered by Qatar and the United States after weeks of fraught negotiations. Dozens of children and their mothers held captive in Gaza since the brutal incursion into Israel on 7 October will be freed via Egypt, according to the agreement. The first release of hostages is expected on Thursday. More than 14,000 people, including 5,000 children, have been killed in Hamas-controlled Gaza since the start of Israels retaliatory bombardment on 7 October and subsequent invasion, health authorities in the enclave say. Britains foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, has said the truce between Israel and Hamas is a crucial step towards releasing hostages and providing humanitarian relief in Gaza. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Chaim Peri was an artist and a peace activist who used to take sick people from Gaza for treatment in Israeli hospitals. On 7 October he was among those kidnapped by Hamas fighters when they came across the border to carry out an attack that claimed 1,200 lives. Every day of waiting since then has been one of despondency and fear for his family. They are relieved now that the freeing of hostages is due to start under a deal, but they are also aware that Mr Peri, 80, who suffers from heart disease, will not be among the first to come home. It is a strange feeling now. Things are moving at last and that is great. It is also right, of course, that children and women will be the first to be let go, said his son Noam. If only we had some idea about when our father may get out. He is not a healthy man; he needs daily medication. He is a brave man, a hardy man, but at his age he may not survive much longer. He has fought for human rights all his life, including Palestinian rights. It would be so sad if he had a lonely death in Gaza. Mr Peri was listed as missing after the attacks and his family only found out that he was alive when Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old neighbour at Kibbutz Nir Oz, who has been freed by Hamas, reported that she had seen him in captivity. Seventy-three residents of the Kibbutz were abducted, Yocheveds 83-year-old husband Oded is among those still being held. Their daughter, Sharone, agreed with Noam Peri that it was only right that women and children should be the first to get home. But everyone is really concerned about what can happen next. Why is Hamas delaying the freeing of the others? When will they come out? It is a kind of psychological warfare that they are carrying out, she said. The agreement, which was brokered by Qatar as the main conduit, and Egyptian help, with the US administration a driving force, is structured to encourage the further releases of hostages. Relatives and friends of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have protested for their release for weeks (AFP via Getty Images) A four-day ceasefire will be used to free 50 women and children from Gaza, followed by the release of 150 Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails. A second phase would then come into play with the pause in fighting extended by a day for every 10 further hostages freed. Israel will then release up to 150 more Palestinian detainees. The process will not get under way until Thursday. The Israeli government has issued a list of the 300 inmates who would be freed. Under the countrys constitution citizens have 24 hours to appeal to the Supreme Court against individual releases. This option, it is thought, is unlikely to be pursued successfully. All Israeli and American air activity, including drone flights, are due to stop in the south of Gaza for the four days. In the north of the territory, however, the suspension will be limited to six hours every day. Israeli forces will stay in position, but will not carry out any offensive operations. Much needed humanitarian assistance will be boosted with 200 lorries carrying food, four fuel tankers, and four lorries carrying gas going into Gaza from Egypts Rafah crossing on each of the four days. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) will get access to the hostages to check on their physical and mental well-being, and the conditions under which they are being kept, something the families of the hostages and the Israeli government has been pressing to happen. Some of the hostages suffer from illnesses which need medical care and some have been injured during their abduction. Among those taken away was a Thai worker who was nine months pregnant and may have given birth. There are many in their 70s and 80s who are afflicted by high blood pressure and may suffer strokes if they do not receive the required medication. Netanyahu: We are at war, and the war will continue until all our goals are achieved (AFP) The families of the hostages have welcomed the ICRC access, but there is trepidation among some that the Israeli military may try to carry out rescue operations if they track down the location of the hostages, and these could go wrong with potentially fatal consequences. Im really conflicted about this. Obviously its a very good thing that the Red Cross is getting the visits to help people with medical conditions. But would the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] find out the locations and then try rescue missions if they did? Its hard to imagine they wouldnt, said the brother of a young man who was kidnapped from the Supernova musical festival. Until now I would have said hell yes go and save the hostages with a rescue attempt. But now with this deal in place, with progress being made, Ive become very nervous about something like that. Things can go wrong on these things even with best precautions taken. The brother, who has spoken regularly to Israeli and foreign media since the war began, did not want his identity disclosed on this occasion. This is a very tense time, delicate time. People can take things wrongly, think Im appeasing the terrorists. The fact is, we are all very nervous about things going wrong now, he wanted to explain. Relations of women and children who are likely to be freed in the first tranche remain apprehensive. Yosi Shnaiders cousin, Shiri Bibas, and her two children 10-month old baby Kfir, and four-year-old Ariel were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. He said: We saw a photo of them with Hamas, there was blood on one of the kids blankets. Shiri looked terrified, she was crying. We do not know what has happened to them, what kind of state they are in. They should be in the first 50 freed, but weve heard nothing. Hamas is playing games, first of all they said they did not know where all the women and children were. Then they say they will give 10 names at a time. We dont trust them, everyone is very worried. Anyway, whatll happen after this? Will the government try to destroy Hamas like they said, or will the war just end? There was cautious hope among some international leaders that the temporary ceasefires will lead to an end to the fighting. Qatars prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said the deal should establish a comprehensive and sustainable agreement that would put an end to the war and the bloodshed. He added that this could lead to serious talks for a comprehensive and just peace process. However the near unanimous cabinet approval for the hostage deal, with only the party of the ultra-right security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, voting against it, was on the pledge that the truce was strictly temporary. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his ministers: We are at war, and the war will continue until all our goals are achieved. The stated goal of the Israeli government is the total destruction of Hamas and the liquidation of its leadership and command and control. That has not been achieved yet and it remains unlikely that peace will break out in the immediate future. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the Gaza ceasefire by at least one more day to allow for more hostage releases. On Thursday, just minutes before the six-day ceasefire was due to expire, Israels military said in a statement the truce will continue. In light of the mediators efforts to continue the process of releasing the hostages and subject to the terms of the framework, the operational pause will continue, said the Israeli statement released on Thursday. Hamas announced in a separate statement that a consensus had been reached to extend the ceasefire for a seventh day. Qatar said the two sides had agreed to extend the truce for an additional day (today, Thursday) under the existing conditions, which are a cessation of all military activities and the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza. The extension of the ceasefire had been uncertain up until the last hour as Israel and Hamas couldnt come to an agreement over the new list of Israeli hostages slated for release from Gaza. The truce between Hamas and Israel was due to expire at 7am local time (5am GMT). Earlier, Hamas had claimed that Israel had declined to receive seven women and child hostages and the bodies of three others, who the militant group said were killed during the Israeli militarys bombardment of Gaza, in exchange for a temporary truce extension on Thursday. This is despite confirming through mediators that this group is all the (Hamas) movement has in terms of detainees in the agreed-upon category, Hamas said in a statement, according to Al Jazeera. Hamas freed 16 Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for 30 Palestinian women and child prisoners late on Wednesday. Qatar, a key mediator of the truce negotiations, said that 10 of the freed captives were included in the current truce arrangement, while four Thai citizens and two Russian-Israelis were freed outside the terms of that agreement. A Thai national waves an Israeli flag while walking to a bus leaving the Shamir Hospital in Ramle, Israel, Wednesday, 29 November 2023, on his way back to Thailand, after being released from Hamas custody. International mediators on Wednesday worked to extend the truce in Gaza, encouraging Hamas militants to keep freeing hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and further relief from Israel's air and ground offensive (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press All rights reserved) Meanwhile, Qatars foreign affairs ministry stated that further negotiations are ongoing in hopes of reaching a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. During the six-day ceasefire, authorities said that 97 Israeli and foreign hostages were released by Hamas and 210 Palestinians were freed from Israeli prisons. Just before announcing the ceasefire extension, both Israel and Hamas had resorted to increasingly aggressive rhetoric, with the Israeli military saying it was ready for the next stage of the war. Over the past few days Ive been hearing this question will Israel go back to fighting after maximising this phase of returning our hostages? So my answer is unequivocal yes, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Hamas military wing had also asked its fighters to be ready for combat in case the ceasefire was not extended. The Al-Qassam Brigades had earlier on Telegram asked the fighters to maintain a high combat readiness. Hong Kong: SWD combats accident fraud cases The Social Welfare Department (SWD) today said it will continue to co-operate with the Independent Commission Against Corruption on its follow-up work on a fraud case concerning Traffic Accident Victims Assistance (TAVA). The department noted that the ICAC has announced the completion of its investigation on the TAVA fraud case and the laying of charges against the concerned individuals. Administered by the SWD, the TAVA Scheme provides speedy financial assistance to road traffic accident victims or the surviving dependents of deceased victims. To guard against abuse and fraud, the department strictly verifies every application by seeking written confirmation from Police on whether a traffic accident is involved. It liaises closely with the Hospital Authority and the Department of Health to ensure that the injuries sustained by the applicants are related to the traffic accidents concerned. Furthermore, suspected cases are referred to enforcement agencies for investigations. In addition, the SWD also verifies whether the applicants have made any claim for damages or compensation through other means for the same traffic accident. It will also write to insurance companies timely to inform them of the disbursement of a payment, to avoid double compensation. The SWD stressed that obtaining TAVA by deception is a criminal offence and offenders are liable upon conviction to imprisonment of up to 14 years. The department will continue to monitor the scheme's implementation and urges anyone who has information about improper or illegal activities by TAVA applicants to report to the department or Police. This story has been published on: 2023-11-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. International Buddhism exchanges and cooperation among people from China, the United States and Canada are important in efforts to boost mutual understanding and promote peace, religious leaders said. They made the remarks at the third China-US-Canada Buddhist Forum last week in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where nearly 300 representatives and guests participated. Themed "Tranquil Mind, Auspicious Coexistence", the forum aims to connect the Buddhist communities of the three countries to promote international Buddhist exchanges and cooperation and facilitate exchanges and mutual learning between Eastern and Western civilizations. "Only by realizing that the world is a community with a shared future for humankind, can different countries jointly promote peace and harmony," said Master Yanjue, head of the Buddhist Association of China. Master Mingyu, head of the American Buddhist Federation, said Buddhism is not just a religion but also a philosophy that can guide people through life. "Buddhism has become increasingly popular in the US since the 20th century. In particular, Chan Buddhism, which originated in China, has helped many people find inner peace. It's important to find ways to better integrate the teachings of Buddhism with people's daily activities so people can live in peace and harmony," Mingyu said. Master Dayi, head of the Buddhist Association of Canada, said it's necessary to promote Buddhism differently among overseas Chinese and Westerners that have different lifestyles. China has set a good example in making sure that the promotion of Buddhism can adapt to social development. Last week's forum was the first to be held in China. Toronto hosted the first event in 2017, and the second was held in New York in 2019. The event has become a platform to promote friendly exchanges among the Buddhist communities across the Pacific Ocean. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Families of hostages, and Palestinians trapped in besieged Gaza wait anxiously for the start of a long-awaited truce and exchange of captives, in the first breakthrough in a bloody seven-week war. At least 50 women and children captured by militants are expected to be gradually released over a four day period in exchange for a halt in fighting and the release of 150 Palestinian women and children jailed in Israel. Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid including fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza. Israeli diplomatic sources told The Independent the ceasefire could be extended by a day for every additional 10 or so additional hostages released. In exchange there will also be more Palestinians released. It was expected that hostages would start to be released on Thursday, but Israels national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said captives would not be let free before Friday. Negotiations for the release of our captives are progressing and continue all the time, Mr Hanegbi said in a statement released by the prime ministers office. The start of the release will proceed according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday, Mr Hanegbi added. Relatives and friends of Ditza Heiman in Tel Aviv call for her release (AFP via Getty Images) The Israel Justice Ministry published a list of a total of 300 Palestinians eligible to be released, mainly teenage boys detained over the past year for throwing stones and other minor offences. The deal which came after weeks of fraught discussions is the most significant breakthrough for desperate families who have been lobbying for the release of an estimated 240 hostages held captive by militants. Many fear because tensions and distrust are so high it could crumble. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was the right choice but the truce was only temporary. I want to be clear. The war is continuing. The war is continuing. We will continue it until we achieve all our goals, he said. He said Israel would resume the war after the truce and keep fighting until we achieve all our goals, including the destruction of Hamas fighting and governing abilities and the return of all hostages. The Israeli military has signalled after the truce it will push their offensive south which rights groups have said would be devastating for families sheltering there. On 7 October Hamas militants seized hundreds of civilians, including foreign nationals, babies as young as 10 months old and the elderly, during a bloody rampage through southern Israeli towns, where they killed at least 1200 people. In retaliation Israel unleashed a crippling siege, its heaviest ever bombardment of Gaza and launched a ground offensive deep inside the blockaded strip. So far only four female hostages have been released in deals brokered between Egypt, the US and Israel: the bodies of two other Israeli women have been found in Gaza City. In besieged Gaza, a fragile four-day halt in hostilities and an accompanying increase in delivery of badly needed aid would be the first respite for civilians living under ferocious bombardment launched by Israel in the aftermath of 7 October. Men look over the site of a deadly explosion at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City (AP) The Palestinian health ministry has said it has stopped officially counting the death toll from Israels strikes because the bombing was so heavy it was impossible to properly count the dead. As many as 14,000 are believed to have been killed. And so there has been tense expectation riding on the truce deal, with negotiations continuing until the eleventh hour. The families of hostages who had forged a central gathering point in a square in Tel Aviv told The Independent people were nervous but optimistic about the deal and just hoped the truce would hold for the full four day period. It feels as if this deal opens the door to the next deal, and so the release of even more hostages, said Gil Dickmann, whose 39-year-old cousin Carmel was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Beeri. The problem is whether its going to fall apart in between the days. What could go wrong is that the deal will collapse midway. This was a concern shared by civilians in Gaza for different reasons, who told The Independent they were on the brink of running out of basic supplies, struggling to find clean water, and frightened about the prospects of Israels ground incursion pushing deep into the south where most of Gazas 2.3 million population is crammed into after answering Israels orders to evacuate south. David and Varda Goldstein pose for a picture whilst holding-up photos of their 3 grandchildren, Gal, Tal and Agam, and their mother, Chen, who were kidnapped by Hamas (Getty) Ahmed, who asked for his full name and identity to be withheld for his security, said he and his family were bracing themselves for a difficult night in the southern city of Rafah. The hours before a pause or truce are usually the deadliest. I expect a horrible night, Ahmed said. Four days would never be enough to provide enough humanitarian aid for such a huge and dense population as we have here in the south, he said, adding that he and his wife are fast running out of basic supplies. It is only a pause. People cant go home to pick up their remaining stuff or even claim the bodies of those buried under the rubble. The details were still being hammered out in the eleventh hour. Israels Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly flew to Doha on Wednesday afternoon to tie up the final print of the deal with Qataris. Late on Wednesday one diplomatic source told The Independent: The details are being finalised, it is extremely sensitive. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which will manage the transport of hostages, said on Wednesday evening they had still not been given details of the logistics of the deal. Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip (AP) Diplomatic sources told The Independent the truce will begin at 10am local time a time Hamas has also confirmed publicly. The Independent understands at that point they will start to gather and transport the hostages to the south of Gaza a treacherous journey in the war-blasted territory that for previous hostage releases had taken as long as 13 hours. When they have left Gaza they will be met by psychologists and doctors before being taken to hospitals in Israel for treatment if needed. Later in the day Palestinians in Israeli prisons who were listed in the deal will be released and returned home. US President Joe Biden welcomed the deal, saying Mr Netanyahu committed to supporting an extended pause. Several nations, including Britain, France, China and Russia, also welcomed the agreement. Qatars prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent ceasefire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arab foreign ministers also applauded the deal but said aid to Gaza needed to be significantly increased, the truce must be extended and it should be the first step toward full cessation of hostilities. There were also tense exceptions about the release of Palestinian women and children in Israels jails as part of the truce. A Palestinian boy on a bicycle looks at rubble of a building following Israeli strikes in Rafah on Wednesday (AFP) The Israeli military says it has detained more than 1,850 Palestinians in the West Bank since the war began, mostly suspected Hamas members. Palestinian rights groups say that number is closer to 3000 including 200 children. The United Nations said it has been the deadliest year in the West Bank in decades 200 Palestinians have been killed there, mainly during battles triggered by army raids. Attacks by Jewish settlers have surged, deepening Palestinian despair. In Gaza on Wednesday the ferocious fighting continued. Outside Khan Younis, workers dug a mass grave for 111 bodies that Israeli authorities handed over after troops took them from Shifa Hospital and other parts of northern Gaza. Israeli troops took the bodies apparently for DNA analysis amid the search for hostages in the north. Strikes also levelled buildings in the Nusseirat refugee camp and the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, which have been heavily bombarded in recent days. The citys al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said 128 bodies were brought in overnight after strikes. Theres no safe place, said Umm Rami al-Jabali, who survived a strike in Deir al-Balah. Inside isnt safe, outside isnt safe. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Watch as Benjamin Netanyahu makes a statement on Wednesday, 22 November, after Hamas agreed to release at least 50 hostages dung a four-day ceasefire under a new deal with Israel The agreement was brokered by Qatar and the United States after weeks of negotiations since Hamas's brutal attack on 7 October. The breakthrough means dozens of people held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, will be released and a large influx of aid will be brought into the besieged territory. Dozens of children and their mothers held captive in Gaza since Hamass incursion into Israel will be freed via Egypt, according to the agreement. Sources told the Independent Israel is willing to extend the humanitarian ceasefire by a day for every 10 additional hostages released by Hamas. The first release is expected on Thursday. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Plestia Alaqad, a Palestinian journalist whose dispatches from Gaza have provided a rare glimpse of the war to millions of social media followers around the world, has fled Gaza amid Israels ongoing bombardments and military siege. I traveled yesterday and this was literally one of the hardest decisions that I took, she wrote in the caption under an Instagram video on Wednesday. I hope this nightmare ends and Ill be back in Gaza soon. She made the decision to leave for the safety of her family, fearing that her reporting and role as a journalist could put her familys life in danger, she said. Speaking in Arabic to her followers, she said she hoped for an end to the war and the return of Gaza citizens to their homes. Earlier this week, Ms Alaqad said she stopped wearing her blue press vests and helmet, fearing that what she once used to protect her during the crisis has made her a target. I dont feel safe in Gaza no matter what, even while sleeping I dont feel safe, but especially when wearing [the] press vest and helmet I dont feel safe, she wrote. I hope this nightmare ends soon, I hope we dont lose anymore journalists. At least 53 media workers, including 46 Palestinian journalists, have been killed since 7 October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, as of 22 November. Belal Jadallah, considered a giant among Gaza journalists and the director of the nonprofit media group Press House Palestine, was killed and his pharmacist brother-in-law was seriously wounded during an Israeli attack on Sunday, according to his family. On Monday, two Lebanese journalists were killed during an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon, close to the border with Israel. Ms Alaqad, who now has nearly 4 million followers on Instagram, is among young Palestinian journalists whose social media posts have provided rare firsthand accounts of the devastation. Within the month after Israel launched its retaliatory campaign, she gained more than 2 million followers. Her video diaries shared views from her home during airstrikes; sheltering in the dark during blackouts while listening to the sounds of bombs booming in the distance; evacuating her home as it burned; and tours of Gaza revealing the scale of devastation around her. The more I walk, she said in one video as she surveyed collapsed homes and buildings and the rubble around her, the [more] speechless I get. Her often unfiltered overage of Israels attacks has shifted a dynamic across world media struggling to capture what is happening in Gaza amid power shortages, blackouts and ongoing bombardments. Ms Alaqads footage, viewed by tens of thousands of people on Instagram, was profiled by NBC News, New York Magazine and The New York Times, which shared her dispatches and images in the days after Israel launched its siege. Reporting and posting about whats happening in Gaza, Palestine feels pointless, she wrote on the 37th day of Israels siege after regaining access to her account. It feels like Im posting movie scenes for people to watch, and whenever they get bored they watch something else. In her latest video, speaking in Arabic, she told her followers that she feels guilty for leaving and expressed her sorrow for Gaza citizens forced to leave their country to stay alive. More than 12,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 5,000 children, following Israels retaliatory strikes in the wake of Hamas attacks on 7 October that killed 1,200, according to Gazas health ministry. Israel and Hamas have agreed to a four-day pause in fighting that will allow for the release of at least 50 women and children reportedly held hostage in Gaza, while Hamas announced that the deal will include the release of 150 Palestinian women and teenagers from Israeli prisons. The pause also is expected to accelerate the flow of desperately needed humanitarian relief, medical aid and fuel into Gaza. Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyTech email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} A group of nearly 30 House Democrats has accused Elon Musk and X of profiting from Hamas propaganda. The group, led by Reps Jamie Raskin and Dan Goldman, sent a letter to Mr Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino on Tuesday accusing the company of not following its own policies regarding violent and hateful entities, which prohibits promotion of terrorist organizations and propaganda and states the platform works to remove such violations. The letter outlined reports from non-profit research groups that showed X accounts sharing uncensored videos depicting the desecration of corpses. The lawmakers said such content was being spread in the darkest corners of the platform through hashtags used by people monitoring updates about the Israel-Hamas war. They added that the posts and accounts were allowed to remain live for days after their policy violations had been publicized. The group went on to accuse X of profiting off the back of the Hamas propaganda being shared, through monthly subscription fees collected from some propaganda spreaders and ads displayed in replies to posts by both Premium and regular accounts. This, the lawmakers said, is indefensible. The lawmakers concluded by asking Mr Musk and Ms Yaccarino to uphold your public commitments and enforce your policies. They also asked the pair to provide all forms of written communications relating to content moderation for any posts or accounts associated with, related to, or connected to Hamas. X did not immediately returnThe Independents request for comment. However, the same day that the letter was sent, Mr Musk announced plans to donate all revenue the social media platform generates from advertising and subscriptions linked to the war to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross in Gaza. X Corp will be donating all revenue from advertising & subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza, he posted on X. The condemnation from House Democrats marks just the latest development in the growing antisemitism row encircling Mr Musk and the social media platform. Since Mr Musks $44bn acquisition of X closed last year, he has relaxed moderation policies on the platform and cut many staff involved with moderating content. In recent months, Mr Musk has come under fire on multiple occasions over content promoting antisemitism on the site. Mr Musk has also sparked outrage over his own peronal posts and comments which have promoted antisemitic content. Last week, the self-described free-speech absolutist said a post which promoted an antisemitic theory was the actual truth. A social media user had 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. Im deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest s*** now about Western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realisation 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, the post added. Mr Musk responded by writing: You have said the actual truth. His response received praise from white nationalist Nick Fuentes while prompting widespread backlash from dozens more, including the White House, with many accusing him of antisemitism. He later responded to the accusations of antisemitism, insisting nothing could be further from the truth. A group of nearly 30 House Democrats has accused Elon Musk and X of profiting from Hamas propaganda (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) This past week, there were hundreds of bogus media stories claiming that I am antisemitic. Nothing could be further from the truth, he wrote. I wish only the best for humanity and a prosperous and exciting future for all. Days later, left-wing non-profit organisation Media Matters published a report revealing that adverts from big brands including IBM, Apple, Oracle and Bravo were running next to pro-Hitler and antisemitic content on Mr Musks social media platform. The revelation prompted a series of major companies including Disney, Apple and IBM to pull advertising from X. On Monday, Mr Musk responded by filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters. He and other X executives denied the accusations in the report, saying that the research strategy used by the non-profit to uncover the content placed next to company adverts was not representative of how regular people use its platform. The organisation had followed accounts that posted the content, then refreshed the X timeline until adverts appeared, X executive Joe Benarroch said. Meanwhile, an X spokesperson told The Independent the company did not intentionally place the adverts next to the posts from the antisemitic accounts, which have now been demonetised, meaning advertising can no longer run on their profiles. However, the accounts have not been removed. Media Matters president Angelo Carusone issued a statement on Monday addressing Mr Musks campaign against the organisation, calling the lawsuit meritless and 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, the non-profit said. This came after an earlier scandal in the days after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, where Mr Musk was forced to delete a post in which he amplified an account widely accused of antisemitism and promoted debunked videos as reliable sources of information about the attack. Last year, advocacy organisation the American Jewish Committee called on Mr Musk to apologise over a controversial post that made a satirical comparison between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Adolf Hitler. Mr Musk has previously insisted that he is pro free speech but against antisemitism of any kind. Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyTech email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} "If you suffer from ringing ears, youre going to love this recent breakthrough," said the unblockable advertisement, featuring a man with Mona Lisa smile pouring baby oil into his ear canal. Not tempted? Then how about a spammy news website with the headline "This Seems Unbelievable, But Happens in Dubai Everyday"? Or an unauthorised SpaceX-branded cryptocurrency, complete with the dubious promise that you could win a trip to Mars? These are the low-quality adverts that users of X, nee Twitter, have been seeing more of in the year since Elon Musk bought the company for a titanic $44 billion. Their prominence is a testament to the slow drip of reputable advertisers who have been abandoning the service and thereby strangling it of its financial lifeblood. Last week that drip became a torrent after Elon Musk enthusiastically endorsed the idea that "Jewish communities" in the US have been stoking "hatred against whites" and pushing to "flood the country" with "hordes of minorities" a mildly watered-down version of the white supremacist conspiracy theory known as "the Great Replacement" . One day after, an investigation by the left-wing campaign group Media Matters for America found that ads for major companies such as Apple and IBM had appeared next to explicitly pro-Nazi posts despite promises from Xs chief executive Linda Yaccarino that they would be "protected" from such unfortunate juxtapositions. Musk is doing everything he can to make sure this business that was overpriced when he bought it is worth nothing The following day, major companies including Apple, Sony, Warner Bros, Disney, and IBM all said they would no longer buy adverts on X, while advertising executives pressed Yaccarino, once respected throughout the ad industry as a high-flying executive at NBCUniversal, to resign before her reputation was indelibly tarnished. Tesla shareholders, tech barons, and even the White House joined in the criticism. The crisis could deprive the ailing social network of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in sales revenue, marking a turning point from which it may not recover. "Any advertiser on the platform is tacitly if not explicitly supporting Musks choices its impossible to separate them at this point," Brian Wieser, a widely respected ad industry analyst and head of the advisory firm Madison and Wall, told The Independent. "Musk is doing everything he can to make sure this business that was overpriced when he bought it is worth nothing." Musk argued that he is not antisemitic and launched what he called a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against Media Matters, which accused it of artificially manipulating the social networks algorithms to achieve the contentious juxtapositions (while admitting that they had in fact occurred). Advertisers and journalists reach their breaking point Its hard to assess the scale of the blow that was dealt to X last week in part because, as a privately held company, it no longer needs to reveal its finances publicly. But data provided to The Independent by the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower suggests that just six of the companies that pulled out Apple, IBM, Sony, Comcast, and Paramount accounted for 7 per cent of all US ad spending on the social network. Wieser likewise estimates that all the boycotters combined could represent 5 or 10 per cent of Xs pre-Musk ad revenues, with each film studio accounting for perhaps tens of millions of dollars in a good year though he cautions that this is only a guess. "Theres no doubt that Musks own promotion of white genocide was not just a catalyst but a massive contributing factor of advertisers leaving," says Angelo Carusone, the head of Media Matters and a veteran of past advertising boycotts against Fox News and Facebook. He tells The Independent this latest incident was remarkable because it was such a direct and personal endorsement by Musk of claims that most large companies would run a mile from. "If youre an advertiser and youre having some brand safety concerns, and then youre [seeing] the platform promoting the very content that should be diminished, youre saying: I dont think this is fixable," he says. This comes on top of an existing advertiser exodus that began when Musk bought Twitter in October 2022. Of the companys top 100 US advertisers in the days before the buyout, only 50 were still there as of October 2023, according to Sensor Tower and the new top 100 were spending roughly 45 per cent less money. X and Yaccarino have given different figures, claiming that numerous top 100 advertisers have returned to the service this year. However, that is not supported by third party data . The situation has created new pressure on Yaccarino, who is reportedly facing calls to resign from ad executives. "My advice was to leave before her reputation was damaged," said the prominent marketer Lou Paskalis on Monday . "I believe that there has been a groundswell of a lot of people such as myself saying, save yourself. Nor was the latest outrage limited to advertisers. "I call on Elon Musk to resign," said Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz. "[This] CEO does so many detrimental things that destroy the brand," said longtime Tesla investor Ross Gerber. "We condemn this abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms, which runs against our core values as Americans," said a spokesperson for Joe Biden. View more Some journalists also reached their limit. Platformer, a widely-read tech newsletter that has often broken major news from inside the company, said it would no longer promote its content on the service or feature any tweets in its daily roundup of funny posts from across the internet. "Any day over the past day would have been a good day to quit X; Thursday was just mine," Platformers editor Casey Newton tells The Independent. "X has devolved into a far-right cesspool, and it would undermine the integrity and value of what we try to do to continue contributing to the platform in any way." Such decisions are dangerous to X because it has historically depended on reporters, pundits, and celebrities to draw other users to the service. Its own PR folk have always boasted that Twitter was the place where you could see the latest news playing out before it had even solidified into headlines. "It does feel like a step change," says Wieser, arguing that its "really hard to come back from" what he describes as the "overt racism" of Musks remarks. A comparison with the massive Facebook advertising boycott of 2020 is similarly instructive. That year, many companies froze their spending on the service out of concern over its refusal to take action on posts by Donald Trump that called for violence against George Floyd protesters. Ron DeSantis refuses to condemn Elon Musk endorsing antisemitic conspiracy theory Back then, Carusone says, many firms were "quiet quitters" and had to be cajoled or pressured into announcing their decisions. Those quitting X this month immediately publicised it. Moreover, Xs nascent revenue sharing programme for big accounts an attempt by Musk to vie with YouTube and TikTok for the favour of professional social media influencers means advertisers must also contend with the risk of their money directly funding extremists. ( Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer who is under investigation for rape and human trafficking in Romania , claims to have received at least $20,000.) And while Zuckerberg had exercised great personal influence over how Facebook treated Trump, he wasnt the one who was actually making the posts at the heart of the debate. "This all ties into Musks conduct because so much of Xs policies and orientation to brand safety are an extension of Elon Musks view, which frankly is redpilled and bad for business," says Carusone. X was already bleeding away money and clients In November 2022, weeks after closing the deal on Twitter, Elon Musk held a gigantic conference call to reassure advertisers about his plan for the company, saying he was "open to ideas". One problem: just days earlier he had threatened "a thermonuclear name and shame" campaign (he seems fond of that word) against advertisers who paused their spending, accusing them of giving in to activists who were "trying to destroy free speech in America". It was, Wieser tells The Independent, "one of the dumbest things Id ever seen" and symptomatic of the long-term problems that have brought X to this point. One of those Musk was mad at was Carusone from Media Matters. But, he tells The Independent, "no one was rooting against X. Everyone really seemed to want X to succeed". However, advertisers were quickly spooked by the scorched earth blitzkrieg that Musk seemed to be waging against his own company . He gutted not only the content moderation and policy teams responsible for stopping hate speech and abuse, but also sales teams responsible for liaising with advertisers and ensuring their problems were flagged to other departments. "Twitter, certainly for large brands, was never a must-buy," says Wieser. "It requires a lot of work to persuade marketers to buy from them and develop programmes that are unique to those advertisers. "So when you cut the workforce by that much, that had very direct consequences in addition to the brand safety and suitability issues." Brand safety, incidentally, is an ad industry term for the difficult craft of avoiding reputational damage when promoting your products such as by not letting them be associated with some dollar store Adolf Hitler fan club. There is a sizeable sub-industry of consultants and technologists working to shield advertisers from these risks. Carusone says that most of the early exodus was driven by media buyers middlemen who run ad campaigns on behalf of their clients. When the initial chaos abated, the middlemen relaxed their postures, and at that point Carusone thinks the situation was still salvageable. Over the summer, Yaccarino touted a new automated system that would use AI to spot extremist posts and prevent any ads from running next to them. Linda Yaccarino, right, chats with Elon Musk at a conference two months before joining X (Rebecca Blackwell/AP) Yet as Musk continued his own inflammatory statements from antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros to claiming Mark Zuckerberg bought the 2020 election individual advertisers began to peel away, not least because of Media Matters intervention. In August, companies such as Adobe and Gilead Sciences paused spending after Carusones group found their ads running beside pro-Nazi posts. In September, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said he was "constantly asking" if the company should keep using X, saying there were "some things about it I dont like". So for Wieser, X had already "degraded to a point of inconsequence for most marketers" when Musk posted his most recent antisemitic tweet and tipped the company into perhaps its biggest mess since the buyout. 'There's no way back with Elon Musk in charge' Large social networks have died before, and there is no reason to think it cant happen again. So does X have a viable path back to safety, or even success? For Wieser the companys future looks "totally bleak". What little information we have suggests that Musks vaunted premium service, formerly known as Twitter Blue, has not been widely adopted and is nowhere close to making up for the loss of ad revenue. "Your base case," says Wieser meaning the most likely outcome for X "should be that Musk grinds it down to zero." Granted, he adds, there may still be some low-end advertisers who dont care about where their ads appear the kind of scammy or spammy promotions that have proliferated on X this year. Like most major social networks, X puts ads in front of its users based on an automated auction process, in which advertisers bid against each other to fill each potential advertising space as it comes up. If big-spending major brands dont show up, those auctions will be won by smaller and cheaper bidders which often means lower-quality ads. This issue is not unique to X , but Musks decisions have made X uniquely vulnerable to it. Lower ad quality could also exacerbate the flight of ordinary users, meaning fewer eyeballs and fewer spaces in which X can sell ads. Its a shell of what it was, and theres no way back that I can see, unless Musk steps aside Both outside estimates and internal leaks suggest that X has lost users since the buyout anything from 4 to 15 per cent. That is not surprising given the cavalcade of unpopular decisions Musk has made, such as trashing Xs verification system for public figures, dumping the Twitter brand and its iconic blue bird logo, and briefly capping the number of posts users could view. "Its a shell of what it was, and theres no way back that I can see, unless Musk steps aside," concludes Wieser. The only upside to the current crisis, he adds, would be if it provokes shareholders of Tesla another Musk company, which is thriving in comparison to X into a revolt that forces him to sell X or otherwise insulate it from his influence. X did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent, except for the automated response: "Busy now, please check back later." (It was, at least, a step up from the poop emoji with which all media requests previously met.) On Sunday evening, Yaccarino sent an email to X employees saying that "no other platform" is "working as hard to protect free speech" and decrying "deceptive attacks" by outside activists. The companys lawsuit accused Media Matters of "knowingly and maliciously manufacturing" controversial juxtapositions of adverts and posts, claiming that these combinations were extremely rare and would never be seen by most users. It said that the groups dummy accounts had only followed two kinds of profiles: big-name advertisers and known extremists. It further claimed that the group had to "endlessly scroll and refresh" this "unrepresentative feed" in order to achieve those results, generating "between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than the average X user". In response, Carusone describes this lawsuit as "like getting mad at a mirror because you dont like the reflection", and says his group will fight the case. Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyTech email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} OpenAI has reached a deal for ousted boss Sam Altman to return as its chief executive, the company said on Wednesday. The artificial intelligence company said it would reinstate a board consisting of Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam DAngelo. We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam DAngelo, the company posted on X. The AI companys board abruptly fired Mr Altman on Friday saying it no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI. Microsoft, which has heavily invested in the AI firm, then officially announced it was hiring Mr Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, who resigned on Friday. Extremely excited to share the news that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, together with colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella said in a post on X. Within days, OpenAI brought in the former head of Twitch Emmett Shear as interim chief. But chaos soon erupted at the company with over 500 employees signing a letter threatening to quit unless its board resigned and reinstated their dismissed boss. The letter was reportedly signed by several senior staff at OpenAI, including the companys chief technology officer Mira Murati, who was appointed as the interim chief. The announcement early on Wednesday confirms rumours that the OpenAI founder is returning to the helm of his company. We are collaborating to figure out the details, the company said. Mr Altman said on Wednesday that he is looking forward to returning to OpenAI with the support of the Microsoft chief. When I decided to join Microsoft on Sunday evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team, he said adding that he is looking forward to returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft. I love OpenAI, and everything Ive done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together, Mr Altman posted on X. Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyTech email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Security researchers have discovered a USB propagating worm developed by state-backed Russian hackers to infect Ukrainian targets, which they warn is now spreading globally. The LitterDrifter worm automatically spreads malware via a hidden file within USB drives, with a victims data then transmitted back to the attackers. Cyber security firm Check Point Software described the malware as a unique player in the Russian espionage ecosystem, designed to collect data and spy on communications. The method of its distribution via removable USB drives means it is difficult to contain the worm to just the intended targets, according to the researchers. Due to the nature of the USB worm, we see indications of possible infection in various countries like the US, Vietnam, Chile, Poland and Germany, Check Point researchers wrote in a blog post detailing the threat. In addition, weve observed evidence of infections in Hong Kong. All this might indicate that much like other USB worms, LitterDrifter have spread beyond its intended targets. The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) said the campaign had been identified as originating from personnel within Russias Federal Security Service (FSB). Since Russias invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian government has been under near-constant digital attack, according to Googles Shane Huntley, who is a senior director at the tech giants threat analysis group. Russian government-backed attackers have engaged in an aggressive, multi-pronged effort to gain a decisive wartime advantage in cyberspace, often with mixed results, Mr Huntley wrote in a July post. Cyber attacks have also been perpetrated against Nato partners and Ukraines allies, witch such attacks increasing in 2023. Ukraines National Cybersecurity Coordination Center (NCSCC) recently revealed that Russian-backed hackers have been targeting European embassies. The latest discovery demonstrates how targeted attacks can easily spread globally when distributed in such a manner. It leverages simple, yet effective techniques to ensure it can reach the widest possible set of targets in the region, the Check Point researchers noted. Its clear that LitterDrifter was designed to support a large-scale collection operation. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The Foreign Office has stepped up its warning to British travellers about the prospect of terrorist attacks saying they could be indiscriminate and occur without warning. Five months after the last update, the online travel advice entitled Reduce your risk from terrorism while abroad has been augmented to reflect heightened concern about the impact of the current conflict that began with the Hamas assault on Israel on 7 October 2023. A new heading has been brought in to the advice: Impact of conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It warns: The current conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories has led to heightened tensions around the world. Terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaida and Daesh, have called on their supporters to carry out terrorist attacks in response to the conflict. The conflict could also motivate individuals to carry out attacks, including in Western countries. Terrorist attacks could target Jewish or Muslim communities, or the interests of Israel and its allies. Much of the travel advice remains the same. It warns: There is a high threat of terrorist attacks globally affecting UK interests and British nationals, including from those who view the UK and British nationals as targets. Public spaces are potential targets for terrorists. These include places like bars, restaurants, shops, places of worship, tourist sites and transport networks. Significant dates, including anniversaries, public holidays, religious festivals and political events may also be targeted. In many countries, as in the UK, the main threat is from self-initiated terrorists who are inspired by, but not directed or significantly supported by, terrorist groups. These terrorists are often self-radicalised, influenced by extremist content online, and could be motivated by a range of extremist ideologies. Their attacks are difficult to predict and disrupt, and could happen in almost any country. Attacks by self-initiated extreme right-wing terrorists have mainly taken place in Western countries, and may target minority groups or perceived representatives of the establishment. Terrorists sometimes call for attacks against British interests and those of other countries through social media, publications and other public messages. These calls are often intended to motivate sympathisers to carry out attacks. The FCDO currently warns against all-but-essential travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon and Syria. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The earth is at its most restless in Iceland right now. The Reykjanes peninsula, southwest of Reykjavik, is seething with seismic activity sparking hundreds of small earthquakes. The town of Grindavik, just 10 miles south of Keflavik International Airport, has been evacuated as a precaution. Yet flights are continuing to arrive and depart as normal. These are the key questions and answers on consumer rights. I am in Iceland. Will I be able to leave? Yes, assuming the international airport remains open. So far operations have been normal. You may be keen to leave earlier than booked, in order to guarantee your getaway, but at present you will not be able to switch flights without paying a penalty. A spokesperson for British Airways told The Independent: Our flights are operating as planned and we continue to monitor the situation closely. The earthquakes have struck just 10 miles south of Icelands main airport, Keflavik International Airport, but the UK foreign office have said travel can go ahead (Vafri.is) We will be in touch with customers directly should the situation change. The easyJet statement is very similar: Our flying schedule is currently operating as normal however we are monitoring the situation closely and should this change we will contact customers directly to advise on their flights. But didnt an Icelandic volcano shut down European aviation for a week? Yes. Travellers may remember where they were in April 2010, when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted. The skies of northern Europe completely closed to passenger aviation for almost a week because of fears that volcanic ash spreading southeast from Iceland could damage aircraft engines and endanger travellers. More than 50,000 flights, with eight million passengers booked to travel, were cancelled. So far in 2023, though, ash has not been an issue in the current geological outburst. Icelands Blue Lagoon has been closed as a precuation (Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) What if I am booked on a package holiday? Foreign Office advice stops well short of advising against travel to Iceland, meaning holiday companies can continue to operate as normal with no automatic right to cancel. The Foreign Office advice to British travellers is that it is increasingly possible that a volcanic eruption could occur. The official warning on volcanic eruption and earthquakes reads: Earthquakes and indications of volcanic activity have increased above normal levels on the Reykjanes peninsula, southwest of Reykjavik. The Icelandic authorities continue to monitor the area closely, particularly the area northwest of Mt Thorbjorn near the Svartsengi power plant and the Blue Lagoon. On 10 November, a Civil Protection Alert was declared after an intense swarm of earthquakes. The town of Grindavik was evacuated as a precaution. Some roads have been closed and visitors are advised to stay away from the area. Keflavik International Airport is operating as normal. While there is no current eruption, it is increasingly possible that one could occur. (Icelandic Met Office) Until and unless the Foreign Office warns against travel, the assumption is that everything will go ahead as normal. The FCDO advises traveller to check the following resources for updates: The one exception is for holidaymakers who had planned to stay at the Blue Lagoon an increasingly popular wellness destination, with an upmarket hotel on the site. The Blue Lagoon is currently closed. Only those booked for a stay have the chance to cancel; if you were hoping to pop in as a day visitor for a steamy stop in the volcanic rock pools, you will need to return at some time in the future. Can I claim on insurance? No, unless it is one of the vanishingly rare cancel for any reason policies. On standard travel insurance, disinclination to travel is not an acceptable reason for a claim. Would you go to Iceland at the moment? Yes, I would relish the opportunity. Late November is an excellent time to visit Iceland for good value. Conditions right now are also excellent for the prospect of a good show from the Northern Lights, which are at a peak of the usual 11-year cosmic cycle. I also know that the Icelandic authorities are expert at handling seismic events, with extremely good monitoring and emergency systems in place. I would book a package holiday, though, knowing that if the earth gets too restless for comfort in the vicinity, I would be able to cancel for a full refund. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The mother of a 28-year-old cruise ship passenger who allegedly jumped overboard has criticised the cruise line, claiming it failed to tell her that her son was missing. Tyler Barnett, from Louisiana, is believed to have gone overboard the Carnival Glory on Monday. He was first reported missing a day after leaving New Orleans for a weeklong cruise to Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands and Cozumel, Mexico, Carnival Cruise Line said in a statement. He was on board the cruise ship with his sister and uncle and was last seen at about 11.40pm on Sunday going to his room after visiting the ships casino. The Coast Guard has now launched two aircraft to search a 200-mile area near where the ship sailed into the Gulf of Mexico to find the missing 28-year-old. His mother, Elisha Reid, has criticised Carnival Cruise Line, telling Business Insider she found out her son was missing from a family member, not the company. While Mr Barnetts mother is hopeful he is still alive, a Carnival Cruise Line spokesperson said surveillance footage reviewed by the company appeared to show the 28-year-old jumping from the ship at about 1.40am on Monday, Business Insider reported. He can be seen climbing on a lifeboat and jumping from there, the spokesperson said. Carnival Cruise Line said they informed Mr Barnetts family of the surveillance footage, while Ms Reid said the footage shows her son slipped from the ship, rather than jumped. They hit a wave and he went down off the lifeboat, she said. Tyler was my only son, my firstborn. He was my everything in life! He was the air I breathed. He was the beat of my heart. I feel as if my heart no longer beats. She added that Carnival initially told her daughter who is on the ship there was no footage of what happened to her son. The company said they are helping the family members of Mr Barnett, who are still on board the ship. Our Care Team will continue to do all they can to support the family in this difficult time, a spokesperson said. The ship has been cleared by the US Coast Guard to continue with the cruise. Speaking about her son, Ms Reid said: I have my moments where I break, but Im keeping the faith. Whats important to me is to know where hes at and to have him home, whether hes alive or not, I want his body to be home, she said. She added that her son grew up around the water and absolutely breathed being on the river and the sea, working on a tugboat. My only peace is Tyler loved the water and to fish, Ms Reid said. How ironic that he is where he always loved to be. At least nine other people have gone overboard on cruise ships this year, only two of whom survived. The birth of a rare rhino calf at Chester Zoo was caught on camera. A zookeeper captured rhino Zuri giving birth to an eastern black rhino on Sunday, 12 November. So far, the pair have been inseparable and the little one is feeding regularly and already gaining in size and weight, says Rhino team manager Emma Evison. The birth will help in preserving an endangered species. Fewer than 600 of the species are left across the African wild and are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The Duchess of Sussex discussed personal struggles with teenagers during a charity visit in Vancouver. Meghan was at the headquarters of Justice for Girls - an organisation that aims to help young women in poverty - to join a discussion about the work of the non-profit. During her visit, she had a candid chat with two teenage interns who told her about the issues they have faced. The Duchess was keen to chat with two of our teen interns to discuss their personal struggles for justice, a statement from the charity, shared on Instagram, read. Her genuine and understanding approach left the girls feeling heard, supported and inspired. The joint liquidators of two Ireland-based Russian state-owned leasing firms have launched High Court proceedings aimed at preventing the "seizing ownership" of dozens of highly valuable aircraft. Damien Murran and Julian Moroney of Teneo Restructuring Ireland were earlier this year appointed by the court as joint liquidators to GTLK Europe DAC, and GTLK Europe Capital DAC. The firms, which are part of the wider GTLK group, were wound up following an application by four creditors who claimed they were owed more than US$178m (162.5m) by the firms. The firms' financial difficulties arose from the economic sanctions imposed on Russian entities following last year's invasion of Ukraine. On Tuesday the liquidators, represented by Stephen Byrne Bl, said their clients want to bring proceedings over what they say is an attempt by the companies' parent to register itself as the legal owners of some 37 aircraft which are assets of the firms in liquidation. Counsel said that the aircraft in question are based in Russia. The court heard that GTLK's parent is Joint Stock Company State Transport Leasing Company, which the court heard is wholly owned by the Russian Federation, represented by its Ministries of Finance and Transport. The parent is claiming that it is entitled to be registered as the legal owner under 'pledge agreements' governed by Russian law, allegedly entered into between it, GTLK Europe, and nine other GTLK Europe group companies registered In Ireland. The pledge agreements were allegedly entered into in March 2022, two weeks before the parent became the subject of EU sanctions imposed over Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The parent has claimed that the pledge agreements were made to secure the repayment of loans from the parent to GTLK Europe between 2017 and 2022. The liquidators say that they have been informed by the parent that it will seek to reply on the pledge agreements to "seize the title over the aircraft", "secure payment under the loan agreements," and "declare itself the owner of the aircraft under an out of court enforcement of the pledges in the Russian Federation". Counsel said that the liquidators in correspondence with the Russian-based parent have "made it clear" they do not accept that the parent has acquired the legal title to the aircraft as a result of the enforcement of the pledge agreements or otherwise. In their action the liquidators are seeking various orders from the court including one setting aside the pledge agreements, as well as a declaration that the agreements are void and unenforceable as a matter of Irish law. They also seek a declaration that the liquidators retain title to the aircraft. The liquidators asked the parent to consent to the order and declarations, but have not received any response. Several subsidiaries of the GTLK group are notice parties to the proceedings, which the liquidators say should be heard and considered by the Irish courts. While the pledge agreements are governed by Russian law, the liquidators and the notice parties are based in Ireland. Mr Justice Mark Sanfey, on an ex-parte (one side only represented) basis, granted the liquidators permission to serve notice of the proceedings on the Russian parent company, and the notice parties by email. The matter will return before the court next week. GTLK is Russia's largest leasing business in the transport sector and leased ships and aircraft to customers all over the world. GTLK's Europe Group's international leasing business is headquartered in Dublin, and the wound-up firms are at the top of the group's structure. Last May four creditors successfully obtained orders to wind up the Irish based companies. Reports in Spain say move will help group cut debt Cellnext owns hundreds of masts in Ireland, including the Three Rock Broadcast asset in the Dublin Mountains Spanish telecoms group Cellnex is plotting a sale of some of its assets in Europe including 1bn worth of communications towers it owns in Ireland. The group owns tens of thousands of mast sites in countries including Spain, France, Italy, Poland, the UK and the Netherlands. Its reportedly eyeing a sale of all or part of its assets in Ireland and Austria to cut debt and eyes an improved credit rating from Standard & Poors. In September, Cellnex said it had agreed to sell a 49pc stake in its Swedish and Danish operations to infrastructure investment firm Stonepark for an initial 730m. State-owned forestry group Coillte sold its 300 tower sites in a 70m deal to newly-formed Irish telecoms infrastructure firm Cignal, which was established by French investment group Infravia. The French firm sold Cignal to Cellnex in 2019 for 210m. By then, Cignal owned 546 telecoms sites across Ireland. At the time of the acquisition by Cellnex, the Spanish group committed to investing an additional 60m in the Irish operation to build up to 600 new sites by 2026. That would bring high-speed wireless broadband to more rural areas and also help mobile operators address coverage blackspots. In 2021, Cellnex acquired hundreds more towers in Ireland valued at 600m from Hutchison, the owner of mobile operator Three, as part of a wider 10bn tower deal with the telecoms group. That entire acquisition added almost 25,000 masts to Cellnexs portfolio. In third-quarter results released this month, Cellnex told investors that its deleveraging targets remain unchanged and that its committed to securing a BBB- rating from Standard & Poors by next year at the latest, and maintaining its investment grade rating from Fitch. The group has net debt of 17.6bn and has told investors that it will be able to rapidly cut the figure over the next few years due to its strong cash flow. Its current net debt to Ebitda is at about five times, a figure it projects will be cut to virtually zero by 2034. If the group is to sell its assets in Ireland, there is likely to be a number of interested bidders. Among them could be UK-based infrastructure investment group John Laing. It finalised a deal this year to acquire Irish mast company Towercom from Infrabridge, the infrastructure manager of the Irish Infrastructure Fund. Towercom has 409 towers in Ireland. Tally includes sharp increase in corporation taxes and includes PRSI Corporation tax receipts have almost doubled in three years, the Central Statistics Office says, with less than 1pc of firms paying the vast bulk of receipts. Corporation taxes made up the States second-largest revenue stream last year, raking in 23bn, up from 12bn in 2020. Between 2021 and 2022, the corporation tax take rose 48pc. It made up more than a fifth (22pc) of total tax revenues in 2022. That is almost three times its share of total revenues in 1995, which was 8pc. However, recent months have seen the tax take come down on last year, a sign that the post-pandemic boom may be ebbing. CSO research shows that in 2021, the vast majority of firms (93pc) paid less than 100,000 each in corporation tax, but they made up just 6pc of total revenues. Meanwhile, less than 1pc of firms paid more than 1m each, but they made up 85pc of all receipts. Just under a third (29.9pc) of corporation tax receipts are paid by the industry sector, which includes manufacturing but not construction. The information and communication sector makes up just over a fifth of all revenues (21.9pc). Income tax brought in 31bn last year, and continues to be the States largest revenue raiser, making up just under a third of revenues, similar to its share three decades ago. Last year, the income tax take was 13pc higher than it was in 2021 and was five times what it was in 1995. Employment has reached a record of more than 2.6 million people this year. Together, corporation tax, income tax, and the universal social charge (USC) accounted for around half of all taxes received last year. Vat, now the States third-largest tax head, increased by 16pc in 2022 compared with 2021, and is up 50pc compared with the first year of the pandemic in 2020. PRSI receipts were 14bn in 2022, up 19pc on 2021. The Government just signed off this week on further hikes in PRSI to ensure the pension age can remain at 66, with increases in store for employers, employees and the self-employed. Customs duties, one of the smallest revenue streams compared to other taxes, doubled after Brexit in 2021 and rose by a fifth last year to just over 617m. Residential property taxes and commercial rates were down slightly last year on the year before. Excise receipts were 300,000 lower than they were in 2021 as a result of the cost-of-living cuts on fuel. Fuel makes up around a fifth of all excise duties, with alcohol and tobacco making up more than a third. Overall taxes, including social contributions, are almost double what they were a decade ago, rising to more than 100bn in 2022, the CSO said. Much of this growth has been in more recent years, said Elaine O'Sullivan, a statistician in the CSOs government accounts division. Mark Knopfler is best known as the singer and guitarist in Dire Straits (Yui Mok/PA) Dire Straits star Mark Knopfler will auction more than 120 of his guitars and amps, saying it is time for his old friends to have new adventures with new owners. The frontman of the British rock band will auction instruments that span his 50-year career, with 25% of the proceeds going to charity. The collection, to be sold at auction house Christies, includes guitars he used to write, record and perform his compositions for Dire Straits, which include the hits Brothers In Arms, Romeo And Juliet and Money For Nothing, as well as numerous solo albums and soundtracks for films such as Local Hero. 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 Also included in the collection are guitars made by Gibson, Fender and Martin alongside custom-built models by Rudy Pensa and John Suhr, and bespoke examples crafted by luthiers from across the globe. Some 25% of the total hammer price will be divided equally and donated to The British Red Cross, Tusk and Brave Hearts of the North East. Knopfler, who was born in Glasgow but grew up in Blyth, in Northumberland, said: Wherever I go Im still crossing streets to look at guitars in the windows of music shops. Ive done that since I was a little kid. 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 Ive lived with this love affair for over 60 years. That has meant a passion for all kinds of guitars: the impossible dreams and plenty of the less expensive ones, too. As a career in music made it possible for me to realise some of those dreams, guitars of all shapes and sizes began to appear. Its time to take some of these treasured six-string companions out of their cases and leave them in the care of Christies to allow them to have new adventures with new owners. You can be sure Ill be sad to see them go but weve had wonderful times together and I cant play them all. To you fellow players, enthusiasts and collectors, I wish you many good times with these old friends of mine. Among the collection is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul guitar which is estimated to fetch between 300,000 and 500,000. The auction will take place at Christies in London on January 31 2024. Backbench politicians across the Coalition have lashed out at miserable figure of 10m to support businesses affected by the use of local hotels and B&Bs to house refugees. The hospitality industry was left furious after Failte Ireland said restaurants, cafes and gastropubs would not be included in the scheme as a result of instructions from Tourism Minister Catherine Martin. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael politicians have branded the 10m fund insufficient and criticised the exclusion of restaurants and cafes. Fianna Fail Senator Lisa Chambers said it was a miserable amount in the first place but worse, the businesses most impacted arent even included. She added: While its welcome that the minister is putting in place a financial support for businesses impacted, the amount is derisory. Its not going to have any meaningful impact for the hospitality sector and that amount needs to increase. The scheme needs to be expanded to include cafes and restaurants because theyre the businesses most impacted. Party colleague Eamon O Cuiv said the 10m allocation was not enough. Virtually all hotels west of the Shannon are full of Ukrainians, apart from the very expensive hotels. It does have an impact on hospitality and on visitor attractions, he said. Its not right to not include hospitality businesses because were shedding hospitality businesses already. Fine Gael TD Alan Dillon said it was a missed opportunity. What I would ask that the minister, her officials and Failte Ireland revisit this, to have something similar to what was introduced during the pandemic for areas which are subjected to high dependency around emergency accommodation, he said. Fianna Fail Senator Eugene Murphy said he agreed the exclusion of hospitality businesses was deeply unfair. Restaurants do benefit from tourist businesses, he said. Ten million is not much once you break it down. The Government should investigate if there are more hospitality businesses which could benefit from it and expand the scheme. Fine Gael TD Michael Ring said the scheme should also be expanded to hospitality businesses. Ms Martin said on Budget Day that there would be measures put in place to help businesses whose revenues fell as a result of tourist accommodation being taken up by Ukrainian refugees. Restaurants Association of Ireland chief executive Adrian Cummins said Ms Martin should reverse the policy. On Christmas Eve 2020 Sarah OSullivan was driving around Limerick, delivering boxes of her handmade cookies. She did not know it at the time, but she was on the cusp of building a business born out of people looking for comfort during the pandemic. Ms OSullivan parked her full-time job forecasting food and drinks trends for other entrepreneurs and she followed her gut instinct, launching her venture called SOS Cookies. Three years on, in addition to baking cookies she has also introduced a DIY kit with dry ingredients so kids and their parents can make cookies for Santa. Ms OSullivans SOS Cookies was one of 17 up-and-coming Irish brands invited to be part of the Christmas Market at Arnotts in Henry Street, Dublin. The showcase, which launched officially yesterday, champions Irish brands and includes craft and design, food, beauty, home and toys. I always wanted to have my own business but I didnt really know what that looked like for me, Ms OSullivan said. I thought it would be cafe or restaurant some day, but its in cookies, which is happiest, most fond treat in the world so I was very lucky. After pivoting careers to work for herself, Ms OSullivan says she believes her success has been down to doing family favourites so theres something Ferrero Rocher for the granny, Kinder for the child and Terrys Chocolate Orange for mum and dad. Another venture enjoying the sweet taste of success is Sugar Plum Sweetery. Founded by Denise Buckley and her husband, David, the family-run business has a boutique store and chocolate factory in Mullingar, Co Westmeath. They launched in June last year with the aim of creating unique gifts for special occasions and they even developed a Toy Show Box with treats for the Late Late Show special this Friday. It is like coming full circle, Ms Buckley said yesterday, explaining how she started her career working with the Brown Thomas Arnotts group in homewares, cosmetics and accessories. Like Ms OSullivan, Ms Buckley says she always wanted to start her own brand with a wide range of products. After managing the trajectory of other brands in store, she got to finally her own idea going with Christmas gift boxes personalised with the recipients name. She has also devised a competition with a touch of Willy Wonka goes to Co Westmeath. The lucky customer who buys the Sugar Plum Sweetery product with the golden ticket will win a visit to the firms chocolate factory and make their own sweet creation. The Christmas Market has 45 brands including five businesses contesting the stores annual pitch competition. The winner gets a 10,000 business development fund and an invitation to sell their wares in the store next year. Finalists include the Human Collective, founded by Conor Buckley, who is supporting social inclusion with a range of sustainably made leisurewear designs. A man caught with 600 of cannabis in his home had been diagnosed with cancer and was using the drug to ease the symptoms, a court has heard. Karl Gallagher (31) was charged after gardai found the cannabis, along with weighing scales and paraphernalia, in a search of his apartment in Dublins north inner city. Judge Bryan Smyth spared him jail, giving him a six-month suspended sentence when he appeared at Dublin District Court. A close up of a hand holding an e-cigarette, usage rates have risen from 6pc last year and are highest amongst 15 to 24-year-olds. Picture: Amani A/Alamy Stock Fewer people in Ireland are drinking since before the pandemic but smoking rates have not fallen and more are using e-cigarettes, according to a new national survey. The annual Healthy Ireland survey rom the Department of Health shows the proportion of the population consuming alcohol in the previous 12 months is 70pc, a reduction on the 75pc reported in 2018. Almost a quarter of the population are considered binge drinkers drinking six or more standard drinks on a typical drinking occasion. This is also down on 2018 when they figure for binge drinking was 27pc. The survey found that the prevalence of smoking is stable, the same as reported in 2021 - 2022 with 18pc of people as current smokers, 14pc smoking and 4pc occasionally. Health Minister Stephen Donnelly is now to launch a public consultation on a proposal to increase the legal limit to buy cigarettes from 18 to 21. In 2015, some 23pc of the population smoked but it had been hoped for a reduction in rates this year. Around 8pc of the population now use e-cigarettes. The report said that "while e-cigarettes can be a valuable quit aid for smokers, usage rates have risen from 6pc last year and are highest amongst 15 to 24-year-olds used by 20pc of women and 16pc of men in this age group. Health Minister Stephen Donnelly. Photo: PA The survey by Ipsos B&A for the first time quizzed people on drug use. It found 30pc reported lifetime drug use, 6pc said they used drugs in the previous 30 days and 5pc in the last year. The most prevalent illicit drug in the last year was cannabis, which was used by 6pc of the population. This was three times the level of usage of cocaine, the next most common drug. It found that 86pc report their quality of life as good or very good, with just 5pc saying that their quality of life is poor or very poor. The average 2023 Energy and Vitality Index (EVI) score, with higher scores indicating positive mental health, is 65.3. This has increased from 62.4 in 2021 but remains below levels measured in 2016 (67.8). Conversely, the average Mental Health Index (MHI-5) score in 2023 where lower scores indicate possible mental ill-health is 78.2, an improvement on 76.0 in 2021, but higher than the pre-pandemic measurement of 81.2 in 2016. Over one third say they feel more socially connected since 2021, with 22pc reporting feeling less socially connected and 43pc reporting no change. Some 69pc know someone who has died by suicide, with 15pc of respondents reporting that someone close to them died in this way. Only 28pc completed the questions on suicide. This indicates a response bias as those for whom suicide resonates strongly may have been more likely to agree to take part in this module. When it comes to health service use, 76pc report visiting a GP in the previous 12 months, with an average of 4.0 visits per person. Findings show 55pc of children attended a GP during the past 12 months with an average of 2.4 visits per child. The number of visits by children was lower than in 2019, when 58pc of children had visited a GP in the previous 12 months, with an average of 3.4 visits per child. In terms of acute service usage within the past 12 months, 16pc had visited an emergency department (ED), 4pc had visited a minor injury unit (MIU), and 9pc had visited an out-of-hours GP service. Furthermore, 36pc had visited a consultant, 16pc had been admitted to hospital as a day patient and 12pc had been admitted for longer. The proportion of people using EDs, MIUs and out-of-hours GP services were similar and in some cases, slightly higher than previously measured. Minister Butler said: Im happy to see improvements in mental health and social connectedness since 2021, when high-level restrictions were in place. "However, mental wellbeing is not back to where it was before the Covid-19 pandemic and this requires continued focus. "Given the negative impacts of loneliness on mental and physical health, we have been expanding social prescribing and other supports. We are also highlighting the importance of social connections for older people through our Hello World campaign. More than four in ten report taking an antibiotic in the last 12 months, significantly higher than the 27pc reported during the pandemic in 2021, and 2pc higher than the proportion in 2017. 78pc correctly agreed that antibiotics kill bacteria and 59pc understood that antibiotics do not kill viruses. Chief medical officer Professor Breda Smyth said: Medicines such as antibiotics are vital drugs that are used to treat infections and to save lives, helping to protect people from infections when having surgery, giving birth and when receiving treatment for diseases including cancer. "We can all help reduce antimicrobial resistance by being aware of correct antibiotic use and only using these medicines when they are absolutely needed. Hand washing and sanitising is also crucial in order to reduce the spread of infection. She added :We have seen some encouraging trends in the 2023 Survey, indicating some improvements in population health and in some key lifestyle risk factors such as alcohol consumption . "These figures reaffirm the need for robust initiatives that support us all to live happier, healthier lives, such as the Public Health (Alcohol) Act, 2018 and the forthcoming Public Health (Tobacco Products & Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill. It is notable that our health service is working harder than ever to meet the needs of an expanding population, providing supports that improve access to affordable healthcare including free contraception and the expansion of GP visit cards. Fianna Fail politicians have warned of the threat of deepfakes as they called for the Electoral Commission to create a strategy to tackle the misuse of artificial intelligence in political campaigning. Deepfakes are digitally manipulated images, video and audio that are designed to create fake material featuring the likeness of an individual, often to misrepresent their views or speech. Senator Malcolm Byrne will table the motion which also calls for a national awareness campaign on AI and technological change. Mr Byrne, who is the party spokesman on higher education, innovation and science, said while AI has plenty of positives, the technology also brings challenges. One of our biggest concerns is around the potential impact of the misuse of AI through misinformation, disinformation, and particularly deepfakes on elections and referenda. He said deepfakes had been used in recent elections in Slovakia and Argentina. Speaking to reporters in Dublin, Mr Byrne further hypothesised that a deepfake of an Irish political leader saying something controversial could emerge during upcoming elections. The difficulty is once a video comes out and theyre sufficiently believable, it can be shared on social media thousands of times, and even when the denial is then published, you will still have people who will say: Oh well, look, you know, this wasnt a deepfake, this was really what he or she actually believed. And you can imagine, you know, the crucial days before an election or indeed in a referendum, how something like that could have an impact. Mr Byrne accepted that disinformation and misinformation had been factors in previous elections but said deepfakes had turbocharged the threat. The Government has established an AI Advisory Council, appointed of an AI Ambassador and plans to establish an AI cluster to support enterprise development in the sector. We also believe within the Oireachtas there is a need to set up a special committee to look at artificial intelligence and explore its impacts right across all areas of society. Today's News in 90 seconds - November 22nd He said the education system also needs to change due to opportunities that AI present. Mr Byrne added: The most important piece of legislation that the European Union will enact this decade is the AI Act and its critical, we believe, that that takes a people-centred approach, that it focuses on a risk-based approach that minimises the risk, that it places serious obligations on the tech companies to ensure that they assess the potential risks of rolling out AI in any area. Senator Lisa Chambers said technology companies have a responsibility to protect users from the misuse of AI. Yes, we intend to regulate that sector and yes, we intend to legislate and to ensure that theres protections. They dont need to wait for that to do the right thing. There is a moral and an ethical responsibility on the part of social media companies to protect their users and to ensure that they dont infringe on the integrity of our electoral process. They have tools to do that. They dont need to wait for the regulation. Mr Byrne, who said he did not think Fianna Fail had used generative AI to create public-facing material, said his party would pledge not to misuse the technology. Gardai have seized nearly 100,000 worth of cash, some of which they believe to be counterfeit, following a raid in west Dublin. The search was carried out by officials from the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (GNBCI). It was conducted as part of an ongoing probe by GNBCI into the production and supply of counterfeit currency and false documentation. "As part of the investigation, a search warrant was obtained pursuant to section 48 of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act, 2001, a garda spokesperson said. Today's News in 90 seconds - November 22nd During the course of the search operation, the following items were seized, 94,845 cash in various denominations (some of which is believed to be counterfeit), 600 sterling and a mobile phone. Documentation suspected of being used in the production of false identities was also seized by investigating gardai. The spokesperson added that the currency will now be examined by personnel in the Document and Handwriting Section of the Garda National Technical Bureau. No arrests yet have been made and investigations are ongoing. LATEST | Gaza hostage release not before Friday as hopes grow for Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand (9) U.S. President Joe Biden welcomes dealPalestine official says 85 women, 350 minors among prisoners in IsraelLeo Varadkar says release of Emily Hand is a major priority for governmentIreland is going to have to change the way it trades with Israel following Gaza conflict Taoiseach Bodies from Al-Shifa hospital buried in mass grave Emily Hand is expected to be among the 50 children and women to be released Eoghan Moloney, Nidal al-Mughrabi, Rami Amichay, Senan Molony and Claudia Savage Wed 22 Nov 2023 at 22:55 Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand (9) is one of the potential 50 hostages that will be released by Hamas in an exchange for 150 Palestinians held by Israel, according to a reported list of hostages. Dublin Lord Mayor said he was happy to refuse a meeting with the Israeli ambassador as he defends his decision after being criticised for agreeing to meet with Dana Erlich. Daithi de Roiste said the meeting will allow him and the Group Leaders to collectively express their disgust with Israels actions of genocide in Gaza. Their meeting will take place next Wednesday on International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. "It was a collective decision made by group leaders in Dublin City Council as the representatives of the citizens of Dublin, to a request to meet the Israeli ambassador and outline our concerns of what's happening in Gaza, the Lord Mayor told the Irish Independent. I put it to all group leaders in Dublin City Council, he explained. He decided to clarify his decision on X, formerly Twitter, in response to criticism. Israeli ambassador contacted the Mansion House with a request to meet with the Lord Mayor, and the meeting was a mutual decision of all group leaders, he explained. 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 raised this at Group Leaders (Meeting with Leaders of all political parties and Independents) I expressed that I was happy to refuse this request. Or if it was the opinion of Group Leaders, to go ahead with the meeting where we could collectively express our disgust with their actions of genocide in Gaza. It was unanimously agreed to go ahead with the meeting by all present and that Group Leaders of all Parties and Independents would join the meeting in the Mansion House. This was also minuted, he wrote. Today's News in 90 seconds - November 22nd Fianna Fail leader Tanaiste Micheal Martin recently told Newstalk that maintaining diplomatic links is essential in order to get Irish citizens out of Gaza. Mr Martin also visited Israel a week ago as part of his visit to the Middle East, where he spoke with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. Cllr Hazel De Nortuin for People Before Profit has criticised the decision to host the meeting with the ambassador. "I am calling on the Lord Mayor to cancel this meeting and join the call for the ambassador to be expelled, and for him to stand in solidarity with Palestine, she said. "This meeting is a disgrace and not what Dublin stands for. 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 Fianna Fail has been contacted for a comment. A mother of two, who was awarded damages for having to live with her family in an Oliver Bond House flat that was unfit for human habitation, claimed today that Dublin City Council was reneging on its 10-year plan to rejuvenate the whole 70-year-old complex. Judge Sinead Ni Chulachain said in the Circuit Civil Court today that the local authority must complete by March 31 next repairs to Sinead Morans apartment to bring it up to a standard in which it was fit for a family to live in. The court was told by barrister Peter Maguire that Ms Moran regularly had to paint and redecorate her home because of damp and black mould and throw out ruined clothes, a wardrobe, and a bed and mattress because of damp. Judge Ni Chulachain had brought a City Council legal team back before her to detail what works it was prepared to carry out in order to make the flat fit for human habitation. Barrister John P. Kehoe, counsel for the local authority, handed in a report on proposed council works to be carried out to Ms Morans flat in the first quarter of 2024. Ms Moran said she had been complaining about damp and black mould since 2009 and had withheld rent in a bid to force the local authority to act. She was awarded damages of 8,000 which Judge Ni Chulachain said amounted to 800 a year compensation for having to live in the conditions, described in an earlier hearing to the court, for the past 10 years. Today's News in 90 seconds - November 22nd Judge Ni Chulachain told Mr Maguire, who appeared with Thomas Loomes Solicitors for Ms Moran, that she would reduce the award by 3,976 to compensate the city council for rent that had not been paid by Ms Moran. She directed that she be paid out the remaining 4,024 compensation. She said that while works were being carried out to other apartments (over a 10-year renovation plan) the upgrading of Ms Morans flat would take precedence in the first three months of 2024 over other works. Ms Moran had told the judge that the Oliver Bond House complex was also rat infested. Following todays award of damages Ms Moran said the city council was not living up to its much vaunted 10 year plan of rejuvenating the Dublin 8 complex. The council is just repairing apartments that people have moved out of in order to facilitate new residents moving in, she said. She said the council was failing to get a move on under its 10-year refurbishment plan for necessary repairs to existing apartments in which hundreds of people were still being forced to live, many in unlivable conditions. Judge Ni Chulachain referred to a 2018 High Court decision by Mr Justice Seamus Noonan in which he awarded a Dolphin House, Rialto, resident 25,000 for personal injuries against the city council for having to endure living in unfit conditions for a decade, said there had been no evidence of personal injury in Ms Morans case. Former Taoiseach Enda Kenny has made his first appearance at a Fine Gael constituency event since he stepped down as Taoiseach. Mr Kenny was the guest speaker at a Fine Gael event in Dublins Dun Laoghaire suburb on Tuesday night attended by senior party figures, including Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe, junior finance Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, Senators Barry Ward, Regina Doherty and Joe OReilly as well as local councillors. The event in the Royal Marine Hotel was held to celebrate former minister Sean Barretts contribution to politics ahead of the 50-year mark next year since he was first elected as a councillor in 1974 on Dublin City Council. Mr Barrett was elected to the Dail in 1981 and went on to serve as Minister for Defence, Minister for the Marine, Ceann Comhairle and Government Chief Whip. Mr Kenny attended the event as a guest speaker in his first Fine Gael appearance since he stepped down as party leader in 2017. The event sparks speculation within the party if he will put his name forward to be selected as Fine Gaels presidential candidate in the looming presidential elections in 2025. European Commissioner Mairead McGuinness is currently viewed within the party as a frontrunner for the Fine Gael Aras ticket. The former Taoiseach made two speeches, one about Mr Barrett and one about his own time in politics to over 100 people present. People at the event said he spoke about the challenges he faced as Taoiseach and the different place the country is in now in regards to economic stability and the challenge in rebuilding the country. He even quoted former US President John F Kennedy, saying: We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. Mr Kenny also spoke about the people he met during his time as Taoiseach and party leader, including families battling addiction. He spoke about how different the country is now to when he was in power, even though it hasnt even been a decade since he stepped down. However, sources said the event was not a rallying of the troops ahead of a potential presidential bid. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar did not attend the event. It was great to see him and he was in wonderful form, said Senator Barry Ward. He said people dont give a damn about the past but they do. The success of his Government is something we can hold up to show politics does work. Irish soldiers take part in exercises in Wicklow ahead of deployment to Lebanon last month. Photo: PA Tanaiste Micheal Martin says Ireland will abandon the traditional triple lock feature of the international deployment of Irish troops, removing the UNs veto. The move is a significant change to Irish neutrality policy and ignores the report of a consultative forum that found there was no public appetite for a change in Irelands time-honoured stance. The triple lock requires there to be first a UN resolution in relation to a troubled territory or state, requesting international force assistance; second, a Government decision to send Irish soldiers in support of that mandate; and thirdly the approval of Dail Eireann. Mr Martin says it is now proposed to have a double lock instead consisting solely of a Government decision and Dail approval. At the same time, he pledged: This Government has no intention of taking any steps towards Nato membership, or altering our policy of military neutrality. He blamed the frequent paralysis on the UN Security Council (SeCo), where the big powers each have the power to block deployments by applying their national veto an arrangement that stems from the end of the Second World War. The Tanaiste insisted that any moves under a new double lock would be fully consistent with the principles of the UN Charter and international law, which Ireland would continue to observe. But Sinn Fein immediately attacked the move as a dilution of neutrality and claimed the Government had attempted to rig its security consultative forum, held in Dublin Castle and other venues around the country, earlier this year. SF TD Matt Carthy said the Government should hold a referendum on removing the UN mandate, which he said would not pass. "If Government now want to take away that protection of the triple lock, then that should be also put to the Irish people by way of referenda, he said. "I have no doubt if that referendum was put to the Irish people that they would vote overwhelmingly to maintain the triple lock." He said the UN should be reformed, especially in terms of the veto which can be imposed by the five permanent Security Council members. Mr Martin said the implications of frequent UN impasses for Ireland and our current policy was simply something we have to take seriously. We have to be honest about the fact that, in respect of many of the worst crises internationally where rapid, impartial and decisive international action is desperately needed the Security Council has not been able to act, he added. As matters stand, the rules governing the despatch of contingents of the Defence Forces for overseas peace support operations ensure that these may take place only where the operation is mandated or authorised by the UN and then backed by the Government and Dail. Mr Martin said that, in effect, the triple-lock system handed the five permanent members of the Security Council a veto. It is a veto over our national sovereign decision to deploy troops to peacekeeping missions as we see fit, he said. He said the forum had shown no single consensus over how to proceed, but agility and responsiveness were needed on such matters. Irish deployments (of more than 12 personnel) would still comply with the highest standards of international law, he stressed. It would make sense, I believe, to amend our existing legislation in a manner which would allow us to respond to crisis situations with more agility, he said. In making these important decisions, we are not surrendering our sovereignty. Mr Martin revealed he had instructed officials in the Department of Defence to prepare legislative proposals without delay that would govern the future overseas deployments of our Defence Forces. This would allow Ireland to despatch Defence Forces personnel to multilateral missions overseas where these are organised by a regional organisation such as the EU or African Union or where the host country is requesting such support from the international community. He added: By making this change in the future, we would be removing the veto power of the Security Council over Irelands engagement, while safeguarding the essential link with international law. Mr Carthy said that what had been just announced was an attack on traditional Irish neutrality. In his view, the Government forum was an exercise in attempting to advance that agenda. That exercise had been a failure. It became undone because it had attempted to pre-empt public debate, with the Government stating almost as if it were a fact that there is a need to deepen collaboration with Nato, Mr Carthy said He said the Government had repeatedly sought to undermine the triple lock, which requires a UN mandate prior to Irish participation in overseas missions. But an opinion poll at the time of the forum whose hearings were disrupted by activists clearly showed that the vast majority of Irish people value our neutrality, he said. The poll showed 61pc of voters support Ireland's current model, Mr Carthy said. Just 26pc want to see it change. He welcomed an intervention by President Michael D. Higgins where he warned of the dangers of a drift in foreign policy. Mr Martin said, however, that there was no attempt to go it alone. We are already active members of the EUs Common Security and Defence Policy, including Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). Rather than some notional European army, what PESCO provides for in reality is a menu of projects which allow us to work with and learn from EU partners, he said. Mr Martin said Ireland would also go further in the area of maritime security, particularly in relation to subsea cables. Ireland this year became an observer in the Critical Seabed Infrastructure Protection (CSIP). But Mr Martin said: We should go further and do more. He said Ireland was involved in Natos Partnership for Peace, but for the avoidance of doubt, let me once again be entirely clear: this Government has no intention of taking any steps towards Nato membership or altering our policy of military neutrality. That is simply not on the agenda. But a values-led foreign policy does not exclude a dedicated and clear-eyed focus on our own national security, he said. As I have said before, Ireland cannot rely on our geographic isolation for our security, nor isolate ourselves from world events, Mr Martin said. The nature of the threats we face are unlike those we have seen before. They may include cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns that seek to undermine our social cohesion, or interference with our energy and telecommunications infrastructure. The havoc wreaked by the malicious actors who attacked the HSE in 2021 offers a salutary reminder that neutrality is no safety. I therefore make a commitment today that the Government will deliver a National Security Strategy in the coming months. The strategy will lay out the threat environment. He promised a fully-functioning National Security Authority to deal with the protection of EU classified information as well as personal and facilities security clearance, all underpinned by legislation. As an island nation, the question of our maritime security is paramount. I also am announcing a maritime security strategy. This will have a particular focus on subsea infrastructure. Mr Martin said this would help make Ireland a confident and forward-looking State, one that does not shy away from playing an active role in upholding international peace and security. Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe has warned RTE it needs to step up efforts to collect the TV licence fee as it emerged the broadcaster has now lost some 17 million since the Ryan Tubridy payments controversy. Mr Donohoe told the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday that efforts must begin to collect licence fee revenues after a collapse in compliance since the summer of controversy at Montrose. According to those present, the minister reiterated that a Government bailout totalling 56 million - including 16 million this year and 40 million across 2024 - had been made available on a conditional basis. It comes after Fine Gael TD Brendan Griffin, a member of the Oireachtas Media Committee, attacked the national broadcaster and Media Minister Catherine Martin whom he reportedly said had completely washed her hands of the crisis around licence fee compliance. Mr Griffin is said to have rounded on RTE and claimed it had not collected more than 17 million in licence fee revenue. He said the broadcaster had abdicated its responsibility and that he could see no effort by the RTE board to stop the rot. Warning that the fall in licence fee revenues could reach 20 million by Christmas, the Kerry TD, who is standing down at the next general election, said the Government and the Oireachtas Media Committee should call in the RTE chair Siun Ni Raghallaigh. He said theyve done nothing, they took their foot off the gas and have been rewarded, a source said of Mr Griffins comments. He said there was no change in messaging and no intensification of advertising to recoup what the State is losing. Senator Micheal Carrigy, who is also a member of the committee, concurred with Mr Griffin, saying that RTE needed to stem the flow of people not paying the licence fee, otherwise the taxpayer would be faced with a bigger ask. The Longford-based senator said that RTE needs to appear before the committee. The meeting also heard from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar that the Cabinet decision for the pension age to remain at 66 will be paid for by gradual increases in PRSI. The meeting heard someone not retiring until the age of 70 would receive a State pension over 300 a week if they decided to defer their retirement. Fine Gael has completed 74pc of selection conventions and selected 251 candidates for next Junes local elections, the meeting was also told. The Taoiseach also said the temporary ceasefire in Gaza, due to begin on Thursday, and the impending exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners offered a spark of hope to all. He said he hoped Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand will be released back to her family in the coming days and that every effort is continuing to be made by the Government through diplomatic channels to ensure Emily's release. Ryan Tubridy has wished good luck to his Late Late Show successor Patrick Kielty ahead of his Toy Show debut on Friday. Mr Tubridy hosted the show for 14 years until he stepped down last March. I feel so happy that I had 14 beautiful years doing it. I loved every single Toy Show I did. I feel so happy that I was able to pass it on and say it's somebody else's now. Its in great hands, Mr Tubridy told Q102s Breakfast. There is a wonderful bunch of people working on that show. I wish them all only the best, and Paddy, good luck in this first, it's a big gig, and hell be well able for it. I'm not going to miss it in the sense because I did it, and I had my fun, and I left the Late Late just at the right time for me. I was delighted to leave it behind. I love it, I hope all the children get to have fun. The broadcaster also joined FM104s Strawberry Alarm Clock this morning, where he said the Toy Show was his favourite night of the year and there was magic in the air. Ryan Tubridy speaking on FM104 Strawberry Alarm Clock. Photo: Instagram. On the Toy Show night this year, Ryan Tubridy revealed he will be in Clifden, Co Galway, to turn on the Christmas lights. The ex-RTE star told his future colleagues at Q102 that he feels on top of the world now. It was bumpy, and life throws you curveballs, and you then respond to those things in a way that you best can. He said everyone in Virgin Media UK and Q102 was very welcoming towards him. They say: 'We actually like what you do, and we want you to do it for us. And suddenly, out of nowhere comes these opportunities. And they're big, beautiful, and exciting. So it's been an intriguing road, he said. Mr Tubridy will come back to radio airwaves in early January, as he will host a mid-morning slot on Virgin Radio UK from 10am to 1pm Monday to Friday, which will also be broadcast simultaneously on Dublins Q102. Mr Tubridy will also host a weekend show in Ireland on Dublin Q102, FM104, 96FM in Cork, Live95FM in Limerick, and LMFM. It's going to be a nice mix of home and away. I am beyond excited. This is something that I didn't see necessarily coming half a year ago, he told FM104. Ryan Tubridy speaking on Q102 Breakfast. Photo: Instagram. "This is the chapter two situation in so many ways, personally, professionally, with the constants that will always be part of the story, he said about his move to London. My Irishness is very important to me. I'm not going to wear it heavily because no one should wear their nationality in a heavy-handed way, but I will definitely be flying the flag. I think I won't be greatly upset to say goodbye to 2023, but I will be excited. I'm so ready for this January, he added. Constable Sam Williamson, whose address was given as c/o PSNI Headquarters at Brooklyn, Knock Road, Belfast, entered guilty pleas on Tuesday to four counts of obtaining or disclosing personal data. But at Armagh Magistrates Court, sitting in Newry, the 33-year-old officer denied four further charges relating to unauthorised access to computer material. Those are to be contested before a district judge at the Magistrates Court. None of the alleged facts giving rise to the charges were opened in court. But according to the charge sheets, Williamsons offences involved the PSNIs operational information system called Niche and concerned two named females. He admitted to have knowingly or recklessly, without the consent of the data controller, obtained or disclosed personal data or the information contained in personal data, namely a Niche record for two named females and in relation to two Niche occurrences. The charges Williamson denies concern allegedly causing a computer to perform a function with intent to secure access to a program or data which he was not authorised to access. His defence lawyer suggested the computer misuse charges are duplicate with the data breach offences; however, a Public Prosecution Service lawyer told the court the prosecution did not accept that submission. Adjourning the case to November 28 for contest, District Judge Anne Marshall said she would deal with the issue next week. Finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said that worker entitlement to retire could be paid for without further burdening the labour force with taxes. Voters had sent a loud and clear message at the last general election that people had a right to retire at 65, he said. All workers at that age should be given the right to choose, he said, whether to work on or to down tools. Those workers would be surely disappointed today, at the Government again letting them down, he said. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar stressed however that the retirement age was 66, not 65. He pointed out that Sinn Fein had voted for a retirement age of 66 in Northern Ireland. The Government had resisted suggestions that the threshold should be raised to 67, he said. Sinn Feins proposal that someone else should pay was not honest, he said. Mr Doherty rejoined on honesty by telling the Taoiseach that Sinn Fein proposals to raise PRSI (for employers) had been described out of your mouth as a tax on jobs. The Taoiseach shot back: Your passion is phony. You proposed in your last manifesto a 40pc increase in employers PRSI. It would have cost jobs, he said. Back in the 1970s, he added, the pension age was 70 and life expectancy was 68. People now were retired for 20 or 30 years, which was a great thing, but had to be paid for. Mr Doherty said: Half the people over there [Government benches] are entitled to retire at 50. The Dail then descended into disorder. Earlier he had argued: This is simply about fairness. If you're working on your feet all day, whether it's on a construction site, as a hairdresser, in hospitality, or on the factory floor, you can't be expected to continue working beyond the pension age. This is a Government that actually legislated to increase the retirement age to 68 it was only Sinn Fein and public pressure at the last election that put a stop to that. He added: The various options developed and the data gathered by the Pension Commission made it clear that it was possible to put the social insurance fund on a sustainable footing and afford the people the right to retire on a pension at the age of 65. Increasing employers PRSI on the portion of pay above 100,000 would immediately cover the cost of introducing the right to retire on a pension for those who have reached the age of 65 years, he said. The Taoiseach said the decision not to raise the pension age to 67 comes at a cost and we'll have to cover that cost by increasing, very gradually, employers, self-employed and employees PRSI over the course of the next number of years. Weve set out the schedule of how that will be done, with the first increase of 0.1pc in October of next year. In the full year that will cost the average worker about 45 or 50. That is the cost of not raising the pension age, and that is a cost I think that most people will be willing to bear. In addition to that we're making further reforms to the PRSI system. We believe the work should pay, and that if you pay more money into the Social Insurance Fund, you should get more benefits as a result. Part of the reforms that Minister Humphreys is bringing in is that if people are made unemployed, for the first few months after they lose their job, they won't get paid the basic job seekers rate they will get paid a higher rate, as was the case under the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP). Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he has never before seen an international letter sent to an Irish political party about attacks on press freedom in all his time in the Dail. It came after Fine Gael TD Ciaran Cannon, the last leader of the Progressive Democrats, raised a letter newly sent to Sinn Fein. The communication, from a series of international bodies, was expressing alarm about a series of legal actions taken by Sinn Fein members against journalists. New measures were announced last week to enable targeted migration from non-EU countries. Photo: Alamy/PA TRUCK drivers are in greater demand than rocket scientists, a conference on staff shortages was told as a new Tinder for skills plan was revealed. Barbara Nolan, head of the European Commission Representation in Ireland, said there is a reason why countries like New Zealand, Australia, the US and Canada outstrip EU countries as preferred destinations for jobseekers worldwide. She said it is because EU legal migration rules are overly complex, uncoordinated and very much focused on highly-skilled migrants. But the reality is that right now we need more truck drivers than rocket scientists, so we need to address that issue, she said. She told an audience at the commissions office in Dublin that it identified 42 occupations where there are EU-wide shortages of workers. The list includes plasterers, welders, roofers, civil engineers and accountants. New measures were announced last week to enable targeted migration from non-EU countries, she said. They include a proposal set up an EU talent pool to recruit jobseekers from non-EU countries to roles where there are shortages. This would be done on an online platform to enable employers and jobseekers to identity each other and match skills to job offers. So its Tinder for skills, she said. Lets see. We hope its going to work. She said we need to go further and attract skills and talent from all over the world. Simon Harris, Minister for Further and Higher Education, said we have moved from an unemployment crisis to most businesses he visits having difficulty attracting labour. He said the issue is most stark in construction, digital skills and green skills. The minister said investment is needed so every person in the country has digital skills. We cannot live in a country where one in two of us lack basic digital skills, he said. This is the tech capital of Europe and one in two of us lack basic digital skills. He said we have to retrofit skills onto a generation that did not have the same educational opportunities and remove the stigma. Mr Harris said there is a well-worn path where people do the Leaving Cert and have a good CEO day and later get a job. He said it works well for many people, but has not worked well for everyone. A report shows we need 50,000 more people working in construction by 2030, he said. He said the overwhelming majority of them will not go to university, and will do apprenticeships. We know in this country and in many European countries, the biggest social challenge people face is getting a roof over their own head, he said. He said there is a corelation between the rigidity of the education system and an elitist mindset where children are asked what university they want. Meanwhile, it is understood that businesses with 250 or fewer workers will be eligible for a new incentivisation scheme that will be rolled out in September. It will support the cost of retaining staff in digitalisation, climate action and management. Globally aviation would rank in the top 10 emitters of greenhouse gases if counted as a single country, the European Commission says. Stock image Denmark has announced a new proposal to implement a "green tax" on all flights in an effort to fund a sustainable-energy transition for its domestic air travel. The plan would charge passengers (in Danish krones) around 8 for flights within Europe, 32 for medium-distance flights and 51 for long-distance flights by 2030. The policy would be phased into effect beginning in 2025. Half of the revenue from the "green tax" - which is expected to bring in around 1.2 billion krones (161m) - would be used to support a transition to have all domestic flights use 100pc sustainable fuels by 2030 (Denmark plans to have its first all-green-fuelled domestic flight route in operation in 2025.) Another portion of the revenue would support pension increases for elderly citizens. "Flying takes a toll on the climate, which is why we need to equip our flight sector with green wings," Denmark's Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities Lars Aagaard said in a statement. "The flight sector in Denmark must - as all other sectors - lower its carbon footprint and get on board a green future. We will create that change and make green flights our reality." Globally, the aviation industry accounted for 2pc percent of all energy-related CO2 emissions in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. Some estimates see aviation's share in global carbon emissions rising to 22 percent by 2050. The move by the Danish government follows similar policies elsewhere in Europe that aim to limit the negative climate effects of air travel. At the start of this year, the government of the Netherlands tripled its passenger tax on air travel in another bid to curb carbon emissions. And earlier this summer, France became the first country in the world to enact a legal ban on any domestic short-haul flights between places where an easy train alternative exists, and where the train trip is less than 2.5 hours. Though a legal first, climate advocates found the law lacking, as routes banned by the law accounted for less than 3pc of domestic flight emissions. The original proposal that came from the French climate "citizens' assembly" applied to flights where the train travel was under four hours, but the plan was watered down in the legislature. Recent years have seen a growing international movement of scientists, professionals and consumers advocating for less air travel, some going as far as to stop travelling by plane altogether. We Stay on the Ground, a Sweden-based group, had 26,000 people sign up for its "flight free" campaign in 2020, for example. However, despite some vocal supporters and high-visibility public efforts - like Greta Thunberg's trip across the Atlantic via high-speed sailboat - the movement for less flight travel hasn't reached the mainstream. Still, governments, especially in Europe, have taken clear steps to regulate the climate impacts of the aviation industry, both through policies like Denmark's proposed tax and by cracking down on "greenwashing" airlines misrepresenting their sustainability practices, as was the case in an EU-wide complaint filed by consumer groups this autumn. "This proposal is little more than greenwash that will ultimately fuel the industry's growth. The tax is too tiny for demand reduction, and most of it will be swallowed by the industry," Magdalena Heuwieser, co-founder of the Stay Grounded network, said in an email. Heuwieser said Denmark has enough rail connections to ban all domestic flights. "This would be much more sustainable, as flying is always more energy intensive, no matter which technology might come up in the future." Visitors heading to Paris for next year's Olympics face major accommodation problems amid soaring hotel prices and a crackdown on rentals of tourist apartments. A report by the Paris tourism office showed that hotel prices would rise by a whopping 314pc between the 2023 and 2024 summers. "We want popular Games, and it can't be popular Games at 700 a night," Frederic Hocquard, Paris's deputy mayor for tourism and night life, told Reuters on Monday. The report also hit out at the Paris hotels for waiting too long to open their booking platforms for the July 26 - August 11 Olympics. "Some 66pc of the hotels are still not available for booking for the period of the Olympics," the report said. According to the Paris Tourism office, a hotel night in the Paris region was 169 in July 2023, and it is expected to soar up to 699 euros in July 2024. "The rise is 366pc for the two-star hotels and 475pc for the three-star hotels," it said. "What is going to happen is that people will take a hotel room for 200 a night in Nantes, Lille or Rennes and commute by train and they will save money this way," Hocquard added. "At the London Games, the prices were too high and the occupation rate of hotels went 12pc down. You can't triple the price of the rooms. Maybe you can allow, a 10 or 15pc increase, but tripling the prices won't work. "The way it is going, we're going to feed the Airbnb beast." Visitors might opt for Airbnb, but the French parliament is expected to pass a law to crack down on illegal renting of tourism homes. In Paris, residents are allowed to rent their place on Airbnb for a maximum 120 days a year, but Jacques Baudrier, Paris's deputy mayor in charge of housing, said the city is struggling to have the law respected. "We need to produce a lot of evidence that the law is not respected and it makes it hard to sanction," Baudrier told Reuters on Monday. "There are about 20,000 homes that are being rented illegally all year long." The French parliament is expected to pass a law stipulating that owners who rent their homes will be taxed. "The law project will be presented at the Parliament on November 28, and we are confident that it will pass. We don't have any problems with those who rent their home legally. We have a problem with the illegal renting," said Baudrier. Last June, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said he is "in favour" of reforming the taxation of furnished tourist accommodation, because of the significant "windfall effects". Between 2021 and 2023, owners who illegally rented their homes were fined 6.5 million in total. Senan Molony: Sixty years on, its time to lay to rest those conspiracies about the killing of JFK Today marks the 60th anniversary of JFKs assassination. A second murder just one hour later helps show what really happened. US president John F Kennedy, his wifeJackie Kennedy, Texas governor John Connally and others smile at the crowds lining their motorcade route in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Photo: Getty Senan Molony Wed 22 Nov 2023 at 03:30 Today marks the 60th anniversary of the murder of the 35th president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy a deadly shooting that has become one of the most investigated crimes in history. Reading the victim-impact statements made by the family of Ashling Murphy at the sentence hearing of Jozef Puska, this case like other murder cases cries out for life sentence to be just that: life without parole. Someone who not only is found guilty of murder, but who lies about the circumstances of the murder itself or who fails to give an adequate explanation into their actions should never see the light of day again. All too often judges are restricted at sentence hearings, whereby sentences they think should be enforceable are restricted by way of rulings from the higher courts. Unlike America, where there are minimum and maximum sentences, Ireland is constantly tinkering around the edges because of a lack of definitive sentencing guidelines. We saw this in the Larry Murphy case, a vile rapist and abductor, where the judge wanted to impose a maximum sentence for Murphys heinous crimes, but was restricted from doing so because the judge knew it would be appealed to a higher court. The legislator, ie the Government and the Attorney General, must deal with this issue of life tariffs or minimum sentencing, and whether those indicted should ever be allowed a parole hearing, before we have to deal with another Puska or Murphy. The higher courts, which hold much sway on the type of sentencing that can be imposed, must also take responsibility for the inadequate sentences imposed for these terrible crimes. While Puska is accommodated in one of our more modern prisons and provided with a never-ending legal aid system of appeals, the victims family and loved ones are left with memories of a talented and special young woman whose life was so mercilessly taken and who should have lived a long and full life. Its time we changed this narrative. Christy Galligan, Letterkenny, Co Donegal Leo Varadkar claim that US is not using Shannon for route to Israel seems flimsy Taoiseach Leo Varadkar stated during an interview on RTE on November 19 that Shannon Airport is not being used by the US to transport military supplies to Israel. Since no aircraft associated with the US military has ever been searched or investigated at Shannon Airport over the past three decades, there is no way that the Irish government can confirm that the US military has not been transporting military supplies to Israel through Shannon Airport. On November 16, Omni Air number N819AX passed through Shannon Airport, coming from Pope Army Airfield, North Carolina, and went on to Abdullah Al-Mubarak Air Base in Kuwait, which is used by the US military as one of its Middle East distribution points On November 15, Omni Air number N846AX passed through Shannon Airport, coming from Biggs Army Airfield, El Paso, Texas. It also flew on to Kuwait. Both aircraft were on contract to the US military, and presumably were approved by the Transport Minister. Mr Varadkar stated that: You have to receive express permission to bring munitions through any airport in Ireland and they have to be signed off on by the Department of Transport and the Minister for Transport, and thats not happening. This is, at best, only partly correct. The only way to ensure Irish airports are not being used by the US in support of Israeli bombardment of the people of Gaza, and other wars, is to end US military use of Irish airports. Edward Horgan, Castletroy, Co Limerick It would be better for all concerned if UN took over the Israeli administration Edward Horgan (UN must send emergency force to fully take over administration of Gaza, Irish Independent, Letters, November 18) puts forward a reasoned argument in which he suggests that the UN General Assembly should authorise an emergency mission to take over the administration of Gaza. I fully understand his position, but it strikes me that the world would be a much safer place if, instead, the UN put together an emergency mission to take over the administration of Israel. If only this were possible. Fintan Lane Lucan, Co Dublin World Childrens Day comes and goes, with no let-up for Gazas youngest World Childrens Day (yesterday) is a day when we stand up for childrens rights everywhere. Alas, these are perilous times to be a child in Gaza. Wanton attacks on civilian infrastructures, medical facilities, childrens hospitals and maternity departments have become commonplace. This heinous and fruitless war has scarred children physically and psychologically. Childrens lives have been riddled with psychological distress, loss, grief, anguish, risk, slaughter, anxiety and uncertainty. Another problem is delivering the much-needed health services that can have an impact on the community far beyond the individual, like the polio eradication programme. This is a major drawback. The discontinuation of polio vaccination is a crime since this disease will re-emerge and many children will be left paralysed. It is imperative to demand an immediate stoppage of grave violations of childrens rights. There can be no military solution to this intractable conflict. Only justice and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state can prevent the children of Gaza from truly becoming the lost generation. Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob, London, United Kingdom Rovers return is another simple way to gauge just how bad the weather is A recent letter about rain from Leo Gormley reminds me of the father and son seated comfortably by the fire. The father says to his son: Go out and see if its raining. The sensible son replies: No need, Ill just call the dog in and see if hes wet. Tom Gilsenan, Beaumont, Dublin 9 A rubbish idea from the EPA which that turn Ireland into a draconian farce The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has come up with the novel idea that enforcing households to put their waste into the proper-coded bins will put manners on families to do the right thing. At a time when for example we do not have enough gardai to adequately investigate serious crime, the EPA wants people sent out to rummage in other peoples garbage to carry out spot checks. Only in Ireland. Robert Sullivan Bantry, Co Cork Cork County Councils LHQ Gallery is presenting a group exhibition which is set in the mid-80s and looks at the weeks leading up to Christmas capturing the busyness of the season, the family traditions, and the complicit silences of a town. The exhibition is titled Small Things Like These, aptly named after a novel by Irish writer Claire Keegan, and includes almost 100 works by 85 artists, craftspeople and designers. This is Cork Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Cork newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details Sara Baume a writer and artist based in west Cork, will exhibit a work titled Sleepover which is a replica of flowers her mother gave her. The year after my father died, I visited my mothers house more often than usual, and every time I did, she would put a vase of flowers for me in the room where Id slept as a child. At a certain point I started to photograph them, and later, to make a replica of each different flower, as a complementary offering of devotion, Sara explained. The exhibition has a painting titled The Memory Cabinet by 16-year-old Luke Cooney that reflects the idea that fine chine holds memory. Its always there, in my grandparents press, through birthdays, celebrations and funerals. Christmas was always a constant at my Nannys house, the same time, the same China, said Luke. Many of the works on display are available to purchase and LHQ Gallery takes no commission. Im delighted to see the large number of submissions received for this exhibition. LHQ Gallery is a fantastic platform for artists, craftspeople, designers and other creatives to showcase and celebrate their artistic talent. I am very much looking forward to visiting the exhibit, said Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr. Frank OFlynn. The exhibition will open with a special event on Thursday, November 30, and run until Friday, December 22 at LHQ Gallery, Carrigrohane Road, Cork. A protest in support of a ceasefire in Gaza will be held at the Plaza in Mallow on Monday, November 27 at 5pm. The protest in the North Cork town has been organised by Socialist Party TD for Cork North Central, Mick Barry. This is Cork Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Cork newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details It was initially intended to hold the protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza this Friday afternoon, but the date has been altered to avoid clashing with the switching on of the Christmas lights in Mallow town which will take place at 6pm on Friday evening. Deputy Barry has called for a complete and total ceasefire. What is needed now is not just a humanitarian pause but a complete and total ceasefire. By the start of this week at least 13,000 Palestinians had been killed, including at least 5,500 children. This genocide has to stop. Protests across the world have brought millions of people onto the streets to shout stop, he said. The Socialist Party TD has called on all the residents of Mallow who oppose the Israeli assault on Gaza to attend the protest. This will be a chance for the people of Mallow to join that growing social movement of international solidarity." An official invitation will be issued to the Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works, Patrick O'Donovan, to visit Rathcormac which was impacted twice in one week by the recent severe flooding. It was also agreed at last Mondays Northern Committee meeting that a letter would be sent to the OPW and to Minister ODonovan requesting that the OPW would release individual schemes from the second tranche of Catchment Flood Assessment and Management Programme (CFRAM) and prioritise the villages that were impacted by the recent severe flooding events such as Rathcormac. Rathcormac was identified for proposed flood relief schemes in 2018 under CFRAM. 118 schemes were to be carried out nationwide and, in the initial phase, there would be five larger schemes and 31 schemes for under 1m. Other schemes, including the scheme for Rathcormac, would get the green light to go ahead in the latter half of the 10 years from 2018-27. This is Cork Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Cork newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details The Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr Frank OFlynn said a long term solution for the Cork village is required. We need the OPW to prioritise areas like Rathcormac that have suffered severe flooding recently because it will take a number of years to get through the full list. In recent weeks there were two floods in Rathcormac. It is inhibiting development of local businesses getting planning and extra houses which are needed in the area. We have to fast track the programme for Rathcormac. We need a long term solution, he said. Fianna Fail councillor William OLeary said residents are looking for answers. Being a Rathcormac man it has been a very distressing couple of weeks. People are very upset at the two separate events that happened within the space of a week. In terms of flood risk measures Rathcormac has to be top of the list. People on the street dont want to hear any jargon. People are looking for answers and we have to find ways of progressing some of the tranche 2 schemes with the OPW. Fine Gael councillor Noel McCarthy who seconded the motion said the OPW need to step up. My colleagues and I attended two meetings with a special committee that has been set up in Rathcormac over the last month. One woman described her house as like a building site. They are afraid of another flood. We cannot keep going back with the same answers. What they really want is a long term plan to be implemented. We need the OPW to step up, take responsibility and prioritise Rathcormac. The emotion is devastation and on top of that fear, said Fine Gael councillor Kay Dawson about the concerns among residents in Rathcormac. It is really strongly felt by people whose homes and businesses were flooded twice. The group want something that they can work towards so they dont live in this level of fear going forward. They need action now. Fianna Fail councillor Deirdre OBrien added that it is time something was done. John Slattery, acting county engineer said the local authority is assessing interim measures to reduce flood risks in Cork towns and villages. Up to 12 private dwellings and two businesses were affected by the recent flooding. In advance of a release date for Tranche 2 schemes, Cork County Council is currently assessing interim measures that could be implemented to reduce flood risk in towns and villages that were affected by Storm Babet. All interim works would be subject to funding. Kevin Morey, divisional manager said the executive are very conscious of the real concern in Rathcormac. I understand the very real concern and urgency in Rathcormac. We are very conscious that it is an area that needs action. We have been talking to the OPW since the events of Storm Babet. OPW have indicated that they are open to proposals for interim measures in places that have been recently affected. We need to identify the interim measures. There is good sense to the proposed letter to OPW that would urge them to prioritise those places that were impacted on the list. I will use whatever influence I have as well and we will all work together, he added. The design phase of the project has been assigned 50,000 of a new fund aimed at enhancing outdoor activities in Ireland A fund of 50,000 has been allocated to a proposal to design a pedestrian bridge in Macroom that would link the section of Macroom Town Park north of the River Sullane to the section south of the river. Funding for the design stage of the project was announced by Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys, on Tuesday, November 21. The allocation is part of a government fund close to 2.3 million aimed at supporting the development of 50 outdoor projects across Ireland. Local Fianna Fail TD Aindrias Moynihan welcomed the funding allocated to Cork County Council to take the first step in improving local amenities. This is Cork Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Cork newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details "The council have been looking at options to improve amenities locally including this pedestrian access and these funds under the Outdoor Recreation Infrastructure Scheme will be of huge benefit, allowing the design stage and the ground works needed to get underway, Cllr Moynihan said. "A new pedestrian bridge over the River Sullane will create much greater access to Macroom Town Park, which is hugely important for locals. The more we can improve infrastructure for the town the more opportunities will be available to people to get out and enjoy the outdoors," he said. 50,000 is the maximum amount of funding allocated to projects under the government investment, to get them to a shovel-ready stage and in a position to avail of further funding. According to the government, the investment, under the Outdoor Recreation Infrastructure Scheme (ORIS), will be key to enhancing outdoor amenities like walkways, cycleways, rivers, lakes and beaches. It is claimed that the projects which the fund helps to deliver will enhance Irelands reputation as an outdoor adventure destination. Announcing the funding, Minister Humphreys said that the investment announced would aid in the development activities in rural Ireland. The funding Im announcing today will support the further development of our hiking trails, water based activities and other amenities making them even more enjoyable places for families to visit nationwide, Minister Humphreys said. These amenities are here for us all to enjoy. I would encourage everyone who can to get out and about, and make the most of what our countryside has to offer, she added Funding for the delivery of projects on the ground under the other Measures of the scheme will be announced by Minister Humphreys early next year. Leading figures from international development, business, academia and media will gather for a major new climate conference at University College Cork (UCC) on Monday, November 27. Former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, will be the keynote guest speaker at the first Sustainable Futures Forum, held in the Glucksman Gallery on the eve of the COP28 global climate negotiations. This is Cork Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Cork newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details Mary Robinson has always been vocal about climate change concerns and has written books on the subject and this week she is back in the news, calling for a coalition of peace in the Gaza War. The event, hosted by RTE presenter Miriam OCallaghan, will explore the key challenges Ireland faces as it seeks to meet ambitious targets set out in its Climate Action Plan.The free conference will cover topics including sustainable urban and rural development, the role of technology and innovation within industry, ensuring climate justice, and the role of the media on climate change. Over 500 researchers are engaged on sustainability at UCC and our research has shaped key national climate policies as we look to create a sustainable future. We are simply running out of time and the Sustainable Futures Forum provides a crucial space to discuss the solutions to critical sustainability and climate issues at a national and international level, said UCC President, Professor John OHalloran. Spaces are limited for the event and for those who cant attend in person the keynotes presentation and panel discussions will be live-streamed online. Pictured at the award presentation, from left to right: John Smith, CEO Nano Nagle Place; George Duggan and his son Max, Cork Crystal; Sr Jo McCarthy, Presentation Sisters; Manus OCallaghan, Awards Organiser; Tadhg Kelleher, Cork City Community Radio, Nominator. Picture: Tony OConnell Sr Josephine McCarthy has been named as the Cork Person of the Month for November. The West Cork Presentation Sister has been recognised for over 30 years work in community development. Known as Sister Jo, her missionary work led her to Presentation Missions in Ecuador and Peru, where she worked for 20 years before returning to Ireland in the early 2000s. Sister Jo who is a native of Ballinacarriga, Dunmanway was inspired from a young age by the legacy of Nano Nagle the founder of the Presentation Sisters. This is Cork Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Cork newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details Sister Jo followed in Nanos footsteps discovering a calling to work on the Missions. She said that Nano Nagle has been a constant in her very colourful life that took her to Peru and Ecuador. Looking back on her missionary work, Sister Jo admitted she did serve in some dangerous places. We did serve in some very dangerous places whilst doing our missionary work. In Ecuador we lived in an area which was completely lawless and every dispute was settled with an axe, she said. Sr McCarthy supported a development education programme with Presentation Secondary Schools for many years, facilitating an immersion experience for teachers and students across Africa, Pakistan, and India. In 2006, the Presentation Sisters established the Cork Migrant Centre (CMC) at Nano Nagle Place (NNP) in Cork City. The centre provides free, confidential information on access to services and immigration issues to EU and non-EU migrants. Sister Jo has been a key shaper and developer of programmes at the Cork Migrant Centre. She stepped down as director of the Cork Migrant Centre in 2018, though she remains an active volunteer with Dr Naomi Masheti and her team. Her name will now go forward, alongside the other monthly winners, for possible selection as Cork Person of the Year for 2023, which will take place at the annual gala awards lunch in January 2024. Former Dublin manager Jim Gavin spoke to the Oireachtas Committee on the matter today. Dublin needs a directly elected Mayor with significant powers to represent the people living in the capital, former Dublin football manager and former chair of the Citizens Assembly, Jim Gavin said today. Mr Gavin was addressing the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government, and Heritage as they discuss proposals from the Citizens Assembly, who once again emphasised the importance of having a directly elected mayor in Dublin to lead and represent the city of Dublin. The Citizens Assembly outlined their recommendations on devolving significant powers to the newly elected mayor, including housing, homelessness, community, healthcare, transport, and emergency services. The assembly also recommends devolving policing, water, and education over a period of 5-10 years and reform of local government. The report highlights Ireland's low local self-governance ranking and the need for ambitious change to improve the situation. The assembly members pored over this evidence during many months of discussion, reflecting and questioning, and considering these complex issues from all perspectives, Mr Gavin said. The result of deliberation is a strong recommendation to create a powerful new mayor of Dublin as a substantial figure with wide-ranging political powers to lead, deliver, represent, and be accountable for all in our capital city. Ms Nicole OConnor, also a member of the Citizens Assembly, outlined that it was an experience she holds great pride in having been a part of. It was an opportunity to meet 66 other randomly selected citizens from diverse backgrounds and different walks of life alongside 12 councillors to discuss something that can impact them for years to come, she said. Ms OConnor also brought up the fact that the Citizens Assembly acknowledged the lack of knowledge amongst Dublin citizens about what local government does. Education is going to be of the utmost importance for people, she said. VIDEO: "This is very, very special" - Dublin team members on winning All Ireland five in a row The assembly recommended that the decision on whether or not Dublin should have a directly elected mayor should be put to the people of the Greater Dublin Area in a plebiscite. Senator Mary Fitzpatrick asked the Citizens Assembly whether they thought about a two-fold referendum, one on local government and on the role of a directly elected mayor. Ms OConnor countered that the plebiscite would be an opportunity for education on what theyre voting on. Mr Art OLeary, former Secretary to the Dublin Citizens Assembly, said that a huge part of the deliberation was focusing on the powers that mayors have in Ireland and internationally all over the world. "Then we decided on the breadth and depth of the role; then we looked at what kind of structures were needed to underpin this particular role to support us to ensure that the person could deliver on their mandate, so that's what is set out in the report, he said. Deputy Cian OCallaghan also asked the Citizens Assembly whether it was worth waiting a year or more to have a fully formed proposal. Mr Gavin said he would be hesitant to have any further delay. The Citizens Assembly filed their report last December, and 12 months later, discussions are continuing. So, from the assembly members' perspective, there are concerns that this report will be put on the shelf and gather dust, he said. If we can put a report together in six months, there's no reason why the experts in Custom House cant put it together in that time frame as well and get it out for next year in June. Mr OLeary outlined that the plebiscite, if it does take place, does not need to take place at the same time as local elections. We haven't had an election in this country since 2020, and in the next 23 months, we will have every single type of electoral event that is possible to have, so we could have up to a dozen electoral events in the next 23 months. So that could be a time, you know, to take some time to develop the general scheme and go with one of the other electoral events as well because it is just a plebiscite for the people of Dublin. And if it was felt that you needed the time to do this properly, because we get one shot at this and it is very, very important that we get it right, he said. Member of the Citizens' Assembly, Ms OConnor, also outlined that not everybody in the assembly said they needed a plebiscite and that it was just a recommendation. I think a lot of us felt like we just wanted this progress; we knew putting our recommendations forward that not everything may be met. But I feel like personally Id prefer to not do the plebiscite and know that we will be coming out with an end product that hopefully will be successful, she said. Steven Matthews, TD, and spokesperson for planning and local government in Wicklow said that he acknowledges the reward here that could be huge if gotten right. Theres a great opportunity for Dublin here; if Dublin is doing well, the country generally does well, and I think we need to acknowledge that, he said. Mr Gavin concluded by thanking committee members for their time and energy and acknowledged their energy, enthusiasm, and their understanding of local government issues. More Trees Now is proud to join the Easy Treesie project and Crann Trees for Ireland planting in a new and exciting way The More Trees Now initiative supports the re-planting of cuttings and saplings in our local parks. Pic: Stock image/Getty Schoolchildren and volunteers across Dublin are getting involved in an initiative to plant more indigenous trees through circular forestry. Next Tuesday, November 28, community volunteers will be joined by 30 schoolchildren at Seagrange Park in Baldoyle to take elder, willow cuttings and saplings and re-plant them within the park in areas where they have space to grow. The re-planting is being carried out in collaboration with Baldoyle Wild Towns who won a National Climate Award for their work. Chairwoman and councillor Joan Hopkins said she loves working with the local schools, and everything they do is with their future in mind. In Baldoyle, like most coastal areas, we are on the front line of climate change and rising tides. Planting trees is the obvious solution to this risk and the method we are showing people means we use what nature has provided without spending any money, she said. The main obstacle we face is getting permission to use the green spaces we have to plant. We are working very closely with the council, but we need to focus our efforts and speed up the work we are doing. We are running out of time and councils must ensure there is a sufficient number of green space for nature, she added The following day, on November 30, volunteers of all ages are also being asked to join in at Da Farm in Kilternan, south Dublin, to take tree cuttings and save saplings for a second life. This project is being set up by Easy Treesie, a part of Crann: Trees for Ireland, which is planting a million trees with Irelands one million schoolchildren and their communities along with More Trees Now. More Trees Now is a Dutch campaign that collects young trees and shrubs in nature areas and parks to give them away for free to civilians and farmers who want to plant them. More Trees Now is proud to join the Easy Treesie project and Crann Trees for Ireland planting in a new and exciting way More Trees Now said it is proud to join the Easy Treesie project and Crann Trees for Ireland as there is a dire need to restore our native biodiversity. It has also been outlined that the majority of these saplings do not reach adulthood and either disappear naturally due to competition, but quite often are removed in routine landscape and forest management. They conclude that by transplanting the saplings, we may be able to restore ecosystems, create forests and green areas elsewhere. Orla Farrell, Easy Treesie project leader, recalls her grandmother in rural Cork never leaving the farmhouse without a scissors and a plastic bag in her handbag to secure cuttings from plants she admired. Ms Farrell, now a new grandmother herself, was happy to hear this old practice is alive and thriving in Holland. She also outlined that she was most interested to watch and learn from the Dutch team harvesting bundles of elder wands and whomping willows during National Tree Week earlier this year. Weve planted 400,000 nursery saplings so far, this easy method will complement our programme, helping us to accelerate our planting rates and adding resilience to our woodlands using local resources, she said. A barbershop in Galway city will offer free haircuts for life to anyone who can help one of their staff members and his family to find a new home. John McGuire, owner of Fat Tony's Lifestyle & Barbers, explained that one of his barbers, Cley Mendez, is urgently looking for a new home with his family. John explained that Cley, who is from Brazil, has been working at his shop in Galway for about seven months: He has been in Portugal for a couple of years and hes married, hes got two kids, of six and nine years of age, two boys. He came over from Portugal and got a job with us. So hes been with us for about seven months now, and his wife and two kids arrived just at the end of summer, so theyve been here for a couple of months now. He said Cley and his family found looking for a home extremely difficult. They struggled to get accommodation, theyve been moving around to friends houses and couch surfing, said John. They looked at a few places but they only got one viewing in the last couple of months. And then the landlord when he heard it was a family said he didnt want a family in it, he preferred to have single professionals or students because theyre gonna move out after a year or something, it would be a lot more difficult to get rid of a family. Unfortunately, the situation has recently forced the family to move in with Cleys mother, who is also based in Galway. Part of the reasons that he moved to Galway was because his mother is quite elderly and he wants to look after her. They ran out of options and they had to move in with her. So, two adults and two kids sleeping on the floor in the living room and his mother in the bedroom. However, Cleys family soon has to move again as the shop owner explained: The landlord is aware that theyre sleeping on the floor and hes not happy about it. And he said listen, I need you out by Christmas. So today, John decided to put up a post on the shops social media pages, asking for help. The post reads that anyone who will help Cley and his family finding accommodation, will receive free haircuts for life. Today's News in 90 seconds - November 22nd John said: Its a small price to pay. Hes a really good guy, theyre a great family, he gets on with everyone, hes a big personality in the shop. We try and help each other out when we can. He said that in just a couple of hours, the post was shared by a huge amount of people and some have already contacted them. John explained: Weve had a number of people come back to us, we got a great clientele, a great community of people that comes to our barbershop. One guy in particular said that he has a house about ten miles outside the town, in the countryside, which would be ideal, but it wont be available until January. So he said hell keep him on the list for when it does become available. John highlighted how the low availability of homes and their prices are making Cleys search particularly difficult. I think its just getting a bit desperate now. You go on Daft.ie and you find a house thats suitable, they dont put up a phone number, so you cant directly contact them, you have to email them, and the property might have 5,000 views in the last three days online, so God knows how many emails they are actually getting. He added: Youre working but your wage a lot of time wont even cover your rent. So hes probably gonna have to work multiple jobs, his wife probably has to work two jobs, just to make ends meet. On the sixtieth-anniversary of JFKs assassination in Dallas Texas, The Kerryman looks back at how the people in Kerry reacted to the shocking incident. Closed pubs, special Masses, adjournment of Tralee Circuit Court, and a two minute silence at Tralee Greyhound Track are some of the many acts of respect in Kerry in the days following the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The sixtieth-anniversary of the death of the 32nd President of the United States came as a devastating blow to people in Ireland, not just because of his Irish ancestry - which people were immensely proud of - but also due to the fact he had visited Ireland only six months earlier. The Kerryman in the days after his death featured a picture of President Kennedy on its front page with the headline: The Man Who Lies In Arlington Cemetery. The editorial gives deferential appraisal to the man in glowing terms, while citing his contribution to world affairs, civil rights, and Catholicism. The world will long remember the foul deed that was done in Dallas, Texas, on the evening of Friday, November 22, 1963. A shot rang out around the word and people everywhere heard it. They have been listening to its echo since and will be for many years, was written in the opening paragraph. The Kerryman editorial went on to list all the doubters of President Kennedy in the lead up to his presidency, who criticised his age, his inexperience, and his religion. He confounded the doubters, how wrong they all were. He brought to his task a maturity of judgement and thought that belied his age. A flair for conducting affairs in all spheres, foreign and domestic, that was borne of innate ability and high purpose. The editorial stressed that Kennedys presidency was against the odds due to his Catholicism. Even though many Catholics chose not to vote for him believing it to be too lofty an ambition, Kennedy dismissed the limitations placed against him. JFK lived his faith and set the invaluable precedent that a Catholic could be a distinguished President of the United Stateshe had the gift of greatness which made him at home with all men and in all conditions. His memorable visit to Ireland last June during which he gave himself and his heart to the Irish peoplehe gave the impression of a relaxed man without a care who had come on holiday among his people. The editorial goes on to highlight Kennedys fortitude during the Cuban missile crisis when facing down the Soviet Union and its interference. He dared Khrushchev to cross the line. The world tittered on the brink and John Kennedy did not wilt and Khrushchev backed down, the editorial asserts. For that alone, all humanity owes him a dept. His advocacy for civil rights in the United States made for him enemies as well as friends. In this country, John F Kennedy, with his Irish name and Irish forebears, was exalted to a unique position. There was no one in the long and intimate history of Irish American relations in any respect like him. Although third generation Irish, he preserved the characteristics of his race and could do and say the things our people expected him to do. The world will not see his likes again. The Kerryman also reports on 81-year-old Nora Hogan from Mountcollins. A letter from the White House, accompanied by and signed photograph of President Kennedy, was posted to Nora just four days before Kennedys assassination. Remarkably, the letter and picture were received by Nora in the post just a few hours before JFKs assassination on November 22. While visiting Limerick that June, the President heard of Noras disappointment at not being able to see him paraded through the streets because she was ill. Nora had worked in America for 52 years and met JFKs grandfather there. On hearing of the presidents death, Nora told The Kerryman: No one can ever take his place in the White House. And Mrs Kennedy is a marvellous woman, I must write to her. News of the presidents death caused shock and grief in many towns and villages around Kerry. At all Masses in Tralee on the Sunday after his death, prayers were offered for the late president. Shops and businesses in Tralee closed on the Monday afternoon as a mark of respect. The Kerryman reports that a Tralee Circuit Court sitting was adjourned by Justice Barra OBriain, his Lordship saying he wished to attend the Solemn Requiem Mass in Dublin on Tuesday: I would like as President of the Circuit Court to pay this tribute and also to express my own personal sympathy to the Kennedy family, Mr OBriain said. At Tralee Vocational Committees monthly meeting a minute silence was observed, while a two minute silence was held at Tralee Greyhound Track before racing. The presidents death caused widespread regret at a meeting of Listowel Urban Council where a motion expressing deep sympathy to the American Ambassador was proposed. At a special meeting of Tralee Chamber of Commerce, a vote of sympathy was extended to Mrs Kennedy, the Kennedy family, and the people of the United States. In Castlemaine, a number of admirers of the late president are having Mass for the repose of his soul. Mass was also celebrated at Milltown Parish Church by Rev J. Quane where the pupils from the local primary and secondary schools attended. A special Mass was said by Rev Father OBrien at Tralee Technical School, attended by pupils and staff. TD for South Kerry Patrick OConnor (Scarteen) recalled meeting with President Kennedy on a visit to Washington in May 1963. His knowledge of Irish history is surprising and he gave the impression that in him Ireland had a warm friend and true champion, said Mr OConnor. Lastly, The Kerryman reports that many public houses and shops were closed during the Mass and business was suspended throughout the day as a mark of respect. Prayers were also said on Sunday at Annascaul and Camp and schools closed on Tuesday when special Masses were offered. The silent protest in Killarney on Saturday over plans to open a new direct provison centre in the town. The centre opened its doors on Wednesday despite the outcry. 72 asylum seekers have arrived to Killarney this Wednesday afternoon, November 22, despite huge public objection to plans by the Department of Integration to open a new direct provision centre in the town. Just days after a silent protest saw hundreds march through the town the Government have moved ahead with their plans to open a new direct provision for international applicants on the Muckross road. Significant concerns were raised locally about the plans, to house the 70 male International Protection Applicants (IPAs) or asylum seekers at the 22-bed Kingscourt/Harmony Inn guesthouse on the Muckross road, particularly surrounding medical services in the town and their potential to cope with increased numbers. Many people in the town feel Killarney has played its part in accommodating refugees and that the town should not have to take anymore. A public meeting saw an attendance of around 300 people many voicing anger at the plans and calling on TDs to fight for the people of the town and tell the Department of Integration that Killarney is full and cannot take any more. Yet despite the significant outcry and public pleas The Kerryman can confirm that the centre opened its doors on Wednesday afternoon and that 72 international applicants have arrived. Their arrival comes after a meeting was to be arranged between representatives from the Department of Integration and local residents. A meeting had been sought with Minister for Integration Roderic OGorman but this was refused. Deputy Michael Healy-Rae confirmed to The Kerryman last week that the centre would open despite concerns as contracts had been agreed. This is Kerry Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Kerry newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details Local councillor Niall Botty OCallaghan expressed disappointment that the people of the town were not listened to. "I am very disappointed that our services and our economy are being ruined by decisions of the Government. When is enough, enough?, he said. "The social fabric of our amazing town is at a critical juncture. I am again calling on TDs to fight our corner. Irish chef Neven Maguire will bring his popular Christmas specials from the heart of County Limerick this year, as he will cook easy and festive dishes in the world-renowned Adare Manor. The first Christmas special will be aired on Thursday December 7 at 8pm on RTE One, and Neven will prepare Dublin Bay Prawn Spring Rolls with Mango Salsa. His main course will be Turkey Breast with Citrus Butter, Honey Glazed Ham and Perfect Sides. These include Mashed Potato, Brussel Sprouts, Red Onion and Bacon Crumble, and Honey glazed Carrots. Neven will then create a delicious Chocolate Baked Alaska with Chocolate Sauce for dessert. Whether youre a seasoned home cook or a beginner in the kitchen, Nevens clear instructions and tips will help you recreate his delicious recipes. He will also visit Adare Manors Michelin starred restaurant, The Oak Room, where he will chat about food at Christmas with Head Chef Mike Tweedie. Today's News in 90 seconds - November 22nd In Adare village, Neven will then visit The Good Room Cafe where owner Claire Staunton and her team baked tasty desserts for Neven to try, inspired by local flavours, traditions, and a true sense of community. And to finish this episode Neven will look for something a bit special, so he invited the Shannon Gospel Choir to come to Adare to sing a festive song. Neven commented: I couldnt be more excited to share this festive season with you all. Christmas is a special time of year, and the power of food to bring people together, and create lasting memories, is something I hold dear. I hope that Nevens Christmas in Adare brings joy and inspiration to your holiday season. Nevens Christmas in Adare is directed by Mark Boland, produced by David Hare of InProductionTV and sponsored by Bord Bia. Some of Dundalks finest musicians have come together for a special fundraiser concert is aid of Dundalk Youth Centre taking place on Thursday November 23nd in the Spirit Store. Jinx Lennon, Orwells 84, Sophie Coyle plus stars of the future Rowan Murphy, TJ Murphy, Carmen and Mia Martin, are all lending their support for All amped Up, with further musicians to be announced. Dundalk Youth Centre is a non-profit organisation, that provides a creative youth service for young people aged 12-18 in Dundalk, including a purpose built Youth Cafe, where young people can come have a cuppa and a chat, play pool and hang out. A programme of arts, a counselling and therapy service and a music room, that provides a safe space, for beginners and more advanced musicians, band rehearsals, a recording studio and a variety of music workshops. The cenre has forged a fantastic relationship with the Spirit Store over the past 18 months with the Emergence concert series that showcases the wealth of musical talent among young people in Dundalk and all around the north east. Emergence has just won a Louth PPN Community and Voluntary Award for its contribution to enhancing quality of life in Louth for children and young people. All Amped Up represents the energy of the burgeoning music scene in Dundalk and the line-up is a celebration of that where some of our best loved bands and musicians will share the bill with the outstanding emerging talent coming through. There will also be a raffle on the night with some very scintillating prizes including a Fender Squier Stratocaster electric guitar and amp, a Forme Winster 2 Hybrid Bike, an art piece from our friends from the Buhoma Youth Project in Uganda, and many more to be announced over the next few weeks. It will be a great night of craic and music in the Spirit Store on Thursday November 23. Doors at 7.45pm. Tickets are 10 and are available through the Spirit Store website and Dundalk Youth Centre. Sinn Fein has confirmed that Tipperary County Councillor Annemarie Ryan has joined the party and will sit as part of the Sinn Fein group on the Council in anticipation of the 2024 local elections. Cllr Ryan said that her primary motivation for joining the party was Sinn Feins determination to end the housing crisis, and to help create a fair and just society. Elected as an independent candidate in 2019, Cllr Ryan lives just outside Tipperary Town with her husband Loic and their two children Betty and Leon. Born in Leeds to Irish parents, Annemarie moved to Tipperary in the early 1980s but, like so many others after school, she emigrated to Britain, eventually returning to Cork in the mid-1990s. In 2007, Annemarie and Loic returned to Tipperary Town, and opened the popular French Quarter Cafe, which they have run for the last 17 years. Annemarie became involved in local politics through her work with the community activist group March4Tipp, culminating in her standing successfully as an independent candidate in the 2019 local elections, and has worked tirelessly on behalf of her constituents for the past four years. Cllr Ryan said: "I am joining Sinn Fein, and Im looking forward to next years local elections, because I want to see Ireland become a fair and just society. "In particular, I believe that Sinn Fein has the solutions and political will to end the housing and homelessness crisis. "In the past year, I have seen a significant change in the focus of my council work, much of it now is assisting people - families, men, women and children - living in insecure tenancies and facing notices-to-quit. That is a damning indictment of decades of failed housing policies. "Only a Sinn Fein government, and Sinn Fein council teams across the state, can undo that damage. "People cannot contribute to society without a secure and affordable home over their head. It is damning to see the terrible impact homelessness and insecure tenancies are having on so many people. "The people of Tipperary are facing an almost impossible search for alternative rental accommodation with little hope of finding an affordable long-term secure home. Many others are equally unable to afford to buy a house given soaring house prices and lack of affordable accommodation schemes throughout the county. "The housing crisis is affecting the whole of society; those on low incomes reliant on social housing; working families; adults who have no choice but to remain living in the family home; lost job opportunities due to insufficient accommodation options, and many more forced to emigrate. "As a mother, I want my children to be able to afford to live independently. I dont want them, or anybody else, to be forced out of the market, to have to emigrate or to have their futures limited because of the housing crisis." Cllr Ryan outlined further issues of importance for her, adding: "I will continue to support the delivery of the N24 Cahir to Limerick Junction Realignment. This includes the prioritisation of the Tipperary Town Bypass, which is a crucial element in the regeneration of Tipperary Town. It's important that rural villages as well as our market towns are included in future plans for growth and sustainable developement. I will continue to work hard to ensure they receive adequate supports. "I am an active member of Tipperary Town Revitalisation and am involved in many early stage projects. Such projects are aimed at combating high levels of social exclusion such as creation of job and education opportunities, delivery of tourism projects and regeneration of Tipperary Town centre by finding uses for derelict and vacant properties. Sinn Fein's 2024 alternative budget proposed increased funding for Local Authorities, and from my experience to date, all local authorities, including Tipperary County Council, are consistently underfunded. This makes it impossible to deliver adequate services across all departments, for example in housing, roads, recreation and amenities, planning, environmental protection. "When I was first elected, I promised to keep people informed of the work of the Local Authority. I promised to listen to peoples concerns and to act on their behalf. I believe that if people look at my record, they will see that I have consistently done both of these things. I will continue being that voice for the community, I will continue to work hard on behalf of all constituents, and I will continue to represent all of the community." Welcoming Cllr Ryan to Sinn Fein, Deputy Martin Browne said: Cllr Annemarie Ryan has proven herself to be an effective councillor and campaigner who is known for her tireless work in putting the interests of the community to the fore in all she does. This dedication is apparent through the numerous projects that have been brought to Tipperary town, and in the national attention that has been drawn to the need for a bypass of Tipperary town. I am very proud to have her as a member of Tipperary team Sinn Fein. Cllrs Tony Black and David Dunne said: We have seen first-hand the immense contribution that Cllr Ryan has made in advocating on behalf of her constituents at council level and as a campaigner. Whether representing her constituents on matters of housing, infrastructure, or job creation, Cllr Ryan has proved to be tireless in her commitment towards the people of Tipperary. Cllr Ryans addition to Sinn Fein locally will make our presence stronger and will increase our influence as we continue to deliver for the people of Tipperary at council level. Cllr Michael Whelan with Minister of State James Browne and Minister Darragh O'Brien, in Rosslare Europort last July. Ramsgrange looks set to be linked with the 16m waste water treatment plant in Arthurstown, meaning the village can finally grow again. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage press office has confirmed to this newspaper that there will be a positive announcement for Ramsgrange before Christmas. In April 2022, the Minister announced a new funding measure, under the Multi-annual Rural Water Programme, for the waste water collection and treatment needs of villages and settlements that do not have access to public waste water services. Funding of 50 million has been specifically allocated under the National Development Plan 2021-2030. The first round of funding is intended to follow a demonstration project model approach to inform future funding needs that will provide appropriate longer-term solutions. This is Wexford Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Wexford newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details All rural local authorities were asked to submit a maximum of two suitable priority applications each, for this funding measure. A total of 23 individual applications from 13 local authorities were received before the closing date September 15, 2022, and this included an application from Wexford County Council relating to Ramsgrange. An independent expert panel has evaluated each application received, and Minister Darragh OBrien plans to announce approval of funding for specific projects in the coming weeks, including a positive announcement for Ramsgrange. Minister for Housing Darragh O'Brien. Welcoming the news, Cllr Michael Whelan said: Last July I met with Minister OBrien and Minister Browne in Rosslare and put forward the case for Ramsgrange which is an ideal village for this scheme. With approximately 60 houses with three estates, a secondary school and a national school, Ramsgrange has so many things happening such as SWWFRC, Day care centre, housing for the elderly, pub, shop, etc. This grant will see approximately 2million being invested into much needed wastewater infrastructure, he said. With the secondary school expanding and all the activity in the village, this work being carried out will open Ramsgrange for further development. Great praise has to go to Wexford County Council staff who put a great application together when applying for this pilot scheme last year. This will also help to clean up the rivers flowing in to Duncannon beach and compliment the work been carried out by Wexford County Councils Duncannon Blue Flag Farming and Communities Scheme EIP, therefore bringing the return of the blue flag even closer. So this is welcome news for the area in more ways than one. He said: The fact that Ramsgrange wasnt included in the plans from day one has been an issue but this is a very welcome development, one which will mean further millions for the area. Cllr Whelan said having better sewerage infrastructure may entice a developer to build another estate there and will be a game changer for the area. Cllr. Michael Whelan. Photo; Mary Browne The Arthurstown, Ballyhack and Duncannon Sewerage Scheme has was officially opened by Minister OBrien in early March. Located on a hilly area accessed just off the pier at Arthurstown, the new facility built by SISK has eliminated the discharge of raw sewage into the Barrow, Nore, Suir estuary. Working in partnership with Wexford County Council, Irish Water acquired the land for the plant which caters for almost 4,000 people. Works commenced in summer 2021 at Arthurstown, Ballyhack and Duncannon. New pump stations were also built in Ballyhack and Duncannon, with extensive road works during construction. Pumped and gravity mains installed from Duncannon up to Church Road, from Mersheen to Ballyhack, and through the Dunbrody estate which link up all the pump stations to the treatment plant. 2022 saw mechanical and electrical works following a period of intensive civil engineering works. The works have eliminated the equivalent of 1,500 wheelie bins of raw sewage being discharged into the estuary per day. Fine Gael TD for Wexford Paul Kehoe has revealed that hes actively considering a move into European politics and is weighing up a potential run at the 2024 European elections. Following last weeks announcement that sitting Fine Gael MEP Deirdre Clune wont be seeking re-election to the European Parliament, sources within the party revealed that the Wexford TD was being lined up to replace her as a candidate in the Ireland South constituency. When asked for comment, the former Minister of State and government chief whip said it was certainly something that would pique his interest. This is Wexford Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Wexford newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details Yes my name has been mentioned, he confirmed. Members of the parliamentary party have approached me about it. I was a bit surprised by the retirement of Deirdre Clune and Id like to pay tribute to her. I think shes been an excellent MEP for the past ten years. Deputy Kehoe says that the nudge from the party towards Europe has come as something of a surprise but it is definitely something hes considering. Look, I wasnt expecting this, he said. I havent had any kind of wide consultation with anybody about it yet, but I am actively considering it, yes. Wexford County Council targets delivery of 1,100 homes by 2026 The European Elections wont take place until June of 2024, the same as the local elections, so Ill have a think about things in the coming weeks. Generally a selection convention for a European election wouldnt take place until February or March anyway, so Id imagine Ill have a chat with my family and people within the party and make a decision early in the New Year. Having served as a TD for two decades, Fine Gael would be hopeful that Kehoe would have the profile required for a successful European run. However, he would have to compete with fellow Wexford man and sitting MEP Mick Wallace for vital Wexford votes to secure one of the five seats in the Ireland South constituency, which covers Carlow, Clare, Cork, Kerry, Kilkenny, Laois, Limerick, Offaly, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford, and Wicklow. Should Fianna Fails Malcolm Byrne return for another run at Europe, it could conceivably result in three Wexford based candidates competing for the five seats in Ireland South. Kehoes interest in the European race could be further fuelled by the Boundary Commission Report published back in August, which will see North Wexford carved off into a new three-seat constituency with South Wicklow for the next general election, effectively drawing a big line through the Bree natives voter base. Having battled hard to retain his Dail seat in the last couple of elections, it seems Deputy Kehoe may look to broaden his horizons, but it seems he wont be rushed into making a definitive decision on where his political future lies. With tensions running high over a proposed IPAS (International Protection Accommodation Services) centre within his own Wexford constituency, Fine Gael TD Paul Kehoe has once again reiterated the need for a serious conversation around the numbers of international protection applicants being taken in. "I feel that we have taken our quota, the former Minister and government chief whip said. The people weve taken are being looked after quite well. "We need to have a serious conversation at government level around the levels of welfare and accommodation that are being provided. There are a number of economic migrants taking advantage of the system. We need to take that more seriously. This is Wexford Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Wexford newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details "Im a huge advocate of Europe and the EU, but our open borders are causing us a huge problem and were only going to have more and more migrants coming here. Deputy Kehoe has urged Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Tanaiste Micheal Martin and Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan to have a mature and balanced debate" in relation to the topic of immigration and the path Ireland will take going forward. "Ive seen comparisons in relation to the levels of welfare provided by Ireland in comparison to other countries and we are by far the most generous, he continued. If you look at what Belgium is giving and the numbers coming in comparison, by head of population, weve taken way more. I'm taking calls on this issue every single day, Deputy Kehoe concluded. This is something that needs serious consideration. At the end of the day, the government are the policy makers and we are elected to reflect the views of our constituents. In relation to ongoing tensions and protests in Rosslare around the proposal for a second IPAS centre in the village, on the site of the Great Southern Hotel, Deputy Kehoe believes that Wexford County Council has the matter in hand. The Save Our Nursing Home protest in Rosslare Harbour on Saturday. Pic: Jim Campbell The local authority recently sent a warning letter to the developer stating that they may be in breaking of planning law and has sought guidance from An Bord Pleanala around whether the proposed accommodation centre would be an exempted development. "Im happy enough to let Wexford County Council pursue the matter," he said. Theres a legal issue that has to be decided upon there and I trust that the council is taking the appropriate action. If there was an easy way to decide this, Im sure it would be done. This is very sensitive and it deals with new legislation that has to be tested. What I would say is that Rosslare has absolutely been very supportive of international protection applicants and Ukrainian refugees, but it does come to a point where we have to look at things in a different way. Eddie and Jo Roche of SVP Arklow at the ACE Awards Night in the Arklow Bay Hotel Winners of the charity raffle Emma Murphy Cox and Denis Nolan of the Arklow Little Vikings with Cleo Russell, Tammy Byrne and Devon Reardon at the ACE Awards Night in the Arklow Bay Hotel Cleo Russell and Tammy Byrne with the Elavon team at the ACE Awards Night in the Arklow Bay Hotel Ciara Kelly of Jack N Jill during the fasion show at the ACE Awards Night in the Arklow Bay Hotel. Photo: Michael Kelly Members of the Kenny family who were awarded the Peaceful Hero Award for Denis Kenny at the ACE Awards in the Arklow Bay Hotel. Photo: Michael Kelly Cllrr Pat Fitzgerald presents Honor Kelly of the Citizens Information with the Community Volunteer Award at the ACE Awards in the Arklow Bay Hotel. Photo: Michael Kelly The Arklow Cancer Support Group who were winners of the Community Volunteer of the Year at the ACE Awards Night in the Arklow Bay Hotel Deirdre Keogh with the fashion show judges Hayley Reynolds, Roisin Long and Aine Morrison at the ACE Awards in the Arklow Bay Hotel. Photo: Michael Kelly Martha Majnusz with Jenny and Lily Kaye at the ACE Awards in the Arklow Bay Hotel. Photo: Michael Kelly Arklows famous community spirit was on full show when members from over 30 voluntary groups, charities and organisations gathered at the Arklow Bay Hotel for the inaugural ACE awards. Sponsored by Elavon, the magical evening was the brainchild of the volunteer-led ACE community group, which seeks to build a network of volunteer and community groups in Arklow, and were inspired to acknowledge the contributions of the towns outstanding organisations and groups. With guests basking in the convivial atmosphere and the conversation flowing, the awards kicked off with the SSE Renewables Sustainable Charity Fashion Show, which featured a judging panel of three previous Roses of Tralee contestants, before a delicious dinner was served. After the Arklow Revival Gospel Choir had delivered an enchanting performance, awards were handed out across several categories, as voted for by the public via ballot boxes dotted around the town. Among those honoured on the night were Triona Burke of Vision Ireland, who won the Community Scheme Worker of the Year award, Community Group of the Year Arklow Cancer Support, Community Volunteer of the Year, Honor Kelly (Citizens Information Centre) and The Peaceful Hero Award was bestowed on the family of Denis Kenny. Anita Nolan of Little Warriors a safe and inclusive space for children, their parents, siblings and friends to play in an anxiety-free environment who won the SSE Renewables Spirit of the Community award, said: I found out that we were shortlisted for an award a couple of weeks ago, but I never thought for a million years that wed actually win one, Anita joked. I was in absolute shock when they called my name because there were so many amazing people and fantastic charities and organisations there. I look at these people and organisations in awe and just think that they really are the backbone of our community. The thing that really stood out for me at the awards was the absolute need for groups like ours in the town, which is probably why people voted for us theyre happy that their kids have somewhere to go now. Praising the passion of Arklows rock-solid core of volunteers, ACE member Tammy Byrne said that the awards simply could not have gone more smoothly. It was such a great night for the community, and the feedback we got was just phenomenal, Tammy said. We had 32 groups or organisations in attendance, and there was such a nice mix of people who are so passionate about their community. Cleo (Russell) and I cant thank everyone enough for making the awards possible, from our sponsors to the Arklow Bay staff, the participants in the fashion show and the performers on the night the Revival Choir and Christine Dunne Firmo and everyone in between. It was a big show of community spirit, and to thank everyone for coming, were going to have an event in the Bridgewater Shopping Centre on December 14 (at 5 p.m.) where they can showcase the resources they provide in the town. Pictured at the presentation to Their Lives Matter by Bray Lions Club are (from left): Helen Doyle, Helen Heagney, Michael Scanlan, Frank Corr, Dr. Trish Scanlan (ceo TLM), Jerry Teehan, Peter Doyle (president, Bray Lions Club) and Norman Heagney. Bray Lions Club has made a donation to the Their Lives Matter (TLM) childhood cancer support organisation, which operates in Tanzania through its founder and CEO Dr Trish Scanlan, a Bray oncologist and paediatrician. The presentation was made to Dr Scanlan by Peter Doyle, President of Bray Lions Club, who said that the club is joining with the Lions Club of Dar es Salaam in supporting TLM. Their Lives Matter, which translates into Tumaini La Maisha and shares the same acronym, is a Tanzanian NGO dedicated to supporting children with cancer. TLM was registered in 2011, inspired by the commitment of the parents and staff and the incredible bravery of children who attended the first childrens cancer ward in the Ocean Road Cancer Institute, in Dar es Salaam. TLM works in close partnership with the Muhimbili National Hospital, which now houses the largest childrens cancer ward in the country, supporting the work of the paediatric oncology unit based at Upendo Childrens cancer ward in Jengo la Watoto. Through this partnership all inpatient childrens cancer care is offered free of charge to all patients. For the estimated 4,500 children who develop childhood cancer every year in Tanzania, the ability to afford the travel, medical and associated costs is a distant dream. TLM funds, sources and provides a range of supports, including chemotherapy for every child in Tanzania. Survival rates have gone from less than 10pc to more than 50pc or children, and the number of children treated had increased from 120 in 2005 to 956 in 2022. Dr Trish Scanlan, from Bray, graduated in medicine from UCD in 1997 and went on to practice at Our Ladys Childrens Hospital, Crumlin. After relocating to Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania in 2007, to work on the childrens oncology ward at the Ocean Road Cancer Institute, she had to transition from circumstances where a 90pc childhood cancer survival rate is the norm, to where 90pc of children attending her hospital died. Dr Scanlan helped to create a national strategy for paediatric oncology and established the National Paediatric Oncology Centre at the Muhimbili National Hospital. Over the following years, survival rates have been transformed under her constant guidance. The amount donated to TLM has not been disclosed as it is part of an ongoing support. A total figure will be made available when the project is complete. Meanwhile, Bray Lions have announced that the Bray Lions Club Christmas Charity Auction for local families takes place in The Wild Goose, Bray on Thursday, November 30, at 9pm. All are welcome. Tracey O'Brien, Louise Fortune and Marisol Estevez at the Bray Institute of Further Education Graduation Awards. Christ Church COI Services of Worship for this Sunday The Sunday before Advent The Kingship of Christ: 11am: Holy Communion. Parish Life Centre [PLC] Bookings: The Parish Life Centre is available for day and evening bookings. Please contact Tracey in the Parish Office at 01-286 2968. Classics by Candlelight: Takes place in the Church at 7.30pm on Sunday December 3rd. Proceeds are in aid of Breakthrough Cancer and Parish Funds. Tickets from 10 available from the Parish Office, Fleurtique, Quinsboro Road, The Travel Centre, or after Church on Sundays. Parish Office: The Parish Office can be contacted at 01- 286 2968 or info@christchurchbray.ie between 9am to 1pm Monday to Friday. Bray Methodist Church Worship this Sunday: 10amSunday Worship with Creche and Sunday School. Bray Presbyterian Church Worship this Sunday: 11.30am Sunday Worship with Sunday School. Christian Assembly Church Worship this Sunday: 10.45am Morning Worship; 6.30pm Evening Service of Bible teaching, singing and fellowship. Wednesdays: 8pm Prayer Meeting & Bible study. Cornerstone Church at The Well Worship this Sunday: 11am. Bray Gospel Hall Bray Gospel Hall, 27 Florence Road - Sunday Morning 10.45am to 12 Noon: Breaking of Bread (Lords Supper)A Time of Worship, Praise and Remembrance. Holy Redeemer Parish Contact Holy Redeemer Parish: Call (01) 2868413. Website: www.holyredeemerbray.ie; Email: office@holyredeemerbray.ie. Parish Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 9.30am to 11am. If you need to contact us email: office@holyredeemer.ie. Mass Times: 10amMonday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Saturday No Mass on Tuesday. Sunday Masses: 6pm Vigil Mass on Saturday and on Sunday at 10.30am and 12Noon. To book a Mass, please call into the Sacristy before or after our Masses Mass Cards: Mass Cards may be purchased from the Parish Office during its opening hours. Baptism: Registration for Baptism can be made online via the parish website www.holyredeemerbray.ie. Please choose a Second or a Fourth Saturday of the month in 2023. Blessed Carlo Acutis: The relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis will be welcomed to this Church by Archbishop Dermot Farrell this Saturday at 3pm. The church will remain open until 9.30pm and re-open at 9.30am on Sunday. The relic will remain in the church until its departure at 1pm on Sunday. St. Annes Church, Shankill: The Vigil Mass on Saturdays is celebrated at 5pm in St. Annes Church. All are welcome. St. Peters Parish To Book a Mass: To book a Mass, please contact Sharon in the Parish Office on 01- 282 9467 or email: stpeterslittlebray1@gmail.com. Parish Office: Parish Office opening hours areMonday: 9.30am to 12.30pm; Tuesday: 9am to 12.30pm; Wednesday: Closed; Thursday: 9am to 12.30pm; Friday: 9am to 12.30pm. The parish office can be contacted by calling 01-282 4967 or by email: stpeterslittlebray1@gmail.com. St. Peters Church Mass Times: Sunday: 9.30am (Irish), 11.30am. Holy Days of Obligation: 11.30am. No Weekday Mass. First Friday of the Month Mass: 10am. Mass Update: Sunday Mass is broadcast on the parish web-site at 9.30am (Irish) and 11.30am (English)Google Chrome required. Car Park Hours: These are 9am to 12.30pm, Monday to Friday, for parish business and at the weekends during church ceremonies. The Cemetery is accessible via Laneway for Pedestrians. St. Peters Cemetery: There is a strict policy of No Dumping Allowed in any area of the cemetery. Visitors to the cemetery are requested to take home all forms of rubbish with them in order to keep the cemetery tidy. Your co-operation is appreciated. St. Annes Church, Shankill: A Vigil Mass is celebrated on Saturdays at 5pm in St. Annes Church. All are welcome. The St. Annes Parish Christmas Fair will take place this Sunday in St. Annes Resource Centre, Dublin Road, Shankill from 10am until 3pm. Raffle tickets for the Christmas Fair are now available to purchase in St. Annes Resource Centre and at all weekend Masses. Tickets cost 10 each. A new stall this year is called Collectors Corner. Antiques, Sentimental pieces, unwanted gifts. All are welcome. Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish Website: www.queenofpeace.ie. Mass: Weekday Masses are celebrated at 10.30am on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Weekend Masses are at 6.30pm on Saturdays and 10.30am and 12 Noon on Sundays. Mass Bookings: Anyone who wishes to book a Mass can do so by contacting the Parish Secretary via email at: secretary@queenofpeace.ie, or call 2745497. Mass for Deceased Garda Members, Family Members, etc: This Mass will be celebrated in this Church at 12noon on Saturday December 2nd 2023. All are welcome to attend. St. Fergals Parish Mass Times: Mass times are 9.30am Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. No morning Mass on Thursdays and Saturdays. Saturday: 7.30pm Vigil Mass; Sundays: 8am and 10.30am. Baptism: Baptisms take place on the first and third Saturday of each Month at 12Noon. Bookings can be made through the Parish Office Only. The Preparation meeting takes place on the Monday before the 1st Saturday of the month. Please call into the Parish Office three weeks in advance of the Baptism to complete the Baptism Form and to confirm the date. Confessions: Are heard on Saturdays after the 7pm Vigil Mass. Marriage: All couples must give notice to the priest or Parish Secretary at least three months prior to the date of marriage. Mass for Deceased Garda Members, Family Members, etc: This Mass will be celebrated in Our Lady Queen of Peace Church, Bray, at 12noon on Saturday December 2nd 2023. All are welcome to attend Syro Malabar Catholic Church Mass is celebrated every Sunday at 2.30pm in St. Fergals Church, Ballywaltrim. Bray Library Opening hours are 10am to 5pm Monday to Saturday with late opening on Tuesday and Thursday to 8.30pm. The library can be contacted at 01-2862600 or email: braylib@wicklowcoco.ie. Online services including e-books, audio-books, digital magazines and newspapers and e-learning are available via the library website. The library is again involved in Imbolc, the Community Seed Arc programme, where one can get seeds for a variety of plants and after they flower, donate seeds from them for the programme. As always, you can have seeds sent to your local Wicklow Library branch by emailing your branchand requesting up to 4 packets. Knit and Crochet for Purple House Cancer Support takes place at 11am every Monday in the library no need to book. Doodle Time for 9-12 year olds takes place every Thursday from 3pm to 4pm. Ballywaltrim Library Opening hours are 10am to 5pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and 10am to 8pm on Wednesday. The library can be contacted at 01-2723205 or by email at: ballywatrimlibrary@wicklowcoco.ie. Online services including e-books, audio-books, digital magazines and newspapers and e-learning are available via the library website. Borrowers can renew their books on-line at any time. Tummy-Time for Babies takes place every Monday and Friday from 10.30am to 12pm no booking required. Bray Cualann Historical Society Last Thursday night the monthly meeting of the Bray Cualann Historical Society, the local history society for Bray and North Wicklow, held in the Royal Hotel, Bray, began on a sombre note with members standing and observing a minutes silence in memory of two members who had died recently the Societys Hon. President Eva Sutton, and Sr. Cyril Connolly who was a contributor to Volume 6 of the Societys journal. Guest speaker for the meeting was Vincent Delaney who presented his lecture on Bray Town, The Sailing Club and the Droleen Dinghy. As the Bray Cualann Historical Society does not hold a meeting in December, the next meeting of the Society will take place in the Royal Hotel, Bray, at 8pm on Thursday January 18th 2024 when the AGM will take place and will conclude with a presentation by James Scannell called A Dangerous Place to Worka selection of accidents in and around Bray Railway Station. Members and supporters of the Bray Cualann Historical Society are asked to note that the following events take place in the week ahead tonight (Wednesday) Peadar Curran will present Letters from America at 6pm to the Old Dublin Society in the Conference Room of Dublin City Library & Archive, 144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. All are welcomeadmission is free. The AGM of the Society will follow this presentation all members are requested to attend the AGM; on Saturday afternoon Joe Mooney will present Dublin Port, World War One, and U-Boats attacks on Merchant Ships at 2.30pm in Charleville Mall Library, Charleville Mall, North Strand, Dublin 1.All are welcomeadmission is freebooking is advised but not essentialbook in branch, call 01-2228411, or email: charlevillemalllibrary@dublincity.ie; next Monday night James Scannell will present John Hinde and his Colour Postcards of Dublin at 8pm to the Clondalkin Historical Society in Aras Chronain Irish Cultural Centre, Watery Lane, Clondalkin, Co. Dublin. All are welcomeadmission is 5 for non-members; next Tuesday night Peter OConnor will present The Wicklow Gold Rush of 1795 at 8pm to the Wicklow Historical Society in the De la Salle Pastoral Centre, beside St. Patricks R.C. Church, Wicklow Town. All are welcome voluntary donation appreciated. The attention of members and supporters of the Society is drawn to the drawn to a new book on the history of that familiar South Dublin landmark the Ballycorus chimney which explains how it came to located on the side of Carrickgollogan Mountain and the role it performed by Rob Goodbody in his latest book The Lead Mines Ballycorus and Glendalough in the Nineteenth Century in which he explains how it came to located there and its connection with mining operations carried out in the Glendalough valley and the adjacent Glendasan by the Mining Company of Ireland from the 19th century until the First World War. In this book Rob explains the mining process in the Glendalough and Glendasan areas and the smelting process in Ballycorus, where the ore was transported by road until sidings were built in the Shankill station to receive the ore by rail. The chimney was used to disperse fumes from this Ballycorus smelting operation which was a very dangerous hazardous one for workers. Written in a very clear concise style and aimed at the general reader, this book by Rob Goodbody, is a very fascinating and engrossing account of mining in the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains and the production of finished products at Ballycorus from the mined ores. Superbly illustrated, it is an excellent account of the history of this unique industrial monument and is an essential acquisition for those interested in local history and mining and industrial history. Poetry in the Park Poetry in the Park takes place on the First Sunday of Every Month at 12pm on the bandstand in the Peoples Park, Lower Dargle Road, Bray. Listen to or read your favourite poems, hear original poetry performed by local poets or simply chat with other poetry fans in this beautiful outdoor setting on the banks of the River Dargle. Bray Lions Charity Auction The Bray Lions Charity Auction takes place from 8.30pm on Thursday November 30th in The Wild Goose for local causes. Bray residents didnt pull any punches when it came to a statue of the towns beloved boxer, Katie Taylor, which mysteriously appeared along the path up towards Bray Head in recent days, reigniting calls for a permanent tribute to the towns beloved athlete. The 14-foot gold statue is named 'Katie The Redeemer', after the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, as Taylor looks to get revenge for her first professional loss to Chantelle Cameron in front of a sold-out 3Arena on Saturday. Promoter Matchroom Sport is behind the erection of the statue, which was sponsored by Conor McGregors Forged Irish Stout. Matchroom Sport chairman Eddie Hearn, said: Katie Taylor is the greatest female fighter of all-time. What she has accomplished in the sport is unrivalled and Im sure there will be several statues of her in Ireland before long! But will she be the redeemer next Saturday and dethrone the undisputed champion Chantelle Cameron? And Doug Leddin, a spokesperson for Forged Irish Stout, said: Bray will inevitably get a more permanent Katie Taylor statue but we felt the need to celebrate her with our Katie The Redeemer tribute ahead of one of the biggest fights of her career. Like every Irish person were so proud of what Taylor has achieved and shell have the whole country in her corner when she steps into the ring next Saturday. This is Wicklow Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Wicklow newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details However, perhaps misunderstanding the intent, many Bray residents werent so kind in their appraisal, with one person taking to social media to describe it as a woeful attempt at the boxers likeness. "Did a twelve-year-old draw this out with a crayon, one asked, while another harked back to the golden age of sculpture, and commented: Look at the statues made thousands of years ago by the Greeks and Romans. Amazing artists of their time. And here we are all these years later and this is what were producing? Another believed the statue will only incur the wrath of the pugilist god Apollo, when they said: Now you are jinxing her, should she lose, a statue will remind the world of the shame. A more modest poster wrote: Well deserved but that statue doesn't look anything like her. However, the structure wont be in Bray for long, as the plan is to reveal it at other locations in Dublin City Centre in the run-up to fight night, such as the 3Arena and Temple Bar. Regardless of what Bray denizens think of the statue, the overwhelming amount of good will for the boxer, hailed in the town as an icon a role model and an inspiration, is palpable as the 37-year-old looks to avenge her first ever defeat as a professional boxer. And the statue, albeit temporary, has also rekindled passions for a permanent fixture to honour the Bray pugilist, with many asking again why there isnt a tribute in the town. When Katie returned from the US as the undisputed champion of the world, in June, 2019, there were plans mooted to honour the then 32-year-old champion with a statue, perhaps on the seafront, commanding a position looking in at her home town. Councillor Joe Behan said at the time that he would be asking Wicklow County Council if proposals would be considered to erect a statue in Katies honour at the next meeting, but added he wanted Katie consulted beforehand. Cllr Behan was a teacher at St Fergals National School when Taylor was a pupil there. A dedicated Facebook page, Replace Bray town hall statue with a statue of Katie Taylor (which was rather unfair to the wyvern winged dragon that was there to honour local philanthropist, Reginald Brabazon), didnt hold back and gained huge support. While Simon Harris confirmed that he had written to Wicklow County Council and asked them to commission a permanent and public tribute to Katie Taylor in Bray. Sinn Fein TD, John Brady, also backed calls for a permanent tribute while Katie was at the height of her career. Theres no point in looking back in 20 years and saying we should have done something, he said. Alas, here we are and nothing has been done. But the one person who was forgotten in all the clamour was Katie herself. And in the end it was she who, after questioning if statues were only meant to be erected for dead people, said at her homecoming: "I'm not sure how I feel about having a statue, but I'm just so grateful for all the support I've received from the whole country." Cllr Behan confirmed this when he said Katie was interviewed around the time on a possible tribute. "She was a pupil in our school and we all knew her as a child growing up. And she always maintained this great, natural humility. And she made it very clear at the time she didnt want it. Cllr Behan added that she is honoured by a Council bursary every year, which keeps her name in the public domain in a way that is more in keeping with her wishes. Cathaoirleach of Bray Municipal District, Melanie Corrigan, also said that while she would love to see a tribute to the success of Katie Taylor, and the role model for all young boxers she has become, it would have to be with the approval and agreement of Katie and her family. The Wicklow Branch of the Irish United Nations Veterans Association is hosting a fundraising quiz on Friday, November 24 at 8pm in the Bray Head Fishing & Social Club, on the Strand Road in Bray and all are welcome to attend. Post 21 (Wicklow Branch) offers ongoing member support to veterans who have served with the United Nations. They also continue to serve the wider County Wicklow community with charitable efforts, including festive hampers for those in need. Fundraising is key to their ongoing efforts. As such, Post 21 has teamed up with Cllr Stephen Stokes to organise this quiz. Praising the work of the group, Cllr Stokes said: The UN veterans have given tremendous service to Ireland and World peace. I am delighted to support their ongoing efforts in the community. This is Wicklow Newsletter Enter your email address below and click 'Sign Up' to receive the This is Wicklow newsletter direct to your inbox. Please check your inbox to verify your details Cllr Stokes added that people with absolutely no connection to the Irish United Nations Veterans Association would be warmly welcome to attend the fundraising quiz. Its tables of four, but if you come on your own, we will find you a team. The emphasis on the night will be enjoyment. Tables of four will cost 40. The organisers thanked businesses who have donated quiz prizes so far, and would welcome more donations. Anyone looking for more information about the Irish United Nations Veterans Association Post 21, Wicklow, can contact Viv Collins on jhvcollins@gmail.com Cattle Sale - November 15: A good variety of 300400kg quality bullocks and heifers on sale. Trade was brisk. Lots of farmers buying these type of cattle now. Sample prices: Bullocks: Lim 350Kg made 1,000; Her 420Kg made 980; Ch 320Kg made 950; Lim 320Kg made 905; Lim 340Kg made 905; Lim 330Kg made 905; Lim 330Kg made 905; Lim 330Kg made 900; Lim 320Kg made 870; Her 370Kg made 850; Lim 330kg, made 830. Heifers: BB 380Kg made 1,000; Ch 370Kg made 940; Lim 370Kg made 820; Ch 370Kg made 800; Ch 340kg made 780. Sheep Sale - November 18: A fast paced trade seen with sheep up by 5 per head. There was full clearance of all stock seen. 45-50kg lambs made from 139-152. 40-45kg lambs made from 110-139. 35-40kg lambs made from 94-110. Cast ewes making up to 130 per head. Sample prices: 2 x 58kg made 152; 2 x 59kg made 151; 5 x 48kg made 146; 1 x 50kg made 144; 9 x 46kg made 143; 1 x 40kg made 140; 6 x 46kg made 139; 7 x 42kg made 127; 7 x 42kg made 124; 10 x 45kg made 123; 2 x 44kg made 118; 1 x 44kg made 118; 3 x 40kg made 117; 3 x 42kg made 116; 14 x 39kg made 112; 10 x 40kg made 110. BLESSINGTON Sheep Sales November 14: Very Big sale of sheep with a very lively trade for all classes. Fat lambs better by 2 to 5 ahead on last week. Heavy Lambs 148 to 156 or 92 to 102 over /kg; Factory Lambs 130 to 148 or 86 to 98 over /kg; Store Lambs over 40kg 118 to 130 or 78 to 90 over /kg; Store Lambs 35-40kg 90 to 118 or 55 to 84 over /kg; Store Lambs over 30kg 64 to 90 or 34 to 64 over /kg; Heavy Ewes 120 to 146 per head; Lighter Ewes 88 to 118 per head. Cattle Sales November 16: A big sale of cattle. There was a very good trade for all classes - especially the heavy cattle, with a lot of customers ringside and online via Marteye. Beef Bulls 1,280 to 1,520 over /kg; Continental Store Bullocks 500 to 1,180 over /kg; HE/AA Store Bullocks 400 to 1,000 over /kg; Fr Store Bullocks 460 to 800 over /kg; Cont. Store Heifers 460 to 1,000 over /kg; HE/AA Store Heifers 380 to 800 over /kg; Beef Cows 480 to 1,000 over /kg; Feeding Cows 160 to 480 over /kg. CARNEW Sheep Report - November 16: A total of 1,986 sheep on offer, meeting an improved trade with heavy sheep up by 3/5 per head. Store lambs meet a solid trade with farmers and specialist feeders available ringside and online to buy lambs on offer. Some prices: 40L 47kg at 145; 25 M/L 43kg at 125; 18 E/L 46kg at 137; 25 E/L 49kg at 145; 22L 50kg at 158; 10 M/L 36kg at 99; 13L 41kg at 113. Cattle Sale - November 18: 822 head on offer and 60 calves. All stock met a very lively trade with everything up 50-70 while beef types up over 100 on recent weeks. Factory and feedlot agents are very active for the forward stores anything over 500kg with northern buyers and wholesalers very active online for beef. while many farmers are available to buy lighter longer term stores. Cows: 816kg BBX 2,000; 754kg Lm 1,750; 900kg FR 1,700; 638kg AA 1,170; 648kg Fr 960. Heifers: 792kg Chx 2,360; 702kg Chx 1,940; 564kg PTX 1,710; 554kg Lm 1,550; 440kg AA 1,100; 414kg lmx 1,120; 388kg lm 1,210. Bullocks: 804kg Lmx 2,340; 790kg Chx 2,260; 735kg Chx 2,150; 650kg lmx 1,970; 610kg lmx 1,740; 507kg chx 1,550; 402kg lmx 1,200. Calves met a super trade all round with a full clearance Fr bulls sold from 90-205 While HE and AA bulls sold from 155-265 HE and AA heifers sold from 120 -245 Continental calves sold from 250-400 Runners Fr bulls sold 300-450 HE and AA runners sold from 400-650 while continental runners sold from 550-810. People in Wicklow face up to likelihood climate change will force managed retreat Local people have their say on a plan to move inland due to rising sea levels and erosion caused by climate change. Bray author Carmen Cullen. Tom Galvin, Eoin Mac Raghnaill and Myles Buchanan Wicklow People Wed 22 Nov 2023 at 06:00 A managed retreat away from coastal areas in the coming decades could soon become national policy, with the effects of climate change on sea levels meaning many Irish cities, including those on the Wicklow coastline, from Bray south to Arklow, could be facing big changes as early as 2050. Taylor (20) facing gruelling treatment in Essen in GermanyGoFundMe has already raised over 26,000 to help the Cahill family A Wicklow family had their world turned upside down in mid-September when they learned that 20-year-old Taylor had an inoperable brainstem tumour. Taylor Cahill from Ashford is the oldest child of Brigid and Dave Cahill and the couple have one other child, Amelia (13). Brigid said Taylors diagnosis has devastated the entire family. Our world was rocked to its core on September 15 when we were told Taylor had a brainstem tumour and worse again that it was inoperable. His diagnosis has been an absolute emotional rollercoaster for the family. Initially we were given the devastating news that Taylor had a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) tumour which is a highly aggress tumour which is difficult to treat. However, more recently we have been told he has a Diffused Astrocytoma IDH-Mutant Glioma (Grade 2) with the potential of actually being a higher grade as per results from his mutation analysis. Time is definitely of the essence for Taylor when it comes to treatment but because Taylors tumour is in the pons area of the brain surgery is not an option for him unfortunately. Brigid said that the recommended treatment for a tumour that Taylor has is six weeks of radiation and 12 months of chemotherapy. The best possible treatment for Taylor is Proton Radiation therapy as it helps to reduces the risk of damage to surrounding healthy brain tissue. Unfortunately this treatment is not available here in Ireland so we are looking at travelling to Essen in Germany for treatment. This would involve myself and Taylor staying approximately six or seven weeks over in Germany while they look after him, leaving Taylors dad David here in Ireland to look after Taylors sister Amelia and our dog Bear. On Monday Taylor received approval from the HSE for a Travel Aboard Scheme (TAS) application which will cover the cost of treatment in Germany. However the scheme does not cover travel, accommodation or living expenses while in Germany which will be significant. I had reached out to the Gavin Glynn Foundation for assistance but unfortunately Taylor is just outside their criteria for financial assistance but they have kindly offered to help us with the logistics of things when we actually know when we are going. A GoFundMe page to help with these costs has since been set up and to date over 28,000 has been raised within days as people rally around the popular family. Brigid said that when news of Taylors diagnosis seeped into the community she was inundated with questions from people about helping and asking if she had set up a GoFundMe page. I think people felt helpless and they want to help us along this journey and sometimes thats by giving. However the suggestion of a fundraising page was met with some resistance from Taylor who struggled to come to terms with the fact he needed financial assistance to beat this devastating diagnosis. As you can imagine trying to get our 20-year-old to accept help was hard and he still struggles with the idea of people giving him money. When he first heard about some of the costs associated to going to Germany he dismissed the idea of going completely but that was never an option for myself and Dave. Germany was where he had to go so we were going to make that happen no matter what. Taylor who is a former student at Colaiste Chill Mhantain has since reluctantly gotten on board with the idea. Brigid said the continued encouragement of family and friends remind him that any contribution is to help him get well and lessen any financial burden he may have been worried about. Taylor who has just graduated from Bray Institute of Further Education (BIFE) having completed a one year pre university science course had hoped to begin a degree in Analytical Science on Monday, September 18, just three days after he was admitted to hospital and was diagnosed with the brain tumour which has been nicknamed Tony the Tumour! This has now been put on hold as he is too unwell to take up his place. However he hopes to take up this place as soon as he is fit and healthy again. On Tuesday the Cahill family got the go ahead from Essen that Taylor has been accepted for treatment there and they will travel to Germany this weekend. We will be in Germany on Sunday, said Brigid. Taylor will have medical and mapping tests and meetings next Monday and Tuesday to assess the tumour. If all goes well with these we are expecting that he will start his treatment on December 12. Brigid said that the entire family has been overwhelmed by the level of support they have received since Taylors diagnosis became public. The outpouring of love, generosity and kindness of people has been amazing. We truly are touched and will be forever grateful for everyones support. To donate to Taylors GoFundMe log onto www.gofundme.com/f/taylor-on-his-our-brain-tumour-journey 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? People-smuggling accused tried to stop mother gossiping over Essex migrant deaths, court told Caolan Gormley denies being in on plot that saw 39 lives lost Caolan Gormley denies charge. Photo: PA Emily Pennink Wed 22 Nov 2023 at 03:30 A haulage boss accused of being part of a people-smuggling ring linked to the deaths of 39 migrants in the UK tried to stop his mother gossiping after news of the tragedy broke, a court has heard. Russia cannot co-exist with the current regime in Kyiv, but Moscow can resist the might of Nato for as long as it needs to fully demilitarise Ukraine, a senior Russian diplomat has said. China said yesterday it would be a serious mistake if Argentina were to cut ties, after the weekend presidential election victory in the South American country of a right-wing libertarian who has said he will not deal with communists. Palestinians evacuate a casualty of an Israeli air strike on a house, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem. The Israel-Hamas deal agreed on Wednesday for the freeing of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners will be repeated later this month, a Palestinian official told Reuters. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that would mean a total release of 100 of the around 240 people Hamas seized during its October 7 killing spree in southern Israel. New Delhi: India is nearing a deal closure with Elon Musks Tesla Inc. to enable the American automaker to export its electric vehicles to the country starting next year and establish a manufacturing facility within two years, Bloomberg reported citing sources familiar with the developments. An official announcement may be made during the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit in January, said the report, quoting the people. Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu are being considered as potential locations for the factory, given their well-established ecosystems for electric vehicles and exports. According to the report, Tesla is expected to make an initial investment of approximately $2 billion in the plant, and the company aims to increase its procurement of automotive components from India to potentially reach $15 billion. Tesla also wants to explore local battery production in India to bring down costs, stated the report. After a year-long deadlock, Tesla and India, the world's third-largest automobile market, resumed discussions in May. While Elon Musk has criticised India's sky-high import taxes and electric vehicle (EV) policies, India cautioned Tesla against selling cars in the country that are manufactured in China. However, India is now mulling a reduction in import taxes for global EV manufacturers for a period of five years, provided these companies make a firm commitment to establishing local manufacturing units, according to reports. The report added that Tesla's India-manufactured vehicles may be priced as low as $20,000 in the local market. Ridesharing app Uber and the Transport Department, Government of West Bengal, on Wednesday, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to launch Uber Shuttle - a bus service for daily commute - in Kolkata. With a first-of-its-kind partnership, the new service will tap into Ubers global expertise with an aim to provide tech-optimized mobility choice using private bus fleets. The launch of Uber Shuttle will help in tackling road congestion while getting more people to commute in fewer vehicles which in turn helps reduce carbon emissions. By March 2024, Uber will run approximately 60 air-conditioned buses on predefined routes, connecting business districts with residential areas in Kolkata. As part of this MoU, Uber has proposed to invest USD 10 million by 2025 in the State and create approximately 50,000 livelihood opportunities in Kolkata in the next 5 years. The MoU was signed at the ongoing Bengal Global Business Summit by Saumitra Mohan, IAS, Secretary, Transport Department., Government of West Bengal, and Shiva Shailendran, Director - Operations, Uber India & South Asia. With the launch of Uber Shuttle, commuters will now be able to pre-book seats up to a week in advance, follow the live location and route of the bus, and know its expected time of arrival (ETA), just like they can do with an Uber cab. This will bring alive a convenient commute experience with no standing passengers, cashless payments, and round-the-clock safety support from Uber including having access to a 24X7 Safety Line. Buses will run on each route from 6 am to 10 pm daily. Commenting on the launch of Uber Shuttle and the MoU with Uber at the Bengal Global Business Summit, Saumitra Mohan, IAS, Secretary, Transport Department, Government of West Bengal, said, Government of West Bengal remains committed to improve public transport services and expand available transport options to make commuting hassle-free. Our partnership with Uber is another step in this direction. Sharing his views on the launch, Shiva Shailendran, Director - Operations, Uber India & South Asia, said, We are committed to building a business which serves the mobility needs of every Indian and its why buses are an important focus area for us at Uber. We are very excited to partner with the Government of West Bengal to launch Uber Shuttle in Kolkata. This partnership is special as the first partnership of its kind that will bring the magic of Uber rides to buses. In line with Ubers global sustainability goal, this will help put more people in one vehicle, and help ease traffic congestion and reduce carbon footprint. By giving commuters more transport options to choose from, and creating livelihood opportunities for drivers, we are confident that this initiative will set us on a path of collective win. Each Shuttle vehicle will have a seating capacity of 19 to 50 persons. The buses will be run by local fleet partners using Ubers technology. Image credit: Pixabay The tremor, which hit the hardest at III to IV MMI (Modified Mercalli Intensity) in Ternate city, caused the collapse of a telecommunication tower and killing of a worker, said Fehby Alting, head of the provincial disaster management and mitigation agency. The quake happened when a worker was working to demolish the Telkomsel-operated tower whose lifetime had expired, whereas the tower collapsed and killed the worker, Alting told Xinhua via phone. The official added that other buildings or houses in the city and other parts of the province were not damaged, while the risk assessments of the impact of the tremors have yet to be completed. The earthquake occurred at 09:48 a.m. Jakarta time (0248 GMT) with its epicenter situated at 68 km northwest of Halmahera Barat (West Halmahera) district and a depth of 109 km under the seabed, the country's meteorology and geophysics agency said. The quake was also felt in districts of West Halmahera and North Halmahera of North Maluku province, as well as Manado city, Bitung city, Minahasa district and Sitaro district of North Sulawesi province, the agency said. The official of the agency did not issue a warning for a tsunami as the tremor would not trigger giant waves. Indonesia, an archipelagic nation, has been frequently stricken by earthquakes for its position on a vulnerable quake-stricken zone called "the Pacific Ring of Fire." In image Mamata Banerjee with Sourav Ganguly and Mukesh Ambani/ courtesy: Her Facebook page Kolkata/IBNS: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Tuesday declared former cricketer and ex-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) Sourav Ganguly as the brand ambassador of her state. Addressing the Global Business Summit 2023 in Kolkata, Banerjee said: "Sourav Ganguly is a very popular figure and he can work for the young generation in a very good manner. I want to involve him as the Brand Ambassador of Bengal." She also urged Ganguly to accept the offer and told him: "Don't say no. Always say yes because we must be positive...we must be constructive." The Bengal Global Business Summit is an annual event hosted by the Mamata Banerjee government that sees participation from several companies across countries, including the UK, US, Australia, Korea, Japan, Germany, and France. The two-day summit commenced on Tuesday. Inaugurating the summit, Banerjee unveiled a series of new policies aimed at doubling the state's exports, upgrading logistical infrastructure, and fostering renewable energy manufacturing. She also introduced initiatives promoting biofuels and a new sub-sea cable landing station in Digha to bolster internet connectivity in the eastern region. The summit's inauguration this year saw a gathering of prominent business leaders, including Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, Sanjeev Goenka from the energy sector, and Rishad Premji of Wipro. Photo courtesy: UNI Jakarta/UNI: Seeking to bridge trade deficit with Indonesia arising primarily on account of heavy coal and palm oil imports, India is planning to further diversify its export basket with the key Southeast Asian nation by adding more agri products such as potato, onion, apples and grapes. Speaking to a visiting media delegation as part of India-ASEAN media exchange programme, a senior official at the Indian embassy here said that the trade deficit with Indonesia is not that large and hence manageable. "We have been importing quite a substantial volume of coal and palm oil from Indonesia which leads to a trade deficit. In order to bridge this we are trying to diversify into new sectors. "We are trying to diversify into agro products. We want to add apples, grapes, chillies, potato and onion among others to our export basket. So, we are trying to bridge the deficit," he said. The embassy official said that India and Indonesia are aiming at a total bilateral trade of US$50 billion by 2025. "In 2018, our Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) came here and we signed more than 30 MoUs. We also signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement that elevated our bilateral relations. In 2018 our trade (with Indonesia) was around US$ 20 billion. "During this time our PM set a bilateral trade target of US$ 50 billion by 2025," he said. He further said that there has been almost 50% growth in trade since then and it has reached nearly US$ 40 billion. "In 2023, if you see, there is a growth of 50% in bilateral trade and it has reached nearly US$ 40 billion. So, we are very close to achieving the target set by our Prime Minister. Among major items, we import coal and palm oil from Indonesia. "We export sugar, rice, heavy equipment, engineering goods, technologies etc to Indonesia. So, our trade basket is quite large with Indonesia," the official said. Meanwhile, the media delegation also met the President of the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), Tetsuya Watanabe. Watanabe said that as a policy think tank ERIA is keen to expand collaboration with the Indian government and policy-makers. "India is an economic powerhouse and it has increased its significance economically and politically," he said. Under India's G20 Presidency, ERIA was part of several working groups and participated in various ministerial meetings and summits. Image tweeted by Uttarakashi New Delhi/IBNS: The rescue operation to evacuate 41 trapped workers from the Uttarakhand tunnel collapse is expected to be completed by Wednesday night with only 12 metres of rock and debris left to be cleared off, media reports said. "I am happy to announce we have been able to move forward by another six meters. It is expected that in the next two hours when we prepare for the next phase, we will be able to (finish) remaining work," Bhaskar Khulbe, the Special Officer deputed to the Uttarakhand Tourism Department, told reporters. Khulbe said about 67 percent of the drilling had been completed. The rescuers were able to enter the collapsed part of the tunnel on Wednesday night. After being trapped for about 10 days now, the Centre came up with a five-option action plan that involved drilling from three sides to access the trapped workers. Five different agencies have been tasked with carrying out each operation. The labourers have been trapped in a 400-metre buffer zone of the unfinished main tunnel since November 12 when a portion of the 4.5-km tunnel on the Brahmakal-Yamunotri National Highway collapsed, trapping 41 workers. The tunnel - meant to join Silkyara and Dandalgaon in Uttarkashi - is a part of the Char Dham project. On Monday morning, a wider pipe was installed to deliver a wider variety of food and medicine to the trapped people. Earlier, only dry fruits could be sent in. The rescue ops involved an international tunneling expert team and a robotics team from defence research organization (DRDO). Over the last week, several plans to cut through the 40-meter rock wall fell through. The last rock fall occurred on Friday when attempts were made to use an American Auger drill flown in from Delhi. The drill machine that was being used before that had broken down and work had to be stopped till the new one reached. The Physical appearance of Guru Nanak cannot be truly canonized because no real image from his lifetime for any future facsimile exists, nor should it be canonized because he rejected any unique facial identity of God or a prophet. Moreover, there is always transcendence from specific (individual) to global (universal) for a human born to be godly. The historical real image of a prophet or a thinker has to fade into a universal image. It is here that the universal image needs to be free of a form, a time, and a place even though it has a form in a time and a place. The evolution of the individual in his philosophy is a process of losing physical identity and gaining intellectual and philosophical identity. Considering that the interest and practice of Guru Nanak were evolving an epistemological cut in the philosophical thinking and religious practice of his times, he avoided portraitures and physical images but ensured the inscription of his ideas in the written form by hand. To look the way others looked, yet think and practice differently from them, he lived among them wearing the dresses of his time but renounced the contemporary ideologies, practices, and rituals. His udasis (travels) were not renunciation of the world and society but his preaching tours through dialogue and discourse. These were neither pilgrimages nor journeys to indifference in the literal sense of the word but were a rise from the personal to the universal engaging with people and their wellbeing. That is why he challenged several socially ill practices and religious philosophies of the Power and its relation to humans. Sikhism is founded on a balance between the binaries of temporal and universal, on the one hand, and material and spiritual, on the other. Thus God is formless. Thapia na jaye kita na hoye, aape aap niranjan soye: It cannot be established nor it can be created for it is there by itself. This is how the Super Power is described and this is how, later in the history of knowledge, Matter is described. If that is so, it is unreasonable to canonize the portraitures of the philosopher Guru who teaches abstaining from idolatry. The distinctiveness of the Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib sanctified as the Shabad Guru, is its genesis directly by its prophets. We can access, understand, and identify ideological Guru Nanak distinct from others, but we cannot identify his phenotype. It is not possible to identify the contours of his face, the shape of his eyes, ears, nose, lips, etc. However close to the real a portraiture, construed from his writings and narratives of his life may be, it will remain imaginary. Then why run against the teachings of the one whom we intend to show reverence by portraying his image? Yet, long after he left the world, his followers prepared a kind of primers for preaching the ideas and philosophy of Guru Nanak in the simplest ways. These are known as Janam Sakhis, the handwritten (manuscripts) describing the events related to his birth, childhood, travels (Udasis), and the final settlement. Later, following the Pahari miniature painting tradition, the paintings were added to the Janam Sakhis as visual illustrations of the narratives. This is how the practice of portraying Guru Nanak was started. The narratives added mythological elements to history so as to achieve the goal of communicating with the masses of those times in their idiom. In the absence of any authentic portrayal, the portraitures of Guru Nanak depended heavily on the understanding and imagination of the painters. As a result, even in its first stage in the seventeenth century, the images varied. While in some portrayals, Guru Nanak is shown wearing a cap in different styles, in others wearing a turban. In some paintings his head has a circular golden halo, in others it is absent; in some, he has a rosary in the hand, tilak on the forehead, in others he has not. In different portraitures, he has different contours of the face. The variation is rather a principle than an exception during the initial period. The efforts to create an iconic image of Guru Nanak have been a slow but continuous process: gradually, Guru Nanak is shown in varied sitting or standing poses in the ambiance of beautiful and ethereal elements of nature. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the portraiture of Guru Nanak reveals a departure from the Kangra miniature style and Hindu symbolism of saintliness, wearing a long white beard and a turban on the head. These paintings do not narrate an event but portray a persona of Guru Nanak individually or accompanied by Bala and Mardana highlighting his divine image. Influenced by western techniques including medium, form, and format, according to Kavita Singh, modern artists use the Western style to project idealism in a realistic manner. Such a variation in the portraiture of the great philosopher and the Guru has created controversies more than once in the recent past, such as the use of an image of Guru Nanak in a school textbook in California and his visual portrayal in a film. To avoid such controversies on the body, dress and his physical postures of sitting or standing, it is possible to avoid portraying to identify or canonise Guru Nanak in physical appearance. Those who want to paint an imaginary image based on the readings of his writings may do that without naming their work as Guru Nanak. However great a painter someone may be, however, a devout follower someone may be, he cannot pay respect to Guru Nanak by acting against his teachings. (Photo and text courtesy: Khalsavox.com) Premature and low-weight babies being moved from Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City to the south of the enclave.Photo Caption: UNICEF/Eyad El Baba UN agencies on Tuesday issued an urgent call for action, emphasizing the severe health risks faced by pregnant women, babies and children due to worsening climate catastrophes. In Protecting maternal, newborn and child health from the impacts of climate change, the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF) jointly underscore the neglect, underreporting, and underestimation of climate events effects on maternal and child health. It also draws attention to the importance of integrating maternal or child health in national climate change response plans given the gap in addressing the needs of women, newborns, and children in the climate change discourse in many countries. Climate action now Climate change poses an existential threat to all of us, but pregnant women, babies and children face some of the gravest consequences of all, warned Bruce Aylward, Assistant Director General for Universal Health Coverage at WHO. Childrens futures need to be consciously protected, which means taking climate action now for the sake of their health and survival, while ensuring their unique needs are recognized in the climate response, he added. The call to action, issued ahead of the COP28 climate conference, outlines seven urgent measures, including sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, climate finance actions, and specific inclusion of the needs of pregnant women, babies, and children in policies. Dire impacts Amidst a year marked by devastating climate disasters, including wildfires, floods, heatwaves, and droughts, the impacts on pregnant women and children are dire. Higher temperatures globally also contributes to the spread of deadly diseases, particularly affecting pregnant women and children. Research indicates that harm can start in the womb, leading to various complications for both mothers and children, with consequences lasting a lifetime. Arrival of medical staff and equipment Speaking later in New York, UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq said around 40 trucks carrying medical equipment, alongside 180 doctors and nurses, entered Gaza on Monday for the establishment of a second Jordanian field hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis. The facility will have 150 beds. He also reported that the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, came under attack on Monday. Twelve people were reportedly killed, including patients and their companions, and many others were injured. This marked the fifth time the hospital has been hit since the start of hostilities last month. Hospitals and medical personnel are specifically protected under international humanitarian law and all parties to the conflict must ensure their protection. Hospitals must not be used to shield military objectives from attack, he said. The UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, further reported that nearly 93,000 displaced people are sheltering in 156 of its facilities across all five governorates in the Gaza Strip, including in the north. UN at the ready Meanwhile, international media have been reporting on the possibility of a deal between Israel and Hamas that would involve a hostage exchange and a cessation of fighting for four or five days. Asked about UN humanitarian response in the event of a possible ceasefire, Mr. Haq said it was a little bit premature to talk about the issue. But certainly, what we are doing is trying to make sure that we are ready, so if there is any pause in fighting, which is what we've been asking for, we would be able to deliver humanitarian aid more effectively, he said. WHO staff member killed The World Health Organization (WHO) mourned the death of a staff member who was killed in Gaza on Tuesday. Dima Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj, 29, worked as a patient administrator at the Limb Reconstruction Centre, a critical part of the WHO Trauma and Emergency Team, and had been with the UN agency since December 2019. Alhaj had evacuated from Gaza City to her parents house in the south, which was bombed on Tuesday. She was killed alongside her husband, six-month old son, and two of her brothers. Reportedly, over 50 family and community members sheltering in the same house also died. "She was a wonderful person with a radiant smile, cheerful, positive, respectful. She was a true team player. Her work was crucial, and she had been requested to take on even more responsibilities to support the Gaza sub-office and team, said Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territory. He expressed deepest condolences to her mother and father, a long-serving medical specialist in Gaza, as well as to her family and many friends. WHO noted that the humanitarian community and the UN have suffered losses since the start of the conflict. Two doctors from the medical charity MSF were also killed on Tuesday while UNRWA has lost 108 colleagues to date. The death of Dima and her family is another example of the senseless loss in this conflict, said WHO. We plead again with all those who hold in their hands the power to end this conflict to do so. Photo Courtesy: UN News/Ziad Taleb Gaza/IBNS: A humanitarian pause between Israel and Hamas may start at 04:30 GMT on Thursday, the i24 broadcaster reported. Earlier in the day, Palestinian movement Hamas confirmed that it had agreed with Israel on a four-day truce in the Gaza Strip with the cessation of all hostilities and the release of 50 Israeli hostages in return for 150 Palestinian prisoners. Hamas will hand over to Israel a preliminary list of 10 prisoners on Wednesday evening; if it is agreed upon, the Israeli side will hand over to the Palestinian movement a list of prisoners whom they will be willing to release in return. "This is the first good news from Gaza in a long time," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters. "Russia and most countries were calling for a truce and humanitarian pauses, because only on the basis of such pauses can the contours of future attempts at a sustainable settlement be built." President Vladimir Putin has, since the beginning of the war, called attention to the suffering of Palestinian citizens, termed the situation a failure of U.S. policy, and encouraged Israel to exercise patience, Reuters reported. Last month, Russia infuriated Israel by hosting a Hamas delegation in Moscow. On Tuesday, the BRICS nations demanded a humanitarian truce between Israel and the Gaza Strip, leading to a cessation of hostilities. We called for an immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities, BRICS said in a joint communique. Acts of violence aimed at Palestinian and Israeli civilians were condemned, including war crimes, indiscriminate attacks, and targeting of civilian infrastructure, as well as all acts of provocation, incitement, and destruction." the joint communique read. (With UNI/Sputnik inputs) Photo Courtesy: Unsplash An improvised explosive device (IED) planted on the roadside exploded in Pakistan's Hoshab area in Balochistan on Sunday which left at least three people dead, media reports said on Wednesday. Commissioner Mekran Division Saeed Ahmed Umrani confirmed to Pakistan Today that unidentified terrorists targeted a car using an improvised explosive device (IED) in Hoshab tehsil of district Kech, adding all three persons travelling in the car were killed on the spot. Levies and personnel of other law enforcement agencies went to the spot to investigate the matter. The deceased people were rushed to hospital for treatment. The force of the explosion was so intense that it caused substantial damage to the targeted vehicle, underscoring the severity of the attack, the newspaper reported. A border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan. (file). Photo Courtesy: UNOCHA/Shahrokh Pazhman Some civil society activists are demanding Pakistan stop the forceful deportation of Afghan refugees from the south Asian nation. These protesters said that law enforcement agencies in Pakistan are persecuting Afghan refugees, reported Tolo News. Some members of the civil society, lawyers and legal and political activists of Pakistan started a rally and demanded to stop the arrests and forced deportations of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, the news agency reported. The Joint Action Committee for refugees, which is one of the organizers of this protest, said in a newsletter that after Pakistan's decision to deport illegal refugees, Afghan refugees were harassed by the police and other law enforcement agencies. "They have asked Pakistan to stop the process of refugees being forcibly deported from here and to allow them to stay legally," Sediq Kakar, an advocate in Pakistan, told Tolo News. The Talian administrators of Afghanistan claimed they had taken all necessary steps to deal with the situation. Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for Afghanistan's Taliban administration, was quoted as saying by Tolo News: "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan considers it its duty to resettle the refugees who return to their homeland and cooperate if we have the facilities and we are sure that the returnee refugees are more than 400,000." Some returnees from Pakistan complained about the bad behaviour of soldiers of the neighbouring nation. "They destroyed our house, we had our own house. The Pakistani police forcibly dragged us and said that we will deport you and you have no right to stay in our country," Mazuddin, a returnee, told Tolo News. The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) and humanitarian partners are providing critical aid at border crossing points between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the face of a surge in forced returns of Afghan nationals. According to IOM, in the past two months alone, nearly 375,000 Afghans left Pakistan, primarily utilizing the Torkham and Spin Boldak border crossings, near Kabul and Kandahar, respectively. The number of daily border crossings has skyrocketed from 200 to a staggering 17,000, creating an unprecedented strain on resources and infrastructure. Desperate situation Their situation is desperate; most people told us they were forced to leave the country and leave belongings and savings behind, said Maria Moita, IOM Afghanistan Chief of Mission. People arriving in Afghanistan are extremely vulnerable and need immediate support at the border as well as for the long term in the areas of return, she added. The crisis has unfolded following Pakistans implementation of the Illegal Foreigners Repatriation Plan, which set a 1 November deadline for the voluntary return of all undocumented Afghans in Pakistan to their home country. Photo Courtesy: Unsplash Hong Kong Police have arrested four persons over suspicion of entering the city illegally on Monday, media reports said. Four other suspected illegal immigrants who accompanied the Pakistani passport holders on the double-decker bus to Shau Kei Wan were being hunted, the force was quoted as saying by South China Morning Post. Shortly before 8.30am, police received multiple calls from passers-by who spotted on Cape DAguilar Road in Shek O a group of eight non-Chinese men thought to have entered the city illegally, the newspaper reported. Police searched and carried a roadblock in the area after the Pakistani nationals escaped the spot. About half an hour later, a bus driver made a report to police about eight suspected illegal immigrants jumping into the vehicle on Cape D Aguilar Road in Shek O. They got off at Shau Kei Wan bus terminal on Aldrich Street, the newspaper reported. The four people were apprehended on Po Man Street. On Saturday, four non-Chinese men were arrested on Peaked Hill, southwest of Lantau Island, after a fisherman alerted the authorities when he spotted the group in distress, the newspaper reported. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court pulled up the Delhi government for not coming up with funds for the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridors to Alwar and Panipat. Noting that the Delhi government has not fulfilled its assurance to allocate funds, the SC said if the dues were not paid within a week, the funds earmarked for advertisements would be transferred to the project. Embarking on what was meant to be a joyous Thanksgiving retreat, one family's idyllic plans took a harrowing turn, culminating in an unexpected visit to the hospital. Where did this happen? Jade and Cassidee Smith, a husband and wife, shared with KUTV the unsettling experience that unfolded when their family chose Six Lakes Lodge in Duchesne County, Utah, as the backdrop for last weekend's holiday celebration. Little did they anticipate that their tranquil getaway would transform into a series of bewildering events that would ultimately lead to a medical crisis. Cassidee recounted to the news outlet that she and her sister experienced a sudden weakness, a sensation akin to impending faintness. The gravity of the situation escalated when a family member discovered their 11-month-old child appearing lethargic and pale within the lodge. Swiftly recognizing the severity of the situation, they promptly transported the infant to the hospital. I just kept telling [Jade] something is not right, Cassidee shared. How many members of the family were affected? KUTV Another distressing incident unfolded with a 12-year-old child in the family. Cassidee became aware of this when she and her husband were napping. Her sister abruptly woke her, frantically shouting that their niece was discovered unresponsive, before collapsing onto the floor in a faint. I went to get up. My tunnel vision, I was blacked out, Cassidee recalled after struggling to wake up. I was just slapping [my husband] like you have to get up, I cant move; I couldnt stand. The family noticed "three" members were outside, and several others weren't feeling well. Responding promptly, they dialed 911 and opened all the cabin doors. However, additional family members started feeling worse. We went from one unresponsive to four in about five minutes, Jade said, noting that the family then tried getting 13 children out of the lodge. According to KUTV's report, the Altamont Fire Department shared in a press release that deputies arrived at the cabin around 2:30 a.m. local time. Using a detector, firefighters discovered elevated levels of carbon monoxide within the cabin. "We found the hot zone in the basement in a utility room," Altamont Fire Chief Josh Phillips told KUTV. "The CO readings were strongest in that utility room." After discovering high carbon monoxide levels, all 19 family members at the lodge were transported to the Uintah Basin Medical Center for treatment. Six family members were taken by ambulance while the rest drove themselves. The company owning Six Lakes Lodge stated that they have cleared the scene, but the investigation into the cause is ongoing. They assured me that their other properties would remain unaffected and safe. The Smiths shared that every family member's blood tests at the hospital revealed carbon monoxide levels exceeding 8.5. The 12-year-old niece's levels were exceptionally high at 33. According to the National Institute of Health, carbon monoxide poisoning is defined by carboxyhemoglobin levels over 10%, with severe poisoning associated with levels over 2025%. The family members underwent treatment in hyperbaric chambers for two and a half hours at the hospital, ultimately recovering. Jade expressed relief, noting, "It was scary, but it was really lucky. If one thing would have happened differently, then this would be a story about 19 corpses being found in a cabin." (Never miss a story follow us on Telegram to stay up-to-date on what Indiatimes offers, from exciting news to captivating human interest stories.) What comes to your mind when asked about who could have been the worlds first company to hit a $1 billion market cap - Google, Microsoft or Apple? Well, none of them even existed when the worlds first company hit that mark. Which Company Was The Worlds First To Hit $1 Billion? us-steel In 1901, U.S. Steel became the worlds first company to reach the $1 billion mark, when it hit $1.4 billion after it went public. Also Read: How A Lost iPhone Led To Warren Buffett Investing Billions In Apple When Was US Steel Founded? By the late 1800s, the steel industry in the United States had surpassed the capacity of Britains steel production. In 1901, through the merger of several steel companies, financier J. P. Morgan formed the United States Steel Corporation, then the largest company in the world. The merger included Andrew Carnegies Carnegie Steel Company, Elbert H. Garys Federal Steel Company, and William Henry Moores National Steel Company, as well as National Tube Works, American Steel & Wire, American Sheet Steel, American Steel Hoop, American Tin Plate, American Bridge, and the Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines. Some of the nations most influential leaders of finance served on U.S. Steels Finance Committee, including J. P. Morgan and George F. Baker. getty Also Read: This Chinese Company Was World's First To Hit $1 Trillion Market Cap Who Is US Steels CEO? David B. Burritt was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of United States Steel Corporation in May 2017. At that time, Burritt was also named to the companys Board of Directors. He was elected president and chief operating officer in February 2017 with executive responsibility for all aspects of the companys day-to-day business in the United States and Central Europe. Burritt joined U. S. Steel in September 2013 to serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer with responsibility for all aspects of the companys strategic and financial matters. Prior to joining U. S. Steel, Burritt served as Chief Financial Officer at Caterpillar Inc. As per US Steel, Burritt was born in St. Louis, Missouri and earned a bachelors degree in accounting in 1977 from Bradley University in Peoria. Burritt received a masters degree in business administration from the University of Illinois in Champaign in 1990. For the latest and interesting financial news, keep reading Indiatimes Worth. Click here. Ruslan Nimchynskiy . Russia's full-scale armed invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused a protracted humanitarian crisis and affected the global food supply. Ukraine, known as the world's breadbasket, delivered 46% of the world's sunflower oil exports, 12% of the world's corn exports, and wheat exports, providing most of the imported grain to many countries in Africa and the Middle East. Due to the significant grain export in previous years, some countries have become dependent on Ukrainian grain. Countries such as Lebanon, Djibouti, Pakistan, Somalia, Mauritania, and Eritrea meet more than half of their wheat needs thanks to Ukraine. Generally, grain from Ukraine is irreplaceable in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Such dependence on Ukrainian grain means that any disruption in the supply chain could have serious consequences for these countries. The Kremlin's unprovoked and unjustified war against Ukraine has caused serious damage to the Ukrainian economy and exacerbated global food insecurity, especially in developing countries. Russia blocked Ukrainian trade routes across the Black Sea, mined Ukrainian agricultural fields, burned crops, destroyed Ukraine's food supplies, created labor shortages, and attacked merchant ships and ports. Despite the terrorist war of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, daily missile attacks, mining of Ukrainian ports, and shelling of farms, Ukraine harvested 55 million tons of grain this year and exported 85 percent of it. We managed to launch the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which has proven to be a vital lifeline for the world. This enabled Ukraine to resume shipping millions of tons of desperately needed grain exports through the international waters of the Black Sea. The deal unlocked millions of tons of grain and other foods that would otherwise be stuck in Ukraine. The Black Sea Grain Initiative helped people in need across the globe by directly delivering food to lower-income countries and bringing down food prices. Owing to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, more than half of the global supply by the United Nations World Food Programme has been covered by Ukrainian grain. In the frame of this Initiative, Ukraine exported over 33 million tons of agricultural products to 45 countries, and 60% of the volumes went to the countries of Africa and Asia. But nonetheless, on 17 July 2023, Russia withdrew from the Black Sea Grain Initiative and started attacking Ukrainian ports storing grain intended for export. As a result of massive attacks since Russia's withdrawal from the Initiative, Ukraine suffered a reduction in the export potential of its ports by 40%, and over 300,000 tons of grain were destroyed. The export of grain cargoes to the countries of Asia, Africa, and Europe was reduced by almost 3 million tons per month. The Kremlin continues to block Ukrainian ports and threaten civilian ships carrying food, while Russian missile strikes destroy Ukrainian grain warehouses and transport hubs. But even in these difficult conditions, Ukraine is ready to remain a guarantor of global food security. Ukraine has harvested 70mln tons of crops (domestic demand is about 25%) out of this year's estimated 79,1 million tons of crops. We are ready to continue food export to the global market. Ukraine continues to implement the Initiative using alternative routes. On 8 August, 2023 temporary routes for civilian vessels to/from the Black Sea ports of Ukraine came into effect. 62 vessels have already used this new alternative sea corridor transporting~1.5 million tons of crops. The most promising in terms of grain export is the Danube corridor. The Ukrainian grain has been exported through Croatian ports. On 3 October, Lithuania agreed on a corridor for Ukrainian grain transit to the Baltic ports. On 10 October President Zelenskyy announced the establishment of a new grain corridor through Moldova and Romania. On 17 October, the Port of Riga received the first test container train with Ukrainian agricultural products. We consistently continue to increase the throughput of all corridors combined. The Ukrainian Government approved new rules for exporting agricultural products to make it impossible to abuse and violate the law during the export as well as to protect the rights of agricultural entrepreneurs who comply with export legislation. Besides, Ukraine communicates actively with its partners to set up Grain hubs to store Ukrainian grain in seaports warehouses regionally and to ensure its swift shipment to the countries of the Middle East and Africa. The implementation of such an ambitious infrastructure project, with the involvement of interested partners, regional powers and international financial structures, will contribute to the strengthening of global food security and will allow a flexible response to the needs of regional markets. We continue to work to strengthen global food security. Proving its genuine devotion to guaranteeing food security, Ukraine has also launched an important humanitarian program, Grain from Ukraine, initiated by President Zelenskyy. Within its framework, Ukraine provided grain free of charge to those in need, especially in countries of Africa. Approximately 34 countries joined the Initiative. The program raised 200 million USD in donations and sent 170,000 tons of wheat to Ethiopia (90,000 tons), Somalia (25,000 tons), Yemen (30,000 tons), and Kenya (25,000 tons). Ukraine intends to send more ships with humanitarian grain to African countries: 25,000 tons to Nigeria, 32,000 tons to Sudan, and 12,500 tons to Somalia. We call on countries around the globe to join this Initiative. Food security is one of the elements of the Ukrainian Peace formula initiated by President Zelenskyy. This humanitarian initiative Grain from Ukraine is a powerful response to the threat created by Russia. The grain export blockade from Ukraine is an attempt by Russia to cause a famine in the whole world seeking that its conditions are met. A joint response of Ukraine and our partners will enable us to defuse the food crisis and save millions of people from hunger, and social chaos. The better and safer tomorrow is in our hands and we are definitely capable to do our outmost to prove the strength of the Free World against the totalitarism. The final endorsement of the revised Recovery and Resilience Facility (RFR) Greece 2.0 is expected to take place at the Ecofin meeting on December 8. The European Commission has positively EU Commission gives the green light to the revised Greece 2.0 - Some yet-to-be identified gunmen, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, reportedly attacked the Adamawa State Police Headquarters located at the heart of Jimeta community in Yola North local government area. According to the states Police Public Relations Officer, SP Suleiman Yahaya Nguroje, confirmed the attack to newsmen, said that things were under control. Nguroje added that the attack was repelled, but the identities of those behind it was unknown. Meanwhile, a source, who spoke with Daily Trust said that the attackers were military personnel on a revenge mission, following the alleged killing of a military officer by the police. READ MORE: Gunmen Kidnap Adamawa Speakers Chief Of Staff, Usman Sahabi INFORMATION NIGERIA learnt that the development is coming barely few days after the stand-off between officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and personnel of the Nigerian Air Force. Justice Hamza Muazu of the Federal Capital Territory High Court Abuja, has granted the former Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele, bail in the sum of N300 million and two sureties in like sum. Emefiele is mandated to deposit all his travel documents with the registrar of the court and must remain within the FCT. He is expected to remain in Kuje Correctional Centre pending when he meets the bail conditions. INFORMATION NIGERIA learnt that Emefiele was absent on Wednesday morning for the ruling on his bail application. READ MORE: Financial System Rotten Under Emefiele Tinubu Tells Nigerians In Diaspora According to his lawyer, Mr Mathew Burkaa, however, disclosed that it was normal, as he is already at the Kuje Correctional Centre. Recall that the Federal Government, last Friday, arraigned Emefiele on a six-count charge bordering on alleged procurement. The original charge, which was 20 counts to the tune of N6.5 billion, was reduced to six, to the tune of N1.6 billion. It was gathered that the former CBN boss is the only defendant in the new charge. Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has promised to rid the nations capital of syndicates who specialise in offering fake Certificates of Occupancy (C of Os), to members of the public. According to him, while he was Governor of Rivers State, three fake C of Os were issued on his plot after paying N57 million. Wike, who disclosed this on Tuesday at a meeting with estate developers in Abuja, also said he had been able to save over N110 billion since he assumed office in August this year. He expressed displeasure at the rate at which fake Certificates of Occupancy (C of O) were given, adding that henceforth, N5 million would be paid to acquire a C of O. According to him, gone are the days unsuspecting members of the public were allocated one plot of land with different fake C of Os. The minister added that he would seek a presidential approval to add the National Identification Number, NIN, to the requirements for obtaining a C of O. While stating he was given a fake C of O by some officials of the FCT Administration, he faulted the payment of N8.9 billion as monthly salary to Federal Capital Development Authority workers. The developers, on their part, pleaded with the minister to reduce the N5 million payment for C of O. READ ALSO: I Met A Battered Police Force, Even Criminals Know We Lack Resources, Personnel IGP Egbetokun After intensive appeal by the developers, the minister said the payment could be made within four months after which the C of O could be handed over to the applicant. He said: I can tell you authoritatively that I have saved not less than N110 billion for FCTA since my assumption of office three months ago. Allocation of lands to three or more persons will no longer be allowed. C of O enables you to do business. When we take the right decision some people will be happy, some will not. We are ready for such fight. When I was governor of Rivers State, we had three C of Os from FCT. Three. It turned out that all were fake. The C of O was coming from FCTA as a government, not as an individual. The plots allocated or said to be allocated. We paid money. When I now sent the Liaison Officer, the people from FCTA took him to the land and later, we discovered that it was fake land. Look at the money we had paid. The people disappeared. We could not find them again. Over N57 million that we paid. Why? Because that was how it was being done in the FCT. I have said that it will not work again. I will seek Mr Presidents approval to link any C of O to NIN number, so that we know when this house falls, we will know the owner. So that when a crime is committed in a property, we will know the owner. This is what happens in developed countries. The rich men will kick against it but anything that will help our people must be done. Support this move. There must be sanity in our system. You will attest to the fact that there are changes. How will you feel that at the end of the day you have a C of O but it is fake or that your land is allocated to another person? Kayode Egbetokun, Inspector-General of Police (IGP), has explained that he met a battered Police Force upon assumption of office. The IGP made the disclosure on Tuesday before the House of Representatives during a plenary to brief the lower legislative chamber on the efforts of the Police to secure the country. According to Egbetokun, the police lack the facilities, equipment and other resources needed to run a functional force. Unfortunately, we met on the ground a police force that had been battered. A police force that has suffered serious neglect over the past few years. The police also find itself operating in a very difficult environment partly as a direct consequence of this neglect, he said. Egbetokun added that the manpower of the police is grossly inadequate, adding that even the criminals know that. The IGP said the United Nations recommended 1:400 policing ratio is currently unachievable in Nigeria, noting that the current ratio stands at 1:1,000. While calling for redoubling of manpower in the police force, he said, We have 1,137 police divisional headquarters across 774 LGAs in Nigeria but getting operational vehicles for the division is difficult. Each of these divisions requires at least four functional vehicles but we have divisions that dont have any functional operational vehicles as of today. The welfare of personnel is nothing to write home about. Funding is critical to achieving the mandate of the Nigerian police. Unfortunately, the citizens are not interested in our excuses for underperformance. What the citizens want is performance. They want us to serve them. We are willing to serve them but we need your cooperation, funding, more manpower, and logistics to train our men adequately. We need to improve the welfare of our officers, we want a well-motivated workforce in the police. Egbetokun said despite all the inadequacies, in the police, the force has been doing so wonderfully well. READ ALSO: LP Senator Snaps, Raises Voice At Akpabio For Selecting Minority Leaders He said police officers have been doing their best to protect lives and properties across the country. We have been responding to the best of our ability but unfortunately, no agency can perform beyond the limit of resources available to it, he said. The IGP noted that he plans to leave a police force that officers and Nigerians will be proud of. He said in the last five months, several arrests have been made, including recoveries of illicit weapons, adding that some suspects are undergoing prosecution. Egbetokun said the police cannot secure Nigeria alone and need the support of every Nigerian to succeed. But within the environment where we function, the police have done so well and we are still doing so much. We believe in inter-agency cooperation and we are leveraging on the availability and the cooperation that is available from other agencies. We appeal for cooperation and collaboration and that Nigerians should please support the police. We are implementing community policing strategies but we are reviewing this. Recently, I announced the establishment of a special intervention squad which is going to be a standby unit of at least 1,000 men in each of the states. These men would be socially trained, specially equipped, and ready for deployment at the shortest notice in any area of the country where there are crises. This way we intend to join the military in fighting terrorism in the north-east and fight armed banditry in the north-west and north-central. Fight kidnapping and armed robbery across the country and ensure that we reduce violence in our country to the nearest minimum, he added. The police chief further urged the parliament for increased budgetary provisions to enable the force meet the expectations of Nigerians. Following the decision of the Appeal Court that sacked Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano State, there was confusion on Tuesday when the Courts Certified True Copy (CTC) of the judgement emerged and stated otherwise. While the widely reported verdict of the court last Friday indicated that the appellate court upheld the decision of the petition tribunal sacking Yusuf, the state Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Haruna Isa-Dederi, argued that CTC of the verdict showed that Yusufs victory at the poll was affirmed by the Appeal Court. Isa-Dederi who disclosed this while addressing a press conference last night, said, as indicated in the written judgment, the Court of Appeal set aside the judgment of the Kano Election Petition Tribunal for lacking in merit. He said that, in the evidence contained on page 67 of the copy of the Appeal Court judgment released on Tuesday and signed by Registrar, Jameel Ibrahim Umar, appellate court upheld the victory of Abba Kabiru Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party as duly elected Governor of Kano. Recall that the three member panel of the Appeal Court , on Friday, November 17, dismissed the appeal filed by the Governor on the basis of his Party membership status. The appellate court subsequently affirmed Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the governorship poll in the state. Dederi noted that the CTC of the judgment clearly indicated that the tribunals ruling that sacked the Governor was set aside. The Justice Commissioner insisted that contrary to what the justices read to the public in the courtroom on November 17, the written evidence has vindicated Yusuf as legitimate Governor of the State. However, according to the CTC obtained by Punch, Justice Moore Adumein, in his lead judgment, wrote, I will conclude by stating that the live issues in this appeal are hereby resolved in favour of the first respondent and against the appellant. READ ALSO: Its Unacceptable For Few Judges To Upturn Decisions Of Millions Of Voters Obasanjo On Appeal Court Judgements Having been earlier sacked by the state governorship election petition tribunal, the Governor who approached the Court of Appeal seeking to upturn the tribunals judgment is the appellant before the appellate court. The All Progressives Congress, the Independent National Electoral Commission and the NNPP are the first, second and third respondents respectively. According to the CTC, Justice Adumein continued, In the circumstances, I resolve all the issues in favour of the appellant and against the first respondent. Therefore, I find no merit in this appeal which is liable to be and is hereby dismissed. The judgment of the tribunal in Petition No.: EPT/KN/GOV/01/2023 between: AL PROGRESSIVES CONGRESS (APC) v. INDEPENDENT NATIONAL ELECTORAL COMMISSION & 2 ORS. delivered on the 20th day of September, 2023 is hereby set aside. The sum of N1,000,000.00 (one million naira only) is hereby awarded as costs in favour of the appellant and against the 1st respondent. In resolving all issues in favour of the appellant (Yusuf), it means the Court of Appeal granted the governors appeal to quash his sacking by the tribunal. But in concluding that he found no merit in the appeal while dismissing it also means that he upheld the decision of the tribunal sacking the governor. The mix up in the judgment became more obvious with the judges final declaration that the judgment of the tribunal delivered on September 25 sacking the governor is set aside while awarding N1m in favour of the governor and against the first respondent (APC). The two other justices of the appeal court , Justice Bitrus Sanga and Justice Lateef Ganiyu, agreed with the lead judgment. While many NNPP stalwarts in the state said they considered the development as favourable to their course, a lawyer who asked not to be named said the confusion might just be a typographical error, insisting that the reasoning of the court in the preceding parts of the judgment aligned with the well reported decision that Governor Yusuf has been sacked based on his party membership issue. Meanwhile, a chieftain of the APC, who confirmed the authenticity of the CTC, told Daily Trust that they would be getting the corrected version. He said the court has admitted to the clerical errors, adding its typographical error that has already been corrected. We will be getting the corrected version tomorrow (Wednesday). "Tea bonds people from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan," said Lee Yi-te, chairman of the Taiwan Chinese Tea Art Promotion Association, at the 2023 Maritime Silk Road Tea Culture Forum on Nov 15. Lee has been dedicated to the promotion of cross-Strait tea culture for a long time, often leading delegations to Fujian for tea cultural exchanges. During the forum, he traced the historical connection between Fujian and Taiwan's tea industries. He shared that wild tea trees were discovered in Taiwan over 300 years ago, and that Fujian tea was introduced to the area about 100 years later, thus marking the beginning of the tea industry in Taiwan. "Sharing the same roots, Fujian and Taiwan tea have showcased their distinctive characteristics over the course of a long history," said Lee. The tea tree varieties that originally crossed the sea from Fujian to Taiwan in the early days continue to be cherished and supported by tea enthusiasts. In recent years, Taiwan has made practical advancements in tea technology. For instance, some tea-making techniques that were previously passed down through sensory experience have now been replaced by electronic noses invented by researchers at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. This technology accurately monitors the changes in a tea's aroma, helping to stabilize the consistency of the tea's quality. Lee said that the tea industries in Fujian and Taiwan each have their own strengths, and the two regions can collaborate in certain areas to promote the integrated development of the tea industries on both sides of the strait. Yang Zishuo contributed to this story. Discrepancies have come to light on a recent public disclosure made by Funso Doherty, a Lagos-based chartered accountant and politician, on allocations in the 2023 budget of the Lagos State Government (LASG). Doherty, the 2023 governorship candidate of the Action Democratic Congress (ADC) in Lagos, on Saturday, wrote an open letter to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on some contract awards reported by the states Public Procurement Agency (PPA). One of the awards analysed by the accountant from April to September, which he said requires scrutiny and review, was the sum of N7.5 million awarded for the replacement of the liquid fragrance in the Office of Mr Governor, Lagos House, Ikeja. For the replacement of liquid fragrance in Sanwo-Olus office, the records published was a June 16, 2023 payment by Sanwo-Olus Chief of Staff (CoS), Tayo Ayinde, to Adebiyi Lateef Adebowale, a 33-year-old Lagos resident. According to the Lagos PPA, Ayinde paid Adebowales ARC44 Global Enterprises a sum of N7,475,000. The CoS, according to the PPA also paid the business the sum of N2,300,000 for production of telephone directory pamphlet of Divisional Police Officers (DPOs) and emergency response agencies in Lagos State. The total payment which amounts to N9,775,000 were made on June 16 (pamphlets) and June 23 (frangrances) to the same business. Following a visit by Foundation of Investigation Journalism (FIJ) to the registered address of ARC44 Global Enterprises on Monday, to see and find out how Adebowale secured the contract to deliver fragrances and pamphlets, the business was nowhere to be found. Having visited 10, Ayoola Lawal Street, Bariga-Shomolu, the alleged address, an aged woman who operated a kiosk in front of the building, noted she did not know anyone named Adebowale or business called ARC44 Global Enterprises. READ ALSO: FCTA Officials Disappeared After Issuing Me Three Fake C Of Os As Rivers Governor After Paying N57M Wike Upon request of the full description of the man (Adebiyi Lateef Adebowale), business name and the contracts the state government paid him for, the woman said in pidgin: Lati? Na mechanic he be o! We know am here as Adebiyi Lati. Na very quiet boy. He no de print or sell anything. Na mechanic. Printing press no de here. Moreso, contacts were dropped for Adebiyi to call as FIJ was unable to meet him at the the time. However when Lati called, FIJ in the guise of wanting to order flyers and pamphlets, asked if he could produce 1,000 wedding flyers, and if he had supplied pamphlets to police DPOs as claimed on the PPA website, he said: I will produce it for you; no problem. Responding to if he produced pamphlets for the police, he said, Pamphlets for DPOs? No o! Asked of his fragrance contract, he replied, Why are you asking these types of questions? While maintaining he did not produce anything of such nature, he refused to comment on whether he was a mechanic or not, but he said he owned the business. All the contracts were issued by the procurement agency and were delivered. Go and meet them if you have any questions, he told FIJ. When contacted and briefed with the development, Gboyega Akosile, Chief Press Secretary to Sanwo-Olu said, Nothing is perfect. Lagos State tries its best, and among the 36 states, we try our best to meet the procurement requirements. Show me another state that meets the procurement law. No contractor would speak with you. Maybe you got the wrong person. Take the procurement agency to court and see. The business is four months old, but there are ways procurement people do their thing and they would tell you there is a clause that allows them give contracts to any business. You can open a business today and get a contract. Those fragrances cost about $1,000 per one, and they got about eight of them. The governors office is not just his house he sleeps in Lagos. His residence in Abuja, Marina, Alausa, G.R.A. and other offices are all governors office. If they bought and put in all those offices, then I dont think it is anything. Hakeem Oshodi, Presiding Judge of the Ikeja High Court, Lagos has convicted two men over the death of seven officers of the Department of State Services (DSS). On Tuesday, Clement Ododomu was sentenced to death by hanging while Tiwei Monday bagged 16 years in prison. The convicts, having committed the offences on September 14, 2015, in Ishawo Creek, Ikorodu, Lagos, were arraigned on a 10-count charge bordering on conspiracy to commit murder, murder and illegal possession of firearms, contrary to section 223 and 298 (3) of the criminal law of Lagos state, 2015. The State Government had submitted that DSS received a distress call from an editor of Sun newspaper (name withheld) on September 14, 2015, about the kidnap of his wife at their residence. It was said that the state command of the DSS dispatched a nine-man team to carry out surveillance to ascertain the location of the kidnappers who were negotiating for a ransom. In the evening of that day, Martins Ajayi, one of the officers in the team, sent a distress text message to the command headquarters saying that the men had been ambushed by vandals and their weapons seized. The defendants, however, pleaded not guilty to the crime while submitting that they were in Lagos to attend the burial of their grandmother. But in the judgment, Oshodi held that the defence failed to provide essential witnesses to corroborate the claim. The judge also noted that the defendants did not show remorse for their crimes. READ ALSO: How We Lost Election Because I Rejected Offer To Bribe INEC Obasanjo The court has considered the allocutus of the defence counsel, but the position of the law is binding to us all. As noted, the first defendant was convicted on counts one, five, seven, nine and ten, while the second defendant was convicted on counts one and ten, the judge said. Oshodi held that the prosecution was not able to prove that the second defendant was guilty of murder, adding that, evidence before the court showed that it was one Agbala and the first defendant who killed the operatives. He held that the prosecution was able to prove that the two defendants participated in the ambush of the operatives. The Presiding Judge discharged and acquitted the convicts on counts two, three, four, six and eight because the prosecution was unable to prove the allegations against them. The court has observed the demeanour of the defendants and came to the conclusion that they felt no remorse with regard to the allegations they were facing. They informed the court that they do not understand English language, whereas, in the recording, they both were conversing in English. The first and second defendants are hereby sentenced to imprisonment for 14 years for count 10 and the first and second defendants are hereby sentenced to imprisonment for two years for count 9. The first defendant is hereby sentenced to imprisonment for 20 years. The terms of imprisonment for both defendants will run concurrently. For count five and seven, which the court has found the first defendant guilty, the sentence of the court upon you is that you be hanged by the neck until you be dead and may God have mercy on your soul, Oshodi said. Olufemi Ajadi Oguntoyinbo, a chieftain of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), on Tuesday cautioned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu not to interfere with the functions of the judiciary. Recall that last Friday, the Court of Appeal in Abuja nullified the victory of Kano States Governor, Abba Yusuf because the Governor is not a member of the NNPP. Oguntoyinbo, who was the 2023 gubernatorial candidate of NNPP in Ogun State, added that Tinubu should not intimidate the judiciary. After paying a solidarity visit to Yusuf, Ajadi in a statement to Daily Post said : President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should not interfere with the functions of the judiciary but instead allow the judiciary to function effectively as expected in democratic governance. READ ALSO: Its Unacceptable For Few Judges To Upturn Decisions Of Millions Of Voters Obasanjo On Appeal Court Judgements The president should not cow the judiciary; he should realise that Nigeria is not Lagos, where he turned the state into an APC state with no functioning opposition parties. APC as a party and the President are too desperate to control all states in Nigeria, hence their resort to pushing the judiciary to achieve their aim of foisting on the country a one-party system. Last week, former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar warned the nation of the plan of the ruling APC and President Bola Tinubu to turn the country into a one-party state. I agree with Alhaji Atiku and want all other statesmen to rise up and caution President Tinubu not to turn the country to Lagos State, where he pockets everything. Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Kingsley Moghalu has warned that Nigerias judicial and electoral systems are collapsing. Moghalu stated that the development has threatening implications for Nigerians aspirations for democracy. INFORMATION NIGERIA learnt that the former deputy governor of the apex bank made this known in a post via his X handle on Wednesday. He said: Nigerias judicial and electoral systems are collapsing. This has ominous implications for our aspirations for democracy. Often, those who benefit from these systemic failures are intoxicated by their advantage. But, history tells us that longer term, the prognosis isnt pretty. READ MORE: Kano: Confusion As Appellate Courts Certified Judgment Allegedly Affirms Gov. Yusufs Election This is coming after the Certified True Copy of the Appeal Court ruling that sacked Kano state governor in circulation contradicted the appellate courts ruling. Recall that the court of appeal upheld the Kano Governorship Election Petition Tribunal ruling that sacked Abba Kabir Yusuf as Kano Governor. Meanwhile, the widely publicized ruling from the court last Friday suggested that the appellate court maintained the petition tribunals decision to remove Governor Abba Yusuf, the states attorney general and commissioner for justice, Haruna Isa-Dederi, contended that the judgments CTC demonstrated that the appeal court upheld Yusufs election victory. Students of the Gateway Polytechnic, Saapade, Ogun State on Tuesday, protested attacks on their off-campus hostels by armed men suspected to be robbers and cultists. It was gathered that the students stormed the campus yesterday, displaying placards with various inscriptions. According to the students, who pleaded anonymity for security reasons, while addressing Daily Post, said: the armed men usually invade students hostels at night to dispossess them of their phones, money and other belongings. READ MORE: Pastor Nabbed For Kidnapping, Fake Prophecies In Ogun They raped some girls and even beat them on Sunday. We can no longer sleep with eyes closed. These criminals will come to take our belongings and even force themselves on girls. It is getting too much. This must not continue, they chanted. INFORMATION NIGERIA learnt that the students are returning to their families until the situation is addressed. When contacted, the Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer, Omolola Odutola, confirmed to Daily Post that the Area Commander is on ground there. Asked to speak further about the agitations of the students, the PPRO said she would get the details and revert. Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Christopher Musa, has labeled the factional leader of the proscribed Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB), Simon Ekpa, as a menace to Nigeria. Musa made the disclosure on Tuesday when he and other Service Chiefs appeared before the House of Representatives to brief the lower legislative chamber on the security situation in the country. Recall that Ekpa, a self-proclaimed follower of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB, has consistently called for a sit-at-home in the South-East geopolitical zone. The sit-at-home order is often forcefully enforced by Ekpas disciples, despite IPOBs disapproval of the directive. The CDS noted that Ekpas actions have led to the loss of many lives while his utterances have caused significant harm to the country. The Defence Chief said the nations mission in Finland where Ekpa is based should step in by engaging the government of the European country. In the South-East, Simon Ekpa has become a menace to this country. The country must act on it diplomatically. Simon is having a freeway because they (Finland) are encouraging him to do what he is doing. His utterances and actions are affecting what is happening in Nigeria. We should never allow that our foreign service should step in, Musa said. According to him, the government should invite the Finnish ambassador to explain why they are protecting him. He is doing us more harm because, by his utterances, a lot of people have been killed, Musa said. Musa added that security is not only the responsibility of security forces noting that everyone has a role to play in ensuring a secure nation. READ ALSO: I Only Beat My Wife When She Misbehaves Man Tells Kaduna Court We can never be everywhere. So, we need educational sensitisation programmes for all Nigerians to understand that security is everybodys responsibility. What you see talk about it You dont just keep quiet and say that it is for the police or the army. Everybody has a role, he added. While stressing that the key to addressing insecurity is good governance, he highlighted that military operations achieve success in States where there are elements of effective governance by the Governors. We have seen governors that are willing and doing things to make the people happy and that is why we are having the cases of success we are having, he said. The Defence Chief said Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) remain the most potent threat to Military personnel. He said the IEDs are clandestinely planted by insurgents and bandits to attack military personnel. IEDs have remained the most potent threat that we have. They put these IEDs on the ground and because there are no roads, a vehicle climbs it and everyone in that vehicle is either killed or dismembered, he said. Musa also raised concerns about the nations borders, saying people come into the country at will. Nigeria is one country where our borders are porous. We have about a thousand borders. People can come in and out without checking, and that is where we have the movement of light weapons and small arms, he added. In celebration of their third wedding anniversary, well-known Nigerian actor Williams Uchemba has gone all out to surprise his wife Brunella Williams. The humanitarian and actor married Brunella, in 2020, a Nigerian doctor residing in the US. Williams Uchemba disclosed that they were originally supposed to go to Cancun on vacation to celebrate the anniversary but he had work commitments. Then he lied to her, telling her that work would prevent him from returning home for the anniversary. READ MORE: Keep Talking, While I Keep Cashing Out- Ilebaye Responds To Ceecs Statement Over BBNaija Win However, he surprised her pleasantly by showing up on the anniversary with loads of gifts for her. The actor also gave his wife a new iPhone 15 as a gift as he could recall a time she complained about her former phone giving her issues. Watch video here Janet Monge in 2018 at the Penn Museum, showing her class a set of upper teeth from a 5,300-year-old skeleton found resting in a crate in the museum's basement. Read more Former curator and University of Pennsylvania anthropology professor Janet Monge no longer works at the Penn Museum, a museum spokesperson has confirmed to The Inquirer. Monge was accused of mishandling the remains of MOVE bombing victims in 2021 and Penn has since faced demands for her termination. The quiet separation comes after years of speculation about Monges employment status, and is the latest development in a multi-year saga that raised questions of institutional racism, accountability, and the role of human remains in anthropology. The museum refused to comment on the circumstances and timing of Monges departure. She was still listed as the associate curator-in-charge and keeper of collections on the museums website in August but as of late October the museum confirmed that she was no longer employed. Monge did not respond to The Inquirers requests for comment. The human remains at the center of Monges downfall date back to a horrific day in Philadelphia history. In 1985, the citys police bombed a home in West Philadelphia where members of the Black liberation group MOVE lived, killing 11 people, including five children. Though survivors believed, for decades, that they had put their children to rest, they later learned that some remains were in the possession of Monge and her advisor, Alan Mann, held in storage at the Penn Museum. The citys medical examiner had given the forensic anthropologists the remains to identify the victims, but after claiming that they could not make any definitive identifications, Mann and Monge never returned the remains to MOVE relatives. The city officially identified the remains as 14-year-old Katricia Tree Dotson Africa, but Monge and Mann disagreed with that assessment. Advertisement Without the Africa familys knowledge or consent, Monge and Mann kept these remains, part of a femur and a pelvic bone, and transported them between Penn and Princeton University for years. Monge used the remains as teaching aids for in-person classes, various videos, and in a Princeton online course called Real Bones: Adventures in Forensic Anthropology in 2019. In April 2021, The Inquirer and Billy Penn broke the news that Monge and Mann had the remains of a MOVE bombing victim in the Penn Museum and used them in classes. The family demanded repatriation and reparations, as well as the termination of Monge as museum curator and university professor. The news led to multiple investigations from Penn, Princeton, and the city of Philadelphia into the conduct of the anthropologists, the medical examiner, and the city. Penns report accused Monge and Mann of extremely poor judgment and gross insensitivity. Despite calls for Monges immediate removal, she remained a Penn employee. There have also been questions about whether they had the remains of more than one victim: MOVE relatives and activists claim that Monge also possessed remains of 12-year-old Delisha Africa. In August 2023, they held a press conference at the Penn Museum, accusing Monge of lying to investigators about how many remains she possessed and demanding the return of Delisha Africa to her family. Penn told The Inquirer that they planned to investigate the claims and maintained that they returned all remains to the family in July 2021. In May 2022, Monge sued Penn, The Inquirer, and various media outlets alleging defamation based on false accusations of racism. In her amended complaint from July 2023, she claimed that following the news coverage, she was demoted to museum keeper, received a pay cut, and was no longer allowed to teach. This demotion [in August 2021] was affected by a salary cut of $65,000 per year for the following two years of her employment, upon which Penn would deem Dr. Monge as retired, the lawsuit says. The timing of this agreement lines up with her departure in fall of this year, though the museum declined to confirm. We are unable to discuss personnel matters, said the museum spokesperson. The timing of Monges quiet exit also coincided with Penns announcement of a new human remains policy. The museum announced that it will no longer display exposed human remains, except in cases where they are wrapped or covered, such as mummies. It also included promises to expand its staff for the specific purpose of identifying and repatriating human remains in the collection as well as additional staff specializing in biological anthropology. The museum has the human remains of more than 10,000 people amassed throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, including white supremacist Samuel Mortons Cranial Collection, which contains an estimated 1,300 skulls stolen from around the world used to justify racist science. Some were displayed in a classroom for years until they were relocated in 2020. Penn apologized for its unethical possession of the collection in 2021 and plans to repatriate skulls of Black Philadelphians, enslaved Cubans, and others. The museum has not replaced Monges position. The spokesperson said they are close to hiring for a new position of faculty-curator in bioanthropology/ bioarchaeology. That person, they said, will have expertise in repatriation requests and the analysis of human remains. Critics are skeptical about these efforts, especially given what they say is a pattern of a lack of transparency. They make a big deal out of the press release for the human remains policy at around that exact same time [that Monge left] and then they dont even acknowledge that this happened, said Lyra Monteiro, a professor of history, American studies, and African American studies at Rutgers University. Monteiro is also one of the organizers who has joined the MOVE family in demanding accountability from Penn. Again, this refusal to be accountable, refusal to take responsibility because they enabled her for all these years. An earlier version of this article mentioned Monge will be replaced by a new faculty-curator in bioanthropology/ bioarchaeology. These two roles are separate. Members of the Central Bucks school board hear public comment on a severance package for the superintendent during a meeting last week. Democrats recently elected to the board are now facing recount challenges. Read more The Democrats who swept the Central Bucks school board races earlier this month won by a collective 4,300 votes with the narrowest race a margin of several hundred. But Republicans are now challenging the results claiming there was fraud or error that warrants a recount in three of the five races. The 15 petitions, filed with the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas Monday, mirror a tactic by Republicans who last year flooded Pennsylvania courts with challenges after the loss of GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. This is a waste of time, said Adam Bonin, a Democratic elections lawyer based in Philadelphia. He noted the win margins in Central Bucks: Of the three races in question, the tightest contest was Heather Reynolds win over school board president Dana Hunter, by 295 votes. (Reynolds won 53% of the vote to Hunters 47%.) Advertisement The petitions, which seek a hand recount, dont specify what fraud or errors the voters believe occurred. Two petition signers responded to requests for comment Tuesday. One of them, Orest Mandzy, said in an email, Why do you assume I think there was fraud or error in the election? Mandzy didnt respond to a follow-up question about why he had signed a statement attesting his petition was based upon information that I consider to be reliable and that makes me believe that fraud or error ... was committed in the computation, canvassing, and tabulation of the votes cast in his precinct. Catherine Mandzy said in an email that Hillary Clinton is one of my idols and I thought I would follow her lead and seek a recount like she did in 2016. (Among the other petitioners is Shannon Harris, who has challenged library books and sued the district over masking, which she called a Satanic ritual.) The petition effort follows a bitterly contested election in the Bucks County district, which drew hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign spending. Republicans who were ousted had passed controversial policies, including prohibiting sexualized content in library books and barring staff advocacy, including the display of Pride flags in classrooms. I think its just another desperate, pathetic attempt to retain their grasp on power, said Karen Smith, a Democrat reelected to the board. Following up on the egregious settlement last week with Dr. Lucabaugh, Smith said referring to a $700,000 payout Republicans awarded the departing superintendent now theres this. Smith said Harris emailed her the petitions Monday night, and she was formally served Tuesday. The last time I ran for school board, I won by 4, Smith said. Her opponent then didnt challenge the results. This, Im up by 400. As long as they file petitions in every precinct, voters dont need to present evidence of fraud in order for a judge to order a recount, Bonin said. All thats required is a $50 filing fee an amount Bonin said dates to the 1930s. It is not high enough to in any way compensate for the county for the additional labor which will go into this, or serve as a deterrent to frivolous actions, which this is, Bonin said. It wasnt clear Tuesday when a judge might act on the petitions. James OMalley, a Bucks County spokesperson, said the county expected a judge would schedule a conference with the parties involved in the case, and decide whether to order a recount. The University of Pennsylvania Health System reported a $58 million operating profit for the quarter that ended Sept. 30. The systems HUP pavilion is shown here in the background. Read more The University of Pennsylvania Health System on Wednesday reported a $58 million operating profit for the three months that ended Sept. 30, up from $50 million in the same period last year. The nonprofit system, which owns six acute-care hospitals, had $2.6 billion in revenue, a 7.2% increase. Inpatient admissions were up 2% and outpatient visits climbed 4%. Were solid, if not where we ultimately want to be, said the health systems chief financial officer Keith Kasper. Were ahead of budget, but obviously a little bit short of where weve been historically. Penns operating margin in the first quarter was 2.3%. That was slightly better than last years 2.1%, but far below the 6% average operating profit margin Penn had during the three years before the pandemic, financial records show. Advertisement Kasper said that patient volumes are good, though the number of people who come to the emergency department but dont get admitted to the hospital is down, particularly at Lancaster General Hospital, he said. Penn State Health opened a new hospital in Lancaster County in October 2022. Thats likely a factor, he said, but its also because COVID-19 is not as active as it was last year. Its difficult to precisely target, whats Penn State, whats the market, he said. Growth in cancer services Cancer services have been strong, with Lancaster doing especially well. The new proton-beam therapy center there is exceeding expectations, Kasper said. Were servicing that community, but were having a pretty large draw. The range of patients coming to see us in Lancaster is up to 80 miles, he said. As is the case throughout the health-care industry, Penn is still contending with high costs for overtime and temporary staff. Its grudgingly moving down, not nearly as fast as we want it to, Kasper said. Turnover rates are back down to pre-pandemic levels, particularly for registered nurses who care directly for patients. The system has a strong stream of applicants, but it still takes three to six months from when they hire a nurse to when the nurse takes care of patients independently, Kasper said. In addition to reducing the use of high-cost temporary staff, health-care systems still have to adjust to the pay raises that were awarded during the pandemic to attract and retain staff. Once you embed compensation increases, they dont go anywhere. Were just having to work our way through that, Kasper said. A few Philadelphia-area health systems have gotten rate increases from insurers this year to help with that, though its not clear how significant they are. We werent successful in that, Kasper said. Moodys Investors Service and Standard & Poors Ratings Service last month issued reports on the health systems financial condition. Both agencies affirmed their current high ratings and said the financial outlook was stable. American Medical Response, a medical transportation and mobile health-care provider, says it will lay off 152 employees in the Philadelphia area next year in response to the end of a contract with Main Line Health, according to a spokesperson for the company. We very much want to keep these first responders working onboard local ambulances, a spokesperson for American Medical Response said in a statement. AMR served Main Line Health for six years and has more than 200 full-time and part-time first responders in the Philadelphia area, according to the spokesperson. First responders will be laid off in three waves, which will take place Jan. 18, Feb. 19, and April 18, according to documents shared with the states department of labor and industry. Affected employees include EMTs, EMS students, paramedics, and nurses, among others. Advertisement AMR, which was founded in 1992, is part of Global Medical Response, a company with more than 38,000 employees that provides medical services and transportation, according to the companys website. The companys work includes wildland firefighting and helicopter ambulance services. Despite the layoffs, AMR will continue to serve Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, the companys spokesperson confirmed. Ambulnz, a mobile medical-service and transportation provider, and a subsidiary of DocGo, has an agreement to deliver emergency transportation services to Main Line Health hospitals in the Philadelphia region for three years, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. The agreement was announced last month, and the company estimates that it will provide transportation to more than 12,000 Main Line Health patients annually with an initial fleet of 10 ambulances and eight wheelchair vans. Ambulnz, which launched in California in 2016, has provided services in more than 26 states and has plans to continue expanding, according to the companys website. The company began providing services to Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in 2019. AMR will offer employees relocation allowances to transfer to another position within the company and will host a job fair to connect employees with other local EMS agencies, according to a company spokesperson. The end of AMRs contract with Main Line Health comes as insiders have recently said more money is needed to fund EMS agencies. As of August, three EMS agencies had closed in the prior three months in Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, Heather Sharar, executive director of the Ambulance Association of Pennsylvania, told The Inquirer that EMS is dying. How long can you exist if no one is paying you the cost for your service? Sharar said. Traffic on I-95 approaching Alleghney Ave. at around 8:45 a.m. Northbound I-95 in Northeast Philadelphia was closed for several hours Wednesday morning as police investigated a shooting. Read more I-95 has reopened in Northeast Philadelphia after Pennsylvania State Police closed the northbound lanes of the busy highway for hours Wednesday morning, just as travelers hit the road ahead of Thanksgiving. Officers began investigating a shooting at the Academy Road exit that injured three people around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, the Pennsylvania State Police said. Two victims, age 25 and 29, are from Trenton. Another, also age 25, is from Morrisville. One victim suffered a graze wound, while another was in stable condition Wednesday morning, police said. The third victim was in critical condition. Police said they found a Chevrolet with several bullet holes on the passenger side of the vehicle. There are no current suspects, and police said the investigation was ongoing. Northbound I-95 was closed near the Betsy Ross Bridge between Exit 26 and Exit 32 from 3:30 a.m. to 9:45 a.m as police investigated the scene. Philadelphia School District Chief Safety Officer Kevin Bethel speaks with reporters after a shooting at 60th and Oxford streets in November 2022. He has been named the next commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department. Read more For a moment, on a mild June evening long ago, a narrow street in South Philadelphia filled with the sound of innocence, the voices of children playing. Then came gunshots and screams. A 13-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man had gotten into a fight, and shot at each other on Sigel Street near 22nd. A stray bullet found an even younger victim, 4-year-old Nashay Little. The bullet tore through an artery in the girls thigh. She was fortunate to survive. In the aftermath of that 2006 shooting, Kevin Bethel, then captain of the neighborhoods 17th District, grew emotional. What threshold do we have to hit, he told reporters, before people start to realize how serious this is? Advertisement Seventeen years later, that imaginary threshold has long since been obliterated. The city is plagued by a gun violence epidemic that has claimed 335 lives so far this year, and resulted in another 1,187 people being wounded. Too often, those victims are young people; in 2022, nearly 200 children were shot. And now it will be Bethels responsibility to turn the tide, to prevent more kids from being traumatized by the long, unpredictable shadow of gun violence. On Wednesday, during a news conference at City Hall, Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker introduced Bethel as Philadelphias next police commissioner. Parker said she believes Bethel will lead our department into a new day, and a new era of public safety, and community engagement. It is a homecoming of sorts for Bethel, who worked for 29 years in the citys Police Department before retiring in 2016, and has spent much of the last four years serving as chief of school safety for the School District of Philadelphia. READ MORE: Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker has tapped Kevin Bethel for police commissioner, sources say He will face a mile-long list of expectations, from providing stability for a police force that has been led by four different commissioners since 2019, to the more complicated task of driving down crime numbers without employing tactics like unnecessary stops of civilians that could inflame tenuous community relationships. Im a proud Philly cop. Im proud to be a cop, Bethel, 60, said Wednesday. But were not your enemy. Were here to serve. We have our issues, and we can address them. Of all the candidates said to have been considered by Parker for the commissioners job, Bethel a West Philly native, father of three daughters, and husband to a former police officer, Rhonda Bethel traveled the longest path to the position. Glimpses of Bethels career, and interviews with people who have worked with him, offer a sense of how he might lead the Police Department at such a critical moment. Theres a lack of belief in institutions, not only in this city, but nationally, said Anthony Erace, the interim executive director of the Citizens Police Oversight Committee. The police commissioner is the embodiment of the personality of the Police Department. READ MORE: Kevin Bethel reshaped Phillys school safety. Heres a look at his time in the district. Strong and direct Bethel became a Philadelphia police officer during one of the most tumultuous periods in the departments history. It was 1986, just a year after officers in a police helicopter had dropped a satchel of explosives onto the roof of MOVEs Osage Avenue headquarters during a standoff, igniting an inferno that killed 11 people including five children and destroyed dozens of homes in the surrounding West Philadelphia neighborhood. Following the bombing, then-Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor resigned, and an investigatory commission deemed the citys actions unconscionable. The saga became a permanent scar in the citys psyche, a visceral reminder of the power that police wield, and how poor leadership could lead to chaos. Bethel was assigned to the 6th District, which includes Chinatown, and parts of Center City and Northern Liberties. On New Years Eve in 1988, Bethel and several other 6th District cops said they witnessed a 19-year-old man, Charles Sample, fatally shoot a 21-year-old man outside a club at 13th and Locust Streets. Bethel chased Sample, according to news reports at the time, and fired once when Sample turned toward him, wounding Sample in the back. He survived, and was charged with murder. Years later, Bethel shared an anecdote with a reporter about his time as a patrol cop, one that fit with a recurring theme of helping young people. He recalled stopping a corner boy, a youth who was selling drugs but instead of arresting the kid, Bethel lectured him. One day, Bethel said, the two reconnected, and the young man had started his own business. Bethel steadily accumulated promotions and assignments Narcotics Strike Force, Internal Affairs, Narcotics Intelligence Investigative Unit and was made captain of the 17th District, in South Philadelphia, in 2005. It was there that Dorothy Perrine, a block captain and lifelong resident of Point Breeze, met Bethel. Perrine, 83, said she was in frequent contact with Bethel when he was captain of the 17th, and found him to be genuine, and a good listener. Bethel was later recognized for his work with the districts youth with a George Fencl Award, a community policing prize that had been created by former Daily News columnist Chuck Stone, in memory of Fencl, a widely admired civil affairs chief inspector. During a 2020 podcast interview, Bethel told Jerry Ratcliffe, a Temple University criminal justice professor, that interacting directly with South Philadelphia residents in their living rooms, on their steps was the most rewarding experience of his career. He was also blunt about the toll of being a top figure in the department: I want [violence] to stop. So you give to get, he explained. And what you give is your family life, and your health, and quality of life. All that stuff, wrapped together, you start to lose. I know [Bethels] a strong person, and thats what you got to be for that job, Perrine said. Hes strong and direct, and he doesnt take any crap. READ MORE: Kevin Bethel will be Phillys next police commissioner. Who is he? Moving up Philadelphia and its police force arrived at another crossroads in 2008, when a new mayor, Michael Nutter, appointed Charles H. Ramsey police commissioner. Ramsey was recruited to tamp down violent crime the city had recorded 391 homicides in 2007 and bring reforms to an ossified department. One of Ramseys first moves was to elevate Bethel, then 44, from captain to deputy commissioner, which he later described as one of the best if not the best decisions I made as police commissioner here in Philadelphia. In Ramsey, Bethel found a career mentor who doubled as a father figure. Bethel has said that he was a young child when his father left; Bethels mother, Odessa, raised him and his three brothers. (One brother, Keith P. Bethel, is the assistant pastor of Christian Stronghold Church at 47th Street and Lancaster Avenue.) Ramsey maintained a regular presence at community events, crime scenes, and on television screens. Being visible, he said during a recent interview, is crucial for a commissioner and rank-and-file cops as well. Youre not only dealing with the reality of crime, he said, but the fear of crime, the perception of crime. As a deputy, Bethel was in charge of the departments patrol divisions, and Operation Pressure Point, a campaign to reduce violent crime in 12 districts. Bethel also worked with the citys LGBT community to develop a nine-page directive for improving police interactions with transgender individuals. Ramsey described Bethel as a right arm to me, one of the only officials who lingered in police headquarters longer, at night, than Ramsey. If anyone was still in the office, he said, it would be Bethel, going over crime numbers. He is absolutely driven when it comes to fighting crime. By 2013, the citys homicide total plunged to 246, and remained below 300 until 2017. The department won acclaim for its restrained handling of protests over police shootings a far cry from the brute force it used during the civil rights era. Ramsey spoke openly about local obstacles to weeding out corruption: an arbitration system that routinely overturned his discipline of problem cops, and a state disability system that enabled some officers to stay off the job for years with questionable injuries. Theres a narrative out there that reforms hurt public safety, Erace said. But you can be a nonracist police department and one that has a homicide clearance rate thats above 80%. Bethel was a vocal proponent of Ramseys crime-fighting strategies, which included using data to evaluate the effectiveness of foot patrols, and to prevent at-risk youths whod committed crimes from reoffending. Yet Bethels time as a deputy commissioner was not without some controversy. Between 2011 and 2014, the city spent $198,000 to settle five lawsuits that had been filed against Anthony Washington, a longtime police official, over allegations that included workplace harassment, civil rights violations, and physical abuse. Among those who accused Washington of sexual harassment were four female cops. A police sergeant, John Massi, claimed in a federal lawsuit that he faced retaliation after expressing concerns about Washington to Bethel. Massi alleged that Bethel had told him that Washington was a friend, and to not f with him. (The city settled Massis lawsuit for $8,000.) In the past, Bethel denied the retaliation claims. Bethel retired from the police force in 2016, not long after being awarded a three-year fellowship with the Stoneleigh Foundation to expand a pre-arrest diversion program for youths who got into trouble on school grounds. After learning that 1,600 students had been arrested during the 2013-2014 school years, Bethel told Ramsey that he believed it was wrong to march a 10-year-old child out of the school in cuffs, take him into headquarters, fingerprint him or her, because they came to school with a pair of scissors. Students who committed low-level offenses for the first time were instead provided social services to address underlying problems in their lives. By the 2018-19 school year, the number of student arrests plummeted to 250. Ronnie L. Bloom, Stoneleighs executive director, was struck by the affection Bethel displayed for the districts students, whom he referred to in conversations as my kids. The foundations fellows often have great ideas, Bloom said, but Bethels stood out for being data-driven and for producing quantifiable results. You dont always have situations where there are specific numbers that show, This many young people had a different life trajectory because they did not end up in the criminal justice system, she said. Hes really a star. Well be watching In Bethels most recent job, as the citys school safety chief, he was required to thread the needle between providing a safe space for students amid a period of record citywide gun violence, while acknowledging that some parents wanted no trace of law enforcement in schools. He will have to reckon with a similar dynamic in January, when he will be in charge of making the entire city safer. He retrained a school safety department that was hell-bent on being a police department, said former Philadelphia School Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. He helped those [officers] to understand how to approach a young person in a way that helps manage conflict and reduce aggression, and connect young people to the services they need. Bethel implemented a Safe Path program that paid residents with radios to monitor areas around some high schools, and utilized drone technology and social media to identify potential conflicts. Id be overjoyed if he was commissioner, Hite said. Roz Pichardo is the founder and executive director of Operation Save Our City, a nonprofit that works with families affected by gun violence and the opioid pandemic, twin scourges that have disproportionately impacted Kensington. I definitely would love to hear what the plan is, Pichardo said. We heard some empty promises from the last administration. Im hoping we dont get a repeat of that. During Wednesdays news conference, Bethel said that he understands the impact gun violence has on our communities, on our children, on families and teachers and all the community. References that Parker made during the mayoral campaign to enlisting the National Guard to help address drug activity in Kensington, and to police making constitutional stops of civilians, didnt sit well with Pichardo. She worries such approaches will only inflame tensions between police and community residents. Lets not cause more harm, she said. The stop-and-frisk references also concerned attorney David Rudovsky, whose law firm sued the city on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union in 2010, alleging that police had illegally stopped and searched thousands of Philadelphians. That lawsuit led to an agreement between the city and the ACLU to ensure that police have sound legal suspicions to stop and search someone. Our litigation made significant strides in narrowing stop-and-frisk, to make it more effective, Rudovsky said. He expects Bethel will be pressured to make a quick impact on the citys violent crime. It is starting to trend in a better direction, but people will want more. Thats what Parker ran on, Rudovsky said. I guess the bottom line is, well be watching. Bethel will face an additional wrinkle to the commissioners job: The city will soon have a new cabinet-level position, a chief public safety director, who will oversee the police, fire, prisons, recreation, and emergency management departments, and report directly to the mayor. Ramsey who, along with former Police Commissioner Richard Ross, interviewed candidates for the top cops job said the new hierarchys success will depend on how each official views their role. Theres a window of opportunity for change that doesnt stay open forever, Ramsey said. Its gonna be a rather heavy lift because of where the city is right now, but its very doable. As Bethel stood inside City Hall, surrounded by current and former city officials who applauded his appointment, he seemed aware of the enormity of the task that awaits him. He implored Philadelphians to give him, and the police force, a chance and to raise their voices if the department makes any missteps. But let us be a part of the community, he said. The Philadelphia Parking Authority has launched an online map of the citys residential permit parking districts. Read more The Philadelphia Parking Authority has launched an online map of the citys residential permit parking districts. The map, which debuted in September, comes almost a decade after local web developer Lauren Ancona created her own such map after realizing the PPA didnt have one. Our goal with the launch of the new residential permit district maps is to provide local residents with quick and convenient online access to delineate the numerous RPP districts throughout the city, PPA spokesperson Martin ORourke said in an email. Residents have been complaining about the lack of an accessible parking map for years. Advertisement READ MORE: Everything you need to know about parking in Philly: Courtesy tows, tickets, and more I have sent PPA probably half a dozen RTK requests for this data, and they have repeatedly insisted they do not have any data about parking regulations on Philadelphia streets, one resident posted on Reddit last year. I do not believe them, but Im also not about to sue them over this. Redditers shared a variety of tips to figure out where residential parking permits are required, including messaging PPA for the streets in residential zones, going through raw data, and using Google Street view to determine which streets dont have signage. PPA data shows that most parking violations were ticketed in Center City, South Philadelphia, and North Philadelphia between 2012 and 2017. The most violations were ticketed in zip code 19103, at 965,334 violations within the five-year span. READ MORE: Nobody is safe: Philly officials refuse to fix courtesy-tow problem as class-action lawsuits proceed The map, ORourke said, took four months to complete, including collecting data and ironing out kinks before uploading it online. In addition to color-coded borders of each regional permit parking area, the map shows where public parking is available throughout the city. The map has been viewed over 109,000 times online as of Tuesday afternoon. PPA hasnt received any feedback from residents since launching the map. However, the sheer volume of views with no negative feedback is encouraging, ORourke noted. No, retail and small to medium enterprises, he said. I think that we need to take it step by step. I think that most of the wholesale brokers are disclosing fees anyway because I think that they are working with people who want to know and who will ask the question. Reflecting on the firm's growth plans, Baker said: Our continued growth and expanded footprint have attracted market-leading lawyers, like Matthew, in their chosen areas of practice to our business. We are continuing to build our capacity at the senior level as well as attracting high calibre support staff. We have also been able to promote from within and maintain our focus on our enviable culture. The market is taking note, and we are excited to continue on our growth journey and expand the expertise and services we provide to our clients. The scholarship will see the recipients learn about different animal-related professions, genetic diseases, pet nutrition, surgery, animal rescue, wildlife conservation, exotic animals, and the key role of pet insurance in improving pet healthcare outcomes. It will also enable some students to visit the University of Sydney Veterinary Teaching Hospital & Clinical Skills Centre for an exclusive behind-the-scenes excursion. The strategy demonstrates the government recognises the importance of protecting all of Australia from critical infrastructure to small businesses and citizens, Warren said. Its great they have acknowledged the key role that universities have in contributing to sovereign capability development and innovation, especially through research. We really found an opportunity to enhance the pregnancy cover beyond the traditional 19 weeks offered in market, said Cosgrave. Im a mother with a 19-month-old and with a doctors clearance I was able to fly up to 32 weeks into my pregnancy, so the way we see it is why shouldnt your travel insurance cover you if a doctor says you can travel? We think about it like pixelization on a TV, said Bryan Simms (pictured), co-founder and president of Mammoth Life. Black and white screens were the standard 40 or 50 years ago, but you could only see so much detail in that picture. Fast forward to today, we have 5K, where it appears as though the images on the television are lifelike. The 2023 event will also be highlighted by the presence of Pete Alonso, first baseman for the New York Mets, as the celebrity guest speaker. Alonso, a renowned MLB player with multiple accolades, including three-time MLB All-Star and two-time Home Run Derby champion, is also the founder of the Alonso Foundation. His foundation focuses on vital regional needs, supporting youth, animal welfare, and veterans through various initiatives. Long-Term Thinking Builds Winning Culture When Chip and Ted Gibson got the keys to Deland, Gibson Insurance Associates in 2020, the brothers took over what Chip described as a great shop. Three generations of their family members had guided the independent agency since its doors opened in 1900. It was then Chip and Teds turn to steer the organization into the future. Three years later, Deland, Gibson has been named one of Insurance Journals Best Agencies to Work For. The agency earned the Bronze Regional Award for the East region in the magazines annual Best Agencies to Work For competition. Deland, Gibson won the award based on employee responses to the annual Insurance Journal survey. This is kind of the result of many years of work, said Chip, the agencys owner and CEO. Its not like something you can instantly turn on and say, Hey, weve got a great culture and were doing a lot of good things. It takes time to actually accomplish things, to implement things and make it work. Insurance Journals 2023 Best Independent Insurance Agencies to Work For The votes are in! Employees in 2023 highlighted the importance of competitive salaries, employee benefits, training and education, resources, and other employee perks as drivers of satisfaction in the workplace. But its not all about compensation and benefits. The votes are in! Employees in 2023 highlighted the importance of competitive salaries, employee benefits, training and education, resources, and other employee perks as drivers of satisfaction in the workplace. But its not all about compensation and benefits. The Massachusetts-based agency employs 77 people. Many of them praised Deland, Gibsons positive work environment, fair management and far-reaching charitable giving in their survey responses. They also emphasized the focus on caring for clients and deepening relationships. The culture here is incredible, wrote one respondent. We live by our core values, there is a sense of collaboration and community. We help each other, work hard and do great things. Most of Deland, Gibsons business is split between personal and commercial policies. The agency has a specialized high net worth division, and on the commercial side, employees have expertise in various areas. About 10% of the companys business is employee benefits. Long-term thinking is integral to the companys strategy. In an industry with stiff competition, continuously evolving and improving are key focus areas for the Deland, Gibson team. We want to be an independent agency thats prepared and thriving, Chip explained. Not one thats reactive and has outside pressures make it do something they may not want to do. After Chip and Ted took over, the agency underwent a rigorous outside review by the Massachusetts Association of Insurance Agents that objectively highlighted Deland, Gibsons strengths and weaknesses. In the process, Deland, Gibson received a five-star designation and a perspective that reshaped its internal approach. The big takeaway: Communication could be improved. They established a client experience committee to hear holistic advice from employees. As strategic planning became a bigger focus, a sheet outlining the agencys core values and actionable goals hung on the wall at each Deland, Gibson location. Honest conversations led to big internal improvements. Notably, after staff members took Kolbe tests an assessment like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator optimal communication styles were identified and shared to enhance interactions and strengthen connections. In their responses, employees spoke highly of their company across the board. As one respondent put it, expectations are clear, education is encouraged and pay is fair. Another said the staff lives by its core values and noted there is a sense of collaboration and community among employees. This agency is very family oriented, considerate to employees needs, and management works with you and not against you, reads a survey response. They have clients best interest in mind and make us very comfortable in our positions so we can feel good about our clients and their needs as well. Chip believes it all boils down to genuinely caring. His advice to other agency owners? Improving an agency doesnt happen overnight. It takes consistent effort. See All Winners: Best Insurance Agencies to Work For An eastern Pennsylvania school district has reached a settlement with The Satanic Temple in a lawsuit that alleged the district discriminated against students by barring one of the group`s After School Satan clubs from using a school building earlier this year. The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the Saucon Valley School District had agreed to pay $200,000 in attorney`s fees and to provide The Satanic Temple and the After School Satan Club it sponsors the same access to school facilities as is provided to other organizations. The ACLU filed the lawsuit in March after the district rescinded its earlier approval to allow the club to meet following criticism. The After School Satan Club, with the motto Educatin with Satan, had drawn protests and even a threat in February that prompted closure of district schools for a day and the later arrest of a person in another state. Saucon Valley school district attorney Mark Fitzgerald told reporters in a statement that the district denies having discriminated against The Satanic Temple, its club or the approximately four students who attended its meetings. He said the district`s priorities were education and the safety of students and staff. 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, Fitzgerald said. The $200,000 will be paid by the districts insurance and all organizations will be following the districts facilities use policy in the future, he said. The Satanic Temple says it doesn`t believe in religion in public schools and only seeks to open clubs if other religious groups are operating on campus. The After School Satan clubs are aimed at providing a fun, intellectually stimulating, and non-proselytizing alternative to current religious after-school clubs, the organization said. The group says it has no interest in converting children to Satanism and in fact views Satan not as a supernatural being but as a literary figure that represents a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny over the human mind and spirit. The club`s programs, they say, focus on science, critical thinking, creative arts, and good works for the community. June Everett, director of The Satanic Temples After School Satan Club program, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the group was pleased the dispute had been resolved. She indicated, however, that the club may not reopen anytime soon, even though it could. The group said it sought to open a club in Saucon Valley because the district permitted a Good News Club, which is Christian. Everett said since that club now appears to be inactive, the After School Satan Club will also be on hold, but the group will seek to reopen it if the Good News Club resumes. Copyright 2023 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics K-12 Education Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. announced the acquisition of Queensbury, New York-based independent insurance agency, Hughes Insurance Agency, Inc. From it headquarters in Queensbury and an office in Albany, Hughes serves the Glens Falls, Lake George Saratoga Springs corridor, as well as the greater Capital District areas of Albany, Troy, Latham, Clifton Park, and Malta. Hughes is headed by Linda Abodeely, CPCU, president, and Joe Koncikowski, vice president, and represents national and regional insurance carriers offering personal and commercial insurance as well as life and health. The agency team will continue to operate out of its current location as part of Gallagher Agency Alliance under the direction of Jen Tadin, managing director of Gallaghers Global Small Business practice. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Gallagher Agency Alliance is a merger & acquisitions model partnering with agencies that specialize in small business property/casualty insurance and employee benefits. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. is a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Topics Mergers & Acquisitions New York A.J. Gallagher France, backed by the United States, plans to seek a halt to private financing for coal-based power plants during the U.N. climate conference later this month, three sources familiar with the deliberations told Reuters in India and Europe. The plan, which was communicated to India earlier this month, will deepen divisions at the COP28 summit in Dubai running from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, with India and China opposed to any attempt to block construction of coal-fired power stations for their energy-hungry economies. Frances minister of state for development Chrysoula Zacharopoulou told the Indian government about the plan, called the New Coal Exclusion Policy, for private financial institutions and insurance companies, two Indian officials said. The plan to stop private financing for coal-fired power plants has not been previously reported. A spokesman for Zacharopoulou did not directly comment on emailed queries from Reuters but said the question of financial investments in coal had been discussed at several different multilateral forums over the past few years. Indias environment, power and renewable energy, coal, external affairs and information ministries, the OECD and the French embassy in New Delhi did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. A source in Europe familiar with the plan said the aim was to dry up private funding for coal power and that it was a top priority for French President Emmanuel Macron during COP28, seen as a crucial opportunity to accelerate action to limit global warming. The proposal provides for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to set coal-exit standards for private finance firms whose financing could be tracked by regulators, rating agencies and non-governmental organizations, the two Indian officials said. The U.S., European Union and Canada, among others, have been seeking a plan to expedite the phase-out of coal, which they have cited as the number one threat to climate goals. They are concerned private international financing continues to support large additions to coal capacity in developing nations, according to the plan shared by France with India. Some 490 gigawatts of new coal capacity, roughly equal to one-fifth of existing global capacity, is planned or under construction, mostly in India and China, the officials said. Rick Duke, Deputy U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change, did not comment directly on the proposal but noted the expansion in coal-fired plants. We are pushing to set an expectation globally that countries need to join us in the fastest possible power sector transition, including all that clean power deployment, Duke said. And countries need to stop digging a deeper hole by building new unabated coal power plants, because unfortunately, theres still some 500 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plants in the pipeline globally, and the IPCC and the International Energy Agency have both been quite clear that that needed to stop already. Member countries are divided on emissions abatement technologies that are yet to evolve to commercial scale for use in developing countries, one of the Indian officials said. About 73% of electricity consumed in India is produced using coal, even though the country has increased its non-fossil capacity to 44% of its total installed power generation capacity. The country intends to resist the push to fix a deadline for a fossil fuel phase-out or phase-down at COP28, as coal will be its main energy source for a few more decades, and may ask members to shift their focus on reducing emissions from other sources. It may also push developed nations to become carbon negative rather than carbon neutral by 2050. (Reporting by Sarita Chaganti Singh, Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Kate Abnett in Brussels; additional reporting by Benjamin Mallet in Paris; editing by Sonali Paul) Topics USA The threat of cargo theft activity this Thanksgiving is extremely high and unlike any recent year, according to CargoNet. CargoNet, a Verisk product, has tracked a sharp increase in year-over-year theft reports. Since November 2022, the average number of reports filed per week has jumped to 51 a 64% increase compared to data between January 2012 and October 2022. Recent numbers are even higher. Per a press release, between Oct. 1 and Nov. 11, CargoNet recorded an average of 66 reports per week. Strategic cargo theft groups over the past year have shown that they ramp up activity around major holidays because they understand logistics brokers will be under pressure and more likely to make mistakes, the press release said. CargoNet is concerned recent spikes in theft of unattended, loaded conveyances, particularly in Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, and Southern California will continue into the holiday. Strategic Cargo Theft Threat CargoNet has recorded 433 new theft events since October a 101% increase year-over-year. Cargo thefts or fictitious pickups and identity fraud reports made up 35% of reported crimes in that time. Fifty-six percent of the strategic cargo thefts were in California. While strategic cargo thefts happened across the Golden State, they were most frequent in the counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange. The most frequently stolen goods were alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, motor oils, auto parts, apparel, solar energy generation items and nutritional supplements. The press release said organized crime groups seek to obtain a load tender in one of the following ways: Outright impersonating a legitimate motor carrier. Using an authority they have registered or have been given access to. Deceiving a motor carrier into giving them the credentials to vital accounts. CargoNet reported a recent wave of strategic cargo thefts in which criminals represented themselves as an outsourced dispatch service. They were hired by multiple motor carriers and gained access to their emails, load board accounts and FMCSA accounts to effectively hijack the authority and use it to get load tenders and steal truckload shipments, the release said. The criminals appeared to be legitimate representatives of the motor carriers to their victims because they were communicating via official accounts, CargoNet shared in the press release. Logistics brokers should be on alert for these strategies this upcoming holiday. If a load tender is emailed to a potential cargo thief, it is imperative to change the pickup information with the shipper to prevent theft of the shipment. Full Truckload Threat Since October, CargoNet has tracked an increase in theft of unattended, loaded conveyances across the United States. Unattended freight is at high risk this holiday because of the likelihood it will be left unattended and unmonitored for several days before a driver returns to complete delivery, CargoNet reported. Truckload theft rings have focused on shipments of major appliances, small appliances, non-alcoholic beverages, ATVs and construction equipment. Thefts have been especially common in the following areas: Dallas-Fort Worth, particularly along South Freeway at the Interstate 20 and Interstate 35W intersections in Fort Worth. The Atlanta metro area, particularly around Tucker and Stone Mountain and South Fulton, Fairburn and Palmetto. Florida, in major freight hubs like Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and Miami. Southern California, especially in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Topics California Fraud Trucking The Texas Supreme Court on Friday reversed a Dallas County judges decision to sanction an insurer for making an overbroad discovery demand, finding that the carrier had a valid interest in the medical records of a claimant who had been involved in five other automobile accidents. The high court granted a writ of mandamus requested by Liberty County Mutual Insurance Co. and vacated the trial courts orders to quash the carriers deposition notices and levy $2,000 in sanctions. Liberty had asked claimant Thalia Harris physician for medical records spanning from five years before to five years after the April 2017 car crash that she claimed had injured her. Dallas County Judge Juan Renteria and a panel with the 5th District Appellate Court found the insurers subpoenas too broad, but the Supreme Court said it was an abuse of discretion not to approve the discovery demand. The trial courts order prevents Liberty from obtaining records from Harris primary doctor regarding her pre-accident condition and whether she complained of similar injuries from her multiple other car accidents, the decision says. Harris sought underinsured motorist benefits from Liberty after an April 2017 car crash. She received $100,000 from a policy-limits settlement with the insurer for the driver of the other car, but she claimed she would need an additional $265,000 in medical treatment and filed an underinsured motorist claim with Liberty, her own insurer. After Liberty denied the claim, Harris filed a lawsuit against the carrier and its claims adjuster. The insurer learned that Harris had also been involved in an auto crash in March 2015 and was involved in additional crashes in June 2017, April 2018, June 2019 and January 2020. Liberty demanded from Harris physician, Dr. F.J. Simmons, all documents regarding her treatment starting in April 2007 up the date of the subpoena, which was filed approximately five years after the claimed injuries. After Harris filed a motion to quash the subpoena, Liberty agreed to narrow its request to a ten-year time span from five years before the accident to five years after. Harris attorney said during a court hearing that two other trial courts had quashed similar discovery requests and imposed sanctions for the same thing Liberty had done. Judge Resteria granted Harris motion to quash and ordered defense counsel to pay a $2,000 sanctions. Liberty filed a petition for a writ of mandamus to overturn that order. The carrier appealed to the Supreme Court after the 5th Appellate District denied the petition. The Supreme Court said it grants mandamus relief only if the requesting party can show there was an abuse of discretion and that it lacks an adequate remedy on appeal. Liberty argued that the order to refuse its discovery request was an abuse of discretion because Harris was seeking damages for back and neck injuries similar to injuries she said she had suffered in at least some of the other car crashes. The high court said in any discovery demand, a trial courts must consider whether the partys need for information is proportionate to the needs of the case. In personal injury cases, evidence about a partys condition before an accident and progress afterward is relevant, the opinion says. Dr. Simmons is likely the only person who can provide information about Harris condition before the accident, the court said. Libertys discovery requests sought relevant information and were not so broad or disproportionate as to justify an order precluding all discovery from Dr. Simmons, the opinion says. Topics Carriers Texas Medical Professional Liability Wiglesworth-Rindom Insurance Agency, based in Stuart, Florida, has named Linda Cathey vice president of agency operations. Cathey will oversee growth and development of the agency team. She previously was the managing director for Squeeze, an online insurance agency and quote comparison site. She also was director of personal lines at Marsh McLennan for more than 20 years. Cathey holds the certified insurance service representative (CISR) and the chartered private risk and insurance advisor (CPRIA) professional designations, the agency said in a news release. Wiglesworth-Rindom was recently named the Best Agency to Work For in the Southeast by Insurance Journal for 2023, based on employee surveys. Liberty Insurance Brokers Promotes Baillie The Liberty Company Insurance Brokers, headquartered in Gainesville, Fla., promoted Adam Baillie to chief operating officer. Baillie joined Liberty in 2014 as a producer and later became a managing partner. He most recently served as chief strategy officer. Topics Agencies Wildfires prompted campgrounds in North Carolina and Tennessee to evacuate starting Sunday while firefighters prepared for high winds and low humidity on Monday, though officials hoped for some help from expected rain. The National Weather Service`s office in Morristown, Tennessee, office issued a red flag warning into Tuesday in the East Tennessee mountains and southwest North Carolina, with winds between 25 and 50 mph Monday afternoon, increasing to 40 to 70 mph on Monday night with 80 mph gusts possible in some places. In North Carolina, a youth camp and about a dozen homes were evacuated Sunday evening as the fire spread in the Sauratown Mountains in Stokes County, said Jimmy Holt, a ranger with the N.C. Forest Service, on Monday. About 50 children were safely evacuated from the Mountain Top Youth Camp and residents of about 12 threatened homes were advised to evacuate as the fire spread, Holt said. No injuries or damage to structures have been reported. By Monday, the fire that was first reported Saturday evening had spread to 300 acres (121 hectares) with little containment and at least a hundred people are involved in fighting the blaze, including firefighters from Washington, Oregon, Utah and Montana, who are used to this type of ground, Holt said. They are some of the best firefighters in the country that we have right here right now, he said. Rain forecast for Tuesday could help contain the fire. Its going to be a challenge today, Holt said. Yesterday was a very, very tough day we had on the mountain and today is going to be another tough day. Firefighters on the Cherokee National Forest, which spans 10 counties along the Tennessee border, are securing containment lines on existing fires before the wind event, the U.S. Forest Service said in a news release. In Tennessee, authorities also ordered an evacuation at a campground on Whitwell Mountain as a wildfire stemming from an escaped campfire spread, Marion County Emergency Management Director Steve Lamb told news outlets. Its a challenging terrain; its hard to access the areas where the fire is, Lamb said. Were just having to work it out as we can; it will be some time. About 20 acres (8 hectares) had burned, Lamb said on Monday and the Whitwell Police Department said in a statement on social media that a helicopter was being used in an effort to help contain and extinguish the blaze. The red flag warning also led officials at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park to announce it would close campgrounds and most roads on Monday as a precaution to protect visitors, employees and park resources. Employee and visitor safety is our only priority, said Cassius Cash, a superintendent. We understand these closures are an inconvenience, but we are trying to eliminate as much risk as possible during this dangerous weather event. The park said it would issue an update on Tuesday about the status of its campgrounds and roads. In southern West Virginia, a 2,200-acre (890-hectare) wildfire in the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve was fully contained Monday, the National Park Service said. The cause of the fire, which has burned since Nov. 6, remains under investigation. Copyright 2023 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Virginia North Carolina Tennessee West Virginia Nevada must pay $340,000 total to the ACLU of Nevada and eight people on a prison firefighting crew in a settlement reached earlier this week, but clears the state of admitting to claims including negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and cruel and unusual punishment. The settlement reached Tuesday by the Nevada Board of Examiners ends both state and federal lawsuits filed in March stemming from a 2021 fire cleanup on the southern tip of the state. In a lawsuit filed in Clark County District Court, the ACLU of Nevada alleged that supervisors mocked and abused prison firefighters after what was described as a gruesome cleanup assignment that left several unable to walk, stand or shower without assistance for days. The lawsuit claimed none of the incarcerated firefighters received medical treatment that night. In the lawsuit, the ACLU of Nevada alleged on behalf of the plaintiffs that when the sole of one plaintiffs boot melted off from the heat, a Nevada Division of Forestry supervisor duct-taped it back on and told her to continue working. When another plaintiff started crying from pain, the supervisor allegedly said, You can keep crying as long as you keep working. The Nevada Division Forestry will also expand on training for its prison firefighting program, and implement or ensure a host of policies meant to protect incarcerated firefighters including avenues to submit anonymous concerns and better maintenance of protective equipment, including work boots. The crew fighting the 2021 fire was from Jean Conservation Camp, the only prison firefighting facility designed for women. The Division of Forestry owns the camp and firefighting programs while the Department of Corrections staffs the camp. The Nevada Department of Corrections and Division of Forestry both declined to comment. The settlement was first reported by The Nevada Independent. The plaintiffs, comprised of current and formerly incarcerated people, will receive between about $24,000 and $48,000 each. Copyright 2023 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Nevada Source: Streetwise Reports November 22, 2023 (Investorideas.com Newswire) North Shore Uranium Ltd. is looking to become a "major force" in the exploration of important uranium deposits in Saskatchewan's world-class Athabasca Basin. Newly trading company North Shore Uranium Ltd. (NSU:TSXV), with projects near mills and mines that produce 100% of the uranium in Canada, is looking to become a "major force" in the exploration of the important uranium deposits in Saskatchewan's world-class Athabasca Basin. The company is fully funded to start drilling for uranium in Q1 2024 on its highly prospective Falcon project as analysts call for a growing supply-demand deficit, with uranium prices hitting their highest levels since 2008 - US$80 a pound today. "The existing uranium supply shortage will only get worse in the coming years and anybody who makes a new discovery in uranium, especially in Saskatchewan's world-class Athabasca Basin, will be well-positioned to capitalize. Our highly prospective Falcon and West Bear properties, with high-quality drill-ready targets at Falcon, are located near extensive infrastructure, including active uranium mills. Important discoveries in settings like this can become very, very valuable assets," noted North Shore President and Chief Executive Officer Brooke Clements, a geologist with more than 35 years of experience in the industry. According to a recent report by the World Nuclear Association, demand for uranium for nuclear reactors is expected to climb 28% by 2030 and nearly double by 2040 as governments work toward meeting zero-carbon targets. "From the beginning of the next decade, planned mines and prospective mines, in addition to increasing quantities of unspecified supply, will need to be brought into production," the report said. In general, global nuclear power-generating capacity is expected to rise 82% to 792 gigawatts by 2050 as the world transitions from fossil fuels, the International Atomic Agency said. "Uranium is the one energy source that could satisfy every Millennial and Gen-Xer on the planet; zero pollutive impact anywhere and a reliable, cost-effective means of heating the planet and recharging Elon Musk's vehicles," industry observer Michael Ballanger wrote. "Handled properly, nuclear power is truly the alternative for coal and oil and natural gas." The Catalyst: With Neighbors Like These North Shore's uranium projects abut the eastern edge of the Athabasca Basin, near Cameco Corp.'s Cigar Lake and McArthur River mines and the two mills that serve them. McArthur River and Key Lake are the world's largest high-grade uranium mine and mill complex, Cameco said, collectively producing 535 million pounds of uranium since 1983. Cigar Lake is the world's highest-grade uranium mine and has produced 105 million pounds of uranium since 2015. Two of the company's other neighbors on the eastern margin of the Athabasca Basin that have made high-profile uranium discoveries are: 92 Energy Ltd. and Baselode Energy Corp. Drilling at 92 Energy's Gemini project intersected thick zones of mineralization, including 17.5 meters at 0.38% U3O8, including 2 meters at 0.82% U3O8, and 0.5 meters at 0.94% U3O8. Baselode's results at its ACKIO discovery on its Hook property included 10.5 meters at 0.28% U3O8, 3.6 meters at 0.69% U3O8, and 7.5 meters at 1.67% U3O8, including 5 meters at 2.45% U3O8. North Shore controls more than 60,000 hectares at its Falcon and West Bear projects. Holes drilled at Falcon in 2008 showed elevated uranium values up to 0.235% U3O8, according to the company. However, the company is now focused on evaluating high-quality drill-ready targets that were not previously tested. Source: North Shore Uranium Ltd. "We've got lots of new proprietary and publicly available geophysical data, and we've defined a lot of conductors," Clements told Streetwise Reports. "We're working hard with our consultants ... to optimize our first drill program to drill test the best possible spots and position ourselves for future programs." Multiple highly prospective targets have been selected at both Falcon and West Bear using new geophysical data and publicly available electromagnetic (EM) and geological data. "Falcon is a property with over 60 kilometers of well-defined EM conductors that have not been tested and uranium-bearing boulders and structures that have not been adequately explained. We are very excited to start our first drilling campaign in Q1 2024." Clements said. Nuclear Power's Resurgence Uranium from mining is used primarily as fuel for nuclear fission in power plants, but it is also used in the medicine, food production, and space industries. There are currently about 440 nuclear reactors operating worldwide, with about 60 under construction and a further 430 planned or proposed, according to the World Nuclear Association. In 2022, they provided about 10% of the world's electricity. The sector suffers from the stigma surrounding the risk of radiation and accidents - like those at Chernobyl and Fukushima - and the element's use to power nuclear bombs. However, new studies show other energy-producing sectors are more dangerous than nuclear energy. In fact, the coal industry accounts for as many as 120 deaths per year compared to less than 0.01 deaths per year in the nuclear industry, according to the World Nuclear Association. Critically, nuclear power plants produce carbon-free baseload energy 24/7, which is essential for achieving emission-reduction targets. Investors are hoping nuclear power will have a resurgence as governments attempt to turn away from fossil fuels. Ownership and Share Structure Insiders, management, and strategic investors account for 50% of the company's shares, according to the company. CEO Brooke Clements owns 3.08%, with 1.13 million shares. The rest, about 50%, is retail. North Shore's market cap is about CA$5 million, with 36.81 million shares outstanding. Since October 31, it has traded in a range of CA$0.30 and CA$0.13. More Info: This news is published on the Investorideas.com Newswire - a global digital news source for investors and business leaders Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. 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That's all it takes to get an article published on Investor Ideas - Learn More Sam Altman is returning as the boss of OpenAI just days after his ouster, capping frenzied discussions about the future of the startup at the centre of an artificial intelligence boom. The ChatGPT maker also unveiled a new initial board with former Salesforce co-chief executive Bret Taylor as chair and Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary, and Adam D'Angelo as directors. Mr D'Angelo was part of the original board that had dismissed Mr Altman. The return of Mr Altman could potentially usher in a new era for the startup which had long juggled concerns among staff about AI's dangers and its potential for commercialisation. The original board had given scant explanation for Mr Altman's firing last week other than his lack of candour and its need to defend OpenAI's mission to develop AI that benefits humanity. Analysts said the reshuffle will favour Mr Altman and Microsoft, which has pledged billions of dollars to the startup and is rolling out its technology to its customers globally. "There are still huge questions about why Mr Altman was fired and why Microsoft had been kept in the dark about the decision," said Danni Hewson, AJ Bell's head of financial analysis. Ms Hewson said: What does seem clear is that Microsoft will now play a much bigger role, that the partnership will become stronger and the two companies more integrated. Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella welcomed the changes. Microsoft shares rose 1.5%. It was not immediately clear if the previous board directors who hold no equity in OpenAI would retain their seats, or if the backers of its capped-profit subsidiary - such as 49% owner Microsoft - would ultimately win board appointments. Unlike most Silicon Valley startups, OpenAI is overseen by a nonprofit parent board designed to ensure AI safety is given priority alongside growth. It created the capped-profit unit in 2019 to raise funds and grant stock options to its employees. "The return of Altman consolidates his influence over the direction of OpenAI, and probably means it will be more bold and profit focused, but also potentially less risk averse," said Kyle Rodda, analyst at Capital.com. Reuters earlier reported some shareholders were exploring legal recourse after the turmoil threatened the future of OpenAI, recently expected to have an over $80bn valuation. Tuesday's moves reassured some investors. "We believe this is the best outcome for the company," said Thrive Capital, a backer of OpenAI. Mr Altman's dramatic turnaround drew comparisons in Silicon Valley lore to Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO who left the computer maker in a 1985 power struggle only to return 12 years later. Mr Altman took back the CEO mantle after four days. His departure triggered a major upheaval at OpenAI, with president Greg Brockman quitting in protest. By Sunday, Mr Altman was back at OpenAI's offices expecting his swift reappointment, when the board surprised again by naming ex-Twitch boss Emmett Shear as interim CEO. Mr Altman's master stroke was made possible in part by Microsoft. When he was out of a job, chief executive Satya Nadella said Mr Altman could head a new research team alongside Mr Brockman and other colleagues departing from OpenAI. By Monday, nearly all of OpenAI's over 700-strong staff had threatened to leave and join Microsoft's effort unless the board stepped down and reinstated Mr Altman. This threat was backed by Microsoft's vast computing power, the key asset driving OpenAI's technology along with its staff of computer scientists. Reuters Ireland has the potential to become a renewable energy powerhouse, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was told at Cork Chambers annual dinner in Dublin. Speaking to hundreds of business leaders, the Chambers president Ronan Murray said the countrys commitment to delivering such projects is critical to achieving energy security and future resilience. Sitting in this enviable position on the edge of the Atlantic, we have the potential to emerge as a renewable energy powerhouse, said Mr Murray. Our commitment to delivering on this is critical to achieving energy security and future resilience. This year alone, we have seen many steps taken to enable the growth of the sector, with the launch of Mara [the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority], the first offshore wind auctions, and increased activity in the solar landscape. "Paving the way for energy independence will not only enhance our appeal to investors but it will also elevate the quality of life in Ireland which ultimately will create a more secure legacy for the generations to come. Delivering the keynote address at the Burlington Hotel, Mr Varadkar said the development of offshore wind in places such as Cork is Irelands moonshot. Offshore renewable energy will become a reality over the course of the next decade and Cork stands to be a big beneficiary, said Mr Varadkar. There are incredible opportunities for us if we act quickly and ambitiously. I want Ireland to become energy independent by harnessing our untapped renewable energy resources, particularly our offshore wind. "This is our moonshot for the 21st century something to strive for, not because it is easy but because it is hard. "Recalling the vision of Ardnacrusha and the spirit of the Free State. Port areas such as Cork and its hinterlands will be central to the development of this new industry. The Taoiseach also said he believes that more balanced regional development is good for the country as a whole. Cork, as a city-region, has a population approaching 600,000 people which is similar to that of Galway, Limerick, and Waterford combined. Cork City and county can lead the way with Government in generating economic and population growth. "We will be there to ensure it succeeds through increased investment in infrastructure like rail, roads, housing, schools, hospitals, universities, energy, and water. Mr Murray said the two vibrant urban hubs showcase a remarkable synergy. One that resonates on the global stage. We have consistently demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to attract substantial foreign direct investment to our island and equally to maintain an economic environment that can serve as a launchpad for Irish private enterprises eager to scale and make their mark on the international stage, he said. Outstanding Contribution to Business At the same event, Cork Chamber honoured former PM Group chief executive Pat McGrath with its Outstanding Contribution to Business Award. Mr McGraths role at the company played a significant part in his career. In the early 2000s, his period as CEO was instrumental in chartering the organisations internationalisation. He led the engineering firms strategy to transform the company from a primarily Ireland-only focus into an international services firm focused on multi-national companies in the life sciences, food, energy, data centre, and advanced manufacturing sectors across the world. PM Group has grown to 3,500 people across 20 offices globally. Pat McGrath with the Outstanding Contribution to Business award at the Cork Chamber annual dinner, with John Higgins, managing partner, EY Cork, host Jacqui Hurley, Ronan Murray, president of Cork Chamber, and Conor Healy CEO. Mr McGrath joins a distinguished group of previous award recipients including Cathy Kearney, Jim Woulfe, Bob Savage, Anne OLeary, Sean ODriscoll, and Frank Boland for their contributions to business. Through his career, Pat has shown exemplary strategic and visionary thinking, said Mr Murray. He has chartered a wonderful career and mapped out new territories through his contributions to PM Group, helping the company to break into new markets, ultimately making this Irish-born organisation a global success in its field. Receiving the award, the Tipperary man said: I never thought when I came to Cork 45 years ago as a young engineer for a six-week assignment that I would be the recipient of this prestigious award in my adopted city. Cork has been the launch pad for the growth of PM Group from a small indigenous player into an international engineering company with a global reach. The dairy industry will gather at University College Cork (UCC) for a two-day conference on sustainability in December. The gathering on December 4 and 5 aims to discuss and demonstrate a sustainable, profitable path for Ireland's dairy industry amid pressing environmental, economic, and regulatory challenges. The event will be opened by Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Simon Coveney, which is also to be addressed by senior-level figures in Irelands agri-food industry from the Department of Agriculture, Teagasc, and more. The conference is jointly organised by ICOS and UCC and takes place in the Aula Maxima (Great Hall) of the university. President of ICOS Edward Carr said the event is an "important opportunity for reflection and foresight for our industry". "In Ireland, we are uniquely positioned to lead the global dairy sector towards a sustainable future. This conference is our platform to identify and showcase how sustainability can be an engine of growth and resilience for our dairy co-ops," he added. At the forefront Professor Paul McSweeney, vice president for learning and teaching in UCC, said that Irish dairy farmers and their co-ops are "at the forefront of implementing sustainable practices, ensuring that Irish agriculture contributes to addressing the global challenge of climate change". "The economic contribution of the dairy sector is profound, creating annual value in the order of 17bn, including exports in excess of 6.5bn, extending its benefits to rural communities and consumers across Ireland and contributing to national and international food security," Mr McSweeney said. "We must ensure that this continues on a sustainable basis for the future and I very much welcome this timely event to address these opportunities." The event will explore the main pillars underpinning the dairy industrys current and future sustainability strategies. The themes for the conference include climate change and biodiversity; sustainability as a dual imperative and opportunity; and the future of Irelands nitrates derogation. Irish band Lankum has had a gig cancelled in Germany due to their support of Palestine, which they have been vocal about since the escalation of the war in recent weeks. The band was due to play the TransCentury Festival in Leipzig alongside German-Brazilian musician Gloria de Oliveira last Sunday, but the band's performance was pulled. De Oliveira was given the option to perform alone but told the Irish Examiner that "given the circumstances, it didnt feel right to me to just go on with my show, so I pulled out". Music blogger Nialler9 reported that the festival posted a statement announcing its decision which read: The Lankum & Gloria De Oliveira concerts tonight will not take place. Lankum represents a political stance that we as a venue and festival do not represent. In consultation with the artists, we have agreed to cancel the concert. Since then, the festivals Instagram has been changed to Private, and follow requests denied. The festivals Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, profiles have not been active since 2022 and 2018 respectively. A request for comment from organisers has not received a response. Lankum has also been contacted for comment. The political stance referred to in the statement is believed to refer to the bands support for the Palestinian people. Following an attack by Hamas militants on October 7, in which 1,400 Israeli citizens were killed and a further more than 200 kidnapped, Israel announced a military operation on Gaza to target Hamas leaders and operations. Since then, more than 11,000 people have reportedly been killed in Palestine and thousands have been left without food, water, or medicine. Germany has cracked down on pro-Palestine protests saying it is to stop public disorder and prevent antisemitism. But supporters of Palestinians say they feel blocked from publicly expressing support or concern for people in the Hamas-controlled enclave of Gaza without risking arrest, their jobs, or immigration status. The German government says they need to protect Jewish communities given a rise in antisemitic violence since the attacks by Hamas, which is deemed a terrorist group by the EU and several countries. In Germany, the issue is particularly acute because of the killing of 6m European Jews in the Holocaust by the Nazis. "Our history, our responsibility for the Holocaust makes it our duty in every moment to stand for the existence and security of Israel," Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. Gig for Gaza As a band, Lankum has been vocal about their support for the Palestinian people and calls for a ceasefire. The Dublin four-piece have not posted any response to the cancellation of their performance last weekend and are continuing their largely sold-out European and UK tour. No other gigs in Germany have been affected with their final performance in the country taking place tomorrow. They have also continued to post in support of the Palestinian people and are due to play the Gig for Gaza in the 3Arena next Tuesday, November 28. The concert, which will also feature Damien Dempsey and Lisa ONeill among others, was initially to be held in Vicar Street but after the venue sold out in a matter of minutes, it was moved to the much larger venue in the Point Village. In a statement announcing the concert, Lankum said: Like most people of sound mind and reason around the globe, we are heartbroken and shocked to see the indiscriminate murder of children and civilians happening for the past few weeks. This, on top of decades of oppression, persecution, and dehumanisation is something we can only struggle to comprehend. That is why we are very proud to raise our voices in solidarity with the people of Palestine. It's the very, very least we can do. The statement was signed by Cormac, Daragh, Ian and Radie. Posting about the fundraiser today, which will support the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, Lankum wrote: Dublin in 6 days. Tickets are selling very fast. Let's sell this out!! - Additional reporting by Reuters Science reveals that food preservation is a battle with bacteria, with perishable items like leftover pizza being prime targets. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland recommends keeping fridge temperatures between 0C and 5C, echoing the USDA's warning that perishables over 4C for more than two hours enter the 'Danger Zone' of rapid bacterial growth. Rewinding to the pre-fridge era, people used iceboxes, root cellars, and other creative methods for food cooling. This was a risky endeavour, often losing the fight against bacteria. Today, avoiding the fridge involves clever shopping and embracing traditional preservation methods. Opting for less perishable, more shelf-stable foods is key. This means choosing items like dried beans or canned goods over fresh meats. This concept might not thrill the younger crowd, but it offers a practical alternative to refrigeration. This approach combines modern knowledge with ancestral eating habits, balancing food safety with a touch of nostalgia. It also encourages a deeper appreciation for the resources we often take for granted and a more sustainable lifestyle, reducing reliance on energy-intensive appliances. Plus, it's a chance to get creative in the kitchen (basically, I wouldn't be eating my usual Goodfellas pizza). Influencers I found online who have gone without refrigeration use the opportunity to explore recipes that our forebears used before the luxury of refrigeration became a household norm. So I tried in vain to see what it would be like to go without using anything from our fridge for one week. Sound easy. Spoiler alert: it wasn't. Day one was the easiest primarily because I was prepared. For breakfast, I had toast and avocado and a flapjack. For my dinner, I had soup that I bought in fresh, sealed, foiled bags and stored in the cupboard, and that evening, I had toast and sardines. I drank my coffee black and went without tea. Dare I say it, day one was simple. However, by day three, having repeated the same meals, my salad dreams had wilted. I had bought green beans, mini cucumbers, carrots, and a few heads of lettuce, thinking it would be fine in the press. I was looking forward to, as the D'unbeliveables would say, "a simple bit of salad," but it had shrivelled and died. I plunged it into cold water from the tap, but there was no saving. Day four, I'm in Super Valu with my eldest, looking at vegetables in glass jars. She quipped, "Dad, don't get them for me." They were all right. The best had to be my newfound love for pickled beetroot. Day five is the third time I've been to the butchers. Now I know there's a hypocrisy here. Yes, butchers use fridges, but I DON'T agree. I shared a burger with no chips (they came out of the freezer) with the kids for dinner and boiled some pasta. On day six, I hit a curve ball. We were heading out to eat. I ordered a roast dinner. I didn't ask the wait staff, "Sorry, but can you only serve me food that hasn't been in your fridges, please?" because my family are continually embarrassed by my social excursions with them already, and I didn't want to heap any more misery on them. Also, I was hungry. I repeated my first day's feast of sardines and bread the following day and was happy that the week had ended. However, I gained three really valuable insights over the seven days. Firstly, our food choices today are endless. Take away the fridge, and due in no part to food science, they still are, but the convenience goes away. That ham sandwich or pack of chicken breasts you rustle up disappears. You have to do something that I hate: plan ahead. Secondly, you visit the shops daily when you are without refrigeration (even for one person). I understand why every small town and village had dozens of little shops a century ago. They were vital to a pre-refrigerated world. Finally, I stockpile meat and vegetables that we never consume, especially for no reason when I have a plethora of shopping options nearby. But it's the fresh vegetables that gave me a surprise. If I treated them with the same respect as I did with meat, I would most definitely eat more of them. But honestly, a week of sardines and longing glances at my idle fridge? I've never been happier to reunite with a chilled carrot. Dropshipping is one of those new terms you may have come across and wondered, 'What does it mean?' However, the idea of dropshipping has been around for a while, and it is gaining momentum. There are stories doing the rounds of teenagers who are on the brink of becoming millionaires thanks to their dropshipping business. Of course, these are the super-success stories, but where there's a will, theres a way - starting a dropshipping business will take work, but it could prove quite lucrative if successful. Dropshipping is basically having a business and selling products without having a store. What a dropshipper does is sell the products to a customer, and pass on the order to the manufacturer, who then delivers the goods to the customer under your company name. The dropshipper earns money as they pay a wholesale price for the items, but then can mark up the price when selling them onto customers. Walter Dunphy on Irishfinancial.ie said: Dropshipping is a business model that allows you to create a website or social media page that advertises a product that you can rebrand as your own if you please. You do not keep any stock of the product on hand, once a customer orders the product from you, you then buy it from the supplier who then ships it directly to the customer. Digital marketing consultant, Cian Murphy, said for anyone hoping to become a dropshipper, the challenges will be finding customers, setting up a local website and handling customer support. Starting a dropshipping business can be an excellent venture if you have the right information at hand. Dropshipping is so popular because the dropshipper does not need to hold stock. The drop shipper does not require to part with a vast sum of capital for stocking up the store like conventional retail shops, he said. There are many things to consider if you are thinking about getting into the world of dropshipping. Firstly, think long and hard about what products you want to sell and their profitability. Like any other business, you need to inspire yourself and learn to manage your time properly, said Mr Murphy. Things to consider when starting out is getting a good supplier and this is where extensive research needs to happen. Word of mouth, of course, is such a valuable research tool, but it is vital to do as much research as possible at this point. After that, Mr Murphy said next on your list should be obtaining a business permit and selecting a platform for your enterprise. Select a market segment which is not fully saturated. It is not easy to find an unsaturated niche, but with the invention of new products now and then, makes it possible to get new market segments, said Mr Murphy. Just because you dont have a physical store as part of a dropshipping business, it does not mean that you will not have to do the planning that would generally go into starting a business. Like any other company having a business plan is key, especially laying out how you plan to make a profit. You need to venture into a profitable market segment because the objective of any business is to make a profit. Explore several business ideas and narrow them down depending on the profit margins, and pick the one with the highest profit margin or potential, said Mr Muphy. Mr Murphy also highlights certain features that a dropshipping product should have and these should be considered when starting out. I would advise you to deal with portable products that are easy to transport to customers to avoid incurring additional shipment costs. Deal with products that are not too cheap because the profit margin will be negligible while highly expensive products will reduce your customer traffic. Deal with average-priced products affordable to a wide range of customers. He also advises choosing products that are not seasonal, because he points out you will only sell them on seasons and this will kick you out of business when there are no holidays. Do not try to introduce a product that is experiencing stiff competition, since you will only fail, he added. Mr Dunphy said that rather than looking to far-away international markets, an alternative would be to look for European suppliers or even specifically Irish suppliers that would allow you to list their products on your website. Although this is likely to lead to tighter profit margins it will help you still maintain a position where you do not have to keep stock on hand and still get products out to customers on a speedily. The final piece to the puzzle then will be making sure you attract customers and this will be where marketing and advertising come into play. There are multiple strategies that you can use to lure customers into buying your products. One of the best ways to attract customers is by creating a list of email addresses which you can use to communicate regularly to your customers, said Mr Murphy. The ship at the centre of the biggest cocaine seizure in Irish history has been confiscated by the State. The MV Matthew was seized in September carrying over 2.2 tonnes of cocaine, with a conservative value of 157m but which may have a street value of some 500m. The 190m long, 32m wide bulk cargo vessel, which is estimated to be worth around 9m, is to be put up for auction. It has been docked in Cork Harbour since it was seized and impounded and it has been at the centre of a major Garda investigation. Notification of the confiscation was made in the official State gazette, Iris Oifigiuil, on October 20. It gave anyone with a claim to the vessel 30 days to contest forfeiture of the vessel and that period has now lapsed, meaning it has been confiscated. The notice said that, on October 19, the Panamanian-registered MV Matthew was seized by a customs officer on the grounds that it is liable to forfeiture under section 17 of the Customs Act 2015. Barrister and maritime law specialist Ciaran McCarthy said that the ship would likely be auctioned off by the State soon. The State has to minimise its losses, said Mr McCarthy. It costs the State money to have this ship in existence. A ship is a living thing in the sense that if you didnt have a crew on there and you didnt have people maintaining it, keeping its generators running, etc, it would start to deteriorate. Also, of course, there are mooring fees attached to it, there are port fees. So the State is simply stepping in and exercising its right to recoup those fees. Its given whoever is the owner of the MV Matthew the chance to come and claim the ship, but its highly unlikely they would do so given that it was found with 200m worth of cocaine on board. Mr McCarthy said the ship, built in 2001, is not a very valuable ship and it is difficult to estimate its value without inspecting it. However, he said the ship had managed to traverse the Atlantic from the Caribbean to Cork so it was operational and its bulk alone would make it valuable for steel scrappage. It would be in the interest of the State to get rid of this immediately. I would imagine that the State will request that the local auctioneer specialised in marine matters will organise the sale of it. The MV Matthews journey to Ireland began on August 19, departing from Curacao, a Dutch-Caribbean island north of Venezuela. Initially named the MV Honmon, it was renamed MV Matthew shortly before its journey to Cork. It had been bought by a newly established company registered as Matthew Maritime Inc, with an address in the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands require minimal details for company registrations, making company owners very difficult to track. After the ship reached Irish waters, on September 26, warning shots were fired by the LE William Butler Yeats naval vessel as the MV Matthew allegedly tried to flee from Irish authorities into international waters. The elite Army Ranger Wing then stormed the vessel, with officers fast-roped from a helicopter onto the ship before arrests were made. Meanwhile, the Castletownbere-registered fishing trawler, the Castlemore, which was also allegedly used in a drugs trafficking operation but which ran aground in the days before the MV Matthew was intercepted, remains stuck on a sandbank off the Wexford coast. A Belfast boy who inspired a campaign to change organ donation laws in Northern Ireland has passed the milestone of 2,000 days on a transplant waiting list. Seven-year-old Daithi Mac Gabhann is battling hypoplastic left heart syndrome and needs a new heart. His father Mairtin has used the occasion to urge people to sign up to the NHS organ donor register. Most adults in Northern Ireland are now considered potential organ donors after Daithis Law came into effect last year. The Organ and Tissue Donation (Deemed Consent) legislation changed the way consent is granted. Adults are now deemed to have given consent as a potential organ donor after their death unless they choose to opt out or are in an excluded group. Mairtin Mac Gabhann with his son Daithi (Liam McBurney/PA) Daithi, who was awarded the freedom of Belfast earlier this year, has been on the waiting list for a heart transplant since 2018. In June he was temporarily suspended from the transplant waiting list, a decision which his father Mairtin said broke our hearts. Mr Mac Gabhann said: Transplant is currently Daithis only hope of survival and to have that taken away from us was devastating. Thankfully after all or nothing surgery in July of this year, Daithi is now back and active on the waiting list. This was a lesson to us of how fragile Daithis condition can be, and how quickly circumstances can change for the worse. Although Daithi is currently stable, we feel that time is still not on his side. Mr Mac Gabhann added: Please, take the two minutes and consider joining the NHS Organ Donor Register. Encourage your family to sign up, regardless of age. Please dont give up on Daithi and our campaign. While Daithi's Law is in place, we must continue to take action. We are very proud that Daithis Law is in place and saving lives, but as a society we can do more. No amount of money can save my sons life, but words and discussions can. Share your organ donation decision with loved ones, and lets work together to save more lives. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met Daithi Mac Gabhann earlier this year (Niall Carson/PA) There are currently 47 children across the UK on the transplant waiting list for a new heart. MPs at Westminster last year progressed the stalled legislation on the opt-out donation system in Northern Ireland because the political impasse at Stormont meant local Assembly members were unable to convene to pass the regulations. Earlier this year Daithi received the Points of Light award which he given personally from Rishi Sunak when he visited Belfast. The number of people in Ireland saying they are in good or very good health is in decline compared to pre-pandemic levels, along with an increase in people reporting long-term medical conditions. Furthermore, almost one in five young people aged 15 to 24 regularly use e-cigarettes (18%) while almost a quarter of the population (24%) say they are binge drinkers. Wednesday marked the publication of the Healthy Ireland survey for 2023, which looks at general trends across multiple factors on the health of the Irish nation. It looks at issues such as general health, smoking, alcohol, GP visits, and mental health. In the first year of the survey in 2015, 85% of the population reported being in good or very good health. This remained fairly static until 2019 but has fallen since then. In 2023, 81% of men reported their health as good or very good, while just 79% of women said the same. Among women, the largest decline was reported in women aged 55 to 64 reporting good health, down 13 points from 2019. Two in five people have a long-term condition that has been confirmed by a diagnosis. This is an increase of 11 percentage points since 2021. The most common conditions were high blood pressure or hypertension (9%), followed by arthritis (6%), high cholesterol, asthma, and diabetes (all 5%), the survey said. The prevalence of smoking has been dropping steadily since 2015, when it was at 23%. However, the rate of 18% of the population describing themselves as current smokers has remained static for the last three years. The 25 to 34 age group was the most likely to smoke, while men were more likely to be smokers than women. More people in Ireland describe themselves as ex-smokers than current smokers. Half of current smokers tried to quit in the last year, with 23% successful in doing so. E-cigarette usage and binge drinking Meanwhile, 8% of the population use e-cigarettes daily but this rises significantly among younger groups. A fifth (20%) of women aged 15-24 use e-cigarettes either daily (11%) or occasionally (9%), making them the group with the highest prevalence of the e-cigarette usage, the survey said. 16% of men in the same age group use e-cigarettes either daily (9%) or occasionally (7%). Meanwhile, the rate of alcohol consumption among the population has decreased compared to previous years. 70% of people reported drinking alcohol in the last 12 months, down from 75% in 2018. It said: There has been a notable change in drinking behaviour over the past five years among those aged 25-54, inclusive. Those in this age group are now less likely to have consumed alcohol in the past 12 months and are also less likely to drink at least once a week. This is particularly evident among individuals at the younger end of this age range. Men, and in particular younger men, were more likely to be binge drinkers according to the survey. File picture: Johnny Green/PA Wire The rate of binge drinking, where a person drinks more than six standard drinks on a typical drinking occasion, stood at 24% of the population down from 27% in 2018. Men, and in particular younger men, were more likely to be binge drinkers according to the survey. On the other hand, the number of people visiting their GP has increased in recent years. This has been primarily driven by a growth in younger age groups seeing their GP. In the past year, 76% of people visited their doctor. While 44% of people paid nothing to see their GP, a further 35% of people had to pay between 51 and 75. Mental health In terms of mental well-being, better results were reported compared to 2021 when restrictions were in place but remain down on pre-pandemic levels. Minister of State Mary Butler said: Mental well-being is not back to where it was before the covid-19 pandemic and this requires continued focus. When asked, 4% of the population said they feel lonely all the time while a further 10% said they felt lonely some of the time. The survey also looked at drug use among the population, with one in five reporting having taken illegal drugs in their lifetime. A further 7% said theyd taken drugs in the last year, and 3% said theyd taken drugs in the last month. The most common illegal drugs used within the last year are cannabis (5.9%), cocaine (1.9%), ecstasy or MDMA (0.8%), magic mushrooms (0.8%) and ketamine (0.4%). One-fifth of people in the 15-24 age group said theyd taken drugs in the last year with, again, men more likely to have done so. In 2023, three in five people in Ireland said they have had covid-19 at some point. This was an increase from 36% in 2022. The Oireachtas has heard that a national strategy for increasing the airplay of Irish artists on TV and radio stations would mean that "no one could fail here". Members of the Oireachtas media committee heard from representatives of the Music and Entertainment Association of Ireland (MEAI) and independent artist Rebecca Cappuccini about the struggles facing up-and-coming musicians when it comes to getting their music promoted. While many stations indicate that they will hit a 20% quota for playing Irish music one in every five tracks the association believes that many are not following through. MEAI co-founder Jackie Conboy said: "I've spoken to a number of local radio stations in recent weeks, and the one thing that comes back is that they give the people what they want. "Theyre playing what people are requesting," he said. "Thats lost on some stations. They want to look like a national station similar. "The stations who are looking after their county or area, those listeners are remaining loyal. Rebecca Cappuccini told the Oireachtas media committee that, for young people, there is a 'disconnect between what the radio thinks they want and what they seek'. Mr Conboy pointed to similarities between British radio stations and those in Ireland. In response to a question about plans by Irish stations to simulcast Ryan Tubridy's new show on Virgin Radio in Britain, he said: "There seems to be a thing now where [producers] are looking at whats being played in the UK and [are using] a lot of the same playlists, very much so. "That has to change to a degree. Our market is different. "At the moment, what happens in Dublin City and what happens outside the M50 are two different things. "If you said that to people in Dublin that you could get Mike Denver into a venue and get 600, 700 people, theyd think your mad, but you can." Aidan Butler, a member of the MEAI committee and former producer for RTE Radio One, added: "There is a big [east-west] divide. Some radio stations and even RTE and the Dublin based ones are included they have to, as a commercial organisation, they have to look at having 1.5m listeners in one area. Aidan Butler highlighted the different markets within Ireland, telling the Oireachtas media committee that country star Charley Pride once told him he 'could sell out three nights in Cork, Galway, and Limerick but couldn't even get arrested in Dublin'. "Do they put on something that they know that listeners will hit the button to switch after five seconds of a song? Mr Butler noted how late country music star Charley Pride once remarked to him that he "could sell out three nights in Cork, Galway, and Limerick but couldn't even get arrested in Dublin". The likes of Nathan Carter had "cut his teeth" on local radio, he said. He added that radio stations were always looking for the next Beatles or U2 but were being hamstrung by not "broadening their horizons" by going to concerts themselves to find new musicians. iRadio was singled out and highlighted for praise by both Mr Butler and Mr Conboy for their work in promoting Irish artists. Social Democrats TD Ciaran Cannon suggested that the Irish music industry could mirror that of Korea noting that, in 1997, during poor economic times, the Korean government poured funding into its culture and music, resulting in the K-Pop phenomenon of the 2010s and present day. He said: "Sitting in someones bedroom right now could be the next U2 or Cranberries. "They arent getting recordings, they arent getting airplay. It would be a horrendous shame if all of that talent doesnt have the support mechanisms in place." The Edge and Bono on stage at the U2 eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour at the O2 Arena in London. Ms Cappuccini said: "We have such strong artists in this country, we dont need to look outside of it. "Most younger people, they all listen to playlists that they make for each other. Their interest in radio is gone. The radio is giving them the same stuff theres a disconnect between what the radio thinks they want and what they seek. Ive been working in the music industry for two decades as a manager, a fixer, a venue manager, an artist liaison, a tour manager. Its not just me coming as a person who didnt make it with a track three months ago, its coming as a person who has seen many people just like me not making it. When asked if a national strategy would be beneficial, she agreed, noting: "There is no one who can fail here." The committee agreed to write to Justice Minister Helen McEntee after concerns were raised by the speakers about the safety of performers, particularly in Dublin City. Ms Cappuccini said: "The issues are primarily gig-goers who are scared to go out after dark, buskers and people going in to venues with expensive equipment which was being stolen." The committee was told that if all the relevant stakeholders were brought together to discuss the national plan, it would be "majorly beneficial". A garda investigation is under way after a woman was injured in a shooting incident at a house in Dublin on Tuesday night. At approximately 10.10pm, gardai say they received reports of the discharge of a firearm at a residential premises in the Jobstown area of Tallaght. A woman aged, 30s, later presented to Tallaght Hospital with a suspected gunshot injury. Her injuries are not understood to be life-threatening. Gardai and emergency services personnel were also called to incidents of criminal damage by fire to a car and a house at separate locations in the Jobstown area. No other injuries have been reported and no arrests have yet been made. A garda spokesperson said that technical examinations of the scenes are ongoing. Investigating gardai have issued an appeal to anyone who was in the Jobstown area between 9.30pm and 3:00am, and who may have seen something, to come forward. They have also requested that any pedestrians or motorists with camera footage make this available. Anyone with information should contact Tallaght Garda Station on 01 666 6000 or at the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111. More than 30,000 information requests were made to the Department of Agriculture last year under pseudonyms linked to Willy Wonka, Mel Gibson, and Russell Crowe, the High Court has heard. 'Willy Wonka made 745 individual requests to the department over six days in the autumn of 2022, the Department said. It reported its annual average of 167 requests under Access to Information on the Environment (AIE ) Regulations ballooned to 32,297 in 2022, with most related to forestry matters. The court heard that state forestry body Coillte had to deploy three additional staff to deal full-time with such requests. High Court judge Mr Justice Richard Humphreys remarked the requester is more likely than not to be an individual rather than a group of people and seems to have a particular interest in American cinema from the 1980s and later. Coillte and its parent Government department both told the High Court they experienced an unprecedented increase in requests under the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations in 2022. Coillte told the court the concerted and co-ordinated campaign has required it to expend significant resources, including deploying three additional staff to deal full-time with the requests. The Department of Agriculture said its annual average of 167 AIE requests ballooned to 32,297 in 2022, of which 30,630 were related to forestry matters. This level of inquiry is absolutely unprecedented and has forced it to increase AIE section staffing, which has a knock-on effect for other areas, the department added. Under the legislation, a public body has four weeks to process an information request, with a further four weeks if required. The judge remarked the requester was likely to be an individual who had an interest in post-1980s films. Picture: PA Photo/Lionsgate Films Coillte said there was no prospect of it being able to process the unprecedented number of requests within the permissible time period. Coillte put together a table setting out its views on the possible inspiration behind the requesters identities. Among those seeking information was Ben Wade, who, Coillte said, could be a reference to the character played by Russell Crowe in the 2007 film Yuma. Jess Robin might be linked to Neil Diamonds performance in the 1980 movie The Jazz Singer. Stanley White was the name of a captain in the 1985 film Year of the Dragon, Coillte added. Coillte said it dealt with earlier requests in the normal way because they at that point seemed typical or one-off. The issue only became apparent in March 2022 when it began to realise a significant number of requests were of a similar style, type, and phraseology. In the months from then until June 2022, it received 130 pseudonymised requests. It has received no more of these types of requests since June 7, 2022, it said. Generally, Coillte replied to the requests seeking the individuals current address and confirmation the names were the requesters actual legal names. When none of this information was provided, it regarded the requests as invalid. The requesters then sought an internal review before appealing 81 rejections to the Commissioner for Environmental Information. The commissioner addressed 58 of the cases in a block, with 23 more still to be decided. In its omnibus decision, the commissioner ruled it had jurisdiction to consider the appeal and found Coillte was not justified in treating the requests as invalid. The State forestry firm appealed to the High Court seeking to set aside this decision. It wants a declaration that the commissioner erred in accepting and considering the purported appeals. The court should also declare that Coillte was entitled to require requesters to provide confirmation of their name and address, it says. Mr Justice Richard Humphreys decided that the appeal could not be determined without referring questions of interpreting EU law to the Court of Justice of the EU. Among the issues referred to is one asking whether the EU directive that gave rise to the AIE Regulations defines an applicant as a natural or legal person identified by their actual name and/or physical address, or if it includes an anonymous or pseudonymous person whose contact details are identified only by email. The reference also asks if the directive prohibits a public authority from seeking confirmation about a requesters identity where the authority has formed a reasonable view that the identity is questionable. Sinn Fein has hit back following the publication of a letter from the organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) over its concerns about the "methods of intimidation" being taken by it through "repeated legal actions" against media and journalists. In a joint letter to Mary Lou McDonald signed by 11 media organisations, the RSF expressed its alarm after a Sinn Fein TD lodged defamation proceedings against the Irish Times and its political correspondent Harry McGee. The claim was lodged in the High Court over the reporting of a comment made by Chris Andrews the day after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. The article in question included comments made by Mr Andrews on social media about the events in Israel, including his responses to a post on X, formerly Twitter, by Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission. However, in a letter on Friday, the RSF said politicians should seek to avoid resorting to the courts except in the most egregious of circumstances. This included taking advantage of the Press Ombudsman and the Press Council system. On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Sinn Fein told the Irish Examiner that while Ms McDonald has received the letter, she "has no intention of responding to inaccurate suggestions contained therein". "All citizens have the right to protect their name and reputation, and such fundamental legal rights in no way cut across or undermine robust political debate, which happens every single day of the week in the Oireachtas and in the media," the spokesperson said. "It is not unreasonable for these debates to be based on fact and truth." The letter from the RSF said that Ms McDonald should "be aware" that the legal actions that Sinn Fein members are "currently taking against the media have the hallmarks of SLAPPs (strategic lawsuits against public participation)". "As you know, SLAPPs are a form of legal harassment used by powerful people to intimidate and silence public watchdogs, including journalists, the RSF added. The fact that Sinn Feins most recent legal action has been filed against journalist Harry McGeeas an individualgives credence to the idea that it is intended to chill public interest speech. Moreover, the number of legal actions that have been filed by Sinn Fein members points to a co-ordinated campaign against the media in Ireland. The Sinn Fein spokesperson added that "it is interesting" that the same concerns expressed in the letter are not being expressed to Fianna Fail or Fine Gael. "Given dozens of current and former Fianna Fail and Fine Gael representatives have taken or threatened legal action against media outlets. The authors of this letter seem to be suggesting that a different standard should apply to Sinn Fein representatives in defending their good names," the spokesperson added. White House planners did not include Cork in the first draft itinerary they prepared for President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's famous visit to Ireland in June 1963. But that was quickly changed one day after the president called his cigar-smoking press secretary Pierre Salinger into his office in Washington. Mr Kennedy, who had earlier overruled his aides who did not want him to visit Ireland at all during his 10-day European tour, told him he must visit Cork. No reason was given for the presidents insistence, but Salinger surmised during a visit to Ireland two weeks before JFKs arrival that it was probably due to the presidents forebears, the Fitzgeralds, being from the county and therefore a part of his family heritage. On his way into the City Hall in Cork to be conferred with the Freedom of the City by Lord Mayor Sean Casey, on June 28, 1963, the president shook hands with a number of Fitzgerald men from the Skibbereen area. All were farmers. HISTORY HUB If you are interested in this article then no doubt you will enjoy exploring the various history collections and content in our history hub. Check it out HERE and happy reading Later, in his address to the 1,000 invited guests, he mentioned how he had met with four rather angry Fitzgeralds, who told him they were tired of hearing about the Kennedys of New Ross and asked him what about the Fitzgeralds. I said that was because my grandfather, John F Fitzgerald, who was mayor of Boston, used to tell everybody he was from Limerick or Donegal, Galway, or anywhere. President Kennedy is almost lost among a crowd of well-wishers during his visit to Cork. File picture: Keystone/Getty Images Family history The grandfather he referred to was the celebrated Honey Fitz, who was three times Mayor of Boston. His first term was from 1906 to 1908, after the death of Mayor Patrick Collins, who was born in Fermoy, Co Cork. Fitzgerald was defeated in the next election but was returned to office again from 1910 to 1914. He also served in the US Congress, had the gift of the gab, could sing like a lark and was a natural, old-style politician. Patrick J Kennedy, whose own father had emigrated from New Ross, was initially an opponent of Honey Fitz, the son of another Irish emigrant, Tom Fitzgerald, from Bruff in Co Limerick. But they later became political allies and were also united through the marriage in 1914 of their respective offspring, Joseph P Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald. Rose Fitzgerald was the eldest daughter of Honey Fitz and his wife Josie Hannon, whose father Michael was from Lough Gur and whose mother Mary Anne was a Fitzgerald from Bruff. Joseph P Kennedy was the eldest son of Patrick J Kennedy and his wife, Maura Hickey, whose father James came from Cork. His wife, Margaret Field, was also Irish, and may have been from Cork as well. Politics was never far from Honey Fitzs mind and he was reputed to have held an election meeting in Kenmare, Co Kerry, during his 1908 visit during which he urged the locals to write letters to their relatives in Boston asking them to vote for him. President Kennedy at Collins Barrack after arriving in Cork Mr Kennedys family links with Cork, through his Hickey great grandmother, were probably not the only reasons he insisted on coming to the city. His wife Jacquelines maternal great grand parents, James Lee and Mary Norton, also travelled to the US from Cork. She visited Ireland as a 21-year-old in 1950, attended the Dublin Horse Show, travelled to Cork to find out more about her maternal roots, and is said to have kissed the Blarney Stone. But the Cork connections did not end there because Kennedys closest and trusted aides, Dave Powers and Larry OBrien, were both from West Cork, albeit once removed. He introduced each of them in the City Hall during his visit. Powers was his right-hand man from his first political campaign in Boston in 1946 to his death in Dallas in 1963. He later became the first curator of the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. A gifted storyteller with quick-fire wit, his father John Powers was from Rodeen, Castletownbere, while his mother, Catherine, was a Green from Ardra, Bere Island. Larry OBrien, who was later appointed US postmaster general by President Lyndon Johnson, directed Mr Kennedys senatorial (1952) and presidential (1960) campaigns, was with him in Dallas and also with his brother Senator Bobby Kennedy when he was assassinated in Los Angeles. President Kennedy speaking at Cork City Hall during his visit to the city in June 1963. A brilliant electoral strategist, he was chairman of the Democratic national committee when his office in the Watergate complex in Washington was burgled in 1972, setting off one of the major scandals in US political history, leading to the president, Richard Nixons resignation. OBrien, whose namesake father was from Skibbereen and his mother Myra, who was a Sweeney from Dunmanway, later came to Glengarrriff to work on his memoirs No Final Victories A Life in Politics from John Fitzgerald Kennedy to Watergate.1 Before leaving Washington for his European tour, Mr Kennedy had arranged for all members of the White House staff of Irish descent to be flown to Ireland for his visit. He also assigned somebody to find out which of his staff members had relatives still living in Ireland. As a result, several first cousins of Dave Powers as well as Larry OBriens aunt, Julia Sweeney from Dunmanway, his mothers youngest sister, were among those present in Cork City Hall for his address. Mr OBrien later wrote that the visit to Ireland moved Mr Kennedy and rekindled in him a sense of his Irish heritage. That was certainly to the fore when he travelled through the streets of Cork from Collins Barracks in a motorcade of 14 vehicles to the City Hall. An estimated 100,000 people turned out to greet Kennedy. A White House photographer captured the enormity of the welcome on St Patricks St. The photo shows people 20 deep in places. John F Kennedy is driven through St Patrick's St in an open-top car with Lord Mayor Sean Casey, during his visit to Cork. File picture A few moments later in the Grand Parade, he took delight in a sign attached to a tree. It read: Dont worry, Jack. The Iron Curtain will rust in peace. Another sign on a business premises read Closed. Gone to Meet President Kennedy. The president probably also saw the humour in the huge crane that a certain Cork-based businessman from Glenflesk in Co Kerry had parked near the City Hall a few days earlier. Suspended from the crane was the sign: Cranes for Hire. Any Obstacle in the presidents way, ring Wm. OBrien. But there was a moment of panic when the Secret Service detail temporarily lost sight of the president in Cork City Hall. They were told he had merely slipped into a toilet to answer a call of nature. An anxious agent charged down the marble stairs, pulled a pistol from his belt and took up duty outside a window facing Anglesea St. Some people thought it was over reaction. But it has since emerged there was a reason for the jitters. Declassified papers from the Department of Justice made public in 2006 revealed that several death threats were made against the president while he was in Ireland. Each was a hoax. But the gardai took extra precautions In a pragmatic assessment, Garda Commissioner Daniel Costigan briefed the department that any attempt on the life of the president was most unlikely. The USS Norris, a destroyer which eight months earlier was one of the ships standing off Cuba during the missile crisis that almost led to nuclear war, also dropped anchor in Cork Harbour and stayed there until he had departed the country. This article was first published on June 29, 2013 This podcast is part of our Best of 2023 series Find more of our favourites here. Suella Braverman, the former British home secretary, has left the building (by referencing a 1990s song by The KLF Im showing my age). La Braverman comes to mind because free speech and the corollary right to protest are under full frontal attack, as evidenced by the suppression of Israels critics in its war with Hamas in Gaza. The erosion of rights previously understood in liberal democracies was well underway before the horrific Israel-Hamas battle. The situation is further complicated by the fact that antisemitism has exploded. Whats become obvious is that antisemitism has always been lurking in the undergrowth, but it is not mutually exclusive from discrimination towards other groups. Discrimination is discrimination. Protecting free speech without condoning hate speech has always been difficult. Right now, its a Herculean task. The problem is that, in protecting the rights of one group, for example, the Jewish community, you cannot trample the rights of another group in this case, Palestinians or those who may be pro-Palestinian. Or, more generally, anyone who wants to say things that others might consider contentious or even demeaning from their subjective viewpoint. The right to freedom of expression (or free speech) is protected under Article 40.6 of the Irish Constitution, and under the European Convention of Human Rights but there are limits to the rights. A current bill in front of the Seanad designed to prevent hate speech potentially curbs free speech and bears examination. Then British home secretary Suella Braverman told police they should treat waving Palestinian flags at the November 12 march as a criminal offence. File picture: PA But first, what is the evidence that free speech and the right to protest are getting bashed? Bravermans attitude to a recent pro-Palestine march on Remembrance Day was alarming. She wrote to chief constables in England and Wales telling them that waving the Palestinian flag at a march might be a criminal offence. She also described pro-Palestine protesters as hate marchers. SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said of Bravermans remarks: Its honestly like reading a pound shop Enoch Powell piece. Despite severe public pressure, Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley allowed the march to proceed, saying it was not evident that the threat to public order met the threshold to ban the protest. The requirement to maintain public order is another limit to the freedom to protest. As is preventing hate speech or speech that could incite hatred towards a group of people because of their race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origins, or sexual orientation. Freedom of speech and the right to protest are being curbed in several countries with pro-Palestinian protests strongly discouraged or banned. In France, the Council of State recently ruled that demonstrations in support of Palestinians could not be banned outright but must be considered on a case-by-case basis. In Germany, protests were reportedly banned in Hamburg. In Berlin, schools were authorised to ban students from wearing the keffiyeh or displaying the Palestinian flag and many protests were banned outright in Berlin due to a concern that, if they went ahead, they would incite people to hatred. Did the German authorities go too far? Critics say that they have violated civil liberties but the right to free speech is not as strongly guaranteed in Germany as it would be in Ireland or Britain because of the Holocaust. The balancing act between competing rights in Germany has a particularly fraught resonance. A vigil at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on November 7 in support of Israel and protesting the Hamas attacks on Israel. Picture: Markus Schreiber/AP As Germanys antisemitism commissioner, Felix Klein, reportedly said: Antisemitism is bad anywhere, but it has this other dimension which it doesnt have in any other country. Yet there remains a conundrum of sorts for the Germans. If they go too far in clamping down on the right to protest, they risk eroding the rights of pro-Palestine protesters and potentially trapping themselves in grave moral and political errors. As pointed out in the leader column in this newspaper recently: The lesson from the past is that, at the start of the 1920s, nearly 80% of Germans were strongly in favour of liberal democracy. Yet within 15 years a largely progressive, highly civilised, modern country had turned into a brutal dictatorship. Thats the thing appalling stuff happens if you dont protect fundamental rights in a democracy. The free speech war being fought on American campuses is not new but has intensified since the war. A demonstration in Berlin on November 18 in support of Palestine and protesting Israel's attacks on Gaza. Picture: Fabian Sommer/AP Last week, a Jewish civil rights organisation filed civil rights complaints against Penn University and Wellesley College for allowing antisemitism to run rampant, and George Washington University suspending the Students for Justice in Palestine group for projecting the slogan Glory to our martyrs on the library. However, one complaint was that a Palestinian writers conference had been allowed to take place at the University of Pennsylvania a month before the war. Would allowing Palestinian writers to gather be likely to lead to hate speech and engender violence against Jewish people? On the face of it, it seems not, and it is dangerous territory. This month, The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned that politically-motivated policing of free speech on campus would destroy the foundation on which academic communities are built. So, what about our hate speech bill? The rationale for the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 currently before the Seanad is sound. An Garda Siochana reported that hate crimes had increased by 29% in 2022 compared to the year before. The issue is what the bill lacks. There are safeguards for freedom of expression protecting reasonable and genuine contributions to academic discourse, so if Palestinians or Jewish writers were to get together in our universities they should be fine unless, obviously, what they said was explicitly hateful. But the question is what is explicitly hateful? The bill fails to define hate speech or hate crime. To take one current example of why this might be problematic: Many Jewish people consider any criticism of Israel to be inherently antisemitic, while many of us fundamentally disagree. How would the new bill deal with this scenario? Is it a hate crime against people of Jewish descent to critique Israel? We need clarity on what hate speech consists of, particularly given the act allows for up to a five-year prison sentence for committing a hate crime. In not defining a hate act under the bill, we leave it up to individual judges to decide. While judges always face choices in evolving principles of law, they shouldnt be making law, and not on something important like this. We should revisit our bill. Our challenge is using the law to prevent and prosecute antisemitic hatred or Islamophobia or other hate speech but not in a way that unduly curbs free speech or politicises it. As the last few weeks have demonstrated, its at highly febrile times that bad actors exploit sensitivities, mistakes get made, and democratic backsliding happens. Maybe instead of talking about the dead, talk about the living. Stop talking about killing Arabs. Talk about saving Jews," shouted Hen Avigdori outside the Israeli parliament, or the Knesset, on Monday. Avigdoris wife and daughter were taken by Hamas on October 7. Along with other relatives of hostages, he had taken part in a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to pressure the Israeli government to agree on a deal to release hostages held in Gaza, who have now faced six weeks under heavy bombardment. At another earlier hostage rally in Tel Aviv, a woman wearing a tee-shirt saying psychological first aid was there if demonstrators needed emotional support. She described the anger and betrayal that many Israelis felt after October 7 and that the Israeli government had failed to keep them safe. Its part of the basic contract between the government and Israelis: you keep us safe, said the first aid responder, who did not want to give her name. An opinion poll by the Maariv newspaper last month found 80% of Israelis believed Netanyahu should publicly accept responsibility for the security failures that led to the bloody October 7 attack which killed 1,200 and triggered a war that has displaced 250,000 in Israel and killed more than 13,000 Palestinians. 'Minister for crime' Protestors have increasingly targeted the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically. Outside his residence in Jerusalem earlier this month, protestors chanted Jail Bibi and held posters with Netanyahus face smeared in blood and calling him the minister for crime. One protestor held a board sign saying: An endless nightmare named Netanyahu. When the f**k will it end? According to polling earlier this month by Israeli TV Channel 13, 29% of Israelis believe Netanyahu should resign immediately, while 47% believe he should resign after the war. It's hard to overstate just how much anger and resentment and frustration there is, with Netanyahu specifically, and the far right government in general, said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group. Corrupt and dysfunctional Zonszein said Israels long-serving prime minister was not able to communicate any kind of empathy with the families of hostages and years and years of corruption and political appointments are exposing how corrupt and dysfunctional Israel's institutions are. According to a survey by Bar Ilan University, fewer than 4% of Israelis view Netanyahu as a reliable source of information regarding the war against Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: 'If people wanted Netanyahu out of there, there would either have to be mass protests in the street, which is something that's very difficult to do right now.' Picture: Abir Sultan/ via AP The military loathes the Israeli prime minister, Zonszein said, particularly after he attempted to blame them for October 7 in a now-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter. Opposition Knesset member Avigdor Lieberman, who was once Netanyahus defence minister, said the Israeli premier is not interested in security, he is not interested in hostages, only politics. Everybody is waiting for him to take some kind of responsibility, and he hasnt, said Zonszein. Nobody wants him there, but he's still there Nobody's prepared to take whatever steps would need to be taken to remove him. While many Israelis are angry with the government, they are also still reeling from the October 7 attack and lack the energy to take the streets to protest en-masse. If people wanted Netanyahu out of there, there would either have to be mass protests in the street, which is something that's very difficult to do right now, Zonszein said. Theres a lack of understanding of what should be done and a fear of what the next steps will bring people aren't able to really organise anyway. Repressive climate Many left-leaning activists and Arab-Israeli citizens have reported an increasingly repressive climate for free speech since the war began. Dr Meir Baruchin lost his job teaching American history at a school and had his teaching license revoked by the Ministry of Education after the 62-year-old Israeli activist wrote posts online that were critical of the Israeli military. He was initially detained by the Israeli police while he was investigated for sedition and intent to commit treason and placed in solitary confinement for four days before being released. Jude Liemburg, who is involved in Looking the Occupation in the Eye, a collective of Israeli human rights activists focused on the occupied West Bank, said: You're not allowed to say anything regarding Palestinians or people get crucified on social media, or fired from their work. Yahli Agai, 18, said they received death and rape threats when they wrote relatively mild posts online calling for civilians in Gaza not to be killed. A ceasefire isn't a very popular position among the Israeli public right now, said the Israeli anti-war protestor. A lot of people are scared and traumatised and think only in terms of winning the war. Agai said many people in Israeli view a ceasefire as offensive and giving up to the people who murdered children but Agai believes it is not and that Israelis need to support an end to the cycle of bloodshed. In 2021 Irish politicians from across the political spectrum united to become the first EU nation to pass a motion declaring Israels actions as de facto annexation of Palestinian land. The vote caused ripples across the world and sent out a clear message that Ireland is unified when it comes to the Palestinian people. That unity has been eroded in recent weeks as Israel, before the current brief pause, had ramped up its bombardment of Gaza, which has so far killed more than 10,000 people. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Health Authority in Gaza said they had lost the ability to accurately count the death toll because of the collapse of part of the enclave's health system. Words matter. Members of the opposition have been right to echo the views of the thousands of people who have marched on the streets of our cities in recent weeks in condemnation of the sustained bombardment of Gaza which has caused untold destruction on people who have already suffered years of hardship. Richard Boyd Barrett and others were right to use the privileged position they hold on the opposition benches to call out what they view as the "genocidal intent" of Israel. "They have done this by warning they will cut off food and electricity; by referring to Palestinians as animals; by talking about inflicting a new Nakba a new catastrophe on the Palestinians; and by talking about things such as erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. I could go on," the People Before Profit-Solidarity TD said. But the Government is also right to choose its words wisely. Tanaiste Micheal Martin made it clear that "motions did not get Irish citizens out of Gaza, diplomacy did. This is the bottom line." Mr Martin knows that his theatre is not Leinster House, but his voice carries directly to Israel, Egypt, the West Bank, and other Middle Eastern states, that have real influence on what might happen next. Political stance Sinn Fein's Matt Carthy, in an unusual move for a member of the opposition, acknowledged in the Dail how far politicians have gone, taking a stance that goes beyond our international counterparts. "In the context of the horrendous savagery we have seen unfold in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel over the past six and a half weeks, the official words of Ireland matter. "It was important that this Parliament was among the first in the world to call for a ceasefire a full unequivocal ceasefire and that it repeats that call at every opportunity. " Mr Carthy added that the Taoiseach's words were also important when he "correctly acknowledged" that Israeli actions of cutting off power, fuel and water supplies constitute collective punishment. "It was important when the Tanaiste rightly stated that the Israeli assault on Gaza contravenes the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, under which the concepts and principles of necessity and proportionality are key. "Words were especially important when the Taoiseach stated that ongoing Israeli atrocities cannot be without consequence. Irish words matter, not more than but as much as those of anybody else." There also comes a time when actions as well as words are needed. Actions such as the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and sanctions on Israel have been pushed by the opposition. For the Government, it must balance any actions with the ability to speak up by remaining in the room. But Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has now suggested that the Israeli government is not listening to anyone, including US President Joe Biden. Sadly the Israeli government doesn't listen to us. I'm not sure the Israeli government listens to anyone anymore. They used to listen to the Americans. I'm not even sure that's the case anymore. They are, as President Biden said, at risk of being blinded by rage," Mr Varadkar told the Dail. Fifty women and children held hostage by Hamas and other groups in Gaza since October 7 are set to be released in exchange for a four-day ceasefire, the office of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. According to the Israeli government, Hamas militants took about 240 hostages and killed 1,200 people when they raided Israel on October 7. The hostages were taken from communities, including collective farms, kibbutzim and military bases in southern Israel as well as people attending an outdoor music festival. More than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the US Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal. Nine-year-old Israeli-Irish girl Emily Hand is also believed to be among the hostages held in the enclave. Hamas has said it has hidden the captives in "safe places and tunnels" in Gaza. Family members of Israeli hostages who are currently being held in Gaza, Thomas Hand (second right), the father of nine-year-old Irish-Israeli child Emily Hand, Iris Haim (left), the mother of Yotam Haim and Orit Meir (right) the mother of Almog Meir, 21, during a press conference at the Israel Embassy in London. Picture: Victoria Jones/PA Wire Here is everything we know so far about the four-day pause in fighting: Who brokered the deal? The deal between Israel and Hamas was brokered by Qatar with the support of the United States. A US official said three Americans would be among those freed, including a girl who turns four this week, and that the first release should take place by Thursday. What are the terms of the deal? Palestinians gather in front of a building hit by an Israeli on the Gaza Strip at the Nusseirat refugee camp. Picture: AP Photo/Adel Hana According to Hamas, Israel will release 150 Palestinian prisonersall women and childrenfrom Israeli jails and allow hundreds of aid trucks a day to cross the Rafah border with Egypt, providing humanitarian supplies to Palestinians in Gaza. Israel will cease air strikes in southern Gaza and restrict them to six hours a day in the north, according to the Hamas account of the deal, which also says Israeli forces have committed to not bring military vehicles into Gaza during the ceasefire, nor try to detain anyone. The ceasefire would be extended by a day for every 10 additional hostages released, the Israeli government said. The agreement temporarily pauses a war that has lasted more than six weeks so far. The conflict has already cost the lives of 14,128 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the government media office in Gaza, and more than 1,200 people in Israel. Why has an agreement been reached now? Israels government has come under intense pressure domestically to make progress on returning hostages. Their families mounted a high-profile bring them home campaign, meeting members of the Israeli war cabinet on Monday night. The military assault on northern Gaza had resulted in only one hostage being rescued alive. A woman takes a photo of a poster showing Israelis held captive in Gaza plastered underneath a picture of Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. Picture: AP Photo/Ariel Schalit International pressure has also been mounting in response to the increasingly desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza. Bombing by the Israeli military followed by the ground invasion have caused a civilian crisis: food, water, fuel and medicines are desperately short, 1.7 million people out of 2.3 million have been displaced, and only 10 out of 36 hospitals are functioning. Last week, 68% of Americans said they supported a ceasefire, reflecting concerns in the US that Israel had gone too far in its military response. Hamas is losing ground on the battlefield, as Israels forces have been able to capture large parts of northern Gaza, including Gaza City. Will fighting restart once the ceasefire is over? Hamas is likely to want to use any ceasefire to re-group, and it is possible it could seek to extend it by offering to gradually release more of the hostages. Israel has re-iterated its vow to eliminate Hamas, so its survival as a group would represent a victory. Israel has greater motives to return to the battlefield. The Israeli military has not yet occupied all of northern Gaza. On Tuesday, it had surrounded Jabalia, which it considers a Hamas stronghold, and the nearby Indonesian hospital, the only functioning large medical facility in the north. Israeli commanders are also focused on the south of Gaza, and in particular the city of Khan Younis, where they believe Hamass leadership is based and the remaining hostages may be held. Palestinians look at houses destroyed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Monday. Picture: AP Photo/Hatem Ali) Some in the Israeli military establishment argue that delivering a knockout blow to Hamas would require attacking the city, though it would kill and displace even more civilians in an already crowded country. The US has made clear it will not support a ground offensive in the south, unless there are much greater safeguards against civilian casualties. - The Guardian Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement over a four-day halt to the devastating war in Gaza. The truce will be accompanied by the release of dozens of hostages held by the militant group in return for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, mediators said. The deal marks the biggest diplomatic breakthrough since Hamas October 7 rampage into southern Israel ignited a war that has devastated vast swaths of Gaza and raised fears of a wider conflict across the Middle East. The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, which has played a key role in mediating with Hamas, announced the deal without saying when it would go into effect. Fifty hostages will be released in stages, in exchange for what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will release women and children first, and the supply of humanitarian aid flowing into the besieged territory will be ramped up. "They are lacking the essential needs to survive, to stay alive. Even if this conflict stops, people have no idea how they are going to rebuild their lives again". Our colleague Hisham in #Gaza shared this audio weeks ago. Today, the ongoing suffering is even more devastating pic.twitter.com/k6vBymfFO9 ICRC (@ICRC) November 21, 2023 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume the war after the truce and keep fighting until we achieve all our goals, including the defeat of Hamas. Residents in Gaza City said the fighting there had intensified overnight into Wednesday, with gunfire, heavy artillery and air strikes in central neighbourhoods. The announcement capped weeks of indirect Qatari-led negotiations between Israel and Hamas, an Islamic militant group that seized Gaza from the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority in 2007. The United States and Egypt were also involved in stop-and-go talks to free some of the roughly 240 hostages captured by Hamas and other militants during their wide-ranging October 7 raid. Todays outcome is the result of tireless diplomacy and relentless effort across the United States government. While this deal marks significant progress, we will not rest as long as Hamas continues to hold hostages in Gaza. https://t.co/gG2LlPMUhM Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) November 22, 2023 US President Joe Biden welcomed the deal, saying Mr Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure that the hostages are released and humanitarian aid can be sent to Gaza. Qatars Prime Minister and top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent ceasefire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel said that the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it is standing by to assist any swap. Israels justice ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible for release as part of the deal, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offences. Under Israeli law, the public has 24 hours to object to any release. A man passes by a fence with photographs of hostages, mostly Israeli civilians who were abducted during the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel, in Ramat Gan (AP) As the full extent of the devastation becomes known and as hostages are released, pressure could grow on Israel to end its war without achieving its goal of crushing Hamas. Even the US, Israels chief backer, has expressed concerns about the heavy toll on Gazas civilian population. An air strike overnight hit a residential building in the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 17 people, including children, said Ahmad Balouny, a relative of the deceased. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of two children pulled from the rubble, one of them badly burned. (PA Graphics) Despite the massive destruction across Gaza and the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians, Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar will likely present the release of the prisoners seen by most Palestinians as heroes resisting occupation as a major achievement, and declare victory if the war ends without removing Hamas from power. In a statement, Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid including fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza. It said Israeli aircraft would stop flying over southern Gaza for the duration of the four-day ceasefire and for six hours daily in the north. The war erupted in early October, when several thousand Hamas militants broke through Israels formidable defencbes and poured into the south, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capturing scores more. Palestinians gather in front of a building hit by an Israeli on the Gaza Strip in Nusseirat refugee camp (AP) Israel responded with weeks of devastating air strikes on Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It does not differentiate between civilians and militants, though some two-thirds of the dead have been identified as women and minors. The invasion has caused vast destruction in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, displaced more than 1.7 million people and caused severe shortages of food, medicine and other basics throughout the territory. Israel cut off all fuel imports at the start of the war, causing a territory-wide power blackout. Israel has rejected growing international criticism and vowed to press ahead until it destroys Hamas military and governing capabilities, and all hostages are freed. South Korea says that North Korea has fired a ballistic missile toward the sea but that the launch likely failed. South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North Korean launch was made from the Norths capital region on Wednesday night. It says the North Korean missile was believed to have failed but did not elaborate. The North Korean missile launch came a day after it launched a spy satellite. North Korea has claimed to have put the satellite into orbit. Previously, outh Korea decided to partially suspend an inter-Korean agreement and restart front-line aerial surveillance of North Korea, hours after the North claimed to have put its first military spy satellite into orbit in violation of UN resolutions, officials in Seoul said. A photo provided by the North Korean government, shows what it says a launch of the newly developed Chollima-1 rocket carrying the Malligyong-1 satellite at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground (KCNA/KNS/AP) The South Korean announcement, which will likely infuriate North Korea, came as the Norths neighbours are trying to confirm whether the launch on Tuesday evening was successful and the satellite can perform reconnaissance functions. South Koreas military said it assessed that the North Korean spy satellite had entered orbit as the North claimed. But it said it needs more time to verify whether it works. Earlier, the Pentagon said it was assessing the success of the launch, while Japan stated there had been no confirmation of the Norths report on the satellite entering orbit. North Koreas state media claimed the spy satellite transmitted imagery showing space views of key military sites in the US Pacific territory of Guam. Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day ceasefire in the war in Gaza, a diplomatic breakthrough that will free dozens of hostages held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory. The truce announced on Wednesday raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, which was triggered by Hamas October 7 rampage into Israel. Now in its seventh week, the war has levelled vast swaths of Gaza, fuelled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank, and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East. But Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late on Wednesday he told US President Joe Biden that he will press ahead with Israels war after a temporary ceasefire expires. (PA Graphics) Mr Netanyahu said at a news conference he delivered the message to Mr Biden in a phone call on Wednesday. I want to be clear. The war is continuing. The war is continuing. We will continue it until we achieve all our goals, Mr Netanyahu said. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is expected to take effect on Thursday. Mr Netanyahu, along with the other members of his special war cabinet, told a press conference earlier Wednesday they will resume the war until Hamas is destroyed and all of the 240 hostages it is holding are released. The ceasefire deal, whose logistics were being worked out late Wednesday, temporarily freezes both sides at a tenuous moment. Israeli troops hold much of northern Gaza and say they have dismantled tunnels and much of Hamas infrastructure there. But Israeli officials acknowledge the groups infrastructure remains intact elsewhere. Smoke rises following an Israeli shelling in the Gaza Strip (Leo Cornea/AP) Just days before the truce, Israel said it was determined to take its ground offensive into the south. That could be potentially devastating for Gazas uprooted population, most of which is squeezed into the south with nowhere to go to avoid the assault. Residents in Gaza City said the fighting intensified overnight into Wednesday, with gunfire, heavy artillery and airstrikes. Apparently they want to advance before the truce, said Nasser al-Sheikh, who is sheltering with relatives in the city. Palestinian militants continued firing rockets at Israel throughout the day, without causing casualties. The announcement of the truce capped weeks of indirect, stop-and-go negotiations to free some of the roughly 240 hostages taken by Hamas and other militants during their October 7 raid. Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, helped mediate the deal. A woman looks at photographs of hostages, mostly Israeli civilians who were abducted during the October 7, unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel, in Ramat Gan, Israel (Oded Balilty/AP) Fifty hostages will be freed in stages, in exchange for the release of what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will let go women and children first. Israel said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed by Hamas. Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid, including fuel, would be allowed to enter Gaza. The ceasefire is to take effect at 10am local time on Thursday, according to Egypts state-run Qahera TV channel. Mr Biden welcomed the deal, saying Mr Netanyahu committed to supporting an extended pause. Several nations, including Britain, France, China and Russia, also welcomed the agreement. Qatars prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israels Justice Ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible to be released, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offences. The Israeli military says it has detained more than 1,850 Palestinians in the West Bank since the war began, mostly suspected Hamas members. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed there, mainly during battles triggered by army raids. Attacks by Jewish settlers have surged, deepening Palestinian despair. LHOKSEUMAWE, IndonesiaAround 200 Rohingya refugees arrived in Indonesias westernmost province by sea overnight, the United Nations refugee agency said Wednesday, taking the total arrivals in the last week to more than 1,000 members of the persecuted Myanmar minority. Thousands of the mostly Muslim Rohingya risk their lives each year on long and expensive sea journeys, often in flimsy boats, to try to reach Malaysia or Indonesia. The latest group, which included men, women and children, landed in the small city of Sabang in Aceh Province at the tip of northern Sumatra at around 11 p.m. local time on Tuesday. The mayor, he said 200. He informed us about the disembarkation. The team will depart to Sabang early tomorrow morning, United Nations refugee agency protection associate Faisal Rahman told AFP. Members of the local community said the number could be higher, with estimates as high as 360 refugees landing, said Rahman. Locals in Aceh last week turned away several boat arrivals from Bangladesh, saying they did not have the resources to accept the desperate refugees who in most cases have spent weeks at sea. Images and footage seen by AFP showed the latest arrivals sitting in rows on a beach in Acehs Sabang instead of being taken to shelter. Security forces and locals could be seen standing around the large group. With the latest arrivals, nearly 1,100 refugees have landed in Aceh in the last week alone after more than 800 earlier landed on five boats, according to local officials. UNHCR estimates more than 2,000 Rohingya attempted the risky journey to other Southeast Asian countries in the whole of 2022. Rejection virus Rahman said the UNHCR team was trying to get to Sabang city as soon as possible to ensure the latest arrivals were receiving adequate treatment. He said the agency had appealed to Sabang Mayor Reza Fahlevi to find the refugees safe shelter. The situation in the field now is not good. The rejection virus has been spread to all people, he said. There is a big chance that they will move the community to push them back to the sea, but lets hope that is not happening. More than a million from the ethnic group have fled Myanmar since the 1990s, most in the wake of a 2017 military crackdown that is now subject to a UN genocide investigation. The bulk of them have settled in camps in Bangladesh. On Wednesday a group of 256 Rohingya arrivals were given a reprieve when Indonesia granted them three months temporary shelter after locals threatened to turn them back to sea for the third time. The security of the refugees during temporary stay is the governments responsibility by coordinating with the local police, the national immigration office said in a statement. The refugees were being moved on Tuesday evening and an AFP journalist saw trucks packed full of Rohingya men, women and children setting off for the new shelter. Ann Maymann, representative of the UN refugee agency in Indonesia, told AFP the decision was better than having the refugees stay at a beach with no security. Many Acehnese, who themselves have memories of decades of bloody conflict, have long been sympathetic to the plight of their fellow Muslims. But some say their patience has been tested, claiming Rohingya consume scarce resources and occasionally come into conflict with locals. Indonesia is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention and says it is not compelled to take in refugees from Myanmar, complaining that neighboring countries have shut their doors. Ethnic Rakhine armed group the Arakan Army (AA) said it has rescued some 100 civilians held hostage by Myanmar military regime forces in Pauktaw town in western Myanmars Rakhine State. Regime warships and aircraft bombarded Pauktaw town on Nov. 16 after the AA seized the main police station there. Many civilians fled Pauktaw following the juntas strikes, but a few hundred were trapped in the town. The regime detained some of them to use as human shields. The AA attacked junta deployments in Pauktaw town on Tuesday and rescued some 100 civilians who had been detained by the regime for six days. The two sides clashed heavily during the rescue operations and both sides suffered casualties, the AA said. The regime used air and artillery strikes, as well as warships and a multiple rocket launcher system during the fighting, said the AA, which posted a video file of the juntas strikes. Weapons were also seized from junta troops. The AA said it continues to attack junta troops in Pauktaw town as it tries to rescue the remaining hostages. The Myanmar military regime said on Tuesday, however, that there were only skirmishes in the area, while junta soldiers and police conducted patrols around the town. Myanmar junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun has attempted to sow ethnic discord between Shan, Taang and Kokang communities in northern Shan State. He accused the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) of fighting to occupy Shan territory. Zaw Min Tun said the two groups, which as part of the Brotherhood Alliance that launched Operation 1027 on October 27, have occupied Shan homes and other property instead of attacking junta targets. In August Zaw Min Tun tried to stoke ethnic tensions by telling a press conference that he was surprised resistance groups were killing ethnically Bamar soldiers with weapons supplied by the Kachin Independence Army. He referred to Bamar people killing each other in Bamar-majority Sagaing and Magwe regions. The regime has lost around 160 positions in northern Shan State since October 27. Territorial clashes between the TNLA and the Restoration Council of Shan State have increased tensions between the Taang, also known as Palaung, and Shan communities. The junta media has claimed the MNDAA is staying at the rear and asking ethnically Bamar Peoples Defense Forces to carry out the fighting in northern Shan State. Inciting racial and religious hatred is a strategy that successive military regimes have used to counter insurgencies in Myanmar. Myanmars junta is preparing to move around 14,000 troops to Naypyitaw to defend its nerve center against a resistance offensive that is gaining ground across the country, according to sources in the administrative capital. Residents, regime staff and military whistleblowers told The Irrawaddy that the junta is secretly recalling thousands of troops from other regions while forcing civil servants in Naypyitaw to mobilize as a military guard. Regime officials have also stepped up household registration inspections in the capital. The preparations reportedly began soon after the ethnic Brotherhood Alliance launched Operation 1027 in northern Shan State in late October, seizing towns, outposts, troops, weapons and ammunition. Other ethnic armed groups and Peoples Defense Forces (PDF) groups have joined the resistance offensive, making territory gains across the country. Intense fighting in the Kayah State capital of Loikaw, just a five-hour drive from Naypyitaw, apparently triggered the juntas move to reinforce its nerve center. Sources close to military officials in Naypyitaw said the regime is preparing to move some 10,000 combat troops from Mandalay, Bago and Yangon regions to bases in Naypyitaw Union Territory. In addition to the combat troops, around 4,000 commandos from bases in these regions began redeploying to the administrative capital in the second week of this month, said former soldier U Lwin, citing a source within an infantry battalion commando unit in Mandalays Tada-U Township. The roofs of the commandos new barracks are being reinforced with steel H beams to resist drone attacks. They [the junta] are also building 70 new barracks [in Naypyitaw], he said. Meanwhile, military and police are secretly preparing to build new permanent and temporary bunkers throughout Naypyitaw Union Territory, according to other Naypyitaw military sources who spoke to the Irrawaddy. Sources with knowledge of operations inside the Ministry of Home Affairs No. 10 Office said Naypyitaw police stations have been instructed to mobilize as defense outposts in an emergency. In such a situation, the police will no longer exercise their normal daily routine of investigating criminal cases or arresting thugs and thieves. Instead, the stations will turn into defensive bases [for the junta], one of the sources said. Naypyitaw police stations are also preparing concrete blocks, sandbags and other materials needed to transform into defensive bases in just a few days, he added. Personnel from GE [Garrison Engineering] Corps are now working closely with township police chiefs on preparations, he said. Under orders from junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, the GE Corps is also upgrading barracks, bunkers, armories and other important buildings inside Naypyitaw military bases, said sources. The Irrawaddy has also viewed a leaked Naypyitaw Council document containing details of a plan to form military reserve units with civil servants and former military personnel. The document, dated Nov.15 and signed by council secretary Tin Maung Swe, orders administrative departments in Naypyitaw to start organizing two companies per department to go out and serve for natural disasters, and security if necessary. It adds that the companies should comprise ex-military personnel and staff who have attended the 6-month training course at the Central Institute of Civil Service (Phaung Gyi). This is the plan to help in the event of an emergency, Tin Maung Swe confirmed to Reuters last week. Junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun subsequently told state media that no such plan was underway. Meanwhile, residents in Naypyitaw said officials had launched nighttime raids to inspect household registrations. Staff from ward administrator offices accompanied by armed police visit houses randomly at around 11 pm on weekdays. This has been going on for two weeks in our ward, said a resident of Shwe Ingyin ward in Dat Khi Na Thiri Township, Naypyitaw. Residents in neighboring Pyinmana Township confirmed that officials have stepped up household inspections, often accompanied not just by police but also soldiers, which is scaring communities. If they find a visitor in a household with no guest registration, they arrest a male family member immediately and throw him in jail for a night, said a Pyinmana resident. U Lwin, the ex-military man, said the regime is remobilizing troops and their families to serve as a last line of defense for the generals in Naypyitaw. The junta has already trussed them up like the chickens in a basket by putting their families close beside them. If the Northern Alliance offensive reaches Naypyitaw, the junta will sacrifice these troops on the front line to protect themselves, he said. More than 200 junta troops have been killed in 10 days of clashes since the launch of Operation 1111, a resistance offensive to root out junta troops in the Kayah State capital of Loikaw, allied resistance forces said. Junta troops have suffered heavier casualties than allied resistance forces in the battle for Loikaw, Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) chairman Khun Bedu told the Irrawaddy on Tuesday. Clashes break out every day in Loikaw, inflicting heavy losses on junta troops. So far, we have seized more than 200 assault rifles and heavy weapons, the KNDF chief said. At least 45 members of allied resistance forces have sacrificed their lives during the battle, he added. More than 20 junta outposts and bases have been seized by allied resistance forces in Kayahs Loikaw and Demoso townships and neighbouring Pekon Township in southern Shan State. Junta infantry units have also abandoned another 15 outposts and bases in Loikaw, Demoso and Pekon, resistance forces claimed. The KNDF claimed that some areas in Loikaw, Nan Mei Khon and Moebye towns are now under the control of resistance forces. We have seized several key locations in the state capital Loikaw. We will release more information after capturing the remaining junta strongholds in the town, the KNDF chairman said. A resistance alliance of the KNDF, Karenni Army (KA), Karenni National Peoples Liberation Front (KNPLF) and Peoples Defense Forces (PDFs) launched the offensive in Loikaw, Demoso and Pekon townships on Nov. 11. The alliance seized a key outpost in Loikaw University on Nov. 14, killing at least 110 junta troops including two commanders. At least 32 junta soldiers surrendered to the KNDF while an estimated 38 were captured by allied resistance forces. The KNDF has vowed to adhere to the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, promising to provide medical care and other assistance to surrendered troops. Around 200 educators and their families from Loikaw University were safely evacuated by resistance forces, according to the KNDF. Meanwhile, the pilot of a junta warplane that crashed in a resistance stronghold on Nov. 12 was arrested by allied resistance forces on Sunday. The wreckage of the fighter jet was found in Thandaunggyi Township in Karen National Union (KNU)-controlled territory in Karen State on Sunday according to the civilian National Unity Government (NUG). The junta has responded to the heavy losses in Loikaw with heavy shelling and airstrikes in residential areas, displacing around 40,000 residents. Loikaw, home to around 50,000 people, was the regimes administrative center in the resistance stronghold of Kayah State. The UN estimates that at least 100,800 people were displaced by previous fighting in Kayah State as of Oct. 9. Some 70 people including 10 children have been killed in Kayah State as a result of indiscriminate junta shelling, airstrikes and shooting since Nov. 11, said the Karenni Humanitarian Aid Initiative, a local volunteer group. Clashes between the Arakan Army (AA) and the juntas military continued to break out on Wednesday in northern Rakhine State and in the southernmost tip of Chin State, according to residents and the AA. Intense. clashes occurred in Chin States Paletwa Township as the AA continued attacks on two junta tactical deployment posts in Tarunaing and Hnonebu villages on Wednesday. Residents say the clashes in Paletwa began on November 14 and that tension remains extremely high. It has been over a week since the clashes broke out around Paletwa Township as the AA tries to seize two bases, a resident of the township said. The township has been shelled daily from inside the two bases, while junta jets have bombed it daily, residents say. At least four residents of the township have been killed and eight more injured by the junta militarys airstrikes and shelling since November 14. With transport routes closed, the price of food and other necessities has surged, they said. Juntas spokesman Zaw Min Tun told a November 16 press conference that regime troops have been fighting back hard against the AAs frequent attacks on the base in Tarunaing village. He accused the AA of undermining development in Rakhine Sta, saying Tarunaing is on a major route connecting Myanmar and India. The AA vowed on Wednesday, however, that it will not stop attacking junta bases until the troops inside them surrender. It said junta troops have been committing war crimes. The AA launched an attack on Kha Htee Hla outpost in Butheedaung Township on the morning of November 18 and seized in at 8 am on November 21, according to the AA and residents. After suffering heavy casualties, the juntas police and military troops inside the outpost fled into another outpost nearby. The AA chased them and kept fighting them in the jungle, a resident of Butheedaung said. During the three days of fighting for the base, the juntas military launched airstrikes on Kha Htee Hla and another five villages nearby, forcing thousands of residents to flee, the source added. Cashes continued to break out in Pauktaw Town on Wednesday where the AA saved more than 100 residents who had been taken hostage on Tuesday. The AA also led other residents out of the town, it said. The juntas military sent a MiG 35 helicopter and a jet fighter to Pauktaw at around 10 am Wednesday. They dropped bombs and used machine guns to fire indiscriminately in the town, including a hill where Law Ka Hteik Pan pagoda is located, according to residents and a statement released by the AA. It began fighting the junta militarys Border Guard posts in Rakhine State on November 13, saying this was part of Operation 1027. Within 10 days, the AA seized four junta outposts in Rakhine State and claimed more than 40 more that had been abandoned by junta troops. Intense clashes continued to be reported across northern Shan State on Wednesday as ethnic armed organizations and other resistance groups attacked more regime bases as part of Operation 1027. The Myanmar junta responded to the resistance attacks with heavy aerial bombardments. As part of the operation, the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) attacked the Mine Kyat military outpost in Lashio Township on Tuesday. During the clash, a regime fighter jet conducted eight air strikes to protect the base. On Wednesday morning, a Chinese-made Y-12 military transport plane dropped at least 45 bombs on the area around the Mine Kyat base, the TNLA said. However, details of casualties were not available for either side. The TNLA said it also clashed with regime forces at the Kyin Thi bridge in Hsipaw Township on Wednesday morning. Later in the morning it attacked the Sakham Thit Kone junta base outside Namkham town. Citing residents, local media reported that a drone accidentally dropped a bomb on the compound of the Zeya Mingalar Monastery in Out Nant Hual Village in Muse Township on Wednesday morning, injuring a Buddhist novice and damaging vehicles and monastery buildings. It is unknown whether the drone was operated by junta or resistance forces. The TNLA accused junta forces of shelling the monastery. In a separate development in Operation 1027 on Wednesday, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) said it and allied resistance groups seized two more junta positions in the Kokang area in northern Shan. The tripartite Brotherhood Alliance of the MNDAA, TNLA and Rakhine States Arakan Army (AA) launched the operation on Oct. 27, attacking regime targets and bases across northern Shan, Kachin and Rakhine states and upper Sagaing and Mandalay regions. Several resistance groups including Peoples Defense Force groups (PDFs) under the civilian National Unity Government (NUG) and other ethnic armed groups are coordinating with the operation. Meanwhile, many other resistance groups are also conducting anti-regime operations in Chin and Kayah states and elsewhere in the country to show their support for Operation 1027. Due to the escalation in fighting, more than 286,000 people have been newly displaced between Oct. 26 and Wednesday, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Of these, around 40,000 are from northern Shan State. They are sheltering in the Wa Self-Administered Zone, U Nyi Rang, the liaison officer of the United Wa State Party (UWSP), wrote on his Facebook page. The Myanmar junta lost more bases and dozens of troops over the past three days as Peoples Defense Force groups (PDFs) and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) stepped up attacks on regime targets across the country. In one case, an ethnic army rescued nearly 100 civilian detainees who had been used as human shields by junta troops in Pauktaw town, Rakhine State on Tuesday. Incidents were reported in Rakhine, Shan and Chin states and Sagaing, Magwe and Bago regions. The Irrawaddy has collected the following reports of significant attacks from PDFs and EAOs. Some military casualties could not be independently verified. Nearly 100 civilian hostages evacuated by ethnic resistance in Rakhine Joint resistance forces conduct drone strikes on regime targets in Yesagyo Township on Monday. / Daung Thway Ni Guerrilla Force Ethnic Rakhine armed group the Arakan Army (AA) said it managed to evacuate nearly 100 civilians including children and some monks after a heavy clash with regime forces in Pauktaw town, Rakhine State on Tuesday. A junta unit of 100 troops recaptured the town from the hands of the AA after junta aircraft and gunboats bombed the town last Thursday. Since then, the Myanmar military has arrested around 100 trapped civilians and used them as human shields, the AA said. On Tuesday, the AA attacked regime forces in the town and rescued civilian detainees amid heavy bombardment by junta aircraft, gunboats and artillery units in the nearby Rakhine State capital Sittwe. The junta suffered heavy losses during the clash and some AA troops were also killed, the ethnic armed group said. Three more junta bases fall to resistance forces in northern Shan The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) said it attacked and seized three more junta bases along with a large haul of weapons and ammunition in the north and center of the Kokang area in northern Shan State as part of Operation 1027 on Tuesday. The ethnic rebel group said it also conducted three drone strikes on the militarys 291st Battalion in Hseni Township, northern Shan on Tuesday. Another member of the Brotherhood Alliance, the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), said it attacked the Mine Kyat junta base in Lashio Township, northern Shan State, forcing the junta to use fighter jets to defend the base on Tuesday. Junta base seized in Chin PDF (Zoland) claimed to have seized the junta base on Kennedy Peak in Tedim Township, Chin State early on Tuesday morning. During the raid, five regime forces and a resistance member were killed. Eleven other regime forces including a major were arrested after fleeing the resistance raid. The resistance forces seized 24 weapons, ammunition and an anti-drone jammer. In the afternoon, a junta Mi-35 helicopter gunship attacked resistance forces at the junta base. Police station raided in Bago At least one police officer was killed in Thayawady Township, Bago Region on Monday night when Thayawady-based resistance groups raided the police station in Thonze town, said Bago Region PDF. During the raid, junta police went into hiding and were unable to respond to the attack. After the resistance raid, regime soldiers stopped and checked vehicles on the Yangon-Pyay Highway. Resistance groups burn junta police station amid air strikes in Sagaing Wetlet PDF told The Irrawaddy that several resistance groups led by Shwebo District PDF battalions 1 and 2 occupied and burned down a police station manned by 20 police officers in Shwe Pan Kone Village on the Shwebo-Monywa road in Wetlet Township, Sagaing Region on Tuesday. An Mi-35 helicopter gunship and a fighter jet were used to defend the police stronghold, but failed. During the raid, six policemen were killed and another arrested while the rest of the police officers fled. There were resistance casualties, Wetlet PDF said. Military checkpoint bombed in Magwe Arakan Army forces evacuate nearly 100 civilian detainees rescued from regime forces during a clash in Pauktaw town on Tuesday. / AA At least four regime soldiers suffered serious injuries in Yesagyo Township, Magwe Region on Monday when three resistance groups used improvised remote-controlled airplanes to drop bombs on the Taung O military checkpoint, said the Daung Thway Ni guerrilla force, which took part in the drone strikes. Injured soldiers were hospitalized, said the resistance groups, citing a military informant. They said the military checkpoint was extorting money from civilian vehicles. Twelve junta soldiers, including a major, were captured by Peoples Defense Force Zoland after it seized a hilltop base in Chin States Tedim Township on Tuesday. PDF Zoland said its forces attacked the junta base on Kennedy Peak in the township at 4 am on Tuesday and seized it after two hours of fighting. Three regime troops were killed in the fighting and the rest fled, a resistance officer told Zoland Voice TV, adding that PDF members chased after the fleeing junta troops and captured 12 of them. The PDF also seized 24 military weapons, ammunition and an anti-drone jammer. One resistance fighter, Tg Kam Lian Pau, was killed in the fighting, according to PDF Zoland. The juntas military used an MI 35 helicopter to attack the resistance forces who seized the base, but no casualties were reported. Troops from the regimes Infantry Battalion 268 also retreated from a base in Chin States Falam Township on Wednesday, according to the Chin National Defense Force, the armed wing of the Chin National Organization (CNO). The CNO also urged people not to use Falam-Kale Road to prevent regime troops from arresting them for use as human shields. On November 13, the Chin National Army, the armed wing of Chin National Front, and other resistance groups took control of the Indian border town of Reh Khaw Da in Falam Township after seizing two regime bases. Myanmars junta is suffering daily losses as PDFs and ethnic armed organizations have stepped up attacks on regime targets in every state and region of the country except for Ayeyarwady Region. Colorado Supreme Court will hear appeal of ruling that Trump can stay on ballot despite insurrection The Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals from both a liberal group that sought to disqualify Donald Trump and the former president himself after a state judge ruled that Trump engaged in insurrection but can appear on the state's ballot 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. Pope meets relatives of Israeli hostages and Palestinians in Gaza and sets off firestorm over words Pope Francis has met separately with relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinians living through the war and set off a firestorm by using words that Vatican diplomats usually avoid: Terrorism and according to the Palestinians genocide. Reddit 115 Email 115 Shares Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) Al Jazeera reports that Qatar successfully brokered the exchange of 50 Israeli hostages held by Hamas for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli jails (who are also hostages, as I will explain). The deal, which was approved by Israels national unity cabinet on Tuesday evening, also provides for a four-day humanitarian pause in Israels land and air assault on Gaza, and permission for hundreds of aid trucks to bring in water, food and other necessities to Gazas Palestinians. Some 500 trucks used to enter the Gaza Strip daily, but that number has been cut to a handful or sometimes none at all by the Israeli authorities. Gazas population, under economic blockade since 2007, is deeply dependent on imported staples. Hamas took some 240 hostages during its horrific October 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1200 persons, 1,000 of them innocent non-combatants. The machine-gunning down of innocents at a music festival, other attacks on non-combatants with small arms, and the firing of unguided rockets at civilian cities are all grave war crimes, as is hostage-taking. CBC News: Israel, Hamas agree to 4-day ceasefire that sees captives exchanged on both sides The Israeli government responded by cutting potable water and electricity off to the entire 2.2 million people in Gaza, all but 30,000 or 40,000 of them innocent non-combatants, and half of them children. It then launched an intensive aerial bombardment of densely populated building complexes, of hospitals, schools and other infrastructural facilities, killing an estimated 13,300 persons and wounding tens of thousands. A majority of the population has been made homeless and displaced, perhaps 1.5 million persons. Gazas one million children are suffering from hunger and have been deprived of potable water. Most of these Israeli actions constitute war crimes as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and they also fit the definition of genocide in that document, ratified by over 120 countries worldwide. The detainees being exchanged are women and children. So, let me return to the question of whether this is a hostage exchange on both sides. Israel often arrests and imprisons Palestinians arbitrarily or for thought crimes such as working for human rights, according to the United Nations. OHCHR wrote last year about a trend in which human rights defenders and humanitarian workers are detained by Israeli authorities for prolonged periods and subjected to different forms of pressure to admit guilt in the absence of compelling evidence, as an attempt to curtail their human rights and humanitarian work. It added, The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has also stated that under certain circumstances, widespread or systematic imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty in violation of international law may constitute crimes against humanity. The Special Rapporteur for the UN on Palestine wrote in a recent report that since 1967, over 800,000 Palestinians, including children as young as 12, have been arrested and detained under authoritarian rules enacted, enforced and adjudicated by the Israeli military. Palestinians are subject to long detention for expressing opinions, gathering, pronouncing unauthorised political speeches, or even merely attempting to do so, and ultimately deprived of their status of protected civilians. They are often presumed guilty without evidence, arrested without warrants, detained without charge or trial and brutalised in Israeli custody. Israel is holding 6,704 Palestinians, many of them arrested on the flimsiest of pretexts. The number of detainees includes over 2,000 in what it is pleased to call administrative detention. That is where someone is arrested and imprisoned without charges, a trial, or sentencing. Administrative detention orders have a term of one to six months, but they can be indefinitely renewed. Moreover, Israel arrests as many as 500 minors each year, including children as young as nine and ten, keeping the bulk of them in military brigs, and about 150 in civilian prisons. They stand accused of mistreating these children while they are in custody. Most are guilty of sassing Israeli soldiers or police, though some are stone-throwers. These people have been effectively kidnapped by the Israeli state and are hostages, not prisoners. ( Globalvoices.org) Amidst the chaos of Israels war on Gaza, truth becomes a casualty in the battleground of information, entangled in a maze of misinformation and biased narratives, eclipsing the reality of the crisis unfolding in Gaza. In news reporting, every semantic choice, nuanced omission, prioritization, and bias holds the power to shape how readers interpret and absorb information. Systemic issues and marginalized voices are obscured beyond headlines. Cognitive and algorithmic biases manipulate information access, notably in the fog of war, as seen in Gaza. The complex information landscape is shaped by not only misinformation but also by the different narratives employing defamation and dehumanization, mirroring pattern in main stream media coverage of Palestinians and other Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Palestinians dont just die, they get killed The choice between died and killed in describing fatalities in Israels war on Gaza reflects a subtle yet impactful semantic difference because it shapes how information is perceived. Merriem-Webster defines to die as an intransitive verb, implying an indirect action, potentially linking fatality to natural causes, like old age. Conversely, to kill is a transitive verb, suggesting a more direct action, often tied to an unnatural or violent manner of death, such as an airstrike, for instance. In 2022, Laura Albast wrote in an opinion article in The Washington Post, This is a pattern we have seen over and over again in media coverage of Palestine. Palestinians are not killed; we simply die. This sentiment was echoed recently by journalist Yara Eid when she responded to a Sky News presenter, I think language is really important to use because, as a journalist, you have the moral responsibility to report on what is happening. Palestinians dont just die, they get killed. News media actively make choices about using passive or active voice, demonstrating a hierarchy in terminology beyond the die/kill dichotomy. Examining language within a news piece exposes framing that reveals inherent bias or perspective. In one particularly confusing example, a CNN news anchor ambiguously described Palestinian fatalities by saying: One hospital in Gaza says it received 22 bodies during the intense overnight bombardment along with hundreds of people injured. There was no further clarification provided about whether those bodies were deceased, who was responsible, and from whom they were received. The New York Times headline on the November 5 Israeli airstrike hitting the Al Maghazi refugee camp used indirect language, stating, Explosion Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood. This phrasing, such as leaves many casualties and dense neighborhood instead of specifying a refugee camp, was ambiguous. Furthermore, the language used casts doubt about information sources, stating Gazans say, without explicitly attributing the airstrikes to Israelis. In the context of Israels month-long bombardment on Gaza, such ambiguity seems unnecessary. Notably, this strike was one of three airstrikes hitting refugee camps in Gaza within a 26-hour window. In a CBS News article, the authors used intense language to describe Hamas attack on Israelis as a murderous rampage. However, when referring to Palestinian fatalities over the first nine days of the war, they employed comparatively lighter terms like killed and death toll. This created a notable hierarchy in the portrayal of violence, which may diminish the impact or severity of the suffering of Palestinians. This discrepancy in language can influence readers impressions and create an imbalance in how violence is perceived. Revealing a systemic issue in newsrooms Revealing a systemic issue in newsrooms, this hierarchy of terms and narrative shaping is not unique to Palestinians. The U.S. news media has long faced criticism for racism, particularly in its coverage of police violence against Black Americans, exemplified in the murder of Breonna Taylor. Author and editor Adeshina Emmanuel pointed out, Newsrooms often fixate on the moment of death, leaning heavily on police narratives, and as those narratives often do assassinate the characters of police violence victims. This implies a narrow focus on the immediate and often dramatic events rather than the broader context. The medias coverage of the war in Ukraine has also raised concerns about racism. Scholar H.A. Hellyer highlighted the racist language used by reporters, emphasizing the dehumanization of non-White populations and its impact on their right to live in dignity. Beyond overtly racist coverage, other major humanitarian catastrophes, such as the war in Sudan, receive minimal attention from mainstream media. Political influence and pressures on newsrooms significantly influence media narrative-shaping. In May 2023, it is unsurprising that a majority of US journalists expressed concerns about press freedoms. These concerns are supported by instances where numerous journalists were dismissed for expressing pro-Palestinian remarks, a trend that has intensified in recent weeks. Amid the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken requested the Qatari Prime Minister to tone down Al Jazeeras rhetoric regarding Israels action in Gaza. This sentiment was reflected in other newsrooms, as reported by The Intercept: Leadership at Upday, a subsidiary of the Germany-based publishing giant Axel Springer, gave instructions to prioritize the Israeli perspective and minimize Palestinian civilian deaths in coverage, according to the employees. A group of Jewish writers drafted an open letter condemning the notion that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-semitic and noted the pro-Palestine suppressions: Now, this insidious gagging of free speech is being used to justify Israels ongoing military bombardment of Gaza and to silence criticism from the international community. [] Israeli journalists fear consequences for criticizing their government. [] We refuse the false choice between Jewish safety and Palestinian freedom; between Jewish identity and ending the oppression of Palestinians. In fact, we believe the rights of Jews and Palestinians go hand-in-hand. Global calls of solidarity Reddit Email 70 Shares By Yara M. Asi, University of Central Florida | (The Conversation) After more than a month of being subjected to sustained bombing, the besieged people of the Gaza Strip are now confronted with another threat to life: disease. Overcrowding at shelters, a breakdown of basic sanitation, the rising number of unburied dead and a scarcity of clean drinking water have left the enclave on the precipice of major disease outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization. As an expert in Palestinian public health systems who wrote about the many relationships between war and health for my forthcoming book How War Kills: The Overlooked Threats to Our Health, I believe that the looming crisis cannot be underestimated. The easy spread of infectious disease in wartime conditions can be just as devastating as airstrikes to health and mortality if not more so. Health care services in Gaza already vulnerable prior to the Israeli bombing campaign have essentially no capacity to cope with a major outbreak. Disease already rampant History has proved time and again that war zones can be a breeding ground for disease. Anywhere impoverished and underresourced people crowd for shelter or access to resources often in facilities with inadequate living conditions, sanitation services or access to clean water is prone to the spread of disease. This can be through airborne or droplet transmission, contaminated food or water, living vectors like fleas, mosquitoes or lice, or improperly cleaned and managed wounds. In any situation of armed conflict or mass displacement, the threat of infectious disease is among the primary concerns of public health professionals. And from the outset of the Israeli bombing campaign, experts have predicted dire health consequences for Gaza. After all, the Gaza Strip had fragile health and water, sanitation and hygiene sectors long before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and prompted the retaliatory airstrikes. The health system of Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world, has long been plagued by underfunding and the effects of the blockade imposed by Israel in 2007. Waterborne illness was already a major cause of child mortality the result of the contamination of most of Gazas water. In early 2023, an estimated 97% of water in the enclave was unfit to drink, and more than 12% of child mortality cases were caused by waterborne ailments, like typhoid fever, cholera and hepatitis A, that are very rare in areas with functional and adequate water systems. Other forms of infectious disease spread have also been reported in recent years. Gaza had experienced several previous outbreaks of meningitis an inflammation of the tissues surrounding the brain and spinal cord typically caused by infection notably in 1997, 2004 and 2013. In late 2019, a small outbreak of measles a highly contagious, airborne virus was reported in Gaza, with almost half of reported cases in unvaccinated people. Despite a relatively high vaccination rate in Gaza generally, these gaps in vaccination and the inability to respond quickly to outbreaks were attributed by the WHO to the continuous socio-economic decline since 2009, conflict, and closure. And the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Gaza Strip hard, exacerbated by the Israeli blockade that prevented or delayed the import of vital personal protective equipment, testing kits and vaccines. France 24: Hunger, disease inevitable in Gaza as fuel runs out FRANCE 24 English A system overwhelmed The vulnerability of Gazas health care meant that from the outset of the latest conflict, organizations such as the WHO voiced concern that the violence and deprivation could quickly overwhelm the system. There are several ways war in general, and the conflict in Gaza in particular, accelerates and promotes infectious disease risk. Almost concurrently with the start of the bombing campaign, Israel imposed siege conditions on Gaza. This prevented the import of fuel needed to run generators for vital infrastructure. Generators are needed because Israel shut off electricity to Gaza. As fuel has essentially run out in recent days, this has meant no power for desalination plants or for solid waste collection. As a consequence, many people have been forced to consume contaminated water or live in conditions where living carriers of disease, like rodents and insects, thrive. Even basic cleaning supplies are scarce, and equipment used to sterilize everything from medical equipment to baby bottles is inoperable. These unhygienic conditions come as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza attempt to flee the bombing to the few remaining places left to shelter. This has caused massive overcrowding, which increases the risk of an infectious disease outbreak. Children especially vulnerable Already, the WHO has reported worrying trends since mid-October 2023, including more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea in Gaza. Diarrhea is a particular risk for young children who are prone to profound dehydration. It represents the second-leading cause of death worldwide in children younger than 5 years of age. Half of the diarrhea cases reported in Gaza since the Israeli bombing campaign began have been in children under 5. Meanwhile, nearly 9,000 cases of scabies a skin rash caused by mites have been reported, as have more than 1,000 cases of chickenpox. More than 70,000 cases of upper respiratory infections have been documented, far higher than what would be expected otherwise. These are just cases that were reported; undoubtedly, more people who were unable to get to a health facility for diagnosis are also sick. Reports of the spread of chickenpox and upper respiratory infections like influenza and COVID-19 are particularly dangerous considering childrens vaccination schedules are being highly disrupted by conflict. With health services overstretched and the mass movement of families, young children and newborns are likely going without vital, lifesaving inoculations just as winter the peak season for respiratory infections arrives. Upper respiratory infections are also exacerbated by the amount of dust and other pollutants in the air due to the destruction of buildings during bombing. Then there is the direct impact of the bombing campaign. A lack of antibiotics due to both the siege and the destruction of health facilities means physicians are unable to adequately treat thousands of patients with open wounds or in need of medical operations, including amputations. More death and suffering Increasingly, doctors are even running out of wound dressings to protect injuries from exposure. Poor infection prevention controls, high casualty rates and high concentrations of toxic heavy metals, among other factors, are leading to reports of antimicrobial resistance, which occurs when bacteria and viruses evolve over time to no longer respond to antibiotics and other antimicrobial medications. This has the potential to lead to health issues long after the bombing stops. Similar trends were also seen in Iraq, where antimicrobial resistance rates remain high despite the peak of bombing campaigns ending many years ago. And with many bodies laying under rubble, unable to be retrieved, and the necessity of digging multiple mass graves near sites where people are sheltering, there is also increased risk of disease arising from an inability to adequately dispose of the dead. While the images and photos from Gaza of areas and people that have been bombed are devastating and have caused a massive death toll at least 12,000 by mid-November, according to Gaza health authorities the rapid spread of infectious disease has the ability to cause even greater mortality and suffering to a population reeling from weeks of sustained bombing. Yara M. Asi, Assistant Professor of Global Health Management and Informatics, University of Central Florida This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / PJX Resources Inc. ("PJX" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the closing of the previously announced (see November 14 and November 21, 2023 press releases), and oversubscribed, non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") of 21,610,038 units through the issuance of 13,816,422 Flow Through Units at a price of $0.105 per Flow Through Unit and 7,793,616 Non-flow Through Units ("Unit") at a price of $0.09 per Unit for total proceeds of $2,152,150. Each Flow-through Unit consists of one common share to be issued as a "flow-through share" within the meaning of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the "Flow-through Shares") and one common share purchase warrant. Each Unit consists of one common share and one common share purchase warrant. Each warrant, whether acquired as part of a Flow-through Unit or Unit, entitles the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.20 for 24 months following completion of the Offering. Subject to TSXV Exchange approval, Finders' fees of $30,337.20 cash and 291,709 Finders' Warrants will be paid in relation to the completion of the Offering. The Finders Warrants will entitle the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.20 for 24 months following completion of the Offering. The securities issuable in connection with this Offering will be subject to a hold period in Canada which will run for four months from the date of the closing of the Offering. John Keating, President of PJX commented: "The strength in demand for this financing reflects the significance of what we recently discovered. Our discovery of boulders with Sullivan deposit style and grade of mineralization may be the most compelling evidence of the potential to discover another Sullivan type deposit in 130 years since the Sullivan was discovered in 1892. (see news releases Oct 12 and Nov 14)." Additional analyses are pending. These results will be compiled with recent mapping, prospecting, and other data to prepare maps with geological cross sections for presentation in January. PJX plans to commence drilling as soon as the snow recedes which is expected to occur in late Spring, 2024. The completion of the Offering may constitute a related party transaction within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101") as certain insiders of the company participated in the Offering. The Company is relying on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 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 offering by insiders did not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of the company, as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company also made the Offering available to subscribers who receive suitability advice from a registered investment dealer in accordance with applicable prospectus exemptions in certain Canadian jurisdictions. The Company confirms that there is no material fact or material change about the Company that has not been generally disclosed. The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering for expenditures on its properties located in Cranbrook, British Columbia, and for general working capital. The gross proceeds from the issuance of the Flow-through Shares shall be used to fund exploration expenditures on the Cranbrook Properties, with a focus towards exploration on the Dewdney Trail Property. Flow through units will qualify as Canadian exploration expenses (as defined in the "Income Tax Act (Canada)"). The Offering has received conditional approval from the TSXV Exchange. About PJX Resources Inc. PJX is a mineral exploration company focused on building shareholder value and community opportunity through the exploration and development of mineral resources with a focus on gold, silver, and critical metals including copper, zinc, cobalt, cadmium, indium, and others. PJX's primary properties are road accessible, close to power, rail, and located in the historical mining area of Cranbrook and Kimberley, British Columbia. Please refer to our web site http://www.pjxresources.com for additional information. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Linda Brennan, Chief Financial Officer (416) 799-9205 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements in this news release, referred to herein as "forward-looking statements", constitute "forward-looking statements" under the provisions of Canadian provincial securities laws. These statements can be identified by the use of words such as "expected", "may", "will" or similar terms. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of factors and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by PJX Resources Inc. as of the date of such statements, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, known and unknown, could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Except as otherwise required by law, PJX Resources Inc. expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in PJX Resources Inc.'s expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based. Cautionary Note to US Investors This news release may contain information about adjacent properties on which PJX Resources Inc. has no right to explore or mine. We advise U.S. investors that the SEC's mining guidelines strictly prohibit information of this type in documents filed with the SEC. U.S. investors are cautioned that mineral deposits on adjacent properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on our properties. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. This press release may use the terms "Measured", "Indicated", and "Inferred" resources. United States investors are advised that while such terms are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize them. "Inferred Mineral Resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an Inferred Mineral Resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of Inferred Mineral Resources may not form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of Measured or Indicated Mineral Resources will ever be converted into Mineral Reserves. United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of a Mineral Resource is economically or legally mineable. Neither the 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. Drilling is now underway at the Guayabales Project's Trap porphyry target ("Trap") with the objective of following up on the 2022 discovery hole TRC-1, which intersected 102.20 metres of gold-silver-copper mineralization averaging @ 1.53 g/t gold equivalent. Trap is located approximately three kilometres to the northeast of the Company's flagship Apollo porphyry system ("Apollo") and is significantly larger than Apollo in dimensions measuring approximately 2 kilometres by 2 kilometres in area. The mineralization styles and geochemical signatures encountered at Trap are very similar to those observed at the Apollo system, namely porphyry vein and alteration systems being overprinted by subsequent carbonate base metal ("CBM") sheeted vein systems. High-grade assay results have been received from a short hole drill program at Apollo. The aim of the program was designed to provide important data for block modelling by infilling the shallowest portion of the dip of the system as it moves under cover, with results including: 130.45 metres @ 2.17 g/t gold equivalent from 119.90 metres downhole in APC-80. 98.75 metres @ 2.71 g/t gold equivalent from 132.35 metres downhole in APC-82. Drilling in the southern part of Apollo into the porphyry halo located outside of the high-grade brecciated porphyry system has cut shallow, lower grade mineralization while extending the maximum known dimensions of the brecciated porphyry to 560 metres (previously 520 metres). The system remains open to the west, north and at depth. Assay results include: 109.15 metres @ 0.46 g/t gold equivalent from 7 metres downhole in APC-75. Drilling continues at the Guayabales project with four rigs currently in operation and a backlog of assay results expected in short order. Assay results outstanding include a series of directional drill holes at Apollo as well as initial results from the ME target area. Ari Sussman, Executive Chairman commented: "Trap is an extremely exciting target, one which we did not appreciate appropriately when the discovery hole was drilled in mid-2022 as our geological knowledge of the Guayabales project was only in its infancy. After careful review, it is now clear that the 2022 Trap discovery hole is hosted in a long and continuous zone of quartz diorite porphyry with overprinting styles of mineralization similar to those observed at Apollo. Trap possesses all the characteristics of a potentially large porphyry system, and we look forward to seeing what transpires from our drilling program now underway." TORONTO, Nov. 22, 2023 /CNW/ - Collective Mining Ltd. (TSX: CNL) (OTCQX: CNLMF) ("Collective" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that is has commenced drilling at the Trap target ("Trap") and assay results for seven holes drilled in the Apollo porphyry system ("Apollo). Apollo and Trap are both targets within the Company's flagship Guayabales project located in Caldas, Colombia. Presently, there are four diamond drill rigs operating at the Guayabales project as part of the Company's planned 42,000 metre drilling program for 2023. Details (See Table 1-4 and Figures 1-2) This press release outlines details of the Trap target and results from seven holes drilled within and peripheral to the Apollo system. Trap Target The Company announces that drilling is now underway at the Trap target in the northern portion of the Guayabales project. Trap is located approximately three kilometres to the northeast of the Apollo Porphyry system in the largest porphyry intrusion centre outlined to date at the Guayabales project. On September 27, 2022, grass roots reconnaissance drilling at Trap resulted in a porphyry discovery with drill hole TRC-1 assaying 102.20 metres @ 1.53 g/t gold equivalent (Table 1) including: 16.10 metres @ 2.63 g/t gold equivalent from 250.20 metres downhole related to a copper- gold-silver porphyry style mineralization (Table 2). from 250.20 metres downhole related to a copper- gold-silver porphyry style mineralization (Table 2). 14.70 metres @ 2.00 g/t gold equivalent from 289.00 metres downhole related to gold-silver rich CBM style mineralization (Table 3). Mineralization styles and metal geochemistry at Trap is very similar to the Apollo porphyry system in terms of gold, silver, and copper (see Tables 2 and Table 3). Hole TRC-1 intersected porphyry style mineralization (see Table 2, downhole depths from 250.2 metres to 266.30 metres) with secondary biotite, hydrothermal magnetite (up to 0.5%) in veinlets, albite, chlorite, chalcopyrite (up to 1.0 % and replacing the magnetite) and pyrite (up to 1.3%). Below this at 289.00 metres downhole, the hole entered into a polymetallic, CBM mineralization phase enveloped by strong sericite alteration. The sheeted carbonate veins host gold, silver, lead and zinc with sulphides including sphalerite (up to 0.5%), galena (up to 0.2%), pyrite (up to 2.0%), copper oxides, quartz, and carbonates. Table 1: Assay Results for TRC-1 (announced September 27, 2022) Hole # From (m) To (m) Length (m) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) Mo (%) AuEq (g/t*) TRC-1 233.80 336.00 102.20 1.26 12 0.09 0.003 1.53 Incl 259.10 269.00 9.90 3.00 25 0.25 0.007 3.65 and incl 294.50 303.70 9.20 1.82 31 0.07 0.003 2.27 *AuEq (g/t) is calculated as follows: (Au (g/t) x 0.95) + (Ag (g/t9 x 0.014 x 0.95) + (Cu (%) x 1.96 x 0.95) utilizing metal prices of Cu US$4.00/lb, Ag $20/oz and Au US$1,400/oz and recovery rates of 95% for Au, Ag and Cu. Recovery rate assumptions are speculative as no metallurgical work has been completed to date. True widths are unknown, and grades are uncut. (See press release dated September 27, 2022) Table 2: Individual Assay Results from Within Trap Hole TRC-1 Highlighting Porphyry Style Mineralization (Low Values of Zinc and Lead mineralization) Hole # From (m) To (m) Length (m) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) Zn (%) Pb (%) TRC-1 250.20 250.80 0.60 0.61 37 0.15 0.01 0.03 250.80 251.40 0.60 1.95 37 0.34 0.01 - 251.40 252.10 0.70 1.64 50 0.30 0.01 - 252.10 252.80 0.70 1.46 33 0.30 0.01 - 252.80 253.50 0.70 1.41 25 0.25 0.01 - 253.50 254.20 0.70 2.27 21 0.29 0.01 - 254.20 255.00 0.80 0.18 3 0.04 - - 255.00 255.80 0.80 0.28 2 0.04 0.01 - 255.80 256.60 0.80 0.25 8 0.03 0.02 - 256.60 257.20 0.60 0.40 12 0.03 0.05 0.01 257.20 257.80 0.60 0.40 12 0.05 0.08 - 257.80 258.40 0.60 0.51 11 0.02 0.01 - 258.40 259.10 0.70 0.84 21 0.05 0.01 - 259.10 259.80 0.70 1.33 24 0.13 0.01 - 259.80 260.40 0.60 1.15 13 0.11 0.01 - 260.40 261.00 0.60 1.60 26 0.13 0.03 0.01 261.00 261.60 0.60 1.37 14 0.12 0.01 - 261.60 262.30 0.70 0.99 12 0.10 0.01 - 262.30 263.00 0.70 11.12 62 0.47 0.01 - 263.00 263.70 0.70 3.39 21 0.16 0.07 - 263.70 264.30 0.60 2.21 36 0.19 0.24 0.01 264.30 265.00 0.70 2.25 24 0.21 0.02 - 265.00 265.65 0.65 4.06 79 0.38 0.11 - 265.65 266.30 0.65 7.70 39 0.50 0.02 - Table 3: Assay Results for Within Trap Hole TRC-1 Highlighting Later Stage CBM Style Vein Overprinting Mineralization (Zinc and Lead Enriched Mineralization) Hole # From (m) To (m) Length (m) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) Zn (%) Pb (%) TRC-1 289.00 289.80 0.80 1.14 4 0.22 0.01 - 289.80 290.40 0.60 1.62 4 0.21 0.04 - 290.40 291.00 0.60 1.19 19 0.06 0.61 0.01 291.00 291.70 0.70 1.44 17 0.26 0.08 - 291.70 292.50 0.80 1.03 20 0.17 0.07 - 292.50 293.20 0.70 0.90 20 0.05 0.05 0.01 293.20 293.90 0.70 0.72 8 0.01 0.16 0.07 293.90 294.50 0.60 1.41 29 0.08 0.84 - 294.50 295.20 0.70 2.11 37 0.11 1.53 0.01 295.20 295.80 0.60 3.13 37 0.10 0.22 0.01 295.80 296.40 0.60 1.36 30 0.03 0.02 0.03 296.40 297.00 0.60 1.16 21 0.04 0.08 0.10 297.00 297.60 0.60 0.90 14 0.07 0.03 0.02 297.60 298.20 0.60 1.29 69 0.16 0.52 0.16 298.20 299.00 0.80 2.82 21 0.07 0.04 0.03 299.00 299.70 0.70 0.95 16 0.07 0.06 0.04 299.70 300.60 0.90 1.36 17 0.04 0.04 0.01 300.60 301.20 0.60 1.32 5 0.01 0.01 - 301.20 301.70 0.50 1.48 10 0.01 0.06 0.05 301.70 302.20 0.50 1.80 49 0.06 0.40 0.26 302.20 303.00 0.80 3.79 81 0.08 0.54 0.40 303.00 303.70 0.70 1.34 18 0.11 0.09 0.01 Apollo Drilling Three holes were drilled from Pad 12 in order to better outline the shallowest portion of the dip of the system for block modelling. High-grade and shallow brecciated porphyry mineralization was intersected in holes APC-80, APC-82 and APC-84 (see Table 4) and was fringed to the north by lower grade and peripheral mineralization. These three holes have added grade and volume at shallow levels to the Apollo system with assay results as follows: 130.45 metres @ 2.17 g/t gold equivalent from 119.90 metres downhole in APC-80. 98.75 metres @ 2.71 g/t gold equivalent from 132.35 metres downhole in APC-82. 53.70 metres @ 0.67 g/t gold equivalent from 120.00 metres downhole in APC-84. Additionally, from Pad 3, drillhole APC-75, APC-77 and APC-79 (see Table 4) were fanned in southerly directions to test for the potential of the low-grade halo of mineralization surrounding the main brecciated high-grade Apollo system. These holes were drilled so that the Company can begin to assess the potential of the low-grade halo and its potential to positively impact future mining scenarios as well as determining the eastern boundary of the Apollo intrusion. Assay results are as follows: 109.15 metres @ 0.46 g/t gold equivalent from 7.00 metres downhole in APC-75. 36.10 metres @ 0.36 g/t gold equivalent from 52.40 metres downhole in APC-77. As a result of drill holes APC-75 and APC-77, the maximum known strike of the Apollo system has been extended by 40 metres and now measures 560 metres in length. Finally, a seventh hole, APC-76 was drilled to the west from Pad 5 with the objective of intersecting a deep zone of the brecciated porphyry. Unfortunately, the hole was abandoned at a shallow depth before reaching the target zone when it entered a fault zone and encountered mechanical problems. Table 4: Assay Results for Apollo Drilling Hole # From (m) To (m) Length (m) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) Cu (%) Mo (%) WO 3 (%) AuEq (g/t*) APC-75 7.00 116.15 109.15 0.27 6 0.05 0.002 0.01 0.46 Incl 109.75 116.15 6.40 3.42 9 0.04 0.003 - 3.54 and 302.25 337.05 34.80 0.23 21 0.06 0.005 - 0.66 Incl 333.40 335.10 1.70 3.87 351 0.07 0.003 - 9.21 APC-76 Hole abandoned due to technical issues APC-77 52.40 88.50 36.10 0.08 10 0.07 0.003 - 0.36 APC-79 no significant interval; drilled outside the Apollo intrusion APC-80 119.90 250.35 130.45 1.30 33 0.19 0.001 0.03 2.17 incl 139.00 155.30 16.30 2.72 23 0.05 0.002 0.01 3.11 and incl 159.05 173.10 14.05 0.87 55 0.16 0.002 0.26 2.76 and incl 213.50 250.35 36.85 2.57 16 0.13 0.001 - 2.95 APC-82 70.00 105.80 35.80 0.46 8 0.01 - - 0.58 and 132.35 231.10 98.75 1.27 52 0.39 - 0.03 2.71 incl 152.20 175.05 22.85 1.27 22 0.06 - 0.02 1.69 and incl 175.05 204.65 29.60 1.81 82 0.75 0.001 0.09 4.43 and incl 204.65 231.10 26.45 1.42 79 0.54 0.001 0.01 3.42 APC-84 120.00 173.70 53.70 0.51 10 0.02 0.001 - 0.67 Incl 147.50 166.20 18.70 1.05 15 0.02 0.001 - 1.29 and 257.60 269.25 11.65 0.93 5 0.03 0.002 0.01 1.08 *AuEq (g/t) is calculated as follows: (Au (g/t) x 0.97) + (Ag (g/t) x 0.016 x 0.88) + (Cu (%) x 1.79 x 0.90)+ (Mo (%)*11.62 x 0.85) + (WO3 (%)*6.54 x 0.50) utilizing metal prices of Cu US$3.85/lb, Ag US$24/oz Mo - US$25/lb, WO3 - US$31,000/t and Au US$1,475/oz and recovery rates of 97% for Au, 88% for Ag, 85% for Mo, 50% for WO3 and 90% for Cu. Recovery rate assumptions for gold are based on metallurgical results announced on October 17, 2023. Recovery rates for copper, molybdenum, tungsten and silver are speculative as limited metallurgical work has been completed to date on these metals. True widths are unknown, and grades are uncut. Exploration Drill Program and Assay Update Diamond drilling at the Guayabales project now totals 123 drill holes (approximately 48,751 meters) completed and assayed. The 2023 Phase II drilling program is advancing on schedule with assay results reported for 52 holes and an additional ten holes awaiting assay results from the lab. The Company now has four diamond drill rigs operating within the Guayabales project area with the following objectives for the remainder of 2023: Expanding the Apollo porphyry system both laterally and vertically. The Company is currently advancing with directional drilling utilizing two rigs aimed at expanding the Apollo system at depth, to the west and north. Drill test the Trap target in the northern portion on the Guayabales project. Three widely spaced reconnaissance holes were completed at Trap in 2022 with the discovery hole, TRC-1 assaying 102.2 metres @ 1.53 g/t gold equivalent and containing similar mineralization to the Apollo porphyry system. Follow up drilling is now underway and initial assay results are expected in due course. About Collective Mining Ltd. To see our latest corporate presentation and related information, please visit www.collectivemining.com Founded by the team that developed and sold Continental Gold Inc. to Zijin Mining for approximately $2 billion in enterprise value, Collective Mining is a copper, silver, and gold exploration company with projects in Caldas, Colombia. The Company has options to acquire 100% interests in two projects located directly within an established mining camp with ten fully permitted and operating mines. The Company's flagship project, Guayabales, is anchored by the Apollo system, which hosts the large-scale, bulk-tonnage and high-grade copper-silver-gold Apollo porphyry system. The Company's near-term objective is to drill the shallow portions of the Apollo system, continue to expand the overall dimensions of the system, which remains open in most directions and test newly generated grassroots targets. Management, insiders and close family and friends own nearly 45% of the outstanding shares of the Company and as a result, are fully aligned with shareholders. The Company is listed on the TSX under the trading symbol "CNL" and on the OTCQX under the trading symbol "CNLMF". Qualified Person (QP) and NI43-101 Disclosure David J Reading is the designated Qualified Person for this news release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") and has reviewed and verified that the technical information contained herein is accurate and approves of the written disclosure of same. Mr. Reading has an MSc in Economic Geology and is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and of the Society of Economic Geology (SEG). Technical Information Rock, soils and core samples have been prepared and analyzed at SGS and ALS laboratory facilities in Medellin, Colombia and Lima, Peru. Blanks, duplicates, and certified reference standards are inserted into the sample stream to monitor laboratory performance. Crush rejects and pulps are kept and stored in a secured storage facility for future assay verification. No capping has been applied to sample composites. The Company utilizes a rigorous, industry-standard QA/QC program. Information Contact: Follow Executive Chairman Ari Sussman (@Ariski73) and Collective Mining (@CollectiveMini1) on Twitter. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking information and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussion with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often, but not always using phrases such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking information. In this news release, forward-looking information relate, among other things, to: anticipated advancement of mineral properties or programs; future operations; future recovery metal recovery rates; future growth potential of Collective; and future development plans. These forward-looking statements, and any assumptions upon which they are based, are made in good faith and reflect our current judgment regarding the direction of our business. Management believes that these assumptions are reasonable. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors include, among others: risks related to the speculative nature of the Company's business; the Company's formative stage of development; the Company's financial position; possible variations in mineralization, grade or recovery rates; actual results of current exploration activities; conclusions of future economic evaluations; fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets; fluctuations in spot and forward prices of gold, precious and base metals or certain other commodities; fluctuations in currency markets; change in national and local government, legislation, taxation, controls regulations and political or economic developments; risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining (including environmental hazards, industrial accidents, unusual or unexpected formation pressures, cave-ins and flooding); inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on mining; employee relations; relationships with and claims by local communities and indigenous populations; availability of increasing costs associated with mining inputs and labour; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development (including the risks of obtaining necessary licenses, permits and approvals from government authorities); and title to properties, as well as those risk factors discussed or referred to in the annual information form of the Company dated April 7, 2022. Forward-looking information contained herein are made as of the date of this news release and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements and there may be other factors that cause results not to be anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. After two years, fans might see Lee Jong Suk on the small screen as he headlines "I'm Against My Romance." In a report, the South Korean heartthrob is in talks to star in a new romance K-drama. Lee Jong Suk to Potentially Team Up with Go Min Si in New Romance K-Drama Broadcasting officials mentioned that Lee Jong Suk is selected to play the lead star in "I'm Against My Romance," and is positively considering joining the series. If he officially accepts the offer, he will work alongside Go Min Si, who is also selected to play his co-star. IN CASE YOU MISSED: Lee Jong Suk Hasn't Appeared in Historical K-Drama in 10 Years Because of THIS The upcoming K-drama is a romance series that depicts the story of ex-lovers who get reunited and have a chance to continue their relationship. In "I'm Against My Romance," viewers will get to see a love story that stimulates memories and fantasies of their first love. Other than the two lead stars, the upcoming romance series will be under the direction of Lee Eung Bok, who directed hit K-dramas "Descendants of the Sun," "Goblin," "Mr. Sunshine," and Netflix's "Sweet Home" While working with the cast lineup, the forthcoming series is expected to broadcast on TVN in 2024. As mentioned, "I'm Against My Romance" will be Lee Jong Suk's first K-drama in two years after landing the challenging role of Park Chang Ho in MBC's "Big Mouth," where he starred alongside Im YoonAh. Lee Jong Suk Update Other than his possible comeback on the small screen, Lee Jong Suk underwent big adjustments in terms of his agency. As mentioned by a news outlet on September 20, HighZium Studio confirmed that the actor did not renew his contract with the label. "We are letting you know that the strategic partnership signed by HighZium Studio and A-MAN Project last year will expire at the end of October, after actor Lee Jong Suk's ongoing 2023 fan meeting tour." Following this, news broke that Lee Jong Suk was in talks to sign under ACE Factory. In addition, he was looking into establishing his own production company and plans to launch it in early 2024. Other than this, the South Korean star was busy with off-screen activities such as his fan meet, which kicked off in Hong Kong on July 1, followed by Taipei and Jakarta in the same month. The actor continued the fan meet in Dubai and Bangkok in August while having the meet and greet in Seoul, Osaka, and Tokyo in September. Wrapping up the fan meet tour, he went on to Singapore, Macau, and finally Ho Chi Minh City in October. READ MORE: Park Bo Young Mistook THIS Actress As Lee Jong Suk's Girlfriend: 'Was it something real?' For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news, keep your tabs open here at KDramaStars. KDramaStars owns this article Written by Geca Wills This South Korean actor is slated to appear in the forthcoming Hollywood movie "Home Sweet Home Rebirth." Can you guess who this celebrity is? Alexander Lee Embarks Joins 'Home Sweet Home Rebirth' Cast On November 22, multiple media outlets announced that U-KISS member Alexander Lee has been confirmed to join the cast of the Hollywood film "Home Sweet Home Rebirth." The idol-actor's agency, Tango Music, confirmed the Korean star's participation in the project. In the movie, Alexander Lee takes the role of a mysterious monk and appears as an assistant to the protagonist. He is a strong ally who saves his wife and helps the main lead against the villain. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Did You Know? Han Hyo Joo's Outfit at the 51st International Emmy Awards Costs THIS Much "Home Sweet Home Rebirth" is a live-action version of a survival-thriller video game of the same name that has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide. Director Alexander Kiesl, Steffen Hacker, producers Dean Altit, and Parkin Maliwan will all collaborate in this production. Alexander Continues His Global Activities Joining Alexander Lee are Thai actress and model Urassaya Sperbund, Michele Morrone, and William Moseley. Alexander Lee signed an exclusive contract with Tango Music in September. It was also revealed that he, along with four members of U-KISS (Suhyun, Hoon, Ki Seop, and Eli), had a meal together and signaled active activities in various fields. ALSO READ: Park Seo Joon Praised by 'The Marvels' Co-Star Brie Larson: 'He's the most...' Alexander Lee, who has released various hits as a member of the second-generation K-pop group U-KISS, has appeared in many series and films, local and international. He starred in South Korea's "God's Quiz 3" and Singapore's film "3 Piece in a Ford." "Home Sweet Home Rebirth" is expected to begin filming in Thailand in earnest. After Park Seo Joon, who just made his American movie debut in "The Marvels," Alexander Lee is the next Korean star to make a mark in Hollywood and his fans are already looking forward to his future projects. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: 4 K-Stars Who Fulfilled Their Hollywood Dreams: Park Seo Joon, Youn Yuh Jung, More What can you say about Alexander's upcoming debut in the US? Share your thoughts/replies in the comments! For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news and updates, keep your tabs open here at KDramaStars. KDramaStars owns this article. Shai Collins wrote this. After months of waiting, fans are excited to see Park Seo Joon's Hollywood debut as he joins MCU's "The Marvels" alongside Brie Larson, Iman Vellani, Teyonah Parris, and more. However, as the highly anticipated movie officially hit the big screens, fans expressed their dismay at the South Korean star's look. Taking on the role of Prince Yan of Aladna, Park Seo Joon transformed into a long-haired superhero. In addition, the MCU also introduced the actor's character wearing golden headgear. On top of it, Park Seo Joon's costume in "The Marvels" also features golden wings, which some find odd. READ MORE: Park Seo Joon Dishes on His Love for BTS + Actor Reveals Reason Behind His Dedication to Working Out After MCU released the trailer, fans and netizens flocked to social media to express their disappointment with the actor's styling. Meet the Prince Get tickets to #TheMarvels, only in theaters November 10. Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) November 3, 2023 Various outlets noted that the public seemed to be unimpressed with how the character was styled Others were confused if the crown was from the Silla era or if the character was inspired by an Indian god. 'The Marvels' Costume Designer Explains the Reason Behind Park Seo Joon's Look as Prince Yan Directed by Nia DaCosta, "The Marvels" team also featured Lindsay Pugh, who is in charge of the costume design. According to reports, the team made reference not only to the characters based on comics but also took inspiration from the concepts in all MCU movies and series. As mentioned, Lindsay Pugh wanted the character's inner strength and status to be the highlight of his look, hence the golden crown. "Prince Yan needed to be strong but also have a somewhat serious feel. His costume had to shine with beautiful colors yet possess a hint of strength." Park Seo Joon is among the few South Korean stars who managed to land an acting debut in Hollywood. With the actor marking his first ever international project, fans are thrilled to see PSJ's role as he takes on a challenging character. However, other than the styling or costume in the movie, fans got disappointed over Park Seo Joon's screentime in "The Marvels." Park Seo Joon Screen Time in 'The Marvels' Garners Attention Days before the global release of the movie, an online post garnered attention after the user shared that the actor had a short screentime in the movie, saying that he only had a 2 minute, 47 second appearance. Netizens and fans can help but feel disappointed because, all the while, they thought that the actor was playing a significant role since he was a part of the trailer. Interestingly, Park Seo Joon briefly commented about this and explained the reason behind it. As mentioned by SBS Star, the actor mentioned that the character of Prince Yan played a significant role in Carol Danvers' life. "Some might think my part in the movie is too short, but I believe it plays a crucial part in the overall narrative of The Marvels." IN CASE YOU MISSED: IU Corrects Park Seo Joon After Sending Her Food Truck: 'It's Ae Soon, not Soon Ae' For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news, keep your tabs open here at KDramaStars. KDramaStars owns this article Written by Geca Wills Han Hyo Joo made her return to Netflix through "Believer 2." Despite the hype for the movie, it received mixed reactions from the audience. Keep on reading to know what the viewers said. 'Believer 2' Tops Netflix Global & Flixpatrol for Non-English Films On November 17, the long-awaited film "Believer 2" officially hit the small screen through the online streaming giant, Netflix. Just days after its release it claimed the top spot on Netflix's Global Top 10 chart for non-English films on November 22. Before this, it had secured the third position on Flixpatrol as of November 21 and recorded an impressive score of 349 points. Based on the data released by Netflix for the Global Top 10 list, "Believer 2" swiftly made it to the top 10 lists in more than twenty countries including Thailand, Singapore, Romania, Morocco, and Jamaica. The action film also earned spots on the Flixpatrol charts in South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Han Hyo Joo Reveals Overwhelming Support of 'Moving' Fans to Her New Movie: 'Bong Seok's mom is getting bad' "Believer 2" is one of the anticipated movies this 2023 as viewers are intrigued by the continuing intense storyline of the relentless pursuit of Detective Won Ho, after the brutal battle at Yongsan Station. The narrative unfolds with characters like the missing Rak, the re-emerged Brian, and the dangerous Big Knife. It is a sequel to the 2018 crime action film, "Believer." Han Hyo Joo & 'Believer 2' Criticized by Viewers However, despite the achievements it received on trending charts, the movie faced criticism after its release. According to a source, "Believer 2" has been called out for its thin plot, unappealing characters, and disappointing ending that makes the audience feel despondent. In particular, Han Hyo Joo's performance received backlash, with the viewers saying she lacked acting skills and that she wasn't right for the role. As a result, the rating remains in the two-point range. It is a regrettable situation because it is a movie that has attracted more than five million viewers. Believer 2 (Netflix sequel to the 2018 korean hit) Upped the action, crazyness & violence, kept the tension & twists. 7,5/10 But you should really watch Believer shortly before, otherwise it might just feel too convoluted or flat out confusing. (especially as 1 lead got recast) pic.twitter.com/r1pHEb8Cyv Jack Sawyer (@JackSawyer0815) November 20, 2023 Believer 2 was a good movie but, felt useless to be made by the end of it. Genuinely wouldve preferred the movie to not exist. (Especially based on the ending.) #kdramas #netflix #Believer #Believer2 @NetflixKo November 20, 2023 What's Next for Han Hyo Joo Meanwhile, Han Hyo Joo made her red carpet walk at the 51st International Emmy Awards in New York. She met the crowd with an elegant ensemble that cost millions. The "Moving" actress attended the prestigious event as a presenter in the TV movie and mini-series categories. IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Did You Know? Han Hyo Joo's Outfit at the 51st International Emmy Awards Costs THIS Much What can you say about Han Hyo Joo's new movie "Believer 2"? Share your thoughts/replies in the comments! For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news and updates, keep your tabs open here at Kdramastars. Kdramastars owns this article. Shai Collins wrote this. Kai Thomas has won the $60,000 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for his debut novel, "In the Upper Country," about two Black women at the northern end of the Underground Railroad. Thomas is seen in an undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Writers' Trust, Brooke Bridges, *MANDATORY CREDIT* The former Managing Director of Uganda Railways Corporation, Mr. Stanely Ssendegeya, has been remanded to Luzira prison for forging academic documents that enabled him to secure the aforementioned job. Ssendegeya was arrested by the State House Anti-Corruption Unit on his way to Nakasero Hospital, where he reportedly receives daily medication for his stroke. He appeared before Buganda Road Court Grade One Magistrate Siena Owomugisha on Wednesday and denied forging a Masters Degree in Business Administration. Prosecution states that Ssendegeya, a 54-year-old resident of Namugongo Janda in Wakiso district, with the intent to deceive, forged a CV purporting that he held a Masters Degree in Business Administration whereas not. He is also accused of providing false information to a recruitment firm, Delloit Uganda Ltd, at their offices on Lumumba Avenue. Ssendegeya, through his lawyer Benon Tusasirwe, applied for bail on grounds that his medical condition cannot be adequately managed in prison. He also presented three sureties, including his wife, son, and mother-in-law, but the court has reserved its ruling until November 27, 2023. He has been remanded to Luzira prison until then after state prosecutor, Judith Nyamwiza, informed the court that investigations are still ongoing. By AFP srael and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war. In the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the war, Palestinian militants will release during a four-day truce 50 women and children kidnapped during their October 7 raids. After weeks of Qatar-brokered negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus cabinet approved the truce accord Wednesday after a near-all-night meeting, in which he told ministers this was a difficult decision but its a right decision. he cabinets sign-off was one of the last stumbling blocks after what one US official described as five extremely excruciating weeks of talks. Hamas released a statement welcoming the humanitarian truce and said it would also see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails. The resistance is committed to the truce as long as the occupation honours it, a Hamas official told AFP. Hamas gunmen carried out on October 7 a cross-border attack, the worst in Israels history, that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government. Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups also took an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners hostage, among them elderly people and young children. Israel declared war on Hamas, vowing to bring the hostages home and to destroy the militant group. It launched a major bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which, according to the Hamas government in the territory, has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children. Israel said that to facilitate the hostage release it would initiate a four-day pause in its six-week-old air, land and sea assault of Gaza, while it stressed that the agreement did not spell the end of the war. For every 10 additional hostages released, there would be an extra days pause, the Israeli government said. Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group that took part in the October 7 attacks, had earlier told AFP the truce would include a ceasefire on the ground and a pause in Israeli air operations over southern Gaza. The negotiations have involved the US Central Intelligence Agency, Israels overseas spy agency Mossad, Egyptian intelligence, and leaders in Doha, Cairo, Washington, Gaza and Israel. A senior US official said three Americans, including three-year-old Abigail Mor Idan, were among the 50 earmarked for staggered release from Thursday. US President Joe Biden said he was extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented. Buganda Kingdom premier, Charles Peter Mayiga, has eulogized the late Joyce Mpanga as a true patriot. He made the remarks on Wednesday while visiting the deceaseds family members at her home in Lungujja, Rubaga division to condole with them. Mayiga noted that the former state minister of primary education will be remembered in Buganda Kingdom and her husband, Fredrick Mpanga, who died in the 1970s, for the role they played in supporting Bugandas exiled King, the late Edward Muteesa, and Prince (now Kabaka) Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, when they were in England. He said the late Mpanga was very close to Prince Mutebi throughout his time in exile. Mayiga added that Baganda will never forget the lates role in the restoration process of the Kingdom of Buganda and a great pillar in the Buganda Lukiiko (Parliament) where she served until her death. Mpanga was also awarded the highest Kingdom honor of a spear and shield (Ekitiibwa ekyAmafumu nEngabo) at Kabakas coronation. Mpanga will be accorded an offcial burial on Thursday, November 23, 2023. By Andrew Bagala The police have resorted to drilling boreholes and installing solar power in their facilities to reduce water and electricity bills. This follows the disconnection of water and power in several police institutions across the country over utility bill arrears just five months into the financial year. The institution intends to massively install solar gadgets for lighting, drill water for domestic use and package the same to reduce budget leakages on utilities, support operations, and also participate in production, the Inspector General of Police, Mr Martins Okoth Ochola, said yesterday. Last week, police teams visited several barracks in the Kampala Metropolitan Police Area evicting people who reside there illegally. At least one person was shot dead at the Kireka Police Barracks during the exercise. The utilities crisis attracted Parliaments attention last week with the Speaker of Parliament, Ms Anita Among, raising concerns. Why would you disconnect water and electricity to someone providing you with security? This is government to government, why do we do this? Ms Among asked. In response, the Minister of State for Internal Affairs, Gen David Muhoozi, said he was unaware of the situation but requested time to find out why. Funding for utilities in the police budget has been insufficient for more than 10 years. For instance, in the 2021/2022 financial year, the government provided only Shs16.24b and Shs11.09b for power and water bills, respectively. The police require an additional Shs86b to deal with utility bills each financial year. The available funds can cover utilities for only four months in a financial year. Mr Ochola said despite the challenges, the government has continued to cut the police budget every financial year. In May, President Museveni directed that security personnel shouldnt be forced to spend their salaries on services the government is required to provide to them. By Philip Wafula, Ronald Seebe & Sam Caleb Opio Kyabazinga William Gabula Nadiope IV last Saturday tied the knot with Ms Jovia Mutesi at Christs Cathedral, Bugembe in Jinja North City Division, after which they hosted their guests at a reception at the monarchs Igenge Palace. But while bars had a field day as its patrons followed proceedings on television sets, lodging facilities took a hit as most people didnt return later in the night to engage in conjugal rights out of respect for the Kyabazinga and Inhebantu. The head of traditional healers in the kingdom, Mr Patrick Mudungu, had earlier warned married couples in the monarchy against having sexual intercourse on the historic day. Specifically, Mr Mudungu urged married couples to vacate their matrimonial beds on November 18, and sleep on the floor separately to avoid any temptation of getting intimate, warning that any such attempts by errant couples may result in doom. This is a precaution to all people that the spirits will be watching everyone on that night and those who will go against this, will experience a change in their lives, Mr Mudungu said in an interview with Daily Monitor prior to the wedding. Instead, Mr Mudungu asked Kyabazingas subjects, especially married couples, to reflect on their different beliefs. However, Ms Aidah Naigaga, who owns Naigaga Lodge in Namutumba Town Council, says the royal wedding night cost her over Shs300,000. All my rooms remained empty, men were seen in bars drinking the whole night until morning, but they obeyed Mr Mudungus directive, Ms Naigaga said, adding that that was my first time to see such a thing happening. She added: Before the royal wedding day, I thought it was a joke, but started noticing it at 8pm when my routine customers were only drinking but not entering the lodge. Mr Ronnie Wampa, the manager of Dabada Lodge in Namutumba Town Council, says he even reduced prices but customers stayed away allegedly for fear of being harmed by the spirits Mr Mudungu talked about. Mr Duncan Waiswa, the manager of Namugere Bar and Lodge, also in Namutumba Town Council, said he only got two customers, adding that overall, he made a loss of over Shs150,000 from lodges, but made money from drinks. A lady who owns one of the lodges in Kamuli, but declined to be named, saying she doesnt like being in the media spotlight, said she registered losses even after offering a discount in honour of the Kyabazinga. Some of Kyabazingas subjects have told this Publication that they didnt engage in conjugal rights for fear of the wrath of the spirits. Mr Noah Muyinda, a resident of Kaiti Village, says he abstained on the wedding night because he feared to become impotent. Before Mr Mudungu declared a ban on conjugal rights on the wedding day, my grandfather had briefed me on the same matter and even warned of the consequences; so, I decided to abstain for only a day than becoming impotent for life, Mr Muyinda said. He added that on the royal wedding night, he slept in the kitchen to avoid any temptation or arousal by his wife. Instead of sleeping separately on the floor, I slept in the kitchen alone, while my wife slept on the bed, he added. Mr Juma Balikowa, a resident of Kasedere Village, Namutumba Sub-county in Namutumba district, says he did not have any conjugal rights on Saturday night because he respects the Kyabazinga and culture of Busoga. He says: I slept on the bed with my wife, but we agreed not to have sex because we respect our Kyabazinga. Mr John Walugada, a resident of Ntalinga Village, Kizuba Sub-county also in Namutumba district, says he deliberately went against Mr Mudungus directive to see what would befall him. Nothing has so far happened to me, not even being attacked by spirits. Perhaps I will see the consequences in future, but as of now, I am okay, he said. Mr Jafari Nabongho, a resident of Itonko Village in Namutumba Town Council, says much as he knew that nothing was going to befall him if he had conjugal rights, he decided to abstain and spend the night praying for the royal couple. However, a youth, who asked to only be identified as Dhizaala, said he set out to conjugal rights but it took him half an hour to rise up to the occasion, quickly fueling fear that the spirits had killed him. Mr Julius Otai a clinical psychiatrist and chairperson Busoga Mental Health Workers Forum, says what befell the youth is more of a psychological effect, adding that people who try to test the norm or prove it a myth may actually have failed to perform because of mental phobia and anxiety which causes sexual dysfunction. Mr Emmanuel Babalanda, the deputy Chief Prince (Isabalangira) of Bugabula chiefdom, however, says since this was a Christian wedding, cultural issues were overtaken by events and modernization. According to Mr Babalanda, there was a need to respect and honour the Kyabazinga by not having two bulls in one kraal on a single night. By Sylvia Katushabe The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mr Thomas Tayebwa, has called for internal audits in public schools to eliminate ghoststudents. Mr Tayebwa said the government is losing a lot of money through funding non-existing learners in public schools that could cover the funding gap in the education sector. Just like we have done audits for human resources in the country, we need to do serious audits for our students in these schools. The huge amount of money we are losing to ghost students would help to cover most of these costs,Mr Tayebwa said. He was speaking during the orientation meeting for MPs on early child- hood development in Kampala yesterday. Mr Tayebwa said the census of students should be on the same day and time, arguing that schools swap learn- ers to top up the missing numbers. What is surprising is that in villages, private schools are cheaper than public schools because there is a lot of corruption where the registered numbers are not the exact ones on the ground, the Deputy Speaker said. However, Mr Tayebwa called for increased funding for universal education both at primary and secondary levels to make it entirely free. He also called for a law to protect the inter-sex children in the country, saying they had been left behind. According to Mr Tayebwa, most of them are stigmatised. Most of them are looked at as a curse in the community and even killed, so such people, the albinos, the intersex are disabilities that have not been brought forward and I would ask colleagues to look into it and see how best they can be helped, he said. Mr Tayebwa said the country has more than 300,000 inter-sex people and its unfortunate they were included by the gay community. They came to me saying they want us to look into the law we passed but we showed them what we passed, they were never touched, and we never criminalised any activity of an intersex person. I will interest you in studying these groups and we see how we can help them, especially on policy and how we can fund their treatment and surgeries. The doctors who accompanied them from Mulago hospital said these are easy operations, especially if identified early, the Deputy Speaker said 1 of 1 , - khaskhabar.com : , 22 2023 5:37 PM One of Kilkennys best known actors, Michael Somers, has taken to the directors chair in his biggest project to date. Hailing from Coon in North Kilkenny, Somers was instrumental in the Michael Casey era with The Kilquan Players, an era where the group became one of the best known groups in the country. The Kilkennyman was a member of the Barn Owl Players and trod the Barn stage on numerous occasions. However, The Steward of Christendom by renowned writer Sebastian Barry will be his biggest project to date. Michael has also always had an interest in and a pasion for directing. Directing was where I wanted to be, he said. Im a harsh critic when it comes to plays. But the person Im hardest on is me. According to Somers, when it comes to local, The Steward of Christendom is as local as it gets. The Steward of Christendom is a profoundly moving story of family, love and loss. The Steward of Christendom focuses on Thomas Dunne, loosely based on Barrys great-grandfather, now confined to a psychiatric facility. The play recounts Dunnes personal and public life throughout the 1910s and into the early 1920s. Set in 1932 in the Baltinglass county home Thomas Dunne (Paul McManus), the last Chief Superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, looks back on his life as he tries to keep his ghosts at bay with reimagined memories of his daughters Annie (Michelle Phelan), Maud (Eimear Martin) and Dolly (Niamh Deay) and his son Willie (Muckalees Kevin Tynan), interspersed by interactions between Dunne and Mrs ODea (Georgina Brennan Stynes) and Smith (Richard Duffy), two attendants from the home. History It is a tale of family running concurrently with Irish history, spanning British colonial rule through to the early days of Irish independence. When the county home closed in Baltinglass patients moved to St Dympnas in Carlow, a place where Carlow Little Theatre rehaersed for years. Sebastian Barry has congratulated the cast and crew in staging the play in the county where it is based. Im delighted and proud that the distinguished Carlow Little Theatre are tackling The Steward, and bringing it home to Carlow, he said. I do wish them every success and happiness doing the play. The play runs from November 22 to 25 at 7.30pm in the Visual in Carlow. Admission is 21 and 19. For more see visualcarlow.ie The debate surrounding the Boundary Commissions recommendation to subsume parts of North-West Kilkenny into a new three-seater Tipperary North constituency shows no signs of abating with Kilkenny and Tipperary TDs having their say in the Dail. Klkenny TD and Minister of State for Nature, Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcom Noonan, defended the proposed changes despite much local disapproval. "For a hurling county like ours it is very difficult; I am sure it is difficult for the people of Urlingford and Freshford to deal with," he said, before claiming that the recommendations struck a 'good balance', stating, the changes will offer 'broader representation' that is 'more reflective of Irish society'. Tipperary Independent TD Mattie McGrath labelled the change 'unusual', adding: "No one expected this or saw it coming. "I can tell the House that regarding the people of Cill Chainnigh, nil siad sasta." Kilkenny Fianna Fail TD, John McGuinness, called on politicians to 'challenge' and 'amend' the Boundary Commissions report. Deputy McGuinness said: "We should look at the commissions report, and any report that comes before us, and not be afraid to amend it if it is in the interests of the people that we represent and in this case, if it is in the interests of democracy, because that is all we have." The local representative went on to voice his disapproval of North-West Kilkenny being amalgamated into the new Tipperary North constituency. "I believe in the integrity of the county. It should be protected at all costs. It was a ridiculous decision and one that the House should not feel obliged to adopt," Mr McGuinness said. VIRGIN Media Television has announced that Brian Dowling and Katja Mia will become the new, permanent presenters of The Six OClock Show. The Six O'Clock Show hosts some of the biggest international and local guests live everyday, with fabulous food, musical performances and some brilliant regulars that are always guaranteed to entertain, inform and usually give you a few laughs. TV presenter and radio host Brian Dowling has guest presented on Virgin Media Television previously. The Kildare native also fronts Virgin Media Televisions brand-new sustainable makeover series The Salvage Squad, which airs on Sundays at 8pm on Virgin Media One. Katja Mia joins The Six OClock Show as permanent presenter, having joined the Ireland AM Weekend team last year. Katja is also a model and social media influencer. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brian Dowling Gourounlian (@bprdowling) The hosts arent strangers as theyve co-presented Ireland AM together before. Speaking about his new role as co-host, Brian said: Im absolutely delighted to be joining The Six OClock Show team permanently. Im such a big fan of the show and have had a blast guest presenting on the Six Sofa, so I cant wait to get stuck into presenting each weeknight, and with such a pro Katja joining me. Speaking about her new role as co-host, Katja said: Im delighted to become the new co-host on The Six OClock Show and join such a fantastic on-air team. Ill miss the Ireland AM team and my co-hosts Elaine and Martin, but Ill be bringing everything Ive learnt with me to my new presenting gig. The Six OClock Show airs weeknights at 6pm on Virgin Media One and Virgin Media Player. Holger Hanselka headed KIT from October 2013 to August 2023. KIT honored his extraordinarily successful presidency at a farewell symposium on November 9. (Photo: Markus Breig, KIT) The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) held a farewell symposium today for its longtime President, Professor Holger Hanselka. Leading members of the political, business, and scientific communities came together at the event in the Audimax to honor Hanselka for his achievements as head of KIT from 2013 to 2023. During Hanselkas tenure, KIT regained its University of Excellence title and the 2nd KIT Further Development Act took effect. Photos of the event can be viewed in this album During his time in office as president, Holger Hanselka was committed to defining a clear strategy for KIT and forming it into a single entity. The primary aim of the 10-point plan he submitted at the start of his presidency in 2013 was to identify and exploit potential synergies in research, teaching, innovation and operations. To that end, the Joint KIT Statutes were enacted under his leadership in 2014 to define an integrated organizational structure. In collaboration with his colleagues on the KIT Executive Board, Hanselka developed the KIT 2025 Umbrella Strategy, which was adopted in 2015. It set priorities for the years to come: Cutting-edge research for the benefit of society; a focus on energy, mobility and information; integrating basic research with applications and transfer; research-oriented teaching and strong support for young scientists; a new Executive Board portfolio for Innovation and International Affairs; and further integration of the functions of a major national research institution and a state university. Operational Success Resulting from Large-Scale Reorganization Hanselkas push for a strategic and organizational realignment of KIT laid the foundation for numerous subsequent operational successes. A particularly significant achievement was KITs reattainment of the prestigious University of Excellence title in July 2019. In the Excellence Strategy contest organized by Germanys federal and state governments, KIT proved itself with its research clusters and its strategic concept, The Research University in the Helmholtz Association | Living the Change, and won back the title it had lost in 2012. A further milestone was reached when the 2nd KIT Further Development Act came into force in January 2023 after years of preparation at KIT and at the federal and state levels. The amended act removes numerous administrative restrictions and strengthens cutting-edge research, research-oriented teaching, and knowledge and technology transfer. Having fulfilled Hanselkas strategic vision of a university that is unified, efficient and strong in research, KIT now enjoys the greatest freedom of action among Germanys scientific institutions. At the farewell symposium, Professor Michael Kaschke, Chairperson of the KIT Supervisory Board, praised Hanselkas contributions: In his ten years as president, Holger Hanselka has left his mark on KIT. Thanks to the long-term strategic and organizational realignment he envisioned, which included all of KITs divisions and functions, KIT has been able to regain its excellence status and become one of the most attractive places in Germany for researchers and students. With the enormous potential stemming from its combination of university and large-scale research, KIT can also move toward the forefront of the international scientific landscape. Looking back on his time in Karlsruhe, Holger Hanselka said: In the ten years I spent at KIT, we turned it into combination of national research center and state university. That was very demanding on everybody here, but we took the path together and Im very thankful for that. In his view, KIT is well positioned for the future. Today I can say that our idea of one KIT has borne fruit. KIT has been a University of Excellence again since 2019, and its well established in the Helmholtz Associations program-oriented research. Thanks to its structure, which is unique in Germany, KIT can make major contributions to the solution of global problems by performing cutting-edge research and offering research-oriented teaching. Statements about Holger Hanselkas Tenure as President of KIT Judith Pirscher, Undersecretary of State at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research: After ten years of extraordinary service and dedication, Professor Hanselka, the architect of KIT, is leaving Karlsruhe to serve as President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. During his time in office, he transformed KIT into a beacon on the German scientific landscape. His passion for science and research and his tireless dedication have made KIT one of the leading institutions in Europe. For that I extend to him on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research my heartfelt thanks for his work and his extraordinary dedication, and I wish him all the best in his new role. Petra Olschowski, Baden-Wurttembergs Minister of Science, Research, and the Arts: For nearly a decade, Professor Holger Hanselka shaped the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. During his presidency, he was able to strategically position KIT for the future as The Research University in the Helmholtz Association: Holger Hanselka returned KIT to its place among the Universities of Excellence, and he stands for the integration of university and national large-scale research. He has earned immense gratitude for his service at KIT, and Holger Hanselka will continue to shape the research landscape as President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Professor Oliver Kraft, Vice President for Research at KIT, who represents the KIT President internally and externally during the transition: The captain has left us, but a properly organized ship like KIT can be steered by the officers for a while without major course changes. In the KIT Executive Board, we see ourselves very well positioned for the upcoming preparations for the federal and state Excellence Strategy competition, the next round of the Helmholtz Associations program-oriented funding, and further implementation of the KIT Act. Professor Otmar D. Wiestler, President of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres: With his in-depth expertise and his impressive understanding of advanced research and knowledge transfer, Holger Hanselka has played an especially important role in shaping energy research at Helmholtz. As Vice President, he worked with our Research Field Energy to guide the transformation of our energy system always with an eye to the needs of society. On behalf of the Helmholtz Association, I extend my sincere thanks for his efforts and accomplishments. We look forward to a strong partnership with him in his new role as President at Fraunhofer. Adrian Keller, Chairperson of the KIT Students Union: Professor Hanselka had a major influence on KITs development, driving the integration of its university and large-scale research activities. In spite of our frequently divergent opinions and positions, which are a function of the roles we have, we always maintained a trusting and constructive working relationship, for which I give him my heartfelt thanks. Dr. Frank Mentrup, Lord Mayor of Karlsruhe: It is very much to Professor Hanselkas credit that KIT now has a clear strategic vision, is involved in all important fields of pioneering research, and has become a University of Excellence again in 2019. In addition, during the Hanselka era KIT set new standards in communication and discourse with our citys society, establishing innovative educational formats like the KIT Science Week. He has helped KIT and Karlsruhe to further improve their cooperation and mutually benefit from it. Holger Hanselka: a Short Biography Professor Dr.-Ing. Holger Hanselka, born in Oldenburg in 1961, studied mechanical engineering at TU Clausthal. He took a position as a research assistant at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in 1988, where he specialized in lightweight construction and fiber composites. From 1997, he held the chair of Adaptronics at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. In 2001 he became Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability in Darmstadt and, concurrently, Head of the System Reliability and Machine Acoustics Research Group at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Hanselka was a member of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschafts Executive Board from 2006 to 2012 and Vice President of the Technical University of Darmstadt from 2010 to 2013. While he was President of KIT, Hanselka was also Research Field Coordinator Energy of the Helmholtz Association. He became President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in August 2023. More information: The Architect of KIT: an interview with Professor Holger Hanselka in the current issue of KITs research magazine, lookKIT (p. 64 ff.) Being The Research University in the Helmholtz Association, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,800 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence. BERLIN, Nov 22 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government looks set to delay talks on next year's budget as it struggles to find a way out of a deepening crisis caused by a court ruling that has forced a freeze on new spending pledges. A delay to the talks - scheduled for Thursday - would underscore the challenge facing the government after the country's constitutional court blocked a move to transfer 60 billion euros ($65.44 billion) in unused funds from the pandemic to green investments. In a bombshell ruling last week, the court ruled the budget manoeuvre was incompatible with the debt restrictions enshrined in Germany's constitution. The three parties in Social Democrat (SPD) Scholz's uneasy coalition with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) are trying to hammer out a solution to keep as many spending pledges as possible - and make them legally compliant. With talks among politicians from all parties going on through the day, options include drawing up a supplementary budget for 2023 and suspending Germany's self-imposed debt brake before reinstating it for next year. An email seen by Reuters from the head of the budget committee of the opposition conservatives, asked other members of the committee if they objected to cancelling Thursday's planned talks to thrash out next year's spending plans. Such a move would probably mean next year's budget could not go to the Bundestag lower house of parliament next week which could increase uncertainty about spending in all areas of the German economy. Highlighting the gravity of the situation, the government has already imposed a freeze on most new spending commitments. It has also blocked spending from the 200 billion euro Economic Stabilisation Fund for this year, a letter seen by Reuters showed, and a government source told Reuters the government wanted to close the fund by the end of the year. Almost every item of spending that has not yet been formally approved is up in the air. Among the uncertainties is aid for Ukraine. The government had planned to double military aid to Ukraine to 8 billion euros next year. INDUSTRY URGES CLARITY Greens Economy Minister Robert Habeck has warned that Germany's place as an investment hub is at stake, as well as jobs, and industry chiefs have called for clarity quickly. "German industry is looking at the current political situation with the greatest concern," said Siegfried Russwurm, president of the BDI industry association. The influential VDA autos association, which represents giants like BMW (BMWG.DE) and Volkswagen as well as smaller suppliers, urged the government to provide a clear, reliable basis for planning as quickly as possible. The government must be "more committed and determined than before in pushing ahead with energy partnerships and trade and raw materials agreements to strengthen Germany as an industrial location," a spokesperson for the VDA said. Trying to inject some reassurance, one government source told Reuters that the government would continue with its modernisation and economic transformation. "This will not be called into question by the budgetary difficulties," said the source. So far, Berlin has stuck by an agreement for 10 billion euros in subsidies with U.S. chipmaker Intel (INTC.O), which will develop two chipmaking plants. A government source has told Reuters suspending the debt brake, which was lifted between 2020 and 2022 to cushion the impact of the COVID pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, would have to follow guidelines set out in the court ruling. Finance Minister Christian Lindner has been reluctant to reform the debt brake, which restricts Germany's structural budget deficit to the equivalent of 0.35% of gross domestic product. His pro-business FDP are strong advocates of fiscal discipline and low taxes. ($1 = 0.9168 euros) Get all the essential market news and expert opinions in one place with our daily newsletter. Receive a comprehensive recap of the day's top stories directly to your inbox. Sign up here! (Kitco News) - The push to make Bitcoin (BTC) legal tender continues to gain traction in some regions as Joana Cotar, a member of the German Bundestag (federal parliament), recently expressed her support for making the top cryptocurrency legal tender in Germany. Cotar made the comments while speaking with Cointelegraph, saying that she wants to initiate a preliminary examination to create a legal framework that officially recognizes BTC as legal tender in the country. This includes ensuring the legal security for companies and citizens, she said. We need to combat potential risks such as money laundering, tax evasion, and other illegal activities associated with Bitcoin, but without stifling innovation and the freedom aspects of Bitcoin. At the same time, Cotar pushed back against the creation of a digital euro, saying the implementation of the central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the EU would allow central banks to set an upper limit for payments and ownership, putting citizens helplessly at [their] mercy. The digital euro would also mean that each and every one of us could be totally monitored, she said. As a convinced libertarian, I emphatically reject this. Anyone who is against surveillance and for freedom does not need a digital euro! Cotar pointed to Chinas social credit system as a cautionary example of what a cashless and state-controlled payment system would mean for EU citizens. I dont want the authorities to be able to spy on our private life and misuse this data, she said. During a speech last week before the Bundestag, Germanys parliament, Cotar advocated for Bitcoin by wearing a shirt with the BTC logo on it while also speaking out against the Digital euro. Whoever is tired of fiat money and is interested in sound money has Bitcoins in his wallet. No one needs the digital euro, except for the ECB and politicians with a different agenda: namely the total surveillance of citizens, she said. To help educate her fellow Bundestag members on the benefits of Bitcoin, Cotar has started the Bitcoin in the Bundestag initiative. We need to promote the freedom aspects of Bitcoin. This includes protecting privacy, ensuring security standards, and preventing excessive regulation to maximize the benefits of Bitcoin, she said. While she is clearly pro-Bitcoin, Cotar said that other crypto assets are not really of interest to her. Establishing a formal Bundestag committee that recognizes the technological differences between Bitcoin and other crypto assets and mainly deals with the importance of Bitcoin for our society is very important for us, she said. My initiative is Bitcoin only. With the EU preparing to implement the recently passed Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation that establishes a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the European Union, it's unclear what role Bitcoin will play in the grand scheme of things, and whether it will be able to gain legal tender status, but Cotar intends to keep the conversation going by drawing more attention to Bitcoin, its capabilities, and the role of sound money in the financial system. Currently, Bitcoin is only considered legal tender in two countries: El Salvador and the Central African Republic (CAR). The adoption of BTC as legal tender in Germany would mark the most significant act of adoption at the governmental level, and could influence other nations to reconsider their stance on Bitcoin, especially given Germany's substantial economic influence in Europe and around the world. MUMBAI, Nov 22 (Reuters) - The Indian government will likely complete the sale of its majority stake in IDBI Bank (IDBI.NS) only after the country's general elections in mid-2024, said three sources aware of the matter, stretching out a process that began in October 2022. The Reserve Bank of India, also the country's banking regulator, has not yet completed "fit and proper" vetting on the interested bidders, who include Emirates NBD and Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa, after which the bidders can do their due diligence and place their financial bids, the sources said. The finalisation of an agreement to buy 60.7% of IDBI and regulatory approvals will take place only after general elections, the first source said. The sources declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media. India's general elections are expected by May next year and an outgoing government typically avoids major policy decisions just ahead of polls. Last week, a government official said a sale was unlikely this financial year, putting at risk the government's target of raising 510 billion rupees ($6.13 billion) through share sales. The government had asked the RBI to speed up the vetting process but this is taking time as foreign entities are also interested in acquiring the lender, two sources said. The Indian finance ministry did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. After the central bank's clearance, potential bidders will need at least two months to assess IDBI Bank's financials and "adequate time" to firm up bids, said the third source. The government, which owns 45.48% in IDBI Bank, and state-owned Life Insurance Corp of India (LIFI.NS), which holds 49.24%, together plan to sell 60.7% of the lender. On Tuesday, the government cancelled the bidding process for hiring an asset valuer for the sale after only one bid was received. This bidder's conditions were not acceptable to the government and a fresh process will be initiated soon, said the second source. ($1 = 83.2440 Indian rupees) LONDON, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Britain's finance minister Jeremy Hunt said he would explore options for a NatWest (NWG.L) share offer to the public in the next 12 months, to allow the government to reduce its stake in the bank. The government has been slowly reducing its stake in NatWest since bailing out the lender during the 2008-9 global financial crisis, but retains around 39%. The bank was returned to majority private control last year after a string of stock sales, mainly to institutional investors. "I will explore options for a NatWest retail share offer in the next 12 months subject to supportive market conditions and achieving value for money," Hunt said on Wednesday. The plan forms part of a wider push to reinvigorate interest in UK stocks, the minister said, adding it "was time to get Sid investing again". "Tell Sid" adverts encouraged millions of ordinary Britons to buy into the privatisations of state-owned companies in the 1980s. Alasdair Haynes, CEO of share trading platform Aquis Exchange, said the move was "a positive first step" to attract new retail investors to UK markets, but urged the government to also educate individuals about investments, risks and rewards. NatWest said decisions around share sales were a matter for the government, but welcomed its commitment to returning the bank to private hands. NatWest shares dipped on Hunt's comments and were last down 1.1% at 204.7 pence, compared with a 0.2% fall in the FTSE 100 (.FTSE) index. The government is all-but-certain to make a hefty loss on the 45 billion pound ($56.07 billion) rescue, with NatWest shares languishing far below the level at which it was bailed out at 502 pence per share. The share sale plan comes at a difficult time for NatWest, which has endured a tumultuous year after a damaging row with former Brexit party leader Nigel Farage over the closure of his bank accounts. The episode sparked a political backlash and ultimately led to the departure of the bank's CEO Alison Rose. The stock is the worst performing FTSE 100 British bank stock this year, down more than a fifth, according to Eikon data. Britain's last major attempt to lure retail investors into stock investment came with the 2013 listing of Royal Mail, a bumper multi-billion pound IPO that was more than 20 times oversubscribed and saw shares jump almost 40% at market debut. That investment turned sour for many and shares in the renamed holding company International Distributions Service (IDSI.L) are now worth 25% less than its 330 pence offer price. ($1 = 0.8025 pounds) this is the future Willie Jackson would have brought us, had the election gone the other way. Canada ran the same "If you link you must pay" regime Jackson wanted. So Meta stopped serving news. And news outlets figured out that they really did need those links. Oops. https://t.co/qsuPmoopkQ Eric Crampton (@EricCrampton) November 22, 2023 The NZ media convinced the outgoing government that they somehow have a divine right to advertising revenue and facebook and Google should be taxed to fund NZ media. This is what has occurred in Canada, and the result was the tech giants said the benefit from stories being promoted on social media benefits the media far far more than the tech companies. So they turned off the ability to share Canadian news on social media. The result was a huge revenue drop for the media, and now the Government is bailing them out. This is what Labour wanted to implement in NZ! Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr Actresses dropped from Hollywood companies after comments on Israel-Hamas war Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Scream star Melissa Barrera were each dropped by Hollywood companies after making comments on the Israel-Hamas war that some deemed antisemitic This story has been updated with additional developments. CNNs Becky Anderson in Doha, Jeremy Diamond and Mike Schwartz in Sderot, Kareem El Damanhoury, Pamela Brown, Betsy Klein, Lauren Iszo, Amir Tal and Manveena Suri contributed to this report. Cutler Capital Management LLC lessened its position in Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE Free Report) by 7.9% during the second quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The fund owned 157,250 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock after selling 13,547 shares during the quarter. Pfizer comprises approximately 3.4% of Cutler Capital Management LLCs investment portfolio, making the stock its 4th largest position. Cutler Capital Management LLCs holdings in Pfizer were worth $5,768,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. A number of other large investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Front Street Capital Management Inc. increased its position in Pfizer by 4.3% during the 1st quarter. Front Street Capital Management Inc. now owns 5,168 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $268,000 after buying an additional 215 shares in the last quarter. Madison Wealth Management grew its holdings in Pfizer by 0.6% during the first quarter. Madison Wealth Management now owns 42,810 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $1,747,000 after acquiring an additional 262 shares during the period. Capital Planning Advisors LLC raised its position in Pfizer by 1.8% during the second quarter. Capital Planning Advisors LLC now owns 16,091 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $590,000 after acquiring an additional 281 shares in the last quarter. Gilbert & Cook Inc. lifted its holdings in Pfizer by 1.3% in the first quarter. Gilbert & Cook Inc. now owns 21,268 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock valued at $868,000 after acquiring an additional 283 shares during the period. Finally, YHB Investment Advisors Inc. boosted its position in Pfizer by 0.4% in the 1st quarter. YHB Investment Advisors Inc. now owns 79,905 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $3,260,000 after purchasing an additional 284 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 68.05% of the companys stock. Get Pfizer alerts: Pfizer Stock Performance PFE traded down $0.03 during trading on Wednesday, hitting $30.27. 9,906,628 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 25,482,787. 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 Inc. has a 1-year low of $28.93 and a 1-year high of $54.93. The stock has a fifty day moving average price of $31.81 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $35.11. The firm has a market capitalization of $170.92 billion, a P/E ratio of 16.56, a PEG ratio of 1.92 and a beta of 0.63. Pfizer Announces Dividend Pfizer ( NYSE:PFE Get Free Report ) last announced its 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. The business had revenue of $13.23 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $13.77 billion. Pfizer had a net margin of 15.30% and a return on equity of 16.72%. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Pfizer Inc. will post 1.56 earnings per share for the current year. The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 4th. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be paid a dividend of $0.41 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 9th. This represents a $1.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 5.42%. Pfizers dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 89.62%. Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of research analysts have recently issued reports on the company. StockNews.com began coverage on Pfizer in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Jefferies Financial Group raised shares of Pfizer from a hold rating to a buy rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $38.00 to $39.00 in a research note on Monday, October 16th. BMO Capital Markets decreased their target price on Pfizer from $44.00 to $33.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, October 16th. Wells Fargo & Company dropped their target price on shares of Pfizer from $39.00 to $35.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a report on Monday, October 16th. Finally, Cantor Fitzgerald reissued an overweight rating and issued a $75.00 price target on shares of Pfizer in a research note on Monday. Twelve research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and six have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $42.50. Get 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. Further Reading Want to see what other hedge funds are holding PFE? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Pfizer Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Pfizer and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Macquarie Group Limited (ASX:MQGPF Get Free Report) announced a interim dividend on Wednesday, November 8th, MarketIndexAU reports. Shareholders of record on Monday, December 11th will be given a dividend of 1.665 per share on Monday, December 11th. This represents a yield of 1.61%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 23rd. Macquarie Group Price Performance About Macquarie Group (Get Free Report) Macquarie Group Limited provides diversified financial services in Australia, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates through four segments: Macquarie Asset Management (MAM), Banking and Financial Services (BFS), Commodities and Global Markets (CGM), and Macquarie Capital. Read More Receive News & Ratings for Macquarie Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Macquarie Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. By Tanzila Narbaeva In recent years, the world has been troubled by unexpected threats, conflicting relations, environmental consequences, geopolitical conflicts and a crisis of mutual distrust. In such a complex period, issues of national statehood, and territorial and regional security are becoming more serious. In this sense, it is plain as day how necessary it is to establish a spirit of understanding, tolerance, solidarity and trust in the mutual relations between states and political leaders. In such a precarious situation, Uzbekistan today has become an international arena for dialogue, inviting developing countries to its bosom. Additionally, the head of our country is expressing himself as one of the active leaders who boldly raises the peoples acute problems not only in the region but also on the world stage as well as promoting advanced initiatives for their rational solutions. Over recent years, many influential and promising structures, including meetings of heads of state of SCO, OTS, ECO, CIS and summits of organizations within the framework of the U.N., have been successfully held in our country, and this is recognized on the international level as well. Last week, Uzbekistan's capital city, Tashkent, hosted the 16th summit of another prestigious organization the Economic Cooperation Organization. The summit was held under the theme "Toward Economic Stability and Development in Cooperation," which was chaired by our president, a unique unanimity can be observed in the opinions expressed by the leaders of the member states of the organization and the proposals put forward. This means that the issues on the agenda are equally relevant for the participating countries. In particular, the head of our state has emphasized that there are great opportunities and potential that have not yet been used to expand all-round cooperation between the member states. It was also emphasized that the trade index between member countries of this structure is $85 billion, which is only eight percent of their total foreign trade. It was mentioned that many years of efforts to conclude a preferential trade agreement did not provide the expected outcomes, and many restrictions and problems still remain in the way of creating barrier-free trade. In order to give new impetus to the cooperation within ECO, the president proposed to develop the conceptual document called, "Strategic Goals of Economic Cooperation 2035." In this important document, it was outlined that it was necessary to pay attention to the main areas such as promoting mutual trade, strengthening transport and communication links, activating industrial cooperation, ensuring energy security, combating climate change and deepening cooperation in the field of tourism and cultural-humanitarian exchange. The president also expressed his practical proposals regarding a number of important issues on the agenda of the summit and stated that Uzbekistan is ready to serve as a convenient and useful platform for their discussion. In particular, it was noted the importance of developing a program of joint actions to increase the flow of mutual investments, protect them and deepen industrial cooperation, as well as organize an interregional industrial exhibition and hold its first event in our country in 2024. In order to strengthen effective cooperation in the fight against climate change and environmental protection at a time when climate-related risks are increasing, it was proposed to hold the first conference of the high-level platform on ecological issues in the framework of the upcoming Samarkand Climate Forum in 2024. A proposal was put forward at the ECO Secretariat to establish a tourist advisory committee consisting of tourism administrations and leading experts of the member countries and to hold its first meeting in the city of Shahrisabz, which was declared the tourist capital of the organization. Such initiatives are taken by a noble and great person who sees the world as a whole, who accepts the pain in any part of it as his own, and who considers human values as the highest value. This is the fact that the constructive ideas and projects boldly put forward by our president from the platforms of various international organizations are approved by the world community and make a great contribution to ensuring stable development and peace in the world, especially in our territory. In his speech at the 78th session of the U.N. General Assembly, the head of our state drew the attention of the leaders of the political sphere to the fact that fundamental changes are taking place in the system of international relations, a crisis of confidence is observed on a global scale, problems in the functioning of global security institutions and deviations from the norms of international law are increasing. All these are factors for the increasing tensions occurring on a large scale. How should countries behave in such complex conditions? The head of our state clearly answered this question in his speech. First of all, it was noted that it is necessary to maintain the spirit of practical solidarity and cooperation, to put common interests above narrow interests, and to strengthen the idea of consolidating countries. For instance, our president from the rostrum of the U.N. underlined with confidence, "With the support of the international community, Central Asia will continue to follow the path of unity. Turning Central Asia into a peaceful and prosperous territory will remain a priority objective of Uzbekistans foreign policy." Certainly, today, at a time when the spirit of practical cooperation, solidarity and engagement is becoming more important than ever, it is noteworthy that the countries of Central Asia are on the path of good neighborliness, strategic partnership, mutual cooperation and development. Nations whose souls and languages are close to each other have always been able to find a wise solution to any problem, whether it would be it private one or a common one. We see this fact in the background of our countrys membership in the Organization of Turkic States with the presidents firm political will, and his great efforts to maintain and strengthen the inter-ethnic dialogue, something that is increasingly lacking today. In addition, politicians and experts emphasize that the inclusion of Uzbekistan, one of the cradles of world civilization, into this international organization which previously operated as a council, played an important role in transformating it into a full-fledged organization. In addition, the initiatives of the head of our state are aimed at further expanding multifaceted and mutually beneficial relations with all member states and strengthening strategic partnership relations to increase the international prestige and influence of this organization on a global scale, as well as to ensure the well-being of our Turkic peoples, who have been friends and brothers from ancient times. Recently, at the last meeting of the heads of states of the Organization of Turkic States held in Astana, Kazakhstan, our president was awarded the "Highest Order of the Turkic World." Certainly, at a time when mutual competition among countries is intensifying and the process of struggle to maintain its rightful place in the world's community, we consider such recognition achieved at the international level as the highest assessment given to the leader of our country. It is known that the trade, economic and humanitarian relations of our country with the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States are developing more and more. It should be noted that in the last few years, Uzbekistans participation in the activities of the Commonwealth has become more active. During this period, most of the initiatives put forward by the president of Uzbekistan in many important directions were supported by the member countries and implemented. At the meeting of the Council of Heads of the Commonwealth of Independent States recently held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, our president was awarded the highest award of the organization the CIS Medal of Honor for his great contribution to strengthening friendship, good neighborliness and multilateral cooperation. This is, definitely, another recognition of the importance of the role of Uzbekistan in this structure and the territory. Hikmet Eren, chairman of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Relations, Fund EkoEurasya, noted that he considers it timely and relevant that the leader of Uzbekistan has put forward initiatives aimed at further expanding mutually beneficial cooperation within the framework of the CIS. He remarked that "The proposal put forward by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to organize a conference of leading think tanks and experts of CIS countries in order to develop a new long-term agenda of multilateral cooperation will undoubtedly serve to consolidate efforts aimed at developing multilateral relations between commonwealth member countries." One can cite many examples of such international recognitions. It is worth noting that the international community says that owing to the constructive foreign policy of the leader of Uzbekistan, a favorable political environment and trust have successfully been formed not only in Central Asia, but also among the leaders of the world countries. At this point, the open and friendly foreign policy of the head of our state creates a solid foundation for the development of the international relations of our national parliament. During his visits to foreign countries and from international platforms, the president repeatedly reiterated the need to effectively use the possibilities of parliaments to bring people closer to each other, and ensure peace and unity in the world. In particular, on Aug. 6, 2021, at the third consultative meeting of the leaders of Central Asian countries in the national tourist zone Avaza in Turkmenistan, taking into account the increasing role of parliamentarianism, the president proposed to hold the Regional Parliamentary Forum. Shortly after this initiative, in February 2023, the first inter-parliamentary forum of Central Asian countries was held in Turkestan, Kazakhstan and the Turkestan Declaration, aimed at further strengthening inter-parliamentary relations in order to support comprehensive strategic partnership between the countries of the region, was adopted. In 2024, Uzbekistan will host the forum. In recent years, our inter-parliamentary relations have regularly continued in such directions as ensuring peace and stability in the world, strengthening humanitarian ideas, and expanding friendly relations between countries and peoples. In particular, a number of international forums and conferences were held together with international structures such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the CIS, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Examples of this are large international forums such as "Global Inter-parliamentary Cooperation in Achieving the Goals of Sustainable Development" held in Bukhara and "The Role of Parliament in Ensuring Inter-ethnic Harmony and Inter-religious Tolerance," organized in Samarkand with the participation of the general public and religious leaders. More than 10 events were held and eight final documents were adopted within the year when Uzbekistan first chaired the dialogue of leading women of Central Asia, which was organized on the initiative of the head of our state. We constantly exchange mutual experience on issues such as regional womens state management, preventive diplomacy, environmental protection, entrepreneurship and business, culture, education, science, art and gender equality. When it comes to our international relations, it is worth noting with pleasure that 25 inter-parliamentary groups and two commissions based on mutual respect and trust have been established. Also, in 2022, the 14th summit of women leaders of the parliaments of the Inter-Parliamentary Union member states was successfully held for the first time in the territory of the CIS, in our country. All these are a clear example of the reforms being carried out in our country to develop parliamentarianism, ensure human rights and democratize society, and their practical results are duly recognized by the world community. President Mirziyoyevs initiatives to revive inter-parliamentary relations within the framework of the Organization of Turkic States are also noteworthy. Today, in order to ensure the implementation of these initiatives, a "road map" has been developed and is being implemented step by step. Since 2017, relations between Uzbekistan and TURKPA have been stepped up. Since then, the parliamentary delegation of Uzbekistan has been actively participating in a number of events of the assembly. In a word, our national parliament should comprehensively develop foreign relations in its activities, pay attention to the issues of gender equality in the parliament, the main principle of our newly adopted Constitution to build a sovereign, democratic, legal, social and secular state as well as "Fop Human Value and dignity of persons," actively began to ensure the principles of democracy and justice based on the noble idea. Yes, the initiatives and projects put forward by the leader of our nation as a defender of our interests in the international arena are enthusiastically accepted by progressive humanity, the fact that our country is increasingly strengthening its rightful place in the world's community raises the stature of our nation and increases the sense of pride. This, in turn, requires us, the citizens of Uzbekistan, to unite towards the great goal of ensuring the interests of the people of our country. This also calls to feel the responsibility for the fate of the tribe. Undoubtedly, all this serves not only the internal development of our country but also the increase of its reputation on the world scene, becoming an attractive country that is open to everyone and where it is possible to establish mutually beneficial cooperation. Tanzila Narbaeva is chairwoman of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan By Lina Gong Southeast Asian countries have established a well-functioning regional structure for disaster relief since the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, evident in their collective responses to the dam collapse in Laos and the earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia in 2018, as well as Typhoon Mocha in Myanmar earlier this year. Cooperation with external partner countries has been indispensable to such progress in the region. The worsening climate crisis, which increases the demand for disaster relief, raises new questions about how the regions disaster relief cooperation with external powers will evolve, and what it is expecting from its external partners. Disaster relief and security cooperation in Southeast Asia Disaster relief in Southeast Asia serves both strategic and functional purposes. From a strategic perspective, disaster relief cooperation often considered "low-hanging fruit" due to its benign nature and low sensitivity facilitates Southeast Asias endeavors to manage relations with external powers from a position of relative weakness while maintaining its centrality in regional security. For example, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) initiated security engagement with China through the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in the late 1990s, and disaster relief was one area of cooperation. This strategic thinking is also reflected in the ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint 2025, which identifies humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) cooperation as a pathway to enhance ASEANs centrality in the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM)-Plus. The institutional design of both ARF and ADMM-Plus ensures that ASEAN leads the agenda setting and operations of these mechanisms, maintaining its centrality. Southeast Asia also recognizes the functional value of disaster relief cooperation. Given that natural disasters are a major security threat in the region, effective disaster relief constitutes a core component of ASEANs vision to build a secure region. Since the 2004 tsunami, ASEAN has established a set of entities to achieve the goal, including the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management (ACDM) and the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre). These entities serve as focal points for external powers to engage in ASEAN policymaking and relief operations. Japan is the largest funding partner of the AHA Centre, contributing over $40 million between 2011 and 2021. In 2021, ASEAN established ACDM Plus mechanisms with China, Japan and South Korea to strengthen cooperation on disaster issues. Such partnerships allow ASEAN and its member states to draw on the expertise, perspectives and resources of external powers, enhancing national and regional capacity to deal with disasters. Southeast Asias expectations for disaster-related partnerships Continuity and certainty are crucial for stable and lasting partnerships between Southeast Asia and external powers. Due to alliances or close security partnerships with several Southeast Asian countries, the United States has consistently been a leading provider of HADR. Japans financial support for the AHA Centre comes from the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund, established in 2006 partly to support cooperation on disaster management and humanitarian assistance. This fund demonstrates Japans enduring commitment to the partnership. In comparison to ad hoc cooperation, these formalized mechanisms provide certainty in cooperation between Southeast Asia and its partners. Complementarity is another factor. Over two decades, ASEAN has gained valuable experience in disaster relief cooperation and engaged all major external powers in the Asia-Pacific. With the U.K. recently becoming ASEANs dialogue partner, and France in discussions with the regional grouping about this status, the region is likely to see more disaster-related partnerships emerging. Moving forward, these partnerships must complement each other and align with ASEANs own vision for disaster management. ASEAN continues to depend on partners to finance its disaster-related activities. For instance, more than half of the AHA Centres annual budget in 2020 was provided by external partners. In addition to providing direct funding support, external partners should cooperate with Southeast Asia to explore innovative ways of financing, strengthening the regions financial independence and sustainability. The need for cooperation in capacity building is growing due to climate change and the evolving domestic political environment in Southeast Asian countries. Climate-induced shifts in disaster patterns and the operational landscape of disaster relief require new skills, capabilities and technologies. Growing nationalistic sentiment in Southeast Asian countries makes it more difficult for foreign countries to deploy relief staff on the ground after disasters. Alternatively, capacity building is a more convenient avenue for external partners to keep working with Southeast Asian countries on disaster issues. Disaster relief will continue to be an important area for security cooperation in Southeast Asia, given the regions vulnerability to disasters and its economic and strategic importance to major powers. While serving the strategic interests of both the region and external powers, cooperation should align with the regions vision for disaster management, such as through strengthening financing and the use of technology, further improving the effectiveness of disaster relief in the region. Lina Gong, PhD, is a Research Fellow in the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Programme of the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University as well as a member of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network (APLN). She has recently worked on regional cooperation in HADR in the Indo-Pacific region. This essay is published in cooperation with the APLN (www.apln.network). Albion, IN (46701) Today Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. High 46F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.. Tonight Steady light rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 38F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%. Angola, IN (46703) Today Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers in the afternoon. High 43F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a half an inch.. Tonight Steady light rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 37F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%. Kendallville, IN (46755) 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 Light rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers 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 42F. 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 39F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%. In the latest controversy to hit the K-pop scene, Australian-Vietnamese member Hanni from NewJeans finds herself at the center of a storm as fans express outrage over ADOR's decision to prevent her from taking Korean language lessons. The revelation came during a live stream on November 21, 2023, where Hanni, known for her endearing personality and multi-faceted talents, disclosed that she hasn't had a Korean class in the past two years due to the company's intervention. The Revelation: Hanni's Candid Confession Despite her proficiency in the language, highlighted by occasional charming mistakes that endeared her to Korean fans, Hanni expressed her desire to improve further. In a candid moment during the live stream. This revelation has sparked a wave of disappointment among fans who believe that continuous improvement in the Korean language is essential, especially considering NewJeans' base is in Korea, despite their numerous international commitments. "I told the company that I wanted to take Korean classes too. But they said I can't. They said I don't need them." The decision to halt Hanni's language lessons has raised suspicions among fans, with many speculating that it could be a calculated marketing tactic by ADOR to maintain a certain image. Some netizens have voiced concerns about the possible xenophobic undertones of finding mispronunciations cute, emphasizing the need for sensitivity in appreciating foreign members' language learning journeys. : Hanni stop improving ur Korean : Hey! I have something to say! I did ask the company to have more Korean classes but they said I didn't need it : after hearing everyone all the Bunnies said i can't improve so i don't have any classes my last class was 2 yrs ago pic.twitter.com/7u5OaH8gtK - NEWJEANS NEWS (@newjeansnews_) November 21, 2023 Others have questioned the logic behind restricting Hanni's desire for self-improvement, especially given that her counterparts in other HYBE labels continue to receive language lessons. READ ALSO: Is NewJeans Hanni Rich? Here's How Much The Idol Has Earned So Far The reactions on online forums highlight the diversity of perspectives on this matter. Some speculate that ADOR might be attempting to control Hanni to fit the group's youthful concept, while others suggest the decision may be rooted in concerns about her potential future endeavors in the industry. Here's How K-Netz Reacted: "No, but this is such an obvious pro, so just why? It's also a plus when other foreign idols in that company speak fluent Korean, and what's more is that they receive lessons, so???" "Huh? But Hanni is totally good at Korean." "[reply] she probably thinks she's not good enough." "Let her learn since she says she wants to." "Why can't she? LOL. Her last lesson was two years ago?" "I don't think it's such a childish reason as to because fans think it's cute... Isn't it because she might research about working for other companies later on that they want to completely block this?" "Huh, this is so fascinating. The other labels in HYBE don't do this. Kazuha seemed to be studying hard, so what's up with ADOR? She said she wants to, so why are they stopping her" "Ugh, disgusting." As the controversy unfolds, fans are demanding transparency from ADOR and expressing disappointment in the company's alleged interference with Hanni's personal and professional development. The incident serves as a reminder of the complexities and challenges faced by K-pop idols, even beyond the spotlight, as they navigate the delicate balance between personal growth and industry expectations. READ ALSO: NewJeans Hanni Is Drawing Mixed Reactions in Vietnam for THIS Reason Follow and subscribe to KpopStarz for more news. KpopStarz own this article. Cassidy Jones wrote this. In a recent feature for the December 2023 edition of W Korea, BLACKPINK's Rose shared insights into her personal life, including an unexpected revelation about her sentiments towards her most-liked Instagram posts. The K-pop sensation, who captivated fans with her appearance alongside her adorable three-year-old pup Hank, delved into her experiences during BLACKPINK's second world tour, BORN PINK, and discussed her aspirations for the coming year. Rose's Struggle to Maintain the Perfect Instagram Vibe Since their comeback in 2018 with "DDU-DU DDU-DU," BLACKPINK members have maintained their status as some of the most-followed female K-pop idols on Instagram. Rose, in particular, has amassed over 74.5 million followers over five years and shared her journey during a fun Q&A "Puzzle Interview" with W Korea. Rose, known for her meticulous curation of her Instagram grid, revealed that maintaining the right "vibe" requires significant effort. Despite carefully selecting photos and their order, the BLACKPINK star confessed that the images garnering the most likes often leave her feeling disheartened, as she believes they don't align with her personal aesthetic. Surprisingly, Rose disclosed that her selfies, or face photos, receive the most likes, contrasting with her preferred aesthetically pleasing posts. READ ALSO: BLACKPINK Rose Reveals the Part of Her Face She is Most Insecure of This discrepancy, she admitted, makes her "a bit sad." Despite the emotional toll, she expressed her determination to stay true to herself, continuing to post content that resonates with her and suits her vision for her Instagram page. During the W Korea "Puzzle Interview," Rose also shared her hopes for 2024, providing fans with a glimpse into her aspirations and future plans. As the K-pop sensation bares her emotions and vulnerabilities, fans are left to ponder the complexities of maintaining a carefully crafted public image in the age of social media. READ ALSO: BLACKPINK Rose Unblocks BLINK She Blocked After Accidentally Viewing DMs on Instagram Follow and subscribe to KpopStarz for more news. KpopStarz own this article. Cassidy Jones wrote this. SRV Media New Delhi [India], November 22: Fashion Talent House is stepping into the fashion and talent market with seasoned experts at the helm. Rajesh Shetty, a celebrity stylist and designer with over two decades of experience in the fashion industry, joined forces with entrepreneur Adityaa Srivastavaa, the co-founder, to establish this talent house over a year ago. Also Read | Khalistani Attack at Indian Consulate: NIA Searches Premises in Pune, Haryana Over Attack by Khalistani Supporters at Indian Consulate in San Francisco. Having collaborated with prominent models and celebrities worldwide, the duo has decided to exclusively represent six professional models and six celebrities under their company's banner. Every six months, they will manage the public profiles and work assignments related to fashion, media, movies, and print ad commercials for these talents. Adityaa Srivastavaa, who leads the Talent House, remarks, "We groom, style, market, and provide the best visibility to our talents with straightforward clauses, ensuring artists are free to take up assignments without any complications." Also Read | Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai November 22, 2023 Written Update: Akshara, Abhira Decide To Run Away From Yuvraj, Armaan's Date With Ruhi Gets Spoiled by His Family!. Rajesh Shetty, a renowned celebrity stylist, expresses his excitement, stating, "After years of working in television, I wanted to introduce something unique and contribute positively to the industry. With vast experience in over 3000 fashion shows worldwide, it's exhilarating to bring exceptional talents together." The Talent House focuses on individual promotion, marketing, and PR adhering to industry standards. They prioritize overseeing major endorsements and assignments for A-list celebrities and models in the current market scenario. Fashion Talent House boasts diverse assignments, including fashion weeks, commercial endorsements, movies, styling, and artist/model management. Their next venture in makeup and hair is anticipated, spearheaded by Rajesh Shetty, who specializes in avant-garde shows, embracing high-end makeup, headgear, and creative expressions. With an impressive client base, Fashion Talent House is expanding its global footprint and is widely recognized for its exceptional services. You can follow them on Instagram using the links provided below. For more information, please visit: https://instagram.com/fashion.talent.house?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA== (ADVERTORIAL DISCLAIMER: The above press release has been provided by SRV Media. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of the same) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Validating your browser . . . Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Please enable cookies and reload the page. This may take up to 5 seconds Event ID: 364417894042211041516684285403900568085 Validating your browser . . . Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Please enable cookies and reload the page. This may take up to 5 seconds Event ID: 346170858663154545916036318308385016037 Patna, Nov 22 (PTI) The Bihar government on Wednesday decided to urge the Centre to incorporate the hiked reservation for deprived castes from 50 to 65 per cent in state government jobs and educational institutions in the 9th schedule of the Constitution, so that it is guaranteed immunity from legal scrutiny, an official said. The Ninth Schedule of the Constitution includes a list of Central and state laws that cannot be challenged in courts. In 1992, the Supreme Court capped reservations for the backward classes at 50 per cent. Also Read | Fake BigBasket, DMart, Blinkit Websites: Delhi Police Arrest Kingpin for Duping Buyers. The Cabinet also increased the dearness allowance of government employees in Bihar by 4 per cent. They will get a DA of 46 per cent with effect from July 1 this year, Additional Chief Secretary (Cabinet Secretariat), S Siddharth, told reporters after the Cabinet meeting. Also Read | Jhotwara Election 2023: BJP Fields Rajyavardhan Rathore Against Congress Leader Abhishek Choudhary, Know Polling Date, Result and History of Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha Seat. The Nitish Kumar government on Tuesday issued gazette notifications for raising the quota for deprived castes to 65 per cent, after Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar gave his assent to two bills, paving the way for implementing the new reservation system. On Wednesday, the Bihar Cabinet in a meeting chaired by the chief minister passed a resolution on asking the Centre to include the provision in the 9th schedule of the Constitution, Siddharth said. "The state government is of the opinion that keeping in view the special circumstances, the inclusion of amended provisions of hiked reservation in the 9th Schedule of the Constitution will help in ensuring justice to deprived and backward sections," Siddharth said. The resolution was mooted by the General Administration Department. Following a caste survey in Bihar, the state government tabled an analysis of it in the assembly earlier this month. The House then passed two bills - Bihar Reservation of Vacancies in Posts and Services Amendment Bill and the Bihar Reservation (Admission In Educational Institutions) Amendment Bill - to increase the quota. The bills sought a hike in the quota for Scheduled Castes (SC) from 16 to 20 per cent, Scheduled Tribes (STs) from 1 to 2 per cent, extremely backward castes (EBCs) from 18 to 25 per cent and other backward classes (OBCs) from 15 to 18 per cent to elevate the total quantum of caste-based reservations from 50 to 65 per cent. On the increased dearness allowance, Siddharth said, "The increased dearness allowance will be effective from July 1, 2023. With the hike, the state government will spend an additional Rs 966 crore." (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 22 (PTI) Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) Girish Chandra Murmu has been elected as the Vice-Chair of the UN Panel of Auditors for the next year. This recognition underscores India's commitment to the highest standards of external audit and its active participation in shaping the global audit landscape, the CAG said in a statement. Also Read | Jhotwara Election 2023: BJP Fields Rajyavardhan Rathore Against Congress Leader Abhishek Choudhary, Know Polling Date, Result and History of Rajasthan Vidhan Sabha Seat. Murmu participated in the sixty-third session of the Panel of External Auditors, held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on November 20-21, 2023. The Panel of external auditors comprising heads of 12 Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) globally, oversees the external audit of the UN Secretariat, funds and programmes, and specialised agencies. Also Read | West Bengal Receives Investment Proposals Worth Rs 3.76 Lakh Crore at Bengal Global Business Summit 2023. The independent body, including representatives from Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Philippines, Russia, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, conducts financial, performance and compliance audits of UN entities. CAG said the annual meeting served as a unique platform for collaborative discussions on various issues, including follow-up actions on the Secretary-General's response to the Panel Letter, and addressing critical concerns related to financial and management, climate change, and digital matters. In the meeting, Murmu led the discussion on critical financial and management issues affecting UN organisations, it added. In a separate meeting, Murmu along with panel members met UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, exchanging views in the areas of risk management, the challenging financial environment, and the imperative for well-structured funding strategies. The panel members emphasised the pivotal role of the UN system in guiding and managing climate finance issues, alongside expressing concerns about digital transformation. "During the meeting, Comptroller and Auditor General of India Girish Chandra Murmu was elected as the Vice-Chair of the UN Panel of Auditors for the forthcoming year," India's apex auditor added. On the sidelines of the panel meeting, the CAG of India also held a bilateral meeting with Pierre Moscovici, the First President of Cour des comptes (Supreme Audit Institution of France) to discuss the strengthening of bilateral relations between the two SAIs. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Validating your browser . . . Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Please enable cookies and reload the page. This may take up to 5 seconds Event ID: 889776150174371386817678933094728497322 Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) [India], November 22 (ANI): Defending remarks of his brother Akbaruddin Owaisi who threatened a police inspector and asked him to leave the spot during a campaign event, AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi said that the official should not have intervened as "five minutes" were left for the campaign time to be over for the day. Answering queries during a press conference, Asaduddin Owaisi said the campaign by candidates is allowed till 10 pm. Also Read | Thane Stripping Case: Minor Boy Stripped Nude, Beaten for 'Rs 300-Loan' in Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde's Hometown; One Arrested (Watch Video). "If the time was 10:01 pm, you have all the right to stop us. When five minutes were left why did he come to the podium? The law permits and you tell us to stop it five minutes before? One could react if it's 10:01 pm. What's this behaviour? One could say a lot in five minutes. For a speaker, opening and concluding remarks are important," he said. Asaduddin Owaisi asked if action would be taken against the concerned official. Also Read | Rajouri Encounter Update: Three Indian Army Soldiers Including Officer Killed in Ongoing Jammu and Kashmir Gunfight With Terrorists. He said the Election Commission should probe the matter. "I have a copy of the permission," he said. Akbaruddin Owaisi on Tuesday threatened a police inspector who was asking him to follow the Model Code of Conduct in place for the assembly polls in the state. Akbaruddin threatened the policeman after he was asked to stop his speech. The AIMIM leader, who was addressing a campaign in Hyderabad's Lalitabagh, asked the policeman to "leave" the venue, implying that if he made a "signal" to his supporters, the inspector would be forced to "run" from the place." "Do you think that after facing knives and bullets, I got weak, still there's lots of courage in me. Five minutes are left and I'll address five minutes, no one can stop me. If I give a signal then you'll have to run, shall we make him run? This is what I'm saying they come like this to weaken us," Akbaruddin said. Akbaruddin is in the fray from the Chandrayangutta constituency. The seat has been a stronghold of the AIMIM, with the party winning it in 2014 and 2018. Telangana will go to polls in a single phase on November 30. The counting of votes for Telangana, along with those of four other poll-bound states, will take place on December 3. The state is witnessing a largely triangular contest between the ruling BRS, Congress and BJP. (ANI) (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 22 (PTI) Many leaders spoke on the Israel-Hamas conflict at the virtual G20 meeting with calls made for extending timely humanitarian assistance, not allowing the violence to spread and to find a long-term solution to the Palestine issue, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Wednesday. Briefing reporters on the virtual G20 meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jaishankar said all 21 members, including the African Union, nine guest countries and 11 international organisations participated. Also Read | Karnataka PGCET Result 2023 Declared At kea.kar.nic.in, Know How to Download Scorecard. He said there was a discussion on the progress of the agenda of the New Delhi Summit that took place in September. Jaishankar said the West Asia/Gaza situation came up for discussion at the meeting in "greater detail" and to some extent the Ukraine conflict and its consequences were also deliberated upon. Also Read | Haryana Shocker: 142 Minor Girls at Government School Allege Sexual Assault by Principal Over 6 Years in Jind; Accused Behind Bars. The virtual G20 summit was also very significant because it was the first gathering of world leaders after the outbreak of the conflict in West Asia. "As I said many leaders spoke about it and what we heard really was the condemnation of terrorism, expression of deep concern over the loss of civilian lives, calls for extending timely and adequate humanitarian assistance, not allowing the conflict to spread and to find a long term solution to the Palestine issue," Jaishankar said. The G20 members on the whole welcomed the understanding which has been reached on the release of hostages, on the flow of relief material to Gaza and some pause in the fighting, he said. "Overall there was a strong sentiment expressed by the leaders to ensure implementation of the commitments which were agreed to at Delhi," he said. Modi extended India's support to Brazil for its upcoming presidency, Jaishankar said and noted that India will be part of the G20 troika. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Validating your browser . . . Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Please enable cookies and reload the page. This may take up to 5 seconds Event ID: 1351891946154144330712595948349437038871 Jaipur (Rajasthan) [India], November 22 (ANI): Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot made an emotional appeal to voters on Tuesday as assembly elections draw near in the state. He urged voters to consider his image, even if the local candidate has limited impact, stating, "Imagine that I am contesting from all these 200 seats." "There are 200 candidates contesting the election, I got requests from around 150 places but I can't go everywhere for campaign, so I am appealing to everyone that you imagine that I am contesting the election from all these 200 seats. I request you to repeat this government again. You (people) don't have to see who is contesting from the local level," Gehlot said while speaking to ANI. Also Read | Khalistani Attack at Indian Consulate: NIA Searches Premises in Pune, Haryana Over Attack by Khalistani Supporters at Indian Consulate in San Francisco. Gehlot emphasized the importance of repeating the current government, and highlighted his tenure's achievements, fulfilling ten guarantees, and promised to implement seven more if voted back into power. "The schemes and laws introduced during my tenure have made a big impact, and we are now offering seven more guarantees, which have received a huge welcome," he said. Also Read | Karnataka Shocker: 65-Year-Old Woman Astrologer Hacked to Death in Kalaburagi, Police Suspect Rape Before Murder. The Congress, led by Mallikarjun Kharge, released its manifesto on Tuesday, promising a caste-based census, a new scheme for panchayat-level recruitment, and a law to implement the minimum support price for farmers, among other guarantees. Rajasthan is set for assembly polls on November 25, with votes to be counted on December 3. Of the 200 assembly seats, 199 will be contested on November 25, as elections in the Karanpur constituency were adjourned due to the passing of the Congress candidate Gurmeet Singh Koonar. In 2018, Congress won 99 seats, while the BJP won 73. Gehlot assumed the CM position with the support of BSP MLAs and Independents. (ANI) (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 22 (PTI) A court here will hear on November 28 the arguments on framing of charges against former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief and BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a matter relating to sexual harassment allegations by six wrestlers. In the last hearing on October 30, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Harjeet Singh Jaspal granted three weeks to the counsel for the parties to file their written arguments so they could be concluded in a "systematic manner." Also Read | Rajouri Encounter Update: Three Indian Army Soldiers Including Officer Killed in Ongoing Jammu and Kashmir Gunfight With Terrorists. On Wednesday, Singh's advocate filed the reply, following which the judge posted the matter on November 28 for further proceedings. Earlier, Singh had questioned the jurisdiction of the court trying the case, claiming no alleged action or consequence happened in India. Also Read | Kerala Cabinet Meeting Organised at Bar in Private Hotel in Kannur, Congress Slams CM Pinarayi Vijayan. The city police had filed a charge sheet in the case against Singh, a six-time MP, on June 15 under sections 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 354A (sexual harassment), 354-D (stalking) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. The police had also charged Vinod Tomar, the suspended assistant secretary of the WFI, in the case. (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 22 (PTI) Home-grown mapping company Genesys International has signed a pact with Survey of India to leverage its resources for building digital twins of major towns and cities in the country. With this, Genesys International will get access to technological and data resources that Survey of India has developed since its establishment in 1767. Also Read | SBI CBO Recruitment 2023: Vacancies Notified for 5,280 Posts of Circle Based Officers, Apply Online at sbi.co.in. Surveyor General of India Hitesh Kumar Makwana said that this is the first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) the department has signed with a private company for the development of geospatial content and called upon other players to collaborate with it for leveraging resources that the department has. "In line with National Geospatial Policy 2022, Survey of India (SoI) has commenced collaboration with the industry beginning with Genesys International to deliver geospatial content which will be created with reference to the National Geodetic Framework. SoI is willing to collaborate with industry partners for utilising the modern surveying techniques and leveraging the expertise of the Indian private sector," Makwana said. Also Read | Indian Navy Recruitment 2023: Vacancies Notified for 275 Trade Apprentices Posts, Apply Online at apprenticeshipindia.gov.in. Genesys has developed its own technology for creating 3D (three-dimensional) versions of map that can show the buildings along with a 2D layer of the map. "The 3D Digital Twin aimed to be created will be used by government departments for various new initiatives. The integration of our CORS technology with the surveying expertise of the private sector will enhance the usability and reliability of geospatial data, unlocking new possibilities for India's development. We are looking for the future possibilities that this SoI-Industry collaboration holds and it would be useful for the larger public needs," Makwana said. Genesys International Chairman and Managing Director Sajid Malik said that the collaboration with SoI will help the company in saving as well as leveraging data of SoI which comes with a high level of precision. "We will use the data to develop the digital twin of cities in India. We partner with several government departments like urban town planners, telecom companies etc. The Digital Twin map of cities helps them in planning action for their business. "We have created a navigational 2D map of the entire country and 3D map of around 10 cities. We have created a live view for Google and will partner with other companies who use map for providing services to end customers," Malik said. He said collaboration with SoI will help Genesys in getting precise co-ordinates of city, town, and state boundaries. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Validating your browser . . . Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Please enable cookies and reload the page. This may take up to 5 seconds Event ID: 1643479296956208019616211071169377431207 Kolkata, Nov 22 (PTI) Ride-hailing app Uber on Wednesday announced that it will soon start a bus service in Kolkata for office-goers. By March next year, Uber Shuttle will have 60 air-conditioned buses on predefined routes, connecting business districts with residential areas of the city, it said in a statement. Also Read | SBI CBO Recruitment 2023: Vacancies Notified for 5,280 Posts of Circle Based Officers, Apply Online at sbi.co.in. Uber will invest USD 10 million in the state by 2025, and create about 50,000 livelihood opportunities over the next five years, it added. For the bus service, Uber signed an agreement with the state Transport Department at the Bengal Global Business Summit. Also Read | Indian Navy Recruitment 2023: Vacancies Notified for 275 Trade Apprentices Posts, Apply Online at apprenticeshipindia.gov.in. Like cabs, passengers can pre-book seats up to a week in advance for Uber Shuttle, track live location and route, and receive real-time estimated time of arrival (ETA) through the Uber app. Uber Shuttle will offer commuters a seamless and convenient travel experience, the statement said. The service will also provide cashless payment options, round-the-clock safety support and a comfortable ride with air-conditioned buses running from 6 am to 10 pm daily, it said. "This unique partnership will bring the convenience and reliability of Uber rides to buses, contributing to our global sustainability goal of increasing vehicle occupancy, reducing traffic congestion, and lowering carbon emissions," said Shiva Shailendran, the director of operations at Uber India & South Asia. "By providing commuters with more transport choices and creating livelihood opportunities for drivers, we are confident that this initiative will set us on a path of collective success," he added. State Transport Secretary Saumitra Mohan said West Bengal was committed to enhancing public transport services and expanding available options to make commuting hassle-free. Our partnership with Uber is another step in this direction, he said. (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Uttarkashi, November 22: A 41-bed hospital was readied on Wednesday at the Community Health Centre in Chinyalisaur in this district for the care of 41 trapped labourers after they are evacuated from the Silkyara tunnel. Rescue efforts at the tunnel gained momentum on Wednesday with the American auger machine resuming drilling through the accumulated rubble at the collapsed site inside the tunnel and penetrating up to 45 metres by the afternoon to prepare an escape passage for the trapped labourers. Uttarakhand Tunnel Collapse: NHAI to Undertake Safety Audits of All Under-Construction Tunnels Across India. Around 12 metres more have to be dug through the rubble to lay two more 800 mm diametre steel pipes of 6 metre length each for the stranded workers to crawl through. All the hospitals in the district as well as AIIMS, Rishikesh have been kept on high alert. 41-Bed Hospital Readied at Community Health Centre in Chinyalisaur #WATCH | 41-bed hospital readied at Community Health Centre in Chinyalisaur for medical examination and care of trapped workers after they are evacuated from Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi pic.twitter.com/hBt4NkElSs ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has arrived at the Matli helipad on way to an on-the-spot inspection of the rescue operations. Officials said a team of 15 doctors has been deployed. Uttarkashi Tunnel Rescue Operation Update: Horizontal Drilling to Evacuate 41 Trapped Workers in Silkyara Tunnel Reaches 42 Metres (Watch Video). A makeshift hospital consisting of eight beds has also been set up at the site for the immediate medical care of the trapped workers if required. Several ambulances and a helicopter have been kept on standby, they said. Army Chief General Manoj Pande on official visit to Republic of Korea. (Photo: X//Indian Army) Seoul [South Korea], November 22 (ANI): Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), General Manoj Pande, who is on an official visit to South Korea interacted with the Vice Minister of Defence Acquisition Programme Administration and called on General Kim Seung-yum, Chairman and joint Chief of Staff of the Republic of Korea on Tuesday. "Aspects related to further strengthening of military ties and bilateral defence cooperation were discussed during the significant interaction," the Indian Army posted on X. Also Read | Israel-Hamas War: Hostage Release Deal Likely on November 21, Say Officials. "The COAS also paid tributes to the Bravehearts in a solemn wreath-laying ceremony at the War Memorial," it added. During his visit to South Korea, the Chief of Army Staff was presented with an impressive Guard of Honour. Also Read | India Issues Travel Advisory for Myanmar, Asks Its Nationals in Country to Register with Embassy in Yangon. "General Manoj Pande #COAS was presented an impressive Guard of Honour during his visit. The #COAS interacted with General Park An-su, Chief of Staff, ROK Army & exchanged thoughts on contemporary issues of mutual interest," the Indian Army said. "He also visited Defence Establishments & Tech labs, including Agency of Defence Development #ADD where he was briefed on the ongoing R&D and latest developments in the fields of AI, Autonomous Vehicles, Man-Unmanned Teaming & Robotics," it posted on X. General Manoj Pande, Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) proceeded on an official visit to the Republic of Korea (ROK) on Sunday. The aim of the visit is to further reinforce the robust defence ties between the two nations. The visit commences on November 20, a momentous day in the history of India-ROK relations, the Ministry of Defence stated. On November 20, 1950, 73 years back, 60 Para Field Ambulances of the Indian Army landed in Busan to provide much-needed medical support during the Korean War. The Ministry further stated that the itinerary of the COAS includes interactions with the senior military leadership of the ROK and visits to defence formations and establishments. India and ROK celebrate 50 years of diplomatic ties in 2023. This visit underscores the commitment of both nations to strengthen the special strategic partnership. (ANI) (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 [India], November 22 (ANI): India and the United Kingdom have discussed the future of electric propulsion in naval vessels during the second India-UK Electric Propulsion Capability Partnership Joint Working Group meeting, which took place in New Delhi on Tuesday. The meeting was co-chaired by Joint Secretary (Naval Systems), Department of Defence Production Rajeev Prakash and Director, Ships Operations and Capability Integration, Defence Equipment & Support, Rear Admiral Steve McCarthy. Also Read | US Warned India After Its Authorities Thwarted Plot To Assassinate Khalistan Separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American Soil: Report. During a 2022 Defence Expo in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, organisations from India and the UK's defence industry united to create a new defence industry joint working group for more effective cooperation. Following the Gadhinagar expo the Electric Propulsion Capability Partnership was later established with the aim of helping India develop maritime electric-propulsion technology for its future warships. Also Read | Singapore: Four Indian Nationals Imprisoned for Conspiring to Steal Apparel From Retail Store. India's naval warships do not currently have electric propulsion systems. The Indian Navy is considering adding them to future warships. On Tuesday, the British and Indian sides discussed issues of the Electric Propulsion Partnership like finalisation of the Statement of Technical Requirements (SOTR), Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) procedures, maintenance, Manning Philosophy and System Integration requirements. A post shared on X, formerly Twitter, by the UK Defence in India stated, "Progress through partnership with people and safety at its heart and huge capability opportunity for the@indiannavy. Exiting times ahead for our marine engineers." Electric propulsion uses electrical power to drive propeller blades for propulsion. Developing Electric Propulsion can have numerous effects on a military including increasing electric power availability, reducing carbon footprint and improving ship navigation economy. India has had continuous multifaceted cooperation with the UK defence sector, institutionalizing defence dialogue at Defence secretary level. The Indian army also has regular exhanges between the two services including some handling of officer training and the conducting of joint exercises. The 7th edition of AJEYA WARRIOR-23, a joint military exercise between India and the United Kingdom was conducted in the UK between April and May of this year. The exercise is conducted alternatively in the UK and India, with the previous edition being held in Chaubatia, Uttarakhand. Soldiers of the 2 Royal Gorkha Rifles from the United Kingdom and Indian Army soldiers from the BIHAR Regiment were in attendance. The aim of the exercise was to build positive military relations, imbibe each other's best practices and promote the ability to operate together while undertaking company-level sub-conventional operations in urban and semi-urban environments under UN mandate, in addition to developing inter-operability, bonhomie, camaraderie, and friendship between the two armies, an Indian Ministry of Defence statement read. (ANI) (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 [India], November 22 (ANI): Reaffirming their support to Israel in its war against Hamas, India and Australia also called for adherence to international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians. The two nations also urged for the immediate release of all remaining hostages. Also Read | Israel-Hamas War: Hostage Release Deal Likely on November 21, Say Officials. "Noting horrific terrorist attacks against Israel on 7 October 2023, both sides reaffirmed that they stand with Israel against terrorism and called for adherence to international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians. They called for the immediate release of all remaining hostages," the joint statement said. The India-Australia joint statement that came after the Defence and Foreign Ministers' 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue also expressed support for "humanitarian pauses" in the region. Also Read | India Issues Travel Advisory for Myanmar, Asks Its Nationals in Country to Register with Embassy in Yangon. "The Ministers committed to continue coordinating with partners in the region on humanitarian assistance to meet the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They expressed support for humanitarian pauses and committed to continue close diplomatic coordination, including with key partners in the region, to prevent the conflict from spreading, preserve stability in the Middle East, and work toward a political solution and durable peace," the joint statement read. 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. During the 2+2 Ministerial dialogue, the ministers from both sides also expressed their deep concern at the deteriorating situation in Myanmar and its impacts on regional security and stability. They called for an immediate cessation of violence, the release of all those arbitrarily detained, safe access to humanitarian assistance, and resolution of the crisis through dialogue and transition towards federal democracy. They reaffirmed their support for ASEAN-led efforts in addressing the crisis in Myanmar and called for the full implementation of ASEAN's Five-Point Consensus, the joint statement added. A number of Myanmar nationals fled from their country following the recent airstrike by the Myanmar army in the bordering areas of the country. More than 26,000 from Myanmar's Rakhine state have been displaced since Monday after fresh fighting between Myanmar Armed Forces (MAF) and the Arakan Army (AA) according to the United Nations. Meanwhile, around 5000 people from Myanmar have entered the Indian state of Mizoram following a fresh airstrike by the Myanmar army in the bordering areas along the Indo-Myanmar border. In the wake of the situation. India has called for the end of violence after an airstrike at the Indo-Myanmar border and emphasised the resolution of the situation through constructive dialogue. "Our position on the ongoing situation in Myanmar is very clear. We want secession of the violence and the resolution of the situation through constructive dialogue. We reiterate our call for the return of peace, stability and democracy in Myanmar," Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said on Thursday in a weekly briefing. Meanwhile, India and Australia, as per the joint statement also discussed the ongoing developments in the Indo-Pacific, Middle East and Ukraine, and expressed "deep concern" over Ukraine conflict. "They expressed deep concern over the war in Ukraine and its tragic humanitarian consequences. Ministers reiterated their support for a comprehensive, just, and durable peace in Ukraine that upholds all the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter. They underscored the growing impacts of this war on the global economic system and food security, with consequences predominantly affecting developing and least-developed countries," the joint statement read. Earlier on Monday, the India-Australia 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue took place with EAM Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh participating with their Australian counterparts; Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles. In her opening remarks, Wong said that Canberra deeply values its bilateral relationship with New Delhi, adding that it is "crucial to region" where sovereignty is respected. She further noted that the two nations have done a lot together bilaterally and hope to do more. During the meeting, Jaishankar said that the bilateral relationship between India and Australia has grown rapidly and noted that it has larger implications for the region. He called the partnership between India and Australia in Quad format "very beneficial" for bilateral relations and the Indo-Pacific region. (ANI) (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 [India], November 22 (ANI): The Indian Army released a video describing a joint training exercises underway between troops of the Indian Army and Sri Lankan Army. In post on X the the Indian Army shared, "The troops of the Indian Army & Sri Lankan Army are undergoing joint training by active participation in a series of training activities including UN Lectures and Tactical Exercises at Foreign Training Node, Aundh, Pune." Also Read | Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Claims He Survived Five Assassination Attempts Ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Says First Was Very Interesting. The 12-day joint military exercise between the two Armies, is named Exercise Mitra Shaktil. The exercise is being conducted from 16th to 29th November 2023. The Indian contingent, of 120 personnel, is being represented mainly by troops from the Maratha Light Infantry regiment. The Sri Lankan side is being represented by personnel from 53 Infantry Division. 15 personnel from Indian Air Force and five personnel from Sri Lankan Air Force are also participating in the exercise. Also Read | Freyja Hanstein Dies: Health App Wholesome Worlds Founder Passes Away at 36 Due to Brain Tumour After Husbands Cancer-Linked Death. The aim of the exercise is to jointly rehearse conduct of Sub Conventional operations under Chapter VII of United Nations Charter. The Scope of the exercise includes synergising joint responses during counter-terrorist operations. Both sides practice tactical actions such as raid, search and destroy missions, heliborne operations, etc. In addition, Army Martial Arts Routine (AMAR), combat reflex shooting and Yoga also form part of the exercise curriculum. Exercise Mitra Shakti- 2023 also involves employment of Drones and Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems besides helicopters. Drills to secure helipads and undertake casualty evacuation during counter-terrorist operations will also be rehearsed jointly by both sides. Collective efforts focus on achieving an enhanced level of interoperability amongst the troops and reduce the risk of life and property while keeping the interests and agenda of the UN at the forefront during peace keeping operations. Both sides also exchanged views and practices of joint drills on a wide spectrum of combat skills that will facilitate the participants to mutually learn from each other. Sharing of best practices will further enhance the level of defence cooperation between Indian Army and Sri Lankan Army. The exercise also fosters strong bilateral relations between the two neighbouring nations. On Wednesday the Indian Army also released a video of a joint excercise with troops of the Nepal Army in Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand. "Joint Military Exercise #SuryaKiran_2023 between #India & #Nepal will be conducted from 24 Nov to 07 Dec 2023 in Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand. The exercise aims to enhance interoperability in jungle warfare, counter-terrorism operations in mountainous terrain and Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations while sharing best practices" the Indian Army said in its post on X. Exercise "Surya Kiran" is conducted annually between India and Nepal with the aim to enhance interoperability in jungle warfare & counter terrorism operations in mountainous terrain and HADR under UN mandate. The joint exercise focus on evolution of combined drills for planning and conduct of tactical operations at unit level in counter terrorism operations and disaster response mechanism in general and role of armed forces in management of disaster. (ANI) (This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body) Validating your browser . . . Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Please enable cookies and reload the page. This may take up to 5 seconds Event ID: 916251669690629126914140165271848692674 Lakhimpur Kheri, November 22: A seven-year-old boy was critically injured in a leopard attack at Isanagar near Dhaurahra range of the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve (DTR) in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri district, forest officials said. The boy, Anil Kumar, was on his way home with his parents and locals from their farm when the big cat, hiding in the crops, pounced on him and tried to drag him away. Leopard Attack in Uttar Pradesh: Big Cat Attacks Brothers, Beaten to Death by Villagers in Bijnor. Alert locals came to his rescue. The minor, who sustained head injuries, was rushed to a nearby community health centre and a doctor there referred him to a higher medical facility in Lakhimpur city. Leopard Attack in Nashik Video: Big Cat Pounces on Pedestrian in Gulmohar Colony, Terrifying CCTV Footage Goes Viral. A forest team also rushed to the spot. Forest Ranger N.K. Chaturvedi said, "The child is battling for his life in hospital. A team is trying to monitor the leopard's movement near the village." (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Nov 22, 2023 08:01 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Suriname has suffered what many are calling the worst mining disaster in South America as a gold mine in Rosebel, one of South America's largest open-pit gold projects, collapsed. The death toll for this mining disaster is currently standing at 14, with seven people still reported missing, according to Loop Caribbean News. The initial number was 10 dead, but more bodies were recently recovered from the collapsed mining pit. President Chandrikapersad Santokhi initially announced the ten confirmed dead in front of Suriname's congress, known as the National Assembly. He revealed that the incident happened at 3:00 PM local time at a tunnel that was temporarily constructed. That tunnel had "considerable depth," and it collapsed, burying a number of gold miners. "As a government, we are shocked and offer our condolences to the relatives," the President said in a statement. He then added that the Suriname government is now considering whether to declare a day of national mourning for the miners or several days of national mourning. Investigations into the collapse are now ongoing, with police officers, soldiers, and members of the National Disaster Management Coordination Centre being deployed to the area to provide assistance. The investigation itself is being headed by the country's Attorney General. A French search and rescue team has also been dispatched to help search for more bodies. Suriname Gold Mine Collapse Happened Inside a Mine Owned by a China-Controlled Company The incident, considered the worst mining disaster in South America, happened on a concession belonging to a subsidiary of Chinese state miner Zijin Mining, as revealed by Suriname officials. READ MORE: Suriname: 5 Places to Visit in This Country Filled With Natural Beauty The area was called Rosebel Gold Mines, the subsidiary purchased by Zijin in February, and it was known for being filled with illegal miners. The company released a statement saying that it regretted the deaths and claimed that it had tried to remove informal miners, known locally as porknokkers, with an eviction order. However, this eviction order did not work as the illegal miners soon returned, according to Mining.com. "We have been in discussions with the Surinamese authorities for quite some time, during which we have repeatedly emphasized the dangers of illegal gold mining," the company said in a statement. "There have been several efforts earlier this year to address this dangerous situation." Zijin, which has mining operations all over South America to feed China's increasing demand for other countries' mineral wealth, has faced issues with informal and illegal mining operations within their other mines in South America. Suriname and Its History With Illegal Miners Even before the deadly gold mine collapse, Suriname has long struggled against illegal, small-scale mining for years. It is estimated that around 15,000 people are working in the small mining sector, and these include not just Suriname natives but also Brazilians and Chinese, according to the Associated Press. Since the collapse, Suriname has vowed to impose tighter restrictions on these small-scale mining operations. President Chandrikapersad Santokhi said that officials have agreed on taking a "stricter and tighter" approach to regulating the gold sector. READ MORE: Brazil: Jair Bolsonaro Tried To Hack the 2022 Election, Says Hacker This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Rick Martin WATCH: Mining the Golden Mountains of Suriname With An Ex-Rebel Leader - Vice China said Tuesday it wants to keep its relations with Argentina on track despite the election of a right-wing libertarian president who has vowed not to deal with communists, Reuters reports. Javier Milei, who won Sunday's presidential vote, has slammed China and Brazil, two of Argentina's top trading partners. He once called China's government an "assassin" and said its people were "not free." Milei's stance contrasts with the outgoing president, Alberto Fernandez, who visited Beijing last month and praised China as a "true friend." Fernandez also promised to work with China in groups such as the G20 and BRICS. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China and Argentina have a "sound momentum of growth" in their bilateral ties. "China stands ready to work with Argentina to keep our relations on a steady course forward," Mao said. READ NEXT: Argentina's New President Javier Milei to Face Daunting Economic Problems Javier Milei Senior Adviser's Statement Mao Ning told reporters at a press briefing that China and Argentina have a sound and growing bilateral relationship based on economic complementarity and mutual respect. She was responding to a question about an interview that Diana Mondino, a senior adviser to President-elect Javier Milei, gave to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti on November 20. The agency reported that Mondino said cooperation with China would be stopped under Milei's administration, XINHUA noted. Mao said the agency's description of Mondino's statement was different from what she read on its website. She said Mondino actually said that some people misunderstood Milei's foreign policy, that no country could isolate itself from diplomatic and economic ties, and that it would be a huge mistake for Argentina to cut off relations with major countries like China or Brazil. Mao also said Mondino acknowledged that China is an important trading partner for Argentina and that the new government values its relations with China, especially in business. China is Argentina's second-largest trading partner and the largest buyer of its agricultural products, Mao said. She said China is ready to work with Argentina to keep their relations on a steady course forward. China and Argentina China said Monday it congratulated Argentina on its peaceful presidential election and its new leader, Javier Milei, who has been critical of China. Mao said China and Argentina have a long history of mutual respect and cooperation. She said both countries want to deepen their ties and benefit their people, per Global Times. China sees its relations with Argentina as a long-term strategic partnership and is ready to work with Argentina to maintain their friendship, support each other's growth and prosperity through mutually beneficial cooperation, and keep their ties on a stable and lasting path of development for the benefit of both people, Mao noted. China is one of Argentina's top trading partners. Bilateral trade reached $15.15 billion in the first 10 months of 2023, according to Chinese customs data. In 2022, trade between the two countries rose 20 percent to $21.36 billion. Argentina also used the Chinese currency to repay part of its debt to the International Monetary Fund. The Argentine economy ministry said it will pay about $3.4 billion in debt and interest to the IMF soon, using some yuan from a currency swap deal with China's central bank. READ MORE: Dominican Republic: At Least 21 Dead After Heaviest Rainfall This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Bert Hoover WATCH: China says it would be 'a serious mistake' if Argentina cuts ties - From The Times and The Sunday Times The family of Rex Heuermann, who is suspected to be the infamous Gilgo Beach serial killer who terrorized New York in the 2000s, are reportedly speaking up in a new documentary, and they are expected to make over a million dollars because of it. Much like many families with a serial killer in their midst, Heuermann's family did not have the faintest idea of his double life. He is accused of killing 27-year-old Amber Lynn Costello, 24-year-old Melissa Barthelemy, and 22-year-old Megan Waterman, whose remains were all found in Gilgo Beach, Long Island, He is also the prime suspect in the murder of Maureen Brainard-Barnes. Asa Ellerup, Heuermann's estranged wife, as well as his and her adult children, Victoria and Christopher, have already sold the rights to their story to a new documentary, which is being produced by NBC's streaming service, Peacock. According to Yahoo! News, Heuermann's lawyers are also receiving payments as they will be taking part in the documentary. The three family members did not know anything about Rex Heuermann's "hunts" where he went after sex workers. Rex Heuermann may only be accused of killing three and is the prime suspect in another one, but he may have killed a lot more, as a total of 11 bodies were found in the stretch of Gilgo Beach between 2010 and 2011. These include all four of his alleged victims, who were all found buried while being bound by belts or tape and some wrapped in burlap. Their bodies were all buried within one-quarter mile of each other in Gilgo Beach and were known as the Gilgo Beach Four. Rex Heuermann Wife Attends His Hearing Inside a New York Court Asa Ellerup, 59, sparked a media frenzy last Wednesday when she arrived for her estranged husband's trial inside the Arthur M. Cromarty Courthouse in Riverhead, Long Island. She was being followed by a documentary crew from Peacock, sparking rumors of her deal for the documentary. The New York Post reported that reporters soon swarmed her as she got out of her car, with two photographers even getting into a fight with one another as they jockeyed to get into position for a good shot. READ MORE: The 5 Most Infamous Serial Killers From Colombia A native of Iceland, Ellerup looked more composed than previously when news of her husband being a serial killer first erupted. Upon arriving at the courtroom, she was seen smiling and nodding to Heuermann. She filed for divorce from him back in July. The hearing itself was fairly standard despite the media frenzy outside, as it was just the defense asking for the investigators' notes and both sides asking for paperwork. Another Serial Killer Told Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Rex Heuermann To Confess and Avoid Prosecutors 'Gloating' Convicted serial killer Keith Jesperson, better known as the "Happy Face Killer," reportedly comforted the suspected Gilgo Beach serial killer, Rex Heuermann, telling him that the food was "better in prison: and advised him to confess. According to The Messenger, the 68-year-old serial killer sent letters to Heuermann from his cell in Oregon. He told the suspected killer that he should confess to his alleged crimes so that prosecutors and police would not be gloating about any evidence they find. He added that confessing would be better as it avoids a lengthy trial, and living in prison would be better than staying in jail, as Heuermann is now. READ MORE: Richard Ramirez: A Look at Horrific Crimes of 'Satanic' Serial Killer Dubbed the 'Night Stalker' This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Rick Martin WATCH: YouTuber who interviewed Rex Heuermann says suspected serial killer had "very imposing" presence - CBS New York America has conducted two sets of airstrikes in Iraq against Iran-backed militants, marking the first publicly disclosed US responses in Iraq to a series of recent attacks against troops in the region, Reuters reports. Up until this point, America had been cautious about retaliating in Iraq due to the sensitive political landscape. The strikes, carried out on Tuesday evening, targeted two facilities in Iraq, according to a statement from the US military. The statement emphasized that these actions were a direct response to the attacks on US and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups. The decision to retaliate comes amid ongoing concerns about the delicate political situation in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani has limited control over the powerful Iranian-backed militias, whose support was instrumental in securing his position a year ago. These militias now constitute a significant bloc in his governing coalition. Approximately 24 hours before the strikes, American forces were attacked at an air base west of Baghdad. In response, a US military AC-130 aircraft engaged in self-defense, reportedly resulting in casualties among the Iranian-backed militants. The exact number of hostile forces killed remains unclear, but US officials have stated that the AC-130 gunship, equipped to fire artillery at ground targets, acted defensively in the face of the attack. READ NEXT: Joe Biden Urges Israel to Implement Humanitarian Pause Iran-Backed Militants Has Been Attacking Since Last Month There have been a reported 66 attacks on US and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria since October 17, with Al-Asad experiencing several incidents, according to CNN. Prior to the recent ballistic missile attack on Monday, a one-way drone attack targeted forces at Al-Asad, resulting in no casualties or infrastructure damage, according to a US official. As of last week, a total of 56 US troops had sustained minor injuries in these attacks, with at least 25 of them being traumatic brain injuries. All injured personnel have since returned to duty. Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh stated that they have responded in retaliation in cases where they were able to identify the point of origin. In response to continuous attacks on US troops, the US has executed three strikes in Syria. The first strike targeted two facilities in Abu Kamal linked to Iranian-backed militias on October 26. Subsequent strikes hit a weapons storage facility in Maysalun, Deir Ezzor, Syria, used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and affiliated groups on November 8. Additional strikes were carried out on November 12, targeting a training facility and safe house in Syria near Abu Kamal and Mayadin, respectively. America Air Strikes Aside from the four pre-planned retaliatory airstrikes by the US since October 17, there have been instances of immediate America forces firing back at Iran-backed militants when their locations were identified. The three other pre-planned America airstrikes in recent weeks targeted weapon storage facilities, a safe house, and another command and control center in Syria used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxy militants for launching attacks, as stated by Pentagon officials. Some militants are expected to have been killed in at least some of these strikes, ABC News noted. The full damage assessment of the two sites hit in Iraq on Wednesday is yet to be conducted, making it unclear whether any enemies were killed, according to a US official. Despite America's counterattacks aiming to discourage further aggression, there is currently no sign of these actions slowing down. READ MORE: China Makes Stance Clear on Working with Argentina This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Bert Hoover WATCH: U.S. forces carry out additional strikes against Iran-backed militia in Iraq - From NBC News Donald Trump's defense team continued arguing their case and called in former Trump Organization Corporate Controller Jeffrey McConney, the company's top accountant, to the stand as their witness in the former president's New York fraud trial. McConney had served as the corporate controller for the Trump Organization for a long time and was tearing up on the stand when he testified that he had to quit his job because of the company's mounting legal problems. According to the Associated Press, when asked by defense lawyer Jesus M. Suarez about why he does not work for the company anymore, McConney was seen taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes with tissues as he reflected on his 35 years working for the embattled company. "I'm very proud of the work that I did," he told the Trump defense lawyer. "I just wanted to relax and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets for the company that I loved working for. I'm sorry." The former Trump Organization executive is also a defendant in the Donald Trump New York fraud trial as he is one of the executives accused of fraudulently inflating the former president's wealth in his financial statements, therefore securing better loans and deals from banks and other lenders. Former Trump Organization Executive Accused of Helping Donald Trump Inflate His Assets As McConney was crying at the stand, he was also accused by New York Attorney General Letitia James of helping the Trump family, as well as his direct superior, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, of faking business paperwork. READ MORE: Donald Trump Attacks Kim Kardashian After Daughter Ivanka Trump Attended Reality Star's Party According to The Daily Beast, McConney was tasked with mostly overseeing the Trump Organization's mundane internal finances and approving all kinds of checks made by Donald Trump himself. However, he is also accused of taking part in some of Trump's more questionable activities, from directing funds meant for charity to then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to helping company executives dodge taxes. This was exposed in a trial last year when his direct boss, Allen Weisselberg, was sent to prison for tax evasion and fraud. The Trump Organization's former top accountant is now taking all the blame for Trump, saying that the inflated numbers for the Trump properties were all thanks to his personal "mistakes." When grilled by prosecutors about his role in the alleged bank and insurance fraud plot, he claimed that he knew nothing. Another Trump Witness Tripped Up When Presented With Evidence The defense also called in David Miller as an expert witness. Miller is an underwriting expert and testified he has never seen insurance underwriters rely on media outlets when making their assessments. However, prosecutors were ready for this and presented a report that was written by Miller himself that contradicted his testimony. According to Raw Story, State Attorney Andrew Amer pointed out that Miller's own report stated, Some underwriters do not require financials and instead use their experience and other means (such as Forbes and USA Today) to satisfy their underwriting needs." READ MORE: Donald Trump is Confused Why Co-Defendants Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro Pleaded Guilty This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Rick Martin WATCH: Trump Expert SCREWS UP during Testimony, INCRIMINATES Trump - MeidasTouch A suspect is now in custody in connection to a rural Colorado shooting that resulted in three deaths and one person wounded, believed to stem from a suspected property dispute, according to PEOPLE. Hanme K. Clark, a 45-year-old resident of Westcliffe, Colorado, was apprehended by New Mexico State Police and US Marshals near Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Tuesday, as reported by the Custer County Sheriff's Office. During a press conference, Custer County Sheriff Rich Smith stated that a woman believed to be the suspect's girlfriend was found in the vehicle at the time of the arrest, and investigators are currently working to determine her involvement in the incident. The arrest followed a 25-hour manhunt that commenced on Monday, during which Clark surrendered peacefully. The suspect's father contacted the sheriff's office and offered assistance in locating Clark. Sheriff Smith confirmed that the Colorado shooting suspect was found on Tuesday in the same white Ram 1500 pickup truck as the one identified on the previous day. READ NEXT: Colorado: Man With Guns and Explosive Found Dead The Colorado Shooting The Colorado shooting occurred around 1 PM on Monday when the assailant opened fire on five individuals in a wooded area, revealed Sheriff Rich Smith at a news conference on Monday night, per CNN. The attack resulted in the deaths of two men and a woman, while another woman sustained gunshot wounds to the chest but is expected to survive. A fifth person managed to escape the attack. According to Sheriff Smith, the suspect and at least one of the victims had been involved in previous civil disputes related to property lines and easements, although specific details were not provided. The Custer County coroner identified the three victims on Tuesday as Rob Geers, 63 and his wife, Beth Wade Geers ,73, along with James Daulton, 58. Patty Daulton, the wife of James Daulton, was injured in the incident and is receiving treatment at a trauma center. In a subsequent news conference on Tuesday, Sheriff Smith mentioned that Patty Daulton's condition is improving. The Daultons and the Geers were property owners, and their properties bordered that of the suspect. Following the arrest of the Colorado shooting suspect, Sheriff Smith expressed hope it would bring relief to the neighborhood and community and, more importantly, closure to the families and friends of the victims. The Colorado Shooting Suspect Hanme K. Clark, the Colorado shooting suspect, appears to have a background as an accomplished mixed martial arts fighter in Colorado, CBS News noted. A post from Pancrase MMA in Denver identifies one of their fighters as Hanme Clark, known by the nickname "The Ruiner." Clark is listed as 6'3" and 185 pounds, holding a purple belt in Pancrase Mixed Martial Arts, a black belt in Taekwondo, and experience in Kendo, a Japanese sword-fighting style, the post said, adding that he has also earned several titles through Pancrase. Pancrase MMA's website features a news item titled "Former Pancrase Student and Colorado MMA Fighter Wanted for Shooting 4," linking to a Daily Mail story about Clark being sought by the police. Meanwhile, court records indicate that a man with the same name as Clark is a plaintiff in a property dispute in Custer County civil court. This case dates to 2020 and remains open. READ MORE: America Launches Airstrikes on Iran-Back Militants in Iraq This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Bert Hoover WATCH: Police arrest man suspected of fatally shooting 3 in Colorado - From NBC News In a new development posing challenges to Joe Biden's presidency, left-wing environmentalist Jill Stein officially launched her third presidential bid on Tuesday, per The Guardian. Stein, 73, is seeking to secure the nomination of the US Green Party and joins a growing list of predominantly leftist figures announcing candidacies that could potentially weaken Biden's support in the anticipated rematch against Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election. After initially announcing her candidacy via a video posted on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Stein further substantiated her campaign in a live Zoom conversation with two progressive activists, Chris Smalls, a US trade union organizer for Amazon workers, and Miko Peled, an Israeli-born pro-Palestinian activist. "This is all about our community rising up for our higher values," Stein stated during the conversation. She emphasized the unprecedented nature of the political moment and indicated that her campaign would focus on key themes such as workers' rights, high living costs, and US support for Israel. These are issues where Biden may face vulnerabilities within his voter base. READ NEXT: Joe Biden 2024 Reelection Bid Confirmed Jill Stein Jill Stein, a two-time Green Party nominee who ran for president in the 2012 and 2016 elections, has officially launched a new bid for the White House, aiming to secure the Green Party's nomination in the 2024 presidential election. Stein announced her candidacy in a video shared on X (formerly Twitter), asserting that the political system is broken and criticizing both Democrats and Republicans as "bought and paid for." In the video released early this month, Stein expressed dissatisfaction with the ruling parties, stating that they are not addressing the challenges the country faces. She criticized both parties for allocating trillions to the "endless war machine" while millions of Americans lack basic necessities such as food, housing, and healthcare, according to USA Today. Stein outlined her vision for an "economic bill of rights" for Americans, advocating for the right to a job, healthcare, housing, food, education, and more. Additionally, she called for the abolition of student and medical debt as part of her proposed platform. Did Jill Stein Help Donald Trump to the White House? Jill Stein, a two-time Green Party nominee for president, consistently rebuffs assertions that she acted as a "spoiler" in the 2016 election, contributing to Donald Trump's victory. While Stein garnered more votes than Trump's narrow margins of victory in key swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the impact on whether Stein voters would have supported Hillary Clinton, who faced unpopularity among far-left voters, remains unclear. Jill Stein has adeptly navigated and addressed these accusations, including baseless claims linking her to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. These claims stemmed from her attendance at a state-owned "Russia Today" party in Moscow in 2015 and alleged Russian troll farm activity supporting her campaign. During her advisory role in Kanye West's presidential campaign shift from the People's Party to the Green Party (before West ultimately ran as an independent), Stein advocated for the role of third-party insurgents, according to a July interview with CNN. She drew parallels with historical examples, such as the abolitionist party preceding the Civil War, which faced demonization as a spoiler while advocating for abolitionists to gain political power. At that time, Stein spoke favorably about West and the efforts of Green Party affiliates, including her former running mate Ajamu Baraka and journalist Chris Hedges, in integrating the renowned intellectual into the party structure. However, recent developments show that Jill Stein is once again assuming the role of the Green Party's standard-bearer. READ MORE: Joe Biden Says Hamas Hostages Will Be Released This article is owned by Latin Post. Written by: Bert Hoover WATCH: Jill Stein Launches Another Presidential Campaign In Surprise Green Party Bid - From Forbes Breaking News Hellertown police this week arrested a suspect in the delivery of fentanyl that claimed the life of a 19-year-old borough man in the summer of 2022. The suspect, 20-year-old Holden Wilkins, admitted in an interview with police to having purchased what he believed to be the painkiller oxycodone and delivering $20 worth of the substance to 19-year-old Riley T. James, Hellertown Detective Michael Dattilio wrote in court records. James had just gotten out of a rehab program and contacted Wilkins looking to ease his dope sickness, Dattilio wrote after interviewing Wilkins. The delivery of the white packets stamped with Monster High in black ink occurred during the afternoon or evening of July 9, 2022, according to police. That same day, James was found by his father dead in the bedroom of their home in the 200 block of Linden Avenue in Hellertown, court records say. Police the following day viewed a social media post by someone identified as Wilkins in which he admitted to providing James a substance prior to his death, court records state. This was the break in the investigation that led to the interview with Wilkins, according to police. After the interview with Dattilio, Wilkins turned over to police two white packets with the identical Monster High stamp that contained a white powder that tested positive for the powerful synthetic opioid painkiller fentanyl, according to court records. Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek in October 2022 determined James died of acute fentanyl intoxication and ruled the death an accident, according to police. James excelled at chess and poker, was artistic and enjoyed video games, and photo-bombing, according to his obituary. District Attorney Terry Houck last month approved the charges against Wilkins based on Dattilios investigation. Wilkins, of the 800 block of Main Street in Hellertown, was arraigned Tuesday before District Judge Alan Roger Mege on felony charges of drug delivery resulting in death and drug possession with intent to deliver (two counts), in addition to misdemeanor involuntary manslaughter. Wilkins was sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $1 million bail and faces a preliminary hearing scheduled for Dec. 20, to determine if there is sufficient evidence to send the charges toward trial in the Northampton County Court of Common Pleas. Court records were not immediately updated with an attorney for Wilkins. The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration runs a National Helpline, 800-662-4357 (HELP) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 800-487-4889. It is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups and community-based organizations. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.d A former inmate at a rural Pennsylvania prison says he was assaulted while he was shackled, had his clothes ripped off, was subjected to racial slurs and left strapped to a chair for 10 hours with just a blanket covering his private parts, according to a lawsuit. Damion Davis still has blurry vision in one eye two years after the attack in the Pike County Correctional Facility, the suit says. After he filed a grievance, Davis was held in solitary confinement for six months, the lawsuit says. Davis sued prison warden Craig Lowe and a handful of prison employees in federal court on Nov. 15. Prison board solicitor Thomas Farley said the prison denies the allegations. Experts are trying to pin down the cause of a mysterious respiratory illness sickening hundreds of dogs nationwide. No cases have been reported in Pennsylvania or New Jersey at this time, but the illness has been found in multiple states. Most cases have cropped up in Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, New Hampshire and Washington. The illness which can cause coughing, sneezing, nasal or eye discharge and lethargy, as well as pneumonia does not appear to respond to antibiotics. Experts still dont know the underlying cause. New Jersey-based veterinarian Kirsten White cautioned against panic, saying these sorts of illnesses emerge in dogs from time to time. She added that its lack of response to antibiotics could merely mean its a viral infection. Because bacteria would generally respond to antibiotics, said White, whos also a clinical assistant professor of shelter medicine at the Shreiber School of Veterinary Medicine of Rowan University. A viral infection does appear to be the most likely cause, according to the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association. The Oregon Department of Agriculture found that the cases appear to share a viral etiology, but common respiratory diagnostic testing has been largely negative, the OVMA said. While several cases have involved positive tests for M. cynos, a bacteria that can cause canine respiratory illness, that is not believed to be the underlying causative agent, the organization noted. Oregon alone has reported more than 200 cases. There have been some dog fatalities from the illness, but White said, as far as the total number of cases, it doesnt seem to be that likely. She said dog owners should be aware of symptoms. My big thing would be not to panic but to be practical, White said. Obviously, you want to ensure that your dog is up to date on all preventative vaccines that are recommended by your vet. Especially vaccines like bordetella, parainfluenza and canine influenza. She added, If an owner is concerned, or they have a dog that has a compromised immune system something like a cancer patient they can consider avoiding exposure to other dogs in places like dog parks, doggy daycare, boarding kennels, or grooming facilities. Dog illnesses like this happen, White said. They often begin as mysteries that are soon solved. One of the things that I think is scaring people (is) everybody says this is so new, and its really not, she said. Respiratory infections do emerge, she said, citing diseases like kennel cough, an umbrella term for multiple disease-causing agents, either bacterial or viral. Theres a lot of respiratory issues out there, White said. Canine influenza caused a big stir when we first discovered that in some shelter populations a couple (of) years ago, but I think this is not new. I think the part that has people concerned is that were not sure what the causative agent (is) yet. White said she wouldnt be surprised if cases are eventually found in New Jersey. If owners notice signs of illness in their dog, they should have their dog evaluated by a veterinarian, said Darby McDermott, the state public health veterinarian, in a statement. She also said dogs that are ill should be kept away from other animals, and should not be brought to public areas like dog parks while they are sick to prevent other dogs from being exposed to contagious illnesses. The cause of the reported illnesses in dogs is unknown at this time, however it is important to remember that dogs can carry multiple germs that can make people sick, McDermott said. It is always important for people to protect themselves when they interact with dogs or other pets. One of the best and easiest ways people can help protect themselves is by thoroughly washing their hands after handling, caring for, feeding, or cleaning up after dogs. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Moonlight Pizza, a small shop on South Robinson Avenue in Pen Argyl, has received a glowing review from Dave Portnoy, the controversial blogger whose pizza reviews have proven highly influential for small businesses around the country. Owners Anthony Ulecka and Nicole Adams got a visit from Portnoy, known primarily as the founder of the blog Barstool Sports. Portnoy also claims to be a pizza connoisseur, regularly publishing One Bite Pizza Review videos in which he grades slices on a scale from 1 (the worst) to 10 (the best) after one bite (its more than one bite). He reviewed Moonlights pie in a video posted on Tuesday afternoon, which has already garnered over 1 million views between X (a.k.a. Twitter) and YouTube. Warning: The video below contains explicit language. Ulecka and Adams, both of whom could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning, have been slinging dough for four years in their small, cozy space that seats 12. Moonlight does all its orders over the phone starting at 2 p.m. until they run out of dough for the day. Customers can pick it up or dine in, and theyre welcome to bring their own drink of choice. Moonlight is open from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. This is all key information because the pizzeria will likely see an uptick in business, especially since Portnoy gave the pizza an 8.3 out of 10. Thats what happened recently in Bucks County, for instance, where Portnoy earlier this month reviewed two pizzerias, according to a phillyburbs.com report on Monday. Portnoys visits have been a boom for business at the two pizzerias, although some customers have grumbled online about the long lines created by Portnoys reviews, the news website reports. After the Moonlight Pizza review was published, Portnoys followers, who call themselves Stoolies, showed up in Moonlights comments on Instagram and Facebook. A few dozen left their congratulations in some form for both the score and the business Ulecka and Adams were going to get following the popular bloggers visit. Portnoys methods and responses to his critics have generated considerable controversy. After an August video review of Massachusetts pizzeria Dragon Pizza owner confronting Portnoy went viral, Portnoys followers sent a deluge of 1-star Yelp reviews towards the restaurant, and Portnoy himself even derided the owner and the business on political pundit Tucker Carlsons social media show. Portnoy has also been subject to multiple allegations of sexual harassment, racism and misogyny. In response to media criticism of his behavior, he has often taken aggressive stances against reporters, including ones at the Washington Post and NJ Advance Media, the parent company of lehighvalleylive.com. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com. Connor Lagore may be reached at clagore@njadvancemedia.com. CEO of Laois Chamber Alliance, Caroline Hofman, recently travelled to Brussels to represent Laois at the European Parliament of Enterprises in Brussels, as part of a Chambers Ireland delegation. The European Parliament of Enterprises is the largest event at European Union level giving the floor directly to entrepreneurs. It brings together over 700 business representatives, coming from 43 European countries, who are given the opportunity to 'become' Members of the European Parliament for one day, debating and voting on some of the most crucial topics currently impacting businesses with major representatives from EU institutions. This was followed by a second day of meetings with a number of MEPs, followed by briefings at the Permanent Representation of Ireland to the European Union. Delegates had the opportunity to meet with Deputy Permanent Representative of Ireland to the EU, Ambassador Barbara Cullinane, along with members of the Competitiveness, Trade, and Energy and Climate teams. Caroline Hofman spoke following her mission to Brussels. "It was a privilege to represent Laois at the European Parliament of Enterprises, joining over 700 entrepreneurs from EU and non-EU countries in the Hemicycle of the European Parliament. This is where Members of the European Parliament gather during plenary sessions and also where crucial votes take place. This was an important opportunity to hear the challenges being faced and solutions other countries are putting forward, and to vote on key issues affecting businesses across Europe. "Having a voice at not only a local, regional and national level, but also at a European level, is a vital part of the work Laois Chamber Alliance does. It is important for us to give our members a voice through forums like the European Parliament of Enterprises and missions to Brussels. Whilst in Brussels, I raised with our MEPs the need for an EU funding officer to be allocated to each county. This funding officer can in turn assist businesses and organisations to inform them of all relevant funding opportunities and to assist them with the application process, which can often be quite complex. There is a significant amount of EU funding available for eligible organisations, and it is important that these organisations are provided with the assistance they need to tap into these opportunities, concluded Ms Hoffman. The event is organised once every two years by Eurochambres in collaboration with the European Parliament. Sinead Lawlor, operations manager at Naas Killashee Hotel is this years winner of the Employee of the Year award at the County Kildare Chamber Business Awards. The awards event took place on November 17 at the Killashee Hotel. Ms Lawlor began working at Killashee Hotel in November 2013, stepping into the role of duty manager. Her skills and dedication quickly became evident, leading to a swift promotion to conference manager in January 2014. She continued to impress with her management abilities and ability to create unforgettable experiences for the hotels guests and clients. In June 2022, Sinead she was promoted to the role of operations manager. This means she oversees international conferences, weddings and events at the hotel. Sinead, who is from Palmerstown in Dublin, graduated from Ballyfermot Senior College with a Higher National Diploma in Hotel and Catering Management in 1997. Industrial catering was a prominent industry then and her first role was as a junior catering manager in Intel which had eight restaurants on site. She transferred to IBM with Campbell Catering and was their youngest unit Manager at 23 with responsibility for two of the four site restaurants catering for thousands of people each day. She moved into the hotel industry in 2006 and went to work in what is now Central Hotel Tullamore for five years. This was followed by two years in the neighbouring The Bridge House, prior to her joining the team at Killashee. Read more Kildare news Due to unprecedented demand from her fans across the UK and Europe, music icon P!NK is set to make a rapturous return in 2024, announcing brand new dates on her spectacular Summer Carnival World Tour, which saw her play at sold-out shows across the summer, delighting over 1 million of her fans along the way. Kicking off at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on the June 11, 2024, she will then play a string of stadium shows in London, Dublin, Liverpool, Glasgow, Bern, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Brussels, Leipzig, Stuttgart, and Monchengladbach, before bringing the jaw-dropping tour to a close in Stockholm on July 25, 2024. Fans will undoubtedly rejoice as the megastar will return to seven cities she visited in 2019 (Cardiff, Dublin, Liverpool, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Stuttgart, Stockholm) and will also play her first ever show in Monchengladbach, Germany and her first show in Leipzig in over 10 years. Shell also be returning to Copenhagen and Bern for the first time since 2010. P!NK has announced an Irish show for Aviva Stadium, Dublin on 20 June 2024. Tickets from 89.50 including booking fee go on sale on Thursday 30 November at 9AM. Subject to licence. Over 450 business leaders from across Kildare attended the Kildare Business Awards, powered by Eirgrid, last Friday night (17th November) in The Killashee Hotel. Allan Shine, CEO of the Chamber in his opening address paid tribute to all the finalists and noted that this year the Chamber received a record number of applications for the 15 category awards on offer. He said, It is an honour for me to lead a Chamber that is without doubt one of the most formidable, progressive and dynamic business organisations in the country and that is down to our members. Our membership engages and trusts the Chamber team and that enables us to be the voice for business in the region. Mr Shine continued, The certainty that Kildare can offer as a vibrant progressive county ensures that we are and remain the location of choice, for both existing and potential business enterprise. This county is awash with young vibrant High Potential Start Ups that are benefiting from the supports from LEO Kildare, Enterprise Ireland, Maynooth University and the Chamber. The opportunities for young companies here is unrivalled. However, we cannot be complacent, there is still much to do. There is a constant and consistent message from you, our members, in our quarterly business sentiment reports which show that Kildare faces challenges around infrastructure, housing, healthcare, early learning and childcare. We require significant improvements in these areas. With Local, European and National elections taking place within the next 12 18 months, these are the areas that our Chamber will focus on when lobbying our elected representatives. Business of the Year for 2023 was won by Irish Dog Foods. ABOVE: Deirdre Coughlan Murray, Sean Mulryan and Bernardine Mulryan Sean Mulryan of Ballymore Group was this years recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Business Award. Winners this year were; ABOVE: Director of Services, Community, Climate, Environment, Water, Marian Higgins, Cathaoirleach of the County of Kildare, Cllr Darragh Fitzpatrick, Chief Executive, Kildare County Council, Sonya Kavanagh, Chief Executive, Kilkenny County Council, Lar Pawer, Cathaoirleach of Kilkenny, Cllr Michael Doyle, Director of Services, Environment and Climate, Sean McKeown. Kildare and Kilkenny County Councils have today announced the renewal of their partnership agreement to lead the Eastern and Midlands Climate Action Regional Office (CARO) for the next six years. Kildare County Council as the lead authority in the region, supported by Kilkenny County Council, coordinates the delivery of climate action across 17 Local Authorities, encompassing the border, midlands, mid-east and south-east counties of the country (with the exception of Dublin). The Eastern and Midlands CARO is one of four offices established in 2018 to support local government to respond and adapt to climate change. They coordinate national and local climate policy and work to ensure a more joined-up approach to responding to the climate crisis at a regional level. Chief Executive of Kildare County Council, Sonya Kavanagh welcomed the continued partnership with Kilkenny County Council for the Eastern and Midland Region: Over the previous five years, the partnership has been instrumental in helping local authorities in the region to respond to climate challenges, particularly on adaptation, and the Eastern and Midlands CARO has become a really valued resource for the local authorities within the region. We look forward to working closely with Kilkenny County Council to further progress support for climate action within the sector. Going forward the partnership will continue to help local authorities to deliver climate policies and behavioural change within their own organisations and to empower citizens, businesses and neighbourhoods to better understand the impacts of climate change and to embrace the need for climate action. Three Kildare-based TDs have explained their decision to oppose the motion calling on the government to impose sanctions on Israel last week. The motion, which was proposed by the Social Democrats, called for a range of economic and diplomatic sanctions against Israel, and also called for the diplomatic credentials of Israels ambassador in Ireland, Dana Erlich, be revoked. However, on Wednesday, November 15 last, the government's amendment to the motion was voted for by 85 votes to 55. The four Kildare TDs who voted against the motion Fianna Fail TD James Lawless, Independent TD Dr Cathal Berry, and Fine Gael TDS Bernard Durkan and Martin Heydon were given the opportunity to clarify their reason behind voting against the motion, following criticism on social media regarding their respective votes. While Bernard Durkan TD did not respond in time for comment, James Lawless TD, Dr Cathal Berry TD and Martin Heydon TD were open to discuss their views. Fine Gael TD Bernard Durkan. James Lawless told the Leader: "The motions proposed by the opposition last week were misguided and potentially highly dangerous, as they jeopardised live and ongoing efforts by the Tanaiste, Micheal Martin TD, who was in the Middle-East all of last week, working on the release of Irish hostages from Gaza which he secured, through diplomacy. "The Tanasite visited all countries in the region last week and used all diplomatic channels to enable Irish citizens to escape the region, many of whom arrived back to Ireland over the weekend; none of that would have been possible if we had chased short-term headlines and supported those motions." He continued: "Diplomatic channels are maintained even in wartime, it is not a sign of friendship, but a channel of communication between states. "It also allows Ireland to express our position on a ceasefire and the need to spare civilians in the conflict. "Expelling an ambassador would place us on the fringe with no voice." Commenting on the prospect of a referral to the International Criminal Court, Mr Lawless, who is also a barrister, said: "The situation in Palestine is already under their jurisdiction and subject of a live complaint since 2021 and their lead investigator has already confirmed that all current events are included in that exercise. "Doing another duplicate referral would just confuse things and could weaken Irelands position by being seen to politicise the court. "I also note that one of the motions sought to suspend the research cooperation program between the European Union and Israel... this would simply have penalised students in universities there, many of whom have been vocal themselves calling for international law to be followed. "I regret to say that I believe the motions were political theatre and the subject is far too important. "They would not have made a jot of difference for a single person in Gaza or Israel, other than the Irish citizens being released into Egypt would almost certainly not have proved possible. "Some parties want to make progress, others want to make noise." In addition, Mr Lawless praised a recent editorial that was published in the Business Post, titled: "Sinn Fein's lack of nuance on Israel conflict should ring alarm bells for voters." "I BELIEVE IN ACTUAL DIPLOMACY" Last month, Dr Cathal Berry TD, sat down with the Leader to discuss the current Israel-Palestine conflict. Dr Berry TD, who previously served with the Defence Forces on peacekeeping missions in Israel, Syria and Lebanon, told the Leader that was 'not surprised' at the recent escalation, and added that when he was in Israel as a soldier, he likened the situation to 'a powder keg waiting to go off.' He also said: "Ultimately, it's up to Israel and Palestine to organise the peace process amongst themselves." "The priority should be a ceasefire, and the exchanging of hostages." Now, Dr Berry TD has clarified his reasoning behind voting against the recent motion: "I find it unbelievable that some politicians would put our own people (in Gaza) and troops, some of whom are based in Kildare, at risk, and would undermine all the hard work by our diplomats, just for political self-interest. "It's reckless and irresponsible." Dr Berry continued: "We have seen it the last few days, with some of our citizens leaving Gaza, but that wouldn't have happened if the motion had gone through." "I believe in actual diplomacy, rather than megaphone diplomacy," he concluded. "SANCTIONS ARE IMPACTFUL ONLY WHEN COLLECTIVELY ENFORVCED BY A COALITION OF STATES" Martin Heydon TD also echoed similar sentiments voiced by both Mr Lawless TD and Mr Berry TD: "Recent proposals by the opposition regarding Gaza would have a minimal effect on the situation on the ground and could, in fact, diminish our capacity to engage in effective negotiations which is so important for Irish citizens caught up in the conflict. "The Taoiseach, Tanaiste and other government Ministers have expressed continually their outrage at what is happening in Gaza, both at home and abroad. "We have called for a humanitarian ceasefire and continue to actively advocate for that wherever we can, particularly using our voice in Europe." Mr Heydon TD continued: "As the Taoiseach recently discussed in the Dail, when it comes to imposing sanctions, we must act multilaterally, as individually imposed sanctions lack effectiveness. "Sanctions are impactful only when collectively enforced by a coalition of states. "With regard to the motion calling for the Israeli ambassador to be expelled, we do need to keep diplomatic channels open with all sides; this will ensure we have as many options as possible to ensure the security of Irish citizens caught up in the conflict. "Were we to expel the ambassador, ours would likely get expelled from Israel and we would have no voice there to negotiate with when required." "Diplomacy isn't solely about maintaining amicable relations, nor does it signify approval of a country's policies or deeds... we have citizens in Palestine and Israel, making it imperative to keep these communication lines open," he concluded. In other news related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, it was announced earlier this morning that a four-day ceasefire has been agreed upon, in addition to the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza. Kildare students Tegan DArcy, Vicky Maher and Quamdeen Timson were presented with scholarship awards by Dublin City University at a ceremony to celebrate memorial and endowed scholarships on Wednesday November 15. In total, 47 students received awards named in honour of individuals and organisations who have played a key role in the life of Dublin City University and Irish society. Tegan DArcy from Prosperous, a former student of Clane Community School who is currently completing a degree in Genetics and Cell Biology at Dublin City University, was presented with the Maureen OFarrell Memorial Scholarship. Originally a trained nurse, Maureen was an ardent believer in social justice and the power of education and impressed these values on her three sons. This scholarship in support of the DCU Access Programme was established in 2022 by her family to honour her memory and passion for education. Vicky Maher from Dunlavin, a former student of Cross and Passion College Kilcullen who is completing a degree in Actuarial Mathematics at Dublin City University, was awarded the Endowed Deloitte Access Scholarship. Created by professional services network Deloitte, this scholarship was established to support greater access to higher education. Quamdeen Timson from Monasterevin, a former student of St Pauls Secondary School who is currently completing a degree in Computer Science at Dublin City University, was presented with the Hough and Lydon Family Memorial Scholarship. This scholarship was established by DCU alumni PJ Hough and Mar Lydon in honour of their parents. It supports a STEM student each year through the DCU Access Programme. Speaking at the event, Joe Quinsey, CEO of DCU Educational Trust commented, We are delighted to celebrate the students who receive memorial and endowed scholarships today, and to honour those who created those scholarships, and our friends and loved ones who are remembered through them. The talent and promise of these students are truly a source of great hope for the future. The 47 scholarship recipients were selected based on different criteria, depending on the wishes of those who created the scholarship. These include undergraduate students supported by DCUs Access Programme, postgraduate students in the fields of Biotechnology, Accounting, Law and Journalism, and students with outstanding sporting achievements. A proposal was made to delay the possible arrival of 155 refugees in Dromahair next week due the lack of consultation in regard to services in the village where local councillors say the school and primary care centre are both at full capacity. Councillors condemned the lack of communication from the department in relation to the refugees' arrival at the recently restored Abbey Manor Hotel. A meeting of Manorhamilton Municipal District heard that councillors had received an email from he Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) confirming that beds were being provided for people seeking refugee status in Ireland - 124 for families and 31 beds for single men. Cllr Felim Gurn said that he was advised that Leitrim would have met it's quota for taking in people fleeing the war at 450 people now we currently have around 1,900 Ukrainians. He said the population of Dromahair is nearly 1,000 and asked if there has been consultation here with regards the primary care centre; that's at capacity as it is. He continued that these families have to be educated and said the pressure on Sligo A&E has to be taken into consideration. Cllr Mary Bohan said the school and doctor's surgery are full and that she wanted the council to call on the department to delay this further until all these services have been put in place. I think myself, for 47 bedrooms, the number of people coming in seems to be very high. Cllr Bohan noted that this is a very sensitive issue and said that many of the people fleeing from the war have nothing but the clothes on their back and if any of us were in their shoes, we would be looking for a roof over our heads and those unfortunate people are not responsible for the chaos it's causing in certain areas. She said that issue was the lack of information from the department and said she tried to get in contact with the owner of the hotel several times but still failed to get any answers. She spoke of how protests took place at Magowna House hotel in Inch, Co Clare, after over 30 asylum seekers entered the premises during the summer. We need to have everything in place for them when they do come and be catered for in local schools. The Dromahair school full and the doctor's surgery is full, she said. She wants the council to call on the department to delay this further until all these services have been put in place. I think myself, for 47 bedrooms, the number of people coming in seems to be very high. A lot of people said they would welcome families and help them integrate with regard to sports, schools, etc. but the facilities are not there. If they are going to bussed into Sligo and all over the place how will they integrate? she asked. Cllr Padraig Fallon asked how 155 people will fit into 47 rooms, especially with a number of single individuals. He said that the communication has been dire and he has been contacted several times in relation to the issue. He said that he contacted the department on a regular basis but only got vague replies. He said no lessons have been learned from where there have been concerns in other communities regarding this issue. This is a form of direct provision, he continued which he described as inhumane, degrading and unfit for purpose. Cllr Sean McDermott seconded Cllr Bohan's proposal that we hold back and put that in writing because it doesn't make sense. He said with 155 people coming to an area, you want to be told everything up front and spelt out properly and that doesn't seem to be happening. Cllr Frank Dolan said the real issue was the lack of communication, the secrecy, the rumours of the unknown and that has the local people annoyed; it's not that they are anti-anything. Cllr Dolan asked what do 31 single men do in the village of Dromahair and it will bring serious problems for the ordinary individuals living in the village. Chief Leitrim Planner Bernard Greene responded and said that the council haven't received any formal complaints to the effect that unauthorised development had taken place and they (the owners) hadn't complied with planning permission. He added that he and another member of the team will go and inspect the building themselves in the next week to ensure the permission that was granted last year is being carried out according to what was granted but that is the physical works; the use of the structure then is governed by the Exempted Development Provisions. He added that it was believed they were somewhat lenient to the developers - we weren't, he said, adding that they ensured all planning regulations were adhered to. Cllr Bohan said, I do think we need to contact the department to delay this until we get these issues sorted. Cllr Gurn backed the motion. Concerned Residents Group established A group has been set up by concerned residents in Dromahair in response to the imminent arrival of 155 refugees. In a statement, the group said, The decision to accommodate 155 International Protection Applicants (IPA), a mixture of families and single males is very concerning. We have no Garda station in Dromahair and we have a right to be concerned for our safety given the increase in population this will result in overnight. There has been a complete lack of respect shown to the community and the refugees in the process to date by both the developer and the various government departments involved. There was no consultation or engagement with the community of Dromahair at any stage. Dromahair does not have the services or infrastructure to cope with these numbers of IPA. Schools, health services, transport services, and all other public services are already lacking in resources. We do not believe that the building is fit for purpose and have raised numerous concerns to Leitrim County Council to this effect. In light of this we are intending to have a peaceful gathering outside the Abbey Hotel this evening (Wednesday) at 7pm in Dromahair to show our concerns. VVC Perforates 2 Wells for Helium and Natural Gas and Results of Post-AGM Board Meeting TORONTO, Nov. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- VVC Exploration Corporation, dba VVC Resources, ("VVC") or (the "Company"), (TSX-V:VVC and OTCQC:VVCVF) announces the following: Perforation of 2 Wells in Syracuse VVC is proud to announce significant progress in its Syracuse Project, aimed at helium and natural gas extraction. The Company has successfully completed the perforation of two critical wells: Hodgson 1-17 and T-Spiker 1-7. On November 16, 2023, VVC made a pivotal announcement regarding the Syracuse Project's progress in helium and natural gas extraction. The Company proudly disclosed the successful connection of two wells, Durler 2-21 and Levens 2-31 to the Tumbleweed Pipeline, marking a significant stride in the Company's strategic initiative. In conjunction with this achievement, VVC reiterated its commitment to completing six additional wells, including the previously mentioned Hodgson 1-17 and T-Spiker 1-7. This development is a crucial step in VVC's strategy to enhance its helium and natural gas production capabilities. "The perforation of these wells positions VVC to tap into the high-potential Syracuse Project more effectively," stated Jim Culver, CEO of VVC Resources. The Syracuse Project represents VVC's commitment to innovative and sustainable resource extraction in helium and natural gas. Appointment of Officers In first Board Meeting after the re-election of directors at the Annual General Meeting of shareholders (the "AGM") held yesterday, the Directors reappointed the following executive officers for VVC and the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the ensuing year: Jim Culver, President and CEO Terrence Martell, Chairman of the Board Kevin Barnes, Chief Financial Officer Michel Lafrance, Secretary-Treasurer Bill Kerrigan, President of Plateau Helium Corporation. In addition, the directors also appointed directors to the Company's various standing committees and a Chairman for each Committee for the ensuing year. Option Grant At the same Board Meeting, the Directors also granted incentive stock options under its stock option plan, to officers, directors and consultants of the Company, to purchase up to an aggregate of 14,650,000 common shares, representing 2.96%% of the outstanding shares of the Company. The stock options are exercisable at a price of CA$0.08 per share expiring November 20, 2033. The exercise price was fixed above the minimum allowable price by the TSX Venture Exchange policies. The options, granted in accordance with the provisions of the Company's stock option plan, are subject to the TSX Venture Exchange policies and the applicable securities laws. Of the Options granted, 45.4% were to directors, 30.7% to Officers and 23.9% to Employees/Consultants of the Company. About VVC Resources VVC engages in the exploration, development, and management of natural resources - specializing in scarce and increasingly valuable materials needed to meet the growing, high-tech demands of industries such as manufacturing, technology, medicine, space travel, and the expanding green economy. Our portfolio includes a diverse set of multi-asset, high-growth projects, comprising: Helium & industrial gas production in western U.S.; Copper & associated metals operations in northern Mexico; and Strategic investments in carbon sequestration and other green energy technologies. VVC is a Canada-based, publicly-traded company on the TSXV (TSX-V:VVC). To learn more, visit our website at: www.vvcresources.com . On behalf of the Board of Directors Michel J. Lafrance, Secretary-Treasurer For further information, please contact: Patrick Fernet - (514) 631-2727 or Mike Culver - (202) 531-6559 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] 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. 21 november 2023 at 16:00 News published onand distributed by: PIH Health Physicians Honored for High-Quality, Affordable, Patient-Centered Care Integrated Healthcare Association's Excellence in Healthcare Award Recognizes Provider Organizations for Achieving Top Marks Simultaneously on Quality, Patient Experience, and Cost WHITTIER, Calif., Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- PIH Health Physicians was one of 19 provider organizations statewide to receive the Excellence in Healthcare Award from the Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA) for their performance on clinical quality, patient experience, and cost measures in Measurement Year 2022. This is the seventh year PIH Health Physicians has received this award. "California's healthcare providers have shown unwavering commitment to serving our communities, providing high-caliber healthcare services, and enhancing systems to improve patient care," says Anna Lee Amarnath, MD, MPH, general manager of IHA's AMP program. "IHA is committed to partnering with industry leaders to support healthcare providers and their focus on the quality improvements that have the biggest impact on health outcomes." Part of IHA's statewide Align. Measure. Perform. (AMP) Program, the Excellence in Healthcare Award recognizes provider organizations that perform in the top 50% in all three major AMP areas: clinical quality, patient experience, and total cost of care. Of the nearly 200 provider organizations statewide participating in the AMP Program, only 19 attained Excellence in Healthcare Award performance standards for their care of patients with Commercial HMO coverage. "We are honored to once again be recognized for improving healthcare quality and our efforts to ensure patients have a positive experience while working to keep care affordable," said Roberto Madrid MD, vice president Medical Operations, PIH Health Physicians. "Additionally, PIH Health Physicians was also recognized with the Top 10 Percent Award for Patient Experience for ranking above the 90th percentile in the Patient Experience domain in the AMP Program. "These awards reflect the collective effort of all our hardworking physicians, advance practice professionals, nurses, staff and leadership team and their unwavering commitment to putting our patients first," continues Dr. Madrid. About PIH Health PIH Health is a nonprofit, regional healthcare network that serves approximately 3 million residents in the Los Angeles County, Orange County and San Gabriel Valley region. The fully integrated network is comprised of PIH Health Downey Hospital, PIH Health Good Samaritan Hospital, PIH Health Whittier Hospital, 37 outpatient medical office buildings, a multispecialty medical (physician) group, home healthcare services and hospice care, as well as heart, cancer, digestive health, orthopedics, women's health, urgent care and emergency services. The organization is nationally recognized for excellence in patient care and patient experience, and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) has identified PIH Health as one of the nation's top hospital systems for best practices, cutting-edge advancements, quality of care and healthcare technology. For more information, visit PIHHealth.org or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. About IHA's AMP programs IHA's Align. Measure. Perform. (AMP) programs use a fair and transparent approach to measurement and benchmarking to create a reliable assessment of performance for medical groups, and IPAs across health plans. The AMP programs are recognized nationally for partnering with organizations across California and the nation to drive meaningful changes that reduce costs and improve healthcare quality and outcomes. Paired with the insights from IHA's California Regional Health Care Cost & Quality Atlas, the AMP programs help partners reduce the reporting burden for payers and providers by using a standard measure set to deliver objective data and analysis that support performance improvement. For more information, visit www.iha.org SOURCE PIH Health 21 november 2023 at 16:07 News published onand distributed by: Rado and Untitled Art in Miami Beach: A natural partnership LENGNAU, Switzerland, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Rado has a global reputation as the Master of Materials and is equally celebrated for its remarkable design heritage. It makes perfect sense that the Swiss watch brand has partnered with leading independent art fair Untitled Art, for its 12th edition in Miami Beach. This year, Rado, as a proud Official Partner of Untitled Art, will launch striking new interpretations of its game-changing Anatom watch. The Anatom, first introduced 40 years ago, takes its name from the perfectly anatomical fit of the watch on the wrist and from the rounded sapphire crystal. Its timeless and unique design codes resonate as powerfully today as they did in 1983, when they helped define the spirit of an era. In the decades since it took the watch world by storm, the Anatom has virtually become a Rado trademark and many of the brand's most popular models have been inspired by its style and shape. On Friday December 7th, visitors to Rado's booth (A31) at Untitled Art during Miami Art Week will have a chance to experience four new Anatom models?Characterised by Rado's design DNA, these new iterations also highlight the brand's signature material, high-tech ceramic. As CEO Adrian Bosshard says, "The new Anatom references stand today ? as they did in 1983 ? for timeless unique design and incomparable wearing pleasure." Rado invites everyone attending Untitled Art, Miami Beach 2023 to stop by and Feel the Difference. Rado Rado is a globally recognised Swiss watch brand celebrated for its pioneering use of high-tech ceramic materials and distinctive design. With a rich heritage of innovation, Rado continues to push the boundaries of traditional watchmaking, creating timepieces that are as durable as they are stylish. UNTITLED ART Untitled Art is the leading independent art fair taking place annually on the sands of Miami Beach. Guided by a mission to support the wider art ecosystem, Untitled Art offers an inclusive platform for discovering contemporary art and prioritizes collaboration in each aspect of the fair. SOURCE The Swatch Group (U.S.) Inc. - Rado Division 21 november 2023 at 16:22 News published onand distributed by: Air Lease Corporation Announces Delivery of First of 25 New Boeing 737-8 Aircraft to Malaysia Airlines Berhad Air Lease Corporation (NYSE: AL) announced today the first of 25 new Boeing 737-8 aircraft delivered to Malaysia Airlines Berhad from ALC's order book with Boeing. Featuring CFM LEAP 1B-27 engines, this new Boeing aircraft is the first 737-8 addition to Malaysia Airlines' fleet. "We are thrilled to announce ALC's first of 25 new Boeing 737-8 aircraft delivered to Malaysia Airlines," said Steven Udvar-Hazy, Executive Chairman of Air Lease Corporation. "Our significant deal for 25 new Boeing 737-8 aircraft with MAB is a milestone transaction that demonstrates ALC's commitment to the national carrier's long-term fleet modernization and sustainability program. We are honored to be the first to introduce the 737-8 to the airline." This Boeing 737 aircraft joins six Airbus A350-900 aircraft currently on long-term lease to the airline from ALC. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including expected delivery dates. Such statements are based on current expectations and projections about our future results, prospects and opportunities and are not guarantees of future performance. Such statements will not be updated unless required by law. Actual results and performance may differ materially from those expressed or forecasted in forward-looking statements due to a number of factors, including those discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. About Air Lease Corporation (NYSE: AL) Air Lease Corporation is a leading global aircraft leasing company based in Los Angeles, California that has airline customers throughout the world. ALC and its team of dedicated and experienced professionals are principally engaged in purchasing new commercial aircraft and leasing them to its airline customers worldwide through customized aircraft leasing and financing solutions. The company routinely posts information that may be important to investors in the "Investors" section of its website at www.airleasecorp.com. Investors and potential investors are encouraged to consult Air Lease Corporation's website regularly for important information. The information contained on, or that may be accessed through, ALC's website is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this press release. About Malaysia Airlines Malaysia Airlines is the national carrier of Malaysia, offering the best way to fly to, from and around Malaysia. Malaysia Airlines carries up to 40,000 guests daily on memorable journeys inspired by Malaysia's diverse richness. Malaysia Airlines embodies the incredible diversity of Malaysia, capturing its rich traditions, cultures and cuisines via its inimitable Malaysian Hospitality across all customer touch points. Since September 2015, the airline has been owned and operated by Malaysia Airlines Berhad. It is part of the Malaysia Aviation Group (MAG), a global aviation organisation that comprises of different aviation business portfolios aimed at serving Malaysian air travel needs. Via our alliance with oneworld, Malaysia Airlines offers superior connectivity with seamless journeys to 1,000 destinations across 150 plus countries, and access to over 650 airport lounges worldwide. For more information, please visit http://malaysiaairlines.com. 21 november 2023 at 16:35 News published onand distributed by: Abaxx Closes CAD$30.7 Million Financing and Terminates ATM Program This news release constitutes a "designated news release" for the purposes of the Company's prospectus supplement dated April 26, 2023 to its short form base shelf prospectus dated November 4, 2021 /NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/ TORONTO, Nov. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Abaxx Technologies Inc. (NEO:ABXX)(OTCQX:ABXXF) ("Abaxx" or the "Company"), a financial software and market infrastructure company, majority shareholder of Abaxx Singapore Pte. Ltd., and producer of the SmarterMarketstm Podcast, is pleased to announce that it has closed its non-brokered private placement previously announced on October 23, 2023 (the "Financing"). The Financing consisted of the issuance of 5,338,866 common shares (the "Shares") of the Company at a price of CAD $5.75 per common share for aggregate gross proceeds of CAD $30,698,480. The proceeds of the Financing are expected to enable Abaxx to complete its final applications for "recognized market operator" and "approved clearing house" licenses for Abaxx Exchange Pte. Ltd. ("Abaxx Exchange") and Abaxx Clearing Pte. Ltd. ("Abaxx Clearing"), respectively, with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and provide working capital and funds for general corporate purposes through the launch of its exchange. No finder's fees or commissions were paid in connection with the Financing. "Abaxx welcomes this new funding from some of the world's largest institutional investors and top commodity infrastructure portfolio managers," said Josh Crumb, CEO of Abaxx. "Upon closing of this placement, the Company now has the backing and the capital certainty to proceed to the final licensing of our Exchange and Clearinghouse in Singapore. On behalf of the Abaxx board of directors, I would like to welcome our new institutional shareholders from Canoe Financial, K2 Asset Management and the multiple additional leading global institutional investors who participated in the placement." A total of 3,665,218 Shares issued in connection with the Financing are subject to a statutory hold period of four months from the date of issuance in accordance with applicable securities legislation. The Financing is subject to final acceptance of Cboe Canada. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities issuable under the Financing have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold to or for the account or benefit of persons in the "United States" or "U.S. persons" (as such terms are defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. Termination of ATM Program The Company also wishes to announce that it has terminated its "at-the-market" equity offering program relating to sales of common shares ("ATM Program") with BMO Capital Markets, as sales agent. The ATM Program was originally announced on April 26, 2023. Upon termination, the Company is expected to have no further obligations related to the ATM Program. About Abaxx Technologies Abaxx is a development-stage financial software and market infrastructure company creating proprietary technological infrastructure for both global commodity exchanges and digital marketplaces. The Company's formative technology increases transaction velocity, data security, and facilitates improved risk management in the majority-owned Abaxx Commodity Exchange (Abaxx Singapore Pte. Ltd.) - a commodity futures exchange seeking final regulatory approvals as a "recognized market operator" and "approved clearing house" with the Monetary Authority of Singapore ("MAS"). Abaxx is a founding shareholder in Base Carbon Inc. and the creator and producer of the SmarterMarketstm podcast. For more information please visit abaxx.tech, abaxx.exchange and smartermarkets.media. For more information about this press release, please contact: Steve Fray, CFO Tel: 416-786-4381 Media and investor inquiries: Abaxx Technologies Inc. Investor Relations Team Tel: +1 246 271 0082 E-mail: [email protected] Forward-Looking Statements This News Release includes certain "forward-looking statements" which do not consist of historical facts. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements that describe Abaxx or the Company's future plans, objectives, or goals, including words to the effect that Abaxx expects a stated condition or result to occur. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as "seeking", "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Although these statements are based on information currently available to Abaxx, Abaxx does not provide any assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Risks, uncertainties, and other factors involved with forward-looking information could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release includes but is not limited to, Abaxx's objectives, goals or future plans, the planned use of proceeds from the Financing, regulatory approval for the Financing, other risks which may preclude the use of proceeds from the Financing, other risks which may preclude Abaxx from achieving corporate objectives or otherwise advance the progress of Abaxx; effects of the termination of the ATM Program, timing of the commencement of operations and regulatory approvals, financial predictions, and estimates of market conditions. Such factors include, among others: risks relating to the global economic climate; dilution; the Company's limited operating history; future capital needs and uncertainty of additional financing; the competitive nature of the industry; currency exchange risks, including risks relating to currency conversion of Financing proceeds; the need for Abaxx to manage its planned growth and expansion; the effects of product development and need for continued technological change; protection of proprietary rights; the effect of government regulation and compliance on Abaxx and the industry; the ability to list the Company's securities on stock exchanges in a timely fashion or at all; the ability to obtain regulatory approvals for the Financing in a timely fashion or at all; network security risks; the ability of Abaxx to maintain properly working systems; reliance on key personnel; global economic and financial market deterioration impeding access to capital or increasing the cost of capital; and volatile securities markets impacting security pricing unrelated to operating performance. In addition, particular factors which could impact future results of the business of Abaxx include but are not limited to: operations in foreign jurisdictions, protection of intellectual property rights, contractual risk, third-party risk; clearinghouse risk, malicious actor risks, third-party software license risk, system failure risk, risk of technological change; dependence of technical infrastructure; and changes in the price of commodities, capital market conditions, restriction on labor and international travel and supply chains. Abaxx has also assumed that no significant events occur outside of Abaxx's normal course of business. Abaxx cautions that the foregoing list of material factors is not exhaustive. In addition, although Abaxx has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. When relying on Abaxx's forward-looking statements and information to make decisions, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. Abaxx has assumed that the material factors referred to in the previous paragraph will not cause such forward-looking statements and information to differ materially from actual results or events. However, the list of these factors is not exhaustive and is subject to change and there can be no assurance that such assumptions will reflect the actual outcome of such items or factors. The forward-looking information contained in this press release represents the expectations of Abaxx as of the date of this press release and, accordingly, is subject to change after such date. Readers should not place undue importance on forward-looking information and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. Abaxx does not undertake to update this information at any particular time except as required in accordance with applicable laws. Cboe Canada does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. 21 november 2023 at 17:30 News published onand distributed by: Mercy Co-workers Volunteer Nearly $500,000 of Service in 2023 ST. LOUIS, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- At the conclusion of its second year, Mercy's Volunteer Time Off (VTO) program continues to positively impact and support local communities. Over 2,171 co-workers donated a total of 12,790 work hours across a four-state area while participating in this program. By the end of 2023, Mercy estimates 2,300 co-workers will have served more than 13,500 hours. "We are so grateful to give back by encouraging our Mercy co-workers to serve together through volunteer work." Mercy's VTO program began in January 2022 and allows co-workers time to volunteer during work hours at local nonprofits or community events and still get paid their normal salary. "It's wonderful to see how our co-workers value their VTO hours," said Ayanna Pierce, Mercy vice president of benefits and talent relations. "Mercy is full of diverse individuals who are dedicated to their work and community, which is the true spirit of Mercy. We know it can be challenging to find time to do traditional volunteer service and we're excited to support our co-workers by providing them this additional benefit." One nursing team in Northwest Arkansas recently spent several of their VTO hours volunteering at Cobblestone Farms, a local nonprofit with a goal to alleviate hunger through sustainable farming. The Mercy volunteers spent several hours cleaning out greenhouses to prepare them for next season's planting and assisting with other tasks. Katelyn Beckmann, manager of nursing services for the cardiac unit at Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas, helped plan and participate in the service project. "We try to plan a team-building experience every few months, and we love using VTO as a way to get together and do something different than our typical work," said Beckmann. "For this project specifically, our team really wanted to get outside in the beautiful weather and do something meaningful. Farming is so different from nursing, and it was great to bond as a group over new and interesting work." Eight hours are granted to co-workers at the start of each calendar year. The hours can be spent consecutively or in separate volunteer activities preapproved by a co-worker's leader. "This specific project felt like a cycle that keeps giving to everyone involved," Beckmann said. "We helped clean up the greenhouses, and in return, our service will allow the farm to continue serving those who are most at need in our community. Ultimately, it makes Northwest Arkansas a better place for all of us." Co-workers can provide a wide range of meaningful service through the VTO program. Other opportunities include serving meals at a homeless shelter, cleaning up a section of a road or highway, walking dogs at a local animal shelter and more. In Oklahoma, CJ Barnhill, manager of nursing services for the emergency department at Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City, and his team helped organize and throw birthday parties for kids experiencing homelessness. "We see a lot of people with housing insecurity come in through the emergency department, so my team and I are passionate about helping this population," said Barnhill. "When someone is experiencing homelessness, often the last thing on their mind is celebrating their birthday. There's something fulfilling about getting to make this day special again, and it's great that Mercy has a program that empowers co-workers to get involved." The VTO program allows co-workers to continue the spirit of giving demonstrated by Mercy's Foundress Catherine McAuley, who established the Sisters of Mercy in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland. Her framework for charitable work guides Mercy's mission and values today. With this program, co-workers can go into their community to help others and follow in Catherine's footsteps. "The communities where we work and live support us in our mission to provide compassionate care to all who come through our doors," said Pierce. "We are so grateful to give back by encouraging our co-workers to serve together through volunteer work." About Mercy ? Mercy, one of the 20 largest U.S. health systems and named the top large system in the U.S. for excellent patient experience by NRC Health, serves millions annually with nationally recognized quality care and one of the nation's largest Accountable Care Organizations. Mercy is a highly integrated, multi-state health care system including more than 40 acute care, managed and specialty (heart, children's, orthopedic and rehab) hospitals, convenient and urgent care locations, imaging centers and pharmacies. Mercy has 900 physician practices and outpatient facilities, more than 4,000 physicians and advanced practitioners, and more than 45,000 co-workers serving patients and families across Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Mercy also has clinics, outpatient services and outreach ministries in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. SOURCE Mercy 22 november 2023 at 08:00 News published onand distributed by: FedEx Freight and Christmas SPIRIT Foundation Celebrate Landmark Milestone: Delivers 300,000th Tree to Military Families This Season This year, FedEx Freight will deliver the 300,000th tree for the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation's annual Trees for Troops program. The milestone tree is set to arrive at Fort Liberty on Dec. 1, 2023, alongside nearly 16,000 trees slated for families at over 90 military bases across the United States this December. "Every year, the FedEx Freight team puts in tireless effort to support Trees for Troops and the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation. This milestone 300,000th tree delivery is a direct reflection of our dedication to both causes," said Lance Moll, President and CEO, FedEx Freight. "Through our industry-leading transportation network, we are honored to give back to local communities and military families whose values have always been closely tied to the core mission of our company." Since 2005, FedEx Freight has supported the Trees for Troops program, an initiative that delivers farm-grown Christmas trees to domestic and international U.S. military bases. This long-standing collaboration has become a cherished tradition for FedEx Freight, with drivers logging over 600,000 miles for tree deliveries over the years. "This program started on a crazy idea and started small. We delivered 4,300 trees to only five bases that first year," said Wendy Richardson, Chair of the Christmas Spirit Foundation Board of Trustees. "It's hard to believe we're now going to exceed 300,000 total trees since we began working with FedEx 19 years ago. The commitment and dedication of all involved is truly inspiring. We love providing Christmas spirit to the men and women and their families in our military, one tree at a time." Trees for Troops kicks off Nov. 27, as hundreds of donors and volunteers come together to help make this effort a success. There are two ways the public can support Trees for Troops: Donate a tree for delivery to a base at one of the official Trees for Troops locations. Some locations offer online tree purchase options for shopper convenience. Donated trees must be purchased by Dec. 3, to ensure pick-up and delivery by FedEx Freight. Visit the Trees for Troops website to donate online, and follow Trees for Troops on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. A full list of participating locations can be found at treesfortroops.org. FedEx Freight participates with the Trees for Troops program as part of FedEx Cares, the company's global community engagement program. For more information on how FedEx team members around the globe "Drive forward. Give back." by volunteering and doing countless acts of caring throughout the year, check out fedexcares.com. About FedEx Freight FedEx Freight, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX), is a leading provider of priority, premium, and economy less-than-truckload (LTL) freight services, simplifying large and bulky shipping in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Headquartered in Memphis, Tenn., FedEx Freight is at the forefront of innovation, offering customers total convenience and efficiency. With expanded service offerings like FedEx Freight Direct, shipments can be safely delivered to and through the door for residences and businesses. Team members across the network are dedicated to delivering the ultimate customer experience through exceptional service, reliability, and on-time performance, as well as giving back to the communities where they live and work. For more information, visit fedex.com/about. About FedEx Corp. FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) provides customers and businesses worldwide with a broad portfolio of transportation, e-commerce and business services. With annual revenue of nearly $90 billion, the company offers integrated business solutions through operating companies competing collectively, operating collaboratively and innovating digitally as one FedEx. Consistently ranked among the world's most admired and trusted employers, FedEx inspires its more than 500,000 employees to remain focused on safety, the highest ethical and professional standards and the needs of their customers and communities. FedEx is committed to connecting people and possibilities around the world responsibly and resourcefully, with a goal to achieve carbon-neutral operations by 2040. To learn more, please visit fedex.com/about. About the Christmas SPIRIT Foundation and Trees for Troops The Christmas SPIRIT Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization that works to recognize and support the true spirit of Christmas through programs like Trees for Troops. The foundation was established in 2005 and is among fewer than five percent of U.S. charities to be awarded the "Best in America" seal of excellence by Independent Charities of America. To learn more visit www.christmasspiritfoundation.org. 22 november 2023 at 11:15 News published onand distributed by: A solar farm over a field of soybeans, at harvest time, in Amance (Meurthe-et-Moselle), October 12, 2022. PATRICK HERTZOG / AFP France is refusing to pay up. Le Monde has learned the French government has no intention of paying out hundreds of millions of euros for failing to meet its European renewable energy target in 2020. French Minister for Energy Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher made this clear to the European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson, in a letter dated October 20. In 2009, as part of a European directive, France pledged to achieve a share of 23% renewables (wind, solar, hydro) in its gross final energy consumption by 2020 up from 10.3% in 2005. Having only achieved 19.1%, they fell short of this binding target. France did have the option of achieving it artificially, as did Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Malta, by buying up "statistical volumes" of renewables from states that had exceeded their own target. A year ago, Pannier-Runacher publicly estimated that the state would have to pay around 500 million for this delay, and had begun negotiations with Sweden and Italy. Read more Article reserve a nos abonnes French energy minister: Necessary transition 'is on a scale comparable to the first industrial revolution' Since then, the minister has changed tack. "We have played our part in the political effort to land ambitious texts on renewables, and we are one of the countries doing the most to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," she told Le Monde. "We're not going to let this happen for legal reasons." The government is willing to compromise In its letter to Simson, the Ministry of Energy Transition justifies its decision by highlighting the progress made by France. It points out that the country significantly increased the share of renewables in its energy mix (+46.1%) between 2012 and 2022, 10 points higher than the European average, and that France has one of the most decarbonized electricity productions in Europe, thanks to its large nuclear capability. "The result is a paradoxical situation in which France is being unfairly singled out," wrote Pannier-Runacher. Read more Article reserve a nos abonnes More carrots than sticks: Macron outlines new environmental policy With France still having not achieved its consumption target of 23% renewables (20.7% in 2022), the ministry tells us that it has a "plan of action" to do so. On Wednesday, November 22, the government was due to publish the broad outlines of its new energy-climate strategy, which will call for a sharp drop in fossil fuel consumption and significant development of renewables. The government says it is willing to compromise and to put its hand in its pocket, but only for renewable energy development projects. In its view, this would ensure compliance with European law. "Any outlay agreed by France on the ex post facto procurement of renewable energy production volumes from other Member States would have no effect on the volume of renewables consumed on EU territory," it said. On Tuesday, the European Commission had not replied to the letter. Contacted by Le Monde, it explained that it was "studying the elements" of the letter and "preparing a response." You have 15% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only. LIMERICKS TUS Gaelic Grounds is set to host a throwback music festival in summer 2024. The Big Day Out, 90s vs 00s, is coming to the outdoor Limerick city venue next August 31, 2024. Tickets are on sale at 9am this Friday, November 24. A star-studded lineup has been announced, with headline acts including Five and D:Ream, as well as Cascada and Swedish DJ, Basshunter. The "throwback party of the summer" will be hosted by Mark McCabe, who will be performing his iconic song Maniac 2000 and playing some of the largest floor fillers of the 90s and 00s! From the 90s, FIVE will be live on stage performing hits like Keep on Movin and Slam Dunk (the Funk), while D:REAM Live will be keeping the party going with their hits Things can only get better and UR The Best Thing. After nearly 20 years of filling dance floors across the world with hits like Everytime We Touch and Evacuate the Dancefloor, dance sensations of the 00s Cascada will be performing some of the worlds best party anthems, while Swedish DJ and producer Basshunter will be pumping out his hits like Now Youre Gone and All I Ever Wanted. RYAN TUBRIDY has revealed his new radio show on Live95 is still "a work in progress". "We are very much in planning stage at this point, but all in due course that will be revealed," he said. The former RTE TV and radio presenter made the comments while speaking on the Limerick Today show with Joe Nash about the recent news of his move to Virgin Radio UK. He is set to present a dedicated Irish weekend show from early next year across a number of local radio stations in the Wireless Ireland group - including Live95, Dublins Q102, Corks 96FM and LMFM in the north-east - all of which owned by Virgin Radio UK's parent company, News Corp. His new weekday show on Virgin Radio UK will launch early January 2024 and will be broadcast live from London simultaneously on Dublins Q102, marking Ryan's return to Irish radio. Ryan says he is enthusiastic about his move to UK radio, and added how pleased he is to still have a presence on Irish radio. "The presence here in Ireland was a lovely addendum to the story. I thought it might just be a London and UK story but it turns out that the Irish question is answered also, which is quite pleasant," he said. He also paid tribute to legendary Limerick broadcaster Terry Wogan, describing an occasion in London some years ago where Terry took him to lunch and gave him advice. "He was very warm, very generous. I'm sorry he's not around today to be honest with you, he's somebody I would have loved to have shared this with and and I would have tapped him up for some more advice," Ryan said. Before his move to London, Ryan will turn on the Christmas lights in Clifden in Galway this Friday, just hours before Patrick Kielty presents his first Late Late Toy Show. JAMES Doyle, best known as Protein Bor has hinted across his social media he may appear in this year's Toy Show. The TikTok rose to social media fame over the pandemic mostly for his strong Westmeath accent but also his gym advice and fitness content. It will be Patrick Kielty's first time hosting the annual Christmas-themed programme after he replaced Ryan Tubridy as host of the show in September. The social media star has shared a video sitting in the famous Late Late Show chair and gave a flat white to everyone in the audience. Many of his followers under the video took it that he is set to appear on the Toy Show saying; I hope you're on the toy show, it'll be the best one yet. Speaking to the Westmeath Independent on how the name protein bor came about and his rise to fame James said; The whole trend started with how I was saying Protein Bor. It started with people just taking the mick out of my accent. I don't mind, sure growing up in Ireland, you have to get used to the slagging. It's a given and Im so used to it by now. So when everyone online started slagging me, I just kinda went along with it too and then all of a sudden it took off and Protein Bor was everywhere. This year's Late Late Toy Show is on this Friday, November 24 at 9.35pm on RTE One and RTE Player. The HSE is urging young men and women in Limerick, Clare, and North Tipperary to get the life-saving HPV vaccine, as the Laura Brennan HPV vaccine catch-up campaign draws to a close in the coming weeks. With limited clinics available until December 31, this will be the last chance for young people who haven't had the HPV vaccine before to avail of this crucial vaccine for free via www.HPV.ie. As part of the Laura Brennan HPV (human papillomavirus) Vaccine Catch-Up Programme, the vaccine is available to: men, aged 21 and younger women, aged 24 and younger Limerick clinics November 23 Mary Immaculate College (students only) November 27 Northside Youth Space, Ballynanty December 12 St Brendans Health Centre, Rosbrien December 20 Roxtown Health Centre, Limerick City December 28 Roxtown Health Centre, Limerick City Clare clinics November 22 Ennis Primary Care Centre December 7 Shannon Health Centre December 27 Ennistymon Health Centre The HPV vaccine protects against the types of HPV that cause approximately 90% of cervical cancers; 90-95% of HPV-related anal cancer; and 90% of genital warts. Due to high demand since the scheme was extended to young men in September, the HSE has decided to reopen clinics at Primary Care Centres in the community, and will be opening clinics in community hubs over the coming weeks. To date, we have vaccinated more than 860 people as part of the campaign. Jennifer Purcell, from Limerick City, has been a strong, local advocate for the HPV vaccine since her experience with cervical cancer in 2019. Her message to young women and men is to get protected in order to avoid serious illness later in life. Jennifers cervical cancer story I was diagnosed with cervical cancer when I turned 25. It was during the summer of 2019, I didn't get to celebrate my birthday over drinks or have a party with friends. I spent my birthday in hospital, having surgery to remove cancer from my cervix. At the time, Laura Brennan was running an extensive campaign for the HPV vaccine, as she was dying of cervical cancer at just 26. I was in awe of her relentlessness and resilience, I felt connected to this campaign in a way I cant explain. Perhaps it was that we were similar in age, yet her life was being cut short when it could have been prevented. I started doing some digging and realised the HPV vaccine was rolled out in secondary school the year after I finished, so I had just missed the window. I guess hindsight is a great thing, and until tragedy strikes, we just never expect it could happen to us. But part of me felt a real sense of unease, an unease I couldnt shake. Our bodies have a way of speaking to us; a sixth sense or a gut feeling, that something just isnt right. I got the letter just a few weeks before my 25th birthday to book my cervical screening, can you come in tomorrow said the nurse to my surprise, and it was like a sign. I got a call a few weeks later with the news that I had highly abnormal precancerous cells (high grade dyskaryosis CIN2 and CIN3) which followed with a colposcopy and LLETZ treatment to remove the cells. Dont be worrying, said all my friends and family, who made a point of saying if it was anything more serious, they would call me within 2 weeks with results. Two weeks later, I got that dreaded call. I had stage 1 Cervical Cancer at just 25 years old. I stared blankly at the booklet, reading the words understanding cervical cancer over and over again as the doctor muttered my action plan in the background. I had prepared myself for the worst, but I was lucky enough to have caught it so swiftly that the surgery removed it all. I thank Laura every day for potentially saving my life. I didnt have the chance to get the HPV vaccine for free, which could have prevented me from ever having cervical cancer, but its fantastic to see it being offered completely free until the end of the year to carry on Lauras legacy. The campaign ends in a few weeks timeat the end of Decemberand getting this free vaccine is giving people a unique chance to protect themselves against serious illness later in life. The HPV vaccine is available to people with a cervix up to the age of 25 and has now been extended to males up to their 22nd birthday. The vaccine protects against the types of HPV that cause approximately 90% of cervical cancers, 90-95% of HPV-related anal cancer, and 90% of genital warts. HPV infection can lead to cancer in men, including penile, anal, oral, and throat cancers, as well as genital warts. I hope that we can achieve the goal of eliminating cervical cancer in Ireland, as Laura herself said: Get your facts. Get the vaccine. North Tipperary clinics November 20 Thurles Primary Care Centre December 11 Thurles Primary Care Centre December 29 Nenagh Health Centre Stock Market News BRBY Headlines - Lancaster scientist meets local MP in Parliament to lobby for action on climate emergency 22-11-2023 02:34 Stock News headlines are gathered from financial news sources around the web. Views and opinions on each item are from their respective authors and website. They are not opinions of LiveCharts.co.uk NO MATTER HOW much time we spend unclogging our email inboxes on any given day, more calendar invites, premeeting memos and urgent" tech updates will pile up tomorrow. Given the scale of the problem, it might feel like a personal email butler is necessary. Enter artificial intelligence. Companies like Shortwave, launched by ex-Googlers, or Sanebox, a $3.49-a-month utility, offer third-party extensions that can triage your unread messages. Major email platforms are increasingly developing similar tools. When drafting a note in Gmail, for instance, you can now add context that Googles Bard chatbot pulls from your Google Calendar, Maps searches and Googles other apps. (You can access Bard free at bard.google.com. With a work account, you might have to ask your companys IT administrator to enable Bard.) Tasks that would take humans a good chunk of the workdayskimming hundreds of emails for a specific note, finding meeting times that will work both for colleagues in Los Angeles and Lithuania, marking spam as readare childs play for AI. Here, four ways to use AI to email more deftly. 1. Faster Foraging Sifting through a stuffed inbox for a particular note can be frustrating, especially since results are organized by recency not relevance. AI can search more smartly. With the right query, Googles Bard and Shortwaves chatbot can generate a list of your upcoming travel reservations or call up all the recommendations youve been sent. 2. CliffsNotes Cant read every email that lands in your inbox? AI can summarize them. Use Googles Bard or Shortwaves chatbot, or the Summarize" button on Outlook, to produce a condensed version of any particular message or thread without the corporate jargon and conversational hedges. 3. Ghostwriting AI writing aids can conjure an email with as few as three words of instruction. Those with access to your inbox, like Bard, can ingest the message youre replying to and generate a response with appropriate context. Dislike its first effort? Quickly regenerate a new version. 4. Decluttering By default, Gmail and Outlook sort unnecessary correspondence in their own tabs and folders. To further filter what you dont need, try Sanebox. It works like a virtual Marie Kondo, scanning your email history for what youve interacted with, trashed or ignored. It then auto-organizes what you receive into folders based on how important it thinks they are. Mind Your As and Is Heed these tips to use Chatbots in polite society 1. Check Your Work | Always read over a chatbots output for factual, grammatical and tonal errors, said Fabrizio DellAcqua, who researches AI software at Harvard Business School. Dont fall asleep at the wheel," he said. 2. Honesty Is the Best Policy | Anyone who discovers that youve been secretly using AI to write emails might never trust your work again. Renee Richardson Gosline, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Human-First AI research group, said being upfront about your usage can lessen their unease. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. India, November 22, 2023: Fintellix, a leading provider of regulatory compliance and risk management solutions, is thrilled to announce the appointment of Mr. Ashok Narain as Senior Advisor at Fintellix. With an illustrious career spanning more than 33 years, Mr. Narain brings a wealth of experience from his distinguished role as Chief General Manager at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). He has served as the head of supervision for Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) for four years until the end of 2022. His remarkable contributions include spearheading the implementation of Enterprise-wide Risk Management at the RBI and providing guidance for the development of the ERM architecture for the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Apart from his contributions as a regulator and supervisor, Mr. Narain has also served on the boards of both private and public sector financial institutions. He is also empanelled by the International Monetary Fund as a Financial Sector Specialist. "We are privileged to welcome Mr. Ashok Narain as our Senior Advisor. His deep expertise in regulatory matters and risk management will be instrumental in guiding our strategic decisions and ensuring we continue to deliver innovative solutions to our clients. We are confident that his contributions will enhance our product strategy and enable us to deliver even greater value to our customers," said Mr. Shailendra Mruthyunjayappa, CEO and President at Fintellix. "I am looking forward to a very fruitful association with Fintellix, a global analytics firm and leader in the Regtech, Risktech, and Suptech space, which was ranked among the top 50 in Chartis Risktech100 2024 list and has won the Regtech FE Best Banks award for excellence this year!" Mr. Ashok Narain. Mr. Narain's joining marks a significant milestone for Fintellix, and the entire team looks forward to his valuable insights and guidance as the company continues its commitment to excellence in the regulatory technology space. For more information, please visit: https://fintellix.com/ Disclaimer: This article is a paid publication and does not have journalistic/editorial involvement of Hindustan Times. Hindustan Times does not endorse/subscribe to the content(s) of the article/advertisement and/or view(s) expressed herein. Hindustan Times shall not in any manner, be responsible and/or liable in any manner whatsoever for all that is stated in the article and/or also with regard to the view(s), opinion(s), announcement(s), declaration(s), affirmation(s) etc., stated/featured in the same. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. 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. New Delhi (India), November 22: Mobile applications are considered to be the best evaluation that has brought significant change to global businesses. Whether it could be for a retail store looking for ways to connect with its target audience or an enterprise making sure its team stays connected and well-informed; mobile applications can do it all. The app development team makes sure the business gets enhanced ROI and delivers a top-notch user experience to its global audience base. The feature-rich mobile applications can work as a marketing tool, enhance sales operations, help businesses stay organized, and deliver many more benefits than the traditional ways were missing out. As the mobile applications are going to represent your brand image and business to the world; make sure you get the best app development team to work for you. Various top mobile app development companies are bringing digital transformation for the business integrating their development expertise with the latest trends and technologies like AI, ML, AR, VR, Blockchain, IoT, and more. As it can be a troublesome task for businesses to find and evaluate the expertise of mobile app development companies, the team of TopITCompanies.co has made a list of the top 10 Mobile App development companies in USA for 2024. The team has considered various factors such as service offerings, years of experience, technical skills, team strengths, industries they serve, and many more to compile the list that can work well for almost every industry out there. Top 10 Popular Mobile App Development Companies in USA 2024 1. Hyperlink InfoSystem Founded in the year 2011, Hyperlink InfoSystem is a leading app development company offering custom app development solutions that can suit the industry-specific standards of their client base. Starting its development journey with app development services the company is now a prominent name when it comes to developing custom web solutions, software solutions, IoT solutions, AI/ML integrated solutions, and more. In fact, their team of app developers has delivered 4500+ mobile applications, 2200+ Websites, 120+ AI & IoT Solutions, 25+ Metaverse Solutions, 20+ NFT Marketplace, 80+ blockchain solutions, 140+ Gaming solutions, 120+ Salesforce Solutions and more for their 2700+ Global clients. 2. HData Systems Since its foundation in 2019, HData Systems has been providing business analytics services to its global clients. Their data model equipped with advanced technologies of Big Data, Data Analytics Data Science, and Artificial Intelligence offers precise analytical data that help organizations to empower their business, make better decisions, boost ROI, and accomplish goals. Our company converts structured and unstructured data into precise distinguishable metrics that enable you to analyze the best for your business. 3. iMOBDEV Technologies Founded in the year 2009, iMOBDEV Technologies is a leading development company offering innovative and robust digital solutions. They believe in building coordinating partnerships offering innovative, robust, and high-quality solutions to global businesses that can help them build a better tomorrow for themselves and their users. They have qualified professionals who analyze the development requirements and create the best solution to meet the industry standards. 4. ELEKS ELEKS is a top-notch custom software development company. They work with large clients and small and medium-sized businesses to increase their value through new technology. Their 2,000+ experts in the United States offer a broad spectrum of software services to clients. They provide various services such as custom software development, product design, data science, quality assurance, R&D, smart teams, and support and maintenance services are among them. 5. Globant Globant is a digitally native company that helps organizations reinvent themselves to create a way forward and unleash their potential. Globant is a place where innovation, design, and engineering meet scale. They have more than 25,924 employees and they are present in 21 countries working for companies like Google, Rockwell Automation, Electronic Arts, and Santander, among others. 6. Exadel For over 20 years, Exadel has provided the greatest app development services, as well as corporate and bespoke software solutions to Fortune 500 firms. With 20+ sites and delivery centers around the US and Europe, Exadel addresses the toughest development difficulties using Agile methodology, providing a scalable and capable mix of multi-shore employees at the industry's most affordable cost. 7. CI&T CI&T is an end-to-end digital transformation partner for global businesses. As a digital native, we bring a 27-year track record of accelerating business impact through complete and scalable digital solutions. With a global presence of 6,000+ professionals in strategy, research, data science, design, and engineering, we unlock top-line growth, improve customer experience and drive operational efficiency. 8. BairesDev They are the leading custom software development firm. They design and engineer scalable, high-performance software solutions to meet clients' business challenges. They translate digital transformation into digital acceleration by using their technological skills and cross-industry experience. Their ultimate objective is to add value throughout the digital transformation process. 9. CI&T CI&T is an end-to-end digital transformation partner for global businesses. As a digital native, we bring a 27-year track record of accelerating business impact through complete and scalable digital solutions. With a global presence of 6,000+ professionals in strategy, research, data science, design, and engineering, we unlock top-line growth, improve customer experience and drive operational efficiency. 10. Innowise Group Innowise Group is an international full-cycle software development company bringing wise digital innovations to clients across the globe. Founded in 2007 by a group of passionate IT enthusiasts, Innowise became a multinational business with key delivery centers in Europe, offices worldwide, and more than 1500 top-notch IT professionals leveraging their software engineering expertise to make the businesses of our customers even more successful. Disclaimer: This article is a paid publication and does not have journalistic/editorial involvement of Hindustan Times. Hindustan Times does not endorse/subscribe to the content(s) of the article/advertisement and/or view(s) expressed herein. Hindustan Times shall not in any manner, be responsible and/or liable in any manner whatsoever for all that is stated in the article and/or also with regard to the view(s), opinion(s), announcement(s), declaration(s), affirmation(s) etc., stated/featured in the same. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Founder-CEO of Binance , the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, as he is fondly known by crypto enthusiasts, has stepped down from his role after pleading guilty to breaking US anti-money laundering laws, as per a Reuters report. Also Read: What is Binances connection with terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Explained Zhao agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement deal in a Seattle court on November 21, including a personal payout of $50 million, to resolve the matter, the news agency said quoting prosecutors in the case. They added this is among the largest corporate penalties in the United States' history. Binance will pay out $1.81 billion within a timeline of 15 months, followed by another $2.51 billion forfeiture as part of the deal, prosecutors told Reuters. Also Read: 'I made mistakes.., CEO Changpeng Zhao resigns after pleading guilty to money laundering violations, terror connections However, while this latest development comes as another big blow for the crypto sector after FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud just earlier this month, legal experts told Reuters the deal is "a good outcome" for Zhao personally. It leaves his wealth intact and also allows him to retain his stake in Binance, they noted. So, who is Changpeng Zhao? A Canadian citizen, 44-year-old Zhao was born in China's Jiangsu province. His family moved to Vancouver when Zhao was 12 after his father -- a university professor, was banished to the countryside during Mao's Cultural Revolution, as per a Bloomberg report. Young Zhao was exposed to technology and studied computer science. He has a degree in the field from McGill University. Once in the professional field, he held jobs building trading systems in New York and Tokyo, it said. Also Read | Binance lays off over 1,000 employees, including 36 in India- Report Zhao dipped his toes into crypto in 2013 during a friendly poker game with investor Ron Cao and BTC China CEO Bobby Lee in Shanghai, the Bloomberg report added. During the match both of Zhao's fellow players urged him to put 10 percent of his net worth into Bitcoin, he reportedly did his research and then sold his apartment for Bitcoin. He also worked at crypto companies OKCoin and Blockchain.info before starting his own venture. Zhao founded Bitcoin in 2017 along with Chief Marketing Officer Yi He. Zhao and Yi have children together. The company's name is a portmanteau of binary and finance, the report added. Zhao reportedly has his company's logo tattooed on his arm. Also Read: One year after FTX imploded, heres how crypto is changing Binance swiftly grew into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world and made Zhao the richest person in the sector. Over the years he has also joined in the ranks of the world's wealthiest. As per the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index (BBI), Zhao is ranked 68th richest in the world with a wealth of $23.5 billion. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Silicon Valley tech giant Microsoft recently appointed Aparna Gupta as the Global Delivery Center (GDC) leader. This post is a part of the Industry Solutions Delivery and the broader Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) organization. Following Aparna's appointment to the new role as GDC leader, she will serve as the leader to customer innovation and delivery excellence, cloud growth acceleration with top tier talent, industry depth and partner ecosystem. Aparna had been serving as GM of Customer Success at Microsoft India. Also read: OpenAI, Microsoft hit with new author copyright lawsuit over AI training In a social media post on X (formerly Twitter) on November 21, Aparna disclosed her appointment to the new post at Microsoft. Her post reads, "Thrilled to announce my next chapter at Microsoft." Following her appointment Aparna Gupta said, I am looking forward to working with the teams at GDC to deepen technical expertise across solution areas and build a strong team culture with an aim to deliver excellence to our customers." She added, "There is a strong foundation within the team, and I hope to build further on it to take it to the next level." Aparna joined Microsoft six years ago as the India lead for Commercial Software Engineering (CSE) which is now known as ISE (Industry Solutions Engineering). Also read: Why Microsoft hiring Sam Altman is not the best option for both the firms Corporate vice president of Microsoft Industry Solutions Delivery, Maureen Costello said, With more than 25 years of industry expertise and extensive Microsoft experience, coupled with her ambition and unwavering leadership, I have no doubt that Aparna will lead our GDC team to continued success." President of Microsoft India and South Asia, Puneet Chandok said, Her extensive experience and deep knowledge of Microsoft technologies will help customers plan and deploy future-ready solutions, especially in the age of AI, and maximize the value of their investment in Microsoft. Her leadership will play a vital role in our continued success in the region and globally." Global Delivery Center was established in Hyderabad in 2005. It is the delivery wing of Industry Solutions Delivery. Since its establishment, GDC has set up at two more locations including Bangalore and Noida, along with a worldwide presence. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Sam Altman was in Las Vegas for the biggest party of the weekend, the Formula One race, when he opened the Google Meet link that would set off a whiplash-inducing corporate power struggle about the future of artificial intelligence. In the moments before he clicked on the link in his hotel room, the 38-year-old CEO was living a charmed life. Ever since his company, OpenAI, ushered in the AI age a year ago with the release of ChatGPT, Altman had been jet setting around the world meeting with presidents and prime ministers, shaping the global agenda on AI policy. And he was nearing a fundraising that would value OpenAI at nearly $90 billion, almost triple what it had been earlier in the year. At noon, he logged on to find the companys boardexcept, ominously, his closest ally and co-founder, Greg Brockmanpeering back at him. Ilya Sutskever, the brilliant, eccentric AI researcher whose hiring eight years ago had put OpenAI on the map, informed Altman that he was being fired and that the news would be announced soon. No explanation was given. And then, shortly after the little boxes blinked closed, Altman was locked out of his computer. The crisis at OpenAI is personifying a question that has been boiling inside the AI industry and creating angst among technology giants and world leaders: Who can be trusted to open the Pandoras box that artificial intelligence might represent? One solution that Altman devised was a curious corporate structure that led to his ouster. A nonprofit board governs OpenAIs for-profit business arm with the sole purpose of ensuring the company develops AI for humanitys benefiteven if that means wiping out its investors. It was this board that abruptly fired Altman, even as OpenAIs business hit its apex. The board has been vague in public about its reasons, saying in a blog post that Altman was out because he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board." According to people familiar with the boards thinking, members had grown so untrusting of Altman that they felt it necessary to double check nearly everything he told them. The explanation baffles Altmans defenders, who say they arent aware of specific episodes that might warrant such an outcome. Over the weekend, Altmans old executive team pushed the board to reinstate himtelling directors that their actions could trigger the companys collapse. That would actually be consistent with the mission," replied board member Helen Toner, a director at a Washington policy research organization who joined the board two years ago. This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen insiders at OpenAI and people around the companys hectic weekend. The situation remains fluid, including where Altman will work or how many followers he would take if he left, and discussions are continuing between the camps. The near-$90 billion-valuation investment plan is on hold. Altman and Elon Musk had set out to create OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit aimed at achieving artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a system with reasoning capabilities that match or exceed a humans. They declared they wanted to do this in a way that would benefit humanity, not just to make profit for corporations. But it turned out that the most promising technological path they found required vast stores of computational power, and thus great piles of money, to work. Despite the weird," in his own parlance, nonprofit structure, Altman managed to convince much of the biggest money in the Valley to sign on, including Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund. Eventually, he reeled in Microsoft, which invested $13 billion for 49% of the for-profit. OpenAIs leaders had a long history of bitter feuds. There was the rupture between Altman and Musk, who left in 2018. Then there was another large rift a couple of years later, when a group of key researchers left to found the rival company Anthropic after clashes over safety. This time around, Altmans grip on the board slipped after some of the more business-minded board members left earlier this year. The maker of the most advanced AI technology that was rapidly weaving itself into every nook and cranny of the American economy came to be controlled by four people who werent focused on whether the business was economically successful. In addition to Sutskever, OpenAIs board consists of Adam DAngelo, a former Facebook executive and a co-founder of the question-and-answer website Quora; Tasha McCauley, an adjunct senior management scientist at the Rand Corp., a policy nonprofit, and Toner, a director at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a research organization tied to Georgetown University. The center receives funds from Open Philanthropy, a group identified with effective altruism, a philanthropic movement whose adherents spend money trying to solve potentially catastrophic problems affecting the world. Friday, at noon, those four people fired Altman. At 12:19 p.m., with Sutskever as their spokesman, they removed Brockman from the board. Brockman resigned from his employee role in protest. Inside OpenAIs plant- and fountain-filled offices in San Francisco, the executive leadership team was in shock. The board had named Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati interim CEO and handed the executive team a packet of crisis-communications talking points that offered no more insight into what was going on than the boards vague blog post, according to people familiar with the matter. Murati and Sutskever led an all-hands meeting at 2 p.m. Employees peppered them with dozens of questions, many of which were some version of: what did Sam do? One employee asked if they would ever find out, to which Sutskever replied, No." After that meeting, the executive team regrouped in a conference room. A member of the executive team told Sutskever that the lack of detail was unacceptable and demanded the rest of the board join a video call to explain, according to people familiar with the matter. On the call, the leadership team pressed the board over the course of about 40 minutes for specific examples of Altmans lack of candor, the people said. The board refused, citing legal reasons, the people said. Some executives said they were getting questions from regulators and law-enforcement entities such as the U.S. attorneys office in Manhattan over the charge of Altmans alleged lack of candor, the people said. The truth was going to come out one way or another, they told the board. People familiar with the boards thinking said there wasnt one incident that led to their decision to eject Altman, but a consistent, slow erosion of trust over time that made them increasingly uneasy. Also complicating matters were Altmans mounting list of outside AI-related ventures, which raised questions for the board about how OpenAIs technology or intellectual property could be used. The board agreed to discuss the matter with their counsel. After a few hours, they returned, still unwilling to provide specifics. They said that Altman wasnt candid, and often got his way. The board said that Altman had been so deft they couldnt even give a specific example, according to the people familiar with the executives. The executives requested written examples of the boards allegations. Meanwhile, Altman was on the phone with Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, saying he wanted to keep working on the technology. They gamed out ways to undo the days events, but also began to hash out a backup plan for Altman to bring a bunch of his top researchers and start a new division at the tech giant, according to people familiar with their conversation. Altman also told friends that he was thinking of starting a new company with Brockman and intended to hire away dozens of OpenAI employees. Altman blamed himself for not better managing the board, which he felt was taken over by people overly concerned with safety and influenced by effective altruism. The specter of effective altruism had loomed over the politics of the board and company in recent months, particularly after the movements most famous adherent, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was found guilty of fraud in a highly public trial. Some of those fears centered on Toner, who previously worked at Open Philanthropy. In October, she published an academic paper touting the safety practices of OpenAIs competitor, Anthropic, which didnt release its own AI tool until ChatGPTs emergence. By delaying the release of Claude until another company put out a similarly capable product, Anthropic was showing its willingness to avoid exactly the kind of frantic corner-cutting that the release of ChatGPT appeared to spur," she and her co-authors wrote in the paper. Altman confronted her, saying she had harmed the company, according to people familiar with the matter. Toner told the board that she wished she had phrased things better in her writing, explaining that she was writing for an academic audience and didnt expect a wider public one. Some OpenAI executives told her that everything relating to their company makes its way into the press. OpenAI leadership and employees were growing increasingly concerned about being painted in the press as a bunch of effective altruists," as one of them put it. Two days before Altmans ouster, they were discussing these concerns on a Slack channel, which included Sutskever. One senior executive wrote that the company needed to uplevel" its independence"meaning create more distance between itself and the EA movement. OpenAI had lost three board members over the past year, most notably Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and OpenAI investor who had sold his company to Microsoft and been a key backer of the plan to create a for-profit subsidiary. Other departures were Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, and Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman. The departures left the board tipped toward academics and outsiders less loyal to Altman and his vision. Friday, after being fired, Altman immediately flew back to San Francisco. On Saturday, his Russian Hill home became a war room filled with OpenAI employees, including Murati, then the interim CEO, and other members of the executive team, plotting his return to the company. They began to use X in a coordinated fashion for their campaign. That evening, Altman tweeted i love openai employees so much," and dozens of OpenAI employees quote-tweeted it with heart emojis. On Sunday morning, Murati sent a note to staff saying that Altman would be returning to the office. Altman arrived, mugging on X with his guest pass, writing first and the last time I ever wear one of these." He, Brockman, Murati, strategy chief Jason Kwon, Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap and the rest of the leadership team spent the day negotiating with the board, arguing for Altmans reinstatement and tossing out suggestions for new board members. They believed they were getting somewhere. One suggestion, Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce, was approved by both sides. But the sticking point remained Altmans desire to reclaim his CEO role, people familiar with the matter said. Altman also pushed to fire the current board. The negotiations stretched late into the night, as multiple rounds of takeout were delivered to the Mission District offices and reporters from multiple news outlets staked out the scene like a papal conclave. Inside, employees gathered, some openly sobbing. When the white smoke came, it wasnt Altman. Emmett Shear, the co-founder of video-streaming service Twitch and a vocal proponent of a slower approach to developing AI, had been named CEO by the board. Microsoft was given no heads-up about the decision, but when it dropped Nadella had a plan at the ready: Altman and Brockman would go to Microsoft to start a new AI unit, one person said. The board then put out a memo to the OpenAI team saying it stood by its decision and thought Altmans behavior and lack of transparency" had undermined the boards ability to effectively supervise the company in the manner it was mandated to do." In an attempt to bat down the theories coursing through social media, it added that This decision is not about product safety or security, the pace of development or OpenAIs finances." Bottom line," the board said, This was a governance issue that lies at the heart of how the board of this uniquely structured organization executes its responsibilities and advances its mission." A Slack message went out to employees announcing an all-hands meeting with Shear, but several employees responded with middle finger emojis, according to a person familiar with the matter. Less than a dozen people showed up. The roughly 200 people who had spent their Sunday waiting for a resolution flooded out of the building. In the lobby, Brockmans wife, Anna Brockman, who had been married in 2019 at OpenAIs offices in a civil ceremony officiated by Sutskever, cried and pleaded with Sutskever to reconsider. Shortly afterward, he did. Overnight Sunday night, OpenAI employees penned a blistering open letter threatening to quit and follow Altman and Brockman to Microsoft unless the board resigned and reinstated them, and installed new independent board members like Taylor and Hurd. By the end of the day, more than 700 of the 770 employees had signed itincluding Sutskever. I deeply regret my participation in the boards actions," he wrote on X. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything weve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company." Altman retweeted it with three hearts. On Monday evening, Nadella went on CNBC and said OpenAI needed a new governance structure, but he left the door open to the possibility that Altman and his team would remain at OpenAI. Microsoft has set up a floor of the LinkedIn office in San Francisco with laptops and clusters of GPU chips, which provide the computational power behind AI, to house the OpenAI team if the bid to restore Altman to the company he co-founded fails. But as negotiations drag on between the board and OpenAI leadership, there are no OpenAI employees there yet. A person familiar with Nadellas thinking said Microsofts first preference is for Altman to return as OpenAI CEO. Corinne Ramey and Tom Dotan contributed to this article. Write to Keach Hagey at Keach.Hagey@wsj.com, Deepa Seetharaman at deepa.seetharaman@wsj.com and Berber Jin at berber.jin@wsj.com The tumultuous story of Sam Altmans ouster from OpenAI and his triumphant return in five days could make it to business school curricula, offering valuable lessons on leadership, loyalty and valuations. The OpenAI whirlwind started on Friday with the abrupt dismissal of co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Altman, who enjoys a cult-like status in the technology world. President Greg Brockman quit as well, prompting hundreds of employees to threaten resignation, and triggering an outcry to bring Altman back. After briefly joining Microsoft, and much public back-and-forth over social media, Altman was back at OpenAI on Wednesday. The conclusion of this boardroom battle will be interesting. One can teach how two stakeholdersOpenAI and Microsofthad their differences played out; how corporates and leaders create an image and position themselves on social media; and how boardroom opinions are managed and perceptions created, which show employee loyalty," said Nishant Uppal, a professor of organizational behaviour and human resource management at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow. The dismissal was led by OpenAIs chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who later went on to express his regret on X, formerly Twitter. Meanwhile, the company board, which went through two interim CEOs during the chaos, reached out to Altman. The OpenAI case offers rich insights for business schools, emphasizing the critical aspect of balancing innovation with stability in boardroom dynamics. It underscores the importance of teaching future business leaders the art of navigating such delicate equilibrium," said Himanshu Rai, director, IIM-Indore. Rai said B-Schools should prioritize curricula that delve into adaptable strategies, focusing on transparent communication and the significance of aligning leadership goalsa reflection of the negotiations witnessed in OpenAIs context with Sam Altman." View Full Image . (Mint) The story took a twist when Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, the largest investor in OpenAI, offered Altman and Brockman jobs in Microsoft to open a new AI lab. Finally, on Wednesday, a new board was created at OpenAI, along with the return of Altman and Brockman, bringing the curtains down on the drama. While reports on the behind-the-scenes developments at OpenAI are still trickling out, Ganesh N. Prabhu, a professor of strategy at IIM Bangalore, noted that one needs to study the ways not-for-profit organizations like OpenAI are governed differently from for-profit companies. Right now, we have just 20% of the information, and once there is closure, we need to know why Altman was asked to go," Prabhu said. According to him, investments such as Microsofts without a board position and social media commentary by top executives of non-profits without requiring usual regulatory processes are also worth studying. At IIM Calcutta, students may be taught about the conflict between a board, executive leaders and employees using this case. What happens when the personal equity and contribution of the leaders in building a company are larger than the equity of the rest of the board can be taught to the students," said Prashant Mishra , a professor of marketing at IIM Calcutta. The Adani group is in separate talks with Wilmar International Ltd, GQG Partners Llc and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) to sell its entire stake in Adani Wilmar Ltd for $2-2.2 billion, two people aware of the development said. No single entity is expected to acquire the stake on offer, and the Adani group may farm out shares in the edible oils maker to multiple buyers, the people cited above said on condition of anonymity. Apart from Wilmar, there are at least four global funds who are keen to buy Adanis stake in Adani Wilmar, and the plan is to finalize the deal before the end of FY24," the first person added. Mint could not ascertain the names of the other two funds. Wilmar and Adani hold 43.97% each in the joint venture (JV). While the Adani group holds the promoter stake through Adani Commodities Llp, the Singaporean edibles giant holds it through Lence Pte Ltd. The (Adani) group is keen to shift focus from non-core ventures such as commodities and retail consumer goods to core infrastructure, energy, ports, logistics and cement businesses," said the first person, adding that Adani Wilmar may be delisted after the transaction. View Full Image Adani Group data The companys current promoter holding is way above the regulatory limit of 75%, and its new investors may have to work out a plan to bring it in compliance. Any change in promoter may require a mandatory open offer for acquiring up to 100% stake and suBSEquently listing at least 25% shares of the firm again to remain compliant and listed. Or, Wilmar along with others may buy back all shares from the public and delist," the second person added. A spokesperson for Wilmar International declined to comment. Emails sent to Adani group, GQG and QIA spokespersons remained unanswered. Wilmar, among the most-valued companies in Singapores SGX, makes edibles, consumer products, ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat central kitchen products with over 500 manufacturing plants and a distribution network covering China, India, Indonesia and 50 other countries. Among the suitors, while Wilmar is already a key edibles player in India through its JV with Adani, GQG Partners, a US-based boutique asset management firm led by Rajiv Jain, and Doha-based sovereign wealth fund QIA have significant investments in Adani group firms. Since 2 March, GQG Partners has pumped in at least 37,440 crore into five Adani group firms, with the last instalment of 8,811 crore on 16 August in Adani Power Ltd. In the same month, QIA invested $500 million for a 2.5% stake in Adanis listed renewable energy arm Adani Green Energy Ltd. Much of their investments came after the 24 January report by US-based short-seller Hindenburg Research that battered Adani group stocks and stripped them of $150 billion in investor wealth at one point. The report forced the Adani group to change its strategy by lowering leverage levels and focusing more on energy and infrastructure-related businesses. The group, which operates the countrys busiest international airport in Mumbai and has won a bid to redevelop Asias largest slum Dharavi in the city, is also aiming to double its cement production capacity to 140 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) by 2028. On 4 August, Mint reported that Adani will invest $4-5 billion to expand its cement capacity to over 100 mtpa in two years via greenfield and new acquisitions. On 17 October, The Economic Times reported that the Adani group is in talks to buy the cement businesses of debt-laden Jaypee Associates Ltd. According to the two persons cited above, the Adani group is keen to acquire the cement business of Jaypee Associates for around 4,500 crore. According to the latest strategy, the funds from the sale of stake in Adani Wilmar could be utilized for building a war chest to partly fund the mammoth $4-5-billion Dharavi redevelopment project via internal accruals, said the two persons. The countrys ready-to-eat food business, packaged edibles business and in-kitchen consumer product businesses are clearly growing. And, the (Adani Wilmar) stock may just be at its fair level at the moment for a possible share sale deal, which is why any prospective transaction in Adani Wilmar may close fast," said the head of an investment advisory firm. Shares of Adani Wilmar have plunged from the record 878 seen on 28 April last year, much of the decline coming after the Hindenburg report. On 20 November, Adani Wilmar fell to its lowest at 285.8 on the BSE. On Wednesday, the stock closed 1.95% lower at 313.95, 45% lower than when the Hindenburg report hit. With the cooking oil business facing margin pressure, Adani Wilmar has reported losses for two consecutive quarters. For the September quarter, the firm announced a consolidated net loss of 130.73 crore. The companys consolidated total income fell to 12,331.20 crore during the July-September period from 14,209.20 crore in the corresponding period of the previous year. During the September quarter of FY24, the cooking oils business accounted for 74% of the companys total revenue from operations. The chip maker now synonymous with AI reported another quarter of blowout sales and earnings growth late Tuesday. Revenue more than tripled to $18.1 billion thanks mostly to soaring sales at the companys data center segment, which is now four times as large as its other businesses combined. Nvidias strong lead in the chips necessary to power generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT is also evident in its surging bottom line. Adjusted operating margins hit a record high of 64% in the fiscal third quarter ended October, far above the companys average of 38% for the same quarter over the past five years. But being on top has its price. Nvidias strong lead in the most advanced AI chips has made the company a prime target of new rules by the U.S. government looking to slow Chinas advancements in the area. They took effect in October, and Nvidia warned on Tuesday that it expects sales to China and other markets named in new export restrictions to decline significantly" in the current quarter. Nvidia added that any lost sales to China will be more than offset" by strong growth in its other markets. The company still managed to project $20 billion in revenue for the January quarter, up a whopping 231% from the same period last year and 11% above Wall Streets targets. But the tone of the warning was still a bit starker than statements Nvidia has made on the issue over the past several quarters as tensions between the U.S. and China have ratcheted higher. Nvidias share priceup 60% in just the past six monthsslipped nearly 2% in after-hours trading following the companys report and conference call. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said during the earnings call that Nvidia is working with the U.S. government on new chip designs that would be compliant with the rules. But the outcome and timing of that remain uncertain. That means Nvidia will likely be more at the mercy of the spending habits of tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, that are pouring billions into outfitting their data centers with generative AI capabilities. Fortunately for Nvidia, their demand is going in only one direction these daysskyward. Wall Street sees the growing bulk of that spending flowing straight into Nvidias coffers. The companys data center revenue is now projected to hit $65 billion in the fiscal year ending January of 2025, more than double the projected combined data center sales of rivals Intel and AMD for about the same period. It helps that the same big tech companies that have the means and motivation to develop their own in-house data center chips are sticking close to Nvidia; Google-parent Alphabet specifically noted the availability of new cloud services powered by Nvidias H100 chip on its own earnings call last month. And Microsoft, which announced its first in-house chips for AI processing at its Ignite conference last week, brought Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on stage at the same event to announce new services offered by the two companies. With geopolitics making its life more complicated, it is nice for Nvidia to have lots of local friends with deep pockets. Write to Dan Gallagher at dan.gallagher@wsj.com Founder-CEO of Binance , the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Changpeng Zhao has stepped down from his role after pleading guilty to breaking US anti-money laundering laws. As part of the deal, Zhao is not allowed to take on a management position in the company for the next three years, as per reports. Thus, in his announcement on social media site X, formerly Twitter, Zhao announced that Richard Teng, Binance's global head of regional markets, will take over as CEO. "Im pleased to announce that @_RichardTeng, our now former Global Head of Regional Markets, has been named the new CEO of Binance today. Richard is a highly qualified leader and, with over three decades of financial services and regulatory experience, he will navigate the company through its next period of growth. He will ensure Binance delivers on our next phase of security, transparency, compliance, and growth," Zhao wrote. Also Read: Binance CEO pleads guilty, steps down from company. Who is Changpeng Zhao? The succession was also announced by Binance in an official statement to the press and acknowledged by Teng in a separate post on X. Who is Richard Teng? A long-time executive of Binance, Teng was promoted to global head of regional markets earlier this year. As per Zhao's tweet, prior to joining Binance, Richard was CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority at Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM); Chief Regulatory Officer of the Singapore Exchange (SGX); and Director of Corporate Finance in the Monetary Authority of Singapore. "With Richard and the entire team, Im confident that the best days for @Binance and the crypto industry lay ahead," Zhao said. Also Read: What is Binances connection with terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Explained "I look forward to seeing the new leadership take the reins. Please join me in congratulating Richard on his well-deserved promotion," he added in another post. Leadership from Teng In his own post on X, Teng said he has stepped into the role of Binance CEO with "honour and deepest humility". "We operate the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. The trust placed on us by our 150m users and thousands of employees is a responsibility that I take seriously and hold dear. With CZ, and our leadership teams support, I have accepted this role so that we can continue to meet and exceed the expectations of stakeholders while achieving our core mission, the freedom of money," Teng said. He also sought to assure those shaken by the crypto sector crisis, adding "The foundation on which Binance stands today is stronger than ever. To ensure a bright future, I intend to use everything Ive learned over the past three decades of financial services and regulatory experience to guide our remarkable, innovative, and committed team." Also Read: 'I made mistakes.., CEO Changpeng Zhao resigns after pleading guilty to money laundering violations, terror connections "My focus will be on 1) reassuring users that they can remain confident in the financial strength, security, and safety of the company; 2) collaborating with regulators to uphold high standards globally that foster innovation while providing important consumer protections; and 3) working with partners to drive growth and adoption of Web3," Teng outlined. He added, We are here to stay. Please lend me your support. Excited for the days ahead!" A labor group is seeking representation on the Starbucks board, ratcheting up pressure in a battle between the coffee giant and its workers over pay and working conditions. The Strategic Organizing Centera coalition of labor unions including the Service Employees International Union that owns a small Starbucks stakeis seeking to address what it views as a failure by the board to oversee the companys treatment of its workers. The group has nominated three director candidates, according to people familiar with the matter, kicking off what is sure to be one of the most closely watched proxy battles in 2024. The window for shareholders to nominate candidates to be voted on at Starbucks next annual meeting opened Oct. 25 and runs through this Friday, according to proxy materials. Like most boardroom fights at large corporations, the success of this one will likely hinge on who can win the support of the big index funds and proxy advisors. Over the past two years, about 360 of the companys 9,380 U.S. cafes have voted to join the Starbucks Workers United union, an affiliate of the SEIU. Starbucks has resisted those efforts, and Starbucks Workers United has filed more than 600 complaints against the company with the National Labor Relations Board. Starbucks has vowed to spend $1 billion on higher wages and expanded benefits for baristas, and on Monday said it formed a board committee focused on complying with responsibilities, including regulatory oversight and the environment. The Starbucks board and executive leadership team regularly engage with all stakeholders, and we are committed to constructive dialogue that furthers our collective goal of creating long-term value for all stakeholders," the company said in a statement. Today, Starbucks has a diverse, engaged, and independent board with a balanced mix of experience, skills, and perspectives," it added. The SOC argues that the fight over unionization has exposed the company to legal, financial and regulatory risks while damaging the value of its brandand potentially its share price. The coalition, founded in 2006 and formerly known as Change to Win, has previously submitted proposals at companies including Apple and Uber, but this marks the first time it has nominated director candidates. Unions have notched recent wins for everyone from auto workers to Hollywood writers and actors, in part because public support for organized labor is at its highest level in decades and companies have wealth to share after years of strong profits. Even in banking, which is historically union-shy, there are organizing efforts underway. But with many companies tamping down on spending, the power balance could shift away from workers groups again. SOC has held an economic interest in Starbucks for years as part of its shareholder-advocacy portfolio, the people said. (Many of Starbucks workers are also shareholders, through the companys stock-ownership program.) SOCs nominees are: Maria Echaveste, a former senior White House official in the Clinton administration and corporate attorney; Joshua Gotbaum, an economic-policy and regulatory expert; and Wilma Liebman, formerly chair of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama. While unionized baristas make up a small portion of the companys workforce, they have steadily gained traction since 2021, when workers in Buffalo, N.Y., voted to form the first labor union at a Starbucks cafe. Earlier this month, the union said thousands of unionized baristas went on strike on a busy sales day for the coffee chainknown as Red Cup Day"as they tried to bring the company back to the negotiating table. It falls to Chief Executive Laxman Narasimhan, who only just took the reins from Howard Schultz in March and is Starbuckss first CEO from outside the company, to grapple with the labor unrest. (Schultz returned for a brief stint as interim CEO in 2022 to help the company navigate labor and operational challenges.) Narasimhan must also contend with Starbucks losing its edge to rival Luckin Coffee in China, which Schultz has said represents one of the companys best opportunities for growth. The Starbucks Workers United union has said that Narasimhan should give priority to negotiations with newly unionized workers versus spending his time working as a barista, something he has done to get a handle on the business. Starbucks, for its part, has said it prefers to keep a direct relationship with workers rather than by going through a union. Schultz was called in March to testify before a U.S. Senate committee on the companys response to the union drive. Some investors have already raised concerns regarding Starbucks management of its labor issues. At the companys 2023 annual meeting in March, more than half of the shares that were voted favored a nonbinding request of the company to commission an independent assessment of its worker-rights practices. The proposal was also supported by both leading proxy-advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis. The labor group at Starbucks could also benefit from the required use of the so-called universal proxy card that went into effect last year. Directors nominated by a company must now be listed on the same ballot as those put forth by activists, enabling investors to pick and choose rather than vote entirely for either one slate or the other. Advisors had expected the changes in proxy-voting rules could encourage first-time activists, particularly those fighting for social issues. Write to Lauren Thomas at lauren.thomas@wsj.com and Cara Lombardo at cara.lombardo@wsj.com Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Binance chief Changpeng Zhao stepped down and pleaded guilty to breaking US anti-money laundering laws as part of a $4.3 billion settlement resolving a years-long probe into the world's largest crypto exchange, prosecutors said on Tuesday. The deal, which will see Zhao personally pay $50 million, was described by prosecutors as one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history. It is another blow to the crypto industry that has been beset by investigations and comes on the heels of the recent fraud conviction of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. But several legal experts said it was a good outcome for Zhao, leaving his vast wealth intact and allowing him to retain his stake in Binance, the exchange he founded in 2017. Also Read: Binance lays off over 1,000 employees, including 36 in India- Report Binance broke U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and failed to report more than 100,000 suspicious transactions with organizations the US described as terrorist groups including Hamas, al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, authorities said. The exchange also never reported transactions with websites devoted to selling child sexual abuse materials and was one of the largest recipients of ransomware proceeds, they said. Binance made it easy for criminals to move their stolen funds and illicit proceeds on its exchanges," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Tuesday. Binance also did more than just fail to comply with federal law. It pretended to comply." Some of the charges, which are both criminal and civil, relate to practices that Reuters reported first in a series of articles in 2022. Also Read: One year after FTX imploded, heres how crypto is changing The Justice Department, which negotiated the settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Treasury Department, is seeking an 18-month prison sentence for Zhao, the maximum suggested under federal guidelines, the New York Times reported. Binance's former chief compliance officer Samuel Lim was charged by the CFTC, the agency said. Neither Lim nor his lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment. Binance will pay $1.81 billion within 15 months, and a further $2.51 billion forfeiture as part of the deal, prosecutors said. Zhao, a billionaire who was born in China and moved to Canada at the age of 12, pleaded guilty in a Seattle court on Tuesday afternoon. Also Read: Cryptocurrency Bitcoin reaches 2-month high, surges above $30,000 in volatile week: Report "Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance," Zhao said in a tweet after the settlement was announced. "Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself." While authorities have probed Zhao and Binance for years, Zhao's exit marks a dramatic development for one of the most powerful figures in the crypto industry, and for Binance. The deal raises questions over the future of the crypto exchange, which he has tightly controlled. Richard Teng, a longtime Binance executive, will take over at Binance, Zhao said in his post. "These resolutions acknowledge our companys responsibility for historical, criminal compliance violations, and allow our company to turn the page," Binance said in a statement. In a separate statement, Teng said that his focus would be on "reassuring users that they can remain confident in the financial strength, security and safety of the company." ZHAO RETAINS BINANCE STAKE Vanderbilt University law professor Yesha Yadav said while the fine was extremely large it appeared manageable for Binance. "This deal...looks designed to give Binance the chance to live another day, while removing CZ, a figurehead who has been so intrinsically linked to the growth of a business model," she said. Since Zhao appears to be retaining his stake in Binance, however, it's possible he may still be able to exert influence on the company, Yadav added. Zhao is worth $10.2 billion, according to Forbes. Also Read: Sam Bankman-Fried: All you need to know about FTX founder convicted of defrauding cryptocurrency customers Given the seriousness of the violations and actors involved, Zhao appears to have "come out of this looking pretty good" as the U.S. government likely had to entice him to come to the U.S., said Robert Frenchman of Mukasey Frenchman LLP. "He still has enormous wealth," Frenchman said. "He isn't likely to spend too much time in a U.S. jail. He retains his ownership stake in Binance, a company that has now resolved some of its biggest legal issues." Prosecutors likely weighed those benefits for Zhao against the possibility that he may not have otherwise surrendered and the desire to convince Binance to agree to pay a hefty sum, said Jeffrey Cohen, an assistant professor at Boston College Law School and former federal prosecutor. Also Read: Binance, CEO Changpeng Zhao to seek dismissal of CFTC complaint of violating Commodity Exchange Act "If you can get a good number for a corporate fine and the cost is that the individual defendants take a slightly lesser penalty, the government makes that calculation," Cohen said. 'POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL' Binance has been under the Justice Department's scrutiny since at least 2018, Reuters reported last year, just one of a string of legal headaches it faces in the United States. Federal prosecutors asked the company in December 2020 to provide internal records about its anti-money laundering efforts, along with communications involving Zhao. The CFTC filed its civil charges against Binance in March, alleging it failed to implement an effective anti-money laundering program to detect and prevent terrorist financing. Internally, Binance officers and employees acknowledged that the platform facilitated "potentially illegal activities," the CFTC alleged. Also Read: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty. A timeline of the events leading up to here In February 2019, Binance's Lim received information on transactions by the militant Palestinian group Hamas on Binance, the CFTC wrote. Lim, a Singaporean, "explained to a colleague that terrorists usually send small sums as large sums constitute money laundering'," the CFTC said in its March lawsuit. Daniel Silva, a partner at law firm Buchalter and former federal prosecutor said the allegations likely could have supported charges against Zhao carrying stiffer penalties like fraud or money laundering. "He was at risk of much more serious charges, and so this resolution is a very favorable one for him," Silva said. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Macau is best known as the casino capital of Asia. But the former Portuguese colony, on Chinas south coast, is hoping to gain a reputation for more reputable ways to make money. In August trading began on the MCEX, a market that is the first of its kind. Investors are not exchanging currencies, debt or equity. Instead, they are buying the future revenues of businesses in mainland China. If successful, the exchange may help solve a problem that plagues smaller firms both in China and elsewhere: the difficulty of finding finance. Charles Li, a former boss of Hong Kongs stock exchange and the creator of the new market, has said that investors tend to eschew lending to such businesses simply because the risks and rewards are poorly matched, with borrowers burdened if a venture flops and financiers short-changed if it goes well. For bigger companies, the solution is listing on a public marketsomething beyond the means of their smaller peers. Mr Li believes he may have solved this mismatch. MCEX allows investors to buy and sell a new type of financial instrument called a Daily Revenue Obligation (DRO). Contract owners gain a fraction of a businesss revenue for a fixed period of time, in effect buying the right to future income. Issuance has been strong. dros worth almost 2.2bn yuan ($300m) were offered on the exchange in the first month of trading. Selling future revenues is a good deal for small firms. Owners get access to capital without diluting their stake and without repayment obligations. For investors, the advantage is less clear (indeed, no information is available about their appetite so far). Micro Connect, which owns the exchange, claims they can enjoy equity-like returns". Their exposure is, however, rather large. Small firms often fail. Whereas a loan secured against assets has limited downside for its financier, the risk for a DRO holder is limited only by the size of the investment. They have no claims on the assets of the business if it goes bankrupt. But Micro Connect does have a couple of selling points. If financial instruments designed to fund firms that banks wont lend to and investors wont buy sounds unpalatable, allocators can diversify their risk by buying up pools of DROs, known as a Daily Revenue Portfolio". The underlying DROs are unrated, but the pools are given a risk indicator under a framework developed by a Chinese rating agency, which relies on predictions of cash flows. Mr Lis financial innovation also offers foreign investors something valuable: access to China. After decades of trying, overseas investors still have few good options. Cross-border private-equity deals have collapsed; keepwell agreements", between parent firms and subsidiaries, have been the subject of years-long court disputes. MCEX promises to be different. DROs are Macau-issued copies of contracts agreed on the mainland. Micro Connect takes on the enforcement risk in mainland China and offers investors the assurance of a contract enforceable under Macanese law. The company that issues a DRO will have its revenues verified and disbursed by local banks each day, and recorded on a blockchain, providing investors with real-time insight into the performance of the business in which they have an interest. Although technology cannot eliminate accounting trickery, such as changing when invoices are issued, it can prevent fraud. It is almost impossible for a business to earn and not disclose cash revenues in Chinas entirely digitised economy. Chinas entrepreneurs may be especially eager to make use of the scheme now. Banks are scrutinising lending more closely owing to the economys struggles, so firms are looking elsewhere for capital. Many are turning to outfits beyond the banking system, known as shadow lenders", from which China Beige Book, a data firm, says borrowing is at near-record highs as a share of total lending. This helps explain why Chinas smaller firms are keen. Whether these are the sorts of businesses in which foreign investors want to invest is another question entirely. Correction (September 29th 2023): An earlier version of this article incorrectly described MCEX as an over-the-counter market. Sorry. For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, finance and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com The recent surge in cement prices was not expected to sustain. A partial rollback in prices was widely anticipated after a sharp uptick in September and October. Average all-India cement price of one bag (50 kg) in the trade segment have fallen by almost 2% month-on-month to 382 so far in November, according to dealers channel check by Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India). The trade segment is where cement is sold by the manufacturer to the dealers. The steepest decline of 13 per bag was seen in the north as the festive season usually leads to a labour shortage. A ban on construction activities in the Delhi and National Capital Region due to pollution is also said to have hurt demand. Cement dealers expect demand in this region to recover after Diwali and Chhath Puja as labour unavailability eases, said the Nomura report dated 20 November. Large-caps Ambuja Cements, ACC, Shree Cement and UltraTech Cement have meaningful exposure to the north. The pace of capacity additions also has a bearing on pricing prospects. North is expected to witness the second highest capacity addition in the country over the next two years after south. In FY24, an additional cement capacity of 6-7 million tonnes is expected to come on stream in the north, which is close to 18% of the total incremental capacity expected in the sector throughout the country in FY24," said Ravleen Sethi, associate director, CareEdge Ratings. View Full Image Taking a U-turn Currently, the north is operating at capacity utilisation of over 80%, which is the highest among all regions, she added. So, with additional capacities coming on stream utilization might be impacted unless demand is on a solid footing. Thus, the bouts of price corrections cannot be ruled out. For now, all-India cement trade prices are currently still 17 per bag higher compared to Q2FY24. If prices sustain at the current level, it should aid the realization outlook in Q3FY24. On the input costs front, analysts note that prices of fly ash and slag are elevated. However, spot prices of imported petroleum coke and coal have softened marginally month-on-month in November so far. Meanwhile, while cement demand is expected to remain robust in the run-up to the general elections, slated in 2024, pricing pressures may get severe once demand fades out. Amid heightened competition and large capacity additions, the chase for market share gains may intensify, forcing companies to choose between volume growth and realisations. When it comes to investing in mutual funds , it is essential to have a well-balanced investment portfolio. One key decision that investors often struggle with is the right allocation between mutual fund lumpsum and SIP (Systematic Investment Plan). A lumpsum investment is beneficial when an investor has a sizable amount of money available to invest. It allows for a potentially higher growth rate as the entire investment is deployed at once, giving the capital more time to benefit from market fluctuations and potential appreciation in the long run. However, lumpsum investments are subject to market timing risks, as the investment is made at a specific point in time when the market may be overvalued or undervalued. On the other hand, a SIP allows investors to invest regularly over a period of time. This investment strategy mitigates the impact of market volatility as investments are made at different price points. SIPs are particularly beneficial for investors looking to invest small amounts regularly and have a disciplined approach to investing. So, how should one effectively balance mutual fund lumpsum and SIP investments in their portfolio? Sundeep Sikka, ED and CEO, Nippon India Mutual Fund says, "In the mutual fund industry, systematic investment is quite popular. More than 35% of the equity assets (excluding ETFs) are systematic assets - where investors had systematically invested and accumulated corpus." SIPs also offer the advantage of rupee cost averaging, which means that investors can buy more units when the markets are down and fewer units when the markets are up, thus potentially reducing the overall investment risk. If one were to invest 50,000 every month, at least 50% can be through monthly SIPs in equity funds, the rest can be either lump sum or in debt funds/other assets. Overall, I would urge investors whether SIP or lump sum, the key is to stay invested for the long term," says Ashish Gupta, chief investment officer of Axis Mutual Fund. CA Nitesh G Buddhadev, Founder, Nimit Consultancy, says, For most salaried individuals, SIP is the ideal way, however they should try to put in some lumpsum as well every year when they get a bonus or have some other savings. Approx 20 to 25% of total SIP amount one should invest as lumpsum (Say if someone is doing 25k SIP so 25% of 3 lakh = 75k). It's like you are investing for 15 months in 12 months. In case of business owner, one might have irregular cash flow however they should try and do some min possible SIP along with lumpsum." In conclusion, it is advisable to consult with a financial advisor to determine the appropriate allocation based on your individual circumstances. Remember, investing in mutual funds comes with its own set of risks, and it is important to do thorough research and consider your financial situation before making any investment decisions. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Google Doodle celebrates Lebanons Independence Day today with the National flag of Lebanon. On this day in 1943, Lebanon gained its independence from France's occupying forces. Lebanon became independent from France's occupation on this day in the year 1943. Lebanon gained autonomy from France's rule after 80 years. Many other countries recognised Lebanon as an independent state in the year 1941. However, it was only until the year 1943 that elected Lebanese representatives amended the Constitution and marked a complete end to the French Mandate after nearly 80 years of rule over Lebanon. Following this, Lebanese officials were arrested at Rashaya Castle which unified the nation against the French. Moreover, widespread protests across Lebanon and global calls pressurised French officials to release these arrested Lebanese officials on November 22. On Independence Day, the castle, also known as the Citadel of Independence is highly visited. Citizens visit the national monument as a mark of respect in honour of those who sacrificed their life for the nation and to commemorate the hardships endured on the path to freedom. On this day, citizens of the country engage in other activities such as attending parades, and speeches and relishing traditional dishes including tabbouleh and kebbeh with family and friends. Students in schools actively participate in patriotic activities and make crafts items like cardboard crowns adorned with cedar trees similar to the one depicted on the flag in Google's Doodle today. This Doodle's reach spans the entire country of Lebanon. Google released another Doodle today given Netherlands National Elections 2023 that are slated to take place today. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Four Army personnel were killed and two others injured during an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district on Wednesday. A fierce gunfight broke out in the Bajimaal area of Dharmsal after a cordon-and-search operation. Another official was injured while taking on the cornered terrorists. The encounter broke out late on Wednesday morning with two terrorists trapped in the exchange of fire. The joint team comprises personnel of the Jammu and Kashmir Army and Police. Officials said two captains, a havildar and a jawan have lost their lives during the encounter. "A team of security forces was on a search operation in Baji Maal forest area of Rajouri when contact was established with terrorists and a firefight erupted," officials had said. ALSO READ: Terrorist killed in encounter with joint team of security force in Rajouri Contact established on 22 Nov and intense firefight ensued. The terrorists have been injured and surrounded and operations are in progress, amidst acts of valour and sacrifice by own bravehearts in trying to prevent collateral damage to women and children in the highest traditions of IndianArmy. #Whiteknightcorps salutes the supreme sacrifice," the White Knight Corps of the Army said. The development also came mere days after a terrorist was killed during an encounter with joint team of security personnel in Rajouri. A Cordon and Search Operation had led to an encounter in the Behrot area of of Rajouri's Budhal on November 18. A police spokesperson said the terrorist had opened fire from inside a house while the security personnel were moving towards the target. One AK-47 rifle, three magazines, three grenades and a pouch were also recovered from the encounter site. Local residents told PTI that a cordon-and-search operation has been underway in the Bajimaal area of Dharmsal since Sunday to track down terrorists operating in the area. "Due to the operation we were asked to stay back at home and not venture out. Our children stayed back at home and did not attend the school," a villager told PTI. (With inputs from agencies) Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued an advisory, on November 21, for Indian nationals travelling to Myanmar in view of the desperate security situation. The Ministry expressed deep concern over the fighting between Myanmars anti-junta groups and government forces close to India's border and advised against travelling to the country. The advisory urged Indian citizens to register themselves with Yangon which is the Embassy of India by filling out the form available on the official website. The advisory states, All Indian nationals planning to live in Myanmar(excepting short term tourists) are advised to register themselves with the Embassy of India, Yangon. Registration with the Embassy will facilitate any measures that need to be taken in a situation of emergency or if such a need arises." The ministry advised citizens to avoid non-essential travel and those Indian nationals who are already in Myanmar were advised to be cautious and avoid travel to violence-affected regions. The Ministry further advised against inter-state travel by road. The advisory further gives details of the registration process. Travellers seeking to undertake travel should download and fill in the Registration Form available on the official website of the Embassy of India. A soft copy of the form must be sent to the mentioned link and a hard copy to the Consular Wing of the Embassy of India. Indian Nationals can also deposit the hard copy at the Embassy between 9:30 am and 11:00 am on any working day. This hard copy must be submitted with two colour passport-size photographs of each family member, one copy of each of the Passport's first page, last page and current visa page; and the passport of each individual for verification purposes. What MEA spokesperson said During a press briefing, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, We reiterate our call for the return of peace, stability and democracy in Myanmar". He was responding to questions on the recent fighting. Bagchi further stressed that Indias position on the situation in Myanmar was very clear". "We want cessation of the violence and resolution of the situation through constructive dialogue," he added. The intensified fighting since October has displaced about 90,000 people, reported the UN. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to chair the G20 virtual summit today on November 22, amid growing international concerns due to the Israel-Hamas war and shaky diplomatic relations with Canada. Canada participation confirmed Significantly, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has confirmed attendance at the event. This would be Trudeau's first virtual interaction with Modi since the two countries' relationship turned sour. Diplomatic relations between India and Canada have been strained since Khalistani separatist and Canadian citizen Hardeep Nijjar was assassinated. Canada blames India for the killing, while India has denied its involvement. Russia, China to attend Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Li Qiang have also accepted India's invitation to the meet. Notably, both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping had given the G20 Leaders' Summit in New Delhi a miss. It was held on September 9 and 10 this year. Gaza in Focus The situation in Gaza is expected to be a major talking point during the meeting as the Israel-Hamas war continues for the sixth week. The large civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis are expected to be brought up. Qatar today announced that it has brokered a truce-for-hostages agreement between Israel and Hamas, marking a crucial step towards a temporary ceasefire, AP reported. The deal is set to bring a much-needed four-day halt in the fighting and secure the release of numerous hostages. Qatar's foreign ministry said details of the truce would be released tomorrow, AP added. About 50 Israeli hostages are expected to be gradually released by Hamas in exchange for around 150 Palestinian prisoners from Israel -- mostly women and children. Other expected topics of discussion India's G20 Sherpa, Amitabh Kant, anticipates robust participation and views this as a "unique opportunity" for Modi to engage with global leaders. Kant, in his statement, outlined the primary objectives of the G20 summit, aimed at tackling deficiencies in global governance, reiterating dedication to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and advancing towards a reinvigorated multilateral system poised to enhance the well-being of individuals worldwide. Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth said the meeting will provide added impetus and direction regarding matters concerning the finance track. Following this, the responsibility will transition to Brazil, slated to assume the G20 presidency on December 1, taking the helm of the global initiative. While development remains central, discussions may expand to various pressing issues. Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra avoids speculating on geopolitical tensions being raised. The virtual summit will allow leaders to discuss the implementation of declarations and cooperate on critical challenges, aiming to bridge global governance gaps. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. New Delhi: The government may not make it mandatory for online business firms to register on Open Network Digital Commerce (ONDC) in the proposed new e-commerce policy, two officials privy to the information said, in an easing of rules that could benefit the big players. Instead, it is likely to propose voluntary registration. This would mark a relaxation from the earlier thinking and comes after a final round of consultations with stakeholders in early August, one of the officials said. Besides, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT)an arm of the commerce and industry ministrymay not make it compulsory for online portals to share their buyer and seller database with the ministrys service facilitator ONDC, this official said, adding that the policy is ready to be released soon. The earlier thinking within the government was to make it compulsory to position ONDC as a one-stop service providing network. The ONDC was formed in 2022 to make the state-run application programming interface (API) a popular format among domestic sellers and buyers as the governments service facilitator allows all types of business entities to get on board by paying a nominal subscription fee. However, with the new policy expected to address complaints against unfair trade practices such as predatory pricing, flash sales, etc. the e-commerce entities will have to comply with the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act," the other official said. In the proposed legislation, the government has already relaxed mandatory provisions for setting up an independent regulator for online retail platforms. Opinion is divided on any moves toward easing the rules. Registration of e-commerce players on ONDC should be made mandatory, otherwise the whole purpose of bringing a revamped policy to regulate online players will become futile," a person from the industry said on the condition of anonymity. The tweak in the proposed policy would prove a windfall for major e-commerce players like Amazon, Flipkart and Reliance, because they have a huge seller repository. Domestic traders body leader Praveen Khandelwal said that apart from ONDC registration, there should be compulsory registration of all online players with DPIIT and a separate regulatory body to keep online frauds under check. The players registered with ONDC include, Zomato, Swiggy, Ola, Paytm, India Post, etc. A person privy to the e-commerce policy discussion confirmed, Its true that the conversation regarding dropping of registration clauses is happening, but its at the government level only. Private players are not part of those deliberations." Queries sent to the commerce ministry and ONDC remained unanswered at press time. The issue comes against the backdrop of frequent run-ins between e-commerce majors and small traders. More than 12 million sellers earn their livelihood by selling or reselling products and services. However, only 15,000 of themless than 1% of the totalare in e-commerce. The online business is still out of reach for the majority of sellers, especially from small towns and rural areas. ONDC is neither an application nor a softwareit is a network for digital commerce with a mandate to bring all channel partners onto a single network. It is present in about 600 cities and has 80 service providers registered with it. Over the past ten years, the Indian government has requested Google to take down around 1.155 lakh content from its platforms including YouTube, web browser, etc. With this, India emerged as the top third country to send requests to Google for content removal, according to a Surfshark study. Also Read: Google Chrome's upcoming features: AI-powered Tab Organization and Autofill Helper in work, suggests report Between 2013 and 2022, Indian government agencies have requested Google to take down content over 19,600 times. The analysis showed that defamation emerged as one of the most frequent reasons for the requests. Also Read: Is YouTube loading slow on your device? Google says THESE users may experience suboptimal viewing The data highlighted a global trend of governments attempting to censor information with the help of content removal requests. The report said that governmental requests for content removal exceeded 3,55,000 over the last decade. The year 2022 emerges as a record-breaking year with a 50% rise in removal requests. Also Read: Google's secret deal allowed Spotify to bypass Play Store fees. Details here Content removal requests increase globally during international conflicts and wars Government requests for content removal from Google products are on the rise. In the past decade, the global count has surged nearly 13 times from 7k to 91k requests annually," stated the Surfshark report. Also Read: Google antitrust trial: US government concludes evidentiary phase of lawsuit over search engine monopoly At a global level, the report mentioned national security as the main reason cited by governments for content removal. The report threw light upon a notable increase in content removal requests to Google by governments across the globe during times of international conflicts and wars. Also Read: Sam Altman returns as OpenAI CEO with Satya Nadellas support, to build strong partnership with Microsoft "A notable increase in content removal requests to Google by governments around the world during times of international conflicts and wars prompts us to consider the balance between genuine interest in a country's public safety and the potential encroachment into censorship," said Agneska Sablovskaja, Lead Researcher at Surfshark. Most of the content asked to be removed was from YouTube Out of all the platforms managed by Google, YouTube's content attracted major scrutiny from the Indian government. The reason why most of the content removal requests were for YouTube. Most of the content India requested to remove was from YouTube (8.8k), Google Play Apps (4.3k) and Web Search (1.4k)," the report stated. The Indian government made a total of 19,600 requests for content removal from Google. On average the government made 5 requests per day during the last ten years. The top three justifications of content removal requests were defamation (20.1%), involving harm to reputation, including claims of libel, slander, and corporate defamation. Defamation was followed by impersonation (16.3%) and then privacy and security (8.3%). The top three biggest requesters for content removal from India have been the police, court orders directed at Google, and information and communications authority. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. 8 school children were injured when the auto they were travelling in collided with a lorry near the Sangam Sarat Theatre in Visakhapatnam, while the whole incident was captured by a nearby CCTV camera. News agency ANI quoted Visakhapatnam DCP Srinivas Rao as saying that all eight children have been shifted to a nearby hospital and four of them have already been discharged. Meanwhile, three more children are undergoing treatment and the condition of one of the students is critical. Disclaimer: The visuals are disturbing. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has sent a congratulatory message to caretaker Prime Minister of Lebanon Najib Mikati on the occasion of the countrys national holiday, the 80th anniversary of Independence. "I convey to you my warm congratulations and sincere best wishes on the occasion of the national holiday of the Republic of Lebanon, 80th anniversary of Independence, the Armenian PM said in a letter to Najib Mikati. Armenian-Lebanese relations have a rich history of friendship and cooperation that has passed the tests of time, characterized by civilizational commonalities, cultural ties, as well as traditions of mutual support. Our regions are currently going through the most serious period of challenges and difficulties, and I hope that the peaceful coexistence and harmonious interaction of states will continue to be the pillar of international relations. I am sure that with joint efforts we will be able to further deepen the existing high level of relations and expand cooperation on bilateral and multilateral platforms, including regional issues. Taking the opportunity, I wish you good health and happiness, and lasting peace and prosperity to the friendly people of Lebanon." The Israeli military has stepped up its efforts to produce evidence that Gazas largest hospital was a Hamas command center, as the humanitarian fallout from war and seizure of Al-Shifa Hospital has heaped pressure on Israel. In recent days, the Israeli military has released a series of videos and photos from the hospital that show further details of a tunnel uncovered at the site and security-camera footage of two hostages who were brought there on Oct. 7, the day Israel says Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 200 hostages back to Gaza. On Tuesday, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said its troops were still inside Al-Shifa Hospital searching for Hamass tunnels and other evidence. He said the evidence released so far was just the beginning. At the end of our search we will put everything on display for the world to see," Conricus said. Hamas said the group didnt use Al-Shifa or other hospitals in Gaza for military purposes. A Hamas spokesman said Israel has besieged Gazas hospitals as a part of an effort to break the will of Palestinians and push them off their land. The stakes for Israel are high as it tries to maintain the support of allies, particularly the U.S., for its campaign to destroy Hamas. Its offensive has taken an increasingly devastating toll on the Palestinian population of Gaza, which is governed by Hamasdeemed a terrorist group by the U.S. and Israel. More than 13,000 people have been killed, according to Gaza officials, whose figures dont distinguish between militants and civilians. While many security analysts agree the latest evidence Israel has released increasingly suggests a Hamas presence at the hospital, most say they have yet to see something that constitutes a smoking gun showing it was a command center for Hamas, as Israel has alleged. The Israeli military has produced evidence of a significant Hamas military headquarters intermixed into the Al-Shifa Hospital complex," said John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army officer and chair of urban warfare studies at the U.S. Military Academy. But Spencer said what isnt yet clear is the scale of the presence Hamas had there. He said Israel would need to produce more evidence, for example, showing layers of tunnels to back up its claims. Others remain skeptical of the Israeli militarys claims. None of this proves much of anything, much less a command and control center," said Paul R. Pillar, a nonresident senior fellow at Georgetown Universitys Center for Security Studies, saying the evidence so far amounted to a hole in the ground and some weapons and other military gear. Pressure has mounted in recent days as the human impact of the hospital seizure has become more apparent. Images of premature babies evacuated from Al-Shifa and taken to Egypt have been shared widely online and broadcast on television screens worldwide. On Sunday, after an inspection of the hospital, the United Nations called it a death zone." Israeli military officials said they have created a safe route for those in Al-Shifa to evacuate. On Tuesday, about 700 people remained at the hospital, including patients, staff and people who were sheltering there, according to Gazan health authorities. The Palestine Red Crescent Society sent ambulances to evacuate more people on Wednesday. Early Wednesday, Israel and Hamas agreed to free 50 civilian hostages held by militants in Gaza in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and a four-day pause in fighting. The evidence Israel ultimately presents could matter in terms of how its actions on the battlefield are viewed under the international laws governing warfare. Hospitals are protected under international law, but they can lose their special status when they are actively being used for hostile acts toward the enemy. Israel is also competing in the court of public opinion and doing so in a world that is divided over the Gaza war. Every time Israel releases new material, some dismiss it as insufficient and others gobble it up as proof, particularly in Israel, said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. Ultimately, its most important audience may be the U.S. or other Western allies. Israel wants legitimacy in real time from the West," she said. Command Center Allegation Although Israel has made allegations that Hamas used Al-Shifa for years, it began building a larger and more detailed public case about the hospital in late October, nearly three weeks before it seized the facility on Nov. 12. Military officials put a 3-D animation on display in a briefing with reporters, showing Hamas avatars walking through a layered tunnel system underneath the hospital that was interspersed with what were described as command centers. It was a hypothetical illustration, however, not a real depiction of what was under the hospital, the Israeli military said. Some of what Israel knows about Al-Shifa comes from its own work on the hospital. Israel renovated Al-Shifa decades ago when it occupied the Gaza Strip. Former Israeli officials have said those renovations included constructing underground floors to add sheltered accommodations for patients, a standard requirement for Israeli hospitals. Hamas has connected those underground floors with tunnels that allow militants to move between them for command-and-control operations and to areas outside the hospital to mount attacks, said an Israeli military spokesman. A senior Israeli military official said Hamass underground infrastructure extended out into the vicinity of Al-Shifa as well. After seizing the hospital, the Israeli military has been releasing its findings in batches. The Israeli military said it has done it that way, rather than waiting to do it all in one comprehensive presentation, in an effort to be transparent. Soldiers have to move slowly and methodically in their search to ensure that neither the soldiers nor the remaining patients and staff at the hospital are harmed by explosives Hamas may have left behind, the Israeli military and security experts said. Weapons, Equipment and a Tunnel On Nov. 15, the military first showed footage from the hospitals MRI wing where it says it found AK-47s, grenades, military uniforms and a battle vest with the insignia of Hamass military wing. In a separate area, the military also said, soldiers found evidence of what the military described as a command-and-control center, pointing to several hand-held radios, a laptop and a stack of CD-ROMs. Israel said its soldiers also found a Toyota pickup truck that was packed with weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, explosives and Kalashnikov rifles. The vehicle model is similar to those used by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli military said. Security experts say some of Israels strongest evidence so far has come in recent days, when Israel released video that it said showed inside the tunnel and separate security footage that showed hostages being brought into the hospital on Oct. 7. The video of the tunnel showed a shaft that the Israeli military said went 60 yards underground, leading into a vaulted cement-lined tunnel with electrical wiring. The Israeli military said the footage showed that the tunnel leads toward a metal blast door. The blast door also had a small hatch at its center, which the military said was a hole designed to fire weapons from the inside at attackers. On Tuesday, the Israeli military published photos that it said showed it had opened the door, revealing a further tunnel beyond. The construction of the tunnel appeared to be similar to tunnels that had previously been built by Hamas, said Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a security and risk management consulting firm based in the Middle East. He added that the presence of a heavy door was a sign that what lay beyond was more than just a basement. While the initial evidence released by the IDF was very limited, the recent evidence presented, including the tunnel inside the Al-Shifa compound, and the CCTV camera, are more significant," said Horowitz, referring to the Israel Defense Forces, adding that he couldnt detect any signs of tampering in the footage that had been released. Hostages at the Hospital Israel also released security camera footage of what it said was a Nepalese and a Thai hostage being taken through the hospital hours after Hamass Oct. 7 attack. One video showed men dragging one of the hostages through a hallway, while another showed a hostage, with what appeared to be a severed leg, lying motionless on a stretcher under armed guard. Many of the hostages needed medical care and were taken to hospitals throughout Gaza, the Hamas spokesman said, not just Al-Shifa. Israeli military officials said there were closer hospitals for Hamas fighters to take hostages while returning from their attack on Israel. Days before releasing videos of the hostages, the Israeli military said it found the bodies of two other hostages at sites in the vicinity of the hospital. The military said a pathology report found one of the hostages was killed before being left behind. Weapons were also found next to the body, the military said. I think these pieces of evidence are starting to prove that Hamas used Al-Shifa as a base, though there needs to be more proof to show that this was in fact a command center," said Horowitz. The evidence Israel is presenting wouldnt necessarily justify the suspension of Al-Shifas protected status under international law. The presence of hostages getting medical care, tunnels or trucks with weapons wouldnt nullify its protected status, said Adil Haque, a professor at Rutgers University who focuses on the international law of armed conflict. What could lead to a hospital losing its special status is if hostages were being held captive there or if militants were using medical buildings to shield themselves from attack, he said. But the stakes for Israel extend beyond international law. If Israeli intelligence made an incorrect assessment this is beyond embarrassing," said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House, a think tank based in London. It undermines their argument of the operation and they are left attacking hospitals on flimsy evidence." Shoshanna Solomon in Tel Aviv contributed to this article. Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Google Doodle today highlighted the Netherlands' National Elections 2023, which is set to take place on November 22, 2023. This comes after Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earlier this year said he is retiring from politics after a 13-year long term leading the country. The decision is significant and was seen as "shocking" as Rutte has been dubbed 'Teflon Mark' for his longevity in politics. He said "insurmountable differences" within his coalition have prompted the move. Also Read: PM Modi to host virtual G20 Summit today with Russia's Putin in attendance, Xi Jinping absent Polls today The Dutch will vote for the 150 seats in the lower chamber of parliament today November 22. Among the key issues among voters this election is immigration, standard of living, and the housing crisis in the Netherlands, as per an AFP report. Voters have from among 26 political parties to choose from. Also Read | Binance gets new CEO after Changpeng Zhao steps down: Who is Richard Teng? Voting System The Netherlands follows a proportional voting system. The total number of votes is divided by the 150 seats and any party hitting the threshold (last election it was just under 63,000) gets a seat in parliament, AFP explained. Coalition governments are usually the norm as the system and number of parties make it harder for a clear majority to be gained. Rutte will stay as PM till the new government is formed. Also Read | Sam Altman-OpenAI Saga: Top 10 updates you should know Changing political landscape Mark Rutte's fourth coalition government took office in January 2022 following the longest-ever coalition negotiations in Dutch political history, AP reported. Given the polarized and fragmented political landscape, an election for the 150-seat lower house of the Dutch parliament is expected later this year. Rutte's Cabinet is likely to continue as a caretaker government until a new administration is formed. In the provincial elections earlier this year, Rutte's party faced defeat as a populist pro-farmer party secured second place. This outcome may have served as an incentive for Rutte to make every effort to maintain the unity of his coalition until its term concludes in 2025. Rutte's decision tumbled the dominoes leading to multiple other resignations from leaders of the ruling coalition. According to speculations Rutte may take a job as NATO General Secretary in Brussels after the Dutch elections are concluded. He has however denied these rumours, saying the post should be handed to a woman. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. ANI reported that in September, the Indian Mission in Canada temporarily halted visa services until further notice due to operational reasons, as noted by BLS International. BLS International Services Limited, an Indian outsourcing service provider, oversees government and diplomatic missions globally. The company specializes in managing services such as visa processing, passport services, consular assistance, document attestation, and citizen services. Also Read: India vs Canada: Massive visa backlog due to diplomatic dispute, situation to normalise by Important notice from Indian Mission: Due to operational reasons, with effect from September 21, 2023, Indian visa services have been suspended till further notice. Please keep checking the BLS website for further updates," the BLS website said. In October, India opted to recommence visa services in Canada for four specific categories following a thorough assessment of the security situation, taking into consideration recent measures implemented by Canada. Also Read: India resumes visa services in Canada from today: However, you cannot come to India if you are The categories include entry visa, business visa, medical visa, and conference visa, and the resumption of services was effective from October 26. Following the development, Canada welcomed India's decision to partially resume visa services calling it a good sign" and stating that the suspension should never have happened in the first place". Also Read: As India resumes some visa services, Canada calls move a 'good sign', says suspension should've never happened Significantly, in the midst of a diplomatic dispute with Canada, India suspended its visa services in September, citing an indefinite hiatus. This move followed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's accusation of the involvement of "agents of the Indian government" in the June killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Hardeep Singh Nijjar, identified as a designated terrorist in India, was gunned down outside a Gurdwara in a parking area in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, on June 18. Also Read: India-Canada row: Indian High Commissioner speaks on visa suspensions, says Situation still not ideal' During a parliamentary debate in Canada, Trudeau asserted that national security officials in his country had grounds to believe that agents of the Indian government" carried out the killing of the Canadian citizen, who also served as the president of Surrey's Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara. However, India had rejected the allegations as absurd and motivated" and expelled a Canadian diplomat in a tit-for-tat move over Canada's decision. Also Read: India briefs Australia on Canada spat "We have seen and reject the statement of the Canadian Prime Minister in their Parliament, as well as the statement by their Foreign Minister. Allegations of the government of India's involvement in any act of violence in Canada are absurd and motivated," the statement said. Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepares to lead the G20 virtual summit today, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has confirmed his participation in the event. This marks Trudeau's inaugural virtual engagement with Modi amidst the recent strain in the relationship between the two countries. (With inputs from ANI) BLS INTERNATIONAL SERVICES More Information Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Israel and Hamas agreed to a short ceasefire this week after 47 days of fighting. The tentative truce brokered with help from Egypt, Qatar and the United States will see both sides release prisoners and allow entry of aid. Officials indicate that the process could begin on Thursday at 10:00 am (1:30 pm IST). The brutal seven-week war has thousands of lives with the Gaza health ministry abandoning their tally on November 10. The carefully tracked casualties over the first five weeks of war stood at 11,078. Meanwhile, Israel says that 1,200 people were killed during the surprise Hamas attack on October 7 that triggered the clash. Several hundred others were taken hostage. The Israel-Hamas truce caps weeks of turbulent negotiations to free around 240 hostages transported to Gaza by militants. Here are the details of the truce deal: 1. The first truce in the brutal war was reached after mediation by Qatar and hailed around the world as a sign of progress. However, the start time had not been officially announced till Wednesday afternoon. 2. In the initial stage Hamas will release at least 50 hostages in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. 3. The truce may be extended beyond the initial four day period if more hostages were freed. A second phase could see 150 more Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange for another 50 hostages during an extended truce. 4. A statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said that at least 10 women and children would be released per day to total 50 people over the next four days. The truce could be extended as long as an additional ten hostages were freed per day. 5. Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said that Israeli reconnaissance of Gaza would be put on a temporary hold while hostages were moved. (With inputs from agencies) Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Lets take a look at 10 major updates on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Cabinet's vote Israel has decided to support a plan that calls for the release of 50 women and children taken captive by Palestinian Hamas militants in exchange for a five-day ceasefire in hostilities, according to the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Onslaught on Hamas Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated unequivocally that when the truce ends, the onslaught on Hamas will restart. Both parties evaluate the possible advantages of a respite in hostilities, and this delicate balance is in jeopardy. Hamas optimistic Hamas has expressed optimism about the possibility of a deal facilitated by Qatar. They think a mediated settlement might be achieved very soon. Negotiations have entered a critical stage, and senior Hamas leader Izzat Rishq expressed optimism that a breakthrough will occur in the next few hours. Intelligence efforts During the ceasefire, the continuation of intelligence operations is a strategic imperative for both Israel and Hamas. This crucial aspect of warfare serves several vital purposes that go beyond the temporary pause in active combat. Situation volatile Israeli forces and Palestinian terrorists are fighting one other in urban parts of Gaza, especially the Jabaliya refugee camp. As they attempt to house displaced families and treat patients, hospitals in the area are struggling with overpopulation. Fighting continues in several areas of the Gaza Strip, and the situation is still unstable. Ceasefire details There is still mystery around the details of the cease-fire deal. The specifics are unknown. Reports suggest a possible five-day break in Israel's Gaza offensive. Conversations continue, and the outcome remains uncertain. Human toll The Israel-Hamas war has had a major impact on the Palestinian population. In Gaza, the humanitarian situation has significantly deteriorated. Over 11,000 Palestinians have lost their lives. These include women and children. Hospitals are struggling to accurately count casualties due to the overwhelming conditions. Impact on healthcare In Gaza, many hospitals are no longer working properly, making the healthcare crisis worse. The problem gets even harder because there aren't enough necessary supplies and resources. This makes it very difficult to give proper medical care to sick and injured people. Shortages of food, water Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people are in the southern region. They endure critical shortages of food, water, and generator fuel. The situation has been aggravated by winter rains, leaving many displaced individuals exposed to the elements. Ongoing strikes Amid the ceasefire discussions, Israel continues its strikes in Gaza. The strikes have caused civilian casualties, including women and children. Accusations of Hamas using civilians as human shields complicate the situation and international discourse on the conflict. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. In response to widespread criticism for endorsing an antisemitic post on the social media platform X, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken the step of allocating the revenue generated from advertising and subscriptions linked to the Gaza war to Israeli hospitals and the Red Cross in Gaza, as reported by CBS News. Also Read: Elon Musk's X sues Media Matters over ad controversy, billionaire says first of many It comes after Musk's support for the anti-Semitic tweet received condemnation from a wide spectrum of opponents and organisations, including the Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group that aims to prevent anti-Jewish prejudice. The billionaire had earlier responded to a post on X claiming that Jews have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them." He had said, You have said the actual truth." Also Read: Elon Musk backs anti-Semitism tweet, says, 'You have said the actual truth' Amid the row over endorsing 'anti-semitic' post on X, the platform owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that social media platform X will file a "thermonuclear lawsuit" against the media watchdog 'Media Matters' alleging that it "completely misrepresented the real user experience" and undermined free speech". However, Musk had refuted what he describes as "bogus" media reports accusing him of anti-Semitism. The Tesla CEO said that the X platform works to "protect the right to free speech" and for that one must "see or hear" things that are considered "objectionable" and one must make up their own minds about what to read, watch, or listen to". Also Read: 'Only wish the best for humanity...' defends Elon Musk on anti-semitism controversy Elon Musk's contentious remarks surfaced during a period of increased Islamophobia and antisemitism in the United States amid the Israel-Gaza conflict. Subsequent to the backlash, both Musk and the company released statements addressing the fallout. Yaccarino emphasized the platform's commitment to combatting antisemitism and discrimination, while Musk outlined a stringent policy against promoting genocide on the platform. (With inputs from ANI) Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Pakistan has submitted a request to become a member of the BRICS group of nations in 2024, with the expectation of receiving support from Russia throughout the membership application process. In an interview with TASS, Pakistan's recently appointed Ambassador to Russia, Muhammad Khalid Jamali said, Pakistan would like to be part of this important organization and we are in process of contacting member countries for extending support to Pakistans membership in general and Russian Federation in particular." Also Read: BRICS: 6 more countries to become members; Argentina, Iran, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt join in In response to the question about Pakistan's BRICS membership bid, the diplomat affirmed that the country has indeed submitted its application. He further clarified that Islamabad intends to become a member of the group during Russia's presidency in 2024. Also Read: Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan claims responsibility for rare attack in Punjab province. Who are they? The coalition of developed and developing nations, known as BRICS, was initially composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, established in 2010. In early October, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that BRICS aims to finalize a list of candidates for partner-state status before the upcoming summit scheduled for 2024 in Kazan, TASS reported. Also Read: Jaishankar calls for peaceful resolution of West Asian crisis During the most recent summit held in South Africa in October, BRICS made the decision to extend invitations to six additional countries to join their alliance. Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have received invitations to become BRICS members, with their official membership set to commence on January 1, 2024. As per the report, the official mentioned that under Russia's leadership in BRICS, there will be a particular focus on broadening the group's relationships, especially in Latin America, as part of an effort to increase the circle of BRICS friends." Also Read: BRICS set to invite Saudi Arabia, 2 other nations to join the bloc After Russia's chairmanship of BRICS in 2020, India assumed the leadership role in January 2021 and retained the presidency until December 2021. The overarching theme and strategy during India's BRICS Chairship were encapsulated in the motto 'BRICS@15: Intra BRICS Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation, and Consensus.' Meanwhile, amid the economic crisis, in the last two decades, China extended approximately USD 21 billion more in loans to Pakistan than initially estimated, as per a recent study reported by Nikkei Asia. The study revealed that Pakistan possesses the largest energy portfolio funded by China globally. Also Read: We face hard options on the BRICS architecture "Of the total finance of USD 67.2 billion, USD 36 billion was accumulated under the Nawaz Sharif-led PML-N government, which was in power from 2013 to 2017. Sharif recently returned from years of self-imposed exile in London to help the party in its campaign for elections, apparently with the tacit support of Pakistan's military", according to a Nikkei Asia report. Also Read: Pakistan has to repay $2.44 billion of external debt in July 2023 "We should let more countries join the BRICS family to pool wisdom and efforts to make global governance more just and equitable," Chinese President Xi Jinping said. (With inputs from agencies) Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Following an invitation from India, Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday will participate in the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit, as stated by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Meanwhile, China expressed its hope that the virtual summit will facilitate the gathering of consensus and convey a positive message in this regard. Earlier, during the G20 Summit hosted by India in September, Li Qiang represented Chinese President Xi Jinping in attendance. While addressing a press conference on Tuesday, China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning confirmed the Chinese Premier's presence at the G20 Summit. Also Read: PM Modi to host virtual G20 Summit today with Russia's Putin in attendance, Xi Jinping absent When inquired about China's anticipations for the summit, she underscored the importance of the G20 addressing worldwide challenges collaboratively and making a constructive contribution to the global economic recovery, ANI reported. Also Read: Chinas loss as Indias gain? Our world factory pitch calls for adaptive policy She said the G20 Summit held in New Delhi in September reached important common understandings on adopting actions through partnerships. In the face of the volatile international situation and sluggish economic recovery, it is all the more important for the G20 to reinforce partnership, address global challenges through cooperation and make a positive contribution to world economic recovery and global common development," the Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson said. Also Read: G20 summit 2023: Why China's President Xi Jinping skipping the mega event Further hoping that the summit can gain consensus, she noted, "China hopes that the virtual summit can pool consensus and send a positive signal to this end." Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host the virtual G20 Leaders' Summit on Wednesday evening, marking a significant convergence of global leaders. The summit will include the participation of leaders from all G20 member countries, the Chair of the African Union, and representatives from nine guest countries, along with the heads of 11 international organizationsall of whom have been extended invitations to attend. Also Read: Xi Jinping tightens control over China's financial industry The G20 Leaders' Summit will be held today from 5:30 pm onwards and will witness a major gathering of world leaders. Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin will set out Russia's view of what it sees as the deeply unstable world situation" when he addresses an upcoming virtual G20 summit. (With inputs from agencies) Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is set to make a comeback, successfully thwarting a recent boardroom coup that had plunged the company into disarray over the past few days. The announcement comes from the AI startup itself as it shared the update from its official account on X (formerly Twitter). Altman is set to resume his position, and the recently appointed board will be led by Bret Taylor. Other members include Larry Summers and Adam D'Angelo, as detailed in the company's statement on X. We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this." Also Read: Sam Altman returns as OpenAI CEO with Satya Nadellas support, to build strong partnership with Microsoft OpenAI on Monday named ex-Twitch boss Emmett Shear as interim CEO, while outgoing chief Sam Altman moved to backer Microsoft. After being ousted by OpenAI's board on November 17 due to conflicts regarding the pace of artificial intelligence development and monetisation, Sam Altman engaged in negotiations with the company for his return, as reported by Bloomberg. However, discussions hit a roadblock on November 19, partly because of Altman's push for current board members to step down, Bloomberg reported citing sources. Also Read: OpenAI board approached rival Anthropic's CEO to replace Sam Altman, discuss merger: Reports Sam Altman's statement on return to OpenAI Meanwhile, Sam Altman said he has Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's support for returning to OpenAI. Altman wrote, I love openAI, and everything Ive done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satyas support, im looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with msft (sic)." Also Read: Did OpenAI board inform Satya Nadella before firing Sam Altman? Microsoft CEO says Satya Nadella's comment on Sam Altman's return Reposting Altman's post on X, Nadella wrote, We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance." US authorities have reportedly thwarted a plot to kill Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. Officials are also believed to have issued a warning to India about its possible role in the matter. The development comes mere days after the National Investigation Agency booked him for threatening Air India passengers. According to a Financial Times report citing unnamed sources, US federal prosecutors have also filed a sealed indictment against at least one alleged perpetrator of the plot. The publication cited one person familiar with the matter to add that one person charged in the indictment is believed to have left the US. It however remains unclear whether the would-be assailants abandoned their plan due to recent protests in New Delhi. Alternatively, the FBI may have intervened to foil a scheme that was already in motion. The threat to an American citizen on American soil is a challenge to Americas sovereignty, and I trust that the Biden administration is more than capable to handle any such challenge," Pannun told the FT. He however declined to tell the publication whether US authorities had warned him about any such plot. The report also comes two months after Canada claimed there were credible allegations" linking the Indian government to the killing of another Sikh separatist leader. Hardeep Singh Nijjar had been gunned down by unknown assailants in a Vancouver suburb in June this year. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's assertions dubbed absurd by India had also led to the recall of 41 out of 62 diplomats in India and a pause on electronic visa services till Wednesday. (With inputs from agencies) Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Armenia has offered Azerbaijan to convene a session of the delimitation commissions on the state border, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday. The Foreign Ministry issued a statement in response to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's statement of November 21. "The Armenian side, once again reaffirming the political will of Armenia to make efforts towards the normalization of relations with Azerbaijan and the establishment of peace and stability in the South Caucasus, on November 21, sent to the Azerbaijani side its 6th edition of the agreement on the normalization of relations. Critics of CEO pay often begin and end with the claim that the CEOs dont deserve" their giant salaries, but deserve has nothing to do with it. Large and pre-emptory carrots arent about reward after the fact. They are about control before the fact, designed tightly to harness the interests of the key decision maker, especially in a media and legal environment where a loose cannon CEO can do untold damage to organizational interests. By late Sunday, on the question of the daywhy was CEO Sam Altman of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, fired from his job?ChatGPT had this to say: The board stated that Altman was not consistently candid in his communications. However, specific details surrounding Altmans departure have not been publicly disclosed." Which just proves that, wonderful as ChatGPT is, it falls short of the human capacity for insight, which instantly perceived the episode for what it was: a royal corporate governance snafu caused by confounded and misaligned incentives. Though OpenAI stumbled into its problem innocently enough, as a nonprofit devoted to artificial-intelligence safety that suddenly found itself in charge of the fields leading company, Mr. Altmans lack of an ownership stake already had raised eyebrows on the outside. How was his board supposed to get comfortable with his many initiatives, such as promoting chip and hardware development to speed the rise of artificial intelligence, and how they relate to the companys interests and mission? An even worse governance morass was the board itself. The problem permeates not only OpenAI but also Americas many nonprofit foundations and universities. Lacking transparent and measurable incentives of their own, their leadership sinecures tend to fill up with human weathervanes who search for approval from whatever constituency shouts loudest in the media and social media. To make sure artificial intelligence benefits humanity regardless of profitthe mission encoded in OpenAIs founding chartersounds nice. Its functionally meaningless. Henry Ford could make cars but couldnt dictate how society would change and adapt to the automobiles existence. AIs future will be worked out in a thousand places, by businesses, governments, consumers, politicians and regulators. OpenAIs board cant control this future but did discover its power to turn its own company overnight into an irrelevancy. It also became incandescently clear, as some 700 employees threatened to follow Mr. Altman to his new employer at Microsoft, that its nonprofit board was very, very much interested in money after all. Its chairman, Ilya Sutskever, repented publicly of the firing. He even threatened to defect to Microsoft himself. For all the spin about humanity, a full-blown panic was under way once the board realized an estimated $90 billion in luscious equity might walk out the door. The denouement may not be known for a few days more. Microsoft, which finds itself in the catbird seat, has graciously allowed OpenAI to try to reassemble itself, before it proceeds to absorb the company essentially via its employees for a purchase price of $0. The episode, in one sense, comes 40 years too late for a media that has long botched an understanding of CEO pay as a corporate governance solution. Instead, the media preferred in the last decade to lionize a doom-mongering French economist, Thomas Piketty, who described CEO pay as a form of insider theft, in keeping with his larger theory that capitalism naturally produces stagnation for all except those with inherited wealth. This notion of CEO pay should have fallen apart instantly given that so many of the biggest CEO carrots were dangled in front of outside recruits by corporate boards and private-equity titans who, by definition, couldnt have been in the pockets of executives they had yet to hire. Likewise, missing in Mr. Pikettys income stagnation data was the role of growing government transfers in the financial strategies of individuals and households. When properly accounted for, all income groups have seen rising real income over the past 40 years with no shift toward the rich, according a new paper from economists in Joe Bidens Treasury Department and Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation. Getting back to ChatGPT, perhaps the fastest-growing consumer product in history, and free to most users, its proving, on net, a boon like most products of capitalism do. In my own work, it quickly edged out Googles less-precise search function. Yes, it gets things wrongTruman didnt call the Korean War a police action," a reporter in a press conference apparently did. But Bings version of ChatGPT linked me directly to the June 29, 1950, press-conference transcript so I could see for myself. But it wont soon replace the human knack for synthesizing the most valuable insight from a welter of facts, as independent tech analyst Ben Thompson did from this weeks OpenAI meltdown. If the episode establishes anything, he wrote, a for-profit corporation is the right way to organize a company." Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Its risky to say the boss is wrong, but my boss is really wrongabout airport pickups. She recently wrote a Grinchy piece positing that travelers should stop expecting their loved ones to get them. Its a hassle, and adds to the already nightmarish curbside traffic. Scores of readers applauded this idea. In my book, schlepping someone to or from the airport is the ultimate act of service. Especially if that someone is me. Its my unabashed love language. Ive even thought about weaving that into a dating-app profile. If Im free, Ill bring anyone to the airport, including my former husband. It saves us all money, too. Hitching a ride with family or friends adds a personal touch the most charming Uber Black driver cant replicate. I love it when my daughter (somewhat begrudgingly) packs her 17-month-old twins into the car for an early-morning airport drop-off at the Phoenix airport, a 20-minute drive on a good day. Hearing them clap through If Youre Happy and You Know It" is the remedy for airport stress. Late-night rides are tougher to get, but thats where friends step in. One of my favorite gifts is proudly displayed under a fridge magnet. Its a homemade certificate for five airport rides. Ive cashed in most of them. Airport ride die-hards One friend went above and beyond with airport transportation in San Diego on Sunday. After hosting a nonstop birthday extravaganza in Coronado for her mothers 80th birthday, she piled four of us into her SUV. San Diegos airport is a mess due to construction of a new terminal and garage, and the holiday travel rush had already begun. Then there are the jitters she gets driving over the sky high San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge. She made the trip again Monday morning to drop off the other partygoers. I dont mind taking people to the airport at all," she says. I think thats a really nice thing to do." Mike Wilner is a frequent traveler whose home airport is LAX, the airport many of you told me doesnt deserve the No. 3 spot in our latest annual airport rankings, given its chronically clogged roadways. Wilner says pickups and drop-offs at LAX can be a big time-suck." But he cant say no to requests for rides. Its the right thing to do, and it helps relationships with friends and neighbors and relatives," he says. And," he adds, having a favor in the favor bank aint bad." His brother flew in late Sunday night from an international trip. Wilner picked him up. Hell do the same when his wife flies in from a trip in early December. And his daughter gets a lift when she comes home from college. It helps that Wilner lives a few miles from LAX. He asks people for their flight information and takes it from there, tracking arrivals, traffic and other factors. We have our tips and technology and tricks to sort of minimize the burden," he says. Family tradition I trace my love of free airport rides to my parents. Since the day I moved away from Connecticut after college, Ive never had to worry aboutor really ask fora ride on return visits. This despite a poorly lit, rural road from their house to the Providence, R.I., airport. During the holidays, they would even come into the airport to pick up our family. I can still see my mom and dad waiting at the bottom of the escalator for us. Then wed trudge out into the cold with them, our suitcases in tow. (I never ask anyone to park and come in!) My dad died five years ago, but my mom, now 81, still makes the drive. She asks only that we dont arrive ridiculously late and fly to Providence instead of Hartford, Conn., if the price is right. Its often a family affair, with my sister and niece pitching in on pickups. Ive never asked them to pick me up in Boston, 100 miles away, but another sister does make that request when she finds a screaming flight deal. The family airport shuttle works both ways. When my mom or sisters visit, taxi rides or car rentals are out of the question. My daughter or I pick them up and drop them off, even for those red-eyes to the East Coast. The only exception is when I lived in Chicago and didnt own a car. I still met my mom at the airport on her first visit. The family-shuttle plan backfired in 2021. On the way to Logan Airport in Boston, my sisters car ran out of gas in the Ted Williams Tunnel. The state police shuttled my niece and a friend to the airport in a prisoner-transport van so they didnt miss their flight. Sign up for the WSJ Travel newsletter for more tips and insights from Dawn Gilbertson and the rest of the Journals travel team. Write to Dawn Gilbertson at dawn.gilbertson@wsj.com Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. Indias Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which was passed by Parliament in August 2023, outlines protections for personal data and the rights and duties of Data Principals (owners of data), Data Fiduciaries (who collect and hold data), Data Processors (say, a software company contractually processing data collected by a fiduciary), and Consent Managers (entities that act as intermediaries between Data Principals and Data Fiduciaries). The Act offers detailed, granular protections, and a right to forget provision. There are also stringent compliance standards for Significant data fiduciaries, entities that collect more than a certain threshold volume of data (yet unspecified), or collect data that could impact electoral democracy or Indias sovereignty and security. Significant data fiduciaries have to appoint Data Protection Officers based in India to be points of contact. They must also appoint independent auditors to carry out data audits. Everybody, including powerful social media companies, agrees that the Act is necessary and good. What has created somewhat of a schism between them and the government is the timeline within which these measures need to be implemented. The government is happy to give time to MSMEs, startups, and hospitals, but its views are different for large, global organisations. Companies that alread follow similar rules like that of the GDPR (EUs General Data Protection Regulation) shouldnt ask for a very long time to follow these new rules," Rajeev Chandrasekar, Minister of State for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, and Electronics & IT, said at a Digital India Forum recently. Social media companies, which are clearly significant data fiduciaries, argue that things are not that simple. Nick Clegg, who is president, Global Affairs for Meta, recently claimed operational difficulties" in complying with the Act and asked for time. India is Metas biggest market, with the largest number of users on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. Other data fiduciaries have reportedly informally made similar representations for reasonable time to comply. Could it be that these data fiduciaries are making excuses to seek exemptions from provisions they must comply with under Indian law? Not really. They will need to rework their processes and systems to ensure compliance with the new Act. This takes time. They will have to hire people, and may need to move Indian data onto servers located in new places to avoid conflicts between the Indian Act and the European Unions GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which is far more demanding than the Indian law and even the USs Data Protection laws. This cannot be accomplished overnight. To understand why data fiduciaries may want time, lets look at the new law and its provisions. Personal data protection standards are based on either the US or the EU model. The US model has little control on fiduciaries. The EUs GDPR, in contrast, has detailed, granular protections for personal data, including a right to forget" and even protection against government demands for personal data of citizens, except for very specific purposes. The right to forget" provision enables a data principal to ask that data be deleted once a stated purpose is served. A loan defaulter, for instance, may make a Right-to-Forget request to wipe out the record once the loan is repaid this was the original case that established the principle. GDPRs granular protections involve asking for new permissions if it is proposed that data collected for a stated purpose be reused for another purpose. For example, financial data collected to assess a mortgage may be reused to offer a vehicle loan but only with a second set of permissions. The GDPR requires even governments to carefully specify the grounds for asking for personal data, and it imposes the right to forget" provision on governments. At the other extreme, Indias Act gives the government and its instrumentalities the right to collect data for broad, vaguely defined purposes. But it imposes controls on private data fiduciaries and offers the right to forget. So there are significant differences between these laws, and global data fiduciaries need time to ensure that their data collection and processing systems dont conflict. The entire system, including appeals, ruling, and penalties, will be managed by a proposed regulatory body called the Data Protection Board (DPB). The Centre shall appoint all the members and the chairperson of this board. There will also be an appellate tribunal to take up cases on appeal. Also, any significant data fiduciaries will need to hire officers based in India. Even if it doesnt host Indian data on servers within India (this is not required), it will have to rework software and processes to set up granular permissions, and to process right-to-forget requests. The fiduciary will also have to ensure that it avoids conflicts between the Indian Act and the GDPR. For example, if it hosts Indian data on servers in the EU, a request by the Indian government for data of an Indian may conflict with the GDPRs stricter provisions for government access. Its normal for a reasonable period to be allowed for fiduciaries to comply with new laws. The EU gave data fiduciaries 24 months to comply with the GDPR. Indias Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) is still in the process of formulating rules, setting volume thresholds, appointing the DPB, the Tribunal, etc. And while it hasnt yet set a time period for compliance, unconfirmed reports say the Ministry may not give fiduciaries more than three months. Such tight deadlines may be required to prevent data misuse that could impact electoral democracy, especially in the context of the several upcoming elections in India. Facebooks personal data was notoriously misused to influence voters in the Brexit Referendum and in the 2016 and 2020 US Presidential elections. If Indias Act isnt notified by the government before the forthcoming Assembly elections and the General Election due in April-May 2024, the possibility of social media being misused again cannot be ruled out. It is understandable that given the election schedules, Meity may not be keen to give the sort of generous timelines the EU offered for GDPR compliance. However, it must resist slapping unrealistic timelines on fiduciaries unless it wants to risk hurting Indias attractiveness as an investment destination to global business. At the same time, it is incumbent upon global, digital savvy organisations like Meta, too, to try and speed things up, leveraging their experience of such initiatives in other markets. The hostage deal that Israel and Hamas reached Tuesday will spare the lives of some 50 Israelis, and that is a great relief to the innocents and their families. The cost is a short-term cease-fire that Hamas will exploit, and three-quarters of the 236 hostages will remain in terrorist hands. Israeli leaders believe the trade is worth it, and its not our place to second-guess their judgment. In exchange for returning Israeli children and women, 12 or 13 a day, Hamas is set to receive a four-day pause in Israeli military operations and the release of about 150 of its under-18 and female operatives from Israeli prisons. During the cease-fire, Israel will allow more fuel and aid into Gaza. The pause might also extend longer if Hamas gives up more hostages, 10 for each additional day. The deal again shows the moral gulf between the two sides. Hamas kidnapped Israeli children as young as nine months to use as hostages and spring its jihadists who have been arrested or convicted in a fair trial for their crimes. Israel takes military risks to save its citizens. Hamas risks Palestinian civilians to save itself. Even as Israelis rejoice for the women and children who will return home, they know Hamas is rejoicing too. Its war crimes have been rewarded. It will steal fuel from its own people to power its terror tunnels. Its shattered northern Gaza brigades will use the cease-fire to regroup, escape from weak positions and set more ambushes for Israeli troops. Israels leaders made this deal knowing that their soldiers will pay for it. Every Israeli also knows that Hamass leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was among the 1,027 prisoners Israel released in 2011 in exchange for one kidnapped IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit. In that deal, 280 of the released Palestinian prisoners were serving life sentences for heinous crimes. This time Israel says none of the prisoners it will release have been convicted of murder. Expect Hamas to drag out the cease-fire in hopes of making it permanent. Dribbling out 10 hostages a day, Hamas could stall for a few weeks. Or what if it claims after day two that Israel has broken the deal and hostage releases will continue only after Israel holds off for another few days? What if it pulls that trick over and over? The domestic and international picture will become more complicated for Israel. At home a nation united will be divided over how long to wait. Abroad, the pressure to continue the cease-fire indefinitely will grow, and Israel can expect harsher criticism when it resumes fighting. Israelis know all this, but they are willing to accept the costs to retrieve the captives. They are also unwavering in their determination to overthrow Hamas. The Israeli cabinet says fighting will resume immediately once the cease-fire is up. The deals timing isnt bad for Israel. Having assumed a dominant position in Gazas north, it needs to prepare to turn south. U.S. deputy national security adviser Jon Finer stressed on Sunday that more time is needed before an Israeli advance to determine how to protect civilians in Gazas south. Israel can do that and prepare its next move. Much depends on the Biden Administration. Complaints from the Democratic left are no reason to let the Hamas jihadists who carried out the Oct. 7 massacre stay in power in Gaza. President Biden has said Hamas needs to be destroyed. If he means it, he will back Israels right to resume fighting and finish the job after hostages are released. The Supreme Court had in 2012 ordered the Sahara group to transfer over 16,000 crore to markets watchdog Sebi to refund investors. Now with the death of its founder Subrata Roy, the Centre seems to be weighing the option of transferring the corpus to the Consolidated Fund of India. A report in The Economic Times on Monday said that the government was looking at the legality of transferring the funds to the consolidated fund with few investors coming forward to claim money even after a decade. These funds, which have now swelled to over 25,000 crore, after accumulating interest could be used for pro-poor programmes or for public welfare, the report said quoting officials. Would that be a wise option? It would be tempting for any incumbent government to use such windfall gains" to announce schemes, especially with elections around the corner. However, it is doubtful if any such scheme, unless it is well-targeted and executed, will provide medium and long-term benefits. It may be easy to justify transferring these funds to the Consolidated Fund of India considering that only over 17,000 investors had applied for refunds with the outgo being just 138 crore. In March this year, the Supreme Court, which had originally approved in 2012 the appropriation of funds after all refunds and if the securities market regulator was unable to find out details or whereabouts of the bond investors, allowed the transfer of 5000 crore from the refund corpus to the Central Registrar of co-operatives. This was to refund depositors of the cooperatives promoted by the Sahara group. The deadline for providing refunds through this window too will end soon. And besides the Rs.25,163 crore Sahara refund corpus the regulator and agencies are still trying to reclaim over 60,000 crore from the group. According to reports, Sebi has approached the Supreme Court for transferring the funds to the Consolidated Fund of India, which is dubbed as a black hole" because the funds that flow into it are fungible. In the past, successive governments had promised to use the receipts from divesting the shares of state-owned companies and their assets for either retiring debt or building new assets. Over the years, proceeds from sell-offs of state-run firms have mainly been used to lower the fiscal deficit. It is important to bear in mind the fact that the accumulation of this corpus has come about, thanks to the efforts of the Sebi leadership and the regulators team and lawyers starting a decade ago which fought a major legal battle and won. It will perhaps be apt then to sequestrate these funds to protect investors given the growing breath and width of the financial sector. It is good that the government is now working on an integrated IT portal to allow investors to reclaim unpaid dividends and shares. But it is also the opportune time to debate or think of an integrated scheme for protection and compensation for financial investors cutting across all products in the financial sector. Indian investors now have to approach several sectoral regulators be it for banking, shares, commodities and debt, insurance and pension with little relief from the ombudsmen appointed by the regulators. Equally, the government should review the working of the multiple investor protection, education and awareness funds of all the regulators. The other option will be to use the corpus to build what finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman pitched for at the Global Maritime Summit a few weeks ago. The minister said that India needs to have a full-fledged and fully owned and locally based protection and indemnity entity which will help reduce the countrys vulnerabilities to any global sanctions and pressures in the future. For an economy poised to emerge as the third largest in the world over the next few years, financial stability will be key to higher capital formation, allocation of this capital, and growth. To ensure greater trust and integrity in this sector, there is a strong case for better protection of investors. Using the Sahara refund corpus to promote long-term growth-enhancing initiatives will yield better rewards than handing out freebies. Since the last presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump has complained repeatedly that the political system is rigged" against him. As the 2024 election season draws near, the system actually does appear to be riggedin his favor. The current structure of U.S. presidential elections helps the leading Republican presidential contender in significant ways. Thanks in part to years of work by the former presidents campaign and allies, the partys primary rules and calendar are designed to help a front-runner sew up the nomination quickly. That would be an advantage in any case, but it may matter even more in a year when Trumps legal troubles in multiple civil and criminal trials could mount as the primary calendar unfolds. In the general election, the Electoral College also tilts decidedly to the benefit of the Republican nominee. Thats because Democrats gather a lot of their national popular-vote totals in just a few heavily populated states, while Republican nominees tend to win in less-populous states that deliver winner-take-all electoral votes in return for far fewer actual votes. In effect, Democrats tend to garner large numbers of votes that give them no gains in the Electoral College. Republican votes are simply more efficiently allocated than Democratic votes are," says nonpartisan election analyst Charlie Cook. The Republican advantage is so pronounced that Cook estimates that President Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, will have to win the national popular vote by four to seven percentage points to win in the Electoral College, much as he did in 2020 when he won the popular vote by 4.5% over Trump. In a turbulent political environment with the nation evenly divided, these structural advantages can prove decisive. For President Biden, they figure to increase the headwinds he has to overcome to prevail in a difficult re-election effort. Trumps advantages will begin to emerge early in the new year, when Republican caucuses and primaries unfold in rapid order. In contrast with the Democrats, whose rules require all states to award convention delegates in proportion to each candidates share of the votes, the Republicans allow state parties to choose to conduct various forms of winner-take-all primaries. In some states, winning a plurality automatically gives the top contender all of the states delegates; in others, a winning candidate has to clear a certain threshold to walk away with all the delegates. On the whole, the rules writ large are rules that are front-runner friendly," says Josh Putnam, a political scientist and consultant who runs FrontloadingHQ, a site that tracks primary and delegate issues. The Republican system has long been structured this way, but Trumps forces have worked hard since he first won the nomination in 2016 to tweak it to further help the front-runner. In Massachusetts, for example, a candidate once needed to win just 5% of the statewide vote to get any delegates. In 2020, that threshold was raised to 20%, and a winner-take-all system was added in which a candidate getting above 50% takes all the states delegates. Trumps allies have also pushed for the early Republican primaries and caucuses to adopt new rules friendly to the front-runner, including on Super Tuesday, March 5. Though the party still doesnt technically allow a pure winner-take-all primary until after March 15, in 2024 there will be a proliferation of early states that use some variation, typically giving all the delegates to a candidate who wins 50% or more of the votes. By the Trump campaigns count, 23 states and territories voting by March 15 will employ some kind of winner-take-all trigger. In 2016, just 15 states and territories did so. The most important change is in delegate-rich California, which is instituting rules for its Super Tuesday primary that will give all of its delegates to a candidate who wins 50% of the states vote. For trailing candidates, this means that staying close to the front-runner might bring little or nothing in the way of actual delegates. The front-runner can rack up delegates fast and pull away to an insurmountable lead quickly, particularly when facing a field in which multiple opponents are dividing the remaining vote into small pieces. That effect could be enhanced by the fact that the whole primary calendar is more front-loaded in 2024, with a half dozen states moving their election dates forward from past years. All told, some 60% of the partys delegates will have been chosen by March 5, Cook says. Those rules give an incumbent/front-runner a significant advantage," says Chris LaCivita, senior adviser in the Trump campaign. For a candidate who hopes to overtake Donald Trumpsay, Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantisthis combination of factors means that they have to make their move early to have any chance to catch him. Once the Republican nomination is secured, the GOPs advantage in the general election will start to emerge. Both parties will proceed with the knowledge that the two candidates standing nationally doesnt necessarily reflect their chances of securing the 270 Electoral College votes that produce a winner. That dynamic was clear in 2020, when Biden won the national vote over Trump by some seven million votes but claimed the presidency only because he won four key swing statesGeorgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsinby a total of about 126,000 votes. In that race, Biden won California by 5.1 million votes, New York by 2 million votes and Massachusetts by 1.2 million votes. Winning by such big margins made Bidens vote total look impressive nationally, but it didnt give him any more electoral votes than if hed won those states by a single vote each. Cook refers to these excess votes as wasted votes," and in 2020 Biden won all seven of the states at the top of that list, tallying 14 million votes that did nothing to add to his Electoral College advantage. By comparison, just 7.8 million wasted votes" were cast for Trump. That factor makes it entirely plausible that Trump could win in another inversion" election, in which he loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College, as he did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. That happened only three times in the countrys first 53 presidential elections before 2000, but it has occurred twice in the six contests since then and nearly happened a third time in 2020. Trump has one other advantage worth noting: A potential proliferation of alternative candidates who could siphon more votes away from Biden than from Trump. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cornel West are mounting independent presidential bids, and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is also said to be considering a run. Because of the outsider profile and conservative positions he has struck, Kennedy, though a lifelong Democrat, could sap as many Trump votes as Biden votes. But because of the positioning of West and Manchinthe first a progressive academic and activist, the second a longtime Democratic officeholderboth likely would draw more from the Democrats. All of these outsiders insist they arent aiming to help Trumps candidacy or hurt Bidens, but that could be precisely the effect of their campaigns. Gerald F. Seib retired last year as The Wall Street Journals executive Washington editor and weekly Capital Journal columnist. He has served most recently as a fellow at the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. Snapchat is reportedly testing to introduce a new subscription plan that is free from ads. The platform has already launched the Snapchat Plus subscription tier, enticing potential subscribers with the prospect of enjoying an ad-free service. Snapchat Plus ad-free subscription plan Jonah Manzano, an Australian artist, posted on Threads (via The Verge) featuring the recently unveiled ad-free subscription plan, available at a monthly cost of AUD 15.99. There are speculations that certain Snapchat Plus subscribers might be required to pay a premium for access to the ad-free version. Reportedly, Snapchat is in the testing phase for its ad-free subscription plan. Nevertheless, a few months ago, Android Police had reported that this feature was already accessible to users in Norway. According to reports, the new subscription plan is designed to eliminate ads from stories and Lens ads, although users may still encounter some sponsored ads. Currently, the ad-free subscription plan for Snapchat Plus is not accessible in other significant regions like the US or Canada. Despite obtaining a Snapchat Plus subscription, priced at AUD 5.99, it appears that users may still be subject to ads on the platform. It is suggested that they might need to acquire a distinct ad-free subscription plan to eliminate the display of ads. However, there has been no official confirmation on this matter thus far. Similar to platforms such as YouTube or X, Snapchat is considering the possibility of charging users for an ad-free experience. However, there is no confirmation regarding when Snapchat will globally introduce this feature. As of now, it is speculated that the platform is currently testing the ad-free experience. Since the introduction of Snapchat Plus, the app's experience has significantly improved, featuring exciting new additions such as custom app icons, chat wallpapers, custom notification sounds, generative chat wallpapers and profile background, story boosts, sending gifts, and more. Milestone Alert!Livemint tops charts as the fastest growing news website in the world Click here to know more. 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Any decision to invest in securities must be based solely upon the information set forth in the applicable offering materials, which should be read carefully by qualified investors prior to investing. An investment with Knightsbridge is not suitable or desirable for all investors; investors may lose all or a portion of the capital invested. Investors may be required to bear the financial risks of an investment for an indefinite period of time. Qualified investors are urged to consult with their own legal, financial and tax advisors before making any investment. Knightsbridge is a private investment firm that offers investment services to Qualified Investors, Members and Institutions ONLY. Qualified Investors are defined as individuals who have met those Qualifications in the relevant jurisdictions. Members are defined as individuals who have been accepted into the Knightsbridge membership program. Institutions are defined as entities such as banks, pension funds, and hedge funds. If you are not a Qualified Investor, Member or Institution, you are not eligible to invest with Knightsbridge. All investments involve risk, and there is no guarantee of profit. You may lose some or all of your investment. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Knightsbridge is not a registered investment advisor, and this disclaimer should not be construed as investment advice. Please consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. By accessing this website, you agree to the terms of this disclaimer. Thank you for your interest in Knightsbridge. In the tumultuous world of cryptocurrency, the recent downfall of Binances CEO, Changpeng Zhao, marks yet another high-profile executive caught in the crosshairs of regulatory scrutiny. Amid this chaotic landscape, Knightsbridge takes a different approach, emphasizing a slow and steady strategy that aims to secure a lasting future for the industry. Changpeng CZ Zhao: A Tale of Rapid Rise and Regulatory Challenges Zhao, a prominent figure in the crypto world, orchestrated the meteoric growth of Binance into the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange. However, increased scrutiny accompanied the platforms success, resulting in multiple accusations from the United States. The charges included allegations of allowing transactions to militant groups and in restricted jurisdictions. Facing sweeping US money laundering violations, Zhao and Binance pleaded guilty, agreeing to fines exceeding $4 billion. Zhao resigned as CEO, retaining his shares but being prohibited from involvement in the companys operations. This turn of events underscores the challenges faced by crypto giants navigating a complex regulatory landscape. Sam Bankman-Fried: From Fame to Notoriety Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, found himself in the spotlight as the unofficial ambassador of the cryptocurrency industry. His fame, however, took a drastic turn when revelations about the misuse of customers funds emerged. Binances CZ Zhaos swift response to sell all FTX tokens triggered a rapid collapse of Bankman-Frieds empire. Arrested in the Bahamas and subsequently found guilty of significant financial fraud, Bankman-Fried now faces the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence. This serves as a stark reminder of the perils associated with unchecked financial practices within the crypto space. Do Kwon: The Rise and Fall of a Crypto Genius South Korean entrepreneur Do Kwon, co-founder of Terraform Labs, experienced both acclaim and infamy in the crypto world. His successful marketing of TerraUSD and Luna as groundbreaking stablecoins attracted billions in investments. However, the subsequent collapse in the value of these currencies led to accusations of orchestrating a glorified Ponzi scheme. Do Kwons brash online presence and global hype turned sour as the industry faced significant losses. Evading authorities for months, he was eventually arrested in Montenegro, facing criminal charges in the United States and South Korea. This cautionary tale highlights the repercussions of overhyping and underdelivering in the volatile crypto market. Knightsbridges Approach: Slow and Steady Wins the Race In contrast to the turbulent narratives of industry giants facing legal challenges, Knightsbridge stands firm in its commitment to a measured and compliant approach to digital assets. The companys focus on institutional products, coupled with a meticulous adherence to regulations, positions it as a beacon of stability in an industry grappling with uncertainty. While others rush headlong into the storm, Knightsbridges strategy may seem slow and steady, but it reflects a deliberate effort to build a sustainable future for the crypto industry. In an era of regulatory upheaval, this approach aims to weather the storm and contribute to the establishment of a secure and enduring crypto landscape. Shayne Heffernan YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Germany will provide 84,6 million in aid in the form of grants and loans to Armenia. The aid was announced by Germanys Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Niels Annen. Annen is in Yerevan to participate in the first session of the Armenian-German Intergovernmental meeting. Armenias Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan said the aid will be directed to vocational technical education and new projects in renewable energy. Kerobyan said that trade turnover between Armenia and Germany tripled in the past three years. The November 22 talks were the first intergovernmental negotiations between Armenia and Germany since 2014. I believe that this is a very clear message to the whole world that Germany and Armenia are opening a new road towards cooperation. Armenia is once again proving that it is committed to democracy, to a democratic society, Annen added. A separate aid is envisaged to the Armenian government for receiving and integrating the forcibly displaced persons of Nagorno-Karabakh. Investments will be made in the renewable energy sector, which will allow Armenia to lower electricity prices. We will focus on strengthening Armenias energy independence, which was highlighted in our cooperation negotiations, the German official said. A divided federal appeals court has found that private individuals and groups such as the NAACP do not have the ability to sue under a key section of the federal Voting Rights Act YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Iraq is an important and trusted partner for Armenia in the Middle East, President Vahagn Khachaturyan told President of Iraq Abdul Latif Rashid in Yerevan at a joint press conference. Your visit is indeed a historic one, because you are the first Iraqi president to pay an official visit to Armenia since the establishment of diplomatic relations. I am sure that your visit will open a new chapter in the Armenian-Iraqi relations, and will intensify the multi-sectoral cooperation between the friendly states, Khachaturyan said. President Khachaturyan was pleased to note that Armenias relations with Arab countries have been developing in an atmosphere of mutual trust and warm friendship ever since Armenia regained independence. Bilateral agenda is rather comprehensive and includes numerous areas of cooperation, from trade and economic relations up to educational-cultural, humanitarian and information technologies, the Armenian President said, adding that the rich past of Armenian-Arab historic-cultural interactions and the presence of the Armenian community in Iraq with a history of centuries are the solid foundation for dynamic development of relations. The Armenian nation is grateful to the friendly people of Iraq, especially for receiving the Armenian Genocide survivors and giving them shelter, Khachaturyan said, thanking the Iraqi government for its caring attitude towards the Armenian-Iraqis. Iraq is an important and trusted partner for Armenia in the Middle East. He added that Armenia is greatly interested in developing the bilateral agenda with Iraq, especially in the trade-economic area. We had productive talks with Mr. President Abdul Latif Rashid, during which we discussed a number of issues of mutual interest, Khachaturyan said. The presidents expressed certainty that trade volumes can be increased. They also attached importance to the Armenian-Iraqi intergovernmental meeting on economic cooperation that was held in September in Baghdad. The presidents also discussed cooperation in areas such as agriculture, renewable energy, infrastructure development, food and light industry, education, science and culture. Cooperation in high technologies and digitization was highlighted. In this regard I said that Armenia is ready to convey to the Iraqi side its successful experience of many years in this sector, the Armenian President said. The Armenian and Iraqi Presidents reiterated mutual readiness to strengthen interstate relations. As Longford County Council planners approve another telecommunication structure, private individuals opposing the proliferation of masts across the county are becoming increasingly vocal. In a little over a one year period masts have been either approved or progressed at a number of locations around the county including Lisnanagh, Edgeworthstown, Castlewilder, Abbeyshrule and Barrack Lane, Granard. Last week Longford County Council planners granted planning permission for a 24m high lattice tower with antennas, dishes and associated telecommunications equipment at Ballinalee, Saint Johnstown, Longford. Emerald Towers Limited were granted permission subject to eight conditions. The local authority received two submissions on the application; one from the Irish Aviation Authority and the other from the HSE. The planner's approval is subject to conditions including provisions for monitoring of electromagnetic energy and tree planting plans that incorporate the use of native deciduous and evergreen trees. A recent mast approval by local authority planners for a mast at Abbeylara has drawn significant protest from local residents. Community members have lodged an objection to a 60ft 'street pole solution, installed by Cignal Infrastructure Limited last January. A similar structure earmarked for Ballinamuck has sparked concerns from local Padraig O'Toole. Mr O'Toole contacted the Leader about the Cignal Infrastructure Limited plans: There are similar plans [to Abbeylara] for the same structure on the new footpath as you head down to the village from Gaigue Cross. He says the location of the planned telecommunication structure is not in keeping with the area: We recently had a celebration here in Ballinamuck to commemorate the Battle of Ballinamuck. The crowds were huge and we had Government Minister, Longford County Council officials and local councillors in attendance. Nobody seemed to notice this green cabinet, he said. The cabinet precedes the erection of an 18m street pole solution with multi-operator antenna. Mr O'Toole was one of three locals who objected to An Bord Pleanala about the plans. The national planning body upheld the local authority's approval. In their report they said the proposed development would not seriously injure the amenities of the area. The objector was unhappy with the decision: ABP didn't address the concerns we raised at all, it was basically a box ticking exercise and very disappointing. Mr O'Toole said the local authority should review the mast's location: They say these masts are needed and they probably are, but they should be erected in centres of population namely the actual village of Ballinamuck where most people live and not on the newly installed footpath used by children going to and from school, he concluded. It's often been noted that Livin Dred is a phenomenal drama company. They have created some of the most remarkable stage shows since they first turned the stage lights on for The Beauty Queen of Leenane in 2004. Since then they have afforded audiences remarkable theatre experiences; from 2009s Observe the Sons of Ulster, Marching Towards the Somme to the 2022 production of Tarry Flynn. Longford's proximity and affiliation has meant that all have been presented to local audiences. The most recent staging of Danti-Dan, which was directed by Livin Dred Artistic Director, Aaron Monaghan. With film and TV credits in The Banshees of Inisherin, Redemption of a Rogue, Assassins Creed, The Foreigner, Love/Hate as well as the accolade of one of the countrys fines stage actors, Monaghan's credential are particularly impressive. Aaron will be taking centre stage this Saturday as he assumes the role of SuperBogger. Livin Dred Theatre present the World Premiere of SuperBogger by award-winning writer Clare Monnelly. This is a one-man whirlwind performance, allowing Monaghan the scope to show his mastery of his craft. SuperBogger is the origin-story of Irelands first superhero, and a provocative deep dive into the fragmented mind of a modern, middle-aged parent. It tells the story of Barry West who has the perfect life; a wonderful wife, happy kids, a beautiful home, in the small country town where nothing ever happens. If only he knew why he is so utterly miserable. A chance encounter with a Radioactive Fox leaves him with strange new super-powers, which sets him on track to disturb the small-town peace and reignite some old small-town rivalries. Uniting the creative team of the sell-out success Charlies A Clepto, Super-Bogger is a tour-de-force blockbuster that will leave audiences on the edge of their seats. Directed by Emily Foran. Tickets for SuperBogger at Backstage Theatre Longford on Sunday, November 26 at 8pm are available on 0433347888 or backstage.ie TRIBUTES have been paid to Sharon Shannons manager and friend, John Dunford. Originally from Castlebar in Co Mayo, Dunford was well known to the Irish music scene as he worked alongside Sharon Shannon and Mike Scott of The Waterboys. John Dunford passed peacefully on November 18, surrounded by his loving family in the Blackrock Hospice, after battling with lung cancer. In a tribute posted on Facebook, Sharon Shannon said: I have some sad news in case some of you hadn't heard yet. Our great friend (my friend and manager for the last 35 years) John Dunford was diagnosed with lung cancer only 2 months ago and it advanced really quickly. He went into Hospice last Monday and he slipped away peaceful Saturday morning surrounded by his loving family. We are all heartbroken. Staff of the Dublin music venue, Whelans, also paid tribute to the passing of their friend. So saddened at the sudden passing of our friend John Dunford. John was Sharon Shannon's manager and was an influential character with the Waterboys, esp during the recording of Fishermans Blues. And what a character, so full of life and enthusiasm. We learned so much from him over the years, and were honoured to have known him. He will be sadly missed. Our deepest condolences to all John's family and friends and also to Sharon and the band, they posted alongside a picture of Dunford and Shannon. Predeceased by his parents Stephen and Bernie, his brothers Steve and Tom, and nephew Kevin. John lived every minute of his life to the full and was a generous, loving man who will be deeply missed by his wife Hilly, daughters Becky, Hannah, Katy and Emily, sons-in-law Niall and Craig, grandchildren Shay, Jude and Sid, brother Chuck, sister Derval, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, nieces, nephews, his entire extended family and many close friends. Johns career was varied and successful, including playing a leading role in the Irish music scene, teaching and lecturing, and a stretch as a salty sea captain. Crime By Long Island Published: November 22 2023 A 16-count indictment was unsealed charging 10 defendants with racketeering conspiracy, extortion, witness retaliation, and union-related crimes committed in an attempt to dominate the New York carting and demolition industries. A 16-count indictment was unsealed yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn charging 10 defendants with racketeering conspiracy, extortion, witness retaliation, and union-related crimes committed in an attempt to dominate the New York carting and demolition industries. All ten defendants are in custody and are scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge Ramon E. Reyes, Jr. In connection with the arrests, federal authorities executed search warrants, one of which resulted in the seizure of multiple firearms from an associate of the Gambino crime Family. In a coordinated operation, Italian law enforcement today arrested six organized crime members and associates who are charged with, among other crimes, mafia association and connected criminal offenses. One individual remains at large. The defendants are Joseph Lanni, also known as Joe Brooklyn and Mommino, an alleged captain in the Gambino organized crime family, Diego Danny Tantillo, Angelo Gradilone, also known as Fifi, and James LaForte, alleged Gambino soldiers, Vito Rappa, alleged U.S.-based Sicilian Mafia member and Gambino associate, Francesco Vicari, also known as Uncle Ciccio, alleged U.S.-based Sicilian Mafia associate and Gambino associate, and Salvatore DiLorenzo, Robert Brooke, Kyle Johnson, also known as Twin, and Vincent Minsquero, also known as Vinny Slick, alleged Gambino associates. Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, James Smith, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), Jonathan Mellone, Special Agent-in-Charge, Northeast Region, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General (DOL-OIG), Edward A. Caban, Commissioner, New York City Police Department (NYPD), and Elizabeth Crotty, Commissioner and Chair, New York City Business Integrity Commission (BIC), announced the charges . As alleged, for years, the defendants committed violent extortions, assaults, arson, witness retaliation and other crimes in an attempt to dominate the New York carting and demolition industries, stated United States Attorney Breon Peace. Todays arrests reflect the commitment of this Office and our law enforcement partners, both here and abroad, to keep our communities safe by the complete dismantling of organized crime. Mr. Peace expressed his appreciation to the New York Waterfront Commission, the Offices law enforcement partners in Italy, including the Prosecutor of Palermo, the Polizia di Stato, the Servizio Centrale Operativo, and the Squadra Mobile of Palermo. These defendants learned the hard way that the FBI is united with our law enforcement locally and internationally in our efforts to eradicate the insidious organized crime threat. Those arrested are alleged to have taken part in a racketeering conspiracy in an attempt to control the carting and demolition industries in the city. The FBI will continue to lead the fight against organized crime and ensure that individuals willing to cross the line face punishment in the criminal justice system stated FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Smith. Todays arrests should serve as a warning to others who believe they can operate in plain sight with apparent impunity the NYPD and our law enforcement partners exist to shatter that notion, stated NYPD Commissioner Edward A. Caban. And we will continue to take down members of traditional organized crime wherever they may operate. An important part of the mission of the Office of Inspector General is to investigate allegations of fraud involving labor unions and their affiliated employee benefit plans. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to investigate these types of allegations, said DOL-OIG Special Agent-in Charge Jonathan Mellone. Investigating these matters is at the heart of BICs mission to ensure the industries under our regulation do not pose a risk to public safety. These arrests demonstrate that the influence of organized crime will never go unchecked, stated BIC Commissioner and Chair Elizabeth Crotty. BIC thanks the NYPD, FBI, EDNY, and our other agency partners for their collaboration and excellent work on this case. As alleged in the governments court filings and summarized below, members and associates of the Gambino crime family used violent extortions, fraud, theft and embezzlement schemes to infiltrate the carting and demolition industries to enrich themselves and the Gambino crime family, including by laundering criminal proceeds. For example, in the midst of a financial dispute between Tantillo and the owners of Demolition Company 1, Tantillo and Johnson coordinated a violent hammer assault on the dispatcher for Demolition Company 1, which left the dispatcher bleeding and seriously injured. Extortions Related to the Carting and Demolition Industries Tantillo, Rappa, Vicari and Johnson engaged in a violent extortion conspiracy relating to the demand and receipt of money from John Doe 1, who operated a carting business in the New York City area. The extortion scheme involved threatening John Doe 1 with a bat, setting fire to the steps to John Doe 1s residence, attempting to damage John Doe 1s carting trucks, and violently assaulting an associate of John Doe 1. In addition, Tantillo and Vicari were captured on judicially-authorized wiretaps discussing threats they made to John Doe 1 and John Doe 1s father-in-law. On one call, Rappa stated that Vicari acted like the Last of the Samurai, describing how Vicari picked up a knife and directed John Doe 1s father-in-law to threaten to cut John Doe 1 in half in order to get John Doe 1 to make extortionate payments. After John Doe 1 ultimately made a payment of $4,000 to Vicari, Vicari and Rappa met and sent Tantillo a photo of Vicari raising a small champagne bottle, as in a toast. In addition, Tantillo, Brooke and Johnson engaged in two separate violent extortion schemes of Demolition Company 1 and its owners over purported debts owed to Tantillo and a company operated by Tantillo and Brooke. Brooke violently assaulted one of the owners on a street corner in midtown Manhattan. In another instance, as mentioned, Tantillo and Johnson coordinated a violent hammer assault on a dispatcher at Demolition Company 1, which left the dispatcher bleeding and seriously injured. Pictures of the victim dispatcher were then circulated to various people in the carting and demolition industries. Frauds and Union-Related Crimes in the Carting and Demolition Industries The defendants also committed a series of crimes to steal and embezzle from unions and employee benefit plans and rigged bids in the demolition and carting industries. As part of one such scheme, DiLorenzo provided Rappa with a no-show job at DiLorenzos demolition company so that Rappa could receive paychecks and union health benefits, among other benefits. Similarly, Tantillo arranged for Gradilone to receive a no-show job at a construction company with which Tantillo was associated, which enabled Gradilone to receive paychecks and union health benefits to which he was not entitled. Tantillo and Johnson also conspired to secure a no-show job for Johnson, so that Johnson could similarly receive union health benefits. Tantillo also embezzled from employee benefit plans by using laborers from a non-union company, Gane Services, Inc., to perform work for union companies operated by Tantillo, and failing to make contributions for such work as required by collective bargaining agreements. In addition, Tantillo, DiLorenzo and their co-conspirators conspired to rig bids for lucrative demolition contracts in New York City. Among other things, Tantillo and DiLorenzo coordinated that their companies exchange bidding information to secure a project on Fifth Avenue. Additional Charged Schemes The defendants also perpetrated a series of other crimes throughout the New York and New Jersey areas from 2017 through 2023. Their pattern of racketeering activity included additional extortions, retaliating against a federal witness, and money laundering, among other crimes, as detailed in court documents. For example, in September 2023, Lanni and Minsquero coordinated an assault on proprietors of a restaurant in New Jersey, including physically assaulting a woman at knifepoint. In addition, LaForte, having previously been convicted of a felony, illegally possessed a firearm in or about May 2023. The charges in the indictment are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The defendants variously face maximum sentences between 20 and 180 years imprisonment. The governments case is being handled by the Offices Organized Crime and Gangs Section. Assistant United States Attorneys Matthew R. Galeotti, Anna L. Karamigios, and Andrew M. Roddin are in charge of the prosecution, with assistance from Paralegal Specialist Emme Moosher. The Defendants : JOSEPH LANNI (also known as Joe Brooklyn and Mommino) Age: 52 Staten Island , New York DIEGO TANTILLO (also known as Danny and Daniel) Age: 48 Freehold , New Jersey ROBERT BROOKE Age: 55 New York, New York SALVATORE DILORENZO Age: 66 Oceanside , New York ANGELO GRADILONE (also known as Fifi) Age: 57 Staten Island , New York KYLE JOHNSON (also known as Twin) Age: 46 Bronx , New York JAMES LAFORTE (also known as Jimmy) Age: 46 New York , New York VINCENT MINSQUERO (also known as Vinny Slick) Age: 36 Staten Island , New York VITO RAPPA (also known as Vi) Age: 46 East Brunswick , New Jersey Local News By Chris Boyle Published: November 22 2023 The American Airpower Museum (AAM) has provided space for this event each year ever since the Museum opened its doors in 2000. On Thursday, December 7, 2023, American Airpower Museum hosts the annual Dropping of the Roses Pearl Harbor Memorial Ceremony conducted by the Long Island Air Force Association (LIAFA). The American Airpower Museum (AAM) has provided space for this event each year ever since the Museum opened its doors in 2000. December 7, 2023 is the 82nd Anniversary of the Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy Fleet based at Pearl Harbor. Description Welcome remarks by Col. (ret.) Bill Stratemeier, LIAFA (bstrat@optonline.net, 631-807-4624). A solemn ceremony remembering all who served at Pearl Harbor follows, including a special tribute to World War II veterans who will receive certificates from Long Island elected officials. In keeping with the Dropping of the Roses tradition began by Joseph Hydrusko in 1970, the blessing of 82 American Beauty Roses (including one extra white rose for 9-11) will commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Includes Color Guards from the Navy Reserves and veterans organizations. A Chaplain will conduct a Blessing of the Roses, Taps will be played and Roses presented to our pilot, who then departs AAMs ramp in a vintage military aircraft to drop the Roses over New Yorks Statue of Liberty. The public is welcome to attend our Dropping of the Roses Ceremony on December 7, 2023. Free admission between 10:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. After 12:00 p.m. $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and veterans, $10 for kids 5 to 12. No tickets or pre-registration necessary. Our program starts at 10:30 a.m. and closes at 12:00 p.m. Ceremonies such as this are important to help keep the history of World War II alive. Americans should never forget the contributions and sacrifices of our veterans. Media coverage strengthens the missions of AAM and LIAFA to honor veterans and educate the public about U.S. military history. By getting the word out, youre also helping AAM preserve our historic aircraft. Please Help Keep Em Flying! What? Dropping of the Roses at American Airpower Museum at Republic Airport Where? Hangar 3, 1230 New Highway, Farmingdale, NY When? December 7, 2023 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The American Airpower Museum is an aviation museum located on the landmarked former site of Republic Aviation at Republic Airport, Farmingdale, NY. The Museum maintains a collection of aviation artifacts and an array of operational aircraft spanning the many years of the aircraft factory's history. The Museum is a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Educational Foundation Chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. Local News By Chris Boyle Published: November 22 2023 Since 2017, the Foundation has awarded $190,000 in scholarships to 58 Berkeley College students. The Berkeley College Foundation honored 14 high-achieving students during its annual Scholarship Awards Reception on Wednesday, November 8, 2023. The Berkeley College Foundation honored 14 high-achieving students during its annual Scholarship Awards Reception on Wednesday, November 8, 2023, at Berkeley College in Woodland Park, NJ. Since 2017, the Foundation has awarded $190,000 in scholarships to 58 Berkeley College students. Congratulations to the 2023 cohort of scholarship recipients for taking the first steps in using Berkeley Colleges many resources to set themselves up for success, said John Phillips, Chair, Board of Directors, Berkeley College Foundation. As a member of the Foundations Board of Directors, it has been amazing to learn of the range of tools and programs available to assist Berkeley College students as they pursue their careers. During the program, Ellen Zitis, Executive Director, Berkeley College Foundation, thanked attendees and sponsors for supporting the scholarship recipients on their educational journeys. Zitis read inspiring excerpts from each honorees application essay. Nancy Robles, Scholarship Chair and a member of the Berkeley College Foundation Board of Directors, shared how Berkeley College prepared her for a successful career as President of Eastern Funding, LLC. These Berkeley College scholarship recipients are prepared to seize the opportunities of the future and reach their full potential, said Diane Recinos, EdD, President of Berkeley College. We know that once they embark on their journeys toward fulfilling and impactful careers, they will give back to their own communities. Winter 2023 Scholarship Recipients Joshua Burke of Manhattan, NY, pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration in Business Administration Management Saltanat Kamillya Meiram of Huntington, NY, pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Legal Studies Tiffany Richards of Ponoma, NY, pursuing Licensed Practical Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing Nyasha Williams of Freeport, NY, pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration in Business Administration Management Amanda Youngs of East Northport, NY, pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration in Business Administration Management Fall 2023 Scholarship Recipients Jennifer Ayala of Elmsford, NY, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design Jianni DeJesus of Roselle, NJ, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design Kelsey Hampton of Sulphur, LA, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design Arionna Kline of Cadillac, MI, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design Andre Krzyzanowski De Jesus of Elizabethport, NJ, pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing Communications Julian Marshall of Jamaica in Queens, NY, pursuing an Associate in Applied Science in Information Technology Management Henry McGrath of Wayne, NJ, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 3D Digital Visualization Wendy Pierre-Jean of West Haverstraw, NY, pursuing Licensed Practical Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing Emma Weldon of Medford, NY, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design Event Sponsors Title Sponsor: CohnReznick LLP Advocate: Ai Media Partners: Eastern Funding, LLC and Wilmington Trust Supporter: Hackensack Meridian Hackensack University Medical Center Friends of the Foundation: Allan Industries, Inc., Lakeland Bank, and Gaines, Goldenfarb & Associates Beer and Wine Sponsor: ShopRite Wines & Spirits of Clifton/Cuellar Family Markets About the Berkeley College Foundation The mission of the Berkeley College Foundation is to provide support and resources to students pursuing quality experiences in higher education. Scholarships are awarded to current and prospective students to help defray the cost of tuition and to enhance participation in educational enrichment activities. The Foundation also funds three Berkeley College campus food pantries in Newark, NJ, Woodland Park, NJ, and New York, NY. Based in NJ, the charitable organization received 501(c)(3) status in 2015. The website address is https://berkeleycollegefoundation.org. Music, Movies & Entertainment By Long Island Published: November 25 2023 Sony Pictures is looking for the next Karate Kid. Details are scant but Sony Pictures has put out a casting call for a new character to appear in a new Karate Kid movie starring OG karate kid Ralph Machhio and martial arts superstar Jackie Chan, who played Kung Fu master Mr. Han in the reboot of the Karate Kid in 2010. An open casting call for the role on the Sony website says they are looking for the next Karate Kid. A page on Sonys website says they are looking for an actor to portray Chinese or mixed-race Chinese and between 15 to 17-years-old, speaks fluent English with conversational Mandarin is a strong plus. He's smart, scrappy and a skilled martial artist, the call says. A video also posted to the Sony Pictures YouTube page has both Macchio and Chan talking about the casting call. Watch the video below: Video: YouTube. Ralph Machhio, who lives in Miller Place on Long Island, has seen a big success with the Netflix revival of the Karate Kid franchise reprising his role as Daniel LaRusso in the streaming services Cobra Kai, alongside former nemesis now frenemy, William Zabka who plays Johnny Lawrence. No details about the new movie are available yet and its unclear if Chan is playing a new character or some version of the role he played in the 2010 film version of the Karate Kid. Those interested in responding to the global casting call should visit KarateKidCasting.com or email: KarateKidCasting@sony.com. Crime By Chris Boyle Published: November 22 2023 Michael Meyers, 62, allegedly had communications with a 16-year-old minor on the online application Discord, and requested several sexually explicit photos from the victim. Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and James Smith, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), announced today the arrest of MICHAEL MEYERS. MEYERS is charged with sexual exploitation of a child and receipt and distribution of child pornography. MEYERS was presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith C. McCarthy in White Plains federal court. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: Michael Meyers alleged conduct is disturbing, especially given that Meyers was entrusted with the care of children for many years as an occupational therapist at a school. This Office will do everything in our power to protect the children of our community, and we will use every tool available to law enforcement to investigate and prosecute those who sexually exploit children. FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Smith said: Meyers allegedly used an online communication app to receive sexually explicit pictures from a minor child. The fact Meyers was employed in a school makes this alleged crime even more horrific. Both the bad guys and the American public need to know the FBI is committed to protecting the most vulnerable members of our society, and anyone attempting to sexually exploit a child can expect to end up in handcuffs and face serious punishment in the criminal justice system. According to the allegations in the Complaint filed in White Plains federal court and unsealed today:[1] A review of MEYERSs phone revealed the existence of communications between MEYERS and a 16-year-old minor (Victim-1) on the online application Discord. In connection with these communications, Victim-1 sent MEYERS several sexually explicit photos of Victim-1 at MEYERSs request. Records received by law enforcement indicate that MEYERS was employed as an occupational therapist at a school in Oceanside, New York, from on or about September 1, 1998. MEYERS, 62, of Port Jervis, New York, is charged with one count of sexual exploitation of a child, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, and one count of receipt and distribution of child pornography, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The minimum and maximum potential penalties are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the judge. Mr. Williams praised the efforts of the FBIs Hudson Valley Resident Agencys Safe Streets Task Force, the El Dorado Police Department, the Port Jervis Police Department, the St. Johns County Sheriffs Office, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the New York State Police, and the Putnam County Sheriffs Office. He added that the investigation is ongoing. Any individuals who believe they have information that may be relevant to this investigation should contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or https://tips.fbi.gov. The prosecution is being handled by the Offices White Plains Division. Assistant U.S. Attorney Shaun E. Werbelow is in charge of the prosecution. The charges contained in the Complaint are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. Local News By Chris Boyle Published: November 22 2023 November 25 Marks Small Business Saturday Throughout New York State; Supporting Local Businesses Helps to Create Jobs and Promote Regional Economic Growth. Governor Kathy Hochul today encouraged New Yorkers to support local and regional small businesses during the holiday season especially this Saturday, November 25, for "Small Business Saturday," which celebrates the dedication and spirit of the state's small business owners. Small businesses represent 98 percent of all New York State businesses, and support 40 percent of the private sector workforce. By shopping locally, New Yorkers invest revenue and tax dollars back into their communities, support jobs, and further promote regional economic growth. As the daughter of a small business owner, I know it takes hard work and perseverance to start and grow a business, Governor Hochul said. "Since the beginning of my administration, we have made historic investments in New Yorks small businesses, which provide jobs, boost local economies, and have a huge impact on communities across the state. This Small Business Saturday and every day, I encourage New Yorkers to shop locally. Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner Hope Knight said, "Small businesses are vital to our local economies; they are owned by our neighbors and friends and reinvest back into our communities. As we look ahead to Small Business Saturday, please remember to support your locally-owned businesses this weekend and all throughout the holiday season. New York State Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon said, Small businesses are the heartbeat of our diverse and robust economy. This holiday season and throughout 2024, shop small and shop often to support your neighbors and local economies statewide. Department of Taxation and Finance Acting Commissioner Amanda Hiller said, New York State relies on, supports and celebrates its small business sector. We offer a wide array of tax credits and incentives to help start and expand small businesses, and we are grateful for the contributions of small business owners not only this weekend, but throughout the year. New York State Agriculture Commissioner Richard A. Ball said, Small Business Saturday is a great opportunity to give back to our neighborhood businesses whose owners work so hard to bring their communities special products not only for the holidays, but all year long. At the Department, we work hard to support our farms and small food and beverage businesses, including through our NYS Grown & Certified and Taste NY programs, which helps us introduce them to new customers and tell their story. There are so many awesome New Yorkers making quality, unique products, from gift items to terrific food and beverages, and I encourage everyone to think local when shopping for the holidays. Stop by your closest Taste NY store, shop online at ShopTasteNY.gov, or visit your favorite local farm, food place, or craft beverage producer in support of New York agriculture. Under Governor Hochul's leadership, New York continues to encourage the state's small businesses to grow, thrive and maximize opportunities for success through various initiatives and agency programs. Since taking office, the Governor has established and enhanced an unprecedented 26 programs exclusively for small businesses, and committed nearly $1 billion to supporting small businesses through Empire State Development. New York is a one of the most entrepreneurial states in the nation and supports a network of Entrepreneurship Assistance Centers (EAC) throughout the state. These Centers provide instruction, training, technical assistance, and support services to New Yorkers who are interested in starting or recently started their own business, or entrepreneurs seeking to expand or strengthen their early-stage business. Empire State Development oversees more than $500 million in federal funding awarded through the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI), designed to help small and traditionally disadvantaged businesses succeed. ESD's Division of Small Business supports businesses with less than 100 employees through a portfolio of programs and initiatives that encourage growth. The Division's website provides resources that help to walk small business owners through the available programs, including the state's Business Express website that outlines various business requirements. The New York State Department of Labor offers a multitude of no-cost services for businesses of all sizes, including thousands of job postings on the NYSDOL website, access to tens of thousands of qualified candidates in its talent pool, career fairs and customized recruitment support, and human resources consultation services. More than 24,000 businesses each year work with NYSDOL to list their jobs, find the right candidates, access hiring and training incentives, obtain business tax credits and incentives, get help with one-on-one labor law and safety and health compliance services, and find layoff aversion resources. For more information, visit: https://www.labor.ny.gov/business. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets supports New York's agricultural industry, which is home to nearly 33,500 farms, 700 farmers' markets and farm stands, and thousands of small agribusinesses. The Department supports farms and food and beverage businesses by providing several critical services that enhance their business and increase productivity, profitability, and competitiveness. It also provides direct promotional opportunities through the NYS Grown & Certified program, which markets local growers and producers participating in safe food handling and environmental sustainability programs, helping them better compete in the marketplace. Additionally, the Taste NY program showcases New York farmers and food and beverage businesses at large public events and at more than 70 Taste NY locations across the State, including the State's Welcome Centers, where New Yorkers can find a gift for everyone on their holiday shopping list. New Yorks regional Welcome Centers Taste NY Markets and Taste NY stores around the state offer specialty items as well as pre-made and customized gift baskets, local foods, handmade items, and other unique products. Taste NY Markets are also a great place to purchase a wide range of foods and beverages, from charcuterie meats and cheeses to wine and cider, that can be used to create fresh, delicious holiday meals. For a complete list of Taste NY locations, hours of operation and contact information, visit the Taste NY website. The online marketplace, ShopTasteNY, offers opportunities to shop for New York agricultural products and gifts from the comfort of home. ShopTasteNY.com has holiday gift sets available for purchase, as well as its regular selection of products that highlight the quality and diversity of the state. Orders can be shipped anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. To better ensure gift orders arrive by December 24, it is recommended to have orders placed by Monday, December 18. This year, ShopTasteNY.com, Taste NY's online marketplace, will be offering several holiday weekend deals, including offering 50 percent off sitewide on Black Friday, Free Shipping and a Free Gift on Small Business Saturday and Sunday, and 30 percent off Gift Boxes and Free Shipping on Cyber Monday. How to Support Small Businesses Every Day Local News By Chris Boyle Published: November 22 2023 Legislation S.5026/A.6040 Enacts the Freelance Isnt Free Act Providing Payment Protections for Freelance Workers. Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation S.5026/A.6040, known as the Freelance Isnt Free Act, which provides protections, rights and opportunities for recourse to freelance workers experiencing non-payment for their services. Every single New Yorker deserves to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace, whether they're a full-time, part-time or freelance worker, Governor Hochul said. As freelance work becomes more and more common, we need laws have strong protections to ensure these individuals are paid fairly for the work they do. This new law is a major step forward for this critical sector of our workforce. Legislation S.5026/A.6040 extends protections to freelancers across all of New York State, building upon the NYC's Freelance Isn't Free Law, by adding oversight and enforcement from the New York State Attorney Generals Office. This law will protect freelancers by establishing a right to a written contract with certain terms, timely and full payment, and protection from retaliation and discrimination for exercising these rights. The Attorney General can bring actions to obtain remedies, including damages and civil penalties, on behalf of impacted freelance workers. Freelance workers would also have the right to pursue a private lawsuit to protect their rights under the new law. These expanded rights and protections will apply to covered freelancers being paid at least $800 for their services. The Department of Labor will provide model contracts on its website for freelancers and hiring parties to use with terms that comply with this new law. State Senator Andrew Gounardes said, "Whether it's our contract electricians or domestic workers or our freelance journalists, all workers across New York deserve full, clear, and enforced labor protections. That's why I wrote my bill, Freelance Isn't Free, and why I applaud Governor Hochul for signing it into law. Today, we are making it clear that we won't let workers be pushed around or denied their rights not in Brooklyn, not in Buffalo, and not anywhere across New York." Assemblymember Harry B. Bronson said, Freelancing is a major portion of our economy. Freelancers work very hard every day and prior to this legislation had very little protections if a client didnt pay them for their work. This legislation puts an end to this abuse by requiring a written contract with payment provisions. It also provides for collection procedures through a private right of action or through the Attorney Generals office if the client fails to live up to the contract. By signing this legislation into law, Governor Hochul is ensuring timely payment for freelancers so they may provide for themselves and their families Thank you Governor Hochul. Through this legislation the State is saying to all Freelancers you and your work is valued. Thank you Senator Gounardes as well as the Freelancers Union and all the advocates for your work for this common sense approach to ending the economic discrimination against Freelancers. Freelancers Union Executive Director Rafael Espinal said, "Today is a good day to be a freelancer in the state of New York. This Thanksgiving we are thankful that New York State is committing to protections for freelancers under the law. We have the utmost confidence that NYS will lead the way in holding bad actors accountable and uplifting the independent workforce into the future. We are grateful to Governor Hochul for signing this bill into law and for our champions, bill sponsors Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assemblymember Harry Bronson for their commitment through its inception. National Writers Union President Larry Goldbetter said, Every worker should be paid on time for their work, yet far too few freelancers have access to this basic right. We are grateful to Governor Hochul for taking action to expand worker protections for tens of thousands of freelancers, and look forward to building on Freelance Isn't Free to combat freelance wage theft in New York and across the country. We also want to thank Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assembly Member Harry Bronson for their years of persistence in championing this bill and fighting for freelancers, who will now have far more resources to collect the payment they're owed." YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. President Vahagn Khachaturyan said he presented to his Iraqi counterpart Abdul Latif Rashid the Crossroads of Peace project at their meeting on November 22 in Yerevan. Speaking at a joint press conference with the Iraqi president, the Armenian president said they discussed issues of partnership around regional and international matters. We emphasized the need for dialogue around regional security environment and joining efforts in conditions of the processes taking place in the international arena and the resulting challenges. I presented to my respected counterpart the Crossroads of Peace project developed by the Armenian government, Khachaturyan said. He said that Armenia is interested in the unblocking of regional economic and transport connections based on the principles of sovereignty, equality, jurisdiction and reciprocity. During the meeting the presidents also attached importance to strengthening cooperation as part of fighting all manifestations of international terrorism, and making joint efforts aimed at countering illegal migration. The Crossroads of Peace project is about creating new infrastructures or improving the scope and quality of the existing ones. Armenia is ready to establish five checkpoints on the Armenia-Azerbaijan borders for road infrastructures including in Kayan, Sotk, near Karahunj, near Angeghakot , and Yeraskh. Also, to establish two checkpoints on the Armenia-Turkiye border in Akhurik and Margara for road infrastructures. Armenia is prepared to ensure communications between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkiye, by restoring four railway sections in the territory of the Republic of Armenia. Armenia is ready to restore the Nrnadzor-Agarak railway section and to establish checkpoints near the borders, to restore the railway section from Yeraskh to the border of Nakhchivan and to establish a checkpoint in Yeraskh, to restore the depleted parts of the railway from Gyumri to the border of Turkiye and to establish a checkpoint in Akhurik. Also, Armenia is prepared to restore the depleted parts of railway from Hrazdan to Kayan and to establish a checkpoint in Kayan. This will create new links between all the countries of the region. The principles of the Crossroads of Peace are: all infrastructures including roads, railways, airways, pipelines, cables and power lines operate under the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the countries through which they pass; each country, through its state institutions, in its territory ensures border control, customs control and security of the infrastructures, including the passage through its territory of vehicles, cargo and people; All infrastructures can be used for both international and domestic transportation; countries use all the infrastructures on the basis of reciprocity and equality, and in accordance with these principles border and customs controls can be facilitated through mutual consent and agreement. As missing sections of railways and roads are restored and infrastructures unlocked, it will become possible to establish a seamless connection between the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea via a consolidated, regional railway network and via the North-South and East-West roads. The Government of the Republic of Armenia reaffirms its commitment to contribute its share to the regions peace and stability, and to make practical measures to build the Crossroads of Peace. Crime By Chris Boyle Published: November 22 2023 Jalil McIntyre, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Barbadoro to 24 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release. A New York man was sentenced today in federal court in Concord for transporting stolen goods from Home Depot and Lowes across state lines, U.S. Attorney Jane E. Young announces. Jalil McIntyre, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Barbadoro to 24 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release. McIntyre was also ordered to pay $204,969.02 in restitution, of which $179,606.25 is payable to Lowes and $25,362.77 is payable to Home Depot. On July 31, 2023, McIntyre pleaded guilty to Transportation of Stolen Goods. McIntyres co-defendant, Dushun Jackson, pled guilty on September 15, 2023, and is currently in federal custody. Jackson is scheduled to be sentenced on December 28, 2023. Organized theft rings cause significant financial losses to the retail industry, which ultimately impacts consumers, said U.S. Attorney Young. Todays sentence sends a strong message that federal law enforcement will enforce laws protecting the retail industry from organized theft, with federal felony convictions and imprisonment as a consequence. Jalil McIntyre didnt think twice about stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in high-end merchandise from home improvement retailers all over New England to pad his pockets, and today, he learned there are serious consequences for such brazen criminal conduct, said Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division. Organized retail theft costs businesses, retailers, and consumersand puts the public at riskwhich is why the FBI and our law enforcement partners are doing everything we can to combat it. McIntyre and Jackson traveled to Lowes and Home Depots across the northeastern United States, including New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. They stole high-value commercial items, such as circuit breakers. They were seen on surveillance footage grabbing products off shelves, placing them into large plastic bags, and walking out of the stores. In total, they stole $204,969.02 worth of products across 24 separate thefts. They also attempted to steal another $46,619.07 worth of products during 11 additional unsuccessful thefts. The stolen products were brought back to New York, where both McIntyre and Jackson lived. Crime By Chris Boyle Published: November 22 2023 Douglas also Admitted his Role in Distribution of Fentanyl Laced Cocaine that Led to Four Deaths in the Summer of 2021. Earlier today, in federal court in Central Islip, Marquis Douglas, a narcotics trafficker who operated a drug business that was responsible for the distribution of large quantities of cocaine and fentanyl, along with other illicit substances throughout the North Fork of Long Island, pleaded guilty before United States District Judge Joanna Seybert to conspiring to distribute controlled substances and the distribution of controlled substances resulting in death. Douglas was charged in June 2022. Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, announced the guilty plea. Today, Douglas has admitted his role in a large scale narcotics distribution operation as well as his role in the distribution of fentanyl laced cocaine that led to the deaths of four men in a single day, stated United States Attorney Peace. We hope todays guilty plea begins to bring a measure of solace to the victims families. Mr. Peace also extended his thanks to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office, the Suffolk County District Attorneys Office, the Riverhead Police Department, the Southold Police Department, the Shelter Island Police Department, and the New York State Police for their assistance in the investigation. According to court filings and statements made during todays proceeding, Douglas orchestrated a years long conspiracy to distribute over five kilograms of cocaine, one kilogram of heroin, 280 grams of crack cocaine, 40 grams of fentanyl and a quantity of fentanyl analogues. In August of 2021, Douglas operation distributed a quantity of cocaine laced with a fentanyl analogue in Greenport, New York. When this cocaine was re-distributed at the street level, it ultimately led to four fatal overdoses on a single day across Greenport and Shelter Island. When apprehended in Suffolk County on May 5, 2022, Douglas was found in possession of large, sellable quantities of cocaine and fentanyl. When sentenced, Douglas faces up to life in prison. In the early morning hours on Wednesday, Israel and Hamas separately announced an agreement to halt fighting for a four-day period so that Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners can be exchanged. The hostage deal, the first of the war, would not begin until Thursday at the earliest and would represent the longest pause in fighting since Hamas attack on Oct. 7. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the deal on Wednesday in a statement. The agreement calls for 50 Israeli hostages, mostly women and children, to be returned in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners something Hamas termed as a humanitarian truce. It will take place over a period of four days with each 10 abductees returned resulting in one additional day of respite, according to Israel. The agreement still needs to be reviewed by Israeli courts and until the actual exchanges begin, the situation remains unstable. The Israeli government is committed to bringing all the abductees home, Israels statement read. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, under which at least 50 abductees women and children will be released over a span of four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting. Aside from returning 150 Palestinian prisoners, Israel will also provide additional fuel and humanitarian aid in Gaza. Then fighting is scheduled to resume, according to Israel, to complete the elimination of Hamas. The Israeli government, the IDF and the security forces will continue the war to return all the abductees, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that Gaza does not renew any threat to the State of Israel, Israel said in the statement. The ceasefire, which was completed with Qatar and Egypt acting as mediators, will reportedly include a halt on the ground as well as Israeli air operations over southern Gaza. After many days of difficult and complex negotiations, we announce, with the help and blessing of God, that we have reached a humanitarian truce, Hamas said in a statement on Telegram. The provisions of this agreement were formulated according to the vision of the resistance and its determinants that aim to serve our people and enhance their steadfastness in the face of aggression. In all, Hamas captured approximately 240 Israeli hostages leaving another 190 or so hostages unspoken for in this first agreement. Hamas killed upwards of 1,200 people in that Oct. 7 attack and Israel has responded with air and ground assaults that have resulted in the death of at least 10,000 more in southern Gaza over the last six weeks. In a statement, President Biden said Wednesdays deal should bring home additional American hostages held by Hamas, and drove home the point that this deal should be carried through in its entirety and its important all aspects of this deal be fully implemented. I welcome the deal to secure the release of hostages taken by the terrorist group Hamas during its brutal assault against Israel on October 7th, Biden wrote. I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. Photo: IDF Chief of the General Staff Herzi HaLevi with reserve soldiers in the Gaza Strip, November 21. (IDF) Israel considered a ceasefire with Hamas on Tuesday evening, November 21. The multi-day ceasefire is mediated via Qatar and reportedly includes fifty or more hostages being freed in exchange for Israel releasing prisoners. Israel and Hamas have been at war since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people in Israel. After three weeks of air strikes, Israel launched a ground operation in Gaza on October 27. The offensive has been ongoing for almost four weeks. Israel has lost 390 soldiers, including on October 7, and in the month and a half of fighting since then. Israel continued to strike Hamas over the last day. The IDF said 250 targeted were struck between November 20 and 21. Among the targets struck were dozens of terrorists, rocket launchers, and terrorist infrastructure, the IDF said on Tuesday morning. These included a rocket launch site and other terror infrastructure. The IDF also found a weapons stockpile in a civilian home and uncovered an anti-tank missile hidden in a babys crib, the IDF said. In the northern part of the Gaza Strip, the IDFs 162nd Division pushed into Jabalya, a built-up area adjacent to Gaza City. Israel has struck terror targets here over the last month and a half. On November 21, the IDF destroyed three tunnels in this area. The IDF also said that troops from the Nahal Brigade killed dozens of terrorists over the past few days with support of tanks and UAVs. As in other areas, the IDF said they found weapons in private homes. Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who visited northern Israel on Saturday, November 18, went to the headquarters of the Gaza division on November 21. He was able to observe IDF operations in Gaza through screens in an observation room, his office said in a statement. Our forces are fighting on the frontline, and they are supported by [troops] in the Nahal Oz observation room, which is located in the division HQ. The Nahal Oz observation room was moved to the Reim base, where the Gaza division headquarters is located, after the actual Nahal Oz observation post was overrun and damaged by Hamas on October 7. Although the post was retaken, several observation soldiers were killed and taken hostage. One of them was freed in late October, and the body of a second IDF observer soldier was found near Shifa Hospital on November 16. Gallants reference to the observation room came in the context of this background about the impact the war had on IDF observers, who are mostly female soldiers. Our troops are maneuvering deep inside [Gaza], they are doing excellent work. Their determination and precision, and the combination of ground, aerial, and naval forces working based on accurate intelligence, leads to extraordinary achievements. I commend the IDF, ISA, and all the security forces who are doing excellent work, Gallant said on November 21. Gallant said the next decisions in Gaza would be difficult, referring to the possible hostage deal. I am aware of the pain that the families are experiencing and I would like to tell you that for me returning the hostages is a primary goal and I will do everything possible to achieve it, he said. IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi also visited IDF soldiers on November 21. He went to meet with reservists who had been fighting in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. The way ahead is still long. We must be determined to take this route and deliver maximum achievements, to dismantle Hamas militarily and governmentally, to establish improved security in the communities in the southern region, and to bring back the hostages, Halevi said. Focus on the ceasefire in Israel came as Hezbollah increased attacks in northern Israel. Hezbollah has increased attacks over the last several days, which appears to indicate a trend. On Tuesday, attacks began in the morning with anti-tank missile launches toward Metula, a border town in northern Israel. Later, the IDF said, aircraft identified and struck three armed terrorist cells in the area of the border with Lebanon. In addition, IDF fighter jets struck a number of Hezbollah terror targets, including military infrastructure and structures used for directing terrorist activity. Hezbollah fired mortars at Israel, and sirens sounded in Israel in communities near the northern border overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The IDF said there was a drone or UAV infiltration and more anti-tank fire in the evening. Lebanese pro-Iranian Al-Mayadeen media claimed two of its reporters were killed in an IDF strike in Lebanon. Israeli authorities didnt comment on the incident. Other reports also said a deputy commander of Hamas in Lebanon was killed on Tuesday. These incidents, along with the Iran-backed Houthis hijacking a ship over the weekend in the Red Sea, have led to tensions on other fronts for Israel. Reporting from Israel, Seth J. Frantzman is an adjunct fellow at FDD and a contributor to FDDs Long War Journal. He is the acting news editor and senior Middle East correspondent and analyst at The Jerusalem Post. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. Smoke billows from northern Gaza during clashes on Wednesday, November 22. (Seth J. Frantzman) Smoke billowed from the northern Gaza strip as fighting persisted Wednesday ahead of a ceasefire deal expected on November 23. The dark black smoke which came out of a neighborhood in Gaza City was bookended by additional evidence of clashes, from the sound of artillery fire to flares in the sky, while a helicopter kept watch overhead. Hamas continued firing rockets into southern Israel, as confirmed by the two Iron Dome interceptors that I saw streak over Sderot on Wednesday afternoon. Both intercepted targets overhead. Sirens also sounded in Israels southern city of Eilat on Wednesday due to a cruise missile threat, the second time the Israel Air Force used aircraft to down cruise missiles after F-35s downed one in early November. The Iran-backed Houthis have threatened Eilat with cruise missiles, drones and ballistic missiles since October 7. This week, the group hijacked a ship and vowed to continue hijacking ships in the Red Sea that are linked to Israel. Sderot, like other communities near Gaza, is near-deserted. It was evacuated during the early days of the war. Nevertheless, more civilian traffic was visible Wednesday, as people shopped at a local supermarket. This week, the two regional councils composed of rural communities near Sderot both rejected claims that people might soon return to the periphery of Gaza. They said any return would be conducted gradually and each community would return at its own pace. Some communities were badly damaged during Hamas October 7 attack in Israel that resulted in more than 1,200 civilians being killed and another 240 taken as hostages. The ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is expected to yield the release of some hostages over the next several days. The deal could then be extended. It remains to be seen if the deal will work as expected. Israels Defense Minister Yoav Gallant held a call with his French counterpart, Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu, Gallants office said Wednesday. Minister Gallant briefed Minister Lecornu on the framework reached for the release of Israeli hostages kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist organization to Gaza. Minister Gallant emphasized that the return of all the hostages to their homes, is both a national priority and a stated goal of the war a goal that may only be achieved via continued military pressure against Hamas, Gallants office said. Echoing demands made by Israel during ceasefire negotiations, Gallant called for the international community and NGOs like the Red Cross to be responsible and visit the hostages in Gaza, something that has not yet happened since they were taken on October 7. Gallant and his French counterpart also discussed tensions in the north with Hezbollah. Minister Gallant noted that the State of Israel will not tolerate threats against its citizens and will take the measures required to defend our northern communities, his office said. Gallant spoke after Israels Iron Dome was activated overnight to target a drone that flew from Lebanon into Israel. The IDF also used fighter jets to strike terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon: IDF aircraft together with artillery struck a Hezbollah terrorist cell that fired from Lebanese territory toward the area near Hanita in northern Israel, the IDF said. The IDF shared additional evidence of terrorist tunnels underneath Shifa hospital, Gazas largest, which the IDF secured last week. In new footage released by the IDF, hostages are seen being taken to the hospital by Hamas on October 7. On Wednesday, the IDF also shared images of a terror tunnel route it said extends from under the hospital building and was dozens of meters of a tunnel system which also passes under the Qatari Building in the hospital complex, as well as rooms where Hamas terrorists can operate and stay for extended periods. IDF special units such as the Oketz Unit that works with canines and engineers were involved in exposing the tunnel. Air conditioned rooms were found in the tunnel, and one tunnel shaft extended to a nearby civilian home. In another area of Gaza, the IDF said the Givati Brigade located more tunnels. The unit also found models of an IDF vehicle and the Gaza security fence, apparently used by Hamas for training. The IDF said Wednesday that soldiers have exposed and destroyed approximately 400 terror tunnel shafts since the ground operation began on October 27. IDF troops conducted targeted raids in the area of Beit Hanoun. During the operation, the troops located numerous weapons, AK-47 rifles, it said. Reporting from Israel, Seth J. Frantzman is an adjunct fellow at FDD and a contributor to FDDs Long War Journal. He is the acting news editor and senior Middle East correspondent and analyst at The Jerusalem Post. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. Footage of Houthi forces hijacking the ship Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea yesterday. pic.twitter.com/PSFLpV4FLA OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) November 20, 2023 The Houthis, Tehrans terror proxy in Yemen, boarded and seized the Israeli-linked Galaxy Leader cargo ship via Mi-171Sh helicopter in the Red Sea on Nov. 19, taking 25 crewmembers captive. This piracy, which follows recent Houthi missile and drone attacks against Israel, is part of a larger strategy by the Islamic Republic of Iran to undermine maritime security and American interests while attempting to encircle, attack, and exhaust Israel. The Houthis are a Yemen-based group that instigated a civil war in 2014 when they marched on the countrys capital of Sanaa, forcing the president of Yemens internationally recognized government, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to flee the following year. In 2015, when Saudi Arabia intervened at the head of a coalition including other Gulf states to reinstate the government, Iran sensed an opportunity and increased its support for the Houthis. Consistent with Irans decades-long regional terror proxy strategy, this support for the Houthis enabled Tehran to threaten and undermine Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates while avoiding direct consequences. Iran smuggled small arms, anti-tank missiles, anti-ship missiles, drones, and even ballistic missiles to the Houthis. Between 2015 and 2021, the Houthis fired over 400 missiles and 850 drones at Saudi Arabia, according to the Riyadh-led coalition. For years, Iranian support served as a primary driver prolonging the war in Yemen, reducing the incentive for the Houthis to negotiate in good faith and fueling the horrible humanitarian crisis. After years of Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and heavy Houthi casualties during the groups failed assault on the strategic city of Marib, the two sides finally agreed to a truce in April 2022. Riyadh agreed in March 2023 to a Beijing-brokered deal with Tehran that reinforced the fragile ceasefire between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia. The dramatic reduction in fighting and attacks on Saudi territory was good news for Riyadh. But de-escalation in Irans proxy war with Saudi Arabia allowed the Houthis to regenerate their combat capabilities. The detente also enabled Tehran and the Houthis to focus on targeting Israel. That, in turn, strengthened Tehrans so-called ring of fire around Israel, a network of terror proxies that are part of a plan to exterminate the Jewish state. With that strategic context in mind, it hardly surprising that the Houthis have attacked Israel following Hamass October 7 massacre in Israel. After all, the official motto of the Houthis is: God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel. Curse the Jews, victory for Islam. As if on cue, even as Hezbollah attempted to divert Israeli attention and resources from Gaza by launching attacks on Israels northern border, the Houthis started conducting attacks on Israel from the south on October 19 by launching a barrage of drones and cruise missiles toward Israel. The USS Carney, an American destroyer, intercepted 19 of the drones and four of the cruise missiles, while Saudi Arabia reportedly intercepted one of the cruise missiles (a notable manifestation of common Saudi and Israeli interests). Other Houthi attacks include an attack with a medium-range ballistic missile on Oct. 31. Now, the Houthis have used another one of Irans preferred tactics seizing or attacking ships linked to Israel. A recent report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies found that Iran harassed, attacked, or seized 26 ships between January 2021 and July 2023. Many of these ships were tenuously linked to Israel. The Israeli-linked ships were often not crewed by Israelis, not operated by Israeli companies, or traveling to or from Israel but had some indirect connection with an Israeli businessperson. This appears to be the case with the Galaxy Leader, which is reportedly Bahamian-flagged, British-owned, Japanese operated, and had Philippine, Bulgarian, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Mexican crewmembers, demonstrating the wide-ranging impacts of Irans aggression. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) remarked, This is not an Israeli ship, although records indicate the ship is associated with Ray Car Carriers, a company founded by the Israeli businessman Abraham Rami Ungar. Such nuance may not mean much to the Houthis, who are eager to find every opportunity to target Israeli interests, real or perceived. We will sink your ships, the Houthis declared in Arabic, English, and Hebrew on a graphic released on November 14 showing an Israeli commercial vessel in flames. The Houthis and their terror patron in Tehran seek to divert Israeli resources away from the campaign against Hamas. The missile and drone attacks have consumed interceptors that could be used to prepare for a confrontation with Hezbollah, and attacks on ships could divert some finite Israeli intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets to monitor the Red Sea. These attacks likely also send a message to Saudi Arabia that its cities could once again face barrages of missiles and drones. Attacks on shipping could also increase calls for a ceasefire by countries or entities that would otherwise be largely uninterested in the Gaza conflict, as disruptions to shipping can have global economic implications. Indeed, ships are already reported to have diverted their course in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, a situation that could become much worse. Combined with attacks from Hezbollah and from Iran-backed Iraqi and Syrian militias, it is clear that Iran and its proxies are trying to spread out the IDFs forces and create enough global pressure to stop the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza to prevent Hamass decimation. Iran has spent decades building the capability to attack its adversaries in the Middle East from multiple axes at the same time. By training and supporting numerous proxies, Iran is able to pressure its adversaries while avoiding retaliation. This strategy seeks to keep Israel, the United States, and its Arab partners harried and divided while Iranian leaders sit in safety able to dial up or down attacks at times and places of their choosing. The strategy of using proxy terror puppets to conduct attacks is unlikely to change until the puppet master in Tehran begins to feel more direct consequences for the continued aggression. Bradley Bowman is the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, where Ryan Brobst is a senior research analyst. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. Funeral of eight Popular Mobilization Forces members killed in a US airstrike yesterday. The crowd chants America is the great satan. pic.twitter.com/SHEW3BROVX Joe Truzman (@JoeTruzman) November 23, 2023 The U.S. military attacked Iranian-backed militias at two sites south of Baghdad on Wednesday after its base in western Iraq was targeted with close-range ballistic missiles. When announcing the strikes, the U.S. military accused Iran of directly carrying out attacks on U.S. forces. According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), U.S. air assets conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq. A U.S. military official told FDDs Long War Journal that the facilities were located in Jurf al-Nasr (formerly known as Jufr al-Sakhar), a town about 60 miles south of Baghdad that is a known hub for Iranian-backed militias. Eight Hezbollah Brigades fighters were killed in the strikes, according to the militias. The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, including the one in Iraq on November 21, which involved use of close-range ballistic missiles, CENTCOM stated. The attack is the second by the U.S. military in Iraq in 24 hours, and takes place as the militias have stepped up attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. On Tuesday, a U.S. AC-130 gunship destroyed a vehicle that was involved in attacks against U.S. forces based at the Ain al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province. One member of Hezbollah Brigades, one of the larger and more dangerous militias created by Iran, was confirmed killed in the strike. There have been over 60 attacks on U.S. based in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. Nearly all of those attacks have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), which was established in 2020 to serve as a clearinghouse for smaller Iran-backed militias. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has presented U.S. airstrikes as an effort to establish deterrence against Iran and the militias. The U.S. military has now launched five strikes against Iranian-backed militias three in Syria and two in Iraq over the last month since Oct. 27. But each U.S. attack has been followed by more from the militias. These smaller militias themselves are offshoots of or fronts for the established and prominent militias such as Hezbollah Brigades, Asaib Ahl-al Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada. Many of these militias also are key units within the Popular Mobilization Forces, which is an official and independent Iraqi security branch. The IRI adds another layer of plausible deniability for Iran, which directs and supports these proxy militias behind the scenes. Iran uses these militias to increase their influence in Iraq and Syria as well as to pressure the U.S. military to leave both countries. These militias are also committed to the destruction of Israel and serve as a force multiplier and strategic reserve for Iran as the war rages in Gaza and fighting intensifies on Israels borders. Joe Truzman is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal focused primarily on Palestinian militant groups and Hezbollah. Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 22, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan received Niels Annen, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany. The Prime Minister expressed satisfaction with the resumption of the negotiations on Armenian-German development cooperation, which had not happened since 2014. Nikol Pashinyan highlighted the inclusion of Armenia in the framework of the "BMZ-2030" reform strategy by the German government. According to the Prime Minister, recently a new dynamic has been recorded in the relations between the two countries, there is a great potential to expand cooperation and the Armenian government is interested in fully realizing it, the Prime Ministers Office said in a readout. Niels Annen noted that the resumption of the Armenian-German intergovernmental negotiations is a conscious decision of the German government, taking into account the steps and reforms aimed at the development and strengthening of democracy in Armenia. Mr. Annen added that within the framework of the "BMZ-2030" reform strategy, it is planned to implement projects with Armenia in the areas of economic promotion, energy, vocational education, tourism and other directions. According to the Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, the above-mentioned programs will contribute to increasing the interest of German companies to operate in Armenia. The humanitarian problems of more than 100,000 forcibly displaced people from Nagorno-Karabakh as a result of Azerbaijan's ethnic cleansing policy, as well as the steps taken by the Armenian government to overcome them were discussed. Niels Annen noted that he had a meeting with people forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh in Ararat region and added that the German government is preparing to provide the necessary assistance to contribute to the solution of existing problems. The sides exchanged ideas on the processes taking place in the region. (Alliance News) - Aurrigo International PLC on Wednesday said that it has signed an agreement with International Consolidated Airlines Group SA for the deployment and demonstration of its autonomous aviation solutions. Aurrigo is a Coventry, England-based autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle technology provider, while IAG is the Anglo-Spanish owner of British Airways and Iberia. The partnership, which is for the provision of Aurrigo's solutions at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, is expected to follow a similar phasing to the firm's agreement with IAG in the UK. It will start with an evaluation and simulation phase in November, running for three months, before being followed by a demonstration phase and an initial deployment. Aurrigo expects this will then lead to the deployment of a small fleet in the first half of 2025. The deployment of Aurrigo's vehicles under the agreement will be undertaken at CVG, and valued at USD290,000. "This partnership is an important milestone for us as it will be our first aviation operation in the US - a key target market. We're pleased to be partnering with IAG beyond the UK and to be building a presence at a key international airport," said Chief Executive Officer David Keene. Aurrigo shares were trading 0.5% higher at 103.00 pence each in London on Wednesday afternoon. By Holly Beveridge, Alliance News reporter Comments and questions to newsroom@alliancenews.com Copyright 2023 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved. (Alliance News) - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol committed to deepening ties with Britain on the second day of his state visit on Wednesday, signing a new diplomatic accord with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Following the grand royal welcome on Tuesday, Yoon got down to business on Wednesday, holding talks with Sunak as well as opposition leader Keir Starmer, who is tipped to become Britain's next leader at an election expected in 2024. While meeting Sunak, the two signed a new pact the "Downing Street Accord" according to a post from Sunak's Downing Street office on X, formerly Twitter. The agreement "deepens our long-standing relationship" and steps up "cooperation on technology, defence and security," it said. The two leaders also agreed to start negotiations on a beefed up UK-South Korea free trade deal, according to Downing Street. Earlier, Yoon addressed a business forum attended by chief executives and other representatives from both countries, which kickstarted talks on the new trade deal. Yoon has said the visit is "a springboard" for greater cooperation, with South Korea aiming to expand business opportunities and high-tech industry supply chains as well as bolster diplomatic and defence ties. Addressing British lawmakers in parliament on Tuesday the first day of his three-day visit he said their bilateral relations "will be reborn as true global strategic partners". Wednesday's meetings follow the formal royal welcome Yoon and his wife, First Lady Kim Keon Hee, received on their first day, which saw London roll out the red carpet. King Charles III threw a lavish state banquet at Buckingham Palace attended by an array of VIPs, including other UK royals and K-pop stars Blackpink to end a packed day of pomp-filled ceremony. Earlier, the first couple of South Korea enjoyed a private lunch at the palace and visited Westminster Abbey, where Charles was formally crowned monarch six months ago. Yoon is the first foreign leader hosted by Charles since his May coronation, with the visit coming as Britain forges stronger post-Brexit ties with fast-growing economies in the Indo-Pacific region. The new accord signed Wednesday follows the signing of similar partnerships with Singapore and Japan earlier this year. Meanwhile, Britain and South Korea are set to broaden cooperation on AI, cybersecurity, nuclear energy and defence, as well as working to tackle North Korea's threat, according to Yoon. The bid to upgrade their free trade arrangements follow the launch last year of a consultation on an enhanced deal. The existing accord replicates the EU's agreement with South Korea, and London is eager to showcase the benefits of having left the bloc by striking free trade agreements with Indo-Pacific nations. UK Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch launched the talks with her South Korean counterpart at the business forum taking place alongside the state visit. The two countries are set to announce GBP21 billion of investments in green energy and infrastructure projects across the UK at the forum, according to her ministry. Badenoch said an enhanced deal would boost Britain's vital services sector, while also creating "new opportunities" for UK exports in the food and luxury goods sectors. Total trade in goods and services between the UK and South Korea was GBP16.1 billion in the year to the end of June. Defence cooperation will also be part of the new accord, with both countries pledging to step up joint training and operations "to create the most comprehensive exercise regime between the UK and any partner other than the US". The pact comes as North Korea launched what it claims is a spy satellite, Seoul said Tuesday, in Pyongyang's third attempt this year to get a military eye in the sky. By James Pheby source: AFP Copyright 2023 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Luc Frieden on Wednesday presented his programme for the next five years to the newly formed Chamber of Deputies Luc Frieden addressed Luxembourg's parliament for the first time as the country's new prime minister on Wednesday, putting digitalisation, taxes and a push to cut red tape at the heart of his inaugural speech. The parliament has been fully constituted since Tuesday, when 21 deputies, including eight former ministers, joined their parties in the Chamber of Deputies. Frieden, who was sworn in on Friday, stood in front of the 60 lawmakers to present the CSV-DPs coalition programme for the next five years. Though the deputies were meant to be the first ones to see the agreement, it didnt really work out that way, Frieden said during his address. The document had been leaked by news site Reporter on Friday morning. Also read: Housing, education, family policy: snapshot of the coalition agreement Less red tape The cutting of red tape, digitalisation and modernisation: these were the three concepts that stood out throughout Friedens speech. Simplifying administrative processes for companies, residents and public institutions alike will be one of the ambitions of the CSV-DP coalition, Frieden said, and would speed up efforts to tackle the housing crisis and digital and green transitions. I have asked all ministers to ensure that the administrative procedures in their administrations that have arisen over the years - often for good reasons - are reviewed and shortened and to give guidelines to the administrations to create a modern, citizen-friendly, digital and fast state, Frieden said. A once only approach will stop companies and citizens from having to complete several forms containing the same information. Likewise, when it comes to the construction sector, silence equals agreement meaning that if nobody opposes a building project, it will be able to proceed. The new prime minister also spoke of the governments ambition to create a modern Luxembourg where progress must be made in digitalisation, renewable energy, infrastructure and the healthcare sector. Tax plans As Frieden said at the start of his address - which was delivered mainly in Luxembourgish but at times delved in French - the new chapter builds on what previous generations have accomplished, including the work done by the previous DP-LSAP-dei Greng coalition. In several areas, the coalition agreement has committed to proceeding with strategies inherited from the outgoing government, like former Green transport minister Francois Bauschs National Mobility Plan. Frieden also mentioned some of the tax efforts his cabinet plans on implementing. Though promises made during election campaigns have been kicked down the road, Frieden highlighted some measures his government will take, including an unspecified tax relief for people in the 1A tax bracket and an adjustment of tax brackets. Fixing the housing issue - through a more accessible and broader market - as well as developing the healthcare sector will enable Luxembourg to avoid a social crisis, Frieden said. Also read: Child rights group worries over 'absolute minimum' government deal As part of efforts to plug gaps in the labour market, migrants who have requested international protection in the Grand Duchy will be able to apply for jobs four months after their request. The parliament - in which the CSV holds 21 seats and the DP has 14 - will begin debating the coalition programme on Thursday morning. Also read: New coalition kicks tax cut promises down the road 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%. An Australian woman who spent years enduring excruciating, bodily pains, that saw both her jaw and feet "just keep growing bigger", has described the "overwhelming sense of validation" when she finally received a diagnosis. Now 32, Sunshine Coast woman Shari Dawson said her symptoms began when she was just 21 years old, first noticing what she described as a series of "confusing changes" in 2012. The Queenslander, who was at the time an avid sportswoman, said she had no clue what was happening to her body when she noticed the differences. Shari Dawson prior to her diagnosis (left) and more recently (right). Source: Supplied. "My feet were growing bigger, my rings stopped fitting me, my jaw was changing and enlarging," Dawson told Yahoo News Australia. "I was putting on weight, and I had all these pains in my body. I'd wake up in the morning and I couldn't even open my hands to hold my toothbrush and brush my teeth. "Even just something as simple as that was such a mission. The weight gain during this time was just something that had never happened to me I'd always had quite a small frame my whole life." Aussie woman's decade-long journey begins Dawson explained she'd naturally had "quite a normal overbite" but she started to notice "my bottom teeth and my top teeth touched when I smile ... Then that just sort of progressed to now having quite a large underbite," she said. At the age of 22, she remembered looking at a selfie photo taken on a European holiday and being stunned by how much her smile had changed. Her feet continued to swell, enlarging from a size seven and a half and to a size "10 and a half to 11 depending on the shoe." When Dawson sought medical advice, she was given varying explanations from professionals. One dentist told her that her jaw was simply "just developing late, and this is what it was going to look like now". Story continues Doctors puzzled over 'rare disorder' "I saw a physio and chiropractor," she recalled. "I saw a doctor about my fluid retention and all of them just couldn't tell me what it was, doctors told me that I was confusing fluid retention with weight gain." "A dentist said to me that my mouth just changed following a tonsillectomy". Eventually, after years of living with intense daily pains, Dawson was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery in 2020. "So it was that night that I found out I had a pituitary tumour which had bled and I was getting rushed into emergency surgery because I was told I was going blind in my left eye," Dawson said. "That's when they diagnosed me with acromegaly that was the moment to me where everything over the last seven years finally made sense. It was a bit of an aha moment." Shari with husband Chris. Source: Supplied. Acromegaly is an extremely rare growth disorder that affects between 715 and 3,500 Australians per year, according to the National Institute of Health. It causes the overproduction of growth hormone in the brains pituitary gland, resulting in abnormal growth in adults. Early acromegaly symptoms can include migraines, vomiting, enlarged hands and feet, gaps in between the teeth, a pronounced jawline, thickened skin, and a deepening of the voice. Dawson said she experienced the vast majority of these symptoms. "I was told the tumour was is inoperable," she said. "And so I had to start medication to try and bring those growth hormone levels back down and this particular medication would shrink the tumour over time." Eventually, diagnosis arrives, surgery follows The side effects of Dawson's treatment left her "quite unwell a lot of the time", her hair fell out and her heart rate "just plummeted" resulting in a general "poor quality of life". The Queenslander said she eventually met a woman through the Pituitary Foundation who was on a similar journey to her own, and she put Dawson in touch with her doctor a game-changing move. The doctor gave Dawson a "70 per cent chance at success" and she soon underwent surgery to remove the tumour. Dawson was declared in biochemical remission in 2021, which lasted a total of 18 months. "That was wonderful," she said. "I got to just live a really normal life, I got married, I went on a honeymoon." Tragically, earlier this year, Dawson found out the tumour had reappeared, and though smaller than it was previously, the news meant she will eventually have to return to the treatment that made her sick, or seek the alternative radiation which also presents its own challenges. The Queenslander with her mother, while she recovers in hospital from treatment. Source: Supplied. Now, determined to have children, Dawson said she's currently "pausing treatment" to embark on her fifth round of IVF, with hopes that she will soon fall pregnant with husband Chris. After giving birth, she'll revisit her options, but says she remains hopeful of the future and is leading the push to raise awareness over the condition, that few know about. "If I had heard about this, you know, five years ago, maybe I wouldn't have gotten to a point where I no longer produce certain hormones," she said. "I could have treated it earlier. And I would have had a better outcome now. "If people knew more about it and understood what those symptoms were, then I do think it would greatly impact so many lives and give people better outcomes." To raise awareness of the rare disease, the Australian Pituitary Foundation is hosting a community yoga and wellness workshop this Saturday at St Kilda Life Saving Club in Melbourne. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. Eat, drink and be merry are the spoken rules around holiday tradition but Massachusetts makes that second decree a little harder to follow on Thanksgiving. The Bay States rules surrounding alcohol consumption and purchase, which includes the hours grocery and package stores can be open for business, vary from holiday to holiday. Thanksgiving falls under Massachusetts Blue Laws, or restrictions on which businesses can be open on Sundays or holidays, the governments website said. Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays under full restriction. Read more: These major retailers are closed on Thanksgiving Day Therefore, all package stores in Massachusetts will be closed on Thanksgiving, according to the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commissions holiday calendar for 2023. In addition, grocery stores also fall under the states Blue Laws restrictions, so most grocery chains will be closed Thursday meaning you probably cant grab that 12-pack from your local chain after you finish your Thanksgiving turkey. A woman is expected to face an OUI charge after police claim she crashed her vehicle into a Carver gas station Tuesday afternoon, according to the Carver Police Department. A vehicle hit a guardrail and the back of Nouria gas station, located at 303 Tremont St., around 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 21, Chief Marc Duphily said in a statement. When they arrived, officers found a roughly 6-foot hole in the gas stations back wall. The driver was not there, Duphily said. A Massachusetts State Police Trooper, who was at the gas station at the time, followed the suspected driver down the street and stopped her. Authorities did not release her name. The woman was brought to the hospital for treatment, but she was not placed under arrest, according to Duphily. No other injuries were reported. The woman will be summoned to court at a later date to face charges that will include operating under the influence and leaving the scene of a property damage accident. Additional charges are likely, Duphily said. There are shoe boxes. And then theres this shoe box. Suspected brothel operator Han Lee kept hundreds of money order receipts in a Louis Vuitton shoebox, apparently organized by date, location, and amount, in an impeccable filing system, investigators asserted in court documents made public Wednesday. Along with the receipts for Western Union and the U.S. Postal Service, Lee, 41, of Cambridge, also used the filing cabinet with a sticker price of $1,360 to store utility records and other documents, investigators said. I believe that [Han Lees] financial and business record keeping was impeccable, Zachary A. Mitlitsky, a special agent with United States Department of Homeland Security and Homeland Security Investigations, wrote. Lee, and Junmyung Lee, 30, of Dedham, are accused of operating multiple brothels in Massachusetts and Virginia. Theyve been charged with conspiracy to coerce and entice to travel to engage in illegal sexual activity, U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said on Nov. 8 in a statement. James Lee, 68, of Torrance, Calif., also received the same charges. The brothels operated from at least July 2020 from Cambridge and Watertown, and in Fairfax and Tysons, Va., which is just miles away from Washington D.C., Levy said. Elected and military officials, security-cleared government officials, executives from high-tech and pharmaceutical companies, doctors, professors, attorneys, scientists and accountants, among others made up the list of commercial buyers whom officials believe paid for sex with the women. The customers found the women through two main online platforms: a site called bostontopten10.com, and another named browneyesgirlsva.blog. False advertisements for nude Asian models for professional photography appointments at upscale studios in Boston or Virginia were posted by the defendants, Levy said, along with specific information on the womens physical qualities such as height, weight and breast size. The ads also showed nude or semi-nude pictures of the women. There were frequent updates to the ads on which women were listed as available, which included words like coming soon or open to show when new women would be arriving in the area, Levy said. Buyers verified themselves with their full names, email address, phone number, employer and reference through the site to be eligible to book appointments, Levy added. They were charged a premium price in cash between $350 and $600 an hour, depending on the service, prosecutors said. These verified buyers texted with the three arrested to schedule appointments, to look through a menu of women, peruse the sexual services available at the hourly rate, and to get directions to the high-end apartment brothel locations, Levy said. Court documents also claim Han Lee kept ledgers detailing the daily activities of her brothels. At the time of the search warrant execution, one such ledger was open to a page showing the stage names, appointment dates and times and earnings of the women, specifically Tina and Yoko DDD, who were then-listed on the Virginia brothel website (that is, www.browneyesgirlsva.blog), the court documents stated. Investigators said they met a women who went by the stage name of Tina when they executed a search warrant in Virginia. A photo of the calendar, included in the court documents, shows that the prostitution network not only maintained meticulous daily records of their operation, but also kept those records for a lengthy period of time, it stated. Officials also found envelopes with cash and handwritten notes with the stage names of women and a tally of their earnings. The money received from the brothels was hidden through depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to personal bank accounts and peer-to-peer transfers, Levy said. The rent and utilities of those brothels was also paid for in money orders, which were purchased through the cash proceeds in amounts that would not raise alarms, Levy added. But Han Lee also had lavish and extravagant spending habits. Court documents claim Han Lee didnt have legitimate employment. Still, she was able buy luxury bags and shoes, including, items from Yves St. Laurent, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo. Bank records show purchases from Balenciaga, court documents state. And the Louis Vuitton shoe box, which was used as a filing cabinet, had a sticker price of $1,360. Investigators also found signed blank checks in the name of J.Y.P. Agents located $22,608 in cash, dozens of stored value cards, and used lottery tickets throughout her apartment. Officials believe Junmyung Lee used the money he got to buy a 2018 Chevrolet Corvette. Simply stated I do not believe that [Han Lee] has legitimate employment but I do believe she has made an astounding amount of money running her prostitution business over the last several years, Mitlitsky wrote in the court document. Officials said Han Lee wrote in March 2023 she worked as a medical director and earned $12,000. In any event, based on regular surveillance, investigators are aware that [Han Lee] is not employed as a medical director, nor does she maintain any form of legal employment, court documents state, later adding there is no reason for either suspect to have access to such a large amount of cash during a short period of time unless that cash was through an illegal enterprise like this highly profitable prostitution network. Between the large amount of money and no ties to the community, officials believe both are a flight risk. In federal court Wednesday, officials are asking that both suspects be detained pending trial. The district attorney stated anyone with questions, concerns or information regarding this case should contact USAMA.VictimAssistance@usdoj.gov. A man who was shot and killed by police during a standoff in New Hampshire Monday has been identified as 42-year-old Nate Landrebe, and his death has been ruled a homicide, Attorney General John M. Formella said Tuesday. An autopsy on Landrebes body determined that the 42-year-olds cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds, and that the manner of his death was homicide, Formella said on Nov. 21. Landrebe was engaged in an armed standoff with officers at his home at 32 West Bow St. in Franklin, New Hampshire beginning the evening of Nov. 19-20. A woman living across the hall from Landrebe called police saying that he tried to break through her front door just before 10 p.m. on Nov. 20. The woman said she was unharmed. When they arrived, officers saw that the door had been shot at with a gun, according to the attorney general. Officers also heard gunshots coming from inside Landrebes apartment. An armed standoff occurred and the New Hampshire State Police SWAT Unit were called to the scene, Formella said. Residents in area of Central and West Bow Streets were forced to shelter in place at around 2:45 a.m. as a result. That order has since been lifted. Smoke was also seen coming from the apartment building around 2:35 a.m. Then, just after 3 a.m., police saw fire from inside the building where Landrebe had exchanged multiple gunshots with state troopers. Landrebe was found with gunshot wounds behind the building near a first-floor window, Formella said. Two SWAT members were said to have fired their weapons during the incident. Their names have yet to be released. First responders tried to perform CPR on Landrebe, but the fire was too strong for them to get close enough to him. He was pronounced dead onsite, Formella said. No one in law enforcement was physically harmed during the standoff, and officials said there is not threat to the public. The building was severely damaged from the fire, which is under investigation by the New Hampshire State Fire Marshals Office. Officials do not believe the fire was caused by law enforcement action. The exact circumstances surrounding this incident remain under active investigation. More information will be released as it becomes available, Formella concluded. WESTFIELD Opioid-overdose deaths hit a statewide peak last year. The crisis is widespread, and that includes affecting youth. Last year, three people under the age of 15 died of opioid-related overdoses in Massachusetts, while more than 100 people between the ages of 15 and 24 died of an opioid overdose, according to state data. In response to that, state Sen. John Velis, D-Westfield, wants to increase the number of doses of naloxone also known by its brand name Narcan in schools. The medication can reverse an overdose. Im in the camp that Narcan should be available everywhere absolutely everywhere, Velis said. You cant treat someone who is dead. Under his proposed legislation, municipalities could opt into creating a school naloxone program that would require all school nurses to be trained in naloxone distribution and to stock the medication that can reverse an opioid overdose. The legislation was one of several youth health-related bills included in a recent hearing by the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery. Velis is the Senate chair of that committee. Many first responders in Hampden County carry the medication, and as of relatively recently, the nasal spray also is available over the counter. Which schools in Massachusetts stock already it? Theres no central list tracking that, Velis said. Of the hundreds of districts across the state, about 30 ordered the antidote this year from a state Department of Public Health program, Velis said, but because districts could also be getting the medication elsewhere, its not clear how many in total have it. Across the country, about half of the largest 20 school districts stock naloxone, and many of those that do not are working to get it, according an NPR analysis published last month. The National Association of School Nurses endorses the inclusion of Narcan in schools emergency planning. Opioid-related overdoses appear to be a growing issue for youth. Between 2019 and 2021, overdose deaths nationwide for those between the ages of 10 to 19 doubled, according to the American Medical Association. State Senator John Velis speaks at an evening in August 2023. (Don Treeger / The Republican) 8/14/2023 Velis has been talking with school leaders about the problem. Administrators in one school in his district he did not want to identify which one said they didnt know they could get Narcan from the state. His office is working with the state Department of Public Health and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to identify how many overdoses have happened in schools in the commonwealth. FOXBOROUGH Despite a week off, the Patriots are still dealing with quite a few injuries. New England listed eight players as limited on their first injury report following the bye, including Trent Brown (ankle) and Christian Barmore (knee). On Tuesday afternoon in the Patriots locker room, Brown detailed why hed missed the Colts game in Germany in great detail. $200 INSTANT BONUS DRAFTKINGS MASS CLAIM OFFER BET $5, GET $200 BONUS BET FANDUEL MASS CLAIM OFFER BET $50, GET $250 BONUS CAESARS MASS CLAIM OFFER $1,000 FIRST-BET BONUS BETMGM MASS CLAIM OFFER MA only. 21+. Gambling Problem? If you or a loved one is experiencing problems with gambling, please call 1-800-327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org for 24/7 support. LiveChat with a GameSense Advisor at GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234 MA Gambling Helpline. MA only. 21+. Gambling Problem? If you or a loved one is experiencing problems with gambling, please call 1-800-327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org for 24/7 support. LiveChat with a GameSense Advisor at GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234 MA Gambling Helpline. I had a death in the family and I wasnt going to play anyway. Thats what went into it, Brown told MassLive. Ankle and my knee. The Buffalo game, third to last drive, I got rolled up on down on the goal line. That was ankle and knee, MCL. Early on in the Miami, I rolled it, again. I had a high and low ankle sprain. Im pretty much still dealing with it, but its getting better. Though Mac Jones and Jabrill Peppers have both needed X-rays over the past two weeks, neither was listed on the injury report. New Englands counterparts in the Meadowlands could be hindered quite a bit on Sunday, as Giants DL Dexter Lawrence (hamstring), OL Evan Neal (ankle), LB Bobby Okereke (hip/rib) and WR Darius Slayton (neck) all missed Wednesdays practice. Heres the full injury report for both teams: PATRIOTS DID NOT PARTICIPATE No Players Listed. LIMITED PARTICIPATION DL Christian Barmore, Knee LB JaWhaun Bentley, Hamstring OL Trent Brown, Ankle CB Myles Bryant, Chest CB Jonathan Jones, Knee WR DeVante Parker, Concussion SpT Matthew Slater, Ankle DL Deatrich Wise, Shoulder FULL PARTICIPATION No Players Listed. NEW YORK GIANTS (3-8) DID NOT PARTICIPATE RB Saquon Barkley, Not Injury Related - Rest DL Dexter Lawrence - Hamstring OL Evan Neal, Ankle LB Bobby Okereke, Hip/Rib WR Darius Slayton, Neck LIMITED PARTICIPATION RB Eric Gray, Ankle DB Adoree Jackson, Concussion (non-contact) OL Tyre Phillips, Knee WR Sterling Shepard, Hip OL Andrew Thomas, Knee FULL PARTICIPATION OL John Michael Schmitz, Finger By 5 p.m. on Wednesday, some campaigners wishing to place a question on the November 2024 ballot will be one step closer to their goal. Here are three things to know about the push to get questions on the November 2024 ballot. What questions might voters see on the 2024 ballot? Voters may see questions pertaining to auditing the Legislature; ending the MCAS exam as a high school graduation requirement; the rights and benefits of rideshare drivers; the legalization of psychedelics; and paying tipped workers the minimum wage; on the 2024 ballot as campaigners behind these efforts have all submitted at least 74,574 signatures to local election clerks. What questions didnt make the cut? The campaign to bring rent control to Massachusetts was suspended two weeks before the deadline. On Nov. 10, Rep. Mike Connolly, D-26th Middlesex, who started the campaign, released a statement saying that his team had only gathered 10,175 signatures in the six weeks that theyd been campaigning. As far as Im concerned, every signature is a meaningful act, the Cambridge Democrat told the Boston Globe. Its an opportunity to engage with a voting member of the public, and have a conversation with them about tenant protections and the housing emergency. Connollys campaign faced heavy criticism from some housing justice groups that said that his campaign effort did not address the concerns of most housing advocates. Connolly is standing behind a petition that he filed to the Legislature, one that would remove Massachusetts prohibition on rent control. Additionally, campaigners who are pushing to suspend the states gas tax arent planning to continue with their efforts, State House News Service reported. Other campaign efforts, including one petition regarding same-day voter registration, did not announce whether theyd continue with their measure, SHNS said. What happens now? Now, campaigners must submit their signatures to the office of the Secretary of State to validate the totals by Dec. 6. If the ballot questions have enough signatures certified they will head to the Legislature in January 2024, where lawmakers can either approve, decline or submit a substitute ballot question, according to State House News Service. But if lawmakers dont take any action on the ballot initiatives by May 1, 2024, the campaigners will have to collect an additional 12,429 signatures and file them with local clerks by June 19, 2024, according to State House News Service. From there they will have to file the signatures to the secretary of states office again by July 3, 2024, to get a chance of being placed on the November ballot. A tour of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum ends the only way it can: Down a darkened hallway, where black-and-white footage, played on repeat, breaks the news that the nations 35th president has been felled by an assassins bullets. Kennedys life ended 60 years ago Wednesday. But his legend, and his grip on the American political imagination, remains unshakable. On a cold and gray Tuesday afternoon in November, small knots of people moved quietly around the museum deep on the UMass Boston campus. Some curious. Some there because they felt it necessary. Here, a Kennedy campaign poster. There, photos of a smiling Kennedy and his wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, on the familys sailboat. In one room, Kennedys New Frontier speech at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles played on a video screen. In another, its his 1961 inaugural address on the steps on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Sixty years later, the speeches, and the legend of Camelot, are an embedded part of U.S. political mythology. Kennedys election and youthful vigor were a stand-in for the optimism that the United States felt as it took command of the world stage in the decades after World War II. His death, at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, on Nov. 22, 1963, saw that youthful optimism and a nations conception of itself shattered. The exterior of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of UMass Boston (MassLive photo by John L. Micek).John L. Micek Donald Levi remembers all of it. The retired pediatrician from Nashua, N.H., was at the museum on Tuesday with his wife and family. His 16-year-old grandson was in from Oregon for the Thanksgiving holiday. He said, Papa, can we go to the JFK museum? And I said, Of course. So thats why were all here today, Levi said. Levi was a senior in high school in Portland, Maine, just 17, when Kennedy was killed. Ill never forget that Friday. I was in a chemistry class. And they announced over the public address system that the president had been shot and wounded, he recalled. And then a little while later that he had died. And I just walked out of the school building. And I usually walked with friends, but for some reason I was by myself, and I just walked home. And as I was walking, I noticed cars that were just stopping on the side of the road when they heard the announcement over their car radios, he continued. And then ... my family, and I just ... sat in front of the TV the whole weekend, and just watched everything live. For Levi, like so many Americans, the news of Kennedys violent death was a trauma. An exhibit at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of UMass Boston (MassLive photo by John L. Micek).John L. Micek It was just an amazing, shocking time that Ill never forget. And that was even though 60 years ago and I was 17 at the time its something thats like, burned into my memory that Ill never forget. [Its] probably the most unforgettable event in my life. Levi told MassLive hed met Kennedy as a student while participating in the Youth for Kennedy movement. I remember going to the Portland airport, and meeting Kennedy, Levi said. He shook all our hands. And, you know, I just felt like he was such a wonderful man representing the youth of our country. According to one veteran observer, thats the image of Kennedy thats endured across the six intervening decades, and an American political landscape that has seemingly changed irrevocably. The persistent hold of JFK on the American imagination is borne of imagery, nostalgia, and a love of conspiracy, Christopher Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College, in Allentown, Pa., told MassLive. Front page of the Springfield Daily News Extra reporting the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.The Republican The Camelot myth, Borick continued, juxtaposed against the harsh realities of today, elevates JFK to a special place in the American publics consciousness. Indeed, Kennedys exhortation during his inaugural speech that civility is not a sign of weakness, and his reminder that both sides should explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us, seem to take on an added poignancy at a time when Congress appears incapable of executing its most basic responsibilities. Kennedy motivated a generation of us to get involved in government and politics, Terry Madonna, a veteran political scientist and pollster at Millersville University, in Lancaster, Pa., told MassLive. At issue was civil rights, helping the less fortunate, and moving the country forward economically. In his 1987 memoir, Man of the House, former U.S. House Speaker Tip ONeill, the quintessential Boston Democrat, wrote of Kennedys funeral: It was just such a sad day that it seemed like the whole world had come apart. Kennedy, ONeill further recalled, brought to all sectors of the American public a new feeling that they were wanted, that there was a place in America for them, regardless of religion or race. And perhaps, most important, when Jack Kennedy was president, people had trust in their government. I look forward to the day when that will once again be true. Thirty-six years after ONeill wrote those words, and 60 years after Kennedys death, there are echoes of that sentiment in Donald Levi. I long for somebody like that to come back, he said. Australia Post workers can cop a hard time when being accused of being a bit lazy with deliveries. But one postie's brazen act has taken that occasional criticism to new heights after he was spotted seemingly snoozing on the job in a comfy hammock. The worker chose his sleeping station under a pergola in a public park in Banora Point in NSW's Northern Rivers and used his Australia Post bicycle to ostensibly provide a bit of privacy during his nap. After spotting the man, a local approached him to ask if "he was ok" before realising the worker was in fact sleeping. "He was fast asleep, snoring with his radio on," the local said. "For the last 12 months or so [I] have come across this postman sleeping on the job... he is in full view of golfers and walkers." A local spotted the Australia Post worker sleeping on a hammock in Banora Point NSW. Source: Facebook The local was enraged by the postie's behaviour, calling it "lazy" and questioned whether this was the reason why his mail had been late in recent months. Aussies shocked by postie's brazen behaviour An image of the worker was posted online this week and many were stunned by the premeditated nature of the set-up, pointing out that the hammock must have been packed prior to his shift to allow for his midday siesta. Others feared the unsupervised mail could easily be "stolen" while the worker snoozed. However, some gave him the benefit of the doubt and said he may have simply been enjoying his break when the local spotted him. "If he's on a break then who cares, I'd nap too, but if he isn't on a break shame on him," one wrote, while another questioned whether the picture was even legitimate. "Is this a joke?" Australia Post respond to image of worker sleeping during shift Despite the image being posted online on Tuesday it is unclear exactly when the incident occurred, with Australia Post telling Yahoo News Australia the worker has already been approached to explain his actions. Story continues "Australia Post was previously made aware of this matter and, following an investigation, appropriate disciplinary action was taken," a spokesperson said. Australia Post declined to offer any further clarification. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. Traffic officials are telling Massachusetts residents to take it slow amid several reported crashes that have happened because of slick roads Wednesday morning. Many people in the state, specifically those in Central and Western Massachusetts, woke up to wet weather and slippery roads on Nov. 22 that were a result of wintry mix from the night before. MassDOT said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that those areas got were experiencing rain and freezing rain just before 6 a.m. on Wednesday. Several crashes were reported before 8 a.m. on Interstate 95 North in Sharon, Interstate 90 East in Westfield, Interstate 495 North in Chelmsford and Interstate 93 South in Boston, Assistant Secretary of Media Relations for MassDOT Jacquelyn Goddard said on X. Goddard added that MassDOT had roughly 80 pieces of equipment patrolling and cleaning up roads in Western and Central Massachusetts, and that Massachusetts State Police placed a speed restriction of 40 mph from the New York until Blandford on the Massachusetts Turnpike. The restriction was lifted around 10:30 a.m., according to MassDOT on X. While the threat for snow is over, gusty winds are expected to impact the Massachusetts coast Wednesday afternoon. Gusts of up to 55 mph are possible on Nantucket. The advisory is in effect until 3 p.m. Wednesday. These areas include Eastern Essex, Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket Counties, the weather service said. The forecast for Thanksgiving calls for dry, seasonably cool but brisk conditions, the National Weather Service said in a statement. Things are expected to get chillier starting the first half of the weekend. The next chance for precipitation, which will most likely be rain, will be Sunday night and Monday, forecasters said. Two Massachusetts suspects connected to a two-state brothel network briefly appeared in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Worcester on Wednesday. Han Lee, 41, of Cambridge, and Junmyung Lee, 30, of Dedham, not related, were charged with conspiracy to coerce and entice to travel to engage in illegal sexual activity, U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said on Nov. 8 in a statement. James Lee, 68, of Torrance, California, also received the same charges. The two appeared in court before Magistrate Judge David H. Hennessy, who determined that the two should continue to be detained while the case is pending and without the judge making a finding against them. Han Lees lawyer, Scott Lauer, did not comment. Junmyung Lees attorney, John Amabile, said his client was doing the best he can with a difficult situation. He did not answer questions about the brothel network and if he knew of anyone else associated with it. These brothels operated from at least July 2020 from Cambridge and Watertown, and in Fairfax and Tysons, Virginia, Levy said. Elected and military officials, security-cleared government officials, executives from high-tech and pharmaceutical companies, doctors, professors, attorneys, scientists and accountants, among others made up the list of commercial buyers who officials believe paid for sex with the women. The customers found the women through two main online platforms: a site called bostontopten10.com, and another named browneyesgirlsva.blog. False advertisements for nude Asian models for professional photography appointments at upscale studios in Boston or Virginia were posted by the defendants, Levy said, along with specific information on the womens physical qualities such as height, weight and breast size. The ads also showed nude or semi-nude pictures of the women. There were frequent updates to the ads on which women were listed as available, which included words like coming soon or open to show when new women would be arriving in the area, Levy said. Buyers verified themselves with their full names, email address, phone number, employer and reference through the site to be eligible to book appointments, Levy added. They were charged a premium price in cash between $350 and $600 an hour, charging documents said, depending on the service. These verified buyers texted with the three arrested to schedule appointments, look through a menu of women, sexual services available at the hourly rate and get directions to the high-end apartment brothel locations, Levy said. The money was hidden through depositing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to personal bank accounts and peer-to-peer transfers, Levy said. The rent and utilities of those brothels was also paid for in money orders, which were purchased through the cash proceeds in amounts that would not raise alarms, Levy said. The district attorney stated members of the public who have questions, concerns or information regarding this case should contact USAMA.VictimAssistance@usdoj.gov. Multiple law enforcement agencies across the United States were involved in the investigation and assistance. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation said it was proud to welcome seven new members to its Council, which has replaced the former Board. These incoming personalities bring a wealth of experience key to advancing Africas governance agenda and tackling the multiple challenges the continent faces. In their capacity as Council members, they will support the Foundation in its mission to strengthen the African voice on global challenges and plot a path for the continents future progress. Joining the Council are: H.E. Abdalla Hamdok Former Prime Minister of Sudan Arancha Gonzalez Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, former Foreign Minister of Spain Dr. Ibrahim Assane Mayaki AU Special Envoy for Food Systems, former Prime Minister of Niger, former CEO of the AUDA-NEPAD Tsega Gebreyes Founding Director at Satya Capital Limited Vera Songwe Chair and Founder of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility, former Executive Secretary of UNECA Paul Polman Vice-Chair of UN Global Compact, former CEO of Unilever Professor Yemi Osinbajo Chair of CAP-A (Climate Action Platform-Africa), former Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Commenting on the Council, Mo Ibrahim, Chair and Founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, said: Each one of these individuals have demonstrated a steadfast commitment to advancing Africas development and governance agenda. It is an honour to have them join our Council and bring their invaluable experience to the Foundation. They will each be instrumental in our continued efforts to strengthen Africas voice on global challenges. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is excited to welcome these distinguished individuals to the Council and looks forward to their invaluable contributions. These appointments will come into effect immediately. This move is part of the Foundations continued commitment to inform discussions, convene thought leaders, and support young Africans to become Africas future leaders. The popular St Patrick's Drama Group return to the stage tonight in Westport for what promises to be a hugely entertaining run in their home town. Westport Town Hall Theatre is the venue as John Gahern's acclaimed 'The Power of Darkness' is brought to life by a host of well-known local faces. Tonight's show begins at 8pm, and drama continues on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, November 23, 24 and 25. In The Power of Darkness, Peter King, a prominent landowner is dying. His wealth, earned by hardness and shrewdness in breeding and training horses is never used to spread ease, happiness, or comfort. He lives with his wife Eileen who is half his age, and his 20-year-old daughter Maggie. His illness forces him to employ a young workman called Paul, the son of a neighbouring farmer. Paul is quite the mixture of good looks, sexual egotism, weakness and innocence. His ruthless mother Baby is both manipulative and ambitious. Her husband Oliver is a deeply religious and a God fearing man. An old ex-soldier Paddy helps on the farm and is lured into the family drama but gradually becomes its moral voice. The play has adult themes throughout and is for over 16 years. The Power of Darkness reflects a world of a not-too-distant past. The title is a description of the force that drives it. Tony Varley directs a very strong cast in Liam MacNamara as Peter, Bernie Byrne as Baby, Regina McCormack as Eileen, Meg Noone as Maggie, Paul OBrien as Paul, Seamus Beirne as Oliver and John Gavin as Paddy. 'The Power of Darkness' was first produced by The Abbey Theatre (Dublin, 1991). John McGahern has received many awards and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1990 for 'Amongst Women'. Bookings can be made at www.westporttheatre.com or telephone 098 28459. Pictured above are, front, from left: John Gavin, Seamus Beirne, Paul O'Brien, Regina McCormack, Tony Varley, Bernie Beirne, Mea Noone and Liam McNamara. Back row, from left: Mairead Ryan, Tia Crowley, Dolores Ryan, Grainne Berry, Alice Burns and Sharia Greenway. Lydons Lodge in Cong are urging their local community to get behind Cancer Fund for Childrens Santa Clause campaign this Christmas to help support children and young people impacted by cancer across Ireland. Cancer Fund for Children provides informal emotional, social and therapeutic support to children diagnosed with cancer and their families, at home, in hospital and at their therapeutic short break centre, Daisy Lodge. They are currently working to build a second Daisy Lodge on the shores of Lough Corrib in Cong, so they can be there for every family that needs them, in every county and every community. Speaking on why they are getting behind this charitys campaign, Olga aamd Stephen Lydon of Lydons Lodge Hotel said: Lydons Lodge Hotel are so proud to support Cancer Fund for Children and their Santa Cause Appeal. This truly amazing charity benefits families who are impacted by childhood cancer and we feel it is a worthy cause. Monies raised also goes towards the building of Daisy Lodge Cong which will have a huge impact on families dealing with childhood cancer and we are proud to be a part of that. Mairead Geehan, Partnership and Philanthropy Executive with Cancer Fund for Children said: We are so grateful to have such passionate and dedicated supporters in Olga, Stephen and their team at Lydons Lodge Hotel. Throughout the month of December, approximately 30 children and young people (aged 0-24) will be diagnosed with cancer across Ireland. We at Cancer Fund for Children provide vital services to help ensure none of these children have to face this experience alone and we couldnt do that without the incredible support of local businesses and the local community. Getting involved in our Santa Cause campaign this festive season will help make such a difference in the lives of families impacted by childhood cancer. You too can get involved in this charitys Santa Cause appeal by taking on your own fundraising activity. Organise a coffee morning, festive jumper day or sponsored walk and help support children and young people impacted by cancer. Find out more today on www.cancerfundforchildren.com. A MAN from Westport who died of Motor Neurone disease earlier this year has made an appeal via a pre-recorded video played before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Assisted Dying. Brendan Clarke, who passed away in August this year, called for people to be given the option of assisted dying. Mr Clarke was due to testify before the committee in person before he passed away. The committee is currently holding hearings to discuss the issue of assisted dying and is due to make a report with recommendations later next year. Speaking in a video recorded before his passing Mr Clarke described living with his disease as 'a very difficult life'. "It's not a life I want to live," he added. "But I would appreciate at some stage, when all this committee work is done, that ye would let the state give people like me - I won't be around by them - the choice, if they want to, to avail of assisted dying. It's not an easy decision to make, but in my condition it is. I cannot live like this." Mr Clarke, who was speaking at his home in Dublin, was filmed in the company of his nieces Sarah and Tara, who described him as 'the life and soul of the party' prior to his illness. Sarah said that it had been 'heart-breaking' to see her uncle's health deteriorate. Deputy Michael Healy-Rae, who is chairing the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Assisted Dying, described the video as 'very powerful' and he expressed his thanks to the late Brendan and his family for sharing the video with the committee. A YOUNG man was set upon by Kyle Hayes and others with numerous punches thrown in a nightclub and later pursued outside the nightclub and attacked, a trial has heard. The trial of three men commenced at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court this Tuesday morning. Craig Cosgrave, aged 24, of Caherelly, Grange, Limerick; Kyle Hayes, aged 25, of Ballyoshea, Kildimo, Limerick and Jai Chaudri, aged 22, of Carheeny, Kildimo, Limerick have all pleaded not guilty to alleged offences in the early hours of October 28, 2019. Mr Cosgrave is charged with one count of violent disorder in the Icon nightclub in Limerick city centre. Mr Hayes, a five-time All-Ireland winning Limerick hurler and four-time All-Star, is charged with violent disorder in the Icon nightclub; violent disorder at Upper Denmark Street, Limerick and assault causing harm to Cillian McCarthy, who was aged 20 at the time, of Tooreen, Ballysimon and originally of Hill Top, St Patricks Road, Limerick city. Mr Chaudri is charged with violent disorder at Upper Denmark Street and assault causing harm to Mr McCarthy at Upper Denmark Street. Prosecuting barrister John OSullivan, instructed by State Solicitor Padraig Mawe, said in his opening address to the jury that the three accused enjoy the presumption of innocence and the prosecution has to prove the case. You will try the case based on the evidence, said Mr OSullivan. Mr OSullivan said the jury will hear that the alleged victim - Cillian McCarthy - was on a night out and ended up in the Icon nightclub. He was in the company of Craig Cosgrave who was at the time a friend of his. Cillian had been talking to two girls. In plain terms, Kyle Hayes was upset about this" said Mr O'Sullivan, who later added that "Cillian McCarthy offended Kyle Hayes by simply engaging in conversation with two girls - it started the whole thing off". "In plain terms he (Mr McCarthy) was set upon by Kyle Hayes and others. Numerous punches were thrown, said Mr OSullivan. The barrister said it is the prosecution case that Kyle Hayes and others pursued Mr McCarthy outside the nightclub and Kyle Hayes attacked Mr McCarthy on a public street - Upper Denmark Street. It is the prosecution case that Mr Chaudri was a participant. CCTV does not extend to capture the actual attack. It shows the lead up to it and events after the attack. "Two very important witnesses, Detective Garda Dean Landers and Garda Daniel ORiordan, it is anticipated will say they saw Kyle Hayes and others punch and kick Cillian McCarthy while he was on the ground. "Kyle Hayes fled the scene and was captured a short time later, said Mr OSullivan, who added that Mr McCarthy suffered a fracture of the right orbital which is the area underneath the eye. "The use of violence by the three men was totally unjustified," he added. The prosecuting barrister concluded his address to the jury of seven men and five women by saying the prosecution has to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. Mr Cosgrave is defended by Seamus Roche SC, appearing with Reginald Garrett BL, instructed by solicitor Kieran OBrien. Mr Hayes is represented by Brian McInerney SC, appearing with Joseph McMahon BL, instructed by solicitor Sarah Ryan. Pat Whyms BL, instructed by Sarah Ryan, is acting on behalf of Mr Chaudri. Before the trial judge, Dermot Sheehan, broke for lunch, he told the members of the jury not to Google the trial or go on social media. Dont bother reading the newspapers. If anybody asks what you are up to, tell them I am on a jury. That is as far as you can go. The only evidence happening is in this courtroom, said Judge Sheehan. The trial, which is expected to last into next week, continues. Aussies across the country have admitted they are indeed envious of a resident who came home to find litter strewn across their front yard, branding the man "lucky" despite the mess. Blue bottle caps and ribbons were found scattered across the ground in Mallacoota, Victoria and although the sight is an eyesore to most, others in the know said they were "seething with jealousy" revealing it indicates the presence of a native bird, with the species famous for its interesting breeding ritual. The Mallacoota resident was called 'lucky' after finding litter strewn across his front yard. Source: Facebook While building a mating area called a bower where they get their name from male satin bowerbirds scavenge for all things blue to decorate their courtship arena in a bid to attract a mate, ensuring they make a big display of their intentions. "Like many bowerbird species, he decorates the bower with objects. In the wild he will use a range of colours from white to yellow to purple but satin bowerbirds definitely have a preference for blue," Sean Dooley, national birdwatching champion and Public Affairs Manager for BirdLife Australia, told Yahoo News Australia. Why do satin bowerbirds like the colour blue There are several possible reasons why the bird species favour the colour blue when trying to attract a mate, and the first is a rather vain one. "It is a similar [colour] to the satin plumage of the mature male bird, sometimes the blue feathers themselves are used as decoration," Dooley explained. There is also a "scarcity of blue objects in nature", therefore another proposed reason is the male bird picking these over objects of another colour to demonstrate they are able to find them, and also to defend the prized possessions from being stolen by other competing mates. Satin bowerbirds now make good use of plastic found littered across their territory and collect anything they can find like blue pen lids, clothes pegs and bottle caps, with blue flowers and fruits eagerly sought after before plastic emerged. Story continues Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? Get our new weekly newsletter showcasing the weeks best stories. Click here to sign up to our newsletter. (Yahoo) Birds can be 'strangled' in process of decorating bower Despite the birds now using the plastic to their advantage, many are harmed during the process of collecting the pieces as they often become caught around their head. Bottle caps are commonly stuck inside satin bowerbirds' beaks as they arrange the objects. Source: Facebook and Getty "In the past bowerbirds have been strangled by the blue plastic rings from milk bottle lids," Dooley said, urging residents to be mindful of the impact these disposable plastics have on wildlife. "Even if you do the right thing and dispose of your waste in the correct bin, if someone lives in an area where there are bowerbirds, it would be great if they could snip the ring to prevent it from becoming a noose for an enterprising bowerbird," he said. Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. The start of a new school year always brings exciting changes and new opportunities. This year, Casey Park Elementary students were surprised and excited to see two of the schools hallways come alive with large, permanent floor and wall stickers that created sensory pathways within the building. Students also found calming areas within their classrooms. These pathways and calming areas came to fruition with a grant from Auburn Education Foundation. Casey Park school counselor Heather Justian knew that students needed to learn ways to self-regulate behaviors to optimize classroom learning time. This has been especially true since and due to the pandemic. To counter disruptive behavior and increase student engagement, Mrs. Justian applied for a grant to purchase these stickers and other materials needed to establish sensory hallways that use permanent decals to give students opportunities using movement exercises to de-escalate and then transition back to the classroom. The decals also are a fun way for students to get the wiggles out by following the movement commands. The calming areas established within classrooms are a safe and effective way for children to self-regulate. In a report submitted by Mrs. Justian, she shares that students love using the sensory path and it has already helped calm those students who are still learning to self-regulate. She states that all students love to participate in the paths activities. According to Mrs. Justian, the sensory paths are designed for specific outcomes. The path begins with the moving and grooving dance pathway, which then flows into the skateboard decals where children follow the skateboards while matching handprints on the wall. This activity encourages the development of coordination skills. The next segment is the get the wiggles out activity decals, followed by stretching and deep breathing commands. Then comes dont wake the snake, where students follow the snakes tail quietly while trying not to wake him. Finally, students have reached the last segment, the meditation wall, where decals are on the wall showing animals in different poses and breathing patterns that calm the body. Children mimic the animals and learn calming techniques that will help them throughout the school day. While students have shown excitement about the new additions to their school building, Casey Park staff are pleased with the resulting effects on student behavior. Mr. Roberts, building principal, said, The inclusion of the sensory hallway has been a welcoming experience for students in need of a social-emotional wellness activity. Dr. Braxton, vice principal, shared that he purposefully takes students in need of a reset through the sensory hallway and sees students reset almost automatically. Mrs. Mennerich, dean of students, reported, The sensory hallway can be used to reset students and get them back engaged in learning. Techniques such as breathing and counting support our goals of self-regulation and ultimately participation back in the classroom. School psychologist, Mrs. Church, agreed that the hallway is a great addition to help teach children self-regulation skills. She shared the success story of one student who struggles with self-regulation and who, now, can successfully follow the different motions independently while showing signs of improved self-regulation skills. Mrs. Carey-Dixon, school social worker, summed up the benefits of this grant: I am so grateful for the addition of the sensory hallway funded by AEF. This grant continues giving daily to each and every student that utilizes the hallway. The visual and guided physical movement allows children to naturally regulate in a fun and active way. A huge thank you to Heather Justian, who provided the information for this in-depth description of the sensory hallway as an example of the positive impact that Auburn Education Foundations grants program has on children within the Auburn Enlarged City School District. AEF provides funding for innovative programs that enhance the quality of education through extended learning opportunities within the district. Along with AEFs significant fundraising efforts, this is accomplished with private donations from alumni, corporations, foundations and individuals. Generous support from the community allows the foundation, through its educator grants program, to enrich the educational experience of all students. To learn more about funded grants or to donate to AEF, please visit and explore the website at auburnedfoundation.org. The Fall Detection Systems Market is estimated to be valued at US$ 5,849.3 million in 2023 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 9.4% over the forecast period 2023-2030, as highlighted in a new report published by Coherent Market Insights. Market Overview: Fall detection systems are designed to detect when a person falls and alert caregivers or emergency services, thereby ensuring timely intervention. These systems are crucial for the elderly population who are prone to falls and are at a higher risk of sustaining injuries. The market offers various products associated with fall detection systems, such as wearable devices, smart home devices, and motion sensors. These products utilize advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to accurately detect falls and differentiate them from other movements. Fall detection systems provide peace of mind to caregivers and enable them to provide immediate assistance to the elderly, reducing the risk of complications and hospitalizations. Market Dynamics: The growth of the fall detection systems market can be attributed to two key drivers. Firstly, the increasing geriatric population worldwide is driving the demand for fall detection systems. According to the World Health Organization, the global population aged 60 years and older is expected to reach 2 billion by 2050, which highlights the need for effective fall detection systems to ensure the safety of the elderly population. Additionally, the rising incidence of falls among the elderly is also contributing to market growth. Falls are a major health concern among the elderly, leading to a high risk of injuries, hospitalizations, and even mortality. Fall detection systems play a crucial role in identifying falls and providing immediate assistance, improving the overall quality of life for the elderly population. Market drivers for fall detection systems market: 1. Increasing geriatric population and prevalence of chronic diseases: The global population is aging rapidly, leading to an increased number of elderly individuals who are more prone to falls. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 646 million people aged 65 years and older are at risk of falls each year. Furthermore, the prevalence of chronic diseases, such as Parkinsons disease and Alzheimers disease, in the elderly population has also been rising. Fall detection systems provide an effective solution to monitor and respond to falls, ensuring the safety and well-being of the elderly and individuals with chronic illnesses. 2. Technological advancements and the development of wearable devices: Advancements in technology have revolutionized the fall detection systems market. Wearable devices, such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, equipped with motion sensors and accelerometers, can detect abnormal movements and trigger alerts in case of falls. These devices are becoming increasingly popular among the elderly population and caregivers, as they offer a non-intrusive and convenient approach to fall detection. Moreover, the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms into fall detection systems enables real-time analysis of data, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of fall detection. Get an Exclusive Sample Copy of the Report at: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/3213 Market restraints for fall detection systems market: 1. High cost of implementation and maintenance: One of the major restraints for the fall detection systems market is the high cost associated with implementing and maintaining these systems. The initial cost of purchasing the necessary hardware, software, and wearable devices can be expensive, especially for individuals with limited financial resources. Additionally, periodic maintenance and software updates are required to ensure the optimal performance of the fall detection systems. These ongoing expenses can become a financial burden for both individuals and healthcare organizations, limiting the adoption of fall detection systems. 2. Concerns regarding data privacy and security: The increasing use of wearable devices and the collection of personal health data raise concerns regarding data privacy and security. Fall detection systems gather sensitive health information, including movement patterns, location, and medical history, which must be stored and transmitted securely to protect individuals privacy. Inadequate security measures pose a risk of unauthorized access and data breaches, potentially leading to identity theft and misuse of personal information. These concerns deter individuals from using fall detection systems, especially those who are more cautious about their privacy. In conclusion, the fall detection systems market is driven by factors such as the increasing geriatric population and the prevalence of chronic diseases, as well as advancements in technology and the development of wearable devices. These market drivers contribute to the growing demand for fall detection systems to ensure the safety and well-being of individuals at risk of falls. However, the market is restrained by the high cost of implementation and maintenance, as well as concerns regarding data privacy and security. Overcoming these restraints through cost-effective solutions and robust security measures will be crucial for the wider adoption of fall detection systems in the healthcare industry. List of TOP Players in Market Report are: Koninklijke Philips N.V. LifeWatch USA Tunstall Apple Inc. ADT Security Services Medical Guardian LLC MobileHelp Bay Alarm Company MariCare Oy Origin Wireless The ADT Corporation Singapore Technologies Electronics Limited Semtech Corporation Note: Major Players are sorted in no particular order. Furthermore, the years considered for the study are as follows: Historical data 2016-2021 The base year for estimation is 2021 Estimated Year 2023 Forecast period** 2023 to 2030 Buy This Premium Report and Get Upto 25 % OFF: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/buy-now/3213 This Fall Detection Systems Market Research/Analysis Report Contains Answers to your following Questions: What are the current global trends in the Fall Detection Systems market, and will the market experience an increase or decrease in demand in the upcoming years? What is the expected demand for various product types within the Fall Detection Systems market, and what are the emerging Market applications and trends? What are the projections for the global Fall Detection Systems Market in terms of capacity, production, production value, cost, profit, market share, supply, consumption, import, and export? How will strategic developments shape the Market trajectory in the medium to long term? What factors contribute to the final price of Fall Detection Systems , and what are the raw materials used in its manufacturing? What is the markets growth potential, particularly with the increasing adoption of Fall Detection Systems in mining? What is the current and 2022 value of the global market, and who are the leading companies in this market? What recent Market trends can be leveraged to create additional revenue streams? What entry strategies, economic impact mitigation measures, and marketing channels should be considered for the Fall Detection Systems Market? Summarized Extracts from TOC of Market Study Chapter 1 Fall Detection Systems Introduction and Market Overview 1.1 Objectives of the Study 1.2 Overview of Fall Detection Systems 1.3 Scope of The Study 1.3.1 Key Market Segments 1.3.2 Players Covered 1.3.3 COVID-19s impact on the Fall Detection Systems industry 1.4 Methodology of The Study 1.5 Research Data Source Chapter 2 Executive Summary Chapter 3 Industry Chain Analysis Chapter 4 Market, by Type Chapter 5 Market, by Application Chapter 6 Market Analysis by Regions Chapter 7 North America Market Analysis by Countries Chapter 8 Europe Fall Detection Systems Market Analysis by Countries Chapter 9 Asia Pacific Fall Detection Systems Market Analysis by Countries Chapter 10 Middle East and Africa Fall Detection Systems Market Analysis by Countries Chapter 11 South America Fall Detection Systems Market Analysis by Countries Chapter 12 Competitive Landscape Chapter 13 Industry Outlook Chapter 14 Market Forecast Chapter 15 New Project Feasibility Analysis About Coherent Market Insights Coherent Market Insights is a global market intelligence and consulting organization that provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. We are known for our actionable insights and authentic reports in various domains including aerospace and defense, agriculture, food and beverages, automotive, chemicals and materials, and virtually all domains and an exhaustive list of sub-domains under the sun. We create value for clients through our highly reliable and accurate reports. We are also committed in playing a leading role in offering insights in various sectors post-COVID-19 and continue to deliver measurable, sustainable results for our clients. Contact Us Mr. Shah Coherent Market Insights Pvt Ltd, 533 Airport Boulevard, Suite 400, Burlingame, CA 94010, United States Phone: US +12067016702 / UK +4402081334027 JAPAN:+81-50-5539-1737 INDIA:+91-848-285-0837 Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com The Global Telemedicine Market size was US$ 31.65 billion in 2022 and is estimated to reach a size of US$ 123.78 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 18.17% During the Forecast Period from 2023 to 2030. The telemedicine industry has experienced a remarkable surge in revenue during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. The usage of telemedicine has soared as people seek alternative ways to access healthcare services. This surge can be due to various factors, including increased government spending and favorable reimbursement policies. Request og this Sample Report Here- https://www.astuteanalytica.com/request-sample/telemedicine-market The demand for personalized healthcare has also played a significant role in this shift. As more individuals prioritize their health and well-being, telemedicine has emerged as a convenient and accessible option. Furthermore, the growing population of technically aware and literate individuals has embraced telemedicine as a viable solution, further driving its popularity. One of the most notable and impactful transformations in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the remarkable expansion of telehealth services. Oregon Health & Science University provides a great example of how digital health visits can be a game-changer. In February, they had only 1,100 digital health visits, but by March, that number skyrocketed to nearly 13,000. By April 3, 2020, all 1,200 of the universitys ambulatory faculty members were equipped to conduct virtual visits. This surge in telehealth adoption has been primarily driven by the urgent need for remote healthcare solutions and the swift implementation of legislative and regulatory changes. Particularly, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services temporary waivers and updated rules have played a crucial role in broadening access to telehealth services and ensuring streamlined payment processes. Telemedicine Revolutionizing Healthcare in Rural Areas: Unlocking New Revenue Opportunities Telemedicine is revolutionizing the way healthcare is delivered in rural areas, offering unprecedented opportunities for revenue growth in the market. Rural hospitals, health clinics, and even dental practices are leveraging this powerful tool to bridge the gap and provide essential care to people living in remote communities. Recognizing the significance of telemedicine and distance learning, the USDA Rural Development is actively promoting increased access to these services, aiming to build healthier and more resilient communities in rural America. Less than 10% of US healthcare resources are currently situated in rural areas, despite approximately 20% of the American population residing in these regions. This disparity is particularly striking in a country that has fewer healthcare providers per capita compared to many other developed nations. Consequently, individuals in rural areas face significant challenges due to severe shortages of healthcare professionals. Moreover, rural inhabitants often experience lower household incomes, and higher rates of under-insurance, and encounter greater difficulty in accessing healthcare clinics due to travel constraints compared to their urban counterparts. As a result, the demand for telemedicine services in rural areas is further amplified, as it presents a viable solution to address these pressing healthcare access issues. Adoption of AI and ML in Telemedicine: Unwavering New Prospects for Key Players The adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in telemedicine has opened up new and promising prospects for key players in the healthcare industry. AI and ML technologies have the potential to revolutionize telemedicine by enhancing diagnostic accuracy, improving patient monitoring, and streamlining healthcare processes. By harnessing the power of AI and ML technologies, telemedicine can experience a revolution like never before. One of the most profound impacts of this integration is the enhancement of diagnostic accuracy. With AI algorithms and ML models at their disposal, healthcare providers can now rely on sophisticated tools that analyze vast amounts of medical data and provide accurate diagnoses. This saves time and ensures that patients receive the appropriate treatment promptly. Moreover, the adoption of AI and ML in telemedicine enables improved patient monitoring. By utilizing wearable devices and advanced sensors, healthcare professionals can continuously track vital signs and gather real-time data about a patients health. This allows for early detection of potential health issues and allows for proactive interventions, ultimately leading to better patient outcomes. The rapid advancements in wireless technology and the widespread use of smartphones have opened up new possibilities in the realm of healthcare services. These advancements have paved the way for on-demand healthcare services through health tracking apps and search platforms, as well as facilitated a novel form of healthcare delivery through remote interactions, accessible anytime and anywhere. These services are particularly valuable in underserved regions and areas with limited access to specialists. They bridge the gap by providing healthcare services remotely. Thus, it reduces the need for physical visits to healthcare facilities. This helps in cost reduction and minimizes the risk of exposure to contagious illnesses in crowded clinics. North America to Attain a Substantial Revenue Share of the Global Telemedicine Market North America is projected to dominate the Telemedicine Market during the forecast period, primarily due to the United States high prevalence of chronic diseases and the widespread adoption of telemedicine as a key component of healthcare. This has significantly contributed to the growth of the telemedicine market in North America. The utilization of telemedicine has brought about notable benefits, including enhanced patient satisfaction, reduced healthcare expenses, and improved care management. By leveraging telemedicine applications, Americans can conveniently manage their health, particularly in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Telemedicine has proven to be a vital tool in Americas healthcare sector during these challenging times. It enables individuals to access healthcare services remotely, mitigating the risks associated with in-person visits and reducing the burden on healthcare facilities. This technology empowers patients to receive necessary care, consultations, and follow-ups from the comfort and safety of their own homes. As the demand for accessible and convenient healthcare services continues to rise, telemedicine plays a crucial role in ensuring that individuals can proactively manage their health. The North American telemedicine markets growth is a testament to the effectiveness and potential of this innovative approach, offering a promising future for healthcare delivery in the region. Key Takeaways from the Telemedicine Market In terms of Components, the hardware component segment led the global telemedicine market in 2022. This was due to the extensive adoption of videoconferencing technology, audio equipment, microphones, screens, and other medical peripherals as essential tools for facilitating virtual visits. However, the services segment will experience the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2023 to 2030. Based on the Platform, in 2022, the Internet/Web, which offers direct access to healthcare delivery solutions, emerged as the dominant player in the market, capturing the largest market share. Looking ahead, it is expected that the Internet/Web will continue to witness substantial growth and expansion in the coming years. By Application, in 2022, the radiology segment emerged as a key player in the global telemedicine industry, securing a significant market share. This can be due to several factors, such as the growing prevalence of imaging practices and the widespread adoption of teleradiology workflow by healthcare providers. These developments have contributed to the prominence of the radiology segment within the telemedicine industry. On the basis of End-User, in 2022, the patient segment dominated the global telemedicine industry, capturing a substantial portion of the revenue share. This can be due to the fact that patients widely embraced telemedicine services for a diverse range of healthcare needs, spanning from minor ailments to more critical situations. The increasing reliance of patients on telemedicine has significantly contributed to the prominence of the patient segment within the telemedicine industry. List of Key Companies in the Global Telemedicine Market Medtronic Koninklijke Philips N.V. GE Healthcare Chiron Health Cerner Corporation Asahi Kasie Corporation Zipnosis Siemens Healthineers Iron Bow Technologies Vsee IMediplus Inc. AMC Health Cisco Systems, Inc. Doctor on Demand MDLive Teladoc Health Inc. Medvivo Group Ltd Telespecialists Llc American Well MedWeb GlobalMed Other prominent players For The Full Report, Please Follow This Link- https://www.astuteanalytica.com/industry-report/telemedicine-market Segmentation Overview Segmentation based on Component Hardware Biosignal sensors (BP, HR, ECG, Temp., OSL, others) Wearables IT Infrastructure/Devices Software Collaboration Tools Services Professional Services (IT consultation, Support, and Maintenance) Teleconsultation Telemonitoring Training & Learning Segmentation based on Mode Realtime Interactive Services Store-and-Forward Remote Monitoring Segmentation based on Platform Phone/Mobile Internet (Web) Video Non-video (telephonic) Call centers Segmentation based on Application Neuropsychology Nursing Cardiology Gastroenterology Geriatrics Pharmacy Rehabilitation Radiology Psychiatry Pathology Dermatology Others Segmentation based on End-user Hospitals (Providers) Insurance (Payers) Patients Homes Schools Enterprises Assisted Living Others Others Segmentation based on Region: Europe Eastern Europe Russia Poland Rest of Eastern Europe Western Europe The UK Germany France Italy Spain Rest of Western Europe North America The U.S. Canada Mexico Middle East & Africa (MEA) UAE Saudi Arabia Qatar South Africa Egypt Rest of MEA South America Brazil Argentina Rest of South America Asia Pacific China India Japan ASEAN Malaysia Indonesia Thailand Philippines Vietnam Rest of ASEAN Australia & New Zealand Rest of Asia Pacific Get a Free Sample Report Here- https://www.astuteanalytica.com/request-sample/telemedicine-market About Astute Analytica Astute Analytica is a global analytics and advisory company that has built a solid reputation in a short period, thanks to the tangible outcomes we have delivered to our clients. We pride ourselves in generating unparalleled, in-depth and uncannily accurate estimates and projections for our very demanding clients spread across different verticals. We have a long list of satisfied and repeat clients from a wide spectrum including technology, healthcare, chemicals, semiconductors, FMCG, and many more. These happy customers come to us from all across the Globe. They are able to make well-calibrated decisions and leverage highly lucrative opportunities while surmounting the fierce challenges all because we analyze for them the complex business environment, segment-wise existing and emerging possibilities, technology formations, growth estimates, and even the strategic choices available. In short, a complete package. All this is possible because we have a highly qualified, competent, and experienced team of professionals comprising of business analysts, economists, consultants, and technology experts. In our list of priorities, you-our patron come at the top. You can be sure of best cost-effective, value-added package from us, should you decide to engage with us. : + : sales@astuteanalytica.com : https://www.astuteanalytica.com/ LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube | Facebook by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, November 22, 2023 Ted, the Seth MacFarlane teddy bear, is poised to talk again in a TV spin-off of the two Ted movies. All seven episodes of the new Ted series drop January 11 on Peacock. It is one of three upcoming scripted shows on the way in December and January that the TV Blog is looking forward to. They could be the first signs that TVs content pipeline is starting to fill up following the settling of the writers and actors strikes that halted production for months. Even if the writing and filming of these three shows were completed before the strike, having three new, high-profile shows to watch and write on is a welcome prospect. And more are on the way all over the TV universe in the winter season. advertisement advertisement Mark Wahlberg starred in the Ted movies -- Ted (2012) and Ted 2 (2015) -- as a 37-year-old man whose best friend was a teddy bear that had been his companion since childhood. MacFarlane supplied the voice of the profane Ted in the movies, and he does so again in the upcoming Ted series. Wahlberg is not back for the series, however. The show takes place in a whole different time frame than the movies. In the show, the year is 1993, and the Wahlberg character, John Bennett, is 16 (played by Max Burkholder). Of the three shows, the one that is most anticipated around here is the start of Season Two of Reacher on Amazon Prime December 15. The first season of this series, dating back to February 2022, was the TV Blogs favorite show of 2022. Alan Ritchson is back as the title character, Jack Reacher, an action hero from a series of books by Lee Childs. Reacher is a wanderer and former military police investigator who finds himself wandering into situations in which his peculiar skill sets represent the only resolution to the problems he encounters. In the new season, members of Reachers old unit are getting murdered one by one, and Reacher leads an effort to find the killer, with help from three former colleagues. The TV Blog cannot wait to see Reachers imaginative tactics and fists of fury back in action once again. The TV Blog is also looking forward to seeing how the character of Sam Spade will fare in the upcoming AMC/AMC+/Acorn TV Monsieur Spade, premiering January 14. Sam Spade was the famed detective from The Maltese Falcon novel by Dashiell Hammett published in 1930. It was then turned into two movies, one in 1931 and the more-famous second one in 1941. Directed by John Huston, Humphrey Bogart played Spade in the 1941 movie, and in the process, became forever linked with the character. His Sam Spade is a hard act to follow. In Monsieur Spade, Clive Owen takes up the role of an older Sam Spade in 1963, retired and living in the south of France. This is not a destination I would have expected for Sam Spades golden years after a lifetime plying his trade in San Francisco, but lets go with it. According to a description from AMC, the case that brings Spade out of retirement is the murder of six nuns in a nearby convent. The 1941 Maltese Falcon movie was a faithful re-creation of the novel, in which a group of eccentric, international conmen, and one woman, were circling the globe in pursuit of a falcon statuette encrusted with priceless jewels. Taking on the murder of six nuns is not the kind of case one customarily associates with Sam Spade. Perhaps the show explains why Spade gets involved. And maybe there is a very logical reason why he chose to retire in France. On that subject, let the record show that there is no evidence in any of the versions of The Maltese Falcon that Sam Spade spoke French. by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, November 21, 2023 A federal magistrate judge on Tuesday recommended that Meta Platforms be awarded a default judgment against four residents of Hanoi, Vietnam, who hijacked the accounts of advertising and marketing agency employees in order to perpetrate an ad fraud scheme. U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson in the Northern District of California recommended that the defendants be prohibited from accessing or attempting to access Meta's platforms, and from disrupting Meta's systems -- including by developing malware. It's not clear whether Meta will be able to enforce the injunction, given that the defendants never appeared in court. The recommendation grew out of a lawsuit brought by Meta in June 2021. The company alleged that the Hanoi residents -- Them Nguyen, Le Khang, Nguyen Quoc Bao, and Pham Huu Dung -- duped agency employees users into installing an app called Ad Manager for Facebook from the Google Play store. advertisement advertisement That app, which wasn't affiliated with Facebook, obtained people's logins and passwords, which enabled the defendants to run ad campaigns without the users' knowledge. The fake "ad manager" app was installed more than 10,000 times between December of 2020, when it appeared on the Play store, and May 2021, according to Meta's complaint. Hixson, who accepted Meta's allegations as true, said in his ruling that the defendants ran thousands of ads that redirected Facebook and Instagram users to various ecommerce sites, and spent at least $36 million in advertising, which was charged to the victims' business credit lines. Meta reimbursed the victims. The Cayuga Nation has filed a complaint in federal court against the U.S. and its Department of Justice that would prohibit them from recognizing any leadership dispute within the nation. The complaint, filed Nov. 13 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also seeks to "redress DOJ's wrongful refusal to recognize, to meet with, and to aid and protect as statutorily required the sovereign government of the Cayuga Nation as chosen by the people of the Cayuga Nation and as formally recognized by the United States Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs." The complaint was filed by the council of Clint Halftown, who has been recognized by the bureau as the nation's representative since 2016. He is opposed by the Cayuga Council of Chiefs. In recent years Halftown's council has demolished several buildings associated with his opponents, who in response held a press conference in Seneca Falls in 2020 that led to fighting with the nation's police force. The Council of Chiefs said in a news release on Wednesday that it will hold a press conference about the complaint, which it called a "gag order," at 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 26, at 3136 Seybolt Road, Fayette. Sachem Sam George of the nation's Bear Clan applauded the Department of Justice for trying to stop Halftown's "domestic terrorism" and "ongoing attacks on the sovereignty of his own people." In its 29-page complaint, Halftown's council notes that it was affirmed by more than 60% of enrolled Cayuga members as the nation's "rightful government" in 2016. That was followed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs recognizing the council's leadership despite appeals from the opposing council, and last year the White House invited Halftown to represent the nation at the annual Tribal Nations Summit. However, the complaint continues, the DOJ has not recognized the Halftown council as the nation's rightful government. As a result, the FBI did not allow the nation's police department to access federal criminal databases until a federal court vacated the decision. Halftown's council was also denied a meeting with the U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York on jurisdictional issues. "There can be no greater affront to tribal self-determination and self-government than for a department of the federal government to refuse to recognize and meet with the leadership of an Indian nation chosen by its people, in a process recognized and respected by the Department of the Interior," the complaint says. "The refusal of DOJ to recognize and meet with leaders and tribal justice officials of the Cayuga Nation threatens public safety on the Cayuga reservation in New York, which spans two counties. It denies the Cayuga Nation and its members rights set forth in numerous federal statutes." The Cayuga Nation seeks an order that obligates the Department of Justice to meet with Halftown and other tribal officials, and prohibits the department from "declaring, maintaining or taking any departmental action on the basis that there presently is a leadership dispute within the Cayuga Nation." The nation also seeks attorney fees and any other relief determined by the court. by Fern Siegel , November 22, 2023 Martin Short's latest star turn in TV comedy was Hulu's hit show "Only Murders in the Building." Now, the actor is the focus of a humorous Canada-only national campaign created by Preacher for online money-management platform Wealthsimple. The work is rolling out across broadcast, CTV, digital and social. In it, Short plays a pampered, entitled diva version of himself. All prior advertising in Canada and the U.S., including a 2017 Super Bowl spot, was created in-house. This is Preacher's first work for the company. The spot for the fintech company is titled "Martin Short's Short Day at Work." Your money should work harder than this, reads the closing title. The new ad marks the first campaign for Wealthsimple in almost two years. Instead of playing it on the nose and featuring people who work hard, it seemed more interesting to do the exact opposite. Cue Martin Short, who was gracious enough to help us create the worlds most obnoxiously lazy spokesperson, said Zach Watkins, creative director at Preacher. advertisement advertisement Founded in 2014, Wealthsimple appeals to young, high-earning investors who like tech-forward investment tools. To date, the company reports 3 million clients across Canada and manages over $20 billion in assets. Canadians are working harder than ever and finding it ridiculous that earning a consistent, healthy paycheck isn't enough to feel financially secure anymore, said Rubina Singh, chief marketing officer at Wealthsimple. Wealthsimple understands how difficult it can be to build personal wealth in today's tough economic climate. We offer a robust suite of financial tools from trading and investing to spending and saving that makes sure their money works as hard as they do." Preacher's client work includes Tecovas, StreetEasy, Fanta and Shake Shack. by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, November 21, 2023 A recent California appeals court decision against Meta Platforms threatens to disrupt online advertising by effectively banning demographic targeting, the tech organization NetChoice warned this week. The decision, handed down in September, allowed California resident Samantha Liapes to proceed with a lawsuit claiming that Facebook violated the Unruh Act -- a state civil rights law -- because the company's ad-targeting system allegedly failed to serve some life insurance ads to women and older people. Meta recently asked the California Supreme Court to review the decision. NetChoice this week backed that request, arguing in a letter to the state Supreme Court that the Court of Appeal ruling misinterprets both the intent and the letter of the Unruh Act. The Unruh Civil Rights Act was designed to prevent arbitrary discrimination against individuals; it was not intended to impede the flow of commercial information that can be beneficial to consumers, the organization writes. advertisement advertisement The group adds that if the ruling is left in place, it will effectively ban targeted advertising, leading to a less personalized online experience, higher costs for small businesses, and a less vibrant and innovative online marketplace. Targeted advertising ensures the content users receive is relevant to their stage in life, cultural context, and other personal aspects, NetChoice writes. For instance, a retirement planning service is likely more relevant to an older demographic, while ads for maternity wear are generally most appropriate for women of childbearing age. The organization adds: "If the lower court's ruling stands, it will effectively ban NetChoice's members -- and the entire online advertising industry -- from offering socially beneficial services to Californians." Meta argued in its petition to the California Supreme Court that the lower court's ruling disregards decades of judicial consensus regarding the Unruh Act. Ad targeting has existed for decades, and its never been held to violate general anti-discrimination laws like the Unruh Act -- until now, Meta wrote in a petition filed late last month. Courts have always understood that the Unruh Act isnt meant to make established and legitimate business practices unlawful, Meta argued. Yet the Court of Appeal endorsed a limitless view of liability for targeted advertising whose effects will be as widespread as they are serious. Meta also argued even if the Unruh Act applied, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should have protected the company from liability. That law shields interactive companies from liability for third parties' online activity; in this case, the third parties are the advertisers who use Facebook's targeting tools. Facebook doesnt require advertisers to select particular users to target for ads, the company wrote. So even as plaintiff reads the Unruh Act, those tools will be used toward discriminatory ends only if advertisers choose to do so. by Ray Schultz , November 21, 2023 The city of Seattle is considering a voucher program that would help fund local news reporting. But publishers appear opposed to it. The program, patterned on Seattles democracy vouchers, would be financed, in part, with a property tax that would raise from $3 million to $10 million a year. That alone gives pause because Seattle residents can afford only so many tax increases, the Seattle Times said in an editorial on Tuesday. Such a levy may undermine their generous support for local news. Another problem is that the vouchers could not be used to buy subscriptions only to make donations. Proponents favor using vouchers to make donations, Brier Dudley, editor of The Seattle Times Save the Free Press initiative, recently wrote. Outlets receiving donations would have to make supported content available for free." advertisement advertisement But Dudley argues, This plays favorites with tax dollars. It also starts this pilot project on the wrong foot, conflicting with the business model now supporting most local journalism. He adds, It sounds like one of those complicated retail loyalty programs. This debate takes place as the Medill School of Journalism reports that people in more than half of U.S. counties have little or no access to a reliable local news source. The proposal might appear on the ballot in 2024 if donors are found to fund a campaign, Dudley reports. Dudley and The Seattle Times think that the solution to funding local news should be at the federal level, and that rural areas deserve more help than coastal cities. After several days of drama, OpenAI said late Tuesday it had reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return as CEO to lead the company he built through advancements in AI. The new board will be chaired by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. OpenAI posted on X that the company had reached an agreement in principle for Altman to return as CEO with a new initial board and will collaborate to work out the details. "i love openai, and everything i've done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together," Altman wrote on X. "when i decided to join msft on sun evening it was clear that was the best path for me and the team." advertisement advertisement Others on the board now include Larry Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, and Adam DAngelo, the chief executive of Quora and one of the board members who voted to oust Altman, OpenAI said in the post. "We are so back," Open AI President Greg Brockman shared in a post with photo of him and employees. The agreement includes a plan for an independent investigation into the events that led up to the originally ouster of Altman. The non-profit board stunned the technology industry on Friday with the announcement that it had fired Altman for not being "consistently candid in his communications." The goal was to have OpenAI CTO and board member Mira Murati step in as interim CEO. Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft and one of OpenAI's biggest investors, wrote on X: "We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance." Late Sunday, Microsoft announced that Altman, along with Brockman, who quit after the firing, would join the tech giant as it creates a new AI division. The goal was for the two to lead the new AI division at Microsoft, but with their return to OpenAI it now leaves the Redmond, Washington-based company with something to explain. Will it still create a new AI division and if so, who will run it? Another unsolved challenge will be the hiring of an interim CEO -- Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear. Despite the drama, when OpenAI employees threatened to quit, there were plenty of suitors. Companies had begun attempts to lure OpenAI engineers to work for their company. Salesforce Founder Marc Benioff wrote on X that he would "match any OpenAI researcher who has tendered their resignation full cash & equity OTE to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted AI research team under Silvio Savarese. Send me your cv directly to ceo@salesforce.com. Einstein is the most successful enterprise AI Platform completing 1 Trillion predictive & generative transactions this week! Join our Trusted AI Enterprise Revolution." by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, November 22, 2023 On the bright side, the emotionally charged, week-long on again/off again drama surrounding Sam Altmans ouster and return to OpenAI proves just how human the people leading the development of artificial intelligence actually are. On the downside, it demonstrates how precariously human they also are. Its all very juicy. But this drama should also be raising larger questions, far beyond one companys internal hirings and firings, including We are the people making the decision that will determine so much of our technological future, author Jill Filipovic wrote in an opinion column Tuesday on CNN.com, adding: What guiding principles are they using to make those decisions? And how should other institutions governments, non-tech industries, global alliances, regulatory bodies reign in the worst excesses of potentially dangerous AI innovators? advertisement advertisement The very juicy Sam Altman/OpenAI/Microsoft/OpenAI drama has been entertaining for sure, but it has also been erratic in a way that causes this non-regulatory body to be concerned about whats next. And while I did take some comfort in the fact that OpenAI officially acknowledged Altmans return -- for now -- with a heart emoji on its X Corp. account, it would have been nice to have seen something more like a substantive rationalization for what actually happened -- and why it wont happen again. Even before Altmans boardroom drama unfolded this week, Ive been thinking about the irrational human desires accelerating the development of next-generation artificial intelligence applications -- at least on the surface -- if not in the actual engineering, security and safety protocols. Mainly, Ive been thinking about Elon Musks posts about his Grok AI chatbot, which he says is modeled after sci-fi satire, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but has a rebellious streak. Rebellious streak? Just what I dont want in a technological super power. Has anyone seen Terminator? Over the past quarter century of technological hyper-acceleration, I have often thought about the science-fiction role models that have influenced and inspired its inception, and Ive always fantasized that they were being guided more by Isaac Asimov (see his fictional rules of robotics below), and less by Douglas Adams or James Cameron. Im proposing that the institutions seeking to reign in the worst excesses of potentially dangerous AI innovators use the three rules enshrined in Asimovs short story Runaround in 1942, become codified as international law very soon. The laws, which Asimov described as part of the fictional "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.,, are: The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Star kids just can't seem to catch a break from online trolling, simply by virtue of the families they were born into. From their fashion sense to their achievements, everything is attributed to their privilege. Even the brightest stars are not immune to criticism in Bollywood, especially when you're a star kid like Ananya Panday. The young actress, who has been making waves with her on-screen presence, recently found herself at the centre of online trolling yet again, this time for her photoshoot on the cover of Elle India. Elle India Ananya Panday shared a series of pictures from her Elle India Magazine cover shoot on her Instagram handle. The actress, known for her impeccable style, showcased various looks, from a red-hued bralette paired with a sheer top and a black cut-out detailed Gucci skirt to a white-hued shirt styled with a multi-hued printed skirt featuring a thigh-high slit. However, the glittering facade of stardom couldn't shield Ananya from the critical eyes of online trolls. Elle India A Reddit user reposted the images, and the comment section quickly became a battlefield of opinions. One user unleashed a barrage of criticism, stating, "Her expressions are pretty blank and I get nothing from her eyes. She seems good here cause you cant see the bad acting The critique didn't stop there. The user went on to dissect Ananya's look saying, "You are highly underestimating the power of great makeup, lights, and a generous dollop of photoshop." Comment byu/Legitimate_Spend_614 from discussion inBollyBlindsNGossip Comment byu/Legitimate_Spend_614 from discussion inBollyBlindsNGossip Comment byu/Legitimate_Spend_614 from discussion inBollyBlindsNGossip Comment byu/Legitimate_Spend_614 from discussion inBollyBlindsNGossip Comment byu/Legitimate_Spend_614 from discussion inBollyBlindsNGossip An eagle-eyed fan also noticed how one of Ananya's skirts was similar to something Alia wore at an event a few months back. Reddit/BollyBlindsNGossip This trolling incident comes hot on the heels of another round of trolling aimed at Ananya, where she was targeted for purchasing a new house. The relentless scrutiny extends to her personal life as well, with ongoing criticisms surrounding her alleged relationship with Aditya Roy Kapur. From the outside looking in, Bollywood seems less of an industry and more of a tightly knit family. Or so the idea has been to propagate. However, real experiences for a lot of actors and actresses have proved otherwise and painted the reality of the Bollywood fraternity in a rather startling way. One actor who has always been very candid about his experiences both when he was at the top and during a dip in his career, is Govinda. A 90s superstar, Govinda has been very vocal about his trials and tribulations in the Hindi film industry through the course of his career. Quite recently, the actor was in the news for mending his relationship with Bollywood director David Dhawan at filmmaker Ramesh Taurani's Diwali party. While talking to Bombay Times about it, he shared, I am glad people still feel that we should work together. Yeh unka pyaar hai [This is their love]. Our patch-up had already happened. What further caught peoples attention was the fact that Ramesh Tauranis Diwali Party was actually the first party that the actor attended and was even invited to, after two long decades. He shared, Ramesh Taurani is a good person. Over the years, Bollywood parties have become these group parties, and if you don't belong to a certain group (camp), you aren't invited. If you are not seen at these parties, it is assumed that you aren't social, which is wrong. I am not anti-social at all, and I don't believe in groups. It came as a shock to many, considering Govinda was one of the top actors of his time back in the day. As far as his patch up with David Dhawan was concerned, he said, This was our second meeting. It was a Diwali bash where we ate good food and had a great time. We don't believe in raking up the past. Why mull over it? That's not necessary. Let bygones be bygones. Filmy talk wasn't a priority, but when that happened, we only spoke about the happy memories and those were plenty. Source: Bollywood Hungama A superintendent of a central New York school district and a former school board president are facing public corruption charges for the alleged misuse of nearly $15,000 in taxpayer funds. Bruce Karam and Louis LaPolla were arraigned in Oneida County Court. Both have been charged with four-degree grand larceny and public corruption. Karam is facing more charges, including additional counts of fourth-degree grand larceny and public corruption, along with third-degree corruption of the government. Karam, who has served as superintendent of the Utica City School District since 2011, is accused of using school district funds and supplies, including envelopes and stamps, to send mailers supporting school board candidates. An investigation conducted by the Oneida County District Attorney's Office, New York State Police and state comptroller's office also found Karam allegedly used school resources, including employees to place fliers in district-owned envelopes, to send invitations for a fundraiser that benefited LaPolla's purported charity. LaPolla, who no longer sits on the school board, is facing federal charges for allegedly stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a scholarship fund that was established in his late wife's honor. Investigators believe LaPolla, a former Utica mayor who served as school board president from 2018 to 2022, was aware that school district resources were used to distribute the invitations to his charity's fundraiser. State and local agencies say the misuse of taxpayer funds totaled $14,649, including $9,775 in stamps, $1,015 in supplies and $3,859 for compensation. "The diversion of funds meant to support the education and well-being of students by high-ranking school officials is an appalling betrayal of the public trust," state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said. "Instead of serving the students of the district who they were duty-bound to help, these two defendants allegedly chose to serve themselves." Karam is also accused of attempting to cover up his alleged crimes by asking employees to lie about the use of school district resources. He has been on leave from the school district since October 2022. The next court date for Karam and LaPolla is Dec. 1. At a special meeting Tuesday, Utica City School District Board of Education President Joseph Hobika, Jr. detailed "aggressive and proactive steps to overhaul our administrative operating structure" after Karam was placed on leave one year ago. Those steps include hiring staff and implementing measures to prevent misconduct in the future. "While both Mr. Karam and Mr. LaPolla are entitled to their day in court, we recognize that the bond of trust between the Utica City School District and our community has been violated," Hobika said. "We, the current board of education, deeply regret this breach and extend our sincere apologies to our students, staff, parents and community." The board is cooperating with the ongoing investigations, Hobika added. Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On November 21, local time, Radar Auto, Geely's high-end new energy outdoors lifestyle vehicle brand, hosted a launch ceremony at its flagship store in Vientiane, Laos, marking the official entry of its inaugural all-electric pickup, the Radar RD6, into the Southeast Asian market. Launch ceremony; photo credit: Radar Auto With nations actively pursuing energy conservation and emission reduction, countries in Southeast Asia have articulated ambitious goals for the transformation of their automotive industry structures. Under this background, the Laotian government has outlined a comprehensive strategy with a target to increase the share of electric vehicles (EV) in the country to over 30% by 2030. Simultaneously, compared to sedans and SUVs, there is a greater demand for pickup truck models among consumers in Southeast Asia. Geely Radar strategically forays into the Southeast Asian market while actively expanding its overseas footprint, contributing to the acceleration of local energy industry's restructuring and upgrading. Radar RD6; photo credit: Radar Auto The Radar RD6, touted as China's first native all-electric pickup by Geely, caters to the needs of the Southeast Asian market with a rated payload of 450kg in the rear compartment and versatile adaptability for various scenarios. It is engineered to tackle the region's high temperatures and complex road conditions. Moreover, adopting a high-performance passenger-oriented design philosophy, the RD6 boasts a maximum battery capacity of 100 kWh that enables an impressive range of 632 km, achieving a 0-100 km/h acceleration in 6.9 seconds, and a top speed of 185 km/h. In the markets outside of China, Geely Radar successfully exported its first batch of vehicles in July this year. Geely Holding Group continues to power Radar Auto in technology, resources, supply chains, and overseas channels, facilitating a more efficient expansion of global market prospects. The collaboration with the Laotian car dealer, disclosed during the aforesaid launch event, involves an estimated investment exceeding 20 million yuan, earmarked for channel expansion, product marketing, and other development initiatives. With the debut in Southeast Asia, Radar Auto is set to embark on a rapid overseas market expansion, anticipating official sales commencement in over ten countries globally by January 2024. An American AC-130 gunship on Monday struck a vehicle in Iraq and killed Iranian-backed fighters who had targeted an air base used by U.S. forces with missiles and a drone, according to the Pentagon. Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq was attacked by the fighters with close-range ballistic missiles, causing "several non-serious injuries" as well as some damage to infrastructure -- the latest in what have become numerous attacks on troops in the region, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters Tuesday. "Immediately following the attack, a U.S. military AC-130 aircraft in the area conducted a self-defense strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and the number of Iranian-backed militia personnel involved in this attack," she said. Read Next: Navy Officially Ends Its 'Up or Out' Policy that Forced Sailors to Advance or Separate The strike "resulted in some hostile fatalities," Singh said. The attack on an installation used by the U.S. military in the Middle East is at least the 66th since Oct. 17, and U.S. personnel have suffered at least 62 injuries, according to the Pentagon. Singh noted that the figure does not include any injuries from the most recent attack "as they are still being evaluated." The high tempo of attacks began in the weeks after the start of Israel's war against Hamas, which resulted in the U.S. deploying two carrier strike groups, a Marine expeditionary unit and additional aircraft to the region to deter a wider conflict. But the Pentagon has continued to claim the attacks on U.S. forces by Iran proxies are not related. However, over the last few weeks, the Pentagon has put more than 2,000 troops on deployment alert and moved several air defense units and hundreds of other troops into the region in an effort to help increase deterrence and defensive capabilities. In response to the attacks, the Pentagon has now conducted several planned strikes on weapons and ammunition storage facilities used by Iranian-backed militias in Syria. However, Singh revealed that U.S. forces have also been taking undisclosed but smaller-scale retaliatory actions whenever possible. "We have had other cases where we have responded in retaliation when we were able to identify the point of origin" of the attack, she said. Singh said that yesterday's action fell into the category of an unplanned retaliation. U.S. service members "were able to take action because they saw the militants. They were able to keep an eye on the movement of these militants as they moved into their vehicles," she said. A defense official said that the base was attacked twice -- once with a one-way attack drone and then with two short-range ballistic missiles. The use of short-range ballistic missiles was a new development in the attacks since Oct. 17, but it is not a new capability to the area, the defense official said. The news comes amid questions about whether the U.S. is doing enough to deter the ever-growing attacks on bases in the Middle East. Pentagon officials have repeatedly stressed that they believe their deterrence efforts are working. Singh pushed back on the idea that U.S. deterrence efforts have failed and, instead, stressed that the Pentagon is "being very deliberate in our strikes and what we target." "Right now, we are seeing non-serious injuries, minor damage to infrastructure in comparison to weapons facilities being destroyed, a command-and-control center node being leveled, and ... a training facility also destroyed," she said, referring to the earlier planned retaliatory strikes. "We've been very precise and have inflicted a lot of damage," she added. -- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on X at @ktoropin. Related: Iran-Linked Attacks on US Troops Continue Despite Second Airstrike in Syria Meant to Send Message SKOPJE, North Macedonia Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama urged NATO on Wednesday to further boost its military forces in Kosovo and secure the country's borders with Serbia, warning that recent ethnic violence in Kosovo could potentially trigger a wider Balkan conflict. Kosovos border with Serbia was out of control," Rama said after an informal meeting of Western Balkan NATO members in North Macedonia. He said the frontier was being used for a host of illegal activities, including drugs and arms smuggling and infiltration by ultra nationalists, that could lead to great disturbances in the region. Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority, is a former Serbian province. It gained independence with the help of a NATO military campaign, launched in 1999 to end a bloody Serb crackdown on an armed separatist movement. Tensions remain high, with violence breaking out twice in recent months, and Western countries fear that Russia could try to foment trouble in the Balkans to avert attention from the war in Ukraine. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who attended the meeting in North Macedonia's capital, Skopje, insisted after Wednesday's talks that NATO doesn't see any military threat to its allies in the Western Balkans. But what we do see is an increase in tensions, especially in Kosovo, Stoltenberg said. He said that NATO has strengthened its military presence in Kosovo established after the 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia with about 1,000 additional troops and heavier weaponry. We are cautious, of course. We are closely monitoring the situation and we will certainly do what is necessary to protect and defend our allies, Stoltenberg said. During a visit to Kosovo on Monday, Stoltenberg said that NATO was considering deploying additional peacekeeping troops there. On Tuesday in Belgrade, he said that the recent violent outbreaks in Kosovo were unacceptable and perpetrators must be brought to justice. In May, Serb demonstrators in northern Kosovo clashed with NATO peacekeeping troops. In September, a Kosovo police officer and three Serb gunmen were killed in a shootout after about 30 masked men opened fire on a police patrol near the Kosovo village of Banjska. Serbia doesn't recognize Kosovo's formal declaration of independence in 2008. Both countries want to join the European Union, which is mediating a dialogue between the former foes. Brussels has warned both that refusal to compromise jeopardizes their chances of joining the bloc. Wednesday's talks in Skopje were attended by Rama, the prime ministers of North Macedonia and Montenegro, Dimitar Kovacevski and Milojko Spajic, as well as Croatian President Zoran Milanovic. Another retaliatory U.S. airstrike in the Middle East -- the first of its kind in Iraq -- ratcheted up tensions in the region Wednesday as casualties among Iranian-backed forces mounted and one militia group vowed retaliation. A U.S. defense official confirmed to Military.com on Wednesday that fighter aircraft conducted precision airstrikes against two facilities used by a Hezbollah militia to support recent attacks on bases used by U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. The strikes, which were carried out in Iraq, came just a day after Iran-backed fighters shot ballistic missiles at Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq, prompting a response by a nearby U.S. AC-130 gunship against a vehicle near the launch site, killing some fighters. Read Next: 'I'm Still in the Fight': Top Marine General Makes First Video Appearance Since Cardiac Arrest According to the defense official, Tuesday's strikes were conducted against Kata'ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi Shia militant group that, according to U.S. intelligence, has thousands of members and seeks to establish an Iran-aligned government in Iraq. The strikes targeted an operations center and a command-and-control node south of Baghdad, the official said. They also added that the initial evaluation indicated that "U.S. forces successfully destroyed the intended facilities." But while they confirmed the presence of Kata'ib Hezbollah personnel, "we're unable to provide a casualty assessment at this time." In a statement reported by The Associated Press, Kata'ib Hezbollah said it was considering "expanding the scope of targets" if the U.S. strikes continued, adding that the most recent attack "will not go unpunished." The most recent U.S. strike -- the first planned retaliation in the country -- also angered the Iraqi prime minister who, in a statement reported by several media outlets, called the attack a violation of the country's sovereignty and breach of the longtime U.S. mission to combat the Islamic State terrorist group on Iraqi soil. Attacks against bases housing U.S. troops in the region have been near constant since Oct. 17, with at least 66 rocket and drone attacks that have injured at least 62 service members. Since that time, Pentagon officials have been forced to walk a thin line between proportionally responding to attacks on U.S. troops that, while generally ineffective, have led to injuries and damage but without escalating into a deeper conflict. Officials such as Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said as recently as Tuesday that U.S. retaliations have been precise and aimed solely at the groups they believe are responsible for attacking American bases. However, despite the messaging, the pace of attacks and U.S. retaliation appeared to be growing. The first planned, retaliatory airstrike was conducted by U.S. jets on Oct. 27 in Syria. Since then, two more strikes have been conducted in that country. Singh also revealed Tuesday that U.S. forces have been taking undisclosed but smaller-scale retaliatory actions whenever possible. "We have had other cases where we have responded in retaliation when we were able to identify the point of origin" of the attack, she said. Tuesday's AC-130 gunship strike was one such action. Meanwhile, the U.S. presence in the region has grown dramatically since Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, launched a brutal and bloody surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that left about 1,400 Israelis dead. A separate defense official confirmed to Military.com on Monday that the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, which has been in the waters off of Israel since the start of the conflict, has had its deployment extended. When Military.com asked whether there was a limit to how long the Pentagon plans to keep the Ford on deployment -- which is now nearing 7 months in length -- Singh had no firm answer. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "will make that [decision] when he determines that it's time for the Ford to come home," Singh said Tuesday. Meanwhile, defense officials say that they will continue to message Iran that they plan to hold it accountable for the attacks of the militias it backs. "We will not hesitate to take further measures to protect our people, if necessary," a defense official told Military.com. -- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on X at @ktoropin. Related: Iran-Linked Fighters Killed by US AC-130 Gunship After Attack on Base with Ballistic Missiles SEOUL, South Korea North Korea performed a suspected failed missile test on Wednesday night, South Korea's military said, hours after Seoul said it would resume front-line aerial surveillance in response to the Norths recent spy satellite launch. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a brief statement it detected the missile launch from the North's capital region. It said the missile was fired toward the North's eastern waters but that the launch was believed to have ended in failure. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the South Korean and U.S. authorities are analyzing the North Korean launch but gave no further details. The North Korean launch its first weapons firing in more than two months came hours after South Korea announced it decided to partially suspend an inter-Korean agreement and restart front-line aerial surveillance of North Korea. The Norths neighbors are trying to confirm whether the launch on Tuesday evening was successful and the satellite can perform reconnaissance functions. South Koreas military said it assessed that the North Korean spy satellite had entered orbit as the North claimed. But it said it needs more time to verify whether it works. Earlier, the Pentagon said it was assessing the success of the launch, while Japan stated there had been no confirmation of the Norths report on the satellite entering orbit. North Koreas state media claimed the spy satellite transmitted imagery showing space views of key military sites in the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. It didnt publicize the photos, and many experts remain skeptical about whether the North Korean satellite is advanced enough to conduct meaningful military reconnaissance. Despite questions about the launch, the United States and its allies strongly condemned it. They believe it was meant to improve the countrys missile technology as well as establish a space-based surveillance system. North Korea says it has sovereign, legitimate rights to launch spy satellites to cope with what it calls intensifying U.S.-led threats. But U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit any satellite liftoffs by North Korea, viewing them as covers for testing its long-range missile technology. Heo Tae-keun, South Koreas deputy minister of national defense policy, told a televised briefing that the Norths latest satellite launch was not only a clear violation of the U.N. resolutions but also a grave provocation that threatens our national security. Heo said South Korea decided to respond by partially suspending the 2018 inter-Korean agreement Wednesday and resuming aerial surveillance activities at the border. He added that South Korea will promptly and strongly punish North Korea if it uses the South Korean step as a pretext to launch another provocation. The 2018 agreement, struck during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the rival Koreas, created buffer and no-fly zones along the countries heavily fortified border. Under the deal, the Koreas were required to halt front-line aerial reconnaissance and live-fire exercises. They also removed some of their guard posts and land mines at border areas. The deal invited withering conservative criticism in South Korea with critics saying it significantly restricted the operation of the countrys aerial surveillance assets, which are much more superior to North Koreas. They also accused the deal of heavily benefiting North Korea, because it only called for mutual reductions of conventional military strength while leaving the Norths growing nuclear arsenal intact. South Korea has no nuclear weapons. The brief Korean rapprochement period evaporated soon after the collapse of broader nuclear diplomacy between North Korea and the U.S. in 2019. North Korea has since ramped up missile tests to modernize its weapons arsenal, prompting the U.S. and South Korea to expand their defense exercises in response. When the Norths National Aerospace Technology Administration announced what it called a successful launch of its Malligyong-1 spy satellite, it said the satellite would help improve the Norths war readiness in the face of the enemies dangerous military moves. The agency said North Korea will soon launch several more spy satellites to better monitor South Korea and other areas. Leader Kim Jong Un watched the satellite launch on site. According to state media, Kim later visited the Pyongyang control center of the Norths space agency, where he was briefed that the Malligyong-1 satellite would officially begin its reconnaissance mission from Dec. 1, following a period of fine-tuning. At the center, Kim was also presented with the aerospace photos of Anderson Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other U.S. military facilities in Guam, which were taken Wednesday morning, according to the Norths official Korean Central News Agency. It was not possible to independently confirm those images. Last December, when North Korea released black-and-white satellite photos of South Korean cities following a test launch, many experts said the imagery was too crude for surveillance purposes. North Korea used the same satellite in its two failed launches in May and August. South Koreas military retrieved debris from the first launch and assessed at the time the satellite wasnt sophisticated enough to perform military reconnaissance. In 2012 and 2016, North Korea placed Earth observation satellites into orbit, but experts say neither has ever transmitted imagery back to North Korea. Before Tuesdays launch, South Korean officials said North Korea was likely receiving Russian technological support for its spy satellite launch program as part of the two countries pushes to boost their partnerships. The U.S., South Korea and others accuse North Korea of shipping conventional arms to support Russias war in Ukraine in exchange for receiving high-tech Russian technologies to enhance its own military programs. Both North Korea and Russia have denied the accusations. A spy satellite is among an array of sophisticated weapons systems that Kim wants to introduce. Experts say he would eventually aim to use his enlarged arsenal to win sanctions relief and other concessions from the U.S. when diplomacy resumes. Some civilian experts said North Koreas Malligyong-1 satellite is likely capable of only detecting big targets like warships or planes. But by operating several such satellites, North Korea could still observe South Korea at all times, they said. Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report from Tokyo. Pier 6 sits where the Elizabeth River and Chesapeake Bay meet at the largest Navy complex in the world Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. Its Monday, windy and cold. Sailors, civilian contractors and dockworkers, or stevedores as theyre called on Pier 6, hurry to unload three enormous food trucks filled with hundreds and hundreds of pounds of Thanksgiving provisions for the USS Forrest Sherman, a destroyer thats docked at Norfolk during the holiday. Soon, an assembly line for the food forms; fruits, veggies, potatoes, pies and whole turkeys make their way from the truck to the deck and down into the belly of the ship, where they will sit, chilled, until they head to the galley for preparation. On this episode, well take a look at that tradition, the preparation for it and what it means to the sailors on the ship for Thanksgiving. Since antiquity, one way to learn about a military and its personnel has been through their stomachs, what theyre being fed and how much and this year with all of the uncertainty the world has to offer, troops are getting a lot to eat this Thanksgiving. Main Topics Drew F. Lawrence visits Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, and the USS Forrest Sherman to see sailors prepare for Thanksgiving. Interviews with Defense Logistics Agency personnel on how much food has been sent to troops at home and abroad. Additional Resources Listen, rate, and subscribe! Spotify Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Transcript: SPEAKERS Michael Hong, CS3 Jacob Weed, Robbin Durie, Drew F. Lawrence, Robin Whaley, IT1 Jacob Hruska, Lt. Melissa Jock, Commander Jorge Roldan, CS3 Lopez Miller Drew F. Lawrence Pier 6 sits where the Elizabeth River and Chesapeake Bay meet at the largest navy complex in the world Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. Its Monday, windy and cold. Sailors, civilian contractors and dock workers, or stevedors as theyre called on Pier 6 hurry to unload three enormous food trucks filled with hundreds and hundreds of pounds of Thanksgiving provisions for the USS Forrest Sherman, a destroyer thats docked at Norfolk during the holiday. Soon an assembly line for the food forms; fruits, veggies, potatoes, pies, whole turkeys make their way from the truck, to the deck and down into the belly of the ship where they will sit, chilled, until they head to the galley for preparation. Lt. Melissa Jock There's a hatch actually right behind the quarterdeck there that goes straight down to basically the galley level and then down one more to the reefer. So they'll just make a line and it all makes its way down there. Drew F. Lawrence Thats Lieutenant Melissa Jock, shes the supply officer, or SUPPO for the ship and in charge of making the impending Thanksgiving meal happen for about a quarter of the total crew so about 75 sailors stuck with taking care of the ship on the holiday while it's docked. As shes telling me about the unloading process, something happens something that often happens in the mornings on a military installation. Lt. Melissa Jock ...dairy so they all come in different, different times. They normally try to come at the same...ope, hold on. Drew F. Lawrence The sailors and even some of the dock workers snap to attention and render a salute to the American flag emerging from the top of the ship as the Star-Spangled Banner plays across the piers. And when three whistles blow WHISTLE WHISTLE WHISTLE the crew gets back to work. Lt. Melissa Jock So yeah, so normally it's like three or four trucks. It just depends on what we're getting. But it's pretty much an average that... Drew F. Lawrence In the military, the mission never stops, or at least, not for long. There are times where you make room for tradition, like dropping what youre doing and saluting the colors in the morning. Thanksgiving is no different, it is a holiday steeped in tradition for the military and the sailors on the USS Sherman are some of thousands of troops away from their families on a day that would normally be spent at home with them. On this episode, well take a look at that tradition, the preparation for it and what it means to the sailors on the ship for Thanksgiving. Since antiquity, one way to learn about a military and its personnel is through their stomachs, what theyre being fed and by how much and this year with all of the uncertainty the world has to offer, troops are getting a lot to eat this Thanksgiving. What does that mean? And what might that tell us? For Military.com, my name is Drew Lawrence and this is a special episode of Fire Watch. Despite no major U.S. wars, some troops are away from home more than they were since the height of the global war on terror. For example, Military.com reported that the Army had roughly 120,000 soldiers abroad as of April this year. In 2008, during the height of GWOT, the entire Defense Department had roughly 187,900 troops total deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Those numbers began to dwindle, and now that the U.S. has withdrawn from Afghanistan, youd think that the operation tempo as the military calls its deployment and training rates has slowed down. But with emerging threats in the Pacific, Eastern Europe and now again, the Middle East after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel last month drawing U.S. assets into the region on stability missions, the opposite appears true for service members away from home during the holidays. I talked to some subject matter experts at the Defense Logistics Agency, the element in charge of getting those holiday meals, and really all meals, to troops at home and abroad. Robin Whaley, who is the division chief in charge troop subsistence support abroad, told me this last week: US troops are no longer in Afghanistan, for example, but troops are still being deployed around the world all the time. They're doing different things than maybe they were doing five or 10 years ago. Do you see any difference? You know, do you see that there's more food going out? That there's less food going out? Do you see a difference in where this food is going? Or how it's received? Robin Whaley No, I believe probably food consumption is about the same because no matter where you are or how many troops you have, you're going to eat three meals a day. So I would say that the food consumption is still the same. And then given all of the world events there may be an increase, but I would say it's basically the same. Drew F. Lawrence Whaley has been with DLA for over 30 years and her prediction was right. See, every year, DLA releases how many turkeys they send out, pies, cakes and pounds of ham and beef and sweet potatoes. That also includes how many gallons of egg nog and surprisingly, shrimp, which saw some of its lowest numbers last year take that however youd like. But heres the thing. This year, the numbers that came out for 2023 were astronomically more than any time in the previous five years. Here are some highlights, based on my number crunching: DLA delivered 19,790 more whole turkeys to troops than it did last year with a total of 28,945. This is by far the most turkey DLA has delivered since 2018. Beef numbers are also way up with poundage breaking into the 100,000s for the first time since at least 2017. Thats an increase in 104,717 pounds of beef, or 255% increase since last year. Ham and shrimp numbers have been more than doubled since last year. Again, this is the most amount of ham since 2017. Sweet potatoes, pie and cakes are down by about half each, but the numbers that have increased have increased A LOT. Now, DLA cautioned us about looking too hard at these numbers and hoping for conclusions. For example, troops apparently requested 23,461 gallons of egg nog in 2021. Thats like 3x as much egg nog thats ever been requested can we make any assumptions about that? Maybe troops were thirstier that year, I dont know. But the point is that more troops deployed abroad means that more food is likely requested. And according to DLA, recent world events have directly contributed to the increase in holiday food requested. A few days after my interview with Whaley, she sent a statement that said, in part, This year DLA Troop Support received increased requirements for holiday support due to several unplanned real world events. I asked DLA spokesperson Michael Hong if the real world events referenced in her statement were related to the ongoing Israel Hamas war that began last month. Michael Hong Correct. President Biden has reiterated, reiterated our ironclad support of Israel and so Israel support has affected those numbers. Drew F. Lawrence Holidays always bring that temperature check to light. Why are troops away from home and their families? What are they doing? Where are they? Each year, the Defense Department releases photos of troops eating turkey meals and leaders serving up pies in bases from Boise, Idaho to Syria. The experts at DLA told me that efforts to get those meals to galleys and dining facilities around the world starts months in advance when units begin requesting how much food they want for the holidays. Many troops that DLA support are deployed abroad. In fact, sailors on the USS Forrest Sherman were underway in the Mediterranean last year when Thanksgiving rolled around. Now, some of those sailors are in port stateside and Robbin Durie, who is in charge of stateside subsistence deliveries at DLA understands how that can be sometimes even more difficult. And I guess one question with that is what do you hope for for your customers when they receive the shipments that you put together? And what I mean by that is, you're specifically talking about troops that are here stateside, they're in training, they're at the USS Forrest Sherman there because someone needs to be on the ship at all times. Right, you know, what do you hope for them when they get their Thanksgiving meal and how they feel? Robbin Durie Right? Well, I want them to get that sense of comfort. And so you know, some people might have a perception, oh, it's food, you know, it's very easy to buy. How important really is it? But it's very important. You don't think about how comforting it really is to have turkey on Thanksgiving, those memories that it brings back. So I want those folks that serve our country to have that feeling of comfort if they're not able to be with their loved ones at the holiday time. Drew F. Lawrence And thats what much of the holiday success for the military comes down to: the prep, the care and the camaraderie. Back at the Forrest Sherman, Lieutenant Jock gave me a tour of the galley, freezer and other parts of the ship as she explained a bit more about the planning. We made our way down through the labyrinth of doors and ladders and ended up in the mess deck where sailors were chatting, and Jock explained a bit more about the planning. How far in advance do you plan for Thanksgiving? Lt. Melissa Jock We had to put our food order in three weeks in advance. So we ordered it at like the beginning of the month. And then it's coming today. So that was like 20 days. I think we ordered it on Halloween. October 31st. So that was three weeks out. That's just standard like it's mandatory. Otherwise you're not getting turkeys. Drew F. Lawrence I also spoke to one of the culinary specialist on the ship Jacob Weed,, and it was hard not to be enthused by his excitement in making a holiday meal happen with his friends and for his friends this Thanksgiving. CS3 Jacob Weed I mean, like we're getting chops, like like ASAP like we're getting a five pound bag of onions, peppers, carrots, celery if we have it so we can start mirepoix. We're gonna put that in the turkey. And basically everybody starts a cutting board up, get some music on the speaker. There's like a five minute argument about what music we're gonna listen to then go ahead and bump to music, get into it and get in the group basically get in the jam. We did apple pie, pumpkin, sweet potato pecan. And then we have two really talented fruit carvers...who can turn...Yeah, they do like these swans out of apples, birds and stuff. Drew F. Lawrence Last year you said you were underway, right? What's the big difference between prep from last year, and prep for this year not being underway. CS3 Jacob Weed The ship doesn't move, which makes cooking 10 times easier. That is easily the best difference possible, the fact that you know we're not we're not moving, we don't have to worry about securing stuff for sea, we don't have to get ropes from the BMs to go tie up our roasting pans full of potatoes. They're not flying, nobody's getting hit with flying tomatoes and onions, which is good. And we're using knives obviously, you know, so I would say not moving. But in terms of volume and in terms of like output it's going to be the exact same. Drew F. Lawrence Military.com spoke to several other troops on the USS Forrest Sherman, who all offered a pretty succinct thread of what it was like to spend Thanksgiving on a ship stateside and away from your family: it sucks, but if you have a good meal, spend some time with your friends and enjoy the holiday spirit where you can, it sucks a lot less. CS3 Lopez Miller It's not easy. But they everybody no matter who you are, they tell you if you don't have anywhere to go, go to the ship. Because nobody wants to be here. Drew F. Lawrence Thats culinary specialist third class Lopez Miller, stacking Thanksgiving provisions as they make their way down into the refrigerator freezer, or reefer as its called. CS3 Lopez Miller So the sense that when we're together, it sucks, but...but everyone sucks together. It makes it a little less bad. Drew F. Lawrence And here's information systems technician 1st class Jacob Hruska whos been in the Navy for about 9 years and had some advice for new service memebrs who may not be used to spending time away from home on the holidays IT1 Jacob Hruska Biggest thing is just offering if, if we're lucky enough to be in port, offering them that chance of you know, hey, the base is doing this for you guys. If you don't feel like that, my house is open. But probably the most important thing is just letting them know, like, 'Hey, you're not with your family. Call them if you can. But make sure whatever you can find something to do, don't be alone during the holidays, because it just it gets rough when you're not used to it.' Drew F. Lawrence And to make things a bit more bearable, leadership on the USS Forrest Sherman allowed family members to accompany those 75 or so sailors charged with taking care of the ship on Thanksgiving to join them for the meal a special addition to the holiday tradition that makes it a bit better. Commander Jorge Roldan We really understand that, you know, not everyone's going to be able to travel home. This might be some, some of our sailors first time really kind of being separated from family. And so whatever effort we can make, whether it's, you know, making that meal just a little bit more special. Trying to make sure that we don't do a lot of you know, kind of... Drew F. Lawrence Heres commander Jorge Rodan, the executive officer for the ship. And I asked him if he and other leadership would be coming in to visit their sailors this Thanksgiving. Commander Jorge Roldan Yeah, Captain and I were just discussing it this morning. You know, I asked the team to put together maybe like a special plan of the day with the holiday menu. And once we finalize the timeline for Thursday, I know myself, I'm gonna bring my wife and my son on board. Captain's gonna bring his daughters so that we have an opportunity to kind of share our family with our Navy family. Drew F. Lawrence And others can, can they bring their family as well? Commander Jorge Roldan Yes, if the duty section member has someone that they would like to bring a meal... Drew F. Lawrence Oh, I almost forgot. Jock, the SUPPO, was kind enough to pull out a turkey for us to take a look at. It was the big reveal of the day. Take a listen: I was going to interview it. Lt. Melissa Jock You're gonna interview the turkey? Tell me how that goes. Yeah, sure. Drew F. Lawrence You want to help me? I'm kidding. Thank you for listening to this special episode of Fire Watch. Credit to our executive producer, Zach Fryer-Biggs and a special thank you to the crew and personnel at Naval Station Norfolk for your time. As always, thanks for listening. MINNEAPOLISCarnal Media announces that Alan Breslaw has been promoted to the position of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Breslaw recently held the title of Head of Sales and Marketing at the company. This promotion comes one year after his return to the Carnal Media team. In his first year, Breslaw oversaw the final stages of Carnals three network launches, helping with the consolidation of Carnals 38 individual studio websites into three consolidated subscriptions. This included the launch Carnals newest network FTMPlus.com, which includes its newest brand Transcest.com, as well as the expansion of BarebackPlus.com to include two new brand launches over the past two months: HungFuckers.com and CumDumpSluts.com. During the past year, he not only helped Carnal navigate its fast growth but was a critical part of the executive team that set a course for even more growth and expansion in 2024. In his new role, Breslaw will be in charge of market research and market growth and expansion, work directly with the owner on new sites and networks for the company, and lead the sales and marketing department at Carnal Media. Carnal will add multiple new sites in 2024, begin the relaunch of legacy brands, and launch a fourth standalone network. It's hard to overstate Carnals growth and success with so much taking place and on the immediate horizon, Breslaw said. Having just launched Carnals very own VOD site, and the relaunch of the highly anticipated tangible goods store CarnalGoods, and the relaunch of TheGayGoods already dubbed the 'Playboy of Gay Porn' by The Guardian, I am excited with more incredible announcements to come. I want to thank Legrand, Jay and everyone at Carnal Media, he added. I am honored with the opportunity, and truly excited to do more to help the company continue to grow at its rapid pace. It has been a whirlwind first year, and I look forward to working with everyone on all of the exciting endeavors we have planned on our 10-year roadmap. Breslaw, who was raised in Miami, Florida, started in the adult industry at Hot House working with the legendary Steven Scarborough, and later became the head of online marketing for BelAmi in Prague. In the years since, he has worked for top dating apps globally and owned a successful consulting business before being lured back to Carnal Media. It has been incredible to work closely with Alan, said Carnal Media CEO/founder Legrand Wolf. We are really excited about the future and that Alan magic he constantly brings to the table. Im always amazed how he exceeds our greatest expectations and finds ways to be creative taking things to another level. With the course weve set out and Alan leading in his new capacity, the opportunities for our business are incredible! PONTIAC, MI -- A 50-year-old man was arraigned Tuesday on a charge of bank robbery after he allegedly tried to rob the Huntington Bank in Ferndale Monday. According to Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonalds office, the suspect -- identified as Ricky Moore -- allegedly entered the bank and handed a teller a note demanding money. The teller was worried that Moore had a weapon and alerted a co-worker before handing Moore approximately $2,000 in cash. While the teller was dealing with Moore, the co-worker called police who arrived on scene quickly. Moore was eventually taken into custody at the bank. Bank robberies can be terrifying for bank tellers and other customers, and they undermine the sense of safety that all of us should feel when we are at work or conducting business, McDonald said. We will hold those who commit robberies or threaten violence accountable. Bond was set at $250,000 and Moore is due back in court on Nov. 30. Bank robbery is a felony that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. A U.S. Navy combat ship that was built and commissioned on Lake Michigan has reached its home port in Florida, officials announced. The littoral combat ship USS Marinette LCS 25 traversed 15 locks, four Great Lakes and more than 1,400 nautical miles to reach the Atlantic Ocean and then continued its journey to its homeport of Naval Station Mayport, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Defense. It came into port on Monday. The ship was built in Marinette, Wis., and commissioned in Menominee, Mich., both on Lake Michigans Green Bay. On Sept. 16 after months of training the crew took the order to man the ship and bring her to life. Thousands of people watched the ceremony. After the commissioning festivities concluded, the ship began its transit eastward. Along the way, it stopped for refueling, stores replenishment and liberty for the crew in Cleveland, Ohio; Quebec City, Quebec; and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The sail around for USS Marinette LCS 25 has been an experience of a lifetime, said Damage Controlman 1st Class Michael Neiner, USS Marinettes sailor of the year. If you were to walk amongst this crew today, you would without a doubt feel the unbreakable bonds that were formed over memories made through struggle, perseverance, courage, and success. After more than two months of sailing, the ship arrived at Mayport on Monday. Im extremely proud of this crews accomplishments and dedication, said Cmdr. Shane Brewer, Marinettes commanding officer. Weve encountered various challenges and delays; this crew remained focused on getting home safely before Thanksgiving. The ship is a fast, agile, mission-focused platform designed for operation in near-shore environments yet capable of open-ocean operation, according to the DOD. It is designed to defeat asymmetric anti-access threats and is capable of supporting forward presence, maritime security, sea control and deterrence. TROY, MI A man in stolen vehicle was shot by police during an arrest attempt in Troy. According to the Troy Police Department, officers responded to East Big Beaver Road and attempted to stop a suspect in a stolen vehicle west of Daley Street. While the vehicle was stopped in traffic, officers attempted to box in the stolen vehicle, but the driver of began to try to ram his way out, police said. An officer fired his service weapon and struck the driver in the upper body, police said. The driver was taken into custody and aid was given by paramedics. The driver was transported to a local hospital where he remains in custody in stable condition, police said. The passenger of the suspect vehicle was treated for minor injuries. The Oakland County Sheriffs Office is investigating the incident. ANN ARBOR, MI The little blue box mounted along Ann Arbors Ingalls Street may not stand out to a casual passerby, but city officials say it represents a significant first. Along with another like it on Kingsley Street, its the first utility pole-mounted curbside charging station for electric vehicles in the state of Michigan, according to the city. WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI -- A 23-year-old man charged in the murder of a man found on a Washtenaw County freeway in July allegedly shot the victim 16 times, according to officials. Jlon Alantae Johnson, 23, was arraigned on one charge each of open murder, carrying a concealed weapon and felony firearm on Wednesday, Nov. 22, before 14-A1 District Court Magistrate Elisha Fink. Johnson, of Detroit, was charged in connection with the death of a 28-year-old man earlier this year. Read more: Police investigate fatal shooting of 28-year-old man near Ann Arbor Michigan State Police troopers were called to the shooting in the area of westbound M-14 and Earhart Road around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 18. When they arrived, they found a Detroit man in a vehicle with what appeared to be gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The victim was Devaughn Morgan, Rene Gonzalez, spokesperson for the Michigan State Police, confirmed to MLive/The Ann Arbor News. Johnson allegedly shot the victim 16 times in the face and head, Assistant Washtenaw County Prosecutor Ashley Londy said during the arraignment. Johnson denies the charges, according to his attorney Alexis Plumaj with the Washtenaw County Public Defenders Office. Read more: Police have person of interest in fatal shooting of 28-year-old on M-14 in Washtenaw County Johnson was arrested in Tennessee after violating parole conditions, Gonzalez said. He was extradited from the Knox County Jail, arriving at the Washtenaw County Jail shortly before 2 a.m. on Wednesday. Johnson is currently being held in the Washtenaw County Jail without bond. He is next set to appear in court on Tuesday, Nov. 28. Want more Ann Arbor-area news? Bookmark the local Ann Arbor news page, the Ypsilanti-area news page or sign up for the free 3@3 Ann Arbor daily newsletter. GRAND RAPIDS, MI John Ball Zoos cutest little fluffy red residents officially have names, voted on by the community. The two red panda cubs were born to parents Wyatt and Wasabi in July and are a boy and a girl. Over the last month, the community has been voting on names for the red panda cubs in a fundraiser for red panda conservation. The winning names are Dawa, which means moon in Bhutanese for the male cub and Nima, which means sun, for the female cub. We are thrilled to introduce Dawa and Nima and are so excited to watch them grow and thrive at John Ball Zoo, said Rhiannon Mulligan, education manager at the Grand Rapids zoo. We are also proud that the names of these cubs reflect the places and cultures where red pandas come from, which helps spread awareness about the wildlife and wild places we can continue preserving around the world. RELATED: Paving over paradise: John Ball Zoo parking plan stalls amid resident, county concerns According to John Ball Zoo, they partnered with the Refugee Education Center in West Michigan to come up with the potential names for the red panda cubs. The names were submitted by the Bhutanese and Nepali refugee community, where red pandas originate. Other names in the running for the male cub were Kancha, a Nepali word that means youngest member of the family and Karma, the Bhutanese word for star. The other possible names for the female cub were Kanchi, the feminine version of the Nepali word for youngest member of the family and Pema, the Bhutanese word for lotus flower. Dawa and Nima recently began exploring their outdoor habitat in the last few weeks of the zoos 2023 season. The two red panda cubs will help the species global population, which has declined by 50% over the last 20 years. This is the second litter of cubs born to Wyatt and Wasabi. The red panda pairs first litter was born in June 2020. Those cubs, Rose, Ruby and Willow, moved to a zoo in Tennessee as part of the Species Survival Plan. John Ball Zoo is closed for the 2023 season and will reopen on March 22, 2024. Want more Grand Rapids-area news? Bookmark the local Grand Rapids news page or sign up for the free 3@3 Grand Rapids daily newsletter. More from MLive: Former city commissioner Senita Lenear announces run for Grand Rapids mayor Michigan has 8,500 open hospital jobs, and 50,000 nurses who arent filling them Robbers held gun to managers head, stole nearly $100K in guns from Michigan Dunhams ALLEGAN COUNTY, MI Emergency crews have cleared the scene of a multiple-vehicle crash along U.S. 131 and reopened the impacted stretch of road. The southbound lanes of U.S. 131, north of exit 55 near Martin Township, reopened to traffic shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 22. A three-vehicle crash was reported in the mentioned area around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. At the scene, Allegan County sheriffs deputies found an overturned semi carrying several heads of cattle. Some cattle did die in the crash, deputies said, but an exact number was not immediately available Wednesday. Police have not released any details on what lead up to the crash. However, investigators believe that alcohol and speed are not contributing factors. The investigation is ongoing. Want more Grand Rapids-area news? Bookmark the local Grand Rapids news page or sign up for the free 3@3 Grand Rapids daily newsletter. GRAND RAPIDS, MI One of the 16 Republicans charged in a 2020 false-elector scheme has filed a federal lawsuit against Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel seeking to halt state prosecution. The defendants are accused of an illegal effort to keep former President Donald Trump in office after he lost the election to President Joe Biden. Nessel charged the defendants with multiple felonies. She said the defendants knowingly lied on a false document with intent to defraud despite Biden winning Michigan by 154,000 votes. Related: Judge will not throw out false elector suits over Nessels brainwashed comments Clifford James Frost Jr. on Tuesday, Nov. 21, filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan to stop Nessels prosecution. He alleged that Nessel, a Democrat, filed charges to punish or retaliate against the Republican electors. Attorneys for Frost said he and the other 15 defendant acted only to question the results of Michigans presidential election. The Michigan Criminal Prosecution represents an attempt to criminalize what was at most a futile political protest, Frosts attorneys, Gregory Hanley and Kevin Kijewski, wrote in a 50-page complaint. The attorneys said Michigans 16 presidential electoral votes were cast as expected by the Democratic Party, the political party with the highest number of votes. Related: Charged in Trump fake elector scheme, West Michigan mayor will be vindicated, attorney says The AG alleges that the Republican Elector Certificate was submitted to Congress and the National Archives but concedes that Congress only accepted the electoral votes submitted by the Democrat Electors that were certified by the state. Nonetheless, based upon the Republican Elector Certificate, the AG has brought 8 felony counts, all of which require a showing that the Republican Elector Certificate was a forgery, and which seek to imprison Plaintiff and the other Republic Electors for up to 14 years, the lawsuit said. Related: Michigan GOP, after a pause, excoriates Nessel over Trump elector charges It said that Nessel has a big problem, however, because the alleged forgery did not constitute a crime. The Republican Electors Certificate was exactly what it was purported to be, the lawsuit said. The actions of the defendants could not have resulted in the 16 electoral votes being given to the Republican candidate, the attorneys said. The lawsuit said that in an unrelated legal filing, Nessel had cited an MLive article headlined, Michigan Republicans who cast electoral votes for Trump have no chance of changing Electoral College result. Nonetheless, the AG has claimed that Elector Certification was part of a much bigger conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. Government, the attorneys wrote. They asked that the federal court to preliminarily and permanently enjoin the Michigan Criminal Prosecution because, among other things, it has been brought without a reasonable expectation of obtaining a valid conviction . The state cases are pending in Lansing. Charges include forgery, conspiracy to commit uttering and publishing, and conspiracy to commit election fraud forgery. Nessel has acknowledged there will be claims the charges were politically motivated but said: (W)here there is overwhelming evidence of guilt in respect to multiple crimes, the most political act I could engage in as a prosecutor would be to take no action at all. The lawsuit has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker in Grand Rapids. Read more: After dust-up with parent and 3-week leave, Grand Rapids Schools chief of staff back on duty (Bleep) you all!: Ex-Lions QB Scott Mitchell rips Barry Sanders documentary 3-year, $210 million I-69 project finishes in time for Thanksgiving OTTAWA COUNTY, MI Two girls celebrated finding their forever family on Tuesday. Lilly, 11, and Nala Follett, 14, were adopted during the Ottawa County Family Courts observance of Adoption Day in West Olive. Its been a bumpy road, definitely, Nala Follett said, about the road to her adoption confirmation hearing Tuesday, Nov. 21. I felt like they were my actual, like, forever family within the first couple of weeks (of foster care) - something in my gut told me that, like, I belonged here. Rachael and Josh Follett, and their sons, Weston, 9, and Caleb, 7, officially welcomed the girls into the family. Lilly said she was relieved to have found her new family. According to court officials, the Follett family was one of six families that adopted a total of seven children on Tuesday. Adoption Day is held to raise awareness about adoption and to encourage more families to consider adopting children from the foster care system into permanent and loving homes. Nala met the family through the foster care system a little over two years ago, and Lilly eleven months ago. It was a calling that was on both of our hearts prior to even being together, Rachael said of her marriage and their decision to adopt. The family talked during the hearing about how they are guided by their Christian faith. Chief Probate Court Judge Mark A. Feyen presided over the court hearing, taking time to talk with each Follett family member about the adoption. It will be, like, a final thing. Like, Im officially, like, a part of the Follett family, Nala told the judge. Like, official. The judge gifted each of the girls a book - Drama by Raina Telgemeier for Nala and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis for Lilly. Feyen let all of the Follett children have a turn with the gavel adjourning their hearing. Before the adoption confirmation hearings, Ottawa County Board of Commissioners Vice Chair Sylvia Rhodea read a resolution from the board honoring the day. Board Chair Joe Moss was also in attendance as well as Commissioners Gretchen Cosby, Lucy Ebel, Doug Zylstra, Jacob Bonnema, Roger Belknap and Allison Miedema. Rhodea told the crowd she adopted her son, had relatives who were adopted, and noted she previously had worked with foster care families. Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth M. Welch also spoke before the hearings. This is the week where the court system thrives and is at its best and when we can celebrate successes and new families, Justice Welch told those gathered. For me, personally, the day means a lot - I have an adopted half-brother. Feyen also spoke along with Judge Paul F. Kraus, and Brett and Carissa Morton - local parents who previously adopted children. Rachael and Josh Follett said they knew adopting Lilly and Nala was the right decision for their family. Its just saying one yes at a time, Rachael said of the foster care system and adoption process. Yeah, its not one large decision, its a bunch of little decisions that kind of brought us all together, Josh added. More on MLive Lawsuit settled after Allendale Township rejected Black Lives Matter engraved brick Parents, teachers want more details about plan to close Grand Rapids school buildings Architectural marvel: mid-century modern home hits market for $549K in Grand Rapids Photo credit: ESPN Stephen A. Smith loves to point out how much Molly Qerim loves to eat, maybe even more than she actually loves food. Since taking First Take away from its embrace debate mantra in exchange for more rounded conversations, Smith has done a nice job of using his platform on ESPN to elevate other personalities. Chris Russo, Dan Orlovsky, Kendrick Perkins, Kimberley A. Martin, Ryan Clark and others have undoubtedly enjoyed increased notoriety since joining First Take. And now, Smith is even pitching First Takes host, Molly Qerim for a new job. Attn: Food Network, Stephen A. Smith has a pitch for you pic.twitter.com/7nCWUxmjiM Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 21, 2023 Im interested in producing additional content outside the world of sports, Smith noted Tuesday morning on First Take. Got a perfect show. Molly hosting a show for the Food Network. Cant miss. Cant miss. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Smith continues to highlight that his career goals exceed what ESPN can offer. Maybe Qerim is similarly destined for something bigger than First Take. After Shannon Sharpe asked whether she can cook, Qerim was quick to say, Yeah, but Smith sounded less sure. I dont know, Smith interjected. But I know she can eat! I know that. I know that. I mean she brings buckets of stuff. This is what she does. Qerims breakfast, lunch, and apparent propensity for food is a frequent topic of conversation on First Take, almost as much as LeBron James or the Dallas Cowboys. Smith strangely cant help himself if theres an opportunity to talk about Qerim eating. While we dont know whether or not Qerim is a good cook, Smith makes lasagna with American cheese. Not exactly quality chef material. Luckily for both of them, you dont have to be a good chef to have a successful food network show. Guy Fieri still has three shows on the Food Network and the only time he picks up a cooking utensil is to taste something. Food Network. Molly. Im trying to tell yall, Smith implored. It cant miss. Trust me. It cant miss. Food. Who wouldnt want a Food Network gig? Especially one that doesnt require cooking. Get paid to travel the country or travel the world while tasting different foods? If Smith can help Qerim make that happen, it would be the chefs kiss to their relationship. [First Take] KALAMAZOO, MI -- At 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 21, Leland Unclee Pratt cheered as the last frozen turkey was picked up from his barbershop. Between Monday and Tuesday morning, Pratt gave away 100 turkeys for free at his shop, Unclees, at 1901 W. Main Street. This is the fourth year the business has handed out turkeys, and the most turkeys theyve given away, yet. This year, Pratt said the shop spent about $1,500 on the turkeys, some of which came from community donations. A turkey might cost us $15 or $20, and thats a lot of money for some people, Pratt said. We always want to make really huge change, but it really just all starts with little (stuff). Leland Pratt poses with 100 free turkeys in front of Unclee's barber shopLeland Pratt As someone who grew up poor in Kalamazoo, running the shop with his family and finding ways to give back to his community can show his family and kids they can make a difference. For Pratt, a barbershop is the perfect place to reach those in need. This is like the heartbeat of our community, Pratt said. You have everyone coming in here telling you about their problems, you watch peoples kids grow up ... youve got to give back and take care of people. From free turkeys to community movie nights, Unclees spreads positivity through giving year-round. In December, the shop will host its fifth Christmas event, where families head home with a gift from Santa. Its a tradition that not only brings kids joy, but relieves some stress for parents, Pratt said. The shop is accepting gift donations from individuals and other local businesses, Pratt said. Theres a wealth disparity in Kalamazoo, Pratt said. Theres families Ive dealt with for the last three or four years, that have said I know Lee will probably take care of us, so its less of a stress on me. When you see the kids, its totally worth it. Want more Kalamazoo-area news? Bookmark the local Kalamazoo news page or sign up for the free 3@3 Kalamazoo daily newsletter. MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI - If youre not in the mood to cook up a whole Thanksgiving dinner this week, there are plenty of great Italian spots in the Muskegon area to grab takeout or dine. Keep scrolling to see five great places in the Muskegon area to get that hearty sandwich. These local spots have something for everyone to try, from a classic chicken parmesan and penne bolognese to fresh bruschetta and shrimp scampi. On Thursday, Nov. 23, MLive/Muskegon Chronicle will encourage readers to vote for their top choice on the list. Note: Note: We know this list is not exhaustive, and there are plenty of other delicious Italian food options in the area. You can tell us what other great local spots were missing by emailing sjewell-hammie@mlive.com. 1. Capones Speakeasy and Restaurant Capones Speakeasy and Restaurant at 794 Pine St. in Muskegon describes itself as a prime destination for great drinks and pizzas. Some of the signature dishes include appetizers like the famous meatballs and Sicilian calamari as well as entrees like Capones lasagna and pappardelle basil pesto pasta. Customers also rave about the 14-inch Sicilian pizza offered, like the Old Chicago. It comes with homemade red sauce, a cheese blend, pepperoni, mushroom, green pepper, and Italian sausage. Prices range from $10 to $35, depending on the dish. See the full menu here. 2. Fricanos Muskegon Lake Fricanos Muskegon Lake at 1050 W. Western Ave. Suite 200 is touted as a cozy bistro with an innovative menu of Italian and American dishes, including renowned pizza. The Muskegon staple has been a favorite in the West Michigan area for 75 years since the first location opened in Grand Haven, as stated on their website. Customers rave about the 12-inch thin-crust pizza with an authentic Italian family recipe. There are options to get either plain cheese, pepperoni, Italian sausage, mushroom, green pepper, anchovy, or all five toppings. On the side, there are also fresh breadsticks, cheese breadsticks and salad. Prices range from $6.35 to $16.96. See the full menu here. 3. Lombardos Sicilian Pizza Lombardos Sicilian Pizza at 1401 W. Sherman Blvd. has been serving the Muskegon community traditional Italian recipes in an old-school setting for years. The local spot touts the same recipe and technique passed down generations since 1957 Sicilian-style ingredients with a Neapolitan twist. Classic menu items follow an authentic old-world recipe from Sicily filled with fresh tomatoes, herbs and spices. Top sellers besides the fresh pizza, include chicken parmesan, manicotti, spaghetti, stromboli, and subs. Prices range from $7.75 to $46, depending on the order or pizza size. See the full menu here. 4. Nipotes Italian Kitchen Nipotes Italian Kitchen at 98 W. Clay Ave. in Muskegon is known as the areas first shipping container restaurant offering gourmet Italian eats at a decent cost. The restaurant has something for every foodie or Italian food connoisseur, from smoked salmon crostini and caprese to chicken cacciatore and cacio e pepe. Top sellers on the menu continue to be appetizers like the antipasto platter and plates of pasta like the savory mushroom ravioli. Customers rave about the paninis, like the Lo Zio for $14. It comes with prosciutto, olive tapenade and ailoi served with chips and pepperoncino. See the full menu here. 5. Two Tonys Italian Kitchen & Wine Bar Two Tonys Italian Kitchen & Wine Bar at 723 E. Savidge St. Apt. E in Spring Lake has been serving the Muskegon area delectable pasta and wine since opening in 2006. The favorite spot is touted as a stylish bar and eatery with an old-world feel preparing Greek and Italian classics in a cuasual atmosphere. Customers rave about appetizers like the Italian eggrolls and Chef Michels calamari as well as the classic risotto served with a choice between sea scallops, salmon, chicken scaloppine, crab cakes, calamari, or gulf shrimp. Other popular options include savory pasta dishes, like the savory linguine with clam sauce entree. For $26, it comes with clams, garlic parsley linguine, white wine sauce, garlic, mushroom, and baby spinach topped with fresh basil. Dont forget about the award-winning pizza. A staple on the menu Two Tonys Classic, comes with Italian sausage, pepperoni, green pepper, and mushroom (10-inch for $14.95, 16-inch for $25.95). See the full menu here. Want more Muskegon area news? Bookmark the local Muskegon news page or sign up for the free 3@3 Muskegon daily newsletter. Read more: Do the Turkey Trot in Muskegon before pigging out on Thanksgiving Hamburger Mikey to launch pop-up burger shop at Grand Rapids brewery The Festival of Trees returns to downtown Muskegon with a vintage holiday twist Pigeon Hill Brewing Company partners with United Way on holiday beer GRAND RAPIDS, MI A Muskegon man was sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Dareese Devon Hewlett, 41, was sentenced Tuesday, Nov. 21, by U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering in Grand Rapids to 15 years, eight months in prison. Some New Patriotic Party (NPP) supporters in the Ashanti region said the current EPA boss Dr Henry Kwabena Kokofu is the best to pair Dr Mahamudu Bawumia to run for the 2024 general elections. They believed that since the party has settled on choosing the running mate from the Ashanti region, Dr Kwabena Kokofu stands tall among the favourites. In an interview, some said the former Bantama MP's appeals to the larger populace will help in amassing more votes in the Ashanti region, and beyond. The report sampled the views among the elderly, females and youth in some selected constituencies in the Ashanti region. Elderly view 53-year-old Daniel Ampah, a resident at Atwima Boko said "the matter has been settled that the running mate should come from the Ashanti Region, it would be ideal to choose someone who appeals to the larger populace". He noted that of all the names he had heard, Dr Kokofu has no controversy and would be very acceptable to Ghanaians. "I have known Dr Kokofu since the year 2000 and have followed his activities including the meticulous manner he does his things and I am sure he would bring his varied experiences from Forestry, governance, politics and work at EPA to bear on the office and assist Dr Bawumia to do well," he stated. Female comment Linda Amankwah, NPP member at Duase in the Manhyia North Constituency said she started observing the former MP for Bantama from 2016. She noted that she could say the vast experience Dr Kokofu has in politics, his courteous mannerisms and deep knowledge of various fields of governance and leadership makes him an ideal person to be considered as running mate to Dr Mahamudu Bawumia. Youth Kwabena Amankwah, a 27-year-old resident of Asokwa said the current issue of unemployment has affected the future of Ghanaian youth. He noted that having followed Dr Kokofu's exploits at the EPA he was sure more of the youth could get employment due to his thinking capacity. He stated he was aware Dr Kokofu has doubled the staff size at EPA and decentralized operations of the outfit across the country. "For the youth we want someone who can best fix us with job opportunities and from my knowledge about Dr Kokofu we will be happy if he is considered as a running mate since he has proven himself worthy," he added. NDC parliamentary candidate for Ayawaso West Wougon, John Dumelo, has criticized Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia for condemning former President John Mahamas proposed 24-hour economy policy. In a tweet on Tuesday, Dumelo said Bawumia should focus on presenting his own policy ideas for the upcoming elections instead of attacking others. "You Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia havent offered one single policy yet you are condemning my boss John Dramani Mahamas 24hr economy policy. I hope this time you wont come and say 1 district 1 ship," Dumelo wrote. He accused the vice president of failing to deliver on past promises such as the One Village One Dam, cedi depreciation and 1D1F initiative. "All those flagship programs have failed. The dams have evaporated, the Free S.H.S has caused more problems than solutions and the factories have shut down or sacked its workers. Theres no Break the 8. Its fake the 8. You have faked Ghanaians for almost 8 years and fundamentals of the economy have exposed you," Dumelo added. The sharp rebuke from Dumelo comes after Bawumia criticized Mahamas 24-hour economy pledge while campaigning in Tamale on Monday. Bawumia said, "I hear John Mahama has a new idea and he wants to run a 24 hour economy. I say where did he get this idea from? It is not a bright idea! A 24 hour economy cannot be legislated by government." He argued many businesses already operate 24/7 due to demand, suggesting that Mahama's proposal would fail if implemented. "If you'll make more money opening 24 hours, there is no law preventing you," Bawumia stated. The BRICS group of nations Tuesday called for an immediate and sustained humanitarian truce in Gaza during an extraordinary summit where chair South Africa accused Israel of war crimes and "genocide" in the Palestinian territory. Pretoria hosted a virtual meeting of BRICS -- a group of major emerging economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- aimed at drawing up a common response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. "We called for an immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities," the group said in a summary of the meeting. "We reiterated our strong support for regional and international efforts aimed at achieving an immediate cessation of hostilities, ensuring the protection of civilians and the provision of humanitarian aid." Fighting has raged in Gaza after Hamas gunmen killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during cross-border raids on October 7 -- the deadliest attack in Israel's history. In retaliation, Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas. According to Hamas, the war has killed more than 13,300 people, thousands of them children. "The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide," said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. On Tuesday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said a truce agreement with Israel was in sight, with mediator Qatar adding negotiations to free hostages seized by the Palestinian Islamist group were at their "closest point" to a deal. Leaders and representatives of BRICS said a long-term diplomatic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was needed to ensure peace, with Chinese President Xi Jinping calling for an "international peace conference" to achieve that goal. "There can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine," Xi said, speaking through an interpreter. 'Barbaric acts' China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinians and supportive of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it has this year sought to play a greater role in the Middle East, facilitating a historic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran and sending an envoy to the region to push for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. BRICS, an acronym for its member countries, sees itself as a counterweight to the US and Western-led global order. Describing Hamas's attacks and hostage taking as "barbaric acts" Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said they did "not justify the use of indiscriminate and disproportionate force against civilians". Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has accused the West of stoking tensions in the Middle East and criticised Israel for its conduct in the conflict, said a "long-term and sustainable ceasefire" was key to "prevent other states from being drawn into the war". 'Two state solution' "The concerns of the Palestinian people must be addressed in a serious and sustainable manner, this can only happen with the two-state solution that is based on peaceful coexistence," said India's foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Representatives from Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates -- countries that are all due to join BRICS in January 2024 -- were also invited to the talks. South Africa has long been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party often linking it to its own struggle against apartheid. Earlier this month, it recalled all its diplomats from Israel and last week it joined four other nations in calling for an International Criminal Court investigation into the conflict. On Monday, Israel's foreign ministry said it had also recalled its ambassador to Pretoria for consultations. The summit came as a delegation of foreign ministers of the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan hold talks this week on the conflict. A name specialist, Maxwell Jonni has said the name Cape Coast typifies people who are one-track-minded in life and lack stability. According to him, the spirits that control the name Cape Coast depict one-track-mindedness. Speaking to DC Kwame Kwakye on his 'About Life' Show on GBC Radio Central, on Sunday, November 19, 2023, he explained, the order of the name Cape Coast, attracts spirits who are one-track-minded. He noted that they determine the actions of the people who live in the city. One track-mindedness according to the Name Specialist, means people who are somehow obstinate and don't change their minds easily on issues. "They are somewhat not smart in understanding things that are fast track. Because of their one-track nature, they don't easily give up on things and these are normally internal lifestyles," he stated. "Outwardly, they are a people who rely on people's advise and support to make decisions. They are people who aren't too aggressive with life." According to him, they are people who are normally calm, laid back and somehow not too ambitious. "The name generates calmness, patience and stubbornness. A people who somehow flip flop between sides and that makes them lack stability", he posited. When his attention was drawn to the fact that Cape Coast is normally a swing seat politically, he said he is not analysing the behaviour of Cape Coasters but, only examining the spiritual implication of the name and how it impacts the inhabitants. "Cape Coast's stagnation is same as that of Ghana since they all have similar name impacts. Ghanaians are a swing people but at the same time, if they accept something, it's always difficult to change their minds. Two opposite energies run Cape Coast," he stated. Expatiating further, he averred they are people who request proof before they accept it. "But, at the same time they cannot make strong decisions because of their diplomatic nature which negatively makes them procrastinate decisions," he emphasised. Johnny made these commentaries when discussing the topic "The Name Cape Coast and its impact on the people". He however said names have impacts which direct the destines of people whether knowingly or not. "If Cape Coasters think the name is not what they desire, they can take steps to change it and with time, the current nature would metamorphose into the desired one and things would begin to improve," he stressed. The BRICS group of nations Tuesday called for an immediate and sustained humanitarian truce in Gaza during an extraordinary summit where the chair, held by South Africa, accused Israel of war crimes and "genocide" in the Palestinian territory. Pretoria hosted the virtual meeting of BRICS, with the major emerging economies, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and a few Arab and African guests, aimed at drawing up a common response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa accused Israel of war crimes and "genocide" in Gaza. "The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide," Ramaphosa said. Fighting has raged in Gaza after Hamas gunmen killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during cross-border raids on 7 October, the deadliest attack in Israel's history. In retaliation, Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, killing more than 13,300 people, thousands of them children. Immediate ceasefire Ramaphosa also called for an "immediate and comprehensive ceasefire" and the deployment of a UN force "to monitor the cessation of hostilities and protect civilians." He added, "As individual countries, we have demonstrated our grave concern at the death and destruction in Gaza. "Let this meeting stand as a clarion call for us to combine our efforts and strengthen our actions to end this historical injustice." South Africa has been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party often linking it to its own struggle against apartheid. Earlier this month, Pretoria recalled all its diplomats from Israel and last week it joined four other nations in calling for an International Criminal Court investigation into the conflict. On Monday, Israel's foreign ministry said it had also recalled its ambassador to Pretoria for consultations. Peace conference Chinese President Xi Jinping also addressed a virtual summit of fellow BRICS leaders on Tuesday and called for an "international peace conference" to resolve the conflict between Israel and Hamas. "There can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine," Xi said, speaking through an interpreter. He urged the "early convening of an international peace conference that is more authoritative to build international consensus for peace". Since the outbreak of the latest Palestinian-Israeli conflict, China has been working actively to promote peace talks and a ceasefire, with Beijing providing assistance "to help ease the humanitarian plight in Gaza", which Xi intends to continue to do. China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinians and supportive of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The meeting also included representatives from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also participated. Indian Prime minister Modi, skipped the BRICS-Plus virtual summit and sent his External Affairs Minister Jaishankar instead. (with newswires) According to the latest fuel price statistics from CediRates.com, Ghana's leading fuel price tracking portal, prices at the pumps remain unchanged as compared to the previous day. Leading oil marketing companies such as Goil, Shell and Total are selling at the same prices today, according to the latest data from price tracking portal CediRates. Goil, Shell and Total - which together control a huge share of the retail fuel market - are now selling petrol at GH12.80 per litre and diesel at GH13.30 per litre. Premium motor spirit (PMS) is going for GH12.80, GH14.20 and GH14.29 per liter respectively from these market leaders. Other major oil marketing firms like Puma, JP, Petrosol and Unicorn Petroleum have rates different prices between GH11.66 and GH12.98 price range for both petrol and diesel. Independent petroleum companies such as Benab, Zen and Viggo Energy are selling their products at GH11.66 to GH11.79 per litre. 22.11.2023 LISTEN The United States Embassy has updated its travel advisory to Level 2, advising travellers to exercise increased caution due to emerging threats against LGBTQI+ individuals in Ghana. The alert issued on November 20, 2023, highlights concerns about crime and violence allegedly directed at members of the LGBTQI+ community in Ghana. The advisory specifically outlined areas with alleged increased risks, including parts of the Bono East, Bono, Savannah, Northern, North East, and Upper East regions, citing civil unrest. The embassy warns of violent crimes such as carjacking and street mugging, emphasizing that these incidents often occur at night and in isolated locations. Country summary The Embassy said violent crimes are a concern, and travellers should exercise increased caution, especially in urban areas, crowded markets, and when travelling after dark, where criminal elements may use blockades to restrict movement. Areas near the northern border in the Upper East and Upper West regions are highlighted for heightened caution due to security issues. The Embassy in its advisory also noted that the U.S. government may have limited ability to provide emergency services to US citizens in Ghana, as local police may lack the resources to respond effectively to serious crimes. LGBTQI+ travellers The Embassy in its advisory addressed alleged challenges faced by LGBTQI+ travellers in Ghana, citing prohibitions in Ghanaian law on unlawful carnal knowledge between persons of the same sex. Punishments for such activities can include fines and incarceration. The advisory highlighted the increase in anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric and alleged violence in recent years, with reported incidents of targeted assaults, rape, mob attacks, and harassment. The embassy encouraged travellers to visit its LGBTQI+ Travel Information page and review the Human Rights Report for additional details. It also urged enrolment in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) for emergency alerts and advises a review of the Country Security Report for Ghana. Travellers are recommended to prepare a contingency plan for emergency situations and follow the Department of State on social media for updates. Northern border in Upper East and Upper West Regions In a separate section, the advisory highlights the need for increased caution in border areas, particularly the northern border. Due to security concerns over criminal activity in remote areas, travel of U.S. government personnel to the northern and northwestern border is currently limited. Source: graphic.com.gh Israel and Hamas agreed a deal on Wednesday to release at least 50 hostages being held in Gaza during a four-day truce that aloow hundreds allow hundreds of humanitarian aid trucks to enter the beseiged territory. Following weeks of conflict, Israel's Cabinet signed off on the first major diplomatic breakthrough. the vote, however, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear a deal would not mark an end to the war. The start of the pause in fighting will be announced in the next 24 hours. Under the deal, Palestinian militants will release 50 women and children kidnapped during the 7 October raids, while Israel will free 150 Palestinian women and teenagers. Humanitarian, medical and fuel aid trucks will enter all parts of the Gaza Strip. World reaction French Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna said it hoped its eight citizens would be among those released. "We hope that there will be French people among the first batch of hostages to be released," she told France Inter radio. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she had ordered the European Commission to step up aid deliveries to Gaza. "The European Commission will do its utmost to use this pause for a humanitarian surge to Gaza," she said in a statement, adding: "I wholeheartedly welcome the agreement." Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose administration is based in the occupied West Bank, welcomed the deal between his Islamist Hamas rivals and Israel while calling for wider solutions to the long-running conflict. Abbas "appreciated" the Qatari-Egyptian mediation effort, but wanted to see "the implementation of a political solution based on international legitimacy", a social media post by senior Palestinian aide Hussein Al-Sheikh said. Meanwhile China said it hoped the pause in fighting would "help ease the plight of the humanitarian crisis, de-escalate the conflict and ease tensions". Fallout The World Health Organization has warned that medical services in Gaza had suffered "catastrophic" damage. Israel launched attacks on Gaza after Hamas militants crossed the border on 7 October and killed 1,200 Israelis. More than 240 others were taken hostage. More than 13,300 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza since Israel started its military operation, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave. Nabdam District in the Upper East Region has emerged with the highest rate of multidimensional poverty among all 261 districts in Ghana, standing at a staggering 68.6 per cent. This was disclosed by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in its Multidimensional Poverty Index Scorecard. The GSS presented this comprehensive scorecard covering all 261 Administrative Districts as part of the commemoration of the 2023 African Statistics Day on Tuesday, November 21, 2023. The rate in Nabdam is approximately 11 times higher than that of the 6.3 per cent recorded in the Asokwa Municipality of the Ashanti Region, which is the lowest rate. The report from the GSS further highlights disparities across districts, with 55 of them, encompassing both rural and urban settlements, exhibiting a minimum difference of 20.0 percentage points in the incidence of multidimensional poverty. Kwahu Afram Plains North displayed the highest disparity, with a significant difference of 38 per cent. The GSS further emphasises a notable gender disparity in its findings. In nine out of every ten districts, multidimensional poverty is more prevalent in female-headed households compared to those headed by males, the report stated. This multidimensional poverty indicator is a non-monetary deprivation measure that comprises 13 indicators in four dimensions i.e., living conditions (electricity, housing, assets, overcrowding, cooking fuel, water, and toilet facility); education (attendance, attainment, and school lag), health (insurance coverage and mortality), and employment (work for wage or profit). The district scorecards provide statistics on the proportion of the population within the district that lives in multidimensionally poor households, experiencing multidimensional poverty), and the ranking of the district relative to other districts in the region and to all districts in the country. The scorecard also presents information on the areas in which poor persons in the district are most deprived. The data source is the 2021 Population and Housing Census, according to the GSS. -classfmonline The Kumasi Metropolis in the Ashanti region witnessed a 24 per cent increase in road crashes in 2022, totalling 1,550 cases, compared to 1,255 cases the previous year. This was revealed in the 2022 Kumasi Road Safety Report launched by the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA). While road crashes surged, the report highlighted a notable 16 per cent decrease in fatalities, dropping from 160 in 2021 to 134 in 2022. This statistical shift suggests a complex landscape of increased accidents but a reduced impact in terms of lives lost. According to the report, pedestrians, motorcyclists, and cyclists constituted a significant 84 per cent of the fatalities in 2022. Males were identified as the most affected group, representing 78 per cent of deaths and 67 per cent of serious injuries. The majority of fatalities occurred among individuals aged 20 to 29 years. The comprehensive report was a result of collaborative efforts between the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), the Ghana Police Service, the National Road Safety Authority, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Initiative for Global Road Safety, and Vital Strategies. After the report launch, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the KMA, Samuel Pyne, expressed satisfaction with the reduced fatality rate within the year. Despite the challenges, he indicated the Assembly's commitment to road safety enforcement, aiming for a decline in road crashes and further reduction in the death rate. Mr. Pyne disclosed that the Assembly plans to embark on road safety enforcement initiatives. This includes training about 30 City Guards to ensure road markings at intersections. This is aimed at enhancing safety on Kumasi roads. With the festive season approaching, Mr. Pyne advised drivers to exercise caution and prioritise safety to minimise accidents. -classfmonline Champions of Free Education Africa (COFEA) a non-governmental organization aimed at ensuring every child has access to the free SHS programme has advised school administrators to adhere to the directives of the Ghana Education Service's harmonized prospectus for SHS students. Speaking at a press conference today in Accra, the Executive Secretary of COFEA, Rev. Achampong Afreh, said the school administrators must refrain from overstepping their boundaries of surcharging students with any unapproved fees that would seek to restrict the enrolment of vulnerable students. "We want to state that these prospectus inserted fees and charges for fresh SHS students practiced among government-assisted SHS and TVET schools led to the considerable drop in the enrolment of fresh students in the 2022 2023 academic year. Most parents and guardians were unable to afford the high cost of prospectus charges and therefore had their wards denied the access and opportunity to SHS education," he said. He underscored that COFEA will take on any school that attempts to go contrary to the GES harmonized prospectus for SHS students. Notwithstanding Rev. Achampong Afreh advised parents and guardians to heed GES directives and prepare to meet the requirement. "Therefore, we encouraged parents and guardians to be bold and stand with the GES in the implementation of this national SHS freshmen prospectus. They should not be intimidated by any threat from CHASS officers. Any unapproved fee or item outside the prospectus should be reported to the GES or National Security for the necessary action to be taken," he added. COFEA congratulated and commended the Ghana Education Service, Free SHS Secretariat, TVET, and Conference of Heads of Government-Assisted Secondary Schools for producing the standardized national prospectus. The National Media Commission (NMC) has warned Media General that it is prepared to act on inciteful broadcasts on Onu TV without any reference to the media house. The NMC in an earlier letter to Media General drew its attention to some comments by Onua TV presenter Captain Smart which it said were inciteful. The NMC had indicated that Onua TV/FM through its presenter Captain Smart had carried an inciteful broadcast in which Captain Smart directly insulted the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) and other Commanders of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF). After receiving the letter from the NMC, Media General replied and made its arguments accordingly. However, in another letter from the NMC dated November 21, it said the letter from Media General was only a strategy to avoid taking responsibility. The NMC has given Media General a final warning with a deadline of November 24, warning that if nothing is done, further action may be taken against the media house. Your letter of November 20, 2023, does not address the regulatory directives contained in ours of November 14, 2023. We consider your letter a red-herring strategy to avoid taking responsibility for your actions. Yet, we are prepared to extend our deadline to Friday, November 24, 2023, after which we may act without any further reference to you, parts of the letter from the NMC said. Below is a copy of the NMC letter. RE: RE: FINAL CAUTION AGAINST INCITEFUL BROADCAST Your letter of November 20, 2023 does not address the regulatory directives contained in ours of November 14, 2023. Instead, you raise three extraneous issues which we address below: Ownership of station: You argue in your letter that the Commission's letter addressed to the Board Chairman of Media General is not properly directed as Onua TV is a registered entity under MG Television Ltd, and as such is a separate legal entity with its independent Board of Directors. Our checks at NCA show that upon your request, NCA by a letter dated November 17, 2023, approved the transfer of the authorisation for Onua FM and Onua Tv to Media General. So on record, Media General is the holder of the frequency authorisation. Your claim that a separate legal entity is in control outside the approved entity has major legal implications that we are duty bound to bring to the attention of NCA in addition to the subject matter of our original correspondence. Since you are familiar with the Electronic Communications Act, 2008 (Act 775) you must be aware of the consequences. Mandate of NMC: Article 167(b) of the Constitution (1992) empowers NMC to take all appropriate measures to ensure the establishment and maintenance of the highest journalistic standards in the mass media, including the investigation, mediation and settlement of complaints made against or by the press or other mass media. (Emphasis added). Your lawyers should have no difficulty in explaining this to you, i.e, that the Commission has power to take all appropriate measures and that the mediation and settlement constitute an inexhaustive list of tools the Commission may use to achieve its object. Ordinarily, we would not say more beyond this. However, since this is the second time you have willfully submitted yourselves to a misreading of the law, we feel obliged to point out to you that the law could not have intended that when we are faced with a broadcaster inciting mutiny within the armed forces as you are doing, we should be constrained by complaints settlement procedures. You know the story of Nero fiddling while ancient Rome burned. The National Media Commission will not do that today when in Niger, Chad, Guinea, Gabon, Burkina, Sudan and twice in Mali there have been military insurrections. Transmittal of correspondence: We are unable to treat this as priority until the substantive directives contained in our letter of November 14, 2023 have been carried out. We consider your letter a red-herring strategy to avoid taking responsibility for your actions. Yet, we are prepared to extend our deadline to Friday, November 24, 2023 after which we may act without any further reference to you. Yours faithfully George Sarpong Executive Secretary 22.11.2023 LISTEN The People's National Convention (PNC) has cautioned the youth against allowing themselves to be weaponised against religious and political leaders in the country. A statement signed by PNC's National Youth Organiser, Muniru Seidu Mohammed, called out some political party youth who recently attacked Ashanti regional Chief Imam Sheik Abdul Mumin Harun; as well as Ningo Prampram MP Sam George's "bigoted" remark against Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia. Read the PNC's full statement below: STOP USING THE YOUTH TO ATTACK OUR RELIGIOUS CLERGY The People's National Convention (PNC) Youth condemn in the strongest terms the recent attacks on the Ashanti regional Chief Imam Sheik Abdul Mumin Harun by certain groups affiliated to a political party. It is disheartening to witness political parties exploiting their youth to disrespect and undermine our esteemed religious leaders. We unequivocally condemn the bigoted remark made by Hon. Sam George against His Excellency Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the vice president. Such language goes against the principles of tolerance, unity, and constructive political discourse that should be upheld by all public figures and representatives. We respect the right of every individual to express their views and opinions freely. However, this should not be a licence to attack and belittle our religious bodies, such as the Ashanti regional Chief Imam, for expressing his opinion. Religious leaders, irrespective of their faith, play a vital role in guiding and shaping the moral fabric of our society. They serve as beacons of wisdom and provide spiritual guidance to millions of Ghanaians. It is, therefore, disconcerting to witness their loyalty and integrity being questioned simply because they expressed their personal thoughts. We call upon all political parties to refrain from using their youth as instruments of disrespect towards our religious leaders. Instead, let us focus on constructive debates and discussions that enrich our democracy, rather than fostering division and undermining the fabric of our society. We urge all Ghanaians to embrace tolerance, respect, and understanding, especially in matters pertaining to religion and politics. Let us stand united in upholding the principles and values that have made Ghana a beacon of democracy and harmony in Africa. The younger generation needs to pay careful attention to the policies and ideas presented by political parties, focusing on their potential to create employment opportunities. They should also examine these policies, whether proposed by their own party or others, in order to make informed decisions that would benefit young people in the 2024 election. It is essential for the youth not to be exploited by political parties, but to assertively demand better policies that prioritise their needs. Together, we can foster an inclusive and respectful society that allows for the free expression of ideas, while simultaneously safeguarding the dignity and honor of our religious leaders. -classfmonline The University of Cape Coast (UCC) has refuted claims of conferring a PhD on a former Pro Vice-Chancellor and Provost of the College of Distance Education, Professor George K. T. Oduro. There were reports that Professor George K. T. Oduro obtained his PhD from UCC. However, the Management in a statement on November 27 said, The University of Cape Coast has not conferred any PhD on Prof. Oduro. He studied and obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge (1999 2003). The University of Cape Coast has no records of him being cited in matters of plagiarism or rape. The university advised the general public to treat the publication as falsehood and an act of sheer mischief, and treat it with utter contempt. Read full statement below: Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has clarified the recent controversy surrounding his official residence, emphasising that it was almost sold to a private developer rather than actually being sold, as initially suggested. During a recent Speakers Breakfast Forum in Accra, Speaker Bagbin revealed that his residence was sold to a private developer while he was residing there. However, the Lands Commission refuted this claim in a statement, asserting that the property was never sold to a private developer. In a subsequent meeting with civil society groups, the Speaker provided further clarification, on the matter. I didnt say my residence was sold. That was not what I said. This was just a comment in passing when I said it was almost sold but luckily, I was in possession, he said. He explained that the revelation came to light when the developer attempted to register the land at the Lands Commission. The Lands Commission had earlier stated: At no point in time was the said property sold to a private developer by the Lands Commission. -classfmonline A fatal accident occurred at the foot of Ho Galenkui Mountain near the National Lottery Authority's (NLA) Volta Regional office. The incident occurred between 4pm and 5pm on Tuesday, 21st November 2023. A head-on collision between a 207 Benz and a Zoomlion refuse truck resulted in eight casualties on the spot. Nine other individuals are reported to be in critical condition with various degrees of injuries. The 207 Benz vehicle, loaded with traders carrying foodstuff from Abotoase, experienced brake failure and a tire burst while descending the Galenkui mountain toward the Ho township. Simultaneously, a Zoomlion refuse truck, ascending the Galenkui mountain from the opposite direction, collided head-on with the descending vehicle at a sharp curve. Eyewitnesses recounted that the collision, coupled with brake failure and a tire burst, caused the Benz vehicle to lose control and fall on its left side, trapping passengers inside. The Zoomlion truck was pushed back off its original lane into the left-side gutter due to the impact. An eyewitness, Joy, described the incident to Class 91.3 FMs Volta Regional Correspondent, Kingsley Attitsogbui. According to her, the trapped passengers in the Benz were rescued by locals who managed to lift the vehicle back onto its feet [tyres] before pulling out survivors. The vehicle was loaded with bags of foodstuff, including cassava dough, corn dough, maize, charcoal, boards, and several sheep and goats tied at the top. The Ho Municipal Commander of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Divisional Officer Grade 3, Seth Tay, described the accident as very terrible, confirming that 17 individuals were transported to the hospital for treatment. Unfortunately, eight people lost their lives, while the remaining 9, with varying injuries, are undergoing treatment. Rescue efforts were challenging, with some victims trapped in the mangled car, and the driver of the Zoomlion truck had both legs stuck under the steering wheel for over an hour. The Fire Service, alongside concerned residents, worked tirelessly to rescue victims from the wreckage. The incident led to a traffic standstill on the affected stretch for more than four hours. Towing cars from the Volta Regional Police Motor Traffic and Transport Department were deployed to clear the road for other users. Eyewitnesses expressed concern about the delayed arrival of emergency services, urging prompt action from the traditional leadership and city authorities to address the recurring accidents on Galenkui Mountain. -classfmonline 22.11.2023 LISTEN Sulemana Mohammed-Mustapha, Regional Director of Communications for Bono East of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has provided clarification on former President John Dramani Mahama's call for the cancellation of the teacher licensure examination. According to Mohammed-Mustapha, the former president's stance was in response to pleas from teacher trainees who requested the cancellation of the examination during Mahama's visit to Al-Farouk College of Education as part of his regional tour. Mohammed-Mustapha emphasised that as the Regional Director of Communications, he was present when the trainee teachers passionately appealed to the former president to cancel the licensure examination, citing it as a hindrance for teachers in the country. The students argued that the examination posed obstacles, leading many completed trainees to be denied clearance for employment after their national service. This clarification comes in response to Mr Prince Obeng Himah, the President of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG), who opposed the cancellation of the licensure examination. CETAG's president emphasised the distinct nature of teacher training and the significant impact educators can have on future generations, either positively or negatively. Mohammed-Mustapha defended the former president's call, stating that it was not arbitrary but based on concerns raised by trainee teachers. He argued that the licensure examination, rather than being a new policy, is a backdoor approach by the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government to limit teacher employment, potentially linked to the conditionalities of the International Monetary Fund. Mohammed-Mustapha made this clarification speaking in an interview with classfmonline.com on Tuesday, November 21, 2023. Addressing attacks on the former president's position from some elements in the NPP, Mr Mohammed-Mustapha urged the president of CETAG to focus efforts on ensuring the payment of allowances withheld by the Ministry of Education during CETAG's sit-down strike. He noted that despite deliberations by the Labour Commission, the government is reluctant to settle the matter, and the president of CETAG should prioritize the welfare of members. -Classfmonline (Baonghean.vn) - On November 21 and 22, at Thong Thu Border Post, Nghe An Border Guard, in collaboration with the Thong Thu Commune's local militia in Que Phong district organized a closed-border patrol along the Vietnam-Laos border. This is an important activity aimed at timely detecting violations of border regulations, resolving incidents occurring along the border, and safeguarding the security and safety of the border area. Simultaneously, it maintains the stability of political security, social order and safety in the Vietnam-Laos border area for which this unit is responsible. Lieutenant Colonel Cao Van Cam, Political Officer of Thong Thu Border Post and the patrol team leader, stated: The patrol force overcame difficulties caused by foggy, damp weather and treacherous terrain to thoroughly inspect border markers and ensure the safety of the Vietnam-Laos national border marker system, spanning from marker 359 to 363, covering a distance of 6.813 kilometers. The patrol team checked the condition of the border markers, cleared brush and debris obstructing the view, and cleaned the surroundings of the markers. As a result, there were no signs of border marker displacement, the border markers were maintained intact and safe, there were no indications of legal violations or breaches of border regulations, no unauthorized border crossing or intrusion activities, and absolute safety was ensured regarding personnel and equipped weapons. To reach the Vietnam-Laos national border marker, the patrol team from Thong Thu Border Post and local militia members had to traverse difficult and complex terrain... Photo: Le Thach The patrol team members conducted maintenance on the border marker and the area surrounding the Vietnam-Laos national border marker No. 362. Photo: Le Thach Lieutenant Colonel Cao Van Cam, Political Officer of Thong Thu Border Post, Nghe An Border Guard, and the patrol team leader, inspected the physical condition of border marker number 362 of the Vietnam-Laos border. Photo: Le Thach The patrol team from Thong Thu Border Post, Nghe An Border Guard, along with the local militia of Thong Thu Commune, Que Phong district, performed the ceremony at border marker 359 of the Vietnam-Laos border. Photo: Le Thach 22.11.2023 LISTEN A group of concerned teachers in the Nanumba North District has issued notice of their intention to stage a strike, starting from November 30 if government fails to supply them with their promised laptops. The group explains that over GHC500 was deducted from the accounts of all teachers across the country on November 28, 2021, for the provision of these laptops. However, the Secretary of the group, Ziblila Baba, in an interview with Citi News, said that despite the deduction, the teachers in the district claim they are yet to receive the promised laptops. Per what I know, all districts have received their laptops. Its left with Bimbilla, Nanumba North, Nanumba South, and Kpandai districts. We made a follow-up to our directorate, and we asked them about the laptops. We went to our Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Secretary, and he said they have no hands in the distribution of the laptops. He referred us to the Ghana Education Service (GES) office. So, we went to our GES office, and they said the laptops will be given to us. That was around February this year, that the laptops will be given to us. In July, we didnt hear anything, we went back, and they said by November, it will be given to us. We went to the GES office again, and they said they contacted the manufacturers, and they said there are no laptops again. They told us to expect the laptops in next year, July, but we told them no, the best thing we have to do is to stay out of post. We gave them November 30, so if by that time we dont hear from them, we will stay out of post until our laptops are given to us, Ziblila Baba said. -citinewsroom Investigative journalist, Manasseh Azure Awuni has opined on former President John Dramani Mahamas plan to implement a 24-hour economy if re-elected president again in 2024. He says the policy is not different from the current system in the country that allows the digital transfer of money even at 12 midnight. A 24-hour economy is when, in 2023, Manasseh can send Abdul Hayi Moomen momo from his bank account at 12 midnight, he subtly wrote in a post on X on Tuesday, November 21. John Dramani Mahama, the 2024 flagbearer of the NDC has pledged to establish a 24-hour economy, arguing that such a policy would contribute to economic growth and job creation, especially for the youth. In a statement commemorating the 2023 International Youth Day, Mr Mahama outlined his administration's commitment to nurturing a skilled and entrepreneurial youth. He stated, "A new NDC administration will work urgently to equip our youth with the entrepreneurial knowledge and skills needed for a sustainable future. We will introduce a 24-hour economy with incentives and tax breaks for manufacturers who will run extra shifts to create more room for employment." Yaw Buaben Asamoa, a former member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), has accused President Nana Akufo-Addo of hijacking the party and making it impossible for anyone who falls out of favor with him to have a meaningful role. Buaben Asamoa, who previously served as the NPP's Communications Director, made the remarks after he and three others were expelled from the party for endorsing independent presidential candidate Alan Kyerematen ahead of the 2024 elections. In an interview with Accra-based Citi TV, Asamoa expressed disappointment with the state of the NPP, noting a sharp difference - an open party he joined and the current factionalized organization. The NPP that I knew, in the beginning, is not the NPP that exists now. The party has become divided by heavy factionalism," he lamented. Buaben Asamoa directly attributed the decline to "the overbearing influence of the executive branch, led by President Akufo-Addo." He stated that "the government has taken over" and the president's "personality is overbearing" such that "he controls that party." Most worryingly, Asamoa asserted that "if you dont do the presidents [bidding] if you are not in the presidents good books, you are not useful to the party." This, he argued, represents how the party now functions under Akufo-Addo's control. We have said time and again that the flagbearer of the NDC, John Mahama, is desperate. Since he was elected in May this year, he has not been able to put together any policy direction for the country. Over the last two weeks, Mahama has put two policy initiatives before the people. His moves expose him as a desperate politician behaving like a drowning man who would clutch at the straw. Someone put it this way that, Mahama has nothing new to offer except a desperado who is determined to clutch at the straw. If that were not the case, how does Mr Mahama think that a 24-hour economy would resonate with our voters? We wonder how Mr Mahama who ever steered the affairs of state think that a 24-hour economy holds the key to our economic woes. Is there any wonder that a few days after his announcement, Mahama comes around to change the goal post saying the policy would be voluntary but would not be forced on the players? We ask again, is Mahama in Ghana and knows how private sector players do their business based on the demands of the market? Most food vendors operate a 24-hour economy in most of our economically active locations in Accra. These traders at Pokuase, Madina, East Legon, Osu, Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Kaneshie, Odorkor and Kasoa do not sleep and prepare food for those who need their services everyday. Even commercial motor riders in our villages operate virtually 24/7 and for which reason some indomie sellers stay on to serve them. And again when Mahama was President, what briefs did he get from his men and women that most services were ran for 24 hours? Our hospitals operated 24 hours, water and electricity services never closed their doors to the customers, one could renew his or her National Health Insurance card at any time and while depending on market demands, most factories operate 24-hour services. Has Mahama got any new thing beyond propaganda to put before the people? We have served notice that Election 2024 would be a contest of ideas but not operate like the computer where the operators believe in garbage in, garbage out. Ghanaians are very discerning now and they would not swallow Mahamas promises hook, line and sinker. If Mr Mahama is truly minded to rescue Ghana, then the people expect him to be serious and unveil workable policies. For now, it appears the NDC thinks that based on the economic challenges of the country, any promises would be received well by the electorate. We need pragmatic policies that would turn the corner completely and set the economy on the path of total recovery. What Mahama has prescribed is just a big joke and holds no panacea to our economic malaise. Mahama thinks as a nation we no longer think big, hence his promise to NDC supporters that they should expect him to introduce small poultry businesses for his supporters. As if that is not enough, take a listen to a presidential candidate promising to abolish licensure examination for teachers. How can a government worth its name be thinking of cancellation of examination for teachers meant to improve learning outcomes? Source: Daily Guide A High Court in Accra has set December 5 to take the plea of Gregory Afoko, who is accused of murdering the late Upper East Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Adams Mahama by pouring acid on him. The court will on that day also decide whether to retry Asabke Alangdi on the charge of murder, as the court which previously convicted and sentenced him to death for conspiracy to commit murder did not make such an order. The prosecution, led by Marina Appiah Opare, a Chief State Attorney at the Office of the Attorney General, is pushing for the court to retry Asabke for murder, indicating that the previous court inadvertently omitted the order for him to be retried on the charge of murder. They submit that the omission by the previous trial court is not fatal, and referred to section 406 of Act 30. The defence, on the other hand, is against the accused being retried on the substantive charge of murder since the court that convicted him on conspiracy did not order a retrial. The 'Criminal Court 2', presided over by Justice Marie Louise Simmons, as result suspended the taking of the pleas of the accused persons yesterday to decide on whether both accused can be tried on the charge of murder. She, therefore, adjourned the case to December 5, 2023, for her decision as well as the empanelling of a seven-member jury for the trial. This is the third time Afoko is facing trial for the offence of allegedly killing Adams Mahama in May 2015. The first trial was truncated by the Office of the Attorney General following the arrest of Afoko's alleged accomplice, Asabke Alangdi, who fled the country after the incident. The second trial ended on April 27 this year with a seven-member jury presenting a verdict that shocked many. The jury, by a 4:3 decision, found Gregory Afoko not guilty of conspiring to murder the late Mr. Mahama, but unanimously found his co-accused, Asabke Alangdi guilty of the same offence. The jury, however, by 4:3 decision found the two accused persons not guilty of the substantive charge of murder, thereby resulting in a hung jury and a retrial by a different jury. While Afoko is to be retried as a result of a hung jury, Asabke Alangdi was sentenced to death by hanging after he was convicted by the court based on the jury's guilty verdict on the charge of conspiracy to commit murder. Part of the prosecution's facts state that the deceased returned home around 11:10pm in his pick-up vehicle, with registration number NR 761 14, and immediately he parked the vehicle in front of his house, the suspects went close and signaled him to roll down the glass. The deceased identified the suspects to be party members and rolled down the glass to talk to them. Suddenly, the suspects poured the substance suspected to be acid on his head, face and other parts of his body and fled on a motorbike. The deceased started screaming for help and his wife, Hajia Zenabu Adams, went to his aid and managed to bring him out of the vehicle, the prosecution indicates. The facts state that Mr. Mahama's wife also sustained burns on the right side of her chest and breast while assisting her husband. -DGN online The World Health Organization (WHO) has welcomed the announcement of a 4-day ceasefire in Gaza and the agreement for 50 Israeli hostages to be released by Hamas. However, the WHO director-general said more needs to be done to fully end the suffering of civilians in the region. In a statement posted on social media in Wednesday, November 22, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said "We welcome the announcement of the Israel-Hamas agreement for 50 Israeli hostages to be released. My thoughts are with the families, some of whom my WHO colleagues and I met with in recent weeks." He added that "We also welcome the 4-day pause in fighting that will allow more aid to be safely delivered into #Gaza. However, this is not enough to end the suffering of civilians." Dr. Tedros called for continued efforts "to free the remaining hostages" and said "those still in captivity must receive any needed medical care." He reiterated the WHO's call "for all hostages to be released." The director-general further stated that "We continue to call for a ceasefire so that civilians in Gaza can receive sustained, safe and scaled up support for recovery." The temporary ceasefire and hostage release agreement came after weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas that has reportedly killed over 1,200 Palestinians in Gaza and dozens in Israel. It allows for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza and is aimed at releasing more hostages in coming days. The Chamber for Local Governance (ChaLoG) has given its full backing to former President John Mahama's proposed 24-hour economy policy. The group has described it as a "game changer" that will revolutionize local governance and decentralized development in Ghana. In a statement released on Wednesday, November 22, ChaLoG President Dr. Richard Fiadomor said the policy has the potential to significantly boost local economic activity, increase revenue collection at the local level, and improve security, sanitation and job creation across communities nationwide. "We are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that this policy is sound, pragmatic and properly thought through," Dr. Fiadomor said. It will improve local economic development and lead to an automatic increase in revenues shared with Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies through the District Assemblies Common Fund, the statement added. The statement co-signed by the group's Executive Secretary, Hon. Romeo Elikplim Akahoho, and PRO Hon Alhaji Ibrahim F. Faila, noted that allowing economic activity throughout the day and night will address current challenges faced by MMDAs. "Most assemblies struggle to collect taxes like property rates because people are often not home during the day, it said. This policy will enable assemblies to properly collect revenues and exercise development control even at night." ChaLoG called on Ghanaians to endorse the 24-hour policy to "expand the frontiers of local governance and further deepen decentralization." The endorsement from ChaLoG comes after the Trades Union Congress in a meeting with the one-time President, hailed it as as a "game changer" for the country. 22.11.2023 LISTEN Minister for Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has said Ghana is aspiring to create a business environment that not only captivates travellers but also nurtures a thriving retail centre. Addressing participants at the Middle East and Africa Duty-Free Association (MEADFA) Conference in Accra on Tuesday, he said the government was committed to positioning Ghana as an epicentre where the retail dimension of travel flourishes. The conference aims to bring official recognition to the regions Duty-Free industry, raise awareness of the industrys contribution to the greater travel and tourism industry infrastructure and provide representation for its member companies. The Minister said the annual event served as a platform for meaningful exchanges within the travel retail industry and Ghana as the gateway to Africa stands as the ideal location to host it. He said data suggest that the Middle East and Africa Duty-Free retail market was valued at about US$16bn in 2020 and is expected to grow at an average rate of about 3.7 per cent between 2023 and 2029. The Minister indicated that, In Ghana, weve moved from our old terminal two to terminal three and were also looking to make a couple of other airports in Kumasi and Tamale fully functional as international airports from whence a lot more businesses can take place. Mr Nkrumah expressed Ghanas readiness to deepen its collaboration with MEADFA and hoped that the conference would not be a nine-day wonder but would be a frequent one hosted in Ghana. The Ag. President of the Western Regional House of Chiefs, Awulae Angama Tu-Agyan II, has commended the Minister for Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Mr Stephen Asamoah Boateng, for engaging stakeholders on the proposed National Policy on Religion. According to him, a National Policy on Religion would weed out the charlatans since they have made religion an avenue for money rather than service to God. He said this at the regional stakeholder consultation on the proposed National Policy on Religion on Tuesday in the Western Region as part of consultative meetings across the 16 regions of Ghana. He urged all participants to come up with great ideas and contributions to enable the ministry to develop a policy that would speak the minds of the people. Speaking on behalf of the Country Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Miss Priscilla Tigoe, a Programmes Assistant, said though the Fund works with the vulnerable in society, most of these people look up to religious leaders, adding that it was important to have a religious policy to shape and empower the vulnerable in society. The Chamber for Local Governance (ChaLoG) has outlined eight key benefits of former President John Mahama's proposed 24-hour economy policy for both citizens and local government administrations in Ghana. In a press release dated Wednesday, November 22, ChaLoG said the policy, if implemented, would revolutionize local governance and decentralization through improved local economic activity, increased revenue collection, better security, sanitation and more jobs. The group believes the 24-hour economy vision will "improve local economic development" and "lead to an automatic increase in revenues" shared with Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs). ChaLoG President Dr. Richard Fiadomor who signed the statement with other officials said they are convinced beyond reasonable doubt that this policy is sound, pragmatic and properly thought through. It will improve local economies and facilitate efficient tax collection." ChaLoG outlined the anticipated benefits as: 1) Improved local economic development 2) Increased revenues shared with MMDAs through the District Assemblies Common Fund 3) Higher revenue generation from night toll collection 4) Easier property rate tax collection 5) Better development control and permit fee collection 6) Enhanced security and lighting of communities 7) Improved sanitation and waste management 8) Greater job creation opportunities They noted the policy will allow assemblies to "properly collect revenues and exercise development control even at night." It urged Ghanaians to endorse the proposal to "expand local governance and further deepen decentralization." The Beatrice Cemetery Association is hoping to digitalize the records for the cemetery. Approximately 18,000 people are buried in Evergreen Home and Memorial Park in the 33rd Street location. Mitch Deines said about a year ago he and his wife decided they needed to purchase a plot. They went to the cemetery and were told to drive around and find a few areas they liked. We drove around and found a few blocks we liked, he said. We went back to the office and Sexton Chad Kleveland pulls out some giant hand-drawn paper maps. We go out and look at the plots. When we go back to the office to do the paperwork, I started asking questions while he's typing the deed on an old electric typewriter. Deines got involved as one of the twelve board members and began to investigate a process for digitalizing the cemetery records. In the mid to late 1890s there was a fire, and all of the records were lost at that time, Deines said. The people did the best they could to recreate the records. The original Beatrice Cemetery was located in the Glenover area along the Indian Creek. It was a lower area that flooded frequently. The city decided they needed to do something. Most of the graves were opened and moved to land at the 16th and Scott streets location. Kleveland said some of the bodies were not recovered from the flooding. Around 1894 the Scott Street location was full, and the city began the Evergreen Cemetery on 33rd Street. There are approximately 80-90 acres available at Evergreen Home and Memorial Park. Kleveland noted that some of the grave sites were moved from the original cemetery to Scott Street and then to Evergreen. Disinterment is really quite common, Kleveland said. Theres a lot of history of Gage County in our cemetery, Deines said. We need to make sure we can preserve those records. We have a responsibility as a board. Theres a lot of local interest too. Deines talked about the Kilpatrick family, the Fireman Memorial, Veterans burials and graves of Beatrice State Developmental Center. Its not just a place that people drive by, he said. Theres a lot of cool stuff out there. Kleveland noted that the design at the entrance of the cemetery is in the shape of a heart. After some research the board found a company that will export the records into a software program. In addition, they will take a satellite photo of the cemetery that is easily searchable. Deines said there are several things that makes this very exciting. Its going to make Chads job much easier, he said. He fields phone calls all the time of people coming through the area and looking for a grave. He has to stop what he is doing and search. Kleveland noted that when he is notified of an upcoming burial he is often searching through handwritten records. There is an app that a person looking for a grave can search, and it will walk you directly to the site. Also, a person can find and purchase a plot on the website the company will build. Digitalizing the record is expected to cost around $90,000. The Beatrice Cemetery Association has been seeking grants and fundraising. Deines noted that the organization also participated in Big Give Gage. There is a perception that the Beatrice Cemetery Association had all kinds of money, Deines said. We dont. We have a lot of money in the perpetual care fund, but we cant touch that money. We can only use proceeds from the principal. I dont ever see us touching that. What people see on the balance sheet is deceiving. Kleveland noted there are some expenses that people never think about. The roads were built in the 1960s, he said. The irrigation lines are from the 1920s. We also had to buy a new backhoe last year. Three full-time positions are utilized at the cemetery. The income is derived from the sale of plots and fees from opening and closing graves. Deines said its a park. Its shaded, its pretty and theres water, he said. People walk out at the cemetery and some even watch birds. There is work being done to have the cemeteries put on the National Register of Historical Places. Kleveland said a lot of people come to the cemetery. We have been recording out-of-state and out-of-county plates, he said. Deines noted he wanted people to know that this is important for the community and the cemetery. Donations can be made to the Beatrice Cemetery Association at 408 N. 33rd Street, Beatrice. The Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training has trained over 19,000 master craft persons and apprentices since 2018 under the Ghana Technical and Vocational Education and Training Voucher Project. Out of the number, 13,883 are females, whilst 5,179 are males. The project provides demand-driven training vouchers to Technical and Vocational Education and Training registered master craft persons, their apprentices and workers. The Head of Corporate Affairs of the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Mr. Albert Opare, in an interaction with the media during a visit to the Dabokpa Technical Institute, noted that the beneficiaries received the training in automotive repairs, cosmetology, garment, welding, consumer electronics, plumbing, electrical installation, block laying and furniture making. He added that the government plans to expand the project further and has secured additional funding of 60 million dollars from the World Bank and 40 million Euros from the German Government through KFW Bank to train at least 50,000 more beneficiaries over the next five years. Mr Opare indicated that in addition to the training provided, the project has a positive impact on the TVET system in Ghana. He added that numerous training institutions have been encouraged to register with the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training and are keen to achieve official accreditation for Competency Based Training implementation. We have witnessed the modernisation of the traditional apprenticeship system in Ghana through the implementation of the project. Finally, the project has strengthened the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training as the regulatory body for TVET in Ghana," he said. The Ghana TVET Voucher project is the Ghanaian-German Financial Development Cooperation, co-financed by the Government of Ghana and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the KfW Development Bank. In reaction to former President John Mahama's recent promise to implement a 24-hour economy if re-elected president again, Nana Akomea, Chief Executive Officer of STC and a member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has expressed skepticism about the feasibility of the policy. Former President Mahama pledged his commitment to transforming the country's economy by introducing a 24-hour economy. He emphasized the need to equip the youth with entrepreneurial skills and provide incentives, including tax breaks, for manufacturers operating 24hours to boost employment opportunities. In disagreement, Nana Akomea contested Mahama's policy proposal, asserting that Ghana's economy is already running 24 hours under the current administration led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. According to Akomea, there is currently no law restricting individuals or businesses from operating 24 hours a day. "Currently, nothing stops any person in this country from doing 24 hours. It depends on the economic condition. There is no law currently that prohibits any person from operating 24 hours," Akomea stated during an interview on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" morning show. He further illustrated his point by highlighting the operations of the State Transport Company (STC), a government-owned transportation service. Akomea explained that STC buses travel throughout the night and only pause operations when there is a lack of passengers. Mocking Mahama's proposal to assign police officers to guard shops operating 24 hours Akomea questioned the practicality of such a proposal. "So, every person who works after 10 pm will have a Police officer sitting in his or her office? So, if there is a pharmacy in a community and it clocks 11pm, you will assign two Police officers to the pharmacy. Then the Police will indeed recruit lots of people because the shops on Spintex road alone, from Tetteh Quarshie to Sakumono, if everyone says I will work after 10 and so I need Police personnel, then there will be about 2000 Police officers on the Spintex road alone," Akomea remarked sarcastically. Labour unions in the country have expressed support for former President John Dramani Mahama's proposal to implement a 24-hour economy if re-elected in the 2024 polls. The unions, representing various sectors, believe the policy has the potential to benefit the country by expanding the job market. However, some are urging Mr Mahama to provide more details on the initiative. Speaking on the Class Morning Show on Class91.3FM, Takyi Addo, Head of Communication of the Abossey Okai Spare Parts Dealers Association said "Our association members are embracing this 24-hour economy. It is a good policy. However, we do not know the details, so we want John Mahama to give us the specifics." David Agboado, Communication Head of the Concerned Drivers Association noted, " When the 24-hour economy comes we have an exporting company that work eight hours so we take the workers to work at dawn and their arrival time is 6am and 2pm they close, and we bring another batch that starts from 2:30pm and end at 10pm. But if the 24-hour economy comes, when they close at 10pm, we will have another shift going until the following morning, so when we bring the morning shift, we will send the 10pm batch home and so it will be a chain and as I talk to you 70 cars are working there but when 24-hour economy comes, it will be doubled making it 120 cars. Samson Awingobit, Executive Secretary Importers and Exporters Association added "The idea of a 24-hour economy is superb. I want to go to the ministry of trade at 3 am, and someone will be there. Mahama has said it, and Im sure they will come out with the details." Dr. Shiraz Issahaku, President Ghana Federation of Allied Health Professionals also said "This is excellent news. Weve been calling for a time when patients can access services 24/7. Health is not an event; its a process, and we must have those accessibilities." Edward Karewe, Executive Secretary, General Agriculture Workers Union indicated that if you look at the challenge of unemployment, it all comes from the economy because the economy is not expanding enough to absorb the teeming youth that enter the employment phase so anything that can allow the economy to run faster than it is today will lead to generation of more jobs. President of the Ghana Medical Association, Dr. Frank Serebour, welcomed the news but highlighted the need for the government to reconsider salary structures. He emphasised the importance of determining hourly rates and addressing compensation for working during weekends, public holidays, and overnight shifts. In Dr. Frank Serebour's perspective, It is worth considering, but that will also mean we will have to consider how we pay people. If we want to do a 24-hour economy, it means we should begin to look at how we pay people per hour. So if we want to have a 24-hour economy conversation, then we should expand it to include that so that we can be more productive, and people will earn what they work for. Classfmonline The Northern Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalist Association, Abdul-Majeed Yakubu, has called on journalists in Ghana to prioritize the promotion of girls' education. He emphasized that girls' education is pivotal to nation-building and the media plays a crucial role in shaping perceptions and influencing societal norms. The comments were made during a meeting between CAMFED Ghana and media practitioners in the Northern, Savanna and North East Regions. The meeting, called "CAMFED-Media Partnership Meeting," was held at the Mariam Hotel in Tamale on November 16, 2023. The event was attended by journalists and media house managers in the mentioned areas and was aimed at promoting girls' education. Abdul-Majeed highlighted the need for concerted efforts in amplifying the narrative surrounding girls' education. He stressed the importance of media advocacy to effect meaningful change, saying "Empowering girls through education is fundamental to societal progress and sustainable development. The media plays a crucial role in fostering awareness and influencing positive attitudes towards girls' education." The CAMFED-MEDIA Partnership Meeting catalyzed forging collaborative initiatives between the media and education-focused organizations to ensure broader coverage and increased visibility for issues related to girls' education. Participants shared ideas and strategies aimed at promoting equal access to quality education for girls across Ghana. During the meeting, National Director of CAMFED Ghana, Mrs Fairuza Safian, stated that the event was to provide an opportunity for CAMFED to rekindle its partnership with the media towards advance programs and activities. She expressed gratitude to the Mastercard Foundation for their continuous support of CAMFED's programs over the years, including the Innovation Bursary Program, the Scholars, Transition, and the Young Africa Works Programs. The meeting concluded with a call to action, urging media practitioners to leverage their platforms and influence to spotlight the challenges hindering girls' education and advocating for policy reforms and community interventions to bridge educational disparities. The National Chief Imam, His Eminence, Sheikh Dr. Osman Nuhu Sharubutu has made a donation to people in the North Tongu Constituency affected by the flooding caused by the spillage of the Akosombo dam. In his donation, the National Chief Iman supported the flood victims with several relief items and a cash amount of GHS70,000. On his visit, the National Chief Imam led special prayers for all the displaced persons including senior citizens, mothers, children, and other vulnerable persons in the 21 camps. The cash donation was received by North Tongu Member of Parliament Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and promptly handed over to the Accountability Elders Council to support the construction of the alternative housing project. Reacting to the gesture from the National Chief Iman, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa expressed appreciation to His Eminence Sheikh Dr. Osman Nuhu Sharubutu. May I render profuse personal appreciation to His Eminence for the special prayers and blessings an act of kindness I shall cherish all my life, the MP said in a post on Facebook. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa further noted that Ghana will be eternally grateful to Allah for the precious gift of this graceful, compassionate, peaceful, modest, caring, selfless, wise, distinguished and unifying religious leader par excellence. 22.11.2023 LISTEN Ghana is set to be the home of a landmark worldwide event, the 1st International Conference on Gender Equality on November 24, 2023. Poised to leave a significant global mark, the conference aims to create a global discourse on gender equality while facilitating a commitment to action in ensuring gender parity in the world. Born from an increasing global recognition of the importance of gender equality in social and economic progress, this international conference is a first of its kind. The event, an initiative of I Believe Global Womens Empowerment Foundation supported by the Ministry of Gender Children and Social Protection, the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) Ghana CSOs Platform on SDGs, the Human Rights Reporters Ghana (HRRG) among other partners will attract stakeholders from all around the world, providing the opportunity for significant international cross-pollination of ideas and the dissemination of best practices. This exciting event will be the landscape through which discussions, dialogues, and deliberations on pivotal aspects of gender parity will be brought to the fore. The event which is on the theme: Building Bridges: Charting the Course for Gender Equality and Achieving SDG 5 in Developing Economies is scheduled to be held at the CEDI Conference room, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana from 10am-5pm on Friday November 24, 2023. Participants are poised to rethink and redefine gender equality in the context of the 21st century, bearing in mind that the stride towards achieving a gender-equal world goes far beyond legal rights. To shape the discussion during this conference, key areas of focus will include access to quality education and healthcare, economic empowerment, and violence against women and girls. Furthermore, the discussions will touch on issues about gender and leadership, institutional mechanisms for gender equality, and gender-based discrimination. The conference agenda is designed to be insightful and reflective of global trends, focusing on equality battles that have been fought and won and those that remain a persistent global challenge. Stakeholders will have the chance to deliberate on key indicators, inequalities, untapped potential, and how best to accelerate progress towards achieving gender parity. Speakers who will grace the occasion include experts, advocates, policy-makers, activists, community leaders, industry heads, researchers, and educators. These individuals bring diverse expertise, perspectives, and voices to the international conference, set to make it a vast melting pot of ideas, bold strategies, and actionable solutions towards gender equality. Moreover, the conference will not just deliberate on the problems but also offer proactive solutions, strategies, and plans that can be implemented by individuals, communities, corporations, nations, and even globally. Set to take place in Accra, the capital of Ghana, the event sends a strong message about the country's role and strides in advancing gender equality. Ghana has made significant steps towards achieving gender parity, and hosting this conference reaffirms its commitment to remain at the forefront of this cause. President of I Believe Global, Rachael Lundgren, underscored in an interview the critical importance of fostering gender parity as a foundational component of societal advancement and economic growth. The 1st International Conference on Gender Equality in Ghana is a timely response to the urgent need for gender parity across the world, and Ghana is a fitting host, providing a platform for robust discussions, promising collaborations, and strong commitments towards achieving this global target. Attending this conference serves as a strong commitment for delegates and signals to the world their dedication to identifying, understanding, and eliminating hurdles that stand in the way of both genders being treated equivalently, says the President. The global dream of true gender equality is one we all share, and this conference is not only a step in the right direction but a leap towards making it a reality. All eyes will indeed be on Accra in November as the world converges in the quest for gender equality. The 1st International Conference on Gender Equality happening in Ghana is indeed an embodiment of hope for a future where gender prejudice will take a back seat as the world forges ahead as an equitable community. Its occurrence heralds the dawn of unforgettable milestones in the quest for gender equality. Source:Joseph Kobla Wemakor Agatha Johna, Chief Executive Officer of Care Love Foundations has criticized the Ghana Education Service's abstinence-only approach to sex education. She said the education management bodys old strategy has failed to curb rising teenage pregnancies and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) such as HIV/AIDS. The sexual health advocate said at a workshop in Cape Coast that "GES should accept that their abstinence strategy has now worked, hence the increase in teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections among teenagers." She argued that "the world has gotten to a stage where asking teenagers to abstain from sex would not work." Instead, Ms. Johna called for the GES to "review their strategy, move from abstinence to protection, and teach the kids how to properly use condoms to prevent teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections." Government data shows newly diagnosed HIV cases are disproportionately affecting females, with two-thirds of new cases reported in women. Meanwhile, Ghana has failed to meet its 2022 target of decreasing adolescent pregnancy rates, with the figures actually rising to 15.2% compared to the 14% goal. 22.11.2023 LISTEN In the sprawling landscapes of Kwahu Afram Plains, both north and south, a commendable transformation is underway, guided by the steadfast hands of the Ghana Police Service. Their unwavering commitment to maintaining law and order in the face of challenges, particularly on the shambolic road network that was once a safe haven for nefarious activities, is deserving of our highest praise. One cannot help but acknowledge the newfound aura of security that graces the region, a testament to the enhanced visibility of the police force. The once-shadowed corners and forgotten byways have now been illuminated by the vigilant presence of our dedicated police personnel. This heightened visibility has had a remarkable impact, significantly reducing the incidents of crime that once marred the tranquility of Kwahu Afram Plains. The metamorphosis of these once perilous routes into safe passages is akin to the emergence of a butterfly from its cocoona symbol of transformation and the triumph of order over chaos. The Ghana Police Service, under the astute leadership, has orchestrated a face of security that resonates with the well-being of the community. As we approach the festive season, marked by joy and celebration, it is imperative that we recognize the efforts of the police force and amplify their capabilities. The road to security is, at times, paved with challenges, and it is our duty to fortify the resolve of those who stand as the guardians of our safety. In light of this, we earnestly entreat the government to deploy additional security personnel to Kwahu Afram Plains. The strategic placement of these guardians will not only bolster the existing security apparatus but will also act as a deterrent to any potential wrongdoers who may be tempted to disturb the peace. Moreover, we implore the government to equip these valiant officers with the necessary accoutrements. A well-equipped force is an empowered force, and providing our police personnel with the tools they need is an investment in the safety and prosperity of Kwahu Afram Plains. As responsible citizens, it is incumbent upon us to be active participants in our own security. Let us heed the government's clarion call to "see something, say something." Vigilance is the key that unlocks the door to a secure community, and our collective awareness can serve as an invaluable asset to our diligent police force. To the resilient citizens of Kwahu Afram Plains, we urge you to embrace a culture of security consciousness. Be the eyes and ears that complement the watchful gaze of our police officers. Your cooperation and willingness to provide relevant information will undoubtedly strengthen the shield of protection that envelops our community. In conclusion, let us celebrate the commendable efforts of the Ghana Police Service in Kwahu Afram Plainsa beacon of hope in the realm of security. Through collaboration, vigilance, and unwavering support, we can ensure that the forthcoming Christmas season is not only one of joy but also of unshakeable security and peace Written by Louis Asante Resident of Afram Plains Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) says the introduction of a valuation reference price list for the clearing of goods by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) is an illegal act. Mr. Eddie Akrong, the National President of GIFF, addressing the media in Tema, said the move by the Board of the GRA contradicted international trade laws, especially the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement, which Ghana was a signatory to. Mr. Akrong indicated in a memo emanating from the Board of the GRA to the Customs Division that no discounts, variations, or acceptance of values below the reference price list should be given on any item or product. He said, as a signatory, Ghana was bound by principles that advocated for fair and transparent valuation processes. He further added that the Customs Act, 2015 (ACT 891) clearly and unequivocally stated how valuation for goods should be done and what ought not to be done. He explained that Sections 67 of the Customs Act outline in detail how goods should be valued, while Sections 68(3) also spell out that customs value shall not be determined on the basis of some things, including a minimum customs value. It is thus illegal to create a certain minimum value or reference price list for valuation purposes, he stressed. According to him, several importers have been saddled with the imposition of the valuation price list, even though they have provided all evidence of the genuineness of their values. The GIFF President said all of these contributed to the high cost of doing business in Ghana's ports and directly affected the cost of goods on the market, adding that the major effect of the policy was that it allowed importers to transfer funds illegally, having an economic effect on the country. He urged the GRA to reconsider the policy to align with international standards and foster a conducive environment for trade. Touching on the full implementation of the Interconnected System for the Management of Goods in Transit (SIGMAT), he said it was crucial to reassess and rectify policies that might inadvertently impede the efficiency of Ghana's logistics and supply chain operations. Mr. Akrong pointed out that some bottlenecks in the transit sector had been occasioned by the implementation of SIGMAT, which was causing extreme discomfort and escalating the cost of doing business at the points of entry. He indicated that the description of goods by weight that were Ghana bound might suffer shrinkages due to dehydration, especially in the case of cowhide, explaining that there were no adjustment factors in the system and therefore they were deemed underweighing. He further said that under the SIGMAT, an error in counting and data capture from the originating country resulted in an invalidated process by the system in Ghana, noting that it could take days to resolve it at the cost of the trader as there were no standard processes in place for correcting such errors. GNA 22.11.2023 LISTEN Professor John Gatsi, the Dean of School of Business of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), has called for 'proper investigation and analysis' into government's 'One District, One Factory' policy to enhance efficacy. He said Ghana's industrial sector continued to record low growth despite the implementation of the much-touted industrialisation policy, questioning its contribution to industry. Reacting to the 2024 Budget Statement in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), he noted that Ghana's industrial sector grew by -2.5 in 2019; 0.9 in 2021; 1.9 in 2022; and -2.2 in the first half of 2023. Why should we be implementing the industrialisation policy of the government and then be having this particular record of growth in our industry sector, he queried. Prof Gatsi indicated that the sector would have been in a worse position but for the performance of the oil and gas sector and therefore, stressed the need to prioritise the development of that sector. Mr Ken Ofori-Atta in the Budget Statement projected the country's economy to exceed GH1 trillion in 2024 compared to the GH219.5 billion in 2016. Mr. Speaker, with such a milestone ahead of us, Government is protecting, at all costs, the foundation for sustained economic expansion; a foundation that has been achieved through the sweat and patience of the Ghanaian people. We pledge to protect this for all our people and especially for private sector growth, he said. But Prof Gatsi said given the country's growth trajectory since 2008, the projected growth was natural and expected. Rather, he said government should take steps to ensure that the growth was evenly distributed across sectors, generating opportunities and employment, and sufficiently contributing to revenue generation. For instance, how much is agriculture contributing? How is industry faring? And how is service faring? These are the things that should bother our concentration, he said. Prof Gatsi further commended government for its decision to intensify property tax collection to shore up revenue. The property tax sector is underperforming in terms of revenue. It is an area we need to focus on to get more. So, coming out with a policy to enhance efficiency in the administration and collection of the tax is a laudable initiative, he added. GNA A Fall Farmers Market will be held at Vintage Venue on Saturday, Nov. 25 for the second year. West End Farm Katie Jantzen has been a weekly vendor during the regular season of the Beatrice Farmers Market. She said this has been a project that she has been passionate about offering on Small Business Saturday. It will inside and nice of warm, she said. There is a lot of diversity in vendors this year. Jantzen said she is expecting there will be all kinds of fall produce, baked goods, honey, jams, eggs and a variety of crafts. There are 13 local vendors expected to participate in the event. Anyone attending will be able to buy food, gifts, and crafts, she said. Colleens Catering will also be offering a brunch buffet for $15. Jantzen noted that Colleen Schoneweis of Colleens Catering sources a lot of food from local vendors. The buffet will include several different quiches, breakfast casseroles, sweet potato hash with hollandaise sauce, baked French toast, sausage, bacon, muffins and a variety of other items. Coffee, hot chocolate and assorted teas are included in the cost of the buffet. Mimosas and Bloody Mary drinks will be available to purchase at the bar. People can come and shop at the vendors or just come for the buffet or do both, Jantzen said. Main Street Beatrice Director Morgan Fox said it would be an opportunity to visit some of the downtown businesses on Small Business Saturday. We hope people will take the opportunity to shop downtown after visiting the Fall Farmers Market, Fox said. For every $1 spent locally, it will come back to the community four times. The people with these businesses are our friends and neighbors. The Fall Farmers Market will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Vintage Venue at Seventh and Court. - Source: 22.11.2023 LISTEN Would you take medication for an illness you didn't believe you had? Or if you disagreed with healthcare workers about the cause of your condition? This is the dilemma of many people who live in areas of Ghana where a mosquito-borne disease called lymphatic filariasis , often referred to as elephantiasis, continues to spread. Lymphatic filariasis, or LF as it is commonly known, is a neglected tropical disease which spreads through repeated bites by parasite-carrying mosquitoes. This infection results in the painful and debilitating swelling of legs, arms and genitals, and increases vulnerability to injury and secondary infections. Although little known, lymphatic filariasis is a significant and under-addressed global cause of disability. According to the World Health Organization at least 51 million people are infected with lymphatic filariasis. The World Health Organization's Global Programme for Elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis has greatly reduced the burden of the disease through preventive mass drug campaigns, mosquito control, veterinary public health and sanitation and hygiene measures. Despite this concerted effort, however, lymphatic filariasis continues to be endemic and require mass drug administration in 31 African countries. The challenges to eradicating it are not well understood, and may hinge on better understanding how people with this disease view their condition. Read more: Why it's hard to end elephantiasis, a debilitating disease spread by mosquitoes Our research team brings together specialists in epidemiology, public health and human rights. In our recently published paper in PLOS Global Public Health we take a different approach to the conventional medical focus that dominates research and interventions for this disease. We examined the local perceptions and beliefs about the disease and the personal experiences of those living with it in three rural communities in Ghana's Ahanta West district. This coastal district in Ghana's Western Region has a high rate of lymphatic filariasis infection and many people living with advanced stages of the disease. Members of our research team had worked in this area for more than a decade, establishing the trust relationships that made this research possible. Our findings may help provide insight into why lymphatic filariasis persists in certain settings and how best to tackle it. Cold, rain and curses We found that only 18% of respondents understood lymphatic filariasis as a disease. Fewer than 7% believed it to be a disease spread by mosquitoes. Instead, people held a range of alternative beliefs attributing the condition to other sources, including spiritual causes (curses, witchcraft, evil spirits), cold or rainy weather, and other illnesses. In subsequent interviews, people described how, from their perspective, they encountered the disease. One person explained, When you are cold, then your leg gets swollen. Another noted, There are some who just get jealous of and develop hatred for people for just walking and going about their normal duties and decide that they do not want this person or that person to progress, hence they buy the disease for them spiritually. They added, I strongly believe and have the conviction that someone bought mine for me spiritually. In contrast with these beliefs, which show very limited overlap with medical explanations, nearly half ( 45.8% ) of respondents reported receiving information about the disease from healthcare workers or drug campaigns. These findings suggest we need to learn more about local beliefs in health and wellbeing in order to achieve more effective communication with patients. Our research also demonstrates lymphatic filariasis is not only a medical condition, but also a social and economic one. Ashamed and stigmatised Almost 80% of respondents reported feeling ashamed or stigmatised by their condition. Some said it restricted their social lives and their willingness to go out in public. Infection also limited the ability to earn a living. More than a third ( 36.2% ) said they could no longer work due to their condition. Many reported a need to depend on others for financial support. Among those surveyed less than 3% reported that they were doing well. These findings show an urgent need to address the unmet social, mental health and economic impacts of lymphatic filariasis. What needs to be done Drug campaigns are important but cannot be done in isolation. Existing research shows us that these are more successful when offered in a broader context of care . Healthcare workers must be trained to avoid stigmatising patients. But eliminating stigma is not a simple task, nor can it be left to healthcare workers alone. Further research is needed to better understand local beliefs about lymphatic filariasis, and to understand how stigma affects patients' access to treatment and quality of life. This must include the strong links between the disease and poverty. Lymphatic filariasis follows the social gradient . Those who are poorest are most likely to be affected. Factors associated with poverty increase the chances of being infected and of developing complications. These factors include poor quality housing, limited access to methods of prevention (mosquito nets, good quality footwear), difficulty getting medical care, living in remote rural communities, and working as subsistence farmers. The disease also pushes poor people further into poverty as it progresses. As the number of people affected by it decreases, those who are left behind are more and more likely to be isolated, marginalised, stigmatised and impoverished. As we argue in a recent book chapter , these factors underscore the need for interdisciplinary research teams who are able to address lymphatic filariasis holistically. We need an approach that merges healthcare, health promotion, health systems, spiritual beliefs, social and cultural context, gender dynamics and economic impact. We must put people with lymphatic filariasis and their dignity at the centre of research. Kristi Heather Kenyon receives funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. Alexander Kwarteng receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Dr Colleen McMillan receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Mary Asirifi works for MacEwan University. She receives funding from CIHR. Regiane Garcia receives funding from Canadian Health Institutes Research By Kristi Heather Kenyon, Associate Professor, Human Rights, University of Winnipeg And Alexander Kwarteng, Senior Lecturer in Immunology of Infectious Diseases, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) And Colleen McMillan, Scientific Co-Director and Associate Professor, University of Waterloo And Mary Asirifi, Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing Foundations, MacEwan University And Regiane Garcia, Research Associate, focus on health rights, laws and policies, Simon Fraser University The Ghana Institute of Planning (GIP) elevated Pln. Amb. Hajia Alima Mahama to the Fellow Category of the Institute during its Induction Dinner on Friday, November 17, 2023 at the Kofofridu Technical University, Koforidua. Alongside her, Pln. Dr. Audrey Smock Amoah and Pln. William Hagan Amoah were also promoted into this prestigious class. A fellow of a professional body is a person who has made a significant contribution to national development over the years. GIP equates its Fellow class to that of an Associate Professor in academia. Ambassador Hajia Alima Mahama was the former Minister of Local Government and Rural Development from 2017 to 2021 and served as Ghana's Ambassador to the United States of America. She was awarded for her role in deepening decentralized planning and as a role model for female professionals, especially planners. Pln. Dr. Audrey Smock Amoah, one of the two other individuals honoured, is the head of the Management and Technical Services Department of Local Government Service. Dr. Smock Amoah was elevated for her numerous contributions to the profession such as review of Planning programmes offered by various universities in the country in addition to her inspirational role for her colleague female planners. Pln. William Hagan Amoah is a veteran in the planning industry and has made many contributions mainly in the arena of decentralized fiscal management. At the induction ceremony, the Institute admitted 21 Corporate Members (professional members) and enrolled 136 persons into its trainee membership category. It also issued certificates to 46 deserving students studying planning programmes at the various universities in the countries. The occasion was the concluding session of a two-day parked Annual Conference and General Meeting of the Institute. GIP is the body that regulates professional planning, promotes planning education and advocates for planning in general. According to records at the Office of Registrar of Companies (ORC), it is the first professional body to be registered under the laws of Ghana. Its membership network is spread across every facet of the national system and across the globe. The Western Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Francis Ndede Siah has lamented over poor road networks in the region. According to him, there is no way he will lead a campaign for flagbearer Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia ahead of the 2024 General Election if poor roads in the Jomoro and other Constituencies in the Western Region are not fixed. There is no presidential candidate I can lead to campaign in some constituencies. Even in my own constituency, Jomoro if the roads are not fixed, it will be hard for me to campaign there, Francis Ndede Siah said in an interview with Neat FM. The NPP Western Regional Chairman continued, I have nothing to say and there is nothing to show. What projects has government done in Jomoro? Most raw materials are from Jomoro, yet when it comes to development, Ellembele is far ahead. The road is just 18 to 20km. The most annoying part is that the Jomoro road is being funded by GNPC and Ghana gas. According to him, in 2020 he advised that galamsey activities be checked or the NPP would lose the Western region to the NDC and it came to pass. Francis Ndede Siah warns that if government continues to neglect his calls and roads in the regions are not fixed, the party will lose in the Western Region. Chief of Staff at the Presidency, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare has assured all persons affected by the spillage of the Akosombo dam that they will not be forsaken by government. At a press briefing at the Ministry of Information on Wednesday, November 22, the Chief of Staff stressed that relief and rehabilitation support would be provided by the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and the Volta River Authority (VRA) until the last family is sorted out. NADMO and VRA will continue with relief and rehabilitation efforts until the last family whether at safe havens or displaced are catered for, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare said. The Chief of Staff led the briefing today as Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on floods set up by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo Addo. Since the formation of the committee, the leadership of the Education, Roads, Health, Sanitation, and Water Resources have been on the grounds in the areas affected by the floods to collect data and decide on the kind of help to offer. So far, the government has made available relief efforts between VRA and NADMO since the devastation from the floods happened. The government insists that it is committed to releasing additional funds as the various sectors further assess the affected communities. Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta last week announced that government has budgeted an amount of GHS220 million to support communities affected by the Akosombo dam spillage as well as floods upstream in the Oti, Savannah, and Bono East Regions. According to Chief of Staff Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, the Inter-Ministerial Committee on floods will continue to work with all stakeholders to ensure effective management of the flood in affected communities and streamline programmes towards the restoration of livelihoods. The Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Adutwum has given the assurance that no student in the communities flooded by the controlled spillage of the Akosombo dam will be left behind. Speaking at a press briefing at the Ministry of Information on Wednesday, November 22, the Minister disclosed that 42,526 learners and 1,165 teachers in 121 schools were affected by the spillage. According to him, the Ministry with the help of government has initiated an emergency procurement to provide textbooks for the over 42,000 students whose education has been affected as a result of the flooding. We are going through emergency procurement to make sure we can provide textbooks, as well as learning and teaching materials to all those schools that have been affected, Education Minister Dr. Yaw Adutwum told the press. He further stressed that the goal is to make sure that all students are not left behind anywhere in the areas that have experienced flooding. Following the receding of flood water in some communities, the Minister says the necessary steps will be taken to ensure all schools reopen. He said the Ministry of Education is looking at opportunities for rehabilitation and where there is the need to build a new school it will be done to ensure the education of children in affected communities is not affected. Mr Akwasi Oppong-Fosu, a former Minister of State has reiterated that the values, attitudes, and behaviors of leaders are shaped by the broader social context in which they operate. This he said is an attribute to the statement that Leaders are a reflection of their society, capturing the essence of the intricate connection between leaders and the societies they lead. He said this understanding underscores the crucial role of cultivating a better society as a prerequisite for witnessing better leadership. Mr Oppong-Fosu was speaking at the First Senate Conference organized by the University Students Association of Ghana (USAG) in Accra. The Senate is an esteemed body within USAG that comprises elected representatives from different university campuses who convene to deliberate on pertinent matters affecting Ghanaian students ranging from educational policies to socio-economic issues. The conference was on the theme: Guiding the Solidarity of Student Leaders: The Fortress to Academic Development. He revealed that to contribute to the creation of a better society, we must embark on a multifaceted journey that encompasses both personal transformation and active engagement. The former Minister said embodying the qualities we seek in our leaders honesty, integrity, compassion, and a commitment to service was a fundamental step in this journey. By conducting ourselves with these values, we set a positive example for others and foster a more ethical and responsible society. He said active citizenship played an equally significant role in shaping a better society, adding that, this entails actively participating in civic activities, staying informed about local and global issues, and holding our leaders accountable. By actively participating in shaping our communities, we can contribute to the creation of a more just and equitable society, he added. Mr Oppong-Fosu noted that education plays a pivotal role in cultivating the qualities necessary for effective leadership, and In addition to acquiring knowledge, education should focus on developing emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and moral character. These qualities he said are essential for leaders to effectively navigate the complexities of society, make informed decisions, and inspire others. As we aspire to leadership positions, it is crucial to examine our motivations and purpose. The former Minister of State also posted a question as to whether 'leaders are seeking leadership for self-serving reasons power, privilege, and possessions or are driven by a genuine desire to make a positive contribution to society'. He said true leadership is rooted in a commitment to service and a dedication to the common good and ultimately, our legacy as leaders is not defined by our power, status, or possessions; it is shaped by our character, our integrity, and our impact on the world around us. By embracing the values that foster a better society and striving for transformational leadership, we can leave a lasting positive mark on the world. USAG was founded in 2001 and serves as a unifying body representing the collective interest of students across the various universities in Ghana. It is committed to fostering academic excellence, leadership development and promoting a conducive environment for learning and growth. GNA The National Peace Council has issued a statement on the violent clashes in Nkwanta in the Oti Region. The incident characterised by shooting has resulted in the death of some eight people. In its statement, the National Peace Council described the violent clashes as worrying, adding that Ghanaians must do everything possible to protect the peace in the country. The Council expresses grave concern that the lives of Ghanaians, mostly in their youth, have been lost in these violent incidents which could have been avoided if the parties had exercised some restraint. The Council is worried about these unfortunate incidents and appeals to the Inspector General of Police and the security agencies to strengthen investigations already underway with the required resources to assure the affected families and the Ghanaian public of speedy justice, parts of the release from the National Peace Council signed by its Chairman Rev. Dr. Ernest Adu Gyamfi said. The Council wants Ghanaians to protect the peace and security of the country by creating and using avenues of tolerance, cooperation, and coexistence to sustain the countrys identity as an oasis of peace in Africa. PRESS RELEASE BY THE NATIONAL PEACE COUNCIL ON THE RECENT VIOLENT INCIDENT IN SOME PARTS OF THE COUNTRY The National Peace Council has followed with deep sorrow the unfortunate violent clashes in some parts of the country resulting in the deaths of some citizens of the country. Reports from Kintampo, in the Bono East Region, Nkwanta in the Oti Region, Wenchiki in the North-East Region indicate that violence has led to the destruction of lives and property in these affected communities. The Council expresses grave concern that the lives of Ghanaians, mostly in their youth, have been lost in these violent incidents which could have been avoided if the parties had exercised some restraint. The Council is worried about these unfortunate incidents and appeals to the Inspector General of Police and the security agencies to strengthen investigations already underway with the required resources to assure the affected families and the Ghanaian public of speedy justice. Meanwhile, the Council expresses its deepest condolences to the families in the three affected communities and encourages them and all concerned Ghanaians not to yield to any provocation and restrain themselves from taking the law into their own hands. The Council appeals for calm in these difficult times to enable the investigations to take their full course without hindrance while allowing the Regional Peace Councils and REGSEC to continue to facilitate the resolution of these conflicts. The Council takes the opportunity to remind Ghanaians of paragraphs (c), (d) and (i) of article 41 of the 1992 constitution of the Republic of Ghana which states thus: 41. The exercise and enjoyment of rights and freedoms is inseparable from the performance of duties and obligations, and accordingly, it shall be the duty of every citizen. to foster national unity and live in harmony with others. to respect the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of others, and generally to refrain from doing acts detrimental to the welfare of other persons. (i) to co-operate with lawful agencies in the maintenance of law and order;. Finally, the Council calls on all peoples of Ghana to protect the peace and security of the country by creating and using avenues of tolerance, cooperation, and coexistence to sustain the countrys identity as an oasis of peace in Africa. Thank you. SIGNED REV DR ERNEST ADU GYAMFI CHAIRMAN 22.11.2023 LISTEN IPRC Musanze, one of the eight colleges of Rwanda Polytechnic is the latest educational institution to welcome the Luban workshop, a Chinese vocational training program set-up to deepen cooperation between China and other countries to support global development. The newly inaugurated Rwanda Luban workshop which includes a modern laboratory equipped with robots and other new technologies will support the countrys efforts dedicated to enhancing capacity-building in various sectors as it pursues development goals. By contributing to develop and strengthen vocational skills and provide other core skills the Rwandan youth need to adapt and thrive in a fast-changing world, China, through the Luban workshop, a partnership between Rwanda Polytechnic and Jinhua Polytechnic is supporting the African country to address un-and under employment, foster productivity, drive inclusive growth and improve standards of living. In an interview with Xinhua News Agency, Sylvie Mucyo, the vice-chancellor of Rwanda Polytechnic said, The Luban Workshop is established with cutting-edge technologies that today's world needs. It is a tremendous achievement as it will help Rwandan students to get the best education, the best training in a conducive environment," She added that the Luban Workshop will enhance exchange of expertise enable students and staff including researchers from Rwanda to collaborate with their Chinese counterparts on projects that will ultimately unlock new opportunities and provide lasting solutions to pressing socio-economic challenges. Sylvie Mucyo said "It will support students to be creative and innovative to work on solutions that the community and industry need," Since the first Luban workshop outside China was setup in Thailand on March 8, 2016, by the Tianjin Bohai Vocational Technical College, sponsored by Tianjin Bohai Chemical Industry (Group) Company Limited, China, through the project continues to share its vocational technology and culture with the world deepening cooperation between Chinese educational institutions, government agencies and enterprises with their foreign counterparts. Named after Lu Ban, a Chinese craftsman of the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), who became famous for inventing tools, the Luban workshop, which follows this spirit of craftsmanship has over the past seven years been at the forefront of innovating vocational education worldwide supporting countries to cultivate highly-skilled talents. So far, a total of 27 Luban workshops have been established in 25 countries including Britain, Cambodia, Portugal, Pakistan, Indonesia and India. For participating countries, especially those located in resource-poor regions, the Luban workshop is increasingly indispensable to national efforts dedicated to eliminating barriers to human capital development, industrialization and agriculture modernization contributing to enhancing local capacity-development in various industries. In Thailand, where the first Luban workshop outside China was set-up, the project located at Ayutthaya Technical College, has over the past seven years provided vocational training to 13,000 students. Students at the workshop receive hands-on training in modern teaching and learning facilities including a high-speed railway training center founded in 2018 by the Tianjin Railway Technical and Vocational College. Benefitting from advanced Chinese vocational training education including new technologies, Thailand, through the Luban workshop has trained highly-skilled professionals for key sectors. According to Tanu Vongjinda, secretary-general of the Thai Vocational Education Commission "The courses offered by the workshop have precisely met the demand for high-quality talent in Thailand's industrial and transportation sectors," Tanu also revealed that "The workshop can be regarded as the commission's pride in having created a model for other educational institutions to promote vocational education management worldwide." Faced with a deeply concerning socio-economic phenomenon where nearly 7 in 10 out-of-school or unemployed youth in Thailand lack the motivation to develop skills or seek work, due to a perceived lack of opportunities, according to a new UNICEF-led study (2023), the Luban workshop has become an invaluable resource, contributing to national actions expected to tackle this daunting challenge. Faced with similar challenges, Africa, considered the continent with the least skilled workforce in the world, a condition that partly accounts for the regions decades-long slow growth is also benefiting from the Luban workshop. In March 2019 Africas first Luban workshop was setup in Djibouti over the past four years, China has established 12 workshops in 11 African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, South Africa, Ethiopia and Egypt jointly collaborating with local education authorities to provide the continents bulging youth population with vocational training designed to foster agriculture modernization, advance industrialization and support human capital development. In Djibouti, the Luban workshop which offers 4 majors: rail engineering technology, railway operation and management, business and logistics, all certified by local education authorities has trained 69 local teachers and 148 students the project has also achieved one of its goals, thus, to cultivate local talents for the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway, a major project under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). By jointly providing countries with well-structured advanced vocational training programs that are typically needs-driven, China through the Luban workshop fosters a sense of ownership and empowerment enabling participating countries, especially those located in resource-poor regions to take bold steps, chart a new path to development. About the Author Alexander Ayertey Odonkor is a global economist with keen interest in the social, environmental and economic landscape of both developing and developed countries, particularly in Asia, Africa and Europe. He is a columnist for the China Global Television Network (CGTN), The Brussels Times, China Daily, The Diplomat, Business and Financial Times and several others. He holds a masters degree in Finance and a bachelors degree in Economics and Finance, together with a comprehensive postgraduate education, spanning entrepreneurship, environmental and social management, mining, risk management, electronic trading, and business management pursued at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Curtin University, University of Adelaide, New York Institute of Finance and Delft University of Technology, respectively. 22.11.2023 LISTEN Dear Right Hon Speaker, I pray and hope this mail reaches you in good health. Hon Speaker, we were taught in the middle school that due to value addition to the abundance of raw materials especially cotton and sugar cane from the Agrarian (Agricultural) Sector for wealth creation occasioned or catalyzed the establishment of the Agro-industry with the associated principle of backward integration (a company buying another Company in the supply chain say a factory or Refinery buys a Company that provides raw material or services, hence the buying Company buys another Company behind it or at the downstream. The Agricultural sector which was driven by the Agro processing industry for value addition and wealth creation brought about the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century in Britain and helped developed a 24hour economy thus helped Britain to develop a very stable economy which was based on the ideology of Capitalism or the free market economy as propounded by Adam Smith. So, the stable economy or wealth of Britain was among others on the backbone of Agribusinesses especially cotton, sugar, tea etc and the associated agro-industries hence a combination or matrix of farming, farming industrial, commerce etc for value addition, for food security and wealth creation and not necessary with the mentality for job creation, the wrong mentality of some Politicians in African. This has contributed to the woes of Ghana, due to a wrong mentality of creation of jobs with the Agro Industry and not making the Agricultural sector and the associated agro processing industries to be regarded as for food security and for value addition respectively and both for wealth creation which will virtually increase job numbers. It is not surprised that Ghana with this kind of mentality of seeing the Agric sector as for creation of jobs that the Regime of President Nana Addo came out a very bad national mantra of Planting for Food and for Jobs instead of Planting for Food Security and Wealth Creation. This situation of seeing the Agric Sector as for jobs and not for business or for wealth creation has made River Volta and other rivers in Ghana not regarded as a very important Economy or Agric Resource for wealth creation. The river Volta has rather been left to become a problem with the associated hazard of flooding and spillages especially from River Voltas associated dams like Bagre Dam in Burkina Faso, the Akosombu Dam and the Kpong Dam in Ghana to additional problem in poverty misery despite the massive arable lands near to the great River Volta. Sir, let me cite two examples to drive my point that Agric Sector with the associated Agro Industry must be regarded as business for wealth creation home. The Jospong Group has recently discovered that massive Rice Production as part of the import substitution policy of the Government, is an area it can expand the Groups wealth and has invited foreign partners from Thailand to team up with it to generate more wealth or returns to investment and not necessary to create jobs, of course more hands will be needed but that is not the idea of the business man. Mr Kwame Despite and his brother Dr Sarpong were recently convinced of an area to add more wealth by the current Hon Agric Minister was investment in the Agric sector due to import substitution policy being executed by his Ministry and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. They were encouraged to invest in massive production of poultry products, that is the need for private businessmen to venture or risk into the poultry industry for gains in wealth creation and not necessary for job creation, of course jobs will be created but that is not the rear mindset of the businessman and the Minister of Agric in his import substitution bid. The job creation will not and will never be the interest of the Governor Bank of Ghana when supporting the fiscal side with funds to help in price stabilization or to meet macroeconomic and financial stability. Mr Speaker, the great River Volta which should be regarded as a gold mine which emanates from the North with massive virgin arable land and traverses most of the regions of Ghana including the Bono East Region/Bono Region and then winds through the Eastern Region with a twist through the Oti Region to Volta Region and finally to part of Accra and empties into the Atlantic Ocean around Ada Foah is a great potential asset that has awaited for decades to be used for 24hours economy for wealth creation for macroeconomic stability and virtually inclusive growth with all year round activities when used for farming under Irrigation with the associated agro industries including Rice Mills, Tomatoes factories, Sugar Mills, Sugar Refinery, for fishery businesses, river transportation, hydropower generation. So, Mr Speaker, it is envisaged that Africa especially Ghana is failing to make a successful breakthrough in her macroeconomic fundamentals and virtually inclusive growth through Agric and Agro-industry or Agribusiness because of the very bad or wrong mentality of our Political Leaders of always thinking of or talking of or seeing Agribusiness especially the Agro-industry as a vehicle for creation of jobs instead as of them seeing Agribusiness as a vehicle for food security and creation of wealth or for import substitution which virtually creates more jobs in attempt to preserve wealth and or generate more wealth. When Dr Esther Afua Ocloo Nkulenu, the global icon in business par excellence completed her O level education in 1941 repeat 1941, and it was difficult for her to get a job between 1941 and 1943, so she was forced in 1943 to start as a street vendor later on a cottage industry in marmalade, orange juice and shito in the food industry. To preserve the food items as part of food security and creation of more wealth through value addition, Lady Esther Ocloo pioneered the idea of commercial canning or bottling of food items in Ghana. To create more wealth, she expanded her Agribusiness into the garment industry and pioneered tie and dye industry for wealth creation and not necessary job creation. To open and sustain a huge market for her goods, she initiated the first made in Ghana goods exhibition in 1958 with the mindset of expanding the agribusiness for generation of wealth. The lessons from Esther Ocloo are numerous these include the Agribusiness (Agro-industry) should be regarded as a business or gold mine for wealth creation and not necessary for jobs. The failure of Ghana in the Fourth Republic to improve in her economic fundamentals is due to the mentality of our Leaders always talking of creation of jobs (populism) in the Agric Sector instead of providing the enabling environment for the creation of wealth or vehicle for import substitution (domestication) as demonstrated by Lady Esther and the recent entry into the Agric Sector by Dr Siaw Agyapong, the businessman or the Jospong Group in massive rice production or the interest of Mr Kwame Despite in the Poultry Industry. Another big lesson from Lady Esther Nkulenu is the importance of Exhibition or the showcase of Made in Ghana Goods, so we should revisit the idea of National Agric show or National Agric Exhibition. It was based on the good idea of Lady Esther Ocloo that President Nkrumah introduced in Ghana National Agric Show to showcase Agric equipment, products or Ghanaian goods to derive the Agric sector and replace the National farmers day. The best honor for a farmer is cheap and readily available inputs, ready market at good price. So, the food or Commodity Market with electronic warehousing being developed by the Government must accelerated. It is high time our leaders see the Agric Sector and the associated Agro-business as a vehicle for both food security and wealth creation, consequently, for the improvement on the macroeconomic fundamentals of Ghana and not necessary for job creations hence job for boys and girls so they will not work hard and they will not think far that is out of the box like how Lady Esther Ocloo did when she could not get a job in 1941 I repeat in 1941. With God, she was able to set up big Industries in Food Industry, Garment Industry etc for wealth creation and as such she has provided jobs for her Compatriots including some PHD Holders with some with Pull Her Down (PHD) syndromes including thievery and corrupt acts. So, our leaders, hence the Executive Arm of Government and Parliament must ensure to create the enabling environment for businesses to derive. For instance, in 2013 an Indian Company named Raj Kumar Impex established a Cashew Factory (Agro-industry) in Techiman to process fifty tones of cashew nut in a (per) day but due to power supply problem, (the prolonged Dumsor) the business collapsed. Also due to unbearable tax in Ghana and erratic power supply another Cashew Factory by name Ghananut also in Techiman was forced to relocate to Burkina Faso in 2016 where power besides being assured is very cheap as well as to benefit from less tax. It was therefore not economical sound for our Governments or Regimes in the Fourth Republic, especially the Regime of President Nana Addo with the populist idea of Planting for food and for Jobs (hence political value and not economic value) hence modest achievement was made with the Minister talking of he created jobs during loading and offloading of fertilizer etc . This was the situation of Komenda Sugar Factory as this submission will reveal. Right Hon Speaker, the study of the Political history of Ghana thus encompasses the Political and economy matter of the Agric Sector with the associated Agro Industries especially issues of soya beans, tomatoes and Sugar production in Ghana hence Komenda Sugar Factory is sine qua non for Ghana to take a firm and final decision on the Komenda Sugar Factory to ensure value for money before the equipment become obsolete or rusted. Mr Speaker you and the Hon MPs need to fear God, thus exhibit honesty, intelligence and patriotism by coming to your right senses so as to unanimously agree that the establishment of the Sugar Production Series especially the Sugar Refinery at Komenda was a serious error in economics, so that Parliament through you sits up in order to operationalize only the Komenda Sugar Refinery by the immediate importation of raw sugar at favorable tax condition etc for the Sugar Refinery through a vehicle of Private and Public Partnership Programme or a total hand over to a Private firm for wealth creation. It should not I repeat it should not be placed under Ghana Industry Holding Corporation (GIHOC) or SIGA for it to be regarded as a job creation cost center like COCOBOD. Hmm, COCOBOD since it was established has always depended on the annual ritual of a syndicated loan (Robbing Peter to Pay Paul syndrome) to buy cocoa and pay her numerous employees or personnel with fat salaries. Cry the Beloved Country. COCOBOD is always with huge losses and the best our Hon MPs especially from the Minority Group could do yearly is to shout ehi, ehi, ooh, ooh in Parliament with the sitting Speaker nodding his head like a Lizard. Please, sell it at reduce or reasonable price to strategic investors without further waste of time. With time the cost will be recovered through the taxation especially by VAT. Otherwise it will become another story of the Osagyefo Power Barge which Ghana bought at 240 Million Dollars but it never generated power and Ghana rather incurred additional high cost in security and legal battles and loss the Power Barge to Scrap Dealers through thievery. Before I digress on the woes of Komenda Sugar factory and the way forward, I wish to state that as part of a future import Substitution policy for sugar consumption in Ghana and may be export of sugar and ethanol, we need to support Bui Dam Sugar Factory being established and the planned joint partnership between Alhaji Aliko Dangote and Bono East Regional Coordinating Council for a Sugar Factory for wealth creation for the principal investors. I am sure the budget before you speaks on what support Parliament can help in the Agric Sector. Alhaji Dangote is a businessman always thinking of wealth creation, so he wants to help the import substitution bid of Ghana or improvement of the economic fundamentals of Ghana, he is not hear the create jobs that is out of the equation. Mr Speaker, as part of measures to improve on the economic fundamentals cum import substitution as well as to reduce the perennial flooding at the upper Volta and Spillage at the Akosombu Dam, urgent action for the planned Multipurpose hydroelectric power Dam cum Irrigation near Savelegu in the North East Region and the Multipurpose Hydroelectric cum Irrigation Dam in Upper East Region, so ensure we get these projects come on board. Thanks to God for the Second Northern Battle between two brothers namely Former President Mahama and Vice President Dr Bawumia. Whoever becomes President of Ghana must see to these projects to help in the improvement of the economy fundamentals of Ghana and arrest or reduce the perennial flooding of river Volta and spillage from the Bagre Dam and Akosombu Dam Enter Komenda Sugar Factory, Komenda Sugar factory which was initially a sugar beet farm, warehouse and factory was started by a Dutch with 400 acres of sugar beet farm for sugar beet industry for processing sugar beet into sucrose or sugar for wealth creation. The Dutch Komenda Sugar Beet Factory was later on acquired and developed by the Czechoslovakian State firm namely Technoexport into mini Sugar Cane Factory for wealth creation. Before 1990, Sugar cane was very abundant with large sugar cane farms in the Central Region, some stretching from Winneba to the Komenda Enclave and beyond to the Western Region due to free massive hectares of land. To satisfy a political campaign promise by President Nkrumah to local gin distillers for the improvement on their safety and environmental standards in the distilling of gin as well as for political reason of spatial equity in the distribution of industries, the CCP Regime in the First Republic, acquired from Technoexport the Sugar Production Series with a payment of 2million dollars in 1963 by President Nkrumah and transferred a sugar cane plant equipment meant for Tsito to establish the Komenda Sugar cane milling and Sugar Refinery and preparation of Molasses etc. This was therefore more of a political reason and not necessary for economy value. So it collapsed due to numerous problems including not enough feed of sugar cane for the factory. Why Komenda Sugar Factory in the Fourth Republic despite adequate reports and studies that show Komenda as not suitable for Sugar Production Series (Refinery inclusive), the studies rather show that areas in the Volta Region, in the North East Region, the Bono and Bono East Regions and in the Senchi area have better comparative advantages than Komenda. The very painful matter is that the old Komenda Sugar Factory of Dr Nkrumah was for political reason and not an economic viable project as stated above due to lack of adequate feed. The idea to site the Sugar factory (Refinery) at Komenda was/is a confirmation that our leaders had/have very bad advisers or do not take good advice, otherwise they cannot appreciate the right way of doing things and when they make a mistake, they failed/fail to appreciate the situation and take a reasonable course of action with minimum delay. We must be Honest, Bold and Patriotic, so as to say it as it is with anger. Komenda Sugar Factory is bad investment but something can be done to make the Refinery unit to operate. So this submission. The very sad case of the Komenda Sugar Production Series speaks volume of the incompetent state of some of our technical advisers /leaders. Since, the siting of the Sugar Factory (Refinery) at Komenda was very wrong or a very big mistake (it was not of economic value due no enough sugar cane feed of the right brix content which should be within 40miles radius of the Sugar Mill/ due to lack of sufficient land for a plantation, poor soil at the area for the required sugar cane and not very good climatic conditions especially adequate sunshine for very good yield of over 80 tonnes per hectare, the issues of the activities of illegal/small scale miners in the Pra River thus increasing cost of production due to the pollution of water. Furthermore, issue of a very poor or wrong understanding of the principle of backward integration by the initiators which simply mean when a Company purchases another company for the supplies of product(s) or services required that is a Company in the Upstream acquiring a Company behind it at the downstream supply chain or simply company acquiring the supplier of raw material or service. The allegation that the establishment of Komenda Sugar Production Series was based on the idea of Backward Integration is difficult to understand. Sugar Production Series is made of three Standalone Business units which can be different locations namely the Sugar Plantation which feed the second unit as Sugar Mill (Sugarcane Crusher and extraction of raw sugar). The Sugar Mill must be within 40miles radius of the Sugar Cane Farm and the sugar cane must be crushed within 18hrs in order to obtain good quality raw sugar. The Sugar Mill in turns feeds the Sugar Factory or Refinery unlike the Sugar Mill which must be within 40 miles radius, a Sugar Refinery can be in any part of the World so in Ghana anywhere and for economic reason close to or at Tema is better or the best to receive cheap raw sugar all over the world to produce consumable sugar or Sucrose needed by the Pharmaceutical Industry and Commercial firms that required sugar for production or sugar for home consumption or for manufacture of ethanol (biofuel) for export. A sugar Refinery must work 24/7 all year round with feed from all over Ghana and the rest of the World whichever is cheaper. For instance, it may be cheaper for a Refinery to get cheap Raw Sugar from Brazil or India or Nigeria than from the Komenda Enclave. So, what the experts should have advised was a very big sugar Refinery at the Tema enclave and private Sugar Mills where sugar cane or sugar beet is grown or produced on farms for the Sugar Mill to produce raw sugar. So, Sugar Mills all over Ghana close to areas where sugarcane are grown adequately to feed the capacity of the Sugar Mill and the Sugar Mills in turn feed the Sugar Refinery at Tema with raw Sugar to produce Sugar or Ethanol. A Sugar or Ethanol Refinery at Tema will facilitate any need to import raw sugar at a cheap cost for value addition to produce sugar and or ethanol and work 24/7 for profit. So with time, the Sugar Refinery can used the principle of backward integration to buy some of the Sugar Mills in Ghana or India or Brazil or within Africa or enter off taker agreement with a Sugar Mill for supply of raw sugar. In Ghana the North East with good sunshine and massive arable land close to River Volta for usage for irrigation and power should have been the place for Sugar Plantation and Sugar Factory and not Komenda, due no adequate arable landed at Komenda, which has mostly scattered small holders or peasant farmer at Komenda. The State also failed to provide a very good National sugar Policy with favorably terms for both the famers and the factory, including off taker agreement with good price of Sugar cane to the factory. For instance, farmers at Komenda were not ready to sell Sugarcane at GHC60.00 per tonnes as demanded by the Factory. The factory must be given a benefit of zero tax or tax rebate to ensure the survival of the factory Komenda Sugar Factory, consequently has become an albatross around the neck of the Country thus depicts our brand of not learning from history before doing things or herein the setting up of the Komenda Factory by the initiators (the Seventh Parliament and the Executive). What is more disturbing is subsequent leaders both in the Eighth Parliament and the Executive Arms of Government of President Nana Addos regime (the former and current Minister of Trade and Industry) together with our respected Intelligentsia and the Media failure to think outside the box for appropriate actions towards cost recovery and to meet partly the reason for the Sugar Refinery, so that make at least the Sugar Refinery working by importing raw sugar for it at zero tax. This situation thus amplifies the foolhardiness in Ghana. Surprisingly as stated, some of our Intelligentsias in the associated fields in Agronomy and Economics are not helping the country with good solutions by linking academic work with common sense. For instance, none of some of our respected intelligentsias who speak on issues in the associated field had/has the testicular fortitude to tell the initiators that they had it wrong including not understand the concept of backward integration otherwise it speaks volume of a likelihood of ignorance on the part of the affected intelligentsias. This silence, has made it difficult for the former and current Minister for Trade and Industry of the current regime to gain public support for appropriate actions to operationalize at least the refinery. Hence this submission to you the Right Hon of Speaker of Parliament to get a Strategic investor to operate the Refinery with imported raw sugar. Parliament of Ghana which amongst others is the House of Representatives, scrutinizes policies from the Executive as well as for the approval of the National Budgets/Agreements and the enactment of laws has become a problem to Ghana for not able to solve the very disgraceful situation of Komenda Sugar Factory and also not helping in the import substitution bid to be explained later. Thanks to God, that you, (Right Hon Speaker of Parliament) are friendly/acceptable to both the President, the Majority Group or the NPP, and their Flag bearer and the Minority Group or the NDC and their Flag bearer hence, the choice of God for Ghana at this time of a Hung Parliament to deal with difficult national problem in Parliament. So, I hereby appeal to you to rise to the occasion to ensure at least the Sugar Refinery unit of Komenda Sugar Development Company is operationalized. At least the Sugar Refinery must be used to treat imported Raw Sugar into Sucrose and ethanol either by Strategic Investors by acceptable agreement between the State and the Investors. Mr Speaker how much to sell Komenda Sugar Factory must not be based on cost incurred in the construction. The determinants should include, the evaluation of the current state of the factory and most importantly the Availability of adequate raw material (adequate sugarcane within 40miles radius or raw sugar at a reasonable cost to the factory) or the possibility of the factory through itself or with the support of out growers to produce the sugar cane due to available and adequate arable land for the factory to set up own plantation. This should be coupled with good climatic condition and irrigation facility or the possibility of backward integration with Sugar Mill(s) or alternative usage to ensure the operation of the factory.. This is a commonsense theory. Mr Speaker, you may need to know more about Sugarcane and further info on the Political and Economy issues with Sugar cane production in Ghana, so the below details for your consumption. Sugarcane belong to the grass family which includes cereals like maize, guinea corn, millet and rice. Depending on variety and cultural practices, it take 9 to 17months to mature, staggering the planting process can provide two to three harvests in a year. The yield depends on crop management practice. The average yield is between 60 tonnes per hectare and 70 tonnes per hectare but with good management (Cultural) practices including water supply management, pest and disease control, fertilization (fertilizer application say with NPK) coupled with abundant sunshine, it is possible to increase production. So, with good management in desert areas in Egypt gave up to 120 tonnes per hectare and with two to three harvests. Sugar cane is used to produce sucrose for domestic and industrial consumption (pharmaceuticals, soft drinks, confectionery, beverages etc) and ethanol for mainly for industries and automobile as biofuel, the bye product of sugar production especially bagasse can be used to generate power and for the paper industry etc. The Political Economy of Ghana as far the Agricultural Sector and the Agro-industrial Sector are concerned has not been based on sound economic value but on Political value with the wrong concept of Politicians speaking of creating jobs instead providing the enabling environment for creating of wealth which will virtually generate the needed sustainable jobs. Abstract According to D. Rimmer (1966) in his submission on The Crisis in the Ghana Economy as well as in Rimmer (1992) in his submission in Staying Poor the Ghana Political Economy from 1950 to 1990, in the 1960 there was astronomical rising in exportation in Ghana by over 123 percent and that of sugar only was over 120 percent whilst general import was less than 34percent thus dwindling foreign exchange in the system and the Reserve with Bank of Ghana. According Rimmer, a problem of rising food prices ensued , hence fear of political tension was faced by the regime of the CCP especially in the North with less endowed natural resources and poor development hence a huge gap of the North-South development was rearing its ugly head. President Nkrumah was therefore forced to quickly come out with import substitution policy integrated with spatially equitable agro-industrial plan as both economically and politically expedient. President Nkrumah came about with the Plan of growing of food items especially sugar, tomatoes, rice, maize, etc, that were mostly imported. Nkrumah initial plan was a large scale sugar cane, cereal and tomato plantations and agro processing industries in the North, otherwise the establishment of State Food Production Corporation and State Food Distribution throughout Ghana. So, Ghana under President Nkrumah came out with the First Comprehensive Agro-industries policy in 1962 with the Seven Year Development Plan for National Reconstruction and Development based on socialist economic policy to be driven by various vehicles including a planned construction of the Akosombu Hydroelectric Dam in as the backbone for National Development in 1963. Nkrumah quickly established the National Investment Bank in 1963 with a mandate to facilitate modernization of the industrial sector especially the Agro-industries. Dr Nkrumah said the Plan was aimed at three areas namely (a) to uproot the colonial structure of the economy which President Nana Addo dubbed as the Goggisburg economy (b). Speed up the growth of economy. (c). By Equitable Spatial distribution of Institutions especially industries to engender a socialist economy through developing the State and Cooperative Sectors of businesses etc. President Dr Nkrumah intention was to ensure spatial equity in agro-industrial development and import substitution. Mr Right Hon Speaker, Komenda factory was started by a Dutch with 400 acres of sugar beet farm with a sugar beet warehouse and a factory for processing sugar beet. It was later on developed by the Czechoslovakian State firm Technoexport into Sugar Cane Processing Plant As part of President Nkrumah aimed at checking safety and environmental hazards associated with the distilling of the local gin called Akpteshi at the Central Region which was a campaign promise made to the distillers for a sugar factory for sugar and molasses. So in the fulfillment of the promise made to the locals and in line with the policy of spatial equity in the establishment of Industries, the Government of Ghana under President Nkrumah paid 1.2 Million Dollars and acquired Technoexport in1963 and diverted a Plant for Sugar Factory at Tsito and established Komenda Sugar factory. President Nkrumah, also paid 2million dollars to acquire sugar cane production and processing plant at, Asustuare which was initially established by a Polish Firm CEKOP. The initial Komenda Sugar Factory was established due to a Political decision and not really an economic one. Both factories were retooled in 1973 by the General Acheampong Regime and placed under Ghana Sugar Estate. The highest combined achievement of both Komenda Sugar Factory and Asustuare Sugar Plant was 18,000 tonnes representing 41 percent of their capacity this was even attained with the support of imported raw sugar factory to be fed to the factory and sugar produced by State Farms and Cooperative farm holders as out growers during the regime of General Acheampong on the backbone of the OPERATION FEED YOUR INDUSTRY during the regime of General Acheampong. Due to technical reasons including poor choice of location, high cost of production, poor management, water and energy shortage, obsolete equipment, low feed of sugar cane due to low yield of not more 30 metric tonnes per hectare made both firms to become defunct under the regime of the PNDC around 1995 and were thus placed under Divesture Implementation Committee. Asustruare was bought by a Chinese Firm and installed paper producing equipment as Paper etc factory and is still in good business. Development of Sugar Production as import Substitution in the Fourth Republic The idea of reviving the Komenda Sugar Factory was visited by the Regime of President Kofour in 2002 but this was abandoned due to expert advice. So in order to reduce the huge importation of Sugar, the Kofour Regime in 2007 sought the support of the Government of Brazil, the World leading producer of Sugar to study the possibility of a viable and cost effective Sugar Production Series (Sugar Plantation, Sugar Mill and Sugar Refinery. The Government of Brazil commissioned a Brazilian Company Embrampa to do the studies. The Brazilians found the North East Region especially Savelegu near River Dakar, a tributary of River Volta as one of the good areas for commercial sugar plantation and establishment of both Sugar Mill and Sugar Factory (Refinery) with the capacity to produce 80percent as productive as Sao Paulo in Brazil. With yield not less than 75 metric tonnes per hectare. Coincidentally, the current President, President Luiz Lula Da Silva was in 2007 as the Head of State of Brazil, he and his government were very happy with the results of the feasibility study So the Brazilian planned to offer 260 Million Dollars to Northern Sugar Resources to establish sugar plantation and ethanol plant in Northern Ghana so that Ghana could also export ethanol. The project was shot down by my northern brothers in Parliament accused President Kofour of land grabbing. Then in 2010, President Mills tried to see how he can revive Komenda Sugar Factory through Cargill International but he was told by Cargill International that it was not cost effective to do so and that Cargill will prefer the establishment of a Sugar Refinery in Tema with 100million dollars with initial capacity of 450,000 tonnes to process imported raw sugar but to convert Komenda and Asustuare to produce ethanol with imported sugar raw. In 2013 President Mahama visited Mauritius and invited Omanicane Flexi Sugar Cane Cluster to replicate same Sugar production series in Ghana Google for Mauritius Sugar Cane Sweeten trade with Ghana dated 10 September 2014. In 2014 after studies made in Ghana, Omanicane Flexi announced readiness to invest 250 Million Dollars over five years in Savelegu to cultivate 20,000 hectares of sugar cane to produce 120,000 tonnes of sugar to export to the EU. Report indicated that 128.68 million dollars needed to cultivate 10,000 hectares of sugar cane plantation, to mill and to refine into finished sugar. The breakdown as follows 120millon dollars for the cultivation of 10,000 hectares, milling at 7.804 million dollars and 878, 000 dollars for refining into final sugar or ethanol. Komenda Sugar Factory has become like a white elephant or an albatross around the neck of Ghanaians (hence almost a financial loss to the State like the Osagyefo Power Barge which was bought ove200million dollars and never produced power to Ghana and was cut into scrap by some intruders). The Komenda Sugar Factory saga was/is due to the failure of the technical advisers of our Political leaders to appreciate the History or the woes of the old plant. Google for Spatial Assessment of Sugarcane production to feed the Komenda Sugar Factory, Ghana by researchers at Cape Coast University namely David Yawson, Kingsley Osei and Michael Adu. In April 2019, the then Minister of Trade and Industry Hon Mr Alan Kyerematen told Parliament the factory will be sold at 12 million dollars and the strategic investor will be named at the end of the month to acquire and operationalize In November 2019 the Government of Ghana took a good idea to sell it to strategic investor namely Park Agrotech with financial commitment of 28 million dollars for the next four years but it was opposite by the ranking member on trade and industry committee of Parliament by name Hon Mr Yusuf Sulemana that the nation will be shortchanged with this arrangement. Mr Speaker, Hon Mr Sulemana in November 2019, went to Citi FM and alleged possible corrupt acts and parochial gains against the then Minister of Trade and Industry or President Nana Addos regime, since about 38 Million Dollars was used for the project and the amounted stated by the Minister was very low. According Mr Sulemana, the cost was made of 36.4 million Dollars from Exim bank of India, an initial 1.3 million Dollars from Ghana Exim bank, and the State again borrowed, a further amount of 750,000.00 Dollars from Ghana Exim Bank. So he was not happy that the State was to lose a huge variance. So, he alleged that the government has internationally devalued the factory for its own interest. Later in Parliament, in answering to a question in the name of Hon Mr Yusuf Sulemana of Bole/Bamboi which was asked on his behalf by Hon Mr of Alhassan Suhuyini for Tamale North why the abrogation the agreement with Park Agrotech Ghana Ltd. Then Sector Minister stated that there was no contract for it to be abrogated. According to him, the Condition precedent was not met by the Investor because the COVID19 pandemic prevented the Company to bring her partners to assess the equipment and do necessary maintenance to restart production by 31August 2021 and by this date the investor could not meet the deadline, so the agreement was terminated, as such the management revert to the Board, Komenda It was reported that Hon Mr Alan Kyerematen took an additional loan and established a sugarcane farm in which it cost each sugar cane plant at Sixty Ghana Cedis but it was reportedly burnt by fire by the Management. Hmm, the Ghanaian way of accountability or thievery. Remember what happened to the National Central Medical Store in Accra In May 2022 a Board member by name Mr Appiah the DCE of the area said the board came out with the idea a pregnant of importing raw sugar, very good one yet to be delivered. The Komenda Sugar Mill has 1,250 tons capacity per day as against the old Mill with a capacity of 1,000 tons per day and was even not getting enough feed thus suggested a smaller Capacity was ideal. It was expected to provide employment to 7,300 locals along the value chain and add value to the lives of the people, this was political gimmick, and currently the place is under 8 security guards whose pay is in arrears for than 12 months. On Thursday 20 July 2023, the new Minister for Trade and Industry alleged that it is albatross on our neck that the Contractor is claiming an additional 7. 5 million dollars. BY MAJOR MOHAMMED BOGOBIRI (RTD) The Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) has held a two-day Policy Conference in Accra, Ghana this week. The conference was held at the University of Ghana from Tuesday, November 21, to Wednesday, November 22, on the theme: Accelerating Africas Economic Transformation Towards Shared Prosperity and Sustainability. The conference was co-organised with one of MIASAs German partners, the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), and the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana, Legon. Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the Conference, Dr. Susann Baller, the German Director of MIASA said it is important as it provides the platform to discuss policy relevance while giving policymakers the chance to exchange ideas. She said with a focus on the economic transformation of Africa, it is the hope of MIASA that there will be a deeper insight into how that will be accelerated through the discussions at the end of the two-day Conference. She noted that MIASA wants to use the Policy Conference to inspire policymakers to make politics more impactful toward the shared prosperity and sustainability of Africa. With this Conference, we want to see how we also foster economic transformation and prosperity in a better way What kinds of things are needed for economic transformation and what kind of challenges are associated with it, Dr. Susann Baller explained. In an address, the Provost of the College of Humanities at the University of Ghana, Prof. Daniel Ofori said she has no doubt that the knowledge and insight shared at the Policy Conference will inspire innovative policy solutions. He said he is optimistic that the conference will bring up new ideas, forge connections, and lay the foundation for impactful collaboration towards Africas development. Delivering a keynote address, Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank, Prof. Kevin Chika Urama made the point that to continue to accelerate growth on the African continent, countries should champion policies and projects that are climate-smart and sustainable. Acknowledging that Africa has the least transforming and least industrializing economies, the Economist stressed that leaders must address challenges in their countries and take advantage of the many significant opportunities on the continent. He admonished leaders of the African countries to invest in industries that will process the many raw materials on the continent before they are exported to other continents. We need to carefully think about our industrial policy. Exporting raw materials and importing finished products later should be a thing of the past. We should invest in the industries of our raw materials to create jobs, build roads, add value to our resources, to reduce migration and the cost of logistics, Prof. Kevin Chika Urama said. He added that he is optimistic that if African countries implement the right policies, their economies will be transformed to bring the needed development. On his part, Stefan Dercon from the University of Oxford argued that every country's development and approaches to development will differ from one strategy to the other. Speaking on the topic 'Gambling for Development', he said a country needs to have an elite bargain that involves a shared commitment to growth and development. He said any country that wants to develop should have a serious national commitment led by those in power. According to Stefan Dercon leaders need to be serious about long-term peace and stability if they want to develop their countries. He admonished leaders of countries to use economic advice from research to shift the underlying objects towards growth and development. He indicated that growth and seeing through sensible development policies require those who can stop development to be committed to the development and find an implicit agreement to see it through with sufficient stability, self-awareness of what is possible, and accountability. Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has once again taken a swipe at former President John Mahamas proposed 24-hour economy policy, calling it ill-conceived and lacking innovation. During a recent campaign stop in the Northern Region, Dr Bawumia asserted that Mahamas economic strategies have consistently fallen short and that true economic transformation requires more creative thinking. This is one idea that John Mahama thinks that he has brought, it is a bad idea, it is an idea that hasnt been thought through so I want you to compare me to John Mahama, who has the ideas to transform this economy. The track record of John Mahama doesnt show innovative thinking, it doesnt show ideas, the track record of Dr Bawumia is idea after idea. I have my own priorities and I have my own vision, when I become president I will bring more ideas and you will hear them very soon. Meanwhile, former President Mahama has reaffirmed his commitment to implementing his proposed 24-hour economy policy, dismissing criticism from opponents and reiterating its potential to boost employment and revitalize the Ghanaian economy. During a campaign rally in the Bono East Region, Mr. Mahama emphasized that his vision for a 24-hour economy extends beyond simply extending the operational hours of existing businesses. The NDC flagbearer explained that his policy is based on a comprehensive approach that encourages and incentivizes businesses across various sectors to adopt 24-hour operations, thus creating new employment opportunities and stimulating economic growth. If one factory is doing 24 hours, that is not what I'm talking about. Everybody should be encouraged to be able to do a 24-hour shift. We have the harvest season now and factories that are processing agricultural products should be able to run two shifts, Mr. Mahama explained. We will give incentives for everybody who wants to run a 24-shift system to be able to do that so that more young people will be employed, he added. -Citi Newsroom Cameco Co. (TSE:CCO Get Free Report) (NYSE:CCJ) Senior Officer Cherise Marie Grychowski sold 3,536 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of C$61.00, for a total value of C$215,696.00. Cameco Stock Down 1.5 % Cameco stock traded down C$0.91 during midday trading on Tuesday, hitting C$61.34. The stock had a trading volume of 988,272 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,142,525. The company has a current ratio of 3.85, a quick ratio of 3.74 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 18.46. The stock has a market cap of C$26.61 billion, a P/E ratio of 102.05, a P/E/G ratio of 2.22 and a beta of 0.90. Cameco Co. has a 12 month low of C$28.98 and a 12 month high of C$62.81. The business has a fifty day moving average price of C$54.31 and a 200 day moving average price of C$46.86. Get Cameco alerts: Cameco (TSE:CCO Get Free Report) (NYSE:CCJ) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 31st. The company reported C$0.32 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of C$0.15 by C$0.17. The firm had revenue of C$575.00 million during the quarter. Cameco had a return on equity of 4.82% and a net margin of 11.70%. Research analysts predict that Cameco Co. will post 2.3525836 EPS for the current year. Cameco Announces Dividend Wall Street Analyst Weigh In The company also recently disclosed an annual dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 30th will be issued a $0.12 dividend. This represents a yield of 0.21%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, November 29th. Camecos dividend payout ratio is currently 19.67%. CCO has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Eight Capital boosted their price objective on Cameco from C$65.00 to C$70.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. TD Securities boosted their price objective on Cameco from C$55.00 to C$70.00 and gave the stock an action list buy rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 3rd. BMO Capital Markets boosted their price objective on Cameco from C$42.00 to C$68.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 8th. Royal Bank of Canada lifted their target price on Cameco from C$49.50 to C$56.00 in a research report on Tuesday, September 5th. Finally, Raymond James lifted their target price on Cameco from C$66.00 to C$69.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research report on Wednesday, November 1st. Six equities research analysts have rated the stock with a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Buy and an average price target of C$63.45. Read Our Latest Research Report on Cameco About Cameco (Get Free Report) Cameco Corporation provides uranium for the generation of electricity. It operates through two segments, Uranium and Fuel Services. The Uranium segment is involved in the exploration for, mining, and milling, purchase, and sale of uranium concentrate. The Fuel Services segment engages in the refining, conversion, and fabrication of uranium concentrate, as well as the purchase and sale of conversion services. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Cameco Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Cameco and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (NYSE:CRL Get Free Report) COO Birgit Girshick purchased 1,322 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The shares were purchased at an average price of $187.82 per share, for a total transaction of $248,298.04. Following the acquisition, the chief operating officer now directly owns 44,449 shares of the companys stock, valued at $8,348,411.18. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Charles River Laboratories International Stock Up 0.9 % Shares of NYSE CRL traded up $1.79 during midday trading on Tuesday, reaching $192.32. The companys stock had a trading volume of 501,809 shares, compared to its average volume of 528,974. Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $161.65 and a fifty-two week high of $262.00. The company has a current ratio of 1.45, a quick ratio of 1.16 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.76. The stock has a 50 day simple moving average of $188.36 and a 200-day simple moving average of $198.29. The stock has a market capitalization of $9.86 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 20.93, a PEG ratio of 2.00 and a beta of 1.35. Get Charles River Laboratories International alerts: Charles River Laboratories International (NYSE:CRL Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, November 8th. The medical research company reported $2.72 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $2.35 by $0.37. The company had revenue of $1.03 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1 billion. Charles River Laboratories International had a net margin of 11.27% and a return on equity of 18.15%. Charles River Laboratories Internationals quarterly revenue was up 3.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $2.63 earnings per share. Equities research analysts predict that Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. will post 10.58 earnings per share for the current year. Institutional Inflows and Outflows Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of CRL. Creative Planning increased its stake in shares of Charles River Laboratories International by 41.9% in the third quarter. Creative Planning now owns 4,694 shares of the medical research companys stock valued at $920,000 after buying an additional 1,387 shares during the period. Tudor Investment Corp Et Al bought a new stake in Charles River Laboratories International in the third quarter valued at approximately $11,205,000. Morgan Stanley boosted its holdings in Charles River Laboratories International by 2.4% in the third quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 525,293 shares of the medical research companys stock valued at $102,947,000 after acquiring an additional 12,342 shares during the last quarter. Integrated Wealth Concepts LLC boosted its holdings in Charles River Laboratories International by 33.7% in the third quarter. Integrated Wealth Concepts LLC now owns 1,669 shares of the medical research companys stock valued at $327,000 after acquiring an additional 421 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Ramirez Asset Management Inc. bought a new stake in Charles River Laboratories International in the third quarter valued at approximately $175,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 98.91% of the companys stock. Several research analysts have weighed in on the stock. UBS Group dropped their price objective on shares of Charles River Laboratories International from $250.00 to $215.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. Guggenheim dropped their price objective on shares of Charles River Laboratories International from $255.00 to $225.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, September 22nd. Wells Fargo & Company dropped their price objective on shares of Charles River Laboratories International from $280.00 to $275.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, September 22nd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their price objective on shares of Charles River Laboratories International from $225.00 to $250.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research note on Thursday, August 10th. Finally, Robert W. Baird dropped their price objective on shares of Charles River Laboratories International from $267.00 to $256.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, September 22nd. Five equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $232.54. Read Our Latest Research Report on CRL About Charles River Laboratories International (Get Free Report) Charles River Laboratories International, Inc, a non-clinical contract research organization, provides drug discovery, non-clinical development, and safety testing services in the United States, Europe, Canada, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Research Models and Services (RMS), Discovery and Safety Assessment (DSA), and Manufacturing Solutions (Manufacturing). Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Charles River Laboratories International Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Charles River Laboratories International and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM Get Free Report) CEO Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $224.21, for a total value of $3,363,150.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 14,846,166 shares of the companys stock, valued at $3,328,658,878.86. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Marc Benioff also recently made the following trade(s): Get Salesforce alerts: On Thursday, November 16th, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The shares were sold at an average price of $220.94, for a total value of $3,314,100.00. On Monday, November 13th, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The shares were sold at an average price of $214.87, for a total value of $3,223,050.00. On Wednesday, November 8th, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The shares were sold at an average price of $211.23, for a total value of $3,168,450.00. On Monday, November 6th, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The stock was sold at an average price of $206.27, for a total value of $3,094,050.00. On Friday, November 3rd, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The stock was sold at an average price of $208.39, for a total value of $3,125,850.00. On Wednesday, November 1st, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The stock was sold at an average price of $202.95, for a total value of $3,044,250.00. On Monday, October 30th, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The stock was sold at an average price of $199.01, for a total value of $2,985,150.00. On Friday, October 27th, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The stock was sold at an average price of $196.64, for a total value of $2,949,600.00. On Wednesday, October 25th, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The stock was sold at an average price of $198.31, for a total value of $2,974,650.00. On Monday, October 23rd, Marc Benioff sold 15,000 shares of Salesforce stock. The stock was sold at an average price of $201.68, for a total value of $3,025,200.00. Salesforce Stock Performance Shares of NYSE CRM traded down $0.78 during trading on Tuesday, reaching $224.35. 3,849,205 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 6,425,649. Salesforce, Inc. has a 52-week low of $126.34 and a 52-week high of $238.22. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.15, a current ratio of 1.02 and a quick ratio of 1.02. The company has a 50-day moving average of $208.52 and a 200-day moving average of $212.15. The stock has a market capitalization of $218.29 billion, a P/E ratio of 140.99, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.66 and a beta of 1.18. Institutional Trading of Salesforce Salesforce ( NYSE:CRM Get Free Report ) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 30th. The CRM provider reported $2.12 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.90 by $0.22. The firm had revenue of $8.60 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $8.53 billion. Salesforce had a return on equity of 7.67% and a net margin of 4.77%. The businesss revenue for the quarter was up 11.4% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $0.52 EPS. Analysts forecast that Salesforce, Inc. will post 5.86 EPS for the current fiscal year. Institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Forza Wealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the 2nd quarter valued at about $202,000. Bank of Hawaii raised its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 89.2% in the 2nd quarter. Bank of Hawaii now owns 5,282 shares of the CRM providers stock valued at $1,116,000 after acquiring an additional 2,490 shares in the last quarter. Wealth Alliance Advisory Group LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the 2nd quarter valued at about $396,000. Nordea Investment Management AB raised its holdings in shares of Salesforce by 18.3% in the 2nd quarter. Nordea Investment Management AB now owns 1,547,360 shares of the CRM providers stock valued at $329,387,000 after acquiring an additional 239,786 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Verum Partners LLC purchased a new stake in shares of Salesforce in the 2nd quarter valued at about $210,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 77.52% of the companys stock. Analysts Set New Price Targets CRM has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Jefferies Financial Group lifted their target price on Salesforce from $250.00 to $275.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Thursday, August 31st. Roth Mkm lifted their target price on Salesforce from $242.00 to $265.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Thursday, August 31st. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lifted their target price on Salesforce from $230.00 to $240.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Thursday, August 31st. JMP Securities reissued a market outperform rating and issued a $275.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Thursday, September 21st. Finally, Needham & Company LLC reissued a buy rating and issued a $250.00 price objective on shares of Salesforce in a research note on Friday, September 15th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, thirteen have given a hold rating, twenty-five have issued a buy rating and two have issued a strong buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $241.00. Get Our Latest Stock Report on CRM Salesforce Company Profile (Get Free Report) Salesforce, Inc provides Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology that brings companies and customers together worldwide. The company's service includes sales to store data, monitor leads and progress, forecast opportunities, gain insights through analytics and relationship intelligence, and deliver quotes, contracts, and invoices; and service that enables companies to deliver trusted and highly personalized customer service and support at scale. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Salesforce Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Salesforce and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:AIT Get Free Report) Director Peter C. Wallace sold 1,984 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $163.01, for a total transaction of $323,411.84. Following the sale, the director now directly owns 23,641 shares in the company, valued at approximately $3,853,719.41. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Applied Industrial Technologies Trading Down 1.2 % Shares of NYSE AIT traded down $1.94 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, hitting $160.74. The companys stock had a trading volume of 124,438 shares, compared to its average volume of 212,611. The stock has a market cap of $6.23 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 17.45 and a beta of 1.14. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.39, a current ratio of 3.52 and a quick ratio of 2.44. Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc. has a one year low of $116.94 and a one year high of $167.94. The companys fifty day simple moving average is $157.20 and its 200-day simple moving average is $146.94. Get Applied Industrial Technologies alerts: Applied Industrial Technologies (NYSE:AIT Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The industrial products company reported $2.39 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.07 by $0.32. The company had revenue of $1.10 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.09 billion. Applied Industrial Technologies had a net margin of 8.18% and a return on equity of 25.39%. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc. will post 9.43 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Applied Industrial Technologies Dividend Announcement Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Investors of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be given a $0.35 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 14th. This represents a $1.40 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.87%. Applied Industrial Technologiess dividend payout ratio is 15.12%. A number of equities research analysts have commented on the stock. Robert W. Baird increased their price objective on shares of Applied Industrial Technologies from $161.00 to $185.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a report on Friday, August 11th. StockNews.com assumed coverage on shares of Applied Industrial Technologies in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a buy rating on the stock. Loop Capital increased their price objective on shares of Applied Industrial Technologies from $170.00 to $174.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Monday, August 14th. Finally, KeyCorp increased their price objective on shares of Applied Industrial Technologies from $162.00 to $182.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Friday, August 11th. Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on AIT Institutional Trading of Applied Industrial Technologies A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of AIT. FinTrust Capital Advisors LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Applied Industrial Technologies in the 4th quarter valued at approximately $25,000. Point72 Middle East FZE acquired a new stake in Applied Industrial Technologies during the 4th quarter worth approximately $28,000. State of Wyoming acquired a new stake in Applied Industrial Technologies during the 4th quarter worth approximately $29,000. Huntington National Bank raised its holdings in Applied Industrial Technologies by 963.2% during the 3rd quarter. Huntington National Bank now owns 202 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $31,000 after buying an additional 183 shares during the period. Finally, NBC Securities Inc. acquired a new stake in Applied Industrial Technologies during the 3rd quarter worth approximately $40,000. 92.49% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Applied Industrial Technologies Company Profile (Get Free Report) Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc distributes industrial motion, power, control, and automation technology solutions in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. It operates in two segments, Service Center Based Distribution, and Engineered Solutions. The company distributes bearings, power transmission products, engineered fluid power components and systems, specialty flow control solutions, advanced automation products, industrial rubber products, linear motion components, automation solutions, tools, safety products, oilfield supplies, and other industrial and maintenance supplies; and motors, belting, drives, couplings, pumps, hydraulic and pneumatic components, filtration supplies, valves, fittings, process instrumentation, actuators, and hoses, filtration supplies, as well as other related supplies for general operational needs of customers' machinery and equipment. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Applied Industrial Technologies Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Applied Industrial Technologies and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Stryker Co. (NYSE:SYK Get Free Report) CEO Kevin Lobo sold 56,483 shares of Stryker stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $287.91, for a total transaction of $16,262,020.53. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 81,034 shares in the company, valued at $23,330,498.94. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Stryker Stock Up 1.5 % NYSE:SYK traded up $4.37 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, reaching $293.66. The stock had a trading volume of 1,076,378 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,387,296. The businesss 50 day moving average is $274.86 and its 200 day moving average is $282.47. Stryker Co. has a fifty-two week low of $223.91 and a fifty-two week high of $306.93. The stock has a market cap of $111.56 billion, a P/E ratio of 43.57, a PEG ratio of 2.78 and a beta of 0.94. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.58, a current ratio of 1.48 and a quick ratio of 0.83. Get Stryker alerts: Stryker (NYSE:SYK Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 2nd. The medical technology company reported $2.46 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.43 by $0.03. Stryker had a return on equity of 22.62% and a net margin of 13.00%. The company had revenue of $4.90 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $4.87 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $2.12 earnings per share. Strykers revenue for the quarter was up 9.4% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, sell-side analysts predict that Stryker Co. will post 10.41 earnings per share for the current year. Institutional Inflows and Outflows Analysts Set New Price Targets Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently bought and sold shares of the company. Vinva Investment Management Ltd acquired a new position in Stryker during the first quarter worth $3,257,000. Aviance Capital Partners LLC raised its stake in Stryker by 3.7% during the second quarter. Aviance Capital Partners LLC now owns 2,096 shares of the medical technology companys stock worth $639,000 after acquiring an additional 75 shares in the last quarter. Stifel Financial Corp raised its stake in Stryker by 0.7% during the first quarter. Stifel Financial Corp now owns 400,767 shares of the medical technology companys stock worth $114,412,000 after acquiring an additional 2,868 shares in the last quarter. Andra AP fonden raised its stake in Stryker by 28.8% during the second quarter. Andra AP fonden now owns 30,422 shares of the medical technology companys stock worth $9,281,000 after acquiring an additional 6,800 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. increased its stake in shares of Stryker by 28.6% in the first quarter. Meiji Yasuda Asset Management Co Ltd. now owns 4,451 shares of the medical technology companys stock valued at $1,271,000 after buying an additional 990 shares in the last quarter. 76.24% of the stock is owned by institutional investors. SYK has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Morgan Stanley upped their target price on shares of Stryker from $295.00 to $300.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a report on Monday, August 7th. Truist Financial upped their price target on shares of Stryker from $270.00 to $300.00 and gave the company a hold rating in a research report on Monday, November 6th. Bank of America upgraded shares of Stryker from a neutral rating to a buy rating and upped their price target for the company from $310.00 to $315.00 in a research report on Tuesday, September 5th. Royal Bank of Canada restated an outperform rating and set a $325.00 price objective on shares of Stryker in a research report on Thursday, August 17th. Finally, Roth Mkm reaffirmed a buy rating and set a $345.00 price target on shares of Stryker in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $311.30. Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on Stryker Stryker Company Profile (Get Free Report) Stryker Corporation operates as a medical technology company. The company operates through two segments, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, and Orthopaedics and Spine. The Orthopaedics and Spine segment provides implants for use in hip and knee joint replacements, and trauma and extremities surgeries. This segment also offers spinal implant products comprising cervical, thoracolumbar, and interbody systems that are used in spinal injury, deformity, and degenerative therapies. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Stryker Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Stryker and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Aeva Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:AEVA Get Free Report) Director Stephen Paul Zadesky sold 43,604 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $0.56, for a total transaction of $24,418.24. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 56,105 shares of the companys stock, valued at $31,418.80. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. Aeva Technologies Price Performance Shares of AEVA stock traded down $0.02 during mid-day trading on Tuesday, hitting $0.54. 614,281 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 1,009,450. The stock has a market cap of $120.73 million, a P/E ratio of -0.81 and a beta of 1.25. The stocks fifty day moving average is $0.67 and its two-hundred day moving average is $0.99. Aeva Technologies, Inc. has a 52-week low of $0.47 and a 52-week high of $2.10. Get Aeva Technologies alerts: Aeva Technologies (NYSE:AEVA Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 8th. The company reported ($0.15) EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of ($0.14) by ($0.01). Aeva Technologies had a negative net margin of 5,089.69% and a negative return on equity of 51.10%. The firm had revenue of $0.81 million for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $0.95 million. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted ($0.17) earnings per share. As a group, equities analysts forecast that Aeva Technologies, Inc. will post -0.69 EPS for the current fiscal year. Hedge Funds Weigh In On Aeva Technologies Analyst Ratings Changes Several hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of AEVA. Swiss National Bank increased its holdings in shares of Aeva Technologies by 8.5% during the first quarter. Swiss National Bank now owns 227,800 shares of the companys stock valued at $986,000 after acquiring an additional 17,800 shares in the last quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Aeva Technologies by 55.4% during the first quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC now owns 61,990 shares of the companys stock valued at $268,000 after acquiring an additional 22,104 shares in the last quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Aeva Technologies by 3.0% during the first quarter. Charles Schwab Investment Management Inc. now owns 700,499 shares of the companys stock valued at $3,034,000 after acquiring an additional 20,580 shares in the last quarter. Graham Capital Management L.P. acquired a new position in shares of Aeva Technologies during the first quarter valued at about $323,000. Finally, State Street Corp increased its holdings in Aeva Technologies by 3.7% in the 1st quarter. State Street Corp now owns 2,828,509 shares of the companys stock worth $12,247,000 after buying an additional 101,408 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 36.25% of the companys stock. A number of analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Morgan Stanley upped their price objective on shares of Aeva Technologies from $0.88 to $0.96 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. Roth Mkm reaffirmed a buy rating and issued a $1.50 price objective on shares of Aeva Technologies in a research note on Wednesday, September 27th. Finally, Piper Sandler reissued a neutral rating and set a $2.00 price target on shares of Aeva Technologies in a research report on Wednesday, August 9th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $1.62. Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on AEVA About Aeva Technologies (Get Free Report) Aeva Technologies, Inc designs 4D LiDAR-on-chips in the United States, Thailand, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The company develops its products using frequency modulated continuous wave sensing technology. It offers 4D LiDAR sensing system with embedded software for automotive, industrial, and security applications; and a silicon photonics engine and software algorithms for industrial automation and consumer device applications. Recommended Stories Receive News & Ratings for Aeva Technologies Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Aeva Technologies and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Babcock International Group PLC (LON:BAB Get Free Report) declared a dividend on Tuesday, November 14th, Upcoming.Co.Uk reports. Investors of record on Thursday, November 23rd will be given a dividend of GBX 1.70 ($0.02) per share on Friday, January 19th. This represents a yield of 0.42%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 23rd. The official announcement can be seen at this link. Babcock International Group Price Performance LON:BAB opened at GBX 405.32 ($5.07) on Wednesday. Babcock International Group has a 12-month low of GBX 266.60 ($3.34) and a 12-month high of GBX 433 ($5.42). The firm has a market capitalization of 2.05 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 6,676.67, a P/E/G ratio of 1.35 and a beta of 1.38. The stocks 50 day moving average price is GBX 396.29 and its two-hundred day moving average price is GBX 357. The company has a quick ratio of 0.76, a current ratio of 0.89 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 258.85. Get Babcock International Group alerts: Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of research firms recently weighed in on BAB. Bank of America initiated coverage on Babcock International Group in a report on Monday, September 11th. They set a buy rating and a GBX 585 ($7.32) target price on the stock. Barclays raised shares of Babcock International Group to an overweight rating and increased their price objective for the company from GBX 325 ($4.07) to GBX 529 ($6.62) in a research report on Friday, November 17th. Shore Capital reaffirmed a buy rating on shares of Babcock International Group in a report on Tuesday, November 14th. Jefferies Financial Group reissued a buy rating and issued a GBX 550 ($6.88) price target on shares of Babcock International Group in a report on Wednesday, November 15th. Finally, Berenberg Bank restated a buy rating and set a GBX 450 ($5.63) price objective on shares of Babcock International Group in a report on Tuesday, November 14th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and six have issued a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of GBX 492.67 ($6.16). Babcock International Group Company Profile (Get Free Report) Babcock International Group PLC, together with its subsidiaries, provides value-add services for aerospace, defense, and security in the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, Africa, North America, Australasia, and internationally. The company operates through four segments: Marine, Nuclear, Land, and Aviation. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Babcock International Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Babcock International Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Bank of Georgia Group PLC (OTCMKTS:BDGSF Get Free Report) hit a new 52-week high on Monday . The company traded as high as $41.92 and last traded at $41.92, with a volume of 0 shares trading hands. The stock had previously closed at $41.92. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Separately, Citigroup cut Bank of Georgia Group from a buy rating to a neutral rating in a research note on Friday, August 18th. Get Bank of Georgia Group alerts: Get Our Latest Report on Bank of Georgia Group Bank of Georgia Group Stock Performance Bank of Georgia Group Company Profile The company has a 50 day moving average of $41.37 and a 200 day moving average of $39.64. (Get Free Report) Bank of Georgia Group PLC, through its subsidiaries, provides various banking products and services in Georgia. It operates through three segments: Retail Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking, and BNB. The Retail Banking segment offers consumer loans, mortgage loans, overdrafts, credit cards, and other credit facilities; funds transfer and settlement services; and customers' deposits for individuals and legal entities under the Express, Bank of Georgia, MSME, and SOLO brands. Recommended Stories Receive News & Ratings for Bank of Georgia Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Bank of Georgia Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Beta Wealth Group Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE:WM Free Report) by 243.7% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 15,329 shares of the business services providers stock after purchasing an additional 10,869 shares during the quarter. Waste Management accounts for approximately 1.5% of Beta Wealth Group Inc.s portfolio, making the stock its 21st largest position. Beta Wealth Group Inc.s holdings in Waste Management were worth $2,658,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Several other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of WM. Steel Peak Wealth Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Waste Management by 4.7% in the 2nd quarter. Steel Peak Wealth Management LLC now owns 3,858 shares of the business services providers stock worth $669,000 after buying an additional 173 shares during the last quarter. American National Bank raised its position in Waste Management by 1,459.9% during the second quarter. American National Bank now owns 2,137 shares of the business services providers stock valued at $371,000 after purchasing an additional 2,000 shares in the last quarter. WASHINGTON TRUST Co lifted its stake in Waste Management by 1.9% during the second quarter. WASHINGTON TRUST Co now owns 55,488 shares of the business services providers stock worth $9,623,000 after purchasing an additional 1,055 shares during the last quarter. Sawgrass Asset Management LLC purchased a new position in shares of Waste Management in the 2nd quarter worth about $208,000. Finally, Cetera Investment Advisers raised its holdings in shares of Waste Management by 6.8% during the 2nd quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 57,128 shares of the business services providers stock valued at $9,907,000 after buying an additional 3,618 shares in the last quarter. 78.34% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors. Get Waste Management alerts: Insiders Place Their Bets In related news, VP Michael J. Watson sold 14,288 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $170.44, for a total transaction of $2,435,246.72. Following the sale, the vice president now owns 41,428 shares of the companys stock, valued at $7,060,988.32. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. In other news, CEO James C. Fish, Jr. sold 5,383 shares of Waste Management stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 13th. The stock was sold at an average price of $172.00, for a total value of $925,876.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 171,938 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $29,573,336. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, VP Michael J. Watson sold 14,288 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The shares were sold at an average price of $170.44, for a total transaction of $2,435,246.72. Following the sale, the vice president now directly owns 41,428 shares in the company, valued at $7,060,988.32. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 23,838 shares of company stock worth $4,077,847. 0.27% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders. Waste Management Trading Down 0.0 % NYSE:WM traded down $0.08 during trading hours on Wednesday, hitting $171.61. The company had a trading volume of 345,355 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,577,529. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.17, a current ratio of 0.84 and a quick ratio of 0.80. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $161.40 and a 200 day moving average price of $163.07. The company has a market capitalization of $69.12 billion, a PE ratio of 30.43, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.86 and a beta of 0.72. Waste Management, Inc. has a 52 week low of $148.31 and a 52 week high of $173.71. Waste Management (NYSE:WM Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 24th. The business services provider reported $1.63 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.61 by $0.02. The company had revenue of $5.20 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $5.27 billion. Waste Management had a net margin of 11.47% and a return on equity of 34.14%. Waste Managements quarterly revenue was up 2.4% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $1.56 earnings per share. On average, equities research analysts predict that Waste Management, Inc. will post 5.96 EPS for the current fiscal year. Waste Management Announces Dividend The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Investors of record on Friday, December 1st will be paid a $0.70 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 30th. This represents a $2.80 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.63%. Waste Managements payout ratio is 49.56%. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several analysts have issued reports on WM shares. BMO Capital Markets upped their target price on Waste Management from $160.00 to $163.00 and gave the stock a market perform rating in a research note on Thursday, October 26th. Citigroup cut their price objective on shares of Waste Management from $204.00 to $202.00 in a research note on Thursday, July 27th. Scotiabank decreased their target price on shares of Waste Management from $177.50 to $165.00 in a research report on Tuesday, October 10th. Raymond James cut their price target on shares of Waste Management from $179.00 to $175.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 26th. Finally, StockNews.com began coverage on Waste Management in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating on the stock. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nine 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 $179.77. Read Our Latest Report on Waste Management Waste Management Profile (Free Report) Waste Management, Inc, through its subsidiaries, engages in the provision of environmental solutions to residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers in the United States and Canada. It offers collection services, including picking up and transporting waste and recyclable materials from where it was generated to a transfer station, material recovery facility (MRF), or disposal site; and owns and operates transfer stations, as well as owns, develops, and operates landfill facilities that produce landfill gas used as renewable natural gas for generating electricity. Recommended Stories Receive News & Ratings for Waste Management Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Waste Management and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Police in Red Lodge are investigating a homicide that occurred Tuesday evening. The Red Lodge Police Department is investigating the death with assistance from the Carbon County Sheriffs Office and Montana Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation, police officials said in a press statement Wednesday morning. The man was killed at about 9:15 p.m. in the 800 block of Bonner Avenue North in Red Lodge. Homicides are rare in Red Lodge and Carbon County. In April of 2020, the sheriffs office investing the shooting death of a man at a trailhead south of Red Lodge. Investigators later considered the shooting may have been in self-defense. At a different trailhead in 2018, Thomas Schifferns shot James McGregor to death. The two had been living together with Schifferns common-law wife and had been drinking and arguing over chores. In 2016, three people were murdered in Belfry by a family member, Robert James LeCou. - This story will be updated. Capital International Inc. CA boosted its holdings in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY Free Report) by 28.6% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 724,578 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock after purchasing an additional 160,981 shares during the quarter. Capital International Inc. CAs holdings in Bristol-Myers Squibb were worth $46,337,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Several other hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in BMY. Northwest Capital Management Inc bought a new stake in Bristol-Myers Squibb during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $26,000. True Wealth Design LLC bought a new stake in Bristol-Myers Squibb during the 4th quarter valued at approximately $26,000. Coppell Advisory Solutions Corp. bought a new stake in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb in the 4th quarter worth approximately $31,000. Live Oak Investment Partners bought a new stake in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb in the 4th quarter worth approximately $33,000. Finally, Avalon Trust Co bought a new stake in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb in the 1st quarter worth approximately $36,000. Institutional investors own 74.98% of the companys stock. Get Bristol-Myers Squibb alerts: Insider Activity In other news, Director Theodore R. Samuels II bought 8,500 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The stock was bought at an average cost of $49.81 per share, with a total value of $423,385.00. Following the purchase, the director now owns 35,500 shares of the companys stock, valued at $1,768,255. The purchase was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. In other news, EVP Ann Powell sold 17,986 shares of the firms stock in a transaction on Thursday, August 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $61.25, for a total value of $1,101,642.50. Following the transaction, 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 filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. Also, Director Theodore R. Samuels II purchased 8,500 shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The stock was bought at an average price of $49.81 per share, for a total transaction of $423,385.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 35,500 shares in the company, valued at $1,768,255. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Insiders own 0.08% of the companys stock. Bristol-Myers Squibb Price Performance BMY stock traded up $0.53 during midday trading on Wednesday, reaching $49.01. 6,626,550 shares of the companys stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 9,749,206. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $55.12 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $60.59. Bristol-Myers Squibb has a 1-year low of $48.42 and a 1-year high of $81.43. The company has a market cap of $99.72 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 12.39, a PEG ratio of 1.56 and a beta of 0.38. The company has a quick ratio of 1.07, a current ratio of 1.18 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.11. Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The biopharmaceutical company reported $2.00 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $1.76 by $0.24. Bristol-Myers Squibb had a return on equity of 51.59% and a net margin of 18.44%. The firm had revenue of $10.97 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $10.96 billion. During the same period last year, the firm posted $1.99 EPS. The businesss revenue was down 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. On average, analysts anticipate that Bristol-Myers Squibb will post 7.56 earnings per share for the current year. Bristol-Myers Squibb Announces Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 1st. Stockholders of record on Friday, October 6th were paid a $0.57 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 5th. This represents a $2.28 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.65%. Bristol-Myers Squibbs dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 57.87%. Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of brokerages have commented on BMY. StockNews.com upgraded Bristol-Myers Squibb from a buy rating to a strong-buy rating in a research report on Friday, October 27th. Truist Financial reiterated a buy rating and issued a $84.00 price objective on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb in a research report on Friday, October 6th. William Blair downgraded Bristol-Myers Squibb from an outperform rating to a market perform rating in a research report on Friday, October 27th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft began coverage on Bristol-Myers Squibb in a research report on Thursday, November 9th. They issued a hold rating and a $55.00 price objective for the company. Finally, UBS Group reiterated a neutral rating and issued a $60.00 price objective (down previously from $70.00) on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb in a research report on Friday, October 20th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, thirteen have assigned a hold rating, four have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $63.59. View Our Latest Research Report on Bristol-Myers Squibb Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Profile (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. Further Reading Want to see what other hedge funds are holding BMY? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Bristol-Myers Squibb Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Bristol-Myers Squibb and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Capital International Inc. CA boosted its stake in shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE:RCL Free Report) by 62.2% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 553,243 shares of the companys stock after buying an additional 212,112 shares during the quarter. Royal Caribbean Cruises makes up approximately 1.0% of Capital International Inc. CAs portfolio, making the stock its 20th biggest position. Capital International Inc. CA owned 0.22% of Royal Caribbean Cruises worth $57,393,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in RCL. Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund increased its position in Royal Caribbean Cruises by 0.6% in the 2nd quarter. Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund now owns 17,127 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,777,000 after buying an additional 100 shares in the last quarter. Financial Gravity Asset Management Inc. bought a new stake in Royal Caribbean Cruises in the 2nd quarter valued at about $693,000. B. Riley Wealth Advisors Inc. increased its position in Royal Caribbean Cruises by 1.7% in the 2nd quarter. B. Riley Wealth Advisors Inc. now owns 6,756 shares of the companys stock valued at $701,000 after buying an additional 114 shares in the last quarter. Independent Advisor Alliance increased its position in Royal Caribbean Cruises by 1.7% in the 2nd quarter. Independent Advisor Alliance now owns 7,092 shares of the companys stock valued at $736,000 after buying an additional 119 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Quantinno Capital Management LP increased its position in Royal Caribbean Cruises by 1.5% in the 4th quarter. Quantinno Capital Management LP now owns 8,977 shares of the companys stock valued at $444,000 after buying an additional 136 shares in the last quarter. 75.64% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Royal Caribbean Cruises alerts: Royal Caribbean Cruises Stock Performance Shares of NYSE:RCL traded up $1.46 during trading on Wednesday, hitting $106.29. 1,149,776 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 3,484,322. The company has a market cap of $27.23 billion, a PE ratio of 33.31 and a beta of 2.45. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $91.50 and a 200 day moving average of $94.03. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has a 52-week low of $47.91 and a 52-week high of $112.95. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.90, a current ratio of 0.19 and a quick ratio of 0.17. Insiders Place Their Bets Royal Caribbean Cruises ( NYSE:RCL Get Free Report ) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The company reported $3.85 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $3.43 by $0.42. The firm had revenue of $4.16 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.08 billion. Royal Caribbean Cruises had a return on equity of 34.59% and a net margin of 6.98%. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 39.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the business posted $0.26 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts predict that Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. will post 6.6 EPS for the current year. In related news, CEO Michael W. Bayley sold 7,800 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, November 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $105.00, for a total value of $819,000.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 94,391 shares in the company, valued at $9,911,055. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. In related news, CEO Michael W. Bayley sold 7,800 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, November 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $105.00, for a total value of $819,000.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 94,391 shares in the company, valued at $9,911,055. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, insider Laura H. Bethge sold 3,502 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, October 30th. The stock was sold at an average price of $86.00, for a total value of $301,172.00. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now owns 22,226 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,911,436. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 31,302 shares of company stock worth $3,094,672 over the last 90 days. Corporate insiders own 8.70% of the companys stock. Analyst Ratings Changes A number of analysts have commented on RCL shares. Morgan Stanley boosted their price objective on Royal Caribbean Cruises from $95.00 to $100.00 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a report on Monday, October 30th. Barclays decreased their price objective on Royal Caribbean Cruises from $132.00 to $127.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a report on Monday, October 9th. StockNews.com started coverage on Royal Caribbean Cruises in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating for the company. Citigroup reissued a buy rating and set a $127.00 price objective on shares of Royal Caribbean Cruises in a report on Tuesday. Finally, HSBC initiated coverage on Royal Caribbean Cruises in a report on Monday, October 23rd. They issued a buy rating and a $115.00 target price for the company. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Royal Caribbean Cruises has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $111.93. View Our Latest Stock Report on RCL About Royal Caribbean Cruises (Free Report) Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. operates as a cruise company worldwide. The company operates cruises under the Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, and Silversea Cruises brands, which comprise a range of itineraries. As of February 13, 2023, it operated 64 ships. The company was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Miami, Florida. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding RCL? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE:RCL Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Royal Caribbean Cruises Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Royal Caribbean Cruises and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Capital International Inc. CA trimmed its position in Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG Free Report) by 13.7% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 14,249 shares of the restaurant operators stock after selling 2,256 shares during the period. Capital International Inc. CA owned about 0.05% of Chipotle Mexican Grill worth $30,479,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the company. Addison Advisors LLC raised its stake in shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill by 350.0% in the first quarter. Addison Advisors LLC now owns 18 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $31,000 after buying an additional 14 shares during the period. IMA Wealth Inc. raised its stake in shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill by 185.7% in the first quarter. IMA Wealth Inc. now owns 20 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $34,000 after buying an additional 13 shares during the period. Horizon Bancorp Inc. IN raised its stake in shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill by 240.0% in the second quarter. Horizon Bancorp Inc. IN now owns 17 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $36,000 after buying an additional 12 shares during the period. Tradition Wealth Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill by 320.0% in the first quarter. Tradition Wealth Management LLC now owns 21 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $37,000 after buying an additional 16 shares during the period. Finally, Worth Asset Management LLC bought a new position in shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill in the first quarter worth about $44,000. 91.19% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Chipotle Mexican Grill alerts: Chipotle Mexican Grill Price Performance Shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill stock traded up $24.04 on Wednesday, reaching $2,221.68. The company had a trading volume of 96,458 shares, compared to its average volume of 276,912. The firm has a market cap of $60.96 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 52.49, a P/E/G ratio of 1.91 and a beta of 1.33. The firms 50-day moving average price is $1,934.22 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $1,983.04. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. has a 1 year low of $1,344.05 and a 1 year high of $2,224.80. Analyst Ratings Changes Chipotle Mexican Grill ( NYSE:CMG Get Free Report ) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The restaurant operator reported $11.36 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $10.46 by $0.90. The firm had revenue of $2.47 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $2.47 billion. Chipotle Mexican Grill had a return on equity of 45.26% and a net margin of 12.27%. The companys quarterly revenue was up 11.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $9.51 EPS. As a group, analysts anticipate that Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. will post 44.04 EPS for the current year. Several research analysts have recently commented on CMG shares. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft started coverage on Chipotle Mexican Grill in a research note on Thursday, October 19th. They issued a buy rating and a $2,375.00 price objective on the stock. Barclays decreased their price objective on Chipotle Mexican Grill from $1,950.00 to $1,865.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, October 23rd. Wells Fargo & Company decreased their target price on Chipotle Mexican Grill from $2,400.00 to $2,200.00 in a research note on Thursday, July 27th. BMO Capital Markets decreased their target price on Chipotle Mexican Grill from $1,950.00 to $1,925.00 in a research note on Thursday, July 27th. Finally, Oppenheimer decreased their target price on Chipotle Mexican Grill from $2,300.00 to $2,225.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 4th. Seven research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nineteen have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $2,161.33. Check Out Our Latest Report on CMG Insider Activity at Chipotle Mexican Grill In related news, Director Patricia Filikrushel sold 57 shares of the businesss 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 transaction, the director now owns 686 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,406,169.66. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. In related news, COO Scott Boatwright sold 1,423 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction on Friday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $2,042.02, for a total transaction of $2,905,794.46. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer now owns 3,034 shares in the company, valued at approximately $6,195,488.68. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, Director Patricia Filikrushel sold 57 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction on 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 transaction, the director now owns 686 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $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 quarter. 0.96% of the stock is owned by company insiders. Chipotle Mexican Grill Company Profile (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. Recommended Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CMG? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Chipotle Mexican Grill Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Chipotle Mexican Grill and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Capital International Investors grew its position in Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM Free Report) by 20.1% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 13,169,962 shares of the restaurant operators stock after purchasing an additional 2,207,942 shares during the quarter. Capital International Investors owned approximately 4.70% of Yum! Brands worth $1,824,305,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of YUM. BlackRock Inc. increased its stake in Yum! Brands by 1.2% in the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 21,142,775 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $2,792,538,000 after buying an additional 244,479 shares in the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Yum! Brands by 3.2% in the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 6,136,277 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $848,921,000 after purchasing an additional 188,878 shares during the last quarter. FMR LLC lifted its position in shares of Yum! Brands by 466.5% in the first quarter. FMR LLC now owns 5,867,285 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $774,951,000 after buying an additional 4,831,505 shares in the last quarter. Sustainable Growth Advisers LP increased its stake in Yum! Brands by 11.9% in the 2nd quarter. Sustainable Growth Advisers LP now owns 5,556,412 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $769,841,000 after acquiring an additional 589,139 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Capital World Investors raised its stake in Yum! Brands by 19.6% during the first quarter. Capital World Investors now owns 5,507,237 shares of the restaurant operators stock valued at $652,773,000 after purchasing an additional 901,181 shares in the last quarter. 80.17% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Yum! Brands alerts: Yum! Brands Price Performance NYSE YUM traded up $0.57 during trading hours on Wednesday, reaching $128.81. The companys stock had a trading volume of 348,909 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,575,618. The companys 50-day moving average is $123.45 and its two-hundred day moving average is $130.21. Yum! Brands, Inc. has a 1-year low of $115.53 and a 1-year high of $143.24. The firm has a market capitalization of $36.11 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 24.49, a P/E/G ratio of 1.96 and a beta of 1.04. Yum! Brands Dividend Announcement Yum! Brands ( NYSE:YUM Get Free Report ) last released its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The restaurant operator reported $1.44 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.26 by $0.18. Yum! Brands had a net margin of 21.32% and a negative return on equity of 17.45%. The firm had revenue of $1.71 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.77 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $1.09 EPS. The companys revenue for the quarter was up 4.1% on a year-over-year basis. Equities analysts forecast that Yum! Brands, Inc. will post 5.31 EPS for the current fiscal year. The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 8th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, November 28th will be issued a $0.605 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 27th. This represents a $2.42 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.88%. Yum! Brandss payout ratio is currently 46.01%. Insiders Place Their Bets In related news, CEO David W. Gibbs sold 3,804 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, September 15th. The stock was sold at an average price of $131.23, for a total value of $499,198.92. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 57,325 shares of the companys stock, valued at $7,522,759.75. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In related news, CEO David W. Gibbs sold 3,507 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, October 16th. The stock was sold at an average price of $117.55, for a total value of $412,247.85. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 57,325 shares in the company, valued at $6,738,553.75. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CEO David W. Gibbs sold 3,804 shares of Yum! Brands stock in a transaction on Friday, September 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $131.23, for a total value of $499,198.92. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 57,325 shares in the company, valued at approximately $7,522,759.75. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 20,638 shares of company stock valued at $2,603,751 in the last 90 days. 0.31% of the stock is owned by insiders. Analyst Ratings Changes Several brokerages have issued reports on YUM. StockNews.com began coverage on Yum! Brands in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating for the company. Royal Bank of Canada upped their target price on shares of Yum! Brands from $136.00 to $139.00 and gave the stock a sector perform rating in a research note on Thursday, November 2nd. Barclays dropped their price objective on Yum! Brands from $140.00 to $126.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, October 23rd. Bank of America increased their price target on Yum! Brands from $151.00 to $158.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research report on Thursday, August 3rd. Finally, Morgan Stanley dropped their target price on shares of Yum! Brands from $155.00 to $150.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, October 11th. Ten analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eight have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Yum! Brands has a consensus rating of Hold and an average target price of $145.21. Check Out Our Latest Analysis on Yum! Brands About Yum! Brands (Free Report) Yum! Brands, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, develops, operates, and franchises quick service restaurants worldwide. The company operates through four segments: the KFC Division, the Taco Bell Division, the Pizza Hut Division, and the Habit Burger Grill Division. It operates restaurants under the KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and The Habit Burger Grill brands, which specialize in chicken, pizza, made-to-order chargrilled burgers, sandwiches, Mexican-style food categories, and other food products. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding YUM? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Yum! Brands Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Yum! Brands and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Capital International Ltd. CA lowered its stake in Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:MSI Free Report) by 12.8% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The fund owned 51,488 shares of the communications equipment providers stock after selling 7,556 shares during the period. Capital International Ltd. CAs holdings in Motorola Solutions were worth $15,100,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC. A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of MSI. Tucker Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in Motorola Solutions in the 1st quarter valued at about $27,000. Albion Financial Group UT grew its stake in Motorola Solutions by 3,633.3% in the 2nd quarter. Albion Financial Group UT now owns 112 shares of the communications equipment providers stock valued at $33,000 after buying an additional 109 shares during the last quarter. Strategic Investment Solutions Inc. IL acquired a new position in shares of Motorola Solutions during the 1st quarter worth approximately $35,000. Eagle Bay Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Motorola Solutions during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $35,000. Finally, Tortoise Investment Management LLC grew its position in shares of Motorola Solutions by 1,140.0% during the 2nd quarter. Tortoise Investment Management LLC now owns 124 shares of the communications equipment providers stock worth $36,000 after purchasing an additional 114 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.37% of the companys stock. Get Motorola Solutions alerts: Insider Activity In other news, CFO Jason J. Winkler sold 5,656 shares of the firms stock in a transaction on Tuesday, November 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $305.29, for a total transaction of $1,726,720.24. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 6,732 shares of the companys stock, valued at $2,055,212.28. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. In related news, SVP Cynthia Yazdi sold 5,850 shares of Motorola Solutions stock in a transaction on Tuesday, November 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $306.00, for a total transaction of $1,790,100.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now owns 3,780 shares of the companys stock, valued at $1,156,680. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this link. Also, CFO Jason J. Winkler sold 5,656 shares of Motorola Solutions stock in a transaction on Tuesday, November 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $305.29, for a total transaction of $1,726,720.24. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 6,732 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $2,055,212.28. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last 90 days, insiders sold 76,506 shares of company stock valued at $23,359,370. Insiders own 1.50% of the companys stock. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of brokerages have issued reports on MSI. Raymond James increased their target price on shares of Motorola Solutions from $315.00 to $320.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research report on Friday, August 4th. Barclays decreased their target price on shares of Motorola Solutions from $329.00 to $322.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research report on Friday, August 4th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their target price on shares of Motorola Solutions from $320.00 to $311.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, August 7th. Bank of America initiated coverage on shares of Motorola Solutions in a research report on Monday, October 9th. They set a buy rating and a $330.00 price target on the stock. Finally, StockNews.com lowered shares of Motorola Solutions from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report on Saturday, November 11th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $312.57. Check Out Our Latest Report on Motorola Solutions Motorola Solutions Price Performance NYSE:MSI traded down $0.78 on Wednesday, hitting $319.21. The company had a trading volume of 230,252 shares, compared to its average volume of 719,550. The stock has a market capitalization of $52.99 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 32.36, a PEG ratio of 3.03 and a beta of 0.91. The company has a current ratio of 0.95, a quick ratio of 0.77 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 12.51. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $288.50 and a two-hundred day moving average of $286.65. Motorola Solutions, Inc. has a 52 week low of $251.00 and a 52 week high of $322.53. Motorola Solutions (NYSE:MSI Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 2nd. The communications equipment provider reported $3.19 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $3.03 by $0.16. The business had revenue of $2.56 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $2.53 billion. Motorola Solutions had a net margin of 17.30% and a return on equity of 668.00%. The firms revenue was up 7.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $2.79 EPS. On average, research analysts anticipate that Motorola Solutions, Inc. will post 10.64 earnings per share for the current year. Motorola Solutions Increases Dividend The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, January 12th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 15th will be paid a dividend of $0.98 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 14th. This represents a $3.92 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.23%. This is an increase from Motorola Solutionss previous quarterly dividend of $0.88. Motorola Solutionss dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 35.59%. About Motorola Solutions (Free Report) 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. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Motorola Solutions Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Motorola Solutions and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Capital International Sarl raised its holdings in Bunge Global SA (NYSE:BG Free Report) by 5.6% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firm owned 129,277 shares of the basic materials companys stock after buying an additional 6,860 shares during the quarter. Capital International Sarls holdings in Bunge Global were worth $12,197,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently modified their holdings of the company. Pinnacle Holdings LLC acquired a new stake in Bunge Global during the first quarter worth about $36,000. Spire Wealth Management increased its position in Bunge Global by 242.1% during the 1st quarter. Spire Wealth Management now owns 431 shares of the basic materials companys stock worth $41,000 after purchasing an additional 305 shares in the last quarter. First Manhattan CO. LLC. acquired a new stake in Bunge Global during the 1st quarter worth approximately $48,000. Zions Bancorporation N.A. raised its holdings in Bunge Global by 1,628.3% in the first quarter. Zions Bancorporation N.A. now owns 795 shares of the basic materials companys stock valued at $88,000 after buying an additional 749 shares during the period. Finally, V Square Quantitative Management LLC acquired a new position in Bunge Global during the second quarter valued at approximately $85,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 84.92% of the companys stock. Get Bunge Global alerts: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of brokerages have recently commented on BG. BMO Capital Markets raised their target price on shares of Bunge Global from $120.00 to $140.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research note on Thursday, August 3rd. UBS Group raised their price objective on Bunge Global from $133.00 to $141.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research report on Monday, August 7th. Barclays boosted their price objective on Bunge Global from $121.00 to $125.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research note on Friday, August 4th. Morgan Stanley increased their target price on Bunge Global from $105.00 to $114.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research note on Monday, August 7th. Finally, HSBC started coverage on shares of Bunge Global in a research report on Friday, September 15th. They issued a hold rating and a $122.00 price objective for the company. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $127.14. Bunge Global Stock Up 1.1 % BG stock traded up $1.14 during midday trading on Wednesday, hitting $109.34. 438,177 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,378,116. The stock has a market capitalization of $15.89 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 8.37 and a beta of 0.65. The company has a current ratio of 2.02, a quick ratio of 1.10 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.36. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $106.46 and a 200-day moving average price of $103.41. Bunge Global SA has a 12-month low of $87.86 and a 12-month high of $116.59. Bunge Global (NYSE:BG Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The basic materials company reported $2.99 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $2.50 by $0.49. Bunge Global had a net margin of 3.20% and a return on equity of 18.61%. The business had revenue of $14.23 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $15.33 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $3.45 earnings per share. The businesss revenue was down 15.1% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts anticipate that Bunge Global SA will post 12.8 EPS for the current year. Bunge Global Dividend Announcement The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, March 1st. Stockholders of record on Friday, February 16th will be given a dividend of $0.6625 per share. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, February 15th. This represents a $2.65 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.42%. Bunge Globals payout ratio is 20.51%. Bunge Global Profile (Free Report) Bunge Global SA operates as an agribusiness and food company worldwide. It operates through four segments: Agribusiness, Refined and Specialty Oils, Milling, and Sugar and Bioenergy. The Agribusiness segment purchases, stores, transports, processes, and sells agricultural commodities and commodity products, including oilseeds primarily soybeans, rapeseed, canola, and sunflower seeds, as well as grains comprising wheat and corn; and processes oilseeds into vegetable oils and protein meals. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding BG? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Bunge Global SA (NYSE:BG Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Bunge Global Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Bunge Global and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Capital World Investors increased its stake in shares of Carrier Global Co. (NYSE:CARR Free Report) by 11.0% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 80,757,252 shares of the companys stock after buying an additional 7,996,941 shares during the quarter. Carrier Global comprises approximately 0.8% of Capital World Investors holdings, making the stock its 28th largest position. Capital World Investors owned 9.64% of Carrier Global worth $4,014,427,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Other large investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Knuff & Co LLC acquired a new stake in Carrier Global in the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $25,000. Covestor Ltd raised its stake in shares of Carrier Global by 121.2% during the first quarter. Covestor Ltd now owns 553 shares of the companys stock valued at $25,000 after purchasing an additional 303 shares in the last quarter. Avalon Trust Co bought a new position in Carrier Global in the 2nd quarter valued at about $27,000. WealthPLAN Partners LLC acquired a new position in shares of Carrier Global during the first quarter valued at approximately $29,000. Finally, Nemes Rush Group LLC bought a new stake in Carrier Global during the second quarter worth approximately $29,000. 91.47% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Carrier Global alerts: Carrier Global Price Performance Shares of CARR stock traded up $0.06 during trading hours on Wednesday, hitting $52.79. The company had a trading volume of 1,123,669 shares, compared to its average volume of 5,045,165. Carrier Global Co. has a 12 month low of $40.28 and a 12 month high of $60.04. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.02, a quick ratio of 1.25 and a current ratio of 1.66. The firms fifty day moving average is $52.11 and its 200 day moving average is $51.13. The firm has a market capitalization of $44.29 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 37.40, a PEG ratio of 1.86 and a beta of 1.45. Carrier Global Dividend Announcement Carrier Global ( NYSE:CARR Get Free Report ) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The company reported $0.89 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $0.78 by $0.11. The company had revenue of $5.73 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.89 billion. Carrier Global had a net margin of 5.43% and a return on equity of 26.60%. The firms revenue for the quarter was up 5.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $0.70 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Carrier Global Co. will post 2.71 EPS for the current fiscal year. The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, November 20th. Investors of record on Friday, October 27th were given a dividend of $0.185 per share. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, October 26th. This represents a $0.74 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.40%. Carrier Globals dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 52.48%. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth CARR has been the subject of a number of research reports. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their target price on shares of Carrier Global from $60.00 to $55.00 in a report on Monday, October 9th. Royal Bank of Canada raised their target price on Carrier Global from $54.00 to $64.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a report on Friday, July 28th. UBS Group lifted their price target on shares of Carrier Global from $47.00 to $60.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research report on Friday, September 8th. Mizuho downgraded shares of Carrier Global from a buy rating to a neutral rating and decreased their price objective for the stock from $63.00 to $61.00 in a report on Thursday, September 14th. Finally, Barclays lifted their price objective on Carrier Global from $54.00 to $63.00 in a research note on Friday, July 28th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have given a hold rating and seven have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Carrier Global presently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $57.63. View Our Latest Analysis on CARR Carrier Global Company Profile (Free Report) Carrier Global Corporation provides heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC), refrigeration, fire, security, and building automation technologies worldwide. It operates through three segments: HVAC, Refrigeration, and Fire & Security. The HVAC segment provides products, controls, services, and solutions to meet the heating, cooling, and ventilation needs of residential and commercial customers. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CARR? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Carrier Global Co. (NYSE:CARR Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Carrier Global Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Carrier Global and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Capital International Ltd. CA boosted its stake in Edwards Lifesciences Co. (NYSE:EW Free Report) by 0.1% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The firm owned 129,928 shares of the medical research companys stock after purchasing an additional 162 shares during the quarter. Capital International Ltd. CAs holdings in Edwards Lifesciences were worth $12,256,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC. A number of other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of EW. Capital International Inc. CA lifted its position in Edwards Lifesciences by 11.2% during the second quarter. Capital International Inc. CA now owns 381,938 shares of the medical research companys stock valued at $36,028,000 after buying an additional 38,596 shares in the last quarter. Capital International Investors increased its stake in shares of Edwards Lifesciences by 4.9% in the second quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 27,015,032 shares of the medical research companys stock worth $2,548,023,000 after buying an additional 1,255,926 shares during the last quarter. Capital Group Private Client Services Inc. increased its stake in shares of Edwards Lifesciences by 1.8% in the second quarter. Capital Group Private Client Services Inc. now owns 715,178 shares of the medical research companys stock worth $67,463,000 after buying an additional 12,692 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Edwards Lifesciences by 1.6% during the second quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 12,412,050 shares of the medical research companys stock valued at $1,167,651,000 after purchasing an additional 197,431 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Element Capital Management LLC increased its stake in Edwards Lifesciences by 5.6% during the second quarter. Element Capital Management LLC now owns 80,291 shares of the medical research companys stock valued at $7,574,000 after purchasing an additional 4,293 shares during the last quarter. 79.25% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Edwards Lifesciences alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets EW has been the subject of several recent research reports. StockNews.com lowered shares of Edwards Lifesciences from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 3rd. TheStreet lowered shares of Edwards Lifesciences from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a research report on Wednesday, August 9th. Jefferies Financial Group upped their price target on shares of Edwards Lifesciences from $103.00 to $107.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 25th. Truist Financial reduced their price objective on shares of Edwards Lifesciences from $83.00 to $76.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a report on Thursday, October 26th. Finally, Citigroup reduced their price objective on shares of Edwards Lifesciences from $94.00 to $85.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a report on Thursday, October 26th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have assigned a hold rating and eight have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average target price of $84.29. Insider Buying and Selling In related news, VP Daveen Chopra sold 1,500 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $76.69, for a total value of $115,035.00. Following the transaction, the vice president now owns 23,950 shares in the company, valued at $1,836,725.50. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. In other Edwards Lifesciences news, VP Daveen Chopra sold 1,500 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $76.69, for a total transaction of $115,035.00. Following the transaction, the vice president now owns 23,950 shares in the company, valued at $1,836,725.50. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CFO Scott B. Ullem sold 7,255 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, August 31st. The shares were sold at an average price of $77.79, for a total value of $564,366.45. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 19,248 shares of the companys stock, valued at $1,497,301.92. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders have sold 179,795 shares of company stock worth $12,724,914. Insiders own 1.29% of the companys stock. Edwards Lifesciences Trading Up 0.5 % EW stock traded up $0.34 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, reaching $67.30. 1,823,045 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 3,436,385. The company has a current ratio of 3.28, a quick ratio of 2.45 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.09. Edwards Lifesciences Co. has a 52-week low of $60.57 and a 52-week high of $94.87. The company has a market cap of $40.82 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.61, a P/E/G ratio of 3.75 and a beta of 1.02. The stocks fifty day moving average is $68.81 and its 200-day moving average is $79.23. Edwards Lifesciences (NYSE:EW Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, October 25th. The medical research company reported $0.59 EPS for the quarter, meeting analysts consensus estimates of $0.59. Edwards Lifesciences had a net margin of 24.59% and a return on equity of 24.54%. The company had revenue of $1.48 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.48 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $0.61 earnings per share. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 12.3% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Edwards Lifesciences Co. will post 2.51 earnings per share for the current year. Edwards Lifesciences Company Profile (Free Report) Edwards Lifesciences Corporation provides products and technologies for structural heart disease, and critical care and surgical monitoring in the United States, Europe, Japan, and internationally. It offers transcatheter heart valve replacement products for the minimally invasive replacement of heart valves; and transcatheter heart valve repair and replacement products to treat mitral and tricuspid valve diseases. Read More Receive News & Ratings for Edwards Lifesciences Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Edwards Lifesciences and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. FIBRA Prologis (OTCMKTS:FBBPF Get Free Report)s share price fell 5.6% during mid-day trading on Tuesday . The stock traded as low as $4.18 and last traded at $4.18. 50,360 shares traded hands during mid-day trading, an increase of 852% from the average session volume of 5,289 shares. The stock had previously closed at $4.43. FIBRA Prologis Price Performance The companys 50-day simple moving average is $3.59 and its 200-day simple moving average is $3.57. About FIBRA Prologis (Get Free Report) FIBRA Prologis is a leading owner and operator of Class-A industrial real estate in Mexico. As of September 30, 2023, FIBRA Prologis was comprised of 228 logistics and manufacturing facilities in six industrial markets in Mexico totaling 44.2 million square feet (4.1 million square meters) of gross leasable area. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for FIBRA Prologis Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for FIBRA Prologis and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Industria de Diseno Textil, S.A. (OTCMKTS:IDEXY Get Free Report) hit a new 52-week high during trading on Monday . The company traded as high as $19.95 and last traded at $19.95, with a volume of 89553 shares traded. The stock had previously closed at $19.48. Analysts Set New Price Targets Several research firms recently weighed in on IDEXY. BNP Paribas cut shares of Industria de Diseno Textil from an outperform rating to a neutral rating in a research report on Tuesday, July 25th. Bank of America upgraded Industria de Diseno Textil from a neutral rating to a buy rating in a research note on Tuesday, September 5th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $23.00. Get Industria de Diseno Textil alerts: Read Our Latest Research Report on IDEXY Industria de Diseno Textil Stock Performance Industria de Diseno Textil Cuts Dividend The businesss 50 day simple moving average is $18.42 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $18.37. The company also recently disclosed a dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 17th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 1st were paid a $0.2271 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, October 31st. Industria de Diseno Textils dividend payout ratio is currently 59.21%. Industria de Diseno Textil Company Profile (Get Free Report) Industria de Diseno Textil, SA engages in the retail and online distribution of clothing, footwear, accessories, and household textile products through various retail concepts. The company sells its products under the Zara, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, and Zara Home brands. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for Industria de Diseno Textil Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Industria de Diseno Textil and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Turkeys are on the brain this time of year and that's been exacerbated by Billings' flocks of urban turkeys, which can be aggressive and have destroyed landscaping and left behind droppings. Officials with Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks and the City of Billings have received complaints of nuisance turkeys damaging yards and property. Undesirable turkey behavior is almost always the result of inappropriate human actions, especially feeding the wild birds. Our intention is to protect public safety and property, said Kevin Iffland, assistant city administrator for Billings. However, we need the publics cooperation to make that happen. In North America, there are five different species of wild turkeys. Merriams wild turkeys are the only species present around Billings. There are no wild turkeys native to Montana. Beginning in the mid-1950s, biologists with then Montana Department of Fish and Game released Merriams wild turkeys from Colorado and Wyoming to parts of Montana. The turkeys established populations and today Montana has Merriams turkeys widespread across the state and populations of Eastern wild turkeys in northwestern Montana. Montana has spring and fall turkey hunting seasons each year. Wild turkeys are omnivores and forage for a variety of foods, such as insects, seeds, nuts, frogs and snakes. Some of the larger birds in North America, males, or toms, can weigh 18 to 30 pounds while females, or hens, can weigh 9 to 12 pounds. Turkeys are active during the day and roost in trees at night to avoid predators. FWP and city officials are asking residents to keep wildlife wild and not feed the turkeys. Feeding wild turkeys either intentionally or unintentionally may change their foraging habits, cause them to be bold or aggressive and congregate. Typically, turkeys move throughout the day, foraging for a variety of natural foods. Artificial feeding can motivate turkeys to stay in a single location, which may increase flock size and cause an increase in disease transmission. Feeding of wild turkeys can be unlawful if the feeding harms local populations, including through increased disease transmission, or creates a public nuisance. These situations are handled on a case-by-case basis and can result in fines up to $1,000. For homeowners who have bird feeders in the yard, ensure the area below feeders remains clean and the feed is inaccessible to species such as turkeys and deer. Unsecured garbage can also become a food source for turkeys. Non-lethal hazing is effective in deterring turkeys away from property and establishing dominance. Though large birds, turkeys can be scared easily. Common turkey hazing techniques include: Tethered barking dogs Loud noises: yell, airhorn, whistle, etc. Get physically big: wave arms, open an umbrella, etc. Spray water from hose or squirt gun Install motion-activated sprinklers Chase, but do not make physical contact Remember, these hazing tactics are intended to scare turkeys, not physically harm or kill them. Hazing roosted turkeys is especially important in motivating them to leave the area. This can be done with a hose. Mating season for turkeys is between February and May. Males often become more aggressive and territorial during this time as they seek out a female and can attack their own reflections in objects such as cars and glass doors. Cover these reflective surfaces for the mating season or use hazing tactics described above to deter turkeys from your property and prevent damage. FWP officials do not relocate wild turkeys in the Billings area. Especially with the recent outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza viruses, relocating birds can increase disease transmission and spread. Moving nuisance turkeys from one location to another does not solve the problem of nuisance turkeys, it merely relocates it. It is important to address the root cause of these nuisance turkeys, said Matt Ladd, regional wildlife manager with FWP, which is very likely residents feeding them. The only turkey you should stuff is the one in your kitchen, not your yard. Do not feed wildlife, including wild turkeys, and haze them when appropriate to reduce the number of nuisance turkeys in Billings. BNY Mellon Municipal Income, Inc. (NYSE:DMF Get Free Report) major shareholder Saba Capital Management, L.P. bought 1,702 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, November 21st. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $6.13 per share, for a total transaction of $10,433.26. Following the completion of the purchase, the insider now owns 2,090,143 shares in the company, valued at $12,812,576.59. The acquisition was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Major shareholders that own 10% or more of a companys shares are required to disclose their transactions with the SEC. Saba Capital Management, L.P. also recently made the following trade(s): Get BNY Mellon Municipal Income alerts: On Friday, November 17th, Saba Capital Management, L.P. bought 9,174 shares of BNY Mellon Municipal Income stock. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $6.07 per share, for a total transaction of $55,686.18. On Wednesday, November 15th, Saba Capital Management, L.P. bought 200 shares of BNY Mellon Municipal Income stock. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $5.97 per share, for a total transaction of $1,194.00. BNY Mellon Municipal Income Trading Up 0.5 % NYSE DMF traded up $0.03 on Tuesday, hitting $6.13. 65,681 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 52,532. BNY Mellon Municipal Income, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $5.37 and a fifty-two week high of $6.76. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $5.74 and a 200-day moving average price of $6.07. BNY Mellon Municipal Income Dividend Announcement Institutional Inflows and Outflows The company also recently declared a monthly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 1st. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be issued a dividend of $0.015 per share. This represents a $0.18 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.94%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 14th. Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. acquired a new position in BNY Mellon Municipal Income during the 1st quarter worth approximately $25,000. Wolverine Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of BNY Mellon Municipal Income in the 2nd quarter valued at $39,000. Equitable Holdings Inc. acquired a new position in shares of BNY Mellon Municipal Income in the 1st quarter valued at $72,000. Worth Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in shares of BNY Mellon Municipal Income in the 1st quarter valued at $87,000. Finally, Raymond James & Associates boosted its holdings in shares of BNY Mellon Municipal Income by 17.7% in the 1st quarter. Raymond James & Associates now owns 13,940 shares of the companys stock valued at $90,000 after buying an additional 2,096 shares in the last quarter. BNY Mellon Municipal Income Company Profile (Get Free Report) BNY Mellon Municipal Income, Inc is a closed ended fixed income mutual fund launched and managed by BNY Mellon Investment Adviser, Inc It invests in the fixed income markets of the United States. The fund primarily invests in municipal obligations that are rated investment grade and have maturities of less than one year. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for BNY Mellon Municipal Income Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for BNY Mellon Municipal Income and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Shares of iShares MSCI Chile ETF (BATS:ECH Get Free Report) hit a new 52-week low during mid-day trading on Monday . The company traded as low as $26.41 and last traded at $26.66, with a volume of 385977 shares changing hands. The stock had previously closed at $26.04. iShares MSCI Chile ETF Trading Up 0.7 % The businesss fifty day simple moving average is $25.34 and its 200 day simple moving average is $27.98. The stock has a market cap of $588.04 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 8.48 and a beta of 0.91. Get iShares MSCI Chile ETF alerts: Institutional Investors Weigh In On iShares MSCI Chile ETF Institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC boosted its holdings in iShares MSCI Chile ETF by 362.2% during the third quarter. Tower Research Capital LLC TRC now owns 1,077 shares of the companys stock worth $26,000 after buying an additional 844 shares during the last quarter. Comerica Bank bought a new position in iShares MSCI Chile ETF during the 3rd quarter worth approximately $29,000. Eagle Bay Advisors LLC acquired a new position in iShares MSCI Chile ETF during the second quarter valued at approximately $31,000. Advisors Preferred LLC bought a new stake in iShares MSCI Chile ETF in the second quarter valued at approximately $33,000. Finally, Citigroup Inc. bought a new stake in iShares MSCI Chile ETF in the third quarter valued at approximately $53,000. iShares MSCI Chile ETF Company Profile iShares MSCI Chile Capped ETF, formerly iShares MSCI Chile Capped Investable Market Index Fund (the Fund), is an exchange-traded fund. The Fund seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the MSCI Chile Investable Market Index (the Index). The Index is a free float-adjusted market capitalization index that is designed to measure broad based equity market performance in Chile. Read More Receive News & Ratings for iShares MSCI Chile ETF Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for iShares MSCI Chile ETF and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Lansing Street Advisors boosted its stake in BorgWarner Inc. (NYSE:BWA Free Report) by 4,600.0% during the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 4,982 shares of the auto parts companys stock after purchasing an additional 4,876 shares during the quarter. Lansing Street Advisors holdings in BorgWarner were worth $244,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. grew its position in BorgWarner by 25.2% during the first quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 371,687 shares of the auto parts companys stock valued at $14,458,000 after acquiring an additional 74,902 shares during the last quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. boosted its holdings in BorgWarner by 86.7% during the 1st quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. now owns 22,086 shares of the auto parts companys stock valued at $859,000 after acquiring an additional 10,257 shares during the period. MetLife Investment Management LLC increased its stake in BorgWarner by 23.1% in the 1st quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLC now owns 65,231 shares of the auto parts companys stock worth $2,537,000 after purchasing an additional 12,257 shares during the period. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS lifted its position in BorgWarner by 6.6% in the first quarter. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS now owns 32,082 shares of the auto parts companys stock valued at $1,248,000 after purchasing an additional 1,987 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Yousif Capital Management LLC boosted its stake in shares of BorgWarner by 1.8% during the first quarter. Yousif Capital Management LLC now owns 46,314 shares of the auto parts companys stock valued at $1,802,000 after purchasing an additional 840 shares during the period. 92.35% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get BorgWarner alerts: Analyst Ratings Changes BWA has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft cut shares of BorgWarner from a buy rating to a hold rating and cut their target price for the stock from $47.00 to $36.00 in a report on Friday, November 3rd. Oppenheimer cut their target price on shares of BorgWarner from $48.00 to $45.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a report on Monday, October 9th. StockNews.com lowered BorgWarner from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report on Friday, November 3rd. The Goldman Sachs Group cut their price target on BorgWarner from $48.00 to $42.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research note on Friday, November 3rd. Finally, Guggenheim raised BorgWarner from a neutral rating to a buy rating and set a $41.00 price objective on the stock in a report on Thursday, November 16th. Six investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and ten have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $48.72. BorgWarner Stock Performance Shares of NYSE:BWA traded up $0.56 during trading on Wednesday, hitting $34.58. The stock had a trading volume of 1,030,606 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,246,130. BorgWarner Inc. has a 12-month low of $31.63 and a 12-month high of $51.14. The stock has a market capitalization of $8.13 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 10.97, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.97 and a beta of 1.44. The company has a quick ratio of 1.28, a current ratio of 1.65 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.61. The stock has a 50-day simple moving average of $37.77 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $42.11. BorgWarner Announces Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 1st will be paid a $0.11 dividend. This represents a $0.44 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.27%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 30th. BorgWarners payout ratio is 14.19%. BorgWarner Profile (Free Report) BorgWarner Inc provides solutions for combustion, hybrid, and electric vehicles worldwide. It offers turbochargers, eBoosters, eTurbos, timing systems, emissions systems, thermal systems, gasoline ignition technology, smart remote actuators, powertrain sensors, canisters, cabin heaters, battery modules and systems, battery packs, battery heaters, and battery charging. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for BorgWarner Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for BorgWarner and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. National Bank of Canada (OTCMKTS:NTIOF Get Free Report) and Alior Bank (OTCMKTS:ALORY Get Free Report) are both financial services companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, earnings, profitability and risk. Profitability This table compares National Bank of Canada and Alior Banks net margins, return on equity and return on assets. Get National Bank of Canada alerts: Net Margins Return on Equity Return on Assets National Bank of Canada 15.58% 17.27% 0.79% Alior Bank N/A N/A N/A Analyst Recommendations This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for National Bank of Canada and Alior Bank, as provided by MarketBeat.com. Sell Ratings Hold Ratings Buy Ratings Strong Buy Ratings Rating Score National Bank of Canada 0 0 0 0 N/A Alior Bank 0 0 0 0 N/A Valuation & Earnings National Bank of Canada presently has a consensus target price of $98.00, suggesting a potential upside of 48.76%. Given National Bank of Canadas higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe National Bank of Canada is more favorable than Alior Bank. This table compares National Bank of Canada and Alior Banks top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation. Gross Revenue Price/Sales Ratio Net Income Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Ratio National Bank of Canada $10.82 billion 2.06 $2.63 billion $6.92 9.52 Alior Bank N/A N/A N/A C$1.48 1.40 National Bank of Canada has higher revenue and earnings than Alior Bank. Alior Bank is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than National Bank of Canada, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks. Institutional and Insider Ownership 0.1% of National Bank of Canada shares are held by institutional investors. 0.3% of National Bank of Canada shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term. Summary National Bank of Canada beats Alior Bank on 9 of the 9 factors compared between the two stocks. About National Bank of Canada (Get Free Report) National Bank of Canada provides various financial products and services to retail, commercial, corporate, and institutional clients in Canada and internationally. It operates through four segments: Personal and Commercial, Wealth Management, Financial Markets, and U.S. Specialty Finance and International. The Personal and Commercial segment offers personal banking services, including transaction solutions, mortgage loans and home equity lines of credit, consumer loans, payment solutions, and savings and investment solutions; various insurance products; and commercial banking services comprise credit, and deposit and investment solutions, as well as international trade, foreign exchange transactions, payroll, cash management, insurance, electronic transactions, and complimentary services. The Wealth Management segment comprises investment solutions, trust services, banking services, lending services, and other wealth management solutions. The Financial Markets segment offers corporate banking, advisory, and capital markets services; and project financing, debt, and equity underwriting; advisory services in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, and financing. The U.S. Specialty Finance and International segment provides specialty finance products; financial products and services to individuals and businesses in Cambodia; and investment solutions, guaranteed investment certificates, mutual funds, notes, structured products, and monetization. National Bank of Canada was founded in 1859 and is based in Montreal, Canada. About Alior Bank (Get Free Report) Alior Bank S.A. provides banking products and services to individuals, businesses, and enterprises in Poland. The company offers personal and savings accounts; investment loans; mortgage; and insurance services. It also offers bills and cards, trade finance, deposits, internet banking, and treasury related products and services. In addition, the company provides commercial bonds, pension, and investments fund services, as well as operates trading platforms. Alior Bank S.A. was founded in 2008 and is based in Warsaw, Poland. Receive News & Ratings for National Bank of Canada Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for National Bank of Canada and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF (BATS:NUSC Get Free Report) shares reached a new 52-week high during mid-day trading on Monday . The stock traded as high as $35.39 and last traded at $35.33, with a volume of 68827 shares traded. The stock had previously closed at $35.16. Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF Stock Up 0.7 % The business has a fifty day moving average of $34.10 and a 200 day moving average of $35.69. The company has a market cap of $987.92 million, a P/E ratio of 20.51 and a beta of 1.13. Get Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF alerts: Institutional Trading of Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF Several institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of NUSC. TIAA Trust National Association bought a new stake in Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF during the third quarter worth about $65,719,000. Bank of America Corp DE grew its stake in shares of Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF by 14.3% in the 1st quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 5,432,737 shares of the companys stock worth $192,373,000 after buying an additional 679,218 shares during the last quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV increased its position in Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF by 147.6% during the 1st quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV now owns 214,669 shares of the companys stock valued at $7,601,000 after buying an additional 127,973 shares in the last quarter. Abacus Wealth Partners LLC raised its stake in Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF by 12.4% during the second quarter. Abacus Wealth Partners LLC now owns 1,113,016 shares of the companys stock valued at $41,170,000 after buying an additional 122,525 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada raised its stake in Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF by 12.7% during the third quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 1,075,144 shares of the companys stock valued at $37,438,000 after buying an additional 121,344 shares during the last quarter. Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF Company Profile The Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF (NUSC) is an exchange-traded fund that is based on the MSCI TIAA ESG USA Small Cap index. The fund tracks a multi-factor-weighted index of small-cap companies listed on US exchanges. Holdings are screened for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. NUSC was launched on Dec 13, 2016 and is managed by Nuveen. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Nuveen ESG Small-Cap ETF and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. SAF-Holland SE (ETR:SFQ Get Free Report)s stock price hit a new 52-week high on Monday . The stock traded as high as 13.95 ($15.33) and last traded at 13.95 ($15.33), with a volume of 90920 shares changing hands. The stock had previously closed at 13.18 ($14.48). SAF-Holland Trading Up 1.1 % The stocks 50 day moving average is 12.44 and its 200-day moving average is 12.35. The company has a market cap of $640.00 million, a P/E ratio of 8.30, a PEG ratio of 0.44 and a beta of 2.01. The company has a current ratio of 2.30, a quick ratio of 0.99 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 155.96. About SAF-Holland (Get Free Report) SAF-Holland SE manufactures and supplies chassis-related assemblies and components for trailers, trucks, semi-trailers, and buses. The company offers axle and air suspension systems, fifth wheels, hweel systems, coupling systems, kingpins, and landing gears, as well as ball races, braking and EBS systems, lighting systems, and disc brakes. See Also Receive News & Ratings for SAF-Holland Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for SAF-Holland and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer Company Limited (OTCMKTS:SHWGF Get Free Report)s stock price hit a new 52-week high on Tuesday . The company traded as high as $1.73 and last traded at $1.73, with a volume of 0 shares changing hands. The stock had previously closed at $1.73. Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer Price Performance The stock has a 50-day moving average of $1.73 and a 200 day moving average of $1.73. The company has a quick ratio of 2.49, a current ratio of 2.84 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14. Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer Company Profile (Get Free Report) Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer Company Limited engages in the research and development, production, wholesale, and sale of medical devices in the People's Republic of China. It operates through Medical Device Products, Orthopaedic Products, Interventional Products, Pharma Packaging Products, Blood Management Products, and Others segments. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp. (OTCMKTS:TCYMF Get Free Report) shares hit a new 52-week low on Tuesday . The stock traded as low as $1.26 and last traded at $1.26, with a volume of 0 shares. The stock had previously closed at $1.26. Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Stock Performance The company has a current ratio of 0.84, a quick ratio of 0.71 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.63. The firms 50-day simple moving average is $1.34 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $1.47. Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Company Profile (Get Free Report) Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Holding Corp., an investment holding company, manufactures and sells instant noodles, beverages, and instant food products in the People's Republic of China. The company operates through Instant Noodles, Beverages, and Others segments. It offers ready-to-drink teas, juices, bottled water, and carbonated soft drinks, as well as coffee drinks/functional drinks/probiotics. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Tingyi (Cayman Islands) Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Tingyi (Cayman Islands) and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. TransDigm Group (NYSE:TDG Get Free Report) was upgraded by stock analysts at StockNews.com from a hold rating to a buy rating in a note issued to investors on Tuesday. Several other equities analysts have also recently issued reports on TDG. Barclays upped their price objective on TransDigm Group from $930.00 to $1,040.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Monday, August 14th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft initiated coverage on TransDigm Group in a research report on Wednesday, September 27th. They issued a buy rating and a $1,001.00 price objective on the stock. Susquehanna upped their price objective on TransDigm Group from $850.00 to $875.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research report on Friday, November 10th. Wells Fargo & Company upped their price objective on TransDigm Group from $840.00 to $910.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 15th. Finally, Truist Financial reiterated a buy rating and set a $1,044.00 target price on shares of TransDigm Group in a research note on Friday, October 20th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eleven have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, TransDigm Group has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $997.54. Get TransDigm Group alerts: View Our Latest Research Report on TDG TransDigm Group Trading Up 0.7 % TransDigm Group stock traded up $6.44 during trading hours on Tuesday, hitting $970.80. 237,693 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 274,744. The firms 50-day moving average price is $873.26 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $860.38. The company has a market cap of $53.70 billion, a PE ratio of 44.09, a PEG ratio of 1.63 and a beta of 1.38. TransDigm Group has a one year low of $599.42 and a one year high of $1,013.08. TransDigm Group (NYSE:TDG Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, November 9th. The aerospace company reported $8.03 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $7.10 by $0.93. The business had revenue of $1.85 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1.84 billion. TransDigm Group had a negative return on equity of 52.68% and a net margin of 19.70%. The businesss revenue was up 22.6% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $4.74 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts expect that TransDigm Group will post 28.71 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Insider Transactions at TransDigm Group In other news, Director Robert J. Small sold 39,558 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Monday, November 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $965.20, for a total value of $38,181,381.60. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 179,615 shares in the company, valued at approximately $173,364,398. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. In related news, CFO Sarah Wynne sold 5,420 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Thursday, September 7th. The shares were sold at an average price of $883.16, for a total value of $4,786,727.20. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 700 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $618,212. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Also, Director Robert J. Small sold 39,558 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Monday, November 20th. The stock was sold at an average price of $965.20, for a total transaction of $38,181,381.60. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 179,615 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $173,364,398. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold 101,141 shares of company stock worth $95,297,122 in the last three months. Corporate insiders own 7.18% of the companys stock. Institutional Inflows and Outflows Hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the stock. Clear Street Markets LLC boosted its holdings in shares of TransDigm Group by 92.5% during the 1st quarter. Clear Street Markets LLC now owns 102 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $75,000 after purchasing an additional 49 shares during the last quarter. Chiron Investment Management LLC bought a new position in shares of TransDigm Group in the 1st quarter valued at about $512,000. Sands Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in shares of TransDigm Group by 1.2% in the 1st quarter. Sands Capital Management LLC now owns 156,186 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $115,117,000 after acquiring an additional 1,919 shares during the last quarter. Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund lifted its holdings in shares of TransDigm Group by 0.9% in the 1st quarter. Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund now owns 3,988 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $2,939,000 after acquiring an additional 36 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Zurcher Kantonalbank Zurich Cantonalbank lifted its holdings in shares of TransDigm Group by 9.0% in the 1st quarter. Zurcher Kantonalbank Zurich Cantonalbank now owns 30,216 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $22,271,000 after acquiring an additional 2,502 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 95.78% of the companys stock. About TransDigm Group (Get Free Report) TransDigm Group Incorporated designs, produces, and supplies aircraft components in the United States and internationally. Its Power & Control segment offers mechanical/electro-mechanical actuators and controls, ignition systems and engine technology, specialized pumps and valves, power conditioning devices, specialized AC/DC electric motors and generators, batteries and chargers, databus and power controls, sensor products, switches and relay panels, hoists, winches and lifting devices, and cargo loading and handling systems. See Also Receive News & Ratings for TransDigm Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for TransDigm Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Vodafone Group Public Limited (LON:VOD Get Free Report) announced a dividend on Tuesday, November 14th, Upcoming.Co.Uk reports. Investors of record on Thursday, November 23rd will be paid a dividend of 0.05 ($0.05) per share by the cell phone carrier on Friday, February 2nd. This represents a dividend yield of 5.07%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 23rd. The official announcement can be seen at this link. Vodafone Group Public Stock Performance LON:VOD opened at GBX 75.03 ($0.94) on Wednesday. The companys 50-day moving average is GBX 77.06 and its two-hundred day moving average is GBX 76.07. The firm has a market capitalization of 20.32 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 225.79, a PEG ratio of 0.59 and a beta of 0.51. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 109.39, a current ratio of 0.89 and a quick ratio of 0.78. Vodafone Group Public has a 1-year low of GBX 69.73 ($0.87) and a 1-year high of GBX 103.24 ($1.29). Get Vodafone Group Public alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of research analysts recently commented on the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their price objective on Vodafone Group Public from GBX 92 ($1.15) to GBX 89 ($1.11) and set a neutral rating on the stock in a report on Wednesday, November 15th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft reaffirmed a buy rating and issued a GBX 165 ($2.06) price target on shares of Vodafone Group Public in a research note on Wednesday, November 15th. Citigroup cut their price objective on Vodafone Group Public from GBX 79 ($0.99) to GBX 78 ($0.98) and set a neutral rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday. Finally, Barclays reaffirmed an equal weight rating and issued a GBX 95 ($1.19) target price on shares of Vodafone Group Public in a research report on Monday, November 6th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, four have given a hold rating and two have given a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of GBX 106.09 ($1.33). About Vodafone Group Public (Get Free Report) Vodafone Group Public Limited Company provides telecommunication services in Europe and internationally. It offers mobile connectivity services comprising end-to-end services for mobile voice and data, messaging, device management, BYOx, and telecoms management, as well as professional and consulting services; and fixed line connectivity, such as fixed voice and data, broadband, software-defined networks, managed WAN, LAN, ethernet, and satellite; and financial services, as well as business and merchant services. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Vodafone Group Public Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Vodafone Group Public and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. A Yellowstone County man is accused of illegally torching a large pile of lumber on his property, prompting a response from emergency crews that escalated to him charging first responders with a skid-steer. Justin Wade Cary appeared Tuesday in Yellowstone County District Court via teleconference after being charged with multiple felonies and misdemeanors, including assault with a weapon, assaulting an officer and negligent arson. The 43-year-olds arraignment came to an abrupt end after prosecutors recommended his bond amount, with presiding District Judge Jessica Fehr asking that Carys microphone be muted. I never left my property, Cary said before Judge Fehr warned him that everything he said in court was being recorded. Youre going to make (the bond) to where I cant make it, so it dont matter. Deputies with the Yellowstone County Sheriffs Office were called to a fire late on the night of Nov. 16. The flames covered an area of about an acre, court documents said, and was burning on a property along North 13th Road, just west of Worden. The fire was about 30 feet from a residence and was allegedly sending up embers that were drifting across the road and onto nearby properties. When deputies reached the scene, they saw a man later identified as Cary driving a skid-steer toward them, according to charging documents. Wade was allegedly irate with deputies, cussing at them. A crew with Worden Fire Department then arrived and told Cary he was not allowed to burn after dark, and later told investigators Cary didnt have an active burn permit. The fire department had issued several warning to Cary about burning after dark, court document said. Deputies asked Cary to get out of the skid-steer, but he allegedly refused and continued cursing at them. Cary then drove the skid-steer toward a deputys vehicle. He stopped within five feet of him, according to court documents, causing the deputy to worry that Cary would ram him and leading him to call for backup. Cary came close to ramming other emergency vehicles, charging documents said, including a WFD fire engine and another YSCO cruiser. Still driving the skid-steer, Cary allegedly rolled around the property with a can of gas and started lighting random fires. Using the equipment, he carried logs to the front of his property trying to build a barricade, according to charging documents. At that point, YSCOs Tactical Response Team had been activate and were trying unsuccessfully to negotiate with Cary, but he consistently refused to get out of the skid-steer. Law enforcement received a search warrant for the property, court documents said, and managed to detain and arrest Cary. During the arrest, however, Cary allegedly started fighting with deputies and was shot with a Taser. Crews took him to a local hospital for minor injuries, then he was booked into Yellowstone County Detention Facility. He has remained in custody since Nov. 17. While the investigation into the fire and standoff with law enforcement, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder told the Gazette that it appeared Cary was mostly burning logs on the property, and no first responders were harmed. In total, Cary is facing two counts of assault with a weapon, two counts of assault on a peace officer, negligent arson and resisting arrest. At Carys arraignment Tuesday, Deputy County Attorney Victoria Callender asked Judge Fehr to set his bond at $150,000, saying the accusations against him were egregious. Its not right, Cary said in response to the bond recommendation. Im in the right, but Im always in the wrong, he said, repeating that he was on his own property. After muting Carys microphone, Fehr sided with prosecutors in setting his bond at $150,000, and a detention officer soon led Cary out of the room. If convicted of the most serious crime, assault with a weapon, Cary could be sentenced up to 20 years in prison. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday proposed to host the UN climate conference in 2028 or COP33 in India and launched the Green Credit Initiative focused on creating carbon sinks through peoples participation. Addressing the high-level segment for heads of states and governments during the UN climate conference in Dubai, he said India has presented a great example to the world of striking balance between development and environment conservation. India is one among only few countries in the world on track to achieve its Nationally Determined Contributions or national plans to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the guardrail to avoid worsening of climate change impacts. Modi was the only leader to join the opening plenary along with COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber and UN Climate Change President Simon Steill. The prime minister called for maintaining a balance between mitigation and adaptation and said that energy transition across the world must be "just and inclusive". He called for rich countries to transfer technology to help developing nations combat climate change. The prime minister has been championing the Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE movement), urging countries to adopt planet-friendly living practices and move away from deeply consumerist behaviours. He cited a study by the International Energy Agency, saying this approach can reduce carbon emissions by 2 billion tonnes. Modi said everyones interest must be protected and everyones participation is necessary in the fight against climate change. 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For more details you can refer to our Cookie Policy *I agree to the updated privacy terms and I warrant that I am above 16 years of age. *I agree to the processing of my personal information for personalized recommendations, personalized advertisements and any kind of remarketing/retargeting on other third party websites. I agree to receive direct marketing communications via Emails and SMS. (Optional). Please select (*) all mandatory conditions to continue. I Accept Theres a new fraternal order in town. But if the Montana and Yellowstone County Tavern Associations have their way, there wont be any drinking for their cause here. Billings attorney Lyndon Scheveck has registered the Order of Chosen Friends in Montana and is working to open local chapters, including one in Yellowstone County. As a nonprofit, he said, the new order aims to raise money to benefit young people and low-income families across the area. OCF was founded in 1879 by a group of mostly Freemasons and Odd Fellows in Indiana to create an organization to help pay old age and disability benefits. Like many fraternal societies of the day, the original order had a secret ritual and was organized in a three-tiered structure of local councils, statewide grand councils and a national supreme council. The group, however, experienced a number of splits over the years, leading Alan Axelrod, author of the International Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Fraternal Orders in 1997, to call it "almost a parody" of brotherly bonding organizations. I resurrected it, Scheveck, 36, said. He recruited his twin brother and fellow attorney Layne Scheveck, along with Billings businessmen Matt Brosovich and Boone Jones to join as members of the nonprofits board. Now, OCF is seeking four liquor licenses for the Billings area. Theyd like to open an amphitheater by the Yellowstone River and three bars, one downtown, another elsewhere in Billings and one in Laurel. Each would be open to the public and the proceeds from OCFs alcohol sales and gambling would go back into the community, Scheveck said. This isnt to get rich, the Skyview High School graduate said. This would help alleviate some of the financial problems people are having here. OCF plans to use the money to give local kids opportunities, such as going hunting or fishing, taking part in extracurricular activities at school or getting the tools and training to get into trade work. Scheveck, a criminal defense and personal injury lawyer, said he believes it could also help with Billings crime problem by giving teenagers something productive to do instead of getting into trouble. However, both the state and local tavern owners associations are protesting OCFs liquor license application. Theyre fighting tooth and nail over it, Scheveck said. They just don't want competition. Theyre trying to protect their generational wealth. Yellowstone County Tavern Association President Corey Welter said it isnt so simple. The longtime Billings businessman explained the state offers low-cost liquor licenses for veterans and fraternal organizations, such as the Elks Lodge or the VFW. Meanwhile, businesses have to compete for the limited number of liquor licenses Montana allows in each area based on the local population. That, of course, drives up the price of buying into the booze-selling game. In Billings, it now costs between $850,000 to $1 million for a business to acquire a liquor license, versus about $850 for a fraternal organization, Welter said. The Order of Chosen Friends has been defunct since the early 20th Century, he said, noting the recently revived group still has no local membership and has yet to establish meetings. This is an obvious attempt to circumvent the system and get a cheap license. Although the law requires proceeds from a fraternal organization liquor sales to go back into its community service work, Welter isnt convinced OCFs mission is entirely charitable. There are often ways of getting money back from the organization, said the bar, casino and liquor store owner. Welter isnt the only one with concerns, either. The Montana Department of Revenue has received 117 signed letters from Yellowstone County residents, objecting OCFs liquor license. The protesters raise concerns about its ability to operate the establishments lawfully and that the welfare of people and businesses near its locations could be adversely and seriously affected. Scheveck said with a mix of experienced attorneys and business owners on its board, OCF is well-prepared to run the nonprofit according to the law. And, he said, because theyve yet to decide where theyll be located, its hard to determine how anyone or anything nearby might be affected. A hearing for the contested liquor license is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Dec. 4 at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center, 1223 Mullowney Lane. Once the issue has been settled by the state, OCF plans to start recruiting members. Although it's a fraternal order, both men and women can join. Scheveck said he hopes to get younger people involved as membership in similar groups that have historically done charitable work in the community is dwindling. There needs to be new blood, he said. A judge has issued a protective order barring a Southeastern Montana sheriff from his family, their home and schools. Undersheriff Scott McDermott served the restraining order on his boss on Nov. 3. It directed law enforcement to remove the sheriff from his home in Colstrip within 24 hours. Fulton is required to stay at least 1,500 feet from his wife, his teenage daughter and younger son, their residence and Colstrip Public Schools, which serve roughly one third of the rural countys students. Hes also barred from having any kind of communication with his wife and children, but he is allowed to carry a gun. Violating the order is a misdemeanor carrying penalties of up to $10,000 in fines and up to five years in jail. Judge Nickolas C. Murnion found from the request for protection that there was a potential danger of harm for Fultons family and issued an immediate, temporary order to keep them safe until the matter can be considered in court. A hearing to determine whether the temporary order will be extended is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Nov. 22 at the Rosebud County Courthouse in Forsyth. Murnion has recused himself from the case. District Court Judge Olivia Rieger, of Glendive, will preside in his place. Fulton said he and his wife are getting a divorce and the protective order was just an unfortunate part of those proceedings. Character assassination is what it feels like, the sheriff said. I dont think this is fair at all. Fulton told the Gazette his attorney would likely advise him not to go into further detail until his case is considered in court. However, he did point out temporary restraining orders are granted to protect people until a judge hears from each side. Anybody can go get one, he said. I didnt break any laws or anything. Last year, Fulton's certification as a law enforcement officer was placed on a one-year probation after a night of drinking escalated into a marital dispute and a call to police. The Montana Public Safety Officer Standards and Training Council, or POST, investigated the Oct. 2, 2022 incident. The report found the incident started at a friends house when Fulton and his wife got into an argument. He then left, driving her car after hed been drinking. When she returned home, he refused to give her phone to her. She contacted law enforcement and when officers arrived, he initially denied having had a fight with his wife and keeping her phone from her, but later admitted it. Following the investigation, POST concluded the sheriff had engaged in "prohibited conduct" and his actions "violated the code of ethics," which are grounds for certification sanctions. In July, Fulton agreed to a year-long probation during which the suspension of his credential was stayed. The settlement requires Fulton to get a chemical dependency evaluation from a licensed provider, follow any treatment recommendations and allow POST to monitor his progress. As long as he complies with the stipulations of the agreement, follows the law and does not violate again, no further action will be taken. Katrina Bolger, an investigator with POST, said the case status committee determines whether a violation has occurred. Information about the protective order against Fulton will be provided to the committee at its next meeting on Nov. 21. However, Bolger said, it would be uncommon for the committee to take action until the issue has been resolved in court. If Fulton is found in violation and his certificate is suspended, it doesnt mean hed have to give up the helm as Rosebud Countys top lawman. Sheriffs are elected into office and state law does not require them to be POST-certified. Fulton has served with the Rosebud County Sheriffs Office for 26 years. He started in 1997 as a reserve officer and deputy coroner. In 2016, he was appointed sheriff. Voters elected him to his first, four-year term in 2018 and re-elected him for another term in 2022. There are few music ensembles at Saint Marys Central High School that senior Allison Bleth isnt a member of. She plays bassoon in the concert band and wind orchestra, plays piano in the jazz band, and sings in the concert choir and jazz choir. Bleth said she has been playing piano for as long as she can remember, but her bassoon career started in middle school when she had to pick a new instrument to learn. We all had to be in band our sixth grade year, and I just wanted to have something that was kind of unique, Bleth said. Everyone was picking trumpet and saxophone, and I was like, I want to have something that's fun. So I went for bassoon. The daughter of Ryan and Kate Bleth, of Bismarck, is one of the Tribune's 2023-24 Teen of the Weeks, sponsored by MDU Resources Group, which includes MDU Construction Services Group Inc., Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. and WBI Energy Inc., along with Cascade Natural Gas Corp., Intermountain Gas Co. and Great Plains Natural Gas Co. A Teen of the Year will be selected from the weekly winners in the spring and will receive a $5,000 scholarship. Bleth has been a member of the Central Dakota Childrens Choir since second grade and joined the Bismarck Mandan Youth Symphony Orchestra last year. She said the youth orchestra is fun because she gets to play her bassoon with string instruments, which she doesnt get to do at school. It's just really cool because we're able to work with people that we don't go to school with, so we can make new friendships through that, she said. We also get to work with really amazing directors that we don't get to work with at school. I just really enjoy getting to make music with people I don't see very often. The drum major and alto section leader said she likes helping her fellow musicians and being an example of hard work and what it looks like to be dedicated to a program. Bleth has made an All-State music ensemble for three years and was selected for the Northwest International Festival of Music at Minot State University for five years. Saint Marys Band Director Anne Chambers said Bleth is one of the most talented students she has worked with. Allison has provided wonderful leadership qualities in all of the organizations, ensembles and classes in which she participates, Chambers wrote in a letter of recommendation. She is goal driven, hardworking, and highly respected amongst her peers. She has been a great leader within her section and is always willing to lend a hand wherever needed. Outside of music, Bleth is a part of Student Council, Saints for Life, Vera Forma and National Honor Society. She said her favorite way to give back to the community is by volunteering at the Mandan food pantry with her family. The straight A student has taken two Advanced Placement classes and scored a 31 out of a possible 36 on her college entrance exam. Physicians and the former, sole abortion provider in North Dakota have asked a judge to block enforcement of part of a revised law that bans most abortions, saying a provision that allows the procedure to protect a womans health is too vague. North Dakota outlaws all abortions, except in cases where women could face death or a serious health risk. People who perform abortions could be charged with a felony under the law, but patients would not. Tuesdays request for a preliminary injunction asks the state district court judge to bar the state from enforcing the law against physicians who use their good-faith medical judgment to perform an abortion to treat pregnancy complications that could pose a risk of infection, hemorrhage, high blood pressure, or which otherwise makes continuing a pregnancy unsafe. The doctors and clinic are asking the injunction to remain in place until their suit against the full law goes to trial next year. Physicians have perceived the law's language for serious health risk to be so vague that they don't know at what point a condition rises to the level of being what the statute calls a serious health risk, Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Meetra Mehdizadeh told The Associated Press. Physicians want to be able to provide treatment for their patients before their health declines and before they experience serious and potentially life-threatening complications, she said. Because of the restrictions placed on abortion access in North Dakota, they dont know whether they can do that legally. The state's revised abortion law also provides an exception for pregnancies caused by rape and incest, but only in the first six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. It also allows for treatment of ectopic and molar pregnancies, which are nonviable situations. The Red River Womens Clinic sued the state last year after the U.S. Supreme Courts Dobbs decision, which overturned the court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling establishing a nationwide right to abortion. The lawsuit targeted the states since-repealed trigger ban -- a ban designed to go into effect immediately if the court overturned Roe v. Wade -- as unconstitutional. The clinic moved last year from Fargo to neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota, where abortion remains legal. A judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the ban from taking effect last year, which the state Supreme Court upheld in March. In April, the Republican-led Legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill revising the state's abortion law. Republican Gov. Doug Burgum signed that bill into law in late April. In June, the clinic filed an amended complaint, joined by several doctors in obstetrics, gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine. A jury trial is scheduled for August 2024. Chief Justice Jon Jensen wrote in the court's March decision that it is clear the citizens of North Dakota have a right to enjoy and defend life and a right to pursue and obtain safety, which necessarily includes a pregnant woman has a fundamental right to obtain an abortion to preserve her life or her health. State Sen. Janne Myrdal, R-Edinburg, who sponsored the bill, called Tuesday's filing sad" and said it could have come earlier. We can do a lot better in North Dakota than what these people who are suing us are intending to do, so we're going to stand firm and continue to protect life, she told the AP. The Associated Press sent a text message to North Dakota Republican Attorney General Drew Wrigley seeking comment. Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report. The first problem with Marjorie Taylor Greene's book, which debuted yesterday, is its title: MTG. When you search for it online or on Amazon, the results that come up are either products or information about the card game Magic: The Gathering. The second problem is that the book is selling poorly. Its Amazon ranking positions it as the 3,349th best-selling book on the site. Based on my experience as an author, this is a pretty dismal performance. The third problem is the poor reviews the book is receiving. So far, the reviews trickling in are all one-star, which isn't likely to inspire potential buyers. Take a look: I saw my neighbor throwing this book into the trash and ask him if I could read it first. Boy, what a boring mistake. This is book is far from any reality and full of imaginations. Don't waste your time. i couldn't even get thru half of the book.MTG is living in a different world then most people.you can tell it stretches the truth and imagination America First? Printed in Canada. Filled with lies. This book had absolutely nothing to do with Magic: The Gathering. To be fair, that last review isn't entirely correct. Both Magic: The Gathering, and Marjorie Taylor Greene both exist in fantasy worlds, so there is that. Stay tuned for the perpetually aggrieved Jewish Space Laser lady to blame the mainstream media and the deep state for suppressing her masterwork. The second episode of the new Disney theme park YouTube series "Disney Unpacked," featuring Jim Shull, a former Disney imagineer, is about the making of "Crush's Coaster," the indoor family roller coaster ride in Disneyland Paris based on the movie Finding Nemo. Shull designed the ride, and the video takes you through the process from getting his marching orders from Michael Eisner some time after Finding Nemo opened to great success in 2003, to the opening of the completed ride in 2007. The ride centers around the scene in the movie where little lost clownfish Nemo rides on the shell of sea turtle Crush through the East Australian Current. Riders board a turtle shell vehicle that first goes through a relatively slow-moving dark ride showing movie scenes and characters, then darts and spins (it was the first spinning roller coaster in any Disney park) as the story takes riders through the fast-moving EAC. I was on the ride last month, and it is one of the most popular rides in either of the two Disneyland Paris parks, consistently with the longest lines, usually around 75 minutes. We avoided that line by using the single-rider line, which meant our group couldn't ride together, but was a much shorter wait. There's one part early in the ride in which riders briefly exit the show building, which I thought was a nice feature designed to enhance and diversify the ride experience. Shull explains however, that the reason for that brief outdoor excursion, which was put in at considerable expense, was not for the benefit of the riders, but for onlookers; so that anyone viewing the ride from the park would know exactly what it's like. Photo credit: Ruben Bolling The ride is clearly a crowd-pleaser, but Shull also says that the ride's purpose was to increase ride capacity at the park, and I'd say it's less successful at that. Boarding and securing only four guests at at a time, the line moves very slowly. And I had time to notice that process because of another capacity issue: the ride broke down when we were very close to boarding. So we had time to analyze the boarding area very closely while a maintenance crew was called in to look around, kick some tires, and then finally give the go-ahead to resume. Photo credit: Ruben Bolling "Disney Unpacked" is hosted by Shull with Disney historian Jim Hill and theme park expert and data scientist Len Testa, the latter two of whom also host the podcast "The Disney Dish." This episode features lots of concept art from the ride's development process, and it's interesting to see the various ideas that were tossed around. At one point the turtle shell vehicles were to feature Crush's head, tail, and fins, but Shull says that a "crash detection" simulation tool indicated that these extremities would not make it through the turbulent ride, so they were removed. Here's a ridethrough video of "Crush's Coaster," showing the first part of the ride from both angles, facing forward and facing backward. Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao (also known as CZ) on Wednesday announced that he will step down as the CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, after pleading guilty to federal charges and agreeing to pay $4.3 billion in fines. Binance Holdings Limited (Binance), the entity that operates the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.com, pleaded guilty and has agreed to pay over $4 billion to resolve the US Justice Departments investigation into violations. Zhao, a Canadian national, also pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) programme, in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and has resigned as CEO of Binance, the Justice Department said in a statement late on Tuesday. Richard Teng, Binances former global head of regional markets, will be the exchanges new CEO, Zhao said in a post on X. Binance is no longer a baby. It is time for me to let it walk and run. I know Binance will continue to grow and excel with the deep bench it has, Zhao added. As a shareholder and former CEO with historical knowledge of our company, I will remain available to the team to consult as needed, consistent with the framework set out in our U.S. agency resolutions, he said. According to court documents, Binance admitted to prioritising growth and profits over compliance with US law. Binance was launched in 2017 and focused on attracting high-volume customers. Binance failed to implement controls and procedures to prevent money laundering and also did not implement controls that would have prevented US customers from conducting transactions with customers in sanctioned jurisdictions. Binance became the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history, said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. The message here should be clear: using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal, Garland added. Zhao said in his post on X that he will now do some passive investing, being a minority token/shareholder in startups in areas of blockchain/Web3/DeFi, AI and biotech. I cant see myself being a CEO driving a startup again. I am content being a one-shot (lucky) entrepreneur, he posted. Disclaimer: Information, facts or opinions expressed in this news article are presented as sourced from IANS and do not reflect views of Moneylife and hence Moneylife is not responsible or liable for the same. As a source and news provider, IANS is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article. On Wednesday, 1622 stocks advanced, 2067 declined and 141 remained unchanged, with an advance decline ratio of 0.78 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), indicating negative closing of stocks in broader markets. The trend of the major indices on Wednesdays trading is given in the table below. On NSE, 140 securities advanced and closed at a new 52-week high whereas 14 securities sank to close at their new 52-week lows. In sectoral indices, Nifty PSU Bank, Nifty Metal and Nifty Media FMCG were among the biggest losers. Nifty IT, Nifty Auto and Nifty Pharma among the biggest gainers. Wipro (-0.11%) has entered into collaboration with NVIDIA to help healthcare companies accelerate adoption of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) through AI-driven strategies, products, and services. GMR Power and Urban Infra (+5.00%) has acquired 1,051,154,500 equity shares of GMR Energy (GEL), a subsidiary of the company (representing 29.14% of the equity share capital of GEL). AstraZeneca Pharma India (-0.65%) has received permission to import pharmaceutical formulations of new drug for sale or for distribution in Form CT-20 from Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation for the additional indication of Olaparib film coated tablets. Adani Enterprises (-0.94%) wholly owned subsidiary -- Adani Defence Systems and Technologies (ADSTL) has signed Shareholders Agreement and Share Subscription Agreement with Elbit Systems, Israel (ESL). Eco Hotels & Resorts (-4.98%) has entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Accsol Management Services, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. OK Play India (-0.64%) has acquired 100% Shareholding in MRH Technologies to act as its sole and exclusive distributor under MRH Technologies subsidiary to promote, distribute, supply, install and service its new product- PureAir Mobile Fine Dust Particle Filter. Reliance Industries (+0.33%) has planned to invest an additional Rs 20,000 crore in Bengal in the next three years for enhancing digital life solutions, augmenting Reliance Retail footprint and on bio-energy. CG Power and Industrial Solutions (+19.99%) has filed an application with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India seeking approval to set up an Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) facility and the grant of subsidy for the said project. Raymond Limited (-4.4%) fell for the seventh day as the acrimonious separation between Chairman Gautam Singhania and his wife came to light. The stock has fallen 12% since November 13 when Singhania announced a separation from Nawaz Singhania, his wife of 32 years and a Raymond board member. Eclerx Services (+10.55%) insiders sold net 24,098 shares through open market. Ethos (+0.17%) promoter sold net 8,000 shares through open market. The top gainers and top losers of the major indices are given in the table below: The closing values of the major Asian indices are given in the table below: Nawaz Modi, the director of Raymond Ltd and wife of the company chairman Gautam Singhania, claimed that the Ambanis had come to her rescue after Mr Singhania physically 'assaulted' her, says a report from India Today In an interview, Ms Modi says her estranged husband, Mr Singhania, had 'assaulted' her in September and then afterwards had tried to stop the cops from entering the house. "But the Ambanis made sure they (the cops) came," she told the portal. Ms Modi told India Today that Mr Singhania 'assaulted' her and their minor daughter, Niharika, on the morning of 10 September 2023 after his birthday party at their residence in Mumbai. Taking refuge in a room, she and her daughter tried to seek help, but it was Nita Ambani and Anant Ambani who came to their rescue and ensured police action. "Gautam tried to stop the cops from coming, from entering JK House, and he tried not to be smoked out and be brought down and cornered thanks to the Ambanis' instructions, the cops overruled everything Gautam tried. He was then truly cornered. He didn't want the NCs (non-cognisable offence report) to be written. The Ambanis made sure that they were written," Ms Modi was quoted in the report. Meanwhile, Mr Singhania refused to comment on the allegations raised by Ms Modi. He told India Today, "In the interest of my two beautiful daughters, I would like to maintain my family's dignity and I will refrain from offering any comment. Please respect my privacy." Earlier this month, Mr Singhania issued a statement to announce his separation from his wife, Nawaz Modi Singhania . Ms Modi Singhania is a director in at least 10 of the private and publicly-listed companies of the Singhania family, including its flagship Raymond. As part of the divorce settlement, Ms Modi demanded 75% of Mr Singhania's estimated US$1.4bn (billion) net worth, the report from India Today says. Ending suspense that lasted for almost a week, OpenAI says it has reached an an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to its chief executive officer (CEO) with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (chairman), Lawrence (Larry) H Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. In a tweet on X, OpenAI says it is collaborating to figure out the details. We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this. OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 22, 2023 In a tweet, Mr Altman says, "With the new board and with Satya (Satya Nadela) 's support, I am looking forward to returning to OpenAI, and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft." i love openai, and everything i've done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satya's support, i'm Sam Altman (@sama) November 22, 2023 Mr Altman was unceremoniously sacked on 17 November 2023. After creating a high-voltage drama after abruptly sacking him, the OpenAI board started discussions with Mr Altman to return to the company as CEO. However, Mr Altman, who was fired by the board on a video call, was earlier 'mbivalent' about coming back and sought key governance changes. OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who reportedly led efforts to remove Mr Altman, said on X that he deeply regrets his participation in the board's actions. "I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company," he noted. I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we've built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company. Ilya Sutskever (@ilyasut) November 20, 2023 Meanwhile, after hiring Mr Altman to lead its advanced artificial intelligence (AI) research, Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella has said that it's still possible that Mr Altman could return to OpenAI in some capacity. In an interview with CNBC, Mr Nadella said that Microsoft wants Mr Altman and former OpenAI president Greg Brockman to have a fantastic home if they are not going to be in OpenAI. Asked whether Mr Altman would return to OpenAI, Mr Nadella said: "That is for, you know, the OpenAI board and management and the employees to choose (Microsoft) chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI (and) obviously that depends on the people at OpenAI staying there or coming to Microsoft, so I'm open to both options." Mr Nadella said that Microsoft would want to see "something change around the governance" at OpenAI going forward, including around its investor relations. Microsoft, which has invested over US$10bn (billion) into OpenAI to date does not have a seat on OpenAI board. On Monday, more than 500 employees at OpenAI reportedly threatened to resign and join Microsoft. OpenAI has nearly 770 employees. Kyle Rittenhouse became a MAGA celebrity when he shot and killed two men 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum and 26-year-old Anthony Huber with an AR-15 style rifle at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020. He was 17 at the time. Since his acquittal for the killings, he's been enjoying his status as right-wing folk hero, appearing on MAGA podcasts and speaking at far-right conferences. He even got to meet former President Trump a Mar-a-Lago and got his picture taken with him. Trump called him "really a nice young man." But his star-status among the red caps hasn't equated to wealth for Rittenhouse. From Newsweek: During a recent episode of his show, Oliver said: "If you want one, with or without me on it, you can order a sculpture at this website right here. We've actually got one for everybody in our audience. On the day before a national holiday, walking distance from Niagara Falls one of the worlds natural wonders that draws millions of people annually the peace was shattered by an explosion caused by a car crashing into an obstacle near a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection booth. Law enforcement authorities did not know what caused the explosion on the Rainbow Bridge, and U.S. and Canadian officials werent taking any chances, shutting down traffic in both directions to all four international crossings between Western New York and Canada as they looked into whether an act of terror was committed on Western New Yorks doorstep. Close The Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls as law enforcement from multiple agencies assemble to investigate after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A heavily armed Niagara Falls Police officer directs tourists in Niagara Falls away from the Rainbow Bridge after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement barricade the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A view of the debris field inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza on Wednesday. Both occupants of the car died. LEFT: A view of the debris field inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza on Wednesday. Both occupants of the car died. RIGHT: Fire damage is visible at a structure in the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded there Wednesday. The customs plaza is closed at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Fire damage is visible at a structure in the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement barricade the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. The customs plaza is closed at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls, after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement barricade the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A Niagara Falls Police officer mans a barricade at the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Wreckage inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement agents block the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Eyewitness Rickie Wilson describes what he saw to members of the news media outside the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed into the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement officers park an armored vehicle at a barricade outside the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded inside the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. State Police block traffic on Main Street in Niagara Falls near the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News) Law enforcement officers park an armored vehicle at a barricade outside the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after an car crashed and exploded inside the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A Niagara Falls Police officer directs tourists away from the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, N.Y. after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A Niagara Falls Police officer directs tourists away from the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement officers park an armored vehicle at a barricade outside the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded inside the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Photos: Aftermath after vehicle crashes, explodes at Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls Two people died in a vehicle that exploded on the American side of the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls late Wednesday morning, a federal law enforcement source said, prompting the closure of all four Niagara region bridges between the United States and Canada. The Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls as law enforcement from multiple agencies assemble to investigate after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A heavily armed Niagara Falls Police officer directs tourists in Niagara Falls away from the Rainbow Bridge after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement barricade the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A view of the debris field inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza on Wednesday. Both occupants of the car died. LEFT: A view of the debris field inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza on Wednesday. Both occupants of the car died. RIGHT: Fire damage is visible at a structure in the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded there Wednesday. The customs plaza is closed at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Fire damage is visible at a structure in the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement barricade the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. The customs plaza is closed at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls, after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement barricade the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A Niagara Falls Police officer mans a barricade at the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Wreckage inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement agents block the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Eyewitness Rickie Wilson describes what he saw to members of the news media outside the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed into the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement officers park an armored vehicle at a barricade outside the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded inside the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. State Police block traffic on Main Street in Niagara Falls near the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News) Law enforcement officers park an armored vehicle at a barricade outside the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after an car crashed and exploded inside the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A Niagara Falls Police officer directs tourists away from the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, N.Y. after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. A Niagara Falls Police officer directs tourists away from the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded within the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Law enforcement officers park an armored vehicle at a barricade outside the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge to Canada in Niagara Falls after a car crashed and exploded inside the customs plaza, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. But within six hours, local, state and federal officials gave the word: It was not. Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a news conference at the scene at 5 p.m. that there is no indication of a terrorist attack. Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said the crash was a very unfortunate fatal car accident. There is no indication of a terrorist attack at Rainbow Bridge, Gov. Kathy Hochul says. pic.twitter.com/XUZYdyZK3G Charlie Specht (@Charlie_Reports) November 22, 2023 Gov. Kathy Hochul Rainbow Bridge press conference Your browser does not support the audio element. Later Wednesday night, after being briefed by representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the White House, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer said it is clear the vehicle crash is not related to terrorist activity. The FBIs Evidence Response Team on the site of the accident swabbed for explosives and there was no evidence of any chemicals or substances that would create an explosion, Schumer said. He added that the FBI knows the identity of the man who owns the vehicle involved in the crash and his wife, who was also in the vehicle, and it has found no connection between them and any terrorist group or criminal activity. The names of the victims are still not being released at this time, but Schumer said more details are likely to come out tomorrow, on Thanksgiving Day. The investigation is continuing. I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief that this horrible accident was not terror related," Schumer said. Shortly before 10 p.m., The FBI office in Buffalo released a statement announcing that its investigation of the incident was concluded and that it turned the matter over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation. "A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and nor terrorism nexus was identified," the FBI said in a statement. Authorities said the cause of the incident was still currently under investigation. A source with knowledge of the situation said the couple was traveling in a luxury vehicle and had purchased two tickets to a concert Wednesday night in Toronto, suggesting that the crash may have been accidental. Video from the scene showed a fire quickly spreading in the plaza and a huge plume of black smoke billowing into the sky. Other images that circulated on social media appeared to show charred remnants of a shattered vehicle strewn about the plaza. Two people inside the vehicle were dead and a customs officer was injured. Hochul said the investigation would likely take a long time. This vehicle basically incinerated; there is nothing left but the engine, she said. She also said that the authorities have identified that this is a local individual. According to two local law enforcement sources with knowledge of the investigation, the vehicle involved was a relatively new Bentley, and the two occupants of the car were from Western New York. Earlier in the day, the pair were at the Seneca Niagara Casino, the sources said. They were traveling at a high speed as they approached the bridge. Investigators are looking at the possibility that the driver had a medical incident or there was a malfunction with the vehicle. A video obtained by NBC News appeared to show a vehicle speeding on Niagara Street before going airborne at the bridge entrance. Immediately after the crash, U.S. and Canadian authorities shut down not only the Rainbow Bridge, but also the Peace Bridge, Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and Whirlpool Bridge. All but the Rainbow Bridge were reopened by about 5 p.m. At Buffalo Niagara International Airport, flights continued but security was greatly heightened. NFTA police with K9 units checked each car that entered the airport and passengers were subjected to extra screenings. Buffalo City Hall and three Erie County buildings, including the Rath Building, the old County Court House and Family Court, closed early on Wednesday as a precaution. The Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalos two campuses in Amherst and Buffalo announced to members that, under the advice of law enforcement, they decided to close through the Thanksgiving holiday. Turkey Trot organizers said they were keeping in touch with law enforcement, but the annual race is expected to go on as scheduled. A customs officer working at the crossing was injured in the incident. Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center has evaluated and treated a single patient with non-life-threatening injuries from the incident, said Sean Dwyer, the hospitals marketing director. That patient, a border patrol agent, has already been discharged from the hospital, Dwyer added. The FBI Office in Buffalo was leading the investigation. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was aiding in the investigation, along with Homeland Security Investigations. Garcia told The News that his specialty teams are involved in the investigation, as well. The car explosion made national news and drew attention from the top leaders of Washington, D.C. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that President Biden was aware of the incident. The president has been briefed on the vehicle explosion at the Rainbow Bridge Port of Entry. He and his team are closely following developments, Jean-Pierre wrote. Schumer and fellow Senator Kirsten Gillibrand both were briefed by the FBI. Paul Edwards, of England, and Gloria Fiorito, of Hamilton, Ontario, were on their way back from the outlets in Erie, Pa., shopping for holiday gifts for their grandchildren when they noticed the commotion at the Rainbow Bridge entrance. We went on a little getaway for the night. We were looking for deals, which we found, Fiorito said. We were really looking forward to being home today. The couple got out of their car after seeing emergency vehicles gathered at the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge. They approached reporters gathered at the corner of Niagara and Third streets and said they didnt know at first why the bridge was closed. Because its Niagara Falls, Im sure (the news coverage) will spread all over the world, Edwards said. The couple booked a hotel room for the night and said they would try to cross the bridge again on Thursday. They were thankful to not be closer to the scene of the explosion. You never know what could have happened, Edwards said. In this file photo, people are seen gathered in front of the Ricardo J. Bordallo Governor's Complex at Adelup, as they demonstrate in support of Palestine and the end of violence in that region. Similar demonstrations took place at Guam Del. James Moylan's district office in Hagatna last week. Students who walked out of their Montgomery County, Maryland, schools protest against gun violence in front of the White House in Washington, U.S., February 21, 2018. Two weeks after Election Day, Cheektowaga has its next town supervisor. A recount by the Erie County Board of Elections confirmed Democrat Brian Nowak won the seat by a razor-thin margin over Republican Michael Jasinski. Nowak beat Jasinski by 53 votes. The final tally was 9,045 votes for Nowak and 8,992 votes for Jasinski, according to the Board of Elections. The recount process started Tuesday and finished Wednesday afternoon at the Board of Elections office on West Eagle Street in Buffalo. The process involved elections employees separating the ballots by district, counting them by hand and then running the ballots through a machine to confirm the hand count. Nowak was present Wednesday morning to observe the process. The election results will be certified next week, within 25 days of the election. Last week, after all absentee and affidavit ballots were counted, Nowak had a 57-vote lead over Jasinski, or 0.32%. That fell within the 0.5% margin triggering an automatic recount, according to New York State election law. The campaign for the supervisor position was heated, with both candidates butting heads. Leading up to Election Day, Jasinski and outgoing town Supervisor Diane Benczkowski attempted to oust Nowak from his Town Board seat. Jasinski called on Nowak to resign after Nowak publicly called out an applicant to the town Ethics Board for flying a confederate flag at her home. Jasinski also sponsored a resolution to censure Nowak for reportedly offering a bribe to the towns highway superintendent. The Erie County District Attorneys Office looked into that accusation and found no evidence of criminal conduct by Nowak. Since Nowak is a Town Board member, his seat will be vacant once he assumes the supervisor role on Jan. 1. His seat can be filled by appointment or during a special election next year. In an interview leading up to Election Day, Nowak said making Cheektowaga a more affordable place for residents will be one of his top priorities as supervisor. Nowak, 36, has lived in Cheektowaga since 2006, he said. He and his wife have a 3-year-old son and another child on the way. He has served six years on the Town Board and has been a volunteer firefighter with the Cheektowaga Pine Hill Fire Department since 2018. In the election for Town Board members, Democrat Gerald Kaminski will retain his seat and be joined by Republican challengers Barbara Bakowski and Vernon Thompson. Democrat Richard Rusiniak will be the next Cheektowaga highway superintendent. Town Clerk Kimberly Burst and Town Justice David Stevens will both hang on to their positions after running unopposed. MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) Liberian President-elect Joseph Boakai s party announced Tuesday it was cancelling all remaining victory celebrations, a day after authorities said a driver sped into a crowd killing at least three people and injuring 17 others. Our thoughts and condolences go out to the families and friends affected by this devastating, wicked, and barbaric act of domestic terrorism, leading to loss of precious lives, Boakais Unity Party said in a statement. We urge the authorities to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation to determine the cause and hold those responsible accountable, it added. Authorities say the driver of a jeep without license plates switched off the lights of the vehicle and willfully struck a gathering of Unity Party supporters who were celebrating the final results of the Nov. 14 runoff presidential election. According to the National Elections Commission, Boakai won with 50.64% of the second round balloting while incumbent President George Weah took 49.36%. Weah had already conceded defeat several days earlier based on the release of provisional results, and urged his supporters to respect the votes outcome. The incumbent government on Tuesday extended its sympathies to the families of the victims. But in a news release urged the public to refrain from making unsubstantiated claims about the incident, which has the potential of stoking post-elections violence. The government takes particular note of a Unity Party statement, which appears to have drawn a conclusion, by terming the incident as domestic terrorism while at the same time urging the police to investigate the cause of the incident, the news release said. ____ Follow APs Africa coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/africa By MARK M. MENGONFIA Associated Press Latest peace talks between Ethiopias government and Oromo militants break up without an agreement ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) The latest round of peace talks between Ethiopias federal government and a militant group waging a long-running conflict in the countrys Oromia region have broken up in Tanzania without an agreement, both sides said Tuesday. The Oromo Liberation Army says it is fighting for greater determination for the Oromo, Ethiopias largest ethnic group, who have long claimed being marginalized. The insurgency stretches back to the 1970s but has escalated in recent years, killing thousands and rendering lawless vast swathes of Oromia, Ethiopias largest region. The OLA has been listed as a terrorist group in Ethiopia, and the government has accused it of carrying out mass killings against ethnic minorities. A previous round of talks between the OLA and Ethiopian officials in Tanzania earlier this year also failed. Redwan Hussein, the prime ministers national security advisor, blamed the intransigence of the OLA for the latest failure. The obstructive approach and unrealistic demands of the other party are the principal reasons why these talks could not succeed, Redwan wrote on X, formerly Twitter. An OLA statement accused Ethiopias government of trying to co-opt its leadership rather than beginning to address fundamental problems that underlie the countrys seemingly insurmountable security and political challenges. The Ethiopian government signed a peace deal with fighters from its northern Tigray region in November 2022, ending a devasting two-year conflict that is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands. Since then, however, conflict has flared elsewhere. In addition to the conflict in Oromia, the government faces a rebellion by militia fighters in the Amhara region that started in July. Bodies of 4 teenage boys who disappeared on a camping trip in Wales found in their overturned car Bodies of 4 teenage boys who disappeared on a camping trip in Wales found in their overturned car View Photo LONDON (AP) The bodies of four teenage boys who had been missing since they left for a weekend camping trip have been found inside their overturned car, British police said Tuesday. Police in Wales said the bodies of the boys, who were reportedly 16 to 18 years old, were recovered from the car that appeared to have left a highway near Tremadog in Gwynedd, northwest Wales. The vehicle was upside-down and partially submerged in water, police said. A search was launched for Jevon Hirst, Harvey Owen, Wilf Henderson and Hugo Morris after they failed to return home to Shropshire, England, from an overnight camping trip to the Snowdonia area. At present, this appears to have been a tragic accident, and our thoughts are with the family and friends of the four young men at this very difficult time, said police superintendent Owain Llewellyn. Mark Drakeford, the first minister of Wales, said the boys deaths were devastating news. 4 out of 5 Mexicans who got a flu shot this year turned down Cuban and Russian COVID-19 vaccines 4 out of 5 Mexicans who got a flu shot this year turned down Cuban and Russian COVID-19 vaccines View Photo MEXICO CITY (AP) Four out of five people in Mexico who got influenza shots so far this year turned down the governments recommendation that they get Russian or Cuban COVID-19 boosters at the same time, officials said Tuesday. Assistant Health Secretary Ruy Lopez Ridaura attributed the high refusal rate to people being reluctant to get two vaccines at the same time. People have a certain reluctance to get simultaneous vaccinations, Lopez Ridaura said. But the population eligible for flu and COVID-19 shots people over 60 and people with underlying health problems are considered high-risk, and Mexicans in those groups had extremely high take-up rates for Covid vaccines in 2021 and 2022, according to the Health Department. Some people appear to simply distrust the Russian Sputnik and Cuban Abdala vaccines, both designed in 2020 for variants prevalent at the time. It is an old antigen, its as if they were going to give me an influenza vaccine from 2020, said Andreu Comas, a professor of medicine at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi. There are no studies regarding the effectiveness of both of these vaccines against the (current) variants. Mexico has bought millions of doses of the Russian and Cuban vaccines. The original plan was to administer around 20 million shots, but only about 1.9 million people, or 9.5% of those eligible, have agreed to take them since the vaccination campaign started in mid-October. In contrast, 10 million people got the influenza shot in the same period. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been a big supporter of Cuba, hiring Cuban doctors, buying vaccines and construction materials from Cuba and supplying oil to the island. Meanwhile, Mexico has held up approval for Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 boosters, both of which were designed to work against the COVID variants currently circulating. While those shots have been approved for use in the United States since September, they may not be available for Mexicans until 2024. ____ Follow APs coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america Susan Sarandon, Melissa Barrera dropped from Hollywood companies after comments on Israel-Hamas war View Photo NEW YORK (AP) Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Scream star Melissa Barrera were each dropped by Hollywood companies after making comments on the Israel-Hamas war that some deemed antisemitic. Spyglass Media Group, the production company behind the upcoming Scream VII, acknowledged Barreras exit from the horror franchise. The Mexican-born actress, who starred in In the Heights and the two recent Scream installments, had posted statements on Instagram Stories calling the war genocide and ethnic cleansing. Gaza, she wrote, is currently being treated like a concentration camp. Spyglass said in a statement that its position is unequivocally clear: We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech. Late Wednesday, Barrera posted a statement on Instagram Stories about her firing. First and foremost I condemn antisemitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people, she wrote. I believe a group of people are NOT their leadership, and that no governing body should be above criticism, she added. I pray day and night for no more deaths, for no more violence, and for peaceful co-existence. I will continue to speak out for those that need it most and continue to advocate for peace and safety, for human rights and freedom. Earlier Wednesday, Deadline reported that Jenna Ortega, who played Barreras sister in the two previous Scream films, has exited the seventh installment. Ortega earlier departed the franchise because of her Wednesday schedule, the trade reported. A spokesperson for Ortega didnt immediately respond to queries. A spokesman for the United Talent Agency said Sarandon, the five-time Oscar nominee, is no longer represented by the agency. Sarandons exit from UTA followed comments shes made about Israel, most recently in an appearance Nov. 17 at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York. There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence, Sarandon said, according to the New York Post. The Post reported that Sarandon joined the crowd in chanting From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free a slogan some see as antisemitic because it suggests the eradication of Israel. Sarandon could not be reached for comment Wednesday. At the rally, she also was quoted as saying: Theres a terrible thing thats happened where antisemitism has been confused with speaking up against Israel. I am against antisemitism. I am against Islamophobia. The Israel-Hamas war has caused rifts throughout Hollywood. Earlier, when many groups were issuing statements condemning Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the Writers Guild of America ultimately didnt after failing to come to an agreement. Maha Dakhil, a prominent agent with Creative Arts Agency, last month resigned her board seat after sharing a social media post accusing Israel of genocide. Dakhil apologized. Israel and Hamas on Wednesday agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza. By The Associated Press A baby dies and a Florida mom is found stabbed to death, as firefighters rescue 2 kids from blaze A baby dies and a Florida mom is found stabbed to death, as firefighters rescue 2 kids from blaze View Photo DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) Firefighters discovered a woman stabbed to death when they rushed to extinguish a blaze early Tuesday at an apartment in Daytona Beach, while her three young children were taken in critical condition to a hospital where the youngest, an infant, died. Authorities have not released the babys cause of death or the type of injuries and current conditions of the two surviving kids, ages 4 and 5. This is a horrific incident two days out from a holiday that centers around family, Daytona Beach police Chief Jakari Young told reporters at the scene. The mothers name has not been released and police were investigating the fire as a homicide, Young said. Authorities have not named a suspect. The fire began around midnight Tuesday at the Countryside Apartments, Young said, and the infant was found in a crib near the mother. WKMG in Orlando reported that state investigators believe a fire was intentionally set at the apartment. Officials also said a police officer was treated for smoke inhalation. Im very proud of all the officers that initially responded, as well as fire and medical personnel, Young said. If it wasnt for their actions, there probably would have been more lives lost. Buffalos only official hostel for backpackers and budget travelers is in danger of being kicked out of its Main Street home of nearly 30 years because of the deteriorating condition of the downtown building. That has city officials considering whether the former Norbans department store building can be rehabbed or needs to be demolished. But whether the hostel will be able to remain in the future is still uncertain. The hostel has been trying since 2019 to cobble together a plan to buy and renovate the complex, even extending its operations to the back portion. But despite being named designated developer in 2020, it has been unable to advance the work sufficiently or even demonstrate the financial wherewithal to complete the purchase. The designated-developer agreement expired last year. I would rather see it restored and then the city send it out for bid for it to be adaptively reused, said Common Council Member Mitch Nowakowski, whose new district will include the hostel as of Jan. 1. Its better for the city to shore it up and then look for someone to purchase it than to demolish it and see it as a pile of rubble. The Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency is evaluating what to do with the two connected buildings at 667 Main and 664 Washington streets, after city inspectors cited hazardous conditions, and structural engineers from DiDonato Associates warned of a risk of collapse because of serious disrepair and water infiltration. Sign up for the Buffalo Next free newsletter The News' Buffalo Next team covers the changing Buffalo Niagara economy. Get the news in your inbox 5 days a week. That already led to some emergency repairs to an electrical threat in particular, but much more work is needed to stabilize the two buildings. The agency is scheduling an emergency board meeting in two weeks to review two primary options of demolition, at a cost of $741,000, or rehab, estimated at $1.02 million. A full renovation would cost $2.25 million, according to DiDonato. At this time, we are going to take whatever steps are necessary to ensure this building is safe and secure, said Hope Young-Watkins, senior director of the quasi-city agency that owns the property. I am concerned about the overall effects of whats happening with the building, to make sure that everyone its occupants and surrounding neighbors are in a safe position, she said. Time to leave City officials are now advising the leadership of Hostel-Buffalo Niagara that it will have to vacate the Main Street building that it has occupied since 1996, at least until repairs are completed. DiDonato recommended to us that they did not feel it was safe for occupants to be on either side during the construction, and we need to get moving quickly to stop some of the challenges occurring with the building, Young-Watkins said. We dont want it to continue to deteriorate. The goal is to prevent the loss of a building in the downtown core, in the Theater District. That certainly is what the hostel wants, said attorney Laurence K. Rubin, who represents the hostel. It would certainly be a shame to see another property disappear. The hostel began operations 27 years ago, offering space for up to 50 guests per night in large rooms with bunk beds, along with the communal kitchen, dining and lounge spaces. An estimated 5,000 to 7,000 guests visit each year, according to the nonprofit. There are nights when its just jammed, Rubin said. The hostel has been located in the Main Street building, formerly Norbans Self-Service Department Store, since it opened. The 12,000-square-foot masonry building has a half-finished basement, two storefronts on the first floor, and 16 rooms and apartments on the first, second and third floors, with bunk beds. Originally designed by architect E.B. Green, it was constructed around 1900 by the Glenny family. The back section which is connected on the first floor is a 19,000-square-foot former warehouse and industrial building fronting on Washington, with a three-story portion and a one-story portion. Its vacant, except for storage. Unsafe structures The city has been eyeing the potential value of the property for years. It issued a request for proposals to redevelop the complex in 2017, citing its potential for commercial, retail, residential or mixed-use purposes. That led to a campaign to save the hostel, and resulted in the designated-developer agreement. It was extended twice, but expired on Oct. 1, 2022, after it became clear that the hostel lacked the financial resources to pull it off. In the meantime, the structure which already had a history of building violations and failed inspections dating back to 2001 has deteriorated significantly. An inspection in March cited nine violations from two inspectors related to unsafe structures, roof and drainage issues, electrical system hazards, and concerns about exterior walls and the interior structure. That resulted in the issuance of an order to remedy in April, to BURA. The report found that structural elements are compromised from years of water damage, while a temporary structural shoring scaffolding was installed in 2016. Floors throughout the building are severely water damaged and are unsafe to walk on. The roof is damaged and leaking, while vegetation is growing throughout the roof and its large HVAC units. Additionally, theres severe water damage to the service panel, wiring, conduits and fire alarm system, and the electrical panel needed to be moved. Theres also peeling and chipping paint, while some walls need masonry repairs. The order noted that the inspection was not even completed due to the hazardous conditions at interior of this building. Complete deterioration Rubin said he only learned about the crisis from his client a few weeks ago, but Young-Watkins insists that BURA officials have been trying to stay in contact with the hostel all along. After she received the order-to-remedy in April, she said, BURA hired DiDonato to conduct a building assessment, and then she met with the hostels board and leadership in June after the engineers submitted their report. We tried to jump in and handle it immediately, as soon as we got information about what was happening there, she said. The July report by DiDonato which had conducted an assessment in October 2019 found that the existing buildings structural roof and floor systems have completely deteriorated. It recommended replacement of the roof and floors, removal and reframing of stairs, asbestos and mold remediation, repointing and repairs to the masonry at the roof parapets and foundation, installation of a new firewall to separate the two buildings, and replacement of electrical system and fire alarms. They are currently shored, but due to all the water infiltration this condition is getting worse, DiDonato wrote in a Nov. 13 letter to BURA, urging that the hostel evacuate the building. It is only a matter of time before sections of the roof and floor systems start to cave in if no structural intervention is undertaken. In September, Young-Watkins told the BURA board that action would be needed, with a proposal to be brought this month. Instead, more immediate repairs were needed, including to the electrical panel. But the work is far from done, and officials will bring a formal request to the board for emergency approval later this month, after the work timeline, cost estimates and other details are firmed up. There are a number of things that we will need to bring to you that still pose a very high potential of risk, Young-Watkins told the BURA board. Not giving up The hostel was notified Nov. 17 of the need to clear out, but Rubin said the hostel hasnt given up yet. When it was designated developer, the nonprofit had hired Savarino Cos. as its contractor, and had planned to rehab the closed-up rear portion with more street-level storefronts and another six to 10 extended-stay private rooms upstairs, in addition to renovating the Main Street building. The cost is estimated at more than $2.5 million, but Rubin said that the hostel had made progress on getting estimates and financial models for the short- and long-term, and even has letters of intent from lenders. He said its also now working with a new consultant, after Savarino went out of business. We think were going to be able to make a good proposal to BURA, Rubin said. Theres been tons of work done by the hostel, and we were hoping to bring it to BURA as soon as possible. Young-Watkins said no determination has been made about the hostels future. BURA and the city both agree that the hostel is an asset for the city, she said. The hostel itself, and what it does, is a wonderful thing to have in any city, and Buffalo is privileged to have it. Right now, what I have to do is make sure its safe for anyone to be in it should they decide to return to it. No one was injured when a US Navy plane landed in a Hawaii bay, but some fear environmental damage No one was injured when a US Navy plane landed in a Hawaii bay, but some fear environmental damage View Photo HONOLULU (AP) A large U.S. Navy plane remained in a Hawaii bay Tuesday, the day after it overshot a runway and landed in the water, raising concern about environmental damage and questions over how the military would remove the aircraft. All nine people aboard the P-8A were uninjured when the plane, flying in rainy weather, overshot the runway Monday at a Marine Corps base in Kaneohe Bay outside Honolulu. Crews set up a temporary floating barrier to protect the environment, and an investigation is underway, Navy spokesperson Lt. Mohammad N. Issa said in an email Tuesday. The P-8A is often used to hunt for submarines and for reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. It is manufactured by Boeing and shares many parts with the 737 commercial jet. Residents near the bay were eager to hear plans for the massive planes removal and were worried about possible damage to the coral reef in the area, along with harms from fuel and other chemicals. The plane landed about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) from an ancient Hawaiian fishpond, said Hiilei Kawelo, executive director of Paepae o Heeia, the organization that cares for the pond. The plane in the water is concerning, she said. Its directly upwind from our fishpond. Kawelo said she understands removing the plane is a big undertaking but is hopeful the military will at least defuel it in a timely fashion like today. Navy officials didnt immediately answer questions Tuesday about extraction plans, environmental concerns and how the plane ended up in the water. A news release from the Navy later Tuesday said divers worked overnight to help stabilize the plane. Preliminary assessment indicates the aircraft is structurally intact, and there was no sign of fuel leaking from the aircraft, the statement said. The area where the plane landed near the base isnt accessible to the public, but Kawelo said she is familiar with the broader reef that extends in the bay, which is abundant in small fish and octopuses. Im hoping that it landed on a sandy patch that didnt house any coral, she said. But our coral reefs are absolutely critical and important for the ecosystem. They are the foundation for life in the ocean. The plane is adding to the communitys distrust for the military, said Wayne Tanaka, executive director of Sierra Club of Hawaii, noting a massive fuel storage facility that sickened 6,000 people when it leaked jet fuel into a Pearl Harbor drinking water well in 2021. Tanaka said he wants the state to hold the Navy accountable for any damage. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources is expected to conduct a damage assessment after the plane is removed, department spokesperson Dan Dennison said. The state Department of Health, which responds to potential fuel spills, said no fuel has been released so far. A U.S. Coast Guard pollution response team is assisting the Navy. By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER Associated Press SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) The wife of a northwestern Iowa county supervisor was convicted Tuesday of a scheme to stuff the ballot box in her husbands unsuccessful race for a Republican nomination to run for Congress in 2020. The Sioux City Journal reports that jurors deliberated six hours before finding Kim Taylor guilty of 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration and 23 counts of fraudulent voting. Prosecutors said Taylor, a Vietnam native, approached numerous voters of Vietnamese heritage with limited English comprehension and filled out and signed election forms and ballots on behalf of them and their English-speaking children. They said the scheme was designed to help her husband, Jeremy Taylor, a former Iowa House member, who finished a distant third in the race for the Republican nomination to run for Iowas 4th District congressional seat. Despite that loss, he ultimately won election to the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors that fall. No one testified to seeing Kim Taylor personally sign any of the documents, but her presence in each voters home when the forms were filled out was the common thread through the case. Jeremy Taylor, who met his wife while teaching in Vietnam, has not been charged, but has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator. The case remains under investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ron Timmons, one of three prosecutors who presented the federal governments case, said he couldnt comment on any potential future indictments. Kim Taylor, who remains free pending sentencing, faces up to five years in prison on each charge. Now is a time for empathy for a family that is suffering, said her attorney, F. Montgomery Brown, adding his focus is to get the best outcome at sentencing. Brown didnt immediately respond to an email message from The Associated Press about the case or the couples reaction. Woodbury County election officials became aware of possible voter fraud in September 2020, when two Iowa State University students from Sioux City requested absentee ballots, only to learn ballots had already been cast in their name. They were allowed to withdraw those ballots and cast their own, but Woodbury County Auditor Pat Gill, who also is election commissioner, kept the fraudulent ballots. When processing absentee ballots on election night, election workers notified Gill that the handwriting on a number of them appeared to be similar. Most voter fraud cases involve one voter casting a single ballot in another persons name, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Evans, who helped prosecute Taylors case. Despite whats in the media, voter fraud is extremely rare, Evans said. To have someone vote dozens of times for several people, that is rare. President Joe Biden orders US flags lowered in memory of former first lady Rosalynn Carter View Photo PLAINS, Ga. (AP) President Joe Biden has ordered that U.S. flags on federal government buildings and property will be lowered to half staff for five days in recognition of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 96. Bidens order calls for flags to fly half-staff from Saturday through sunset on Wednesday, Nov. 29, the day Carter will be buried in Plains, Georgia, the hometown she shared with former President Jimmy Carter. The order applies to flags at the White House, all other federal buildings and grounds, and all military and naval posts, including navy vessels, in the U.S. and its territories, along with all U.S. diplomatic, military and naval outposts abroad. Such orders are common when major federal government figures die, including first ladies. Presidential spouses, though, do not receive state funerals. Rosalynn Carter will be honored with public events beginning Monday in Sumter County, Georgia, where she and the former president were born, wed and lived most of their lives. Jimmy Carter, who is 99, remains at home under hospice care. A service for Rosalynn Carter will be held in Atlanta on Tuesday, followed by a final funeral Wednesday at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, where the Carters were members for more than 40 years after leaving Washington in 1981. She will be buried on land near the home where she and the former president have lived since 1961, with the exception of four years in the Georgia Governors Mansion and four years in the White House. It is not clear whether Biden will attend Rosalynn Carters Atlanta service. Former presidents and first ladies often attend the funerals of former first ladies. Biden has said he plans to deliver the eulogy for former President Carter when the time comes. By BILL BARROW Associated Press California can share gun owners personal information with researchers, appeals court rules View Photo SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) A state appeals court ruled that California can continue providing personal information of gun owners to researchers to study gun violence, reversing last years decision by a lower court judge who said such data sharing violates privacy rights. In 2021, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law allowing the states Department of Justice to share identifying information of more than 4 million gun owners in California with qualified research institutions to help them better study gun violence, accidents and suicides. The information which the state collects with every firearm sale to perform background checks include names, addresses, phone numbers, and any criminal records, among other things. Under the law, researchers can use the information and make their findings public, but cant release any identifying information of gun owners. In response, gun owners and organizations sued the state, arguing that the disclosure of their information violates their privacy rights. San Diego County Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal ruled to temporarily block the law last October. But on Friday, a three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeals for the Fourth District found that the lower court failed to consider the states interest in studying and preventing gun violence in its analysis before halting the law. In the opinion, Associate Justice Julia C. Kelety sent the case back to the lower court and said the preliminary injunction must be reversed. Lawyers representing the gun owners and firearms groups suing the state didnt immediately respond to calls and an email seeking comment. The Friday ruling came months after a federal judge refused to block the law in a separate lawsuit. The data sharing law is among several gun measures in California that are being legally challenged. In October, a federal judge overturned the states three-decade-old ban on assault weapons again, ruling that the law violates constitutional rights. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said once the data sharing ruling is implemented, the state will resume providing this information to researchers. The courts decision is a victory in our ongoing efforts to prevent gun violence, Bonta said in a statement. He added: The law serves the important goal of enabling research that supports informed policymaking aimed at reducing and preventing firearm violence. Garen Wintemute, who directs the California Firearm Violence Research Center at University of California, Davis cheered the recent ruling. The center has been working with the state on studying gun violence. The courts decision is an important victory for science, Wintemute said in a statement. For more than 30 years, researchers at UC Davis and elsewhere have used the data in question to conduct vital research that simply couldnt be done anywhere else. Were glad to be able to return to that important work, which will improve health and safety here in California and across the country. By TRAN NGUYEN Associated Press MERIDEN About 300 parishioners gathered at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church on Sunday to honor Raul and Gilda Cardona for their lifelong service to the parish and celebrate the feast day of Our Lady of Divine Providence, the patroness of Puerto Rico. After a special Mass with Bishop Emeritus of Hartford Peter Rosazza and several local deacons, the community gathered in the church hall for a traditional Puerto Rican parranda, or party, with Puerto Rican music, dance and food. Were very grateful for the first people who arrived in Meriden and made a way for others, said the Rev. James Manship, St. Rose pastor, in Spanish during grace before the meal. Raul and Gilda Cardona have been deeply involved in church and community service and received heartfelt thanks from fellow members. Event coordinator Elena Medina of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, has been part of the Saint Rose community for over 50 years and read a brief biography of the couples service. Raul Cardona was born in Aguada, Puerto Rico, in 1941. He moved to Meriden in 1958, five days before turning 17. He married Gilda in 1964 and they became involved in the Catholic Cursillo movement of the 1970s in which parishioners work together with priests and bishops to support the church. This was the beginning of their dedicated service to the church and the community. Despite going through difficult times, with health problems and the place he worked closing, Raul Cardona was ordained a permanent deacon in 1983 to serve Meriden, New Britain and Wallingford. The celebration featured traditional Puerto Rican dishes, desserts and a cake adorned with the Puerto Rican flag and an image of Our Lady of Divine Providence. Members of the extended Cardona family, members of the churchs Spanish choir and Mariachi Mexico Antiguo played live villancicos, traditional Christmas music, as parishioners danced and celebrated the start of the holiday season. The celebration on Sunday was the end of nine days of novenas in honor of Our Lady of Divine Providence and a special Spanish-language Mass held in her honor. At the start of the Mass, parishioner Miguel Montijo read a historical account of Our Lady of Divine Providence. He explained Pope Paul VI declared her the patroness of Puerto Rico on Nov. 19, 1969 476 years after Columbus arrived on the island of Borinquen for the first time. The intention is to bring together the two great loves of Puerto Ricans: love for their beautiful island and love for the Mother of God, Montijo read in Spanish. The Mass was filled with cultural elements, including a procession with the portrait of Our Lady of Divine Providence and an offering collected by ushers wearing traditional Puerto Rican hats, known as pavas. During the Mass, Bishop Emeritus Rosazza commended Raul Cardonas four decades of dedicated service to the St. Rose community and his partnership with Gilda Cardona. Raul, I think you have developed your talents over 40 tears of being a deacon and working with the community at St. Rose, he said in Spanish. I think a lot of people have grown in their faith and humanity because of you. lguzman@record-journal.comTwitter: @lguzm_n Latino Communities Reporter Lau Guzman is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Support RFA reporters at the Record-Journal through a donation at https://bit.ly/3Pdb0re. To learn more about RFA, visit www.reportforamerica.org. Its no fun being a sober realist. The fact that Hamas and Israel, the latter due to substantial US pressure, have agreed to a hostage swap (limited to 50 Hamas hostages for 150 Israel hostages, all under 19) and 300 aid trucks a day over a 4 day pause means very little in the trajectory of Israels campaign to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza. Its big significance is as a talking point for each side: for Biden and Israel, to make a low-cost concession and blunt global condemnation; for Hamas, to show willingness to negotiate and get disproportionate hostage exchanges. Below are the terms of the deal as Hamas understands them: Hamas statement on truce: "After difficult and complicated negotiations over many days, we announce, with the help and success granted by Allah Almighty, the reaching of the agreement of a humanitarian truce (a temporary ceasefire) for a duration of four days with diligent and pic.twitter.com/zp4QEWDNLq COMBATE | (@upholdreality) November 22, 2023 300 trucks a day is only a small dent compared to the needs of the inhabitants of Gaza. It is also noteworthy that Gaza coverage on Twitter (and many other venues) dropped dramatically after the lack of fuel in Gaza resulted in loss of power and with it, Internet and cell phone service. The flow of images of the horrors in the combat zone fueled international outrage and made it difficult for Israel to defend its position in front of the wider world, not that that mattered much to its ground campaign. The US is too tethered to Israel at the hip to do much more that achieve change in conduct at the margin. Its theoretical great leverage translates into paltry practical influence due to the how Israel has built itself into a kingmaker within the Beltway and has also succeeded in branding criticism of Zionism as anti-semitism. As former ambassador Alistair Crooke pointed out in his latest interview on Judge Napolitano, Israels destruction of hospitals in Gaza alone makes the enclave uninhabitable. You cant run a medical system for a large population on a long-term basis out of field hospitals. Israel was on the verge of achieving that in North Gaza. Israel spent last night bombing the only remaining hospital in north Gaza and bombing homes all over south Gaza. https://t.co/hllVMLrbmh Mohammad Alsaafin (@malsaafin) November 20, 2023 There is little reason to think Israel will stop destroying hospitals. Of course, flattening housing and wrecking infrastructure also advances the end of making Gaza uninhabitable.until it is rebuilt to suit the needs of Israel. Now admittedly, the entry of aid truck and presumably aid workers will allow for a round of new images of the state of human and habitat destruction in Gaza, so there will likely be another outrage boomlet. But unless Gaza gets enough fuel to restore electricity and the Internet on a sustained basis, Gaza will go dark again, and with it, the opportunity to document Israels crimes and use them to maintain and increase international pressure. Israel will just kidnap 150 people and hand them over to Hamas for 50. This whole hostage taking thing is a meme. Israel has escalation dominance, without external help Palestine is finished. https://t.co/9nB9VH8xsx Korobochka () (@cirnosad) November 22, 2023 The reality is the only parties that can stop the carnage are Arab/Muslim states, by attacking Israel with enough intensity to force Israel to pull substantially out of Gaza to defend other fronts. They have chosen not to and are instead engaging in a campaign of harassment (which by some accounts is escalating; its hard to know given disparate actions by different players). They may win the long game by weakening Israel, particularly economically. The Cradle had a must-read account of the impact as of earlier this month. Things cant have gotten better. Key sections: Data cited from Israels Central Bureau of Statistics reveals a bleak reality one in three businesses have either shuttered or are operating at 20 percent capacity since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood commenced on 7 October and punched a hole in Israeli national confidence. More than half of businesses face revenue losses surpassing the 50 percent mark. The southern regions, closest to Gaza, bear the brunt, with two-thirds of businesses either closed or functioning to a minimum. Adding to the crisis, Israels Labour ministry reports that 764,000 citizens, close to a fifth of Israels workforce, are jobless due to evacuations, school closures mandating childcare responsibilities, or reserve duty call-ups. On Monday, Bloomberg put numbers to the economic impact of Tel Avivs military belligerence: The Gaza war has cost the Israeli economy almost $8 billion to date, with a further $260 million in losses incurred with every day that passes. Theres a lot more detail, such as on damage to the tech and tourism sectors, and the impact of new reluctance to use Palestinian workers. Another story described how the agriculture sector is in crisis due to the loss of foreign field hands (particularly Thais) and the lack of enough Israelis who are willing and able to step in. Now one can argue that Israel is small enough that the US (unlike with Ukraine) could support its government budget on a long-term basis. But what kind of society would it be? One with a badly atrophied commercial sector, a bulked-up military, subsisting on foreign welfare? But even if Israels opponents succeed in bleeding Israel into permanent weakness, that is of no help to the Palestinians, who still look set to be killed in catastrophic numbers. Perhaps enough international pressure could eventually be brought on the US to get us to finally pull Israels choke chain. But by then, it seems highly likely that Israel will have established facts on the ground in Gaza (deaths plus built environment destruction) for Israel to have decisively won in its aim of removing substantial numbers of Palestinians from Israel permanently. When Buffalo teamed up with Rochester and Syracuse to be named one of 31 tech hubs around the country by a federal agency, it proved that regional collaboration can pay off. But that was just the start. Now, representatives of the three regions are back at it, trying to secure tens of millions of dollars the federal government will award to a select number of those tech hubs. The upstate partners task this time is different, and with more on the line. The first time around, the three regions had to make the case for why their combined territory deserved tech hub status, based on the assets they had to offer. They competed against nearly 250 other applicants, as the federal government aims to promote innovation beyond hotbeds like Silicon Valley. Their joint pitch under the NY SMART I-Corridor Tech Hub banner succeeded, putting the three-region area in the running for up to $75 million in federal funding. But only five to 10 of the 31 tech hubs are expected to receive funding through the program run by the U.S. Commerce Departments Economic Development Administration. Those awards could range from $50 million to $75 million. This time around, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse must propose how they would put funding into action. Here is whats ahead for the partners: Chipping in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse built their joint pitch around cultivating the semiconductor industry. Its an industry that has already taken root in New York State. But its getting a mammoth boost from Micron Technologys plan to invest up to $100 billion in a chip-making complex near Syracuse. Just a few hours drive to the west, Intel is pouring $20 billion into two chip-making facilities near Columbus, Ohio. The Buffalo-to-Syracuse corridor extends between the massive Micron and Intel projects. Plus, Edwards Vacuum is planning to invest $319 million in a Genesee County manufacturing plant within the corridor, to support the semiconductor industry. The federal government wants to pump up domestic semiconductor production after supply chain disruptions during the pandemic. Semiconductor production is heavily concentrated in Asia, but new factories are coming online in the United States. Legislation advocated by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer is incentivizing domestic chip manufacturing. Collaborating, not competing Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse realized their best shot at getting designated as a tech hub was by working together. When it comes to chasing economic development, its a different tack for them. We are actually, for the first time, aligning around a really big vision and a really big strategy across Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, said Christina Orsi, president of the John R. Oishei Foundation. We have not done that (before). We have competed with each other. Each of the three regions can benefit from collaborating, said Joseph Stefko, president and CEO of ROC2025, an alliance of Rochester economic development organizations. To effectively compete for national and global investments, its not going to be Buffalo alone, or Rochester alone, or Syracuse alone, its going to be as a combined force, Stefko said. I think the framework weve built here, the collaborative framework is going to serve us really well, far beyond what happens in tech hubs. Benjamin Sio, senior vice president of strategy, policy and planning for CenterState CEO, an economic development organization in Syracuse, recalled the negotiations CenterStates CEO had with Micron before the tech company committed to its project. Micron wasnt interested in only the resources available in the Syracuse area, Sio said. Company officials asked about the number of engineering graduates coming out of the University at Buffalo and Cornell University, and research and development spending on semiconductors at SUNY Albany. These companies care about what is happening in upstate New York in general, Sio said. They are requiring us to look beyond these regional boundaries and create new partnerships, work with new training providers on figuring out new ways to fill these jobs. The Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse regions are already connected in some ways, Stefko said during a recent discussion hosted by the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. He cited research that about 70,000 individuals live in one of those three regions but commute to work in one of the other two regions. Securing the money No doubt it helps to have someone with Schumers clout talking up the NY SMART I-Corridor Tech Hubs bid. The Senate majority leader championed the legislation that created the tech hubs. But the three regions still have to put in the work to secure the funds in the competition. Tech hubs have until Feb. 29 to file their applications. Dottie Gallagher, president and CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, said the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm was valuable in helping prepare the three-region coalitions application for tech hub status earlier this year. So the partners will hire McKinsey to support the next phase, as well, she said. The tech hubs are required to submit applications for individual proposed projects perhaps two to five such proposals instead of one, all-encompassing proposal, Sio said. Each of those applications will be individually judged, he said. They could choose not to fund one. So its incumbent on us to make sure those applications, however many there are, are as competitive as possible, they have as much leverage as possible, they have as much as regional collaboration as possible. Stefko said projects the partners submit will have to be prioritized through a regional lens. This is less about, what is the building we put in Rochester or Buffalo or Syracuse, and how do we scale this opportunity across the regional corridor? he said. What might the projects involve? The partners are starting to work on those details, Gallagher said. What weve talked about is really looking at where are the gaps in the strong market that we have here, and how can we find projects that will be catalytic in terms of filling those gaps, so we can really get moving as a region, she said. Funding power If the three regional partners succeed, they hope to be awarded $75 million through the tech hub program. But they view the funds as akin to seed capital, kick-starting the tech hub plans. Stefko pictures tech hub funding as one layer in a larger capital stack, and building a capital stack that would have sustained impact. He mentioned philanthropic organizations, public entities and the private sector as other potential sources of funding. The SMART-NY partners hope if Congress commits additional funds to the tech hub program down the road, beyond the initial $500 million, the region could tap into even more funding. Were looking at this as an opportunity for sustained federal investment, Stefko said. Fully funded, the federal tech hub program could reach $10 billion. Win or lose Decisions on tech hub funding are expected to come in spring 2024. Win or lose, representatives of the three regions believe what they have accomplished through the tech hub process bodes well for future collaboration. Think about this as an investment prospectus, Gallagher said. This is how were working together to actually drive investment in the regions. The regions tech hub status also serves as a kind of Good Housekeeping seal of approval that could open up the region to federal funding from other agencies and organizations, she said. Gallagher said the Micron deal is a leg up because that investments happening, and its real, and it will have spillover effect in our region regardless. Thats going to help keep the momentum going, as well. Stefko didnt hedge about the SMART-NY bids chances of securing tech hub funding. This program was tailor-made for our region, he said. I really wont contemplate a scenario in which we dont win. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Allied leaders from the Western Balkans in Skopje on Wednesday (22 November 2023). Hosted by Prime Minister Dimitar Kovacevski of North Macedonia, the meeting was attended by Prime Minister Edi Rama of Albania, President Zoran Milanovic of Croatia, and Prime Minister Milojko Spajic of Montenegro. The leaders discussed strengthening NATOs deterrence and defence, growing geostrategic competition, NATOs continued support to Ukraine, and the situation in the Western Balkans. The meeting marked the end of Mr Stoltenbergs four day visit to the Western Balkans, where the Secretary General met with leaders from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia and North Macedonia. In every stop, I made clear that stability in the Western Balkans depends on all sides choosing dialogue and diplomacy over conflict and chaos, he said. This region is strategically important to NATO but there are reasons for concern, said the Secretary General. He also stressed that ending secessionist rhetoric would boost stability and enable reforms in Bosnia-Herzegovina and he called for Belgrade and Pristina to reengage with the EU-facilitated dialogue. The latest proposals for the establishment of the association of Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo could be an important step forward, he said, adding that, it is time to overcome regional conflicts that have continued for far too long. (As delivered) Prime Minister Kovacevski, Dear Dimitar, Thank you so much for hosting us all here today in Skopje together with NATO Allies from the region. It is good to be together with you all today. And we just finalized and finished a very interesting meeting where we addressed common security challenges we all face in the Western Balkans. But let me start by saying that the Republic of North Macedonia is a valued NATO Ally, making important contributions to our shared security. North Macedonia also leads by example as a successful multi-ethnic society. Demonstrating how people from different ethnic and religious groups and backgrounds can live together in peace. And build a country together. In a few months time, we will mark NATOs 75th anniversary. And at our next Summit in Washington, we will continue to adapt our Alliance for the future. We will strengthen NATOs deterrence and defence. Address growing geostrategic competition. And maintain momentum in NATOs support to and relations with Ukraine. Today, in our meeting, was an opportunity to discuss all of these issues. As well as the situation in the Western Balkans. This region is strategically important to NATO. But there are reasons for concern. We see secessionist threats in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a fragile security situation in Kosovo. And stalled normalisation between Belgrade and Pristina. On top of this, authoritarian states like Russia seek to undermine our democracies with cyber and hybrid threats. I have just completed a tour of the region. In every stop, I made clear that stability in the Western Balkans depends on all sides choosing dialogue and diplomacy over conflict and chaos. Ending secessionist rhetoric would boost stability and enable reforms in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Re-engaging in the EU-facilitated dialogue is essential to Belgrades and Pristinas path to peace and prosperity. The latest proposals for the establishment of the association of Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo could be an important step forward. It is time to overcome regional conflicts that have continued for far too long. We also discussed Russias brutal war of aggression against Ukraine. There are no signs that Putin wants to negotiate or stop fighting. So I commend NATO Allies present here today for providing vital support to Ukraine. This is even more important when the situation on the battlefield is so difficult. So Prime Minister, thank you again for hosting us all today. I look forward to working closely with you all as we start to prepare for the upcoming Summit in Washington. Thank you so much. Moderator: [speaks Macedonian] Journalist: [speaks Croatian] Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: I think we need to understand why this region is of great importance for NATO. We don't see any imminent military threat against any NATO Ally in this region. What we see is increasing tensions in particular in Kosovo. We also see that there are rising tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but we don't see any direct, imminent military threat against any country. So yes, we are concerned about the developments, which are going in the wrong direction in some countries in this region. But at the same time, I think it's also to understand and to recognise the strength and the importance of NATO. And NATO has been present in this region for many years. We now also have several NATO Allies represented here in this meeting. In Kosovo we have already increased our presence with around 1000 extra troops also with some heavier armour. And we are, of course, vigilant, we are closely monitoring the situation. And we will always do what is necessary to protect and defend all Allies. But this is more about how to work with our partners in the region. How to help to stabilize our neighbourhood because when our neighbours are more stable, we are more secure. And therefore it has been very useful for me to sit down with the other leaders from the region and to improve and to share, to improve our analysis and to share our assessments because that helps us to get a better common understanding of the way forward. The Western Balkans are core business for NATO. We have Allies and partners in the region. We have history here. We have presence here and we have a responsibility to help to ensure peace and prosperity. And therefore, this meeting has been important. Then just to mention briefly that yes, of course, I will look into the proposal from Prime Minister Edi Rama, supported also by the President of Croatia, that of course what we should look into is whether we should meet on a more regular basis and also inviting [inaudible] nations. [Questions to various regional leaders] Moderator: [speaks Macedonian] Journalist: Good afternoon. I have a question for the President of the government of Montenegro. You have been appointed Prime Minister recently: will the cooperation with NATO be on the top of the agenda? And if Mr. Stoltenberg can say and answer the same question what are the expectations of NATO from the new government in Montenegro? Thank you. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg: We expect that the new government will continue to ensure that Montenegro continues to be an important and highly valued NATO Ally. I had the honour and the privilege of welcoming Montenegro as a new member of the Alliance a few years ago. It has been a great pleasure to work with Montenegro and I look forward to working with the new government because Montenegro is a NATO Ally and an important region for our Alliance. Montenegro contributes to different NATO missions and operations. I met Montenegrin soldiers, officers, and different NATO missions and operations and I've been impressed by their commitment, their professionalism, and I look forward to see more of those troops in different NATO missions and operations in the future. Then, of course, we also appreciate very much the clear commitment by Montenegro to continue to invest more in defence: in a more unpredictable and dangerous world there is a need to invest more in security and Montenegro is doing that. And lastly, Montenegro plays an important role in the Western Balkan region, bordering countries and, as the prime minister said, having a good relationship with all the neighbours is important in itself. But also what Montenegro does when it comes to help and support the NATO efforts to facilitate and support the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade to address the tensions and difficulties we see in Kosovo is also an area or a topic or task where Montenegro plays an important role and I look forward to see continued effort from Montenegro on exactly these efforts. Moderator: [speaks Macedonian] American diplomats privately warn Biden regime that Arab world is furious over U.S. position of unconditional support for Israel The United States is ostracizing itself in the Middle East, a cadre of American diplomats in the Arab world has told the Biden regime. America's limitless and unconditional support for Israel's genocidal military campaign in Gaza "is losing us Arab publics for a generation," reads a diplomatic cable obtained by the media. This cable underscores widespread concern among American officials about the growing anger around the world towards the U.S., which rather than condemn Israel's genocide in Palestine is supporting it with cash, weapons and troops. "We are losing badly on the messaging battlespace," reads a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Oman, citing conversations with "a wide range of trusted and sober-minded contacts." The actions of the U.S. in failing to condemn Israel for carpet-bombing Gaza in response to the October 7 false flag attack remember: Israel ordered a stand-down for a full seven hours that day, allowing Hamas to infiltrate are widely seen "as material and moral culpability" among the general public "in what they consider to be possible war crimes." The cable in question was written by the second-highest U.S. official in Muscat, and was sent to the White House's National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). (Related: Check out these October 7 testimonies showing that Israel's IDF shot up and "burned alive" Israeli civilians Hamas killed far fewer Israeli civilians than we are being told.) Israel wants to level Gaza to build Ben Gurion Canal connecting Mediterranean Sea to Red Sea The American embassy in Cairo also sent a cable that was relayed back to Washington as part of a daily media summary. It corresponded with commentary made in a state-run Egyptian newspaper about how "President Biden's cruelty and disregard for Palestinians exceeded all previous U.S. presidents." As of now, the Biden regime continues to avoid calling for a ceasefire, all the while ramping up the amount of "aid" going into Gaza while pushing for "humanitarian pauses," meaning Israel agrees to stop shooting and bombing Palestine for a few hours a day every so often. This is too little, too late, according to many who are outraged that the U.S. is not taking a more hardline stance against Israel's relentless aggression against Gaza, which sits atop land that Israel wants to use for its Ben Gurion Canal Project. The leaders of Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) joined the Jordanian foreign minister and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this past weekend to converse with the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) about calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Blinken, a Zionist, reiterated U.S. opposition to this call, arguing it will allow Hamas time to regroup and launch another attack on Israel. On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out against the daily four-hour "pauses" of bombings in Gaza, though this was probably Netanyahu playing to his coalition. While U.S. officials in public seem to support Israel no matter what, there is private chatter suggesting that many of them simply cannot stomach what Israel is doing to Gaza and secretly support a ceasefire. Many Americans also oppose Israeli aggression against Gaza, marking a major shift in public sentiment about the matter. Last week, Biden himself was confronted by a protester at a private fundraiser who called on the Phony-in-Chief to call for a full ceasefire immediately. Certain entrances to the White House compound were also found to be covered in bright-red handprints, this meant to mimic blood, along with words like "genocide Joe." The latest news about the escalating situation in the Middle East can be found at Chaos.news. Sources for this article include: CNN.com NaturalNews.com IndianExpress.com Biblical brainiac Ben Shapiro lies exposed Ben Shapiro has been particularly vocal during the last few years, and is no stranger to controversy due to his outspoken views. For example, he has opposed same-sex couples raising children; he has said (and sort of retracted) that Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. and more. During the past month however, his comments have had the ability to cause more than offence due to him sharing unverified propaganda and lies concerning Israel-Gaza where he promotes himself as an expert on the subject. However, he has now been exposed by real experts. (Article by Patricia Harrity republished from Expose-News.com) Propaganda Tools In times of crisis, individuals frequently gravitate towards social media, driven by a lack of trust in mainstream news and its tendency to broadcast the official government narrative and propaganda. Amid diverse perspectives on the various platforms, there is a shared aspiration for truth. Deceptive entities deliberately engaging in dishonest and misleading practices exploit this tendency to share content without thorough verification making individuals susceptible to their manipulation and their spread of unverified reports, leveraging the widespread dissemination of information. The lies and propaganda circulate faster than verification and find their way to mainstream news and official statements, in turn amplifying the online falsehoods. Trust is certain individuals is fundamental to the development of our beliefs, hence the reason so many people believed the word of doctors during the great hoax and previously trusted characters such as Doctor Hilary Jones, were used to sell the virus, the masks, the jabs and their loyal followers who had no reason to doubt them before, believed every word they said. This appears to be the same tactic used for the various other crises we have thrown our way. Prominent characters have been thrust into the limelight to play their part in the New World Order productions after years in rehearsals, touting perspectives that we can resonate with. A trust in their intellect and views develop among individuals thus, making them the perfect tool to spread new government narratives and propaganda. Benjamin Shapiro Two characters, or tools that I am thinking of, are Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro who have had bit parts up until now, where we are seeing them becoming increasingly political and vocal about the situation in Gaza. Ben Shapiro in particular has been guilty of spreading unverified propaganda that arguably created a hate filled divide in public opinion concerning the Gaza Israel situation. Their usual intellectual sounding word salad that has been accepted by their followers has continued, but largely without demands for verification, up until now. Norman Finkelstein has been just one person who is questioning Shapiro and has asked him to join him in an online debate, Shapiro so far has rejected the offer, the information below about Norman Finkelstein may show why that is. Benjamin Aaron Shapiro is a 39 year old American lawyer, columnist, author, and conservative political commentator. Shapiro writes columns for Creators Syndicate, Newsweek, and Ami Magazine, and serves as editor emeritus for The Daily Wire, which he co-founded in 2015. Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show, a daily political podcast and live radio show. Norman G. Finkelstein Norman Finkelstein has written of his parents experiences during World War II. His mother, Maryla Husyt Finkelstein, grew up in Warsaw, Poland, survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Majdanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Her first husband died in the war. Normans father, Zacharias Finkelstein, was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp. Source Finkelstein now an American Political Scientist received his PhD from the Princeton University Politics Department in 1987. He has authored many books including THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY: Reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering, GAZA: An inquest into its martyrdom, and most recently, I ACCUSE! Herewith a proof beyond reasonable doubt that ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda whitewashed Israel. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled, Ill Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Politically Incorrect Thoughts on Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom. Source Today Finkelstein posted a thread on the X platform which I have written out below. Natural Superiority of Women? Brainy hunk Jordan Peterson was interviewed by Piers Morgan about Gaza. He confidently stated that This is a last ditch attempt by the Iranian mullahs to use the Islam against Jews story to prop up their own dismal reign. And so they rattled the chain of their Hamas puppets and said provoke, and they [Hamas] did. Not even Israeli intelligence makes such a demented claim. Boy Wonder Ben Shapiro has put out his own fact-based video that features an image of him as a Jewish Tom Cruise in Top Gun. (Top Nebbish?) Shapiro asserts that the Khartoum Three Nos paved the way to the June 1967 war. Except that, in the real world, the Khartoum summit convened not before but after the war. Not a terrific showing for self-described Alpha-genius males. Meanwhile, I was interviewed by Jordan Petersons daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, and Ben Shapiros colleague, Candace Owens. Each of them humbly confessed at the outset that they were largely ignorant of the subject matter. Each listened respectfully and intently. Each posed logical, acute questions: Peterson wondered why the 1947 UN Partition Resolution awarded Jews 56% of Palestine if they only comprised one-third of the population, while Owens wondered what Israel stood to gain by committing a genocide in broad daylight. When I juxtaposed in my mind Jordan and Mikhaila, Top Gun and Candace, a book I read as an undergraduate came to mind, Ashley Montagus The Natural Superiority of Women (source). Boy Wonder Ben Shapiro Below is the Fact Video that Norman Finkelstein was referring to. Biblical Brainiac Ben Shapiro Exposes Lies about Israel Norman Finkelstein wrote on his substack that his close friend and editor, Deborah Maccoby, wrote him an irate email after listening to Ben Shapiros FACTS video; 00: 35). Maccoby, who took her degrees from Oxford, is the daughter of famed British-Jewish historian Hyam Maccoby and is currently editing his essays on T.S. Eliot. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Shapiro managed to get all his facts wrong. Here is Part 1 of Maccobys evisceration.] The Ben Shapiro Version of Ancient Jewish History Series 1: The name Palestine. MYTH Ben Shapiro states: the Jews were exiled from Israel in 136 CE, after the Bar Kochba Revolt: the Romans, in an attempt to shame the Jews, renamed the area Palestine as an insult, after the Jews historic enemy the Philistines. The question of exile is a separate issue, which I will address in a later post in the Ben Shapiro Version of Ancient Jewish History Series. This post will only address the question of the origin of the name Palestine. PREVALENCE OF THE MYTH Mr Shapiro is repeating a myth that according to a letter from Kenan Jaffe, an American Jewish high school classics teacher, that was published in 2017 in the US Jewish paper The Forward has become received wisdom but is clearly and demonstrably false. Mr Jaffe was responding to an article by J. J. Goldberg which though in itself it is a fascinating piece that predicts the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that is taking place at the present time includes in passing a comment that the name Palestine was coined by the ancient Romans after their conquest of Judea. I have included Mr Jaffes letter below as an Addendum. On a personal note, I first encountered the myth in 2019, when a US publisher who wanted to republish my fathers book Revolution in Judaea: Jesus and the Jewish Resistance (New York, 1981) sent me a trial copy in which, to my horror, the name Palestine which my father, in accordance with accepted scholarly usage, employs to mean the land as a whole, as distinct from specific areas of the land such as Judaea was changed throughout to Israel! When I pointed out that this was factually wrong and demanded that the name Palestine be reinstated, the publisher responded with the claim that it was only in 136 CE that the land had been named Palestine, so my fathers use of the name to describe the whole land in the first century CE was anachronistic. After much argument, the publisher agreed to reinstate the name Palestine. FACT Since the fifth century BCE, when Herodotus first used the word to mean the entire land, it has been commonly known as Palestine. The Romans only gave official expression to a name that had been used for centuries. The whole land has never been called Israel. EXPLANATION AND EVIDENCE To address first my point above that the whole land has never been called Israel (in response to Mr Shapiros phrasing The Jews were exiled from Israel): The political, territorial title Israel (as distinct from the extremely vague religious concept of Eretz Israel, or the Land of Israel)1 has only ever been used for a) the ancient Northern Kingdom of Israel, which is thought to have lasted about 200 years, from the tenth to the eighth century BCE;2 b) the modern State of Israel, which was founded in 1948 and, according to international law, is confined to the pre-1967 borders. My fathers library contains numerous standard works about the land in the time of Jesus; and the use of the name Palestine to mean the whole land at that time is such accepted, taken for granted usage among the writers of these books that they have not thought it necessary to justify the term.3 But the Palestinian academic Nur Masalha has devoted a section of his 2018 bestseller Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (London 2018) to the history of the name. Professor Masalha cites the use of the name Palestine by (among other pre-second century CE Greek writers) the fifth century BCE Greek historian Herodotus, who was the first to use the name for the whole land, instead of just for the area where the Philistines lived,4 and the fourth century BCE Greek scientist, philosopher and historian Aristotle, whose description of a lake in Palestine is widely understood to refer to the Dead Sea (pp. 72-77). Moving on to the Romans, Professor Masalha cites the use of the word Palestine in the works of the first century CE poets Ovid and Statius and the first century CE orator, philosopher and historian Dio Chrysostom (pp. 83-84) and also the first century CE geographer and historian Strabo, the first century CE natural historian Pliny the Elder and the first century CE geographer Pomponius Mela (pp. 87-90). Professor Masalha also cites the use of Palestine, meaning the whole land, by the first century CE Jewish philosopher Philo and the first century CE Jewish historian Josephus (pp. 90-91). Professor Masalha concludes (pp. 83-84): The Romans conception of Palestine had nothing to do with any biblical narratives or the Old Testament narrative of the Philistines . The administrative name of the new province, Syria Palaestina, was almost certainly inspired by the works of classical Greek and Roman geographers, historians and poets who had contributed so much to the spread and popularisation of the name Palaestina since the work of Herodotus in the fifth century BC. ADDENDUM: LETTER FROM KENAN JAFFE IN THE FORWARD, September 25, 2017 https://forward.com/opinion/letters/383433/the-real-history-of-the-name-palestine/ J. J. Goldbergs September 18 column, A Major Jewish Philanthropist Just Published a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Palestinians, is an important journalistic contribution to the American Jewish discussion about Israel, but it contains one subtly pernicious misconception. Mr. Goldberg repeats the received wisdom that the term Palestine was coined by the Roman rulers of Jewish Judea. According to this story, which I have heard on many occasions from knowledgeable individuals, the Romans renamed most of the land of Israel after the traditional Israelite enemy, the Philistines, as an insult to the Jews who had unsuccessfully rebelled in the early 2nd century CE. I only discovered that this story is clearly and demonstrably false by accident through a chance encounter with some basic classical texts and subsequent research. It is true that the Romans only implemented the name Palestine as an administrative provincial category after the Bar Kochba rebellion, which is no doubt the source of much confusion. But more than a century before Bar Kochba and before the Romans had any political use for the term, the Roman poet Ovid wrote that a primordial mythological character sat by the edge of the waters of Palestine, contextually referring to a region west of Mesopotamia. In the 5th century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus referred by name to Palestine as a land connecting Egypt and what is now Lebanon, inhabited by several peoples. These are only two examples of many texts that attest to an ancient and ongoing reference to the name Palestine. The name Palestine does not derive from a historical episode that is all about Jews and our rebellions and lost primacy in the land of Israel. Since the beginning of classical antiquity, Palestine has been consistently used as a general term for an ill-defined region inhabited by many groups, Jews often prominently, but never exclusively among them. 1 The first mention in the Bible of the boundaries of the Land of Israel is Genesis 15: 18: The Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates. So this earliest promise is the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. It is puzzling that the fundamentalist settlers on the West Bank dont demand all this. Other Biblical references to the borders of the Land of Israel vary widely. Israel is also used in the Bible to mean the people of Israel. 2 The Northern Kingdom, which began in Samaria, expanded by conquest until it became a major regional military power, incorporating Galilee and parts of southern Syria and Transjordan and extending in the south as far as the territory of the Moabites; but the Northern Kingdom was eventually conquered by the Assyrians and destroyed. For an archaeological history of the Northern Kingdom, see Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeologys New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts (New York, 2001), pp. 149-225, and David and Solomon: In Search of the Bibles Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York, 2006), passim. For a map of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the ninth century BCE, see ibid., p. 102. 3 For instance, see the title of the classic and magisterial work Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London, 1977), by the renowned American Christian scholar E. P. Sanders, who was a close friend of my father (St Paul lived in the first century CE). Sanders feels no need to justify his title. 4 See p. 45: Herodotus was the first historian to denote a geographical region called Palaistine which was far wider than ancient Philistia. Brother Nathanael Debunks Ben Shapiro It is unlikely that Ben Shapiro will argue with either Norman Finkelstein or his expert friend Deborah Maccoby, but will continue to use his prominence on social media to push a narrative that is untrue. Thankfully we have real experts that are in a position to expose his lies. Read more at: Expose-News.com Israeli experts do not believe Netanyahu can destroy Hamas and bring the hostages home Experts and former Israeli security officials alike have confirmed in an interview that it is impossible for Tel Aviv to achieve its twin goals of destroying Hamas and rescuing all of the remaining hostages held in Gaza. "Destroying Hamas and rescuing the hostages at the same time is not possible," warned Razi Barkai during an interview with Israel's Army Radio, a radio network owned and operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). General of the Reserve Army Gioria Eiland, former head of the IDF's Operations Department, shared this sentiment. "Hamas as an organization has not been broken, not only because its leadership still exists, but also because the goal on its part is very simple: to persevere and be steadfast." (Related: John Moore: Escalation of Gaza conflict could lead to the ELIMINATION OF ISRAEL.) Israeli Channel 13 Arab affair correspondent Zvi Yehezkeli added that Hamas in Gaza is not in distress. "And you won't find senior leaders under Al-Shifa Medical Hospital." Israelis believe Netanyahu intentionally prolonging the war to keep himself in power In his interview with Army Radio, Eiland also noted how Hamas will likely keep holding on to the hundreds of Israeli and other foreign hostages it has in its vast, unconquerable network of tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip. "[Hamas] assumes that Israel will at a certain stage be forced to stop due to international pressure or other reasons; therefore, this battle is still at its peak," he said. And while there is indeed strong international pressure for a long-lasting ceasefire in Gaza, domestic pressure against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conduct of the war is also reaching its boiling point, with many Israeli activists certain that Netanyahu is intentionally prolonging the conflict to keep himself in power. Israeli journalist and writer Meron Rapoport, writing for Local Call, warned that, "even if there is no chance of achieving a real military victory," Netanyahu is willing to prolong the conflict in Gaza, especially if doing so staves off "any progress" toward Palestinian self-determination following the conflict. The families of Israelis being held hostages are, of course, not happy about this situation, as they rightly fear that a prolonged conflict means their chances of seeing their loved ones back home continue to diminish. Some of these families have banded together and have, almost since the conflict began, been protesting for Tel Aviv to do more to secure the release of the hostages. "I demand from Benjamin Netanyahu and the cabinet to give us answers and actions," said Shelly Shem Tov, whose 21-year-old son Omer was kidnapped, during a stop on a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem. "Where are you? Where are you?" "Bibi [Netanyahu], [Benny] Gantz and [Minister of Defense Yoav] Gallant, you failed! You failed!" she said at another instance, naming the three most important members of Israel's emergency war cabinet. "We know that you can decide tonight [to secure the release of the hostages]," she screamed, through sobs. "We will burn the state down until they come home all of them." Learn more about the ongoing devastating conflict in Gaza at WWIII.news. Watch this episode of the "Health Ranger Report" as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, discusses how Israel's indiscriminate bombing and ground operations in Gaza are not "self-defense." This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Israel PURPOSELY targeting innocent women and children in Gaza to level fertility playing field: "The plan is to kill the children." Rescue agency reveals that Israel's aerial attack killed over 260 Israeli CIVILIANS during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood; drone footage corroborates report. Gaza's dwindling Palestinian Christian community could be COMPLETELY WIPED OUT by Israeli attacks. Hamas' military wing has DESTROYED at least 160 IDF military vehicles since Israel's invasion of Gaza. Netanyahu says Israel will maintain "indefinite security control" over Gaza Palestinians will forever be held as POWs in a concentration camp. Sources include: MiddleEastMonitor.com 972Mag.com Reuters.com JewishCurrents.org Brighteon.com WATCH: Israeli children sing we will annihilate everyone in Gaza Israeli public broadcaster Kan brought together a group of Jewish children to sing a song in celebration of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. (Article by Chris Menahan republished from InformationLiberation.com) The comically evil song was deleted shortly after it was posted due to widespread backlash on social media. ?WATCH: Israeli children sing, "We will annihilate everyone" in Gaza, against a background of destruction. Disturbing video was posted, then deleted by Israeli national broadcaster @kann_news. We captured it and added English subtitles FULL STORY: https://t.co/fzS5bu2NBxpic.twitter.com/pKut1WYixi Electronic Intifada (@intifada) November 19, 2023 From Electronic Intifada: Israel's national broadcaster Kan uploaded this song to X (formerly Twitter) in which Israeli children sing in celebration and support for the Israeli army's mass extermination campaign of Palestinians in Gaza. The sweet faces of children make an incongruous accompaniment to the genocidal lyrics of the so-called Friendship Song 2023. "Autumn night falls over the beach of Gaza, planes are bombing, destruction, destruction," the children sing in angelic voices. "Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields." The video was deleted after backlash but was archived on X and on Kan's website and translated by David Sheen for Electronic Intifada. "The song and video were originally created by Ofer Rosenbaum a so-called 'crisis-communication expert' who heads a public relations firm called Rosenbaum Communication," Electronic Intifada reported. This is the type of lunacy you produce when the guiding principle of your war is an ancient biblical commandment to "destroy Amalek." Netanyahu declaring invasion: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible" 1 Samuel 15:3 "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" pic.twitter.com/5QF9PkGhjJ Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 28, 2023 Top Israeli official Bezalel Smotrich explains his government's plan for Gaza: "We will not stop until Amalek is finally destroyed." pic.twitter.com/v3sQEhSPwv Chris Menahan ?? (@infolibnews) November 16, 2023 These animals can no longer live. Ezra Yachin, a 95-year-old Israeli army reservist, is seen inciting every Jew with a weapon to kill Palestinians and erase the memory of them pic.twitter.com/LUQs0XoR5U Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 13, 2023 Read more at: InformationLiberation.com War in the Middle East will become OBSOLETE once Low Energy Nuclear Reactions are allowed to flourish, providing low-cost energy to the world Countries in the Middle East, which possess 48.3 percent of the world's oil reserves, play a vital role in global oil production and the economic growth of the countries in the region, which derive most of their income from oil. The 12 largest oil fields in the region are in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Oman and the U.A.E., where more than 15 million barrels of oil are extracted collectively, daily. During a recent broadcast on Brighteon.com, Mike Adams and media ecologist James Martinez pointed out how the Middle East's supremacy on fossil fuel would be pointless as soon as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), or cold fusion, is allowed. This energy source is said to be cost-efficient. "Everything that we're seeing in the Middle East right now would be irrelevant if the world wasn't running on fossil fuels. Let's make no mistake, the entire reason the United States is backing Israel has to do with oil," Adams said. "It's to have Israel as a proxy state for the West to have a presence in the Middle East to protect its oil supply." He even cited that the militant group Hamas was created by Israeli and U.S. intelligence, or mostly Israeli intelligence, and funded by Israel but influenced by U.S. intelligence. The Health Ranger pointed out that if we had clean, truly green and sustainable energy, which is LENR, we wouldn't need any wars in the Middle East. His guest Martinez agreed, saying some of the people that he met are aware of this whole globalist operation. However, not as many as he thought. It's not a topic of discussion but he thinks people will start thinking about it based on recent events that may have been manipulated by globalists, who would not want an affordable and truly clean energy source. He proceeded to cite what happened back in October in Acapulco, where Category 5 storm Hurricane Otis made landfall in the Mexican state of Guerrero, leaving 46 dead and 58 people missing. He was there when it happened. "It [Hurricane Otis] took place but it was played down," he said. "It looks like a bomb went off," Adams quipped and Martinez quickly agreed. "This is where it gets interesting to me because I was very suspicious of why the port authorities or the government of Acapulco did not warn the public about what happened," he said. As the Cold Fusion proponent observed, there was no sound outside, no airplanes and no immediate rescue operations. "I suspected it was a weather weapon used against Acapulco for the construction of a 15-minute city," he said. Acapulco, being a place where free speech and freedom of political affiliation flourished, makes it a target for the urban planning concept for the government's total control and tyranny. But the good news is earlier this year, ARPA-E, a U.S. agency dedicated to funding advanced energy research, announced a handful of grants for LENR. Most scientists likely didn't take notice of the news. But, for a small group of them, the announcement marked vindication for their specialty: cold fusion, which is the science of making atomic nuclei merge and harnessing the resultant energy. The process does not involve incredible temperatures, on the scale of millions of degrees, needed for "traditional" fusion. "In a dream world, successful cold fusion could provide us with a boundless supply of clean, easily attainable energy," the website Popular Science indicated. Cold fusion advocate: War is obsolete Martinez, who aims to wake the public up from the deep electronic hypnotic sleep, also added war is already outdated. "It's mostly about conflicts having to do with territory and energy resources. It's done for a reason. And we're technologically way past that," he said. "There's a lot of bad effects from technology, but there's a lot of good effects as well. Some of those good effects allow us to be independent and not pollute the environment. We don't need warfare anymore because we're living in a state of abundance." He further pointed out that the mainstream media is just brainwashing people about things that are so obsolete "it doesn't even matter anymore." Adams went on to explain how the LENR technology works. He said that once properly commercialized, a small unit that can be compared to an air conditioning system can be attached to the house. This unit will constantly produce power and could also be tied to a lithium battery bank to help buffer power drawers. It would be enough for the needs of a household that "you'll be able to cut the power lines, you won't need to depend on the power grid." "I'm not saying that it exists in that form right now. But all we need is mechanical engineers, some physicists and consumer product engineers to put these pieces together. The technology exists, they can make that happen. And the world would be set free in so many ways. Food would become incredibly affordable to people because food prices are directly related to energy prices," Adams said. (Related: Cold fusion (LENR) commercial breakthrough could END food and energy scarcity around the world.) Per Martinez, the world changes the media ecological effects of utilizing a technology like this. "We don't need conflicts anymore. People need to realize that technological breakthroughs exist today, but they've got to be demanded and the general public needs to be aware of it." Follow Power.news for more stories related to energy. Watch the full interview featuring Mike Adams with James Martinez below. This video is from the Health Ranger Report channel on Brighteon.com. Sources for this article include: AA.com.tr Brighteon.com PopSci.com Palestinian rights group seeks prosecution of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau for complicity in Gaza war crimes A Palestinian rights group has announced its intention to seek war crime indictments against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and three other officials with his administration in the International Criminal Court over their support for Israel and its actions in Gaza. Trudeau, along with his Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Justice Minister Arif Virani, and National Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, have been served with notices of intention to seek prosecution against them for aiding and abetting the war crimes being perpetrated in Gaza. The group behind the legal action is an independent organization of academics, politicians and lawyers known as the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians Legal Working Group for Canadian Accountability (ICJP LWGCA). The group aims to protect Palestinians human rights and hold the Israeli military and government, along with their supporters, accountable for intentional law violations. Although many countries initially supported Israel in defending itself after a surprise attack by Hamas terrorists last month that killed 1,200 Israelis civilians and military personnel alike and took more than 200 hostages, Israel is quickly losing what little goodwill it had as the civilian death toll continues to rise in Gaza, where terrorists regularly use civilians as human shields and operate in areas such as hospitals and schools. So far, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, while tens of thousands have been injured, according to reports from the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry. Moreover, numerous Gazans are internally displaced after being instructed by Israeli authorities to move south for their own protection ahead of their ground invasion. The ICJP LWGCA has accused Canadian officials of not doing anything about ethnic cleansing through a campaign of forced displacement of 1.2 million people. The group said that despite mounting deaths in Gaza and clear evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and despite international outrage from the United Nations and human rights experts across the globe, Canada has continued to pledge its steadfast support for Israel. It also took issue with Canadas continuing exporting of arms to Israel, as well as its refusal to stop what it terms the illegal recruitment of Canadian volunteers to assist Israels military. They also complained that the government is doing nothing to stop millions of dollars from being sent by Canadian charities to benefit the military of the Jewish state. ICJP LWGCA called on the Canadian government to demand a ceasefire and put an end to financial and material support for Israel. Trudeau has been reluctant to criticize Israel Trudeau has said publicly that Israel has a right to defend itself after coming under attack by terrorists. While he has called for civilians to be protected, he has not directly criticized Israel for its military strikes that have destroyed countless residential and public buildings, including schools, hospitals and mosques. He has, however, been increasingly calling on Israel to minimize the impact of its operations on innocent Gazans recently, imploring the country to stop killing civilians in Gaza and urging its military to exercise maximum restraint in the Gaza Strip. He told the media: The world is watching, on TV, on social media were 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. His comments were perceived by some as being too critical of Israel, and hours later, he spoke to Benny Gantz, a former Israeli defense minister who is now in Netanyahus wartime cabinet, to reaffirm Canadas support for Israel and its right to defend its people in accordance with international law. Sources for this article include: Expose-News.com ArabNews.com CBC.ca MEAT HEIST: 5 Suspects wanted for stealing boxes of frozen meat from refrigerated truck in South Philly The Philadelphia Police Department is currently searching for five men suspected of stealing boxes of frozen beef from a refrigerated truck on Nov. 15 in South Philadelphia. The heist took place at around 12:30 a.m. on the 700 block of Pattison Avenue in South Philly East. The targeted tractor-trailer was parked overnight at the supply warehouse lot for Jetro, a restaurant supply store. The driver was in the cab at the time of the heist. When the driver felt his truck shake, he went out of the cab to investigate. The driver then saw three individuals at the rear of the trailer hauling boxes of frozen beef out to two other thieves sitting in a nearby parked car. The driver told police that one of the suspects said to him: "We're only taking a little." The thief then allegedly motioned toward his hip, implying that he and possibly more of the thieves had firearms. The driver noted that the five suspects fled the scene in a silver Ford Explorer SUV. At least 15 boxes of beef were stolen, with an estimated value of $7,660. Some more slabs of beef spilled out of the truck and were left behind after the suspects were discovered by the truck driver and escaped in a rush. Trend of cargo thefts not expected to end soon Truck drivers all over the country, especially in large cities, are dealing with an increase in cargo thefts. The increased danger to truck drivers has resulted in them arming themselves with tools to keep their high-priced cargo safe, such as heavy-duty locks. "There's $250,000 worth of meat in the back of these trucks, and that's $750,000 by the time they sell it. That's a lot of money," said trucker Mark Leighton. In Philadelphia, at least 196 cargo thefts have been recorded by Philadelphia police since the year began. Last year, 242 cargo thefts were recorded. The heist on the frozen beef boxes in South Philly comes just a few weeks after 184 cases of crab clusters worth approximately $73,000 were stolen from a truck in North Philadelphia. The increase in cargo theft in the past few months is a trend that isn't expected to end soon, as reported by some industry insiders. The latest data from CargoNet, a Jersey City, New Jersey-based data- and information-sharing corporation working to fight cargo theft, showed a 59 percent increase in recorded theft events in the third quarter of 2023 when compared with the past year. (Related: Cargo thefts spiked 15% in 2022 across US and Canada as organized crime rings targeted supply chain.) "As we enter the final quarter of 2023, there is no indication that cargo theft activity will slow in the domestic United States. We anticipate that strategic cargo theft will remain at unprecedented levels of activity throughout the quarter," the company said in a statement. Follow Collapse.news for more news about cargo thefts happening in America. Watch the video below about the mass looting spree that rocked Philadelphia two months ago. This video is from the andreash channel on Brighteon.com. More related articles: Rampant theft prompts NYC grocery stores to consider locking up food. Retailers, businesses continue to flee Portland due to rampant violence, theft and lawlessness. CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens to close down more than 1,500 stores due to rising retail crime, leaving MILLIONS without local access to medications. Mexico considers deploying national guard troops to defend high-crime highways and put a stop to cargo theft. Thieves now targeting containers loaded with electronics and household goods. Sources include: 6abc.com Landline.media Fox29.com CargoNet.com Brighteon.com A Cheektowaga man pleaded guilty Monday in State Supreme Court in three separate cases involving arson, animal cruelty and aggravated harassment of a deputy at the Erie County Holding Center, according to the District Attorneys Office. Zachary A. Jackson, 19, pleaded guilty to the highest count in each of the cases brought against him. He remains held without bail and faces a maximum of 15 years in prison when sentenced on Jan. 3. They include one count of third-degree arson for an Oct. 15, 2022, incident in which he intentionally poured lighter fluid on a pickup truck that belonged to one of his family members and used a blowtorch to set fire to the vehicle. The fire was quickly put out by police and firefighters who responded to the scene, but the truck was significantly damaged in the fire. Jackson was arraigned the next day in Cheektowaga Town Court and released under supervision. A temporary non-offensive order of protection was issued on behalf of the owner of the truck. Jackson also pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated cruelty to animals under New York States Agriculture and Markets Law after he attempted to drown a family members dog on April 19 at a home on Girard Avenue in the town. Prosecutors said the dog, a mixed breed terrier named Sprocket, needed emergency veterinary treatment. Jackson was held without bail following his arraignment in the animal cruelty case. While incarcerated at the Holding Center on Sept. 19, Jackson intentionally threw a liquid that was believed to be urine at a jail deputy, and he pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated harassment of a Holding Center employee by an inmate. Target in hot water once more over WOKE Christmas decorations Big-box retailer Target has apparently never learned from its earlier fiasco, as it is in hot water once more over "woke" Christmas decorations sold on its shelves The X account End Wokeness shared several pictures of these woke decorations on the platform. One photo featured a figurine that looked like a dark-skinned Santa Claus in a wheelchair. Another photo showed a nutcracker soldier with its cap adorned with the six-color Pride rainbow and holding a Progress Pride flag. "Target outdid itself this year for Christmas," the account wrote. The post went viral on social media, with commenters blasting the retailer for failing to learn its lesson the first time. "You would think [Target] would have learned from the last time," one commenter wrote. "When will companies finally start to realize it? Go woke, [get] broke." Another commenter wrote: "Everyone getting ready to boycott Target again until they go bankrupt." Target said in a statement that it was offering over 10,000 new items ahead of Christmas, describing the goods as "must-have gifts" and "exclusive-to-Target items across many categories." While the statement did not go into detail, it is presumed that the "must-have items" include the two decorations documented by the End Wokeness account. The renewed calls for a boycott came as Target released its earnings report for the third quarter of 2023, which showed a 4.9 percent decline in sales compared to the third quarter of 2022. Physical store sales dropped by 4.6 percent in Q3 2023, while online sales dropped by six percent in the same period. The company's total revenue of $25.4 billion was 4.2 percent lower than last year, with some of the decline attributed to "higher inventory shrink" a euphemism for retail theft. "In the third quarter, our team continued to successfully navigate our business through a very challenging external environment, Target CEO Brian Cornell said in a statement. Not the first time Target yielded to wokeism Earlier this year, Target yielded to wokeism by offering products in time for Pride month which is typically celebrated in June. Even worse, it stocked some products designed by a known Satanist, further adding fuel to the fire. Writing for PJ Media, Catherine Salgado expounded on the different items Target offered for Pride month. Such items include Pride-themed body suits, rompers and bibs for babies. For older children, there are swimsuits, socks, leggings and dresses. More notably, it also included chest binders and "tuck-friendly" swimsuits for gender-confused individuals. Meanwhile, an InfoWars piece noted that some of the items Target sold for Pride month were from designer Abprallen. "The items include a 'We Belong Everywhere' mini messenger bag, a 'Too Queer for Here' tote bag and a 'Cure Transphobia, Not Trans People' sweatshirt all listed as 'Pride Adult Clothing,'" it said. "But it was a 'Satan respects pronouns' shirt that garnered the most attention. Other products feature skeletons draped in Pride and trans colors, 'gay cult' stuff and buttons with 'trans witches for abortion' emblazoned on them." According to the Epoch Times, the launch of the Pride products and the resulting boycott forced the company's stock to drop from roughly $160 to $130 per share. Outrage online and in real life prompted Target to remove some of the most controversial items from its shelves. (Related: Target loses $9B in week following boycott calls over LGBTQ-friendly kids clothing.) Incidentally, a former Target executive cited one item that made the biggest boycott calls the "tuck-friendly" swimsuit purportedly designed for male-to-female transgenders. "That tuck swimsuit, that's really what made the difference versus the competitors," said former Target Vice Chairman Gerald Storch. "That's where the big mistake [was] made." Visit Wokies.news for more stories about Target selling "woke" items. Watch Target CEO Brian Cornell denying the accusations of Satanism linked to its Pride products below. This video is from the GOD > gov channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Gavin Newsom fumes at Target for removing satanic LGBT pride children's clothing from stores, accuses CEO of "selling out LGBTQ+ community.'' Target launches new "Satanist Pride" line of LGBTQ+ clothing for CHILDREN, prompting anti-woke boycott. TWISTED: Target introduces LGBTQ clothing line for INFANTS. Sources include: TheEpochTimes.com Twitter.com PJMedia.com InfoWars.com Brighteon.com Youre paying for the Israel war. Youll also pay for the refugees The United States regime has picked sides in the Israel-Hamas war and has committed to funding Israel's ongoing bombing of non-combatant men, women, and children in the Gaza strip. Northern Gaza's infrastructure is now all but destroyed, with millions of Gazans displaced and homeless. Nearly ten times more Gazans than Israelis have now died in the conflict. Many Gazans have fled to the southern portion of Gaza, but homelessness and abject poverty awaits them there. (Article by Ryan McMaken republished from Mises.org) By employing what is essentially the carpet-bombing approach, Tel Aviv has made the choice of adopting a policy that is sure to produce hundreds of thousands of refugeesor perhaps even more than a million. Indeed, many in the Israeli regime are motivated to maximize refugees, and push Gazans out of the country altogether using the Orwellian phrase "voluntary migration." On a military, tactical level, the Israeli state will have no problem accomplishing this. Tel Aviv has an air force, a deep reservoir of American-funded weapons, and a nuclear arsenal. The Israeli military can easily reduce all of Gaza to rubble. But what is sure to result from this is a humanitarian disaster accompanied by a global debate over which foreign country will host the refugees. Israeli mouthpieces are already at work pushing the cost onto foreign taxpayers, including American ones. This week, two Israeli politiciansone from the militarist Likud party, and one from the center-left Yesh Atid partytook to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to demand that "countries around the world should offer a haven for Gaza residents who seek relocation." According to these politicians, "[t]he international community"i.e., not Israel"has a moral imperative" to resettle Gazans somewhere outside Israel at not-Israel's expense. It is significant these claims appeared in an American publication. Tel Aviv is the latest welfare-queen regimein the tradition of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyrepeatedly haranguing the American public with demands for free money. It's no coincidence that Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu is now seemingly ubiquitous on American prime-time news programs. His primary job right now is to demand money and favors from Washington and from other Western regimes. It will probably work. Americans should get ready for plane-loads of Gaza refugees arriving in their cities, funded by the American taxpayers who can now barely afford to keep up with the price of groceries. This will be sold as a "humanitarian" effort, but anyone who sees through the propaganda will see that it's really all a cynical effort to please pro-Israel interest groups and Israeli politicians. A Pattern of War and Refugees This was all predictable from the minute the war started last month. The US and its allies have settled into a predictable pattern in foreign policy over the past thirty years: force the taxpayers to pay for the regime's wars which involve bombing various poor foreign countries "back into the stone age." Then, once the refugees start pouring outand the Americans have lost the war, of courseWestern regimes then tell the taxpayers back home to cough up even more money to pay for resettlement of all those refugees whose countries were needlessly destroyed by the bombs dropped by Washington and its allies. This is no small phenomenon. A 2020 report from Brown University estimated that 37 million people have been made refugees by the US-led "War on Terrorism." By 2016, 5.2 million of them reached Europe. In 2022 alone, more than 159,000 refugees arrived by sea in Italy, Greece, Spain, Cyprus, and Malta. Thousands more arrive at the land borders of the EU every year. Thanks to the distance from western Asia and North Africa, refugees totals have been smaller in the United States. Nonetheless, the total number of refugees has ranged from 50,000 to 90,000 per year in most years since the US began its war in Afghanistan. This has transformed a number of communities in the United States, however, since refugees often tend to concentrate in specific places along ethnic or religious lines. In the decades of the US's endless on-again, off-again military meddling in Somalia, tens of thousands of Somali refugees have been relocated to Minnesota at taxpayers' expense. Since 2018, Minnesota has hosted more than 40,000 Somalia-born migrants (many classified as refugees). Most of the refugees, of course, are concentrated within Minneapolis' metro population of only 3.5 million. In democracies, this has political consequences. It is also important to remember that migrants who enjoy the legal status of refugees are not normal immigrants. Ordinary immigrants arrive at the United States at their own expense. The vast majority must find work on their own if they wish to have an income. They are eligible for few social benefits. Those seeking legal residency, of course, must go through a lengthy administrative process. For example, Mexicans who obtain a work visa in the United States have to work. They don't show up and receive "free" help from government-funded refugee agencies in finding jobs, apartments, and other government freebies. In contrast, all of that is fast-tracked for people labeled "refugee" by the federal government, and most of these refugees are immediately eligible for a wide array of taxpayer funded benefits. In total, this all costs the taxpayers nearly two billion dollars per year, or $80,000 per refugee per year in the form of federal and state programs including food stamps, child care, and public housing. It's not enough that you pay for the bombs that create the refugees, dear American taxpayer. You'll also have to pay to resettle those refugees in your town. Read more at: Mises.org Why can Argentina count 25-30 million paper ballots in hours, while blue U.S. swing states take DAYS with machines? Its quite astonishing that the United States of America, one of the most powerful nations in the world, struggles to hold streamlined elections. Weve gone from having election results on the same night or in the early hours to prolonged counts of sketchy ballots behind closed doors, with the winner remaining unknown for days on end. And these types of rinky-dink elections with long third world delays are being normalized, but its far from normal, and we all know it. This unacceptable stark contrast was glaringly obvious during the recent presidential election in Argentina, where they efficiently tallied 25 to 30 million paper ballots within hours. Meanwhile, certain blue districts in the United States, using machine ballots, take days to count a fraction of that number. How does one reconcile this? (Article republished from Revolver.news) End Wokeness: Argentina: 25-30 million paper ballots Maricopa (2020): 1.9 million ballots Milwaukee (2020): 460k ballots Detroit (2020): 250k ballots Fulton (2020): 523k ballots Explain to me how Argentina hand-counted all of their ballots in a few hours, but the big blue areas in our swing states take several days with machines? Argentina: 25-30 million paper ballots Maricopa (2020): 1.9 million ballots Milwaukee (2020): 460k ballots Detroit (2020): 250k ballots Fulton (2020): 523k ballots Explain to me how Argentina hand-counted all of their ballots in a few hours, but the big blue areas in our End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 20, 2023 The voting process in Argentina was streamlined and efficient. Politico: Voting stations opened at 8 a.m. (1100 GMT) and close 10 hours later. Voting is conducted with paper ballots, making the count unpredictable, but initial results were expected around three hours after polls close. Milei went from blasting the countrys political caste on TV to winning a lawmaker seat two years ago. The economists screeds resonated widely with Argentines angered by their struggle to make ends meet, particularly young men. Money covers less and less each day. Im a qualified individual, and my salary isnt enough for anything, Esteban Medina, a 26-year-old physical therapist from Ezeiza, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a Milei rally earlier this week. Concerned about the possibility of unreliable elections similar to those in the U.S., officials in Argentina closely monitored the voting process. The Politico article elaborates on this: The vote takes place amid Mileis allegations of possible electoral fraud, reminiscent of those from Trump and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Without providing evidence, Milei claimed that the first round of the presidential election was plagued by irregularities that affected the result. Experts say such irregularities cannot swing an election, and that his assertions are partly aimed at firing up his base and motivating his supporters to become monitors of voting stations. Such claims spread widely on social media and, at Mileis rally in Ezeiza earlier this week, all those interviewed told the AP they were concerned about the integrity of the vote. Perhaps its worth considering the idea of outsourcing our elections to Argentinas capable hands? That might ensure we learn the results within a day and alleviate concerns about Democrats cheating. What an embarrassment weve become. Read more at: Revolver.news Cargo ship with Israeli ties hijacked by Houthi rebels; 25 hostages taken Houthi rebels have seized a cargo ship in the Red Sea that is reportedly tied to an Israeli businessman, taking its 25 crew members hostage. The attack involved the Japanese cargo ship Galaxy Leader and came just a few days after the Houthis released a graphic of an Israeli commercial ship in flames with a caption stating, We will sink your ships. The group has been fighting against the military of Yemen with backing from Iran for longer than a decade. U.S. officials reported that the attack was carried out by helicopter at around 1:00 pm local time on Sunday. Armed rebels rappelled down to the deck of the boat from a helicopter that hovered overhead. The ship is operated by a Japanese company and owned by a British company. However, the ships owners have been linked to Ray Car Carriers, a company that was founded by the Israeli billionaire Abraham Rami Ungar. He told the AP that he was aware of the incident but did not want to comment as he waited for more details. A different ship linked to Ungar experienced an explosion in the Gulf of Oman in 2021; the incident was blamed on Iran at the time. None of the crew members on board the ship were Israeli. The crew comes from countries such as the Philippines, Mexico, Ukraine and Bulgaria. A Houthi spokesperson confirmed that the ship was targeted due to its ties with Israel. There was no cargo on board at the time, and the ship was en route from Turkey to India. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X: The Yemeni armed forces reiterate their warning to all ships belonging to or dealing with the Israeli enemy that they will become a legitimate target for armed forces. He said that armed forces will continue to operate against Israel until it ends its campaign against Hamas. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack and said in a statement: This is another act of Iranian terrorism and constitutes a leap forward in Irans aggression against the citizens of the free world, with international consequences regarding the security of the global shipping lanes. One U.S. military official told The Hill: Houthi militants seizure of the motor vessel Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea is a flagrant violation of international law. They called for the ship and the crew to be released immediately. Houthis are attacking Israel in support for fellow Iranian proxy Hamas This is the latest attack launched against Israel by the Houthis, who are siding with their fellow Iranian proxy, Hamas, in its war against Israel. After Hamas carried out a brutal attack that killed 1,200 Israelis and took more than 240 people hostage, the resulting Israeli air and ground offensive has been incredibly deadly, with the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry reporting that more than 13,000 people have died in Gaza so far. Since the beginning of the fighting, the Houthis have been launching missiles and drones in the direction of Israel. On October 19, a U.S. Navy war ship shot down a trio of cruise missiles and a dozen drones fired from Yemen toward Israel, according to a spokesman for the Department of Defense. On October 31, militants who officials believe are Houthis fired a ballistic missile from Yemen in the direction of Israel. The IDF said that its Arrow defense system intercepted the missiles. The International Maritime Security Construct sent an advisory last week to all mariners navigating the Red Sea warning them to keep their distance from Yemeni waters and advising them to travel at night if possible. Sources for this article include: AlJazeera.com NBCNews.com TheHill.com Former U.S. troops punished for rejecting COVID vaccination SUE Biden for billions in lost wages A lawyer who successfully brought down the vaccine for anthrax has done it again , this time with a lawsuit against the Biden regime on behalf of former United States military servicemen who lost pay and benefits due to the government's Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) "vaccine" mandate. Attorney Dale Saran, a retired marine himself, is joined by fellow attorneys Andy Meyer and Brandon Johnson, all of whom are joining former troops in three separate lawsuits being filed against the president and his cabinet. The three separate lawsuits are expected to be turned into a class action lawsuit representing all servicemen who were kicked out of the military or otherwise illegally ordered to stop drilling because they refused to roll up their sleeves for a round of COVID injections. According to Saran, the amount of money being sought is in the "billions," which he says is appropriate because "that's what it is in backpay it's billions of dollars." (Related: OSHA is now lying about its COVID jab mandate, claiming it never existed.) Biden's COVID jab mandate impacted up to 100,000 U.S. military servicemen Filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the three lawsuits will be heard in a specialized court where illegal discharges are heard. "The Court of Claims has been around since the Reconstruction Era," Saran noted about this little-known court. "It's a very old court and kind of a weird one." "But in any event, you can go there if you've got a claim and say, 'Hey, I was illegally discharged, or the military did something to impede my pay,' or whatever. The Court of Claims is where you go." As few as 80,000 and as many as 100,000 military servicemen in the U.S., both active duty and reservists, are said to have been impacted by Biden's COVID jab mandate. Of this, more than 8,000 active-duty troops were kicked out of the military entirely, as were tens of thousands of reservists who were ordered not to drill anymore or were moved to inactive status. "They were basically [without] the benefit of any due process," Saran says about the plaintiffs in the case. "No boards were held. They didn't hold any administrative separation boards; they didn't hold any hearings." "They didn't do any federal recognition boards; none of the administrative or judicial procedures were used. They just flat-out did it. And then ... they got the Coast Guard to follow along, and they got a bunch of Coasties, too." One former Coastie, as Saran calls them, who is suing for damages is Zach Loesch, whom President Biden personally called to thank for saving people's lives during Hurricane Ian. At the time when Biden contacted him, Loesch was just two weeks away from being kicked out of the military for refusing to get injected with COVID chemicals from one of the big three pharmaceutical companies that produced COVID shots for the U.S. market. "Say you enlisted for five years, you got a bonus and $50,000 ... And then, now, they're like, 'Hey, we're going to inject you with this.' You're like, 'Yo, that's experimental. Like, that's not actually licensed. And the defense secretary's order was, we'd only have to take licensed vaccines that says experimental,'" Saran further explained. According to Saran, the Pentagon already has the money ready and waiting to award backpay for those who lost active-duty or drill time since this is money that is factored into the Pentagon's annual budget as allocated by Congress. "That's money we're saying was illegally kept," Saran says. "That's money that's fundamentally as far as I can tell has been stolen by the DOD [Department of Defense]." The latest news about the fallout from Operation Warp Speed can be found at ChemicalViolence.com. Sources for this article include: Breitbart.com NaturalNews.com Hezbollah strikes Northern Israel with four rockets, destroying key IDF base The Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon has hit and possibly destroyed an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) base in Northern Israel with four small ballistic missiles Footage circulating all over social media proves that the Biranit military base, located around a kilometer away from the Lebanese border, was extensively damaged. One popular video circulating shows a building on fire. (Related: Lebanon's Hezbollah says it is "prepared and ready" to join the war against Israel.) The IDF itself has confirmed that rockets were fired at the base and have also blamed Hezbollah for the incident, although Israeli sources are trying to downplay the situation by merely claiming that the base was "damaged by rocket fire." There were no reported injuries in the attack. Separate Hezbollah strikes also targeted the communities of Arab al-Aramshe and Bar'am, seven miles to the west and six miles to the east of Biranit, respectively. The IDF responded by conducting strikes on supposed Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon using fighter jets and combat helicopters flying across the border and tanks and artillery pieces firing from Israel into Lebanon. Footage shows extensive damage at the Biranit army base in northern Israel following a Hezbollah rocket attack from Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/1VhAljjg1L Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) November 20, 2023 Hezbollah has more rockets that could strike Israeli targets Hezbollah confirmed in a statement that it successfully hit the Biranit military base in two separate operations with a total of four Burkan rockets within a 20-minute interval. The statement also noted that the strikes were conducted in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to affirm Hezbollah's support for their resistance amid the perceived Israeli aggression. The Burkan is an Iranian-designed and Syrian-manufactured short-range rocket with a range of up to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), with a warhead that can weigh between 100 to 500 kilograms (220 to 1,102 pounds). They are launched from pedestal launchers originally designed for mortars and converted into ballistic missile launchers. Hezbollah reportedly first used these rockets in the mid-2000s. The Burkan is officially classified as a "heavy rocket," a type of missile characterized by a substantial warhead capable of causing significant damage to targets at relatively short ranges, typically up to 10 kilometers. Israeli and international sources alike have confirmed that Hezbollah has fired over a thousand rockets from Lebanon at Israeli targets since the beginning of the current conflict in Gaza in early October. The IDF has noted that there have been ongoing missile interceptions and continuous alarm sirens for civilians to evacuate to bunkers, as Hezbollah disruption operations have worked 24 hours a day in northern Israel. In fact, on the same day that Hezbollah successfully struck the Biranit base, Israeli media reported that "25 missiles and artillery shells, in addition to a kamikaze drone, were launched from Lebanon" toward the city of Kiryat Shmona and the town of Margaliot, "causing damage to the places." The IDF also confirmed that "rocket-propelled grenades were launched from Lebanon" toward Kiryat Shmona and that at least three more suicide drones were intercepted entering northern Israel from Lebanon. Hezbollah-affiliated sources claim that these strikes have caused over 1,500 IDF casualties. Watch this video from "Military Tube Today" pointing out how easy it is for Hezbollah to target Israeli military troops and fortified positions along the Israeli-Lebanese border. This video is from the channel The Prisoner on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Middle East scholar: Iran-backed Hezbollah joining Israel-Hamas war is a "game-changer." Rioters set fire to U.S. Embassy in Beirut after Hezbollah calls for "day of rage." Israel illegally deploying WHITE PHOSPHORUS weapons in Gaza and Lebanon innocent civilians being killed as churches and hospitals are repeatedly bombed. Reuters journalist killed by Israeli missile fire in Lebanon while covering Israel-Hamas war. Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah ready to "join the battle" in Gaza, warns Hamas leader. Sources include: The-Express.com English.AlMayadeen.net TimesOfIsrael.com ArabNews.com Brighteon.com Iran bars nuclear inspectors while stockpiling enriched uranium Iran's nuclear activities once again stirred international concern as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that the country continues to bar several experienced nuclear inspectors In a confidential report, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi criticized Iran's decision to withdraw accreditation from eight top inspectors, including French and German nationals. He deemed the move "extreme and unjustified." This move, announced in September, is seen as a response to perceived "political abuses" by the U.S., France, Germany and Britain. The IAEA highlighted the significant negative impact on its ability to monitor Iran's nuclear program. Its latest report underscores the unprecedented nature of Iran's actions, with Grossi stating that it is "unambiguously contrary to the cooperation that is required" from nations involved in nuclear activities. The refusal to accredit inspectors complicates the IAEA's mission and raises questions about Iran's commitment to international cooperation in monitoring its nuclear program. The diplomatic fallout adds to existing tensions between Iran and key world powers. Tehran reiterated its position in a letter, asserting its right to withdraw accreditation while expressing a willingness to explore possibilities to address the IAEA's request for reinstatement. The standoff reflects the broader challenges faced by international organizations when seeking cooperation from nations involved in sensitive nuclear activities. It also emphasizes the importance of maintaining transparent and collaborative efforts to address global security concerns. The inspectors' withdrawal is not an isolated incident but part of a larger geopolitical context surrounding Iran's nuclear ambitions. The IAEA has a longstanding role in monitoring Iran's nuclear activities amid suspicions from Western nations about the country's intentions to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran has enough enriched uranium for 3 ATOMIC BOMBS Iran consistently denies any plans for nuclear weapons, emphasizing the peaceful nature of its nuclear program. But in one confidential IAEA report, it was learned that Iran has enough uranium enriched up to 60 percent, close to weapons-grade, for three atomic bombs. Iran's stock of uranium enriched grew by 6.7 kilograms (14.8 pounds) to 128.3 kg (282.9 lbs) since the last report on Sept. 4, according to Reuters. That is more than three times the roughly 42 kg (92.6 lbs) that, by the IAEA definition, is theoretically enough for a nuclear bomb if enriched further. (Related: Thanks, Obama: U.S. defense official declares Iran can construct a nuclear bomb in about 12 days.) "That's quite an amount, especially if you don't use it for anything," a senior diplomat told Reuters, referring to the fact Iran is the only country to enrich such a high level without producing nuclear weapons. Additionally, the report revealed that Iran's estimated stockpile of enriched uranium had exceeded 22 times the limit set in the 2015 accord between Tehran and world powers. As of Oct. 28, Iran's total enriched uranium stockpile was estimated at 4,486.8 kg (9,891.7 lb), a significant increase from August. The 2015 deal aimed to curb Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions. The development raises concerns about Iran's adherence to the terms of the nuclear deal, especially as tensions persist with major world powers. The unraveling of the 2015 deal began in 2018 when then-U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from it and reimposed sanctions. Iran responded by intensifying its nuclear activities, leading to a renewed focus on the country's nuclear ambitions. Efforts to revive the nuclear deal through European Union-mediated negotiations have faced challenges, reflecting the complex geopolitical landscape surrounding Iran's nuclear activities. The IAEA's hope for a prompt resolution of the inspectors' withdrawal underscores the urgency of addressing issues related to Iran's nuclear program to maintain international stability and security. The diplomatic intricacies involved highlight the delicate balance required to navigate such critical matters on the global stage. Watch former National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow discuss whether President Joe Biden's policies have emboldened Iran. This video is from the NewsClips channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: Iran Nuclear Deals UN Security Council Res. 2231 banning missile transfers to Iran EXPIRES Iran now free to send and receive missiles, drones and hypersonic weapons. House passes resolution aiming to block Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Israeli top official warns Irans uranium enough to build up to 5 NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Sources include: AlJazeera.com Reuters.com Brighteon.com Israel approves MULTI-DAY CEASEFIRE DEAL: Hundreds of imprisoned Palestinian women and children to be released in exchange for 50 Israeli hostages The Israeli emergency war cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to a multi-day ceasefire deal with Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza, which will see 50 Israeli hostages and hundreds of unlawfully detained Palestinian women and children released. The terms of the deal call for a four-day ceasefire in Gaza, during which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) will halt all its military operations in the Strip, including all ground and some air operations. In exchange, Hamas will free "at least" 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it and other Palestinian groups are currently holding in Gaza. All of these 50 hostages will be women and children 30 children, 12 women and eight mothers. For every 10 hostages Hamas releases into Israeli custody, the ceasefire will be extended by at least one more day, which could see the lull in the fighting last for up to nine days. Israeli media even optimistically reported that Hamas could potentially locate some 30 more Israeli women and children beyond the initial 50 who could be released, allowing the ceasefire to be extended to 12 days. During this ceasefire, Israel will also be allowing around 300 more aid trucks per day to enter Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah Border Crossing. More fuel will also be allowed to enter Gaza during this time. But the Israeli government has made it clear that this ceasefire is only temporary. "The Israeli government, the IDF and the security forces will continue the war to return all the abductees, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that Gaza does not renew any threat to the State of Israel," said the Israeli war cabinet in a statement. "We are at war, and we will continue the war," said Netanyahu. "We will continue until we achieve all our goals." Fortunately for Gazans, this long-term lull in the fighting could lead to additional pressure, both international and domestic, for Israel to agree to a permanent ceasefire without having achieved its goal of destroying Hamas' military capabilities. Israel to free hundreds of illegally detained Palestinians In exchange for the freeing of the 50 hostages, the Israeli government has also agreed to free at least three times the number of Palestinians illegally imprisoned under Israeli "administrative detention," which rights groups have pointed out is practically no different to Hamas' kidnapping and hostage-taking operation on Oct. 7. (Related: TIMELINE: 75 Years of Israel's human rights abuses against Palestinians.) While the Israeli government has refused to provide a specific number of Palestinians to be freed, Israeli media outlets have pegged the number at 150 women and children. Meanwhile, a minister for the Palestinian National Authority told Arab media that 350 Palestinian minors and at least 82 Palestinian women illegally jailed by Israel would be free to return to their homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Before Oct. 7, Israel was holding approximately 5,200 Palestinian political prisoners in its jail, including 170 children and 1,264 "administrative detainees" who were being held unlawfully without trial or charge. Since then, the number of Palestinians illegally detained by Israel has exploded. Watch this short video from "Southfront Press" detailing the latest gains and losses by the IDF in its assault on Gaza City right before the temporary ceasefire. This video is from the Cynthia's Pursuit of Truth channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: NEW POLL: 70% of Americans support a CEASEFIRE in Gaza. Israel PURPOSELY targeting innocent women and children in Gaza to level fertility playing field: "The plan is to kill the children." Sociopathic Netanyahu insists Israel doesn't kill children after launching attacks that have murdered over 4,000 young ones in Gaza. Netanyahu says Israel will maintain "indefinite security control" over Gaza Palestinians will forever be held as POWs in a concentration camp. Israel agrees to 4-hour daily pauses in Gaza fighting to allow civilians to flee. Sources include: ZeroHedge.com APNews.com Axios.com TimesOfIsrael.com PeoplesDispatch.org Brighteon.com NUCLEAR WAR: Radioactive fallout from attacks on U.S. ICBM silos could kill 300 million Americans A new report warns that up to 300 million people in the United States alone could be killed from exposure to radioactive fallout in the first four days following a nuclear attack. If the U.S. ends up getting attacked with nuclear weapons, its enemies would most likely focus all or most of their fire on the nation's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch facilities or silos to prevent a successful counterattack. The U.S. would try to retaliate against its enemies using these silos, placed strategically out of many of the country's major population centers in states like Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. For America's enemies, taking them out would be the top priority. This is what a group of scientists who wrote a special report on the U.S.'s nuclear weapons program believe. Their report, published by the outlet Scientific American, relied on the presumption that the immediate destruction of the approximately 450 ICBM silos in the U.S. would lead to massive radioactive fallout. While the deaths from the immediate blasts would be minimal due to the low population densities surrounding the ICBMs, winds and severe weather would bring the radioactive material through the country. 90% of the population in the Lower 48 in danger of receiving deadly doses of radiation Depending on weather conditions, up to 90 percent of the population of the lower 48 U.S. states would be in danger of receiving deadly doses of radiation. (Related: Is the federal government preparing Americans for a nuclear attack?) The scientists worked with researchers at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security and found that in the first four days after the approximately 450 ICBM silos are struck, between 340,000 and 4.6 million people would die, with simulations suggesting an average death toll of around 1.4 million. In the long-term, the scientists predicted that 300 million people would be at risk of receiving a fatal dose of fallout. This study comes just as the U.S. Air Force announced a $1.5 trillion program to replace the country's Minuteman III ICBMs, which have been in operation since the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Replacing the Minuteman III would be the more modern LGM-35 Sentinel ICBM, which is expected to be in operation beginning in 2029. The Sentinel is believed to carry an equivalent explosive power of 800 kilotons of TNT and is expected to reach up to 6,000 miles and be capable of striking any target around the globe within 30 minutes. The Princeton researchers pointed out that the U.S. Air Force has assessed the potential effects on humans and the environment of deploying a Sentinel ICBM. However, this assessment did not mention what would happen to people and the environment in the U.S. if the missiles were detonated in their silos. The researchers concluded their report by making it clear that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." "To this end, the best deterrent to adversary initiation of nuclear war against the United States or its allies or partners is a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent and strong and credible extended deterrence." Follow NuclearWar.news for more news about the imminent nuclear attack in America. Watch the video below about NYC's Emergency Management Nuclear War Preparedness announcement. This video is from the Cynthia's Pursuit of Truth channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: FEMA map shows areas most at risk of being targeted by nuclear warheads in a war. After U.S. simulates nuke attack on Moscow, Russia responds overwhelmingly: 30 U.S. cities to be the first incinerated, killing 100s of millions. Military to hold nightmarish nuclear drill in Houston to prepare for direct nuclear strike on the continental United States. Brannon Howse shares tips on how Americans can SURVIVE a nuclear attack. Sources include: DailyMail.co.uk ScientificAmerican.com Newsweek.com Brighteon.com 8 Confirmed SALMONELLA cases in Canadas British Columbia province linked to CANTALOUPES imported from Mexico Eight confirmed cases of salmonella infection have been documented in the Canadian province of British Columbia, all linked to cantaloupes imported from Mexico In a Nov. 15 statement, the British Columbia Center for Disease Control (BCCDC) and regional health authorities warned the public not to consume, distribute, serve or use any whole or pre-cut cantaloupes sold under the label Malichita. As per genetic sequencing, most of the illnesses detected to date were caused by the rare S. soahanina strain also called S. sundsvall found in the contaminated melons. Since mid-November, there have been eight salmonella cases confirmed in the Fraser Health, Island Health and Vancouver Coastal Health regions in British Columbia affecting people aged less than a year to 68. Affected residents experienced symptoms typical of salmonellosis, including abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, headache, nausea, stomach cramps and vomiting. Dehydration was also observed in infants. Public health investigation of the cases showed a link to the Malichita cantaloupes reportedly imported from Mexico, sold to Fruits et Legumes Gaetan Bono and distributed to the following areas: Alberta British Columbia Manitoba New Brunswick Newfoundland and Labrador Nova Scotia Ontario Prince Edward Island Quebec Possibly other Canadian provinces and territories British Columbians were advised to immediately dispose of Malichita cantaloupes that were sold from Oct. 11 to Nov. 14, or return them to the location where they were purchased. Further guidance provided by the BCCDC and regional health authorities included the following: If you have diarrhea caused by consuming contaminated food and water, you should not go to school or work until at least 48 hours after your last loose stool or vomiting episode to ensure you have had a chance to recover and reduce the possibility of transmitting salmonella infection to others. Wash your hands frequently and properly before and after eating; before and after handling food; immediately after handling raw food and before touching anything else; after using the toilet or changing diapers; after touching animals, including pets, their feces, pet food, etc. (Related: Protect pets from salmonella with electrolyzed water.) Care for children in daycare centers who experience diarrhea or vomiting temporarily in an area separate from the others. They may be given oral rehydration salt solutions that you can buy over the counter to prevent dehydration. Practice proper food handling to prevent salmonella and other pathogens from proliferating and contaminating or cross-contaminating food. (Related: Prevent FOOD CONTAMINATION and food poisoning with these simple steps.) U.S. also declares salmonella outbreak traced to imported cantaloupe The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also declared an outbreak of salmonella days after Canadian officials reported the eight confirmed cases in British Columbia. Just like the outbreak in Canada, the American outbreak has been traced to Malichita brand cantaloupes imported from Mexico. In the U.S., the outbreak was spread across 15 states, with 43 confirmed salmonellosis cases with at least 17 people requiring hospitalization. Sofia Produce, LLC of Nogales, Arizona, which does business under the name Trufresh, has performed a product recall after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency determined that additional imported cantaloupes from Mexico have possible salmonella contamination. According to the company's recall announcement, the cantaloupes were packed in cardboard containers bearing the Malichita label. The containers were distributed between Oct. 16 and 23 in the following states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration noted that the contaminated cantaloupes may have reached consumers through retail produce markets located in states other than those previously identified. Buyers who have purchased the recalled products were instructed to dispose of them and retain their records of disposal. Visit Outbreak.news for more similar stories. Watch this video about a similar salmonellosis outbreak also caused by contaminated cantaloupes. This video is from the Daily Videos channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: SALMONELLA outbreak in various states prompts RECALL of diced onion products. CDC reports salmonella outbreak from tainted ground beef after recording 16 cases in four states. 10 Simple ways to prevent salmonella and other bacteria. Oyster recall: Salmonella contamination forces Canadian company to recall oysters. Sources include: TheEpochTimes.com BC.CTVNews.ca FoodSafetyNews.com FDA.gov Brighteon.com A Kenmore man pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of second-degree criminal sexual act, the highest counts in an indictment against him, according to the Erie County District Attorneys Office. Prosecutors said that around March 2018 and October 2019, 36-year-old Justin Barker of Kenmore engaged in sexual conduct on several occasions with an individual who was under the age of 15 at undisclosed locations in Amherst and Buffalo. Barker, who remains released on $75,000 bail, faces a maximum of up to seven years in prison when he is sentenced on Feb. 21 by Erie County Court Judge Sheila A. DiTullio. District Attorney John J. Flynn commended the Amherst Police Department and the New York State Police for their work in investigating the case. The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Rebecca A. Fioravanti of the Special Victims/Domestic Violence Bureau. Harold McNeil Vets puzzled by new, mysterious and sometimes fatal respiratory illness making dogs sick all over the U.S. Veterinarians all over the United States are investigating an unusual respiratory illness that's making dogs sick . These same doctors warn that this long-lasting illness is not responding well to antibiotics Veterinarian Dr. Amanda Cavanagh, section head for the Small Animal Emergency Service center at the Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital, noted that more and more dogs are coming into veterinary emergency rooms for coughs. Dr. Lindsey Ganzer, the owner of North Springs Veterinary Referral Center in Colorado, has reported that her animal hospital alone has already seen at least 30 cases of this mysterious new illness. While research on the symptoms is still ongoing, vets are saying that most reported symptoms are similar to those of a typical kennel cough and include coughing, sneezing, nasal and eye discharge. Some dogs are able to remain vibrant and active throughout their illness, while others present with symptoms of lethargy and a lack of appetite. In more severe cases, the dogs become critically ill, with their conditions escalating rapidly and leading to pneumonia within 24 to 36 hours of the first symptoms appearing. Many dogs have already passed away due to the mystery illness. (Related: Veterinarians: Dogs are getting sick from discarded weed.) At least 10 states have recorded cases of the mystery respiratory illness The mysterious illness was first reported in Oregon back in August, and the Oregon Department of Agriculture has already received over a hundred written reports from vets regarding the illness. From Oregon, cases eventually spread out to much of the American West, with the San Diego Humane Society being forced to temporarily pause intake of owner-surrendered dogs until December to help prevent the spread of the mysterious disease. "He's never been sick a day in his life," said Wendy Brown, a dog owner in Idaho. Brown added that her three golden retrievers each started showing symptoms earlier this month. "Dooley started doing kind of this huffing and also seemed to feel quite lethargic," she described. "Not too long after, Bridge began to exhibit the symptoms. But he and his were louder, more boisterous. It was like, I thought it was his stomach because he made a retching sound." Like many dog owners, Brown believed her dogs were coming down with a typical kennel cough. But when the symptoms didn't go away with standard treatment, she knew it was something more serious. "The vet started him [Dooley] on a 10-day cycle of doxycycline," she said. "Today was day 10 and he is not a lot better. So, quite a bit of concern for us there." As of press time, 10 states have confirmed receiving dogs with cases of the mysterious outbreak: California, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington. In Oregon alone, over 200 cases have already been reported since mid-August. Several dogs in the state have already died, while many more are still struggling to get the mystery illness out of their systems. Watch the following video to learn about a local vet's advice on how to avoid the mysterious illness that is sickening dogs. This video is from the Daily Videos channel on Brighteon.com. More related stories: CDC warning: Cases of flesh-eating LEISHMANIASIS, which could be entering the U.S. via imported dogs, are on the rise. Pet abandonment cases soar all over the world due to inflation, rising cost of living. Canadian company vows to produce 9,000 tons of crickets each year for "human and pet consumption." Your dog needs some face time with the pack: Study on canine health reveals playtime helps reduce long-term stress levels. Dogs are part of the family, but have a different digestive system: Do you know which people foods they can eat? Sources include: StrangeSounds.org ABC7Chicago.com APNews.com Brighteon.com War in Gaza not only claiming lives but also devastating Israels economy The catastrophic consequences of the Israel-Hamas war are unfolding as the world watches. According to reports, at least 11,470 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7, but the death toll has not been updated for days due to the collapse of the enclave's health system that collected this data. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas's attacks stands at about 1,200. But this is not the only aspect that the public is seeing. As per Bloomberg, the financial effects of Tel Aviv's military aggression, the Israeli economy has already suffered damages of about $8 billion, and they increase by $260 million every day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who depends heavily on support from "ultra-Zionist right-wing political groupings," continues to provide "vast sums" to settler-colonial and non-essential ideological programs despite this catastrophic situation, deviating from the standard wartime economic protocol, reports reveal. Furthermore, data taken from the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel indicate that since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood began, one in three firms have either closed their doors or are only operating at 20 percent capacity. Over half of organizations in Israel have experienced revenue losses above 50 percent. The majority of enterprises in the southern regions, the ones closest to Gaza, are either closed or operating at a minimum. Worse, the Israeli Labor Ministry revealed that 764,000 people, or about five percent of the country's workforce, are now unemployed. This is because of the reserve duty call-ups, school closures that necessitate childcare arrangements, and evacuations. Moreover, according to Financial Times, many Israeli building projects, which mostly relied on abusing Palestinian laborers, have temporarily come to an end because Zionists "don't want to have Palestinian workers there" and they "are upset at the sight of Arab workers holding heavy tools." Meanwhile, Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, Ernst and Young's global strategy consulting arm, said that in the worst-case scenario, the expansion of military action in the Middle East would entail severe consequences not just for the region but for the entire world economy. He predicted a possible moderate recession, a plunge in stock prices, and a loss of $2 trillion. Oil prices are also likely to rise to $150 per barrel from the current $85, he added. Last month the World Trade Organization (WTO) warned that global gross domestic product (GDP) could drop five percent in the longer term if the world splits into two trading blocs as a result of the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas. The WTO also slashed its 2023 forecast for global trade growth to 0.8 percent from the previously estimated 1.7 percent, citing a deepening manufacturing slowdown. Netanyahu maintains Israel can afford and win the war Three hundred Tel Aviv economists called on Netanyahu and his financial ministers to wake up and come to your senses earlier in November. They pointed out the "grave blow that Israel was dealt," and are aware of the tragedy that is unfolding. "A fundamental change in national priorities and a massive rechanneling of funds to deal with war damage, aid to victims, and the rehabilitation of the economy," was how they see the cataclysm. But the prime minister maintained his stance and boldly promised to establish an "economy under arms" in response. "My guidance is clear: we are opening the taps, pumping money to everyone who needs it. Whatever economic price this war exacts on us, we will pay it without hesitation. We will beat the enemy in the military war and we will win the economic war, too," he boasted. A lot of analysts think otherwise. They feel like Israel is just as dangerously misguided about its ability to sustain its economy amid the ongoing conflict. The Start-Up Nation Policy Institute (SNPI) has released reports on this. One study found that results were startling on the harm done to the countrys tech industry, which was once a source of pride and delight for the country and a predictor of future development, just two weeks after the Al-Aqsa Flood began. The Tel Aviv-based think tank predicted a quickly approaching "economic crisis whose force is still unknown" even at that early stage. Overall, the deteriorating security situation in Israel was cited as a cause of damage by 80 percent of Israeli information technology (IT) companies, with 25 percent citing "double damage, both in human resources and in obtaining investment capital." Just 10 percent of the tech firms were "managing to have meetings with investors" at all, while over 40 percent of them had postponed or canceled investment agreements. On November 2, SNPI also released another report that examined Israel's economic resilience to security crises in the past, using data from "significant combat events of the last twenty years." This included Operation Protective Edge in 2014, a deadly seven-week battle that wreaked further havoc, punishment and devastation on Gaza's already blockaded population. "Tel Aviv has proven its ability to overcome crises of this sort in the past and emerge stronger, even though it acknowledged that recent events had naturally raised big concerns among foreign investors, partners, and customers of Israeli businesses," the study concluded. (Related: The U.S. and Israeli war agenda will bring the world into an economic DOOM LOOP, Andy Schectman warns Mike Adams.) Check out EconomicRiot.com to learn more about the economic repercussions of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Sources for this article include: AlJazeera.com GreatGameIndia.com RT.com The weather in parts of Canada will unload wintry and colder outlook this November, with heavy blowing snow. The snowy outlook can significantly affect road conditions as the winter is very near. Canadians are no strangers to challenging weather conditions, from wildfires to prolonged warmth and heavy snow conditions. In the recent news, portions of Canada recorded a return of colder temperatures and a freezing outlook. People are advised to check the weather conditions at the end of November and December due to the blast of snow and extreme cold. It also marks the early winter preparedness in Canada. In the nearby areas, the Northeastern US will expect a mixture of rain and snow this week as many Americans look forward to Black Friday and Thanksgiving. Canada Weather in November: Where Will Snow and Rain Unload? According to the latest forecast, a chilly weather outlook could unload in Southern Ontario. Residents should watch out for the frosty outlook this early week, affecting the driving conditions in the region. The report said that a weak Colorado low will bring colder conditions to Southern Ontario this week. The freezing rain could be noticeable in the midweek. In the forecast, a light snow outlook is likely in Igauit and Ottawa. Meanwhile, rain can unload in the following areas: Montreal Prince George Victoria Toronto Meanwhile, the cloudy conditions will emerge in the following areas: Calgary Fredericton Saskatoon St. John Whitehorse Winnipeg Yellowknife In Alberta, residents can anticipate a significant temperature drop this midweek. Snowy outlook can likely unfold in Alberta's Southern Foothills, especially in the Edston, Hilton and Yellowhead region on Wednesday. The snow will be favorable for snow lovers in parts of Canada. However, prolonged exposure to cold weather is not recommended this week, especially for older adults and people with medical conditions. Also Read: Warmer Trend to Snow Accumulations To Unload in Parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, NWS Forecast Shows Canada Snow and Winter Preparedness A blast of snow has been seen in Canada this month. More snow and extreme cold can emerge in December and the arrival of winter. As a result, early preparations are crucial to prevent emergencies due to heavy snow and winter storms. Here are significant weather reminders for Canadians this November. Check for winter watches and snow storms Homeowners should stay updated with challenging weather conditions, particularly winter storms and watches. It will help Canadians to become more prepared and check the travel conditions. Home Preparedness Homeowners should also protect their plumbing and heating systems. Crops and roofs are likely to become damaged due to heavy snow and snowstorms. Keeping survival winter kits is also recommended for homes in case of emergencies. Related Article: Northeastern US Weather Forecast: Heavy Rains, Strong Winds to Hit Before Thanksgiving For more similar stories, don't forget to follow Nature World New Some of the stranded dolphins were found to have high concentrations of PFAS chemicals concentration, according to recent reports. The contamination of said pollutants can have environmental effects on dolphins and other aquatic animals. Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are found in water. They are recognized as long-lasting chemicals that can stay over time. The alarming detection of PFAS in animals and humans can result in significant health effects. As a result, understanding the effects of PFAS is crucial for the environment and animals. PFAS is commonly seen in manufacturing and consumer products. According to recent reports, PFAS emergence can cause cancer, and affect the kidney, thyroid and reproductive system. The PFAS reduction is crucial to avoid toxic chemicals entering the world's oceans. Dolphins Suffer from PFAS Chemicals in Gippsland The latest study in Science of the Total Environment showed the PFAS hepatic concentrations in dolphins in Southeast Australia, including Victoria, Gippsland and Melbourne. Experts from the Melbourne University, RMIT and Marine Mammal Foundation raised concerns about the alarming concentration of forever chemicals. The critically endangered Burrunan dolphins (Tursiops australis) are affected by the said pollutants. The continuous pollutant threat can harm the dwindling numbers of said dolphins. Alarmingly, the Burrunan dolphins have the highest concentrations of PFAS. Without urgent efforts and monitoring, the species can likely suffer from the brink of extinction. Unlike other dolphins, the Burrunan is considered small, with a weight of up to 130 kilograms. They are recognizable by their charcoal-colored back and dark gray color, which commonly thrive in estuarine and coastal areas. However, the Burrunan dolphins have suffered from population decline, including the following threats: Fishing gear entanglement Habitat loss Climate change and warming event Vessel strike Water pollution Experts noted the PFAS live concentration for the said stranded dolphins. Scientists discovered that newborn and juvenile dolphins had PFAS contaminants. Also Read: New Coral Reef Fish Species Discovered in Great Barrier Reef Dolphin Facts: The Common Bottlenose Dolphins The common bottlenose dolphins are also called Tursiops truncatus. They have a length from 6 to 13 feet, weighing up to 1,400 pounds. They can live up to 60 years and commonly thrive in the following areas: West Coast Southeast Mid-Atlantic Pacific Islands The bottlenose dolphins are mainly threatened by human-related activities and injuries. According to recent reports, they suffer from chemical contaminants, habitat loss, illegal feeding, oil spills, ocean noise pollution and fishing gear entanglement. In addition, the said bottlenose dolphins like to consume small fish, crabs, shrimp, squid and other small aquatic animals. When they hunt for potential prey, they use their teeth. Related Article: Widespread Microplastics Harm Aquatic Species in Rivers in Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, Report Warns For more similar stories, don't forget to follow Nature News. Severe winds knocked over a lamppost at California's Disneyland, injuring three people. On Monday, Anaheim, California, received a high wind warning after gusts of 45 to 65 miles per hour were recorded. Disneyland Wind Incident As guests began to arrive at the 'happiest place on earth' in the morning, high winds toppled a lamppost on Disney's Main Street, injuring three parkgoers, according to Santa Ana Police Department Sergeant John McClintock. The lamppost was situated in a flowerbed near the Disneyland flagpole, close to the park's main entrance. One person was critically hurt and was brought to the hospital for treatment, while two other people were treated at the scene for lesser injuries. It is unknown what types of injuries were incurred or the person's present status. An hour later, Disney workers cordoned off the area and began removing the fallen portion of the pole, while a cherry picker was employed to stabilize and rebuild the lamppost. While construction was going on, Disneyland News Today uploaded pictures of workers directing the crowds to use an alternate route into the park. Workers were also seen fixing cables to other lampposts to prevent future mishaps throughout the windy day, according to the outlet. On-stage park concerts scheduled for the rest of the day were also canceled owing to "inclement weather." Read Also: Santa Ana Winds Bring Threat of Inferno and Property Damage in Southern California Damages Of Strong Wind A Cessna 172 parked at John Wayne Airport was also blown over by the strong wind. This airplane was connected to the ground down there, parked, and the severe winds pulled it up and flipped it over this afternoon. No one was injured. Officials at John Wayne Airport stated on X that operations at the airport were only temporarily halted. #JohnWayneAirport addressed an incident on the runway with a Cessna 172 (small private) aircraft. Airport operations were temporarily delayed. Airport operations have resumed. For up to date travel information, please contact airlines directly: https://t.co/YTx0tVk2Ut John Wayne Airport (@JohnWayneAir) November 20, 2023 Ten flights were diverted, as were eight departures and eight landings. At least two other semi trucks blew over on the eastern valley roads as the Santa Ana winds raged across the mountains. While gusts in inland Orange County reached 60 mph, winds howled above 80 mph in the Santa Ana Mountains, with a peak gust of 89 mph at Santiago Peak, according to the NWS in San Diego. As the Santa Ana wind pattern persisted, high wind warnings and wind advisories were issued across much of Southern California on Monday and Tuesday morning. In the fall and winter, as chilly domes of high pressure sink into the interior West, the Santa Ana winds are a common annoyance in Los Angeles and Southern California. "There is typically a strong high pressure that parks itself over the Great Basin, and you have a complimentary low pressure off of the California Coast, and that creates a really strong gradient," John Abatzoglou, an associate professor of climatology at the University of California Merce. Stronger occurrences can produce gusts of 80 mph or more. The dry, offshore winds can further exacerbate fire conditions by lowering humidity levels, making fire starts simpler, and fanning any wildfires that are already burning in the area. The German government announced that it will invest 4 billion euros ($4.37 billion) in African green energy projects until 2030, stressing that African countries should benefit more from their riches of raw materials. Chancellor Olaf Scholz discussed the pledge at a press conference during the G20 Compact with Africa event in Berlin. Increase the Role of African States in Technologies The summit, which was organized by the G20 group of prominent countries, brought together the leaders of various African and European countries, with clean energy and the role it can play in developing African economies and benefiting global decarbonization being a key theme. Several African and European leaders traveled to Berlin on the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to attend the Compact with Africa (CwA) summit. The idea, which arose from Germany's 2017 G20 presidency, brought together leaders from the host country, Nigeria, France, Kenya, Ghana, and the Netherlands, among others, and was also attended by high-ranking delegates from the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU). Ahead of the summit, the German government stated that one of the main goals of the compact would be to increase the role of African states in not only providing resources for sustainable technologies but also in processing them on-site, in contrast to China's approach in Africa in recent years. This is not about development aid according to the outdated patterns of donors and recipients," said Scholz at a speech in Berlin. "This is about investments that pay off for both sides." Read Also: Environmentalists Urged Puerto Rican Court To Stop Local Government From Approving Renewable Energy Projects China's Presence In Africa When asked about China's substantial presence in Africa, some African leaders stated that the continent was open to different forms of cooperation. "Our wish is for you to place your trust in us, to impose less conditions and to create the conditions together. ...Improving governance, that's our responsibility, and therefore this shared vision could allow, I'm certain of it, for a large capital that could be invested in the continent," said Moussa Faki, the chairperson of the African Union Commission. African countries have long grumbled that while Europe talks about investment, China actually gives funding without moral equivalence. Nonetheless, Chinese lending to Africa is declining, while European interest is increasing. The West is increasingly competing with China and Russia across the continent for geopolitical influence, crucial minerals, and new economic prospects. "The global order is shifting and Europe and Germany can not just sit on the sidelines," Finance Minister Christian Lindner said after meeting with his counterparts from several African countries at the conference. The G20 Compact with Africa summit was the sixth since its inception in 2017 under the German G20 chair, and it brought together the leaders of more than a dozen African countries. Last year, Germany's commerce with Africa was 60 billion euros ($65.4 billion), a fraction of its trade with Asia but growing 21.7% from 2021. Related Article: Germany Hastens Transition to Greener Energy A third family member charged with conspiring to kidnap a former University at Buffalo student is in federal custody in Brooklyn after his arrest earlier this month in the United Arab Emirates. FBI agents arrested Adham Abughanem at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York upon his arrival from Dubai on Sunday, according to court documents. A magistrate judge in Brooklyn agreed to release him Monday on a $500,000 bond with conditions, but U.S. District Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. in Buffalo temporarily blocked his release and scheduled a hearing for Nov. 29 in his courtroom. The federal judge last week ordered the father and another brother of the Lackawanna woman to remain in custody as their cases proceed. Prosecutors have described an elaborate plot relying on trickery to kidnap the 22-year-old woman from Mexico to the United States, then from the United States to Egypt, and finally from Egypt to Yemen. Khaled Abughanem, 50, and his son, Waleed Abughanem, 32, who have been in jail since February, have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping conspiracy charges. The fathers lawyer described Khaled Abughanem as a loving father to his 22-year-old daughter who was only trying to protect her after she sneaked away from the familys Lackawanna home to Mexico to marry a man he had never met. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Maeve Huggins and Charles Kruly have said the three Abughanems conspired to hold her against her will in Yemen for approximately 16 months because she attempted to marry someone of her own choosing, rather than entering into a forced marriage that her father had sought to arrange. The indictment against Adham Abughanem, her 26-year-old brother, was unsealed last summer to help the government execute the warrant for his arrest. The government listed him as a fugitive. An Interpol red notice was issued and Emeriti authorities arrested him Nov. 7 and transferred custody to the FBI, according to court records. In Brooklyn, a public defender for Adham Abughanem called the governments assertion that he was a fugitive legally inaccurate. He was living with his wife in Dubai when the grand jury indicted him in April, said Deirdre D. von Dornum, an assistant federal defender, in a court filing. There is no indication that law enforcement informed him that he was wanted in the United States or made any attempt to have him voluntarily surrender, she said, adding that Abughanem was served with no formal notice of the charges and was not aware a red notice had been issued to Interpol members. Adham Abughanem has already been in custody for more than 30 days in Dubai, UAE, the public defender said as she sought his release under conditions. While the government prevailed in the detention hearings for his father and brother, Adham Abughanems circumstances are different, von Dornum said. Unlike his brother, he is a U.S. citizen. And unlike his brother and father, his role was far more peripheral in the alleged plot, she said. Federal authorities allege Adham Abughanem was with his father and mother in Mexico when his sister involuntarily departed that country, accompanied her and other family members on a flight from the United States to Egypt, and then traveled with the family to Yemen. Unlike his brother and father, he is fully Americanized and had made a life separate from his family, going to college outside of Buffalo, working in New York City and then in Buffalo, and living outside the family home since his graduation from high school, his public defender said. Adham Abughanem voluntarily left a country with which the United States has no extradition treaty to face these charges, she said. The 22-year-old woman returned to the U.S. after her father and brother were placed in custody earlier this year. Her family does not know where she is living now. Sorry, something doesn't look right. Something seems unusual about your device or browser. Please contact support. It would certainly be entertaining. Im referring to the scenario, however unlikely it may have seemed a month ago, that three of Western New Yorks top elected officials State Sen. Tim Kennedy, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz could battle it out in the race to succeed Rep. Brian Higgins, D-Buffalo, who announced plans to resign from Congress. Sen. Kennedy Tim Kennedy announces candidacy to succeed Brian Higgins in Congress State Sen. Tim Kennedy is running to succeed his political mentor Brian Higgins as Buffalos representative in Congress. Kennedy, a South Buffalo Democrat, was the first to jump into the race when he told The Buffalo News in an exclusive interview that he was the best candidate to succeed Higgins. I believe the track record that I have is reflective on a local and state level of his track record in Washington because of how I emulate the way he operates, Kennedy said. In reality, though, Kennedy had essentially been running for the seat for months. Throughout the summer, he was spending big bucks on biographical materials to help his constituents learn more about him, even though he has been in state office since 2011. Last week, Geoff Kelly of Investigative Post quantified that in his story, writing, In the first six months of this year, Kennedys state Senate campaign committee doled out $426,000, mostly on consultants and political contributions. Thats $64,000 more than Kennedy spent in the same period in 2022, the last time he was up for reelection. So Kennedy had clearly been ready to press the go button when Higgins announced his intentions to step down. He also has a huge fundraising advantage. Ken Krulys politics blog noted this week that Kennedy has $2.1 million in his campaign kitty compared to $212,000 for Brown. After unloading his treasury on attack ads against his GOP opponent in November, Poloncarz has the smallest treasury, if he has anything left in the bank (we wont know until his post-election report is filed on Dec. 4). Mayor Brown Brown seemed to have his own thing going outside of politics with his pursuit of the presidency at SUNY Buffalo State. Brown told reporters multiple times that he was exploring it, even taking night classes at Daemen University so that he could fulfill the degree requirements for the position. My political sources, though, say the mayors plan has shifted. The Buffalo State post seems less likely, especially if it is filled by years end, and Brown appears to be testing the waters for Congress quite seriously. The mayor told reporters last week that if voters sent him to Washington, he would be a centrist fighter who would work to bring leftist Democrats and right-wing Republicans together. We have people that are rabid on the left, that are rabid on the right, Brown told reporters Friday after a news conference about winter storm readiness. I think we need fighters in the center to bring our country back together. Brown has liabilities, from the years-long rumors about federal probes of City Hall to more basic failures like plowing snow. But one issue Brown could position himself well on is gun control. He is normally a politician who stays in his lane when it comes to making public comments, but he has spoken out about the mass shooting epidemic America faces. If Democrats were to take back the House next year, you have to imagine House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other national Dems in Washington would be clearing the way for Rep. Byron Brown to discuss the horror that occurred at Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue during the racist mass shooting in 2022. It also helps that Brown who is Buffalos first and only Black mayor would be the regions first Black representative in Congress. County Executive Poloncarz Poloncarz, meanwhile, also appears to be considering a run, albeit in the early exploratory stages. Fresh off his 18-point victory to secure an unprecedented fourth term as county executive, he has been talking with Democratic chairs in various towns and testing the waters behind the scenes. The timing may not be right for him he could be accused of being overly ambitious since he was just re-elected but political pros say voters rarely hold that against candidates. Voters mostly expect politicians to act like ... well, politicians. Weary of congressional bickering, Brian Higgins announces plans to resign In an exclusive interview, Higgins refused to confirm what other sources told The News and other media outlets last week: that he's leaving to become president of Shea's. But he said he plans to resign from Congress in early February and sounded glad to be leaving. Poloncarzs skills would be a natural fit in Congress. He is a policy wonk, he has an intricate knowledge of how the various levers of government work and he is tuned in to national issues. You are aware of this if you follow his account on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, where Poloncarz has been known to opine on issues like prescription drug costs, the Republican drama in choosing a House speaker and the Israel-Hamas war. Unlike Kennedy and Brown, Poloncarz has not spoken about the NY-26 race publicly. But in late September, when I asked him if he would serve out his full term if he were re-elected as county executive, Poloncarz said he intended to but left the door open. If an opportunity arose federal or another position that I thought was appropriate Im not going to sit here today and say, Im not going to consider it, Poloncarz said. Perhaps most significantly, he has the best relationship of the three with Erie County Democratic Chairman Jeremy Zellner, a longtime ally. Zellner is ultimately going to be the person making the decision about who will succeed Higgins, at least in the short term. (Technically, if any of these candidates did not get the Democratic nomination, they could petition their way onto the ballot using another line, but lets not get too far ahead of ourselves.) Poloncarz has one more thing going for him that suggests he may have had Congress in his sights: many of the lawn signs he handed out for his most recent campaign simply read Poloncarz without the for county executive. That means supporters who put the signs back in their garages could take them out again for a congressional race. By Express News Service CHENNAI: The Thousand Lights All Women Police have booked a case against actor Mansoor Ali Khan for making derogatory comments against actor Trisha. This comes a day after the National Commission for Women (NCW) asked the TN police to file a case. As per the police statement, a case was registered against Mansoor under sections 354 (A), 509 of the IPC. The case was registered on the basis of a complaint filed by NCW. The commission on Monday took suo motu cognisance of the issue and asked Tamil Nadu DGP to register a case against the actor and invoke IPC Section 509 B and other relevant laws. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Mansoor refused to apologise and said that the South Indian Artistes Association has made a grave mistake by demanding a public apology. He also said that rape scene does not translate into rape in real life. A video of Mansoor from one of his interviews had surfaced on social media, where he had said he hoped to have a rape scene in 'Leo' starring Trisha just like he had in older films with stars like Khushbu Sundar and Roja. "When I heard that I was acting with Trisha, I thought there would be a bedroom scene in the film. I thought that I could carry her to the bedroom just like I did with other actresses in my earlier movies. I have done so many rape scenes in a number of movies and it's not new to me. But these guys didn't even show Trisha to me on the sets during the Kashmir schedule," Khan had purportedly said. Trisha and Mansoor Ali Khan don't share screen space in Lokesh Kanagaraj's film 'Leo' but have portrayed prominent roles in the film. Responding to Khan's remarks, Trisha took to microblogging site X and wrote, "A recent video has come to my notice where Mr. Mansoor Ali Khan has spoken about me in a vile and disgusting manner. I strongly condemn this and find it sexist, disrespectful, misogynistic, repulsive and in bad taste. He can keep wishing but I am grateful never to have shared screen space with someone as pathetic as him and I will make sure it never happens for the rest of my film career as well. People like him bring a bad name to mankind." (With online desk inputs) Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp CHENNAI: The Thousand Lights All Women Police have booked a case against actor Mansoor Ali Khan for making derogatory comments against actor Trisha. This comes a day after the National Commission for Women (NCW) asked the TN police to file a case. As per the police statement, a case was registered against Mansoor under sections 354 (A), 509 of the IPC. The case was registered on the basis of a complaint filed by NCW. The commission on Monday took suo motu cognisance of the issue and asked Tamil Nadu DGP to register a case against the actor and invoke IPC Section 509 B and other relevant laws.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Mansoor refused to apologise and said that the South Indian Artistes Association has made a grave mistake by demanding a public apology. He also said that rape scene does not translate into rape in real life. A video of Mansoor from one of his interviews had surfaced on social media, where he had said he hoped to have a rape scene in 'Leo' starring Trisha just like he had in older films with stars like Khushbu Sundar and Roja. "When I heard that I was acting with Trisha, I thought there would be a bedroom scene in the film. I thought that I could carry her to the bedroom just like I did with other actresses in my earlier movies. I have done so many rape scenes in a number of movies and it's not new to me. But these guys didn't even show Trisha to me on the sets during the Kashmir schedule," Khan had purportedly said. Trisha and Mansoor Ali Khan don't share screen space in Lokesh Kanagaraj's film 'Leo' but have portrayed prominent roles in the film. Responding to Khan's remarks, Trisha took to microblogging site X and wrote, "A recent video has come to my notice where Mr. Mansoor Ali Khan has spoken about me in a vile and disgusting manner. I strongly condemn this and find it sexist, disrespectful, misogynistic, repulsive and in bad taste. He can keep wishing but I am grateful never to have shared screen space with someone as pathetic as him and I will make sure it never happens for the rest of my film career as well. People like him bring a bad name to mankind." (With online desk inputs) Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Dr Nithya Franklyn By Express News Service CHENNAI: The Tamil Muslim cuisine or the Tamil Sahibu is the cuisine of the Tamil-speaking Muslims who live along the Coromandel Coast of South Tamil Nadu. The intermingling of Arab traders and the local women during the 8th or 9th century resulted in the formation of the population who live around Kilakarai, Kayalpattinam Adirampattinam, etc. Though not listed among the popular cuisines, it is unique and subtly flavourful. The life of the Tamil Muslims has been shaped around the ocean. It is mostly a seafaring community that relies on maritime trade, fishing, and pearl diving as their main source of income. Over the centuries merchant traders, Islamic Evangelists, foreign cultural practices along with new culinary influences started docking in towns around Kilakarai, Kayalpattinam, and Thondi. According to researchers, this rich and distinct food identity was shaped by influences not only from the Arab world but also from countries like Sri Lanka, The Maldives, and those from the South Asian archipelago due to semi-permanent migrations and trade. These migrants formed cultural strongholds to establish their identity in their greener pastures and one of their proud exports was their cuisine. They also incorporated the cuisines of the places they moved into and hence, porkless yum cha, mamak food, and Khaleej mandi became hot favourites. The most exquisite ingredient of Tamil Muslim cuisine is the kanava karuvad or dried squid. It is an ode to hot Indian summers and made from fresh squid that has been gutted and made to dry in the blazing hot tropical sun. The squid once thoroughly dehydrated is deconstructed by hand into thin thread-like pieces and is one of the most expensive seafood commodities available locally due to how labour-intensive the process is. The combination of perfectly fried dried squid (the oil has to be at optimal temperature and removed from heat after dropping the calamari) with curry leaves and chillies can amp up any meal. Another special ingredient of the region is the rampe or pandan leaves. These leaves give out a distinct flavour only when cooked. The thenga choru or nei choru with the flavours of pandan leaves are served on every special occasion along with Kayalpattinam kalari kari. Masi or Maldivian fish which is smoked and dried tuna is yet another special flavouring agent of this region. Made into a thovayal with shallots, chillies, and coconut or as a flavouring agent to curries this gives an oceanic punch and umaminess to the dish. The anams or watery coconut milk-based curries of the region have a spectacular taste. Their pulianam or coconut milk rasam is the best I have tasted and the meal itself is heavenly when paired with kanava karuvad fry. Dumroot, a sticky cake made from semolina, maida, and coconut milk is a local specialty that is made for festive occasions and weddings. Though dumroot has many doppelgangers in world cuisine like the Arab basbusa, Filipino bibinka, the Indian version is unique. Another local specialty is the dodol, a fudge sweet made by cooking coconut milk, jaggery, and rice flour for over three hours on a firewood stove. Dodol is believed to have been brought by the Portuguese from Indonesia and there is a version of this in Sri Lanka too. Vengaya paniyaram, poicha idiyappam, dum adai, surul paniyaram, pathir puri, and seeni vadai are some of the famous and exquisite short delicacies of the region though the list is endless. Kayalpattinam Kalari Kari: It is a delicacy from the Kayalpattinam area and no marriage or celebratory meal would be complete without this. It pairs beautifully with ghee rice, pulao, plain rice and rotis too. It is tangy, creamy, and flavoursome and irresistible. Ingredients Mutton: 500 g Chilli powder: 1 tsp Coriander powder: 1 tsp Jeera powder: 1 tsp Fennel powder: 1 tsp Ginger-garlic paste: 1 tsp Onion: 1, sliced For gravy Coconut oil: 3 tbsp Ghee: 2 tbsp Cinnamon, cloves, cardamom: 2 each Onion: 1, sliced Ginger-garlic paste: 1 tsp Curry leaves, pandan leaves Curd: 2 tbsp Chilli powder: 1 tsp Coriander powder: 1 tsp Jeera powder: 1/2 tsp Fennel powder: 1/2 tsp Garam masala: 1/2 tsp Poppy seeds: 1.5 tbsp Cashews 10 Coconut milk: 1 cup Raw banana: 1/2 cubed Mango: 2 slices Method Marinate the mutton with the rest of the ingredients. Make a fine paste of cashews and poppy seeds. Heat oil, ghee and add the whole spices, curry leaves, onion, ginger-garlic paste and then the spice powders. Add the mutton, curd and saute till oil oozes out add the poppy-cashew paste, enough water and cook till done. Now, add pandan leaves, raw banana, mango, coconut milk and let it cook till done. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp CHENNAI: The Tamil Muslim cuisine or the Tamil Sahibu is the cuisine of the Tamil-speaking Muslims who live along the Coromandel Coast of South Tamil Nadu. The intermingling of Arab traders and the local women during the 8th or 9th century resulted in the formation of the population who live around Kilakarai, Kayalpattinam Adirampattinam, etc. Though not listed among the popular cuisines, it is unique and subtly flavourful. The life of the Tamil Muslims has been shaped around the ocean. It is mostly a seafaring community that relies on maritime trade, fishing, and pearl diving as their main source of income. Over the centuries merchant traders, Islamic Evangelists, foreign cultural practices along with new culinary influences started docking in towns around Kilakarai, Kayalpattinam, and Thondi. According to researchers, this rich and distinct food identity was shaped by influences not only from the Arab world but also from countries like Sri Lanka, The Maldives, and those from the South Asian archipelago due to semi-permanent migrations and trade. These migrants formed cultural strongholds to establish their identity in their greener pastures and one of their proud exports was their cuisine. They also incorporated the cuisines of the places they moved into and hence, porkless yum cha, mamak food, and Khaleej mandi became hot favourites. googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The most exquisite ingredient of Tamil Muslim cuisine is the kanava karuvad or dried squid. It is an ode to hot Indian summers and made from fresh squid that has been gutted and made to dry in the blazing hot tropical sun. The squid once thoroughly dehydrated is deconstructed by hand into thin thread-like pieces and is one of the most expensive seafood commodities available locally due to how labour-intensive the process is. The combination of perfectly fried dried squid (the oil has to be at optimal temperature and removed from heat after dropping the calamari) with curry leaves and chillies can amp up any meal. Another special ingredient of the region is the rampe or pandan leaves. These leaves give out a distinct flavour only when cooked. The thenga choru or nei choru with the flavours of pandan leaves are served on every special occasion along with Kayalpattinam kalari kari. Masi or Maldivian fish which is smoked and dried tuna is yet another special flavouring agent of this region. Made into a thovayal with shallots, chillies, and coconut or as a flavouring agent to curries this gives an oceanic punch and umaminess to the dish. The anams or watery coconut milk-based curries of the region have a spectacular taste. Their pulianam or coconut milk rasam is the best I have tasted and the meal itself is heavenly when paired with kanava karuvad fry. Dumroot, a sticky cake made from semolina, maida, and coconut milk is a local specialty that is made for festive occasions and weddings. Though dumroot has many doppelgangers in world cuisine like the Arab basbusa, Filipino bibinka, the Indian version is unique. Another local specialty is the dodol, a fudge sweet made by cooking coconut milk, jaggery, and rice flour for over three hours on a firewood stove. Dodol is believed to have been brought by the Portuguese from Indonesia and there is a version of this in Sri Lanka too. Vengaya paniyaram, poicha idiyappam, dum adai, surul paniyaram, pathir puri, and seeni vadai are some of the famous and exquisite short delicacies of the region though the list is endless. Kayalpattinam Kalari Kari: It is a delicacy from the Kayalpattinam area and no marriage or celebratory meal would be complete without this. It pairs beautifully with ghee rice, pulao, plain rice and rotis too. It is tangy, creamy, and flavoursome and irresistible. Ingredients Mutton: 500 g Chilli powder: 1 tsp Coriander powder: 1 tsp Jeera powder: 1 tsp Fennel powder: 1 tsp Ginger-garlic paste: 1 tsp Onion: 1, sliced For gravy Coconut oil: 3 tbsp Ghee: 2 tbsp Cinnamon, cloves, cardamom: 2 each Onion: 1, sliced Ginger-garlic paste: 1 tsp Curry leaves, pandan leaves Curd: 2 tbsp Chilli powder: 1 tsp Coriander powder: 1 tsp Jeera powder: 1/2 tsp Fennel powder: 1/2 tsp Garam masala: 1/2 tsp Poppy seeds: 1.5 tbsp Cashews 10 Coconut milk: 1 cup Raw banana: 1/2 cubed Mango: 2 slices Method Marinate the mutton with the rest of the ingredients. Make a fine paste of cashews and poppy seeds. Heat oil, ghee and add the whole spices, curry leaves, onion, ginger-garlic paste and then the spice powders. Add the mutton, curd and saute till oil oozes out add the poppy-cashew paste, enough water and cook till done. Now, add pandan leaves, raw banana, mango, coconut milk and let it cook till done. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai on Tuesday said that he expects an improvement in air quality in the coming days in the city.An improvement can be seen in the pollution level in Delhi. Further improvement is expected in the coming days. As per the predictions of the weather department, the AQI is not expected to worsen. However, people need to be alert, he said. The Punjab government has controlled stubble burning by more than 50% as compared to last year, Rai added. He said that a six-member special task force was formed for proper implementation and monitoring of GRAP rules. The task force includes the special commissioner of Transport, DCP (HQ) Traffic Police, Deputy Commissioner, chief engineers of MCD and PWD. Their work will be to coordinate with departments concerned and give the implementation report to the government, he said. Meanwhile, the AQI recorded on Tuesday was 323, as per the System of Air quality and weather forecasting and research (SAFAR-India). According to the central pollution control board at 7:41 am, the AQI in Anand Vihar was recorded at 374, in Jahangirpuri at 399, in Lodhi Road at 315, and in New Moti Bagh at 370.Last Saturday, the CAQM revoked the restrictions that were imposed under GRAP IV permitting trucks and buses except for BS-3 and BS-4 petrol and diesel vehicles to enter the city and lifting the ban on ongoing construction activities. Stringent restrictions removed The Centre on Saturday removed stringent curbs, including a ban on construction work related to linear projects and the entry of polluting trucks into Delhi in view of a drop in pollution levels due to favourable wind speed and direction. The relative humidity was recorded at 91 per cent at 8:30 am. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai on Tuesday said that he expects an improvement in air quality in the coming days in the city.An improvement can be seen in the pollution level in Delhi. Further improvement is expected in the coming days. As per the predictions of the weather department, the AQI is not expected to worsen. However, people need to be alert, he said. The Punjab government has controlled stubble burning by more than 50% as compared to last year, Rai added. He said that a six-member special task force was formed for proper implementation and monitoring of GRAP rules. The task force includes the special commissioner of Transport, DCP (HQ) Traffic Police, Deputy Commissioner, chief engineers of MCD and PWD. Their work will be to coordinate with departments concerned and give the implementation report to the government, he said. Meanwhile, the AQI recorded on Tuesday was 323, as per the System of Air quality and weather forecasting and research (SAFAR-India).googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); According to the central pollution control board at 7:41 am, the AQI in Anand Vihar was recorded at 374, in Jahangirpuri at 399, in Lodhi Road at 315, and in New Moti Bagh at 370.Last Saturday, the CAQM revoked the restrictions that were imposed under GRAP IV permitting trucks and buses except for BS-3 and BS-4 petrol and diesel vehicles to enter the city and lifting the ban on ongoing construction activities. Stringent restrictions removed The Centre on Saturday removed stringent curbs, including a ban on construction work related to linear projects and the entry of polluting trucks into Delhi in view of a drop in pollution levels due to favourable wind speed and direction. The relative humidity was recorded at 91 per cent at 8:30 am. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Jaison Wilson By Express News Service NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the AAP government for not providing funds to the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridors to Alwar in Rajasthan and Panipat in Haryana, saying that the latters advertisement funds would be transferred to the project if the dues were not paid within a week. A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia, however, stayed the order for a week, granting time to the government to comply with its earlier promise on payment at the request of its counsel. The SC said the advertising funds for the last three years were Rs 1,100 crore and Rs 550 crore for this year. The top court said that budgetary provision was something that the state government should look into but if such national projects were to be affected and money was spent on advertisements, it would be inclined to direct that those funds be transferred for this project. We would have been inclined to transfer those funds. However, on the last date, Dr. Singhvi (the governments counsel) had assured that the funds would be made available. We are thus constrained to direct that the funds allocated for advertising be allocated for this project. At the request of the Delhi government counsel, however, we keep this order in abeyance for one week. If the funds are not transferred the order will come into effect, the SC said in its order. On July 24, the top court berated the Delhi government for throwing its hands up over contributing its share towards the two RRTS corridors to Alwar and Panipat and directed it to provide Rs 415 crore for the project within two months. The Arvind-Kejriwal-led AAP government in the city had earlier expressed its inability to contribute funds for the RRTS project after which the apex court directed it to place on record funds spent on advertisements in the last three years. Delhi to Meerut in 60 minutes The project entails semi-high speed rail corridors connecting Delhi to Meerut, Alwar & Panipat. The estimated cost of the 82.15-km stretch (Delhi will have 13 km) is Rs 31,632 cr. The corridor, with 24 stations, will cover the distance from Sarai Kale Khan to Modipuram (Meerut) in 60 minutes. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the AAP government for not providing funds to the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridors to Alwar in Rajasthan and Panipat in Haryana, saying that the latters advertisement funds would be transferred to the project if the dues were not paid within a week. A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia, however, stayed the order for a week, granting time to the government to comply with its earlier promise on payment at the request of its counsel. The SC said the advertising funds for the last three years were Rs 1,100 crore and Rs 550 crore for this year.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The top court said that budgetary provision was something that the state government should look into but if such national projects were to be affected and money was spent on advertisements, it would be inclined to direct that those funds be transferred for this project. We would have been inclined to transfer those funds. However, on the last date, Dr. Singhvi (the governments counsel) had assured that the funds would be made available. We are thus constrained to direct that the funds allocated for advertising be allocated for this project. At the request of the Delhi government counsel, however, we keep this order in abeyance for one week. If the funds are not transferred the order will come into effect, the SC said in its order. On July 24, the top court berated the Delhi government for throwing its hands up over contributing its share towards the two RRTS corridors to Alwar and Panipat and directed it to provide Rs 415 crore for the project within two months. The Arvind-Kejriwal-led AAP government in the city had earlier expressed its inability to contribute funds for the RRTS project after which the apex court directed it to place on record funds spent on advertisements in the last three years. Delhi to Meerut in 60 minutes The project entails semi-high speed rail corridors connecting Delhi to Meerut, Alwar & Panipat. The estimated cost of the 82.15-km stretch (Delhi will have 13 km) is Rs 31,632 cr. The corridor, with 24 stations, will cover the distance from Sarai Kale Khan to Modipuram (Meerut) in 60 minutes. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Mukesh Ranjan By Express News Service RANCHI: As many as five elephants died of electrocution after coming in contact with 33,000 volt overhead wire in Jharkhand. The incident took place early in the morning on Tuesday in the jungles of Musabani under Ghatsila sub-division of East Singhbhum district. Earlier too, two wild elephants allegedly had died due to electrocution in the region on November 1 and November 2. According to locals, five wild tuskers, including two calves, were electrocuted by a high-tension over head wire that had fallen on the forest stretch. The high-tension line had been drawn reportedly to feed the power supply to Hindustan Copper Ltd in Ghatsila. Locals claimed that a section of villagers in Mosabani were driving a herd of 12 wild elephants away towards the forest this morning and incidentally discovered five elephants lying dead in the jungles. The villagers have found a pair of fallen high-tension wires entangled with the dead elephants carcass. Despite repeated complaints to the electricity department to raise the height of the overhead wire, no action was taken in this regard due to which the five elephants were electrocuted, said a villager requesting anonymity. A herd of elephants, about 8 in number, have been roaming in the area for the last few weeks which has panicked the villagers, he added. Meanwhile, forest department has asked the villagers to remain alert at night as there is a possibility that the remaining three elephants may come back looking for the other members of the herd and may get angered and spoil the atmosphere in the region. Forest officials confirmed that five elephants, including 2 calves, have died due to electrocution. They, however, informed that the process of identifying sagged overhead wires was on and they had also submitted a list of 66 locations in Chakulia to the electricity department to tighten them after the November 1 and 2 incidents. The process of identifying the sagged wires in Musabani area was onin between the incident took place which is really very unfortunate, said Jamshedpur DFO Mamta Priyadarshi. They have also called the General Manager of Jharkhand Bijli Vitaran Nigam Limited (JBVNL) and officials of HCL as well, to feel the seriousness of the matter and take adequate measures in this regard, she added. The DFO said that she has also alerted the field staff to increase patrolling in the region. No action by electricity board A villager said that Despite repeated complaints to the electricity department to raise the height of the overhead wire, no action was taken in this regard due to which the five elephants were electrocuted. Earlier, two wild jumbos had died due to electrocution in the region on November 1 and 2. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp RANCHI: As many as five elephants died of electrocution after coming in contact with 33,000 volt overhead wire in Jharkhand. The incident took place early in the morning on Tuesday in the jungles of Musabani under Ghatsila sub-division of East Singhbhum district. Earlier too, two wild elephants allegedly had died due to electrocution in the region on November 1 and November 2. According to locals, five wild tuskers, including two calves, were electrocuted by a high-tension over head wire that had fallen on the forest stretch. The high-tension line had been drawn reportedly to feed the power supply to Hindustan Copper Ltd in Ghatsila. Locals claimed that a section of villagers in Mosabani were driving a herd of 12 wild elephants away towards the forest this morning and incidentally discovered five elephants lying dead in the jungles. The villagers have found a pair of fallen high-tension wires entangled with the dead elephants carcass.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Despite repeated complaints to the electricity department to raise the height of the overhead wire, no action was taken in this regard due to which the five elephants were electrocuted, said a villager requesting anonymity. A herd of elephants, about 8 in number, have been roaming in the area for the last few weeks which has panicked the villagers, he added. Meanwhile, forest department has asked the villagers to remain alert at night as there is a possibility that the remaining three elephants may come back looking for the other members of the herd and may get angered and spoil the atmosphere in the region. Forest officials confirmed that five elephants, including 2 calves, have died due to electrocution. They, however, informed that the process of identifying sagged overhead wires was on and they had also submitted a list of 66 locations in Chakulia to the electricity department to tighten them after the November 1 and 2 incidents. The process of identifying the sagged wires in Musabani area was onin between the incident took place which is really very unfortunate, said Jamshedpur DFO Mamta Priyadarshi. They have also called the General Manager of Jharkhand Bijli Vitaran Nigam Limited (JBVNL) and officials of HCL as well, to feel the seriousness of the matter and take adequate measures in this regard, she added. The DFO said that she has also alerted the field staff to increase patrolling in the region. No action by electricity board A villager said that Despite repeated complaints to the electricity department to raise the height of the overhead wire, no action was taken in this regard due to which the five elephants were electrocuted. Earlier, two wild jumbos had died due to electrocution in the region on November 1 and 2. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Michael J. Keane, the top deputy for Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn Jr., was endorsed by the Erie County Democratic Committee on Tuesday to succeed Flynn when he steps away from the seat. Erie County Democratic Committee Chairman Jeremy J. Zellner described Keane, who hails from a storied South Buffalo political family, as a person with a big heart who cares a lot about this community and who has done incredibly competent work at the Erie County District Attorneys Office. Keane staved off a late challenge from veteran former prosecutor Christopher Belling, who also appeared before Democratic Committee members Tuesday. Belling said no other candidate can begin to match, much less exceed his qualifications as a prosecutor for four decades. Belling also sought to make an issue of Keanes political connections. Keane is the son of former Assemblyman Richard J. Keane, who served 33 years in public office, the brother of Buffalo City Court Judge Kevin J. Keane and the husband of Lynn W. Keane, a State Supreme Court justice. Surrounded by dozens of family members and supporters in ECDCs Larkinville offices, Keane said hes proud of his familys public service but also his own as Flynns first deputy district attorney. Public service is something I was born and raised in, Keane said. Its literally in my blood. Ive got family members who are police officers, firefighters, nurses and, yes, even elected officials. And Im proud of that. Im proud of my family and Im proud of the public service that Ive done every day for the last seven years. Keane said the DAs Office has had to adapt to New Yorks recent criminal justice reforms, including Raise the Age, bail reform, changes in the discovery law, the repeal of Civil Rights Law 50-a, which previously shielded police discipline records from public view, and the widespread use of body cameras by law enforcement agencies throughout the county. Weve faced some real significant changes in the DAs office, beginning almost at Day One, he said. Weve had to essentially modernize and transform our office over the last seven years and I think weve done it almost seamlessly. And Im proud of the work we have done. After Zellner notified him that he was not selected, Belling declined to comment but told The News that he was considering mounting a primary challenge. Zellner scoffed at the notion. We are trying to hold this seat in Democratic hands, he said. I think what Mr. Belling is trying to do is to give the Republicans some cover here and cause us some problems and make us spend some money and make us have a primary thats unnecessary. Flynn told The News last week that he wont seek re-election and may step down from his position early next year before his term is over at the end of 2024. No Republican has held the seat since the late 1980s, Erie County Republican Chairman Michael Kracker said. He confirmed that James Gardner, a law clerk for Erie County Court Judge Kenneth Case, has emerged as a possible candidate for the Republican endorsement. By Express News Service JAIPUR: Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath kicked off campaign in Rajasthan on Tuesday by visiting Dungarpur and Chittorgarh. He addressed election rallies in these districts in support of BJP candidates. Yogi said that the land of Rajasthan was a symbol of bravery. It is a land of devotion and power. But the people of the state have been complaining for the last five years. The government of Rajasthan fail to stop crimes, atrocities on women and corruption, he commented. He attacked the Gehlot government and remarked that BJP ended terrorism by removing Section 370. Similarly, to end corruption, misgovernance, mafia raj and gunda raj in Rajasthan, BJP governments at the state and Centre has to be formed, he said. Accusing Congress of appeasement, he said that Uttar Pradesh is a much bigger state and social and religious programmes are held there, but curfew is imposed only in Rajasthan. Explaining the reason for this, the Chief Minister of UP stated that hooliganism is no more present in UP. Praising the Modi government, he said that by solving every problem, better railways, airports, IITs and IIMs were built. Taking a potshot at Congress, he said that even so many years after Independence, Congress could not even provide toilets and houses to the poor. The UP CM said that the Central government makes various types of welfare schemes, but the Rajasthan government is not able to implement them. Taking the state government to task, Yogi added that there were many mining mafias in the state. There have been incidents of murders and rapes in the last five years. The schemes of the Centre were also not implemented effectively in the state, Yogi said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp JAIPUR: Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath kicked off campaign in Rajasthan on Tuesday by visiting Dungarpur and Chittorgarh. He addressed election rallies in these districts in support of BJP candidates. Yogi said that the land of Rajasthan was a symbol of bravery. It is a land of devotion and power. But the people of the state have been complaining for the last five years. The government of Rajasthan fail to stop crimes, atrocities on women and corruption, he commented. He attacked the Gehlot government and remarked that BJP ended terrorism by removing Section 370. Similarly, to end corruption, misgovernance, mafia raj and gunda raj in Rajasthan, BJP governments at the state and Centre has to be formed, he said.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Accusing Congress of appeasement, he said that Uttar Pradesh is a much bigger state and social and religious programmes are held there, but curfew is imposed only in Rajasthan. Explaining the reason for this, the Chief Minister of UP stated that hooliganism is no more present in UP. Praising the Modi government, he said that by solving every problem, better railways, airports, IITs and IIMs were built. Taking a potshot at Congress, he said that even so many years after Independence, Congress could not even provide toilets and houses to the poor. The UP CM said that the Central government makes various types of welfare schemes, but the Rajasthan government is not able to implement them. Taking the state government to task, Yogi added that there were many mining mafias in the state. There have been incidents of murders and rapes in the last five years. The schemes of the Centre were also not implemented effectively in the state, Yogi said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Rajesh Asnani By Express News Service JAIPUR: The Congress finally released its manifesto four days ahead of voting in Rajasthan. Party chief Mallikarjun Kharge was in Jaipur to formally release the document. The manifesto has promised to increase the health insurance scheme from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh for all citizens of the state. Congress has projected it as one of the winning cards in the elections. The party also promises to enact legislation to implement the Minimum Support Price for farmers based on the recommendations of the Swaminathan Committee. The party commits to providing interest-free loans to both farmers and village traders. The BJPs focus on the exam paper leak in its campaign has prompted the Congress to make substantial promises to various sections of the society, particularly the youth. The Congress has outlined plans for job creation, promising 10 lakh new jobs for the youth, including 4 lakh in the government sector. The party has also vowed to conduct a caste census if it regains power in the state. The manifesto, named Public Manifesto-2, was presented by Manifesto Committee Chairman CP Joshi at the PCC office in the presence of several senior party leaders. In addition to the partys key assurances, the seven guarantees mentioned in the manifesto encompass various initiatives such as providing affordable gas cylinders to families with BPL and Ujjwala gas connections and ensuring English medium education for all children. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot emphasized the collective effort behind framing the manifesto, saying that 3.32 crore people contributed their suggestions for Mission 2030. CP Joshi, while presenting the manifesto, spoke about the vision of creating a new Rajasthan by 2030. The promises include the Griha Lakshmi Yojana, providing Rs 10,000 annually to female heads of households, and implementing policies to enhance womens safety, such as installing CCTV cameras in public places. Other significant promises include conducting a caste-based census, increasing health services under Chiranjeevi Yojana, and extending education up to the Class 12. Rahul calls PM liability In a broadside against the BJP, Rahul Gandhi accused the saffron camp of spreading hatred in the country. In Rajasthan, Rahul said the sole agenda of the BJP was to misguide people in the name of religion. With PM Modi using cricket analogies, the Congress leader used the panauti (liability) trend on Indias World Cup defeat to get back at the Prime Minister. Panauti (meaning liability or bad omen) got our team defeated. PM means Panauti Modi. Rahul said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp JAIPUR: The Congress finally released its manifesto four days ahead of voting in Rajasthan. Party chief Mallikarjun Kharge was in Jaipur to formally release the document. The manifesto has promised to increase the health insurance scheme from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh for all citizens of the state. Congress has projected it as one of the winning cards in the elections. The party also promises to enact legislation to implement the Minimum Support Price for farmers based on the recommendations of the Swaminathan Committee. The party commits to providing interest-free loans to both farmers and village traders. The BJPs focus on the exam paper leak in its campaign has prompted the Congress to make substantial promises to various sections of the society, particularly the youth. The Congress has outlined plans for job creation, promising 10 lakh new jobs for the youth, including 4 lakh in the government sector. The party has also vowed to conduct a caste census if it regains power in the state. The manifesto, named Public Manifesto-2, was presented by Manifesto Committee Chairman CP Joshi at the PCC office in the presence of several senior party leaders. In addition to the partys key assurances, the seven guarantees mentioned in the manifesto encompass various initiatives such as providing affordable gas cylinders to families with BPL and Ujjwala gas connections and ensuring English medium education for all children. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot emphasized the collective effort behind framing the manifesto, saying that 3.32 crore people contributed their suggestions for Mission 2030.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); CP Joshi, while presenting the manifesto, spoke about the vision of creating a new Rajasthan by 2030. The promises include the Griha Lakshmi Yojana, providing Rs 10,000 annually to female heads of households, and implementing policies to enhance womens safety, such as installing CCTV cameras in public places. Other significant promises include conducting a caste-based census, increasing health services under Chiranjeevi Yojana, and extending education up to the Class 12. Rahul calls PM liability In a broadside against the BJP, Rahul Gandhi accused the saffron camp of spreading hatred in the country. In Rajasthan, Rahul said the sole agenda of the BJP was to misguide people in the name of religion. With PM Modi using cricket analogies, the Congress leader used the panauti (liability) trend on Indias World Cup defeat to get back at the Prime Minister. Panauti (meaning liability or bad omen) got our team defeated. PM means Panauti Modi. Rahul said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By Express News Service VIJAYAWADA: As many as eight school students were injured after the auto-rickshaw in which they were travelling hit a truck at Sangam-Sarat junction in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday morning. Among the students, the condition of two of them is said to be serious, as per the police. The incident happened on Wednesday morning when the auto-rickshaw was ferrying the children to a private school in Ram Nagar. While crossing a four-road junction, the three-wheeler hit a truck that was heading towards Siripuram junction from Railway Station Road. Several students flew out of the vehicle due to the impact, as the auto overturned. The police suspect negligent and rash driving of both the autorickshaw and lorry driver may have led to the accident. The viral CCTV footage of the accident retrieved from a camera installed in a nearby building is being shared widely on social media. #WATCH | Andhra Pradesh: Eight school children were injured in an accident when an auto collided with a lorry near Sangam Sarat Theatre in Visakhapatnam Source: CCTV Footage from a local shop pic.twitter.com/sr9xaadUVo ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 Locals rushed to the spot and helped the injured children. The injured children were immediately rushed to the Railway hospital. Eyewitnesses alleged that the already overspeeding truck couldn't immediately bring the vehicle to a halt and it was only after a few meters the driver managed the pull the brakes. The truck driver tried to escape the spot, however, the locals managed to nab him. Both the lorry driver and the autorickshaw driver were taken into police custody. A case has been registered and further investigations are underway. WATCH VIDEO: Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp VIJAYAWADA: As many as eight school students were injured after the auto-rickshaw in which they were travelling hit a truck at Sangam-Sarat junction in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday morning. Among the students, the condition of two of them is said to be serious, as per the police. The incident happened on Wednesday morning when the auto-rickshaw was ferrying the children to a private school in Ram Nagar. While crossing a four-road junction, the three-wheeler hit a truck that was heading towards Siripuram junction from Railway Station Road. Several students flew out of the vehicle due to the impact, as the auto overturned.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The police suspect negligent and rash driving of both the autorickshaw and lorry driver may have led to the accident. The viral CCTV footage of the accident retrieved from a camera installed in a nearby building is being shared widely on social media. #WATCH | Andhra Pradesh: Eight school children were injured in an accident when an auto collided with a lorry near Sangam Sarat Theatre in Visakhapatnam Source: CCTV Footage from a local shop pic.twitter.com/sr9xaadUVo ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 Locals rushed to the spot and helped the injured children. The injured children were immediately rushed to the Railway hospital. Eyewitnesses alleged that the already overspeeding truck couldn't immediately bring the vehicle to a halt and it was only after a few meters the driver managed the pull the brakes. The truck driver tried to escape the spot, however, the locals managed to nab him. Both the lorry driver and the autorickshaw driver were taken into police custody. A case has been registered and further investigations are underway. WATCH VIDEO: Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By Express News Service NEW DELHI: India has donated $2.5 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for humanitarian assistance in Gaza. The UNRWA, functional since 1950, carries out direct relief and work programmes for registered Palestine refugees and is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states. India on Monday handed the UNRWA $2.5 million as part of its annual contribution of $5 million for the year 2023-24 to support the agencys core programmes and services, including education, healthcare, relief, and social services provided to Palestinian refugees, the Representative Office of India at Ramallah said. The contribution was handed over by the Representative of India (ROI) to Palestine, Renu Yadav, to the Director of Partnerships, Department of External Relations of UNRWA, Karim Amer. The ROI underlined Indias continued support for the agencys activities in the region and the services it provides to Palestinian refugees during the handover ceremony at UNRWAs field office in Jerusalem, an official press release said. The UNRWA has been struggling to provide basic services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since the October 7 Israel-Hamas conflict which has prompted more than two-thirds of the Gaza population of approximately 2.3 million to flee their homes. Earlier on November 19, India had delivered 32 tonnes of humanitarian assistance to the people of Palestine via the El-Arish Airport in Egypt. Since 2018, India has provided $27.5 million to the UNRWA. During an extraordinary virtual ministerial pledging conference for UNRWA held on June 23, 2020, India announced that it would contribute $10 million to UNRWA over the next two years. Prior to the war in Gaza, UNRWA was already facing an increased demand for services resulting from a growth in the number of registered Palestine refugees, the extent of their vulnerability, and their deepening poverty. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: India has donated $2.5 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for humanitarian assistance in Gaza. The UNRWA, functional since 1950, carries out direct relief and work programmes for registered Palestine refugees and is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions from UN member states. India on Monday handed the UNRWA $2.5 million as part of its annual contribution of $5 million for the year 2023-24 to support the agencys core programmes and services, including education, healthcare, relief, and social services provided to Palestinian refugees, the Representative Office of India at Ramallah said. The contribution was handed over by the Representative of India (ROI) to Palestine, Renu Yadav, to the Director of Partnerships, Department of External Relations of UNRWA, Karim Amer. The ROI underlined Indias continued support for the agencys activities in the region and the services it provides to Palestinian refugees during the handover ceremony at UNRWAs field office in Jerusalem, an official press release said.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The UNRWA has been struggling to provide basic services to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians since the October 7 Israel-Hamas conflict which has prompted more than two-thirds of the Gaza population of approximately 2.3 million to flee their homes. Earlier on November 19, India had delivered 32 tonnes of humanitarian assistance to the people of Palestine via the El-Arish Airport in Egypt. Since 2018, India has provided $27.5 million to the UNRWA. During an extraordinary virtual ministerial pledging conference for UNRWA held on June 23, 2020, India announced that it would contribute $10 million to UNRWA over the next two years. Prior to the war in Gaza, UNRWA was already facing an increased demand for services resulting from a growth in the number of registered Palestine refugees, the extent of their vulnerability, and their deepening poverty. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By Express News Service GUWAHATI: Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen Rana Pratap Kalita on Tuesday said the ethnic violence in Manipur would continue as long as the weapons looted by mobs are not recovered. At a media interaction in Guwahati, he also said it is a political problem in the state where two communities, Kukis and Meiteis, have got polarised. Although the level of violence has come down, over 5,000 weapons were taken away from various police stations and other places. Out of that, about 1,500 weapons have been recovered. So, some 4,000 weapons are still out and as long as these are out in society, the sporadic violence will continue, Lt Gen Kalita, who hails from Assam, said. The weapons, along with ammunition, were looted in several incidents on different days. The state had appealed to people multiple times to return the weapons. It had also warned that if the weapons are not returned, those possessing them would face actions as per the law. To a query, Lt Gen Kalita said there are some legacy issues among Kukis, Nagas and Meiteis in the strife-torn state. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp GUWAHATI: Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen Rana Pratap Kalita on Tuesday said the ethnic violence in Manipur would continue as long as the weapons looted by mobs are not recovered. At a media interaction in Guwahati, he also said it is a political problem in the state where two communities, Kukis and Meiteis, have got polarised. Although the level of violence has come down, over 5,000 weapons were taken away from various police stations and other places. Out of that, about 1,500 weapons have been recovered. So, some 4,000 weapons are still out and as long as these are out in society, the sporadic violence will continue, Lt Gen Kalita, who hails from Assam, said. The weapons, along with ammunition, were looted in several incidents on different days. The state had appealed to people multiple times to return the weapons. It had also warned that if the weapons are not returned, those possessing them would face actions as per the law. To a query, Lt Gen Kalita said there are some legacy issues among Kukis, Nagas and Meiteis in the strife-torn state. googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By PTI KOLKATA: Over three months after the death of an undergraduate student of Jadavpur University because of ragging and subsequent fall from a hostel balcony, the representative body of faculty members voiced concern that "disciplinary action" against the guilty was yet to be taken by the university. The Jadavpur University Teachers' Association (JUTA) in a letter to officiating vice-chancellor Buddhadeb Sau said the "inordinate delay in imposing punishment" on the students has raised serious questions on the intent of the administration to curb ragging on the campus. The student fell off a second-floor balcony of the JU Main Hostel on August 9 after intensive ragging. He died at a private hospital the next day. "We note with deep concern that disciplinary action against the convicted persons in the death of a first-year student has not yet been taken in spite of a series of meetings of the anti-ragging committee and an anti-ragging squad of the university," the letter by JUTA said on Wednesday. READ MORE | Death by ragging: A long global history of violence "Inordinate delay in imposing punishment has raised serious questions on the role and interest of the administration to curb ragging in university. In this context, JUTA demands immediate punishment of identified guilty persons using the institutional rules and regulations failing which serious legal measures will be initiated against the administration to ensure social justice," the letter, a copy of which was made available to the media, said. The association said it will mobilise the stakeholders to launch an agitation against the motivated inaction by a section of the administration to curb ragging if no steps are taken. The anti-ragging squad of JU in its report submitted to the university two months ago had suggested expelling 35 senior students residing in the varsity hostel where the UG student died. The squad also supported another recommendation of the panel to expel four senior students from the university for their alleged direct involvement in the ragging of the Bengali honours student leading to his fall from the balcony. Attempts to contact JU interim VC to elicit his response on the issue failed. JUTA also reiterated its opposition to any move by the state government to roll out a human resource management system (HRMS) in JU and other state universities for disbursement of salary, retirement benefits, matters related to pay fixation, promotion etc. apprehending it will seriously jeopardize the academic and financial autonomy of the institution. Urging Sau to "place the matter in the executive council and discuss the policy threats which are hidden in HRMS", JUTA said this was needed to protect the interests of the stakeholders. Under the circumstances, silence of the university administration becomes a real threat to the stakeholders, JUTA said and threatened a bigger movement if their concerns are not addressed. READ MORE | End ragging, dont turn campuses into centres of violence and fear Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp KOLKATA: Over three months after the death of an undergraduate student of Jadavpur University because of ragging and subsequent fall from a hostel balcony, the representative body of faculty members voiced concern that "disciplinary action" against the guilty was yet to be taken by the university. The Jadavpur University Teachers' Association (JUTA) in a letter to officiating vice-chancellor Buddhadeb Sau said the "inordinate delay in imposing punishment" on the students has raised serious questions on the intent of the administration to curb ragging on the campus. The student fell off a second-floor balcony of the JU Main Hostel on August 9 after intensive ragging. He died at a private hospital the next day.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); "We note with deep concern that disciplinary action against the convicted persons in the death of a first-year student has not yet been taken in spite of a series of meetings of the anti-ragging committee and an anti-ragging squad of the university," the letter by JUTA said on Wednesday. READ MORE | Death by ragging: A long global history of violence "Inordinate delay in imposing punishment has raised serious questions on the role and interest of the administration to curb ragging in university. In this context, JUTA demands immediate punishment of identified guilty persons using the institutional rules and regulations failing which serious legal measures will be initiated against the administration to ensure social justice," the letter, a copy of which was made available to the media, said. The association said it will mobilise the stakeholders to launch an agitation against the motivated inaction by a section of the administration to curb ragging if no steps are taken. The anti-ragging squad of JU in its report submitted to the university two months ago had suggested expelling 35 senior students residing in the varsity hostel where the UG student died. The squad also supported another recommendation of the panel to expel four senior students from the university for their alleged direct involvement in the ragging of the Bengali honours student leading to his fall from the balcony. Attempts to contact JU interim VC to elicit his response on the issue failed. JUTA also reiterated its opposition to any move by the state government to roll out a human resource management system (HRMS) in JU and other state universities for disbursement of salary, retirement benefits, matters related to pay fixation, promotion etc. apprehending it will seriously jeopardize the academic and financial autonomy of the institution. Urging Sau to "place the matter in the executive council and discuss the policy threats which are hidden in HRMS", JUTA said this was needed to protect the interests of the stakeholders. Under the circumstances, silence of the university administration becomes a real threat to the stakeholders, JUTA said and threatened a bigger movement if their concerns are not addressed. READ MORE | End ragging, dont turn campuses into centres of violence and fear Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Ujwal Jalali and Preetha Nair By Express News Service NEW DELHI: In the midst of the election season, the Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday provisionally attached assets worth Rs 751.90 crore in a money laundering case against Congress-promoted National Herald and entities linked to it, drawing sharp reaction from the party. Investigation revealed that Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) is in possession of proceeds of crime in the form of immovable properties spread across many cities of India such as Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow to the tune of Rs 661.69 crore and Young Indian is in possession of proceeds of crime to the tune of Rs 90.21 cr in the form of investment in equity shares of AJL, the ED said on Tuesday. National Herald is published by AJL and owned by Young Indian Private Limited. Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are Young Indians majority shareholders with a combined stake of 76%. The agencys action comes at a time when elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Mizoram are in progress. The Congress said the move reflected the BJPs desperation to divert attention from certain defeat in the ongoing state polls. This is a prefabricated structure of deceit, lies and falsehood, of by and for the BJP, to divert, distract and digress in the middle of elections, said party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi. The money-laundering probe stems from an order of Court of Metropolitan Magistrate of Delhi, which took cognizance of a private complaint. The court held that the seven accused, including Young Indian, committed offences under various sections of the IPC. EDs provisional order has to be approved by the adjudicating authority of PMLA. EDs charges AJL owed `90.21 crore to AICC, but the latter treated it as non-recoverable and sold the loan for Rs 50 lakh to a newly incorporated company called Young Indian This action amounted to cheating the shareholders of AJL as well as donors of the Congress party AJL then held an EGM to increase share capital and issue fresh shares worth Rs 90.21 crore to Young Indian With this, the stake of over 1,000 shareholders came down to 1% and AJL became a subsidiary of Young Indian, which took control over properties of AJL Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: In the midst of the election season, the Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday provisionally attached assets worth Rs 751.90 crore in a money laundering case against Congress-promoted National Herald and entities linked to it, drawing sharp reaction from the party. Investigation revealed that Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) is in possession of proceeds of crime in the form of immovable properties spread across many cities of India such as Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow to the tune of Rs 661.69 crore and Young Indian is in possession of proceeds of crime to the tune of Rs 90.21 cr in the form of investment in equity shares of AJL, the ED said on Tuesday. National Herald is published by AJL and owned by Young Indian Private Limited. Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are Young Indians majority shareholders with a combined stake of 76%. The agencys action comes at a time when elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, and Mizoram are in progress. googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The Congress said the move reflected the BJPs desperation to divert attention from certain defeat in the ongoing state polls. This is a prefabricated structure of deceit, lies and falsehood, of by and for the BJP, to divert, distract and digress in the middle of elections, said party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi. The money-laundering probe stems from an order of Court of Metropolitan Magistrate of Delhi, which took cognizance of a private complaint. The court held that the seven accused, including Young Indian, committed offences under various sections of the IPC. EDs provisional order has to be approved by the adjudicating authority of PMLA. EDs charges AJL owed `90.21 crore to AICC, but the latter treated it as non-recoverable and sold the loan for Rs 50 lakh to a newly incorporated company called Young Indian This action amounted to cheating the shareholders of AJL as well as donors of the Congress party AJL then held an EGM to increase share capital and issue fresh shares worth Rs 90.21 crore to Young Indian With this, the stake of over 1,000 shareholders came down to 1% and AJL became a subsidiary of Young Indian, which took control over properties of AJL Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Ejaz Kaiser By Express News Service RAIPUR: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the National Investigation Agencys (NIA) plea challenging the investigation conducted by the Chhattisgarh police into the 2020 FIR related to the Maoist attack at Jhiram (Bastar) in May 2013. The attack resulted in the deaths of 29 individuals, including 20 Congress leaders. The court, headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, dismissed the NIAs argument that, as the initial investigator, it had exclusive jurisdiction over the case, preventing the state police from probing a subsequent FIR. The incident occurred in Darbha, approximately 350 km south of Raipur, when Maoists targeted a Congress motorcade returning from a rally in Sukma. The Chhattisgarh police initiated an investigation in 2013, later handed over to the NIA. In 2018, the Congress, now in power, established a Special Investigation Team, seeking the NIAs report for further inquiry. However, the NIA refused to comply. In 2020, Jitendra Mudaliar, son of one of the slain Congress leaders, filed a new FIR, emphasizing conspiracy and political murder. The Chhattisgarh police commenced its probe. Despite NIAs attempts to transfer the case to federal jurisdiction, both the Jagdalpur special court and Bilaspur high court rejected the petitions. According to Sudeip Shrivastava, counsel for Mudaliar, the Chhattisgarh government and Mudaliar argued that the NIA hadnt investigated the larger conspiracy aspect, justifying the states continued involvement. Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel welcomed the decision, stating it would bring justice to Chhattisgarh. In contrast, Arun Sao, BJP state president, questioned the governments evidence, challenging it to present during the ongoing probe. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp RAIPUR: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the National Investigation Agencys (NIA) plea challenging the investigation conducted by the Chhattisgarh police into the 2020 FIR related to the Maoist attack at Jhiram (Bastar) in May 2013. The attack resulted in the deaths of 29 individuals, including 20 Congress leaders. The court, headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, dismissed the NIAs argument that, as the initial investigator, it had exclusive jurisdiction over the case, preventing the state police from probing a subsequent FIR.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The incident occurred in Darbha, approximately 350 km south of Raipur, when Maoists targeted a Congress motorcade returning from a rally in Sukma. The Chhattisgarh police initiated an investigation in 2013, later handed over to the NIA. In 2018, the Congress, now in power, established a Special Investigation Team, seeking the NIAs report for further inquiry. However, the NIA refused to comply. In 2020, Jitendra Mudaliar, son of one of the slain Congress leaders, filed a new FIR, emphasizing conspiracy and political murder. The Chhattisgarh police commenced its probe. Despite NIAs attempts to transfer the case to federal jurisdiction, both the Jagdalpur special court and Bilaspur high court rejected the petitions. According to Sudeip Shrivastava, counsel for Mudaliar, the Chhattisgarh government and Mudaliar argued that the NIA hadnt investigated the larger conspiracy aspect, justifying the states continued involvement. Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel welcomed the decision, stating it would bring justice to Chhattisgarh. In contrast, Arun Sao, BJP state president, questioned the governments evidence, challenging it to present during the ongoing probe. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Ramashankar By Express News Service PATNA: Bihar government on Tuesday issued gazette notification for two quota Bills after Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar signed the Bihar Reservation of Vacancies in Posts and Services (for SC, ST, EBC and OBC) Amendment Bill and the Bihar (In Admission in Educational Institutions) Reservation Amendment Bill, 2023 paving the way for hike in quota from existing 50 per cent to 65 per cent. Governor Arlekar had signed the two Bills on November 18. Earlier both Assembly and Council had passed the Bills on November 9 unanimously. The Governor gave his assent to the two Reservation Amendment Bills barely a few days after chief minister Nitish Kumar expressed hope that the Bills would be signed by the Governor at the earliest. With issuance of gazette notification, reservation in government jobs and educational institutions in the state will be 75 per cent (inclusive of 10 per cent quota for Economically Backward Sections). Under the new provision, the reservation quota for Scheduled Castes (SCs) has gone up to 20 per cent, while that of Scheduled Tribes (STs) has gone up to 2 per cent, Extremely Backwards Classes (EBCs) to 25 per cent and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) to 18 per cent. At present the SCs get 16 per cent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions where as SCs get 1 per cent only. Similarly EBCs get 18 per cent and OBCs 15 per cent respectively. Gazette notification said, On analysis of data collected during caste based survey 2022-23, it is apparent that large section of OBCs, SCs and STs need to be promoted for them to catch up to satisfy cherished aim in the Constitution of equality in opportunity and status. It further stated, The members of SC/ST and OBC have remained deprived and marginalised for centuries. Though affirmative action has led to improvement in their life to a certain extent, the ultimate goal of equality has not yet been achieved. Date further strengthens the perception that in addition to measures in place the state needs to take more action for proportional equality. Quota for SCs up Under the new provision, the reservation quota for Scheduled Castes (SCs) has gone up to 20 per cent, while that of Scheduled Tribes (STs) has gone up to 2 per cent, Extremely Backwards Classes (EBCs) to 25 per cent and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) to 18 per cent. At present the SCs get 16 per cent reservation. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp PATNA: Bihar government on Tuesday issued gazette notification for two quota Bills after Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar signed the Bihar Reservation of Vacancies in Posts and Services (for SC, ST, EBC and OBC) Amendment Bill and the Bihar (In Admission in Educational Institutions) Reservation Amendment Bill, 2023 paving the way for hike in quota from existing 50 per cent to 65 per cent. Governor Arlekar had signed the two Bills on November 18. Earlier both Assembly and Council had passed the Bills on November 9 unanimously. The Governor gave his assent to the two Reservation Amendment Bills barely a few days after chief minister Nitish Kumar expressed hope that the Bills would be signed by the Governor at the earliest. With issuance of gazette notification, reservation in government jobs and educational institutions in the state will be 75 per cent (inclusive of 10 per cent quota for Economically Backward Sections). Under the new provision, the reservation quota for Scheduled Castes (SCs) has gone up to 20 per cent, while that of Scheduled Tribes (STs) has gone up to 2 per cent, Extremely Backwards Classes (EBCs) to 25 per cent and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) to 18 per cent. At present the SCs get 16 per cent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions where as SCs get 1 per cent only. Similarly EBCs get 18 per cent and OBCs 15 per cent respectively.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Gazette notification said, On analysis of data collected during caste based survey 2022-23, it is apparent that large section of OBCs, SCs and STs need to be promoted for them to catch up to satisfy cherished aim in the Constitution of equality in opportunity and status. It further stated, The members of SC/ST and OBC have remained deprived and marginalised for centuries. Though affirmative action has led to improvement in their life to a certain extent, the ultimate goal of equality has not yet been achieved. Date further strengthens the perception that in addition to measures in place the state needs to take more action for proportional equality. Quota for SCs up Under the new provision, the reservation quota for Scheduled Castes (SCs) has gone up to 20 per cent, while that of Scheduled Tribes (STs) has gone up to 2 per cent, Extremely Backwards Classes (EBCs) to 25 per cent and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) to 18 per cent. At present the SCs get 16 per cent reservation. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Ramashankar By Express News Service PATNA: Nitish Kumar's cabinet on Wednesday passed a resolution demanding the grant of special category status to Bihar in the wake of a caste-based survey conducted in the state, which showed the state was home to 94 lakh poor families. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar disclosed the decision of the cabinet in this regard on his social media platform. The cabinet approved the proposal demanding special category status for the state. The state wants to launch schemes for the betterment of about 94 lakh poor families for which Rs.2.5 lakh crores is required. If special category status is granted by the Centre, the state would be able to fulfill the poor families, he said. He said the welfare schemes for the poor families would be implemented in five years as the amount is huge. But if the Centre helps us, we will be able to do the same in much less time, Nitish posted on his social media account. , 16 20 , Nitish Kumar (@NitishKumar) November 22, 2023 The JD(U) supremo has been raising the demand for special category status since 2010. Even rallies were separately held at Gandhi Maidan in Patna on November 24, 2012, and at Ram Leela Maidan in Delhi on March 17, 2013, in support of the demand. Without taking the name of Congress, Nitish said that Bihar's demand for special category status was never looked into by the then government at the Centre. Bihar chief minister disclosed that the then Union government had formed the Raghuram Rajan committee at the request of the former. The report of the Raghuram Rajan committee was published in September 2013. The then union government did nothing on this report. In May 2017 again, the Bihar government urged the Centre to accept the state's demand of special category status with a view to all-round development of the state, he clarified. ALSO READ | Why raising the quota is not a solution to Bihar's caste woes Nitish also explained how reservation quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and Extremely Backward Classes were increased on the basis of the caste-based survey data. He revealed that about 94 lakh poor families have been found in the state, according to the caste-based survey data, which was made public on October 2 on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. The state government has already proposed to give Rs.2 lakh each to the poor families belonging to all sections to make them economically self-reliant. Nitish Kumar had earlier announced that he would launch a state-wide movement if the Centre does not grant special category status to Bihar at the earliest. Nitish had said Bihar needs special category status in order to move forward. The demand for a special category status will be heard in every nook and corner of the state during the movement, he had said. Moving a step further Nitish had declared that those who do not support the demand are not interested in Bihars development. Meanwhile, the Bihar government has sent its recommendation to the Centre requesting the latter to hike the reservation quota for SCs, STs, OBCs, and EBCs at the national level on the pattern of Bihar. On November 21, the state government published a gazette notification in this regard after Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar signed the Bills concerned. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp PATNA: Nitish Kumar's cabinet on Wednesday passed a resolution demanding the grant of special category status to Bihar in the wake of a caste-based survey conducted in the state, which showed the state was home to 94 lakh poor families. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar disclosed the decision of the cabinet in this regard on his social media platform. The cabinet approved the proposal demanding special category status for the state. The state wants to launch schemes for the betterment of about 94 lakh poor families for which Rs.2.5 lakh crores is required. If special category status is granted by the Centre, the state would be able to fulfill the poor families, he said. He said the welfare schemes for the poor families would be implemented in five years as the amount is huge. But if the Centre helps us, we will be able to do the same in much less time, Nitish posted on his social media account.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); , 16 20 , Nitish Kumar (@NitishKumar) November 22, 2023 The JD(U) supremo has been raising the demand for special category status since 2010. Even rallies were separately held at Gandhi Maidan in Patna on November 24, 2012, and at Ram Leela Maidan in Delhi on March 17, 2013, in support of the demand. Without taking the name of Congress, Nitish said that Bihar's demand for special category status was never looked into by the then government at the Centre. Bihar chief minister disclosed that the then Union government had formed the Raghuram Rajan committee at the request of the former. The report of the Raghuram Rajan committee was published in September 2013. The then union government did nothing on this report. In May 2017 again, the Bihar government urged the Centre to accept the state's demand of special category status with a view to all-round development of the state, he clarified. ALSO READ | Why raising the quota is not a solution to Bihar's caste woes Nitish also explained how reservation quotas for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and Extremely Backward Classes were increased on the basis of the caste-based survey data. He revealed that about 94 lakh poor families have been found in the state, according to the caste-based survey data, which was made public on October 2 on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. The state government has already proposed to give Rs.2 lakh each to the poor families belonging to all sections to make them economically self-reliant. Nitish Kumar had earlier announced that he would launch a state-wide movement if the Centre does not grant special category status to Bihar at the earliest. Nitish had said Bihar needs special category status in order to move forward. The demand for a special category status will be heard in every nook and corner of the state during the movement, he had said. Moving a step further Nitish had declared that those who do not support the demand are not interested in Bihars development. Meanwhile, the Bihar government has sent its recommendation to the Centre requesting the latter to hike the reservation quota for SCs, STs, OBCs, and EBCs at the national level on the pattern of Bihar. On November 21, the state government published a gazette notification in this regard after Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar signed the Bills concerned. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Christopher Mount bends over a spiral notebook at his kitchen table, scratching at a blank page titled Bills. Every month, its the same story: the same list, the same math. And after minutes of summing, the same shortages. You could cast as far back as Mounts childhood to work out how he wound up at this table. The 39-year-old Buffalo man and his wife, Bethany, both inherited poverty from their parents. But when the Mounts reflect on where their story went wrong, they return most often to the apartment they rented in Buffalos Seneca-Cazenovia neighborhood in 2019. Within months of moving in, all four of the couples children tested positive for lead exposure and Christopher began suffering seizures that left him dazed, black-eyed and bloody. Like tens of thousands of older homes across the city, that apartment contained toxic lead-based paint that flaked off its interior window sills and walls. Since at least the early 1990s, Buffalo has ranked among the nations worst cities for lead exposure a function of its aging housing stock, persistent failure of leaders to prioritize safe and affordable housing and prospects that a serious illness can make hard times seem nearly impossible. There are ripple effects, said Bethany, 41, of living in a home contaminated with lead. Christopher lost his job. The bills piled up. Every month now, its the same story of scrimping, the same grind. Experts say lead exposure affects thousands of families in Western New York, though it can manifest in different ways. Children are most vulnerable because they play on floors and put their hands in their mouths, and their brains are still developing. Nearly 500 Erie County children tested positive for elevated blood lead levels in 2020, according to the state Department of Health. Some of those children go on to develop neurological issues, including learning disabilities or impulse control, which the Mounts youngest son, Billy, now exhibits. But lead exposure can have other consequences other ripples, in Bethanys words. The Mounts point to Christophers seizures, which prevent the family from leaving him alone. That, in turn, limited Bethany to jobs she could work on weekends, when the older children could keep an eye on Christopher at home. That home, meanwhile chosen quickly, amid a shortage that has made housing unattainable for many Buffalonians suffers from some of the same maintenance issues as the old house on Hammerschmidt Avenue. Water leaks through the ceiling in a second-floor bedroom. The plumbing backs up in the basement. The Mounts found paint chips under a loose rug and dreaded that they, too, might contain lead. Crisis now visits the Mount household so often that it has taken the guise of inconvenience: another van breakdown, another roof leak, another unexpected emergency room visit. It is what it is, Bethany says, frequently but its also exhausting, she admits. Every new day seems the longest of their lives. If an end is in sight, they do not see it. And yet, it takes a kind of hopefulness and ingenuity to try the math again each month. To decorate the house for holidays, however cheaply. To pitch a used tent in the living room for the children. During the past 13 months, the Mounts have opened their lives to a Buffalo News photographer. Their goal, Christopher and Bethany said, is to make landlords think twice about the risks that unremediated lead paint poses. The Erie County District Attorney charged their former landlord, MD Abedin, with a misdemeanor in March 2021, citing him for renting the house on Hammerschmidt, even after he knew about the lead contamination. Abedin pleaded guilty later that year and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service. It is what it is. I cannot fathom another family having to go through all these issues, Bethany wrote on social media last year. No one should have to go through what Im dealing with on a daily basis. Anuraag Singh By Express News Service BHOPAL: The Congress has called all its 230 candidates to Bhopal on November 26 for training them on relevant aspects of counting of votes. Madhya Pradesh went to polls on November 17, and the counting will take place across 55 districts on December 3. According to the state Congress sources in Bhopal, each candidate and his two agents will be trained in all technical and legal aspects of counting. The exercise is particularly being conducted to train the candidates in all aspects of training, spanning from EVM seals being opened, tallying of signatures and ensuring receipt of certificates after every round of counting to prevent possibility of any malpractice, a senior state Congress leader told this newspaper. As per informed sources, a similar training session is also likely to be conducted by the ruling BJP, but the details are not yet out. Upbeat about returning to power on its own (unlike in 2018 when it garnered the support of independents and smaller parties), the state Congress has written to all its 230 candidates to furnish by November 30 details about government staff who might have openly helped the ruling BJP during the election in the state.Our election control room, which was established on November 17, received complaints about government staff, including officials, helping the ruling BJP against all established rules and procedures. All the candidates have been asked to submit all possible details about such government staff/officials (including picture and video evidence) along with their partisan conduct to the state Congress by November 30. Once our government is back in the state, it will ensure that such partisan staff are rendered justice, a state Congress leader said in Bhopal. Importantly, the state Congress chief and partys chief ministerial face Kamal Nath, during the poll campaign, had been hinting towards action against the government staff/officials siding with the BJP during the entire poll process. Led by women voters, Madhya Pradesh reported highest ever turnout of over 76% in the November 17 polls to 230 assembly constituencies. Leaving nothing to chance on December 3 Congress plans to train its 230 candidiates, and their agents, on tech and legal aspects of counting Counting of votes will take place on December 3 across 55 districts in Madhya Pradesh Training will span from opening of seals of the electronic voting machines and tallying of signatures Training will also ensure receipt of certificates after every round of counting to prevent possibility of any malpractice BJP is also likely to hold similar training sessions to party candidates, but details are not out yet Congress has also asked party candidates to furnish details of government officials who might have helped BJP in the election MP saw highest ever turnout of over 76% in the Nov 17 polls Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp BHOPAL: The Congress has called all its 230 candidates to Bhopal on November 26 for training them on relevant aspects of counting of votes. Madhya Pradesh went to polls on November 17, and the counting will take place across 55 districts on December 3. According to the state Congress sources in Bhopal, each candidate and his two agents will be trained in all technical and legal aspects of counting. The exercise is particularly being conducted to train the candidates in all aspects of training, spanning from EVM seals being opened, tallying of signatures and ensuring receipt of certificates after every round of counting to prevent possibility of any malpractice, a senior state Congress leader told this newspaper. As per informed sources, a similar training session is also likely to be conducted by the ruling BJP, but the details are not yet out. Upbeat about returning to power on its own (unlike in 2018 when it garnered the support of independents and smaller parties), the state Congress has written to all its 230 candidates to furnish by November 30 details about government staff who might have openly helped the ruling BJP during the election in the state.Our election control room, which was established on November 17, received complaints about government staff, including officials, helping the ruling BJP against all established rules and procedures.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); All the candidates have been asked to submit all possible details about such government staff/officials (including picture and video evidence) along with their partisan conduct to the state Congress by November 30. Once our government is back in the state, it will ensure that such partisan staff are rendered justice, a state Congress leader said in Bhopal. Importantly, the state Congress chief and partys chief ministerial face Kamal Nath, during the poll campaign, had been hinting towards action against the government staff/officials siding with the BJP during the entire poll process. Led by women voters, Madhya Pradesh reported highest ever turnout of over 76% in the November 17 polls to 230 assembly constituencies. Leaving nothing to chance on December 3 Congress plans to train its 230 candidiates, and their agents, on tech and legal aspects of counting Counting of votes will take place on December 3 across 55 districts in Madhya Pradesh Training will span from opening of seals of the electronic voting machines and tallying of signatures Training will also ensure receipt of certificates after every round of counting to prevent possibility of any malpractice BJP is also likely to hold similar training sessions to party candidates, but details are not out yet Congress has also asked party candidates to furnish details of government officials who might have helped BJP in the election MP saw highest ever turnout of over 76% in the Nov 17 polls Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Rajesh Asnani By Express News Service JAIPUR: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sharpened his attack on the ruling Congress in Rajasthan on Tuesday saying the Congress was a slave of appeasement, which was why people like Kanhaiya Lal were beheaded in the state. The Popular Front of India (PFI) is a terrorist organisation and the government has banned it. But PFI processions take place in Kota and the Congress government sleeps. The Congress government is a slave to appeasement and is afraid of terrorists, said the PM. Addressing a public meeting in Rajasthans Baran district, the PM said even as the country suffered, Congress leaders handed them to robbers, rioters and criminals. Those accused of organising communal riots in Rajasthan walked the red carpet in the CM house, said Modi. He slammed communal incidents in the state and asserted that the Gehlot government should be thrown out of power for its appeasement agenda. He alleged the Congress has turned Rajasthan, a land of warriors, into an unchallenged territory of rioters. PM Modi said every section of society wanted to get rid of the Congress. Congress is now a symbol of corruption, nepotism, and appeasement three evils preventing India from becoming a developed nation, he said. Besides Baran, the PM also addressed public meetings in Kota and Karauli districts. In the evening, he also held a grand road show to woo voters in Jaipur. The PM targeted the Gehlot government over its failure to check the rising crime graph against women. He said state ministers were seen standing with those who committed atrocities against sisters and daughters. He slammed a senior Gehlot minister for his controversial remarks on atrocities against women. Instead of taking action against the criminals, the Congress government has given them a free hand to commit crimes, said Modi. Meanwhile, Union home minister Amit Shah, while addressing election meetings in Sikar and Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, also targeted the Gehlot government and said appeasement was at its peak in the state. Three evils Alleging poor law & order, PM said Congress is now a symbol of graft, nepotism, appeasement three evils preventing India from becoming a developed nation. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp JAIPUR: Prime Minister Narendra Modi sharpened his attack on the ruling Congress in Rajasthan on Tuesday saying the Congress was a slave of appeasement, which was why people like Kanhaiya Lal were beheaded in the state. The Popular Front of India (PFI) is a terrorist organisation and the government has banned it. But PFI processions take place in Kota and the Congress government sleeps. The Congress government is a slave to appeasement and is afraid of terrorists, said the PM. Addressing a public meeting in Rajasthans Baran district, the PM said even as the country suffered, Congress leaders handed them to robbers, rioters and criminals. Those accused of organising communal riots in Rajasthan walked the red carpet in the CM house, said Modi. He slammed communal incidents in the state and asserted that the Gehlot government should be thrown out of power for its appeasement agenda. He alleged the Congress has turned Rajasthan, a land of warriors, into an unchallenged territory of rioters. PM Modi said every section of society wanted to get rid of the Congress.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Congress is now a symbol of corruption, nepotism, and appeasement three evils preventing India from becoming a developed nation, he said. Besides Baran, the PM also addressed public meetings in Kota and Karauli districts. In the evening, he also held a grand road show to woo voters in Jaipur. The PM targeted the Gehlot government over its failure to check the rising crime graph against women. He said state ministers were seen standing with those who committed atrocities against sisters and daughters. He slammed a senior Gehlot minister for his controversial remarks on atrocities against women. Instead of taking action against the criminals, the Congress government has given them a free hand to commit crimes, said Modi. Meanwhile, Union home minister Amit Shah, while addressing election meetings in Sikar and Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan, also targeted the Gehlot government and said appeasement was at its peak in the state. Three evils Alleging poor law & order, PM said Congress is now a symbol of graft, nepotism, appeasement three evils preventing India from becoming a developed nation. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By PTI NEW DELHI: The Election Commission on Wednesday issued a show-cause notice to the president of Rajasthan Congress for allegedly camouflaging political advertisements in newspapers as news reports. It asked state Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra to respond to the notice by 3 pm on Thursday. "In the interim, refrain from utilising this format, content, language and placement of advertisement, which as per your own party's complaint in March, violates the spirit of the Representation of the People Act and the model code of conduct.," the notice read. The BJP had moved the EC against the Congress advertisements ahead of the November 25 assembly polls. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: The Election Commission on Wednesday issued a show-cause notice to the president of Rajasthan Congress for allegedly camouflaging political advertisements in newspapers as news reports. It asked state Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra to respond to the notice by 3 pm on Thursday. "In the interim, refrain from utilising this format, content, language and placement of advertisement, which as per your own party's complaint in March, violates the spirit of the Representation of the People Act and the model code of conduct.," the notice read.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The BJP had moved the EC against the Congress advertisements ahead of the November 25 assembly polls. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By PTI NEW DELHI: Epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata should be included in social sciences textbooks and the Preamble of the Constitution written on classroom walls, a high-level NCERT panel has recommended, according to its chairperson C I Issac. The seven-member committee, which was constituted last year, has made several recommendations for its final position paper on social sciences, which is a key prescriptive document for laying down the foundation for the development of new NCERT textbooks. The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has not taken a call on the recommendations yet. "The panel has stressed teaching epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata in the social sciences syllabus to students. We think that students in their teenage years build their self-esteem, patriotism and pride for their nation," Issac said. He noted that every year thousands of students leave the country and seek citizenship in other countries because of a lack of patriotism among them. "Therefore, it is important for them to understand their roots and develop love for their country and their culture. Some boards already teach Ramayana and Mahabharata but it should be done in a more elaborate way," he said. Issac earlier said that the same panel had also recommended replacing the country name 'India' with 'Bharat' in textbooks, introducing 'classical History' instead of ancient History in the curriculum, and highlighting 'Hindu victories' in the textbooks for classes 3 to 12. "Our Preamble gives importance to social values including democracy and secularism. It is noble. Therefore, we have recommended writing it on the walls of the classrooms so that everyone can understand and learn from it," Issac added. The NCERT is revising the school curriculum in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The new NCERT textbooks are likely to be ready by the next academic session. The panel's recommendations may now be taken into consideration by the 19-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) notified in July to finalise the curriculum, textbooks and learning material for these classes. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: Epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata should be included in social sciences textbooks and the Preamble of the Constitution written on classroom walls, a high-level NCERT panel has recommended, according to its chairperson C I Issac. The seven-member committee, which was constituted last year, has made several recommendations for its final position paper on social sciences, which is a key prescriptive document for laying down the foundation for the development of new NCERT textbooks. The National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has not taken a call on the recommendations yet.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); "The panel has stressed teaching epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata in the social sciences syllabus to students. We think that students in their teenage years build their self-esteem, patriotism and pride for their nation," Issac said. He noted that every year thousands of students leave the country and seek citizenship in other countries because of a lack of patriotism among them. "Therefore, it is important for them to understand their roots and develop love for their country and their culture. Some boards already teach Ramayana and Mahabharata but it should be done in a more elaborate way," he said. Issac earlier said that the same panel had also recommended replacing the country name 'India' with 'Bharat' in textbooks, introducing 'classical History' instead of ancient History in the curriculum, and highlighting 'Hindu victories' in the textbooks for classes 3 to 12. "Our Preamble gives importance to social values including democracy and secularism. It is noble. Therefore, we have recommended writing it on the walls of the classrooms so that everyone can understand and learn from it," Issac added. The NCERT is revising the school curriculum in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The new NCERT textbooks are likely to be ready by the next academic session. The panel's recommendations may now be taken into consideration by the 19-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) notified in July to finalise the curriculum, textbooks and learning material for these classes. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Jitendra Choubey By Express News Service NEW DELHI: India experienced an unprecedented surge in vegetable oil imports, setting a record at 167.1 Lakh Tonnes (LT) in November 2022 -October 2023 period. Market analysts attribute this surge, particularly in refined palm oil, to what they view as flawed government policies. Consequently, this surge has adversely affected domestic edible oil production, posing a threat to the sustainability of the oilseeds processing industry, transforming India from a processor into a mere packer. Notably, over 60% of these imports, totalling 100 LT, comprised palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia. The influx has caused a slump in domestic market prices, notably impacting mustard oil and dissuading farmers from cultivating more mustard. Rajasthan, a major mustard seed producer, has responded by reducing the targeted acreage for mustard sowing in the current rabi season from 45.52 Lakh Hectare (LHa) to 41 LHa. Reports on the progress of the Rabi sowing season reveal a shift away from oilseeds towards other crops. Mustard sowing has decreased from 69.31 LHa to 68.66 LHa, contributing to an overall 1.43% reduction in oilseeds acreage. States experiencing declines in oilseeds cultivation include Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, West Bengal, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand. The root cause of this scenario lies in the preference for cheaper refined palm oil over crude palm oil (CPO) in imports, fuelled by the Indian governments decision to reduce duties and promote the import of refined oil. This marks a departure from the previous policy that encouraged processors to import CPO instead, protecting the domestic processing industry by imposing higher cess on refined oil imports. In contrast, Malaysia and Indonesia have imposed higher cess on CPO exports, safeguarding their domestic processing industries. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: India experienced an unprecedented surge in vegetable oil imports, setting a record at 167.1 Lakh Tonnes (LT) in November 2022 -October 2023 period. Market analysts attribute this surge, particularly in refined palm oil, to what they view as flawed government policies. Consequently, this surge has adversely affected domestic edible oil production, posing a threat to the sustainability of the oilseeds processing industry, transforming India from a processor into a mere packer. Notably, over 60% of these imports, totalling 100 LT, comprised palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia. The influx has caused a slump in domestic market prices, notably impacting mustard oil and dissuading farmers from cultivating more mustard.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Rajasthan, a major mustard seed producer, has responded by reducing the targeted acreage for mustard sowing in the current rabi season from 45.52 Lakh Hectare (LHa) to 41 LHa. Reports on the progress of the Rabi sowing season reveal a shift away from oilseeds towards other crops. Mustard sowing has decreased from 69.31 LHa to 68.66 LHa, contributing to an overall 1.43% reduction in oilseeds acreage. States experiencing declines in oilseeds cultivation include Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, West Bengal, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand. The root cause of this scenario lies in the preference for cheaper refined palm oil over crude palm oil (CPO) in imports, fuelled by the Indian governments decision to reduce duties and promote the import of refined oil. This marks a departure from the previous policy that encouraged processors to import CPO instead, protecting the domestic processing industry by imposing higher cess on refined oil imports. In contrast, Malaysia and Indonesia have imposed higher cess on CPO exports, safeguarding their domestic processing industries. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Namita Bajpai By Express News Service LUCKNOW: In one of the rare instances of a retiring judge speaking up against the Collegium decision, Allahabad High Court Chief Justice Pritinker Diwaker, on Tuesday, said that his transfer from Chhattisgarh High Court to Allahabad High Court in 2018 by the Collegium headed by then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra was ill-intentioned and directed to harass him. The retiring chief justice of Allahabad High Court was speaking at the farewell function organized in his honor in Prayagraj. As per the sources, Justice Diwaker said that in a sudden turn of events, the then Chief Justice of India Justice Dipak Misra transferred him from Chhattisgarh to Allahabad High Court where he assumed office on October 3, 2018. The then Chief Justice showered on me some extra affection for the reasons still not known to me which entailed my transfer from Chhattisgarh to Allahabad High Court and the transfer order seems to have been issued with an ill-intention to harass me," said Justice Diwaker. He added that as fortune would have it, the bane turned into a boon as he received immense support and cooperation from his companion judges as well as from the members of the Bar. Pertinently, the retiring judge thanked the current CJI DY Chandrachud for rectifying the injustice done to him. It was the Collegium headed by CJI Chandrachud that recommended him to take over as the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court. Born in 1961, Justice Diwaker's parent High Court is the Chhattisgarh High Court. He graduated in law from Durgawati University in Jabalpur and enrolled as an advocate in 1984. He was designated Senior Advocate in January 2005 and elevated to a judge of the Chhattisgarh High Court on March 31, 2009. He has been a judge of the Allahabad High Court since October 3, 2018. In a full court reference organized by the High Court, Justice Diwaker shared his experience and journey in the legal profession. Talking about his experience as the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Diwaker remarked that balancing a heavy workload is indeed a challenge in the High Court. Justice Diwakar also praised the lawyers practicing before the Allahabad High Court bench at Lucknow. "The quality of lawyers at Lucknow and their behavior is commendable. Their legal acumen and presentation are as good as lawyers of any other High Court," he stated. Justice Diwaker also said that he never aspired to be a judge but became one due to destiny. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp LUCKNOW: In one of the rare instances of a retiring judge speaking up against the Collegium decision, Allahabad High Court Chief Justice Pritinker Diwaker, on Tuesday, said that his transfer from Chhattisgarh High Court to Allahabad High Court in 2018 by the Collegium headed by then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra was ill-intentioned and directed to harass him. The retiring chief justice of Allahabad High Court was speaking at the farewell function organized in his honor in Prayagraj. As per the sources, Justice Diwaker said that in a sudden turn of events, the then Chief Justice of India Justice Dipak Misra transferred him from Chhattisgarh to Allahabad High Court where he assumed office on October 3, 2018. The then Chief Justice showered on me some extra affection for the reasons still not known to me which entailed my transfer from Chhattisgarh to Allahabad High Court and the transfer order seems to have been issued with an ill-intention to harass me," said Justice Diwaker.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); He added that as fortune would have it, the bane turned into a boon as he received immense support and cooperation from his companion judges as well as from the members of the Bar. Pertinently, the retiring judge thanked the current CJI DY Chandrachud for rectifying the injustice done to him. It was the Collegium headed by CJI Chandrachud that recommended him to take over as the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court. Born in 1961, Justice Diwaker's parent High Court is the Chhattisgarh High Court. He graduated in law from Durgawati University in Jabalpur and enrolled as an advocate in 1984. He was designated Senior Advocate in January 2005 and elevated to a judge of the Chhattisgarh High Court on March 31, 2009. He has been a judge of the Allahabad High Court since October 3, 2018. In a full court reference organized by the High Court, Justice Diwaker shared his experience and journey in the legal profession. Talking about his experience as the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court, Justice Diwaker remarked that balancing a heavy workload is indeed a challenge in the High Court. Justice Diwakar also praised the lawyers practicing before the Allahabad High Court bench at Lucknow. "The quality of lawyers at Lucknow and their behavior is commendable. Their legal acumen and presentation are as good as lawyers of any other High Court," he stated. Justice Diwaker also said that he never aspired to be a judge but became one due to destiny. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Yeshi Seli By Express News Service NEW DELHI: US authorities have thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in the United States and expressed concern over India's involvement in the same. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American and a Canadian citizen who is the leader of Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a US-based group that is part of a movement pushing for separate homeland for Sikhs called Khalistan. According to a report that appeared in The Financial Times, The US had issued concerns over Indias involvement in the plot to kill Pannun. There was no immediate response from Indias foreign ministry on the report. The development comes two months after Canada said there were credible allegations linking Indian agents to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. India has rejected Canadas accusations. It may be recalled that Pannun is the same person who had warned sikhs (through a video) to not take an Air India flight to India on November 19th or face consequences. He had gone further by saying that there was a threat to New Delhi airport on November 19th which happened to be the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. "We have core security concerns on the video that has surfaced from Pannun which presents serious security concerns, said Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra on November 10th, after Pannun had made threats through a video. "We do not comment on diplomatic, law enforcement or intelligence discussions with our partners, said a spokesperson of the US Embassy in response to the report. Meanwhile, India on Wednesday resumed issuing e-visas to Canadians. It may be recalled that India and Canada got embroiled in a diplomatic row after Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, on his return from India in September after the G20 Summit, alleged in Parliament that India was involved in the killing of slain Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. After this, an Indian diplomat was expelled from Canada. In response, India expelled a Canadian diplomat and went further by stopping visa services to Canada and also asked for diplomatic parity which led to the expulsion of 41 Canadian diplomats from India. "Our diplomats are threatened in Canada as a result of which we had to stop visa services as going to the consulates was not possible. We also wanted diplomatic parity as not just were Canadian diplomats more in number in India but were also seen interfering in our internal matters, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said earlier. However, after receiving assurances from Canada, India resumed some visa services on October 26th, and from November 22nd e-visa services were resumed too. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: US authorities have thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in the United States and expressed concern over India's involvement in the same. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American and a Canadian citizen who is the leader of Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a US-based group that is part of a movement pushing for separate homeland for Sikhs called Khalistan. According to a report that appeared in The Financial Times, The US had issued concerns over Indias involvement in the plot to kill Pannun. There was no immediate response from Indias foreign ministry on the report.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The development comes two months after Canada said there were credible allegations linking Indian agents to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. India has rejected Canadas accusations. It may be recalled that Pannun is the same person who had warned sikhs (through a video) to not take an Air India flight to India on November 19th or face consequences. He had gone further by saying that there was a threat to New Delhi airport on November 19th which happened to be the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. "We have core security concerns on the video that has surfaced from Pannun which presents serious security concerns, said Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra on November 10th, after Pannun had made threats through a video. "We do not comment on diplomatic, law enforcement or intelligence discussions with our partners, said a spokesperson of the US Embassy in response to the report. Meanwhile, India on Wednesday resumed issuing e-visas to Canadians. It may be recalled that India and Canada got embroiled in a diplomatic row after Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, on his return from India in September after the G20 Summit, alleged in Parliament that India was involved in the killing of slain Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. After this, an Indian diplomat was expelled from Canada. In response, India expelled a Canadian diplomat and went further by stopping visa services to Canada and also asked for diplomatic parity which led to the expulsion of 41 Canadian diplomats from India. "Our diplomats are threatened in Canada as a result of which we had to stop visa services as going to the consulates was not possible. We also wanted diplomatic parity as not just were Canadian diplomats more in number in India but were also seen interfering in our internal matters, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said earlier. However, after receiving assurances from Canada, India resumed some visa services on October 26th, and from November 22nd e-visa services were resumed too. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Narendra Sethi By Express News Service DEHRADUN: With little time left for the evacuation of 41 labourers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel, the government has stepped up the rescue operation plan for the ongoing operation at the tunnel in Uttarkashi as relief workers stepped up efforts to evacuate them. After being safely taken out of the tunnel, the labourers will be taken directly to Chinyalisaur Hospital, 32 km from the tunnel. The workers will be pulled out of the tunnel with a small wheeled stretcher through an 800 mm pipe by rope, from where they will be immediately taken to the hospital for examination by ambulance. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami left Dehradun for Uttarkashi on Wednesday evening to boost the morale of the workers after being evacuated. "So far, nine pipes have been drilled horizontally up to 48 metres," Colonel Deepak Patil, the rescue in charge of the operation in the Silkyara tunnel for the past 10 days, told this newspaper, sharing an update on the progress. There are about two more pipes left to be drilled. "The process of drilling and welding is time-consuming, as each pipe must be very strongly welded together and then allowed to cool before continuing", Col Patil added. Being forced to stay confined for more than 260 hours in the collapsed tunnel would likely have caused a painful change in 41 workers. In such a situation, after getting out of the tunnel, they should avoid interacting with many people. "The labourers will likely be kept in isolation for a day or two after emerging from the tunnel," said Dr Rohit Gondwal, a psychiatrist who has been in Silkyara from Dehradun for the past three days to gain a deeper understanding of the mood of the trapped labourers. Dr Gondwal spoke through the camera from pipe to two experienced labourers referred to as 'Negi ji' and 'Gabbar', who have faced similar accidents in the past. "Individuals like Gabbar and Negi have played a key role in maintaining high morale among the 41 fellow labourers in the tunnel", Dr Gondwal said. Forty-one labourers were trapped when a portion of an under-construction tunnel from Silkyara to Dandalgaon on the Yamunotri National Highway (NH) in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi collapsed in the early hours of Diwali on November 12. Most of the stranded labourers are from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal. Around 200 personnel from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), police, paramilitary forces, air force and revenue department have been pressed into service for the last 11 days to rescue the stranded labourers. The total length of the tunnel between Silkyra and Badkot being constructed by Navayuga Engineering Company Limited under the supervision of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) is 4533 meters. The collapsed part is 35 meters. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp DEHRADUN: With little time left for the evacuation of 41 labourers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel, the government has stepped up the rescue operation plan for the ongoing operation at the tunnel in Uttarkashi as relief workers stepped up efforts to evacuate them. After being safely taken out of the tunnel, the labourers will be taken directly to Chinyalisaur Hospital, 32 km from the tunnel. The workers will be pulled out of the tunnel with a small wheeled stretcher through an 800 mm pipe by rope, from where they will be immediately taken to the hospital for examination by ambulance. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami left Dehradun for Uttarkashi on Wednesday evening to boost the morale of the workers after being evacuated. "So far, nine pipes have been drilled horizontally up to 48 metres," Colonel Deepak Patil, the rescue in charge of the operation in the Silkyara tunnel for the past 10 days, told this newspaper, sharing an update on the progress. There are about two more pipes left to be drilled. "The process of drilling and welding is time-consuming, as each pipe must be very strongly welded together and then allowed to cool before continuing", Col Patil added.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Being forced to stay confined for more than 260 hours in the collapsed tunnel would likely have caused a painful change in 41 workers. In such a situation, after getting out of the tunnel, they should avoid interacting with many people. "The labourers will likely be kept in isolation for a day or two after emerging from the tunnel," said Dr Rohit Gondwal, a psychiatrist who has been in Silkyara from Dehradun for the past three days to gain a deeper understanding of the mood of the trapped labourers. Dr Gondwal spoke through the camera from pipe to two experienced labourers referred to as 'Negi ji' and 'Gabbar', who have faced similar accidents in the past. "Individuals like Gabbar and Negi have played a key role in maintaining high morale among the 41 fellow labourers in the tunnel", Dr Gondwal said. Forty-one labourers were trapped when a portion of an under-construction tunnel from Silkyara to Dandalgaon on the Yamunotri National Highway (NH) in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi collapsed in the early hours of Diwali on November 12. Most of the stranded labourers are from Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal. Around 200 personnel from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), police, paramilitary forces, air force and revenue department have been pressed into service for the last 11 days to rescue the stranded labourers. The total length of the tunnel between Silkyra and Badkot being constructed by Navayuga Engineering Company Limited under the supervision of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) is 4533 meters. The collapsed part is 35 meters. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Yeshi Seli By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the BRICS-Plus meet on Israel and Gaza on Tuesday. Attending the meet virtually on PMs behalf, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said the immediate crisis in West Asia was triggered by the terrorist attack of October 7. Where terrorism itself is concerned, none of us should or can compromise with it. Hostage taking is equally unacceptable and cannot be condoned. Subsequent developments have deepened our concern even more as we witness large scale civilian casualties and a humanitarian crisis. We strongly condemn any death of civilians, he said. India said the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza was causing immense human suffering, including to civilians, elderly, women and children. We welcome all efforts of the international community towards de-escalation. Right now, there is an urgent need to ensure that humanitarian aid and relief effectively and safely reach the population of Gaza. It is also imperative that all hostages are released, he said. Dr Jaishankar thanked South African President Ramaphosa for convening the meeting. I speak for Prime Minister Narendra Modi who could not join us today. We are gathered to discuss the deeply concerning situation in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Gaza. South Africa has rightly taken the initiative to convene the BRICS, and also to include those who would be part of the group in due course. I convey Prime Minister Modis greetings to all the leaders, virtually present, said Jaishankar. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi skipped the BRICS-Plus meet on Israel and Gaza on Tuesday. Attending the meet virtually on PMs behalf, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said the immediate crisis in West Asia was triggered by the terrorist attack of October 7. Where terrorism itself is concerned, none of us should or can compromise with it. Hostage taking is equally unacceptable and cannot be condoned. Subsequent developments have deepened our concern even more as we witness large scale civilian casualties and a humanitarian crisis. We strongly condemn any death of civilians, he said. India said the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza was causing immense human suffering, including to civilians, elderly, women and children. We welcome all efforts of the international community towards de-escalation. Right now, there is an urgent need to ensure that humanitarian aid and relief effectively and safely reach the population of Gaza. It is also imperative that all hostages are released, he said.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Dr Jaishankar thanked South African President Ramaphosa for convening the meeting. I speak for Prime Minister Narendra Modi who could not join us today. We are gathered to discuss the deeply concerning situation in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Gaza. South Africa has rightly taken the initiative to convene the BRICS, and also to include those who would be part of the group in due course. I convey Prime Minister Modis greetings to all the leaders, virtually present, said Jaishankar. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By Express News Service VIJAYAWADA: The State government on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court against a High Court order granting regular bail to TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu in the Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC) scam case. Seeking directions to set aside the High Court verdict, the State government submitted to the apex court that the accused (Naidu) is an influential person and has helped two of his key associates (including a government servant) to flee the country. The accused is therefore clearly obstructing the conduct of investigation and, therefore, ought not to be granted bail, the Special Leave Petition (SLP) read. In its appeal filed through advocate Mahfooz Ahsan Nazki, the State government contended that the High Court has not only conducted a mini-trial, but has also completely erred, rendering findings that are completely contrary to the record. Advocate Mahfooz Ahsan Nazki said, The State of Andhra Pradesh is constrained to file the Special Leave Petition against the impugned judgment dated November 20, 2023 passed by the High Court. It has delved deep into facts of the case and has rendered findings that are not only factually incorrect, but are also likely to prejudice the court below during the trial. READ MORE | Bail doesn't mean Naidu has been given clean chit in APSSDC case: YSRC's Sajjala Reddy While referring to various SC verdicts, the State government said the practice of detailed elaboration of evidence in bail orders has been repeatedly deprecated by the apex court. A bare perusal of the findings would reveal that the High Court has exceeded its jurisdiction by conducting a mini-trial and rendering findings on merits. This, it is most respectfully submitted, ought not to be allowed, the appeal read. Speaking to reporters, Additional Advocate General (AAG) Ponnavolu Sudhakar Reddy said they have approached the apex court as they feel that the bail order was not right and that the High Court has exceeded its limits. During arguments on the bail plea, we brought to the notice of the HC that the SC is seized of the matter regarding bail as it is part of Naidus quash petition. We had submitted that it was not proper for the High Court to take up hearing on the petition as the apex court has reserved its orders. At the time, I was told my objections were noted. Unfortunately, the same was nowhere to be found in the bail order, he said. Stating that the probe in the case was still underway, the AAG pointed out that even the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was investigating the matter. Explaining that evidence are only submitted to the trial court, he said proof, including like note files raising objections over release of funds, forensic audit report establishing diversion of Rs 240 crore, was submitted to the High Court as well. The HC conducted a mini-trial against the rules during the grant of bail, he maintained. While denying interim bail to Naidu on October 17, the Supreme Court had said that it would pronounce its verdict on his plea, challenging the HC order refusing to quash the FIR against him in the APSSDC case, after Diwali vacation. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp VIJAYAWADA: The State government on Tuesday moved the Supreme Court against a High Court order granting regular bail to TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu in the Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC) scam case. Seeking directions to set aside the High Court verdict, the State government submitted to the apex court that the accused (Naidu) is an influential person and has helped two of his key associates (including a government servant) to flee the country. The accused is therefore clearly obstructing the conduct of investigation and, therefore, ought not to be granted bail, the Special Leave Petition (SLP) read.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); In its appeal filed through advocate Mahfooz Ahsan Nazki, the State government contended that the High Court has not only conducted a mini-trial, but has also completely erred, rendering findings that are completely contrary to the record. Advocate Mahfooz Ahsan Nazki said, The State of Andhra Pradesh is constrained to file the Special Leave Petition against the impugned judgment dated November 20, 2023 passed by the High Court. It has delved deep into facts of the case and has rendered findings that are not only factually incorrect, but are also likely to prejudice the court below during the trial. READ MORE | Bail doesn't mean Naidu has been given clean chit in APSSDC case: YSRC's Sajjala Reddy While referring to various SC verdicts, the State government said the practice of detailed elaboration of evidence in bail orders has been repeatedly deprecated by the apex court. A bare perusal of the findings would reveal that the High Court has exceeded its jurisdiction by conducting a mini-trial and rendering findings on merits. This, it is most respectfully submitted, ought not to be allowed, the appeal read. Speaking to reporters, Additional Advocate General (AAG) Ponnavolu Sudhakar Reddy said they have approached the apex court as they feel that the bail order was not right and that the High Court has exceeded its limits. During arguments on the bail plea, we brought to the notice of the HC that the SC is seized of the matter regarding bail as it is part of Naidus quash petition. We had submitted that it was not proper for the High Court to take up hearing on the petition as the apex court has reserved its orders. At the time, I was told my objections were noted. Unfortunately, the same was nowhere to be found in the bail order, he said. Stating that the probe in the case was still underway, the AAG pointed out that even the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was investigating the matter. Explaining that evidence are only submitted to the trial court, he said proof, including like note files raising objections over release of funds, forensic audit report establishing diversion of Rs 240 crore, was submitted to the High Court as well. The HC conducted a mini-trial against the rules during the grant of bail, he maintained. While denying interim bail to Naidu on October 17, the Supreme Court had said that it would pronounce its verdict on his plea, challenging the HC order refusing to quash the FIR against him in the APSSDC case, after Diwali vacation. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Editor's Note: Ten years ago, Managing Editor Bruce Andriatch asked readers to share their stories from the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. As we remember that tragic day 60 years ago today, we share their responses once again. *** Its a vague question, but virtually every American age 56 or so or older will know exactly what you want to know when you ask it this week: Where were you? The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, remains the seminal moment in the lives of millions. Whether they heard it on television, from a loved one or over the public address system in school, the moment they learned that the president had been shot while riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas is an indelible memory. As the nation prepares to commemorate a day that still brings tears to peoples eyes a half-century later, we invited readers to share their stories. Whether by email or on Facebook, hundreds answered the question. Reading them, it is impossible to not be struck by how many people vividly remember minute details of that day: precisely where they were, what someone was wearing, the emotion on the face or in the voice of the person sharing the news. Many people remember it as the first time maybe the only time they saw a loved one cry. My parents and siblings were as devastated as I was, wrote Cheryl Johnson, a student at Kenmore West High School at the time. It took a long time to move on with life the way it was. To this day I ask why this happened. I will never forget him and still ask why. What follows is a sampling of some of the responses. I was in first grade and heard about JFKs assassination just like anyone else at the time, through the news. I was in school then. The principal let everyone in school home for the day. Our teachers were crying (they were all older and female in 1963), our janitor lowered the flag to half-staff. The rest of the week was no school at all, and I remember watching the funeral on TV. Michael Vaughn I was a 9-year-old fourth grader in Miss Shrivers class at the Glendale School in the Town of Tonawanda. I remember it being a Friday afternoon, just before dismissal for the day probably about 3 p.m. with all the excitement of a week of school completed and a couple of weekend days to come. As we were getting ready to board the school buses for the trip home, Miss Shriver received a call on the classroom telephone at the front of the room. I remember the sadness of her face as she told the class that the president had been shot. I was old enough to be shocked but clearly didnt understand what this really meant. Gary J. Jastrzab I was home from school because it was parent-teacher conference day at my Wisconsin elementary school. As a second grader, I was hanging out with my babysitter, enjoying a carefree day. Because in those days there was nothing on daytime television for kids, I had spent the day coloring, playing with dolls and practicing my piano lesson. The first sign that anything was wrong was when I saw my mother walking from the garage to the house sobbing. I immediately assumed she was distraught over my teacher, Mrs. Unsers, report of my behavior and ran and hid under my bed. A few minutes later, I heard the babysitter crying and went to the kitchen to find out what was going on. Someone killed President Kennedy, my mother said, choking back her tears. We need to pray for Mrs. Kennedy, Caroline, Little Jack and our country. She got up and placed a rosary over the framed photo of JFK that hung in our kitchen and then started to recite the Hail Mary. Sharon Linstedt I had just gotten off the bus which took me home from kindergarten, my Disney-themed metal lunchbox in hand. Upon entering our home, I found my mother in front of our black-and-white television, her eyes welled up with tears that couldnt seem to come out. She turned to look at me and with a voice choked with emotion announced to me, They killed the president. I later pieced together a timeline that had me learn of his passing within fewer than five minutes after Walter Cronkite delivered the news to the nation. I remember nothing else of that day. Chris Reich I was a student at Bennett High School. During the class change from sixth to seventh period, we heard a radio broadcast come on the PA system for a few seconds saying He was shot and is being rushed to the hospital. We didnt know who they were talking about. Then about halfway through the seventh period, our principal, Lloyd Miller, came on the PA and asked all the students to stand up. He then told us about the president being shot. My memory isnt clear, but I think he asked us to say a silent prayer. He then dismissed school early. I remember how quiet it was in the hallways as we all left and walked down the stairs to Main Street. Allan Harris I will never forget the horror of those few days. When I saw the devastation of life being taken so fast and with so little judgment, I began to worry about firearms in the wrong hands. In those days, we watched three prominent men, all fathers of very young children, being destroyed because someone didnt like them. Free speech is one thing, but free expression of violence this way should be controlled. The shame is that we are still fighting this battle; the difference now is that it is the children being destroyed, still with little judgment and not because someone didnt like them but because someone just wanted to. God help America and our freedoms. Excuse the raw emotion but it hasnt gone away for this old lady (74, now). Kathleen Ray I was in downtown Buffalo, going to each department store located on Main Street seeking work for the Christmas holidays. It was the lunch hour, and Main Street would normally have been noisy and busy with people. I was coming out of Hengerers near Lafayette Square when I realized that there was complete silence on the street. Cars were stopped in the street or pulled over to the curb and people were crowded around them listening to the car radios. I asked someone what had happened. I learned then that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I remember a feeling of nausea coming over me and I leaned against a car to steady myself. After a while, traffic began moving again, but still everything was quiet. People spoke in whispers as they proceeded on their business. I boarded a bus and went home to Massachusetts Street where I turned on the television to hear Walter Cronkite announce the death of the president. Chris Majewski It was the worst, tear-filled weekend of my life. The words The president has been shot in Dallas suddenly blared over the music from a speaker in my dental operatory at my office in Alexandria, Va., across the Potomac from D.C. My patient abruptly sat up in her chair and I, a 28-year-old dentist, jerked up in disbelief as well. After completing treating my patient and soon learning the president had died, I canceled my remaining schedule and went home to learn the details on TV. Camelot and the handsome husband and his lovely lady were real to me. I barely ate or slept. On Sunday, my wife and I drove to D.C. and stood directly across the street from the White House among a throng of people viewing the casket and riderless black horse with a backward empty boot in one stirrup, signifying our lost commander in chief. The casket was to lie in state at the Rotunda in Congress. Shortly afterward, as we were readying to leave, there was a discernible ripple in the crowd. It was then we first learned that Oswald had been shot. Later at home and riveted to TV news, more and more unfolded to our growing consternation and depression. May none of us, ever again, experience another weekend like that. Leonard Gross As a third grader at St. John de LaSalle School in 1963, Friday afternoons usually meant group word games, educational bingo or holiday play rehearsal for me. I dont recall which fun event we were involved in, but I can still see the principal, Sister Leo Joseph, at the classroom door, interrupting to call our teacher into the hall. A minute or two later, Sister came back into the room to tell us the president had been shot. She walked back out. She didnt indicate he was dead. I was an 8-year-old class clown so it was my responsibility to break the ice. I stood up and pretended I was making a speech, made a gun noise with my mouth, clutched my chest and fell to the floor. Most of the other kids laughed. Once home from school, I learned what happened because all TV programming was pre-empted for continuous news coverage of the scene in Dallas. All six stations, including the three Canadian ones, were reporting the shooting. I still remember the large-type, bold banner headline in the afternoon Niagara Falls Gazette. It was the first time I ever saw the word ASSASSINATED. I had to look it up. I still consider Nov. 22, 1963, as not only a pivotal day in my life and spirit, but the single, most important turning point in modern-day America. More than any other event such as Watergate, Vietnam, Woodstock or Kent State, JFKs death was the day hope began to fade. Anything that seemed to bolster optimism in a greater national good the Peace Corps, the Presidents Council on Physical Fitness, the race to the moon, even basic trust in leadership all fell victim that day. It was the day 8-year-olds put assassinated in their vocabularies. Thad Komorowski I was a young rocket scientist working at an aerospace company in Sacramento, Calif. I was driving to the University of California at Davis taking classes to earn a masters degree in mechanical engineering. When the news came on the car radio of Kennedys death, I immediately pulled off the freeway, crying. I then went on to UC Davis and tried to have my classes dropped for the day. Surprisingly, I did not succeed. Several years later, I came to Buffalo to work on the Lunar Excursion Module at Bell Aerospace a program Kennedy championed before his death. Charles J. Schorr My now-wife and I were in the same sixth-grade class in West Falls Elementary. The teacher was called out of the room and, when he returned, tearfully announced the assassination. Most of us were shocked to see our big, authoritative male teacher crying, so the room was mostly silent except for the class toughy who would now properly be referred to as a bully who began to laugh. My wife and I both remember the teacher in anger picking this kid up and pressing him against the wall. Bruce Kloc I can remember the details of that fateful day so vividly. I, along with three of my younger siblings, were students at St. Josaphats School in Cheektowaga. I recall sitting in Sister Mary Inviolates third-grade classroom, when suddenly the PA system went on. That was unusual in the afternoon, because it was used only for morning announcements and dismissal. We heard the uncharacteristically broken voice of our principal, Sister Mary Antonelle, telling us to get on our knees and pray because our beloved president had been shot. You could hear the concerned fear in the voice of the usually stoic woman. An hour later we were dismissed to go home, unaware of the presidents updated status. I was a walker, because we lived seven-tenths of mile from the school. My classroom was on the second floor, so we were dismissed first, in order to collect our younger siblings in the schoolyard. Ill never forget the scene as the front doors of the school opened wide that afternoon. In the front schoolyard, standing at least 10 deep, was a sea of parents and grandparents, tear-stained and weeping, waiting to break the news that, indeed, President John F. Kennedy had died. The entire scene was so overwhelming. I usually had to shepherd my sister and two brothers safely homeward, along with a few neighbors. Not that day. My mom loaded my 3-year-old twin sisters into a wagon and walked to the school to enfold us in her reassuring arms and break the terrible news. Bonnie Platt As a junior at the University of South Florida, I was attending a 20th century literature class where we viewed a 16mm film about the death of Abraham Lincoln and the train ride that carried his body from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Ill. All along the tracks and at many stops along the way, people mourned the tragic loss of the Great Emancipator. Walt Whitman, who bravely served as a medical corpsman during the Civil War, became my favorite poet. When I exited the darkened classroom, the day was clear and bright and the suns glare blurred my vision. Students were scurrying around in a panic, many weeping: Did you hear what happened? Kennedy was shot! Over the years, many comparisons between JFK and Lincoln would be discovered; but these two poems, Oh Captain, My Captain and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd, created a synergy of sadness that still brings tears to my eyes today. Fred Tomasello Jr. Our school, Holy Name of Jesus School on Bailey Avenue, did not have a cafeteria, so all the children went home for lunch. The children were just coming back from lunch and gathering in the playground; the bell was getting ready to ring, when one of the sisters came out and said that the president had been shot. I think she had been washing dishes in the convent and turned on the radio and heard it. One of the students, Gregory, who lived just across the street from the school, wanted to run home and get a radio, but I remembered that there was a small black-and-white television set in the school, in the storage room. I asked to borrow it and had it brought into my classroom. It was our custom to start the morning and afternoon class sessions with a prayer, and that afternoon my class all prayed for President Kennedy. I invited the other seventh-grade class in, and we had around 70 students sitting in a classroom set up for 38, they were doubling up in the seats. You could have heard a pin drop in the room; it was silent. I remember just watching the film of the motorcade being shown over and over, then I remember Walter Cronkite announcing that the president had died, and there was utter silence in the room. It was quite somber. We watched the news coverage for the rest of the day. That Saturday, I remember taking the bus to Mount St. Josephs teachers college, where I was studying for my masters degree, and I remember thinking how our lives were all changing and they would never be the same. Sister Kathleen Murphy (at the time, her name was Sister Clare Francis) I was at Boys Vocational High School in Buffalo when someone walked in where our swimming class was in progress and announced that President Kennedy had been shot. I ran upstairs where other people were to confirm the news, and yes sadly it was true. Disbelief, shock and sadness took over my emotions. Every Nov. 22, since that day, I go back to Boys Vocational High School and that swimming class. D. Gus Collado I had just moved from my hometown of Philadelphia to New Jersey and was applying for a New Jersey drivers license. I happened to be at the state barracks to take, I suppose, a test and get new plates when the news came that JFK had been assassinated. It turned out looking back on the period the beginning of violent and trying times. Morton J. Merowitz The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is very much entwined in the memories of my wedding, Nov. 23, 1963. The day before, my mother and I were sitting under hair dryers in a salon, unable to hear but suddenly aware something monumental had just occurred. People were crying and hugging each other. Simultaneously, we lifted the heavy bonnets off our heads and were told the news. The tragedy was the topic of conversation at our ceremony, by the priest officiating and at the reception. The Buffalo Trap and Field Club, now extinct, extended our afternoon reception several hours as a previously scheduled dinner dance had been canceled out of respect for the president. As we honeymooned in Quebec we followed the continuing drama of the shooting of Oswald by Ruby. My mother saved all the Buffalo Evening News editions regarding the tragedy, and I have them to this day. Carol Thrun Nowicki I was in Miss Steins sixth-grade class at Herbert Hoover Elementary School. She was in the middle of her lesson when the principal I think it was Mr. McLaren announced the tragic news. Miss Stein tried to explain it, but we were too young to understand the full impact. After school was let out, I walked home and tried to wrap my head around it. Little did I know that that weekend would change my life forever, as I heard of the details of Kennedys death and then watched his accused killer murdered live on national TV. Im absolutely sure that the loss of JFK was responsible for shaping my future political philosophy. I still put the loss of both Kennedy and Martin Luther King as two of the deepest and troubling moments in our countrys history. I often wonder what the world would be like today if he had never gone to Dallas. Mike Townsend I was in second grade at Our Lady of Mount Carmel grade school in Niagara Falls. It was around afternoon recess when the principal came over the loudspeaker and told everyone that we were all to go down to the church. Our teacher got us all together and led us down to the church where we were told by the pastor that President Kennedy had been shot and that we were going to pray the rosary for him. At that time, we believed that he was still alive. When we were done, our teacher told us to hurry home. I ran down to my grandmothers since that is where my mother was going to be. When I got there, my mother and grandmother were both in tears and they had Walter Cronkite on. He soon announced that the president was dead. I was really upset since Kennedy was the first president I really knew. His death caused me to read quite a bit about his life and subsequently all of the theories behind his assassination. His message, along with that of his brother, Robert, were the reasons why I wanted to get into government. To this day, anytime I hear a reference to the president or Hail to the Chief, I always think of President Kennedy. Anthony Restaino I was in sixth grade at St. Aloysius School in Springville. Our principal, Sister Bernice, came into our classroom to tell us that President Kennedy had been shot. When I arrived home from school, my mother told me that Uncle Bus and Aunt Dolores had a new son, David. I recall my mother saying that she had never felt so much sadness and happiness all in one day. Looking back on that afternoon, how true that was. I said goodbye to a president and hello to a cousin. Jean Kessler I was in third grade. My family had moved that spring to a rural area outside of Binghamton, and we were looking forward to our first holiday season in our new home. My teacher, Mrs. Grady, was pregnant nearing her delivery date, as I remember. Her husband was a fifth-grade teacher in the same school building. Mr. Grady was very tall at least to a third grader. He was always careful to move slowly to avoid scaring any of the younger students in the building. It was after lunch and recess, and I can still see Mrs. Grady standing at the chalkboard. Suddenly, Mr. Grady runs into the room with a horrified look on his face that is burned into my memory and yells, The presidents been shot!! and grabs his wife for comfort. Classmates started crying, even though we didnt yet understand the significance of what had just happened. It was because wed been frightened by Mr. Grady. Within minutes, the principal made a confirming announcement on the PA system, the buses were summoned early, and we all were all sent home. Jeff Wilson I was in an English class at Kenmore West High School. It was a few minutes into class, at about 2:10 p.m., when our schools principal, Mr. Raymond Frazier, came on the PA system. This was very unusual since it was the last period of the day and most announcements were in the morning. Mr. Frazier said the words I and most of my classmates will never forget. He said simply that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had died after being shot in a motorcade in Dallas. Minutes later, Mr. Frazier came back on the PA system to announce that classes were being canceled. My response was much stronger than most of my classmates in Mr. Kohlers English class that Friday afternoon. Three years before as a seventh grader, I had seen then-candidate Sen. John Kennedy speak at Memorial Auditorium in one of the largest political rallies in Buffalos history. After seeing and hearing Kennedy that September night in 1960, just weeks before the election, I was hooked on Kennedy and politics. So I was devastated at the news that afternoon. As a result, I lashed out at my teacher for what I thought was a very mild and unemotional response to this news. I thought he simply did not care enough. Of course it was his job to keep us calm and talk us through this shocking news. Years later I apologized to Mr. Chuck Kohler. I remember these moments as if they happened yesterday. Len Lenihan I was a fifth grader at the Campus School the day Kennedy was killed. It was after lunch and I was in the gymnasium shooting hoops when an announcement was made over the intercom system ordering us back to our classrooms. There, we learned the news and that wed be going home early. We were the duck and cover generation. We watched as yellow and black signs began to be installed in public buildings directing the locations of fallout shelters. My next-door neighbor had one built in their basement, as he was brigadier general of New Yorks National Guard. For the first time, we had a very public president and the first to have a great deal of television exposure. For a 10-year-old, this news was just as confusing as it was tragic. We students walked to the Elmwood bus stop, bus pass in hand to begin our rides toward home. The day began to take on a very surreal atmosphere as we walked and rode in silence trying to digest the information asking the question, What happens next? Sitting on the unusually quiet bus, approaching Ferry, I looked out my window to about six women standing on the sidewalk outside the post office openly weeping to one another and thats when I felt a great deal of fear and anxiety, wishing that this slowly creeping bus I was on would speed me right to my stop at Lexington so I could get home, bypassing my almost daily stop at the Highland Deli. When I got off the bus, I walked home at an accelerated pace, getting to the house in a blur. I immediately turned on the television, tuning into Walter Cronkite, and the rest is history. The following days played out on the television allowing all of us to bear witness to unsettling history, one that I will never forget. F.P.Taylor II I was a patient at Buffalo General Hospital having a tonsillectomy. After being brought from the recovery room, my family was there waiting and anxious to share with me the sad news of the murder of President Kennedy. Upon hearing what happened my reply was, Thats nice. They soon realized I was still experiencing the effects of the anesthetic and it would take a few more hours before I could comprehend the full impact of this tragedy. Recuperating at home offered me the opportunity to view the entire weeklong showing of this historic event. Memories of those days will remain with me for life. Marilyn A. Molloy I was in second grade at Holy Ghost Academy in the Adirondack village of Tupper Lake. The school was staffed by Sisters of the Holy Ghost, French nuns who had white habits. It was a fairly new school and did not have a public address system. The nuns would communicate by sending one of the sixth-grade girls around with a note. We were having art when came a knock at the door, and in walked one of the sixth-grade girls. Our teacher, Sister Theresa, read it, initialed it and said, Children, please put your things away. I have very bad news to tell you. Donna Woods, who sat to my right in the first row, said to a few of us, Theyre probably going to make us go to school on Saturdays now. We laughed. So there we sat hands folded on our desks as we watched Sister pace back in forth in the front of the room under portraits of Pope Paul VI and President Kennedy. Finally she turned to us and said, Someone has shot President Kennedy. Everyone gasped. She went on. They dont know who did it or how badly hes been hurt. We started to say the rosary. Then there was another knock on the door, and it was another sister. Our sister went out in the hallway. We finished our prayers and stood there talking when Sister Theresa came back in, and one of my classmates asked how President Kennedy was. Theyve given him the last rites, was her answer. We all knew what that meant. When 2:10 came, it was time to board the buses. As I walked past the cafeteria, the cafeteria ladies were standing there crying. A shiver went through me. Seeing this unnerved me. They were always friendly and cheerful; now they stood there with tissues wiping away tears. Walking out to the buses, leaves were blowing across the sidewalk, and it was a beautiful sunny day, rather warm for late November in the Adirondacks. The flag was at half-staff, and I knew then that he was dead. When I reached my neighborhood, one of our neighbors, Alcid Roy, was raking his front lawn. Alcid, did you hear what happened? Somebody shot President Kennedy. He turned to us, took the pipe out of his mouth and with his thick French Canadian accent said, That is not funny. You should not make jokes like that. No, no. Sister told us at school he got shot in Dallas, Texas. Without another word, he dropped his rake and ran up his front steps. All these years later, I can close my eyes and still see that old man in faded green work pants, old brown cardigan sweater and brown fedora running up his front steps. Michael Garrelts When the news broke, I was home from kindergarten at School 30 because I had the chickenpox. My mother had me resting on the living room couch while she ironed and watched As The World Turns. Caroline Kennedy was also a kindergartner at the time. Our teacher brought in any pictures of the White House kindergarten she found in Life or Look magazines or from The Buffalo Evening News. Not being able to comprehend the tragedy, I hoped to see Caroline and her little brother John-John on the news or in the newspaper. I was disappointed Saturday morning cartoons were canceled because of the funeral coverage. Mary Beth Parrinello I was in Miss Miller/Mr. Goetzs gym class at Hyde Park School in Niagara Falls, when my sixth-grade teacher came down to the gym looking quite upset. I immediately thought something had happened to her husband as he had been sick. She announced to us that our president had been shot and died in Dallas, Texas. It was the first time I saw sixth-grade boys cry. Many of my classmates had seen JFK when he stopped in Niagara Falls. We returned to our classroom in complete silence. When our parents picked us up, we were dismissed for the darkest five days in history. Rosemary Rajczak Marohn I had recently graduated from Archbishop Carroll High School and was at my first real job a long-distance telephone operator. Our department was stationed at the old telephone building at Main and Morris streets. The switchboards were the old-fashioned cords and plug style. All of a sudden our boards went CRAZY. As we answered each call light, we heard the news that the president was shot and then later the president was dead. Housewives at home alone, traveling businessmen everyone picked up the phone and dialed 0 for operator. Callers were overcome with sadness, and they were afraid. All needed to hear another voice. They wanted to reach loved ones to comfort them or be comforted. It was a day similar to 9/11; everyone needed to be reassured. Over and over, we told the frightened callers, It will be OK or Yes, it is terrible. Phone operators now became grief counselors. That went on for hours. We did not have time to process our own feelings. We had to be there to help those calling in. The days that followed were filled with constant TV coverage reshowing the Dallas motorcade, the arrival at the Washington, D.C., airport, the coffin at the Capitol, the funeral Mass, the procession to Arlington, the grieving family and the grieving nation. The sadness continued mounting each day with everyone glued to their televisions. The day of the funeral, our boards were dark. Sheila Marie Long My sister-in-law had just phoned with the news of JFKs assassination as I was dressing my 5- and 3-year-old daughters to go out to play. It was a sunny day in Pittsburgh. I remember my disbelief and shock at the news. After the call I took the girls outside and remember thinking, A really big historical event just took place, and everything seems so normal. LaVerne Hoover I was a sophomore in high school. I had just stopped into the ladies room when a girl came running in and said the president has been shot. My first thought was it was a rumor and not real. As I walked to my last class of the day, study hall, there was a lot of commotion in the hallways. I walked into class and looked at my study hall teacher. Her face was blank. After all these years, I remember for a second how my stomach felt sick. The principal announced over the PA system that indeed the president had been shot in Dallas. You could hear a pin drop in that huge room. Seconds later he came on again and said President John F. Kennedy was deceased. His voice was cracking and told everyone they would be releasing us right away. I remember looking at my study hall teacher and she was crying. As I walked out of that room, my heart was broken, yet I couldnt cry. I was still in shock as was everyone in that school that day. Kenmore West was a huge high school, and in the hallways no one was talking. When I met up with my two girlfriends to walk home, I held in my tears as not to be embarrassed. The feeling in my chest was tight. When I reached my house, I ran in the front door and sobbed and sobbed; it was hard to breathe. As I cried, my thoughts were for his two little children and the first lady. It was so hard to comprehend why, and the shock that came with it. I loved that he was the first Catholic president, was young, a husband and father. I was a Catholic and was so proud to have him as our president. Before then, I never paid attention to politics, but I took to him right away when he was a candidate. My parents and siblings were as devastated as I was. It took a long time to move on with life the way it was. To this day I ask why this happened. I will never forget him and still ask why. Cheryl Johnson I was in my sixth-grade classroom at St. John the Evangelist School (now closed) in South Buffalo. It was afternoon and an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the president had been shot. In silence I walked with my class to the church to pray for JFK, but while we were kneeling, a man came in off the street and informed Sister that the president had died. At that moment, my prayer for his healing became a prayer for his soul and for his family and for our country. I was changed. Our country was changed. But I have remained to this day a strong believer in the power of prayer. Mary Leary I was a sophomore at Syracuse University. On Friday, Nov. 22, while I was working at the chemistry library, a grad student came in and told us the president had been shot. This was devastating news, but how could it be true? I went out in the hall to have a cigarette and talk to the grad student to try to confirm if the information was valid. While we were talking, an announcement came over the PA system stating that President Kennedy had died and the university would be closed until further notice. I was devastated and returned to my sorority house in tears. We were an unusual group of girls because we were of different religions, races, ethnicity ... you name it. At that time there were only Christian and Jewish sororities. We had looked to Kennedy for inspiration, and now he was gone. There had to be something that we could do besides watch the TV. I had a car, and five of us decided to drive to Washington. We arrived in Washington and found it to be like a ghost town. Most places were closed, and there was very little traffic. We easily found a hotel we could afford within walking distance of the Capitol, and in fact could see the dome from our window. The day of the funeral procession, we arose early so we could get a good place along the route. We stood there for hours waiting to see the caisson carrying Kennedys body. There was the horse with the boots turned backward and Mrs. Kennedys face behind a darkened limo window. We could hear the guns firing the salute at the cemetery in Arlington, and we all cried. JFK had a great impact on my generation. Lots of my friends wanted to join the Peace Corps. Young people were interested in helping others. We cared about what the government was doing. That all died with President Kennedy. Judith Hoffman I was a senior at Canisius College and, after class, went to my locker for books and other things to take home. A classmate asked: Did you hear Kennedy was shot? I responded: OK, whats the punchline? thinking it was some sort of joke. He told me it was no joke. My car radio was broken, so we drove home to South Buffalo in total silence. When I reached my parents house, I turned on the TV and heard Walter Cronkite announce that the president was dead. A very sad day for America and the world. William Newell At the time of President Kennedys assassination, I was employed in the Contracts Administration Department of a local company that manufactured electric components for the U.S. military through contracts with the Defense Department. Our staff included an administrator and secretary for each military branch. My supervisor and I were responsible for Department of the Navy documents. Each of us had two security clearances, Secret and Confidential, working in a small and windowless secured area. Of prime concern was to leave nothing uncovered or unlocked, under caution of immediate firing. News spread immediately that the president was shot in Dallas. All work stopped, with staff walking and milling about, repeating their same shocking responses from person to person, the repetition as some kind of salve for disbelief. With later news the president had died, a pall came over our small office, as we then silently continued on with our work as best we could. For such a tragic outcome, talk was meaningless. Quiet retreat helps to grip unbelievable tragedy. Touching for me was the fact that President Kennedy had been a U.S. Naval officer, a veteran of our branch. But mostly the irony: Here we were, so diligently guarding mere paper, while our leader, in an open car motorcade, was virtually unguarded. After work, I returned to the home I shared with my parents and grandmother. I was immediately greeted by my sobbing grandmother saying to me, They shot our president. For decades a naturalized U.S. citizen, grandmother was a Polish immigrant who grew up in Warsaw under czarist Russian control. She never imagined a presidents assassination was possible in modern America. Victoria Luchowski I was in second grade at St. John the Baptist School in Kenmore. I remember it being announced on the PA sometime in the afternoon. My two brothers and I took the bus home from school and told our mother about the news as soon as we got home. She didnt watch TV during the day much, so she turned on the television. It was the first time I recall ever seeing my mother cry. Mary Lou Plesac I was in third grade at St. Marys of the Lake in Hamburg. It was announced over the PA system, and we were told to go home. Everything was dark and gloomy for several days. The coverage seemed constant over our black-and-white TV. The only bright spot was the birth of my cousin on Nov. 21, 1963. My aunt spent that time in the hospital watching the coverage from her hospital bed. Lisa was her first child . Coleen Hanna I was serving as a dental officer on the USS Northampton CC1 (a communication command ship). We were on weekly maneuvers, and Norfolk, Va., was our home port. We moored around that morning. I had shopping to do at the exchange, and as I arrived there, I noticed many of the women shoppers were crying or had saddened faces. Then over the PA system came the announcement about the president being shot. My wife was a first-grade teacher at a Catholic school in Norfolk. They announced that the president had been shot, and she and her class prayed for President Kennedy. She did not know that he died until she arrived home from school and saw me crying in front of the television. We had a reservation at the Officers Club to celebrate our first wedding anniversary, but the Officers Club was closed. So we had a quiet a dinner at home and watched TV all weekend. Dr. Robert D. Balcerak I was 7 years old, attending Charles A. Lindbergh Elementary School in Kenmore. On a sunny afternoon in late November we were suddenly dismissed from school. No one told us why. Many of us walked to and from school in those days, myself included, and so I began the trek home. Bob, our Kaufmans Bakery delivery truck driver, was just sitting there in his truck parked in front of the Wellers house two doors down from the school. I asked if he knew why we were dismissed early. He told me President Kennedy had been assassinated. I asked what that meant. The news sank in hard. Although my dad was a Republican, as were most of our neighbors in Kenmore in those days, I liked President Kennedy. I liked the space program. I favored civil rights. Bob could probably tell I was shaken by the news. Bakery truck employees werent supposed to take on passengers. There was only one seat in the truck, but Bob, a friend of my Uncle Jacks, who also drove for Kaufmans, said his next stop was our house, and as this was a unique circumstance, he offered me a ride home. I sat down on the first step of the truck, head bowed while the news continued to sink in. We drove on in silence until about halfway home when I demonstrated my vast knowledge of history and political science by asking, Does this mean Nixon will be president now? Bob took a deep breath and said, Lyndon. Baines. Johnson. I could tell by the way he said it he wasnt pleased. As we pulled up to our house, I thanked Bob for the ride, and then ran up the driveway to tell Mom the news before Bob could unload whatever baked goods hed sell us. As I entered the living room, I saw Mom, Grandma and cousin Lynn seated on the couch watching television. All three were crying. It was one of the very few times I saw my mom cry. Dan Schwartz By Express News Service COIMBATORE: The parents of a Class 7 girl at a government high school in Ashokapuram on Tuesday lodged a complaint to the chief educational officer alleging that a teacher had spoken ill about their habit of eating beef meat and their religion. In the petition, the parents stated that the female teacher did not like children who came to school wearing hijab and had been harassing children from minority community indirectly for the last few months. Two months ago, the teacher asked my child about my occupation. My child had told her that I run a beef and meat shop. Two weeks ago, the teacher beat up my child and criticized our eating habit of beef consumption. The parents added that they took up the issue with the headmistress, but she supported the teacher. Since the headmistress did not take action on their complaint, they approached the CEO. Headmistress Rajeshwari refused to speak about it. Chief Educational Officer R Balamurali told TNIE that he received the complaint from the parents and would order an inquiry. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp COIMBATORE: The parents of a Class 7 girl at a government high school in Ashokapuram on Tuesday lodged a complaint to the chief educational officer alleging that a teacher had spoken ill about their habit of eating beef meat and their religion. In the petition, the parents stated that the female teacher did not like children who came to school wearing hijab and had been harassing children from minority community indirectly for the last few months. Two months ago, the teacher asked my child about my occupation. My child had told her that I run a beef and meat shop. Two weeks ago, the teacher beat up my child and criticized our eating habit of beef consumption. The parents added that they took up the issue with the headmistress, but she supported the teacher. Since the headmistress did not take action on their complaint, they approached the CEO.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); Headmistress Rajeshwari refused to speak about it. Chief Educational Officer R Balamurali told TNIE that he received the complaint from the parents and would order an inquiry. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By Associated Press TORVAIANICA: Pope Francis recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in this working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic. Thanks to the local parish priest, these women now make monthly visits to Francis Wednesday general audiences, where they are given VIP seats. On any given day, they receive handouts of medicine, cash and shampoo. When COVID-19 struck, the Vatican bussed them into its health facility so they could be vaccinated ahead of most Italians. On Sunday, the women many of whom are Latin American migrants and work as sex workers joined over 1,000 other poor and homeless people in the Vatican auditorium as Francis guests for lunch to mark the Catholic Churchs World Day of the Poor. The menu was evidence of Francis' belief that those most on the margins must be treated with utmost dignity: cannelloni pasta filled with spinach and ricotta to start; meatballs in a tomato-basil sauce and cauliflower puree, and tiramisu with petit fours for dessert. For the marginalized trans community of Torvaianica, it was just the latest gesture of inclusion from a pope who has made reaching out to the LGBTQ+ community a hallmark of his papacy, in word and deed. Before, the church was closed to us. They didnt see us as normal people, they saw us as the devil, said Andrea Paola Torres Lopez, a Colombian transgender woman known as Consuelo, whose kitchen is decorated with pictures of Jesus. Then Pope Francis arrived and the doors of the church opened for us. Francis latest initiative was a document from the Vaticans doctrine office asserting that, under some circumstances, transgender people can be baptized and can serve as godparents and witnesses in weddings. It followed another recent statement from the pope himself that suggested same-sex couples could receive church blessings. In both cases, the new pronouncements reversed the absolute bans on transgender people serving as godparents issued by the Vatican doctrine office in 2015, and on same-sex blessings announced in 2021. Prominent LGBTQ+ organizations have welcomed Francis message of inclusivity, given gay and transgender people have long felt ostracized and discriminated against by a church that officially teaches that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. Starting from his famous Who am I to judge comment in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, to his assertion in January that being homosexual is not a crime, Francis has evolved his position to increasingly make clear that everyone todos, todos, todos is a child of God, is loved by God and welcome in the church. That judgment-free position is not necessarily shared by the rest of the Catholic Church. The recent Vatican gathering of bishops and laypeople, known as a synod, backed off language explicitly calling for welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics. Conservative Catholics, including cardinals, have strongly questioned his approach. After his latest statement about trans participation in church sacraments, GLAAD and DignityUSA said Francis tone of inclusion would send a message to political and cultural leaders to end their persecution, exclusion and discrimination against transgender people. For the trans community in Torvaianica, it was a more personal message, a concrete sign that the pope knew them, had heard their stories and wanted to let them know that they were part of his church. Carla Segovia, a 46-year-old Argentine sex worker, said for transgender women like herself, being a godparent is the closest thing she will ever get to having a child of her own. She said that the new norms made her feel more comfortable about maybe one day returning fully to the faith that she was baptized in but fell away from after coming out as trans. This norm from Pope Francis brings me closer to finding that absolute serenity, she said, which she feels is necessary to be fully reconciled with the faith. Claudia Vittoria Salas, a 55-year-old transgender tailor and house cleaner, said she had already served as a godparent to three of her nieces and nephews back home in Jujuy, in northern Argentina. She choked up as she recalled that her earnings from her former work as a prostitute put her godchildren through school. Being a godparent is a big responsibility, its taking the place of the mother or father, its not a game, she said as her voice broke. You have to choose the right people who will be responsible and capable, when the parents arent around, to send the kids to school and provide them with food and clothes. Francis unusual friendship with the Torvaianica trans community began during Italys strict COVID-19 lockdown, when one, then two, and then more sex workers showed up at the Rev. Andrea Conocchias church on the main piazza of town asking for food, because they had lost all sources of income. Over time, Conocchia got to know the women and as the pandemic and economic hardships continued, he encouraged them to write to Francis to ask for what they needed. One night they sat around a table and composed their letters. The pages of the letters of the first four were bathed in tears, he recalled. Why? Because they told me Father, Im ashamed, I cant tell the pope what I have done, how I have lived. But they did, and the first assistance arrived from the popes chief almsgiver, who then accompanied the women for their COVID-19 vaccines a year later. At the time of the pandemic, many of the women weren't legally allowed to live in Italy and had no access to the vaccine. Eventually, Francis asked to meet them. Salas was among those who received the jab at the Vatican and then joined a group from Torvaianica to thank Francis at his general audience on April 27, 2022. She brought the Argentine pope a platter of homemade chicken empanadas, a traditional comfort food from their shared homeland. Showing the photo of the exchange on her phone, Salas remembered what Francis did next: He told the gentleman who receives the gifts to leave them with him, saying Im taking them with me for lunch, she said. At that point, I started to cry. On Sunday, Salas was seated at Francis' table in the Vatican auditorium. She said she had woken up at 3 a.m. to make him more chicken empanadas for his dinner. They're still hot, she said. For Canocchia, Francis response to Salas and the others has changed him profoundly as a priest, teaching him the value of listening and being attentive to the lives and hardships of his flock, especially those most on the margins. For the women, it is simply an acknowledgement that they matter. At least they remember us, that were on Earth and we havent been abandoned and left to the mercy of the wind, said Torres Lopez. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp TORVAIANICA: Pope Francis recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in this working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic. Thanks to the local parish priest, these women now make monthly visits to Francis Wednesday general audiences, where they are given VIP seats. On any given day, they receive handouts of medicine, cash and shampoo. When COVID-19 struck, the Vatican bussed them into its health facility so they could be vaccinated ahead of most Italians. On Sunday, the women many of whom are Latin American migrants and work as sex workers joined over 1,000 other poor and homeless people in the Vatican auditorium as Francis guests for lunch to mark the Catholic Churchs World Day of the Poor.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The menu was evidence of Francis' belief that those most on the margins must be treated with utmost dignity: cannelloni pasta filled with spinach and ricotta to start; meatballs in a tomato-basil sauce and cauliflower puree, and tiramisu with petit fours for dessert. For the marginalized trans community of Torvaianica, it was just the latest gesture of inclusion from a pope who has made reaching out to the LGBTQ+ community a hallmark of his papacy, in word and deed. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Associated Press (AP) (@apnews) Before, the church was closed to us. They didnt see us as normal people, they saw us as the devil, said Andrea Paola Torres Lopez, a Colombian transgender woman known as Consuelo, whose kitchen is decorated with pictures of Jesus. Then Pope Francis arrived and the doors of the church opened for us. Francis latest initiative was a document from the Vaticans doctrine office asserting that, under some circumstances, transgender people can be baptized and can serve as godparents and witnesses in weddings. It followed another recent statement from the pope himself that suggested same-sex couples could receive church blessings. In both cases, the new pronouncements reversed the absolute bans on transgender people serving as godparents issued by the Vatican doctrine office in 2015, and on same-sex blessings announced in 2021. Prominent LGBTQ+ organizations have welcomed Francis message of inclusivity, given gay and transgender people have long felt ostracized and discriminated against by a church that officially teaches that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. Starting from his famous Who am I to judge comment in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, to his assertion in January that being homosexual is not a crime, Francis has evolved his position to increasingly make clear that everyone todos, todos, todos is a child of God, is loved by God and welcome in the church. That judgment-free position is not necessarily shared by the rest of the Catholic Church. The recent Vatican gathering of bishops and laypeople, known as a synod, backed off language explicitly calling for welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics. Conservative Catholics, including cardinals, have strongly questioned his approach. After his latest statement about trans participation in church sacraments, GLAAD and DignityUSA said Francis tone of inclusion would send a message to political and cultural leaders to end their persecution, exclusion and discrimination against transgender people. For the trans community in Torvaianica, it was a more personal message, a concrete sign that the pope knew them, had heard their stories and wanted to let them know that they were part of his church. Carla Segovia, a 46-year-old Argentine sex worker, said for transgender women like herself, being a godparent is the closest thing she will ever get to having a child of her own. She said that the new norms made her feel more comfortable about maybe one day returning fully to the faith that she was baptized in but fell away from after coming out as trans. This norm from Pope Francis brings me closer to finding that absolute serenity, she said, which she feels is necessary to be fully reconciled with the faith. Claudia Vittoria Salas, a 55-year-old transgender tailor and house cleaner, said she had already served as a godparent to three of her nieces and nephews back home in Jujuy, in northern Argentina. She choked up as she recalled that her earnings from her former work as a prostitute put her godchildren through school. Being a godparent is a big responsibility, its taking the place of the mother or father, its not a game, she said as her voice broke. You have to choose the right people who will be responsible and capable, when the parents arent around, to send the kids to school and provide them with food and clothes. Francis unusual friendship with the Torvaianica trans community began during Italys strict COVID-19 lockdown, when one, then two, and then more sex workers showed up at the Rev. Andrea Conocchias church on the main piazza of town asking for food, because they had lost all sources of income. Over time, Conocchia got to know the women and as the pandemic and economic hardships continued, he encouraged them to write to Francis to ask for what they needed. One night they sat around a table and composed their letters. The pages of the letters of the first four were bathed in tears, he recalled. Why? Because they told me Father, Im ashamed, I cant tell the pope what I have done, how I have lived. But they did, and the first assistance arrived from the popes chief almsgiver, who then accompanied the women for their COVID-19 vaccines a year later. At the time of the pandemic, many of the women weren't legally allowed to live in Italy and had no access to the vaccine. Eventually, Francis asked to meet them. Salas was among those who received the jab at the Vatican and then joined a group from Torvaianica to thank Francis at his general audience on April 27, 2022. She brought the Argentine pope a platter of homemade chicken empanadas, a traditional comfort food from their shared homeland. Showing the photo of the exchange on her phone, Salas remembered what Francis did next: He told the gentleman who receives the gifts to leave them with him, saying Im taking them with me for lunch, she said. At that point, I started to cry. On Sunday, Salas was seated at Francis' table in the Vatican auditorium. She said she had woken up at 3 a.m. to make him more chicken empanadas for his dinner. They're still hot, she said. For Canocchia, Francis response to Salas and the others has changed him profoundly as a priest, teaching him the value of listening and being attentive to the lives and hardships of his flock, especially those most on the margins. For the women, it is simply an acknowledgement that they matter. At least they remember us, that were on Earth and we havent been abandoned and left to the mercy of the wind, said Torres Lopez. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp Yeshi Seli By Express News Service NEW DELHI: Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, while addressing the G20 virtual summit welcomed the release of 50 hostages by Hamas, and made seven observations on the Israel-Hamas conflict which included zero tolerance on terrorism. He called the killing of civilians unacceptable, urged that humanitarian aid should arrive soon, urged for need for regional stability and suggested dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the conflict. "When I proposed this virtual summit, there was no anticipation of what the global situation would be like today. New challenges have arisen in the last months. The situation of insecurity and instability in the West Asia region is a matter of concern for all of us. Our coming together today symbolizes that we are sensitive to all issues and stand together to resolve them. We believe that terrorism is unacceptable to all of us. The death of civilians, wherever they happen, is condemnable, said Modi adding that he hoped that all Israeli hostages would be released soon. "It is necessary to ensure timely and continuous delivery of humanitarian aid. It is also important to ensure that the war between Israel and Hamas does not take any regional form. Despite the clouds of crisis that we are seeing today, One Family has the power to work for peace. From the perspective of human welfare, we can raise our voice against terrorism and violence, and towards humanity. Today, India is ready to move step by step to fulfil this expectation of the world and humanity, Modi added. The Summit was attended by 22 heads of government, though some leaders were not present. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida, and Australian PM Anthony Albanese took part in the Summit, while Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden skipped it. "It is for a country to decide on who represents them, said External Affairs Minister, Dr S Jaishankar, after the conclusion of the Summit. "Russia has never refused peace negotiations in Ukraine and I understand that this is war and the loss of life cannot but shock. But isnt the extermination of the civilian population in Gaza shocking? Isn't it shocking that doctors have to perform operations on children without anaesthesia? Isn't it shocking that the UNSG said that Gaza has turned into a huge childrens cemetery, said Russian President Vladimir Putin during his address adding that helping the people of Gaza is our sacred duty. Australian PM, Anthony Albanese, suggested that the economies of G20 countries should work together. "Today in the age of Artificial Intelligence, there is a need to use technology in a responsible manner. There is increasing concern about the negative use of AI all over the world. India has a clear thinking that we should work together on the global regulation of AI. Understanding the seriousness of DeepFake, and how dangerous it is for society and the individual, we have to move forward. We want AI should reach the people, and it must be safe for society. With this approach, the Global AI Partnership Summit is being organized in India next month. I am sure that all of you will cooperate in this also, Modi added. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp NEW DELHI: Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, while addressing the G20 virtual summit welcomed the release of 50 hostages by Hamas, and made seven observations on the Israel-Hamas conflict which included zero tolerance on terrorism. He called the killing of civilians unacceptable, urged that humanitarian aid should arrive soon, urged for need for regional stability and suggested dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the conflict. "When I proposed this virtual summit, there was no anticipation of what the global situation would be like today. New challenges have arisen in the last months. The situation of insecurity and instability in the West Asia region is a matter of concern for all of us. Our coming together today symbolizes that we are sensitive to all issues and stand together to resolve them. We believe that terrorism is unacceptable to all of us. The death of civilians, wherever they happen, is condemnable, said Modi adding that he hoped that all Israeli hostages would be released soon. "It is necessary to ensure timely and continuous delivery of humanitarian aid. It is also important to ensure that the war between Israel and Hamas does not take any regional form. Despite the clouds of crisis that we are seeing today, One Family has the power to work for peace. From the perspective of human welfare, we can raise our voice against terrorism and violence, and towards humanity. Today, India is ready to move step by step to fulfil this expectation of the world and humanity, Modi added. googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The Summit was attended by 22 heads of government, though some leaders were not present. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida, and Australian PM Anthony Albanese took part in the Summit, while Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden skipped it. "It is for a country to decide on who represents them, said External Affairs Minister, Dr S Jaishankar, after the conclusion of the Summit. "Russia has never refused peace negotiations in Ukraine and I understand that this is war and the loss of life cannot but shock. But isnt the extermination of the civilian population in Gaza shocking? Isn't it shocking that doctors have to perform operations on children without anaesthesia? Isn't it shocking that the UNSG said that Gaza has turned into a huge childrens cemetery, said Russian President Vladimir Putin during his address adding that helping the people of Gaza is our sacred duty. Australian PM, Anthony Albanese, suggested that the economies of G20 countries should work together. "Today in the age of Artificial Intelligence, there is a need to use technology in a responsible manner. There is increasing concern about the negative use of AI all over the world. India has a clear thinking that we should work together on the global regulation of AI. Understanding the seriousness of DeepFake, and how dangerous it is for society and the individual, we have to move forward. We want AI should reach the people, and it must be safe for society. With this approach, the Global AI Partnership Summit is being organized in India next month. I am sure that all of you will cooperate in this also, Modi added. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By AFP JERUALEM: Six Palestinians were shot dead in an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the Palestinian Authority's health ministry said. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers across the West Bank since the Hamas attacks on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, according to the ministry. Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967 and its troops regularly launch raids across the Palestinian territory. The Palestinian Red Crescent said the Israeli army stormed the refugee camp in the northern city of Tulkarem and briefly detained a 16-year-old with shrapnel wounds to his face. A 26-year-old young woman "beaten by the Israeli army" had been transferred to hospital, the Red Crescent added. ALSO READ | Israeli Cabinet approves cease-fire with Hamas that includes release of some 50 hostages The Israeli army was still in the camp at mid-morning Wednesday, an AFP photographer reported. The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. The Palestinian Red Crescent said that it treated a total of 26 injured, including four with bullet wounds, in the West Bank towns of Tulkarem, Bethlehem, Tubas and Qalqilya. Israeli officials say an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed across southern Israel in the unprecedented Hamas attacks on October 7. READ HERE | What we know - Israel-Hamas truce deal Israel has responded with a massive bombardment and ground operations in the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas-run health ministry says have killed more than 14,000 people, including thousands of children. ALSO READ | Qatar confirms Israel-Hamas truce-for-hostages deal that would pause Gaza fighting, bring more aid Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp JERUALEM: Six Palestinians were shot dead in an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the Palestinian Authority's health ministry said. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers across the West Bank since the Hamas attacks on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, according to the ministry. Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967 and its troops regularly launch raids across the Palestinian territory.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The Palestinian Red Crescent said the Israeli army stormed the refugee camp in the northern city of Tulkarem and briefly detained a 16-year-old with shrapnel wounds to his face. A 26-year-old young woman "beaten by the Israeli army" had been transferred to hospital, the Red Crescent added. ALSO READ | Israeli Cabinet approves cease-fire with Hamas that includes release of some 50 hostages The Israeli army was still in the camp at mid-morning Wednesday, an AFP photographer reported. The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment. The Palestinian Red Crescent said that it treated a total of 26 injured, including four with bullet wounds, in the West Bank towns of Tulkarem, Bethlehem, Tubas and Qalqilya. Israeli officials say an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed across southern Israel in the unprecedented Hamas attacks on October 7. READ HERE | What we know - Israel-Hamas truce deal Israel has responded with a massive bombardment and ground operations in the Gaza Strip, which the Hamas-run health ministry says have killed more than 14,000 people, including thousands of children. ALSO READ | Qatar confirms Israel-Hamas truce-for-hostages deal that would pause Gaza fighting, bring more aid Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By Associated Press JOHANNESBURG: A majority of South African lawmakers on Tuesday voted in favor of a motion calling for the closure of the Israeli embassy and the cutting of diplomatic ties until Israel agrees to a cease-fire in Gaza. The vote on the motion supported by the ruling African National Congress party came as President Cyril Ramaphosa in a meeting with other world leaders accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza with its military offensive in the besieged territory in search of its Hamas militant rulers. The motion tabled by the opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters received the support of 248 parliament members while 91 lawmakers opposed it. The vote came after Israels foreign ministry said it had recalled its ambassador to South Africa, Eliav Belotserkovsky, back to Jerusalem for consultations. The two countries diplomatic relations have witnessed a rise in tensions over the war in Gaza. Ramaphosa previously said his country believes Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have been killed. South Africa announced last week that it had referred what it called Israels genocide in Gaza to the International Criminal Court for an investigation. Its cabinet has called on the ICC to issue an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ALSO READ | BRICS urges immediate Gaza truce, South Africa slams Israeli 'genocide' Earlier this month, South Africa recalled its ambassador to Israel and withdrew all its diplomatic staff. Ramaphosas new comments Tuesday came in a virtual meeting of BRICS countries attended by leaders of the bloc including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Israel-Hamas war began after the Palestinian militant groups surprise attacks on Israel on Oct.7 killed about 1,200 people. Israels retaliatory strikes on Gaza have killed more than 12,700 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp JOHANNESBURG: A majority of South African lawmakers on Tuesday voted in favor of a motion calling for the closure of the Israeli embassy and the cutting of diplomatic ties until Israel agrees to a cease-fire in Gaza. The vote on the motion supported by the ruling African National Congress party came as President Cyril Ramaphosa in a meeting with other world leaders accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza with its military offensive in the besieged territory in search of its Hamas militant rulers. The motion tabled by the opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters received the support of 248 parliament members while 91 lawmakers opposed it.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The vote came after Israels foreign ministry said it had recalled its ambassador to South Africa, Eliav Belotserkovsky, back to Jerusalem for consultations. The two countries diplomatic relations have witnessed a rise in tensions over the war in Gaza. Ramaphosa previously said his country believes Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have been killed. South Africa announced last week that it had referred what it called Israels genocide in Gaza to the International Criminal Court for an investigation. Its cabinet has called on the ICC to issue an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ALSO READ | BRICS urges immediate Gaza truce, South Africa slams Israeli 'genocide' Earlier this month, South Africa recalled its ambassador to Israel and withdrew all its diplomatic staff. Ramaphosas new comments Tuesday came in a virtual meeting of BRICS countries attended by leaders of the bloc including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Israel-Hamas war began after the Palestinian militant groups surprise attacks on Israel on Oct.7 killed about 1,200 people. Israels retaliatory strikes on Gaza have killed more than 12,700 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By AFP JERUSALEM: The vast majority of Palestinians slated for release under an Israel-Hamas swap deal to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, are teenage boys, an official Israeli list shows. Israel released the names on Wednesday of 300 Palestinian detainees who could be set free under the agreement. Under the terms of the deal, the first phase will see 50 Israeli hostages released over the course of four days, with 150 security detainees to be freed in response. ALSO READ | Six Palestinians shot dead in West Bank: Palestinian Authority More detainees could subsequently be released at the same ratio of three to one, it said. An AFP examination of the names found that 33 were women, 123 were boys under 18, and 144 were 18-year-old men. The youngest was 14-year-old Adam Abuda Hassan Gheit from annexed east Jerusalem, who was arrested in May for "hostile sabotage activity, attacking a police officer and throwing stones". The oldest was a 59-year-old woman called Hanan Salah Abdallah Barghuti, who was arrested in September for "Hamas activity including money transfers", it said. ALSO READ | Israeli Cabinet approves cease-fire with Hamas that includes release of some 50 hostages It identified 49 as Hamas members, 60 as belonging to Fatah, the party which leads the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, and 17 as being affiliated with the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The others had no affiliation specified. READ HERE | What we know - Israel-Hamas truce deal The most prominent individual on the list is Israa Jaabis, 38, who was convicted of detonating a gas cylinder in her car at a checkpoint in 2015, wounding a police officer. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Israeli rights group HaMoked welcomed the deal. "Holding people as hostages is itself illegal, a war crime, and Hamas should release all the hostages unconditionally," its executive director Jessica Montell said in a statement, adding it was "appropriate that Israel release prisoners and detainees to advance this goal". Most of those to be released were "detainees still awaiting trial, on charges that range from incitement to stone-throwing to attempted murder", she said, adding that the list also included women and teenagers held without charge or trial in so-called administrative detention. "These people should also have been released unconditionally, so a deal to release Israeli hostages and Palestinian administrative detainees is doubly welcome," she said. ALSO READ | Qatar confirms Israel-Hamas truce-for-hostages deal that would pause Gaza fighting, bring more aid Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp JERUSALEM: The vast majority of Palestinians slated for release under an Israel-Hamas swap deal to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza, are teenage boys, an official Israeli list shows. Israel released the names on Wednesday of 300 Palestinian detainees who could be set free under the agreement. Under the terms of the deal, the first phase will see 50 Israeli hostages released over the course of four days, with 150 security detainees to be freed in response.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); ALSO READ | Six Palestinians shot dead in West Bank: Palestinian Authority More detainees could subsequently be released at the same ratio of three to one, it said. An AFP examination of the names found that 33 were women, 123 were boys under 18, and 144 were 18-year-old men. The youngest was 14-year-old Adam Abuda Hassan Gheit from annexed east Jerusalem, who was arrested in May for "hostile sabotage activity, attacking a police officer and throwing stones". The oldest was a 59-year-old woman called Hanan Salah Abdallah Barghuti, who was arrested in September for "Hamas activity including money transfers", it said. ALSO READ | Israeli Cabinet approves cease-fire with Hamas that includes release of some 50 hostages It identified 49 as Hamas members, 60 as belonging to Fatah, the party which leads the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, and 17 as being affiliated with the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The others had no affiliation specified. READ HERE | What we know - Israel-Hamas truce deal The most prominent individual on the list is Israa Jaabis, 38, who was convicted of detonating a gas cylinder in her car at a checkpoint in 2015, wounding a police officer. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Israeli rights group HaMoked welcomed the deal. "Holding people as hostages is itself illegal, a war crime, and Hamas should release all the hostages unconditionally," its executive director Jessica Montell said in a statement, adding it was "appropriate that Israel release prisoners and detainees to advance this goal". Most of those to be released were "detainees still awaiting trial, on charges that range from incitement to stone-throwing to attempted murder", she said, adding that the list also included women and teenagers held without charge or trial in so-called administrative detention. "These people should also have been released unconditionally, so a deal to release Israeli hostages and Palestinian administrative detainees is doubly welcome," she said. ALSO READ | Qatar confirms Israel-Hamas truce-for-hostages deal that would pause Gaza fighting, bring more aid Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp By AFP JERUSALEM: Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war. The first major diplomatic breakthrough in the conflict follows weeks of painstaking negotiations brokered by Qatar with help from Egypt and the United States, and is also intended to allow the delivery of desperately needed food, medicines and fuel to the 2.4 million civilians trapped in Gaza in increasingly dire conditions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved the truce accord early Wednesday after a near-all-night meeting, in which he told ministers this was a "difficult decision but it's a right decision". The deal is crafted to take effect in stages that the mediators hope can be extended and broadened. Here is what we know so far. ALSO READ | Israeli Cabinet approves cease-fire with Hamas that includes release of some 50 hostages Mediator Qatar to announce start Qatar said it would announce the start of the four-day humanitarian pause in Gaza, during which Palestinian prisoners will be released in exchange for 50 of the hostages Islamist militants hold in Gaza. "The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension," Qatar's foreign ministry said in a statement. "The agreement includes the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons," it said. Qatar said the deal would include "the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs". ALSO READ | Qatar confirms Israel-Hamas truce-for-hostages deal that would pause Gaza fighting, bring more aid 'Truce can be extended' Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told AFP the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas would be staggered over the four-day truce. "The truce begins and then every day within the four days we will have a number of hostages coming out... and that number should reach 50 by day four," he said. The expectation was that the initial 50 women and children hostages freed by Hamas would be followed by further releases to extend the initial four-day truce. "If by then the Palestinians can commit to an additional number, then the truce can be extended," Ansari said. During the period hostages are moved, Israeli reconnaissance of Gaza will be put on temporary hold, said the spokesman, who is also a key adviser to Qatar's prime minister. Scope of deal Although Qatari mediators held out hope the truce deal could lead to a more durable ceasefire, Israeli officials stressed that they intended to resume their campaign to eliminate Hamas as soon as the hostage releases are over. In a statement, the Israeli government pledged to "continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza". Ahead of the crunch meeting which approved the deal, hawkish Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said he had won assurances it would not spell the end of the war. "Immediately after we have exhausted this phase" he said, security operations would "continue in full force". Who will be freed? An estimated 240 hostages were abducted by Hamas in its shock October 7 attack that killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel but just 50 are to be freed in the initial phase of the truce. Qatar said those earmarked for staggered release were all children or female civilians. "There are no military prisoners among those to be released," its foreign ministry spokesman said. A senior US official said three Americans, including three-year-old Abigail Mor Idan, were among the 50. Aid 'surge' planned Large parts of Gaza have been flattened by thousands of air strikes, and the territory is under siege, with minimal food, water and fuel allowed in. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she had ordered a surge in aid deliveries to Gaza following the announcement of the four-day pause in fighting. "The European Commission will do its utmost to use this pause for a humanitarian surge to Gaza," she said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp JERUSALEM: Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, while offering besieged Gaza residents a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war. The first major diplomatic breakthrough in the conflict follows weeks of painstaking negotiations brokered by Qatar with help from Egypt and the United States, and is also intended to allow the delivery of desperately needed food, medicines and fuel to the 2.4 million civilians trapped in Gaza in increasingly dire conditions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved the truce accord early Wednesday after a near-all-night meeting, in which he told ministers this was a "difficult decision but it's a right decision".googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-8052921-2'); }); The deal is crafted to take effect in stages that the mediators hope can be extended and broadened. Here is what we know so far. ALSO READ | Israeli Cabinet approves cease-fire with Hamas that includes release of some 50 hostages Mediator Qatar to announce start Qatar said it would announce the start of the four-day humanitarian pause in Gaza, during which Palestinian prisoners will be released in exchange for 50 of the hostages Islamist militants hold in Gaza. "The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension," Qatar's foreign ministry said in a statement. "The agreement includes the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons," it said. Qatar said the deal would include "the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs". ALSO READ | Qatar confirms Israel-Hamas truce-for-hostages deal that would pause Gaza fighting, bring more aid 'Truce can be extended' Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told AFP the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas would be staggered over the four-day truce. "The truce begins and then every day within the four days we will have a number of hostages coming out... and that number should reach 50 by day four," he said. The expectation was that the initial 50 women and children hostages freed by Hamas would be followed by further releases to extend the initial four-day truce. "If by then the Palestinians can commit to an additional number, then the truce can be extended," Ansari said. During the period hostages are moved, Israeli reconnaissance of Gaza will be put on temporary hold, said the spokesman, who is also a key adviser to Qatar's prime minister. Scope of deal Although Qatari mediators held out hope the truce deal could lead to a more durable ceasefire, Israeli officials stressed that they intended to resume their campaign to eliminate Hamas as soon as the hostage releases are over. In a statement, the Israeli government pledged to "continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza". Ahead of the crunch meeting which approved the deal, hawkish Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said he had won assurances it would not spell the end of the war. "Immediately after we have exhausted this phase" he said, security operations would "continue in full force". Who will be freed? An estimated 240 hostages were abducted by Hamas in its shock October 7 attack that killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel but just 50 are to be freed in the initial phase of the truce. Qatar said those earmarked for staggered release were all children or female civilians. "There are no military prisoners among those to be released," its foreign ministry spokesman said. A senior US official said three Americans, including three-year-old Abigail Mor Idan, were among the 50. Aid 'surge' planned Large parts of Gaza have been flattened by thousands of air strikes, and the territory is under siege, with minimal food, water and fuel allowed in. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she had ordered a surge in aid deliveries to Gaza following the announcement of the four-day pause in fighting. "The European Commission will do its utmost to use this pause for a humanitarian surge to Gaza," she said. Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp A pastor who was put on administrative leave in September is among seven Catholic priests recently accused in lawsuits of sexual misconduct with adults. A Buffalo man said the Rev. Joseph S. Rogliano kissed him and made unwanted sexual advances during a 2010 counseling session in a church rectory immediately following a funeral for the mans family member at Fourteen Holy Helpers Church in West Seneca. Rogliano has been on leave as pastor of a family of Buffalo parishes since the Buffalo Diocese announced in September it was investigating a claim of inappropriate conduct with an adult. The Adult Survivors Act lawsuit naming Rogliano was filed Friday by attorney Paul Barr in Erie County State Supreme Court. Barr also filed lawsuits that accuse four other priests of sexual misconduct with adults in the 1980s: the Rev. William White, the Rev. Arthur J. Smith, the Rev. Paul Keeling and the Rev. Kenneth Ward. White, Smith and Ward are now deceased. White and Smith were diocesan priests, while Keeling is a Barnabite order priest at Our Lady of Fatima Shrine in Youngstown and Ward was part of the Orders of Friars Minor Conventual. In addition, attorney Elizabeth A. Cate filed a lawsuit Monday against St. James parish in Jamestown alleging that the Rev. Lawrence Connors groomed a young man for three years and then sexually assaulted him in the church rectory in 1976. Connors died in 1992. And the Rev. Donald J. Joyce, a member of the Oblate order who died in 2013, was accused of having unpermitted sexual contact with an 18- to 19-year-old parishioner in Buffalo in a lawsuit filed Tuesday by attorneys Jeff Anderson & Associates and Steve Boyd. The cases were filed just days before a one-year window suspending the statute of limitations on adult sex abuse cases closes Thursday. The window allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their abusers no matter when the abuse was alleged to have happened. The Adult Survivors Act, like the Child Victims Act, also allows abuse survivors to sue employers of abusers that may have been negligent in not preventing the abuse. In the case accusing Rogliano, for example, both Rogliano and Fourteen Holy Helpers, where he was assigned as a priest in 2010, are named as defendants. Rogliano had not previously been accused publicly of sexual misconduct. Court papers alleged that Rogliano used his position of trust, authority and power over the plaintiff to sexually abuse him under the guise of religious counsel and consolation. During the counseling session after the funeral, Rogliano made sexual advances, rubbed the plaintiffs shoulders and kissed his forehead and shoulders, according to court papers. The plaintiff was stunned and left, court papers said. The priest certainly took advantage of a situation, said Barr. He had the wherewithal to fend off these advances. The diocese announced Sept. 11 that Bishop Michael W. Fisher had temporarily relieved Rogliano of his pastoral and administrative duties for a family of parishes that includes Blessed Trinity, SS. Columba-Brigid, St. Lawrence and St. Martin de Porres churches. He also was removed from his role as coordinator of the Priests Personnel Board while a review board examines the claims against him. Ordained to the priesthood in 1985, Rogliano has served at parishes in South Buffalo, Amherst, Lockport and North Buffalo. White, Smith, Keeling and Joyce all had been accused previously of sex abuse of minors. They are included on diocese lists of priests with substantiated allegations of abuse against them. Keeling is named as a defendant in a 2019 Child Victims Act lawsuit, while Smith was accused of child molestation in two lawsuits, Joyce in three and White in several. In the Adult Survivors Act lawsuits, White is accused of sexually abusing a Buffalo man on three occasions while promising that he would find employment for the man. The abuse was alleged to have happened in the rectory of Annunciation Church on the West Side around 1982 to 1984, according to court papers. An Amherst man who attended Masses at Our Lady of Victory Basilica and St. Thomas Aquinas Church in South Buffalo in the mid-1980s said in court papers that Smith became a close family friend and heard his confessions. But when the plaintiff got into Smiths car in 1985 or 1986, the priest said that he wanted to hug the man and then began to kiss his neck and ear, court papers said. Smith also kissed the plaintiffs neck and ear in 1987 at a cottage near Rushford Lake, where they were spending a weekend in prayer, according to court papers. The man was stunned and paralyzed at the unwanted sexual contact but was able to get away, the lawsuit said. Ward, who died in 1989 at age 44, had not been accused publicly of sexual misconduct prior to the lawsuit on Friday. The plaintiff, who lives in Lackawanna, said in court papers he was living at the Franciscan Center on Seneca Street in 1982 when he developed a rash on his skin and went to Ward for help. At the time, the Franciscan Center, now closed, was a shelter for homeless young men. Ward told the man to strip down, applied calamine lotion on his genitals even though the rash was elsewhere, and then took Polaroid photos of the naked plaintiff, according to court papers. A 74-year-old Erie, Pa., man accused Connors of climbing atop and pinning him on a recliner in the rectory of St. James Church in Jamestown in 1976. In a struggle between the two, the priest unzipped the mans pants and reached inside his underwear to touch his genitals, court papers said. The man said he tried to report the incident to multiple bishops and was told that diocese officials do not talk to victims. New Delhi, Nov 21 H yundai Motor India Ltd. (HMIL), Indias first smart mobility solutions provider and largest exporter since its inception, on Tuesday launched the Samarth initiative for the awareness and enablement of people with disabilities in India. The initiative is aligned with Hyundais global vision of Progress for Humanity that aims to enable an inclusive, progressive world through the power of mobility. Through this initiative, Hyundai aims to help create a more aware and sensitized society towards people with disabilities in India. With over 26.8 million differently abled people in India, Hyundai understood the need for creating awareness in the society towards disabilities. With the launch of Samarth, Hyundai Motor India is Indias first automobile company to launch an inclusive mobility project at a mass scale. Hyundai will partner with NGOs and media network to create a mass movement while also aligning Hyundai dealerships and network to become more inclusive. With technology, partnerships, product innovations, and storytelling, Samarth aims to turn the world into a level-playing field for all. Commenting on the launch of Samarth initiative, Un Soo Kim, MD & CEO, HMIL, said, We dont just make cars but also believe in empowering India, and to empower India, we undertake social initiatives under the pillars of- Earth, Mobility and Hope. "These are aligned with Hyundais global vision of Continue and propagate Progress for Humanity. Samarth is a manifestation of this belief. We are pleased to announce the launch of Samarth initiative, which is a step towards creating a more aware and inclusive society towards differently abled in India. We aim to cultivate a more equitable and sensitized society for the differently abled and want them to see their true capabilities. Hyundai Motor India launches inclusive mobility initiative for people with disabilities Found this article helpful? Spread the word and support us! San Francisco, Nov 21 M icrosoft on Tuesday said it will match OpenAIs compensation to employees who want to join Sam Altmans new advanced AI research lab at Satya Nadella-run tech giant. Microsoft Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and EVP of AI, Kevin Scott, said in a post on X that the company has seen their petition to the OpenAI board. To my partners at OpenAI: We have seen your petition and appreciate your desire potentially to join Sam Altman at Microsofts new AI Research Lab, he posted. Know that if needed, you have a role at Microsoft that matches your compensation and advances our collective mission, Scott added. Microsoft Chairman and CEO Nadella announced on Monday Altman and OpenAI co-founder and former president Greg Brockman will join the company to run its advanced AI research team. However, he said that its still possible that Altman could return to OpenAI in some capacity. In an interview with CNBC, Nadella said that Microsoft wants Altman and Brockman to have a fantastic home if theyre not going to be in OpenAI. Asked whether Altman would return to OpenAI, Nadella said: Thats for, you know, the OpenAI board and management and the employees to choose (Microsoft) chose to explicitly partner with OpenAI (and) obviously that depends on the people at OpenAI staying there or coming to Microsoft, so Im open to both options. More than 500 employees at OpenAI on Monday reportedly threatened to resign and join Microsoft. In a letter to OpenAI's board, they said that "Microsoft has assured us that there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join". Competitors like enterprise software major Salesforce have also been trying to poach OpenAI employees to join their AI projects. However, several OpenAI researchers turned down Benioff's job offer. Microsoft offers OpenAI employees to match their compensation Found this article helpful? Spread the word and support us! President Biden torches Trump's rhetoric on defunding police, saying it would lead to 'less safe America' Washington, Nov 22 U S President Joe Biden's 2024 re-election campaign targetted his predecessor Donald Trump over his rhetoric on defunding police, arguing his policy prescriptions would lead to "a less safe America". Biden's campaign points to past policies Trump has touted such as "stop and frisk". It also hits the former president over his proposed cuts to community policing programmes while simultaneously criticising the "defund the police" movement, media reports said. Biden's birthday reminds voters 'Bubble Wrap' plan to protect him, the Washington Examiner said, claiming to have had an exclusive preview of his (Trump's) vision for America in 2025. When President, Trump took a hard line on policing projecting himself as a "law and order" president amid rising crime and racial justice protests. Trump called for drug dealers to receive the death penalty and even suggested that police be empowered to shoot shoplifters on the spot. The Biden campaign managers have capitalised on this offensive rhetoric to counter Trump's, arguing his solutions to crime would actually leave America less safe. Referring particularly to Trump's past support for "stop and frisk," the Biden team said it was a controversial much criticised police strategy with the potential risk of racial bias and an undue violation of individual's privacy. In 2018, Trump claimed, Stop and frisk works and it was meant for problems like Chicago." Biden's team says such a policy would amount to police harassing citizens on the street. On several occasions, Trump has also signalled his support for arming teachers with firearms to protect students from coming harm's way in the event of a mass shooting by serial offenders. Republican politicians see this as a potential deterrent but has been categorically opposed by Democratic politicians. Biden's re-election team says such a policy would make America's classrooms less safe. "Political violence, harassing citizens in their own neighbourhoods, gunning down Americans at will, flooding classrooms with more guns. That's what Donald Trump is promising if he's elected president again. He's proudly campaigning on a platform of fear, division and violence. He's betting that a scared and divided nation is how he wins this election. It didn't work in 2020, and it won't work this time either," Biden campaign spokesman Seth Schuster said in a statement, the Examiner reported. The Biden campaign is attempting to portray Trump as weak on law enforcement, highlighting his administration's proposal to disband the Community Relations Service and Community Oriented Policing Services and move their duties to other parts of the Justice Department. The administration at the time defended the proposal as a way to "improve efficiency," but the Biden campaign is calling it part of a "dangerous MAGA agenda to defund law enforcement". Trump's campaign did not provide comment to the Washington Examiner. The Biden campaign has already hit the former president over his expected policies on abortion and immigration in a potential 2025 administration as it ramps up attacks on the likely Republican nominee. President Biden torches Trump's rhetoric on defunding police, saying it would lead to 'less safe America' Found this article helpful? Spread the word and support us! Gandhi Sagar decks up for cheetah arrival, but villagers buckle up for a battle for their cattle Bhopal, Nov 22 There are several problems, including the shortage of electricity, water for irrigation and land rights leases in our village, but the clouds of crisis are looming over our livelihood now. The place where our cows, goats and buffaloes used to graze is being enclosed by a stone wall and wire fence to make way for the cheetahs, said Dinesh Gurjar (30), a dairy farmer from Chainpuriya Block village. Cheetahs had ceased to exist in the country 70 years ago (1952). On September 17, 2022, on his 72nd birthday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released eight Namibian cheetahs into the quarantine enclosure at the Kuno National Park in Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh. On February 18 this year, another 12 cheetahs arrived at Kuno from South Africa. In the last week of March, Namibian cheetah Siyaya gave birth to four cubs, of which three died later. Meanwhile, six cheetahs also died. At present, 14 cheetahs and one cub are present at the Kuno National Park. There is a plan to bring a new consignment of 10 cheetahs from South Africa next January. Preparations are on to settle them at the Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary, situated on the border of Neemuch and Mandsaur districts of Madhya Pradesh. Here, an enclosure of 67 sq km is under construction at a cost of Rs 30 crore. According to the forest department officials, the work will be completed by next month. On the other side of the road is Chainpuriya (Ravalikudi), coming under Chainpuriya Block village panchayat in Manasa tehsil of Neemuch district. Earlier, there used to be three villages -- Chainpuriya, Ravalikudi and Pathar -- which the administration had merged into Chainpuriya Block village. About 2,500 residents of 452 families live here, with their main occupation being animal husbandry and agriculture. Every villager has 70 to 100 livestock, but the number of buffaloes and goats is less against the over 25,000 cows. Dinesh said the government was opening cow shelters and running many schemes for them in every village panchayat, but was unconcerned about their cattle. Taking his point forward, his wife Sudha Bai said, Milk business is the livelihood of our family, which includes my husband, mother-in-law and two children. We have 55 cows. The rest 25 are goats and buffaloes. If they do not get food, all of us are in danger of dying of hunger. Broken promises Seated on a stool made of mud outside her house, Kajri Bai (75) questioned why only the poor paid the price of development. Fifty years ago, during the construction of Gandhi Sagar Dam, we had to leave everything because our land came in the submergence area of the dam and the administration displaced us. Since then, we have been occupying this place, earning a living through agriculture and dairy business. If the government does not leave space for our cattle, we will once again face the brunt of displacement, which we detest, she said. The family of Savra Gurjar (38) has been living in the village for 50 years. We have no objection to Project Cheetah. Our only demand is that when our ancestors were displaced here, the forest department had reserved compound numbers 35, 36, 40, 41, 42, 43 for grazing in Rampura range of Neemuch forest division. The department has now wrongly demarcated this land for Project Cheetah. Samrat Dixit (33) said the villagers have written to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Governor Mangubhai C Patel regarding their problems and have submitted a memorandum to Neemuch District Collector Dinesh Jain. We have also protested. Yet our problem remains the same. You tell me, if the forest department covers up our pastureland, where will we take our cattle to graze? We have only one grazing spot, whereas the forest department has other spaces that can be utilised, he said. In this connection, Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary Superintendent Rajesh Mandavlia told 101Reporters that wire-fencing work began on a war footing after the department reached an agreement with the forest committees. We have received the villagers consent. We have left out 300 hectares of forest land for grazing, he claimed. Dixit confirmed that talks were held with the department officials through forest committees, where the department agreed to give up 300 hectares. However, no consensus was reached because the area provided was inadequate. "During the talks, the department officials were ready to give up only 300 hectares at first. As we did not agree, the officials said they could leave 1,080 hectares in three of the six grazing compounds. But the reality is that the land offered is not enough to accommodate our 25,000 cows. Our cattle can graze at ease only when we get about 3,000 hectares," Dixit elaborated. Aseem Srivastava, Madhya Pradesh Forest Department Chief Wildlife Warden, told 101Reporters that the six grazing compounds were not part of the sanctuary, but belonged to the general forest division of Neemuch. "Right now, except for that part, chain link fencing is being done. Negotiations are progressing with villagers through the forest committees. We hope a solution to this problem will be found soon, he said. Our fathers and grandfathers have also lived here. One side of the road has been covered by fencing and preparations are on to cordon off the area on the other side of the road. If that yet-to-be fenced area is given to us for grazing cattle, our problem can be solved. We also need the forest to rear such a large number of cattle. We have jointly complained many times and met the officials, but our problems remain the same, said Prahlad Gurjar (32). Prabhulal Gurjar (45) said if a solution is not found through talks, they would approach the court. We are in talks with fellow villagers and lawyers, he said. The progress so far Mandsaur Divisional Forest Officer Sanjay Raikhere told 101Reporters that an enclosure is being made for cheetahs at one end of River Chambal in the sanctuary. Here, 12,600 pits have been dug and iron pipes installed at a distance of every three meters for supplying water to them. A wall of 28 km in length and 10 ft in height is being built. Three ft above the wall, solar wire fencing is being installed to stop the cheetahs from crossing the fence, he said. Raikhere said the departments earlier plan was to bring six cheetahs from Kuno, but now 10 from South Africa will reach the sanctuary by January. Gandhi Sagar sanctuary is spread over 369 sq km. Over Rs 17 crore has been spent in installing a mesh in the 28-km enclosure, while cameras have also been installed in the forest area, he said. He claimed that officials associated with Project Cheetah were happy about the preparations made at Gandhi Sagar and the presence of chinkaras, the favourite prey of cheetahs, in good numbers. Water sources are being set up at every two km distance in the enclosure. Water would be lifted from the Chambal in the forest area of Karanpura and Chaurasigarh. At both places, four water tanks with 10,000 litre capacity each are under construction. Totally, eight tanks are being constructed in the enclosure, Raikhere said. (Sanavver Shafi is a Madhya Pradesh-based freelance journalist and a member of 101Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.) Gandhi Sagar decks up for cheetah arrival, but villagers buckle up for a battle for their cattle Found this article helpful? Spread the word and support us! The nearly 14,000 runners and walkers planning to participate in Thursday mornings Turkey Trot should expect the 8K event to go on as scheduled, despite a vehicle that exploded on the American side of the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls late Wednesday morning setting off a federal investigation. The YMCA, which will host the 128th annual Turkey Trot the oldest consecutively run footrace in the world said it is aware of the incident and in discussion with local police and authorities about safety for the race. Organizers of the Turkey Trot continue to maintain active conversations with City of Buffalo Police and other local authorities to ensure the safest race possible, said a spokesperson for YMCA Buffalo Niagara. The YMCA will share additional updates as they become available. Although the cause of the incident remains under investigation, there is no sign of terrorist activity, Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a Wednesday evening news conference. The crash caused the closure of all four bridges for international crossings, Erie County buildings, City Hall and some other facilities, as well as increased security efforts of the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport and throughout its system. The Turkey Trot begins at 9 a.m. Thanksgiving Day near the Delaware Family YMCA, 2564 Delaware Ave., at the corner of Delaware and Tacoma avenues in North Buffalo, and ends downtown at Franklin and Court streets near the Buffalo Convention Center. Organizers said there are approximately 500 spots remaining for runners. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) was hastily passed in 2019, and while the overall goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions remains laudable, mandating decarbonization goals and timetables is not a realistic approach. Since the passage of the CLCPA, New Yorkers have seen an ever-growing price tag for transmission upgrades, offshore wind projects and natural gas bans on new construction, as well as state-subsidized facilities to build windmills. The brunt of these costs is already falling on the backs of utility ratepayers, and from building infrastructure necessary to implement the CLCPA to developers second-guessing the feasibility of projects, this is only the beginning. Meanwhile the entity responsible for ensuring the reliability of the grid, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), has been in the process of taking unprecedented action to address declining reliability margins due in part to the misguided policies coming out of Albany. Earlier this year, NYISO declared a reliability violation for the New York City area. Their Short-Term Assessment on Reliability (STAR) report makes clear that thinning margins are also likely to impact upstate if current trends and anticipated needs are not addressed. Upstate United has repeatedly called on policymakers to address reliability issues and reveal the true costs of the CLCPA and who is footing the bill. It was not until earlier this year through NYISOs declaration for a reliability need and the Public Service Commissions (PSC) recent unanimous vote to deny renewable developers an additional twelve billion dollars, that it felt like our warnings and apprehensions were being heard. The PSC and NYISO have set the bar for how to mitigate the unintended consequences of poorly constructed policies. The PSC took action to protect ratepayers and New Yorkers writ large by defending the bidding process in place to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent appropriately. Additionally, NYISO continues to monitor and report on the grids rapid change of pace under the CLCPA. However, the PSC should not have to be the de facto taxing authority for the CLCPA, nor should NYISO be forced to take unprecedented actions to protect the grid. Despite its unrealistic timeline and unknown costs, the legislature approved the CLCPA. An honest conversation about what that means for the New Yorkers is long overdue. The legislature needs to acknowledge the countless warning signs before them. For the sake of the grid reliability and quality of life for New Yorkers, it is time to change course to a more affordable and realistic approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 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%. The discovery of antibiotics revolutionized patient care; however, the overuse of antibiotics throughout the world has led to the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant organisms that continue to pose significant threats to global health and economic well-being. In addition to the adoption of various public health policies to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, various vaccine candidates have also been developed to combat the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance. Image Credit: BaLL LunLa/Shutterstock.com Introduction to antimicrobial resistance Understanding AMR Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) refers to the evolution of microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and viruses through mutations or genetic transfer to survive exposure to a previously effective antimicrobial agent. In 2019 alone, AMR was responsible for over 4.95 million deaths, which exceeded the deaths due to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and malaria combined. By 2050, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that AMR will cause up to 10 million deaths each year. AMR is largely due to the overuse and misuse of antimicrobial agents, particularly in low- to middle-income countries (LMICs) where many individuals will self-diagnose their illnesses and purchase over-the-counter antibiotics when they are not needed for treatment. Many physicians throughout the world also unnecessarily prescribe lengthy courses of antibiotics due to a lack of appropriate diagnostic tools to confirm a bacterial infection or to avoid dissatisfaction from patients demanding antibiotic treatment. In addition to the direct effects of AMR on patient care, it is also associated with significant economic costs. Within Europe, AMR has been attributed to over nine billion euros, whereas the United States Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that AMR contributes to $20 billion USD in direct healthcare costs and $35 billion USD in loss of productivity each year. The role of vaccines in AMR prevention Vaccines and AMR Vaccines are considered to be highly effective tools in the fight against AMR. Vaccines significantly reduce the overall burden of infectious diseases caused by both bacterial and viral infections. In fact, vaccines against viral infections, particularly those affecting the respiratory system, reduce the inappropriate use of antibiotics, thereby limiting the spread of resistant pathogens. Bacterial infections are common secondary complications following certain viral infections and may even lead to viral-bacterial superinfections. Thus, vaccination against viral pathogens directly reduces the risk of these secondary bacterial infections that may be antibiotic resistant. In addition to the indirect benefits of vaccines on AMR, several vaccines have also been developed to specifically target bacterial strains that have become resistant to modern antibiotics. For example, several vaccines have already been developed to target Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae type b, and Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi (S typhi). Vaccine success stories Impact of vaccination Since 1983, several pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines have been developed and approved for use in children. These vaccines have significantly reduced the incidence of infections caused by both drug-susceptible and drug-resistant S. pneumoniae infections, with observational studies suggesting that up to 84% of invasive pneumococcal diseases in children younger than two years of age were prevented in the United States alone in the first five years these vaccines were introduced. Current estimates indicate that pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) have prevented up to 23.8 million infections in children younger than five years of age in LMICs. In the absence of both PCV and rotavirus vaccines, researchers estimate that that these pathogens would be responsible for 56.9 million and 47.9 million cases of antibiotic-treated infections, respectively. However, despite the availability of these highly effective vaccines, global vaccine coverage remains low at about 40% in children under five years of age. To date, over 20 vaccines have been developed and approved for use against S. typhi. Within Pakistan, typhoid conjugate vaccines (TCVs) have been particularly successful to mitigate local outbreaks of drug-resistant S. typhi infections. Current estimates indicate that routine immunization with TCV by nine months of age with additional booster doses would prevent 21.2 million multi-drug resistant typhoid infections and over 342,000 deaths throughout the world. Vaccines and antimicrobial resistance Play Challenges and myths Vaccine misconceptions To date, vaccines have saved millions of lives throughout the world. Despite these benefits, vaccine hesitancy has emerged as a significant public health issue that has led to the re-emergence of previously controlled diseases like measles. Although the factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy are complex, misinformation is often spread through social media and other outlets that willingly ignore the wealth of scientific evidence supporting the safety of currently approved vaccines. Following the publication of a problematic paper proposing a link between vaccines, particularly the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and autism, MMR vaccine coverage significantly declined in many developed nations including the United Kingdom. This paper, which was ultimately retracted due to its lack of appropriate controls and biased study design, led many researchers to conduct large epidemiological studies throughout the world which have substantively affirmed that vaccination, including with the MMR vaccine, does not have a correlative or causative link to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Another issue that many vaccine-hesitant parents raise is concerns regarding the number of vaccines that children receive, particularly those under two years of age. In some regions of the world, over 30 doses of vaccines that protect against 20 different diseases will be administered to children within the first 24 years of life. Importantly, the schedule and dosing of these vaccines have been based on various factors including the waning of maternal antibody levels during pregnancy, maturation of the immune system, and the vulnerability of young children to these potentially severe diseases. Furthermore, delaying or separating vaccines puts patients at unnecessary risks and has not been shown to confer any benefits to the child. The importance of herd immunity Herd Immunity and AMR Effective vaccination coverage throughout a given population confers protection to members of the community who are not vaccinated or are not capable of mounting effective immune responses following vaccination. This phenomenon, which is widely referred to as herd immunity, can significantly reduce the transmission of AMR pathogens and limit the use of antibiotics in non-vaccinated individuals. Herd immunity has already reduced the burden of various diseases throughout the world, including invasive pneumococcal disease. To this end, significant reductions in penicillin-resistant pneumococcal infections have been reported in all age populations, including those over 65 years of age, following the introduction of PCV7 and PCV13. References Ding, D., Wang, B., Zhang, X., et al. (2023). The spread of antibiotic resistance to humans and potential protection strategies. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety 254. doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2023.114734. Frost, I., Sati, H., Garcia-Vello, P., et al. (2023). The role of bacterial vaccines in the fight against antimicrobial resistance: an analysis of the preclinical and clinical development pipeline. The Lancet Microbe 4(2); e113-125. doi:10.1016/S2666-5247(22)00303-2. Laxminarayan, R. (2022). The overlooked pandemic of antimicrobial resistance. The Lancet. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00087-3. Lewnard, J. A., Lo, N. C., Arinaminpathy, N., et al. (2020). Childhood vaccines and antibiotic use in low- and middle-income countries. Nature 581;94-99. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2238-4. Geoghegan, S., OCallaghan, K. P., & Offit, P. A. (2020). Vaccine Safety: Myths and Misinformation. Frontiers in Microbiology 11. doi:10.3389/fmicb.2020.00372. Jansen, K. U., Gruber, W. C., Simon, R., et al. (2021). The impact of human vaccines on bacterial antimicrobial resistance: A review. Environmental Chemical Letters 19(6); 4031-4062. doi:10.1007/s10311-021-01274-z. Further reading On October 13, 2023, in Addis Ababa, Armauer Hansen Research Institute (AHRI) and BGI Genomics signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enhance the Institute's genomics and precision medicine capabilities. The Institute got its name from the Norwegian physician, Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen, who first described the leprosy bacillus (Mycobacterium leprae) and joined the Ethiopian Ministry of Health in 2004. Located in Addis Ababa, it serves as a biomedical hub for the region. BGI Genomics provides precision medicine solutions in more than 100 countries worldwide. Leveraging the company's latest technologies, this agreement will foster cooperation with AHRI on research and development to enhance health outcomes in Ethiopia and Africa. Professor Afework Kassu, the Director of the Institute, said AHRI aims to be a leading center in genomics and bioinformatics, which will serve not only Ethiopia but also neighboring countries in Africa. This agreement also showcases the growing cooperation between Ethiopia and China companies. Hearing loss affects more than 60 percent of adults aged 70 and older in the United States and is known to be related to an increased risk of dementia. The reason for this association is not fully understood. To better understand the connection, a team of University of California San Diego and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute researchers employed hearing tests and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to determine whether hearing impairment is associated with differences in specific brain regions. In the November 21, 2023 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, researchers reported that individuals enrolled in this observational study who had hearing impairment exhibited microstructural differences in the auditory areas of the temporal lobe and in areas of the frontal cortex involved with speech and language processing, as well as areas involved with executive function. "These results suggest that hearing impairment may lead to changes in brain areas related to processing of sounds, as well as in areas of the brain that are related to attention. The extra effort involved with trying to understand sounds may produce changes in the brain that lead to increased risk of dementia," said principal investigator Linda K. McEvoy, Ph.D., UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science professor emeritus and senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute. "If so, interventions that help reduce the cognitive effort required to understand speech -; such as the use of subtitles on television and movies, live captioning or speech-to-text apps, hearing aids, and visiting with people in quiet environments instead of noisy spaces -; could be important for protecting the brain and reduce the risk of dementia." McEvoy designed and led the study while at UC San Diego, in collaboration with Reas and UC San Diego School of Medicine investigators who gathered data from the Rancho Bernardo Study of Health Aging, a longitudinal cohort study of residents of the Rancho Bernardo suburb in San Diego that launched in 1972. For this analysis, 130 study participants underwent hearing threshold tests in research clinic visits between 2003 and 2005 and subsequently had MRI scans between 2014 and 2016. The results of the study show that hearing impairment is associated with regionally specific brain changes that may occur due to sensory deprivation and to the increased effort required to understand auditory processing stimulations. The findings emphasize the importance of protecting one's hearing by avoiding prolonged exposure to loud sounds, wearing hearing protection when using loud tools and reducing the use of ototoxic medications." Emilie T. Reas, Ph.D., co-author, assistant professor, UC San Diego School of Medicine T cells are the key immune system component involved in killing cancer. Tumors produce signals that turn off these T cells, partially by forcing them to progressively differentiate (mature) into a hypofunctional state known as exhaustion. Scientists from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital comprehensively examined the transcription factors involved in T-cell differentiation states in cancer. They then used this information to enhance anticancer activity in preclinical models by promoting or blocking T-cell differentiation. The findings, which have implications for cancer immunotherapy, were published today in Nature. T cells are used in adoptive cell therapy (ACT) to target and kill cancer cells. Among ACTs, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells have shown clinical efficacy in blood cancers but have not been as effective in solid tumors. This variance in efficacy is partly because tumors promote T-cell exhaustion, in which the cells are less effective at actively killing cancer. The scientists showed they could precisely interrupt the flow of the differentiation process, thereby enhancing antitumor efficacy. T cells are the cornerstone of tumor immunotherapy, and we found a new way to reprogram T cells to make them more effective. We can push them towards a specialized state so that they can be more functional tumor-killing cells." Hongbo Chi, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Immunology Modifying differentiation to flow toward cancer-killing T cells T-cell differentiation is conceptually similar to a river running down a mountain. The top of the mountain is the precursor cell, and the bottom an exhausted cell. The desired state is between these two extremes -; like having a lake in the middle of the mountain -; that is differentiated enough, but not too much, to have high proliferation and effective anticancer activity. The lake receives water from above but also has a stream constantly draining it further down the slope. Uninterrupted, all water in the lake will eventually drain through the river leading down below -; all the T cells will become exhausted. The scientists found a way to increase the water flow from above and dam the river draining the lake, resulting in more water accumulation in the lake or, more aptly, more T cells that effectively kill tumors. For example, when the researchers deleted the transcription factor ETS proto-oncogene 1 (ETS1), the amount of cancer-killing T cells was increased by enhancing differentiation to the intermediate state (increasing flow into the lake). On the other hand, knocking out the transcription factor recombination signal binding protein for immunoglobulin kappa J region (RBPJ) increased the accumulation of intermediate state T cells by blocking terminal differentiation (damming the river at the lake). Each approach showed markedly increased antitumor activity. Even more promising, when the researchers combined their modified T cells with a type of immunotherapy called immune checkpoint blockade, they further increased antitumor activity. "We've provided new potential strategies to enhance immunotherapy," said co-first author Peipei Zhou, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Immunology. "We increased the amount of cancer-killing T cells by differentiating them from upstream precursors, and we could also block terminal differentiation to increase accumulation of the functional cells. Both approaches improved antitumor efficacy in our immune checkpoint blockade models." While the work was done in mouse models, the researchers used bioinformatics data from human clinical samples to verify that these same genes are important in these processes in humans. Mapping the differentiation journey of exhausted T cells T cells infiltrate tumors to go about their work of destroying them. The researchers mapped the transcription factors expressed in the T cells infiltrating tumors. Their work showed which individual transcription factors and their networks are responsible for each T cell differentiation state, providing targets for improving immunotherapy. "We created a map for the field of T-cell differentiation and exhaustion in tumors based on the loss-of-function genetic screening at high dimension," said co-first author Hao Shi, Ph.D., St. Jude Department of Immunology. "This map will provide a guide for future researchers to refer to and use to identify ways to improve T cell-based immunotherapies." Where past attempts to understand T-cell exhaustion focused on an individual molecule or transcription factor, this screen was more comprehensive. This allowed the researchers to document the entirety of the gene regulatory networks involved. "We've provided the most complete picture of the transcription factors in T cells inside a tumor ever created," Zhou said. "Such a causal transcriptional network provides new insights into lineage differentiation, a fundamental process in biology," added Shi. The group performed this feat using single-cell CRISPR-Cas9 screening, a gene editing technology that analyzes gene expression profiling of individual cells after selectively removing transcription factors in a comprehensive screen. Transcription factors are proteins that directly regulate gene expression. By examining an individual T cell's gene expression pattern, the researchers could compare them to see which knocked-out transcription factors most affected T-cell differentiation and anticancer activity. "The same approach may be more broadly applicable to increase our knowledge in many biological contexts beyond T cells and immunology," Chi said. "We showed this new technology, single-cell CRISPR screening in vivo, can drive novel biological discovery. I think we're at the advent of something truly exciting." Authors and funding The study's other co-first author was Hongling Huang, formerly of St. Jude. The study's other authors are Xiang Sun, Sujing Yuan, Nicole Chapman, Jon P. Connelly, Jordy Saravia, Anil KC and Shondra Pruett-Miller, all of St. Jude, and Seon Ah Lim, formerly of St. Jude. The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (CA253188, AI105887, AI131703, AI140761, AI150241 and AI150514), the Cancer Center Support Grant (P30 CA021765) and ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization of St. Jude. COVID-19 raced through nursing homes many times over the past few years, as the virus spread rapidly among vulnerable older adults living close together. But a new study shows the virus can leave a lasting impact too making the older adults who live in these facilities more dependent on staff to help them with basic daily activities for months after their infection. They also experience a decline in their brain function. These "long COVID" effects came to light in a detailed analysis led by researchers from Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan's academic medical center. They compared a group of nursing home residents who had COVID-19 with a similar group who had not, and looked at their physical and mental functioning for up to a year. On average, nursing home residents who caught COVID-19 and survived had effects that lasted about nine months. In addition, 30% of those who had a confirmed case of COVID-19 died during the study follow-up period, more than twice the percentage that died in the comparison group. The results are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society by a team led by former U-M geriatrics fellow Sophie Clark, M.D., now at the University of Colorado, and Lona Mody, M.D., M.Sc., interim chief of the division of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the U-M Medical School, and staff physician at VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. The study's authors also included Lillian Min, M.D., M.S.H.S., a geriatrician and, like Mody, a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. Comparing two groups over time The researchers looked at data from two Michigan nursing homes, focusing on residents who lived there between 2019 and 2022. They were able to study full data on 90 nursing home residents who tested COVID-19 positive on a PCR test between March 2020 and October 2021, and 81 residents who lived in the same nursing homes during that time but did not test positive. The majority were women, over age 80 and were white and non-Hispanic. Half had dementia, and all had multiple chronic health conditions. Nearly all of those who had COVID during the study period were unvaccinated at the time they got infected. The team looked at the patients' scores on two standard scales that nursing homes use to measure residents' physical and mental functioning, and report in a system called the Minimum Data Set. The researchers examined each patient's scores from before the pandemic and over the next year. They had at least four quarterly measurements for each one, showing how much assistance they needed for daily activities such as dressing, going to the toilet and bathing, and how they scored on basic cognitive tasks such as repeating and recalling words, and knowing what year, month and day it is. "Before the pandemic, the two groups scored about the same on both their need for help with activities of daily living, or ADL, and their cognitive status," said Clark. "But the patients who tested positive for COVID showed a sudden decline in both measurements that lasted long after their infection." Rapid decline and some recovery Nursing home residents who had had COVID-19 experienced new decline in their function and needed substantially more help with daily activities after their acute infection period, lasting for months. This places an even greater burden on nursing home staff, who are already stretched thin." Lona Mody, M.D., M.Sc., interim chief of the division of geriatrics and palliative medicine at the U-M Medical School The good news was that COVID survivors without dementia gradually regained their ability to do daily activities, and were nearly on par with the uninfected group by the end of a year post-infection. Those with dementia continued to decline, faster than their peers who had dementia but had not had COVID-19. On the cognitive test, patients showed a rapid decline immediately after COVID infection, and stayed far below the uninfected group for months -- though both groups had about the same cognitive results by the end of a year. The researchers note that the measures taken to protect nursing home residents from coronavirus infections in 2020 and 2021, including reducing visiting options and social activities, may have contributed to the overall decline in both groups. The researchers note that recent data shows that COVID vaccination can reduce the risk of long COVID. So the experience of the patients in their study (who mostly caught COVID before vaccines were available) may not match what is happening today in vaccinated nursing home residents. "This is especially true for those who have gotten the updated vaccine that became available in September," said Mody. "We encourage all nursing home residents and staff, and the family members who visit these homes, to get vaccinated and help prevent more cases of acute and long COVID in this especially vulnerable population." The study was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (HS25451), the National Institute on Aging (AG050685), and the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research and the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System. In addition to Clark, Mody and Min, the study's authors are Liza Bautista, M.D., Karen Neeb M.S.N., C.N.P., Ana Montoya, M.D., M.P.H., Kristen E. Gibson, M.P.H., Julia Mantey, M.P.H., and Mohammed Kabeto M.S. The last time I stepped on a plane for vacation, for fun, was more than three years ago. I haven't been able to visit California, whose coast I adore. Nor Rome, where my husband and I lived for some time. And yet, I'm told, I've been on a journey. Two journeys, actually: First, a "traumatic brain injury journey," experienced at Johns Hopkins Hospital after I banged my head and developed trouble with my balance and gait. More recently, I've been a traveling companion on my husband's "cancer journey" at Memorial Sloan Kettering, in New York City. These are two of the highest-ranked hospitals in the country. The care was excellent in both places. But neither of these journeys resembled our bike ride in Ireland or the wine-tasting trip in Sonoma a few years before. So much of being seriously ill has been rebranded in American health care as a kind of adventure. Experts speak of stroke journeys. Hospital systems invite people on kidney transplant journeys. The language has trickled down into advertising: Take a hair loss journey or a weight loss journey (newly popular because of Wegovy and similar drugs). The heart failure journey even comes with a map. A map? But on these journeys, you don't get to go anywhere except maybe the hospital or doctor's office, which is likely, too, to have bought into the travel concept. In the past two decades, American hospitals have gotten into the business of hotel-like hospitality (illness can be fun!) rather than confine themselves to the business of disease (what a downer). And although the care might stay solid, the focus on luxurious amenities and the fancy new buildings that house them is one of the factors that have helped send costs for patients soaring that much higher, to prices well above those in other developed countries. In this version of health care, I'm no longer a patient. I'm a client, a customer, or (worse) a guest, no matter that I didn't choose this journey cum illness. I appreciate a little luxury and privacy as much as the next person. But, at a time when Americans' life spans are getting shorter and 4 in 10 adults say they've delayed or gone without necessary care because of cost, is it worth it? In recent years, tight budgets, staffing shortages, and burnout have hit American hospitals. At the same time, many health centers in the U.S. including the most prestigious ones, and even some community hospitals have morphed into seven-star hotels. New hospital buildings, such as recent projects at the University of Michigan hospital system and Valley Hospital in Paramus, New Jersey, offer all-private rooms, in many cases with couches and flat-screen TVs. A hospital might now boast about its views, high-thread-count sheets, or food provided by a Michelin-starred chef. Those commissioning and designing these pavilions cite research showing that private rooms are better for healing, because they offer a better chance at sleep and a lower chance of infection. (Actually, the evidence is pretty murky.) But we're suckers for this type of thing, and the industry knows that even small comforts can make us feel better, regardless of whether we're actually getting better. In 2008, researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that a hospital investing in amenities would increase demand by 38%, whereas a similar investment in clinical quality would lead to only a 13% increase. More recently, hospital executives told The Boston Globe that the main reason hospitals have moved in this direction is that "people's expectations have changed," and it creates a "competitive advantage" that can be marketed to potential customers. And so the Mayo Clinic now offers complimentary concierge services, which can help with recommending nearby restaurants and finding pet care. I think that's the hospitality version of what used to be called the hospital "help desk," whose function was merely to explain to visitors how to get to patient rooms. Cleveland Clinic, which employs a team of curators, owns one of the largest contemporary art collections in the region, and its leaders see that collection as one tool for "positively affecting patient outcomes." Patients at Cedars-Sinai can experience its "therapeutic art collection" of Chagalls, Picassos, and Oldenburgs. Hospital food has gotten so good that in some areas people go to their local hospital for haute cuisine rather than medical needs. And when you look at the numbers on your hospital bill, remember that all of this adds up. For the amount that American patients (or their insurers) pay for some luxury hospital journeys, they could sign up for a Virgin Galactic suborbital joy ride. This transformation from hospital to hospitality has filled up hospital C-suites with chief experience officers, whose function is to "manage patients' experiences throughout their healthcare journey," as described by the publication HealthTech. The Cleveland Clinic was the first major academic medical center to add one, back in 2007; now some health systems hire for this and similar positions directly from the hospitality industry, picking people who'd previously been managers at a Ritz-Carlton or a Trump hotel. The American Hospital Association acknowledges and defends the transformation. "These are not just 'nice to haves,'" Nancy Foster, AHA's vice president of quality and patient-safety policy, wrote to me in an email. "Actions hospitals can take to reduce stress and provide other psychological support can have a meaningful impact on one's physical and behavioral health, including the ability to recover more rapidly." But pretending that illness is an Abercrombie & Kent safari is harmful. These amenities have a cost, and they are not worth nearly what we're paying for them as we're billed for $100,000 joint replacements and $9,000 CT scans. Room charges in many hospitals can exceed $1,000 a night. And "facility fees" for outpatient procedures and even office visits can reach hundreds of dollars, and simply don't exist elsewhere. A hospital's function is to diagnose and to heal, at a price that sick people can afford. I dream of a no-frills Target- or Ikea-like hospital for care. That doesn't mean hospitals need to resemble prisons. Hospitals certainly have room to improve on breakfasts featuring Lilliputian plastic cups of orange juice and rubbery eggs. But to understand one of the many reasons Americans pay so much for health care, consider this: The best hospitals in Europe are utilitarian structures that most resemble urban high schools. When I got stitches for a deep cut in my forehead in Gemelli Hospital where the pope gets health care I sat on a gurney in a big, dark room with other patients. Instead of providing free coffee and a piano in a soaring, art-filled marble lobby, how about focusing on the very basic things that health systems in the U.S. should do, but in my experience in many cases do not, like making it easier for patients to schedule appointments? Shortening the now lengthy wait times to see physicians who take insurance plans? Paying for adequate staffing on nights and weekends, so patients don't linger in bed pointlessly for two days until social workers return on Monday? Or ending those two-day stays in emergency rooms when all inpatient beds are full? (Hotels aspire to run at full occupancy to maximize revenue; hospitals, I'd argue, should not.) This winter, I'm planning a journey for which I look forward to some good food and art. We haven't yet determined the exact destination, but it will not be a U.S. hospital. After the UK voted to leave the European Union and the government negotiated for British travellers to become third-country nationals subject to a range of restrictions, British passport holders must now have their travel documents inspected and stamped. The next steps, which are likely to be introduced in autumn 2024, will involve more red tape. The good news: passport stamping will end. The bad news: every traveller must be fingerprinted and provide a facial biometric. The European Union is planning to introduce an Entry/Exit System (EES) that will record the movements of non-EU visitors. Shortly afterwards in mid 2025, according the latest plan prospective UK visitors to the Schengen area will have to apply online for permission to enter. The Schengen area comprises most of the 27 remaining members of the European Union (but not Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland or Romania), plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Electronic Travel Information and Authorisation System (Etias) is the next step in tightening frontier controls. It depends upon EES being fully functional and is due to appear in mid-2025. When it is introduced, the 7 (6) online permit will be valid for three years. What is the Entry/Exit System? The Entry/Exit System is an automated IT system for registering citizens from third countries, which means everywhere outside the EU and Schengen area. The system is aimed at such travellers when they either enter or leave at an external Schengen border such as flying from the UK to Spain or crossing by road from Greece to Turkey. (It will not be used for internal frontiers within the Schengen area.) EES will register the date and place of entry or exit, plus fingerprints and a facial biometric. This system, says the European Union, will replace the current system of manual stamping of passports, which is time-consuming, does not provide reliable data on border crossings, and does not allow a systematic detection of over-stayers. Story continues British travellers, like other third-country nationals, are restricted to 90 days stay in any 180 days within the Schengen area. But enforcement of this currently depends on checking passport stamps and is applied haphazardly. When will it start? Originally EES was due to start in 2021. But the body responsible for implementation the European Union Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (EU-LISA) has repeatedly pushed back the date because the database is far from ready. In October 2023, the European Councils Justice and Home Affairs Council endorsed a new timeline for the roll-out of EES,. The council said in a statement: The new roadmap for the delivery of the new IT architecture foresees that the Entry/Exit System will be ready to enter into operation in autumn 2024. How will the biometric checks work? Outbound and inbound passengers will go through the formalities at airports abroad, in a similar way to US immigration, though both on the way in and out of the Schengen area. Some EU members have expressed alarm at the extra time involved in the new processes, with the Slovenian government warning: It takes up to four times longer to do the new process. For terrestrial travellers it could be even worse. Giving evidence to Parliament about the new system, Tim Reardon, head of EU exit for the Port of Dover, said: There is no such thing as an e-gate for a car, and there is no such thing as an e-gate process for people travelling as a group. Theyre all one-at-a-time processes. There is no way of doing a biometric control without getting everyone out of the vehicle. Thats the one thing on our site which cannot happen, because youre in the middle of live traffic. It would be equivalent to asking people to get out of their car at a motorway toll booth. Its fundamentally unsafe and it cant happen. Gareth Williams, strategy director for Eurostar, which runs trains to France from London, said: We dont currently see a practical solution. If we take the peak of August, up to 80 per cent of people will have to go through the system. We do have a very extreme space challenge. At a minimum we would require over 30 kiosks, and an area about the size of our entire check-in area at St Pancras. The rules will not apply to EU citizens. When does Etias start? The much-delayed scheme is now anticipated to start in mid-2025. A grace period of six months is likely to be granted, meaning it is likely Etias will not become mandatory before 2026. Is Etias a visa? Officially, no. Europe says that Etias is a pre-travel authorisation system. It is a similar concept to the US Esta, the Canadian eTA and the British ETA, which are not technically visas. They are issued to international travellers who do not require a full visa. Its key function is to verify if a third-country national meets entry requirements before travelling to the Schengen area, says the EU. But as Etias requires visitors to apply in advance, provide lots of personal information, pay money and be issued with a permit to cross a border, it is not surprising that it is commonly termed a eurovisa. How much does it cost? The fee is 7 (6) for all applicants aged 18 to 70; while those under 18 or over 70 will still need an Etias, it will be free. How will I apply? When finally the EU is ready, at the heart of the system is an Etias app and website. Travellers will be required to submit personal information including name, address, contact details in Europe and passport data. They must also state an occupation (with job title and employer). Students will be required to give the name of their educational establishment). The applicant must give details of any serious convictions in the past 20 years. Travellers must also provide online the reason for their journey (holiday, business, visiting family, etc), specify the country they will first arrive in, and provide the address of their first nights stay which will pose a problem for tourists who like to make plans as they go along. As with other online travel permits, commercial intermediaries are allowed but according to Frontex, the EU organisation implementing Etias, there are many scam sites out there that are likely to apply fees way above the basic 7 (6). Any site other than europa.eu/etias is unofficial and should not be trusted. One imposter site claims to have processed 671 applications already; this is impossible since no applications have been processed anywhere. Another site offers a 40 per cent discount for early applications. Some use the EU logo, which is illegal. Frontex also warns about the risk of identity theft if personal information is provided to imposter sites. What happens to the information? Every application will be checked against EU and relevant Interpol databases, as well as a dedicated Etias watch-list. The system will be tuned to pick out individuals suspected of being involved in terrorism, armed robbery, child pornography, fraud, money laundering, cybercrime, people smuggling, trafficking in endangered animal species, counterfeiting and industrial espionage. How far in advance must I apply? The European Union says: We strongly advise you to obtain the Etias travel authorisation before you buy your tickets and book your hotels. The aim is for an Etias to be granted within minutes, though even a straightforward application could take up to four days. If an application is flagged (ie there is a hit with one of the databases) the applicant may be asked to provide additional information. Alternatively, says the EU, the applicant may be asked to participate in an interview with national authorities, which may take up to additional 30 days. Assuming yours is granted, there is no certificate issued, and nothing needs to be printed. The frontier guard will get the information he or she needs from the passport you used to apply. In a case of mistaken identity, will I be able to appeal? Yes. Details of how to appeal will be included with the notice of rejection. Once I have an Etias, am I guaranteed admission to the Schengen area? No. Mere possession of a travel authorisation does not confer an automatic right of entry, says the EU. As with the US, travellers can be turned away for any reason. There is likely to be a mechanism in place for an Etias to be rescinded. Do I need to apply for an Etias every time I travel to Europe? No. The permit will be valid for three years, or until your passport runs out, whichever is the earlier. Will I need an Etias to travel to Ireland? No. The Common Travel Area incorporating the UK, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands transcends European Union rules, and in any event, Ireland is not in the Schengen area. If I have a long-stay permit from one of the EU nations, must I obtain an Etias? No. How are people without internet access supposed to apply? They will be expected to get a friend, a family member or a travel agent to make the application for them, in the same way as the US Esta and similar schemes. Just remind us about the 90/180 day rule? This rule, to which the UK asked to be subject after leaving the European Union, means that British travellers cannot stay more than 90 days in any stretch of 180 days. As an example of what it means: if you were to spend the first 90 days of 2024 (January, February and almost all of March) in the Schengen area, you would not be able to return until late June. Is this all because of Brexit? No. Work on strengthening the European Unions external border was already under way before the UK referendum on membership in June 2016. Etias would not be relevant if the UK was still in the EU. But the nation voted to leave the European Union and the British government negotiated for British travellers to be classified as third-country nationals triggering extra red tape. Initiating discussions, Sam Altman and OpenAIs board are reportedly considering the reinstatement of the former CEO of the AI research lab, as per sources cited by Bloomberg. The board of the company behind ChatGPT on Friday fired Sam Altman, to many, the human face of generative AI sending shock waves across the tech industry. Reportedly, talks are underway between Altman and at least one board member, Adam DAngelo, adding that the former CEO may rejoin as a director on a transitional board. Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor could also serve as a director on a new board, the report added. Following an interview with CNBC, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella expressed openness to Sam Altman returning to OpenAI instead of joining Microsoft. Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman are set to join Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team. The talks also involve some of the AI startups investors, many of whom are pushing for his reinstatement, the report added. Efforts are underway to resolve the leadership turmoil within the company before Thanksgiving, the Bloomberg report said. Attempts to reinstate Altman to his position as CEO stalled this week due to disagreements over the composition and authority of the board. The boards decision to oust Altman, saying that Altman was not consistently candid in his communications, drew widespread criticism. According to the Bloomberg report, the recently appointed interim CEO Emmett Shear has been left in the dark, adding that he has informed people close to OpenAI that he does not intend to stay on if the board cannot provide him with a clear explanation for Altmans abrupt dismissal. Several employees, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever, on November 20 signed a letter demanding the resignation of the remaining board members. They indicated that they would follow Altman to his new AI research venture at Microsoft if their demands were not met. When Sam Altman was on November 16 asked to join the Google Meet where he was to be informed of the board of directors decision to oust him as the CEO of OpenAI the next day, he was in Las Vegas for the biggest party of the weekend. After the call on Friday, the news soon spread like wildfire causing upheaval in the global tech corporate world. Soon after, Microsoft, which has a significant stake in the ChatGPT maker, reacted swiftly to the development, with its CEO Satya Nadella offering Sam Altman to head its new advanced AI research team. This shook OpenAIs board. Its co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, who also headed the board, said he deeply regret his participation in the boards actions. OpenAI is nothing without its people https://t.co/XYKLQ61e6l OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 22, 2023 On November 22, OpenAIs board, which sacked Sam Altman saying it no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI, saw a reshuffle. As part of the rejig, Ilya Sutskever has been removed from the board. McCauley (tech entrepreneur) and Helen Toner (director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetowns Center for Security and Emerging Technology) have also been removed. OpenAIs New Board of Directors Bret Taylor, who is a former co-CEO of Salesforce, will now serve as the chair of the board. Apart from this, he is also a member of the Shopifys board. Earlier, he has also served as the chairman of the board of X, earlier known as Twitter. Other members of the board are Larry Summers, former secretary of the treasury, and Adam DAngelo, co-founder and CEO of Quora. DAngelo was also on the earlier board of directors that ousted Altman and has been retained on the revamped board. A Short Timeline of What Happened At OpenAI November 16: OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever sent Altman a message on November 16 to schedule a meeting on November 17. November 17: Sam Altman was sacked by ChatGPT maker OpenAI as its CEO and director after its board said it no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI. Mira Murati was appointed interim CEO. November 18: Investors push for Altmans return. There were reports that Sam Altman could return to OpenAI. November 19: Sam Altmans return seemed difficult as the company announced its new interim CEO Emmett Shear, the co-founder of Twitch. He replaced Mira Murati. November 20: Shocks felt after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, along with their colleagues, will be joining Microsofts new advanced AI research team, with Altman as its head. Over 500 employees threaten to resign. Ilya Sutskever expresses regret for participating in the boards decision to sack Sam Altman. November 21: Satya Nadella indicates openness to Sam Altmans return to OpenAI, rather than joining Microsoft as initially announced. He said that regardless of what happens, though, OpenAI needs governance changes. November 22: Sam Altman is back as CEO Of OpenAI. Greg Brockman also joins back. OpenAI in a statement says, We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board. The latest chaos at OpenAI began when the companys board of directors fired CEO Sam Altman. The board stated that Altman was not consistently candid with them, but did not provide any specific details about the allegations. Altmans dismissal led to a wave of resignations from OpenAI employees, including president and chairman Greg Brockman. Three senior researchers also resigned in protest. In the wake of Altmans departure, Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, announced that it would be hiring Altman and some of his former OpenAI colleagues to work on a new AI division. This move further angered OpenAI employees, who felt that Microsoft was poaching their talent. Nearly 500 OpenAI employees have signed a petition calling for the board of directors to resign. The petition states that the board has lost the trust of the companys employees" and that the company is now in a state of crisis." The real crisis in artificial intelligence company 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. 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," 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 platform X late on Friday. Based on todays news, i quit," he wrote. The departures blindsided many employees who discovered the abrupt management change from an internal message and the companys public facing blog. Reportedly, Brockman said it came as a surprise to Altman and him as well, who learned the boards decision within minutes of the announcement. We too are still trying to figure out exactly what happened," he posted on X, formerly Twitter, adding, We will be fine. Greater things coming soon." The now four-person board consists of three independent directors holding no equity in OpenAI and its Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever. 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. The chatbot became one of the worlds fastest-growing software applications. 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 ChatGPTs launch, regulators scrambled to catch up: the European Union revised its AI Act 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." Murati, who has worked for Tesla, joined OpenAI in 2018 and later became chief technology officer. She oversaw product launches including that of ChatGPT. At an emergency all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon after the announcement, Murati sought to calm employees and said OpenAIs partnership with Microsoft is stable and its backers executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, continue to express confidence in the startup, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. In a statement published on Microsofts website, Nadella said: We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world." Earthquake The shakeup is not the first at OpenAI, launched in 2015. Tesla CEO Elon Musk once was its co-chair, and in 2020 other executives departed, going on to found competitor Anthropic, which has claimed it has a greater focus on AI safety. Well wishers and critics piled onto digital forums as news of the latest shuffle 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 cant wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work- its going to be simply incredible." This is a shocker and Altman was a key ingredient in the recipe for success of OpenAI," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. 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 companys tender offer transactions this year that fueled OpenAIs valuation from $29 billion to over $80 billion. In the short term it will impair OpenAIs ability to raise more capital. In the intermediate term it will be a non-issue," news agency Reuters quoted Thomas Hayes, chairman at hedge fund Great Hill Capital, as saying. 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. Is Microsoft A Clear Winner? Microsoft emerged on Monday as the big winner of the upheaval at OpenAI, hiring ousted CEO Sam Altman and other key staff of the startup to avert a potential flight to rivals and help deepen its lead in the artificial intelligence race. The turmoil at OpenAI raised fears about the fallout for Microsoft, which has pumped in billions of dollars and uses the pioneers technology for most of its AI offerings such as its Copilot AI assistant. The move ensured the golden child of AI" will stay with Microsoft, analysts said, as the company competes with Alphabet-owned Google to dominate the nascent industry, Reuters reported. Reportedly, Altman will lead a new research team at the software giant. He will be joined by Greg Brockman, another OpenAI cofounder, as well as other researchers including Szymon Sidor. About 500 employees of the startup also threatened to leave unless the board stepped down and reinstated Altman, as well as Brockman, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters. Your actions have made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI," the employees said on Monday in the letter, adding, Microsoft has assured us there are positions for all OpenAI employees at this new subsidiary should we choose to join." Analysts said an employee exodus was expected due to concerns over governance and the potential impact on what was expected to be a share sale at an $86 billion valuation, potentially affecting staff payouts at OpenAI. Movements at OpenAI OpenAI is bringing in the former head of Twitch as interim CEO. Emmett Shear announced his new role on Monday morning in a post on X, while also acknowledging the process and communications" around Altmans firing were handled very badly" and damaged trust in the company. When it abruptly fired Altman, OpenAI said an internal review found the 38-year-old was not consistently candid in his communications" with the companys board of directors. OpenAI did not provide more details, leaving industry analysts and tech watchers reading tea leaves in an effort to figure out what happened. At OpenAI, Shear has promised to shed some light into Altmans departure. In his X post, he pledged to hire an independent investigator to look into what led up to Altmans ouster and write a report within 30 days. Shear, 40, is the co-founder of the Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch, a social media site thats mostly known for gaming. Shear left the company in March. He said that was due to the birth of his now 9-month-old son. OpenAI had initially named its chief technology officer, Mira Murati, as interim CEO. But she appeared to be one of the signatories on a letter that began circulating early Monday and signed by hundreds of other OpenAI employees calling for the boards resignation and Altmans return. However, it is not confirmed that all of the signatures were from OpenAI employees, news agency AP reported. A spokesperson at OpenAI confirmed that the board has received the letter, which also said the board had replaced Murati, against the best interest of the company. Investors keeping a close eye Investors, for their part, are trying to stabilise the situation. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella weighed in a post on X early Monday morning, saying he was extremely excited" to bring on Altman and Brockman and looking forward to getting to know" the new management team at OpenAI. (With agency inputs) Stocks to Watch on November 22: GIFT Nifty on the NSE IX traded 27.5 points, or 0.14 per cent, higher at 19,857.5, signaling that Dalal Street was headed for a positive start on Wednesday. Heres a slew of stocks that will be in focus today for various reasons. Maruti Suzuki India: The automobile major said the board of directors will meet on 24 November to consider allotting 1,23,22,514 equity shares of the company to Suzuki Motor Corporation on a preferential basis. Titan Company: The Competition Commission of India has approved Titans acquisition of an additional 27.18% stake in CaratLane Trading. Titan will acquire the shares from Mithun Padam Sacheti, Siddhartha Padam Sacheti and Padamchand Sacheti. Wipro: The company announced a collaboration with Nvidia to help healthcare companies accelerate the adoption of generative artificial intelligence through AI-driven strategies, products and services. TCS: The US Supreme Court has rejected the companys petition to file an appeal against the orders passed by the US Court of Appeals in the Epic Systems Corporation matter. It confirmed the punitive damages award of $140 million passed by the District Court of Wisconsin. With this, the company intends to make the balance provision of about $125 million in its financial statements as an exceptional item for the third quarter and the nine months to December 2023. Bank of Baroda: Life Insurance Corporation of India has increased its stake in the public-sector bank to over 5%. LIC bought 24.39 lakh shares of the bank, taking its total stake from 4.984% to 5.031%. Reliance Industries: Chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani said at the Bengal Global Business Summit that the company plans to invest 20,000 crore in West Bengal over the next three years. It is also planning to build a compressed biogas plant in the state. Adani Enterprises: Adani Defence Systems and Technologies has signed a pact with Elbit Systems, Israel, which will pick up a 44% stake in Atharva Advanced Systems. BPCL: The company will consider an interim dividend at its board meeting on 29 November. Airtel: Bharti-backed low earth orbit (LEO) satellite firm OneWeb has been granted the necessary regulatory approvals from the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) to launch commercial broadband services in India. Titan Share Price: Shares of Titan Company Limited extended gains by nearly a per cent to Rs 3,415 on November 22, rallying for the sixth consecutive trading session. This comes after the company received approval from the Competition Commission of India to purchase an additional stake in its subsidiary CaratLane. On November 21, Titans share price rose over a percent and crossed the market capitalisation of Rs 3 lakh crore for the first time. Titan shares have gained over 11 per cent in three months and are up more than 31 per cent year-to-date (YTD). Tata Groups watch and jewellery retailer increased its shareholding in CaratLane to 98.28 per cent from 71 per cent, paying Rs 4,621 crore for the purchase, the company said in an exchange filing. Titan first acquired a 62 per cent stake in CaratLane in 2016 for a consideration of Rs 357.24 crore, thereby making it a subsidiary of the company. Subsequently, Titan increased its stake in the omni-channel jewelry retailer. Titan, a joint venture between the Tata Group and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO), is active in several businesses through lifestyle brands, including jewellery, eye care, fragrances, and fashion accessories. In August, jewellery maker Titan announced that it is going to increase its stake in its subsidiary and new-age jewellery brand CaratLane to 98.28 per cent by acquiring an additional 27.18 per cent for Rs 4,621 crore. CaratLane was started as a purely online brand in 2008, looking at the fast-growing affordable and accessible jewellery market. Titan first invested in CaratLane in 2016 and over the years, in partnership with its jewellery brand Tanishq, CaratLane witnessed substantial growth. The deals beyond a certain threshold need approval from the regulator, which keeps a tab on unfair business practices as well as promotes fair competition in the marketplace. The Andhra Pradesh Integrated Common Entrance Test, AP ICET 2023 phase 2 counselling seat allotment result will released today, November 22. The Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) will release the merit list on the official website at icet-sche.aptonline.in. Aspirants who have successfully cleared the AP ICET 2023 entrance exams and have applied for the phase 2 counselling round can check the result using their application number and password. Students shortlisted may report to the designated colleges by tomorrow, November 23 for further document verification and reservation of the seats. It is held for Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Computer Application (MCA) admission in Andhra Pradesh institutes. AP ICET 2023 Phase 2 Counselling Seat Allotment Result: Steps To Check Step 1: Visit the official AP ICET 2023 counselling website at icet-sche.aptonline.in. Step 2: On the homepage, click on the phase 2 counselling result link Step 3: Input the required details such as the hall ticket number and password Step 4: The result will appear on the screen Step 5: Save, download and take a print out for further use. Candidates belonging to the general category, who have secured 50 per cent under (For Open Competition (under Unreserved Category) in degree or equivalent exam will qualify for admission. In the case of Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes, and Backward Caste candidates, they must have secured 45 per cent marks in degree or equivalent exam to qualify for admission. AP ICET 2023 was held on May 24 and May 25. This year, over 49,000 candidates registered for the AP ICET 2023, out of which 44,343 took the exam. Candidates who secured 25 per cent marks in AP ICET 2023 were assigned ranks in the merit list. Thapala Jagadish Kumar Reddy secured rank 1 by scoring 169 marks in the exam this year. Vedantam Sai Venkata Kartik came in second with 164 marks and Putluru Rohith stood third with 162 marks. As many as nine ranks out of the top 10 were secured by boys while only one rank was secured by a girl. The Kerala National Means-cum Merit Scholarship (NMMS) Examination 2023 has been postponed. The exam which was scheduled to be conducted on December 7 will now be held on December 11. The exam will be held in two shifts. The question paper will be available in four different languages: English, Malayalam, Tamil, and Kannada. Candidates who applied for the scholarship exam can check the revised exam schedule on the official website at nmmse.kerala.gov.in. The exam is being held for students in Class 8 who want to apply for the Kerala NMMS scholarship exam for the academic year 202324. Earlier, the application deadline was extended to November 8. Kerala NMMS 2023 Exam Schedule: How to Check Step 1: Go to the official website of the Kerala NMMS at nmmse.kerala.gov.in. Step 2: Search and click on the timetable that is available on the homepage. Step 3: The date sheet will open on the screen Step 4: Download the schedule for further reference. Also read | CBSE Board Exams 2024: Class 10th, 12th Datesheet Likely by November-End? The Kerala NMMS 2023 is held every year to provide an annual scholarship amount of Rs 12,000 to financially disadvantaged students to help them continue their school education. The Kerala NMMS 2023 test will be divided into two 90-minute segments. Part I Mental Ability Test (MAT) will be conducted from 10 am to 11:30 am and from 10 am to noon, Part II Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) will be held from 1.30 pm to 3 pm and from 1.30 pm to 3.30 pm. Questions in the exam will be asked from classes 7 and 8. The exam will be held in the offline mode featuring multiple choice questions. This means students will have to select one of the four answers provided. The exam will be held for 2 hours 30 minutes. There will be a total of 180 questions of one mark each. Candidates whose household income doesnot exceed Rs 3.5 lakh are eligible to apply for the Kerala NMMS 2023 scholarship exam. Over the past several weeks, the state of Tamil Nadu has been experiencing significant rainfall across its many districts. Schools in Puducherry have been instructed to close today, November 22, due to heavy rainfall and flooding. A school holiday has been declared for today for both government and private educational institutions as announced by the Education Minister. Due to heavy rain in the region, a holiday has been announced in all the government and private schools in Puducherry today (22nd November): Education Minister A Namachivayam, ANI posted on X (formerly Twitter). According to local media reports, schools in Karaikal have also been ordered to close due to the severe downpour. Due to heavy rain in the region, a holiday has been announced in all the government and private schools in Puducherry today (22nd November): Education Minister A Namachivayam ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 The IMD weather update was taken into consideration before making the final decision. For the next two days, November 22 and 23, the Regional Meteorological Centre and IMD issued an orange alert and predicted heavy to very heavy rainfall with thunder and lightning in a few areas in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Karaikal. School headmasters in Nagai and Mayiladuthurai, according to a Times Now report, have the authority to determine whether or not to shut down their respective schools. In the midst of the heavy rainfall, schools in Tamil Nadu may move to online lessons. As a result, students are recommended to contact their respective institutions for up-to-date information on classes. According to the IMD, the cyclonic circulation that is currently persisting over the Comorin region, as well as another that is circulating over the Southwest Bay of Bengal off the Tamil Nadu Coast, will bring about constant rainfall in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Last week, on November 15, the District Collector of Chennai issued a school holiday due to persistent torrential downpours following a forecast of heavy rainfall in Chengalpattu, Kancheepuram, Villupuram, and Cuddalore districts by the meteorological department. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday asserted that his guarantee outweighs all false promises made by the Congress, and asked the people of Rajasthan to wipe out the Ashok Gehlot government to free the state from oppression and corruption. Modis guarantee, he said, begins from where the hope from Congress for the welfare of the poor and the public ends. Addressing a public meeting in Dungarpur district, he said democracy has given the people of Rajasthan an opportunity to end the misrule of the Congress government and they should not let this opportunity go. Wipe out Congress and free Rajasthan from riots, crimes and corruption. Congress departure is also necessary for quick implementation of Centres schemes, he said. He said that the Congress government has committed scam in every government recruitment in Rajasthan. There is such a business between Congress leaders and their close ones that their children became officers and your children are selectively thrown out, he said. He said the people of Rajasthan should note that the Gehlot government will not return to the state. Rajasthan goes to polls on November 25 and the results will be declared on December 3. There are still three places in the Euro 2024 finals up for grabs following the end of the group-stage of the qualifying campaign. Wales could yet join England and Scotland in the hat for the Euro 2024 draw, but Rob Pages side will need to navigate the play-offs if they are to reach a fourth major tournament in eight years. Thats because Wales finished behind Turkey and Croatia in qualifying from Group D, but the Dragons have been afforded a second-chance thanks to their performance in the Uefa Nations League. Wales are guaranteed a home semi-final after taking their place in play-off Path A - but Thursdays draw will determine who they face in Marchs play-off rounds, while Poland and Robert Lewandowski could be waiting in the final. Heres everything you need to know. Who has qualified for Euro 2024? Pot 1: Germany (hosts), Portugal, France, Spain, Belgium, England Pot 2: Hungary, Turkey, Romania, Denmark, Albania, Austria Pot 3: Netherlands, Scotland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic Pot 4: Italy, Serbia, Switzerland, Play-off winner A*, Play-off winner B*, Play-off winner C* Who could still qualify? Semi-finals Path A: Poland (1) vs Estonia (4) / Wales (2) vs TBC* Semi-finals Path B: Israel (1) vs TBC* / Bosnia and Herzegovina (2) vs TBC* Semi-finals Path C: Georgia (1) vs Luxembourg (4) / Greece (2) vs Kazakhstan (3) TBC* = one of Finland, Ukraine or Iceland How do the Euro 2024 play-offs work? There is still space for three teams to join the Euro 2024 draw, with three separate paths offering those sides who qualified for the play-offs a way into the tournament finals. There will be six semi-finals on 21 March 2024 and three finals on 26 March, with the winning teams entering the Euro 2024 group stage. When is the play-off draw? This will be held from 11am GMT on Thursday 23 November. The only thing to draw is which side from Finland, Ukraine or Iceland goes into Path A and which of the other two go into Path B. The draw will also determine which winner of the semi-final hosts the play-off final. *If Finland are allocated to Path B by the draw, as the higher-ranked team they would play Bosnia and Herzegovina, and whichever of Ukraine or Iceland are allocated to Path B would play top-ranked Israel. If Ukraine and Iceland are both allocated to Path B, the higher-ranked Ukraine would play Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Iceland would play Israel. With only a week left for the Telangana assembly elections and campaigning in full swing, K Chandrashekar Rao-led Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) is focussed on highlighting the welfare schemes that his government has delivered to the people, and has sought a re-election to come back to power. News18 spoke to BRS spokesperson Dasoju Srravan in an exclusive interview in which he said how the Karnataka model pitch of the Congress is a total failure. He stressed that the state government has successfully addressed the issues of unemployment and housing, and KCR is a messiah of the poor. Edited interview Q: In Telangana, people are questioning the promised 2 BHK homes by the BRS, and issues of unemployment are being raised. Why is this narrative coming up? A: Nobody can deny that there is a crisis of unemployment in the country, and the situation is not just there in Telangana. In states like Rajasthan, Gujarat, there are lakhs of youth who are seeking employment; this includes BJP and Congress ruled states. In the context of Telangana, if you look at it, 1,65,000 jobs have been filled both in government and government undertakings. Around 45,000 job notifications have also been undertaken. In addition to these government jobs, almost 24 lakh jobs have been created in our two terms in the service and private sector. In the IT sector, the jobs have gone up by 9 lakh, and so there is a significant effort by the K Chandrashekhar Rao-led BRS government to provide jobs and ample employment opportunities to the youth. I agree there is a gap, but its an all-India scenario. The ecosystem that we have created in Telangana today has the potential to create 20 lakh more jobs. The atmosphere in Telangana and Hyderabad is poised to make it become a global destination. We have Foxconn, Meta, Amazon, and this has attracted more industrial investment, and Hyderabad is the destination hub for it. Q: You speak of job opportunities that will be provided; when will these jobs be delivered? A: Two lakh government jobs, 6 lakh IT jobs have been delivered, another 24 lakh jobs in the private sector like IT and manufacturing have also been given. Another 20 lakh jobs in Telangana alone in our next term is our target. We have given the assurance that there will be stable career growth for the youth in Telangana when we come back to power for the third term. Q: You promised 2 BHK homes to the people of the state. In GHMC itself, around 1 lakh was to be given to the people, but when we spoke to voters on the ground, they said they have not received the benefit and if people did get it, it is those who already have homes. How do you react? A: I dont think anywhere in the country there is such a transparent mechanism for the allocation of homes. Our chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao has ensured it is done through a lottery. No question of recommending a person for a 2 BHK, not even an MLA can recommend the name of a beneficiary. Such a transparent system is in place. Tell me of one state in the country where such housing has been given to the downtrodden section of society? It is a false campaign of the opposition. The construction cost is Rs 8 lakh, and around 500 sq ft of 2bhk house is given. Though the construction cost is around Rs 8 lakh, the appreciation of the land where the housing has been given today is around 50 lakh or more today. The benefit to the poor who gets these homes is very high. We cannot build homes overnight; it will be done slowly. It is an ongoing programme and a dream of KCR that every person should have a home. As a third-time CM, he will have more sustainable programmes, and as many numbers of houses will be built. KCR is a messiah of the poor, and he will ensure a vibrant future for the people of the state. Q: Congress says the BRS has copied the welfare schemes that they have pitched for the people. Both parties are countering each other based on these welfare schemes; how is yours different? A: It is easy to copy; Congress has become a copycat. There is no innovation by the Congress. KCR was innovative when he brought in Rythu Bandhu and Dalit Bandhu and KCR nutrition kit. Many schemes were effectively implemented. Unfortunately, the Congress is an intellectual party that has become intellectually bankrupt. They only know how to copy others rather than bring something new. Q: The Congress talks about bringing the Karnataka model to Telangana? A: What Karnataka model are you talking about? The five declarations that they made, are they able to implement those? If they are really implementing them effectively, why are farmers bringing crocodiles to the roads to protest because of the electricity substations? Farmers in Karnataka are struggling with just 5 hours of power. They are not even getting two hours of power. DK Shivakumar comes here (Telangana) and says there is five hours of power; his PCC president says the Congress will give three hours of power and in their declarations, they say seven hours of power, and in the manifesto, they say 24 hours of power? The Congress is trying to confuse the people by saying if you cannot convince the people, you must confuse them; thats what the Congress is doing. The Congress cheated people in Rajasthan and Karnataka. But people in Telangana are smart enough and do not want to be charged like the people in Karnataka. The Congress said they will give jobs to the youth, but that has not happened. They said they will ban Bajrang Dal, have they done it? This is all naarebaazi, but it wont work in Telangana. In one of his biggest road shows, Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent multiple messages in Jaipur on Tuesday as he spent little over an hour in a road show through the old city part of Jaipur which was rocked by serial bomb blasts in the year 2008. Thousands poured on to the streets of the old city to catch a glimpse of the prime minister, in an indication of the BJPs confidence in Rajasthan. The road show began at the famous Sanganeri Gate of the Old City near the spot where three bomb blasts had gone off in 2008 next to a Hanuman temple. The accused in the Jaipur serial bomb blasts were acquitted recently, which the BJP has made into a poll issue against the Ashok Gehlot government. This was the first-ever road show held by PM Narendra Modi in the city of Jaipur. The road show touched three assembly constituencies of Hawa Mahal, Kishanpole and Adarsh Nagar which are all seats of sitting Congress MLAs and also have a significant Muslim population. The BJP has been trying to make inroads into these seats and the PM led the effort on Tuesday after holding two rallies in the state. BJP supporters at the road show talked about the Muslim appeasement policies of the Gehlot government, indicating how the contest in the seats of the Old City has become polarised. PM Modi will do three more rallies on Wednesday and Thursday to conclude his campaign in the state. People at Modis road show spoke about his continuing popularity and women in large numbers had also turned up to have a glimpse of the PM. Modi on Monday had done a road show in Bikaner. Home Minister Amit Shah will also do two more road shows in Chittorgarh and Nathdwara on the last day of campaigning on November 23. However, describing the prime ministers road show as a flop show, chief minister Ashok Gehlot claimed that it had been curtailed from its original plan of nine kilometres to just four kilometres after BJP realised the mood of the people. Telangana will have elections on November 30 to elect all 119 members of the states legislative assembly, with the votes to be counted on December 3. Dr Kota Neelima is the Congresss MLA candidate for the Sanathnagar constituency in Hyderabad city and she spoke to News18 on the fight against the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), what women in the state want from this election, and whether the Karnataka model of her party will work here. What is your sense of the feeling on the ground? It looks like both the Congress and BRS are giving each other a tough fight on the ground and contesting against each other on the basis of welfare schemes as well. Its not a close fight by any description. It may seem like one visually, because of the amount of money that the BRS is pumping in like the merchandise on the ground. Maybe we are not doing it. We dont have money for making caps or fancy posters which you see across Hyderabad costing crores of rupees. We have the heart of the people and the resources to help our cadre. What I would like to say is about the difference between the BRS and Congresss welfare schemes. The BRSs schemes are a rip-off of the Congress schemes and a copy of our six guarantees. When the Congress brought the six guarantees and Sonia ma announced them, the BRS was the first to criticise us, asking where we would get the money from. Then, within a week, they announced the same guarantees, and it was quite unscrupulous of them because it was in the name of the poor. Its quite interesting as when I spoke to the BRS, they called the Congress a copycat for copying their welfare schemes to promote your party. The BRSs existence today is because of the people from the Congress. Everything that the Congress has announced has been implemented in states, schemes that have been running successfully in Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Chhattisgarh as well. One must pick up the performance of the Congress in other states and see who is copying whom. BRS is out of ideas, and they are intellectually bankrupt and financially as well. They have a Rs 5 lakh crore debt, the kind of burden they have brought the state to and cant even pay their own government employees today. They are talking about us; we have shown our performance. Congress has brought in great schemes that directly impact and help people, including the Mahalakshmi scheme. In this scheme, Rs 2,500 is being paid per woman so that they get the agency to make decisions on their own. We are giving women the financial independence they need. Financial independence and decision-making were important for a woman and that is what the Congress has to offer. In Telangana, we have an Indiramma Illu, which has been standing for years. BRS refurbishes these homes and shows them as its own. How important is the element of catering to the female electorate? It is critical, and I am glad it is very critical. Women are central to this election even in my constituency Sanathnagar. As you can see in this basti where we are, all those accompanying me are women. There are large numbers of women, and they have come out in large numbers as the woman candidate is from the Congress and they have confidence in us. This is the confidence they did not have till now and this is the thing that was not seen in Telangana. On the BRS side, there are no women; it is all about two or three people. They dont have women or gender equality even in their schemes. There is no recognition of women as an independent person. That is very important to me as a political scientistwhat importance you give to women and their financial stability. That is not so in BRS. If women vote in the BRS, they are voting invisibly. BRS schemes give them invisibility; they are not seen by the government, not thought of by the government, and not represented by the BRS government or the party. What in your opinion are women asking from you as a candidate? It is sad, but here they are asking for proper infrastructure. They are seeking respect and dignity. When we talk about drinking water, the way they have to struggle for basic drinking water even in the heart of Hyderabad is distressing. KT Rama Rao talks about hi-tech city, the BRS is obsessed with it, but the real Hyderabad lives in these gullies you are taking now. These homes are yet to see infrastructure and development. When women talk about issues, they speak about infrastructural issues. It is interesting as usually the issue of infrastructure is seen from a gender perspective as something concerning a man. Women have more opinions about this and they are more concerned as well. Secondly, the financial issue, then the bankruptcy of the BRS government is important. I would like the BRS to argue about this but they cannot. The financial bankruptcy of the state is reflected in every household budget of every citizen. When a woman is expected to balance her household budget, manage her home, and choose where to spend, she is having to bear the brunt of the wrong policies of the BRS government. The most important thing is that she knows it. Where the root of her financial situation comes from. Women understand their budgetary woes come directly from the BRS governments wrong policies. Every research and study shows that the BRS benefits have gone to those close to the BRS heavyweights, not even to their cadre. This has caused a huge disenchantment. How do you see the workability of the Karnataka model here in Telangana? It has to. When we talk of womens safety and schemes, we look at the welfare schemes with a huge hope not just for the Congress but also for the whole country and every woman in the country. KTR spoke about a women-oriented manifesto; how do you see it? Well, the BRS had nine years to do this. They could have brought this manifesto anytime. They should first begin with an explanation on a white paper as to why they failed in these nine years and then talk about a manifesto. The BRS is talking about a womens manifesto now as it is only now that they are thinking about women who are being assertive in this election. A lot of women even in this constituency Sanathnagar, a lot of women who had not spoken out before are here. They are here campaigning in support of the Congress and against the BRS. So naturally KTR is worried and he thinks a manifesto for women will sort out the problem. First of all, they need to explain to a woman which is a tough thing and she has been affected for nine years. They need to bring out an apology letter, as to why they did not fulfill their schemes. The popular dance reality show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa is back with its 11th season and has brought together some renowned faces from the industry. While the show is heading towards its third week, the contestants will face their first eliminations this season. Reports suggest that this week Aamir Ali, who made his television comeback with the show, is slated to be the first one to leave. According to a source quoted by India Forums, Aamirs previous performance received positive reviews from the judges, but this weeks performance did not receive favourable reviews, leading to his elimination. While the report of Aamir Alis elimination made headlines, his FIR co-star and friend Kavita Kaushik reacted to it calling it unfair. She said, Not done!! He is so hardworking and a fab dancer. This is too soon and wasnt even given a fair chance, as quoted by ETimes. The India Forums source stated that, Aamir was in the bottom two with Anjali Anand, but he was the first participant to be eliminated from the show. Aamir Ali had impressed the judges with his performance in the last couple of weeks, and Arshad Warsi and Farah Khan gave him some good reviews. As Aamir gave his first performance, Arshad Warsi said, I have been a judge to Aamir earlier as well so I know his potential. He will surely go far in the show, quoted ETimes. The portal also mentioned that for the second performance, Aamir chose to dance on Pehla Nasha which was originally choreographed by Farah Khan. Reacting to the act, Farah stated, This song is very close to my heartSo when someone performs this song, it can go in either direction. But today, it was very sweet and nice. Both of you look wonderful together. Aamir, when you perform a waltz with a girl, she becomes the centrepiece, especially with her flowing dress and the lifts but today, you are the centrepiece. However, this is not Aamir Alis first appearance on a dance reality show. The actor won Nach Baliye 3 with his then-partner Sanjeeda Sheikh in 2007. He was also seen as a participant in Zara Nachke Dikha 2 and as a guest in Nachle Ve with Saroj Khan. Apart from that, he also hosted Nach Baliye 4. Besides, Aamir Ali has been in a number of series, including Black Widows and Naxalbari. His most recent was The Trial, where he played a cop opposite Kajol. Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day ceasefire that would bring temporary respite for Gazans suffering from bombing and land offensive for over six weeks and release dozens of hostages taken by the Palestinian militant group on October 7. Qatar confirmed the ceasefire agreement saying the start time will be announced in the next 24 hours and it would last for four days. The truce comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus cabinet approved the accord after a near-all-night meeting, in which he told ministers this was a difficult decision but its a right decision. Hamas released a statement welcoming the humanitarian truce, which it said would also see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails. What Does the Truce Agreement Say? The ceasefire would bring some respite for the people in Gaza, where large parts of the Palestinian territories have been flattened by thousands of air strikes, and the territory is under siege, with minimal food, water and fuel allowed in. The truce offers Gaza residents the prospect of a desperately desired, if brief, pause after nearly seven weeks of total war, which has killed over 11,000 Palestinians. Under the agreement at least 50 Israeli and foreign hostages would be released women and children in return for a four-day lull in military operations. For every 10 additional hostages released, there would be an extra day of truce. Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad had said the truce would include a complete ceasefire on the ground and a pause in Israeli air operations over southern Gaza. According to a report in AFP quoting Hamas and Islamic Jihad sources, the proposed deal would also allow for up to 300 trucks of food and medical aid to enter Gaza. However, Netanyahus office, in a statement, underscored that the truce did not spell the end of the war. Why does Qatar mediate so many conflicts? Though several countries in the Middle East hope to play the role of mediators including Egypt and Oman, but Qatar has presented itself as the regions primary problem solver and holds a track record for successful talks in the past. Apart from the Israel-Hamas war, it has been active in mediation roles in Ukraine, Lebanon, Sudan, Afghanistan and others. In the case of the latest conflict in Gaza, Qatar has good relations with both Western nations and Hamas and was successful in the release of two American hostages last month. The negotiations have also positioned Qatar into a delicate international balancing act as it maintains a relationship with those viewed as militant groups by the West while trying to preserve its close ties with the US. According to a report in The Guardian, Qatar, being a mediator wants to portray itself as indispensable to the international community and protected from interventions by neighbours like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Has There Been Opposition to Qatars Role? The American right and some in Israel have opposed the role of Qatar and accused it of harbouring terrorists. North Carolina Republican senator Ted Budd said, For weeks, Qatars foreign ministry has claimed to be close to negotiating a deal for the release of hostages held by Hamas including American hostages. How long will Qatar continue to host terrorists with American blood on their hands? Gershon Baskin, an Israeli hostage negotiator who has dealt directly with Hamas, at a recent Middle East Institute seminar said, Qatar is a state that supports terrorism and they need to be called to order. The Americans need to tell Qatar: if you dont force Hamas to release hostages, you are going to exile them from Qatar. However, Qatar claims that it hosts Hamass political leaders not due to ideological sympathy but because the US has asked it to. Where does Qatar stand on the conflict? There is no doubt that Qatars sympathies lie with the Palestinians. The Qatari foreign ministry has solely blamed Israel for Hamass attack and has not once condemned the brutality. In 2012, as war raged in Syria and Hamass leadership opposed the Syrian government, Doha provided it with shelter. Qataris said the decision was taken in coordination with the United States and with the blessing of former US President Barack Obama. Qatar, which has hosted Hamass political office for more than 10 years, is also respected by the United States, Israels chief ally. It also provides millions of dollars in foreign aid, pays the salaries of civil servants in the Gaza Strip, provides direct cash transfers to poor families, and offers humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The US considers Qatar as a major non-NATO ally and Doha has widening defense trade and security cooperation with America. It is also home to the largest US military base in the region. A new scam is on the rise this year fraudsters have been duping people of lakhs of rupees while posing as customs officials across metro cities. In this new method, called courier scam, the imposters posing as police officials or NCRB agents contact people accusing them of engaging in illicit activities related to sending and receiving parcels containing drugs or other banned substances. Then the scamsters convince the victims that they will be contacted by police personnel and the entire racket of money extortion begins to settle the false complaint against the victims. The courier scam has been targeting people between 35 to 50 and there have been hundreds of cases reported to the police this year. How Does the Scam Work? Courier scammers claim to be customs officials and contact their targets over the phone. They mention a parcel booked in their name and claim that it contained narcotic drugs or some other banned substances. Then they would impersonate an official from a police station to talk to them about possible arrest. The victim, who has already been frightened, tries to settle the false case by offering money to avoid arrest, which is transferred to the scamsters. The scammers use psychological tactics during calls to distress the victims and extract personal identification and bank details. They ask the victim to give their Aadhaar and other identification details apart from the bank information, thus duping money from people. In other cases, it also begins with a missed call. When the person returns the call, it is transferred to an automated voice message informing that they have reached the helpline of a courier company like Fedex or Blue Dart. Then the other person on the phone pretending to be a Mumbai police officer claiming illegal drugs have been found in a parcel sent to their address. The scamster then blackmails the person into making a payment. A Bengaluru resident was duped recently of Rs 1.52 crore after he fell prey to the courier scam. Debashish Das, 66, received a phone call on November 10 from a person who claimed to be a FedEx employee named Kartikeya. The employee then informed Das that a case had been registered against him in Mumbai because a courier sent in his name to Taiwan was found to contain six credit cards, expired passports, and even 950g of MDMA drugs. Das was told to get in touch with the Andheri cybercrime police station in Mumbai on a Skype call. Then a fake police officer, Pradeep Sawant, told him that bank accounts in his name were found to be involved in illegal activity close after which the scamsters managed to get all the victims money, including his fixed deposits, worth Rs 1.52 crore transferred to their account. Courier Scam on Rise Amid the rise in such cases of courier scam, banks and police have warned people to be aware of such fraud calls. As many as 250 cases involving fake courier fraud have already been reported in Bengaluru this year, according to The Indian Express. The Bengaluru police has said that the investigation of these cases along with three other types of common cyber fraud Aadhaar Enabled Payment Services fraud, WhatsApp sextortion and online job fraud would be prioritised for investigations. The Pune city cyber cell has reported seven cases related to courier scam in 2023. In Chennai, at least 30 people have been victim of the fraud in past one month. How to Stay Safe? In the run up to the Telangana Assembly polls, the BJP has promised scrapping the Muslim reservation, bringing in Uniform Civil Code and free trip to Ayodhya for the people in the state if the party wins the state election. Union Home Minister Amit Shah while campaigning in the state has reiterated that the BJP will remove 4 per cent Muslim reservation as soon as the government is formed and will distribute it among SC, ST and OBC. KCR gave Muslim reservation on the basis of religion which is against the Constitution. If you elect a BJP government, we will increase reservation for the OBCs and SC/STs in place of reservation on basis of religion, Amit Shah said while campaigning in Telangana. What Has BJP promised? The issue of Muslim quota was highlighted by Amit Shah several times during the rally in Telangana where he promised scrapping the reservation for Muslims apart from imposing Uniform Civil Code and increasing reservation for the backward communities. In the party manifesto, the BJP said it is committed to remove all unconstitutional religion-based reservations in the state and reallocate it to Backward Classes, Scheduled Casts and Scheduled Tribes. The party promised to remove unconstitutional religion-based reservation, including the 4% quota for Muslims, in government jobs and seats in state educational institutes. Congresss Minority Declaration The Congress has promised to increase the budget up to Rs 4,000 crore annually towards minority welfare and conducting the caste census within six months after coming to power in Telangana. The party released the Minority Declaration, which will ensure fair reservation for all backward classes including, minorities in jobs, education and government schemes. It also promised Rs 1,000 crore per annum to provide subsidised loans to jobless minority youth and women. The party also promised other benefits to the minority community including financial assistance to minority students, monthly honorarium for religious priests, establishing Telangana Sikh Minority Finance Corporation, special recruitment to fill Urdu medium teachers and other benefits. What Have Other Parties Said After Shah raked up the Muslim quota in April this year, the Congress, the BRS and the AIMIM accused him of undermining the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court before which the issue has been pending. Hitting out at Shah, Telangana Congress Leader Shabbir Ali said the BJP has zero idea about the Muslim quota in the state. Shabbir has maintained that the 4% Muslim quota in jobs and education for socially and economically backward Muslims is being implemented in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh based on the stay granted by the Supreme Court. AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi attacking the saffron party, said, BJP is lying about the reservation. Muslims in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are not getting reservations on the basis of their religion but on their social and educational backwardness. Not every Muslim is getting it but there has been a list created for backward Muslims and they are only getting it. Both the Congress and AIMIM argued that the existing quota is not applicable to forward classes within the Muslim community while the benefits are only extended to the most socially and educationally backward classes of Muslims in social and educational sectors. The quota is applicable for butchers, dhobis, barbers among others. The ruling BRS said that Shahs statement was another sign that the BJP is greedy to grab power by any means. BRS spokesperson Ravula Sridhar Reddy reportedly said, Amit Shah has turned the Muslim quota into a religious issue. He does not know the difference between constitutional and unconstitutional quota because the 4% quota is constitutional and does not breach the 50% ceiling. All about the Muslim Reservation The first proposal to bring Muslims under reservations dates back to the 1960s before Telangana was formed. The then Andhra Pradesh government had been studying the backwardness of the other backward classes and found that some sections of Muslims like washermen and weavers were more backward than the scheduled caste on the educational, social and economic fronts, according to The Times of India. In 1994, the Congress government led by chief minister Kotla Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy included two categories of Muslims like washerman and weavers into the OBC list. In 2004, the Congress government under YS Rajasekhar Reddy provided 5 per cent quota to Muslims by treating them as OBCs. A backward classes commission recommended reservations based on socio-educational backwardness among 14 categories of Muslims, but added that the reservation be brought down to 4 per cent to keep it well within the 50 per cent SC cap. At present, Telangana provides 4 per cent reservation to Muslims, which constitutes 12.7% of the population in Telangana. During the 2014 Assembly election when the state was newly formed, the TRS (now BRS) had promised that it would increase reservations for Muslims in jobs and education to 12%. In April 2017, the Telangana Assembly passed a Bill for increasing reservations for Muslims from 4 per cent to 12 per cent, and Scheduled Tribes from 6 per cent to 10 per cent. The Bill was then sent to the Union government for its assent. However, the centre refused to give its nod, saying that it cannot allow religion-based reservations. The central government on Wednesday suspended DGCA official Captain Anil Gill as the aviation regulator is contemplating initiating disciplinary proceedings against him on alleged corruption charges. The ministry of civil aviation said this is a zero tolerance approach to malpractices. There is zero tolerance for malpractices. Any such issue will always be dealt with the strictest measures in accordance with the law, said civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia. Amid the graft allegations, a preliminary enquiry against Gill was completed and the report was recently submitted to the ministry of civil aviation. According to a notification issued, he has been suspended under Section 10 of central civil services rules under which the appointing authority may suspend a government official in cases where a disciplinary proceeding against the person is contemplated or is pending. At present, Gill is a director posted in the directorate of aerosports at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The suspension order said during the period of suspension, Gill should be in the national capital. The preliminary inquiry was conducted as per norms of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). According to reports, corruption allegations against Gill pertain to his stint at the department handling flying training organisations (FTOs). The DGCA has also started carrying out a reshuffle of duties of various officials and transferring them to different centres. The decision comes days after the DGCA asked the ministry to transfer a case of bribery against Captain Gill to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The director was recently reassigned to the aerosports department after an anonymous email about the allegations against him was received. According to a report in Hindustan Times, the email alleged that Captain Gill misused his position to take three aircraft as a bribe from flying schools and, in turn, lease them out to other schools for Rs 90 lakh each. It further alleged that he forced a company, Skynex Aeroflight Solutions (an approved flying training organisation by DGCA), to send him to the Czech Republic for training on Piper PA-28 aircraft; this was not required for his role. An official told HT that the email said Gill used these visits to form dealership relations between his benami company, Sabres Corporate Solutions, and the aircraft manufacturer (Bristell Aircraft) to extract commission in forex, while the deal was originally to be direct supply of aircraft to FTO (Skynex). Officials said issues highlighted in a second such email is likely to attract violations under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday filed a fresh supplementary charge sheet in a money laundering case, involving Congress leader Rahul Gandhis brother-in-law Robert Vadra and arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. According to sources privy to the development, the charge sheet names UAE-based businessman CC Thampi and one other and the same has been filed before Delhis Rouse Avenue Court. Special CBI Judge Neelofer Abida Parveen has now kept the matter for hearing arguments on the point of cognisance on November 24. The case relates to Vadras illegal acquisition of assets abroad allegedly from Bhandari. As per the case of the prosecution, Bhandaris firm Santech FZE had purchased a property from a private firm, which was acquired by Thampis Dubai-based company Sky Light, and later changed hands allegedly to Vadra. Earlier this month, the same court allowed Vadra to travel to Austria and Switzerland for two weeks. As the applicant (Robert Vadra) is not named as an accused and there has not been any further material alleged against the applicant other than emails exchanged on the renovation of one immovable property disposed of in the year 2010, it would not be sufficient ground to impose any fetters on the right to movement of the applicant, Special Judge Parveen said, while granting the said relief. The court had, however, directed Vadra to furnish a bank guarantee for a sum of Rs 25 lakh in his name. It further directed that Vadra would not open or close any bank account and would not enter into any kind of property transaction abroad. Four army personnel including two officers (Captains) were killed in the ongoing encounter with terrorists in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir. Two terrorists were trapped in an encounter with security forces in Rajouris Kalakote area earlier in the day, police said. The encounter broke out between terrorists and joint forces of the Army and J-K Police in the Bajimaal area of Dharmsal following a cordon and search operation, police said. Several soldiers also sustained injuries in the gun battle. #WATCH | An encounter is underway between terrorists and joint forces of Army & J-K Police in the Bajimaal area of Dharmsal in Rajouri district(Visuals deferred by unspecified time) pic.twitter.com/pNnXvtbRKt ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 There are a few splinter groups of Jaish who have been cornered in the Gulabgarh forest areas near the Bajimal area. This is an old group which was initially spotted on October 5 which led to the initial gunbattle following which the encounter ensued. Politicians Express Condolences Former Jammu and Kashmir and National leader Omar Abdullah expressed to the families of those who offered the ultimate sacrifice. Terrible news from Rajouri where 4 army personnel including 2 officers have laid down their lives in the line of duty. While condemning the continuing efforts to spread militancy into hitherto peaceful areas of Pir Panchal region I send my sincere condolences to the families of those who offered the ultimate sacrifice today, Abdullah wrote on X. Former J&K CM and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti criticised the government of India over the security situation in the union territory. Heartbreaking to see officers & jawans lose their lives in the line of duty despite GOIs misleading false claims that all is well in J&K. The price of this facade is being borne by them & innocent civilians whove become collateral damage in unabated violence. My deepest sympathies with their families & loved ones, she said in a post on X. Indian Armys White Knight Corps informed that the operation was launched in Kalakote area on November 19 based on specific intelligence. Based on specific intelligence Joint Operations launched in #Kalakote Area #Gulabgarh forest #Rajouri, District on 19 Nov 23. Contact established on 22 Nov and intense firefight ensued. The terrorists have been injured and surrounded and operations are in progress, amidst acts of valour and sacrifice by own bravehearts in trying to prevent collateral damage to women and children in the highest traditions of #IndianArmy. #Whiteknightcorps salutes the supreme sacrifice, White Knight Corps said in a post on X. Based on specific intelligence Joint Operations launched in #Kalakote Area #Gulabgarh forest #Rajouri, District on 19 Nov 23.Contact established on 22 Nov and intense firefight ensued. The terrorists have been injured and surrounded and operations are in progress, amidst acts White Knight Corps (@Whiteknight_IA) November 22, 2023 AAP Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha took to X (formerly Twitter) and expressed condolence on the death of three army personnel in Rajouri. Sad news was received that 3 soldiers were martyred in an encounter with terrorists in Rajouri, Jammu and Kashmir. I salute the supreme sacrifice of the brave martyrs. Give place at the feet of Lord Shri. Om Shanti, the AAP leader said in the X post. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the entire country salutes the bravery of the army personnel in the encounter. Former Punjab CM and BJP leader Amarinder Singh also condoled the killings of the Army personnel. Saddened to hear about the martyrdom of 2 Indian Army Officers and 1 Jawan of 63 Rashtriya Rifles during a fierce encounter in Baji Mall forests of Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir. I pray to Waheguru ji to grant eternal peace to the departed souls, he wrote on X. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday addressed the virtual G-20 Summit hosted by India and highlighted the blocs achievements, including the entry of the African Union into G-20, under Indias Presidency. The prime minister added that it was under Indias presidency that all the G20 countries came together in cooperation to give voice and a platform to Africa to put forward its issues. In todays world which is full of challenges, it is mutual trust that binds us, connects us, PM Modi said while addressing the G-20 leaders. Delivering my remarks at the @g20org Virtual Summit. https://t.co/u19xStkZX7 Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) November 22, 2023 G20 has given a message of inclusivity which is phenomenal. It is a proud moment for India that the African Union was given a voice in G20 under its presidency, PM Modi added. On the ongoing war between Israel and the militant group Hamas, Prime Minister Modi welcomed the deal for the release of hostages and said that terrorism in any form or state is unacceptable to G-20. PM Modi also said that he hopes all the hostages will soon be safely released and emphasised that this war doesnt shape itself into a regional military conflict. The prime minister also talked about Indias role in promoting the development of alternative fuels along with reducing carbon. G20 has recognised mission LiFE lifestyle for the environment for a pro-planet approach. There has been a call to triple the use of renewable energy by 2030. It has shown commitment towards clean hydrogen. The need to take climate finance from billions to trillions has been recognised. In a few days, during COP-28 being held in UAE, concrete steps need to be taken on all these initiatives, Modi said. PM Modi on Artificial Intelligence On the recent issue around the deepfake videos of famous personalities, PM Modi said that the world is worried about the negative outcomes of Artificial Intelligence. (AI) #WATCH | At the G20 virtual Summit, PM Modi speaks on the deepfake issue, says, "The world is worried about the negative effects of AI. India thinks that we have to work together on the global regulations for AI. Understanding how dangerous deepfake is for society and pic.twitter.com/YtSIW1qIcN ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 Also Read: What is the AI Technology, How it is Created & Laws Against It The world is worried about the negative effects of AI. India thinks we have to work together on the global regulations for AI. Understanding how dangerous deepfakes are for society and individuals, we need to work forward. We want AI to reach the people, it must be safe for society, Modi said. To implement DPI in countries of the Global South, I propose to establish a Social Impact Fund. On behalf of India, I also announce an initial amount of USD 25 million for this. I hope that all of you will join this initiative, Modi said. He said in the age of Artificial Intelligence, there is a need to use technology responsibly. PM Modi on Israel-Hamas War Addressing the G-20 leaders virtually from New Delhi, the prime minister Wednesday said that it was important to ensure that the war doesnt escalate into a regional conflict. He also welcomed the truce deal to release hostages and said that terrorism in any form or state is unacceptable to G-20. We welcome the news of the deal about the release of hostages. We hope all the hostages will be released soon, said Modi. The Prime Minister added that new challenges have arisen in the last months and the situation of insecurity and instability in the West Asia region was a matter of concern. India on Wednesday said it takes inputs on security matters from the US seriously since they impinge on its own national security concerns as well. The ministry of external affairs said this in response to queries about a report in the British daily Financial Times, which stated that the US had thwarted an attempt to kill Sikh extremist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others, said ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi about discussions between India and US on security matters. Bagchi said the inputs were a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow-up action. On its part, India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well, he said. The ministry official said issues in the context of US inputs are already being examined by relevant departments. According to the report published by Financial Times, the US thwarted a conspiracy to assassinate Pannun on American soil and issued a warning to Indias government over concerns it was involved in the plot. The report cited multiple sources. This comes two months after diplomatic relations between Indian and Canada nosedived when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged that agents of the Indian government were involved in the June killing of Sikh extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Vancouver. India had rejected the allegations as absurd and motivated. But, on the contrary, this time India has said it takes the US inputs seriously. According to the FT report, the US, Canada and allies shared details as part of being in the intelligence-sharing network Five Eyes. The Nijjar killing and the Pannun assassination plot has sparked concerns about a possible pattern of behaviour on Delhis part. Washington shared details of the Pannun case with a wider group of allies after Trudeau went public with details of the Vancouver killing, the combination of which sparked concern among allies about a possible pattern of behaviour, the report stated. It said the US protest was issued after Prime Minister Narendra Modis state visit to Washington in June. It was not clear whether the protest to New Delhi led the plotters to abandon their plan, or whether the FBI intervened and foiled a scheme already in motion. Quoting sources, the report further stated that a sealed indictment has been filed in a New York district court against at least one alleged perpetrator in the plot. The US justice department is debating whether to unseal the indictment and make the allegations public or wait until Canada finishes its investigation into Nijjars murder. Further complicating the case, one person charged in the indictment is believed to have left the US, it said. Pannun, who is a dual citizen of the US and Canada, is the self-proclaimed general counsel of unlawful association Sikhs for Justice (SFJ). He has been under the NIAs lens since 2019, when the anti-terror agency registered its first case against him. Earlier this week, the NIA registered a case against him and SFJ for issuing video messages threatening people flying Air India. The case has been filed under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Pannun was listed as an individual terrorist by the ministry of home affairs on July 1, 2020, a year after the Centre banned the SFJ. Top intelligence sources in India have rubbished as baseless the Financial Times report on November 22, which, citing unnamed sources, alleged that the US authorities had thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in their country and reportedly issued a warning to India over concerns that the government was involved. At the time of publishing this report, the foreign ministry and the U.S. embassy in New Delhi had not issued a statement. Top intelligence sources in India, however, have rubbished the Financial Times report as baseless. (With PTI inputs) Anurag Kashyap revealed he was gifted marijuana by a fan during one of his trips to Canada and things went south pretty soon. He said that many people have the perception that he enjoys partaking in marijuana but in reality, he does not engage in the activity. He added that he is allergic to the substance and gets serious asthma attacks even when he is seated beside someone who is smoking the substance. The Kennedy director revealed he needed medical help even when he was given a box filled with the substance. Speaking with Flip the Script with Shubra podcast, Anurag revealed, Because Ive made Gangs of Wasseypur and Raman Raghav, people think Im a psychopath. People are initially very scared of meeting me. And when they meet me, they get totally overwhelmed because Im completely opposite of their perception. I cant change that. A lot of people think that I smoke up. Often, when I get trolled, people call me ganjedi and nashedi. But I just roll my cigarettes; they dont even know Im allergic to it. I get serious asthma attacks even if I smell somebody smoking pot around me. Recalling his visit to the Toronto International Film Festival, Anurag said, I was in Toronto for the festival, and somebody came and said, Ive got a nice gift for you. He had a wrapped bag, with flowers on it. And because Im allergic to it, I can smell it from a distance. I said, Whats in that bag. He said, Something youd love. I opened the bag, and he had rolled joints in it. I said, Whats wrong with you? Take it away from me, take the smell away. I had to take an antihistamine immediately. Its that bad for me. But its perception. I cant change that, he added. Anurag made the headlines last month when he presented Kennedy at Mumbais MAMI Film Festival. The film received a standing ovation. The film is yet to set a release date. Anurag had also released Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat earlier this year, a romantic film which he directed. Besides helming projects, Anurag has also been facing the camera. He made an appearance in Kuttey, Haddi and Leo this year. Kannada actress and the daughter of actor Arjun Sarja, Aishwarya Arjun recently embarked on a new chapter as she exchanged rings with actor Umapathy Ramaiah. Umapathy is the son of renowned actor-director Thambi Ramaiah. The couples engagement ceremony was a private affair and it was held in Chennai last month. In a recent interaction with a media house, the cameraman named Advik Sudarshanan shared details of Aishwaryas engagement ceremony. He said that Arjun sir was very happy as a father on his daughters engagement day and had even called an event management team from Bengaluru to organise the ceremony. He went on to reveal that Aishwarya instructed everyone about what she wanted. From the decoration, colour to the lights and cake, everything was done as per the actress choice. Advik made several revelations about the ring that Aishwaryas fiance gave her at the ceremony. He said that the 5-carat blood ruby ring was imported from Burma. Though a simple design, the ring is a rare one with a price worth more than Rs 20 lakh. Earlier, in an interview with ETimes, Thambi Ramaiah shared how Umapathy and Aishwaryas relationship blossomed and how they decided to tie the nuptial knots. He revealed that they met each other when Umapathy participated as a contestant on the TV reality show, Survivor Tamil. The show was hosted by Arjun Sarja. Later, both the families met at a temple for the first time. Soon after the meeting, the couple decided to get engaged and preparations were begun. The couple is yet to finalise their wedding date. They will soon make an official announcement about their wedding date, which is expected to take place in February 2024. Notably, Arjun Sarja directed the movie Prema Baraha in 2018 with Aishwarya in the lead role. Tamil actor Mansoor Ali Khan has been booked for allegedly making insensitive remarks against actress Trisha. As reported by The Hindu, an enquiry was conducted on November 21 against Mansoor following which a case has been filed against the actor. Reportedly, Mansoor Ali Khan has been booked under Section 354 A (sexual harassment) and Section 509 (word, gesture, or act intended to outrage modesty of woman). NCW Had Asked Tamil Nadu DGP To Take Action Against Mansoor Ali Khan Mansoor Ali Khan has been booked days after the National Commission For Women (NCW) asked Tamil Nadu DGP to take action against the actor. The National Commission for Women is deeply concerned about the derogatory remarks made by actor Mansoor Ali Khan towards actress Trisha Krishna. Were taking suo motu in this matter directing the DGP to invoke IPC Section 509 B and other relevant laws. Such remarks normalize violence against women and must be condemned, the NCW statement issued last month read. What Had Mansoor Said Against Trisha? Recently, a video went viral on social media in which Mansoor Ali Khan said in Tamil, When I heard that I was acting with Trisha, I thought there would be a bedroom scene in the film. I thought I would carry her to the bedroom just like I did with other actresses in my earlier movies. I have done so many rape scenes and its not new to me. But these guys didnt even show Trisha to me on the sets during the shoot in Kashmir. How Had Trisha Reacted To Mansoors Comments? Later, Trisha also broke silence on Mansoor Ali Khans comment and called it sexist, disrespectful, misogynistic, repulsive. A recent video has come to my attention where Mr Mansoor Ali Khan has spoken about me in a vile manner. I strongly condemn this and find it sexist, disrespectful, misogynistic, repulsive, and in bad taste. He can keep wishing, but I am grateful never to have shared screen space with someone as pathetic as him, and I will make sure it never happens for the rest of my film career as well. People like him bring a bad name to mankind, she wrote on X. Mansoor Ali Khan refused to apologise for his rape comment made about Trisha. In a press conference he hosted hours before an FIR was registered against him, Mansoor said his statement was misconstrued and that he will not apologise for the statement. For the unversed, the Tamil actor said in a press event last week that he was disappointed that he was didnt get to share the screen with Trisha in Leo. He then joked that he was hoping for a bedroom scene and that he has done his share of rape scenes. What did Mansoor Ali Khan Say About Trisha? The statement led to strong reactions from many, including Trisha. She slammed him and said she will ensure she doesnt work with him in the future. Many stars from Tamil and Telugu industries came forward to support her. This includes Chiranjeevi. Nadigar Sangam (the South Indian Artistes Association) also issued a temporary ban against him. Mansoor Ali Khan Refuses To Apologise Reacting to the outrage caused by his statement, Mansoor said, I didnt mean personally. If there is a rape or murder scene is that real in cinema? Does it mean raping someone for real? What does murder in cinema mean? Does it mean they are murdering someone for real? Why do I need to apologize? I didnt say anything wrong. I respect all actresses. Mansoor Ali Khan Threatens Nadigar Sangam Addressing the ban, Mansoor warned, Nadigar Sangam has made an Himalayan mistake by banning me straight away without asking for a show-cause notice. They should have asked me to explain myself about the video. Does that how a case gets investigated in a court? I am giving four hours of time to Nadigar Sangam (to withdraw the ban). What have they said in the press release? I have to apologise before everyone. Do I belong to caste which apologises? I am acting with a lot of patience. If Nadigar Sangam doesnt retract its ban, I will burst out like a volcano. The whole of Tamil Nadu is behind me. FIR Filed Against Mansoor Ali Khan Meanwhile, Mansoor Ali Khan has been booked under Section 354 A (sexual harassment) and Section 509 (word, gesture, or act intended to outrage modesty of woman). has been booked days after the National Commission For Women (NCW) asked Tamil Nadu DGP to take action against the actor. The National Commission for Women is deeply concerned about the derogatory remarks made by actor Mansoor Ali Khan towards actress Trisha Krishna. Were taking suo motu in this matter directing the DGP to invoke IPC Section 509 B and other relevant laws. Such remarks normalize violence against women and must be condemned, the NCW statement issued last month read. Ranbir Kapoor was seen learning Telugu from Rashmika Mandanna when they stepped out for the promotions of Animal on Wednesday. The actors were seen on the sets of Indian Idol together. In the videos shared by the paparazzi, Ranbir and Rashmika were seen posing for the cameras when Ranbir overheard Rashmika speaking with a paparazzo in Telugu. Surprised by the interaction, Ranbir asked him if he was a photographer from Hyderabad. When he found out that he was from Mumbai but spoke Telugu at home, Ranbir greeted him in Telugu. The Animal actor did not stop at that. He asked Rashmika to help him with more words. Rashmika taught him to how to ask someone if they are okay. When a paparazzo requested him to speak in Kannada, Ranbir asked Rashmika to teach him a few lines and tried to repeat it. Watch the video below: Animal marks Ranbirs first film with Rashmika. The film is directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga, the filmmaker behind the controversial film Kabir Singh. Speaking about Kabir Singh, Ranbir told Variety, Well, to be honest, I was really drawn to the script of Animal. Its a unique and intense story that immediately caught my attention. As for watching Arjun Reddy or Kabir Singh, I must admit that I did watch both films and found them to be incredibly powerful and impactful. However, my decision to accept Animal was not solely based on those films. It was more about the script, the character, and the opportunity to work with Sandeep Reddy Vanga. About Animal: Animal stars Ranbir Kapoor and Rashmika Mandanna in the lead. The film also stars Bobby Deol and Anil Kapoor in pivotal roles. Bhushan Kumar and Krishan Kumars T-Series, Murad Khetanis Cine1 Studios and Pranay Reddy Vangas Bhadrakali Pictures have backed Animal. The film is directed by Sandeep Reddy Vanga and is in the crime drama genre. It promises to take viewers on a thrilling ride on December 1, 2023. The film clashes with Vicky Kaushals Sam Bahadur. Actor Tanuj Virwani recently announced his engagement with Tanya Jacob. Sharing a bundle of breathtaking pictures from his proposal, the actor also penned a heartwarming note for her that read, Its neither the Journey that matters most , nor is it the the Destination. It is the Company Cannot wait to spend the rest of my Life with you @tanyajacob1 Welcome to the Fam. In a chat with Hindustan Times, Tanuj said, I am going to be turning 37 soon, so it just felt like the right time. We also dont want to settle at 45 or something. My parents, especially my mother, have been wanting this to happen for a long time now. Its about meeting the right person at the right time. I am very happy and filled with gratitude. Sometimes when you know, you know. You cant just be practical; you have to make an emotional choice and listen to your heart at times. On being asked if it was a grand proposal, Tanuj said it was an intimate ceremony. There was no grand proposal or anything. Its just that we go back a really long way, and we have been speaking about it for a long while. She is from Singapore, so because of the distance, we were just trying to work out how things should be going ahead. Earlier this year, she shifted to India and has been living in Mumbai. We gathered with our family and friends on November 17 in Singapore and had a celebration where we exchanged rings, he said. Although the wedding date hasnt been settled, the Bajao actor shares their enthusiasm for progressing to the next stage soon. We havent nailed down any details for the big day yet, but its on the horizon. Were still basking in the engagement moment. As we work out the logistics and consider everything else, you can anticipate an announcement in the near future, he concludes. An unlikely caste war is raging across the United States. Ordinary Americans know nothing about it, and even Indian Americans are mostly ignorant of the forces arrayed against them. In this war, human rights activists have joined forces with Muslim and Sikh organisations to vilify India in general and Hindus in particular. They are succeeding in convincing ordinary Americans that Indian immigrants have brought caste-based discrimination to the United States. Hindus who are active in temple governance may have heard about the labour rights case that was brought against the B.A.P.S. Mandir in Robbinsville, New Jersey. Tech executives in Silicon Valley may have heard of the caste discrimination case that was brought against Cisco Systems. And others may have heard when Seattle became the first city in America to outlaw caste-based discrimination. But few people are aware that these battles are all connected fronts in a larger war that also includes efforts to stigmatise Hindus on American university campuses, promote Dalit rights narratives at Google, embed anti-Hindu propaganda in American school textbooks, and convince Californians that the Hindu faith is fundamentally based on caste repression. At the centre of all of these controversies is the allegation that anti-Dalit discrimination is a fundamental characteristic of the Hindu faith. Muslim and Sikh organisations have taken up the cause of Dalit rights in order to disparage American Hindus, the Hindu faith, and ultimately the entire country of India in the eyes of ordinary Americans and the American media. And despite some recent legal reverses, the Muslim-Sikh-Dalit coalition is winning the larger narrative war. Everywhere in this diaspora culture war, you will find an American Dalit rights organisation called Equality Labs. Supported by its allies in the Indian American Muslim Council and the Sikh Coalition, Equality Labs promotes the idea that American Dalits face serious caste-based discrimination in the United States. They routinely cite a 2016 United Nations Human Rights Council claim that 250 million people worldwide still face appalling and dehumanising discrimination based on castea claim that is sourced to a defunct website that also provided no documentation. And they cite a 2016 survey of Dalit rights activists conducted by Equality Labs itself. No fewer than two-thirds of the Dalits who responded to the Equality Labs survey reported facing caste-based discrimination in their American workplaces. That sounds awful until you read the details. The survey wasnt conducted on a broad-based sample of American Dalits. It was conducted on a self-selected sample of American Dalit rights activists. The suggestion that two-thirds of American Dalits face caste-based discrimination in their workplaces is nonsensical. Few American Dalits are likely to have bosses who have any knowledge of caste whatsoever, or even know what a Dalit is. Certainly, some American Dalits may work in organizations alongside other Indian Americans. But there just arent that many Dalitsor Indiansin America. In India, roughly one-quarter of all people identify as members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. But America has no schedules. The best estimate that can be made, based on data from a 2020 survey conducted by YouGov for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is that only 20,000 to 25,000 Americans identify as Dalit or as members of castes that are scheduled in India. That is a tiny fraction of the Indian-American population of more than 4 million, and an even tinier fraction of the population of the United States as a whole. In short, there are very few American Dalits, and there is no solid evidence that they face discrimination in the United States. According to Equality Labs own survey, 80 per cent of American Dalits hold or are studying for postgraduate qualifications. Whatever the true data, it is clear that Dalits are not a historically disadvantaged group in the United States. So why are American Muslim and Sikh civil society organizations so concerned about potential anti-Dalit discrimination in the United States? The Indian-American diaspora culture war seems to be driven by two forces: hatred of India, and hatred of Hindus. Both of these forces coalesce in Islamist and Khalistani movements in the United States. The organisations that have joined together to fight caste-based discrimination in America are generally aligned with demands for independence for Kashmir and Khalistan. Many of them host free Kashmir and free Khalistan materials on their websites alongside their Dalit rights campaigns. Fighting caste discrimination is, for them, merely a tactic in a wider war. The Muslim-Sikh-Dalit coalition may not succeed in its ultimate geopolitical goals, but it is succeeding in turning American public opinion against Hindusand against India. This is something that should concern all Hindusand all Indians. The most effective way to combat American anti-Hinduism might be for Muslim and Sikh Indians to speak up on behalf of their Hindu compatriots. The diaspora caste war is a war that Indians can win, but only if they stand together against those who would divide them along religious and communal lines. Salvatore Babones is an associate professor at the University of Sydney. His new report, The Weaponization of Caste in America, has just been published by the Indian Century Roundtable. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18s views. Amidst the intricate tapestry of Indian politics, the captivating state of Rajasthan has become a veritable battleground, where the art of strategic manoeuvring and political finesse reign supreme. In the realm of Indian politics, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has earned a reputation for its formidable organisational prowess. With a meticulous approach, the party is currently spearheading a carefully planned campaign that spans from the grassroots level to the grand political stage. One cannot help but be in awe of the intricate roadmap the BJP has created for the upcoming Rajasthan elections as the electoral drama plays out. It is a tapestry woven with threads of meticulous planning, charismatic leadership, and an astute understanding of the electorates pulse. The Congress, along with its ecosystem, has astutely constructed the narrative that the BJPs predicament in Rajasthan stems from internal strife and the marginalisation of former chief minister Vasundhara Raje. The ecosystem also attempted to generate the notion that the partys performance would suffer as a result of the leadership crisis. The preponderance of opinion polls, however, have already refuted this viewpoint. That is why a look into the strength of the BJP with respect to Rajasthan is indeed necessary. A Resilient Organisational Framework The organisational prowess of the BJP stands as the cornerstone of its electoral game plan. In the vast expanse of Rajasthan, the party boasts an extensive web of karyakartas, those dedicated foot soldiers who toil tirelessly at the grassroots level. This network stretches its reach to the farthest and most secluded corners of the state, serving as a formidable backbone for the partys well-oiled campaign machinery. In a remarkable display of strategic prowess, the party has cultivated a robust organisational structure that leaves no stone unturned in its quest to disseminate its message far and wide. This carefully constructed framework guarantees that the partys voice resonates with every single voter, forging an intimate and meaningful bond that fosters a deep sense of personal connection and unwavering engagement. The Modi Factor: Capitalising on Charisma In the ever-evolving realm of politics, it is an unfortunate reality that the captivating allure of personalities often eclipses the crucial importance of policies. In this intricate dance of power and influence, the spotlight is frequently fixated on the individuals who occupy the stage, while the substance of their proposed measures and initiatives fades into the background. This phenomenon, though not entirely surprising, raises pertinent questions. In a shrewd move, the BJP appears to have astutely recognised the prevailing circumstances and is now strategically positioning itself to leverage the immense popularity enjoyed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Through a carefully orchestrated sequence of planned rallies, his charismatic appeal has been unleashed, captivating audiences across the state. In the realm of political figures, Narendra Modi transcends the mere role of a face plastered on campaign posters. He embodies something far more profounda potent symbol of leadership that strikes a chord with an incredibly diverse electorate. The BJP possesses a remarkable knack for harnessing the power of the Modi factor which sets it apart from other political parties. By skillfully tapping into the electorates emotional and aspirational sentiments, the BJP has managed to carve out a distinctive position for itself. Hindutva Appeal Against Growing Community Violence In the ever-evolving landscape of public discourse, the strategic deployment of ideologies emerges as a formidable force that wields significant influence over the shaping of public opinion. The BJP has been employing a focus on Hindutva, effectively tailored to strike a chord with a significant portion of the voting populace. The ideological stance in question, despite its inherent controversies, has undeniably demonstrated its efficacy as a formidable electoral tool throughout history. The BJPs remarkable ability to align itself with the sentiments associated with Hindutva adds a fascinating layer of intricacy to the electoral equation, potentially influencing the dynamics of voting in its favour. The partys strategic playbook, while undoubtedly effective, has not been without its fair share of controversy. One crucial element of its electoral strategy revolves around highlighting concerns regarding communal violence within the state. In a skillful manner, it constructs a narrative that draws connections between these incidents and the perceived appeasement politics of the Ashok Gehlot government towards a particular community. In a move that carries significant implications, political actors have adopted a tactic that serves a dual purpose. On one hand, it aims to consolidate the Hindu vote base, while on the other, it intentionally fuels polarisation among the electorate. Anti-Incumbency Dynamics: The Historical Advantage The political pendulum of Rajasthan swings to the rhythm of anti-incumbency, a phenomenon that has defined the states electoral landscape since the 1990s. This deep-rooted trend presents an opportune moment for the BJP, as the electorates yearning for change aligns perfectly with the partys aspirations to reclaim power. After five years of the Congress rule, a palpable sense of discontent pervades the air, paving the way for the BJPs narrative of renewal and transformation. The party astutely positions itself as the antidote to the perceived stagnation that has set in under the current dispensation. This strategy of embracing change resonates with the electorates desire for a fresh start, a sentiment that often intensifies as the tenure of a single party extends. The BJPs electoral playbook is carefully crafted to exploit the anti-incumbency advantage. The party relentlessly highlights the perceived shortcomings of the Congress government, focusing on issues such as unemployment, corruption, and administrative apathy. These targeted attacks aim to erode public confidence in the incumbent administration and reinforce the need for a change in leadership. The BJPs strategy is not merely about exploiting the anti-incumbency factor; it also involves presenting a compelling vision for Rajasthans future. The party promises to usher in an era of economic prosperity, social progress, and efficient governance, appealing to the aspirations of a populace seeking a better tomorrow. Whether the BJP can successfully capitalise on the anti-incumbency wave and translate it into an electoral victory remains to be seen. However, the partys strategic manoeuvring and its ability to tap into the electorates desire for change has undoubtedly placed it in a strong position to challenge the Congress government in the upcoming elections. Capitalising on Internal Dissent Masters of political strategy, the BJP demonstrates a shrewd ability to capitalise on internal dissent within the Congress party. The forthcoming elections in Rajasthan provide a fertile ground for the BJP to amplify the recent criticisms levied by Congress dissident Sachin Pilot against Chief Minister Gehlot. Pilots vocal stance, especially regarding issues of corruption and the reluctance of the Gehlot government to take on corruption that allegedly took place during the previous BJP government, becomes a strategic tool for the BJP to sow seeds of discord within the Congress ranks. By highlighting internal dissent, the BJP aims not only to weaken the unity of its primary political opponent but also to present itself as a party that remains united and cohesive. This calculated move transcends the immediate electoral context, positioning the BJP strategically in the larger political narrative. The emphasis on internal discord within the Congress serves to create an image of disarray and lack of leadership, contrasting it with the BJPs portrayal of stability and unity. In this intricate political dance, the BJP skillfully transforms internal dissent within the Opposition into a tactical advantage, further strengthening its position as a formidable force in the upcoming elections. Governance Matters: Accountability and Allegations The BJPs narrative seamlessly transcends ideological battles, delving into the realm of governance with a focused objective. Its sights are set on holding the Gehlot government accountable, specifically in matters of law and order, particularly concerning crimes against women. This narrative aligns with the broader image the BJP wishes to projectthat of a party deeply committed to the welfare and safety of its citizens. Beyond rhetoric, the party strategically addresses issues of public concern, positioning itself as a stalwart defender of citizen rights. Adding depth to the narrative is the alleged red diary swirling with rumours of corruption and purportedly in the possession of the dismissed Rajasthan minister Rajendra Gudha. While the veracity of these allegations remains uncertain, they undeniably contribute to the larger picture the BJP paints of itself as a party dedicated to transparency and ethical governance. The alleged improprieties, whether proven or not, serve as talking points that resonate with the broader theme of the partys commitment to upholding the principles of good governance and fostering a political environment founded on integrity. As the BJP deftly manoeuvres through the intricate web of Rajasthan politics, its strategic emphasis on Hindutva emerges as a meticulously calculated move to mould public sentiment. Navigating the nuanced currents of ideology, the party capitalises on historical affiliations and emotional resonances to sway the political landscape in its favour. However, the controversial facets of its approach, notably the nuanced connection drawn between communal violence and perceived appeasement politics, introduce intricate layers of complexity onto the political chessboard. In the relentless pursuit of electoral dominance, the BJP engages in a high-stakes game of ideological chess, deploying calculated gambits aimed at polarising the electorate. The controversies surrounding this strategic approach highlight the inherent tensions embedded within the political landscape. The unfolding drama in Rajasthan holds the key to unravelling the efficacy of these manoeuvres, providing valuable insights into the delicate interplay between ideology, controversy, and the ever-shifting dynamics of the electoral arena. The author, a columnist and research scholar, teaches journalism at St. Xaviers College (autonomous), Kolkata. He tweets at @sayantan_gh. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18s views. As the Winter Session of Parliament inches closer, all eyes are on the future of Mahua Moitra. The ethics committee report recommending Moitras disqualification as MP and further investigation into allegations of compromising national security by sharing her Parliament account log-in has been shared with the Speaker. Sources say the Speaker is unlikely to delay and will go by the committees suggestions. But there could be more trouble in store. Sources say Moitras former close friend Jai Anant Dehadrai whom she now refers to as a jilted ex has written to the Chief Justice of India, complaining about advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan putting pressure on him to withdraw the complaint against the Trinamool Congress leader. Sankaranarayanan was Moitras counsel in the defamation suit she has filed against Dehadrai, accusing him of maligning her image. In court, Dehadrai had said Sankaranarayanan should not be on the case as he had spoken with him regarding the matter. Sankaranarayanan had responded that as Dehadrai had briefed him in the past, he had reached out with his clients consent to see if a settlement was possible. Since there was an objection now, Sankaranarayanan said he did not wish to proceed and had withdrawn from the case. But, sources say, the complaint to the CJI mentions that not only had Sankaranarayanan pressured Dehadrai to withdraw the complaints against Moitra but had also dragged in the CJIs name. Meanwhile, sources close to Sankaranarayanan vehemently denied any pressure and said it was routine to reach out to settle matters. A public spat between Supreme Court lawyer Dehadrai and Moitra hit headlines last month, with the former partners sparring over who gets the custody of their dog, a three-year-old Rottweiler Henry. Henry is with Moitra at present. The tussle between the two took a turn for the worse when BJP MP Nishikant Dubey said he received a letter from Dehadrai, claiming that the lawyer had shared irrefutable evidence that Moitra had taken bribes in the form of cash and gifts from business tycoon Darshan Hiranandani to ask questions in Parliament. The Enforcement Directorate has attached immovable assets and equity shares worth Rs 752 crore as part of its ongoing money laundering investigation against the Congress-promoted National Herald newspaper and companies linked to it. The immovable assets that have been attached include the National Heralds office premises at ITO in Delhi, the Nehru Bhawan at Mall Avenue near Kaiserbagh in Lucknow and the Herald House in Mumbai, sources said. The Congress has called the action taken on Tuesday (November 21) as petty vendetta tactics and dubbed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) a coalition partner of the BJP which, it claimed, is staring at certain defeat in the assembly polls. What has the ED said about its latest action? The ED has alleged that the shareholders and donors of the Congress were cheated by the office-bearers of Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) and the party. A provisional attachment order has been issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against AJL and Young Indian (YI). Under the law, such a provisional order has to be approved by the adjudicating authority of PMLA in six months following which the ED can take possession of the attached properties. Investigation revealed that Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) is in possession of proceeds of crime in the form of immovable properties spread across many cities of India such as Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow to the tune of Rs 661.69 crore and Young Indian (YI) is in possession of proceeds of crime to the tune of Rs. 90.21 crore in the form of investment in equity shares of AJL, the ED said. The National Herald is published by AJL and owned by Young Indian Pvt Ltd. Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are majority shareholders of YI, holding 38 percent shares each. What is the case? The money laundering case stems from a court order metropolitan magistrate of Delhi that took cognisance of a private complaint against alleged irregularities in the National Heralds affairs on June 26, 2014. The court had held that seven accused persons and entities, including YI, prima facie committed offences of criminal breach of trust under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, dishonest misappropriation of property and criminal conspiracy. The ED has said: The accused persons hatched a criminal conspiracy to acquire properties worth hundreds of crores of AJL through a special purpose vehicle Young Indian. AJL was given land on concessional rates in various cities of India for the purpose of publishing newspapers. It further alleged that AJL closed its publishing operations in 2008 and started using the properties for commercial purposes. It said AJL had to repay a loan of Rs 90.21 crore to the All India Congress Committee (AICC), but the party treated it as non-recoverable and sold it for Rs 50 lakh to a newly incorporated company, Young Indian, without any source of income to pay even Rs 50 lakh. After purchasing the loan of Rs 90.21 crore from the AICC, YI demanded either repayment of loan or allotment of equity shares of AJL to it. The ED said AJL held an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) and passed a resolution to increase share capital and issue fresh shares worth Rs 90.21 crore to YI. With this fresh allotment of shares, shareholding of more than 1,000 shareholders was reduced to a mere 1 percent and AJL became a subsidiary company of YI. YI also took control over properties of AJL, it added. Who all have been questioned? The Gandhis, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and party leader Pawan Bansal, Karnataka deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar and his MP brother DK Suresh were questioned and their statements recorded last year. According to sources, they may be called again for questioning before the ED files a chargesheet. When was the case filed? BJP leader Subramanian Swamy filed the case against the Gandhis in 2012, accusing them of misusing party funds to purchase a company that published the National Herald newspaper. On November 1, 2012, Swamy filed a private complaint in a Delhi court, alleging that the Gandhis committed fraud and land grabbing worth thousands of crores. He alleged that they fraudulently acquired properties of Associated Journals Ltd (AJL) in Delhi, UP, and other places worth Rs 1,600 crore through the private company Young Indian, which they owned. But, when did it all really start? It all began with the acquisition of shares of AJL on January 26, 2011. The AJL was incorporated as a public limited company on November 20, 1937, under the Indian Companies Act, 1913 for the purpose of publication of newspapers in different languages. It started publishing newspapers such as National Herald in English, which was founded by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1938. The company also published two other dailies, Qaumi Awaz in Urdu and Navjeevan in Hindi, in addition to the National Herald. A brainchild of Nehru, AJL was never his personal property. But, it was an unlisted public company with 5,000 freedom fighters as shareholders. Apart from Nehru, AJL stalwarts such as Purushottam Das Tandon, Acharya Narendra Dev, Kailash Nath Katju, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Krishna Dutt Paliwal, and Govind Ballabh Pant signed the Memorandum of Association. The real estate value of AJL is estimated to be Rs 5,000 crore. It has properties in New Delhi, Lucknow, Bhopal, Mumbai, Indore, Patna and Panchkula, as well as the Herald House in New Delhi, which is a six-story building with approximately 10,000 sq m of office space. AJL began reporting losses and, in April 2008, it formally ceased printing and publishing newspapers, including the National Herald. The properties were allotted for carrying out newspaper business and publication of newspapers in different languages. However, it was also allowed to let out these properties on rent to cater to its publication business. The office of AJL was moved from Lucknow on September 1, 2010, to its Delhi property situated at 5A, Herald House, Bahadurshah Zafar Marg. Amid this chain of events, the AICC had advanced loans to AJL from time to time. (With PTI inputs) Amidst the recent developments surrounding the firing and subsequent reinstatement of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI, the company has made its new Chat with Voice feature available for free to all ChatGPT users. This means that even if a user is not a paying ChatGPT Plus subscriber, they will still be able to use OpenAIs new ChatGPT feature, which allows for full-fledged conversations with the chatbot. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the company announced that ChatGPT with voice is now available to all free users. Download the app on your phone and tap the headphones icon to start a conversation. ChatGPT with voice is now available to all free users. Download the app on your phone and tap the headphones icon to start a conversation.Sound on pic.twitter.com/c5sCFDAWU6 OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 21, 2023 In the process, the demo shared by OpenAI playfully addresses the current situation at the company and states, Its been a long night for the team, and were hungry. How many 16-inch pizzas should I order for 778 people? ChatGPT then provides a detailed response, noting it would require 195 16-inch pizzas if 778 employees each consume three slices. Notably, OpenAI has an employee base of similar proportions, and the majority among them were the very individuals who threatened to walk out of OpenAI if the board did not rehire Sam Altman. News18 Tech had the opportunity to test the feature using the ChatGPT app on iOS. The feature feels responsive; ChatGPTs responses sound as if they are coming from a real person, and the entire experience feels like a next-generation voice assistant. The AI assistant can now respond to you, take pauses, making the entire process more convenient and natural. With that said, Sam Altman has returned to his position as CEO of OpenAI, after a series of bizarre developments that included Microsoft extending an offer for Altman and his team to join its new AI division, OpenAIs hiring of a new interim CEOEmmett Shear (former CEO of Twitch), and an alleged mass walkout of employees if OpenAIs board failed to hire Altman back. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon are among the most valuable brands in the world. Not only do they continue to dominate the tech space, but overall, these brands have consistently ranked as some of the most influential and powerful ones globally, occupying the top spots. As per Interbrands Best Global Brands 2023 list, these brands still hold the top positions. Lets take a look at the top tech brands with the most brand value and growth. Interbrands Best Global Tech Brands of 2023: Apple The iPhone maker holds the top spot as the brand with the most value, and it has experienced a 4% growth compared to last year. It makes aspirational products, tools that help creatives and is among the most profitable in the tech space. Microsoft The company behind Windows and the iconic Office suite takes the second spot in the overall Best Global Brands 2023 rankings. The rank has remained unchanged since last year, but it has seen steady growth at a rate of 14%. Amazon The e-commerce giant, known for producing some of the most innovative tech such as the Alexa-powered Echo lineup and Kindle E-reader, occupies the third rank. Google If any company has made our lives easier than ever, its Google. Not only does it provide the most useful online tools, but its advances in artificial intelligence and the Google Pixel phones are noteworthy. It experienced a growth of 3% and remains fourth on the list. Samsung The iconic South Korean brand behind the Galaxy lineup of smartphones occupies the fifth spot on Interbrands list, representing one of the few Asian brands in the top ranks. Cisco While this brand may not be as glamorous or popular as some of the others, it plays a significant role in facilitating much of what happens in and around internet connectivity. Cisco holds the 15th spot on the list. Instagram This social media platform is widely used by the youth, thanks to the proliferation of Reels and its overall user-friendly interface. Instagram also remains the top choice for people to document their lives by posting pictures, stories, and more. It was acquired by Meta for just $1 billion and stands as one of the most iconic acquisitions of all time, holding the 16th spot. Adobe Its suite of tools for creative professionals, including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and After Effects, are among the most used software in the world. The maker of these tools occupies the 17th spot on Interbrands list. IBM Ranking as the 18th best global brand, IBM remains one of the key cloud service and cognitive solutions companies globally, witnessing a 2% growth. Oracle Occupying the 19th spot on the list, Oracle has a brand value of $34,622 million. Primarily working in the domain of cloud technology and computing infrastructure. How many candles are too many on a birthday cake? Well, just ask President Joe Biden, who took the cake game to a whole new level by lighting up 81 candles on his birthday. A snapshot of the celebration surfaced on social media, featuring the commander-in-chief at the White House, surrounded by the warm glow of those 81 flickering flames. The sight not only sparked a blazing memefest but also left people scratching their heads, wondering, Wheres the cake in this sea of candles? Desis joined the conversation with relatable laughs. One user joked, Man so old you have to light a hawan instead of candles to celebrate the years. Another chimed in, asking, Is that a Birthday cake or a Hawan Kund? A third user humourously pondered, Will never know whether it was icing on the cake or the candle wax. Man so old you have to light a hawan instead of candles to celebrate the years pic.twitter.com/cXmMeVvzAF (@gali_galisimsim) November 21, 2023 Is that a Birthday cake or a Hawan Kund ? pic.twitter.com/gmgIjgaUzR Yo Yo Funny Singh (@moronhumor) November 21, 2023 But the meme fest didnt stop there; users worldwide added their own flair. One user on the micro-blogging site X joked, Joe Bidens cake has so many candles on it that it nearly burned down the White House. Another shared a gif from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air with Will Smiths character setting a pan on fire, saying, Cant get over Bidens birthday cake photo. Also Read: Kid Dresses Up As Joe Biden For Halloween And Internet Has So Much To Say A third quipped, Joe Biden got an Olympic torch birthday cake, while others teased, Biden is so old his birthday cake looks like a bonfire. Even the oldest sitting president in US history joined in, trying to beat the ageist narrative with self-deprecating quips. Turns out on your 146th birthday, you run out of space for candles! Biden joked on his Instagram account. He also used the image for his first-ever post on Threads, saying, I turned 81 and all I got was a new social platform. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Joe Biden (@joebiden) But the comedy didnt end there. In his latest gaffe, President Biden referred to Taylor Swift as Britney Spears during the White Houses annual Thanksgiving ceremony. Also Read: How an Indian Account Dedicated to Cricket Has More Twitter Impressions Than President Joe Biden Pardoning two turkeys, Liberty and Bell, he remarked, You could say its even harder than getting a ticket to the Renaissance tour or, or Britneys tour. Shes down, its kind of warm in Brazil right now. In the last few years, there has been a significant rise in cybercrime cases across the country. From cases of data breaches to people losing lakhs to fraudsters, thousands of cases are reported every year in India. In the latest one from the national capital, a man while trying to get a refund from Uber fell victim to a similar incident and ended up losing lakhs of rupees. According to the Times of India report, the man identified as Pradeep Chowdhary lost around Rs 5 lakhs to a scam after he called Uber customer care to seek a refund. However, the customer care number was fake. It was planted by the scammer, who took advantage and managed to lure in the money. How a Delhi man was trapped while seeking a refund from Uber: A resident of Delhis Safdarjung enclave, Pradeep Chowdhary booked an Uber cab to Gurgaon where his fare showed Rs 205. However, he was later charged around 318 after the trip was completed. Immediately acting upon the additional charge, Chowdhary called the customer care number that he obtained from Google. As mentioned in the FIR, the call intended for Uber customer care was redirected to a different number and then to Rakesh Mishra on another number. Upon contacting, Chowdhary was asked to download the Rust Desk app from the Google Play Store. Next, he was asked to open the Paytm app and message rfnd 112 for the refund. The victim however did question customer care for seeking his number for which it was explained that it was for account verification. As a result of the following instructions, initially Rs 83,760 was transferred to an account belonging to Atul Kumar, followed by four more transactions of Rs four lakhs, Rs 20,012, Rs 49,101, and others. While three transactions were made through PayTM, one was done via PB Bank. Notably, a case has been registered in the matter under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code and section 66D of the Information Technology Act. Meanwhile, in another fraud reported from Navi Mumbai, a 31-year-old doctor also fell victim to a fraudulent scheme and lost Rs 1 lakh after making an order of Rs 300 on an e-commerce platform. The woman received an unexpected call from an individual, acting to be a representative of the company, asking her to follow certain instructions to fulfill her order. However, this led to a major financial loss for the woman as she ended up losing Rs 95,000 and Rs 5,000 in two separate transactions. US President Joe Biden has expressed relief that some hostages taken when Hamas militants stormed into Israel on October 7 will soon go free under a deal brokered with help from across the Middle East. I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented, Biden said in a statement released by the White House. The US President thanked Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar and President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt for their critical partnership in reaching this deal. And I appreciate Prime Minister Netanyahus commitment in supporting an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out, he added. I welcome the deal to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas during its brutal assault against Israel on October 7th.Im gratified that these brave souls, who have endured an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented. President Biden (@POTUS) November 22, 2023 This comes after a near-all-night meeting where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that accepting a deal for the release of hostages taken in the Hamas attacks of October 7 was a difficult decision but its a right decision. Israel, Hamas Agree on 4-Day Ceasefire and Release of 50 Hostages: Key Points The Israeli government is committed to bringing all the abductees home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, under which at least 50 abductees women and children will be released over a span of four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting, the statement said. The release of every ten additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite, it added. Pause to begin in the next 24 hours On Wednesday, Qatar confirmed that Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement on a four-day humanitarian pause, to begin in the next 24 hours. The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension, Qatars Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Qatar has been engaged in weeks of intense, behind-the-scenes negotiations aimed at freeing some of the 240 hostages held in Gaza. Qatar said the deal had been undertaken with Egypt and the US as well as Hamas and Israel and would include the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs. Israel-Hamas War: Secret Negotiations That Led to The Gaza Hostages Deal The truce begins and then every day within the four days we will have a number of hostages coming out and that number should reach 50 by day four, Qatars foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari was quoted as saying by AFP. If by then the Palestinians can commit to an additional number, then the truce can be extended, Ansari said. The temporary cessation of hostilities would not come into effect immediately and would need some time to be prepared on the ground, he said. Under the deal there are no military prisoners among those to be released, he said, indicating that was an area where trust would have to be built if talks were to move forward. The number of hostages agreed for release by the militants is by far the largest since Hamas gunmen stormed over Gazas militarised border on October 7, seizing the hostages and killing 1,200 people. In response, Israel has launched a relentless bombing campaign and subsequent ground invasion in Hamas-ruled Gaza, killing more than 11,000 people, according to the territorys health ministry. (With agency inputs) The BRICS group of nations Tuesday called for an immediate and sustained humanitarian truce in Gaza during an extraordinary summit where chair South Africa accused Israel of war crimes and genocide in the Palestinian territory. Pretoria hosted a virtual meeting of BRICS a group of major emerging economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa aimed at drawing up a common response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. We called for an immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities, the group said in a summary of the meeting. We reiterated our strong support for regional and international efforts aimed at achieving an immediate cessation of hostilities, ensuring the protection of civilians and the provision of humanitarian aid. Fighting has raged in Gaza after Hamas gunmen killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during cross-border raids on October 7 the deadliest attack in Israels history. In retaliation, Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas. According to Hamas, the war has killed more than 13,300 people, thousands of them children. The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide, said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. On Tuesday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said a truce agreement with Israel was in sight, with mediator Qatar adding negotiations to free hostages seized by the Palestinian Islamist group were at their closest point to a deal. Leaders and representatives of BRICS said a long-term diplomatic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was needed to ensure peace, with Chinese President Xi Jinping calling for an international peace conference to achieve that goal. There can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine, Xi said, speaking through an interpreter. Barbaric acts China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinians and supportive of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it has this year sought to play a greater role in the Middle East, facilitating a historic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran and sending an envoy to the region to push for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. BRICS, an acronym for its member countries, sees itself as a counterweight to the US and Western-led global order. Describing Hamass attacks and hostage taking as barbaric acts Brazils President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said they did not justify the use of indiscriminate and disproportionate force against civilians. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has accused the West of stoking tensions in the Middle East and criticised Israel for its conduct in the conflict, said a long-term and sustainable ceasefire was key to prevent other states from being drawn into the war. Two state solution The concerns of the Palestinian people must be addressed in a serious and sustainable manner, this can only happen with the two-state solution that is based on peaceful coexistence, said Indias foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Representatives from Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates countries that are all due to join BRICS in January 2024 were also invited to the talks. South Africa has long been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party often linking it to its own struggle against apartheid. Earlier this month, it recalled all its diplomats from Israel and last week it joined four other nations in calling for an International Criminal Court investigation into the conflict. On Monday, Israels foreign ministry said it had also recalled its ambassador to Pretoria for consultations. The summit came as a delegation of foreign ministers of the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan hold talks this week on the conflict. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to take part in the virtual G20 leaders summit hosted by India on Wednesday. Trudeaus participation was confirmed through the public schedule of the Canadian Prime Minister. The summit will be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who announced it during the closing session of the New Delhi G20 Summit on September 10. 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 participation of world leaders, including Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been confirmed. Trudeaus attendance at the virtual summit is notable as the India-Canada has deteriorated since September when the Canadian PM alleged the involvement of a foreign agent in the killing of Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. India strongly denied the allegations and asked Canada to furnish proof. New Delhi has also asked Ottawa to curb Khalistani elements in the country and ensure security for the Indian diplomatic missions. Something rare and rather exceptional This Virtual Summit will be the second time PM Modi will be hosting the leaders of the G20 within a span of just over two and a half months. This is something very rare and rather exceptional. No other presidency has had a physical meeting of all the leaders and then a virtual meeting, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said during a special press briefing on Tuesday. The Virtual Summit of the G20 will also be a major gathering of world leaders since the conclusion of the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly High-Level Week and the SDG Summit. It will be held from 5:30 pm onwards under the chairmanship of PM Modi. When asked about Trudeaus participation during the Tuesday presser, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra said India expects a large majority of leaders to participate in the discussions as has been the case even in the Summit in September, where a very high-quality participation from the world leaders at the physical Summit. We dont expect tomorrows Summit to be any different in so far as that is concerned, he added. Throughout its G20 presidency, Kant said India has worked to ensure that the concerns of the Global South receive due cognizance. Weve also seen the inclusion of the African Union as a permanent member of G20. Since our successful hosting of the G20 Leaders Summit on 9th and 10th September and the unanimous adoption of the New Delhi Leaders Declaration, the world has actually witnessed a succession of events and several new challenges have emerged, he added. In the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the war, Israel and Hamas announced a deal on Wednesday allowing at least 50 hostages and scores of Palestinian prisoners to be freed while offering a four-day truce after weeks of all-out war in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus cabinet approved the truce accord after weeks of Qatar-brokered negotiations. The cabinets sign-off was one of the last stumbling blocks after what one US official described as five extremely excruciating weeks of talks. Hamas released a statement welcoming the humanitarian truce and said it would also see 150 Palestinians released from Israeli jails. The resistance is committed to the truce as long as the occupation honours it, a Hamas official told AFP. Israel Netanyahus office said the Government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza. Earlier, PM Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that accepting a deal for the release of hostages taken in the Hamas attacks of October 7 was a difficult decision but its the right decision. Statement by the government of Israel:The Government of Israel is obligated to return home all of the hostages. Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 22, 2023 United States US President Joe Biden has expressed relief that some hostages taken when Hamas militants stormed into Israel on October 7 will soon go free under a deal brokered with help from across the Middle East. I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented, Biden said in a statement released by the White House. He thanked Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar and President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt for their critical partnership in reaching this deal. And I appreciate Prime Minister Netanyahus commitment in supporting an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out, he added. I welcome the deal to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas during its brutal assault against Israel on October 7th.Im gratified that these brave souls, who have endured an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented. President Biden (@POTUS) November 22, 2023 EU EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she has ordered her European Commission to step up aid deliveries to Gaza following the announcement of a four-day pause in the conflict under a hostage-release deal. The European Commission will do its utmost to use this pause for a humanitarian surge to Gaza, she said in a statement, adding that I wholeheartedly welcome the agreement. I wholeheartedly welcome the agreement reached on the release of the 50 hostages and on a pause in hostilities.My full statement Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) November 22, 2023 UK Britain welcomed a truce deal between Israel and Hamas as a crucial step towards providing relief to the families of the hostages and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. This agreement is a crucial step towards providing relief to the families of the hostages and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in a statement. France France welcomed the Israel-Hamas truce deal, hailing the work of Qatar in securing the agreement and saying it hoped that French nationals would be among the hostages released. We hope that there are French among the hostages that Hamas will free, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on France Inter radio, adding we hope so and were working hard toward it. China China welcomed a truce deal between Israel and Hamas, after they reached an agreement on a four-day humanitarian pause in exchange for the release of 50 hostages in Gaza. We welcome the temporary ceasefire agreement reached by relevant parties, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing. Beijing hopes that it will help ease the plight of the humanitarian crisis, de-escalate the conflict and ease tensions, Mao said. (With agency inputs) India has resumed the e-visa services for Canadian nationals, sources said on Wednesday ahead of Justin Trudeaus participation in the Virtual G20 Leaders Summit. This renewed service includes the issuance of entry visas, business visas, medical visas, and conference visas. This development comes as Trudeau is set to take part in the India-hosted meet which was confirmed through the public schedule of the Canadian Prime Minister. His virtual presence at the G20 meeting and the resumption of e-visa services for Canadians could mean that the two countries are heading for detente. Wednesdays summit will be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who announced it during the closing session of the New Delhi G20 Summit on September 10. 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 participation of world leaders, including Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been confirmed. India-Canada spat Trudeaus attendance at the virtual summit is notable as the India-Canada has deteriorated in September when the Canadian PM alleged the involvement of a foreign agent in the killing of Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. India strongly denied the allegations and asked Canada to furnish proof. New Delhi has also asked Ottawa to curb Khalistani elements in the country and ensure security for the Indian diplomatic missions. In September, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced the temporary suspension of visas to Canadian citizens in view of security threats faced by its high commission and consulates in Canada. Earlier this month, New Delhi had eased some of the visa curbs on Canadians. Israel and Hamas on Wednesday announced that they have agreed to a four-day truce that would see the Palestinian group release dozens of hostages taken on October 7. The deal includes the release of at least 50 hostages held in Gaza, over the period of four days. Tonight, the Government has approved the outline of the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostages women and children will be released over four days, during which a pause in the fighting will be held, the Prime Ministers Office said in a statement. The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause, it added. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus cabinet approved the accord after a key meeting, in which he told reticent ministers this was a difficult decision but its a right decision. For every 10 additional hostages released, there would be an extra day of truce. The truce, which was welcomed by Hamas, offers Gaza residents the prospect of a much-desired pause after nearly seven weeks of total war. Statement by the government of Israel:The Government of Israel is obligated to return home all of the hostages. Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 22, 2023 Here are the top updates regarding the deal: The four-day truce reached by Hamas and Israel should allow the release of at least 50 of the roughly 240 hostages, who were kidnapped on October 7. Sources from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group, had earlier told AFP the truce would include a complete ceasefire on the ground and a pause in Israeli air operations over southern Gaza. Media reports ahead of the vote said Israel would free some 150 Palestinian prisoners and allow additional humanitarian aid into Gaza as part of the deal, but the Israeli statement made no mention of either of these elements Three Americans, including a child, will be among the first hostages released by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip when an agreed four-day truce with Israel takes effect, a senior US official said Tuesday. Hostage releases will begin roughly 24 hours after the deal is approved by all parties, according to a White House official cited by The Associated Press. Ahead of the Cabinet vote, which came after a six-hour meeting stretching into the early morning, Netanyahu said the war against Hamas would resume after the truce expires. Despite his tough words, the government statement said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. Israel said it will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza. Hamas claims the deal was agreed for the freeing of hostages held by the group in Gaza in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinians from Israeli jails. (With agency inputs) Israeli Cabinet has approved a ceasefire with Hamas that includes the release of some 50 hostages held by militants, according to an official statement released on Wednesday. This comes after a near-all-night meeting where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that accepting a deal for the release of hostages taken in the Hamas attacks of October 7 was a difficult decision but its a right decision. The Israeli government is committed to bringing all the abductees home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, under which at least 50 abductees women and children will be released over a span of four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting, the statement said. The release of every ten additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite, it added. Statement by the government of Israel:The Government of Israel is obligated to return home all of the hostages. Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 22, 2023 Hamas has welcomed a humanitarian truce approved by Israel that provides for the freeing of hostages held by the group in Gaza in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. The provisions of this agreement were formulated according to the vision of the resistance and its determinants that aim to serve our people and enhance their steadfastness in the face of aggression, a Hamas statement said. Notably, the statement does not offer details regarding possible concessions Israel is believed to have made, including the release of Palestinian prisoners and the entry of additional fuel and aid into Gaza. Before the vote on the deal, Netanyahu told his cabinet on Tuesday that US President Joe Biden had helped improve the framework being laid out before you to include more hostages at a lower price. The entire security establishment fully supports it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this evening, at the start of the Government meeting:While this meeting is to discuss the return of our hostages, I would like to start with something that should be self-evident: We are at war and will continue the war. pic.twitter.com/YaICV89yEU Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 21, 2023 I listened to their plight The hostages families have demanded that Israel should insist on the return of all those being held, and the Religious Zionist party, which is part of Netanyahus coalition government, has voiced opposition to the deal, denouncing it as bad for Israels security, for the hostages and soldiers. Yesterday evening, I met, together with the members of the War Cabinet, members of the hostages families. I listened closely to their plight. With shaking voices, sometimes in tears, they described the nightmare they are in, Netanyahus office said in a statement. Multiple news agencies said the tentative agreement would include a five-day truce, comprised of a complete ceasefire on the ground and an end to Israeli air operations over Gaza, except in the north, where they would only halt for six hours daily. Under the deal, between 50 and 100 Israeli and dual-national civilians would be released in exchange for some 300 Palestinian women and children currently held in Israeli jails. It will allow the IDF to prepare for a continuation of the fight the war is ongoing, and it will continue until we achieve all of our objectives: destroying Hamas and bringing back all the hostages, Netanyahu said. The war erupted on October 7 when Hamas militants burst across the border into Israel, killing at least 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage. Most of the dead were civilians, while the hostages included small children, women and older people. Israel responded with weeks of blistering airstrikes on Gaza, followed by a ground invasion that began over three weeks ago. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The invasion has caused vast destruction in northern Gaza and caused a humanitarian crisis. (With agency inputs) Raising concerns about the worsening humanitarian situation in war-torn Gaza, Iran President Ebrahim Raisi on Tuesday asked the members of BRICS countries to cut off ties with Israel in the wake of its continued military campaign to eliminate Hamas. During his address at the BRICS virtual meeting on West Asia, Raisi said the issue of Gaza, is the issue of humanity and justice. The Zionist regime and its supporters have not only violated humanity, ethics and rights, but they are also trying to deceive the public opinion of the world by suppressing valid information and spreading disinformation, he added. On Tuesday, South Africa hosted a virtual meeting of BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa aimed at drawing up a common response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. The summit came as a delegation of foreign ministers of the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan hold talks this week on the conflict. Fighting has raged in Gaza after Hamas gunmen killed around 1,200 people, during cross-border raids on October 7 the deadliest attack in Israels history. In retaliation, Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, in which over 12,000 Palestinians have died. The Iranian President said, Lets not forget that the root of war lies in the continuation of occupation. Contrary to Israels propaganda distortion, legitimate defence is not their barbaric action, but legitimate defence according to international conventions of defence against occupation, he added. Gaza is a symbol of Wests moral decline At the extraordinary meeting of BRICS leaders, Raisi alleged the Zionist regime, with the green light and full support of America, has declared war against the people under occupation and has set a record in registering war crimes. Today, the West has been disgraced and the falsity of Western values and slogans has been revealed. Gaza is a symbol of the moral decline of the West, he said. His scathing remarks came as the BRICS group of nations Tuesday called for an immediate and sustained humanitarian truce in Gaza during an extraordinary summit where chair South Africa accused Israel of war crimes and genocide in the Palestinian territory. We called for an immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities, the group said in a summary of the meeting. We reiterated our strong support for regional and international efforts aimed at achieving an immediate cessation of hostilities, ensuring the protection of civilians and the provision of humanitarian aid. (With agency inputs) North Korea said Wednesday it had succeeded in putting a military spy satellite into orbit, with state media claiming leader Kim Jong Un was already reviewing images of US military bases in Guam sent by Pyongyangs new eye in the sky. Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have slammed the sanctions-busting launch, Pyongyangs third attempt this year to put a satellite into orbit, and the first since Kim met President Vladimir Putin at a Russian cosmodrome in September. After failed attempts in May and August, the official Korean Central News Agency reported that a rocket had blasted off late Tuesday and accurately put the reconnaissance satellite Malligyong-1 on its orbit. Images in state media showed Kim watching the launch, then smiling and waving, surrounded by white-uniformed scientists and engineers celebrating the satellites purported success. The satellite will formally start its reconnaissance mission from December 1 after finishing 7 to 10 days fine-tuning process, KCNA said, adding that it was already transmitting images. Kim watched the aerospace photos of Anderson Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other major military bases of the U.S. forces taken in the sky above Guam in the Pacific, which were received at 9:21 a.m. on Nov. 22, according to KCNA. Eyes and fist Washington said the launch was a brazen violation of successive rounds of UN resolutions barring the North from tests of ballistic technology used in both missiles and satellite launch rockets. In response, Seoul on Wednesday partially suspended a 2018 military deal with the North, saying it would resume surveillance operations along their border. South Koreas military said the purported spy satellite was assessed to have entered orbit, from comprehensive analysis of flight track information and various circumstances. But it added that determining whether the satellite is actually operating will take time. Speaking at Pyongyangs space launch centre, leader Kim claimed the development meant the North now has both eyes overlooking a very long distance and a strong fist beating a very long distance, in a possible reference to the countrys banned intercontinental ballistic missiles, which it claims could hit the US mainland. Kim stressed once again that it is necessary to operate many more reconnaissance satellites to both increase the countrys military strike means as well as for self-defence. China, Pyongyangs longtime treaty ally and main economic benefactor, did not condemn the launch but said the situation was complex and sensitive, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a briefing. All parties concerned should remain calm and restrained, look squarely at the crux of the problem, adhere to the general direction of a political settlement, and do more to help ease tensions, she added. Korean space race? Seoul has been saying for weeks that nuclear-armed Pyongyang was in the final stages of preparation for another attempted spy satellite launch. Seouls spy agency this month said Pyongyang appeared to have received technical advice from Russia in return for sending at least 10 shipments of weapons for Moscows war in Ukraine. The Norths May attempt failed due to the abnormal startup of its second-stage engine, Pyongyang state media said at the time, while the August misfire was attributed to an error in the emergency blasting system. Putin suggested in September after his meeting with Kim that his nation could help Pyongyang build satellites. Seoul and Washington have both subsequently accused Pyongyang of shipping weapons to Russia, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning this month that military ties between North Korea and Russia were growing and dangerous. The launch also appears to kick off a space race on the peninsula, experts said, with Seoul planning to launch its first spy satellite via a SpaceX rocket later this month. Kim Jong Un demonstrated his will to have an upper hand in military superiority by attempting to launch the first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit before South Korea, said Lim Eul-chul, associate professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam University. Of course, it appears that there will be differences in the performance of the satellites. Successfully putting a spy satellite into orbit would improve North Koreas intelligence-gathering capabilities, particularly over South Korea, and provide crucial data in any military conflict, experts say. Pakistans interim government Wednesday recommended placing the names of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and 28 others on the Exit Control List (ECL) to prevent them from fleeing the country, citing their alleged involvement in a corruption case. A subcommittee of the federal Cabinet recommended placing the names of Khan, the chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf: party, and 28 others on the ECL in the Al-Qadir Trust case, the Dawn newspaper reported. The case alleges that the ex-premier and his wife, Bushra Bibi, obtained billions of rupees and land worth hundreds of kanals from Bahria Town Ltd for legalising Rs 50 billion that was identified and returned to the country by the UK during the government led by Khan. Khan, 71, was initially arrested in the said case earlier this year from the premises of the Islamabad High Court but was later released after the Supreme Court declared the arrest unlawful. MEMBER States of the Southern African Development Community are united by unbreakable bonds which are historical, cultural and familial, ties that can never be torn asunder by wanton characters, President Mnangagwa has said. Yesterday, SADC Ambassadors and representatives accredited to Zimbabwe encompassing Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Botswana, Tanzania, Malawi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Zambia paid a courtesy call on President Mnangagwa at State House in Harare to congratulate him on his August harmonised elections victory. In his remarks, President Mnangagwa described all SADC member states as one people, united for the common purpose of ensuring peace, stability, socio-economic development and prosperity. The President said Zimbabwe appreciates the continued show of solidarity as well as the unwavering support rendered by the regional bloc. Dating back to the days of our liberation struggle, and indeed since time immemorial, we are collectively united by unbreakable bonds cemented by historical, cultural and family ties. We are one people. This unity, love and common purpose, among our countries, must be nurtured and defended for shared peace and stability as well as the socio-economic development and prosperity of our peoples, he said. On behalf of the Government and people of Zimbabwe, I am pleased to receive you all, in this show of solidarity with us, as brothers and sisters. We value the friendship and unwavering support SADC continues to demonstrate towards Zimbabwe. President Mnangagwa said it was heartening to note that SADC endorsed the credibility of Zimbabwes August polls as free, fair, credible and peaceful. In the same vein, he said, Zimbabweans continue demonstrating political maturity as evidenced by the peaceful environment that characterised the polls. May I thank you, Your Excellency, Ambassador Agostinho da Silva and your esteemed colleagues, for initiating this courtesy call on me, to congratulate the people of Zimbabwe for holding free, fair, credible and peaceful 2023 Harmonised General Elections. Now that the elections are behind us, the people of Zimbabwe continue to maintain peace and exhibit political maturity. The conduct of political contestations under the Second Republic is a clear demonstration of our resilience, unity and peaceful nature, he said. Zimbabwe, said the President, was committed to upholding the rule of law, as well as laid down statutes in the SADC Treaty. Democracy and the rule of law are two of the core principles enshrined in Articles 4 (c) and Article 5 of the SADC Treaty. As a founding member of our august regional bloc, Zimbabwe takes pride in entrenching unity, peace and development as well as deepening constitutionalism, good governance, democracy and the rule of law, he said. President Mnangagwa expressed gratitude for the solidarity shown by the bloc through the continued call for the unequivocal removal of Western imposed sanctions. He however, said Zimbabwe continues to show itself as a dominant force and true sanctions buster. Despite socio-economic adversities brought about by the illegal sanctions, we remain focused, steadfast and determined to grow every sector of our economy, guided by our national development philosophy, Nyika inovakwa, inotongwa, inonamatirwa nevene vayo (A country is built, governed and prayed for by its own people). Allow me to once again thank, most heartily, your respective jurisdictions for the continued calls for the unconditional lifting of the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe. These have been echoed consistently by the various leaders within our region, not only during the SADC Anti-Sanctions Day as recognised annually on October, 25 said President Mnangagwa. The President also commended the diplomats accredited to Zimbabwe for relaying the true Zimbabwean story of peace, tranquillity and unprecedented development, much to the chagrin of Western oppressors. Since the advent of the Second Republic, you as ambassadors, have walked the journey with us and experienced the peace, tranquillity and unprecedented development which we are experiencing as a nation. Being the eyes and ears of your capitals, you have honestly testified to this indisputable fact. We thank you, he said. As the incoming Chair of SADC, President Mnangagwa charged the region to continue standing as a united front, pursuant to the ultimate goal of accelerating regional integration for sustained development. The Head of State and Government said it is equally important for SADC Ambassadors to champion economic diplomacy towards the full realisation of the blocs economic potential. Your visit today shows our determination as SADC to continue standing as a solid bloc, guided by the adage, united we stand, divided we fall. Let us remain firm on our principles of solidarity as we accelerate regional integration for sustainable development for a common future. I call upon you, Ambassadors from SADC, to focus on economic diplomacy towards harnessing the economic potential of our region. Drawing from our respective comparative and competitive advantages, more must be done to deepen cooperation between and among our countries. This must be in the context of our regional industrialisation and integration agenda as well as the African Continental Free Trade Area, he said. Equally important, said President Mnangagwa, is the realisation of all-round food self-sufficiency, increased industrialisation and adoption of technology to make the region a fortified powerhouse. Avenues should be pursued to increase our regions capacity to realise food security and sovereignty. Riding on our rich natural resources, industrialisation must be accelerated, infrastructure connectivity enhanced and our tourism products jointly marketed. Through the effective use of ICTs and our youthful population, innovation must see us produce more goods and services for use by our people. These and other critical areas should be our key focus. We must believe in ourselves, he said. President Mnangagwa congratulated the Kingdom of Eswatini for conducting peaceful polls, while also wishing the DRC and Madagascar peace and tranquillity as they will be holding elections in their respective countries soon. Let me also take this opportunity, Your Excellencies, to congratulate the Kingdom of Eswatini for conducting peaceful elections earlier this year. As you are aware, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar will soon be heading for elections. I wish the two countries peaceful and successful electoral processes, said the Head of State and Government. Herald Members of Congress are calling for a detailed examination of a deal that allows a US Army plant to supply ammunition for AR-15-style weapons, including ammo used in numerous mass shootings, to the commercial market. A New York Times investigation published this month and based on more than 1 million pages of law enforcement records found ammunition from the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant near Kansas City, Mo., which carries a distinctive "LC" marking on the casing, had been used in at least a dozen mass shootings in the US since 2012including the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texasas well as in the murders of police officers. Built during World War II, the plant, which has received $860 million from the Pentagon for improvements over the last 20 years, maintains the ability to produce some 1.6 billion rounds of ammo each year under a contract with the Army. It's "the largest producer of small-arms munitions within the Department of Defense," according to the Kansas City District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. But that's something of a side business. Since the 1990s, the plant has supplied ammo to the commercial market with little public oversight, per the Times. As of 2020, as much as 66% of ammunition produced at the facility entered the commercial market, according to the Times' reporting. It's been seized from violent felons, rioters at the US Capitol, and people who threatened to shoot US politicians, per the Times. On Friday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) wrote to the Army Secretary, noting "federal subsidies may be artificially increasing the availability of ammunition in the civilian marketplace and contributing to serious violence by private citizens," per the Times. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) also flagged "the disturbing use" of the ammunition, adding she would request "a briefing from the Army on how the contracts are issued at this plant." Sen. Elizabeth Warren, meanwhile, called for "meaningful oversight" by Congress, saying "it's unconscionable for the US government to be in the business of making military-grade ammunition to sell to civilians." Only last month, the Kansas City District of the US Army Corps of Engineers quoted a project manager as saying "potentially billions of dollars" could flow into the ammunition plant over the next decade. (Read more ammunition stories.) This file has been updated with information about the victims. Five people are missing after a landslide near the Alaskan city of Wrangell killed a girl and injured a woman, per the AP. No information about either of them was immediately released. The slide, estimated at 450 feet wide, occurred Monday night in the southeastern part of the state after days of heavy rain, the Anchorage Daily News reports. Three homes were "directly in the path of the landslide" down a mountain, Alaska State Troopers said Tuesday. Ground searches are waiting for a geologist to finish assessing the slide, which was along the Zimovia Highway, for safety, per NBC News. Tearing up as he testified, Donald Trump's former corporate controller said Tuesday he "gave up" on his longtime job because he was worn out by the company's legal woes. Jeffrey McConney was on the witness stand for a fourth day in six weeks at the ex-president's civil fraud trial when defense lawyer Jesus Suarez asked why McConney no longer works at the Trump Organization, the AP reports. McConney paused, took off his glasses, raised his hands in the air, wiped his eyes with tissues that were brought to him and started reflecting aloud about his more than 35 years at the company. "I'm very proud of the work that I did," he said, then launched into a recitation of investigations and legal proceedings in which he's been subpoenaed or called to testify. "I just wanted to relax and stop being accused of misrepresenting assets for the company that I loved working for. I'm sorry," he testified, his voice trembling. McConney is among defendants in the trial in which New York Attorney General Letitia James says Trump and executives at his company fraudulently inflated his wealth on his financial statements, which were used to secure loans and insurance. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, has deplored the case as a political attack by James, a Democrat. He contends the documents actually underestimated his net worth. McConney worked at the Trump Organization from 1987 until this past February. He has testified that he retired and is receiving a total of $500,000 in severance payments. His exit came months after he was granted immunity to testify for the prosecution at the Trump Organization's New York criminal tax fraud trial, where he admitted breaking the law to help fellow executives avoid taxes on company-paid perks. The company was convicted and is appealing. At the current civil trial, McConney was called to testify last month by the attorney general's office and again this week by defense lawyers. He has testified about how he and other executives arrived at the asset values that James' office says were wildly high but that he says were legitimate. story continues below He disclosed, for example, that the estimate for the Trump Tower penthouse was increased by $20 million partly because of the value of Trump's celebrity. The triplex also was valued for years at three times its actual sizea discrepancy that McConney attributed to information from a colleague he believed "knew the property a lot better than I did." McConney said he valued Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida as though the property could be sold as a private home, though an agreement with the National Trust for Historic Preservation called for keeping the property a club, a status that yielded tax benefits for Trump. McConney testified Tuesday that he never intended to mislead anyone or to be inaccurate. "To be hit over the head every time with a negative comment over something is just really frustrating, and I gave up," he said, throwing up his hands. (Read more Trump New York fraud trial stories.) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won the approval of his Cabinet early Wednesday for a deal that would exchange prisoners in Israel for hostages in Gaza, the AP reports. In a televised address Tuesday night, Netanyahu had assured his nation that the war against Hamas will go on either way. "Tonight we stand before a difficult decision, but it is the right decision. All security organizations support it fully," he said of the proposal. Israeli officials said the tentative deal calls for Hamas to release 50 women and children, while about 150 Palestinian women and teenagers being held in Israeli prisons would be freed, the New York Times reports. Hamas took about 240 hostages in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. A herd of followers are tracking a moose on the loose in southern Minnesota, hoping the majestic animal's journey ends safely after it was spotted Tuesday 140 miles northwest of Minneapolis. The AP report that fans have been tracking the young male moose since late September and posting updates, photos, and videos of sightings on a Facebook page that has more than 21,000 followers as of this writing. Admirers call the animal "Bullwinkle" or "Rutt," the latter in homage to a scatterbrained moose from the movie Brother Bear. A Minnesota Department of Natural Resources expert told the Minnesota Star Tribune that moose typically only roam in northern Minnesota, making the now-famous moose's visits to south and central Minnesota a rare treat. Todd Froberg, the agency's big-game program coordinator, said the young moose is likely looking for home territory or other moose and is expected to continue moving north. Amateur moose-tracker Brenda Johnson said traffic on the Facebook page, of which she's the administrator, picked up in September when the moose was spotted in Iowa near the border of Minnesota. She suspects Rutt traveled from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa before coming back to Minnesota, based on news reports of moose sightings in South Dakota that match his description. Johnson said she created the Central MN Moose on the Loose Facebook page in 2018 to track another moose whose life tragically ended when it was fatally struck by a semi while crossing a highway. Rutt enthusiasts had been monitoring his fan page for weeks hoping for news that the colossal creature would avoid a similar fate and safely cross Interstate 94 (he did). story continues below Danielle Magnuson began searching for the moose last month as a distraction from stressors in her life. She spent several days a week searching before she finally found him Nov. 13 near Sauk Centre. "It's almost like seeing a unicorn," Magnuson said. "They're just really beautiful animals, and we don't get a chance to see them around our area." Another moose fan who spotted the animal in late October agrees: "This moose has brought so much joy to so many people and so much hope, because most people in their lifetime never get to see a moose." (Read more moose stories.) Critics of the UK's ruling Conservative Party say welfare reforms unveiled Wednesday show why it is nicknamed the "nasty party." Under the new plan, disabled people, including people with mobility or mental health issues, will be instructed to look for work they can do from home or face having their benefits cut by almost $6,000 per year, the Guardian reports. Jeremy Hunt, the country's Treasury chief, said it was "wrong economically and wrong morally" for more than 100,000 people a year with illness or disability to be placed on benefits with no requirement to look for a job, reports the Times of London. Official say they plan to use digital tools to track attendance at interviews and careers fairs. Critics, including charities for people with disabilities, criticized the plan as ill thought-out, noting that the number of work-from-home jobs has dropped sharply since the end of the pandemic. "Everyone should be able to work if they want to and can, but this latest government move looks sets to punish disabled people, adding more anxiety on to disabled households that are already struggling," said Sarah White, the head of policy at disability charity Sense, per the Guardian. Rachel Reeves of the opposition Labour Party accused the government of ignoring the "wider problem" of high rates of long-term illness and long National Health Service waiting lists, reports Sky News. "Britain is the only country in the G7 where the employment rate still has not returned to pre-pandemic levels," she said. Hunt said Wednesday that the British economy has "turned a corner" and the government is bringing in the biggest tax cuts since the 1980s, the AP reports. But despite the cuts, taxation is still on course to reach its highest level since World War II, with more people moving into tax brackets that have been frozen for years. (Read more United Kingdom stories.) A museum in the UK has made the decision to refer to an ancient Roman emperor as "she" and "her," saying evidence shows Elagabalus, who reigned for four years from AD 218-222, was a transgender woman. The council-run North Hertfordshire Museum in Hitchin, which has a silver denarius coin bearing Elagabalus' face, says the decision stems from classical texts indicating the emperor was born a man but identified as a woman, per Art Newspaper . However, there's much debate over whether that's truly the case. The texts come from Cassius Dio, a senator who served the emperor who ascended the throne after Elagabalus' assassination. Some historians say the text might have served to undermine Elagabalus, also known as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. As Cambridge professor of Roman studies Andrew Wallace-Hadrill tells the Telegraph, to accuse a Roman man of feminine behavior was a great insult. Therefore, Dio's claims that Elagabalus asked to be called "lady" and requested that female genitalia be fashioned for him or her could be attempts at character assassination. Transgender was "never seen as a category by the Romans," says Christian Laes, a classicist and ancient historian at the University of Manchester. "But it remains the case that in times of troubles and crisis, so-called transgressors of the sexual norms were subject to scapegoating." Dio painted Elagabalus as sexually promiscuous, claiming the emperor who died at 18 was married four times to women and once to a man, the former slave Hiercoles, per the BBC. During that marriage, Elagabalus was "termed wife, mistress and queen," Dio wrote. There are also references to Elagabalus wearing makeup and wigs. Laes believes "most of this is related to the aristocratic and senatorial disdain for the emperor's oriental origins and beliefs," per the Telegraph. Wallace-Hadrill similarly notes Elagabalus, who hailed from Syria, not Rome, likely faced "racial prejudice." However, Keith Hoskins, a Liberal Democrat member of the North Herts Council, says the evidence shows "Elagabalus most definitely preferred the she pronoun, and as such this is something we reflect when discussing her in contemporary times, as we believe is standard practice elsewhere." Further, "We know that Elagabalus identified as a woman and was explicit about which pronouns to use, which shows that pronouns are not a new thing," he says. There is a lot more to unpack here. (Read more transgender stories.) Kneeland Youngblood, co-founder of private-equity firm Pharos Capital Group, acknowledges a victory in his $900 million lawsuit against one of America's largest oil companies wouldn't change his life. But "for many of my relatives it could be transformative," the Dallas-based investor fighting for recognition of his ancestors' claim to oil-rich land in Texas' Karnes County tells the Wall Street Journal . He claims his formerly enslaved great-great-grandfather, Louis Eckford, bought up 147.5 acres of land in the Eagle Ford shale in 1889and that his descendants still retain a half-stake in the property where ConocoPhillips drills for oil. Another family, the Korths, who've occupied and paid taxes on the land on which they now run a cattle operation for generations, claim they don't own the other half-stake but rather have full ownership. In his suit, Youngblood alleges ConocoPhillips has sided with the Korthswho are also named as defendantsso as to expedite drilling and avoid splitting royalty payments that could amount to millions. The full- or half-share dilemma gets confusing: The Korths, who are white, say Eckford's wife Eliza passed her stake in the property to Fritz Korth as repayment for a $300 loan following her husband's death in 1896; the Korths say a trust deed backs that up. The Eckford descendants aren't so sure, and both sides differ on whether her stake was half or full. The Korths separately claim Fritz Korth in 1939 bought Louis' half, which because he had no will would have passed to his children under state law; but it's unclear whether the children ever knew they owned it. This past summer, a Texas jury decided the families co-own the land, though the Korth family plans to appeal the verdict. story continues below Drilling in the area heated up prior to 2010; the Korth family in 2008 signed a contract with ConocoPhillips "that reflected their shared half interest in the tract," per the Tribune. It wasn't until 2011 when ConocoPhillips started contacting some Eckford descendants to ask about leasing land from them that they learned of their claim to the land, per the Journal. Some Eckford heirs signed leases with ConocoPhillips before the Korths fought for full ownership of the land. Youngblood says he continues to fight what some say is an uphill battle because it could be life-changing for his relatives. He believes that if the case goes to trial, "we can get a lot more [than $900 million]." A law professor tells the Journal that $900 million in damages, unpaid royalties, and punitive penalties, is a lot to ask for so small a plot. But as Youngblood says, "This is about legacy." (Read more lawsuit stories.) Both Israel and Hamas have agreed to a humanitarian ceasefire that will see the release of at least 50 hostages taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the deadliest conflict in history between the two enemies. It's believed hostages will be released in groups of 10 or 12 over four days beginning Thursday. Israel is to release 150 Palestinian prisoners, or three prisoners for each hostage released, Fox News reports. Here's what else we know: Days of 'respite': "At least 50 hostageswomen and childrenwill be released for 4 days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting," Israel's Prime Minister's Office said, per Fox. "The release of every 10 additional hostages will result in an additional day of respite." It is likely more than 50 hostages will be released, a senior US official tells Reuters, "but I just don't want to put a number on it." "At least 50 hostageswomen and childrenwill be released for 4 days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting," Israel's Prime Minister's Office said, per Fox. "The release of every 10 additional hostages will result in an additional day of respite." It is likely more than 50 hostages will be released, a senior US official tells Reuters, "but I just don't want to put a number on it." Americans: Three Americans will be releasedtwo women and a girl, Abigail Mor Idan, who turns 4 on Friday, Reuters reports. Abigail's parents were killed Oct. 7 at the Kfar Aza kibbutz. Abigail's father had the girl in his arms when he was shot, NBC News reports, adding the girl's older brothers survived. Seven other Americans remain unaccounted for. The US military struck two operations centers belonging to Iraqi Hezbollah early Wednesday in response to what it said were attacks on US bases, including the Ain al-Asad Air Base, that have escalated alongside Israel's operations against Hamas in Gaza. "We can confirm an attack last night by Iran-backed militias using a close-range ballistic missile against US and coalition forces at Al-Asad Airbase, which resulted in eight injuries and some minor damage to infrastructure," Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said Wednesday, per the Times of Israel . US fighter jets struck Kataib Hezbollah operations center and a Kataib Hezbollah Command and Control node near Al Anbar and Jurf al Saqr, south of Baghdad, officials tell the AP. The "discrete, precision strikes ... were in direct response to the attacks against US and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups," US Central Command wrote on X. "Five members of Kataeb Hezbollah were killed by aerial bombing in the Jurf al-Sakhar sector," an official in the Iraqi security services told AFP via the Times. The US strike followed another immediate, unplanned retaliatory strike by an AC-130 gunship that was in the air when the Iranian-backed militants fired two short-range ballistic missiles at Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq late Monday evening, per the AP. The gunship was able to locate the origin of the missiles, and fired on several militants who had fled in a vehicle. "Multiple Iranian-backed militiamen in Iraq" were killed in that earlier strike, per the Times. The officials who spoke to the AP said the US is trying to communicate that it does not seek wider conflict but that the Iran-backed attacks against American forces must stop, and that the US will take further action if needed. To date, US bases in Iraq and Syria have been struck 66 times (32 times in Iraq and 34 times in Syria) since Oct. 17, the day a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. (Read more Iraq stories.) It's the day before Thanksgiving, and also the commemoration of another somber day in American history: the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. JFK was fatally shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in a motorcade with wife Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Gov. John Connally, and Connally's wife. Questions from that fateful day remain, as do questionable theories that have popped up since. "As a society, we became addicted to conspiracy theories because of the Kennedy assassination," political scientist Larry Sabato tells Time, which takes a closer look at why that is. More on the anniversary: In pictures: USA Today features photographs of a "shocked nation mourning" after Kennedy's murder, as well as images from the late president's funeral. USA Today features photographs of a "shocked nation mourning" after Kennedy's murder, as well as images from the late president's funeral. What to watch: There's no shortage of specials to mark the 60th anniversary, and TV and film writer Hunter Ingram makes some recommendations to NPR. One pick: a documentary from the "One Day in America" series by National Geographic, which Ingram calls a "really fascinating" look at the events that day in Dallas. Retired Navy Capt. Don Walsh, an explorer who in 1960 was part of a two-man crew that made the first voyage to the deepest part of the oceanto the "snuff-colored ooze" at the bottom of the Pacific's Mariana Trenchhas died. He was 92. Walsh died Nov. 12 at his home in Myrtle Point, Oregon, daughter Elizabeth Walsh said Monday, per the AP . In January 1960, Walsh, then a US Navy lieutenant, and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard were sealed inside a 150-ton, steel-hulled bathyscaphe (a self-propelled submersible used in deep-sea dives) named the Trieste to attempt to dive nearly 7 miles below the surface. The two men descended to 35,800 feet in the Challenger Deep, the deepest point of the Earth's oceans and part of the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles off Guam in the Pacific. After a descent of about five hours, the submersible touched down on what the log described as the "snuff-colored ooze" of silt churned up by the ship reaching the bottom. When they reached the seafloor, the two men shook hands. "I knew we were making history," Walsh told the World newspaper of Coos Bay, Oregon, in 2010. "It was a special day." After spending 20 minutes on the floor and confirming there was life there when a fish swam by, they began their 3 1/2-hour ascent. "We were astounded to find higher marine life forms down there at all," Piccard said before his death in 2008. Piccard designed the ship with his father, and they sold it to the US Navy in 1958. Walsh was temporarily serving in San Diego when Piccard requested volunteers to operate the vehicle. Walsh stepped forward. "There was an opportunity to pioneer," Walsh told the World. "I wasn't sure what I was going to be doing, but I knew I'd be at sea. It wasn't until later they told us what they had in store." Walsh was born Nov. 2, 1931, in Berkeley, California. He joined the Navy at age 17 and graduated from the US Naval Academy. He earned a master's degree and a doctorate in oceanography from Texas A&M. Walsh served in the Navy for 24 years, retiring with the rank of captain and serving on various submarines. He then became a professor at the University of Southern California before opening his own marine consulting business in 1976. In 2010 he received the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award and served on many boards, including as a policy adviser to the US State Department. story continues below Walsh traveled the world, including many trips to Antarctica, where the Walsh Spur pointed rock is named in his honor. His daughter said one of the earliest lessons she and her brother, Kelly, learned from their parents is that the world isn't a scary placea lesson that was reinforced because their parents always came home after their various travels. "Don't be scared of it and go have adventures and learn things and meet people," Elizabeth Walsh recalled her father teaching. "He's certainly instilled an enthusiastic curiosity about the world in Kelly and I, and that's a tremendous gift." In 2020, Kelly Walsh made his own journey to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in a vessel owned and piloted by Dallas explorer Victor Vescovo, who honored Don Walsh online last week. In addition to his children, Walsh is also survived by his wife of 61 years, Joan. (Read more explorer stories.) In what could be a major setback for Tesla, a Florida judge has ruled that a lawsuit over a deadly 2019 crash north of Miami can go to trial with a claim for punitive damages. Judge Reid Scott in the Circuit Court for Palm Beach County said there was "reasonable evidence" showing that Tesla execs including CEO Elon Musk knew that the Autopilot feature was defective, Reuters reports. Jeremy Banner was killed when his Tesla Model 3 collided with a tractor-trailer that was crossing his path on a highway, the Verge reports. The 18-wheeler sheared off the roof of Banner's vehicle. The judge said the accident was "eerily similar" to a 2016 crash that killed another Tesla driver using Autopilot in Florida. "It would be reasonable to conclude that the Defendant Tesla through its CEO and engineers was acutely aware of the problem with the 'Autopilot' failing to detect cross traffic," the judge wrote. The lawsuit filed by Banner's widow accuses Tesla of intentional misconduct and gross negligence, the Guardian reports. When the case goes to trial, tech experts are expected to testify that Tesla's marketing "lulled drivers into a false sense of security," reports Bloomberg. The judge said evidence shows Tesla "engaged in a marketing strategy that painted the products as autonomous" and Musk's public statements "had a significant effect on the belief about the capabilities of the product." A jury cleared Tesla of wrongdoing in an Autopilot lawsuit last month, but more lawsuits over fatal crashes will go to trial in the coming months. The ruling to allow a punitive damages claim in the Florida cases could lead to damages of millions, or even billions, against Tesla. University of South Carolina law professor Bryant Walker Smith tells Reuters that the judge's ruling suggests there were "alarming inconsistencies" between what Tesla knew and what it told the public. "This opinion opens the door for a public trial in which the judge seems inclined to admit a lot of testimony and other evidence that could be pretty awkward for Tesla and its CEO," Walker says. (Read more Tesla stories.) When informed about the situation, they said staff did nothing except change the sheets and offer some wine which was no avail to the couple. Kirk says she filed a complaint to the company on Friday, November 17th however was shocked to know about denying any complaints filed by the company. "I had to pay additional fees for laundry and medication, now that I am home I have to get my clothes professionally dry cleaned". One more passenger came forward complaining about the bed bug bites from the September cruise. Linda Nelson and her sister were on the Fiji cruise when on the second to last day they started having itchy bite marks on their body. "We were both badly bitten by bed bugs. P&O are denying there is a problem, my sister and I can confirm there is a problem." Nelson contacted the company in the hope of receiving some compensation or an apology but received no response. "We would like at least an apology and some refund for the extra costs of fumigating, doctor's visit etc" Nelson said. However, the company has already denied allegations of bed bugs in their cruise ships. "It is a mystery for us too. We have undertaken a comprehensive programme and a thorough investigation but we cannot find any evidence based on this issue," spokesperson from P&O told Newshub. The company has received the complaints and is reaching out to the impacted but is reluctant to disclose any compensation details. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com In a collaborative effort with the Bahrain Diabetes Society and the Rotary Club of Manama, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) Medical University of Bahrain announced the relaunch of its Diabetes Mobile Unit (DMU). The celebratory ceremony, held in the presence of His Excellency Lieutenant General Dr Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Health and President of the Bahrain Diabetes Society, marked a significant step towards reinforcing community partnerships and advancing diabetes education in Bahrain. The ceremony included the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between His Excellency Lieutenant General Dr Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, Ms Renuka Nambiar Ravindran (President of Rotary Club of Manama), and Professor Sameer Otoom (President of RCSI Medical University of Bahrain). Attended by key dignitaries, including Her Excellency Dr Jaleela bint Alsayed Jawad Hasan, Minister of Health, and Her Excellency Dr Diana Abdulkarim Al Jahrami, Secretary General of the Higher Education Council, the event showcased the commitment of these organisations to collaboration and community health. Humanitarian services Expressing his gratitude, HE Lieutenant General Dr Shaikh Mohammed bin Abdulla remarked, I extend my deepest thanks and gratitude to RCSI Medical University of Bahrain and Rotary Club of Manama, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, and Bahrain Diabetes Society, for their efforts and humanitarian services that have contributed significantly towards easing the healthcare challenges in Bahrain, especially in managing individuals with diabetes and obesity. The signed agreement outlines a collaborative effort to promote the DMU program, develop educational materials, coordinate school visits, and train volunteers. The primary objective is to provide diabetes education and support to children and their families in Bahrain. Commitment Professor Sameer Otoom emphasised the Universitys commitment to increasing diabetes awareness and prevention among children, expressing thanks to the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education for their support. The DMU, established in 2012, has educated over 5,400 children in Bahrain, visiting primary schools and using interactive games and activities to teach about diabetes, healthy eating, and the importance of an active lifestyle. Ms Renuka Nambiar Ravindran, President of Rotary Club of Manama, commented, Rotary Club of Manama (RCM) has been promoting diabetes awareness through the Bahrain Diabetes Society for the last 12 years and with RCSI Medical University of Bahrain thereafter. It is a privilege for RCM to have provided the van to be used to support the Diabetes Mobile Unit. We are pleased to continue to support RCSI Medical University of Bahrain and BDS in our endeavor to raise awareness and prevention of type 2 diabetes among school children. During the ceremony, Ms Danah Smith, Lecturer in Nursing and Academic Lead for the Diabetes Mobile Unit (DMU), presented the development of the DMU, its relaunch in 2023, and the unveiling of the new edition of the Diabetes Mobile Unit Story Book titled Learn with us Move with us. This interactive and engaging educational resource aims to provide school students with valuable insights into diabetes. AFP | Baku The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com President Ilham Aliyev yesterday accused France of inciting conflicts in the Caucasus by arming Azerbaijans longtime rival Armenia, with which it has fought two wars. Baku and Yerevan have been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict over Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Baku reclaimed in September after a lightning offensive against Armenian separatists. (France) is pursuing a militaristic policy by arming Armenia, encouraging revanchist forces in Armenia, and laying the groundwork for provoking new wars in our region, Aliyev said in written comments to an international conference in Baku. Canadians can enter to win a pair of dazzling diamonds for themselves and a friend VAUGHAN, ON, Nov. 22, 2023 /CNW/ - Taco Bell Canada, the iconic Mexican-inspired restaurant chain known for its cheesiness, spiciness and most of all, messiness, is unveiling its biggest crown jewel yet four 1-carat diamonds made from taco shells. Lab-grown in a process that took more than 12 months at a top-secret, undisclosed location, the diamonds serve as an ode to the perfectly imperfect nature of tacos. Canadians can enter to win a pair of dazzling taco diamonds for themselves and a friend. (CNW Group/Taco Bell Canada) "Taco Bell is all about celebrating life's messy moments and embracing what it means to be imperfect," said Devon Lawrence, Marketing Director, Taco Bell Canada. "The idea that even something as beautiful as diamonds have imperfections reinforces our brand mantra to Live Mas, and celebrate our authentic, messy and beautiful selves! And what better way to mark the occasion than with friends the people who celebrate you for exactly who you are." To officially unveil the diamonds, Taco Bell is hosting a pop-up event celebrating best friends just in time for the holiday season. On December 1 & 2 at 1153 Queen St. W in Toronto, besties are invited to see the diamonds up-close and enjoy a variety of activities for free, including: Getting matching tote bags Taking cheesy photos at the photobooth with fun props and filters Receiving matching temporary tattoos Getting permanent friendship bracelets That's not allguests will also have the opportunity to try Taco Bell favourites, including Soft Tacos, Crunchwrap Supremes and the return of the fan-favourite Grilled Cheesy Burrito before it is available nationwide on December 4. To prove that like diamonds, friends are forever, Taco Bell will be giving away a pair of matching necklaces featuring the diamonds to two bestie duos across Canada. To enter the contest, Taco Bell lovers simply need to follow Taco Bell Canada on Instagram or TikTok, like the post and tag their bestie in the comments. The contest runs from November 21 to December 8, 2023. The winners will be drawn on December 11, 2023. For more information on Taco Bell Canada and to review the contest rules and regulations, please visit www.tacobell.ca About Taco Bell Canada Taco Bell Corp. ("Taco Bell") is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. and is the nation's leading Mexican-style quick service restaurant chain. Taco Bell serves tacos, burritos, signature quesadillas, nachos, salads and much more. For locations, information on Taco Bell and to chat with Taco Bell fans, visit us online at our website www.tacobell.ca or any of our other social channels including on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tacobellcanada, Twitter @TacoBellCanada, Snapchat TACOBELLCANADA, Instagram @tacobellcanada, or on TikTok @tacobellcanada. SOURCE Taco Bell Canada For further information: Jeene Sulaivany, Edelman, [email protected], 647-245-7646 Give the gift of Tims with a three-pack of Tims Scented Candles (in Apple Fritter, French Vanilla Cappuccino, and Maple scents); a Snowy Timbits Night 500-Piece Puzzle, or the new limited-edition Tim Hortons Winter Blend Fine Grind Coffee and Candy Cane Hot Chocolate Mix . (in Apple Fritter, French Vanilla Cappuccino, and Maple scents); a or the new limited-edition and . Help a loved one add to their Tims collection with new versions of annual Tim Hortons holiday merchandise favourites including the Tims Holiday Snow Globe, Ornament, Ceramic Mug and Stainless Steel Travel Mug. Plus, pick up some Hot Chocolate Ornaments as a fun gift to include with your holiday cards. And don't forget to check out TimShop.ca, featured on the Tims app, for exclusive Tims holiday apparel: Proudly share your love for Tims and the holiday season with the festive and kitschy limited-edition Tim Hortons Holiday Sweater. Complete your outfit with the three-pack of Tim Hortons Holiday Socks . Plus, stay warm with the Always Fresh merino wool blend toque. "Every year, Canadians love browsing our holiday merchandise collection and doing a little shopping during their Tims Runs," said Hope Bagozzi, Chief Marketing Officer at Tim Hortons. "We're excited to be offering some really fun new gift ideas that guests' family, friends and co-workers will love to receive, plus new versions of some familiar classics that Tims fans collect and bring out every holiday season." Tim Hortons holiday merchandise is available at participating Tims restaurants in Canada while supplies last. Availability varies by restaurant. Tim Hortons Winter Blend Coffee and K-Cups, as well as Candy Cane Hot Chocolate Mix are also available at grocery stores across Canada including at Walmart, Sobeys, Loblaws and Giant Tiger stores. About Tim Hortons In 1964, the first Tim Hortons restaurant in Hamilton, Ontario opened its doors and Canadians have been ordering Tim Hortons iconic Original Blend coffee, Double-Double coffees, Donuts and Timbits in the years since. Over almost 60 years, Tim Hortons has captured the hearts and taste buds of Canadians and has become synonymous with serving Canada's favourite coffee. Tim Hortons is Canada's largest restaurant chain operating in the quick service industry with nearly 4,000 restaurants across the country. More than a coffee and bake shop, Tim Hortons is part of the Canadian fabric and guests can enjoy hot and cold specialty beverages including lattes, cappuccinos and espressos, teas and our famous Iced Capps alongside delicious breakfast, sandwiches, wraps, soups and more. Tim Hortons has more than 5,700 restaurants in Canada, the United States and around the world. For more information on Tim Hortons visit TimHortons.ca. SOURCE Tim Hortons For further information: [email protected] Deer hunting season has arrived in northwest Wisconsin, and for locals that means spending time outdoors with friends and family trying to kill deer. Some hunters travel long distances to take part in the Wisconsin deer hunting season. But first they need to get the right gear. Hunter Cantwells family owns Tilden Gun in Chippewa Falls. He said October and November are busy times for the store, as patrons prepare for hunting season. Its been a little crazy. It can go from completely dead to nonstop busy really fast, he said. Tilden Gun Address: 12427 98th Ave., Chippewa Falls Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday Information: 715-944-9852 or www.tildengun.com Cantwell said one of the hardest part of the job is keeping up with all the guns and gear that customers seek. Its actually really hard. You never truly can keep up. I get customers bringing stuff in every day that I've never seen before. My dad's never seen some stuff before, he said. It's always a challenge. We just tried to keep all the common calibers and ammo along with good quality brand rifles. The store carries a good selection of handguns, shotguns, rifles and accessories like holsters, flashlights, lasers and red dots, Cantwell said. The store also has a plethora of ammunition currently, he said. We kind of have ammo everywhere right now. We did have a shortage back in 2019 and 2020. So we've been trying to keep up and make sure that we have a good inventory of ammo. Anything from a .22 to a 300 Win Mag or anything like that. So we try to keep everything we can in stock, he said. Cantwell said the best part of his job is meeting interesting people. Were a unique community here, and a lot of these guys come in regularly. You get to know them and their preferences. We talk about hunting or target practice or whatever. Sometimes I forget that not everyone knows guns the way I do. I just grew up with this, he said. But Im here to make everyone comfortable. Jacob Evans arrived in Wisconsin on Friday for opening weekend. He said he drove up from southern Illinois to try and kill a deer. I go out with some buddies each year. We like making the trip up north. Its a big adventure, and we come back in the summer to go fishing. Theres no guarantee of course, you know, when it comes to deer hunting. Ive had years that have been a total bust, but Im hopeful. I hear that the number of hunters is declining each year so maybe that gives me a better chance of getting lucky, Evans said. Ill be here all week for the hunt. According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the state is recognized nationally as one of the country's premier locations for hunting white-tailed deer. Wisconsin has both an abundant herd and a reputation for producing some of the largest bucks in the world. Stephen Anglemyer of Gilman was in the Tilden Gun store Thursday looking at .30-30 rifles. He too was raised around guns and hunting, he said. I just grew up with a .30-30, and I would actually like to buy another new one at some point, he said. Guns are pricey, you know? But I always consider the name brand quality for what Im doing. I mean, last year I went elk hunting and I got a 300 Win Mag I bought brand new, but I knew that the brand was going to shoot straight. For the longer ranges you need the higher quality, he said. Throughout the week of Thanksgiving, Anglemyer hopes to be able to hunt every day despite recent ankle surgery. He said hed be going with high school friends, two brothers, his father and a friend of his wife, Judy, visiting from overseas. Judys friend Sonni P. Mendoza flew all the way from the Philippines to hunt deer this year with the Anglemyer family. This was Mendozas fourth trip to Wisconsin for deer hunting, he said. Hell be in the state hunting until Nov. 30 when he travels to Florida to hunt feral pigs and do some scuba diving. Judy is from the Philippines, Mendoza said. I know her well I told her that I was coming to hunt one year, and she said yes. During his second trip to Wisconsin for hunting, Mendoza said he killed a doe. He and his friends grilled it and it was delicious, Mendoza said. It is great fun. Very good time, Mendoza said. Anglemyers 11-year-old daughter shot and killed her first buck last year. I shot an eight-point buck last fall, Kiera Anglemyer said. We were on my aunt's land because it's right next to our land, it's connected. And we were in the stand sitting there about 10 minutes, and then a buck came through and I got so nervous. So I picked up the gun and I was getting ready to shoot, and then I shot even though my dad told me not to. Kiera said they found a little bit of blood on the ground after shed taken her shot but didnt see the animal anywhere so they went to get her tracking dog. They later went back out and found the deer about 50 yards from where theyd been. I would have been so upset if we hadnt found it, she said. But now we have the rack in dads office. While her husband, kids and Mendoza checked out merchandise at Tilden Gun and shared hunting stories, Judy Anglemyer was busy buying her first gun Thursday. Her license will be one of hundreds of thousands of licenses sold in the state this year. Its very exciting buying my first pistol, she said. TORONTO, Nov. 22, 2023 /CNW/ - The partnership between The Outlaw Ocean Project and Alexa Translations affirms their shared commitment to shaping a better world for generations to come. In the first week of October, The Outlaw Ocean Project published a truly unique investigation that focused on pressing concerns on both land and sea. For the investigation, The Outlaw Ocean Project team were called upon to report from myriad locations around the world, including onboard Chinese squid ships, from a small village in Indonesia, the biggest port in Uruguay, and within mainland China. The Outlaw Ocean Project logo (CNW Group/Alexa Translations) The investigation focused on China because it has by far the largest high-seas fishing fleet and processes much of the world's catch. However, it also looked at Americans who eat vast quantities of seafood and who may also be implicated - not in the least because more than 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported, with much of it either caught by Chinese ships or processed in China before arriving in the U.S. When it came to sharing how the partnership with Alexa Translations aided their work, Ian Ubrina, director and founder of The Outlaw Ocean Project, said, "We would not have been reporting from so many different locations, across geographic and language divides, without the help from the interpreters and translators from Alexa Translations." As a non-profit journalistic organization focused on producing investigative stories, The Outlaw Ocean Project aims to reach a younger and more international audience with its stories. Their goal is to raise awareness and create a sense of urgency about human rights, labor, and environmental abuses that occur at sea. Being among the few organizations that report on such complex issues, they hope to distribute these high-impact stories to as broad and diverse an audience as possible. With the help of the Alexa Translations A.I. platform and their team of expert professional translators, The Outlaw Ocean Project has been able to accurately translate its latest investigation for all the world to see. Consequently, this has empowered it to actualize its plans to expand its reach and shed light on the untold and troubled stories of the oceans. "Alexa Translations is proud and thankful to have the chance to support such a noble cause as The Outlaw Ocean Project," said Gary Kalaci, CEO of Alexa Translations. "As long as The Outlaw Ocean Project continues their mission to investigate and bring to light urgent stories, Alexa Translations will support them by translating these stories to be shared across language barriers." About Alexa Translations: Alexa Translations provides award-winning translation services and artificial intelligence language solutions for the world's largest and most prestigious legal and financial organizations. Since its founding, Alexa Translations has been a trusted partner providing consistent, quality translation services to help clients meet their business goals. Alexa Translations' translators are professional and certified subject matter experts with specific expertise and in-depth industry knowledge. For more information, visit: https://alexatranslations.com/ About The Outlaw Ocean Project: The Outlaw Ocean Project is a non-profit journalism organization solely dedicated to producing investigative stories about lawlessness at sea, and human rights, environment, and labor concerns across the world's oceans. To reach a broader and more diverse audience, it converts its investigative journalism into different narrative forms such as music initiatives, mural art, educational games, and documentary films, among others. Their investigations are distributed globally for free with this type of journalism being rare, expensive, and urgently needed. For more information, visit: https://www.theoutlawocean.com/ To read their latest investigation: https://www.theoutlawocean.com/china SOURCE Alexa Translations For further information: Mark Vecchiarelli, Vice President of Marketing, at [email protected]. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is seeking public input on a project proposed on Wisconsin Highway 29, according to a press release. The proposal seeks to improve safety along the highway by installing a cable guard in the median on Highway 29 from 40th Avenue in Hallie and Lake Hallie to 50th Avenue in Lake Hallie, from County J to 190th Street in Lafayette and from County G in Delmar to 0.45 mile west of County H in Stanley. During construction, which is scheduled for 2024, Highway 29 will remain open. The public is invited to go to the project website, review a presentation and handout and submit comments by email or mail to project staff, the release says. The project website can be found at /wisconsindot.gov/Pages/projects/by-region/nw/wis29cablecc/default.aspx. People can provide comments by Dec. 18 by emailing tyson.pelkofer@dot.wi.gov or submitting them via mail to Wisconsin Department of Transportation, 718 W. Clairemont Ave., Eau Claire, WI 54701, Attn: Tyson Pelkofer. Donate now to Food For The Poors match campaign and support their holistic, transformational approach to poverty reduction. Is it enough to provide for someone physically if their emotional and spiritual needs remain unmet? This is a question that drives the work of Food For The Poor (FFTP), a Christian nonprofit operating in Latin America and the Caribbean that offers a holistic approach to poverty alleviation. As they believe every person is worth caring for and every soul is worth saving, FFTP seeks to nourish hope, dignity, and faith in the lives of the less fortunate. "If all we're doing is feeding people and not telling them about Jesus, then what are we doing?" FFTP founder Ferdinand Mahfood asked. These words are still a guiding light for the organization. Beyond feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, FFTP's mission extends to sharing the message of salvation and fostering profound transformation. What Transformation Truly Looks Like In every area of their work, FFTP seeks to address the multidimensional facets of poverty. Poverty is not solely a lack of material resources; it encompasses vulnerability, powerlessness, isolation, physical suffering, and distorted worldviews. FFTP acknowledges this complexity by empowering the poor with tools, resources, and knowledge. These integrative approaches ultimately lead to sustainable development. In their fight against malnutrition, for example, they combine short-term food aid with nutrition education, agricultural inputs, training, and access to water, ensuring that food security extends from the present to the future. FFTP doesn't stop at addressing material needs. They also delve into the intangible aspects of poverty, such as self-worth, dignity, identity, and self-reliance. True development, as they see it, encompasses spiritual, social, and psychological considerations. And above all else, spiritual transformation is the cornerstone, leading to broader personal, economic, and social change. In a paradigm shift for poverty work, FFTP has intentionally moved from merely building things to building lives. They understand that distorted worldviews can be more crippling than material limitations, and they know that to truly flourish, individuals must break free from the psychological shackles of poverty. In this way, FFTP adopts a participatory approach, working alongside the poor to shift toward more holistic, relationship-based models that prioritize mindset change and overall well-being. A Transformation Case Study Drawing inspiration from biblical principles of empowerment and self-sufficiency (2 Thess. 3:1012), FFTP aims to enhance the capacity of those they help, teaching them to make choices and take control of their lives. FFTP's economic empowerment projects are shining examples of this approach. They engage in initiatives like coffee farming, beekeeping, and bean cultivation. And the impact is profound, as participants transition from surviving to thriving. In Marcala, Honduras, coffee production increased by over 70 percent thanks to FFTP's support. The cooperative also registered trademarks for their products, resulting in increased revenue from coffee and honey sales. These projects not only boost production and income but also lead to higher savings, improved living conditions, and a heightened sense of self-reliance among the beneficiaries. More than providing resources, these programs help individuals and communities shape their futures. Facilitating access to proper inputs, providing technical and business training, and promoting community empowerment are all part of the equation. In some projects, reforestation initiatives ensure environmental sustainability. Working with cooperatives not only helps farmers access better markets but also provides networking opportunities and support for marketing and commercialization. FFTPs evaluation results speak to the efficacy of their initiatives. Bean production and the coffee and honey projects saw a significant increase in production yields and income. Households are reporting greater stability and optimism, and thats because it's not just about economic progressit's about holistic well-being. Be the Transformation This holistic approach embodies a commitment to transforming lives, recognizing that poverty is a complex web of challenges that demands multifaceted solutions. Through their integrated efforts, FFTP is alleviating poverty and restoring faith in the hearts of those they serve. Colossians 1:1520 reminds us how in Christ, all things hold together. In the same way, FFTPs holistic approach fosters peace, hope, and transformation in communities, strengthening the fabric of lives affected by poverty. November 28 is Giving Tuesday, a global movement where we each have the opportunity to transform our communitiesand our worldthrough the power of generosity. If youre interested in supporting the work of Food For The Poor, helping transform and empower those living in poverty, donate today. Together, we can make a difference and be the agents of change that this world so desperately needs. Gunmen reportedly attacked the Adamawa State Police headquarters in the wee hours of Wednesday, sending residents of Yola into panic. The police headquarters is located at the heart of Jimeta community, in Yola North Local Government Area. The Police Public Relations Officer, SP Suleiman Yahaya Nguroje, confirmed the attack to Daily Trust but said things were under control. According to Nguroje, the attack was repelled, but the identities of those behind it was unknown. One source said the attackers were military personnel on a revenge mission following the alleged killing of a military officer by the police. It could not be independently verified if military personnel were involved. However, the paper quoted the police as saying investigations were ongoing to ascertain the cause of the attack and those behind it. A federal capital territory high court has granted bail to Godwin Emefiele, former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in the sum of N300 million. According to the judge, the former CBN governor must produce two sureties in like sum. The sureties must have certificates of occupancy and titles of properties within the Maitama district in Abuja. Emefiele is mandated to deposit all his travel documents with the registrar of the court and must remain within the Abuja Municipal Council. He is expected to remain in Kuje Correctional Centre pending the perfection of his bail conditions. PROCUREMENT FRAUD Emefiele was first granted bail on November 8, after he filed a fundamental human rights suit protesting his detention for 151 days. On November 18, he was arraigned on a six-count charge bordering on procurement fraud. Emefiele was accused of using his position to confer a corrupt advantage on Saadatu Yaro, a staff of CBN, by awarding a contract for the procurement of 43 vehicles worth N1.2 billion between 2018 and 2020. They include 37 Toyota Hilux vehicles at the cost of N854.7 million, one Toyota Avalon at the cost of N99.9 million, one Toyota Landcruiser V8 at the cost of N73.8 million, two Toyota Hilux Shell Specification vehicles at the cost of N44,200,000. He was also alleged to have awarded Yaro a contract for the procurement of two Toyota Landcruiser VXR V8 worth N138 million. Emefiele pleaded not guilty to the amended charge. Thereafter, he was remanded at the Kuje correctional facility pending ruling on his bail application on November 22 (today). Protesters are currently out on the streets of Kano over the judgment which sacked Governor Abba Yusuf. The police are trying hard to disperse the protesters who are chanting: We Want Justice. Last week, an Appeal Court panel had upheld the verdict of the tribunal led by Justice Oluyemi Akintan Osadebay which sacked Yusuf on September 20, 2023. The governors votes were then reduced to 853,939 while those of Nasir Ganuwa, his All Progressives Congress (APC) rival, remained at 890,705. The appellate court subsequently affirmed Gawuna as winner of March 25th, 2023 Governorship poll in Kano. Governor Yusuf had asked his lawyers to file an appeal at the Supreme Court. However, when the Certified True Copies of the judgment was released, page 67 of the document indicated that the tribunals ruling that sacked Governor Yusuf was set aside. In the lead judgment delivered by Justice Moore Aseimo Abraham Adumein, the judge held in one of the concluding paragraphs on Page 68 that I will conclude by stating that the live issues in this appeal are hereby resolved in favour of the 1st respondent and against the appellant. The issue had triggered confusion, with the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) and APC claiming victory. Amid the confusion, some youths stormed the streets, saying there were attempts to rob Governor Yusuf of the mandate freely given to him. Police succeeded in dispersing some of the protesters with teargas but others were adamant. Shehu Sani, a former federal lawmaker, has called for the immediate lifting of the sanctions imposed on Niger Republic by the European Union and the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS. Recall that some military officers led by erstwhile Presidential Guard Commander, General Abdourahamane Tchiani had ousted President Mohamed Bazoum of Niger Republic back in July 2023. And in reaction, ECOWAS and EU placed sanctions against the West African country. However, it appears the sanctions are only inflicting more hardship and making life difficult for the poor people. The ECOWAS and EU sanctions imposed on Niger Republic is affecting the capacity and capabilities of the country to fight terrorism. Sani, who served in the 8th Senate, wrote on X. We are witnessing escalation of terrorist attacks in Nigerias bordering states. These sanctions must be lifted in the interest of the collective security of the West African region. Former Senate President, David Mark has described Senator Abba Moros ascent to the position of minority leader in the Senate as a remarkable achievement. Following the exit of Senator Simon Mwadkwon from Plateau, Moro, who replaced David Mark in the Senate, assumed the role of minority leader on Tuesday. Mark made the remarks in a congratulatory message signed by his Special Advisor, Paul Mumeh. This is a testament to your exceptional leadership skills, unwavering dedication, and the trust and confidence your colleagues have in you. Your elevation to such a crucial position is a testament to the respect and admiration you have earned throughout your distinguished career. Your commitment to public service, tireless advocacy for your constituents, and your ability to bridge divides make you an exemplary choice for the role of Minority Leader. The former Senate President added As the Minority Leader, you will undoubtedly face numerous challenges and responsibilities. Mark described Moro as a worthy successor, saying, I have every confidence that you will excel in your new role as the Minority Leader. The former Senate president implored Abba Moro to keep improving his constituents lives to a substantial degree. Israel has confirmed that it has reached a temporary ceasefire deal with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, in Gaza. The truce marks a major diplomatic breakthrough nearly seven weeks after the start of a conflict that has spiralled into a grave humanitarian crisis in the enclave. A statement from the Israeli government on Wednesday said at least 50 hostages women and children will be released in Gaza over four days. Israel however hinted that the ceasefire could be extended. The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause, the statement said. A Hamas statement said 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and children, held in Israeli jails will also be released as part of the deal. The truce would also allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, the statement said, adding that the start time of the pause in fighting would be announced within the next 24 hours. The deal comes a day after Hamas said it was closing in on a truce with Israel. Hamas is holding 239 hostages in Gaza, including foreign nationals from 26 countries, according to figures from the Israeli military. The abductions happened on October 7, when the militants crept into Israel in a coordinated attack, killing around 1,200 people the largest such attack on Israel since the countrys founding in 1948. In response, Israel vowed to avenge the dark day by annihilating the group. Israel also imposed a blockade on Gaza, cutting off supplies of food, water, medicines and fuel, while launching a relentless air and ground assault. Over 13,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health authorities. Speaking further on the truce deal, the Israeli government said the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and other security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the country from Gaza. Former federal lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani has urged caution in handling the ongoing litigation over the Kano State governorship election. This is even as he alleged that the Court of Appeal CTC judgement in circulation clearly affirmed the victory of the serving Governor. According to him, the Kano matter is a grenade and the pin must be handled with the utmost care. Sani made his views known in a post on his social media platform, X, on Tuesday. The former lawmaker stated that democracy cannot survive when political interests override moral and constitutional obligations to uphold the cause and the tenets of justice. He wrote, Kano: the Court of Appeal CTC judgement in circulation clearly affirmed the victory of the serving Governor. The Kano matter is a grenade and the pin must be handled with the utmost care. Our democracy cannot survive when political interests override our moral and constitutional obligations to uphold the cause and the tenets of justice. Recall that the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja had upheld the decision of the Kano State election petition tribunal, which nullified the victory of Abba Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP. The three-member panel, led by Justice Moore Adumein, declared Nasiru Gawuna of the All Progressives Congress, APC, as the rightful winner of the 18 March governorship election in the State. The Economic Community of West African States Court in Abuja has ruled that the National Broadcasting Commissions use of the Nigerian Broadcasting Code to penalize and fine broadcast stations was an infringement on their right to free speech. The declaration was made on October 23 by the ECOWAS court in a ruling rendered in a lawsuit brought against the Federal Republic of Nigeria by non-governmental organization, Expression Now Human Rights Initiative. The Court found that the Nigerian government failed in its duty to harmonize its domestic laws with its international commitments. The applicant has contested the arbitrary imposition of sanctions, including fines, against broadcast stations, based on the NBC Code. Justice Dupe Atoki, presiding over the court, noted that member states must give due consideration to its alignment with international guarantees and obligations like those under the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights while passing legislation. The applicant, who was represented by Solomon Okedara & Co., specifically contested the claims that Articles 3 (1) (1), 3 (1) 2, 15 (2) (1), and Article 15 (5) (1) of the Amendments to the Nigeria Broadcasting Code (6th Edition) violated the right to free speech. The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights Articles 9(1) and (2) are violated by Article 3(1) (1) of the Code, the court ruled, due to its limitless reach. The Codes Article 3(1)(2) was found to be excessively unclear and vague by the court and it may lead to curtailment of the right to freedom of expression. In addition, the court directed the Nigerian government to stop implementing the provisions until they were in accordance with Article 1 of the ACHPR and to align Articles 3 (1) (1), 3 (1) (2), 15 (2) (1), and Article 15 (5) (1) of the Amendments to the Nigeria Broadcasting Code (6th Edition) with its obligations under that article. According to Justice James Omotoshos May ruling, the court determined that NBC lacked the authority to punish broadcast stations with sanctions because it was not a court of law. Hong Kong: Chris Sun attends SZ conference Secretary for Labour & Welfare Chris Sun today attended the 2nd National Conference on the Development of Human Resources Services and called on Vice Minister of Human Resources & Social Security Yu Jiadong in Shenzhen. At the two-day conference, Mr Sun briefed Minister of Human Resources & Social Security Wang Xiaoping on an array of policy initiatives to attract and retain talent set out in the Policy Address to raise Hong Kongs competitiveness and keep creating a strong impetus for growth. Mr Sun also updated Ms Wang during her tour to the exhibition area of Hong Kong Talent Engage on the achievements of the Greater Bay Area Youth Employment Scheme (GBA YES). He highlighted the collaboration with Guangdong counterparts and the partners from various municipalities. Mr Sun had a lunch meeting with China International Intellectech Group Co Chairman Bu Yulong to exchange views on protecting imported workers employment rights and benefits. The company is one of the enterprises approved by the Mainland's commerce authorities to engage in labour service co-operation with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In the afternoon, Mr Sun and the Hong Kong SAR delegation he was leading, called on Vice Minister of Human Resources & Social Security Yu Jiadong to discuss deepening talent collaboration. Mr Sun then gave a presentation on Hong Kong talent admission policies and the GBA YES to jobseekers and students at the conference's recruitment event for youth talent in the bay area. He also had thorough discussions with provincial and municipal leaders at a forum on the high-quality development of human resources services in the bay area. In addition, the delegation toured two exhibitions to learn more about the development of various industries in the bay area and the country as well as the talent they need. Mr Sun concluded his visit by meeting officials of the Dongguan Human Resources & Social Security Bureau. The delegation returned to Hong Kong in the evening. This story has been published on: 2023-11-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. The University of Nebraska Medical Center and Columbus Community Hospital have signed a master affiliation agreement that will provide enhanced education and training opportunities for UNMC health professions students. It will allow the institutions to work collaboratively when building the health care workforce in the Columbus area and the surrounding region. This latest agreement further enhances UNMCs statewide impact as it works to build the future workforce and deliver health care and health care education throughout Nebraska. It is continuing in its commitment to expand the states rural health workforce in critical areas, said Nicole Carritt, UNMC director of rural initiatives and assistant vice chancellor for health workforce education relations. Columbus Community Hospital has been a great partner, Carritt said. It has gone above and beyond to ensure students have a great learning experience while on their rotations. We are interested in using this agreement as a springboard to even more collaborations. We hope to expand educational programs on the UNMC-Kearney campus and increase the number of health professions students interested in living and providing health care in the states rural areas. Under the new and enhanced agreement, students from programs including allied health, medicine, nursing, pharmacy and public health will have the opportunity to participate in clinical training opportunities at Columbus Community Hospital. Over the years, we have had a great collaborative relationship with UNMC, said Michael T. Hansen, FACHE, president/CEO of Columbus Community Hospital. We thoroughly enjoy the many students we host every year during their rural rotations here at CCH. By signing the Master Affiliation agreements for both clinical and non-clinical students, we streamline the process and ensure that our mutual interests are perfectly aligned. We continue to see severe health care workforce shortages across many disciplines from physicians and nurses to medical lab technicians, pharmacists and many others said Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, chancellor of UNMC. Strong educational experiences in our communities, such as the ones provided at Columbus Community Hospital, are integral in growing the states rural health workforce. We are excited at the possibilities this new agreement opens up. As UNMC works to improve the health of people across Nebraska, partnership and innovation is in the best interest of the student, community and state, Carritt said. With the agreement, we are building on an already impactful partnership, and we thank the leaders and clinicians of Columbus Community Hospital for this continued collaboration. Former President Muhammadu Buhari has disclosed why Nigerians once laughed at him. Opening up on his struggles while in power, Buhari said Nigerians laughed at him because he had no money while trying to become president. Buhari, however, said God saved him through the Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs. He spoke during an interview with the Nigeria Television Authority, NTA in Abuja. Reminiscing on his failed attempt for the presidency: Buhari said: I had no man to blame but myself, i made up my mind to continue trying, people laughed at me because here is a stupid poor man who wanted to relieve Nigeria but has no money to give us, but God saved me by sending technology, the Permanent Voters Cards. This was the attitude of some people, I feel patriotism in the profession I found myself in after leaving secondary school was fantastic. I try to be fair where I find myself I found myself struggling to gain support because Nigerians seem to be impressed more by material success rather than be honoured by the less privileged, were a fantastic initiative. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the investment landscape has undergone a significant transformation, with innovative technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies taking center stage. One such innovation that is gaining momentum is securities tokenization, which promises to revolutionize the way we invest in traditional assets. This article explores the impact of securities tokenization in the post-pandemic investment landscape and how platforms like immediate-enigma.org are paving the way for a more inclusive and efficient investment ecosystem. The Evolution of Securities Tokenization From Traditional to Tokenized: A Paradigm Shift Securities tokenization represents a pivotal shift from the conventional ways of buying and trading assets. Traditionally, when investors wanted to buy shares in a company, they received paper certificates or digital entries in a centralized database. However, the advent of blockchain technology has introduced a new, more efficient way of managing and trading these assets. With securities tokenization, assets like stocks, bonds, and real estate are converted into digital tokens and stored on a blockchain. The Post-Pandemic Investment Landscape Adapting to Uncertainty: A Need for Change The COVID-19 pandemic created economic turbulence and prompted investors to reconsider their portfolios and diversify into alternative assets. As a result, cryptocurrencies and digital assets gained favor as a hedge against traditional market volatility. In this evolving landscape, the emergence of platforms has played a crucial role in facilitating access to tokenized securities. Benefits of Securities Tokenization Efficiency and Accessibility Increased Liquidity: Tokenized securities are highly divisible, allowing for the sale of fractional ownership. This not only enhances liquidity but also broadens access to a more extensive pool of investors. Reduced Intermediaries: Traditional financial markets often involve multiple intermediaries, each adding a layer of complexity and cost. Securities tokenization simplifies the process by eliminating many intermediaries, streamlining transactions, and reducing fees. 24/7 Market Access: Unlike traditional stock markets with set trading hours, tokenized securities can be traded 24/7, allowing investors greater flexibility and global access. Transparency and Security Immutable Ledger: Blockchain technology ensures that every transaction is recorded and cannot be altered. This guarantees transparency and prevents fraud and manipulation. Smart Contracts: Smart contracts, a key feature of blockchain, automate the execution of predefined agreements when specific conditions are met. This eliminates the need for intermediaries and ensures that transactions occur as intended. Enhanced Security: Tokenized assets are stored in a secure and decentralized manner, reducing the risk of hacking and unauthorized access. Revolutionizing the Investment Landscape Empowering Investors on a Global Scale In the post-pandemic investment landscape, a groundbreaking online trading platform has emerged as a leader in the realm of tokenized securities. This innovative platform harnesses the advantages of securities tokenization, providing a means for investors worldwide to access a diverse array of assets efficiently and with enhanced security. A Glimpse into the Platform's Operation Innovating the Way We Invest User-Friendly Interface: This platform offers an intuitively designed interface, catering to both experienced investors and newcomers alike. Navigating the system is seamless and hassle-free. A Spectrum of Tradable Assets: Investors have the opportunity to engage with a broad spectrum of tokenized assets, spanning from traditional stocks and bonds to real estate and even fine art. Security and Transparency: The platform employs blockchain technology, a secure and transparent mechanism that safeguards the integrity of all transactions, ensuring the trust of its users. Advanced Trading Resources: This platform boasts a suite of advanced trading tools and analytical resources, arming investors with the information they need to make well-informed decisions. The Future of Securities Tokenization Expanding Horizons Securities tokenization is not limited to traditional assets; it has the potential to expand into other areas of investment. In the near future, we may see the tokenization of intellectual property, copyrights, and even ownership in startups, democratizing access to previously illiquid assets. This evolution in the investment landscape is driven by the desire for efficiency, inclusivity, and transparency. Challenges and Regulatory Framework Navigating the Path Forward While the benefits of securities tokenization are evident, there are also challenges that must be addressed. Regulatory bodies are actively working to establish a framework for tokenized securities to ensure compliance, protect investors, and mitigate the risk of fraud. It is crucial that these regulations strike a balance between fostering innovation and safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders. Conclusion The New Frontier of Investment Securities tokenization is undoubtedly changing the way we invest, offering greater efficiency, transparency, and accessibility to a broader range of assets. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, this innovative approach to investment has gained significant momentum. Platforms are at the forefront, making it possible for investors around the world to participate in this exciting evolution of the investment landscape. While challenges and regulatory issues persist, the future of securities tokenization looks promising, and it is set to become a significant player in the post-pandemic investment landscape, empowering investors in ways previously unimaginable. The 97th annual Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade will return to its usual 2.5-mile route for the annual holiday tradition in New York City. Here is how you can watch the festivities this year from your couch or the New York City parade route. The 2023 Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade begins at 8:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 23 and runs until approximately noon. The parade will be broadcast at the same time in all U.S. time zones. There will also be a replay of the parade from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. NBC and Telemundo will broadcast the parade. There is also a Macys Live Parade Special on Macys website, featuring behind-the-scenes videos. NBCs streaming service Peacock will livestream the parade starting at 8:30 a.m. You also can watch NBC on other streaming platforms, such as Fubo TV, which offers a free trial and has live TV and DVR functions, so viewers can watch the parade in real-time or on-demand. Today hosts Hoda Kotb, Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker will host for NBC. It begins at West 77th Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. The parade will make its way south along 8th Avenue before turning down 59th Street at Columbus Circle. The remainder of the Thanksgiving Day Parade will travel south down 6th Avenue, ending at Macys Herald Square. The parade will feature seven new balloons, five new floats and dozens of performers and marching bands. One of the new balloons in particular is fan-favorite Beagle Scout Snoopy. According to the Macys parade website, its the ninth version of the longest-running character balloon to appear in the parade. The Deliciously Delectable World of Wonka float will also be making its debut in the parade to promote the new Wonka movie coming out from Warner Brothers Pictures in December 2023. There will be 17 performers, including big names, such as Brandy, Cher, Chicago, Jon Batiste and Pentatonix. There will also be nine marching bands, including New Jerseys own Rutgers University marching band, the Marching Scarlet Knights. The Macys Thanksgiving Parade is not a publicly ticketed event. If there are tickets for prime viewing spots of the parade at Herald Square, they are usually given to friends and family of Macys employees, parade performers and politicians. It is possible, however, to view the parade for free along the 2.5 mile parade route. People usually line up starting at 6 a.m. at Central Park West, which is a prime viewing spot, to watch the parade on Thanksgiving Day. Forecasters from the National Weather Service are calling for mostly sunny skies with a high of 52 degrees and a low of 41 degrees. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Katherine Rodriguez can be reached at krodriguez@njadvancemedia.com. Have a tip? Tell us at nj.com/tips. The Newark City Council on Tuesday approved the creation of a supplemental zoning board of adjustment, an unusual move intended to alleviate a backlog of development applications built up during the citys ongoing real estate boom. Its a good thing, Elnardo Webster, a Newark development lawyer, said of the new boards creation. Im excited. Allison Ladd, the citys deputy mayor for economic and housing development, said 33 applications were pending before the zoning board, with hearings scheduled through March. She said another 40 applications are awaiting scheduling. She said she hoped the new board would be established early next year. Officials say a second board to review applications will cut the backlog and reduce the time developers have to wait for a hearing. In a business where time is money, and costs are passed on to renters and home buyers, Webster said the waiting period could last for months even as financial, weather or other conditions were ripe to break ground. Im glad the mayor listened to the development community, Webster said, referring to the administration of Mayor Ras J. Baraka. The supplemental board was created for one year, and officials said it will not be renewed if the city erases the backlog. If were caught up at that point, this board will be dissolved, Newark Corporation Counsel Kenyatta Stewart told council members, who voted 8-0 to create the new board. Like the citys regular zoning board, the supplemental one will review and approve or reject developers requests to construct projects not typically permitted in their proposed location, a form of special permission known as a use variance. For example, a use variance would be required to build an apartment tower on a block zoned for single-family homes or a factory on land zoned for retail shops. Also like the regular board, the supplemental panel would be made up of seven members and four alternates. Like the regular board, the supplemental one will also weigh appeals of its initial decisions by developers who feel their requests had been improperly denied. It will likewise have nine members, each nominated by one of the nine council members and subject to the full councils approval, Ladd said. The two boards could use the same professional staffers, though Ladd said the city would hire additional staff and lawyers to accommodate the increased caseload. She said the added cost of a second board would be offset by additional fees and other revenues resulting from the greater number of applications reviewed. Newark has experienced a building boom in recent years as skyrocketing rents in Jersey City and other communities closer to New York have prompted apartment hunters and developers to look farther west for living space and investment opportunities. Negative perceptions of the states largest city have eased with the passage of time, reduced crime and the economic growth, according to scientific polling and unscientific surveys. Beyond the ongoing boom, officials anticipate an additional boost in development applications thanks to zoning changes the council approved last month intended to stimulate the development of market-rate and affordable housing and allow a wider variety of projects in some areas. Legislation allowing municipalities to create supplemental boards was approved in 2019, sponsored by state Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), whose district includes parts of Newark. Ladd said she was unaware of any other municipality that had invoked the law but could not say whether Newark was the first. Newark residents who spoke during Tuesdays public hearing on the supplemental board questioned the need for one, fearing it would breed corruption and suggesting the existing board should cut its backlog by meeting more often. You want to create another corrupt committee? resident Felicia Alston-Singleton told the council. Why do you need another zoning board to do backlogs? Put another meeting on. But Ladd said the council had already approved an increase in zoning board meetings from two per month to one nearly every week. And, Ladd said, board members typically have full-time day jobs, with limited time and energy to spend on zoning business. She added that scheduling more meetings for the same board would risk violating state and local laws, setting maximum total payments to board members at $4,980 a year. Newark board members are paid $166 for each regular meeting and $250 for special ones to address backlogs. Nobody knows Jersey better than NJ.com Sign up to get breaking news alerts straight to your inbox. Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com Editors note: A version of this story was posted in 2019. Thanksgiving Dinner may be the most iconic meal in American culture. It also may be the most stressful to prepare. How big should your turkey be? How long should you cook it? How long do you thaw it? What about a brine? And the gravy? And sides? Yikes. Fear not, Bird Day chefs. NJ Advance Media talked to some of the biggest names in New Jersey cuisine to take the guesswork out of preparing your turkey. Ryan DePersio of Battello and The Kitchen Step in Jersey City; Marc Budinich of 15 Fox Place in Jersey City; Gail Salowey, a longtime caterer based out of Northeast New Jersey; and Joshua Bernstein of Mountain Creek Resort in Vernon all weighed in on how to properly cook Thanksgiving Dinner. We asked for their thoughts on an Associated Press guideline for cooking Thanksgiving dinner that has been circulating for years, as well as their general tips and tricks. The Associated Press suggests your turkey should be about 1.5 pounds per person. Do you agree? Budinich: Only thing I would change is two pounds of turkey per guest. Leftovers on Friday are a must. DePersio: 1.5 pounds person is best, everyone craves leftovers! Salowey: I never buy a turkey less than 20 pounds, but thats because I like massive leftovers and sending people home with food. And that 10 p.m. turkey sandwich on Thanksgiving night is the best sandwich of the year. How about thawing a frozen turkey in the fridge? Does 24 hours per four to five pounds of turkey sound right to you? DePersio: I recommend running the water over it the fastest way to thaw it. Salowey: Of course a fresh turkey is the most desirable. With that being said, its very important to make sure your frozen turkey is completely thawed before the big day. Especially if you want to wet or dry brine it. It must be completely thawed before brining. The AP warns against brining a turkey for more than 10 hours. Is that good advice? Salowey: When I have wet-brined my turkey, I have always done it for 24 to 36 hours. No problem. If the brine recipe is accurate, it will be delicious. Use a recipe from a reputable chef, cook or blog, not some random website that you have Googled. Also, if wet-brining, take the turkey out the brine the night before. Its a messy process that takes some time and cleaning up. The turkey will brown better if the skin has a chance to dry out overnight. If you dont have the correct vessel or enough space, dry brining is excellent. The salt, sugar and spices will tenderize and flavor the meat and keep it moist. How long should you cook your turkey? The AP recommended cooking at 425 degrees, with a 15-pound turkey cooking for between four and four-and a half hours and a 20-pound turkey cooking between five and six hours. DePersio: I will go with the low and slow cooking approach. Avoid high temperatures, they could dry the turkey out even if its a short period of time. If you want to get fancy, slide slivers of truffle butter in between skin and breast. Salowey: Im a big fan of the low and slow. I heat the oven to 450 then turn it down to 325 as soon as I put the turkey in. Then follow the directions that come with your particular turkey. If youre not filling the cavities with stuffing, make sure you put some onions and herbs inside to further enhance the flavors. And if you dont feel like trussing the whole turkey, at least tie the legs together to keep it all snug. And dont forget to season the outside. The simplest way is to rub it with butter or an oil of your choice, then season it aggressively with salt and any other herbs and spices of your choice. Throw a couple of sliced onions, a few carrots and some celery around the base of the bird to flavor the pan juices. Basting is good but dont do it too often. The opening and closing of the oven will add time to the overall cook time. How long should you rest your turkey once its cooked? Twenty minutes? Salowey: Twenty minutes is the minimum amount of time, especially is its a large bird. Go for at least 30 minutes. But heres the thing, the turkey can sit out for an hour, tented with foil, and still be hot. Any advice for sides or leftovers? Bernstein: Think four to one, four people to one pound for each side. I try to usually have two starch sides and two to three vegetable sides for my guests. Dont forget that stuffing should count as a starch side. And stuffing should never be cooked inside the turkey. It is dangerous! DePersio: Make sure you keep the bones and carcass and make turkey soup the next day with leftover vegetables that you roast with the turkey. Add barley to make it more like a stew. Salowey: I use this time (when the turkey is resting) to not only make the gravy from all the delicious pan juices, but also to cook and reheat the sides because my oven no longer has a big bird in it. The gravy is important here. It needs to be served really hot to go on the meat that has been sliced and sitting on the serving platter. My solution is a gravy vessel with a little candle under it. As long as the gravy is hot, all the food that has been sitting out and waiting for guests to dig in to, will be warmed up by that hot gravy. Also, keep the rest of the gravy in a saucepan on the stove, at a gentle simmer, to refill the serving vessel. Thanks, Mom. With these tips and tricks from our New Jersey food experts, youre guaranteed to have a delicious and delightful Thanksgiving. Enjoy your turkey, your sides... and youre tryptophan-induced nap. Happy Bird Day! Looking for more New Jersey food coverage? Subscribe to the free Jersey Eats newsletter here! Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Jeremy Schneider may be reached at jschneider@njadvancemedia.com and followed on Twitter at @J_Schneider and on Instagram at @JeremyIsHungryAgain. Coast Guard crews rescued a boater more than a week after his family lost contact with him following his departure from New Jersey in a sailboat bound for Bermuda. The man left Jersey City for the more than 600 mile trip, but his family reported they lost contact with him on Nov. 6, according to the Coast Guard. He was considered overdue at his destination as of Nov. 14, officials said. Operators of the sailing vessel Time Bandit heard an alert about the missing craft and encountered a boat adrift with tattered sails and a missing boom that matched its description last week, the Coast Guard said. The good Samaritans made contact with the occupant of the other boat, but the Coast Guard warned against a boat-to-boat transfer because of ocean conditions. The crew of the Cape May-based Coast Guard cutter Lawrence Lawson arrived at the scene, about 270 miles off Hatteras, North Carolina, on Nov. 15 and rescued the man from his disabled boat. He was taken in stable condition to the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, where he was reunited with his family, officials said. In announcing the rescue, an Coast Guard official stressed the importance of mariners carrying emergency beacons. We are pleased that this case resulted in a family reunion, said Commander Wes Geyer The search area for this case was nearly twice the size of Texas and the seas are very unforgiving. We urge all mariners venturing offshore to carry a properly registered Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB). This device can help pinpoint your exact location should the unthinkable ever happen. Coast Guard airplane and helicopter crews based in North Carolina and Massachusetts assisted in the search and rescue effort. Coast Guard crews rescued a mariner from his adrift vessel more than a week after his family lost contact with him following his departure from New Jersey.(U.S. Coast Guard) Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. A 29-year-old man who authorities say inappropriately touched two Rutgers University students Monday night in New Brunswick has been charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact. Crystal Jay Ecot grabbed (the women) in an intimate area while running past them, the Rutgers University Police Department said. The first woman was accosted on campus at 11:20 p.m. on College Avenue between Seminary Place and Hamilton Street, authorities said. The second incident happened about 25 minutes later just off campus near Hamilton Street and Easton Avenue, the RUPD said. Ecot, of Hillsborough, was arrested Monday, the Middlesex County Prosecutors Office said. He is neither a student nor an employee of the university. Attorney information wasnt available Wednesday. Earlier this month, a 32-year-old New Brunswick man was charged with three counts of criminal sexual contact following similar incidents on or near the College Avenue campus. Anyone with information is asked to call New Brunswick police Detective Sean Freeman at 732-745-5217, Detective Richard McNulty of the Rutgers University Police Department at 848-932-1889 or Detective Stephanie Redline of the Middlesex County Prosecutors Office Special Victims Unit at 732-745-3316. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. A Monmouth County school district abolished its policy on transgender students last week, joining other New Jersey districts in controversially revising or dropping their policies. The Freehold Township Board of Education voted 6-3 on Nov. 14 to rescind the districts policy. The now-abolished policy outlined that the district shall accept a students asserted gender identity; parental consent is not required. It also said a student did not need to meet any threshold diagnosis or treatment requirements to have their gender identity recognized by district officials and staff members, nor were parents required to be notified about a students change in gender identity or expression. In an email to NJ Advance Media, school board president Michelle Lambert confirmed the vote but did not specify why it was abolished. Each board member voted for various reasons, she said. In a letter sent to families the day after the vote, district schools Superintendent Neal Dickstein said a great deal of misinformation was circulating in the district about the policy, but did not cite specific examples. The absence of any policy or regulation does not remove the responsibility that we as educators have to make decisions based upon what is in the best interest of each and every student in our care, he wrote. The abolished policy does not translate to the forced outing of children as it is being interpreted by some, he said. District officials will review internal procedures the next several weeks to support transgender students, Dickstein also said in the letter. Other New Jersey school districts have also made changes to their policies regarding transgender students. In Union Township in Hunterdon County, the school board had a first reading of a motion to abolish the districts policy on transgender students at Mondays meeting. The second reading will take place in December, said board president Lou Palma. At least five other districts in New Jersey have also recently dropped their policies on transgender students. The changes come as state Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Sundeep Iyer, the director of the state Division on Civil Rights, are pursuing lawsuits against four school districts that passed policies requiring school staff to notify parents about gender-related requests and changes. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Brianna Kudisch may be reached at bkudisch@njadvancemedia.com. Three New Jersey men were charged in a violent string of late-summer robberies in Passaic County in 2022, authorities announced Wednesday. Kareem Powell, 30, of Willingboro, and two co-defendants, Carlos Diaz, 30, and Edward Porter, 30, both of Paterson, were charged in a superseding indictment with Hobbs Act robbery, officials said. The Hobbs Act prohibits robbery and extortion affecting interstate or foreign commerce that includes violence in furtherance of those crimes. Powell was charged with two counts of Hobbs Act robbery as well as two counts of brandishing a firearm during the robbery, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced in a release. Diaz and Porter were previously charged with three counts each of Hobbs Act robbery and brandishing a firearm in relation to the robbery, Sellinger said. Wednesdays superseding indictment adds an additional Hobbs Act charge for Porter and Diaz. Powell was arrested on Tuesday and detained after his arraignment hearing, the office said. Authorities allege the trio robbed a bodega at gunpoint in Passaic on Aug. 22, 2022, making off with several thousand dollars. Later that night, the group robbed another business at gunpoint in Paterson while menacing customers with handguns and forcing them to lie facedown on the ground during the robbery, the U.S. Attorney said. The next night, Powell, Diaz and Porter are accused of robbing a Passaic liquor store of several thousand dollars, again at gunpoint. Authorities alleged that Porter pistol whipped a victim in the face during the liquor store robbery, and in a later robbery in Paterson the same evening, pushed and wrestled with another victim while trying to steal a handbag. Each count of brandishing a firearm during a crime carries a mandatory minimum sentence of seven years to run consecutively. Attorneys for the defendants count not immediately be reached Wednesday. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matthew Enuco may be reached at Menuco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Matt on X A state grand jury on Tuesday voted not to file charges against the detective who fatally shot a suspect who pointed a fake gun at him during crime spree in Paterson. Paterson Police Detective Victor Loran shot Hui Zhang, 33, of Pensacola, Florida, on October 10, 2022. The crime spree began when Zhangs vehicle struck three other cars near Straight and Van Houten Streets around 4 p.m. He then exited his car and attempted to carjack multiple others while firing what appeared to be a pistol, officials said. Detective Loran was on-duty, but wearing plain clothes and running a personal errand at the time of the incident. He was also not wearing a body camera due to his current assignment, according to the state Attorney Generals office. Loran saw Zhang attempting to remove someone from their car on Van Houten Street and ordered him to drop his weapon. Zhang then ignored the demands and pointed the gun at the detective, investigators said. Loran fired a shot and struck Zhang, who was pronounced dead at 4:23 p.m., authorities said. Zhangs weapon was later tested by State Police ballistics investigators and was determined to be an imitation firearm capable of making realistic gunshot sounds, officials said. The Attorney Generals office previously released four surveillance videos from the surrounding area that captured the encounter. Under a law passed in 2019, the state Attorney Generals office is required to investigate all fatal encounters involving a law enforcement officer and deaths that occur while a person is in police custody. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Nicolas Fernandes may be reached at nfernandes@njadvancemedia.com. Governor Jim Pillen, in accordance with a request from the White House, has announced that all U.S. and Nebraska flags be flown at half-staff to honor former first lady Rosalynn Carter. The order is effective Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023, until sunset, on the day of Carters interment, Wednesday, Nov. 29. Despite state laws that soundly protect a persons right to reproductive choice, New Jersey is actually not an easy place to get an abortion, with limited or no services available in 11 of its 21 counties, according to the first-ever statewide analysis of abortion access. The report, Abortion Needs and Availability in New Jersey, from the New Jersey Family Planning League and the Rutgers School of Public Health, reveals there are 41 brick-and-mortar abortion providers in the state that are easily found through internet searches and advertising. Sign up for Reckons latest weekly newsletter covering the three topics never to be discussed at the dinner table. Enter your email to subscribe to Matter of Faith. A former advisor to President Barack Obama was caught on camera Nov. 21 making Islamaphobic remarks to a muslim street vendor in New York City this week. The video has garnered more than 10 million views after it was posted to X on Tuesday afternoon. The video posted on X shows Stuart Seldowitz, who was a national security advisor to former President Obama, making racist remarks at a halal food vendor in New York City. If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasnt enough. Its not my fault you pray to a criminal, Seldowitz said said to the vendor, who repeatedly asked him to leave because he was working. More than 13,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the United Nations. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamass attacks stands at about 1,200. Seldowitz, who is a three-time winner of the State Departments Superior Honour Award, was also filmed harassing a street vendor in what appeared to be a separate incident, where he was wearing different clothes and it appeared to be a different time of day. Seldowitz worked in the U.S. State Departments Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs from 1999 to 2003 and then served as Acting Director of the National Security Council South Asia Directorate from 2009 to 2011 for the Obama administration. Do you speak Arabic, the language of the Koran? The holy Koran, he also said, appearing to mock the Muslim religious text. Thats why youre selling food in a food cart, because youre ignorant, but you should learn English. Itll help you when they deport you back to Egypt. Meet Stuart Seldowitz, a former advisor to the White House who used to advise Obama on foreign policy. He is a three-time winner of the State Departments Superior Honour Award. pic.twitter.com/DYDUKnhmEw Zara Magnusson (@zaramagnusson) November 21, 2023 Commenters on social media are responding to the videos of Seldowitz comparing his harassing language to U.S. government support of Israel in the war. This is the Former Obama national security advisor, Stuart Seldowitz. When these are the people shaping US foreign policy then it makes sense why the US has the blood of Muslims in their hands. They are proud of their hatred for islam and their crimes against the Muslim world, said X user @Abo_Mradd. This harassment comes at a moment of unprecedented rising Islamophobic sentiment among Americans in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said reports of anti-Muslim harassment have increased 216%. CAIR received more than 1,200 reports of anti-Muslim incidents from Oct. 7 to Nov. 4, which the organization said represents a 216% increase in reports compared to last year. In the last six weeks, Muslim American victims of violent hate crimes have made national headlines, including a 6-year-old Palestinian stabbed 36 times and killed in Chicago, the fatal assault of Talat J. Khan, a Muslim pediatrician in Texas, an Arab Muslim Stanford University student was sent to the hospital after a hit and run on campus and threats to people wearing Palestinian clothing in public. We want to emphasize that these incidents are not occurring in isolation, but theyre actually connected to the ongoing violence in Gaza, said CAIR research and advocacy coordinator Farah Afify in response to the Seldowitz video. When politicians and media networks use and uplift Islamophobic rhetoric in order to justify the ongoing killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza by the Israeli government, that lends itself directly to Islamophobic sentiment and therefore anti-Muslim incidents in the United States. While the violence being reported now represents a deviation, there was still a regular stream of anti-Muslim hate crime in the United States. In 2021, there were over 2,700 anti-Muslim hate crimes reported in the United States. Despite a report earlier this year marking decreased incidents of anti-Muslim hate, CAIR said the more than 200% increase from this year compared to last year is alarming. Afify said anti-Muslim hate is directly connected to American lawmakers who have embraced Islamophobic rhetoric. On Nov 7, during the Florida legislative session, Florida Rep. Michelle Salzman, who shouted all of them in response to a rhetorical question from Rep. Angie Nixon (D-Jacksonville) who asked, We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough [to call for a ceasefire]? In the clip, which has racked up 11.9 million views on X, a heckler can be heard shouting, all of them. The woman was later identified as Salzman. This isnt new behavior. In 2021, United States Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) made a joke about Rep. Ilhan Omar being (D-Minnesota) mistaken for a terrorist in a Capitol elevator. Boebert later issued an apology. At the same time, reports of anti-semitic hate in the US are also on the rise. The Anti-Defamation League, an American Jewish advocacy group and one of the oldest anti-hate groups in in America, documented a staggering 832 antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment between Oct. 7, the day Hamas attacked Israel, and Nov. 7, which represents an increase of 316% over the same period last year. The US Justice Dept. has also reportedly been taking notice of the spike in hate crimes against Jewish and Muslim individuals since Oct. 7 and says it is taking measures to protect and assure those communities. In addition to meeting with Jewish leaders about threats to Jewish university students, the department has opened a hate crime investigation in the case of the Muslim child stabbed to death in Chicago. The fallout of Seldowitzs Islamophobic rant Gotham Government Relations, a Manhattan-based lobbying group for which Seldowitz served as the new foreign affairs chain, cut ties with him Tuesday after his remarks went viral that afternoon. Seldowitz told the New York Times Wednesday the conversation started after the vendor told him he supported Hamas. His claims are currently not confirmed and nNone of those statements from the vendor were shown in videos posted online,, and the vendors support for Hamas has not been confirmed, the NYT reported. In an apology shared with City & State New York following the backlash from the videos, Seldowitz said he didnt consider himself an Islamophobic guy. If I had to do it all over again, I would not have raised the religious aspect, he told City & State. Ive spoken up for equal treatment of Muslims on numerous occasions with numerous different people. But you know, in the heat of the moment, I said things that probably I shouldnt have said. Afify said the interaction between Seldowitz and the food vendor is not unique when compared to the reports of anti-Muslim harassment and violence the organization has responded to this year. She said the proliferation of this type of behavior is even more reason for a ceasefire in Gaza. I would emphasize that it is not a unique example, but it is similar to the kinds of anti-Muslim rhetoric incidents that weve seen across the country, Afify said. It speaks to the need for the Biden administration to come out and call for a lasting ceasefire in order to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians abroad and to protect the lives and well being of Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in the United States. November is Indigenous History Month and a critical opportunity to examine the insertion of indigenous and queer history in the archives. This month, we are highlighting the work of indigenous, two-spirit activist Richard LaFortune (Anguksuar). LaFortune is a local Twin Cities Native American artist and activist. He was a founder of the American Indian Gays and Lesbians (AIGL) a group critical to advocacy for indigenous LGBTQ people. Founded in 1987 in Minneapolis, Minn., the mission of AIGL was to celebrate and remember our roles as gay and lesbian people in our traditional indigenous cultures and reclaim the spirituality of our cultures. AIGL and Lafortune focused on providing information by and for LGBTQ indigenous peoples while breaking down the isolation among LGBTQ indigenous people in rural reservation and urban landscapes. Although AIGLs work happened locally in the Twin Cities and throughout greater Minnesota, the work of LaFortune led to the founding of the International Two-Spirit Gathering of North America in 1988. First held in Minnesota, this international gathering was historically integral to indigenous and queer identity formation throughout the continent. It shuffled between the U.S. and Canada, acknowledging the broad indigenous connections throughout North America. The purpose of the gatherings was to bring together LGBT indigenous peoples, their friends, and lovers to share culture, host a powwow, and create a supportive environment for building community. Notably, this gathering was originally called the International Native Lesbian and Gay Gathering and it was not until the third gathering in 1990 that the term two-spirit was coined. This gathering has changed the international landscape and our ways of knowing and understanding queer indigeneity. The term two-spirit, although not representative of all queer indigenous peoples, signifies a different way of knowing and understanding gender outside of western heteronormative culture - a critical moment to celebrate this month. To this day LaFortune is still active at the intersection of indigenous and queer communities, focused on public health and native language revitalization advocacy. His work over the past nearly forty years, continually reminds us of the critical intersection between indigenous and queer communities and the ways that indigenous ways of knowing are critical to understanding LGBTQ identities. From the Queer Archives is a monthly post dedicated to LGBTQ history by culling queer and trans history from archival materials across the United States. Reckon focuses especially in the Midwest, a region where the experiences, contributions, and struggles of queer people and communities have been overlooked in historical narratives. This series is critical in our current political and cultural moment where LGBTQ history, books, and representation are being removed from schools and public libraries. It is through historical visibility that LGBTQ people can understand this moment and themselves as part of a long legacy of queer and trans community-building. Aiden M. Bettine is a trans archivist and historian. He is the curator of the Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota Libraries and the co-founder of Late Night Copies Press, a Minneapolis-based micropress that publishes zines on queer and trans history, libraries, and archives. He specializes in researching and writing about queer and trans history throughout the Midwest. A New Jersey court issued an immediate stay of certification in a local mayoral election in South Jersey Tuesday. A lawsuit filed Monday in Superior Court challenged the validity of a write-in mayoral victory in Penns Grove in Salem County, alleging that the incumbent mayor illegally registered to vote while still on probation. Louis J. Pasquale, the Republican candidate for mayor in Penns Grove, asked the courts to intervene in the anticipated general election victory of Mayor LaDaena Thomas. Pasquale alleges the incumbent mayor illegally registered to vote in 2019 while on probation for a felony from 19 years prior. No frivalous lawsuit, based on a flagrant misrepresentation of the facts will stop me from leading my community, Thomas said in a statement Tuesday night. The voters made it clear they want to continue the momentum. The results from the Nov. 7 general election are scheduled to be certified on Wednesday. The lawsuit also names the Salem County Board of Elections and County Clerk Dale Cross as a party and asks the court to intervene in the final certification of the election based on the allegations against Thomas. The complaint filed Monday alleges Thomas illegally registered to vote in 2019 based on a felony from 2000 to which she pleaded guilty. Thomas pleaded guilty in January 2000 to third-degree theft for obtaining telephone service without paying, according to the complaint. She was sentenced to four years of probation and fines totaling $16,443 in February 2000. In 2004, her probation was extended six years. It is unclear from court records why her probation was extended. According to Pasquales attorney, Samuel D. Jackson, Thomas probationary status remains active and asserts that she still owes more than $10,000 in restitution. Jackson alleges in the complaint that according to state voter registration records, Thomas registered to vote in February 2019 while her probation was still active, therefore violating state law at the time. In December 2019, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a new law opening up voting rights to those on probation and parole, but the law did not take effect until March 2020. We brought this lawsuit on behalf of Lou Pasquale because we learned that LaDaena Thomass voter registration was fraudulent and invalid, since she registered to vote in 2019 while she was still on probation, which was against the law, Jackson said in an email Tuesday afternoon. Without a valid voter registration, Ms. Thomas is legally ineligible to hold office, Jackson added. We are confident that the court will properly enforce the law, just as it did the last time Ms. Thomas was in violation of election law. Besides claiming Thomas registered to vote illegally, the complaint filed on Monday alleges that Thomas should have been disqualified from the election based on her loss in the Democratic primary election earlier in the year under New Jerseys Sore Loser Law. This law keeps candidates from running as independents after losing a primary. The Sore Loser Law is an essential part of the democratic process, because it prevents losing primary candidates from putting their own interests above their partys interests by adding their names to the ballot and splitting their own partys vote in the general election, Jackson said on Sept. 19. Todays decision was a victory for the people of Penns Grove, which upheld the law and strengthened the operation of the party system. But later in September, an appeals court ruled that Thomas could run as a write-in candidate after Pasquale and Democratic mayoral candidate John Washington challenged Thomass ability to be listed on ballots as an independent in the general election. The court upheld their argument that Thomas could not run as an independent, but affirmed that she could run as a write-in candidate. I am thankful to the voters for taking time to write or type my name, a historic and extra step that confirms an extra amount of support for what my team has accomplished, Thomas said in her statement. Im proud to represent a diverse group of people to lead a safe, clean, and affordable community. On Tuesday, Thomas had 197 write-in votes, with a handful of additional votes that appeared to be cast for her but in many cases misspelled her name. Its unclear whether the board of elections will accept those additional votes. Pasquale currently sits in second place, with 191 votes, while Washington received 153. Cross, the Salem County clerk, said as of Tuesday the elections office had not been served with the complaint. Therefore, we are working to certify the general election by November 22, 2023, in accordance with the state timeline, he added. A response to the allegations is expected at a virtual hearing on the allegations scheduled for Dec. 12 at 1:30 p.m. before Judge Benjamin D. Morgan. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Matthew Enuco may be reached at Menuco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Matt on X. The 2023 Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade is airing on Thursday, Nov. 23 at 8:30 a.m. It will air, as always, on NBC, although you can also watch on CBS. You can watch live as it airs on Peacock, Fubo TV (free trial), or DirecTV Stream (free trial). The event will broadcast live from New York City with hosts Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, and Al Roker, who have been hosting together since 2018. This year, New Jerseys own Dylan Dreyer is also expected to host. Heres the information youll need to watch about where you can watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade. What channel does The Thanksgiving Parade air on? The main event for the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade airs on NBC, although you can also watch parts of it on CBS. You can use the channel finder on your providers website to locate either channel: Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, DIRECTV, Dish. When is The Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade 2023 on? The Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade begins on Thursday, Nov. 23 at 8:30 a.m. on NBC. It will air before The 2023 National Dog Show at 12 p.m. The coverage of the parade on CBS will feature anchors Kevin Frazier and Keltie Knight. How to watch The 2023 Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade without cable There is a ton of information about The Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade on Macys official website. The parade broadcast itself, along with other NBC programming, is available with Peacock, Fubo TV (free trial), or DirecTV Stream (free trial). Peacock is the official streaming home of all NBC content, and will begin live-streaming the event at 8:30 a.m. You can watch here. Heres the cast of TODAY taking a look at what you can expect from this years Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade, courtesy of TODAYs official YouTube channel: Related stories about streaming TV services A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving isnt on TV in 2023. Heres where to watch for free anyway The best streaming services for animated TV in 2023 What is Sling TV and how does it work? Price, channels, live streaming info The best streaming services for live TV in 2023: Prices, features, free trials The best VPNs of 2023, according to reviews How to watch Yellowstone, the hottest show on TV right now Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Joseph Rejent covers TV, writing about live television, streaming services and cord-cutting. He can be reached at jrejent@njadvancemedia.com. The mayor used racial slurs in front of the township business administrator. He denigrated female cops to officials in his then all-male police department, whose chief was also caught on tape hurling epithets. When the lieutenant who secretly recorded it all threatened to blow the whistle, the township attorney negotiated a $400,000 hush-money settlement, and the local council approved it few questions asked. Those are just some of the findings of a scathing new report from New Jerseys attorney general in a racism scandal that rocked Clark Township after recordings of Mayor Sal Bonaccorsos bigoted tirades were published by NJ Advance Media last year. Over 43 pages released Monday, state prosecutors painted a bleak picture of the Union County townships government, detailing how a raft of officials expended tremendous public resources to cover up the misconduct of the mayor and police brass. It is unclear how doing so benefited the people of Clark, the report concluded. The findings were disgusting, said residents who harangued a mostly mum township council Monday night. Experts in good government were similarly troubled. The most basic responsibility of public officials is really to follow the law, and when that doesnt happen, the whole community is hurt, said Matthew Boxer, a former state comptroller who now conducts corporate investigations in private practice. You add on top of that the racism its just disgusting in so many ways. State investigators now say everybody in Clark government should have known better, with Attorney General Matthew Platkin calling for the firing of top officers, a review of arrests and traffic stops in Clark, a civil rights inquiry into local hiring practices and potential ethics charges for the towns former lawyer. While they declined to bring criminal charges related to the scandal, authorities separately charged Bonaccorso with using his public office to benefit his private landscaping business. Here are some of the reports highlights and some unanswered questions. Why werent there criminal charges in the cover-up? In the report, prosecutors said they seriously considered charges of official misconduct or insurance fraud in connection with the 2020 settlement, under which the whistleblower, Lt. Antonio Manata, surrendered the recordings he had made and agreed not to file a lawsuit that would have brought them into the public eye. The report cited concerns that with the settlement, municipal officials were more interested in protecting themselves than in fulfilling their obligations to the public. These are not naive ideals or lofty ambitions, but rather the bare minimum expectations communities should have in their leaders, the report said. The leaders in the Clark Police Department, and the township more generally, failed to keep up their end of that bargain. But ultimately, prosecutors said they concluded that because officials were working on the advice of a lawyer the townships former longtime attorney Joseph Triarsi it would be difficult to prove they abused their offices. According to the report, Triarsi urged approval of the agreement, calling it the most economically appropriate resolution to the controversy. But he also acknowledged that had Manatas recordings come to light, those involved would have been done, the report said. Triarsi did not return requests for comment. The townships current attorney, Mark Dugan, who is a member of the same law firm, also did not respond. The report chided Triarsi over his handling of the settlement and said it was referring the matter to the Office of Attorney Ethics, which oversees professional discipline for lawyers in the state. Where was the township council in all of this? The scandal exploded into the public eye in March 2022 when NJ Advance Media published some of the racist recordings and detailed the settlement with Manata, under which he was also allowed to remain on the payroll for two years without working until he was eligible to retire. Since then, Clarks seven-member township council has repeatedly refused to weigh in on the controversy, though all but one of them were in office when the deal was approved. What did they know at the time? According to the report, before the vote, council members were informed behind closed doors that there were recordings of Bonaccorso and Police Chief Pedro Matos using racist language. But they unanimously approved the settlement without reviewing a copy of the agreement or even listening to the audio. The recordings were never played, and the council members were advised that the tapes would not be disclosed, the report said. Only one member asked to hear the recordings, and when Triarsi advised the tapes were unavailable, he abandoned his request. How is the community reacting now? On Monday night, hours after the attorney generals announcement, council members continued to avoid addressing the issue. At a council meeting that Bonaccorso did not attend, board members went over town reports such as updates to the library, upcoming community events and how finances are faring in the town. But when angry residents brought up the allegations during public comment, councilors barely said anything as an audience of about 20 people yelled and criticized Clarks leadership. This is a terrible stain on our community, said resident Mary Semler. The cover-up needs to end. Michael Shulman, an unsuccessful candidate for council last year, said Clark should not have a mayor representing the township who is facing criminal charges. Its disgusting that he took advantage of his position for personal gain on top of being the bigot and racist hes proven to be, Shulman said. Bonaccorso, a Republican, has publicly apologized for the racist recordings but has resisted calls that he resign. He vowed to fight the official misconduct charges he faces for allegedly using town resources, including computers, fax machines and even township employees to benefit his business. Mayor Bonaccorso will vigorously defend this case and will ultimately clear his name and reputation, said a statement released Monday night by his attorney, Robert Stahl. Mayor Bonaccorso has devoted himself to the betterment of all the citizens of Clark for many, many years of public service. On Tuesday, Gov. Phil Murphy again called on Bonaccorso to step down, as the Democrat did last year after the recordings came to light. Hate and corruption have no place here in New Jersey, especially coming from those in positions of leadership, Murphy spokeswoman Tyler Jones said in a statement to NJ Advance Media. What prompted authorities to investigate? Authorities seized control of Clarks police department in July 2020, citing credible allegations of misconduct among its leadership. Six months before, Clark officials had inked the settlement that seemingly kept a lid on the accusations. So, how did prosecutors learn of them? It all started with a series of anonymous letters that began circulating in April 2020, the report reveals. One letter was sent to the Union County Prosecutors Office, complaining that Manata was being paid while not showing up for work and that Police Chief Matos was covering it up, the report said. Others were sent to Matos and threatened to expose the recordings unless he resigned. That prompted township attorney Triarsi to contact county prosecutors in June 2020, when he claimed the township was being blackmailed while not disclosing the settlement or his knowledge of the recordings, the report said. Instead, this was being portrayed by the township as a referral of a criminal investigation into possible extortion by an unknown suspect believed to be Manata, the report said. That apparent gambit backfired. But for UCPO taking action in response to the anonymous letter it received, as well as in response to Triarsis claim of extortion, the misconduct of Clark officials would have remained secret, the report said. Township officials were right to suspect Manata was behind the letters, according to his attorney, Valerie Palma DeLuisi. On Monday, DeLuisi told NJ Advance Media that her client had written those letters, saying they showed the risks he took to ensure township officials were held accountable, when he could have just walked away. He tried to correct the wrongdoing, even after he was no longer reporting for work, DeLuisi said. To great personal detriment, he sent letters trying to get someone to start an investigation. What will happen to the police officers named in the report? Two of the police officers recorded using racial slurs Chief Matos and internal affairs Sgt. Joseph Teston have been on paid leave for the past 40 months, as has a police captain, Vincent Concina, who Manata accused of retaliation. In that time, their salaries have cost taxpayers more than $1.57 million. The report calls for Matos and Teston to be fired, and for Concina to face discipline. But it notes the attorney general lacks the authority to take those steps. Under state law, that power rests with the appropriate authority in this case, the mayor. The set-up presents a clear conflict of interest, authorities acknowledge. After all, Clark officials entered the confidential settlement agreement designed to keep much of the sustained misconduct from ever seeing the light of day, the report said. Additionally, certain Clark officials encouraged and actively participated in some of the very same misconduct that the Attorney General deems grounds for termination of employment. Platkin, the attorney general, has called on Clark officials to appoint an independent third party to review his recommendations. Absent that, he said, the state Legislature should act to give him the power to fire cops for misconduct. Teston did not return a request for comment. Matos and Concina could not be reached. NJ Advance Media staff writers Deion Johnson and Brent Johnson contributed to this report. Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com. Riley Yates may be reached at ryates@njadvancemedia.com. S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X. 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. Watertown, NY (13601) Today Periods of rain. High 47F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.. Tonight Cloudy with occasional rain showers. Low 38F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%. A Lancaster County jury has found a 22-year-old Lincoln college student guilty of first-degree sexual assault. The decision came Friday, at the end of Evan Mielak's three-day trial. Mielak, a Regents Scholar at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was charged in April on the allegation of a 20-year-old woman, who said he had sexually assaulted her in her apartment near campus following a night of drinking. She immediately told her sister and a week later reported it to police, confronting Mielak in a phone call as investigators recorded. The Lancaster County Attorney's Office charged him with first-degree sexual assault of an incompetent person because he should have known she wasn't capable of consenting due to the level of her intoxication. Mielak faces up to 50 years in prison at his sentencing in January. UNL maintains a comprehensive list of campus and local resources for sexual assault survivors on its website, including information on how to report sexual assaults to both law enforcement and the school's Title IX office. U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of Baton Rouge may one day be remembered alongside the late U.S. District Judge J. Skelly Wright of New Orleans, whose decisions in landmark civil rights cases in the 1960s forever changed Louisianas political landscape. Nowadays, Dick is the presiding judge in a pair of important voting rights cases the new front lines in Americas long fight for equal rights under the law. The most high-profile of those two cases is the one dealing with Louisianas racially gerrymandered congressional districts. Dick last year issued a 152-page opinion declaring the districting plan illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. The U.S. Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals eventually agreed with her. She has ordered state lawmakers to draw a second majority-Black congressional district by Jan. 15. If they dont, she will draw one herself via a special master. Meanwhile, Dick on Monday, Nov. 27, will begin presiding over a multi-day trial in a similar challenge to Louisianas state House and Senate districts. Several Black voters and civil rights groups allege that Louisianas legislative districts dilute Black voting strength and do not afford Black voters the opportunity to elect state lawmakers of their own choosing. They argue that lawmakers deliberately packed Black voters into as few districts as possible in order to avoid giving them House and Senate seats in proportion to their population. The legislative redistricting plan that GOP lawmakers rammed through last year kept the number of majority-Black legislative seats the same as it has been for more than a decade 29 in the 105-member House and 11 in the 39-member Senate even though Black citizens comprise 33% of Louisianas population. Proportionality is not guaranteed by the Voting Rights Act, but when the numbers get far enough out of whack, as they clearly do in Louisiana and in the face of evidence that lawmakers methodically refused to create more majority-Black districts the courts can grant relief. This case has always been about fairness and representation, Dorothy Nairne of Assumption Parish, the lead named plaintiff in the legislative districting case, said in a statement released by the Louisiana ACLU last June. These maps have real consequences for my community, Nairne added. It is time that Black voters all the way from my neighborhood in Napoleonville up to Baton Rouge and Shreveport are able to finally feel real hope that their voices will be heard in our political process. We are eager to see this vision through in the courts. The legislative maps case has generated far less attention than the challenge to Louisianas congressional districts, but it, too, could alter the states political landscape if the plaintiffs prevail. Republicans have a supermajority in both the state House and Senate, but if Dick finds that the Legislature must have more majority-Black districts, Democrats could gain enough seats to threaten the GOPs supermajority. No matter how Dick rules, the case will be appealed, possibly all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. A Neligh pharmacist was ordered to pay $573,000 in restitution at her sentencing Monday for health care fraud. Danelle Charf pleaded guilty in federal court in Omaha to making false statements related to health care matters. Chief Judge Robert F. Rossiter, Jr. sentenced her Monday to two months of prison, plus three years of supervised release, in addition to the restitution. In the indictment, prosecutors said that, between 2016 and 2021, Charf submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare and Nebraska Medicaid while owner and operator of the Wanek Pharmacy in Neligh and Tilden Pharmacy in nearby Tilden. According to court records, she filled prescriptions with the generic version of certain medications, then submitted claims seeking reimbursement for the more expensive brand-name versions of the medications. As a result of the scheme, prosecutors say she caused losses of at least $573,300 to Medicare and Nebraska Medicaid. A former Ilfracombe Sea Cadet is now sailing the South China Sea in charge of the largest ship in the Royal New Zealand Navy. Rob Welford learned to sail on the Bristol Channel, spent 37 years sailing the world with two navies and is now at the helm of HMNZS Aotearoa on a deployment to South East Asia. Commander Welford took over the vessel in a change of command ceremony in Singapore late last month and sailed the ship into the South China Sea that same afternoon. Commander Welford grew up in Ilfracombe and joined the Sea Cadets aged 12 as well as working on local fishing boats. That naturally led to a 28-year career in the Royal Navy, where he logged operational service in the Adriatic, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Bosnia. He served as executive officer (second in command) on minesweeper HMS Arun and frigate HMS Campbeltown. After considering a career change, he decided to join the Royal New Zealand Navy in 2014 and emigrated with his family. HMNZS Aotearoa, commissioned in 2020, is a 568-foot-long 26,000-ton polar-class maritime sustainment and replenishment vessel and is the largest ship ever built for the Royal New Zealand Navy. Cmdr Welford said: Come onto the bridge first thing in the morning when we are at sea and you will see the big smile on my face as I drink my coffee. Quite simply, I cant think of anything else I would rather be doing. I was fortunate enough to meet some Royal New Zealand Navy and New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel through some multi-national engagements. I also got to attend a couple of meetings in New Zealand, and through talking to people I thought that I might be able to put my knowledge and skills to some good use in the Royal New Zealand Navy. His son was eight at the time and New Zealand also looked like a good place for him to grow up. He has since deployed to Vanuatu following Tropical Cyclone Pam in 2015 and was the executive officer to the Force Commander of the Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai Peninsula in 2020, where he was awarded a Force Commanders commendation. More recently, he was involved in the planning and execution of operations such as the evacuation of New Zealand and Australian nationals from Afghanistan in 2021 and the NZDFs contribution to Ukraines self-defence. HMNZS Aotearoa is on a South East Asia deployment and Commander Welford said fitting in to a well-established team part-way through was an interesting challenge, as well as being a new class of ship for him. He said: Its a big challenge learning how it works and the only way to tackle that is to put the time in to learn, ask questions, walk the patch and get into the books. I have a lot of experience but the crew havent seen that. So making sure I did a good job of ship-handling as we left port from Singapore only three hours after the change of command ceremony helped to start that impression. He described his leadership style as enabling and he didnt feel like he leads the crew. They know where they need to go and I see it as my job to help them to get there, he said. Sometimes the directions might need to be quite clear, but I would prefer to give them a metaphorical map, to help them find their own way as most of the time they know their parts of the ship better than I do. Cmdr Welford likes the two Hs of leadership: Humanity and Humility. He added: You need to remember that your people are human and that you are too and that very few human beings are perfect. If you then have enough humility to be able to admit you are not perfect, own your mistakes and apologise if you are wrong, then that will set a good climate from which to build your team, or in my case the crew. Belgium Moves to Accelerate EU Blockchain Infrastructure Project Disclosure: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. By using this website, you agree to our terms and conditions. We may utilise affiliate links within our content, and receive commission. The Belgian government has unveiled plans to accelerate the development of a blockchain infrastructure project in Europe during its Council of the European Union presidency in early 2024. Belgium to focus on a public sector European #blockchain during its EU presidency The country will promote development of a transnational blockchain infrastructure for the storage and management of official documents, minister for digitisation Mathieu Michel tells Dr Martin Hiesboeck (@MHiesboeck) November 21, 2023 Mathieu Michel, Belgiums Minister of State for Digitalization, shared with Science|Business media on November 21 the four key objectives the country aims to accomplish during its upcoming presidency. These goals include establishing a public blockchain for pan-European Union infrastructure and initiatives to address challenges related to the digital economy, online anonymity, and artificial intelligence (AI). Michel highlighted the idea of building innovative blockchain applications on a common infrastructure overseen by the government, considering the growing number of countries exploring blockchain-based applications. The Minister of Digitalization also proposed a strategic overhaul of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) project, which was established by the European Commission in 2018. The project collaborated with the European Blockchain partnership of 27 EU member states, including Liechtenstein and Norway. The proposed revival would see EBSI renamed Europeum and structured as the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (EDIC), a legal framework established in December 2022 to enable member states to implement projects. If implemented, Europeum would serve various purposes in public administration, such as enabling the recognition of driving licenses and other documents across the EU member states. Additionally, it could streamline procedures like VAT declarations. The infrastructure might also support applications like the digital euro. Furthermore, Michel noted that creating a public blockchain for pan-EU use goes beyond a technical project; it should be treated as a European and political initiative. This implies that the initiative involves not only technical aspects but also requires collaboration and commitment on a political level, emphasizing the need for coordinated efforts and support from various European stakeholders. EU Blockchain Project Is an Alternative to Private Chains The Minister of Digitalization emphasized the endless possibilities an EU-enabled blockchain infrastructure could bring, particularly in terms of security and transparency. He referenced the fundamental concept of blockchain technology, noting how data are held in sequential blocks and linked securely to each other in a blockchain network. Once recorded in a block, data cannot be retroactively changed without altering all subsequent blocks. This inherent immutability makes it challenging for anyone, including hackers, to tamper with recorded information. Michel noted that the unique blockchain structure underscores the security the proposed EU blockchain project embeds, making it preferable to private alternatives. Apart from the proposed project integration of blockchain technology, it integrates mechanisms to prevent accidental changes to data by regular users. In terms of security, transparency, and privacy, the blockchain can give control back to the citizens of the data that belongs to them, the Minister said. However, this is not possible on private blockchains, which are merged with servers outside the EU and often deployed to follow principles of data transparency, which often bring about privacy concerns. At press time, Romania, Italy, Croatia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, and Luxembourg have officially approved or ratified a European plan related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain. The projects headquarters will be situated in Belgium, signaling collaborative efforts among these nations to establish unified regulations for the emerging digital asset and blockchain space. Fall brings cooler temperatures and changing landscapes and Respiratory Syncytial Virus, or RSV, season. RSV can be devastating to infants, but fortunately there are multiple ways to protect your little ones from the virus one even before your baby is born. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a vaccine that can be given to pregnant women to prevent complications of RSV in their newborns. The FDA also approved another vaccine that can be given to infants younger than 8 months old to prevent RSV or lessen its severity. RSV is highly contagious, and it can cause respiratory infections. Some children can experience mild, cold-like symptoms. Others can develop pneumonia or bronchiolitis from RSV. Dr. Emily Switzer, a Franciscan Physician Network pediatrician in Dyer, said RSV can affect the lower airways and can be particularly detrimental to infants. When it affects the lower airway, it causes inflammation and mucus plugging that really makes it incredibly difficult for infants to breathe, Switzer said. They just dont have the ability to clear those airways as well, and they get blocked up. The Abrysvo vaccine that can be given to pregnant women was approved in August. This approval provides an option for health-care providers and pregnant individuals to protect infants from this potentially life-threatening disease, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a release. Abrysvo is given in a single-dose injection between 32 and 36 weeks gestational age of pregnancy, according to the FDA. The vaccine can protect newborns up to 6 months. If a mother doesnt receive the Abrysvo injection, its recommended that infants up to 8 months old receive Beyfortus. The shot also was approved in July. So, this is hot off the press, newly approved by the FDA so this is excitingly new, Switzer said. Although its new to the public, it doesnt mean its unstudied. It underwent rigorous study for the past year or so in order to be FDA-approved, Switzer said. Beyfortus uses monoclonal antibodies to help prevent RSV. When exposed to a virus, our bodies identify proteins on that virus and create antibodies to act as an army and kill and attack and destroy that virus, Switzer said. The Beyfortus injection gives infants the antibodies needed to fight RSV without being exposed to the virus. So, if their body is exposed to RSV, they have the army already ready to attack that virus, Switzer said. Though RSV affects each person differently, Switzer said extreme cases can be devastating on children. If anybody has worked in a hospital during the fall or winter season, they have seen the detrimental effects of the RSV virus, she said. In some cases, these children are absolutely fighting for their lives to breathe. Switzer said there is also the possibility of lingering issues from RSV. Any time there is an injury to the lung, it can take time to heal or put the patient at higher risk for other infections. Because youre taking a big hit in your lungs when theyre that inflamed and having that much of an injury, Switzer said. She encourages every parent with children younger than 8 months to discuss Beyfortus with their pediatricians. It is lifesaving, she said. No parent wants to watch their child struggle to breathe. It is terrifying, its awful, its miserable, and if we can prevent that, its just such an amazing gift to have access to something that can prevent such devastation. For the South Shore Friends of Veterans, an organization formed in 2011 to assist Region veterans, thanks are not enough. Back then, local leaders including decorated combat veterans founded the group dedicated to raising money for veterans causes. We work quietly in the background, said Spiro Olympidis, a founder of the organization that drew veterans from other groups looking to do more. The Porter County Community Foundation established the group's granting program in 2019, helping it realize its goals. One of its first beneficiaries, Folds of Honor, received money to award scholarships to families of fallen or disabled veterans who served after 9/11. Unwavering support from Valparaiso-based Friends of Veterans extends to programs including Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, the Indiana Patriot Guard, Indiana Fallen Heroes, Home Team Valpo and the Veterans Court of Porter County. Our board, Charlotte Liss, Jose Trujillo, Caleb Key and Nichole Caylor, is entirely made up of combat veterans and the mother of a combat veteran, said Olympidis. We have a strong focus on the South Shore. If people are looking for a place to give in their community, Friends of Veterans is one, he said. Their commitment to honoring and supporting our veterans is truly commendable, and we couldnt have achieved this without their partnership," Lake Station Mayor Bill Carroll said of the organization's involvement in the city's Hoosier Veterans Festival. "Thank you for making a difference in the lives of our veterans and all those who attended our 1st annual Hoosier Veterans Festival this year. SSFoV has been a valuable partner to the Indiana Fallen Heroes, enabling us to carry out our mission of honoring our fallen heroes, said President Paul Rosenwinkle. Their support, ranging from financial assistance for trailers to guidance in obtaining our 501(C)3 status, has been instrumental in our success. SSFoV has consistently proven to be an invaluable resource for Indiana Fallen Heroes. Collaborating with Drive Clean Indiana, Friends of Veterans also helped the Indiana Disabled American Veterans acquire vehicles to transport veterans. Above all, Friends of Veterans works to ensure these heroes and their legacies are not forgotten by supporting memorial events, motorcycle runs and fundraising efforts. It means so much to their families and friends even years after the loss. We must never forget, Olympidis said. He described Folds of Honor events where hundreds of volunteers carry placards with a photo of a fallen hero to honor their sacrifice. The support we have received from SSFoV has been invaluable to Northwest Indiana Patriot Guard. Their provision of a customized vehicle for veteran escort missions has greatly enhanced our ability to honor our fallen heroes, said Jim Strine, ride captain for the organization that provides motorcycle escorts at veterans' funerals. Friend of Veterans also supports families and survivors of the Sapper 6. These six soldiers, Brian Leonhardt, Jonathan Metger, Christopher Patterson, Sergio Perez, Nicholas Taylor and Robert Tauteris, lost their lives in Afghanistan while serving with the Valparaiso-based Indiana National Guards 713th Combat Engineers in 2012, the unit with which Olympidis served. If you know a veteran in need, reach out to the Friends of Veterans at ssfov.com. Olympidis says such outreach is crucial particularly considering that every day, 22 Veterans take their own lives. A Veteran Suicide and Crisis Hotline takes calls and texts at 988. To donate, visit ssfov.com/donate.php or call the Porter County Community Foundation at 219-465-0294. Earned income tax rate increases seem likely for Newville as the borough takes steps to remedy its financial crisis, according to a recovery plan from the state. Newvilles consultant, PFM Group Consulting, prepared the boroughs Municipalities Financial Recovery Act Recovery Plan on behalf of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. The plan serves as the first of a series of steps the borough must take to move forward after the discovery of financial discrepancies in December 2022. This prompted the dismissal of long-time borough manager Fred Potzer in January and launched an investigation through the Cumberland County District Attorneys Office that includes an ongoing forensic audit of borough finances. Newville qualified for designation as a distressed municipality under Act 47 over the summer. According to the state, Act 47 requires the Department of Community and Economic Development to financially assist municipalitiesexperiencing severe financial difficulties for residents health, welfare and safety. Act 47 also gives the borough extraordinary taxing authority, allowing it to increase earned income taxes on residents and commuters above maximum levels otherwise established by state law. Even with approximately $500,000 in state loans in September and an additional $300,000 anticipated in November or December, the borough faces a $783,000 deficit in next years budget. According to the plan, Newville currently levies a 1% earned income tax on residents and those who work in the borough. The resident portion of the tax is split with the Big Spring School District, so the borough collects 0.5% of residents wages. Aside from earned income taxes paid to the school district, the recovery plan recommends the borough levy its typical 0.5% earned income tax for residents and 1% earned income tax for nonresidents with an additional 1.5% added under Act 47 from 2024 to 2028, bringing the total earned income tax to 2% for residents and 2.5% for nonresidents. The increase is expected to generate an additional $456,000 next year. With the borough required to pass a balanced budget for 2024 by Dec. 31, the plan said the remaining gap will be closed by a combination of tax increases and decreased spending. The full recovery plan is available online for public view, and a public hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. Nov. 28 at the Newville Borough Office at 4 West St. Final approval is anticipated during the borough council meeting to follow. Photos: Scenes from the 2023 Newville Halloween Parade PORTAGE A 31-year-old Gary man pulled over on allegations of drunken driving, whipped out a $20 bill, reversed crashed into a police vehicle and then led a high-speed chase that ended with a head-on collision and failed foot chase, Portage police said. The officer said he stopped driver Keon Moten around 4:30 p.m. Friday after seeing him swerving along eastbound U.S. 20 and fluctuating in speed. Moten, who smelled of alcohol and appeared intoxicated, claimed to be out buying milk for his child, police said. He denied having consumed alcohol or drugs, at which time he pulled out the $20 bill, which the officer interpreted as some sort of offer. When asked to step out of his Chevrolet Malibu for sobriety tests, Moten allegedly started his vehicle, rolled up the window and reverse crashed into the police vehicle. Moten fled west on U.S. 20, drove into oncoming traffic and drove off the right side of the highway to pass other vehicles, police said. Drunk woman walks away after rolling vehicle in Portage neighborhood, police say An officer searched the area and spotted what he first thought was a large rock. As he attempted to turn north on to County Line Road, he crashed head-on into another vehicle waiting to turn east on to U.S. 20, police said. Moten then fled on foot into a field before he dropped to the ground and gave up. He was taken to the hospital for medical care, but refused to allow a blood draw, requiring police to obtain a court order. Moten was taken to the Porter County Jail and faces a felony count of resisting law enforcement and misdemeanor resisting, operating while intoxicated endangering others and leaving the scene of an accident, police said. Gallery: Recent arrests booked into the Porter County Jail Lwiyhi Torres-Alvarez Michael Oprisko Shayna McNeil Quentin Heckman Destiny Grakauskas Daniel Sutton Kameron Watkins Lily Stratton Travis Schirato Lewis Stahl Jonathon Daniels Seth Garrison Annie Brasher Jeremy Worley Selena Rivera Jonathan Thien Rachael Trinidad Benjamin Long Raymond Byrd Ryenn Dearing Jennifer Hurt Brian Augustynski Hector Ayala Joshua Vasquez Brett Volk Brock Pappas Antonio Tito-Acatitlan Tonya Worley Kayden Whiteside Patrick Carter Edward Remm Dylan Apgar Luke Bucksbarg Jonathon O'Brien Anthony Kyle Keon Moten Trennell Walker Brooke White Justin Troutwine Willie Armstrong Richard Drescher Holly Hardee Scott Pachowicz James Pierce CROWN POINT A Chicago teenager said he regrets the "horrible decision" he made when he and his cousin committed a robbery-turned-murder against an elderly man outside a gas station in 2021. Tyjuan Jefferson, 17, said he has had a lot of time to sit with his thoughts and emotions while incarcerated: he has had 877 days to do so, he said, to be exact. "I have learned a life of crime is far from the life I desire," Jefferson said. "I'm sorry for all the pain I have caused the family. I hope this gives the family the closure they need." Jefferson was sentenced to eight years in prison Friday morning for his role in the death of Wallace Broadnax, 70, who was killed during an attempted robbery June 26, 2021 in the parking lot of a Gary gas station. He pleaded guilty to attempted armed robbery, a level three felony, and in exchange prosecutors agreed to drop murder and attempted robbery resulting in serious bodily injury charges, documents show. Jefferson and his cousin Antonio Terrell, 16, of Gary, approached Broadnax outside the gas station at West 23rd Avenue and Grant Street in Gary, and a brief struggle ensued as Jefferson tried to grab Broadnaxs car keys, according to court documents. When Broadnax tried to escape, Terrell fired multiple shots in his direction. The boys fled the scene. Deputy Prosecutor Veronica Gonzalez said although Jefferson did not fire the gun, he was aware Terrell had a firearm. She said giving Jefferson a reduced sentence because he didn't pull the trigger diminishes the severity of the crime. "Mr. Jefferson is the one who initiated contact with Mr. Broadnax," Gonzalez said. "[This] makes him equally responsible for the actions of Mr. Terrell." Terrell was sentenced to 40 years in prison Oct. 27 after he pleaded guilty to attempted robbery resulting in serious bodily injury and robbery resulting in serious bodily injury. Defense attorney Matthew LaTulip said Jefferson was 15 when the crime was committed and asked the court to understand the "mental faculties" that could come with decision making at that age. He said both of Jefferson's parents have experienced incarceration and substance abuse issues and he had "no guidance, no structure in terms of a role of reality." LaTulip said he hopes Jefferson's incarceration can end in a "positive outcome" if he takes advantage of educational and vocational opportunities while incarcerated. Lake Criminal Court Judge Samuel Cappas said he believed the mitigating circumstances, such as the fact that Jefferson pleaded guilty, did not behave violently and expressed remorse, outweighed some of the aggravators presented by Gonzalez. Broadnax's wife said at a hearing in October that she couldn't forgive the teenagers for what they had done to her husband, at least not yet. "Forgiveness to me is like respect," she said. "You have to earn it." Nearly 250 Latino high school students from six Lake County schools attended a two-day career fair meant to educate the students about their post-secondary options and connecting them with working professionals. The Positive Pathways event, hosted by the Fort Wayne-based nonprofit Latinos Count, took place at Purdue University Northwest's Hammond campus with around 60 students from both Hammond high schools attending on Thursday, and nearly 180 students from Whiting, Highland, East Chicago Central and River Forest high schools showing up on Friday, according Steve Corona, the executive director for Latinos Count. Corona said the two primary goals of the event were to increase the college-going rate of Latino students and to help them figure out their strategy after high school. "It's about choices, it's about opening eyes," he said. "It's about exposing kids to what we refer to as Positive Pathways." Those pathways include attending college, but additionally entering trade school, enlisting in the armed forces, entering the workforce or starting a business. "My guess is that what they hear at school is [only] college and not more than that. So what we do is talk about those other options," said Corona. During the job fair, students had the opportunity to speak with representatives from the local higher education institutions, local businesses, the U.S. Army and construction trade professionals. Additionally, students engaged in small group discussions with "Latino Champions", working professionals from various career areas ranging from utility workers to a former college chancellor who discussed with the students their life stories since high school, and talked about their achievements but also their struggles and overcoming barriers. "It's motivation [and] inspirations from somebody who looks just like them," Corona said. Aaron Robles, the program director for Latinos Count, said the event was also a good networking opportunity. Robles, a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program, said given his status as an undocumented immigrant as a child, he was unable to do things such as get his driver's license or apply for college. Therefore, he began doing freelance graphic design work and eventually started his own graphic design company. Since then, Robles has expanded his business ventures to include real estate and the restaurant industry. He credits one of his high school instructors for helping guide him to opportunities he and his family weren't aware of, and giving him the best piece of advice he has gotten, which was networking. "The number one thing is [to] just know people," Robles said. "That's the difference between those who make a lot of money and those who don't." Alyssa Garcia, a student at Morton High School in Hammond, said she took advantage of reaching out to the Latino Champion mentors for help during their small-group discussions. "I want more chances to try and figure out what I want to do in life," she said. Garcia said going to college is one of her goals after high school because of her interest in going into the medical field. PHOTOS: New mural at Hammond's Advanced Engineering Services Advanced Engineering Services gets a new mural completed by Felix Maldonado Jr. Advanced Engineering Services gets a new mural completed by Felix Maldonado Jr. Advanced Engineering Services gets a new mural completed by Felix Maldonado Jr. Advanced Engineering Services gets a new mural completed by Felix Maldonado Jr. Advanced Engineering Services gets a new mural completed by Felix Maldonado Jr. Advanced Engineering Services gets a new mural completed by Felix Maldonado Jr. Advanced Engineering Services gets a new mural completed by Felix Maldonado Jr. Individuals, couples and families looking for an alternative to the shopping mall or an escape from their relatives in the days after Thanksgiving can "opt outside" at the Indiana Dunes. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources is waiving admission fees Friday at all DNR properties, including Indiana Dunes State Park in Chesterton. In addition, state park visitors who upload photos of their Black Friday adventure to social media sites, check-in using the DNR's nature passport app, or participate in a scavenger hunt may eligible for prizes, including state park annual passes, guided tours, and gift cards for camping and inn stays. "Theres nothing like going for a hike the day after Thanksgiving to work off the turkey and fixings from the day before," said Dan Bortner, DNR director. "The benefits of opting outside go beyond the quality memories created with family or the mental perks of spending time in nature. Hoosiers can also win fun prizes that will keep them connected with Indiana DNR year-round." At Indiana Dunes State Park, a naturalist is scheduled to lead a two-mile moderately rugged hike from the Nature Center to the Beach House Blowout and back, beginning at 10 a.m. Friday. Registration is not required for the hike. Individuals with questions about the hike can contact the Nature Center, 219-926-1390, or search "opt outside" at in.gov/dnr. A separate, expert-led, family-friendly hike is scheduled for 1 to 4 p.m. Friday at the nearby Indiana Dunes National Park in Portage. That hike begins at West Beach and goes for up to 3.5 miles, with easy cut-offs back to the parking lot for 1- or 2-mile hikes. The hike is moderately difficult, with 270 stairs and some sections of loose sand. During the hike, which is co-sponsored by Save the Dunes, regional experts in birding, botany, insects, geology and ecology will highlight and explain natural features seen along the trail. On Saturday, a ranger will lead national park visitors on a search for wild turkeys and other wildlife from 1 to 3 p.m. during a hike along the ancient Calumet shoreline of Lake Michigan, through forested dunes and small blowouts. That hike will start at the Calumet Dunes Trail parking lot on 300 E (Kemil Rd.) and U.S. Hwy. 12 near Beverly Shores, adjacent to the Lake Michigan Ecological Research Station. More information about the hikes is available by calling Indiana Dunes National Park, 219-395-1882, or by visiting the park's website, nps.gov/indu. Admission to the national park is $25 a car for a one- to seven-day pass. A $45 annual pass also is available. Entrance fees can be paid at the Indiana Dunes Visitor Center or online. Two actresses, one an Academy Award-winning veteran and the other a relative newcomer, have been dropped by Hollywood companies after comments they separately made about the Israel-Hamas war drew criticism. Susan Sarandon, a five-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner (for best actress, in 1995s Dead Man Walking), was dropped by United Talent Agency after making comments at a pro-Palestinian rally last week. An agency spokesman, Richard Siklos, confirmed Tuesday that the agency no longer represented Sarandon but declined to elaborate. Efforts to reach Sarandon for comment were not immediately successful. Separately, Spyglass Media Group dropped Melissa Barrera from the cast of the Scream horror franchise after she posted incendiary comments on Instagram about Israels retaliation for the Hamas attacks. We have zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech, Spyglass said in a statement on Tuesday. Representatives for Barrera did not respond to requests for comment. United Talent dropped Sarandon after she made remarks at a rally in New York City last week. There are a lot of people that are afraid, afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence, she said at the rally, where she called for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, according to a video published by The New York Post. Those remarks were criticized on social media; a former speechwriter for Israels delegation to the United Nations said on the X platform, formerly Twitter, that she had interpreted Sarandons remark as implying that Jews have it coming that we dont deserve to live free from harassment and assault. The Post characterized her remarks as an anti-Jewish rant in a headline. Sarandon said at the rally that being critical of Israel should not be considered antisemitic. Theres a terrible thing thats happened where antisemitism has been confused with speaking up against Israel, Sarandon said. I am against antisemitism. I am against Islamophobia. There has been a sharp rise in antisemitic crimes in New York City since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, according to the Police Department. On Oct. 7, Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking about 240 people hostage, according to the Israeli government. More than 11,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,600 children, have been killed since the Israeli counteroffensive began, according to Gazas health ministry. Sarandon counts Bull Durham and Thelma & Louise among her credits. This year, she was featured in the latest DC Comics movie, Blue Beetle, which was a box office disappointment. She has also long been known for her political activism. Hollywood has been riven in recent weeks by the Israel-Hamas war. Some Jewish writers were angered that their union did not quickly issue a statement condemning Hamas. A prominent agent at Creative Artists Agency, Maha Dakhil, posted messages to social media accusing Israel of genocide and then removed them. She issued an apology and resigned from an internal leadership position at the company. One of her prominent clients, the screenwriter and playwright Aaron Sorkin, dropped her as his agent, saying in a statement, Maha isnt an antisemite, shes just wrong. Max Wittawat was a pastry chef at Spot Dessert Bar for 13 years, and sometimes you can see the imprint of that work in the Thai food he serves now as the chef of Bangkok Supper Club, a new restaurant in the West Village. His scallop ceviche is a dessert, essentially, or at least the beginning of one. Pieces of scallops are buried at the bottom of a pink mound of watermelon granita with small cubes of fresh watermelon and bits of mint leaves in it. As the ice crystals melt, you pick up a flicker of hot red chiles along with other flavors that dont normally end up in desserts: garlic, fish sauce, pickled watermelon rind. Mr. Wittawats background comes through in less obvious ways, too. He works rice as if it were dough, bringing out textures that run the gamut from soothingly chewy to airily crisp. Sticky rice, molded like a hamburger patty and lightly grilled like one, comes with chicken that is cooked over charcoal in the style of a Bangkok street vendor. The rice cake doesnt taste like much except soy and char, fleetingly, but you can tear off lumps of it to chew on in the pauses between lemongrass-scented bites of chicken, and to dip into the juices left behind on the platter. A former State Department employee and national security official was recorded on video harassing a halal food vendor in Manhattan in recent weeks, calling the man a terrorist. The former official, Stuart Seldowitz, was recorded in several videos posted on X, also known as Twitter, taking pictures of the vendor and berating him with Islamophobic comments. After a brief back-and-forth about children being killed, Mr. Seldowitz tells the man: If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasnt enough. The vendor, who has not been identified, is heard on the videos asking Mr. Seldowitz to please go and saying that he would call the police. The police said on Tuesday night that no reports had been filed against Mr. Seldowitz, but they confirmed that the commanding officer of the 19th Precinct was aware of the videos and that precinct personnel were monitoring the situation. Recordings of the encounters spread online at a time when tensions have intensified between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups across the country since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7. The tensions have been particularly acute in New York City, where there have been almost daily demonstrations and increases in both anti-Islamic and antisemitic hate crimes. The video clips posted online show Mr. Seldowitz returning to the same location over several days once at night and twice during the day and each time refusing to leave. Hes heard saying in one clip, Its a free country its not like Egypt. In the same clip, Mr. Seldowitz calls the vendor ignorant for not speaking English before continuing to make derisive comments about Islam's founder, the Prophet Muhammad. The videos do not show any comments by the vendor or interactions that occurred before the clips start. Efforts to reach the vendor at his cart on Tuesday were unsuccessful. According to Mr. Seldowitz, who said in a phone interview on Tuesday that he had not seen the videos, the episodes started after he asked the vendor if he was Egyptian. As the conversation progressed, the man expressed support for Hamas, Mr. Seldowitz said, though no such claims are captured on any of the videos that have been made public At that point, I got rather upset and Ive said things to him, that in retrospect, I probably regret, though that I do regret, Mr. Seldowitz said. Instead of focusing in on him and what he said, I expanded into insulting his religion and so on. When asked why he had continued to return to the vendor, Mr. Seldowitz said he had wanted to ask if the man was still a supporter of Hamas, adding that I was upset at the fact that he was selling food in a neighborhood in New York. Despite being captured on video calling the religions holy figure a rapist several times, Mr. Seldowitz insisted that he was not Islamophobic. Ive worked with Muslims, he said, adding, I have many people who are Muslims and Arabs and so on, who know me very well and who know that Im not prejudiced against them. On Tuesday night, it was a busy scene in front of the cart, which sits steps from the 83rd Street exit of the 86th Street Q subway station. Despite the rain, crowds would intermittently emerge from the subway and form a short line of hungry travelers. A man working in the cart, who did not want to give his name but said he was not the vendor in the videos, said he himself had encountered Mr. Seldowitz once last week and had called the police. The police came after 30 minutes, he said, but left, saying they couldnt do anything. Since then, the man said, Mr. Seldowitz had returned twice and was recorded by the other vendor. Mr. Seldowitz said he had held several positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate and a post in the U.S. State Departments Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs. He no longer holds any government positions, he said. According to a November 2022 announcement by Gotham Government Relations, a Manhattan-based lobbying firm, Mr. Seldowitz was the groups new foreign affairs chair. In a short biography that has since been taken down from the firms website, he is described as a three-time winner of the State Departments Superior Honor Award. According to David Schwartz, the firms president, Mr. Seldowitz was never an employee of Gotham Government Relations and was not registered as far as Mr. Schwartz was aware as a lobbyist for the firm. Im personally outraged and offended by this language, Mr. Schwartz said in a statement, adding, Islamophobia and antisemitism have no place in our world and must be eradicated. Mr. Schwartz also said he wanted to offer legal representation, without charge, to the food vendor against the person who had spewed such vile, hateful statements. Dodai Stewart contributed reporting. Alain Delaqueriere contributed research. FRONT PAGE An article on Tuesday about the psychological chasm between Palestinians and Israelis misstated the year the Oslo Accords collapsed. It was 2000, not 1993. The article also misstated the location of the Givat Haviva Center for Shared Society. It is about an hours drive north of Jerusalem, not in Jerusalem. INTERNATIONAL An article on Sunday about European countries increasing weapon production to aid Ukraine misstated the name of a top Estonian diplomat. He is Jonatan Vseviov, not Yonatan Vseviyov. Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions. To contact the newsroom regarding correction requests, please email nytnews@nytimes.com. To share feedback, please visit nytimes.com/readerfeedback. Comments on opinion articles may be emailed to letters@nytimes.com. For newspaper delivery questions: 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) or email customercare@nytimes.com. The researchers started by collecting plain-looking termites from the wild. Then they pasted pieces of paper to their backs that more or less looked like capes either solid black, solid white or striped in black and white. This was not the latest effort to introduce tiny heroes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was an attempt to learn something about how jumping spiders, some of natures most widespread and canny predators, perceive their prey. In nature, most prey avoid being detected by predators by blending into their surroundings. But some species strive to stand out. Monarch butterflies, yellowjacket wasps and ruby-red velvet ants, for example, use bright or contrasting coloration to warn predators of their toxicity. Scientists are still trying to decipher which predators perceive such displays. Especially little is known about how jumping spiders process these color patterns. According to Lisa Taylor, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Florida, they possess keen vision thanks to a set of large, forward-facing eyes. Two years of post-shutdown theater has brought to New York stages a slew of solo performers wrestling with subjects like grief, death and the apocalypse and those are just the comedies. Solo shows are inexpensive to produce and relatively low-lift endeavors for an industry still on shaky ground. There has been no shortage this fall, and now four solo shows running Off Broadway demonstrate a range of approaches to the form, proving, at least for this round, that baring your inner thoughts and fears pays off. A Good Day to Me Not to You, at the Connelly Theater in the East Village, and Sad Boys in Harpy Land, at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown Manhattan, opt for all-out vulnerability, dissecting the psyche as if the stage were an operating table. School Pictures and Amusements, also at Playwrights Horizons, take the opposite tack, with performers who hold themselves at a distance to direct attention elsewhere, but with devices that can be distracting and evasive. The middle-aged narrator of A Good Day to Me Not to You divulges intimate details from the start: She is nursing a surprise case of genital warts, she tells the audience, that has been dormant for the decade since she last had sex. In this wryly candid confessional, presented by Waterwell, the writer and performer Lameece Issaq plays a New Yorker with a mordant sense of humor who is weathering a downswing: She was forced to to quit orthodontics school because of her bouts of vertigo, and then she was fired from a dental lab for filing away the imperfections in patients plaster molds. Now she is nursing HPV and moving into a convent boardinghouse named for St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins and sexual abuse survivors. (The weathered sanctuary set by Peiyi Wong shifts locales under Mextly Couzins dynamic lighting.) Tuesday's storm will leave south-central Pennsylvania for the busiest travel day of the year Wednesday. However, if you're flying out or awaiting family to come in, there will be delays in some parts of the country. Lee Weather Team Meteorologist Joe Martucci points out the problem spots and Aides said the president was also hopeful that the hostage release could be an early step toward a broader peace in the region once the immediate crisis ends. In an opinion article published in The Washington Post on Sunday, Mr. Biden described how far his ambitions stretch beyond the four-day pause in fighting agreed to on Tuesday. Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today, he wrote. It should be to end the war forever, break the cycle of unceasing violence, and build something stronger in Gaza and across the Middle East so that history does not keep repeating itself. Mr. Biden and his top aides have repeatedly said they do not tell Israel how to respond to the slaughter of 1,200 people inside their country, and Mr. Netanyahu made it clear on Tuesday that he intended to resume military operations against Hamas as soon as the hostages were freed in accordance with the deal. The war will continue, Mr. Netanyahu said. But some senior American officials have signaled they would not be disappointed if the pause became a more permanent cease-fire. If the White House tries to use the hostage deal to press for a longer-term cease-fire and start moving toward the bigger questions about occupation and a two-state solution, that could put Mr. Biden on another collision course with Mr. Netanyahu when the fighting is scheduled to resume. A top administration official, who briefed reporters on Tuesday in the hours before the deal was finalized, said the pause in fighting was a step toward an eventual push for peace. But the official cautioned that such a possibility was a long way off. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a deal that had not yet been finalized. In the short term, the president and his aides say they are focused on ensuring that Hamas lives up to the promises the militant group made during weeks of negotiations that often seemed destined to fail. The first sign of progress came in late October, when U.S. officials received word through intermediaries in Qatar and Egypt that Hamas could accept a deal to release women and children. In return, they wanted Israel to free Palestinian prisoners, pause the fighting, and delay a ground invasion. With Israeli troops massing outside Gaza, officials in Israel and the United States debated whether to accept the deal. Israeli officials did not think Hamas was serious about the offer and refused to delay the ground offensive. Hamas refused to provide any proof of life about the hostages. Negotiations stalled. At the White House, Mr. Biden and his foreign policy team kept pressing. On Nov. 14, hope swelled again after Mr. Netanyahu called the president to say he could accept the latest offer from Hamas. But just hours after the call, Israeli military forces stormed Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which they said served as a Hamas command center. Suddenly, communications between Hamas and the officials in Qatar and Egypt went silent. When Hamas resurfaced hours later, they made it clear: The deal was off. For several days, the militant group demanded that Israeli troops withdraw from the hospital, which Israel refused. It took several days for the talks to resume, following a call from Mr. Biden to the emir of Qatar. Administration officials continued pressing Israel and, through the intermediaries, Hamas. After Mr. Bidens call, top aides, including the director of the C.I.A., met with the emir in Qatar to go over the latest draft a six-page text with detailed steps for implementation on both sides. Within a week, the diplomatic pressure paid off. On Tuesday evening, as the Israeli cabinet took its final vote to approve the deal, Mr. Biden headed out of Washington for a five-day Thanksgiving vacation with his family on the island of Nantucket. The Israeli decision, announced by Mr. Netanyahus office, would allow for a pause of at least four days in the fighting in Gaza. If it holds, it will be the longest halt in hostilities since Hamass Oct. 7 attacks prompted Israel to begin its bombardment of Gaza. In a statement on Tuesday night, Mr. Biden pledged to work with regional leaders to ensure this deal is carried through in its entirety, adding, It is important that all aspects of this deal be fully implemented. But even with the deal in place, Mr. Biden faces challenges ahead. There are still Americans being held hostage in Gaza, and the tensions in the United States, and within his own party, show few signs of diminishing. Officials said they were keenly aware that the horror for the families of those still in captivity in Gaza will not end until their loved ones are home. For Mr. Biden, it could not happen soon enough. As president, I have no higher priority than ensuring the safety of Americans held hostage around the world, Mr. Biden said in his statement, adding, Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released. No Labels, the centrist organization that is vying to gain ballot access for the 2024 presidential election, has joined forces with Javier Palomarez, an advocate of Hispanic-owned businesses with a history of allegations of workplace financial misconduct and sexual harassment. In 2018, Mr. Palomarez stepped down from his job as chief executive of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce while facing accusations that he had padded his pay and had made an unwanted pass at his female chief of staff. He denied those allegations and later sued the chamber. He also sued one of the groups former directors, saying that he had been sexually harassed. Both matters were ultimately settled out of court in 2019. In an interview on Tuesday evening, Mr. Palomarez said his departure from the Hispanic Chamber was a result of a witch hunt against him because he elected to work with instead of against the Trump administration. He said he won the lawsuits against his accusers, though he said the terms of the settlements remained confidential. He declined to reveal them. All I can do is tell you I maintained my innocence then and I maintain it now, he said. Mr. Palomarez is a self-described Democrat who resigned from a diversity coalition convened by the Trump administration over its efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He appears on cable news occasionally to criticize President Biden on issues like immigration and domestic energy production. He is also the founder and chief executive of an advocacy organization with a mission similar to that of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, his former employer, and is now a volunteer leader at No Labels. Yet it is one that does not pit the elite against the common man in the way populist parties often do, political analysts said. While anti-establishment votes in many European countries have often gone to right-wing parties, Mr. Omtzigts presence seems to have provided an alternative to Dutch voters who dont feel quite at home in the far right. The Dutch election is shaping up as one of the most significant and competitive in years. It is being held two years ahead of schedule, after Mr. Ruttes government collapsed in July when the parties in his coalition failed to reach an agreement on migration policy. Mr. Rutte, who is serving as caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed, was considered a mainstay of Dutch politics. But trust in the leader who was nicknamed Teflon Mark has suffered because of several scandals, including a lack of action by his government after earthquakes caused by decades-long gas production in the northern province of Groningen damaged thousands of homes. Mr. Rutte was also a strong voice for fiscal restraint inside the European Union, especially after the British exit, allowing the Netherlands to punch above its weight on E.U. budget matters. Those are big political shoes to fill, and the race remains unpredictable, analysts said, with three or four parties closely jockeying near the top of polls in the homestretch. As Israel and Hamas indicated that they were preparing a cease-fire to free 50 hostages, some families of those abducted to Gaza last month were grappling with conflicting emotions: a growing optimism that their loved ones would return that was chilled by a gnawing fear that the deal might collapse or worse, that they might be left behind. If weve been on a roller coaster, now were going up, said Gili Roman, whose sister Yarden Roman was taken hostage from Beeri, a Gaza border kibbutz, during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. The fear is that the higher we go, the farther well fall. Theres a lot of anxiety. The Israeli government and Hamas announced Wednesday morning that they would uphold a brief cease-fire in Gaza to allow for the release of some of the roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas and other militant groups. The Israeli decision, announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office in a WhatsApp message, would allow for a pause of at least four days in the fighting in Gaza. If it holds, it would be the longest halt in hostilities since Hamass Oct. 7 attacks prompted Israel to begin its bombardment and subsequent ground invasion of Gaza. Less than an hour later, Hamas announced in a statement on Telegram that it had agreed to a four-day cease-fire that would allow for 50 hostages to be exchanged for 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Yifat Zailer whose cousin Shiri Bibas was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz along with Ms. Bibass husband, Yarden Bibas, and their two red-haired children, Ariel and Kfir said her anxious wait for news has been tinged by the hope that she might soon see her loved ones and the fear something might go awry. Im trying to take care not to be happy too quickly, Ms. Zailer said on Tuesday. It could collapse tomorrow, for any reason. We might see the days pass, the hostages returning and Shiri and her children not among them. Kfir, less than a year old, is one of the youngest Israelis abducted by Hamas-led gunmen on Oct. 7. His family in Israel still does not know where he and his brother are being held, whether they are with their parents or even if they are still alive, Ms. Zailer said. But even if Ms. Bibas, Kfir and Ariel return home as part of the emerging hostage deal far from guaranteed Yarden, her husband, is likely to stay behind. We are being torn apart, Ms. Zailer said, calling it an impossible situation. It breaks your heart, she added. At Kibbutz Nir Oz, 76 people were taken hostage on Oct. 7, according to Irit Lahav, a kibbutz spokeswoman. Sheffa Phillips-Bahat, 15, a resident of the kibbutz, had two cousins who were kidnapped by Hamas brothers Or, 16, and Yagil Yaakov, 12. Their father, Yair Yaakov, was also taken hostage. Yagil appeared in a video released on Nov. 9 by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group based in Gaza that invaded Israeli towns on Oct. 7 alongside Hamas. In the video, he asked Israel to bring him home. Hostages often appear in such videos under duress and their statements are likely to have been coerced. Ms. Phillips-Bahat and her family have not heard whether her cousins would be among those coming home in a hostage exchange, but they remain optimistic. I cant think of anything but getting the hostages back, she said. David Blumenfeld and Carmit Hoomash contributed reporting. After more than six weeks of war, the Israeli government and Hamas announced Wednesday morning that they would uphold a brief cease-fire in Gaza to allow for the release of 50 hostages Hamas captured during its assault last month on Israel. The decision, first announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office in a WhatsApp message, includes a pause of at least four days in the fighting in Gaza. If it holds, it would be the longest halt in hostilities since Hamass Oct. 7 attacks prompted Israel to begin its bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. The Israeli government is committed to the return of all abductees home, the government said. It added: Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 abductees women and children will be released for four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting. The release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite. In its own statement on Telegram, Hamas affirmed the deal, saying, After many days of difficult and complex negotiations, we announce, with the help and blessing of God, that we have reached a humanitarian truce. Hamas added that the 50 Israelis would be freed in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian women and detainees under 19 held in Israeli jails. The Israeli hostages may not be released until Thursday at the earliest to allow time for Israeli judges to review potential legal challenges to an agreement, according to an Israeli official. Qatar, the lead mediator of the deal, did not immediately comment. The United States conducted a new round of airstrikes the second in roughly a day in Iraq early Wednesday, destroying two facilities used by Iranian proxies that had been targeting American and coalition troops, U.S. military officials said. The latest rounds in the tit-for-tat attacks between the United States and Iranian-backed fighters took place in Iraq, in a departure from the United States practice of striking mostly targets in Syria. This time, the United States struck an operations center and a command-and-control node south of Baghdad used by Kataib Hezbollah, a militia group in Iraq that is considered a proxy of Iran. Kataib Hezbollahs political wing is part of the coalition of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani of Iraq. A defense official said the military could not provide a casualty assessment. The strikes came as the Biden administration has escalated its attacks recently. Barely more than 24 hours earlier, an American military gunship fired on and killed three Iran-backed militants on Monday night who the Pentagon said Tuesday were part of an attack on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. Unlike that exchange, which Pentagon officials said came at the spur of the moment after an American warplane in the area witnessed the ballistic missile attack on Al Asad Air Base and retaliated, the Wednesday morning strikes were planned, at least for a few hours. In the earlier attack, a Pentagon spokeswoman said, the militants had moved to their vehicle after firing missiles at Al Asad Air Base, one of the last remaining Iraqi bases where U.S. forces are stationed. The gunship, an AC-130, spotted them from the air, she said. The militants were targeted because the AC-130 was able to determine the point of origin, the spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said on Tuesday. We had an aircraft that was able to identify where the close-range ballistic missile was being shot from, and therefore we were able to take action. The U.S. strikes followed others last week in eastern Syria against facilities used by Iran and its proxies. Officials said the American strikes last week killed at least six people and possibly seven. The Biden administration had previously conducted airstrikes that officials said were meant to deter Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the militias it supports in Syria and Iraq, but U.S. officials had said that before last week, they had caused no known casualties. The administration blames Iran and the militias aligned with it, known as the Axis of Resistance, for what has become a daily barrage of rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. The latest strike came almost two weeks after American warplanes hit a munitions warehouse in eastern Syria and then several buildings in the region that the Pentagon said were being used for training, logistics and storing munitions, as well as a safe house serving as a command headquarters. An earlier set of U.S. retaliatory strikes came on Oct. 27. Until last week, President Biden had rejected more aggressive bombing options proposed by the Pentagon out of fear of provoking a wider conflict with Iran. But the U.S. strike on Monday was the second to cause fatalities. American officials say there have been 66 strikes by Iran-backed militias on American troops and bases since Oct. 17. With a string of No. 1 hits like Rich Girl, Maneater and Shes Gone in the 1970s and 80s, followed by a more recent cultural resurgence, Daryl Hall and John Oates have long been one of pop musics most celebrated duos. But over the decades, there have been hints that things were not entirely copacetic between the two men whose names are almost always uttered in sequence. (Oates is the one with the famous mustache.) In the 80s the group went on hiatus, and both members have at times pursued solo work. In 2020, they announced plans for a 19th studio album, but it never came to fruition; this year, the musicians performed separate tours. Now, the discord is undeniable as Hall, 77, has filed a lawsuit in Nashville against Oates, 75, the partner with whom he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. Because a judge allowed the complaint to be filed earlier this month under seal, details on the disagreement are scant, but court records classify it as a contract lawsuit. Lawyers for the two men did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The lore of Hall and Oates dates back to 1967, when the musicians were students at Temple University. As Oates tells it in his 2017 memoir, both men were performing in separate bands at a sock hop in Philadelphia when gunfire broke out and they ended up in a service elevator together. A few weeks later, Oatess band split up after two of its members joined the military, and Hall invited Oates to play guitar for his group. Later on, they started writing music together, landing a deal with Atlantic Records in 1972 that propelled them to pop stardom. Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous nights highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. The Picture of Health On Monday, former President Donald Trump released a statement from his doctor that declared him to be in excellent health. The vague report declared that Trump had lost weight through an improved diet and daily physical activity and that his physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional. Jimmy Fallon questioned the report on Tuesday, joking that Trumps the only guy who gets his cardio in by storming out of courtrooms. Bob Contant, who stubbornly sustained his countercultural bookshop for nearly four decades, even as it decamped farther and farther from its punk-rock playground on St. Marks Place in the East Village while the demand in that gentrifying neighborhood for titles on poststructuralist philosophy and critical theory dwindled, died on Nov. 6 at his home in Manhattan. He was 80. His wife, Marilyn Berkman, a poet, said the cause was complications of Covid. A career bookseller, Mr. Contant opened the St. Marks Bookshop in a storefront on St. Marks Place with three partners in 1977. It became a magnet for a wide range of authors and artists, among them Susan Sontag, Richard Howard, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Thurston Moore, Madonna and William S. Burroughs (who was drawn to the shop every Saturday to buy science fiction books and, Mr. Contant once said, because he had a crush on one of the employees). Mr. Contant was the principal owner and buyer for the shop, which, until it closed in 2016, was generally acknowledged to be the oldest independent Manhattan bookstore still owned by any of its founders. Charlottesville parents want answers. After a series of violent student brawls that resulted in Charlottesville High School canceling classes on Friday, Monday and Tuesday, hundreds of parents poured into the schools auditorium Monday night, many hoping to hear what administrators were doing to keep their children safe. Thats not what they got. Instead, parents spent 90 minutes at a listening session organized by Charlottesville United, an organization created to support the citys public schools. Although held on school grounds, it was not a CHS event, and no leaders from Charlottesville City Schools took the stage to answer questions. But five CHS teachers did. The crowd that filled half the large auditorium grew tense at times, with some parents scared for the safety and future of their children occasionally yelling over each other as they tried to learn what the school was doing to stop students from roaming the halls, skipping class, starting fights and stirring disorder. The fighting in particular has been a cause for concern this entire calendar year, with multiple moments of violence caught on camera and circulated online. One large brawl that broke out on Thursday afternoon resulted in multiple smaller skirmishes and general chaos across school grounds. That chaos included an 18-year-old intruder who does not attend CHS gaining access to the building for the sole purpose of joining the fights; a CHS student let the 18-year-old in. Charlottesville police had to be called to help staff restore order; it took hours. Teachers had had enough. So many refused to attend class the next day that CHS was forced to cancel classes. And on Monday and Tuesday, classes were canceled so that teachers and administrators could focus on a hard reset, an effort to determine how to fix a culture that many say is broken within the school. I dont think theres going to be a quick fix, school spokeswoman Beth Cheuk told the press on Monday afternoon. Things are not going to get 100% better overnight, she said. But can we take forward steps? Can we make progress? Can we help people feel like every day this is the place they want to be? Yes, thats what were working towards, Cheuk said. Monday was an eventful day for the division. In addition to canceled classes and the hard reset, school leadership also named an interim principal to replace Rashaad Pitt, who submitted his resignation two weeks ago shortly before tensions at the school reached a boiling point. Kenny Leatherwood has taken the job. He began working at CHS in 1981 and served six years as its principal. In the two weeks since Mr. Pitt announced his resignation, Mr. Leatherwoods name has been sent to me over and over as the right person for the job, school division Superintendent Royal Gurley wrote in a statement announcing the decision. Leatherwood was not in attendance on Monday night, which was noted by several parents at the listening session. And while two school board members were in attendance, they did not take the stage. There was a reason only two board members attended: If three had been there, it technically would have been a school board meeting. That is not what Charlottesville United wanted. We want to be clear that Charlottesville United is not advocating for any set solutions at this juncture. We are here to listen, the group wrote in a statement announcing the event. At first, the format, which centered the voices of teachers, appeared to confuse and even upset some of the parents in attendance. Im wondering if Im in the wrong meeting because my kid wasnt in school on Friday, one parent said into the microphone after the teachers introduced themselves. Im wondering if Im in the right meeting because I havent heard why is it that teachers didnt come to work? I dont see a policymaker up there, he said, getting applause from the audience as he asked for specific policy changes the school was considering. We are here for answers! yelled someone in the crowd. Why are the children not in school? yelled another. The moderator reminded the audience that the purpose of the meeting was to listen, specifically to teachers and concerned parents. One by one, parents came to the microphone to express their concerns and ask questions of teachers. A few things were clear from the evening, one of which is that Charlottesville supports its teachers. Parents repeated over and over again that they admire their educators and the work they do each day. Perhaps the loudest applause of the night came after one teacher said they needed to be paid more. They also reiterated that CHS is understaffed and they need more teacher vacancies filled. The recurring concerns of parents regarded safety and communication. Over and over, parents expressed worry their children were not safe in school and frustration that the district is not transparent enough. One mother of a CHS student addressed the fact that parents are often getting their information from social media, which can be unreliable and lack context. But a lot of time thats where weve gotten our information because theres no communication from the school, she said to the teachers. It took you guys standing up at a meeting and taking a stand for any kind of messaging to go out to the parents whatsoever. Jose Douglas is the father of a CHS student and wants metal detectors installed in the school. The number one thing were looking for is safety, he said into the microphone, addressing the fact that an intruder was let into the school on Thursday. What if a gun came in that day as well? After the meeting, Douglas told The Daily Progress that was his first thought after hearing an intruder had entered the school. They let this kid in here and they couldve had a gun. It couldve been a catastrophic moment right then and there, he said. And nobody had answers. Many parents left the session frustrated that they did not hear directly from school board members or administrators. Im not satisfied with anything I heard, Douglas said. We need safety. I need to understand when the safety is coming. As the crowd began to filter out of the building, three mothers of CHS students remained in the back of the auditorium discussing their children and what theyd heard on stage. None of the three, who each declined to provide their first names, was satisfied with what theyd heard. I know the teachers needed a break. They needed a reset. But what exactly is going to be different next Monday? asked K. Johnson, the mother of a sophomore. Thats why I came, to see if we could hear anything different than what Ive learned from Facebook or in the community. Behind her sat N. Williams. She came to learn what changes the school was planning to institute. All we know is kids were put out Friday, today and tomorrow, but they havent given us any data on what theyve implemented or what the changes are. They havent given us anything, Williams said. She had not realized the event would be a forum for teachers and parents to speak their minds. I didnt know there were going to be teachers on the stage. It should have been administrators, she said. The trio said they did not find the forum to be especially helpful. The teachers cant really answer [our questions]. Its not their fault, Williams said. Johnson said she would have appreciated even a rough sketch of the administrations plan of action. We plan to do this, this and this. Some style of outline to give us something to look forward to, Johnson said. I just dont see a resolution, added F. Brown, the mother of a freshman and a junior. They didnt give us one anyway. What they did get was the perspective of teachers and an explanation of why teachers felt a need for the reset. We didnt want to come back to business as usual when it wasnt business as usual, Pam Brown, who has taught at CHS for 24 years, told the crowd. Normally, the weekend is a time for a reset, but Brown said this called for something different. Were tired. We do not want to have business as usual, Brown said to a round of applause. This kills me. I love being with my students. Im here probably 12 to 14 hours a day most days. Being out of school can be inconvenient, it can be upsetting, but for us it was necessary, Brown said. They also provided some insight on the work sessions theyd been part of that day. While they didnt give specifics, they called the training amazing and really productive. Please believe us that a lot of progress was made today and Im feeling a lot more hopeful for tomorrow, Tina Vasquez told the crowd. Administration has given us commitments to follow up on things that we asked for and we brought up. Joseph Patterson, another teacher, added that the day was intense, with many teachers feeling emotionally and mentally exhausted by the end of their work session. Oftentimes, what happens is we dont get to have these discussions, Patterson said. Today we were able to put in real work, have real discussions and have a moment to be really vulnerable and transparent. So were very optimistic that our efforts are not going to go in vain. Holly Faulconer said teachers share many of the same frustrations as parents. And while she feels safe in the school, she conceded that others dont. But she felt Mondays conversations between teachers and administrators was progress. It felt like actual productive work in order for us to get to where we need to go because we all including you, the students and staff know we need change and we want change. And so today felt like an actual step, not just a box that were going to check, Faulconer said. Matt Deegan, a history teacher, called Mondays internal conversations a good start that will need to be revisited. Were not going to be able to start a new school from scratch based on 16 hours of conversation, Deegan said. We have to further define student expectations and consequences for students. The question of consequences has gotten much attention as parents have learned more about what is happening within the school. One anonymous staffer previously told The Daily Progress that the roving bands of students who do not attend class and start fights receive mild punishments because data from the Virginia Department of Education indicates a correlation between punished students and low graduation rates. One CHS senior, Nasir Sumpter, came to the microphone to say that many issues were being sugarcoated. I think disciplinary action is needed severely, Sumpter said. Im just going to be honest. There are kids that are roaming the halls every day that dont go to class. Theres kids that go in the bathroom and smoke tobacco. There are kids that start random fights. And in all honesty, they need to be disciplined. The crowd cheered as he spoke. He was among a number of community members who asked for more disciplinary actions. Gurley and others have previously told the press that many of the problems occurring in CHS are often started by a small subsect of students. On Friday, he said more substantial discipline could be coming. Still, on Monday teacher Pam Brown told people to use caution when describing those students, saying shed seen them labeled as thugs. Teachers have emphasized that certain students have difficult home lives, with some being food insecure and without a safe place to stay. That can cause kids to act out once in school. I just want everybody to understand that these kids are our kids, Brown said, adding that CHS produces amazing people and adults. But we have to be there with them no matter what they do. No matter who they are. While many parents left Monday night wanting more specifics, it also became clear that much of the community is still proud of the school despite its ongoing troubles. The listening session celebrated the diversity of the student body, its dedicated teaching staff and a community that wants to help. We love the kids that walk through these doors. We are in a bad space and we recognize that, but we are 100% committed to changing it, and we will need your support through that, Faulconer said. Several parents said theyd like to join the school as substitute teachers, which are sorely needed. Wes Bellamy, a former city council member and the father of a CHS student, told The Daily Progress the community needs to offer its support to the school. The onus is on the schools. The security portion is on the schools. But its also on us, Bellamy said while standing with Douglas. We as community members and specifically Black men who care, we have to be present, and thats what were committed to doing. He and Douglas are planning to be at the school next Monday to welcome students as they enter. Theyre calling for other community members to join them. Were going to do it. Were not going to wait on anybody else, Bellamy said. Well be here Monday at 8:40 a.m. Douglas said. Gaza and Israel await a cease-fire and freed hostages Israel and Hamas havent announced details of a deal for a four-day cease-fire in Gaza, including when it will start. It could begin today. The deal, announced yesterday, includes a planned exchange of at least 150 Palestinian women and children jailed by Israel for at least 50 Israeli women and children taken hostage during Hamass attack on Oct. 7. We have live updates. Israeli officials said they had yet to work out with Hamas who will be released. Israel published a shortlist of 300 Palestinians in Israeli jails who could be exchanged, but had yet to narrow it down to 150 names. The process and route by which the hostages would be transferred to Israel has also not been finalized. The pause would allow for more deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza, through both the Egyptian and Israeli borders, but there has not yet been an agreement on the amount of supplies that would be allowed through. For years, the Binance founder Changpeng Zhao and other senior employees at the cryptocurrency exchange knew that some of its users were criminals. Yet, despite regular warnings from some of its own employees that some transactions on Binance.com were violating anti-money-laundering laws, the firm was reluctant to cut them off. Those allegations, which were made public on Tuesday in a sweeping federal case against Binance and Mr. Zhao, show how thoroughly he and his deputies understood that criminals were using their trading platform and how little they did to stop them. In many cases, they worked hard to keep the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, an arm of the Treasury Department that fights money laundering and other illicit financial transactions, from learning about their most notorious users, according to a regulatory filing by FinCEN. Mr. Zhao and Binance pleaded guilty on Tuesday to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and agreed to pay hefty fines. In April 2019, representatives from a technology company working with Binance reached out to one of Mr. Zhaos deputies to report that Hamass military wing, the Qassam Brigades, was fund-raising for what it described as Palestinian resistance by soliciting Bitcoin donations, and that it had received funds through transactions on Binance.com. The Binance official acknowledged the report, then tried to persuade the tech companys representatives to downplay Binances role in the transactions, according to the filing, which FinCEN posted on its website on Tuesday. As a result, Boeing has redistributed dozens of jets earmarked for Chinese airlines to other customers. Boeing is holding 85 Max planes in storage awaiting delivery to Chinese carriers, for which the planes were even painted years ago. Those are among 250 aircraft in Boeings inventory, most of which the company said it expected to deliver by the end of next year. China is a crucial market for Boeing. Before the pandemic, about a third of Boeings 737s were being delivered to the country. Over the next two decades, Boeing projects, China will account for 20 percent of global airplane demand. This means China will need an estimated 6,500 single-aisle planes like the 737 Max and more than 1,500 larger, twin-aisle planes, such as Boeings 787 Dreamliner, Boeing said. The Max was banned globally for 20 months after it was involved in two fatal crashes in late 2018 and early 2019, killing 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia. Passenger flights aboard the Max resumed in much of the world by early 2021, but China was the last major country to clear the plane to fly again. The first Max passenger flight there was in January, and all 95 Max planes in China are now back in service. While Boeings sales and deliveries to China have diminished greatly, the company hasnt been shut out. Boeing sold a handful in 2020 to a Chinese leasing company, ICBC Leasing, which also took delivery of a dozen Max jets in 2021 and 2022. Boeing has also sold and delivered dozens of 777 freighters to customers in China in recent years. In the three years since the Max began flying again, Boeing has received more than 2,100 new orders worldwide for the jet, not including cancellations. During an air show in Dubai this month, the company announced more than 200 additional orders, about a third of those for the Max. That sales momentum, faith in the companys ability to accelerate deliveries and other recent positive news have helped to lift Boeings share price more than 15 percent this month. Every day, Davida Wynn sets herself one task: Take a bath. Or wash the dishes. Or make an elaborate meal. By the end of the chore, she is exhausted and has to sit or lie down, sometimes falling asleep wherever she happens to be. Anything beyond that is truly excruciating, Ms. Wynn, 42, said. Her heart races even during small tasks, and she often gets dizzy. At least once a month, she falls at her home outside Atlanta. Once she badly bruised her face, and another time she banged up her knee. Ms. Wynn was infected with the coronavirus in May 2020, when she was a nurse in a hospital Covid unit, and became so ill she was put into a medically induced coma for six weeks. Ever since, her bloodwork has indicated that she is experiencing extreme inflammation, a hallmark of autoimmune disease. Infection with the coronavirus is known to leave behind a long legacy of health problems, many of which are characterized as long Covid. But mounting evidence suggests that independent of that syndrome, the coronavirus also befuddles the immune system into targeting the body, causing autoimmune disorders in some people. When he was in his mid-20s and first visited the studio where he would later shoot Citizen Kane, Orson Welles is said to have likened the movies to the best electric train set a boy could have. Welles is a defining inspiration for Ridley Scott, who is best known for monumentally scaled historical epics like Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven. In these movies as well as in his latest spectacle, Napoleon, Scott plays, to push Welless metaphor further, with the biggest train sets conceivable giant, beautiful, gleaming machines that can, by turns, transport and overwhelm you. Hes a heavy metal guy. Napoleon is a very big movie, as you would expect given that it follows its title subject from the bloody delirium of the French Revolution to battlefields across Europe, Africa and, catastrophically, into Russia. More startling, though, is that the movie is also often eccentric and at times eccentrically funny. You expect refined craft and technique from Scott and the pleasures of spectacle filmmaking at its most expansive. You expect heft, seriousness, not snort-out-loud humor, which I guess explains why, while watching the movie, I flashed on Karl Marxs axiom about history being first tragedy and then farce. It opens in Paris amid that convulsion of violence called the Terror, with surging, shouting crowds and the metallic hiss of the falling guillotine blade. Aristocrats are losing their heads (Scott re-creates one execution with gory verisimilitude), and Napoleon Bonaparte a mesmerizing, off-kilter, lumpish Joaquin Phoenix will soon profit from the chaos. Before long, the story has jumped forward and now Napoleon is in the southern French port city of Toulon, where he strategically routs the Anglo-Spanish fleet that has taken the city. The reason is that most heart donors currently come from a small category of deaths: donors who have been declared brain dead, often after a traumatic incident like a car accident. But they remain on life support their heart beats, and their blood circulates, bringing oxygen to their organs until a transplant team recovers their organs. The new technique, transplant surgeons say, significantly expands the potential pool to patients who are comatose but not brain dead, and whose families have withdrawn life support because there is little chance of recovery. After these patients hearts stop, they are declared dead. But hearts are almost never recovered from these donors because they are often damaged by oxygen depletion during the dying process. Surgeons have discovered that returning blood flow to the heart, after the donor has been declared dead, will restore it to a remarkable degree, making it suitable for transplant. But two aspects of the procedure have left some surgeons and bioethicists uncomfortable. The first problem, some ethicists and surgeons say, stems from the way death has traditionally been defined: The heart has stopped and circulation of blood has irreversibly ceased. Because the new procedure involves restarting blood flow, critics say it essentially invalidates the earlier declaration of death. But that may be a minor problem compared to an additional step surgeons take: They use metal clamps to cut blood flow from the revived heart to the donors head, to limit blood flow to the brain to prevent the possibility that any brain activity is restored. Some physicians and ethicists say that is a tacit admission that the donor might not be legally dead. It has become Paul Schwartzs job to help ensure the safety of millions of Thanksgiving parade watchers as New York Citys chief balloon officer. Mr. Schwartz, whose actual job is deputy commissioner of bridges, has earned the unofficial title from his colleagues because he leads a team of city transportation engineers who clear the floating behemoths in the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade for takeoff. The engineers have gathered detailed calculations on how high each of the 16 giant balloons this year including the Pillsbury Doughboy and Kung Fu Pandas Po can safely go at various wind speeds. Over the course of several hours, they put the newest balloons through test runs at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to try to head off problems. And on parade day, they will spread out along the route with anemometers to monitor weather conditions in real-time. Elena assisted her mother in the kitchen, stringing vivid cerise chiles to dry in the sun, grinding cumin seeds with a mortar and pestle, and dampening and heating tortillas. What was meant to be a family vacation to San Francisco ended up being a permanent stay with the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, when the family home was destroyed. The familys first months in San Francisco were tinged with sadness as we tried so hard to fit into the strange ways of a new land, Zelayeta wrote in her self-help book, Elenas Lessons in Living (1947). Discrimination was routine: At school, students taunted Elena and her siblings for the staccato intonation of their speech. To make ends meet, she hawked her mothers tamales door to door. It was during the throes of the Depression, when it was difficult to find work, that Zelayeta decided to realize her long-gestating dream of running a restaurant. She and her husband, Lorenzo Zelayeta, whose family also hailed from Mexico, began to serve chiles rellenos, or cheese-stuffed peppers, in their seven-room flat, covering tables with pastel cloths. Their homegrown restaurant was such a sleeper hit that Zelayeta soon moved it to a building in downtown San Francisco. There, her jubilant personality was as much an attraction as her enchiladas: She would dance for the crowd as they shouted Ole! There have been five wars in the last 15 years between Israel and Hamas. How do we end the current one and prevent a sixth from happening, sooner or later? How do we balance our desire to stop the fighting with the need to address the roots of the conflict? For 75 years, diplomats, well-intentioned Israelis and Palestinians and government leaders around the world have struggled to bring peace to this region. In that time an Egyptian president and an Israeli prime minister were assassinated by extremists for their efforts to end the violence. And on and on it goes. For those of us who want not only to bring this war to an end, but to avoid a future one, we must first be cleareyed about facts. On Oct. 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, unleashed a barbaric attack against Israel, killing about 1,200 innocent men, women and children and taking more than 200 hostage. On a per-capita basis, if Israel had the same population as the United States, that attack would have been the equivalent of nearly 40,000 deaths, more than 10 times the fatalities that we suffered on 9/11. Israel, in response, under the leadership of its right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under indictment for corruption and whose cabinet includes outright racists, unleashed what amounts to total war against the Palestinian people. In Gaza, over 1.6 million Palestinians were forced out of their homes. Food, water, medical supplies and fuel were cut off. The United Nations estimates that 45 percent of the housing units in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. According to the Gaza health ministry, more than 12,000 Palestinians, about half of whom are children, have been killed and many more wounded. And the situation becomes more dire every day. This is a humanitarian catastrophe that risks igniting a wider regional conflagration. We all want it to end as soon as possible. To make progress, however, we must grapple with the complexity of this situation that too many people on both sides want to wave away. First, Hamas has made it clear, before and after Oct. 7, that its goal is perpetual warfare and the destruction of the state of Israel. Just last week a spokesman for Hamas told The New York Times: I hope that the state of war with Israel will become permanent on all the borders, and that the Arab world will stand with us. Second, Israel has done nothing in recent years to give hope for a peaceful settlement maintaining the blockade of Gaza, deepening the daily humiliations of occupation in the West Bank, and largely ignoring the horrendous living conditions facing Palestinians. Needless to say, I do not have all of the answers to this never-ending tragedy. But for those of us who believe in peace and justice, it is imperative that we do our best to provide Israelis and Palestinians with a thoughtful response that maps out a realistic path to addressing the reality we face today. Here are my thoughts as to the best way forward and how the United States can rally the world around a moral position that moves us toward peace in the region and justice for the oppressed Palestinian population. To start, we must demand an immediate end to Israels indiscriminate bombing, which is causing an enormous number of civilian casualties and is in violation of international law. Israel is at war with Hamas, not innocent Palestinian men, women and children. Israel cannot bomb an entire neighborhood to take out one Hamas target. We dont know if this campaign has been effective in degrading Hamass military capabilities. But we do know that a reported 70 percent of the casualties are women and children, and that 104 U.N. aid workers and 53 journalists have been killed. Thats not acceptable. There must also be a significant, extended humanitarian pause so that badly needed aid food, water, medicine and fuel can get into Gaza and save lives. If Wednesday mornings deal in which 50 Israeli hostages are to be freed in exchange for a four-day pause in fighting is honored, it is a promising first step that we can build upon, and hopefully work to extend the pause. Meanwhile, the United Nations must be given time to safely set up the distribution network needed to prevent thirst, starvation and disease, to build shelters and evacuate those who need critical care. This window will also allow for talks to free as many hostages as possible. This extended pause must not precede a resumption of indiscriminate bombing. Israel will continue to go after Hamas, but it must dramatically change its tactics to minimize civilian harm. If long-suffering Palestinians are ever going to have a chance at self-determination and a decent standard of living, there must be no long-term Israeli re-occupation and blockade of Gaza. If Hamas is going to be removed from power, as it must be, and Palestinians given the opportunity for a better life, an Israeli occupation of Gaza would be absolutely counterproductive and would benefit Hamas. For the sake of regional peace and a brighter future for the Palestinian people, Gaza must have a chance to be free of Hamas. There can be no long-term Israeli occupation. To achieve the political transformation that Gaza needs, new Palestinian leadership will be required as part of a wider political process. And for that transformation and peace process to take place, Israel must make certain political commitments that will allow for Palestinian leadership committed to peace to build support. They must guarantee displaced Palestinians the absolute right to return to their homes as Gaza rebuilds. People who have lived in poverty and despair for years cannot be made permanently homeless. Israel must also commit to end the killings of Palestinians in the West Bank and freeze settlements there as a first step toward permanently ending the occupation. Those steps will show that peace can deliver for the Palestinian people, hopefully giving the Palestinian Authority the legitimacy it needs to assume administrative control of Gaza, likely after an interim stabilization period under an international force. Finally, if Palestinians are to have any hope for a decent future, there must be a commitment to broad peace talks to advance a two-state solution in the wake of this war. The United States, the international community and Israels neighbors must move aggressively toward that goal. This would include dramatically increased international support for the Palestinian people, including from wealthy Gulf States. It would also mean the promise of full recognition of Palestine pending the formation of a new democratically elected government committed to peace with Israel. Lets be clear: this is not going to happen on its own. Mr. Netanyahus Likud party was explicitly formed on the premise that between the Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty, and the current coalition agreement reinforces that goal. This is not just ideology. The Israeli government has systematically pursued this goal. The last year saw record Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank, where more than 700,000 Israelis now live in areas that the United Nations and the United States agree are occupied territories. They have used state violence to back up this de facto annexation. Since Oct. 7, the United Nations reports that at least 208 Palestinians, including 53 children, have been killed by Israeli security forces and settlers. This cannot be allowed to continue. Mr. Netanyahu has made clear where he stands on these critical issues. So should we. If asking nicely worked, we wouldnt be in this position. The only way these necessary changes will happen is if the United States uses the substantial leverage we have with Israel. And we all know what that leverage is. For many years, the United States has provided Israel substantial sums of money with close to no strings attached. Currently, we provide $3.8 billion a year. President Biden has asked for $14.3 billion more on top of that sum and asked Congress to waive normal, already-limited oversight rules. The blank check approach must end. The United States must make clear that while we are friends of Israel, there are conditions to that friendship and that we cannot be complicit in actions that violate international law and our own sense of decency. That includes an end to indiscriminate bombing; a significant pause to bombing so that massive humanitarian assistance can come into the region; the right of displaced Gazans to return to their homes; no long-term Israeli occupation of Gaza; an end to settler violence in the West Bank and a freeze on settlement expansion; and a commitment to broad peace talks for a two-state solution in the wake of the war. Over the years, people of good will around the world, including Israelis, have tried to address this conflict in a way that brings justice for Palestinians and security for Israel. I, and some other members of Congress, have tried to do what we could. Obviously, we did not do enough. Now we must recommit to this effort. The stakes are just too high to give up. It is hard to describe what it means for someone to be severely wasted, but when you hold a child who is suffering from this most lethal form of acute malnutrition, you understand, and you never forget. In Afghanistan last year, I met a 3-month-old girl named Wahida who was so malnourished I could barely feel the weight of her in my arms. Her suffering has left an indelible mark on my heart. Now the suffering in Gaza is leaving a similar mark on me. Last week, I visited the al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Inside, I was met with a sea of patients, health care workers and the displaced. And there were children everywhere: girls and boys running through the corridors, resting on mattresses with their families and recovering in hospital beds. I met a 16-year-old being treated for injuries sustained when her neighborhood was bombed. Though she survived, the doctors say she will never be able to walk again. The medical staffers were mounting truly heroic efforts to provide lifesaving care to their patients, including dozens of children. But with their supplies of fuel, medicines and water nearly depleted, it is unclear how long they can continue to provide even the most basic of interventions. In the hospitals neonatal ward, for example, tiny babies were clinging to life in incubators, as doctors worried about how they could keep the machines running without fuel. These children, Gazas youngest as well as those in utero are especially vulnerable to the burgeoning crisis of malnutrition and the prospect of starvation. After more than six weeks of war amid bombs and gunfire, a lack of electricity and the near-total closure of all border crossings, Gazas one million children are now food insecure, facing what could soon become a public health catastrophe. Supplies of nutritious food have virtually run out. Shops are closed, and in the streets of Khan Younis I saw piles of garbage where there once were food stands. Last week, the al-Salam Mill in Deir al-Balah was reportedly hit in an attack and forced to shut down. This was Gazas last functional flour mill. All local flour production is now effectively halted. The hostage release deal outlined on Tuesday would include a cease-fire of at least four days and would reportedly allow for some new shipments of basic humanitarian aid to go to the people of Gaza who desperately need it. But to save lives and ensure that Gazas people, especially its children, remain healthy and stave off looming health issues, we as humanitarian partners must be permitted to bring quality food, essential nutrition supplies, water and fuel into Gaza, at levels that are sufficient to meet the surging needs. And we must be permitted to continue safely delivering these resources after hostilities resume. Without sufficient quantities of nutritious food, people will quickly become malnourished and could eventually starve. The risks associated with food insecurity are compounded by the extreme scarcity of safe drinking water. According to international humanitarian standards, one person needs a minimum of almost four gallons of clean water per day for drinking and to meet basic personal needs. In Gaza, this standard is far from being met: About 96 percent of the water supply is considered unfit for human consumption. Water pumping and wastewater treatment have all ceased to function because of the lack of fuel. People have resorted to accessing water from unsafe sources that are salty or polluted. These conditions, when combined with displacement and overcrowding in shelters, can quickly lead to disease outbreaks that threaten everyone, especially malnourished children. Since mid-October, more than 71,000 total cases of acute respiratory infections have been reported, while over 22,000 cases of diarrheal infections have been reported in children under the age of 5. And without clean water, health care facilities cannot provide effective treatment to those in need, nor can they maintain basic infection prevention and control measures. The consequences of this crisis extend not just to survivors of the war but also to those who will be born in its aftermath. The United Nations estimates that 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza 5,500 of whom are expected to deliver in the next month can no longer obtain basic antenatal health and nutrition services. Malnourished women are more likely to die and face complications during pregnancy and childbirth. They are more likely to have children born too small, too thin and vulnerable to undernutrition, illness and death. More than 105,000 breastfeeding mothers in Gaza are now struggling to feed themselves and breastfeed their babies. Our analyses show that about half of all stunting in early childhood originates during pregnancy or in the first six months of life a time when (in the absence of baby formula, which is in extremely short supply in Gaza right now) children are entirely dependent on their mothers for nutrition. We project that over the next few months, child wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition in children, could increase by nearly 30 percent in Gaza. Up to 5,000 of these children could experience severe wasting, in which dangerous weight loss and acutely weakened immune systems put them at imminent risk of death even from illnesses like the common cold, other respiratory infections and diarrhea. These are conservative projections; the longer the conflict and siege continue, the higher these figures will rise. Without urgent therapeutic feeding and care, severely malnourished children may not survive. Even if they do survive, their condition may disrupt their physical growth and cognitive development, with irreversible long-term effects for the vast majority of them. Undernourished and stunted children are more likely to develop chronic health problems as adults, and more likely to have lower educational achievement and economic security. Even before the current crisis, approximately 30,000 children under the age of 5 in Gaza were experiencing stunted growth, while more than 7,600 suffered from wasting. Now the violence has shut down lifesaving prevention, screening and treatment services for malnutrition that were previously reaching the 340,000 children under 5 years of age in Gaza. With hospitals and health centers ceasing to function and nutrition programs nonoperational, we cannot get malnourished children the critical prevention and treatment services they urgently need. In the humanitarian community, we use the phrase time is of the essence a lot, perhaps to the point where it has lost its ability to convey urgency. But that is exactly the situation we are in right now in Gaza. If we cannot get proper nutrition and care services, safe water and sanitation to children and women now, they will die. Gazas children have endured far too much death and suffering already. In just the last seven weeks, according to Gazas Hamas-run health ministry, at least 5,600 children have been killed and nearly 9,000 injured because of the ongoing conflict. We must not let this grim tally rise, especially when the solutions are so evident: sustained, safe and unimpeded humanitarian access to civilians wherever they are, to bring essential food nutrition supplements, fuel and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza. Delays will cost lives. The parties to this conflict have the power to stop this nutrition crisis from turning into a catastrophe for Gazas one million children. I urge them to give us the space to do our jobs so that we can get these kids the support they need and deserve. Partway through the second of two teacher workdays to deal with the violence and mayhem that shut down Charlottesville High School for three days leading into the Thanksgiving holiday, the campus was shut down entirely on Tuesday after reports of a bomb threat. "This afternoon, we received word that an image of what appeared to be a bomb was posted to a CHS student SnapChat group," reads the opening line of a text message sent to parents around 2:30 p.m. That image launched a search of the premises, according to Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis. "Our canine team is going through the school and making sure there's no bomb," he told The Daily Progress later in the afternoon. Kochis said he sent in the sniffing dog team out of an abundance of caution even though the Snapchat amounted to a "very vague" threat. "We always take them as if they're real until they're not," said Kochis. No bomb was found, according to Amanda Korman, a Charlottesville City Schools spokeswoman. "We have since learned that the person who posted the image, who is a CHS student, had not realized that the image could be interpreted as a threat," Korman told The Daily Progress. "And they regret making those posts." Korman added that the student has been referred for discipline, but would provide no further details. Korman said that the building was evacuated by 2:10 p.m. and administrators and teachers went home to make way for the search. Although their second workday was interrupted, Korman said strides had been made toward resolving the recent troubles that have plagued the home of the Black Knights this year, including the sudden, midterm resignation of Principal Rashaad Pitt. "I think it has been a very productive two days," said Korman. "These days were an opportunity for faculty and staff to get on the same page to support students and to use consequences when students make mistakes." Charlottesville City Schools Superintendent Royal Gurley and the school board indicated Friday in an open letter that the first school closure was precipitated by teachers who refused to teach because of student behavior. There have been reports this school year of a band of students who refuse to go to class but instead wander the halls looking for fights, multiple brawls in school common areas have been filmed and circulated online, teachers have complained that they have no means to discipline students and counselors have said the school district has not punished students given state guidance that severe punishments lower graduation rates. All of this came to a head Thursday of last week when multiple fights were reported on school grounds, an 18-year-old who does not attend CHS was granted access for the sole purpose of entering the fray and police were called to restore order. Teachers refused to come to class the next day, and within 24 hours school officials declared Monday and Tuesday teacher workdays. Korman said that when CHS reopens Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday, it will be a school that's both stronger and safer. "The reason that Dr. Gurley and the school board were in support of having teacher workdays was to ensure there was time and space for faculty and staff to discuss the issues they were seeing," said Korman. "And number two, but perhaps more importantly, to talk about solutions and get back to the business of learning." Korman said the crisis has sparked an outpouring of concern. "Since last Friday, we have heard from concerned parents and particularly from alumni saying, 'How can I help? I'm a Black Knight, and this school meant so much to me, and I want to help.'" Korman said the school district has launched a push to hire substitute teachers and to onboard volunteers, and she said that the school division plans additional communications to parents before the reopening. The election of Javier Milei, a wild-haired showboating weirdo with five cloned mastiffs and a habit of psychic communion with their departed pet of origin, as president of Argentina has inspired a lot of discussion about the true nature of right-wing populism in our age of general discontent. Milei has many of the signifiers of a Trumpian politics: the gonzo energy, the criticism of corrupt elites, the rants against the left, the support from social and religious conservatives. At the same time, on economic policy he is much more of a doctrinaire libertarian than a Trump-style mercantilist or populist, a more extreme version of Barry Goldwater and Paul Ryan rather than a defender of entitlement spending and tariffs. Whereas the party that he defeated, the Peronist formation that has governed Argentina for most of the 21st century, is actually more economically nationalist and populist, having ascended in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis that ended Argentinas most notable experiment with neoliberal economics. You can interpret the Trump-Milei divergence in several ways. One reading is that the style of right-wing populism is the essence of the thing, that its policy substance is negotiable so long as it puts forward figures who promise national rebirth and embody some kind of clownish, usually masculine rebellion against the norms of cultural progressivism. Another reading is that, yes, the policy is somewhat negotiable but there are actually deep ideological affinities between right-wing economic nationalism and what might be called paleolibertarianism, despite their disagreement on specific issues. In American terms, this means that Trumpism was anticipated in different ways by Ross Perot and Ron Paul; in global terms, it means that we should expect the parties of the populist right to move back and forth between dirigiste and libertarian tendencies, depending on the economic context and political winds. In my reporting, the best explanation Ive heard for the boards decision, as poorly communicated as it was, is that it fired Altman for the precise reason it said it fired Altman. He was acting and communicating with the board in a way that made it hard for it to exercise its responsibilities that is to say, control the for-profit. Part of this was communication; the implication is that the board felt Altman was slow or opaque or misleading in what he told them and when. But part of it was the pace of commercialization, the contracts being signed with partners, the promises being made to employees and the products being pushed into development. OpenAI is supposed to develop A.I. to serve humanity, not to help Microsoft capture market share against Google. And so the board tried to do the thing that it was designed to do: rein in the for-profit, in this case by firing Altman. Warned that firing Altman could destroy OpenAI, Helen Toner, one of the boards members, replied, That would actually be consistent with the mission. OpenAI had always told its investors that something like this might happen. It would be wise to view any investment in OpenAI Global LLC in the spirit of a donation, it warned. The company then went out and raised tens of billions of dollars from people who did not see their investments as donations. That certainly describes Microsoft, which invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, owns 49 percent of the for-profit, put OpenAIs technologies at the center of its product road map and has never described its strategy as philanthropic. Satya Nadella, Microsofts chief executive, didnt have the power to stop OpenAIs board from firing Altman, but he did have the power to render the action hollow. He announced a new advanced innovations division, to be led by Altman (and the OpenAI president Greg Brockman, who resigned in solidarity with Altman) and staffed by any OpenAI employees whod like to join. More than 90 percent of OpenAI employees including, weirdly, Ilya Sutskever, the OpenAI co-founder whod not only helped the board oust Altman but also had informed Altman that he was fired then signed a letter threatening to quit unless Altman was reinstated and the board resigned. By Wednesday, Altman was back as chief executive of OpenAI and all but one of the board members had resigned. I dont know whether the board was right to fire Altman. It certainly has not made a public case that would justify the decision. But the nonprofit board was at the center of OpenAIs structure for a reason. It was supposed to be able to push the off button. But there is no off button. The for-profit proved it can just reconstitute itself elsewhere. And dont forget: Theres still Googles A.I. division and Metas A.I. division and Anthropic and Inflection and many others whove built large language models similar to GPT-4 and are yoking them to business models similar to OpenAIs. Capitalism is itself a kind of artificial intelligence, and its far further along than anything the computer scientists have yet coded. In that sense, it copied OpenAIs code long ago. As Ridley Scotts Napoleon opens for Thanksgiving holiday viewing, scenes from the films trailers are making waves. That was especially true of a sensational depiction of French troops led by Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor firing cannons at the pyramids of Giza. I dont know if he did that, Mr. Scott told The Times of London. But it was a fast way of saying he took Egypt. There is no evidence that French invaders launched artillery at the pyramids, or that Napoleons troops shot the nose off the Sphinx, another piece of popular apocrypha (evidence suggests that the nose was chiseled off centuries before Napoleons time). From what we know, Napoleon held the Sphinx and the pyramids in high esteem and used them as a means of urging his troops to greater glory, said Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. He definitely did not take pot shots at them. For much of the past year, OpenAIs board of directors has been criticized as too small and too divided to effectively govern one of the fastest-growing start-ups in Silicon Valley history. On Friday, the boards dysfunction spilled into public view when four of its members fired Sam Altman, OpenAIs popular and powerful chief executive. The dismissal uncorked five turbulent days, as Mr. Altman rallied almost all of the companys 770 employees to lobby for the boards resignation and his reinstatement. Mr. Altman, 38, returned to the company on Tuesday night, after days of haggling over his job and over the makeup of the board. The board and Mr. Altmans allies discussed more than a half dozen options for its future. They considered a board size of three to seven members and discussed about 30 candidates, including Laurene Powell Jobs, the founder of the Emerson Collective and widow of Steve Jobs, and Brian Chesky, the chief executive of Airbnb. The departing board wanted to be sure the replacements would be independent thinkers and experienced enough to stand up to Mr. Altman. Sam Altman was reinstated late Tuesday as OpenAIs chief executive, the company said, successfully reversing his ouster by OpenAIs board last week after a campaign waged by his allies, employees and investors. The companys board of directors will be overhauled, jettisoning several members who had opposed Mr. Altman. Adam DAngelo, the chief executive of Quora, will be the only holdover. OpenAI had an agreement in principle for Mr. Altman to return as chief executive, it said in a post to X. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this. The return of Mr. Altman and Greg Brockman, the companys president who had resigned in solidarity, and the remaking of the board, capped a frenetic five days that upended OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot and one of the worlds highest-profile artificial intelligence companies. The analysis showed that the increased births were disproportionately among women in their 20s and Black and Hispanic women, which researchers said could be because these groups tend to be poorer, making it harder to travel. They are also the demographic groups that have tended to be more likely to seek abortions. Dr. Alison Norris, who studies reproductive health at Ohio State and was not involved in the study, said she was not surprised to see births increasing, particularly among those groups. She noted that before Dobbs, abortion access was already limited in many states, so any measure of change that we see will in some ways be an underestimate of the challenges that people experience. The biggest increases in births were in states where women had to travel the farthest to reach an abortion clinic. Texas, where the average increase in driving distance to the nearest abortion clinic was 453 miles, had a 5.1 percent increase in births, relative to states that did not pass a ban but had similar trends before Dobbs. Mississippi, where it increased 240 miles, had a 4.4 percent increase. In states where there was less of a change in driving distance to the nearest clinic, there was a smaller relative change in births. Missouri, for instance, had only one clinic, in St. Louis. When it closed, the average driving distance to the nearest clinic increased only two miles, because clinics along the Illinois border were already serving Missourians. Births there increased just 0.4 percent. There was also evidence that online abortion pills ordered from overseas vendors played a role in some states. The three states in which the increases in births were less than the researchers had predicted based on travel distances Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana also had large increases in orders for medication abortions from the largest overseas provider, according to an analysis of those orders. Over the weekend, I visited the spectacular de Young Open, a dizzying exhibition of Bay Area artists work at the de Young Museum, San Franciscos flagship art museum in Golden Gate Park. The 883 works in the exhibition were selected through an open submission process that invited artists living in any of nine Bay Area counties to submit paintings, sculptures, photography and more. The event, which the museum plans to hold every three years, follows a format more often seen at community centers, schools and smaller museums, as my colleague Jori Finkel reported. President Biden and his aides are using an agreement for a brief halt to hostilities in Gaza to push the Israeli government to take broad measures aimed at lessening the harm to Palestinian civilians, including setting up safe areas, allowing in more medical aid and permitting larger deliveries of fuel, U.S. officials say. American and Qatari officials are also pushing their Israeli counterparts to consider extending the planned four-day pause in fighting if Hamas pledges to free more hostages beyond the 50 now promised. The agreement, whose details were still under negotiation, has terms for extending the pause. Israel continues to dismiss calls for a longer-term cease-fire accompanied by political negotiations, despite growing U.S. and international concern about the civilian deaths and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The American officials, who say they support Israels right to defend itself, expect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet to continue the military campaign in Gaza that began after the Hamas terrorist attacks nearly seven weeks ago, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 240 others abducted. Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu on Wednesday to discuss the hostage release agreement, and also spoke with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the president of Egypt, according to White House statements summarizing the calls. U.S. officials had been traveling among those three nations to help forge the hostage agreement. Mr. Biden discussed with Mr. Netanyahu the pause, which will allow for surging in much-needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza, according to the White House summary. Mr. Biden also spoke about the need for maintaining calm along the Israel-Lebanon border, where Israel and Hezbollah have been striking at each other, and in the West Bank, where at least 190 Palestinians have been killed in violence since Oct. 7, either in encounters with the Israeli military or extremist Israeli settlers. Speaker Mike Johnson struggled to defend himself at a recent private party meeting on Capitol Hill when some House Republicans confronted their new leader asking for any evidence that he was leading them in a new direction or taking hits on their behalf. Just Google my name and youll see, was Mr. Johnsons reply. He had been besieged by unflattering media coverage since winning the gavel (much of it focused on his evangelical Christianity and hard-line stances against abortion rights and same-sex marriage), the Louisiana Republican told his colleagues. He had even been mocked on Saturday Night Live, he noted, by not one but two different comedians. Mr. Johnson, a fairly anonymous lawmaker before his election last month, has struggled to adjust to the new level of scrutiny that has come with his sudden ascent to the post second in line to the presidency. Some Republicans thought his response at the meeting reflected his steep learning curve as he settles into the job. A mild-mannered Christian conservative who does not curse and rarely raises his voice, Mr. Johnson has pleaded for grace from his fellow Republicans as he has made some of the same moves that led them to oust his predecessor, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California. In Iowa, he doesnt fare much better. A recent Des Moines Register survey shows former President Donald J. Trump maintaining a dominant lead and Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, battling Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for second place. And yet Mr. Ramaswamy, who has campaigned in the image of Mr. Trump, says he will hold over 200 events in Iowa between now and the caucuses on Jan. 15 after abandoning his Ohio headquarters and moving staff to Iowa and New Hampshire, as Politico reported this month. He suggests the polls dont accurately reflect his support. If what we are seeing in our events translates into the broader caucus-going population, were going to have an outstanding result here in Iowa, he told reporters on Tuesday after speaking to a packed crowd at a Cedar Rapids restaurant. People really dial in and start talking about this as the caucus date approaches, and so our bet is thats going to be a bottom-up lift that we get. I truly think were going to end up delivering a surprise, he added. The intensity of his schedule several states a week, with up to six events each day, not counting frequent media appearances is coming at what he says is great personal expense. His campaign has picked up the tab for dozens of meals at recent events. At stops attended by a New York Times reporter, representatives for the host restaurants declined to give specifics on the cost. One restaurant in Toledo, Iowa, reached by phone, put the cost at $1,000. Art Guild of Greene: More than 50 paintings and drawings by The Four Ferrante Sisters (Dianne, Inez, Noreen and Toni [Tucker]) are at Stanardsville Station through Dec. 29. The venue is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. most Fridays and Saturdays. artguildgreene.org. The Arts Center in Orange: artscenterinorange.com. (540) 672-7311. The Barn Swallow: The Art of the Cup, pastel paintings by Brita Lineburger, on view through Nov. 30. Open 1 to 5 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. 796 Gillums Ridge Road in Charlottesville. thebarnswallow.com. Botanical Fare Restaurant: Works by Judith Ely will be on display in November and December. Hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. botanicalfare.com. (434) 217-4496. Cville Arts Cooperative Gallery: World on a String, works by ceramic jewelry artist Jennifer Paxton, on display through November. 118 E. Main St. (434) 972-9500. Carver 4-County Museum is making Being a Citizen, its new traveling exhibit, available during the 75th-anniversary year of George Washington Carver Regional High School, Carver Forever: A Diamond Jubilee. carver4cm@gmail.com. carver4cm.org. The Center at Belvedere: The second Small Works Show can be seen through Dec. 19. https://thecentercville.org/. Chroma Projects: Edie (Edith) Reads Wing in the Great Hall South of Vault Virginia and Sara Clark: Ornatus Mundi in the Great Front Hall of Vault Virginia remain on view through December. Aggie Zed: Congregation can be seen through Nov. 30 on the main floor of Vault Virginia. Third Street Southeast, just off the Downtown Mall. artlab@chroma projects.com. chromaprojects.com. Connaughton Gallery: Landscapes and Georgia OKeeffe Revisited by Eric T. Allen and the Fiber and Stitch Art Collective on display through Dec. 8. Third floor of Rouss & Robertson halls at McIntire School of Commerce. Hours: 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday; closed on weekends. Crozet Artisan Depot: crozetartisandepot.com. Cuppa Joe Coffee: Paintings and etchings by Tom Tartaglino on display at 90 Joshua Lane in Palmyra. Hours: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. (434) 906-4172. The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia: Processing Abstraction, NDakinna Landscapes Acknowledged and Look Three Ways: Maya Painted Pottery can be seen through Dec. 31. Look for an upcoming artist talk by Cara Romero at a later date. Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Paintings from Yirrkala, one of the most significant touring exhibitions of Aboriginal Australian art ever stages, will be on display from Feb. 3 to July 14, 2024. uvafralinartmuseum.virginia.edu. The Gallery at Studio Ix and The Charlottesville Black Arts Collective: Adjacent, new works by Kim Boggs and Dale Morse, can be seen through Sunday. Gallery of the Year: A Collection of Eight Quilts by Amanda Wagstaff will be on view Dec. 1 through Dec. 31. An opening reception is set for 5 p.m. Dec. 1. Artist Talk is set for 5 p.m. Dec. 21. Gallery hours: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. studioix.co. (434) 242-0905. Grace Estate Winery: 5273 Mount Juliet Farm in Crozet. Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Monday and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. graceestatewinery@gmail.com. The Guild Gallery: 300 E. Main St. (434) 227-1333. Harrison Institute and Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia: Their World As Big As They Made It: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance, featuring works of writers, artists and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, through June 8, 2024, at 170 McCormick Road. library@virginia.edu. (434) 924-3021. Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection: Performing Country, which explores the ways Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists explore the complex idea of Country, on exhibition through March 3, 2024. Three Women from Wirrimanu, including colorful acrylic paintings on canvas by leaders of the desert art movement, on exhibition through Dec. 3, 2023. Free tours are offered by volunteer guides at 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. daily. 400 Worrell Drive. (434) 243-8500. The Looking Glass: Look for two new pieces, The Door to the Forest by Sam Fisher and Moon Rabbits by Meesha Goldberg. Open Saturdays and Sundays. Ix Art Park Foundation has opened a major expansion of its immersive art museum featuring works by new and returning artists. ixartpark.org. Louisa Arts Center: Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at 212 Fredericksburg Ave. in Louisa. louisaarts.org. (540) 967-2200. Loving Cup Vineyard and Winery: Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. (434) 984-0774. McGuffey Art Center: Members Holiday Show and Shop continues through Dec. 31 in the Smith Gallery. Winterfest Open House is set for 1 to 4 p.m. Dec. 3. First Fridays event is from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Dec. 1. Members Annual Holiday Show is in the First- and Second-Floor Hallway Galleries (cash and carry). Small-Business Saturday event is from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. mcguffeyartcenter.com. Museum of Culpeper History: The Culpeper Minute Men Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a new exhibit recognizing 100 years of DAR activity in Culpeper County, will run through July 2024. www.culppermuseum.com or (540) 829-1749. Northside Library: Works by BozART members Judith Ely, Katharine Eisaman Maus and Shirley Paul can be seen in the main hallway from Dec 1 through Dec. 30. Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sundays. Phaeton Gallery: William Mason Lord: closeness is on display at 114 Old Preston Ave. phaetongallery.org. Piedmont Virginia Community College: pvcc.edu/performingarts. (434) 961-5362. Possums Store Art and Artisan Gallery: 914 Old Blue Ridge Turnpike in Criglersville. www.firnewfarmartistscircle.com. (540) 718-0370. Pour la maison: pourlamaisoncville.com. (434) 284-8706. Prancing Pony Pottery: Open House and Sale will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 2 and 3 in the studio of Anna Marie Torre Wright at 20370 Fields Mill Road in Richardsville. A kiln opening is scheduled. The crystalline pottery of Tessem Stoneware will be featured. prancingponypottery.com. Quirk Gallery Charlottesville: Colorscapes by father-daughter painters Cate West Zahl and Tom West is on display. (434) 365-3774. Random Row Brewery: Juliette Swensons newest watercolors can be seen in November and December. Hours: 4:30 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 4:30 to 11 p.m. Fridays, noon to 11 p.m. Saturdays and noon to 8 p.m. Sundays. Revalation Vineyards: 2710 Hebron Valley Road in Madison. (540) 407-1236. Scottsville Museum: Museum is closed for the winter season and will reopen in April for regular weekend hours. To research local history, go to scottsvillemuseum.com. To schedule special tours, email info@scottsvillemuseum.com or call (434) 286-2247. 90 E. Main St. scottsvillemuseum.com. (434) 286-2247. Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital: A Group Multimedia Art Exhibit by BozART Fine Art Collective members can be seen through Dec. 4. Look for works by Ellen Moore Osborne in the third-floor gallery birthing center hallway, Juliette Swenson in the second-floor gallery cancer hallway and Katharine Maus in the second-floor gallery lab hallway. 500 Martha Jefferson Drive. Sweet Art Emporium: New work by jewelry artist Gilian Ruffa and sculptor Kap Stanfield among works by 70 artists on view. Open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. 264 Turkeysag Trail, Unit E, in Palmyra. www.sweetartemporium.com. (434) 882-2087. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville: Members art will be presented in Season of Light during November and December. Hours: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sundays. (434) 293-8179. University of Virginia Hospital: Nature Big and Small, photography by Seth Silverstein and Bill Shaw, can be seen in the Main Hospital Lobby through Jan. 3, 2024. Welcome Gallery: Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. newcityarts.org. (434) 202-5277. Westminster-Canterbury of the Bue Ridge: Works by Matalie Deane and Julia Kindred on display through Nov. 30. Woodberry Forest School: Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. www.woodberry.org/arts/baker-gallery. Les Yeux du Monde: Annie Harris Massie: Fleeting can be seen from Saturday through Dec. 20. LYDMGallery@gmail.com. LYDM.co. (434) 882-2622. Editors Note: Exhibits shares information about exhibitions presented on display or online in Charlottesville and Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Madison, Nelson and Orange counties. Items must be received by noon Friday for the next weeks issue. Include the opening and closing dates of your exhibit and a telephone number the public may call with questions. Send your information to jsathe@dailyprogress.com. DAILY PROGRESS STAFF The weather across much of the country will be calm through the weekend, according to forecasters, even as a surge of travelers are expected to fly and drive for the Thanksgiving holiday this year. About 55.4 million travelers are anticipated to travel 50 miles or more from home over the Thanksgiving holiday period, among the highest totals since 2000, according to the automobile owners group AAA. The Transportation Security Administration expects about 2.9 million passengers will pass through airport security checkpoints nationwide on Sunday, which would make it the busiest day ever recorded by the agency. David Pekoske, the agencys administrator, said this holiday week is a continuation of a year of busy holiday air travel, in which we have already seen seven of the top 10 busiest travel days in T.S.A.s history. South Korea suspended a no-fly zone on the border with North Korea on Wednesday, paving the way for it to resume surveillance flights there a day after the North successfully placed its first military spy satellite into orbit. In response, North Korea said it, too, would no longer honor the no-fly zone. It also declared an end to the entire agreement it signed with South Korea in 2018 to cease hostilities. The inter-Korean military deal, signed during a brief period of rapprochement on the Korean Peninsula, included the no-fly zone and a ban on live-fire military drills near the border. In recent years, the two Koreas have accused one another of violating the agreement as their relations soured. We will withdraw the military steps, taken to prevent military tension and conflict in all spheres including ground, sea and air, and deploy more powerful armed forces and new-type military hardware along the border, the Norths Ministry of National Defense said in a statement. North Korea said on Wednesday that the rocket that lifted off a day earlier from its Tongchang-ri space launching station accurately put the satellite in orbit. The Norths state media devoted full front-page coverage to the launch, which came after two previous satellite launches, conducted in May and in August, failed because of rocket malfunction. In his lawyers telling, the stakes were high when Cameron Ortis took on a secret mission while he was working at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the civilian director of an elite intelligence unit. He protected Canada from serious and imminent threats, the lawyer, Mark Ertel, told a jury in Ottawa. But prosecutors and witnesses at Mr. Ortiss trial said there was no such mission and that instead he provided sensitive intelligence to people under criminal investigation without authorization or the knowledge of the police force. His story was nothing but an attempt to have you believe that his criminal, self-motivated acts were aimed at some lofty and secret purpose, Judy Kliewer, one of the prosecutors, told the jurors, while acknowledging that Mr. Ortiss true motive remains a mystery to investigators. On Wednesday Mr. Ortis was convicted of four counts of providing confidential operational information to four men who were targets of police investigations under a secrecy law, as well as breach of trust and unauthorized use of a computer. The Netherlands on Wednesday took a startling turn in national elections with the potential to ripple through Europe, as Dutch voters threw most support behind the party of a far-right icon with an incendiary reputation who had campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform. Geert Wilders, a political provocateur long known for his anti-Islam and anti-Europe stances, appeared poised to come out significantly ahead with the most parliamentary seats, according to some early results and exit polls, which were expected to be dependable, especially given the margin of victory they indicated. The Dutch voter has spoken, Mr. Wilders said in a speech on Wednesday night, declaring himself the winner. The voter has said, We are fed up. He added that he wanted to return the Netherlands to the Dutch. If the preliminary results hold up, the Netherlands will be at the threshold of uncertain new political terrain after 13 years of stewardship by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a stalwart of Dutch politics and a dependable presence on the E.U. stage. Its Thanksgiving tomorrow. At this time of year I usually thank you, my readers, for all your support, and I am once again grateful for that this year. As always, it is a privilege to be able to email you. I am also thankful for all of the ways that Interpreter subscribers are an active community: that you not only read these newsletters but also recommend books, email me feedback, and send questions and suggestions that give me ideas for future columns. But this year, even more than in previous ones, I find that I cannot count the blessings without also counting the sorrows and fears that lurk in their shadows. While I am thankful for this job and community, I am also thankful that I can work in safety, unlike the 53 journalists and media workers who have been killed in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon since the war began or the many others who continue to work despite constant and inescapable mortal danger. I am thankful that my family and I do not have to huddle in a hospital or in a school in the vain hope of being safe from bombs, or to rely on an iron dome to protect us from rockets. I am thankful that I have never had to beg my children to be quiet for hours while we hid from people trying to murder us and our neighbors in our own homes. I am thankful that I have not spent every second of the last 46 days and nights frantic over the fate of loved ones taken hostage. I am thankful that my children have never felt the pain of burying a beloved sibling. Thankful that I have never had to scrawl their names on their limbs in permanent marker in case I die and they are found by strangers. I am thankful that if my children ask me for water, I can just turn on a tap; that if they ask me for food, I can give it to them without having to risk my life to hunt for it in a war zone. Thankful that if we needed a hospital, it would have electricity and sterile equipment and supplies like anesthesia available. Thankful that my children are alive. Thankful that my husband is alive. Thankful that I am alive. Thankful that all of you reading this are alive. But also sad and angry that we live in a world where these things are blessings to be counted, and where so many cannot do so. Reader responses: Books that you recommend Jenny Sidhu, a reader in Rocklin, Calif., recommends Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and Dopesick by Beth Macy: A wonderful double feature: Demon Copperhead followed by Dopesick. Or vice versa perhaps? A deep dive into the opioid crisis, its impact on communities and the role of Purdue Pharma. The background information and humanity depicted in these stories had me re-evaluating my own stance on the people who live in the communities affected. An excellent and humbling example of walking in someone elses shoes. What are you reading? Thank you to everyone who wrote in to tell me about what youre reading. Please keep the submissions coming! I want to hear about things you have read (or watched or listened to) that have had the biggest impact on you this year. What changed your perspective on the world? If youd like to participate, you can fill out this form. I may publish your response in a future newsletter. When Italian senators debated a new law on Wednesday to strengthen protections for women, one name was at the center of their discussions: Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old university student whose violent death has dominated newspaper front pages, newscasts, talk shows and the political discourse for more than 10 days. Ms. Cecchettin went missing on Nov. 11, prompting a search that ended a week later with the discovery of her corpse, wrapped in plastic, in a ditch near a lake in the northern Friuli Venezia Giulia region. She disappeared after meeting with an ex-boyfriend, Filippo Turetta, 21, at a mall; investigators put out a warrant for his arrest on suspicion of kidnapping and murder. He was picked up on Sunday by the police in Germany, who stopped him on a highway. Investigators have not spoken publicly about a motive in the case. Mr. Turetta, who has so far not been formally charged, is awaiting extradition to Italy, which the German authorities say he has not opposed, according to his lawyer, Emanuele Compagno. Mr. Compagno said he had not spoken directly to his client. In his first address to officials from the Group of 20 leading economies since his invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday rebuffed criticism that the wars aggression was shocking and accused Western nations of a double standard because of their response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Appearing at a virtual meeting of the G20, he called the war in Ukraine a tragedy that must be stopped and said Russia had never refused to engage in peace negotiations. For Mr. Putin, it was a rare interaction with Western leaders since the start of the war last year. It was also the first time he had to listen to direct, public criticism of the invasion at an international event. Once he had a chance to respond, Mr. Putin could not hide his irritation. Some colleagues already in their speeches were saying that they were shocked by the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine, Mr. Putin said. Military actions are always a tragedy of specific people, families and the country as a whole and we need to think about ways to stop this tragedy. He delivered his eight-minute address at an event hosted by India as a follow-up to an in-person G20 gathering in September. The plight of civilians in Gaza, which he called an extermination, was also shocking, he said, implying that the West was willing to overlook the aggression there. He also repeated Russias frequent line that Kyiv had acted aggressively against its own people in the Donbas in 2014, calling that shocking. It was another example of a tactic Mr. Putin and other top Russian officials have resorted to in recent years: accusing the West of transgressions, often bending reality, as a way to deflect attention from their own. Mr. Putin referred to the fighting in Ukraine as a war, instead of using the Kremlins euphemism of special military operation. I understand that this war, and the loss of life cannot but shock, he said. Mr. Putin repeated Russias official line that the Kremlin was ready to negotiate and blamed Ukraine for rejecting talks. Russia has never refused peace talks with Ukraine, Mr. Putin said. It was Ukraine, not Russia, which publicly announced that it was withdrawing from the negotiating process. But for all his talk of negotiation, Mr. Putin has shown no willingness to relent from his goal of bringing Ukraine back under Russian dominance, let alone to reverse his declaration last year that four southern and eastern Ukrainian regions are part of Russia including territory that Russias military does not control. Ukraine has cited the need to liberate all of its territory occupied by Russia before it can negotiate for peace. Mr. Putin also listed various grievances Russia holds against the West, such as the 2014 overthrow in Ukraine of its Russia-leaning president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. The Russian leaders address highlighted how the world has been fractured by the war. When the G20 summit took place in September, the absence of Mr. Putin as well as Chinas leader Xi Jinping was a clear indication of the breakdown of global consensus. While President Biden attended for the United States, Russia was represented by its foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, and China by its premier, Li Qiang. The war in Ukraine had cast a long shadow over Indias hosting of the G20 this year, with disagreements over the conflict making consensus difficult. India, which was rotational host of the group this year, tried to keep the agenda focused on issues ranging from rising global debt to climate financing. Its leadership of the summit tested Indias balancing act between its historic ally, Moscow, and its growing relations with the United States and Europe as never before. Delhi wanted to focus on the conflicts economic toll on poorer nations. But during negotiations, Western nations, led by the United States, wanted to force condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine into discussions on every issue. As winter cold sets in across Ukraine, concerns are growing that Russia will soon resume large-scale attacks on the power grid, repeating a tactic it used last year to try to break the will of Ukrainians by plunging them into cold and darkness. Those fears are compounded by what Ukrainian experts and current and former officials say is an energy system that is more fragile than it was a year ago. In interviews, they described power plants still hobbled by Russian attacks last winter, unfinished repairs to substations and shortages of critical equipment like transformers. And snow has already begun to fall. The Ukrainian authorities declined to provide detailed data on the current state of the power grid, saying it was sensitive information in wartime. But experts say the situation has improved only marginally since a United Nations report published this summer estimated that Ukraines total generation capacity had fallen to half of its prewar level by late April. Not a lot has changed since then, Victoria Voytsitska, a former lawmaker and senior member of the Ukrainian Parliaments energy committee, said in an interview. Were in a much worse situation than last year. A 12-year-old forced to make a propaganda video for his kidnappers. A 9-year-old snatched while visiting a friends house for a sleepover. A 3-year-old whose last memory of her parents was seeing them both murdered. And an infant, now all of 10 months, who has spent about a tenth of his life in captivity. They are among the more than 30 children abducted from their homes and taken to Gaza during the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Their faces have appeared on signs at marches in Israel and on fliers posted in cities around the world. And their plight has both galvanized a nation at war and forced Israels leaders to negotiate, albeit indirectly, with Hamas, the armed group they have vowed to destroy. About 240 people were abducted by gunmen that day. Among them were individuals gravely injured in the attack or who suffered from chronic illnesses, infants and grandparents, peace activists and soldiers, citizens of Israel and foreign nationals. Each one of them is a person, not a number or a statistic, said Eylon Keshet, a cousin of Kfir Bibas, the now 10-month-old. Each one is a part of our lives and has dreams and ambitions. Image Kfir Bibas, right, with his father, Yarden, left, his mother, Shiri, right, and brother, Ariel, 4, center. All were taken hostage. Credit... via Bibas family The captive children, especially, have had an immeasurable emotional impact on the traumatized country. Their fate has put the hostages at the center of the national agenda, complicating the militarys war strategy in Gaza and dividing the government about whether a deal to secure the release of at least 50 captives goes far enough and if the agreed pause in fighting would spell a premature end of the war and leave Hamas intact. At least 36 children and teenagers, ranging in age from infancy to the final year of high school, are being held in Gaza. Now, for the first time since the war began, a deal to release dozens of the hostages is at hand, raising the hopes of the nation but creating a special kind of agony for the families desperate to learn if their relatives will be among those freed. Almost a day after the deal was announced, the families had yet to receive any information from the authorities. I am feeling like yesterday and the day before, only worse, said Yael Engel Lichi, the aunt of Ofir Engel, a 12th-grader kidnapped on Oct. 7 from Kibbutz Beeri while visiting his girlfriend. We are at the point of collapse, she added. Some, but perhaps not all, of the children are expected to be among the first hostages released in the coming days under a deal announced on Wednesday. The publicized details of the agreement include a brief pause in fighting and the phased release of at least 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Image Ofir Engel, a 12th grader, with his girlfriend. Credit... via Engel Family Little is known about the childrens whereabouts or well-being, and Hamas, the dominant Palestinian force in Gaza, has denied the Red Cross access to them. It is presumed that some are being held beneath Gazas streets in the groups warren of tunnels and underground chambers. Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, who was among just four hostages released by Hamas early in the conflict, described being marched into a network of damp subterranean tunnels under Gaza that she likened to a spider web. Hamas has said that it does not hold all the captives, raising questions about its ability to free everyone. Islamic Jihad, another armed group in Gaza, released the hostage video of Yagil Yaakov, 12, who was captured along with his brother Or, 16. The deal for a hostage release brought both hope and agony on Wednesday to families of captives held in Gaza. Uncertainty over the agreement including over who would be among at least 50 hostages set to be released, and whether more would follow was straining the emotions of relatives who have campaigned for the release of their loved ones in the 46 days since they were abducted during the Hamas assault on southern Israel. Israel has said that about 240 people were taken hostage to Gaza, and it remained unclear which of them would be released under the cease-fire deal announced overnight. Cease-fires in previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas have proven fragile. Hours after the deal was announced, families said they had received no official information from the Israeli authorities. The government said in a statement that women and children would be released, raising the possibility that families could be separated for example, by leaving behind fathers who were taken captive with their children. At least 36 Israeli civilians ages 18 and under are being held in Gaza along with 13 of their mothers. I am feeling like yesterday and the day before, only worse, said Yael Engel Lichi, the aunt of Ofir Engel, a 12th grader from Jerusalem who was kidnapped on Oct. 7 from Kibbutz Beeri, where he was staying with his girlfriend, Yuval Sharabi, 17, and her family. People have been calling to congratulate the family since Tuesday night, Ms. Engel Lichi said on Wednesday morning. But, she added, We dont know anything. No official has been in touch to tell us anything. We are on the point of collapse, she added. Do you prefer your holiday lightscapes on the elegant side? Or is the campy, cheerful decoration vibe of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation more your style? Veritas Vineyard and Winery and its neighbor and sister winery Flying Fox are offering both options within about a five-minute drive of each other in Afton. Flying Fox Christmas Vacation will offer decorations and drinks inspired by the 1989 comedy through Dec. 23, and the half-mile walking trails and interactive light features of Veritas Illuminated will remain at Veritas until Jan. 6. Among the twinkling sights along the trails at Veritas Illuminated are a giant sleigh, a number of photo ops and a variety of new installations, all powered by more than 100,000 lights. Veritas is on brand and elegant, said George Hodson, who is both general manager of Veritas as well as president and co-owner of Flying Fox. Flying Fox is going Clark Griswold. Veritas has tripled the size of last holiday seasons inaugural light offerings. Last year was sort of proof of concept for us, Hodson told The Daily Progress. Its very interactive. Its really sort of immersive. Its a lot of fun for kids, and parents love watching kids having these experiences. The super-sized sleigh and light-up jumping stones will appeal to all ages, as will the tasting rooms tasteful approach. It creates a new energy, Hodson said. For its inaugural outing, Flying Fox is decorating its tasting room with the best of over-the-top tackiness in mind. A videotape of the movie starring Chevy Chase as a suburban dad whos determined to make his holiday decorations the most spectacular in the neighborhood will play in the background. Flying Fox is going to be the goofy side of Christmas, Hodson said. Were going way over the top. Well do Clark Griswold proud. In the tasting room, visitors can sit by the fireside with wine, mulled wine and cocoa. If you like getting hygge with it, a new winter menu has elevated comfort foods, including a French onion grilled cheese, truffle fries, a pimento cheese biscuit and peanut butter pie. Flying Foxs new cocktails, mocktails and themed drinks, including Cousin Eddies Eggnog, Good OlFashioned Family Christmas and Santas Little Helper, will help spread holiday cheer in another way. Part of the proceeds will benefit Virginia Wine Research Exchange, which helps make important vineyard research and advancements available to area wineries. Both attractions will be open most Thursdays through Sundays. Tickets for Veritas Illuminated range from $15 to $10. Reserve your space at veritaswines.com. And if youre staying at the Farmhouse at Veritas during the holiday season, youll get two complimentary tickets. Theres no admission charge for Flying Fox Christmas Vacation. Festive wear is strongly encouraged, so if you promised your aunt youd actually wear the light-up holiday sweater she gave you, heres your chance. Get all the details at flyingfoxvineyard.com. The Israeli decision on Wednesday to pause the invasion of Gaza to allow Hamas to release some hostages, a move now strongly supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was the culmination of a weekslong dispute among Israels civilian and military leaders about whether such a deal would strengthen Hamas and endanger the remaining hostages. One group of leaders led by Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, sought to delay the cease-fire and release of 50 hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel because of the fear it would slow the momentum of Israels invasion, allow Hamas to regroup and draw international attention away from the remaining 190 people held in captivity in Gaza. Another group, which included David Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israels foreign intelligence agency, who led the negotiations for Israel, argued that the deal was better than none and that the invasion could continue after the brief cease-fire, according to four senior security officials who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the news media. The first group initially took the upper hand, persuading Mr. Netanyahu to delay a cabinet vote originally planned for Nov. 14, according to three of the officials. They hoped that more military pressure might give Israel more influence at the negotiating table, allowing more hostages to be freed. But the second group eventually won out, leading Mr. Netanyahu to hold the vote early Wednesday, setting the stage for a four-day truce and prisoner exchange that could begin this week. A senior defense official from the first group said that its members had changed their minds because the terms that Israel was able to obtain in the signed deal were significantly better than those that existed a week ago. Mr. Netanyahus office, the Israeli military and the Mossad all declined to comment. FTI Consulting represents Telegraph Media Group and The Spectator as the British publications were put on the auction block after the owning Barclay family defaulted on a loan. The sale process is currently on hold pending a Dec. 4 court date. Jeff Zucker, former NBCUniversal CEO and CNN president, is among bidders for the conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper and Spectator magazine. His Redbird private equity firm and an Abu Dhabi investment fund are offering $1.4B for the media outlets. British politicos, though, have raised concerns over RedBirds bid due to concerns about foreign ownership of the UK press. RedBird said it is committed to maintaining the independence of the Telegraph and Spectator. FTI Consulting has John Waples, Rob Mindell, Mitch Barltrop and Tom Hufton working the deal. Two men appeared at last week's district court on charges of being in possession of cannabis for the purposes of selling or supplying to another. Sergeant Brendan Kearns said that on January 1, 2023, a vehicle was spotted with two males acting suspiciously at Park View, Edenderry. The two occupants of the car were Kladias Kotis (21) and Arnas Kotkis (20) both of 31 Rectory Meadows Edenderry. The vehicle was being driven by Kladias Kotis. Gardai got a strong smell of cannabis from inside the car and following a search discovered 16 bags of cannabis and a roll of cannabis under the driver's seat. Neither had previous convictions. Solicitor Aisling Maloney said Arnas is 20 and Kladias is 21. Both came to Ireland as children. They work at Brady Hams and have been there for two years since they left school. Ms Maloney said the defendants found it difficult to sleep and were using cannabis to help them sleep. ''That's why they were hiding it under the seat of the car,'' said Judge Andrew Cody. ''Nonsense'' he added. Judge Cody fined the defendants 500 each and gave them three months to pay. CONCERNS about public safety and increasing incidents of violence and anti-social behaviour in Roscrea were aired by angry members of the community at a public meeting in the town last Friday night. The meeting, organised by local activist group Roscrea Stands Up, heard that Roscrea Garda Station, which once had a core staff of 24 Gardai, is currently operating with seven members of the force. Fear for the safety of children and the elderly, and the dramatic influx of people seeking international protection currently residing in the town, were the prime concerns of the local community. Roscrea's reputation has been indelibly sullied, several local contributors said - pointing to videos of violent incidents in the town centre which were widely shared on social media over recent weeks. "I used to walk every night and know several other women who would walk every night on the bypass and through the town - but I'm afraid now and I won't let my children into the town after dark" was the shocking indictment of the current atmosphere in Roscrea by one local Mother. That sentiment was echoed by several other contributors - including the parents of a young man from Roscrea who was assaulted by three foreign men a short distance from his home. His phone and belongings were taken from him. "Only for he is a fit and strong lad and he was able to fight them off and get away from them it would have been much worse", the young man's father said, adding that the three men who assaulted his son directed their blows towards his head while he was prone on the ground. "It's plain for all to see the Garda Station in Roscrea isn't open as much as it should be and there is a lack of Gardai patrolling the town", Chair of Roscrea Stands Up, Derek Russell told the meeting. Deputy Michael Lowry was the only elected Dail representative to attend the meeting. The organisers invited all five Oireachtas members representing Tipperary and the meeting was attended by several members of Tipperary County Council and local political activists. Deputy Lowry said concerns over the Garda Station is an issue he has received numerous representations about from people very concerned about safety in Roscrea. "Once Roscrea Garda Station had 24 Gardai - now it has seven to patrol a town of almost 6,000 people and the surrounding areas", Deputy Lowry said, stressing that he is not critical of the Gardai working in Roscrea. "Several Gardai stationed in Roscrea have made contact with me over the last 12 months in particular explaining how hard it is to do the job with the numbers they have and the lack of cover they have for each other and their inability to keep the station open at all times. "The Gardai themselves are concerned about that and I'm fully conscious of the difficulties they have and the deficit they have of numbers - it's about numbers and it's about the cover they require '', Deputy Lowry said. "The situation in Roscrea has become more difficult for the Gardai because of the increased population in Roscrea and the diverse nature of the increase in the population. "That has brought problems with it and we have a commitment from various Ministers and government that where towns and villages accepted and welcomed refugees and people from Ukraine there would be extra support services. "One of the failings of the situation in Roscrea has been the inability to provide accitional Gardai and that has caused problems for the community, for the Gardai themselves and they are very unhappy about it", Deputy Lowry told the meeting. Deputy Lowry said he has spoken with Minister Helen McEntee about the situation in Roscrea and she has briefed the Garda Commissioner and Chief Superintendent for the Tipperary/Clare Garda Division. "This is a national problem" Deputy Lowry added, tracing the genesis of the problem to too few new recruits entering and qualified Gardai emerging from the Garda Training College in Templemore. He explained that the Tipperary/Clare Garda District has also seen a disproportionately high number of retirements from the force in recent years and that when their experience is lost it affects the connection between the public and their local Gardai and their intimate knowledge of the area is lost. "The Gardai in Roscrea are doing an excellent job. They're under enormous pressure and they're finding it extremely difficult and they're responding way above what most Gardai are doing in any part of the country. "We need to continue to support them and give them respect and continue to give them the support they require to do their job", Deputy Lowry said, adding that many towns around the country are struggling to accommodate the numbers seeking asylum in Ireland. Councillor Michael Smith told the meeting part of the issue stems from the decision to amalgamate Roscrea and Nenagh Garda District and that when local people contact Roscrea Garda Station they are often redirected to Nenagh - on some occasions even to a Garda based in Cork. Cllr. Smith assured the meeting that only Ukrainian asylum seekers fleeing the war in their home country are being accommodated in the former Sacred Heart Convent after some members of the public expressed concerns about the facility. He said it is unclear how many people are currently being accommodated in Corville House in the St. Anne's complex, but they are not Ukrainian nationals and instead are a mix of nationalities of people seeking international protection. "I don't know how many are in St. Anne's or how long they will be there and we will work together to ascertain how many people are there and what is happening", Cllr. Smith said. Addressing concerns about Corville House, Deputy Lowry said he has spoken with several local contractors who informed him there is "constant development happening at that site". "The main issues in Roscrea seem to come from St. Anne's and I've spoken with the Minister (Roderic O'Gorman) and recall assurances that they would cap the numbers at around 130", Deputy Lowry said, adding that he will make further enquiries. "The Department of Justice simply has to understand that Garda numbers in Roscrea have to be increased and the existing Gardai need more support", Deputy Lowry said. Almost 100 people attended the meeting and the organisers expressed some disappointment at the smaller than anticipated attendance. A follow up meeting will be announced in the coming weeks. Pictured at the public meeting in Roscrea hosted by Roscrea Stands Up are Martin O'Brien, Chairman Derek Russell, Cllr. Michael Smith (FF),Breandan O'Conchuir, Cllr. Eddie Moran (Ind) and Cllr. Shane Lee (Ind). Photo: PJ Wright THE death of the late Les Halewood, Marian Place last week caused widespread grief in Tullamore and surrounding areas. A native of Liverpool, Les had lived in Tullamore with his late wife, Maureen, and family, for the past number of decades, becoming involved in a number of organisations in the area. He passed away the the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore and will be sadly missed by his loving sons Shane, Kieran and Darragh, daughters in law Qingfei and Jennifer, his adored grandchildren Maureen, Abigail and Matthew, brothers, sisters, brothers in law, sisters in law, nieces, nephews, relatives, neighbours and friends, to whom the deepest sympathy is extended. His remains reposed in O'Reilly Funeral Home on Saturday with burial to Ballycommon cemetery following the celebration of Solemn Requiem Mass in the Church of the Assumption on Monday morning. Blessed with an outgoing personality and a great sense of humour, Les had a deep interest in politics, both local and national, and current affairs. He had also been a member of the Tullamore branch of the Irish National Foresters and researched a history of the body in the late 1990s. Les was also one of the founder members of the Tullamore Phoenix Festival in 2001, along with his late wife, Maureen, and served on the committee for a number of years. He presented a popular radio show on Phoenix Festival 107.4 FM, The Three Fivers, along with co-hosts Regina Vickers and Ger Scully, both also members of the festival committee. May he rest in peace. Breast feeding mums and mums-to-be from across the county are invited to join the Cuidiu Offaly Breastfeeding Support Group in Tullamore Library this Saturday, November 25, at 10.30am to celebrate the groups first birthday. The Offaly branch of the national breastfeeding and parenting support charity was founded last year by local mum, Jasmine Elkhershi and Cuidiu Breastfeeding Counsellor, Carolina von Ow from Geashill. The group has enjoyed a busy first year, hosting several meetings a month in The Space in Tullamore library. Bumps, babies and older children are welcome at the groups informal meetings where both new and experienced mums meet up to chat about breastfeeding over tea and cake. Breastfeeding has lifelong health benefits for both mother and baby, but unfortunately it doesnt always go smoothly, said Cuidiu Offaly chairperson Jasmine Elkhershi. The 2022 Bainne Bheatha study highlighted lack of support as the main reason many mums in Ireland stop breastfeeding before they are ready. This is where Cuidiu Offaly comes in. The group boasts two trained Cuidiu Breastfeeding Counsellors who provide expert breastfeeding support via telephone as well as in person at Cuidius meetings in Tullamore. As well as this peer support, Offaly mums can avail of free professional breastfeeding support from HSE lactation consultant Patricia Marteinsson. Only last year there was no community breastfeeding support available here in Offaly and now we have this thriving community of mums supporting each other, as well as professional support from Patricia, said co-founder Carolina von Ow. This has proven to be a winning combination for Offaly mothers. Good, practical support in the community is vital for mothers to achieve their breastfeeding goals, whether they are exclusively breastfeeding, combination feeding or pumping, said chairperson Jasmine Elkhershi. We can really see this being borne out by the statistics as well. One of the highlights of the last year was that Offaly had the highest rate in Ireland of women continuing to breastfeed at three months postpartum. To have 100% of mums continuing to breastfeed is just incredible. The future looks bright, too, as four more Cuidiu Offaly members are currently training to be Cuidiu Breastfeeding Counsellors. Breastfeeding mums or mums-to-be who are interested in breastfeeding are encouraged to drop in to this Saturdays meeting or one of Cuidiu Offalys regular meetings, which are held on Thursdays and Saturdays. Dates and details can be found on Cuidiu Offalys social media accounts @cuidiuoffaly. Irelands premier has expressed hope that Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand will be included in the first group of hostages released in Gaza. Taoiseach Leo Varadkars comments came as Irelands Department of Foreign Affairs cautioned that there had been no official confirmation that the nine-year-old would be released as part of the deal for a four-day pause in fighting in the region. Emily, whose father Tom is originally from Co Dublin, is believed to be being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. Addressing the Dail on Wednesday, Mr Varadkar also questioned whether Israel listens to anyone anymore as he expressed doubt whether it would heed international calls to stop the killing of civilians in Gaza after the four-day pause was over. The ceasefire will facilitate the release of 50 hostages being held by Palestinians including, we hope, Emily Hand, and will also facilitate the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, in some cases teenage boys imprisoned for doing little more than throwing stones at armed soldiers, he said. In relation to the four-day ceasefire, that will allow humanitarian aid to get into Gaza food, fuel, medicines, water, all of the basic needs for human life. And Ireland, individually and also as part of the UN and the EU, will do anything we can to make sure that that happens and happens well. And it is our view that the ceasefire should not just last for four days, that it should be extended to allow space for there to be a peace initiative, which can bring a permanent end to violence in the region, resulting in a two state solution Israel and Palestine as secure and viable states living side by side. He added: Sadly, the Israeli government doesnt listen to us. Im not sure the Israeli government listens to anyone anymore. They used to listen to the Americans. Im not even sure if thats the case anymore. They are, as President Biden said, at risk of being blinded by rage. And its the sad reality that Im not actually sure that any action or statement by us or the European Union or the US will change the current course of action that they are on. That doesnt necessarily mean that we dont do the right thing. And we have increased our humanitarian aid to Gaza and Palestine. We have provided additional funding to the International Criminal Court so they can fund the investigation into war crimes that may have been committed in the Palestinian territories and will continue to press at UN level and EU level. Providing an update on the status of Emily, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said: The Department of Foreign Affairs welcomes the announced agreement between Israel and Hamas for a truce and the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza. Our focus in particular is on the case of nine-year old Irish citizen Emily Hand. We have worked consistently for her release over recent weeks, including through extensive contacts with regional partners. There is no official confirmation at this time of those scheduled to be released under this agreement. The department welcomes the truce agreed as part of the hostage deal. A break in hostilities is essential to allow for significant increased humanitarian access. Gazas civilian population urgently need fuel, food, water, and medical supplies, on a sustained basis and at scale. Mr Varadkar fielded questions on the Israel-Hamas conflict during Leaders Questions in the Dail. Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns reiterated her call for Mr Varadkar to back a suspension of Israels trade deal with the EU. Taoiseach, there must be consequences if Israel is determined to continue this barbarism, she said. Mr Varadkar sought legal advice after Ms Cairns insisted a human rights clause in the EU-Israel trade deal had been breached thus providing grounds for the deal to be suspended. The Taoiseach said he had asked for the legal advice to be prepared but had not yet received it. But he made clear his view that sanctions only worked if taken on a multilateral basis. Ms Cairns also called on the Government to use November 29 International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People to formally recognise Palestine as a state. Mr Varadkar said Ireland recognised Palestine on a de facto basis but would only do so officially when it was formally established as a secure state as part of a two state solution peace deal. About a month after its resumption, several members of the Benton County Disposal Site Advisory Committee are concerned by what chair Ken Eklund has called a "stonewall" with the countys community development department staff. The advisory board resumed meeting in October after two long breaks, first between September 2022 and May 2023 as a result of the then-ongoing Benton County Trash Talks, and again from June to October 2023 for no clear reasons, according to Eklund. 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. Eklund says the committee is concerned that its recent interactions with county staff have stalled its advisory role as required by state law and impeded it from addressing important landfill issues. But community development director Darren Nichols says the committee "has not been effectively gathering public insights for the past two years" adding, via email, that "the conversation has dwindled to a handful of passionate committee members operating with a narrower agenda." SWACs dissolution According to Nichols, the countys one-table policy was instituted upon the advice of Oregon Consensus (whose principal is Sam Imperati), the countys facilitator for the task force's fact-finding activities, because it is a typical feature of consensus building processes. The goal, Nichols said, was to provide "one supported and coordinated space to share information and address the full range of issues around solid waste." With the plan in place, the county will then "establish a new governance structure around solid waste and sustainable materials," according to Nichols, and the state's Department of Environmental Quality was in support of this policy. The advisory committee fought its way into meeting for an hour during that time, according to Eklund, although they could only discuss issues that pertained to the taskforce and the report it was compiling on the Coffin Butte Landfill. It was in no way like its regular meetings which, according to state law, must be held at least four times in a calendar year and the committee did not set its own agenda. Then SWAC was dissolved. According to Nichols, SWACs dissolution simply had to do with the countys long-term and wide-ranging trash plans. "Benton County is replacing the earlier version of the Solid Waste Advisory Council (SWAC) with a more appropriate regional advisory committee during the development of a sustainable materials management plan," Nichols said via email. At the committee's meeting on Oct. 25, Nichols said an ad-hoc committee was being formed in the interim to fill in for the dissolved council pending the development of the countys sustainable materials management plan. Members of the disposal site advisory committee are not buying these reasons. Joel Geier, also a member of the dissolved council, said he found the countys one-table policy absurd. In an email to county commissioners dated Nov. 2, Geier said this was especially so because the county "has systematically excluded and removed voices from the 'one table,' ever since the start of the BCTT process." Regarding the long-term trash plans, Geier said it was concerning that pertinent issues like the EPAS methane gas emission warning, leachate being sent to treatment plans not designed to remove hazardous chemicals and recorded groundwater contamination captured in the Trash Talks report were not being captured in what ought to be a long-term waste management plan. "These are disposal site issues, and thus are appropriate topics for the Disposal Site Advisory Committee," Geier wrote. "Recent actions by county staff to restrict the scope of meetings and to schedule meetings arbitrarily, without consulting DSAC members, have been a step in the opposite direction," the email further said. Mark Yeager, another member of the committee, said during the Oct. 25 meeting that SWACs dissolution was in violation of county code and there were still unanswered questions about what responsibilities this proposed interim committee could handle to fill in for the dissolved council. If a conditional use permit request arose, for instance, before the sustainable material plan process was completed and a new advisory body instituted, could the interim committee make standing decisions on it? It was also concerning, according to Yeager, that members of the disposal site committee had not been asked to be on the interim council being formed. Nichols said at the meeting that the committee could nominate a member, a topic the group agreed to discuss at the next meeting that was to be held Nov. 16. On Nov. 9, Nichols emailed the committee to announce the meeting was cancelled. The email said the meeting date was not suitable for multiple members and no comment was made about rescheduling it to a later date in November. Whose agenda is it? The disposal site advisory committee exists based on state law. The law (ORS 495.320) mandates every county where a regional landfill is proposed or exists to institute a disposal advisory committee comprising the disposal sites neighbors, property owners as well as employees of the operator. The committees role is to review the siting, operation, closure and long-term monitoring of said site. According to the countys 2020 DSAC by-laws, the chair of the committee develops the agenda for the meeting with assistance from the community development director or their designee. Nichols says the state law does "give the Board of Commissioners authority to schedule committee meetings, set committee agenda topics, appoint ex-officio members and amend the committee bylaws." One such amendment, which came after a Sept. 5 board of commissioners meeting, was a motion moved by Commissioner Nancy Wyse and seconded by Xan Augerot "to direct staff to schedule monthly DSAC meetings and create meeting agendas to fulfill Benton Countys statutory responsibilities in October, November and December 2023." Nichols said the chair and committee were informed of this revision. Eklund said that after hed received the staffs agenda, which he considered preliminary, he prepared one as chair of the committee incorporating the staffs agenda as dictated by the by-laws and shared with staff a week ahead of the meeting. He received no response. But at the Oct. 25 meeting, both staff and committee members spent more than half an hour in a tense exchange trying to determine which agenda will guide the deliberations. A non-committee member who joined the meeting made a threatening remark to one of the community development staff, exacerbating the already tense meeting. The staffs agenda for the Oct. 25 meeting listed six items, key of which were (in time allotment): the community concerns about the annual report for 2021, community comments and review of minutes for nine meetings prior. Eklunds agenda included items he believed were more important to the committee, like setting a regular meeting schedule and reviewing language on the DSAC's web page. He also reallotted time frames to the county staffs agenda. In his agenda, Eklund allotted the first 25 minutes to "regrounding the committee" since this was the first regular meeting to be held in over a year and, according to the agenda, the meeting was "reconvening in an environment that is much different in terms of staff support." "For some reason, the agenda prepared by staff had basically an hour allotted for an item where, where were at with the item is waiting for staff to supply us with documents and so theres nothing to report, theres nothing to do," Eklund said on a call. According to Eklund, this control over the agenda is a key struggle about the sovereignty of the committee and who decides what they can or cant discuss at the meetings. Another committee member, Marge Popp, who participated in the Trash Talks workgroup, said she "encountered similar tendencies to control subcommittee process and output by the same staff responsible for liaison with DSAC." Requests and reports As soon as the committee was directed to resume its meetings, Eklund said he made a public request to the community development staff on Sept. 15 to better understand SWACS dissolution. By Oct. 6, the request had not been acknowledged, causing Eklund to flag the request to Nichols citing the Freedom of Information Act as governing the request, which seemed to move it along. Other records requests hed made that were not yet responded to at the time of this interview included requests for public comments reports to assist in the compilation of the community concerns annual report for 2021 and 2022. Every year, county staff collect community concerns and comments regarding the landfill and compile it into a report that is then presented to the committee for review and editing before it is sent off to the states Department of Environmental Quality, as required by law. "The prior reports are posted and publicly accessible on the committees website, so they dont require a public request," Nichols said. Solid waste and water quality program coordinator Daniel Redick developed a draft of the 2021 report and brought it to the committee last July. But Eklund said theyd failed to include material related to the landfill expansion which the committee believed was a significant omission. Conversations about the landfills expansion began in late 2021. Following an approval recommendation by the solid waste advisory council, the application went to the Planning Commission who held public hearings in November where an overwhelming amount of opposition to its expansion was received. Eklund said all of that feedback was supposed to be in the 2021 community concerns report. Before the committee could reconvene in October (meetings are held once every quarter), their activities were paused for the Trash Talks taskforce. Eklund says that in his interpretation of the state law, the committee may not make the four regular meetings per year required of them. However, Nichols said the committee refuses to acknowledge the staff's community comments report. The staff report acknowledges that it "does not detail each of the community member concerns received throughout that public hearing process," but it listed concerns culled from the process in a table which included concerns about out-of-county waste, groundwater quality, air quality, odor and greenhouse gas emissions, among other concerns. "Some members have repeatedly resisted the Boards direction to complete the committees basic responsibilities, which are to read and approve the 2021 and 2022 reports which then needs to be filed with the Oregon DEQ," Nichols said. In retrospect, Eklund says he wishes he had put his foot down regarding control over the committee's schedule and agenda before they were suspended last year. "I believe it is surprisingly difficult for county staff to appreciate the harm a landfill exacts on the environment, and balance that cost against the revenue generated by the franchise fee," Popp said via email. Eklund thinks the stonewalling goes beyond current or potential franchise fee revenue. Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by becoming a subscriber today. "It seems like theres something else also that has to do with discouraging essentially very active participation in the process from my point of view so far, Eklund said. Popp said she understands the task of the county staff is tough, but she wishes "they would at least try to do it. And elicit help from residents, not waste time fighting them. In spite of staff's cancelation of the scheduled November meeting, Eklund has called for a committee meeting on Nov. 27 standing on state and county law, set an agenda which includes discussing a steadier meeting schedule, and has asked the community development staff to respond if it has any concerns. Related stories: Bengaluru Braces For Thrill-Filled Kambala Buffalo Race: 160 Pairs To Compete, Free Entry For All Bengaluru oi-Madhuri Adnal Kambala, the traditional buffalo race of coastal Karnataka, is all set to make its debut in Bengaluru at the Palace Grounds on November 25 and 26. Spearheaded by Puttur MLA Ashok Kumar Rai, this marks a significant cultural milestone for Bengaluru. 160 pairs of buffaloes expected to participate On November 23, more than 160 pairs of buffaloes from the coastal belt will embark on their journey from from Uppinangady in Dakshina Kannada on November 23 at about 9.30 a.m to Bengaluru. They'll make a stop at Hassan before passing through Nelamangala to enter Bengaluru, accompanied by their attendants and handlers. Kambala festival: Buffalo race season begins to enthuse local folks in coastal Karnataka Free Entry for Spectators Muralidhar Rai Matanthabettu, the Working President of the Bangalore Carpet Committee, made it clear that there will be no entry fees or advanced ticket bookings required for spectators. The event welcomes all fans and curious onlookers without any charge. Venue and Schedule The Kambala Games are slated to occur at Gate 5 within the vast 70-acre Palace Grounds, starting from 10:30 am on November 25 and continuing until the evening of November 26. With its debut in the Silicon City, organizers are expecting a massive turnout of 500,000 to 800,000 attendees, anticipating the influx of coastal job seekers and enthusiasts. A dedicated seating arrangement of 10,000 seats for VVIPs has been arranged, offering the general public an opportunity to witness the event in a setting reminiscent of the rural coastal areas. Guest List As per the guest list, the organisers had invited Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) Brij Bhushan Singh on November 26 for the felicitation ceremony of the wrestlers. Hours after facing heavy backlash from several quarters, Singh who is accused of sexual harassment, his name was dropped. Among the remaining names on the guest list for the event are Sandalwood star Darshan Thoogudeepa, BJP leader Aravind Limbavali, and several others. The Kambala festival, primarily observed in Karnataka's Dakshina Kannada district each year, features the famed traditional buffalo race, a beloved and distinctive sport within the state's farming community. The morning segment of the Bengaluru Kambala event is scheduled for inauguration by former Chief Minister and BJP leader B S Yediyurappa on November 25. Following this, the evening session will be inaugurated by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, November 22, 2023, 11:20 [IST] Bengaluru On Track To Overtake Chennai, To Get India's Largest Circular Railway Network IndiGo Under Fire For Allegedly Tricking 6 Passengers Into Disembarking To Avoid Empty Flight Bengaluru oi-Madhuri Adnal Six travelers aboard an IndiGo flight bound for Chennai found themselves unexpectedly disembarking at Bengaluru airport after what they claimed was the airline's reluctance to proceed with only six passengers onboard. The incident occurred at Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) around 9:30 pm on Sunday when IndiGo flight 6E478, originating from Amritsar and bound for Chennai via Bengaluru, landed, as reported by Times of India. "While seated on the plane on the Bengaluru tarmac, I received a call from an IndiGo ground crew member asking me to disembark. They claimed my boarding pass for another Chennai-bound flight was ready," said one of the six passengers involved. Similarly, the other five passengers received similar calls and subsequently exited the aircraft. Alleged Drunk Passenger Misbehaves With IndiGo Crew On Flight, Arrested At Bengaluru Airport In essence, the passengers alleged that IndiGo assured them an alternate flight ready for departure, only to be misled as the airline purportedly did not want to fly with just six passengers. With no available Chennai-bound flights that evening, all six were compelled to stay overnight in Bengaluru and travel the next day. IndiGo's Response: IndiGo acknowledged the incident, stating, "On November 19, 2023, flight 6E 478 had eight transit passengers from Amritsar to Chennai via Bengaluru. Due to the delay of the incoming aircraft from Amritsar, these passengers couldn't board the onward flight to Chennai at Bengaluru Airport." Is Web Check-In Mandatory For Indigo Passengers? Here's What Airline Says The airline's ground staff purportedly attempted to assist the passengers in making their connection, but due to time constraints, they couldn't board. IndiGo arranged overnight accommodations and flights the next morning for the passengers, expressing regret for the inconvenience caused. The affected passengers sought action against what they termed as "outright deception" by IndiGo personnel and demanded redressal for the inconvenience. They confronted the IndiGo staffer responsible for their disembarkation, alleging that even IndiGo's assistant manager displayed indifference and declined assistance, despite acknowledging the error and refusing them airport accommodations. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, November 22, 2023, 11:33 [IST] Auto Facility For Irular Tribe Children At Government Expense, Yet Another Wonder Of Dravidian Model DMK's Contributions To Tamil Nadu And The Latest Dravidian Model Of Governance Chennai oi-Oneindia English Desk Though the current trend is the Dravidian model of governance, DMK has implemented many pioneer projects in Tamil Nadu before this. Without the knowledge about such projects, today's younger generation just mounts criticisms comparing the differences observed in the development of other states with Tamil Nadu. Prior to Dravidian model: Among the unique least-spoken projects implemented by DMK before the Dravidian model, the important one is the State government's Public Distribution System (PDS). Under this scheme, fair price shops are functioning in the state. The universal PDS is best implemented only in Tamil Nadu, no other states have such a well performing scheme. It is after 1970, the PDS system was made universal in Tamil Nadu, before that, the scheme was concentrated in some cities like Chennai, Coimbatore etc. During Annadurai's period '1 padi rice per rupee' scheme was introduced in Chennai which was later expanded to Coimbatore alone, but during Karunanidhi's period, particularly after 1970, the PDS scheme reached the rural areas also. M. Karunanidhi, a pioneer personality: After becoming the CM of Tamil Nadu in 1969, Karunanidhi introduced the Public Distribution System (PDS) scheme in 1972; issued ration cards to all families by 1975 and brought the Beggars' Rehabilitation Scheme. Such a scheme for a particular group has never been introduced by any political parties before. There was a period, when beggars used to roam at night which has been witnessed by our elder generations but today there is no such group as beggars in Tamil Nadu, thanks to DMK regime, all of them are rehabilitated. According to recent statistics, a small economic shock has pushed many people in Gujarat to below the poverty line. If you take California, a developed state and one of the richest states in the US, still has homeless people who sleep on the pavement. Countries that developed in poverty: Suppose a country experiences a small economic crisis, it will lead to lay off (unemployment) which will result in people's inability to pay house rent, car EMI etc. Such a condition, where a small economic crisis results in people ending up in streets, is called the rocket effect. To avoid rocket effects and the resultant adversities, Tamil Nadu government has built many embankments and one such embankment is Public Distribution System (PDS) scheme. In Tamil Nadu, one can purchase 35 kg of rice free of cost with one ration card. The intention behind this, is the prevention of food shortages for a family, which is not taken care of even in advanced states like California where people are forced to the streets during an economic crisis. PDS is one of the shock absorbers introduced by the Tamil Nadu government with foresight and anticipation of future events. As a continuation of this, Karunanidhi formed the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board in 1970 whose primary objective is to construct houses to uplift the standard of living of slum dwellers. After checking the food and shelter boxes, DMK's attention turned to education and introduced the Chief Minister's Breakfast scheme. Tamil Nadu, the best state in education: On 16th September 1920, mid-day meal scheme was introduced in Chennai Thousand Lights Corporation School following a resolution passed during the reign of Sir P.T. Rajan. A scheme introduced during the reign of Justice Party was value added by Kamaraj, M.G.R and Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi by adding egg to the meal made it a nutritious meal. A scheme first introduced by Tamil Nadu is now implemented by many states, not because of conviction, but because of the instructions given by the Supreme Court (SC) and mandatory provisions under the National Food Security Act. When there was less than 20% literate people in Tamil Nadu, former CM Kamaraj provided opportunities of primary education to the masses. 15700 primary schools in 1950, have been increased to 29000 in 1962 and 814 higher secondary schools in 1955 have been increased to 1996 in the year 1962. In order to encourage the pursuit of education, essentials such as pencils, uniforms, footwears, bags, free bus passes, bi-cycles and watches were given. Following this, CM Stalin is providing Rs.1000 per month to girl students to pursue higher education, which resulted in the increase of Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) to 52% (Meaning: out of 100 eligible students, 52 students go to college) in higher education. DMK government ensured higher education which has never been done by any government before and now, the Dravidian model has introduced an incentive scheme for the provision of Rs.7500 to civil service aspirants. Tamil Nadu, a role model state in reservation: The Dravidian movement was the first movement to politically take up the issue of inequality in education. Tamil Nadu has the highest share of reservation in India i.e. up to 69%. In 1989, when no one cared about women rights in India, the former CM Karunanidhi, enacted a law for the provision of equal rights to women in family property. As another form of women rights, CM Stalin introduced 'Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thogai Thittam', for which the government has planned to spend 30000 crores till the end of the current regime. This financial assistance scheme is another embankment built to prevent poverty. Recognition to the 3rd gender: The DMK government which made property rights for women a reality, is now concentrating on the LGBTQ+ community. For the community, a Tamil Nadu Transgenders Welfare Board was established during Karunanidhi's period and now CM Stalin has published a glossary containing inclusive terms for the LGBTQ+ community. The DMK government turned to the medical field after ensuring food; shelter; education and property rights. CM Stalin has introduced one of a kind scheme in India namely 'Makkalai Thedi Maruthuvam' scheme (Medicine at people's doorstep). Medical Structure in Tamil Nadu: Prevention is better than cure and in order to prevent diseases and deaths, diagnosis in the early stage is the first step. Early diagnosis of illness is hindered due to issues like unawareness, troubled family finances and many such obstacles. Realising this difficulty, CM Stalin introduced the 'Makkalai Thedi Maruthuvam' scheme. As per the scheme, a team visits each house and conducts medical examinations for everyone above 40 years of age. After the survey, the government has clear data of the percentage of people having diabetes, hypertension etc. When compared to the old data, the number of persons with certain medical conditions in the new data have increased manifold. The Union government has also introduced a similar scheme but the difference between the two is the approach. In the state government's scheme, the team approaches each individual's house to conduct the medical exam, giving the state a uniform clear data which will be helpful in formulating better plans but in the union government's scheme medical exam will be conducted only for people visiting the government hospital which will not be the case all the time. As opposed to the criticisms of the residents of Tamil Nadu, the officers coming from other states for inspection are amazed by the infrastructure available in the government hospitals of Tamil Nadu. Flabbergasted Gujarat officials: A few days back, a team of officials from Gujarat came to inspect Kalaignar centenary multi-specialty hospital. After the examination of facilities, they were amazed by the availability of diverse medical infrastructure in one place. The Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation Limited, a public company managed by the Tamil Nadu government was formed to cut the expenses of medicine procurement. The earlie practice where each government hospital procured the needed medicines separately was changed due to the fact that separate purchase of medicines leads to different procurement cost. In order to establish a common pricing system and to reduce the procurement expenses of the government, Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation Limited was established. After its establishment, the company started placing bulk orders of medicines for all hospitals including primary health centres and multi-specialty hospitals. One of the benefits of bulk procurement of medicines is the purchase of medicines at a lower cost (1 rupee medicine can be purchased at 50 paisa). Bulk procurement encourages competition among companies for the provision of medicines at lower costs but earlier pharmaceutical companies were not interested in small orders. Additionally, the government started procuring generic medicines and stopped procuring branded medicines. Generic medicines which are already cheaper could be procured at even cheaper rates due to the placing of bulk orders in lakhs. Seeing the profit made in this way of procurement of medicines, the World Bank implemented the same in the third world countries. In India, such a practice exists only in Tamil Nadu and the public company established by the Tamil Nadu government has made tremendous contributions in this regard. Free life-saving advanced treatments: DMK regime extended the ambit of treatments provided in the government hospitals. Kalaignar's Medical Insurance scheme introduced on 23.7.2009 covered the costs of life-saving advanced treatments in hospitals. Till January 2022, approximately 1.37 crore families benefited under the insurance scheme which made the advanced treatments affordable for the common public. The next beneficial scheme in the medical field is the Organ Transplantation programme in Tamil Nadu introduced in 2008, during the period of Karunanidhi. The particular scheme gave birth to the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu (TRANSTAN) in 2015. DMK's next target is the general knowledge of the people after taking care of food, shelter, education and medicine. In order to expand the knowledge base, former CM Karunanidhi provided free colour television sets. Are all goods given to the public, freebies? DMK was slammed by PM Modi with the accusation of promoting 'Revdi culture' (Revdi - a Rajasthan sweet gifted during festivities which is metaphorically compared to freebies given by the government) which is a huge barrier to the country's economic development. As per economist Jeyaranjan, pork barrel politics is what hinders the economic development of a country. Pork barrel politics means targeting the voters of specific constituencies during the election time by giving freebies to persuade them. Pork barrel politics cannot be compared to the provision of free rice by the DMK government to 2.20 crore ration cards which is a welfare measure. Such measures are not concentrated on a particular group of people or a particular constituency, it is something done for the welfare of the people across the state. Tamil Nadu, an industrialised state: The reason for the progress of Tamil Nadu into a state full of industries is the implementation of various unique, diverse and people-centric schemes. Tamil Nadu contributes one-third to the GDP of the country. Apart from this, Tamil Nadu has become a hub in the global level and first in India for the manufacture of e-bikes, electronics, leather products, automobiles etc. Sathya Pratha Sahoo, the Chief Electoral Officer of Tamil Nadu said, "Tamil Nadu is the only state in India where elections are conducted in a peaceful manner." Kashmir Is Not Gaza: Ex-JNU Student Shehla Rashid Hails PM Modi, Shah For Peace In J&K Mortal Remains Of Capt. Pranjal, Who Died Fighting Terrorists, To Be Flown To Bengaluru Large Number Of People Pay Last Respects To Capt M V Pranjal In Bengaluru 4 Army Personnel Killed In Encounter With Terrorists In J-K's Rajouri India oi-Prakash KL Four Army personnel including two officers and two jawans have lost their lives in an ongoing encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district on Wednesday, 16 Corps sources told ANI. "Troops including Special Forces are deployed in the area after inputs were received about movement of a group of terrorists in the area. 16 Corps Commander and Rashtriya Rifles' Romeo Force commander are monitoring the operations closely. More details awaited," 16 Corps sources told the news agency. The encounter broke out between terrorists and joint forces of the Army and the Jammu and Kashmir Police in the Bajimaal area of Dharmsal following a cordon-and-search operation, a police official told PTI. Local residents said that a cordon-and-search operation has been going on in the area since Sunday to track down terrorists operating in the area. "Due to the operation we were asked to stay back at home and not venture out. Our children stayed back at home and did not attend the school," a villager told PTI. The firing is going on in the forest area close to the village, he said. Officials said the two terrorists trapped at the encounter site in Bajimaal appeared to be foreign nationals and had been moving around in the area since Sunday. They even took shelter at a place of worship, they said. The border districts of Rajouri and Poonch have witnessed increased terrorist incidents over the past one-and-a-half years. On November 17, a terrorist was killed in an encounter between terrorists and security forces in the Guller Behrote area of Rajouri district. On August 7, a terrorist was gunned down as an infiltration attempt from across the border was foiled by the Army in the Degwar area of Poonch district. Five Army soldiers were killed during an anti-terror operation in the Kesari hills of Rajouri district on May 5. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, November 22, 2023, 20:37 [IST] Caught On Camera: 7 Students Injured As Auto-Rickshaw Collides With Lorry In Visakhapatnam India oi-Madhuri Adnal In a heart-wrenching incident captured by CCTV footage, a tragic collision occurred in Visakhapatnam involving a speeding auto-rickshaw transporting seven school children. The harrowing accident took place when the auto-rickshaw collided with a lorry, subsequently overturning and leading to the injury of all seven students on board. Out of the injured, two students from Bethany School sustained severe injuries, escalating the gravity of the incident. They were rushed to a nearby hospital and are being treated. Details regarding the sequence of events remain obscured, leaving uncertainty surrounding the party responsible for the mishap. The mishap inflicted significant injuries on the students, exacerbating the severity of the situation and sparking concerns about road safety, particularly concerning the transport of schoolchildren. Hyderabad: 4 Women, 1 Child Among 9 Killed In Fire Accident In Nampally; Over 20 Evacuated The incident unfolded as the speeding lorry collided with the auto-rickshaw ferrying the students to their school in Visakhapatnam earlier this morning. The impact of the collision resulted in injuries to all seven students, with two of them sustaining critical injuries, underscoring the gravity of the situation. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, November 22, 2023, 13:29 [IST] Cybercrimes in India in pandemic gone up by 500 per cent: Defence Chief Bipin Rawat CBI Busts Major Cybercrime Module Targeting Foreign Citizens The CBI has busted a major cybercrime module targeting citizens of foreign nations, including that of the USA, through fake call centres during its searches at 24 locations in which Rs 2.2 crore were seized. India -Krishna Kripa New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has successfully dismantled a significant cybercrime operation that targeted citizens of foreign countries, primarily those residing in the United States, through the use of fraudulent call centers. During searches conducted at 24 locations across Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, and Gujarat, the CBI seized a substantial amount of digital evidence, including Rs 2.2 crore in cash, documents related to properties, and cryptocurrency. Modus Operandi The group, allegedly led by Sushil Sachdeva and his associates, employed fraudulent schemes, such as tech support scams, to dupe unsuspecting foreign nationals. They made millions of calls through call centers to deceive their victims. The CBI's intervention was part of an ongoing investigation that has resulted in the apprehension of several cybercriminals. The Investigation The CBI registered the case on July 7, 2022, based on allegations that multiple call centers in India were utilizing the services of a Gujarat-based VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) company to orchestrate millions of fraudulent calls targeting U.S. citizens. The perpetrators impersonated entities such as the US Federal Grant Department, IRS, SSA, CRA, and ATO through VOIP calls. The modus operandi involved sending robo and audio calls impersonating officials from US Federal Departments or agencies. The victims were then deceived into making payments under the guise of fees, fines, or penalties. Initial Phase of Investigation The initial phase of investigations under the CBI's Operation Chakra in October 2022 led to searches conducted earlier at 11 such call centers and entities. The US probe agency, FBI, informed the CBI that the accused in this case had already faced indictments in the USA for similar fraudulent activities against its citizens. Further Investigation and Arrests Based on further investigation, the CBI uncovered the involvement of a private individual, a private company, and their associates in perpetrating large-scale fraud against foreign nationals. The services of a Gujarat-based private company facilitated these fraudulent activities. The CBI's recent action on Wednesday was the result of this expanded investigation aimed at unraveling a deeper conspiracy. The agency's efforts have led to the arrest of several individuals involved in the cybercrime module. The CBI's successful bust of this major cybercrime module highlights the agency's commitment to combating cybercrime and protecting citizens from fraudulent activities. The seizure of digital evidence and cash, along with the arrest of the accused, will serve as a deterrent to potential cybercriminals. The ongoing investigation is expected to further disrupt such illegal operations and bring the perpetrators to justice. Haryana Notifies Benefits of 74 Schemes Under DBT Programme Haryana Chief Secretary Sanjeev Kaushal announced that 74 out of 83 schemes implemented by the state government have been notified under the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) programme and linked to Aadhaar cards. These schemes will also be operated through the Parivar Pehchan Patra (family ID) scheme of the state government. India -Krishna Kripa In a significant move towards transparency and efficiency in welfare delivery, the Haryana government has made substantial progress in implementing the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) program. The state's Chief Secretary, Sanjeev Kaushal, recently presided over a meeting of the Direct Benefit Transfer DBT Advisory Board, where he highlighted the achievements and outlined further steps for the program's expansion. Schemes Notified Under DBT Kaushal announced that out of the 83 schemes implemented by various departments in Haryana, benefits of 74 schemes have been notified under the DBT program. These schemes have been linked to the Aadhaar card, ensuring that eligible beneficiaries receive their entitlements directly and securely. Cumulative Savings through Ghost Beneficiary Identification The state government's efforts to weed out ineligible beneficiaries have yielded significant results. Through a comprehensive review from fiscal year 2014-15 to 2022-23, a total of 36,74,833 ghost or duplicate beneficiaries have been identified across various schemes. This initiative has resulted in substantial notional savings amounting to Rs 7,822.69 crore, indicating the government's commitment to prudent fiscal management. Inclusion of Additional Schemes Recognizing the importance of skill development, food and supplies, urban local bodies, agriculture, and AYUSH sectors, the meeting emphasized the urgent inclusion of nine schemes related to these departments into the DBT framework within a week. This measure aims to ensure that all eligible beneficiaries receive their benefits seamlessly and without delay. Emphasis on Parivar Pehchan Patra To enhance efficiency and streamline service delivery, the Chief Secretary stressed the importance of operating all schemes through the Parivar Pehchan Patra (Family ID) scheme of the state government. The Parivar Pehchan Patra is a unique initiative that creates a comprehensive database of families, enabling targeted and effective delivery of welfare benefits. Disbursement of Subsidies to Farmers During the meeting, Kaushal also directed officers from the agriculture department to promptly disburse subsidies to farmers under various schemes designed for the management of paddy straw. This initiative aims to support farmers in adopting sustainable practices and reducing the environmental impact of paddy straw burning. The Haryana government's proactive implementation of the DBT program and its commitment to eliminating ghost beneficiaries are commendable steps towards ensuring transparency, accountability, and efficiency in welfare delivery. By leveraging technology and streamlining processes, the state government is empowering citizens and making a positive impact on their lives. The integration of schemes with the Parivar Pehchan Patra further strengthens the state's efforts towards inclusive and targeted welfare interventions. Joyful Reunion: Families Express Thanks To Govt After Successful Rescue of 41 Workers From Silkyara Tunnel Practised Yoga, Took Walks To Keep Spirits Up: Rescued Workers Tell PM Modi Hope Remains As Second Rescue Tunnel Begins In Uttarkashi; Trapped Workers Fed Vegetable Pulao India oi-Madhuri Adnal Rescue efforts to reach 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi have reached a critical juncture as operations enter their eleventh day. Drilling work, which had been on hold since November 17, resumed late on Tuesday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with Uttarakhand's Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, inquiring about the ongoing rescue progress. The chief minister later shared updates with PM Modi on the recent 24-hour advancements. As attempts persist to reach the trapped workers, sustaining them has become a priority, with efforts to provide hot meals underway. Recent breakthroughs include Tuesday evening's provision of pulao and matar paneer to the workers and the identification of a location for vertical drilling on Wednesday morning. The Border Roads Organisation's efforts in road construction near the tunnel site have facilitated the movement of a previously stuck machine. Be Sensitive In Reportage, Avoid Sensationalising Tunnel Rescue Operations: Govt To TV Channels 11th Day of the Uttarkashi Tunnel Rescue Work: Since the tunnel collapse on October 12, 41 workers have remained trapped, while rescuers continue their efforts to reach them. Using radio and pipes, family members communicated with the trapped workers. Recent developments involved providing them with freshly cooked, hot meals. Anshu Manish Khulko, Director of the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation, reported the identification of a site for vertical drilling. Road construction, spanning over 350 meters, near the tunnel's hilltop is nearly finished. BRO's ongoing road construction from Silkyara and Barkot sides is also progressing. A significant moment arrived with the capturing of images of the trapped workers using an endoscopic flexi camera inserted through the pipeline, revealing their good condition. Modern drilling machinery from various parts of the country has been deployed to aid in the diverse drilling operations required for the rescue mission. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, November 22, 2023, 10:14 [IST] After a resounding outcry of concern over Sweet Homes drinking water and local fish die-off, Linn County Commissioners are taking steps to reverse the court injunction they say is the cause. In October, thousands of dead fish were found downstream of Green Peter Reservoir after a dramatic change in water pressure. Then earlier this month, Sweet Home residents noticed their drinking water had changed: it tasted like bleach and was tinted yellow. Sweet Home city officials urged that the water was safe, but that the public works department was having to take additional measures to keep the water clean, such as using higher amounts of chlorine. Both instances have a common cause, officials say: the drawdown of Green Peter Reservoir. On Tuesday, Linn County Commissioners unanimously voted to instruct staff to take legal action to modify U.S. District Court Judge Marco Hernandezs order that caused the historic drawdown. The drawdown At Green Peter Reservoir, the water is visibly lower. There's a more muddy bank between the vegetation, and the sandy brown water is wrought with visible sediment. Recently, people gathered around at a lookout point to take photos with somber faces and ask each other what was happening. Peter Green Reservior_Wide A view of the recently exposed shoreline of Green Peter Reservoir as seen from the Green Peter Dam. The reservoir is currently gradually being Back in June, the Green Peter and Lookout Point reservoirs were drawn down to historically low levels a 142-foot drawdown to an elevation of 780 feet. The average level this time of year is usually around 920 feet. The action is part of a court ordered injunction with the intent to aid the survival of passing endangered salmon species. Changing the operations of Green Peter Reservoir was done to grant the fish a safer passage to move downstream through the Santiam River and eventually back to the ocean. However, another species of salmon became a victim of circumstance in the process, Greg Taylor, supervisor fisheries biologist for the Army Corps of Engineers told Mid-Valley Media back in October. The Corps is the entity managing the site. The fish, a species of land-locked salmon called kokanee, were in the depths of the reservoir and were coaxed through the regulating outlet, causing them to undergo a rapid change in water pressure that killed them. Since then, the drawdown has also created an increased amount of sediment downstream into water systems in Linn County. Sweet Home is perhaps the hardest hit. City staff said that despite the increased turbidity, or cloudiness, they have been able to produce drinking water that is well within the Department of Environmental Qualitys safety parameters, and that filters are being replaced more often to ensure that the water is safe. This is a devastating time for us," City Manager Kelcey Young said. 'A Place to Sleep' podcast travels to Grants Pass It's a community that openly heckles and worse its homeless neighbors, many who have deep roots. And it may have a date with the Supreme Court. She added that small businesses have seen about a 10% decrease in profits because people arent using the reservoirs for recreation. We werent prepared and this is probably the biggest thing weve seen in the last couple decades in Sweet Home, Young said in front of the Linn County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, Nov. 21. Commissioners unanimously agreed to pursue legal action in an attempt to overturn the court injunction. I believe as a community we are stunned and I think residents of Linn County expect leadership and actions in times like these, Commissioner Roger Nyquist said. But announcing that the county is pursuing legal action is different than being successful, Nyquist added. Upset The commissioners' action comes a day after a heated community informational meeting in Sweet Home. Residents packed the city hall and over 100 attended virtually to sit in on the Nov. 20 water quality information session with presentations from the city and the Army Corps of Engineers. Residents voiced concerns over their health, their pets' health and having to pay more money for bottled water. Attendees were asked to fill out forms with their concerns rather than speak at the meeting. But many residents interrupted the meeting with vehement remarks and vitriol. Some attendees flipped off the camera and interrupted speakers in the middle of the presentation and expressed discontent with not being able to speak directly to officials. Peter Green Reservoir_Other side The Green Peter Dam is draining the reservoir in effort to reduce the amount of barotrauma, damage to physical tissue caused by a pressure dif Young stressed that Green Peter Reservoir and Foster Lake where the city gets its water was out of the citys jurisdiction and that The Army Corps of Engineers were managing the reservoir. She added that it was the first of multiple information meetings and that they were exploring potential solutions, such as building a coalition, filing an injunction and finding other ways to help the passage of fish such as fish ladders and collectors. We knew the drawdown was coming but no one anticipated this, Young said. Beyond Sweet Home Sweet Home is probably the most affected because the citys water supply is close to Green Peter Reservoir. The city of Lebanon is also experiencing high turbidity in its drinking water supply. This is bad, said public works director Jason Williams as he set down a jar of water the color of apple cider in front of Lebanon City Council on Nov. 8. The water was what is directly coming to the lab, before it is treated, Williams said. We are taking the bottom of Green Peter Reservoir and all the silt that's drained off from every tributary creek that comes into that lake and that's what is going into our water treatment plant, he said. The water is absolutely safe to drink after going through treatment, Williams said. The plant is running 24 hours a day to make it safe. The replacement cycles will be shorter because of that, he added. In Albany, the city sits farther from Green Peter Reservoir, so the water isnt as affected, said Operations Manager, Kristin Preston. But they are still seeing an increase in turbidity. Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help Support local news coverage and the people who report it by becoming a subscriber today. Its not as severe as other communities but a big storm could disturb the sediment more, she said. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to refill the reservoir Dec. 16, she said, adding that when that happens, there may be another spike in turbidity. Thousands of devotees welcome Lord Parshurams palanquin at International Shri Renuka Ji Fair The six-day long International Shri Renuka Ji Fair began on Wednesday afternoon in Himachal Pradeshs Sirmaur district as thousands of devotees welcomed the arrival of Lord Parshurams palanquin, which symbolises his arrival at his mothers abode. India -Krishna Kripa The six-day International Shri Renuka Ji Fair commenced on Wednesday afternoon in Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh, marked by the enthusiastic welcome of Lord Parshuram's palanquin, symbolizing his arrival at his mother's abode. Himachal Pradesh Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Singh Pathania graced the inaugural ceremony held at the Dr Y S Parmar Senior Secondary School ground in Dadahu. Shobha Yatra Led by Assembly Speaker Pathania initiated the grand "shobha yatra" of Lord Parshuram by reverently lifting the silver palanquin on his shoulders. The religious welcome ceremony, known as Devabhinandan, took place as Lord Parshuram's palanquin arrived at Dadahu from a temple in Jamu Koti village. Six additional palanquins carrying other deities joined the procession from various parts of the district. Thousands of devotees participated in the joyous celebration, chanting Vedic hymns, singing devotional bhajans, and playing traditional instruments like "runsinghas," trumpets, and drums. Devotees Throng the Fair The vibrant "shobha yatra" traversed through the Dadahu market, accompanied by the soulful melodies of "devdhun" - ancient Sirmauri devotional songs dedicated to Lord Parshuram and Bhagwati Renuka Ji. It took approximately three hours for the palanquins to complete the 2-kilometer-long procession, culminating on the banks of the sacred Shri Renuka Ji Lake. The palanquins were then placed at the ancient Parshuram temple for devotees to offer their prayers and seek blessings. Religious Significance Acharya Surendra Sharma, a renowned Bhagwat Kathakar, highlighted the profound significance of the fair as the largest annual gathering in Sirmaur district for thousands of years. He noted that the religious assembly finds mention in several ancient scriptures, including the Skand Purana and Brahmand Puran. Devotees from across Himachal Pradesh and neighboring states such as Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi flock to the fair to participate in the festivities. Traditions and Festivities Suresh Kumar Pundir, a prominent social worker from the Renuka area, emphasized the cherished tradition of spending a night under the sky in the fairgrounds as a testament to devotees' devotion to Lord Parshuram and Bhagwati Renuka Ji. Elaborate security arrangements have been implemented to ensure the safety of the thousands of devotees expected to visit the holy tirtha for a purifying dip on Thursday. The fair will culminate on Kartika Purnima, November 27, bringing the six-day extravaganza to a close. The International Shri Renuka Ji Fair stands as a testament to the deep-rooted cultural heritage and profound spiritual significance of Himachal Pradesh. As devotees come together to celebrate the divine presence of Lord Parshuram and Bhagwati Renuka Ji, the fair serves as a reminder of the enduring power of faith and devotion. Through its vibrant festivities, traditional rituals, and the collective spirit of celebration, the fair strengthens the bonds of community and preserves the rich cultural legacy of the region. When Will Telangana Farmers Get Money Into Their Account After EC's Pause On Rythu Bandhu? Will Get Over 70 Seats, Some Survey Firms Will Have 'Egg On Face': BRS leader Rama Rao One Injured In Fight During Campaign, BRS MLC Kavitha Accuses Cong Leaders Of Attack India pti-PTI A worker of the ruling BRS was injured after being allegedly attacked by a group of people during an election campaign of the party in Nizamabad district on Wednesday, police said. The incident happened in Yedapally village in Bodhan Assembly constituency, when members of two groups fought, they said adding one of the groups included some local villagers. However, the members of the BRS alleged that some Congress supporters attacked them resulting in injury to one of them after a chair was thrown at him, but, the Congress cadre in turn charged that the BRS workers hit them. Police intervened and dispersed the groups and said there was unauthorised gathering by the members of the two groups who beat up each other. Police were in the process of registering cases. Meanwhile, condemning the attack, BRS MLC K Kavitha on Wednesday alleged that that Congress leaders are physically attacking BRS cadre unable to digest the fact that people are with the ruling party. Speaking to media persons, she said the true colours and nature of the Congress party is being revealed and the party's history is fraught with attacks. From 1990 to 2012, curfew was imposed for 113 days in ten phases under the Congress rule, she alleged. "While we are trying to spread Information Technology to the districts, the Congress party was spreading riots," she charged. Rescuing 41 Trapped Workers In Uttarakhand Tunnel - Rescue Operation Enters Final Stage India oi-Prakash KL Only 12 metres separate 41 workers trapped in the collapsed tunnel in Uttarakhand's Silkyara and emergency services officials, state officials said on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters at the site around 4.30 pm, former advisor to the prime minister's office Bhaskar Khulbe said, "We are very happy to inform you that (drilling of) a length of six metres has been achieved over the past one hour. Hopefully, the next two-three hours will be comfortable in terms of assembling for the next push and attaining what all of us are waiting for. I hope that when we assemble again at 8 pm we have some similar good news to share with you." Earlier, an official from the Uttarakhand's Road and Transport Department said that the drilling using an auger machine started at 12:45 am. "We are progressing well. We are also doing horizontal drilling from Barkot side and have entered till 7.9 metres," Hindustan Times quoted a senior official with Uttarakhand's Road and Transport Department as saying. He said that until the authorities penetrate 45-50 meters inside the tunnel, he cannot specify the precise timeframe for their rescue. "As long as we reach 45-50 metres inside the tunnel, we will not be able to give you the exact time," he said. Hope Remains As Second Rescue Tunnel Begins In Uttarkashi; Trapped Workers Fed Vegetable Pulao "If there are no obstacles, some big news may be received tonight or tomorrow morning. An iron rod has also come along with the debris. It is a matter of happiness that this iron in the middle of laying the pipeline did not create any problems for us," he added. #WATCH | Uttarkashi (Uttarakhand) tunnel rescue | Former advisor to the Prime Minister's Office, Bhaskar Khulbe says "... I am happy to announce that we have been able to move forward by another 6 meters and it is expected that in the next 2 hours when we prepare for the next pic.twitter.com/BNyzfdbxAM ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 "This is very happy news for us, that we are moving forward at a fast pace," he added. However, he noted that the remaining section is the most critical. NHIDCL officials supervising the rescue operations on the spot had on Tuesday said the auger machine will be put back into operation after the 800 mm diameter steel pipes are pushed through the 900 mm diameter steel pipes already laid through the rubble using the telescopic method. Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami once again on Wednesday morning to take updates on the rescue operations underway at the tunnel and food and other essentials including medicines being supplied to the trapped workers through a new wider pipeline laid for the purpose. Be Sensitive In Reportage, Avoid Sensationalising Tunnel Rescue Operations: Govt To TV Channels It was through this new pipeline that the first visuals were captured of the trapped workers early on Tuesday with the help of an endoscopic flexi camera sent beyond the rubble. Dhami briefed the prime minister about the positive progress made over the last 24 hours in the rescue efforts being carried out at the tunnel with coordination between the state government, the central agencies and the international tunnelling experts. "We are getting continuous guidance from the Prime Minister in this difficult situation. It provides us with a new energy every day to evacuate our trapped brothers safely at the earliest applying all our strength," Dhami said on X. Sachin Pilot slams PM Modi for his comments on Congress treatment of him and his father Sachin Pilot said his father was a dedicated Congressman throughout his life and the prime ministers statements were far from fact and aimed at diverting peoples attention. India -Krishna Kripa Tonk/Jaipur, Nov 22: Rajasthan's former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday for commenting on how the Congress treated him and his father, saying there was no need for anyone other than the party and the people to worry about him. In a public meeting in Rajasthan's Bhilwara district, Prime Minister Modi claimed that Rajesh Pilot had once challenged the Congress family for the party's good, but the family punished both Rajesh and his son Sachin. Sachin Pilot's Response Responding to PM Modi's claim, Sachin Pilot told reporters, "My late father contested the election for Congress president's post along with Sharad Pawar against Sitaram Kesri in 1998. At that time, Sonia Gandhi was not in active politics. Kesri won that election and subsequently nominated both Pawar and my father to the working committee. That is the way a healthy democratic organization and political party should function." Pilot, who is contesting the assembly election from Tonk, said, "As far as I am concerned, I was given an opportunity to become a member of Parliament at a very young age and I have held many responsibilities at the Central government and the state level for many years." He asserted that his father joined the Congress as he was inspired by Indira Gandhi and served the public for a long time, fighting communal forces throughout his life. Sachin Pilot on His Relationship with the Gandhis The former Rajasthan deputy chief minister said, "As far as Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and Priyanka Gandhi are concerned, we have had relations with this family for decades. This relation is of the heart, this relation is old, and I think no one should make statements on this. We are working to strengthen the party." Sachin Pilot Accuses BJP of Diverting Attention Pilot said, "I feel that the BJP's election campaign has not taken off. Because of the fact that their campaign is not getting traction among people and voters, they are now looking to divert attention with such factually wrong statements. It's a clear indication that the BJP is on the back foot." Sachin Pilot Says Congress Will Form Government in Rajasthan Pilot said the Congress formed governments in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka and is going to form governments in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, where voting has been completed. He added that the party will form the government in Rajasthan as well. Congress Accuses PM Modi of Lying The Congress accused Prime Minister Modi of unleashing another pack of lies after he alleged that it punished Rajesh Pilot and his son Sachin Pilot for speaking the truth. AICC spokesperson and chairman of the media department Pawan Khera said, "The prime minister's lies stand exposed today in Bhilwara. Today, Narendra Modi, while continuing the Pradhan Mantri Jhooth Bolo scheme in a fit of panic, unleashed another pack of lies." Sachin Pilot's rebuttal of Prime Minister Modi's claims and his assertion of the strong relationship between his family and the Gandhis indicate that the Congress is keen to put the issue of its treatment of the Pilots behind it and focus on the upcoming assembly elections in Rajasthan. PM Modi speaks with Vietnam PM, says both nations share vision of rules-based Indo-Pacific region Strengthening US, Vietnam Ties For Global Stability, Not Containing China: US Prez Biden Raised Importance Of Human Rights, Free Press With PM Modi At G20: Biden In Vietnam After Sri Lanka And Thailand, Vietnam To Offer Visa-Free Entry To Indian Travellers International oi-Prakash KL After Sri Lanka and Thailand, Vietnam is considering granting visa-free entry for Indians, as reported by the Vietnamese news agency VnExpress. Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung has batted for short-term visa waivers for key markets like China and India to boost tourism. During a conference chaired by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Wednesday, Minister Hung also proposed visa waivers for visitors from affluent nations such as Australia, Canada, the US, and the remaining 20 members of the 27-member EU. As of now, only citizens of Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland enjoy visa-free entry to Vietnam. If this materialize, Vietnam will be the third nation, following Sri Lanka and Thailand, to grant Indians to enter visa-free. In October, the Thai government informed a news agency that it would grant visa-free entry to tourists from India and Taiwan, starting from November 10 and extending to May 10, 2024. "We will provide visa-free entry to India and Taiwan because a lot of their people like to travel to Thailand," AFP quoted Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavision as saying by news agency AFP. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, November 23, 2023, 0:26 [IST] Israel And Hamas Agree To Extend Truce For 2 More Days, And Free More Hostages And Prisoners India Welcomes Release Of Israeli Hostages By Hamas, Calls For Immediate Release Of Those Remaining Israel Approves Deal With Hamas For Release Of 50 Hostages International oi-Madhuri Adnal Israel's cabinet voted early on Wednesday to approve an agreement aimed at freeing approximately 50 hostages taken into Gaza during its attack on October 7. This deal, reported by The Times of Israel, exchanged the hostages' release for a multi-day ceasefire. Although specifics of the agreement weren't immediately disclosed, an Israeli government official hinted to reporters on Tuesday that the deal could secure the release of roughly 50 Israelis, predominantly women and children, in batches of 12-13 individuals per day. In a significant shift during the conflict with Hamas, Israel reluctantly accepted a four-day ceasefire under mounting pressure from the global community. Reports of the deal on securing the hostages in exchange for a ceasefire surfaced on Tuesday when Hamas and Israel said they were "close" to reaching an agreement. Qatar played a prominent role in brokering the talks on the hostages' deal. Israel-Hamas ceasefire: What we know This will be the first pause in the ongoing bombardment. Humanitarian aid will also get access into Gaza owing to this halt.In the four-day halt, 50 women and children would be freed by the Hamas. Though it was not clear when the truce would go into effect, the hostages could be freed starting on Thursday. The Israeli government said it would extend the lull by an additional day for every 10 hostages released. In the statement released by Hamas in which it welcomed the humanitarian truce, it said 150 Palestinians would be released from Israeli jails as part of the deal. Both sides confirmed the agreement following an all-night meeting. Netanyahu said it was a difficult decision but the right one. Netanyahu faced resistance from his war cabinet as some believed that the agreement would give "too much" to Hamas. Who are the hostages? About 240 people were taken hostage by the Hamas after they attacked Israel on October 7. The hostages were mainly people who attended the music festival that Hamas targetted. In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the U.S., Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, Israel's government has said. Hamas so far released four captives: US citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on October 20, citing "humanitarian reasons," and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on October 23. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, November 22, 2023, 9:23 [IST] Indian Student Varun Raj Dies After Being Stabbed In Head At US Gym For 'Looking Weird' India Forms Panel To Probe Allegations Of Plot To Kill Sikh Extremist Pannun In US US Thwarts Plot To Assassinate Khalistani Terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun On American Soil International oi-Prakash KL The United States foiled a plot on American soil to assassinate Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and warned the Indian government expressing concerns about its alleged involvement in the conspiracy, The Financial Times reported citing sources. Pannun is a self-proclaimed general counsel of the outlawed "unlawful association" Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) which has been aiming to revive the Khalistani movement in India. The Financial Times reported that individuals familiar with the case did not specify whether the protest in New Delhi prompted the plotters to abandon their plan or if the FBI intervened to thwart a scheme already in motion. Khalistani Leader Pannun Announces ,000 Reward For Pro-Palestine WC Final Pitch Invader As per the report, the United States shared information about the plot with certain allies after the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist who was killed in Vancouver in June. It comes at a time when India and Canada's relationship have taken a blow after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made an explosive statement in September accusing an Indian government agency of killing Khalistani leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar. He also expelled an Indian diplomat identified as Pavan Kumar Rai, the head of India's foreign intelligence agency in Canada, the Toronto Star newspaper reported. Pannun has been under the NIA's lens since 2019, when the anti-terror agency registered its first case against him. In September, the NIA had confiscated his share of a house and land in Amritsar in Punjab and Chandigarh. Khalistani Leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun Threatens India With 'Hamas-Like Attack' Non-bailable arrest warrants were issued against Pannun by a NIA Special Court on February 3, 2021, and he was declared a "Proclaimed Offender" on November 29 last year. On Monday, a case has been registered against designated terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun for threatening people flying Air India and the airline with closure of operations from November 19, the NIA said in a statement. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, November 22, 2023, 17:43 [IST] 2008-2023 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. CCTV of two cars carrying men linked to Sydney's underworld has been released as police investigate the alleged arson attack on YouTube personality Friendlyjordies' Bondi home. The House has nominated Mike Johnson for Speaker of the House. The FBI ignored more than 40 Biden whistleblowers with information.. Rumble 28 Oct 2023 A young man accused of aiding several people to commit a stabbing murder has been granted bail due to DNA testing delays in Queensland. Australian-Israeli actor Dan Mor said he was nervously awaiting news about whether his sister-in-law Moran would be among the hostages released in coming days. The Republic of Ireland fail to end a disappointing year on a high as they are held by New Zealand in James McClean's final international game. Immigration authorities have removed an illegal immigrant from the U.S. who is wanted for murder in Mexico. He had been removed multiple times before. Gabay, Israeli law student, was from the northern city of Yokne'am and her body was recovered by the authorities on Wednesday near.. DNA 23 Nov 2023 Shooting our own foot: Misuse of medicines is making infections difficult to treat SHOBHA SHUKLA, BOBBY RAMAKANT - CNS Do not misuse or overuse medicines in human health, animal health, food and agriculture and environment (Image by CNS) Details DMCA Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and become resistant to (or no longer respond to) medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death. As a result of drug resistance, medicines become ineffective, and infections become increasingly difficult or impossible to treat. That is why AMR ranks among the top ten global health threats worldwide. "Antimicrobial Resistance is a problem driven by misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medicines, including antibiotics and antivirals, and results in critical medicines losing effectiveness to treat infections," said Thomas Joseph, Head, AMR Awareness, Advocacy and Campaigns, World Health Organization (WHO), at a recent pre-conference meet of 22nd International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA). "AMR is associated with 5 million deaths a year. Besides this, there is the huge burden of morbidity and healthcare expenditure that can affect household welfare severely. The World Bank estimates that Global GDP could fall by $1 to $3.4 trillion annually after 2030 due to AMR," he added. The World Bank estimates that an additional 24 million people would be forced into extreme poverty by 2030 if no action is taken on AMR today. Drawing attention to World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) which is celebrated between 18-24 November every year, Thomas cautioned that "All stakeholders should realize that if we do not act now, we could go back to a pre-antibiotic era, when even simple infections become untreatable." Antimicrobials should be regarded as global public goods There are several issues of access and equity affecting AMR. "Research and development of new treatment options, including new antibiotics, is not prioritized due to a sector-wide market failure. As a result, we are running out of treatment options and new drugs are not coming into the market. Even when new medicines finally reach the market, low- and middle-income countries are not able to access these due to intellectual property and pricing constraints. Antimicrobials should be regarded as global public goods. Governments should strengthen their health systems and push for universal health coverage, so that all have access to the needed antimicrobials prescribed by registered healthcare providers," said Thomas. Be the change: Sharing personal experience of surviving AMR Vanessa Carter, an AMR patient survivor, One Health advocate, Chairperson of the WHO Taskforce of AMR Survivors, and founder of The AMR Narrative, was one of the speakers at the 3rd Annual Global Media Forum on AMR, hosted by Global AMR Media Alliance in lead up to WAAW 2023. She shared her eye-opening personal experience of her battle with AMR. "In 2004, I was 25 years old. I had a severe car accident in Johannesburg, South Africa, and ended up in a hospital with a lot of massive injuries. I had been resuscitated on the side of the road, I was put on life support, I had multiple fractures in my face - a broken jaw and a broken nose - and also lost one eye. I also had a head injury, major abdominal injury, fractured pelvis, neck, and back injury. But the most complicated injuries were to my face, and it took me 10 years to recover from them, during which time I have had 4 different facial prosthetic implants," said Vanessa. But the worst was yet to come. Six years into the accident and after her fourth implant, one day, while getting into her car, Vanessa saw moisture seeping all over her face. It was pus oozing out from her 4th implanted prosthetic. She underwent emergency surgery, and the doctors did "debridement" and reconstructive surgery to fix up the damaged tissue. Two weeks later, the infection returned. She got more of tissue reconstruction done. But the infection kept on returning and it worsened over time. This went on for the next 11 months during which she was kept under the care of several specialist surgeons. Vanessa was eventually diagnosed with highly antibiotic resistant form of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) infection. She could not undergo any more surgeries for one year, as the doctors had to wait for tissue to recover. "I had to cover my face as I looked terrible. My face was very red, full of fluid and swollen. I could not wear my artificial eye. I could not go to fetch my child from school because the kids would get scared looking at me," she recalls. "I lost ten valuable years of my life between 25-35 years of age, being in and out of hospital, and not being able to look in the mirror without seeing a changed face. I nearly got a bloodstream infection and sepsis and almost died. But I am also living with a severe disability now - facial disfiguration that was partially caused by the accident but exacerbated by the fact that we could not treat this infection. When I learned about antibiotic resistance, it came as a surprise that why was it not a common knowledge even though it is such a widespread global threat," she shared in the forum. Political commitment on AMR World leaders at next year's UN General Assembly will be convening a United Nations High Level Meeting on AMR. "We are at a critical point in time to act against AMR. The attention to AMR is growing and it is rightly so. The UN High Level Meeting on AMR next year is a critical opportunity to further accelerate the response to AMR," said Beatrice Atim Odwong Anywar, Uganda's Minister of State for Environment, and Member of Global Leaders Group on Antimicrobial Resistance. "Out of the 5 million AMR-related human deaths that occur every year, most of them are happening in low- and middle-income countries. These are the countries where the burden of diseases is also higher. That is why Uganda is spearheading action against AMR across sectors such as human health, animal health, food and agriculture, and the environment," added Minister Beatrice. One Health Approach The health of humans, animals (domestic and wild), plants and our environment are closely interlinked and interdependent. "This means that whatever happens to one of them, the others will be inevitably affected and impacted for better or for worse," says Javier Yugueros-Marcos, Head of Department Antimicrobial Resistance & Veterinary Products at World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH). We cannot ignore one at the cost of another. Agrees Emmanuel Kabali, AMR Project Coordination Consultant at Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), that "AMR is a complex issue that impacts human, animal, plant and environmental health. Antimicrobials are used extensively in humans, and in animal and plant production." Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Citizen News Service - CNS Social Media Pages: Citizen News Service (CNS) specializes in in-depth and rights-based, health and science journalism. For more information, please contact: www.citizen-news.org or @cns_health or www.facebook.com/cns.page The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors. OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help. If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership. STAY IN THE KNOW If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content. Daily Weekly OpEd News Newsletter Name Email (Opens new browser window) Israel continues to deliberately target residential buildings, hospitals, schools, bakeries, flour mills, water storage facilities and other public facilities. But they will get to pause occasionally over the next few days - like a rapist agreeing reluctantly to take a break occasionally. >6000 children were killed in the pointed genocidal campaign to drive Gazans to Sinai in order to steal the natural gas off the coast of Gaza. The western governments are still partners in the genocide even if they occasionally start to speak of "unacceptable level of civilian deaths" (sicking language for an ongoing genocide). Israel killed over 102 UN workers and 65 journalists to prevent the truth from coming out (largest number of Journalists murdered in any conflict since WWII). The two wars go on: A war of ethnic cleansing and genocide which is used to vent and give Israeli soldiers the psychological satisfaction of murdering civilians because they are losing the other war against the resistance. There is an exchange of prisoners (as many as 150 Palestinian women and children will be released from Israeli gulags where they are mistreated) in exchange for 50 Israeli settlers. This could have been done weeks ago. It took lots of lobbying from families of the Israeli prisoners to pressure the fascist government that really did not care about Palestinian or Israeli lives (they even bombed and burned Israeli civilians on 7 October see previous message with links and proof). Also the genocidal regime was resistant to having pauses in its genocide (let alone a ceasefire). Now they will have pauses to reload and bomb more civilians. The US/Israel war on people will continue (and it is a joint war and not just because of the stream of US weapons- already Five US Delta forces soldiers were killed in Gaza as well as perhaps 300 Israeli soldiers over 10 days of the ground invasion). Over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners are still being tortured and starved in Israeli jails and the ethnic cleansing and genocide continues. But you cannot crush a people fighting for their freedom. Vietnam redux! UN OCHA on day 45 of the aggression against the people of Gaza click here The Zionists gathered their (white/European) forces for a rally in Washington DC gathering as many as 40-50,000 but they had to pay people to attend ($250 per head) and it was a hate rally calling for continuing the genocide. Meanwhile millions are still rallying around the world. Those latter rallies calling to end the genocide and for ceasefire now are always mixed (Jews, Cristians, Muslims, Hindu and people of all religions and ethnical and national backgrounds). The issue of genocide ularresistance.org/activating-the-genocide-convention/ funded by the US click here Jeffrey Sachs at the UN Security Council on how wars can be ended. Yes, there are tunnels under a hospital: Israel built them and so they knew where they are .youtube.com/watch?v=cVG7duZ-u2U A US soldier whipping up troops for the fight in Gaza .facebook.com/reel/334422909206275 But US troops already suffered casualties and the US tried to hide it by claiming their helicopter fell click here But the most damning involvement ofcourse is funding and arming Israel ($20 billion worth this year alone). This is illegal by US law (Leahy amendment) Israeli propaganda is bad- really bad. Corporate media fail to report that Israel's war on hospitals has nothing to do with Hamas. click here see also a compilation of lies at ongaza.org under #9 especially on what happened on 7 October where Israel killed its own civilians and then blamed Hamas Jonathan Cook: Israel and its allies are repurposing the goals and lies of 1948 in Gaza in 2023 click here The Palestine statement against genocide, for liberation and return critical geographies group.wordpress.com/ Global uprising happening- shut it down, no business as usual when genocide is happening: .youtube.com/watch?v=r0STyovb1y0 PLEASE KEEP SPEAKING OUT and PRESSING GOVERNMENTS. Momentum is building and collectively we can turn this around. We must do this if we want an earth that is ruled bylaws not by colonial psychopaths who will not stop at stealing Palestine and occupying Washington DC... they have bigger ambitions. so..... Stay Human, keep Palestine alive, and keep fighting.We are the many they are the few 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 siyeh.org estinenature.org facebook pages Personal .facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9 Institute .facebook.com/PIBS.PMNH IPSWICH - Enviroplanet, a leading UK-based renewable energy solutions company in Ipswich, is revolutionizing how homeowners in Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, and Essex tackle rising energy costs. With a focus on installing Mitsubishi Ecodan heat pumps, Enviroplanet is at the forefront of providing sustainable and cost-effective heating and cooling solutions to the communities they serve. The company proudly offers homeowners access to the government funding of 7500 through the Boiler Upgrade When a stubborn pain in Nick van Terheydens bones would not subside, his doctor had a hunch what was wrong. Without enough vitamin D in the blood, the body will pull calcium from the bones. Left untreated, a vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteoporosis. A blood test in the fall of 2021 confirmed the doctors diagnosis, and van Terheyden expected his companys insurance plan, managed by Cigna, to cover the cost of the bloodwork. Instead, Cigna sent van Terheyden a letter explaining that it would not pay for the $350 test because it was not medically necessary. The letter was signed by one of Cignas medical directors, a doctor employed by the company to review insurance claims. Something about the denial letter did not sit well with van Terheyden, a 58-year-old Maryland resident. This was a clinical decision being second-guessed by someone with no knowledge of me, said van Terheyden, a physician himself and a specialist who had worked in emergency care in the United Kingdom. When insurers rejected his claim, they didnt know he was a top litigator The vague wording made van Terheyden suspect that Dr. Cheryl Dopke, the medical director who signed it, had not taken much care with his case. Van Terheyden was right to be suspicious. His claim was just one of roughly 60,000 that Dopke denied in a single month last year, according to internal Cigna records reviewed by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum. The rejection of van Terheydens claim was typical for Cigna, one of the countrys largest insurers. The company has built a system that allows its doctors to instantly reject a claim on medical grounds without opening the patient file, leaving people with unexpected bills, according to corporate documents and interviews with former Cigna officials. Over a period of two months last year, Cigna doctors denied over 300,000 requests for payments using this method, spending an average of 1.2 seconds on each case, the documents show. The company has reported it covers or administers health care plans for 18 million people. In the 10 minutes and 57 seconds youve been on this page, Cignas doctors could have denied 788 claims, according to company documents. Before health insurers reject claims for medical reasons, company doctors must review them, according to insurance laws and regulations in many states. Medical directors are expected to examine patient records, review coverage policies and use their expertise to decide whether to approve or deny claims, regulators said. This process helps avoid unfair denials. But the Cigna review system that blocked van Terheydens claim bypasses those steps. Medical directors do not see any patient records or put their medical judgment to use, said former company employees familiar with the system. Instead, a computer does the work. A Cigna algorithm flags mismatches between diagnoses and what the company considers acceptable tests and procedures for those ailments. Company doctors then sign off on the denials in batches, according to interviews with former employees who spoke on condition of anonymity. We literally click and submit, one former Cigna doctor said. It takes all of 10 seconds to do 50 at a time. Use our free tool to request your records and see why your insurance company turned you down. Find Out Why Your Health Insurer Denied Your Claim Not all claims are processed through this review system. For those that are, it is unclear how many are approved and how many are funneled to doctors for automatic denial. Insurance experts questioned Cignas review system. Patients expect insurers to treat them fairly and meaningfully review each claim, said Dave Jones, Californias former insurance commissioner. Under California regulations, insurers must consider patient claims using a thorough, fair and objective investigation. Its hard to imagine that spending only seconds to review medical records complies with the California law, said Jones. At a minimum, I believe it warrants an investigation. Within Cigna, some executives questioned whether rendering such speedy denials satisfied the law, according to one former executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because he still works with insurers. We thought it might fall into a legal gray zone, said the former Cigna official, who helped conceive the program. We sent the idea to legal, and they sent it back saying it was OK. Cigna adopted its review system more than a decade ago, but insurance executives say similar systems have existed in various forms throughout the industry. In a written response, Cigna said the reporting by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum was biased and incomplete. Cigna said its review system was created to accelerate payment of claims for certain routine screenings, Cigna wrote. This allows us to automatically approve claims when they are submitted with correct diagnosis codes. When asked if its review process, known as PXDX, lets Cigna doctors reject claims without examining them, the company said that description was incorrect. It repeatedly declined to answer further questions or provide additional details. (ProPublica employees health insurance is provided by Cigna.) Former Cigna doctors confirmed that the review system was used to quickly reject claims. An internal corporate spreadsheet, viewed by the news organizations, lists names of Cignas medical directors and the number of cases each handled in a column headlined PxDx. The former doctors said the figures represent total denials. Cigna did not respond to detailed questions about the numbers. Cignas explanation that its review system was designed to approve claims didnt make sense to one former company executive. They were paying all these claims before. Then they werent, said Ron Howrigon, who now runs a company that helps private doctors in disputes with insurance companies. Youre talking about a system built to deny claims. Cigna emphasized that its system does not prevent a patient from receiving care it only decides when the insurer wont pay. Reviews occur after the service has been provided to the patient and does not result in any denials of care, the statement said. Our company is committed to improving health outcomes, driving value for our clients and customers, and supporting our team of highly-skilled Medical Directors, the company said. Cignas review system was developed more than a decade ago by a former pediatrician. After leaving his practice, Dr. Alan Muney spent the next several decades advising insurers and private equity firms on how to wring savings out of health plans. In 2010, Muney was managing health insurance for companies owned by Blackstone, the private equity firm, when Cigna tapped him to help spot savings in its operation, he said. Insurers have wide authority to reject claims for care, but processing those denials can cost a few hundred dollars each, former executives said. Typically, claims are entered into the insurance system, screened by a nurse and reviewed by a medical director. For lower-dollar claims, it was cheaper for Cigna to simply pay the bill, Muney said. They dont want to spend money to review a whole bunch of stuff that costs more to review than it does to just pay for it, Muney said. Muney and his team had solved the problem once before. At UnitedHealthcare, where Muney was an executive, he said his group built a similar system to let its doctors quickly deny claims in bulk. In response to questions, UnitedHealthcare said it uses technology that allows it to make fast, efficient and streamlined coverage decisions based on members benefit plans and clinical criteria in compliance with state and federal laws. The company did not directly address whether it uses a system similar to Cigna. At Cigna, Muney and his team created a list of tests and procedures approved for use with certain illnesses. The system would automatically turn down payment for a treatment that didnt match one of the conditions on the list. Denials were then sent to medical directors, who would reject these claims with no review of the patient file. Cigna eventually designated the list PXDX corporate shorthand for procedure-to-diagnosis. The list saved money in two ways. It allowed Cigna to begin turning down claims that it had once paid. And it made it cheaper to turn down claims, because the companys doctors never had to open a file or conduct any in-depth review. They simply denied the claims in bulk with an electronic signature. The PXDX stuff is not reviewed by a doc or nurse or anything like that, Muney said. The review system was designed to prevent claims for care that Cigna considered unneeded or even harmful to the patient, Muney said. The policy simply allowed Cigna to cheaply identify claims that it had a right to deny. Muney said that it would be an administrative hassle to require company doctors to manually review each claim rejection. And it would mean hiring many more medical directors. That adds administrative expense to medicine, he said. Its not efficient. But two former Cigna doctors, who did not want to be identified by name for fear of breaking confidentiality agreements with Cigna, said the system was unfair to patients. They said the claims automatically routed for denial lacked such basic information as race and gender. It was very frustrating, one doctor said. Some state regulators questioned Cignas PXDX system. In Maryland, where van Terheyden lives, state insurance officials said the PXDX system as described by a reporter raises some red flags. The states law regulating group health plans purchased by employers requires that insurance company doctors be objective and flexible when they sit down to evaluate each case. If medical directors are truly rubber-stamping the output of the matching software without any additional review, it would be difficult for the medical director to comply with these requirements, the Maryland Insurance Administration wrote in response to questions. Medicare and Medicaid have a system that automatically prevents improper payment of claims that are wrongly coded. It does not reject payment on medical grounds. Within the world of private insurance, Muney is certain that the PXDX formula has boosted the corporate bottom line. It has undoubtedly saved billions of dollars, he said. Insurers benefit from the savings, but everyone stands to gain when health care costs are lowered and unneeded care is denied, he said. Cigna carefully tracks how many patient claims its medical directors handle each month. Twelve times a year, medical directors receive a scorecard in the form of a spreadsheet that shows just how fast they have cleared PXDX cases. Dopke, the doctor who turned down van Terheyden, rejected 121,000 claims in the first two months of 2022, according to the scorecard. Dr. Richard Capek, another Cigna medical director, handled more than 80,000 instant denials in the same time span, the spreadsheet showed. Dr. Paul Rossi has been a medical director at Cigna for over 30 years. Early last year, the physician denied more than 63,000 PXDX claims in two months. Rossi, Dopke and Capek did not respond to attempts to contact them. Howrigon, the former Cigna executive, said that although he was not involved in developing PXDX, he can understand the economics behind it. Put yourself in the shoes of the insurer, Howrigon said. Why not just deny them all and see which ones come back on appeal? From a cost perspective, it makes sense. Cigna knows that many patients will pay such bills rather than deal with the hassle of appealing a rejection, according to Howrigon and other former employees of the company. The PXDX list is focused on tests and treatments that typically cost a few hundred dollars each, said former Cigna employees. Insurers are very good at knowing when they can deny a claim and patients will grumble but still write a check, Howrigon said. Muney and other former Cigna executives emphasized that the PXDX system does leave room for the patient and their doctor to appeal a medical directors decision to deny a claim. But Cigna does not expect many appeals. In one corporate document, Cigna estimated that only 5% of people would appeal a denial resulting from a PXDX review. In 2014, Cigna considered adding a new procedure to the PXDX list to be flagged for automatic denials. Autonomic nervous system testing can help tell if an ailing patient is suffering from nerve damage caused by diabetes or a variety of autoimmune diseases. Its not a very involved procedure taking about an hour and it costs a few hundred dollars per test. The test is versatile and noninvasive, requiring no needles. The patient goes through a handful of checks of heart rate, sweat response, equilibrium and other basic body functions. At the time, Cigna was paying for every claim for the nerve test without bothering to look at the patient file, according to a corporate presentation. Cigna officials were weighing the cost and benefits of adding the procedure to the list. What is happening now? the presentation asked. Pay for all conditions without review. By adding the nerve test to the PXDX list, Cigna officials estimated, the insurer would turn down more than 17,800 claims a year that it had once covered. It would pay for the test for certain conditions, but deny payment for others. These denials would create a negative customer experience and a potential for increased out of pocket costs, the company presentation acknowledged. But they would save roughly $2.4 million a year in medical costs, the presentation said. Cigna added the test to the list. By the time van Terheyden received his first denial notice from Cigna early last year, he had some answers about his diagnosis. The blood test that Cigna had deemed not medically necessary had confirmed a vitamin D deficiency. His doctor had been right and recommended supplements to boost van Terheydens vitamin level. Still, van Terheyden kept pushing his appeal with Cigna in a process that grew more baffling. First, a different Cigna doctor reviewed the case and stood by the original denial. The blood test was unnecessary, Cigna insisted, because van Terheyden had never before been found to lack sufficient vitamin D. Records did not show you had a previously documented Vitamin D deficiency, stated a denial letter issued by Cigna in April. How was van Terheyden supposed to document a vitamin D deficiency without a test? The letter was signed by a Cigna medical director named Barry Brenner. Brenner did not respond to requests for comment. Then, as allowed by his plan, van Terheyden took Cignas rejection to an external review by an independent reviewer. In late June seven months after the blood test an outside doctor not working for Cigna reviewed van Terheydens medical record and determined the test was justified. The blood test in question confirms the diagnosis of Vit-D deficiency, read the report from MCMC, a company that provides independent medical reviews. Cigna eventually paid van Terheydens bill. This patient is at risk of bone fracture without proper supplementations, MCMCs reviewer wrote. Testing was medically necessary and appropriate. Van Terheyden had known nothing about the vagaries of the PXDX denial system before he received the $350 bill. But he did sense that very few patients pushed as hard as he had done in his appeals. As a physician, van Terheyden said, hes dumbfounded by the companys policies. Its not good medicine. Its not caring for patients. You end up asking yourself: Why would they do this if their ultimate goal is to care for the patient? he said. Intellectually, I can understand it. As a physician, I cant. To me, it feels wrong. This article was co-published with The Capitol Forum and ProPublica. Josiah Nettles was riding with a rough crowd when the shooting started. Nettles and an alleged accomplice were sitting in separate cars outside the Kingston Bar as DeAndrae Stephens and three other members of the Woodlawn Park Bloods were in the vicinity of Southwest Morrison Street in the Goose Hollow neighborhood. Does it feel like Portland is suddenly awash in new restaurants? Even by the standards of this food-obsessed Western city, the past few months have brought an impressive number of fresh options, with several interesting and ambitious openings in the mix. Leaving aside the new bars, bakeries and food carts and second locations of existing restaurants, there are plenty of places to check out. Here are eight and a few more for good measure new restaurants to know about in Portland for fall 2023. Bellpine Given the sweeping views from its perch on the 20th floor of the new Ritz-Carlton hotel, one thing was for certain about this new downtown Portland restaurant: It would have to be grand. To that end, the luxury hotel chain recruited Pedro Almeida, chef behind several Michelin-starred restaurants at the Ritz-Carltons Penha Longa Resort in Portugal, and local luminary Lauro Romero (Republica). Together, the chefs are collaborating on a modern American menu presented in a dining room inspired by the tidepools and rock formations of the Oregon Coast. Details: 812 S.W. Washington St., ritzcarlton.com [Read more: Take a first look inside Bellpine, the Ritz-Carltons sweeping new 20th-floor restaurant] Dons Favorite Foods Reservations are now open for this prix-fixe hotspot inspired by Burger Stevens chef Don Salamones upbringing in upstate New York and cooking career at Michelin-starred restaurants in New York City (Gordon Ramsey at the London) and Las Vegas (Restaurant Guy Savoy). Opened with systems specialist Kate Laurents and former Seattle sommelier Adam Galbraith, the supper club-style restaurant is aiming for a November 29 bow in Old Town Beavertons longtime Glorias Secret Cafe space, with a multi-course menu executed almost entirely by Salamone. Details: 12500 S.W. Broadway St., Beaverton; 971-276-5582; donsfavoritefoods.com [Read more: Chef with Michelin-starred experience to open Italian-inspired supper club in Beaverton] Pizza pop-up Grana Pizza Napoletana will open its first brick-and-mortar restaurant this fall in the former Pizzicato at 2811 E. Burnside St.Courtesy of Maya Setton/Grana Pizza Napoletana Grana Just when you thought Portlands pizza scene couldnt get more saturated, along come another handful of places to try. This fall, those included Fusion Curry Pizza (4630 N.E. Sandy Blvd.), The Turning Peel (4546 S.E. Division St.) and new Beaverton truck Proof Pizza (12675 S.W. First St., at the Breakside pod). Grana, a Neapolitan pizzeria that owes a small debt of gratitude to travel host Rick Steves, serves portafoglio (wallet-style) folded pizzas through a takeout window by day, and more straightforward pies in the dining room at night. Details: 2811 E. Burnside St., granapdx.com [Read more: Upcoming Portland pizzeria Grana specializes in Naples-style folded pizzas. Rick Steves is to thank] La Patroncita The latest restaurant from Salsas Locas owner Lucy De Leon whose great guisados spot recently moved from the Portland-Gresham border to 4512 S.E. 28th Ave., near Reed College has comfy couches, colorful walls, neon signs, great chips and guac, a full bar, tacos on pink tortillas and more. Details: 2832 S.E. Belmont St., 971-254-4317, lapatroncitapdx.com Los Burros Supremos The first of two concepts to debut in the old Woodsman Tavern complex, this burrito shop from former Paradise Mariscos chef Adan Fausto, whose Norteno-style carne asada pop-up Tacos Con Onda took over the back patio here last summer, explores regional burrito variations from Sonora to San Francisco. Early next year, Fausto plans to follow-up with La Lenadora, a full-service Mexican restaurant with lamb shank birria, Oregon albacore fajitas and a really aggressive agave program including tequila, mezcal, sotol and raicilla, with around 150 bottles in all. Details: 4529 S.E. Division St., 503-342-1122, losburrossupremos.com (La Lenadora is aiming for an early 2024 opening next door) [Read more: Pair of new Mexican restaurants to open in former Woodsman Tavern space] The Paper Bridge Between new fusion spot An An (8220 N. Denver Ave.), the Ha VL familys new Annam VL (3336 SE Belmont St), Chem Gio's new home at Mosaic Taphouse (7955 N. Lombard St.), Friendship Kitchens second location (2764 N.W. Thurman St.) and roving pop-up Lobo x Platicities hu tieu nights, there sure are a lot of interesting Vietnamese options in Portland right now. The latest place to hit my radar is The Paper Bridge, a new restaurant in the former Simpatica/La Luna cafe with Northern delicacies that rarely grace typical Vietnamese restaurant menus. Details: 828 S.E. Ash St., 503-265-8105, thepaperbridgepdx.com Xiao Ye At this first-generation American restaurant, partners Jolyn Chen and Louis Lin are importing lessons learned at Washington D.C.s great Roses Luxury the eclectic menu, yes, but also the overachieving hospitality to Portland. Xiao Ye, which Chen and Lin opened two months ago in a charming Hollywood neighborhood space formerly home to a DIY dog grooming studio (the sign still hangs out front), serves a lively menu encompassing everything from Roman pastas to Taiwanese street snacks. Details: 3832 N.E. Sandy Blvd., 503-764-9478, xiaoyepdx.com [Read more: Rigatoni alla Gricia? Chrysanthemum ice cream? Xiao Yes first-generation American menu readies to serve in Northeast Portland] Yaowarat Earlier this year, Langbaans Earl Ninsom took a handful of Portland restaurant industry heavyweights on a guided tour of Yaowarat Road, the main thoroughfare through Bangkoks Chinatown. Those high-calorie eating adventures inspired Yaowarat, a new restaurant at Montavillas old Country Cat/Lazy Susan space, where former Tusk chef Sam Smith and hosts/bartenders Eric Nelson and Kyle Webster serve crispy bean curd dumplings, Chinese pork black olive pork and a sultry spin on kuay teow kua gai, the pork-fat-fried rice noodles. Details: 7937 S.E. Stark St., 971-420-8913, yaowaratpdx.com Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com Our journalism needs your support. Please become a subscriber today at OregonLive.com/subscribe The Marion County district attorney this week said she asked Gov. Tina Kotek to revoke the commutations of dozens of people who committed new crimes or are suspected of doing so after they were released early from prison, including a man now accused of murder. District Attorney Paige Clarkson said her office reviewed the cases of 138 people who were prosecuted by her office and whose sentences were later commuted by then-Gov. Kate Brown. Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison has reportedly confirmed that its actively building up its 4G network in Indonesias future capital city Nusantara. According to Nikkei Asia, Indosat president director and CEO Vikram Sinha said that the operator already has 30 4G sites installed in Nusantara, and has invested $10 million to add another 30 to 40 sites to boost the network. "[In Nusantara] we will be working very closely with the authorities to ensure that there is world-class digital infrastructure," Sinha told Nikkei Asia. As for why Indosat is only deploying 4G rather than 5G in Nusantara, Sinha said that there are "still a lot of things which can be done with 4G. While Indosat has launched 5G in eight cities so far, We don't want to rush towards 5G," Sinha said. The $30 billion Nusantara project has been under construction since July 2022. While the overall goal is to relocate up to 1.9 million people in Jakarta to Nusantara by 2045, the Indonesian government plans to start moving some key functions from Jakarta to Nusantara in August next year. Indonesian President Joko Widodo has been pushing the project partly as a practical measure to reduce Jakartas population and traffic congestion, and partly as an opportunity to start fresh with a world-class green smart city. Earlier this month, Telkom Indonesia and KT Corp signed an MoU to collaborate on a smart city project for Nusantara. Banjul, Gambia (PANA) - Gambia and the European Union have signed a 40-million Euro financing agreement for the implementation of the 4th State and Resilience Building Contract for The Gambia Khartoum, Sudan (PANA) - The East African regional bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), has commented on the current peace talks between the government of Ethiopia and the Oromo Liberation Front and the challenges they are currently facing in their negotiations New York, US (PANA) - A deal on Wednesday to release hostages taken during Hamas' attack on Israel has been welcomed by UN chief Antonio Guterres, who added that the UN stood ready to maximize the positive humanitarian impact of the agreement Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The Libyan Minister of Justice in the Government of National Unity, Halima Ibrahim, Wednesday discussed the issue of expatriate marriage contracts at a symposium organized by the Ministry entitled "Expatriate marriage contracts Photo: (Photo : SAID KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images) Amidst the escalating conflict in Gaza, a glimmer of hope emerged as 28 premature babies were evacuated from the besieged enclave's Al-Shifa Hospital to Egypt for urgent medical treatment. These fragile lives, grappling with a myriad of health complications, embarked on a perilous journey, seeking refuge and the chance to thrive. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PCRS) and other humanitarian organizations orchestrated the evacuation, which turned out to be a challenging and terrifying task. The journey began at Al-Shifa, the largest medical facility in Gaza, which had become a battleground amidst the relentless bombardments. Amidst the chaos and destruction, the PCRS team carefully transferred the babies to the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, a border town with Egypt. Battling Health Complications Amidst Conflict Upon arrival at the Emirati Hospital, a team of dedicated medical professionals immediately assessed the babies' condition. The majority of the infants were diagnosed with low blood oxygen levels, a consequence of the dire conditions at Al-Shifa, where power outages and a shortage of medical supplies had severely hampered their care. Several babies also suffered from eye injuries and low birth weight, compounding their delicate state. With the urgency of their situation evident, the decision was made to evacuate 28 of the babies to Egypt. The arduous journey across the Rafah border unfolded under the watchful eyes of Egyptian health workers, who stood ready to receive the precious cargo with incubators and ambulances at the ready. Upon reaching Egypt, the babies were divided into two groups, with 16 admitted to the New Administrative Capital Hospital in Cairo and the remaining 12 transported to El-Arish General Hospital in the Sinai Peninsula. In these Egyptian hospitals, the babies received the specialized care they desperately needed, surrounded by the expertise of medical teams committed to their recovery. Read Also: Schools Advise Parents To Remove Children's Social Media Access Due to Potential Disturbing Content from Israel A Glimmer of Hope Amidst Darkness The evacuation process, while successful in saving the lives of these vulnerable infants, also highlighted the plight of their families. Only four mothers were able to accompany their children to Egypt, leaving the fate of the remaining parents uncertain. The intense fighting and communication blackout in Gaza had made it extremely challenging to locate and reunite families. Despite the separation from their loved ones, the parents of the evacuated babies expressed their profound gratitude to Egypt for providing their children with life-saving care. One father, Ali Sbeiti, whose son Anas was born just three days before the conflict erupted, was overwhelmed with relief upon reuniting with his child. "Thank God. We now feel that our son is safe after not seeing him for more than two weeks," he told CNN. The evacuation of these 28 premature babies serves as a testament to the indomitable spirit of humanity amidst the turmoil of conflict. The collective efforts of humanitarian organizations, Egyptian healthcare providers, and the international community have provided a lifeline for these fragile lives, offering them a chance to blossom in a safe and nurturing environment. While the future remains uncertain, the successful evacuation and ongoing care of these premature babies offer a glimmer of hope amidst the darkness of conflict. Their resilience and the compassion shown by those who came to their aid serve as a beacon of humanity, illuminating the path towards a brighter future for these precious lives. Related Article: Medical Emergency: Israeli Forces Engage Hamas Near Gaza's Largest Hospital, Doctors Strive to Protect Newborns Photo: (Photo : Daniel Tausis on Unsplash) A Florida community is grappling with an unimaginable tragedy after a harrowing incident unfolded at the Countryside Apartments. In the early hours of Tuesday, firefighters responding to an apartment blaze made a horrific discovery: a woman brutally stabbed to death and her three young children in critical condition. The incident, occurring mere days before a holiday centered around family, has sent shockwaves through Daytona Beach. Horrific Discovery Amidst the Flames Firefighters arrived at the scene around midnight on Beville Road, expecting to battle a routine apartment fire. Instead, they encountered a crime scene of unimaginable horror. Inside the apartment, they found a mother with fatal stab wounds and her infant in a state of cardiac arrest. Despite the swift action of medical personnel, the infant tragically passed away in the hospital. The two other children, ages 4 and 5, are currently battling for their lives, their conditions shrouded in uncertainty. The identity of the mother remains undisclosed as authorities work to notify her family. The Daytona Beach Fire Department's Lt. Antwan Lewis pointed out an unusual aspect of the fire: its origin at two separate points within the apartment. This anomaly led investigators to rule the incident a homicide, adding a complex layer to an already distressing situation. Read Also: 17-Year-Old Shows His Quick Thinking Skills as He Helps His Neighbors Escape Fire Using Trampoline No Suspects Named in Ongoing Investigation As the community reels in shock, the police have yet to identify a suspect in connection with the brutal stabbing and the ensuing fire. The investigation continues as detectives piece together the events leading up to the tragedy. Amidst the chaos, a police officer was also treated for smoke inhalation, highlighting the risks first responders face in such dire situations. Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young, in his address to the media, commended the bravery and quick action of the officers, firefighters, and medical teams at the scene. "Their actions potentially saved more lives," he stated, acknowledging the gravity of the situation they faced. The incident has not only rattled the local community but also highlighted the hidden dangers that lurk in seemingly safe environments. In the wake of this tragedy, the Daytona Beach community has come together in mourning and solidarity. Support pours in for the affected family, with neighbors and local organizations offering assistance and comfort during this difficult time. The loss of a mother and her child in such a violent and abrupt manner is a poignant reminder of life's fragility and the unpredictable nature of danger. As the investigation unfolds, the community holds onto hope for the recovery of the surviving children, offering prayers and support. This incident serves as a somber reminder of the need for vigilance and community support in the face of tragedy. The Countryside Apartments incident will undoubtedly leave a lasting impact on Daytona Beach, as it comes to terms with a heartbreaking event that has shaken the very core of this close-knit community. Related Article: Boston Firefighter Catches Baby Dropped from Window After Fire Breaks Out in Hyde Park Home Photo: (Photo : Mathieu Lewis-Rolland /Getty Images) In a calculated and visually arresting move, Portland educators, amidst an ongoing strike, transformed the Burnside Bridge into a symbolic battleground. This strategic bridge standoff, which momentarily brought traffic to a standstill, served as a powerful visual representation of their steadfast pursuit of better teaching terms. Clad in blue and brandishing banners calling for improved conditions, the Portland teachers took a seat on the bridge, making a statement that echoed beyond picket lines. A Symbolic Saga on Oregon's Bridge Standoff The Burnside bridge, a vital artery in Portland's transportation network, became an unexpected stage for the ongoing teacher strike. The Portland Association of Teachers union, flanked by their supporters, orchestrated a carefully planned demonstration, choosing the bridge as the backdrop for their latest act of protest. The symbolism of educators temporarily halting traffic on a major bridge was impossible to ignore, emphasizing the gravity of their ongoing strike and its far-reaching implications. This dramatic move was not merely a spectacle for public attention but a calculated effort to underscore the urgency of their demands. Seated on the Burnside Bridge, Portland teachers sent a visual message that transcended the negotiations table, amplifying their call for improved pay, reduced class sizes, and enhanced working conditions. Navigating the Complex Landscape of Negotiations As the strike entered its fourth week, negotiations between the Portland Association of Teachers union and the district delved into complex terrain. The initial proposal to impose caps on class sizes encountered resistance from the district due to concerns over associated costs. In response, the union strategically shifted its focus, advocating for increased pay for educators handling larger class sizes, a move that showcased adaptability in their pursuit of a fair agreement. The district's latest proposal, offering a 13% salary increase over three years, signaled progress on the financial front. This brought them closer to meeting the union's initial demand for a 20% pay raise. However, negotiations hit a significant roadblock concerning parent involvement in committees overseeing class sizes. The union's proposal to include parents in these committees faced staunch opposition from the district, citing privacy concerns and underscoring the intricate nature of the negotiations. Read Also: Free COVID-19 Tests for Every US Household: Government Launches New Round as Holiday Season Approaches Governor Kotek Intensifies Pressure for Resolution In the midst of this intricate dance of negotiations and symbolic gestures on the Burnside Bridge, Governor Tina Kotek stepped into the fray. Concerned about the growing disruption to students' education, Governor Kotek expressed her apprehension, emphasizing the need for a swift resolution. The dramatic visuals of Portland teachers on the bridge intensified her call for urgency, particularly as the strike has already led to 11 days of missed classes, leaving parents and students grappling with uncertainty. Governor Kotek's appeal for resolution, urging both the teachers' union and the district to prioritize the students' well-being, injects a sense of immediacy into the bargaining process. Her insistence that a deal must be reached by the upcoming Monday underscores the broader impact of the strike on the community and the urgent need for a resolution. In the wake of the Burnside Bridge standoff, Portland finds itself at a critical juncture, anxiously watching the unfolding saga of the teacher strike. The bridge, once a conduit for vehicles, now serves as a symbol of educators' resilience and determination. As negotiations continue, the fate of the strike remains uncertain, and the Portland teachers' commitment to pushing for improved teaching terms persists. Portland, along with the rest of Oregon, remains in suspense, awaiting the resolution that will shape the future of education in the city. Related Article: Digital Accountability: Senate Subpoenas Tech CEOs on Child Protection, Including X, Discord Photo: (Photo : Drew Angerer / Getty Images) In a groundbreaking move, California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a transformative initiative aimed at combating misinformation among K-12 students. The newly enacted California media literacy law, officially known as Bill No. 873, mandates the integration of media literacy into the core curriculum, setting the stage for a comprehensive approach to education that addresses the challenges posed by misinformation in the digital age. Addressing the Rise of Misinformation Among K-12 Students California has positioned itself at the forefront of the battle against misinformation with the recent enactment of Bill No. 873. This pioneering legislation, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in October, signifies a strategic move to equip K-12 students with the essential skills needed to navigate the complex landscape of information online. The California media literacy law, set to take effect in January 2024, mandates the inclusion of media literacy content in the mathematics, science, and history-social science curriculum frameworks. The new law, targeted specifically at K-12 students, reflects a growing recognition of the challenges posed by misinformation in the age of social media. With the proliferation of false information online, the California media literacy law aims to instill crucial skills in students, enabling them to identify and critically assess information encountered on various digital platforms. This strategic approach acknowledges the unique vulnerabilities of young minds and seeks to empower them with the tools necessary for responsible information consumption. Integrating Media Literacy Across Core Subjects One of the notable aspects of the California media literacy law is its comprehensive integration into the core curriculum. By embedding media literacy content into the mathematics, science, and history-social science courses, the legislation takes a holistic approach to education. This strategic placement ensures that media literacy becomes an intrinsic part of students' learning experience, emphasizing its relevance across diverse subjects. Governor Newsom's approval underscores the commitment to fostering a generation of critical thinkers capable of discerning misinformation from factual content. Read Also: US Child, Teen Cancer Deaths Drop 24% from 2001 to 2021 Navigating the Social Media Literacy Curriculum Landscape The legislation's emphasis on the social media literacy curriculum responds to the evolving nature of news consumption among K-12 students. With platforms like TikTok gaining popularity as sources of information, the need for tailored educational strategies becomes evident. The California media literacy law acknowledges this shift, recognizing that young individuals are increasingly turning to social media for news. As a result, the curriculum seeks to address the unique challenges posed by misinformation on these platforms, ensuring that students are equipped to distinguish between reliable and misleading information. In conclusion, California's bold step to combat misinformation through the implementation of media literacy education for K-12 students, as mandated by the California media literacy law, marks a significant milestone. Set to take effect in January 2024, this legislation signals a commitment to shaping a more informed and discerning generation, proficient not only in their core subjects but also in the critical skills necessary to navigate the complexities of information in the digital age. Related Article: Kansas School Sparks Outrage: ACLU Demands Policy Reversal After 8-Year-Old Native Boy's Forced Haircut China Unicom faced huge challenges in operating a centralised customer contact centre serving users in 31 provinces across China. The centre handles the largest number of users (420 million) and the highest traffic volume (100 million calls/month) in China. Processing this volume of user queries, complaints, and issues was an uphill battle. Even with the help of chatbot and service agent, customer satisfaction was relatively low. The centres chatbot could not answer questions correctly due to issues with voice recognition; the correct semantic recognition rate sat at around 85%, preventing users from resolving problems without assistance. Agent efficiency was also an issue. Products and services vary across the 31 provinces the center serves, requiring agents to have in-depth knowledge of specifications and processes. Customer issues were typically resolved manually by agents - a less efficient approach. The level of knowledge needed by agents meant that training new employees was also time-consuming, and this level of specialisation meant that proficient agents needed to be on standby, resulting in high labour and operational costs. To meet these challenges, China Unicom Contact Centre 10010 has creatively implemented AI technologies especially GenAI to improve customer experience and agent efficiency. The first in the industry, a unified dialect foundation model is deployed to effectively identify various dialects within Mandarin, with the overall recognition rate being 92%. With high accuracy in dialect recognition, the model can serve 6 million users daily, pushing the service satisfaction rate to 98%. The innovative intent recognition technology that integrates few-shot learning and deep learning significantly improves the upper limit of dialog understanding and effectively resolves intent entanglement issues. The accuracy of FAQ and intent recognition can reach 98.9% and 98.4%, respectively. By providing a highly humanized AI voice interaction and then switching to manual agents in a timely manner based on emotion recognition, the centre has delivered a much-improved customer experience. During the self-service process, calls can be connected to manual agents in a timely manner through emotion recognition. The manual call connection rate reaches 96.8%, and the manual call connection rate within 15 seconds is 85% or higher. To facilitate customer communication, the voice labelling mechanism has been standardised to ensure recognition of elements such as accent, pitch, volume, and speed in the voice dataset. The incremental learning mechanism then gradually optimises the voice recognition model to reduce the error rate, providing all end users with a consistent voice recognition experience. The customers emotional status can be predicted using converged data, and phoneme data with no related information can be used to increase the quantity of training data for emotion status recognition, improving the efficiency and accuracy of emotion status recognition. More importantly, the data is categorised by level and handled according to security regulations, compliance requirements, and technical specifications for the entire lifecycle from collection, transmission, storage, use, transfer, and destruction. The solutions specify the responsible departments and processing processes at each stage and establish routine monitoring, warning, audit, and emergency handling mechanisms to ensure data security. Service switchover and recovery can be completed within minutes with the help of the active-active DR architecture based on the data centres located in Xian-Xianyang and Wuxi. To assist the contact center agents, the dialog data between agents and users is used to build an industry dictionary library. Coupled with a new word discovery algorithm, they can automatically generate core dialog content and critical information based on the post-trained foundation model of the communications industry to recommend communication corpuses to agents in real time. Service data is used to continuously iterate models to improve the dialog abstract capability of the platform, helping agents by standardising and improving the efficiency of order creation. Additionally, agents are assisted by a LLM-based heuristic human-machine interaction software, which can help to build application services such as intelligent service request recommendation, intelligent case recommendation, intelligent intent identification, and intelligent knowledge recommendation. The average call duration of agents is reduced by 28 seconds, and the number of repeated calls within 2 hours is reduced by 2.85%. In addition, the technology offers auxiliary tools such as intent recognition, knowledge recommendation, and automatic case filling to improve service efficiency. The user experience is, therefore, enhanced through AI solutions. Not limited to telecommunication use cases, China Unicom has provided efficient and convenient services and emergency relief for users in various major events and incidents such as the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and the flood in Zhengzhou. During the flood event caused by heavy rains in Zhengzhou, China Unicom 10010 responded quickly. The user self-service portal and agents took over millions of emergency help and consultation requests within a short period of time. Assisted by Gen AI, the agents quickly found out about the flood and provided immediate emergency relief. In a nutshell, the contact centre is delivering innovation with Gen AI. Huawei Pangu Model and other LLM are used for training and content generation; the centres foundation model is trained using 57 million hours of communication data between users and agents to quickly improve the accuracy of voice and semantic recognition, which helps to enhance its humanization level and boost the relevance of generated content. In addition to the excellent experience for users, the implementation of AI has also reduced costs for the contact centre as it requires fewer agents, providing China Unicom a total benefit worth CNY600 million. In addition to its main customer service function, the centre also provides IoT, public cloud, online digital services, and terminal services. China Unicom Contact Centre 10010 is a systematic and intelligent contact centre that can help services in thousands of industries go digital. Currently, the centre serves enterprises in more than 20 industries, such as retail, transportation, and manufacturing. As a result, the Gen AI-enabled Smart Contact Center is not only a capability center but also a value generation center for China Unicom. It helps China Unicom to enter the billion-dollar enterprise customer service market of billions CNY and create the opportunity to generate even more revenue. This service is a courtesy for our print subscribers to give them access to our online edition at no additional cost. If you haven't registered on the new site, you must do it now before you do anything else. Chapter 9 (pp. 65-85) of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised second edition: 17 August 2013; slightly revised again in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version). Anyone who reads this book should first read the following three introductory articles, in order to fully understand the definitions and sociological categories I am employing: Introduction (on the book page) Definitions: Radical Catholic Reactionaries, Mainstream Traditionalists, and Supposed Neo-Catholics [revised 8-6-13] Radical Catholic Reactionaries: What They Are Not [9-28-21] If youre still confused and unclear as to my meanings and intent after that, read one or more of these articles: Rationales for My Self-Coined Term, Radical Catholic Reactionaries [8-6-13] My Coined Term, Radical Catholic Reactionary: Clarifications [10-5-17] Clarifying My Coined Term, Radical Catholic Reactionary [4-3-20] This book is modeled after the method and structure of the French mathematician and Catholic apologist Blaise Pascals classic, Pensees (thoughts). Catholic apologist and philosopher Peter Kreeft described this masterpiece as raw pearls and more like sayings than a book . . . Sayings reflect and approximate the higher, the mode of Christ and Socrates and Buddha. Thats why Socrates is the greatest philosopher, according to St. Thomas (S.T. III, 42, 4). I am not intending to compare myself or my own thoughts or their cogency or import in any way, shape, or form, to those of Pascal, let alone to Socrates or our Lord Jesus! I am merely utilizing the unconventional structure of the Pensees, which harmonizes well, I believe, with the approach that I have taken with regard to the present subject. I have sought to analyze (minus proper names, a la Trent) the premises, presuppositions, logical and ecclesiological bottom lines and (in a word), the spirit of a false and divisive radical Catholic reactionary strain of thought held by a distinctive sociological sub-group of Catholics. ***** Ecumenism can be traced to many kernels in Catholic tradition, most notably with the acceptance by St. Augustine and the Church, of Donatist baptism. The Donatists were formal schismatics, yet the Church accepted the validity of their baptism (just as with Protestants today). Radical Catholic reactionaries argue that ecumenism undermines, and is contrary to, evangelism and apologetics. It does not at all the two goals being distinct and complementary endeavors, not contradictory ones. I rejoice in the truths that we share with our Protestant and Orthodox brothers and sisters in Christ; at the same time, we try our best to convince them that the Catholic Church is the fullness of the faith. Reactionaries claim that St. Thomas Aquinas would have rejected modern-day ecumenism. It can readily be granted that he didnt understand it in the 21st century sense, any more than he accepted let alone understood the Immaculate Conception. It took the non-Thomist Blessed Duns Scotus to fully develop that. But ecumenism can be developed from the seed of St. Thomass teachings about the culpability and/or good faith of non-Catholics and non-Christians; just as it can be developed from St. Augustines approach to the Donatists, and the controversy over re-baptism or for that matter, from our Lords dealings with Samaritan women and Roman centurions. We wouldnt expect a figure from seven centuries earlier to fully grasp what has developed in the interim. The key is the nature of development of doctrine. Many developments would seem foreign to those from centuries earlier. But St. Thomas did teach on this general subject: With regard, however, to Cornelius, it is to be observed that he was not an unbeliever, else his works would not have been acceptable to God, whom none can please without faith. Now he had implicit faith, as the truth of the Gospel was not yet made manifest: hence Peter was sent to him to give him fuller instruction in the faith. (Summa Theologica, II II q. 10 a. 4 ad 3 in some editions ad 4) Many reactionaries labor under the illusion that Vatican II ecumenism and indifferentism are identical. That can be easily refuted from the council documents themselves (so easily that there is no need to do so here). The ecumenical councils of Lyons and Florence also included reconciliation with the Orthodox, which might be regarded as precursors to Vatican II ecumenism. One can always find pre-conciliar popes and aspects of former councils espousing what is allegedly so hideous in Vatican II. Reactionaries are always decrying what they call a false ecumenism often equating it with indifferentism or relativism. My question to them, then, is: what is considered true ecumenism? If there is no such thing, then why qualify the word? That would be like saying avoid a false lust or dont engage in false embezzlement. The use of false, therefore, implies the existence of a true (authentic) ecumenism, as in the teaching of Vatican II. The so-called innovations of Vatican II concerning religious liberty are merely a return to the status quo of the early Church, over against the Church of the High Middle Ages. The council, in decreeing this, lends its authority to the current move of the Holy Spirit towards more tolerance and ecumenism, while not compromising or sacrificing doctrine in the process. Therefore, the Vatican II emphasis on religious liberty is not a corruption or reversal of previous tradition, since this was the primitive (apostolic) tradition, and since application of it may vary, according to times and places (since it is not a dogmatic question). Likewise, the Church has recently opposed capital punishment, which is not intrinsically morally impermissible. What is thought to constitute legal and societal justice, with regard to criminals (and formerly, also heresy) has obviously changed, from the times of the Crusades and Inquisition. In any event, this (like the religious liberty issue) also involves no dogma of the faith, or proclamations of a complete reversal of doctrine and precedent. The reactionary has to demonstrate that ecumenism and religious liberty are total corruptions of Catholic tradition. If they cannot do that, then they would then be part and parcel of the ordinary and universal magisterium. I dont think reactionaries get it with regard to ecumenism. They dont seem to make the necessary (elementary) distinctions, and jumble things and ideas together that dont belong together. There are liberal distortions and reactionary distortions of ecumenism. The liberals get more and more heterodox and New Age, and the reactionaries become more and more conspiratorial and exclusivistic; almost Pharisaical at times, in their strong tendencies towards absurd, short-sighted hyper-legalism. I question whether many reactionaries even understand the true nature of legitimate Catholic ecumenism. They must first understand that in order to have a substantive opposing position (which is itself highly imprudent, as a Catholic must give assent to the Churchs teaching). We often observe a constant vapid equation of ecumenism with indifferentism. As the latter is clearly rejected by the Church, the criticism collapses as irrelevant; a non sequitur. Yet it is constantly made. This suggests that the real problem is found in the prior attitude of the reactionary and his fallacies and Protestant-like false dichotomies, not in the teaching itself, since the very thing harped on is already dealt with in the documents themselves. Reactionaries see in documents of Vatican II and papal and Church actions what they want to see. What they miss is the responsibility to give assent to what the pope (and the council) is teaching. As for the never-ending trashing of the reactionary critics of the Assisi I and II ecumenical gatherings, they need to show from actual proclamations by the pope and other Catholics, that the faith and Vatican II-type ecumenism was compromised. Instead, we observe a lot of hysterical alarmism that presupposes certain fears and suspicions from the outset and then interprets the proceedings accordingly. That is singularly unimpressive and unpersuasive. Thus we see reactionaries like one person from a prominent reactionary website/newsletter, who went to the second ecumenical gathering at Assisi as a reporter to heap scorn upon the proceedings and present it according to his warped, preconceived (false) notions of its intent and goal and underlying impulses. Reactionaries tell us that many of the faithful are confused by things like Assisi I and II and the Pope kissing the Koran, etc. But lots of things in Catholicism are confusing, as it is on a very high level, spiritually and intellectually. The Trinity is very confusing. The hearers of Jesus discourse from John 6 were very confused, too, including virtually all the disciples. So what? Luther was very confused about the biblical symbiotic relationship between faith and works. Ignorance is changed by education, not sugar coating possibly difficult-to-understand teachings and actions. The complexity and depth of the Catholic Church is its unique glory. The deepest spiritual and theological truths arent all that simple. I was asked if I would kiss a book that denied the divinity of Christ (referring to Pope St. John Paul IIs kissing of the Koran). I replied: Would you vote for a candidate who allowed abortion in cases of rape and incest? Would you pray with a Protestant (or a Jew) at a school commencement or at a family picnic? Once I prayed with a Muslim Imam at a George Bush rally. Does that make this man a Christian (or terribly compromised), because he prayed with a majority Christian crowd? Of course not. Does that make me (along with hundreds of other Christians there) a Muslim and mean that I deny the divinity of Jesus? Again, of course not. Or did I deny the divinity of Jesus without knowing it? Reflective adults immediately realize that such joint endeavors are based on the common ground we have, while at the same time acknowledging self-evident differences. I was also asked if I would kiss the writings of Arius. I replied that it is not a direct analogy, because one is a heresy and corruption of Christianity, whereas the other (though still ultimately incorrect in many ways) is a separate religion altogether. Would a reactionary kiss the Hebrew Bible? Would he kiss the famous scroll of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls? No? Why? Yes? Then they are (by their own false reasoning) accepting an incomplete, Christ-less religion and denying key tenets of Christianity. Apparently, reactionaries accept Vatican II, with the exception of the following clauses about Islam, Judaism, and other religions, from Nostra Aetate (more of the pick-and-choose cafeteria Catholicism of the modernists, and private judgment of Protestants?): The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God . . . They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God . . . The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding . . . (3) The Church, therefore, urges her sons to enter with prudence and charity into discussion and collaboration with members of other religions. (2) The sacred Council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all men, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values. (3) Since Christians and Jews have such a common spiritual heritage, this sacred Council wishes to encourage and further mutual understanding and appreciation. This can be obtained, especially, by way of biblical and theological enquiry and through friendly discussions. (4) When a layman disagrees with the Holy Father on matters of prudence, I go with the pope, all things considered. When a reactionary disagrees with the decree of an ecumenical council, ratified by a pope, on matters of ecumenism, I with all due respect go with the council. The Muslims often do a better job than Protestants and liberal, nominal Catholics when it comes to sexual morality, the wrongness of contraception and abortion, pornography, divorce, and homosexuality, and in their (bizarre, strange) behavior of continuing to want to have large families with two parents of a different gender. But lets simply war against them (as an entire class of people not referring to the opposition of extreme lunatic terrorists), rather than work together to fight the evils of Communism, humanism, terrorism, radical feminism, unisexism, widespread abortion and euthanasia, and sexual debauchery and degeneracy. Lets never work together for a better world, based on the many values that we hold in common. That would never do; we dont want that. I dont think reactionaries fully understand paradox, nuance, and the complex balances which Catholic teaching require. Ecumenism does not negate apologetics. Partial truth in another religion does not contradict fullness of truth in Catholicism. It isnt a zero-sum game, as if no other belief-system has any truth and all are worthless, simply because we possess the fullness of it. Reactionaries again show their affinity to the thought-processes of Martin Luther, who also had this irritating tendency of creating false tendencies: man has a sinful tendency, therefore he is totally depraved, and even good acts are sinful; God is sovereign, therefore man has no free will. Etc., etc. Authentic Catholic ecumenism is the effort to find as much common ground and common cause with all our religious brethren as we can, and as much oneness without compromise of doctrine or what we believe to be apostolic tradition; and also to understand and frankly acknowledge where we disagree, and to establish respect and fellowship (with fellow Christians). I think charity and common-sense ethics demand that, and I believed the same as an evangelical. I dont think it is ever good to stop talking to and dialoguing with people of good will. It in no way necessarily implies an indifferentism or religious relativism (as many Catholic liberals and their liberal Protestant cronies have distorted the endeavor to mean). With the Jews and Muslims, ecumenism is more or less diplomacy and good will, and co-belligerency against the evils of our time wherever possible (e.g., the Muslims and Orthodox Jews agree with us on contraception and abortion and other traditional family issues), as well as the condemnation of hatred, mutual suspicion, etc. Why cant we join together with other Christians (even those of other religions) in all the areas that we hold in common (especially morality, in this day and age)? I think were all too used to (and rightly sick of) the ersatz, fake ecumenism of the liberals, where nominal religionists agree to find togetherness in their unbelief and skepticism. That requires neither guts, ingenuity, nor effort. Thats not the Catholic or Vatican II approach at all, nor is it the least bit impressive or appealing. Whats so profound about agreeing on things that are already agreed upon? One reactionary disdainfully remarked that the typical neo-Catholic will snuggle up with persons who have no interest in joining their religion. I replied: You mean the way that Jesus snuggled up to the Roman centurion?: Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith . . . Go; be it done for you as you have believed. (Matthew 8:10, 13). Jesus uttered not a word about the gospel or believing even in the Jewish Torah, let alone the full-bodied message and dogma of Christianity. Reactionaries (like many Calvinists and Protestant fundamentalists) take a dim view of the notion that people will be judged, in part, according to how much they know and dont know about Christianity or Catholicism. But this is eminently biblical: But he who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light beating. Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more. (Luke 12:48) . . . we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness. (James 3:1). And you, Capernaum . . . If the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you. (Matthew 11:23-24) . . . although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him . . . (Romans 1:21) If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead. (Luke 16:31) We believe that we have the fullness of salvation. That doesnt mean that all who are not formal members of the Church will go to hell. The Church has never taught that. No one is saved outside the Church, in one sense, but they can possibly be in another sense. Both truths have been held in paradox. One cannot take one to its extreme and deny the other. This is no modern innovation of liberalism or Vatican II. It goes back to Jesus, St. Peter, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas. The Second Vatican Council contrary to uninformed reactionary claims repeatedly stressed that there was no salvation outside the Church and that the Catholic Church possessed the fullness of salvation: Yet she proclaims and is in duty bound to proclaim without fail, Christ who is the way, the truth and the life (Jn 1:6). In him, in whom God reconciled all things to himself (2 Cor 5:18-19), men find the fulness of their religious life. (Nostra Aetate [Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions], section 2; p. 739 in Flannery edition) This motif is all through Unitatis Redintegratio. If one can miss this crucial element which some reactionaries incredibly claim is missing entirely from this Decree on Ecumenism , then one can miss the sun in a clear sky in summer at high noon. I shall cite just a few statements: Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. (1) . . . division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world . . . (1) The sacred Council . . . has already declared its teaching on the Church . . . (1) In this one and only Church of God . . . the Catholic Church . . . (3) . . . written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope, and charity . . . All of these . . . belong by right to the one Church of Christ. (3) For it is through Christs Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help towards salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained . . . the one Body of Christ into which all those should be incorporated who belong in any way to the people of God. (3) . . . little by little, as the obstacles to perfect ecclesiastical communion are overcome, all Christians will be gathered . . . into the unity of the one and only Church, which Christ bestowed on his Church from the beginning. This unity, we believe, subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose, and we hope that it will continue to increase until the end of time. (4) Their ecumenical activity cannot be other than fully and sincerely Catholic, that is, loyal to the truth we have received from the Apostles and the Fathers, and in harmony with the faith which the Catholic Church has always professed . . . the reconciliation of all Christians in the unity of the one and only Church of Christ . . . (24) Likewise, Lumen Gentium states, among other things: This is the sole Church of Christ . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in the Catholic Church. (8) / . . . that all may be peaceably united, as Christ ordained, in one flock under one shepherd. (15) In 1937, Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical, Divini Redemptoris, wrote: Against the violent effort of the powers of darkness which would snatch from the hearts of men the very idea of God, we hope very much that Christians shall come and join all those who, and they are the greater part of humanity, believe that God exists and who adore him. Indifferentism is a mindset and procedure in which ostensible differences (usually no longer held in fact) are papered over in a quintessentially liberal ersatz relativistic nominalism, masquerading as feel-good unity. Orthodox Catholic ecumenism, on the other hand, is holding strongly and never yielding ones orthodox belief, and not denying real, heartfelt differences in the slightest, yet simultaneously seeking to achieve whatever unity, acknowledgment of common ground, fellowship, and social and political cooperation that is possible with ones Christian brethren. This is required of every Christian, in light of the very strong scriptural injunctions towards unity, especially John 17. Reactionaries claim that by attending a Protestant church service, we are, in effect, demonstrating that we agree with all their teachings and beliefs. This may be the impression of some, but it is by no means clear-cut. To use a personal example, I attended my nieces confirmation at a Lutheran service. To not do so would strike me as uncharitable and smacking of spiritual arrogance (or at least perhaps leaving that impression). I didnt partake of the communion, and did nothing contrary to my beliefs while there and a great deal fully consistent with my Catholic beliefs (I used to attend this church as a Protestant, and in fact it played a large role in my evangelical conversion of 1977). This is not a compromise, and Catholics are not absolutely forbidden to attend Protestant services; rather, we are advised to use our judgment, discretion, and prudence. I went to my mothers Methodist church on Mothers Day one year. This meant a great deal to her. She knew full well I disagreed with some things, but that was quite beside the point. All three of her children were worshiping God with her in her own church, for the first time in many years. I dont think God is concerned about that sort of thing, to put it mildly. But the devil would love to get Christians stirred up in opposition to it, because divide and conquer is one of his successful strategies. Protestants and Orthodox are not strictly speaking outside the Catholic Church. The Decree on Ecumenism, from Vatican II (I, 3) states: One cannot charge with the sin of separation those who at present are born into these communities and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers. For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church . . . [A]ll who have been justified by faith in baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church. Moreover, some, even very many, of the most significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church: the written Word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to him, belong by right to the one Church of Christ. This doesnt mean that we cease from trying to vigorously persuade non-Catholics that the fullness of apostolic Christianity resides in the Catholic Church. There is always a certain tension or paradox between ecumenism and apologetics, but as Catholics we are commanded to engage in both endeavors. It isnt optional. Reactionaries act as if mere presence at a Protestant service or cooperation with Protestants on any number of joint endeavors, is a total acceptance of their doctrines. If that were the case, I could do little at all in this world, since I can always find something to disagree with ethically or doctrinally. I would scarcely be able to leave my home. I could never set foot in a house of fornicators, or talk to pro-abortionists, or give a gift at Christmas to a drug addict or glutton or greed-filled man, or fellowship with Orthodox, since they sanction things I regard as mortal sin (divorce and contraception), etc. But my Bible teaches me that Jesus Himself would do all these things. The apostles went to the synagogues until they were kicked out. The burden of proof is on the reactionary to show that contact with anyone who disagrees to the slightest degree theologically is utterly impermissible. I maintain that it is neither biblical nor in line with the demands of charity. We have the example of Jesus eating in sinners houses. He ate the Last Supper with Judas (knowing all things). I think that is sufficient. The real ecclesiological and theological issues are made even more difficult to resolve by such a foolish and uncharitable stance of rigid inflexibility: assuming something is a principle when it is not, and is in fact merely Pharisee-like legalism and obscurantism. There is a delicate balance between ecumenism and apologetics. The former without the latter degenerates into liberalism, indifferentism and relativism. The latter without the former is hard-hearted, overly rationalistic, dry-as-dust ivory tower Christianity. As always, Catholicism takes a both/and approach. We are not beholden to intellectual and cultural fads and fashions. Since some reactionaries imply that Vatican II suddenly changed everything for Catholics with regard to ecumenism, it is helpful to explore what the Catholic Church was teaching along these lines in the three or four generations before the council. Catholic thought has developed in this area (just as it has in many if not all areas), especially in the last fifty years or so, during which time the development has been noticeable and rapid. But fairly explicit precedent exists for such ecumenism at least as far back as Pope Leo XIII (r. 1878-1903), who tried to encourage an attitude of respect and friendship with regard to the Churches of the East. In his encyclical, Praeclara Gratulationis [1894], he used expressions that had previously rarely been seen in papal documents: We cast an affectionate look upon the east . . . the Eastern Churches, so illustrious in the ancient faith and glorious past . . . the distance separating us is not so great . . . Leo XIII never calls the Orthodox, or speaks of them, as schismatics. He tries to describe the schism in a way that though faithful to his own Catholic convictions is not insulting or condescending towards the Eastern Orthodox Christians. For Leo XIII the Orthodox are separated Christian, or dissident Christians. He stresses that unity becomes more glorious and attractive if it encompasses a great diversity of liturgical and ecclesiological rites, customs, and forms. This ecumenical approach taken by Leo XIII has been highly influential on the policy of the papacy ever since. In all the documents on the Eastern Churches since his time, we find a friendly tone, a call to unity and reconciliation and mutual respect, and a formal recognition of the Eastern Orthodox traditions. With Pope Pius XI (r. 1922-1939), the ecumenical outlook with regard to Eastern Orthodox Christians becomes even more explicit. For the first time, the official documents of the Catholic Church confess that the barriers to reconciliation and reunion are not all caused by the Orientals . . . In Rerum Orientalium (1928), he states: The remedy for the great ills of separation cannot be applied unless the impediment of mutual ignorance, contempt, and prejudice be first removed. . . . Ven. Pope Pius XII (r. 1939-1958) more openly foresaw the blessings that unity could bring to the universal Church, East and West. Equally remarkable is the increasing openness in the approach to Protestants from recent popes. This development has been slower than that towards the Orthodox, but it does undeniably exist and can be demonstrated. Pope Leo XIII addressed many letters to Protestant Christians in which he avoided the insulting vocabulary of the past. He never referred to them as heretics, and referred to them as separated Christians. Leo XIIIs desire for unity included Protestants. He was a key player in several movements of prayer for unity, and he sought formulas of unity that would be agreeable to both Catholics and Protestants. In official Church documents, the development of the modern ecumenical outlook with regard to Protestants is notable in the thought of Ven. Pope Pius XII. In his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus (1939), a new motif is emphasized: We cannot pass over in silence the profound impression of heartfelt gratitude made on us by the good wishes of those who, though not belonging to the visible body of the Catholic Church, have given noble and sincere expression to their appreciation of all that unites them to us, in love for the person of Christ or in belief in God. The constant reference to Protestants as separated brethren in Venerable Pope Pius XII is striking, since it assumes what older Church documents were not so willing to grant: the good will on the part of non-Catholic Christians. In the writings of Ven. Pope Pius XII it is presumed that many perhaps most Protestant Christians are outside the Church without guilt. In other words, they are not heretics (especially in the subjective sense), but rather, separated brethren. They have faith in God and his Son Jesus Christ, and many spiritual attributes that give them a profound affinity with Catholics and the Catholic Church. The notion that Protestant Christians have access to real faith (the faith that justifies), to grace, and the same God, has been implicit in the principles of Catholic theology at all times (which is why ecumenism is a consistent development and not a novel innovation, or corruption). In the writings of great converts such as Newman, Manning, Chesterton, and Knox Catholics who remembered their own previous states of mind we find this ecumenical outlook stated clearly. On the Ecumenical Movement was published by the Holy Office in 1949. It allowed Catholics, with the approval of their bishop, to participate in theological dialogue with Protestant Christians. This was an official Catholic recognition of the ecumenical movement. The document permitted ecumenical gatherings to be opened and closed with common prayer. All of the Catholic ecumenical development surveyed above, occurred in the 80 years between the time of the pontificate of Leo XIII (from 1878) up through the reign of Ven. Pope Pius XII (who died in 1958). The well-known, extensive, and profound ecumenical efforts of Pope St. John XXIII, who called the Second Vatican Council, are not even included. Clearly, ecumenism has been the noteworthy and remarkable Catholic development of our times, even surpassing mariological development, whose explicit roots go back considerably further than modern Catholic ecumenism does. Ecumenism, though new in many ways, is nevertheless a legitimate development of Catholic theology and thought; one with an explicit history that precedes Vatican II by many centuries, and often seen in Holy Scripture as well. The Second Vatican Council was not the triumph of liberalism and indifferentism, liturgical mediocrity, and situation ethics; nor was it a radical change of direction. Quite the contrary: it was perfectly orthodox and consistent with preceding developments and trends. The Donatists, too, were institutionally outside of the Catholic Church. But the Church all the way back in St. Augustines time (d. 430) determined that their baptism was valid, and that individual Donatists didnt need to be baptized upon conversion to Catholicism. This is precisely the same fundamental and sacramental principle by which we declare that Protestants are baptized into the Body of Christ, and are therefore a part of the One True Church in some imperfect fashion. Reactionaries almost totally misunderstand the ecumenical language of Vatican II. The council is not agreeing with Buddhism or Islam or any other religion per se; rather, it is merely recognizing the sincere and worthy goals to be found in almost all world religions. This is diplomatic, conciliatory language. It is obviously an attempt to find common ground with other religions not an exercise in indifferentism or relativism. Reactionaries neednt create a contradiction where, in fact, two ideas are complementary. Those who are predisposed to be critical of Vatican II often find in it what they wish to find, but in so doing, they make their bias evident to all. Nostra aetate (Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions), from Vatican II had a particular purpose. The key phrase in the document is: The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. In other words, what is true is good (and that is what is discussed), and can be gladly acknowledged. The errors are, of course, harmful. It is not the function of this particular document to document those. But it is not an indifferentist document (see #164 above). The reactionary could, I suppose, argue (similar in spirit to a sectarian Protestant fundamentalist) that all religions besides Catholicism are thoroughly evil, through and through, but this is patently (and I think, obviously) false. St. Paul engaged in a tactic not unlike the document Nostra aetate, in his sermon on Mars Hill, in Athens (Acts 17). He cited pagan poets and philosophers, and the tomb of the unknown god, rhetorically built upon them, and proceeded to make the case for Christianity. So he engaged in both ecumenism and apologetics, consecutively. It is difficult to do them simultaneously, just as a prophet cannot easily bring forth a message of love and pastoral concern, and a scathing jeremiad, at the same time. Furthermore, St. Paul teaches the notion that much good can be found outside of the law (by extension, the Church) in Romans 2:12-16 (cf. 3:29). This is nothing new in Catholic teaching. Ecumenism finds its roots right in Holy Scripture. This incorporation of what was true and good in pre-Christian religion was also very much in evidence in the Virgin Marys appearance at Guadalupe perhaps the greatest and most rapid mass conversion of all time. St. Justin Martyr (d. c. 165) wrote: Those who lived according to Logos are Christians, even if they were considered atheists, as among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus. (Apology, I, 46) St. Augustine agrees: From the beginning of the human race, whoever believed in Him and understood Him somewhat, and lived according to His precepts . . . whoever and wherever they may have been, doubtless were saved through him. (Epistle 102, 12) The reactionary anti-ecumenical argument (especially against the two ecumenical gatherings at Assisi) ironically reduces logically to a curious version of the tired anti-Catholic Protestant objection that Catholicism is deliberately compromised with paganism. Like the Protestant charge, it is based on a thorough (and rather elementary) misunderstanding, and is a house of cards with no foundation. Pope St. John Paul II kissed the Koran, in an ecumenical, diplomatic gesture. Reactionaries have maintained that this was imprudent and scandalous, even if the Holy Father didnt intend to convey agreement with Islam. They argue that such an action was bound to be misunderstood; therefore, shouldnt have been done in the first place. Yet, many things in the Catholic Church are gigantically misunderstood. If we stopped doing and believing things for that reason, we could do little except be mere Christians and skeletal Christians, as I like to call a certain sort of minimalistic, least-common-denominator sort of Christianity. The Marian doctrines are severely misunderstood. Should we, then, not proclaim them, and refuse to participate in Marian devotion? How many Protestants believe in or understand the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin? Should we then throw these beliefs out? Should we totally rule out the possibility of the pope defining Mary-Mediatrix for the same reason (and I speak as an inopportunist myself, though I accept the doctrine). A full-blown Mariology (even already-defined Marian doctrines) suggests a bunch of false ideas to a bunch of folks, too. Moreover, we know that our Lord Jesus was often misunderstood. One could make a similar argument of, why did Jesus do that? say, forgiving the adulteress, or turning the tables in the Temple It was terrible PR . . . , etc. I think it is utterly obvious that the popes kissing of the Koran didnt suggest carte blanche approval; it merely meant acceptance of those things which are true in the Koran, per Vatican II directives on ecumenism, and Pope St. John Paul IIs many comments in this vein. In other words, his actions have to be interpreted in light of his overall teaching, and that of the Church, as crystallized especially in Vatican II. Many reactionaries quick to draw the most cynical, skeptical, critical conclusion, refuse to do that. The pope also sometimes kisses the ground in America and other countries when he enters them. Does that mean he sanctions legal abortion or (from 1993-2001) the presidency of Bill Clinton, with all that it represented? Clearly not. These are diplomatic gestures, born of charity and good will, not exhaustive doctrinal agreement. Kissing the ground or perhaps a dignitary (in some cultures) does not mean total approval of that person or his country. If it did, then there could be scarcely little diplomacy at all. If every handshake, hug, or kiss meant what reactionaries have to imply for their argument to succeed, we would never end any wars (by diplomatic means) or have any treaties. Did the pope shake hands with Castro when he visited Cuba? I assume that he did. I doubt that I could have done so myself, but then I am not a world leader, whose job requires such delicate gestures at times, for the sake of peace, unity, and understanding. Every conciliatory and unitive act must be understood within the prior assumption of theological and philosophical differences. These are presupposed throughout, whereas in indifferentism they are cast to the wind. True, the outsider cant always know this from observation, but truth is sometimes complex. What if the pope kissing the Koran (theoretically) stopped a war? Would that be a valuable end? Would the reactionary critic of the pope rather be a Crusader going in to do battle with Muslims, or a St. Francis of Assisi, who tried to talk to them, did miracles, and profoundly impressed Muslims in so doing? An easy choice . . . Certain gestures (in this case, kissing a book) have a wider application than just the liturgy, so that the analogy to the liturgy is not exclusive. Genuflecting (apart from the sign of the cross) is similar to curtseying or bowing before a king. There is overlap. Therefore, it is just as reasonable or proper to make an analogy to kissing the ground (with all that that means and doesnt mean), as it is for reactionaries to make an analogy to kissing the gospels in the Mass. I would maintain that the more fitting or obvious analogy is to another country, since we are dealing with another religion, and indeed another supposed revelation. Meeting with Muslims is nothing like a Mass at all. At the Assisi ecumenical gatherings, there werent common prayers undertaken by those of different religions. There were simultaneous prayers offered. This is a crucial distinction, and one that disintegrates much of the almost hysterical reactionary critique against these undertakings. Prohibition of meeting with non-Catholics is a prudential, disciplinary matter. It may have been wise during the 16th century, but hopefully the Church has become a little more confident, so that we dont have to fear being overcome by every non-Catholic argument. If we are to reach non-Catholics, we have to talk to them, truly respect them insofar as we can, and love them. We can hardly do so by an absolute refusal to engage in any common activities. Nothing in true ecumenism, therefore, is unbiblical (e.g., the Samaritan woman, the Roman centurion, the initial outreach to the Gentiles) or un-Catholic (the Donatists; the acknowledgment of Protestant baptism and Orthodox sacraments). It isnt an eternal dogma that Catholics cant talk to or fraternize with non-Catholics. How could we evangelize or teach about the fullness of the Church if this were an absolute? We couldnt even say grace at a family reunion, or listen to an invocation at a commencement ceremony (as some anti-ecumenical sorts of Orthodox Christians have indeed argued). If Pope St. John Paul IIs kissing of the Koran was done only in the company of one, or a few, then obviously it was not intended for public consumption. As such, it seems to me that much of the reactionary argument about it causing scandal and stumbling to the faithful collapses, as it was something done in private in the first place. ***** Photo credit: annegaellecahuzac (1-12-17) [Pixabay / Pixabay Content License] * Summary: Chapter 9 of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version). Chapter 10 (pp. 87-89) of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised second edition: 17 August 2013; slightly revised again in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version). Anyone who reads this book should first read the following three introductory articles, in order to fully understand the definitions and sociological categories I am employing: Introduction (on the book page) Definitions: Radical Catholic Reactionaries, Mainstream Traditionalists, and Supposed Neo-Catholics [revised 8-6-13] Radical Catholic Reactionaries: What They Are Not [9-28-21] If youre still confused and unclear as to my meanings and intent after that, read one or more of these articles: Rationales for My Self-Coined Term, Radical Catholic Reactionaries [8-6-13] My Coined Term, Radical Catholic Reactionary: Clarifications [10-5-17] Clarifying My Coined Term, Radical Catholic Reactionary [4-3-20] This book is modeled after the method and structure of the French mathematician and Catholic apologist Blaise Pascals classic, Pensees (thoughts). Catholic apologist and philosopher Peter Kreeft described this masterpiece as raw pearls and more like sayings than a book . . . Sayings reflect and approximate the higher, the mode of Christ and Socrates and Buddha. Thats why Socrates is the greatest philosopher, according to St. Thomas (S.T. III, 42, 4). I am not intending to compare myself or my own thoughts or their cogency or import in any way, shape, or form, to those of Pascal, let alone to Socrates or our Lord Jesus! I am merely utilizing the unconventional structure of the Pensees, which harmonizes well, I believe, with the approach that I have taken with regard to the present subject. I have sought to analyze (minus proper names, a la Trent) the premises, presuppositions, logical and ecclesiological bottom lines and (in a word), the spirit of a false and divisive radical Catholic reactionary strain of thought held by a distinctive sociological sub-group of Catholics. ***** It is beyond silly for any Catholic to use the title evolutionist as a sort of insult or epithet, or implied synonym for modernist, in light of the fact that Ven. Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Humani Generis (1950) clearly permitted the belief in evolution for Catholics (with only minor restrictions). If radical Catholic reactionaries wish to dissent from that encyclical also, they ought to honestly and openly broadcast their dissent, rather than conveniently conceal a fact that they must be aware of, judging from their generally high degree of knowledge with regard to Catholic theology. Ven. Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical, Humani Generis (12 August 1950), declared upon the relationship of evolutionary theory to the Catholic Faith: For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faithful [11] Some however rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from preexisting and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which through generation is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own. [12] Note that belief in the theory of evolution is in no wise prohibited by Ven. Pope Pius XII for Catholics in good standing. The pope could have easily stated such a prohibition if indeed this was what the Church wished to teach. But he did not. Good Catholics may believe in evolution in good conscience, provided that they do not accept it in a materialistic fashion, do not deny that each individual soul is a direct creation of God, or accept the false notion of polygenism which view adversely affects original sin. How is it that many reactionaries speak so dogmatically of evolution, as if it were utterly impermissible for a Catholic to believe? By what authority do they do so? By what reasoning do they refer to the present Holy Father as an evolutionist, as if this were some terrible and scandalous epithet and horrific state of affairs? And how do they manage to blatantly disobey the encyclical Humani Generis, from Ven. Pope Pius XII in 1950, which itself is quite harsh on modernism in other sections? More internal contradiction and self-defeating arguments . . . * ***** * Summary: Chapter 10 of my book, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries (December 2002; revised in November 2023 for the purpose of the free online version). NB: This post is cross-posted at my substack, where most of my less-official and more-experimental or more-fun writing is nowadays. You might subscribe! Creatures, a few weeks ago I watched Killers of the Flower Moon, a Scorsese flick about the 1920s wave of murderous violence unleashed by white men greedy for the oil wealth of the Osage Indians. If that sounds like an unexpected subject for a Scorsese flick, thats one of the movies strengths: the moment when you realize that this story is perfect for this director. Not the one-man-alone Scorsese of Taxi Driver or Raging Bull or Bringing Out the Dead, not actually the period Scorsese of Age of Innocence, but the Scorsese of Goodfellas and Casino and The Irishman. Its a riff on two genres: the Western, sure, a little bit, but mostly the mafia movie. The mob flick, but for lynch mobs; the roaring twenties, but the roar is your Black neighbors houses in flames. [Im going to talk about a bunch of specific choices here, including the final image; Im very grateful I didnt know what that image would be in advance, so if you also prefer this kind of swerve and surprise, skip this post until youve seen the film.] As I was watching the film, I could feel myself deciding to like choices that I could have decided to dislike. The prowling camera inside the central couples home, trapped amid fine material goods; the pained grimace that is Leonardo DiCaprios only expression throughout this entire movie. Theres a stagey quality to parts of this film, even before the sudden swerve into metatheater at the end. It all worked for me, partly for mysterious reasons of movie chemistry but maybe partly because these choices were made to entertain: a word that could sound like criticism, it could sound like Im calling Scorsese exploitative or the audience ghoulish, but I basically mean that the emotions resonate. Glee, shock, suspense, fear, hope, sorrow. Theres an extended introduction that includes scenes of Jazz Age Indian wealthscenes I havent seen in any other movie before. Its exciting! Osage limos, Osage flappers, Osage pilots in their dashing new two-seater planes. Im obviously having my emotions during this scene as a white viewer, but I think a thing the film does, why its keen attention to what your emotions are doing is interesting, is keep those emotions tightly bound to the Osage people. Scorsese knows how to make you feel certain things in a way that will keep you watchingthese are the skills of the entertainer. And hes using them, here, to keep you emotionally in an Osage viewpoint even though the actual narrative, the events you see and the way you learn whats happening, follows the white people. The two main white folks are somewhat blank: Robert De Niro is a pure villain, radix malorum est This Guy. DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a returning WWI veteran who marries an Osage woman, Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone)but unlike the other white men courting Osage oil belles, hes marrying for love. He thinks hes marrying for love. He closes all the doors between his heart and his conscience, so he can believe that when he reaches toward his wife, what hes doing can still bear the name of love. No matter what I do to you, I love youeven Ernest must know that thats never true. Killers rises toward genre horror, and the horror comes from the intimacy of the violence being committed against the Osage. Everyone whos murdering them says, I am your friend. I love you. Look at all Ive done for you! Everyone whos murdering them seems to believe it, too. Mollies a terrific character. Shes wryI know this is one of those words I overuse, like desultory, but this time Im right! Shes wry and tough, shes worldly-wise, shes wealthy and she knows, or thinks she knows, that her wealth is a target painted on her chest. The thing is that she knows shes smart and tough and clear-eyed. People who know that they are smart are susceptible to believing that all their judgment calls are the smart ones. People who know theyre cynical about human nature can be conned if you convince them that only somebody as worldly-wise as them would see that youre on the level. Its like that Sartre riff, which I cant remember where I read itsomewhere in the old blogosphere daysHell is other people: but not you (youre different). Mollie knows her strengths, and that leads her to underestimate her vulnerability. And yet in the end its her strength of will that brings an end to the killing. And its also the FBI. Scorsese trusts his audience on this, I think. He does not go into the blank unholy Hoover of it all: the part where the FBI comes to Osage country in order to strengthen their own power. The radio-show bit at the end is a bravura scene, shocking and full of devastating comedy, and one of the things its doing is lampshading the heroic role this narrative gives the FBI. Next week on the King Arthur Flour Hour: our G-men tackle the degenerate subversive, Doctor King! Scorsese doesnt say that, which is good, he absolutely should not have, but he does show you how this story might become that one. Killers made me think of a couple ways the Western and the gangster film intertwine. The Western is about violence and lawlessness, which are glamorous and lucrative, and available to people of every race: Thats the Fugees in Cowboys taking on the personae of Drug War criminals, taunting, Yo, this was how the West was won! The Western is about violence and lawlessness, which are forms of freedom: Thats the men interviewed for The Act of Killing, who butchered fellow Indonesians accused of Communism, and who call themselves premen, which is the English, free men. But then the thing that makes Killers feel most like a Western is that one of the classic Western forms is the tragic institution of order. Here, we do end with a scene of order: the circle dance. It isnt a tragic new institution, but a restoration. Whatever role lawmen played in making it possible, it isnt the kind of order lawmen bring. White beach moonflower photographed by Sabina Bajracharya, found via Wikimedia Commons and used under a Creative Commons license. The Takoradi Technical University (TTU) has launched the official logo for the celebration of its 70th anniversary which starts in 2024. The 70th anniversary logo encapsulates seven decades of solid commitment, resilience, growth, and remarkable journey as an institution as well as represents a dream-nurtured, celebrated triumph and an inspiration for the future of the institution. According to the TTU, the logo which was designed by Prince Asamoah Williams, an alumni of TTU, after an open competition for the creation of the anniversary logo, embodies elements such as a cog wheel, a golden evolving laurel wreath, a multi-coloured extension of the "7, and an inset of the TTU original logo, with each element radiating intrinsic and extrinsic sensibility which tells the story of evolution, innovation, collaboration, societal relevance, and team spirit that have been the foundation of achievements. After a symbolic unveiling of the 70th Anniversary logo, the Vice Chancellor of TTU, Rev. Prof. John Frank Eshun, said the newly launched logo and the anniversary represents the embodiment of the past and the future of the university which has been made possible by unity of purpose. As we celebrate this momentous occasion, lets reflect on the journey that has led us here- our triumph, hurdles, and invaluable contribution to our growth as a successful institution in technical education. I want you to realize that this logo symbolizes the essence of the past, present and future. The lively colours and dynamic design blend tradition with innovation, reflecting our ability to adapt and progress over the years. Rev. Prof. John Frank Eshun, Vice-Chancellor We have witnessed incredible progress and transformation as a technical institution of higher learning over the past 70 years. Our commitment to innovation has allowed us to embrace new technologies, strategies, and ideals while holding on to our traditions and core values. We have grown not just in number of years but in our understanding of the complex challenges we face. Our 70th-anniversary logo represents a symbol of unity and collaboration. It reminds us that we are part of the larger community, where every individuals efforts are vital to the total growth of the University, he said. Rev. Prof. Eshun also used the occasion to eulogise the past leadership, staff, and partners of the university as pacesetters and helping to drive TTU to where it is today. Together, we have accomplished a lot and improved lives. As we move forward, let us continue to nurture a culture of inclusivity and teamwork to confront the challenges aheadIt is essential to acknowledge the work of our forebears who toiled day and night to bring us this far. We also acknowledge the tremendous support from our stakeholders: the Governing Council, Management, Executive Committee, Academic Board, Convocation, staff and students. We cannot forget volunteers, partners, and the communities we serve. Without your support, dedication and belief in our cause, our journey would not have been possible. As we celebrate our 70th anniversary, we express our deepest gratitude to all those whose contributions have been instrumental in our success. The launch of our 70th-anniversary logo signifies both celebration and renewed commitment, he acknowledged. The Pro Vice Chancellor of TTU, Prof. Victor Kweku Bondzie Micah, while giving the highlights of the makeup of the 70th Anniversary logo indicated that the logo re-emphasises the collective spirit of the University which must be nurtured beyond the 70th Anniversary. As we stare and relate to the elements of the logo and the comprehensive outlook of the logo, let us remember the foundation the early visionaries laid, what we are doing together in this journey of projecting this institution, and the potential future that lies ahead of us. We should let this new dawn inspire us with the new opportunities and challenges that will transform the next chapter of our legacy. Let us carry the essence of our 70-year journey in our hearts to manifest the societal relevance we aspire to achieve. The logo is reflective of the dynamic interweaving of our collective experiences, the cohesive bond that unites us, and the aspirations that drive us onward. This 70th anniversary should help us to build better relationships and collaborations with stakeholders and consolidate gains as the premier Technical University in Ghana, he urged. He further outlined what the 70th anniversary seeks to achieve besides the celebration of the past. It is to promote the Visibility of TTU, to celebrate her smart innovations and achievements, to consolidate gains as the premier Technical University, to engage and enhance collaborations and partnerships, as well as inspire the future, he added. The Registrar of TTU, Dr. Moses Maclean Abnory for his part, said a good logo gives a first impression and sets an institution apart from its peers, hence the unveiling of the 70th Anniversary emblem is instructive and timely to usher in the celebration of the 70 years of success of the university. President of the TTU Alumni, Dr. Bruce Amartey, expressed excitement for being part of the TTU success story. We, as alumni, are very privileged to have passed through this institution, as it has shaped and transformed us into what we are today. We believe TTU will continue to shape lives and create innovative and transformative citizens who will shape society and Ghana as a whole, he noted. The official launching of the TTU 70th anniversary is scheduled for December 15, 2023. Prince Asamoah Williams, a B-Tech Graphic Design alumnus, who emerged as a winner of the 70th Anniversary logo designing competition will receive an amount of GH2,500, while the 1st and 2nd runner-ups will also receive GH1,500 and GH 1,000 respectively. DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited. Source: Myjoyonline.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. Featured Video The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has said Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education was necessary for technological advancement and economic growth. He, therefore, said the governments commitment to foster STEM skills among the youth was not a choice, but a necessity. Dr Bawumia also said that technical, vocational education and training (TVET) was a catalyst for change, adding that it provided people with practical skills fundamental to industrial growth. He said it was through TVET that we cultivate a skilled and adaptable workforce capable of meeting the demands of a dynamic and evolving job market. "By investing in STEM and TVET education, we equip our students with the tools to understand, adapt to, and drive these changes to position the nation at the forefront of global innovation and digitalisation which will be the backbone of our nation's prosperity," the Vice-President added. This was contained in an address read on his behalf by the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, at the opening of this years Education Week in Accra yesterday. The five-day programme is on the theme: "Education delivery for national transformation: The case for STEM and TVET". The event is the sixth in a series and is held annually to assess the performance of government policies, programmes and projects in the education sector. Self-retrospection Dr Bawumia said to improve on the effectiveness and efficiency of the governments development interventions, it was important to periodically embark on an impartial self-retrospection on policies, programmes and projects being implemented and make good use of the feedback for the achievement of institutional goals. Education, he said, was the best investment, for which reason the government had since January 2017, initiated and implemented innovative and transformative programmes in the sector. The Vice-President mentioned free SHS, provision of infrastructure at all levels, restoration of teacher trainee allowances, harmonisation and prioritisation of TVET education with the passage of the Pre-Tertiary Act, 2020 (Act 1049); review of previous curriculum to focus on 21st Century skills and the deepening of inclusive, special and complementary education. It is both an honour and a responsibility to advocate the development of a robust STEM and TVET ecosystem that empowers our youth and drives the nation into a new era of innovation and progress. He commended the Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, for his commitment to enhancing STEM and TVET education. For his part, Dr Adutwum said the countrys educational system was going through a major transformation, adding that we have received support to build a number of schools. He mentioned the Arab Development Bank as one of the establishments that was supporting the government to construct more basic and junior high schools in the country. A Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, said assessing the progress of policies, programmes and interventions was pivotal to the delivery of effective public policy. Significance The UNESCO Country Director, Edmond Moukala, said the week-long event provided the government and other stakeholders the opportunity to jointly reflect on the successes and the challenges that had been militating against access to quality and inclusive education. For her part, the Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Prof. Rita Akosua Dickson, said it was important to take stock of how far the country had come in education delivery. Source: graphiconline.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. Featured Video Nana Yaw Baffuor Gyimah, an indigene of Asante Akyem North and a businessman based in Australia has donated a brand new Toyota Tacoma towards the campaign of Hon Kwadwo Baah Agyemang, an aspiring parliamentary candidate for the Asante Akyem North NPP and CEO of Ghana Digital Centers Limited (GDCL). At a brief ceremony over the weekend, Mr Gyimah presented the vehicle and documents to the Campaign Team of Hon Agyemang. Speaking to this reporter, Mr Gyimah said the gesture is to show appreciation to Hon Baah Agyemang for granting him opportunity to do well in life and for supporting less privileged people. "I am donating this vehicle towards the campaign of Hon Kwadwo Baah Agyemang, a man who has shown so much care to some of us and many others. I, in particular have gotten this chance to do this because he invested in me and gave me the opportunity to travel abroad to work and earn something for myself", Mr Gyimah stated. Advice: Mr Gyimah advised the people in Asante Akyem North especially delegates of the New Patriotic Party to vote for someone whose actions make him fit to lead the party. He also asked that they vote for someone whose preoccupation is to see people do well in life and is ready to support them. Mr Gyimah encouraged the delegates to look out for the person who can best lobby for projects and other initiatives to Asante Akyem North and vote for such. "I am sure that the delegates will size- up persons aspiring to lead Asante Akyem North and choose Kwadwo Baah Agyemang because in him is the embodiment of kindness and a commitment to the development of the constituency", Mr Gyimah noted. Reaction: Speaking to this reporter, Hon Agyemang said he was happy that Nana Yaw Baffuor Gyimah has remembered the modest support he gave him previously. He noted that those who show appreciation makes it easy for other people to support those who are in need. Hon Agyemang said he is committed to using both his resources and influence to support all residents and indigenes of Asante Akyem North so that together they can make the constituency great again. "I thank Nana Baffuor Gyimah for showing support to my campaign and donating this rugged and important car in appreciation of the modest contribution i made to his previous life", Hon Baah Agyemang said. 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. Featured Video The Second Lady of Ghana, Mrs Samira Bawumia, has called for increased youth participation in the fight against Climate Change Speaking at the Africa Women and Children Conference (AFRIWOCC) pre-COP28 Climate conference at the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement in Legon, she explained that the move would step up efforts aimed at combating climate change and mitigating its impacts, particularly on Youth. According to Mrs Samira Bawumia, she want seek to document youth perspective, ideas and innovative solution to climate change ahead of the united nation COP28 in Dubai-UAE. Under the theme of "Youth in Climate Action," the conference unfolded in two dynamic sections. Beyond discussions, an exhibition showcased eco-friendly products designed to promote sustainable living. From natural fertilizers for farms to eco-friendly fuel alternatives, the conference actively encouraged practices that reduce reliance on LPG gas and firewood. H.E Mrs Samira Bawumia talks about The International Youth Climate Delegate Program (International YCDP), which will off on November 30th to December 12th 2023 at Dubai. Notable figures such as, Executive Secretary at the Energy Commission, United Arab Emirates Ambassador designate to Ghana Khalifa Yousif Alzaabi and other Participants at the conference discussed the importance of presenting a unified African message on climate action, particularly concerning its effects on youth. 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. Featured Video The Overlord of Mamprugu, Naa Bohagu Abdulai Mahami Sheriga, has appealed to the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, to use his influence to help resolve the protracted chieftaincy-related conflict in Bawku. He said he was confident that the Vice-President, who was recently elected as the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), could help bring together the feuding factions in the long-standing conflict that had caused havoc for decades in the once peaceful town. Naa Sheriga said the conflict was taking a toll on the people of Bawku, the immediate neighbouring communities and the larger Mamprugu Traditional Area, and that it was about time deliberate efforts were made to find a lasting solution to the dispute. The traditional ruler further urged Dr Bawumia to visit the chiefs and people of the various areas engaged in the conflict, especially in Bawku, and try to encourage peace among all the factions. The Nayiri made the appeal when the Vice-President paid a courtesy call on him at his palace in Nalerigu last Monday as part of his tour of the Northern and North East regions. Background There has been recurring chieftaincy dispute in Bawku and its environs, characterised by violent clashes that have claimed hundreds of lives over the years, while property running into millions of Ghana cedis has been lost to the violence. Historians say the dispute is over the rightful ownership of the Bawku skin, referred to as na'am. At the peak of every one of the renewed clashes, socio-economic activities are grounded in the once busy commercial town. Blessings While congratulating the Vice-President on his election as the flag bearer of the governing party, Naa Sheriga prayed and wished him well in the 2024 presidential election. The Nayiri conferred the title "Bigangna" on the Vice-President, which refers to a person who does not discriminate. Naa Sheriga explained that the title was befitting of the Vice-President because of the character he had demonstrated in office. Gratitude Dr Bawumia expressed gratitude to the traditional ruler and his elders for their prayers and encouragement. He pledged to use his influence and wisdom to help find a lasting solution to the conflict in Bawku. Thank you tour The NPP flag bearer is touring the North East and Northern regions to thank delegates and party faithful following his victory in the two rounds of the NPP presidential primary. Thousands of supporters and sympathisers of the NPP thronged the forecourt of the Nayiri Palace in Nalerigu, capital of the North East Region, to cheer Dr Bawumia. He was joined on the tour by the National Chairman of the party, Stephen Ayensu Ntim; the Majority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei-Mensah- Bonsu; Ministers of State, government appointees, party bigwigs and parliamentary aspirants. Source: graphiconline.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. Featured Video Ghana will keep highlighting how important it is to take major steps in promoting sustainability across a range of economic sectors, according to First Lady Rebecca Akufo-Addo. As part of its attempts to diversify the nation's energy mix, Ghana established a floating hydro solar hybrid plant, demonstrating its excellence in this field among West African nations, she intimated. Rebecca Akufo-Addo said that the plant will power a cashew factory in the Bono Region and create jobs for roughly 800 people, especially women, while speaking virtually at the Huawei 2023 Sustainability Forum. "The cashew plant will not only provide employment opportunities but also equip beneficiaries with the necessary skills set to make a living. The world is going green and projects such as the Hydro Solar Hybrid plant shows that Ghana is on the right path towards the realization of a sustainable and eco-friendly digital future, she noted. I therefore believe that this cashew factory will build on the successes we have achieved as partners and contribute to the realization of a new rural economy where no one is left behind, she noted. The First Lady of Ghana also expressed her appreciation to Huawei for its unwavering contributions, initiatives, and projects that aim to boost the country's economy, especially in the digital sector. Together, we have worked tirelessly in building the skills capacity of females in rural areas. Over 6,000 students and traders have been trained in a period of two years and my Office is grateful for this collaboration with Huawei, she stressed. The forum was held under the theme; 'Thrive Together with Tech: Realizing Sustainable Development'. At the same event, broadcast journalist Kafui Dey joined to share some knowledge about the initiatives being undertaken in Ghana to achieve sustainability and an eco-friendly future. Huawei promised to use technologies and services like 5G and AI to provide connection to over 120 million people in distant places across more than 80 countries by 2025 when it joined the ITU's Partner2Connect Digital Coalition in 2022. Investing in broadband networks and other ICT infrastructure has so far been used to boost economies by assisting enterprises in launching new services and motivating entrepreneurs to launch new ventures. These actions seek to safeguard the environment by lessening the negative effects of economic development on the environment, in addition to the advancement of digital technology. 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. Featured Video The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and ComClark Network and Technology Corp announced on Tuesday that they will collaborate on a project to provide various connectivity technologies to over 2,000 remote areas across the Philippines. The collaboration is part of the Universal Internet Subscription for GIDA (UISG) Project, which aims to deploy of fixed VSATs, fibre and satellite-communications-on-the-move terminals to more than 2,000 geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDA) across the Philippines. DICT says this will aid its assistance to other government agencies and LGUs with their connectivity needs during natural disasters. The terrain of each area will determine which access connectivity technology is deployed which means fibre wherever possible, and satellite everywhere else. DICT says around 1,400 sites are geographically viable for fiber-enabled access points. Hilly and mountainous areas will be connected with fixed VSATs. The UISG project will also make use of satellite-communications-on-the-move terminals powerful and portable antennas that can be hooked up to automobiles and boats, making them ideal for augmenting disaster and emergency response. DICT says that it has received 34 satellite-on-the-move units for distribution to its regional offices. ComClark chief operations officer Benedicto Bulatao said that an unprecedented 145-gigabyte capacity was allocated for the project. Working with various connectivity providers, the UISG Project currently tracks over 4,740 active sites in 1,871 locations providing connectivity across all 17 regions of the Phiulippines. DICT says that 97% of the sites have already been activated and accepted, and are expected to be completed by the end of this year. DICT is working with ComClarks subsiary Converge ICT Solutions to implement the project. The supply of the equipment between DICT and ComClark is being implemented with We Are IT Philippines and Telered Technologies and Services. DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy said the project will help boost its goals of broadening digital inclusion across the Philippines. The Free Public Internet Access Program, under the Broadband ng Masa Initiative, seeks to bridge the digital divide and connect Filipinos to limitless opportunities the digital economy offers, he said in a statement. Our collaboration with ComClark for the UISG Project exemplifies our dedication to turning this vision into reality. We are committed to ensuring that the benefits of the digital revolution reach every corner of our nation. Prof. Joseph Osafo has called on the New Patriotic Party to relax its punitive measures against members said to be in breach of its constitution. Four prominent members of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) openly soliciting support for independent candidate and former flagbearer aspirant of the party, Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen, have had their membership revoked. These persons; Hopeson Adorye, a defeated parliamentary candidate, Nana Ohene Ntow, a former General Secretary, Boniface Abubakar Saddique, a former Zongo Minister and Yaw Buaben Asamoah, former Adentan MP, according to the party, are no longer members for breaching its constitution. Statement A statement issued and signed by the General Secretary, Justin Kodua Frimpong, read; Despite their flagrant breach of the Partys Constitution particularly Articles 3(5)(A)(4) and 3(9)(1), the afore-named men still hold themselves out as members of the NPP. For the avoidance of doubt, Article 3(5)(A)(4) of the NPP Constitution enjoins all members of the Party to abide by and publicly uphold the decisions of the Party. It continued that Article 3(9)(1) of the Constitution enjoins any member who supports an independent candidate to lose his or her membership. A Member of the Party, who stands as an independent candidate against the officially elected member of the Party, or who joins or declares his or her support for another Political Party, or for an independent candidate, when the Party has sponsored a candidate in a general or by-election, automatically forfeits his or her membership of the Party. In line with these constitutional provisions, it is the view of the NPP that Hopeson Adorye, Nana Ohene Ntow, Boniface Abubakar Saddique and Yaw Buaben Asamoa have AUTOMATICALLY FORFEITED their membership of the Party. They are, therefore, no longer members of the Party, the party emphasized. Be Sober Prof. Joseph Osafo, commenting on the decision during Peace FM's morning show "Kokrokoo", has implored the NPP to be sober in meting out sanctions to their members particularly at this crucial time that they are nearing the 2024 elections. According to him, the party cannot afford to lose its members nor their influence, asserting the decision to dismiss these four stalwarts may not augur well for the party. The Senior Psychologist also shared that he prefers dialogue to what he termed a "muscular" approach to addressing issues. "Two wrongs don't make a right", he stated, cautioning the NPP against the times they are in to risk dismissing their members. "In these times that the NPP find itself, I think that they should soberly take certain decisions...exercise a little patience", he urged. 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. Featured Video The former Member of Parliament for the Adentan constituency has described the statement of forfeiture of NPP membership released by the partys General Secretary as unstrategic and needless. The legal practitioner has taken his time to school NPP leadership on political and constitutional matters in respect of elections 2024. Lawyer Buaben Asamoa speaking for his colleagues reaffirms their conviction that their candidate for the 2024 election, Alan Kyerematen will be a better President than both John Mahama and Dr. Alhaji Bawumia. Read the full statement released by Hon Yaw Buaben Asamoa on the 20th of November 2023 below. Re: FORFEITURE OF MEMBERSHIP PURSUANT TO THE PROVISION OF ARTICLE 3(9)(1) OF THE NEW PATRIOTIC PARTY CONSTITUTION My attention and that of my esteemed and patriotically principled colleagues, Hopeson Adorye, Nana Ohene-Ntow and Saddique Abu-Bakar Boniface, has been drawn by numerous media outlets to a statement purportedly issued and signed by the General Secretary of the NPP, captioned as above. Though none of the persons mentioned has received a personal copy, we accept our resignation from the NPP and pledge our commitment to Ghanas success through our support for Alan Kyerematen. We also take this opportunity to respond and set the minds of concerned well-meaning patriots at ease. First, our public conduct in unconditionally and with great conviction supporting the highflying independent candidature of Alan Kyerematen for president, is against the NPP constitution, which provides for automatic forfeiture of membership under article 3(9)(1). That is incontestable and therefore needs no formal written notice. Unfortunately for the Party Leadership', the wholesale application of the poorly written article 3(9)(1), may not be serving the interests of the general membership of the Party well. By not differentiating between support for presidential and parliamentary candidates, conduct against a presidential candidate, results in forfeiture of the parliamentary vote as well. This is clearly out of step with the fast developing political culture of skirt & blouse, where voters increasingly mix their choice of presidential and parliamentary candidates based on factors other than what the party Leadership says. H.E. the President benefitted from skirt and blouse when he won ten constituencies in the Central Region where NDC won the parliamentary seats. Are those who accepted the President but voted otherwise at parliamentary level to be sacked? Hundreds of thousands of NPP members and millions of sympathisers are deeply unhappy at the so called mafia tactics of intimidation and inducement used to skew delegate elections in favour of choices that may not necessarily be popular with the general electorate. Indeed, the mafia approach is against article 55(5) of the 1992 Constitution, which demands democratic principles in internal party processes. Whilst there is value to being part of an organisation like a party, continuing exclusionary practices, quietly erodes loyalty and conviction, over time. Secondly, the same article 55(2) which gives a right to join political parties also gives a right to support political activity as an independent under 55(10) and (16). Considering that the right of a political party to sponsor candidates, does not exclude the right of independent candidates nor their supporters to participate in general elections, it may not be prudent to continue to reduce ones membership with archaic rules. Thirdly, in the profound wisdom of the 1992 Constitution, qualification to the presidency of Ghana does not require political party affiliation. Articles 57(1), 58, 62 and 63(1)(2)(3) and 94, dealing with the nature, qualification and powers of the office, have nothing to do with parties. Furthermore, exercising the powers of the presidency do not require party authority. In office, a president appoints and runs a government under articles 70, 76, 77, 78(1)(2) and 79, without a stated party presence. A voter does not have to be a member of a party to benefit from the presidency. Fourthly, the public is keenly aware that the selection of H.E the Vice President, Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia as Presidential Candidate of the NPP, was the confirmation of a process carefully designed to have only one outcome. Because it was choreographed, there is nothing new or surprising to offer the voter public. Arguably, the patient Ghanaian voter, has been short-changed by the presidential candidate selection processes of both the NPP and NDC. The lack of genuine choice of candidates at party level, translates into a loss of trust in duopoly politics and increasing apathy, hence the loud chorus for a credible third force leadership if democratic practice is to be sustained for the benefit of youthful voters. That is why a bold and viable candidate like Alan Kyerematen, meets the need of the times. I and my friends Hopeson Adorye, Nana Ohene-Ntow and Saddique Abu-Bakar Boniface, in our support for Alan Kyerematen, a man of vision, competence, integrity and action, represent millions of Ghanaians who want to serve the country with a clear conscience. We are upholding the preamble to the Constitution, articles 1, 3(2), 17(1)(2)(3), 21(1)(3), 35(1)(4)(5)(9), 37(2)(a) and above all, article 41. Finally, the 1992 Constitution recognises coalition governments. A coalition is defined by the oxford dictionary as a temporary alliance for combined action, especially of political parties forming a government. Alan Kyerematen wants to bring Ghanaians together in the next election, in a Government of National Unity, to think Ghana, and redirect Ghana onto a positive trajectory. Nowhere in our constitution is it specified that Parliament is bi-cameral or that only a majority and minority can operate in Parliament. It is a fiction sold by the Standing Orders. Article 97(2) states unequivocally that a member need not lose their seat under 97(1)(g) and (h), if their party is a member of a coalition government. Article 103(5) admonishes that committees of Parliament ought to reflect the different shades of opinion in Parliament. Article 104 talks about a majority of members present and voting. It does not refer to a majority party. Ghana is ready for a political third force capable of breaking unproductive duopoly politics. We do not need a change of constitution to effect the change of leadership that the parties are incapable of offering. We have Alan Kyerematen. Together, our support for his independent presidency will unleash the development energy being suppressed by tit for tat duopoly politics. 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. Featured Video Nana Akomea has justified the dismissal of Hopeson Adorye, a defeated parliamentary candidate, Nana Ohene Ntow, a former General Secretary, Boniface Abubakar Saddique, a former Zongo Minister and Yaw Buaben Asamoah, former Adentan Member of Parliament, by the New Patriotic Party. The leadership of the party, in a statement, noted that these persons are no longer members because of their support for Alan Kyerematen, an independent candidate and once upon a time presidential aspirant of the New Patriotic Party. The party emphasized that the four individuals' behavior is a breach of their constitution, therefore, henceforth they forfeit their membership. A Member of the Party, who stands as an independent candidate against the officially elected member of the Party, or who joins or declares his or her support for another Political Party, or for an independent candidate, when the Party has sponsored a candidate in a general or by-election, automatically forfeits his or her membership of the Party, the statement signed by NPP General Secretary, Justin Frimpong Koduah, established. It accentuated that in line with these constitutional provisions, it is the view of the NPP that Hopeson Adorye, Nana Ohene Ntow, Boniface Abubakar Saddique and Yaw Buaben Asamoa have AUTOMATICALLY FORFEITED their membership of the Party. They are, therefore, no longer members of the Party. But the New Patriotic Party has received a backlash from some section of the public who finds the decision hasty and fears it may have a scathing impact on the party's quest to retain power. Discussing the issue on Peace FM's morning show "Kokrokoo", Nana Akomea defended the party stating the victims chose their own fate. He argued that they, by their own actions, removed themselves from the New Patriotic Party, therefore what the party has done is seemingly granting their wish. "Once it's clear that you have declared for another Presidential, even Parliamentary candidate, you have automatically removed yourself from the party", he told Nana Yaw Kesseh, adding that "the party needs more people but not someone whose behavior will destroy the little; one bad nut will spoil the soup". Nana Akomea however noted should the four persons and any other person who has defected from the NPP have a change of heart, there is always place for them in the party. "You can come back but will have to reapply. In the reapplication stage, the party will create room for you to explain why you decided to do what you did." 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. Featured Video The National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Volta Region has expressed scepticism regarding Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta's recent promise to allocate some GH220 million outlined in the 2024 budget, for the first phase of the government's relief package for victims of the recent flood disaster triggered by the spilling of excess water from the Akosombo and Kpong Dams. The party said it acknowledged the urgency and necessity of aiding those affected by that human-induced calamity. However, they remained highly apprehensive and uncertain about the government's ability to fulfil yet another promise. Hon. Ken Ofori Atta, the Finance Minister's, track record in meeting financial commitments has always raised questions among the discerning public, and this new pledge only adds to the growing list of such unfulfilled assurances, a statement issued and signed by the NDC Volta Regional Communications Officer, Sorkpa Kafui Agbleze, said. The failed promise, captured in the 2022 Budget, to make available some GH10 million to ameliorate the plight of residents of Anlo, Keta and Ketu South Municipalities which have and are still reeling under the havoc of the perennial tidal waves, is still fresh on the minds of the people, it added. 2024 Budget The party said the 2024 annual budget had woefully failed to inspire confidence since no clear commitments had been made towards their welfare while they wait for the actual release of the funds pledged in the next year's financial statement. The recent flood disaster has left many communities along the Lower Volta in distress, requiring swift and effective action. The Volta NDC, therefore, urges the government to go beyond mere promises and empty rhetoric, and ensure that deliberate immediate disbursements of relief funds are made to drastically alleviate the hardships and suffering of these unfortunate citizens, it said. We believe that the affected people deserve concrete and immediate response. We will closely monitor the government's actions to ensure accountability and fulfilment of promises made in the 2024 budget, it stated. Commendation The group, however, commended the government for the submission of a document to the International Development Association (IDA) to enable it to access some funds from the Crisis Response Window from the World Bank but condemned the Finance Minister's failure to inform Ghanaians about the actual amount government intended to access and the timeline to expect such funding. We are equally worried about the government's inability to spell out the additional resource allocation by the Ministry of Agriculture for the restoration of livelihood to the victims of the VRA induced flooding so we can properly hold them accountable. We will accept nothing short of full restoration of livelihood and properties of the affected victims of the flood disaster, it said Source: graphiconline.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. Featured Video Nana Akomea has responded to former President John Mahama 24-hour economy promise to Ghanaians. The former President has assured Ghanaians that if re-elected President, he will ensure the economy runs 24 hours stressing this is part of his manifesto to improving the living standards of the citizenry as he believes the New Patriotic Party led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has failed Ghanaians. "A new NDC administration will work urgently to equip our youth with the entrepreneurial knowledge and skills needed for a sustainable future. We will introduce a 24-hour economy with incentives and tax breaks for manufacturers who will run extra shifts to create more room for employment. "We will work to ease the burden of taxes imposed by this NPP administration on Ghanaian businesses and investors, which has robbed Ghana of its envious position as one of Africa's leading destinations for investment", he promised. But Nana Akomea doesn't believe Mahama's 24-hour economy is applicable. However, to him, Ghana's economy is already running 24 hours under the Akufo-Addo rule, emphasizing that no law stops any person or trader from engaging in business from dawn to dusk. "Currently, nothing stops any person in this country to do 24 hours. It depends on the economic condition...There is no law currently that prohibits any person from operating 24 hours", he said on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" programme Tuesday morning, citing STC as an example of the companies doing a 24-hour business. The Chief Executive Officer of STC noted that their buses travel "throughout the night" and does not work only "if we don't get passengers". Nana Akomea also ridiculed Mahama's promise to assign Police officers to guard shops that work till daybreak, asking how is it going to be possible? "So, every person who works after 10 pm will have a Police officer sitting in his or her office? So, if there is a pharmacy in a community and it clocks 11 pm, you will assign two Police officers to the pharmacy. Then the Police will indeed recruit lots of people because the shops on Spintex road alone, from Tetteh Quarshie to Sakumono, if everyone says I will work after 10 and so I need Police personnel, then there will be about 2000 Police officers on the Spintex road alone...", he said sarcastically. 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. Featured Video A former teacher who had been employed at a Chester County school received a 3-to-10-year prison sentence Monday after being accused of undressing a former student and forcing himself onto her when she was passed out drunk. Seth Reich, 42, was a theater teacher at Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School Center for Performing and Fine Arts located in West Chester and was seen by prosecutors as a master manipulator who used his authority to exploit insecure female students by becoming a friend, then a mentor, and then eventually assaulting them, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Reichs lawyer, James Funt, argued that his client has changed and taken responsibility for his past while addressing any mental health issues. The hearing was about five hours long, resulting in Chester County Court Judge Analisa Sondergaard admonishing Reich for his actions but crediting the testimony of doctors and family. If not for that, he said, it wouldve meant a longer sentence in jail. What happened to [the victim] will not be batted off as a mistake, a bad choice in judgment or stepping outside of his marriage, Sondergaard said. This was a crime. Reich was acquitted of institutional sexual assault but jurors rejected a claim that Reich had groomed another student at the school into a sexual relationship. Funt claimed that his client and this other teen were friendly while she attended Pennsylvania Leadership but after she graduated and turned 18, they became intimate. The victim of the sexual assault in the hotel room testified during the trial that the two met when she worked on a play he was directing during the summer of 2019, and was close friends with the other teen, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Both girls frequently texted Reich and played with the idea of meeting up in a hotel room after the play wrapped. Within those texts, there was mention of buying condoms and filming a pornographic movie, but the two teens said it was all a joke. When the three went to the hotel, prosecutors claimed Reich gave the teens alcohol, and the older teen passed out. When she woke up, she saw Reich and her friend being intimate. When she protested, she said Reich slapped and sexually assaulted her. Since then, she said she has dealt with panic attacks and flashbacks to the assault. Additionally, Reich told her not to tell anyone what happened between the two, the Inquirer said. Reich addressed both of the victims in a statement, apologizing and saying he thought the events that took place were consensual. The pain and disgust I feel for all of this will haunt me for the rest of my life, Reich said. There are no words to express how sorry I am. Fighting for leniency, Funt argued that Reich sought psychiatric help after the arrest and started the proper treatment of his unchecked bipolar disorder after years of inconsistent therapy and medication that was ineffective. Psychologists even testified that Reich was in a manic, hypersexual state during the risque text exchange with the two teens. He also mentioned that the bipolar disorder contributed to the inappropriate relationships he had with the teens. But to Deputy District Attorney Erin OBrien, Reich was only sorry he got caught and not for his actions. He had all of those things and every opportunity in the world, and he used that to become a teacher and find young women to exploit, she said, according to the news site. Reich was convicted in May of sexual assault, simple assault, furnishing liquor to minors, and related crimes for the assault on the then-19-year-old victim in August 2019, The Inquirer reported. Another Pennsylvania mayor has found himself in trouble with the law. The mayor of McKeesport, Allegheny County, was arrested in Nashville, Tenn., early Sunday after he became belligerent with staff at a city gastropub while drunk, according to news reports. Michael Cherepko, 46, caused a scene outside the Nashville bar/restaurant called the Whiskey Row and accused staff of stealing his credit card shortly after 2:10 a.m., TribLive reported. Police could smell alcohol on the defendant. The defendant had slurred speech and admitted to being messed up, Metro Nashville police claimed in the affidavit. Authorities told him to come back the next day to try to find his card, but was warned not to return to Whiskey Row for the remainder of the night, WTAE reported. But Cherepko returned at 2:28 a.m. to look for his credit card. This was when security flagged down authorities, where he was clearly too intoxicated to reason with and deemed him to be a danger to himself. He was then charged with public drunkenness and criminal trespassing. He was taken into custody Sunday but posted $250 bond and was released from jail, according to both reports. In a statement Monday, Cherepko said he wanted to be upfront about the arrest and that he was embarrassed about what transpired. This is an embarrassing situation, and Id like to apologize to my family and my constituents, Cherepko wrote. What started as a misunderstanding over my missing credit card could have been handled the next day with the establishment or my bank. I should not have allowed myself to be in a situation like this, and unfortunately, I have to deal with the consequence. That means having my day in court and hopefully being absolved of any charges once the facts are explained, he added. Cherepko has a hearing in Nashville set for Jan. 5. The mayor of Stroudsburg, Monroe County, was recently charged with DUI following an incident in September. A woman pleaded guilty in a deadly DUI crash on I-95 in South Philadelphia in 2022 that claimed the lives of two Pennsylvania troopers and a pedestrian. Now, she will spend at least 27 years in prison, according to news reports. Last year, 23-year-old Jayana Webb struck and killed state troopers Martin F. Mack, III, 33, and Branden T Sisca, 29, as well as 28-year-old Reyes Rivera Oliveras on Interstate 95 near the Broad Street exit. Webb entered her plea on Wednesday to multiple charges, including third-degree murder and homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence. She was sentenced to 27 years to 60 years. Todays conviction of Jayana Webb is a just resolution of one of the most shocking incidents of vehicular violence in recent memory, District Attorney Larry Krasner said in a statement to NBC10. But Webbs prison time has been delayed because she is seven months pregnant, KYW Newsradio reported. This combination of photos provided by the Pennsylvania State Police shows Trooper Martin F. Mack III, left, and Trooper Branden T. Sisca. Authorities say an early Monday, March 21, 2022 crash on a highway in Philadelphia killed the two state troopers and a civilian.Pennsylvania State Police via AP The incident occurred around 12:40 a.m. on March 21, 2022, in the southbound lanes of I-95 near Lincoln Financial Field. Mack and Sisca had just pulled over Webb when they received a call about a man, Oliveras, who was walking on the highway and left Webb as they responded to him. As they attended to Oliveras, Webb, who had a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit of .08, fatally struck all three men and the patrol car at a high rate of speed. The impact was so great that it threw the two troopers and Oliveras into the northbound lanes of I-95. She remained at the scene with her badly damaged vehicle. In a tweet posted before the crash, Webb seemingly documented the traffic stop tweeting, why the cop pull me & say Im doing 110 ina 50. In another tweet from mid-January, Webb bragged about her ability to drink to drive. If you ask me, Im the best drunk driver ever, the post read, Fox29 reported. It was announced that Jenna Ortega will exit stage left from Scream 7 a day after star Melissa Barrera was fired from the latest installment of the horror movie series, according to media reports. The reason? Its all due to her Wednesday Season 2 scheduling. The departure of the Wednesday star didnt have anything to do with Barreras firing and it was planned months ago even before the SAG-AFTRA strike began. Turns out, Ortegas representatives informed Spyglass prior to the strike that the actress would not be returning. Multiple sources claimed that Ortega either had no deal or, in the renegotiating of her option, asked what the movie company deemed was too much money, The Hollywood Reporter reported. The actress also needs to wrap filming on Tim Burtons Beetlejuice 2, which has a few more days to shoot after it was interrupted by the SAG-AFTRA strike, Variety reported. Spyglass previously declined to bring back actress Neve Campbell the original franchise star after she had asked for a significant raise for Scream 6, The Hollywood Reporter reported. Now, since the film has lost two of its main leads who were instrumental in revitalizing the aging franchise, the future of the film is in the air even though the films director, Christopher Landon, remains. Ortega and Barrera co-starred as sisters Tara and Sam Carpenter in the 2022 revival of Scream and in the sequel, Scream 6. Scream 7 was announced earlier this year. The 2022 revival of the film franchise brought back original stars Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette while introducing new characters such as Mason Gooding Jr. and Jasmine Savoy Brown, Variety reported. By Dan DeLuca, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS) PHILADELPHIA Daryl Hall is suing John Oates. The pop and R&B duo formed in Philadelphia in 1970 has forged one of the most successful alliances in musical history. In their heyday between 1974 and 1991 the partners scored 29 Top 40 hits and six that reached number one. Theyve been inducted together into both the Songwriters and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and are generally considered the most commercially successful pop music duo of all time. But all is not well in Hall and Oates land. On Nov. 16, Hall filed a lawsuit against Oates in court in Nashville, Tennessee. Philadelphia Magazine reported the news after being posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by Tennessee-based Axios reporter Nate Rau last week. What is the dispute dividing the duo, who first met in an elevator at the Adelphi Ballroom in West Philadelphia in 1967 while leading their own bands? That is unknown. The file is sealed. It can only be seen by Private Eyes, so to speak. So we dont know if the partners have, in fact, grown Out of Touch, to quote another 1980s chart-topping hit. Presumably, the lawsuit was filed in a Nashville Chancery Court because thats where Oates lives. Representatives for Hall, Oates, and Hall & Oates as a group, were contacted by The Inquirer for comment but had yet to respond at time of publishing. In 2017, 2018, and 2021, Hall & Oates headlined their own HoagieNation Festival in Philadelphia. The first two years were held at the Festival Pier on the Delaware River waterfront, and then in 2021, it moved to the Mann Center, where it appeared to be poised to take its place alongside the Roots Picnic as an annual event. But the fest wasnt staged in either of the last two years. The duo, who have worked together and apart for decades, played only a handful of dates in 2022, including one at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and none this year. Meanwhile, theyve been busy individually. Particularly Hall. Hes been touring with fellow Philadelphia Todd Rundgren as an opening act, with upcoming shows this week in Japan and the Philippines. His webcast, Live From Daryls House, relaunched this month from its home base in Pawling, New York, with episodes featuring Glenn Tilbrook, Robert Fripp and Lisa Loeb. Oates is an active member of the creative community in Nashville, and appeared at the Americana Music Honors show in September. He has released a series of singles this year, the latest of which is Too Late to Break Your Fall. People who bought cheese from a Schuylkill County farm are being told to discard it because it may be contaminated with listeria. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture issued the warning about Hilltop Meadow Farm brand 60-day Aged Pepper Jack Raw Milk Cheese with sell by dates of Sept. 21, 2023, and earlier. The department said testing confirmed the presence of listeria monocytogenes bacteria. The department also said two illnesses have been linked to the cheese. Hilltop Meadow Farm at 153 Martins Road, Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, voluntarily recalled the cheese that was sold in half pound, 1 pound, 2.5 pound and 5 pound sizes at their farm store and at the following locations: Meadow Run Farms, 727 Rettew Mill Road, Littitz, Lancaster County Shady Acres Farm Market, 8514 Elizabethtown Road, Elizabethtown, Lancaster County Willow Haven Farm, 7686 Herber Road, New Tripoli, Leigh County Healthy Habits Natural Market, 1120 Center Turnpike, Orwigsburg, Schuylkill County Little Leaf Natural Products, 505 S. Main St., Montrose, Susquehanna County Whole Earth Center, 360 Nassau St., Princeton, New Jersey Healthy Way, 396 S. Main St., Massena, New York Northstar Bison Store, 225 Birch Avenue, Cameron, Wisconsin The department said the cheese is labeled with the designations From A2/A2 Milk and Made from 100% Grassfed Cows Milk. Symptoms of a listeria infection include fever, muscle aches, nausea and diarrhea. Listeriosis mainly affects pregnant women, newborns, the elderly, and adults with impaired immune systems. Listeriosis in pregnant women can result in miscarriage, premature delivery, serious infection of the newborn, or stillbirth. The FDA has issued a warning to consumers about raw oysters that were illegally harvested from Connecticut recently and may be contaminated. The oysters were harvested by Seaview Fisheries on Nov. 12 and Nov. 15 and were distributed in Pennsylvania as well as Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Texas and possibly other states, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is advising consumers, restaurants and retailers not to sell or eat the oysters because they may be contaminated. Oysters harvested illegally may be contaminated with human pathogens, toxic elements or poisonous or deleterious substances and can cause illness if consumed. Oysters are filter feeders that remove and bioaccumulate bacteria and other pathogens from the water. It is not uncommon for shellfish to be consumed raw and whole. Contaminated oysters can cause illness if eaten raw, particularly in people with compromised immune systems. Oysters contaminated with pathogens may look, smell, and taste normal, the FDA said. The oysters in question, the FDA said, are marked with Seaview Fisheries LLC, CT-084-SS, AQ, and harvest location lots L466B and 466A. The oysters could cause food poisoning. The FDA said common symptoms are diarrhea, stomach pain or cramps, nausea, vomiting and fever. Symptoms may start within a few hours or may take a few days and can last for a few hours or several days. By JOSEF FEDERMAN, TIA GOLDENBERG and SAMY MAGDY, The Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza a diplomatic breakthrough that will free dozens of hostages held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory. The truce announced Wednesday raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, which was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 rampage into Israel. Now in its seventh week, the war has leveled vast swaths of Gaza, fueled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank, and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume the war after the truce and keep fighting to destroy Hamas fighting and governing abilities and secure the release of all hostages in Gaza. The cease-fire temporarily freezes both sides at a tenuous moment. Israeli troops hold much of northern Gaza and say they have dismantled tunnels and much of Hamas infrastructure there. But Israeli officials acknowledge the groups infrastructure remains intact elsewhere. Just days before the truce, Israel said it was determined to take its ground offensive into the south. That could be potentially devastating for Gazas uprooted population, most of which is squeezed into the south with nowhere to go to avoid the assault. Residents in Gaza City said the fighting intensified overnight into Wednesday, with gunfire, heavy artillery and airstrikes. Apparently they want to advance before the truce, said Nasser al-Sheikh, who is sheltering with relatives in the city. Palestinians bury people killed in the Israeli bombardment who were brought from the Shifa hospital, in a mass grave in the town of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)AP Palestinian militants continued firing rockets at Israel throughout the day, without causing casualties. A DIPLOMATIC BREAKTHROUGH The announcement of the truce capped weeks of indirect, stop-and-go negotiations to free some of the roughly 240 hostages taken by Hamas and other militants during their Oct. 7 raid. The cease-fire is to take effect at 10 a.m. local time Thursday, according to Egypts state-run Qahera TV channel. Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, helped mediate the deal between Israel and Hamas. Fifty hostages will be freed in stages, in exchange for the release of what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will let go women and children first. Israel said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed by Hamas. Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid including fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza. U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed the deal, saying Netanyahu committed to supporting an extended pause. Several nations, including Britain, France, China and Russia, also welcomed the agreement. Qatars prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israels Justice Ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible to be released, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offenses. A bridge on the border between the United States and Canada was closed Wednesday afternoon because of a vehicle explosion, according to the FBIs Buffalo Field Office. The FBI Buffalo Field Office is investigating vehicle explosion at the Rainbow Bridge, a border crossing between the U.S. and Canada in Niagara Falls, the FBI said in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. at 1:17 p.m. on Nov. 22. Ive been briefed on the incident on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls and we are closely monitoring the situation, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on X. State agencies are on site and ready to assist. The City of Niagara Falls Mayors Office also confirmed that Rainbow Bridge was closed on Facebook. The bridge, which connects the cities of Niagara Falls, U.S. and Niagara Falls, Canada, is located less than a mile from the waterfalls. Other nearby bridges, including The Peace Bridge, Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, and Whirlpool Bridge were all closed in both directions, according to WIVB-TV in Buffalo. The FBI is coordinating with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners in this investigation, the statement continued. The FBI could not offer more information as the situation is very fluid. Police in Lancaster County are asking for the publics help in finding a 69-year-old woman they say has been missing for almost a week. Nancy McDowell, of Clay Township, was last seen near the 500 block of North Duke Street in Lancaster around 12:30 p.m. Nov. 15, according to a police report. McDowell was last known to be with her husband James McKee, and may be going by the name Nancy McKee, according to police. She may be in the Lebanon or Lancaster area and was last seen driving a vehicle, but police said they had no information on it. Anyone with information about McDowells whereabouts is urged to call the Northern Lancaster County Regional Police Department at 717-733-0965 or Lancaster County dispatchers at 717-664-1180. Story by Ed Mahon of Spotlight PA Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania. Sign up for our free newsletters. Thousands of Cumberland County residents on Wednesday were asked to limit their water usage while officials ensure the local supply was not polluted during this weeks heavy rain. About 42,000 Pennsylvania American Water customers are under a mandatory water conservation order out of an abundance of caution, the company said in a Wednesday morning news release. Under the order, customers are asked to limit usage to essential purposes only, with a targeted reduction of 10%15% until further notice. The conservation order affects residents in the following municipalities: Silver Spring Township, Hampden Township, Lower Allen Township, Lemoyne, Wormleysburg, East Pennsboro Township, New Cumberland, Fairview Township, Shiremanstown, Camp Hill, and Newberry Township. The mandatory conservation order was issued following recent rains that significantly raised water levels in the Conodoguinet Creek, potentially releasing trapped oil from an upstream spill that occurred earlier this fall, American Water said in Wednesdays news release. No oil has been found in the drinking water, and Wednesdays measures are solely a precaution, American Water said. The company said production was stopped at the Silver Spring Treatment Plant as another precautionary measure, and increased at the West Shore Water Treatment Plant. American Water said the company is monitoring the situation closely and hopes to be able to lift the conservation order as soon as possible. However, a specific timeline was not provided. Updates are being provided to customers through American Waters emergency notification system. More information can also be found on the companys website. Allentown officials say they intend to file a motion of no-confidence in Mayor Matt Tuerks leadership following news that he approved the termination of a city employee who called for an investigation into claims about misconduct and discrimination at city hall this year. There has to be a vote of no-confidence at this point, Councilman Ed Zucal told lehighvalleylive.com. A no-confidence vote by city council would not remove the mayor from office, according to municipal governance law. It would just send a statement, Zucal said. The vote could happen as early as next Wednesday, he said. A spokesperson for Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk confirmed that the city did fire the citys benefits manager Karen Ocasio on Monday. The reason behind her termination was not immediately provided when requested on Tuesday. Allentown Mayor Matthew Tuerk (Donna Fisher | lehighvalleylive.com contributor, file)Donna Fisher | lehighvalleylive.com contributor As mayor, I have a duty to ensure a good working environment for all employees so that we may continue to provide high quality city services to our residents and stakeholders. I dont participate in retaliatory practices and I dont have tolerance for it either. Since these are personnel matters, we have no additional comment at this time, Tuerk said in a statement. In a statement, Zucal called Ocasios firing an act of revenge. He said Ocasio had just filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission prior to her termination. Ocasio has filed multiple complaints to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission regarding the issue, she alleged in September. She also told city council members at the time that shed been a target of prejudice and discrimination since she started her job in 2018. From personal experience I can tell you this is going on, even to the point that when I first started I was told where the manager sits is called the United States and where administration sits is called Mexico, she told council in September. Ocasio was employed by the city for five years, according to a Linkedin profile registered to her. Her resume says she began working for the city as a clerk in 2018 prior to serving as a human resources coordinator in 2020 and then as benefits manager for the city in 2022. She did not immediately respond to requests for comment by lehighvalleylive.com on Tuesday. A third party could also be called to investigate widespread claims about misconduct and prejudice across all levels of City Hall as early as next year, officials announced in October, following outcry by members of the public and other city employees. Proponents of the investigation claim city hall leaders are complicit in discriminatory behavior and perpetuate a culture of prejudice against minority employees. A letter from the Allentown NAACP chapter in July and the subsequent firing of the citys second HR director, Nadeem Eli Shahzad, have further propelled speculation about the citys practices. According to reports, Shahzad was quoted saying disagreements with Tuerk and his handling of racism allegations in city hall led to his ouster. Glenn Epps can be reached at gepps@lehighvalleylive.com or glenn_epps_on Twitter. The Derry Township School Board has asked one of its members to step down in the wake of criminal charges saying she furnished alcohol to several minors, according to WGAL. Maria Memmi, 53, of Hershey, has not responded to the request, WGAL said. Memmi and Philip DAdderio, 53, of Hershey, hosted a party on the 100 block of Java Avenue in Hershey on Oct. 28 after 10:45 p.m., according to Derry Township Police. Derry Township Police went to the party and found minors at the party drinking Busch Light, Twisted Tea and wine, they said. The Derry Township School Board previously said the school district does not have the authority to discipline a school board member because they are an elected official. Memmis term on the school board expires on Dec. 4, and she did not seek re-election, according to district officials. We would like to clarify that the incident in question involves a personal matter of the board member, which resulted in a citation by local police, the district said in a statement. PennLive could not reach district officials to confirm Memmi was asked to step down by the time of publication. PennLive could not reach Memmi for comment on the story by the time of publication. Memmi and DAdderio both face a single count of furnishing alcohol to a minor. They have been released and are ordered to return to District Judge Dominic Pelino on Jan. 16 for a preliminary hearing. By Farrah Hassen Two years ago, filmmaker Mohannad Abu Rizk asked children in Gaza about their dreams. One young girl responded, My dream is for us to stay alive and to live in peace. We have a right to stay alive. Shes one of the 2.2 million Palestinians living in the densely populated Gaza Strip under a 56-year Israeli occupation and a 16-year blockade that deprives them of food, water, electricity, and freedom of movement. International rights groups now classify this system as apartheid. Shes also one of the Palestinians Israeli officials called human animals and children of darkness as bombs fell on Gaza. Its unclear if this girl with the big, soulful brown eyes is still alive, but about half of the over 10,000 Gazans killed by the Israeli military are children. All human lives are precious. The murder of over a thousand Israelis by Hamas on October 7 was a heinous crime. Israeli families deserve justice and the safe return of their loved ones held hostage. But indiscriminately bombing and collectively punishing Palestinian civilians who are neither synonymous with Hamas nor responsible for their crimes accomplishes neither. For most Americans, thats not a controversial opinion. In a recent survey, 66 percent of Americans supported an immediate ceasefire as a step toward peace and justice for both Palestinians and Israelis. Unfortunately, our elected officials arent listening yet. Instead of backing a ceasefire, President Biden requested $14.3 billion in military assistance to Israel above the $3.8 billion taxpayers already send each year. And when a few House Democrats, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), called for a ceasefire in October, the White House press secretary didnt hold back: We believe theyre repugnant, and we believe theyre disgraceful. The GOP rhetoric has been even more repulsive. Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) compared innocent Palestinians to innocent Nazis while Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) called for Gaza to be eviscerated and turned into a parking lot. Instead of working for peace, House Republicans have focused their energies on a bad faith censure of Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress. This dehumanizing and dangerous rhetoric fuels hate crimes that have escalated against Arab and Muslim Americans since October 7 including the murder of 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadea Al-Fayoume and the attempted murder of his mother in Illinois. Recently, a Muslim student at Stanford was hospitalized after being struck by a car in a suspected hate crime. The wars reverberations can also be felt in the chilling climate of fear and repression that painfully reminds Arab Americans and Muslims like myself of the days following the 9/11 attacks. College students have faced doxxing and harassment for signing statements supporting Palestinians or criticizing the Israeli government. Others have lost job offers. But despite efforts to smear and silence them, people are standing up for basic human dignity. Tens of thousands of Americans marched in Washington, D.C. on November 4 to support a ceasefire. The movement for a ceasefire continues to grow around the country. Veteran State Department official Josh Paul resigned in protest on October 17, calling the U.S. rush to supply Israel with more arms shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse. And over 400 congressional staffers signed a statement demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Gaza is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. There is no food, water, or safety. Many experts have warned that a likely genocide is underway. The U.S. must stop funding this assault, which will only lead to the loss of more Palestinian and Israeli lives and exacerbate the rising Islamophobia and anti-semitism that have no place in our society. Our elected officials must listen to the majority of American people who are demanding peace so that Palestinians can live freely, instead of dreaming about it. Farrah Hassen, J.D., is a writer, policy analyst, and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org. By Mireille Rebeiz On Nov. 4, 2023, over 300,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to support the State of Israel in its war against Gaza. They demanded the immediate release of the hostages and spoke loudly and clearly against Hamas terrorism. The March for Israel is considered the largest pro-Israel gathering since Hamas heinous and terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, when they killed over 1,200 Israeli civilians and kidnapped over 200. Among the attendees was Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who was spotted wearing his usual hoodie and draped with the Israeli flag. This was not a surprise as Sen. Fetterman has continuously expressed his unwavering support to Israel. A few days before the rally, he was filmed laughing at American veterans getting arrested for gathering and calling for a ceasefire. People have every right to gather and speak up against terrorism or in support of ceasefire. Freedom of expression and the right to protest are as American as apple pie, and they are protected under the Constitution. However, here is why Sen. Fettermans position is disturbing: as an elected official and representative of the American people, Sen. Fetterman is supporting the practices of a foreign government, a far right-government that Israelis themselves spent this last summer protesting for its abuses of human rights, and these protests have not stopped after the Oct. 7 attacks. Sen. Fetterman is speaking in support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was accused of corruption, and he only returned to politics to avoid prosecution. He also rejected negotiations of ceasefire in exchange of hostages. Furthermore, many voices are calling for a ceasefire and expressing deep concerns over the atrocities committed in Gaza. Over 11,000 Palestinian civilians were killed by the Israeli Defense Forces, and over 4,500 are children under the age of 15. The United Nations and international lawyers are speaking of possible genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court, which received a joint request from five countries, promised to investigate alleged war crimes and genocide in the Palestinian territories. In this context, Sen. Fetterman did not pause to reconsider his position. While Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan is censored over her Israel Hamas rhetoric, Sen. Fetterman has no problem carrying the flag of a foreign state, and it is disheartening. To be clear, this is not about Israels right to exist as a state, nor about the rallies in Washington DC. This is about Sen. Fettermans failed promise to Pennsylvanians, no matter who they are. He ran for elections as one of the people. His website mentions that he dedicated his life to fighting for Pennsylvanias forgotten communities. Who are these forgotten communities? Sen. Fetterman, let me ask you this: Would you consider American Jews and American Israelis opposing the Netanyahu Governments practices as one of these communities? What about the Arab and Muslim American voices calling for ceasefire? Or would you consider us all terrorist and equate us with Hamas? What about African American voices calling for ceasefire? Are all these voices unworthy of your attention? What about Gazan children? Are they children of a lesser God, and therefore beneath you? What about American veterans calling for ceasefire? Maybe for those, you reserve the special treatment of mocking laughter. According to a recent poll, 80% of Democrats, 57% of Independent, and 56% of Republicans support ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza. Meanwhile, you remain provokingly silent on the matter. I am ashamed I ever voted for you, Sir. You are unworthy of my trust. I would like to remind you that Pennsylvania is home to the fastest growing Arab American community in the United States. I call upon them, and on every peace lover, not to vote for you in the next election. It is true that it will not be for a while, but we, Arab Americans, can hold a grudge for a long, long time. And we will remember. Mireille Rebeiz, Ph.D. is Chair of Middle East Studies and Associate Professor, Dickinson College. The opinion expressed within the content is solely her own and does not reflect the opinions or beliefs of her employer. Of the 22 million-plus immigrants legally admitted into this country between 1961 and 1997, almost 75 percent, are from multiple-citizenship-allowing countries according to the center for immigration studies. If this is the case, why should America be totally responsible for dual citizens who are taken hostage or incarcerated in another country? All are sympathetic to releasing the hostages taken by Hamas, but if any hostage retains a dual citizenship and is taken hostage in one of their countries of citizenship, then it should be that country who is responsible for freeing them. In fact, America should not assume full responsibility for freeing people of dual citizenship when taken hostage or incarcerated in hostile countries or high-risk areas. The U.S. State Department needs to issue a policy that America is not responsible for citizens who leisurely travel to countries that are on their travel advisory list. Matt Drozd, Allengheny County, Pa. By Darrin Kelly As the second largest energy producer in the United States, Pennsylvania has long seen natural gas and energy production as key parts of the commonwealths economy. More than 250,000 Pennsylvanians go to work each day in energy jobs to ensure the region has the electricity to power our businesses, heat our homes, and gas to fuel our cars. Our region has a legacy of energy production like no other our oil fields and coal mines fueled the industrial revolution, and our union workers powered the steel mills that made Pittsburgh a global hub of industrial production. These economic opportunities for working people helped folks like their families out of poverty and drove the creation of the middle class and the modern-day labor movement. Today, Western Pennsylvania remains an energy leader and our energy sector is one of our greatest strengths as we look to rebuild our industrial base and attract the jobs and industries that will help our region grow for decades to come. As our nation develops the energy sources of the future from hydrogen to nuclear Pennsylvania and its skilled workforce will continue to play a key role. As we invest in the energy sector, we have to ensure we protect union workers, their families, and our environment. Gov. Shapiro and CNX Resources, a leading natural gas producer in Pennsylvania, recently came together to do just that. While CNX continues to invest in our region and create jobs, they are also taking important steps to protect Pennsylvanians health and safety. CNX will disclose every chemical they are using in their operations so that Pennsylvanians are aware of whats being put into our environment. They are also going to conduct transparent air monitoring and post the data online for everyone to access, starting at their well pad in Washington County. CNX intends to expand this monitoring and disclosure across its opera8ons in Pennsylvania. CNX has also agreed to voluntary setbacks around places like schools and hospitals that go beyond what is currently required. Agreements like this will help to protect the health and safety of people who work and live in communities with natural gas produc8on. The Allegheny-FayeIe Labor family are not just workers, we are members of our communites. No one wants safety protocols and clean air and water around these production sites more than the people who go to work there every day and raise their families in these communities. While certain folks will tell you that we cant have common sense environmental policy and a thriving energy economy, Gov. Shapiro and I know that is a false choice. We do not need to choose between protecting good paying unions jobs in the energy sector and protecting our environment. Those two things go hand in hand here in Pennsylvania. Were glad Gov. Shapiro believes in our union workers and is finding ways to bring people together to protect lives and livelihoods. His administration is working to keep Pennsylvania an energy leader, fighing to ensure the energy industry stays in Pennsylvania and con8nues to create jobs here, while also protecting the health and safety of people in Western PA. Darrin Kelly is the president of the Allegheny/Fayette Central Labor Council. Albin Baptist Church 315 Cheyenne Ave, Albin; 246-3254; Sunday school 9:30 a.m., Sunday service 10:45 a.m .; Youth group, Sunday 5:30 p.m. Blessed Hope Baptist Church 327 S. Main St., Burns 307-547-2383 J. Nathaniel Ensley, pastor, Sunday Services: Sunday School 9:30 a.m .; Fellowship 10 a.m .; Worship 10:30 a.m .; Summer Studies (June-September) 5 p.m. Wednesday Services: Childrens AWANAs 6:45 p.m .; Teen Service 7 p.m .; Bible Study/Prayer 7 p.m. Burns Presbyterian Church 140 S. Wyoming Ave., Burns; 547-3734 Rev. Gwyn Downing, pastor Sunday worship 9 a.m .; Sunday school all ages 10:10 a.m. Carpenter United Methodist Church Rev. Gail Graves, pastor; Services are held each Sunday at 10 a.m. Crossroads Community Church 418 Pine St. 245-3534 Dan DeBruyn, pastor http://www.crossroadscommunitychurchwyo.org; Sunday school 9 a.m., Sunday service 10 a.m .; Jr./Sr. high ministry, Wednesday 6:30 p.m. Evangelical Wesleyan Church 321 W. 1st St., Burns 547-2276 Walter F. Hagemeier, pastor Sunday School 10 a.m., morning worship 11 a.m., evening service 7 p.m .; Wednesday prayer meeting 7:30 p.m. Grace English Lutheran Church Corner of 8th and Miller, Pine Bluffs 245-3390 Sunday service 10 a.m .; Bible study and Sunday School immediately following service; Bible study 10 a.m. Monday. Golden Prairie Church 4996 Road 226, Burns 307-246-3293 Sunday School 9:30 a.m., Sunday Service 10:45 a.m. Call for information on community-wide small bible study groups. Jeff Giles, Pastor. http://www.goldenprairiechurch.org Hereford Community Church Hereford, CO Rev. Carol Opdycke, pastor, Sunday service and Sunday School 11 a.m. Hillsdale United Methodist Church 4235 Hills St., Hillsdale, Sunday worship service 9 a.m. Immanuel Lutheran Church 201 Washington Ave, Burns; 1-308-235-2582 Kenneth Mars, pastor Sunday worship 8 a.m. Lighthouse Assembly of God 117 W. 5th St., Pine Bluffs 245-3822 http://www.lighthousepb.com; Norman and Rhonda Reed, pastors Sunday school 9:30 a.m .; worship service 10:30 a.m .; KITTS KLUB, Fusion Youth Ministries, and adult Bible study, Wednesday 6:30 p.m .; monthly mens and womens meetings. Pine Bluffs Heritage Center 607 Elm St., Pine Bluffs Contact Doug or Connie Merrick at 307-214-0002 or 307-631-5571 Bible study Tuesday nights 7:30 to 8:30 p.m .; non-denominational, open to all. Pine Bluffs United Methodist Church 600 Main St 307-245-3781 http://www.umcpinebluffs.org Pastor Lesley Matschke Sunday @ 8:45 a.m. - Adult Bible Study. Childrens Son-Day school 10 a.m. during Worship Service after the childrens message. Worship service @ 10 a.m. followed by coffee fellowship time @ 11 a.m. Youth group (6th grade through high school) meets the first, third and fifth Wednesday @ 6:30 p.m. Presbyterian Church of Kimball Seventh and Cedar Street 1-308-235-3044 Alan Foutz, PhD., pastor Bible study for all ages 9:30 a.m .; Worship service 10:30 a.m. St. Josephs Catholic Church Albin Father Kevin Koch Sunday Mass 8 a.m. St. Pauls Catholic Church 501 East 4th Street, Pine Bluffs 245-3761 Father Kevin Koch, pastor Daily Mass, Monday Wednesday, 8 a.m .; Friday, 10 a.m .; Saturday Vigil Mass 5 p.m .; Sunday Mass 9:30 a.m., Reconciliation Saturday 4:30 p.m. or by appointment. Faith Formation Classes 10:30 a.m., for grades Pre-K thru Grade 8 to include First Communion Preparation. St. Peters Catholic Church Carpenter Father Kevin Koch Sunday Mass 11:15 a.m. Shepherds Closet is eastern Laramie countys local communitys ongoing effort to donate, volunteer and receive. They distribute non-perishable food and clothing to anyone in need.It is located in the Burns-Plex Community Center. Hours are Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday 7:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. Questions, please call Betty 307-547-3335 or 307-630-7292. Veterans Outreach & Advocacy Program (Wyo. Dept. of Health/BHD). OEF/OIF veterans eligibility, (307) 630-3230. Zion Lutheran Church, on WCR 124, Grover Sunday service 8 a.m .; Sunday School immediately following service. We have a very young team this year with freshmen accounting for over half of it. We had a rocky start at the Western Wyoming Community College event in Rock Springs, but we made great strides and finished in the middle of the pack at the recent LCCC meet in Cheyenne. As far as small schools go, we are definitely hanging in there with the best of them. I'm also very optimistic about the future of the team. They are young, but I can tell they will be real contenders here in a couple of years. Our next meet is coming up in Thermopolis, which is a new venue on the WAC circuit, so we'll see how... Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print President Biden said that this Israel/Hamas hostage deal that his administration deserves credit for should bring home American hostages. President Biden said in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA: I welcome the deal to secure the release of hostages taken by the terrorist group Hamas during its brutal assault against Israel on October 7th. Jill and I have been keeping all those held hostage and their loved ones close to our hearts these many weeks, and I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented. I thank Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar and President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt for their critical leadership and partnership in reaching this deal. And I appreciate the commitment that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government have made in supporting an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure the provision of additional humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinian families in Gaza. I look forward to speaking with each of these leaders and staying in close contact as we work to ensure this deal is carried through in its entirety. It is important that all aspects of this deal be fully implemented. As President, I have no higher priority than ensuring the safety of Americans held hostage around the world. Thats whyfrom the earliest moments of Hamass brutal assaultmy national security team and I have worked closely with regional partners to do everything possible to secure the release of our fellow citizens. We saw the first results of that effort in late October, when two Americans were reunited with their loved ones. Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released. Todays deal is a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination of many dedicated individuals across the United States Government to bring Americans home. The Biden administration is being praised for delivering the first step in deescalating the war between Israel and Hamas. The hostage release is big, but the ability of hundreds of aid trucks to flow into Gaza during the ceasefire will save countless lives. Now that Biden has gotten the sides to take the first step toward peace, it is important to move forward and negotiate a longer pause and ceasefire. The United States has been pressuring Israel to go after Hamas in a more targeted way that would halt the killing of innocent Palestinians. The United States is trying to support Israel in its war on Hamas while also advocating to the Palestinian people and the long term peace that will come with a two state solution. The Biden administration has done a good job navigating one of the most fraught geo-political conflicts in the world. There is more to be done, but this deal is a great first step toward peace. A Special Message From PoliticusUSA 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. Aiken Elementary School held its second Turkey Trot, an incentive event meant to encourage students to donate canned goods for Golden Harvest Food Bank. According to principal Kristie Brooks, this has been a fun way to promote giving back and understanding that were very, very blessed. Tuesday's event, like last years, was planned to be full of outdoor activities until the rain came. However, Aiken Elementary staff didnt let it stop them from making the Turkey Trot a wonderful day of indoor fun. Brooks spoke about physical education teacher Shannon Erwins dedication to making the Turkey Trot fun despite the weather: She jumped in and made sure that we still had activities and fun stuff since we couldnt be outside this year. Children from all grade levels had a chance to play games in the gym. One of these was Turkey Takedown, a dodgeball-inspired game where students had to defend paper turkeys from being knocked down. Younger grades participated in a race around the gym, stopping to stick paper feathers to a board as they ran each lap. Shortly before noon, third grade classes walked through the halls showing off their paper plate balloon floats inspired by the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. Aiken Elementary student Adalya Ware shared her thoughts on the Turkey Trot: Im excited that we get to go and run around and have fun with our friends, she said. We get to run around, said another student, Camden Cooper. We get to see our friends while were doing it too. Brooks said that events like these help to solidify the schools better together mentality. As a community, were better together when we give and when we cheer on our fellow man, she said. Im super proud of everyone who came together when we knew the rain was coming to make sure we were still able to do this for our students. 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 History buffs, especially those with a fondness for engineering and railroads, have a new feature to explore on the edge of Hitchcock Woods in the form of a salute to cutting-edge technology from the early 19th century. The Inclined Plane, a major step forward in railroad development, is represented in a new, hands-on display within sight of South Boundary Avenue. It's near the newly created "gateway" to Hitchcock Woods, to the left of anyone traveling downhill toward the forest. Wooden rails from an era prior to iron rails are part of the full-size replica, as is a simulation of the engine house's foundation. The machinery in question sometimes noted as "incline plane" or "Inclined Plane at Aiken" played an essential role in Aiken's establishment. The community was known in its early days as a cotton town and then a railroad town, as noted by Howard Wayt, an electrical engineer who is also on the Friends of the Aiken Railroad Depot's board. The essential arrangement is "like a diagonal elevator," Wayt said. He noted that moving cotton from the fields to such locations as Savannah and Charleston was hugely important, and the Inclined Plane helped allow some of the South's first steam locomotives to handle elevation changes that would otherwise make movement impossible. Uphill travel was a problem due to relatively low power, and downhill movement was troublesome due to the absence of brakes. The engine house was at Highland Park and Highland Park Terrace, and "the Inclined Plane went down the hill, into what's now Hitchcock Woods," Wayt said. The Timberland High School girls basketball team returns a seasoned group for the 2023-24 campaign on the hardwood. The Lady Wolves bring back four starters from a squad that won 18 games and captured a region crown for the second year in a row in 2022-23. Read moreLady Wolves going to court with seasoned group Sunrise Cafe on Main Street cuts the ribbon "I've been where you've been," is the message Johnny Davis had for Columbia's homeless population when he opened his early morning cafe in the quiet alley off Main Street. The 69-year-old Navy veteran opened his restaurant, Sunrise Cafe, at 1801 Main St. in early June with the goals of serving hot breakfast all day and employing those in the community who didn't have a home. As cold rain drizzled from a gray sky, Davis stood inside the warm eatery next to his wife of over four decades, Yvette, and officials from the city of Columbia as he cut a bright red ribbon to celebrate his business' opening. He emphasized the importance of second chances and grace. "You got two choices: you can be bitter or better. Anybody can be bitter. But to be better, you got to think better, you got to do better. It starts up here," Davis motioned to his head as he spoke. The restaurant serves classic breakfast options like pancakes, French Toast and omelets, along with Southern lunch options like a meat-and-two plate or a burger baskets. Davis has seven employees at the cafe, five of whom don't have anywhere to live, he said. "I don't care where you came from," Davis told a crowd of reporters and attendees at the ribbon cutting ceremony. "If you want a job and you want to work, I'll hire you." The mantra is inspired by Davis' own story one of wrong choices, missteps and immense grace. Following what he said were a handful of years as a young person experiencing homelessness in Columbia, Davis was sentenced to a life sentence. He spent over a decade in prison before then-President Barack Obama commuted his sentence, along with 79 other people. Davis was released in 2018. "The thing I want everyone to know is to give somebody a chance," Davis said, adding in how much the commutation from former President Obama impacted him. After he left prison, he turned his life around. CAMDEN A proposal to annex and redevelop the 360 acres that house the historic Camden Training Center was shot down by the famously equine-centric city's Planning Commission, after hundreds descended on City Hall in protest. Residents of the Kershaw County seat praised Stuart Grant, the attorney, horse owner, breeder and philanthropist who owns the property, for his stewardship and upkeep of the thoroughbred training grounds since he purchased the land in 2004. Still, at least 200 people overflowed from the City Hall chambers on Nov. 21, a majority of them asking the Planning Commission to either delay or reject Grant's plan for an 800-home development to replace the equine facility. Considering Camden's history with steeplechase and horse racing, and the annual events such as the Carolina Cup that bring in thousands of visitors and millions of dollars, horse owner and trainer Arch Kingsley said the center is a "nucleus" for the city of just under 8,000 people. "The proposal as it exists here would represent a total betrayal of what we so proudly claim as part of Camden's identity," Kingsley said. People crowded the hallways and stairwell at Camden City Hall on Lyttleton Street, roughly 30 miles northeast of Columbia. The chambers were at capacity. Kingsley, along with more than a dozen other residents who addressed the Planning Commission directly, said the main concern with the development is that an influx of permanent residents could require more infrastructure, more schools, and could price low-income residents and small businesses out. Not everyone at the Planning Commission's meeting stood against the development, however. COLUMBIA Behind South Carolina's prison walls, murderers, child molesters and drug traffickers are supposed to be locked away, isolated from society and no longer a threat to public safety. But with cellphones, smuggled into state prisons, inmates have been able orchestrate drug-trafficking operations and plot shootings and attacks from behind bars, state officials say. In one recent disturbing case, a convicted killer allegedly used a contraband cellphone to direct a woman to molest a young child and send him the recordings, state officials say. They both are now facing life in prison. South Carolina Department of Corrections has tried to keep cellphones out of prisons. But now the focus not primarily on confiscating the cellphones, it's turning them off. SCDC Director Bryan Stirling has spent years calling on the federal government to allow states prisons to "jam" or block cellphone signals. He's found another option, but it comes with a large price tag. He is making a budget request to the General Assembly for around $32 million to install a technology at state prisons that would detect cellphone's identification number. The number is then reported to the carrier and permanently disabled. He's tried it at Lee Correctional Institution. So far, around 790 cellphones have been shut down in the prison of around 1,100 inmates. Since then, calls using the prison pay-by-minute phones have gone up 70 percent, Stirling said. "The most dangerous thing that an inmate can have is a cellphone," Stirling said. While Stirling has a plan to turn off phones, Attorney General Alan Wilson has joined his call to jam cellphones at state prisons. On Nov. 21, Wilson announced three separate and ongoing State Grand Jury investigations that led to charges against seven corrections officers and employees. The State Grand Jury worked in partnership by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, South Carolina Corrections Department and local law enforcement agencies. GREENVILLE Its been almost a year since the launch of OpenAIs ChatGPT and though not everyone is ready to accept it business partners Spencer Tate and Nemath Ahmed are embracing with open arms the transformative power of artificial intelligence. Tate and Ahmed like many members of Gen Z are disciples of the internet. When they met earlier this year, they bonded over a mutual pursuit to create a waste bin that could recognize and instruct a person on how to properly recycle. Tate, a senior at Furman University, and Ahmed, a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, settled on the idea of creating an AI-based tool that helps businesses research potential customers. Since launching in March, Tate and Ahmeds company dotflo has received significant financial backing from two angel investors and LAUNCH a fund started by internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis. A few weeks ago, Tate and Ahmed closed a pre-seed funding round with $100,000 to keep building out their software. They hope that dotflos AI-based assistant Zama can take on some of the more tedious and repetitive work involved in research, thus freeing human workers to undertake more creative tasks. The tool might also help companies in their infancy do more with fewer employees. Burnout is also something thats really common in the space of doing research, especially when its a founder-led team and there are like four or five people working on building the business out, Ahmed said. Traditionally, researching prospective customers involves searching various websites like LinkedIn, manually verifying personal information and crafting an introductory message. With a list of names and LinkedIn pages, Tate and Ahmed said Zama can do the rest. Depending on the personal information the user feeds Zama and the amount of information about a potential customer online, the tool can also craft a message that mentions a shared interest between the two parties. WALHALLA The Oconee County sheriff's deputy shot after a highway pursuit remains in the hospital after being struck in a way officials thought was "not survivable." At a recent church service for Cpl. Lucas Watts, 27, Oconee County Sheriff Mike Crenshaw commented on the severity of the deputy's wound and the road to recovery that lies ahead. Crenshaw said that Greenville County Sheriff Hobart Lewis called him and was worried the gunshot was "not survivable." Sign up for updates! Get the latest Greenville news from The Post and Courier in your inbox. Email Sign Up! "Just so you all understand the significance of this injury, I'm not talking about a grazing wound to the head," Crenshaw said. "I'm talking about a bullet to his brain." Watts was transported by ambulance from the scene in Oconee County to Greenville Memorial Hospital. His condition was too unstable to fly him, Crenshaw said. The suspect, identified as Gregory Wayne Maxwell, also remains in the hospital with at least one gunshot wound, Lt. Ryan Flood with the Greenville County Sheriff's Office told The Post and Courier. Authorities say that after Maxwell shot Watts, Maxwell drove away and then got out of his car at his home near Catfish Hill on Black Bass Road in Oconee County. Maxwell allegedly then began to shoot at deputies with a rifle, arrest warrants show. Deputies then shot Maxwell at least once, Flood said. Maxwell was charged Nov. 17 with five counts of attempted murder and one count of possession of a weapon during a violent crime, arrest warrants show. Once Maxwell is released from the hospital, he will be formally arraigned, Flood said. Four Oconee deputies are on paid administrative duty (non-patrol) pending an internal review, which could be completed as soon as next week, Crenshaw said. The Greenville County Sheriff's Office is investigating the incident at the request of the State Law Enforcement Division in order to determine if there was any criminal wrongdoing by the deputies involved, Flood said. SLED typically investigates officer-involved shootings, but because of an unidentified familial conflict in the investigation, the Greenville County Sheriff's Office said they were asked to investigate. 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 Kingstree, SC (29556) Today Cloudy this morning. A few showers developing during the afternoon. High 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Showers early, then cloudy overnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%. At the recent Migration Institute of Australia conference in Sydney, the Department of Home Affairs shed light on significant changes within Australias migration program, with an emphasis on improving the skilled migration system. The Department presented insights into the programs overhaul as the existing program was deemed not fit for purpose due to unclear objectives and inefficiencies in attracting highly skilled migrants and facilitating business access to workers. Before the end of this year, we should see the transition period from a subclass 482 visa to permanent residency reduce from three years to two, allowing all occupations to transition to permanent residency, and making amendments to the age exemptions. Additionally, the removal of the two-visa limit for short-term occupations is set to provide more flexibility within the system. The Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT) is another significant change with the increase from $53,900 to $70,000 that started on 1 July 2023, marking the first TSMIT rise since 2013. Major changes proposed to improve Australias migration system The Federal Governments draft Migration Strategy outlines a once in a generation reform of Australias current migration program. This comes after a review that found the current program not fit for purpose. While some changes commenced in July 2023, it may take some time before we see any significant change. This year, the Government undertook consultation with state and territory governments and key stakeholders on the outline of the Migration Strategy and critical policy shifts, with the final strategy to be released later this year. For employers, some of the proposals outlined in the Migration Strategy include doing away with outdated and inflexible occupation lists and providing a fast, simple pathway for specialised, highly skilled workers. It also allows employers to pay large visa costs monthly rather than upfront and broadens the program to encompass skills at all levels. Although its too early to predict what the new migration program will look like, it is pleasing to see a thorough review with consultation being undertaken. Protecting Australias migrant workforce With up to one in six recent migrants being paid less than the statutory minimum wage, the Federal Government has responded to what it calls a crisis of exploitation by introducing several legislative reforms to better protect visa holders working in Australia. Key changes include harsher penalties and potential jail time for employers who try to take advantage of their migrant workers. The measures announced by the Federal Government follow the recommendations contained in the 2019 Report of the Migrant Workers Taskforce headed by Australian economist, Professor Allan Fels. The report followed revelations of significant wage underpayments and poor working conditions in certain industry sectors, with particular focus on temporary migrants. Although 7-Eleven was at the forefront of media attention following the discovery of systemic underpayments in their franchises, the report revealed that the problem is widespread. On 5 June 2023, Minister ONeil, along with Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke and Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles jointly flagged key legislative changes to the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). These changes encompass criminalising the act of pressuring individuals to violate their visa conditions and prohibiting businesses from further hiring people on temporary visas where they have exploited migrants via the introduction of prohibition notices. Changes will also increase penalties and compliance tools to deter exploitation and repeal section 235, making it an offence for a non-citizen to contravene conditions of their visa and was perceived to discourage reporting exploitative behaviour. Protections for visa holders The Government has committed to working with unions, industry, and key stakeholders to introduce future reforms, including strengthening the existing assurance protocol to protect visa holders who go to the Fair Work Ombudsman for assistance. It is also piloting a new whistleblower visa to allow migrant workers to stay in Australia while they pursue an exploitation claim. Allowing visa holders up to 180 days to find a new employer sponsor is a further reform set to ease the pressure faced by exploited workers to continue working in poor conditions. The Government will allocate $50 million in extra funding to the Australian Border Force to enforce these changes using new compliance tools yet to be introduced. Existing financial sanctions will also be increased, and in some cases tripled. The Government has also committed to strengthen the firewall between the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Department of Home Affairs to encourage whistleblowing and protect visa holders who report employer exploitation. As the reforms roll out, businesses that engage visa holders will need to pay close attention, considering the possibility of being banned from future hiring if found guilty of exploiting migrant workers. Individuals who deal with visa holders, including management, human resource staff and legal advisors, should familiarise themselves with their obligations and the introduction of criminal sanctions for those found to have coerced workers into breaching their visa conditions. By Rebecca Macmillan, Migration Practice Director at Holding Redlich Disclaimer The information in this article is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavour to provide accurate and timely information, we do not guarantee that the information in this article is accurate at the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Charleston officials have approved an annual bonus for all city employees. City Council unanimously approved $3.75 million in bonuses at their Nov. 14 meeting. The funds already were part of the annual budget, meant to pay salaries for various positions that have remained vacant this year, according to Chloe Field, assistant director of communications. After taxes, full-time employees will get $1,200, while part-time employees will get $600. Field said the council doesn't often give city employees bonuses using the budget funds. She said staff received a bonus in 2021 from American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds due to COVID-19, and every now and then employees who are on the city's healthcare plan will receive a bonus if the city has saved money from the healthcare budget. In 2022, City Council passed two rounds of bonuses for employees, as well as approving a pay raise to help with retention. Police and fire workers received a 12 percent raise, and all other employees got a 13.3 percent raise. Its helped so far, according to Field. The turnover rate for the City of Charleston in 2022 was 17.39 percent. Field said the projection for 2023s turnover rate is 12 percent. The bonuses will be paid this week. Paige Marie Postell was drunk and high when she crossed the centerline of Toogoodoo Road, hitting Francene Gibbs head-on, according to 9th Circuit Assistant Solicitor Timothy Finch. Gibbs died in the July 16 crash just after dawn near her Hollywood home. She was 60. Postell was 17 at the time but has since turned 18. Circuit Court Judge Deadra Jefferson denied the teenager's request for bond on Nov. 20. Her blood alcohol content was .099, just over the state's legal limit, Finch said at a Charleston County Circuit Court bond hearing last week. She also tested positive for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. While any marijuana use in South Carolina is illegal, states where it is legal have set impairment limits ranging from 2 to 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood. Postell had 6.2 nanograms of THC in her system, Finch told the judge. Finch said Postell was with friends and her cousin the night before the crash. They had gone to Edisto Beach to watch the sunrise. On her drive home, she struck Gibbs' Ford sedan at 65 mph. The speed limit on the highway is 55 mph, Finch said. Postell and the three passengers in her Chevrolet sedan were all injured and taken a hospital, according to the Charleston County Sheriff's Office, which investigated the collision. Postell turned herself in to deputies on Aug. 25, more than a month later. She was charged with felony DUI resulting in death. She has no criminal history. Postell appeared in court Nov. 14 in a wheelchair, which shes been confined to since the crash. Her attorney, Michael O'Connell, said she's had three surgeries on her arm, right leg and ankle to fix fractures she suffered in the impact. He said she's struggled to get the follow-up care and physical therapy she needs because she's in jail. The Charleston County Sheriff's Office fired one of its own following an investigation into an Oct. 21 vehicle pursuit that ended with the deputy assaulting someone, according to a document provided by the department. James Henry "Hank" Carter III was dismissed Nov. 9, more than two weeks after the incident. The sheriff's office described the assault as a "serious policy violation" in a letter of termination. "Your actions warrant immediate termination for egregious conduct regardless of subsequent additional policy violations," the letter read. Carter declined to comment when reached by phone. He referred the reporter to his attorneys, Andy Savage and Joseph Cannarella of the Savage Law Firm, who provided a statement on Carter's behalf: "Carter has always been a serious, no non-sense, law enforcement officer committed to protecting our community." Following a high-speed chase that topped 100 mph, Carter tried to subdue the driver, who had fled on foot, his attorneys said. "No weapons or other law enforcement devices were used by Carter to gain control and the suspect did not sustain any injury," the statement read. Body-worn camera footage confirmed the former deputy's involvement, which was reported to the Office of Professional Standards on Nov. 8 according to the termination letter. Carter was fired the next day "based on the level of disrepute brought upon the Charleston County Sheriff's Office," the letter continued. The sheriff's office was unable to provide an incident report or use-of-force report from the Oct. 21 episode because of staffing shortages for the upcoming holiday. The State Law Enforcement Division was requested to investigate the use-of-force allegations against Carter. The investigation is active and ongoing, according to SLED spokeswoman Renee Wunderlich. As of Nov. 22, Carter's law enforcement certification was still active, according to the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, which certifies all offers in the state. A man accused of holding a 19-year-old woman against her will in his downtown Charleston apartment, restraining her to his bed and sexually assaulting her is now facing additional charges after another victim came forward. Walter Clayton Pate III was arrested July 13 after a woman reported a sexual assault once she arrived at the Medical University of South Carolina, according to 9th Circuit Assistant Solicitor Mallory Haliena. He faces charges of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping in that case. On Nov. 20, the 27-year-old Marine veteran was also charged with voyeurism and attempted murder after a woman told police he'd taped their sexual encounters without her consent and then strangled her when she discovered the secret stash of videos. On Nov. 21, Pate appeared in Charleston County Circuit Court to ask for bond. Judge Bentley Price heard from prosecuting and defense attorneys but withheld ruling on the bond request. "Clayton enjoys hurting people," one of the women told Price during the hearing. The Post and Courier does not identify victims of sexual assault. Pate's attorney Gil Gatch, who serves in the state's legislature as a House representative, told the court Pate had consensual sexual relationships with both women, and the allegations were the result of a "misunderstanding." "I don't think any of them are true," Gatch said of the charges. Though he conceded that his client filmed the women having sex without their consent. The newest charges stem from an encounter in March, according to Haliena. Pate was threatening to release the sex tapes, the solicitor said. They argued, and Pate, who was intoxicated, punched her and strangled her several times, Haliena and the victim said in court. When Pate's roommate, who witnessed the assault, attempted to step in, he was also struck, according to a letter Haliena read aloud in court. The roommate and the woman from the alleged March assault then took Pate to the hospital because they thought he was having a medical emergency, Haliena said. HAMPTON Lawmakers have asked Gov. Henry McMaster to order an investigation into Hampton Countys precarious financial situation, saying county government is too broke to hire someone to find out how millions of dollars vanished from its coffers. Members of the Hampton County legislative delegation told the governor in a letter dated Nov. 15 they were exceedingly concerned about the countys financial situation. They cited pleas for help from concerned residents, increasingly dire warnings from county leaders and recent reporting by The Post and Couriers Uncovered initiative about the countys struggle to determine what happened to its money. The county has acknowledged misspending at least $3.1 million from a penny-per-dollar sales tax intended for construction projects and $1.5 million from a fund restricted to fire expenses. Its former finance director said the money appeared to cover everyday expenses, papering over mounting deficits. But no one can say for sure how the funds were spent. There appears to be a lot more to this issue than misspent funds. However, the county has no resources to determine culpability, wrote state Rep. Bill Hager and Sens. Margie Bright Matthews and Brad Hutto. The trouble is that South Carolina subjects its local governments to minimal oversight, Uncovered previously reported. The states watchdog agencies say they dont have the jurisdiction to investigate counties and municipalities. And while the state employs forensic accountants for law enforcement, they only deal with suspected criminal acts. The South Carolina Department of Corrections failed for years to follow the state law requiring it to write annual inspection reports of county detention centers and send those reports to county officials responsible for jail oversight. Under a long-standing policy implemented by Blake Taylor, former compliance, standards and inspections division director, inspectors resorted to "verbal reports" to local officials unless a written report was requested, according to SCDC Spokeswoman Chrysti Shain. The agency then lost or forgot about certain records to the point that, in some cases, Corrections officials believed inspection reports had not been written. And in May, a former Corrections employee filed a complaint with the state Office of Inspector General alleging that Taylor had deliberately stonewalled the agency staff when they asked for documents that had been requested under the states Freedom of Information Act law. Taylor denied trying to prevent staff access to records and attributed the problem to the documents not existing. Shain said after The Post and Courier began asking about missing inspection reports, agency staff began a search for lost records. There were significant organizational issues in the records room of the Division of Compliance, Standards and Inspections, Shain said in an email. Some records were not filed properly, and some were thought not to be available. Because of your inquiry, our staff did a deep dive into the records room and began digitizing many years of records. Taylor attributed the problems to a lack of administrative support in the inspections office and admitted that some records were not organized and filed. "Not all paperwork created and received was being handled efficiently and professionally," Taylor said in an email. "That could and should have been done better. Other agency staff came in recently to help organize historical documents in preparation for digitization which will make the office function more smoothly in the future." Those who think the study of history is a purely academic exercise largely miss the point. Yes, learning more about our past makes us smarter and may even entertain us, but it does more than that. It provides context and gives us a better sense of where we are today. Read moreEditorial: There are lessons to learn from Charleston's own tea 'party' The Access Group has recently unveiled a significant initiative, earmarking $100,000 in Small Business Software Grants for ten carefully selected businesses. Alongside this generous financial support, the company is also offering complimentary software health checks to all entrants, aimed at diagnosing and addressing software-related challenges faced by businesses. Against the backdrop of a concerning trend in business failure rates, with 58.5% of small businesses succumbing between June 2019 and June 2023 according to the ABS, and substantial annual software expenditures totaling $38 billion for these organizations, Access recognizes the pivotal role software plays in organizational success. This trend is set to persist, with Gartner predicting a 7.8% growth in IT spending in Australia in 2024. Kerry Agiasotis, Access APAC President, emphasizes the companys commitment to supporting businesses grappling with technological change and rising operational costs. As a global software provider with over 30 years of experience and a customer base exceeding 60,000, Access aims to make a tangible impact by providing ten grants of $10,000 each to small businesses in Australia and New Zealand. This initiative goes beyond the typical promotional offerings, providing real and lasting value to bolster the survival rates of businesses crucial to the nations economy. Access is not only extending financial support but is also offering a free software health check to every business that applies, addressing issues such as cash flow challenges, slow growth, escalating costs, and other operational hurdles. Access Groups comprehensive software solutions cater to diverse industries and job functions, spanning warehouses, restaurants, healthcare providers, accountants, recruiters, payroll professionals, not-for-profit organizations, and construction firms. Beyond financial aid, Access is committed to assisting businesses in diagnosing and resolving their most pressing issues through this holistic approach. With 81% of Access software products priced under $10,000 annually, the grants are poised to make a tangible difference, covering the cost of software for three years in 42% of cases. The initiative is not a short-term fix or momentary promotion but a strategic opportunity for businesses to streamline their systems and proactively navigate the challenges anticipated in 2024. Mr. Agiasotis emphasizes that the grants are not exclusive to new customers, showcasing a commitment to equitable support for both existing and new clients. This initiative reflects Access Groups dedication to empowering businesses with the tools they need to enhance productivity, ensure profitability, and weather the challenges of the evolving business landscape. THE DETAILS The grants are open to any Australian or New Zealand business with a turnover of $10 million or less. To enter, businesses need to complete this form. They will then be contacted by an Access software expert relevant to their industry and needs, within 10 days. Every business that submits an application will receive a free software health check. 10 businesses will receive a $10,000 grant, redeemable on suitable Access software. For full terms and conditions, visit the campaign page. For more information on The Access Group Great Software Giveaway, visit: https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-au/campaigns/small-business-software-grants/ Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. MULLINS Marion County residents will have more access to colorectal cancer care and screening at MUSC Health Marion Medical Center. The medical center is set to get new, state-of-the-art screening technology and a nurse navigator to help patients ensure they can get screened or treated for colorectal cancer. A $500,000 grant from the Marion County Healthcare Foundation will fund the medical centers additions. "Rural health care is getting harder, not easier," said MUSC's Florence Division CEO Jay Hinesley. "Having the foundation support us in this way is great for the patients. It's great for the community." MUSC and Marion County Healthcare Foundation leaders hope the new technology and nurse navigator will help close gaps in the region. The key to treating colorectal cancer is screening and early detection, MUSC Health Marion Executive Director Shametra Myers said in a press release. Unfortunately, 37.5 percent of all cancers in Marion County are diagnosed in the late stage, Myers said. Thats a huge problem that this grant will help us address. Colorectal cancer disproportionately affects the Black community with a 20 percent higher chance of being diagnosed and a 40 percent higher chance of death, according to the American Cancer Society. Marion Countys population is 56.2 percent Black or African American, according to census data. We hope that this program can really help reduce incidences, Pete Mazzaroni, Marion County Healthcare Foundation executive director, said. Get people earlier in diagnostics and then get them navigated to the treatment that they need. MUSC Health will work with Health Care Partners of South Carolina to stress the importance of screening and early detection of colorectal cancer to the Marion County community. The new nurse navigator is expected to help streamline colorectal care in the area. Patients can run into issues that keep them from getting screened or treated for colorectal cancer, Rami Zebian, MUSC Health Marion Medical Center chief medical officer, said in a press release. A nurse navigator will help patients with childcare, insurance, scheduling and other issues. The Kennedys may well be the most photographed, written about, talked about, admired, hated, and controversial family in American history. But for all the words and pictures, the real story was not told until Peter Collier and David Horowitz spent years researching archives and interviewing both family members and hundreds of people close to the Kennedys, reads the Encounter Books profile of The Kennedys: An American Drama, first published in 1984. A wonderful hater-of-Kennedys guide, wrote P.J. ORourke in The American Spectator, an assemblage of ugly facts and rude anecdotes about this large and dirty family. It is not, of course, a complete collection. Deforestation of North America would be needed to print a book that size. But it will suffice. Here, for those who have forgotten or just love to hear it all again, is the fulsome scurvy truth: Old Joseph P. Kennedy was a liar and a greedy thief, an ignoramus, adulterer, vile anti-Semite, coward and pompous ass. His wife Rose was a frigid martinet, unashamed to suckle at the teat of shabby lucre, awash in pietism and tartuffery, filled with the letter of Catholicism and empty of its spirit. They raised their nine whelps in an atmosphere of brutal pride and stupid competition. And so on, but the story did not end there. Peter Collier happened onto materials from Lem Billings, a schoolmate and sidekick of John F. Kennedy, and those became the basis for Things in Glocca Morra, a biographical novel in Billings voice. A beautiful work of art, tender and witty, splendidly written, with richly and sensitively drawn characters, a keen moral compass, and, in its later chapters, an almost unbearable feeling of suspense, writes Bruce Bawer. It is at once a biographical novel that paints a credible picture of the young Jack, imagining how he might have come to be the man he was, for good and for ill. Things in Glocca Morra is also a whodunit, raising questions about the real stories behind two horrible deaths, one of them Jacks, on November 22, 1963. Collier and Horowitz teamed up on The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty and The Fords: An American Epic. In 1998, Horowitz authored Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, mandatory reading for anybody who wants to understand the left. In 2012, Peter Collier authored Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick, the first and only biography of President Reagans UN Ambassador, the Democrat who charged that the San Francisco Democrats always blame America first. Things in Glocca Morra, was released in 2020, a year after Peter Collier passed away at the age of 80. Full disclosure: This writer worked with Peter Collier on Heterodoxy, the forerunner to Frontpage Magazine. In 2015, Collier wrote the foreword to Bill of Writes: Dispatches from the Political Correctness Battlefield, which includes several essays from Heterodoxy. An agreement between Israel and the government of Gaza for a partial hostage release apparently is about to be finalized. The details are not yet clear, but it looks something like this: Various reports of the deal have indicated that somewhere between 50 and 100 Israeli and foreign hostages would be released, in exchange for a five-day break in fighting and the release of somewhere between 150 and 300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Reports over the past week have said that Israel was demanding the release of all the children held in Gaza and their mothers as a condition. *** Between 50 and 100 Israeli civilian and foreign hostages would be released, but no military personnel, and in exchange, some 300 Palestinians would be freed from Israeli jails, among them women and minors, according to sources cited by AFP. The agreement is expected to be approved by Israels cabinet, although [t]wo far-right parties were set to vote against the deal. In this case, count me with the far right. I dont like the deal for three reasons. 1) A five-day break in the fighting will help Hamas to regroup, and take the pressure off the terrorists, at least temporarily. My preference would be for Israel to pursue total victory relentlessly and without interruption. 2) Reportedly, three times as many terrorists are to be released as Israelis. Why? If there is to be an exchange, why shouldnt it be one for one? 3) The terrorists imprisoned in Israel have been convicted of crimes, while the Israelis held hostage by Hamas are innocent people who were snatched in a criminal raid. Where is the equivalency? Hostages should be released unconditionally. Historically, taking hostages has paid off for the Gazans. Exchanges like this one will continue that tradition and encourage more hostage-taking, as with the 2011 deal to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, thought to be the mastermind of the October 7 massacre in exchange for captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. The Israelis find themselves in a war of annihilation, and in my opinion, they should get on with it, making October 7 the last timeeverthat Palestinians dream of taking hostages. Richard Landes is the medieval historian and author, most recently, of Can The Whole World Be Wrong?: Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad. He taught at Boston University. His excellent site is The Augean Stables. He posts here on X/Twitter, where he specifies his areas of interest Medieval historian, apocalyptic thought, blog on lethal journalism & other follies of 21C intelligentsia as well as his preferred pronouns thou, thee. He has a lot to say to thee (and me). Landes gave the phenomenon of Pallywood its name. He was the foremost expositor of The Muhammad Al-Dura Blood Libel: A Case Analysis. Meeting him in the summer of 2007 when I visited Israel as a guest of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations was a highlight of the trip for me. Wherever host Fern Oppenheim knocked on the door, the door opened. The internet magazine White Rose has now published Landess long essay Jihadi journalism. It takes up the report by HonestReporting on the AP and Reuters photographers who appear to have gone along for the ride with Hamas to document the October 7 massacre in Israel. Landes reviews the evidence. He places it in the appropriate context. He takes a scholarly if biting approach to the subject. His essay is long and difficult to excerpt. You more or less have to let Landes develop the case. At one point Landes quotes a Jordanian editor: Fake news has a long and distinguished pedigree in the Arab world. Landes comments: And when, on rare occasions, self-censorship fails and Muslims begin to publicly criticize Muslims, an honor-brigade steps in to save Muslim face. Western journalists, who depend on these media-men, who trust them and have no reason to doubt them, thus pump unfiltered (enemy) war propaganda into the public sphere. Landes of course takes up the performance of the mainstream media in the matter of Israels supposed attack on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City (links omitted): We were all witnesses to the power of this alliance between post-fact narrative journalism and pre-fact, propaganda journalism. The consequences were and continue to be devastating on a global scale. On October 17, 2023, just before 7 P.M., an explosion occurred in the parking lot of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City. The explosion, by military standards, was minimal, and the fire ball that followed, though briefly impressive, only burned a half dozen cars, with structural damage to three. The hospital had some windows blown out by the blast, but remained intact. Informed estimates put the death toll at a high of 50, and probably fewer. (The only two photos showing multiple bodies have around 20.) The most impressive one in the courtyard of the hospital is surrounded by people with no sign of further bodies anywhere. Hamas decided to play this one for all its worth. They claimed that an Israeli airstrike bombed the hospital itself in a horrific and criminal attack. With thousands crowded around the hospital seeking safety from the savage Israeli bombing, it led to over 500 of them being killed, and the death count would probably rise as bodies were dug out from the rubble. What proof did they offer for these claims? Pictures of hundreds of bodies? Pictures of the destroyed hospital and the workers digging victims from the rubble? Pictures of the giant crater and the belongings of the thousands of people who had taken shelter there? Shrapnel and other fragments of the missile that struck? Nothing of the sort. The fragments had mysteriously vanished from the site, making it impossible to assess its provenance, according to the New York Times. Actually, not impossible at all. The removal of the shrapnel from their own rockets is a standard Hamas operating procedure in cases of shortfall, a tell-tale proof of provenance. Instead, what the stations showed was a medley of short, jerky, un-focused pictures of bodies being removed in the chaotic darkness. Its not clear whether this is how the footage came, orin time-honored Pallywood styleCNNs editors strung together the most striking sight-bytes to give the impression of a massive catastrophe. CNNs reporters certainly were convinced, referring repeatedly to the horrific images, warning that the pictures viewers were about to see were horrendous sickening heart-wrenching graphic scenes of utter destruction. And yet, these actual shots that CNN used over and over to illustrate their claims, they dont add up to much at all. Looked at dispassionately, these photos offer no evidence for any of Hamas accusationsnothing showing damage to the hospital, nothing indicating the presence of hundreds of deaths, or thousands of people gathered there to seek shelter, no picture of the huge crater caused by the massive blast that killed so many. And yet, so mesmerized were the entire pack of CNN journalists, that for the next 17 hours (at least) hours after the IDF had presented the evidence to themCNN played the same medley of videos, each time with a somber warning, each time accompanying the narratives about a horrific catastrophe that had killed hundreds, with a rising toll expected as bodies are pulled from the rubble. Over and again CNN recited the tale (for which they had no photographic evidence) that the ceiling of the hospitals operating room caved in during surgery. So convinced were these shrewd journalists of the massive nature of the blast, that when the Israelis claimed it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rocket, the response was incredulity: that is a lot of damage for one rocket. Clarissa Ward, claiming expertise based on her experience, but reading from Hamas talking points, expressed doubts about Israels case: I will say, based on seeing these rocket attacks, that they dont usually have an impact like that in terms of the size of the blast, the number of the death toll. Narrative over evidence. Read the whole thing along with its many links here. Short answer: No. The idea of free speech is that it is a means toward the main end of securing all of our natural rights by promoting political deliberation, and promoting the search for truth. I argued in the latest podcast that it is perfectly reasonable to shut down Students for Justice in Palestine chapters on college campuses purely on the grounds that they abuse the principle of free speech because their success as a movement would end the right of free speech for Jews (not to mention end the lives of Jews). Any SJP support for Hamas is a secondary question. A lot of listeners disagreed, and they may well be right that it may not be wise or necessary to shut down SJP speech. But the principle matters, and the logic of this principle is seldom better expressed than by David Lowenthal in his 1998 book No Liberty for License: The Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment: The most recent threats to ordered liberty come less from communists than from the Nazis, Aryan Nation, militias, and the Klan, freed by the Court to mount efforts at dismantling our constitutional system. Today the public as a whole, and blacks and Jews in particular, seem shorn of legal protection prior to the commission of crimes against them. For it has become clear from the events of the late 1960s and early 1970s that the clear and present danger rule is in fact no rule at all, no protection against groups that seek to strip others of their rights. Government inaction during that violent decade reveals that under the clean and present danger rule it will refrain from taking preventive measures and will deal with acts of law-breaking only after they occur. Citizens may therefore find themselves asking whether our founding fathers, known for their prescience and realism, meant the First Amendment to protect those who would use freedom for the destruction of freedom. Was this keystone of the Bill of Rights really intended to guarantee the freedom of expression and organization to the enemies of freedom? . . . Some will protest that the First Amendment guarantees freedom even to those who would destroy freedom, that is guarantees freedom to those who would counsel, urge, or even incite to the violation of the law. Such cannot be the case if the First Amendment is intended, above all, as an instrument of republican government, a way of ensuring that the national government is responsive to citizens, so that their rights may be kept secure. Only if it can be shown that a Nazi or Communist or Black Panther Party or a Ku Klux Klan contributes to republican ends can a case be made through the First Amendment for permitting it legal status. Otherwise, such groups are all legally and prudently shorn of this status from the outset, and not only without violating any part of the Constitution, but in keeping with its positive injunctions. Chaser: Applications are now open, and four companies will be selected for the first round of the new Cremorne Digital Hub (CDH) Scaleup Program. Addressing the ecosystems growing pains which threaten to drive Australias next generation of tech unicorns offshore, Cremorne Digital Hubs Scaleup Program powered by Boab aims to fuel the next level of digital investment and innovation growth locally. Australias ability to nurture fledgling startups has improved significantly with the Victorian startup ecosystem alone jumping from $50 billion to $91 billion in the last three years. Yet, support for rapidly scaling companies is well behind other countries such as the US. Australias scaleup funding gap is set to reach $53 billion by 2030 according to the Tech Council of Australia, plus local scaleups face challenges when it comes to talent, infrastructure and regulation. CDH is a Victorian Government-backed innovation hub helping to grow the states digital capabilities and innovation. Its new CDH Scaleup Program is supporting fast-growing local tech companies to supercharge Victorias track record in building global tech companies, says Partner Engagement & Activation Lead Julie Stevens. We are already great at nurturing early stage startups but need to make it attractive to find success and build jobs locally rather than watching them fly away, Stevens says. Its those growing pains around issues like funding, talent and support that can leave scaleups feeling that they have no choice but to look elsewhere. Minister for Jobs and Industry, Natalie Hutchins says More and more we are seeing tech companies with roots in Victoria growing to become industry leaders. The Cremorne Digital Hub Scaleup Program will help even more local tech companies to become well-known global tech brands. Rather than offering a structured formalised program, the CDH Scaleup Program will tailor its assistance according to the needs of individual scaleups, in areas such as business development, talent acquisition, operations and access to the wider tech community. Director of Cremorne Digital Hub, Matthew Clunies-Ross adds all companies in scale up mode have different challenges and require the most time and cost-effective solutions to meet those challenges. The CDH scale up model identifies each companys critical needs and delivers bespoke services. Melbournes Cremorne is already home to many of Australias top tech companies including Carsales.com, REA, Seek and MYOB, representing more than $40 billion of tech market value. Cremorne Digital Hubs shareholders include Carsales.com and Artesian, along with Melbourne, RMIT and La Trobe universities. Along with helping Australian scaleups establish local and international connections, Cremorne Digital Hub also aspires to attract foreign scaleups to our shores, Stevens says. The CDH Scaleup Program will help scaleups establish more solid foundations on which to build a successful international business, she says. Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 14:16:18 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 1093 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Duke EnergyMarsha Smith's role? To support the smart grid efforts in Indiana, technology that helps ensure reliable power for customersAt 29, U.S. Army veteran Marsha Smith hung up her uniform to pursue another goal: to become an electrical engineer. With support from her husband, family and the GI Bill, she enrolled in classes at American Military University.Then Smith learned she was pregnant. It was a lot to take on at once - juggling schoolwork, motherhood, a household and a job, but she was determined to persevere."When we had our daughter, Harley, I questioned if now was the best time to do this," she said. "But I needed an education to attain my goal of becoming an engineer. So, I took it a day at a time." Smith graduated in 2022, with both practical experience and a job offer at Duke Energy in Plainfield, Ind., where she interned in college.She found a natural fit in Grid Management, where she works today, alongside other engineers who implement smart technology that helps ensure customers have power when and where they need it.The smart grid can reroute service around problems, reducing the likelihood a customer is impacted by an outage. This self-healing technology helped avoid more than 1.4 million outages in 2022, saving over 7.2 million hours of customer outage time across the six states Duke Energy serves.From engineers who operate power plants to lineworkers who connect customers to the grid, Duke Energy employs nearly 2,400 military veterans, Director of Talent Acquisition and Workforce Development Ron Wages said."They help make us better," said Wages, who inspires his team of recruiters to work with military organizations as they seek skilled workers with diverse backgrounds and experiences to lead the company to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050."Veterans understand the importance of safety, adherence to process and procedure and exhibit an inherent active caring for the team member next to them," Wages said. "This is the foundation of providing safe, reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy." Smith, a former battle captain in the Army's tactical communications network, knows the importance of reliable service.She offered air support to service members in the Middle East as they maneuvered through Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and the country of Bahrain, east of Saudi Arabia."Sharing intelligence data is critical to successful missions on the battlefield," she said. "That's not possible without the ability to communicate." After her deployment to Afghanistan for Operation Enduring Freedom, Smith served two tours in South Korea, one spent protecting the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea."Meeting so many diverse people of other backgrounds, nationalities and ethnicities taught me to adapt, to understand people's unique needs and how best they receive information," Smith said. "There's also that camaraderie factor. You support your team when they need help." Her colleague, electrical engineer Gary Fry, joked that Smith's ability to bring the team together is rare among engineers."We have an eclectic group," Fry said. "And some of us are what I like to call pencil heads,' meaning we're more technically minded than we are social. Marsha's got an attention to detail, while also being energetic and bubbly, so her being adept at both helps keep our group engaged." An engaged workforce fuels success, said Rick Grant, vice president of grid operations at Duke Energy. In the same way veterans are supported by an employee resource group called Together We Stand, which aims to ease the transition to civilian life, the company offers support to team members like Smith who come in through internships and co-ops.These programs help the company make more informed hiring decisions, while students glean insights into what it would be like to work at Duke Energy."An interview is a two-way street," Grant said. "In the same way our teams are evaluating if someone is a good fit, the students get to see behind the curtain. They meet other engineers, work with them on projects and learn new skills while experiencing what our culture is like - the intangibles you don't get by researching a company on the internet. That's as attractive as anything we have to offer." As an intern, Smith took the opportunity to listen and ask questions. She viewed it as a bunch of small windows to show people that she could be an asset to the team.Mike Simms noticed. As manager of grid management in the Midwest, he recruits engineers."We've hired a lot of talented engineers from that program, including three of the eight engineers on my team," Simms said. "They've all done well, and in learning and developing new skills, they've earned promotions to higher roles in Grid Management. And other engineering groups hire, too. It's been an excellent feeder pool for full-time hiring." In addition to Smith's work on the smart grid in Indiana, she provides day-to-day operations support for Duke Energy's Distribution Control Center, where a team of about 90 people communicates with customers and technicians in the field."We assist the DCC by investigating equipment failures or researching customer issues, fixing what we can remotely or ensuring the right team gets out there," Smith said. "It really suits my personality." Her passion for the work began as a high schooler in the Four Corners of New Mexico. Smith's dad was a construction manager at an energy company who worked with other engineers. She had an interest in electronics, how parts come together to make something work.Smith's role as an electrical engineer is a blend of both integrated project management and system interface functionality. That's not to say it was easy, she said, reflecting on societal expectations that urged her to embrace a different path."The women in my family haven't explored a degree in something as technical as electrical engineering. Many were stay-at-home moms," Smith said. "So, there's a natural inclination to question if I can be both a great mom and a successful engineer. I realize now that my journey has been to challenge my own mentality. Because at one point, I thought I'd never get here." View original content here.View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Duke Energy on 3 blmedia.com Contact Info:Spokesperson: Duke EnergyWebsite: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/duke-energyEmail: info@3 blmedia.com SOURCE: Duke Energy PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 16:40:35 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 633 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 All Traffic Solutions' ATS Gives Back program helped law enforcement combat speeding and strengthen community safety with the donation of radar speed signs that collect traffic data.CHANTILLY, VA / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Since the inception of the All Traffic Solutions' ATS Gives Back program, 55 data-collecting radar speed signs were given to 54 law enforcement agencies. These donations contributed to the reduction in speeding, improved resource allocation, an increase in community safety, and public engagement. The success of the ATS Gives Back program is a testament to ATS' commitment to supporting the growing challenges that face local police departments. The donations demonstrate their dedication to enhancing safety outcomes and community well-being.ATS radar signs collect traffic data through TraffiCloud, ATS' patented portal for remote equipment management and ready-made reports. This solution has proven effective in responding to and resolving complaints related to speeding. Agencies such as Camden County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina, Milford Borough Police Department in Pennsylvania, and Selma Police Department in Texas have experienced remarkable success, noting a 25 to 50 percent reduction in speeding after deploying their signs. Speed reduction creates safer environments for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists alike. According to Chief Of Police Matthew McCormack, "[the donated ATS radar speed sign] has helped to slow traffic in the areas it has been deployed, plus the data helps identify problem times and areas." Since the deployment of their signs, agencies have embraced change in their traffic management processes. With the capability to collect actionable traffic data and access ready-made reports, officers can prioritize enforcement and optimize resource allocation. Lieutenant Brandon Henderson of Camden County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina, said, "We are able to deploy deputies in specific areas during specific times based on data provided by the signs. This has aided in reducing manpower drains".Sharing traffic data has created a wave of proactive measures among agencies utilizing ATS' TraffiCloud remote equipment management portal. In addition to being able to use collected data to identify legitimate speeding problems, police departments can share their ready-made reports with their community. Camden County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina has fostered "community understanding of [their] efforts and validity of complaints", allowing residents to witness the tangible impact of ongoing traffic safety efforts. Furthermore, Police Chief Rick Beighley of Quarryville Borough Police Department in Pennsylvania, shared that gathering data led to "an agreement to install speed humps on a certain roadway." The result is a collaborative and informed approach to traffic management that addresses real issues and enhances overall community safety.Learn more about the ATS Gives Back program and apply by visiting the All Traffic Solutions website.All Traffic Solutions' ATS Gives Back recipients with their donated data-collecting radar speed signs.About ATS Gives BackIn 2020, All Traffic Solutions launched the ATS Gives Back program to show their gratitude for law enforcement and their dedication to helping those in need. With this program, All Traffic Solutions has committed to donating 1 radar speed sign each month to small police departments around the country that lack the necessary budget and do not qualify for grants. ATS Gives Back recipients also receive a subscription to TraffiCloud, All Traffic Solutions' patented portal for remote equipment management and access to ready-made reports.About All Traffic SolutionsAll Traffic Solutions (ATS) was founded in 2000 and is a leading provider of traffic safety and messaging solutions. All Traffic Solutions helps law enforcement agencies and municipalities use radar speed displays, portable variable message signs, and patented TraffiCloud remote management software to calm traffic, share time-critical alerts, collect traffic data, and improve safety outcomes while maximizing budget and resources. ATS products are known for their durability, portability, and ease of use. For more information, visit https://www.alltrafficsolutions.com Contact:Celeste Moroncmoron@ alltrafficsolutions.com SOURCE: All Traffic Solutions PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 18:46:10 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 977 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION (IN WHOLE OR IN PART) IN, INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE SUCH RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION.FRANKFURT, GERMANY / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Atlantic BidCo GmbH ("Atlantic BidCo" or the "Bidder") has secured more than 95% of the shares in Aareal Bank AG ("Aareal Bank") and plans to initiate a squeeze-out of the remaining minority shareholders to acquire all remaining shares of Aareal Bank. The management board of Aareal Bank has been informed of this intention by Atlantic BidCo.Atlantic BidCo as of November 22, 2023 holds approx. 90.71% of the shares in Aareal Bank. According to the current status (today 2pm), the public delisting tender offer (the "Delisting Offer") by Atlantic BidCo to the shareholders of Aareal Bank has been accepted for approx. 4.31% of the shares in Aareal Bank. The acceptance period for the Delisting Offer expired at midnight (CET) on November 21, 2023. The final results will be published on November 24, 2023. The completion of the Delisting Offer is expected to take place on December 8, 2023.After the completion of the Delisting Offer and thus having reached the stake of 95% of the share capital of Aareal Bank, Atlantic BidCo will request pursuant to section 327a para. 1 sentence 1 of the German Stock Corporation Act that Aareal Bank's shareholder meeting resolves to transfer the shares of the minority shareholders of Aareal Bank to Atlantic BidCo as the majority shareholder against payment of an appropriate cash compensation. The amount of the cash compensation will be determined at a later date.Atlantic BidCo is a non-controlled company indirectly held by funds which are respectively advised, managed or controlled by Advent International, L.P. ("Advent"), and Centerbridge Partners, L.P. ("Centerbridge"), and CPP Investment Board Europe S.a r.l., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board ("CPP Investments"), as well as other minority shareholders.The revocation of admission of the Aareal Bank shares to trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange became effective upon the expiry of the acceptance period of the Delisting Offer. Thus, the last trading day of the Aareal Bank shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange was November 21, 2023.Media Contacts of the BidderOlaf Zapke, FGS Global, Tel +49 170 764 1971, olaf.zapke@fgsglobal.com Julia Caspers, FGS Global, Tel +49 151 16 23 15 45, julia.caspers@fgsglobal.com Roland Klein, Kekst CNC, Tel +44 7776 162 997, roland.klein@kekstcnc.com Isabel Henninger, Kekst CNC, Tel +49 174 940 9955, isabel.henninger@kekstcnc.com Information about Shareholders of the BidderAbout Advent InternationalFounded in 1984, Advent International is one of the largest and most experienced global private equity investors. The firm has invested in over 415 private equity investments across 42 countries, and as of June 30, 2023, had EUR 85 billion in assets under management. With 15 offices in 12 countries, Advent has established a globally integrated team of over 295 private equity investment professionals across Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on investments in five core sectors, including business and financial services; technology; health care; industrial; and retail, consumer and leisure. For over 35 years, Advent has been dedicated to international investing and remains committed to partnering with management teams to deliver sustained revenue and earnings growth for its portfolio companies.Advent has a well-established track record in the European financial services sector with growth investments in leading payment companies like Nexi, Nets and Concardis Payment Group (both now part of Nexi), Worldpay, Planet and Addiko, an international banking group focusing on Southeastern Europe. The investment in Aareal Bank follows Advent's acquisition of a 30% stake in Aareon in 2020, the leading pan-European provider of innovative software solutions for the real estate sector, and a subsidiary of Aareal Bank. Advent's approach is to provide significant support to management teams by assisting with operating resources and expertise from its Portfolio Support Group and third-party Operating Partner program.For more information, visit:Website: http://www.adventinternational.comLinkedIn: About CenterbridgeCenterbridge Partners, L.P. is a private investment management firm employing a flexible approach across investment disciplines - private equity, private credit and real estate - in an effort to develop the most attractive opportunities for investors. The Firm was founded in 2005 and as of June 30, 2023 has approximately USD 36 billion in capital under management with offices in New York and London. Centerbridge is dedicated to partnering with world-class management teams across targeted industry sectors and geographies.Centerbridge has a strong track record investing in financial services and real estate in Europe, with investments including BFF Banking Group, which is listed on the Milan Stock Exchange; Williams & Glyn in partnership with RBS; auxmoney GmbH, the German digital credit platform; and Phoenix Holdings, listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, amongst others. Globally, Centerbridge has invested over USD 20 billion in financial services and over USD 9 billion in real estate.For more information, please visit www.centerbridge.com About CPP InvestmentsCanada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Fund in the best interest of the more than 21 million contributors and beneficiaries of the Canada Pension Plan. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, investments are made around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure and fixed income. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm's length from governments. At September 30, 2023, the Fund totalled C$576 billion. For more information, please visit www.cppinvestments.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.___Important NoticeThis publication is for information purposes only and neither constitutes an invitation to sell, nor an offer to purchase, securities of Aareal Bank. The offer document published by Atlantic BidCo after approval by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundes PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 15:51:23 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 617 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 The Ambassador Hotel houses 134 residents, serves as critical affordable housingNORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / U.S. BankThe Ambassador Hotel was built in 1911 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. (Photo by Toolbox Video Services)Originally published on U.S. Bank company blogThe historic Ambassador Hotel has played a role in San Francisco's history for 112 years, including serving as an informal hospice during the 1980s and 1990s AIDS crisis, and housing low-income individuals today.Time along with wear and tear left the building in need of a comprehensive rehab, and San Francisco's Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp., which acquired the Ambassador in 1999, is in the midst of a such a rehab project, which includes funding from U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance.Impact Finance invested $67 million in Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) and provided a $71 million construction loan. It instituted a financial structure involving LIHTCS that included tax exempt and taxable construction financing."The Ambassador Hotel holds a rich and cherished history in the heart of San Francisco, particularly among the Tenderloin community," said TNDC CEO Maurilio Leon. "During the 1980's and 1990s, it served as a vital sanctuary for numerous AIDS patients, extending compassion and support to those who were without the means to care for themselves or connect with support networks. In the early 2000s, TNDC assumed the stewardship of this historic place, and today, in 2023, we take great pride in continuing its enduring legacy by preserving affordable housing for our community." Constructed in 1911 and on the National Register of Historic Places, the Ambassador Hotel is a six-story building with 134 single-room apartments that include full bathrooms and kitchenettes. The property houses very low-income individuals with an area median income between 30-60%.Located on the corner of Eddy and Mason Streets, the Ambassador's rehab included a mega structural upgrade featuring structural steel plus life safety upgrades, code upgrades and replacement of building systems."At a time when other financial partners hesitated to move forward with an investment due to the complexities, we leaned in," said Lisa Gutierrez, director of business development, affordable housing, for Impact Finance. "We've specialized in complex developments like this for over 30 years. The coordination to get to the finish line was intense, from understanding the relocation plan of this vulnerable resident population to aligning with the many public funding sources and rental subsidies, all while managing the building rehabilitation needs of this historic building." In addition to this financing, since 2005, the U.S. Bank Foundation has provided $225,000 in grant and corporate contribution funding to TNDC.The project is expected to be completed in 2024, and Ambassador residents said they are excited about the changes."I really like the new modern features at the Ambassador - especially the additional cabinet space in my room," said one resident."I enjoyed returning to my newly rehabbed unit. Everything is so new and works well," said another."I especially like the outdoor furniture on the Ambassador's courtyard patio," another resident said. "I'm planning to do my schoolwork out there at one of the new tables." Over nearly 30 years, Impact Finance has provided $1.25 billion in debt and almost $800 million in equity within San Francisco's larger five-county metropolitan statistical area.Gutierrez said the bank's motivation to be involved in the Ambassador project is the investment's high impact."We're investors with heart," she said, "and our primary goal is to create lasting change in our communities." View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from U.S. Bank on 3 blmedia.com Contact Info:Spokesperson: U.S. BankWebsite: https://www.3blmedia.com/profiles/us-bankEmail: info@3 blmedia.com SOURCE: U.S. Bank PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 19:05:11 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 430 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC a nationally recognized law firm, notifies investors that a class action lawsuit has been filed against FMC Corp. ("FMC" or "the Company") (NYSE:FMC) and certain of its officers.Class Definition:This lawsuit seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws on behalf of all persons and entities that purchased or otherwise acquired FMC securities between November 2, 2022 and October 20, 2023, inclusive (the "Class Period"). Such investors are encouraged to join this case by visiting the firm's site: bgandg.com/fmc Case Details:The complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements and failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, it is alleged that Defendants failed to disclose to investors that: (1) the diminishment of patent protection for FMC's flagship products following legal defeats in key markets including India, China, and Brazil had opened the door to increased competition from generics; (2) the Company repeatedly mislead investors about the status of such proceedings and falsely claimed that it did not and would not face generic competition in key markets until 2026 at the earliest; and (3) because of these issues Defendant's positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.What's Next?A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to review a copy of the Complaint, you can visit the firm's site: bgandg.com/fmc or you may contact Peretz Bronstein, Esq. or his Law Clerk and Client Relations Manager, Yael Nathanson of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC at 332-239-2660. If you suffered a loss in FMC you have until January 8, 2024, to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff.There is No Cost to YouWe represent investors in class actions on a contingency fee basis. That means we will ask the court to reimburse us for out-of-pocket expenses and attorneys' fees, usually a percentage of the total recovery, only if we are successful.Why Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman:Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC is a nationally recognized firm that represents investors in securities fraud class actions and shareholder derivative suits. Our firm has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors nationwide.Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.CONTACT:Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLCPeretz Bronstein or Yael Nathanson332-239-2660 | info@ bgandg.com SOURCE: Bronstein, Gewirtz and Grossman, LLC PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 18:15:37 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 504 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 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/MPW Contact An Attorney Now: MPW@ hbsslaw.com 844-916-0895Medical 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 PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 04:45:22 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 544 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 Nuvo Capital Partners Successfully Closes Inaugural Fund, Strategically Acquiring Off-Market Multifamily AssetsPONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL / ACCESSWIRE / November 21, 2023 / Nuvo Capital Partners, an innovative private equity real estate firm, announced the close of its premiere seed capital fund. Co-founded in August by a trio of industry visionaries - Stuart Keller, Lenny Pisano, and Brian Underdahl - Nuvo has swiftly carved a niche in the Southeastern U.S. real estate market, leveraging deep-rooted connections, and tapping into exclusive off-market multifamily assets primarily across Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.Brian Underdahl (Left), Lenny Pisano (Center), Stuart Keller (Right) The initial funding round marks a significant milestone, fueling the firm's strategic initiatives and bolstering their market presence. Nuvo is poised to cultivate a dynamic portfolio of strategic alliances with family offices and institutional investors, granting exclusive entry into prime off-market investments.At the heart of Nuvo's philosophy is a commitment to value creation that transcends traditional investment strategies. "Nuvo" - an acronym for 'Never Underestimate Valuing Others' - encapsulates their ethos of prioritizing the human element within the real estate matrix.In a notable departure from industry norms, Nuvo Capital Partners introduces an altruistic dimension to its business model. The firm's strategic fund is designed to revitalize multifamily properties facing financial challenges, providing essential support to syndicators confronting the threat of foreclosure. In a groundbreaking display of corporate stewardship, Nuvo directs a portion of its own prospective profits back to the initial investors (LPs) who have encountered losses, reaffirming its dedication to equitable returns and bolstering community resilience. This innovative approach not only rescues properties from financial demise but also ensures the return of capital to initial investors (LPs), showcasing Nuvo's dedication to ethical reinvestment and community support.In addition to ethical investment practices, Nuvo has another mission. Stuart Keller, the CEO of Nuvo, in partnership with the Special Operators Transition Foundation (a non-profit organization committed to helping Special Operations Forces (SOF) veterans transition from the military into their next successful career), embarks on a mission to facilitate seamless transitions for SOF veterans into the civilian workforce. Keller's vision is dual-faceted: "We aim to harness our expertise in multifamily property investments to make a tangible difference in local communities, while also imparting real estate acumen to empower individuals to elevate their personal and community well-being".With a goal to amass a portfolio exceeding $1 billion of distressed multifamily real estate by Q2 2025, Nuvo predominantly targets burgeoning Southeastern markets. The leadership, drawing from a profound history of over $600 million in multifamily transactions, is on the lookout for passionate professionals to join their ranks, as they embark on realizing their niche-focused investment strategies.About Nuvo Capital PartnersNuvo Capital Partners is a real estate private equity firm that specializes in off-market multifamily assets within the thriving Southeast market. As a dedicated General Partner, our team's experience has yielded over $650 million in transactions, culminating in 14 dispositions and 10 full-cycle deals. Committed to transparency, Nuvo offers its investors a clear window into quality real estate opportunities, underpinned by our unwavering integrity. Our investor relations are fortified through meticulous monthly, quarterly, and annual reporting, ensuring our partners are well-informed and engaged.Media DetailsWebsite URL: https://nuvocapitalpartners.com/Company Name: Nuvo Capital PartnersEmail Address: info@ nuvocapitalpartners.com SOURCE: Nuvo Capital Partners PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 12:00:31 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 1025 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / PJX Resources Inc. ("PJX" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the closing of the previously announced (see November 14 and November 21, 2023 press releases), and oversubscribed, non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") of 21,610,038 units through the issuance of 13,816,422 Flow Through Units at a price of $0.105 per Flow Through Unit and 7,793,616 Non-flow Through Units ("Unit") at a price of $0.09 per Unit for total proceeds of $2,152,150.Each Flow-through Unit consists of one common share to be issued as a "flow-through share" within the meaning of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the "Flow-through Shares") and one common share purchase warrant. Each Unit consists of one common share and one common share purchase warrant. Each warrant, whether acquired as part of a Flow-through Unit or Unit, entitles the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.20 for 24 months following completion of the Offering.Subject to TSXV Exchange approval, Finders' fees of $30,337.20 cash and 291,709 Finders' Warrants will be paid in relation to the completion of the Offering. The Finders Warrants will entitle the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.20 for 24 months following completion of the Offering.The securities issuable in connection with this Offering will be subject to a hold period in Canada which will run for four months from the date of the closing of the Offering.John Keating, President of PJX commented: "The strength in demand for this financing reflects the significance of what we recently discovered. Our discovery of boulders with Sullivan deposit style and grade of mineralization may be the most compelling evidence of the potential to discover another Sullivan type deposit in 130 years since the Sullivan was discovered in 1892. (see news releases Oct 12 and Nov 14)."Additional analyses are pending. These results will be compiled with recent mapping, prospecting, and other data to prepare maps with geological cross sections for presentation in January. PJX plans to commence drilling as soon as the snow recedes which is expected to occur in late Spring, 2024.The completion of the Offering may constitute a related party transaction within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101") as certain insiders of the company participated in the Offering. The Company is relying on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 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 offering by insiders did not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of the company, as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company also made the Offering available to subscribers who receive suitability advice from a registered investment dealer in accordance with applicable prospectus exemptions in certain Canadian jurisdictions. The Company confirms that there is no material fact or material change about the Company that has not been generally disclosed.The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering for expenditures on its properties located in Cranbrook, British Columbia, and for general working capital. The gross proceeds from the issuance of the Flow-through Shares shall be used to fund exploration expenditures on the Cranbrook Properties, with a focus towards exploration on the Dewdney Trail Property. Flow through units will qualify as Canadian exploration expenses (as defined in the "Income Tax Act (Canada)").The Offering has received conditional approval from the TSXV Exchange.About PJX Resources Inc.PJX is a mineral exploration company focused on building shareholder value and community opportunity through the exploration and development of mineral resources with a focus on gold, silver, and critical metals including copper, zinc, cobalt, cadmium, indium, and others. PJX's primary properties are road accessible, close to power, rail, and located in the historical mining area of Cranbrook and Kimberley, British Columbia. Please refer to our web site http://www.pjxresources.com for additional information.FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:Linda Brennan, Chief Financial Officer (416) 799-9205info@ pjxresources.com Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking InformationCertain statements in this news release, referred to herein as "forward-looking statements", constitute "forward-looking statements" under the provisions of Canadian provincial securities laws. These statements can be identified by the use of words such as "expected", "may", "will" or similar terms.Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of factors and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by PJX Resources Inc. as of the date of such statements, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, known and unknown, could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Except as otherwise required by law, PJX Resources Inc. expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in PJX Resources Inc.'s expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.Cautionary Note to US Investors:This news release may contain information about adjacent properties on which PJX Resources Inc. has no right to explore or mine. We advise U.S. investors that the SEC's mining guidelines strictly prohibit information of this type in documents filed with the SEC. U.S. investors are cautioned that mineral deposits on adjacent properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on our properties. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.This press release may use the terms "Measured", "Indicated", and "Inferred" resources. United States investors are advised that while such terms are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize them. "Inferred Mineral R PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 15:52:07 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 508 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 November 22, 2023, marks the 60th Anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. To reexamine this historic event, renowned host and author Paul Brandus is collaborating with Evergreen Podcasts to transform his new book, Countdown To Dallas, into an accompanying podcast.CLEVELAND, OH / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Today marks the 60th Anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. To reexamine this historic event, renowned host and author Paul Brandus is collaborating with Evergreen Podcasts to transform his new book, Countdown To Dallas, into an accompanying podcast. Paul Brandus is a veteran member of the White House press corps and a presidential historian.John F. Kennedy and Wife Jaqueline Kennedy November 22, 1963, Dallas, TX In Countdown To Dallas, Brandus seamlessly weaves together insights gleaned from FBI files, quotes sourced from the assailant's wife and family members, notes from Soviet officials, photographs, weapon receipts, interviews conducted by the Warren Commission, and a wealth of additional materials. This comprehensive approach plunges listeners into the years, days, hours, and minutes leading up to the tragic assassination of President Kennedy. Both the podcast and book focus on the troubled and broken life of Kennedy's killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and challenge six decades' worth of conspiracy theories-none of which have been proven."We were immediately captivated by the prospect of collaborating with Paul Brandus on such a historically significant project," expresses Gerardo Orlando, Chief Content Officer at Evergreen Podcasts. "Brandus is a meticulous, thorough, and honest storyteller, and Countdown To Dallas stands as yet another stellar example of his narrative acumen." The premiere episode of the Countdown to Dallas podcast series, "Episode One - what Happened in Dealey Plaza?", explores the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Host Paul Brandus explains the need for a fresh perspective on the assassination. Brandus highlights the release of new government documents and promises to analyze these documents in future episodes. He also discusses the importance of understanding overlooked aspects such as presidential security, the influence of conspiracy theories, and the Warren Commission's role in investigating the assassination.Episodes of Countdown To Dallas are available now on Evergreen's website, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you find podcasts.The book, Countdown To Dallas by Paul Brandus is out now in bookstores. Also, pick up Paul's best-seller, Jackie -- a colorful biography of Jacqueline Kennedy in the years between her two marriages -- and listen to its companion podcast, From First Lady to Jackie O.For more about how false information turns our world inside out, listen to Paul's podcast, Disinformation.Connect with Paul on Twitter/X at WestWingReport or via his LinkedIn profile.Press inquiries: If you'd like to interview Paul Brandus, contact Samantha Maloy at Evergreen Podcasts.About Evergreen PodcastsEvergreen Podcasts is an established podcast production network with a catalog of entertaining and thought-provoking shows rooted in high production quality and artistic integrity. With a diverse range of podcasts, Evergreen Podcasts connects listeners with engaging content that informs, entertains, and inspires. For more information, visit evergreenpodcasts.com Contact InformationSamantha Maloy Director of Marketing smaloy@ evergreenpodcasts.com SOURCE: Evergreen Podcasts PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 15:02:38 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 605 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 HOUSTON, TX / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / SEIDOR, a global technology consulting firm with a significant presence in 45 countries, announces the appointment of Rodolpho Cardenuto as the new CEO of SEIDOR in the United States. With an illustrious career spanning 26 years, including leadership roles at SAP Americas, Mr. Cardenuto is poised to lead SEIDOR in making the United States its largest global market within the next five years.New SEIDOR US CEO SEIDOR has a comprehensive service portfolio, anchored by strategic partnerships with the main world industry giants like SAP, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Currently backed by 8,500 professionals and yielding an annual revenue of $833 million, the company is actively fortifying its presence in the U.S. market. With ambitious goals to quintuple sales, expand its workforce to 1,000 employees, and triple its client base within three years, SEIDOR is unifying its U.S. operations under the name 'SEIDOR North America,' a move designed to streamline operations for heightened efficiency and market synergy.In his role as CEO of SEIDOR North America, Mr. Cardenuto emphasizes the commitment to responsiveness in meeting the digital transformation needs of U.S. customers. SEIDOR stands out as the primary SAP partner worldwide in terms of the number of clients, boasting Platinum Partner status and being a founding member of the United Vars global alliance.The company houses an internal team of 5,000 specialized SAP consultants. As a member of the United Vars, it taps into a widespread network of 10,000 SAP consultants worldwide.Key strategic focus areas in the U.S.SEIDOR directs its efforts on two key strategic areas to simplify and streamline processes for its customers in the U.S. market. Firstly, to accelerate the transition of companies to advanced SAP S/4HANA technology from their legacy systems, such as SAP ECC. And secondly, to carry out the implementation of SAP S/4HANA Public Edition solutions.Mr. Cardenuto's vision extends beyond the U.S. market, positioning SEIDOR for international growth, including expansion into Canada. Under his leadership, SEIDOR aims to strengthen collaboration with SAP, offering cutting-edge solutions in the highly competitive technology market.Josep Benito, SEIDOR's global CEO, emphasizes the importance of reinforcing the company's presence in the U.S., stating, "Strengthening our presence in the world's leading technology market is fundamental, as we are committed to SEIDOR playing a relevant role in the U.S. business ecosystem." On his part, Mr. Cardenuto highlights "our commitment to being more responsive to our U.S. customers' digital transformation needs." He also mentions "SEIDOR's readiness to support customers with operations both inside and outside the U.S., serving as their operational partner in North America." SEIDOR's excellence is underscored by numerous SAP awards, including the prestigious SAP Pinnacle Award won nine times. The firm's commitment to innovation and digital transformation aligns with its global vision, with the U.S. market playing a pivotal role.About SEIDORSEIDOR is a global technology consulting firm that offers a comprehensive portfolio of solutions and services in innovation, customer experience, ERP, analytics, employee experience, cloud, workplace, and cybersecurity. Among its solutions, SEIDOR stands out as a Platinum partner of SAP and offers a comprehensive portfolio of its solutions in the North American market.With revenue of $833 million in 2022 and a workforce of over 8,500 highly qualified professionals, SEIDOR has a direct presence in 45 countries across Europe, Latin America, the United States, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The consultancy firm is a partner of leading technology companies. SEIDOR has an extensive presence in the United States, with its headquarters located in Houston.Contact InformationMiles Beard Digital Marketing Specialist miles.beard@seidor.com SOURCE: SEIDOR North America The Australian government has ushered in changes to the Privacy Act that will have a profound impact on the approximately 2.3 million small businesses operating across the country. Previously, businesses with an annual turnover of $3 million or less were exempt from the Act, meaning they had no obligation to keep personal information secure or to notify affected people if there was a data breach. Small businesses will now have to comply with a raft of obligations previously reserved for big businesses, including seeking informed consent, increased accountability for information handling, and rules around destroying data when its no longer needed. This means every business needs to ensure their privacy policies are watertight. Here are three key ways the new rules could impact your business. A need for government support in training Many small businesses may lack the expertise and knowledge to navigate the complexities of the new privacy landscape. While the government is very clear on the rules themselves, its not quite so clear on how small businesses can adhere to these privacy principles particularly for those businesses still in the process of digital transformation. Small businesses need accessible resources, training, and best practices to ensure they understand and effectively implement the required changes without incurring excessive costs or risking non-compliance. Because if the likes of Optus, Medicare and Latitude cant get it right then, how are small businesses going to know where to turn? The governments focus on enforcement should be complemented by robust education and advisory support. Similar to the ATOs approach, there needs to be a proactive effort to educate and assist small businesses in implementing best practices. Compliance costs Compliance costs could represent a serious challenge for businesses that need to invest in restructuring their processes, systems, and workforce to align with the new privacy obligations. Its not just about ticking a few boxes. Small businesses may need to allocate resources for training programs to make sure that employees understand and stick to the new privacy obligations. Set aside time and resources to educate staff on the intricacies of the revised regulations, and work that into your plan whether its the direct cost of training materials or the indirect costs associated with time spent away from regular duties. Legal consequences and penalties The removal of the exemption for small businesses means they are now subject to the same privacy obligations as larger enterprises. Failure to comply with the Privacy Act could lead to legal consequences and penalties, so its important to get on top of things as soon as possible. Engaging legal professionals who specialise in privacy law is a great way to ensure that youre interpreting and implementing the regulations accurately this will, of course, incur costs. However, the cost of a short-term legal advisor may far outweigh the cost of fines and legal action should you encounter a security breach or are found to be contravening the regulations. Although it might seem like an inconvenience, the revised rules are designed with a clear purpose: to strengthen privacy measures, particularly when it comes to how small businesses handle their customers personal information. This can only be a good thing, and small businesses should use the changes as a chance to review and improve their processes as soon as possible. A focus on privacy is equally beneficial for your businesss bottom line and your customers security: in fact, the two can and should go hand in hand. Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 16:31:02 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 602 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC a nationally recognized law firm, notifies investors that a class action lawsuit has been filed against SC Health Corporation ("SC Health" or "the Company") (NYSE:SCPE; NYSE: SCPE.WS; NYSE: SCPE.U) and Rockley Photonics Holdings Limited ("Rockley" or "the company") (NYSE: RKLY; NYSE: RKLY.WS) and certain of its officers.Class Definition:This lawsuit seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws on behalf of all persons and entities that purchased or otherwise acquired SC Health and Rockley securities: (1) directly in the March 2021 private investment in public equity of Rockley shares (the "PIPE Offering") conducted in connection with the merger of SC Health and Rockley (the "Merger"); or (ii) between March 19, 2021 and January 23, 2023, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). Such investors are encouraged to join this case by visiting the firm's site: bgandg.com/scpe Case Details:The complaint alleges that defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Rockley's joint venture agreement ("JV Agreement") with Hengtong Rockley Technology Co., Ltd. was in jeopardy because Jiangsu Hengtong Optic-Electric Co., Ltd. ("Hengtong"), Rockley's joint venture partner, had acquired a majority interest in a company, Huawei Marine Networks Co., Ltd. ("Huawei Marine") (later renamed HMN Tech), on the banned entities list maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Department of Commerce since 2019; (ii) the JV Agreement was in further jeopardy because in February 2021 the World Bank had invalidated a bid by Huawei Marine to build an undersea optical cable based on security concerns raised by the United States and other countries that China could use the infrastructure to spy on communications; (iii) the materially undisclosed risk that the JV Agreement could fail as a result of Hengtong's acquisition of a majority interest in HMN Tech jeopardized Rockley's joint venture revenues, launch schedule, business prospects, and ultimately Rockley's solvency; (iv) Rockley did not have the customer base or customer commitments that defendants had represented to investors; and (v) Rockley did not have sufficient customer orders to allow it to develop and commercialize products, maintain and expand client relationships, reach cash flow break-even, or stave off bankruptcy following the Merger.What's Next?A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to review a copy of the Complaint, you can visit the firm's site: bgandg.com/scpe or you may contact Peretz Bronstein, Esq. or his Law Clerk and Client Relations Manager, Yael Nathanson of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC at 332-239-2660. If you suffered a loss in SC Health you have until January 8, 2024, to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff.There is No Cost to YouWe represent investors in class actions on a contingency fee basis. That means we will ask the court to reimburse us for out-of-pocket expenses and attorneys' fees, usually a percentage of the total recovery, only if we are successful.Why Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman:Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC is a nationally recognized firm that represents investors in securities fraud class actions and shareholder derivative suits. Our firm has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors nationwide.Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.CONTACT:Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLCPeretz Bronstein or Yael Nathanson332-239-2660 | info@ bgandg.com SOURCE: Bronstein, Gewirtz and Grossman, LLC PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 15:30:54 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 1019 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 BEDFORD, NS / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Silver Spruce Resources, Inc. ("Silver Spruce" or the "Company") (TSXV:SSE) along with its partner Colibri Resource Corp. ( TSX.V:CBI)(OTC:CRUCF) ("Colibri") are pleased to announce jointly the discovery of new Gold-Silver showings on the Diamante property which include assays to 3.52 g/t Au and 197 g/t Ag from outcrop grab samples.Sporadic surface exploration since 2011 has resulted in several surface showings comprised of epithermal precious and base metal mineralization (Au-Ag+/-Cu-Pb-Zn) (Figure 1). Recent exploration at Diamante has been focused on Diamante II and includes property wide geological mapping, evaluation and sampling of historical showings, collection and analyses of 49 steam sediment samples, and assay of 60 outcrop samples.Highlights of the 2023 work to date is the discovery of new mineralized showings in the southern and northern parts of the concession. Assays of 3.52 g/t Au and 121 g/t Ag from one showing and assays of 0.122 g/t Au and 197 g/t Ag from a second showing are on the southern part of the property in the area of Calton and Southern target areas which incudes a past sample of 39.8 /t Au and 109 g/t Ag. In the northern part of the Diamante II concession, samples returning assays of .818 g/t Au (5.07 g/t Ag) and 0.749 g/t Au (2.13 g/t Ag) are located approximately 250 metres northwest of the historical Mezquite-Raizudo showing which includes a sample which returned an assay of 5.64 g/t Au. A component of the field work completed to date has been geological mapping and evaluation of historical showings. Confirmation of the historical showings includes a sample which returned an assay of 3.34 g/t Au and 20 g/t Ag from the Calton target area.Ian McGavney, President & CEO of Colibri commented: We are very pleased with these new results which significantly expands the footprint of known mineralization on the Diamante II concession. We will be continuing this early stage exploration approach and anticipate that our further geological mapping, prospecting, and continued evaluation of historical showings will provide the structural and alteration framework in which to interpret the extensive epithermal mineralization system evident on the property. We are also modeling, evaluating, and interpreting work previously completed, including the 2022 drilling, with the objective of prioritizing drill targets for a second drill program planned for early 2024.The Diamante property is comprised of the Diamante I and Diamante II concessions which contain numerous historical artisanal and small scale mining sites. Colibri and Silver Spruce commenced exploration on the Diamante property during 2021 and during 2022. Colibri, as operator, and Silver Spruce completed the first-ever drill program on the Diamante property at the prioritized El Pillado and La Prieta targets located on Diamante I.Highlighted results included 2.48 grams per tonne ("g/t") Au and 56.7 g/t Ag over an intersection length of 9.0 metres ("m") from La Prieta and 0.26 g/t Au and 184.5 g/t Ag over an intersection length of 6.0 m from El Pillado. In addition, both target areas exhibited highly anomalous levels of base metals in highlighted drill assay intervals.Figure 1 - Rock Sampling Map, Assay Highlights and Target Areas on Diamante IIAbout the Diamante PropertyThe Diamante Property is located within a belt of epithermal Au-Ag mineralization hosted by the Sierra Madre Occidental Volcanic Complex (Figure 2). Major gold mining operations in the area of the Diamante property include Alamos Golds' Los Mulatos Mine as wells as Agnico Eagles' El India and Pinos Altos Mines. The Diamante project is located approximately 12km km northeast of Minera Alamos' Santana Au development project (Figure 2) which is anticipated to commence commercial production within the next quarter. The Property is located approximately 170 km southeast of Sonora state capital Hermosillo and approximately 10 km northwest of the town of Tepoca. The property is accessed directly from Sonora state Highway 16.The 1,057-hectare Diamante Property is located adjacent to the Company's Jackie property (Figure 3) which covers 1,130 hectares. The Diamante property hosts a number of historical showings (Figures 1, 3 and 4) and combined with mineralization on the Jackie property exhibit the geological characteristics of epithermal low to intermediate sulfidation Ag-Au (Pb-Zn), high sulfidation Au-Cu, and potential transition zones within and peripheral to porphyry style Au-Cu mineralization.Figure 2. Regional Map of Sierra Madre Occidental Deposits showing Silver Spruce property locations.Figure 3. Sonora claim packages including Silver Spruce /Colibri's Diamante I and II and Jackie, and Colibri's El Mezquite, showing property-wide gold assays from rock sampling programs.Figure 4. Diamante I - Surface Gold Samples and Target AreasAu equivalents presented in this news release were calculated using metal prices of US$1660 per ounce Au, US$18.65 per ounce Ag, US$1.32 per pound Zn, and US$0.83 per pound Pb. No metal recovery factors were used.Qualified PersonJamie Lavigne, P. Geo and a Director for Colibri is a Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release.Greg Davison, PGeo, Silver Spruce VP Exploration and Director, is the Company's internal Qualified Person for the Diamante Project and has reviewed the technical content of this press release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"), under TSX guidelines.About Silver Spruce Resources Inc.Silver Spruce Resources Inc. is a Canadian junior exploration company which has signed Definitive Agreements to acquire 100% of the Melchett Lake Zn-Au-Ag project in northern Ontario, 100% interest in the Mystery Au project near recent discoveries by Sokoman Minerals Corp. and New Found Gold Corp. among others in the Exploits Subzone Gold Belt, Newfoundland and Labrador, 100% interest in the Pino de Plata Ag project located 15 kilometres west of Coeur Mining's Palmarejo Mine in western Chihuahua, Mexico and up to 50% interest in Colibri Resource's Diamante Au-Ag project located from 5 kilometres to 15 kilometres northwest from Minera Alamos's Nicho deposit in Sonora, Mexico. Silver Spruce signed a 50:50 joint venture agreement with Colibri on the nearby Jackie Au project. Silver Spruce Resources Inc. continues to investigate opportunities that Management has identified or that have been presented to the Company for consideration.Contact:Silver Spruce Resources Inc.Greg Davison, PGeo, Vice-President Exploration and Director(250) 521-0444gdavison@silversprucere PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 15:02:42 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 465 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 Leading manufacturer unveils TEGO, its latest architectural cladding series. TEGO, designed as SOLIDAL's light and shade series, offers a diverse range of designs and shapes to create a dynamic interplay of light and shadow, adding depth and mood to architectural spaces and offering unique facade aesthetics.SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / SOLIDAL, a renowned manufacturer in architectural building envelop systems, is proud to announce the launch of its latest non-combustible, ECO2 low carbon aluminium cladding range, the TEGO Series, to North America and the MENA Region.SOLIDAL TEGO Concave TEGO Series is an innovative architectural cladding product by SOLIDAL. Crafting Light and Shade With TEGOTEGO, a part of SOLIDAL's architectural cladding series, emerges as a masterpiece in the play of light and shade. This series, available in varying designs and shapes, introduces a new dimension to architectural aesthetics. TEGO aims to redefine how light interacts with structures, creating a visually stunning and emotionally resonant experience.Shapes That Transform SpacesUnder the TEGO Series, SOLIDAL introduces a diverse range of shapes, each offering the baseline fundamental of the dynamic interplay of light and shadow. The available shapes include concave, oblique, box, tapered, valley, and ridge. This rich variety allows architects and designers to sculpt spaces that not only fulfil the practical needs of energy savings but also evoke distinct moods and emotions.Joshua Turco, Director at SOLIDAL, expresses, "We are excited to introduce TEGO Series to the North America and the MENA Region. Since its launch, TEGO has been quite popular among the leading architects in our home market, Australia. Because it's 100% recyclable Cradle to Cradle, TEGO is gaining acceptance among the community who cares for sustainability and the environment and we are proud to contribute." Building on the success of the TEGO Series, which has been selected by esteemed architects for prominent projects like the Wagga Wagga Base Hospital and the Griffith Base Hospital in Australia, SOLIDAL continues to shape the landscape of architectural design in the new global markets. In line with its expansion plans, SOLIDAL is actively seeking representation in key markets, particularly North America, North Africa and the Middle East."We invite passionate and dynamic partners in North America and the MENA Region to join us and introduce our innovative TEGO products to a wider audience since we are getting a lot of interest from these regions in particular," says Mohit Kukreja, PR & Corporate Communication Manager at SOLIDAL.About SOLIDALSOLIDAL is a leading manufacturer of architectural cladding and building envelop systems, dedicated to pushing the boundaries of design, functionality and suitability. With TEGO, SOLIDAL continues its tradition of offering a wide range of architectural products that transform spaces and inspire architectural expression.Contact InformationMohit Kukreja Manager, PR and Corporate Communications info@ solidal.com +61491747108SOURCE: SOLIDAL PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 23:06:10 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 398 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 Earnings To Be Announced Prior to Market Open on Monday November 27th, 2023TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Think Research Corporation (TSXV:THNK) ("Think" or the "Company"), a company focused on transforming healthcare through digital health software solutions, announced today that it will release Third Quarter 2023 Results pre-market, Monday, November 27th, 2023. Think's financial statements and Management Discussion and Analysis will be available under the Company's profile on SEDAR and on the Company's website as of 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time.Subsequently, CEO Sachin Aggarwal and CFO John Hayes with host a conference call to discuss the results, with a Q&A session to follow.TIME: 8:30 AM EST, Monday November 27th, 2023Conference Call Participant Details:Canada/USA Toll Free: 1-800-319-4610International Toll: +1-604-638-5340About Think Research CorporationThink Research Corporation is an industry leader in delivering knowledge-based digital health software and data solutions. The Company's evidence-based healthcare solutions support clinical decision-making, improve access to services, enable practitioners to gain better capabilities and knowledge, and help to standardize care to facilitate better healthcare outcomes. Think Research has gathered a significant amount of data by building its repository of knowledge through its digital solutions platform and group of companies. The Company's focused mission is to become an essential platform that helps healthcare clinicians, institutions and networks to provide the best care and information.Think licenses its solutions to over 16,000 facilities for over 331,000 primary care, acute care, and long-term care doctors, nurses and pharmacists who rely on the content and data provided by Think to support their practices. Over 3 million patients and residents annually receive better care due to the essential data that Think produces, manages and delivers.In addition, the Company collects and manages pharmaceutical and clinical trial data via the BioPharma Services entity that Think acquired on September 10, 2021. BioPharma Services is a leading provider of bioequivalence and Phase 1 clinical research services to pharmaceutical companies globally. Think's other services include a network of digital-first primary care clinics and medical clinics that provide elective surgery. Visit: www.thinkresearch.com 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 news release.For more information: https://www.thinkresearch.com/ca/investors/ For further information: Mark Sakamoto, Executive Vice President, Think Research, 416.388.7119, mark.sakamoto@thinkresearch.com SOURCE: Think Research PR-Inside.com: 2023-11-22 22:45:25 Press Information Published by ACCESSWIRE News Network 888.952.4446 e-mail http://www.accesswire.com # 855 Words ACCESSWIRE News Network888.952.4446 TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Black Iron Inc. ("Black Iron" or the "Company") (TSX:BKI) is proud to have been a sponsor and have management participate in the second Rebuild Ukraine Business Conference (the "Conference"), held between November 21-22, 2023, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This significant event showcased Canada's belief in Ukraine's victory and its commitment to providing diverse assistance. Representatives at the Conference included government officials, investors, companies from Canadian and multilateral organizations who are eager to collaborate with their Ukrainian counterparts across a broad range of interests.Among the companies envisioning their future in a free, democratic, and resilient Ukraine is Black Iron. "We believe in Ukraine's victory and are determined to implement the Shymanivske Iron Ore Project (the "Project"), aiming to be one of the most substantial and attractive foreign investment ventures for Ukraine. Despite the Project's implementation challenges, including Russian aggression, our Company is steadfast in progressing towards our goal," stated Matt Simpson, Chief Executive Officer.The Company reiterates that the Project received full support from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as publicly stated by the Ukrainian leader when he first officially came to Canada. The successful realization of the Project, backed by Ukrainian authorities and Canadian investors, will send a crucial signal not only to the Canadian business community, but to the entire civilized world that investing in Ukraine is a secure venture.In July 2023, Black Iron Inc. submitted a proposed binding Investment Support Agreement (the "Investment Agreement") to Ukraine's Ministry of Economy. With four months having passed, the Company looks forward to a positive written response from its Ukrainian counterparts to progress the Investment Agreement towards signing with support from the entire Cabinet of Ministers. Black Iron is resolute in finalizing this critical document, which includes transfer ofl government owned essential for Project development, and urges the Ukrainian government to expedite the review and conclusion of the aforementioned Investment Agreement. This will open a new chapter not only for the Company but also in Ukraine's relationships with foreign investors at large.About Black IronBlack Iron is an iron ore exploration and development company, advancing its 100% owned Shymanivske Iron Ore Project located in Kryviy Rih, Ukraine. Full mineral resource details and projected project economics can be found in the NI 43-101 technical report entitled "(Amended) Preliminary Economic Assessment of the Re-scoped Shymanivske Iron Ore Deposit" published in March 2020 with an effective date of November 21, 2017 under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . The Project is surrounded by five other operating mines, including Metinvest's YuGOK and ArcelorMittal's iron ore complex. Please visit the Company's website at www.blackiron.com for more informationFor more information, please contact:Black Iron Inc.info@blackiron.comForward-Looking InformationThis press release contains forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is based on what management believes to be reasonable assumptions, opinions and estimates of the date such statements are made based on information available to them at that time. Forward-looking information may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the terms of Investment Agreement, Ukrainian government support of the Investment Agreement, the review, approval and execution of the Investment Agreement, the development and financing of the Project discussions with the Ukraine government, the outcome of the war in Ukraine and the Company's future plans. Generally, forward looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: the war in Ukraine; general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; the actual results of current exploration activities; other risks of the mining industry and the risks described in the annual information form of the Company. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. The Company notes that mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.SOURCE: Black Iron 2023-11-22 17:45:02 Warszawa => SAP Analytics Cloud Consultant <= TeamQuest Sp. z o.o. For our client, a company with over 30 years of experience, which helps its business partners implement ERP and BI systems we are looking for SAP Analytics Cloud Consultant. 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If you're looking for a company that has the right team of experienced and qualified experts from various fields, which successfully carries out even the most complex projects that accelerate the development of organizations worldwide, this company is for you. ***** ***** SAP Analytics Cloud Consultant ***** ***** Tasks: * Engage with clients to comprehend their business needs, create a blueprint, construct, test, and provide support for the comprehensive solution built upon SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and SAP Datasphere * Gather and analyze requirements, model client data, key performance indicators, and/or market data using a wide set of analytical tools and techniques to develop both quantitative and qualitative business insights and enhance decision-making for our clients * Deliver the full life cycle of SAP analytics solutions (Discovery, Prepare, Design, Build, Deploy and Support) * Estimate and ensure timely delivery for the project deliverables. Duties include but are not limited to: * Responsible for the successful delivery of functional and technical components of planning, budgeting and forecasting solutions using SAC Planning. * Apply functional and technical integration knowledge of SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools, planning/BI systems and functional finance processes (reports, input schedules, script logic, allocations, distributions, trending, forecast models, Storyboards, Dashboards and visualization). * Develop functional / technical specification documents and design best in class technical solutions to support analytical/reporting activities * Support the setup and development of an overall SAC governance model to position the solution for future reporting and analytics operations and enhancements. * Collaborate with the cross-functional team to develop an integrated SAC solution to support business processes and project deliverables with an emphasis on quality, productivity, and consistency * Develop a cut-over strategy for SAC activities for Go-live. Support sales and presales processes. ***** Job requirements: * Minimum of 3 years" experience in designing and developing analytic applications using SAP Analytics Cloud and/or SAP Datasphere, including at least 1 full implementation cycle. * Good knowledge of SAP Analytics technologies, including SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Datawarehouse Cloud, and BW4/HANA. * Strong experience in SAP Analytics Cloud planning, including designing and building plans, forecasts, forecast adjustments, and integrating generated forecasts with other processes, reports, and dashboards to support key business performance indicators. * Extensive understanding of advanced story design options in SAP Analytics Cloud, predictive capabilities, augmented analytics, forecasting, etc. * Good understanding of SAP Analytics Cloud, Analytics Designer, and advanced scripting capabilities. * Understanding of defining data models in SAP Datasphere, integrating SAP and non-SAP systems, and the advantages and disadvantages of different modeling options. * Knowledge of business content, best practices, and market trends to enhance reporting and analytics. * Good understanding of data visualization and data modeling best practices. * Experience with SAP BW and/or SAP HANA Modeling. * Knowledge of SQL and R scripting. * Knowledge of JavaScript. * English language proficiency at a minimum C1 level. * Holding an SAP certification confirming competence in a specific area is a plus. ***** Benefits offered: * Possibility to work remotely and in the office (Warsaw, Katowice, Wroclaw); * Flexible working hours, work life balance; * Participation in interesting projects, at home and abroad; * Cooperation with business analysts; * Opportunity to improve professional skills (product and specialized training, extensive internal training, e.g. Cloud Automation; * Work with modern tools, e.g. Jira; * Rich social package (subsidized MultiSport card, private medical care, group insurance); * Extensive employee development program; * Friendly team built of non-accidental people who will not forget your birthday, wedding, birth of a child; * Integration trips to interesting places. Aplikuj tu / Send your CV: => => => http://TeamQuest.pl/n/84500-n?utm_source=nntp&utm_me dium=cron&utm_campaign=2311 => => => W przesanych materiaach prosimy o dopisanie klauzuli nastepujacej tresci: Wyrazam zgode na przetwarzanie moich danych dla potrzeb tej i kolejnych rekrutacji (zgodnie z ustawa o ochronie danych osobowych z dnia 29 sierpnia 1997 roku t.j. Dz.U.2016 poz. 922). Jednoczesnie wyrazam zgode na udostepnienie moich danych osobowych potencjalnym pracodawcom. Potwierdzam prawdziwosc powyzszych danych i zgadzam sie na przetwarzanie i administrowanie moimi danymi, ktore podaem/am do wiadomosci TeamQuest Sp. z o.o. z siedziba w Warszawie 00-814 Warszawa ul. Miedziana 3A lok. 21 do celow rekrutacji pracownikow. Jednoczesnie oswiadczam, ze zostaam/em poinformowana/y iz administratorem moich danych jest TeamQuest Sp. z o.o. z siedziba w Warszawie 00-814 Warszawa ul. Miedziana 3A lok. 21 oraz ze moje dane moga zostac przekazane potencjalnym pracodawcom oraz, ze mam prawo dostepu do tresci swoich danych, prawo ich poprawiania, prawo sprzeciwu wobec ich przetwarzania w wyzej opisanym celu oraz wobec przekazywania danych innym podmiotom, a takze prawo zazadania zaprzestania przetwarzania moich danych osobowych ze wzgledu na moja szczegolna sytuacje. Podanie danych jest dobrowolne. Jednoczesnie wyrazam zgode na podejmowanie czynnosci majacych na celu weryfikacje prawdziwosci przekazanych przeze mnie dokumentow i informacji w nich zawartych. -- Pozostae oferty: https://teamquest.pl/praca-w-it/ ID=56120c389532f58eb8bdd4218bbc7779 The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) on Tuesday warned producers in the oil and gas industry against frustrating the governments climate action project. The NUPRC Head of Public Affairs and Corporate Communications, Laide Shonola, disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday. Mrs Shonola said the commission on Tuesday in Abuja read the riot act to producers in the oil and gas industry that it will not hesitate to apply necessary measures to erring or deviant producers and operators whose activities constitute a hindrance to the effective implementation of the Nigerian Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme (NGFCP), the countrys climate action plan. She said the commissions Chief Executive, Gbenga Komolafe, who handed down the warning at an executive session with the producers, underscored the pivotal role of producers in the successful implementation of the NGFCP. Mr Komolafe was said to have insisted that the commission would go as far as applying necessary measures against deviant operators to the extent of the ultimate consequence of revocation of licenseces or leases. According to her, Mr Komolafe said the commission will activate the necessary provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021 and enabling regulations such as the Gas Flaring, Venting and Methane Emissions (Prevention of Waste and Pollution) Regulations 2023 to ensure faithful implementation of the programme. He recalled that at the inaugural session of the producers forum earlier in the year the significance of the NGFCP to achieve the elimination of the unwholesome practice of and wasteful of gas flaring with its attendant deleterious social, health and environmental impacts was underscored. Moreover, as a nation, the NGFCP represents one of our key climate actions to combat emissions and support Nigerias transition endeavours. The imperatives of the programme have taken on added significance with the recent pronouncements of Mr President at global fora and the international attention that the Programme has attracted. Nigeria cannot afford to fail! We cannot fail! the statement quoted Mr Komolafe as saying. He explained that the commission has so far issued relevant letters of award to 42 individual companies for all 49 flare sites on offer. These flare sites, he said, represent locations that are within the operating areas of 15 companies present at this engagement. The importance of your cooperation and collaboration cannot be over-emphasized, the statement said. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Olamiju Alao-Akala, a member of the House of Representatives representing Ogbomosho Federal Constituency, has emerged as the Chairman of the Young Parliamentarians Forum (YPF) of the 10th National Assembly. Mr Alao-Akala, who is the son of the late Oyo State Governor, Adebayo Alao-Akala, was declared the chairman of the forum on Tuesday at the National Assembly Complex. The legislator was nominated unopposed by the members of the YPF. He succeeds Kabir Tukura, a lawmaker from Sokoto State, who served as the chairman of the forum in the Ninth Assembly. The YPF was established in 2003 to help young legislators understand issues and equip them with the knowledge and skills to be better lawmakers. It consists of members of parliament who were 40 years of age at the time of election. In his acceptance speech, Mr Alao-Akala said the forum is a platform to amplify the voices of young legislators in the parliament. He promised that the platform would continue to allow young lawmakers to contribute to the development of the National Assembly. For me, leading the YPF, which is made up of active young legislators like me, is akin to leading the family to success, growth and achievement of goals. I will, therefore, not take this opportunity lightly, and I will do my best to make sure that I build on the legacies and achievements of my predecessors. The YPF is a platform designed to empower and amplify the voices of young lawmakers, enhance our active participation in both the legislative process and leadership position. It serves as an important channel for young parliamentarians to contribute significantly to the work of the parliament while advancing the interests of the next generation and our nation. I will continue to explore avenues of growth for us all, while also inviting my fellow young parliamentarians to note that the YPF is anchored on the principle of no decisions about us without us, he said. Mr Alao-Akala said he has been involved in the activities of the YPF across the world, hence, he is adequately prepared to lead the organisation. It might interest you to know that in the few months of my being in the National Assembly, I have been actively involved in the programmes and activities of the YPF. I participated in the Core Legislative training in Uyo, I attended the 9th IPU Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians in Hanoi, Vietnam and the 147th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Luanda, Angola, which events have no doubt opened my eyes and exposed me to the responsibilities of the YPF in particular, and the National Assembly in general, he said. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Nigeria Police Force was in a battered and neglected state when President Bola Tinubu assumed office and appointed a new Inspector General of Police, the police chief told lawmakers on Tuesday. The IGP, Kayode Egbetokun, also said Nigeria must address the manpower shortage in the police, noting that even criminals are taking advantage of the deficiency. Mr Egbetokun stated this on Tuesday while appearing before the House of Representatives at the sectoral debate. He said Nigeria is still far away from the United Nations recommended policing ratio of one police to 400 citizens. He stated that Nigeria has about a 1:1,000 policing ratio. The manpower of the police today is grossly inadequate, even the criminals know that. The UN ratio of 1:400 is not attainable in Nigeria today because the ratio in Nigeria is 1:1000 which suggests that we have to double the manpower in the police and over, he said. Mr Egbetokun, who was appointed as IGP on 19 June by President BolaTinubu, said he inherited a force that had been battered as a result of years of neglect. Unfortunately, we met on ground a police force that had been battered, a police force that has suffered serious neglect over the past few years. The police also finds itself operating in a very difficult environment partly as a direct consequence of this neglect, Mr Egbetokun said. The police chief further explained that the government has been unable to adequately address the issue of logistics and equipment for the police. The IGP explained that getting operational vehicles for the 1,137 police divisional headquarters across the country has been a challenge. We have 1,137 police divisional headquarters across 774 LGAs in Nigeria but getting operational vehicles for the division is difficult. Each of these divisions requires at least four functional vehicles but we have divisions that dont have any functional operational vehicles as of today, Mr Egbetokun told the lawmakers. He, therefore, called on the lawmakers to increase the budgetary allocation to the police. After the presentation by the IGP and the other security chiefs, the House went into a closed-door session. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), Charles Igwe, has spoken on the allegation of admission racketeering against the institution. The Nigerian Senate recently launched an investigation into the allegation that UNN management and that of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) were involved in admission racketeering. This followed a report that the university in 2019 allegedly colluded with JAMB to truncate the admission of an applicant, Chinyere Ekwe, into the institution where she had applied to study medicine and surgery. No admission racketeering in UNN Mr Igwe, a professor, denied the allegation, insisting that the university offers admissions based on the admission policy of Nigeria and federal character principle. The vice-chancellor spoke while fielding questions from reporters during a press briefing in Enugu, the Enugu State capital, on Tuesday, as part of the activities marking the institutions 51st convocation ceremony. He said the university has the tradition of conducting a transparent admission process in compliance with the federal governments established criteria of 45 per cent merit, 35 per cent catchment areas, and 20 per cent for educationally less developed states. Mr Igwe explained that what happened was that Ms Ekwe had scored below the merit cut-off mark for admission into the medicine and surgery department of the institution in that year. He added that the university had proposed more candidates for admission into professional courses more than the quota allowed by professional bodies, but JAMB insisted that the institution must follow the quota prescribed by the bodies. Some of the professional bodies include the Nigerian Medical Association, the Nigeria Bar Association and the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria. According to the VC, the professional bodies had maintained that medicine and surgery had a quota of 180 students, law 220, nursing 75, pharmacy 150 and dentistry 15. There was no way we could admit every person that applied for medicine when we were taking only 180 persons, he said. The VC said, following the development, Ms Ekwe, like other students affected by the situation, was recommended for admission into the medical laboratory science department of the institution in the hope that she could be transferred to the medicine and surgery department the following year if she performed well academically. There is no racketeering of any nature at the University of Nigeria, the VC maintained. He recalled that he had pleaded with some deans in the university at that time to give preference to the students affected by the policy during the admission process the following year. Mr Igwe said Ms Ekwe has already successfully been transferred to the medicine and surgery department of the institution from the medical laboratory science where she was initially admitted. So, I dont know what warranted the outburst on the floor of the Senate, he said. He commended the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, and the Senator representing Abia South District, Enyinnaya Abaribe, for showing understanding in the matter. I receive requests from presidency to admit choice candidates Mr Igwe said he often received requests from some people who claim they were from the presidency while others pretend their requests were coming from bishops. I get all sorts of requests during every admission. Somebody will write to me from the presidency. These days, people drop names. And he wants me to take somebody that scored 215 as against somebody that scored 300 and if I dont do it, they will go to public places and spread rumour that the University of Nigeria is now practising admission racketeering, he stated. One came with an admission request a year or two ago from a bishop. I am an Anglican. Even when they make these requests, they go for core courses. Somebody around me just picked that letter-head paper with the request and said, you forged this thing. I know the signature of the bishop, the VC said. Background The senator representing Ebonyi North District, Onyeka Nwebonyi, had earlier in November, moved a motion in which he alleged that some UNN staff members allegedly conspired with JAMB to deny Ms Ekwe admission into the institutions medicine and surgery department in 2019. Mr Nwebonyi asked the Senate to immediately compel JAMB and UNN to admit her into the department. But Mr Akpabio said the Senate would investigate the matter, pointing out that JAMB should be invited for fair fearing given that they are a reputable institution. Meanwhile, JAMBs Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, while reacting to the matter during the 2023 Customer Service Week of the exam body, explained that Ms Ekwe was not admitted into UNNs medicine and surgery department that year because she had scored 291 in her UTME which was below the mark for admission into the course. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print All 24 central bank officials tasked with inspecting SCB received bribes of between VND100 million ($4,137) and $5.2 million to condone the lenders extreme violations, the police have said. The Ministry of Public Security recently recommended charging Do Thi Nhan, former head of the State Bank of Vietnams inspection and supervision department, with receiving bribes worth $5.2 million from SCB from whom Truong My Lan had siphoned away VND1 quadrillion ($44 billion) worth of public deposits over a decade. It has recommended charging 16 other officials who inspected the bank with abusing their position and authority while performing official duties. The remaining seven will not be charged since they collaborated with investigators and returned the money they had taken illegally. The police said Nhan discovered the scam in August 2017, but, as head investigator, falsified the reports allowing SCB to continue operating normally. At a meeting with Lan, who unofficially owned a 91.5% stake in the bank, in HCMC in October 2017, Nhan said the violations were severe and the bank needed to sell off its assets to repay depositors. Lan asked Nhan to "help" SCB, and she instructed her subordinates not to mention VND38 trillion worth of bad debts in the reports, which also falsified all key financial indicators of the bank. Nhan reduced the bad debt ratio, which was in reality 35.8%, to 6.8%. At another meeting in Hanoi in March 2018 Nhan told Lan that she had discovered violations committed by 71 SCB customers who were part of her ring. Lan again asked her for help. Nhan told her subordinates not to track the source of the 71 customers money and scaled down the investigation to overlook the fact that SCB had given out new loans to these customers to repay earlier ones. Nhan and her boss Nguyen Van Hung, the SBVs deputy chief inspector, have confessed that they altered the investigation reports to conceal the scam from the central bank and government. All the inspectors received bribes, of VND100 million to $40,000, from SCB, with Nhan getting $5.2 million. The ministry recommended last week that Lan should be charged with several crimes, including bribery, violating banking regulations and embezzlement. Eighty five others were included in the recommendation for the same charges plus appropriation of property by abusing trust. Lan and her accomplices caused SCB VND500 trillion in losses, the police said. After the private lender faced a run in October 2022 the central bank put it under special control to also prevent an industry-wide contagion. The Senate on Tuesday passed a resolution to revise the Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (LFN) 2004. The resolution was sequel to a motion by Kaka Shehu (APC, Borno Central) at the plenary. Mr Shehu, while presenting the motion, said the revision was necessary because some of the issues cited in the laws are outdated and needed clarity. Mr Shehu, a lawyer, explained that the revision of the laws of the country ought to have been done a long time ago but that the National Assembly was not giving it legislative support. He noted that there was an attempt to revise the laws in 2010 but the federal legislature refused to grant the approval. The senator stressed that the call for the revision of the laws of the federation was in the interest of democratic governance in the country. Mr Shehu therefore asked his colleagues to support the revision. READ ALSO: Uproar at Senate over change in leadership of minority caucus After debate on the motion, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, put it to voice vote and majority of the senators voted in support of it. Mr Akpabio thereafter directed the Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters to interface with the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation to conduct the review. The process involves compilation of all updated federal laws. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) says oil thieves have vandalised over 5,000 kilometers of oil pipelines connecting different parts of the country. The Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Ltd, Mele Kyari, disclosed this when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream) on Tuesday. PREMIUM TIMES has reported a high rate of pipeline vandalisation across the country. The situation has led to the contamination of the environment including rivers and destruction of many farmlands. Mr Kyari, while addressing the Senate committee, explained that the company had adopted several measures to secure its pipelines from being vandalised but the oil theft and pipeline vandalisation have persisted. He said the continuous vandalisation of the pipelines was causing a huge loss to the NNPC Ltd. He described the situation as a national calamity. Over 5,000 kilometers of oil pipelines in the country are not working as a result of pipeline vandalism. Ten million litres of oil was lost from volume pumped from Aba to Enugu at a time. The company has been unable to pump oil from Warri to Benin within the last 22 years and cannot connect to Ore . There is no amount of security measures that had not been taken to curb the crime without success, which to us in NNPC Ltd, is substantially a national calamity, he said . Mr Kyari said the NNPC Ltd has started replacing the vandalised pipelines in different parts of the country. Chairman of the committee, Ifeanyi Ubah, urged the NNPC Ltd to find a lasting solution to the issues of pipeline vandalism and oil thefts. Mr Ubah advised the NNPC Ltd to increase the security of its pipelines. A member of the committee, Seriake Dickson (PDP, Bayelsa West) urged the NNPC Ltd to engage the locals in the security surveillance of the pipelines. Mr Dickson, a former governor of Bayelsa State, advised the NNPC Ltd to award contract to the locals especially in oil producing areas as a way of negotiating the security of pipelines. Some local governments in Bayelsa State like Sagbama where I come from, are not covered by the contract with attendant consequences, he said. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, says the FCT Administration will stick to a flat rate of N5 million as the fee for issuance of Certificate of Occupancy (C- of-O) for all sizes of plots of land in the capital city. Mr Wike disclosed this at a meeting with the Estate Developers and Residents Associations in Abuja on Tuesday, according to a statement by the ministers Director of Press, Anthony Ogunleye. According to the statement released on Tuesday, the minister rebuffed the suggestion by some residents to review the N5-million-flat-rate regime to be sensitive to the sizes of the plots of land for which the C-of-Os are sought. Responding, the minister insisted that a C-of-O is a business and security document which is not necessarily graded according to the size of the property or its location. He maintained that a flat rate of N5 million must be paid for its collection, but hinted at the possibility of a review of this sum, the statement said. Mr Wike said payment could be made within four months of land allocation after which the C-of-O would be handed over to the applicant. He added that he would seek the approval of President Bola Tinubu to link applicants National Identification Number to C-of-Os before issuance. Mr Wike said the era when three or more persons were allocated the same plot of land with fake C-of-O was over. Allocation of land to three or more persons will no longer be allowed because the C-of-O enables you to do business. When we make the right decision, some people will be happy, and some will not be. The rich will kick against some of our decisions, but anything that will help our people must be done, Mr Wike said. He promised to ensure orderliness and sanity in the land administration system and processes in the FCT. Mr Wike lamented that the issuance of C-of-O in the FCT was enmeshed in a lot of controversy which sometimes led to crises. He said, One of the reasons I have stopped signing is because I dont trust those C-of-Os they are bringing for me to sign. I dont want to sign a C-of-O that has been given to another person. The minister expressed worries that workers salaries at the FCT Administration and the Federal Capital Development Authority gulp N8.9 billion monthly. Mr Wike said he had saved N110 billion for the FCT barely three months into office and assured that the funds would be attached to specific projects. He said he inaugurated a taskforce on the issuance of Certificate of Occupancy (C of O) for housing estates and the recovery of land use contravention fees on 14 November. He explained that the measure was to ensure that each unit in the housing estates had its separate C-of-O. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print A non-profit international school for social change, Acumen West Africa, has inducted new fellows from Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, The Gambia, and Sierra Leone into its foundry community (alumni network). The event marked a significant milestone in cultivating morally and socially conscious leaders committed to fostering positive change within their communities. The induction of the 2023 Fellows commemorated the programs fifth year in West Africa. Speaking at the induction event which was held recently in Lagos, Moyin Okubor, the Manager for Acumen Academy in West Africa, emphasised the significance of the program in the region. She said they are dedicated to nurturing and equipping leaders with the tools, knowledge and mindset needed, as they tackle some of the most pressing socio-economic challenges within their respective communities. She said: Through weaving Acumens core values humility, empathy and moral imagination into the fabric of the fellowship, we inspire a deeply personal transformative journey whilst catalyzing a movement towards a more just, equitable and prosperous West Africa. Similarly, Ms Okubor advocated for leadership mentorship in Nigeria as a panacea for social change. She said: The need and demand for leadership role models across Africa is undeniable. Our fellowship program serves as a catalyst for shaping the next generation of purpose-driven leaders. Through our work, we illuminate the path to moral and impactful leadership, fostering a legacy that transcends individual success to inspire collective transformation across the region. Ms Okubor expressed deep inspiration by the lives touched, innovative solutions implemented, and enduring commitment to positive social change within fellows communities. In parallel with the induction, Acumen West Africa announced the opening of applications for the 2024 Acumen West Africa Fellowship. The organisation encouraged organizational builders and social entrepreneurs dedicated to addressing problems of poverty and injustice in West Africa to apply. The application period will run from October to 10th December 2023, offering a new cohort the opportunity to embark on a transformative journey towards positive social change. The newly inducted members into the foundry community Acumen Academys alumni network, would join the gathering place for alumni of Acumen Academys Fellowship and accelerator programs, who have excelled at the highest level, establishing themselves as the next generation of social innovators who are enacting social change and challenging the status quo. Becoming a Foundry member means gaining entrance to a unique set of resources from a community of supportive peers, the opportunity for mentorship, and the opportunity to access both social and financial capital. Impact The 2023 Fellows also shared their reflections on the programs impact. Amy Gaman from Nigeria expressed excitement about contributing meaningfully to her community, she said, Acumen has equipped me with the necessary tools and networks to create sustainable solutions to our countrys challenges. Josephine Saidu from Sierra Leone highlighted the importance of leveraging local resources, she said, This program has shown me the importance of leveraging local resources to address local problems. I am excited to apply the knowledge gained to make a real impact in my country. Dieudonne K. Perry from Liberia emphasised the programs role in amplifying the voices of the marginalized, stating, Acumen has provided me with a platform to amplify the voices of the marginalized in our society. This program is crucial in cultivating a new generation of leaders who are passionate about creating a more inclusive and equitable West Africa. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and Egypt have indicated interests to participate in the 2023 Calabar Carnival. Twenty-Six states in Nigeria have also indicated interests to participate in the event which has Season of Sweetness as its theme. Executive Secretary of the Carnival Commission, Austine Cobham, told reporters in Calabar, the state capital, on Monday that the 2023 session would be a pace-setter for the 20-year-old carnival. He assured that participating countries and states would not be segmented, but would showcase their beauty, elegance, pageantry and talents together beginning from kick-off on 1 December. Mr Cobham said adequate arrangements had been made to ensure security of lives and property before, during and after the carnival held usually at Yuletide. He also said that the impact of the 32-day carnival would be felt across the state and the nation. We are working to ensure that the 2023 edition will be record-setting in comparison with editions held since 2004. We shall introduce new events at the 2023 carnival and reintroduce the children carnival, which had been stopped since 10 years ago. Concentration will not be in Calabar as the central and northern parts of the state will also be made to feel and enjoy the carnival. We are lighting up major roads and streets in Calabar for the festival and the same will be done in the central and northern parts of Cross River, Mr Cobham said. Cross River suspended the Calabar Carnival in 2021, a development it attributed to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Binance, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange, Changpeng Zhao, has stepped down as CEO of the company. Mr Zhao disclosed this in a post via his verified Twitter handle on Tuesday. Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself, Mr Zhao said. Binance is no longer a baby. It is time for me to let it walk and run. I know Binance will continue to grow and excel with the deep bench it has. Im pleased to announce that Richard Teng, our now former Global Head of Regional Markets, has been named the new CEO of Binance today. Richard is a highly qualified leader and, with over three decades of financial services and regulatory experience, he will navigate the company through its next period of growth. Mr Zhao said the new CEO will ensure Binance delivers on the next phase of security, transparency, compliance, and growth. Before joining Binance, he said Mr Richard was CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority at Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM); Chief Regulatory Officer of the Singapore Exchange (SGX); and Director of Corporate Finance at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. With Richard and the entire team, Im confident that the best days for Binance and the crypto industry lay ahead. As a shareholder and former CEO with historical knowledge of our company, I will remain available to the team to consult as needed, consistent with the framework set out in our U.S. agency resolutions, he added. Background Binance is the worlds leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider with a financial product suite that includes the largest digital asset exchange. The company had recently faced a series of setbacks, announcing plans to leave the Netherlands, Cyprus, Canada and Australia and being charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Earlier in June, the SEC sued Binance and Mr Zhao, alleging that the company artificially inflated its trading volumes, diverted customer funds, and misled investors about its market surveillance controls. On Tuesday, the company pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to money laundering and breaching international financial sanctions, agreeing to pay more than $4.3 billion in penalties, US authorities said, according to Financial Times. Binance admitted to anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting and sanctions violations, authorities said. The alleged misconduct occurred between at least August 2017 and October 2022, according to court filings. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) DELTA has handed over impounded vessels to the officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for suspected oil theft. The arrested vessels, TUG MV STEPH 1 and Barge SIMI, laden with product suspected to be stolen Automotive Gasoline Oil (AGO), were handed over to the anti-graft agency on Wednesday at the NNS DELTA Jetty. Samuel Musa, the base operations officer (BOO) of NNS DELTA released the vessels to the EFCC on behalf of the Commander, NNS DELTA, Chindo Yahaya. Addressing reporters, Mr Yahaya, a naval commodore, said that Barge SIMI was impounded with about 120,000 litres of product suspected to be AGO at Workson Jetty, Edjeba, on the NPA Expressway in Warri South. He said that TUG MV STEPH 1 was arrested at KFT Yard, Edjeba on the NPA Expressway while discharging suspected AGO into some rubber tanks. The commander said that the two vessels were arrested on 6 July. On 6 July, 2023, NNS DELTA arrested Barge SIMI, laden with about 120,000 litres of product suspected to be AGO at Workson Jetty, Edjeba on the NPA Expressway. The barge was without necessary documentation and approvals. Preliminary investigation revealed that the product is an accumulation of Remnants On Board (ROB) from various vessels. Accordingly, Barge SIMI is hereby handed over to the EFCC for detailed investigation and further necessary action. Similarly, On 6 July, 2023, NNS DELTA also arrested TUG MV STEPH I at KFT Yard, Edjeba on the NPA Expressway in Warri, he said. Mr Yahaya said that TUG MV STEPH 1 was caught discharging product without necessary documentation, and approvals adding that it was consequently detained and taken to NNS DELTA. Accordingly, TUG MV STEPH 1 is hereby handed over to the EFCC for detailed investigation and further necessary action, he said. Mr Yahaya said that the NNS DELTA was poised to rid its area of illegal activities or operations. He warned those who indulged in such illegalities to desist forthwith. Gomina Suru, an assistant commander, EFCC Two, Benin Zonal Command, led officials of the anti-graft agency to receive the vessels on behalf of the commission. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that officials of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority were on the ground to collect samples of the product. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Vice President Kashim Shettima has restated the commitment of the Tinubu administration to the welfare of the Nigerian Armed Forces, including families of fallen heroes. He said the administrations resolve was in acknowledgement of the sacrifices of service personnel to the unity of Nigeria and sustenance of global peace. The vice president, who stated this on Tuesday evening shortly after he was decorated with the emblem of the 2024 Armed Forces Remembrance Day at the Presidential Villa, recalled the heroics of Nigerian service personnel in conflict theatres at home, across Africa and beyond. We really need to identify with the families of our fallen heroes those who made the supreme sacrifice in the enthronement of peace in our country and our world in general, from Congo to Liberia, Sierra Leone and beyond. My heart goes out to the families of those who paid the supreme price. We have the moral burden to support them, Mr Shettima said. Earlier, National Chairman of the Nigerian Legion, Abdulmalik Jibrin, said the annual Armed Forces Remembrance Day celebration is a solemn occasion dedicated to remembering the sacrifices of fallen heroes of the Nigerian Armed Forces. ALSO READ: Tinubu approves N18bn life assurance benefits for families of fallen heroes He also urged Nigerians to always remember the families of the fallen heroes, especially by contributing resources through the Nigerian Legion for the welfare of their loved ones. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had, in October, launched the Emblem Appeal for the 2024 Armed Forces Remembrance Day, restating his governments commitment to the repositioning of the armed forces. *Stanley Nkwocha* *Senior Special Assistant to The President on Media & Communications* *(Office of the Vice President)* *22nd November, 2023* Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Guineas Justice Minister Alphonse Wright announced an investigation into former president Alpha Condes alleged involvement in treason, two years after the ex-president was overthrown by the military in a coup, Al Jazeera reports. The public prosecutor reportedly received a letter from Mr Wright, requesting that the new authorised investigation look into alleged acts of treason, criminal conspiracy and complicity in the illicit possession of arms and ammunition. Mr Conde, who was Guineas first democratically elected leader, was ousted by Colonel Mamady Doumbouyas special army squad in September 2021. The coup followed Mr Condes attempt to prolong his ten-year rule by a third term in office, during which he brutally put down demonstrations opposing the proposed election. Since then, Mr Conde has been the subject of many legal investigations by Guineas military authorities, including allegations of corruption, rape, kidnapping, torture, and assassination. Coups took place in some west and central African governments recently, including Guinea. Between 2020 and 2023, there was at least one coup in Gabon, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Meanwhile, the commanders of the Guinean military pledged to return the country to civilian rule by 2026. Mr Conde is currently living in exile in Turkey. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa has called on residents of the state to remain calm and go about their normal businesses following the clash between soldiers and police in Yola. The Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Humwashi Wonosikou, issued this on Wednesday in Yola. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that on Tuesday night, sporadic gunshots between the police and the soldiers at police headquarters were heard at about 11:00 p.m. in Yola, the Adamawa State capital. One soldier was injured while a policeman was killed in a clash between some army and police personnel. Mr Fintiri described the incident as unfortunate. He appealed for accommodation and tolerance among security agencies, describing the incident as unacceptable at this time of peacebuilding. While regretting the ugly incident that led to the clash between the soldiers and the police, Gov. Fintiri disclosed that government is on top of the situation and appealed to the parties to exercise restraint in the overall peace of the State, he stated. Mr Fintiri urged all security personnel on special assignment to remain at their duty posts and conduct themselves with a high sense of maturity. I am concerned that such acrimony could have lasting consequences on the hard-earned peace we have been able to build over the years. I appeal to all security personnel for restraint, mutual respect and tolerance for one another as people destined to work together in this great state. I appeal for patience and understanding as the administration works towards lasting solutions to these conflicts. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Lawmaker Pham Van Hoa speaks to the National Assembly. Photo courtesy of the National Assembly The fraud and bribery committed by Van Thinh Phat chairwoman Truong My Lan are unprecedented in scale, a lawmaker has said. Speaking in the National Assembly Tuesday Pham Van Hoa, a lawmaker from the southern province of Dong Thap, was referring to the VND1 quadrillion (US$44 billion) in depositors money she allegedly took out of lender SCB between 2012 and 2022. She is now likely to be charged with bribery, embezzlement and violating banking regulations. Eighty-five others also face similar charges, including Do Thi Nhan, former head of the State Bank of Vietnams inspection and supervision department, who had allegedly received bribes of over $5 million to condone the violations at SCB. Referring to another hot-button issue, he asked if lenders and insurance companies had allowed bank employees to induce customers into buying insurance policies, which resulted in thousands of complaints and eroding public trust in the two industries. The government needs to find solutions for these issues and regain peoples trust, he said. Bo Thi Xuan Linh, a lawmaker from the central province of Binh Thuan, said many people have expressed concern about corruption at government agencies in charge of oversight and investigation of potential crimes. People who masterminded these incidents of corruption should be severely punished, she said. Between October last year and September this year, the Ministry of Public Security recorded 5,700 cases of financial crimes and nearly 800 corruption cases. An Abakaliki Chief Magistrate Court on Wednesday ordered the remand of a 29-year-old man, Chikodili Igboji in a correctional centre for allegedly raping a 50-year-old widow. The Magistrate, Chinedu Agama-Agama, ordered the remand of the defendant after rejecting his bail application. Mr Igboji is facing a count charge of rape allegedly committed on 15 October, at Udenyi village, Izzo Imoha in Ezza North Local Government Area of Ebonyi State. He pleaded not guilty to the charge. The defence counsel, Francis Nwelom, moved a bail application for the defendant, stressing that he was innocent. The prosecution counsel, Stanley Ngene, a police inspector, however, opposed the bail application and prayed the court to order the remand of the defendant. Mr Ngene told the court that the offence is punishable under section 358 of the Criminal Code, CAP 33 Vol. 1 laws of Ebonyi State of Nigeria, 2009. The survivor, a mother of six children, while narrating her ordeal to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) after the court session, alleged that the defendant came to her house at night armed with a knife. She alleged that the defendant interrupted her sleep, grabbed her and commanded her not to utter a word, or else he would kill her. I was afraid and started shivering. I managed to ask him, what was my offence? I pleaded with him to have mercy on me that I have no husband and I have six children. He pushed me, raped me and went away with my phone and my hard-earned N20,000, she said. The survivor, a farmer, said she wants justice. I am begging the court to ensure that the defendant suffers in prison. He should receive his punishment, accordingly. I also want the government at all levels, particularly Governor Francis Nwifuru, as well as good-spirited individuals, to come to my aid. I am from the warring community of Ezza-Effium and my children have been out of school. We ran out of my own community due to the lingering communal crisis in the area, she said. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, has paid a maiden visit to agencies under the ministry, canvassing reforms and adherence to due process in line with the Renewed Hope agenda of the Bola Tinubu administration. Speaking at his first port of call, the Mining Cadastral Office (MCO), the minister lauded the efforts of the agency as the custodian of mineral titles, stressing the need to do more in addressing perceived inadequacies, emphasizing that the perception of progress in the mining sector is contingent on the activity or inactivity of the MCO. In his welcome address, the Director-General of MCO, Obadiah Nkom, expressed delight in being the first agency to host the minister. Restating the functions of the agency as the issuer of mining licences, Mr Nkom said the MCO moved in 2022 to digitise its operations through migration to an online platform called Electronic Mining Cadastral System. According to him, though the new platform led to a significant number of applications, he admitted some challenges such as delays in processing applications as a result of backlogs from the old system. Mr Nkom assured that efforts are ongoing to fine-tune the processes and make them more efficient in collaboration with World Bank-assisted Mineral Sector Support for Economic Diversification, MinDiver. The minister, in his response, charged the agency to improve its productivity, emphasising that whatever infractions committed by MCO have a smearing effect on the ministry, as it is the major agency that interfaces with the public. The public puts this agency in the prism of the entire ministry. Since I assumed office, 90% of all issues that have come to my table on the entire solid mineral activities have been connected to the MCO, whether complaints, commendations, infractions or otherwise. The issues around the multiplicity or duplicity of licenses and perceived underhand dealings traceable to the agency must be addressed. The perception must change. We will not hesitate to wield the big stick where necessary If the agency does not reform itself, Mr Alake said. At the Nigeria Geological Survey Agency (NGSA), the Director-General, Abdulrasak Garba, while welcoming the Minister, revealed that the agency has been pivotal to the generation of geoscience information for the development of the mining sector in line with its mandate. Mr Garba also said the NGSA has been in charge of the production of geological, geophysical, and geochemical maps of Nigeria, amongst other functions. He cited funding constraints as a challenge, appealing for the Ministers intervention. Mr Alake, in his remarks said the functions of NGSA, aside from the mining sector, cut across all sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing, and industrial development, stressing it is akin to the foundation of developmental efforts of any nation. I must say you are doing a good job generating a lot of relevant data that are critical for informed decisions by decision-makers makers, entrepreneurs in all fields. I have gone through the literature submitted during my initial briefing, and I can see at a glance the functions that you do and I am quite glad that you have been living up to the billing and performing quite effectively but there is always room for improvement. These days of paucity of funds, like you mentioned, it becomes imperative that we become geniuses in our creative endeavours. We must task ourselves on how to become independent. I see no reason why NGSA cannot be self-sustaining because what you generate is in demand, the Minister added. At his last port of call, the Council of Nigerian Mining Engineers and Geoscientists (COMEG), Mr Alake, in his address to the Registrar, Zacheus Opafunsho, a professor, and his management team likened the agency to a quasi-academic institute given its role of accrediting and certifying mining professionals, noting COMEG is assisting to ensure quality control in the mineral sector. On funding challenges, the Minister assured of efforts to ensure the agency is captured in the budgetary allocation of the coming fiscal year but also urged the agency to look inward. While we do our own bit of ensuring you have budgetary provisions, it can never be enough. My advice is to be creative. Seat down with members of your team and think out of the box. One way is increasing your membership fees. Whoever does not pay, you have a restriction on them. On our own part, and henceforth, any report from the extractive industry or mining engineers that does not contain the COMEG stamp should not even be brought to my attention, the minister affirmed. *Segun Tomori* Special Assistant on Media to the Honourable Minister of Solid Minerals Development. 22nd November, 2023. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print WaterAid has donated a 6,000-litre solar-powered borehole and rehabilitated seven compartments of toilets and group of handwashing stations to Community and LGA Primary schools, Ijegun in Lagos State. The projects were inaugurated on Wednesday in partnership with the state government. Speaking on the ocassion, the Country Director, WaterAid Nigeria, Evelyn Mere, said the inauguration was part of activities to mark the World Toilet Day. 2023. Represented by Ukeme Essien, Head, Strategy, Programme Effectiveness and Learning WaterAid, Ms Mere said the project would serve about 2,000 schoolchildren including staff members in Community and LGA II Primary Schools, Ijegun, Igando-Ikotun Local Council Development Area of the state. Ms Mere said the new water facility and toilets were part of interventions under the first year of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Improvement Project funded by the PepsiCo Foundation in Lagos State. She said the project would impact at least 173,000 people with clean water, safely managed sanitation, and hygiene promotion. The provision of these life-transforming services will improve learning and school attendance as children, especially girls, can stay in school because they have access to clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene. As part of the objective of the project to strengthen systems and institutions, WaterAid built the capacity of community members by training over 20 female local area mechanic and establishing a Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Committee (WASHCOM) to maintain and operate new water facilities. An estimated 68 million Nigerians are without access to basic drinking water; 171 million lack handwashing facilities with soap; 113 million do not have adequate toilets; and 48 million practice open defecation. In Lagos State, only 36 per cent of schools have access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene services in 2021, Mere said. According to her access to clean water and decent toilets in school promotes hygiene and contributes to better health among students and staff. More importantly, children deserve a healthy learning environment with easy access to safe and sustainable Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services. Lack of access to adequate WASH facilities can reduce the attendance rates and educational achievement in schools There could be no better time to inaugurate these facilities than on the World Toilet Day celebration where WaterAid alongside our partners-PepsiCo Foundation are accelerating and modelling change for children to feel safe in school and lead healthy lives especially in an environment where they are nurtured. While we commend the governments efforts in WASH service delivery and systems strengthening, we call for increased investments in clean water, decent toilets, and good hygiene so that children do not miss out on education, Ms Mere said. Also, the President of the PepsiCo Foundation and Global Head of Social Impact for PepsiCo, C.D Glin, said they were proud of its long-standing partnership with WaterAid. Were incredibly proud of our long-standing partnership with WaterAid and the transformative work taking place in Lagos State to give access to the basic human right of clean, safe water. This work builds on over 15 years of PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation and reaching more than 80 million people including 12 million people in 2022 alone with access to safe water through distribution, purification and conservation programmes. These efforts put us more than halfway to our pep+ goal of reaching 100 million people with safe water access by 2030. In his goodwill message, the Chairman of Ikotun Igando LCDA, Lasis Akinsanya, expressed gratitude to PepsiCo Foundation and WaterAid for citing the project in the LCDA. Mr Akinsanya said he had no doubt that the project would positively impact the pupils and staff of the schools where it is sited. He pledged the commitment of the LCDA to take ownership of the project. Akinsanya added that the LCDA had employed a security man to secure the facility from vandals. He appealed to WaterAid and PepsiCo Foundation to build more projects in the LCDA. The highlight of the event was the unveiling of the project by the Chairman of the LCDA, Mr Akinsanya. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Kwara State High Court in Ilorin, the state capital, has ordered the remand of a man, Adekunle Ademola, in prison over an allegation of vote selling levelled against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Mr Ademola allegedly agreed to sell his vote during the last 18 March governorship/House of Assembly elections in Kwara State. EFCC said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr Ademola, a registered voter at Polling Unit 004, Ilorin Grammar School, Geri Alimi, Ilorin, agreed for money to be paid into his GTB bank account for voting at the election. He was charged with one count of electoral fraud under section 121 (2) of the Electoral Act, 2022 and punishable under section 121 (4) of the same Act. The defendant pleaded not guilty when the charge was read to him during his arraignment before the judge, Mahmud Abdulgafar, on Wednesday. In view of the defendants not-guilty plea, the prosecuting counsel, Andrew Akoja, prayed the court for a trial date. He also requested that the defendant be remanded in a correctional centre. The judge, in response, remanded the defendant at the Mandala Correctional Centre. He then adjourned the case until 6 December for trial. Read EFCCs full statement below: EFCC PRESS RELEASE Electoral Fraud: EFCC Arraigns Vote Seller in Ilorin The Ilorin Zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has arraigned an alleged vote seller, Adekunle Ademola arrested by operatives of the EFCC, at the just concluded gubernatorial elections in Kwara State. He was arraigned on Wednesday, November 22, 2023 before Justice Mahmud Abdulgafar of the Kwara State High Court, sitting in Ilorin on one-count charge bordering on vote selling. The offence contravenes Section 121 (2) of the Electoral Act, 2022, and is punishable under section 121 (4) of the same Act. The lone -count reads: That you, Adekunle Ademola sometime on 18th March, 2023 at Ilorin, within the Judicial Division of the High Court, while being a voter at the Polling Unit 004, Ilorin Grammar School, Geri Alimi, Ilorin Kwara State, during the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly Election in Kwara State, did agree for money to be paid into your account number 0035091636 domiciled with Guarantee Trust Bank Plc for voting at the election and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 121 (2) of the Electoral Act, 2022 and punishable under section 121 (4) of the same Act. The defendant pleaded not guilty to the charge when it was read to him. In view of his plea, prosecuting counsel, Andrew Akoja, prayed the court for a trial date to enable the prosecution prove its case, and for the remand of the defendant at a Correctional Centre. Justice Abdulgafar thereafter remanded the defendant at Mandala Correctional Centre and later adjourned the case to December 6, 2023 for trial. Adekunles journey to the dock started on March 18, 2023 when he was arrested at Polling Unit 04, Ilorin Grammar School, Ilorin by officers of the Ilorin Zonal Command of the EFCC, on election monitoring duty in the State. Specifically, the defendant provided his name and account number as well as information about seven others for the purpose of receiving money after he had voted. Dele Oyewale Head, Media & Publicity November 22, 2023. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has re-awarded the contract for the construction of the official residence of the Nigerian Vice President to Messrs Julius Berger for N15 billion. The cost is now more than double the amount the contract was first awarded in 2010. Mr Wike, who spoke during an inspection of the project on Tuesday, said the contract, which was initially awarded to Julius Berger in 2010 for N7 billion, was not executed as planned owing to lack of funds. He said the company will receive the necessary funds to complete the project by May 2024. Mr Wike expressed confidence in the companys ability to complete the project within eight months and promised to mobilise it before December. He lamented the increased cost of executing projects that were awarded years ago but abandoned, adding that the hike in cost was putting a lot of strain on the finances of the FCTA and stunting the growth and development of the nations capital. You made a promise to us that you will complete this project within 7/8 months. Even though we have not mobilised you, you have shown concern by working. It is very important and shows that you have confidence in us. Let me assure you that we will mobilise you before December. After that, you have to expedite work to ensure completion before May 29, 2024. I believe that you can achieve that. I also believe there is no need to wait. If you know my antecedent, you know that I dont make promises I cannot fulfil. As far as I have gotten the support of Mr President and Vice President, I can tell you to go ahead and put everything in hand so that we can achieve this, so that all the stories of abandoned properties will no longer be there. It will be a thing of the past. The manpower shows that you are serious, so just go ahead and we will give you the funds to be able to mobilise. Look at the Vice Presidents residence that was awarded in 2010 at the cost of N7 billion. That project was abandoned. And we have called back Julius Berger and said look, can you complete this project within eight months? They said yes but they cant continue with it at the same cost, which is obvious. A project that was awarded in 2010 at N7billion and was abandoned because of no funding. They said they cannot do it for less than N15 billion, looking at the cost of building materials. We have told them that before the end of the month, we will fund them so that they can finish it. Sign of renewed hope He said the move to complete of the project is a sign of renewed hope for the residents of Abuja. He expressed joy that abandoned projects are now being completed, and it is a breath of fresh air for the country. Mr Wike promised to complete other abandoned projects within the FCT that have a significant impact on the residents of the nations capital. He added that he is attaching the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to specified projects as his administration is working on improving its IGR to fund the projects to avoid making excuses. READ ALSO: Wike promises land allocation to Abuja judges For me, we are happy because the promises made by Mr President of renewed hope have come back. Residents of Abuja are now seeing that projects abandoned are now being completed and they are seeing a renewed hope for this country and commend Mr President. As I speak to you today, we have done very well in terms of IGR and these monies would be attached to specific projects. So there is no reason to say there is no money to execute the projects. For example, what we are doing now. We have submitted some projects budgets for 2023, Mr President has promised to transmit it to the National Assembly. We are asking if they should allow us to spend N61 billion before 2024 because we have the money and we want to use the money to execute specific projects so that by May 29, these projects are completed, then we take new other projects for 2024. So, be assured that no project we have started will be abandoned, Mr Wike said. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Lagos State Public Procurement Agency has issued a statement reacting to an open letter sent by Funsho Doherty on the states procurement spending. Mr Doherty, the candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in the 2023 governorship election, said the Lagos State government needs to consider its priorities in spending taxpayers money. Judicious use of public funds is always important, and is especially so now, he said in a letter to the Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. The Lagos State official documents referenced by Mr Doherty covered projects awarded for the second and third quarters of 2023 by the states Public Procurement Agency (PPA). Mr Doherty said these awards require greater scrutiny and he requested the governor to review the projects. Mr Doherty quoted how N2 billion was approved for the provision of supply items (rechargeable fans, rechargeable lights and fridge in the office of the deputy governor. He also mentioned how N18.5 million was awarded to the office of the chief of staff to the governor for the supply and distribution of 2,000 Noiler chicken across the local government areas and wards in the state. Response In responding to Mr Dohertys concerns on Tuesday, Fatai Onafowote, the Director-General of Lagos State Public Procurement Agency said the issue was a misunderstanding arising from a lack of clarity. The agency said it is committed to ensuring transparency, accuracy, and accountability in all government transactions, as mandated by the Lagos State Public Procurement Law. We regret that specific details, particularly concerning the descriptions of government dealings, may have inadvertently led to confusion, impacting both governmental entities and corporate partners providing to the state, the statement said. Earlier on Monday, the Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Obafemi Hamzat, denied that his office received more than N2 billion for the provision of supply items (rechargeable fans, rechargeable lights and fridge). According to the documents shared by Mr Doherty, the office of the deputy governor also got N30 million for monthly outreach of indigent citizens by the wife of the deputy governor, and another N30 million was awarded for monthly empowerment programmes of the wife of the deputy governor. In response to the publication, which has continued to generate debates among Nigerians especially on social media, the deputy governors office wrote the procurement agency, seeking clarification on information it described as untrue, mischievous, fake and unfounded. The deputy governors office said: It is important to state that, the office did get approval and awarded the provision of supply items (rechargeable fans, rechargeable lights and fridges) for the sum of =N=2,017,840 (Two Million, Seventeen Thousand, Eight Hundred and Forty Naira) and not the =N=2,017,840,000 (Two Billion, Seventeen Million, Eight Hundred and Forty Thousand Naira as reported on the website of your agency, Lagos State Public Procurement Agency, Lagos MEPB Q3 Budget Performance Review referenced by the X (formerly Twitter) account. In its statement on Tuesday, the Lagos procurement agency also clarified that the government allocated N2 million for rechargeable fans, rechargeable lights and fridges to the office of the deputy governor. The agency noted that the concerns raised about the N2 billion arose largely from lack of detailed descriptions in the project information, which has inadvertently led to confusion in public space. We emphatise with public concerns and extend our sincere apologies for any distress caused. Its never our intent to cast doubt or cause misunderstandings that might tarnish the reputation of respected individuals and organisations involved in these transactions, the agency said. The agency also addressed some of the procurement deals that stirred controversy such as: 1. The Lagos Lotteries and Gaming Authority: Mr Doherty said substantial costs are being incurred by the Lagos State Lotteries and Gaming Authority far above revenues it is generating for wide-ranging and disparate purposes. He added that as of September, the authoritys 2023 revenues were reported at approximately N3.3 billion and expenditure at approximately N11.4 billion. This contradicts the rationale for the existence of the authority and should be reexamined, he said. However, the Agency refuted the claim that the dwindling revenue cannot be substantiated and does not reflect the true position at Lotteries Board. The enabling law creating the Board empowers it to allocate funds for expenditure relating to certain objectives including educational, infrastructural, health care and environmental objectives. 2. Concerning the Lagos State Procurement Agency on-boarding of four MDAs and Twenty-nine hospitals into the E-procurement system, Mr Doherty said, there should be additional oversight and control mechanism for significant procurement awards of the Public Procurement Agency as procurement should not be left alone to police itself. In responding to this claim, the Agency said: The Lagos State Public Procurement Agency operates under a governance framework that ensures rigorous oversight and control mechanisms beyond its internal procurement policies. The agencys activities are subject of meticulous scrutiny and audit processes conducted by both the Lagos State House of Assembly and office of the Auditor General. 3. For Mr Dohertys comment on Blue Rail Line: the agency said that The Blue Line Rail Projects design and construction were entrusted to Messr CCECC Nigeria Limited. Subsequently, upon finalising the fixed infrastructure, a two-year partial operation contract was executed with the contractor for the following purposes: bolster the technical and operational expertise of LAMATAs teams, fostering their capacity, meticulously gather scientific, financial and revenue data essential for informed decision-making processes, equip pertinent practitioners with the necessary information crucial for forthcoming concessioning procedures, empower the contractor to promptly address any defects identified during the operational phase of the project. 4. For the fragrance for the Governors office: The procurement agency said the amount of N7.47 million budgeted for the expenditure covers the entire year 2023 and other offices aside from the Governors office. To address these concerns thoroughly, the agency said it has taken immediate steps: Line-by-line explanations of the contracts are attached herewith, aiming to provide absolute clarity and dispel any lingering misconceptions. See the pictures below for further information on the line-by-line explanations by states procurement agency: Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Kano State House of Assembly on Tuesday received a supplementary budget request of N24 billion from the state governor, Abba Yusuf. Tuesdays request is barely two months after the assembly approved a supplementary budget request of N58 billion. The request was approved on 9 October. During planetary presided by the speaker, Jibril Falgore, the letter from Mr Yusuf was read by the spokesperson of the assembly, Uba Abdullahi. Mr Abdullahi said the proposed expenditure set aside N4 billion for personnel costs, and settlements of gratuity and N20 billion was set aside for capital expenditure. The second supplementary budget is to be sourced from additional revenue, both from federation account allocation Committee, internally generated revenue and receipts from Ministry for Local Government and independent power project loan from CBN, the spokesperson said. The first and second supplementary budgets under Mr Yusuf have now risen to over N82 billion, six months after he assumed office. Mr Yusufs predecessor, Abdullahi Ganduje, had signed a budget of N268 billion for 2023 before leaving office in May. With the supplementary budget of N82 billion, the 2023 budget of the state now stands at N350 billion. Mr Ganduje had, in November last year, presented N245 billion estimates for 2023. However, the lawmakers reviewed the budget upward to N268 billion, to cater for what they referred to as the social and economic developments of the state. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print A Federal High Court in Port Harcourt on Tuesday ordered the two factions in the Rivers House of Assembly to suspend further sitting and maintain the status quo, pending the dispensation of the suit before the court. A factional speaker of the assembly, Edison Ehie filed the suit, asking the court to stop Martins Amaewhule, the speaker of another faction in the Assembly and other lawmakers from presiding over the activities of the assembly. The River House of Assembly is the first plaintiff in the suit, while Mr Ehie is the second. The defendants are the factional speaker of the assembly, Mr Amaewhule, Dumle Moal, former deputy speaker, the Inspector-General of Police, Director, State Security Service, Rivers State, and the Commissioner of Police. The judge, Phoebe Ayua, in her ruling, ordered all the parties to respect the court order, pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice. The order directed the plaintiff/applicants to put the respondents on notice forthwith. In the suit, the plaintiffs sought, among others, a declaration that Mr Amaewhule and his deputy, having been removed and suspended from the house, are not entitled to participate, disturb, interfere or obstruct the performance of the legislative proceedings and duties of the new speaker. This, they said, was in accordance with the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria. The plaintiff also sought an order restraining Mr Amaewhule and the deputy from interfering or taking part in the functions of the House of Assembly. The court was adjourned till 27 November for a hearing. The assembly broke into two factions in October when Mr Amaewhule and some members attempted to impeach Governor Siminalayi Fubara of the state. (NAN) Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Yobe State governor, Mai-Mala Buni, has donated a house and cash to the family of a police officer who was killed during an attack on his convoy. Last Saturday, gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram terrorists attacked the governors convoy along the Maiduguri-Damaturu highway, killing a police officer and injuring two others, including a soldier. The incident happened as the governors motorcade was returning from the 24th convocation of the University of Maiduguri, Borno State. Following the incident, the governors spokesperson, Mamman Muhammed, in a statement, on Tuesday, said the governor has directed the purchase of a house worth N7.5 million to the family of the deceased policeman, Mohammed Maina, a corporal. Mr Muhammed said the sum of N2 million has been approved for the family for their immediate needs in addition to N1 million provided for the childrens school fees. The governor also approved N1 million to each of the six other security operatives injured during the attack, Mr Muhammed added. Another N2 million was approved by Governor Buni to take care of their medical bills. The family of the deceased and those injured were also supported with food items. Governor Buni prayed for the repose of the soul of the deceased, and the quick recovery of those injured. Meanwhile, the family of late Mohammed Ali, who died in an accident involving a security vehicle, has been presented with keys to a house donated by the state government. The Emir of Damaturu, His Royal Highness, Alh. Shehu Hashim ll Ibn Umar El-kanemi, in the company of the Special Adviser to the Governor on Religious Affairs, Ustaz Babagana Malam Kyari, presented the keys and prayed for the deceased, the statement said. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Yoruba socio-political group, Afenifere, has called on President Bola Tinubu and the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Ganduje, to end the political impasse in Ondo State. The Ondo State Government has been in a virtual lockdown since Governor Rotimi Akeredolu became seriously ill early this year. After months of prevarication, Mr Akeredolu formally transferred power to his deputy, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, on 14 June through a letter to the state House of Assembly in which he notified the lawmakers that he was taking a 21-day medical leave. Following several extensions of the leave while he was in hospital in Germany, the governor returned to Nigeria in September to resume his duties. He, however, has not been to the state, instead staying out of public view in his private residence in Ibadan, Oyo State. The opposition has demanded that Mr Akeredolu resign if he is unable to return to his office. Mr Akeredolus absence has also caused a division in the state government between his loyalists and the deputy governor. An attempt by the state House of Assembly to remove the deputy governor from office, as the crisis worsened, was checked by the Federal High Court which is hearing a suit filed by the deputy governor against the House. Afenifere speaks on crisis At an emergency meeting called by its leader, Reuben Fasoranti, in Akure on Tuesday, Afenifere warned the feuding sides against the removal of either the governor over his illness or his deputy over alleged disloyalty. The group expressed concern over the prolonged absence of the governor from the state and the lack of communication between him and his deputy. Afenifere lamented the failure of the ruling APC to reconcile the feuding groups in the Ondo State Government. The group lamented misinformation on developments in the state government and the deputy governor being disallowed from performing his constitutional duties on behalf of the governor. It noted the apparent confusion and helplessness of civil servants in the state in the absence of clear directives from the government. It condemned the current utter disrespect for the Rule of Law in Ondo State whereby self-serving persons have taken over the government without due regard to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The groups position is contained in a communique it issued at the end of Tuesdays meeting, signed by Mr Fasoranti and the groups Secretary, Bakkita Bello. The communique stated as follows: There should be NO impeachment of the Governor nor the Deputy Governor by the House of Assembly. All unelected persons should allow the three arms of government to find lasting solutions to the current crisis. The rule of law should be followed by all stakeholders as enshrined in Nigerias constitution. The Elders also called on the State/National Leadership of the Ruling Party, the All Progressives Congress, to provide the required guide to those in Government as well as ensure discipline amongst their fold. Conciliation efforts initiated by Papa Reuben Fasoranti, Oba Olu Falae, Basorun Seinde Arogbofa, Chiefs Femi Aluko, Korede Duyile and Professor Olu Aderounmu, that were started two months ago and been continuously vigorously pursued by Elders/Leaders, Spiritual and Royal Fathers in the State, should be concluded to allowing true rapprochement and enduring good governance thrive in the State. The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency, Senator Bola Ahmed TINUBU, is hereby passionately called upon to intervene and end the present constitutional crisis in the state, to avoid the looming breakdown of Law and Order in Ondo State. Mr Fasoranti, called for prayers for the improved health of the governor, as his absence has, without doubt, caused a lack of sustained good governance in the State. Meanwhile, the APC in Ondo State has assured that the political crisis will soon be resolved. It, however, warned political gladiators and stakeholders to be circumspect in their utterances and actions as regards the political development in the state. The faceoff between the executive and legislative arms of the state government is being critically examined by the combined teams of national and state leaderships of the party, a statement by the partys Spokesperson, Alex Kalejaiye, said on Wednesday. The chapter is very hopeful that the situation would soon be resolved, to wade off avoidable political tension, and engender a friendly atmosphere, ahead of the governorship election. The party expressed appreciation to various stakeholders, particularly the respectable elders in the state for their concerns, words of counsel, and prayers, assuring that the storm would be over soon. It is imperative to urge stakeholders to pursue peace with maturity and civilised conduct. Protests and violent agitations, as being contemplated by some groups, can only lead to personal injuries. We should be reminded that security agents would not condone destructive conducts under whatever pretence. We should be well guided. The ruling party commended the good people of the State for their peaceful disposition thus far, and their resolve to resist relentless efforts, aimed at dragging them into unproductive agitations. The Ondo APC further applauded security agents for all the efforts and sacrifices to ensure a peaceful atmosphere. They have been commendably organised, and supportive in this regard. Police warn against breach of peace To avert the uneasy calm in the state leading to a breach of the peace, the police had warned against holding any form of political protest in the state. As more people expressed worry over the absence of the governor and the alleged abuse of power by his kitchen cabinet due to the vacuum, the opposition has stepped up pressure on the state government to be transparent on the governors health condition. On Thursday, 33 commissioners and members of the state executive committee passed a vote of confidence in the governor but the deputy governor and two commissioners did not sign the document. Compounding the impasse are rumours that the governors health condition had worsened and that a cabal around him was concealing information on it while it continued to illegally wield the powers of the governor. Mr Akeredolu has over a year left before his second term, to which he was elected in October 2020, expires. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7th October 2023 and the response from Israel (and the international community) requires a new approach by the EU in its Middle East policy. The member states and the EU itself must re-think its policies in the Middle East and should come with plans and strategies for new initiatives and peace plans. We want to discuss and reflect on what would a new direction leading to peace look like, on what should BundnisC's position be and the areas in which it could advise the German government. The speakers will present different perspectives. The participants can ask questions and will be involved in the discussion throughout the event. We want to achieve a broader perception of the various aspects of the Middle East conflict, in light of the EU policies and the EU itself. The House of Representatives has resolved to probe Zenith Bank over the alleged freezing of the bank accounts of some of its customers. This resolution was a sequel to a motion of a matter of urgent public importance moved by Femi Bamishile (APC, Ekiti) on Wednesday during plenary. Moving the motion, Mr Bamishile informed the lawmakers that Zenith Bank has an App for the transaction of FX. According to him, the app has been running for years with no limit cap on transactions. He stated that customers of the bank have been using the platform for transactions but that the app stopped recently. Mr Bamishile said shortly after the App stopped, the bank also froze the bank accounts of some of the customers using the software. This App has been ongoing for a period of time, and there is no cap to the limit of money that can be bought or transferred either by an individual or business. Three weeks ago customers accounts were frozen and a message was sent out by Zenith Bank to their customers, asking them to refund the money they transferred using the App, he said. He cited a case of an unnamed man whom the bank is coercing to refund $100,000 after carrying out transactions via the App. A young man was invited and detained by the Special Fraud Unit. He was made to pay a $100,000 back to the bank and also made to give an undertaken under duress stating that he made an illegal transaction, the legislator said in the motion. Mr Bamishile explained that Zenith Bank made money from all transactions via the App, therefore, they should be equally liable for any disruption. Following the adoption of the motion, the Speaker, Abbas Tajudeen mandated the committee on Digital Banking to look into this issue and come to an amicable resolution. The committee is to report back to the House in two weeks. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Senate resolved on Wednesday to probe the abandoned installation of CCTV cameras in the Abuja metropolis. The failed contract, which has been previously valued at $460 million, was awarded to a private contractor during the administration of late President Umaru Yaradua. The Senate passed the resolution to probe the contract following a motion sponsored by Ned Nwoko (PDP, Delta North) at the plenary. Mr Nwoko, while presenting the motion, said that despite series of security measures already in existence, kidnapping and other insecurity challenges still persist in the Federal Capital Territory. The senator said his senior legislative aide, identified as Chris, a lawyer, and 18 other persons were abducted two weeks ago from their residences around Galadimawa area of Abuja. He said that security sources indicated that 12 of the victims have been killed by their abductors, while efforts to rescue the remaining seven are still ongoing. Mr Nwoko called for a joint security operation involving the Nigerian Army, the police and State Security Services (SSS) for a rescue operation of the victims. He also urged members of the upper chamber to encourage security agencies in the country to facilitate installation of CCTV cameras within Abuja metropolis and other parts of the country. Ede Dafinone (APC, Delta Central), who seconded the motion, said there is an urgent need to stop kidnapping and other security challenges across the country. Enyinnaya Abaribe (APGA, Abia South), in his contribution, said residents of Lugbe and Kubuwa areas of Abuja can no longer sleep in their homes because of the fear of being attacked by kidnappers. Mr Abaribe urged security agencies to increase security surveillance patrols within the territory. Abandoned CCTV cameras Adamu Aliero (PDP, Kebbi Central) revealed that N500 billion was awarded to a contractor for the installation of CCTV cameras in the Abuja metropolis. Mr Aliero said the contract was awarded to the contractor when he was the FCT minister. Mr Aliero was the FCT minister between December 2008 to March 2010 under the administration of late President Yaradua. Although the senator was silent on the name and details of the contractor, he stressed that the installation of the cameras was abandoned. He therefore called for the probe of the contract. The contractor just came and installed useless cameras and nobody is saying anything. It is now time for us to revisit that issue of the N500 billion award of contract for installation of CCTV cameras in the city. We should make the contractor account for the huge loss of money. The project has gone down the drain and nobody is talking about it, Mr Aliero said. After debate on the issue, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, put it to voice vote and a majority of the senators voted in support of it. Mr Akpabio, thereafter, directed the Senate Committee on FCT to liaise with the Office of the Minister of FCT to investigate the abandoned project. The Senate President also urged the Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun to increase the surveillance of patrols in Abuja to prevent kidnapping and other security challenges. Mr Akpabio directed Clerk of the Senate, Chinedu Akubueze, to communicate the resolution to the appropriate authorities. Previous scrutiny The failed Abuja CCTV camera project was a subject of legislative scrutiny in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, during the 9th National Assembly. Then-Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed to a House committee in 2019 that Nigeria was still servicing the $460 million Chinese loan that was obtained in 2010 for the installation of the CCTV cameras in Abuja, while the project itself was not executed. Enraged by the disclosure, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) wrote a letter anchored on the Freedom of Information Act to the Minister of Finance, requesting detailed information on the CCTV project. When the minister refused to release the requested information, SERAP sued the minister and the federal government, asking the court to issue an order compelling them to disclose the information. In May this year, the Federal High Court in Abuja granted SERAPs prayers, ordering then outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari government to account for the spending of $460 million Chinese loan to fund the failed Abuja Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) project. READ ALSO: Senate moves to revise Nigerian laws The court also ordered the government to publish the total amount of money paid to Chinese and local companies and contractors and specific details of the names of the companies and contractors and status of the implementation of the project. But there is no indication the judgement has been complied with. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Soldiers have rescued 31 kidnapped victims during separate onslaughts against terrorists in Sokoto State on Tuesday. The operation, tagged Hadarin Daji, is a military operation in north-west Nigeria to fight terrorists who have been attacking communities in the region for over a decade. The operation consists of men and officers of the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Air Force and other security agencies. The victims were rescued during a sustained clearance operation of terrorist enclaves, a statement released in Gusau by the operations spokesperson, Yahaya Ibrahim, said. Mr Ibrahim, a captain, said the troops cleared Alya Fulani where they rescued 30 people before proceeding to Goboro all in Tangaza Local Government Area where they rescued one victim. In a recent clearance operation conducted by the troops of OPHD on 21 November 2023 at Tangaza LGA of Sokoto State, cleared Alya Fulani village, Buani forest, where 30 kidnapped persons were rescued. All the discovered terrorist hideouts were destroyed as the terrorists abandoned their captives and fled from their camps before the arrival of the aggressive troops. The troops also proceeded to Goboro village where one female kidnapped victim was rescued as the terrorists/bandits fled in disarray due to troops firepower superiority, he said. READ ALSO: Three killed in Zamfara as terrorists launch fresh attack Mr Ibrahim said the commander commended the gallantry of the troops, charging them to do more and continue to deny the terrorists any freedom of action. Zamfara and other Northwestern states have witnessed several terrorist activities for over a decade. The terrorists attack and kill people in their communities, markets, religious places, schools and highways. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Food aid to 1.4 million people in Chad, including recently arrived refugees from conflict in Sudans Darfur region, will stop in January 2024 due to a lack of sponsorship, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The WFP announced in a statement on November 21, that it would stop providing relief to internally displaced persons and refugees from Nigeria, the Central African Republic, and Cameroon as of December 2023 due to financial difficulties and an increase in humanitarian needs. From January 2024, the suspension will be extended to 1.4 million people across Chad including new arrivals from Sudan who will not receive food as they flee across the border, read the report. Since fighting broke out between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seven months ago, over 540,000 refugees fled from Sudan into Chad, according to the International Organization for Migration. Many have left West Darfur, where mass massacres and racially motivated violence flared up again in October 2023 in the state capital, el-Geneina, forcing hundreds more people to flee. In just the last six months of conflict in Sudan, as many refugees have fled into Chad as had crossed the border in the preceding 20 years starting from the outbreak of the Darfur crisis in 2003. This brings the total number of refugees in Chad to over a million, making the country host to one of the largest and fastest-growing refugee populations in the whole African continent, WFP said. WFP urgently needs $185 million to guarantee that the crisis-affected communities of Chad get help for the next six months. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal, Umar Bangari, has reacted to the raging controversy over the true copy of the judgement of the court sacking Kano State governor, Abba Yusuf, last Friday. A three-member panel of the Court of Appeal led by Moore Adumein had nullified Mr Yusufs election on the ground that he was not an authentic member of his political party, the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), so was not validly nominated as a candidate in the poll. Consequently, the appellate court declared his closest challenger, Nasiru Gawuna, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the 18 March governorship election. However, the certified true copy (CTC) of the judgement issued by the Court of Appeal, said Mr Yusuf won the election, contrary to its earlier findings on Friday. Addressing journalists on Wednesday in Abuja, NNPPs national secretary, Dipo Olayoku, said the appellate court had thrown his party and the country into confusion. If at the point of delivering the judgement, there was a pronouncement that our appeal failed but the CTC of the same judgement in its conclusive findings actually resolved all the issues in our favour, and even awarded costs in our favour against the APC, this definitely is a riddle. It is clear to us that the only conclusion that can be drawn from this judicial debacle is that the average reasonable person can only conclude that the Court of Appeal changed the judgement after they had concluded deliberations on the matter, and then mistakenly left the original conclusion during the cutting and pasting process. To our greatest surprise, the CTC showed that the judgement delivered by Justice Moore Aseimo Abraham Adumein, JCA, and concurred to by Justice Bitrus Gyarazama JCA, Justice Lateef Adebayo Ganiyu, JCA is actually in favour of our candidate, the Governor of Kano State, Engr. Abba Kabir Yusuf, Mr Olayoku said while referencing portions of the judgement. Appeal Courts reaction The Chief Registrar of the appellate court, Mr Bangari, in reaction to the claims, described the discrepancy between what was read in open court and what was contained in the certified true copy of the judgement as a clerical error. He said the error in the body of the judgement does not invalidate the courts findings. He said the error would be corrected once lawyers to parties in the suit file their requests in that regard. Mr Bangari referenced Order 23 Rule 4 of the Court of Appeal HandBook which empowers the court to correct any clerical error once detected by the court or any of the parties in the matter. What happened in the part of the judgment is just a mere clerical error that ought not to draw any issue. The Court is empowered to correct such clerical error and would be done as appropriate, the Chief Registrar said in a statement on Wednesday. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Some supporters of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) on Wednesday in Kano protested against the Appeal Court judgement that sacked Governor Abba Yusuf 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. Displeased with the court judgement, the protesters rose from a prayer session at an open field located at BUK Road and called for fairness and justice for the governor. The protests followed the release of the Certified True Copy of the judgement which has some contradictory pronouncements. READ ALSO: Appeal Court speaks on confusion in certified copy of judgement on Kano election PREMIUM TIMES noticed that the police dispersed the protesters who were mainly underaged children. Some of the protesters pelted security operatives with stones. The protest terminated at Gidan Murtala at the BUK road after the police fired multiple rounds of teargas to disperse the protesters. Fearing violent clashes between supporters of the NNPP and APC, the police had banned all forms of protests or jubilation following the Appeal Court judgement. A few days ago the police warned that it has uncovered a plan my supporters of ruling party to protest the outcome of the case. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Nigerian government has promised to initiate strategies towards exploring dynamic funding solutions for the nations four inter-university centres. The countrys four inter-university centres are the National Mathematical Centre (NMC), the National Institute for Nigerian Languages, the Nigerian French Language Village, and the Nigerian Arabic Language Centre. Speaking on Wednesday during an interactive session with the chief executive officers of these centres, the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, said part of the strategies to achieve improved funding will be by establishing a constructive dialogue involving the ministry, the centres, and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND). A statement issued on Wednesday by the Federal Ministry of Education and signed by its Director of Press and Public Relations, Ben Goong, noted that the ultimate goal is to seamlessly integrate the inter-university centres into TETFUNDs funding framework, ushering in an era of sustained financial support. The education minister appealed to the academic community and urged both the public and private universities across the country to patronise the centres for their training programmes. Statement According to the statement, Mr Sununu pledged to support the cause for increased funding. He promised that he would interface with his former colleagues at the National Assembly to make a case for improved funding for the centres, adding that training and research are key to national development. Addressing the minister, the chief executives of the centres lamented the challenges of inadequate funding, low patronage, and inability of their academic staff to rise to the professorial cadre level owing to statutory constraints, as well as poor and dilapidated infrastructure. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The governor, who also threatened to go to the Supreme Court over the inadequate national compensation of his state, is also seeking 13 per cent derivation from the national hydrocarbon revenue for its supply of water to the Delta region. The states in Niger Delta are entitled to 13 per cent from federal allocations. What then is the role of the Hydro-Electric Power Producing Areas Development Commission (HYPPADEC)? The governor of Niger State, Alhaji Umaru Bago recently expressed his concern over the countrys revenue sharing formula. The state he governs, Niger, is called the power state. This is no fluke; it hosts power generation plants with a total installed capacity of 6,000MWs, from the Shiroro to Kainji and Jebba stations, as contribution to the national grid, yet the state has remained largely undeveloped. For giving much to the nation, and receiving virtually nothing, the governor said his state is being shortchanged and is determined to right the wrong. The governor, who also threatened to go to the Supreme Court over the inadequate national compensation of his state, is also seeking 13 per cent derivation from the national hydrocarbon revenue for its supply of water to the Delta region. The states in Niger Delta are entitled to 13 per cent from federal allocations. What then is the role of the Hydro-Electric Power Producing Areas Development Commission (HYPPADEC)? Our people are ravaged and displaced year in, year out because of the water from Niger to the Delta. The Federal Government will pay Niger state N1 trillion in the next three months for hydrocarbon exchange. They must. We have provided this country with hydropower for a long time; nobody is compensating us for it, the governor blew hot in a subtle threat to the Federal Government. Continuing, Governor Bago noted that, Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) must pay us, they have consumed from Niger State hydrocarbon exchange, and NNPC must pay us. We have woken up; we can never tolerate being neglected or abandoned again. The only way to ensure the Federal Government heeds us is to shut down the hydro dams until we are paid. We are serious about this; we will take every kobo that is for Niger State. We are not going to be marginalised again; our waters, our lands and our borders are strengths for us and not weaknesses. We demand compensation for our people. The force in Governor Baros remarks makes you wonder if Niger State exists in isolation. Talking tough and threatening fire and brimstone are empty if there are no extant laws to support the governors claims. However, continued agitations for resource control is a legitimate right in an awkward federation like ours, where most resources are mainly in the exclusive list under the control of the Federal Government. Within this agitative purview, the people of Niger Delta fought hard and got 13 per cent derivation, NDDC and the Ministry of Niger Delta. Whether these MDAs can meet their milestones, achieve their targets and solve the ecological challenges and environmental degradation bedeviling the Niger Delta is a different ball game. If duplication of MDAs could transform the country overnight, Nigeria would be El dorado by now, because we have them and states in abundance. Meanwhile, I do not begrudge the Niger State governor for also joining the league of agitators and demanders for compensation from the Federal Government. Government does not reward civility. If in doubt, ask the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). Other than coming to the rescue of capsized boats and their survivors, I have not seen much of HYPPADEC interventions in the hydropower producing states of Niger, Kogi, Kebbi, Plateau, Benue and Kaduna states, except a youth transformation and development programme of the six participating states; distribution and commissioning of operational vehicles Following in the footsteps of the Niger Delta agitation, the power producing states struggled to get HYPPADEC on track for many years. I was also in the vanguard of the agitation, authoring many articles to that effect. In 2010, HYPPADEC was finally reckoned with, when it became an Act of the National Assembly. Like the NDDC, it was geared towards addressing the ecological challenges arising from the exploration and operation of the hydro advantage of states around River Niger and its precincts. Thereafter, HYPPADEC went into hiatus for another 10 years, while amendments to the laws establishing it took place. It was not until 2020 that President Muhammadu got HYPPADEC off the shelf, and finally constituted a governing board and management for its take off, operation and functionality. Thus, the fate of Niger State and others in HYPPADEC is not all gloom, as painted by the governor. In fact, HYPPADEC was established to address the issues he raised, when Bago recently played host to the Federal Commissioner of the National Commission for Refugees, Migration and Internally Displaced Persons, Tijani Aliyu, in Minna. Incidentally, HYPPADEC is headquartered in Minna, so he cannot claim he does not know about the establishment. But like Oliver Twist, having more is no crime. Going forward, I hope Governor Bago will work with HYPPADEC to demand more from the Federal Government to achieve more for the state. HYPPADEC should not go the way of other agencies established to improve the lives and operating environment of host communities harbouring mineral resources like the NDDC. The people of Niger Delta continue to wallow in poverty, side by side with the degradation of their environment, while money channeled to the area through the 13 per cent derivation has become slush funds for the light fingered and elites who have access to power. Other than coming to the rescue of capsized boats and their survivors, I have not seen much of HYPPADEC interventions in the hydropower producing states of Niger, Kogi, Kebbi, Plateau, Benue and Kaduna states, except a youth transformation and development programme of the six participating states; distribution and commissioning of operational vehicles, while perennial ecological problems like flooding and environmental degradation remain unchecked. Ultimately, running the country like a federation that it is claimed on paper can erase the ignorance of state governors about what is under their nose, and how it can be explored and exploited for the good of their people. The resources of any state, if allowed to be controlled by that state, should be sources of wealth, even as the state pays royalties to the centre. That is what a federation is all about. Though still in infancy, HYPPADEC and the activities carried out so far are quite different from what is expected of the commission. This explained why Governor Bago did not take the organisation into cognisance in his outbursts and threats to the Federal Government, except the governor just made a political statement; far from accepting the Commissions existence as a Federal Government agency in the capital of the state he governs. Ultimately, running the country like a federation that it is claimed on paper can erase the ignorance of state governors about what is under their nose, and how it can be explored and exploited for the good of their people. The resources of any state, if allowed to be controlled by that state, should be sources of wealth, even as the state pays royalties to the centre. That is what a federation is all about. According to Wikipedia, a federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterised by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-governing status of the component states, as well as the division of power between them and the central government, is constitutionally entrenched and may not be altered by a unilateral decision, neither by the component states nor the federal political body. Alternatively, a federation is a form of government in which sovereign power is formally divided between a central authority and a number of constituent regions, where each region retains some degree of control over its internal affairs. In Nigeria, the reverse is the case; the states come to Abuja to beg for what is rightly theirs. This arrangement questions the principles of a federation, as stated above. Let us work towards a Nigeria where political campaign promises will no longer be hinged on federal allocations. The current situation that allows states with unharnessed resources to come to collect allocation is no longer tenable. It is quite easy to fritter away money that is not worked for. That explains the reckless spendings of governors. It is also the reason that politics is the only profitable job in town, where people have access to free money they did not work for and why the competition for power is intense. True federalism can curb these excesses. Zainab Suleiman Okino is a syndicated columnist. She can be reached via: zainabokino@gmail.com Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Mr Teslim Kolawole Folarin, the former Chairman of the Local Content Committee in the 9th Senate, has commended the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) for training 500 youths in Oyo State on solar power installation and maintenance. The training programme was organised as part of the Boards youth empowerment and human capacity-building initiatives. The training was conducted in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, and it lasted for six months. Mr Folarin, who represented Oyo Central Senatorial District, gave the commendation on Tuesday when he participated in the close-out ceremony of the training held at Ibadan. He lauded the Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Mr Simbi Kesiye Wabote for his dedication to growing Local Content and building capacity for youths of the country. He noted that If we have about 10 Simbis in Nigeria, our country will be a better place. He requested the Board to continually engage the youths with more training and contract opportunities in the oil and gas industry. Delivering the keynote address at the event, the Director, Planning, Research and Statistics at the NCDMB, Mr Abdulmalik Halilu hinted that the Board initiated the programme to create employment opportunities in the country, generate wealth and empower the youths to contribute meaningfully to the economy of the nation. He observed that technology, skill acquisition in trades and agriculture are some of the high-impact economic sectors. He harped that solar power installation and maintenance training provided an alternative source of power at homes and offices to support the national power grid in addition to providing job opportunities for the youths. He further disclosed that as part of the end-to-end planning for the programme, the Board has concluded arrangements to register cooperative societies for the group as well as provide shops where they would practice their trades. According to him, the trainees will commence business as registration of cooperatives and the provision of shops in groups for the graduates has been done. This empowerment programme was aimed at providing lifelong support to youths. He implored Nigerian youths to take advantage of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Joint Qualification System (NOGICJQS), adding that the platform is intended to select participants for human capacity-building interventions and employment opportunities whenever they are available. In her comment, the General Manager of the Corporate Communication and Zonal Coordination Division, Mrs Angela Okoro gave an overview of the Boards objectives and mandates stating that the Board has trained over 16,000 semi-skilled and skilled youths across the country, in furtherance of its human capital development initiatives. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), has refuted a media report which falsely alleged that its Executive Secretary, Mr Simbi Kesiye Wabote said that international oil companies (IOCs) including Shell, were no longer interested in investing in the country. A statement issued on Tuesday by Manager, Corporate Communications of NCDMB, Mr Esueme D Kikile in Yenagoa described the report as inaccurate and a failure to understand the current context and nuances of the Nigerian oil and gas industry which Engr. Wabote tried to explain in his Goodwill Message. The existence of challenges does not translate to the bleak scenario painted in the report which certainly does not represent the views of NCDMB or its leadership. In fact, the tone of the ES message was very positive in discussing the challenges. The NCDMB is constantly having frank discussions with stakeholders, including the IOCs in a dynamic and often challenging sector. Protecting Nigerias best interests is our constant focus as we try to balance the imperatives of keeping the sector investor-friendly with the current and future priorities of the country, Mr Kikile explained. The rebuttal which was titled, Misrepresentation of goodwill message made by Executive Secretary, NCDMB, Engr. Simbi Kesiye Wabote at 2023 NAPE conference clarified as follows: It has come to our attention that some media reports on comments made by the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Engr. Simbi Kesiye Wabote at the recent 41st Annual International Conference and Exhibition of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE), in Lagos contained significant misrepresentations and distortions. The report distorted Engr. Wabotes privileged comments, and reached an imaginary conclusion that suggests that ShellPetroleum Development Company (SPDC) has withdrawn from the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) it signed with the NCDMB, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and four other international oil companies (IOCs) towards shortening the contracting cycle, ramping up Nigerias crude oil production and ensuringcompliance with the provisions of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act. As a professional and rigorous institution with a commitment to the sharing of accurate information, it is necessary that we clarify the real facts and substance of his comments at the event in the interest of stakeholders, including investors. Contrary to the impression in the report, the ES did not participate in any panel discussion at the Conference; his comments were captured in his Goodwill Message, copies of which were shared at the event.In it, he touched on various issues critical to the good health of the local and global energy sector. His comments, essentially a rallying cry to the nations petroleum explorationists, included: A. Addressing the Energy Trilemma achieving an appropriate balance between energy security, sustainability, and affordability. B. The central role of Nigerian petroleum explorationists in addressing key questions in future energy dynamics. C. The continued relevance of the oil and gas industry as a key pillar of global energy powering industrial and economic developments across the world. D. The urgent need for the nation to increase the component of renewable energy in its energy mix and the central role of petroleum explorationists in achieving this imperative. E. How the resurgence in the issuance of licenses for exploration and development of oil and gas in the North Sea is affecting global energy dynamics and why Nigeria needs to work harder to remain relevant. Second, the statement in the report the IOCs, especially Shell, were no longer interested in investing in the country attributed to Engr. Wabote is inaccurate. It is, at best, a failure to understand the current context and nuances of the Nigerian oil and gas industry which Engr. Wabote tried to explain in his Goodwill Message. The existence of challenges does not translate to the bleak scenario painted in the report which certainly does not represent the views of NCDMB or its leadership. In fact, the tone of the ES message was very positive in discussing the challenges. The NCDMB is constantly having frank discussions with stakeholders, including the IOCs in a dynamic and often challenging sector. Protecting Nigerias best interests is our constant focus as we try to balance the imperatives of keeping the sector investor-friendly with the current and future priorities of the country. The NCDMB equally seizes the opportunity to refute the comments attributed to the Executive Vice President (Upstream), NNPC, Mrs. Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, to the effect that the implementation of the NOGICD Act has led to thereturn of portfolio managers or companies, rather than the development of local competences and capabilities. NCDMB, as a regulatory agency does not select contractors for the operators. The role of NCDMB in the tender management process is to ensure that the operators and their Joint Venture (JV) partners comply with the provisions of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act in selecting contractors for their projects and activities. It is therefore inappropriate to suggest that the implementation of the NOGICD Act has led to the return of portfolio managers and companies. The phenomenal improvement in Nigerian Content growth from 5 percent before the NOGICD Act was enacted in April 2010 to 54 percent by the end of 2022, which is acknowledged locally and internationally is clear evidence that Nigerian Content has created visible and tangential capacities and capabilities and not portfolio companies. The NCDMBs implementation tools and procedures are designed to approve only companies with demonstrable capacities and capabilities and never portfolio companies. We believe that ample and verifiable evidence and information abound regarding the giant strides made by Nigerian companies on the production and service sides of the oil and gas industry since the enactment of the NOGICD Act, and there is no such thing as portfolio companies arising from Nigerian Content implementation, contrary to what the EVP was quoted to have alluded to the statement concluded. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Biden Administration has decided to extend by 120 days a sanctions waiver that allows Iraq to pay for the much-needed fuel it has received from Iran without running afoul of U.S. sanctions. The waiver permits Iraq to deposit payments into non-Iraqi banks with restricted accounts, accessible to Iran for spending only on humanitarian goods. An estimated $10 billion has been built up in Iraqi escrow accounts for the Iranian gas, and Iran has responded to lack of payment by periodically cutting gas supplies to Iraq. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller noted that there are 20 U.S. sanctions waivers dealing with payment by Iraq for Iranian fuel imports, and that they were initiated under the previous U.S. administration. The waivers are consistent, he said, with the U.S. goals of reducing Irans leverage over Iraq, and of ultimately weaning Iraq from dependence on Iranian fuel. Also, and importantly, Spokesperson Miller said allowing Iran to access funds for the purpose of buying food and medicine is a good thing for the Iranian people with whom we have no quarrel. Our quarrel is with the Iranian regime and its destabilizing activities. And what we see is an Iranian regime that whether these waivers are issued or not, whether their people benefit from these monies or not continues to fund hostile activities. That has not changed; it has not changed going back years, he said. It has done that first and foremost; its one of its top priorities. It does that whether its people receive humanitarian benefits or not. Regarding Irans malign activities, Spokesperson Miller said, the United States will continue to hold the Iranian government accountable. National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby underscored U.S. resolve: We have added force posture to the region. We have sanctioned in two and a half years some 400 entities 300 in just the last year alone - for all manner of Iranian destabilizing behavior: the way theyre treating their protesters; the way theyre supporting Russia; and the way theyre threatening maritime shipping in the Gulf region, he said. Nobody is turning any blind eye to Irans destabilizing activities, declared Mr. Kirby. Were going to continue to keep the pressure on them. The Minister of State for Petroleum (Oil), Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, has commended Waltersmith Group and the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) for supporting the Federal Government agenda of improving domestic refining capacity. Speaking on Tuesday during a facility tour of Waltersmith Petroman Oil Limited, Ibigwe, Ohaji-Egbema Local Government Area of Imo State, the Minister commended the company and NCDMB for taking the bull by the horn to commence local refining of crude and partially meeting the demand of the local. According to the minister, The quickest way to fix our energy challenge in the country should be through modular refineries, while we await the total rehabilitation of the big refineries. The 5,000-barrel per stream day Waltersmith Petroman, which has been a stable source of diesel, kerosene, naphta, and high fuel oil for the domestic market since its commissioning in 2020, was for him a proof of how beneficial such smaller processing plants could be. Lokpobiri praised the Board for taking up equity in Waltersmith Refinery which quickly facilitated the completion of the modular refinery. While commending Waltersmith Group, the minister charged companies which have been given license for modular refineries and marginal fields operation to take a cue from Waltersmith and make deliberate investments. In his words, If you have a marginal field, an allocation, it is a paper given to you, it doesnt add value to you or to Nigeria, unless you take it to the next level by making the requisite investment and then adding the value that is expected. What I am seeing is that out of the numerous marginal fields that were allocated, only Waltersmith and a few of them have been successfully driven, he stated. He recalled that he had sounded a warning at the recent Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) event in Abuja that marginal field allocations without the requisite investments stand the risk of being revoked. Speaking further on the imperative of such a line of action, he said, It is important that we make this point so that we can retrieve some of those fields to the basket, so as to reallocate such assets to those who are able and prepared to develop and exploit them to the benefit of the industry and the nation. He disclosed that he had obtained presidential approval to conduct a fresh round of bidding, which would take place soon, promising that marginal fields would henceforth be prioritised in terms of their location to those who have modular refineries, so that they will be able to produce. Commenting on the remarkable success story of Waltersmith, whose Management has announced plans for further expansion, Mr Lokpobiri said, I can assure you that this Government will do whatever we can to support you so that you can continue to grow. He had similar words of praise for the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), whose direct involvement through equity participation, greatly facilitated the take-off and operations of the refinery. In his own remarks, the Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Mr Simbi Kesiye Wabote, said the decision of the Board to participate as equity holder in Waltersmith was informed by its sense of mission and the impressive organisational arrangement within the company. According to him, NCDMB had no hesitation in partnering with Waltersmith, given the very clear corporate governance that is required and exists within the company. He stressed that part of our mandate is to enhance development and we see ourselves as catalysts for the industrialisation of Nigeria. At NCDMB, we are proud of what we have achieved here [at Waltersmith], he declared. In an interview during the tour, the President and Group Chief Executive Officer of Waltersmith Petroman Oil Limited, Mr. Abdulrasaq Isa, said part of the expansion plans of the company is to raise the capacity of the processing plant from the present 5,000 to 40,000 barrels per stream day, and to be able to produce two million tonnes of petroleum products per annum. The refinery has so far supplied a total of 600 million litres of petroleum products to the Nigerian market since its commissioning in 2020. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print No fewer than 25 persons were killed in an auto crash at Takalafia, a village along Yawuri Expressway, in Magama Local Government Area of Niger State. The crash involved a DAF articulated vehicle said to be overspeeding and subsequently lost control around 3 a.m. on Tuesday. The FRSC Public Education Officer, Bisi Kazeem, confirmed the accident in a statement issued in Abuja. Mr Kazeem explained that the accident involved 29 people, comprising 20 male adults, four female adults, and five male children. He said the injured victims were evacuated to Kontagora General Hospital, for immediate medical attention, adding that the dead were deposited in the mortuary of the same Hospital in Niger State. Meanwhile, the Niger State governor, Mohammed Bago, has expressed shock over the accident In a statement by his media aide, Bologi Ibrahim, the governor described the accident as unfortunate and avoidable. He decried the insensitivity of some drivers, especially those who violate traffic rules and end up causing sorrows to people and their loved ones. Mr Bago cautioned drivers particularly of trailers and other haulage vehicles to desist from conveying passengers in their vehicles as it poses serious dangers to the lives of the passengers and other road users. He said his government will work closely with relevant government authorities to ensure that stringent penalties are meted out to violators of traffic rules. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print Three people were killed Tuesday night when terrorists attacked Kaura Namoda town in Zamfara State. Those killed were Garzali Kaura, Naima and Halifa Dan Tsoho, a secondary school pupil. The police authorities didnt release a statement on the attack, but Mustapha Jafaru, the senior special assistant on public affairs to the governor, confirmed the attack. A resident of Kaura, Abdulmalik Mohammed, said the attackers drove into the town around 9:00 p.m. and went to the Kofar Zurmi. Its surprising because the attackers came some minutes after 9:00 p.m. Once they were in the area, they began shooting indiscriminately and people started fleeing. The woman who was killed was running into her house from an Islamiyya school in the area when they shot her. Then they shot another boy, who was also running home, the source said. Another person, Garzali Kaura, who the source said he knew very well, was also found dead with bullets in his body in the morning (Wednesday). He said the attack would have been worse if not for the prompt response of security agents and members of vigilante groups in the area. Its even surprising how these guys (terrorists) would beat the multiple security agents around the areas and launch this attack. I dont know why we need to call soldiers before they come whenever were being attacked, but they tried their best to chase the terrorists away, just that they need to do more, he said. Calls and SMS sent to the police spokesperson in the state, Yazid Abubakar, were not responded to at the time of filing this report. Kaura Namoda, located in the northern part of Zamfara State, has come under attack in recent months. The area, one of the semi-urban areas in the state, shares boundaries with Zurmi, Birnin Magaji and Shinkafi, all areas suffering from incessant terrorist activities. Zamfara and other North -western states have been witnessing a series of terrorist activities for over a decade. The terrorists attack and kill people in their communities, markets, religious places, schools and highways. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The Akwa Ibom State Governor, Umo Eno, on Tuesday, presented the 2024 budget proposal totalling N845.632 billion to the State Assembly for approval. The proposal christened Arise Budget for Growth and Expansion is made of a recurrent expenditure of N352.917 billion and a capital expenditure of N492.715 billion. The 2024 appropriation is predicated on the oil benchmark of $73.96 per barrel at a production rate of 1.78 million barrels per day with an estimated exchange rate of 700 /US$, in line with the National budget benchmark projections, the governor told the lawmakers. The new proposal is 0.5 per cent less than the revised Appropriation Law of 2023 which stood at N850 billion. Giving a breakdown of the recurrent revenue of N561 billion projected for 2024 which represents 3.7 per cent of the revised provision of N540.8 billion in the current fiscal year, the governor listed the states source of recurrent revenue to include, N60 billion from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), N55 billion from statutory revenue, N280 billion from derivation revenue, N51 billion as 13 per cent derivative revenue arrears and N45 billion from Value Added Tax (VAT). The governor said as a strategy for the implementation of the 2024 budget, the state government will partner with foreign investors to invest in the relevant and key sectors of the economy and undertake robust human capital development. Mr Eno mentioned the goals of the budget to include widening the industrial base of the State through rapid industrialisation and investment activities by providing an enabling environment for the private sector to thrive. This is to enhance the availability of goods and services for domestic use as well as for export. Achieving at least 10 per cent increase in IGR by eliminating evasion in payment, wastages and leakages in collection and expenditure and developing tourism potentials. Mr Eno informed the lawmakers of his determination to invest in the blue economy and improve the living standards and financial success of fishers. He said the state government recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Nigerian Navy for the establishment of Ibom Fish City, an ambitious project aimed at maximizing our comparative advantage in the blue economy. Giving a review of the performance of the 2023 Appropriation Law, the governor said a total of N850 billion was approved for the 2023 Fiscal Year with a total recurrent expenditure of N394.315 billion and a capital expenditure of N455.685 billion. As of September 2023, the total recurrent revenue collected was N326.420 billion representing 80.5 per cent of the prorated approved provision for the period (January September). The sum of N62.082 billion was realised from other capital receipts excluding recurrent surplus. This represents 26.8 per cent of the prorated approved provision for the period. A total of N135.681 billion was spent on capital programmes within the same period which represents 39.7 per cent of the prorated provision for the period, the governor said. The governor assured the lawmakers of his determination to ensure faithful implementation of the budget. He solicited expeditious approval of the estimates from the lawmakers. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print A total of 288 students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) have bagged first class honour in various disciplines. The Vice-Chancellor of UNN, Charles Igwe, disclosed this during a press briefing on Tuesday as part of the activities to mark the institutions 511st convocation ceremony. Mr Igwe, a professor, said of the 12,962 graduating students, 11,444 of them will be awarded bachelors degrees at the convocation ceremony billed to hold on Friday in Nsukka Campus of the institution. Further breakdown of the bachelors degrees shows that 4,853 will receive second class (upper division); 5,077 will bag second class (lower division); 653 will bag third class, seven will graduate with a pass while 616 were unclassified. The vice-chancellor said of the 67 students that will receive diploma certificates, seven of them bagged distinction, 35 made credit, 22 got merit and three secured a pass. He added that 1,451 students will receive postgraduate degrees and diplomas during the convocation. The breakdown of the postgraduate degrees is as follows: 479 persons will earn the doctorate degree while 884 persons will be awarded the masters degrees, Mr Igwe said. A total of 88 postgraduate diplomas of the university will also be awarded at the convocation. Honourary doctorate degrees Mr Igwe said the university will award honourary doctorate degrees of the institution to four prominent Nigerians. Under this category, the vice chancellor said the Managing Director of Fidelity Bank, Nneka Onyeali-Ikpe, will be awarded the doctor of business administration while a former Inspector-General of Police, Ogbonnaya Onovo, will receive the doctor of public administration. READ ALSO: Nigerian university speaks on alleged admission racketeering The other two are Egochukwu Weli and a retired army general, J.O.J Okoloagu, both of whom will receive honourary degrees in public administration. The Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, Sonny Echono, will deliver the convocation lecture titled, University Autonomy and the Challenge of Sustainable Funding in Nigeria, Mr Igwe said. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print The House of Representatives has asked the federal government to construct 23 pedestrian bridges on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway. The resolution followed a motion moved by Tolulope Akande-Sadipe (APC, Oyo) during plenary on Wednesday. The lower chamber asked the government to make provisions for the construction of the bridges in the 2024 budget. Moving the motion, Mrs Akande-Sadipe explained that the urban development along that expressway means there is an unavoidable need to cross the highway. She stated that despite the investment in the construction of the road, the government has neglected safety measures. There is an unavoidable need to cross the highway to access schools, homes, workplaces and markets, this undervalues the safety of pedestrians and drivers as there is a daily high rate of fatal accidents recorded, hence there is an urgent need for the construction of pedestrian bridges, which is currently non-existent. The ongoing construction of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, despite safety implications and ongoing advocacy, pedestrian bridges have been neglected by stakeholders and the Lagos/Ibadan expressway has become a death trap, the legislator said. Mrs Akande-Sadipe suggested the locations where the pedestrian bridges should be built. The locations are Technical University; Toll Gate, Ibadan; Felele, Ibadan; Soka, Ibadan; Sanyo, Ibadan; Boluwaji, Ibadan; Academy; and Eleruku, Ibadan. She also said two bridges should be sited between Muslim and Olohun-Sogo, Ibadan and two other bridges between Olohun-Sogo and Ore-Meji Bridges. Furthermore, the lawmaker said three bridges each should be located between Ore-Meji and Iwo Road; and between Iwo Road and General Gas bridge. She called for the construction of five bridges between General Gas and Ojoo. Ms Akande-Sadipe noted that the bridges would save lives, reduce the sufferings of commuters, particularly school children and maintain the economic viability of these highly populated areas. The motion was adopted by the House without debate. Consequently, Speaker Tajudeen Abbas mandated the Committees on Works and Appropriations to ensure compliance. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp Telegram LinkedIn Email Print ( Read 980 Times) 20 25 10 30 , Source : Next Close Previous Next Next Next Link has been copied to clipboard The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the(IIT Kanpur), has unveiled a new online education platform called Self-Assessment Test and Help for Entrance Exams (SATHEE). This platform aims to assist students in preparing for competitive exams in accordance with the(NEP 2020) and to achieve sustainable development goals.SATHEE offers video lectures from faculties of IITs and IISc for National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) aspirants. The platform has commenced with its first 45-day JEE crash course, designed to provide intensive preparation and revision in a short period, ideal for students looking to consolidate their learning before exams, the ministry said.The platform was recently launched in an event at Shastri Bhawan by K Sanjay Murthy, Secretary of the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education. The platform will be available in English, Hindi, and various regional languages to help students overcome language barriers. The event was attended by S Ganesh, Officiating Director of IIT Kanpur; Govind Jaiswal, Joint Secretary of the Education Ministry; Sanjay Kumar, Secretary of School Education, Ministry of Education, and Amey Karkare, Principal Investigator of the SATHEE project.The platform will also host a series of intensive, expert-designed learning modules along with novel features like an interactive chatbot. It will also organize regular doubt-clearing sessions led by students from IITs and AIIMS . "The outreach of SATHEE marks a significant step towards enhancing accessibility to education in India. This platform opens up new avenues for students preparing for competitive exams, offering quality resources and support. Our goal is to ensure that every student, irrespective of their location or financial situation, has the opportunity to excel in their academic pursuits. SATHEE is a testament to our commitment to educational equity and excellence", S Ganesh said. Forum draws CEOs of world's largest multinational companies, business leaders, and key policy makers under this year's theme "A New Era for Business" Program will address six core themes influencing global business today: Market and Trade Dynamics; Geopolitical Tides; Emerging Technologies Talent Shortages and Workplace Shifts; Climate Risk; and Consumer Trends Abu Dhabi to host Fortune Global Forum for the first time in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), to attract world-class talent, leaders, businesses and investments Confirmed speakers include: H.E. Dr. Thani Al Zeyoudi , UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade H.E. Omar Al Olama , UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence H.E. Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi , Chairman of Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development Paul Hudson , CEO of Sanofi Ray Dalio , Founder of Bridgewater Associates Jenny Johnson , CEO, Franklin Templeton Laura Cha , Chairman of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Raj Subramaniam, CEO of FedEx Natarajan Chandrasekaran , Chairman of Tata Sons Tony Blair , Executive Chairman, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change NEW YORK, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Fortune and Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED) announced today a list of confirmed speakers for the 2023 Fortune Global Forum, the preeminent gathering that brings together the CEOs and leaders of the world's largest multinational companies, alongside policy makers, and investors under this year's theme "A New Era for Business." The annual event will be held November 27-29, in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, in cooperation with the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED). The Forum will take place at the Emirates Palace, and this is the first time the global event will be hosted in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It also marks Fortune Live Media's return to hosting its best-in-class, exclusive conferences internationally in the world's economic hubs after having remained in the United States for the duration of the pandemic. Alan Murray, CEO of Fortune, said: "We live at a time of immense change in the world of business, driven by rapidly evolving technology, a massive energy transition, uncertain economics, and hugely disruptive geopolitics. The Fortune Global Forum gives business leaders a unique opportunity to come together and share their ideas, learnings and best practices for navigating this unprecedented period of change." Hosting the Fortune Global Forum for the first time in the region is part of ADDED's efforts to bolster Abu Dhabi's status as a leading business, economic, and cultural hub. As the catalyst of Abu Dhabi's economic growth and diversification, ADDED is doubling down its efforts in raising the Emirate's competitive edge as a global preferred destination for talents, businesses, and investments. H.E. Ahmed Jasim Al Zaabi, Chairman of ADDED, said: "As the global landscape shifts towards multipolarity, traditional economic systems are undergoing a profound transformation. Cross-border trade, foreign investments, and global markets are undergoing a reimagination process that carries significant implications for CEOs, investors, and consumers alike. The need for visionary leadership and informed discussions has never been more important than now. Hosting the first Fortune Global Forum in the region emphasizes Abu Dhabi's role in leading the global conversations to foster positive impacts that transcend borders, ensuring a trajectory towards global prosperity in this era of unprecedented changes". H.E. Al Zaabi added: "This forum is an excellent opportunity for Abu Dhabi to accentuate its inedible mark in the global economic, business, and cultural landscape. Its chosen theme 'A New Era for Business' will highlight new developments in Abu Dhabi and the role of "Falcon Economy' in guiding the next phase of economic diversification as well as providing insightful roadmap to navigate the tectonic shifts at the global stage. At ADDED, we firmly believe the seamless synergy between governments and industry leaders is essential to address challenges of mega shifts, proactively and effectively". Participants in the Global Forum actively engage in discussions led by Fortune's award-winning editors, whose journalistic perspective provides unique insights into the key trends and leaders that are driving business forward. With the role of multinational business and economic policy at a crossroads, and rising issues of geo-political implications, the best companies are reinventing both mission and approach, and turning challenges into opportunities for renewal and growth. The Fortune Global Forum 2023 list of speakers and agenda can be found here. About the Fortune Global Forum: Since 1995, the Fortune Global Forum has been hosted by the editors of Fortune in great cities on the dynamic frontiers of global business. The Fortune Global Forum has convened world leaders and the heads of global business the chairmen, presidents, and CEOs of the world's largest companies. Participation in the Fortune Global Forum is by invitation only and expected guests will include multinational CEOs and the heads of the UAE's most important companies, along with world leaders. Previous editions of the Fortune Global Forum have been held in global cities including Singapore, Guangzhou, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Paris, Cape Town and San Francisco. About Fortune Fortune upholds a legacy of award-winning writing and trusted reporting for executives who want to make business better. Independently owned, with a global perspective and digital agility, Fortune tells the stories of a new generation of innovators, builders, and risk takers. Online and in print, Fortune measures corporate performance through rigorous benchmarks, and holds companies accountable. Fortune creates communities by convening true thought leaders and iconoclasts those who shape industry, commerce and society through powerful and prestigious lists, events and conferences, such as the iconic Fortune 500, the CEO Initiative and Most Powerful Women. For more information, visit fortune.com. Contacts: Patrick Reilly Fortune [email protected] SOURCE Fortune Media (USA) Corporation CHICAGO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Using a routine chest X-ray image, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool can identify non-smokers who are at high risk for lung cancer, according to a study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death. The American Cancer Society estimates about 238,340 new cases of lung cancer in the United States this year and 127,070 lung cancer deaths. Approximately 10-20% of lung cancers occur in "never-smokers" people who have never smoked cigarettes or smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) currently recommends lung cancer screening with low-dose CT for adults between the ages of 50 and 80 who have at least a 20 pack-year smoking history and currently smoke or have quit within the past 15 years. The USPSTF does not recommend screening for individuals who have never smoked or who have smoked very little. However, incidence of lung cancer among never-smokers is on the rise, andwithout early detection through screeningwhen discovered, these cancers tend to be more advanced than those found in smokers. "Current Medicare and USPSTF guidelines recommend lung cancer screening CT only for individuals with a substantial smoking history," said the study's lead author, Anika S. Walia, B.A., a medical student at Boston University School of Medicine and researcher at the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center (CIRC) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School in Boston. "However, lung cancer is increasingly common in never-smokers and often presents at an advanced stage." One reason federal guidelines exclude never-smokers from screening recommendations is because it is difficult to predict lung cancer risk in this population. Existing lung cancer risk scores require information that is not readily available for most individuals, such as family history of lung cancer, pulmonary function testing or serum biomarkers. For the study, CIRC researchers set out to improve lung cancer risk prediction in never-smokers by testing whether a deep learning model could identify never-smokers at high risk for lung cancer, based on their chest X-rays from the electronic medical record. Deep learning is an advanced type of AI that can be trained to search X-ray images to find patterns associated with disease. "A major advantage to our approach is that it only requires a single chest-X-ray image, which is one of the most common tests in medicine and widely available in the electronic medical record," Walia said. The "CXR-Lung-Risk" model was developed using 147,497 chest X-rays of 40,643 asymptomatic smokers and never-smokers from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) cancer screening trial to predict lung-related mortality risk, based on a single chest X-ray image as input. The researchers externally validated the model in a separate group of never-smokers having routine outpatient chest X-rays from 2013 to 2014. The primary outcome was six-year incident lung cancer, identified using International Classification of Disease codes. Risk scores were then converted to low, moderate and high-risk groups based on externally derived risk thresholds. Of 17,407 patients (mean age 63 years) included in the study, 28% were deemed high risk by the deep learning model, and 2.9% of these patients later had a diagnosis of lung cancer. The high-risk group well exceeded the 1.3% six-year risk threshold where lung cancer screening CT is recommended by National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines. After adjusting for age, sex, race, previous lower respiratory tract infection and prevalent chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, there was still a 2.1 times greater risk of developing lung cancer in the high-risk group compared to the low-risk group. "This AI tool opens the door for opportunistic screening for never-smokers at high risk of lung cancer, using existing chest X-rays in the electronic medical record," said senior author Michael T. Lu, M.D., M.P.H., director of artificial intelligence and co-director of CIRC at MGH. "Since cigarette smoking rates are declining, approaches to detect lung cancer early in those who do not smoke are going to be increasingly important." Additional co-authors are Saman Doroodgar Jorshery, M.D., Ph.D., and Vineet K. Raghu, Ph.D. The researchers report support from the Boston University School of Medicine Student Committee on Medical School Affairs, National Academy of Medicine/Johnson & Johnson Innovation Quickfire Challenge, and the Risk Management Corporation of the Harvard Medical Institutions Incorporated. Note: Copies of RSNA 2023 news releases and electronic images will be available online at RSNA.org/press23. RSNA is an association of radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and related scientists promoting excellence in patient care and health care delivery through education, research and technologic innovation. The Society is based in Oak Brook, Illinois. (RSNA.org) Editor's note: The data in these releases may differ from those in the published abstract and those actually presented at the meeting, as researchers continue to update their data right up until the meeting. To ensure you are using the most up-to-date information, please call the RSNA Newsroom at 1-312-791-6610. For patient-friendly information on lung cancer screening, visit RadiologyInfo.org. SOURCE Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) DUBLIN, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Airport Ground Support Equipment Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This analytics tracks the current state of the airport ground support equipment (GSE) manufacturing market to understand how airports are strategizing to optimize their overall operations and reduce emissions. The study explores some strategies and best practices from leading global airports and analyzes the market for GSE in 6 regions and 5 airport tiers, based on annual passenger traffic. The increase in air travel has led to higher investments in commercial airlines, airports, and infrastructure; and intense competition. New airports with development plans (greenfield and brownfield projects) are the top drivers because they will require a complete set of GSEs to ensure seamless operations. GSE purchases will also scale with operations (aircraft fleet and passengers) scale. Potential growth in passenger traffic across regions, the increase in future aircraft deliveries, and the development of new carriers and airports are some factors that will drive this market. Airports and airlines are collaborating with manufacturers and are piloting and implementing new GSEs with advanced features and high-quality output. Some of the key queries this report explores are: What are the market drivers and restraints of investment in GSE? What are the major growth opportunities areas for global airports segmented by relevant regions and airport tiers? How has COVID-19 impacted the overall airport industry and its direct implication on the airport GSE market? What are the holistic technologies and market trends that are prevalent in the industry? Key Topics Covered: Growth Opportunity Analysis Scope of Analysis Market Overview Passenger Traffic GSE Segmentation Airport GSE Geographic Segmentation Key Competitors Airport Ground Support Equipment (GSE) - Growth Metrics Growth Metrics Growth Drivers Growth Restraints Forecast Assumptions Revenue Forecast Revenue Forecast Analysis Revenue Forecast by Region Revenue Forecast Analysis by Region Revenue Forecast by Tiers GSE Revenue Share Analysis by Segment Pricing Trends and Forecast Analysis Key Market Focus Areas Key Technology Focus Areas Key Best Practices Ancillary Opportunities Case Study Competitive Environment Revenue Share Analysis Airport (GSE) - Notable M&As Growth Opportunity Analysis - Airport Passenger Tier I Growth Opportunity Analysis - Airport Passenger Tier II Growth Opportunity Analysis - Airport Passenger Tier III Growth Opportunity Analysis - Airport Passenger Tier IV Growth Opportunity Analysis - Airport Passenger Tier V Growth Opportunity Universe Growth Opportunity 1: Growing APAC Aviation Growth Opportunity 2: Automation and Advanced GSE Software Growth Opportunity 3: Clean-energy GSE Units For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/5pamre 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 TOKYO, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading Japanese climate tech company Asuene announces a significant milestone in its global expansion strategy with the establishment of its second overseas subsidiary, Asuene USA Inc., headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Driving Climate Innovation on a Global Scale Asuene, renowned for its carbon accounting platform, has been at the forefront of climate technology in Japan. The company, serving over 4,000 clients, is a market leader in carbon accounting services, emphasizing a comprehensive approach to sustainability. In November 2022, Asuene took its first step beyond Japanese borders, establishing Asuene APAC in Singapore. Now, with the opening of Asuene USA, the company aims to contribute to the global effort to achieve net-zero emissions. Seizing Opportunities in the U.S. Market The United States, as the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases globally, presents a significant opportunity for Asuene to make a substantial impact on corporate decarbonization efforts. Aligning with the U.S. renewed commitment to global climate action, Asuene USA will focus on supporting American companies in their journey towards net-zero emissions. Seiichiro Tanigaki, Country Manager of Asuene USA, comments: "We are excited to bring Asuene's holistic suite of services to the United States. Our carbon accounting platform is just the beginning we offer sustainability consulting, education, and support for carbon credit solutions through "Asuene" the carbon accounting platform. We will be a one-stop solution partner for our customers." Kohei Nishiwada, Co-Founder & CEO of Asuene Inc., comments: "Asuene recognizes the pivotal role the U.S. market plays in global decarbonization efforts. With its vast potential, the U.S. is a priority for achieving our vision of net-zero emissions by 2050. Following our successful establishment in Singapore, our expansion into the U.S. marks a significant stride in our global business development. We are committed to positioning Asuene as a leading Climate Tech company representing Japan, striving for success on a global scale." About Asuene USA Inc. Service: Carbon accounting platform for measuring, reporting, and reducing emissions Address: 8 The Green, Ste R, Dover, DE 19901 19901 Website: https://earthene.com/asuzero/usa About Asuene Inc. Asuene is a leading climate tech company based in Japan, dedicated to creating a better world for future generations. Its flagship service is a cutting-edge carbon accounting platform for enterprises, visualizing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the supply chain. Asuene also provides sustainability transformation consulting, including assistance for TCFD, CDP, SBTi. CEO: Kohei Nishiwada Date of Establishment: October 2019 Headquarters: KDX Toranomon Building, 1-10-5 Toranomon, Minato-Ku, Tokyo, Japan Global websi te: https://earthene.com/asuzero/usa SOURCE Asuene Inc. HANGZHOU, China, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- BEST Inc. (NYSE: BEST) ("BEST" or the "Company"), a leading integrated smart supply chain solutions and logistics services provider in China and Southeast Asia ("SEA"), today announced its unaudited financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023. FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS[1] For the Third Quarter Ended September 30, 2023: [ 2] Revenue was RMB2,226.7 million ( US$305.2 million ), compared to RMB2,029.1 million in the third quarter of 2022. The increase was primarily due to increased revenue of BEST Freight and BEST Global. was ( ), compared to in the third quarter of 2022. The increase was primarily due to increased revenue of BEST Freight and BEST Global. Gross profit was RMB51.8 million ( US$7.1 million ), compared to a gross loss of RMB39.0 million in the third quarter of 2022. The increase was primarily due to further improvements in operating efficiency for both Freight and Supply Chain Management. Gross profit margin was 2.3%, compared to a gross loss margin of 1.9% in the third quarter of 2022. was ( ), compared to a gross loss of in the third quarter of 2022. The increase was primarily due to further improvements in operating efficiency for both Freight and Supply Chain Management. was 2.3%, compared to a gross loss margin of 1.9% in the third quarter of 2022. Net Loss from continuing operations was RMB193.0 million ( US$26.5 million ), compared to RMB378.9 million in the third quarter of 2022. Non-GAAP net loss from continuing operations [3][4] was RMB180.9 million ( US$24.8 million ), compared to RMB363.0 million in the third quarter of 2022. Diluted loss per ADS [5] from continuing operations was RMB9.46 (US$1.30) , compared to a loss of RMB17.60 in the third quarter of 2022. Non-GAAP diluted loss per ADS [3][4] from continuing operations was RMB8.81 (US$1.21) , compared to a loss of RMB16.79 in the third quarter of 2022. was , compared to a loss of in the third quarter of 2022. was , compared to a loss of in the third quarter of 2022. EBITDA[6] from continuing operations was negative RMB151.2 million ( US$20.7 million ), compared to negative RMB335.9 million in the third quarter of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA[6] from continuing operations was negative RMB139.1 million ( US$19.1 million ), compared to negative RMB320.0 million in the third quarter of 2022. BEST Freight BEST Freight recorded a revenue growth of 10.0% in the third quarter of 2023, year over year. Freight's gross margin was 3.2%, representing a 6.2% percentage points improvement from the same period of 2022 as we continued to reduce operating expenses and improve efficiency. BEST Supply Chain Management Driven by its best-in-class service quality and digital capabilities, BEST Supply Chain Management recorded a gross margin of 9.1% compared to 7.2% in the same period of 2022. BEST Global In the third quarter, BEST Global continued its robust post-COVID recovery. BEST Global's revenue increased by 30.2% and its parcel volumes increased by 44.9%, both year over year, with parcel volumes in Vietnam and Malaysia, increased by 64.9% and 122.0%, respectively. Total volume of the cross-border business in the third quarter increased by approximately 41.2% quarter-over-quarter. Others The Company continued to wind down its Capital business line and expects to complete the wind-down by the end of 2023. Key Operational Metrics Three Months Ended % Change YOY September 30, 2021 September 30, 2022 September 30, 2023 2022 vs 2021 2023 vs 2022 Freight Volume (Tonne in '000) 2,427 2,527 2,557 4.1 % 1.2 % Supply Chain Management volume (Tonne in '000) 260 480 680 84.6 % 41.7 % Global Parcel Volume in SEA (in '000) 37,082 27,044 39,194 (27.1 %) 44.9 % FINANCIAL RESULTS[7] For the Third Quarter Ended September 30, 2023: Revenue The following table sets forth a breakdown of revenue by business segment for the periods indicated. Table 1 Breakdown of Revenue by Business Segment Three Months Ended September 30, 2022 September 30, 2023 (In '000, except for %) RMB % of Revenue RMB US$ % of Revenue % Change YOY Total Freight 1,325,833 65.3 % 1,457,988 199,834 65.5 % 10.0 % Supply Chain Management 461,527 22.7 % 465,790 63,842 20.9 % 0.9 % Global 211,347 10.4 % 275,198 37,719 12.4 % 30.2 % Others[8] 30,417 1.6 % 27,680 3,794 1.2 % (9.0 %) Total Revenue 2,029,124 100.0 % 2,226,656 305,189 100.0 % 9.7 % Freight Service Revenue was RMB1,458.0 million ( US$199.8 million ) for the third quarter of 2023, compared to RMB1,325.8 million in the same period last year. Freight service revenue increased by 10.0% year over year, primarily resulting from increases in average selling price per tonne. ( ) for the third quarter of 2023, compared to in the same period last year. Freight service revenue increased by 10.0% year over year, primarily resulting from increases in average selling price per tonne. Supply Chain Management Service Revenue increased by 0.9% year over year to RMB465.8 million ( US$63.8 million ) for the third quarter of 2023, up from RMB461.5 million in the same period of last year. ( ) for the third quarter of 2023, up from in the same period of last year. Global Service Revenue increased by 30.2% year over year to RMB275.2 million ( US$37.7 million ) for the third quarter of 2023 from RMB211.3 million in the same period last year primarily due to rapid volume growth in Vietnam , Malaysia and cross-border business. Cost of Revenue The following table sets forth a breakdown of cost of revenue by business segment for the periods indicated. Table 2 Breakdown of Cost of Revenue by Business Segment Three Months Ended % of Revenue Change YOY September 30, 2022 September 30, 2023 (In '000, except for %) RMB % of Revenue RMB US$ % of Revenue Freight (1,365,074) 103.0 % (1,410,625) (193,342) 96.8 % 6.2ppt Supply Chain Management (428,190) 92.8 % (423,320) (58,021) 90.9 % 1.9ppt Global (255,341) 120.8 % (324,408) (44,464) 117.9 % (2.9ppt) Others (19,469) 64.0 % (16,540) (2,267) 59.8 % 4.2ppt Total Cost of Revenue (2,068,074) 101.9 % (2,174,893) (298,094) 97.7 % 4.2ppt Cost of Revenue for Freight was RMB1,410.6 million ( US$193.3 million ), or 96.8% of revenue in the third quarter of 2023. The 6.2 percentage points year-over-year decrease in cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue was mainly due to higher price and reduced unit cost. ( ), or 96.8% of revenue in the third quarter of 2023. The 6.2 percentage points year-over-year decrease in cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue was mainly due to higher price and reduced unit cost. Cost of Revenue for Supply Chain Management was RMB423.3 million ( US$58.0 million ), or 90.9% of revenue in the third quarter of 2023. The 1.9 percentage points year-over-year decrease in cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue was primarily due to improved operating efficiency and optimized customer mix. ( ), or 90.9% of revenue in the third quarter of 2023. The 1.9 percentage points year-over-year decrease in cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue was primarily due to improved operating efficiency and optimized customer mix. Cost of Revenue for Global was RMB324.4 million ( US$44.5 million ), or 117.9% of revenue in the third quarter of 2023. The 2.9% year-over-year decrease in cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue was primarily due to higher gross margin in cross-border business and Vietnam . Gross Profit was RMB51.8 million (US$7.1 million), compared to a gross loss of RMB39.0 million in the third quarter of 2022; Gross Margin was positive 2.3%, compared to negative 1.9% in the third quarter of 2022. Operating Expenses Selling, General and Administrative ("SG&A") Expenses were RMB236.3 million (US$32.4 million), or 10.6% of revenue, in the third quarter of 2023, compared to RMB275.2 million, or 13.6% of revenue, in the same period of 2022. SG&A expenses in the third quarter decreased by 14.1% year over year due to reduced headcount and bad debt expense. Research and Development Expenses were RMB27.8 million (US$3.8 million) or 1.3% of revenue in the third quarter of 2023, compared to RMB39.6 million or 2.0% of revenue in the third quarter of 2022, primarily due to reduced headcount. Share-based Compensation ("SBC") Expenses included in the cost and expense items above were RMB12.2 million (US$1.7 million) in the third quarter of 2023, compared to RMB15.9 million in the same period of 2022. Of the total SBC expenses, RMB0.05 million (US$0.01 million) was allocated to cost of revenue, RMB0.5 million (US$0.1 million) was allocated to selling expenses, RMB10.7 million (US$1.5 million) was allocated to general and administrative expenses, and RMB0.8 million (US$0.1 million) was allocated to research and development expenses. Net Loss and Non-GAAP Net Loss from continuing operations Net Loss from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2023 was RMB193.0 million (US$26.5 million), compared to RMB378.9 million in the same period of 2022. Excluding SBC expenses, non-GAAP net loss from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2023 was RMB180.9 million (US$24.8 million), compared to RMB363.0 million in the third quarter of 2022. Diluted loss per ADS and Non-GAAP diluted loss per ADS from continuing operations Diluted loss per ADS from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2023 was RMB9.46 (US$1.30), compared to a loss of RMB17.60 in the same period of 2022. Excluding SBC expenses non-GAAP diluted loss per ADS from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2023 was RMB8.81 (US$1.21), compared to a loss of RMB16.79 in the third quarter of 2022. A reconciliation of non-GAAP diluted loss per ADS to diluted loss per ADS is included at the end of this results announcement. Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin from continuing operations Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2023 was negative RMB139.1 million (US$19.1 million), compared to negative RMB320.0 million in the same period of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA margin from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2023 was negative 6.2%, compared to negative 15.8% in the same period of 2022. Cash and Cash Equivalents, Restricted Cash and Short-term Investments As of September 30, 2023, cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and short-term investments were RMB2,360.9 million (US$323.6 million), compared to RMB3,332.0 million as of September 30, 2022. In the third quarter, the Company repurchased approximately US$75 million (RMB 542 million) aggregate principal amount of its existing Convertible Senior Notes due 2024. Net Cash Used In Continuing Operating Activities Net cash used in continuing operating activities in the third quarter of 2023 was RMB234.4 million (US$32.13 million), compared to RMB250.4 million of net cash used in continuing operating activities in the same period of 2022. The decrease in net cash used in operating activities was mainly due to the decreased net loss in the third quarter of 2023. SHARES OUTSTANDING As of November 09, 2023, the Company had approximately 397.6 million ordinary shares outstanding [9]. Each American Depositary Share represents twenty (20) Class A ordinary shares. As previously announced, effective from April 4, 2023, the Company changed the ratio of its American Depositary Shares to its Class A ordinary shares, par value US$0.01 per share, from the original ADS ratio of one (1) ADS to five (5) Class A ordinary share, to a new ADS ratio of one (1) ADS to twenty (20) Class A ordinary shares. As previously announced, the Company's board of directors authorized a share repurchase program, under which the Company could repurchase up to US$20 million worth of its outstanding American Depositary Shares over a 12-month period. The Company's board of directors has terminated the share repurchase program, effective as of September 25, 2023. Prior to the program's termination, the Company repurchased a total of 1,265,685 ADSs for a total amount paid of US$3,311,134.95 (excluding commissions) under the program. ABOUT BEST INC. BEST Inc. (NYSE: BEST) is a leading integrated smart supply chain solutions and logistics services provider in China and Southeast Asia. Through its proprietary technology platform and extensive networks, BEST offers a comprehensive set of logistics and value-added services, including freight delivery, supply chain management and global logistics services. BEST's mission is to empower business and enrich life by leveraging technology and business model innovation to create a smarter, more efficient supply chain. For more information, please visit: http://www.best-inc.com/en/. SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the business outlook and quotations from management in this announcement, as well as BEST's strategic and operational plans, contain forward-looking statements. BEST may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about BEST's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: BEST's goals and strategies; BEST's future business development, results of operations and financial condition; BEST's ability to maintain and enhance its ecosystem; BEST's ability to compete effectively; BEST's ability to continue to innovate, meet evolving market trends, adapt to changing customer demands and maintain its culture of innovation; fluctuations in general economic and business conditions in China and other countries in which BEST operates, and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in BEST's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release and in the attachments is as of the date of this press release, and BEST does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law. USE OF NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES In evaluating its business, BEST considers and uses non-GAAP measures, such as non-GAAP net loss/income, non-GAAP net loss/income margin, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, EBITDA, and non-GAAP Diluted earnings/loss per ADS, as supplemental measures in the evaluation of the Company's operating results and in the Company's financial and operational decision-making. The Company believes these non-GAAP financial measures that help identify underlying trends in the Company's business that could otherwise be distorted by the effect of the expenses and gains that the Company includes in loss from operations and net loss. The Company believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information about its operating results, enhance the overall understanding of its past performance and future prospects and allow for greater visibility with respect to key metrics used by the Company's management in its financial and operational decision-making. The presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. For more information on these non-GAAP financial measures, please see the table captioned "Reconciliations of Non-GAAP Measures to the Nearest Comparable GAAP Measures" in the results announcement. The non-GAAP financial measures are provided as additional information to help investors compare business trends among different reporting periods on a consistent basis and to enhance investors' overall understanding of the Company's current financial performance and prospects for the future. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP, but should not be considered a substitute for, or superior to, U.S. GAAP results. In addition, the Company's calculation of the non-GAAP financial measures may be different from the calculation used by other companies, and therefore comparability may be limited. Summary of Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Income Statements (In Thousands) Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, 2022 2023 2022 2023 RMB RMB US$ RMB RMB US$ Revenue Freight 1,325,833 1,457,988 199,834 3,627,082 3,902,486 534,880 Supply Chain Management 461,527 465,790 63,842 1,321,473 1,387,250 190,138 Global 211,347 275,198 37,719 721,227 711,607 97,534 Others 30,417 27,680 3,794 92,895 78,250 10,725 Total Revenue 2,029,124 2,226,656 305,189 5,762,677 6,079,593 833,277 Cost of Revenue Freight (1,365,074) (1,410,625) (193,342) (3,837,911) (3,784,616) (518,725) Supply Chain Management (428,190) (423,320) (58,021) (1,233,307) (1,256,540) (172,223) Global (255,341) (324,408) (44,464) (817,573) (861,338) (118,056) Others (19,469) (16,540) (2,267) (78,967) (44,989) (6,166) Total Cost of Revenue (2,068,074) (2,174,893) (298,094) (5,967,758) (5,947,483) (815,170) Gross (Loss)/Profit (38,950) 51,763 7,095 (205,081) 132,110 18,107 Selling Expenses (62,241) (68,054) (9,328) (183,297) (184,541) (25,293) General and Administrative Expenses (212,921) (168,286) (23,066) (680,607) (528,375) (72,420) Research and Development Expenses (39,632) (27,843) (3,816) (114,934) (86,468) (11,851) Other operating (expense)/income, net (14,185) 973 133 105,430 83 11 Loss from Operations (367,929) (211,447) (28,982) (1,078,489) (667,191) (91,446) Interest Income 19,981 18,283 2,506 61,153 65,962 9,041 Interest Expense (20,569) (15,800) (2,166) (72,729) (50,419) (6,911) Foreign Exchange (loss)/gain (98,628) 6,177 847 (201,048) (25,760) (3,531) Other Income 2,657 131 18 23,765 10,598 1,453 Other Expense (464) (103) (14) 19,578 (3,819) (524) Gain on changes in the fair value of derivative assets/liabilities 86,108 10,279 1,409 149,196 46,436 6,365 Loss before Income Tax and Share of Net Loss of Equity Investees (378,844) (192,480) (26,382) (1,098,574) (624,193) (85,553) Income Tax Expense (93) (568) (77) (405) (892) (122) Loss before Share of Net loss of Equity Investees (378,937) (193,048) (26,459) (1,098,979) (625,085) (85,675) Net Loss from continuing operations (378,937) (193,048) (26,459) (1,098,979) (625,085) (85,675) Net (Loss)/income from discontinued operations (8,904) - - (6,677) 15,222 2,086 Net Loss (387,841) (193,048) (26,459) (1,105,656) (609,863) (83,589) Net Loss from continuing operations attributable to non- controlling interests (9,976) (14,942) (2,048) (26,925) (42,171) (5,780) Net Loss attributable to BEST Inc. (377,865) (178,106) (24,411) (1,078,731) (567,692) (77,809) Summary of Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (In Thousands) As of December 31,2022 As of September 30, 2023 RMB RMB US$ Assets Current Assets Cash and Cash Equivalents 533,481 482,817 66,175 Restricted Cash 399,337 227,113 31,128 Accounts and Notes Receivables 691,324 869,922 119,233 Inventories 16,480 10,213 1,400 Prepayments and Other Current Assets 777,842 687,850 94,278 Shortterm Investments 725,043 36,377 4,986 Amounts Due from Related Parties 76,368 41,732 5,720 Lease Rental Receivables 43,067 40,326 5,527 Total Current Assets 3,262,942 2,396,350 328,447 Noncurrent Assets Property and Equipment, Net 784,732 731,424 100,250 Intangible Assets, Net 75,553 88,541 12,136 Longterm Investments 156,859 156,859 21,499 Goodwill 54,135 54,135 7,420 Noncurrent Deposits 50,767 42,907 5,881 Other Noncurrent Assets 75,666 113,360 15,537 Restricted Cash 1,545,605 1,614,553 221,293 Lease Rental Receivables 40,188 3,817 523 Operating Lease Right-of-use Assets 1,743,798 1,413,430 193,727 Total noncurrent Assets 4,527,303 4,219,026 578,266 Total Assets 7,790,245 6,615,376 906,713 Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity Current Liabilities Long-term borrowings-current 79,148 19,801 2,714 Convertible Senior Notes held by related parties 522,744 538,485 73,806 Convertible Senior Notes held by third parties 77 79 11 Shortterm Bank Loans 183,270 442,845 60,697 Accounts and Notes Payable 1,430,004 1,597,125 218,904 Income Tax Payable 1,563 2,538 348 Customer Advances and Deposits and Deferred Revenue 277,737 279,771 38,346 Accrued Expenses and Other Liabilities 1,145,654 1,051,736 144,152 Financing Lease Liabilities 11,873 1,267 174 Operating Lease Liabilities 544,262 538,255 73,774 Amounts Due to Related Parties 1,315 1,436 196 Total Current Liabilities 4,197,647 4,473,338 613,122 Summary of Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Cont'd) (In Thousands) As of December 31, 2022 As of September 30, 2023 RMB RMB US$ Non-current Liabilities Convertible senior notes held by related parties 522,744 - - Long-term borrowings 381 - - Operating Lease Liabilities 1,292,057 1,138 156 Financing Lease Liabilities 26,024 21,368 2,929 Other Noncurrent Liabilities 18,752 956,243 131,064 Long-term Bank Loans 928,894 963,976 132,124 Total Noncurrent Liabilities 2,788,852 1,942,725 266,273 Total Liabilities 6,986,499 6,416,063 879,395 Mezzanine Equity: Convertible Non-controlling Interests 191,865 191,865 26,297 Total mezzanine equity 191,865 191,865 26,297 Shareholders' Equity Ordinary Shares 25,988 25,988 3,562 Treasury Shares - (23,853) (3,269) Additional PaidIn Capital 19,481,417 19,518,882 2,675,285 Accumulated Deficit (18,934,860) (19,502,552) (2,673,047) Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income 124,464 115,794 15,871 BEST Inc. Shareholders' Equity 697,009 134,259 18,402 Non-controlling Interests (85,128) (126,811) (17,381) Total Shareholders' Equity 611,881 7,448 1,021 Total Liabilities, Mezzanine Equity and Shareholders' Equity 7,790,245 6,615,376 906,713 Summary of Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (In Thousands) Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, 2022 2023 2022 2023 RMB RMB US$ RMB RMB US$ Net cash used in continuing operating activities (250,375) (234,429) (32,131) (809,772) (555,609) (76,153) Net cash used in discontinued operating activities (7,917) - - (66,174) - - Net cash used in operating activities (258,292) (234,429) (32,131) (875,946) (555,609) (76,153) Net cash generated from/(used in) from continuing investing activities 891,756 65,212 8,938 (88,780) 701,698 96,176 Net cash generated from/(used in) investing activities 891,756 65,212 8,938 (88,780) 701,698 96,176 Net cash used in from continuing financing activities (982,052) (602,297) (82,552) (1,948,848) (375,362) (51,448) Net cash used in from financing activities (982,052) (602,297) (82,552) (1,948,848) (375,362) (51,448) Exchange Rate Effect on Cash and Cash Equivalents, and Restricted Cash 44,482 27,416 3,758 92,586 75,333 10,325 Net decrease in Cash and Cash Equivalents, and Restricted Cash (304,106) (744,098) (101,987) (2,820,988) (153,940) (21,099) Cash and Cash Equivalents, and Restricted Cash at Beginning of Period 2,799,266 3,068,581 420,584 5,316,148 2,478,423 339,696 Cash and Cash Equivalents, and Restricted Cash at End of Period 2,495,160 2,324,483 318,597 2,495,160 2,324,483 318,597 Cash and Cash Equivalents, and Restricted Cash from continuing operations at End of Period 2,495,160 2,324,483 318,597 2,495,160 2,324,483 318,597 RECONCILIATIONS OF NON-GAAP MEASURES TO THE NEAREST COMPARABLE GAAP MEASURES For the Company's continuing operations, the table below sets forth a reconciliation of the Company's net (loss)/income to EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin for the periods indicated: Table 3 Reconciliation of EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin Three Months Ended September 30, 2023 (In RMB'000) Freight Supply Chain Global Others Unallocated[10] Total Net Loss (37,702) (477) (114,597) (16,993) (23,279) (193,048) Add Depreciation & Amortization 19,330 8,558 11,278 283 4,287 43,736 Interest Expense - - - - 15,800 15,800 Income Tax Expense 2 1 - 565 - 568 Subtract Interest Income - - - - (18,283) (18,283) EBITDA (18,370) 8,082 (103,319) (16,145) (21,475) (151,227) Add Share-based Compensation Expenses 1,680 865 510 9 9,089 12,153 Adjusted EBITDA (16,690) 8,947 (102,809) (16,136) (12,386) (139,074) Adjusted EBITDA Margin (1.1 %) 1.9 % (37.4 %) (58.3 %) - (6.2 %) Three Months Ended September 30, 2022 (In RMB'000) Freight Supply Chain Global Others Unallocated Total Net Loss (138,749) (9,664) (110,426) (48,601) (71,497) (378,937) Add Depreciation & Amortization 19,417 8,397 6,531 1,976 6,025 42,346 Interest Expense - - - - 20,569 20,569 Income Tax Expense - (22) - 115 - 93 Subtract Interest Income - - - - (19,981) (19,981) EBITDA (119,332) (1,289) (103,895) (46,510) 64,884 (335,910) Add Share-based Compensation Expenses 2,511 1,314 1,354 23 10,694 15,896 Adjusted EBITDA (116,821) 25 (102,541) (46,487) (54,190) (320,014) Adjusted EBITDA Margin (8.8 %) 0.0 % (48.5 %) (152.8 %) - (15.8 %) For the Company's continuing operations, the table below sets forth a reconciliation of the Company's net (loss)/income to non-GAAP net Income/(loss), non-GAAP net Income/(loss) margin for the periods indicated: Table 4 Reconciliation of Non-GAAP Net (Loss)/Income and Non-GAAP Net (Loss)/Income Margin Three Months Ended September 30, 2023 (In RMB'000) Freight Supply Chain Global Others Unallocated Total Net Loss (37,702) (477) (114,597) (16,993) (23,279) (193,048) Add Share-based Compensation Expenses 1,680 865 510 9 9,089 12,153 Non-GAAP Net (Loss)/Income (36,022) 388 (114,087) (16,984) (14,190) (180,895) Non-GAAP Net (Loss)/Income Margin (2.5 %) 0.1 % (41.5 %) (61.4 %) - (8.1 %) Three Months Ended September 30, 2022 (In RMB'000) Freight Supply Chain Global Others Unallocated Total Net Loss (138,749) (9,664) (110,426) (48,601) (71,497) (378,937) Add Share-based Compensation Expenses 2,511 1,314 1,354 23 10,694 15,896 Non-GAAP Net Loss (136,238) (8,350) (109,072) (48,578) (60,803) (363,041) Non-GAAP Net Loss Margin (10.3 %) (1.8 %) (51.6 %) (159.7 %) - (17.9 %) For the Company's continuing operations, the table below sets forth a reconciliation of the Company's diluted loss per ADS to Non-GAAP diluted loss per ADS for the periods indicated: Table 5 Reconciliation of diluted loss per ADS and Non-GAAP diluted loss per ADS Three Months Ended September 30, Nine Months Ended September 30, 2023 2023 (In '000) RMB US$ RMB US$ Net Loss Attributable to Ordinary Shareholders (178,106) (24,411) (582,914) (79,895) Add Share-based Compensation Expenses 12,153 1,666 37,419 5,129 Non-GAAP Net Loss Attributable to Ordinary Shareholders (165,953) (22,746) (545,495) (74,766) Weighted Average Diluted Ordinary Shares Outstanding During the Quarter Diluted 376,632,651 376,632,651 385,954,907 385,954,907 Diluted (Non-GAAP) 376,632,651 376,632,651 385,954,907 385,954,907 Diluted loss per ordinary share (0.47) (0.06) (1.51) (0.21) Add Non-GAAP adjustment to net loss per ordinary share 0.03 0.00 0.10 0.02 Non-GAAP diluted loss per ordinary share (0.44) (0.06) (1.41) (0.19) Diluted loss per ADS (9.46) (1.30) (30.21) (4.14) Add Non-GAAP adjustment to net loss per ADS 0.65 0.09 1.94 0.27 Non-GAAP diluted loss per ADS (8.81) (1.21) (28.27) (3.87) [1] All numbers presented have been rounded to the nearest integer, tenth, or hundredth, and year over year comparisons are based on figures before rounding. [2] In December 2021, BEST sold its China express business, the principal terms of which were previously announced. As a result, China express business has been deconsolidated from the Company and its historical financial results are reflected in the Company's consolidated financial statements as discontinued operations accordingly. The financial information and non-GAAP financial information disclosed in this press release is presented on a continuing operations basis, unless otherwise specifically stated. [3] Non-GAAP net income/loss represents net income/loss excluding share-based compensation expenses, amortization of intangible assets resulting from business acquisitions, and fair value change of equity investments (if any). [4] See the sections entitled "Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures" and "Reconciliations of Non-GAAP Measures to the Nearest Comparable GAAP Measures" for more information about the non-GAAP measures referred to within this results announcement. [5] Diluted earnings/loss per ADS, is calculated by dividing net income/loss attributable to ordinary shareholders as adjusted for the effect of dilutive ordinary equivalent shares, if any, by the weighted average number of ordinary and dilutive ordinary equivalent shares expressed in ADS outstanding during the period. [6] EBITDA represents net income/loss excluding depreciation, amortization, interest expense and income tax expense and minus interest income. Adjusted EBITDA represents EBITDA excluding share-based compensation expenses and fair value change of equity investments (if any). [7] All numbers represented the financial results from continuing operations, unless otherwise stated. [8] "Others" Segment primarily represents Capital business unit. [9] The total number of shares outstanding excludes shares reserved for future issuances upon exercise or vesting of awards granted under the Company's share incentive plans. [10] Unallocated expenses are primarily related to corporate administrative expenses and other miscellaneous items that are not allocated to individual segments. SOURCE BEST Inc. The private label arrangement will bring a new syringeless magnetic resonance (MR) injector to the U.S. 510(k) premarket notification has been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration MILAN, Italy, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Bracco, a global leader in diagnostic imaging, and ulrich GmbH & Co. KG, a renowned German medical device manufacturer specializing in contrast media injectors and spinal implants, announced today a new long-term partnership that will bring a Bracco-branded, state-of-the-art MR injector to the United States under an exclusive private label arrangement. The two companies also announce the submittal of a 510(k) premarket notification to the FDA for the new device manufactured by ulrich GmbH & Co. KG. Organ and tissue differentiation is frequently only possible with the use of contrast media in medical imaging. For over 30 years, ulrich medical has offered contrast media injectors for use in computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. The injector submitted to the FDA is already approved by the European Medicines Agency and commercialized by ulrich medical in the European Union and in numerous other countries around the globe. "Through our strategic collaboration and this private label agreement with ulrich medical, Bracco will bring syringeless MR injectors to the U.S. and today's submission for 510(k) clearance to the FDA brings us one step closer to elevating the standard of diagnostic imaging solutions around the country to expand Bracco's MR portfolio in the U.S.," said Fulvio Renoldi Bracco, Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Bracco Imaging S.p.A. "We are taking bold actions to help make a difference for patients, and this long-term partnership serves as a testament to our commitment to improved quality and efficiency for healthcare providers." "This strategic collaboration with Bracco Imaging to introduce this contrast media injector to the U.S. market represents our commitment to innovation and excellence in healthcare," said Klaus Kiesel, Chief Executive Officer of ulrich medical. "Together, we look forward to setting the new standard for patient care in MR." About Bracco Imaging Bracco Imaging S.p.A. ("Bracco Imaging"), part of the Bracco Group, is an innovative world leader delivering end-to-end products and solutions through its comprehensive portfolio across diagnostic imaging modalities. Headquartered in Milan, Italy, Bracco Imaging's purpose is to improve people's lives by shaping the future of prevention and precision diagnostic imaging. The Bracco Imaging portfolio includes products and solutions for all key diagnostic imaging modalities: X-ray imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound (CEUS), and Nuclear Medicine through radioactive tracers and novel PET imaging agents. Bracco Imaging has approximately 3,700 employees and operates in more than 100 markets globally. Bracco Imaging has a well-skilled and innovative Research and Development (R&D) organization with an efficient process-oriented approach and track record in the diagnostic imaging industry. R&D activities are located in four centers based in Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Bracco Group's global revenues were 1.7 billion Euros in 2020. To learn more about Bracco Imaging, visit www.bracco.com. Media Contacts Bracco Imaging Micaela Colamasi Senior PR Communication Manager +39 340 9775099 [email protected] SOURCE Bracco COSTA MESA, Calif., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- CerraCap Ventures, a Southern California-based venture capital firm, proudly announces its participation in Entropica Labs' Series A funding round, reinforcing its dedication to making quantum computers useful. Entropica Labs, drawing on years of hands-on research across various quantum computing modalities and platforms, is developing software tools to empower users to design fault-tolerant versions of quantum circuits and algorithms. As part of the investment Vikas Datt, Partner CerraCap Ventures joins the Entropica Labs board as an observer. "We are excited to join Entropica Labs on their quantum computing journey. Their innovative approach and steadfast dedication to tackling pivotal challenges harmonize perfectly with CerraCap's investment principles. Entropica Labs stands at the cusp of molding the quantum computing future, and we eagerly anticipate working with them in this groundbreaking endeavor", said Vikas Datt. Entropica Labs has demonstrated exceptional prowess in the field by building strong partnerships with hardware companies and delivering value with a nimble and dedicated Team. The successful Series A funding round further validates Entropica Labs' position as a key player in the quantum technology landscape. Dr. Tommaso Demarie, CEO of Entropica Labs, expressed confidence in the partnership, stating, "CerraCap's investment is a significant endorsement of our vision and capabilities. Their Sales and Scale model, coupled with a commitment to supporting portfolio companies, will be invaluable to us in the US market." CerraCap Ventures, known for its strategic investments and operational support to portfolio companies, sees immense potential in Entropica Labs. The firm's approach aligns with the growing demand for sophisticated software solutions in the quantum computing space. "As quantum technology continues to evolve, CerraCap Ventures recognizes the critical role that companies like Entropica Labs play in providing practical solutions to the challenges in the quantum computing landscape. We believe in empowering the next generation of quantum developers and engineers," remarked Saurabh Ranjan. The investment from CerraCap Ventures signifies a collaborative effort to drive advancements in quantum computing. As quantum technology becomes increasingly accessible, CerraCap Ventures is poised to contribute to the transformative journey that lies ahead. About CerraCap Ventures: CerraCap Ventures is an Orange County, California-based early-stage venture capital firm specializing in cyber security, advanced analytics, and health-tech investments. With a focus on B2B enterprise companies, CerraCap Ventures empowers high-growth innovative companies through its unique "Sales & Scale" approach, leveraging partnerships with Fortune 500 companies to drive growth and success, visit www.cerracap.com. About Entropica Labs: Founded in Singapore by Tommaso Demarie and Ewan Munro in 2018, Entropica's thesis is that commercial, practical applications of quantum computers require fault-tolerant quantum error correction, i.e., the ability to actively remove errors from quantum computations. Entropica is a quantum computing software company driven by a mission to build software development tools to accelerate the arrival, and adoption, of useful quantum computers. To learn more about Entropica, visit www.entropicalabs.com. Contact: Nikki Arora, [email protected] SOURCE CerraCap Ventures Cameron Pictures and Lark Productions join as first Canadian Production Partners with "Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent" TORONTO and CHICAGO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cinespace Studios announces a new partnership with NABET 700-M UNIFOR to expand its CineCares Workforce Training Program in Toronto. Cameron Pictures and Lark Productions are producing the upcoming "Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent," the first Canadian production to participate in the program with NABET 700-M UNIFOR, currently filming at Cinespace Toronto and set to air on Citytv and Citytv+ in Spring 2024. Selected trainees are offered hands-on experience on set in the sound, script, and lighting departments. Launched in the spring of 2023, the CineCares Workforce Training program offers participants on-set experience to pursue union membership. BIPOC TV & FILM, Indigenous Screen Office, and POV are recruitment partners selecting candidates to be trained with IATSE Local 873 and NABET 700-M UNIFOR for paid placements in trainee roles for Set Decoration, Props, Grip, Lighting, Sound and General Labour. The program is committed to creating strong wrap-around support, participant network development, mentorships, and post-program sessions. "Cinespace hosts productions with some of the best Toronto crew, who excel at their craft and make extraordinary mentors," said Magali Simard, Director of Industry & Community Relations. "Our partnership with NABET, Cameron Pictures, and Lark Productions allows us to further our commitment to developing local talent and creating a workforce development pipeline." "NABET 700-M UNIFOR appreciates the opportunity to partner with Cinespace Studios, through the CineCares workforce training program, as well as our long-standing production partners at Cameron Pictures and now Lark Productions to work together to add to the depth and diversity of our skilled workforce through paid, on-the-job training opportunities on Law and Order Toronto: Criminal Intent," said Jayson Mosek, Business Agent at NABET 700-M UNIFOR. "We're proud to be the first Canadian production to bring CineCares trainees onto our sets and to be able to provide this opportunity for the next generation of crew talent," said Amy Cameron, co-founder and executive producer at Cameron Pictures. About Cinespace Studios Cinespace Studios, headquartered in Chicago, IL, is a best-in-class global platform of production facilities that supports content providers and their creatives. The platform is one of the largest sound stage operators globally with 109 active stages across Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, Wilmington, and Studio Babelsberg in Germany. Cinespace is home to productions that include Lionsgate's The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and John Wick: Chapter 4, HULU/FX's Golden Globe-nominated The Bear, Dick Wolf's One Chicago franchise, Guillermo Del Toro's Academy Award Winner The Shape of Water, UCP's Chucky, MGM TV/Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, Netflix's Stranger Things, Marvel Studios' Iron Man 3 and Amazon Studios' The Summer I Turned Pretty. CineCares, a division of the studio, has been established to support, promote, and engage local communities to support workforce development and crew diversity. For more information, visit www.cinespace.com . About NABET 700-M UNIFOR NABET 700-M UNIFOR represents almost 3,000 highly skilled film, television & digital media Technicians in the Province of Ontario across fifteen different technical departments and is the preferred choice of domestic and many service producers to service their project in Ontario. For more information, visit www.nabet700.com About Cameron Pictures Cameron Pictures Inc. is an independent Canadian television production company with a focus on scripted content. Among Cameron Pictures' award-winning series are Mary Kills People (Global/Lifetime, co-produced with eOne); the comedy Little Dog (CBC, co-produced with Elemental Pictures); and the comedic buddy cop drama Pretty Hard Cases (CBC/NBCU). About Lark Productions Established in Vancouver in 2010, Lark's productions include Family Law for Global TV, spy drama Fortunate Son for CBC in association with NBCUniversal International Studios, CSA-nominated Motive (CTV, USA Network), the hit formats The Real Housewives of Toronto (Slice) and The Real Housewives of Vancouver (Slice), Crash Gallery (CBC), Paramedics: Life on the Line (Knowledge Network), Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH (Knowledge Network, Discovery Fit), and High Moon (SYFY). Media Contact: Catherine Shin, 323.794.2719 [email protected] SOURCE Cinespace Studios BROOKLYN, N.Y., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- City Tech's Ursula C. Schwerin Library is one of 50 U.S. libraries selected to host Americans and the Holocaust, a traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that examines the motives, pressures and fears that shaped Americans' responses to Nazism, war and genocide in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. The touring library exhibition based on the special exhibition of the same name at the Museum in Washington, D.C. is traveling to U.S. libraries from 2020 to 2024. Americans and the Holocaust will be on display at City Tech and open to the public by appointment November 28 December 17, 2023, during which time the City Tech Library is hosting a series of special events pertaining to the exhibition. All in-person and online programs are free and open to the public; registration is required. "CUNY and its City Tech campus are pleased to host Americans and the Holocaust, an exhibit that asks difficult questions that remain relevant today," said CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez. "We thank the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association for bringing this educational and thought-provoking touring exhibition to CUNY. I encourage New Yorkers to see it at the campus' Ursula C. Schwerin Library and also to attend the slate of related educational events that will be presented at City Tech during the three weeks of the exhibit." "We're honored that City Tech has been chosen to host this important exhibit, and appreciate the efforts of Library Professors Keith Muchowski and Junior Tidal in securing this award," said Interim Chief Librarian Anne Leonard. "We are grateful to partner with other CUNY institutions and members of our local community on programming around the exhibit." Based on extensive new research of that period, Americans and the Holocaust addresses important themes in American history, exploring the many factors including the Great Depression, isolationism, xenophobia, racism and antisemitism that influenced decisions made by the U.S. government, the news media, organizations and individuals as they responded to Nazism. This exhibition will challenge the commonly held assumptions that Americans knew little and did nothing about the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews as the Holocaust unfolded. Drawing on a remarkable collection of primary sources from the 1930s and '40s, the exhibition focuses on the stories of individuals and groups of Americans who took action in response to Nazism. It will challenge visitors to consider the responsibilities and obstacles faced by individuals from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to ordinary Americans who made difficult choices, sought to effect change, and, in a few cases, took significant risks to help victims of Nazism even as rescue never became a government priority. Americans and the Holocaust: A Traveling Exhibition for Libraries is an educational initiative of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association. In addition to the traveling exhibition on loan, the Ursula C. Schwerin Library received a cash grant to support public programs. The grant also supported expenses for a library staff member to attend an orientation workshop at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the exhibition, visit ushmm.org/americans-ala. Americans and the Holocaust was made possible by the generous support of lead sponsor Jeannie & Jonathan Lavine. Additional major funding was provided by the Bildners Joan & Allen z"l, Elisa Spungen & Rob, Nancy & Jim; and Jane and Daniel Och. The Museum's exhibitions are also supported by the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Special Exhibitions Fund, established in 1990. About the Ursula C. Schwerin Library The Ursula C. Schwerin Library at New York City College of Technology (City Tech) fosters connections with and supports a diverse community of staff, faculty, and over 13,000 students in their academic pursuits. City Tech is the designated college of technology within the City University of New York (CUNY), the largest public urban university in the United States. For more information, visit library.citytech.cuny.edu. About the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires leaders and citizens worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity. The Museum's far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by generous donors. For more information, visit ushmm.org . About the American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is the foremost national organization providing resources to inspire library and information professionals to transform their communities through essential programs and services. For more than 140 years, the ALA has been the trusted voice for academic, public, school, government and special libraries, advocating for the profession and the library's role in enhancing learning and ensuring access to information for all. For more information, visit ala.org . SOURCE New York City College of Technology WENZHOU, China, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- As a move to mark the tenth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) this year, the 2023 Mayors Exchange Conference on Maritime Silk Road City Influence will be held from November 24-25 in coastal city Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province. Through exchanges and interactions among Maritime Silk Road city municipal officials, experts and scholars from 13 foreign countries, the conference seeks to facilitate mutual learning and win-win cooperation in the region, according to the Executive Committee. Made up by a main session, five parallel sessions, and several special activities, the event will see the release of the "Maritime Silk Road Star City Index" and the list of the "Top 10 Influential Maritime Silk Road Cities 2023," and city branding and case studies by Maritime Silk Road city municipal officials. As a major activity of the conference, the Maritime Silk Road Star City Index will be launched to offer a scientific evaluation and comprehensive display of diversity of cities along the trade route. The index system is made up by 20 indicators that assess a city's global connectivity, trade network, culture legacy and international exchanges. Municipal officials from well-known Maritime Silk Road cities such as China's Wenzhou, Maldives' Male, Italy's Castellamonte and Spain's Barcelona will attend the conference to display their cities' charm and share their cities' unique practices. An initiative to promote innovative development on Maritime Silk Road city cooperation will be released during the conference. As an important hub along the Maritime Silk Road, Wenzhou is one of the first 14 coastal cities in China to open to the outside world. The Shuomen Ancient Port site located in Wenzhou was selected as one of the top ten national archaeological discoveries in 2022, demonstrating the prosperity and continuity of the ancient trade route on the sea. At the same time, Wenzhou's trade with the BRI countries increased from 53.33 billion yuan in 2013 to 147.05 billion yuan in 2022. "In the past decade, the Silk Road spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit has been translated into realities, with more and more stories about the shared prosperity thanks to the BRI's practices on the sea," said Chen Yingxu, vice mayor of Wenzhou. "As members of the Maritime Silk Road, we are a community that share weal and woe," Chen said. SOURCE Wenzhou Executive Committee of the 2023 Mayors Exchange Conference on Maritime Silk Road City Influence TO ACCESS THIS CONTENT YOU MUST OPEN A SESSION OR CREATE AN ACCOUNT MEMBER LOGIN CREATE YOUR USER ACCOUNT In 2022, Entergy Mississippi helped secure $808 million in capital investments and created more than 1,050 new jobs For 16 consecutive years, Site . . . Recognized for Enabling Product Security Lifecycle Visibility and Uncovering Vulnerabilities for Enhanced Threat and Risk Visibility for Streamlined Regulatory Compliance TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cybellum , creators of the award-winning Product Security Platform, announced today that its Product Security Platform has been formally designated as "CWE-Compatible" by the MITRE Corporation's Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) Compatibility and Effectiveness Program. The designation means that Chief Product Security Officers (CPSOs) and their teams are able to manage the vulnerabilities and associated risks identification posed to their connected devices within a globally trusted framework. CWE is a community-developed list of software and hardware weakness types. It serves as a common language, a benchmark for security tools, and as a baseline for weakness identification, mitigation, and prevention efforts. CWE-Compatible Products and Services must meet four requirements. The first is that they must be CWE searchable whereby users may search security elements using CWE identifiers. In addition, they must present CWE output, in which security elements presented to users include, or allow users to obtain, associated CWE identifiers. They must have mapping accuracy of security elements that accurately link to the appropriate CWE identifiers and there must be documentation describing the CWE, CWE compatibility, and how CWE-related functionality in the capability is used. "Securing official recognition as CWE-Compatible is a great achievement for Cybellum that not only affirms our commitment to excellence but places Cybellum at the forefront of product security innovation," said Michael Engstler, Co-Founder & CTO of Cybellum. "Cybellum's Product Security Platform aligns security and compliance teams, developers, and executives around one source of security truth that they can all rely on for ongoing vulnerability monitoring and compliance with the ever-changing landscape of emerging regulations." CWE has emerged as the de facto reference resource that guides security-conscious developers, especially those involved in developing embedded systems for safety critical products. Cybellum's Product Security Platform uncovers and manages vulnerabilities in Java files and supported OS components and in executables from any of the supported CPU architectures including Intel x86/x64, ARM, PowerPC,MIPS and more. The threats can also be detected in UNIX/Linux ELF and Microsoft Windows PE executable files. It also can uncover vulnerabilities in executables from any of the supported microcontroller architectures including ARM, Renesas RH850/V850,Infineon TriCore, and others. "At Cybellum, we understand the profound impact that vulnerabilities can have on embedded systems, particularly those that underpin critical sectors," said Roman Kesler, VP of Research at Cybellum. "Achieving CWE compatibility is not just a validation of our product's robustness, it also signifies our alignment with the industry's best practices and our dedication to equipping product security practitioners with the tools they need to fortify their systems against potential threats." Mitre CWE is continually updated and maintained by a community of security experts, developers, researchers, and organizations from both the public and private sectors. The collaborative nature of CWE ensures that it remains a dynamic and evolving resource that reflects the latest insights into product security. Cybellum supports companies that rely on the Mitre CWE program by: Focusing on multi-team collaborative product security from asset management and software assurance to incident response and cyber-compliance Aggregating and managing product assets based on data coming from multiple sources, from SBOMs to CWE and other vulnerability databases Syncing MITRE's database with Cybellum's VM CoPilot to triage vulnerabilities automatically, saving the time and resources needed for vulnerability prioritization Providing a customizable Policy Engine that automates requirement validation and allows teams to produce reports for 50+ cybersecurity regulations, accelerating compliance with regulations and your own policies Refining intelligence monitoring, automated relevance assessments, and impact-focused investigation workflows for rapid remediation of post-market incidents About Cybellum Cybellum is where teams do product security. Device manufacturers such as Jaguar Land Rover, Supermicro, Danaher, and Rolls Royce use Cybellum's Product Security Platform and services to manage the main aspects of their cybersecurity operations across business units and lifecycle stages. From Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) to Vulnerability Management, Compliance Validation, and Incident Response, teams ensure their connected products are fundamentally secure and compliant and stay that way. To learn more visit www.cybellum.com Media Contact: Annette Habani, Marketing Manager [email protected] SOURCE Cybellum Launch of XRP ETP: Valour plans to introduce a Ripple ( XRP ) Exchange Traded Product on a European exchange in early December 2023 , expanding its range of digital asset investment products. Valour plans to introduce a Ripple ( ) Exchange Traded Product on a European exchange in early , expanding its range of digital asset investment products. Investment Access and Expansion: The Ripple ( XRP ) ETP will allow investors to gain exposure to XRP , the native cryptocurrency of the Ripple ecosystem, through banks or brokers, meeting the growing demand for diverse digital asset investments in European markets. Valour continues to prioritize product innovation and development, and it has plans to list additional traditional and physically backed ETPs in the coming months. TORONTO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - DeFi Technologies Inc. (the "Company" or "DeFi Technologies") (NEO: DEFI) (GR: RB9) (OTC: DEFTF), a crypto native technology company that pioneers the convergence of traditional capital markets with the world of decentralised finance ("DeFi"), is excited to announce that its subsidiary Valour Inc. ("Valour"), a leading issuer of exchange traded products ("ETPs") that provide simplified access to digital assets, plans to launch a Ripple (XRP) ETP on a European exchange in early December 2023. The Valour Ripple XRP ETP will enable investors to gain exposure to XRP, the native cryptocurrency in Ripple's ecosystem, simply and securely, via their bank or broker. XRP has a market cap of $31.6 Billion and ranks fifth among all cryptocurrencies globally. "The introduction of the Ripple (XRP) ETPs by Valour is a significant expansion of our product offerings," said Marco Infuso, Chief Sales Officer of Valour. "Adding XRP to our suite of products caters to the growing demand for diverse digital asset investments in European markets. These ETPs provide European investors with access to leading cryptocurrencies, aligning with our commitment to democratizing and pioneering the digital asset market for traditional investors." Ripple XRP is a key player in the digital currency space, known for its use in facilitating rapid and low-cost international money transfers. Operating on RippleNet, XRP serves as a bridge currency in Ripple's payment network, allowing for seamless currency exchanges worldwide. This has positioned XRP as a preferred choice for financial institutions seeking efficient alternatives to traditional cross-border payment methods. Valour continues to prioritize product innovation and development, and it has plans to list additional traditional and physically backed ETPs in the coming months. In addition to its novel digital asset platform, which includes 1Valour Ethereum Physical Staking ETP and 1Valour Bitcoin Physical Carbon Neutral ETP, Valour offers fully hedged digital asset ETPs with low to zero management fees, with product listings across European exchanges, banks and broker platforms. Valour's existing product range includes Valour Uniswap ( UNI ), Cardano ( ADA ), Polkadot ( DOT ), Solana ( SOL ), Avalanche ( AVAX ), Cosmos ( ATOM ), Binance ( BNB ), Enjin ( ENJ ), Bitcoin Carbon Neutral ( BTCN ) and Valour Digital Asset Basket 10 ( VDAB10 ) ETPs with low management fees. Valour's flagship products are Bitcoin Zero and Ethereum Zero, the first fully hedged, passive investment products with Bitcoin ( BTC ) and Ethereum ( ETH ) as underlyings which are completely fee free. Closing of Oversubscribed Private Placement DeFi Technologies is also pleased to announce that further to its press release dated November 13, 2023, it has closed a non-brokered, oversubscribed, private placement of 11,812,500 units of the Company ("Units") at a price per Unit of C$0.16 for aggregate gross proceeds of C$1,890,000 (the "Offering"). Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company (each, a "Common Share") and one Common Share purchase warrant (each, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to acquire one Common Share at an exercise price of C$0.23 per Common Share until November 22, 2025. No finder's fees were paid in connection with the Offering. The Company intends to use the proceeds of the Offering for general corporate purposes, including to satisfy liabilities of the Company. Certain Units, Common Shares and Warrants purchased will be subject to a four-month hold period commencing on the closing date of the Offering pursuant to National Instrument 45-102 Resale of Securities, and the remaining Units, Common Shares and Warrants were distributed in offshore jurisdictions pursuant to Ontario Securities Commission Rule 72-503 - Distributions Outside Canada and, as such, will not be subject to a statutory hold period in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws. About DeFi Technologies DeFi Technologies Inc. ( NEO: DEFI ) ( GR: RB9 ) ( OTC: DEFTF ) is a crypto native technology company that pioneers the convergence of traditional capital markets with the world of decentralised finance (DeFi). With a dedicated focus on industry-leading Web3 technologies, DeFi Technologies aims to provide widespread investor access to the future of finance. Backed by an esteemed team of professionals with extensive experience in financial markets and digital assets, we are committed to revolutionising the way individuals and institutions interact with the evolving financial ecosystem. Join DeFi Technologies' digital community on Linkedin and Twitter , and for more details, visit https://defi.tech/ About Valour Valour Inc. issues exchange traded products (ETPs) that enable retail and institutional investors to access digital assets like Bitcoin in a simple and secure way via their traditional bank account. Established in 2019, Valour is a wholly owned subsidiary of DeFi Technologies Inc. ( NEO: DEFI ) ( GR: RB9 ) ( OTC: DEFTF ). For more information on Valour, visit https://valour.com Cautionary note regarding forward-looking information: This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to the Offering; launch of the Valour Ripple XRP ETP; development and listing of future ETPs; the regulatory environment with respect to the growth and adoption of decentralized finance; the pursuit by DeFi and its subsidiaries of business opportunities; and the merits or potential returns of any such opportunities. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company, as the case may be, to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but is not limited the acceptance of Valour exchange traded products by exchanges; growth and development of decentralised finance and cryptocurrency sector; rules and regulations with respect to decentralised finance and cryptocurrency; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities offered under the Offering have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. SOURCE DeFi Technologies Inc. DUBLIN, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Strategic Profiling of Emerging eMobility Companies" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The automotive industry is increasingly electrified, and multiple tech companies are entering the sector, making it competitive and fragmented. This study provides a strategic overview of several new entrants in the automotive industry, with the intent of identifying and understanding the factors that contribute to their success. New entrants in the automotive sector are focusing on smart technologies in the connected, autonomous, shared, and electric (CASE) ecosystem. The report has examined each company's innovation and research portfolios as well as purchasing assets and capabilities. The study also covers partnerships between traditional automakers and contract manufacturers, which are expected to shape the automotive sector. The study period is 2021-2030. Research Highlights Provide an overview of eMobility companies (e.g., Alibaba, Apple, Baidu, DiDi, Foxconn, Huawei, Sony Corp) and their in-house applications and operating systems, including financial analysis Deep dive into companies' key operational strategies with a focus on their automotive capabilities Understand and analyze the companies' business models and partnerships Key Topics Covered: Growth Opportunity Analysis Research Scope Key Takeaways Competency Analysis of eMobility Companies Growth Drivers Growth Restraints Alibaba Alibaba Group Holding Limited: Company Overview Alibaba Group Holding Limited: Financial Overview Alibaba Group Holding Limited: Plan to Enter the Automotive Market through IM Motors Alibaba Group Holding Limited: Joint Ventures in the Automotive Space Alibaba Group Holding Limited in Automotive Apple Inc. Apple Inc.: Company Overview Apple Inc.: Financial Overview Apple Inc.: Plan to Enter the Automotive Market with Project Titan Apple Inc.: Joint Ventures in the Automotive Space Apple Inc. in Automotive Baidu Inc. Baidu Inc.: Company Overview Baidu Inc.: Financial Overview Baidu Inc.: Plan to Enter the Automotive Market with Apollo Baidu Inc.: Joint Ventures in the Automotive Space Baidu Inc. in Automotive DiDi Global DiDi Global Inc.: Company Overview DiDi Global Inc.: Financial Overview DiDi Global Inc.: Plan to Enter the Automotive Space DiDi Global Inc.: Joint Ventures in the Automotive Space DiDi Global Inc. in Automotive Foxconn Technology Co. Ltd. Foxconn Technology Co. Ltd.: Company Overview Foxconn Technology Co. Ltd.: Financial Overview Foxconn Technology Co. Ltd.: Entry into the Automotive Space Foxconn Technology Co. Ltd.: Joint Ventures in the Automotive Space Foxconn Technology Co. Ltd. in Automotive Huawei Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.: Company Overview Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.: Financial Overview Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.: Plan to Enter the Automotive Space Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.: Joint Ventures in the Automotive Space Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. in Automotive Sony Group Corp. Sony Group Corp.: Company Overview Sony Group Corp.: Financial Overview Sony Group Corp.: Entry into the Automotive Space with the VISION Series Sony Group Corp.: Joint Ventures in the Automotive Space Sony Group Corp. in Automotive Xiaomi Xiaomi Corporation: Company Overview Xiaomi Corporation: Financial Overview Xiaomi Corporation: Plan to Enter the Automotive Space with its EV MS11 Xiaomi Corporation: Joint Ventures in the Automotive Space Xiaomi Corporation in Automotive Growth Opportunity Universe Growth Opportunity 1: Developing a Service Ecosystem Growth Opportunity 2: Partnerships and Knowledge Sharing Growth Opportunity 3: Business Diversification and New Business Models For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/c2o6c6 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 In partnership with Michigan's premier cannabis company, House of Dank, the superstar's ultra-premium cannabis line is now available in the state. DETROIT, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Two-time GRAMMY winner Future's ultra-premium cannabis brand, EVOL by Future , is now available in Michigan in partnership with the state's leading cannabis company, House of Danka Best of Weedmaps Nominee and a "premiere bud shop"according to High Times. Beginning today, Michigan connoisseurs will be able to purchase EVOL's elite flower offerings, strain specific hash-holes, and pre-rolls available at any House of Dank location. EVOL by Future x House of Dank EVOL by Future was launched earlier this year under Carma HoldCo , the leading global branding and licensing company behind the top celebrity and cannabis brands. "Through our partnership with House of Dank, we're delighted to bring EVOL by Future to discerning cannabis buyers in Michigan," said Adam Wilks, Co-founder and CEO of CarmaHold Co. "By combining the expertise of House of Dank with the global appeal of Future's brand, we will elevate Michigan's cannabis experience together." "Future's impact and influence on modern music and culture is undeniable, and we know that EVOL by Future will connect with cannabis enthusiasts throughout Michigan just as his music has," said Prince Yousif, owner of House of Dank. "Teaming up with Carma to introduce the EVOL by Future line at House of Dank allows us to continue enriching cannabis culture throughout Michigan." About EVOL by Future Two-time GRAMMY winner Future, together with Carma HoldCo , the family of iconic global brands, present EVOL by Future , the multi-platinum superstar's line of ultra-premium cannabis. Distribution of Carma HoldCo's products spans 100,000+ retailers across 40+ states and 17 countries worldwide. To learn more about EVOL by Future, visit: www.evolbyfuture.com . About House of Dank House of Dank is a leading Michigan cannabis innovator known for its premium products, passionate customer service, easy ordering process, and commitment to supporting its communities. With locations in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Monroe, Lapeer, Saginaw, Center Line, Traverse City, and more, House of Dank prides itself on making world-class cannabis accessible to all in The Wolverine State. For more information visit: www.shophod.com. Media Inquiries: Lindsey Cosgrove Senior Account Supervisor 650-946-8436 [email protected] SOURCE Carma HoldCo LIMASSOL, Cyprus, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Exness, the world's largest multi-asset broker, participated in the Lisbon Web Summit 2023, which took place between November 13 and 16. The Web Summit, recognized as the biggest tech event in the world, attracted over 70,000 visitors and featured key speakers from organizations such as Microsoft, MIT, Qualcomm, and TechCrunch. Exness personnel outside the Altice Arena at the Lisbon Web Summit At the event, Damian Bunce, Exness Chief Customer Officer, delivered an insightful masterclass titled "Fintech decoded: disruptive tech in capital markets", to a full house. Bunce's presentation showcased the broker's pivotal role in fintech development. It explored the transformative impact of technology in the sector, tracing its evolution from the dominance of traditional institutions to the current era of fintech innovation. His audience also gained insights into the transition of the liquidity landscape and the trade execution standards that led to the democratization of trading. The full masterclass can be viewed here. Reflecting on the event, Bunce stated, "The Web Summit is at the heart of technological advancement and innovation it is where all the latest trends, technologies, and topics that shape our world are discussed. As it aligns with our core vision of leveraging technology in creating advanced products, we were excited to contribute to the global discussion about the future of fintech. Engaging with hundreds of like-minded people and exchanging views and opinions with them was very gratifying for us". Exness is a global multi-asset broker which uses a unique combination of technology and ethics to create a favorable market for traders and raise the industry benchmark. Exness' ethos and vision revolve around the concept of offering its clients a frictionless trading experience, by bringing to life the financial markets in the way they should be experienced. Today, Exness is recognised as the largest retail market maker, with a monthly trading volume of almost $5 trillion and a loyal client base which counts over 600,000 active traders. Contact: Constantina Georgiadou [email protected] +35725030959 Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2283605/Exness_Lisbon_Web_Summit.jpg Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2207022/Exness_Logo.jpg SOURCE Exness SALT LAKE CITY and JUJA, Kenya, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- EyeCare4Kids, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing essential eye care to underserved communities around the world, announced today the grand opening of a comprehensive, state-of-the-art vision clinic at Kalimoni Mission Hospital in Kenya, Africa. Thanks to generous donations of individuals and corporations, EyeCare4Kids helped to build a new hospital wing and donated cutting-edge examination equipment, ensuring access to high-quality eye care for local children and communities. EyeCare4 Kids opens a comprehensive, state-of-the-art vision clinic at Kalimoni Mission Hospital in Kenya, Africa The Arch Bishop of Nairobi said mass, blessed the hospital, the EyeCare4Kids vision clinic and Joseph Carbone, founder of EyeCare4Kids. He said that this was the best eye clinic in all of Kenya. "The new vision clinic at Kalimoni Mission Hospital, located in Kenya, was made possible because of the unwavering support of donors and the tireless efforts of so many of our partners and friends," said Joseph Carbone, founder of EyeCare4Kids. "The clinic officially began serving patients in the summer, marking a significant milestone in the organization's mission to improve eye health around the world." The grand opening ceremony was graced by the presence of Arch Bishop of Nairobi, Philip Anyolo, who presided over a mass and blessed both the hospital and the EyeCare4Kids vision clinic. Arch Bishop Anyolo commended the efforts of EyeCare4Kids and Carbone, stating that the new clinic stands as the finest eye care facility in all of Kenya. Carbone added, "I am the most blessed man on earth because of the efforts of so many people who helped the hospital wing and vision clinic become a reality." The project is several years in the making as EyeCare4Kids faced challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hospital initially allocated a building to EyeCare4Kids, but the opportunity was delayed due to the pandemic. Despite these obstacles, the building was constructed, and the EyeCare4Kids clinic is now officially open, ready to provide vital eye care services to the community. As part of the Sight the World initiative and partner 1-800 CONTACTS, the clinic offers the ability to do refractions using mobile devices, a technology acquired by 1-800 CONTACTS in 2022. A local lab makes the glasses or EyeCare4Kids supplements the glasses and covers shipping to the hospital. Carbone said, "The vision clinic at Kalimoni Mission Hospital is a leap forward in eye care for the local residents and will empower the people of Kenya to become more self-reliant. EyeCare4Kids remains committed to its mission, striving to make a meaningful difference in the lives of individuals and communities around the world." Carbone is dedicated to serving underserved children across Africa. In December 2021, he led a similar mission to Mali, Africa, where over 1,000 individuals were treated, and essential equipment and eyeglasses were donated to a local hospital. About EyeCare4Kids Founded in 2001, EyeCare4Kids is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides professional eye care to low-income, visually impaired children and underserved families. Founded by optician Joseph Carbone, EyeCare4Kids has served more than 400,000 children with a goal to provide more than 500,000 children with glasses by 2025. EyeCare4Kids has eight clinics in Utah, Nevada and Arizona, and three mobile clinics that travel to schools, Native American reservations and rural areas. The nonprofit is also expanding internationally with multiple clinics open and planned in Africa. For more information, visit eyecare4kids.org. Contact: Maggie Cline 801-285-5443 [email protected] SOURCE EyeCare4Kids SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Novarad Corporation used VisAR, their augmented reality surgical navigation system, to biopsy an intraventricular tumor from a patient's brain at MAC CDMX Hospital in Mexico this past week. This surgical procedure marks the first-of-its-kind application of augmented reality surgery in Latin America, showcasing Novarad's commitment to pushing the boundaries of medical science and providing patients with cutting-edge, low-cost treatment options. In July, surgeons at MAC CDMX Hospital completed a successful spine surgery using VisAR's navigation. Expanding the boundaries of AR navigation, VisAR was utilized in a far more challenging and risky surgery in this case. A team of neurosurgeons, Dr. Alberto Ramirez and Dr. Jose Francisco Cuellar, assisted by Dr. Wendell Gibby of Novarad, utilized VisAR to biopsy a malignant tumor in the 3rd ventricle, deep in the center of the brain. VisAR provides real-time, three-dimensional visualization of the patient's anatomy. It allows precise navigation of surgical instruments with optical tracking via an attached code. This innovative system allows surgeons to superimpose critical information onto the surgical field, providing unparalleled precision and accuracy during delicate surgeries. By enhancing a surgeon's situational awareness, VisAR helps reduce the risk of complications and ensures optimal outcomes. The precise targeting and biopsy of the intraventricular tumor is as challenging as it gets in neurosurgery. This highlights the potential of VisAR, which uses advanced imaging software paired with an off-the-shelf Microsoft HoloLens to revolutionize delivery of healthcare. "After performing the first spine cases, we realized that the accuracy and safety with which we can place implants using VisAR is very good," said Dr. Ramirez, one of the surgeons involved in the procedure. "After performing the cranial case, we found we could smoothly and confidently guide our craniotomy margins when entering the anatomical corridor for tumor reception. I think that in some way, the VisAR navigation is essential. Despite a slight increase in surgical time, we see such an improvement during surgery. We have a much better ability to see and understand the brain injury. As I said in the previous spinal surgery, it seems like a revolutionary invention to me." VisAR began development about 7 years ago. It was the first AR device given FDA clearance for preoperative planning 5 years ago. It has rapidly evolved, achieving stereotactic navigation clearance by the FDA for the spine in 2022. It has been used in eight countries for a wide variety of applications, including spinal implant guidance, plastic surgery, orthopedic trauma and oncology, and interventional radiology. VisAR is currently available in the United States, Mexico, and Indonesia, with other countries expected to approve the technology in upcoming months. Visit novarad.net/visar for more information or to schedule a demonstration. About Novarad Corporation Novarad is a global healthcare technology company specializing in the development and deployment of innovative medical imaging and informatics solutions. For more information about Novarad Corporation and its revolutionary VisAR augmented reality surgical navigation system, please visit novarad.net/ SOURCE Novarad Corporation DUBLIN, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Bio-Based Naphtha: Global Markets" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global market for bio-based naphtha was estimated to be worth $1.4 billion in 2022. The market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.3% from 2023 to 2028, and it is expected to reach $3.9 billion by 2028. Bio-based naphtha can help enterprises in adhering to these rules and bolster their reputations for sustainability. Similar to conventional naphtha, bio-based naphtha is primarily used as a feedstock for petrochemical crackers or as a component in gasoline blending. Overall, the need for bio-based naphtha is fueled by the aim of building a more environmentally friendly and sustainable economy, increasing energy security, and satisfying consumer demand for eco-friendly goods and materials. In this report, the global market's bio-based naphtha has been segmented based on source, application and geography. The major oil producers are constantly battling to become more sustainable to maintain their dominance in the developing market for more sustainable fuels. They use funding schemes and technological advancements that will boost demand for bio-based naphtha. For instance, in 2021, Mitsui Chemicals, a Japanese petrochemical producer, signed an agreement to buy bio-naphtha from a biofuel producer, Neste, and a Japanese trading company, Toyota Tsusho, as part of its measures to meet its 2050 decarbonization goal. The used cooking oil (UCO) segment currently dominates the market with a value of $479.0 million in 2022. It is estimated the UCO source segment will expand at a CAGR of 18.2%, and it is predicted to reach $1.3 billion by 2028. Five geographical regions have been identified for the bio-based naphtha market: North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. In 2022, the global market for bio-based naphtha was dominated by Europe. The Europe bio-based naphtha market generated $734.2 million in revenue in 2022, holding 52.0% of the global market. A few of the main factors propelling the North American market are the existence of several domestic and foreign companies, the accessibility of resources, technological advancements, and the spike in demand for biopolymers. The North America market for bio-based naphtha was estimated to be worth $336.8 million in 2022. It is anticipated that this market will develop at a CAGR of 18.1% and reach $924.8 million by 2028. The report analyzes the global bio-based naphtha market based on the segmentation of source and application. These segmentations are further analyzed at the global and regional levels. Key Report Highlights: 133 data tables and 27 additional tables A comprehensive overview of the global market for bio-based naphtha (bio-naphtha) Analyses of the global market trends, with market revenue (sales figures) for 2022, estimates for 2023, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2028 Understanding of the upcoming market potential for bio-based naphtha, assessment of the global bioplastics and biofuels markets, and areas of focus to forecast this market for bio-naphtha into various segments and sub-segments Estimation of the actual market size and revenue forecast for global bio-based naphtha market in USD million values, and corresponding market share analysis based on the source of feedstock, application, and region In-depth information (facts and figures) concerning the major factors influencing the demand for bio-based naphtha market (opportunities, drivers and challenges) with respect to specific growth trends, upcoming prospects, and contributions to the overall market Market outlook and assessment of the renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuels markets, increasing R&D activities in bio-naphtha, pricing, consumption and estimated production capacities A look at the recent market trends, regulatory concerns, and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) developments in global bio-based naphtha market Review of the key patent grants and recent patent applications on bio-based naphtha market, with emphasis on emerging technologies and new developments within the bio-based naphtha industry A look at the main producers of bioplastics and biofuels, and analyze the structure of bio-based naphtha industry (e.g., market shares, concentration, and recent merger and acquisition (M&A) activities etc.) Identification of the key players operating in the market, and analysis of their competitive landscape based on recent developments, segmental revenues, and operational integration Descriptive company profiles of the leading global players of the industry, including Eni, Diamond Green Diesel , Neste, Preem, Repsol and UPM Biofuels Key Topics Covered: Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Summary and Highlights Chapter 3 Market Overview Introduction to Bio-Based Naphtha Organic Waste as Feedstock Chapter 4 Market Dynamics Chapter 5 Market Breakdown by Source Market for Bio-Based Naphtha by Source Market Size and Forecast Biomass Vegetable Oil Used Cooking Oil Animal Fat Other Sources Chapter 6 Market Breakdown by Application Market for Bio-Based Naphtha by Application Market Size and Forecast Gasoline Plastic Production Chapter 7 Market Breakdown by Region Chapter 8 Sustainability in the Bio-Based Naphtha Industry: An ESG Perspective Importance of ESG in the Bio-Based Naphtha Industry ESG Ratings and Metrics: Understanding the Data ESG Practices in the Bio-Based Naphtha Industry ESG Carbon Footprint Issue Analysis Regulatory and Sustainability Programs Current Status of ESG in the Market for Bio-Based Naphtha Case Studies: Examples of Successful ESG Implementation Future of ESG: Emerging Trends and Opportunities Concluding Remarks Chapter 9 Emerging Technologies Highlights, Overview and Summary Market Trends: Bio-Based Naphtha New Product and Technology Development Chapter 10 Mergers and Acquisitions Chapter 11 Competitive Landscape Chapter 12 Company Profiles Chevron Renewable Energy Group Diamond Green Diesel Eni S.P.A. Neste Oyj Preem Repsol Shell Totalenergies UPM Biofuels For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/tw26j4 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 DUBLIN, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Cardiac Assist Devices - Global Market Insights, Competitive Landscape, and Market Forecast - 2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global cardiac assist devices market was valued at USD 2.89 billion in 2022, growing at a CAGR of 13.70% during the forecast period from 2023 to 2028, to reach USD 6.23 billion by 2028. The demand for cardiac assistance devices is motivated by a rise in the prevalence of coronary diseases, growth in new therapies, the affordability of medical devices, increasing penetration and acceptance of cardiac assistance devices in emerging countries, and innovation and advancement of medical devices. Cardiac Assist Devices Market Dynamics: Heart transplantation is widely regarded as the greatest therapeutic option for individuals with end-stage heart failure across the world. Only a limited percentage of patients get transplants due to the scarcity of organs available for transplantation. According to the most recent statistics, the number of patients waiting for a heart transplant has more than doubled in only five years. However, the scarcity of donors, long waiting times, and an increasing number of unstable patients have favored the development of cardiac assist. Cardiac Assist Devices (CAD) are a type of mechanical pump that operate together with the heart to increase the effectiveness of pumping and maintain optimal blood flow across the body. To treat end-stage heart failure, cardiac aid systems are used that are determined by the individual's needs. As a result of the scarcity of cardiac donors, temporary cardiac assist devices are utilized to provide long-term assistance for individuals. Moreover, companies are increasing their manufacturing of essential medical device products. For instance, in August 2022, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted breakthrough device designation to Abiomed's Impella ECP expandable percutaneous heart pump. The designation means the FDA will prioritize Impella ECP's regulatory review processes including design iterations, clinical study protocols, and pre-market approval (PMA) application. Therefore, such initiatives are expected to help the market and the patients in their treatment which will drive the cardiac assist devices market growth also. However, high treatment costs and limitations regarding the safety of implantable devices may prove to be certain restraints to the Cardiac Assist Devices market growth. North America is expected to dominate the Overall Cardiac Assist Devices Market: Among all the regions, North America is expected to account for the largest share of the cardiac assist devices market. The growing prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, access to better healthcare infrastructure, and growing awareness regarding cardiac diseases coupled with the presence of major cardiac assist devices market players in the region are predicted to be the major influencing factors in driving the overall growth of the cardiac assist devices market over the forecast period. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2022, estimated that about 20.1 million adults aged 20 and older had Coronary artery disease (CAD) in the US, in 2020. Also, the same source stated that in the United States, someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds. Every year, about 805,000 people in the United States have a heart attack. Out of these, 605,000 are a first heart attack, 200,000 happen to people who have already had a heart attack and about 1 in 5 heart attacks are silent - the damage is done, but the person is not aware of it. As per the facts provided by the CDC 2020, heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States where about 655,000 Americans die from heart disease each year. In addition, the well-established healthcare infrastructure in the country with supportive reimbursement programs covering the costs for the implantable devices as well as the procedure further encourages people to opt for such devices. Thereby, considering the presence of a large patient pool in the US coupled with new product launches, the market for cardiac assist devices looks promising in the United States. Key Takeaways from the Cardiac Assist Devices Market Report Study Market size analysis for current market size (2022), and market forecast for 5 years (2023-2028) Top key product/services/technology developments, mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, and joint ventures happened for the last 3 years Key companies dominating the global cardiac assist devices market. Various opportunities are available for the other competitor in the cardiac assist devices market space. What are the top-performing segments in 2022? How these segments will perform in 2028? Which are the top-performing regions and countries in the current market scenario? Which are the regions and countries where companies should have concentrated on opportunities for cardiac assist devices market growth in the coming future? Key Topics Covered: 1. Cardiac Assist Devices Market Report Introduction 2. Cardiac Assist Devices Market Executive Summary 2.1. Scope of the Study 2.2. Market at Glance 2.3. Competitive Assessment 3. Regulatory Analysis 3.1. The United States 3.2. Europe 3.3. Japan 3.4. China 4. Cardiac Assist Devices Market Key Factors Analysis 4.1. Cardiac Assist Devices Market Drivers 4.1.1. Rise in prevalence of coronary diseases 4.1.2. Growth in new therapies 4.1.3. Scarcity of heart donors 4.2. Cardiac Assist Devices Market Restraints and Challenges 4.2.1. High cost of the pump 4.2.2. Low repayment scenario in developing countries 4.3. Cardiac Assist Devices Market Opportunities 4.3.1. Increasing penetration and acceptance of cardiac assistance devices 4.3.2. Development of non-invasive, compact, and advanced devices 5. Cardiac Assist Devices Porter's Five Forces Analysis 5.1. Bargaining Power of Suppliers 5.2. Bargaining Power of Consumers 5.3. Threat of New Entrants 5.4. Threat of Substitutes 5.5. Competitive Rivalry 6. Cardiac Assist Devices Market Layout 6.1. By Product 6.1.1. Ventricular Assist Devices 6.1.1.1. Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVAD) 6.1.1.2. Biventricular Ventricular Assist Devices (BIVAD) 6.1.1.3. Right Ventricular Assist Devices (RVAD) 6.1.2. Total Artificial Hearts 6.1.3. Intra-Aortic Balloon Pumps 6.2. By Type 6.2.1. Transcutaneous 6.2.2. Implantable 6.3. By Therapy 6.3.1. Bridge-To-Transplant (BTT) 6.3.2. Bridge-To-Candidacy (BTC) 6.3.3. Destination Therapy (DT) 6.4. By End-User 6.4.1. Hospitals 6.4.2. Cardiac Centers 6.4.3. Ambulatory Surgical Centers 6.5. By Geography 7. Cardiac Assist Devices Company and Product Profiles 7.1. Abbott Laboratories 7.1.1. Company Overview 7.1.2. Company Snapshot 7.1.3. Financial Overview 7.1.4. Product Listing 7.1.5. Entropy 7.2. Abiomed, Inc. 7.3. Teleflex Incorporated 7.4. SynCardia Systems, LLC 7.5. St. Jude Medical Inc. 7.6. Berlin Heart 7.7. CARMAT 7.8. CorWave SA 7.9. Medtronic Inc. 7.10. Terumo Heart, Inc. 7.11. Balton Ltd. 7.12. NovaPump GmbH 7.13. Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd. 7.14. Thoratec Corporation 7.15. Getinge AB 8. KOL Views 9. Project Approach For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9tyh6a 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 NEW YORK, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A latest research report [110+] pages with 360-Degree visibility, titled "Dairy Herd Management Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Type; By End-use (Small-scale, Large-scale, Cooperative Farms); By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2023 - 2032" published by Polaris Market Research in its research repository. Dairy Herd Management Market, Dairy Herd Management Industry, Dairy Herd Management Market Size, Dairy Herd Management Market Share, Dairy Herd Management Market 2023, Dairy Herd Management Market 2032 According to Polaris Market Research latest [115+ Pages] research report, the global dairy herd management market size and share is predicted to grow from USD 3.43 billion in 2022 to USD 6.83 billion in 2032. It is anticipated to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 7.1% from 2023 to 2032, according to the latest report by Polaris Market Research. What is Dairy Herd Management? How Big is Dairy Herd Management Market Size? A Quick Report Review The methodical and thorough approach to managing a dairy herd's health, procreation, and productivity is known as dairy herd management. For dairy farms to sustain long-term high output, it is a crucial component. They must effectively oversee the feeding, comfort, reproduction, and milking of cows, among other critical considerations. Furthermore, by increasing reproductive efficiency, maintaining herd health, and optimizing milk output, dairy herd management plays a critical role in guaranteeing the sustainability and profitability of dairy farming operations, boosting the dairy herd management market demand. To efficiently manage the herd and satisfy the expectations of the dairy sector, a mix of knowledge, skills, and attention to detail is needed. Request Sample Copy of Dairy Herd Management Market Research Report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/dairy-herd-management-market/request-for-sample (The sample of this report is readily available on request. The report sample contains a brief introduction to the research report, Table of Contents, Graphical introduction of regional analysis, Top players in the market with their revenue analysis and our research methodology.) Who are the emerging companies in the global industry? Alta Genetics Inc. DeLaval GEA Group Aktiengesellschaft Lely Afimilk Ltd. BouMatic Herdlync Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. SUM-IT VAS Directly Purchase a copy of report with TOC @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/buy/2943/2 OR Browse TOC for Purchase Specific Section of the Reports @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/dairy-herd-management-market/toc Key Highlights from the Report: It is anticipated that there will be a rise in demand for milk and its derivatives, including butter, cream, and cheese, which will propel market expansion. The technological advancements in monitoring livestock are playing a significant role in driving the market growth. The dairy herd management market segmentation is mainly based on end use, type, and region. Europe has dominated the market with the largest share in 2022. Dairy Herd Management Market Global Scope & Outlook Report Attributes Details Market value in 2023 USD 3.67 Billion Market value in 2032 USD 6.83 Billion CAGR 7.1% from 2023 2032 Base year 2022 Historical data 2019-2021 Forecast period 2023-2032 Market's Prime Determinants of Growth, Trends, and Opportunities Growth Drivers Technological Advancements: The dairy herd management market size has grown significantly due to the large part of livestock monitoring technology. Farmers can now more accurately and easily monitor the behavior, health, and productivity of individual cows or the whole herd in real time by utilizing RFID tags, modern sensors, and data analytics. With the aid of this technology, infections may be detected early, breeding and feeding methods can be optimized, and overall herd management can be improved. The dairy herd management market size has grown significantly due to the large part of livestock monitoring technology. Farmers can now more accurately and easily monitor the behavior, health, and productivity of individual cows or the whole herd in real time by utilizing RFID tags, modern sensors, and data analytics. With the aid of this technology, infections may be detected early, breeding and feeding methods can be optimized, and overall herd management can be improved. Efficiency and Profitability: Dairy farmers may now measure their output and make ongoing adjustments to livestock behavior and farm operations by implementing data-driven processes. This increases the profitability and efficiency of farms. Trends and Opportunities Rising Popularity: The dairy business is seeing a greater transition toward automation and sophisticated animal management, which is shown in the growing popularity of herd management. Taking advantage of this trend, dairy businesses are improving herd management for a variety of cattle and livestock applications. In the upcoming years, automated milking parlors, robots, micro-sensor technology, and smartphone apps for data analysis are anticipated to become commonplace on dairy farms, expanding the dairy herd management market growth. Request Customized Copy of Report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/dairy-herd-management-market/request-for-customization (We customize your report according to your research need. Ask our sales team for report customization.) Segmental Analysis Milk Management Systems Sector Accounts for the Largest Share In the dairy businesses, the milk management systems sector holds the largest share. This is due to the labor-intensive nature of milking cows and the fact that the amount of labor needed has been greatly decreased with the adoption of milk management technologies. Therefore, more advancements can be made by automating and replacing some of the operator's activities, which will make their work more effective and less physically taxing. Increasing the number of milking units in a larger dairy can boost productivity. Moreover, breeding management is also anticipated to expand at a quick rate. This sector of the dairy herd management market is quite important. It is specifically made to make dairy herd reproduction more efficient. This allows farmers to monitor fertility, supervise breeding cycles, and promote genetic selection for higher milk yield and better herd health. Large Scale Dairy Farms Sector Holds the Largest Share The largest proportion is held by large-scale dairy farms in the industry. This is because of the fact that these farms can afford to purchase dairy herd management software, which raises revenue. On the other hand, small-scale farms frequently experience financial losses because their production value is insufficient to pay for all expenses, including the owners' time and capital investments. Furthermore, dairy herd management technologies used by cooperative farms have the potential to reduce production costs for individual farms and help them reach economies of scale, which will accelerate their growth. They can then compete with larger farms on price by passing this cost decrease on to customers. Inquire more about this report before purchase @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/dairy-herd-management-market/inquire-before-buying (Inquire a report quote OR available discount offers to the sales team before purchase.) Regional Insights Which Country has the Largest Dairy Herd? Europe: Due to the increased understanding of the advantages of automation among dairy farm owners in the region, Europe has dominated the dairy herd management market. The adoption of milk and nutrition management systems in the European dairy industry has significantly increased as a result of this knowledge. Asia Pacific: It is anticipated that the Asia Pacific region will grow rapidly due to government measures that include financial support for automation technologies. Farmers are becoming more conscious of the productivity and efficiency boosts that come with implementing advanced dairy farm automation systems. Browse the Detail Report "Dairy Herd Management Market Share, Size, Trends, Industry Analysis Report, By Type; By End-use (Small-scale, Large-scale, Cooperative Farms); By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2023 - 2032" with in-depth TOC: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/dairy-herd-management-market For Additional Information OR Media Enquiry, Please Mail Us: [email protected] Key Questions Answered in the Report What is the current and expected dairy herd management market value? At what CAGR is the market expected to grow during the forecast period? Which factors are driving the market growth? What are the key market trends and opportunities? Which segment accounts for the largest dairy herd management market share? Who are the prominent players in the industry? About Polaris Market Research: Polaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for PMR's clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve PMR's diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide PMR's customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities. Adept with a highly competent, experienced and extremely qualified team of experts comprising SMEs, analysts and consultants, we at Polaris endeavor to deliver value-added business solutions to PMR's customers. Contact: Likhil G 30 Wall Street 8th Floor, New York City, NY 10005, United States Phone: +1-929 297-9727 Email: [email protected] Web: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com Follow Us: LinkedIn | twitter Blog: https://www.polarisnewsblog.com Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2283643/Dairy_Herd_Management_Market.jpg Logo : https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1316207/Polaris_Market_Research_Logo.jpg SOURCE Polaris Market Research TO ACCESS THIS CONTENT YOU MUST OPEN A SESSION OR CREATE AN ACCOUNT MEMBER LOGIN CREATE YOUR USER ACCOUNT In the presence of His Majesty King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands the 10 Energy Ministers of the North Seas Energy Cooperation (NSEC)** met in T. . . DUBLIN, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Hostel Market (by Booking Channel, & Region): Insights and Forecast with Potential Impact of COVID-19 (2022-2027)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global hostel market is predicted to record a value of US$6.04 billion in 2023, growing at a CAGR of 10.15%, during the forecast period. Hostels offer an array of advantages, from budget-friendly accommodations to the opportunity to connect with fellow travelers from around the globe, find travel companions, and exchange travel insights. Some hostels, such as Zostel in India or Hostelling International, cater to specific traveler demographics. Western Europe dominates the hostel market, driven by its wealth of tourist destinations in various European cities. While London remains a major hub for UK tourism, regional markets across the United Kingdom have gained popularity among both tourists and investors. The United Kingdom's hostel market is poised for significant growth, with hybrid hostels emerging as a prominent trend in the industry. The expansion of hostels has surpassed that of hotels, primarily due to the growing millennial population. Additional factors contributing to this growth include the increasing use of third-party booking platforms, a surge in international travelers, and a rise in young solo travelers. The rise of the millennial population has played a pivotal role in driving growth in the OTA (Online Travel Agency) hostel market. Millennials are known for their tech-savvy nature and heavy reliance on mobile applications for booking accommodations. They gather information from social media platforms and are influenced by the experiences of fellow travelers, making OTA an essential booking channel, particularly for this demographic. The hostel market features a diverse landscape with a multitude of players. Key industry leaders include Hostelworld Group, Hostelling International (HI), Generator Hostels, Safestay plc., A&O Hotels and Hostels, London Backpackers, Wombat's Hostel, Green Tortoise Hostel, Newquay International Backpackers, and Maestro Hostel. Explore the exciting possibilities and trends in the hostel market through our comprehensive research report. Driver: Escalating Popularity of Solo Travel The increasing popularity of solo traveling is creating a favorable environment for the growth of the travel industry as well as the hostel market. Solo travelers are experience seekers and majority of them travel to collect memories and experience the local culture, as well as to make social connections. These solo travelers are typically outgoing, curious, and adventurous people who like to meet and connect with new people or like-minded travelers during their tour. Solo travelers mostly prefer hostels with buzzing communal spaces as they are budget-friendly and provide the opportunity to meet other travelers. Owing to the rising preference of solo travelers to book hostels during their trip, the demand for hostels is expected to increase in the coming years. Challenge: Misconceptions About Hostels A major barrier to the success of hostel market has been the certain misconceptions associated with the hostel. One of the major misconceptions about the hostels is that the hostels are only for young people. Therefore, majority of the older travelers are reluctant to book hostel for their stay. Another misconception is that the hostels are dirty, resulting in the low demand from many guests. There are various other misconceptions, including hostels are only for partying & for solo travelers, have no privacy, and are not considered safe. Infact, people also think that unlike many hotels, hostels do not provide any amenities. Hence, the growing misconceptions about the hostels is regarded as a key factor that restrain the growth of the hostel market. Trend: Rising Demand for Luxury Hostels One of the major trends that would impact the growth of the hostel market is the rising demand for luxury hostels. The hostel market has undergone a major transformation and now designer hostels with private rooms, vibrant bars, yoga classes and luxurious interior designs are becoming more common. Luxury hostel accommodations offer the perfect balance of privacy, amenities, and social activities. These luxury hostels are characterized by swimming pools, cocktails, art shows, live music, rooftop bars, yoga classes and luxury suites. Luxury hostels also provide excellent service and maintain clean premises. Therefore, the rising demand for luxury hostels is creating a robust development in the overall hostel market. The COVID-19 Analysis During the pandemic, hostel industry witnessed a decline due to the restrictions in travelling all around the world. Many hostel chains were losing money and were forced to close due to the lockdown the integration of technology in hostel apps and online booking channels would open new doors, pave the way for enhancement, and widen the horizons of the hostel business in the next years. Analysis of Key Players Global Market Analysis Global Hostel Market: An Analysis Global Hostel Market by Value: An Overview Global Hostel Market by Value Global Hostel Market by Booking Channel (Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), Hostel Websites, Offline Direct and Offline Intermediaries) Global Hostel Market by Region ( Western Europe , Asia , Latin America , North America , Australia and New Zealand and Rest of the World) , , , , and and Rest of the World) Global Hostel Market by Volume: An Overview Global Hostel Market by Volume Global Hostel Market: Booking Channel Analysis Global Hostel Market by Booking Channel: An Overview Global Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) Hostel Market by Value Global Hostel Websites Hostel Market by Value Global Offline Direct Hostel Market by Value Global Offline Intermediaries Hostel Market by Value Hostel Overview Benefits of Staying in a Hostel Hostel Segmentation: An Overview Hostel Segmentation by Booking Channel Market Dynamics Growth Driver Greater Spending by Millennial Growing Interest for Travel Rising Middle Class Population Increasing Role of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) Escalating Popularity of Solo Travel Increasing Investments in the Hostel Industry Challenges Overcrowding in Hostels Misconceptions about Hostels Rise of Budget and Midscale Hotels Market Trends Surging Interest in Sustainable Travel Growing Number of Mobile Bookings Shift in Consumer Preferences towards Shared Experiences Rising Demand for Luxury Hostels Increasing Importance of Social Interaction for Travelers Introduction of Hybrid Hostels Competitive Landscape Global Hostel Market Players by Total Properties Global Hostel Market Players by Instagram Followers Company Profiles: Business Overview, Operating Regions, Business Strategy A&O Hotels and Hostels Generator Hostels Green Tortoise Hostel Hostelling International (HI) Hostelworld Group London Backpackers Maestro Hostel Newquay International Backpackers Safestay plc. Wombat's Hostel For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/not55 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 DUBLIN, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Tetrahydrofuran Market - Global Industry Size, Share, Trends Opportunity, and Forecast, 2028F" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global Tetrahydrofuran (THF) market is poised for robust growth, with a projected CAGR of 5.31% through 2028, according to the latest market research report. In 2022, the market was valued at USD 4.36 billion, and it is expected to see significant expansion in the coming years. Tetrahydrofuran is a versatile chemical compound characterized by its clear and colorless liquid form and distinctive ethereal odor. It is less dense than water and is commonly used as a solvent in various industries. Notably, THF is a key solvent in the production of vinyl polymer (PVC), showcasing its importance in the chemical industry. The production of Tetrahydrofuran involves multiple processes, including carbonylation and hydrogenation of aldehyde, as well as chemical transformation of maleic compounds. However, the most widely accepted method of production is through the dehydration and cyclization of 4-butanediol. Alternative methods such as the dichloro-butane and hydrocarbon reaction methods also contribute to THF production. One of the significant applications of THF is in the production of Polytetramethylene Ether Glycol (PTMEG), a crucial raw material for various fibers, especially in the textile industry. The demand for textile fibers, driven by their strength and durability, has led to increased PTMEG production, further bolstering the Tetrahydrofuran Market's growth. Additionally, THF is employed in coatings, varnish production, chemical intermediates, laboratory chemicals, and serves as a reaction medium in the pharmaceutical sector. While the Tetrahydrofuran Market presents promising growth opportunities, it faces certain challenges, including stringent environmental regulations and the compound's volatile nature. Nevertheless, factors like the surging demand for polyurethane and the rapid expansion of the energy sector are driving the market forward. The global Tetrahydrofuran Market report provides comprehensive insights into the market's current status and future prospects. It offers a detailed analysis of product types, end uses, production processes, and key players. This report is an invaluable resource for industry consultants, manufacturers, existing market players seeking expansion opportunities, newcomers, and other stakeholders looking to align their strategies with the evolving market trends. Regional Insights Asia Pacific emerged as the dominant player in the Global Tetrahydrofuran Market in 2022, holding the largest market share in terms of both value and volume. There is a growing demand for tetrahydrofuran in the packaging industry, particularly for the manufacturing of polyvinyl chloride. Additionally, the pharmaceutical industry relies on tetrahydrofuran for the production of pharmaceutical steroids. In 2016, the Indian packaging industry was identified as one of the fastest-growing sectors globally, with a market value of USD 700 billion. Furthermore, China's packaging materials revenue was projected to exceed $5.2 billion in 2018, representing approximately 26 percent of the global packaging materials market. Russia, on the other hand, emerged as the eighth largest market for packaged food products, with a trade volume of 27.5 million tons, and beverages, with a trading volume of 26 billion liters. The Indian pharmaceutical industry plays a significant role in the global market, supplying over 50% of the world's demand for various vaccines and 40% of the US generic demand. Moreover, India meets 25% of the UK's medicine requirements. Looking ahead, the Indian pharmaceutical sector is expected to reach a market value of US$ 100 billion by 2025, while the medical device market is projected to grow to US$ 25 billion. Given the flourishing packaging and pharmaceutical sectors in the region, the demand for tetrahydrofuran is anticipated to witness substantial growth in the Asia Pacific during the forecast period. Competitive Landscape Company Profiles: Detailed analysis of the major companies present in the Global Tetrahydrofuran Market. Ashland Inc. Banner Chemicals Limited BASF SE DCC PLC Hefei TNJ Chemical Industry Co.Ltd. Henan GP Chemicals Co., Ltd Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation REE ATHARVA LIFESCIENCE PVT. LTD Shenyang East Chemical Science-Tech Co., Ltd. Sipchem Chemicals Co Report Scope: Tetrahydrofuran Market, By Technology: Reppe Process Davy Process Propylene Oxide Process Butadiene Process Tetrahydrofuran Market, By End User: Polymer Textile Pharmaceutical Paints and Coatings Others Tetrahydrofuran Market, By Region: North America United States Canada Mexico Europe France United Kingdom Italy Germany Spain Asia-Pacific China India Japan Australia South Korea South America Brazil Argentina Colombia Middle East & Africa & South Africa Saudi Arabia UAE Kuwait Turkey Egypt For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/3mypjy 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 New data acquired by the Global Tobacco Control Progress Hub reveals the rate of implementation of key tobacco control policies decreased between 2020 and 2022 EDMONTON, AB and BALTIMORE, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - A global barometer of tobacco control reveals that implementation of several high-impact tobacco control policy measures required by the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) decelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, following 12 years of steady progress. The MPOWER tobacco control scorecard, which reports country-level implementation of key FCTC policy measures, reveals that two-thirds (68%) of 195 countries reported no improvement or a reduction in key policies to reduce tobacco use between 2020 and 2022, with one-third of countries (35%) reporting a decline. Only 32% of reporting countries reported an improvement. The largest declines occurred in low-income countries and those located in the Eastern Mediterranean and South-East Asia. However, the slowdown was observed around the globe. "We are very concerned with the deceleration in the adoption of high-impact tobacco control policies," said Joanna Cohen of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "This disruption is very troubling, especially following 12 years of steady progress in implementing these policies. We urge all countries to redouble efforts to reduce tobacco use to make up for lost ground. We cannot allow this setback to further impair global efforts to curb the tobacco epidemic. Progress delayed is improved health denied." The news comes prior to an abbreviated summit of the FCTC treaty scheduled later this week in Geneva. The treaty's 10th Conference of the Parties (COP10) is being convened virtually on November 23 and 24, to be followed by a full session in early 2024. "This slowdown is a wake-up call and we urge all countries to adopt strong measures to get tobacco control back on track and reignite global efforts to reduce tobacco use," said Les Hagen of ASH Canada. "The enactment of high-impact tobacco control policies was delayed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we cannot allow the tobacco industry to take further advantage of the situation. This disturbing slowdown could have dire consequences for millions of people worldwide especially if it is sustained. We urge all FCTC Parties to throttle up efforts to reduce tobacco use and bend the curve back to its previous trajectory." Introduced in 2003 by the WHO, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is the world's only public health treaty. The treaty is credited with preventing millions of deaths resulting from tobacco use. Tobacco kills over eight million people annually worldwide, representing one of the leading causes of death and disease. ABOUT The Global Tobacco Control Progress Hub is the world's first independent public health treaty surveillance platform and it is a collaboration of ASH Canada and the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. SOURCE Global Tobacco Control Progress Hub As a component of HRP's commitment to being good neighbors in each community they enter, project teams held turkey drive events in four cities to uplift and support local residents and nonprofit partners during the holiday season. Over the course of 10 days, HRP volunteers distributed over 2,500 turkeys to families in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Alexandria, Virginia. "HRP's Turkey Drive is one of our favorite initiatives of the year and I am especially grateful for our community partners and volunteers across the HRP platform who help facilitate these meaningful events," said HRP CEO Roberto Perez. "This initiative embodies our commitment to serving and supporting the communities where we work and live. We know the impact of our projects extend beyond site boundaries and last well after we are done transforming each site. It is a privilege to be able to host our annual Turkey Drives in an ever-expanding group of cities within the HRP portfolio." The first Turkey Drive event was held in Alexandria, Virginia on November 15th, with the HRP volunteers donating and distributing 250 turkeys in collaboration with the Alexandria Redevelopment Housing Authority (ARHA) and local nonprofit ALIVE!, partners that HRP will continue to work with as they transform the former Potomac River Generating Station coal-fired power plant into a sustainably-built mixed-use waterfront development in the Old Town North neighborhood. In Chicago, HRP joined forces with New Life Center's "Pan de Vida" food distribution initiative by donating 250 turkeys and holding a November 16th distribution event at the Pan de Vida location in Little Village, where HRP redeveloped the site of the former Crawford coal-fired power plant into Chicago's largest LEED-certified industrial building. Additionally, HRP will sponsor a Thanksgiving dinner service on November 25th, extending their support to the community during the holiday period. The team behind The Bellwether District, HRP's largest project that will transform a 1,300-acre former refinery into the new home for innovation and logistics leaders in Philadelphia, donated 1,250 turkeys and collaborated with local elected officials and community organizations over 18 separate distribution events. HRP also partnered with the South Philly Salvation Army to host a Thanksgiving-style dinner on November 16th. The HRP Boston team, currently redeveloping the former L Street Station coal-fired power plant at 776 Summer Street into a vibrant mixed-use development at the gateway between South Boston and the Seaport District, collaborated with the South Boston Neighborhood House, providing approximately 800 turkeys to local residents. "At HRP, we know that when we enter a new city, we become neighbors and share the responsibility to be stewards of each community. Our team is so grateful to have opportunities like these to join incredible partners and community members with the joint mission of working to build a sustainable future," continued Perez. "On behalf of our entire company, I'd like to express our heartfelt thanks to all who have volunteered and contributed to making these events possible and extend warm wishes for a Happy Thanksgiving to all." About Hilco Redevelopment Partners (HRP): HRP is in the business of transformation. As a real estate owner, operator, and developer, we re-imagine complex properties across the United States to remediate and redevelop sites for the future. To do this we take a holistic approach to sustainable redevelopment that prioritizes the community, the environment, and the economy. We do this because we want to make lasting change. Our expertise spans multiple sectors, including modern logistics facilities, urban mixed-use projects, and life science ecosystems. HRP is passionate about and committed to making an enduring positive impact and improving communities through its transformational projects. HRP is an operating unit of Hilco Global (www.hilcoglobal.com), a privately held diversified financial services company and the world's preeminent authority on maximizing the value of assets for both healthy and distressed companies. Hilco Global operates as a holding company comprised of over 20 specialized business units that work to help companies understand the value of their assets and then monetize that value. SOURCE Hilco Redevelopment Partners Modal title PRN Top Stories Newsletters Sign up to get PRNs top stories and curated news delivered to your inbox weekly! Enter Your Email Select Country Select Country Submit Thank you for subscribing! Our newsletters contain tracking pixels to help us deliver unique content based on each subscriber's engagement and interests. For more information on how we will use your data to ensure we send you relevant content please visit our By signing up you agree to receive content from us.Our newsletters contain tracking pixels to help us deliver unique content based on each subscriber's engagement and interests. For more information on how we will use your data to ensure we send you relevant content please visit our PRN Consumer Newsletter Privacy Notice . You can withdraw your consent at any time in the footer of every email you'll receive. Unsere Newsletter enthalten Zahlpixel, die die Lieferung einzigartiger Inhalte in Bezug auf das Abonnement und die Interessen der einzelnen Abonnenten ermoglichen. Weitere Informationen uber die Verwendung Ihrer Daten im Hinblick auf die Zusendung von relevanten Inhalten, finden Sie in unserer Mit Ihrer Anmeldung erklaren Sie sich damit einverstanden, Inhalte von uns zu erhalten.Unsere Newsletter enthalten Zahlpixel, die die Lieferung einzigartiger Inhalte in Bezug auf das Abonnement und die Interessen der einzelnen Abonnenten ermoglichen. Weitere Informationen uber die Verwendung Ihrer Daten im Hinblick auf die Zusendung von relevanten Inhalten, finden Sie in unserer PRN Consumer Newsletter Privacy Notice . Ihre Zustimmung konnen Sie jederzeit in der Fuzeile jeder erhaltenen E-Mail widerrufen. Notre newsletter contient des pixels espions nous permettant la fourniture a chaque abonne, dun contenu unique en lien avec ses souscriptions et interets. Pour de plus amples informations sur lutilisation faite de vos donnees en vue de lenvoi des contenus concernes, nous vous invitons a consulter la politique de confidentialite disponible a partir du lien suivant En vous inscrivant a la newsletter, vous consentez a la reception de contenus de notre part.Notre newsletter contient des pixels espions nous permettant la fourniture a chaque abonne, dun contenu unique en lien avec ses souscriptions et interets. Pour de plus amples informations sur lutilisation faite de vos donnees en vue de lenvoi des contenus concernes, nous vous invitons a consulter la politique de confidentialite disponible a partir du lien suivant PRN Consumer Newsletter Privacy Notice . Vous pouvez a tout moment revenir sur votre consentement par le biais des informations situees au bas de chaque e-mail recu. ROCKVILLE, Md. and SUZHOU, China, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Innovent Biologics, Inc. ("Innovent") (HKEX: 01801), a world-class biopharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and commercializes high quality medicines for the treatment of oncology, metabolic, autoimmune, ophthalmology and other major diseases, and AnHeart Therapeutics ("AnHeart"), a global clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel precision therapies for people with cancer, announce that the New Drug Application (NDA) for taletrectinib, a next-generation ROS1 tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), has been accepted by the Center for Drug Evaluation (CDE) of the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) of China, for the treatment of adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic ROS1-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have been previously treated with ROS1 TKIs. The NDA acceptance are based on positive results from the Phase 2 TRUST-I trial (NCT04395677), a multicenter, open-label, single-arm trial that evaluated taletrectinib in Chinese ROS1-positive NSCLC patients. Results from an interim analysis of the TRUST-I trial were presented at the European Lung Cancer Congress (ELCC) 2023.[Link] Professor Caicun Zhou, Principal Investigator and Oncologist at Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, stated: "We have extremely limited options for our patients with ROS1-positive NSCLC, especially those with brain metastases who represent more than one-third of patients, and those who go on to develop resistant mutations, which is more than half of patients. Once patients progress on the current options, there are no approved treatments. I hope this NDA represents a step towards making another option available to the ROS1-positive NSCLC patient community in China." Dr. Hui Zhou, Senior Vice President of Innovent, stated: "We are encouraged by the best-in-class efficacy and safety profile that taletrectinib demonstrated in the TRUST-I trial, and are excited about the NDA acceptance in China. Together with our partner AnHeart, we will work closely with the NMPA to bring this precision therapy to NSCLC patients who are in need of novel treatment options, especially those with acquired resistant mutations or with brain metastases." Bing Yan, MD, Chief Medical Officer of AnHeart, stated: "Acceptance of our China NDA marks an important milestone for AnHeart and is the first regulatory submission for taletrectinib globally. We would like to thank all the doctors and patients who participated in the clinical trials that support this submission. We look forward to working with our partner Innovent and the regulatory authorities in China to hopefully make taletrectinib available to patients in need as soon as possible." In June 2021, Innovent and AnHeart entered into an exclusive license agreement for the co-development and commercialization of taletrectinib in Greater China, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. About ROS1-positive Non-small Cell Lung Cancer More than one million people globally are diagnosed with NSCLC annually, the most common form of lung cancer. It is estimated that approximately 3% of people with NSCLC in China are ROS1-positive. There are approved first-generation TKIs for people with newly diagnosed advanced or metastatic ROS1-positive NSCLC and no approved therapies for people whose ROS1-positive NSCLC has progressed following treatment with these medicines. Up to 35% of people newly diagnosed with metastatic ROS1-positive NSCLC have tumors that have spread to their brain (brain metastases), the number increases to approximately 55% for those whose cancer has progressed following initial treatment. About Taletrectinib Taletrectinib is an oral, potent, brain penetrant, selective, next-generation potential best-in-class ROS1 inhibitor being evaluated for the treatment of ROS1-positive NSCLC. Taletrectinib was evaluated in ROS1-positive NSCLC patients in two Phase 2 trials, TRUST-I (NCT04395677) in China, and TRUST-II (NCT04919811), a global pivotal trial. Positive interim results from TRUST-II trial were reported at the ELCC 2023, and positive interim results from TRUST-II trial were reported at the European Society of Medical Oncology Congress 2023.[Link] Taletrectinib was granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) by the CDE of NMPA in 2022 for the treatment of adult patients with advanced or metastatic ROS1-positive NSCLC who have previously been treated with a ROS1 TKI as well as those who have not previously been treated by a ROS1 TKI (TKI-naive). In addition, taletrectinib has also been granted BTD for the treatment of ROS1-positive NSCLC by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the United States in 2022. About Innovent Inspired by the spirit of "Start with Integrity, Succeed through Action," Innovent's mission is to discover and develop, manufacture and commercialize high-quality biopharmaceutical products that are affordable to ordinary people. Established in 2011, Innovent is committed to discovering and developing, manufacturing and commercializing high-quality innovative medicines for the treatment of oncology, autoimmune, cardiovascular and metabolic, and ophthalmology diseases to enhance the quality of the patients' lives. Innovent has 10 products in the market, including TYVYT (Sintilimab Injection), BYVASDA (Bevacizumab Injection), SULINNO (Adalimumab Injection), HALPRYZA (Rituximab Injection), Pemazyre (Pemigatinib Oral Inhibitor), olverembatinib, Cyramza (Ramucirumab Injection), Retsevmo (Selpercatinib Capsules ), FUCASO (Equecabtagene Autoleucel Injection) and SINTBILO (Tafolecimab Injection). Additionally, we have 1 NDA under NMPA review, 6 assets in Phase III or pivotal clinical trials, and 19 more molecules in early clinical stage. Innovent has also entered into 30 strategic collaborations with Eli Lilly, Roche, Sanofi, Adimab, Incyte, MD Anderson Cancer Center and other international partners. We strive to work with many collaborators to help advance the biopharmaceutical industry, improve drug availability and enhance the quality of the patients' lives. Note: TYVYT (sintilimab injection) is not an approved product in the United States. BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection), SULINNO, and HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection) are not approved products in the United States. TYVYT (sintilimab injection, Innovent) BYVASDA (bevacizumab biosimilar injection, Innovent) HALPRYZA (rituximab biosimilar injection, Innovent) SULINNO (adalimumab biosimilar injection, Innovent) Pemazyre (pemigatinib oral inhibitor, Incyte Corporation). Pemazyre was discovered by Incyte Corporation and licensed to Innovent for development and commercialization in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. CYRAMZA (ramucirumab, Eli Lilly). Cyramza was discovered by Eli Lilly and licensed to Innovent for commercialization in Mainland China. Retsevmo (selpercatinib, Eli Lilly). Retsevmo was discovered by Eli Lilly and licensed to Innovent for commercialization in Mainland China. Disclaimer: Innovent does not recommend any off-label usage. About AnHeart Therapeutics AnHeart Therapeutics ("AnHeart'') is a global clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel precision therapies for people with cancer. Our lead investigational therapy, taletrectinib, is a next-generation ROS1-inhibitor currently in pivotal Phase 2 trials for ROS1-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Taletrectinib has been granted Breakthrough Therapy Designations by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the China National Medical Products Administration. AnHeart's second investigational therapy, safusidenib, is a mIDH1-inhibitor being evaluated in a Phase 2 trial for IDH1-mutant glioma. Our mission is to improve the lives of people with cancer. We are supported by leading life sciences investors and have built an organization with deep oncology drug discovery and development expertise, with offices in New York and Shanghai. For more information, visit https://www.anhearttherapeutics.com/ or follow us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/anheart-therapeutics-official/. Innovent's Forward-Looking Statements This news release may contain certain forward-looking statements that are, by their nature, subject to significant risks and uncertainties. The words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "intend" and similar expressions, as they relate to Innovent, are intended to identify certain of such forward-looking statements. Innovent does not intend to update these forward-looking statements regularly. These forward-looking statements are based on the existing beliefs, assumptions, expectations, estimates, projections and understandings of the management of Innovent with respect to future events at the time these statements are made. These statements are not a guarantee of future developments and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond Innovent's control and are difficult to predict. Consequently, actual results may differ materially from information contained in the forward-looking statements as a result of future changes or developments in our business, Innovent's competitive environment and political, economic, legal and social conditions. SOURCE Innovent Biologics Market Leader Expands Again with New Product Range Exclusively Formulated for Dogs, Available at Chewy in Time for Holiday Season SEATTLE, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Jones Soda Co. (CSE: JSDA, OTCQB: JSDA), the original craft soda known for its great taste, unconventional flavors and user-submitted photo labels, today announced its expansion into the pet category with the launch of Jones Craft Dog Soda. Uniquely formulated for canines in collaboration with veterinarians and dog owners, new Jones Craft Dog Soda combines all-natural human-grade ingredients in flavors that dogs love, and includes choiceful functional supplements to provide our furry friends with a wholesome boost they need to help support and maintain optimal joint health. Just in time for the holidays, the initial flavor product range will be available first exclusively at Chewy and jonessoda.com in November 2023, with additional retailers to follow in 2024. As a treat, hydration-booster, or delicious food-topper, Jones Craft Dog Soda is everything consumers love about Jones Soda but in flavors that have been specially developed for your four-legged best friend. The wholesome and nutritious recipes are made with real people-grade meat and poultry stocks that are also used in premium soups and sauces. Also containing human-grade Glucosamine and Chondroitin which are known for supporting joint and cartilage health, Jones Craft Dog Soda is not just a great-tasting beverage, it's a treat you can feel great about giving to your pet. The product launch will include Chicken and Beef flavors, and of course, just in time for the holidays and in true Jones fashion, the company's signature Turkey and Gravy. The products are non-carbonated and contain no sodium or sweeteners of any kind. And while the flavors are specially-formulated for your pups, adventurous dog owners are dared to drink it too! "Looking at the millions of photos our fans have submitted to us over the years, it's easy to see how much Jones fans love their pets! Knowing how much our pets mean to us, a lightbulb went off when we brought back Turkey and Gravy, our fan-favorite seasonal flavor," said Eric Chastain, President and COO of the Jones Soda Co. Beverage Division. "And we couldn't think of a better place to launch than Chewy, a trusted destination for pet parents and partners everywhere, who shares our sentiment that pets aren't just pets, they're more." Just like Jones Soda (for people), Jones Craft Dog Soda features consumer-submitted (pet-themed) photos and future bottlings will also feature photos of adoptable dogs looking for their forever homes. As part of Jones' popular Caps for Gear loyalty program, fans are also encouraged to collect and save Jones Craft Dog Soda bottle caps for redemption of prizes, including Jones-branded dog toys, leashes, and dog bowls. To purchase Jones Soda Craft Dog Soda, visit JonesSoda.com or Chewy.com. About Jones Soda Co. Jones Soda Co. (CSE: JSDA, OTCQB: JSDA) is a leading craft soda manufacturer with a subsidiary dedicated to cannabis products. The company markets and distributes premium craft sodas under the Jones Soda brand, and a variety of cannabis products under the Mary Jones brand. Jones' mainstream soda line is sold across North America in glass bottles, cans and on fountain through traditional beverage outlets, restaurants and alternative accounts. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. For more information, visit www.jonessoda.com, www.myjones.com, www.drinklemoncocco.com or https://gomaryjones.com SOURCE Jones Soda Retailer shares last-minute tips and savings ahead of Thanksgiving CINCINNATI, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) today shared it is starting Black Friday early offering half-off all annual Boost by Kroger Plus memberships beginning Wednesday, November 22 and served up some last-minute Turkey Day inspiration from its blog the Fresh Lane. "Whether you need a few final items to round out your meal or a full dinner menu, save time and money by letting Boost by Kroger bring Thanksgiving to your door," said Tom Duncan, Kroger's Vice President of Marketing. "Make convenience your new tradition with free grocery delivery and expert holiday meal planning tips and tricks from the Fresh Lane." From November 22-28, customers can receive 50 percent off an annual membership for Boost by Kroger Plus, the membership that can save customers up to $1,000 per year with double the fuel points, free grocery delivery and exclusive member savings. Offering convenient options for every budget, new enrollees can select from one-year memberships providing free next-day delivery (normally $59/year) or free delivery in as little as two hours (normally $99/year) on orders of $35 or more. New enrollees who join on November 22 or 23 and purchase the same-day annual delivery membership can get last minute Thanksgiving items delivered to their door for free, just in time for Turkey Day. Current Boost members who re-enroll between November 22-28 can also take advantage of this offer and receive half off their next year of membership. Customers can save more with Kroger's Freshgiving meal serving up Thanksgiving at less than $5 per person and shop the retailer's 5x event that allows digital coupons to be redeemed up to five times. Holiday travelers can also enjoy fuel savings earning 4X fuel points (5X for Boost Members) on gift card purchases (limited time only). For turkeys putting the finishing touches on their holiday spreads, the retailer recommends strolling down the Fresh Lane, Kroger's blog featuring fresh recipes, DIY inspiration and more. The Fresh Lane showcases ideas for meal planning, prepping, and enjoying good food, no matter if it's taco Tuesday, spaghetti night or Thanksgiving, Kroger has families covered. The holiday headquarters for chefs and entertainers looking to perfect a classic green bean casserole recipe or on the search for a fabulous seasonal cocktail, the Fresh Lane is here to make Turkey Day a breeze. Check out these tips and tricks: Customers can shop their Thanksgiving favorites and more at Kroger's Thanksgiving shop, in-store, through Kroger Pickup or delivered using Boost by Kroger Plus. Kroger Family of Companies Rewards World Elite Mastercard eligible cardmembers may now redeem a free one-year, next-day Boost membership or cardholders who are current annual Boost members may receive a free one-year extension of their next-day Boost membership. To learn more and redeem this Kroger Rewards World Elite Mastercard cardmember offer visit here. *The creditor and issuer of the Kroger Family of Companies Rewards World Elite Mastercard is U.S. Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Mastercard International Incorporated. About Kroger At The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR), we are dedicated to our Purpose: To Feed the Human Spirit. We are, across our family of companies nearly half a million associates who serve over 11 million customers daily through a seamless digital shopping experience and retail food stores under a variety of banner names , serving America through food inspiration and uplift, and creating #ZeroHungerZeroWaste communities by 2025. To learn more about us, visit our newsroom and investor relations site. SOURCE The Kroger Co. MONTREAL, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - LOGISTEC Stevedoring Inc., a subsidiary of LOGISTEC Corporation ("LOGISTEC") and leading North American marine services provider, received the Best Specialist Dry Bulk Terminal Award at the International Bulk Journal's ("IBJ") ceremony held in London, England. This prestigious award recognizes LOGISTEC's expertise in providing safe and reliable dry bulk cargo handling services across its North American network of port terminals. "Receiving this award from the IBJ highlights our commitment to our bulk customers, the dedication of our experts and the continued excellence of our port operations," stated Rodney Corrigan, President of LOGISTEC Stevedoring Inc. "Our leadership in health and safety across our network enables our people to go above and beyond to find innovative supply chain solutions." LOGISTEC won the Best Specialist Dry Bulk Terminal Award by demonstrating its proficiency in handling iron ore at the Port of Cleveland (U.S.). In collaboration with the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, the team's creative solutions represent a model of quality and consistency. Since the beginning of operations in 2017, LOGISTEC handled impressive volumes, invested in the operations to improve efficiency, and succeeded in maintaining a perfect safety record. Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority ("HOPA Ports"), LOGISTEC's port partner in Ontario (Canada), was named Best Dry Bulk Port, demonstrating their leadership in providing safe, productive, and environmentally friendly bulk operations. LOGISTEC congratulates HOPA Ports for this important recognition of excellence. The IBJ is an important media for the maritime dry bulk industry. For 40 years, IBJ has been a leading-edge source of information focusing on all aspects of moving bulk cargo around the world, including dry bulk shipping, commodities, port, logistics and more. The IBJ Awards salute exceptional achievements in world leading companies. ABOUT LOGISTEC LOGISTEC Corporation is based in Montreal (QC) and provides specialized services to the marine community and industrial companies in the areas of bulk, break-bulk and container cargo handling in 60 ports and 90 terminals located in North America. LOGISTEC also offers marine transportation services geared primarily to the Arctic coastal trade as well as marine agency services to shipowners and operators serving the Canadian market. Furthermore, the Company operates in the environmental industry where it provides services to industrial, municipal and other governmental customers for the renewal of underground water mains, dredging, dewatering, contaminated soils and materials management, site remediation, risk assessment, and manufacturing of fluid transportation products. The Company has been profitable and has paid regular dividends since becoming public and payments have grown steadily over the years. A public company since 1969, LOGISTEC's shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols LGT.A and LGT.B. More information can be obtained on the Company's website at www.logistec.com. SOURCE Logistec Corporation - Communications ST. LOUIS, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- At the conclusion of its second year, Mercy's Volunteer Time Off (VTO) program continues to positively impact and support local communities. Over 2,171 co-workers donated a total of 12,790 work hours across a four-state area while participating in this program. By the end of 2023, Mercy estimates 2,300 co-workers will have served more than 13,500 hours. Mercy's VTO program began in January 2022 and allows co-workers time to volunteer during work hours at local nonprofits or community events and still get paid their normal salary. "We are so grateful to give back by encouraging our Mercy co-workers to serve together through volunteer work." Post this "It's wonderful to see how our co-workers value their VTO hours," said Ayanna Pierce, Mercy vice president of benefits and talent relations. "Mercy is full of diverse individuals who are dedicated to their work and community, which is the true spirit of Mercy. We know it can be challenging to find time to do traditional volunteer service and we're excited to support our co-workers by providing them this additional benefit." One nursing team in Northwest Arkansas recently spent several of their VTO hours volunteering at Cobblestone Farms, a local nonprofit with a goal to alleviate hunger through sustainable farming. The Mercy volunteers spent several hours cleaning out greenhouses to prepare them for next season's planting and assisting with other tasks. Katelyn Beckmann, manager of nursing services for the cardiac unit at Mercy Hospital Northwest Arkansas, helped plan and participate in the service project. "We try to plan a team-building experience every few months, and we love using VTO as a way to get together and do something different than our typical work," said Beckmann. "For this project specifically, our team really wanted to get outside in the beautiful weather and do something meaningful. Farming is so different from nursing, and it was great to bond as a group over new and interesting work." Eight hours are granted to co-workers at the start of each calendar year. The hours can be spent consecutively or in separate volunteer activities preapproved by a co-worker's leader. "This specific project felt like a cycle that keeps giving to everyone involved," Beckmann said. "We helped clean up the greenhouses, and in return, our service will allow the farm to continue serving those who are most at need in our community. Ultimately, it makes Northwest Arkansas a better place for all of us." Co-workers can provide a wide range of meaningful service through the VTO program. Other opportunities include serving meals at a homeless shelter, cleaning up a section of a road or highway, walking dogs at a local animal shelter and more. In Oklahoma, CJ Barnhill, manager of nursing services for the emergency department at Mercy Hospital Oklahoma City, and his team helped organize and throw birthday parties for kids experiencing homelessness. "We see a lot of people with housing insecurity come in through the emergency department, so my team and I are passionate about helping this population," said Barnhill. "When someone is experiencing homelessness, often the last thing on their mind is celebrating their birthday. There's something fulfilling about getting to make this day special again, and it's great that Mercy has a program that empowers co-workers to get involved." The VTO program allows co-workers to continue the spirit of giving demonstrated by Mercy's Foundress Catherine McAuley, who established the Sisters of Mercy in 1831 in Dublin, Ireland. Her framework for charitable work guides Mercy's mission and values today. With this program, co-workers can go into their community to help others and follow in Catherine's footsteps. "The communities where we work and live support us in our mission to provide compassionate care to all who come through our doors," said Pierce. "We are so grateful to give back by encouraging our co-workers to serve together through volunteer work." About Mercy Mercy, one of the 20 largest U.S. health systems and named the top large system in the U.S. for excellent patient experience by NRC Health, serves millions annually with nationally recognized quality care and one of the nation's largest Accountable Care Organizations. Mercy is a highly integrated, multi-state health care system including more than 40 acute care, managed and specialty (heart, children's, orthopedic and rehab) hospitals, convenient and urgent care locations, imaging centers and pharmacies. Mercy has 900 physician practices and outpatient facilities, more than 4,000 physicians and advanced practitioners, and more than 45,000 co-workers serving patients and families across Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Mercy also has clinics, outpatient services and outreach ministries in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. SOURCE Mercy Wednesday, December 6, 2023 | 12:00pm PDT LOS ANGELES, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On Wednesday, December 6th, 2023, at noon PDT, John Moran Auctioneers will proudly present: The Collection of Frederick W. Davis: An American Abroad with selections from the esteemed Dr. Amy Conger Estate. This monumental auction, showcasing an array of Latin and American fine and decorative art from the 20th century, will be a landmark event in the world of art acquisition. This sale of Latin and American art from the 20th century will be a landmark event in the world of art acquisition! Post this Diego Rivera (1886-1957), "Dos Indios Arando En Un Frutal," 1935. Watercolor on hand-made rice paper laid to board, Image/Sheet: 10.75 H x 15.25 W est. $30,000-50,000. Fred Davis (1877-1961), a visionary collector and dealer of pre-Columbian and Mexican folk art, amassed a treasure trove of Latin American art throughout the early to mid-20th century. His remarkable collection, previously inaccessible to collectors, will finally emerge, presenting a remarkable array of lots comprising exquisite art, photographs, silver tableware, jewelry, and books, poised to command attention. Davis's arrival in Mexico in 1910 through the Sonora News Company sparked an enduring fascination with folk art and pre-Columbian artifacts. His pivotal role in managing the Sonora Company's arts and crafts showroom in Mexico City during the tumultuous Mexican Revolution solidified his position as a magnet for emerging artists of the "Mexican school." As a cultural ambassador, Davis welcomed esteemed figures like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Jean Charlot to his residence in Cuernavaca. Among the prized possessions within the collection are two guest books from Davis's residence, adorned with a plethora of signatures and sketches contributed by his esteemed guests. These invaluable artifacts encapsulate the rich tapestry of connections and interactions within Davis's distinguished social circle. Dr. Amy Conger, a luminary scholar whose groundbreaking research established a benchmark in the history of photography, will be honored through her contributions. Her renowned book, "Edward Weston: Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography", stands as a testament to her profound influence. The auction will feature selections from her vast collection of photography and materials amassed over a lifetime of exploration, creating a beautiful parallel with Davis's legacy. The auction will showcase works by iconic artists such as Diego Rivera, Miguel Covarrubias, Rufino Tamayo, Jose Clemente Orozco, Vicente Rojo, Caroline Durieux, and more. Among the extensive photo collection are works by Edward, Brett, and Kim Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Strand, Beaumont Newhall, Graciela Iturbide, Mario Giacomelli, and Eugenia Vargas. For more information and to view the sale, visit www.johnmoran.com. Contact: Brenda Smith brenda@johnmoran.com SOURCE John Moran Auctioneers ELKOAfter decades of working in finances, Clearly Nevada art gallery owner Le Ray Reese has found inspiration to paint. His inspiration? The Joy of Painting host Bob Ross. I started painting six years ago, August 2017, Le Ray Reese said, noting that he had never painted or taken painting classes until then. His wife, Patsy Reese, explained that she and her husband sold their tax, accounting and financial planning company Clearly Nevada, Inc. in 2014. They had owned it since 1991. Upon selling his company, Le Ray began to consider his other interests. He said, I think I would like to learn to paint, Patsy noted. So I bought him a Bob Ross art kit because he used to watch Bob Ross all the time. However, upon peeking inside, Le Ray put the kit away for four years, Patsy said. In order to give him a proper workspace that he could get messy with paint, Patsy bought her husband a shed, which he promptly insulated and installed electrical wiring inside. However, Le Ray still displayed no apparent motivation to paint until he encountered an enticing opportunity in February of 2017. We happened to be over in Utah at Hobby Lobby and saw a sign to learn Bob Ross technique, he said. It took me six months to get enough courage to take the class. The night before the class in August 2017, Le Ray struggled with his nerves, Patsy explained. She talked him back on track. I said, you are gonna go. You are here. You have paid for it. You are going. So he went to the class and did an absolutely beautiful painting. And from there, his painting experiences were increasingly fulfilling, she explained. Every month for a year, we went to Utah and he took two classes every month. And then after six months, his instructor said, You need to become a Bob Ross instructor. So we ended up going to Florida for three different sessions for him to be certified in Bob Ross style, she said. So now he is certified to teach landscape, floral and wildlife, Patsy noted. Le Ray taught painting at Great Basin College in 2019. When the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns temporarily paused the colleges in-person classes, Le Ray and Patsy decided to move the painting lessons to a building they owned on Commercial Street. They opened the doors in May 2020 and their gallery has thrived ever since. Most of the paintings for sale in the gallery are Le Ray Reeses own artwork, but the gallery also features a monthly guest artist. Le Ray said that while retirement is on the eventual horizon for him and Patsy, for now they are content with upholding their agreement to teach art classes at Great Basin College. We will maintain the gallery and keep it open for as long as needed, he said. The Clearly Nevada art gallery is living proof that even if someone hesitates at first to pursue creative passions, it is never too late to commit to those passions. The results could be extensive! As Bob Ross famously quoted many times on his show, there are no mistakes, just happy accidents. NEW YORK, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The nail polish market size is expected to grow by USD 3.62 billion from 2022 to 2027, according to Technavio. In addition, the growth momentum of the market will progress at a CAGR of 4.46% during the forecast period. Consumer engagement on social media is notably driving the nail polish market. However, factors such as the availability of counterfeit nail polish may impede market growth. The market is segmented by Distribution Channel (Specialty stores, Hypermarkets and supermarkets, and E-commerce ), Product (Regular nail polish, Gel nail polish, and Others ), and Geography (APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and Middle East and Africa). Technavio provides a comprehensive report summary describing the market size and forecast along with research methodology. The Free sample report is available in PDF format Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Nail Polish Market 2023-2027 Key Segment Analysis The specialty stores segment is significant for market growth during the forecast period. This is a part of the offline distribution channel and this contributes greatly to revenue generation in the global nail polish market. Beauty and personal care specialist retail stores are witnessing significant demand and thus, this has become the major revenue-generating segment for the market. Furthermore, factors like the growing e-commerce and online beauty retailers have also impacted how customers purchase nail polish products. The retailers in the market, including specialty stores, constantly adapt to the transformations through improvements in their online presence and offering both in-store and online shopping options to cater to a broader customer base. These factors garner high sales for nail polish through these stores and impact the overall market growth positively. To know additional highlights and key points on various market segments and their impact in coming years, View a FREE PDF Sample Report. Geographical Market Analysis APAC will contribute 40% to the growth of the global market during the forecast period. The rising disposable incomes, rapid urbanization, and a developing sense of fashion and personal hygiene are some of the major factors for the regional nail polish market growth in APAC during the forecast period. OPI, Essie, and Revlon are some of the major market players and they are increasing their presence across APAC countries to enter this developing market. Another factor for the regional market growth is the flourishing nail salons and nail art studios. However, regulatory constraints connected to product safety and ingredient restrictions are some of the challenges that producers must overcome to retain growth in this competitive market. Company Insights The nail polish market is fragmented, and the companies are deploying organic and inorganic growth strategies to compete in the market. The report analyzes the market's competitive landscape and offers information on several market companies, including: Unilever PLC, The Estee Lauder Companies, Revlon Inc., Coty Inc., Wella International Operations Switzerland Sarl, cosnova GmbH, Note Cosmetics France SARL, LOreal SA, Delia Cosmetics Sp. z o. o, FIABILA SAS , Shiseido Co. Ltd., American International Industries, Cosmetic Industries Inc., Chanel Ltd., Nykaa Fashion Pvt. Ltd., Oriflame Cosmetics S.A., Lotus Herbals Pvt. Ltd., Colorbar Cosmetics Pvt. Ltd., Faces Canada, Christian Dior SE View a FREE PDF Sample Report to find additional highlights on the growth strategies adopted by companies and their product offerings. Related Reports: The global nail care products market size is estimated to grow by USD 6,775.51 million between 2022 and 2027 accelerating at a CAGR of 5.01%. The artificial nails market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 6.04% between 2022 and 2027. The market size is forecast to increase by USD 303.92 million. Nail Polish Market Scope Report Coverage Details Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 4.46% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 3.62 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 4.26 Regional analysis APAC, Europe, North America, South America, and Middle East and Africa Performing market contribution APAC at 40% Key countries US, China, India, Germany, and UK Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks ToC: Executive Summary Market Landscape Market Sizing Historic Market Sizes Five Forces Analysis Market Segmentation by Distribution Channel Market Segmentation by Product Market Segmentation by Geography Customer Landscape Geographic Landscape Drivers, Challenges, & Trends Company Landscape Company Analysis Appendix About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contacts Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com SOURCE Technavio AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research has awarded Katie Shipp, CISR, CAWC, Commercial Account Manager for Dodge Partners Insurance, in Omaha, Nebraska, the most prestigious honor available to insurance customer service representatives: National Outstanding CSR of the Year. The Society of Certified Insurance Service Representatives (CISR) and the Society of Certified Insurance Counselors (CIC) selected Katie as the 2023 National Award Winner from a field of 27 state winners. After five national finalists were chosen, a panel of judges evaluated their individual contributions to the insurance community and essays written on the topic: "Empathy is an important aspect of customer-facing jobs, and it will only become more important as companies place a greater emphasis on making customer interactions feel natural and effective. Explain how empathy has helped you become a better CSR. Give three examples of how you've used empathy in your role and describe the positive effects it's had on your organization." In her essay, Katie mentions what empathy means to her. She states, "To me, empathy is the backbone of Customer Service, and quality Customer Service is what I'm passionate about. I tap into my empathy for others in daily interactions with clients, during carrier meetings, and especially in claims." Katie receives a cash award of $2,000, a distinctive gold and diamond lapel pin, and her name on a sculpture at The National Alliance headquarters. A National Alliance scholarship will be awarded to her employer, Dodge Partners Insurance. In addition to the national winner, four national finalists were chosen from a competitive field of applicants: Sharon G. Cross , CISR, with Ollis/Akers/Arney, in Springfield, Missouri , CISR, with Ollis/Akers/Arney, in Emily Gregory , CISR, CLCS, CBIA, with McGriff Insurance Services, LLC, in Greensboro, North Carolina , CISR, CLCS, CBIA, with McGriff Insurance Services, LLC, in Jaylen Miller , CISR Elite, CSRM, with Dwight Swanstrom Company, in Duluth, Minnesota , CISR Elite, CSRM, with Dwight Swanstrom Company, in Sonnie Tremble , CIC, CRM, CISR, ERIS with The Insurance Man, in Midland, Texas Each finalist receives a gold and garnet lapel pin, $500 cash award, and publicity in a national trade journal. For additional information about this award, contact The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research: PO Box 27027, Austin, Texas 78755-2027; 800-633-2165; Email [email protected]; Website: www.scic.com. Media Contact Danielle Janecka Chief Experience Officer The Society of Certified Insurance Service Representatives 512-349-6181 [email protected] SOURCE The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research EDISON, N.J., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Nous Infosystems, a leading global IT solutions provider delivering innovative technology services and solutions, announced that it has achieved the Microsoft Advanced Specialization in Infrastructure and Database Migration. The Advanced Specialization acknowledges Nous Infosystems' expertise in delivering successful Infrastructure and Database Migration solutions on Azure and affirms exceptional capabilities in delivering successful customer outcomes aligned with the Microsoft Cloud. Nous Microsoft Infra and DB Migration Specialist Microsoft's Advanced Specialization program is designed to recognize partners that demonstrate deep technical expertise in specific scenarios aligned with the Microsoft Cloud. The audit assessed the partner's operational capabilities against program requirements, along with Nous Infosystems' technical proficiency, experience, and ability to achieve successful outcomes. "Attaining the Advanced Specialization epitomizes Nous Infosystems' unwavering commitment to excellence in both technical and business acumen," underlined Anurag Chauhan, CEO of Nous Infosystems. "Our success in this accomplishment reaffirms our dedication to offering innovative solutions, providing substantial value to clients across diverse industries. This achievement stands as a testament to our continuous pursuit of excellence." Dan Rippey, Program Director for the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program expressed, "Nous Infosystems has demonstrated outstanding technical capabilities, experience, and a proven ability to deliver successful outcomes aligned with the Microsoft Cloud. Their specialization in Infrastructure and Database Migration showcases their deep expertise in critical technical scenarios." Also, Sreenivasan Narayanan, EVP Microsoft Global Alliances at Nous Infosystems, added, "Our collaborative partnership with Microsoft has been pivotal in driving technical innovation. This accomplishment not only underscores our team's technical prowess but also emphasizes the robustness of our alliance. It reinforces our commitment and sustained investments to deliver high quality solutions to become a valued partner to Microsoft in cloud migration domain." About Nous Infosystems Nous Infosystems is a global information technology firm providing innovative software solutions and services across a broad spectrum of industries. Established in 1996, we have delivered technology-led business outcomes to customers for over two decades. Major offerings include digital transformation solutions, business IT consulting, application development and maintenance, AI-led business intelligence solutions, cloud and infrastructure management services, enterprise application integration, product engineering solutions, and independent testing services. Nous Infosystems operates in the US, UK, Germany, Canada, and India. We have our development centers in the USA (New Jersey) and India (Bangalore and Coimbatore). Media Contact: Sophia Park Public Relations +1 (732) 985-9533 [email protected] Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2283663/Nous_Microsoft_DB_Migration.jpg SOURCE Nous Infosystems Inc. CHICAGO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- People with long COVID exhibit patterns of changes in the brain that are different from fully recovered COVID-19 patients, according to research being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study comparing patients with long COVID to both a group without history of COVID-19 and a group that went through a COVID-19 infection but is subjectively unimpaired," said one of the study's lead authors, Alexander Rau, M.D., resident in the Departments of Neuroradiology and Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at University Hospital Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany. After infection with COVID-19, as many as 10-25% of patients may develop a post-COVID condition commonly referred to as "long COVID." People with long COVID may experience a wide variety of symptoms, including difficulty concentrating ("brain fog"), change in sense of smell or taste, fatigue, joint or muscle pain, shortness of breath, digestive symptoms, and more. These symptoms may persist for weeks, months, oras is only now becoming apparentyears after COVID-19 infection. However, the basis of this condition is poorly understood. Diffusion microstructure imaging (DMI), a novel MRI technique, is a promising approach to fill this gap. DMI looks at the movement of water molecules in tissues. By studying how water molecules move in different directions and at various speeds, DMI can provide detailed information on the microstructure of the brain. It can detect even very small changes in the brain, not detectable with conventional MRI. For this prospective, cross-sectional study, Dr. Rau and colleagues compared MRI brain scans of three groups: 89 patients with long COVID, 38 patients that had contracted COVID-19 but did not report any subjective long-term symptoms, and 46 healthy controls with no history of COVID-19. The researchers first compared the cerebral macrostructure of these three groups to test for atrophy or any other abnormalities. Next, they used DMI to gain a deeper insight into the brain. The three groups were compared to reveal group differences in the brain's microstructure. DMI parameters were read for the gray matter in the brain. Additionally, whole brain analyses were employed to reveal the spatial distribution of alterations and associations with clinical data, including long-COVID symptoms like fatigue, cognitive impairment or impaired sense of smell. The results showed no brain volume loss or any other lesions that might explain the symptoms of long COVID. However, COVID-19 infection induced a specific pattern of microstructural changes in various brain regions, and this pattern differed between those who had long COVID and those who did not. "This study allows for an in vivo insight on the impact of COVID-19 on the brain," Dr. Rau said. "Here, we noted gray matter alterations in both patients with long-COVID and those unimpaired after a COVID-19 infection. Interestingly, we not only noted widespread microstructural alterations in patients with long COVID, but also in those unimpaired after having contracted COVID-19." The findings also revealed a correlation between microstructural changes and symptom-specific brain networks associated with impaired cognition, sense of smell and fatigue. "Expression of post-COVID symptoms was associated with specific affected cerebral networks, suggesting a pathophysiological basis of this syndrome" Dr. Rau said. The researchers hope to reexamine the patients in the future, recording both clinical symptoms and changes to the brain's microstructure. Despite these brain imaging findings, it remains unclear why some people develop long COVID while others do not, although previous studies have identified risk factors including female sex, older age, higher body mass index, smoking, preexisting comorbidities, and previous hospitalization or intensive care unit admission. Co-authors are Jonas A. Hosp, M.D., Nils Schroter, M.D., Marco Reisert, Ph.D., Horst Urbach, M.D., Cornelius Weiller, M.D., and Elias Kellner, Ph.D. Note: Copies of RSNA 2023 news releases and electronic images will be available online at RSNA.org/press23. RSNA is an association of radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and related scientists promoting excellence in patient care and health care delivery through education, research and technologic innovation. The Society is based in Oak Brook, Illinois. (RSNA.org) Editor's note: The data in these releases may differ from those in the published abstract and those actually presented at the meeting, as researchers continue to update their data right up until the meeting. To ensure you are using the most up-to-date information, please call the RSNA Newsroom at 1-312-791-6610. For patient-friendly information on brain MRI, visit RadiologyInfo.org. SOURCE Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Orea Mining Corp. ("Orea") (TSX: OREA) (OTCQB: OREAF) (FSE: 3CG) announces that the Supreme Court of France (Conseil d'Etat) has sent the ruling concerning the renewal of the Montagne d'Or mineral titles back to the Court of Appeals. Orea and its legal advisors remain confident of a positive outcome for Orea and its shareholders, however the timeline of a conclusive ruling cannot be reasonably predicted. Montagne d'Or is a permitting stage, 5 million ounce open pit gold mine development project with good grade, excellent metallurgy, and considerable potential to increase ounces by infill and expansion drilling.* The Supreme Court of France has determined that a provision under the applicable mining code whereby mineral titles could be renewed automatically for 25-years is unconstitutional, and has referred the proceedings back to the Court of Appeal of Bordeaux where the French government will be required to demonstrate that the Montagne d'Or project does not comply with environmental regulations. In the opinion of Orea and its legal advisors, it will be challenging for the French government to demonstrate that Montagne d'Or mineral titles should not be renewed on environmental grounds, for various reasons, including: in 2021 the Court of Appeal of Bordeaux previously rejected the French government's request for an appeal citing that their environmental arguments were without merit; Orea and Nordgold (the "JV") completed 7 years of baseline environmental studies which resulted in one of the most comprehensive ESIA's (Environmental and Social Impact Assessment) ever completed for mining permit applications in France ; the holding of numerous community and stakeholder meetings, and, of public hearings and workshops organized by the French government, which resulted in major modifications to the Montagne d'Or mine design; and most notably; the French government commissioned a taskforce to assess the benefits and the impacts associated with the development of the gold mining industry in French Guiana , with an emphasis on Montagne d'Or, the most advanced large-scale gold project under development in France . The study was extremely favorable and strongly supported the Montagne d'Or mine development. The taskforce included independent experts and drew from the government ministries involved in mine permitting in France, including individuals from the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and the Ministry of Interior. The taskforce consulted extensively with all stakeholders, including local administration and communities, indigenous groups, social and environmental NGOs, mining industry representatives, and socio-economic parties. Highlights: The taskforce accessed a very large volume of technical documentation from studies carried out by reputable engineering firms. The Montagne d'Or mine project is designed and developed in accordance with international standards and adapted to the local setting. The project's environmental footprint is 30 times less than a legal alluvial mining project for the same amount of gold produced, alluvial being the most common method of gold production in French Guiana . . According to the French National Institute of Industrial Environment and Risk (INERIS), the use of cyanide is appropriate for gold extraction in French Guiana . . The French Geological Survey (BRGM) confirms that there is no viable alternative to cyanide in gold mining, and that cyanide is used by more than 400 facilities worldwide, including in the most modern European mines. The environmental impacts and risks of the Montagne d'Or project are mitigated. BACKGROUND OF THE LEGAL PROCEEDINGS LEADING TO THE SUPREME COURT DECISION The Montagne d'Or mineral titles expired in December 2018 and we're rightfully due for automatic 25-year renewal under 1994 amendments to the French mining code (for details see October 8, 2020 news release). All conditions for automatic renewal were satisfied by the JV yet the French government did not renew the titles, nor did it formally deny renewal, instead it relied on a legal delay tactic under which an application could be "deemed" rejected if the government does not provide a formal response to an applicant within a prescribed time period; as in the case of Montagne d'Or. The JV initiated legal proceedings in early 2019 to protect its right to the renewal of the mineral titles. The French government's position was that that Montagne d'Or project wasn't compatible with its environmental ambitions. On December 24, 2020, the court disagreed with the government, invalided the "deemed" refusal and ordered the government to renew the mineral titles within 6 months. In February 2021, the French government filed an appeal of the decision. Orea announced on July 22, 2021, that the Court of Appeal of Bordeaux rejected the French government's request for an appeal citing that the arguments put forth by the French Government were without merit. In October 2021, Orea announced that the government exercised its right to request a final appeal to the Supreme Court of France. After failure by the government in two previous courts, to be considered for admission in the Supreme Court, the French government was required to demonstrate new facts and information; they took the position that the automatic 25-year renewal of the mineral titles was unconstitutional. The request was admitted in October 2022, and the Supreme Court made a recent ruling as outlined above. *ABOUT MONTAGNE D'OR Montagne d'Or is an open pit gold mine development project that hosts Measured Mineral Resources of 10.3 Mt at 1.804 g/t gold (600,000 oz), Indicated Mineral Resources of 74.8 Mt at 1.350 g/t gold (3.25 Moz) and additional Inferred Mineral Resources of 20.2 Mt at 1.48 g/t gold (960,000 oz), prepared in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). The Mineral Resources are confined within a pit shell defined by a gold price of US$1,300/oz and a cut-off grade of 0.4 g/t gold. Mineral Reserves have also been defined with Proven Mineral Reserves of 8.25 Mt at 1.99 g/t gold (530,000 oz) and Probable Mineral Reserves of 45.87 Mt at 1.50 g/t gold (2.2 M oz). The Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves were estimated using a gold price of US$1,200 per ounce at varied cut-off grades from 0.552 to 0.665 g/t gold, dependent on lithological rock types, economics and estimated metallurgical recovery. Montagne d'Or ore can be readily processed to recover the contained gold and silver values using unit operations considered standard to the industry. Qualified Person Rock Lefrancois, a director of the Company, is a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed this news release and is responsible for the technical information reported herein, including verification of the data disclosed. For more about Orea visit the company's website at www.oreamining.com Robert F. Giustra Chairman Certain statements made herein, including statements relating to matters that are not historical facts and statements of the Company's beliefs, intentions and expectations about developments, results and events which will or may occur in the future, constitute "forward looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation ("forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance, reflect current expectations or beliefs regarding future events and are typically identified by words such as "anticipate", "could", "should", "expect", "seek", "may", "intend", "likely", "budget", "plan", "estimate", continue", "forecast", "believe", "predict", "potential", "target", "would", "might", "will", "focus", "develop", "discuss", and similar words, expressions or phrases (including negative variations) suggesting future outcomes or statements regarding an outlook. These include, but are not limited to, statements and information regarding: the Company's plans to construct and develop the Montagne d'Or project, including anticipated timing thereof; the timing, processes, outcome and other matters related to the renewal of the Montagne d'Or concessions, including the appeal from the French Government; action plans in response to the sanctions imposed on Nord Gold PLC and certain shareholders of Nord Gold PLC, results of any discussions or negotiations with Nord Gold PLC regarding the acquisition of Montagne d'Or, directly or indirectly, including obtaining necessary approvals from regulatory and sanctions authorities in any jurisdiction, including extensions to such approvals; completion of the acquisition of the remaining 55.01% s interest of Montagne d'Or, if any, and timing of closing of such acquisition; plans to carry-out updated economic studies for Montagne d'Or project, including the possibility of resulting in a higher NPV; the impact from rulings by the French Constitutional Court regarding the French Mining Code; rulings by the Court of Appeal of Bordeaux regarding compliance with environmental regulations; if and when proceedings at the Court of Appeal of Bordeaux will take place and their timeline; the satisfaction of regulatory requirements in respect of the permitting, construction and operation of the Montagne d'Or project, including but not limited to, the submission and processing of mine permit applications, the timing thereof and the timing of completion of environmental and engineering studies; the Company's ability to renew the concessions for the Montagne d'Or project and to comply with the conditions thereof; economic analysis for the Montagne d'Or project and related exploration objectives and plans; the conversion of mineral resources into mineral reserves and the conversion of inferred mineral resources into higher resource classification categories; the acquisition of exploration projects including terms of acquisition, exploration or development plans, intentions to acquire additional exploration or development interests and the implications thereof; the elimination or reduction of costs; the production capacity and potential of future plant and equipment; future exploration and mine plans, objectives and expectations and corporate planning of the Company, future studies and environmental impact statements and the timetable for completion and content thereof; impacts of government sanctions against the Company's joint venture partner; and statements as to management's expectations with respect to, among other things, the matters and activities contemplated in this news release. Forward-looking statements are made based upon certain assumptions and other important factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such assumptions and analyses are made by the Company's management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are reasonable and appropriate in the circumstances. All assumptions and analyses are those of the Company's. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. There can be no assurance any private placement in progress will complete, nor any financing targeting long-term strategic investors. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies, local and global economic conditions, and the environment in which the Company will operate in the future, including compliance by the Company with regulatory and permitting requirements applicable in French Guiana, the sufficiency of Company's working capital; the Company's ability to secure additional funding for the continued exploration and development of its properties; the price of gold and other metals; and the Company's ability to retain key personnel. You are hence cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Certain important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include, among others, political and economic risks in France, political and economic risks in French Guiana, risks related to sanctions in France, Canada, the UK, the US and elsewhere; risks relating to the Company's working capital; the renewal applications for the Concessions and the possible outcomes thereof; possible negative outcomes of any appeals from the decision of the Administrative Court of Cayenne in French Guiana; possible negative impacts from rulings by the Court of Appeal of Bordeaux; possible negative impacts from rulings by the French Constitutional Court regarding the French Mining Code; regulatory risk including but not limited to unforeseen changes in regulatory requirements, the Company's ability to enforce its contractual and other legal rights to explore and exploit its properties, risks related to exploration and development, permitting and licensing risk, the estimation of mineral resources and mineral reserves and related interpretations and assumptions, future profitability of the Company, the ability to obtain additional financing on a timely basis, the price of gold and marketability thereof, government regulations including with respect to taxes, royalties, land tenure and land use, title to the Company's properties, currency exchange rates and fluctuations, environmental risks, dilution resulting from the issuance of additional securities of the Company, joint venture risks, reliance on Nord Gold PLC as operator of the Montagne d'Or project, the availability of equipment, conflicts of interest, competition in the mining industry, uninsured risks, market fluctuations, global financial conditions, credit risk and risks arising from pandemics and epidemics. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. These statements, however, are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, which contribute to the possibility that the predicted outcomes will not occur. Events or circumstances could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those estimated or projected and expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements are included in the "Risk Factors" section in Company's annual information form dated December 21, 2022, for the year ended September 30, 2022 ("AIF"). Readers are further cautioned that the list of factors enumerated in the "Risk Factors" section of the AIF that may affect future results is not exhaustive. When relying on the Company's forward-looking statements and information to make decisions with respect to the Company, investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and other uncertainties and potential events. Furthermore, the forward-looking statements and information contained herein are made as of the date of this document and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update or to revise any of the included forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. The forward-looking statements and information contained herein are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. SOURCE Orea Mining Corp. SAN DIEGO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK x NIZAR S. NAYANI, Individually and on Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated, Plaintiff, vs. LIFESTANCE HEALTH GROUP, INC., MICHAEL K. LESTER, J. MICHAEL BRUFF, ROBERT BESSLER, DARREN BLACK, JEFFREY CRISAN, WILLIAM MILLER, JEFFREY RHODES, ERIC SHUEY, KATHERINE WOOD, MORGAN STANLEY & CO. LLC, GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. LLC, J.P. MORGAN SECURITIES LLC, JEFFERIES LLC, TPG CAPITAL BD, LLC, UBS SECURITIES LLC, and WILLIAM BLAIR & COMPANY, L.L.C., Defendants. : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : x Civil Action No. 1:22-cv-06833-JSR CLASS ACTION SUMMARY NOTICE OF PENDENCY OF CLASS ACTION, PROPOSED SETTLEMENT, AND MOTION FOR ATTORNEYS' FEES AND EXPENSES TO: ALL PERSONS AND ENTITIES WHO OR WHICH PURCHASED OR OTHERWISE ACQUIRED LIFESTANCE HEALTH GROUP, INC. ("LIFESTANCE") COMMON STOCK IN AND/OR TRACEABLE TO LIFESTANCE'S INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING ON OR ABOUT JUNE 10, 2021, THROUGH NOVEMBER 8, 2021 ("CLASS"). YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED, pursuant to Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and an Order of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, that Court-appointed Lead Plaintiff, on behalf of himself and all members of the proposed Class, and LifeStance, Michael K. Lester, J. Michael Bruff, Robert Bessler, Darren Black, Jeffrey Crisan, William Miller, Jeffrey Rhodes, Eric Shuey, and Katherine Wood (the "Individual Defendants" and, together with LifeStance, the "LifeStance Defendants"), and Morgan Stanley & Co., LLC, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Jefferies LLC, TPG Capital BD, LLC, UBS Securities LLC, and William Blair & Company, L.L.C. (the "Underwriter Defendants" and, together with the LifeStance Defendants, "Defendants"), have reached a proposed settlement of the claims in the above-captioned class action (the "Action") in the amount of $50,000,000 (the "Settlement"). A hearing will be held before the Honorable Jed S. Rakoff on January 24, 2024, at 4:00 p.m., in Courtroom 14B of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl Street, New York, NY 10007 (the "Settlement Hearing") to determine whether the Court should: (i) approve the proposed Settlement as fair, reasonable, and adequate; (ii) dismiss the Action with prejudice as provided in the Stipulation of Settlement, dated October 13, 2023; (iii) approve the proposed Plan of Allocation for distribution of the proceeds of the Settlement (the "Net Settlement Fund") to Class Members; and (iv) approve Lead Counsel's Fee and Expense Application. The Court may change the date of the Settlement Hearing without providing another notice. Any updates regarding the Settlement Hearing, including any changes to the date or time of the hearing, will be posted to the Settlement website, www.LifeStanceSecuritiesSettlement.com. You do NOT need to attend the Settlement Hearing to receive a distribution from the Net Settlement Fund. IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF THE CLASS, YOUR RIGHTS WILL BE AFFECTED BY THE PROPOSED SETTLEMENT AND YOU MAY BE ENTITLED TO A MONETARY PAYMENT. If you have not yet received a full Notice and Claim Form, you may obtain copies of these documents by visiting the website for the Settlement, www.LifeStanceSecuritiesSettlement.com, or by contacting the Claims Administrator at: LifeStance Securities Litigation c/o A.B. Data, Ltd. P.O. Box 173090 Milwaukee, WI 53217 www.LifeStanceSecuritiesSettlement.com (877) 884-3360 Inquiries, other than requests for information about the status of a claim, may also be made to Lead Counsel: Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP Ellen Gusikoff Stewart 655 West Broadway, Suite 1900 San Diego, CA 92101 [email protected] (800) 449-4900 If you are a member of the Class, to be eligible to share in the distribution of the Net Settlement Fund, you must submit a Claim Form postmarked or submitted online no later than January 17, 2024. If you are a member of the Class and do not timely submit a valid Claim Form, you will not be eligible to share in the distribution of the Net Settlement Fund, but you will nevertheless be bound by all judgments or orders entered by the Court relating to the Settlement, whether favorable or unfavorable. If you are a member of the Class and wish to exclude yourself from the Class, you must submit a written request for exclusion in accordance with the instructions set forth in the Notice so that it is received no later than January 3, 2024. If you properly exclude yourself from the Class, you will not be bound by any judgments or orders entered by the Court relating to the Settlement, whether favorable or unfavorable, and you will not be eligible to share in the distribution of the Net Settlement Fund. Any objections to the proposed Settlement, Lead Counsel's Fee and Expense Application, and/or the proposed Plan of Allocation must be filed with the Court, either by mail or in person, and be mailed to counsel for the Parties in accordance with the instructions in the Notice, such that they are received no later than January 3, 2024. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THE COURT, DEFENDANTS, OR DEFENDANTS' COUNSEL REGARDING THIS NOTICE. DATED: October 25, 2023 BY ORDER OF THE COURT UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK SOURCE Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP NEW YORK, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The safes and vaults market size is expected to grow by USD 1.61 billion between 2022 and 2027. However, the growth momentum of the market will accelerate at a CAGR of 5.74% during the forecast period. The market is segmented by end-user (Banking and Non-banking), product (Cash management safes, Depository safes, Vaults and vault doors, Gun safes and vaults, and Others), and geography (APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America). Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Safes and Vaults Market An increase in commercial bank branches is notably driving market growth. With the global increase in population and urbanization, banks are being encouraged to expand their presence in urban areas. Further, many banks are opening their branches in rural and sub-urban areas owing to the significant population that resides there. Thus, the growth in bank branches globally will boost the demand for lockers. Also, banks, especially those in advanced nations, will invest in advantageous, new-generation lockers to guarantee the highest level of security. Therefore, such factors are expected to drive market growth during the forecast period. The report analyses the market size and growth and provides accurate predictions on the growth of the market. View PDF Sample Key Highlights: The report recognizes the following as some of the key players in the safes and vaults market: Acme Safe Co., ALPHA INDUSTRIES (PVT) LTD., Alpha Safe and Vault Inc., American Rebel Holdings Inc., American Security, BJARSTAL sarl, Blue Dot Safes Inc., Bode Panzer GmbH, Brown Safe Manufacturing Inc., Bumilsafe Mfg. Co., CMI Safe Co., Diebold Nixdorf Inc., Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Gunnebo AB, Hayman Safe Co. Inc., INKAS Group of Companies, ISM, Kumahira Co. Ltd., Falcon Safe Marketing Sdn Bhd, and Access Security Products Ltd. and Vault Inc., American Rebel Holdings Inc., American Security, BJARSTAL sarl, Blue Dot Safes Inc., Bode Panzer GmbH, Brown Safe Manufacturing Inc., Bumilsafe Mfg. Co., CMI Safe Co., Diebold Nixdorf Inc., Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Gunnebo AB, Hayman Safe Co. Inc., INKAS Group of Companies, ISM, Kumahira Co. Ltd., Falcon Safe Marketing Sdn Bhd, and Access Security Products Ltd. Safes and Vaults Market is fragmented in nature. Market to observe 4.9% YOY growth in 2023. Market Dynamics: Trend Automation in safes and vaults is an emerging trend shaping the market growth. Globally, various automation technologies are rapidly advancing in the industrial, healthcare, and other sectors. The emergence of automation technologies is largely influenced by the reduction of human effort and the improvement of inaccuracy. Manufacturers of safes and vaults are also incorporating automated solutions into their products to provide more security and convenience, m Challenges The high cost of safes and vaults and the low rate of repurchase are major challenges hindering the market growth. Manufacturing companies are integrating advanced technologies like alarm systems, sophisticated locks, and surveillance systems in their products to expand the safety and security provided by safes and vaults. Although integrating such technologies enhances the security provided by these products. The report also covers information on upcoming trends and challenges. Explore detailed information by purchasing a report Keg Segments: The banking segment is estimated to witness significant growth during the forecast period. The number of bank branches and ATM installations is being driven by the expanding global population and the growing number of people with bank accounts globally. Get a glance at the market contribution of the segments, Request a Sample Report Related Reports: The industrial safety gates market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.06% between 2022 and 2027. The market size is forecast to increase by USD 131.9 million. The personal safety alarms market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 8.9% between 2022 and 2027. The market size is forecast to increase by USD 84.7 million. Safes And Vaults Market Scope Report Coverage Details Base year 2022 Historic period 2017-2021 Forecast period 2023-2027 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 5.74% Market growth 2023-2027 USD 1.61 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth 2022-2023 (%) 4.9 Regional analysis APAC, Europe, North America, Middle East and Africa, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 36% Key countries US, China, Japan, Germany, and UK Competitive landscape Leading Vendors, Market Positioning of Vendors, Competitive Strategies, and Industry Risks ToC: Executive Summary Market Landscape Market Sizing Historic Market Sizes Five Forces Analysis Market Segmentation by End-user Market Segmentation by Product Market Segmentation by Geography Customer Landscape Geographic Landscape Drivers, Challenges, & Trends Company Landscape Company Analysis Appendix About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contacts Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com SOURCE Technavio SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe LLP is investigating potential derivative claims on behalf of shareholders of The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) relating to possible false and misleading statements and breaches of fiduciary duty related to subscriber growth on the company's streaming platform, Disney+. On November 6, 2023, plaintiffs filed a consolidated securities class action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California alleging a nine-part scheme by Disney and certain of its current and former officers and directors to mislead the company's shareholders concerning projected rates of subscriber growth on Disney+. Among other things, plaintiffs alleged that between December 10, 2020 and May 10, 2023, the defendants set "unattainably high" Disney+ subscriber targets to boost the company's stock price and then took several actions to maintain their alleged scheme, including reorganizing the company, masking "unsustainable" content costs with "accounting manipulations," and repeatedly assuring shareholders the projections were on track, which they were not. When the truth began to emerge in November 2021, the company's stock price plummeted in several stages, erasing billions in shareholder value. Then, on August 9, 2023, Disney disclosed a $2.65 billion impairment charge, the vast majority of which was "related to the removal of content [from direct-to-consumer streaming services, including Disney+] and the termination of certain third party license agreements." During the relevant period, the securities class-action plaintiffs also alleged that certain Disney executives, including CEO Robert A. Iger and former CFO Christine M. McCarthy, unloaded a combined $393 million of their personal Disney stock. The Schubert Firm is investigating potential breaches of fiduciary duty by Disney's officers and directors in connection with these allegations. If you own stock in The Walt Disney Company and wish to obtain additional information about your legal rights, please contact us today or visit our website at https://www.classactionlawyers.com/disney. About Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe LLP Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe represents shareholders, employees, and consumers in class actions against corporate defendants, as well as shareholders in derivative actions against their officers and directors. The firm is based in San Francisco, and with the help of co-counsel, litigates cases nationwide. Contact Amber L. Schubert Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe LLP [email protected] Tel: 415-788-4220 SOURCE: Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe LLP SOURCE Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe LLP Smithfield representatives presented the donations during two events at each respective food bank, highlighting the importance of center-of-the-plate protein donations for residents of these Virginia communities. The brand also showed appreciation for the staff and volunteers at each food bank by bringing its Bacon Bus to provide lunch. "These donations, as a part of the Commonwealth Clash, bring these two universities Virginia Tech and University of Virginia together in the most meaningful way possible," said Jonathan Toms, senior community development manager for Smithfield Foods. "Supporting Feeding Southwest Virginia and Blue Ridge Area Food Bank impacts these communities greatly, and we thank them for their continuous efforts to provide relief to the residents of our home state." Since the 2014-2015 academic year, Smithfield has sponsored the Smithfield Commonwealth Clash the rivalry between Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia across all school-sponsored sports. Throughout the year, the company looks to support the communities surrounding Virginia Tech and UVA. Feeding Southwest Virginia alone channels over $33 million in food and groceries through 380 partner feeding programs in its 26-county, nine-city region. The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank serves those living with hunger across 25 counties and eight cities on either side of the Blue Ridge. With the help of more than 400 programs and pantry partners, it provides nutritious food to well over 125,000 people each month. But protein continues to be one of the biggest needs for local food banks because of costs and limited resources. "Receiving this donation from Smithfield brings unsurmountable support in alleviating hunger for Southwest Virginia," said Pamela Irvine, president and CEO for Feeding Southwest Virginia. "We are thankful for the partnership with the high demand for food assistance in our area." "Smithfield has our gratitude for this generous donation," said Michael McKee, CEO of the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. "This will provide much-needed center-of-the-plate protein to the residents of our community and continue to provide hope to our neighbors." About Smithfield Smithfield isn't only a leading provider of high-quality pork products. We're a leading provider of the most important part of any meal: premium, high-quality meat. And we take our meat duties seriously. After all, the rest of the meal is just a side dish. Smithfield products were first introduced in 1936 in Smithfield, Virginia, by people who lived for the love of meat. Today, the Smithfield brand stands for craftsmanship, authenticity, and pure passion as we continue to give meat-lovers across the country the deliciousness they crave: our classic bacon, slow-smoked holiday hams, hand-trimmed ribs, marinated fresh pork, smoked meats, and even more meaty magic. All Smithfield products not only meet our customers' high flavor standards but also meet the highest quality and safety standards in the industry. All while being produced right here in the USA. To learn more about the Smithfield portfolio of products, please visit www.Smithfield.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formally known as Twitter). Smithfield is a brand of Smithfield Foods, Inc. About Smithfield Foods Inc. Headquartered in Smithfield, Virginia, since 1936, Smithfield Foods, Inc. is a U.S. food company that employs nearly 60,000 people in seven countries and partners with thousands of American farmers. As one of the world's leading vertically integrated protein companies, we are dedicated to producing "Good food. Responsibly." to feed a growing world population. We have pioneered sustainability standards for more than two decades, including our industry-leading commitments to become carbon negative in our U.S. company-owned operations and reduce GHG emissions 30% across our entire U.S. value chain by 2030. We believe in the power of protein to end food insecurity and have donated hundreds of millions of food servings to food banks, disaster relief efforts and community outreach programs in all 50 U.S. states. Smithfield boasts a portfolio of high-quality iconic brands, such as Smithfield, Eckrich, Gwaltney and Nathan's Famous, among many others. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com and connect with us on Facebook, X (formally known as Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram and Threads. Feeding Southwest Virginia Food Bank Feeding Southwest Virginia is a partner of Feeding America. For the last four decades, the Food Bank's ultimate mission has been to nourish neighbors, engage community partners, and develop solutions to address food insecurity. The primary function of the Food Bank is to secure and distribute large quantities of food for our neighbors. Approximately, $28 million worth of food and grocery related products are channeled annually through more than 400 food pantries and meal programs throughout our 26-county and nine-city service region. Visit feedingswva.org for more information." Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Founded in 1981 and headquartered in Verona, Virginia, the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank is the largest organization alleviating hunger in western and central Virginia. The Food Bank serves an average of 127,500 people per month across 25 counties and eight cities through distribution centers in Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Winchester, and Verona. We're serving record numbers of Virginians through our network of more than 400 community partners, which includes food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, schools, libraries, healthcare clinics, community centers, and more. We pledge to continue innovating and adapting to secure, store, and distribute more food to more individuals, families, children, and seniors experiencing hunger. The Food Bank is a partner food bank of Feeding America, a national association with a network of more than 200 food banks, 21 statewide food bank associations, and over 60,000 partner agencies, food pantries and meal programs. Last year, this charitable food assistance network helped provide 5.2 billion meals to tens of millions of people facing food insecurity. For more information, visit www.brafb.org. SOURCE Smithfield Foods, Inc. TALLINN, Estonia, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- In the domain of financial trading, today's markets are a realm of vast complexity. Navigating this domain demands more than just infrastructureit requires an optimal toolkit and unmatched support, ensuring that opportunities are grasped and pitfalls are avoided. Recognizing the critical need for excellent service standards, SpearGPT has launched its revamped "Market Overview" section. This resource is crafted to empower participants across the globe with a comprehensive, real-time panorama of market dynamics. "At SpearGPT, we aspire not to just keep pace with the financial landscape but also anticipate its twists and turns to empower our clientele," stated Peter Kraus, SpearGpt spokesperson. "Recognizing that the pulse of the market never slows, we are now excited to present our updated and more detailed 'Market Overview' section a testament to our innovative drive. This platform extends beyond traditional boundaries, offering traders of all levels a holistic lens to monitor the financial horizon's ever-shifting tides, 24/7." A premier trading system SpearGPT deploys dynamic trading tools and industry-leading platforms, underpinned by a bedrock of robust security measures to ensure traders' peace of mind. The broker accommodates multiple advanced services, allowing traders to harness the available opportunities with unprecedented efficiency. "Our team is devoted to equipping traders across the spectrum with the tools to harness the dynamism of global financial markets with simplicity and agility," added Kraus. "Crafted for intuitive interaction, our forum stands out with its seamless layout, an extensive suite of financial instruments, solid security, and reliable customer support. Our foundation is rooted in the fusion of the latest technology with crystal-clear integrity and expert finesse, forming the landscape upon which our clients' trading endeavors thrive." About SpearGPT SpearGPT is a leading brokerage service, delivering an expansive array of trading options to market participants. From currency pairs to CFDs and cryptocurrency, the brand offers a comprehensive portfolio of financial assets. The inclusion of a detailed market overview section further equips traders with essential insights to navigate the markets effectively. Distinctively, the company's tiered account system standard, premium, and VIP enables traders to select a level of service tailored to their personal scale and style. In essence, SpearGPT emerges as a paramount provider, carving a path for its members through the complexities of trading with a service suite that is both comprehensive and accessible. SOURCE SpearGpt ELKO Adoption is a beautiful way to expand a family. That was the message from two families who celebrated the adoptions of their children at the Elko County Courthouse Tuesday afternoon. The Hales and Baker families were on hand at a luncheon for Elko Countys annual Adoption Day in coordination with the National Adoption Day on Nov. 18, which raises awareness about foster care adoption. Mike and Ashley Hales spoke about their rollercoaster journey to adopt four children three from Elko County that started in 2019. It included a couple of false starts before doors started opening for them to adopt three boys and a girl. We wanted a family and we went down all the avenues and tried to expand our family. It wasnt working with our traditional methods and then the infertility treatments werent working. So we were led to foster care and then private adoption, so it was just kind of a snowball, Mike said. The Hales, who live in Utah, said adoption was a mutual decision made while the couple was dating in high school. Adoption has a sweet spot in our hearts, Ashley said. Its definitely a beautiful way to expand your family. From the beginning of our relationship, [adoption is] what I want to do. After getting married, the couple discovered Ashley had a hormone condition that caused infertility. They worked with doctors for a few years and then decided to look into becoming a foster family. They signed up to give a home to two teenage boys who were living in Texas, successfully completed a home study, and were accepted as boys foster family. Unfortunately, plans fell through when the teens decided to remain close to their school and friends instead of relocating to Utah. But they didnt give up, despite rejected applications for children, Ashley said. After a few months, the Hales received a call about a six-day-old baby girl in neonatal intensive care who had been born prematurely. She had a really rough start to life, Ashley recalled. We were totally in love with this baby girl. The couple brought the baby home, and she lived with the Hales for about 10 months. During that time, all the signs seemed to point toward adoption, but it didnt work out and the baby was reunited with her birth family. Today, the Hales maintain a relationship with the little girl. It was a great thing for her and her family. Yet the couple was heartbroken. They poured their energies into remodeling a house and decided on a whim to sell it, using the equity to work through an adoption agency for a child. Days after the house was sold, they spoke with a friend in the foster care system who knew of a baby who had been in the hospital for two weeks. The Hales applied and were selected for adoption. While working on that adoption, they received a call about another baby who was in need of a family. Two years ago, just before Thanksgiving, Ashley received a text message about a third baby who became available for adoption. Ashley said she knew the child was meant for them. The whole weekend, I was like, Theres a baby in the hospital, waiting for me to bond with him and love him, and it was killing me, she remembered. Monday morning, I was on the phone [to start the adoption process]. Now the family of two was on its way to becoming a family of five, with a 15-month-old, a four-month-old and a newborn, all boys. This year, when Ashley received an email about adopting a baby girl, she couldnt wait to show Mike the good news that literally floored him. She said, We have a baby girl! I said, Stop playing. Then I read the email and I collapsed. I was like, No way! Mike said. The babys adoption was finalized in district court on Nov. 21. Mike said the boys adore their new sister. Especially our oldest, but they all love baby sister. They dote on her, they love to make her laugh, Ashley added. Through it all, Mike praised Ashleys determination to secure the adoption of the babies, including one baby they found out about who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Were passionate about adoption. I couldnt love my kids any more than I do, Ashley said. The Hales said for those looking to adopt to build a community of adoptive moms and adoptees. Ashley also suggested doing research and finding resources such as the podcast Adoption Now. But the Hales also emphasized keeping in mind the biological connection for the children, if possible. At the luncheon, the Hales were joined by 17 family members, some of whom are biologically related to their children and live in Elko. Thats a big part of our journey. We have biological grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings and we make them part of our family as well, Ashley said. Mike agreed, explaining that their research showed adoptive families who are open to maintaining relationships with biological family members can put adoptive children on the path to success. Having a relationship with their biological family knowing where they came from and who their biological family is and that history is only going to set them up for success, Mike said. Its easier said than done, [but] having an open heart and open mind and willingness to have those relationships has been key. Being open about adoption also gives the parents the opportunity to tell the story of how each child came into the family, Mike continued. That way, it doesnt catch them by surprise as well. The more people that love on our kids, the better, he said. For those who might be hesitant and on the fence about whether or not to get involved with foster care or adoption, Mike and Ashley advised them to take the leap. Even with the heartbreak that weve experienced with our first foster daughter going home and being reunified [with her biological family], I would still do it, a thousand times over again, Ashley said. Even after reunification, you can still have a connection with their family, be their support, give them respite and help them out. The Baker family Brian and Jolene Baker also attended the luncheon on Tuesday. They finalized a private adoption for a baby boy who joins their family of seven. Meeting adoptive families like the Hales and hearing their story was an exciting, amazing and wonderful time for everyone to get together and celebrate these kids, Jolene said. [The kids] all deserve a family. The Baker family Jolene and Brian Baker celebrated the adoption of a baby boy along with their children on Elko County Adoption Day at the Elko County Courthou The Bakers echoed the Hales advice for parents considering adoption, adding that the process is worth it. It takes patience and time, and its very worth it because these kids all need a family, Jolene said. They all deserve to be loved and taken care of. Elko County Adoption Day On Tuesday, three children were adopted in Elko District Court, presided by Judges Kriston Hill and Mason Simons. The Fourth Judicial Court granted 22 adoptions for the year, Simons said. For about 10 years, Elko Countys adoption celebration has been a significant day on the district court calendar that the judiciary looks forward to each year. Simons called the day a wonderful opportunity we have to celebrate the joy of adoption and the joy of these new family units we are creating. Adoption Day transforms courthouse, lives ELKO It was not an ordinary morning for most everyone entering the Elko County Courthouse on Nov. 1. Family Court Master Michelle Rodriguez said she has been working on adoption cases for Elko County, and called the countys recognition of National Adoption Day the best day in the district court. We get to make families happy, she said. Kids are safe in their forever home. I think its the best thing we do here. Rodriguez pointed to the Hales experience with multiple ways of adopting through foster care and private adoption as a good example of building an adoptive family through various avenues. Adoption Day allows the community to learn there are different ways to become a forever family, she said. The celebration also shows theres a need for more foster families, Rodriguez added. We always need more foster families. Not just to adopt but to support these kids who are truly at risk, and they need the love anywhere they can get it, she said. WILDWOOD, Mo., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- St. Croix Hospice builds upon their existing end-of-life services in eastern Missouri with the opening of a new branch in Wildwood. This expansion marks the eighth St. Croix Hospice branch in Missouri and enables the company to offer more accessible services to patients in Wildwood and the surrounding communities. "Rural communities often encounter numerous obstacles in accessing high-quality end-of-life care as they struggle with scarce resources, geographical barriers and a shortage of experienced professionals." says St. Croix Hospice Founder and CEO Heath Bartness. "Our new Wildwood branch will bolster our support for the surrounding rural communities in eastern Missouri by providing them with the increased accessibility and convenience of our expert care team." According to data from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, only about 50% of Medicare beneficiaries utilize the hospice benefit when they are eligible, and this statistic is even lower outside of most urban areas. As a Medicare benefit, hospice can reduce health care costs while significantly improving patient and family quality of life through pain and symptom management. "Over 18% of the population in Wildwood, Missouri is aged 65 and older, with more individuals expecting to receive personalized end-of-life care each year," said Rachel Choate, Regional Director of Clinical Operations at St. Croix Hospice. "Adding an additional branch to the eastern region of Missouri will better meet this need and allow more patients to receive a continuity of care while bringing our dedicated care team closer to their patients and families." St. Croix Hospice serves more than 4,400 patients within the Midwest every day. Taking an integrated approach to hospice care, the expert team at St. Croix Hospice provides physical, emotional and spiritual support that meets the unique needs of each patient. St. Croix Hospice teams are stationed in more than 60 branches throughout 10 states, ensuring responsive, proximate service to wherever patients call home. About St. Croix Hospice St. Croix Hospice supports patients, their families and caregivers when they need us the most, delivering exceptional hospice care 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and wherever a patient calls home. With branches in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin, St. Croix Hospice takes pride in round-the-clock availability, prompt response and same-day admissions including during evenings, weekends and holidays. Contact St. Croix Hospice 24/7 at 855-278-2764 or stcroixhospice.com. CONTACT: Kelly Buethe [email protected] 612-409-0910 SOURCE St. Croix Hospice NEW YORK, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The surface disinfectants market is expected to grow by USD 1.20 billion from 2022 to 2027. In addition, the growth momentum of the market will progress at a CAGR of 5.66% during the forecast period, according to Technavio. North America is estimated to contribute 65% to the growth of the global market during the forecast period. Increasing investments in the healthcare industry is notably driving the surface disinfectants market. However, factors such as the Rising use of UV radiation for surface disinfectants may impede market growth. The market is segmented by product (hypochlorite, quaternary ammonium compounds, hydrogen peroxide, chlorhexidine gluconate, and others), type (liquids, sprays, and wipes), and geography (North America, Europe, APAC, Middle East and Africa, and South America). We provide a detailed analysis of 20 companies operating in the surface disinfectants market including 3M Co., Acuro Organics Ltd., BASF SE, CarrollCLEAN, Clariant International Ltd., Ecolab Inc., Envista Holdings Corp., Hillyard Inc., Kao Corp., KERSIA GROUP, Lonza Group Ltd., Medline Industries LP, Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, S.C. Johnson and Son Inc., Solvay SA, STERIS plc, The Procter and Gamble Co., Tristel Plc, Unilever PLC, and Whiteley Pty Ltd. The report offers an up-to-date analysis of the market, and to know the exact growth variance and the Y-O-Y growth rate, Request a FREE Sample Report. Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Surface Disinfectants Market 2023-2027 Surface Disinfectants Market 2023-2027: Company Analysis 3M Co. - The company offers surface disinfectants such as 3M Ultra Rapid Multi-Enzyme Cleaner 1 L, 3M Rapid Multi-Enzyme Cleaner 70500 1 L, 3M Glutarex, 2 percent Glutaraldehyde Disinfectant 1 L. This report provides a full list of key companies, their strategies, and the latest developments. Buy Now for detailed company information Surface Disinfectants Market 2023-2027: Segmentation Product The hypochlorite segment is estimated to witness significant growth during the forecast period. Hypochlorite is readily available in liquid form, i.e. sodium hypochlorite or other forms such as calcium hypochlorite, which are highly effective disinfectants. The water hardness shall not be affected by hypochlorite disinfectants, as they are able to perform a wide range of antibacterial activities. Additionally, the growing demand for medical applications is driving this segment. In order to prevent the spread of infections among patients and healthcare professionals, hypochlorite bleach solution acts as a disinfectant primarily on restained surfaces for health equipment in medical laboratories and nursing homes. Hence, these factors are expected to drive the segment growth during the forecast period Learn about the contribution of each segment summarized in concise infographics and thorough descriptions. View a FREE PDF Sample Report Surface Disinfectants Market 2023-2027: Key Highlights Historic Market Size 2017-2021 CAGR of the market during 2023-2027 Detailed information on factors that will assist surface disinfectants market growth during the next five years Estimation of the surface disinfectants market size and its contribution to the parent market Forecasts on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior The growth of the surface disinfectants market Analysis of the competitive landscape and detailed information on companies Comprehensive details of factors that will impede the growth of surface disinfectants market companies FAQS How do the major trends impact the market? How big is the North America market? market? How do the key drivers and challenges impact the market? Related Reports: The hot melt adhesives market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.28% between 2022 and 2027. The market size is forecast to increase by USD 4,396.66 million. The fluorapatite market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 3.85% between 2022 and 2027. The market size is forecast to increase by USD 151.05 million. ToC: Executive Summary Market Landscape Market Sizing Historic Market Sizes Five Forces Analysis Market Segmentation by Product Market Segmentation by Type Market Segmentation by Geography Customer Landscape Geographic Landscape Drivers, Challenges, & Trends Company Landscape Company Analysis Appendix About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contacts Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com SOURCE Technavio PENGZHOU, China, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 22, the 12th China Sichuan (Pengzhou) Vegetable Fair (hereinafter referred to as "Vegetable Fair"), a major event for the Chinese vegetable industry, is scheduled to take place inside the Tianfu Vegetable Expo Park in Pengzhou, Sichuan. Organized by Pengzhou Municipal People's Government, this year's Vegetable Fair is going to unveil various scientific innovation landmarks such as the Southern China Vegetable Seed Industry Innovation Center and Pengzhou Protected Vegetable Demonstration Greenhouse. Combined with the field exhibition of new vegetable varieties at the 9th Chengdu Seed Industry Expo (Autumn), the event aims to create a modern agriculture industrial park that integrates smart agriculture, protected agriculture and digital agriculture, and promote exchanges and cooperation on new technologies, new equipment, new products and new projects. Besides, the Vegetable Fair is also going to focus on the innovative development of the vegetable seed industry as the main theme to host the 3rd Chinese Vegetable Brand Conference and the 2nd Chinese Vegetable Industrial High-quality Development Forum, among other activities. The Vegetable Fair is a crucial window for the showcasing of development feats of the "Sichuan vegetable" industry, and an important carrier for foreign cooperation. Pengzhou hopes to expand the influence of its vegetable brands through this event, and propel it forward on its path of positioning itself as a "capital of vegetable" in Western China. Experts have noted that vegetables in Sichuan enjoy sufficient heat and light exchanges, resulting in long growth cycles, and can rely on their own immune system for protection against external invasion, leading to high survival capacity. Thus, Sichuan vegetables are known for their outstanding nutritional content, flavors and textures, which is why experts and consumers alike have aptly coined them as "vegetables of the lands" for the relatively greener and healthier qualities compared with "vegetables of greenhouses". As the permanent host of the China Sichuan (Pengzhou) Vegetable Fair, Pengzhou is a representative production region of Chinese "vegetables of the lands", as well as a Modern Agriculture Demonstration Zone of China and one of the top 10 vegetable production bases of China. With 820,000 mu of vegetable plantations (including multiple cropping) and over 200 varieties of vegetables in 13 categories, the city is vital to the vegetable supply of Sichuan and even the whole of China. "Pengzhou is going to continuously dedicate efforts in terms of scientific and technological innovation in the vegetable industry, promote breakthroughs in germplasm source and other key aspects, strengthen the construction of agricultural infrastructure facilities, improve support for agricultural science and technology, and raise the level of modern agricultural facilities and equipment. Meanwhile, steps will be taken to turn the Vegetable Fair into a major platform for open cooperation, exhibition and sales, and investment attraction for the 'agriculture, rural villages and farmers' of Chengdu, Sichuan and even the entire southwestern region of China," a relevant Pengzhou official in charge explained. SOURCE Pengzhou Municipal People's Government In Season 2 of the Muse Creative Awards, the Black-owned company emerged victorious with awards for their brand refresh, winning for Logos and Brand Identity in the Corporate Identity category. JERSEY CITY, N.J., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Great Exhale , a private membership community designed to center Black women, announced that it is a two-time winner in this year's MUSE Awards. The brand identity project that earned the company this victory was led by its Founder, Lisa Hurley , and created by Rose Reynolds, Creative Director of RoseReynolds & Co. The MUSE Awards, established by the International Awards Associate, honor creative and design professionals who achieve excellence and demonstrate exceptional creativity. The Great Exhale, a private membership community created exclusively to center Black women, has been honored with two Silver Muse Awards in collaboration with graphic design firm RoseReynolds & Co. In Season 2 of the 2023 MUSE Creative Awards, the company won in the Corporate Identity category for Logos and Brand Identity. For more information, visit www.itsthegreatexhale.com.. The Great Exhale, a private membership community created exclusively to center Black women, has been honored with two Silver Muse Awards for their brand refresh, which includes a new logo, brand mark, and visual identity. The team behind the rebrand is Lisa Hurley (center): Founder, The Great Exhale; Latrice Torres (left): Executive Director, The Great Exhale; Rose Reynolds (right): Creative Director, Rose Reynolds & Co. For more information, visit www.itsthegreatexhale.com. "More than 10,000 entries were submitted, so it is truly an honor to have been selected. In addition to being an entrepreneur, I am also a career creative with deep experience in the branding and corporate identity space. Winning two MUSE Creative Awards therefore holds special resonance." Hurley continued, "As a Black-owned company, we are required to be excellent in all ways. Being recognized by the MUSE Creative Awards speaks to our commitment to serving our community at the highest level as we continue to evolve. I am proud to be a part of a team that can collaborate and execute in a superlative way." "This season's works took the team by surprise with the level of quality they were at. The entrants certainly deserve the recognition for all the efforts they had put in," Thomas Brandt, spokesperson of IAA elaborated. He continued, "These professionals and creatives demonstrate how those who pursue excellence will always thrive, regardless of the changes their industries go through." About The Great Exhale Founded by Lisa Hurley, The Great Exhale is a private membership community built exclusively to center Black women. It is a soft space designed for Black women around the globe to collectively relax, lay their burdens downand exhale. The Great Exhale facilitates this by providing a forum for Black women to: Enjoy community with a supportive sisterhood Embrace ease and divest from overwork Liberate themselves from code switching Be as excellent or as average as they choose Experience greater psychological safety Share their stories with like-experienced people Be seen and validated by folks who understand Live a softer, happier, more fulfilling life Members benefit from community support, empowering content, authentic connections, exclusive learning journeys, and more. Find The Great Exhale Online: Website: www.itsthegreatexhale.com Community: www.thegreatexhale.com LinkedIn: The Great Exhale Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheGreatExhale Instagram: @_thegreatexhale_ Linktree: linktr.ee/thegreatexhale To learn more, follow Lisa Hurley on social media. About The Muse Awards The MUSE Creative Awards, established in 2015 by the International Awards Associate (IAA) as part of the MUSE Awards Program, celebrates and honors excellence and innovation in creative design, advertising, and digital media. IAA was founded with a mission not only to honor and promote but also to redefine benchmarks for recognizing exceptional design and media contributions. Contact: Latrice Torres Email: [email protected] SOURCE The Great Exhale NEW YORK, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The smoking accessories market is projected to increase by USD 13.51 billion and the market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 4% between 2022 and 2027, according to Technavio. The increasing number of new product launches is a major trend in the market. Many of the world's leading suppliers of smoking accessories are launching a wide range of products, including vaporizers, pipes, cigarette cases, cigarette papers, lighters, and ashtrays. Their goal is to attract a broader consumer base and strengthen their market presence through this new product launch and expansion. The growing number of such launches and expansions by manufacturers across the globe is a key driver for the growth of the smoking accessories market. For example, British American Tobacco launched its first CBD vaping product, VUSE CBD Zone, in January 2021. Similarly, in February 2023, Imperial Brands launched the first brand-new upgrade to its Pulze heating cigarette device. Hence, an increase in the number of product launches is expected to drive market growth during the forecast period.- Download a Sample Report Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Smoking Accessories Market 2023-2027 Smoking Accessories Market Insights - Vendors : 15+, Including British American Tobacco Plc, Bull Brand Ltd., Chongz Ltd., Colibri, Curved Papers Inc., DICKSON CONCEPTS INTERNATIONAL LTD, Farman Handicrafts, GRAVITRON LLC, HBI International, House of Puff, Imperial Brands Plc, Jinlin HK Smoking Accessories Co. Ltd., MOONDUST PAPER PVT. LTD., North Eye Technology Pvt. Ltd., Rocky Patel Premium Cigars LLC, Scandinavian Tobacco Group AS, Three Dots Scientific and Handicrafts, Univac Furncrafts Pvt. Ltd., Vorsicht Glas GmbH, and XL Enterprises Ltd., among others : 15+, Including British American Tobacco Plc, Bull Brand Ltd., Chongz Ltd., Colibri, Curved Papers Inc., DICKSON CONCEPTS INTERNATIONAL LTD, Farman Handicrafts, GRAVITRON LLC, HBI International, House of Puff, Imperial Brands Plc, Jinlin HK Smoking Accessories Co. Ltd., MOONDUST PAPER PVT. LTD., North Eye Technology Pvt. Ltd., Rocky Patel Premium Cigars LLC, Scandinavian Tobacco Group AS, Three Dots Scientific and Handicrafts, Univac Furncrafts Pvt. Ltd., Vorsicht Glas GmbH, and XL Enterprises Ltd., among others Coverage: Parent market analysis; key drivers, major trends, and challenges; customer and vendor landscape; vendor product insights and recent developments; key vendors; and market positioning of vendors Parent market analysis; key drivers, major trends, and challenges; customer and vendor landscape; vendor product insights and recent developments; key vendors; and market positioning of vendors Segments: type (vaporizer, waterpipes, rolling paper and cigarette tubes, lighters, and others), distribution channel (offline and online), and geography (APAC, North America , Europe , Middle East and Africa , and South America ) To understand more about the smoking accessories market, request a sample report Smoking Accessories Market Market Dynamics Key drivers The increasing number of organized retail outlets selling smoking accessories is a key factor driving market growth. The organized retail market has experienced significant growth with the emergence of store types such as supermarkets, convenience stores, hypermarkets, and specialty stores. These retail stores play an important role in the distribution of smoking accessories, making them readily available and accessible to consumers. Large, organized retailers are the main sellers of smoking accessories, and the market depends heavily on them. In addition, the growing number of organized retail stores selling smoking accessories has led to increased competition among companies. Major global retailers such as Walmart and Target are among the suppliers of smoking accessories in their stores. Hence, these factors are expected to drive market growth in the region during the forecast period. Significant Challenges Regulatory control compliance is a significant challenge restricting market growth. The smoking accessories market is closely related to tobacco consumption and smoking habits, resulting in many rules and regulations imposed by different governments around the world. These regulations govern the consumption and marketing of smoking products, which can have a significant market impact. In addition, more and more countries are banning smoking products, which can have a negative impact on the development of the market. Various countries' import and export bans on smoking products have also reduced the consumption of cigarettes and smoking accessories. Governments in countries like India and Austria have banned smoking in public places. In addition, some governments have enacted strict regulations for broadcasting smoking advertisements. Hence, these factors are expected to restrict market growth during the forecast period. Drivers, Trends & Challenges have an impact on market dynamics and can impact businesses. Find some insights from a sample report! The smoking accessories market report provides critical information and factual data, with a qualitative and quantitative study of the market based on market drivers and limitations as well as prospects. Why Buy? Add credibility to the strategy. Analyzes competitor's offerings. Get a holistic view of the market. Grow your profit margin with Technavio- Buy the Report What are the key data covered in this Smoking Accessories Market report? CAGR of the market during the forecast period Detailed information on factors that will drive the growth of the smoking accessories market between 2023 and 2027 Precise estimation of the size of the smoking accessories market and its contribution to the market with a focus on the parent market Accurate predictions about upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior Growth of the smoking accessories market across APAC, North America , Europe , Middle East and Africa , and South America , , and , and A thorough analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information about vendors Comprehensive analysis of factors that will challenge the growth of smoking accessories market vendors. Gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Related Reports The e-cigarette and vape market is projected to increase by USD 66.83 billion and the market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 30.41% between 2022 and 2027. The teeth whitening market is projected to increase by USD 1,166.84 million and the market size is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 4.96% between 2022 and 2027. Table of Contents About US Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contact Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com SOURCE Technavio TOKYO, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- MUSASHI JAPAN, a Japanese kitchen knife brand operated by TAIMATSU Corporation (Location: Taito, Tokyo; President: Allen Wang), will commence sales of its new product, the "Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife," from November 2024. Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife Blessed with abundant nature and delicious food, Tsushima in Nagasaki Prefecture is a beautiful place, but it faces a major problem of marine plastic waste. Every year, a large amount of marine waste from neighboring countries washes ashore, and Tsushima City invests approximately 280 million yen annually in its collection and disposal. Despite its efforts, however, Tsushima City is limited in the amount of waste it can collect annually, and disposing of all marine plastic waste is a challenging task. In response to this serious issue, there is hope for new initiatives to reuse marine plastic as a valuable resource. One such initiative comes from the Japanese kitchen knife brand MUSASHI JAPAN. MUSASHI JAPAN has created the "Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife" by collecting marine debris that has washed ashore on Tsushima and reusing it as knife handles. This product does not only contribute to solving the serious issue of marine waste, but also aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After two long years of development, this innovative product is now complete. The most distinctive feature of the Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife is its handle. Here, various types of marine debris collected on Tsushima Island are reused. Therefore, these knives have a special, one-of-a-kind design that takes advantage of the individual characteristics of the marine debris. In addition to the beauty of the pattern, the knives are also highly functional. The pattern has a built-in NFC chip, which can be read by a smartphone to directly access the MUSASHI JAPAN website. This allows users to gain a deeper understanding of the story behind the production of the knives and the brand's commitment to the SDGs. These knives are designed to be used in everyday life. The intention is for them to be used not only for cooking in the kitchen, but also to serve as opportunities for casual communication about the importance of the SDGs at home parties and other occasions. MUSASHI JAPAN is committed to developing sustainable products that will leave a beautiful planet for future generations, and the Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife is part of this effort to naturally incorporate the SDGs into our daily lives and to spread the importance of the SDGs. About MUSASHI JAPAN MUSASHI JAPAN is a Japanese knife brand that focuses on traditional Japanese culture and experience. Its products are highly acclaimed by culinary enthusiasts and professional chefs around the world for their quality and beauty. The brand also aims to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and actively promotes environmental initiatives. MUSASHI Japan's products range from an elaborate series of hand-carved engravings to knives with unique handles made of traditional lacquer, offering a diverse selection of products that are both functional and beautiful. The store is located in Kappabashi, Asakusa, Tokyo, and its interior represents a fusion of the traditional and the modern. Knowledgeable staff members from around the world welcome customers and provide friendly advice on everything from choosing knives to maintenance. On the second floor, there is a sake bar offering a unique drinking experience inspired by Japanese culture. The online store allows customers, both domestically and internationally, to easily purchase top-quality kitchen knives. The store places emphasis on conveying the appeal of Japanese culture to its customers. It also provides detailed descriptions of each product, along with information about the craftsmen and the background of production. The online store regularly offers special promotions and discounts that are not available in physical stores. Through these efforts, MUSASHI JAPAN will continue to pass on the wonderful Japanese culture while providing the world with the highest quality traditional craft of kitchen knives. New Product Information Product name: Tsushima Ocean kitchen knife with NFC chip Price: 14,800 yen - 29,800 yen Sales URL: https://www.musashihamono.com/pages/ocean-knife Online store: https://www.musashihamono.com/ Store Information Store name: MUSASHI JAPAN Kappabashi Knife & Sake Shop Address: THOSHICHI BUILDING, 3-8-4 Nishi Asakusa, Taito-ku, Tokyo Business hours: 10:00 - 18:00 How to get there: A 9-minute walk from Tokyo Metro "Tawaramachi Station", and a 6-minute walk from Tsukuba Express "Asakusa Station" SOURCE MUSASHI JAPAN Propelled by the increasing focus on rare diseases and the overall expansion of the biopharmaceutical industry, the demand for antibody discovery services is skyrocketing. This comprehensive report delves into the antibody discovery market forecast, company share analysis, competition intelligence, DROT analysis, market dynamics and challenges, and strategic growth initiatives. NEWARK, Del., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Market Study of Antibody Discovery Market by Phage Display from 2024 to 2034 The global antibody discovery market is anticipated to reach a valuation of US$ 7,652.2 million in 2024, driven by the increasing incidence of chronic diseases. The trend is expected to create new opportunities for the market, leading to a projected CAGR of 7.2% between 2024 and 2034 and reaching a total valuation of approximately US$ 17,142.7 million by 2034. Empower Informed Decision-Making: Preview Our Comprehensive Antibody Discovery Market Research Report Before You Buy One of the major factors contributing to the growth of the market is the collaborations between pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, and academic institutions, which have become more common, facilitating the pooling of resources and expertise for antibody discovery. Research and development efforts are increasingly focused on multifunctional antibodies that can target multiple pathways or antigens simultaneously, expanding therapeutic possibilities. Antibodies play a crucial role in diagnostics, and the expansion of diagnostic applications, such as in the detection of biomarkers and infectious agents, contributes to the growth of the antibody discovery market. Advances in understanding of immunology, particularly the role of antibodies in immune responses, drive the identification of novel targets and the development of antibodies for various therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. Single cell antibody sequencing technologies enable the characterization of individual B cells, providing insights into diverse antibody repertoires and facilitating the discovery of rare and potent antibodies. Combinatorial antibody libraries, which involve the generation of diverse antibody variants, contribute to the identification of antibodies with improved binding affinity and therapeutic properties. Increasing attention to pediatric medicine has led to the development of antibody therapies specifically designed for children, addressing the unique challenges and requirements in this patient population. The success of immunotherapies, especially in oncology, has prompted exploration into other therapeutic areas, such as autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases, broadening the application of antibody based treatments. Key Takeaways from the Market Study Global antibody discovery market was valued at US$ 7,158 .3 million by 2023-end. .3 million by 2023-end. From 2019 to 2023, the market demand expanded at a CAGR of 8.4%. The market in China is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.5% through 2034. is expected to expand at a CAGR By method, the phage display segment to account for a share of 41.0% in 2024. From 2024 to 2034, antibody discovery market is expected to flourish at a CAGR of 7.2%. By 2034, the market value of antibody discovery is expected to reach US$ 17,142.7 million . "Increased understanding of the role of antibodies in neurological disorders has spurred research and development efforts to discover antibodies for conditions like Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis" says Sabyasachi Ghosh (Associate Vice President at Future Market Insights, Inc.) Antibody Discovery Market Research Report Coverage Attribute Details Estimated Market Size in 2024 US$ 7,652.2 million Projected Market Valuation in 2034 US$ 17,142.7 million Value-based CAGR 2024 to 2034 7.2 % Forecast Period 2024 to 2034 Historical Data Available for 2019 to 2023 Market Analysis Value in US$ million Key Regions Covered North America Latin America Western Europe Eastern Europe South Asia and Pacific East Asia The Middle East & Africa Key Market Segments Covered Method Antibody Type End User Region Key Countries Profiled The United States Canada Brazil Mexico Germany France France Spain Italy Russia Poland Czech Republic Romania India Bangladesh Australia New Zealand China Japan South Korea GCC countries South Africa Israel Key Companies Profiled Danaher Corporation Eurofins Scientific Evotec Twist Bioscience Charles River Laboratories Genscript Technology Corporation Biocytogen Sartorius AG Fairjourney Biologics S.A Creative Biolabs Understand global, regional, and country-level parameters with growth opportunities, historical data (2019-2023), and forecasts (2024-2034). Buy this report today! Competitive Landscape Prominent players in the antibody discovery market are Danaher Corporation, Eurofins Scientific, Evotec, Twist Bioscience, Charles River Laboratories, Genscript Technology Corporation, Biocytogen, Sartorius AG, Fairjourney Biologics S.A, and Creative Biolabs, among others. Recent Developments In July 2022 , Bio Techne executed a substantial acquisition, incorporating Namocell into its portfolio. The strategic move not only broadens the array of products of the company, but also diversifies its capabilities into gene therapy development, cell engineering, cell line development, single cell genomics, and antibody discovery. , Bio Techne executed a substantial acquisition, incorporating Namocell into its portfolio. The strategic move not only broadens the array of products of the company, but also diversifies its capabilities into gene therapy development, cell engineering, cell line development, single cell genomics, and antibody discovery. In 2020, AbCellera announced a multi year strategic research collaboration and licensing agreement with Eli Lilly and Company for the discovery of antibodies targeting up to nine therapeutic targets selected by Lilly. Purchase this report now to get key companies with their Revenue Forecast, Volume Forecast, Company Ranking, Competitive Landscape, Growth Factors, Trends, and Pricing Analysis. More Valuable Insights Available Future Market Insights offers an unbiased analysis of the global antibody discovery market, providing historical data for 2019 to 2023 and forecast statistics from 2024 to 2034. To understand opportunities in the antibody discovery market, the market is segmented on the basis of method (phage display, hybridoma, and others), antibody type (humanized antibody, human antibody, chimeric antibody, and murine antibody), and end user (pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, research laboratory, and academic laboratory), across seven major regions (North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Asia & Pacific, East Asia, and Middle East & Africa (MEA)). The healthcare team at Future Market Insights offers expert analysis, time efficient research, and strategic recommendations with the objective to provide authentic insights and accurate results to help clients worldwide. With a repertoire of over 100+ reports and 1 Million+ data points, the team has been analyzing the market lucidly in 50+ countries for over a decade. The team provides a brief analysis on key trends including competitive landscape, profit margin, and research development efforts. About the Author: Sabyasachi Ghosh (Associate Vice President at Future Market Insights, Inc.) holds over 12 years of experience in the Healthcare, Medical Devices, and Pharmaceutical industries. His curious and analytical nature helped him shape his career as a researcher. Identifying key challenges faced by clients and devising robust, hypothesis-based solutions to empower them with strategic decision-making capabilities come naturally to him. His primary expertise lies in areas such as Market Entry and Expansion Strategy, Feasibility Studies, Competitive Intelligence, and Strategic Transformation. Holding a degree in Microbiology, Sabyasachi has authored numerous publications and has been cited in journals, including The Journal of mHealth, ITN Online, and Spinal Surgery News. Explore FMI's Extensive Coverage in the Healthcare Domain: About Future Market Insights (FMI) Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in Dubai and has delivery centers in the United Kingdom, the United States, and India. FMI's latest market research reports and industry analysis helps businesses navigate challenges and make critical decisions with confidence and clarity amidst breakneck competition. Our customized and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. A team of expert-led analysts at FMI continuously tracks emerging trends and events in a broad range of industries to ensure that our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers. Contact Us Nandini Singh Sawlani Future Market Insights Inc. Christiana Corporate, 200 Continental Drive, Suite 401, Newark, Delaware - 19713, USA T: +1-845-579-5705 For Sales Enquiries: [email protected] Website: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com LinkedIn| Twitter| Blogs | YouTube Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1197648/3531122/FMI_Logo.jpg SOURCE Future Market Insights Each year the Vantagepoint A.I. team pledges to help stock the local food pantry during the holiday season. This season they raised the bar. WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The team at Vantagepoint A.I. is committed to giving back to the local community in Florida and helping stock food shelters like the Life Church Food Pantry in Pasco County, Florida. These donations help provide much-needed assistance to those struggling to put food on the table, especially during the Thanksgiving holiday. The team at Vantagepoint A.I. believes in the importance of supporting and helping their community and are proud to be able to make a positive impact through charitable efforts like food donations. This marks the fifth year Vantagepoint A.I. has held its food drive during the holiday, reflecting their ongoing commitment to making a positive impact. "This is about 3,000 pounds of food here, and all of this is because of our team effort," said Vantagepoint A.I. President Lane Mendelsohn. "This is a local food pantry just five minutes from our office It's so important to us to know this donation will benefit our immediate community." Mendelsohn continued, "I've taken all these food items to the local pantry just in time for Thanksgiving. This is their week of 'Serve My City Thanksgiving' and they said they'll use these donations to help provide over 1,300 box meals to those who need them in time for the holiday. We're working together, making an impact, and helping those in need." Vantagepoint A.I. was the first in the world to give independent traders the power of artificial intelligence for their home computers. By helping traders trade smarter, the VantagePoint family of traders are able free themselves from trading woes and worries, create a secure future for themselves and their families, and make a lasting difference of good in their own communities. Recently celebrating over 44 years in business and transforming the world of financial trading, Vantagepoint AI now has traders in over 160 countries. About Vantagepoint A.I., LLC. Headquartered in Wesley Chapel, Fla., Vantagepoint's artificial intelligence-based software forecasts Stocks, Futures, Forex, and ETFs with proven accuracy of up to 87.4%. Using patented Neural Network processes, VantagePoint software predicts changes in market trend direction up to three days in advance, so traders know the optimal times to make their trades. Second-generation, family owned, Vantagepoint A.I. is actively committed to giving back in the Tampa Bay community including regularly donating a portion of revenue to Shriners Hospitals for Children and The Children's Cancer Center. To see artificial intelligence in action, schedule a demonstration at www.vantagepointsoftware.com/demo Media Contact: Jordan Youtz jordany@vantagepointsoftware.com SOURCE VantagePoint Software Astellas, Bayer, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Kite Pharma, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and other biopharma leaders advance digital innovation for more customer-centric engagement BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV) today announced that leaders from Astellas, Bayer, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, GSK, Kite Pharma, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and more will be among the speakers at Veeva Commercial Summit, Europe on November 2829 in Madrid, Spain. Life sciences professionals will come together to share how they are advancing digital strategies across sales, medical, and marketing to bring new treatments to patients. One of largest gatherings of life sciences leaders in Europe, Veeva Commercial Summit will host over 1,300 industry professionals across more than 100 sessions. Astellas, Bayer, and GSK will headline the opening keynote joining Chris Moore, president of Veeva Europe on stage. Veeva will showcase Veeva Vault CRM, the next generation of CRM for life sciences, with companies sharing how they are advancing field engagement to deliver on-demand information to healthcare professionals (HCPs) and fostering better connections with clinical. Forward-thinking life sciences companies will headline the event's main keynotes, including: Astellas , standardizing customer and deep key opinion leader (KOL) data globally to drive consistent field engagements and improve collaborations with the scientific community. , standardizing customer and deep key opinion leader (KOL) data globally to drive consistent field engagements and improve collaborations with the scientific community. Bayer and GSK , enhancing their commercial foundation to lead omnichannel, precision engagement. and , enhancing their commercial foundation to lead omnichannel, precision engagement. Ferring Pharmaceuticals and Novo Nordisk , connecting their content approach across marketing and medical to lead highly personalized engagement. and , connecting their content approach across marketing and medical to lead highly personalized engagement. Kite Pharma and Novartis, measuring medical impact more effectively to link medical outcomes to company success. A panel with practicing physicians, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and Veeva experts will close the event, highlighting the evolving needs of KOLs and HCPs. They will discuss how the industry is moving toward more responsive customer-centric engagement to bring the right medicines to the right patients. "Developing service-oriented HCP relationships is key to creating better patient outcomes as real-time communication increases with the growth of complex therapies," said Chris Moore, president of Veeva Europe. "We are excited to bring the industry together, creating a network of shared learnings that can spur ideation and innovation to advance life sciences." The event is open exclusively to life sciences professionals. Register and stay up to date on the agenda and program details at veeva.com/eu/Summit. Additional Information To register for Veeva Commercial Summit, visit: veeva.com/eu/Summit Connect with Veeva on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/veeva-systems About Veeva Systems Veeva is the global leader in cloud software for the life sciences industry. Committed to innovation, product excellence, and customer success, Veeva serves more than 1,000 customers, ranging from the world's largest biopharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. As a Public Benefit Corporation, Veeva is committed to balancing the interests of all stakeholders, including customers, employees, shareholders, and the industries it serves. For more information, visit veeva.com/eu. Veeva Forward-looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements regarding Veeva's products and services and the expected results or benefits from use of our products and services, including certain of our new solutions and applications that are still under development or not generally available. These statements are based on our current expectations. Actual results, availability, and any future events relating to these products and services could differ materially from those provided in this release and we have no obligation to update such statements. There are numerous risks that have the potential to negatively impact our results, including the risks and uncertainties disclosed in our filing on Form 10-Q for the period ended July 31, 2023, which you can find here (a summary of risks which may impact our business can be found on pages 38 and 39), and in our subsequent SEC filings, which you can access at sec.gov. Contact: Jeremy Whittaker Veeva Systems +49-695-095-5486 [email protected] Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1488285/Veeva_Systems_Logo.jpg More than 200 companies will be exhibiting at the American Exploration & Mining Association Annual Meeting at the Nugget Casino Resort in Sparks Dec. 6-8, and AEMA expects a big turnout for the event that begins with short courses Dec. 3. Its going to be one of the better years since COVID and the best in the last 10 years, said Michael Heywood, AEMAs membership and exhibitor coordinator, who reported that while pre-registration is closed people can still register at the door. He said that 1,000 plus people pre-registered for the event, and there could easily be 700 to 800 more registering at the door. In fact, he was registering people at the hotel on Nov. 21. Online registration has been cut off, however. Our show is exploration oriented, focused on exploration and development and far-end reclamation, Heywood said. Along with the exhibits, the annual meeting features technical sessions that begin at 8 a.m. on Dec. 6 and continue into the morning of Dec. 8, as well a Wednesday lunch featuring keynote speaker Dr. Douglas Wicks and a Thursday lunch with Tim Crowley as guest speaker. Wicks is program director for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy for the U.S. Department of Energy, and his program areas are on transformative approaches for critical mineral recovery from mining or waste-to-energy residues. He is currently developing programs around the stimulation of geological hydrogen as a new primary energy source, according to AEMA information on Wicks, which also states that he has a distinguished career in industry, academia, and government. Crowley, who was director of the Nevada Mining Association before starting his own public relations firm, is vice president of government affairs and community relations for Lithium Americas, which is developing the Thacker Pass lithium mine near the Nevada-Oregon border. Lithium Nevada officials said in mid-October that the $2.3 billion project remains on schedule to begin production in late 2026, after receiving court approval in the long-continuing legal battles over the project. 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, Crowley said in an email to The Associated Press in mid-October. The technical sessions will be on a wide variety of topics, including the mining workforce, artificial intelligence use in mining, sustainable mining, mining and exploration permitting, state and province reports, accessing capital for projects, and building relationships with native nations and tribes. Were really getting involved in indigenous affairs. They are becoming increasingly relevant, Heywood said. Prior to the technical sessions and opening of the exhibit hall, the short educational courses begin on Dec. 3. The events beginning Dec. 6 will also include the annual Core Shack, a welcoming reception in the exhibit hall on the first exhibit day and a happy hour reception on the second day. There also is a Native Americans in Mining Reception on Dec. 7. Heywood said there are more than 240 exhibit spaces, but some companies took more than one space, and all the spaces were sold out in September. Spokane-based American Exploration & Mining Association has been holding its annual meeting mostly in Sparks in recent years because of all the mining and exploration in Nevada, but in the past has alternated between Sparks and Spokane. The association is a national trade organization representing the hardrock mining industry, and the annual meeting is in its 129th year. ELKO Police are asking the community for help as they search for a suspect in a stabbing which took place along South Fifth Street early Tuesday morning. Elko police officers were dispatched to the Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital shortly after midnight Nov. 21 on a report of a man who had been stabbed about 5 to 7 times, according to a press release. The victim was uncooperative with emergency room staff and with officers. Police said they were able to locate a potential crime scene on the 500 block of South Fifth Street, collecting bloody articles of clothing and other evidence related to the incident. The investigation into the altercation is continuing, police said. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Elko Police Department at 775-777-7310 or call the non-emergency dispatch at 775-777-7300. If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here An art performance at the event (Photo: VOV) Speaking at the event, Ms. Sivanheuang Phengkhammay, principal of the school, said that each teacher in the school not only teaches students but also joins in promoting the Vietnamese culture and the great solidarity and friendship between Vietnam and Laos. On this occasion, the Vietnamese Association in Vientiane gave 51 gifts worth 18,360 USD totally to teachers. At the event, teachers and students joined a musical performance to express their best wishes to the school's teachers. The school, formerly known as Nguyen Du I and Nguyen Du II primary schools, is a place for children of overseas Vietnamese in Vientiane to study the Lao national curriculum along with the Vietnamese language. It now has 30 classes with over 1,000 students from preschool to high school level, and 66 officials and teachers. The Vietnamese students account for about 45%./. Gorakhpur, Nov 22 : A Class 10 student was allegedly gang-raped while returning after attending Chhath Puja with her family in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur district, the police said. Two people have been arrested in the case. Police identified the accused as Deepak and Upendra. According to police, the accused kidnapped the survivor while she was returning from Chhath Puja, took her to a deserted house and gang-raped her. The incident came to the fore after the survivor's 12-year-old brother found her missing and started searching for her. The boy reached the crime spot where the accused thrashed him. When he raised an alarm, few locals came to his rescue but by then both accused had escaped, said police. Superintendent of Police (North), Arun Kumar, said, "Both the accused have now been arrested." Ramallah, Nov 22 : At least 3,000 Palestinians have been arrested by the Israeli forces in the West Bank since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict on October 7, according to Palestinian statistics. In the past few hours, at least 40 Palestinians in the West Bank were detained by the Israeli army, according to a joint statement by the Palestinian Authority Commission for Prisoners' Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club released on Tuesday. The Israeli forces conducted the arrests in various places across the West Bank, including Jenin, Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Jericho, while also raiding a number of residential homes, said the statement. It added that among those arrested, some were apprehended at homes, some detained at military checkpoints, some coerced to surrender, and some taken hostage, Xinhua news agency reported. The statement noted that the Israeli army's systematic arrest operations were intensified significantly in the area after October 7, when Israel launched weeks-long attacks on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Hamas surprise attack on southern Israel on the same day. New Delhi, Nov 22 : With just days away for the crucial Assembly elections in both the states, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge will address two public meetings in Telangana, while party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will hold five rallies in Rajasthan on Wednesday. According to Congress leaders, Kharge will be in Telangana's Alampur and Nalgonda Assembly constituencies on Wednesday. He will first address a public meeting at 1.30 p.m. in Leeja Town area of Alampur and then the second at 4.30 p.m. in Marriguda Ground, Nalgonda. Polling for Telangana's 119-seat Assembly is scheduled to take place on November 30. Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi will address his first rally at 12 noon at Rajakhera in Dholpur district, with another one scheduled at 1.30 p.m. in Nadbai, Bharatpur; and the last one at 3 p.m. in Gangapur, Gangapur City district. His sister and party's general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will address two public meetings in Churi and Shahpura at 12.30 p.m. and 2.30 p.m., respectively. Polling for the 200-seat Assembly in Rajasthan will be held on Saturday. Counting of votes will take place on December 3. The Congress is eyeing a second consecutive term in the desert state which has a tradition of alternate party governments for the last three decades. --IANS aks/ksk Seoul, Nov 22 : North Korea's claimed success in placing its first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit on its third attempt has raised the possibility it could have received technological assistance from Russiaa media report said on Wednesday. North Korea said a new type of Chollima-1 space rocket successfully put the Malligyong-1 satellite into orbit on Tuesday night, just months after two botched attempts in May and August, respectively, Yonhap News Agency reported. The latest launch came amid growing speculation that Russia might have provided the North with military technology in return for the North's supply of military equipment and munitions for use in Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine. South Korea earlier retrieved wreckage from the first attempt, which the North claimed to have experienced an "abnormal" startup of the second-stage engine, and concluded it had no military use as a reconnaissance satellite. Pyongyang blamed booster malfunctions at the third-stage level on its second attempt. But in just three months, North Korea came back declaring the successful launch of its first spy satellite and vowed to launch several more "in a short span of time" to secure its reconnaissance capabilities against South Korea. South Korean military officials and intelligence said that Russia is likely to have provided technical support to the North. In September, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un traveled to Russia and held a rare summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. When asked whether Russia would help the North build the satellites, Putin told reporters that was the reason "why we came here". Defence Minister Shin Won-sik said during Sunday's media interview that North Korea is believed to have overcome its engine problems in its satellite with Russia's assistance. Earlier this week, a military official told reporters an 80-tonne liquid fuel engine was transferred from Russia to the North even before the September summit, and said evidence suggests that Russian engineers entered the North after the summit. Pending a detailed analysis of the launch, South Korea and the US did not confirm whether it was a success. Observers say a successful launch could significantly enhance the North's monitoring of the South. Canberra, Nov 22 : More than 20 people have been arrested following a pro-Palestinian protest overnight in a suburb of Sydney, Australian police said on Wednesday. Approximately 400 people carried out "unauthorised protest activity" at Port Botany Tuesday night and blocked vehicle movement on Foreshore Road, Xinhua news agency quoted the New South Wales Police Force said in a statement. "After a number of people continued to refuse police direction, 23 people were arrested before all people left the roadway," the statement said. The protest, organised by the Palestine Justice Movement Sydney, was directed at Israeli shipping company ZIM, which has offered its support to the Israeli government in the Gaza conflict and had a ship at the port on Tuesday, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Seoul, Nov 22 : South Korea suspended part of a 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement Wednesday in response to Pyongyang's latest launch of a military spy satellite. Under the proposal approved in an extraordinary Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, Seoul will restore reconnaissance and surveillance activities around the inter-Korean border, reports Yonhap News Agency. President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is on a state visit to Britain, will electronically approve the motion later in the day. The Comprehensive Military Agreement, signed on September 19, 2018, under the previous liberal administration of President Moon Jae-in, calls for halting all hostile military activity between the Koreas, setting up maritime buffer zones and turning the DMZ into a peace zone, among other things. The move came after North Korea claimed success in its third attempt to place a spy satellite into orbit. The launch took place late Tuesday from a launch site in Tongchang-ri on North Korea's northwest coast. "North Korea is clearly demonstrating that it has no will to abide by the Sept. 19 Military Agreement designed to reduce military tension on the Korean Peninsula and to build trust," Han said during the meeting. The effectiveness of Article 1, Clause 3 of the agreement will be suspended, allowing Seoul to immediately restore reconnaissance and surveillance operations against North Korea in the area around the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) separating the two Koreas, also known as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The section outlines no-fly zones that were established around the MDL in November 2018. "Our military's ability to identify threatening targets and its response posture will be greatly enhanced," Han said, adding that such a measure is vital for national security. The Defence Ministry said the partial suspension will take effect at 3 p.m. "Our military will resume aerial surveillance and reconnaissance operations to detect signs of North Korea's provocations near the MDL," Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy Heo Tae-keun said during a press briefing. OpenAI board will go after my shares if I go off: Sacked CEO Sam Altman. Image Source: IANS News San Francisco, Nov 22 : Signalling another twist in the Sam Altman-OpenAI saga, the company's board of directors is reportedly in talks with Altman to return as soon as this week. According to reports, discussions are underway between Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, a current member of the OpenAI board and Altman, and possibly other board members as well. The board and Altman are discussing a number of possible scenarios that could play out like Altman returning as a director on a transitional board, according to Bloomberg. Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor could also serve as a director on a new board. Ace investors like Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital are also aggressively pushing for Altman's return to OpenAI. Altman is said to have demanded "significant" managerial and governance changes at OpenAI as a condition for his return. OpenAI VP of global affairs, Anna Makanju, sent a memo to employees, indicating that OpenAI's management had been in "intense discussions" with the board, Altman and interim CEO Emmett Shear. Meanwhile, Microsoft on Tuesday said it will match OpenAI's compensation to employees who want to join Altman's new advanced AI research lab at Satya Nadella-run tech giant. Nadella on Monday announced that Altman and OpenAI co-founder and former president Greg Brockman will join the company to run its advanced AI research team. However, he said that it's still possible that Altman could return to OpenAI in some capacity. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, holds the First China-Uzbekistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue with Uzbekistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bakhtiyor Saidov, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 21, 2023. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao) BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held the First China-Uzbekistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue with Uzbekistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bakhtiyor Saidov on Tuesday in Beijing. The two sides had comprehensive and in-depth communication and reached broad consensus on implementing the important consensus reached by the two heads of state and strengthening the synergy of development strategies, and jointly announced the establishment of a strategic dialogue mechanism between the two countries' foreign ministers. Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, said that China and Uzbekistan are friendly neighbors with a shared future. No matter how the international situation changes, the bilateral relations have maintained sound and steady development and are full of vitality. The close interaction between the leaders of the two countries shows the high level and particularity of China-Uzbekistan relations, and also demonstrates the distinct features of the bilateral relations represented by mutual respect, good-neighborliness, solidarity and mutual benefit, Wang said. China is ready to work with Uzbekistan to make good use of the new platform of China-Uzbekistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue, advance all-round mutually beneficial cooperation and speed up the building of a China-Uzbekistan community of shared future, Wang said. Wang called on the two sides to consolidate the belief of solidarity and mutual trust, promote common development, cultivate the public opinion for everlasting friendship, and safeguard peace and stability. Saidov said that Uzbekistan cherishes the solid mutual trust between the two heads of state and the friendship between China and Uzbekistan and supports the global initiatives proposed by China, and will continue to abide by the one-China principle, firmly support each other and deepen strategic mutual trust with China. Uzbekistan expects to comprehensively deepen all-round cooperation with China and push the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level, said Saidov. The two sides also agreed to further strengthen coordination within multilateral frameworks such as the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, promote the building of China-Central Asia mechanisms, and safeguard regional peace, development, security and stability. The two sides also exchanged views on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, holds the First China-Uzbekistan Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue with Uzbekistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Bakhtiyor Saidov, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 21, 2023. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao) Editor: WXL San Francisco, Nov 22 : Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao (also known as CZ) on Wednesday announced that he will step down as the CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, after pleading guilty to federal charges and agreeing to pay $4.3 billion in fines. Binance Holdings Limited (Binance), the entity that operates the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.com, pleaded guilty and has agreed to pay over $4 billion to resolve the US Justice Department's investigation into violations. "Zhao, a Canadian national, also pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) programme, in violation of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and has resigned as CEO of Binance," the Justice Department said in a statement late on Tuesday. Richard Teng, Binance's former global head of regional markets, will be the exchange's new CEO, Zhao said in a post on X. "Binance is no longer a baby. It is time for me to let it walk and run. I know Binance will continue to grow and excel with the deep bench it has," Zhao added. "As a shareholder and former CEO with historical knowledge of our company, I will remain available to the team to consult as needed, consistent with the framework set out in our U.S. agency resolutions," he said. According to court documents, Binance admitted to prioritising growth and profits over compliance with US law. Binance was launched in 2017 and focused on attracting high-volume customers. Binance failed to implement controls and procedures to prevent money laundering and also did not implement controls that would have prevented US customers from conducting transactions with customers in sanctioned jurisdictions. "Binance became the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history," said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. "The message here should be clear: using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal," Garland added. Zhao said in his post on X that he will now do some passive investing, being a minority token/shareholder in startups in areas of blockchain/Web3/DeFi, AI and biotech. "I can't see myself being a CEO driving a startup again. I am content being a one-shot (lucky) entrepreneur," he posted. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Amidst growing concerns, Delhi's air quality, which has taken a nosedive, remains into the 'very poor' category. On Wednesday, the overall air quality in Delhi remained in the 'very poor' category at 9 a.m. The AQI scale categorises levels from 0 to 500, with Anand Vihar breaching the 'severe' threshold. At the Anand Vihar area, PM2.5 levels remained into the 'severe' category standing at 429 and PM10 reached 443, and CO plummeted to 105, classified as 'moderate', according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The Air Quality Index (AQI) between zero and 50 is considered 'good'; 51 and 100 'satisfactory'; 101 and 200 'moderate'; 201 and 300 'poor'; 301 and 400 'very poor'; and 401 and 500 'severe'. The Bawana station recorded alarming PM2.5 at 500 and PM10 at 452, both in the 'severe' category, although CO levels were marked 'satisfactory' at 86. The Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport T3 witnessed PM2.5 levels at 429 and PM10 at 346, both falling under the 'severe' and 'very poor' category, respectively. The CO level was recorded at 95, maintaining a 'satisfactory' rating. ITO's monitoring station reported PM2.5 at 411, categorised as 'severe,' while PM10 touched 340, labeled 'very poor.' CO levels were 'moderate' at 104, with NO2 at 119, falling into the same category. At the New Moti Bag station, the air quality was 'severe,' with PM2.5 at 467. Okhla Phase-II recorded severe PM2.5 at 429 and PM10 at 402. Mrunal Thakur says the difficult time is but the most wonderful phase. Image Source: IANS News Mumbai, Nov 22 : Actress Mrunal Thakur has been multitasking between the sets of her upcoming projects, completing the final touches to 'Hi Nanna' and also completing the shoot for 'Family Star' with Vijay Devrakonda. Currently, she is engrossed in the shooting of a film alongside Vijay Devrakonda in Hyderabad and Delhi. Simultaneously, Mrunal has recently begun promotions for the highly anticipated 'Hi Nanna' starring superstar Nani. Mrunal has not taken a single day off in the past ten months, showcasing an unparalleled dedication to her craft. Whatever time she gets off from her shoots in Hyderabad, she flies to Mumbai to complete her commitments to her projects in Hindi cinema, her commitments for her brand work and also promotions of her other films. The actress has been shuttling between Hyderabad and Mumbai, seamlessly transitioning from film promotions in the bustling city of Mumbai to the film sets in the vibrant film hub of Hyderabad. "It's been an incredible journey. Juggling between projects and promotions has been challenging, but the love and response from the audience make it all worthwhile," said Mrunal. She added: "Sita Ramam catapulted work in south and work here in Hindi film has been happening non stop. This combined with existing commitments of brands, meetings." "I literally fly to Mumbai sometimes only for 4-5 hours and take off again. I haven't taken a single day off. But I'm not complaining. There are exciting things coming up and I want put in this effort." Visakhapatnam, Nov 22 : Seven school children were injured when an auto-rickshaw in which they were travelling collided with a truck in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday. The incident, which occurred at Sangam Sarat Theatre crossroads, was captured on CCTV cameras. The speeding auto-rickshaw apparently lost control, and rammed into the truck. The three-wheeler overturned, throwing the children onto the road. Passersby rushed to the rescue of the injured and shifted them to hospital where the condition of two is stated to be critical. The truck stopped about 100 meters away from the spot. The locals caught the driver and cleaner and handed them over to police. However, after analyzing the CCTV footage, police said the collision occurred due to negligence by the auto-rickshaw driver. San Francisco, Nov 22 : Google-owned YouTube has said that viewers with ad-blockers installed might experience "suboptimal viewing", no matter what browser they are using. This statement comes when a number of users on Reddit and other online forums complained they are experiencing a delay of five seconds when they try to load a video on Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge. But, the five-second delay no longer appears when loading a video on Chrome, reports Android Authority. YouTube, however, clarified that the platform's ad blocker detection doesn't target specific browsers, and delays have been reported across all browsers. Users with ad blockers will continue to have a substandard viewing experience. The company recommends trying YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience or allowing ads. "To support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favourite content on YouTube, weave launched an effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience," a YouTube spokesperson was quoted as saying. "Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using," it added. The company started cracking down on ad blockers earlier this year, but it went all out earlier this month when it blocked people from watching videos unless they disable their add-ons, extensions, and apps. Meanwhile, YouTube's effort to crack down on users with ad blockers has resulted in a record number of uninstalls, with multiple ad-blocking companies reporting that thousands of people are uninstalling their products after the video-sharing platform began showing warnings to people trying to watch videos on its website while using ad blockers. New Delhi, Nov 22 : CG Power and Industrial Solutions hit the upper circuit of 20 per cent on Wednesday after it announced a foray into semiconductor assembly at a cost of $791 million. CG Power stocks is up 19.99 per cent on BSE at 469. The companyas market cap is Rs 71,629 crore. CG Power has filed an application with the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) seeking approval to set up an Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) facility and the grant of subsidy for the said project under the Modified scheme for setting up of Compound Semiconductors / Silicon Photonics / Sensors Fab/ Discrete Semiconductors Fab and Semiconductor Assembly, Testing, Marking and Packaging (ATMP)/ Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) facilities in India. It may be further noted that, subject to the project and the subsidy being approved, the company proposes to implement the same as a Joint Venture in partnership with technology providers/anchor customers, which are under discussion. The estimated investment on the project over a period of five years is $791 million and the same is expected to be funded by a combination of subsidy, JV Partners equity contribution and debt, as required, CG Power said. (Sanjeev Sharma can be reached at Sanjeev.s@ians.in) Manila, Nov 22 : The Philippines' Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Wednesday confirmed that 17 Filipino seafarers were among the crew members of a cargo vessel taken hostage by Yemen's Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. In a television interview, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega expressed alarm over the ongoing hostage crisis involving the Filipinos and other nationalities working on the hijacked ship, reports Xinhua news agency. "We are alarmed. It is not the first time Filipino seafarers were held hostage," de Vega said. DFA Spokesperson Teresita Daza said the Philippine government was working for the release of the Filipino hostages. "We have been making diplomatic representations with governments," she said in a brief statement. Daza added that "various government agencies are meeting and working to get back our seafarers back safely." The Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Sunday confirmed that they have hijacked an "Israeli cargo ship" in the Red Sea. Local media reported that a total of 25 people were on board, including those from Bulgaria, Ukraine, the Philippines, Mexico and Romania. Kochi, Nov 22 : Kerala Leader of Opposition (LoP) V.D Satheesan on Wednesday again launched a broadside against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for giving a clean chit to CPI(M) workers who allegedly attacked Congress workers waving blacks flags at the CM and the cabinet members on November 20, when their month-long outreach yatra reached Kannur. Seeking an apology from the CM, the Congress leader demanded his resignation calling his behaviour "unbecoming of a Chief Minister". Satheesan took on CM Vijayan for the violent incident that took place in Kannur where the leaders reached as part of the state wide yatra "Nava Kerala Sadas (New Kerala Assembly)", that was kicked off from Manjeswaram in Kasargod on November 18. "While Vijayan who is also the Home Minister said the party workers were trying to prevent the Youth Congress workers waving black flags from being hit by the bus, in the FIR registered against his party workers they have been charged under murder charges. We all saw how brutally the CPI(M) workers were attacking our activists with sticks, iron rods and flower pots," said Satheesan. "But Vijayan says they were trying to save the lives of our workers and applauded his party workers and asked them to repeat the same in future also. We have decided to seek legal recourse for Vijayan's statement as it amounts to creating violence," said Satheesan. After the TV channels showed the attack unleashed by the CPI(M) workers, on Wednesday State Ministers like M. B. Rajesh and P. Rajeeve sought to downplay Vijayan's remarks termed it as one "filled with dry humour. " Vijayan is on a state-wide trip, which will pass through all 140 Assembly constituencies, and culminate on December 24 in the state capital. While the Chief Minister Vijayan has touted this trip as the beginning for building a new Kerala, the Opposition has termed it as "extravagance and PR exercise" ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. Meanwhile, the Congress-led UDF has now decided to launch their own yatra across the state to highlight the misgovernance of the Vijayan government which has now completed half its tenure of his second term. On Wednesday, a controversy surfaced when a top educational authority in Malappuram district directed school headmasters of state-run schools in the district to see that school students are taken to take part in the public meeting of Vijayan. With the media taking it up in a big way, a rejoinder came stating that there are provisions to use the school bus to take students who are members of science clubs in schools. Incidentally, this fresh direction came after the Kerala High Court on Tuesday stayed a government order which allowed the use of school buses of government educational institutions to transport people to the venue of the meeting led by Vijayan. Meanwhile, on the fifth day of the trip, Vijayan chaired a cabinet meeting in Kannur, the first since the state wide bus trip started. New Delhi, Nov 22 : The Legal Rights Protection Forum, a legal activist group, has written to the Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights on November 6, urging the commission to request the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and other relevant intelligence agencies to register a case and take further action against the Tuticorin Diocesan Association, a Tamil Nadu-based non-governmental organisation. It also asked the national commission to constitute a multi-disciplinary team of child welfare experts, chartered accountants and law enforcement officials and conduct a detailed investigation of the activities of the NGO and decide whether it has right to function as a registered society. The activist group alleged that the Tuticorin Diocesan Association has continued to receive funds from foreign players despite the suspension and cancellation of its FCRA registration on February 25, 2015, by the then Union Law Minister, Kiren Rijiju because of adverse reports received from the intelligence agencies. However, data from the Ministry of Home Affairs, showed that the NGO continued to receive Rs 4,45,07,214 into its Bank of Baroda account at Tuticorin branch, which is designated to receive foreign funds, from 2015-16 onwards. Hence, the call to request the ED and other relevant law enforcement agencies to register a case in this matter of economic offense. The NGO claims that it is running and maintaining Homes for destitute children, specialised adoption agencies, homes for mentally retarded boys and rescue homes for boys and girls. It also mentions that it is running and maintaining educational institutions and religious places. At the time of suspension/cancellation of the FCRA registration of The Tuticorin Diocesan Association, the major reason provided by the Indian government was that the "NGOs were using foreign funds for anti-national activities". Detailed analysis of the flow of funds revealed that 'Child Welfare' was only an excuse to carry out anti-national activities which have a serious bearing on the territorial integrity, economic prosperity and political stability of the nation. The Legal Rights Protection Forum further added that while receipt of funds under the FCRA route even after cancellation of the FCRA licence of the NGO, was a serious violation, but the large-scale diversion of the funds raises even more serious questions and merits a deeper investigation by concerned authorities. Similarly, the legal activist group has also made serious violations charges against a Christian NGO 'Jesus Redeems' based in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu. The NGO, run by Mohan C Lazarus, is known for disturbing communal harmony by making anti-Hindu statements, against Hindu temples and Hindu Gods at mass religious gathering and has many FIRs registered against him at various police stations of Tamil Nadu. A key allegation is that the NGO was flouting the rules of the recent amended FCRA. Under the new rules, the chief functionary of the recipient Indian organisation should not be a part of the donor organisation, but Lazarus continues to be Chief Executive Officer of a US registered Public Charity organisation named 'Jesus Redeems Ministries Inc.' which is a significant foreign contributor to "Jesus Redeems." Hence, the Legal Rights Protection Forum had been demanding the suspension and cancellation of its FCRA license. Similarly, on April 5, 2023, the Ministry of Home Affairs informed the Rajya Sabha that it was examining the complaints against an NGO -- The Other Media -- for misusing foreign funds to organise protests and demonstration around Vedanta Sterlite Copper plant in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu. The Minister of State for Home Affairs, Nityanand Rai said in a written reply that it had "received some representation and complaints alleging violations of the FCRA for the New Delhi-based NGO." The minister added that in case incidence of violations of provisions of the FCRA, are found, the certificate of FCRA registration of the association may be cancelled under Section 14 of the Act. Earlier three NGOs -- the Tuticorin Diocesan Association, Tuticorin, the East Coast Research and Development Trust, Thoothukudi and Greenpeace India Society, Chennai -- had their FCRA registration cancelled and their bank accounts frozen, after detailed investigation against them. The Greenpeace International was put under the watch list and the case of the Centre for Promotion of Social Concerns, Madurai, was referred to the Central Bureau of Investigation, according to a release by the Press Information Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs on March 4, 2015. In January 2022, the Central Bureau of Investigation registered a case against the programming unit of the Centre for promotion of Social Concerns, People's Watch, headed by Henri Tiphagne. Incidentally, all these organisations accused of violating FCRA norms have been actively involved in anti-development activism across South India and were also involved in the protests against Kudankulam Nuclear Plant and Sterlite Copper in Tamil Nadu. Los Angeles, Nov 22 : Oscar-winner Susan Sarandon has been dropped by a top Hollywood agency after saying frightened Jews are "getting a taste of how it feels to be Muslim in America." The 77-year-old actress has spent the past few weeks raging against Israel and is now under fire for her latest outburst in the wake of the October 7 attack by Hamas, reports pagesix.com. Sources say that several staffers at the agency were extremely hurt by Sarandon's comments. A spokesperson said the agency is no longer representing Sarandon. Sarandon, the star of hit movies including 'Thelma & Louise', won her Oscar for 'Dead Man Walking', and had been a client of the agency since 2014. Sarandon has appeared in two movies this year, DC spin-off 'Blue Beetle', which was a box-office flop, and rom-com 'Maybe I Do', with fellow veterans Diane Keaton, Richard Gere and William H. Macy, and has three other films in post-production. She enraged people with her comments at a pro-Palestinian protest in NYC last week. "There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country," she said. Aviva Klompas, the former director of speechwriting at the Israeli Mission to the United Nations, wrote: "When Susan Sarandon said that Jews 'are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country' she was saying that American Jews have it coming that we don't deserve to live free from harassment and assault." This left not just Jews fuming, but others including Asra Nomani, a Muslim Indian American who responded to Sarandon on X, with a list of the freedoms she and her parents enjoy in the US. Sharing a photo of herself with her parents, Nomani wrote: "Hi there Susan Sarandon, this is my mom, my dad and me on the rail trail in Morgantown, West by God Virginia. Let me tell you what it means to be Muslim in America." "My dad didn't have to become a second-class indentured servant to one of the many tyrants of Muslim countries that use immigrants from India, like my family, as essential slavesmy dad got a job as an assistant professor of nutrition." "He got rejected first for tenure but being Muslim in America meant he got a right like everybody got his right to appeal and guess what? He won and he became a full professor." "My mom? Being Muslim in America meant she got to live FREE with the wind in her hair, like Masih Alinejad fights for women in the Muslim nation of Iran to be able to enjoy." Nomani also said she was able to give birth safely and freely to a baby out of wedlock in America something that would have led to her death in some Muslim countries. "This is a 'taste' of life for a Muslim family in America. Please don't minimise the experience of Jewish Americans by sanitising the hell that it is for Muslims living in Muslim countries and vilifying America for the life and freedoms she offers Muslims like my family," she added. "Go, live like a Muslim woman in a Muslim country. You will come back to America and kiss the land beneath your feet," she said. Sarandon has already left people appalled by reposting a tweet from a far-right account claiming that an Israeli helicopter had murdered Israeli citizens on October 7. She has also come under fire online for retweeting posts on X celebrating Pink Floyd's outspoken frontman Roger Waters, 80, who has spent years being accused of anti-Semitism. She highlighted an appearance by Roger at an event in Uruguay, and reposted a tweet saying: "Despite attempts by the Israeli lobby to cancel the event, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd took the stage in Uruguay, donning a Kufiyyah and advocating for an end to the Israeli genocide in Gaza." Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, holds talks with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 21, 2023. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator Zhao Leji held talks with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin on Tuesday in Beijing, calling for enhanced exchanges between the legislative bodies of the two countries. Zhao, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, said that under the strategic guidance of the two countries' top leaders, the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era has maintained the correct progressive direction. Political mutual trust has been continuously consolidated, practical cooperation has been carried out vigorously and people-to-people and sub-national exchanges have been continuously deepened, setting an example of new model of major-country relations. Zhao said that no matter how the international situation changes, China and Russia should work together to consolidate and develop comprehensive strategic coordination, bring constant benefits to the two peoples, and safeguard international fairness and justice. The two sides should continue to promote synergy between Belt and Road cooperation and the Eurasian Economic Union, achieve more practical cooperation outcomes, and promote cooperation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS and other mechanisms, he said. Zhao said the China-Russia committee for parliamentary cooperation is a solid and effective platform for enhancing political mutual trust, promoting practical cooperation and carrying forward the friendship between the two peoples. The NPC of China is willing to work with the Russian Federation Council to implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, strengthen exchanges further, and promote the development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era, Zhao said. "We are willing to make use of exchange mechanisms, special committees, bilateral friendship groups and other platforms to carry out in-depth exchanges and cooperation at various levels and in various fields, and strengthen the exchange of foreign-related legislative experience," he added. Volodin said that Russia firmly upholds the one-China principle, and that all parties and groups of the Russian State Duma support the continuous development of friendly relations with China. The Russian State Duma is willing to make joint efforts with the NPC of China to give play to the positive role of the Russia-China committee for parliamentary cooperation, provide a legal guarantee for the promotion of practical bilateral cooperation, and contribute to the development of Russia-China relations, Volodin said. Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, holds talks with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 21, 2023. (Xinhua/Pang Xinglei) Editor: WXL Former UP DGP launches new political party in Bundelkhand. Image Source: IANS News Lucknow, Nov 22 : Former Director General of Police (DGP) of Uttar Pradesh, Sulkhan Singh, has launched a new party - the Bundelkhand Loktantrik Party (BLP). Singh, who launched the party on Tuesday, expressed the party's commitment to spearhead a movement advocating for the creation of a separate Bundelkhand state. This envisioned state would amalgamate seven districts in Uttar Pradesh -- Banda, Chitrakoot, Hamirpur, Mahoba, Jalaun, Jhansi, and Lalitpur -- with eight districts in Madhya Pradesh -- Damoh, Panna, Chattarpur, Datia, Sagar, Tikamgarh, Niwadi, and Ashok Nagar. Singh announced the BLP's intention to field candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, targeting the eight seats in the Bundelkhand region. Four of these seats are situated in Uttar Pradesh, while the remaining four are in Madhya Pradesh. Hailing from Banda district, Singh accused successive governments of neglecting the Bundelkhand region, asserting that its rich mineral resources, cultural heritage, and tourist attractions have been exploited without promoting development. He said that the distinct needs of Bundelkhand necessitate the establishment of a separate state, labelling it as the only solution to the government's apathy. The former DGP underscored the region's lack of political representation at both the Central and state levels, coupled with insufficient investment, as key contributors to its backwardness. He slammed national political parties for their failure to prioritise Bundelkhand's development, highlighting that the area's concerns are not on their agenda. The Bundelkhand region grapples with a water crisis, widespread unemployment, and significant migration, he said. The BLP, he affirmed, is poised to address these pressing issues and actively work towards the comprehensive development of the region. Seoul, Nov 22 : Hyundai Motor Group's autonomous vehicle joint venture in the US plans to manufacture its self-driving electric vehicles in the group's newly launched innovation hub in Singapore, the company said on Wednesday. Motional, the joint venture established between Hyundai and U.S. mobility startup Aptiv in 2020, will produce its all-electric Ioniq 5 robotaxi units at the Hyundai Motor Group Innovation Center Singapore. According to Hyundai, the Ioniq 5 robotaxis will be deployed as part of Motional's commercial services in the U.S. starting in 2024, reports Yonhap news agency. Motional and Hyundai also revealed that the Ioniq 5 robotaxi is one of the first Society of Automotive Engineers Level 4 autonomous vehicles to be certified under the U.S. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. "The certification is a testament to the vehicle's incredibly thorough development and testing program, its safety and reliability, and the sophistication of the autonomous technology," Karl Iagnemma, Motional president and CEO, said. Patna, Nov 22 : A day after a speeding car of Madhepura district magistrate Vijay Prakash Meena mowed down four persons in Phulparas block in Madhubani district, the whereabouts of Meena is undisclosed now. The accident took place at Purwari Tola village under Phulparas police station in the district. The victims were marking NH 57 with a white line when Meena's car mowed them down. Sources say that Meena was present in the car at a time of accident. However, the district administration of Madhepura claimed that he was in the district when the accident happened. As per the eyewitnesses, three persons, including two security guards, fled the scene after the accident with the help of bikers. The district administration of Madhubani has not given the details of the persons boarded inside the vehicle. Only a driver who was trying to flee from the spot, was overpowered by the passersby and handed over to the police. Vijay Prakash Meena is a 2016 batch IAS officer and was deployed as DM of Madhepura on April 11, 2023. The DPRO of Madhepura claimed DM Vijay Prakash Meena was in the district and his vehicle was having technical errors. The driver went with the vehicle to rectify errors. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Highlighting its unwavering dedication to safeguarding passenger interests, the aviation watchdog, the DGCA has imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Air India for non-compliance with passenger-centric regulations. The DGCA said that it carried out inspections at Delhi, Kochi and Bangalore Airports of Scheduled Domestic Operators in the months of May and September to ascertain the discharge of their obligations related to facilities/compensation provided to the passengers as per provisions laid down in regulations. "During the inspections of the airlines, it was observed that Air India was not complying with the provisions of the relevant Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR). Accordingly, a show cause notice was issued to Air India on November 3 seeking their response for non-compliance to the provisions of the relevant regulations," said a senior DGCA official. "Based on the reply submitted by Air India, it was found that it has not complied with the provisions of the CAR, inter-alia, not providing hotel accommodation for passengers affected by delayed flights, non training of some of their ground personnel as per the stipulations laid down in the CAR and non-payment of compensation to international business class passengers who were made to travel on unserviceable seats," said the official. "Accordingly, the DGCA has imposed a financial penalty of Rs.10 lakh on Air India for non- compliance of regulations," the official added. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Undoubtedly, one of the most wonderful days in anyone's life is getting married; it's the moment when you and your spouse can celebrate your new beginning as a couple. And what better way to capture this unique moment in time than choose a beautiful location for the wedding? Udaipur, Rajasthan Because of the lakes and palaces scattered across the vast metropolis, this lovely location is appreciated by both Indians and visitors from other countries. Few cities can match the charm that Udaipur exudes thanks to its magnificent royal structures. Weddings in Udaipur are said to resemble magnificent fairy tales. Offering a hint of splendour, opulence, and monarchy, the Oberoi-Udai Vilas or the Jag Mandir palace are among the best venues for a marriage celebration. It easily becomes one of the most sought-after locations for Indian weddings. The Backwaters of Kerala - Go A Little Offbeat This kind and pleasant location Kerala is the destination for people who would rather have a small, intimate ceremony than a large, busy one. The tranquil, picturesque backwaters offer a view that will likely stay in your mind for a very long time. The ideal vacation for an Indian destination wedding. Imagine the backwaters, the gorgeous houseboats, and the beaches blanketed in coconut palm palms. Verdant! Andaman and Nicobar Islands Want to exchange vows under the sky blue skies, crystal clear lakes, and golden dunes, distant from the mainland? Consider the Nicobar and Andaman Islands. There are plenty of beachside resorts on Havelock Island where you can get married, even if the majority of the island is off-limits to visitors. It's true that you may reserve an entire island resort and say your vows with the Indian Ocean as your backdrop. You should get married in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands all the more because of their pleasant climate. Neemrana Fort - Just A Stone Throw Away From Delhi This historic fort outside of Delhi is ideal for a photo session because of its striking architecture and the "shock and awe" factor that not many locations can match. Over the years, the Neemrana Fort Palace has gained a lot of popularity as a weekend retreat from Delhi to host a magnificent wedding ceremony and provide the bride and groom some priceless moments (and pictures). This location in India offers all you need for a destination wedding that will be remembered. Goa - Wedding and Partying Hand In Hand It's impossible to consider being married by the sea without considering marrying your special someone in Goa. You can have a wide range of photos for your pre-wedding shoot because there are so many different locations to choose from, including immaculate beaches, spectacular sunsets, old churches, gorgeous resorts, and lush forests. Organizing haldi and mehndi celebrations by the pool, rain dances in the middle of the sea, or an endless night of cocktails on the beach are other ways to take advantage of Goa's party atmosphere. (Photo source: instagram) (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 22 : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who was in Jodhpur on Wednesday to campaign for the BJP in poll-bound Rajasthan, touched upon the riots that rocked Jodhpur two years ago and said that had it happened in UP, the rioters would have been taught a lesson with bulldozers. "Two years ago in Jodhpur, swords were being waved in the streets and rioters were creating havoc. If these rioters had been in UP, they would have been taught a lesson with bulldozers. The government was silent then. How long will this anarchy last," Yogi Adityanath questioned. He went on to say that the Rajasthan Government could not provide security, respect to women and it could not work for the welfare of the poor or provide a development plan. He added that it cannot respect faith and banned the Ram Navami procession. "Here in Jodhpur, a year ago, a seer was murdered by miscreants. The government did not hold any hearing. Similar incidents were seen in Bharatpur, Alwar and every district. This is a government of curfew and riots. Mafia and anarchy are flourishing here," he said. Adityanath added, "The Congress government does appeasement politics. It talks about the interests of only one community. If the Congress does this, where will the poor, tribals, backward classes, farmers and the youth go? "The BJP has given reservation in politics to half the population. Triple talaq has been banned. Welfare schemes have been implemented effectively." He added, "Only the BJP government can respect your faith. The Congress used to say that Ram temple cannot be built. We built the temple. On January 22, 2024, Ram Lalla will be installed in his temple by Modi. If you want to come to Ayodhya, Gajendra Singh will make arrangements for your arrival. Make all three BJP candidates victorious and all the devotees come to Ayodhya." Adityanath gave a 20 minute speech in Sardarpura and was joined by Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat. Adityanath reached Jodhpur airport by a special plane and headed straight to the meeting place. Sardarpura is considered the hot seat of Rajasthan as BJP candidate Professor Mahendra Singh Rathore is in the fray against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. Given that Sardarpura is Gehlot's turf, the BJP is putting all its might behind Mahendra Singh Rathore. Rajya Sabha MP Rajendra Gehlot, Rameshwar Dadhich, close aide of Rajasthan CM who joined the BJP, and Mayor South Vanita Seth were present on the stage. The BJP's Rameshwar Dadhich said, "The Congress is cheating the workers. Rajendra Gehlot, Vanita Seth and I always used to campaign for Gehlot in Sardarpura, today all three are BJP candidates." Mahendra Rathod said, "A fee of Rs 10 is charged for the darshan of Bhairuji in Mandore and crores of rupees are given for the Dargah of Tanha Peer. The Congress does appeasement." New Delhi, Nov 22 : The Supreme Court said on Wednesday that it will hear the batch of petitions challenging the constitutionality of the colonial-era penal provision of sedition in January next year. "List the case in January, 2024," ordered a bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI), D.Y. Chandrachud, and comprising Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. In terms of the standing operating procedure (SoP) issued by the apex court, the bench appointed one nodal counsel from each side to compile the written submission, case laws and other pleadings. Senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan, appearing for the petitioners, urged the top court to list the batch of petitions challenging the constitutionality of Section 124A (sedition) of the IPC before a seeven-judge bench. At this, CJI Chandrachud said that he will pass relevant orders in the matter. Earlier in September, the Supreme Court had ordered that its earlier judgment rendered in the Kedar Nath case upholding the constitutionality of Section 124A (sedition) of the IPC requires a reconsideration by a larger bench of minimum five judges. In 1962, the Constitution Bench in the Kedar Nath Singh case had upheld the validity of Section 124A, saying that the state needs protection from the forces who seek to jeopardise its safety and stability. On May 11 last year, in a path-breaking order, the Supreme Court had directed the Centre and all the state governments to refrain from registering any FIR or taking any coercive measures, while suspending all continuing investigations in relation to the Indian Penal Code's Section 124A (sedition), and also directed that all pending trials, appeals, and proceedings be kept in abeyance. The apex court in its prima facie observation had said that the rigours of Section 124A were not in tune with the current social milieu, and were intended for a time when the country was under the colonial regime. In June, the Law Commission, in its report to the government, had advocated for retention of the penal provision dealing with sedition, saying that "colonial legacy" is not a valid ground for its repeal. The panel recommended model guidelines curbing the misuse of Section I24A of IPC and said that amendments could be introduced to bring about greater clarity regarding the usage of the provision. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Elon Musk has announced that his X Corp will donate all revenue from advertising and subscriptions associated with the ongoing war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in the Hamas-controlled region. "X Corp will be donating all revenue from advertising & subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza," he said. When a user expressed concern about donated funds ending up in the hands of Hamas militants, Musk stated that the company would monitor the spending of funds while also requesting innovative ideas to aid victims. "We will track how funds are spent and go through Red Cross/Crescent. Better ideas are welcome. We should care about the innocent regardless of race, creed, religion or anything else," the tech billionaire said. Meanwhile, X has failed to remove 98 per cent of posts which promoted antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian hate, or other hate speech, according to a new report. X 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 found. Recently, the Joe Biden administration has slammed Musk for repeating a "hideous lie" about Jewish people, as he continues to endorse far-Right viewpoints and agrees with posts that promote antisemitism. Musk replied to a post sharing an antisemitic conspiracy theory, calling it "actual truth". He responded to a conspiracy theory that motivated the man who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Moving ahead in its probe into the attacks on the Indian consulate in San Francisco, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday carried out searches at 14 locations across Punjab and Haryana. A NIA spokesperson here said that the anti-terror probe agency sleuths on Wednesday carried out searches at 14 locations in the two North Indian states in a bid to unravel the complete conspiracy behind the March 19, 2023 and July 2, 2023 attacks, involving criminal trespass, vandalism, damage to public property and attempts to cause hurt to the Consulate officials and set the Consulate building on fire through acts of arson. The locations raided by the NIA on Wednesday were spread across the districts of Moga, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, Mohali and Patiala in Punjab, and Kurukshetra and Yamunanagar in Haryana, the official said. The searches led to the seizure of digital data containing information related to the accused persons, along with other incriminating documents, the official said. He said that the agency has been probing the case with the aim to identify and prosecute the attackers and send a strong message to such anti-India elements. A NIA team had visited San Francisco in the US in August this year to investigate the attacks on the Consulate which led to fear among the Consulate staff and the community. The official said that as part of its investigations, the NIA has crowd sourced information to identify and collect information about US-based entities and individuals involved in these violent incidents. The agency has already identified certain individuals who were part of the conspiracy behind the repeated attacks. These include the attackers and many of their associates, who are both Indian and foreign nationals. The Consulate General of India in San Francisco was attacked on March 19 by a group of assailants who committed criminal trespass, damaged public property, and attacked officials of the Consulate. Prior to this attack, on the same day, some attackers attempted to set the Consulate building on fire by sprinkling inflammable substances early in the morning. Subsequently on July 2, at midnight, a few persons attempted to set the Consulate building on fire. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Honasa Consumer Ltd, the parent company of direct-to-consumer (D2C) skincare brand Mamaearth, has posted Rs 29.4 crore in profit after tax (PAT) in the second quarter of FY24, an increase of 94 per cent from Rs 15.2 crore reported in the previous-year quarter. Mamaearthas operating revenue increased 21 per cent (year-on-year) to Rs 496.1 crore from Rs 410.5 crore in Q2 FY23, the company said in its first quarterly result after listing on the bourses. "Honasa has been able to deliver market-beating growth and constantly improve the profitability portfolio of the company. Our business has grown by 33 percent YoY in H1 FY24 which is 3.8 times the median growth of FMCG companies in India," said Varun Alagh, Chairman and CEO, Honasa Consumer. Honasa Consumeras stock closed at Rs 349 on Wednesday. Mamaearth had posted a Rs 151 crore loss in FY23. Its operating revenue increased significantly in FY23, reaching Rs 1,493 crore from Rs 943 crore the previous year. However, overall expenditure increased from Rs 942 crore to Rs 1,502 crore. Peak XV Partners (earlier Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia) has reportedly found 10 times or greater return in the oversubscribed initial public offering (IPO) of Mamaearth. In Mamaearth, Peak XV Partners has found another 10 times or greater return within the six months since separating from Sequoia, TechCrunch had reported earlier this month. A tourist poses for a photo with local children during a cultural tourism festival in Luchun County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Nov. 19, 2023. The long street banquet, a time-honoured tradition of Hani ethnic group in China, was held here during a cultural tourism festival on Sunday. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) Tourists and local residents take part in the long street banquet during a cultural tourism festival in Luchun County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Nov. 19, 2023. The long street banquet, a time-honoured tradition of Hani ethnic group in China, was held here during a cultural tourism festival on Sunday. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) This aerial photo taken on Nov. 19, 2023 shows a view of Luchun County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province. The long street banquet, a time-honoured tradition of Hani ethnic group in China, was held here during a cultural tourism festival on Sunday. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) Local residents of Hani ethnic group attend a parade during a cultural tourism festival in Luchun County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Nov. 19, 2023. The long street banquet, a time-honoured tradition of Hani ethnic group in China, was held here during a cultural tourism festival on Sunday. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) Local residents of Hani ethnic group attend a parade during a cultural tourism festival in Luchun County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Nov. 19, 2023. The long street banquet, a time-honoured tradition of Hani ethnic group in China, was held here during a cultural tourism festival on Sunday. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) Local residents of Hani ethnic group attend a parade during a cultural tourism festival in Luchun County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Nov. 19, 2023. The long street banquet, a time-honoured tradition of Hani ethnic group in China, was held here during a cultural tourism festival on Sunday. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) This aerial photo taken on Nov. 19, 2023 shows tourists and local residents taking part in the long street banquet as performers passing by during a cultural tourism festival in Luchun County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province. The long street banquet, a time-honoured tradition of Hani ethnic group in China, was held here during a cultural tourism festival on Sunday. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) This aerial photo taken on Nov. 19, 2023 shows a view of the long street banquet during a cultural tourism festival in Luchun County of Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province. The long street banquet, a time-honoured tradition of Hani ethnic group in China, was held here during a cultural tourism festival on Sunday. (Xinhua/Chen Xinbo) Editor: JYZ Panaji, Nov 22 : Alleging that BJP government is out to kill the democracy by inducting 'defectors' in cabinet, Congress Chief Amit Patkar on Wednesday sought 'disqualification' of MLA Aleixo Sequeira, who was on Sunday evening sworn in as a minister in the BJP led government. "We had filed a disqualification petition against Digambar Kamat and Michael Lobo in July (2022) and against eight MLAs in November, last year. Time and again we are requesting to expedite the matter. But in the second disqualification matter, the Speaker has not even issued notices. "Hence we had approached the High Court and there was direction by court to clear it within time limit. But Speaker has not even issued notice," Amit Patkar said, after submitting memorandum to Goa legislative Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar. "When there is a disqualification petition against the eight MLAs, member from the same group is being inducted in the cabinet. What kind of justice is this," he questioned. "We have now sought action from the Speaker against Aleixo Sequeira. He should write to the Governor to disqualify him, because the matter is sub-judice," he said. He said that the Speaker should first give decisions in these matters. "If the decision is against us then we will approach higher court. But at least he should give judgement. Without doing that these defectors are inducted in the cabinet," he said. He said that as speculated few more members from 'eight defectors' are going to get a cabinet berth. "BJP government is out to kill the democracy. They don't believe in democracy and hence we have demanded to stop more inductions of defectors," he said On September 14, last year former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, Michael Lobo, Delilah Lobo, Kedar Naik, Sankalp Amonkar, Rajesh Faldesai, Aleixo Sequeira and Rudolf Fernandes switched to the BJP, reducing the Congress' strength to three MLAs in the 40-member Goa Assembly. The Congress had alleged that Digambar Kamat and Michael Lobo had hatched a conspiracy by hobnobbing with the BJP to split Congress MLAs. Earlier, the Congress in July, last year, had filed a disqualification petition with the Assembly Speaker against former Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and Michael Lobo for anti-party activities. Later after the political development of defection took place, two individual disqualification petitions against eight MLAs had been filed before Goa Assembly Speaker Ramesh Tawadkar on November 11 and on December 9, Congress had filed a disqualification petition against eight MLAs. RGCB to provide support to identify rare Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 22 ( IANS) The Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB), an autonomous institute under the government of India, on Wednesday announced that it will assist all district and taluk hospitals and family groups in Kerala to identify rare pediatric genetic diseases and provide free genetic testing, support and counselling for children who require it. This was announced by RGCB director Professor Chandrabhas Narayana, while hosting an awareness programme on Pediatric Rare Genetic Disorders to mark International Children's Day. "By organising this awareness programme, RGCB tries to fulfill the mandate of International Children's Day on the right to life, health, education and family life," said Narayana. As per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare statistics, around 72 to 96 million people suffer from some form of rare condition in India. There are reported 7,000 rare conditions but as per the ICMR's National Registry for Rare Diseases, only 4,000 rare diseases have so far been reported in the country. Reports indicate that 80 per cent of rare diseases are genetic in origin, of which 70 per cent start in childhood. "It is extremely important that these issues are understood, discussed and addressed by conducting awareness campaigns. It is heartening to note that Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, has initiated a nationwide mission mode programme on Pediatric Rare Genetic Disorders of which RGCB is an integral part," said Narayana. RGCB principal investigator Dr Moinak Banerjee appealed to all segments of society to be a part of this mission either through a clinical support group, family support group or volunteer support group to address the unique needs of children facing these rare conditions. Kochi, Nov 22 : Advocate Saiby Jose Kidangoor has been reinstated as the president of the Kerala High Court Advocates' Association (KHCAA), nine months after he resigned from the post. A decision in this regard was taken by the executive committee of the KHCAA after the High Court was informed that the State would be dropping the charges against him in an alleged bribery scam. Kidangoor was elected to the post in December, 2022, but things went awry for him when in January, bribery scam surfaced and an first information report (FIR) was registered against him by the Kerala Police alleging that he had fleeced large sums of money from clients under the pretext of using it to bribe some judges of the Kerala High Court. He fought the legal battle which he won and was reinstated. New Delhi, Nov 22 : Defence Ministry official on Wednesday said that the Indian Coast Guard has apprehended a Pakistani fishing boat -- Naz-Re-Karam -- in Arabian Sea, inside the Indian waters. The official said that the Coast Guard has also apprehended the crew members of the boat. "A joint interrogation will be done of the crew," the official said. He said that the Indian Coast Guard Ship Arinjay while patrolling in Arabian Sea observed one Pakistani fishing boat, fishing about 15 kms inside Indian waters near the International Maritime Boundary Line on November 21. "It was established that the Pakistani fishing boat Naz-Re-Karam (Reg no. 15653-B) left from Karachi on November 19 with 13 crew members," the official said. "They could not explain or justify the fishing by the boat in the area and the boat has been brought to Okha harbour for thorough rummaging and joint interrogation by all agencies," the official said. He said that on being challenged, the boat started to flee towards Pakistan side. However, the Indian Coast Guard ship intercepted the boat and stopped them in Indian waters. Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 22 : In a first of its kind, the Kerala Cabinet on Wednesday met at a bar attached to a private hotel in Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's home district Kannur. For ages, the practice of holding weekly Cabinet meeting on Wednesday has been taking place in the state secretariat here. Occasionally, it is held outside the state capital, but itas always held in state-run guest houses. The Congress has slammed Vijayan for holding the Cabinet meeting at a private hotel, when spacious government guest houses are there in Kannur where the meeting could have been held without spending any money. Vijayan is on a state-wide trip that began on Saturday, which will pass through all the 140 Assembly constituencies before ending in the state capital on December 24. Each day the Chief Minister will meet people in four Assembly constituencies, while the Cabinet will also meet every Wednesday. Vijayan has branded his trip as the beginning of building a new Kerala, while the opposition has termed it as extravagance and PR exercise ahead of next year's Lok Sabha polls. Chennai, Nov 22 : The impending closure of 287-room five-star hotel Crowne Plaza Chennai Adyar Park at the heart of the city will benefit a couple of star hotels situated in the nearby localities, said senior industry officials. The Crowne Plaza Chennai Adyar Park property is owned by Adyar Gate Hotels Ltd and is managed by the global hospitality chain InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). The hotel will stop accepting guests from December 20 onwards, as the property owners plan to redevelop the land. As a matter of fact, IHG checked into the Chennai hotel market with its Crowne Plaza brand for the hotel owned by Adyar Gate Hotels. Prior to that, the property was managed by ITC. It was called Sheraton Park Hotel and Towers. Adyar Gate Hotels also owns the InterContinental Chennai Mahabalipuram Resort (beach resort) and Fortune Sullivan Hotel in Ooty. "There are a good number of star hotels near Crowne Plaza and they can easily absorb the additional business following its closure," Revathi, Director, UGO Hospitality, a hospitality consultancy company, told IANS. According to her, the Teynampet, Anna Salai, T. Nagar belt -- closer to Crowne Plaza -- has about 1,500 five-star hotel rooms. The properties are doing about 75-80 per occupancy and they can easily absorb the additional business that would be coming up with the closure of Crowne Plaza. "Nearby there are several hotels in the same category and they will benefit," Yangya Prakash Chandran, Founder and CEO, Crossway Hotels and Resorts, told IANS. The star hotels that are nearby are Hyatt Regency, Marriott, GRT Grand, Raintree, Novotel, The Leela Palace, Welcomhotel, Savera and others. "The Chennai hotel market can be classified into four segments - properties located in the Central Business District, OMR, ECR and the Guindy belt," Ruban Das, General Manager, Hyatt Regency Chennai, told IANS. And the business is good for the hotels in all the belts. The beach resorts on the East Coast Road (ECR) do booming business during the weekends while the hotels on the parallel stretch the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) are logging moderate growth and impacted by the metro-rail work. Similarly the hotels in the Central Business District are logging moderate growth, while the properties located in the Guindy belt are the ones logging handsome business growth, a senior industry official told IANS. "We have come back to the pre-Covid levels. Several new industrial projects are happening and we are getting guests because of that. The corporate travel has come back to normal levels," said Das, who heads the 325-room nine-floor Hyatt Regency Chennai. According to Das, refurbishment of the rooms in six floors has been completed and the remaining rooms in the three floors will happen next fiscal. City hotels are holding food festivals regularly and on its part Hyatt Regency Chennai is now holding the Hakka cuisine, anchored by Chef Katherine Chung. According to Das, 2023 could be termed as the year of consolidation for the industry in the city as no new property has come up. (Venkatachari Jagannathan can be reached at v.jagannathan@ians.in) New Delhi, Nov 22 : A Delhi court on Wednesday sent Amit Katyal, promoter of AK Infosystems, to judicial custody till December 5 in the alleged land-for-job scam. Katyal, who was arrested earlier this month by the central probe agency, was produced before Special Judge Geetanjali Goel of Rouse Avenue Court on expiry of his Enforcement Directorate (ED) remand. Katyal has been alleged of acquiring several lands from aspirants on behalf of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Chief and former Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. He was first detained and later arrested by the financial probe agency on November 11 under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Katyal's premises in upscale south Delhi's New Friends Colony was declared as an office of AK Infosystems but is being used by RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav as residential premises. The ED on July 31 this year attached six immovable assets having book value of Rs 6.02 crore belonging to RJD leaders Rabri Devi, Misa Bharti (daughter of Lalu Yadav), Vineet Yadav (husband of Lalu's daughter Hema Yadav), Shiv Kumar Yadav (father-in-law of Hema Yadav), A B Exports Pvt Ltd and A K Infosystems Pvt Ltd., both companies owned and controlled by family members of Lalu Prasad Yadav, under the provisions of PMLA, 2002 in the Railway job for land scam. The properties attached include the residential premise situated at D-1088, New Friends Colony, New Delhi owned by A B Exports Pvt Ltd. Two land parcels situated at Mahuabagh (Danapur), Patna of which one each is owned by Rabri Devi and AK Infosystems Pvt Ltd, have also been attached. "The registered address of the company is D-1088, New Friends Colony, New Delhi, which is the house belonging to Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family members. Several other lands were also acquired by Amit Katyal in the said company in return for giving undue favours by Lalu Prasad Yadav when he was minister of railways," the agency alleged in a statement issued on Monday. After acquiring the land, it said, shares of the said company were transferred to the family members of Lalu Prasad in 2014. The Delhi High Court, earlier this month, declined to provide relief to Katyal seeking a copy of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) in a money laundering case, saying that it cannot impede the investigative process of the ED at the stage of summons issuance under the PMLA. Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma had dismissed Katyalas plea. Katyal had sought the quashing of the ECIR and a summon issued by the ED and wanted to prevent the probe agency from taking any coercive action against him, including further investigation in the money laundering case. --IANS spr/dan Mumbai, Nov 22 : The upcoming episode of streaming cooking show 'MasterChef India' brings along an offsite challenge where the homecooks will be divided into Red and Blue teams, and Rukhsaar Sayeed and Nidhi Sharma taking up the captaincy of the two teams. The challenge is held at Saffron, a restaurant at a five star property in Mumbai's Juhu area. Known for its scrumptious selection of curries and biryanis from the kitchens of Hyderabad and Lucknow, Saffron plays host to 'Saffron Offsite Team Service'. Rukhsaar will lead the Red team which includes Rukhsaar Sayeed, Nambie Jessica Marak, and Suraj Thapa. Rukhsaar Sayeed shared her experience, stating, "Being chosen as the captain of the Red Team was both an honour and a challenge. Nambie and Suraj are immensely talented and coordinating with them in the high-pressure setting was an experience like no other. We put our hearts into creating a street food platter to not only prove our skills but also reflect the essence of Saffron. The competition was tough but the Red Team was ready to face whatever came our way." Nidhi will lead the Blue team which includes Nidhi Sharma, Mohammed Aashiq, and Harish Closepet. The task at hand is to craft a gourmet-level street food platter for the guests of Saffron. Nidhi said, "Taking on the captaincy for the Blue Team was a responsibility I embraced wholeheartedly. Working alongside Mohammed and Harish, we aimed to bring innovation and excellence to our street food platter. The experience was undoubtedly an unforgettable one. We will forever cherish the memories we created in the kitchen." 'MasterChef India' streams on Sony LIV. Nitish Kumar government passes 40 proposals including Patna, Nov 22 (IANS) The Nitish Kumar government passed 40 proposals including the demand for a special status for Bihar by the Centre during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. The state government has also demanded a fund of Rs 2,50,000 crore from the Centre for the implementations of various projects. Following the cabinet meeting, Nitish Kumar on his official social media handle X said: "During the meeting of a cabinet, we have passed a proposal to give special status to Bihar and requested the Centre to meet the same." "This is the first time that the Bihar government has conducted a caste based survey in the state. On that basis, we have enhanced the reservation for the people of Bihar who come under Extremely Backward Caste (EBC), Other Backward Castes (OBC), Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), they will get the benefit of reservation up to 65%. Earlier, the reservation in Bihar was 50%. Ten percent reservation was given to economically weaker sections in upper castes. This will help candidates in the admission to various educational institutions as well as in government jobs," Kumar posted. "People coming under EBC had 18% reservation in the past. After this bill, the Bihar government has enhanced the reservation to 25%. Similarly, the OBC category with 12% reservation will get 18%. The SC had 16% reservation in the past and will get 20% now and the ST having 1% reservation will get 2%," he said. Additional chief secretary in the cabinet secretariat S. Shidhartha, said: "We have sent two proposals to the Centre including special status for Bihar and reservation up to 65% under Article 9. It will help us as no one would challenge this in court." "As per the caste based survey, 94 lakh families are in the poor category and hence the state government has passed a proposal to provide Rs 2 lakh in instalments to one person of such families below the poverty line; 63,850 families are houseless and landless in Bihar and the state government has decided to give Rs 1 lakh to each of the families to purchase land. Earlier, the state government was giving only Rs 60,000. Besides, 39 lakh families are living in huts and the state government will provide Rs 1.20 lakh to each of them for the construction of concrete houses," Shidhartha said. "The expenses are expected to go up and hence we have been demanding from the Centre to provide Rs 2, 50,000 crores to complete these projects," he said. Hyderabad, Nov 22 : Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said on Wednesday that the party is not scared of attachment of properties of National Herald. He alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi hatched a conspiracy to attach properties worth Rs 780 crore of a newspaper which was started by country's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Addressing a public meeting as part of the election campaign in Alampur constituency in Mahabubnagar district, he alleged that the attachment was also an attempt to cow down people of Telangana to support BJP and KCR. "The property which has been seized does not belong to a person but to a newspaper which was started by Pandit Nehru in three languages as a voice of freedom fight. He created awareness among people through this newspaper. It was people's voice, and PM Modi and Amit Shah have conspired against such a newspaper," he said. Kharge said they should be under no illusion that they can scare Congress by seizing its property. "Congress is not scared. We will continue to fight and we will fight till the end. We were not scared of the British and we can never be scared of the BJP which did not fight for the country and which had no role in its Independence," he said. Appealing to the people of Telangana to bring Congress to power in the November 30 election, Kharge said the Congress is fighting those who have snatched people's lands. "The kind of development you wanted in Telangana has not happened, be it roads, irrigation facilities or schools. KCR sits in his farm house and takes decisions. People should not vote for a person who does not live among them," he said. Kharge said the Telangana election is significant for the country as the Congress will win here to move forward to register victory across the country. "The Congress will emerge stronger and send a message to the entire country," he said. The Congress leader described KCR, BJP and MIM as three friends. "KCR goes to Nagpur RSS headquarters and says Modi is my friend. Owaisi keeps praising KCR as my good friend. The BJP has colluded with the both," he said. Kharge alleged that farmers were unhappy in Telangana while the hopes of unemployed were dashed by the KCR government. He said KCR failed to fill two lakh vacancies in government departments. --IANS ms/pgh Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech titled "Working Toward a Ceasefire and Realizing Lasting Peace and Sustainable Security" at the extraordinary joint meeting of BRICS leaders and leaders of invited BRICS members on the situation in the Middle East with particular reference to Gaza on Nov. 21, 2023. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen) BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday attended the BRICS extraordinary virtual summit on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, saying that the parties to the conflict must end hostilities and achieve a ceasefire immediately. Xi called on the parties to stop all violence and attacks against civilians, release civilians held captive, and act to prevent loss of more lives and spare people from more miseries. Xi said humanitarian corridors must be kept secure and unimpeded, and more humanitarian assistance should be provided to the population in Gaza. He said the international community must act with practical measures to prevent the conflict from spilling over and endangering stability in the Middle East as a whole. He emphasized that the only viable way to break the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli conflict lies in the two-state solution, in the restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine, and in the establishment of an independent State of Palestine. China calls for early convening of an international peace conference that is more authoritative to build international consensus for peace and work toward an early solution to the question of Palestine that is comprehensive, just and sustainable, Xi said. Xi said this is the first summit since the expansion of BRICS. Given the current circumstances, it is very timely and very important that we meet and speak up for justice and for peace on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. "The conflict in Gaza is raging on into its second month. China is gravely concerned that the conflict is causing enormous civilian casualties and a humanitarian disaster, and tends to expand and spill over," he said. The collective punishment of people in Gaza in the form of forced transfer or water, electricity and fuel deprivation must stop, he said. All the parties must act to deliver on UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions through concrete measures on the ground, Xi said. Xi said the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli situation is the fact that the right of the Palestinian people to statehood, their right to existence, and their right of return have long been ignored. He said there can be no sustainable peace and security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine. Xi said since the outbreak of the latest Palestinian-Israeli conflict, China has been working actively to promote peace talks and a ceasefire. China has provided humanitarian assistance to help ease the humanitarian plight in Gaza and will provide more supplies and assistance according to the needs of the people in Gaza. At the UN Security Council, China has acted in its capacity as president to facilitate the adoption of the resolution, which calls for extended humanitarian pauses and corridors, the protection of civilians, and the provision of humanitarian assistance, he said. Hailing the BRICS cooperation mechanism as an important platform for emerging markets and developing countries to strengthen solidarity and cooperation and safeguard common interests, Xi said the meeting to coordinate positions and actions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict marks a good start for greater BRICS cooperation following its enlargement. China stands ready to work with other members to usher in a new era for BRICS cooperation, Xi said. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa chaired the summit, which gathered leaders from China, Brazil, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and foreign ministers from India and Argentina. The leaders expressed grave concern over the Palestinian-Israeli situation and condemned all acts of violence against civilians. They stressed the need for the protection of civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law, calling for an immediate durable, sustainable humanitarian truce and humanitarian aid delivery. They emphasized the importance of settling disputes through dialogue, and voiced support for all efforts conducive to a peaceful resolution of the crisis. The leaders called on the international community to support a just solution to the Palestinian question, and promote the realization of the two-state solution and establishment of an independent State of Palestine that enjoys full sovereignty. Wang Lei, director of the Center for BRICS Cooperation Studies at Beijing Normal University, said the summit reflects the sense of responsibility of the BRICS countries, their call for international peace and stability, and their consensus on many major issues. China's position is consistent, fair, just and without selfish interests and China genuinely works for regional peace and development, said Xu Feibiao, director of the Center for BRICS and G20 Studies with China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech titled "Working Toward a Ceasefire and Realizing Lasting Peace and Sustainable Security" at the extraordinary joint meeting of BRICS leaders and leaders of invited BRICS members on the situation in the Middle East with particular reference to Gaza on Nov. 21, 2023. (Xinhua/Liu Bin) Editor: JYZ New Delhi, Nov 22 : A Delhi court on Wednesday posted for November 28 hearing of arguments on framing of charges against BJP MP and former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh in a sexual harassment case against him by six women wrestlers. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Harjeet Singh Jaspal had, during the last hearing, granted three weeks to the counsels in the case to file their written arguments, and had stressed before the parties that the arguments shall be concluded in a systematic manner. Upon Singh's counsel filing a reply on Wednesday, the judge posted the matter for further proceedings on November 28. The BJP MP had last time questioned the jurisdiction of the Delhi court trying a sexual harassment case against him by six women wrestlers, claiming that there was no action or consequence which happened in India. "There is no action or consequence which has happened in India and therefore, the alleged offences which, as per the Prosecution, have happened in Tokyo, Mongolia, Bulgaria, Jakarta, Kazakhistan, Turkey, etc., cannot be tried by this court," Singh's counsel, advocate Rajiv Mohan had submitted before the court. Singh had contested that this court had no jurisdiction to try any offence which was allegedly committed "outside" India. Public Prosecutor (PP) Atul Kumar Srivastava, however, had said that the act of sexual harassment of the victims was a continuing offence, as it did not stop at any particular time. "The accused molested the victims whenever he got the opportunity and such harassment cannot be looked in isolated brackets and the series or the chain thereof needs to be seen as one," he had said. Delhi Police has also told the court that Singh never missed an opportunity to sexually harass women wrestlers, adding that there is sufficient evidence to frame charges against him and proceed with the trial. Earlier, Singh had urged the court to discharge him claiming material contradictions in the statements of witnesses against him. His counsel, Mohan, had argued that as per the law, the Oversight Committee had to recommend for the registration of the FIR within seven days, but since in the matter at hand, no such recommendation has been made, it is safe to assume that the Committee did not find a prima facie case against the accused. "Since no prima facie case was found out by the Oversight Committee, and since no case was found out, no FIR was registered, it automatically amounts to exoneration," Mohan had told the court. He had further claimed that the statements made before the Oversight Committee and the statements recorded under Section 164 CrPC have material contradictions and that the statements made later in time (under Section 164) have material improvements and, therefore are liable to be rejected in toto. "Since there are material contradictions in the statements of the prosecution witnesses, that itself calls for discharge of the accused as the contradictions have the effect of taking the case away from the arena of grave suspicion, towards only mere suspicion," the defence counsel had said. The argument was opposed by the PP, who had said that the constitution of the Oversight Committee itself was not in accordance with law. "There is no question of exoneration because no recommendations/findings have been given by the said Committee," the prosecutor had said. New Delhi : A slum near Delhi Public School on Mathura Road being demolished. Image Source: IANS News New Delhi, Nov 22 : The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of pursuing an anti-poor agenda as the Delhi Government initiates efforts to provide shelter for the homeless. In a press conference held at the AAP headquarters on Wednesday, AAP MLAs, Sanjeev Jha and Praveen Kumar shed light on the ongoing demolitions of slums in Jangpura, with accusations that the BJP attempted to run bulldozers in cold weather, in direct violation of construction and demolition bans due to pollution concerns. The AAP MLA from Burari constituency, Shri Sanjeev Jha and Jangpura MLA Shri Praveen Kumar addressed a press conference at the party headquarters on a crucial issue related to Delhi. MLA Sanjeev Jha criticised the BJP's actions, stating, "The BJP, with its anti-poor stance, continues its attempts to demolish the homes of the poor and marginalised people living in slums continuously." He cited previous instances where slums were demolished, leading to arrests and court interventions. Highlighting the current situation in Jangpura, area legislator Jha remarked, "Now, as the cold sets in, on one hand, the Delhi Government is setting up camps for those living on the streets and constructing the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) shelter houses, while on the other hand, BJP attempted to run bulldozers in a locality in Jangpura." Kumar provided details on the legal aspects of the case, focusing on the JJ Cluster behind the Sunder Nursery DPS School. He explained that DUSIB, under its jurisdiction, legally oversees 675 clusters, including the DPS Sunder Nursery Mathura Road cluster, where the recent demolition attempts occurred. Kumar expressed concern over the violation of court orders, stating, "Despite the court's decision, L&DO began marking and breaking homes yesterday. This is a violation of the court's decision. This entire case shows how the central government wants to render the poor homeless across the country." The AAP leaders demanded the immediate implementation of the court's order, emphasising that the responsibility lies with the Land & Development Office (L&DO) and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to provide relocation and formulate policies to protect the rights of those affected. Agartala, Nov 22 : Amidst the controversies over the role of Governors in a few states in the country, senior politicians in Tripura said that Governor Indra Sena Reddy Nallu is trying to reign over the state government from Raj Bhavan. Quoting the media reports, veteran politician and former MLA Tapas Dey said that the Tripura Governor is trying to control the state government from Raj Bhavan. "If the media report is accurate, the Central government has lost confidence in the state government. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha is overburdened with over 30 departments, and therefore, he is not being able to deliver despite his sincerest efforts. Are we heading for a President's Rule directly or indirectly?" said Dey, a senior leader of the opposition Tipra Motha Party (TMP). Without mentioning the name, he said that one of his distinguished friends, who was engaged in the highest position of judicial service, on condition of anonymity said that "this trend is dangerous for a popularly elected democratic government". Former BJP leader from Telangana and three time MLA of combined Andhra Pradesh Assembly Indra Sena Reddy Nallu took over the charge of Tripura Governor on October 26. Opposition leader Animesh Debbarma said that as Nallu was in direct politics for many years he did not forget his previous role and position. "I did not find any problem with the Governor's meeting with the state government officials. However, he (Reddy Nallu) should adjust himself with his new position, forgetting his previous role as politician," said Debbarma, also a senior leader of TMP. The Governor during the past one week held separate meetings with top officials and leaders of many departments including Rural Development, Urban Development, Tourism, Transport, Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council and visited the Government run Govind Ballabh Pant Medical College and Hospital. Reddy Nallu during his meetings with the senior officials and visit to the medical colleges asked the officials to be more proactive to provide prompt and best services to the people. CPI-M and Congress leaders also separately said that actually the Central leaders of BJP controlled their party run state governments in several states. "Governor can give his advices to the state government but directly should not interfere into the functioning of the state's elected government. We are observing the role of Tripura Governor and in appropriate time we would react," a Congress leader said on condition of anonymity. New Delhi, Nov 22 : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday said that it carried out searches at various locations in Hyderabad in a money laundering case being against Syed Burhanuddin. The searches were carried out under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) at various locations. The ED registered a case on the basis ofFIR registered by the Hyderabad Police on the basis of complaint which alleged that Syed Burhanuddin, through his associate Venkatraman Yadav, had filed a complaint before the ED against a person alleging his involvement in money laundering, hawala and other illegal activities. The FIR further alleged that Burhanuddin forged and fabricated the documents using fake ED stamp and also showed purported acknowledgement, evidencing receipt of the complaint by ED. The FIR also alleged that Burhanuddin threatened the complainant with dire consequences and also offered to help him by settling his case for a monetary consideration of Rs 10 crore by falsely projecting his closeness with officers of ED and also his association with the PMO. The ED said that its probe revealed that several other FIRs were registered against Burhanuddin containing similar allegations involving similar modus operandi of approaching people with bogus offers to settle their cases by falsely projecting his association with high ranking officers of various organizations. Search operations resulted in the recovery and seizure of digital devices and incriminating documents including property documents, documents showing his association with various entities including overseas entities and documents indicating unaccounted property transactions, the ED added. Want to see someone from backward classes as Telangana CM: Pawan Kalyan. Image Source: IANS News Hyderabad, Nov 22 : Actor-politician Pawan Kalyan said on Wednesday that he joined hands with the BJP in Telangana as he wants to see someone from the backward classes as the state's Chief Minister. The Jana Sena Party (JSP) leader launched the campaign for BJP-JSP candidates for the November 30 Telangana Assembly elections by addressing a public meeting in Hanamkonda. "I have joined hands with the BJP to see someone from the backward classes as the CM," he said while taking a dig at Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader K. Chandrasekhar Rao for failing to fulfil his promise of making a Dalit the first Chief Minister of Telangana. The BJP has promised that if voted to power, it will make someone from the backward classes the Chief Minister. JSP, a constituent of the BJP-led NDA, has backed the promise. Under the seat-sharing agreement for the November 30 elections, the BJP has left eight seats for JSP and fielded candidates in 111 constituencies. Addressing the maiden election meeting in support of BJP candidates in Warangal, Pawan Kalyan claimed that he was one among those who supports Telangana. "Telangana has given me immense strength. With the same spirit, I am fighting rowdies in Andhra Pradesh," he said. Hoping that the youth of Telangana will support him, the actor said he would undertake a yatra in Telangana just like he is doing in Andhra Pradesh. Pawan Kalyan also vowed to accomplish the change for which the sons of Telangana laid down their lives. He said it is painful to see a state which came into existence with sacrifices has become a victim of corruption. Tel Aviv, Nov 22 : Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Wednesday opposed the cabinet decision for hostage swapping with Hamas. Sources in Israel government told IANS that both the ministers have opposed on the hostage deal. However, minister without portfolio and former chief of armed forces, Benny Gantz, has questioned the opposition by Smotrich and asked him whether he trusts Hamas leadership more than Israel's war cabinet. Likud party ministers also opposed Ben Gvir in the cabinet meeting which was held till early Wednesday morning and according to Hebrew media sources, there was a heated exchange between Ben Gvir and the Likud party ministers. Ben Gvir, according to reports, has told the cabinet that the decision can lead to generational damage and hurt the country for several decades to come. With the Hostages and Missing Families Forum conducting massive protests and with international pressure mounting on Israel government, there was no solution other than agreeing for a ceasefire for four days in exchange of the release of 50 hostages, including women and children. A total of 300 Palestine prisoners who are in Israel jails will also be released from Thursday onwards, sources said. Tel Aviv, Nov 22 : David Barnea, the chief of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad, will travel to Qatar and meet Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani to discuss the intricacies of hostage release, which is scheduled to take place from Thursday onwards. The trip, according to Israel sources, is meant for pushing more deals in favour of Israel during the ceasefire and release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. It is to be noted that Israel has insisted that it would be releasing only women and children from its prisons and no murder accused would figure in the list of those released. Hamas will release 50 hostages kidnapped from Southern Israel on October 7, while Israel will release 300 Palestinians who are in Israeli prisons. Barnea, according to sources, will insist that more hostages kidnapped from Israel be released. According to information available, 80 people will be released in the next four days by Hamas after Barneaas visit to Qatar, which is mediating the intricacies of the deal with Hamas and Israel at the behest of the US. Chennai, Nov 22 : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Wednesday that it has carried out searches at the premises linked to Pranav Jewellers in Trichy in connection with a ponzi scheme case. The ED said the searches were conducted on Monday under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the case of a ponzi scheme run by certain accused persons in the name of Pranav Jewellers, a partnership firm based out of Trichy. During the searches, various incriminating documents, Rs 23.70 lakh unaccounted cash, and gold jewellery weighing 11.60 kg were seized. The ED said that its probe revealed that Pranav Jewellers and other connected persons cheated the public by diverting public funds to shell entities or entry providers under the garb of purchase of bullion or gold ornaments. The ED said that its searches also revealed that the supplier parties in the books of Pranav Jewellers were entry providers, who during the investigation confessed to have provided adjustment or accommodation entries to Pranav Jewellers for amounts of over Rs 100 crore and also confessed to have given cash to the accused persons in lieu of bank payments. The ED probe is based on an FIR registered by Economic Offences Wing, Trichy, against Pranav Jewellers and others alleging that Rs 100 crore was collected from public by it under the guise of a gold investment scheme with the promise of high returns. Pranav Jewellers failed to return the amount to the investors. Mumbai, Nov 22 : Amid fire from the Congress and other parties, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde instructed the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to not implement its steep 8 per cent hike in water charges for Mumbai, here on Wednesday. Accordingly, the BMC announced that there will be no hike in water charges, spelling relief for Mumbaikars in the election year when civic, Lok Sabha and Assembly elections are scheduled. The BMC said that a proposal by the Hydraulic Department to increase the water supply charges this year has been yanked off after the CM's directives. Mumbai Congress President Varsha Gaikwad, who had strongly protested the BMC's proposal when it was coming without the presence of elected representatives in the civic body, welcomed the CM's decision. Explaining the rationale behind the upward revision in the water charges, the civic body said that the seven reservoirs -- Tansa, Upper Vaitarna, Middle Vaitarna, Modak Sagar, Bhatsa, Vihar and Tulsi -- supply around 3,950 million litres water daily to quench the thirst of Mumbai. However, barring Vihar and Tulsi, the other reservoirs are located at a distance of around 150 km from the city, the water undergoes purification treatment and then transported to all parts of Mumbai before reaching individual households through pipelines. It said that the annual water charges are determined by calculating infrastructure costs, maintenance and repairs, royalty fees, water purification and disinfection processes, electricity costs, installation, etc. Around 11 years ago, the BMC Standing Committee had passed a resolution to increase the water charges by maximum 8 per cent annually, and the current proposed hike for 2023-2024 was in tune with that decision. New Delhi, Nov 22 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted more time to several Opposition parties including the Congress, Trinamool Congress and the DMK to respond to a PIL seeking direction to stop the opposition parties from using acronym INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) for their bloc. A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Mini Pushkarna also granted more time to the Centre to file its reply in the matter. Earlier on October 31, the court had granted more time to the Centre to respond to the Public Interest Litigation (PIL). Appearing for the Centre, Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma said: "We need a week-ten days more time to put in our reply." On the other hand, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi representing the nine political parties said there were "preliminary objections" against the petition and the Supreme Court has already dealt with the issue. The bench has now listed the matter for hearing next on January 4. The Election Commission (EC) had filed its counter-affidavit, and has said that it cannot regulate political alliances under the Representation of People Act. The court had then, during the last hearing, noted that only the EC has filed a response and some of the political parties named in the proceedings have not been served notice yet. Counsel for the petitioner, businessman Girish Bharadwaj had said that the matter required to be dealt with urgently, as the parties were using "the name of the country" and the national flag. Singhvi had argued that the petition is not maintainable. The writ petition, contends that to date, the poll panel has not taken any action on the representation given by him to prevent the respondent political parties to use the acronym INDIA. It is his case that the acronym has been used only to take undue advantages in the upcoming general elections in 2024. In its reply, the EC, cited a decision of the Kerala High Court that there is no statutory provision mandating the constitutional body to regulate the functioning of political alliances but said its reply should not be seen as an expression of its opinion on the legality of use of the acronym by the political parties involved. In August, the high court had issued notice to the Central government in Bharadwaj's PIL. A division bench headed by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and comprising Justice Amit Mahajan had sought response from the Central government, the EC, and 26 political parties. The court had remarked that this has case to be heard. "It requires hearing," it had said. "apractice of using the acronym I.N.D.I.A. (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance)/INDIA of respondent political parties are only to attract and gain sympathy and votes of the innocent citizen and to use as a tool for political benefit and also to give a nudge or a spark which may lead to political hatred which eventually will lead to political violence," the PIL claims. Citing alleged violation of Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950, and relevant Rules, Bharadwaj has said that the acronym being the essential part of the national emblem cannot be used for any professional, commercial purpose, and political purpose. "athe selfish act of these political parties may adversely affect the peaceful, transparent and fair casting of votes during the upcoming general election of 2024 which may expose the citizens to unwarranted violence and also affect the law and order of the country," the plea reads. This aerial panoramic photo taken on Jan. 10, 2023 shows a view of Lujiazui area in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe) BEIJING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- China has allowed Mastercard's Chinese joint venture to conduct bank card clearing operations in the country, marking another step forward in the opening-up of the country's financial market. The approval made Mastercard the second overseas bank card clearing institution to enter the Chinese market, following American Express in 2020. "China is one of our most important markets. We are pleased to have reached this milestone with our local partner, NetsUnion Clearing Corporation (NUCC)," said Michael Miebach, CEO of Mastercard, adding that Mastercard's deeper participation in the Chinese market will benefit the country, its consumers and its businesses. Mastercard NUCC Information Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd, the joint venture of Mastercard and NUCC, can authorize its member institutions to issue Mastercard yuan bank cards in China, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) announced. Within six months of receiving its certification, the Mastercard joint venture will be able to authorize its member institutions in China to conduct the issuance and acceptance of Mastercard cards. Calling it a landmark event in China's latest financial market opening-up campaign, Dong Ximiao, chief researcher at Merchants Union Consumer Finance Company Limited, said that the broader opening-up of the country's bank card clearing market will help domestic players improve services and elevate their risk prevention and control capabilities. The move demonstrates China's confidence and resolution to expand its opening-up, said Zeng Gang, director of the Shanghai Institution for Finance and Development. Allowing more overseas bank card clearing institutions to enter the Chinese market will help build a stable bank card clearing market structure with effective competition, and deepen the supply-side structural reform of the payment industry, Zeng said. China has been stepping up efforts to promote a high level of financial opening-up, implementing concrete measures such as allowing global investors to invest in China's capital market through more channels, and scrapping securities, futures and fund ownership caps for foreign institutions. Following these measures, many global financial institutions have expanded their footprints in China, showing faith in the country's continued financial opening-up. On Monday, a meeting of the country's Central Financial Commission highlighted work to steadily promote the opening-up of the financial sector, as well as its development and growth. The PBOC said China will continue to improve its business environment and better facilitate foreign financial institutions that expand their businesses in the country. "The PBOC welcomes U.S. financial institutions to boost their presence in China, share China's economic development outcomes, and contribute to deepening financial cooperation between China and the United States," it said. The central bank noted that it will promote work on bank card clearing market access in an orderly manner, while improving the regulatory system to balance development and security. Editor: JYZ Tel Aviv, Nov 22 : The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said that they will intensify the attacks on Khan Younis area which is considered to be the hideout of Yahya Sinwar. The IDF sources told IANS that after four day ceasefire ends on Thursday, the IDF will commence the operation against the Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar is widely believed as the master brain behind the October 7 attacks. Earlier, the Israel Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has also said that Israeli forces will find Sinwar and kill him. "It is moral obligation to kill Yahya Sinwar," the Defence Minister has said. With the huge exodus of people from North Gaza to South, there is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza with several shelters controlled by the UNRWA are overfilled. Many humanitarian aid agencies have warned of an imminent medical catastrophe unfolding in the Southern area of Gaza following the displacement of people. New Delhi, Nov 22 : The spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Arindam Bagchi, said on Wednesday that the US shared some inputs pertaining to a nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others which are a cause of concern for both the nations and they have decided to take necessary follow-up action. He also said that issues in the context of the US inputs are already being examined by the relevant departments. In a statement on reports of discussions between India and the US on security matters, Bagchi said: "During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to a nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others." He said the inputs are a cause of concern for both the countries and they have decided to take necessary follow-up action. On its part, India takes such inputs "seriously" since it "impinges on our own national security interests" as well, he said. "Issues in the context of US inputs are already being examined by the relevant departments," the MEA spokesperson added. New Delhi: Former Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia leaves his residence after meeting his ailing wife. Image Source: IANS News New Delhi, Nov 22 : A Delhi court on Wednesday extended the judicial custody of former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia till December 22 in connection with the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) case related to the alleged excise policy scam. Special Judge M.K. Nagpal of the Rouse Avenue Court also granted Sisodia's application requesting access to his bank statement for a specific period. Sisodia apprised the court that the statement was withheld by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is also probing the case, due to the attachment of his savings account. The judge allowed the request, directing the branch manager of the bank to provide a copy of the bank statement to any of Sisodia's authorised counsels. In a separate development, the court also addressed the application of Vijay Nair, an accused in the case, seeking the supply of woolen clothes and twelve books. The court approved Nair's request. Sisodia was arrested by the CBI on February 26 for his alleged involvement in corruption concerning the formulation and implementation of the now-scrapped Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22. The ED had then arrested him on March 9 in connection with a money laundering case stemming from the excise policy matter. On Tuesday, the court extended Sisodiaas judicial custody in connection with the ED case till December 11. Besides, the court had also said that the trial in the matter should start as soon as possible. In July, the Delhi High Court had denied bail to Sisodia in the excise policy case being probed by the ED. Imphal, Nov 22 : Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh on Wednesday said that in view of the prevailing situation in Myanmar, security has been further tightened along the state's around 400 km border with the neighbouring country. "In view of the prevailing situation in Myanmar, we have deployed a huge number of our forces along the border. Not only Assam Rifles but state security forces, BSF, CRPF have been deployed. We are monitoring the situation strictly and closely," the Chief Minister told media persons. The Manipur Chief Minister's remarks comes after 74 Myanmar soldiers fled to Indian territory after their camps in Chin state were captured by the Chin National Defence Force (CNDF), the armed wing of the Chin National Organisation (CNO). Myanmar soldiers were apprehended by the Mizoram Police in Champhai district and handed over to Assam Rifles. The Indian forces handed over all the 74 soldiers to Myanmar Army officers at Tamu (opposite to Moreh border in Manipur) in the neighbouring country. Besides soldiers, around 1,400 Myanmarese, including women and children, took shelter in Mizoram's Champhai district last week following the gunfight between the Myanmar's Tatmadaw (military) and CNDF cadres. Claiming that normalcy is returning to the state, the Chief Minister said that some elements are trying to create trouble. "Destruction of the prefabricated temporary houses for the displaced people is unfortunate. Now, we have provided security and reconstruction of the prefabricated houses will be started again. In the last one or two months, normalcy has been restored in most parts of the state except for one of two incidents occurred recently. "We condemn these acts. We should work together to restore normalcy in Manipur," he said. On Monday two people including a security personnel were killed in Manipur's Kangpokpi district. The 48-hour total shutdown in the Kangpokpi district imposed by the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU), Sadar Hills ended on Wednesday while its economic blockade along Imphal-Dimapur National Highway (NH-2) and Imphal-Jiribam National Highway (NH-37) is still underway. These two vital highways are life lines of Manipur. Volunteers were seen at various locations enforcing the total shutdown. However, there was no report of any untoward incident. The protesters, mostly Kuki-Zo womenfolk, chanted slogans such as, "We Demand CBI inquiry", "We Want Justice", "We Demand Separate Administration", etc. CoTU's Media Cell Coordinator, N.G. Lun Kipgen said that Monday's ambush taking two innocent Kuki-Zo precious lives was the second fatal ambush carried out by the disguised valley-based insurgent outfits in the region donning state forces camouflage, armed with sophisticated weapons. The CoTU has been demanding the central government's intervention to maintain the law and order situation in the tribal dominated areas of Manipur. Jaipur, Nov 22 : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that the BJP wants to create two Indias. "They want to create two Indias. On one side, is Adaniwala India and on the other side is true Hindustan, Mother India, where people give blood and sweat 24 hours a day. We do not want two Indias," Rahul Gandhi said while addressing a poll rally in Rajasthan. He said that if Congress government comes back to power in Rajasthan again, they will first conduct a caste census in Rajasthan. "As soon as our government comes to power at the Centre, the Congress will conduct caste census in the entire country. There should be equal participation of backward people, poor, Dalits and tribals," Rahul Gandhi said. He said that after the caste census is done the governments will be able to take action accordingly. "India will change after the caste census," he said. He said that the day when India allows its poor, backward, tribals and Dalits to participate in running of the country, a miracle will take place in India. "Backwards, Dalits, tribals will understand the power which will change our country," Rahul Gandhi said. He said that in every speech, Prime Minister Modi says that he belongs to OBC. "What is the population of OBC in India? No one knows. No one knows the population of backward people in our country," he said. "I asked in Parliament that we praise Bharat Mata, but no one knows how much population is there in Bharat Mata. So, I demanded caste census in Parliament," he said. He said that since he spoke about the caste census, Modi has changed his speeches. "Since then Modi says that there is one caste in India that is the poor. When the time came to win the elections, Modi becomes an OBC. But when it comes to giving participation to the OBC class, Modi sayd that there is only one caste and that is the poor," Rahul Gandhi said. He said that India is not run by MPs and MLAs. "At least 90 officers along with the Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister run the country. These people decide how much budget money will go to health, education, insurance scheme and defence of the country. "How many IAS officers are from backward class out of these 90 officials? The backward population is 50 per cent and out of these 90 officials, only one officer is tribal and three officers are Dalit," he said. He said that today the population of backward people is almost 50 per cent and their share is less than five percent. He said that during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, he traveled from Kanyakumari to Kashmir and only one or two slogans emerged during the yatra. "The most beautiful slogan that emerged from the Bharat Jode Yatra was, 'We have to open a shop of love in the market of hatred'," Rahul Gandhi said. He addressed election rallies in Rajkheda, Nadbai, and in Gangapur City in Rajasthan. Patna, Nov 22 : Two persons were arrested by Vaishali Police in Bihar on the charge of smuggling firearms and cartridges from Nepal, an official said. The accused have been identified as Kishan Kumar and Aashish Kumar, natives of Malgodam road Khagaria. The police said that it has seized a sophisticated pen pistol, a country made Katta, 3 live cartridges, 1 misfire cartridge, 1 laptop, 1, cell phone, an Aadhar card and a bike from their possessions. Police said that the accused were arrested after they met with an accident at Matiyara Chowk under Sarai police station. "We learnt that two bikers met with an accident at Matiyara Chowk on Tuesday night. When we initiated the rescue operation, we found a firearm. When we thoroughly checked them, we found weapons," said Manibhushan Kumar, SHO of Sarai police station. He said that they have been admitted to Sadar hospital Hajipur and are undergoing treatment in police custody. He said that an FIR under IPC sections of 414/34 and arms act has been registered against them. "We are trying to find out their criminal records. Preliminary probe revealed that they were coming from Nepal. Further investigation is underway," he said. --IANS ajk/dan New Delhi, Nov 22 : A Delhi court has convicted a man for committing sexual assault and sexual harassment against two minor girls, deeming the prosecution's evidence as cogent, trustworthy, consistent, corroborative, and inspiring confidence. Assistant Sessions Judge Kumar Rajat convicted Shrikant under Sections 8 and 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, along with Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 354 and 509. Shrikant was accused of sexually assaulting one minor girl and sexually harassing another residing in a women's welfare institution on December 14, 2014. The judge underscored the essence of a woman's modesty, pointing out the accused's culpable intention as crucial. He noted that both intention and knowledge could be attributed to Shrikant, who deliberately used criminal force against the first minor girl without her consent. Noting that the accused had no known relation to the victim and lacked a bona fide reason for the act, the court found Shrikant guilty of intentionally insulting the modesty of the first minor girl. Similarly, the court noted that Shrikant had called the second minor girl to a secluded place, offering her money and making inappropriate remarks. This, the court ruled, amounted to intentionally insulting the modesty of a woman. The judge commended the credibility of the witnesses, stating that the first minor girl's corroboration of facts, her identification of the accused in court, and the consistency of her statement were crucial. The second victim's testimony regarding sexual harassment was also considered consistent, with the court inferring "sexual intent" from Shrikant's actions. The judge said that there was no apparent reason for the minor girls to falsely implicate Shrikant. Concluding the verdict, the court stated: "The evidence led by prosecution is cogent, trustworthy, consistent, corroborative and inspires confidence. Thus, the prosecution has proved its case beyond reasonable doubt against accused Shrikant." --IANS spr/dan New Delhi, Nov 22 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought response from the Centre, Delhi Police and MCD on Mission Save Constitution's (MSC) plea to hold a public meeting (All India Muslim Mahapanchayat) at the Ramlila Maidan. Notably, the high court had last month upheld Delhi Police's decision to revoke initial permission granted to the petitioner, MSC, an organisation dedicated to promoting awareness about constitutional rights, stressing on the importance of the period of end of Shradh till Diwali, calling it extremely auspicious for people belonging to the Hindu community. However, the court had said that it is always open to the authorities, after the festive season is over, to consider afresh the organisation's plea for permission to hold the event. Delhi Police apprised Justice Subramonium Prasad that it has received an application from another organisation as well for organising a programme at the Ramlila ground from December 3 to 5 and no objection certificate (NOC) has been issued for it. In response, the court asked the police to place before it the relevant records, including the copy of application of the other organisation and when it was received. The petitioner said it is aggrieved by the pendency of a decision by the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Central district, on its application seeking NOC for organising the meeting on December 4. After the high court had upheld Delhi Police's decision to revoke initial permission granted to the petitioner, the latter rescheduled the event for December 4 and applied for permission to book Ramlila ground. "The Horticulture Department of the MCD redirected the petitioner to the Delhi Police for NOC and the petitioner then submitted a request on November 13 after the conclusion of Diwali festivities," the plea, filed through advocates Jatin Bhatt and Harshit Gahlot, said. Delhi Police, through advocate Arun Panwar, submitted before Justice Prasad that the application regarding NOC to organise the event on December 4 has been considered but the request could not be acceded. He said the Central district received an application on November 8 from Mahatyagi Sewa Sansthan for organising a programme at the Ramlila ground from December 3 to 5. The counsel said the NOC has already been granted to the Sansthan for December 4, so it is not feasible to entertain another application for the same date. The matter is likely to be heard on November 24. Earlier, Justice Prasad had refused to grant permission to the petitioner, which had initially received approval for the gathering, scheduled for October 29, after a series of meetings and clearances with Delhi Police officials. However, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) of Central district had revoked this permission citing concerns over the event's "communal" nature. The organisation had alleged that the Delhi Police unilaterally and arbitrarily revoked their initial consent. The police had informed Justice Prasad that MSC allegedly misled the authorities when seeking permission to hold the public meeting. The police had said that while the initial permission had been granted, it was subsequently revoked due to numerous complaints from local residents, who expressed concerns that the proposed event with expected attendance of around 10,000 people might have communal undertones. The court had observed that the posters of the organisation showed that the event can have communal and religious overtones, and that it might increase communal tension in the Old Delhi area, which has witnessed communal tensions in the past. Justice Prasad had said that while there is freedom to raise voice, the apprehension of the SHO of the concerned area cannot be washed away by constitutional courts for the possibility of communal tension. He had said that the organisation's fresh plea for permission will be considered by the authorities on its own merits, subject to the organisation providing a list of speakers and an undertaking that the meeting will not cause any communal tension. The organisation's objective for the event is to initiate a series of gatherings focused on strengthening various marginalised communities, beginning with minority communities and extending to groups like SC, ST, and OBC. These meetings aim to give a voice to all oppressed sections of society. The DCP's letter, which cancelled the previous permission, mentioned that the event's theme had been misrepresented, and social media posts indicated a communal agenda. It raised concerns about the potential for communal tensions during the festive season and in a sensitive location like Old Delhi. The petitioner had argued that the reasons provided for the cancellation of permission were "unfounded' and "unreasonable". MSC, led by advocate Mehmood Pracha as its national convenor, aims to educate the public about their constitutional rights and improve the well-being of marginalised communities by utilising constitutional and legal provisions. Ahmedabad, Nov 22 : Gujarat Director General of Police Vikas Sahay on Tuesday announced major reshuffle in the Traffic Brigade (TRB) personnel. There are over 9,000 TRB personnel assisting the traffic police across the Gujarat state. "More than 1,100 personnel who have completed a decade of service are still active. At least 3,000 have reached the five-year mark and 2,300 have completed three years," said a notification. The officials said that allowing personnel to continue in the same role for extended periods is not administratively sound. He said that TRB roles, being contractual and not lifetime appointments need periodic refreshments. "The vacancies will be filled by recruits, providing opportunities for others to serve in the Traffic Brigade," the official said. He said that the personnel with ten years of service will be relieved by November 30, followed by those with five years on December 31. "The final group, those who have served for three years, will be relieved by March 31, 2024," the official said. Meanwhile, the affected personnel have protested at the Surat Collectorate and submitted a memorandum to the Surat Collector, demanding the withdrawal of the notification and an increase in daily wages from Rs 300 to Rs 450. --IANS janvi/dan Hyderabad, Nov 22 : Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national president Mayawati on Wednesday expressed the hope that BSP will come to power in the state. Addressing the party's election rally in Suryapet, she appealed to people to bring BSP under the leadership of state president R.S. Praveen Kumar to power to fulfil the dreams of BR Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. She said that BSP is contesting the elections on its own. "We have not entered into an alliance with any party. This time the election result will be surprising," she said. She appealed to people to not get misled by the false promises made by various parties. She said ruling and Opposition parties make promises but mostly forget them after getting elected and people no longer believe such promises. Mayawati said that the BSP does not release its manifesto as it believes in action and not in mere words. She said that the BSP alone is fighting both the BJP and the Congress. She also slammed Telangana's ruling party BRS for failing to fulfil the promises made to people. Condemning the attack on BSP candidate in Suryapet, Vatte Jannayya, she said the state government which failed to enforce law has no right to remain in power. Mayawati said Dalit, tribals, other weaker sections, Muslims, other minorities, labourers and farmers in the country were facing numerous problems. She alleged that some parties were hatching conspiracies to do away with the reservation enjoyed by SCs, STs and OBCs. She said the Congress party which ruled at the Centre and in many states for a longer period after independence and the BJP which has been ruling the country and many states for the last few years and other parties which were in power were responsible. She recalled that it was only after BSP's struggle that the government headed by VP Singh accepted the Mandal Commission recommendations. She said despite being in power for a long time, Congress did not confer Bharat Ratna upon BR Ambedkar and it was only on the consistent demand by BSP that V.P. Singh government conferred the highest civilian award on the architect of the Indian Constitution. She also slammed Congress party for not declaring mourning following the passing away of BSP founder Kanshi Ram though it was in power at the Centre. Praveen Kumar accused the BRS government of corruption, particularly in the Kaleshwaram irrigation project. He also called on people to defeat the BRS in the upcoming elections. He alleged that CM KCR and his family had amassed wealth worth Rs 1.20 lakh crore through the Kaleshwaram project. He said that the project was being built at an exorbitant cost, and that the funds were being diverted to the BRS leaders. Praveen Kumar also criticised the TRS government for failing to fulfil the aspirations of the martyrs who had laid down their lives for the Telangana movement. He said that the government had not done enough to improve the lives of the poor and marginalized. Photo taken on Nov. 2, 2023 shows black-headed gulls that have arrived in Kunming City of southwest Chinas Yunnan Province to spend winter here are flying around in the waters of the Haigeng Dam, attracting tourists to watch the gulls, feed them, and take pictures. It is reported that the first batch of black-headed gulls that arrived in Kunming is close to 5,000 in number, and large quantities of black-headed gulls will gradually arrive in Kunming to spend winter. (Wang Zuman/Guangming Picture) Photo taken on Nov. 2, 2023 shows black-headed gulls that have arrived in Kunming City of southwest Chinas Yunnan Province to spend winter here are flying around in the waters of the Haigeng Dam, attracting tourists to watch the gulls, feed them, and take pictures. It is reported that the first batch of black-headed gulls that arrived in Kunming is close to 5,000 in number, and large quantities of black-headed gulls will gradually arrive in Kunming to spend winter. (Wang Zuman/Guangming Picture) Editor: JYZ New Delhi, Nov 22 : Two months after suspending visa facility following a diplomatic spat with Canada triggered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's claim that his government has intelligence linking New Delhi with the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, India on Wednesday said that it has resumed e-visa service for Canadian nationals. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said, "Regarding e-visa, first of all it has nothing to do with the G20 meeting. What had happened was we had temporarily suspended visa issuance because the situation in Canada made it difficult for our diplomats... like going to office and doing the necessary work for processing visas. "As the situation there has become more secure or relatively improved, I think we have found it possible for the visa services to progressively resume and you know, physical visas had started in many categories," the minister said. "So, at that time itself we had said we will be looking at e-visas next. I think it was a logical consequence of that," he added. Diplomatic relations between India and Canada hit rock bottom after Trudeau in September claimed that his government has intelligence linking New Delhi with the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil in June this year. Subsequently, both nations removed an envoy each and later New Delhi asked Canada to recall more than 40 of its diplomats posted in the country, to maintain diplomatic parity. India said this was done owing to repeated interference in its internal affairs by Canada and to cut down a huge number of diplomatic presence of Canadian diplomats in the country. India had rejected claims by the Canadian government that it had an involvement in the killing of Nijjar, as it dubbed the charges as "absurd and motivated". New Delhi, Nov 22 : A Delhi court has granted bail to a man accused of murdering his daughter, citing doubts about the victim's identity after a DNA mismatch. Additional Sessions Judge Vishal Gogne, presiding over the case against Ravinder Chaudhary, acknowledged the strong likelihood that the body recovered from the lake may not belong to the alleged victim, leading to the decision to release the accused on bail. Chaudhary was accused of strangling his daughter in a fit of rage on January 18, 2020, as she had married against his wishes. According to the prosecution, the victim's body was disposed of in a lake in Mohammadpur, Bulandshahr, where it was recovered 12 days later. The court noted the principal ground for seeking bail, which stemmed from the Forensic Science Laboratory's (FSL) DNA examination. The FSL found that the DNA profiles of Chaudhary and his wife did not match the DNA profile drawn from the tooth and bone of the body recovered from the lake. The defence argued that, as the alleged victim could not be identified as the biological daughter of the accused, Chaudhary's detention should not be extended. It further contended that all other evidence against the accused was circumstantial and weak. It was revealed that the post-mortem of another female had been conducted on the same day at the same hospital where the autopsy of the victim took place. The possibility of switching biological samples between the two deceased females was raised, prompting a repeated DNA test. The court noted that the two DNA profiles still did not match, raising a strong likelihood that the body recovered from the lake was not that of the accused's daughter. Considering the doubts about the victim's identity and the circumstantial nature of the evidence against Chaudhary, the court deemed it imprudent to extend his custody pending further trial, especially given his three-and-a-half years in custody. The court directed the accused to submit a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and scheduled the matter for further proceedings on December 21. --IANS spr/khz Patna, Nov 22 : RJD chief Lalu Prasad on Wednesday targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that he will remove him from power if the Centre doesn't grant special status to Bihar. Interacting with mediapersons at the Patna airport on Wednesday, Lalu Prasad said, "Bihar should get special status and if it does not happen, we will remove the Modi government from the Centre." The demand for special status has gained momentum once again after the Nitish Kumar government passed a proposal on this at the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. The state government has also demanded from the Centre to provide a fund of Rs 2,50,000 crore for the implementations of various projects. Nitish Kumar, following the meeting, uploaded a post on his official X handle, saying: "During the Cabinet meeting, we have passed a proposal to give special status to Bihar and requested the Centre to meet the same." Reacting on the special status demand, state BJP chief Samrat Choudhary took a dig at the Chief Minister, saying, "Nitish Kumar requires special treatment and not special status. He does not have the moral right to demand special status." Patna, Nov 22 : Two persons were arrested by Vaishali Police in Bihar on the charge of smuggling firearms and cartridges from Nepal, an official said. The accused have been identified as Kishan Kumar and Aashish Kumar, natives of Malgodam road Khagaria. The police said that it has seized a sophisticated pen pistol, a country made Katta, 3 live cartridges, 1 misfire cartridge, 1 laptop, 1, cell phone, an Aadhar card and a bike from their possessions. Police said that the accused were arrested after they met with an accident at Matiyara Chowk under Sarai police station. "We learnt that two bikers met with an accident at Matiyara Chowk on Tuesday night. When we initiated the rescue operation, we found a firearm. When we thoroughly checked them, we found weapons," said Manibhushan Kumar, SHO of Sarai police station. He said that they have been admitted to Sadar hospital Hajipur and are undergoing treatment in police custody. He said that an FIR under IPC sections of 414/34 and arms act has been registered against them. "We are trying to find out their criminal records. Preliminary probe revealed that they were coming from Nepal. Further investigation is underway," he said. IFFI 2023: Making of 'Mighty Afrin: In the time of Floods' was big challenge, says director. Image Source: IANS News Panaji, Nov 22 : Angelos Rallis, Director of "Mighty Afrin: In the time of Floods" has said that while making the film he faced various challenges and had to shoot barefoot surrounded by snakes during floods. Rallis was speaking during an interaction programme in the 54th International Film Festival of India. To show the world how the people of the sub-continent of Asia live during the floods, he chose to stay with them in those situations without any facilities available. "It is a climate crisis story, wherein various aspects of the same are shown. If you want to do a film about climate change, then this sub- continent is the first place to check because it is an area which is severely affected," the Greece filmmaker said, adding the film was shot for five years. He said that it was a complicated process to shoot in Bangladesh as the place he had chosen had no facilities of hotels or even electricity. "I experienced the situation in Bangladesh and later I shot the film. It was not an easy process as there was no electricity to use equipments. There were many difficulties...I stayed with local people and relied on them to know about weather changes and floods. It was a dangerous process. During the floods I saw snakes around me, but without fear we shot 10 to 15 hours a day," Angelos Rallis said, adding batteries were used during shootings, which had to be sent for charging after every alternate day to far places. "I am happy because it is a life experience. It was a challenge to explain to the community about this film project. I stayed there wearing 'lungi' and walking barefoot to see how the locals were living," he said. He added that it is a film about the climate crisis and about how people adapt, when there is no sort of help from anyone. In the disappearing islands along the Brahmaputra river, orphan Afrin faces the ravages of floods in a coming-of-age tale. The film captures her resilience as she seeks her estranged father amid the climate crisis, joining the ranks of new refugees, merging dreams with reality. Baghdad, Nov 23 : Eight members of the Iraqi paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces were killed and four others were wounded by US airstrikes near the Iraqi capital Baghdad. A statement by the Hashd Shaabi said on Wednesday that at 2:30 a.m. (2330 GMT on Tuesday), the US aircraft attacked positions of the Hashd Shaabi forces in the Jurf al-Nasr area, south of Baghdad, leaving eight of its fighters killed and wounding four others. "We affirm our strong condemnation of this hostile act, which represents a blatant violation of Iraq's sovereignty," the statement said. Meanwhile, the US Central Command said in a statement that the US aircraft conducted precision strikes in Iraq in direct response to the attacks against US and coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, Xinhua news agency reported. A statement by the media office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani said the US airstrikes constitute a clear violation of the coalition's mission which is to fight the Islamic State militants on Iraqi soil. The latest US airstrikes came after the Iraqi armed group "Islamic Resistance in Iraq," an umbrella body for Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, claimed responsibility for carrying out a series of rocket and drone attacks on military bases housing US-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria. The attacks by the armed group are believed to be part of a series of retaliatory measures amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Rime frosted trees and a blanket of snow on the ground have created a white fairyland in Sifangding Mountain in Tonghua city, Jilin province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Tonghua city in Jilin province recently welcomed a heavy snow that turned the Sifangding Mountain into a fantastical winter realm. Rime frosted trees and a blanket of snow on the ground are drawing tourists and photographers to enjoy the unique winter landscape. 9 1 Editor: JYZ Photo taken on Nov. 21, 2023, shows the first "Dunhuang" land-sea international freight train departing from Dunhuang City, northwest China's Gansu Province. The freight train, loaded with 1,000 tons of asbestos, will be sent to Tianjin port before it leaves for Bangkok, Thailand, via land-sea transport.(Zhang Xiaoliang/Guangming Picture) Photo taken on Nov. 21, 2023, shows the first "Dunhuang" land-sea international freight train departing from Dunhuang City, northwest China's Gansu Province. The freight train, loaded with 1,000 tons of asbestos, will be sent to Tianjin port before it leaves for Bangkok, Thailand, via land-sea transport. (Zhang Xiaoliang/Guangming Picture) Editor: ZAD Union drives at Barnes & Noble stores are gaining momentum, with a majority of the workers at two more outlets voting to unionize. In San Jose, Calif., 28 booksellers, cashiers, and baristas at the B&N located at the Almaden Plaza shopping mall voted on November 8 to join United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 5, and 18 workers at the B&N in Bloomington, Ill., voted on Nov. 17 to join the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union. On its Instagram page, the group that spearheaded the union drive at B&N-Almaden wrote that its goal in unionizing is to secure better wages, guarantee access to comprehensive training, and create a safer work environment for team members and our customers, declaring that nobody knows [store operations] like we do and and we believe we deserve a say in how our store is run. UFCW Local 5, which represents workers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Central California, posted on its Instagram page that the B&N-Almaden election was a big win, and that the workers have spoken, securing a resounding 90% majority in the union election. In Bloomington, the election was, RWDSU director of communications Chelsea Connor told PW, unanimously in favor of the union." Three other B&N retail outletsone in Hadley, Mass. and two in New York City, including B&Ns flagship store on Union Square as well as the store in Park Slopehave already unionized. The workers at those stores are represented by RWDSU, as are the workers at the B&N Education store on the Rutgers University campus in New Jersey. One day of downtime due to a strike of Polish carriers at Ukrainian-Polish border crossing points (BCPs) costs an exporting company UAH 1 million, the European Business Association (EBA) reported based on the results of an express survey of 55 participating companies. According to the study, the total estimated amount of damage caused to the surveyed companies since the beginning of the downtime reached at least UAH 305.88 million. At the same time, both importers and exporters suffer equally, because 49% of companies import products to Ukraine. At the same time, 25% of goods are sent to Poland, 15% to Germany, as well as to other Baltic countries, Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Asian and African countries. "A strike by Polish carriers can significantly complicate and even paralyze the work of many companies in Ukraine. This affects the trust, including foreign partners, in Ukrainian companies. Due to the demands of Polish carriers, which are also not addressed to Ukraine, it is the Ukrainian ones that suffer business," EBA Executive Director Anna Derevyanko said, calling for a constructive resolution of the situation. The EBA said that blocking traffic at the border by Polish carriers has already led to numerous negative consequences for businesses in Ukraine and their counterparties abroad. Transportation costs have increased significantly, which affects the cost of production and the price competitiveness of companies. There is a change in routes, while at the same time queues at the Slovak and Hungarian borders are increasing. Businesses are already reporting a shortage of transport, including due to the reluctance of carriers to take orders during the strike. Failure to fulfill obligations to Ukrainian and foreign customers will entail penalties from buyers, cancellation of further orders and loss of customers. The inability to import the necessary raw materials or components creates risks for Ukrainian production. All this has a direct impact on the access of the population in Ukraine to necessary goods and the uninterrupted operation of enterprises, the business association said. The latest research from Ampere Analysis finds that global Pay TV penetration will see its first yearly decline ever next year. This will follow Pay TV penetration peaking at 60.3% in Q4 2023. By 2028, penetration will have fallen by almost four percentage points. The latest research from Ampere Analysis finds that global Pay TV penetration will see its first yearly decline ever next year. This will follow Pay TV penetration peaking at 60.3% in Q4 2023. By 2028, penetration will have fallen by almost four percentage points. All regions will be in decline by 2025, the analyst firm predicts. Pay TV penetration signifies the number of Pay TV subscriptions relative to the number of households. Ampere Analysis figures show that in North America, Pay TV penetration has almost halved from a high of 84% in 2009 to 45% in 2023, caused by a combination of high costs and competition from a mature SVOD market. Latin America has also shown large declines in penetration since 2016. This is largely led by Brazil, which has posted a drop of roughly 10 percentage points since its peak Pay TV penetration of 42% that year. Growth in Pay TV has come primarily from Asia-Pacific and Europe in recent years, with large gains coming from China Mobile after it acquired an IPTV license in 2018. This growth has mostly been driven by low-cost IPTV services, which are often bundled into broadband packages for a low or nominal cost, Ampere Analysis reports. Now these regions will fall into decline after 2025. There are still some growth markets, such as Portugal, Serbia and Hungary. Rory Gooderick, Senior Analyst at Ampere Analysis says: Growth in global Pay TV uptake has been driven over the last five years by Asia Pacific and Central & Eastern Europe. However, declines coming from the Americas, which are driven by streaming competition and the high price of Pay TV in North America, currently sitting at over $90 a month, will contribute to global Pay TV penetration declining for the first time in 2024. Gooderick went on to point out that with their annual ARPU of over $1,100, North American cable and satellite platforms will remain a powerful force in TV, and he flagged the recent Disney-Charter deal as a model that could help to stem losses (see separate story). Ampere Analysis currently surveys 96 countries globally. Pay TV penetration is measured as revenue-generating units per 100 households. 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'...similar to the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2012 taper tantrum, or the 2018 midcap crash.' 'This could lead to a substantial decline in activity and revenues for the broking industry.' 'When this will happen is uncertain, but as brokers, we must be prepared for such a downturn.' "Private equity and venture capital firm-backed players pursue aggressive tactics to acquire clients without paying much heed to the bottom line," Jimeet Modi, founder and CEO of the SAMCO Group, tells Sundar Sethuraman/Business Standard. There is a change in the pecking order in the broking industry. What are your thoughts? There are multiple metrics to define who holds the top position in the broking industry. The only publicly available information is that of active clients, but this is just one metric. Some brokerages have only a third of the clients of the new top player, yet in terms of revenues, they are five times larger. We also have to consider the average revenue per user. At SAMCO, we don't believe in chasing customers or growth for the sake of it; it must be profitable growth. PE/VC-backed players pursue aggressive client acquisitions, but that number makes no difference for players who are more profit-oriented. What is SAMCO's unique selling proposition, given how competitive the broking industry is? We are not a plain-vanilla execution platform. We provide trading services as well as a recommendation and analytics platform. We target investors who are already in the market and looking to improve their performance. Many new investors come from small towns with the aspiration of getting rich quickly through derivatives trading, but we don't chase that category. Instead, we help customers become more self-aware by showing them their trading patterns and blind spots. The idea is to assist customers in making the best use of the funds they can deploy. What are the new emerging trends in the industry? Between 2000 and 2010, online trading was introduced, but people were paying ad valorem fees. Research was bundled as part of brokerage services and offered to customers. From 2012-2014 onwards, discount broking started to gain prominence, focusing solely on the platform. I believe the next eight to 10 years will be characterised by platform-plus services. Merely offering a platform may no longer meet customer needs; value-added offerings in terms of analytics, advanced recommendations, and automated trading are necessary. Digital onboarding was a game changer for the broking industry. What could be the next development to further boost the industry? The account aggregator framework will give a significant boost to the industry. Account aggregators offer a range of assets across multiple brokers, allowing customers to have a holistic view of their assets and manage their finances more effectively. Brokers will leverage data from aggregator platforms to enhance the customer experience. IMAGE: Jimeet Modi, CEO, SAMCO Group Photograph: Kind courtesy Jimeet Modi/X The past few years have been financially favourable for the broking industry. What is your outlook for the future? The broking industry is supercyclical in nature. In recent years, especially since the pandemic, markets have seen a generally upward trajectory with occasional corrections. Brokerages are likely to perform well in such a scenario. However, at some point, the markets may experience a turbulent phase similar to the 2008 global financial crisis, the 2012 taper tantrum, or the 2018 midcap crash. This could lead to a substantial decline in activity and revenues for the broking industry. When this will happen is uncertain, but as brokers, we must be prepared for such a downturn. Will a few large players dominate the industry in the future? By and large, only a few hundred brokers will remain. Survival will likely be limited to brokers with more than 50,000 customers, as they can afford the deep investment in technology for customer experience and regulatory compliance. Smaller brokers face the challenge of being too small to meet compliance costs. What new regulatory changes could impact the industry? All recent regulations have contributed to a healthier market. Regulations on upstreaming and downstreaming implemented by SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) since September have prevented events similar to the Karvy case. Similarly, regulations on margins have reduced leverage in the system, preventing many brokers from going bust. The reduction of the settlement cycle is the next significant regulatory change that will impact the industry. We are content with the T+1 cycle but have concerns about how an instant or hourly settlement would work. Questions arise regarding how short sellers will be accommodated and how day traders will be affected. They bring a lot of liquidity by buying or selling before the market closes. We hope that the new regulations will not negatively impact liquidity and will address these concerns. We look forward to the consultation paper on this. Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com Go First suspended its flights and filed an insolvency application, squarely blaming engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney for its cash crunch. Photograph: ANI Photo The presence of an engine maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facility in India could have prevented Go First airline from going belly up, as sending engines abroad for servicing is not an efficient way to operate a carrier, Piyush Srivastava, senior economic advisor, Ministry of Civil Aviation, said in a statement on Tuesday. On May 3, Go First suspended its flights and filed for insolvency, squarely blaming engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney (PW) for its cash crunch. The airline claimed that about half of its 54 aircraft were grounded on May 3 due to a delay in the supply of engines by the US-based company. PW has denied the charges. Srivastava, delivering a speech at the aviation industry event Aero MRO 2023, said, Removing the engine here in India, paying a charge to transport it elsewhere while the aircraft is on the ground, or renting another engine not an efficient way of operating an airline. Our recent experience with Go First is fresh in our memory. "It probably would not have landed on its belly had we had the requisite MRO services in the country. "Its supplier, the OEM (PW) in that case, was not in a position to help the airline due to supply chain disruption, and the airline went belly up, which is not a good thing for the aviation sector, he added. After Go First airline stopped operating flights on May 3, its lessors put in applications with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to repossess more than 40 of the airlines 54 planes. However, the National Company Law Tribunal on May 10 put a moratorium on all of Go Firsts assets, barring the lessors from taking their planes back. Multiple lessors of Go First have filed an appeal in the higher tribunal and courts to repossess the planes. Srivastava stated that it is time for the establishment of MRO facilities in the country, as currently, only 15 per cent of Indian carriers MRO business is handled in India. We handle only 15 per cent. Whatever maintenance work we perform here is at the bare minimum, focusing on line and airframe maintenance, he noted, highlighting the deficiency in engine and component MRO facilities in India. We need to cover the ground in component and engine maintenance, where it matters, he noted. Srivastava mentioned that the trump card lies with the airlines, given their substantial orders. He stated that they can impose a condition on aircraft and engine makers to have an MRO facility in India. Sometimes people reach out to me, especially in the defence ministry and other government departments, asking why I don't make it mandatory (to buy planes/engines only from the company that has MRO in India). "Of course, we have toyed with this idea, but I believe that this amounts to licence permit raj in another form, which I am not fond of, he said. The easier route is that the airline industry themselves realise that this is something they have to do, he noted. India stands out as a major purchaser of aircraft, with major domestic airline operators such as Air India and IndiGo placing two of the worlds largest aircraft orders with Airbus and Boeing in 2023. Despite ranking as the third-largest global aircraft buyer, India faces a notable scarcity of engine MRO centres. Consequently, approximately 92 per cent of the engine MRO business is outsourced to other nations. The Indian MRO industrys total size is expected to grow substantially from about $1.7 billion in 2021 to about $4 billion by 2031. Diwali fireworks are expected to continue on Dalal Street next week, with four companies collectively seeking to mobilise over Rs 6,600 crore through initial public offerings (IPOs). In terms of the amount raised, this is poised to be the busiest week of calendar year 2023. Tata Technologies (Tata Tech), a subsidiary of Tata Motors, could lead the charge with an IPO projected to be over Rs 2,900 crore. This will mark the first maiden share sale by a Tata Group firm in nearly two decades. The last IPO from Indias most valuable conglomerate was Tata Consultancy Services in 2004. The state-owned power project financier, Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency, will also launch its maiden share sale worth over Rs 2,100 crore. The other two offerings are from Federal Banks retail-focused non-banking financial company arm, Fedbank Financial Services (Fedfina), and consumer oil manufacturer Gandhar Oil Refinery (India). Industry players, despite challenging market conditions, assert that companies are eager to proceed with their share sales ahead of state elections and the year-end holiday season for foreign portfolio investors (FPIs). Following a turbulent October, these four IPOs will once again test investors appetite for primary share sales, they said. The IPOs are coming at a time when FPIs are set to remain net sellers for a third straight month. Since September, FPIs have sold domestic shares worth Rs 40,000 crore (nearly $5 billion). Bankers said liquidity support from domestic funds will ensure good demand. FPIs and retail dominated the IPO market 20 years ago, and high networth investors followed FPIs. "Now, the market is dominated by domestic institutional investors. In the past three years, FPIs have vacillated, removing money from the Indian market. "But domestic investors have been buying continuously. "With such strong domestic flows, any company with an interesting story and an attractive valuation will have takers, said Ajay Garg, founder of Equirus Capital. If all four issues sail through successfully, the IPO mobilisation for November, at nearly Rs 8,500 crore, will be the second-most this year after September when close to Rs 12,000 crore was raised. Market players said the continuous flow of deal activity amid FPI selling is a sign that domestic markets have matured. Indian markets have largely discounted the global headwinds, whether the geopolitical situation or the rate-hike scenario. "Global headwinds have not had any long-term impact on the market in the last few years due to the gush of domestic money. "The channeling of domestic savings to Indian markets and the rise in the number of investors have made Indian markets largely resilient, said Mahavir Lunawat, founder, Pantomath Advisory Services. However, some companies have had to reduce their IPO size to align with challenging market conditions. For instance, Tata Tech had cut its IPO size by more than a third. In March, when the company filed its draft red herring prospectus (RHP) with market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India, it intended to sell 95.71 million shares, or 23.6 per cent equity. According to the latest RHP, the Tata Tech IPO will consist an offer for sale of 60.85 million shares. In October, however, Tata Motors sold a 9.99 per cent stake in Tata Tech for Rs 1,613.7 crore to investors, led by private equity major TPG. The fact that Gehlot has stayed relevant these five years with his populist schemes is one reason why he may beat incumbency in a state that votes for change every election, observes Ramesh Menon. IMAGE: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, senior party leaders Ashok Gehlot and C P Joshi release the Congress manifesto for the Rajasthan assembly elections in Jaipur, November 21, 2023. Photograph: Kind courtesy Ashok Gehlot/Twitter Both the Congress and the BJP desperately want to win the Rajasthan elections with good reason. The Congress wants to be in power in the states to bolster its growth and the BJP wants to consolidate its position in the states after its loss in Karnataka. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has carefully crafted his strategy of reaching out to the masses with numerous welfare schemes for women and disadvantaged communities. He promised cooking gas cylinders at Rs 500 to 10.5 million families. Female heads of families will be given an annual honorarium of Rs 10,000 in installments. He has also a bag of freebies on offer. One of them is a laptop for first-year students in government colleges. Another is the accessibility of English medium education to all. There is also an emergency relief insurance guarantee of up to Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) during critical situations. To boost agriculture and environmental sustainability, he has offered to provide cow dung at the cost of Rs 2 a kilo to farmers. He also plans to get back the old pension scheme that will help pensioners. To beat the BJP propaganda machine, Gehlot splashed national and regional papers with huge ads showcasing his work in the last five years. But it is not all smooth sail sailing. The BJP is putting up a strong fight and not cutting corners while doing it in spite of infighting. It has brought in Vasundhara Raje, the former chief minister, who was sidelined all these five years. She was hesitatingly brought in to contest from Jhalara Patan as she has support at the grassroots all over the state and could play spoiler. Many of her loyalists who were going to be denied tickets earlier have now been given tickets. However, Raje has not been named the BJP'S chief ministerIAL candidate and it is well known that she does not get on well with the party high command in Delhi. Rajendra Rathore, who is leader of the Opposition and a seven-time BJP MLA, defended the party's action saying that since it had Prime Minister Narendra D Modi's face, it was good enough and the decision on who should be chief minister would come after the election results. Modi at one rally said that the BJP has only one face and that is of the Lotus. Sidelining Raje may not be the best strategy for the BJP. When it did that with other state leaders, it lost. Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka should have been glaring examples of that. Voters in the state do not get swayed by Modi or central leaders as ultimately they have to deal with the state leaders and rely on them for good governance. It can also hit regional pride when a local leader is looked down upon. IMAGE: Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra D Modi with C P Joshi, who heads the party in Rajasthan, at an election meeting in Jodhpur. Photograph: ANI Photo The fact that the BJP has chosen to field some of its MPs in the assembly election has not been taken kindly by the local populace. In many places, there have been open revolts on the streets as local leaders were denied tickets. The Congress is using this fact to say that these MPs are not going to get tickets for the parliamentary elections and so are being accommodated in the state elections. The BJP also brought in leaders from the Centre to firefight in Rajasthan. Like South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri who recently got a show cause notice from the party for abusing a fellow MP in Parliament. He has been made the election-in-charge of the Tonk district. It has not been taken well by party loyalists. In many places, there were open revolts and protests against the BJP by its workers. MP Rajyavardhan Rathore who was being fielded from Jhotwara was confronted with black-waving BJP workers who did not want him contest. The retired colonel shifted to the Taranagar constituency which is comparatively safer. Similarly, the election cavalcade of MP Deviji Patel, who is being fielded from Sanchore, was pelted with stones. All this is not good news for the BJP. IMAGE: Congress leader Ashok Gehlot at an election meeting in Rajasthan. Photograph: Kind courtesy Ashok Gehlot/Twitter The fact is that apart from Vasundhara Raje, the BJP does not have a face that will pull in votes. Ironically, they do not want her around in a patriarchal-driven state. If the BJP wins and she is not crowned, she will not be silent. She has a remarkable loyal standing among the electorate and she knows that. The BJP will realise this in case they win and try to replace her with Diya Kumari from the erstwhile Jaipur royal family who is an MP from Rajasamand. She has been given a ticket from the Vidyadhar Nagar constituency that was earlier held by five-time MLA Narpat Singh Rajvi who had won with over 30,000 votes in the last assembly election. He is the son-in-law of former CM Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. BJP supporters have not taken kindly to the way he has been treated. But the reality is that Kumari is close to the party leadership and has won their confidence as they would rather have the state chief minister listen to them and not have an independent stand like Raje did who refused to bend down to party dictates from Delhi. Political circles in the state talk about how it would be foolhardy to replace the experienced Raje with Kumari who has no legislative experience and will not be accepted by the party rank and file. Rajvi minced no words when he questioned how the BJP gave Kumari a ticket when it was a historic fact that her family had connived with the Mughals and fought against Rana Pratap who is greatly respected in the state. IMAGE: BJP national Vice-President Vasundhara Raje and her son Dushyant Singh, MP, left, at the nomination rally of party candidate Vitthal Shankar Awasthi from the Bhilwara constituency, November 4, 2023. Photograph: ANI Photo In 2018, the BJP won 71 seats compared to the Congress' 100. Many ministers in Raje's government lost. Some seats were lost by narrow margins and that is the BJP's hope this time that it will ride on anti-incumbency and improve its vote share. In 2018, the Congress garnered 39.30 percent of votes while the BJP secured 38.77 percent. Another hope the BJP is clinging to is that it won 24 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. The Congress lost all seats. IMAGE: Congress leaders Sachin Pilot, Govind Singh Dotasra, Mallikarjun Kharge, Ashok Gehlot, C P Joshi, Jitendra Singh, Pramod Tiwari and others at the release of the Congress manifesto for Rajasthan assembly elections in Jaipur, November 21, 2023. Photograph: ANI Photo The Congress learned from the last Karnataka elections how it is best to bury the hatchet among state leaders and present a show of unity. In Rajasthan, Gehlot has not had an easy time dealing with former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot who openly attacked the government time and again on various charges like corruption not being addressed. But now seemingly work together as they know there is no other way. The winning margins are thin and one wrong step may end up losing the chance to form a government again. In the run-up to the polls, the Congress has aggressively highlighted its schemes which claim to lessen the gravity of the price rise with subsidies and doles built in to help the poor. One can see it in the regions of Marwar, Mewat, Ajmer, Hadoti, Jaipur, Shekhavati and others. In meeting after meeting, Gehlot emphasised his game plan of savings, relief and growth as a strategy to fight poverty and ensure development. If he gets another term, credit has to go to his various populist schemes. Voters among the backward castes, tribals and women feel that they have been looked after. It has been difficult for the BJP to fight this strategy and so it is harping on communal issues like the murder of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal. The fact that Gehlot has been able to stay relevant all these five years with his populist schemes is one of the reasons why he may beat incumbency in a state that votes for change every election. Ramesh Menon, award-winning journalist, educator, documentary film-maker and corporate trainer, is the author of Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister. Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com The Maltese resolution envisages a win-win situation, which the two parties fail to see in their mood to bring each other to book. It may well mark the beginning of the end of war, predicts Ambassador T P Sreenivasan. IMAGE: Palestinians walk at the site of Israeli strikes on houses in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, November, 21, 2023. Photograph: Abed Sabah/Reuters Tiny Malta went down in history as a ray of hope for humanity when it managed to persuade the cynical members of the United Nations Security Council to stress humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence and the obligation to respect and protect humanitarian relief personnel. These principles are like motherhood, rarely challenged by anyone, but nations who occupy the horse shoe table consider them dispensable when the world faces existential challenges. They remain insensitive to the massacre of civilians and turn away from the massive tragedy in the theatres of war like Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Gaza. For the first time in many years, a vote was cast in the Security Council in favour of an extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip. Powerful nations like the US, Russia and the UK abstained, perhaps out of a sense of shame in vetoing a resolution which was a flash of conscience in an area of darkness. Mercifully, a liberal interpretation of the veto that abstention by permanent members would be counted as positive, the resolution scraped through, giving a ray of hope that the Security Council might act decisively in extremely precarious situations. The preambular paragraphs of the resolution consist of a careful selection of accepted language in the UN Charter and elsewhere, but one can sense the struggle of the authors to choose the phrases, which would not offend anyone. But it is clear that the eventual outcome makes all the countries equally unhappy. The categorical rejection of forced displacement of the civilian population, including children in violation of humanitarian law must have been painful for Israel, but it is balanced by an unequivocal demand for immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas. Nothing good has happened several days after the resolution was adopted, but the operative paragraphs open up several windows of opportunity for the future. The stress is on humanitarian efforts, but the resolution identifies the action required without anyone making concessions that affect their national priorities. Killing by itself is of no interest unless they give the warring factions some tactical advantages. It is clear that Israel is on a revenge drive, which only adds to the bitterness. On the other hand, cessation of hostilities under any pretext will eventually end conflict. The Maltese resolution envisages a win-win situation, which the two parties fail to see in their mood to bring each other to book. It may well mark the beginning of the end of war. If a humanitarian process saves lives and Israelis get their hostages back, neither side loses on the principles that they are fighting for, such as the two nation solution or the overall security of Israel. Considering the voting pattern and the statements made, it is obvious that the Maltese delegation engaged all the members of the Security Council individually as there was no P-5 position, no Nonaligned Movement position or others. For Malta to have accomplished this feat of a resolution without even the threat of a veto speaks highly of the Maltese delegates at the UN. The fact that Malta had no axe to grind may also have been a factor in its success. Curiously, an oral amendment was made by the Russian delegation, which it described as "the lowest common denominator, lower than what the Council cannot allow." The amendment was to add a reference to Paragraph 1 of a General Assembly resolution referring to 'illegal Israeli actions in Occupied Palestinian territories'. The oral amendment was defeated by a vote of 5 in favour, 1 against and 9 abstentions, obviously because several delegations did not want to disturb the delicate balance of the Maltese text. The UAE delegate waxed eloquent on Malta's effort by stating that what emerges from the ruins of Gaza may be the last chance for the Council members to save it. Malta expressed the hope that "our votes today translate into lives, the lives of thousands of children, civilians and heroic humanitarian workers." The Council adopted resolution 2712(2023)by a vote of 12 in favour to none against with 3 abstentions (Russia, UK, USA) IMAGE: A person stands in front of pictures during a demonstration in Tel Aviv, November 21, 2023, to demand the liberation of hostages who are being held in Gaza after they were seized by Hamas terrorists on October 6, Photograph: Amir Cohen/Reuters The US stated after the vote that it did not vote against the resolution because it worked with others to adopt a resolution on the war situation. But it also said that it was horrified that a few Council members cannot bring themselves to condemn the terrorist attacks that Hamas carried out against Israel on Oct 7. Like the UK, the US also highlighted the demand for release of the hostages by Hamas. The Russian delegate remarked that 'humanitarian pauses are not and cannot be a replacement for a ceasefire or even a truce.' China remarked that the Council should have adopted a more comprehensive and more robust resolution much earlier. The reason why it did not happen was the obstructionist attitude of the US. China characterised the adopted resolution as a first step towards a ceasefire, averting even a greater catastrophe. The Observer for the State of Palestine regretted that the UN did not ask for a stop to the killing, particularly civilians including women and children. The Israeli narrative of killing should not prevail. 'There is an alternative reality in which Palestinians are free and no Palestinian and no Israeli is killed. It is time for it to prevail. It is time for peace.' Israel stated that no resolution, which did not restrain Hamas, would create peace. 'Should Hamas choose to lay down their arms, turn themselves in and hands over the hostages unscathed, this war would end immediately.' IMAGE: A tank manoeuvres near the border with Gaza in southern Israel, November 21, 2023. Photograph: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters Even a week after the historic resolution was adopted, the situation on the ground has not changed for the better. No pause in the battle has taken place. The attack on the only remaining hospital in Gaza has resulted in more casualties. But moves for a ceasefire have gained momentum, perhaps as a result of a slight movement within the Security Council to seek a solution through a humanitarian pause. The Security Council acted on the premise that an imperfect resolution is better than no resolution, but as a first step, it may well have initiated a process for peace. Unlike in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war, the Security Council has not remained paralysed over the Israel-Hamas conflict. Ambassador T P Sreenivasan is a frequent contributor to Rediff.com. You can read his earlier columns here. Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com 'If you are constructing the tunnel in the Himalayan region, then if you have constructed 10 metres of tunnel, first you will have to do proper treatment and ensure the stability of this constructed structure.' 'You cannot just throw concrete on the ceiling and sidewall of the tunnel for permanent stability. That will not work.' IMAGE: A rescue operation is underway after a part of the Silkyara tunnel collapsed in Uttarkashi. Photograph: ANI Photo Dr Yaspal Sundriyal, professor of Geology at the Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, explains to Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com the probable reason behind the tunnel collapse at Silkyara and the challenges that the rescuers could face in their effort to extract the 41 workers who have been trapped inside the tunnel since November 12. What is your assessment of the rescue efforts being taken in getting the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel? The measures adopted by all the technical experts till now have failed to show any success. Machines and other technical tools are being brought from outside the country as well as from Indore but still the situation has not changed much. The mountain (through which the tunnel is being dug out) at Silkyara tunnel contains phyllite (mostly contains clay and micaceous minerals), a very weak rock. Earlier when drilling machines were used, the non-technical people told that the mountain is made of large rocks containing talcum powder. Actually, it is not talcum powder, but phyllite rocks which contain micaceous substances. So the lithology or the rock type is very weak. When they started constructing the tunnel, they started constructing it from both sides -- from the Silkyara and from Dandalgaon; Silkyara end is in the Bhagirathi Valley and Dandalgaon is in the Barkot area. Construction of this 4.5 km long tunnel would have likely eased 20 to 25 km of tough road conditions making it easier for Char Dham passengers. Given the geology of the area, it was difficult for them to widen the existing roads so they started constructing tunnels. We appreciate this effort, but at the same time the Himalayas are very sensitive mountain ranges; they are still uplifting. Given that the entire Himalayas is hazardous -- and any infrastructure project like construction of tunnels, road widening, construction of the hydro projects -- you will have to take extra care. One fails to understand why the construction company did not use tunnel-boring machines or TBMs. That is a very unfortunate part. If they did not use TBMs, it means they used dynamite to make way for the tunnel and through JCBs they are digging the hill to construct the tunnel. The many tunnels where they have finished the construction work, they have not used the TBMs. It is for the government and the construction company to answer why they are not using TBMs. What are the advantages of using TBMs? The TBM machine is just a boring machine, but it is safer because it disturbs a limited portion of the area where the tunnel is under construction while uncontrolled blasting and diging process using a JCB machine disturbs unlimited area of the surface where the tunnel is being constructed. IMAGE: Rescue operations underway after a portion of the Silkyara tunnel collapsed. Photograph: ANI Photo As a geologist, would you believe that the construction company should have used TBMs? They should have used tunnel-boring machines. The other critical factor is that to provide stability to those parts where tunnel work was almost completed, they used high-pressure machines to throw the concrete on the ceiling and sidewalls of the tunnel to hold the loose material from falling. While this technique gives some stability to the ceiling and side walls that stability is not enough to bear the load of the entire hill. They have done RCC (reinforced concrete cement) treatment only up to 200 metres from the Silkyara side. And the tunnel collapsed after 250 metres (from the Silkyara side). Earlier it was said that the tunnel collapsed only about 55 metres (from the mouth of tunnel) then they (the government officials) said 60 metres because they don't have any exact measurements. The other concern is that there could be even some giant boulders (between the mouth of the tunnel and the place where the 41 workers are still trapped). And if you think that we will drill and bore and penetrate through the debris that has fallen and damaged the tunnel, then certainly in some areas, these machines will also encounter big boulders, drilling through which will be very difficult. These big boulders could be another huge challenge hindering the rescue efforts. The other unfortunate part is there was no emergency exit built inside the tunnel which could have allowed the workers a safe passage in case of such eventuality. Why was an emergency exit route not available inside the Silkyara tunnel? Actually, they (the 41 workers) were working inside the tunnel when it collapsed. The construction company should have done proper lining -- lining is a technical word which means use of iron pipes in the arch shape or horseshoe shape to give proper stability to the tunnel. But they have not done that. They thought they will do that later on. Any tunnel which is under construction or constructed the provision of emergency exit is the part of design, but in the Silkyara tunnel no emergency exit was constructed. IMAGE: SDRF personnel during the rescue operation to evacuate the 41 workers trapped inside an under-construction tunnel between Silkyara and Dandalgaon, November 14, 2023. Photograph: ANI Photo Is the rock composition of the mountains in this belt stable enough to go for digging tunnels? The engineering properties of the rock and soil in the Himalayan region are not suitable for this kind of tunneling because we do not have continuous rock surfaces. The rocks found in this region are phyllitic rocks made of clay minerals. Some people are saying some underground water was also trickling in the tunnel. When these clay minerals come into contact with the moisture, the process of pinching and swelling occurs. This swelling-pinching makes the rock weaker and weaker. If you are constructing the tunnel in the Himalayan region, then if you have constructed 10 metres of tunnel, first you will have to do proper treatment and ensure the stability of this constructed structure. You cannot just throw concrete on the ceiling and sidewall of the tunnel for permanent stability. That will not work. Given that the experts working on the safety and rescue of these trapped workers are planning to drill from the top as well as horizontally from two more sides. Do you think it will bear any success? It is not easy to judge right now because earlier also they have penetrated one drilling machine and that failed. And again they called another machine from Indore that also failed. Now I heard that they are doing geophysical survey. If you are constructing such type of infrastructure in the Himalayan region, then all geological survey, geophysical surveys should be done before you implement the project. What is the use of the geophysical survey now? I cannot understand. During the geophysical survey, if you will run the ground penetrating radar, it will give you the inner picture which will not be more than 20 or 25 metres of high resolution. That will actually not give any results. IMAGE: Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari and Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami assess the rescue operations in Uttarkashi, November 19, 2023. Photograph: ANI Photo What more measures could the rescuers take to reach the workers who are trapped? They will have to make another tunnel. Actually, in any tunnel construction some exits are also constructed, which they (the construction company Navayuga Engineering) have not done. Each such edit has one exit and tunnels are open from both sides. This is the difference. These exits are constructed as emergency exits. Had they constructed these exits at every one kilometre then the solution would have been different. But they have not done any such type of work in the tunnel. 41 lives are at stake since 10 days. If they will drill from the upper side vertically, then during the vertical drilling, the ceiling of the tunnel will get damaged. There is a possibility that more such parts of the tunnel may fall down. But if they plan to construct two more 300 metre tunnels horizontal to the existing tunnel where these workers are trapped then maybe they can bore one exit or small tunnel between these two tunnels, and that may be one of the way out. But the construction of those parallel tunnels should be strictly by the tunnel-boring machines. Not by dynamite. They can't dynamite the mountain. After this mishap, do you think the government as well as construction companies will be more cautious while digging tunnels in this part of the Himalayas? First of all, the government will have to audit and evaluate the strength of the tunnels and railway tracks which are being constructed in Uttarakhand. About 60 kilometres of tunnels is proposed to construct the railway track and three or four tunnels are completed. I don't have any reason to believe that the government will take any lesson from this incident because despite the 2013 Kedarnath flash floods in this region, people have continued to construct their houses near the riverbed or near areas which were declared unsafe. Unless the government frames foolproof rules on how to construct houses near riverbeds or how to use the highly sensitive Himalayan landforms to build railway tracks and construct tunnels and roads, nothing can be done. The Bihar government on Wednesday decided to urge the Centre to incorporate the hiked reservation for deprived castes from 50 to 65 per cent in state government jobs and educational institutions in the 9th Schedule of the Constitution, so that it is guaranteed immunity from legal scrutiny, an official said. IMAGE: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during the Chhath Puja festival, at CM's residence, in Patna, November 20, 2023. Photograph: ANI Photo The Ninth Schedule of the Constitution includes a list of Central and state laws that cannot be challenged in courts. In 1992, the Supreme Court capped reservations for the backward classes at 50 per cent. The Cabinet also increased the dearness allowance of government employees in Bihar by 4 per cent. They will get a DA of 46 per cent with effect from July 1 this year, additional chief secretary (cabinet secretariat), S Siddharth, told reporters after the Cabinet meeting. The Nitish Kumar government on Tuesday issued gazette notifications for raising the quota for deprived castes to 65 per cent, after Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar gave his assent to two bills, paving the way for implementing the new reservation system. On Wednesday, the Bihar Cabinet in a meeting chaired by the chief minister passed a resolution on asking the Centre to include the provision in the 9th Schedule of the Constitution, Siddharth said. "The state government is of the opinion that keeping in view the special circumstances, the inclusion of amended provisions of hiked reservation in the 9th Schedule of the Constitution will help in ensuring justice to deprived and backward sections," Siddharth said. The resolution was mooted by the general administration department. Following a caste survey in Bihar, the state government tabled an analysis of it in the assembly earlier this month. The House then passed two bills -- Bihar Reservation of Vacancies in Posts and Services Amendment Bill and the Bihar Reservation (Admission In Educational Institutions) Amendment Bill -- to increase the quota. The bills sought a hike in the quota for Scheduled Castes from 16 to 20 per cent, Scheduled Tribes from 1 to 2 per cent, extremely backward castes from 18 to 25 per cent and other backward classes from 15 to 18 per cent to elevate the total quantum of caste-based reservations from 50 to 65 per cent. On the increased dearness allowance, Siddharth said, "The increased dearness allowance will be effective from July 1, 2023. With the hike, the state government will spend an additional Rs 966 crore." Press Release November 22, 2023 Manifestation on the PENCAS bill By Senator Pia S. Cayetano Chairperson, Senate Committee on SDGs, Innovation, and Futures Thinking Mr President, just a short statement. As the Chairperson of the Committee on Sustainable Development Goals, Innovation, and Futures Thinking, I have manifested my support from the very beginning for this PENCAS (Philippine Ecosystem and Natural Capital Accounting System (PENCAS) bill. We need to ensure that sustainability does not remain a concept. It needs to be embodied in every important agency in our government, particularly the finance agencies and the budgeting agencies. Sustainability needs to be something that all our accountants, all our technical staff, understand. This bill paves the way. It is quite technical, and it will take time for many of us to understand every detail of what is intended to be achieved here. But this is a step in the right direction, and we congratulate the sponsor (Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda) and, of course, the Economic Affairs Chairman (Senator Grace Poe) as well, for giving priority to this bill. Thank you, Mr President. The Verkhovna Rada has authorized, until December 31, 2024, one-time sales of Russian and Belarusian rubles in non-cash form from accounts in resident banks that were frozen with the onset of full-scale aggression, through non-Russian and non-sanctioned banks. Some 242 MPs voted for corresponding amendment No. 62 to law on improving state regulation of financial services markets No. 9422 adopted on Wednesday. "When publishing the law for the second reading, consultations were held with the National Bank. The amendment concerns Ukrainian taxpayers who have accounts in rubles that are blocked. We allow them to be sold one-time, receive hryvnias and use this money for economic activities, to pay taxes," MP Andriy Motovylovets (from the ruling Servant of the People faction) said before the vote in the Rada. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said it was important to ensure that the Israel-Hamas war does not take the shape of a regional conflict and expressed concern over the prevailing insecurity and instability in West Asia. Photograph: / Rediff.com IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers opening remarks at the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit, in New Delhi, November 22, 2023. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (top right), Russian President Vladimir Putin (left bottom), Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Australian PM Anthony Albanese and other dignitaries are also seen. In his opening remarks at the virtual summit of Leaders of G20 countries, Modi made it clear that terrorism was "unacceptable" to everyone and the death of civilians, anywhere, was condemnable. The prime minister also welcomed news of the announcement of the release of hostages and expressed the hope that they will be set free soon. "It is necessary to ensure timely and continuous delivery of humanitarian aid. It is also necessary to ensure that the war between Israel and Hamas does not escalate into a regional conflict,"Modi said. The virtual summit of Leaders of G20 countries was attended by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, UAE President Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, among others. "Our coming together shows that we are sensitive to all issues and standing together for their solution. We believe that terrorism is unacceptable to us. Death of civilians, wherever it may be, is condemnable. "We welcome the news of the release of hostages. We hope all hostages will be released soon," Modi said. The prime minister also spoke about the "negative effects" of artificial intelligence and made a strong pitch for global regulation of the emerging technology. "There are growing concerns across the world on the negative use of AI. India's thinking is clear, we have to work together on global regulation of AI. We must understand the dangers posed by deepfakes to society and individuals and move forward," Modi said. Addressing the G20 leaders, he said, "When on November 16 last year, Indonesian President Joko Widodo handed the ceremonial gavel to me, I had said we will make G20 inclusive, ambitious, action-oriented and decisive. In one year, we have together achieved this." All of us together have taken G20 to newer heights, he said. "In this world full of mistrust and challenges, it is this trust that binds us together. In the last one year, we have expressed confidence in 'One Earth, One Family and One Future'. Moving away from controversies, we have worked with unity and cooperation," Modi said. "I can never forget that moment when in Delhi all of us welcomed the African Union into the G20. This message of inclusivity given by the G20 to the world is unprecedented." "It is a matter of pride for India that under its presidency, Africa was given a voice. In the last one year in the G20, Global South's voice has also been heard," Modi said. The prime minister asserted that the G20 has increased the confidence in multilateralism and global governance reforms have been given a direction. The prime minister also invited leaders of G20 nations and that of the Global South to study the Aspirational Districts Program of India, which aims at implementing sustainable development goals at the local level in the country. "This single initiative has changed the lives of 25 crore people in the country," Modi said. Israel and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a temporary four-day ceasefire to allow the release of 50 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinian detainees and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged territory. IMAGE: An Israeli soldier takes position in a location given as Gaza, amid the ongoing ground operation of the Israeli army against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Photograph: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via Reuters The deal, once implemented, will be the first major diplomatic breakthrough and pause in fighting since the war began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. The announcement comes amid a strong assertion from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the "war will continue until all our goals are achieved". Following a marathon six-hour meeting in Tel Aviv that ended in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Israeli Cabinet approved a deal mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States by a 35-3 vote with ministers from the extreme right-wing Otzma Yehudit party of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir voting against. The Cabinet meeting was preceded by the meetings of the War Cabinet and the Security Cabinet. A PMO statement said that 50 women and children held hostage in Gaza will be released over four days during which there will be a pause in fighting. For every additional 10 hostages released, the pause would be extended by another day, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. The Israeli government is committed to the return of all abductees home, a statement on behalf of the government said. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 abductees women and children will be released for four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting. The release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite, it added. The implementation of the deal cannot start until about 24 hours after final approval as Israeli law gives the public a day to appeal against the agreement in the Supreme Court. Local media speculated that the first exchange could already happen on Thursday morning. Israel has released a list of 300 Palestinians that could be released under the deal struck between Israel and Hamas. The list, posted on Israel's justice ministry website, includes the names, ages and offences of those eligible. Only 150 detainees are expected to be released at first. Qatar, whose capital Doha serves as the headquarters for Hamas, confirmed that an agreement for a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been reached and the start time will be announced in the next 24 hours. The lull in violence will last for four days after it starts, it said. A statement early on Wednesday from Qatar's foreign ministry described the talks that produced the agreement as a mediation effort by Egypt, the US and Qatar for a humanitarian pause. The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension, the statement said. The agreement includes the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons, the number of those released will be increased in later stages of implementing the agreement, it said. It also added that the ceasefire will allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs. Meanwhile, Netanyahu insisted before entering the Cabinet meeting that the deal was a result of the pressure Hamas felt due to Israel's military campaign and asserted that the war would continue until the goals set are achieved - to eliminate Hamas, secure the release of all the hostages, and ensure that there's no more threat from Gaza to Israel's security. We are at war, and the war will continue until all our goals are achieved, the Israeli PM said. The return of hostages is a top, sacred priority and I am committed to it, Netanyahu emphasised adding, Before us is a difficult decision but the right one. We will not rest until everyone is returned. The war has stages and the return of the hostages will have stages, he argued. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant backed his Prime Minister, saying Israel's ground offensive in Gaza is a key factor in dialling up the pressure on Hamas to negotiate and release some of the 240 hostages taken from Israel on October 7. Without the pressure and the continued pressure [on Hamas], there will be no chance to secure the release of the next groups of hostages, Gallant said, vowing that once the 4-5 day ceasefire is over Israel's operations in Gaza will resume in full force. I will say honestly this [hostage deal] is a difficult outline, it is painful, but it is also right, War cabinet minister Benny Gantz said. The US official said the hostages released by Hamas were expected to include several Americans. I thank Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar and President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt for their critical leadership and partnership in reaching this deal, US President Joe Biden said in a statement. And I appreciate the commitment that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government have made in supporting an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure the provision of additional humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinian families in Gaza," he said. Israel began attacking Gaza after Hamas fighters crossed the border on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 others hostage Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 14,000 people - including more than 5,000 children - have been killed in Israel's campaign. The Nitish Kumar government in Bihar upped the ante on the Chief Minister's long-standing demand for grant of special status to the state with a resolution to the effect on Wednesday being passed by the cabinet. Kumar broke the news himself, announcing the development on social media, shortly after the cabinet meeting he chaired here was over. "The cabinet has passed a resolution (prastaav) requesting the Centre for grant of special category status to Bihar", Kumar wrote in a lengthy post in which he also said that the fresh demand was necessitated by findings of the caste survey his government carried out in the state. Kumar said that while the rise in percentage of population of the deprived castes has led to increase in the quotas for SCs, STs and OBCs from 50 to 65 per cent, his government also planned to undertake a number of welfare measures for the benefit of "94 lakh families", which according to the survey lived in abject poverty. "We intend to provide, in instalments, an assistance of Rs two lakh to one member of each of these families for some type of economic activity (rozgar)", said Kumar, adding that his government was also committed to building pucca houses for "39 lakh families living in huts" and every such household will be provided Rs 1.20 lakh for the purpose. He also said that his government had been providing an assistance of Rs 60,000 to landless families for purchasing land but has now decided to raise the sum to Rs one lakh which would benefit 63,850 such households identified in the survey. "The implementation of all such measures will incur an expenditure of Rs 2.50 lakh crore. Because of the huge sum involved, we have set a deadline of five years from now for the completion of the schemes. But if we get special category status, we will be able to accomplish the task in a much shorter time", said Kumar. The JD(U) leader, who is the state's longest-serving chief minister, also recounted that he had been raising the demand for special status "since 2010" and rallies to press the demand were addressed by him here in 2012 and a year later at the Ram Lila Maidan in Delhi. "To look into our demand, the government at the Centre had set up a committee headed by (former RBI governor) Raghuram Rajan which submitted its report but nothing came of it. In May 2017, we again wrote to the Centre requesting special status.. it is my request that the Centre agree to the demand keeping in view the interests of the people of Bihar", said Kumar. Notably, Kumar, who had dumped the BJP last year and has emerged as a key figure of the opposition coalition INDIA, has been asserting that if the new formation formed the next government at the Centre, he would press for "special status to all backward states". Hoping to galvanize the deprived castes in his favour with the rise in quotas, Kumar has of late been renewing the long-standing demand with fresh vigour. He raised the demand on the floor of the assembly recently when the bills for increase in quotas in jobs and educational institutions were tabled before the assembly. Last week, he had threatened to launch a state-wide agitation if the demand for special category status was not met. Pakistan President Arif Alvi has stirred a controversy by proposing a 'one-state solution' to the Palestine problem in a significant departure from established policy, prompting the caretaker government to distance itself from the remarks and calls for his resignation. IMAGE: Smoke rises after Israeli air strikes in Gaza, as seen from southern Israel, on November 22, 2023. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters The presidential office made waves on Friday by advocating for a 'one-state solution' to the Palestine issue. However, Alvi's office retracted the statement within a few hours, marking an abrupt about-face in the official position. The presidency initially released a statement attributing to President Alvi the suggestion of a 'one-state solution' during a telephonic conversation with Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas. 'If the two-state solution was not acceptable to Israel, then the one-state solution was the only way where Jews, Muslims and [a] good percentage of Christians could live to exercise equal political rights,' the original press release quoted Alvi as telling the Palestinian President. Almost all news TV channels ran the President's statement, which was also released by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan. The Presidency later retracted the press release and issued a new one, which omitted any mention of the controversial proposal. Caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani on Tuesday termed President Arif Alvi's proposal of a 'one-state solution' to the Palestine problem as not being in line with the country's principled and historic stance on the issue. He was speaking on the floor of the Senate when Pakistan Peoples Party senator Raza Rabbani asked for an explanation from him over the controversial press release. The foreign minister said the Presidency had not sought input from his ministry before issuing the press release, adding that he was not aware of the context in which the president had suggested the 'one-state solution'. Jilani said that soon after the release of the President's statement, his ministry had to issue a clarification, stating Pakistan's official position on the Palestine issue. That clarification, he said, was sent to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Secretariat and other organisations concerned, including United Nations bodies. Jilani said that Pakistan had always suggested a 'two-state solution' to the Palestinian problem based on the border of 1967 and in line with the UN Resolution No 242. Taking the floor after the completion of the agenda, Senator Raza Rabbani said: "A contradiction was issued [after the press release] but I demand the resignation of the president over his statement." He also asked the foreign minister to inform the House as to 'what counter-measures has the government taken to overcome this disastrous statement that was issued by the president?' The Supreme Court on Wednesday said its "limited ambit" was whether the 2022 verdict that had upheld the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) powers to arrest and attach property involved in money laundering was required to be reconsidered by a larger bench of five judges. IMAGE: The Supreme Court of India. Photograph: ANI Photo While the Centre told the apex court that the Prevention of Money Laundering Act was an "important legislation" for the nation, the petitioners' side claimed the ED has become an "unruly horse" and can go anywhere it wanted. A three-judge bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul was hearing the pleas seeking reconsideration of the July 27, 2022 verdict by a three-judge bench on certain parameters. In that verdict, the top court had upheld the ED's powers of arrest, attachment of property involved in money laundering, search and seizure under the PMLA. "Whether there is a need at all for having a review or not having a review. That is the limited ambit," the bench, also comprising justices Sanjiv Khanna and Bela M Trivedi, observed on Wednesday. "We have to also see whether...the matter needs to go to five-judges," the bench said. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who opened the arguments from the petitioners' side, said the issues were so fundamental to the rule of law that they were required to be reconsidered. "I am not here to convince your lordships whether the judgement is right or wrong. I am here to only prima facie suggest to your lordships that the issues are so fundamental to the rule of law that this whole issue requires to be reconsidered. That is the limited argument I am going to make," he said. At the outset, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, said when the matter was heard on October 18, the petitioners' had started arguing on a "wide canvass" and he had objected to it saying there were no pleadings except the challenge to sections 50 and 63 of the Act. While section 50 of the PMLA deals with powers of authorities regarding summons, production of documents and to give evidence etc, section 63 pertains to punishment for false information or failure to give information. Mehta said they have received an amendment petition which virtually challenges everything under the PMLA and says that the 2022 verdict needs to be reconsidered. "We are opposing that amendment. If he (petitioner) is confining to sections 50 and 63, I have no difficulty, but if he is going to argue the whole thing, which is based on a proposed amendment, I would be opposing that amendment...," he said. "I have understood your point. You are saying if they (petitioners') are amending the petition, you need to file a response," Justice Kaul told the solicitor general, adding, "Let us see what they are arguing. You have flagged an issue and I have understood it." During the day-long hearing, the bench observed the limited contours would be whether a view on the legal point settled by a three-judge bench raises issue which was required to be considered by a larger bench. "I am only on the process. The process is only limited to this. Beyond that we really don't have any mandate or ambit to go," Justice Kaul observed. Sibal, who referred to several provisions of the PMLA, said the fundamental principle of rule of law was that a person, who was summoned by the investigating agency, should know whether he was called as a witness or an accused. "If I (person) am being summoned... I must know why I am being summoned and in what capacity," he said. "We have reached a stage where the ED, and I quote and I use this expression intentionally, is an unruly horse. It can go anywhere it wants. And what it does is. It does not tell you whether you are being called as a witness or an accused...," Sibal said. The petitioners' claimed that ED was applying the anti-money laundering law to cases like that of income tax evasion by using Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. The bench observed the ED cannot invoke PMLA by using section 120-B of IPC when the alleged conspiracy was not related to a scheduled offence. The arguments in the matter remained inconclusive and would continue on Thursday. While hearing the matter on October 18, the bench had observed it will examine whether its 2022 verdict required any reconsideration. It had noted the objection raised by the solicitor general "that an academic exercise should not be carried out without there being substance and that merely because someone approaches the court and wants the issue decided by the three judges bench to be revisited, should not be an occasion to revisit it". Mehta had said PMLA was not a "standalone offence" but a piece of legislation prepared in conformity with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force. FATF is the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog. In August last year, the top court had agreed to hear a plea seeking a review of its July 2022 verdict and observed that two aspects-- not providing an Enforcement Case Information Report and reversal of the presumption of innocence -- "prima facie" required reconsideration. The apex court had in its 2022 verdict said ECIR filed by ED cannot be equated with an FIR, and providing a copy of it to the person concerned in every case was not mandatory. It had upheld the validity of certain provisions of the PMLA, underlining it was not an "ordinary offence". The bench had said authorities under the Act were "not police officers as such" and the ECIR cannot be equated with an FIR under the Code of Criminal Procedure. It had said supply of an ECIR copy in every case to the person concerned was not mandatory and it was enough if ED, at the time of arrest, discloses the grounds of such arrest. Under India's laws bigamy is disallowed and those in breach of the law don't submit affidavits testifying to this status. However, these candidates have no fear of the law -- and thereby hangs an interesting tale, reports Prakash Bhandari. IMAGE: Congress leaders Ashok Gehlot, Mallikarjun Kharge and others at an election meeting at Vair in Bharatpur, November 18, 2023, for the November 25 Rajasthan assembly elections. Photograph: ANI Photo Candidates in six Rajasthan assembly constituencies have mentioned in their election affidavit that they have more than one wife. Of these, four are from the Bharatiya Janata Party and two are from the Congress. Udai Lal Dangi (Vallabhnagar) Babu Lal Kharari (Jhadol), Dayaram Parmar (Kherawara), Hemant Meena (Pratapgarh) and Kailash Meena (Garhi) are the BJP candidates with more than one wife, while Dayaram Parmar (Kherawara) and Nana Lal Neeman (Ghatol) are the Congress candidates. Interestingly, only recently the wives of these candidates had observed Karwa Chauth together. Member of the Lok Sabha from Udaipur, Sarjun Lal Meena, has two wives. In fact, his two wives, Meenaxi and Rajkumari, are sisters. While Meenaxi runs a gas agency, Rajkumari is a teacher. Under India's laws bigamy is disallowed and those in breach of the law don't submit affidavits testifying to their bigamist status. However, these candidates have no fear of the law -- and thereby hangs an interesting tale. But first, a brief lesson in history. In Rajasthan 25 Vidhan Sabha seats and three Lok Sabha seats are reserved for the scheduled tribes. There are two categories of tribals who qualify. There are the Bhils, who are Adivasis located in southern Rajasthan's districts of Udaipur, Banswara, Dungarpur and Pratapgarh. The other tribals are Meenas, agriculturists with no tribal traits, who were given scheduled tribe status because of a Rajasthan government administrative lapse. While reservations for the Bhils of southern Rajasthan was recommended, because of an administrative lapse in the form of typographic errors it ended in benefitting the agriculturist Meenas as well. The agriculturist Meenas thrived on the reservation status given to them, and today there are over 200 IAS, IPS, IFS and other civil services officers spread all over the country. But the Bhils of southern Rajasthan remain backward, and not a single Bhil has so far made it to the civil services. The Bhils are one of the oldest and most numerous tribal groups in lndia. They were warriors and fought the Mughals under the command of Maharana Pratap. They played a decisive role in the destiny of many rulers and kingdoms. They have witnessed many an empire rise and crumble and vanish in the cold morgue of history. As for the bigamy part, it is customary among tribals to have more than one wife and it is permitted by tribal custom. A Bhil may bring home several wives, if he has the money to pay for them, to boost his prestige among his fellows. Another reason for having several wives is to swell his workforce. It may also happen that the first wife has produced no son and so the husband opts for a second wife. In the tribal areas of southern Rajasthan as many as 50 percent of the tribal men have more than one wife. The men marry several times for a small amount of money that is paid to the girl's father. Usually, the second wife lives in the same house and at times two sisters marry the same man. A number of agriculturist Meenas also have more than one wife, but they have not disclosed it officially, though their community knows it well. A number of IAS, IPS, IFS and other allied service officers from the agriculturist Meena community have more than one wife. As most of them come from rural areas they are married early in life, and after becoming IAS and IPS officers they marry educated girls and let their first wives stay in their village, but they look after them by sending money. Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com On a sunny Texas day in November 60 years ago, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the president of the United States, and his elegant wife Jacqueline Lee 'Jackie' Bouvier Kennedy touched down in Air Force One at Dallas' Love Field just before noon. She was pretty in pink from head to toe, including a fetching pink pillbox hat perched on her head. He, dashing as always, standing 6 ft 1, was outiftted in a grey suit and blue tie. They made a stunning couple. The Kennedys got into the back seat of a black 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible limo with John Connally, then governor of Texas, and his wife Nellie and a posse of secret service agents. Their motorcade, flanked by plenty of police, whizzed off for a lunch engagement at a wholesale trade centre, the Dallas Market Center, downtown. It was a 16 km ride and the route was charted out to give President Kennedy plenty of mileage to wave, greet and smile at the friendly Dallas folks. As the cars took a left onto Elm Street through Dealy Plaza, near a warehouse for school textbooks, the Texas School Book Depository, Nellie Connally pleasantly remarked: 'Mr President, they can't make you believe now that there are not some in Dallas who love and appreciate you, can they?' The 35th president of the United States of America, probably smilingly, said his last four words at 12.30 pm CST on November 22, 1963: 'No, they sure can't'. He turned to wave at the crowds on his right and three fatal shots, fired by an assassin acting indepedently, Lee Harvey Oswald, from the depository, hit him -- the first entered his back, exiting his larynx and he slumped, the next hit his head and ended his life. Jackie held him muttering forlornly repeatedly: 'They have killed my husband...' It was the fourth time in US history that an American president had been assassinated and killed. IMAGE: Jackie and JFK arrive at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, less than an hour before his assassination on November 22, 1963. This photo was taken by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton obtained from the John F Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Photograph: JFK Library/The White House/Cecil Stoughton/Reuters IMAGE: JFK greets crowds at a political rally in Fort Worth, Texas, several hours before his assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. This photo was taken by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton and was obtained from the John F Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Photograph: JFK Library/The White House/Cecil Stoughton/Handout/Reuters IMAGE: Born outside Boston, in Brookline, to a wealthy political family, Kennedy went to Harvard, graduating cum laude and served in the Pacific during World War II. He worked as a journalist and then won a seat in the House of Representatives in 1947, serving the house for six years and the Senate for about seven years after that, before running for the presidency. He married Jackie in 1953 and they had two children, John and Caroline. He is seen here with his young son, John F Kennedy Jr, as they sit in a rowboat on the beach in Newport, Rhode Island. John Jr later died in an air crash and only Caroline survives. Photograph: JFK Presidential Library/The White House/Robert Knudsen/Reuters IMAGE: Kennedy at a political rally in Fort Worth a few hours before his assassination in nearby Dallas. Photograph: JFK Library/The White House/Cecil Stoughton/Reuters IMAGE: Speaking at a rally in Fort Worth. This photo was taken by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton and was obtained from the John F Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. Texas governor John Connally, who was seriously wounded in the assassination, is looking over the president's shoulder at right. Photograph: JFK Library/The White House/Cecil Stoughton/Reuters IMAGE: Kennedy, Jackie, Connally, left, and his wife Nellie ride in the presidential motorcade through Dallas in this handout image taken on November 22, 1963. Photograph: Victor Hugo King/Library of Congress/Handout/Reuters IMAGE: JFK's coffin, guarded around the clock, lies in melancholy repose in the East Room at the White House. Photograph: Kind courtesy Abbie Rowe/Wikimedia Commons IMAGE: The grieving family in black: President Kennedy's brother Robert F Kennedy, sister Patricia Lawford, daughter Caroline Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy and his son John Jr depart the US Capitol, Washington, DC, after accompanying the president's casket to the Capitol rotunda in this November 24, 1963 photo. Photograph: Kind courtesy Wikimedia Commons IMAGE: The slain president's coffin is taken from the US Capitol to St Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, DC for a funeral mass on November 25, 1963, that was attended by 1,200 US and interational dignitaries from 90 countries. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit represented India. Photograph: Kind courtesy US Capitol/Wikimedia Commons IMAGE: JFK was laid to rest at the Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, where an eternal flame was lit for him in 1967. In this picture, Jackie Kennedy and their two children arrive at the US Capitol, the day before, with his brother Robert F Kennedy, who was assassinated too, five years later in Los Angeles. Photograph: Kind courtesy Abbie Rowe/Wikimedia Commons IMAGE: An inscription reading RIP JFK adorns a slat of the wooden picket fence at the top of the 'Grassy Knoll' in Dealy Plaza in Dallas, November 22, 2013 on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. The picket fence plays a major role in many conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination, with some theorists believing that one or more gunmen may have fired on the president from behind the fence in addition to suspect Lee Harvey Oswald who was in the Texas Schoolbook Depository building behind the president. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters IMAGE: 50 years later: The Dallas Police Department Honorary Color Guard and the US Naval Academy Men's Glee Club pose in front of a giant JFK banner at the conclusion of ceremonies commemorating the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination in Dealey Plaza. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters IMAGE: Members of a Dallas police department honor guard at the invocation in Dealey Plaza during ceremonies that marked the 50th anniversary ceremony. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters IMAGE: Then Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick requests a moment of silence during a ceremony to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination at the John F Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, November 22, 2013. The moment of silence came at 1.58 pm, the time President Kennedy was declared dead in Dallas in 1963. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters IMAGE: People listen to the American national anthem during ceremonies commemorating the 50th anniversary of JFK's death at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, November 22, 2013. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff.com 'If you want a room for the consecration then you better book it now.' 'By this time next week there won't be any hotel rooms available in the temple city.' IMAGE: Construction on the Ram temple in Ayodhya, is underway. Photograph: ANI Photo The Ayodhya Ram Mandir consecration takes place on January 22, 2024. And two months ahead of the temple ceremony, to be presided over by Prime Minister Narendra D Modi, hotel rooms are flying off the shelves, literally. Many online sites report non-availability of rooms on dates around the consecration, and some display a message to contact the hotel for rooms. Hotels offer rooms offline at twice the rates shown online. A regular double room costs around Rs 4,500, and can go up to Rs 20,000 depending on the room type, distance of the hotel from the Ram temple and the amenities offered. "If you want a room for the consecration then you better book it now. By this time next week there won't be any hotel rooms available in the temple city," says a hotel owner. For five-star hotels and such, the tariff ranges from Rs 20,000 Rs 55,000 for two people for two nights. To reach Ayodhya by air you have to fly to either Lucknow or Gorakhpur and then travel by road for around three hours. Airfares to Ayodhya are also heading north. Return tickets for two from Chennai start at Rs 30,000 while the business class traveler has to pay three times the amount. So the common man from Chennai will easily spend around Rs 40,000 on travel and stay for two to attend the opening of the shrine, while the rich man will spend around Rs 1.5 lakh for two tickets. Mumbai-Lucknow economy return tickets cost around Rs 11,000 while business class tickets are priced at Rs 62,000 return for one person. Kolkata-Lucknow return airfare is Rs 11,000 per person while business class tickets are priced at Rs 83,000. Delhi has the cheapest airfares at Rs 6,000 for a return economy class ticket and Rs 27,000 return airfare in the business class. Trains to Ayodhya are available, but only for those who have booked well in advance. Indian Railways is expected to run specials too closer to the consecration date. In his farewell speech, retiring Allahabad high court Chief Justice Pritinker Diwaker has alleged that his transfer from Chhattisgarh high court in 2018 when the collegium was headed by then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra was done to 'harass' him. IMAGE: Allahabad high court. Photograph: ANI Photo Sitting on a ceremonial bench of the high court to mark his retirement on Tuesday, Justice Diwaker said his transfer order 'seemed to have been issued with an ill intention' -- in remarks unusual for a judge to make on such an occasion. "On March 31, 2009, I was elevated to the Bench. I discharged my duties as a judge in Chhattisgarh high court till October 2018 to the satisfaction of one and all, and particularly to the satisfaction of my own inner being. "Now, a sudden turn of events descended upon me when then Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra showered on me some extra affection for reasons still not known to me which entailed my transfer to Allahabad high court, where I assumed my office on October 3, 2018," said Justice Diwaker. "My transfer order seemed to have been issued with an ill intention to harass me. However, as fortune would have it, the bane turned into a boon for me because I received immeasurable support and cooperation from my companion judges as well as from the members of the Bar," he added. Earlier this year, Justice Diwaker's name was recommended for the post of the Chief Justice of Allahabad high court by the current Collegium led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud. Justice Diwaker was appointed as the Acting Chief Justice of Allahabad HC on February 13, 2023 and took oath as Chief Justice of Allahabad HC on March 26, 2023, according to the court's official website. "I am highly thankful to the present Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, who rectified the injustice done to me," Justice Diwaker said. In his address, Justice Diwaker also suggested that critics must see shortcomings before reaching any conclusion. "Furthermore this court was subjected to criticism from various corners in relation to its functioning but I am of the firm belief that before reaching to a particular conclusion, critics must see the shortcomings prevailing in the institution from inside and as far as possible the problem should be vested with remedy," he said. Justice Diwaker spoke about his career, starting as an advocate in 1984 in the Madhya Pradesh high court. Born in 1961, he graduated in law from Durgawati University in Jabalpur and became a senior advocate in January 2005. He was elevated as a judge of the Chhattisgarh high court on March 31, 2009. "I never aimed to be a judge, but destiny seems to have steered me in that direction. But I think when you love your profession, time seems to fly, carrying you swiftly towards success," he said. Justice Diwakar also praised the lawyers practising before the Allahabad high court bench at Lucknow. "The quality of lawyers at Lucknow and their behaviour is commendable. Their legal acumen and presentation are as good as lawyers of any other high court," he said. The Congress' welfare guarantees agenda or the Bharatiya Janata Party's Hindutva and anti-graft plank? IMAGE: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and party leader CP Joshi release the Congress's 'Jan Ghoshna Patra' for the upcoming state assembly elections, in Jaipur, November 21, 2023. Photograph: ANI Photo With no apparent wave on the ground or pressing everyday issues, that's what it boils down for voters as Rajasthan readies for assembly polls this week. The larger, macro narrative dominates the discourse in the desert state that has traditionally alternated between voting for the Congress and the BJP. And from the word on the street, be it from the vocal autorickshaw driver pushing for the BJP or the pan shop owner endorsing the ruling Congress' work in the last five years, the November 25 election could fall in line with the pattern. While the Congress is banking on welfare schemes such as the healthcare Chiranjeevi Yojana and its seven guarantees in breaking the revolving door trend, the BJP is upping the ante over what it calls "appeasement" of Muslims by the grand old party and corruption during the Ashok Gehlot-led regime. There are takers for both narratives. In the eastern belt of Rajasthan, hard fought contests are playing out, including in Sawai Madhopur where the sitting Congress MLA (Danish Abrar) is in a triangular contest with BJP MP Kirodi Lal Meena and BJP rebel Asha Meena. The Sawai Madhopur, Tonk and Kota districts account for 14 seats of the 200 assembly constituencies. Asked about the Gehlot government's performance, most people appreciate the Congress' welfare schemes such as the Chiranjeevi Yojana and bringing prices of cylinders down but concerns are expressed over the state of law and order. The BJP's Hindutva pitch and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's face are also clinching factors for many with several people supporting the saffron party citing his appeal and "rise" in India's global stature. "Vote for the BJP is a must as Prime Minister Modi will ensure a Hindu Rashtra is established. We need a UP-like regime in Rajasthan to set things right. The Congress is only concerned about one community," said Amrit Chauhan, an autorickshaw driver in Kota. In his view, a candidate like BJP's Balaknath, contesting from the Tijara seat in Alwar, should be made the chief minister because he can rein-in "mischief makers" just like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has done. Ravinder Kumar, also an autorickshaw driver, echoed him. He said it was the BJP's turn this time and people will opt for the saffron party largely because of its Hindutva approach. "Schemes (of the Congress) are not important. The most important thing is to preserve our identity. We are not Brahmins or lower castes but Hindus first. The lower caste people have also now realised this and are firmly backing the BJP against the appeasement of one community," added a BJP worker in Sawai Madhopur. There is a flip side too. If the BJP's Hindutva approach is gaining traction, there is also acknowledgement that the Gehlot government introduced several measures that reached people in remote areas. Even some BJP supporters in Sawai Madhopur, Tonk and Kota acknowledged that the government had done well on the developmental count and its schemes had touched the lives of the poor. Pawan Meena, a pan shop owner in Sawai Madhopur, said, "The government has done good work. One cannot say this time that it failed on welfare measures as its schemes, especially the Chiranjeevi Yojana, benefitted lakhs of people. Whether that translates into votes is still to be seen." Banking on that sentiment, the Congress has upped its game on welfarism, promising a slew of schemes for farmers and youth, including 10 lakh job opportunities, and a new scheme for recruitment at panchayat level. The party has also promised doubling the amount for beneficiaries under the Chiranjeevi health insurance scheme from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh annually and interest-free loans up to Rs 5 lakh to small traders. Besides, it has said it would bring in reservation for minorities on the basis of their population after the caste census. However, the issue of caste census does not have much traction among people in Rajasthan. Law and order remains a concern with several people citing a tailor being hacked to death in Udaipur by cleaver-wielding assailants who claimed that he had insulted Islam in June last year. Crimes against women is also an issue frequently brought up. "It is tough to call the election... but the BJP seems to be having an edge. The Gehlot government has introduced schemes but look at the state of law and order. What happened in Udaipur and the crimes against women in the state, it is a serious issue," said Vinod BS, an owner of a shop selling Kota suits and sarees. Another refrain heard is that "badlav (change)" every five years is inevitable. "The Gehlot government has done decently but there will be a change in government and there should be a change in government. This keeps the politicians on their toes. If one party remains at the helm, it takes people for granted," said Mukesh Bairwa, a guide at the Ranthambore tiger reserve. As the two parties go all out to stamp their narrative in people's minds, the main question remains whether the three-decade pattern of not repeating a government will remain or will the Congress buck the trend. Polling in 199 out of 200 assembly seats in Rajasthan will be held on November 25 and the results will be declared on December 3. Brattleboro, VT (05301) Today Partly cloudy skies this morning will give way to cloudy skies and rain during the afternoon. High 49F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.. Tonight Rain showers this evening with mostly cloudy conditions overnight. Low 34F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%. A claim emerged among Chinese-speaking online users that U.S. President Joe Biden had been exposed wearing a soiled diaper after falling to the ground. They cited a video taken from a Taiwanese TV program in which one guest made the identical claim. But the claim is false. The photo of Biden in a diaper has been digitally altered, and no diaper can be seen in the original photo. Biden, who just turned 81, has attracted media and public scrutiny due to occasional falls and verbal missteps. These incidents have been frequently exploited by anti-U.S. and pro-China groups to challenge his credibility and that of the United States government. Taiwan has also been affected by these narratives. The claim was made by a Taiwanese commentator Shuai Hua-ming during a program aired by CTi News on Nov. 7. Biden recently tripped and his pants fell down, revealing a diaper. It is very damaging that [he] is already [having] incontinence, said Shuai, who formerly served as a legislator for the Kuomintang, or KMT, one of Taiwans major parties. Shuai, once served as a lieutenant general, is considered an influential opinion leader of the KMT on issues of national defense. The KMT supports improving relations and retaining ancestral ties with Mainland China, advocating for one China with different interpretations. In contrast, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party emphasizes Taiwans unique identity and autonomy, advocating for political and economic distancing from Beijing. CTi News is a Taiwanese 24-hour online news outlet viewed as pro-KMT. Personally, I dont think its a matter of age. Its that he [Biden] is senile, that he seems to have dementia. In addition, his decision-making and his team are chaotic. These are his real problems, claimed another guest of the show, Lai Yueh-chien, a Youtuber and political commentator who supports Taiwans Pan-Blue coalition consisting of opposition parties including the KMT. Claims about Biden wearing a diaper and accusations of his health issues have been also widely shared in Chinese-language social media platforms, including Weibo, NetEase and Zhihu. Carrying out duties is not easy for an old person like Biden, one Weibo user said. A sign of the decline of the old United States, another wrote, referring to the diaper claim. Weibo users recently posted a short video from a Taiwanese news program of former legislator Shuai Hua-ming saying that U.S. President Joe Biden recently fell down to reveal his diaper. (Screenshot / Weibo & Youtube) The claim that Biden had been exposed wearing a diaper emerged after the president attended a graduation ceremony at the U.S Air Force Academy in Colorado on June 1, 2023. Wearing a dark suit, the president tripped and fell down at one point during the event and was immediately helped up by three men standing nearby. At that time, social media users shared a photo of Biden that shows part of what appears to be a diaper protruding from his pants as he falls. However, a closer look at the original photo taken by AFP and videos published by The Washington Post and The New York Times shows that Bidens pants did not split or rip due to the fall and no diapers were exposed. International news outlets, including Reuters and AFP reported that the photo had been digitally altered to add the diaper on the president. An article on NetEase about Bidens diaper being exposed was marked as a rumor by the website. (Screenshot / NetEase) US skepticism narratives Biden has attracted media and public scrutiny due to occasional falls and verbal missteps. These incidents have been frequently exploited by anti-U.S. and pro-China groups to challenge his credibility and that of Washington. Taiwan has also been affected by these narratives. One example is a claim that the AFCL debunked in April that the president apologized to an invisible man after giving a speech at the University of Northern Ireland. But in fact he was just interacting with the attending crowd. Remarks made by Shuai and Lai during CTi News was another example. AFCL contacted Shuai, but he declined to comment. Taiwan has witnessed an evolving collection of unreasonable or manipulative narratives that suggests that the island should keep a distance from or reduce its relations with the U.S. amid its growing ties with Washington, said the Information Operations Research Group, or IORG, a Taipei-based civilian research organization. Out of 85 such narratives investigated by IORG, more than half of them were generated by individuals from in Taiwan, specifically from social media influencers and political commentators, IORG noted in a report updated on Nov. 8. US Skepticism manufactures negative images of Taiwans democratic allies and Taiwans democratic governance, IORG said. These unreasonable and manipulative narratives are harmful to the quality of public discourse, create unfounded mistrust towards democracy, and therefore should be rejected. Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang and Malcolm Foster. Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) is a branch of RFA established to counter disinformation in todays complex media environment. Our journalists publish both daily and special reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers understanding of public issues. Kang Saran, a frequent critic of the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party, was sentenced to three years in prison. A Cambodian man who criticized the countrys longtime ruling party on Facebook over its inability to prevent illegal immigration from Vietnam and drug use was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in prison. Kang Saran told Radio Free Asia that he was convicted by the Banteay Meanchey Provincial Court on charges of defamation, incitement and insulting the king. I ask the Royal Government or government leaders to fully respect the rights and freedoms of the people and the right to life and movement. Dont just send [people] to go to Prey Sar prison like this, he told RFA. Why cant people express their opinions? Why do you always use arrests and charges like this, even though I have no political affiliation at all? he said, addressing his comments toward court officials across Cambodia who have charged numerous government critics in recent years. Kang Sarans remarks about the Cambodian Peoples Party came in a Facebook live video on July 2, just three weeks before the CPP won a sweeping victory in the general election. In the video, he asked whether the CPP would do anything after the election to stop the flow of Vietnamese immigrants into the country a sensitive political issue in Cambodia for many years. He also noted that drug use, government corruption and economic insecurity remain society-wide problems in the country. Banteay Meanchey authorities arrested Kang Saran within hours and held him for 10 days. He was released on bail on July 11. Phon Chhin, the Banteay Meanchey coordinator for human rights group Licadho, said the court should carefully consider whether Kang Saran should be sent to prison to serve his sentence. Kang Saran tried to defend himself in court proceedings, he said. He asserted that he had no such intention as charged. Kang Saran said he was not immediately re-arrested following Wednesdays verdict. He told RFA he has no plans to flee the country and insisted that he did nothing wrong in making the comments. RFA wasnt able to contact Banteay Meanchey Provincial Court spokesman Roeun Lina on Wednesday to ask about the case. Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster. Chinese dissident Zou We holds a placard to call attention to the death of journalist Sun Lin in an undated photo. Authorities in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing have detained a dissident who spoke out about the death of outspoken journalist Sun Lin after state security police broke into his home, as government censors moved to delete and block any news of the incident, rights groups said. "Police in #China detained dissident Zou Wei who spoke up about the death of dissident #SunLin after brutal police beating," the overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders group said via its X account. "Family members and supporters [have been] warned to keep quiet or face persecution if they question police conduct or seek accountability," it said. "Zou Wei, a dissident in Hangzhou, Zhejiang [province], was arrested late at night on Nov. 20 by police from [Hangzhou's] Gongshu district," the Weiquanwang rights website reported. Zou was taken away "for raising a placard to speak out," protesting Sun's death, the group said, adding that police had also searched the home he shares with his mother. In a separate article, the group said government censors have blocked any discussion of Sun's death on Chinese social media. "While people from all walks of life on overseas platforms are talking about this, the authorities have pretended to be deaf and are behaving as if nothing happened," the article said. "Anything on the topic is being strictly blocked, and anyone concerned about the matter can only rely on point-to-point communication," it said, adding that the fact that state security police around the country are warning other dissidents off traveling to Nanjing suggests a higher level of involvement than just the local police station. "We cannot rule out the possibility that Sun Lin was beaten to death by local state security police acting on orders from high-level officials," the commentary said. 'Gruesome murder' Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, said it was "horrified" by Sun's death, adding that he had been re-posting videos on social media about anti-Xi Jinping protests on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco shortly before he died. It cited the Weiquanwang report as saying that medical staff had reported signs of a physical attack, and that the family had been prevented from seeing his body. "This gruesome murder is a direct consequence of the Chinese regimes paranoia, which leads its leaders to see an enemy of the state in every independent media or journalist, and therefore exposes them to systematic retribution," RSF's Asia-Pacific bureau director Cedric Alviani said in a statement. "We urge the international community to build up pressure on the regime for it to end its relentless attacks against press freedom and the right to information," he said. Nanjing journalist Sun Lin is shown in an undated photo. Credit: Wei Quan Wang Sun's family members are currently under close surveillance by state security police, activists have told Radio Free Asia, and have been warning fellow activists around the country not to travel to Nanjing to express their condolences or try to attend memorial activities. Fellow activists have signed an open letter to the Nanjing city authorities calling for an independent probe into Sun's death. The Weiquanwang commentary described Sun as "a strong personality, who was very persistent in his pursuit of universal values." "Sun Lin once said that he would fight to the death," it said, adding that Sun had "showed his strong will and unyielding courage" during many encounters with the authorities as a result of his rights advocacy. "The first time he was arrested, [he] hit his head on a railing and was seriously injured, needing 28 stitches," said the commentary. "When he appeared in court, he had the word 'injustice' embroidered on the front and back of his clothing." "The second time he was arrested, he hit his own head on a police car in protest," it said, calling for an investigation into Sun's death. Xi's 'crusade against journalism' Since Chinese leader Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he has engaged in a "large-scale crusade against journalism," according to Reporters Without Borders. The group cited the deaths of several journalists and press freedom defenders in recent years "for standing against the regimes propaganda." In 2017, Nobel Peace Prize and RSF Press Freedom Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and political commentator Yang Tongyan both died in 2017 from cancers that were left untreated in detention, while journalist Dai Shizong was killed under suspicious circumstances in Hunan province in June 2018. In 2021, Kunchok Jinpa, a leading source of information for journalists about the autonomous Chinese region of Tibet, died in detention as a result of mistreatment, the group said. China ranks 179th out of 180 in the 2023 RSF World Press Freedom Index and is the world's largest captor of journalists and press freedom defenders with at least 123 detained, it said. Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin. Mycoplasma pneumoniae is causing a wave of severe illness among children, as well as some adults, experts say. A crowded hospital in China is seen in this undated photo amid an outbreak of severe cases of pneumonia in children. Hospitals in northern China are currently overwhelmed by thousands of children suffering from a bacterial form of pneumonia that is causing a resurgence of severe illness following a lull during three years of zero-COVID restrictions, doctors and health experts told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday. The Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention said that more than 3,500 cases of "respiratory infection" had been admitted to the Beijing Children's Hospital at the beginning of the month, while media reports blamed the outbreak on Mycoplasma pneumoniae, an atypical bacterium that causes lung infection. Photos and video clips posted to social media from Beijing and Tianjin showed hospital waiting rooms crowded with people, many holding children, amid unconfirmed social media reports that many cases are showing ground glass opacity in lung scans an indicator of severe respiratory illness. The majority of cases seem to be children, with worried parents flooding hospital phone lines and waiting rooms, yet having to wait at least a day even for emergency care. An employee who answered the phone at the Beijing Friendship Hospital pediatrics department said there is currently a 24-hour wait for emergency cases to be seen. "They're still dealing with calls we took yesterday," the employee said. "They haven't even started on today's calls yet there are at least 1,000 people waiting in the queue ahead of you." "The calls coming in today won't get seen until tomorrow ... We're taking more than 1,000 calls a day." The department is staffed with just three doctors in the pediatric outpatient clinic and two in the emergency room, the employee said. "If you were to register now [for treatment], you wouldn't get seen until 5 p.m.or 6 p.m. tomorrow," they said. Limited number of slots An employee who answered the phone at the Beijing New Century Children's Hospital had a similar story. "Wait times are extremely long right now ... there are no more appointment slots today," they said. "If you come in and line up to get an appointment, you will have to wait at least four hours." An employee who answered the phone at Tianjin's Beichen Hospital said there are no more appointments there, either. "There are no more slots even the additional slots are all full," they said. Videos are on Chinese websites showing the recent overcrowding in major hospitals. Credit: Screenshot of video from Qilu Evening News Meanwhile, an employee at the Tianjin Children's Hospital said it had shut its doors to new cases by 2.30 p.m. local time on Wednesday. "We don't have an emergency department, and we're closed now," the person said. "We can't see everybody, and the doctors get off work at 4 p.m.," they said. "There are too many patients and we only have two doctors." Seasonal peak Chinese health officials on Monday warned that the country is now experiencing a peak of seasonal respiratory disease, with National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng calling on health officials to step up monitoring for M. pneumoniae, COVID-19 and seasonal influenza. Monitoring data show that there is growing influenza in both the northern and southern regions, with H3N2 currently the dominant strain, state news agency Xinhua quoted National Influenza Center chief Wang Dayan as saying. According to Patrick Meyer Sauteur and Michael Beeton of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Mycoplasma pneumoniae was a common cause of respiratory infections before the COVID-19 pandemic, with worldwide incidence of 8.61% from 2017 to 2020. "However, non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 drastically lowered the transmission of M pneumoniae," they wrote in The Lancet medical journal in August 2022. The authors warned that "If M pneumoniae infections resurge, they might affect the world population, which has not been exposed to M pneumoniae for the past 3 years, and result in an increase in rare severe disease." Mi Ying, deputy chief physician of pediatrics at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, told the Workers' Daily on Nov. 15 that the bug can cause "mild, severe, or even critical illness." "The severity isn't just related to the invasion by the pathogen, but to the person's immune response," he said. Mi Ying, deputy chief physician of pediatrics at Peking Union Medical College Hospital (pictured in 2008), told the Workers' Daily on Nov. 15 that the bug can cause 'mild, severe, or even critical illness.' Credit: Mark Ralston/AFP It was unclear whether the severity of the outbreak is linked to the mass infection and reinfection of China's population with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 immediately following the lifting of nationwide zero-COVID restrictions in December 2022. Some medical journals have reported coinfection with COVID-19 and M. pneumoniae, while others have pointed to weakened immunity from infection and reinfection with COVID-19, which has also been linked to recent surges in other respiratory infections in children. Mi said people should wear masks, wash their hands frequently and ventilate crowded public spaces "to minimize the risk of infection." Outbreak is worse than usual In an interview published on the Beijing municipal government website, Beijing Friendship Hospital pediatrics expert Wei Tianli said this year's outbreak is worse than usual "because the inflammatory response in the lungs is relatively severe ... across a relatively large area," making it harder to breathe. Taiwan pediatrician Huang Li-min said children are more vulnerable to infection with mycoplasma pneumonia, yet the infection tends to transmit within households, affecting the adults, too. "Recently, it has become more pathogenic due to mutations," Huang said. "Cases are higher, and more serious, causing an outbreak, with some people needing hospitalization." "Members of the same family often catch it, one after another," she said, adding that Asia seems to be seeing a more mutated and pathogenic form of M. pneumoniae than Europe. "Once lockdown was lifted, respiratory diseases made a comeback," Huang said, adding that China is in deeper trouble than some places, due to high levels of antibiotic resistance in the population. "Drug resistance means that oral antibiotics are no longer effective, so people have to rush to the hospital, to the ER," Huang said. "So, large numbers of patients turn up in a short space of time, causing crowds at hospitals." Taiwan-based dissident Gong Yujian, who has contacts in China's medical system, said there is still a severe shortage of medical personnel, supplies and equipment in China, with many medical staff reluctant to work due to corruption, and a hierarchical medical system that offers patchy provision of care depending on how affluent someone is, and on where they live. A Beijing resident who gave only the surname Li for fear of reprisals confirmed Gong's account, saying smaller clinics and community hospitals are easily overwhelmed by sudden outbreaks of disease. "There is also a kind of superstitious thinking people have now which says that you should definitely go to a bigger hospital for more serious illnesses, for peace of mind," she said. Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin. Human Rights Watch said the consolidation policy has been implemented in northwestern China. An ethnic Hui Muslim man stands in front of Laohua Mosque after Friday prayers in Linxia, China's Gansu province, March 2, 2018. Chinese authorities have demolished, closed and converted hundreds of mosques in the northwestern Ningxia region and Gansu province as part of the governments efforts to restrict Islam, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Wednesday. Police have also removed domes, minarets and other Islamic architectural features from other mosques as part of Beijings mosque consolidation policy, the New York-based group said. The Chinese government is not consolidating mosques as it claims, but closing many down in violation of religious freedom, said Maya Wang, Human Rights Watchs acting China director. The Chinese governments closure, destruction, and repurposing of mosques is part of a systematic effort to curb the practice of Islam in China, she said. Under President Xi Jinping, authorities in 2017 began efforts to sinicize religion in a nationwide crackdown on Muslim, Christian and Tibetan Buddhist religious activities and venues. The atheist Chinese Communist Party regards religious beliefs as a dangerous foreign import that could destabilize the regime, and deploys an army of religious affairs officials to micromanage and suppress faith organizations around the country. The overall aim is to redirect loyalty toward the party. A dog is chained next to the site where a now-demolished mosque used to stand in Karakax outside Hotan in Chinas Xinjiang region, April 29, 2021. Credit: Thomas Peter/Reuters According to Human Rights Watch, mosque consolidation is referenced in an April 2018 party document that instructs party and state agencies to strengthen the standardized management of the construction, renovation and expansion of Islamic religious venues across the country. A central principle is that there should not be newly built Islamic venues so that the overall number of mosques is reduced, the document states. One-third of Ningxias mosques closed Ningxia and Gansu provinces have the highest Muslim populations in China after the Xinjiang region, where ethnic Uyghurs have faced repression and severe rights abuses. Since 2017, Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have damaged or destroyed two-thirds of the regions mosques, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Because official documents dont give precise details, Human Rights Watch couldnt determine the number of mosques shuttered or repurposed in Ningxia and Gansu. But the group cited a forthcoming research report by two scholars on Hui Muslims, Hannah Theaker and David Stroup, who have estimated that one-third of Ningxias mosques have been closed since 2020. A mosque stands in front of high-rise buildings in Linxia, Chinas Gansu province, March 2, 2018. Credit: Johannes Eisele/AFP Human Rights Watch also looked at satellite imagery and analyzed videos and pictures published online by Hui Muslims to examine the implementation of Chinas policy in two villages in Ningxia. Of these villages seven mosques, four had significant destruction: three main buildings had been razed and the ablution hall of one was damaged inside, the group said. The authorities have removed the domes and minarets of all seven mosques. Radio Free Asia reported in 2021 that between 400 and 500 mosques faced closure in Ningxia, which had 4,203 mosques as of 2014. In Gansu, Human Rights Watch cited four instances of local authorities implementing the consolidation policy in 2020, including in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, where authorities reduced and combined 10 mosques and altered the Islamic architectural features of 31 mosques. A Chinese government spokesperson told The Guardian newspaper in response to the report that people of all ethnic groups in China are fully entitled to the freedom of religious belief as prescribed by law. We are resolute in rejecting and fighting religious extremism, the spokesperson said. Believers normal religious activities are guaranteed in accordance with law and their customs respected. Edited by Malcolm Foster. Michael Spavor, who was jailed for 3 years in China, claims to have been tricked into providing intelligence to Ottawa. An image of Canadian Michael Spavor, charged with espionage in June 2019, is projected on a screen at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, China August 11, 2021. One of the two Canadians at the center of a major diplomatic spat between Ottawa and Beijing is now seeking a multimillion-dollar settlement from the Canadian government. Michael Spavor, who was jailed in China for nearly 3 years, claimed he was deceived by fellow Canadian Michael Kovrig into sharing intelligence on North Korea which the latter passed on to Ottawa, the Globe and Mail reported. The paper said that confidential negotiations are taking place between Spavors lawyers and representatives of the department of justice and Global Affairs Canada the department in charge of foreign affairs, trade and development. Spavors legal team alleged that he was arrested by China because of information that he shared with Kovrig. The information was later passed on, unbeknown to Spavor, to the Canadian government and its partners from the Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance compromising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Spavor, a businessman with connections in North Korea, and former diplomat Kovrig, were arrested in December 2018 and tried for espionage in 2019. Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor stand as they are recognized before an address from U.S. President Joe Biden in the Canadian House of Commons on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Canada, Mach 24, 2023. (Credit: Mandel Ngan/Pool via Reuters) Their arrests and trials were condemned as arbitrary by the Canadian government which denied categorically that they were spies. Ottawa said the two men were incarcerated on trumped-up charges in retaliation for the arrest of Chinese businesswoman Meng Wanzhou by Canada on a U.S. extradition warrant. Meng is chief financial officer at Chinese technology conglomerate Huawei. She was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on fraud charges and detained in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2018 at the request of the U.S. The case involving Meng Wanzhou and the two Michaels led to one of the biggest diplomatic crises between Canada and China, with both countries accusing each other of hostage diplomacy. All three were released in September 2021 after deals were reached between the governments of China, the U.S. and Canada. China had denied that the cases were linked. Canada should apologize Spavor ran a tour business in a border city between China and North Korea and had a large network of contacts in the secretive state. He was sentenced by a Chinese court in August 2021 to 11 years in prison for spying. Kovrig worked as a diplomat assigned to the Global Security Reporting Program (GSRP) at the Canadian embassy in Beijing from 2012 to 2014. He was with the International Crisis Group, an international think tank, at the time of his arrest. On Spavors latest claim that he was used by Kovrig to obtain intelligence, the Chinese embassy in Canada said: This fully exposes the hypocrisy of the Canadian side. Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are suspected of engaging in activities endangering Chinas national security, an embassy spokesperson said. The recent reports of Canadian media have once again proven that these facts cannot be denied. We urge the Canadian side to face the facts and deeply reflect upon its mistakes instead of continuing to attack and smear China, and misleading and deceiving the Canadian public, the spokesperson added. Chinas mouthpiece Global Times, meanwhile, said that Spavors statements confirm [the] Chinese sides charge and the case is more than simply an embarrassment to the Canadian government. Canada should offer a sincere apology to China, which it has wronged, as well as extend a sincere apology to [the] Canadian public and the international community that it has deceived, it said. Ottawa has not commented on the compensation negotiation but Canadian media quoted several officials who insisted that Kovrig was not a spy. My reaction: This is ridiculous, Kerry Buck, former Canadas ambassador to NATO who also served as assistant deputy minister for international security, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. GSRP diplomats write diplomatic reports, said Buck, referring to Kovrigs job at the Canadian embassy in Beijing. In no world does this make GSRP diplomats spies. Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn. Chess pieces are seen in front of displayed Chinese and Taiwanese flags in this illustration taken, April 11, 2023. Updated Nov. 22, 2023, 9:38 a.m. ET In the midst of Taiwans crucial presidential campaign for the upcoming January election, voters have been presented with a new poll whose findings further reveal the intricacies of cross-strait tensions and the islands relations with major global powers. The poll shows that under 10% of Taiwanese trust China, a sentiment experts attribute to Chinese leader Xi Jinpings rigid approach to cross-strait relations. Only 9.3% of Taiwanese believed China is credible, while 82.7% of respondents said that the threat from Beijing has intensified in recent years, according to the poll by the U.S.-based research center Academia Sinicas Institute of European and American Studies (IEAS) on Monday. Conversely, a comparatively larger 34% of respondents find the U.S. credible, even though it represented an 11-percentage point drop from two years ago. Still, a majority supports the regular presence of U.S. military forces in the Taiwan Strait, with 66.4% approving American military aircraft and warships there, and 65.4% believing in the U.S. presidents commitment to defend Taiwan. Li Zhengxiu, an associate researcher at Taiwans National Policy Research Foundation, cited Xis personal image as the main reason that has led to a more negative view of China among Taiwanese people. This is because Xi Jinpings coercive tactics and his insistence on going his own way, to the extent of his return to the Mao Zedong eras way of doing things, are incompatible with modern people. In particular, Xis tough attitude in handling cross-strait relations, which does not allow for any compromise or negotiation, has further aroused the resentment of the Taiwanese people, said Li. As for the U.S.s eroded credibility among Taiwanese people, Li believes it was a result of the U.S. not responding strongly to Chinas military maneuvers around Taiwan after last years visit by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It made Taiwanese worry about whether the U.S. would honor its promise to help Taiwan in the event of a cross-strait conflict, Li added. Status quo A Taiwanese university student, identified only as Cheng, told Radio Free Asia Cantonese he is all for supporting the current status, given the delicate situation between Taiwan and China. He reasoned that a pursuit of independence would inevitably lead to an armed conflict, while unification might drastically alter their current way of life. Cheng might not be alone. The IEAS poll showed that 91.4% of respondents supported maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. And this widespread preference for the status quo is reflected in the current political climate, noted Rosie Levine, senior program analyst for China at the United States Institute of Peace. The key foreign policy issue in the race is how to best manage cross-Strait relations. For now, the political postures of all three leading candidates [for the presidential election] share a surprising amount of overlap. All are advocating for a version of the status quo that rejects declarations of formal independence, rebuffs Chinas creeping territorial claims, retains a relationship with the United States and rejects Chinas proposal of one country, two systems for bringing Taiwan more formally under Chinese control, said Levine, as cited by the institutes commentary on Nov. 8. Meanwhile, 78.4% of respondents believed that Taiwan and China are not affiliated with each other, 36.5% believed that Taiwan is called the Republic of China, and 21.1% agreed with the Republic of China, Taiwan title, according to the poll. Apart from that, the poll showed 62.5% of respondents considered themselves Taiwanese, only 2.3% thought they were Chinese, and 32.2% thought they were both. In the survey conducted from Sept. 14 to Sept. 19, the poll gathered 1,211 valid responses from Taiwanese adults via telephone and had a sampling error of plus or minus 2.82 percentage points with a confidence level of 95%. Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan. Updated to add the information about the survey method and margin of error. A rocket carrying a spy satellite Malligyong-1 is launched, as North Korean government claims, in a location given as North Gyeongsang Province, North Korea in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on November 21, 2023. South Korea has suspended a landmark military agreement with the North to resume surveillance activities near the border between the two states, a countermeasure to Pyongyangs illegal satellite launch that violated the United Nations Security Council resolution. South Koreas President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday endorsed his Cabinets approval of a motion of the suspension, according to a statement from the Souths Presidential Office. The decision follows close on the heels of North Koreas satellite launch despite international warnings late Tuesday. The Norths state-run Korean Central News Agency later reported that it has successfully put its spy satellite into orbit. Pyongyangs provocative move, also drew strong rebuke from Seouls ally, the United States, which chastised North Korea for undermining stability on the Korean peninsula. Rocket technology can be used for both launching satellites and missiles. For that reason, the U.N. bans North Korea from launching a ballistic rocket, even if it claims to be a satellite launch. North Korea ignored repeated warnings from us and the international community and launched a so-called military reconnaissance satellite last night, South Koreas Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said at an emergency cabinet meeting in Seoul Wednesday. This is a grave violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibit any launch by North Korea using ballistic missile technology and a direct provocation that threatens our security. The prime minister said the launch also shows the Norths clear defiance of the military agreement signed on Sept. 19, 2018 to reduce hostility and build trust on the Korean peninsula. We came to the conclusion that tolerating any further restrictions on our military's intelligence and surveillance activities in the border area in accordance with the September 19 Military Agreement would significantly reduce our readiness and lead to a situation where we would be unable to protect the lives and safety of our citizens, Han said, noting that Seoul is suspending the effectiveness of the some parts of the agreement until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored. Passengers walk past a TV broadcasting a news report on North Korea launching a military satellite, at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, November 22, 2023. (Source: Reuters) While the prime minister did not elaborate on the exact parts of the deal that Seoul was suspending, his remarks suggested South Korea was likely to resume reconnaissance and surveillance operations against North Korea in the area around the military demarcation line. Han said restrictions spelled out in the agreement have limited South Koreas ability to identify North Korean artillery attacks and train its armed forces to prepare for them, leaving them vulnerable should a surprise attack from the North occur. The immediate resumption of reconnaissance and surveillance activities along the Military Demarcation Line through the partial suspension of the September 19 Military Agreement will greatly enhance our militarys ability to identify threat targets and respond to North Korean threats. The two Koreas have agreed to halt what the other has defined as hostile actions toward one another near the border, but the North has conducted a number of provocations, violating the terms of the agreement. Critics in South Korea, thus, have long argued that the deal has already become ineffective, only serving to restrict Seouls operational and surveillance capabilities. North Korea has been solidifying its ties with Russia, and South Koreas National Intelligence Service said earlier this month that it is likely to have received help in obtaining satellite launch technology from Moscow. The launch comes as Yoon is in London for his state visit to the United Kingdom. North Korea has a history of provocations when South Korean presidents are abroad, seemingly to challenge Seouls response capabilities and the efficiency of its systems in the presidents absence. Edited by Elaine Chan and Taejun Kang. Escalating violence by junta troops on the Rakhine border injured 5 children and 3 adults. Residents of Pauktaw city fled during fighting between junta troops and the Arakan Army on Nov 17, 2023. Nearly 100 civilians were caught in a battle in western Myanmar on Tuesday, locals told Radio Free Asia. As fighting in Rakhine state between the Arakan Army and junta forces continues over the disputed town of Pauktaw, residents report an increase in abductions and injuries across the region. Junta forces abducted nearly 100 people, including monks, the elderly, children and pregnant women in Pauktaw to use as human shields, according to an Arakan Army statement on Nov. 21. The civilians were abducted on Nov. 16 when the ethnic army captured Pauktaws police station, which was previously occupied by junta troops. In retaliation, the regime attacked the coastal area by firing weaponry from navy ships and aircraft. By the following week, the junta army and police had re-captured Pauktaw and were patrolling neighborhoods. The Arakan Army seized control of the city again on Tuesday and rescued the captured civilians, according to the group's statement. It also stated the regime was frequently using heavy artillery and launching rockets from ships and by aircraft. The junta stated it had captured Pauktaw before Tuesday, but an announcement by junta spokesman Maj. Gen Zaw Min Tun in military-controlled newspapers did not say anything about the arrested people. Fighting between the two groups is also affecting civilians in the states northeast. On Monday evening in Paletwa township on the Chin state border, eight civilians, including five children, were injured in a junta airstrike. Some of the children are in a critical condition after they were struck by bomb shrapnel while bathing in a creek, said a woman from Mee Zar village, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. The children were hit when they came back from bathing in the creek down from the village. The adults were hit when they went to pick things up, she said. I heard that the injured are in a critical condition. At the moment, were hiding when we hear the sound of the plane. I am still afraid it will come again. All eight victims are currently receiving medical treatment at Mee Zar District Hospital. RFA contacted Chin states junta spokesperson Kyaw Soe Win by phone regarding the aerial bombardment, but he did not respond by the time of publication. Mee Zar village is about 10 kilometers (six miles) away from Paletwa townships Hta Run Aing village, where another clash between the junta army and Arakan Army erupted, locals said. On Monday evening, a Christian church in Matupi townships Lalengpi town was destroyed during the juntas airstrike, according to the locals. Eleven residents, including eight children, were killed during an aerial bombardment on Vuilu village in Matupi township on the night of Nov. 15. Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a meeting with German Federal Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius, who visited Ukraine, the press service of the head of state reported. Zelenskyy noted the importance of the visit of the head of the German defense ministry to Kyiv on the 10th anniversary of the start of the Revolution of Dignity. "This is a historically important day for Ukraine and Europe. Thank you for being with us on this day," he said. Zelenskyy thanked Germany for the significant defense support for Ukraine and the decision to provide another aid package worth EUR 1.3 billion. The head of state also highly appreciated the role of Chancellor Olaf Scholz in mobilizing international support for Ukraine and strengthening the protection of Ukrainian skies before the winter period. "The interlocutors discussed the priority needs of Ukrainian defenders, in particular, in the context of ensuring the protection of the alternative Black Sea grain corridor," the press service said. Further practical steps to strengthen Ukraine's defense capability with the support of Germany were also discussed, in particular regarding the transfer of air defense systems, armored vehicles, artillery and ammunition. The parties paid special attention to the prospects for strengthening cooperation in the field of defense industries and the possibility of creating joint production of certain types of weapons. Zelenskyy highlighted the importance of the recent start of negotiations with Germany on concluding a bilateral agreement regarding security guarantees for Ukraine. During the meeting, an exchange of views on bilateral political dialogue for the near future also took place. Experts say the US$12.5 billion scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. A recent multi-billion dollar embezzlement scandal in Vietnam is just the tip of the iceberg in the countrys corrupt banking system and the government is ill-equipped to address it, experts told Radio Free Asia. Last week, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security released the conclusion of its investigation that found that Truong My Lan, the chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat Group, or VTP, had embezzled 304 trillion dong (US$12.5 billion) by using "ghost companies" and the Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank, or SCB, the groups affiliate bank. The case is considered to be one of the biggest corruption cases in Vietnam ever and the value of the known embezzled funds amounts to about 6% of Vietnams GDP. In its report released on Nov. 17, 2023, the ministrys Police Investigation Agency recommended prosecuting 86 people involved in the case, including Lan, who should face charges of bribery, embezzlement and violating banking regulations. Police also recommended prosecuting dozens of staff from SCB Bank and companies under the VTP Group for embezzlement and violating banking regulations, and two SCB staff and a former acting chief of the Inspectorate and Supervision Department under the State Bank of Vietnam for dereliction of responsibility. Additionally it was found that in handling this case, inspectors were bribed to falsify their findings. Structural problems There are formidable structural problems in Vietnams banking system, Vietnam-based economic expert Bui Kien Thanh told RFA Vietnamese. Apart from the SCB scandal, real estate is another bubble that can pop [at any time] in Vietnam, he said. Banks give many loans [to real estate companies]. Big groups often borrow loans worth seven or eight times more than their asset value. No countrys [banking system] operates in that way. He said the apparent bubble indicates that the government is mismanaging the banks. And when the bubble bursts, the SCB story of US$12 billion would be just the tip of the iceberg only, he said. A man rides a motorbike carrying corrugated iron past the State Bank of Vietnam in Hanoi on July 27, 2023. Credit: Nhac Nguen/AFP According to the investigation conclusion, Van Thinh Phat Group established more than 1,000 companies, including subsidiaries and member companies both inside and outside Vietnam, many of which specialize in banking, stock investment, and real estate. A large number of these ghost companies were established just to take money from SCB bank for Lans use, according to the investigation conclusion. SCB Bank and Van Thinh Phat Groups subsidiaries were connected to each other through forms of cross-ownership, economics expert Nguyen Huy Vu told RFA. Via SCB's banking system, SCB's capital and bonds of Van Thinh Phat Groups subsidiaries are mobilized to be used for the Groups projects. This created extremely high risks for depositors and [bond] investors. After the prosecutions and arrests of Truong My Lan and a series of other VTP leaders, many SCB depositors and those who bought VTP Groups bonds and other products and services via SCB, took to the streets and gathered at SCB offices to demand their money back. VTP victims continue to hold demonstrations. They have even created their own groups on the social media platforms of Facebook and Zalo. Like a pawn shop Thanh explained that the case shows weaknesses in the Vietnamese banking system. Vietnam has over 30 banks, but [these banks] do not provide proper professional training to their employees, he said. The operation mostly focuses on mortgage lending, but actually functions like a pawn shop, he said. Bank employees do not really study whether the project is feasible and can repay the loan, they only look at the mortgages in the borrowing applications. He said such lax oversight is common in the Vietnamese banking system. As a result, [the loss] could be not just $12 billion but many more tens of billions of dollars that havent yet been discovered. The Ministry of Finance estimates that the total bad debts of 28 banks increased by 52 percent in the third quarter of 2023 and some banks bad debts increased by two or three times, according to a report in the Inspection Newspaper, an official publication from the Government Inspectorate. The government is clearly aware of bad debt but hasnt been able to manage it effectively or efficiently, said Thanh. The government hands it over to the Vietnam Asset Management Company, but [they]cannot handle it. In brief, the State Bank has not fulfilled its role of examining and inspecting banks. Corruption in the banking system The high-profile case has grabbed much public attention, prompting many to question the governments management role given the enormity of the embezzlement tand that it occurred over a long period. The investigation conclusion shows the horrific level of crime committed by Van Thinh Phat Group, Dang Dinh Manh, who worked as a lawyer in Vietnam for more than 20 years and currently resides in the United States, told RFA. However, what caught my attention the most was the legal aspect of the case. Accordingly, a series of legal barriers to ensure healthy control of business operations have all been effectively nullified by Van Thinh Phat with the collusion of more than a few government officials. The conclusion of the investigation agency said that all 18 members of an investigation delegation led by Do Thi Nhan, former chief of the Inspectorate and Supervision Department under the State Bank of Vietnam, had received bribes to change their inspection results and cover SCB Banks wrongdoings. As the delegation leader, Nhan received a bribe worth US$5.2 million, it said. Perhaps the inspectors who received bribes in the Van Thinh Phat case had also committed crimes while inspecting other enterprises previously, but there were no mechanisms to stop them from doing that until the Van Thinh Phat case was discovered, Manh said. Thanh also expressed concern over the quality of the State Banks inspection and monitoring activities. Letting banks operate dishonestly without following the law is very harmful and dangerous, he said. Allowing the abuse of bank ownership to borrow money without any limits does not follow the Law on Credit Institutions. According to Thanh, corruption is quite rampant in banking inspection activities in Vietnam and likely extend beyond the SCB case. Many other banks may have been in similar situations but have not been discovered. Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster. Followers have been threatened with prison or fines if they continue to meet. Authorities in Vietnams Dak Lak province are increasingly persecuting members of the Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ, forcing them to abandon prayer meetings or even leave the group, according to one of its founders. Pastor Aga told Radio Free Asia on Monday that harassment of church followers became more intense after the People's Committee headquarters of two communes in the province were attacked by armed gangs in June, leaving nine people dead. The Evangelical Church is not recognized by the Vietnamese government and Pastor Aga lives in the United States. He told RFA that on Nov. 15, police and officials tried to break up and record what they called illegal religious activities when dozens of believers gathered at a house in Buon Don district. Two days later, Buon Don district police summoned many people who attended the gathering to interrogate them, and tried to force them to sign a commitment not to meet again. However, the people refused to sign. The police also warned event host H Ik Kbuor about allowing church members to gather at her house to pray, threatening her with a fine or imprisonment if she continued to use her private house as a gathering place for religious activities. Pastor Aga said the police and local officials arrived again on Nov. 19 when everyone was praying together. On Sunday morning, they came and disturbed them and did not allow followers to gather together, he said. They forced them to abandon the Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ. They even threatened that if they continued, they would be fined or imprisoned like Y Krec Bya and Nay Y Blang. Y Krec Bya was arrested by the Dak Lak provincial government in early April on charges of "undermining the national unity policy" according to Article 116 of the Criminal Code. Nay Y Blang was arrested by the Phu Yen provincial police in mid-May on charges of "abusing democratic freedoms," under Article 331. Neither has been allowed to see their families or lawyers. Both men are missionaries of the Central Highlands Evangelical Church of Christ and are accused of having made contact with Pastor Aga to oppose the Vietnamese government. Pastor Aga said the Church now has 20 groups meeting in the Central and Central Highlands regions. He said that in areas with many meeting places and believers, the authorities harassed them, while in those with few followers, local authorities ignored them. According to a report by Montagnards for Justice on Nov. 19, police and local officials also went to the Church's meeting places in Kdun village, Buon Ma Thuot city and Ko Dung B village trying to force believers to disperse and threatening to punish them if they continued to gather "illegally." RFA called the leaders of the Religious Affairs Committee of the Department of Home Affairs of Dak Lak province and the Buon Don district police to verify the report but no one answered the phone. According to the Human Rights Report in Vietnam 2022-2023, published by the Vietnam Human Rights Network on Nov. 18, the Vietnamese government has systematically oppressed indigenous ethnic people in the Central Highlands since 1975. In addition to taking land from ethnic minorities for state-owned companies, the government does not allow them to freely practice religion, the report said, because authorities believe that following unrecognized religious groups causes social unrest. Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan. Officials are looking for violations of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act. Containers are transferred from a truck to a cargo ship at the international cargo terminal of a port in Haiphong, Vietnam, Aug. 12, 2019. Vietnams exports to the United States have come under closer scrutiny by U.S. Customs and Border officials since a law preventing material or products made by forced labor in China took effect in June 2022. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, said nearly 1,200 shipments of imported goods from Vietnam were denied clearance from June 2022 when the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act, or UFLPA, went into effect, to the start of fiscal year 2024. The law prohibits imports of raw material and products or components made by forced labor in Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region into the United States. The U.S. government has declared that genocide and crimes against humanity against Muslim Uyghurs have occurred in Xinjiang, including mass detentions of Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in re-education camps or prisons and the use of forced labor. Uyghur forced labor has been used to produce cotton for clothing and polysilicon for photovoltaic panels and semiconductors. China has consistently denied the accusations of rights abuses in Xinjiang. Vietnam currently has the second-largest number of shipments denied entry to the U.S. after Malaysia since the UFLPA has been enforced. The tighter rules on tackling human rights violations in Xinjiang have led to controls on more than 6,000 shipments carrying goods worth more than US$2 billion through September, the latest month for which U.S. customs data are available, Reuters reported. CPB authorities examined more than 2,000 total shipments from Vietnam valued at nearly US$549 million, of which 1,186 shipments worth more than US$230 million were denied entry, 554 shipments were released, and 330 shipments were still pending as of Nov. 8, according to the CPBs latest data. Most of the shipments 962 were electronics worth over US$488 million. Other shipments involved were industrial and manufacturing materials; apparel, footwear and textiles; consumer products; and machinery. Of this amount, 376 shipments were denied, 438 were released, and 148 were pending. With 140 shipments worth over US$46 million rejected, August 2022 saw the highest number of shipments from Vietnam denied entry to the U.S., according to the data. More than two-thirds of rejected or held cargo in the U.S. came from Vietnam and Malaysia, major exporters of solar panels and semiconductors, Reuters reported. Neither Vietnams nor Malaysias trade ministries replied to Reuters requests for comment. Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster. 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. Iran's strategy in the Middle East is essentially a take on an old proverb: Give your proxies and partners weapons and you can sustain their battles for a day. Teach them to make weapons and they can fight your enemies for a lifetime. With Iranian-backed militant groups taking the charge in the Islamic republic's fight against Israel and the United States, Tehran is seeing its effort to help them acquire their own weapons-manufacturing capabilities pay off. "Iran has established a network of allies and partners throughout the Middle East, from the Huthis in Yemen, to pro-Iranian groups in Iraq, to pro-Iranian groups in Syria, to Hizballah in Lebanon, to Hamas in Gaza," said Samuel Bendett of the Virginia-based Center for Naval Analyses. "And [Tehran] basically feeds some of its technology there directly, or provides kits and parts and other assistance to the local developers from those units, from those groups, and either gives them training in Iran or trains them on their location." Increasingly, those Tehran-backed militant groups are turning to weapons they have produced themselves, often based on Iranian blueprints or manufactured or assembled with Iran's assistance. "Those groups now have a lot of know-how which was provided to them by Iran," Bendett said. "And they're now using them against the U.S. and its allies in the region." The Iranian-backed Islamic Resistance Movement -- better known as Hamas and considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union -- utilized a vast array of indigenously produced weapons and employed advanced battlefield tactics during its surprise multipronged attack on Israel on October 7 that left around 1,200 people dead. The Israeli Defense Forces said they recovered Iranian-manufactured mortars and explosives used by the Palestinian extremist group after the assault, and Israeli military officials have reportedly estimated that up to 10 percent of the weapons used in the attack were made in Iran. But most were produced or refined by Hamas indigenously in the Gaza Strip, including assault rifles, missiles, rockets, mortars, shells, and ammunition, according to Israeli defense officials. Some of the at least 19 Iranian proxies and partners in the region that help make up Iran's so-called axis of resistance have also used Iranian-derived or indigenously manufactured weapons built with Tehran's help against Israel as well as U.S. troops based in the region since the Hamas assault. These militant groups boast varying levels of firepower in their respective arsenals made up of Soviet-era, Russian, Iranian, and indigenously manufactured weapons based on Iranian designs. While Iran denies delivering arms to the groups directly, many of the missiles, rockets, and other weapons are similar to those produced by Iran. Lebanese Hizballah boasts the most formidable arsenal of projectiles among Tehran's proxies -- including its own manufactured or refitted missiles and rockets. Since October 7, Hizballah has launched hundreds of rockets and missiles at Israel. The Iranian-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen claim to have launched ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones, at Israel. On November 8, the Pentagon announced that a U.S. military surveillance drone was shot down off the coast of Yemen by Huthi forces. In an apparent response to U.S. support for Israel's retaliatory land invasion and aerial bombardment of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria have launched 58 attacks against U.S. forces in the past month, according to the Pentagon. Tehran has denied involvement in the Hamas attack, and in early November Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly pressed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to silence those calling for Iran and Lebanese Hizballah to join the Israel-Hamas war. According to sources cited by Reuters, Khamenei said during the meeting with Haniyeh in Tehran that Iran would continue to offer political and moral support but would not directly enter the conflict. But Iran has publicly boasted about the military aid it has provided to Hamas in recent years. And despite international sanctions and a sea and land blockade on the Gaza Strip that was imposed by Israel and Egypt in 2005, experts say it is clear that Tehran has provided assistance to boost Hamas's fighting capabilities. Middle East political analyst Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib told RFE/RL that Hamas built up its arsenal by looting weapons from former stockpiles of the Palestinian Authority or illegally purchasing them decades ago from Israeli sources through straw-man sales, smuggling arms and materials across the border with Egypt, and domestically producing drones, rockets, and various munitions. But there is little evidence that any seaborne smuggling of arms has taken place since Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip in 2007, he said. And the smuggling from Egypt that reached its height after the Egyptian revolution in 2011 declined sharply after the Muslim Brotherhood government there was overthrown in 2013 and has since "been reduced to a trickle." Nevertheless, Alkhatib said, "the weaponry and the arsenal that Hamas has right now has been building up for over a decade" and benefited from thousands of tons of smuggled arms and materials that could be used to manufacture its own weapons. "Even if the smuggling stopped, those are still significant and vast enough to offer Hamas and other groups the ability to inflict damage as we saw on October 7 and as we're seeing in their defensive battle with advancing Israeli ground troops," said Alkhatib, a U.S. citizen from Gaza. Whereas Hamas historically focused on building up a stockpile of rifles and machine guns, he says, it turned its attention to developing kinetic capabilities -- including mines, targeted explosive warheads, improvised explosive devices, anti-tank missiles, and rocket propelled grenades. Hamas has also invested heavily in developing longer-range rockets and guidance and targeting capabilities as well as a range of unmanned aerial vehicles, including fixed-wing and weaponized commercial-grade drones. Hamas had a falling out with Tehran, including over the extremist group's support of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Alkhatib says. But Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's leader in Gaza, realigned the organization with Tehran "because they have realized that without Iran, their military capability won't stand a chance in continuing to evolve." The realignment "with Iran, with the Syrian regime, and certainly with [Lebanese] Hizballah," he added, "are directly related to Hamas's needs and reliance on Iran to procure materials and, more importantly in the era of limited to no smuggling, technologies and know-how to domestically produce [weapons] systems." Aided by Iranian weapons blueprints and the use of modern digital platforms for remote training, Hamas has learned how to upgrade old rockets and missiles to expand their range and lethality, he said. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Lebanese Hizballah have also been able to remotely teach Hamas fighting tactics and how to develop its massive tunnel network. "And, more importantly, Iran is also teaching Hamas how to use strategic capabilities," Alkhatib said, such as how to integrate drones on the battlefield. "What was particularly spectacular about the October 7 attack," Alkhatib said, "is that Hamas for the first time demonstrated a combined-arms approach to guerrilla warfare, whereby intelligence was linked with the artillery barrage, was linked with the aerial capabilities of using the paragliders, was linked with the ground troops with the elite forces, with the logistical networks to transport the hostages back to Gaza and to send the attacks in waves with internal operational security. "This was a qualitative leap forward in Hamas's fighting doctrine. And it could have only been learned and developed through assistance from Iran, broadly, and more specifically, its proxies and its arms in the region such as Hizballah and the IRGC," he added. Elsewhere in the Middle East, Iran's support for proxies and its involvement in the Syrian civil war now leaves it with a significant number of experienced fighters at the ready for future conflicts. Alkhatib notes that Iran supported hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite militias and fighters in Iraq and Syria, both to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and to combat the Islamic State (IS) extremist group alongside Syrian and Iraqi government forces. "Now that both have been largely defeated, IS and the Syrian rebels, Iran was left with these powerful, battle-hardened, well-trained, well-organized militias that had nothing to do," Alkhatib said. "And so, they have been recycled and repurposed by the IRGC to further bolster the so-called axis of resistance, and to be used in a potential fight with Israel and the United States." A 42-year-old resident of Kherson died on November 22 as a result of shelling by the Russian Army in the center of the southern Ukrainian city, the head of the Kherson military administration said as the death toll from a Russian strike on a hospital in Selydove on November 21 rose to three. Roman Mrochko, the head of Kherson city's military administration, said the civilian was in the yard of a residential building when it was hit by "an enemy projectile" that had been fired from the opposite bank of the Dnieper River. Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here. A gymnasium in the central part of Kherson also came under fire, according to the military authority. The blast blew out windows and damaged the roof, but no one was injured. Kherson city, which was liberated by Ukrainian troops a little over one year ago, has been constantly targeted by Russian shelling from across the river. The Russian strike in Selydove damaged two buildings of the hospital and a coal mine, authorities said. "Another body was recovered from the rubble of the hospital building.... In total, three people were killed in the missile strike," the State Emergency Service said on Telegram on November 22. The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said there were 58 combat clashes at the front during the day on November 22. There were no offensive actions by Russian troops in the Bakhmut and Lyman areas during the day, but Russian troops conducted assault operations in the Kupyansk region, and Ukrainian forces repelled a total of 12 attacks. In the area of Avdiyivka and Maryinka in the Donetsk region Ukrainian forces repelled dozens of attacks, the summary says. The General Staff also reported on four repulsed Russian attempts to regain lost positions near Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhya region, while Ukrianian forces conducted offensive operations in the Melitopol and Bakhmut areas. An estimated 1,300 residents of Avdiyivka remain without electricity, heat, water, or communications, police reported on November 22. "Devastating shelling and approaching frost leave people with no chance of survival," a message from the National Police said. The message notes that the local police department has been destroyed, but two police units are on duty in the city and about 16 people are working in the hospital, which has been damaged by shelling. "First aid medicines are available, but it is not possible to provide assistance in critical situations," the message said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv's troops faced "difficult" defensive operations in Avdiyivka and on other parts of the eastern front, but he said forces in the south were still conducting offensive actions. Russian troops for months have been trying to advance on Avdiyivka in the east and on Lyman and Kupyansk in the northeast. "Difficult weather, difficult defense on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Donetsk, and Avdiyivka fronts. Offensive actions in the south," Zelenskiy said on Telegram. Earlier on November 22, Ukraine and its allies held a virtual meeting on November 22 to discuss ways to enhance protection against an expected uptick in Russian attacks on the war-torn country's energy and civilian infrastructure during the upcoming cold season. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said afterward that "support for Ukraine remains unwavering" and thanked Ukraine's partners who have already started announcing new military aid packages but added that "the biggest and most powerful announcements have not been announced." Umerov said among the results of the meeting is the formation of a new ground-based air defense coalition made up of 20 countries. One of its priorities is providing Ukrainian cities with additional air defense over the winter, he said. The virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group brought together representatives from some 50 countries that back Kyiv in its war against Russia and is being chaired by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Illarion Pavlyuk, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's top spokesman, said ahead of the meeting that the focus would be on preparing for winter -- air defense, artillery, ammunition. "But the projected needs always depend on what the soldiers at the front need. And they are constantly being updated," Pavlyuk said. Last winter, Ukraine's energy infrastructure was regularly targeted by Russian missile and drone strikes that caused civilian victims and damage as well as misery to millions of people who were left in the dark and cold amid below-freezing temperatures. Ahead of the meeting, Austin and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius visited Kyiv as Washington and Berlin announced fresh military aid packages for Ukraine. The United States and Germany are the two largest providers of military aid to Ukraine. But more recently there have been concerns of "war fatigue" among Ukraine's Western allies, especially in Washington. The meeting comes as Russian forces shelled the city of Nikopol, in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, early on November 22, causing casualties and damage and as Ukraine's air defenses fought off another wave of Russian drone strikes. "The occupiers have targeted Nikopol region with heavy artillery four times since last night, regional Governor Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram, adding that two civilians were wounded. "Two men aged 61 and 37 were wounded in the city center and eight private houses, vehicles, and a gas pipeline were damaged," Lysak said, adding that power lines were also destroyed by the shelling, leaving more than 1,200 families without electricity. Russian artillery and drone strikes have repeatedly targeted Nikopol, causing casualties among civilians and damage to infrastructure. Last week, a man was killed in a drone strike. Ukraine's air defenses said in a statement early on November 22 that Russia launched a multipronged drone attack on several regions overnight, but that all 14 Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down. The statement said the drones were downed over the regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhya, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsya, and Khmelnytskiy. It said that a Russian cruise missile fell in the Zaporizhzhya region without reaching its target but caused damage to infrastructure. Meanwhile, Ukraine's 128th Separate Mountain Assault Transcarpathian Brigade reports that it struck a building in the village of Kumachovo in the eastern region of Donetsk where Russian forces were celebrating the Day of Missile Forces and Artillery on November 19, killing 25 troops. The claim could not be independently verified. Novaya Gazeta.Europe and social media reports said Russian director and actress Polina Menshikh, who had come to perform for the troops, was among those killed in the strike, which employed HIMARS missiles. On November 5, 19 members of the Transcarpathian Brigade were killed when Russian missiles struck a ceremony held in a frontline position in southern Ukraine. Russia's Defense Ministry said on November 22 that its air-defense units destroyed three Ukrainian drones over occupied Crimea, as well as four Ukrainian naval drones. "Three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed over the territory of the Republic of Crimea by air defenses," the ministry said. It said that the four naval drones were destroyed in the western part of the Black Sea while heading toward Crimea. The claim could not be independently verified. WATCH: Ukraine marks the 10th anniversary of the Euromaidan protest movement that erupted after then-President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign an EU Association Agreement. Massive crowds of pro-European demonstrators occupied Kyiv's central square for months to oppose Yanukovych's plan for closer economic ties with Russia. On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces reported 48 close-quarter battles along the front line over the past 24 hours. The General Staff of Ukraine's military said Russian assaults were repelled in the Donetsk region in the direction of Lyman, Bakhmut, and Avdiyivka. In Bakhmut, which saw months of heavy fighting earlier this year before falling to the Russians, Ukrainian forces were conducting offensive operations, the General staff said. Listen and follow Talking China In Eurasia Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | YouTube China was quick to respond after Hamas, designated as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,200 people and taking more than 200 people hostage. Beijing stepped up its diplomacy to position itself as a peace broker by calling for a cease-fire and used its newfound influence across the Middle East to weigh in on the unfolding conflict at the UN and elsewhere. In the latest move, a delegation of foreign ministers from the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan met in Beijing on November 20 for talks aimed at finding a solution to end the war. But what is China hoping to achieve and how does this reflect its broader playbook for the region? On the latest episode of Talking China In Eurasia, host Reid Standish is joined by Erin Hale, a journalist in Taiwan working with Al-Jazeera, where shes been covering how China is navigating this unfolding war. Listen to the full episode here: Background Reading India Canada E-Visa Services News Diplomatic Row Over Hardeep Singh Nijjar's Killing Eases as E-Visa Services Restart After Two-Month Suspension India Canada E-Visa Services News: In a positive development, India has reopened its electronic visa (E-visa) services for Canadian citizens, signaling a thaw in the diplomatic tension that arose following the tragic killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada, said sources. The move comes after a nearly two-month gap in the wake of the escalating dispute. Diplomatic relations between India and Canada intensified after the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, leading to the suspension of the E-visa service on September 21. The Canadian authorities had alleged the involvement of 'agents of the Government of India' in Nijjar's murder, which occurred in June. The Indian government strongly refuted any connection to the incident, urging Canada to provide evidence to substantiate its claims. Advertisement After weeks of strained relations and diplomatic discussions, India has now taken the positive step of resuming electronic visa services for Canadian citizens. This reiteration of diplomatic ties through the reopening of the E-visa platform is seen as a significant move towards normalizing relations between the two nations. The restart of E-visa services not only facilitates smoother travel arrangements for Canadian citizens visiting India but also reflects the willingness of both countries to find amicable solutions to diplomatic challenges. (For More News Apart from India Canada E-Visa Services News, Stay Tuned to Rozana Spokesman) Punjab News Latest: Heroin Recovered in Punjab Joint Operation Unveils Narcotics Stash in the Outskirts of Attari Village Punjab News Latest: In a significant anti-narcotics operation, Border Security Force (BSF) officials, in coordination with Punjab Police, successfully recovered more than five kilograms of heroin near the India-Pakistan international border in Amritsar district on Wednesday. Advertisement Following specific intelligence inputs, BSF personnel and Punjab Police initiated a joint search operation in the outskirts of Attari village in Amritsar. During the search, officials discovered a concealed stash of heroin carefully hidden in a bag. The recovered heroin, weighing over five kilograms, highlights the ongoing challenges posed by cross-border narcotics trafficking. Israel-Hamas War Latest Updates Landmark Deal Mediated by Qatar Initiates Four-Day Pause in Conflict, Includes Conditions for Aid and Prisoner Exchange Israel-Hamas War Latest Updates: In a significant development, Israel's cabinet has given the green light to a groundbreaking agreement with Hamas, facilitating the release of approximately 50 hostages and implementing a four-day ceasefire. The deal, brokered by Qatar, marks a temporary halt in the ongoing conflict. As part of the first phase mediated by Qatar, Hamas is set to release Israeli women and children held in Gaza. In reciprocation, Israel has agreed to release around 150 Palestinian prisoners, with a focus on women and minors, according to a statement from Hamas. The ceasefire comes with a unique condition: the release of an additional 10 hostages will extend the pause by one day. The implementation timeline for this agreement remains unclear. Advertisement While announcing the decision, the Israeli prime minister's office emphasized that the government, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and security services will persist in the conflict until all hostages are returned, Hamas is eliminated, and there is no renewed threat to Israel from Gaza. Hamas, in its statement, outlined key components of the deal, including the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian, medical, and fuel aid to all areas of the Gaza Strip. Air traffic in the south will be halted for four days, while in the north, it will cease for six hours daily. Crucially, during the ceasefire period, Israel commits not to target or arrest anyone in all Gaza Strip areas. Israel Remains in a State of War Advertisement Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clarified that despite the temporary pause, Israel remains in a state of war and will continue until all objectives are achieved. He emphasized the complete elimination of Hamas, the return of all hostages, and ensuring Gaza poses no threat to Israel. Qatar plays a pivotal role in mediating these talks, liaising with Israel and Hamas. The country will oversee an operations room in communication with relevant parties, including the Red Cross and US officials, to ensure the successful implementation of the deal. Transparent Prisoner Release Process Advertisement To maintain transparency, the names of the Palestinian prisoners set to be released will be made public within the next 24 hours. This allows Israelis to appeal to the courts against their release, as reported by Axios. Israel Designates Lashkar-e-Taiba as Terrorist Group News Symbolic Move Aims to Strengthen Global Anti-Terrorism Efforts Israel Designates Lashkar-e-Taiba as Terrorist Group News: In a significant step to mark the 15th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Israel on Monday (November 21) officially declared Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) a terrorist organization. The Embassy of Israel in India announced this decision through a post on X (Formerly called as Twitter), emphasizing the symbolic nature of the move. The embassy's statement clarified that the Israeli government, despite not being urged by the Government of India, completed all necessary procedures and checks to include Lashkar-e-Taiba in its list of illegal terror organizations. The move is seen as a demonstration of unity in the global fight against terrorism. Advertisement The Post read, "To symbolize the marking of the 15th year of commemoration of the Mumbai terror attacks, the state of Israel has listed Lashkar-e- Taiba as a Terror Organization. Despite not being requested by the Government of India to do so, the state of Israel has formally completed all necessary procedures and has satisfied all required checks and regulations to the result of introducing Lashkar -e- Taiba into the Israeli list of illegal terror organizations." "While Israel typically lists organizations actively operating against it or those globally recognized by the UNSC or the US State Department, the Israeli ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs collaborated to expedite the listing of Lashkar-e-Taiba. This decision underscores the importance of a unified global front in combating terrorism," the statement explained. Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the tragic events of November 26, 2008, in Mumbai, is described as a deadly and reprehensible terror organization that has claimed the lives of hundreds of Indian civilians and others. The embassy's message expressed solidarity with the victims of terrorism, including those affected by the Mumbai attacks. Advertisement Amidst ongoing tensions in the region, with Israel engaged in a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, the embassy reaffirmed its commitment to combating terrorism globally. The statement concluded with Israel offering sincere condolences to all victims of terrorism and expressing solidarity with survivors and bereaved families of the Mumbai attacks, including those in Israel. "We stand with you united in the hope for a better peaceful future," the Embassy's message conveyed. (For More News Apart from Israel Designates Lashkar-e-Taiba as Terrorist Group News, Stay Tuned to Rozana Spokesman) Indian shares were seeing marginal gains on Wednesday, tracking muted cues from global . The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex edged up 70 points, or 0.1 percent, to 66,000 in early trade, while the broader NSE Nifty index was up 26 points, or 0.1 percent, at 19,809. BPCL jumped over 3 percent after it proposed to consider interim dividend. Titan Company gained 1 percent after the Competition Commission of India approved the acquisition of an additional 27.2 percent share capital of Carrick Lane by the company. Dr Reddy's Laboratories, UPL, Power Grid Corp and Cipla were up 1-2 percent. IDBI Bank tumbled 3.1 percent after the government cancelled the bidding process to hire an asset valuer for its planned IDBI Bank share sale. IndusInd Bank, ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank all traded lower after recent tightening of norms for personal loans and credit cards. Tata Consultancy Services edged down slightly on saying it would make an exceptional provision of $125 million in its Q3 earnings related to a lawsuit dating back to 2014. Tata Steel was marginally higher on fund raising reports. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Market Analysis Publix Super Markets, Inc., an employee-owned supermarket chain, is recalling specific batches of private label Egg Custard Pie citing the possible presence of undeclared coconut, a known allergen, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. The affected Egg Custard Pie package may contain a coconut pie. The recall involves Egg Custard Pie with GTIN# 4141537891, sold between 10/20/2023 and 11/16/2023. The impacted products were sold at Publix stores in Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach counties between October 20, 2023, and November 16, 2023. People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to coconut may get serious life-threatening allergic reactions if they consume these products. However, there have been no reported cases of illness to date. The firm, which currently operates 1,358 stores, said the potentially impacted products have been removed from all store shelves. Consumers who have purchased the recalled product are asked to return it to their local store for a full refund. In similar recalls, Hiram, Maine-based Grandy Organics in early November recalled Gluten Free Honey Oat Granola for undeclared coconut. Kula Brands LLC in October recalled ula Can brand Pina Colada + Kratom Seltzer products for undeclared tree nuts (coconut) and milk. For More Such Health News, visit rttnews.com For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News European stocks advanced on Wednesday despite the latest FOMC minutes offering no indication of possible rate cuts. Hamas and Israel have agreed to a Qatar-mediated pause in fighting, helping ease Middle East tensions. The deal includes the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails in exchange for 50 people held captive by Hamas in Gaza since the armed group that rules the enclave stormed southern Israel on October 7. On a light day on the economic front, investors looked ahead to U.K. finance minister's budget update for direction. Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt will deliver the 2023 Autumn Statement later today, outlining the government's fiscal plan for the year ahead. The announcement is due at around 7.30 am ET. The pan European STOXX 600 was up half a percent at 458.26 after ending marginally lower on Tuesday. The German DAX gained half a percent, France's CAC 40 climbed 0.6 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was up 0.1 percent. British software firm Sage jumped 10 percent after reporting strong revenue growth in its full-year results and launching a share buyback. Home improvement retailer Kingfisher slumped 7 percent after cutting its profit outlook for the second time in three months. Retail company Casino Group fell about 1 percent after it warned of likely 2023 losses for its core French . Germany's Fresenius Medical Care added 1.6 percent after raising its annual earnings outlook. Also, the world's leading provider of products and services for individuals with renal diseases has resolved a legal dispute with the U.S. government. Thyssenkrupp jumped 7 percent. After reporting fiscal 2023 net loss of 2.0 billion euros, the industrial engineering and steel company said it sees profit and higher sales in RY24. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News A young staff member of the World Health Organization and her family members have been killed in Israeli bomb attack in Gaza. Dima Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj, 29, her husband, their six-month old baby boy, and her two brothers were killed when her parents' house in southern Gaza was bombed on Tuesday, WHO said. Dima was staying in her parents' house in the south after being evacuated from Gaza City. More than 50 family and community members sheltering in the same house also reportedly died in the attack. Dima had been working with WHO since December 2019. She was a patient administrator at the Limb Reconstruction Centre, a critical part of the WHO Trauma and Emergency Team. The death of Dima and her family is the latest example of civilians being killed in their homes, at their workplaces, in hospitals, while evacuating, or sheltering in schools. The humanitarian community and UN family have lost more than 107 members since the Israel-Hamas conflict started on October 7. This includes two doctors who were working for MSF and 108 UNRWA officials. WHO called for urgent ceasefire after an attack on Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza killed three doctors and a patient companion. As a four-day truce is expected to take effect in the next 24 hours, the Israeli forces continued attacks in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that nine people were killed in attacks on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza on Wednesday morning, and more than 60 others were killed in a another attack targeting the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Zelenskyy: Most of the funds for military aid for Ukraine will return to USA President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed hope that the U.S. Congress will approve an aid package for Ukraine. Zelenskyy said in an interview with FOX News published Tuesday that he has hope that the help of the United States will be directed around the Ukrainian people. He said that he has hope that the United States will stand with Ukraine in the fight against Russian terrorism. Zelenskyy said that most of the money returns to the United States through production and jobs. When the United States produces for Ukraine and with Ukraine, the country also produces it jointly with the Americans. Thus, most of the goods will be produced in the states, he said. Zelenskyy played down reports of a deadlock at the front, pointing to gradual progress in the Black Sea. Every day I think that we have success, Zelenskyy said. In Crimea, Ukraine achieved success on the Black Sea. Ukraine really destroyed part of the Russian fleet. They do not have such total influence on the Black Sea region, he said. Poland's retail sales increased for the first time in nine months in October, and at a faster-than-expected pace, figures from Statistics Poland showed on Wednesday. At constant prices, retail sales rose 2.8 percent year-on-year in October, reversing a 0.3 percent decline in September. The expected increase was 1.6 percent. In October, sales of solid, liquid, and gaseous fuels grew the most by 16.7 percent annually, followed by motor vehicles, motorcycles, and parts with a 12.3 percent surge. On the other hand, sales of newspapers, books, and other items in specialised stores declined sharply by 11.1 percent, and those of furniture, radio, television, and household appliances plunged by 10.9 percent. The monthly outcome in total retail sales was also an increase of 3.2 percent versus a 0.3 percent drop in September. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Canadian stocks are turning in a mixed performance on Wednesday with investors continuing to assess the likely policy moves by central banks, and reacting to the trend in commodities . Energy stocks are down on reports the OPEC has postponed its meeting to November 30th. Consumer staples and real estate stocks are finding support, while shares from the rest of the sectors are mixed. The benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index is up 50.97 points or 0.25% at 20,160.95 at noon. The Energy Capped Index is down nearly 3%. Cenovus Energy (CVE.TO), Pason Systems (PSI.TO), Baytex Energy (BTE.TO), Athabasca Oil Corporation (ATH.TO), Precision Drilling (PD.TO), MEG Energy (MEG.TO), Parex Resources (PXT.TO), Imperial Oil (IMO.TO) and Candian Natural Resources (CNQ.TO) are down 2 to 3.4%. Consumer staples stock Weston George (WN.TO), which fell sharply on Tuesday on lower earnings, has rebounded today, gaining about 5.5%. Metro Inc (MRU.TO), Loblaw Co (L.TO), Empire Company (EMP.A.TO) and Maple Leaf Foods (MFI.TO) are up 2 to 3%. In the real estate sector, Colliers International (CIGI.TO), Trico Capital Group (TCN.TO), Storagevault Canada (SVI.TO), Crombie Real Estate (CRR.UN.TO) and CT Real Estate Investment (CRT.UN.TO) are gaining 1.3 to 2%. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Production of Gogoros first electric scooter for India has commenced at the companys plant in Aurangabad After a long wait, Gogoro has finally revealed its plans for Indian market. While there are many options available in its home market Taiwan, the company has chosen to start its innings in India with the Gogoro CrossOver. Unveiled in October, the CrossOver is the newest scooter to be added to Gogoros international portfolio. Gogoro CrossOver production begins in India Post the launch in December, sales of Gogoro CrossOver are expected to commence in early 2024. Initially, much of the production will fulfil the needs of B2B partners. Gogoro has tie-ups with companies like Zomato and Swiggy. The CrossOver will also be supplied to Zypp Electric, an EV-only delivery firm. At a later stage, Gogoro will also target the commuter segment with newer variants of the CrossOver. The company has committed investments worth $1.5 billion (approx. Rs 12,300 crore) in Maharashtra. The design of the scooter reveals that it is a versatile machine, capable of carrying a lot of cargo. Gogoro CrossOver utilizes a steel tubular frame. With a wheelbase of 1,400 mm, it is longer than any other Gogoro scooter in production. It can carry cargo at the rear, in the floorboard area and at the front. The protruding LED headlight at front is topped with a metal bracket. It can be used to install a rack at the front. The flat floorboard area is pretty big and can carry a significant amount of cargo. For mounting cargo at rear, Gogoro is likely to offer optional accessories such as luggage racks, panniers and top cases. In its stock form, the scooter has a foldable pillion seat. While making space for cargo, it doubles up as a backrest for the rider. The pillion seat can also be removed completely to accommodate extra-large cargo items. Gogoro CrossOver specs, performance Suspension setup of Gogoro CrossOver comprises telescopic front forks and dual rear shock absorbers. The scooter has 12-inch wheels. Braking duties are performed by 220 mm front and 180 mm rear disc brakes. The scooter has ground clearance of 142 mm and weighs 126 kg with the batteries included. There are two battery packs, weighing around 10 kg each. The batteries are swappable units, with Gogoro promising a superfast 6-second swapping time. This will allow gig workers to optimize their work hours and boost profitability with maximum uptime. The powertrain to be used for CrossOver in India is yet to be revealed. Across international markets, Gogoro CrossOver utilizes a liquid-cooled motor that generates 7 kW (9.51 PS) of max power and 26.6 Nm of peak torque. It remains to be seen if private buyers will be offered this same configuration. For B2B segment, each of the battery packs could be of 1.6 kWh capacity. The B2B variant will have a less powerful motor, generating around 3 kW (4 PS). Top speed could be around 60-65 kmph, whereas range will be close to 100 km on a full charge. Gogoro has chosen to maximize use of locally sourced components. This will help achieve a lower price point for its scooters in India. Ownership cost can be further reduced by offering recharged batteries as a service. Gogoro will also be working to expand its network of battery-swapping stations. As of now, the company has partnered with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) to host its battery-swapping stations. Source With its cute profile, compact size and ample range, Dongfeng Nammi 01 EV seems perfect for everyday urban commutes At the 21st Guangzhou Auto Show, Chinese state-owned carmaker Dongfeng unveiled the all new Nammi 01 EV. Pre-sales are currently open in the price range of 79,800 109,800 yuan (approx. Rs 9.46 lakh to Rs 13.02 lakh). With affordably priced EVs like Nammi 01, Dongfeng is looking to boost its electric vehicle sales. Dongfeng Nammi 01 EV Key features Dongfeng Nammi 01 EV easily gets your attention with its cute, curvy profile. Some of the key highlights include a closed-off grille, triangular headlamps, sleek LED DRLs with interconnecting LED strip and mesh-type air dam with trapezoidal design elements in metallic finish. Side profile has a subtle character line that stretches all the way from the front bonnet to rear tail lamps. Other key features include dual-tone ORVMs with integrated turn signals, flush door handles, deep grooves on the door panels, circular wheel arches, blacked-out pillars and sporty alloy wheels. At rear, Nammi 01 has a raked windshield and trapezoidal tail lamps with smooth edges. The EV gets some exciting colour options such as purple and bright yellow green. Some relatively sober exterior colour choices are also available such as ivory white and light blue. Dongfeng Nammi 01 interiors Inside, Dongfeng Nammi 01 follows a minimalistic design approach. One of the core objectives is to achieve a spacious look and feel. The cockpit section is completely decluttered, with only a few physical buttons on the dash and centre console. Users can access most of the features and functions via the large floating touchscreen infotainment system and the full digital instrument console. One can also notice some nifty innovations such as the drawer-type glove box. The useability is significantly improved with this setup. Other highlights include full-width AC vents, a two-spoke steering wheel with mounted controls and intelligently designed utility spaces. The feel inside is quite premium with the use of quality materials and dual-tone theme of black and white. With the seats folded, Nammi 01 has max storage space of 945 litres. Dongfeng Nammi 01 specs, range Nammi is a new brand that Dongfeng had unveiled earlier this year in August. It will focus exclusively on small electric vehicles. Female customers are likely to be a key target segment. Nammi 01 is the first vehicle to utilize the Dongfeng S3 platform. The EV is 4,030 mm long, 1,810 mm wide and 1,570 mm tall. Wheelbase is 2,660 mm. Based on the variant, the wheels are either 16-inch or 17-inch. Some hi-tech features are available such as Level 2 advanced driving assistance capabilities. Dongfeng Nammi 01 has front-wheel drive. Two range options are available, one with 330 km and the other with 430 km. These have 31.45 kWh and 42.3 kW battery pack, respectively. The battery packs have lithium iron phosphate composition. The electric motor can generate max power of 70 kW or 95 PS. Rated top speed is 140 km/h. The EV supports fast charging. With a 400V fast charger, around 200 km can be loaded in just around eight minutes. The employees of Donovans Steak & Chop House have decided to forego their annual holiday party and instead use that money to help an Oceanside family struggling with cancer and hospital bills, the company announced Friday. The Graziano family was profiled in a San Diego Union-Tribune column on Monday. Gioi Joey, 38, was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer in May and his 37-year-old wife, Maggie, was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer six weeks ago. The couples 6-year-old son, Kai, was afflicted with pediatric neroblastoma cancer as an an infant but is in remission. And the pair has a 19-month old, Everett. The Grazianos hospital bills are estimated at $100,000 and growing, U-T columnist Fred Dickey wrote. Advertisement Maggie and Joey fear theyll be forced to sell their house and move into a rental, which will cost them more than their mortgage, and with much less of a home, Dickey wrote. Its a harsh irony that even if a family is forced to think about the possibility of death, the pressures of living do not relent. After learning of the familys plight, Donovans General Manager Sean Merzbacher said, the restaurants employees roughly 100 people asked if they could cancel the companys holiday party so the money could be donated to the Grazianos. In addition, the workers started a fundraising drive, resulting in a combined total of about $30,000 that will be given to the family. Its gut-wrenching to think about a company going out to a Christmas party knowing that every dollar could be going to a much better cause. said Merzbacher. It really came down to how could one in good conscience celebrate, knowing that money could have gone to such a wonderful family and such a wonderful cause. It was an easy decision for us. Dan Shea, president and managing partner at Donovans, said the staffs initiative and compassion is inspiring. While my heart breaks for what this family has to contend with, at the same time I am so very proud of our employees for their generosity and spirit, Shea said. The Donovans team is challenging all companies and individuals throughout the San Diego area to help the family. Contributions can be made at www.gofundme.com/gioigraziano or to Nice Guys of San Diego at www.sdniceguys.com, in the name of the Graziano Family. jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com; 760/529-4931; Twitter: @jharryjones Foreign Intelligence head: Putin convinced that return of Ukraine, rest of 'historical Russian lands' is possible only as part of global redistribution of world The Kremlin believes that returning Ukraine and the rest of the "historical Russian lands" is possible only as part of a global redistribution of the world, and also sees internal destabilization in Ukraine as the key to Russia's victory, Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Oleksandr Lytvynenko has said. "Putin is convinced that returning Ukraine and the rest of the 'historical Russian lands' and restoring the empire is possible only within the global redistribution of the world. Such redistribution can last 10-15 years, accompanied by conflicts of varying scale and intensity, possibly with the use of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the war against Ukraine is perceived by the Kremlin as an important, but not the only front for Russia, which is actually waging a world war with the United States and the West as a whole," Lytvynenko said in a column for Interfax-Ukraine. In his opinion, four tasks that the Kremlin is currently solving arise from this indicated approach. The first task is to ensure internal stability, mobilize the population and economy, and increase the production of weapons and military equipment. Lytvynenko said the Kremlin so far ensures economic stability and controllability of socio-political processes. In 2026, Russian military production should support large-scale, high-intensity combat operations, and in 2028, Russia should regain the military capabilities it had in 2022. This is exactly why the 2024-2026 Russian budget was formed. According to the Foreign Intelligence Service's head, the Kremlin's second task is to form an alternative coalition of countries to the West, a "coalition of the majority," and this "Global South+" format should promote models alternative to the West (political, economic, financial, humanitarian, values, etc.). Russia's goal in building a coalition is "normalization of the West." He noted the role of, inter alia, increased nuclear blackmail to break the West's will to confrontation, convincing Western elites that they would lose and should retreat peacefully. The key role here will be played by strengthening the military power of Russia, China and other countries of the majority coalition. The third Kremlin task, according to Lytvynenko, is preparation for the upcoming aggression against other countries. The priority now is Moldova and the Baltic countries: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia: the entire western part of the former USSR, and the Kremlin has already begun this work. The reason is a violation of the rights of Russian speakers (primarily Latvia, Estonia). Moscow is already crying out about the oppression of Russian speakers in the Baltics and the right of peoples to self-determination. "After sending Russian spy diplomats, the Russians are actively infiltrating the countries of Europe, primarily Southern Europe, with their agents, creating businesses, NGOs, etc. There are signs that the infrastructure of subversive activities is being prepared for a great war (an approach tested during the Soviet era)," the Foreign Intelligence Service's head said. The Kremlin's fourth task, in his opinion, is to inflame conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Lytvynenko is confident that Putin needs as much Ukrainian territory as he can get. He pointed out that the war has entered the stage of a war of attrition, and there is growing evidence that the Kremlin is ready to fight the war for as long as necessary. According to him, at the instigation of the Russian FSB (which considers the current strategy to undermine Western military, economic and political assistance to be ineffective), the Kremlin plans to adjust the strategy. The key to Russia's victory is internal destabilization in Ukraine. Thus, it is expected to concentrate on three tasks: pressure along the entire front line with the capture of individual, politically and medially important points, in particular, Avdiivka; destruction of critical infrastructure in winter; undermining social unity by fueling ambitions and provoking the military ("only they can restore order") and opposition political forces ("only they are worthy to lead Ukraine"). "A critical mass of dissatisfaction with the policies of the current government must form in Ukraine. Russians do not care who comes to power after the current leadership. They are convinced that whoever it is will not be able to take control of the situation, and Ukraine will plunge into chaos. In the end, the West will not only suspend aid, but will also come to Russia with proposals for urgent negotiations and suspension of the war," Lytvynenko said. Press Release November 22, 2023 SENATE GEARS UP FOR THE COUNTRY'S HOSTING OF THE 31st APPF The Senate has already set the stage for the 31st Annual Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF) where parliamentarians from all over the region will talk about important matters relating to regional peace, prosperity and sustainability. The Senate has been designated as the host for the preparations for the prestigious annual meeting of parliamentarians, along with the House of Representatives as co-host. The event will be held at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Pasay City from November 23 to 25. Senate President Juan Miguel "Migz" F. Zubiri will lead the Philippines in welcoming parliamentarians to the international conference, which will be themed, "Building Resilient Partnerships: Advancing Peace, Prosperity, and Sustainability in the Asia Pacific." "The Philippines is honored to open our doors for this Annual Meeting at this most important time of pandemic recovery, where resilient partnerships are crucial to the collective uplift of our people," Zubiri said. Zubiri said that for the past 31 years, Asia-Pacific countries have enjoyed "notable economic successes and dealt with equally notable downturns." "We have suffered through and survived various public health crises, particularly the SARS epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic; and we have been hit by and helped one another through typhoons, droughts, and earthquakes of mythic proportions," Zubiri said. "What emerges today is an Asia Pacific brought together not only by geography but by shared realities, shared values, and shared goals--made stronger by our intergovernmental partnerships, including the APPF initiative," the Senate chief added. As one of the APPF founding members, the Philippines, having sponsored the first meeting in 1994, will be hosting the APPF delegates for the second time. Expected to join Filipino legislators are lawmakers from 18 countries, namely Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mexico, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russian Federation, Thailand, and Vietnam. A total of 273 participants from 18 countries, including observers, have registered for the forum. The Head of Delegation of the Australian Parliament was the first to arrive on Saturday, November 18. Zubiri said the Annual Meeting is an opportunity for forging resilient partnerships in the region, "so we can move forward as one, united in our aim of achieving lasting peace, prosperity, and sustainability." Zubiri, who will be the keynote speaker, will chair the Executive Committee and the 31st Annual Meeting of the APPF, co-chaired by Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez. Sen. Ronald "Bato" Dela Rosa and Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales Jr. will head the Philippine delegation. Honorable Pornpetch Wichitcholchai, Senate President of the Parliament of Thailand, will speak on behalf of the previous host parliament. A substantial number of officers and staff form part of the APPF 31st Annual Meeting Secretariat that will provide technical support to the delegates. There are officers and staff assigned to be the welcoming group at the airport and liaison officers to attend to delegates' concerns. Other government agencies are also helping the Senate mount this very important gathering of parliamentarians. The Department of Foreign Affairs, Department of Tourism, Department of Transportation, Bureau of Immigration, the Philippine National Police, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, Manila International Airpot Authority, Department of Health, National Museum and Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority are all on board to provide assistance including visa issuance, airport arrivals, cultural tours, and security arrangements. November 26 is allotted for the delegates to come and see the Philippines, or at least Metro Manila. The Senate is working with the DOT for destinations to showcase in one day. DOT will also package some tours so the delegates can see the rest of the Philippines but on their own time and account. Tolentino will be hosting the tour in Tagaytay City. SINGAPORE Scania Singapore celebrated its 20th anniversary over the weekend. While Scania vehicles have been in Singapore since the early 1970s, Scania Singapore was officially established in 2003. At the celebration dinner, Heba Eltarifi, Managing Director of Scania Southeast Asia, credited past and present staff for 20 years of proud achievements. She said: We are now in a great position to build on the success we have and take the company further in a direction where we are the leader in driving the shift towards a sustainable transport system in Singapore. We have what it takes, great people, loyal customers, premium products and services and a foundation built on the Scania way. Over its first two decades, Scania Singapore recorded milestones in accelerating the shift towards a sustainable transport system for the logistics, construction and public service sectors. This includes being the first among Scania operations in Asia to offer Euro 4 vehicles in 2006, followed by the Euro 5 city buses complying with the stricter enhanced environmentally friendly vehicle standards in 2008. It was also successful in encouraging customers to adopt Euro 6 vehicles ahead of the Singapore governments 2018 deadline for all new commercial vehicles to be Euro 6-compliant. In 2018, Scania Singapore launched the New Truck Generation to offer greater fuel economy, safety and driveability to the market. The launch, which already had 18 customers on board, also introduced the S-series and the L-series cabs to give customers a wider range of cabs to suit their operations. Since then, the company has delivered the first New Truck Generation units powered by the legendary V8 engines in 730hp in 2020, and the highest-possible 770hp in 2022. As the New Truck Generation underwent an update, Scania Singapore was ready to deliver its first Scania Super trucks in 2023, featuring a new powertrain and improved components to offer up to 8% fuel savings for long-haul operations. In 2023, Scania Singapore also delivered its first battery-electric trucks to customers from the logistics and waste management sectors. Taking sustainable mobility further, the battery-electric trucks now allow these customers to operate at zero emissions. Electrification is our next phase of growth, and it will truly change the transport industry, said Oscar Wyckman, Country Manager of Scania Singapore. We have made a good start with the delivery of our first battery-electric vehicles. And the team is very much updated on the technical skills and knowledge, and the workshop equipped, to prepare for an electric future for Scania in Singapore. Over the years, as Scania Singapore grew, it added more capabilities to help customers achieve greater profitability by maximising fuel savings, vehicle uptime and operating economies from their fleets. Today, Scania Singapore offers comprehensive services in sales, repair and maintenance, roadside assistance, parts, and data-driven solutions such as fleet management systems. In Singapore, Scania Credit also supports customers with financial and insurance services, while the Asia Parts Centre provides parts inventory support to the region. Scania was the top-selling European truck brand in Singapore for 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2022 and is on track to maintain its leadership position again in 2023. In 2018, Scania was the top-selling truck brand in Singapore. Since the previous meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, six weeks ago, Russia lost almost 36,000 its soldiers, Defense Minister of Ukraine Rustem Umerov has said at the opening of the 17th meeting in the Ramstein format. "Russia definitely does not plan to stop on its own. The only language that Moscow can understand is force. And we have learned this language well," the press service of the Defense Ministry quoted Umerov as saying. The minister said that, according to the report of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since the previous meeting in the Ramstein format alone, Russia lost almost 36,000 soldiers. He emphasized that the weapons provided by partners, in particular HIMARS systems, Storm Shadow missiles, SCALP, ATACMS, Abrams, Challenger, Leopard tanks, changed the situation at the front. Further development of coalitions of capabilities, particularly those related to artillery, armored vehicles, aviation, naval forces, IT and mine clearance, "will help Ukraine, together with its partners, protect millions of innocent lives." "Our people are waiting for an opportunity to return home, to rebuild their homes, to reunite with their families," Umerov said. The 17th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group was attended by defense ministers from more than 50 countries. The Verkhovna Rada proposes to transfer more than UAH 41 million, additionally saved by the parliament this year, to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. "In 2023, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine additionally saved more than UAH 40 million and proposes to redirect these funds to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," the press service of the Verkhovna Rada apparatus reported on Wednesday. As the press service clarified, for ten months of this year the amount of savings amounted to UAH 41.3 million. In particular, more than UAH 11 million were saved on wages for MPs, and more than UAH 9 million were saved by reducing the consumption of electricity, heat and water, which accordingly reduced payments for utilities and energy. "Since the beginning of full-scale military aggression, the apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has been guided by the principle of maximum savings in financial and logistical support for the activities of parliament," head of the apparatus Viacheslav Shtuchny said. The Verkhovna Rada apparatus has already appealed to the Ministry of Finance with a request to redirect the saved funds to the needs of the security and defense forces. The press service recalled that in the first half of 2023, the Verkhovna Rada apparatus also saved funds in the amount of UAH 30 million, which had already been transferred to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. FILE - The Exterior view of VMware headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., on Oct. 24, 2007. Computer chip and software maker Broadcom has announced it has cleared all regulatory hurdles and plans to complete its $69 billion acquisition of cloud technology company VMware on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. Paul Sakuma/AP SAN JOSE, California (AP) Computer chip and software maker Broadcom has announced it has cleared all regulatory hurdles and plans to complete its $69 billion acquisition of cloud technology company VMware on Wednesday. The company, based in San Jose, California, announced it planned to move ahead with the deal after China joined the list of countries that had given a go-ahead for the acquisition. Broadcom is paying $61 billion in cash and stock for VMware and taking on $8 billion of its debt, making this one of the biggest technology deals ever. The announcement came soon after Microsoft acquired video game-maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, also one of the most expensive tech acquisitions in history. Advertisement Article continues below this ad It took 18 months for Broadcom to get all the regulatory approvals, just days before the merger agreement was due to expire. The acquisition was able to go ahead after China's State Administration of Market Regulation said Broadcom's commitments, submitted Monday, would reduce the impact of the merger. The massive buyouts are occurring at a time of heightened anxiety because of turmoil on the global supply chain, war in Europe and the Middle East, and rising prices that have the potential to cool both business and consumer activity. Broadcom's acquisition plan earlier gained approval from Britains competition regulator. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Countless businesses and public bodies, including major banks, big retailers, telecom operators and government departments, rely on Broadcom gear and VMware software. The European Commission, the EUs executive arm and top antitrust enforcer, cleared the deal after Broadcom made concessions to address its concerns about competition. Broadcom wants to establish a stronger foothold in the cloud computing market, and VMwares technology allows large corporations to blend public cloud access with internal company networks. VMware, which is based in Palo Alto, California, has close relations with every major cloud company and provider, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. In a statement, Broadcom said it had legal greenlights in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Israel, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and foreign investment control clearance in all necessary jurisdictions. "There is no legal impediment to closing under U.S. merger regulations, it said. Advertisement Article continues below this ad There has been a flurry of such deals after technology companies' shares fell from stratospheric levels attained during the pandemic, making such acquisitions more affordable. But Broadcom's CEO, Hock Tan, has been pursuing such deals for years, building out the company with big acquisitions like Symantec for close to $11 billion in 2019, and CA Technologies for about $19 billion the year before. The UK chancellor has announced plans to sell off part of the government's stake in high street lender NatWest to retail investors in the coming year. In his Autumn Budget delivered to Parliament on Wednesday, Jeremy Hunt said the Treasury will "explore options" regarding a potential sale, though any divestment is "subject to market conditions and achieving value for money". The government still holds a 38.6% stake in NatWest following a 2008 bailout during which taxpayers paid 45.5bn for an 84% holding in the lender which at the time was known as Royal Bank of Scotland. Previous stake sales were reserved solely for institutional investors. In the official Budget statement, the government said it was "committed to exiting its shareholding in NatWest". "The government intends to fully exit by 2025-26 utilising a range of disposal methods, including accelerated bookbuilds and directed buybacks with NatWest and also via continuing sales through the ongoing trading plan," the statement said. "As part of the plan to return NatWest to the private sector, the government will explore options to launch a share sale to retail investors in the next 12 months." The stock, which was more or less flat at around 206p ahead of Hunt's comments, dropped to a low of 199.35p but recovered to 204.24p just before the close of play down 1.4% on the day. The stock has fallen by around 25% since the start of 2023. Commenting on Hunt's announcement, Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said giving retail investors a chance at NatWest ownership was a "welcome move". "Further sales would again bring NatWest closer to full public ownership and would bring to a close crisis actions taken during the Great Financial Crisis." Streeter added: "At the current valuation the potential for returns, as some of present headwinds ease off, look attractive for both the business and existing and new shareholders. Microsoft appointed Aparna Gupta as the Global Delivery Center (GDC) leader. This is a part of the Industry Solutions Delivery and the broader Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) organization. As the new GDC leader, Gupta will be responsible for overseeing customer innovation and delivery excellence, cloud growth acceleration, top-tier talent acquisition, industry depth and partner ecosystem. I am looking forward to working with the teams at GDC to deepen technical expertise across solution areas and build a strong team culture with an aim to deliver excellence to our customers. There is a strong foundation within the team, and I hope to build further on it to take it to the next level", Gupta said in a statement. Six years ago, she joined Microsoft as the India lead for Commercial Software Engineering (CSE), now known as ISE. During her time at Microsoft, she has significantly impacted the business, including establishing the Customer Success Unit (CSU) as a new segment in MCAPS India, according to Microsoft. "With more than 25 years of industry expertise and extensive Microsoft experience, coupled with her ambition and unwavering leadership, I have no doubt that Aparna will lead our GDC team to continued success", said Maureen Costello, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Industry Solutions Delivery. Established in Hyderabad in 2005, Global Delivery Center (GDC) is the delivery arm of Industry Solutions Delivery and has since scaled to two more locations Bengaluru and Noida, along with a global presence. Hyundai Motor India Ltd. (HMIL), India's largest exporter since its inception and provider of smart mobility solutions, launched the 'Samarth' initiative to raise awareness and provide support for people with disabilities in India. Hyundai's global vision of "Progress for Humanity" aims to enable an inclusive and progressive world through the power of mobility. In line with this vision, Hyundai has launched an initiative to help create a more aware and sensitive society towards people with disabilities in India. The goal of this initiative is to promote inclusivity and help individuals with disabilities lead a better life by providing them with better access to transportation. Hyundai Motor India recognized the importance of creating awareness of disabilities in society, considering that there are over 26.8 million differently-abled people in India. To address this issue, the company launched 'Samarth', which is India's first inclusive mobility project at a mass scale by an automobile company. Hyundai will partner with NGOs and media networks to create a mass movement while also aligning Hyundai dealerships and networks to become more inclusive. With technology, partnerships, product innovations, and storytelling, Samarth aims to turn the world into a level-playing field for all. Commenting on the launch of the Samarth initiative, Un Soo Kim, MD & CEO, HMIL, said, We dont just make cars but also believe in empowering India, and to empower India , we undertake social initiatives under the pillars of- Earth, Mobility and Hope". "These are aligned with Hyundais global vision of Continue and propagate Progress for Humanity. Samarth is a manifestation of this belief. We are pleased to announce the launch of the Samarth initiative, which is a step towards creating a more aware and inclusive society for the differently abled in India. We aim to cultivate a more equitable and sensitized society for the differently abled and want them to see their true capabilities", he added. The Karnataka government and Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM), an Indian subsidiary of Japan's Toyota Motor Corporation, have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to enhance and expand the car manufacturing facility located in Bidadi, Karnataka. 3,300 crore to establish its third manufacturing unit with a capacity of 1 lakh units at Bidadi, located about 35 km away from Bengaluru. This investment has the potential to create employment opportunities for up to 2,000 individuals. According to the MoU, TKM has committed to investing an additional amount of3,300 crore to establish its third manufacturing unit with a capacity of 1 lakh units at Bidadi, located about 35 km away from Bengaluru. This investment has the potential to create employment opportunities for up to 2,000 individuals. The MoU with the Karnataka government was signed and exchanged by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Masakazu Yoshimura, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Toyota Kirloskar Motor in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, among others. "We take immense pride in being the home to Toyota's manufacturing plants and express our appreciation for Toyota's plans for further investments in the state. Their presence in Karnataka since 1997 is an example of the state consistently remaining an attractive destination", said CM Siddaramaiah. Toyota Kirloskar Motor has a large presence in Karnataka with a car manufacturing plant at Bidadi which has a capacity to manufacture 3,10,000 vehicles per annum. In line with the visionary objective set forth by the Hon'ble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, to position India as the Global Skill Hub, the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) recently organized two impactful Business Matchmaking Seminars in the vibrant cities of Osaka and Tokyo. These seminars served as a pivotal platform to enlighten stakeholders and industry leaders about the immense potential of Indian candidates in the global job market. Co-organized in collaboration with the Japan International Trainee & Skilled Worker Cooperation Organization (JITCO) and the Embassy of India, these seminars had a primary objective: to enhance the visibility of Indian Sending Organizations (SO) and to underscore the compelling value proposition that India presents in addressing Japan's skilled labor shortage. The seminars received valuable support from key governmental bodies, including the Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), and the Embassy of Japan in India. These seminars were specifically centered around two noteworthy government-to-government initiatives: the Technical Intern Training Program (TITP), initiated in October 2017, and the Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) program, which was established in January 2021. At the event, attendees representing diverse organizations engaged in productive discussions aimed at closing the prevailing skills gap. This involved creating an effective platform for Indian Stakeholder Organizations (SOs) to collaborate with Japanese Supervising Organizations (SVO) and Implementing Organizations (IOs). With over 45 participants and 40 companies in Osaka each from Japanese and Indian organizations. The dignitaries who were present at the event are Mr. Anil Kumar Raturi, Consul Head of Chancery, Consulate General of India, Osaka Kobe, Mr. Masato Kume, Deputy General Manager International Affairs Dept, JITCO, Mr. Masato Kume, Deputy General Manager International Affairs Dept, JITCO and Mr. Nitin Kapoor, General Manager, CEO Office & Strategy and Mr. Anshul Singhal, Deputy General Manager, NSDC. We were also joined virtually by Mr. Bhupendra Singh, Deputy Secretary, OIA Division, Ministry of External Affairs and Ms. Shruti Pandey, Deputy Director, International Collaboration, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Government of India. In Tokyo, the event saw impressive participation with 50+ participants from 40 companies and 17 Indian Sending Organizations. The event also had key guests from the Embassy of India, NIFCO, and ZENKEN, alongside the dedicated NSDC India team. Among the dignitaries, the ones who graced us with their presence are Mr. Sanjeev Manchanda, First Secretary, Embassy of India Presentation on Human Resources in India; Mr. Bhupendra Singh, Deputy Secretary, OIA Division, Ministry of External Affairs (Virtual); Mr. Shimpei Sugiura, Executive Vice President, JITCO, Mr. Nitin Kapoor, General Manager, CEO Office & Strategy, Mr. Isamu Koyama, Advisor, NSDC and Mr. Anshul Singhal, Deputy General Manager, NSDC. Japanese corporates and recruitment agencies like NIFCO Inc., Fourth Valley, Zenken Corporation, etc. also attended the seminars. India and Japan have collaborated on various skill development initiatives, such as the India-Japan Skill Development Council, which promotes cooperation in vocational education, training, and human resource development. In 2016, the nations signed the "Manufacturing Skill Transfer Promotion Programme" agreement for training 30,000 persons over 10 years with Japanese-style manufacturing skills and practices. Thirty-five Japan-India Institutes for Manufacturing (JIM) and 11 Japanese Endowed Courses (JEC) have been established in different states across India. NSDC International, a 100% subsidiary of NSDC, is catering to a comprehensive list of sectors facilitating skill development and training initiatives aimed at fostering employment opportunities and driving economic expansion. They include textile, healthcare, construction, hospitality, and railways. India and Japan's joint initiatives in skill development extend far beyond their national boundaries. They both embrace a shared vision of fostering international mobility as a central pillar of their partnership. This collective vision is rooted in the firm belief that a globally competent workforce is paramount in tackling the challenges and capitalizing on the opportunities of the 21st century. The Indian Angel Network (IAN), a leading platform for seed and early-stage investments, has teamed up with IIM Alumni Singapore in a strategic partnership aiming to unite Asia's vibrant startup ecosystems of India and Singapore. This collaboration endeavors to encourage connections and joint ventures, fostering growth and innovation within both regions. The Indian Angel Network (IAN), known for its angel investing initiatives in India, and IIM Alumni Singapore, a network comprising professionals from prestigious Indian Institutes of Management, aim to capitalize on their combined strengths for mutual gains. This collaboration's impact is anticipated to extend to startups and investment opportunities. IAN investors are expected to access high-quality investment prospects in Singapore, leveraging the country's robust intellectual property protection and government backing. This aligns with IAN's overarching aim of contributing to the formation of globally impactful companies. Moreover, the partnership aims to support IAN's ambitious target of generating 500,000 jobs through investments in 500 startups with a fund allocation of Rs 5,000 crores. Actress Susan Sarandon has been ditched by her agents at UTA after making what could be considered anti-Jewish statements while participating in a pro-Palestinian protest in Manhattan, the New York Post is reporting. Sarandon, 77, has been railing against Israel for the last few several weeks and sources told the Post that staffers at UTA were hurt by the Oscar award-winning actress statements. Sarandon whos been had a client of UTA since 2014, reportedly said: There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country. She previously left social media followers angry following the reposting of a tweet from a far-right account claiming an Israeli helicopter was responsible for the death of Israeli citizens on Oct. 7, the report said. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - For many families, Thanksgiving tradition involves coming together with loved ones, savoring a feast, and watching the 1934 Laurel and Hardy film March of the Wooden Soldiers. Set in Toyland, the film unfolds in a town inhabited by various fairytale characters, such as Little Bo Peep, Tom Tom, the Pipers son and the Three Little Pigs. Toymakers Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee take center stage as they work to rescue Bo Peep from the villain Barnaby, who demands the Old Ladys mortgage payment or permission to marry Bo Peep. The two face challenges as they cleverly seek help from friends like the Three Little Pigs and Mickey Mouse to save the day. Featuring Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charlotte Henry, Felix Knight, Henry Kleinbach, Florence Roberts and Virginia Karns, the classic film is a Thanksgiving television staple, typically aired throughout the day. The show will air on New Yorks PIX11 at 3 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. For cord-cutters looking to uphold this tradition without cable, there are several streaming services that offer March of the Wooden Soldiers. Vudu You can rent March of the Wooden Soldiers for $2.99 or buy it for $9.99 on Vudu. The site also includes access to reviews, and for a limited time, Vudu is offering new customers a 15% discount on everything for the first month. Amazon Prime Video The film, in full color, can be rented or bought via Amazon Prime Video. Renters have 30 days to start watching, and once started, the film is available for 48 hours. It costs $3.99 to rent and $4.99 to buy on Amazon Prime Video. Disney+ Although March of the Wooden Soldiers isnt on Disney+ by name, its sequel, Babes in Toyland, is available. Released in 1961, almost 30 years after the original, it follows Mary Contrary and Tom Piper as they plan their wedding. The story unfolds as the villain Barnaby, who wants Mary for himself, kidnaps Tom, sparking a series of comic chases, searches and double-crosses, according to the streaming service. The cast includes Ed Wynn, Ann Jillian, Ray Bolger, Annette Funicello and more. How to watch the classic film for free You can also watch March of the Wooden Soldiers for free on Tubi, Pluto TV and Plex. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Its been over a year since the grand opening of the new Animal Care Center facility in Charleston, and since then, quite a bit has been accomplished, with hundreds of pets finding a new home. So far, so good with the center. Its been a success. Its achieved what we weve wanted it to achieve ... almost an adoption every day, said Borough President Vito Fossella at an event Monday to celebrate the state-of-the-art site facilitys one-year anniversary. In October 2022, Animal Care Centers of NYC opened the new facility in Charleston, dedicating the buildings lobby to Tommy Monahan, a 9-year-old Staten Islander who lost his life in 2007 while trying to save his pets during a house fire. The Monahan family, along with Fossella, Ed Burke, who is senior advisor to the borough president, Paul Sanders, senior administrator for Animal Care Centers of New York City, and Frank Rapacciulo, chief of staff for Councilmember Joseph Borelli (R-South Shore), toured the shelter and remembered the legacy of Tommy, along with the facilitys impact in the community thus far. Walking through the care center here, theres signs all over the place of Tommy -- visual and written. Hes super, super important here and the front and center of this place, said Sanders. I am so touched and honored by the way that the community has come out and supported us with adoption. Sanders shared he is proud that the new center won the Best New Building award from the Municipal Art Society of New York for its exceptional architectural design last month. And there were many more milestones highlighted at the press conference. To me, its more important for us to be here just to remind everybody how we are carrying Tommy Monahans legacy, Fossella said. Around here, we dont forget where we come from. We dont forget good people who want to do good for others, including animals ... and Tommy was that spirit. As the holidays approach and we spend time with loved ones, Fossella emphasized the importance of extending care to the animals at the center. He encouraged people to support the center through volunteering, adopting, or fostering, emphasizing that these animals could use some love as well. According to the center, close to 400 animals have found a home thus far since the new facilitys grand opening, which is roughly one animal a day. Additionally, the center has placed over 600 animals with other rescue partners, according to Sanders. Tommy's mother, Maria Monahan, right, gives thanks to Ed Burke, senior advisor to the borough president, for his efforts in making the new facility come to fruition. Also pictured is Tommy's sister, Gabrielle. (Staten Island Advance/ Priya Shahi)Priya Shahi When this place was first floating many years ago, Ed promised that he would see it through fruition and that he would be there until it was completed, Maria Monahan, Tommys mother, said. It was a long haul. We somehow didnt think it would actually happen, but it did. He is now ready to retire on Friday. We are grateful to Ed Burke. This would have never happened without his perseverance. So thank you Ed. Burke said he relates to Tommy, because he too was a nature kid. Burke and Gabrielle visit with one of the animals at the facility. (Staten Island Advance/ Priya Shahi)Priya Shahi Its bittersweet, he said about it being his last week in office. Burke, known for popularizing Staten Island as the borough of parks, reflected on his pride in witnessing the transformation of this region into a borough that actively champions for parks. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. Upgrades are coming to Staten Islands two branches of the YMCA, thanks to more than $1 million in government funding. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn) announced Monday that $1 million in federal grant money had been awarded to the Ys two Island locations, on Broadway in Sunnyside and on Richmond Avenue in Eltingville, for new pool dehumidification systems and HVAC upgrades. This organization is so important, because they serve young children all the way to our our elderly -- it gives them many things to do to keep themselves mentally and physically active and healthy, and Im really happy to have helped earmark this money, Malliotakis said. Were happy to support Staten Islanders on the South Shore and the North Shore, and we appreciate the work that the YMCA does. It is a very important facility and resource for so many, and I hope that many people in our community will benefit and find enjoyment as a result of this grant. In late September, Assemblyman Charles Fall (D-North Shore/Brooklyn/Manhattan) also announced a $350,000 state investment at the Broadway YMCA branch for upgrades to the locations pool. Fall said that investment would help the YMCA location provide better humidity control in its pool area to provide a more comfortable environment for visitors, preserve the buildings infrastructure, and promote a healthier aquatic experience. Every dollar invested in community spaces like the YMCA translates to improved health, wellbeing, and communal connection, Fall said. This isnt just about technology or infrastructure; its about fostering an environment where families can thrive, seniors can engage safely, and our youth can build lifelong health habits in comfort and security. Meghan Sinback, executive director of the two YMCA branches on Staten Island, joined Malliotakis for her Monday announcement, and said the government investments will help the Y provide better services to its members. Were so excited to be here to accept this capital award for the upgrades to our pool and replacement of the dehumidification system, she said. The YMCA truly committed to increasing access to swim lessons and water safety programs, and that all starts with a well-functioning and a well-maintained pool. The Enhanced Subscription provides digital access to all our award winning content from our inception. This package also includes special access to the pdf replica of the print paper which we call the e-edition. We keep the past 90 issues in addition tot he current issue. In addition, you have the ability to comment on our articles. Finally, you have the good feeling of supporting real, local news in your community. Advertisement Eating outSandwiches Six new sandwich joints worth queuing up for (including the new home for popular Stefanino Panino) These hot new inner-north openings are sure to satisfy any lunchtime cravings. Cue the queues! Daniela Frangos November 23, 2023 Save Log in , register or subscribe to save recipes for later. You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. Save this article for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime. Got it Share As featured in the December hit list. See all stories . You might think the last thing the inner north needs is another sandwich joint. But the lunchtime queues suggest otherwise. Melburnians hunger for things betwixt bread shows no signs of abating. Whether youre after fresh or toasted, an Italian panino, banh mi or New York deli-style number, here are six new arrivals to wrap your hands, and mouth, around this summer and beyond. The Bologna at Stefanino Panino. Justin McManus Stefanino Panino, Collingwood Stef Condello, owner of Stefanino Panino, now in Collingwood Yards. Justin McManus Anyone en route to this superstar sandwich spot after peak hour knows to check its Instagram storiesfirst, lest you arrive to find the cupboards are bare. Such is the popularity of this Italian-inspired panino shop by former school teacher Stef Condello and his mum, Diana. Now the Condellos have upped stumps from Brunswick to Collingwood, bringing the Bologna (mortadella, stracciatella, pickled peppers and olives), Roma (porchetta, roasted peppers, provolone, rocket and dijon mustard), Caprese (salami, tomato, basil and buffalo mozzarella) and all their tasty friends, all sandwiched between ciabatta rolls from Natural Tucker. When it opens on Friday, November 24, the bigger site will have indoor and outdoor seating, an espresso machine and hopes of an eventual liquor licence. And queues, no doubt. Must-try sandwich: Bologna mortadella, stracciatella, pickled peppers, olives $16 35 Johnston Street, Collingwood, instagram.com/stefanino.panino Advertisement The Elvis sandwich at UGO. Fabio Risi UGO Cucina Popolare, Fitzroy The Cannoleria crew has brought its signature porchetta from its Heidelberg West paninoteca to a Fitzroy pop-up, setting up shop at a forthcoming apartment development over spring and summer. From 11am, Friday to Sunday, the team is carving slow-roasted pork, tender and herby on the inside and crisp on the outside, and serving it five ways. Get it sandwiched between semolina focaccia in the OG, perhaps, or on potato focaccia in the Elvis, dressed up with pickled capsicum, zingy lemon and creamy caciocavallo cheese. Head there earlier (8am until noon) for breakfast items such as a McUGO pork and fennel sausage and Thats Amore burrata on an English muffin and a waffle stacked with porchetta, shaved pecorino and a drizzle of honey. Finish off with piped-to-order Cannoleria cannoli and a St Remio coffee. Must-try sandwich: The Elvis porchetta, pickled capsicum, lemon and caciocavallo in a potato focaccia ($15) Open Fri-Sun, 8am-3pm, 369 Gore Street, Fitzroy, ugo.com.au Advertisement Spazio Paradiso, Carlton North Carlton North just scored a new panino shop, slinging familiar combos of Italian-style sandwiches to-go. Come for combos like mortadella, stracciatella, green split olives and crushed pistachio; and porchetta with provolone, marinated eggplant and basil pesto. Or build your own. Every sandwich is packed into chewy ciabatta from nearby Natural Tucker Bakery. Owners Jamie Georgopoulos and Meika Khong were inspired by their travels to Milan and its many sandwich shops and mercatos. As such, youll find dried plants, garlic braids and chilli peppers strung up around the no-fuss space (or spazio), plus Italian pantry staples such as taralli biscuits, tomato sugo and legumes to take home. The team is selling out as soon as 12.30pm some days, so go early. Must-try sandwich: The Godfather ham, fior di latte, marinated eggplant, tomato pesto and spinach ($16) Open Wed-Sat, 10.30am-2.30pm, 709 Nicholson Street, Carlton North instagram.com/spazio_paradiso Good Days Hot Bread, Brunswick Advertisement The Good Days crews lockdown hustle selling banh mi was cemented this winter with a dedicated hot bread shop on Sydney Road. Owner-chef Nam Nguyen has assembled a menu of classic banh mi combinations made with local and free-range meat, chicken or fish stuffed into crusty bread rolls from N Lee. Think five-spice rubbed pork belly with crunchy crackling, an umami thwack of XO-seasoned mince and fresh coriander gremolata plus a vegan version made with crisp, pressed tofu, puffed tofu crackling and mushroom pate. The minimal diner, with its laminate and stainless steel detailing, is a spin on old-school Vietnamese-owned bakeries. Its also serving eclairs with filling like pandan cream, plus Vietnamese coffee. Must-try sandwich: XO Porchetta five-spice pork belly, XO mince, pork crackling, coriander gremolata ($16) Open Mon-Fri 10am-3pm, Sat & Sun 10am-4pm, 644 Sydney Road, Brunswick, good-days.com.au Crowd favourite, the roast chicken and pesto sandwich at Donnys Deli. Supplied Donnys Deli, Brunswick Blink and youll miss this no-fuss sandwich shop, which opened near the Moreland and Sydney roads intersection over winter. Its menu of toasted sandwiches and bagels is also halal, and comes from the team behind Coburgs florist-cafe Grounds of Eden, which also supplies the bread and pastries. Find customary items such as tuna melts and Reubens, a crowd-favourite roast chicken and pesto sanga, and bagels that are a vehicle for slabs of chicken schnitzel with red cabbage and truffle mayo. The interior merges delis old and new via white tiles, PVC curtain strips and a pantry section lined with hot sauce, pickled peppers, chilli oil and bread, ready to spruce up your own sandwiches at home. Theres also Allpress coffee and Donnys merch. Advertisement Must-try sandwich: Pesto chicken roast chicken, kewpie mayo, pesto, pickles, swiss cheese and lettuce ($14) Open Mon-Fri, 7.30am-3pm, and Sat & Sun 8am-3pm, at 170A Moreland Road, Brunswick, instagram.com/donnysdeli Coming soon JollyGood, Collingwood Advertisement Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox. Sign up Advertisement RecipesCookbook extracts How to make the golden, crunchy, spicy halloumi sando of dreams at home From golden halloumi sandos to the ultimate toastie, these delicious cheese recipes from experts Ellie and Sam Studd may just change your life. Ellie and Sam Studd November 22, 2023 Save Log in , register or subscribe to save recipes for later. You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. Save this article for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime. Got it Share Cheese offers an infinite diversity of aromas, flavours, types, textures, colours and shades, say experts Ellie and Sam Studd. The siblings, who inherited their passion for cheese from their father, prominent cheese specialist Will Studd, believe cheese represents so much more than nourishment. It encapsulates human craftsmanship and culinary artistry in its purest form, they write in their new book The Best Things in Life are Cheese. With one bite, cheese can teleport us to the Franche-Comte mountain pastures in full bloom, with tinkling cowbell in the distance or it can transport us to an Italian nonnas kitchen, where she makes a simple ricotta for her evening pasta. Here are five recipes from their new collection to try at home. Advertisement Photo: Lauren Bamford Japanese-style crispy spiced halloumi sandwich To us, this is kind of like a Filet-O-Fish burger from Maccas, but in the best possible way. INGREDIENTS 75g ( cup) plain flour 1-2 tsp cayenne pepper, to taste 2 tsp garlic powder sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper 2 eggs, lightly beaten 60g (1 cup) panko breadcrumbs 2 x 250g packets of Cypriot sheep and goat halloumi, drained and patted dry vegetable oil, for cooking 8 slices of white bread or Japanese shokupan (milk bread) 1 cup shredded iceberg lettuce Advertisement Spicy mayo 125g ( cup) Kewpie mayonnaise cup chopped sweet dill pickles 2 tbsp Sriracha chilli sauce sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper METHOD To make the spicy mayo, combine all the ingredients in a small bowl and season with salt and pepper. Set aside. Combine the flour, cayenne pepper and garlic powder in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Place the lightly beaten eggs in another bowl and the panko breadcrumbs on a large plate. If youre using Aphrodite Halloumi (see below), cut the cheese in half horizontally. If youre using blocks of halloumi, cut the cheese into thick slices. Coat the halloumi in the spiced flour, then dunk in the egg and finally coat in the panko breadcrumbs. Heat enough oil to cover the base of a large non-stick frying pan. Cook the halloumi for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden brown, then transfer to a wire rack to drain. Spread the bread with the spicy mayo, top half the bread slices with the shredded lettuce and halloumi, then sandwich together with the remaining bread. Using a serrated knife, trim the crusts off the sandwiches and cut in half to serve. Makes 4 Advertisement Studd siblings recommend: We love Aphrodite Mixed Milk Halloumi Photo: Lauren Bamford Perfect croque monsieur This may be the most ballsed-up dish in cafe culture. In theory, its good. It doesnt seem like something you can truly make a mess of, but often in restaurants the execution is robustly disappointing. You may just have to take matters into your own hands. Thankfully, our version wont leave you with the sour taste of a second-rate sanga. INGREDIENTS Advertisement 25g unsalted cultured butter 25g plain flour 175ml full-cream milk sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper generous grating of nutmeg 220g gruyere or comte, finely grated 4 slices of sourdough 1 tbsp Dijon mustard 180g sliced honey-roasted ham METHOD Preheat the oven to 220C fan-forced (240C conventional). Melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the flour. Gently stir for 2-3 minutes, until it smells biscuity and resembles wet sand. Gradually add the milk, one ladleful at a time and whisking constantly to avoid lumps, then bring to a simmer and cook for 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove the pan from the heat and season the bechamel with salt, pepper and the nutmeg. Stir in 50g of the grated gruyere or comte until melted and set aside. Preheat a grill to high. Place the sourdough on a large baking tray and lightly toast one side under the grill. Spread the untoasted side of two slices with the mustard, then add the ham and three-quarters of the remaining gruyere or comte. Top with the remaining sourdough, toasted side up. Spread the top of each sandwich with a large spoonful of the bechamel and sprinkle over the remaining gruyere or comte. Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes, then finish under the grill for 2-3 minutes, until the cheese is golden brown. Serves 2 Turn your monsieur into a madame Advertisement If up want to turn this monsieur into a madame, you just need to add eggs. Fry two eggs, sunny-side up, in some butter for 2 minutes or until the whites are cooked through. Top the sandwiches with the fried eggs once they come out from under the grill, season with black pepper and serve immediately. Studd siblings recommend: We love La Couronne Fort-Aged Comte Photo: Lauren Bamford Easy ricotta gnocchi with tomato sugo and fresh basil These gnocchi are sooooo light and fluffy, and damn easy to make! TBH, we have stuffed up homemade gnocchi a few times, but we have mastered these like true champions, so consider them foolproof. Because there are so few ingredients in this recipe, its worth spending the money on the more expensive Italian cherry tomatoes, plus some high-grade parmigiano reggiano. Dont freak out about the gnocchi dough its meant to be a moist batter, so you only need a small amount of flour to bind it. Use too much and the gnocchi will taste floury. Advertisement INGREDIENTS iced water 500g fresh ricotta 2 eggs, lightly beaten 100g ( cup) plain flour 1 tsp sea salt flakes 60ml ( cup) extra virgin olive oil 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed with the back of a knife 3 x 400g cans Italian cherry tomatoes small bunch of basil, leaves picked 50g parmigiano reggiano, finely grated Japanese chilli oil or chilli flakes, to serve (optional) METHOD Bring a large saucepan of salted water to the boil over medium-high heat. Get a bowl of iced water ready and place it next to the stove. In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, egg, flour and salt and gently mix until a sticky, moist dough has formed. Working in batches, gently drop heaped teaspoons of the dough into the boiling water. The gnocchi will initially sink, but then rise to the top when they are ready this will only take 5 minutes. As soon as they rise, scoop out the gnocchi using a slotted spoon and add to the iced water. Drain and wipe out the saucepan, then return it to medium-high heat. Add the olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and most of the basil and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 3-5 minutes, until slightly thickened. Using the slotted spoon, carefully transfer the gnocchi to the sauce and simmer for a further 3-5 minutes, until heated through. Divide the gnocchi and sugo among serving bowls, top with the parmigiano reggiano, remaining basil leaves and chilli of your choice, then serve. Serves 4 Advertisement Studd siblings recommend: We love Cravero Parmigiano Reggiano Photo: Lauren Bamford Mexican-style corn and feta fritters Good moods only after eating this one. Its a meal that teleports you to where youd rather be. Sometimes we serve it with a side of smoked salmon or prawns. Please eat in a patch of sun, if available. INGREDIENTS Advertisement 4 sweetcorn cobs (about 1kg), husks and silks removed, kernels stripped 250g Greek barrel-aged feta, crumbled 75g ( cup) self-raising flour 15g ( cup) panko breadcrumbs sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper 4 eggs, lightly beaten small bunch of chives, cut into 3cm pieces 60g pickled jalapenos, chopped 60ml ( cup) extra-virgin olive oil bunch of coriander, leaves picked and chopped 1 tsp smoked paprika 2 avocados, quartered 1 lime, quartered green chilli hot sauce of your choice, to serve METHOD Place the sweetcorn kernels, 125g of the feta, the flour and panko in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper and mix well to combine. Add the egg, chives and jalapenos and stir until a batter forms. Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a large non-stick frypan over medium heat. Working in batches, scoop cup portions of batter into the pan and gently flatten with the back of a spoon. Cook for 3-4 minutes each side, until golden brown. Continue with the remaining oil and batter. Stack the fritters on top of each other and scatter the remaining feta and the coriander over the top. Sprinkle the paprika over the avocado and season with salt and pepper. Serve the avo alongside the fritters, with the lime quarters and hot sauce. Serves 4 Pro fritter tips Advertisement Once you dollop the fritter mixture into the pan, use the back of a spoon or a spatula to help you flatten and shape the fritter into a circle. Fritters take time, so dont rush. They need 3-4 minutes each side to cook through and turn golden. If your pan is too hot, the fritters will not cook properly on the inside. Store leftover fritters in the fridge to enjoy for breakfast, brunch or lunch the next day. Dont use tongs to turn your fritters; use a spatula and gently flip to prevent them from falling apart. Studd siblings recommend: We love Aphrodite Barrel-Aged Feta Advertisement Photo: Lauren Bamford Whole baked cauliflower with comte and parmigiano sauce There is something about seeing a whole baked cauliflower in its full, resplendent glory, rather than florets, that makes you automatically think, I did gooood! INGREDIENTS 1 large head of cauliflower (about 1kg) 80g unsalted butter, softened 4 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked pinch of cayenne pepper finely grated zest of 1 lemon sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper 20g ( cup) panko breadcrumbs Advertisement Comte and parmigiano sauce 40g unsalted butter 2 garlic cloves, crushed 2 tbsp plain flour 500ml (2 cups) full-cream milk 150g comte, grated 90g parmigiano reggiano, grated 1 tbsp creme fraiche tsp smoked paprika pinch of ground white pepper METHOD Preheat the oven to 200C fan-forced (220C conventional). Place the cauliflower in a saucepan large enough to cover it with a lid. Add enough boiling water to come 4cm up the side of the cauliflower, cover with the lid and place over high heat. Bring to the boil and cook for 10-12 minutes, until tender. Carefully remove the cauliflower using two large metal spoons and allow to cool for 10-15 minutes. Combine the butter, two-thirds of the thyme, the cayenne pepper and lemon zest in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Place the cauliflower in a snug-fitting ovenproof frying pan or small baking tray and rub with the butter mixture. Transfer to the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, to make the sauce, melt the butter with the garlic in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and whisk to form a roux, then cook, stirring, for 2-3 minutes, until it starts to smell biscuity. Add the milk gradually, whisking constantly to stop lumps forming, until you have a thick white sauce. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to low and gradually add the comte and two-thirds of the parmigiano reggiano. Mix until the cheese has melted and the sauce is smooth. Remove from the heat and stir through the creme fraiche, paprika and white pepper. Pour the sauce over the roasted cauliflower and sprinkle over the remaining parmigiano reggiano, thyme leaves and the panko breadcrumbs. Roast the cauliflower for another 10-12 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are golden and the sauce is bubbling. Carve up the cauliflower and serve with pilaf rice and your choice of steamed greens, or as part of a bigger spread. Serves 4-6 Advertisement Studd siblings recommend: We love La Couronne Fort-Aged Comte and Cravero Parmigiano Reggiano. If you cant find Comte, sub in any Alpine cheese. Photo: This is an edited extract from The Best Things in Life are Cheese by Ellie and Sam Studd, published by Plum, RRP $44.99. Photography by Lauren Bamford. Buy now Appears in these collections Raise a properly spicy marg to the 20 most popular recipes of November The best recipes from Australia's leading chefs straight to your inbox. Sign up Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Rostyslav Shurma, speaking at the Rebuild Ukraine conference in Toronto (Canada), spoke about the conditions for restoring the Ukrainian economy. "We believe that the Ukrainian economy should be restored, first of all, through private business. However, due to military risks, any projects will be difficult for private investors to implement. That is why they should be built on the terms of public-private partnership," Shurma explained, the press service of the President's Office told Interfax-Ukraine. According to him, today, there is a positive example of Germany and France, which provided state insurance for all their corporations that invested in Ukraine. "We believe that this type of partnership will allow us to achieve two key goals. On the one hand, you will be able to profit from the investment, since Ukraine has many natural advantages. On the other hand, your governments will mitigate the risks arising from the war," he said. According to Shurma, Ukraine now has two opportunities for Canadian investors to make money. The first is related to the restoration of the country and the economy. The second is that Ukraine has natural advantages. As an example, Shurma cited the experience of Westinghouse, which supplies nuclear fuel to Ukrainian nuclear power plants. "We are converting one reactor after another to Westinghouse fuel. And we are determined that 100 percent of the fuel will be purchased only from Westinghouse," he said. Another possible area for investment, he said, is the Ukrainian agricultural sector a huge consumer of fertilizers, crop protection products, seeds and agricultural machinery, and therefore a market for Canadian producers. "We will be interested not only in supplying these products, but also in localizing their production in Ukraine," Shurma said. According to him, any agricultural product produced in Ukraine will have advantages on the international market. "Chicken produced in Ukraine is one of the cheapest in the world. Due to the natural resources of our country," he said. Ukraine, he said, also has significant reserves of natural gas. The country has enormous potential for the production of solar, wind and hydrogen energy. It has the largest reserves of lithium and uranium in Europe. "We are ready to work together with Canadian investors to develop these resources. For this, tools such as export credit agencies and guarantees from the Canadian government can be used," Shurma said. In his opinion, true investment can only come in something that will be commercially successful. "The Ukrainian people really appreciate Canada's help. Therefore, we really look forward to you investing in our country," the deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine said. Australian National University higher education expert Andrew Norton said thousands of students affected by the huge fee hikes in 2021 would take decades to repay their debt if they ever do. Thats not sensible policy, he said. He said the government should revert to a version of the previous fee structure, where the student contribution was roughly related to the expected future financial earnings. That aligns better with the HELP repayment system: people who earn more can repay more quickly, he said. Academics at the University of Melbourne this year analysed more than 725,000 undergraduates who applied for courses in NSW and the ACT between 2014 and 2022, and found that just 1.5 per cent of students chose a field that they would not have chosen had it not been for the scheme. One of the studys authors, senior research fellow Dr Jan Kabatek, said this trend wasnt surprising to see because many high school students had already decided what they wanted to study before the new fee scheme came into effect. The fact that Australian students defer their debt also could have dampened the impact of the policy, he said. Resources spent on fostering their interest in STEM are likely to have a much more profound impact than any changes of student fees, Kabatek said. Mohit Tholu, a second year student at University of NSW studying a bachelor of politics, philosophy and economics, thinks the price increases have done little to discourage people from studying humanities. As a policy itself I think its quite flawed because we do have HECS and as much as people dont want to be spending too much, theyre comfortable enough putting that debt on their HECS if they have to, he said. So its not really a disincentive when its a future problem. Im not going to change my entire degree to do something thats cheaper; Im not going to be good at it or enjoy it. The University Accord interim report released in July, commissioned by Education Minister Jason Clare, said the current arrangement risked causing long-term and entrenched damage to Australian higher education. Clare said the report made it clear that the job ready scheme has not worked, but has stopped short of committing to winding back humanities fee hikes. I have asked the panel to look at the issue of affordability, including the operation of the HELP system and the amounts that students are contributing to the cost of their degrees through the HELP system, he said. Start the day with a summary of the days most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter. 2024 most popular degrees: Watch out medicine, students are applying for business degrees in greater numbers than ever before. What will our future workforce look like? Read about NSWs most popular degrees here. Sydney likes to celebrate success, but the City of Sydneys biannual block party on Stanley Street is such a hit it risks being a cause for gloom. The Heralds Sydney editor Michael Koziol reports that the City of Sydneys biannual event may have become too big for its own good; the large crowds and a minor incident with police have prompted NSW Police and the council to rein in the party. Police have asked for additional crowd mitigation measures, while business owners have been told the partys major drawcard outdoor DJs will no longer be permitted. The Stanley Street festival one night last month. This is a shame because Sydneys entertainment economy has been floored twice over the past lost decade. In the summer of 2014, the industry was flattened when a spate of brawls and killings outside late-night venues in the CBD, Oxford Street and Kings Cross led to lockout laws. The second blow came just when those laws were being repealed and COVID-19 struck. Stanley Street in inner-city Darlinghurst helped introduce Italian tastes to Sydney. Today, a variety of bars and restaurants cluster on one block, so it was a natural choice of area to encourage crowds back after the pandemic and help get businesses back on their feet. Just before his 21st birthday, Carl Molkner was told he had six months to live. An aggressive tumour had made a home in his head and neck, and treatment was having no effect. The cancerous tumour was pushing on the nerves in Molkners face, causing unbearable pain, his quality of life was waning and his desire to give up was growing. He had dreams of being a chef and travelling the world, but his future dissolved after that painful conversation. Carl Molkner was in palliative care at the start of the year for an incurable malignant tumour in his head and neck. Midway through the year, a surgeon successfully operated to remove the tumour. Credit: James Brickwood If voluntary assisted dying were an option available to Molkner a year ago, he says he may have considered it. VAD begins in NSW next week. Molkner, from Sydneys northern beaches, was off and on in hospital, under the care of palliative specialists at Chris OBrien Lifehouse. The nurses, Molkner said, became his lifeline. 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 Within about 15 seconds, the computer-driven train accelerates from a standstill to a speed of 100km/h under Sydney Harbour, whisking its small group of passengers from a massive new underground station at North Sydney to Barangaroo in three minutes. Two minutes later, the train pulls up at another new station at Martin Place in the CBD. The journey will become a reality for tens of thousands of commuters each day from the middle of next year when the ribbon is cut on Sydneys first rail line under the harbour, helping overcome the natural barrier separating the CBD from the north and shaking up the citys public transport system. Testing on the main section of the $21.6 billion Metro City and Southwest line between Chatswood and Sydenham via the CBD reached a critical point on Wednesday when four trains began operating on the railway at any one time, up from two previously. As part of the high-speed testing, a computer system commands the trains as they dart through twin tunnels, which are about 40 metres beneath the harbours water level. Testing and commissioning manager Andrew Turner said the focus was on fine-tuning the safe operation of the train to the ride quality, ensuring passengers avoided feeling a sidewards lateral motion in their seats. [It is about] optimising the train acceleration out of the platform for passenger comfort as well as train deceleration back into the platform at the next station, he said. We want to get the train to the maximum speed to get the shortest journey time between two locations for the passenger comfort. Advertisement In highlighting the intelligence of the operating system, Turner said the driverless trains could communicate with each other. [They can] self-regulate their speed knowing where they are on the track, he said. Testing has been under way on the line since April when trains began inching their way through the tunnels at just 5km/h. So far, more than 2500 hours and 12,500 kilometres of testing has been clocked up. The projects delivery director for trains, systems, operations and maintenance, Melvyn Bolus, said the ride quality for passengers was critical. We can zoom through here, but you dont want people banging into walls, he said. Its amazing how far we have gone from April 21 to now. We have multiple trains, timetables running its really all coming together, he said. Transport Minister Jo Haylen said the metro trains would move more people across the harbour in the busiest peak hour than the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Harbour Tunnel combined once the new line opens next year. World-class metro services will be the fastest express lane in town when travelling across the harbour from the citys north. Sydney Metro will extend the CBD, she said. She described construction of the first rail tunnel under the harbour as an incredible engineering feat, adding that public transport projects of the scale of the Metro City and Southwest line were how great global cities grow and evolve and one that would encourage more people to travel by rail. Advertisement Averaging about 31 metres beneath city streets, the Victoria Cross station at North Sydney will be the citys deepest. Yet, Victoria Cross one of six new stations on the line could have been almost double the depth if engineers early concept designs had been realised. Sydney Metro City and Southwest project director Hugh Lawson said it had been a balancing act between ensuring that the lines gradient from the lowest point beneath the harbour was not too steep for trains, but steep enough that a super-deep station did not have to be built under North Sydney. Transport Minister Jo Haylen takes a driverless train under Sydney Harbour on Wednesday. Credit: Nick Moir As the stations get deeper, you multiply some of the challenges of getting customers down to the trains and in and out in emergencies. Customers want to get from the street to the trains as quickly as possible. They dont want to spend a long time going around various escalators, he said. Luckily, with the metro trains, one of the benefits is they can take steeper gradients than the heavier rail network. Victoria Cross stations northern end is about 50 metres beneath the surface due to North Sydneys hilly topography, while the southern end is about 31 metres below. Featuring Australias largest excavated railway cavern, the massive underground station underscores the sheer scale of the $21.6 billion project, one of three metro lines under construction across Sydney. Workers built Victoria Cross by squeezing materials, supplies and equipment through an access point of just 2.5 square metres, or the size of a standard garage door. Advertisement The stations southern entrance will serve as the main access point for commuters, sporting three banks of escalators to get people from shops and offices on the surface to the platforms below. At the northern end, the stations 50-metre depth there has resulted in lift-only access. The four lifts can each take 27 people, which will be a key access point for local schools. The stations 14 lifts and 19 escalators have now all been fully installed, as well as almost two dozen Opal gates across the stations two entrances, leaving Victoria Cross more than 85 per cent complete. Loading When it opens next year, it will be the busiest station on the new metro line outside Sydneys CBD. More than 15,000 passengers are forecast to pass through Victoria Cross between 6.30am and 10am, reducing pressure on the existing North Sydney station, which at present has about 15,000 commuters passing through its gates during the morning peak. Sydney Metro chief executive Peter Regan said it was a historic moment for the city to run driverless through the twin tunnels under the harbour, which had proven very difficult to excavate. Its been a big feat. There is very significant pressure under the harbour, and its very different to excavating elsewhere, he said. We needed special tunnel boring machines to be able to do that work under the harbour. The second section of the Metro City and Southwest line from Sydenham to Bankstown is due to open by mid-2025. Advertisement Asked if he had told Hamer to message Higgins and see if shes free to come to the pub, Lehrmann said: I dont have a recollection of that happening. Drinks at The Kingston The court heard Higgins ultimately joined Lehrmann, Hamer and another staffer at the Kingston Hotel in Canberra on March 2. Lehrmann said he did not recall Higgins taking out her phone later in the evening to book an Uber. Did you say to Ms Higgins words to this effect: Why dont you stay for a drink? I havent had a chance to chat with you? Collins asked. Possibly. I cant definitively recall that, Im sorry, Lehrmann replied. Asked if he recollected snatching Ms Higgins phone away from her to stop her ordering the Uber, Lehrmann replied: No, that didnt happen. Lehrmann denies attempted kiss Lehrmann denied that on a separate occasion on March 15, 2019, before the alleged rape, he leaned into Higgins and tried to kiss her on the lips after a staff dinner at the Kingston Hotel. Absolutely not, Lehrmann said, adding that he denied making any advance to Ms Higgins ever. Ever? Collins replied. Yes, Lehrmann replied. Loading He said he did not recall any staff dinner on that occasion. Mistaken in AFP interview During the cross-examination, Lehrmann denied giving deliberately false answers in his interview with the Australian Federal Police on April 19, 2021, but said he was mistaken when he told them there was no alcohol in his office in Parliament House. You knew full well at the time you gave your interview to the Australian Federal Police that you had had whisky in your office at all times when you worked for Minister Reynolds, Collins said. When answering those questions I was recalling as to the best I could, Lehrmann said. Did you correct the statement? Collins asked. I cant recall if I did, Lehrmann replied. When did you realise it was false, Mr Lehrmann? Was it before your criminal trial? Collins said. I cant recall, Im sorry, Lehrmann replied. Its a very hazy moment, that criminal trial. Earlier on Thursday, Lehrmann told the court he had initially told Reynolds then-chief of staff, Fiona Brown, that he came back to Parliament House in the early hours of March 23, 2019, to drink whisky. The court has heard he shared an Uber to Parliament House with Higgins after drinks with colleagues. Lehrmann gave evidence that his employment in Reynolds office was terminated on March 26 after he was told by Brown that after-hours access was a breach of the ministerial code of conduct. Did you come in and drink whisky? his barrister, Steven Whybrow, SC, asked. No, I did not, Lehrmann said. Lehrmann said he believed that if he told Brown he had been working on a question time brief she might have regarded this as an even greater security breach. Innocuous Friday night Lehrmann replied absolutely not when asked by his barrister on Thursday if he sexually assaulted Higgins in the early hours of Saturday, March 23, 2019. It was an innocuous evening; a social Friday night, Lehrmann said. He said he did not see Higgins again in Parliament House after he went to his desk to work on a question time brief. Had you at any stage had any sexual contact or similar intimate interactions with Ms Higgins? Whybrow asked. None whatsoever, Lehrmann replied. Texts released Lehrmann told the court on Wednesday his interactions with friends and acquaintances changed drastically after the interview aired on The Project. Exhibit in the Lehrmann defamation trial showing people exiting a group chat with Bruce Lehrmann in the days after Ten broadcast an interview with Brittany Higgins. Credit: Federal Court of Australia Among the exhibits in the trial, released by the court on Thursday, was a screenshot of a group chat with Lehrmann, showing nine people exiting the group in the days after the Ten broadcast. One member posted an image of a red Eject button. Separate screenshots show two other people leaving a different Facebook messenger group, while Lehrmann was also removed from a three-person chat titled The Triumvirate. Lehrmann not named Lehrmann was not named in the Ten interview but Federal Court Justice Michael Lee must decide if he was identified via other means. Loading If the court finds he was identified, Ten and Wilkinson admit the interview conveyed the central claim of rape and are seeking to rely in part on a truth defence. The media outlet has previously told the court the network would call 28 witnesses, including Higgins and Wilkinson. Also killed were Pratibha Sharmas partner, 30-year-old Jatin Kumar, and Vivek Bhatia, 38, and his 11-year-old son, Vihaan. Loading The driver of the SUV, a 66-year-old Mount Macedon man, was taken to hospital under police guard but has since been released pending further police investigation. On Wednesday morning, friends and family gathered at the Coroners Court, hugging and consoling one another in the halls. Counsel assisting the coroner Andrew Imrie said that while the circumstances of the incident were still being ascertained, both criminal and coronial investigations were taking place. Outlining the facts, he said that about 6pm on November 5, a white BMW SUV was travelling downhill in a westerly direction on Albert Street towards the intersection of the Midland Highway, also known as Howe Street. The driver then failed to turn just before the roundabout and mounted the kerb, before striking tables of seated patrons on a grassed area outside the Royal Daylesford Hotel. The five who were injured included an 11-month-old and a six-year-old child, who remains in hospital. Detective Sergeant Peter Romanis said police were investigating whether the drivers diabetes may have been a factor in the crash. Detectives were also gathering evidence about the location of the seating area and any public safety issues it may have presented. The investigation is very much in its infancy. Were in the process of contacting 140 witnesses, Romanis said. A decision on whether charges should be laid has not yet been made. There is no timeline on that process. Coroner Katherine Lorenz acknowledged the dozen friends and family of the deceased who gathered to listen to the hearing on Wednesday. It has been a terrible loss for your families, your communities and indeed for the community as a whole. Its a sad and tragic outcome of what was a very pleasant day out for these people, Lorenz said. The coroner said she would do her best to expedite the matter, noting it would likely be a long process waiting for the criminal matters to be resolved. Vikas Sharma said he believed the area where the incident occurred was unsafe, with no bollards or fences to protect diners. If they cannot make it safe, then why do they allow people to sit people there when the traffic is there? he said. The Sharma family and Anvis father, Gangandeep Silwal, spent much of Wednesday at the Coroners Court for a second hearing to resolve a dispute over who her body will be released to. Lorenz initially granted the release of the nine-year-old girls remains to her biological father before her maternal grandparents lodged their own claim, with a disagreement over who would take her cremated remains to the Ganges in India as part of cultural Hindu arrangements. Anvis mother had sole custody and the Sharma family argued the childs remains should be released to them to allow Anvi to be cremated alongside her mother. But Silwals lawyer, Thomas Bell, argued his client was the senior next of kin and it was his cultural responsibility to make her funeral arrangements. Bell said his client did not take issue with having a joint funeral but acknowledged there was still a disagreement over the choice of funeral company. The main sticking point is who gets Anvi. The ashes as well as her body, he said. And to which funeral director it goes to. Lorenz said she was deeply troubled to be asked to make a ruling and saddened that the family had been unable to agree. Obviously when a child dies its hoped their loved ones can come together to arrange a dignified funeral. In this case, the circumstances of her death, alongside mum and stepfather, are particularly traumatic. Its not desirable for courts to step in. Its always hoped families can agree on funeral arrangements so personal views and cultural practices ... can be observed and respected. Im deeply distressed for all of you. After a day of negotiations, the Sharmas withdrew their application but said they hoped Anvi could still be cremated alongside her mother. Outside the court, Romanis thanked the public for its outpouring of support. He said inspirational acts of humanity, compassion and kindness were shown to the victims and others on the night of the tragedy. Its been very reassuring for the families, he said. I know it does mean a lot to them. When Gabbi Giles enrolled in a bachelor of screen media, she pursued the course of her dreams but there was a catch. Like many thousands of students across Australia, Giles enrolled in a university humanities course, which became more expensive after the Morrison governments Job-ready Graduates fee scheme took effect in 2021. Gabbi Giles says despite being worried about her debt, she would probably choose the same area of study again. Credit: Jason South The price tag for Giles course, along with other subjects such as media and communications, was higher than ever. Giles has loved her course at Victoria University. She had inspirational teachers and even bagged a job in video editing at the ABC after showing off her skills during a work placement. Melbourne Airport says an underground train station at Tullamarine could be cheaper to build than the Victorian governments sky rail plan for the long-awaited airport train. As its dispute with the Allan government over the location of the station becomes a three-way stand-off that threatens to further delay the $13 billion project, the airport has pitched an alternative plan to the Commonwealth re-deploy the massive tunnel boring machines being used on the citys other transport projects. An artists impression of a proposed elevated rail station at Melbourne Airport. Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King last week revealed the Commonwealths $5 billion commitment to Melbourne Airport Rail had survived an independent review of its 10-year infrastructure pipeline. Victoria had earlier committed $5 billion to the project, including a new station at Keilor East and a major redevelopment of Sunshine and Albion stations in Melbournes western suburbs. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Azerbaijan has a very good position in the field of renewable energy sources, SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan) Vice President's Advisor Mustafa Gurbanli said at the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) Caspian Technical Conference in Baku, Trend reports. "But the key question now is where we stand in terms of Azerbaijan and SOCAR, as the largest oil and gas company. The government of Azerbaijan has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent by 2030 and further cutting them by 40 percent by 2050," he reminded. "Moreover, Azerbaijan has strategically decided to increase renewable energy production by 30 percent by 2030. This is a crucial decision made by the Azerbaijani government, and SOCAR, as one of the largest companies in the region, is following the government's pace," the official noted. According to him, to achieve these goals, SOCAR is focusing on three main directions. "The first is decarbonization. We are implementing a comprehensive decarbonization program in all the areas where we operate. Secondly, we are investing in new types of businesses. SOCAR collaborates with major companies in the renewable energy sector and aims to create new businesses, such as wind, solar, hydrogen, and carbon utilization," Gurbanli explained. "Thirdly, it's organizational transformations. Currently, SOCAR is in the process of transitioning, changing its structure, and optimizing the integrated management system. These are the directions we have chosen in our strategy: decarbonization programs, investment in renewable energy sources and hydrogen infrastructure aimed at electrification and transformative programs, as well as all the advanced technologies that will help us achieve the energy transition," he added. The SPE Caspian Technical Conference started on November 21 in Baku and will continue until November 23. It will bring together global industry leaders and technical experts to share perspectives on the industry and address the unique challenges and opportunities it presents. Taking into account the key role of the Caspian region in shaping future global energy dynamics, this conference, organized with the assistance of SOCAR, will feature an expert-selected high-level program, panel discussions on key issues facing the region, and a unique opportunity for networking with experts in oil and gas production. The program will include an assessment of the current situation and offer important discussions for investors, operators, service company representatives, and government authorities in the region. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel 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 Perth students are taking weapons into schools far more often than their Victorian counterparts, as the states teachers union calls for action on the growing problem of violence in our classrooms. Numbers obtained via Freedom of Information laws show there were 114 instances where students took prohibited weapons to schools in 2022 compared to just 78 in Victoria, despite WA having less than half the public school population. State School Teachers Union WA President Matt Jarman said he was alarmed by the figures on weapons in WA and said the comparison to Victoria tells the story all by itself. We had a teacher stabbed two years ago. She was going about her work as a student services manager, and she almost died because someone brought a weapon in, he said. We arent dealing with the problem if the numbers of weapons coming into our schools is increasing, and weve almost lost one employee, a very, very good one. A recent report commissioned by the union revealed in 2022, school based violent events in WA were occurring once every 45 minutes, or 11 times per day. Advertisement Jarman said members were increasingly worried about their safety at work, and the union received hundreds of calls per month asking for help. We would comfortably get 800 calls a month (from members) and we manage all of those in the categories of violence. That number is growing, he said. We need to stop assuming that our schools are safe places because the evidence and the data demonstrates that theyre not. Matt Jarman The figures also revealed Perths most violent schools, with a high school in the citys southeast clocking up more than double the number of notifications to police for violent behaviour than any other in the metropolitan region. According to the figures, Cecil Andrews College in Seville Grove topped the list after receiving 23 visits from police in the past 18 months for behaviour such as physical assault, intimidating/threatening behaviour and disruptive conduct. Second was Coodanup College in Mandurah, which had 16 callouts over the same period. Advertisement Other schools with a high number of callouts include Joseph Banks Secondary College in Banksia Grove and Kelmscott Senior High School the former school of Education Minister Tony Buti. Facebook groups set up for teachers in WA also reveal the extent of the issue, with one teacher stating she had been kicked in the stomach whilst heavily pregnant and others saying there had been little to no action from the state government and school administration when they had reported incidents. Jarman said the state government needed to step up and address the crisis. We need to stop assuming that our schools are safe places because the evidence and the data demonstrates that theyre not, he said. We need to make sure that everyone sends their kids off to school safely and staff go to work safely. Jarman said violence used to occur more in outer metropolitan schools or socially disadvantaged communities, but now we are seeing the same kind of violence in more affluent schools. Advertisement An alternative for violent students Alternative Learning Settings was first trialled in 2019 in a 10-point plan to address the issue, created by then-Education Minister Sue Ellery. The Department said between 2019 and 2021, 223 students were delivered to the program and 191 were reintroduced to school or an alternative TAFE-based pathway. But Jarman said this was not always the answer. Students who have assaulted staff, and we know of several cases, are then being returned to those schools, despite the staff feeling very nervous, despite having lost staff, despite staff threatening to transfer out, and they can transfer out because the teacher shortage will see them picked up anywhere they want, Jarman said. Teachers are considering leaving the profession at higher rates, largely due to violence in schools. Credit: Cameron Myles Despite that, violence is simply returning to their workplaces. Weve got several senior high schools in Perth where thats a problem. The unions report also revealed 86 per cent of teachers had considered leaving the profession in the past four years, up from 80 per cent two years ago. Advertisement A breakdown of the reasons for this figure, given exclusively to this masthead, show a shocking 90 per cent of WA teachers experienced an incident involving violent behaviour at least once per term at their school in 2023. Loading Additionally, 31 per cent of teachers surveyed said they had been the victim of physical violence at least once this school year, while 55 per cent said they had experienced verbal violence. Is there another workplace like a school, where you are expected to go and work after you have been, or one of your colleagues have been assaulted, and that person is allowed back on site? Jarman said. Most other workplaces would not allow that but schools are one of the unique ones where that is okay. The number of staff who are leaving and attributing their departure to violence and physical safety has been increasing for the last three or four years. The violence comes from parents too Advertisement When federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King stunned the NSW Labor government last week with the revelation that the Commonwealth was walking away from a critical road project in western Sydney, she unwittingly launched what will become a sustained funding war. Road and rail are only the beginning. Health, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, education and the long-running stoush over the GST carve-up are coming. So too is migration. This is no confected fight. NSW Labor never shies away from a brawl, even against its own, and funding is a battle with the Commonwealth that the state cannot afford to lose. A fight is coming: NSW Premier Chris Minns and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen The state premiers were already in position before King announced the list of 50 projects across the country for which federal funding would be axed as part of an infrastructure review. Queensland and Western Australia, the next states to go to the polls, were spoiling for a fight. NSW was a little less worked up. But that was before King dropped the bombshell. One-third of the projects on the chopping block were in NSW. Most notably, the M7-M12 interchange, which is already under construction, was on her list. It blindsided NSW because it isnt a pipedream (unlike faster rail, which was also axed but has been reborn more times than anyone can remember). Gaza City: The Israeli military has unveiled what it claims is a Hamas military facility under Gazas largest hospital, showing what appeared to be a subterranean dormitory to a group of foreign journalists who were given a rare glimpse inside the besieged enclave. Dozens of soldiers escorted journalists through a narrow stone tunnel which the military said stretched 150 metres to a series of underground bunkers beneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Living quarters, located at the end of the tunnel, had an air-conditioner, kitchen, bathroom and a pair of metal cots in a room fashioned from rusty white tiles. They appeared to be out-of-use. Shifa Hospital is the hugest hospital in Gaza, and its also the hugest terror facility of Hamas, said Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the Israeli militarys chief spokesperson. Hamas battalion commanders were conducting command-and-control, firing rockets from here. The Associated Press could not independently verify Hagaris claims. Were we spiralling out of control? Indeed, America was. Less than five years later, both Martin Luther King Jr, the soul of the civil rights movement and its ambition that America could, finally, be free at last for all, and JFKs brother, Robert, then on a path to redeem the Kennedy mantle and legacy and be elected president in 1968, were assassinated within 60 days of each other. Loading Society fractured. The civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements exploded. The nation was torn and divided for years with violence in the streets. We could never know for certain whether JFK would have gone down the road that Lyndon Johnson chose in expanding the war and sending 500,000 troops to Vietnam. We would never know whether Kennedy would take truly dramatic steps to advance civil rights for black Americans. JFK was taken from us before we could see him fully. The narrative began to take hold of the young president, the dynamic leader of the country, with his enchanting first lady and their two children who would play in the Oval Office, cut down in his prime. Kennedy did not age in the days after he died. To this day, he is still the handsome president with vigah who called to us: Ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country. Washington: A vehicle exploded on the Rainbow Bridge linking Canada with the United States at Niagara Falls, prompting authorities to close that border crossing and the three others between western New York and southern Ontario, officials said. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force was mobilised to investigate the incident, which occurred on Thursday AEDT, according to New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Hours later federal and state authorities said investigators had found no evidence of an act of terror, though circumstances surrounding the crash on the Rainbow Bridge remained murky, leaving it to be determined whether it was accidental or intentional. At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist attack or threat to the public at large, New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters Wednesday evening. Her comments were echoed by federal and local law enforcement officials at a separate news conference. PHILIPSBURG:--- For the upcoming parliamentary elections to be held on January 11th, 2024, all political parties that submitted a candidate list to the chairman of the central voting bureau on November 22nd, 2023, which did not obtain a seat in the previously held parliamentary elections, must be supported by 134 eligible voters. This conforms with Article 23 electoral ordinance. This endorsement will be held on November 23rd, 2023, at the civil registry department at Soualiga Road #1, Philipsburg, from 09:am to 4 pm. This endorsement is carried out by placing your signature on one candidate list as referred to in Article 39 paragraph 2 of the Electoral Ordinance. The same voter shall not be allowed to sign more than one list. The support of the candidate lists shall only be endorsed by an eligible voter who can identify himself or herself by means of: A valid national identity card A valid passport; A valid national driver's license; Eligible voters for the elections on January 11th, 2024, are persons that: a. are registered at the Civil Registry by October 23rd, 2023; b. are in the possession of the Dutch nationality; c. will reach the age of 18 years on the day of elections. This obligation shall not apply to a candidate list of a political party to which one or more seats were awarded at the last parliamentary elections. ~No official notice of suspension was issued, Immigration Officer's work status remains unaffected~ PHILIPSBURG:--- The Honorable Minister of Justice, Anna E. Richardson, has issued an official letter via email to an Immigration Officer on Tuesday morning at approximately 9:30 AM, in response to the unfortunate incident that occurred with an arriving local citizen who refused to provide an adequate identification at Port Bobby's Marina on Sunday, November 19th, 2023. In her letter, Minister Richardson commended the officer for correctly enforcing the legal requirement for travelers to present a valid passport upon entry into Sint Maarten. The officer's adherence to established protocols in addressing the requirement of a Dutch identification card by the passenger was acknowledged as commendable. However, Minister Richardson also addressed concerns related to a potential violation of Article 97 of the Legal Position of the Police (Rechtspositiebesluit). The Minister also emphasized the obligation to maintain confidentiality as outlined contractually.. Due to the Ministry's high regard for handling personal information, any violation of this principle may result in disciplinary actions. The Minister clarified that, as of now, there is no official notice of suspension, and the officers present work status remains unaffected. Any potential suspension would follow established procedures, as a thorough investigation is ongoing, during which the officer will have the opportunity to present her case. Minister Richardson assured the officer that until further communication is provided, she is expected to resume her duties as scheduled by her superiors. The Minister emphasized her commitment to ensuring a fair and impartial examination of the facts surrounding the incident. Minister Richardson encouraged the officer to personally touch base with her if further clarification of the letter is required, concluding with an appreciation for her cooperation in the investigation. A hard copy of the issued letter will also be delivered to the Justice worker. PHILIPSBURG:--- Windward Islands Bank informs clients that it will begin the first phase of its mass distribution of the new Bankomatiko Plus Mastercard debit cards this Saturday, November 25th. The first phase consists of new cards for all customers whose existing Maestro card expired in October or will expire in November and December. The Bank will open its Pondfill location to clients from 9.00 am to 4.00 pm on Saturday in order for clients to collect their cards. The WIB new Bankomatiko plus Mastercard debit was introduced during a launch ceremony in August and all existing Maestro cards will be replaced. Replacement of cards will occur in three phases, the first phase being all cards that expire in October, November, and December. Clients will be informed once phases two and three are ready for distribution. WIBs new Bankomatiko plus Mastercard debit offers many more features and benefits for clients. Collective Metals Announces Closing of Flow Through Financing for Gross Proceeds of CDN $349,999.92 COLLECTIVE METALS INC. (CSE: COMT | OTC: CLLMF | FSE: TO1) (the aCompanya or aCollectivea https://www.commodity-tv.com/ondemand/companies/profil/collective-metals-inc/ ) is pleased to announce it has closed a non-brokered private placement of 1,129,032 flow-through units of the Company (the \FT Units\) at a price of $0.31 per FT Unit for gross proceeds of $349,999.92 (the \Offering\). Each FT Unit is comprised of one (1) common share of the Company (an \FT Share\) issued on a flow-through basis under the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the aTax Acta) and one-half (1/2) of one common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a \Warrant\), with each Warrant exercisable to acquire one (1) common share of the Company (a \Warrant Share\) at a price of $0.35 per Warrant Share for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance. The Company intends to use the gross proceeds received from the Offering towards \Canadian exploration expenses\ that are \flow-through critical mineral mining expenditures\ (as such terms are defined in the Tax Act) on the Company\-s properties located in British Columbia and Ontario. In connection with the closing, an aggregate of $24,500 was paid in cash and a total of 79,032 findera?s warrants (the aFindera?s Warrantsa) were issued as findera?s fees. Each Findera?s Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one (1) common share in the capital of the Company (a aFindera?s Warrant Sharea) at a price of $0.35 per Findera?s Warrant Share for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance. All securities issued in connection with the Offering are subject to a statutory hold period of four months and one day. The securities issued pursuant to the Offering have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons in the absence of U.S. registration or an applicable exemption from the U.S. registration requirements. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in the United States or in any other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. About Collective Metals: Collective Metals Inc. (CSE: COMT | OTC: CLLMF | FSE: TO1) is a resource exploration company specializing in precious metals exploration in North America. The Companya?s flagship property is the Princeton Project, located in south-central British Columbia, Canada, approximately 10 km west of the currently producing Copper Mountain Mine. The Princeton Project consists of 29 mineral tenures totaling approximately 28,560 ha (70,570 acres) in a well-documented and prolific copper-gold porphyry belt and is easily accessible by road, located immediately west of Highway 3.A The Companya?s Landings Lake Lithium Project is located in northwestern Ontario where numerous lithium deposits have been delineated to host significant reserves of Li2O. The Landings Lake Lithium Project is located 53 km east of Ear Falls, Ontario and covers 3,146 hectares. The Whitemud Project, with several identified pegmatite outcrops, neighbours the Landings Lake Project and consists of 381 single cell mining claims totaling 7,775 hectares. THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES Forward Looking Information Certain statements in this news release are forward-looking statements, including with respect to future plans, and other matters. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding-looking wording such as \may\, \expect\, \estimate\, \anticipate\, \intend\, \believe\ and \continue\ or the negative thereof or similar variations. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including but not limited to, business, economic and capital market conditions, the ability to manage operating expenses, and dependence on key personnel. Forward looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements respecting: Offering and the intended use of proceeds therefrom. Such statements and information are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies and the environment in which the Company will operate in the future, anticipated costs, and the ability to achieve goals. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, the continued availability of capital and financing, litigation, failure of counterparties to perform their contractual obligations, loss of key employees and consultants, and general economic, market or business conditions. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed this press release and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Rector of Azerbaijan State Economic University, Professor Adalat Muradov has proposed to establish SPECA international research center on 'green' economy, Trend reports. "I propose to establish SPECA International Research Center for Sustainable Development of Green Economy from Azerbaijan State Economic University, which would assume a coordinating function in this process," the professor said at the SPECA 2023 Economic Forum in Baku. He said it is necessary to think ahead. "Today, the green economy is actively developing in Azerbaijan - cities being rebuilt in the territories liberated from [Armenian] occupation, using green and smart concepts," he emphasized. The professor added that Azerbaijan is transforming its territory, which suffered from ecocide during the occupation, into a sustainable ecological zone to stimulate green growth. The UN SPECA program was established on March 26, 1998. At present, the SPECA member states are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. SPECA provides a platform for sub-regional cooperation to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that can best be achieved through regional cooperation. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel By Gita Abraham New Canadian Media Canadas trucking industry is looking for new immigrants to fill at least 9,600 truck-driving jobs immediately, and tens of thousands more vacancies in the next couple of years. Craig Faucette, chief program officer of the nonprofit industry organization Trucking HR, said Canada has 23,532 driver vacancies. This number is expected to increase to 55,000 in 2024, according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance. Canada has developed several immigration policies to grant work permits and permanent resident status to foreign workers who are experienced truck drivers in their home country. They are eligible for Canada's online Express Entry system under the Federal Skilled Worker Program. A non-Express entry is also available through the Provincial Nominee Program. To qualify for jobs as truck drivers, applicants need at least five months of continuous work experience in Canada or abroad. Last February, the federal government announced an investment of up to $46.3 million with Trucking HR Canada. The Driving Economic Recovery project provides subsidies to support recruitment, training and wage subsidies for up to 1,400 new drivers as well as 1,200 other professionals that are in demand within the trucking sector. While national trucking organizations are actively recruiting new drivers from Canada and abroad, some private fleet owners argue the industry is not seriously short of truck drivers at least for now. There is an excess capacity of trucks in the market searching for freight, said Mike Millian, president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada. He said cargo volumes have succumbed to a downsized consumer demand, impacting the entire economy. As soon as the current recession ends, we will be in a state of severe and critical shortages, again, Millian said. Now it is time for recruitment. Two international students from India who took up trucking jobs soon after getting their two-year diploma courses said driver training was a challenging process. There was onboard support with a co-driver for a few months before we hit the road on our own, said Sandeep Singh, who completed a two-year law course, and is now driving a 53-feet trailer truck to make money. Speeding cars pose the biggest risk. We have to be alert about wild animals moose, bears, large birds and trees. Other challenges lie when taking bends and maintaining 105 kilometres per hour speed to meet delivery time. We are in constant communication with headquarters and they are aware whether we are running on time. I park at truck stops to fuel, eat and rest. We sleep in the truck using the mattress we carry. Deep Sharma, who completed a supply chain management course but is now driving a refrigerated trailer, said he knows of several other international students who have joined the trucking industry, attracted by the money and the sheer joy of adventure and excitement, he said. Ahmed Darwish, who emigrated from Libya and now lives in Ottawa, said he was an experienced truck driver but faced difficulties getting a licence until he completed additional training to work in Canada. Luckily, I got a job soon after my training, and as a result, I did not have to undergo the sufferings of several new immigrants with work visa experience, Dawish said. It was only $16 to $17 per hour initially, but now I am good with full pay and all benefits. Job Bank salary data shows truck drivers can make $34 per hour; in British Columbia, the average wage is $38 per hour. The trucking sector has one of the oldest workforces, with one-third of drivers over 55 years of age and nearing retirement. Statistics Canada data shows that newcomers make up a higher proportion of the trucking industry, especially in Ontario, compared to other industries. Overall, 17.8 percent of Canadas drivers have South Asian backgrounds. In Vancouver, South Asian immigrants account for 55.9 percent of drivers. In 2022, Canada had More than 300,000 employed truck drivers. In the first nine months of 2023, that number increased to 316,700. Meanwhile, Trucking HR Canada (THRC) released its quarterly Labour Market Information (LMI) snapshot showing that employment for truck drivers is stabilizing, while volatility for shippers and receivers is growing. Here are some highlights of the report: Guest Commentary Chou Yew-woei Commissioner Criminal Investigation Bureau, Taiwan Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people lost their jobs because of the lockdowns and have been desperately looking for financial support. So if a tempting job opportunity came knocking, it would naturally be hard to resist. The harsh reality for those travelling overseas for work, however, is that they risk falling victim to human trafficking, a new form of transnational crime that is preying on people around the world. Fraud is a crime with a long history. In modern times, with the advancement of information and communications technology, this age-old crime is gaining new dimensions and posing an incalculable threat to global security. As INTERPOL Secretary-General Jurgen Stock has said, the need for solid international police cooperation is more vital than ever to deal with new forms of transnational crime such as human trafficking and fraud. Criminal organizations are now operating under highly organized corporate-style models that are based on sophisticated divisions of labor, information exchange, peer learning, and collusion and complicity. To combat transnational crime, law enforcement officers from around the world must unite and come together. Taiwans police authorities are taking the initiative of engaging with their counterparts around the world to fight crime. They aim to close the gap in the global security network and work toward a safer world. As the worlds 21st-largest economy and 17th-largest exporter, Taiwan serves as a pivotal link between Northeast and Southeast Asia and as a hub for the flow of people, goods, and capital. Given the escalating risks caused by new types of transnational crime, Taiwan is continuing to surmount its own outstanding track record of public security. By participating in INTERPOL and working in collaboration with global police authorities, we can all fight transnational crime together. For political reasons, Taiwan has been unable to participate in INTERPOL for over 39 years. Yet at the same time, as transnational crime flourishes in this era of globalization, Taiwanese passports, which enjoy visa-free access to 145 countries and territories, have become prime targets for transnational criminals. This is a threat that should not be underestimated. Taiwans capacity to carry out border security checks and combat transnational crimes such as terrorism and human trafficking is severely hampered by its lack of access to real-time criminal intelligence shared through INTERPOLs I-24/7 system and its stolen and lost travel documents database. Taiwans long-standing exclusion from INTERPOL means that vital exchanges of intelligence are often out of date and incorrect. And Taiwans inability to participate in associated INTERPOL meetings, activities, and training has created a significant gap in the global security and antiterrorism network. In 2022, Taiwans police authorities uncovered a shocking new type of human trafficking occurring in Cambodia and Myanmar. Operating under highly organized corporate models, crime syndicates had used online platforms to recruit people from all over the world, promising overseas job opportunities as bait. In reality, victims were held captive, forced to work in scam call centers, and subjected to such inhumane treatment as electric shocks, beating, drugging, and sexual violence in order to coerce them into aiding the syndicates many illegal activities, including transnational fraud, the laundering of cryptocurrencies, and drug and human trafficking. Reports by Taiwans police authorities to INTERPOL were to no avail. Instead, Taiwan had to rely on police forces in friendly countries to pass on intelligence and cooperate in investigations. Taiwan also mobilized a national cross-government antifraud team to carry out preventative, deterrence, rescue, and investigative operations and stop any more Taiwanese people from being coerced into fraudulent activities. As of July 2023, 478 victims had been successfully rescued. Information shared by Taiwan has aroused international attention, and friendly police forces in Canada, Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia and elsewhere are now aware of this new type of crime, whose victims have hailed from a wide range of nations. Only by combining international resources and conducting cooperative investigations can laws be enforced and can this global security issue be addressed. When China applied for accession to INTERPOL in 1984, it attached conditions that contravened the spirit of the INTERPOL Constitution. China took over Taiwans membership rights and status and constantly cited so-called political issues to ensure that INTERPOL excluded Taiwan from substantive participation in the organization, creating a breach in crime prevention and intelligence sharing. This has also made Taiwans efforts to fight transnational crime and make the world a better place all the more difficult. I ask everyone to support Taiwans participation in INTERPOLs annual General Assembly as an observer. This would allow Taiwans police authorities to participate in various activities, meetings, and training, interact with other countries, and address the deficiency in transnational crime intelligence exchange. This is not a political issue. Global security concerns us all. Let Taiwan and INTERPOL work together. The public defender Levan Ioseliani arrived in the village near the occupation line, where he met Levan Dotiashvili and the family members of Tamaz Ginturi, who had been killed by the Russian occupiers.Ioseliani stated that the state should employ all available leverage to bring the killers of Tamaz Ginturi to justice."I was also interested in the circumstances surrounding Mr. Tamazi's murder-how the investigation is being conducted, the level of involvement from both investigative agencies and local municipal services. We all understand that punishing the criminals will not be easy. The Georgian state should do everything to hold the criminals accountable. This effort should extend both internationally and domestically. We, along with the family, await the expert's answer," stated the public defender.The Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia, Shalva Papuashvili, held an introductory meeting with the newly appointed Ambassador of the Kingdom of Norway to Georgia, Bergljot Hovland. Both sides emphasized the positive development of cooperation between the two countries since the opening of the Norwegian Embassy in Georgia four years ago. The discussion also centered on the growth of parliamentary relations.Shalva Papuashvili expressed gratitude to the Norwegian side for its strong support of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia. He expressed hope that Norway will continue to support Georgia on its path to joining NATO. The ambassador congratulated the chairman on the positive recommendation from the European Commission regarding the granting of candidate status to Georgia. He noted that Norway will continue to contribute to Georgia's democratic development and its alignment with European standards.Papuashvili spoke about the importance of granting candidate status to Georgia and highlighted the country's main achievements along the way. The parties also discussed current events in the region and the significant role of Georgia in the process of establishing regional peace. Shalva Papuashvili wished the ambassador success in fulfilling his important mission in Georgia. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Within the framework of the first summit of the UN Special Program for the Economies of Central Asia (SPECA) in Baku, businessmen will hold B2B meetings to establish mutual cooperation, discuss projects, form future partnerships, and relevant documents will be signed, Azerbaijani Deputy Economy Minister Sahib Mammadov told reporters, Trend reports. "Within the SPECA week in Azerbaijan, an exhibition of SPECA countries was organized, consisting of two parts: inner and outer exhibition zones. In the inner zone there are stands on national economies of SPECA member countries, including Azerbaijan's stand. In addition, there are stands dedicated to the 25th anniversary of SPECA, reflecting the joint cooperation of the member countries," he said. Mammadov noted that Azerbaijan's stand presents information, exhibits, videos related to its economic development, industry, defense industry, agriculture, tourism, energy, state support for entrepreneurship development, and work carried out in its territories liberated from Armenian occupation. 'We believe that holding such exhibitions will promote cooperation between SPECA member countries. Also, a business meeting between businessmen of the member countries will be held on November 24 within the SPECA Week. During this business forum, discussions will be held to establish mutual cooperation, discuss projects, form future partnerships and sign relevant documents," he added. An exhibition of SPECA member countries on the theme "Regional Cooperation for Sustainable Development" is being held in Baku on November 22-25. The exhibition is held on the special initiative of Azerbaijan within the framework of the UN Special Program for the Economies of Central Asia - SPECA Week. The purpose of the exhibition is to demonstrate the economic potential of the participating countries, discuss opportunities for joint mutually beneficial partnership and strengthen regional economic cooperation between the member states. The products of 33 companies are presented in the "Made in Azerbaijan" section. The exhibition hall has 1,034 m for the stand of Azerbaijan, and 253 m each for the stands of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. All stands are set up in a single design. In the center of the exhibition pavilion, along with the stands of the countries, there is a separate stand of 300 m reflecting the cooperation of SPECA countries. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel By Shilpashree Jagannathan New Canadian Media More than half of new Canadian families say they have been victims of fraud, according to a survey by Interac released to coincide with Financial Literacy Month in November. The survey, which also found that most newcomers believe they are more susceptible to scams than the general population, led the company to set up free online education modules for newcomers and international students. Rachel Jolicoeur, director of fraud mitigation and strategy at Interac Corp. Photo: Submitted Fraud attempts themselves are not only growing, but the level of sophistication is also compounding as scammers are constantly evolving their methods, said Rachel Jolicoeur, director of cyber market intelligence and financial crime at Interac. The survey found that 53 percent of newcomer respondents say they and/or an immediate family member have been targeted by fraud, and 55 percent say they are very concerned about becoming a victim in the future. As well, 70 percent of new Canadians polled think they are more susceptible to money scams and 73 percent want to learn more about how to protect themselves. Six out of 10 newcomers say scams make them feel less financially confident, compared with one-third of all respondents. Interac is the Canadian interbank network that links financial institutions and other businesses for electronic financial transactions. The company teamed up with Conscious Economics, a nonprofit organization that provides financial literacy programs to develop its new educational initiatives. The programs, called Mindfulness & Money for Newcomers and International Students, are available to all newcomers, with subtitled modules available in a variety of languages including Mandarin, Punjabi, Farsi, and Arabic. The program will also be part of the international students orientation package at Toronto Metropolitan University. The course is designed to provide newcomers with a supportive community, while also helping bolster their fraud awareness and financial confidence the first step in helping someone to identify and navigate instances of fraud, said Jolicoeur. Aseel El-Baba, co-founder of Mindfulness & Money. Photo: Submitted According to Interacs survey, the top scams newcomers face include fake job postings, phishing, and scammers pretending to represent official government institutions. Its critical that newcomers and international students feel supported in every step of their financial journey here, said Aseel El-Baba, co-founder of Mindfulness & Money and the in-house financial therapist at Conscious Economics. This new set of modules will help explore common challenges newcomers face while navigating an unknown financial system and transacting in new ways. They will also look at the ins and outs of fraud prevention as a newcomer. A binary star is a system of two gravitationally bound stars that orbit a common center of mass called a barycenter. Stars in a binary system do not necessarily have the same mass, size or brightness. The larger star of a binary couple is called the primary star, while the smaller one is known as the secondary star or the companion star. Related: What are star clusters? Binary stars are double stars, but not all double stars are binary stars. This is because some double stars comprise two stars close enough in the sky over Earth to appear as a single point of light, but they are actually vastly separated in space and not part of a gravitationally bound binary systemthese are called optical doubles. Binary star FAQs What is a binary star? If a star is binary, it means that it's a system of two gravitationally bound stars orbiting a common center of mass. Are binary stars rare? No. It is estimated that around 85% of stars exist in binary star systems or systems with three or more stars. Single stars account for around 15% of all stars, but only 44% of stars that are similar to the sun are found with a binary partner, though this proportion is currently hotly debated . Did the sun used to be a binary star? Though the sun is currently a single star, research published in 2020 suggests that it could have once had a similar-size binary partner. Evidence for this theory comes from the fact that it would have been easier for binary stars to capture the Oort cloud , the shell of icy bodies that surrounds the outer limits of the solar system. In 2018 , a team of astronomers saw that the star HD 186302 is remarkably similar to the sun and could be our home star's stellar sibling or a "sun 2.0," with three other possible candidates highlighted. How common are binary stars? Unlike the sun , the vast majority of stars have a binary partner. The Australia Telescope National Facility estimates that up to 85% of all stars may exist in systems with two or three stars. So multistar systems are the norm, and binary systems are the most common multistar systems. The chance of a star having a companion seems to diminish with its size, according to the book " Transiting Exoplanets " (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Around 75% of high-mass O-, B- and A-type stars seem to be found in multiple-star systems, roughly half of all known F- and G-type sunlike stars are found with a companion, and just 25% of small M-type red dwarf stars are found in multistar systems. Binary star systems can also include systems containing a normal star and a stellar remnant, an object that forms when a star runs out of the fuel for nuclear fusion and collapses under its own gravity . These dense and compact star "corpses" can include white dwarfs , neutron stars and black holes . Especially ancient binary systems can contain two stellar remnants orbiting each other. Hubble Space Telescope provided the first ultraviolet-light images of the extended atmosphere of the giant star Mira and its nearby companion. (Image credit: Margarita Karovska (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and NASA) Who discovered binary stars? The first observations of double stars were made in the early 17th century, but the binary nature of these objects was revealed later, according to the University of Oxford. In 1767, astronomer and clergyman John Michell applied statistical principles to astronomy and studied the distribution of stars in the night sky . He determined that there were far more stars in pairs than could be accounted for if they were all randomly aligned, thus providing the first evidence for binary stars and star clusters . In his 1781 catalog of 80 star systems , astronomer Christian Mayer proposed that "these stars could be small suns revolving around larger suns." However, astronomer and composer Frederick William Herschel was not convinced that double stars were composed of stars in physically bound systems, so he set about measuring the distances to these systems, using the principle of parallax , the observed displacement of an object caused by the change of the observer's point of view. Herschel published his stellar catalog of 269 binary stars in 1782 and a second catalog of 434 more binaries in 1784. With the aid of his sister Caroline, Herschel observed the changes in the relative positions of these binary stars and published these observations in 1797. In 1803, he published a demonstration showing that these changes were the result of the stars existing in physical systems of mutual attraction, really bringing binary stars to the attention of the astronomical community. Different types of binary star systems An illustration of VFTS 352, a so-called contact binary, in which stars share stellar material. (Image credit: ESO/L. Calcada) The distances between stars in binary systems and their orbital periods differ considerably from binary to binary, and a system can be defined by these orbital distances. Stars in binary systems can have orbital separations equivalent to thousands of times the distance between Earth and the sun ; these are predictably called "wide binaries," according to "Transiting Exoplanets." (Cambridge University Press, 2010). There are also "close binaries." The stars in these systems are often so close that they can exchange material, with the star losing matter called the "donor star" and the star gathering that matter called the "accretor." (Accretion is the process by which matter is fed to a celestial body, like a star, white dwarf, neutron star or black hole.) Detached binaries are binary stars that do not exchange material. Semidetached binaries are stars in which some material flows from one star to the other. And contact binaries have stars so close together, their gaseous envelopes overlap. These latter stars may be in the process of merging, according to the book "Introduction to the Sun and Stars" (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Orbital distance and matter exchange are not the only ways to categorize binaries, however. According to the Australia Telescope National Facility , there are four types of binary star systems categorized by the methods used to detect them. Visual binaries A visual binary is a binary star system in which the stars can be individually seen as separate bodies in a telescope from Earth. For this reason, most visual binaries are star systems that are closer to Earth. They also tend to be wide binaries, as these factors make the stellar components easier to resolve. Because of the distance between them, the stars in visual binaries do not usually interact via the exchange of material. The brighter star of a visual binary is given the suffix "A," while the dimmer component is assigned the suffix "B." Spectroscopic binaries When a binary system is too distant, or when the stars are too close together, the stellar bodies cannot be resolved separately by a telescope as with visual binaries. However, astronomers can use a phenomenon called Doppler shift to distinguish the stars in these binary systems, which are called spectroscopic binaries. Doppler shift works because the wavelengths of light are shortened when a star is moving toward Earth, shifting it toward the blue end of the electromagnetic spectrum , while light from a star moving away from our planet has its wavelength stretched, or "redshifted." A binary system emits light that is the combined light output, or "spectra," from both of its stellar components. If star A is moving away from Earth and star B is moving toward us, or vice versa, the individual spectra of these stars can be resolved by their red or blue shift . As observations of this binary continue and the stars proceed in their orbits, this situation will be reversed: As star A begins to move toward Earth, its light is then redshifted, and as star B begins to move away from our planet, its spectrum is blueshifted. Spotting a spectroscopic binary relies heavily on several conditions being met. Most significantly, the orbital plane of the binary cannot be at a right angle to our line of sight, and the stars must not move across that line of sight because this stops the Doppler shift from being visible. The chance of spotting a spectroscopic binary is reduced if the stars of a binary system are low-mass or if they are widely separated and thus have a long orbital period that lowers the probability of catching one star moving away from us and the other moving toward us. The chance of seeing a star binary as a spectroscopic binary is also lowered if one of the stars is dim and thus makes little contribution to the combined light from the system. Despite these hindrances, most known binary star systems were spotted using their Doppler shifts. Eclipsing binaries Some stars demonstrate a periodic change in the magnitude of their brightness. This may be triggered when the star changes its intrinsic light output, as in the case of a pulsating variable star, or it could be because the star is a binary system viewed edge-on, meaning one star is periodically eclipsing the other. These are called eclipsing binaries. Eclipsing binaries can also fit into the two previously mentioned categories and are often so close together that they exchange material. Astrometric binaries A companion star in a binary system can have an effect on its partner other than altering its light output. Though the two stars orbit a common center of mass, an unseen star can gravitationally "tug" on the other. This causes a periodic "wobble" in the visible star's motion over time. The precise measurement of a star's motion and position is called "astrometry," so binaries spotted in this way are known as astrometric binaries. How do binary star systems evolve? Shells of cosmic dust created by the interaction of binary stars appear like tree rings around Wolf-Rayet 140 imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech) As mentioned above, in some binary systems, the stars are so close together that they exchange material. This mass transfer occurs when the radius of one star is not much smaller than the orbital separation between the stars. This can proceed in several ways, according to "Introduction to the Sun and Stars." One mechanism, called Roche-lobe overflow , is particularly important. Each star in a binary system is surrounded by a theoretical pear-shaped volume called a Roche lobe, the size of which is determined by the mass of the star. When a donor star, usually a giant one, fills its Roche lobe, material flows from it through a gravitationally stable point called an inner Lagrangian point to the accretion star often a white dwarf or other compact stellar remnant. As it enters the Roche lobe of the donor star, this matter still has angular material, so it can't go straight to the surface of the accretor. As such, it forms a stream of gas and dust on one side of the receiving star or an accretion disk from which it is gradually fed to the surface of the accretor star. With a contact binary, both stars have filled their Roche lobes with the more massive star, sending material to its smaller companion but also sharing brightness and temperature. Binary stars can also exchange material even if neither star fills its Roche lobe. This happens via stellar wind accretion, a process in which the accretor captures the stellar wind blowing from the donor star, usually a massive one. The exchange of mass between stars can have a significant impact on the evolution of these systems and their stellar components. For instance, in a binary system with two main sequence stars , when the more massive star runs out of nuclear fuel and puffs out as a red giant filling its Roche lobe, it starts transferring matter to the other star. As the matter is transferred, the red giant loses mass, causing its Roche lobe to shrink and driving the mass transfer to proceed faster. This can completely deplete the donor star's outer layers, leaving it as an exposed helium star on the path to becoming a white dwarf or a neutron star. This results in a binary system with a large main sequence star and a compact stellar remnant. This will not be the case forever, though. Eventually, after millions or even billions of years, the second star will also enter a red giant phase, filling its own Roche lobe, which causes it to start sending material to its white dwarf or neutron star companion. Because of the incredible density of these stars, when matter falls onto them, it releases a huge amount of energy that can trigger thermonuclear reactions at the surface of that compact stellar remnant. In some cases, the accretion of matter from a red giant to a white dwarf can cause it to blast out a Type Ia supernova or can push it over the mass limit needed to transform it into a neutron star. Do binary star systems host planets? Extrasolar planets, or exoplanets , are planets that orbit stars other than the sun. Binary systems can possess exoplanets in stable orbits , some of which are closer to one star in the binary and thus orbit that star much as Earth orbits the sun, in what is called a circumstellar orbit. Other exoplanets in binary star systems have more unusual orbits, looping both of the stars in that system. Exoplanets that orbit an entire binary system in this way are said to possess "circumbinary orbits." The first circumbinary planet discovered was PSR B1620-26 b, which was first hinted at in 1993 and was finally confirmed to exist in 2003 . This planet's circumbinary orbit carries it around a white dwarf and a neutron star located around 12,400 light-years from Earth. The advanced stellar evolutionary status of the stellar occupants of this exotic system means it is believed to be around 12 billion years old, making PSR B1620-26 b potentially the oldest exoplanet discovered thus far and earning it the nickname Methuselah after the biblical figure who lived to a remarkably old age. The first circumbinary planet discovered around a binary star young enough to still be burning hydrogen in its core, a so-called main sequence star," was discovered in 2011 . Called Kepler-16 b, it orbits a main sequence star smaller than the sun as well as a red dwarf. Astronomers aren't yet sure how existing in a binary star system would affect the habitability of a planet. In 2022, researchers looked at how habitable planets could possibly form in binary star systems . Focusing on a pair of young protostars still gathering the mass needed to trigger hydrogen fusion and become true stars in the binary system NGC 1333-IRAS2A, the team found that habitable planets could emerge around binaries but they would do so differently than those in single-star systems. This is because the complex behavior of young twin stars affects flattened clouds of planet-forming material around them called protoplanetary disks, distorting those disks with periodic outbursts of energy. Also more complex is the calculation of where a habitable zone in or around a binary star system would be for an exoplanet. The habitable zone is the area around a star that is neither too hot nor too cold to allow for the existence of liquid water on an orbiting planet's surface hence why it is often called the Goldilocks zone . This is tricky to estimate for binary star exoplanets because the distances between the planet and the stars change continuously more so than for planets on elliptical orbits around a single star. This means the amount of starlight received by these exoplanets can vary substantially, and thus so can their surface temperatures. In research conducted in 2007 , scientists concluded that 50% to 60% of binary star systems could form planets with the necessary conditions needed to support life. With the Milky Way packed with 100 billion star systems, there are potentially many planets where life could exist under the glare of two "suns," similar to the fictional planet of Tatooine as strikingly depicted in "Star Wars." Binary star expert Q&A We asked Vik Dhillion, Professor of Astrophysics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, some questions about binary stars. Vik Dhillon Social Links Navigation Professor of Astrophysics Vik Dhillon is a Professor of Astrophysics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield. Dhillon's primary research interests are in the field of close binary stars. How common are binary star systems? About half of all stars in the sky are binary! What happens during the development of a star system to create binary stars rather than a single star? Stars are typically formed in clusters of hundreds to thousands, and many of these form as binary stars during this process. Can binary systems break apart? Yes, if one of the stars goes supernova or if there is a close encounter with a third star. How does your work relate to binary star systems? I study close binary stars these are when the two stars in the binary system are separated by of order the diameter of the Sun (just over a million km). These are particularly interesting, as the closeness of the two stars means they can't evolve independently like single stars, and you get mass transferring between (and even merging of) the two star What is fascinating about these systems? Close binary stars are interesting because the mass transfer and/or merging results in some of the most exotic inhabitants of our universe, like supernovae and short gamma-ray bursts. It is in these types of objects that the heaviest elements in the Universe are formed. Additional resources A simulation shows how stars exchange material through a stable gravitational point via a process called Roche lobe overflow. Another simulation , created by NASA, shows what happens in a binary system that has evolved to the point at which both components are neutron stars. Bibliography Binary stars, Australia Telescope National Facility, [accessed 10/10/23], [ https://www.atnf.csiro.au/outreach/education/senior/astrophysics/binary_intro.html ] Types of binary stars, Australia Telescope National Facility, [accessed 10/10/23], [ https://www.atnf.csiro.au/outreach/education/senior/astrophysics/binary_types.html ] Multiple Star Systems, NASA, [accessed 10/10/23], [ https://universe.nasa.gov/stars/multiple-star-systems/ ] Binary star, Britannica, [accessed 10/10/23], [ https://www.britannica.com/science/binary-star ] Binary Stars, Philosophy of Cosmology, Oxford University, [ http://philosophy-of-cosmology.ox.ac.uk/binary-stars.html ] S.F. Green., M. H. Jones., Introduction to the sun and stars, Cambridge University Press, [2015], ISBN 978 1 107 49263 9 S. G. Ryan., A.J. Norton., Stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, Cambridge University Press, [2010], ISBN 978 0 521 13320 3 C. A. Haswell., Transiting Exoplanets: Measuring the properties of planetary systems, Cambridge University Press, [2010], ISBN 978 0 521 13938 0 BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. The Middle Corridor is a good example of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, Director of the Department of International Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of National Economy of Kazakhstan Yerzhan Abish told Trend. "The advantageous location of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan creates favorable conditions for making decisions aimed at increasing trade turnover and developing cooperation. This will allow both countries to derive significant benefits," he noted. "There is significant potential between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan in the sectors of trade, agriculture, industry and other sectors. There are good prospects for improving economic interaction," Abish added. Additionally, he noted that in 2022 the turnover between the countries amounted to about $500 million, which indicates the possibility of increasing this figure to $1 billion in the future. The representative of the Ministry of Economy also emphasized the successful development of energy cooperation between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. The Middle Corridor connects the networks of rail freight transportation of China and the European Union countries through the countries of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkiye and Eastern Europe. The Middle Corridor contributes to the increase of cargo traffic from China to Turkiye, as well as to European countries and in the opposite direction. A block train along this corridor delivers cargo from China to Europe in an average of 20-25 days, and this is one of the main advantages of this transport corridor. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. The opening ceremony of the Labor Center of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is taking place in Baku, Trend reports. The session has begun with the reading of the Koran verses. The event was opened by the Azerbaijani Minister of Labor and Social Protection Sahil Babayev with an introductory speech. The minister recalled that in April 2013, while receiving the heads of delegations from OIC member countries attending the II Conference of Labor Ministers in Baku, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev took the initiative to establish an OIC Labor Center with headquarters in Baku. The OIC member countries unanimously endorsed this initiative. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel However, speed of delivery was under constant review for improvement, and Amazon has announced it will start using drones to deliver parcels in the UK in less than an hour, starting in one yet-to-be-disclosed location at the end of next year. In fact, over the course of the past three decades, not only has Toyota been one of the leaders in the automotive field in terms of carbon emissions reduction across its vehicle offering, it has shared hundreds of royalty free licences, allowing others to use its electrification technology. The initial members of the new board have reportedly been tasked with expanding it to up to nine people, with Microsoft pushing to have a seat to ensure there are no further boardroom bust-ups in the AI firm to which it has committed to more than $10 billion in funding. Phoenix Groups Patrick Thomson, head of research and policy at Phoenix Insights said: State pensioners will welcome news that the government has committed to maintaining the triple lock without adjustments. The triple lock has been an important policy to ensure retirees income has kept pace with rising prices or increases in the working population's wages, and todays announcement means the state pension will rise by 8.5% next April. Recipients of the letter have until tomorrow by 3pm to respond. First bids to Goldman Sachs, handling the sale, are due at the end of the month but that deadline already looks likely to slip. The sales process has been paused to complete due diligence on the RedBird deal and the source of the funds. Trains will never compete with planes when it comes to speed over ultra-long distances. But they can win over and keep passengers by treating them better. Clearly, there is a trade-off between people and baggage at the margins. But if we want to encourage more people onto trains, operators must make it easier, not harder. As with previous years, All Points East is going to be held in Victoria Park in east London. There's lots of public transport options for festival goers. The closest Tube stations are Mile End and Bethnal Green. This means you can travel to the festival via the District and Hammersmith and City lines and the Central line. Detective Chief Inspector Kelly Allen who is leading the investigation said: While three men have now been convicted and sentenced for Ricardos murder, there is still work to be done as two others remain at large having fled abroad. The Metropolitan Police Service is offering a substantial reward of up to 20,000 for information leading to the location and extradition of Ahmed Sesay and Abubaker Tarawally who are both thought to have fled to West Africa. We know that these men will still be in contact with family and friends in the UK. There are people in the very community where Ricardo was killed who will know where those responsible are hiding. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Hissein Brahim Taha has called on all OIC member states to join the charter of the Labor Center, Trend reports. He spoke at the opening of the OIC Labor Center in Baku. According to Hissein Brahim Taha, the establishment of this facility will allow for the expansion of social and economic realms, education, and ICT (information and communication technologies). "We express our appreciation to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev for taking the initiative to establish the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Labor Center. This center will strengthen cooperation among OIC countries," the secretary general remarked. The inaugural ceremony of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Labor Center is taking place in Baku. President Ilham Aliyev initiated the establishment of the OIC Labor Center with headquarters in Baku in April 2013 while receiving the heads of delegations participating in the II Conference of Labor Ministers of OIC member states in Baku. This initiative was unanimously supported by the OIC member states. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel The police car which Fisher was driving did not have its blue lights on at the time because they had accidentally been switched off by one of the occupants, his trial at Southwark Crown Court heard. It is thought that some of those who had lost confidence in him were opposed to Mr Khans widening of the ultra low emission zone to the Greater London boundary in August. Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, he said: I am deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in our country, so I am announcing up to 7 million over the next three years for organisations like the Holocaust Educational Trust to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities. Beyond that point, the freezes are likely to continue to eat further into their incomes each year up to and including 2027/28, at which point they will be paying 249-a-year more in direct tax overall as a result of all the changes since 2021. If we can get some accommodation up there, keep these people safe these people want to be safe, theyre fleeing so-called persecution from these war-torn countries. If we can find an island in the Orkneys or up there thats got no-one on there to start off with, put some decent accommodation on, then its job done. Through a translator, he said: Today we are going to sign a historic Downing Street Accord and, as allies and as friends who have shed blood together in the Korean War, I believe that there is no other areas that we cannot further deepen our co-operation including economic partnerships, science and technology. But Mr Khan said of the Chancellor's annoucements: This Autumn Statement was an opportunity for the Chancellor to recognise the important role that London plays in creating jobs and growth across the UK, while providing vital support to Londoners with the ongoing cost of living crisis. Instead, what weve seen is another deeply anti-London budget. When it comes to tech, we know that AI will be at the heart of any future growth. I want to make sure our universities, scientists and start-ups can access the compute power they need, Mr Hunt said. If Sam Altman wasnt already the biggest name in Artificial Intelligence last week, he definitely is now. As boss of OpenAI, creators of Chat GPT, Altman leads a firm that has revolutionised how many people work and study and grapples with the moral questions around their tech. Last week, Altman was suddenly ousted from OpenAI by the board causing mutiny among staff and signed up with Microsoft to lead a competitor outfit. Then, just as suddenly, he returned to the top of OpenAI, pledging to work in tandem with Microsoft. But who is Altman, and what is he likely to do next? Arguably the most iconic Australian winery around, Penfolds is known for producing world-class wines, with a rich history dating back to 1844. Best known for its exceptional Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon, its flagship Grange is globally celebrated, with the 2017 vintage representing the pinnacle of the brands portfolio and considered a masterpiece of Australian winemaking. It has an inky, deep purple colour, a nose of dark plum, blackberry, espresso and spice, and a palate of profound fruit concentration and seamless tannins. At over 500 a bottle, you could consider this one an investment, especially given its exceptional ageing potential, sure to grow in complexity over the coming decades. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Yerevan is ready to participate in negotiations with Baku, Armenian Foreign Ministry responded to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's statement, Trend reports. According to the statement, Armenia reaffirms its political will to repair relations with Azerbaijan, as well as efforts to build peace and stability in the South Caucasus. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stated yesterday that Azerbaijan is prepared to hold bilateral talks with Armenia to expedite the signing of a peace treaty. "We believe that the two countries should decide together on their future relations," the Azerbaijani ministry noted. Azerbaijan and Armenia are responsible for the continuation of the peace process, including the choice of a mutually acceptable location or the decision to meet at the state border. "We call on the Armenian side not to allow new unnecessary delays and hope that it will respond positively to this challenge to start negotiations as soon as possible," the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said. 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Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Brenda Shaffer, faculty member of the US Naval Postgraduate School, foreign policy specialist, has strongly condemned anti-Azerbaijani statements voiced by Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Samatha Power, Trend reports. "Did you also speak to the 12,000 soldiers from Armenia and their family members (another 20,000) that were living in Karabakh? They probably were happy to go back home," Shaffer wrote on her page on X, as a response to the USAID Administrator's post about her meeting so-called "displaced" Armenians that left Karabakh. Meanwhile, Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan and Head of the Foreign Policy Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmet Hajiyev earlier said that there is no place for USAID's work in Azerbaijan any longer. "During 30 years long occupation of Azerbaijan's land by Armenia when millions more Azerbaijanis were subject to notorious and bloody ethnic cleansing the US stood with the aggressor state of Armenia. Nowadays, the same policy continues in the same form and manifestation," he said. 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According to a press release issued on Wednesday by the higher education institution, another 90 young people are added to them, who, in the first semester, chose UNITBV as a destination for study mobility within the Erasmus+ program, agerpres reports. The institution attracts high-achieving young people from outside the European area to study, through the Transylvania Academica Scholarship program, which it finances in full, some of the scholarship holders choosing to continue their doctoral studies also at UNITBV. They form, over time, a group of "ambassadors" who contribute to increasing its visibility at an international level."In recent years, Transylvania University of Brasov understood that internationalization represents a strategic tool for increasing the quality of academic processes, as well as visibility, gradually implementing a strategy to develop its international dimension. The results did not take long to appear: only in the last 4 years, the number of international students increased by over 50%. One of the significant ways of international promotion was intensifying collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with Romanian diplomatic missions abroad, for developing joint education, research or technical assistance, for promoting the Romanian language, culture and civilization," the press release reads.The most recent recognition of the efforts of Transylvania University in Brasov in the direction of internationalization is the entry as a full member of the UNITA alliance of European universities, together with 9 other prestigious universities from Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Romania, the management of the University of Brasov added. Ciolacu to Romanian Communism Conference: It is our duty not to allow the facts of the past to be distorted Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on Wednesday said that respect for and knowledge of history, and owning up to the past are elements on which a democratic society is founded and it is our duty not to allow the distortion of the facts of the past and to promote historical truth. "For four decades, Romania experienced an oppressive regime, oriented exclusively towards power and determined to eliminate any form of opposition. The communist regime was established and consolidated through terror, violence, through the use of fear as a means of mass manipulation, with our country becoming an isolated and punitive space. At the same time, the dark face of the repressive system hid behind a harsh reality, marked by suffering, humiliation, trauma, flagrant violations of fundamental rights and freedoms. The inhuman nature of the communist regime determined a huge number of losses to humanity, and the entire communist apparatus left strong traces in the collective psyche. Knowing and respecting history, but also accepting the past are elements on which a democratic society is founded. That is why, in addition to the moral duty we have towards all the innocent victims who lost their lives, and towards those who sacrificed themselves in the name of an ideal during the Revolution of December 1989, it is our duty not to allow the distortion of the facts of the past and to promote the historical truth," reads the message to the national conference "Romanian Communism", read out by Alexandru-Mihai Ghigiu, head of the Prime Minister's Chancellery. The message emphasises the importance of educating the young generations about what the communist regime meant and its consequences in order to develop a democratic consciousness, so that all these atrocities are no longer possible, and highlights the need to protect and promote fundamental rights and freedoms in the current context, marked by challenges and an intensification of extremist, xenophobic and racist phenomena. "By educating the younger generation about what the communist regime meant and about its consequences in order to develop a democratic consciousness; we make sure that all these atrocities will never be possible again (...). I want to reiterate the commitment of the Romanian government to the consolidation of memory policies, the promotion of historical truth, the development of research and education about communism. The fight against extremist, populist, racist and xenophobic currents, as well as historical revisionism, is a priority for the Government I lead." The conference, in its twelfth edition, an initiative of the National College for the Study of Securitatea Archives (CNSAS), in partnership with the Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER), the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History and the University of Bucharest, was hosted by the government. Minister of Foreign Affairs Luminita Odobescu had a meeting on Wednesday at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) headquarters with the President of the Senate of the Czech Republic, Milos Vystrcil, on a visit to Bucharest. The discussions focused on bilateral relations, Romania's accession to the Schengen area, the security situation and EU enlargement. According to a press release, Minister Luminita Odobescu underlined the good level of Romanian-Czech relations, highlighting the traditional bond of friendship and solidarity between the two countries and the close cooperation at EU and NATO level, agerpres reports. Odobescu also referred to the Romanian community in the Czech Republic and the Czech minority in Romania, mentioning the special bilateral ties between the two countries. In this context, the minister welcomed the support of the Czech authorities in keeping alive the memory of the Romanian soldiers who died in the Second World War in the battles for the liberation of Czechoslovakia.At the same time, the Romanian official thanked the Czech Republic for its firm support for Romania's efforts to join the Schengen area and the OECD.The two officials also discussed the EU enlargement process, expressing their support for Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Georgia."The exchange of views between the two officials also focused on issues of central interest to the security agenda, such as the security situation in Israel and the Gaza Strip, as well as Romania's and the Czech Republic's strong support for Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova," the MAE added.The President of the Senate of the Czech Republic, Milos Vystrcil, is visiting Bucharest accompanied by a delegation of the Upper House of the Parliament in Prague. Gaudeamus Radio Romania Book Fair kicks off 30th editition on Wednesday, Nov 22 The Gaudeamus Radio Romania Book Fair, now in its 30th edition, opens its doors on Wednesday in the Central Pavilion of the Romexpo Exhibition Complex, with the participation of important Romanian authors like Ana Blandiana, Andrei Plesu, Ioana Parvulescu, Horia-Roman Patapievici, Armand Gosu, Radu Paraschivescu, as well as the Deputy General Secretary of NATO, Mircea Geoana, who are all launching new books. Gaudeamus 30 will have the renowned writer, literary critic, university professor and publicist Ion Bogdan Lefter as its honorary president, who is one of the most enthusiastic and constant friends of the fair, alongside names established for decades in the Romanian publishing landscape. There will be both publishing houses that have already gained a well-deserved notoriety, as well as new projects at the beginning of the road. Thus, almost 200 participants will offer more than 500 publishing events, a varied range of books, suitable for all ages and fields of interest, music and educational games. The Gaudeamus Radio Romania Book Fair is a cultural project financed by the Ministry of Culture. President Klaus Iohannis visited on Wednesday Goree Island, off the coast of Senegal, a UNESCO heritage site and former outpost for the slave trade. On this occasion, the head of state had a meeting with local officials, visited the "Maison des Esclaves" and the Mariama Ba Boarding School, agerpres reports. "We cannot change history, but we can learn important lessons from it and the sad, inhuman and immoral history this place has had must inspire us, politicians, to get involved, to learn from this sad past to build a much better future for the people and perhaps, the most important thing to learn from this is that we have to get involved and fight for human rights, because we are all equal and, in the same way, I believe it is extremely important to learn to respect each other, because it's not enough to consider ourselves equal, we have to consider and respect each other. I wish you to preserve this monument of a sad history and through those who visit you to succeed to build a brighter future for your community, for the African community," said the president, after visiting the Slave House, according to images published by the Presidential Administration. President Klaus Iohannis received a pilgrim's diploma on the island of Goree from local officials.The head of state has been on an official visit to Senegal since Tuesday. Klaus Iohannis ends Thursday his tour in Africa, which began on November 13 with a state visit to Kenya. The head of state has also paid state visits to Tanzania and Cape Verde.President Klaus Iohannis will be received on Thursday by his Senegalese counterpart, Macky Sall. He will also attend the inauguration of the United Nations House in Senegal and the opening of the exhibition "Traditional African Masks - Traditional Romanian Masks", organised in cooperation with the Romanian Peasant Museum. The Ministry of European Investments and Funds (MIPE) is launching, on Wednesday, in public debate, the Emergency Ordinance that regulates the National Investment Program in the infrastructure of hospital units, with an allocation of 10 billion RON, for the period 2024-2030, the ministry announced. The emergency ordinance regulates the necessary measures for creating a legislative framework that will allow potential beneficiaries to promote projects, so as to ensure access of the entire population to essential medical services, increase the quality of life and reach the standards of European countries, agerpres reports. The program benefits from a total budget of 10 billion RON, which will be secured including from loan contracts with credit institutions or domestic or international financial institutions and will be managed at the level of the Ministry of Investments and European Projects. Regarding the investment categories, they aim at the creation of new constructions and their equipment, modernization/rehabilitation and equipment works, as well as expansion to existing constructions, including connection works to existing buildings and equipment. Investments aimed exclusively at the purchase of equipment are not eligible.The evaluation of financing requests will be carried out between May 15, 2024 and August 15, 2024. The approval of the Government Decision regarding the list of projects proposed for financing will be done in September 2024, and the signing of the financing contracts in October 2024. PM Ciolacu: Finance Minister to present plan of measures on tax agency digitisation The Finance Minister will present on Thursday a plan of measures for taxation and the National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) digitisation, aimed at a better collection to the state budget, said Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. He was asked Wednesday at a press conference at the Buzau County Council headquarters about a report by Moody's financial agency according to which Romania will record a deficit of 6% of the GDP in the next two years by applying the new pension law next year. "Let's see the measures that the Finance Minister will present on Thursday on digitisation on certain structural portions and the deadlines that the entire team at ANAF will assume. We have been working for almost a month now with President Nicolae Ciuca, we both got involved and we made a plan for the next period. I will come together with Chairman Nicolae Ciuca with a legislative amendment, the two of us being the initiators, in the area of tax evasion. All these things will help collection," said Marcel Ciolacu. The prime minister pointed out that the time has come for everyone to pay taxes. "If they don't understand the nice talk, we will have the legislation, this time very well put in place, so that they can do it or choose what they want to do," the premier said. In the context, he stressed that a decision on the proposal put forward by the Finance Minister that citizens who report other citizens to be tax evaders or other companies to receive bonuses will be taken only after being discussed within the governing coalition. He pointed out that he wants to maintain the partnership with National Liberal Party (PNL) Chairman Nicolae Ciuca in making important governmental decisions. PM Ciolacu: Romania will not enter default next year Romania will not enter default next year, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said on Wednesday. He was asked at a press conference held at the Buzau County Council headquarters about the fact that, according to estimates, Romania will have to pay 45 billion lei in interest on loans next year. "Why don't you ask Citu, why didn't you raise your voices when he made debts of 9.2% of the GDP? Do you somehow think that those debts are not to be paid? Will any prime minister or some president of Romania come and say: "Don't be upset, I have nothing to do with what they have done." Why didn't Romania see it when a reckless man took the country to this area? (...) Yes, those debts have to be paid and we have prepared and will budget so as to avoid default. With the buffer that is now at the National Bank and at the Ministry of Finance, because we have the largest buffer, there is no risk of having default next year," said Ciolacu. The prime minister attended, on Wednesday, at the Buzau County Council headquarters, the signing of the last works contract for Lot 3 of the Ploiesti - Buzau section of the A7 Motorway (Moldavia Motorway). BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Russia has repeatedly invited Armenia to take part in trilateral negotiations with Azerbaijan, Spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing, Trend reports. Invitations were sent to the Armenian side in September, October, and November to hold trilateral meetings with Azerbaijan, both in Moscow and on the sidelines of multilateral events, she emphasized. Zakharova noted that the Russian side "has still not received clear answers from Armenia to the invitations". "Yerevan is eager to negotiate in Washington and Brussels, although neither the US nor the EU can be considered honest brokers for several reasons. Their actions target pushing Russia out of the South Caucasus," the official stated. "They want to destroy existing security mechanisms while stealing and distorting trilateral agreements reached with Moscow's participation. Therefore, their mediation can bring no real benefits." "Yerevan's naive gamble on the West's assistance has failed. Despite existing invites, peace treaty negotiations [with Azerbaijan] are stalled," she added. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel Scheduled events for Nov 22 PRESIDENCY: - President Klaus Iohannis is paying an official visit to the Republic of Senegal ECONOMY: - The Ministry of European Projects and Investments organizes the event themed: "Digitalization and good practices in e-government" SENATE - The President of the Senate, Nicolae Ciuca, participates in the Foreign Investors Summit EDUCATION: - Google launches the "The Girls Code" project, part of the Breaking Barriers initiative, carried out in partnership with the Adfaber Association; the head of the European Commission Representation in Bucharest, Ramona Chiriac, the Minister of Education, Ligia Deca, the deputy head of the National Cyber Security Directorate, Manuela Catrina, the rector of Politehnica Bucharest, Mihnea Costoiu, are participating CULTURE: - Gaudeamus Radio Romania book fair, XXX edition (November 22 - 26) Who were Missouris indigenous tribes in 1621, when Pilgrims shared a thanksgiving feast with the Wampanoag of Massachusetts? The Osage were here, yes, and so were other tribes, including the Ioway, Otoe, Missouria, Quapaw, Chickasaw and Illinois Confederacy. Many would have ceremonies for everything from planting corn to storing it, says Greg Olson, author of the new book, Indigenous Missourians. So definitely in the fall, when the harvest came in, and they could put food away for the winter, they would have celebrated it in some way, he says. But there was no meal with white settlers: They hadnt encountered any in this area, yet. Still, Native lives would change relatively quickly. Just after the 200th anniversary of the famous Plymouth repast, Missouri was an official state in these United States. Indigenous people were being moved off the land. By 1839, it was illegal for Native people to live in Missouri without federal permission. And 300 years after the early documented thanksgiving, many of the descendants of Missouris Osage owned land in Oklahoma, where some were millionaires from oil found on the reservation and lived in fear that theyd be murdered for their wealth, as told in the Oscar buzzworthy film Killers of the Flower Moon. A 12,000-year history of the Native Americans who lived in what today is termed Missouri includes some of North Americas earliest inhabitants. Indigenous Missourians tells the story of one of the worlds biggest cities a millennia ago, the invasion of white settlers, broken treaties and the tragic Trail of Tears. But Missouris native population never really disappeared although many think it did, according to Olson. Even though we imagine ourselves not to be Indian Country, we are. Histories intertwined Olson has studied and written about Indigenous people for decades. For 18 years, he was curator of exhibits and special projects at the Missouri State Archives in Jefferson City. With his sixth book, subtitled Ancient Societies to the Present, he interweaves Native history and state history, with some particularly original research after the Civil War. In his books preface, he writes: Natives have only appeared in the annals of Missouris past when they presented a significant challenge or obstacle to settler colonialists hunger for land and natural resources. Once many were successfully deported to Kansas, Nebraska and the Indian Territory in the 1830s, and no longer signified a threat to the states white settlement, Natives completely disappeared from Missouris story. The forgotten history of Indigenous people who did live in Missouri over the past 170 years means non-Native people have no concept of Indigenous residents or only vague knowledge of the history of colonialism, he writes. For his book, he includes about 100 pages of notes, previous histories, sources and index. Although not of Indigenous ancestry himself, Olsons research led to a feeling of admiration for the resilience shown by Indigenous peoples and optimism about Missouris Indigenous future. Tribe members are buying land in the state, he says. A lot of those nations want to have relationships with their homelands, he says. Some protect or plan to inter ancient remains here because this is where their ancestors lived. Killers of the Flower Moon The first recorded meeting of white explorers with area Natives was in 1673 during Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliets travels down the Mississippi River. Olson (who doubts earlier Spanish explorers made it all the way into Missouri) does note that Native people here already had European goods theyd received by trading with Europeans in the Great Lakes area. At the time, the Missouri area probably had tens of thousands of Native Americans, with individual towns numbering in the hundreds. The towns were often semi-permanent, located near rivers and fields. Hunters would travel west a couple of times a year to hunt buffalo, Olson says. The Osage (Olson calls tribes in Missouri the Great Osage and Little Osage) as we think of them likely lived in Missouri from the 1500s. They covered a lot of land, the author says. They had claimed most of the southern half of Missouri, northern Arkansas and a lot of Oklahoma and Kansas. Osage were essential to the new town of St. Louis, founded by Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau. Had the Osage not been such good hunters, St. Louis would not have thrived like it did as a trading post. The 18th-century history of white settlers and the Osage in Missouri draws some interesting parallels with the new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon. In the movie, set mostly in the 1920s, white men are appointed as guardians for Osage residents in Oklahoma who became millionaires from oil money. Other men prey on the Indigenous people and marry into wealthy families to extract more resources. Some of the women are then murdered for their money. One of St. Louis founders, Chouteau, worked especially closely with Osage hunters and trappers. He and his family meddled in Osage politics, Olson says, to help give power to the men friendliest to them. Chouteau also took Native wives, who bore him children, and he enslaved some Native people. Like the movie, the history of the Chouteau-Osage interactions show that white men treated Indigenous people in a paternal manner, Olson says. Whites always assumed Native people couldnt take care of their own business. We saw ourselves as parents to their alleged child-like nature. But we werent benevolent. Trading posts and merchants in the Missouri territory would charge Natives for goods more than they did whites (as they also do in the Killers of the Flower Moon movie). So one reason Native tribes would later agree to sell land is to get out of debt, Olson says. Recognizing tribes We are kind of an anomaly, Olson says of Missouri. Most states still have federally recognized tribes within them. A few, including Missouri, along with some of its border states, such as Arkansas, Kentucky. Illinois and Tennessee, do not. The big tribal groups were moved out, but there were thousands of people who stayed behind individually or in family groups, Olson says. Because living in Missouri after 1839 was illegal for most Native Americans, many may have denied their heritage, he says. After 1870, was the first year you could claim to be a Native American on the census. But only about 50 people in Missouri owned up to it. But I knew there were more people because I heard all this oral tradition. Descendants of Native people have told him how they remember that, say, a grandmother would never talk about their heritage. Because of the removal in the 1830s, we have always seen ourselves as a state that did not have an indigenous population. To this day, we dont see ourselves that way. Some people will say, I dont see any Indians around. But according to the current (2020) census, there are about 27,000 in Missouri. Others say there are even more. (About 3% of Missouris 6.15 million people reported on the census that they were entirely or partly American Indian or Alaskan Native.) The book details more contemporary history of native peoples in Missouri. For example, in 1956, the Bureau of Indian Affairs opened an office in St. Louis to recruit native people to live in the urban area, saying they would not be dumped but carefully relocated and integrated into the community. Relocated people often found factory or service jobs but faced housing discrimination. A social club, the All-American Indian Club, was formed in 1958, but two years later the voluntary relocation office closed. About 450 of 1,800 relocated people stayed. The ones who left cited reasons from crime to humidity, but most left because of discrimination. Olsons book also goes into detail about the difficulties of some people with native ancestry unable to enroll in officially recognized tribes while others claim fraudulent ties. Olson concludes, however, that the fact remains that thousands of Missourians are unenrolled descendants of Cherokee or of ancestors of other Indigenous tribes. He points to the Osage purchase of much of Sugarloaf Mound in St. Louis and attempt (although failed) to purchase Picture Cave in Warren County to show Native interest in reclaiming some of their homeland. Twenty acres of land in Lafayette County belongs to Osage, who protect burials there. Although Olson acknowledges that it is difficult to imagine Missouri would ever again be the domain of Indigenous people, he is clear that its Native residents did not vanish in the 19th century. ST. LOUIS COUNTY The yearly Thanksgiving surge is on again at St. Louis Lambert International Airport, and officials expect visitors for the November holiday period will exceed pre-pandemic totals for the first time. The federal Transportation Security Administration projects more than 200,000 departing passengers going through screening at Lambert during the 11-day Thanksgiving travel period starting last Friday. That would be about 8% more than last years total for the same period and slightly higher than the 198,649 logged in 2019, shortly before the pandemic. Increases in arriving and connecting passengers are expected to track similarly, Lambert officials say. Sunday again is expected to be the busiest day, with nearly 24,000 projected to move through Lamberts TSA checkpoints. It looks like its going to be kind of a repeat of ... last year, Lambert spokesman Roger Lotz said. Sunday following Thanksgiving is like a monster. Tuesday and Wednesday (before Thanksgiving) are really heavy as well. Daniel Velez, a TSA spokesman, said TSA officers here were screening an average of 17,500 people a day from last Friday through Monday, ahead of last years pace. On Sunday, TSA is projecting an estimated 2.9 million passengers nationally, which would narrowly exceed a record set on June 30. Velez said 3 million is a possibility. Meanwhile, AAA is forecasting an uptick in Thanksgiving travel of all types, predicting that 55.4 million Americans will go at least 50 miles from home between Wednesday and Sunday. That would be 2.3% above last years total and the third-highest number since the auto club began tracking holiday travel in 2000, with 2005 and 2019 as the top two years. As usual, the most road traffic is expected on Wednesday. Gas prices are down across the country since last Thanksgiving, according to AAA. The average price for regular on Tuesday on the Missouri side of the St. Louis metro area was $2.98 a gallon, compared with about $3.12 a year ago. The Missouri statewide average was $2.91, down from $3.25 in 2022. In Illinois, the statewide average dropped to about $3.47 a gallon from about $4 last year. The national average was $3.30 on Tuesday and $3.66 the same day last year. Some travelers undoubtedly are hoping there wont be a repeat of the Christmastime chaos that hit Lamberts dominant carrier, Southwest Airlines, last year. Severe winter storms knocked out thousands of flights and left millions of passengers stranded, including at Lambert. Many planes, pilots and flight attendants were trapped out of position and its crew rescheduling system bogged down. Southwest officials say they have since bought additional deicing trucks and heating equipment and will add staff at cold-weather airports depending on forecasts. The company also has said it has updated its crew scheduling technology. As for this week, the National Weather Service was predicting daytime highs here the next few days in the 40s and 50s, with a chance of rain Saturday night and Sunday. But weather could snarl air and road traffic in some parts of the country. A storm system was expected to move from the southern Plains to the Northeast on Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing possible thunderstorms, sleet and snow. Parts of Maine, Vermont and northern New Hampshire were expected to get 3 to 7 inches of snow between Tuesday night and Wednesday. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday that the government tried to better prepare for holiday travel over the past year by hiring more air traffic controllers, opening new air routes along the East Coast and providing airport grants for snowplows and deicing equipment. Mother Nature, of course, is the X factor in all of this, he said. The Associated Press contributed to this report Photos: Thanksgiving week at Lambert International is back on par with pre-pandemic trends DELLWOOD A Florissant woman was killed here early Wednesday when a driver fleeing a traffic stop crashed into her car, police said. Ferguson police just before 4:30 a.m. tried to pull over a 2010 Mercedez Benz C300 that was speeding north on West Florissant Avenue, the department said. The vehicle did not stop, and two minutes later the car was spotted in the QuikTrip parking lot at 10768 West Florissant Avenue. The driver, 21-year-old Jarrad Dubose, exhibited erratic behavior before driving off south on West Florissant, failing to stop for police again, according to charging documents. About a half-mile away, Dubose hit 56-year-old Alisa Ruffins 2017 Chevrolet Cruze at West Florissant Avenue and Champlin Drive. Ferguson police Chief Troy Doyle on Wednesday afternoon said the crash happened less than 40 seconds after the second attempted stop and that the officer was following Dubose at the time. The intersection of the crash is on the border of Dellwood and Ferguson. Wednesdays deadly crash is the latest caused by St. Louis-area drivers fleeing police, an issue that has long been at the center of heated debates about police pursuits. At least 13 people have been killed during police chases in the last year and a half, including several who were not involved in the pursuits. According to police data, 229 drivers have driven off from attempted traffic stops in Ferguson so far this year a drastic increase from the 80 that Ferguson police officers had seen at this time last year. Doyle said he does not know what is causing the increase. I know our agency is not the only one going through this, Doyle said. The whole region is going through it, and somewhere down the line we have to stop blaming law enforcement for these incidents and put the blame on the individuals who are causing these tragic incidents take place in our community. Dubose ran from Wednesdays crash but was later arrested and remained in custody Wednesday. Prosecutors charged him with four felonies: DWI resulting in death, DWI resulting in injury, leaving the scene of an accident and resisting arrest by fleeing. He was on probation, according to court records, for two third-degree domestic assault charges and one charge of unlawfully using a weapon. His passenger, an 18-year-old woman from Florissant, was seriously injured and taken to Barnes Jewish Hospital. Police provided medical aid to Ruffin, but she was pronounced dead at the scene. State police will handle the investigation into the accident, and Doyle said his department will review dash and body camera footage to determine if the officer violated any policies. The officer involved was not put on leave. We extend our deepest sympathies to the family of the individual who tragically lost their life, he said in a statement. The safety and well-being of our community are paramount, and we are dedicated to comprehensive investigations and maintaining the highest standards of law enforcement professionalism. The crash site is about 500 feet from where a 2-year-old was killed in April 2022 when a car fleeing St. Louis County police crashed into his familys car. Following several deadly chases last year, the local NAACP chapter called in a federal mediator to facilitate discussions between the organization and both city and county police departments, hoping to set parameters for when police chases are warranted. Police spokespeople and St. Louis NAACP President Adolphus Pruitt told the Post-Dispatch in April they are close to reaching an agreement. Doyle on Wednesday said Ferguson polices pursuit policy is much stricter than the countys. In April, a Bellefontaine Neighbors man was charged with murder after investigators said he led police on a chase and crashed into another car, killing the driver. A few months later, in September, three 15-year-old boys died Sept. 6 in University when they failed to make a curve in the road and crashed into a vacant home following a brief police pursuit. Police chases by St. Louis County police officers were up 300% through the end of March, compared with the same period last year, according to department data. The increase has fallen to 75% through the end of October. Doyle said he planned to release camera footage to the public after his departments investigation. WASHINGTON, Mo. A Hermann, Missouri, police officer who was injured in a fatal shooting earlier this year returned home Tuesday. Adam Sullentrup, of Washington, has spent several months in a Colorado hospital, where he has received intensive rehabilitation therapies following a shooting that killed fellow officer Detective Sgt. Mason Griffith. Sullentrup and Griffith were dispatched to the Caseys General Store in Hermann in March to arrest Kenneth Lee Simpson, 34, for multiple outstanding warrants from Franklin and Warren counties. Simpson opened fire on the two officers instead, severely injuring Sullentrup, who was shot in the head and his side. Simpson was arrested following an hourslong standoff in a Hermann home. He was charged with first-degree murder, two counts of armed criminal action and first-degree assault. Sullentrup, who arrived at St. Louis Lambert International Airport on Tuesday evening, received an emergency vehicle escort from the airport to his hometown of Washington. The escort traveled along Interstate 70 to Interstate 270 and then to Interstate 44. The escort then traveled west on I-44 until Highway 100 at Villa Ridge in Franklin County and continued on Highway 100 into Washington, where dozens of well-wishers gathered to welcome Sullentrup home. Photos: Hermann police officer buried in hometown JEFFERSON CITY A campaign to legalize abortion in Missouri next year remained in question Tuesday as activists gauged possible support from national groups and struggled to come up with an initiative to unify behind. Any successful ballot question would cost millions of dollars. The timeline will be tight supporters must submit roughly 170,000 signatures to the secretary of state by May 8 to make the August or November ballots. And while the Missouri Supreme Court finalized the wording of six ballot initiatives on Monday, activists will have to settle on which proposals to pursue. For any campaign to move forward, it will have to assess whats possible on this timeline, said Mallory Schwarz, director of Abortion Action Missouri. The Supreme Court on Monday turned down Secretary of State Jay Ashcrofts attempt for the high court to consider ballot summaries he wrote. Lower courts had already rejected Ashcrofts proposals the Western District Court of Appeals called them replete with politically partisan language. The Supreme Courts decision put the issue squarely back in the hands of activists hoping to get an issue on the ballot next year. But activists have been divided on the specifics so far. Five of the six measures approved Monday would allow the state to restrict abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy or fetal viability; one plan would not have any such limit. Some activists support the least restrictions possible. One opposes viability limits altogether. And a separate effort, with six other ballot initiatives still being considered in court, is focused on legalizing abortion through just 12 weeks of pregnancy. That effort has already begun collecting signatures. Tom Bastian, spokesman for the ACLU of Missouri, didnt answer a question Tuesday about whether signature collection would begin now that the Supreme Court settled the ballot language. The courts repeated rejection of the Secretary of States arguments verify that his case has no legal bearing but, instead, shows he will sacrifice Missourians constitutional rights to gain the support and funding of special interest organizations to advance his political career, he said in an email. Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri opposes viability limits altogether, Julie Lynn, spokeswoman for the local Planned Parenthood chapter, said Tuesday. And Schwarz, the Abortion Action chief, said her group supports the most expansive measure possible in 2024. She said the threat to a true abortion rights access campaign has been state leadership hellbent on denying people the fundamental right to democracy. Jamie Corley, director of the Missouri Women and Family Research Fund, is leading the campaign for a 12-week limit. Her plan would also allow abortion before fetal viability in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal abnormality or risk to the health or safety of the female. She said her group believs the 12-week plan was the only realistic abortion initiative that has a chance of reaching the ballot in 2024. Abortion Action Missouri is campaigning on other issues, she noted: The group has lent a hand to a separate effort to raise the states minimum wage and guarantee sick days to workers the groups foundation on Oct. 27 wrote a $41,000 check to the minimum-wage campaign. The organization has also recruited on its website paid canvassers for the minimum-wage effort. Ive seen them signal to the press and to the public that there is still a viable campaign at play, and yet were seeing them coalition-build for an entirely different campaign, Corley said. She said it was disappointing that other groups are putting up such resistance to the 12-week campaign in public and private without offering a realistic alternative, and even more so actively moving on from their abortion initiative work. Schwarz responded that Jamie Corley may not be able to do two things at once, but Abortion Action Missouri certainly can. Abortion Action Missouri supporting the minimum-wage campaign is part of the essential work of building a broad coalition that an abortion access campaign will require. Schwarz said internal disagreements had not contributed to the lack of a campaign among those in favor of a more expansive approach. ST. LOUIS For the first time in more than a decade, three tiger cubs have been born at the St. Louis Zoo. The Amur tiger cubs, who were born on Nov. 13, represent a species that is considered one of the most endangered big cats in the world, with fewer than 500 left in the wild, zoo officials said in a statement announcing the birth. The cubs and their 5-year-old mother, Reka, will remain outside of public viewing for the next several months to allow time for the cubs to grow large enough to navigate their outdoor habitat at the zoo. The cubs father, Maxim, an 11-year-old tiger who came to the zoo in 2022 from Indianapolis, can be seen by the public in his habitat at Big Cat Country. In the coming weeks, the cubs will receive their first well-baby check by the Zoos Veterinary Care team, zoo officials said in a statement. The zoo will announce the name of the three cubs following the health check-up. The zoos animal care team is using cameras to watch Reka and her three cubs. Reka, who moved to the St. Louis Zoo from Connecticut in 2021, is described by zoo officials as an attentive mom, who is cleaning, feeding the cubs and keeping them warm. Additional updates about the tiger cubs can be found online at stlzoo.org/TigerCubs. The tiger cubs and their parents are Amur tigers, a species of tigers that once lived throughout much of Siberia and the surrounding region of Russia. The species has faced high risk of extinction in the wild due to habitat loss, poaching, human-wildlife conflict and other factors. The species was once called Siberian tigers by zoologists and members of the public. However, because of their smaller numbers, the species is no longer found in Siberia and are not typically called by that name. Their new name comes from the Amur River in eastern Russia, along the border between Russia and northeastern China. The verdict is in on the U.S. Supreme Courts new standards of ethical conduct released last week: Court watchers in the media and elsewhere have mostly declared them weak and incomplete but better than nothing. We have to disagree. This cynical ploy by the court to get everyone to just shut up about its blatant ethical lapses, already while not actually doing anything concrete to address those lapses is in fact worse than nothing. Thats because the new rules (we use that word loosely) will give the justices undeserved cover from criticism without offering any enforcement mechanism whatsoever. Worse, they completely ignore the towering imperative of forcing recusal in cases where justices have obvious personal conflicts of interest. Its clear from the courts patronizing, dismissive announcement of the new standards that the justices only instituted them so they could say they did, in hopes the national conversation just moves on. It shouldnt. This courts near-record-low public approval ratings these days (theyve hovered around 40% for the past few years) is likely the result of several factors. The courts transparently partisan right-wing political agenda which has led it to concoct convoluted legal theories designed to reach predetermined conclusions on abortion, guns and more is disqualifying in itself to many Americans. Others havent forgotten that the current conservative majority was installed in part by Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnells underhanded manipulation of the appointment process when he led the Senate under former President Donald Trump. For such an ideologically compromised court to cling to any legitimacy at all, its members behavior on nut-and-bolts ethics issues, at least, must be above reproach. But on that front, too, this court has failed. As the world recently learned via ProPublica and other media, Justice Clarence Thomas has spent decades accepting (and failing to disclose) dozens of luxury vacations provided by well-connected billionaires, in addition to boarding school expenses for a close relative. Justice Samuel Alito took a trip via private jet to an Alaskan fishing lodge, courtesy of a hedge fund mogul with business before the court. Then Alito penned an indignant essay in The Wall Street Journal slapping away any suggestion of impropriety. Then there was the disclosure that Justice Sonia Sotomayors tax-funded staff has routinely shilled her books to libraries and universities, activities that would be barred for anyone in government other than a Supreme Court justice. Worse than any of this is the fact that the justices arent required to recuse themselves from cases in which they have clear conflicts of interest, such as Alitos relationship with the above-mentioned hedge fund mogul. The new standards dont change that. The most indefensible example of this problem is Thomas stubborn refusal to recuse himself from cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by supporters of Trump. This despite the fact that Thomas wife, right-wing activist Virginia Ginni Thomas, was a major player in White House efforts to spread the big lie of a stolen election that preceded the insurrection. The reason the justices were able to get away with these and other ethical violations is that the judicial rules of conduct that apply to every other judge in the country dont apply to them. These nine jurists are, in essence, individually self-policing in their conduct. What could go wrong? The new code of conduct, self-imposed by the court to head off brewing congressional action, would frown upon most of the recently revealed ethical lapses by the justices. But it wouldnt assertively prevent any of them because, astonishingly, the new standards include no enforcement mechanism. What, then, is the point? Its to dispel this misunderstanding that the justices regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules, according to a statement signed by Chief Justice John Roberts and the eight associate justices. That statement, typical of the arrogant tone Roberts and his colleagues have taken every time the ethics issue comes up, says all there is to say about how seriously the court views that issue: Not at all. As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., aptly noted regarding the toothless new standards: The honor system has not worked for members of the Roberts Court. Whitehouse and others in Congress say they will continue pursuing binding ethics standards for the court. Yes, that effort raises unsettling issues regarding the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches. But in releasing this insulting sham of a conduct code, the court has made clear it has no intention of cleaning its own ethical house. For the sake of the courts very legitimacy, someone has to do it. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov met with a delegation headed by Leo Docherty, Deputy Secretary of State for Europe in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said, Trend reports. During the meeting, the sides exchanged views on bilateral and regional cooperation between the two countries, as well as international security. Minister Jeyhun Bayramov, emphasizing the importance of Azerbaijan's multifaceted relations with the UK, touched upon the possibilities of further strengthening the existing partnership between the two countries in the political, economic, energy, security, and humanitarian spheres and noted the importance of intensifying political dialogue in terms of identifying new areas of cooperation. The sides also exchanged views on the cooperation between the two countries in the fields of transportation, education, and renewable energy, as well as on the possible activities of UK companies in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Azerbaijan's territories liberated from Armenian occupation. The Minister also informed Leo Docherty about the current situation and realities in the region, the large-scale reconstruction and construction work carried out in the territories liberated from occupation, the mine threat hindering this activity, as well as Azerbaijan's plans to establish a stable peace in the South Caucasus region and the practical steps taken in this direction, the agenda of normalization of relations with Armenia. At the meeting, the sides exchanged views on new areas of cooperation and other topics of mutual interest. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel Economist Melissa Kearney discusses her new book 'The Two Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind" with host Lynn Schmidt, a columnist and St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board member. They also talk about why society needs to work to strengthen families and increase rates of marriage, for our childrens sake as well as the sake of our communities. Regarding the letter to the editor "Pentagon abortion policy protects womens autonomy" (Nov. 15): The writer was not accurate in saying the Pentagon policy merely allows military members to travel to states where abortion services are allowed. The issue is the Secretary of Defense's memo to the service secretaries and uniformed chiefs is a policy that requires funded government travel for those service members. This could be in conflict with federal law, which prohibits the federal funding for abortion. That's the point of Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville holding up military promotions. Regarding "St. Louis County libraries to hand out opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan" (Aug 31): Missouri has won $458 million as part of a settlement with Johnson & Johnson and other opioid distributors. This large sum is meant to directly aid addiction prevention and treatment programs. But how exactly should this money be spent? Looking to St. Louis County libraries may offer inspiration. St. Louis County libraries are offering free Narcan, an opioid-reversal nasal spray, across all county library branches. This type of community-based harm reduction is a research-backed approach to reducing the harmful effects of drug use. Choosing accessible, local sites such as libraries to distribute Narcan not only increases the availability of opioid-reversal drugs but also sends a powerful message challenging the stigma around addiction. Given the influx of money from the opioid settlements, organizations receiving grants should be asking: How can we involve community organizations in the opioid response? Offering free Narcan in accessible locations is a great place to start. It is crucial to identify community settings, such as public libraries, that serve as welcoming, safe spaces that destigmatize addiction. Missouri has been given the chance to lead by example in its response to the opioid crisis. Investing in community-based harm reduction not only offers the opportunity to save lives but also to foster strong systems of support within our communities. Carly Bambrick St. Peters TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / IC Capitalight Corp. (CSE:IC) ("Capitalight" or "the Company"), announces the resignation of Marc Johnson as Chief Financial Officer ("CFO") and as a Director of the Company, and the appointment of Bryan Loree as Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Johnson has been CFO and a Director of Capitalight since 2019 and is leaving to concentrate on his duties as CFO of NextSource Materials Inc. The Company would like to thank Mr. Johnson for all of his work over the years and wish him the best in his future endeavors. Capitalight is pleased to announce the appointment of Bryan Loree as CFO effective immediately. Bryan Loree is a Director of the Company and is also a former CFO of Capitalight. Mr. Loree holds a CPA, CMA designation, a Financial Management Diploma from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and a BA from Simon Fraser University. ABOUT IC CAPITALIGHT CORP. IC Capitalight Corp. operates as a merchant bank that pursues value-based investment opportunities in accordance with its internal investment policies. The Company provides shareholders with long-term capital growth by investing in a portfolio of private company investments and mineral exploration properties that are expected to generate positive cash flows. The company is listed on the CSE under the symbol "IC." To learn more about the Company please visit http://www.capitalight.co For further information contact: +1.866.653.9223 or [email protected] SOURCE: IC Capitalight Corp. View source version on accesswire.com: GEORGETOWN, GUYANA / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / In a historic development, the Government of Guyana, alongside the Guyana Innovation Group (GIG) and the University of Miami, has announced a transformative agreement for developing the Masterplan for Silica City. This pioneering urban project, designed to become a future city for the nation, is positioned on an 11,000-acre area near the Guyana International Airport. President Irfaan Ali (President of Guyana), Julio Frenk (President UoM), Dr. Felicia Knaul, Dean Rodolphe el-Khoury (UoM), Professor Jose Gelabert-Navia (UoM), Rodrigo Veloso (co-founder Guyana Innovation Group) and other representatives Conceived by the University of Miami's School of Architecture, the Masterplan will integrate advanced technology, sustainable practices, and a vibrant lifestyle, symbolizing a new era in city design. Silica City aspires to be a model of sustainability, resilience, and futuristic thinking. President Irfaan Ali's vision for Silica City reflects his administration's commitment to the welfare and sustainable future of Guyana. Guyana, the fastest-growing economy globally, is on a path of modernization and sustainable growth. Following the inauguration of the Innovation Village in Georgetown in September 2022, Guyana's strategic initiatives continue to advance. The Innovation Village will become a central feature of Silica City, marking Guyana's transition to the forefront of the information age, encompassing elements of industrial, digital, biomedical, and Artificial Intelligence sectors. The Guyana Innovation Village has attracted interest from global corporations, eager to collaborate and invest in Guyana. GIG's efforts have drawn attention from the DAR Group, UMusic Hotels, a renowned international Logistics Company, Alder Fuels, OEC, and various MIT Centres. Innovation Village introduces "innovation districts," an urban model promoting synergies between public and private sectors, academia, and NGOs, to foster societal change. Leveraging technologies like blockchain, AI, and big data, these districts aim to nurture local talent and innovative solutions. A highlight is the inclusion of an all-electric motorsports, and water circuits, emphasizing innovation and sustainability. GIG is in discussions with global tech companies to develop the framework for Silica City, aiming to establish it as a leader in smart city technology. Rodrigo Arboleda Halaby, co-founder and Chairman of GIG, emphasized the transformative impact of the Silica City Masterplan. Co-founder Rodrigo Veloso highlighted Guyana's potential and business-friendly environment. Bashar Rihani, Director of the DAR Group, expressed enthusiasm for supporting Silica City and the Guyana Innovation Group. Ahead of COP 28 in Dubai, GIG has explored cities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar for insights applicable to Guyana. The Silica City Masterplan aims to set a new standard in sustainable urban planning, showcasing the collaborative spirit of Guyana, Guyana Innovation Group, and the University of Miami. Contact Information Rachel Green Public Relations [email protected] Related Images President Irfaan Ali (President of Guyana), Julio Frenk (President UoM), Dr. Felicia Knaul, Dean Rodolphe el-Khoury (UoM), Professor Jose Gelabert-Navia (UoM), Rodrigo Veloso (co-founder Guyana Innovation Group) and other representatives Technical meeting led by His Excellency President Irfaan Ali Minister of Housing and Water Collin David Croal, Minister within the Ministry of Housing and Water Susan Rodrigues and the planning and development team SOURCE: Guyana Innovation Group View source version on accesswire.com: JACKSONVILLE, FL / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / ParkerVision, Inc. (OTCQB:PRKR) (the "Company") has received a request from OTC Markets Group Inc. ("OTC Markets") to issue a statement about recent promotional activity concerning the Company and its common shares. On November 20, 2023, OTC Markets notified the Company of certain promotional material encouraging investors to trade the Company's common stock. The material was in the form of an email communication distributed by ThePennyStockPros.com on November 20, 2023, and includes false and misleading statements regarding receipt of media support and payments from the Company, or parties under contract with the Company, to publish and/or distribute advertisements on behalf of the Company. The Company had no knowledge of the promotional material until notified by OTC Markets Issuer Compliance Team. The Company and/or its officers were not involved, directly or indirectly, with the creation, distribution, or payment of the promotional material. The Company is unable to determine if this material had any impact on the trading activity of the Company's common stock. As required by the OTC Markets Promotion Policy the Company, after inquiry of management, its officers, directors, any controlling shareholders (defined as shareholders owning 10% or more of the Company's securities), and its service providers, confirms the aforementioned parties have not, directly or indirectly, been involved in any way with the creation, distribution, or payment of promotional materials related to the Company and its common stock. The Company approves the activities and content of all public relations and investor relations activities carried out by our inhouse and contracted staff, and in doing so, will continue to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), FINRA and OTC Market guidelines. In the last 12 months, the Company has contracted with two service providers for investor relations, public relations, marketing or other related services. These providers include Intro-Act, engaged to provide artificial intelligence (AI) supported shareholder awareness and corporate access services from June 2021 through March 2023, and Anthony Vignieri, engaged on a contract basis since June 2020 as the Company's communications director. As required by the OTC Markets Promotion Policy the Company, after inquiry of management, the directors, control persons, and its service providers, has determined that none of the Company, its officers, directors, any controlling shareholders, or any service providers have sold or purchased the Company's securities within the past 90 days, except as disclosed in the Company's public filings available on EDGAR or through the Company's website. The OTC Markets, as part of its OTC Markets Promotion Policy, has requested that the Company state whether it has issued any shares or convertible instruments allowing conversion into equity securities at prices constituting a discount to the current market price at the time of issuance. As disclosed in its public filings available on EDGAR or through the Company's website, the Company has from time to time issued shares or convertible instruments allowing conversion into equity securities at prices constituting a discount to the then-current market rate. Please refer to the Company's most recent Form 10-Q for the period ended September 30, 2023, filed with the SEC on November 14, 2023, for a full list of convertible instruments and share issuances. About ParkerVision ParkerVision, Inc. invents, develops and licenses cutting-edge, proprietary radio-frequency (RF) technologies that enable wireless solution providers to make and sell advanced wireless communication products. ParkerVision is engaged in a number of patent enforcement actions in the U.S. to protect patented rights that it believes are broadly infringed by others. For more information, please visit www.parkervision.com. (PRKR-I) Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included or incorporated in this press release are forward-looking statements. The Company does not guarantee that it will actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in its forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results could vary materially from these forward-looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by its forward-looking statements, including those important factors set forth under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 and disclosures in the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2023, June 30, 2023, and September 30, 2023, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the Company may elect to do so at some point in the future, the Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statement and it disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Contact: Cindy French Tony Vignieri Chief Financial Officer Communications Director [email protected] [email protected] ### SOURCE: ParkerVision, Inc. View source version on accesswire.com: TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / PJX Resources Inc. ("PJX" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the closing of the previously announced (see November 14 and November 21, 2023 press releases), and oversubscribed, non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") of 21,610,038 units through the issuance of 13,816,422 Flow Through Units at a price of $0.105 per Flow Through Unit and 7,793,616 Non-flow Through Units ("Unit") at a price of $0.09 per Unit for total proceeds of $2,152,150. Each Flow-through Unit consists of one common share to be issued as a "flow-through share" within the meaning of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the "Flow-through Shares") and one common share purchase warrant. Each Unit consists of one common share and one common share purchase warrant. Each warrant, whether acquired as part of a Flow-through Unit or Unit, entitles the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.20 for 24 months following completion of the Offering. Subject to TSXV Exchange approval, Finders' fees of $30,337.20 cash and 291,709 Finders' Warrants will be paid in relation to the completion of the Offering. The Finders Warrants will entitle the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of $0.20 for 24 months following completion of the Offering. The securities issuable in connection with this Offering will be subject to a hold period in Canada which will run for four months from the date of the closing of the Offering. John Keating, President of PJX commented: "The strength in demand for this financing reflects the significance of what we recently discovered. Our discovery of boulders with Sullivan deposit style and grade of mineralization may be the most compelling evidence of the potential to discover another Sullivan type deposit in 130 years since the Sullivan was discovered in 1892. (see news releases Oct 12 and Nov 14)." Additional analyses are pending. These results will be compiled with recent mapping, prospecting, and other data to prepare maps with geological cross sections for presentation in January. PJX plans to commence drilling as soon as the snow recedes which is expected to occur in late Spring, 2024. The completion of the Offering may constitute a related party transaction within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 ("MI 61-101") as certain insiders of the company participated in the Offering. The Company is relying on the exemptions from the valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 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 offering by insiders did not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of the company, as determined in accordance with MI 61-101. The Company also made the Offering available to subscribers who receive suitability advice from a registered investment dealer in accordance with applicable prospectus exemptions in certain Canadian jurisdictions. The Company confirms that there is no material fact or material change about the Company that has not been generally disclosed. The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering for expenditures on its properties located in Cranbrook, British Columbia, and for general working capital. The gross proceeds from the issuance of the Flow-through Shares shall be used to fund exploration expenditures on the Cranbrook Properties, with a focus towards exploration on the Dewdney Trail Property. Flow through units will qualify as Canadian exploration expenses (as defined in the "Income Tax Act (Canada)"). The Offering has received conditional approval from the TSXV Exchange. About PJX Resources Inc. PJX is a mineral exploration company focused on building shareholder value and community opportunity through the exploration and development of mineral resources with a focus on gold, silver, and critical metals including copper, zinc, cobalt, cadmium, indium, and others. PJX's primary properties are road accessible, close to power, rail, and located in the historical mining area of Cranbrook and Kimberley, British Columbia. Please refer to our web site http://www.pjxresources.com for additional information. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Linda Brennan, Chief Financial Officer (416) 799-9205 [email protected] Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements in this news release, referred to herein as "forward-looking statements", constitute "forward-looking statements" under the provisions of Canadian provincial securities laws. These statements can be identified by the use of words such as "expected", "may", "will" or similar terms. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of factors and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by PJX Resources Inc. as of the date of such statements, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, known and unknown, could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Except as otherwise required by law, PJX Resources Inc. expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in PJX Resources Inc.'s expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based. Cautionary Note to US Investors: This news release may contain information about adjacent properties on which PJX Resources Inc. has no right to explore or mine. We advise U.S. investors that the SEC's mining guidelines strictly prohibit information of this type in documents filed with the SEC. U.S. investors are cautioned that mineral deposits on adjacent properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on our properties. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. This press release may use the terms "Measured", "Indicated", and "Inferred" resources. United States investors are advised that while such terms are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission does not recognize them. "Inferred Mineral Resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an Inferred Mineral Resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of Inferred Mineral Resources may not form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. United States investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of Measured or Indicated Mineral Resources will ever be converted into Mineral Reserves. United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of a Mineral Resource is economically or legally mineable. Neither the 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. SOURCE: PJX Resources Inc. View source version on accesswire.com: GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA (SIX:RLF)(OTCQB:RLFTF)(OTCQB:RLFTY) (Relief, or the Company), a biopharmaceutical company committed to delivering innovative treatment options for select specialty, unmet and rare diseases, today announced that its current chief executive officer (CEO), Jack Weinstein, will be stepping down as part of a leadership transition. The company is pleased to announce that Michelle Lock, a highly experienced pharmaceutical executive and current independent member of Relief's Board of Directors, will be assuming the role of CEO on an interim basis. "Michelle has been an active and insightful member of our Board of Directors. Her deep understanding of our organization and her extensive leadership experience in both biotech and big pharma settings make her an ideal leader for Relief. We are excited to have Michelle continue on the Board of Directors and step in as our new CEO." said Raghuram (Ram) Selvaraju, Chairman of the Board of Directors. "I want to extend our gratitude to Jack for his dedication and the important contributions he made over the years." added Dr. Selvaraju. Ms. Lock previously held executive roles as chief operating officer of Covis Pharma Group and senior vice president and head of Europe and International at Acceleron Pharma Inc. She has nearly 30 years of biopharmaceutical strategic, operational and commercialization experience and spent 24 years with Bristol-Myers Squibb. Her appointment as interim CEO of Relief is effective immediately. In response to her appointment, Ms. Lock commented, "I am honored to step into the role of CEO of Relief. This company has a strong legacy of bringing significant value to patients, and I am excited to lead our talented team as we continue to advance our pipeline. I am committed to driving our company on a path of innovation and enhanced patient impact." The Company is looking forward to a new chapter under Michelle Lock's leadership. ABOUT RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Relief Therapeutics is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to advancing treatment paradigms and delivering improvements in efficacy, safety, and convenience to benefit the lives of patients living with select specialty and rare diseases. Relief Therapeutics' portfolio offers a balanced mix of marketed, revenue-generating products, our proprietary, globally patented Physiomimic" and TEHCLO" platform technologies and a targeted clinical development pipeline consisting of risk-mitigated assets focused in three core therapeutic areas: rare metabolic disorders, rare skin diseases and rare respiratory diseases. In addition, Relief Therapeutics is commercializing several legacy products via licensing and distribution partners. Relief Therapeutics' mission is to provide therapeutic relief to those suffering from rare diseases and is being advanced by an international team of well-established, experienced biopharma industry leaders with extensive research, development and rare disease expertise. Relief Therapeutics is headquartered in Geneva, with additional offices in Balerna, Switzerland, Offenbach am Main, Germany and Monza, Italy. Relief Therapeutics is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the symbol RLF and quoted in the U.S. on OTCQB under the symbols RLFTF and RLFTY. For more information, please visit our website www.relieftherapeutics.com or follow Relief Therapeutics on LinkedIn and Twitter. CONTACT : RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA Jeremy Meinen Chief Financial Officer [email protected] Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Relief to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. A number of factors, including those described in Relief's filings with the SIX Swiss Exchange and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), could adversely affect Relief Therapeutics. Copies of Relief Therapeutics' filings with the SEC are available on the SEC EDGAR database at www.sec.gov. Relief Therapeutics does not undertake any obligation to update the information contained herein, which speaks only as of this date. SOURCE: RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA View source version on accesswire.com: TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / November 22, 2023 / Star Royalties Ltd. ("Star Royalties", or the "Company") (TSXV:STRR)(OTCQX:STRFF) is pleased to report its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2023. All amounts are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise indicated. Q3 2023 Financial and Corporate Highlights Quarterly revenues of $271,567, representing a 44% increase over the prior quarter due to improved mineral sands sales at Keysbrook. Quarterly net loss of $277,408 included a $251,851 foreign exchange-driven equity gain from the Green Star Royalties Ltd. joint venture (" Green Star "). "). Green Star's flagship regenerative agriculture carbon farming program was officially listed under Verra's Methodology for Improved Agricultural Land Management, v2.0 (VM0042) (" Verra ") and is currently proceeding to third-party validation. ") and is currently proceeding to third-party validation. The recently announced Copperstone gold stream restructuring improved the Company's balance sheet and enhanced the project's economics and funding options. MOBISMART Mobile Off-Grid Power & Storage Inc. ("MOBISMART") continues to expand sales volumes and their customer pipeline. Alex Pernin, Chief Executive Officer of Star Royalties, commented: "During the third quarter of 2023, our team continued to work diligently to position both Star Royalties and Green Star for upcoming success. Keysbrook performed in-line with internal expectations, and we restructured Copperstone's stream to achieve a 400% increase in exposure to its life-of-mine production profile and significant exploration potential, while converting a portion of its value into immediate and near-term cash and securities. Green Star's flagship regenerative agriculture program continues to advance and has now entered the third-party validation phase under the Verra registration process. Lastly, but importantly, we continue to actively evaluate capital raising opportunities to be well positioned to begin transacting on Green Star's expanded pipeline of carbon investments." Summary of Q3 2023 Financial Results Quarter ended Sept. 30, 2023 Quarter ended Sept. 30, 2022 Revenue $ 271,567 $ 334,192 Net loss (277,408) (276,496) Basic and diluted loss per share (0.00) (0.00) Cash flow (used in) from operating activities (99,563) 58,180 Cash flow (used in) from investing activities - (44,019) Cash flow from financing activities - - For complete details, please refer to the Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements and associated Management Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended September 30, 2023, available on SEDAR+ at sedarplus.ca or on the Company's website at starroyalties.com. Significant Portfolio Updates Keysbrook Mine In the third quarter of 2023, royalty revenues from Keysbrook were $245,194, roughly in-line with operator's budget, and higher compared to the prior quarter due to increased mineral sands sales in the period, reflecting the variability inherent in bulk-shipped products. Elk Gold Mine Gold Mountain Mining Corp. ("Gold Mountain") (TSX:GMTN),(OTCQB: GMTNF),(FRA:5XFA) continued ore mining operations and deliveries to New Gold Inc. (TSX, NYSE American: NGD) during the third quarter. The third quarter royalty payment from the Elk Gold Mine declined to $26,373 compared to $52,801 in the previous quarter, primarily due to lower ore shipments by Gold Mountain. For its quarter ended July 31, 2023, Gold Mountain reported total gold sales of 965 ounces gold and generated total revenue of C$2.2 million from the Elk Gold Mine. Revenues from the Elk Gold Mine were also affected by a lower average gold grade delivered as a result of negative grade reconciliation during the period. Gold Mountain reported in its fiscal quarter outlook in September that it is overcoming its operational challenges and it anticipates transitioning into a steady state of production during the remainder of 2023. In particular, Gold Mountain reported that it is looking to improve the accuracy of grade forecasting, as well as leverage improved data collection/analysis, drilling and blasting designs, and sampling techniques to reduce the volatility of future operating results. In addition, Gold Mountain has stated that it is looking to initiate technical and economic studies required for the permit expansion from 70,000 tonnes of ore mining per year to 324,000 tonnes of ore mining per year in 2024. Copperstone Gold Project On September 14, 2023, Sabre Gold Mines Corp. ("Sabre Gold") (TSX:SGLD),(OTCQB: SGLDF) announced the sale of its Brewery Creek Project and other certain mineral assets in the Yukon to Victoria Gold Inc. ("Victoria Gold") (TSX:VGCX) for an aggregate consideration of C$13.5 million. Following the end of the quarter, on October 3, 2023, Star Royalties entered into a non-binding agreement with Sabre Gold to restructure its existing gold streaming agreement on the Copperstone Gold Mine ("Copperstone"). The Copperstone gold stream restructuring closed on October 31, 2023, where the stream was revised from 6.6% of gold produced with production-based step-downs to a flat 4% of gold produced for the duration of Copperstone's life-of-mine. Under the terms of the streaming agreement, Star Royalties will continue to provide a cash payment to Sabre Gold equal to 25% of the spot gold price for each ounce of gold delivered. As part of the restructuring, additional consideration of C$4.55 million will be paid by Sabre Gold to Star Royalties in a combination of cash and Victoria Gold shares received from Sabre Gold's sale of its Brewery Creek Project. On November 1, 2023, Star Royalties received the first tranche of its additional consideration, consisting of C$1.55 million in cash and 7,407,407 Sabre Gold shares at a price of C$0.135 per common share of Sabre Gold, equating to C$1 million in Sabre Gold shares at the time. As a result, Star Royalties is currently a 9.4% shareholder of Sabre Gold. Additional information on the terms of the restructuring and its rationale can be found in the Company's press releases dated October 3 and November 2, 2023. The Company believes that the new structure of the Copperstone gold stream is a positive development in that it improves the Company's balance sheet, enhances project economics, and improves the long-term optionality on Copperstone's exploration and production potential. Green Star Joint Venture (61.9% interest) During the third quarter of 2023, Green Star continued to advance its investment pipeline of premium North American, nature-based carbon offset projects. In addition, management was focused on progressing the evaluation of private-market capital raising opportunities that would allow Green Star to make future investments in regenerative agriculture, improved forest management, reforestation, livestock enteric methane reduction, grasslands, biochar, and other category types. Green Star will look to transact on several of these projects upon completion of an eventual capital raise. Voluntary Carbon Market Update Green Star is committed to funding premium North American, nature-based solutions in both the compliance and voluntary carbon markets. Carbon credit pricing in Green Star's focus markets remains robust and at near-peak levels, which is in stark contrast to pricing for lower-quality credits that have been subject to several negative news articles. Green Star expects the bifurcation of the voluntary carbon market to continue, with higher quality projects in premium jurisdictions garnering increasing premiums from domestic emitters, while projects that do not meet integrity and quality benchmarks likely to attract lower demand and pricing. The overwhelming theme in the voluntary carbon market for much of 2023 has been about ensuring project quality and carbon credit integrity. During New York Climate Week, industry leaders called upon corporations to act now and unlock the required supply of high-integrity carbon credits. Given the current undersupply of these credits, their associated pricing premiums could outperform other carbon assets, well positioning Green Star with its strategic focus on North America and nature-based solutions positions for success in a quality-driven voluntary carbon market. Looking into 2024, further voluntary carbon market developments are anticipated from two main initiatives: The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market ("ICVCM") and the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative ("VCMI"). During the third quarter of 2023, both VCMI and ICVCM commenced working groups to facilitate an industry-wide understanding of quality. VCMI launched the VCMI Stakeholder Forum to ensure that its guidance is well designed, easy to understand, and effective. The Forum will provide feedback on the Claims Code of Practice, released in June 2023, to provide clear guidance when voluntary carbon credits can be used as a part of an emissions reduction strategy and to provide clarity on the claims that can be made regarding the use of carbon credits. Following early market reaction that the code is too restrictive, VCMI has publicly indicated the next release, expected in late November, will provide additional flexibility for better use case options. ICVCM released the first part of the Core Carbon Principles ("CCP") and the Program-Level Assessment Framework and Assessment Procedure, followed by the Category Assessment Framework later in the year. The CCP label is intended to be assigned to carbon credits of high integrity, quality, and transparency, while the frameworks are designed to assess which categories of carbon credits (i.e., energy, forestry, waste management, etc.) are aligned with the CCP and, consequently, are of high integrity and could receive CCP labels. Green Star anticipates CCP-labelled credits will trade at a premium and will allow companies using these carbon credits to make credible claims about their net-zero commitment while eliminating reputational risks. The first set of fast-tracked credit categories is expected to be announced in early 2024. Other notable developments: Carbon-crediting programs such as Verra can now apply for CCP assessment. Once assessments are complete, programs deemed to be CCP-eligible will be able to issue CCP-labelled credits from CCP-Approved categories of carbon credits. California passed a bill related to voluntary carbon markets. Bill AB1305 (Voluntary Carbon Market Disclosures) will require buyers and sellers of voluntary carbon credits to disclose specific information about carbon projects on their website, or face fines. This bill reflects the growing focus by regulators to ensure transparency on transactions in carbon markets. Regenerative Agriculture Carbon Farming Program Green Star's flagship regenerative agriculture CarbonNOW farming program is a partnership with Anew Climate LLC ("Anew") and Locus Agricultural Solutions ("Locus AG"). The CarbonNOW program was officially listed under Verra's Methodology for Improved Agricultural Land Management, v2.0 ("VM0042") on September 19, 2023, under the "Anew Agri-carbon Aggregation 1" project (ID 4236). The project's 30-day public consultation period was completed in October and the project is now transitioning to its validation phase with the engagement of a third-party validation and verification body. In parallel, Green Star continues to engage with Anew and Locus AG to ensure the project is optimized for maximum carbon offset generation as well as to ensure maximum alignment between all involved parties. While VM0042 v2.0 has introduced additional conservatism, including revisions to buffer pool requirements and statistical uncertainty discounts, Green Star continues to expect to generate cash flow equivalent to well over 400,000 attributable carbon credits per year at the program's full scope of 1.32 million acres. MOBISMART Green Star owns a 2.5% gross revenue royalty on MOBISMART, a private operating company that specializes in mobile solar power and fuel cell generation systems with integrated battery storage and diesel displacement capabilities. In early 2023, MOBISMART transitioned from research and development to commercialization, and became Green Star's first cash flowing asset. During the third quarter of 2023, MOBISMART significantly increased solar unit sales to North American customers that are building out their wind LiDAR fleets. In addition, MOBISMART has continued to expand its fuel cell offerings using higher powered cells to further penetrate the telecommunication markets across North America. MOBISMART expects that this higher power spectrum will accelerate the adoption of its products in decarbonizing the telecom sector, as evidenced by a current engagement with a major US telecom company to pilot its products as power backup systems for cell towers in California and Texas. CONTACT INFORMATION For more information, please visit our website at starroyalties.com or contact: Alex Pernin, P.Geo. Dmitry Kushnir, CFA Chief Executive Officer and Director Vice President, Investor Relations [email protected] [email protected] +1 647 494 5001 +1 647 494 5088 About Star Royalties Ltd. Star Royalties Ltd. is a precious metals and carbon credit royalty and streaming company. The Company innovated the world's first carbon credit royalties in forestry and regenerative agriculture through its majority-owned, pure-green joint venture, Green Star Royalties Ltd., and offers investors exposure to precious metals and carbon credit prices. The Company's objective is to provide wealth creation by originating accretive transactions with superior alignment to both counterparties and shareholders. CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION Certain statements in this news release may constitute "forward-looking statements", including those regarding future market conditions for metals, minerals and carbon offset credits. Forward-looking statements are statements that address or discuss activities, events or developments that the Company or Green Star expects or anticipates may occur in the future. When used in this news release, words such as "estimates", "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "will", "believes", "intends" "should", "could", "may" and other similar terminology are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are made based upon certain assumptions and other important factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performances or achievements of Star Royalties and Green Star to be materially different from future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Forward-looking statements should not be read as a guarantee of future performance or results and will not necessarily be an accurate indication of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors could cause actual results, performances or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, changes in business plans and strategies, market and capital finance conditions, ongoing market disruptions caused by the Ukraine and Russian conflict, metal and mineral commodity price volatility, discrepancies between actual and estimated production and test results, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries, mining operation and development risks relating to the parties which produce the metals and minerals Star Royalties will purchase or from which it will receive royalty payments, carbon pricing and carbon tax legislation and regulations, risks inherent to the development of the ESG-related investments and the creation, marketability and sale of carbon offset credits by the parties, the potential value of mandatory and voluntary carbon markets and carbon offset credits, including carbon offsets, risks inherent to royalty companies, title and permitting matters, operation and development risks relating to the parties which develop, market and sell the carbon offset credits from which Green Star will receive royalty payments, changes in crop yields and resulting financial margins regulatory restrictions, activities by governmental authorities (including changes in taxation), currency fluctuations, the global, federal and provincial social and economic climate in particular with respect to addressing and reducing global warming, natural disasters and global pandemics, dilution, risks inherent to any capital financing transactions, risks inherent to a possible Green Star go-public transaction, the nature of the governance rights between Star Royalties and Agnico Eagle Mines Limited in the operation and management of Green Star and competition. These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should exercise caution in relying upon forward-looking statements and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, except as required by law. SOURCE: Star Royalties Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com: OLDWICK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating (Long-Term ICR) of a+ (Excellent) of Farmers New World Life Insurance Company (FNWL) (Bellevue, WA). At the same time, AM Best has affirmed the FSR of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICR of a (Excellent) of Farmers Reinsurance Company (Farmers Re) (Woodland Hills, CA). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. The ratings of FNWL reflect its balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM). The ratings also recognize the continued strategic value that FNWL provides to its ultimate parent, Zurich Insurance Group Ltd. FNWLs ratings are supported by its risk-adjusted capitalization being maintained at the very strong level, as measured by Bests Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), a history of positive operating earnings, and material contributions to the overall group from new business value and operating profits. The companys previously announced reinsurance agreement with Resolution Life Group Holdings Ltd. will allow a strategy shift going forward, enabling it to focus on a simplified product portfolio that is easier to sell and has shorter cycle times. The ratings of Farmers Re reflect its balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate ERM. The ratings also reflect the companys strategic importance to Zurich Insurance Group Ltd. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Bests website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Bests Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Bests Credit Ratings, Bests Performance Assessments, Bests Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Bests Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2023 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122077565/en/ Thomas Keelan Financial Analyst +1 908 882 1925 [email protected] Edin Imsirovic Director +1 908 882 1903 [email protected] Christopher Sharkey Associate Director, Public Relations +1 908 882 2310 [email protected] Al Slavin Senior Public Relations Specialist +1 908 882 2318 [email protected] Source: AM Best BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov has briefed the UK's Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) Leo Docherty on the current situation and realities in the region, the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan told Trend. The ministry said that Bayramov also informed the UK official about extensive restoration and construction efforts on Azerbaijan's liberated territories, the mine threat impeding these efforts. Besides, the minister shared Azerbaijan's plans for establishing stable peace in the South Caucasus region and practical steps taken in this direction, as well as the agenda of normalizing relations with Armenia. Elsewhere, he highlighted the importance of Azerbaijan's multifaceted relations with the UK and discussed opportunities for further strengthening the existing partnership in political, economic, energy, security, and humanitarian spheres. Bayramov also emphasized the significance of intensifying political dialogue to identify new directions for cooperation. Docherty is on an official visit to Azerbaijan. Prior to that he visited Georgia and Armenia. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel AMSTERDAM--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of a (Excellent) of MS Amlin Insurance SE (MS AISE) (Belgium). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. The ratings reflect MS AISEs balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management. In addition, MS AISEs ratings benefit from lift due to the support of its ultimate parent, MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings, Inc. (MS&AD). AM Best expects MS AISEs risk-adjusted capitalisation, as measured by Bests Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), to remain at least at the very strong level. The balance sheet strength assessment also factors in the companys conservative investment risk exposure and strong liquidity profile. A partly offsetting rating factor is MS AISEs moderate dependence on reinsurance. However, the associated credit risk is mitigated by the use of a financially strong and diverse reinsurance panel. The company has achieved a robust underwriting performance over the four past years (2019-2022), following corrective actions. In 2022, MS AISE recorded a combined ratio of 97.1% (2021: 94.9%), as calculated by AM Best, supported by disciplined underwriting and rate increases. For the first half of 2023, MS AISE recorded a combined ratio of 94.9% (based on companys internal IFRS 4 accounting), in line with its guidance target. MS AISE is a mid-tier commercial specialty carrier with gross written premium of EUR 983 million in 2022 (EUR 869 million in 2021), covering a diversified book of property/casualty and marine businesses. The company has a recognised brand and a market position that is supported by its association with MS&AD. The carrier also benefits from good market expertise and a strong position in a number of niche markets. MS AISEs ratings also consider its strategic importance to MS&AD as the groups vehicle to write primary business in continental Europe. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Bests website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Bests Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Bests Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Bests Credit Ratings, Bests Performance Assessments, Bests Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Bests Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2023 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122378638/en/ Konstantin Langowski Senior Financial Analyst +31 20 308 5431 [email protected] Mathilde Jakobsen Senior Director, Analytics +31 20 308 5427 [email protected] Christopher Sharkey Associate Director, Public Relations +1 908 882 2310 [email protected] Al Slavin Senior Public Relations Specialist +1 908 882 2318 [email protected] Source: AM Best LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of B (Fair) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of bb (Fair) of National Insurance Company (NIC) (Jordan). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. The ratings reflect NICs balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, limited business profile and marginal enterprise risk management. NICs balance sheet strength is underpinned by its risk-adjusted capitalisation at the strongest level, as measured by Bests Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), supported by moderate internal capital generation and underwriting leverage. The balance sheet strength assessment factors in the companys good level of liquidity, with bank deposits and fixed income securities covering net technical provisions by 107% at year-end 2022. Partially offsetting rating factors include NICs exposure to the high financial system risk associated with Jordan, where NICs investments are held, the companys small capital base, which exposes its risk-adjusted capitalisation to potential volatility, and its moderate dependence on reinsurance for writing large limit risks. Although the company has a dependence on reinsurance, the associated credit risk is mitigated partially through the use of a reinsurance panel of strong credit quality. NIC has a track record of adequate operating performance, with a five-year (2018-2022) weighted average return-on-equity ratio of 5%. The company took a number of corrective measures in recent years in response to weak technical performance in 2018 on its medical and motor portfolios. In 2022, NIC reported a non-life combined ratio of 97.4%, better than its five-year weighted average of 102.5% (2018-2022). Operating earnings have been supplemented historically by generally modest investment income, reflecting the companys relatively conservative investment portfolio. AM Best expects NICs profitability to support adequate operating results prospectively. NICs limited business profile assessment reflects the companys relatively small size and concentration to Jordans very competitive medical and motor insurance markets on a net premium written basis, as other lines of business are reinsured heavily. NIC is a mid-tier player in Jordan, where it maintains a market share of approximately 3% (based on total market premium in 2022). This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Bests website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Bests Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Bests Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Bests Credit Ratings, Bests Performance Assessments, Bests Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Bests Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2023 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122443424/en/ Marving Lopez Financial Analyst +44 20 7397 4389 [email protected] Valeria Ermakova Associate Director, Analytics +44 20 7397 0269 [email protected] Christopher Sharkey Associate Director, Public Relations +1 908 882 2310 [email protected] Al Slavin Senior Public Relations Specialist +1 908 882 2318 [email protected] Source: AM Best LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A+ (Superior) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings (Long-Term ICR) of aa- (Superior) of the main rated insurance subsidiaries of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd. At the same time, AM Best has affirmed the Long-Term ICR of a (Excellent) of Zurich Insurance Group Ltd (Zurich) (Switzerland) (a non-operating holding company). The outlook of the FSR is stable, whilst the outlook of the Long-Term ICRs is positive. The Credit Ratings (ratings) reflect Zurichs consolidated balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its strong operating performance, very favourable business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM). The positive outlook of the Long-Term ICR reflects the continued resilience of the groups balance sheet strength, underpinned by strong operating returns from Zurichs various profit centres. Over the past several years, the groups pricing actions, risk selection and natural catastrophe exposure management, have led to an improvement in the performance and reduced volatility of its property/casualty portfolio. In addition, the groups life operations provide it with a solid earnings stream, supporting internal capital generation. The groups balance sheet sensitivity to market risk reduced following the sale of its Italian life and pensions back-books in December 2022, and is expected to reduce further once other announced transactions are completed, in particular the disposal of its German life insurance back-book. Zurichs balance sheet strength is underpinned by its risk-adjusted capitalization, as measured by Bests Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), which was at the strongest level at year-end 2022. The groups balance sheet strength benefits from excellent liquidity and good financial flexibility, with demonstrated access to financial markets. The strength of the groups balance sheet, including its robust liquidity and asset-liability management, is expected to continue to provide resilience to external economic pressures. The group reported a solid Swiss Solvency Test (SST) capital adequacy ratio of 266% estimated at 30 September 2023. Despite recently announced anticipated share buy-back and mergers and acquisitions transactions in the Unites States and India, the groups SST ratio is expected to remain very strong and well-above its minimum target level. Zurichs strong operating performance is supported by a highly diversified earnings profile by geography across its life, non-life and investment operations. Furthermore, operating results are enhanced by the consistent fee-based income derived from Zurichs non-claims management services for Farmers Exchanges (a leading mutual insurance group operating in the United States), which accounted for over a quarter of Zurich groups net income in 2022. The group had solid combined ratios of 93.5% and 93.4% in 2021 and 2022, respectively (as calculated by AM Best, under IFRS 4). The company-reported combined ratio for the first half of 2023 was 92.9% (under IFRS 17). The groups life insurance operations also are profitable and have benefited from the portfolio shift toward capital-efficient insurance products. The majority of life profits are represented by policy charges and fees, which are stable relatively. Zurich is one of the worlds largest insurance groups, with excellent diversification by geography and product. The group maintains strong competitive positions in Europe and the United States, a strong presence in Latin America and selective positions in Asia Pacific. Zurichs ERM has strengthened in recent years, with an increased emphasis on accountability and oversight across the organisation. In AM Bests view, the group has appropriate mechanisms in place to manage its complex and large-scale operations. The FSR of A+ (Superior) and the Long-Term ICRs of aa- (Superior) have been affirmed with a stable outlook of the FSR and a positive outlook of the Long-Term ICR, for the following subsidiaries of Zurich: The Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland Empire Fire and Marine Insurance Company Empire Indemnity Insurance Company Universal Underwriters Insurance Company American Guarantee and Liability Insurance Company American Zurich Insurance Company Universal Underwriters of Texas Insurance Company Steadfast Insurance Company Zurich American Insurance Company Zurich American Insurance Company of Illinois Colonial American Casualty & Surety Company Rural Community Insurance Company Zurich Insurance Company Limited Zurich American Life Insurance Company This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Bests website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Bests Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Bests Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Bests Credit Ratings, Bests Performance Assessments, Bests Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Bests Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2023 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122291561/en/ Valeria Ermakova Associate Director, Analytics +44 20 7397 6269 [email protected] Christopher Sharkey Associate Director, Public Relations +1 908 882 2310 [email protected] Mahesh Mistry Senior Director, Analytics +44 20 7397 0325 [email protected] Al Slavin Senior Public Relations Specialist +1 908 882 2318 [email protected] Source: AM Best NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Autel Energy, a leading provider of EV (electric vehicle) charging solutions and services, is set to mark its presence once again at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this January. The company will showcase its acclaimed residential and commercial EV charging solutions including the highly anticipated debut of the MaxiCharger DC HiPower in conjunction with the latest innovations in Autel Charge Cloud. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122232708/en/ Autel Energy is returning to CES in Las Vegas this upcoming January, featuring the debut of the MaxiCharger DC HiPower with live demos by their EV charging solution specialists. (Graphic: Business Wire) On January 9-12, 2024 at the Las Vegas Convention Centre in Las Vegas, Nevada, Autel Energy will present live demonstrations of the MaxiCharger DC HiPower, a game-changing charging solution that redefines the EV charging experience. It boasts the following features that distinguishes it from other high-powered EV chargers: Ultra-Fast and Efficient Charging Experience: With a maximum output power of 640 kW, and liquid-cooling technology, it can provide up to a range of 250 miles in just 10 minutes. Furthermore, it boasts a maximum single cable output power of 480 kW, setting a new benchmark in the industry. With a maximum output power of 640 kW, and liquid-cooling technology, it can provide up to a range of 250 miles in just 10 minutes. Furthermore, it boasts a maximum single cable output power of 480 kW, setting a new benchmark in the industry. Intelligent Operation to Optimize Power Efficiency: Autels Energy Cube and AI-driven switching algorithms optimizes power efficiency and reduces costs. The operational intelligence it provides through load balancing not only minimizes power consumption but also significantly enhances station performance. Autels Energy Cube and AI-driven switching algorithms optimizes power efficiency and reduces costs. The operational intelligence it provides through load balancing not only minimizes power consumption but also significantly enhances station performance. Reliability to Drive High Uptime: Autels unified hardware and software design ensures minimal failure rates, enhanced maintainability, and optimal uptime. The product showcases an exceptional vehicle-charger compatibility rate of up to 99.5%, coupled with an equally remarkable one-time charge success rate of up to 99.5%. Autels unified hardware and software design ensures minimal failure rates, enhanced maintainability, and optimal uptime. The product showcases an exceptional vehicle-charger compatibility rate of up to 99.5%, coupled with an equally remarkable one-time charge success rate of up to 99.5%. Scalable and Future-Proof Solutions: The MaxiCharger DC HiPower starts at 320 kW and can be expanded up to 640 kW by adding power modules, compatible with solar power, energy storage, and energy management systems (EMS). In addition, multiple dispensers allow users to charge up to 8 vehicles simultaneously. The MaxiCharger DC HiPower caters to On-the-Go Smart Charging and Destination Smart Charging scenarios. It optimizes total cost of ownership (TCO) and energy utilization for CPOs, grids and energy companies, while providing reliable hardware and efficient cloud management for fleets, ensuring optimal fleet operation at the lowest cost. It delivers maximum value to customers in both scenarios. Autel Energy has reaffirmed its commitment to long-term investment in the EV charging business with the recent opening of their advanced manufacturing facility in Greensboro, North Carolina. The facility enables Autel to produce NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) & BABA (Build America, Buy America Act) compliant EV chargers to meet the growing markets demand for high-powered commercial EV chargers in the U.S. and Canada. Shane Long, Chief Technology Officer of Autel Energy US, shared his excitement for 2024 and beyond, We are ready to return to CES with the most thrilling and advanced charging solutions imaginable. We are committed to being this industrys leader by providing the ultimate comprehensive charging experience to consumers while promoting the transition to a greener future through our cutting-edge technology. Autel Energy is set to develop an integrated solution that flawlessly merges EV chargers with advanced software technology, further complemented by commercial amenities. This strategic move is designed to bolster the charging infrastructure, thereby cultivating a synergistic and vibrant energy network. Autel Energy's endeavor goes beyond merely establishing a comprehensive ecosystem, which signifies a landmark in the convergence of sustainable technology and business integration. Join Autel Energy at CES 2024 for live demonstrations and insights into the latest advancements shaping the EV charging landscape. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122232708/en/ Tom Rakoczy Marketing Manager Autel Energy US [email protected] Source: Autel Energy The Transaction completes six years of Ideals growth and value creation under U.S. Fence ownership ERIE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- U.S. Fence Solutions Company, LLC (U.S. Fence), a portfolio company of building industry-focused investment firm, Building Industry Partners LLC (BIP), has sold Ideal Fencing Corp. (Ideal or the Company) to Soil Nail Holdings (SNH). SNH is an investment platform focused on leading commercial contractors throughout North America, and is an affiliate of KKR, a private equity firm headquartered in New York. Founded in 1982 and based in Erie, CO, Ideal was acquired by U.S. Fence in 2017 in partnership with Ideals longstanding President Jim Bockelmann and its management team. Ideal has grown to become the largest highway and bridge guardrail fabricator and installer in Colorado. Ideal also fabricates and installs commercial chain-link and iron fencing, serving Colorados Front Range and beyond. Ideal has a long history of completing projects where guardrail, fencing, access control, design, value- engineering, and in-house fabrication capabilities are all required to deliver quality solution safely and on schedule, which has made it a preferred partner to a long-standing customer base of highway/transit authorities, state and local government agencies, infrastructure contractors, and commercial/industrial contractors and developers. Ideal President, Matt Bockelmann, said Were very proud of the business weve built at Ideal Fencing over many decades and were excited for the next chapter in partnership with SNH. Our team of over 50 employees is more committed than ever to serving our customers across Colorado for decades to come. Wed like to thank BIP and its principals for the successful partnership with Ideal since 2017. Zach Coopersmith, Strategic Advisor at Building Industry Partners and Board Chairman at U.S. Fence, said: Were grateful for the consistent and tireless work from Ideals management team and employees over the past six years under BIPs ownership, including navigating a difficult operating environment through Covid and ultimately reaching new heights for the business. Were proud to have partnered with Matt Bockelmann, Dave Elger, and the team along the way, as Ideal grew its service offerings, expanded its team, and helped develop some of the most important infrastructure projects in the state of Colorado. Matt Ogden, Founder and Managing Partner at Building Industry Partners said, Ideal was an exceptional investment for BIP, built upon the foundational principle of partnering with great people. The Bockelmann family and Ideals team are first-rate people and business partners, and absolute masters of their craft. The combined capabilities and trusting relationship of BIPs and Ideals teams led to tremendous mutual success here. Following the successful sale of Binford Supply in 2021, and now Ideal Fencing, U.S. Fence will focus on growing its residential and commercial fencing installation business at Split Rail Fence in the Front Range of Colorado. U.S. Fence was formed by BIP in 2016. FMI Capital Advisors and Holland & Knight served U.S. Fence as financial advisor and legal counsel, respectively, as part of this transaction. Background of Building Industry Partners Building Industry Partners (BIP) is the leading private equity investment firm focused on the U.S. building industry. Founded by Matt Ogden in 2008, BIP is headquartered in Boston, with investment professionals, operating partners, and advisors across the U.S. Over the past 14 years, BIP is proud to have co-founded or been first equity sponsor of a number of the fastest growing and most dynamic businesses in the U.S. building industrys middle market, including U.S. LBM Holdings, Kodiak Building Partners, Homewood Holdings, and U.S. Fence Solutions/Binford Supply. In 2020, BIP redefined its purpose: to build exceptional and enduring businesses, generate world class investment returns, and contribute to elevating the building industry and its workforce through people-focused investment & business principles. BIP continues to seek opportunities to sponsor the building industrys greatest talent in building exceptional businesses, realizing their entrepreneurial visions, and increasing shared prosperity amongst shareholders, management, and the broader workforce. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122729476/en/ Zach Coopersmith [email protected] 301.646.4608 Source: Building Industry Partners Tender Offers are a Continuation of Cotys Deleveraging Agenda NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Coty Inc. (NYSE: COTY) (Coty or the Company) announced today the consideration payable in connection with its previously announced series of tender offers to purchase for cash (i) up to $150,000,000 aggregate principal amount (the Unsecured Notes Cap) of the Companys 6.500% Senior Notes due 2026 (the Unsecured Notes), and (ii) up to $250,000,000 aggregate principal amount (the Secured Notes Cap) of the Companys 5.000% Senior Notes due 2026 (the Secured Notes), for a total aggregate purchase price, excluding accrued and unpaid interest, of approximately $395 million. The Unsecured Notes and the Secured Notes are referred to collectively herein as the Notes, such offers to purchase are referred to collectively herein as the Tender Offers and each a Tender Offer, and the Unsecured Notes Cap and the Secured Notes Cap are referred to collectively as the Notes Caps and each a Notes Cap. The table below sets forth, among other things, the Total Consideration (as defined below) for each series of Notes, as calculated at 10:00 a.m., New York City time, today, November 22, 2023 and the applicable proration factor for the Notes. The table below also sets forth the previously disclosed aggregate principal amount of each series of Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn as of 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on November 21, 2023 (the Early Tender Date) and accepted for purchase in each tender offer. Title of Security Security Identifiers Principal Amount Outstanding U.S. Treasury Reference Security Bloomberg Reference Page(1) Fixed Spread (basis points) Reference Yield Total Consideration(2)(3) Unsecured Tender Offer 6.500% Senior Notes due 2026 CUSIPs: 222070AB0 (144A) U2203CAA9 (Reg S) ISINs: US222070AB02 (144A) USU2203CAA90 (Reg S) $473,017,000 3.750% UST due 4/15/2026 (CUSIP: 91282CGV7) PX5 140 bps 4.734% $1,007.88 Secured Tender Offer 5.000% Senior Secured Notes due 2026 CUSIPs: 222070AE4 (144A) U2203CAE1 (Reg S) ISINs: US222070AE41 (144A) USU2203CAE13 (Reg S) $900,000,000 3.750% UST due 4/15/2026 (CUSIP: 91282CGV7) PX5 140 bps 4.734% $975.22 (1) The applicable page on Bloomberg from which the Dealer Managers quoted the bid side price of the U.S. Treasury Security. (2) Per $1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered on or prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase by the Company. Inclusive of the Early Tender Premiums (as defined below). (3) Does not include Accrued Interest (as defined below), which will also be payable as described below. The Tender Offers are being made upon the terms and subject to conditions previously described in the Offer to Purchase, dated November 7, 2023 (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time, the Offer to Purchase), which sets forth a detailed description of the Tender Offers. The Company refers investors to the Offer to Purchase for the complete terms and conditions of the Tender Offers. Withdrawal rights for the Notes expired at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on the Early Tender Date. The Tender Offers for the Notes will expire at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on December 7, 2023, or any other date and time to which the Company extends the applicable Tender Offer, unless earlier terminated. As previously announced, all conditions were satisfied or waived by the Company at the Early Tender Date. As previously announced, the Company has elected to exercise its right to make payment for Notes that were validly tendered prior to or at the Early Tender Date and that are accepted for purchase on November 30, 2023 (the Early Settlement Date). Since the amount of Notes validly tendered and not withdrawn prior to or at the Early Tender Date exceeded the applicable Notes Cap, the Company does not expect to purchase any Notes tendered after the Early Tender Date. The applicable consideration (the Total Consideration) listed in the table above will be paid per $1,000 principal amount of the Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase pursuant to each Tender Offer on the Early Settlement Date. The Total Consideration includes an early tender premium of $30.00 per $1,000 principal amount of each series of Notes accepted for purchase (the Early Tender Premiums). Only holders of Notes who validly tendered and did not validly withdraw their Notes prior to or at the Early Tender Date are eligible to receive the applicable Total Consideration for Notes accepted for purchase. All holders of Notes accepted for purchase in the Tender Offers will receive accrued and unpaid interest on such Notes from the last interest payment date with respect to such Notes to, but not including, the Early Settlement Date (Accrued Interest). All Notes accepted for purchase will be retired and cancelled and will no longer remain outstanding obligations of the Company. Information Relating to the Tender Offers BofA Securities, Inc. and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are serving as Dealer Managers in connection with the applicable Tender Offers. Investors with questions regarding the terms and conditions of the Tender Offers may contact the dealer managers as follows BofA Securities, Inc. 620 South Tryon Street, 20th Floor Charlotte, North Carolina 28255 Attn: Debt Advisory Toll-Free: +1 (888) 292-0070 U.S.: +1 (980) 683-5454 Collect: +1 (980) 388-4370 Email: [email protected] J.P. Morgan Securities LLC 383 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10179 United States U.S. Toll-Free: +1 (866) 834-4666; U.S. Telephone: +1 212 834 4818 D.F. King & Co., Inc. is the Tender and Information Agent for the Tender Offers. Any questions regarding procedures for tendering Notes or request for copies of the Offer to Purchase should be directed to D.F. King & Co., Inc. by any of the following means: by telephone at +1 (800) 290-6424 (toll-free) or +1 (212) 269-5550 (collect) or by email at [email protected]. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to sell or purchase, or the solicitation of tenders with respect to, the Notes. No offer, solicitation, purchase or sale will be made in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The Tender Offers are being made solely pursuant to the Offer to Purchase made available to holders of the Notes. None of the Company or its affiliates, their respective boards of directors, the dealer managers, the tender and information agent or the trustee with respect to any series of Notes is making any recommendation as to whether or not holders should tender or refrain from tendering all or any portion of their Notes in response to the Tender Offers. Holders are urged to evaluate carefully all information in the Offer to Purchase, consult their own investment and tax advisors and make their own decisions whether to tender Notes in the Tender Offers, and, if so, the principal amount of Notes to tender. About Coty Inc. Founded in Paris in 1904, Coty is one of the worlds largest beauty companies with a portfolio of iconic brands across fragrance, color cosmetics, and skin and body care. Coty serves consumers around the world, selling prestige and mass market products in more than 125 countries and territories. Coty and its brands empower people to express themselves freely, creating their own visions of beauty; and Coty is committed to protecting the planet. Cautionary Notes Regarding Forward Looking Statements The statements contained in this press release include certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. These forward-looking statements reflect Cotys current views with respect to, among other things, the proposed Tender Offers and the expected source of funds. These forward-looking statements are generally identified by words or phrases, such as anticipate, are going to, estimate, plan, project, expect, believe, intend, foresee, forecast, will, may, should, outlook, continue, target, aim, potential and similar words or phrases. These statements are based on certain assumptions and estimates that Coty considers reasonable and are not guarantees of Cotys future performance, but are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Cotys control, which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from such statements, including the Companys ability to consummate the Tender Offers on the terms and timing described herein, or at all, and other factors identified in Risk Factors included in Cotys Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023 and its subsequent quarterly report on Form 10-Q. All forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this press release, and Coty does not undertake any obligation, other than as may be required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking or cautionary statements to reflect changes in assumptions, the occurrence of events, unanticipated or otherwise, or changes in future operating results over time or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122042264/en/ Investor Relations Olga Levinzon +1 212 389-7733 [email protected] Media Antonia Werther +31 621 394495 [email protected] Source: Coty OMAHA, Neb.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Honorable President of India, in her capacity as the Visitor of the Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, on recommendation of the Board of Governors of IIT Jodhpur have approved the conferment of the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) to Vinod Gupta, Managing General Partner at Everest Group. The convocation of IIT Jodhpur is scheduled on November 21, 2023 in the Permanent Campus of IIT Jodhpur. Dr. K. Radhakrishnan, Former Chairman-ISRO & Former Chairman, Space Commission, has kindly consented to be the Chief Guest of the Convocation ceremony. Mr. Guptas outstanding contributions have earned him this prestigious recognition. We believe Mr. Guptas presence will inspire our academic community and this will be a momentous occasion for IIT Jodhpur as this is the first time IIT Jodhpur is conferring the Honorary Doctor Degree to eminent personalities. Mr. Gupta also has been honored by a Honorary Doctorate from the University of Nebraska and I.I.T., Kharagpur. Mr. Gupta recognizes the role of education in developing the leaders of tomorrow. Through his charitable foundation, he has helped advance education across fields including: business, science, information technology, communications, intellectual property law and wildlife preservation. To see actual letter and more information, visit www.gefusa.org View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231121754453/en/ Josiah Kettelhake [email protected] 402.403.4532 Source: Everest Group A demonstrable commitment to a low carbon plan helps secure contract HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Expro (NYSE: XPRO) has been awarded a Corporate Frame Agreement to deliver well testing services for Equinor in the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS). This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122190029/en/ Expro's modular well test clean-up package (Photo: Business Wire) The Corporate Frame Agreement will see a substantial delivery of well testing operations in the NCS from a single service provider, across the Barents, Norwegian and North Sea. Expro will deliver the contract using its multi-disciplined local team in Stavanger, supported by its Fluids centre of excellence in Haugesund. The four-year contract, with the potential of three two-year options, builds on the companys previous seven-year agreement. The scope of work includes well flow management and production optimization services to enhance Equinors assets across completion, intervention, production, and abandonment operations. Building on the Corporate Frame Agreement, the work scope will see the delivery of hydraulic intervention well services using Expros innovative CoilHoseTM Light Well Circulation System (LWCS) that is designed to provide a more efficient and lower operational carbon footprint approach to operations. A significant portion of the contract is directly linked to a demonstrable commitment to a low carbon plan, allowing Expro implement its environmental capabilities with Equinor and further enhance the strength and depth of this partnership. Iain Farley, Expros Regional Vice President of Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, said: "The contract award is an excellent example of how we continue to build on our collaborative engagement with Equinor. The ongoing seven-year contract has allowed us to work together to drive value through production optimization that encapsulates our ability to reduce our carbon footprint at all stages of project delivery. The strong relationship that has created this opportunity for growth demonstrates the ability and commitment of our team as we continue to provide what we believe to be best-in-class project delivery. We take pride in employing a local workforce in Expro Norway AS and will continue to invest in our people, bringing new talent to our operational team, to continue to deliver the performance this important client expects of Expro. NOTES TO EDITORS: About Expro Working for clients across the well life cycle, Expro is a leading provider of energy services, offering cost-effective, innovative solutions and what the Company considers to be best-in-class safety and service quality. The Companys extensive portfolio of capabilities spans well construction, well flow management, subsea well access, and well intervention and integrity solutions. With roots dating to 1938, Expro has approximately 8,000 employees and provides services and solutions to leading exploration and production companies in both onshore and offshore environments in approximately 60 countries. For more information, please visit: expro.com and connect with Expro on X (formerly Twitter) @ExproGroup and LinkedIn @Expro. SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release, and oral statements made from time to time by representatives of the Company, may contain certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding, among other things, the Companys environmental, social and governance goals, targets and initiatives, and future growth, and are indicated by words or phrases such as "anticipate," "outlook," "estimate," "expect," "project," "believe," "envision," "goal," "target," "can," "will," and similar words or phrases. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the future results, performance or achievements expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based largely on the Company's expectations and judgments and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, many of which are unforeseeable and beyond our control. The factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to materially differ include, among others the risk factors identified in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, historical practice, or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122190029/en/ [email protected] Source: Expro MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Flywheel, a leading medical imaging artificial intelligence (AI) development platform, today announced the launch of its software-as-a-service (SaaS) data management solution on Microsoft Azure. The Flywheel platform is integrated with NVIDIA MONAI, part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, and Azure Machine Learning Studio for development and deployment of production-grade AI applications. This new SaaS offering, which evolved from the companys managed service that has been available since 2015, can expedite significant advancements in medical imaging research and AI model development across the healthcare ecosystem. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231121373437/en/ Flywheel announces the launch of its SaaS data management solution on Microsoft Azure, integrated with NVIDIA MONAI. Flywheel users will also be able to utilize radiology reports with mPower Clinical Analytics by Nuance, a Microsoft company. (Graphic: Flywheel) Flywheel provides a sophisticated infrastructure for the curation of high-quality, standardized datasets within a secure, scalable, and user-friendly SaaS solution. The platform facilitates an accelerated process to prepare and train data for AI model development and supports research among pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, research institutions, and healthcare providers. Healthcare breakthroughs have long standing barriers when it comes to unlocking the powerful insights trapped in medical imaging data. The Flywheel collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA helps researchers and healthcare professionals overcome these barriers and accelerate the management, curation, and analysis of medical imaging data to extract and mobilize valuable insights that advance personalized care, clinical research, and real-world evidence (RWE). The company established an agreement with Microsoft to launch its SaaS solution on Azure, and Flywheel is now available on the Azure Marketplace. In addition, Flywheel solutions integrate with Azure Machine Learning MLOps capabilities and NVIDIA MONAI to support clinical AI collaboration at enterprise scale without redundant model-building workflows. By leveraging the power of Flywheel, Azure and NVIDIA, users can accelerate model development by freeing up data preparation time, enabling reproducibility of AI models, and facilitating collaboration between medical researchers, data scientists, and their stakeholders. In addition, Flywheel users will be able to seamlessly enhance patient cohort discovery and enrich images with refined data from radiology reports all with one-click from mPower Clinical Analytics by Nuance, a Microsoft company. Dr. Richard Bruce, Associate Professor of Radiology and Radiology Vice Chair of Informatics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health said, As an established Nuance and Flywheel customer, we are excited to explore how this deep integration between systems may allow us to increase the speed and scale of research. Our focus is on bridging the gap within medical imaging from innovation to patient care in ways that improve outcomes and make innovation care more accessible. "We are standing on the cusp of a revolution in healthcare, poised to leverage the vast potential of medical imaging data. But harnessing this potential responsibly means ensuring the data is meticulously managed, accurately labeled, diligently curated, and rigorously tested. It's a matter of trust. Our collaboration with Microsoft and NVIDIA epitomizes this commitment, said Trent Norris, Chief Revenue Officer at Flywheel. The synergy between Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, NVIDIA MONAI and Microsofts advanced services creates a robust platform that is integral to our mission. This unified approach is not just about technology. Its about empowering researchers, clinicians, and scientists around the world with the proven scalability of our AI enabling solutions. It enables them to accelerate discovery, drive innovation, and ultimately, enhance healthcare outcomes globally. Flywheel's expertise in medical imaging, combined with the power and scale of Azure, along with the advanced imaging analytics capabilities of mPower, is ushering in a new era of healthcare innovation," said Peter Durlach, Corporate Vice President, Health & Life Sciences at Microsoft. "Our partnership is geared towards a future where Flywheel's platform combined with Microsofts cloud and AI capabilities will help transform patient care through accelerated discovery and AI-driven insights. Learn more at the Radiological Society of North America Annual Meeting in Chicago at Flywheels exhibit, booth No. 4170, McCormick Place, South Hall A. For more information about Flywheel on Azure Marketplace, visit the public listing here. About Flywheel Flywheel is the pioneering medical imaging AI platform powering healthcare innovation through streamlined data management, curation and analysis. Flywheel helps organizations turn complex imaging data into analysis-ready datasets for accelerated research and AI development. Flywheel offers comprehensive solutions for pharma companies, providers, payers, system integrators, AI developers and academic medical centers to get optimum value out of their data assets. Flywheel is an Invenshure-founded company headquartered in Minneapolis, with offices in the Bay Area, St. Louis, and Budapest. For more information on our mission and products, visit www.flywheel.io or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231121373437/en/ Elizabeth Mortek [email protected] Source: Flywheel HANOI, Vietnam--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Global IT services provider FPT today announced that it has joined the SAP Regional Strategic Services Partner (RSSP) initiative, established by SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) to expand the capabilities and reach of established partners in the APJ region that are on a rapid growth trajectory. Through the RSSP initiative, SAP will provide eligible partners with strategic support, which may include coordinated industry-aligned solutions, a joint go-to-market strategy, and access to SAP regional and market unit industry expertise. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231120391277/en/ FPT and SAP's strategic partnership signing ceremony was attended by FPT Chairman Truong Gia Binh, SAP Asia Pacific and Japan President Paul Marriott, RWE AG CIO Edgar Aschenbrenner, and other senior executives. (Photo: Business Wire) The RSSP initiative will enable FPT to scale its SAP practice more rapidly across the APJ region and work more closely with SAP to drive joint customer success. Unlike SAP's existing Global Strategic Services Partner (GSSP) programme, which includes a select group of the company's most strategic global consulting, infrastructure, and technology partners, the RSSP initiative is designed to facilitate collaboration within partner organisations based in the region that demonstrate capabilities and capacity requirements specific to the needs of APJ customers. FPT's SAP implementation and maintenance services are built on a strong foundation of a vast pool of certified and experienced SAP resources and well-established project management frameworks, with over 900 certifications and a dedicated team of SAP consultants. "At FPT, we are passionate about building a happier future for individuals, fostering success for organizations, and prosperity for nations. The 20 years of partnership between SAP and FPT has been a journey of happiness, because we shared a purpose the purpose to enable enterprises in Vietnam and worldwide to manage their resources with efficiency, with transformation and with growth and expansion," said Dr. Truong Gia Binh, FPT Chairman. "We have fostered collaborations with many world-class leaders to enable successful digital transformation for our customers. This collaboration with SAP allows us to leverage their industry expertise and resources to offer enhanced SAP S/4HANA Cloud migration service and managed service to meet the growing needs of our customers in the Asia Pacific Japan region," said Pham Minh Tuan, Chief Executive Officer, FPT Software. "SAP has a vibrant and fast-growing partner ecosystem in the region. Many of our APJ-based partners have thousands of SAP-certified consultants worldwide and deliver hundreds of SAP-related projects every year. We have a unique opportunity to do more with our regional partners and drive more innovation and value for our customers," said Utkarsh Maheshwari, Chief Partner Officer, SAP Asia Pacific Japan. "We welcome and congratulate FPT Corporation on joining the SAP Regional Strategic Services Partner initiative, he added. To qualify for the SAP RSSP initiative, candidate partners must meet or exceed a defined set of SAP criteria, including geographic presence, vertical industry competencies, and alignment on a common sustainability strategy. FPT's collaboration with SAP dates to 2003, with many successful joint digital transformation projects across various sectors, including Manufacturing, BFSI and Energy. Prior to joining the RSSP initiative, FPT received multiple awards from SAP over the years, including SAP Partner of the Year for Vietnam, Outstanding Performance in Midmarket Partner of the Year, and Best RISE Partner of the Year, which was recently announced at SAP Partner Success Summit in April 2023. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. About FPT FPT Corporation (FPT) is a globally leading technology and IT services provider headquartered in Vietnam. FPT operates in three core sectors: Technology, Telecommunications, and Education. During over three decades of development, FPT has constantly provided practical and effective products to millions of people and tens of thousands of business and non-business organizations worldwide, establishing Vietnams position on the global tech map. Keeping up with the latest market trends and emerging technologies, FPT has developed the Made-by-FPT ecosystem of services, products, solutions and platforms, which enables sustainable growth for organizations and businesses and offers distinctive experiences to customers. In 2022, FPT recorded total revenue of US$1.87 billion and 60,000+ employees. For more information, please visit https://fpt.com.vn/en. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231120391277/en/ Mai Duong (Ms.) FPT Software PR Manager [email protected] Source: FPT Software BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Russia is not at all surprised by Bakus harsh assessment of Frances actions, the Spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing, Trend reports. "Both in Baku and in a number of other places, there is fatigue from the insistence of Paris, which unsuccessfully tries to rehabilitate its political reputation in the South Caucasus, significantly tarnished in other parts of the world and on other continents," she said. Zakharova expressed regret that the risks of recurrence in the South Caucasus persist. "In this regard, Russia consistently works to turn the region into a zone of stability and prosperity based on a balance of interests among all regional players and their neighbors," the official noted. "We are building interactions within the framework of the '3+3' consultative regional platform and are working on the comprehensive normalization of relations between Baku and Yerevan based on the highest-level trilateral agreements." She also said that the goals of Western intermediaries, including France, are entirely different. "They seek to turn the South Caucasus into yet another arena for geopolitical confrontation, ignoring the fundamental interests of the region's countries and doing nothing to ensure the security, stability, and prosperity of this region," Zakharova added. President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said in his address to the participants of the International Conference on Decolonization: Women's Empowerment and Development held on November 21 in Baku that France destabilizes not only its past and present colonies but also the South Caucasus, by supporting separatist tendencies and separatists. "By arming Armenia, it implements a militaristic policy, encourages revanchist forces in Armenia, and prepares the ground for the start of new wars in our region. At the same time, France abuses its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to carry out its biased and prejudiced policy, engages in geopolitical intrigues in various regions, and tries to use Western organizations as a means of pressure on other states," President Ilham Aliyev said. France must implement the decisions of the International Court of Justice regarding the nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific Ocean and stop the practice of lecturing other countries, the head of state noted. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Today, Laura Kinder, President of Daversa Partners, has been honored with the prestigious Woman of the Year award for Business Intelligence Groups 2023 BIG Awards for Business. This accolade not only spotlights Lauras remarkable leadership prowess but also stands as a powerful endorsement of her significant contributions to the technology sector. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122824069/en/ Laura Kinder, President of Daversa Partners, Wins Woman of the Year for Business Intelligence Group's 2023 BIG Awards. (Graphic: Business Wire) At the age of 28, Laura ascended to Partner distinguishing herself as one of the industry's leading executive headhunters. Her remarkable leadership has propelled Daversa Partners to the forefront of the industry, earning the firm numerous recognitions from Forbes and Fortune. As a result, Daversa Partners has set new benchmarks for industry excellence, and has established itself as a premier workplace. Recognized as one of Crains Most Notable Women in Tech, Laura leads one of the most prolific executive search practices in the firm. Over the past 15+ years, she has made over 1,000 successful placements across both consumer and B2B businesses. Her role in building leadership teams for transformative companies has earned her the trust and endorsement of leading investors and founders. Founder and CEO, Paul Daversa, emphasized, "Laura is not just extraordinary; she is a catalyst in our industry. Her influence stretches beyond her role as a trusted advisor to an endless list of founders, funders, and operators; she is a game-changer who has launched Daversa Partners into unparalleled heights. Laura's status as one of the trailblazing women in tech is indisputable. In just two short years, she has flawlessly transitioned from Senior Partner to President. Her unique ability to generate unmatched value has been vital to our companys success." "In the spirit of achievement and excellence, we congratulate Laura Kinder on her outstanding success in 2023. This victory exemplifies the highest standards of innovation and business acumen, said Maria Jimenez, chief nominations officer. Kudos to all the winners who have demonstrated unparalleled excellence, collectively shaping the future of business. May this recognition inspire continued greatness in the years to come." About Daversa Partners Daversa Partners is technologys premier executive search firm that builds the leadership teams for growth and venture-backed companies. Our global footprint spans two continents giving our high-performance teams visibility into the entirety of the market. We are dedicated to developing meaningful relationships with entrepreneurs, executives, and investors across Consumer and Enterprise businesses. We believe that the most successful companies achieve major breakthroughs by acquiring extraordinary talent. These people are hard to find and even harder to recruit, they are Material Impact Executives; we only recruit these people. This is what sets us apartand this is what makes Daversa the search partner of choice. For more information on Daversa Partners please visit www.daversapartners.com About Business Intelligence Group The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry and business award programs, business executivesthose with experience and knowledgejudge the programs. The organizations proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and then rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122824069/en/ Nicole Daversa [email protected] Source: Daversa Partners The San Diego Business Journal (SDBJ) recognizes Dr. Crooke as an icon for his remarkable impact on the San Diego region SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- n-Lorem, a nonprofit foundation, announced Stanley T. Crooke, M.D., Ph.D., the founder and CEO of n-Lorem, has been honored as an Icon by the San Diego Business Journal with inclusion in the 2023 SD 500, a recognition that highlights the 500 most influential individuals in San Diego. Dr. Crooke is considered one of the top icons in San Diego for materializing and advancing a new RNA-targeted drug discovery platform and for his work developing and establishing the n-Lorem foundation to charitably discover, develop, and provide personalized experimental antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) medicines for patients with some the worlds rarest genetic mutations. San Diego 500 members actively contribute to the economic vitality of the region. Numerous individuals dedicate themselves to constructing or enhancing the broader community. However, a few members stand out for their exceptional influence and significant contributions, earning them the esteemed recognition as icons by the San Diego Business Journal. Dr. Crooke founded n-Lorem Foundation in 2020 as the first, industrialized non-profit foundation to meet the challenges of some of the rarest of rare patients nano-rare patients, which have illnesses so rare that fewer than 30 people worldwide are afflicted with them. These patients often have no treatment options because their illnesses are too rare for for-profit companies to invest in the research and development of therapies. Once n-Lorem discovers and develops a personalized treatment for each individual nano-rare patient, the ASO therapy is provided free for life. As a hands-on scientific leader his entire career, Dr. Crooke is credited with inventing, advancing and validating a new drug discovery platform, RNA-targeted drug discovery, and using this platform to discover and develop life-changing therapies. Over the course of his career, Dr. Crooke has led the discovery and development of hundreds of drugs, including more than 23 commercialized drugs, and published more than 500 scientific publications. Dr. Crooke has received a number of awards that celebrate his impactful and lasting impression on the world. Most recently, the Indiana University School of Medicine Steven C. Beering Award, and the Prix Galien Roy Vagelos Pro Bono Humanum Award in recognition for his nearly 50 years of dedication to a novel, clinically endorsed concept of using synthetic oligonucleotides to control the expression of genes and proteins that impact disease. Learn more about n-Lorems mission at www.nlorem.org, and please consider giving to n-Lorem to bring hope, possibility and treatment options to these patients and families in need. Watch : Hope is Possible: n-Lorem Foundation Watch: Stan Receives the 2022 Roy Vagelos Pro Bono Humanum Award About n-Lorem n-Lorem Foundation is a non-profit organization established to apply the efficiency, versatility and specificity of antisense technology to charitably provide experimental antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) medicines to treat nano-rare patients diagnosed with diseases that are the result of a single genetic defect unique to only one or very few individuals. Nano-rare patients describe a very small group of patients (1-30 worldwide) who, because of their small numbers, have few if any treatment options. n-Lorem Foundation was created to provide hope to these nano-rare patients by developing individualized ASO medicines, which are short strands of modified DNA that can specifically target the transcripts of a defective gene to correct the abnormality. The advantage of experimental ASO medicines is that they can be developed rapidly, inexpensively and are highly specific. To date, n-Lorem has received over 225 applications for treatment with approximately 100 nano-rare patients approved. n-Lorem was founded by Stanley T. Crooke, M.D., Ph.D., former chairman and CEO of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, who founded Ionis Pharmaceuticals in 1989 and, through his vision and leadership, established the company as the leader in RNA-targeted therapeutics. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. To learn more about n-Lorems mission, visit www.nlorem.org, and please consider giving to n-Lorem to bring hope, possibility and treatment options to these patients and families in need. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122172367/en/ n-Lorem contact: Amy Williford, Ph.D. Sr. Director of Communications [email protected] Source: n-Lorem Foundation CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- North American Van Lines collected 103,999 pounds of food during its third annual Great North American Food Drive. Through its long-standing partnership with Move For Hunger, the collected food is donated to local food banks and will provide nearly 87,000 meals for families and individuals in need, far exceeding previous drives. North American launched the Great North American Food Drive in 2021, activating our agent network to collect vital food donations for our local communities, stated Kevin Murphy, Vice President and General Manager of North American Van Lines. In addition to the tremendous amount of food our network donated, we also focused on raising funds to help support Move For Hunger and its hunger action initiatives all year long, concludes Murphy. More than 44 million Americans face food insecurity every day. Since 2011, North American agents have donated nearly 900,000 pounds to food banks across North America through its partnership with Move For Hunger. The donations collected during the Great North American Food Drive and ongoing efforts throughout the year are vital in ensuring more families have access to meals this Thanksgiving and beyond. North American Van Lines is one of Move For Hunger's longest-standing partners, says Adam Lowy, Founder of Move For Hunger. It's amazing to see what this incredible group of movers has accomplished in a few short months to impact the communities they serve." Throughout its 90-year history, North American Van Lines has prioritized providing exceptional moving experiences and uplifting the communities it serves. North American and its agent network look forward to strengthening the partnership with Move For Hunger to continue to fight hunger. Donate today to fight food insecurity: https://bit.ly/na-food-drive About North American Van Lines, Inc. North American Van Lines is a leading provider of relocation solutions around the world. With more than 500 agents and affiliates worldwide, North American has been ranked highest in satisfaction by Trippels Relocating Employee Survey for five consecutive years and is a certified ProMover of the American Trucking Association. For more information, call (800)228-3092 or visit northamerican.com. U.S. DOT No. 070851 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122150800/en/ Kyra Barker CONNECTIVE Agency [email protected] Source: North American Van Lines, Inc. More than 21 million pounds of produce already donated in 2023 LAKELAND, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, Publix is purchasing and delivering more than 1.3 million pounds of fresh produce to 34 Feeding America partner food banks. This donation of fruits and vegetables is meant to help put nutritious food on the tables of people facing hunger during the holiday. These donations are part of the companys commitment through its biannual Feeding More Together register campaign. Each year, Publix donates $10 million to purchase and deliver produce to Feeding America partner food banks. Customer donations provide shelf-stable and additional perishable food for local food banks and pantries. In 2023 alone, Publix has donated more than 21 million pounds of produce to Feeding America partner food banks. At this time of year, while so many of us are sitting around a table filled with food, millions of Americans arent as fortunate, said Publix CEO Todd Jones. During this season of thanks, were grateful for the opportunity to provide fresh produce to families in need. At Publix, were committed to doing good, together to help alleviate hunger during the holidays and every day. Publix, the largest employee-owned company in the U.S. with more than 250,000 associates, currently operates 1,358 stores in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. For 26 consecutive years, the company has been recognized by Fortune as a great place to work. In addition, Publixs dedication to superior quality and customer service is recognized among the top in the grocery business. For more information, visit the companys newsroom at corporate.publix.com/newsroom. Below are the 34 Feeding America partner food banks receiving produce: Alabama Central Alabama Food Bank Feeding the Gulf Coast Food Bank of North Alabama Montgomery Area Food Bank Florida Feeding Northeast Florida Feeding South Florida Feeding Tampa Bay Harry Chapin Food Bank Second Harvest of Central Florida Second Harvest of the Big Bend Treasure Coast Food Bank Georgia Americas Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia Atlanta Community Food Bank Feeding the Valley Golden Harvest Food Bank Northeast Georgia Food Bank Second Harvest of South Georgia Kentucky Dare to Care North Carolina Action Pathways Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina Food Bank of the Albemarle Inter-Faith Food Shuttle MANNA Food Bank Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina Second Harvest of Metrolina South Carolina Harvest Hope Lowcountry Food Bank Tennessee Chattanooga Area Food Bank Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee Second Harvest of Eastern Tennessee Second Harvest of Middle Tennessee Virginia Feed More Community Food Bank Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank Virginia Peninsula Food Bank View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122680771/en/ Maria Brous (863) 680-5339 Source: Publix BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Temu is seeking the support of its customers in identifying and reporting scam websites and apps that impersonate the e-commerce platform for fraudulent purposes. The company also provided helpful tips to ensure a safe shopping experience during the holiday season. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122872865/en/ Temu Enlists Help of Consumers to Flag Scam Sites, Shares Tips to Shop Safely This Holiday Season (Photo: Business Wire) With the rising popularity of our products and services, we've noticed the emergence of apps and websites impersonating our brand to cheat our customers, said a Temu spokesperson. We have taken legal action against these fraudulent entities. However, the judicial process and expected delays in addressing the issue with the hosting platforms and cloud services mean the resolution may not be immediate. Therefore, we urge consumers to support our efforts by reporting any such fraudulent activities they encounter. To address reports about fraudulent Temu websites, suspicious text messages or phone calls, consumers are encouraged to file a report with Temu at https://www.temu.com/bgch_report_suspicious.html. Additionally, consumers can file their complaints to the relevant authorities including the National Cyber Security Center (https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/section/about-this-website/report-scam-website) and Action Fraud (https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/). Common Scams To Beware: Here are some of the common characteristics and techniques used by scam sites and apps: Individuals report being contacted by someone claiming to be a courier, who then demands additional shipping fees. There are cases where a seller, allegedly representing Temu, solicits payments through alternative methods, such as QR codes, e-wallets, or wire transfers. Consumers have been deceived into making purchases and payments on websites or apps that closely mimic Temu, often accompanied by false notifications of winning a prize. Unsolicited messages from unrecognized numbers have offered financial services or part-time jobs, requiring the recipient to provide personal details. Reports include receiving calls from unknown numbers that either request personal information verification or offer unsolicited refunds. Safe and Fun Shopping With Temu: Temu is a safe and secure platform for online shopping, featuring a wide array of quality merchandise at attractive prices. Consumers can shop with peace of mind by checking that they are browsing on the official Temu website at www.temu.com, and by downloading the Temu app from the official Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Temu is a TrustedSite Certified Secure Site that adheres to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) when handling card data by encrypting data in storage and transmission. Temu collaborates with leading payment networks, leveraging their specialized security and authentication protocols such as Visa Secure, MasterCard ID Check, American Express SafeKey, Discover ProtectBuy, and JCB J/Secure to provide an additional layer of protection for its users. About Temu: Temu is an online marketplace that connects consumers with millions of sellers, manufacturers and brands around the world with the mission to empower them to live their best lives. Temu is committed to offering the most affordable quality products to enable consumers and sellers to fulfill their dreams in an inclusive environment. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122872865/en/ Media inquiries: Temu press office Email: [email protected] Source: Temu Company wins category leader ranking for Regulatory Intelligence and Long-Duration Targeted Improvement capabilities LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Wolters Kluwer has achieved top honors in two solution areas in this years widely followed and hotly contested Chartis RiskTech100 rankings. The company has been named a Category Leader in Regulatory Intelligence for a third consecutive time and, for the second year running, has earned a Category Leader status for its capabilities in Long-Duration Targeted Improvements (LDTI). This comprehensive and independent study of the worlds leading risk and compliance technology companies is compiled by Chartis Research, part of Infopro Digital, publishers of Risk.net and Waters Technology. Wolters Kluwer achieved a #11 global ranking in the RiskTech100 this year and increased not only its Overall Scoremoving from 69.3% in last years report to 69.49% this yearbut also raised its scores across the Core Technology, Customer Satisfaction, Market Presence and Innovation categories. For almost 20 years, the RiskTech100 has been a lens through which we can examine the risk technology landscape and ecosystem, said Sidhartha Dash, Chief Researcher at Chartis Research. Wolters Kluwers overall ranking and category leader wins, built on the foundation of an effective technology development strategy, reflect its continued achievements in delivering high value to customers, helping them manage financial risk and meet regulatory obligations. These latest honors follow on category wins achieved by Wolters Kluwer for its Enterprise GRC capabilities, along with its Operational Risk, Conduct Risk and Control solutions as previously announced by Chartis. ### About Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer (EURONEXT: WKL) is a global leader in information, software, and services for professionals in healthcare, tax and accounting, financial and corporate compliance, legal and regulatory, and corporate performance and ESG. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services. Wolters Kluwer reported 2022 annual revenues of 5.5 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 20,900 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and YouTube. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122214584/en/ Paul Lyon Senior Director, External Communications Wolters Kluwer Mobile: +44 7765 391 824 [email protected] David Feider Associate Director, External Communications Financial & Corporate Compliance Wolters Kluwer Office +1 612-246-9454 [email protected] Source: Wolters Kluwer SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Yelp Inc. (NYSE: YELP), the company that connects people with great local businesses, today announced that management will present at the Wells Fargo Technology, Media and Telecom Summit on Tuesday, November 28, 2023 at 2:15 p.m. Pacific Time. The live and archived webcasts of the presentation will be available on the companys investor relations website at www.yelp-ir.com. The archived webcast will remain available for 180 days after the conclusion of the live presentation. About Yelp Yelp Inc. (yelp.com) is a community-driven platform that connects people with great local businesses. Millions of people rely on Yelp for useful and trusted local business information, reviews and photos to help inform their spending decisions. As a one-stop local platform, Yelp helps consumers easily discover, connect and transact with businesses across a broad range of categories by making it easy to request a quote for a service, book a table at a restaurant, and more. Yelp was founded in San Francisco in 2004. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231121971026/en/ Yelp Inc. Kate Krieger Investor Relations [email protected] Source: Yelp Inc. FILE PHOTO: The sun is seen behind a crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas, U.S., November 22, 2019. Picture taken November 22, 2019. REUTERS/Angus Mordant/File Photo By Nicole Jao NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell nearly 1% in a volatile session on Wednesday as OPEC+ producers unexpectedly delayed a meeting on production cuts, raising questions about global crude supplies. Brent futures settled 49 cents lower to $81.96 a barrel, after falling more than 4% to a low of $78.41 earlier in the session. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude settled 67 cents lower at $77.10, after declining more than 5% to a session low of $73.79 earlier in the day. OPEC+ postponed the meeting, originally scheduled for Nov. 26, to Nov.30, it said in a statement, a surprise development that drove prices sharply lower in early trading. The group was expected to discuss whether to expand oil output cuts. Prices bounced back after news that the disagreement was related to African countries, which are among the smaller producers in the group, rather than the top oil exporters. Some traders also pointed to low liquidity ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. The OPEC+ meeting, which includes major producers Saudi Arabia, Russia and other allies and members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, had been expected to consider further changes to a deal that already limits supply into 2024, according to analysts and OPEC+ sources. The delay stoked concerns that more production could come online from oil producers in the coming months, said Dennis Kissler, senior vice president of trading at BOK Financial. A rise in inventories also pressured prices lower on Wednesday morning, he said. U.S. crude oil inventories rose by 8.7 million barrels last week on higher imports, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said. The U.S. dollar bounced back from a 2-1/2-month low after economic data showed lower unemployment claims. A rise in the greenback makes dollar-denominated oil more expensive for buyers in other currencies. Both crude benchmarks have fallen for four straight weeks. To support prices, OPEC and its allies will need to not only extend, but increase cuts, said John Evans of oil broker PVM in a note. Earlier this week, an OPEC technical panel invited a top financial market dealer to give a presentation, seen by Reuters, which painted a bearish outlook for the oil market. Even if the OPEC+ nations extend their cuts into next year, the global oil market will see a slight supply surplus in 2024, the head of the International Energy Agency's oil markets and industry division said on Tuesday. (Reporting by Nicole Jao, Paul Carsten, Ahmad Ghaddar, Laura Sanicola and Colleen Howe; editing by Jason Neely, Marguerita Choy, David Gregorio and Deepa Babington) A view of logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) at their headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 2, 2023. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo By Ahmad Ghaddar, Maha El Dahan and Olesya Astakhova DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) -OPEC+ has delayed a ministerial meeting expected to discuss oil output cuts to Nov. 30 from Nov. 26 as producers struggled to agree on production levels and hence possible reductions, OPEC+ sources said, a surprise delay that sent oil prices sliding. Three OPEC+ sources said this was linked to African countries. OPEC+ said after its last meeting in June that the 2024 output quotas of Angola, Nigeria and Congo were conditional on reviews by outside analysts. Sunday's meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies such as Russia, known as OPEC+, had been expected to consider further changes to a deal that already limits supply into 2024, according to analysts and OPEC+ sources. "Uncertainty is never good for financial markets, with markets now having to wait longer to get clarity what OPEC+ does next year," said UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo. "The postponement of the meeting also shows there are some different views among the group participants." Brent crude settled down 49 cents a barrel at $81.96, recovering from steep losses earlier of nearly 5% after news that the dispute was linked to African producers, among the smaller exporters in OPEC. That led some investors and analysts to downplay the importance of the issue that caused the delay. Brent has fallen from near $98 in late September, pressured by rising supplies and concern about demand and a potential economic slowdown. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman agreed to delay the meeting, another OPEC+ source said, citing issues around other producers. The Sunday meeting had been expected to convene in OPEC's Vienna headquarters. OPEC announced the delay in a statement which didn't mention if the group would convene online or in person on Nov. 30, although three delegates said it was expected to be in person in Vienna. EXTRA CUTS? Several analysts have predicted OPEC+ is likely to extend or even deepen oil supply cuts into next year and some, including Helima Croft at RBC Capital, have said Saudi Arabia might ask other members to share the task. "We see some scope for the group to do a deeper reduction," Croft said this week. Before the OPEC statement, Bloomberg News reported that the meeting could be delayed for an unspecified period of time, citing delegates who said Saudi Arabia had expressed its dissatisfaction with other members about their output numbers. Saudi Arabia, Russia and other OPEC+ members have already pledged oil output cuts of about 5 million barrels per day (bpd), or about 5% of daily global demand, in a series of steps that started in late 2022. This figure includes a 1 million bpd voluntary reduction by Saudi Arabia and a 300,000 bpd cut in Russian oil exports, both of which last until the end of 2023. (Reporting by Nadine Awadalla, Nayera Abdalla, Ahmad Ghaddar, Vladimir Soldatkin and Maha El Dahan; Writing and additional reporting by Alex Lawler; Editing by Jason Neely, Mark Potter, Kirsten Donovan and Deepa Babington) Sign up for StreetInsider Free! Receive full access to all new and archived articles, unlimited portfolio tracking, e-mail alerts, custom newswires and RSS feeds - and more! Baku is hosting an economic forum on the theme "Transformation of the SPECA region into a global communications hub" (SPECA-2023). According to Azernews, Minister of Economy Mikail Jabbarov noted that the SPECA week (the UN Special Program for the Economies of Central Asian Countries) in Baku is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the program. The Minister expressed confidence that the Economic Forum will facilitate the exchange of information between the program countries and support joint efforts. It was noted that SPECA is based on the goal of achieving common economic goals in the region, reducing inequality, and improving well-being in the region. Playing the role of a bridge between East and West, Azerbaijan stands out for its long-standing traditions of cross-border trade and cultural exchange. However, as trade relations within SPECA deepen, infrastructure development is needed. Increasing initiatives in this area is important for mutually beneficial cooperation. It was noted that in 2022, Azerbaijan's trade turnover with SPECA countries increased 3.6 times and reached $ 1.3 billion. And in the first ten months of this year, this figure amounted to $ 1.2 billion, which is about 16 percent more than in the same period last year. In addition, Azerbaijan has achieved positive results in terms of exports within the framework of the program. Compared to the same period last year, Azerbaijan's exports to the participating countries of the program increased by almost 82 percent in the first 10 months of this year. The possibilities for achieving higher results in this area are wide. Measures such as simplification of customs procedures, reduction of trade barriers, and optimisation of transit traffic can make an important contribution to this issue. The Minister of Economy expressed his opinion on the bilateral beneficial economic and trade partnership of our country with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan within the framework of SPECA and the existing potential in this area. The forum highlighted the important contribution of Azerbaijan's growing transport and transit potential to strengthening our country's ties with Central Asia. In this context, the importance of Azerbaijan's national priorities, a favourable business and investment climate, and the new realities created by the liberation of our territories were emphasised. Dmitry Maryasin, Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, stressed that over the past 25 years, the role of SPECA countries in world trade has increased many times, and their economies have grown noticeably. It was noted that for the sustainable economic development of the participating states in the program, it is necessary to pay increased attention to a number of issues. This includes digital transformation, eliminating problems in the supply chain, fully achieving gender equality, accelerating the transition to a green economy, and other issues. It was noted that work is underway to create a SPECA Fund. The funds that will be transferred to this fund will be used to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Hirohito Toda, Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, noted the importance of strengthening ties between the countries of the program in the fields of energy, transport, environment, customs, information and communication technologies, trade, and other areas, as well as the implementation of joint projects in the future. In his opinion, the economies of the program countries should diversify, focus on digital development, overcome the problems of climate change, ensure food security, etc., and attention should be increased. At the Forum, representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan expressed their views on cooperation within the framework of SPECA, economic and investment potential, and initiatives to develop relations in various areas. The Economic Forum continued its work with sessions on the topic "Transformation of the SPECA region into a global communications hub". During the session on Digital transformation of data and document exchange in the supply chain using UN standards", Deputy Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport of Azerbaijan, Bakhtiyar Mammadov noted that digital transformation is one of the priorities of our country in the field of digitalization, information, and communication technologies. He gave information about the construction of infrastructure, the application of modern technologies, and international cooperation in this field. Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Tajikistan Akhliddin Nuriddinzoda, Secretary General of the International Association Trans-Caspian International Transport Route Gaidar Abdikarimov, Chairman of the Central Asian Transport and Logistics Partnership Larisa Kislyakova, Deputy Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific Vitaly Alexandrov and Sue Probert, Chair of the UN Centre for Trade Promotion and E-Business, stressed the importance of digital transformation and electronic document exchange in terms of effective cooperation in regional trade and also spoke about the benefits of supporting the SPECA principles of sustainable trade by the countries of the region and other related issues. At the event, a conversation was opened about the existing experience in the field of digital transformation in the participating countries, suggestions were made about the potential of partnership. The forum continued in sessions. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. The Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan will consider the expediency of requirements on development of prospective programs of road traffic organization by individuals and legal entities, Trend reports. President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has signed a decree in this regard. According to the decree, the Cabinet of Ministers within three months will examine the expediency of development, as well as implementation of perspective programs, complex schemes, and projects of road traffic organization by physical and legal persons and submit its proposals on this to the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. CRH plc (NYSE: CRH) is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement to divest its lime operations in Europe (the "Business") to SigmaRoc plc for a total consideration of c.$1.1 billion. The transaction is subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals. The Business comprises 16 operating locations with leading market positions across Ireland, the UK, Germany, Czech Republic and Poland. The combined Business generated sales of c.$610 million and EBITDA of c.$137 million in 2022. The transaction is structured in three phases, the first of which is expected to complete in early 2024 comprising the Group's lime operations in Germany, Czech Republic and Ireland. The remaining phases, consisting of operations in the UK and Poland, are expected to complete in 2024. Albert Manifold, Chief Executive of CRH, said: "The decision to divest at an attractive valuation follows a comprehensive review of the Business and demonstrates CRH's active approach to portfolio management. The proceeds from the divestment will provide us with significant additional capital allocation opportunities to deliver further growth and value creation for our shareholders". MOUNTLAKE TERRACE, Wash., Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 1st Security Bank (the Bank) is pleased to announce the promotion of Sean McCormick, currently SVP, Credit Administrator, to the position of SVP, Director of Credit Administration, effective November 1st. Sean joined 1st Security Bank as a Commercial Credit Analyst in 2011. In 2017, he was promoted to Credit Administrator. Seans wealth of credit experience and long history at the Bank have earned him the reputation of a trusted credit advisor, said Stephanie Nicklaus, EVP, Chief Credit Officer, Sean has also forged a strong partnership with commercial lending, community and business banking, and retail banking resulting in outstanding customer experiences. He holds a bachelors degree in finance from the University of Washington. Sean graduated from the American Bankers Association, Stonier Graduate School of Banking, with a leadership certificate from Wharton Executive Education. Sean is on the Finance Committee for the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties. He continues to provide mentorship for third-year students through Stonier. ABOUT 1ST SECURITY BANK OF WASHINGTON 1st Security Bank of Washington, member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender, provides loan and deposit services to customers at its twenty-seven branches across Washington and Oregon, with mortgage services at each branch as well as lending offices in the Pacific Northwest. FS Bancorp, Inc., a Washington corporation, (ticker: FSBW) is the holding company for the Bank. MEDIA CONTACTCamberly Gilmartin AVP, Marketing Manager1st Security Bank[email protected] A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ecf63339-a618-4c1b-9a32-e7088a4495df 1st Security Bank Announces Promotion Sean McCormick SVP, Director of Credit Administration Source: FS Bancorp, Inc. bioLytical Laboratories Inc., in partnership with NGO Coalition Plus, Leads the Charge to Promote the Importance of Rapid Testing during International Test Week with the Donation of Rapid Tests Worldwide bioLytical, in partnership with NGO Coalition PLUS, has donated over 8,000 rapid tests across 25 countries and partner organizations bioLytical is a Canadian company that develops and manufactures all its tests locally for worldwide distribution bioLyticals INSTI platform of rapid tests is designed to detect a wide range of infectious diseases quickly and accurately bioLytical's quality system is MDSAP: ISO 13485 certified Coalition PLUS is a global NGO, an international union of community-based associations that work to help fight HIV/AIDS and hepatitis RICHMOND, British Columbia, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- bioLytical Laboratories Inc. ("bioLytical"), a global leader in rapid in-vitro medical diagnostics and partner Coalition PLUS, a global NGO, announced that together, they have donated and distributed over 8,000 tests across 25 countries to help boost testing access worldwide. International Testing Week, scheduled for November 22- 28 this year, helps raise awareness of the importance of accessible testing for individual and public health. As one of the vital tools to help connect people to care and to reduce the spread of onward infection, boosting access to testing is critical in the fight to end severe public health challenges such as HIV and hepatitis. The pandemic has demonstrated the importance of equitable access to rapid and accurate diagnostic testing to curb the spread of infectious diseases. Timely and efficient testing not only saves lives but also assists in minimizing the societal and economic impact of outbreaks. As part of our commitment and in support of International Testing Week, bioLytical and Coalition PLUS are proud to play a global role in increasing access to testing, reaffirming their dedication to ending some of the worlds most severe health challenges. Robert Mackie, CEO, bioLytical, emphasizes the significance of International Testing Week and states, "International Testing Week serves as a global reminder of the critical role rapid testing plays in safeguarding public health. It is a time to raise awareness about the necessity of early detection, which ultimately contributes to the overall health of communities worldwide. We are proud to support this cause through test donations and to be part of the solution." By donating these tests, bioLytical and Coalition PLUS aim to address the disparities in healthcare access and testing capabilities worldwide. Increasing equitable access to testing helps empower healthcare providers with the tools to identify infection and provide care and treatment quickly. Dr. Bintou Dembele, Vice Chair, Coalition PLUS, says, Community testing for HIV and STIs helps find undiagnosed people often belonging to hard-to-reach populations. The International Testing Week aims at highlighting outreach interventions that are critical to addressing the remaining gaps to end the HIV epidemic." bioLytical Laboratories Inc. is an industry leader in manufacturing rapid in vitro diagnostic tests focusing on infectious diseases with a global mission to ensure every person has access to accurate and reliable tests to learn their status, faster. Coalition PLUS is an international union of community-based associations in the fight against HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis created in 2008, operating in 52 countries and alongside some one hundred civil society organizations. They promote innovative methods adapted to the individuals facing the most discrimination in access to healthcare. In addition to its commitment to International Testing Week, bioLytical continues to innovate and develop cutting-edge diagnostic solutions to meet the ever-evolving needs of the healthcare sector. bioLytical remains dedicated to fostering a healthier, safer, and more connected world through the innovation of rapid diagnostics. By distributing these tests to underserved areas, we hope to facilitate early detection, helping healthcare providers and governments better manage and mitigate the impact of these diseases. bioLytical Laboratories Inc. is a privately-owned Canadian company focused on researching, developing, and commercializing rapid in-vitro medical diagnostics using its proprietary INSTI technology platform and its lateral flow line, iStatis. bioLytical has won several local and industry awards, including B.C. Exporter of the Year in 2019. We have been named Lifesciences B.C.'s Growth Stage Med Tech Company of the Year and featured on B.C.'s Fastest-Growing Companies for seven years, including the Globe and Mail's Fastest Growing Companies list in 2020. bioLytical moved to a significantly larger, state-of-the-art facility in Richmond, B.C., in 2020 to accommodate the extraordinary growth achieved through our team. Providing accurate results in one minute or less, the INSTI range includes the INSTI HIV-1/HIV-2 Antibody Test, INSTI Multiplex HIV Syphilis Ab Test, INSTI HIV Self Test, INSTI Covid-19 Antibody Test, and the INSTI HCV Antibody Test. bioLytical sells its products in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. In 2022, bioLytical launched iStatis, its new lateral flow testing platform, to create additional access to testing worldwide. By delivering accurate results in real-time, INSTI and iStatis generate meaningful outcomes for medical professionals, patients, and public health organizations worldwide and is a key partner in tackling some of the world's most severe healthcare challenges. Please visit www.istatis.com and www.insti.com, and www.biolytical.com for more information. TORONTO, Nov. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited (BlackRock Canada), an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: BLK), today announced the final November 2023 cash distributions for the iShares Premium Money Market ETF. Unitholders of record on November 22, 2023 will receive cash distributions payable on November 30, 2023. Details regarding the final per unit distribution amounts are as follows: Fund Name Fund Ticker Cash Distribution Per Unit ($) iShares Premium Money Market ETF CMR 0.187 Further information on the iShares ETFs can be found at http://www.blackrock.com/ca. About BlackRockBlackRocks purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit www.blackrock.com/corporate | Twitter: @BlackRockCA About iSharesiShares unlocks opportunity across markets to meet the evolving needs of investors. With more than twenty years of experience, a global line-up of 1300+ exchange traded funds (ETFs) and US$3.12 trillion in assets under management as of September 30, 2023, iShares continues to drive progress for the financial industry. iShares funds are powered by the expert portfolio and risk management of BlackRock. iShares ETFs are managed by BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited. Commissions, trailing commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investing in iShares ETFs. Please read the relevant prospectus before investing. The funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. Tax, investment and all other decisions should be made, as appropriate, only with guidance from a qualified professional. Contact for Media:Reem JazarEmail: [email protected] Source: BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited (iShares) OTTAWA, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) welcomes yesterdays announcement in the Fall Economic Statement that the federal government will amend the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act and the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to exclude public universities and colleges. The Liberal government has made good on its promise to close the loophole that allowed the Laurentian University administration to bypass traditional ways that colleges and universities manage financial difficulties, said CAUT executive director David Robinson. As the Auditor-General of Ontario noted in her report on Laurentian, invoking corporate insolvency laws was unnecessary, inappropriate, and damaging to the public mission of the university. Following the staff cuts and program closures arising from the unnecessary use of insolvency legislation at Laurentian University in 2021, CAUTs academic staff associations, the Sudbury community, and champions in Parliament have pressed the government for an exemption. CAUT members across the country sent thousands of letters and participated in national consultations on the legislation. Corporate insolvency legislation was never intended to be used by public institutions like universities and colleges, said Robinson. The laws are misaligned with the goals of public universities and colleges to train students, promote democracy, and advance knowledge. The legislative changes announced yesterday are necessary, long overdue, and will help ensure that the scandal of what happened at Laurentian will never be repeated. Read CAUTs full submission on post-secondary educational institutions and insolvency legislation here. Contact Information: Elizabeth Berman Canadian Association of University Teachers [email protected] (613) 820-2270 ext. 105 Source: Canadian Association of University Teachers PRESS RELEASE CCH Tagetik Global Minimum Tax solution named New Product of the Year award by Business Intelligence Group NEW YORK November 22, 2023 Wolters Kluwers recently launched CCH Tagetik Global Minimum Tax solution was today named New Product of the Year in the Business Intelligence Groups annual BIG Awards for Business . Wolters Kluwer launched its new CCH Tagetik Global Minimum Tax solution in April of 2023, to help multinational companies prepare for 2024 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Pillar Two reporting requirements. The solution helps multinational companies collect, align, calculate and report integrated finance and tax data in accordance with the new OECD requirements. It also helps CFOs better understand how Pillar Two regulations will impact their business model and operations. This newest CCH Tagetik product innovation is just the latest example of Wolters Kluwers commitment to creating user-friendly, advanced technologies that address the constantly evolving challenges faced by the Office of Finance. Ralf Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Corporate Performance Solutions, Wolters Kluwer, said: Were proud that our new CCH Tagetik Global Minimum Tax solution has been named New Product of the Year from the BIG Awards for Business. This recognition reinforces that, as CFOs continue to face evolving regulatory and reporting challenges, they can trust Wolters Kluwer to continue to invest in the development of innovative, agile, user-friendly technology that empowers them to gain visibility into, connect and analyze enterprise-wide data in new and powerful ways. Gartner noted that companys BIG Award for Business nomination focused on the CCH Tagetik Global Minimum Tax solutions ability to empower the Office of Finance to: Rapidly meet Pillar Two regulation requirements by collecting, aggregating, harmonizing, and securely storing the new data sets required to perform complex calculations across local, group, finance, and tax consolidation. Manage the tax process end-to-end, reducing the burden that tax and finance teams face when reporting in accordance with the Pillar Two framework. Guide tax strategy, and understand the current and future impact that Pillar Two reporting requirements will have on their business model and operations. To learn more about how CFOs can efficiently lead the transition toward complying with OECD Pillar Two standards, while minimizing disruption, visit Wolters Kluwers Expert Insights pages. The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry award programs , business executivesthose with experience and knowledgejudge the programs. The organizations proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and then rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers. # # # About Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer (EURONEXT: WKL) is a global leader in information, software, and services for professionals in healthcare, tax and accounting, financial and corporate compliance, legal and regulatory, and corporate performance and ESG. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services. Wolters Kluwer reported 2022 annual revenues of 5.5 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 20,900 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Media Contact: Paul Lyon Senior Director, External Communications Wolters Kluwer Mobile: +44 7765 391 824 [email protected] Attachment VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ceylon Graphite Corp. (Ceylon or the Company) (TSX-V: CYL) (OTC: CYLYF) (FSE: CCY) announces that it has amended the terms of certain convertible debentures (the 2018 Convertible Debentures) that were issued by the Company on May 23, 2018 in the aggregate principal amount of $2,000,000. The 2018 Convertible Debentures previously entitled the holders thereof to convert an aggregate principal balance of $1,850,000 into common shares (2018 Debenture Shares) of the Company at a price of $0.25 per 2018 Debenture Share at any time on or prior to November 23, 2023. The Company has amended the conversion price of an aggregate principal amount of $1,750,000 of the 2018 Convertible Debentures (the Extended 2018 Convertible Debentures) to $0.15 per 2018 Debenture Share and amended the maturity date of the Extended 2018 Convertible Debentures to November 23, 2024 (the Amendments). In addition, the Company has agreed to issue 5,833,333 warrants of the Company (the Replacement Warrants) to the holders of the Extended 2018 Convertible Debentures to replace the warrants originally issued together with the 2018 Convertible Debentures and which otherwise would have expired on November 23, 2023. Each Replacement Warrant is exercisable for one common share of the Company (a Replacement Warrant Share) at a price of $0.15 per Replacement Warrant Share at any time until November 23, 2024. The Company is not receiving any additional funds in connection with the Amendments or issuance of the Replacement Warrants. A total principal amount of $100,000 of the 2018 Convertible Debentures were not extended and mature on November 23, 2023. The Company is currently evaluating options for the repayment of the 2018 Convertible Debentures which rank subordinate in payment priority to the senior secured convertible debentures issued by the Company on October 26, 2023. All securities issued and issuable in connection with the Replacement Warrants are subject to a four month and one day hold period from the dated of issuance in accordance with Canadian securities laws. The Amendments and issuance of the Replacement Warrants are subject to the final approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. In connection with the above transactions a company controlled by Sasha Jacob, CEO of the Company, and holder of a principal amount of $1,000,000 of the 2018 Debentures has received 3,333,333 Replacement Warrants (the Insider Participation). The Insider Participation constitutes a related party transaction as such term is defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (MI 61-101). The Company is relying on an exemption from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements provided under MI 61-101 pursuant to section 5.5(a) and section 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101, on the basis that the Insider Participation does not exceed 25% of the fair market value of the Companys market capitalization. The Company also announces that it has granted an aggregate of 2,500,000 stock options to its directors, officers and employees. Each option is exercisable at $0.05 per common share at any time until November 22, 2028. About Ceylon Graphite Corp. Ceylon is a public company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, that is in the business of mining for graphite, and developing and commercializing innovative graphene and graphite applications and products. Graphite mined in Sri Lanka is known to be some of the highest grade in the world and has been confirmed to be suitable to be easily upgradable for a range of applications including the high-growth electric vehicle and battery storage markets as well as construction, healthcare and paints and coatings sectors. Further information regarding Ceylon is available at www.ceylongraphite.com Sasha Jacob, Chief Executive Officer and Rita Thiel, Chair of the Board of Directors [email protected] Corporate Communications +1(604) 924-8695 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 Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains forward-looking information as such term is defined in applicable securities laws, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. The forward-looking information includes statements about the amendments to the 2018 Convertible Debentures, the evaluation of options to repay the 2018 Convertible Debentures that were not extended, the secured obligations of the Company, regulatory approvals, potential value of products produced with Ceylon graphite, the quality of graphite mined by Ceylon, applications for future graphite applications, Ceylons role as a potential market leader and expectations related to development of Ceylons properties and Ceylons mining operations. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to Ceylon, including the assumption that, there are no material adverse changes effecting development and production at the M1 mine or on other properties, testing related to the performance of Ceylons vein graphite material are accurate, there will be no material adverse change in graphite and metal prices, there will be continued demand for graphite powered batteries, all necessary consents, licenses, permits and approvals will be obtained, including various Local Government Licenses. Investors are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. Risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking information include, among other things, the results of Ceylons graphite testing being inaccurate or incomplete, the market for graphite related technologies not developing as expected, failure to obtain or maintain patents and proprietary technology, loss or failure to acquire available high quality graphite, any failures to obtain or delays in obtaining required regulatory licenses, permits, approvals and consents, an inability to access financing as needed, a general economic downturn, a volatile stock price, labour strikes, political unrest, changes in the mining regulatory regime governing Ceylon, a failure to comply with environmental regulations and a weakening of market and industry reliance on high quality graphite. Ceylon cautions the reader that the above list of risk factors is not exhaustive. Source: Ceylon Graphite Corp. TORONTO, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canadians trust Bertolli for its rich 150-year heritage that is synonymous with elevated Italian flavours. Now, Conagra Brands Canada, Inc. (NYSE: CAG) proudly presents the opportunity to taste that heritage in Bertolli frozen skillet meals that bring the Italian restaurant experience home. Bertolli frozen skillet meals are bursting with traditional and authentic flavours in richly flavoured pasta creations that are made with real simple ingredients like freshly sauteed garlic and slow-simmered sauces. Quick and easy to prepare in under 12 minutes, these meals are an ideal choice for those wanting an Italian restaurant-inspired meal at home. Bertolli frozen skillet meals will serve two, so are perfect for a cozy date night in or for any day of the week when you want a delicious Italian meal at home with minimal preparation or clean up. Simply pour into a skillet, heat, and soon after, a sumptuous meal awaits. The Bertolli frozen skillet meals lineup includes: Chicken Florentine & Farfalle (624 g) Italian Sausage & Rigatoni (624 g) Chicken Carbonara (624 g) Chicken Alfredo & Penne (624 g) Chicken Broccoli Fettuccine Alfredo (624 g) "In today's busy world, we are often pressed for time but still seek authentic, rich flavours," says Arsalan Ahmed, Brand Manager at Conagra Brands Canada. With the introduction of Bertolli frozen skillet meals we want to help Canadians enjoy a premium dining experience at home, along with meaningful connections and memorable moments around the table." The Bertolli frozen skillet meals are available in the frozen section at major grocery stores nationwide, including Sobeys, Longos, Walmart and Metro. About Conagra BrandsConagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE: CAG), headquartered in Chicago with a Canadian presence in Mississauga, is one of North America's leading branded food companies. Guided by an entrepreneurial spirit, Conagra Brands combines a rich heritage of making great food with a sharpened focus on innovation. The company's portfolio is evolving to satisfy people's changing food preferences. Conagra's iconic brands, such as Orville Redenbacher's, Marie Callender's, Hunt's, Healthy Choice, Slim Jim, POGO and VH, as well as emerging brands, including Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP, Earth Balance, and Gardein offer choices for every occasion. For more information, visit www.conagrabrands.ca. For more information, please contact:Sarah El-BakriHarbinger [email protected] A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/753c9655-81fa-416d-8491-730967be8a79 Bertolli Chicken Florentine & Farfalle Bertolli Chicken Florentine & Farfalle Source: Conagra Brands, Inc ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IBN (InvestorBrandNetwork), a multifaceted communications organization committed to connecting companies with the investment community through its dynamic portfolio of 60+ brands, is delighted to announce its re-engagement as the Official Media Partner for The Microcap Conference. Organized by DealFlow Events, The Microcap Conference is scheduled to take place from January 30, 2024, to February 1, 2024, at the renowned Caesars Atlantic City Hotel & Casino, located at 2100 Pacific Avenue, Atlantic City, NJ. The Microcap Conference will serve as a crucial platform for investment, education and collaboration within the microcap sector. This eagerly awaited event builds upon two decades of DealFlow Events' experience in hosting exceptional conferences that cater to the U.S. financial markets. The conference's distinguished attendees will include senior microcap and private company executives, institutional and retail investors, business leaders from brokerage, law, and accounting firms, investor relations professionals, and more. The conference will feature specialized programming geared towards the microcap space, fostering business efficiency and forging lasting relationships with industry peers. In its capacity as the media sponsor for the event, IBN will harness its comprehensive corporate communications solutions to enhance the conference's visibility through an impressive array of strategic tools and influential digital channels. This approach aims to expand the reach of invited speakers, event sponsors and the conference itself, leveraging the power of multi-brand social media technologies and IBN's expansive syndication network. Furthermore, IBN will provide a complimentary syndicated article for each presenting company to amplify their reach. With a coverage network extending to 5,000+ syndication partners and a diverse array of online channels, IBN will be further extending the conference's digital presence. Steven Dresner, CEO of DealFlow Events, commented, "At DealFlow, we are pleased to once again collaborate with IBN for our January event. As the market leader in corporate communications, IBN has always greatly improved our outreach and ensured seamless media coverage at our conferences. We are tremendously excited about our event in January and appreciate IBN's continued support." Jonathan Keim, communications director for IBN, added, "The upcoming conference will offer highly specialized educational and networking opportunities. Our team is excited to be part of the three-day event as we always have an exceptional time at the conferences organized by DealFlow Events. Over the next couple of months, we will be collaborating closely with their team to maximize visibility among our investor audiences." For registration details, please visit The Microcap Conference Tickets. About IBN IBN consists of financial brands introduced to the investment public over the course of 17+ years. With IBN, we have amassed a collective audience of millions of social media followers. These distinctive investor brands aim to fulfill the unique needs of a growing base of client-partners. IBN will continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients. Through our Dynamic Brand Portfolio (DBP), IBN provides: (1) access to a network of wire solutions via InvestorWire to reach all target markets, industries and demographics in the most effective manner possible; (2) article and editorial syndication to 5,000+ news outlets; (3) Press Release Enhancement to ensure maximum impact; (4) full-scale distribution to a growing social media audience; (5) a full array of corporate communications solutions; and (6) total news coverage solutions. For more information, please visit https://www.InvestorBrandNetwork.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the InvestorBrandNetwork website applicable to all content provided by IBN, wherever published or re-published: http://IBN.fm/Disclaimer Media Contact:IBN (InvestorBrandNetwork)Los Angeles, Californiawww.InvestorBrandNetwork.com310.299.1717 Office[email protected] Source: InvestorBrandNetwork (IBN) BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. On November 22, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov met with the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Hissein Brahim Taha, who is on visit to Azerbaijan, Trend reports citing Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. The current cooperation agenda and prospects for relations between Azerbaijan and the OIC, preparations for the upcoming OIC summit and other high-level events next year, our countrys plans in this context, as well as the current situation in the region were discussed at the meeting. Minister Jeyhun Bayramov noted with satisfaction the close cooperation established with the organization. The Secretary General, in turn, said that the opening of the OIC Labor Center in Baku within the framework of the 5th Conference of the Ministers of Labor of the Member States of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation will contribute to the further development of relations within the organization. t was noted that joint work will contribute to expanding cooperation between member countries in the field of labor, employment, social protection and human capital development. During the meeting, there were also exchanged views on other issues of mutual interest. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Latin Metals Inc. (Latin Metals or the Company) - (TSXV: LMS) (OTCQB: LMSQF) announces significant progress at its Organullo Project (Organullo or the Project) where an existing option agreement with AngloGold Argentina Exploraciones S.A. (AngloGold), a wholly owned subsidiary of AngloGold Ashanti plc. (NYSE: AU, JSE: ANG) provides AngloGold with an option to earn up to an 80% interest in the Project. AngloGold has completed an airborne geophysical survey collecting magnetic and radiometric data over most of the Project area (Figure 1). This extensive geophysical survey is a significant step for the Organullo project. With the survey complete, processing is in progress, and we look forward to seeing the results of the survey in due course. stated Keith Henderson, Latin Metals CEO. The data and interpretation will be integrated with existing data collected by AngloGold to help finalize drill targets. AngloGold Ashanti has submitted a drill permit for 11,900m and plans to commence drilling once this permit and other licenses are received. Figure 1: Map showing the Organullo property claims under option to AngloGold and the area where airborne geophysical survey has been completed. Airborne Survey Details Airborne geophysical surveys allow the collection of subsurface data using sensors and instruments mounted on an aircraft. The primary goal is to obtain a better understanding of the distribution of subsurface rock types and mineralization prior to drill testing. The method can be expensive due to the use of aircraft to collect the data, but it is efficient compared to ground-based methods and almost completely non-invasive, minimizing the impact on flora, fauna and local communities. The survey completed by AngloGold collected magnetic and radiometric data along 3,500 line-km, covering most of the Property in eleven days. Survey lines were flown on a 100m spacing north-south and a 1,000m spacing east-west, at an average flight height of 60m above ground. About Latin Metals Latin Metals is a mineral exploration company acquiring a diversified portfolio of assets in South America. The Company operates with a Prospect Generator model focusing on the acquisition of prospective exploration properties at minimum cost, completing initial evaluation through cost-effective exploration to establish drill targets, and ultimately securing joint venture partners to fund drilling and advanced exploration. Shareholders gain exposure to the upside of a significant discovery without the dilution associated with funding the highest-risk drill-based exploration. Qualified Person Keith J. Henderson, P.Geo., is the Company's qualified person as defined by NI 43-101 and has reviewed the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for portions of this news release. He has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Henderson is not independent of the Company, as he is an employee of the Company and holds securities of the Company. On Behalf of the Board of Directors of LATIN METALS INC. Keith Henderson President & CEO For further details on the Company readers are referred to the Company's web site ( www.latin-metals.com ) and its Canadian regulatory filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . For further information, please contact: Keith Henderson Suite 2300 1177 West Hastings Street Vancouver, BC, V6E 2K3 Phone: 604-638-3456 E-mail: [email protected] 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 news release. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities legislation, including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, statements regarding the negotiation of the Option Agreements and exercise of the Option for the Properties, the anticipated content, commencement, timing and cost of exploration programs in respect of the Properties and otherwise, anticipated exploration program results from exploration activities, and the Company's expectation that it will be able to enter into agreements to acquire interests in additional mineral properties, the discovery and delineation of mineral deposits/resources/reserves on the Properties, and the anticipated business plans and timing of future activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Often, but not always, forward looking information can be identified by words such as "pro forma", "plans", "expects", "may", "should", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", "potential" or variations of such words including negative variations thereof, and phrases that refer to certain actions, events or results that may, could, would, might or will occur or be taken or achieved. In making the forward-looking statements in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including without limitation, market fundamentals will result in sustained precious metals demand and prices, the receipt of any necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals in connection with the future development of the Companys Argentine projects in a timely manner, the availability of financing on suitable terms for the development, construction and continued operation of the Company projects, and the Companys ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such risks and other factors include, among others, operating and technical difficulties in connection with mineral exploration and development and mine development activities at the Properties, including the geological mapping, prospecting and sampling programs being proposed for the Properties (the "Programs"), the fact that the Companys anticipated interests in the Properties will only be an option and there is no guarantee that such interest, if earned, will be certain, actual results of exploration activities, including the Programs, estimation or realization of mineral reserves and mineral resources, the timing and amount of estimated future production, costs of production, capital expenditures, the costs and timing of the development of new deposits, the availability of a sufficient supply of water and other materials, requirements for additional capital, future prices of precious metals and copper, changes in general economic conditions, changes in the financial markets and in the demand and market price for commodities, possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates, possible failures of plants, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated, accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry, delays or the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required, including TSX-V acceptance for filing of the Option Agreements, any current or future property acquisitions, financing or other planned activities, changes in laws, regulations and policies affecting mining operations, hedging practices, currency fluctuations, title disputes or claims limitations on insurance coverage and the timing and possible outcome of pending litigation, environmental issues and liabilities, risks related to joint venture operations, and risks related to the integration of acquisitions, as well as those factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's latest Management Discussion and Analysis and other filings of the Company with the Canadian Securities Authorities, copies of which can be found under the Company's profile on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements. Except as otherwise required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking information in this news release or incorporated by reference herein. TORONTO, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- McEwen Mining Inc. (NYSE: MUX) (TSX: MUX) is pleased to announce a financing to fund continued exploration and development at the Fox Complex in the Timmins region of Ontario. The proceeds of this financing will be used exclusively for qualifying Canadian Exploration Expenditures (CEE) and Canadian Development Expenditures (CDE), within the meaning of subsection 66(15) of the Income Tax Act (Canada), on McEwens properties in the Timmins region: Part 1 (CEE) of the financing consists of a US$7.3 million (Cdn$10,007,600) private placement of 788,000 flow-through common shares at a price of US$9.27 (Cdn$12.70); and Part 2 (CDE) of the financing consists of a US$8.8 million (Cdn$12,008,550) private placement of 1,115,000 flow-through common shares at a price of US$7.86 (Cdn$10.77), (Part 1 (CEE) and Part 2 (CDE) together being the Offering). The Offering of 1,903,000 flow-through common shares for US$16.1 million (Cdn$22,016,150) is expected to close on December 14, 2023 (the Closing) and is subject to customary closing conditions, including approval from the TSX and NYSE. This press release is not an offer of common shares for sale in the United States. The common shares may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an available exemption from the registration requirements of the US. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), and applicable U.S. state securities laws. McEwen will not make any public offering of the securities in the United States. The common shares have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act, or any state securities laws. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. CAUTION CONCERNING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains certain forward-looking statements and information, including "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements and information expressed, as at the date of this news release, McEwen Mining Inc.'s (the "Company") estimates, forecasts, projections, expectations or beliefs as to future events and results. Forward-looking statements and information are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties, risks and contingencies, and there can be no assurance that such statements and information will prove to be accurate. Therefore, actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements and information. Risks and uncertainties that could cause results or future events to differ materially from current expectations expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements and information include, but are not limited to, effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, fluctuations in the market price of precious metals, mining industry risks, political, economic, social and security risks associated with foreign operations, the ability of the corporation to receive or receive in a timely manner permits or other approvals required in connection with operations, risks associated with the construction of mining operations and commencement of production and the projected costs thereof, risks related to litigation, the state of the capital markets, environmental risks and hazards, uncertainty as to the calculation of mineral resources and reserves, and other risks. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information included herein, which speak only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to reissue or update forward-looking statements or information as a result of new information or events after the date hereof except as may be required by law. See McEwen Mining's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, under the caption "Risk Factors", for additional information on risks, uncertainties and other factors relating to the forward-looking statements and information regarding the Company. All forward-looking statements and information made in this news release are qualified by this cautionary statement. The NYSE and TSX have not reviewed and do not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the contents of this news release, which has been prepared by management of McEwen Mining Inc. ABOUT MCEWEN MINING McEwen Mining is a gold and silver producer with operations in Nevada, Canada, Mexico and Argentina. In addition, it owns approximately 47.7% of McEwen Copper which owns the large, advanced stage Los Azules copper project in Argentina. The Companys goal is to improve the productivity and life of its assets with the objective of increasing its share price and providing a yield. Rob McEwen, Chairman and Chief Owner has personally provided the Company with $220 million and takes an annual salary of $1. Source: McEwen Mining OTTAWA, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) is encouraged by the federal governments goal to build an economy that works for everyone but fears the current plan still leaves out and leaves behind most Indigenous people due to lack of urban-specific Indigenous economic or social strategies and mechanisms. However, Friendship Centres stand ready to be an effective partner with a clear vision for the well-being of communities that we serve. The federal government outlined its bold intentions for a better Canada and while there is promise, we are concerned that the initiatives announced in the 2023 Fall Economic Statement or forecasting for the 2024 Budget will not achieve their intended outcome without urban Indigenous strategies, said Jocelyn Formsma, NAFC CEO, We are pleased to see the inclusion of the urban, rural, and northern housing initiative, and hope to see similar recognition across other areas, such as early learning and child care, social infrastructure, and employment and labour. The Fall Economic Statement reaffirmed the implementation of an Urban, Rural, and Northern Indigenous Housing Strategy in a for Indigenous, by Indigenous manner. This is a good step towards recognizing the need for an urban-specific strategy around Indigenous housing, however, we must also ensure that the necessary wrap around and supportive services that come with providing housing is also funded. The Fall Economic Statement also reported on the record amounts of funds earmarked for advancing Reconciliation since 2015. Of the billions of dollars announced and recorded, there remains only one federal program that specifically supports urban Indigenous programming and it sunsets in 2025. Despite the fact that more than half of the Indigenous population in Canada is urbanized and face disproportionate levels of poverty, homelessness, racism and violence, there is no urban Indigenous plan, strategy or commitment to stable funding beyond 2025. Within urban spaces, Friendship Centres are the most robust and expansive service providers that can respond to the need to address the social, economic, cultural and marginalization of Indigenous people. The NAFC, through its members, collectively serve over 1 million people in over 100 communities across Canada from coast to coast to coast and are the largest urban Indigenous owned and operated civil society movement. It is essential to understand that supporting Friendship Centres is an investment with tangible economic and social returns. By providing increased, ongoing, and stable funding to these Centres, the federal government is, in fact, investing in the Canadian economy and fulfilling its obligations under various significant commitments, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN DRIP), Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Calls to Action, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) Inquiry Calls to Justice, and the Sustainable Development Goals. The NAFC remains a ready, willing, and natural partner to ensure an economy that truly works for everyone, including the full inclusion of all Indigenous people, regardless of residency. Our expertise and community driven approach is key to addressing the unique needs of urban Indigenous populations, says Formsma, We too believe that better is always possible and Friendships Centres are driven to building sustainable and resilient Indigenous communities in the urban, rural and northern areas that we serve. FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES: John PailleSenior Communications Coordinator[email protected] The National Association of Friendship Centres is a network of over 100 Friendship Centres and Provincial/Territorial Associations, which make up part of the Friendship Centre Movement Canada's most significant national network of self-determined Indigenous owned and operated civil society community hubs offering programs, services and supports to urban Indigenous people. Source: National Association of Friendship Centres (NAFC) Zug, Switzerland, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Blockchain technology has revolutionised the way we manage our finances, offering newfound freedom and control. But with this empowerment comes the vital responsibility of managing wealth effectively. Ocean Money is setting the standard for the neobank industry, empowering clients to take charge and expand their financial horizons. Ocean Money is ushering in a new era with its crypto-compliant digital wealth management platform. This platform equips clients with the confidence and tools they need to build and manage wealth, both within and beyond the crypto realm. What Does Ocean Money's Wealth Management Platform Offer? Ocean Money's wealth management platform aims to provide clients with investment services and opportunities that were once inaccessible due to financial and geographical barriers that have long plagued the wealth management industry. In an industry shrouded in mystery and secrecy, Ocean Money is riding a wave of inclusivity and transparency. Regardless of clients level of investing experience, Ocean Money is delivering personalised and transparent wealth management solutions to supplement their financial journey. The wealth management platform not only offers familiar crypto-friendly options such as spot buying and selling but also sets itself apart with three distinctive features. Access to Unique Investment Opportunities Ocean Money stands as one of the pioneers in offering a diverse range of crypto-enabled investment opportunities, from ETFs to tokenised real-world assets. Here's a glimpse of what their wealth management product brings to the table: - Fractionalized Real Estate: Breaking down the barriers that have kept real estate investment exclusive for centuries, Ocean Money enables everyday investors to access small portions of real estate assets, providing exposure to the market without breaking the bank. - Crypto ETFs: Say goodbye to the crypto casino and the complexity of managing individual positions. Ocean Money allows clients to invest in a diversified portfolio of crypto-assets through managed ETF products, reducing risk and narrow exposure. - BTC Mining Fund: The Bitcoin mining industry is now open to Ocean Money clients. Clients can invest in Bitcoin Mining Funds, profiting from the creation of new Bitcoins. - Early Stage Access: Ocean Moneys partnerships with Venture Capitalists, provides clients access to tokenised VC funds, granting them entry into pre-IPO companies and portfolios.Recently, during an X Space event, Ocean Money's CEO, Adam Dignan, announced that partner VC firms are allocating funds to be tokenised. This exclusive access allows clients to invest in some of the most promising pre-IPO companies. - Access to Previously illiquid Markets: Through tokenisation, Ocean Money is breaking down the walls that kept certain assets out of the hands of general investors. By tokenising assets, Ocean Money is bringing liquidity to illiquid markets, providing accessibility to previously exclusive investments. Airtight Security Ocean Money's industry-leading technology not only excels in trade execution but also in client security. In a recent interview, their CTO, Adam Javaid, highlighted their "multi-layered security architecture that goes beyond just encryption and firewalls." Through partnerships with leading blockchain and smart contract audit firm CertiK, and digital asset custodian Fireblocks, Ocean Money ensures "a secure transition of assets between traditional finance systems and blockchain." Access to Secondary Markets Utilising blockchain technology to tokenise assets, Ocean Money can facilitate efficient secondary markets for a plethora of assets. From tokenised venture funds to real estate, the offerings Ocean Money has for secondary market assets is beyond expectation, and gives clients a chance to own assets previously out of their reach. The secondary markets were previously exclusive to elite financiers and funds, and with Ocean Moneys new technology, they are now accessible to anyone on the platform, giving investors a wider, more diversified choice of investments. Ready to Dive into the Future of Wealth Management? Ocean Money's wealth management platform empowers clients to seize control of their financial destiny. Backed by cutting-edge technology, top-tier security solutions, and a user-friendly interface, Ocean Money ensures the best possible experience. For additional information regarding Ocean Money services and offerings, please visit the website at: https://ocean.money To stay informed about the latest updates, follow Ocean Money on X: https://twitter.com/OceanMoney_ For direct inquiries, contact Sam Pitman via email at: [email protected]. Sam Pitman COO Ocean Money AG sam at ocean.money https://twitter.com/OceanMoney_ Source: Ocean Money OMER, Israel, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Odysight.ai Inc. (OTCQB: SCTC), a leading provider of visual-based predictive maintenance (PdM) and condition-based monitoring (CBM) solutions, proudly announced the election of its CEO, Yehu Ofer, as a member of the International Board of the renowned Weizmann Institute of Science. Mr. Ofer's appointment to this role reflects a significant recognition from one of Israel's top scientific and technological research organizations. This recognition exemplifies Mr. Ofer's exceptional and outstanding reputation within leading technological defense and commercial organizations in Israel and abroad. Yehu Ofer assumed the position of CEO of Odysight.ai on October 18, 2022. He brought with him a substantial business background in the aviation and aerospace industries, as well as a wealth of expertise as a former Israeli Air Force (IAF) pilot and commander. Under his leadership, Odysight.ai has evolved into a major player in the development of video sensor-based predictive maintenance and condition based monitoring solutions for vital systems in the aviation, aerospace, industrial, transportation and energy sectors. A retired colonel in the Israel Air Force, Mr. Ofer has held significant positions, including leading operational squadrons and serving as Israel's defense attache to Italy, Greece, Serbia and Croatia. His experience extends to the private sector, where he held senior management roles at Elbit Systems Ltd. Mr. Ofer holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Haifa and a BA in Economics and Logistics from Bar Ilan University. In addition, Mr. Ofer is a graduate of the National Security college in Tel Aviv. "The Board of Directors and I proudly congratulate Mr. Yehu Ofer on his election to the International Board of the Weizmann Institute", said Prof. Benad Goldwasser, Chairman of the Board of Odysight.ai. Yehu's profound commitment to excellence and leadership as well as his deep understanding of technology and its business applications, as evident during his tenure as our CEO, will undoubtedly contribute to the Weizmann Institutes International Board as much as it has contributed and will continue doing so to Odysight.ai . About Odysight.ai Odysight.ai is pioneering the Predictive Maintenance (PdM) and Condition Based Monitoring (CBM) markets with its visualization and AI platform. Providing video sensor-based solutions for critical systems in the aviation, transportation, and energy industries, Odysight.ai leverages proven visual technologies and products from the medical industry. Odysight.ais unique video-based sensors, embedded software, and AI algorithms are being deployed in hard-to-reach locations and harsh environments across a variety of PdM and CBM use cases. Odysight.ais platform allows maintenance and operations teams visibility into areas which are inaccessible under normal operation, or where the operating ambience is not suitable for continuous real-time monitoring. For more information, please visit: https://www.odysight.ai or follow us on Twitter , LinkedIn and YouTube . Forward-Looking Statements Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 relating to future events or our future performance. All statements contained in this press release that do not relate to matters of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, expectations about Mr. Yehu Ofer's performance as CEO of the Company or a member of the International Board of the Weizmann Institute of Science. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as may, should, expects, plans, anticipates, believes, estimates, predicts, potential or continue or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. Those statements are based on information we have when those statements are made or our managements current expectation and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Factors that may affect our results, performance, circumstances or achievements include, but are not limited to the following: (i) market acceptance of our existing and new products, including those that utilize our micro Odysight.ai technology or offer Predictive Maintenance and Condition Based Monitoring applications, (ii) lengthy product delays in key markets, (iii) an inability to secure regulatory approvals for the sale of our products, (iv) intense competition in the medical device and related industries from much larger, multinational companies, (v) product liability claims, product malfunctions and the functionality of Odysight.ais solutions under all environmental conditions, (vi) our limited manufacturing capabilities and reliance on third-parties for assistance, (vii) an inability to establish sales, marketing and distribution capabilities to commercialize our products, (viii) an inability to attract and retain qualified personnel, (ix) our efforts obtain and maintain intellectual property protection covering our products, which may not be successful, (x) our reliance on single suppliers for certain product components, including for miniature video sensors which are suitable for our Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor technology products, (xi) the fact that we will need to raise additional capital to meet our business requirements in the future and that such capital raising may be costly, dilutive or difficult to obtain, (xii) the impact of pandemics, such as COVID-19 (coronavirus) and (xiii) the fact that we conduct business in multiple foreign jurisdictions, exposing us to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, logistical, global supply chain and communications challenges, burdens and costs of compliance with foreign laws and political and economic instability in each jurisdiction. These and other important factors discussed in Odysight.ais Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on March 28, 2023 and our other reports filed with the SEC could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements made in this press release. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Odysight.ai undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Olaplex Holdings, Inc. (OLAPLEX), today announced their participation in the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail Conference in New York, NY. Eric Tiziani, Chief Financial Officer, will present on Wednesday, December 6, 2023 at 11:00am ET, and will meet with investors during the conference. The audio portion of the presentation will be available on the Companys Investor Relations website, https://ir.olaplex.com/, and will remain there for 90 days following the event. About OLAPLEX OLAPLEX is an innovative, science-enabled, technology-driven beauty company with a mission to improve the hair health of its consumers. In 2014, OLAPLEX disrupted and revolutionized the prestige hair care category by creating innovative bond-building technology, which works by protecting, strengthening and relinking broken bonds in the hair during and after hair services. The brands proprietary, patent-protected ingredient works on a molecular level to protect and repair damaged hair. OLAPLEXs award-winning products are sold through an expanding omnichannel model serving the professional, specialty retail, and direct-to-consumer channels. Contacts Investors: Patrick Flaherty Vice President, Investor Relations [email protected] VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- POWR Lithium Corp. (CSE: POWR) (FRA: 6JX / WKN: A3D6BS) (OTCQB: PWRLF) (POWR or the Company), a mineral exploration and development company focused on American lithium deposits, is pleased to provide a summary of recent activities related to its Halo Project near Tonopah, Nevada. Highlights Recent two-million-dollar ($2M) financing provides year-end impetus and launchpad for 2024. Company completed 884 meters in 4 HQ core holes across the project area. Adjoining property activities, results, and investments provide encouragement. The Halo Project consists of ninety-eight (98) mineral claims located in Nevadas Esmeralda and Nye counties, is considered prospective for claystone-hosted lithium mineralization. Optimistic announcements regarding exploration and development on adjacent properties (see below) to the north and southwest of the Halo Project have fueled enthusiasm for regional lithium exploration activities in the area. Figure 1 - POWR Lithium Halo Property and Adjacent Projects Drilling at Halo was conducted by Falcon Drilling of Carson City, Nevada (https://falcon-drilling.com/). The equipment is designed and manufactured by Falcon and has been proven at numerous projects both domestically and internationally. The highly mobile platform allows for on-site adjustments and target location revisions based on downhole results and initial assessment by the project supervisor in consultation with the POWR exploration team leaders. Drilling at Halo commenced on October 31 and was completed on November 13. Hole depths ranged from 153.6 to 245.4 metres and all holes traversed a thick sequence of finely laminated claystone and siltstone. Logging, cutting and sampling were conducted by POWRs technical team at their logging facility in Tonopah. A total of 490 samples (including internal QAQC) were retrieved by American Assay Laboratories and delivered to their analytical facilities in Sparks, Nevada. Initial results are expected shortly and will be announced in due course. Figure 2. Finely laminated claystone at 221.13 to 224.03 metres, Drill Hole No. HALO-002-23. Immediately to the north (Figure 1), and directly adjacent to Halo, American Lithium (Market Cap US$246M) published a positive preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for its TLC Project with a base case after-tax NPV8% US$3.26 Billion & after-tax IRR of 27.5%. To the southwest and directly adjacent to Halo, American Battery Technology (Market Cap US$190M) has confirmed the presence of lithium at depths greater than 1,400 feet (430m) below surface. The combined outlook from these directly proximal operations is of great interest and exciting to the POWR Lithium exploration team. Company CEO, Patrick Morris notes, We are pleased to have completed the Phase 1 drilling program with four holes traversing the claystone sequence suspected to host important Li values both to the north and west. I applaud the efforts of both Falcon Drilling and our field team to complete this maiden program during the 2023 field program and am anxious to receive the analytical results from our laboratory. Additionally, the Company announces the resignation of Rob Birmingham from the Board of Directors, effective Nov. 21, 2023. We thank Mr. Birmingham for his service to the Company and we wish him well in his future endeavours, notes Mr. Morris. On Behalf of The Board of Directors, Sincerely, ~Patrick Morris~ Patrick MorrisChief Executive OfficerPOWR Lithium Corp.www.powrlithium.com About POWR Lithium Corp. (CSE: POWR) (FRA: 6JX / WKN: A3D6BS) (OTCQB: PWRLF)POWR Lithium is an exploration and development company dedicated to the advancement of North American lithium deposits to support domestic demand. The Company holds interests on the Halo and Eli properties in Nevada. The Company is also focusing on the development of claystone extraction and processing technologies aimed at delivering scalable efficiencies across the value chain in a sustainable manner. To find out more visit www.powrlithium.com and watch our video. POWR Lithium advises the public that as part of its disclosure obligations as a public issuer, all material and regulatory filings can be found on www.sedar.com. We also invite the public to visit our website at www.powrlithium.com and to sign up to our news alerts to be advised of future news releases and related company information. Please also ensure you watch our video which is now available on the website. Forward Looking Information Disclaimer This news release contains statements and information that, to the extent that they are not historical fact, may constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information may include financial and other projections, as well as statements regarding future plans, objectives, or economic performance, or the assumption underlying any of the foregoing. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terms such as may, would, could, will, likely, except, anticipate, believe, intend, plan, forecast, project, estimate, outlook, or the negative thereof or other similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. Examples of such statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the timing of the anticipated results of the drilling program at the Halo Project. Forward-looking information is based on the assumptions, estimates, analysis, and opinions of management made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors that management believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances at the date that such statements are made, but which may prove to be incorrect. The material factors and assumptions used to develop the forward-looking information contained in this news release include, but are not limited to, key personnel and qualified employees continuing their involvement with the Company; the Companys ability to secure additional financing on reasonable terms; the competitive conditions of the sector in which the Company operates; and laws and any amendments thereto applicable to the Company. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information, including, without limitation, risks relating to the future business plans of the Company; risks that the Company will not be able to retain its key personnel; risks that the Company will not be able to secure financing on reasonable terms or at all, as well as all of the other risks as described in the Companys annual Management Discussion and Analysis dated December 16, 2022, under the heading Risks Factors. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking information. Further, any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for the Companys management to predict all such factors and to assess in advance the impact of each such factor on the Companys business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking information to reflect information or events after the date on which it is made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law, including securities laws. The CSE has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the CSE nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CONTACT INFORMATION POWR Lithium Corp. Investor RelationsEmail: [email protected]Phone: +1 (778) 383-7240 Photos accompanying this announcement are available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5ed48612-6a0b-4c15-aaae-2e9a2cce5872https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/84055709-f13f-43ad-ba1d-c71bc9c60427 Figure 1 - POWR Lithium HALO Property Area Status Map POWR Lithium Halo Property and Adjacent Projects Figure 2 - HALO property claystone core sample image Finely laminated claystone at 221.13 to 224.03 metres, Drill Hole No. HALO-002-23. Source: POWR Lithium Corp. MONTREAL, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Premier Health of America Inc. (TSXV: PHA) (the Corporation or Premier Health), a leader in healthcare services and technologies, is pleased to announce that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Cambridge based Canadian Health Care Agency (CHCA), has been retained as a primary contractor for 4-year contracts with Indigenous Services Canada (ISC). CHCA has been retained as a primary contractor in Ontario, and as back-up stream in Manitoba and Alberta, to provide nursing services and care primarily in remote, isolated, and semi-isolated communities. The contracts have an initial term of 4 years, for an initial estimated value of $23.4M and includes 4 1-year extension options, that if exercised, could increase the total value of the contracts over the full 8-year period. The contracts were awarded on November 3 and are to transition in early 2024. Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) works collaboratively with partners to improve access to high quality services for First Nations, Inuit, and Metis. ISCs vision is to support and empower Indigenous people to independently deliver and address the socio-economic conditions in their communities. CHCA is a provider of specialized nursing services that focuses on the recruitment, training, and placement of Registered Nurses and Nurse Practitioners for expanded roles and essential services to Indigenous communities across Canadas north. CHCA is based in Cambridge, Ontario, and was founded in 2001 in response to severe staffing shortages in Canadas northern regions. We are pleased to have been selected to continue working with ISC. Our exceptional health care and administrative professionals are excited about the contract award, and appreciate the trust placed in CHCA to continue providing health care services to remote, isolated, and semi-isolated First Nations communities in ON, MB, and AB. said Giovanni Garay, general manager of CHCA. About Premier Health Premier Health is a leading Canadian Healthtech company that provides a comprehensive range of outsourced services solutions for healthcare needs to governments, corporations, and individuals. Premier Health uses its proprietary LiPHe platform to lead the healthcare services sector digital transformation to provide patients with faster, cheaper, and more accessible care services. For Further Information Please Contact: Mr. Jean-Robert PronovostVice President Business DevelopmentPremier Health of America Inc.[email protected] / 1 800 231 9916 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. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation which reflects the current plans and expectations of the Corporation with respect to future events and financial performance. All statements other than statements of historical or current facts may be forward-looking information. Forward-looking information includes statements that are predictive in nature, depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, or include words such as believes, continues, expects, projects, anticipates, plans, estimates, seeks, intends, targets, forecasts, or negative or grammatical versions thereof and other similar expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as may, will, should, would and could. Forward-looking information in this press release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the execution of the Corporations growth strategy. Forward-looking information is based on managements plans, estimates, projections, beliefs and opinions as at the date of this release, and the assumptions related to those plans, estimates, projections, beliefs and opinions may change; therefore, they are presented for the purpose of assisting the Corporations security holders in understanding managements views at such time regarding those future outcomes and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Although the forward-looking information contained in this release is based on assumptions which the Corporation believes are reasonable, there can be no assurance that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking information. The forward-looking information in this release relate only to events or information as of the date on which the statements are made and, except as specifically required by applicable securities laws, the Corporation undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking information will prove to be accurate. These statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. The Corporation assumes no responsibility to update or revise forward-looking information to reflect new events or circumstances unless required by law. These factors and others are more fully discussed in the filings of the Corporation with Canadian securities regulatory authorities available at www.sedarplus.ca Source: Premier Health of America Inc. NEW YORK, Nov. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of securities of Farfetch Limited (NYSE: FTCH) between March 9, 2023 and August 17, 2023, both dates inclusive (the Class Period), of the important December 19, 2023 lead plaintiff deadline. SO WHAT: If you purchased Farfetch Limited securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement. WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Farfetch class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=19961 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than December 19, 2023. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually handle securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs Bar. Many of the firms attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers. DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, throughout the Class Period, defendants made false and/or misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operations, and compliance policies. Specifically, defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose to investors that: (1) Farfetch was experiencing a significant slowdown in growth in the U.S. and China; (2) Farfetch also faced onboarding challenges impacting the launch of its Reebok partnership; (3) Farfetch downplayed challenges it faced with respect to, and/or overstated its ability to manage, its supply chain and inventory; (4) all the foregoing was having a significant negative impact on Farfetchs revenue and GMV growth; (5) accordingly, Farfetch was unlikely to meet market expectations for its Q2 2023 financial results or its own FY 2023 revenue guidance; and (6) as a result, the Companys public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages. To join the Farfetch class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=19961 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email [email protected] or [email protected] for information on the class action. No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investors ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff. Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/. Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Contact Information: Laurence Rosen, Esq. Phillip Kim, Esq. The Rosen Law Firm, P.A. 275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor New York, NY 10016 Tel: (212) 686-1060 Toll Free: (866) 767-3653 Fax: (212) 202-3827 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] www.rosenlegal.com Seattle, Washington, Nov. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With wine having such a rich heritage, there are numerous wineries in the US that have lasted through the decades, some even centuries. However, few can say that they have led the charge towards being more environmentally conscious while making an impact on state legislation, benefiting small, independent businesses. Wilridge Winery, a family-owned vineyard, orchard, winery and distillery headquartered in Seattle, Washington, is marking its 35th year in business. As the first certified organic, Biodynamic vineyard and winery in the state, Wilridge lays claim to the title of Washingtons greenest winery. Founded in 1988 by former environmental lawyer Paul Beveridge, Wilridge has also contributed to changes in laws governing the sale of wine and alcoholic beverages in the State of Washington. Beveridge inherited a taste for good food and wine from his father, an Episcopal priest. Even when working as an environmental lawyer, Beveridge remained passionate about food and drink, learning how to make wine, and eventually deciding to open a European-style bistro in Seattle. The plan was that he would produce the wines, while his then-wife Lysle would be the chef. However, Washington still had tied house laws that prohibited manufacturers of alcoholic beverages from owning retail outlets that sold wine. The regulation was a leftover from the Prohibition period in the early 20th century. The law had recently been repealed for beer, allowing brew pubs to operate, but it was still in place for wine. With his knowledge of the law and his network, Beveridge led the campaign to have these laws changed, which took two years to finally be approved, allowing the bistro to begin selling Wilridges wine, which was well-received by customers. Beveridge later became a founding member of an organization called Family Wineries of Washington State, which worked to further modernize the states alcohol laws. The organization tackled the government-enforced three-tier system of wine distribution, which kept manufacturers, distributors, and retailers separate in many states. However, Family Wineries of Washington State was able to successfully lobby for the repeal of this system in Washington. All alcoholic beverages in the United States are about 25% more expensive than they should be because of that three-tier system where all alcohol was legally required to be sold through a middleman, Beveridge says. Its a somewhat sad commentary on the system that my legal background was so important to the success of our winery and distillery, but the changes we spearheaded were eventually able to benefit so many other entrepreneurs throughout the state. Aside from creating a huge impact on the legal side, Wilridge Winery is also a trailblazer in environmentally conscious winemaking. In 2007, Wilridge planted its 84-acre certified organic and Biodynamic estate vineyard on Naches Heights near Yakima, Washington the first such vineyard in the state. According to Beveridge, he decided to go organic to ensure the health and safety of his children and other visitors to the vineyard. This was aided by Eastern Washington having an ideal climate for agriculture, with Naches Heights being a perfect place to grow grapes and tree fruit. Wilridge plants 25 different varieties of grapes as well as apples, pears, apricots, plums, and quince. Wilridge grows more Italian varieties than any other vineyard in Washington State, including Sagrantino, a variety of grape that was previously very rare in the Pacific Northwest. Beveridge found a Sagrantino vine at UC Davis, mislabeled as a different variety. He then had it tested and proven as a Sagrantino, before propagating it. Today, all Sagrantino vines in the Pacific Northwest come from the cuttings Beveridge obtained. Furthermore, Beveridge says that the best wines in the world are produced by Biodynamic vineyards and wineries. Aside from not using synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, Biodynamic agriculture employs the methods developed by Johann Goethe and Rudolf Steiner. This includes following a planting calendar that depends on the phases of the moon and other astrological configurations, as well as treating the earth as a living and receptive organism, where everything is returned to the vineyard and the farmer doesn't rely on outside inputs. Biodynamics is about healing the earth through agriculture, Beveridge says. After World War I, Steiner saw all the pesticides that were being sprayed on farms and he realized that you can't promote life by spraying death, and he predicted all these problems linked to pesticides and herbicides. There have been many famous old vineyards that were destroyed by chemicals but were revitalized through Biodynamics. Biodynamics is a scientific discipline and a return to nature and the old knowledge, from the days before pesticides were invented. You cant argue with the results, given the great quality of wines created Biodynamicaly worldwide. Media contact: Name: Kim Aldridge Email: [email protected] Source: Wilridge Winery BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. In accordance with the instruction of President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the return of former internally displaced persons to the restored city of Lachin continue, Trend reports. Another group of citizens was sent from the Gobu Park 3 residential complex in the Garadagh district of Baku on October 22. At this stage, another 21 families (81 people) moved to the city of Lachin. 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, expressed gratitude to the valiant Azerbaijani Army, which liberated the lands from occupation. Thus, until today, a permanent settlement in the city of Lachin has been provided for 346 families - 1326 people. A new survey has found that more than 50% of Americans believe the country has lost ground in the war on drugs. The poll, conducted by Gallup, also showed that 24% of respondents believed America had made progress. This is quite a difference from responses given on the same query in a 2019 survey, which stood at 30% for losing ground to 41% for making progress. This difference can be attributed to growing concern and awareness about the opioid epidemic, which has seen many individuals fall victim to Read More>> About CNW420 CNW420 spotlights the latest developments in the rapidly evolving cannabis industry through the release of two informative articles each business day. Our concise, informative content serves as a gateway for investors interested in the legalized cannabis sector and provides updates on how regulatory developments may impact financial markets. Articles are released each business day at 4:20 a.m. and 4:20 p.m. Eastern our tribute to the time synonymous with cannabis culture. If marijuana and the burgeoning industry surrounding it are on your radar, CNW420 is for you! Check back daily to stay up-to-date on the latest milestones in the fast -changing world of cannabis. To receive SMS alerts from CNW, text CANNABIS to 888-902-4192 (U.S. Mobile Phones Only) For more information, please visit https://www.CannabisNewsWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the CannabisNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by CNW, wherever published or re-published: https://www.CannabisNewsWire.com/Disclaimer CannabisNewsWire Denver, CO www.CannabisNewsWire.com 303.498.7722 Office [email protected] CannabisNewsWire is powered by IBN IBN (InvestorBrandNetwork), a multifaceted communications organization committed to connecting companies with the investment community through its dynamic portfolio of 60+ brands, today announced its re-engagement as the official media partner for The Microcap Conference. Organized by DealFlow Events, the conference is slated to take place from Jan. 30 to Feb. 1, 2024, at the renowned Caesars Atlantic City Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The eagerly awaited event will serve as a crucial platform for investment, education and collaboration and will feature specialized programming geared towards the microcap space. As the media sponsor, IBN will harness its comprehensive corporate communications solutions to enhance the conferences visibility through an impressive array of strategic tools and influential digital channels. At DealFlow, we are pleased to once again collaborate with IBN for our January event, said Steven Dresner, CEO of DealFlow Events. As the market leader in corporate communications, IBN has always greatly improved our outreach and ensured seamless media coverage at our conferences. We are tremendously excited about our event in January and appreciate IBNs continued support. To view the full press release, visit https://ibn.fm/wpLzJ About IBN IBN consists of financial brands introduced to the investment public over the course of 17+ years. With IBN, we have amassed a collective audience of millions of social media followers. These distinctive investor brands aim to fulfill the unique needs of a growing base of client-partners. IBN will continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients. Through our Dynamic Brand Portfolio (DBP), IBN provides: (1) access to a network of wire solutions via InvestorWire to reach all target markets, industries and demographics in the most effective manner possible; (2) article and editorial syndication to 5,000+ news outlets; (3) Press Release Enhancement to ensure maximum impact; (4) full-scale distribution to a growing social media audience; (5) a full array of corporate communications solutions; and (6) total news coverage solutions. 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With broad reach and a seasoned team of contributing journalists and writers, IW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that want to reach a wide audience of investors, influencers, consumers, journalists and the general public. By cutting through the overload of information in todays market, IW brings its clients unparalleled recognition and brand awareness. IW is where breaking news, insightful content and actionable information converge. For more information, please visit https://www.InvestorWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the InvestorWire website applicable to all content provided by IW, wherever published or re-published: https://www.InvestorWire.com/Disclaimer InvestorWire Los Angeles, CA www.InvestorWire.com 310.299.1717 Office [email protected] InvestorWire is powered by IBN In March 2022, a senior software engineer based in Singapore received a job offer from a gaming company. This was a welcome relief, given the challenging circumstances at their current workplace, Sky Mavis, creators of the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity. The company had experienced a significant setback as the value of its in-game cryptocurrency took a nosedive. Upon completing the job application process, the engineer eagerly opened the PDF containing the salary details, only to discover that the job offer was fraudulent. The consequences were severe North Korean hackers had successfully breached Sky Maviss security, gaining access to the private keys essential for Read More>> About CryptoCurrencyWire CryptoCurrencyWire (CCW) is a specialized communications platform with a focus on blockchain and the cryptocurrency sector. It is one of 60+ brands within the Dynamic Brand Portfolio @ IBN that delivers: (1) access to a vast network of wire solutions via InvestorWire to efficiently and effectively reach a myriad of target markets, demographics and diverse industries; (2) article and editorial syndication to 5,000+ outlets; (3) enhanced press release enhancement to ensure maximum impact; (4) social media distribution via IBN to millions of social media followers; and (5) a full array of tailored corporate communications solutions. With broad reach and a seasoned team of contributing journalists and writers, CCW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that want to reach a wide audience of investors, influencers, consumers, journalists and the general public. By cutting through the overload of information in todays market, CCW brings its clients unparalleled recognition and brand awareness. CCW is where breaking news, insightful content and actionable information converge. To receive SMS alerts from CryptoCurrencyWire, text CRYPTO to 888-902-4192 (U.S. Mobile Phones Only) For more information, please visit https://www.CryptoCurrencyWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the CryptoCurrencyWire website applicable to all content provided by CCW, wherever published or re-published: https://www.CryptoCurrencyWire.com/Disclaimer CryptoCurrencyWire New York, NY www.CryptoCurrencyWire.com 212.994.9818 Office [email protected] CryptoCurrencyWire is powered by IBN Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - Canter Resources Corp. (CSE: CRC) (OTC Pink: CNRCF) (FSE: 6O1) ("Canter" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its news release dated November 13, 2023, it has completed the acquisition of Altitude Ventures Corp. ("Altitude") pursuant to the terms of an amalgamation agreement dated November 10, 2023 (the "Amalgamation Agreement") among Canter, Canter's wholly-owned subsidiary, 1447235 B.C. Ltd. ("Subco"), and Altitude (the "Transaction"). The Transaction was completed by way of a three-cornered amalgamation under the Business Corporation Act (British Columbia) among Canter, Subco and Altitude. Pursuant to the Transaction, Altitude amalgamated with Subco and the holders of shares of Altitude (the "Altitude Shares") each received one common share of Canter (a "Canter Share") for every one Altitude Share. The Company issued a total of 18,020,001 Canter Shares to the shareholders of Altitude as consideration for all of the outstanding Altitude Shares pursuant to the Transaction. The amalgamated company became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canter. No finder's fees were paid in connection with the Transaction. Altitude holds the sole option to acquire a 100% interest of the 23,000-acre lithium exploration project located in the Columbus Salt Marsh Basin, Esmerelda County, Nevada, USA, being the "Columbus Lithium-Boron Project". In addition, Altitude holds a 100% interest in certain Beaver Creek lithium occurrences located in the town of Lincoln, Montana, USA, being the "Beaver Creek Property". For additional details regarding the Columbus Lithium-Boron Property and the Montana Property, see the Company's news release dated November 13, 2023 available on the Company's SEDAR+ profile at www.sedarplus.ca. About Canter Resources Corp. Canter Resources Corp. is a Canadian junior mineral exploration company advancing the Columbus Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada, USA, the Beaver Creek Lithium Property in Montana, USA, and the Puzzle Lake Property in Saskatchewan, Canada. The Company is preparing for a Phase I drill campaign at Columbus to test a highly prospective lithium-brine target and plans to leverage the Company's critical metals targeting database to generate a portfolio of high-quality projects with the aim of defining mineral resources that support the domestic clean energy supply chain in North America. For further information, contact: Hani Zabaneh Chief Executive Officer Canter Resources Corp. [email protected] The securities to be issued pursuant to the Transaction have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, United States persons absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This news release will not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor will there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release. The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the business of the Company, references to the potential of the Columbus Lithium-Boron Property and the Montana Property and related matters. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of Canter Resources Corp., including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, volatility of commodity prices, risks associated with the uncertainty of exploration results and estimates, currency fluctuations, dependency upon regulatory approvals, the uncertainty of obtaining additional financing and exploration risk. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188335 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Canter Resources Corp. (CSE: CRC) (OTC Pink: CNRCF) (FSE: 6O1) ("Canter" or the "Company") is pleased to provide a summary of relevant exploration work and results previously completed at the Columbus Lithium-Boron Project ("Columbus", "Columbus Basin" or the "Project"), as well as current interpretations and targeting concepts that will underpin a Phase I drilling campaign that is expected to commence in early 2024. Canter's wholly-owned subsidiary, Altitude Ventures Corp ("Altitude"), holds the sole option to acquire a 100% interest of the 23,000-acre Columbus Project located in the Columbus Salt Marsh Basin, Esmerelda County, Nevada, USA (see press release dated November 13, 2023 for more information). This basin or playa lakebed was the site of historic borate production in the late-1800s. Importantly, the Columbus Basin is unique in that it is structurally and hydrologically enclosed by the surrounding volcanic source rocks, indicating that any lithium, boron and potassium mineralization that has leached into the Columbus Basin over the past 23 million years has had nowhere to escape (see Geologic and Structural Setting section below). The Columbus Project was staked by the same renowned local lithium prospectors who originally staked Ioneer's Rhyolite Ridge, American Battery Technology Company's Tonopah Flats and American Lithium's TLC properties (see Figure 1). In 2021-2022, a private company (Luna Lithium) completed HSAMT and 2D seismic surveys and proceeded to drill a single drillhole north of what the Company believes is the primary target area at Columbus. The core drillhole (LUN-22-001) was drilled vertically with a dip of (-90) to a depth of 2,182 feet (ft) (665 metres ("m")). ALS labs in Sparks, Nevada completed the most thorough analysis taking samples at five (5) ft intervals throughout the drillhole. ALS analysis showed an average of 471.2 ppm lithium ("Li"), 2,508.2 ppm boron and 1.07% potassium from top-to-bottom, including significant intervals within: 772.9 ppm Li over 160 ft (49 m) from 500 ft depth (152.4 m); 877.14 ppm Li over 67 ft (20.4 m) from 708 ft depth (215.8 m); and 1,237.5 ppm Li over 20 ft (6.1 m) from 810 ft depth (246.8 m). Reported samples ranged from a low of 90 ppm Li to a high of 1,600 pm Li. All reported assays were from sediment/clay samples, with no brine samples reported, however, logging and summary reports note that a series of aquifers were encountered (see Figures 2-3 for Luna drillhole location). Canter is unaware of any drilling, sampling, recovery or other factors that could materially affect the accuracy and reliability of this drillhole data. "The Columbus Lithium-Boron Project presents a compelling case for significant lithium mineralization in brines given its strategic location, geological setting, and promising geochemical profile," comments CEO Hani Zabaneh. "As the world's demand for lithium in electric vehicles and energy storage increases, the need to secure a reliable, sustainable, and domestic supply becomes more critical, and we are committed to advancing Columbus and building a high-quality portfolio of critical metals projects in support of that objective." Canter and its geologic team have possession of original assay certificates, have inspected the drill core, completed select re-logging and visited the collar location of this drillhole in the field with its Qualified Person. The Company views this drillhole as proof-of-concept that the Columbus Basin hosts lithium mineralization and believes the results are relevant from an exploration targeting perspective. In particular, the Company intends to focus the upcoming drill program on testing for lithium bearing brines associated with the aquifers mentioned above (see QA/QC section for additional disclosure regarding historical results). Figure 1: Columbus Lithium-Boron Project and other notable lithium company project locations within the Tonopah Lithium Loop. Columbus is accessible year-round via paved highway (US-95) and local access roads. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/10112/188495_dca436f664b1cb8c_001full.jpg Geologic and Structural Setting In the dynamic and complex tectonic landscape of western Nevada, the Columbus Basin, situated within the Coaldale Block, represents a significant intersection of structural forces, marked by the convergence of the Walker Lane Belt and the Mina Deflection. This strategic location within the Basin and Range Province has been central to the basin's structural and hydrological closure over the past 23 million years. This unique and distinct structural setting creates a potential reservoir for lithium and boron mineralization within the Columbus Basin. Surrounding the basin are evolved felsic volcanic formations, notably from the Silver Peak range, Rhyolite Ridge, the Volcanic Hills, and the Monte Cristo range. These formations are instrumental in the genesis of the basin's lithium mineralization, influencing not only the Columbus Basin, but also the nearby Big Smoky and Clayton Valleys. These valleys are renowned for their significant lithium projects operated by entities such as Ioneer, Albemarle, American Battery Technology, and American Lithium (see figure 1 above), underscoring the regional importance of these volcanic sources. Geophysical Surveys Geophysical exploration techniques employed in the Columbus Basin include gravity surveys, magneto-telluric assessments, and seismic reflection surveys. These methods have been instrumental in mapping subsurface structures and identifying potential aquifers. Gravity surveys conducted at Columbus have revealed a deep basement structure, characterized by extensive lacustrine and volcaniclastic sediment basin-fill. This structure is of significant interest due to its potential to host lithium brines at depth. The Columbus claims encompass the entirety of this identified gravity low anomaly, highlighting it as a high-priority exploration target. Modeling of Bouguer gravity data indicates the presence of substantial sedimentary and volcaniclastic fill within the basin, down to an estimated 12,000 ft (>3,658 m) in depth. This gravity low anomaly, confirmed by multiple independent gravity surveys, has not been drilled yet, representing a unique opportunity for exploration in an area with promising geological characteristics. Figure 2: Five priority drillhole locations have been designed targeting the highly conductive geophysical anomaly ( To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/10112/188495_dca436f664b1cb8c_002full.jpg The Hybrid Source Audio Magnetotellurics ( HSAMT ) survey conducted by Hasbrouck Geophysics, Inc. in 2021 at the Columbus Basin has provided critical insights into the subsurface chargeability and geological strata. The HSAMT results revealed a highly conductive, homogenous zone extending several kilometres below the surface. This conductive profile is attributed to the presence of highly saturated and conductive clays near the surface, along with similar conductive layers deeper in the subsurface. The survey was designed to identify potential conductors indicative of lithium-bearing brines and allowed for comprehensive profiling of subsurface resistivity in three dimensions. The processed data revealed favourable low resistivity values (0.2 to 0.5 ohm-metres) near the surface down to approximately 2,200 feet in certain areas, suggesting the potential for a large brine target (see Figure 2 above). ( ) survey conducted by Hasbrouck Geophysics, Inc. in 2021 at the Columbus Basin has provided critical insights into the subsurface chargeability and geological strata. The HSAMT results revealed a highly conductive, homogenous zone extending several kilometres below the surface. This conductive profile is attributed to the presence of highly saturated and conductive clays near the surface, along with similar conductive layers deeper in the subsurface. The survey was designed to identify potential conductors indicative of lithium-bearing brines and allowed for comprehensive profiling of subsurface resistivity in three dimensions. The processed data revealed favourable low resistivity values (0.2 to 0.5 ohm-metres) near the surface down to approximately 2,200 feet in certain areas, suggesting the potential for a large brine target (see Figure 2 above). The previously completed 2D active seismic survey at Columbus provides pivotal data on the subsurface structure along two key lines: north/south and east/west. This seismic technique was instrumental in complementing the HSAMT survey, offering a more nuanced understanding of the Columbus Basin's geological features. The primary benefit of the 2D active seismic survey was its ability to provide detailed cross-sectional images of the subsurface. These images were essential in mapping the variations in sedimentary layers and identifying potential fault zones as well as understanding the structural controls on mineralization. The seismic data allowed for a detailed visualization of the stratigraphic and structural variations across distinct parts of the Columbus Basin. The seismic survey offers insights into the depth, thickness, and continuity of stratigraphic units, which are key factors in assessing the Project's potential for hosting lithium brines. The integration of 2D active seismic data with HSAMT results significantly enhanced the geological model of the Columbus Basin, aiding in the precise targeting of drilling operations and reducing exploration risks (see Figure 3). Figure 3: Seismic survey data has also been incorporated into planned drillhole locations in order to avoid drilling down structural zones that can create drilling challenges and lead to potential brine mixing/dilution. To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/10112/188495_dca436f664b1cb8c_003full.jpg Hydrogeology and Geothermal Activity: The hydrogeological dynamics of the Columbus Basin are intricately connected with the surrounding topographical features and the basin's internal geothermal mechanisms. The Columbus Basin benefits from a robust recharge system, fed by highland drainages and the southward Fish Lake Valley hydrological system. This influx of water plays a vital role in maintaining the basin's aquifers, ensuring their continual replenishment. More importantly, this process facilitates the transport and concentration of mineral-rich solutions, including lithium brines, within the basin's geological framework. Adding to the Columbus Basin's hydrogeological intricacy is the presence of geothermal activity. Subsurface heat sources, indicated by geothermal anomalies, are thought to significantly influence the dissolution and mobility of lithium and other valuable minerals in the groundwater. These thermal dynamics are likely instrumental in the leaching process, extracting minerals from the surrounding volcanic rock formations and transporting them into the Columbus Basin's aquifers. Photo 1: (From left to right) Korbon McCall (Project Manager), Dick Merritt (Merritt Construction), Barbara Craig (renowned lithium prospector and Columbus Project vendor) and Trevor Hawkins (Senior Geologist) at the collar location for LUN-22-01. To view an enhanced version of Photo 1, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/10112/188495_dca436f664b1cb8c_004full.jpg Summary and Key Takeaways The Columbus Lithium-Boron Project presents a compelling case for significant lithium mineralization. The integration of geological, hydrogeological, geophysical, stratigraphic, and geochemical data paints a comprehensive picture of the Project's potential. The Project's strategic location, geological setting, and promising geochemical profile position it as a prime target for lithium exploration and potential development. Permitting work is underway and the Company is engaged with various contractors as it prepares to commence Phase I drilling in Q1/2024. Historical Results and QA/QC All historic drill or sample figures quoted herein are based on historical data and reports obtained and prepared by previous operators. Other than the verification procedures described in this news release, the Company has not undertaken work to verify results and there is no assurance as to the accuracy or completeness of included information. The Company considers this historical data to be relevant as the Company will use this data as a guide to plan future exploration programs, and it should not be used for any other purpose. The Company considers the data to be reliable for these purposes, however, the Company's future exploration work will include additional verification of the data through additional re-logging and check sampling. Readers are cautioned that mineralization at nearby projects are not necessarily indicative of the mineralization on the Project. Qualified Person (QP) The technical information contained in this news release was reviewed and approved by Eric Saderholm P.Geo, Director of Canter Resources, a Qualified Person (QP), as defined under National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. About Canter Resources Corp. Canter Resources Corp. is a Canadian junior mineral exploration company advancing the Columbus Lithium-Boron Project in Nevada, USA, the Beaver Creek Lithium Property in Montana, USA, and the Puzzle Lake Property in Saskatchewan, Canada. The Company is preparing for a Phase I drill campaign at Columbus to test a highly prospective lithium-brine target and plans to leverage the Company's critical metals targeting database to generate a portfolio of high-quality projects with the aim of defining mineral resources that support the domestic clean energy supply chain in North America. For further information contact: Hani Zabaneh Chief Executive Officer Canter Resources Corp. [email protected] The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release. The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Certain information set forth in this news release contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, the Company's exploration plans for the Project. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of Canter Resources Corp., including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, volatility of commodity prices, risks associated with the uncertainty of exploration results and estimates, currency fluctuations, dependency upon regulatory approvals, the uncertainty of obtaining additional financing and exploration risk. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The Company's forward-looking statements are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations, and opinions of management as of the date of this news release, and other than as required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188495 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Connected Home recently launched smart hotel solutions, aiming to provide cost-efficient solutions to the hospitality sector in Saudi Arabia. The smart hotel solutions have already been implemented in select hotels in Astana, Kazakhstan. Connected Home is currently in active negotiation process with several hotel chains in Saudi Arabia to renovate their hospitality system, which includes smart check-ins, automated personalized guest experience, IT and communication infrastructure, staff mobility and other connected all in one tool services. Connected Home was selected as one of the "2022 Emerging Startups" from the New East region by Emerge Tech conference in USA and participated in Hero Acceleration program at Draper University in USA. The company's focus is on the Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain. Mukhtar Kuanyshbaiuly, CEO of Connected Home has also recently signed a contract with Barakat company on distribution their smart hotel solutions in Dubai. Connected Home innovative approach is made possible through technologies that work on the controller (PLC), which the team developed independently: they wrote the software, used details from America and China, tested for several years and improved the quality of the software and hardware. The main goal of Connected Home is safety, resource saving and smart comfort. They plan to introduce more than 10 thousand smart hotel solutions by the end of the year. Under the leadership of CEO Mukhtar Kuanyshbaiuly, Connected Home has grown from its inception to a seven-figure revenue entity, emphasizing security, comfort, sustainability, and health through its IoT-based offerings to top construction and development companies in Central Asia and now in Middle East with ambitious plans to enter USA market in the near future. Photo: Founder of Connected HomeMukhtar Kuanyshbaiuly To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7633/188407_4defbcbf54e65b0a_001full.jpg Contact Connected Home Mukhtar Kuanyshbaiuly +7 747 508 8800 https://connectedhome.kz [email protected] To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188407 Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Copper Fox Metals Inc.(TSXV: CUU) (OTCQX: CPFXF)("Copper Fox" or the "Company")and its wholly owned subsidiary, Desert Fox Mineral Mountain Co., are pleased to announce the results of the deep penetrating geophysical survey utilizing Quantec's ORION 3D Swath DCIP configuration on its 100% owned Mineral Mountain project (the "Project") located approximately 16 miles northeast of Florence, Arizona. Highlights of the survey are set out below: Highlights A northeast trending open-ended positive (>18mrad) chargeability/resistivity anomaly measuring approximately 3,200 meters ('m') long by 1,200 m wide has been identified. The chargeability/resistivity signature is like that which would be expected in the oxidized/supergene zone above the hypogene zone of a porphyry copper system in Arizona. A 1,200 m long by 900 m wide portion of the larger chargeability/resistivity anomaly comes to surface in an area of the property with quartz vein/veinlet/fracture hosted secondary copper (chrysocolla, malachite, chalcocite) and molybdenum mineralization in sericitic/potassic altered porphyritic quartz monzonite and granodiorite. An additional 80 mineral claims (1,653 acres) have been added to the Project to cover the interpreted extension of the northeast trending open-ended positive chargeability/resistivity anomaly and a mineralized Laramide intrusive. Elmer B. Stewart, President, and CEO of Copper Fox, stated, "The results of the IP survey are consistent with the current geophysical model for the oxidized/supergene enriched portion of a Laramide age porphyry copper system in Arizona. The strong positive correlation between the various geoscientific data has identified a near surface drillable target measuring approximately 1,200 m long and 900 m wide that transitions at depth to a significantly larger chargeability signature consistent with the geological/exploration model developed for the Mineral Mountain project." Geological Model The Mineral Mountain project covers a copper-gold-molybdenum porphyry system characterized by a copper-magnetite mineral association that has been subjected to weathering/oxidization/supergene enrichment, a process commonly observed at porphyry copper systems in Arizona. The porphyry copper deposits in the Safford and Ajo Mining Districts of Arizona are being used as geological/exploration models for the Project. The porphyry copper footprint at Mineral Mountain is located on the eastern side of the Laramide intrusive and is interpreted to dip to the east and to the north under the PreCambrian rocks consistent with the location of the recently defined chargeability signature. Geophysical Study Recent investigation of the geophysical characteristics of porphyry copper systems in Arizona shows that the oxidation/supergene processes that affected these porphyry copper systems have altered the petrophysical properties of the mineralization and host rock resulting in lower chargeability and increased resistivity signatures within the oxidation/supergene zone of porphyry copper deposits. Source: Howe, B, Devriese, Sarah, G.R., March 2023; An Empirical Geophysical Model for Porphyry Copper deposits in the Laramide Copper Province. The 2023 geophysical survey has outlined a northeast trending open-ended 3,200 m long by 1,200 m wide chargeability (+18mrad contour) anomaly. Based on the +15mrad chargeability contour, the western, southern, and southeast edges of the anomaly have been defined. The anomaly remains open to the northeast. Figure-1: The +/-350 m below surface 3D model of the northeast trending open-ended anomaly showing the +15mrad and +18mrad chargeability signatures and recently staked mineral claims. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/2177/188312_ae37ac50942afb05_001full.jpg The 1,200 m long by 900 m wide chargeability/resistivity signature that comes to surface in an area of the property that contains abundant mineralized porphyry style quartz veins/veinlets and fractures containing secondary (chrysocolla, malachite, chalcocite) copper and molybdenum mineralization hosted primarily in sericitic and to a lesser degree potassic altered phases of the Laramide age intrusive. The lower chargeability/increased resistivity signature is similar to the recent geophysical model of Laramide age porphyry copper deposits in Arizona. Figure-2 and Figure-3 show the chargeability and resistivity pseudo sections for L-2000 that crosses the 1,200 m by 900 m chargeability/resistivity anomaly. The strength of the chargeability signature increases with depth and is interpreted to represent the primary hypogene sulphide zone of a porphyry system. Figure-2: L-2000 chargeability pseudo section, Mineral Mountain project. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/2177/188312_ae37ac50942afb05_002full.jpg Figure-3: L-2000 resistivity pseudo section, Mineral Mountain project. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/2177/188312_ae37ac50942afb05_003full.jpg Rationale for Land Acquisition The Mineral Mountain project is located within a northeast trending, regional scale, porphyry copper belt that extends from the Ajo porphyry copper district in the west to the Miami-Globe porphyry copper district in the east and hosts some of the largest porphyry copper deposits in Arizona including Santa Cruz and Resolution. The Project is located approximately 25 kilometers ('km') east of Florence, Arizona between the Florence and Resolution porphyry copper deposits. The recently acquired lands covers: Four Laramide age quartz monzonite plugs and several Tertiary age porphyritic granodiorite dikes, interpreted to represent the continuation of the Mineral Mountain intrusive complex to the northeast. The results of the 2023 geophysical survey indicate that the chargeability/resistivity anomaly associated with the copper mineralization at Mineral Mountain extends to the northeast into the recently acquired mineral claims. The largest of the quartz monzonite plugs host extensively oxidized/leached porphyry style quartz veins, quartz veinlets and fractures containing secondary copper minerals (chrysocolla, malachite, chalcocite) and molybdenite. The 2022 airborne magnetic and radiometric survey identified a buried positive magnetic feature interpreted to represent a potassic altered (due to magnetite) late stage intrusive underlying the largest Laramide age intrusive. Geophysical Survey Procedures The ORION 3D SWATH DCIP survey completed by Quantec Geoscience USA Inc. was centered over the Laramide intrusive and measured (employing a pole-dipole array configuration) the DCIP signal on 9 survey lines. The survey mesh covered an area of approximately 3.2 km x 3.6 km using a 25 m cell size in the X and Y directions to cover the electrode array zone (core mesh). Padding cells covering ~3.35 km in each horizontal direction were added to extend the core mesh. A homogenous half-space of ~ 750 ohm-m was used as a starting model for DC inversion. The IP inversions were completed with use of the sensitivity matrix calculated from the calculated 3D conductivity model. The 2D DC and IP inversions were carried out using the UBC DCIP2D inversion codes (Oldenburg and Li, 1994) to produce depth sections of DC resistivity, DC-referenced IP chargeability and HS-referenced IP chargeability to a depth of investigation of 750 m to 800 m. The 3D inversion of the DC and IP data was completed using the UBC 3D inversion codes (Li and Oldenburg, 2000). The full set of 3D Tx-Rx measurements were merged into a single data set and modeled in 3D to produce 3D resistivity and DC-referenced chargeability models. Elmer B. Stewart, MSc. P. Geol., President and CEO of Copper Fox, is the Company's non-independent, nominated Qualified Person pursuant to National Instrument 43-101, Standards for Disclosure for Mineral Projects, and has reviewed and approves the scientific and technical information disclosed in this news release. About Copper Fox Copper Fox is a Tier 1 Canadian resource company focused on copper exploration and development in Canada and the United States. The principal assets of Copper Fox and its wholly owned subsidiaries, being Northern Fox Copper Inc. and Desert Fox Copper Inc., are the 100% ownership of the Van Dyke oxide copper project located in Miami, AZ, the 100% interest in the Mineral Mountain and Sombrero Butte porphyry copper exploration projects located in Arizona, the 25% interest in the Schaft Creek Joint Venture with Teck Resources Limited on the Schaft Creek copper-gold-molybdenum-silver project and the 100% owned Eaglehead polymetallic porphyry copper project each located in northwestern British Columbia. For more information on Copper Fox's mineral properties and investments visit the Company's website at http://www.copperfoxmetals.com. On behalf of the Board of Directors Elmer B. Stewart President and Chief Executive Officer For additional information contact: Lynn Ball @ [email protected] or 1-844 464-2820. Neither the 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. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and forward-looking information within the meaning of the Canadian securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking information"). Forward-looking information is generally identifiable by use of the words "believes," "may," "plans," "will," "anticipates," "intends," "budgets," "could," "estimates," "expects," "forecasts," "projects," and similar expressions, and the negative of such expressions. Forward-looking information in this news release includes statements regarding: a Laramide age porphyry system; an open-ended positive chargeability anomaly; copper-molybdenum mineralization; interpreted dip of the chargeability anomaly; interpretation of the geophysical results and acquisition of mineral claims. In connection with the forward-looking information contained in this news release, Copper Fox and its subsidiaries have made numerous assumptions regarding, among other things: the geological advice that Copper Fox has received is reliable and is based upon practices and methodologies which are consistent with industry standards; and the reliability of historical reports. While Copper Fox considers these assumptions to be reasonable, these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies. Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause Copper Fox's actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein. Known risk factors include, among others: the dimensions and shape of the chargeability and resistivity anomalies may not be as estimated; the surface mineralization may not represent buried porphyry style mineralization; uncertainties relating to interpretation of the geophysical results; the geology, continuity and concentration of the mineralization; the financial markets and the overall economy may deteriorate; the need to obtain additional financing and uncertainty of meeting anticipated program milestones; and uncertainty as to timely availability of permits and other governmental approvals. A more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing Copper Fox is disclosed in Copper Fox's continuous disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulatory authorities at www.sedarplus.ca. All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and Copper Fox disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events, or developments, except as required by law. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188312 Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - Deveron Corp. (TSXV: FARM) ("Deveron" or the "Company"), a leading agriculture services and data company in North America, is pleased to report results for the three months ended September 30th, 2023. Revenue grew to $7,718,602 in Q1/2024 from $7,189,494 in the similar period. Full financial results are available at www.sedarplus.ca. Additionally, the Company announces the implementation of the next phase of its cost optimization program as it continues to integrate its Canadian and US lab network. Utilizing technology and processes from its Canadian lab across the US network, the Company expects to achieve annual run rate savings of $900,000. Deveron expects to achieve these savings effective December 1st, 2023. The Company believes additional areas of cost synergies exist and will be addressed throughout FY 2024. First Quarter 2024 Financial Highlights Soil fertility testing activity saw a strong 21% increase, however this was largely offset by declines in soil carbon collection, testing volumes and revenue resulting in modest overall growth for the period. Fertility testing continued to rise in the quarter as Deveron's influence and value-add focus led to an increase in samples both from current customers as well as new customers coming onto the platform. The Company saw an improvement in gross margin percentage due to these increasing volumes, enhancements in the Company's overall cost structure, and operational leverage within the Company's lab assets. Ongoing variability in carbon markets slowed Deveron's organic growth rate in the quarter as the adoption of carbon programs was slower than the market originally indicated. With this continued volatility in underlying carbon markets, the Company plans to scale back its network investment in carbon and concentrate on fertility testing and ancillary laboratory volume where growth remains unencumbered and robust. The Company's gross margin percentage improved by 5% year over year to 65% from 60% in the similar period in F2023. The Company achieved 81% gross margin in data insights, up from 67% in the similar period in F2023. The Company's gross profit grew 16% year-over-year to $5,014,534 from $4,320,407 in in the similar period in F2023. Non-IFRS EBITDA Loss improved 11% year-over-year to ($907,090) from ($1,014,610) in the similar period in F2023. "Deveron achieved strong organic growth in our fertility products, despite headwinds in some of our ancillary business lines," said David MacMillan, President, and CEO of Deveron Corp. "As we look into Q2, the busiest quarter of the year, soil testing volume across our four laboratories continues on a record pace. Fertility soil testing remains a unique opportunity for the company, enabling us to drive volume, capitalize on operational leverage, and enhance EBITDA margins over time. Our ancillary business units in carbon data collection faced headwinds. Our partners' sell through of carbon testing to end users has fallen short of our indicated expectations. While we believe carbon will be an important business line in the future, due to these challenges, we have decided to focus our strategy and prioritize fertility. Following the end of the quarter, we implemented steps from a cost perspective to streamline our technology teams and realize synergies at our Canadian laboratory network. As we examine and plan for the rest of the fiscal year, we feel confident in the trends we see in our core fertility business. We have taken steps to become a leaner operation, further capitalizing on the operational leverage that exists in this business. We continue to be very optimistic about the outlook for our fertility business." Summary of Financial Results Results of Operations For the three months ended September 30th, 2023 September 30th, 2022 % Change Data Collection $1,215,090 $746,211 63% Data Insights 6,503,512 6,443,283 1% Total Revenue 7,718,602 7,189,494 7% Gross Profit 5,014,534 4,320,407 16% Gross Profit Margin % 65% 60% 5% Operating Expenses 10,838,817 8,917,932 22% Adjusted EBITDA (Loss)* (907,090) (1,014,610) 11% Net Loss (5,975,946) (4,785,775) -25% Weighted Average Common Shares Outstanding 142,087,346 122,807,335 Per Share: Net Loss (0.04) (0.04) *Non-IFRS measure. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("Adjusted EBITDA") should not be construed as alternatives to comprehensive loss or income determined in accordance with IFRS. Adjusted EBITDA does not have any standardized meaning under IFRS and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. The Company defines Adjusted EBITDA as IFRS net loss excluding interest expense, depreciation and amortization expense, share-based payments, income tax expense, integration costs, one time acquisition costs, and impairment of goodwill, property, plant, and equipment and right-of-use assets (ROU). The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is a meaningful financial metric as it measures cash generated from operations which the Company can use to fund working capital requirements, service future interest and principal debt repayments and fund future growth initiatives Adjusted EBITDA (Loss) Calculation For the three months ended September 30th, 2023 September 30th, 2022 IFRS Net Income (Loss) $(5,975,946) $(4,785,775) Less: Interest 891,300 1,130,931 Less: Depreciation & Amortization 1,807,979 2,158,729 Less: Share Based Payments 291,936 293,255 Less: Acquisition and integration costs 154,015 - Less: Income Taxes 151,663 188,250 Change in NCI put obligation (1,771,963) - Non-IFRS Adjusted EBITDA (loss)* (907,090) $(1,014,610) First Quarter 2024 Operational Highlights Deveron Provides Spring Volume Numbers and Corporate Update On July 25th, 2023, Deveron announced record spring fertility sampling and testing volumes across our US and Canada lab networks between January 1st, 2023, and June 30th, 2023. Soil fertility acres collected increased by 24% to 355,866 from 268,800 in the first half of 2022. Fertility samples analyzed in the United States grew by 12% year-over-year to 53,204 from 46,844 in 2022. In Canada, the company analyzed 125,201 samples. The Company expects an increase in lab volumes in the second half of the year. In addition, the Company announces that, further to its press release of May 2nd, 2022, it has achieved an additional $1.5 million in annualized cost synergies. These cost savings have been achieved by centralizing the Company's procurement process and leveraging its network's increased buying power for consumable raw materials used in the lab process. Deveron Announces Appointment of CFO On September 11th, 2023, Deveron announced the appointment of Akshay Shirodker, as CFO of Deveron Corp. Akshay is a seasoned finance executive with proven ability to drive financial excellence and operational efficiency. To date his career has spanned various leadership roles, with his most recent position being, the Head of Finance and Operations at Opencare, a revenue generation technology platform for dental practices across North America, where he guided the company to profitability and helped double the platform's patient marketplace revenue. Prior to this, he played a pivotal role in the successful M&A efforts at UXP Systems, an identity management platform transforming how consumers interact with tier-1 telecommunications providers, culminating in its acquisition by Amdocs. Akshay is a Chartered Professional Accountant earning his CPA designation during his tenure at KPMG. Deveron Announces Private Placement of Convertible Debentures On September 25th, 2023, the Company announced a non-brokered private placement of convertible debentures (the "Debentures") at a price of $1,000 per Debenture for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $2,000,000. Deveron Places No, 30th on The Globe and Mail's Fifth-Annual Ranking of Canada's Top Growing Companies On September 29th, 2023, the Company announced it placed No, 30th on the 2023 Report on Business ranking of Canada's Top Growing Companies. Canada's Top Growing Companies ranks Canadian companies on three-year revenue growth. Deveron earned its spot with three-year growth of 1307%. Subsequent to Quarter End Deveron Announces Closing of Private Placement of Convertible Debentures On October 5th, 2023, the Company announced that further to its press release of September 25th, 2023, the Company had closed the first tranche of a non-brokered private placement through the issuance of 1,750 unsecured convertible debentures at a price of $1,000 per Debenture for gross proceeds of $1,750,000. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering to refinance the Company's outstanding promissory note and for general working capital. Deveron Corp Announces the Launch of PFAS Testing Service On November 1st, 2023, the Company announced the launch of a new testing service analyzing Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances ("PFAS") in soil, water, compost and other matrices. PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals that have gained significant attention due to their widespread use and potential environmental and health concerns. The Management's Discussion and Analysis for the period and the accompanying financial statements and notes are available under the Company's profile on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca. This news release is not in any way a substitute for reading those financial statements, including the notes to the financial statements. About Deveron: Deveron is an agriculture technology company that uses data and insights to help farmers and large agriculture enterprises increase yields, reduce costs and improve farm outcomes. The company employs a digital process that leverages data collected on farms across North America to drive unbiased interpretation of production decisions, ultimately recommending how to optimize input use. Our team of agronomists and data scientists build products that recommend ways to better manage fertilizer, seed, fungicide, and other farm inputs. Additionally, we have a national network of data technicians that are deployed to collect various types of farm data, from soil to drones, that build a basis of our best-in-class data layers. Our focus is the US and Canada where 1 billion acres of farmland are actively farmed annually. For more information and to join our community, please visit www.deveron.com/investors or reach us on Twitter @Deveron. Philip Linton VP Corporate Development [email protected] Tel: 647-622-0076 This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of that phrase under Canadian securities laws. Without limitation, statements regarding future plans and objectives of the Company are forward looking statements that involve various degrees of risk. Forward-looking statements reflect management's current views with respect to possible future events and conditions and, by their nature, are based on management's beliefs and assumptions and subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific to the Company. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in our forward-looking statements. The following are important factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements: changes in the world-wide price of agricultural commodities, general market conditions, risks inherent in agriculture, the uncertainty of future profitability and the uncertainty of access to additional capital. Additional information regarding the material factors and assumptions that were applied in making these forward looking statements as well as the various risks and uncertainties we face are described in greater detail in the "Risk Factors" section of our annual and interim Management's Discussion and Analysis of our financial results and other continuous disclosure documents and financial statements we file with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities which are available at www.sedarplus.ca. The Company undertakes no obligation to update this forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. The Company relies on litigation protection for forward-looking statements. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188334 Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - E-Power Resources Inc (CSE: EPR) ("E-Power" or the "Company") announces that it has closed a first tranche of the private placement previously announced on November 16, 2023 (the "Private Placement"). An aggregate of 3,601,833 units (the " Units") of the Company were issued in the non-flow-through portion of the Private Placement at a price of $0.06 per Unit for gross proceeds of $216,110, each Unit being comprised of one common share in the capital of the Company (each a "Common Share") and one common share purchase warrant (each a "Warrant"), each Warrant entitling its holder thereof to acquire one additional common share (each a "Warrant Share") at a price of $0.10 per Warrant Share for a period of 60 months from the closing date (the "Offering"). Net proceeds from the Offering will be used by the Company for general working capital purposes. No Insiders of the Company participated in the Private Placement. The Company paid finders' fee to Pieter Danielsson, who received a cash commission of $10,710. In addition, he received 178,500 broker warrants, with each broker warrant entitling its holder thereof to purchase one common share of the Company at a price of $0.10 and expiring in 24 months. The securities offered pursuant to the Offering have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, United States persons absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. The securities offered pursuant to the Offering are subject to certain trade restrictions pursuant to applicable securities laws. About E-Power Resources Inc. E-Power Resources Inc. is an exploration stage company engaged principally in the acquisition, exploration, and development of graphite properties in Quebec. Its flagship asset, the Tetepisca Graphite Property, is located in the Tetepisca Graphite District of the North Shore Region of Quebec, approximately 215 kilometers from the Port of Baie-Comeau. For further information, please refer to the Company's disclosure record on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) or contact the Company by email at [email protected]. On Behalf of the Company James Cross President & CEO +1 (438) 701-3736 [email protected] Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information This news release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements that are not historical facts, including without limitation, statements regarding future estimates, plans, programs, forecasts, projections, objectives, assumptions, expectations or beliefs of future performance are "forward-looking statements". These forward-looking statements reflect the expectations or beliefs of management of the Company based on information currently available to it. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those detailed from time to time in filings made by the Company with securities regulatory authorities, which may cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. These factors should be considered carefully and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this news release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188382 Capellen, Luxembourg--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - FIRSTavenue Partners, a globally regulated placement agent focused on private funds, is excited to announce its strategic investment and partnership with Frictionless Markets. This collaboration signifies a notable shift and focus towards the expansion and democratization of the private markets through the use of digital securities, providing a digital-first issuance and investment experience. The Luxembourg-based, Frictionless Markets offers MiFID 2 compliant fund tokenization services, including issuance, distribution and settlement of digital securities in the private markets. The firm is a pioneer in digital securities and atomic settlement under the blockchain and securitization laws of Luxembourg. "At Frictionless Markets, our regulatory first and digitally native approach to broadening access to the private markets is a natural fit with FIRSTavenue's long-term track record. Our combined strengths will unlock huge efficiencies, broadening access for private fund GPs/ Managers, while providing global investors with a venue to invest in the world's best private credit and infrastructure funds," said Pat Hourigan, CEO and co-founder of Frictionless Markets. "We are delighted to come together and lead the way in the realm of financial technology," stated Paul Buckley, Founder and Managing Partner of FIRSTavenue. "This collaboration perfectly complements our dedication to innovation, and we eagerly anticipate offering our clients access to the state-of-the-art solutions provided by Frictionless Markets." As part of the strategic investment, Mr Kaz Yasuda will transition to Frictionless Markets and become Chief Investment Officer. Mr Yasuda has 26 years of experience in the institutional investment field having most recently served as Managing Director at FIRSTavenue. The partnership will initially focus on tokenized fund administration services to institutional clients. For media inquiries, please contact [email protected] and [email protected]. About FIRSTavenue: FIRSTavenue is a leading independent global placement agent and advisory firm specialising in private credit, real assets, private equity and associated capital solutions. Since the firm's inception in 2006, it has raised more than $30 billion of capital commitments on behalf of its clients. The firm maintains a global presence via its headquarters in London and offices in New York, Hong Kong and Hamburg, and today consists of over 40 professionals. FAP USA, L.P. is a member FINRA/SIPC. Learn more atfirstavenue.com About Frictionless Markets: Frictionless Markets the pioneer in the issuance digital securities on the Avalanche blockchain and is fully compliant under the Luxembourg Law of 10 August 1915 on commercial companies (as amended), the Securitisation Law of 22 March 2004 (as recently amended) and the Blockchain II Act 2021 as approved by the Luxembourg Parliament on 21 January 2021. Learn more atwww.frictionless.markets. Media Contact: Contact person: Alex Garmash Email: [email protected] Official Address: 2C Parc d Activities, L-8303 Capellen Luxembourg To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188166 BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Mine victims, their family members, and representatives of Azerbaijani civil society have appealed to the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Tiny Kox, Trend reports. "As of today, we, the victims of the mine terror by Armenia and its military formations, along with our families, relatives, and civil society organizations working in this field, address an open letter to the PACE president and the members of the PACE," the appeal authors said. "We perceive the refusal of the PACE rapporteur on Azerbaijan, who recently visited Baku, to meet with the victims of Armenia's mine terror against Azerbaijan, their families, and NGOs specializing in mine issues as a mockery of the values of the Council of Europe and a lack of respect for human rights and freedoms." "We strongly condemn the transformation of an organization like PACE, which claims to be a human rights institution, into a tool for certain states and circles," the authors noted. "The mine issue is currently the most significant problem for Azerbaijan. An organization that treats this issue in such a manner, remains silent about it, and refuses to meet with victims of mine terror should be ashamed." "Such behavior of PACE representatives is disgusting, as it directly supports Armenia's mine terror," the authors emphasized. "According to recent estimates, over a million mines and unexploded ordnances were planted in the liberated territories. Even after the 2020 second Karabakh war, Armenia continued to transport mines through Lachin [road] and bury them on Azerbaijani territory," the authors reminded. "We haven't forgotten that instead of protesting against this, the PACE advocated for the unhindered passage of Armenian illegal military formations and cargoes through the Lachin road into Azerbaijani territory, thus protecting the continuation of terrorist activities on the lands of another state." "As a result of successful local anti-terrorism measures carried out by the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan in Karabakh on September 1920, 2023, more than 500,000 additional mines and unexploded ordnances were found in the territories taken under control. This means that over the last three years, the mining of Azerbaijani territories has not stopped for a single day but has instead increased," the authors explained. "Another proof of this is the inclusion of Armenia in the list of mine-producing countries in international mine reporting documents. It is hard to find a second country in the world as contaminated with mines as Azerbaijan. One of the ardent supporters of Armenia transporting mines to Azerbaijan through the Lachin road was Liz Kristoffersen [co-rapporteur of the PACE Monitoring Committee on Azerbaijan], whom you have recently sent to Azerbaijan," the appeal authors further said. "Therefore, the victims of mine are not surprised by the shameful attitude of the Council of Europe and the double standards towards Azerbaijan. During this period, the PACE never called on Armenia, as a member state, to withdraw its military formations from Azerbaijani lands and hand over mine maps," the authors also reminded. "Over the years, more than a million Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons have become victims of Islamophobia, xenophobia, Azerbaijanophobia, and the lobbying and corruption network entrenched in the PACE, ignoring their human rights and freedoms in the international organization based in France." "If you, as the President of the PACE, remain silent about this even after our appeal, you should have no moral right to speak about human rights and freedoms," stressed the authors. "Accept us and listen. Witness firsthand how we suffered from Armenia's mine terror, what we lost, and the suffering our families and loved ones endure due to our disabilities. We are also human beings, and we have rights and desires. If the PACE is truly a human rights institution, hearing us and helping us should be its primary commitment," the appeal authors concluded. More than 3,000 people in Azerbaijan have lost their lives as a result of mine blasts in Azerbaijani territories that were once occupied by Armenia and carpeted with landmines by Armenian forces. In particular, since the end of the second Karabakh war, 337 Azerbaijanis (65 killed and 272 injured) have become victims of Armenian mines until today. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel Company Targets Historically Reported 1970's Knockeen Trench Site with 1.8m Wide Bedrock Spodumene Bearing Pegmatite Dike Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Global Battery Metals Ltd.(TSXV: GBML) (OTCQB: REZZF) (FSE: REZ) (the "Company" or "GBML" or "Global Battery Metals"), an international critical mineral exploration company focused on growth-oriented lithium and battery metal projects, is pleased to announce it has received an approved trenching permit from Ireland's Geoscience Regulation Office (GSRO) in relation to a short program of trenching at its Knockeen lithium pegmatite project. The Company intends to open up a shallow trench for a total of 50 metres in total length, approximately 1 - 2m deep and up to 1 - 1.5m in width (see Figure 1), in order to confirm a previously announced historical spodumene bearing pegmatite dike in bedrock (see news release dated January 18, 2023), and anticipates this will enable 3D visualization of the 1.8m wide pegmatite reported from that time. The trench is designed to cross cut the pegmatite dike and then expose 10 - 20m along its strike length in order to then collect approximately 30-40 assay samples from the trench over the next 5-10 business days (see Figure 2). The trenching will also assist in the interpretation of the dike encountered in the 2023 summer drilling program. Work on this small footprint of field area will be undertaken in close association with the landowner's approval. Figure 1: Knockeen Lithium Pegmatite Project The Company intends to open up a shallow trench for a total of 50 metres in total length to confirm a previously announced historical spodumene bearing pegmatite dike in bedrock. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7080/188272_lrh_pl1597_trench%20location%20map_figure1.png The approved permit is for up to 10 shallow trenches for a combined length of up to 200m for a period of up to two years on PL 1597. However, the current work is focusing on this single trench pegmatite target at this time. The permit was issued based on the full set of GSRO screening criteria being assessed and approved. The current phase of detailed exploration work returns to an area where a forty-year-old historical company report1 described a trench excavated at Knockeen Townlands on PLA 1597 which, uncovered in bedrock, exposed a 1.8m wide spodumene-bearing pegmatite dike. However, no detailed laboratory assays or geological maps of the trench were reported at that time. Historical prospecting around the trench also reported the occurrence of up to 10 large boulders of spodumene bearing pegmatite at surface. This work will help inform 2024 exploration planning. Michael Murphy, CEO of Global Battery Metals, stated: "With the goal of confirming lithium mineralization in our first round of exploration achieved, the Company will expedite additional exploration efforts to further define identified lithium mineralization. Knockeen has a storied history, and after drilling consistent, near-surface lithium intersects, we believe that trenching will augment our growing dataset, which can help to enhance this exciting developing lithium project." With first phase drilling recently concluded at Knockeen (see news release dated November 15, 2023), GBML has succeeded in identifying a new Lithium-Cesium-Tantalum (LCT) pegmatite system of significance, importantly recording 24 intervals of lithium bearing spodumene pegmatites intersected across nine holes drilled. The spodumene pegmatites range in width between 0.10m up to 0.63m (true width) with the highest values grading up to 2.57% Li 2 O. Detailed prospecting and rock sampling across Knockeen in late 2022 and early 2023 identified up to 66 samples containing the lithium bearing mineral and returned Li 2 O% lithium contents ranging up to 3.75 % Li 2 O / 17,410 ppm Li. Figure 2: Knockeen Lithium Pegmatite Project - Close Up of Trench Location The trench is designed to cross cut the pegmatite dike and then expose 10 - 20m along the strike length To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7080/188272_lrh_pl1597_trench%20location%20map_figure2_v2.png Geology & Structure The property lies along part of a 135km long regional structural trend of known lithium-bearing pegmatite bedrock occurrences, situated along the south-eastern margin of the Leinster Granite Massif and centred on the Aclare and Moylisha occurrences which were discovered during 1960s and 1970s and are currently being explored by Blackstairs Lithium (under the Ganfeng International Lithium joint venture). This trend is focused along and within a broad regional NE-SW trending structural zone termed the East Carlow Deformation Zone (ECDZ) which runs for over 135km along the SE flank of the Leinster Granite Massif between Dublin in the NE and north of New Ross to the SW. A recent detailed regional structural review and interpretation by the company using remote sensing data and regional geophysical data sets confirmed that PLA 1597 lies within the key ECDZ structural zone. The Knockeen target area lies directly within this zone as it passes through the northern margin of the Backstairs Granite Pluton whilst the southern part of the license is cross cut by a splay of the ECDZ which passes south westwards along the southern margin of the Backstairs Granite Pluton. This southerly splay has been termed the North Wexford Deformation Zone (NWDZ) and provides a second highly prospective trend for the focus for ground exploration activities Several target areas have already been identified for detailed prospecting and mapping which will commence over the coming months. About the Leinster Lithium Project Located south of Dublin in the counties of Wicklow and South Carlow, the Leinster Lithium Project consists of 16 prospecting license areas covering approximately 525km situated along strike to nearby Blackstairs Lithium's Avalonia Project (297km joint venture between Ganfeng Lithium Co. Ltd. and International Lithium Corp.). All of GBML's license holdings are located within or along the important East Carlow Deformation Zone, which is interpreted to control the emplacement of an existing LCT pegmatite field at the Blackstairs Mountains. With first phase drilling concluded at Knockeen, GBML has succeeded in identifying a new and structurally controlled LCT pegmatite system of significance, importantly recording 24 intervals of lithium bearing spodumene pegmatites intersected across nine holes drilled. The spodumene pegmatites range in width between 0.10m up to 0.63m (true width) with the highest values grading up to 2.57% Li 2 O. No drilling has ever been carried out at the Knockeen Prospect previously and intersecting lithium bearing pegmatites in all of the holes drilled so far is considered a major technical success for the Company. Prior surface exploration activities identified and confirmed expansive surface boulder trains of lithium pegmatite lithologies in a number of areas across the Company's property, with recent assay results of 66 rock samples analyzed by ALS Laboratories earlier this year returning Li 2 O% lithium contents ranging up to 3.75% Li 2 O / 17,410 ppm li. Responsibility to the Environment All mineral exploration activities in Ireland take place under the auspices of the GSRO, a division within the Government Department of the Environment, Communications & Climate Change. Exploration is governed under the framework of both Irish and EU legislation that has been implemented to ensure that the environment is protected during exploratory work. Prospecting license holders must comply with all of the relevant legislation. The Company is pleased to confirm that it adheres to the highest standards of good practice in relation to its ongoing exploration activities having completed a detailed GSRO "Appropriate Assessment" process prior to commencement which was reviewed, approved and signed off by the appropriate oversight authorities. GBML's Directors understand that social license is key to unlocking positive exploration outcomes by following low impact / low sound / low disturbance exploration program best practice for environmental sensitivity. Competent Person All scientific and technical information in this announcement has been prepared under the supervision of and reviewed and approved by EurGeol Vaughan Williams, M.Sc., P.Geo., (Principal of Aurum Exploration Services currently providing exploration services to GBML and to LRH Resources Limited), a "qualified person" within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101. Quality Assurance/Quality Control Quality Assurance/Quality Control ("QA/QC") of drill core samples and associated assay results are monitored by GBML through a QA/QC protocol which includes the insertion of blind standard reference materials, blanks, and duplicates at regular intervals. Core is drilled in HQ core diameter and each 3 metres of core recovered is orientated by the drilling contractor on completion of each run drilled. Drill core is laid out in strong core boxes and transported by Company geologists from the drill rig to GBML's secure logging facility. Drill core is then logged using an established logging procedure capturing detailed lithological data as well as measuring all structural elements using a Reflex IQ Logger for accurate orientation of all contacts and structures. The core is marked up for sampling and sawn on site using a diamond core saw. Half core samples are then bagged and secured using plastic cable ties and the samples are then securely transported to ALS Laboratory ("ALS") facilities in County Galway, Republic of Ireland. Samples are analyzed for lithium as well as multi- elemental trace elements using the specific LCT pegmatite analytical suite ME-MS89L offered by ALS. ALS also performs its own internal QA/QC procedures to assure the accuracy and integrity of results. GBML is unaware of any drilling, sampling, recovery, or other factors that could materially affect the accuracy or reliability of the data referred to herein. About Global Battery Metals Ltd. GBML is an international mineral exploration and development company with a focus on lithium and other metals that comprise and support the rapid evolution to battery power. GBML currently maintains economic interests in three battery metal projects: (1) an option to acquire up to a 90% interest in the Leinster Lithium Property and drill program currently underway in Ireland; (2) a 100% interest in the drill-ready Lithium King Property in Utah; and (3) a 55% stake in Peru-based Lara Copper Property, which has over 10,000 metres of drilling. As previously disclosed, Minsur S.A., a Peruvian mining company, entered into an option agreement with GBML and Lara Exploration Ltd. to acquire the Lara copper property for staged payments of USD$5.75 million. GBML will retain a 0.75% net smelter royalty. GBML's common shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV: GBML); Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE: REZ); and are quoted on the OTC Markets (OTCQB: REZZF). Global Battery Metals Ltd. Michael Murphy BA, MBA, MSc., ICD President & CEO T: 604-649-2350 E: [email protected] W: www.gbml.ca Neither the 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. Cautionary Statement Regarding "Forward-Looking" Information This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, without limitation, statements relating to the future operations and activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. 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. Forward-looking statements in this news release relate to, among other things, the Company's exploration plans at the Leinster Lithium Project, including the trenching program and results therefrom. 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 the Company, 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, and the receipt of any required regulatory approvals. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these items. Readers are urged to refer to the Company's reports for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects, publicly available at SEDAR+, the Canadian Securities Administrators' national system that all market participants use for filings and disclosure, at www.sedarplus.ca. The Company 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. ________________________________________________________________________________ 1 Report titled "1975-76 Discovery of Spodumene Pegmatite Float" by Irish Base Metals Limited To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188272 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - RARE EARTH RIDGE CORP. (the "Company" or "Rare Earth Ridge"), is pleased to announce it has entered into an agreement dated November 8, 2023 (the "Agreement"), to acquire an additional claim (the "Conrad Claim") adjacent to the Company's Mount Major Hart property (the "Property"). The Property is located in north-central British Columbia (BC), Canada (Figure 1). With the acquisition of the Conrad Claim, the Property now comprises six (6) British Columbia mining claims covering 2,563 ha (6,333 acres), located about 93 km East-Northeast of the village of Dease Lake, within the Northwest Region of northern British Columbia (Figure 2). Access is by helicopter from Dease Lake which is located along BC Highway 37 and with access to accommodation, fuel and grocery services. Historical sediment sampling combined with recent sediment sampling by Rare Earth Ridge along the western boundary of its Property identified a prominent target for both rare earth elements and yttrium (TREE+Y) and tin on the Conrad Claim. The prior silt sediment samples combined with the Rare Earth Ridge sampling results highlighted a 2.8 km x 1.8 km area as anomalous for both TREE+Y and tin that straddles the Mount Hart and Conrad Claims. Silt sediment samples from creeks draining the area range from 620 to 1197 ppm TREE+Y. These drainages are also anomalous for tin with values ranging from 16 to 304 ppm in the silt sediment samples. The area of anomalous TREE+Y and tin occurs along the contact between the favourable peralkaline Mount Major Hart granite and older ultramafic rocks and suggests potential for both TREE+Y and tin greisen deposits. Additionally, the acquired claim expands the property from 1,910 to 2,563 hectares providing valuable and highly prospective additional ground for long term planning. The Property is located in the tin-tungsten belt of British Columbia within an area having undergone multiple terrane collisions, combined with prolonged thrust and extensional faulting. The Property covers much of the Major Hart pluton, a peralkaline granite with a lithologic composition suitable for the enrichment of TREE+Y and other critical metals. Pursuant to the Agreement, the Company intends to acquire the Conrad Claim for 6,000,000 common shares of the Company. In addition, there is a 2.0% net smelter royalty ("NSR") on the Conrad Claim from commercial production. The Company has the right to purchase the 50% of the 2% NSR from the vendors for $1,000,000 at any time prior to commencement of commercial production. The vendor is an entity controlled by a director of the Company and the vendor is therefore non-arm's length from the Company. That director abstained from voting on the Company's approval of this transaction. Figure 1: Location map, Mount Major Hart property To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/9548/188434_04f92e3a24b158df_001full.jpg Figure 2: Claim map, Rare Earth Ridge property To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/9548/188434_04f92e3a24b158df_002full.jpg The Company also announces that Mr. Jake Tiley has resigned as a Director to pursue other opportunities. We thank Mr. Tiley for his time with the board and wish him success in his future endeavours. QA/QC Historical silt sediment samples were collected by contractors employed by a former holder of mineral titles in the area of the Conrad Claims. The methodology of sample collection and analysis of these samples is described in British Columbia Geological Survey Assessment Report 32384. The Historical silt sediments were gathered from the actively flowing channels of streams and placed in appropriate containers. The silt sediment samples were sent to Acme Analytical Laboratories in Vancouver B.C. where they underwent standard sample preparation before under going a lithium metaborate / tetra borate fusion followed by analysis by ICP-MS analysis for rare earth elements and tin. Silt sediment samples collected by Rare Earth Ridge's personnel were collected from the actively flowing stream channel, placed in kraft paper envelopes and sent to ALS Laboratories in Vancouver where the samples were dried and screened to -80 mesh. A sub sample of the screened material underwent a 4-acid digestion prior to being analysed by multi element ICP MS +REE package. Michael McClintock, P.Eng. with the McClintock Group is a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical disclosures in this release. About Rare Earth Ridge Resources Rare Earth Ridge Resources Corp. is a Canadian junior mining exploration company with its 100% owned Mount Major Hart property located in British Columbia. The Company is focussed on rare earth elements and critical metals. More information can be found at the Company's website at www.rareearthridgeresources.com. The Company is a private company. ON BEHALF OF RARE EARTH RIDGE RESOURCES CORP. "Barry Miller" President, CEO and Director T: (778) 232-1878 E: [email protected] Forward-Looking Information: This press release may include forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business of Rare Earth Ridge. Forward-looking information is based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by the management of Rare Earth Ridge. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as "will," "may," "would," "expect," "intend," "plan," "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "potential," "continue," "likely," "could" and variations of these terms and similar expressions, or the negative of these terms or similar expressions. Although Rare Earth Ridge believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking information is based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because Rare Earth Ridge can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188434 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Ridgeline Minerals Corp.(TSXV: RDG) (OTCQB: RDGMF) ("Ridgeline" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the completion of its 2023 diamond core drill program totaling 2,034 meters ("m") at its Selena silver ("Ag") - lead ("Pb") - zinc ("Zn") - gold ("Au") carbonate replacement ("CRD") exploration project in Nevada. The program totaled five drill holes ranging from 125 m to 690 m depth and targeted shallow-oxide CRD mineralization in the Upper Chinchilla Zone as well as testing for the first time beneath Chinchilla for stacked mineralization at depth (Figure 1 & Table 1). Drill samples have been regularly submitted to the lab for analysis over the past six weeks with assay results expected to be released in December 2023. Mike Harp, Ridgeline's Vice President, Exploration commented, "This year's program had two primary objectives, upgrade the known Upper Chinchilla Zone and test prospective carbonate host horizons at depth for new discoveries. Results so far have confirmed the high-grade nature of the Upper Chinchilla Zone, and we are encouraged by the level of alteration observed in new potential host horizons at depth. We look forward to updating shareholders as assays are received over the coming weeks." Summary of SE23-049 & SE23-050 (assays pending) Drillhole SE23-049 intersected the Upper Chinchilla Zone horizon over a roughly 9 m thick interval at depths consistent with nearby drillhole SE21-024 (Figure 2). 2.7m of total core loss was encountered in the middle of the aforementioned 9 m interval which is interpreted as a collapse breccia zone or cave resulting in no core recovery. Drilling beneath the upper zone intersected multiple stacked zones of CRD style alteration ranging from 1-5m thickness extending down to 665 meters downhole. (see core photo in Picture 1) Picture 1: Core photos of CRD alteration and corresponding shortwave UV "BBQ Rock" at depth in SE23-049. Tracking of fugitive calcite is a proven vectoring technique and indicator of proximity to a CRD system To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_002full.jpg Drillhole SE23-050 intersected the Upper Chinchilla Zone horizon over a roughly 25 m thick interval at depths consistent with nearby drillholes SE21-025 and SE22-045 (Picture 2 & Figure 2). Drilling beneath the Upper Chinchilla Zone intersected intervals of CRD style alteration ranging from 1-3m thickness down to 400 meters downhole as well as UV fluorescing "BBQ Rock" (fugitive calcite) vein breccia intervals down to 600m depth. (see core photo in Picture 3) Picture 2: Representative core and shortwave UV photo of the Upper Chinchilla Zone SE23-050. Note the lack of "BBQ Rock" fugitive calcite veins, which typically occur on the margins of the CRD system To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_003full.jpg Picture 3: Core and Shortwave UV photo of "BBQ Rock" (fugitive calcite veins) at depth in SE23-050. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_004full.jpg Previously Announced 2023 Drill Results SE23-048: 0.9 m grading 720.3 g/t Ag, 12.0% Pb, 0.1% Zn, 0.4 g/t Au (or 1,133.6 g/t Silver Equivalent "AgEq") within 10.9 m grading 94.1 g/t Ag, 1.3% Pb, 0.7% Zn, 0.2 g/t Au (or 182.9 g/t AgEq) starting at 85.3m true vertical depth ("TVD") (Figure 2) And: 0.6 m grading 3.6 g/t Ag, 2.4% Sb, 0.1 g/t Au starting at 240 m TVD And: 3.6 m grading 0.5 g/t Ag, 1.2% Sb, NA g/t Au starting at 247 m TVD See October 12, 2023 Press Release HERE within 10.9 m grading 94.1 g/t Ag, 1.3% Pb, 0.7% Zn, 0.2 g/t Au (or 182.9 g/t AgEq) starting at 85.3m true vertical depth ("TVD") (Figure 2) SE23-047: 4.6 m grading 55.2 g/t Ag, 1.2% Pb, 7.2% Zn, 0.2 g/t Au (or 421.1 g/t AgEq) and 2.8 m grading 205.8 g/t Ag, 1.4% Pb, 0.3% Zn, 1.4 g/t Au (or 386.1.1 g/t AgEq) within 60.7 m grading 69.8 g/t Ag, 0.6% Pb, 1.3% Zn, 0.4 g/t Au (or 175.2 g/t AgEq) starting at 93.8 m TVD (Figure 2) See October 12, 2023 Press Release HERE within starting at 93.8 m TVD (Figure 2) SE23-046: 7.3 m grading 64.2 grams per tonne ("g/t") Ag, 0.8% Pb, 2.9% Zn and 0.1 g/t Au (or 219.4 g/t AgEq") Assays in SE23-046 are from the top of the Upper Chinchilla Zone prior to the hole being abandoned due to bad ground conditions in a mineralized breccia zone. See October 12, 2023 Press Release HERE Silver Equivalent Calculation: Metal Prices ($20 Ag, $0.90 Pb, $1.25 Zn, 1800 Au, no recovery factor applied) Silver g/t + (Gold g/t * (Gold Price/ Silver Price)) + ((22.0462* Lead Price)/ ((1/31.1035) * (Ag Price)) * Lead %) + ((22.0462* Zinc Price)/ ((1/31.1035) * (Ag Price)) * Zinc %) Table 1: Collar table of all 2023 drill holes Drillhole ID Azimuth Dip Total Depth (m) SE23-046 266 -51 127.0 SE23-047 270 -49 200.0 SE23-048 269 -86 332.0 SE23-049 026 -63 689.0 SE23-050 010 -75 686.0 Selena Project Selena is located in White Pine County, Nevada, approximately 64 kilometers ("km") north of the town of Ely, NV. The Project shares a property boundary with the Butte Valley project, a US $33M earn-in agreement between Freeport-McMoRan and Falcon Butte Minerals. The 100% owned project is comprised of 39 square kms of highly prospective exploration ground including Ridgeline's shallow-oxide 2020 Ag-Au Pb-Zn Chinchilla discovery. Subsequent drilling has continued to highlight the potential for high-grade CRD type mineralization (Ag-Au-Pb-Zn Cu) between Chinchilla and the Butte Valley Cu-Au-Ag porphyry located directly west of the property. (View the Selena VRIFY Deck Here) Figure 1: Plan view map showing locations of SE23-046 to SE23-050 as well as previous highlight drill results at the Chinchilla Zone To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_005full.jpg Figure 2: Long-Section C-C' showing 2023 drilling. Assays pending on SE23-049 and SE23-050 To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7298/188360_8677844b5489584a_006full.jpg QAQC Procedures Samples are submitted to American Assay Laboratories (AAL) of Sparks, Nevada, which is a certified and accredited laboratory, independent of the Company. Independent check samples are analysed by Paragon Geochemical Labs (PAL) of Sparks, Nevada. Samples are prepared using industry-standard prep methods and analysed using FA-PB30-ICP (Au; 30 g fire assay) and ICP-5AM48 (48 element Suite; 0.5 g 5-acid digestion/ICP-MS) methods. AAL also undertakes its own internal coarse and pulp duplicate analysis to ensure proper sample preparation and equipment calibration. Ridgeline's QA/QC program includes regular insertion of CRM standards, duplicates, and blanks into the sample stream with a stringent review of all results completed by the Company's Qualified Person, Michael T. Harp, Vice President, Exploration. Technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Michael T. Harp, CPG. the Company's Vice President, Exploration, who is Ridgeline's Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 and responsible for technical matters of this release. About Ridgeline Minerals Corp. Ridgeline Minerals is a discovery focused precious and base metal explorer with a proven management team and a 204 km2 exploration portfolio across six projects in Nevada and Idaho, USA. More information about Ridgeline can be found at www.RidgelineMinerals.com. On behalf of the Board "Chad Peters" President & CEO Further Information: Chad Peters, P.Geo. President, CEO & Director Ridgeline Minerals Corp. +1 775 304 9773 [email protected] Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release. Cautionary Note regarding Forward-Looking Statements Statements contained in this press release that are not historical facts are "forward-looking information" or "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "Forward-Looking Information") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-Looking Information includes, but is not limited to, the anticipated benefits of the Earn-In Agreement and the transaction contemplated thereby. The words "potential", "anticipate", "meaningful", "discovery", "forecast", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "plan", "historical", "historic" and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify Forward-Looking Information. Forward-Looking Information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by the Forward-Looking Information. In preparing the Forward-Looking Information in this news release, Ridgeline has applied several material assumptions, including, but not limited to, assumptions that TSX Venture Exchange approval will be granted in a timely manner subject only to standard conditions; the current objectives concerning the Project can be achieved and that its other corporate activities will proceed as expected; that general business and economic conditions will not change in a materially adverse manner; and that all requisite information will be available in a timely manner. Forward-Looking Information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of Ridgeline to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the Forward-Looking Information. Such risks and other factors include, among others, risks related to dependence on key personnel; risks related to unforeseen delays; risks related to historical data that has not been verified by the Company; as well as those factors discussed in Ridgeline's public disclosure record. Although Ridgeline has attempted to identify important factors that could affect Ridgeline and may cause actual actions, events, or results to differ materially from those described in Forward-Looking Information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that Forward-Looking Information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on Forward-Looking Information. Except as required by law, Ridgeline does not assume any obligation to release publicly any revisions to Forward-Looking Information contained in this news release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188360 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - Scorpio Gold Corporation (TSXV: SGN) ("Scorpio Gold" or the "Company") announces that, further to the Company's press release on November 8, 2023, the consolidation of the outstanding common shares of the Company (each, a "Common Share") on the basis of one post-Consolidation Common Share for every nine pre-Consolidation Common Shares is anticipated to be made effective for trading purposes on Friday, November 24, 2023 (the "Effective Date"). It is anticipated that the Common Shares will begin trading on the TSX Venture Exchange on a post-Consolidation basis at market open on the Effective Date. The new CUSIP of the Common Shares will be 80918M302 and the new ISIN will be CA80918M3021. Shareholders with physical certificates will receive a letter of transmittal from Computershare Trust Company of Canada, the Company's transfer agent. All registered shareholders will be required to send their certificate(s) representing pre-Consolidation shares, along with a properly executed letter of transmittal, to the Company's transfer agent, in accordance with the instructions provided in the letter of transmittal. Shareholders who hold their shares through a broker, investment dealer, bank or trust company should contact that nominee or intermediary on the procedures for processing the Consolidation of their shares, and for determining their post-Consolidation positions. Further details regarding the Consolidation are provided in the press release of the Company dated November 8, 2023. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD SCORPIO GOLD CORPORATION Chris Zerga President and Chief Executive Officer Tel: 775-753-4778 Email: [email protected] Website: www.scorpiogold.com 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. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements with respect to the Company. By their nature, forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results suggested by the forward-looking statements. In addition, the forward-looking statements require management to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. There is significant risk that the forward-looking statements will not prove to be accurate, that the management's assumptions may not be correct and that actual results may differ materially from such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Generally forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "anticipate", "will", "expect", "may", "continue", "could", "estimate", "forecast", "plan", "potential" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release may include, but are not limited to, the issuance of Common Shares in settlement of the amounts owing under the Debentures and the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange to the settlement of the interest payment on the Debentures in Common Shares. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect including, but not limited to, the inability to obtain the requisite TSX Venture Exchange approval The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof or the dates specifically referenced in this press release, where applicable. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any forward-looking statements that are contained or incorporated in this press release. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188338 New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - SEO Near Me, a leading Search Engine Optimization company in the heart of Los Angeles, CA, is using new techniques to improve search visibility of their clients' websites. Its team of SEO experts is pioneering innovations in optimization, keeping an eye on the latest trends in the SEO industry. As part of the new techniques available, the company focuses on increasing the E-E-A-T (Experience, Competence, Authority, and Credibility) scores of client websites through various strategies and optimizing websites for voice-based search queries. E-E-A-T is one of the most important standards used by Google to measure the quality of content on websites. It aims to ensure that its content is supported by first-hand experience and real-world knowledge, recognized and respected in its domain, and is credible and reliable. The company understands the importance of E-E-A-T and is helping its clients improve their website ranking in search results and build a trusted brand. In order to improve E-E-A-T scores, its SEO experts use a variety of strategies, such as frequently updating articles, citing reputable sources, displaying credentials, promoting expert contributions, prioritizing website safety, communicating with the audience, avoiding misleading content, building quality backlinks, managing performance and design, clarity and so on. "The SEO landscape has evolved, and it's not just about posting content and getting backlinks. E-E-A-T is now a big part of SEO, and we're committed to helping our clients increase E-E-A-T scores effectively as well as improve online visibility. We use our expertise and innovative approach to help companies with improved Search Engine Results Page (SERP) ranking," quips Benny, a senior SEO expert. Additionally, another new technique the company is implementing is optimizing client websites for voice search queries. With the rise in popularity of voice search, it is important for websites to have natural-looking content and keywords. The company is helping its customers achieve this by adding keywords and features optimized for voice search, making it easier for users to find what they are looking for. Its SEO specialists are also updating and fine-tuning optimization strategies according to changes in Visual Search, Video SEO, Featured Snippets etc. Boasting over a decade of expertise in digital marketing, SEO Near Me takes great pride in providing professional SEO services to businesses of all scales and in a wide range of industries. Its team consists of highly experienced professionals who are always up to date with the latest SEO trends, techniques and algorithm changes. "When you choose our company," says Roger, one of the marketing pros, "you sign up with a partner who values transparent communication, timeliness in delivery, and above all, results which can be measured in clear terms." About SEO Near Me With a decade of industry experience, awards and a dedicated SEO team, SEO Near Me is ready to elevate client services to new heights of digital success. Both Individuals and business owners stand to benefit with this SEO agency in CA that demonstrate professionalism and transparency at all stages, and provide results-driven strategies. The experts use state-of-the-art tools and adhere to industry best practices to increase client website visibility, improve rankings in search engines, and drive organic traffic to their businesses with customized solutions designed for businesses, to help them reach their goals. Their holistic approach incorporates every aspect of SEO, from careful keyword research and on-page optimization to strong link building and creative content. This ensures that client websites are not only able to stand out but also thrive in the digitally competitive landscape. Ultimately, their goal is to improve search volume and increase website visibility in search engine results. By using a combination of keyword research, link building, on-page optimization, content creation, and technical optimization, they help client websites attract more visitors. It offers a wide range of SEO services to help businesses improve their online presence. For more information, visit https://www.affordableseonearme.com/. Company: SEO Near Me Contact Name: Tony Sergeev Address: 22 Park Pl. City: New York State: New York Country: Unites States Website: https://www.affordableseonearme.com/ email:[email protected] Phone: (833) 672-1736 To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188046 Yancheng, China--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Offshore renewables play a pivotal role in the realm of renewable energy, and its development stands as one of the key paths to combat climate change, expedite energy transition, and ensure energy security. In recent years, the integrated development of offshore wind, offshore solar and marine energy has become a new trend, while advanced technologies and innovative models including offshore hydrogen production and energy island developing rapidly. Cannot view this video? Visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3FmjFZaGTo Yancheng, situated on the eastern coast of China, has excellent offshore renewable energy resource, and is known as the "No.1 city of offshore renewables in China". As of 2022, Yancheng has 5.54 GW of offshore wind in Yancheng are 4.5 GW and 8.94 GW respectively, underscoring its huge potential in the near future. Furthermore, Yancheng attaches significant importance to international cooperation, and has already achieved a milestone by completing the first China-Europe offshore wind cooperation project in China. Yancheng maintains an open, welcoming stance and eagerly anticipates practical collaboration on offshore renewables with European countries and the rest of the world. Signing ceremony of major projects at the forum To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7958/188379_figure1.jpg On November 21, the 2023 China-Europe Forum on Offshore New Energy Development took place in Yancheng, Jiangsu. The forum, themed " Strengthen China-Europe cooperation on offshore renewables for a shared green future," the forum consists of the main forum on 21th morning including opening remarks, release and signing ceremony and keynote speeches, 6 sub-forums on 21th afternoon focusing on Offshore Wind and Solar, Energy Storage, Hydrogen, Building of a New Power Industry, Green Electricity & Renewables Certificate, and Zero-carbon Industrial Park respectively. China's farthest offshore wind power project To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7958/188379_figure2.jpg The opening ceremony was attended by Ren Jingdong, Deputy Director of the National Energy Administration; Zhou Bin, Secretary of the Yancheng Municipal Committee of the CPC; Wang Bin, General Manager of Power Construction Corporation of China; Marjo Crompvoets, Consul General from the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Shanghai; Lise Nordgaard, Consul General from the Consulate General of Norway in Shanghai; and Miguel Montoya, Vice Chairman of the China-EU Chamber of Commerce. Fu Cong, the Head of the Chinese Mission to the EU and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, addressed the conference via video. Zhang Mingkang, Mayor of Yancheng, presided over the opening ceremony China's first smart offshore wind farm in Yancheng City To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/7958/188379_figure3.jpg After the opening ceremony, the forum released significant outcomes, including the "2023 Yancheng Declaration of the China-Europe Forum on Offshore New Energy Development," "Public Solicitation of Technical Solutions for Offshore Photovoltaics, Offshore Energy Islands, and High Proportion Application of New Energy," and the "Comparison Analysis and Cooperation Potential Study of Key Technologies and Industrial Chains of Floating Offshore Wind Power in China and Europe." Twenty-five major projects were signed, with a total amount reaching 29.48 billion yuan, injecting new impetus into the further advancement of technological innovation and industrial upgrading in offshore new energy and deepening pragmatic China-Europe cooperation. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188379 London, United Kingdom--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - MSL has completed its certification with Mastercard, becoming one of the pioneering processors to get direct connectivity to the Mastercard Cloud in Europe. MSLcan now provide issuers, program managers, and credit institutions throughout the EEA with card issuing and banking-as-a-service solutions. MSL Mastercard To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/8700/188384_msl%20mastercard%20article%20image.png With a long history of successful partnerships with Mastercard, MSL's founders have launched many highly successful prepaid programs in Europe. This new certification further solidifies MSL's commitment to providing innovative payment solutions and strengthening its partnership with Mastercard. MSL's next-generation Edge platform offers cutting-edge technology, incorporating AI-driven, real-time decision-making fraud and AML tools. The MSL plug-and-play RESTful API is user-friendly and efficient, ensuring a smooth experience for developers to integrate their platforms seamlessly. Thanks to the new connectivity built with Mastercard, MSL can bring their card issuing, merchant acquiring, and universal remittance platforms to the market-adding significant value to issuers, program managers, and other payment ecosystem partners. MSL offers a unique business model that allows partners to choose their level of involvement. Partners can opt for MSL to manage the whole issuing, program management, and acquiring platform, take more control of the platform, or certify and operate the platform in their name while leveraging MSL's licensing solution. MSL can provide solutions for debit, credit, or prepaid requirements. MSL CEO Conor Doyle commented, "MSL is delighted to partner with Mastercard in Europe and looks forward to expanding this partnership to other regions globally. Together, MSL and Mastercard aim to deliver innovative and secure payment solutions catering to the evolving needs of consumers and businesses. I'd like to extend a special thanks to the Mastercard Spain Team - Alejandro Banegas, Marina Pardo & Juan Carlos Alcaide, who have supported MSL in obtaining this certification". Media Contact: Conor Doyle [email protected] PR Contact: Brian Murphy [email protected] Pinion Newswire To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188384 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2023) - Velocity Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: VLC) (OTCQB: VLCJF) ("Velocity" or the "Company") provides an update on its ongoing exploration program at the Zlatusha exploration license ("Zlatusha" or the "Property"), located in Bulgaria. Velocity holds the Property under an option agreement, pursuant to which Velocity has an exclusive option to acquire up to a 75% interest in the Property (see previous news release January 24, 2023). Zlatusha is the Company's exploration focus and initial drilling is planned for H1 2024. Exploration Update Velocity has confirmed the presence of several magmatic-hydrothermal centers with outcropping copper-gold mineralization hosted in rocks of favourable upper Cretaceous age and composition. Extensive geophysical and geochemical surveys have been completed as well as mapping and prospecting programs. Work completed includes: Airborne Magnetic Survey - 2,361 line-km drone-based magnetic survey, with preliminary data generating several large-scale, high priority targets ( Figure 1 ). Interpretation of the magnetic data and targeting is ongoing and planned to be completed in Q4 2023; - 2,361 line-km drone-based magnetic survey, with preliminary data generating several large-scale, high priority targets ( ). Interpretation of the magnetic data and targeting is ongoing and planned to be completed in Q4 2023; Soil Geochemistry - 1400 soil samples establishing anomalies at the Rosoman target ( Figure 3 ). Soil sampling is ongoing throughout the remainder of this very large property; - 1400 soil samples establishing anomalies at the Rosoman target ( ). Soil sampling is ongoing throughout the remainder of this very large property; Radiometric Surveys - completed on multiple targets with interpretation and targeting ongoing; and - completed on multiple targets with interpretation and targeting ongoing; and Mapping and Prospecting - completed over multiple property-wide traverses including portable XRF analysis of more than 600 rock samples and discovery of new outcropping mineralized zones. An initial drill program is planned for H1 2024 with a focus on discovery of copper-gold porphyry mineralization. Regional Setting Zlatusha Property is located within a Tier One porphyry copper-gold and epithermal belt, which transects Serbia and Bulgaria (Figure 2). The local geological setting at Zlatusha Property is similar to the Timok Magmatic complex, located 95 km to the northwest in Serbia (hosting the Bor, Majdanpek and Cukaru Peki copper-gold deposits) and the Panagyurishte Orefield, located 65 km to the east in Bulgaria (hosting operating mines such as Chelopech, Elatsite and Asarel). Approximately 5km southwest of Zlatusha, the Milin Kamuk mine is under construction. No modern systematic exploration has been carried out at Zlatusha and the Company considers the Property to be prospective for the discovery of additional deposits. Readers are cautioned that the mines and deposits discussed above are adjacent properties and that Velocity has no interest in or right to acquire any interest in the deposit, and that mineral deposits on adjacent or similar properties, and any production therefore or economics with respect thereto, are not in any way indicative of mineral deposits on Velocity's properties or the potential production from, or cost or economics of, any future mining of any of Velocity's mineral properties. Figure 1.Total Magnetic Intensity data collected at Zlatusha together with mineral occurrences. Interpretation and targeting are ongoing. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4368/188302_f9220d6014a38933_002full.jpg Figure 2.Map showing the location of the Zlatusha Property within the prospective Tethyan copper-gold mineral belt transecting Serbia and Bulgaria and highlighting the location of operating mines,formerly operating mines, and mines under development. To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4368/188302_f9220d6014a38933_003full.jpg Exploration Results Rosoman Soil Geochemistry Velocity completed a geochemical soil survey in the vicinity of a known mineral occurrence called Rosoman. A total of 1,040 soil samples were collected on a 100x50m grid defining four significant soil anomalies (Figure 3). Rosoman Gold Zone - predominantly gold-silver anomaly covering an area of 500m x 300m. Historical drilling within this anomaly returned values of up to 11m grading 4.33g/t gold (from 109.0 to 120.0m depth) and 11m grading 3.63g/t gold (from 2.7 to 13.7m depth) - predominantly gold-silver anomaly covering an area of 500m x 300m. Historical drilling within this anomaly returned values of up to 11m grading 4.33g/t gold (from 109.0 to 120.0m depth) and 11m grading 3.63g/t gold (from 2.7 to 13.7m depth) Satellite Anomaly - large 1000m x 350m area with very intense outcropping hydrothermal alteration and characterized by anomalous pathfinder elements - large 1000m x 350m area with very intense outcropping hydrothermal alteration and characterized by anomalous pathfinder elements Ostra Mogila - predominantly copper-molybdenum anomaly over 1000m x 300m - predominantly copper-molybdenum anomaly over 1000m x 300m Rosoman South - predominantly copper anomaly south of the main Zlatusha gold zone All of the prospects above fall within broader-scale northeast-trending hydrothermal alteration envelop with a surface footprint extending over 2200m x700m that includes several zones of phyllic alteration amongst widespread argillic and both transitioning to proximal and distal propylitic mineral assemblages. The alteration surface footprint coincides with low magnetic susceptibility anomaly obtained from the soil reference samples and is further confirmed by the Property-wide drone magnetic survey. Figure 3.Soil Geochemistry assays for gold, silver, copper and molybdenum To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: https://images.newsfilecorp.com/files/4368/188302_f9220d6014a38933_004full.jpg Regional Geology Traverses A series of regional traverses have been completed across the Property to gain more understanding of the volcanic stratigraphy, genetic types of hydrothermal alteration, and the distribution and volcano-sedimentary stratigraphy. During the geological traverses several copper showings were identified with anomalous copper grades analyzed with a portable XRF, including up to 12.8% copper at Rosoman, 0.8% to 4.6% copper near Rosoman village, up to 5% copper at Pishtane, and 0.03% to 5.2% at Mala Rakovitsa. Additional follow-up work is planned to cover the new identified Cu showings. Quality Assurance / Quality Control The work program at Zlatusha Property was designed and supervised by Vasil Dimitrov, CGeol FGS, the Company's Senior Geologist, who is responsible for all aspects of the work, including the quality control/quality assurance program. On-site personnel at the project rigorously collect and track samples which are then security sealed and shipped to ALS Global laboratory in Romania (soil and rock samples) for sample preparation and subsequent analysis. Soil samples are prepared in compliance with industry standards at ALS' Romanian laboratory then a sample split of the milled material (pulp) is shipped to ALS' Irish laboratory for Trace Detection Limit method for a gold plus multi-element package by aqua regia digestion for acid extractable gold - 25g. Field duplicate samples, blanks and independent controlled reference material (standards) are added to every batch. Portable XRF (Olympus Vanta M) and Magnetic Susceptibility (KT-9 kappameter) analysis are applied on soil and rock sample references. Portable XRF analyzer is used to evaluate the concentration of certain elements in rocks and soils providing rapid information to field geologists without waiting for laboratory results. The portable XRF readings provide an effective screening tool for selecting samples for traditional laboratory chemical analysis. The assays of the pXRF analysis are indicative, but accuracy is not equivalent to laboratory analysis. Soil samples are sieved in the field with 40mesh (-1mm) stainless steel sieve, collected in kraft paper bags for drying in storage area. After sample splitting, material is taken from each sample for portable XRF analysis and stored in small transparent zip-lock bags with sample ID tags. Samples are scanned on both sides and the XRF measurements are averaged by the portable XRF. Representative rock sample specimens are selected from the field geologist then scanned with portable XRF in company's warehouse. Blanks and independent controlled reference material (standards) scanned with portable XRF and the results are compared with laboratory analysis. Additional portable XRF QA/QC measurements are taken from "Coin" and "Blank" material (provided by Olympus) for tool calibration before and after scanning of each batch of samples. Geophysical surveys are carried out by geophysical consultants using up-to-date technologies, with the results checked by a third-party independent geophysicist for quality control. Raw geophysical data is processed and corrected, and the results are interpreted by 2 independent groups of geophysicists under the direction of Company staff. Qualified Person The technical content of this release has been approved for disclosure by Daniel Marinov, RPGeo, a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101 and the Company's Vice President Operations. Mr. Marinov is not independent of the Company as he is a director, officer, shareholder, and holds incentive stock options. About Velocity Minerals Ltd. Velocity is a precious metals and copper explorer focused in Eastern Europe. In Bulgaria, Velocity has a 70% interest in the Tintyava property, which includes the prefeasibility-stage Rozino deposit. Velocity also has a 70% interest in the Momchil property (which includes the Obichnik project), a 70% interest in the Nadezhda property (which includes the Makedontsi project), and a 70% interest in the Dangovo property (which is contiguous with the Makedontsi project). The Company holds a 100% interest in the Iglika copper-gold exploration property and recently entered into an option agreement with DPM who have an option to earn a 75% interest in the property. The Company has also entered into agreements to acquire a 75% interest in the Zlatusha and Kalabak copper-gold exploration properties. On Behalf of the Board of Directors "Keith Henderson" President & CEO For further information, please contact: Keith Henderson Phone: +1-604-484-1233 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.velocityminerals.com Neither the 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. This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, statements regarding the exercise of the First Option or the Second Option by Velocity, the entering into of the Definitive Agreement, the formation of the Joint Venture, and the anticipated business plans and timing of future activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by words such as "pro forma", "plans", "expects", "may", "will", "should", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", "potential" or variations of such words including negative variations thereof, and phrases that refer to certain actions, events or results that may, could, would, might or will occur or be taken or achieved. In making the forward-looking statements in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including without limitation, that it will obtain TSX Venture Exchange acceptance, if applicable, that market fundamentals will result in sustained precious metals demand and prices, the receipt of any necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals in connection with the future development of the Property in a timely manner, the availability of financing on suitable terms for the development, construction and continued operation of the Property, and the Company's ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such risks and other factors include, among others, operating and technical difficulties in connection with mineral exploration and development and mine development activities at the Property, the fact that the Company's interest in the Property is an option only and there is no guarantee that such interest, if earned, will be certain, estimation or realization of mineral reserves and mineral resources, requirements for additional capital, future prices of precious metals and copper, changes in general economic conditions, changes in the financial markets and in the demand and market price for commodities, possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates, possible failures of plants, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated, accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry, delays or the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required, including TSX Venture Exchange acceptance, financing or other planned activities, changes in laws, regulations and policies affecting mining operations, currency fluctuations, title disputes or claims limitations on insurance coverage and the timing and possible outcome of pending litigation, environmental issues and liabilities, risks relating to epidemics or pandemics, risks related to joint venture operations, and risks related to the integration of acquisitions, as well as those factors discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's latest Management Discussion and Analysis and other filings of the Company with the Canadian Securities Authorities, copies of which can be found under the Company's profile on the SEDAR website at www.sedarplus.ca. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Except as otherwise required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking information in this news release or incorporated by reference herein. - 30 - To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188302 Vancouver, British Columbia and Princeton, New Jersey--(Newsfile Corp. - November 21, 2023) - Xybion Digital Inc. (TSXV: XYBN), a global, low-code SaaS company that enables digital transformation in life sciences and health organizations, the acceleration of new drug development and enables organizations to maintain employee health and safety, today reported financial results for its second quarter ending on September 30, 2023. Financial references are expressed in US dollars unless otherwise indicated. Please refer to the MD&A and Financial Statements posted onto SEDAR (www.sedarplus.ca) for information relating to non-IFRS measures and risk factors. Financial Highlights for Q2 2024 - September 30, 2023: Adjusted EBITDA (non-IFRS measure) of $631,086 in Q2 2024, compared to $(1,452,748) in Q2 2023, an increase of 143.4% . Adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.8%, as compared to (37.1)% in Q2 2023. (non-IFRS measure) of $631,086 in Q2 2024, compared to $(1,452,748) in Q2 2023, an . Adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.8%, as compared to (37.1)% in Q2 2023. Recurring revenue from Subscriptions and Maintenance for Q2 of 2024 increased by 3.9% to $2.66 M, as compared to $2.56M in Q2 of 2022 from Subscriptions and Maintenance for Q2 of 2024 to $2.66 M, as compared to $2.56M in Q2 of 2022 Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) at Q2 2024 increased by 3.2% or $.33 million to $10.67 million, as compared to $10.34 million at Q2 2023. (ARR) at Q2 2024 or $.33 million to $10.67 million, as compared to $10.34 million at Q2 2023. Overall quarterly revenue increased by 2.3% to $4.00 million, as compared to $3.91 million in Q2 2023. to $4.00 million, as compared to $3.91 million in Q2 2023. Net income of $334,893 in Q2 2024, compared to a net loss of $(1,224,637) in Q2 2023, an increase of 127.3%. of $334,893 in Q2 2024, compared to a net loss of $(1,224,637) in Q2 2023, an As of September 30, 2023 the Company had $6,831,804 million in cash on the balance sheet and zero debt. "As I recently reported, I am pleased that we returned to our profitable growth trajectory in our Q3 and Q4 for the fiscal 2023 and that this has continued through Q2 of fiscal year 2024," stated Pradip Banerjee, CEO of Xybion. "During this time we have been executing our strategy of managing our existing business and carrying out selective acquisitions to offer more comprehensive solutions to our clients," continued Dr. Banerjee. "I am pleased to report that on November 16th we completed the acquisition of Autoscribe, a globally recognized LIMS software provider, headquartered in the United Kingdom, with additional operations in the United States and Australia. Autoscribe LIMS provides multi-industry domain solutions, easy to use and configure software that is currently used by over 140 customers. This acquisition aligns with Xybion's vision of fast-tracking lab digitization and information management SaaS solutions to simplify lab operations and speed up innovation," concluded Dr. Banerjee. Non- IFRS Financial Measures EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin are non-IFRS financial measures. EBITDA is defined as net income or loss before net finance expenses, depreciation and amortization expense and income tax expense. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net income or loss before income taxes, net finance costs, depreciation and amortization, Paycheck Protection Payment (PPP) loan forgiveness, one-time Reverse Takeover (RTO) expenses and stock-based compensation, and Adjusted EBITDA Margin is defined as the percentage of Adjusted EBITDA to revenues. Since the Company capitalizes its operating leases as right of use assets, the amount of amortization related to these right of use (ROU) assets was not added back to earnings in determining Adjusted EBITDA. We believe that Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin are useful measures of financial performance because they provide an indication of the Company's ability to seize growth opportunities in a cost-effective manner and finance its ongoing operations. Each of these non-IFRS financial measures are not recognized measures under IFRS and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. These measures are unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Rather, non-IFRS measures are provided as additional information to complement financial statements by providing further understanding of our results of operations from management's perspective. Accordingly, these measures should not be considered in isolation nor as a substitute for analysis of our financial information reported under IFRS. About Xybion Digital Inc. Xybion is a global SaaS company that helps enterprise life sciences organizations accelerate new drug development into approved medicines that may save lives and keep employees safe. We digitize drug research and development, laboratory testing, regulatory approvals, and pharmaceutical manufacturing on a single, unified cloud platform that is cost-effective, ready to deploy, and easy to use. Xybion has over 160 clients in 29 countries using its software to accelerate timelines, improve compliance, expand capacity, minimize operating risks, and reduce expenses while keeping employees safe. Learn more about Xybion at https://www.xybion.com/ For further information: For more information regarding Xybion Digital Inc., please contact Pradip Banerjee, Chief Executive Officer, [email protected], 609-512-5790 x122 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. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements ("forward-looking statements") in this news release may contain forward-looking information concerning relating to the release of financial results, plans related to the Company's business and other matters that may occur in the future, made as of the date of this news release. In making the forward-looking statements included in this news release, the Company has applied several material assumptions, including with respect to the timing of such release. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual events or results to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as a number of important factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the expectations expressed in them. Such factors include, among others, the risks described in disclosure documents filed by the Company on SEDAR. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in suchstatements. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law and may not be offered or sold in the "United States", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/188330 HiredSupport and President Joel Wolfe, believe that Pakistan is the next prime location for companies looking to outsource their customer service operations that rivals the quality of talent found in The Philippines. HiredSupport, a leading outsourcing customer service company, is making a bold move to become the biggest outsourcing agency for customer support for companies around the world. With the growing demand for outsourcing services, HiredSupport has chosen Pakistan as one of its main office locations for working operations. Pakistan has emerged as a top destination for companies of all sizes, rivaling the talent found in the Philippines. The decision to expand operations in Pakistan comes as no surprise, as the country has seen a significant growth in its outsourcing industry in recent years. With a highly skilled and educated workforce, Pakistan offers a cost-effective solution for companies looking to outsource customer service. This move by HiredSupport not only benefits the company but also boosts the economy of Pakistan by creating job opportunities for its citizens. HiredSupport's President, Joel Wolfe, stated, "We are excited to expand and continue our operations in Pakistan and become the top outsourcing destination for customer support. Our goal is to provide exceptional services to our clients while also contributing to the growth of the Pakistani economy. We have seen a tremendous increase in the demand for outsourcing services, and we believe that Pakistan has the potential to become a major player in the global outsourcing market." With its strategic location, strong work ethic, talent pool, and competitive pricing, Pakistan has become an attractive destination for companies looking to outsource their customer support services. HiredSupport's decision to expand in Pakistan not only showcases the country's potential but also highlights the company's commitment to providing top-notch services to its clients. HiredSupport's push to become the biggest outsourcing provider for customer support is a significant development in the outsourcing industry. With its expansion, the company aims to provide high-quality services to its clients while also contributing to the growth of the Pakistani economy. This move solidifies Pakistan's position as a top outsourcing destination and sets the stage for further growth and success in the industry. About Us: Founded in 2016 by Joel Wolfe, HiredSupport is a diverse team of outsourcing customer service professionals. HiredSupport develops winning customer service teams to help businesses keep customers satisfied around the clock and around the world. Contact Info: Name: Joel Wolfe Email: Send Email Organization: HiredSupport Website: https://www.hiredsupport.com/ Release ID: 89113937 In case of identifying any problems, concerns, or inaccuracies in the content shared in this press release, or if a press release needs to be taken down, we urge you to notify us immediately by contacting [email protected]. Our dedicated team will be readily accessible to address your concerns and take swift action within 8 hours to rectify any issues identified or assist with the removal process. We are committed to delivering high-quality content and ensuring accuracy for our valued readers. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Azerbaijan Dragana Kojic, has made a statement regarding visits to persons detained in Azerbaijan and Armenia, Trend reports. She said these visits are conducted regularly. "The committee's staff regularly visits persons of Armenian origin detained in Azerbaijan, as well as Azerbaijanis detained in Armenia. The last time the visits to the places of detention were conducted in late October and early November. During the visits, the ICRC staff inquires about the conditions of detention of the arrested persons and their treatment," the head of the ICRC office emphasized. According to Kojich, during the visits, attention is also paid to the creation of conditions for the detainees to communicate with their families. She added that the ICRC regularly discusses these issues with both Azerbaijan and Armenia. The leader of the "Dashnaktsutyun" nationalist party in Azerbaijan's Karabakh, former so-called "chairman of parliament" of the separatists David Ishkhanyan, former so-called "president" of the separatists Arayik Harutyunyan, former "state minister" Ruben Vardanyan, so-called "first deputy commander of the defense army" of the separatist regime Davit Manukyan , former so-called "foreign minister" of the separatist regime David Babayan, former so-called "presidents" of the separatists Bako Sahakyan and Arkady Ghukasyan, and former "defense minister" of the separatists Levon Mnatsakanyan were detained by the State Security Service of Azerbaijan and brought to Baku. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel Paid press release content from The Financial Capital. The StreetInsider.com news staff was not involved in its creation. The Hotline Times recently published a groundbreaking article on the future of aviation, focusing on the development and impact of electric airplanes. This article sheds light on how electric aviation is poised to transform the industry. In a world constantly seeking sustainable solutions, The Hotline Times has published an insightful article titled "The Future of Aviation with Electric Airplanes," delving into the evolving landscape of the aviation industry. This feature explores how electric airplanes are not just a possibility, but an imminent reality set to revolutionize air travel. Electric airplanes represent a significant leap forward in aviation technology, offering a cleaner, quieter, and more efficient mode of air transport. The Hotline Times' article comprehensively covers the advancements in this field, highlighting the potential environmental benefits, economic implications, and the challenges faced by the industry in adopting this technology. The article features interviews with leading experts in aerospace engineering and environmental science, providing a well-rounded perspective on the subject. It discusses the current state of electric airplane technology, including recent breakthroughs and the companies at the forefront of this innovation. Furthermore, it addresses the regulatory, technical, and infrastructural changes required to support the widespread adoption of electric airplanes. In addition to technical aspects, the article delves into the economic impact of electric airplanes on the aviation industry. It discusses how this shift could lead to more affordable air travel, potentially opening new routes and making air transport accessible to a broader audience. The environmental angle is also a key focus, with the article examining how electric airplanes could significantly reduce the aviation industry's carbon footprint, aligning with global efforts to combat climate change. The Hotline Times, known for its in-depth analysis and comprehensive reporting, has once again proven its dedication to bringing critical and timely topics to the forefront. This article is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of aviation, environmental sustainability, or technological innovation. The Future of Aviation with Electric Airplanes is an essential read for understanding how electric aviation will shape our skies in the coming years. We encourage readers to explore this fascinating topic and consider the profound implications it holds for our planet and society. Read the full article here: The Future of Aviation with Electric Airplanes About Us: The Hotline Times is a leading online publication renowned for its incisive reporting and in-depth analysis of current affairs, business trends, technology, and culture. With a commitment to journalistic excellence, The Hotline Times delivers compelling content that informs, educates, and inspires its diverse readership. Contact Info: Name: Scott Ward Email: Send Email Organization: The Hotline Times Website: https://www.thehotlinetimes.com/ Release ID: 89113934 In the event of detecting errors, concerns, or irregularities in the content shared in this press release that require attention or if there is a need for a press release takedown, we kindly request that you inform us promptly by contacting [email protected]. Our dedicated team will promptly address your feedback within 8 hours and take necessary actions to resolve any identified issues diligently or guide you through the removal process. Providing accurate and dependable information is our utmost priority. Paid press release content from The Financial Capital. The StreetInsider.com news staff was not involved in its creation. Road Trip, a game-changer in alternative wellness, introduces potent, vegan, and gluten-free Magic Mushroom Gummies. Amanita and Desert Stardust blends offer distinct experiences, redefining perceptions of psychedelics and driving them into the mainstream consciousness. Road Trip has unveiled an innovative product line that's propelling magic mushrooms into the mainstream with unparalleled potency and purity. The brand offers two primary magic mushroom blends. One of them is Amanita Muscaria, featuring a patented 10x Nano Extract that makes it one of the strongest single-serve mushroom gummies available. Amanita Muscaria does not contain psilocybin, the compound responsible for psychedelic experiences. However, some users have reported enjoyable psychedelic effects. These mushrooms boast a striking appearance with their bright red caps adorned with white polka dots, spanning 5-20 centimeters in diameter. Muscimol is the primary psychoactive compound found in the Amanita muscaria mushroom, also known as the fly agaric. Muscimol is generally known for its sedative and dissociative effects. Users often describe a dreamy or delirious state of consciousness, with effects primarily involving visual distortions, a sense of time dilation, and a dream-like state. Amanita Muscaria is available in Raspberry, Peach, and Watermelon flavors. Desert Stardust, another Road Trip product, represents the brand's proprietary blend of tryptamines. It is well-known for its psychedelic and hallucinogenic effects, resulting in altered perception, vivid visuals, and changes in thought patterns. It frequently induces feelings of euphoria and introspection, fostering a deeper sense of connectedness with one's surroundings and inner self. Desert Stardust, which has been revered for its unique properties and the spiritual experiences it facilitates, is available in Blue Raspberry, Pineapple, and Strawberry gummy flavors. A starting dose, one-half gummy, is a sub-perceptual dose, which means users won't experience strong psychedelic effects. Instead, they may notice subtle changes in mood, creativity, and focus. It serves as a great choice for those seeking enhanced clarity and a gentle mood lift without the intensity of a full trip. The products have received 5-star ratings from consumers, paving the way for mainstream consciousness for both Amanita Muscaria and Desert Stardust. SB, in a review, lauded Road Trip for offering game-changing products. "Road Trip are the best by far. Ate two gummies when they arrived and really enjoyed it. No hangover at all, you peak in about an hour and enjoy the ride till it eases off. I'll definitely try again," wrote SB. Thomas, another consumer, said the experience he's had with Road Trip products has been incredible. I can get alone in my room and listen to some meditation music and just stay there for hours. I will continue to stay with Road Trip gummies. There is no substitute," wrote Thomas. Unmatched Quality and Transparency Road Trip is committed to upholding the highest standards of quality and transparency. Vegan and gluten-free, these gummies are a testament to Road Trip's dedication to providing a pure, unadulterated product. In addition, the brand firmly denounces the addition of any Hemp/Cannabis-related compounds, ensuring consumers are guaranteed an authentic and genuine experience. Educating and Empowering However, beyond merely unveiling a product line, Road Trip has led the way in advocatinh for education and empowerment. The brand seeks to inform consumers about the distinctive characteristics of each blend. Road Trip's dedication to offering accurate information empowers consumers to make informed decisions about their wellness journey. Mainstream Acceptance Road Trip's visionary stride is aligning magic mushrooms with mainstream wellness practices. Through rigorous research, strict quality control, and an unwavering commitment to purity, the brand is pioneering a shift in perception. As societal attitudes evolve, Road Trip stands at the forefront, sparking conversations and steering cultural acceptance towards a more open-minded approach to alternative wellness. Road Trip's Magic Mushroom Gummies represent not just a product but a movementan invitation to explore into a realm of wellness and consciousness. As the brand journeys further into the mainstream, it brings with it a promise of authenticity, transparency, and a transformative experience. Those who want to learn more about Road Trip's magic mushrooms may visit its website at www.roadtripgummies.com or reach out to the brand's dedicated team. Contact Info: Name: Road Trip Email: Send Email Organization: Road Trip Co. Phone: 1-866-804-3784 Website: https://www.roadtripgummies.com Release ID: 89113920 Should any problems, inaccuracies, or doubts arise from the content contained within this press release, we kindly request that you inform us immediately by contacting [email protected]. Our dedicated team will promptly address your concerns within 8 hours, taking necessary steps to rectify identified issues or assist with the removal process. Providing accurate and dependable information is at the core of our commitment to our readers. Paid press release content from The Financial Capital. The StreetInsider.com news staff was not involved in its creation. Singapore, 22nd November -Subway Asia Pacific celebrates a quad of accolades at FLA including this year's inaugural Franchise Leader Award, setting a new benchmark for excellence in the franchise industry. In a sweeping victory, Subway Asia Pacific has been honoured with the following prestigious awards Subway Asia Pacific celebrates a quad of accolades at FLA including this year's inaugural Franchise Leader Award, setting a new benchmark for excellence in the franchise industry. In a sweeping victory, Subway Asia Pacific has been honored with the following prestigious awards: 1. Franchise Leader Award Winner (David Leong, Subway) 2. Established Franchisor Award Platinum 3. International Franchisor or the Year Runner Up 4. Franchisor of the Year 2nd Runner Up These awards highlight Subway Asia Pacifics unwavering commitment to innovation, growth, and franchise excellence in a highly competitive market. David Leong on the Landmark Achievement: "A Multi-Year Transformation David Leong, Development Director at Subway Asia Pacific, shared his thoughts on this momentous occasion: "Subway is on an exciting multi-year transformation journey to improve across all aspects of our business. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, we've realized significant milestones, such as substantial sales growth, expanded digital presence, and market penetration. The Asia Pacific region, continues to be a powerhouse for growth, fueled by its vast population and increasing prosperity." Strategic Expansion and Operational Excellence: The Cornerstones of Success Underlining Subway Asia Pacific's strategic initiatives, Eric Foo, President of Subway Asia Pacific elaborates, "We continue to focus on expanding our brand and reinforcing our status as one of the worlds leading restaurant brands. In the past four years, we've formed pivotal partnerships in Greater China, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and ensured optimal placement and format for our restaurants. Our introduction of non-traditional outlets like Drive-Thrus in key markets, coupled with our emphasis on operational excellence for our franchisees, ensures the highest quality experience for our guests. There's immense potential for growth in the APAC region, and we are eager to bring the unique Subway experience to an expanding guest base." Journey"Strategic Expansion and Milestone Achievements Subway is ridding itself of a development-first mindset and opting for an experience-oriented approach. That means focusing on operational excellence and ensuring locations are in the right image, location, and format to best meet guests needs. "We continue to focus on strategic expansion and maintaining our position as one of the worlds largest quick service restaurants. Were also ensuring that Subway restaurants are in the right location and right format. In addition, weve expanded our non-traditional fleet such as Drive-Thrus in several key markets. Just as important, were focused on supporting and training our franchisees on operational excellence so that they can provide the best possible experience to our guests. We have significant growth opportunities in the APAC region and we look forward to bringing a greater Subway experience to our guests" added Foo Looking Forward: A Future of Growth and Innovation Looking to the future, Subway Asia Pacific is committed to building on this legacy of success, by adopting a two-pronged strategy. Among the existing base, Subway will work on helping existing franchisees to expand from one to more restaurant portfolios. At the same time, Subway will seek to engage with new partners in green field markets under new business formats. Whilst doing so, the focus will remain on expanding the brands presence while continuing to offer high-quality, eat fresh feel good, options to its guests. About Subway Asia Pacific Subway Asia Pacific, part of the global Subway brand, is renowned for its fresh and customizable sandwiches. With a strong presence in the Asian market, Subway continues to lead with its guest experience, menu innovation & brand growth. Contact Info: Name: Stanley Kan Email: Send Email Organization: Alto Global Website: http://alto.sg Release ID: 89113972 Should you identify any discrepancies, concerns, or inaccuracies in the content provided in this press release or require assistance with a press release takedown, we strongly urge you to notify us promptly by contacting [email protected]. Our responsive team is committed to addressing your concerns within 8 hours by taking necessary actions to resolve identified issues diligently or guiding you through the necessary steps for removal. Our dedication lies in providing accurate and reliable information. PARIS, FRANCE, Nov 22, 2023 - (ACN Newswire) - - The 42nd Session of the General Conference of UNESCO, held in UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from November 7-22, has generated positive results for Indonesia. During the election of Members of the Executive Board of UNESCO on November 15, Indonesia was voted by 154 out of 181 countries and elected as the board's member for the 2023-2027 period. In electoral group IV, Indonesia competed with eight other countries in the Asia-Pacific region for six allocated seats on the UNESCO Executive Board. The eight countries are Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, South Korea and Sri Lanka, and the six elected included Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Australia. In his remarks, the Indonesian Ambassador to France, Andorra and Monaco, and Indonesia's Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, Mohamad Oemar, expressed gratitude for the unwavering support from UNESCO member countries. "Indonesia is committed to being actively involved and collaborating with other member countries to ensure progress and sustainability in various fields that UNESCO focuses on," he said. Oemar underlined that UNESCO's mission, dedicated to promoting global peace and the prosperity of humans, is recognized as a valuable milestone by Indonesia, which highly values the principles of pluralism, multilateralism, and international cooperation, which are the keys to success in responding to world challenges, including achieving sustainable development goals in all areas of competence mandated by UNSECO. During the Intergovernmental Council of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) election on Thursday, November 16, Indonesia was also elected as a council member for 2023-2027, with Oemar noting that Indonesia's election as a member is momentum for the country to take a strategic role in navigating the transformation of media and policies through UNESCO. "Indonesia is committed to continuing to actively participate, holding dialogue, and collaborate with other member countries in responding to issues of media and technology development and the making of communication and media policies in UNESCO forums," the ambassador remarked. As the council's member, Indonesia will take part in determining policy suggestions, monitoring and vision for freedom of expression, access to information, and digital transformation to ensure fundamental freedom is guaranteed, both online and offline, in line with international standards. Lastly, the Indonesian language has also been designated as an official language of the UNESCO General Conference, based on adopting Resolution 42 C/28 during the Plenary Meeting of the 42nd Session of the UNESCO General Conference on Monday, November 20. Indonesian became the 10th official language, with English, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Italian, and Portuguese. Oemar stated that the Indonesian language has more than 275 million speakers while delivering Indonesia's proposal presentation, adding that the curriculum has entered 52 countries, with at least 150,000 foreign speakers currently. He emphasized that improving awareness of its language was part of Indonesia's global effort to develop connectivity between nations and bolster cooperation with UNESCO. In addition, it is also part of Indonesia's commitment to cultural development at the global level. Reported by Lintang Budiyanti, Raka Adji Edited by Anton Santoso, Copyright (c) ANTARA 2023 Copyright 2023 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved. ATLANTA , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Aaron's Company, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), a leading, technology-enabled, omnichannel provider of lease-to-own and retail purchase solutions today announced the recent opening of its newest company-operated Aaron's GenNext stores in Live Oak, FL and Rockford, IL. The new Aaron's stores in Live Oak and Rockford mark a return to both markets for Aaron's, and they reflect the latest expansion of the Company's GenNext store initiative, which is transforming the in-store customer experience. The new store in Live Oak is conveniently located at 10550 70th Street, beside the Walmart shopping center just off I-10 . The store is open Monday Friday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. 5:00 p.m. The new store in Rockford is located at 6325 E. State Street in Forest Plaza near Rockford University, and it is open Monday Saturday from 10:00 a.m. 8:00 p.m. "GenNext stores are an integral part of the Company's strategy to better serve communities across the country," said Douglas Lindsay , CEO of The Aaron's Company. "As we open new GenNext stores, we continue to receive positive feedback from our customers and team members. We look forward to delivering exceptional value and service to our customers in Live Oak and Rockford with a best-in-class shopping experience." Aaron's GenNext stores include larger showrooms and/or re-engineered store layouts, updated signage, expanded product assortment, enhanced technology-enabled shopping and checkout, and an innovative operating model, providing a best-in-class experience for shoppers. The GenNext program includes remodeling existing stores into the updated format as well as opening stores in new locations. So far this year, Aaron's has converted or opened 38 GenNext stores, bringing the total to 249 company-operated GenNext stores since launching the initiative in 2018. About The Aaron's Company, Inc. Headquartered in Atlanta , The Aaron's Company, Inc. (NYSE: AAN) is a leading, technology-enabled, omnichannel provider of lease-to-own and retail purchase solutions of appliances, electronics, furniture, and other home goods across its brands: Aaron's, BrandsMart U.S.A., BrandsMart Leasing, and Woodhaven. Aaron's offers a direct-to-consumer lease-to-own solution through its approximately 1,250 Company-operated and franchised stores in 47 states and Canada , as well as its e-commerce platform. BrandsMart U.S.A. is one of the leading appliance retailers in the country with 11 retail stores in Florida and Georgia , as well as its e-commerce platform. BrandsMart Leasing offers lease-to-own solutions to customers of BrandsMart U.S.A. Woodhaven is the Company's furniture manufacturing division. For more information, visit investor.aarons.com, aarons.com, and brandsmartusa.com. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aarons-announces-the-opening-of-its-newest-gennext-stores-in-live-oak-fl-and-rockford-il-301995270.html SOURCE The Aarons Company, Inc. VANCOUVER, BC , Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Asep Medical Holdings Inc. ("Asep" or the "Company") (CSE: ASEP) (OTCQB: SEPSF) (FSE: JJ8) is very pleased to announce that, through its subsidiary Sepset Biosciences Inc. ("Sepset"), it has signed a definitive joint venture agreement (the "JV Agreement") with leading Chinese medical diagnostic company, Sansure Biotech Inc. ("Sansure"), through its subsidiary, Hunan Xiang Jiang Sansure Biotech Fund, L.P. (the "Sansure Fund"). Sansure Fund is an investment fund formed by Sansure, Changsha Sanway Spring Venture Capital CO., Ltd. ("Sanway Spring") and certain other investors. The JV Agreement was signed on October 27, 2023 . Under the JV Agreement, the registered capital of the joint venture entity, Hunan Sanway SepSMART Ltd. ("SepSMART"), which will be based in Changsha, China , will be RMB 50,000,000 (the "Total Registered Capital") with (a) the Sansure Fund subscribing for RMB 37,500,000.00 ( ~CAD$ 7 million ) thereof, representing seventy-five percent (75%) of the Total Registered Capital and (b) Sepset deemed to be subscribing for RMB 12,500 ,000 ( ~CAD$ 2.4 million ) thereof, representing twenty-five percent (25%) thereof through the contribution of certain patent rights to Sepset's first generation rapid sepsis test, SepsetER, pursuant to a technology license and collaboration agreement concurrently entered into on October 27, 2023 between Sepset and SepSMART (the "License Agreement" and together with the JV Agreement, the "Transaction"). Formal registration of SepSMART with the applicable regulatory body in China is a condition precedent of the JV Agreement. The License Agreement grants SepSMART the exclusive right to commercialize SepsetER in Mainland China, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region , the Macao Special Administrative Region and the Taiwan area for a period of eight (8) years and requires SepSMART to pay periodic royalty payments to Sepset on a performance basis. The Transaction represents a significant milestone for Asep and supports its manufacturing and distribution strategy based on global partnerships with companies that offer existing market knowledge and sales channels. According to the China Critical Care Clinical Trials Group, nearly 2 million people died in China from sepsis in 2015.1 The frequency of deaths in that country is unusually high (66.7 per 100,000 people). A 2021 meta-analysis by the Department of Emergency Medicine, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital and published by BioMed Central Ltd. (biomedcentral.com) concluded that "the frequency and mortality of sepsis and septic shock in China were much higher than North America and European countries." 2 "Sansure is one of the largest companies in China with both manufacturing and distribution expertise in PCR-based diagnostic assays, which is the technology we use in our SepsetER test," stated Dr. Robert E. W. Hancock , Founder, CEO and Board Chair of Asep and developer of the sepsis risk assessment technology, SepsetER. "This represents an endorsement of the potential of our assay and its importance to human medicine worldwide, as well as access to one of the largest markets in the world. We look forward to collaborating with the Sansure team as we bring this technology to market in China ." In connection with entry into the JV Agreement, Asep, Sepset, Sanway Spring and the Sansure Fund entered into a side letter (the "Side Letter") to provide certain additional representations, warranties, agreements and terms in relation to the joint venture. Pursuant to the Side Letter, Asep and Sansure entered into a performance warrant issuance agreement whereby Asep agreed to provide 3,000,000 performance warrants (the "Performance Warrants") to Sansure or its designated nominees, subject to the required approvals and compliance with applicable securities laws and stock exchange policies. Each Performance Warrant is exercisable into one common share of Asep at an exercise price of $1.00 per common share until the first anniversary of the signing of the JV Agreement. The Performance Warrants and underlying common shares are subject to a hold period expiring four months and one day from the date of issuance. Extension of Investor Relations Engagement The Company is also pleased announce that it has extended the existing engagement entered into on January 1, 2023 with bullVestor Medien GmbH ("bullVestor") to provide strategic planning services to the Company until January 30, 2024 . bullVestor has been engaged for strategic planning, procurement, advertising campaigns on financial ad networks and overseeing progress and results to heighten market and brand awareness for Asep Inc. and to broaden the Company's reach within the investment community. ABOUT SANSURE BIOTECH INC. Sansure (www.sansureglobal.com) is an in-vitro diagnostic solution provider founded in Changsha , Hunan province, China , in 2008 with over 2,000 employees and a broad product portfolio. It is engaged in research and development, production and sales of diagnostic reagents and instruments. The company has more than ten years of experience in specialized diagnostic reagents, nucleic acid diagnostic instruments, complete lab solutions and lab chain services and offers solutions for molecular diagnosis that are compatible with most polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection instruments and lab environments. Sansure listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market on 28 August 2020 , raising RMB2.0 billion (c. US$300 million ), and as of 27 July 2022 , had a market capitalization of approximately RMB17.5 billion (c. US$2.6 billion ). It was also one of the first molecular diagnostics companies to have its SARS-CoV-2 test kits approved in China , which are now sold to over 160 countries. Headquartered in Changsha , the company has built a new industrial park in Shanghai to facilitate its growth. The company has branches and affiliates in nearly 20 cities, including Beijing , Guangzhou , Chongqing and Xi'an . ABOUT ASEP MEDICAL HOLDINGS INC. Asep Medical Holdings Inc. (www.asepmedical.com) is dedicated to addressing the global issue of antibiotic failure by developing novel solutions for significant unmet medical needs in human medicine. The Company is a consolidation of three existing private companies, all with technology in advanced development Sepset Biosciences Inc. (proprietary diagnostic tools to enable the early and timely identification of sepsis), ABT Innovations Inc. (broad-spectrum therapeutic agents to address multi-drug resistant biofilm infections), and SafeCoat Medical Inc. (an antibacterial peptide medical device coating technology). Sepset Biosciences Inc. (www.sepset.ca) is in the final stages of preparation for clinical studies and commercialization of an in vitro diagnostic test that involves a patient gene expression signature that helps assess the development of severe sepsis, one of the significant diseases leading to antibiotic failure since antibiotics are the primary initial treatment for sepsis. Sepsis was responsible for nearly 20% of all deaths on the planet in 2017 and essentially all deaths due to COVID-19 and other pandemics. The SepsetER test is a blood-based gene expression assay that is straightforward to implement, and results are obtained about an hour after taking a blood sample in the emergency room or intensive care unit. This proprietary diagnostic technology differs from current diagnostic tests, enabling the risk assessment for progression to severe sepsis within ~60 minutes of initiating the test. Bacterial culture, the gold standard, provides results after ~15 hours but can be as long as three. Asep believes its test will enable critical early decisions to be made by physicians regarding appropriate therapies and thus reduce overall morbidity and mortality due to sepsis. ABT Innovations Inc.'s (www.abtinnovations.ca) peptide technology covers a broad range of therapeutic applications, including bacterial biofilm infections (dental, wound, sinusitis, skin, medical device infections, chronic infections, lung, bladder, ear-nose and throat, orthopaedic, etc.), anti-inflammatories, anti-infective immune-modulators and vaccine adjuvants. The company is in the pre-clinical development phase with promising data for the first three indications. SafeCoat Medical Inc.'s (www.safecoatmedical.com) technology encompasses anti-fouling self-assembling polymers combined with conjugated antimicrobial peptides, which can be applied to various surfaces as antimicrobial and anti-fouling coatings. In particular, the invention relates to coatings that may be applied to multiple medical devices and implants, and feasibility has been demonstrated in animal models. The company's expertise also encompasses the methods for manufacturing and applying these anti-bacterial coatings. ABOUT BULLVESTOR MEDIEN GMBH bullVestor's business address is located at Gutenhofen 4 4300 Street, Valentin. For more information, please contact [email protected] (+43 (0) 7435-44077) or please visit bullVestor's website: www.bullvestor.com. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of such statements under applicable securities law. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "anticipates," "plan," "continue," "expect," "project," "intend," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "may," "will," "potential," "proposed," "positioned" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements include but are not limited to the ability of the joint venture to pursue commercialization of the Sepsis diagnostic testing kit in China ; the contributions of the joint venture partner to the joint venture; the ability of the joint venture to secure the necessary regulatory approvals for the diagnostic testing kit; the successful clinical testing of Sepset's Sepsis in vitro diagnostic test and its intended filing for regulatory market authorization; the Company not receiving regulatory market authorization as planned or at all; the undertaking of pre-clinical studies on our lead therapeutic, with the expectation that this will lead to fast-track clinical trials; the timeframe for identification of sepsis with the Company's products; the potential opportunities for the generation of revenue; the therapeutic benefits of the Company's products; and other statements regarding the Company's proposed business plans. Various assumptions were used in drawing conclusions or making the predictions contained in the forward-looking statements throughout this news release. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks including the risk that the Company's products may not perform as expected; that the Company may not receive the requisite regulatory market authorization or results of testing; the Company's testing of the products may not be successful and market authorization may not be obtained in the estimated timelines or at all; the Company may not be able to generate revenue from its products as expected or at all; the joint venture may not be able to commercialize the diagnostic testing kit in China as expected or at all; the market for the Company's products may not be as described in this news release; and various other risk factors identified in the Asep's public disclosure record, including without limitation the Company's management discussion and analysis, available for review under the Company's profile at www.sedarplus.ca and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Asep is under no obligation and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law. CITATIONS 1 Weng L, Zeng XY, Yin P, Wang LJ, Wang CY, Jiang W, Zhou MG, Du B; China Critical Care Clinical Trials Group (CCCCTG). Sepsis-related mortality in China : a descriptive analysis. Intensive Care Med. 2018 Jul;44(7):1071-1080. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-018-5203-z 2 Liu, YC., Yao, Y., Yu, MM. et al. Frequency and mortality of sepsis and septic shock in China : a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Infect Dis 22, 564 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-022-07543-8 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/asep-medical-holdings-inc-signs-joint-venture-agreement-with-leading-chinese-medical-diagnostics-company-sansure-biotech-inc-301995366.html SOURCE ASEP Medical Holdings Inc. Cameron Pictures and Lark Productions join as first Canadian Production Partners with "Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent" TORONTO and CHICAGO , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cinespace Studios announces a new partnership with NABET 700-M UNIFOR to expand its CineCares Workforce Training Program in Toronto . Cameron Pictures and Lark Productions are producing the upcoming "Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent," the first Canadian production to participate in the program with NABET 700-M UNIFOR, currently filming at Cinespace Toronto and set to air on Citytv and Citytv+ in Spring 2024. Selected trainees are offered hands-on experience on set in the sound, script, and lighting departments. Launched in the spring of 2023, the CineCares Workforce Training program offers participants on-set experience to pursue union membership. BIPOC TV & FILM, Indigenous Screen Office, and POV are recruitment partners selecting candidates to be trained with IATSE Local 873 and NABET 700-M UNIFOR for paid placements in trainee roles for Set Decoration, Props, Grip, Lighting, Sound and General Labour. The program is committed to creating strong wrap-around support, participant network development, mentorships, and post-program sessions. "Cinespace hosts productions with some of the best Toronto crew, who excel at their craft and make extraordinary mentors," said Magali Simard , Director of Industry & Community Relations. "Our partnership with NABET, Cameron Pictures, and Lark Productions allows us to further our commitment to developing local talent and creating a workforce development pipeline." "NABET 700-M UNIFOR appreciates the opportunity to partner with Cinespace Studios, through the CineCares workforce training program, as well as our long-standing production partners at Cameron Pictures and now Lark Productions to work together to add to the depth and diversity of our skilled workforce through paid, on-the-job training opportunities on Law and Order Toronto: Criminal Intent," said Jayson Mosek , Business Agent at NABET 700-M UNIFOR. "We're proud to be the first Canadian production to bring CineCares trainees onto our sets and to be able to provide this opportunity for the next generation of crew talent," said Amy Cameron , co-founder and executive producer at Cameron Pictures. About Cinespace Studios Cinespace Studios, headquartered in Chicago, IL , is a best-in-class global platform of production facilities that supports content providers and their creatives. The platform is one of the largest sound stage operators globally with 109 active stages across Atlanta , Chicago , Toronto, Wilmington , and Studio Babelsberg in Germany . Cinespace is home to productions that include Lionsgate's The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and John Wick : Chapter 4, HULU/FX's Golden Globe-nominated The Bear, Dick Wolf's One Chicago franchise, Guillermo Del Toro's Academy Award Winner The Shape of Water, UCP's Chucky, MGM TV/Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale, Netflix's Stranger Things, Marvel Studios' Iron Man 3 and Amazon Studios' The Summer I Turned Pretty. CineCares, a division of the studio, has been established to support, promote, and engage local communities to support workforce development and crew diversity. For more information, visit www.cinespace.com . About NABET 700-M UNIFOR NABET 700-M UNIFOR represents almost 3,000 highly skilled film, television & digital media Technicians in the Province of Ontario across fifteen different technical departments and is the preferred choice of domestic and many service producers to service their project in Ontario . For more information, visit www.nabet700.com About Cameron Pictures Cameron Pictures Inc. is an independent Canadian television production company with a focus on scripted content. Among Cameron Pictures' award-winning series are Mary Kills People (Global/Lifetime, co-produced with eOne); the comedy Little Dog (CBC, co-produced with Elemental Pictures); and the comedic buddy cop drama Pretty Hard Cases (CBC/NBCU). About Lark Productions Established in Vancouver in 2010, Lark's productions include Family Law for Global TV, spy drama Fortunate Son for CBC in association with NBCUniversal International Studios, CSA-nominated Motive (CTV, USA Network), the hit formats The Real Housewives of Toronto (Slice) and The Real Housewives of Vancouver (Slice), Crash Gallery (CBC), Paramedics: Life on the Line (Knowledge Network), Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH (Knowledge Network, Discovery Fit), and High Moon (SYFY). Media Contact: Catherine Shin , 323.794.2719 [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cinespace-studios-toronto-partners-with-nabet-700-m-unifor-to-expand-cinecares-workforce-training-program-301995419.html SOURCE Cinespace Studios BROOKLYN, N.Y. , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- City Tech's Ursula C. Schwerin Library is one of 50 U.S. libraries selected to host Americans and the Holocaust, a traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that examines the motives, pressures and fears that shaped Americans' responses to Nazism, war and genocide in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. The touring library exhibition based on the special exhibition of the same name at the Museum in Washington, D.C. is traveling to U.S. libraries from 2020 to 2024. Americans and the Holocaust will be on display at City Tech and open to the public by appointment November 28 December 17, 2023 , during which time the City Tech Library is hosting a series of special events pertaining to the exhibition. All in-person and online programs are free and open to the public; registration is required. "CUNY and its City Tech campus are pleased to host Americans and the Holocaust, an exhibit that asks difficult questions that remain relevant today," said CUNY Chancellor Felix V. Matos Rodriguez. "We thank the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association for bringing this educational and thought-provoking touring exhibition to CUNY. I encourage New Yorkers to see it at the campus' Ursula C. Schwerin Library and also to attend the slate of related educational events that will be presented at City Tech during the three weeks of the exhibit." "We're honored that City Tech has been chosen to host this important exhibit, and appreciate the efforts of Library Professors Keith Muchowski and Junior Tidal in securing this award," said Interim Chief Librarian Anne Leonard . "We are grateful to partner with other CUNY institutions and members of our local community on programming around the exhibit." Based on extensive new research of that period, Americans and the Holocaust addresses important themes in American history, exploring the many factors including the Great Depression, isolationism, xenophobia, racism and antisemitism that influenced decisions made by the U.S. government, the news media, organizations and individuals as they responded to Nazism. This exhibition will challenge the commonly held assumptions that Americans knew little and did nothing about the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews as the Holocaust unfolded. Drawing on a remarkable collection of primary sources from the 1930s and '40s, the exhibition focuses on the stories of individuals and groups of Americans who took action in response to Nazism. It will challenge visitors to consider the responsibilities and obstacles faced by individuals from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to ordinary Americans who made difficult choices, sought to effect change, and, in a few cases, took significant risks to help victims of Nazism even as rescue never became a government priority. Americans and the Holocaust: A Traveling Exhibition for Libraries is an educational initiative of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Library Association. In addition to the traveling exhibition on loan, the Ursula C. Schwerin Library received a cash grant to support public programs. The grant also supported expenses for a library staff member to attend an orientation workshop at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the exhibition, visit ushmm.org/americans-ala. Americans and the Holocaust was made possible by the generous support of lead sponsor Jeannie & Jonathan Lavine. Additional major funding was provided by the Bildners Joan & Allen z"l, Elisa Spungen & Rob, Nancy & Jim; and Jane and Daniel Och . The Museum's exhibitions are also supported by the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Special Exhibitions Fund, established in 1990. About the Ursula C. Schwerin Library The Ursula C. Schwerin Library at New York City College of Technology (City Tech) fosters connections with and supports a diverse community of staff, faculty, and over 13,000 students in their academic pursuits. City Tech is the designated college of technology within the City University of New York (CUNY), the largest public urban university in the United States . For more information, visit library.citytech.cuny.edu. About the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires leaders and citizens worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity. The Museum's far-reaching educational programs and global impact are made possible by generous donors. For more information, visit ushmm.org . About the American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is the foremost national organization providing resources to inspire library and information professionals to transform their communities through essential programs and services. For more than 140 years, the ALA has been the trusted voice for academic, public, school, government and special libraries, advocating for the profession and the library's role in enhancing learning and ensuring access to information for all. For more information, visit ala.org . View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/city-tech-cuny-hosts-americans-and-the-holocaust-traveling-exhibition-301996112.html SOURCE New York City College of Technology First Reimbursed Amyloid PET Diagnostic Tool in Japan TOKYO and BERLIN , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- CMI Inc. and Life Molecular Imaging (LMI) are pleased to announce that the amyloid-PET diagnostic Neuraceq (florbetaben 18F injection) has been approved from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare to be reimbursed by governmental health insurance. With this C2 path approval, Neuraceq-PET is the first amyloid PET diagnostic tool currently reimbursed in Japan . Neuraceq is available in Japan from the approved medical device Synthera+ (PMDA medical device license no. 30100BZX0016900) and is currently accessible at Keio University Hospital, Tokyo , Koseikai Takeda Hospital, Kyoto and Uozumi Clinic, Kumamoto. CMI Inc. plans to set up Neuraceq production at further hospital radiopharmacy sites. With the reimbursement of this diagnostic tool, Japanese physicians can use this state-of-the-art imaging technology to accurately evaluate their patients with cognitive decline. The density of amyloid plaques can be assessed to improve an earlier diagnosis, and to further guide therapy and patient management. After the recent approval of Eisai's Alzheimer's disease (AD) modifying drug LEQEMBI in Japan , an accurate and reliable diagnosis of AD is critical to access this new therapy. Amyloid PET, including also Neuraceq, had a pivotal role in the recent positive clinical study outcomes of new anti-amyloid drugs by making selective inclusion of patients with confirmed amyloid pathology in the brain in the trials feasible. Moreover, amyloid clearance was precisely measured with amyloid PET. "Achieving reimbursement for amyloid PET using Neuraceq in Japan is an important milestone. We are pleased that our amyloid PET tracer, a very important and reliable diagnostic imaging agent, is now available for more Japanese patients," said Dr. Ludger Dinkelborg, Managing Director of Life Molecular Imaging. "LMI is committed to expanding global market access of Neuraceq. We will continue to work with our partner CMI in Japan to improve the diagnosis of patients being evaluated for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease, and to making Neuraceq available to more referring physicians across the country," said Colleen Ruby , Chief Operating Officer, Americas and APAC at Life Molecular Imaging. "CMI is intensively working for PET facilities in Japan and we are encouraging them to deliver amyloid-PET using Neuraceq to patients with possible Alzheimer's disease so that they may have an opportunity to reach advanced therapeutic drugs," said Yasuhisa Fujibayashi , Chief Technology Officer, CMI Inc. For more information in Japanese, please read the CMI press release: https://www.cmi-jpn.co.jp/wp-content/uploads/20231122PR.pdf About Neuraceq Automated Synthesizer Synthera+ (florbetaben 18F) Indication approved in the Japan Neuraceq is a radioactive diagnostic agent indicated for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging of the brain to estimate -amyloid neuritic plaque density in adult patients with cognitive impairment who are being evaluated for Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and other causes of cognitive decline. A negative Neuraceq scan indicates sparse to no neuritic plaques and is inconsistent with a neuropathological diagnosis of AD at the time of image acquisition; a negative scan result reduces the likelihood that a patient's cognitive impairment is due to AD. A positive Neuraceq scan indicates moderate to frequent amyloid neuritic plaques; neuropathological examination has shown this amount of amyloid neuritic plaque is present in patients with AD but may also be present in patients with other types of neurologic conditions as well as older people with normal cognition. Neuraceq is an adjunct to other diagnostic evaluations. Limitations of Use A positive Neuraceq scan does not establish the diagnosis of AD or any other cognitive disorder. scan does not establish the diagnosis of AD or any other cognitive disorder. Safety and effectiveness of Neuraceq have not been established for (i) predicting development of dementia or other neurologic conditions, or (ii) monitoring responses to therapies. Important Safety Information (as approved in Japan ) Risk for Image Interpretation and Other Errors Errors may occur in the Neuraceq estimation of brain neuritic -amyloid plaque density during image interpretation. Image interpretation should be performed independently of the patient's clinical information. Errors may also occur in cases with severe brain atrophy that limits the ability to distinguish gray and white matter on the Neuraceq scan. Errors may also occur due to motion artifacts that result in image distortion. Neuraceq scan results are indicative of the presence of brain neuritic -amyloid plaques only at the time of image acquisition and a negative scan result does not preclude the development of brain neuritic -amyloid plaques in the future. Radiation Risk Neuraceq, similar to other radiopharmaceuticals, contributes to a patient's overall long-term cumulative radiation exposure. Long-term cumulative radiation exposure is associated with an increased risk of cancer. Ensure safe handling to protect patients and health care workers from unintentional radiation exposure. Common Adverse Reactions The overall safety profile of Neuraceq is based on data from 1,090 administrations of Neuraceq to 872 subjects. Adverse Reactions occurring with a frequency of more than 1% include injection/application site erythema, injection site irritation and injection site pain. For more information please visit: https://neuraceq.com About Life Molecular Imaging (LMI) Life Molecular Imaging (LMI, formerly Piramal Imaging) was formed in 2012 with the acquisition of the molecular imaging research and development portfolio of Bayer Pharma AG. It is now part of the Life Healthcare Group. By developing novel PET tracers for molecular imaging, LMI is focusing on a key field of modern medicine. The organization strives to be a leader in the Molecular Imaging field by developing innovative products that improve early detection and characterization of chronic and life-threatening diseases, leading to better therapeutic outcomes and improved quality of life. Please visit https://life-mi.com. About CMI Inc. CMI Inc imports and sells highest quality products such as cyclotron system, automatic PET drug synthesizer, auto dispensing system and so on. CMI also supports planning, development and operation of clinical as well as research facilities for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and contributes to the progress and expansion of Japanese medical field. Learn more at https://www.cmi-jpn.co.jp About Life Healthcare Group Life Healthcare is a global people-centered, diversified healthcare organization listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Life Healthcare has over 38 years' experience in the South African private healthcare sector, and currently operates 64 healthcare facilities in southern Africa . Services include acute hospital care, acute physical rehabilitation, acute mental healthcare, renal dialysis, oncology, imaging and occupational health and wellness services. The Group also owns Life Molecular Imaging, an R&D molecular imaging business of innovative PET tracers to reduce the burden of diseases through improved early detection. Learn more at https://www.lifehealthcare.co.za/ For media queries Brittany Hahn | Marketing Communications Manager | Life Molecular Imaging Tel: +1.484.735.2840 | View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cmi-inc-and-life-molecular-imaging-announce-the-reimbursement-of-the-amyloid-pet-diagnostic-neuraceq-florbetaben-18f-in-japan-301996054.html SOURCE Life Molecular Imaging HOUSTON , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Daiso, the renowned global retail chain offering a wide range of affordable and unique products, is thrilled to announce the grand opening at Copperwood Village in Houston, Texas on December 2nd . "We are thrilled to open our store at Copperwood Village ," said Jack Williams , Chief Retail Operations Officer for Daiso USA. "This achievement reflects the dedication and support of our customers who have embraced Daiso's unique concept and diverse product range. We are excited to provide an exceptional shopping experience to the vibrant Houston community and look forward to serving our customers with the utmost care and dedication." The new Daiso store at Copperwood Village encompasses 8,482 square feet and promises to be a haven for shoppers seeking quality merchandise at affordable prices. With its extensive range of products spanning various categories, including Japanese inspired home decor, stationery, food, and more, Daiso has become synonymous with accessible and innovative offerings. John Clarke , Chief Development Officer for Daiso USA says, " Texas based Daiso customers have shown us through our online business and social media their desire for us to have more stores within the state, influencing our immediate growth strategy in this region. We currently operate 117 units in 7 states with more states opening in 2024". On both Saturday, December 2nd and Sunday, December 3rd , the first 100 customers to shop at the Copperwood Village location and make a minimum purchase of $30 will receive a free goodie bag and a plushie. These special offerings are Daiso's way of expressing gratitude to its loyal customers and welcoming new shoppers to the Daiso community. Daiso invites customers to join in the celebration. The Copperwood Village Daiso, at 6815 Hwy 6 N, is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m to 9 p.m and Sunday from 10 a.m to 8 p.m. About Daiso: Daiso is a global retail chain founded in Japan , known for its vast array of unique and affordable products across various categories such as household goods, stationery, beauty, and more. Daiso entered the US market in 2005 and continues to expand its global footprint while maintaining its commitment to quality, innovation, and customer satisfaction. The Daiso US headquarters is located in La Mirada, CA. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/daiso-new-store-opening-in-houston-tx-301996282.html SOURCE Daiso USA BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. As a result of the vigilance of border troops of the State Border Guard Service (SBS), violation of the state border was prevented on the territory of the service unit "Zagatala", Trend reports, referring to the State Border Service of Azerbaijan. The State Border Service of Azerbaijan informed that Azan Sohail Mohammed (2001 year of birth), a citizen of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, was arrested on November 21 at 18:15 (GMT+4) on the territory of the border outpost located near the village of Pochtbina in the Balakan region while attempting to cross the state border of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the direction of Georgia. "During the investigation, it was established that the detainee officially arrived in the country, intending to violate the state border and migrate from the Republic of Azerbaijan to Georgia, then from there to one of the European countries. Operative investigation measures to identify and neutralize the criminal migration channel are being continued," said the SBS agency in a statement. ENow releases its App Governance Accelerator software to help organizations quickly get control and remain in control of their Microsoft Entra ID apps. This product enables companies to understand their current security posture, define actionable areas for improvement, and accelerate the necessary changes to reach their desired state. CULVER CITY, Calif. , Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- ENow, a trusted software company with over 19 years' experience assisting organizations across the globe, has a long-standing reputation of simplifying complex monitoring scenarios for Entra ID, Active Directory and Microsoft 365 for their clients. ENow App Governance Accelerator provides Identity administrators visibility into the number of apps and app registrations in their Azure AD tenant and their permissions and settings, without needing additional systems. Based on the organizational policies, the gap analysis in the ENow web interface provides information on how to remedy potential security risks. ENow App Governance Accelerator then helps admins to fill the gap and improve the organization's app score. With App Governance Accelerator, organizations can quickly identify risky apps, determine the owner and if they are being used, and stop these apps from accessing corporate data: Quantify application risk continuously: An ongoing assessment of your organization's app governance posture ensures that your tenant stays secure. An ongoing assessment of your organization's app governance posture ensures that your tenant stays secure. Pinpoint problems quickly: The ENow solution empowers IT departments with an extensive arsenal of over 30 checks and dedicated dashboards designed to expedite problem pinpointing. The ENow solution empowers IT departments with an extensive arsenal of over 30 checks and dedicated dashboards designed to expedite problem pinpointing. Progress tracker dashboard: Track progress and receive recommendations to accelerate your application governance project. Track progress and receive recommendations to accelerate your application governance project. Continuous monitoring: Continuous monitoring of apps and tenant settings is not just a security measure but a holistic strategy to ensure seamless operations. Continuous monitoring of apps and tenant settings is not just a security measure but a holistic strategy to ensure seamless operations. Save time and ditch PowerShell scripts: Empower your team to focus on value added activities by avoiding spreadsheets and script maintenance. Empower your team to focus on value added activities by avoiding spreadsheets and script maintenance. Multiple versions to meet various needs: The App Governance Accelerator Professional & Enterprise versions boast additional reporting, including Sign-In data to identify app usage and MSAL & Platform reports to ensure that the latest authentication libraries are being used. The Professional and Enterprise versions also offer Credential Alerting and a highly anticipated integration with ServiceNow to easily open support tickets related to expiring credentials and other security risks or suspicious behavior. The App Governance Accelerator Professional & Enterprise versions boast additional reporting, including Sign-In data to identify app usage and MSAL & Platform reports to ensure that the latest authentication libraries are being used. The Professional and Enterprise versions also offer Credential Alerting and a highly anticipated integration with ServiceNow to easily open support tickets related to expiring credentials and other security risks or suspicious behavior. Receive guidance: Receive expert guidance with input from Microsoft security MVPs and community. The ENow App Governance Accelerator software, used in conjunction with the new free security assessment tool, AppGov Score will help organizations identify application security risks and quickly establish an application governance policy. Alongside its new product, ENow has launched a community site featuring high-quality content written by Microsoft security MVPs. Here, IT professionals will find answers to security questions to improve their application security posture, share recommended practices, and receive constructive feedback from the peer and Microsoft Security MVP community. These resources from ENow will provide the tools needed to elevate identity architects to a power position where they can be proactive vs. reactive and well-equipped to implement a successful application governance strategy for their organization. Find out how to improve your AppGov Score! www.AppGovScore.com/product About ENow : When Jay Gundotra founded ENow in 2004, the goal was simple: Transform the chaos and complexity of Microsoft service outages into a simple visual dashboard that delivers immediate actionable insights needed to quickly solve issues. Our founder's domain knowledge and firsthand experience as a Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory administrator has been the key ingredient in making the complex simple for businesses. The result is an award-winning platform that optimizes the service delivery of mission critical Microsoft collaboration and identity platforms, while increasing morale and productivity in the IT department. As a Microsoft Partner, ENow is trusted by large enterprises around the globe, ENow manages over 550 million employees in over 130 countries and its technologies monitor over 22 billion transactions per week. ENow specializes in optimizing the service delivery of mission-critical Microsoft collaboration and identity infrastructure. Our digital experience monitoring and analytics for Entra ID, Active Directory and Microsoft 365 transforms the way IT supports these complex services which enable organizations to improve service delivery, increase workplace productivity, and lower total cost of ownership while maintaining robust security against unauthorized access. www.ENowsoftware.com Contact: Laura Zawacki (949) 445-1796 [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/enow-introduces-new-security-software-to-address-microsoft-entra-id-application-governance-challenges-301995433.html SOURCE ENow Software NEW YORK , Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Federman Steifman LLP ("Federman") has been ranked by Chambers and Partners ("Chambers") in Chambers' inaugural New York Regional Spotlight Guide. In the 2024 Guide, Chambers focused on identifying and showcasing only the most exceptional small and mid-sized law firms operating within New York . According to Chambers, the Guide recognizes boutique firms that perform "remarkable work, enjoy an impressive regional reputation among clients and fellow practitioners and offer a credible alternative to Big Law." The firms ranked in the New York Regional Spotlight Guide were selected based on in-depth market analysis, coupled with an assessment of firms' depth and breadth of experience, level of expertise and caliber of talent. Federman was recognized for the strength of the Firm's Real Estate and Real Estate Finance practices. Federman Steifman LLP Ranked as a Leading New York Real Estate Law Firm in Chambers USA Regional Spotlight "Federman is proud to be recognized by Chambers, which is widely accepted as the most prestigious law firm ranking," said Peter J. Mannarino , a partner at Federman. "We are honored that Chambers, and the markets generally, acknowledge that top-tier legal services often are performed outside of a large firm setting," Mannarino added. Chambers' conclusions were achieved through independent research and supported by comparative analysis drawing on its decades of knowledge of the U.S. legal market. Chambers seeks to identify law firms and lawyers who demonstrate superior technical ability, professional conduct, client service, diligence, commitment, and other qualities most valued by clients. Chambers' insight into the legal market indicates a trend of large companies seeking specialized support from smaller firms, who can respond more effectively and efficiently to in-house counsel's targeted needs. Chambers' Regional Spotlight builds bridges between in-house counsel, who want more options when retaining legal services, and small to mid-sized firms. The select few firms highlighted in the New York Regional Spotlight Guide, including Federman, are well-positioned to advise local, regional and national companies on a broad range of complex matters both inside and outside of New York . About Federman Steifman LLP Federman Steifman LLP was founded in 2005, specializing in complex and sophisticated real estate, structured finance and corporate transactions. Federman's attorneys represent major international, national, regional and local underwriters, investment banks, private equity firms, hedge funds, asset managers, governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, Fortune 500 companies, credit enhancers, pension funds, insurance companies, private, public and institutional real estate owners and developers, contractors, syndicators and investors, banks, non-bank credit companies, mortgage bankers, savings and loan associations, mezzanine lenders, preferred equity investors, utility companies, cooperative corporations, condominium associations, telecommunications companies, family offices, trusts and estates, high net worth individuals, executives and state and local governments. In 2022, Federman Steifman LLP closed over $8 Billion of real estate financings, sales and acquisitions nationally. For more information, visit www.federmansteifman.com . About Chambers and Partners Chambers and Partners is the world's leading legal rankings and insights intelligence company. For over 30 years, Chambers has differentiated the very best legal talent by identifying and ranking law firm departments and lawyers globally. Chambers' in-depth research teams assess lawyers and law firms across more than 200 jurisdictions around the world, providing independent and impartial intelligence and market insight. The Chambers research methodology is unrivalled in accuracy, depth and quality, delivering indispensable data insights based on rankings that truly reflect ability and talent. In its Spotlight rankings, Chambers and Partners identify markets where there are a significant collection of leading medium sized and smaller firms that may compete effectively with Big Law. Chambers' Spotlight rankings are awarded at a firm-wide level, recognizing firms that are well-known for their expertise in certain selected practice areas. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/federman-steifman-llp-ranked-as-a-leading-new-york-real-estate-law-firm-in-chambers-usa-regional-spotlight-301995360.html SOURCE Federman Steifman LLP SHANGHAI , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. ("Four Seasons Education" or the "Company") (NYSE: FEDU), a tourism and education-related service provider in China , today announced its unaudited financial results for the first half of fiscal year 2024, ended August 31, 2023 . Financial and Operational Highlights for the First Half of Fiscal Year 2024 Revenue increased by 347.5% to RMB61.8 million ( US$8.5 million ), compared to RMB13.8 million in the same period of last year. ( ), compared to in the same period of last year. Gross profit increased by 650.1% to RMB26.7 million ( US$3.7 million ) from RMB3.6 million in the same period of last year. ( ) from in the same period of last year. Operating income was RMB0.9 million ( US$0.1 million ), compared to an operating loss of RMB25.3 million in the same period of last year. ( ), compared to an operating loss of in the same period of last year. Adjusted operating income (1) (non-GAAP) was RMB2.7 million ( US$0.4 million ), as compared to an adjusted operating loss of RMB23.3 million in the same period of last year. (non-GAAP) was ( ), as compared to an adjusted operating loss of in the same period of last year. Net income was RMB5.7 million ( US$0.8 million ), compared to a net loss of RMB23.9 million in the same period of last year. ( ), compared to a net loss of in the same period of last year. Adjusted net income (2) (non-GAAP) was RMB6.2 million ( US$0.9 million ), as compared to an adjusted net loss of RMB18.4 million in the same period of last year. (non-GAAP) was ( ), as compared to an adjusted net loss of in the same period of last year. Basic and diluted net income per American Depositary Share ("ADS") attributable to ordinary shareholders were both RMB2.70 ( US$0.37 ), as compared to a net loss of RMB11.23 in the same period of last year. Each ADS represents ten ordinary shares. ( ), as compared to a net loss of in the same period of last year. Each ADS represents ten ordinary shares. Adjusted basic and diluted net income per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders(3) (non-GAAP) were both RMB2.93 ( US$0.41 ), compared to a net loss of RMB8.65 in the same period of last year. (1) Adjusted operating income/loss is defined as operating income/loss excluding share-based compensation expenses. (2) Adjusted net income/loss is defined as net income/loss excluding share-based compensation expenses and fair value change of investments. (3) Adjusted basic/diluted net income/loss per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders is defined as basic/diluted net income/loss per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders excluding share-based compensation expenses per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders and fair value change of investments per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders. For more information on these adjusted financial measures, please see the section captioned under "About Non-GAAP Financial Measures" and the tables captioned "Reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP Results" set forth at the end of this release. Ms. Yi (Joanne) Zuo , Chief Executive Officer and Director of Four Seasons Education said, "We experienced a strong recovery in the six months ended August 31, 2023 , evidenced by a triple-digit percentage growth in total revenues which drove our gross margin to approximately 43%. The substantial revenue increase was primarily attributable to the robust growth of our tourism business, as well as the increase of the non-academic tutoring business. Additionally, our bottom line turned positive in the period as a result of the improved operating leverage and prudent cost management. "Excitingly, we experienced rapid growth in both our domestic and outbound tourism business for all ages. Furthermore, beyond the regular travel agency business, we capitalized on our abundant study resources and keen industry sense to roll out a broad array of themed enrichment learning trip programs for students. We are also actively developing and providing tourism programs tailored for senior adults. Meanwhile, operations and construction at our proprietary study camps are progressing well. We have been steadily expanding the service offerings of our study camps in operation and construction at our new camp in Jiangxi province is on course with partial facilities set to open next year. "Furthermore, we witnessed encouraging progress in advancing our non-academic tutoring programs as we maintained our strategic focus on enriching and diversifying our non-academic offerings to meet learning needs across broader age groups. Moreover, we further expanded our footprint in school-based tutoring product solutions and training programs for teachers. Leveraging our in-depth expertise and experience in the education sector, we have recently embarked on our overseas learning preparation and consulting businesses, with the goal of providing our customer groups and communities with more comprehensive services. "Moving forward, we plan to further explore new business opportunities that align with relevant rules and regulations in the tourism and education-related services sectors. As we navigate market dynamics and cycles, we remain committed to advancing our strategy to develop our business and increase shareholder value by further enriching our service offerings, diversifying our customer base and investing in our core capabilities," Ms. Zuo concluded. First Half Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results Revenue increased by 347.5% to RMB61.8 million ( US$8.5 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024, from RMB13.8 million in the same period of last year, mainly driven by the rapid growth in the Company's tourism and non-academic tutoring businesses. Cost of revenue increased by 242.6% to RMB35.1 million ( US$4.8 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024 from RMB10.3 million in the same period of last year,mainly due to the increase in cost related to the Company's tourism business and the staff cost of the Company's non-academic tutoring business, which is in line with the revenue growth. Gross profit increased by 650.1% to RMB26.7 million ( US$3.7 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024 from RMB3.6 million in the same period of last year. General and administrative expenses decreased by 10.6% to RMB23.5 million ( US$3.2 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024 from RMB26.3 million in the same period of last year, mainly attributable to the one-time expenses associated with the stock reserve split-up incurred last year. Sales and marketing expenses decreased by 11.2% to RMB2.2 million ( US$0.3 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024 from RMB2.5 million in the same period of last year, mainly resulting from the Company's cost control initiatives. Operating income was RMB0.9 million ( US$0.1 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024, compared with an operating loss of RMB25.3 million in the same period of last year. Adjusted operating income(1) (non-GAAP), which is calculated as operating income (loss) excluding share-based compensation expenses, was RMB2.7 million ( US$0.4 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024, compared with an adjusted operating loss of RMB23.3 million in the same period of last year. Other income, net was RMB2.7 million ( US$0.4 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024, compared with other expenses of RMB0.8 million in the same period of last year. Income tax expense was RMB0.2 million ( US$0.02 million ) in the first half of fiscal year 2024, compared with income tax benefit of RMB0.6 million in the same period of last year. Net income was RMB5.7 million ( US$0.8 million ) during the first half of fiscal year 2024, compared with a net loss of RMB23.9 million in the same period of last year. Adjusted net income(2) (non-GAAP), which is calculated as net income (loss) excluding share-based compensation expenses and fair value change of the Company's investments, was RMB6.2 million ( US$0.9 million ), compared with an adjusted net loss of RMB18.4 million in the same period of last year. Basic and diluted net income per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders in the first half of fiscal year 2024 were both RMB2.70 ( US$0.37 ), compared with a net loss of RMB11.23 in the same period of last year. Adjusted basic and diluted net income per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders(3) (non-GAAP) in the first half of fiscal year 2024 were both RMB2.93 ( US$0.41 ), compared with an adjusted net loss of RMB8.65 , for the same period of last year. Cash and cash equivalents. As of August 31, 2023 , the Company had cash and cash equivalents of RMB221.2 million ( US$30.5 million ), compared with RMB175.7 million as of February 28, 2023 . About Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. is a service provider of both tourism and education-related services in China . The Company's program, service and product offerings mainly consist of non-academic tutoring programs, school-based tutoring product solutions and training programs for teachers, study camps and learning trips for students, and travel agency services for all age groups. For more information, please visit https://ir.sijiedu.com. About Non-GAAP Financial Measures In evaluating the Company's business, the Company considers and uses certain non-GAAP measures, including primarily adjusted operating income/loss, adjusted net income/loss and adjusted basic and diluted net income/loss per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders, as supplemental measures to review and assess the Company's operating performance. Adjusted operating income/loss is defined as operating income/loss excluding share-based compensation expenses. Adjusted net income/loss is defined as net income/loss excluding share-based compensation expenses and fair value change of investments (net of tax effect). Adjusted basic/ diluted net income/loss per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders is defined as basic/diluted net income/loss per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders excluding share-based compensation expenses per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders and fair value change of investments measured at fair value per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders. The presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The Company believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful supplemental information regarding its performance and liquidity by excluding share-based expenses, fair value change of investments measured at fair value and impairment loss on intangible assets and goodwill (where applicable) that may not be indicative of the Company's operating performance from a cash perspective. The Company believes that both management and investors benefit from these non-GAAP financial measures in assessing its performance and when planning and forecasting future periods. These non-GAAP financial measures also facilitate management's internal comparisons to the Company's historical performance and liquidity. The Company also believes these non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors in allowing for greater transparency with respect to supplemental information used by management in the Company's financial and operational decision making. A limitation of using non-GAAP measures is that these non-GAAP measures exclude share-based compensation charges and fair value change of investments measured at fair value (where applicable) that have been and will continue to be for the foreseeable future a significant recurring expense in the Company's business. The Company compensates for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the GAAP amounts excluded from each non-GAAP measure. The accompanying tables have more details on the reconciliations between GAAP financial measures that are most directly comparable to non-GAAP financial measures. Exchange Rate Information This announcement contains translations of certain RMB amounts into U.S. dollars at a specified rate solely for the convenience of the reader. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from RMB to U.S. dollars are made at a rate of RMB7.2582 to US$1.00 , the rate set forth in the H.10 statistical release of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board on August 31, 2023 . Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains statements of a forward-looking nature. These statements, including the statements relating to the Company's future financial and operating results, are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these forward-looking statements by terminology such as "will," "expects," "believes," "anticipates," "intends," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, management's quotations and the Business Outlook section contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections about the Company and the industry. Potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those relating to its ability to attract new students and retain existing students, its ability to deliver a satisfactory learning experience and improving their academic performance, PRC regulations and policies relating to the education industry in China , general economic conditions in China , and the Company's ability to meet the standards necessary to maintain listing of its ADSs on the NYSE or other stock exchange, including its ability to cure any non-compliance with the NYSE's continued listing criteria. All information provided in this press release is as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent occurring events or circumstances, or changes in its expectations, except as may be required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure you that its expectations will turn out to be correct, and investors are cautioned that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results. Further information regarding risks and uncertainties faced by the Company is included in the Company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual reports on Form 20-F. For investor and media inquiries, please contact: In China : Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. Olivia Li Tel: +86 (21) 6317-6177 E-mail: [email protected] The Piacente Group, Inc. Jenny Cai Tel: +86-10-6508-0677 E-mail: [email protected] In the United States : The Piacente Group, Inc. Brandi Piacente Tel: +1-212-481-2050 E-mail: [email protected] FOUR SEASONS EDUCATION (CAYMAN) INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (in thousands, except share data and per share data) As of February 28 , August 31 , August 31 , 2023 2023 2023 Unaudited Unaudited RMB RMB USD Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 175,696 221,191 30,475 Accounts receivable and contract assets 887 6,217 857 Other receivables, deposits and other assets 7,306 8,571 1,181 Amounts due from related parties, net 11,127 10,412 1,435 Short-term investments 24,332 - - Short-term investments under fair value 156,639 136,645 18,826 Long-term investments under fair value current 135,201 139,773 19,257 Total current assets 511,188 522,809 72,031 Non-current assets Restricted cash 1,362 1,652 228 Property and equipment, net 13,979 25,357 3,494 Operating lease right-of-use assets 29,379 28,468 3,922 Intangible assets, net 2,476 2,087 288 Goodwill - 1,125 155 Deferred tax assets 601 881 121 Long-term investment 27,500 36,500 5,029 Long-term investment under fair value non-current 13,583 14,124 1,946 Other non-current assets 972 956 132 Total non-current assets 89,852 111,150 15,315 TOTAL ASSETS 601,040 633,959 87,346 Current liabilities Amounts due to related parties 867 2,124 293 Accrued expenses and other current liabilities 59,542 65,587 9,036 Operating lease liabilities current 2,531 1,768 244 Income tax payable 17,171 17,549 2,418 Deferred revenue 7,269 12,893 1,776 Total current liabilities 87,380 99,921 13,767 FOUR SEASONS EDUCATION (CAYMAN) INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (in thousands, except share data and per share data) As of February 28 , August 31 , August 31 , 2023 2023 2023 Unaudited Unaudited RMB RMB USD Non-current liabilities Deferred tax liabilities 575 575 79 Operating lease liabilities non-current 1,195 1,502 207 Total non-current liabilities 1,770 2,077 286 TOTAL LIABILITIES 89,150 101,998 14,053 EQUITY Total equity 511,890 531,961 73,293 TOTAL LIABILITIES AND EQUITY 601,040 633,959 87,346 FOUR SEASONS EDUCATION (CAYMAN) INC. UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (in thousands, except share data and per share data) Six Months Ended August 31 , 2022 2023 2023 RMB RMB USD Revenue -- Revenue from third parties 9,899 60,718 8,365 -- Revenue from related parties 3,917 1,113 153 Total revenue 13,816 61,831 8,518 Cost of revenue (10,258) (35,143) (4,842) Gross profit 3,558 26,688 3,676 General and administrative expenses (26,343) (23,549) (3,244) Sales and marketing expenses (2,526) (2,244) (309) Operating income (loss) (25,311) 895 123 Subsidy income 1,238 49 7 Interest income, net 377 2,224 306 Other income/ (expenses), net (799) 2,698 372 Income (loss) before income taxes (24,495) 5,866 808 Income tax benefit/ (expense) 642 (154) (21) Net income (loss) (23,853) 5,712 787 Net income (loss) attributable to non-controlling interest (1,940) 664 91 Net income (loss) attributable to Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. (21,913) 5,048 696 Net income (loss) per ordinary share: Basic (1.03) 0.24 0.03 Diluted (1.03) 0.24 0.03 Weighted average shares used in calculating net income (loss) per ordinary share: Basic 21,238,806 21,189,215 21,189,215 Diluted 21,238,806 21,189,215 21,189,215 FOUR SEASONS EDUCATION (CAYMAN) INC. UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (LOSS) (in thousands, except share data and per share data) Six Months Ended August 31 , 2022 2023 2023 RMB RMB USD Net income (loss) (23,853) 5,712 787 Other comprehensive income, net of tax of nil Foreign currency translation adjustments 34,317 1,641 226 Comprehensive income 10,464 7,353 1,013 Less: Comprehensive income (loss) attributable to non-controlling interest (1,940) 664 91 Comprehensive income attributable to Four Seasons Education (Cayman) Inc. 12,404 6,689 922 FOUR SEASONS EDUCATION (CAYMAN) INC. RECONCILIATION OF GAAP AND NON-GAAP RESULTS (in thousands, except share data and per share data) Six Months Ended August 31 , 2022 2023 2023 RMB RMB USD Operating income (loss) (25,311) 895 123 Add: share-based compensation expenses 2,012 1,800 248 Adjusted operating income (loss) (non-GAAP) (23,299) 2,695 371 Net income (loss) (23,853) 5,712 787 Add: share-based compensation expenses (net of tax effect of nil) 2,012 1,800 248 Add: fair value change of investments, excluding foreign currency translation adjustment (net of tax effect of nil) 3,471 (1,304) (180) Adjusted net income (loss) (non-GAAP) (18,370) 6,208 855 Basic net income (loss) per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders (11.23) 2.70 0.37 Add: share-based compensation expenses per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders 0.95 0.85 0.12 Add: fair value change of investments per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders 1.63 (0.62) (0.08) Adjusted basic net income (loss) per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders (non-GAAP) (8.65) 2.93 0.41 Diluted net income (loss) per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders (11.23) 2.70 0.37 Add: share-based compensation expenses per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders 0.95 0.85 0.12 Add: fair value change of investments per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders 1.63 (0.62) (0.08) Adjusted diluted net income (loss) per ADS attributable to ordinary shareholders (non-GAAP) (8.65) 2.93 0.41 Weighted average ADSs used in calculating earnings per ADS Basic 2,123,881 2,118,922 2,118,922 Diluted 2,123,881 2,118,922 2,118,922 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/four-seasons-education-reports-first-half-of-fiscal-year-2024-unaudited-financial-results-301995805.html SOURCE Four Seasons Education Inc. DOVER, N.J. , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Casio America Inc. is proud to announce the launch of its new loyalty program - G-SHOCK Rewards. Launching ahead of the holiday season, the exciting points program is designed to reward valued customers for their continued support and dedication to the G-SHOCK brand. G-SHOCK Rewards offers a seamless and exciting way for customers to earn points with qualified purchases of the brand's iconic watches all year round. These points can be redeemed for exclusive, limited-edition G-SHOCK merchandise. "We are excited to introduce G-SHOCK Rewards as a token of appreciation for our loyal customers who have made G-SHOCK the iconic brand it is today," said Tadashi Shibuya, Vice President, Casio Timepiece Division. "This program serves as an expression of gratitude to our loyal community, offering not only tangible rewards for their unwavering support but also enriching their overall G-SHOCK experience with exclusive perks and benefits." With the program's launch, Casio ID customers can now earn points corresponding to a point value for each qualified purchase, providing an extra layer of excitement for those choosing the toughest watches on the market. For every dollar spent, customers earn points at a one-to-one ratio, up to a maximum of 1,000 points per qualified watch purchase. These earned points unlock a world of exclusive rewards, ranging from G-SHOCK exclusive apparel and collector items that embody the G-SHOCK ethos. G-SHOCK Rewards members also benefit from private promotions, ensuring they enjoy exclusive offers and early access to the latest releases, positioning them at the forefront of innovation. The program's simplicity is a key feature and the user-friendly online portal ensures a hassle-free experience in managing accumulated points. To join G-SHOCK Rewards, customers can visit casio.com/us/rewards/ and sign up for a free account. Once enrolled, members will start earning points immediately with their G-SHOCK purchases. For more information about the G-SHOCK brand, visit gshock.casio.com/us. About G-SHOCK CASIO's shock-resistant G-SHOCK watch is synonymous with toughness, born from the developer Mr. Ibe's dream of 'creating a watch that never breaks'. Over 200 handmade samples were created and tested to destruction until finally in 1983 the first, now iconic G-SHOCK hit the streets of Japan and began to establish itself as 'the toughest watch of all time'. Each watch encompasses the 7 elements; electric shock resistance, gravity resistance, low temperature resistance, vibration resistance, water resistance, shock resistance and toughness. The watch is packed with Casio innovations and technologies to prevent it from suffering direct shock; this includes internal components protected with urethane and suspended timekeeping modules inside the watch structure. Since its launch, G-SHOCK has continued to evolve, continuing to support on Mr. Ibe's mantra "never, never give up." www.gshock.casio.com/us/ About Casio America, Inc. Casio America, Inc., Dover, N.J. , is the U.S. subsidiary of Casio Computer Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan , one of the world's leading manufacturers of consumer electronics and business equipment solutions. Established in 1957, Casio America, Inc. markets calculators, keyboards, mobile presentation devices, disc title and label printers, watches, cash registers and other consumer electronic products. Casio has strived to realize its corporate creed of "creativity and contribution" through the introduction of innovative and imaginative products. For more information, visit www.casio.com/us/ FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES CONTACT: 5WPR [email protected] Sue VanderSchans / Cecilia Lederer CASIO AMERICA, INC. (973) 361-5400 [email protected] [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/g-shock-introduces-new-rewards-program-just-in-time-for-the-holidays-301995991.html SOURCE Casio America, Inc. TAIPEI , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Taiwan Investor Relations Institute (TIRI) hosted its annual conference and international forum on the 16th Nov. 2023 . This year's event featured the participation of representatives from six international Investor Relations (IR) associations: the United States (NIRI: Matthew D. Brusch ), Italy (AIR: Riccardo Fava ), Hong Kong (HKIRA: Eva Chan ), Belgium (BIRA: Wim Allegaert ), Germany (DIRK: Patrick Kofler ), and Singapore Listed Companies (SGListCos: Matthew Song ). The gathering took place in Taipei , fostering a collaborative exchange among global IR professionals. Vice Premier of the Executive Yuan, Cheng Wen-Tsan , delivered the opening address at the conference, extending a warm welcome to representatives from various countries. He expressed anticipation for increased collaboration and exchange between Taiwan's capital market and the international arena. The annual conference and international forum saw representatives from various countries sharing the latest global Investor Relations (IR) practices. Additionally, the 2nd TIRI Awards were presented, recognizing excellence with awards for the ''Best Investor Relations Company'' and ''Outstanding Investor Relations Professional.'' TIRI Chairman, Jonny Kuo , emphasized the significance of Investor Relations (IR) for listed companies. A well-executed IR strategy and communication not only reflect the company's fair market value but also contribute to the soundness of the shareholder structure. Through comprehensive financial reporting and regular updates on industry outlook during well-organized briefings, actively establishing transparent and robust communication bridges with investors becomes a crucial element for companies seeking to enhance corporate governance and ESG practices. By engaging in regular interactions and feedback with investors, companies can gain insights into market demands and promptly adjust strategies and directions to respond to rapid market changes. Chairman Jonny Kuo expressed that this year marks not only the fifth anniversary of TIRI's establishment but also the 2nd TIRI Awards. Through the recognition provided by the TIRI Awards, outstanding performance in Investor Relations (IR) by both companies and Investor Relations Officers (IROs) is celebrated as exemplary practice. The TIRI Awards selection criteria are based on results from corporate governance evaluations, average turnover rates, and transaction amounts to identify the shortlisted candidates. Subsequently, institutional investors and media participate in the voting process to determine the winners of the ''Best Investor Relations Company'' and ''Outstanding Investor Relations Professional' awards.'' In a fair voting mechanism, the TIRI Awards recognize companies and Investor Relations Officers (IROs) with outstanding performance in Investor Relations (IR), characterized by excellent corporate governance evaluations, active participation in capital market transactions, and acknowledgment as benchmarks by institutional investors and the media. Due to the enthusiastic participation of institutional investors and the media in the voting process, the competition among companies and IROs was highly intense. The final list of winners for the 2nd TIRI Awards is as follows. [Listed Mega Cap] Best Company: TSMC (2330); Best IRO: TSMC (2330), Jeff Su , [Listed Large Cap] Best Company: Sitronix (8016); Best IRO: Sitronix (8016), Tom Huang , [Listed Mid - Small Cap] Best Company: Topoint (8021); Best IRO: Topoint (8021), Charles Chang , [OTC Large Stocks] Best Company: Sensortek Technology (6732); Best IRO: Sensortek Technology (6732), Tom Huang , [OTC Medium-Sized Stocks] Best Company: Sentelic (4945); Best IRO: Sentelic (4945), Helen Hsu . TIRI facilitated the exchange among IR associations from various countries during this event, marking not only a milestone for Taiwan but also a pioneering initiative in international cross-border collaboration within the field of Investor Relations across global capital markets. In addition to the sharing and exchange during the annual conference and international forum, TIRI, in coordination with representatives from six international IR associations, concurrently met with the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange. This initiative not only provided international representatives with insights into Taiwan's advancements in corporate governance and ESG initiatives but also elucidated the strengths and advantages of Taiwan's capital market. TIRI aims to deepen Taiwan's integration with the international arena in the capital market through exchanges and collaborations with IR associations from various countries. Press Contact: Secretary General of TIRI : Jonathan Chiou M: 0916-821060 E-mail: [email protected] View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-ir-experts-confluence-in-taiwan-annual-tiri-summit-and-international-forum-for-leading-insights-301995793.html SOURCE Taiwan Investor Relation Institute (TIRI) To promote regenerative ag practices. GILBERT, Ariz. , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The USDA forecasts the sharpest decline in U.S. farm income in history as a result of high input costs and declining commodity prices in 20241. The Humic Products Trade Association (HPTA) is spearheading an initiative to support farmers by urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to define Nutritional Chemicals, an essential but overlooked exemption in pesticide law. This will help farmers gain greater access to these products, which can reduce fertilizer loss and promote nutrient utilization for better crop yields and enhanced ROI. The HPTA believes that defining Nutritional Chemicals will empower farmers to make informed choices regarding applying Nutritional Chemicals, like humic and fulvic acids, thereby enhancing crop productivity while contributing to environmental goals, like reducing nutrient leaching and carbon emissions. They call upon the EPA to define Nutritional Chemicals to allow the states to provide a uniform, transparent regulatory framework. Under pesticide law, there are two categories: fertilizers, exempted from pesticide law and regulated by states, and pesticides, overseen by the Federal government through the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Since FIFRA was passed in 1947, the definition of Nutritional Chemicals, added by an amendment in 1954, has remained absent, leaving a large gap in the regulatory clarity of these products. HPTA's request to EPA is to define the existing FIFRA exemption. Nutritional Chemicals are exempted from FIFRA and should be regulated by the states, like fertilizers. However, the missing definition makes it unclear which products are intended to be exempted from Federal control. The absence of a definition for Nutritional Chemicals has significant consequences for farmers and suppliers. It results in uncertainty regarding the regulation and labeling of these products, leading to inconsistencies across states and impeding farmers' access to these resources. Russell Taylor , President of HPTA, emphasized, "Defining nutritional chemicals is a crucial stride in the right direction. It will complete a federally recognized category of exempted products, enabling states to establish a consistent and uniform regulatory framework that supports sustainable farming practices and environmental objectives." 1 USDA Forecasts Sharpest Decline in U.S. Farm Income in History. United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, & Forestry. September 7, 2023 . Russell Taylor , President, Humic Products Trade Association 435-749-0168 [email protected] View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/humic-products-trade-association-calls-for-epa-to-support-farmers-by-increasing-access-to-crop-inputs-301995590.html SOURCE Humic Products Trade Association Content Operations leader adds new marketing tech, consulting and operations talent to its global capabilities. LONDON , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Content Operations Strategy and Services leader ICP has announced its acquisition of Team 6ix, a UK -based Martech and Content Operations consulting firm. The move joins Team 6ix's highly respected team of martech strategists, consultants and experts with ICP's resources and expertise. "This marks the start of ICP's next exciting phase of growth," said ICP CEO Christopher Grakal . "The addition of Team 6ix strengthens us at a key moment: global businesses increasingly recognize new opportunities to unlock the full value of their marketing and commerce assets, across their content ecosystem. That means more than just delivering creative martech strategies and solutions. It means dedicating the right people to serve as their partners, as well as the right automation and AI solutions. ICP's people, joined by Team 6ix's, form a world-class team of experts, strategists and solution-builders." Team 6ix's leadership team, led by founder Daniel Rowe , will join ICP's management team as operations are combined over the coming months. ICP's blue-chip client list, which includes Coca-Cola, Diageo, Estee Lauder Mars, NBCU and Unilever, will be joined by Team 6ix's clients which include Reckitt and other large multi brand global companies across a variety of market sectors. "Our combined client roster represents many of the world's most beloved and successful brands," notes Grakal. "They look to us to help them navigate a fast-changing martech world and identify and build the best solutions to help them continue to grow." The acquisition also reflects the continued desire for companies to stay on top of how new technologies and platforms can be smartly leveraged by global marketers. This means finding the right technologies and developing the right platforms designed specifically for each client. "Both ICP and Team 6ix have succeeded because they stay very focused on the people who will actually use the platforms day-to-day and end-to-end," says Daniel Rowe , Team 6ix's founder. "That type of client focus has been key to our success and ICP's, and that's a key reason why we are so excited to join them." Kevin O'Loughlin , Director at NorthEdge ICP's private equity partner, added: "We are delighted to support ICP to complete its first strategic acquisition since our investment. This is an important milestone for the company and presents an opportunity to bring even more high quality talent, expertise and resources to ICP. The partnership will allow the combined businesses to continue delivering best-in-class service to their long-standing clients, alongside expanding the services they offer to ensure they can meet the future demands of their clients in the fast-changing martech market." ICP and Team 6ix have already begun an integration process that is expected to continue into early 2024. ICP is a global leader in Content Operations, enhancing clients' content lifecycle technologies and processes to orchestrate the frictionless flow of content across Marketing and Commerce ecosystems. Offering solutions across Digital Asset Management, Digital Commerce, and Creative Operations, ICP helps the world's top brands unlock the potential of their content. See icpnet.com. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/icp-announces-acquisition-of-uk-based-team-6ix-301995996.html SOURCE ICP MONTREAL , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - LOGISTEC Stevedoring Inc., a subsidiary of LOGISTEC Corporation ("LOGISTEC") and leading North American marine services provider, received the Best Specialist Dry Bulk Terminal Award at the International Bulk Journal's ("IBJ") ceremony held in London, England . This prestigious award recognizes LOGISTEC's expertise in providing safe and reliable dry bulk cargo handling services across its North American network of port terminals. "Receiving this award from the IBJ highlights our commitment to our bulk customers, the dedication of our experts and the continued excellence of our port operations," stated Rodney Corrigan , President of LOGISTEC Stevedoring Inc. "Our leadership in health and safety across our network enables our people to go above and beyond to find innovative supply chain solutions." LOGISTEC won the Best Specialist Dry Bulk Terminal Award by demonstrating its proficiency in handling iron ore at the Port of Cleveland ( U.S. ). In collaboration with the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, the team's creative solutions represent a model of quality and consistency. Since the beginning of operations in 2017, LOGISTEC handled impressive volumes, invested in the operations to improve efficiency, and succeeded in maintaining a perfect safety record. Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority ("HOPA Ports"), LOGISTEC's port partner in Ontario (Canada ), was named Best Dry Bulk Port, demonstrating their leadership in providing safe, productive, and environmentally friendly bulk operations. LOGISTEC congratulates HOPA Ports for this important recognition of excellence. The IBJ is an important media for the maritime dry bulk industry. For 40 years, IBJ has been a leading-edge source of information focusing on all aspects of moving bulk cargo around the world, including dry bulk shipping, commodities, port, logistics and more. The IBJ Awards salute exceptional achievements in world leading companies. ABOUT LOGISTEC LOGISTEC Corporation is based in Montreal (QC) and provides specialized services to the marine community and industrial companies in the areas of bulk, break-bulk and container cargo handling in 60 ports and 90 terminals located in North America . LOGISTEC also offers marine transportation services geared primarily to the Arctic coastal trade as well as marine agency services to shipowners and operators serving the Canadian market. Furthermore, the Company operates in the environmental industry where it provides services to industrial, municipal and other governmental customers for the renewal of underground water mains, dredging, dewatering, contaminated soils and materials management, site remediation, risk assessment, and manufacturing of fluid transportation products. The Company has been profitable and has paid regular dividends since becoming public and payments have grown steadily over the years. A public company since 1969, LOGISTEC's shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols LGT.A and LGT. B. More information can be obtained on the Company's website at www.logistec.com. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/logistec-wins-best-specialist-dry-bulk-terminal-award-at-the-2023-international-bulk-journal-awards-301996124.html SOURCE Logistec Corporation - Communications Findings Help to Inform Selection of Optimal First-Line Treatment FORT MYERS, Fla. , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Medical oncologist Lucio N. Gordan MD, president and managing physician of Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, LLC (FCS), is lead author of the first real-world study comparing the two preferred regimens recommended for the primary treatment of non-transplant patients with newly-diagnosed multiple myeloma, published recently in Science Direct. Results of the study to assess optimal clinical treatment strategies were reported in the article entitled, "Progression-Free Survival of Daratumumab (DRd) Versus Bortezomib Triplet Combination With Lenalidomide and Dexamethasone (VRd) in Transplant Ineligible Patients (TIE) With Newly Diagnosed Multiple Myeloma (NDMM): TAURUS Chart Review Study." Approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration, VRd (approved in 2017) and DRd (approved in 2019), are the only preferred regimens recommended by the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology for the primary treatment of this patient population. However, previous to the TAURUS study, no direct head-to-head clinical trial had been conducted to compare the efficacy of the two regimens. Conducted at nine sites across the U.S. , inclusive of large academic and community-based centers, the study compared progression-free survival (PFS) among 178 patients ages 65 and above receiving DRd or VRd as first-line treatment (1L) in similar clinical settings. As reported by Dr. Gordan and his co-authors, the findings " show that TIE NDMM patients treated with DRd as 1L treatment had a lower risk of disease progression or death (14.5%) compared to patients treated with VRd (28.2%)." In summary, the authors stated: "These findings add to the growing body of evidence showing superiority of DRd vs. VRd as 1L treatment for TIE NDMM patients." Multiple myeloma affects white plasma in the bone marrow. Cancerous tumors can weaken the body's immune system, damage bones and lead to end-organ damage. MM is the second most common hematologic malignancy in the U.S. Two thirds of newly diagnosed patients are 65 years or older. There is no cure; the median age at death is 75 years. To access the study in Science Direct: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2152265023015501 About Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, LLC: (FLCancer.com) Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS) offers patients access to more clinical trials than any private oncology practice in Florida . The majority of new cancer drugs recently approved for use in the U.S. were studied in clinical trials with FCS participation.* Recognized for our research, FCS is a recipient of the national Clinical Trials Participation Award presented by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). FCS physicians, trained in prestigious medical schools and research institutes, are consistently ranked nationally as Top Doctors by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1984, FCS has built a national reputation for excellence that is reflected in exceptional and compassionate patient care, driven by innovative clinical research, cutting-edge technologies and advanced treatments, including targeted therapies genomic-based treatment and immunotherapy. Our highest values are embodied by our outstanding team of highly trained and dedicated physicians, clinicians and staff. *Prior to approval View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lucio-n-gordan-md-is-lead-author-of-first-real-world-study-comparing-preferred-treatments-for-multiple-myeloma-301996200.html SOURCE Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute OCEANSIDE, Calif. and WASHINGTON , Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Biotechnology is not just another industry; it's a transformative force that has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, agriculture, and even our approach to combating climate change. In recent years, North San Diego County has emerged as a rapidly expanding bioscience hub, attracting some of the most innovative firms in the biotech sector. However, this industry's swift growth presents challenges, most notably the urgent demand for a specialized workforce. At MiraCosta College, we anticipated this need within our community because of our future focus. As one of 15 community colleges within the state of California to offer a bachelor's degree, we responded by creating a program in biomanufacturing. This initiative has become pivotal for regional development, educational equity, and employment excellence. Built on a Foundation of Industry Partnership When the community called for qualified professionals in the rapidly expanding biotech sector, MiraCosta College answered. But we didn't do it alone. By forming strategic partnerships with local biotech firms, we developed a novel and specialized biomanufacturing bachelor's program designed to meet industry demands. In collaboration with our industry partners, we've also established pathways for students to receive grants for paid internships and earn-and-learn opportunities. These experiences ensure that our students not only acquire theoretical knowledge but also gain invaluable practical experience. Integrating these internships into our program facilitates a seamless transition for our graduates into the workforce, making them job-ready from day one after graduation. Our students graduate with a comprehensive understanding of the subject and hands-on experience that makes them invaluable assets in the workplace. Setting a National Standard Our program prepares people for national certification through a unique and accessible pathway. The program's success has reverberated beyond our local and even state boundaries. A case in point is Luis De Luna , a MiraCosta College student who was the first in his family to attend college and has earned the prestigious DREAM Scholar recognition from Achieving the Dream, a national nonprofit focusing on equity in higher education. Luis is a testament to our program's accessibility, effectiveness, and broader impact on creating a diverse and talented workforce. This story of transformation, perseverance, and excellence earned national recognition, solidifying MiraCosta College's reputation as a leading educational institution in the biosciences. Such stories reinforce the excellence of our program and its ability to change lives. Leads to Inclusive Economic Development The STEM fields are historically underrepresented in terms of both race and gender. Statistics from The Pew Research Center show a striking gap: White workers constitute 63 percent of all STEM jobs, while Black and Hispanic or Latino/a workers make up just 28 percent. Similarly, despite earning most degrees, women comprise a meager percentage of STEM degree earners. MiraCosta College has been intentional about making this high-quality program accessible to students who are often left behind by the educational system. Through financial aid, mentorship, and hands-on training, we have broken barriers and bridged educational gaps, offering new avenues for social mobility. In 2022, MiraCosta College was one of 77 recipients of nearly 1100 community colleges recognized by INSIGHT Into Diversity for establishing cutting-edge programs, events, and initiatives to improve STEM diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Success by the Numbers The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Around 95 percent of our biomanufacturing bachelor's program graduates go directly into the field, supporting our regional industry and economy. This is not just a statistic; it is a robust endorsement of our program's effectiveness, the high standard of education we provide, and the pressing industry demand for skilled biomanufacturing professionals in our region and state. Fueling Innovation Through State and Federal Investment MiraCosta College is thrilled to announce that it has received two substantial grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), totaling over $1.6 million . These grants aim to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing education for diverse, underrepresented community college and high school students. The BioSCOPE grant of $649,986 aims to remove the fear of science and offer hands-on, industry-relevant skills to students. This project collaborates with the Bay Area Bioscience Education Community (BABEC) and Laney College. The other grant of $1 million focuses on creating pathways for students in emerging biomanufacturing technologies, specifically targeting underrepresented groups in STEM. As a leader in the state, MiraCosta College has been awarded nearly $10 million to support our biotechnology program and the life science industry. More Than A Program, A Paradigm. As the biotech sector continues to expand in North San Diego County and across the nation, we believe MiraCosta College's novel biomanufacturing bachelor's program serves as more than just a case study of success; it serves as a model for how educational institutions can and should respond to community needs. In a politically divided nation, certain issues transcend party lines. Democrats and Republicans can agree on the importance of workforce development and socioeconomic mobility. Our biomanufacturing bachelor's program is a testament to this shared vision, proving that common ground can be found when it comes to improving our communities and ensuring a brighter future for our students. This program is not merely a conduit to employment; it's an ecosystem of opportunity, fostering talent, rectifying social inequalities, and meeting the demands of an ever-evolving industry. Uniquely American, community colleges serve more than 10 million students annually, providing critical access to higher education in academic and workforce development. As the voice of the nation's community colleges, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), delivers educational and economic opportunity for more than 10 million diverse students in search of the American Dream. Uniquely dedicated to access and success for all students, AACC's member colleges provide an on-ramp to degree attainment, skilled careers, and family-supporting wages. Located in Washington, D.C. , AACC advocates for these not-for-profit, public-serving institutions to ensure they have the resources and support to increase economic mobility for all. https://www.aacc.nche.edu/ View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/miracosta-colleges-pioneering-biomanufacturing-program-fueling-the-biotech-boom-and-bridging-educational-gaps-301996143.html SOURCE American Association Of Community Colleges LACHIN, Azerbaijan, November 22. Another group of native residents has arrived in Azerbaijan's Lachin, Trend's Karabakh bureau reports. A total of 81 people (21 families), who left Baku in the morning, have already arrived in Lachin, where they were met by representatives of the State Committee for Refugees and IDPs, the special representative office of Azerbaijan's President in Lachin district, which is part of the East Zangezur economic region, and Baku Improvement Service. Thus, 346 families, i.e. 1,326 people were provided with permanent residence in Lachin. All conditions have been created to accommodate the resettled families in Lachin in the houses where they used to live and which were restored or rebuilt after the end of Armenian occupation on the instructions of the head of state. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel Limited-time Black Friday Holiday Offer Provides Complimentary Indulgences on Luxurious Spring 2024, European River Cruises MIAMI , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Riverside Luxury Cruises, the new all-inclusive, luxury European river cruise brand, announced its Complimentary Indulgences Black Friday Offer today. Travellers will receive up to 500 euros onboard credit when they mention HOLIDAY23 and book a spring 2024 luxury river cruise aboard any Riverside Mozart and Riverside Ravel spring itineraries, departing March 24 through June 30, 2024 . Guests can apply their onboard credit to indulge in a complimentary spa treatment; experiences in the Vintage Room , an exclusive, gourmet degustation and wine pairing; or private shore excursion on a luxurious cultural and culinary immersion through the French Rhone and Austrian Danube wine valleys. For more information, please visit www.Riverside-Cruises.com/en. "Riverside Luxury Cruises' Complimentary Indulgences offer will make our guests' luxury river cruise even more indulgent," said Jen Halboth , CEO for the new luxury brand. "While Riverside is all inclusive, we also offer a few exclusive and highly personalised experiences which can make an exceptional Riverside luxury cruise extraordinary. We welcome discerning travellers to try Europe's newest, distinctive and culturally immersive travel experience with a limited time offer that is anything but limiting." Travellers can choose among three- to 21-night itineraries along the fascinating and culture-rich Rhone and Danube rivers aboard Riverside Mozart and Riverside Ravel. Guests will enjoy Riverside's signature, intuitive service and savour unmatched gourmet dining; bask in exceptional comfort throughout the ships' expansive spaces and plush accommodations; and delight in elegant decor akin to fine luxury boutique hotels found throughout the continent. Riverside's Complimentary Indulgences Black Friday offer is applicable for all new bookings in all categories made from November 22 through December 1, 2023 . Travellers must select Premium All-inclusive with Excursions option. Travel Advisors can also apply the holiday offer for their group bookings. However, the offer cannot be combined with waived single supplement offer and additional restrictions may apply. Launched in 2023, Riverside Luxury Cruises offers luxurious, all-inclusive cruises on the Danube, Rhine, and Rhone rivers aboard the all-suites Riverside Mozart , Riverside Ravel, and the soon-to-launch Riverside Debussy, the most luxurious ships on Europe's waterways. All guests enjoy Riverside's signature intuitive and attentive service from every staff and crew member; personal butlers service in every suite; StarLink Wi-Fi; gourmet cuisine paired with the region's best wines; and diverse shore excursions to delve further afield into the region's history, culture and attractions. For more information and to make a reservation, travellers should contact their travel advisor; visit www.Riverside-Cruises.com; or call 1-833-305-3313. Travel Advisors can book their luxury clients through the brand's dedicated partner portal at www.Riverside-Cruises.com/TA. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-riverside-luxury-cruises-presents-travellers-500-euros-onboard-credit-per-suite-for-more-pampering-celebrating-and-cultural-immersing-301995978.html SOURCE Riverside Luxury Cruises Leading Residential + Commercial Power Washing Franchise Secures Pivotal Backing with Sights Set High on 2024 Growth Goals PHILADELPHIA , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Rolling Suds, a leader in residential and commercial power washing for 30-plus years, announces its alignment with and strategic backing from franchising veteran, David Barr . After an impressive kickoff year of its franchise opportunity, this announcement comes at a prime time as Rolling Suds has awarded agreements for 59 territories across 16 states year-to-date. With prospective franchisees flocking toward the opportunity, the emerging franchise is riding the wave of success. David Barr has been highly involved in the franchising industry for more than 35 years in several capacities, from CEO to franchisee to board member and more. Barr has played an integral role in Rolling Suds from the beginning, serving as a personal mentor to CEO Aaron Harper , demonstrating his belief in the brand's mission. After seeing the emerging franchise's impressive growth in less than a year since its launch, Barr was inspired to strengthen his position with Rolling Suds. "It is a true honor to have the support of incredible visionary David Barr as we redefine successful, responsible franchising," shared Harper. "His unique perspective, gained from experience with brands such as Domino's Pizza, College HUNKS Hauling Junk and Moving, and Franworth, will continue to be invaluable. David's track record speaks for itself, having helped brands grow from two units to 500, and I look forward to seeing where this astute partnership takes us." As Q4 closes out and the brand prepares for 2024, Barr's strategic investment will put Rolling Suds in a favorable position to reach its growth goal of becoming a 300+ unit system. While having secured dozens of agreements this year, Rolling Suds has also welcomed 11 new corporate members in anticipation of its exponential growth. With sights set on a bright future, the brand leans into the robust foundation its built and proven business model. "Rolling Suds represents a rare opportunity in franchising one that is both ethical and scalable," shared Barr. "I've rarely seen such rapid growth and innovation in such a short amount of time. My strategic investment signifies my utmost confidence in Aaron and the team, and I am excited to contribute to the company's bright future." The residential and commercial power washing franchise brand is looking to align with single and multi-unit operators looking to stake their claim in the more than $577B home improvement industry. As the industry continues its boom, Rolling Suds has 59 territories in various stages of development across the U.S. , with vast whitespace available. Rolling Suds is a proven business backed by more than 30-years of industry experience and knowledge. One of its key differentiators is the quality and process of the service itself, and ability to complete jobs two to three times more quickly. Rolling Suds has a proprietary cleaning process which utilizes high-quality materials and a specific dilution of soaps within their wash method. With state-of-the-art equipment and highly trained professionals, Rolling Suds is a sustainable business with the ability to invest back into itself. The Rolling Suds brand and franchise is built on three core elements relationships, reputation and reliability and each are applicable to both consumers and franchisees. Having unparalleled experience in such an unregulated industry, Rolling Suds franchisees will be able to differentiate themselves from competitors through a recession-resistant business model. The business support that franchisees receive is immense, including a nine-week interactive power launch training program, one week in person training, six months of lead generation, digital and marketing needs handled, technician training, among many other essential business aspects are provided. It's truly a complete business in a box. For more information on the Rolling Suds franchise opportunity, visit rollingsudsfranchise.com/get-started or call 949-877-2948. ABOUT ROLLING SUDS: Rolling Suds is the premier franchise in power washing, bringing unparalleled standards to an unregulated industry. The company, founded more than 30 years ago, has helped more than 200,000 residential and commercial customers while building a great reputation by hiring the best people, using the best equipment, and providing the best experience in the industry. Anchored by years of unmatched results, Rolling Suds aims to make power washing one less thing to worry about for customers across the U.S. by expanding into new markets. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rolling-suds-aligns-with-franchising-veteran-david-barr-in-strategic-investment-as-development-surges-301996062.html SOURCE Rolling Suds FRANKFURT, Germany , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Slenergy, a leading innovator in the renewable energy industry, celebrates significant success in Europe with its ground-breaking iShare-Home one-stop residential energy solution. The iShare-Home solar system debuted in Germany this May, and a tailored version was introduced to Italian households in Milan this October. Designed to tackle current challenges in the residential solar energy landscape, Slenergy's iShare-Home system offers capacities ranging from 4-15 kW. This one-stop solution, distinguished by standardized system design, modular product design, easy installation and smart energy management, incorporates PV modules, hybrid inverter, energy storage, cable set, mounting structure and smart monitoring system. In a solar industry driven by a promising future, innovative technology and robust competition, Slenergy distinguishes itself through unmatched local service and unprecedented one-stop solution with product reliability as its core. The company ensures superior reliability by leveraging its cutting-edge smart factory. As a new entrant in PV backed by a decade-long expertise in electronics, Slenergy is dedicated to advancing the industry through precision manufacturing. The company has redefined the manufacturing landscape by introducing an industry-leading automated production line grounded in lean principles that surpasses conventional mechanization. Situated within Slenergy's 380-mu industrial park, the 68,000 m2 smart factory serves as a center of seamless automation. Beyond advanced automation, Slenergy's manufacturing process rests on two additional pillars: a robust process control system and high-level vertical supply chain integration. By linking to materials at the deepest industry level, Slenergy's control system enables comprehensive recording and analysis of manufacturing data. The vertical integration of the entire supply chain optimizes efficiency in the manufacturing process and speed to delivery. Slenergy's smart factory rigorously implements risk control strategies across all phases, including incoming materials, production, inspection and quality sampling. Through real-time system-level quality control in the entire production process, Slenergy closely monitors the manufacturing process to uphold quality commitments. This comprehensive quality approach, monitoring both the system and products, is critical for fulfilling Slenergy's pursuit of excellence while delivering consistently high-quality products. With the successful achievements of its iShare-Home solution in Europe , Slenergy is realizing its vision of driving the global transition toward renewable energy. As the company expands internationally, its pioneering smart factory ensures the high quality of its one-stop systems. Through continued innovation in the new energy sector, Slenergy promises to advance energy independence and reduce carbon footprints by providing reliable, affordable and sustainable energy solutions. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/slenergys-smart-factory-enhances-product-reliability-in-the-renewable-energy-landscape-301995886.html SOURCE SLENERGY PENGZHOU, China , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 22 , the 12th China Sichuan (Pengzhou) Vegetable Fair (hereinafter referred to as "Vegetable Fair"), a major event for the Chinese vegetable industry, is scheduled to take place inside the Tianfu Vegetable Expo Park in Pengzhou, Sichuan . Organized by Pengzhou Municipal People's Government, this year's Vegetable Fair is going to unveil various scientific innovation landmarks such as the Southern China Vegetable Seed Industry Innovation Center and Pengzhou Protected Vegetable Demonstration Greenhouse. Combined with the field exhibition of new vegetable varieties at the 9th Chengdu Seed Industry Expo (Autumn), the event aims to create a modern agriculture industrial park that integrates smart agriculture, protected agriculture and digital agriculture, and promote exchanges and cooperation on new technologies, new equipment, new products and new projects. Besides, the Vegetable Fair is also going to focus on the innovative development of the vegetable seed industry as the main theme to host the 3rd Chinese Vegetable Brand Conference and the 2nd Chinese Vegetable Industrial High-quality Development Forum, among other activities. The Vegetable Fair is a crucial window for the showcasing of development feats of the " Sichuan vegetable" industry, and an important carrier for foreign cooperation. Pengzhou hopes to expand the influence of its vegetable brands through this event, and propel it forward on its path of positioning itself as a "capital of vegetable" in Western China . Experts have noted that vegetables in Sichuan enjoy sufficient heat and light exchanges, resulting in long growth cycles, and can rely on their own immune system for protection against external invasion, leading to high survival capacity. Thus, Sichuan vegetables are known for their outstanding nutritional content, flavors and textures, which is why experts and consumers alike have aptly coined them as "vegetables of the lands" for the relatively greener and healthier qualities compared with "vegetables of greenhouses". As the permanent host of the China Sichuan (Pengzhou) Vegetable Fair, Pengzhou is a representative production region of Chinese "vegetables of the lands", as well as a Modern Agriculture Demonstration Zone of China and one of the top 10 vegetable production bases of China . With 820,000 mu of vegetable plantations (including multiple cropping) and over 200 varieties of vegetables in 13 categories, the city is vital to the vegetable supply of Sichuan and even the whole of China . "Pengzhou is going to continuously dedicate efforts in terms of scientific and technological innovation in the vegetable industry, promote breakthroughs in germplasm source and other key aspects, strengthen the construction of agricultural infrastructure facilities, improve support for agricultural science and technology, and raise the level of modern agricultural facilities and equipment. Meanwhile, steps will be taken to turn the Vegetable Fair into a major platform for open cooperation, exhibition and sales, and investment attraction for the 'agriculture, rural villages and farmers' of Chengdu , Sichuan and even the entire southwestern region of China ," a relevant Pengzhou official in charge explained. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-12th-china-sichuan-pengzhou-vegetable-fair-to-open-301995604.html SOURCE Pengzhou Municipal People's Government TOKYO , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- MUSASHI JAPAN , a Japanese kitchen knife brand operated by TAIMATSU Corporation (Location: Taito, Tokyo ; President: Allen Wang), will commence sales of its new product, the "Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife ," from November 2024 . Blessed with abundant nature and delicious food, Tsushima in Nagasaki Prefecture is a beautiful place, but it faces a major problem of marine plastic waste. Every year, a large amount of marine waste from neighboring countries washes ashore, and Tsushima City invests approximately 280 million yen annually in its collection and disposal. Despite its efforts, however, Tsushima City is limited in the amount of waste it can collect annually, and disposing of all marine plastic waste is a challenging task. In response to this serious issue, there is hope for new initiatives to reuse marine plastic as a valuable resource. One such initiative comes from the Japanese kitchen knife brand MUSASHI JAPAN . MUSASHI JAPAN has created the "Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife " by collecting marine debris that has washed ashore on Tsushima and reusing it as knife handles. This product does not only contribute to solving the serious issue of marine waste, but also aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After two long years of development, this innovative product is now complete. The most distinctive feature of the Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife is its handle. Here, various types of marine debris collected on Tsushima Island are reused. Therefore, these knives have a special, one-of-a-kind design that takes advantage of the individual characteristics of the marine debris. In addition to the beauty of the pattern, the knives are also highly functional. The pattern has a built-in NFC chip, which can be read by a smartphone to directly access the MUSASHI JAPAN website. This allows users to gain a deeper understanding of the story behind the production of the knives and the brand's commitment to the SDGs. These knives are designed to be used in everyday life. The intention is for them to be used not only for cooking in the kitchen, but also to serve as opportunities for casual communication about the importance of the SDGs at home parties and other occasions. MUSASHI JAPAN is committed to developing sustainable products that will leave a beautiful planet for future generations, and the Tsushima Ocean Kitchen Knife is part of this effort to naturally incorporate the SDGs into our daily lives and to spread the importance of the SDGs. About MUSASHI JAPAN MUSASHI JAPAN is a Japanese knife brand that focuses on traditional Japanese culture and experience. Its products are highly acclaimed by culinary enthusiasts and professional chefs around the world for their quality and beauty. The brand also aims to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and actively promotes environmental initiatives. MUSASHI Japan's products range from an elaborate series of hand-carved engravings to knives with unique handles made of traditional lacquer, offering a diverse selection of products that are both functional and beautiful. The store is located in Kappabashi, Asakusa, Tokyo , and its interior represents a fusion of the traditional and the modern. Knowledgeable staff members from around the world welcome customers and provide friendly advice on everything from choosing knives to maintenance. On the second floor, there is a sake bar offering a unique drinking experience inspired by Japanese culture. The online store allows customers, both domestically and internationally, to easily purchase top-quality kitchen knives. The store places emphasis on conveying the appeal of Japanese culture to its customers. It also provides detailed descriptions of each product, along with information about the craftsmen and the background of production. The online store regularly offers special promotions and discounts that are not available in physical stores. Through these efforts, MUSASHI JAPAN will continue to pass on the wonderful Japanese culture while providing the world with the highest quality traditional craft of kitchen knives. New Product Information Product name: Tsushima Ocean kitchen knife with NFC chip Price: 14,800 yen - 29,800 yen Sales URL: https://www.musashihamono.com/pages/ocean-knife Online store: https://www.musashihamono.com/ Store Information Store name: MUSASHI JAPAN Kappabashi Knife & Sake Shop Address: THOSHICHI BUILDING, 3-8-4 Nishi Asakusa, Taito-ku, Tokyo Business hours: 10:00 - 18:00 How to get there: A 9-minute walk from Tokyo Metro " Tawaramachi Station ", and a 6-minute walk from Tsukuba Express " Asakusa Station " View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tsushima-ocean-kitchen-knife--a-fresh-approach-and-value-creation-in-addressing-the-marine-waste-issue-301995683.html DENVER , Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Welltok, Inc. ("Welltok") is providing notice of an event that may affect the privacy of certain individuals' information. Welltok provides online wellness resources to health plans, including Mass General Brigham Health Plan ("MGBHP"). Welltok takes this incident very seriously and is providing information about the incident, our response to it, and resources available to individuals to help protect their information, should they feel it appropriate to do so. What Happened? On May 31, 2023 , and again in June 2023 , Progress Software Corp. publicly disclosed zero-day vulnerabilities that impacted the MOVEit Transfer tool. As a user of that tool, Welltok moved quickly to apply available patching and undertook recommended mitigation steps. Welltok promptly launched an internal investigation, with the assistance of third-party cybersecurity specialists, to determine the potential impact of the vulnerabilities' presence on the MOVEit Transfer server on the security of data housed on the server. The investigation determined that an unknown actor exploited vulnerabilities, accessed the MOVEit Transfer server between May 30, 2023 , to May 31, 2023 , and exfiltrated certain data from the MOVEit Transfer server during that time. Welltok subsequently undertook a time-consuming and detailed review of the data stored on the server at the time of this incident to understand the contents of that data and to whom that data relates. On [date], Welltok completed this extensive review process and identified that information pertaining to MGBHP health plan members as of May 30, 2023 was present in the affected files. Since then, Welltok has been coordinating efforts with MGBHP to review and verify the affected information as well as locate address information in order to provide direct notice to as many impacted individuals as possible. This review was completed on October 30, 2023 . What Information Was Involved? While Welltok has no evidence that any information has been misused, Welltok is notifying impacted individuals and providing information and resources to help protect individuals' personal information. The following types of information may have been impacted: first and last name; date of birth; home address (including city, state, and zip code); telephone number; email address; last 4 digits of Social Security number; Medicaid identification number; and health insurance information (which potentially includes member/subscriber ID numbers). What Welltok is Doing. Welltok takes this event and the security of personal information in its care very seriously. Upon learning of this event, Welltok moved quickly to investigate and respond to the event, and notify potentially affected individuals. As part of its ongoing commitment to the security of information, Welltok is reviewing and enhancing its existing policies and procedures related to data privacy to reduce the likelihood of a similar future event. Welltok is notifying impacted individuals for whom Welltok has a valid mailing address via U.S. mail and offering them credit monitoring and identity protection services. Welltok is also notifying applicable regulators. How Will Individuals Know If They Are Affected By This Incident? Welltok is mailing a notice letter to individuals whose information was determined to be in the affected files, for whom a valid mailing address is available. If an individual does not receive a letter but would like to know if they are affected, they may call Welltok's dedicated assistance line, detailed below. Whom Should Individuals Contact For More Information? If individuals have questions or would like additional information, they may call Welltok's dedicated assistance line, which is available Monday through Friday, at 1-800-628-2141 between the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern time , and 11:00 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time , excluding major U.S. Holidays. Please be prepared to reference engagement number B107738. statements, explanation of benefits forms, and monitoring your free credit reports for suspicious activity and to detect errors. Under U.S. law individuals are entitled to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus. To order a free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call, toll-free, 1-877-322-8228. Individuals may also contact the three major credit bureaus directly to request a free copy of their credit report, place a fraud alert, or a security freeze. Contact information for the credit bureaus is below: Consumers have the right to place an initial or extended "fraud alert" on a credit file at no cost. An initial fraud alert is a 1-year alert that is placed on a consumer's credit file. Upon seeing a fraud alert display on a consumer's credit file, a business is required to take steps to verify the consumer's identity before extending new credit. If you are a victim of identity theft, you are entitled to an extended fraud alert, which is a fraud alert lasting seven years. Should you wish to place a fraud alert, please contact any one of the three major credit reporting bureaus listed below. As an alternative to a fraud alert, consumers have the right to place a "credit freeze" on a credit report, which will prohibit a credit bureau from releasing information in the credit report without the consumer's express authorization. The credit freeze is designed to prevent credit, loans, and services from being approved in your name without your consent. However, you should be aware that using a credit freeze to take control over who gets access to the personal and financial information in your credit report may delay, interfere with, or prohibit the timely approval of any subsequent request or application you make regarding a new loan, credit, mortgage, or any other account involving the extension of credit. Pursuant to federal law, you cannot be charged to place or lift a credit freeze on your credit report. To request a security freeze, you may need to provide the following information, depending on whether the request is made online, by phone, or by mail: Full name (including middle initial as well as Jr., Sr., II, III, etc.); Social Security number; Date of birth; Addresses for the prior two to five years; Proof of current address, such as a current utility bill or telephone bill; A legible photocopy of a government-issued identification card (state driver's license or ID card, etc.); and A copy of either the police report, investigative report, or complaint to a law enforcement agency concerning identity theft if you are a victim of identity theft. Should you wish to place a fraud alert or a credit freeze, please contact the three major credit reporting bureaus listed below: Equifax Experian TransUnion https://www.equifax.com/personal/credit-report-services/ https://www.experian.com/help/ https://www.transunion.com/credit-help 1-888-298-0045 1-888-397-3742 1-800-916-8800 Equifax Fraud Alert, P.O. Box 105069 Atlanta, GA 30348-5069 Experian Fraud Alert, P.O. Box 9554, Allen, TX 75013 TransUnion Fraud Alert, P.O. Box 2000, Chester, PA 19016 Equifax Credit Freeze, P.O. Box 105788 Atlanta, GA 30348-5788 Experian Credit Freeze, P.O. Box 9554, Allen, TX 75013 TransUnion Credit Freeze, P.O. Box 160, Woodlyn, PA 19094 Additional Information You may further educate yourself regarding identity theft, fraud alerts, credit freezes, and the steps you can take to protect your personal information by contacting the consumer reporting bureaus, the Federal Trade Commission, or your state Attorney General. The Federal Trade Commission may be reached at: 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW , Washington, DC 20580; www.identitytheft.gov ; 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338); and TTY: 1-866-653-4261. The Federal Trade Commission also encourages those who discover that their information has been misused to file a complaint with them. You can obtain further information on how to file such a complaint by way of the contact information listed above. You have the right to file a police report if you ever experience identity theft or fraud. Please note that in order to file a report with law enforcement for identity theft, you will likely need to provide some proof that you have been a victim. Instances of known or suspected identity theft should also be reported to law enforcement and your state Attorney General. This notice has not been delayed by law enforcement. For District of Columbia residents, the District of Columbia Attorney General may be contacted at: 400 6th Street, NW , Washington, DC 20001; 1-202-727-3400; and oag.dc.gov. For Maryland residents, the Maryland Attorney General may be contacted at: 200 St. Paul Place , 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; 1-410-528-8662 or 1-888-743-0023; and https://www.marylandattorneygeneral.gov/. Welltok, Inc.'s address is 1515 Arapahoe St. #700 Denver, CO 80202. For New Mexico residents, you have rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, such as the right to be told if information in your credit file has been used against you, the right to know what is in your credit file, the right to ask for your credit score, and the right to dispute incomplete or inaccurate information. Further, pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the consumer reporting bureaus must correct or delete inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable information; consumer reporting agencies may not report outdated negative information; access to your file is limited; you must give your consent for credit reports to be provided to employers; you may limit "prescreened" offers of credit and insurance you get based on information in your credit report; and you may seek damages from violator. You may have additional rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act not summarized here. Identity theft victims and active-duty military personnel have specific additional rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Welltok encourages you to review your rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act by visiting www.consumerfinance.gov/f/201504_cfpb_summary_your-rights-under-fcra. pdf, or by writing Consumer Response Center, Room 130-A, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580. For New York residents, the New York Attorney General may be contacted at: Office of the Attorney General, The Capitol, Albany, NY 12224-0341; 1-800-771-7755; or https://ag.ny.gov/. For North Carolina residents, the North Carolina Attorney General may be contacted at: 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; 1-877-566-7226 or 1-919-716-6000; and www.ncdoj.gov. For Rhode Island residents, the Rhode Island Attorney General may be reached at: 150 South Main Street , Providence, RI 02903; 1-401-274-4400; and www.riag.ri.gov. Under Rhode Island law, you have the right to obtain any police report filed in regard to this incident. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/welltok-inc-provides-notice-of-data-privacy-event-301995303.html SOURCE Welltok, Inc. BINZHOU, China , Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from Yangxin County Propaganda Department: The 16th (2023) China Cattle Industry Development Conference took place in Yangxin County, Binzhou City, Shandong Province from November 11 to 12 , with a theme of "Cluster sharing, improving quality and efficiency, and driving high-quality development of the entire industry chain." Over 800 experts, scholars, leading officials, and entrepreneurs nationwide gathered in Yangxin County to discuss the vision and future of the cattle industry, exploring opportunities for mutual development. Shandong is renowned for its high-quality meat in China . Among all the cities in Shandong , Binzhou stands out as the premier location for beef cattle. During the opening ceremony of the Conference, the organizers introduced the impressive development of the Yangxin beef cattle industry, and jointly unveiled the standards for the entire industry chain of Yangxin beef, as well as the 'Yangxin Black Cattle' breeding and propagation system with relevant departments. Moreover, the opening ceremony also revealed the regional public brand 'Yangxin Beef', valued at approximately 21.026 billion yuan . Several cooperative projects were signed on-site, covering bank-enterprise collaboration, cold chain logistics, beef import and export, and pre-made food processing. Yangxin County is currently making active efforts to establish a green and circular industrial ecosystem for beef cattle breeding. They are cultivating a highly distinctive "six-have" development model, which includes having funds for cattle procurement, suitable ranches for rearing, high-quality fodder for feeding, qualified professionals for disease prevention, viable markets for selling, and effective methods for converting cow manure into valuable resources. Overall, this model supports a diverse pattern of the development of the cattle industry. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/yangxin-county-a-powerhouse-in-chinas-cattle-industry-takes-center-stage-at-the-china-cattle-industry-development-conference-301995797.html SOURCE Yangxin County Propaganda Department 3D printed clouds and figurines are seen in front of the Alibaba Cloud service logo in this illustration taken February 8, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo By Casey Hall and Jenny Wang SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) -A top Alibaba executive told staff on Wednesday that it was a "coincidence" that a plan by former chief Jack Ma's family trust to sell some shares in firm was disclosed on the same day the firm scrapped its cloud unit's listing. In a move seen as an effort to quell ongoing unease within the e-commerce giant, Jiang Fang, an Alibaba partner and its chief talent officer, said in an post on the firm's intranet seen by Reuters that Ma's office had earlier this year made a plan to sell some shares to reinvest in agriculture and public welfare projects. They were required by U.S. securities rules to disclose the plan by mid-November, she said. "Nov. 16 happened to be the disclosure time set, but the stockbrokers did not know that this day was the day when the company was set to release its financial report," Jiang said, adding that the "coincidence" had created a "severe misunderstanding". Investors wiped some $20 billion off Alibaba's market value last Friday after the company abruptly scrapped plans to spin off its cloud and groceries businesses. Analysts also said a regulatory filing that came out hours before the disclosure saying that Ma's family trust intended to sell 10 million American Depository Shares in Alibaba hurt sentiment as it raised eyebrows about Ma's commitment to the future of the company he co-founded. Two company sources told Reuters that Ma's move had generated a lot of discussion within the company, as did Jiang's post. Alibaba did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jack Ma Foundation, the philanthropic organization that handles media queries for the billionaire, said in a statement to Reuters the reported stock sale has not occurred, adding that the messages Jiang posted in the Alibaba intranet are all factual. In her internal note, Jiang also repeated comments from Ma's family office shared with the Alibaba-owned newspaper South China Morning Post on Friday that Ma remained "very positive" about Alibaba and that his family trust eventually did not sell a single share. Jiang also said rumours that the company was going to lay off 25,000 people were untrue, adding that Alibaba had filed a police report over the matter. Alibaba in March announced plans to carve out the cloud business as part of a restructuring, the biggest in its 24-year history, that broke the company up into six units. The company has also been grappling with some upheaval in its top ranks, welcoming a new CEO, Eddie Wu, in September. That same month, former group CEO Daniel Zhang abruptly quit his position as cloud unit head, just two months after announcing his new focus would be cloud computing. (Reporting by Casey Hall in Shanghai and Jenny Wang in Beijing; Editing by Brenda Goh and David Evans) By Aditya Soni (Reuters) - Sam Altman's return as OpenAI's chief executive will strengthen his grip on the startup and may leave the ChatGPT creator with fewer checks on his power as the company introduces technology that could upend industries, corporate governance experts and analysts said. OpenAI is bringing Altman back just days after his ouster as well as installing a revamped board that could bring sharper scrutiny to the startup at the heart of the AI boom, but strong support from investors including Microsoft may give Altman more leeway to commercialize the technology. "Sam's return may put an end to the turmoil on the surface, but there may continue to be deep governance issues," said Mak Yuen Teen, director of the centre for investor protection at the National University of Singapore Business School. "Altman seems awfully powerful and it is unclear that any board would be able to oversee him. The danger is the board becomes a rubber stamp," he said. OpenAI's new board will boast more experience at the top level and strong ties to both the U.S. government and Wall Street. The board fired Altman last week with little explanation and attempted to move on by naming an interim CEO twice. However, pressure from Microsoft - and the 38-year-old's strong loyalty among the 700-plus OpenAI employees that caused nearly all of them to threaten to leave the company - led to Altman's reinstatement as of Wednesday. "Altman has been invigorated by the last few days," GlobalData analyst Beatriz Valle said. But that could come at a cost, she said, adding that he has "too much power now." Bret Taylor, former co-CEO of Salesforce who also played a key role in forcing through Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter as a director, will be chairing the board. Other members include former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, a Harvard academic and longtime economic aide to Democratic presidents. "The fact that Summers and Taylor will join OpenAI is quite extraordinary and marks a dramatic reversal of fortunes in the company," Valle said. Summers, who also sits on the board of Jack Dorsey's fintech firm Block, has in recent months been vocal about the potential job losses and disruption that could be caused by AI. "ChatGPT is coming for the cognitive class. It's going to replace what doctors do," he said in a post on X in April. OpenAI's previous board consisted of entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, Helen Toner, director of strategy at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, as well as Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo, who also sits on the new board. It was not immediately clear if any of the other directors would remain, including Sutskever, who joined in the effort to fire Altman then signed onto an employee letter demanding his return, expressing regret for her "participation in the board's actions." OpenAI on X said it was "collaborating to figure out the details" of the new board. Microsoft declined to comment. Summers and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Sutskever, Altman and Taylor could not be immediately reached for comment. Some analysts say the management fiasco will ensure that OpenAI executives proceed cautiously, as the high-flying startup will now be subject to more scrutiny. Several noted that companies such as Facebook parent Meta have flourished with a powerful CEO despite concerns about corporate governance. "Sam definitely comes out stronger but also dirtied and will have more of a microscope from the AI and broader tech and business community," Gartner analyst Jason Wong said. "He can no longer do no wrong." (This story has been refiled to capitalize a letter in GlobalData in paragraph 7) (Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Porter) FILE PHOTO: An electric vehicle charging station is seen at the Volkswagen display during the media day at the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/File Photo By Rod Nickel WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Canada needs to shift gears on its strategy of building electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across the country, advocacy groups and government officials say, but they are trying to steer Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government down different roads. Trudeau's rollout strategy is focused on building EV ports in populous public areas and multi-family residential buildings, which experts warn may not be enough to rapidly increase EV adoption and help meet the government's ambitious climate goals. Canada's best opportunity to rev up its charging network build-out is to focus on single-family homes, where more than 80% of charging occurs, some advocacy groups say. The country's Office of the Auditor General and other groups argue, however, that the world's second-largest country by area should do more in remote and low-income communities, a task the private sector is unlikely to take on. Trudeau's government plans to phase out sales of new light-duty combustion vehicles by 2035, part of Canada's broader target of curbing greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by at least 40% by 2030, a goal it is likely to miss. Transportation accounts for 22% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. The country's sprawling national highway system spans 38,049 km (23,643 miles) and cold winters reduce battery efficiency, creating additional challenges for building an effective charging network. The government-controlled Canada Infrastructure Bank agreed last week to loan up to C$210 million ($153.08 million) to fuel retailer Parkland Corp to help spur expansion of its existing EV charging network in British Columbia, a Western Canadian province where EV adoption is high. The bank's financing raised its total charging commitments to C$445 million. Parkland, nevertheless, said it is looking for further outside investment to build out its charging network. Trudeau's government should make it cheaper for owners of older homes to upgrade their electrical systems, work that costs C$2,000-C$3,000, said Daniel Breton, the CEO of Electric Mobility Canada, an advocacy group. Breton also is co-chair of a government working group on charging infrastructure. "People seem to forget that the backbone of the infrastructure is not public charging, it's home charging," Breton said. 'SERIOUS CHALLENGE' Breton said that 30% of the cost of installing a home EV charging station in the U.S. is covered by a federal tax credit, while California residents can receive rebates for upgrading charging stations and electric panels. Most Canadians drive short distances to work, meaning that public charging is mainly necessary for longer-haul travellers, Breton said. A Nov. 7 report from Canada's Auditor General said Natural Resources Canada, the main government agency providing financial support for charging stations, is on track to meet an interim target of installing 33,500 ports nationally by 2026. Canada had 19 EVs per public charging point in 2022, while the number was 24 in the U.S., according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Canada is spending more than its neighbor on EV chargers on a per capita basis, according to calculations from the Clean Energy Canada program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, a rare example of Canada outpacing the U.S. in the transition to a future less reliant on fossil fuels. Ottawa needs to expand its financial support to homeowners without sacrificing other areas, said Brian Kingston, the CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association and a co-chair of the government working group on charging infrastructure. "It's a serious challenge for an older home," Kingston said. The Office of the Auditor General reported that Canada had overwhelmingly funded charging ports in populous provinces and should do more to build charging stations in remote parts of the country. Those areas and multi-unit buildings should be the government's top priorities for funding because they are the ones least likely to attract private investment, while many homeowners can afford the upgrades themselves, said Joanna Kyriazis, director of public affairs at Clean Energy Canada, which also has a role on the infrastructure charging government working group. Natural Resources Canada said it is reviewing gaps in the country's charging infrastructure and seeking collaboration from the private sector and provincial governments to meet its goals. Trudeau's government plans to subsidize 84,500 new charging stations by 2029, hoping to spur the private investment needed to expand the network to at least 442,000 public chargers by 2035. ($1 = 1.3718 Canadian dollars) (Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Editing by Denny Thomas and Paul Simao) BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan were apprehended trying to breach the state border of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the direction of the Russian Federation, Trend reports, referring to the State Border Service of Azerbaijan. On November 21 four citizens of Pakistan (Majid Abdul Muhammad, Muhammad Yasin Ali, Abu Bakar Ahsan, and Ullah Ubayd Ahsan) were caught at the service territory of the border outpost located near Zuhul village of Gusar district. During the investigation it was revealed that the detained planned to migrate illegally from the Republic of Azerbaijan to the Russian Federation and from there to a European country. Operative investigation measures to identify and neutralize the criminal migration channel are being continued, said the State Border Service. FILE PHOTO: Broken Ethernet cable is seen in front of binary code and words "cyber security" in this illustration taken March 8, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo By Byron Kaye SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia will give cyber health checks for small businesses, increase cyber law enforcement funding and introduce mandatory reporting of ransomware attacks under a security overhaul announced on Wednesday after a spate of attacks. The federal government said it will also subject telecommunications firms to tougher cyber reporting rules which apply to critical infrastructure, seek migrants to build up the cyber security workforce and set limits on inter-agency data sharing to encourage people to report incidents. The A$587 million ($382 million) plan shows the centre-left Labor government trying to get on the front foot after a year in which nearly half the country's 26 million population had personal information stolen in just two data breaches at companies, while a cyber attack at its biggest port operator this month brought supply chains to a standstill. "We cannot continue as we have," Cyber Security and Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil told reporters in Sydney. "We can't have a situation where we have data flying around the country, where we have critical infrastructure starting to fail, where we have small business and citizens who are continually telling us they feel vulnerable and unable to cope with the cyber threats themselves." Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said national security typically meant "military assets in the traditional sense but increasingly, we're talking about cyber ... because of the economic impact that it can have." Cybercrime reports in Australia jumped by nearly a quarter in the year to June, with the average cost to victims up 14%, the Australian Cyber Security Centre said in a report this month, which noted a new defence agreement with the U.S. and Britain had made the country a bigger target. Unveiling the seven-year strategy, O'Neil said that while large businesses received some of the biggest cyber attacks, they typically recovered, but attacks on small and medium-size businesses could be terminal. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said this month that 44% of companies it surveyed had no plan to stop data breaches originating from supply chain partners. Companies backed the plan, saying the country's estimated 2.5 million small and mid-sized businesses were the engine-room of the economy but largely unprepared for cyber crime. "The small-business sector is a huge driver of economic growth but they continue to face alarming rates of cyber crime," said Patrick Wright, head of technology and enterprise operations at No. 3 lender National Australia Bank. Aidan Tudehope, co-founder of Macquarie Technology, which supplies data services for 42% of Australian federal agencies, said the strategy was a "unifying nationwide endeavour" after the country's cyber policies had become fragmented. Under the strategy the government said it would set up a single portal for reports of cyber attacks and establish "cyber rapid assistance" teams to respond to incidents in the Pacific region, as well as identifying network vulnerabilities. The government would meanwhile seek to cut the amount of customer data companies were required to keep. Breaches in 2022 on No. 2 telco Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications, and No. 1 health insurer Medibank Private exposed information stored sometimes years earlier including data belonging to people who were not customers. ($1 = 1.5366 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Byron Kaye; Additional reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Stephen Coates) Police officers view the scene after an incident at the Rainbow Bridge U.S. border crossing with Canada, in Niagara Falls, New York, U.S. November 22, 2023 in a still image from video. REUTERS/Reuters TV By Ted Hesson and Jonathan Landay WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A speeding car crashed in flames on the bridge linking New York state and Ontario at Niagara Falls on Wednesday, killing two people in the vehicle and sparking a security scare that closed four U.S.-Canadian border crossings. Hours later, federal and state authorities said investigators had found no evidence of an act of terrorism, though circumstances surrounding the crash on the Rainbow Bridge remained murky, leaving it to be determined whether it was accidental or intentional. "At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist attack" or threat to the public, New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters on Wednesday evening. Her comments were echoed by federal and local law enforcement officials at a separate news conference. The FBI said in a statement it had concluded its investigation. "A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified," the FBI said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Video of the crash caught on security camera and posted to X by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency showed the car traveling from the U.S. side at high speed, then hitting an object and flying into the air before crashing to the ground and exploding in flames. The driver and a passenger perished in the wreck, and a CBP officer suffered minor injuries. He was treated at a hospital and released, an agency official said later. Authorities did not identify the two people killed. CNN reported the driver was a 56-year-old man who was traveling in a Bentley automobile with his wife to attend a concert by the rock group KISS. A performance of the band scheduled for Wednesday in Toronto as part of the group's farewell tour was canceled after one of its members, Paul Stanley, came down with flu. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on its website the Buffalo Niagara International Airport had closed, but Hochul said there were no interruptions. 'HEIGHTENED ALERT' The crash unfolded at a time of heightened security concerns around the world stemming from the conflict in the Middle East and at the peak of U.S. holiday travel on the eve of Thanksgiving celebrations. The Rainbow Bridge and all three other border crossings along the Niagara River between western New York and the Canadian province of Ontario - the Peace Bridge, the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and the Whirlpool Bridge - were shut for several hours as a precaution. Other international crossings remained open on "heightened alert status," the governor said. Security measures were escalated at other airports and railways managed by the Niagara-Frontier Transit Authority, as well as at various locations around New York City, officials said. The three bridges that were not involved were reopened early Wednesday evening, but the Rainbow crossing remained closed during the investigation and as officials assessed the crossing's safety. Hochul said the car that crashed sailed over an 8-foot-tall fence before landing in a fireball that incinerated the vehicle, leaving little but the engine visibly intact and scattering debris over more than a dozen security booths on the bridge. Witness Mike Guenther told Buffalo television station WGRZ-TV that he was walking near the bridge with his wife when the car, traveling at high speed, struck a fence at the crossing and was catapulted into the air before exploding. He was flying, over 100 miles an hour," said Guenther, who was visiting from Kitchener, Ontario. He said the vehicle, which he described as a luxury sedan, was "fish-tailing" out of control before it crashed. It was a ball of fire, 30 or 40 feet high, never seen anything like it, said Guenther. (Reporting by Ted Hesson and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Additional reporting by Ismail Shakil, Katharine Jackson, Daphne Psaledakis, Susan Heavey, Daniel Trotta, Andrew Hay, Ward Jasper, Makini Brice, Gabriella Borter, Joseph Ax, Richard Cowan and Daniel Whitcomb; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by David Gregorio and Leslie Adler) FILE PHOTO: A view for an empty Pizza Hut restaurant as a result of the boycott of Western brands in Egypt due to the Israeli bombardment in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Cairo, Egypt, November By Farah Saafan and Suleiman Al-Khalidi CAIRO (Reuters) -On a recent evening in Cairo, a worker cleaned tables in an empty McDonald's restaurant. Branches of other Western fast-food chains in the Egyptian capital also appeared deserted. All have been hit by a largely spontaneous, grassroots boycott campaign over Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip since the deadly Hamas attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Western brands are feeling the impact in Egypt and Jordan, and there are signs the campaign is spreading in some other Arab countries including Kuwait and Morocco. Participation has been uneven with only minor effects seen in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Some of companies the campaign is directed at are perceived to have taken pro-Israeli stances, and some are alleged to have financial ties to Israel or investments there. As the campaign has started to spread, boycott calls circulated on social media have expanded to list dozens of companies and products, prompting shoppers to shift to local alternatives. In Egypt, where there is little chance of people taking to the streets because of security restrictions, some see the boycott as the best or only way to make their voices heard. "I feel that even if I know this will not have a massive impact on the war, then this is the least we can do as citizens of different nations so we don't feel like our hands are covered in blood," said 31-year-old Cairo resident Reham Hamed, who is boycotting U.S. fast food chains and some cleaning products. In Jordan, pro-boycott residents sometimes enter McDonald's and Starbucks branches to encourage scarce customers to take their business elsewhere. Videos have circulated of what appear to be Israeli troops washing clothes with well-known detergent brands which viewers are urged to boycott. "No one is buying these products," said Ahmad al-Zaro, a cashier at a large supermarket in the capital Amman where customers were choosing local brands instead. In Kuwait City on Tuesday evening, a tour of seven branches of Starbucks, McDonald's and KFC found them nearly empty. In Rabat, the capital of Morocco, a worker at a Starbucks branch said the number of customers had dropped off significantly this week. The worker and the company gave no figures. McDonald's Corp said in a statement last month that it was "dismayed" by disinformation regarding its position on the conflict and that its doors were open to all. Its Egyptian franchise has underlined its Egyptian ownership and pledged 20 million Egyptian pounds ($650,000) in aid to Gaza. Asked for comment, Starbucks referred to a statement on its website about its operations in the Middle East that was updated in October. The statement said the company was a non-political organisation and dismissed rumours that it had provided support to the Israeli government or army. Starbucks, which earlier this month reported record revenues for the fourth quarter, said it had nothing further to share on its business. Other Western companies did not immediately respond to requests by Reuters for comment. 'UNPRECEDENTED REACTION' The boycott campaigns have spread in countries where pro-Palestinian sentiment has traditionally been strong. Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel decades ago, but those deals did not lead to a popular rapprochement. The protests also reflect a groundswell of anger over an Israeli military operation that is more destructive than previous offensives, causing a humanitarian crisis and killing 13,300 civilians, according to authorities in Hamas-run Gaza. Israel said about 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, and that about 240 were taken hostage. Previous boycott campaigns in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, had less impact, including those advocated by the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. "The scale of the aggression against the Gaza strip is unprecedented. Therefore, the reaction, whether on the Arab street or even internationally, is unprecedented," said Hossam Mahmoud, a member of BDS Egypt. Some campaigners have singled out Starbucks for suing its workers' union over a post on the Israel-Hamas conflict, and McDonald's after its Israeli franchise said it gave free meals to Israeli military personnel. An employee at McDonald's corporate offices in Egypt who asked not to be named said the Egyptian franchise's October and November sales fell by at least 70% compared to the same months last year. "We are struggling to cover our own expenses during this time," the employee said. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the figures the employee provided. Sameh El Sadat, an Egyptian politician and co-founder of TBS Holding, a supplier to Starbucks and McDonald's, said he had noticed a drop or slowdown of about 50% in demand from his clients. UNEVEN TAKE-UP Despite efforts by targeted brands to defend themselves and retain business with special offers, boycott campaigns have continued catching on, in some cases outside the Arab world. In Muslim-majority Malaysia, a worker at a McDonald's in Putrajaya, Malaysia's administrative capital, said the branch was seeing about 20% fewer customers, a figure that Reuters was not immediately able to verify. Ride-hailing app Grab also faced calls for a boycott in Malaysia after the chief executive's wife said she had fallen "completely in love" with Israel during visits there. She later said the posts were taken out of context. The Malaysian arms of Grab and McDonald's said following the boycott calls that they would donate aid for Palestinians. Earlier this month, Turkey's parliament removed Coca-Cola and Nestle products from its restaurants, with a parliamentary source citing a "public outcry" against the brands although no big Turkish company or state agency has cut ties with Israel. Take-up of boycotts has been uneven, with no major impact seen in some countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Tunisia. Even where boycotts have a wider following, some people are sceptical they can have much effect. "If we really want to boycott and support these people (Palestinians), we take arms and fight with them...Otherwise, no," said Cairo kiosk owner Issam Abu Shalaby. ($1 = 30.9000 Egyptian pounds) (Reporting by Farah Saafan, Sarah El Safty and Mai ShamsElDin in Cairo, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, Danial Azhar in Kuala Lumpur, Ahmed Hagagy in Kuwait City, Jonathan Spicer in Istanbul; Additional reporting by Deborah Mary Sophia; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) By Andrius Sytas VILNIUS (Reuters) -Estonia's interior minister accused Russia on Wednesday of being involved in "a hybrid attack operation" to bring migrants to its border, aiming to undermine security and unsettle the Baltic state's population. About 30 migrants, largely from Somalia and Syria, have attempted to enter Estonia from Russia through the Narva crossing point since last Thursday, Estonia's interior ministry said. None have asked for asylum and all were turned back, it said. Estonia has made preparations to close border crossings if "the migration pressure from Russia escalates", and to deal with migrants if they try to enter outside official crossings, Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets told Reuters through a spokesperson. "Unfortunately, there are many signs that Russian border officials and possibly other agencies are involved", said the minister. "Quite frankly, (the) ongoing migration pressure on Europes eastern border is a hybrid attack operation", he added. Russian officials were not immediately available to comment. Estonia's neighbour Finland said on Tuesday Russian authorities were likely directly involved in more than 500 asylum seekers, mostly from Yemen, Somalia, Syria and Iraq, arriving in a sudden surge from Russia over the past two weeks. On Monday, the Kremlin denied Russia was deliberately pushing illegal migrants towards the Finnish border and said Russian border guards were carrying out their duties in line with the rules. Laanemets said migrants were appearing at the Estonian border points "in an orchestrated manner and in groups of 7-11 people", and Russian border guards were filming with a pre-prepared recorder as migrants were turned back by the Estonians on Monday. The video then appeared in Russian media within hours, said the minister, adding a request from Estonian border guards to Russian colleagues to stop letting people through without European Union entry documents had not been heeded. The situation at the Estonian-Russian border is "similar" to that in Latvia and Lithuania at their borders with Belarus, the minister said. The two countries and Poland have accused Belarus of orchestrating the arrival of thousands of Middle Eastern and African migrants at their borders since 2021. Belarus has denied the allegation. (Reporting by Andrius Sytas in VilniusEditing by Mark Potter, Kirsten Donovan) FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed logo of Facebook parent Meta Platforms is seen in front of displayed Google logo in this illustration taken on November 2, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU lawmakers agreed on Wednesday to draft rules requiring Alphabet's Google, Meta and other online services to identify and remove online child pornography, saying that end-to-end encryption would not be affected. The draft rule on child sexual abuse material (CSAM), proposed by the European Commission last year, has been a bone of contention between advocates of online safety measures and privacy activists worried about surveillance. The European Union executive came up with the CSAM proposal after the current system of voluntary detection and reporting by companies proved to be insufficient to protect children. EU lawmakers have to thrash out the final details with member states before the draft can become legislation in a process that may be finalised next year. The proposed legislation forces messaging services, app stores and internet access providers to report and remove known and new images and videos, as well as cases of grooming. An EU Centre on Child Sexual Abuse will be set up to act as a hub of expertise and to forward reports to the police. To avoid mass surveillance, EU lawmakers beefed up detection orders to allow judicial authorities to authorise time-limited orders to find and delete CSAM. These can only be issued if there is reasonable grounds of suspicion of child sexual abuse. Companies would also be able to choose the technology used to detect such offences, as long as this is subject to an independent, public audit. The decision by lawmakers to exempt end-to-end encryption from the draft rules drew praise from privacy activists. "The European Parliament's position removes indiscriminate chat control and allows only for targeted surveillance of specific individuals and groups reasonably suspicious of being linked to child sexual abuse material with a judicial warrant," The European Liberal Youth (LYMEC) said. (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Alexander Smith) FILE PHOTO: Firefighting helicopters fly over Aguamansa, as wildfires rage out of control on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain August 18, 2023. REUTERS/Borja Suarez/File Photo By Kate Abnett BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a forest monitoring system that will use satellites to track threats such as climate change-fuelled wildfires and illegal logging. Climate change is taking a mounting toll on Europe's forests, as extreme heat and drought increase the risk of deadly wildfires. Nearly 900,000 hectares of EU land was burned in forest fires last year, an area roughly the size of Corsica, EU data show. The degradation of Europe's forests spells trouble since their CO2-storing capacity is needed to meet climate targets and protect surrounding areas from flooding. On Wednesday, the Commission proposed a law that would see Brussels collect forest data from the EU's Copernicus Sentinel satellites. EU member states would also be obliged to gather ground measurements of trends including the areas available for logging, the volume of trees and the location of ancient forests. "We need to see the trends, need to predict better, we need to see how they are responding to climate change," EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius told Reuters. "At this moment there are no comprehensive monitoring requirements to provide an overall picture of the state of our forests," he said. The new data will also help track other risks, like illegal logging, across national borders, Sinkevicius said. The EU has clashed with countries including Poland over this issue. The European Court of Justice ruled in March that Poland's policy of allowing logging during birds' breeding seasons breached EU environment laws. The court also ruled in 2018 against Warsaw's authorisation of logging in the ancient Bialowieza forest. Campaign group Fern welcomed the EU proposal as "a potentially golden opportunity" to provide the data needed to protect Europe's forests. However, the group said the law should go further and compel EU countries to then take action to improve forests' health. Brussels says forest data currently provided by member states has gaps and often long delays, hampering their ability to prepare for climate hazards. (Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Christina Fincher) FILE PHOTO: View shows Sigma Lithium Corp SGML.V production at the Grota do Cirilo mine in Itinga, in Minas Gerais state, Brazil April 18, 2023. REUTERS/Washington Alves/File Photo By Fabio Teixeira RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The former co-CEO of Sigma Lithium, a leader in Brazil's budding lithium sector, was fired earlier this year for trading its shares during a quarterly earnings blackout period, according to legal correspondence in a civil lawsuit, trading data and two people familiar with the matter. Vancouver-based Sigma Lithium, which did not reply to questions about the dismissal, gave no reason to investors when announcing the exit of Calvyn Gardner, who was co-CEO with his wife Ana Cabral-Gardner until January 2023. Gardner's ouster touched off a series of lawsuits in Brazil and the United States, along with a broader management shakeup, revealing boardroom turmoil at the lithium miner as it tries to sell itself to car firms and big battery industry players. Gardner and Cabral-Gardner, who are getting divorced, did not respond to requests for comment. Previously unreported legal correspondence show the company told Gardner's lawyers in a July letter that he was dismissed over share sales in January. His lawyers acknowledged those trades in a letter to Sigma in August, but said he had been unaware of the firm's restrictions on what they described as "routine" trading. Public data from Canada's System for Electronic Disclosure by Insiders (SEDI) shows that Gardner sold 500,000 shares for about $13.3 million between Jan. 11 and 12, ahead of Sigma's planned annual report. It is not a crime to trade during a blackout period, two legal experts told Reuters, but any trades based on material nonpublic information would be considered a violation under North American securities law. The company said in its July 31 letter to Gardner's lawyers that he "possessed and may have used" privileged information "relating to the company's ongoing M&A process" in the trades. In their Aug. 4 reply, his lawyers denied he had traded using any non-public material information. Sigma, which is listed in Toronto and New York, did not respond to questions about its restrictions on insider trading. The Canadian Securities Administrators did not reply to a request for comment on whether Gardner's trades could be a securities violation and whether they were under investigation. A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission spokesperson declined to comment. Blackout periods for trading by insiders are a common corporate restriction ahead of quarterly results, when executives and board members are most likely to have nonpublic information that could affect share prices. Stephen Cohen, head of the regulatory practice at Sidley Austin LLP, said corporate discipline can vary for insider trading during blackout periods. Minor violations can lead to a warning, while trading with material nonpublic information is often a fireable offense, he said. Gardner's lawyers accused Sigma in the correspondence of acting disproportionately and in "bad faith" when it fired him. They cited the fact that another Sigma insider, Vicente Lobo Cruz, traded during a blackout period and went unpunished. Cruz, who is co-chair of the Sigma board's technical committee, sold 184,190 shares on Aug. 5, 2022, two weeks ahead of Sigma's quarterly results, according to SEDI data. Cruz did not reply to a request for comment. Reuters could not determine if Cruz was investigated or punished by Sigma. Two people with knowledge of the situation said tension had been mounting last year between the co-CEOs, and Cabral-Gardner seized on her husband's trading as justification to convince Sigma's board members to fire Gardner. After leaving Sigma, Gardner filed at least four lawsuits against his wife in Brazilian courts seeking to revert her decisions involving their shared assets. One of them included his lawyers' correspondence with Sigma about his dismissal over the January trading. In August, Sigma sued Gardner in New York, for allegedly misappropriating documents from the firm. Gardner has not commented on the case. (Reporting by Fabio Teixeira; Editing by Gabriel Stargardter, Brad Haynes and Rosalba O'Brien) Israeli tanks take position near a border with Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Amir Cohen (Reuters) -Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas began a four-day truce on Friday morning, with the first of four daily exchanges of hostages held in Gaza in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails taking place later each day. WHAT ARE THE DETAILS OF THE DEAL? Under the Israel-Hamas deal, the two sides agreed to a four-day truce so that 50 women, children and teenagers under the age of 19 taken hostage could be freed in return for 150 Palestinian women and teenagers in Israeli detention. The deal includes agreement to allow more emergency aid and fuel into Gaza. The hostages, among about 240 taken by Hamas in their Oct. 7 raid on Israel, have been released in groups of a dozen or so each day in exchange for groups of Palestinian prisoners. As of Sunday, 40 Israelis - some of them holding dual citizenship - had been released, according to an Israeli tally. In addition 17 Thai citizens and one Filipino - farm workers employed in southern Israel when they were seized - were freed under a separate agreement. Those involved in the deal for the Israeli hostages have described the break in hostilities as "a humanitarian pause". Qatar's chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, said that while the truce was in place there would be "no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing." WHEN DID THE DEAL START AND CAN IT BE EXTENDED? The truce began at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) on Friday. If not extended, it was due to end some time on Tuesday. The pause can be extended by a day for each additional batch of at least 10 hostages released by Hamas. An Israeli official would not say when precisely the truce would expire, telling Reuters that "it's a fluid situation". To secure an extension, the official said that Hamas had to produce a new list of hostages it proposed to release and that this had to be approved by Israel. In return, Israel would free three times the number of Palestinian prisoners. The official said the exchange process could last for a maximum of four days beyond the four days initially agreed, based on an Israeli calculation that there were 100 women and children held in Gaza. If that took place, the deal could last until Saturday, Dec. 2. From the start, Israel provided a list of 300 Palestinians it said it was ready to release in return for a total of 100 hostages. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE TRUCE ENDS? According to an Israeli cabinet decision, Israel is committed to resuming its offensive against Hamas in Gaza immediately once the truce expires. Hamas said when details of the agreement were announced that its "fingers remain on the trigger" throughout the truce. HOW IS THE DEAL BEING IMPLEMENTED? The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is working in Gaza to facilitate the release of hostages, Qatar said. Hostages have been transported through the Rafah crossing to Egypt, the only country apart from Israel to share a border with Gaza. In return, Palestinians have been released from Israeli jails and taken to Jerusalem and Ramallah, the West Bank city which is home to the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. During the truce, trucks loaded with aid and fuel have crossed into Gaza, where 2.3 million people have been running out of food and many hospitals have shut down in part because they no longer have fuel for their generators. Qatar said that an operations room in the Qatari capital would monitor the truce and the exchange and that it had direct lines of communication with Israel, the Hamas political office in Doha and the ICRC. Doha has helped iron out glitches, including working to resolve concerns raised by both sides over lists of those being freed. WHO ARE THE HOSTAGES BEING RELEASED? The Israeli hostages released by Hamas have included children, some of their mothers and elderly women. As well as Israeli civilians and soldiers taken on Oct. 7, more than half the roughly 240 hostages are foreign and dual nationals from about 40 countries including Argentina, Britain, Chile, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Thailand and the U.S., Israel's government has said. U.S. President Joe Biden said on Sunday among those freed was a 4-year-old American hostage. Not all the hostages taken on Oct. 7 are held by Hamas fighters. WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS BEING FREED AND WHY WERE THEY HELD? As part of the exchange, Israel has freed women and teenagers from Israeli jails. The Palestinian Prisoners Society said before the exchange began that 7,200 Palestinian prisoners were being held by Israel, among them 88 women and 250 children 17 and under. Most on Israel's list of those to be freed are from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jerusalem and were held for incidents such as attempted stabbings, hurling stones at Israeli soldiers, making explosives, damaging property and having contacts with hostile organisations. None are accused of murder. Many were held under Israeli administrative detention, meaning they were detained without trial. WHO NEGOTIATED THE DEAL? Qatar played a major mediation role. Hamas has a political office in Doha and the Qatari government has kept channels of communication open with Israel, even though unlike some other Gulf Arab states it has not normalised ties with Israel. The U.S. also played a crucial role, with the U.S. president holding calls with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the weeks leading up to the deal. Egypt, the first Arab state to sign a peace deal with Israel and which has long played a mediation role over the decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has also been involved. WHY HAS IT TAKEN SO LONG TO NEGOTIATE? The deal was announced 46 days after the start of the war, one of the most fierce conflicts to erupt between the two sides. Hamas fighters killed 1,200 people when they launched their raid on Israel, the biggest single-day toll on Israeli soil since its creation in 1948. As of Sunday, about 14,800 people in Gaza had been killed in the Israeli offensive, the most by far of any recent war. Amid such ferocious fighting, the large number of hostages and Israel's stated determination to wipe out Hamas in Gaza, mediating even a temporary deal, like this one, proved far more challenging than in previous conflicts. The initial negotiations for a deal between Israel and Hamas, both sworn enemies, began within days of the Oct. 7 attack but progress was slow. This was partly because communications had to go via Doha or Cairo on every detail. In 2014, when Israel last launched a major land invasion in Gaza, it took 49 days for both sides to implement a ceasefire deal, but that ended major fighting for several years. (Editing by Edmund Blair) A Louis Vuitton logo is seen outside a store on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris, France, June 27, 2023. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/File Photo PARIS (Reuters) - LVMH Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnaults five children are increasingly stepping into the spotlight as they move up the ranks of the luxury empire. All five of the Arnault children hold key management roles at brands in the company. DELPHINE ARNAULT, 48, became chairman and CEO of fashion label Christian Dior Couture in February. She was previously executive vice president of Louis Vuitton, in charge of products. She has also served as deputy managing director of Christian Dior Couture, and is a member of LVMH's board of directors and the group's executive committee. Delphine graduated from French business school EDHEC and the London School of Economics. ANTOINE ARNAULT, 46, is head of communications, image and environment for LVMH as well as chairman and CEO of LVMH holding company Christian Dior SE. He has been CEO of the upscale menswear and shoe label Berluti since 2012, and will remain chairman of the label when he steps down as CEO in January 2024. He has been chairman of Italian cashmere specialist Loro Piana since 2013. Previously head of communications at Louis Vuitton, he is a member of LVMH's board of directors. Antoine has degrees from French business school INSEAD and Canadian business school HEC Montreal. ALEXANDRE ARNAULT, 31, is executive vice president, in charge of product and communications at Tiffany. He was previously CEO of luggage-maker Rimowa, a position he held for four years starting in 2016. Alexandre has a masters degree from French university Ecole Polytechnique. FREDERIC ARNAULT, 29, has been CEO of Tag Heuer since 2020. He was previously head of strategy and digital director at the watch label, which he joined in 2017. Frederic is a graduate of France's Ecole Polytechnique. JEAN ARNAULT, 25, has been director of marketing and development of Louis Vuitton's watches division since August 2021, when he joined. Jean has a masters degree in financial mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in mechanical engineering from Imperial College in London. (Reporting by Mimosa Spencer; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Louise Heavens) Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, attends an open dialogue with students at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan June 12, 2023. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo By Jody Godoy (Reuters) -Few people can force OpenAI to change governance at the crisis-stricken artificial-intelligence company, and the head of Microsoft, a major financial backer, is not one of them, according to legal experts. The nonprofit board overseeing the maker of the popular ChatGPT chatbot sent shock waves through Silicon Valley on Friday by abruptly firing Chief Executive Sam Altman. Nearly all of the company's 700 employees signed a letter threatening to resign if the board does not step down, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has called for governance changes. Microsoft did not immediately return a request for comment made after business hours on Tuesday. The turmoil has left investors weighing their legal options and illustrated a divide over how the potentially disruptive technology can be developed safely. Because it is a nonprofit, the only people who could force the current board of OpenAI to step down or change are judges or state attorneys general, said Alexander Reid, an attorney at BakerHostetler who counsels nonprofit organizations. Attorneys general oversee and investigate nonprofits, and have wide latitude to seek reforms. "Even if they don't go to court, their mere presence typically gets results," he said. Attorneys general can enact everything from leadership changes to complete shutdown of an organization, usually after finding fraud or illegal conflicts of interest. Hershey Co is one example. The trust that controls the candymaker agreed in 2016 to replace certain board members after the Pennsylvania attorney general challenged the trust's spending. Darryll Jones, a law professor at Florida A&M University, said the U.S. Internal Revenue Service is another source of accountability. "There is a whole boatload of scholarship noting that nonprofit enforcement is severely lacking, but for the most part nonprofits are pretty good at self-policing if only to avoid scandal that would impact donations," he said. OpenAI's for-profit arm was under the full control of a nonprofit, an arrangement meant to insulate decisions about a potentially powerful technology from being driven by corporate greed. Because of that, investors who have collectively plowed billions of dollars into the startup face hurdles to suing the board over Altman's firing, though sources have told Reuters some are considering legal action. Under OpenAI's bylaws, only directors can remove or elect new board members. The arrangement, known as a self-perpetuating board, is very common in the nonprofit world, said Reid. There are currently four people on the board: three independent directors, and OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The latter worked with the other board members to remove Altman and former President Greg Brockman, but has since said he "deeply regret(s)" the action. Outside of government enforcers, Sutskever may now be the only person in a position to formally challenge the board's decision. Board members can sue other board members, either directly or on behalf of the organization, for failing to exercise their duties, said Reid. But typically such court battles are fought only when there is suspected malfeasance connected with spending or compensation, he said. In fights over organizational direction or control, the more common play is for the organization to split. "You just form another nonprofit that does it slightly differently," he said. OpenAI has already survived one such break. The cofounders of Anthropic, who were also executives at OpenAI until 2020, had broken from their employer over disagreements regarding how to ensure AI's safe development and governance. Whether OpenAI survives the rift between its board and employees will likely be determined in the next few days. (Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Tom Hals and Matthew Lewis) BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov met with Hungarian Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Peter Szijjarto and Hungarian Energy Minister Csaba Lantos in Budapest, Azerbaijan's Energy Ministry told Trend. During the meeting with Peter Szijjarto, the need of speeding the processes linked to the establishment of the Joint Venture (JV) was emphasized, as was satisfaction with the results of the ministerial meeting on the development and transfer of green energy. "It was noted that the transport of huge quantities of "green" energy from Azerbaijan will play an important role in the successful execution of the "Caspian-Black Sea-European Green Energy Corridor." It was also mentioned that Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are interested in transferring electricity from Central Asia to Europe via this corridor. The strategic value of the project was evaluated in terms of building a bridge between Azerbaijan and the European Union, particularly Hungary," the ministry said. The importance of supplying Azerbaijani gas to the Hungarian market was mentioned at the meeting. Prospects of gas supplies from Azerbaijan on a long-term basis, as well as development of cooperation with Hungarian companies in oil and gas projects were discussed. The discussion of cooperation with Hungary in the field of hydrocarbons and green energy was continued at the meeting with Energy Minister Csaba Lantos. There was a broad exchange of views on expanding ties with MOL and MVM companies, as well as on the feasibility study (FS) process of the Green Energy Corridor project, and on the transmission of electricity to Europe. It was agreed that Hungary will provide practical support for the processes related to the connection to the European Association of Transmission System Operators of Electricity (ENTSO-E) network. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel By Essi Lehto HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland is considering closing some of the four remaining crossing points on its frontier with Russia or even the whole border if a flow of asylum seekers from its neighbour continues, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told Reuters on Wednesday. In November, more than 600 people without valid travel documents to the European Union have come to Finland via Russia, prompting Helsinki to shut several crossings and accuse Moscow of funnelling migrants. The Kremlin denies the charge. The asylum seekers come from a wide range of nations including Yemen, Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, according to immigration authorities. "We have already taken measures to close border crossing points, and if need be, we will be doing further closings," Valtonen said in an interview, adding that closing the entire border was one option the government was currently discussing. An announcement on border restrictions will be made at 1700 GMT, the government later said. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that Russia will "of course" respond if Finland closes the remaining border posts between the two countries. Zakharova did not say what Moscow's reaction would be. Her comments were made before the Reuters interview with Valtonen. Finland's reception of asylum applications could be moved to a location away from the land border, Valtonen said, but added her country would still adhere to its international obligations and ensure asylum could be sought by "people in true need". STRENGTHENED BORDER SECURITY Finland joined the NATO military alliance earlier this year in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and had already passed laws to strengthen security on the Russian border last year, fearing Russia's retaliation to its membership would come in the form of orchestrated migration. The new laws were crafted to enable blocking the 1,340-km (830-mile) frontier and make it possible for the government to direct asylum applications to just one or several border crossings, such as an airport in exceptional circumstances. Finland has asked the EU's border Agency Frontex for help in managing the situation, EU commissioner Ylva Johansson said in a speech on Monday. "Finland has now requested additional operational support from Frontex of up to 60 standing corps officers in the coming weeks," she said. Valtonen confirmed observations by the Finnish border guards and said Finnish decision-makers had additional evidence that the Russian border service was transporting the migrants to the border but declined to reveal her sources. She noted that temperatures in the north were currently dropping to minus 20 degrees Celsius (-4F), making the crossings perilous if migrants did not have sufficient clothing. "It is even dangerous and life threatening to use such means that Russia is now using," she said. Valtonen said Finland had tried discussing the matter with Russia but Moscow had so far declined to engage in dialogue. On Wednesday, 51 migrants arrived from Russia to apply for asylum at the Salla border crossing and at least 11 at Vartius in Northern Finland, the Border Guard said. (Reporting by Essi Lehto; Editing by Anne Kauranen, Terje Solsvik and Frances Kerry) Chief of the Finnish Border Guard, Lieutenant General Pasi Kostamovaara, looks on as Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo speaks at a press briefing during a visit at the Vartius border crossing station in Kuhmo, Eastern Finland, November 20, 2023. Lehti By Essi Lehto HELSINKI (Reuters) -Finland will close all but the northernmost crossing point on its border with Russia from midnight on Friday in a bid to halt a flow of asylum seekers to the Nordic nation, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Wednesday. Since the beginning of the month, more than 600 people without valid travel documents to the European Union have come to Finland via Russia, prompting Helsinki to shut several crossings and accuse Moscow of funnelling migrants. The Kremlin denies the charge. "The government has today decided to close more border stations," Orpo told a press conference. The asylum seekers come from a range of nations including Yemen, Afghanistan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria, according to immigration authorities. The European Union border agency Frontex plans to deploy officers and equipment to Finland as soon as next week in response to a request from Helsinki, a spokesperson said. EU migration commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Tuesday Finland had asked for 60 Frontex officers on top of 10 already stationed along its 1,340-kilometre frontier with Russia. Earlier on Wednesday, Estonia accused Russia of involvement in "a hybrid attack operation" to bring migrants to its border, after 75 migrants - mostly from Somalia and Syria - attempted to enter from Russia since last week. The Baltic country said it had prepared to close border crossings if migration pressure from Russia rose, and to deal with migrants if they tried to enter outside official crossings. The Finnish border guard said on Wednesday that unauthorized entries continued at crossing points with Russia and had moved further north along the border to Vartius and Salla, two frontier stations that still accepted asylum applications. Finland said Russia was letting migrants through those two crossing points by foot despite an agreement that they could only be crossed by car. "There are growing signs that the situation is worsening on the eastern border," Orpo said. Finland will shut three of the four remaining border crossing points from midnight on Friday, leaving only the Raja-Jooseppi crossing in the Arctic open. All other crossings will be shut until Dec. 23, also for Finns wanting to enter Russia. "Raja-Jooseppi is the northernmost (border crossing) and it requires a real effort to get there," Orpo said. The government will seek to amend legislation that prevents it from closing the entire border, he added. President Sauli Niinisto said on Monday repatriating people who do not meet the criteria for asylum had become impossible and called for an EU-wide solution to stop uncontrollable entry to Europe's passport-free Schengen area. The Kremlin said on Monday it had lodged a formal protest over Finland's partial border closure, saying the decision reflected an anti-Russian stance. In 2021, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia accused Moscow's close ally Belarus of artificially creating a migrant crisis on their borders by flying in people from the Middle East and Africa and attempting to push them across the frontier - an accusation Belarus repeatedly denied. (Reporting by Essi Lehto; writing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; editing by Alexandra Hudson, Christina Fincher and Mark Heinrich) FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: A smartphone with a displayed Intel logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo/File Photo BERLIN (Reuters) - The negative court ruling on German finances last week could cost Intel billions of euros in subsidies for planned chip-making plants in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, the state economy minister was quoted as saying by magazine WirtschaftsWoche. Berlin had agreed subsidies worth nearly 10 billion euros with the U.S. chipmaker, a person familiar with the matter had told Reuters when Intel announced its plans. "When Germany cannot afford such future projects like Intel anymore, then the economic damage will be enormous and the image damage gigantic," Sven Schulze, economy minister of Saxony-Anhalt was quoted as saying. (Reporting by Matthias Williams; Writing by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Madeline Chambers) FILE PHOTO: The San Francisco skyline is seen behind a self-driving GM Bolt EV during a media event where Cruise, GM's autonomous car unit, showed off its self-driving cars in San Francisco, California, U.S. November 28, 2017. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/Fil By Samrhitha A and David Shepardson (Reuters) -General Motors' robotaxi unit Cruise is planning to re-launch in one unspecified city before expanding to others, just weeks after California barred its self-driving vehicles from public roads following an accident last month. Cruise last week paused all supervised and manual car trips in the United States while also expanding a safety review of its robotaxis, causing tumult within the company and compelling its CEO Kyle Vogt and chief product officer Daniel Kan to step down. It is also a setback for an industry dependent on public trust and the cooperation of regulators. Cruise had in recent months touted ambitious plans to expand to more cities, offering fully autonomous taxi rides. "Once we have taken steps to improve our safety culture and rebuild trust, our strategy is to re-launch in one city and prove our performance there, before expanding," the company said in a statement. The GM unit said it would focus on the Bolt-based Cruise AVs in the near term with a longer term strategy around the Origin, a multi-passenger vehicle designed without a steering wheel or other controls for operation by a human driver. It told employees in an email, which was read to Reuters, that it will also cut some jobs, "primarily in non-engineering roles" and would provide more details in mid-December. A GM spokesman said its finance chief Paul Jacobson would likely address the financial impact on the automaker during a call with analysts scheduled for Nov. 29. Before Cruise suspended operations, GM CEO Mary Barra had said Cruise and its autonomous vehicle technology could generate $50 billion in revenue by 2030, making the robotaxi business a big piece of her strategy to double revenue to $280 billion. GM lost more than $700 million at Cruise in the third quarter and more than $8 billion since 2016. Meanwhile, it now faces higher labor costs under a new United Auto Workers contract, slower-than-expected sales of its electric vehicles and costly new emissions standards from Washington. GM's troubles have led to a 16% slide in its shares so far this year, compared with a near 19% rise in the broader S&P 500 index. "Investors will be watching closely to evaluate whether management sees GM's challenges as limited to Cruise or if there is broader discussion about capital allocation across GM's portfolio," Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note Wednesday. NOT IN SAN FRANCISCO GM and Cruise did not disclose the city where it would relaunch operations but it is unlikely to be in San Francisco, where the accident took place. The incident involved another vehicle and ended with one of its self-driving taxis dragging a pedestrian. California authorities have pulled the company's license to operate driverless rides. Cruise has operations in Phoenix and Austin, where regulators have been more accommodating. Its rival Waymo too has extensive operations in the cities. As part of its previous expansion plans, Cruise had last year asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for permission to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles annually without human controls. Without government approval, GM cannot deploy the Origin on public roads. The NHTSA said in July it "will issue a decision in the coming weeks" before the accident raised questions about safety. Cruise also said it would compensate employees for potential tax liability of shares granted by the company. It had last week decided to make a new tender offer to allow them to sell shares, two days after cancelling an earlier offer. Suspension of the program had sparked backlash from some employees who said they would face heavy tax burdens on the stocks that were vested at a much higher valuation on Oct. 15. (Reporting by Samrhitha Arunasalam in Bengaluru, David Shepardson in Washington and Joe White in Detroit; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Arun Koyyur) BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary's main border crossing with Ukraine saw long queues on Wednesday, the customs authority said, with haulers re-routing from crossings in Poland and Slovakia amid blockades there as truckers seek restrictions on Ukrainian drivers. Trucks at the Poland-Ukraine crossing are backed up for miles as Polish truckers have blocked roads to three border crossings in a protest, now in its second week. In Slovakia, the main border crossing with Ukraine was also blocked on Tuesday, although the country's haulers' union called it the action of a single truck. The group has still warned it could join Polish truckers in protest. Truckers have sought to win restrictions on the number of Ukrainian trucks entering the European Union. Truckers from Ukraine have been exempt from seeking permits to cross since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Polish and Slovak drivers say that has undercut business. The spillover of long border queues hit Hungary on Wednesday, with the main border crossing, Zahony, seeing long queues of trucks waiting to enter Ukraine. Authorities were stepping up efforts to let the increased traffic through their border, the Hungarian Tax and Customs Authority said, but the "capacity of the Tisza bridge and the crossing point is severely limiting their possibilities." Slovak news website Dennik N reported that the blockage at the Slovakia-Ukraine crossing that started around midday on Tuesday ended just before midnight, although queues there remained. Polish truckers will also begin blocking the Medyka crossing together with farmers on Thursday, a protest organizer said. Ukraine and Poland held talks on the blockages at their border last week but did not report any progress. The sides were to have talks with the EU on Wednesday. On Sunday, Ukrainian authorities said about 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks, including those carrying fuel and humanitarian aid, were stuck on the Polish side of the border. (Reporting by Boldizsar Gyori; Editing by Jason Hovet and Bernadette Baum) BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's ruling Fidesz party submitted a bill on "protecting national sovereignty" to parliament on Tuesday to defend against what it called undue political interference by foreign persons or groups. The legislation comes as nationalist Orban, who over the past 13 years has clashed repeatedly with the European Union over democratic rights in Hungary, has stepped up his party's campaign ahead of European Parliament elections next June. Orban, in power since 2010, has denied accusations he was undermining democracy in the ex-Communist satellite. The bill would set up a separate authority to explore and monitor risks of political interference and recommend changes in regulations. It would also punish banned foreign financing for parties or groups running for election with up to three years in prison. "Hungary's sovereignty is impaired -- and it also carries a heightened risk to national security -- if political power gets into the hands of persons or organisations dependent on any foreign power, organisation or person," the bill said. Lawmakers will need to debate the bill before its final approval. Orban, who has a two-thirds majority in parliament that allows Fidesz to change any legislation, scored his fourth landslide victory in 2022. The EU has suspended billions of euros of funding to Hungary over a rule-of-law dispute during the tenure of Orban, who has appealed to conservative voters by portraying himself as a defender of Hungary's national interests. The legislation, first proposed in September, coincided with the launch of a billboard campaign vilifying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and a survey with anti-EU tunes about the bloc's policies including funding for Ukraine and talks on EU membership with the war-torn country. (Reporting by Boldizsar Gyori and Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Josie Kao) FILE PHOTO: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves as he arrives at Bharat Mandapam convention center for the G20 Summit, in New Delhi, India, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. Evan Vucci/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo By YP Rajesh and Krishn Kaushik NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged leaders of the world's 20 big economies on Wednesday to do whatever necessary to ensure the Israel-Hamas conflict does not expand into a wider conflict as insecurity and instability in West Asia is worrying. He was speaking at the opening of a virtual summit of G20 nations, of which India holds the presidency before Brazil takes over next month. Modi hosted the summit to review progress on policy suggestions and goals announced at the annual G20 summit organised in New Delhi in September, and to determine how to speed up progress towards objectives. That meeting was overshadowed by Russia's war in Ukraine although members overcame deep divisions over it to produce a consensus document and move forward on issues like overhauling institutions such as the World Bank. Wednesday's summit was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Japan's Fumio Kishida, Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan, Canada's Justin Trudeau, Australia's Anthony Albanese and Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, among others. Modi's comments on the Israel-Hamas war came as the two sides agreed a ceasefire in Gaza for at least four days, to let in aid and release at least 50 hostages captured by militants in exchange for at least 150 Palestinians jailed in Israel. Modi told G20 leaders that "new challenges have emerged" for the world in the past few months. "The situation of insecurity and instability in the West Asian region is a matter of concern for all of us," Modi said. "It is necessary to ensure that the Israel-Hamas conflict does not become any form of a regional conflict. "We believe that terrorism is unacceptable to all of us," he continued. "Deaths of civilians anywhere is condemnable. It is important that humanitarian aid should reach in time and is uninterrupted." India has developed close, strategic ties with Israel since the 1990s but also has longstanding relations with Arab countries that enable large imports of oil for its fast-growing economy. New Delhi has sought to balance these ties in its position on the Israel-Hamas conflict. India has also not blamed its old friend Russia for the Ukraine war, and stressed that conflict should be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy. The Kremlin said on Monday that Putin would set out Russia's view of what it sees as the "deeply unstable world situation" when he addresses the virtual G20 summit. Russian state TV presenter Pavel Zarubin said this would be the "first event in a long time" that includes both Putin and leaders in the West, which has imposed heavy sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. (Reporting by Krishn Kaushik; writing by YP Rajesh; editing by Mark Heinrich) Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi holds a press conference on the opening day of a quarterly meeting of the agency's 35-nation Board of Governors in Vienna, Austria, November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Lisa Leutner By Francois Murphy VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran's barring of some of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's most experienced and expert inspectors from the team allowed to operate there is a "very serious blow" to the agency's work, the watchdog's chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday. Tehran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency in September that it was taking the step, known as de-designation. The IAEA said at the time that while Iran is allowed to do that, the way it was done was unprecedented and harmful to its work. "It's a very serious blow to our capacity to do that," Grossi told a news conference when asked to what extent the move had affected the IAEA's ability to carry out meaningful inspections in Iran. He is urging Tehran to reconsider. Uranium enrichment is the heart of Iran's nuclear programme, and the process by which uranium is purified to levels as high as 60%, close to the roughly 90% that is weapons-grade. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons but no other state has enriched to that level without producing them. The IAEA will not say how many inspectors were de-designated. Diplomats put the number at slightly more than a handful. While that is a fraction of the more than 100 inspectors assigned to Iran, they are among the IAEA's top experts on uranium enrichment, officials said. One diplomat put the number of inspectors barred in this wave at eight, all of them French and German. That left only one enrichment expert in the team assigned to Iran, they added. One senior diplomat put the number of other enrichment experts available with the required know-how at probably fewer than five. "There are not many countries with this type of expertise. And normally countries where this expertise exists are very reluctant to release the expertise. They also were inspectors that were familiar with the facilities, had been there for years inspecting the facilities," the senior diplomat said, referring to the de-designated inspectors. The importance of that experience was illustrated in January when an inspector noticed a subtle but substantial change to a cascade, or cluster, of uranium-enriching centrifuges that Iran had failed to inform the IAEA of. That change caused a spike in the enrichment level to 83.7%, a record. The inspector who spotted that change, a Russian enrichment expert, was de-designated later this year, shortly before the others, numerous diplomats said. (Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Frances Kerry) By Ahmed Rasheed and Timour Azhari BAGHDAD (Reuters) -Iraq's government condemned overnight U.S. airstrikes south of Baghdad that killed eight members of Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group Kataib Hezbollah, saying they were a "dangerous escalation" not coordinated with authorities. The U.S. has carried out two series of strikes in Iraq since Tuesday, in response to more than 60 attacks by Iran-aligned militias against forces in the region, and destroyed a Kataib Hezbollah operations centre and a command and control node. Until this week, the United States had been reluctant to retaliate in Iraq because of the delicate political situation in Baghdad, where they have sought closer cooperation, and in an effort to avoid regional spillover from the Gaza war. The U.S. had previously undertaken three separate sets of strikes in Syria in response to the attacks, which began on Oct. 17 and have been linked by Iraqi militia groups to U.S. support for Israel in its bombardment of Gaza following attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel. Kataib Hezbollah said the strikes in Iraq killed eight of its members in its stronghold of Jurf al-Sakhar, south of Baghdad. In a statement, it threatened to attack a wider array of targets if U.S. strikes continued. The Iraqi government condemned the U.S. strikes as "a clear violation of sovereignty and an attempt to disrupt the stable internal security situation," while also noting attacks by armed groups went against Iraq's national interest. It said in a statement that the strikes were a violation of the advisory role of international forces in Iraq to fight the remnants of the Islamic State militant group - a coalition that a number of factions in Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim ruling coalition say they want ousted. About 24 hours earlier, U.S. forces were attacked by close-range ballistic missiles at Ain al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad, resulting in eight injuries and minor infrastructure damage, U.S. officials said. A U.S. military AC-130 aircraft responded in self-defence, killing Iranian-backed militants, the U.S. officials said. Kataib Hezbollah said one their members was killed in that strike. The group is part of Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a group of many mainly Shi'ite Muslim armed groups that was formed in 2014 to fight Islamic State and subsequently recognised as an official security agency by Iraq's government. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani has limited control over some Iran-backed factions, whose support he needed to win power a year ago and who now form a powerful bloc in his governing coalition. Many of the factions also do not see eye-to-eye on actions against U.S. forces. The United States has 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq on a mission it says aims to advise and assist local forces trying to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State, which in 2014 seized large swaths of both countries before being defeated. (Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Timour Azhari in Baghdad; Writing by Timour Azhari; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Alex Richardson, Bernadette Baum and Andrew Heavens) Irish Tanaiste, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Micheal Martin speaks to members of the media during the 78th United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, U.S., September 19, 2023. REUTERS/Bing Guan DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland plans to drop a decades-long policy of only deploying troops on overseas peacekeeping missions that are authorised by the United Nations, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence Micheal Martin said on Wednesday. While Ireland has a long-standing policy of staying outside military alliances, its troops participate in European Union defence pact projects, United Nations peacekeeping missions and it recently served on the UN Security Council. However the law governing the dispatch of more than 12 defence force personnel states that they may only be deployed with approval from the government, parliament and if the operation in question is mandated or authorised by the UN. Martin said in effect the so-called "triple lock" system hands the five permanent members of the UN Security Council a veto over part of Irish defence policy, noting that the Council has not authorised a new peacekeeping mission since 2014. "We have to be honest about the fact that in respect of many of the worst crises internationally, where rapid, impartial and decisive international action is desperately needed, the Council has not been able to act," Martin, who is also the country's deputy prime minister, told parliament. "It would therefore make sense, I believe, to amend our existing legislation in a manner which would allow us to respond to crisis situations with more agility." He said officials will prepare legislation that could, for example, allow Ireland despatch troops to multilateral missions overseas where these are organised by a regional organisation such as the EU or African Union, or where the host country is requesting such support from the international community. Martin was speaking at a debate on a report from the chair of a security forum the government organised earlier this year. On the triple lock, the report stated that while there was not a consensus on the issue, the preponderance of views, especially among experts and practitioners, was that it is was no longer fit for purpose and should be reconsidered. Sinn Fein, the left wing opposition party with a big lead in opinion polls ahead of elections due by early 2025, criticised the move and said it would have dangerous repercussions for Ireland's reputation and the credibility of its serving troops. The party's foreign affairs spokesperson Matt Carthy said any change to the "triple lock" should be put to a referendum. (Reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by David Gregorio) BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. To attain the target level of renewable energy, around $20 trillion will be required globally, Stanislav Yankelovich from Boston Consulting Group said at the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) Technical Conference in Baku, Trend reports. "Despite widespread support, the energy transformation necessitates significant investments. This comprises money for creating low-carbon infrastructure (about $4 trillion) and around $12 trillion for the development of solutions that enable end-users to embrace low-carbon technologies," he explained. Yankelevich emphasized that despite the commitment and support of countries around the world, there is a significant investment gap, partly related to technological and human resources impeding this transition. The SPE Caspian Technical Conference started on November 21 in Baku and will continue until November 23. It will bring together global industry leaders and technical experts to share perspectives on the industry and address the unique challenges and opportunities it presents. Taking into account the key role of the Caspian region in shaping future global energy dynamics, this conference, organized with the assistance of the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), will feature an expert-selected high-level program, panel discussions on key issues facing the region, and a unique opportunity for networking with experts in oil and gas production. The program will include an assessment of the current situation and offer important discussions for investors, operators, service company representatives, and government authorities in the region. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel FILE PHOTO: An advertisement promotes Tesla Autopilot at a showroom of U.S. car manufacturer Tesla in Zurich, Switzerland March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/ File Photo By Hyunjoo Jin and Dan Levine (Reuters) -A Florida judge found "reasonable evidence" that Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and other managers knew the automaker's vehicles had a defective Autopilot system but still allowed the cars to be driven unsafely, according to a ruling. Judge Reid Scott, in the Circuit Court for Palm Beach County, ruled last week that the plaintiff in a lawsuit over a fatal crash could proceed to trial and bring punitive damages claims against Tesla for intentional misconduct and gross negligence. The order has not been previously reported. The ruling is a setback for Tesla after the company won two product liability trials in California earlier this year over the Autopilot driver assistant system. A Tesla spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday. The Florida lawsuit arose out of a 2019 crash north of Miami in which owner Stephen Banner's Model 3 drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler big rig truck that had turned onto the road, shearing off the Tesla's roof and killing Banner. A trial set for October was delayed, and has not been rescheduled. Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor, called the judge's summary of the evidence significant because it suggests "alarming inconsistencies" between what Tesla knew internally, and what it was saying in its marketing. "This opinion opens the door for a public trial in which the judge seems inclined to admit a lot of testimony and other evidence that could be pretty awkward for Tesla and its CEO," Smith said. "And now the result of that trial could be a verdict with punitive damages." The Florida judge found evidence that Tesla "engaged in a marketing strategy that painted the products as autonomous" and that Musk's public statements about the technology "had a significant effect on the belief about the capabilities of the products." Scott also found that the plaintiff, Banner's wife, should be able to argue to jurors that Tesla's warnings in its manuals and "clickwrap" agreement were inadequate. The judge said the accident is "eerily similar" to a 2016 fatal crash involving Joshua Brown in which the Autopilot system failed to detect crossing trucks, leading vehicles to go underneath a tractor trailer at high speeds. "It would be reasonable to conclude that the Defendant Tesla through its CEO and engineers was acutely aware of the problem with the 'Autopilot' failing to detect cross traffic," the judge wrote. Banner's attorney, Lake "Trey" Lytal III, said they are "extremely proud of this result based in the evidence of punitive conduct." The judge also cited a 2016 video showing a Tesla vehicle driving without human intervention as a way to market Autopilot. The beginning of the video shows a disclaimer which says the person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. "The car is driving itself," it said. That video shows scenarios "not dissimilar" than what Banner encountered, the judge wrote. "Absent from this video is any indication that the video is aspirational or that this technology doesnt currently exist in the market," he wrote. (Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Richard Chang and Stephen Coates) Mourners stand near the coffins of the two journalists working for Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen TV channel said to be killed by an Israeli strike on Tuesday in southern Lebanon, as they gather outside the channel's building to offer prayers ahead of their fu BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hundreds of mourners paid their respects in Beirut on Wednesday to two reporters working for pan-Arab station Al Mayadeen who were killed the previous day in an Israeli air strike on south Lebanon. The crowds gathered around the two coffins of correspondent Farah Omar and camera operator Rabih al-Maamari, both draped in Lebanese flags and topped with wreaths of flowers, outside the Al Mayadeen headquarters in Beirut. The Committee to Protect Journalists said deaths added to a toll of over 50 journalists killed covering the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and its spillover to other regions including the Lebanon-Israel border area, where Israeli and Lebanese Hezbollah forces have been exchanging fire since Oct. 7. Al Mayadeen accused Israel of deliberately targeting the TV crew because the channel was known to be pro-Palestinian and supportive of Iran's regional military alliance, which includes Gaza's ruling Hamas movement. Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Wednesday called the killing of the two journalists an "assassination". Israel's military said it was "aware of a claim regarding journalists ... who were killed as a result of (Israeli army) fire...This is an area with active hostilities, where exchange of fire occur. Presence in the area is dangerous". Al Mayadeen said the Israeli strike occurred near the town of Tayr Harfa, about a mile from the Israeli frontier. A third person, who was not working with the channel but was accompanying them as they filmed, was also killed. Wednesday marked 80 years since Lebanon's independence from France. In a written statement, veteran parliament speaker Nabih Berri said: "On independence day this year, minutes or even eternities of silence are not enough to mourn" the two Al Mayadeen reporters and others killed by Israel's military. Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Wednesday called the killing of the two journalists an "assassination". The Israeli military has previously said it cannot guarantee journalists' safety in areas of military activity. Israeli authorities have sought to block Al Mayadeen's websites and seize equipment linked to the station. On Nov. 13, pan Arab network Al-Jazeera said one of its crew members was lightly wounded in Israeli shelling on the border town of Yaroun. (Reporting by Maya Gebeily) (Reuters) -North Korea fired an unspecified ballistic missile toward the East Sea late on Wednesday, but the launch appears to have failed, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing the South Korean military. The South Korean military said North Korea fired the missile from the Sunan area in Pyongyang at 11:05 p.m. (1405 GMT) but it did not provide other details, according to the Yonhap report. The South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities were conducting an analysis into the launch, Yonhap said. The missile launch comes a day after North Korea said it successfully placed its first spy satellite in orbit and vowed to launch more in the near future, defying international condemnation from the United States and its allies. (Reporting by Katherine Jackson and Ismail Shakil; editing by Jasper Ward and Chizu Nomiyama) FILE PHOTO: A North Korean flag flutters at the propaganda village of Gijungdong in North Korea, in this picture taken near the truce village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, South Korea, February 7, 2023. REUT By Soo-hyang Choi SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korea said on Thursday it would deploy stronger armed forces and new weapons on its border with the South, a day after Seoul suspended part of a 2018 military accord between the two Koreas in a protest over Pyongyang's launch of a spy satellite. North Korea's defence ministry said in a statement carried by the KCNA news agency that it would restore all military measures it had halted under the deal with South Korea, which was designed to de-escalate tension along their shared border. "From now on, our army will never be bound by the September 19 North-South Military Agreement," the statement said. "We will withdraw the military steps, taken to prevent military tension and conflict in all spheres including ground, sea and air, and deploy more powerful armed forces and new-type military hardware in the region along the Military Demarcation Line." Tuesday's satellite launch was the North's third attempt this year after two failures and followed a rare trip by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to Russia, during which President Vladimir Putin vowed to help Pyongyang build satellites. South Korean officials said the latest launch most likely involved Russian technical assistance under a growing partnership that has seen Pyongyang supply Russia with millions of artillery shells. Russia and North Korea have denied arms deals but have promised deeper cooperation, including on satellites. South Korea on Wednesday suspended part of the inter-Korean deal in response to Pyongyang's launch and said it would immediately step up surveillance along the heavily fortified border with the North. North Korea accused South Korea of scrapping the deal, known as the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), and said Seoul will be held "wholly accountable in case an irretrievable clash breaks out" between the two Koreas. NORTH FIRES MISSILE North Korea's statement came hours after it fired a ballistic missile toward the sea off its east coast late on Wednesday. South Korea's military said the launch appeared to have failed. A U.S. Department of State spokesperson said South Korea's decision to suspend part of the CMA was a "prudent and restrained response," citing North Korea's "failure to adhere to the agreement." "The ROK suspension will restore surveillance and reconnaissance activities along the ROK side of the Military Demarcation Line, improving the ROK's ability to monitor DPRK threats," the official said, referring to South Korea and North Korea respectively by the initials of their official names. South Korea resumed the use of crewed and uncrewed reconnaissance aircraft in the border area on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency reported. The suspended North-South pact was signed at a 2018 summit between Kim Jong Un and then South Korean President Moon Jae-in, one of the most concrete measures to come from months of diplomacy that stalled out by 2019. Moon Chung-in, a professor at Yonsei University who served as a special adviser to President Moon during the talks with Kim, said that although North Korea had not been following all elements of the agreement, the CMA's demise could increase the risk of confrontation along the border. "Accidental clashes can escalate into full-blown conflict, including nuclear strikes," he said. "We have every reason to try to reduce risk and tension and instead the South is going in the opposite direction." Critics have said that the pact weakened Seoul's ability to monitor North Korea, and that Pyongyang had violated the agreement. "The CMA was a good agreement in theory, since risk reduction and confidence- and security-building measures are beneficial to both sides by reducing the risk of tactical clashes and inadvertent escalation," said Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst now with the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation. However, with further measures stalled, the measure came at the cost of curtailing allied surveillance and military training and did not reduce the North Korean military threat, he said. Although it has remained publicly noncommittal, Washington had been privately urging Seoul to maintain the CMA, Klingner said. North Korea said on Tuesday it placed its first spy satellite in orbit, drawing international condemnation for violating U.N. resolutions that bar its use of technology applicable to ballistic missile programs. South Korea has said the North Korean satellite was believed to have entered orbit, but it would take time to assess whether it was operating normally. (Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi, Josh Smith in Seoul, David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Sonali Paul, Ed Davies and Gerry Doyle) By Yosri Aljamal HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - For Yusif Abu Maria, the looming Gaza hostage deal is especially personal. Not only is his son on a list of candidates of imprisoned Palestinians to be freed by Israel: It would be a replay of Abu Maria's own release from jail almost 20 years ago. The Qatari- and Egyptian-mediated agreement approved by Israel in the early hours of Wednesday will pause the war between Israel and Hamas militants for a few days, enabling the entry of more humanitarian aid to the ravaged Gaza Strip. In the lull, Hamas will free 50 children and women who were among the some 240 people taken to Gaza during its Oct. 7 killing spree in south Israel. In return, 150 female inmates or teenaged males will be released from Israeli security prisons. A list of 300 candidate prisoners published by Israel's Justice Ministry includes Ubay Abu Maria, who was taken into custody this year, four months after his 18th birthday, and accused of belonging to the armed Islamic Jihad militant group. The length of the list suggested Israel was preparing for the possible disqualification of some prisoners by its Supreme Court, where victims of Palestinian attacks can file challenges, or that future prisoner-for-hostage swaps were being prepared. But Ubay's pining father sounded confident of a homecoming. "Of course I'm very happy, because I've lived through this myself," said Yusif, who in 2004 was among 400 prisoners freed in return for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers held by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. "Ubay will be in my arms, among my family, my brethren, his siblings, and in his mother's lap. We say that, God willing, all prisoners - not just Ubay, but also prisoners who have been in jail for 40 years, 30 years - should be released," he told Reuters, saluting their "great and brave resistance" to Israel. Many Israelis see the Palestinian prisoners as dangerous foes whose freedom would raise risks of new and widespread violence. Yusif, a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, said he had spent several stints in Israeli jails on charges of organising a potential armed attack. He confirmed Ubay's association with the more hardline Islamic Jihad. "It was at school where met some people from Islamic Jihad. It was his decision and I supported his decision. I didn't have any objection," Yusif said in the family home in the occupied West Bank. Uday has an arm injury, his parents said, compounding their worry about conditions that have been toughened up in the prisons, where inmates have clashed with guards at times. The Prisons Service has reported the death in custody of five inmates since Oct. 7, four of them from apparent health complications. The fifth case is under investigation, the Prisons Service said. "I feel just like any mother who has a wounded son in jail would," said Yusif's wife, Fida. "We hear a different rumour or a genuine report every day, things that break our hearts. So of course I'm very happy. God willing this will be concluded well." (Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Nick Macfie) MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian anti-aircraft units destroyed three Ukrainian drones over the Crimean peninsula, the Russian defence ministry said. "An attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack with aircraft-type UAVs on objects on the territory of the Russian Federation was prevented," the defence ministry said. "Three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed over the territory of the Republic of Crimea by air defences," the ministry said. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine says it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory. Russia says Crimea is now part of Russia. (Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) FILE PHOTO: A government billboard shows American philanthropist Alex Soros, son of Hungarian-American financier George Soros and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Budapest, Hungary, November 20, 2023. The billboard reads, "Let's not d BUDAPEST (Reuters) - A political campaign by Hungary's government that vilifies the head of the European Commission and the son of financier George Soros is "propaganda deeply tainted by antisemitism", a spokesperson for Soros' foundation said on Wednesday. A Hungarian government spokesman said accusations the campaign was antisemitic were "groundless". The government of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban unveiled billboards on Monday vilifying European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, the first time it has made her a personal target in a political campaign. The billboards, part of Orban's campaign for 2024 European parliamentary elections, depict Von der Leyen alongside Soros' son Alexander, who chairs his Open Society Foundations, and read: "Let's not dance to their tunes". George Soros and his liberal views have been a perennial target of Orban's Fidesz party over the past decade. Soros is Jewish and his central role in Fidesz propaganda has led some critics to accuse the party of antisemitism, which it denies. "Hungarian taxpayers money is again being used to pay for political propaganda that is deeply tainted by antisemitism," a spokesperson for the Open Society Foundations said in a reply to Reuters questions. "This is a well-worn tactic by the Hungarian governmentcreating a vague and imaginary foreign threat to distract voters from real domestic issues..." Orban has said there is zero tolerance in Hungary for antisemitism, while at the same time repeatedly portraying Hungarian-born Soros as a puppet master plotting to undermine his rule, including by supporting mass immigration. The veteran prime minister banned a pro-Palestinian rally in Budapest after Hamas' attack on Israel last month. "It's never been about George Soros's identity as a Jew. Its about his ideology and his radical activism. It's about his determination to meddle in politics in Hungary and other countries of Europe," government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs wrote on his blog on Wednesday, rejecting the allegation of antisemitism. Orban has said Hungary is the safest country in Europe for Jews due to his government's tough stance on illegal migration. In 2018, Central European University, founded by Soros in 1991, moved the bulk of its courses out of Hungary to Vienna following a long struggle between Soros and Orban's government. (Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Mark Potter) FILE PHOTO: A ship sails between wind turbines in the Taiwan strait off the coast of Pingtan Island, Fujian province, China, April 10, 2023. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File photo TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan again reported Chinese military activity around the island on Wednesday, with 11 aircraft crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait as the island's election campaign kicked into high gear. Democratically-governed Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained for the past four years of regular Chinese military patrols and drills near the island, as Beijing seeks to pressure Taipei over its sovereignty claims. Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary polls on Jan. 13 and candidates have to register with the election commission this week in order to take part. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which Beijing views as separatists, registered its presidential ticket on Tuesday, though the opposition is mired in disagreement about a potential joint bid. Taiwan's defence ministry said that starting early Wednesday afternoon it had detected J-10 and J-16 fighters as well as H-6 bombers and early warning aircraft carrying out overseas missions. Eleven of those aircraft crossed the Taiwan Strait's median line flying in airspace to the centre and southwest of the island, working with Chinese warships to carry out "joint combat readiness patrols", the ministry added. The strait's median line had previously served as an unofficial barrier between the two sides and which Chinese planes now regularly fly over. Taiwan sent its own forces to monitor, the ministry said. China's defence ministry did not answer calls seeking comment. China says its activities near Taiwan are aimed at preventing "collusion" between Taiwan separatists and the United States and to protect China's territorial integrity. Taiwan's government, which has repeatedly offered talks with China, rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims and says only the island's people can decide their future. Taiwan's main opposition party, the Kuomintang, traditionally supports close ties with Beijing, and has pledged to re-open dialogue with China should it win the election. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Toby Chopra and Raju Gopalakrishnan) By Ali Sawafta RAMALLAH (Reuters) -Dozens of Palestinian women and teenagers held prisoner by Israel for periods of a few months to several years will gain their freedom under Wednesday's deal for the release of 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza by the Islamist group Hamas. Jubilant reunions are expected when Palestinian families greet the prisoners on their return as early as Thursday, most of them to their homes in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Arrested for such offences as attempted stabbings, stone throwings at Israeli soldiers or having contacts with hostile organisations, many were held under administrative detention, meaning Israel held them without trial. In contrast to previous prisoner swaps, notably the deal under which Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released by Hamas in 2011, none has been convicted of murdering Israelis. In that deal, Israel released more than 1,000 prisoners, some convicted of murder, including Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip and one of those held responsible by Israel for a deadly Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel. The Qatari-brokered accord was the first concrete sign of any halt to the fighting which began with the Oct. 7 attack by hundreds of Hamas gunmen, who seized around 240 Israelis and foreigners as hostages. Israel has agreed to a four-day truce, the entry of aid to Gaza and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners in return for the hostages, all children or women. Another 150 Palestinian prisoners could be freed in return for another 50 hostages in days to come, a Palestinian official said. "The release of a number of our prisoners during the war is a very important thing," said Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Authority's Commission for Prisoners' Affairs. "This deal could be a start to change the general atmosphere of this war," he said. The Palestinian Authority lost control of Gaza during a 2007 power struggle with Hamas but it regards the besieged enclave as part of a future Palestinian state that includes the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital. It was still unclear exactly who would be released. Israel has issued a list of 300 names, to accommodate potential objections to certain individuals as well as the possibility that the swap could grow beyond its original scale. For Fares, the main significance of the accord is as a step to a wider end to hostilities. "The resistance didn't call this deal a swap deal but it is a deal for truce and ceasefire," he said. (Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Howard Goller) FILE PHOTO: Pictures of hostages held in Gaza, who were seized from southern Israel on October 7 by Hamas gunmen during a deadly attack, are displayed in Tel Aviv, Israel, November 15, 2023. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shortly after Hamas militants took hostages during their deadly assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, the government of Qatar contacted the White House with a request: Form a small team of advisers to help work to get the captives freed. That work, begun in the days after the hostages were taken, finally bore fruit with the announcement of a prisoner swap deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt and agreed by Israel, Hamas and the United States. The secretive effort included tense personal diplomatic engagement by U.S. President Joe Biden, who held a number of urgent conversations with emir of Qatar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the weeks leading up to the deal. It also involved hours of painstaking negotiations including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA Director Bill Burns, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy Jon Finer, and U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk, among others. Two officials involved in the effort provided extensive details of the work that led to an agreement in which 50 hostages are to be freed in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners during a four-day pause in fighting. Shortly after Oct. 7, Qatar - a long-established mediator in a volatile region - approached the White House with sensitive information regarding the hostages and the potential for their release, the officials said. The Qataris asked that a small team, which they called a "cell," be established to work the issue privately with the Israelis. Sullivan directed McGurk and another National Security Council official, Josh Geltzer, to establish the team. This was done without telling other relevant U.S. agencies because Qatar and Israel demanded extreme secrecy with only a few people to be in the know, the officials said. McGurk, a seasoned diplomat with deep experience in the Middle East, held daily morning calls with the prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani. He reported back to Sullivan and Biden was briefed daily on the process. Biden got an upfront look at what the victims of the Hamas attack endured when he held an emotional, lengthy meeting on Oct. 13 with the families of Americans who were either being held hostage or were unaccounted for. Days later, Biden traveled to Tel Aviv for Oct. 18 talks with Netanyahu. The official said securing the release of hostages was a central focus of his discussions with Netanyahu and his war cabinet, as well as humanitarian assistance. Five days later, on Oct. 23, the White House team's work helped yield the release of two American hostages, Natalie and Judith Raanan. From outside Sullivans West Wing office McGurk, Sullivan and Finer tracked in real time the captives' difficult, multi-hour journey out of Gaza. The return of the two Americans proved it was possible to gain freedom for hostages and gave confidence to Biden that Qatar could deliver through the small team that had been established, the officials said. Now, an intensified process started to get more hostages out. When this happened, Burns began speaking regularly with Mossad director David Barnea. Biden saw an opportunity to gain the release of a large number of hostages and that a deal for prisoners was the only realistic path to securing a pause in the fighting, the officials said. On Oct. 24, with Israel poised to launch a ground offensive in Gaza, the U.S. side got word that Hamas had agreed to the parameters of a deal to release women and children, which would mean a pause and a delay in the ground invasion. U.S. officials debated with the Israelis whether or not the ground offensive should be delayed. The Israelis argued that terms were not firm enough to delay, since there was no proof of life for the hostages. Hamas claimed they could not determine who was being held until a pause in fighting began. Americans and Israelis viewed the Hamas position as disingenuous. The official said Israel's invasion plan was adapted to support a pause if a deal came together. Biden then engaged over the next three weeks in detailed talks as proposals about a potential hostage release were traded back and forth. Demands were made that Hamas produce the lists of hostages it was holding, their identifying information, and guarantees of release. The process was long and cumbersome - communication was difficult and messages had to be passed from Doha or Cairo into Gaza and back, the officials said. Biden held a previously undisclosed phone call with the Qatari prime minister when the phasing of releases began to take shape, the official said. Under the agreement that was taking shape, women and children hostages would be freed in a first phase, together with a commensurate release of Palestinian prisoners from the Israelis. The Israelis insisted Hamas ensure all women and children come out in this phase. The U.S. side agreed, and demanded through Qatar proof of life or identifying information for women and children held by Hamas. Hamas said it could guarantee 50 in the first phase, but refused to produce a list of identifying criteria. On November 9, Burns met in Doha with the Qatari leader and the Mossad's Barnea to go through the texts of the emerging arrangement. The key obstacle at that point was that Hamas had not clearly identified who it was holding. Three days later, Biden called the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and demanded to know the names or clear identifying information for the 50 hostages including ages, gender and nationalities. Without the information, the official said, there was no basis to move forward. Shortly after Biden's call, Hamas produced details for the 50 hostages it said would be released in the first phase of any deal. Biden in a Nov. 14 call urged Netanyahu to take the deal - Netanyahu agreed. McGurk saw Netanyahu that same day in Israel. Walking out of a meeting, Netanyahu grabbed McGurks arm and said we need this deal and urged Biden call the emir of Qatar on the final terms, one of the officials said. Talks stalled as communications went dark in Gaza. When they resumed, Biden was in San Francisco attending an Asia-Pacific summit. He called the emir of Qatar and told him this was the last chance, and the emir pledged to apply pressure to close the deal, the officials said. "The president insisted the deal had to close, now. Time was up," one official said. On Nov. 18, McGurk met in Doha with the Qatari prime minister. Burns was dialed in after he spoke with Mossad. The meeting identified the last remaining gaps toward a deal. The agreement was now structured for women and children to be freed in the first phase, but with an expectation for future releases and the aim to bring all hostages home to their families. In Cairo the next morning, McGurk met with Egypt intelligence chief Abbas Kamil. Word came from Hamas leaders in Gaza that they had accepted nearly all the agreements worked out the day before in Doha. Only one issue remained, tied to the number of hostages to be released in the first phase and the ultimate structure of the deal to incentivize releases beyond the 50 known women and children, the officials said. A flurry of additional contacts ensued, and the deal finally came together. (Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Don Durfee and Lincoln Feast) BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. In order to protect animals from infectious diseases, the Food Safety Agency of Azerbaijan (FSAA) implements appropriate measures in accordance with the epizootic situation in the world based on the data of the World Organization for Animal Health, FSAA's Department of Information Support and Innovative Solutions said, Trend reports. "According to the official data of the World Organization for Animal Health, an epizootic hemorrhagic disease has been registered in the French region of Pays de la Loire, and an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza has been registered in the Brodsko-Posavska administrative-territorial unit of Croatia," the agency said. To protect Azerbaijan's territory from the aforementioned infectious diseases, a temporary ban on the entry of all types of live ruminants from the Pays de la Loire region, as well as their genetic material, was enforced. Import of live poultry and hatching eggs, poultry meat, processed products containing poultry meat, all types of poultry products from enterprises located within a 10-kilometer radius of the farm where the disease outbreak occurred (except goods subjected to heat treatment ensuring avian influenza virus destruction), feed and feed additives for poultry (except feed and feed additives of plant origin received by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of Azerbaijan). In order to strengthen control measures, an appeal has been sent to the State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan to take appropriate measures with respect to vehicles arriving from these administrative-territorial units or entering Azerbaijan in transit. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel Dutch far-right politician and leader of the PVV party, Geert Wilders speaks as he reacts to the exit poll and early results in the Dutch parliamentary elections, in The Hague, Netherlands November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Yves Herman By Bart Meijer and Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - With the Dutch election over, attention will now turn toward forming a new government. Coalition building in the fractured Dutch political landscape always takes months, and this time will likely be no exception. Here are several leading scenarios of the type of government that could emerge, given recent polling and depending on parties' relative performance in the actual vote. HARD-RIGHT COALITION With Geert Wilders' anti-immigration Freedom Party seen as the clear winner, he will likely try to form a government with former Prime Minister Mark Rutte's conservative VVD Party and the centrist upstart "New Social Contract." All three campaigned on the need to limit immigration and have said they might be willing to seek exemptions from European Union agreements on accepting asylum-seekers and on environmental policies. Negotiations would be difficult as both the VVD's new leader Dilan Yesilgoz and NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt have said that Wilders' extreme stances -- including seeking a total ban on mosques and korans in the Netherlands -- would make it impossible to form a government with him. Wilder has also in the past said he wanted to quit the European Union and close Dutch borders. Labour leader Frans Timmermans has excluded working with Wilders. But in the recent campaign, Wilders has shown a more pragmatic side, saying he understands he will need to make major sacrifices in order to enter government. Foreign policy might be less friendly to the EU, less pro-Ukraine, and more pro-Israel. Based on the exit polls, this combination would have 79 seats in the 150-seat parliament. BROAD MAJORITY COALITION Yesilgoz has other options if talks to form a hard-right coalition fail. She could seek to form a centre-right government with NSC and the Labour/Green Left combination led by former EU climate chief Timmermans. With 69 seats this combination would not have a majority and would probably look to one of the smaller liberal parties. But negotiations would be tough as Yesilgoz and Timmermans have campaigned heavily on the differences between their two parties. Omtzigt has indicated he could work with both. Both sides would face major sacrifices and compromises. A main point of contention would be the Labour/Green aims to significantly hike wealth and profit taxes, in return for lower income taxes, an idea which the pro-business VVD has heavily opposed. An agreement on restricting immigration could also be complicated. All three parties aim to limit labour migration, but the leftist parties are seeking a much softer tone on asylum seekers than the VVD. Leftist parties would be more willing to limit low-skilled labour immigration. A broad coalition would be more willing to invest in the energy transition than a right-wing government would be. CENTRIST MINORITY The Netherlands is traditionally governed by majority government coalitions. But given that no single party has more than 25% of the vote, a minority government is also an option that has worked in the country's past. VVD and NSC could agree on a core government plan, for which they would seek majorities with outside support from the left and from the right on different issues. For migration issues it could look for a conservative alliance with PVV and other parties on the right, while for climate policies it could seek support on the left. Omtzigt has said he would favour this setup as it would prevent parties from rigidly sticking to prearranged plans. However, the VVD has said this type of government is inherently unstable and not a preferred option. PROCESS: Talks will begin with the appointment of a so-called explorer on Friday, a political outsider who will hear from each party what possibilities they see and prefer. Negotiations on the coalition that is deemed most likely will then begin, and should be expected to go on well into 2024. The formation of the last government, Rutte's fourth consecutive since becoming prime minister in 2010, was the longest in history with a total of nine months. (Reporting by Bart Meijer) FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (not pictured) at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, November 17, 2023. REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen/File Photo By Jonathan Spicer and Sabine Siebold ANKARA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Turkey has informed NATO that ratification of Sweden's membership bid will not be completed in time to allow the country's accession ceremony at a meeting of alliance foreign ministers next week, two sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. Last week, the Turkish parliament's foreign affairs commission delayed a vote on Sweden's NATO membership bid in order to hold further talks on the subject. The commission will likely resume its debate on the matter on Tuesday or Wednesday, one of the sources said. NATO foreign ministers will meet in Brussels on those days, Nov. 28-29, a gathering that some in the Western defence bloc had hoped would mark Sweden's accession. The Turkish Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for comment. Both Sweden and Finland had requested to join NATO in May last year following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. President Tayyip Erdogan raised objections at the time to both requests over what he said was the Nordic nations' protection of those who Turkey deems terrorists, as well as their defence trade embargoes. Turkey endorsed Finland's bid in April, but has kept Sweden waiting. Turkey has demanded that Sweden take more steps to rein in local members of the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist group by the European Union and the United States. In response, Stockholm introduced an anti-terrorism bill that makes membership of a terrorist organisation illegal, while also lifting arms export restrictions on Turkey. It says it has upheld its part of a deal signed last year. For ratification, the bill needs to be approved by the Turkish foreign affairs commission before being put to a full parliament vote, which could come days or weeks later. Erdogan would then sign it into law to conclude the process, the length of which has frustrated Ankara's allies and tested its Western ties. While NATO member Hungary also has not ratified Sweden's membership, Turkey is seen as the main roadblock to Sweden's accession. (Writing by Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by Leslie Adler) FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi talk during a meeting with senior officials and CEOs of American and Indian companies in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hock By Jeff Mason and Shivam Patel NANTUCKET, Mass./NEW DELHI (Reuters) - United States authorities thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States and issued a warning to India over concerns the government in New Delhi was involved, a senior Biden administration official said. The U.S. is treating the plot with utmost seriousness and has raised the issue with the Indian government "at the senior-most levels," the White House said on Wednesday. The Financial Times first reported the plot. White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Indian officials expressed "surprise and concern" when they were informed about the incident. We are treating this issue with utmost seriousness, and it has been raised by the U.S. government with the Indian government, including at the senior-most levels," Watson said. "They stated that activity of this nature was not their policy ... We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable, she said. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who says he is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, was the target of the foiled plot, according to the senior administration official. News of the incident comes two months after Canada said there were "credible" allegations linking Indian agents to the June murder of a Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in a Vancouver suburb, something India has rejected. India's anti-terror agency filed a case against Pannun on Monday stating that he warned flag carrier Air India passengers in video messages shared on social media this month that their lives were in danger. The issue is a highly delicate one for the Biden administration, which has been working to develop close relations with India given shared concerns about China's rising power. Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said when asked about the FT report that Washington had shared "some inputs" that were being "examined by "relevant departments." Bagchi said the inputs pertained to the "nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others." "India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well," he said. The FT said its sources did not say if the U.S. protest to India resulted in the plot being abandoned, or if it was foiled by the FBI. It said the protest was registered after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was welcomed on a state visit by President Joe Biden in June. Biden is currently vacationing on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Apart from the diplomatic warning to India, U.S. federal prosecutors have also filed a sealed indictment against at least one suspect in a New York district court, the FT said. The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment. Pannun, like Nijjar, is a proponent of a decades-long but now fringe demand to carve out an independent Sikh homeland from India called Khalistan, a plan New Delhi sees as a security threat due to a violent insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s. India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) registered a case against Pannun under charges related to terrorism and conspiracy, among others. It stated he threatened in video messages to not let Air India operate anywhere in the world. The case comes against the historical backdrop of a bombing in 1985 of an Air India aircraft flying from Canada to India that killed 329, and for which Sikh militants were blamed. Pannun told Reuters on Tuesday that his message was to "boycott Air India not bomb." He told Reuters on Wednesday he would let the U.S. government respond "to the issue of threats to my life at the American soil from the Indian operatives." "Just like Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar's assassination by the Indian agents on Canadian soil was a challenge to Canada's sovereignty, the threat to (an) American citizen on American soil is a Challenge to America's sovereign(ty)," he said. Pannun is the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, which India labelled an "unlawful association" in 2019, citing its involvement in extremist activities. Pannun was listed as an "individual terrorist" by India in 2020. (Reporting by Shivam Patel, Krishn Kaushik in New Delhi and by Jeff Mason, David Brunnstrom, Andrew Goudsward; Editing by Heather Timmons and Stephen Coates) KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal hailed a new 1.5 billion euro aid tranche from the European Union on Wednesday, saying it was key to maintaining the country's macroeconomic stability as war raged on. Shmyhal also said he hoped for fast approval of the EU's multi-year 50 billion euro program for Ukraine as uncertainty grew over aid from the United States for the next year. The finance ministry said the government had received the latest 1.5 bln euro tranche from the EU, bringing the bloc's total aid to 16.5 billion euros so far this year. "It helps us to maintain economic resilience during the large-scale war," Shmyhal said on the Telegram messaging app. "We expect that the new multi-year support mechanism Ukraine Facility worth 50 billion euros will be approved by the EU member states as soon as possible." The war with Russia, now in its 21 month, has severely hit the Ukrainian economy, with the government relying heavily on financial support from Western allies for social spending. The finance ministry said in a statement it hoped to receive one more aid tranche from the EU in December. The EU was the largest financial donor to Ukraine this year, finance ministry data showed. Ukraine faces a budget gap of about $43 billion next year and the government plans to cover the deficit with foreign financial assistance. Kyiv hopes to receive about 18 billion euros from the EU's Ukraine Facility programme next year, when it is also seeking $12-14 billion in economic support from the United States. However, the U.S. package is still to be approved. (Reporting by Olena Harmash; Editing by Kirsten Donovan) FILE PHOTO: A local resident walks next to residential buildings heavily damaged by Russian military strikes in the front line town of Avdiivka, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine November 8, 2023. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/ (Reuters) - Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that Russia's military appeared to be sending fewer troops and less equipment into the battle for the shattered eastern town of Avdiivka, seen as a gateway to the capital city of Donetsk region. Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said there were fewer ground assaults and fewer air strikes on Avdiivka, a town with a pre-war population of about 32,000 which has been under Russian attack for more than a month. About 1,500 residents remain. "Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles," Shtupun told national television. Russia denies such allegations. "The invaders are not abandoning their plans to surround Avdiivka. Eight attacks were repelled today." The head of Avdiivka's military administration, Vitaliy Barabash, said fighting was gripping an industrial district and Ukrainian forces were holding their positions. Major fortifications were erected after Russian-funded separatists briefly seized Avdiivka in 2014. "The enemy continues to press on our boys," he told NV Radio. "The main focus for them is drones. And drones again." Ukraine's military said there also had been an uptick in the number of Russian attacks on nearby Maryinka, a town where control has been disputed for months. Russia rarely mentions Avdiivka in its daily military updates. The Russian defence ministry's latest update mentioned that its troops were attacking villages south of Avdiivka, but gave few details. Reuters was unable to verify accounts from either side. Ukraine's eastern regions remain the focus of Russia's slow advance in nearly 21 months of war after Moscow's troops failed to move on the capital Kyiv in the days following the invasion. In the south, Russian forces also made missile strikes on port infrastructure in the Black Sea city of Odesa, regional officials said. There were no details of the damage inflicted. In southern Kherson region, Russia's Defence Ministry said marines were "stopping all attempts by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to carry out amphibious landings on the Dnipro islands and the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro River". Pro-Russian bloggers said Russian forces had been harrying Ukrainian forces near the village of Krynky, near marshes on the eastern bank upriver from the city of Kherson. Russia withdrew its forces from the city and the western bank of the Dnipro late last year, but have been shelling Ukrainian-held localities from positions on the opposite bank. Ukrainian military analyst Pavlo Norozhny told NV radio that Kyiv's forces had established a beachhead at Krynky and were advancing on the larger town of Oleshky to the south. (Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Stephen Coates) FILE PHOTO: A view shows a hospital heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Selydove, Donetsk region, Ukraine November 21, 2023. REUTERS/Alina Smutko/File Photo (Reuters) -Ukrainian troops face "difficult" defensive operations on parts of the eastern front with bitter winter cold setting in, but forces in the south are still conducting offensive actions, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday. Russian troops launched offensives on different sections of the front line in Ukraine's east this autumn, trying to advance on the devastated town of Avdiivka and in the northeast between the towns of Lyman and Kupiansk. "Difficult weather, difficult defence on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Donetsk and Avdiivka fronts. Offensive actions in the south," Zelenskiy said on Telegram messenger. The Ukrainian general prosecutor's office said one man died when Russian forces shelled Avdiivka, another in an attack on Chasiv Yar to the north and a third in the southern city of Kherson. In the town of Sedylove in the east, a third body was pulled from rubble after a hospital was struck on Tuesday. Operations could be complicated by cold weather, with daytime temperatures of minus 5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) expected to dip as fighting moves to an attritional phase. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and now controls nearly a fifth of its territory. A Ukrainian counteroffensive, under way since June, has made no major breakthrough. The front line has changed little in Avdiivka since fighting erupted in 2014 between Kyiv and Russian-backed militants, but the town has faced waves of attacks since mid-October, followed by temporary lulls, according to the Ukrainian military. After one such lull the day before, the head of the "Tavria" military command said on Wednesday that Russian troops had "dramatically increased" the number of assaults and airstrikes. "Our defenders are steadfastly holding the defence in the Avdiivka direction," Commander Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said on Telegram. Ukrainian forces continued the offensive on the southeastern Melitopol front, he added. In its evening report, Ukraine's General Staff said 22 Russian attacks had been beaten back in and around Avdiivka. Military analyst Oleksandr Musiyenko told NV Radio that Ukrainian forces had launched counterattacks near Avdiivka in the past week and "managed to push the enemy back from previous positions". In an earlier battlefield report, the General Staff said troops were holding bridgeheads secured on the eastern side of the River Dnipro occupied by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said the latest gathering of military officials from Western countries helping Ukraine had set up a "coalition to develop air defence" led by France and Germany. Kyiv sees improving air defences as critical to its drive to evict Russian troops. In its account of the fighting, Russia's Defence Ministry said its troops had struck Ukrainian troops and equipment near Bakhmut, another devastated town north of Avdiivka. Reuters could not independently verify frontline reports. (Reporting by Yuliia Dysa; editing by Tom Balmforth, Bernadette Baum, Ron Popeski and Cynthia Osterman) FILE PHOTO: Afghan nationals rest at a camp after returning from Pakistan at the Torkham border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan, November 14, 2023. Abdul Khaliq Sediqi/International Rescue Committee (IRC)/ Handout via REUTERS/File Photo By Asif Shahzad ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency on Wednesday urged Pakistan to halt deportation of undocumented Afghan refugees during the harsh winter season, as police continued to search homes and expel Afghanis who had not already left. Islamabad last month announced it would expel over a million undocumented refugees, mostly Afghans, amid a row with Kabul over charges that it harbours anti-Pakistan militants. Over 370,000 Afghans have fled Pakistan since Oct. 1. "UNHCR is calling upon the government of Pakistan to halt these mass numbers of returns during this harsh season of winter because the cold in Afghanistan is really deadly and it can take lives," the agency's regional spokesman, Babar Baloch, told Reuters TV in an interview. "We're talking about desperate women, children and men being on the move, leaving Pakistan in droves," he said. The agency has said the Afghans' return should be voluntary and that Pakistan should identify vulnerable individuals who need international protection. Pakistan is home to over 4 million Afghan migrants and refugees, about 1.7 million of whom are undocumented. Many came after the Taliban retook Afghanistan in 2021, and a large number have been present since the 1979 Soviet invasion. Pakistani police have been searching door to door in refugees settlements for those who have not left voluntarily, beginning with the port city of Karachi, where hundreds of thousands of Afghans live. Anyone remaining may be forcefully expelled. Thousands of Afghans have gone underground in Pakistan to avoid deportation, fearing for their lives if they return to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan following the hasty and chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led western forces in 2021. Islamabad has thus far not entertained calls by international organizations and refugee agencies to reconsider its deportation plans. Pakistan's Supreme Court has admitted a petition filed by rights activists seeking to halt the deportation, which is yet to be taken up for a hearing, a court order issued on Wednesday said. (Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Bernadette Baum) false 0001398987 0001355001 0001398987 2023-11-20 2023-11-20 0001398987 rlgy:AnywhereRealEstateGroupLLCMember 2023-11-20 2023-11-20 ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION WASHINGTON, DC 20549 _______________________________ FORM 8-K _______________________________ CURRENT REPORT Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Date of Report (Date of Earliest Event Reported): _______________________________ Anywhere Real Estate Inc. (Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter) Delaware 001-35674 20-8050955 (State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation) (Commission File Number) (IRS Employer Identification No.) _______________________________ Anywhere Real Estate Group LLC (Exact Name of Registrant as Specified in its Charter) Delaware 333-148153 20-4381990 (State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation) (Commission File Number) (IRS Employer Identification No.) _______________________________ 175 Park Avenue Madison , NJ 07940 (Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code) ( 973 ) 407-2000 (Registrants telephone number, including area code) None (Former name or former address if changed since last report) _______________________________ Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions: Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c)) Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act: Title of each class Trading Symbol(s) Name of each exchange on which registered Anywhere Real Estate Inc. Common Stock, par value $0.01 per share HOUS New York Stock Exchange Anywhere Real Estate Group LLC None None None Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is an emerging growth company as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act of 1933 (230.405 of this chapter) or Rule 12b-2 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (240.12b-2 of this chapter). Emerging growth company If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Item 5.02. Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers. On November 20, 2023, the Board of Directors of the Company (the Board ), based upon a recommendation of the Compensation Committee of the Board (the Compensation Committee ), granted an exceptional achievements cash award (the Exceptional Achievements Award ) and a cash-based performance incentive award (the Performance Award ) under the Companys Second Amended and Restated 2018 Long-Term Incentive Plan to the Companys Chief Executive Officer & President (the CEO ) (collectively, the Awards ). In granting the Awards, the Board (and in its recommendation, the Committee) considered multiple factors, including extraordinary recent accomplishments that truly distinguish the Company from its competitors and show exemplary leadership in the current very challenging residential resale market. The Board and the Committee also considered the CEOs executive management and leadership expertise, the critical role he plays in setting and executing the Companys business strategy, and the potential business disruption likely to be caused by a loss of his services. In granting the Exceptional Achievements Award, under which the CEO is receiving $5 million in cash in 2023, the Board (and in its recommendation, the Committee) recognized the CEOs leadership in: a. Removing enormous litigation uncertainties and burdens for the Company. i. The Company was the first industry defendant to architect and settle the massive group of seller-side antitrust cases on a nationwide basis. The settlement includes releases not only for the Company, its subsidiaries, affiliates and brands but also affiliated agents and franchisees. ii. Preliminary court approval of the Companys settlement was granted on November 20, 2023. iii. By contrast, several co-defendants face a multi-billion-dollar verdict in the Burnett case alone (covering only a very small percentage of the nationwide claims), and ongoing challenges in other pending cases. iv. New cases against others have emerged across the country. v. The Companys settlement, subject to final court approval, will bring certainty, free up management time and attention, eliminate the cost of ongoing litigation, including trials and appeals, and eliminate the downside risks associated with significant damage awards. b. Managing the Companys balance sheet, noting the reduction of approximately $280 million in debt in third quarter 2023, including the execution of the August 2023 debt exchange transactions, which provided a reduction of $160 million in debt with minimal incremental annual cash interest expense while retaining debt basket capacity. c. Realizing significant cost savings during the past several years, with the Company on track to realize cost savings of $200 million in 2023. The performance component of the Performance Award has two tranches, the first of which is based upon the achievement of a pre-established level of realized cost savings for the year ending December 31, 2024. The second tranche will be based upon a metric determined by the Board in February 2025, taking into account, among other things, then market conditions, which will measure financial or operating performance during 2025 (each of calendar year 2024 and 2025, a Performance Period ), with each tranche equal to $5.0 million in cash. No amount will be earned under a tranche if the performance metric for the applicable Performance Period is not satisfied, except as stated in the Performance Award and summarized below. The CEO generally must remain employed with the Company throughout the applicable Performance Period to be eligible to receive a payout of the applicable Performance Award tranche. If the CEOs employment is terminated without cause or the CEO resigns his employment for Good Reason (as defined in his employment agreement) during the applicable Performance Period, he will be eligible to receive a pro-rata amount of the Performance Award based on actual performance for the applicable Performance Period. If the CEOs employment terminates due to his death or disability, he will receive a pro-rated amount of the Performance Award for the applicable Performance Period. If terminated in connection with a change in control, he would be entitled to full payout of the Performance Award. The Awards are subject to clawback if the CEO resigns his employment other than for Good Reason, as follows: (x) with respect to the Exceptional Achievements Award, prior to March 1, 2025, (y) with respect to the Performance Award earned under the 2024 Performance Period, prior to March 1, 2026, and (z) with respect to the Performance Award earned under the 2025 Performance Period, prior to March 1, 2027. Additionally, our Clawback Policy will apply to the Performance Award, which provides for recoupment of erroneously received incentive compensation tied to a financial metric in the event of a material restatement of our financial statements, and also authorizes the Compensation Committee to exercise discretion to recoup incentive compensation (including the compensation received under both Awards) for: the commission of any felony or act of moral turpitude; any violation of Company policy or applicable legal or regulatory requirement that may result in significant financial, competitive or reputational harm; fraud, embezzlement, misrepresentation, willful misconduct, dishonesty or corruption; or breach of the CEOs restrictive covenants with the Company, including those related to non-competition and non-solicitation. The description of the Performance Award set forth above is qualified in its entirety by reference to the Performance Award filed as Exhibit 10.1 to this Current Report and incorporated by reference herein. Item 9.01. Financial Statements and Exhibits. (d) Exhibits Exhibit No. Description 10.1 Special Performance & Retention Award Notice of Grant & Award Agreement. 104 Cover Page Interactive Data File (embedded within the Inline XBRL document). SIGNATURES Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized. ANYWHERE REAL ESTATE INC. By: /s/ Marilyn J. Wasser Marilyn J. Wasser, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary Date: November 22, 2023 Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized. ANYWHERE REAL ESTATE GROUP LLC By: /s/ Marilyn J. Wasser Marilyn J. Wasser, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary Date: November 22, 2023 EXHIBIT INDEX Exhibit No. Description 10.1 Special Performance & Retention Award Notice of Grant & Award Agreement. 104 Cover Page Interactive Data File (embedded within the Inline XBRL document). ATTACHMENTS / EXHIBITS SPECIAL PERFORMANCE & RETENTION AWARD NOTICE OF GRANT & AWARD AGREEMENT. XBRL TAXONOMY EXTENSION SCHEMA DOCUMENT XBRL TAXONOMY EXTENSION DEFINITION LINKBASE DOCUMENT XBRL TAXONOMY EXTENSION LABEL LINKBASE DOCUMENT XBRL TAXONOMY EXTENSION PRESENTATION LINKBASE DOCUMENT IDEA: R1.htm IDEA: rlgy-20231120_htm.xml IDEA: Financial_Report.xlsx IDEA: FilingSummary.xml IDEA: MetaLinks.json If the securities being registered on this form are being offered in connection with the formation of a holding company and there is compliance with General Instruction G, check the following box. If this form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. 333-271516 If this form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(d) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering. Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of large accelerated filer, accelerated filer, smaller reporting company and emerging growth company in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Large Accelerated filer Accelerated filer Non-accelerated filer Smaller reporting company Emerging growth company If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act. If applicable, place an X in the box to designate the appropriate rule provision relied upon in conducting this transaction: Exchange Act Rule 13e-4(i) (Cross-Border Issuer Tender Offer) Exchange Act Rule 14d-1(d) (Cross-Border Third Party Tender Offer) This registration statement will become effective automatically upon filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 SCHEDULE 13G Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Amendment 1)* Bit Brother Limited. (Name of Issuer) 078995107 (CUSIP Number) November 22, 2023 (Date of Event which Requires Filing of this Statement) Check the appropriate box to designate the rule pursuant to which this Schedule is filed: [ ] Rule 13d-1(b) [X] Rule 13d-1(c) [ ] Rule 13d-1(d) * The remainder of this cover page shall be filled out for a reporting person's initial filing on this form with respect to the subject class of securities, and for any subsequent amendment containing information which would alter the disclosures provided in a prior cover page. The information required in the remainder of this cover page shall not be deemed to be "filed" for the purpose of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ("Act") or otherwise subject to the liabilities of that section of the Act but shall be subject to all other provisions of the Act (however, see Instructions). BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Expansion of trade and economic relations was discussed between Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, the Ministry of Economy of Azerbaijan said, Trend reports. Within the SPECA week in Baku, Minister of Economy of the Republic of Azerbaijan Mikayil Jabbarov held a meeting with First Deputy Minister of Economic Development and Trade Zavki Zavkizoda. "Azerbaijan attaches importance to the development of economic ties with Tajikistan. Economic forum and meetings held within the framework of SPECA week contribute to further strengthening of ties with Central Asian countries. There is a great potential for expanding cooperation in energy, agriculture, industry and other areas. Such joint projects as the creation of agro-industrial cluster can contribute to the economies of both countries," Jabbarov said. The meeting discussed prospects of bilateral ties and cooperation within international organizations, promotion of trade and economic ties and investments and other matters. The UN SPECA program was established on March 26, 1998. At present, the SPECA member states are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. SPECA provides a platform for sub-regional cooperation to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that can best be achieved through regional cooperation. Baku is hosting the SPECA from November 20 to 24, 2023. Stay up to date with more news on Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel A Philippine Air Force FA-50PH jet fighter, joins the maritime patrol of the Philippines and the United States over Batanes and areas in the West Philippine Sea on Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. (Philippine Air Force via AP) BANGKOK The United States and the Philippines are conducting joint air and maritime patrols in the South China Sea, which come as the two countries step up cooperation in the face of growingly aggressive Chinese activity in the area. The Philippine Air Force said Wednesday its aircraft had taken part in joint patrols the day before in the vicinity of Batanes, the northernmost province of the Philippines, which is only about 125 miles from Taiwan, a self-governed island that China claims as its own. The patrols run through Thursday and also include both the U.S. and Philippine navies. They come only days after Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. called the situation in the South China Sea increasingly dire as China seeks to assert its presence in an area where multiple nations have competing territorial claims. Asked about the patrols, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijings position had been made clear to both the Philippines and the U.S. The Philippines-U.S. joint patrol drill must not undermine Chinas territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, she said. The U.S. 7th Fleet said the patrols were part of routine American interaction with its allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region. China claims virtually the entire South China Sea as its own waters, which has led to disputes not only with the Philippines but also with Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei. These claims have long been regarded as potential flashpoints in the region, and have fueled U.S.-China rivalry. Earlier this month a Chinese coast guard ship blasted a Philippine supply ship with a water cannon in disputed waters, and last month a Chinese coast guard ship and an accompanying vessel rammed a Philippine coast guard ship and a military-run supply boat near a contested shoal, according to Philippine officials. Speaking on Sunday in Honolulu, Marcos said China has been showing interest in atolls and shoals that are closer and closer to the coast of the Philippines, with the nearest atoll about 60 nautical miles away. Unfortunately, I cannot report that the situation is improving, Marcos said. The situation has become more dire than it was before. In announcing the start of the joint patrols, Marcos said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that they were testament to our commitment to bolster the interoperability of our military forces. Through collaborative efforts, we aim to enhance regional security and foster a seamless partnership with the United States in safeguarding our shared interests, he wrote. Under Marcos, who was elected last year, the Philippines has been deepening its relationship with the U.S. in a shift from his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who had been closer to China and Russia. In February, Marcos approved an expansion of the U.S. military presence in the Philippines to add four new bases from five existing sites under a 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement between the longtime treaty allies. The move, which Marcos said would boost the Philippines coastal defense, dovetails with the Biden administrations efforts to strengthen an arc of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China. Marcos has also been strengthening ties with others, including Tokyo, signing an agreement earlier in the year to allow Japanese troops to join training exercises. Coast Guard crews rescued a boater more than a week after his family lost contact with him following his departure from New Jersey in a sailboat bound for Bermuda. (U.S. Coast Guard) (Tribune News Service) Coast Guard crews rescued a boater more than a week after his family lost contact with him following his departure from New Jersey in a sailboat bound for Bermuda. The man left Jersey City for the more than 600 mile trip, but his family reported they lost contact with him on Nov. 6, according to the Coast Guard. He was considered overdue at his destination as of Nov. 14, officials said. Operators of the sailing vessel Time Bandit heard an alert about the missing craft and encountered a boat adrift with tattered sails and a missing boom that matched its description last week, the Coast Guard said. The good Samaritans made contact with the occupant of the other boat, but the Coast Guard warned against a boat-to-boat transfer because of ocean conditions. The crew of the Cape May-based Coast Guard cutter Lawrence Lawson arrived at the scene, about 270 miles off Hatteras, N.C., on Nov. 15 and rescued the man from his disabled boat. He was taken in stable condition to the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, where he was reunited with his family, officials said. In announcing the rescue, an Coast Guard official stressed the importance of mariners carrying emergency beacons. We are pleased that this case resulted in a family reunion, said Cmdr. Wes Geyer. The search area for this case was nearly twice the size of Texas and the seas are very unforgiving. We urge all mariners venturing offshore to carry a properly registered Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB). This device can help pinpoint your exact location should the unthinkable ever happen. Coast Guard airplane and helicopter crews based in North Carolina and Massachusetts assisted in the search and rescue effort. mgray@njadvancemedia.com 2023 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit nj.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Col. Richard Rusnok, commander of Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, attends an on-base event, Oct. 31, 2023. (Darien Wright/U.S. Marine Corps) This story has been corrected MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan The commander of this base south of Hiroshima is ramping up off-base patrols as the Marine Corps considers liberty policy changes due to an uptick in off-base incidents in Japan. Col. Richard Rusnok reached out to Iwakuni Mayor Yoshihiko Fukuda by phone Nov. 18, a city official who deals with base policy told Stars and Stripes on Nov. 21. The commander outlined efforts to reduce the incidents, including uniformed patrols of the Kawashimo and Marifu nightlife areas, which began that weekend. The Marines are also considering changes to the bases liberty policy, said the official, who did not specify what those may entail. Its customary in Japan for some government officials to speak to media on condition of anonymity. There are changes that are being considered, but were not the ones doing anything as a reaction to what has happened out in town, MCAS Iwakuni spokesman Maj. Gerard Farao told Stars and Stripes by phone Tuesday. Its bigger than that. A Marine was arrested by Iwakuni Police earlier this month on suspicion of assaulting an elderly woman in Marifu. Another was arrested in April on accusations of stealing a car parked in the same area. A spokesman for 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, Capt. Tyler King, said the Marines are aware of another recent alleged incident involving a Marine and a Japanese national. We continue to work closely with local authorities regarding this incident, he said by email Nov. 21. King did not provide details about the incident, and Iwakuni Police do not have record of any recent arrests involving a Marine. Yamaguchi Broadcasting reported that a 67-year-old man got in a scuffle with a U.S. service member following a break-in at a store in Iwakuni on Nov. 18. The victim sustained serious injuries, such as bruises to his body and a cut on his head, the report said. The service member was detained and taken away by other Americans. Fukuda told Rusnok he wants to see a joint patrol by the city and MCAS Iwakuni by years end, the official said. Such patrols are common and typically take place several times per year. The worlds largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, conducts operations in the Mediterranean Sea, Nov. 10, 2023. The carrier will remain with its strike group in the eastern Mediterranean, U.S. officials said. (Malachi Lakey/U.S. Navy) NAPLES, Italy The Navys most advanced aircraft carrier will stay in the eastern Mediterranean Sea for the foreseeable future in a continued show of strength, as Iran-backed militants increase their attacks on American forces in the Middle East. The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group will remain on duty in the region until Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin determines it should return to the U.S., Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson, told reporters Tuesday. She added that the Defense Department would make an announcement when that decision had been made. On Monday, USNI News reported that Austin had again extended Fords deployment. The carrier left its home port in Norfolk, Va., more than six months ago on May 2. Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Nobles, attached to Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 70, observes an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter during flight operations aboard the dock landing ship USS Carter Hall, Oct. 27, 2023. (Moises Sandoval/U.S. Navy) The statement about Ford came as U.S. forces carried out retaliatory strikes Tuesday against two undisclosed facilities in Iraq. The operation was connected to a close-range ballistic missile attack Monday against American and coalition forces at al Asad Air Base in Iraqs western Anbar province. An AC-130 gunship airborne at the time of the missile attack fired on a vehicle carrying militants thought to be responsible, resulting in several casualties, U.S. officials said. In all, U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have been attacked upward of 66 times since Oct. 17, resulting in 62 injuries to American personnel, Singh said. Those numbers did not include the most recent attack, she noted. Ford was nearing the end of its first full deployment when Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel, killing and torturing at least 1,200 people on Oct. 7. Days later, Austin ordered Ford and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to the eastern Mediterranean in support of Israel and to deter a broader regional conflict. Eisenhower later was redirected to U.S. Central Command, which includes the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Gulf of Oman. Other Navy ships in the eastern Mediterranean include the amphibious command ship USS Mount Whitney. In addition to the Eisenhower group, the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, which includes USS Bataan and USS Carter Hall along with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, is deployed in the Middle East. Ford is not the first U.S. carrier on duty in the Mediterranean in recent years to see its deployment extended. The Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group spent more than eight months in the region after war broke out in Ukraine. It was relieved by USS George H.W. Bush in August 2022. Analysts have suggested that the Navy could keep the carrier in the region through December without negatively impacting deployment and maintenance schedules. The Ford group includes the destroyers USS McFaul, USS Ramage and USS Thomas Hudner, the cruiser USS Normandy and Carrier Air Wing 8. A Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane prepares for takeoff at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, Sept. 27, 2023. CFM International was awarded a $47,775,000 modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract, the Department of Defense said this week. This modification exercises options to procure three CFM56-7B27AE spare engines, two for the Navy and one for the government of Germany, in support of the P-8A Poseidon aircraft, the Pentagon said. (Logan Beeney/U.S. Marine Corps) (Tribune News Service) A jet engine maker based in Butler County is winning big with a modification to a U.S. Navy contract. CFM International, based in West Chester Twp., Ohio, was awarded a $47,775,000 modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract, the Department of Defense said this week. This modification exercises options to procure three CFM56-7B27AE spare engines, two for the Navy and one for the government of Germany, in support of the P-8A Poseidon aircraft, the Pentagon said. Work will be performed in Villaroche, France (53% of the work); Durham, N.C. (43%); and Peebles, Ohio (4%), and is expected to be completed next month. Fiscal 2024 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $31.8 million; and foreign military sales customer funds in the amount of $15.9 million will be obligated at the time of award, the department said. The contract came from the Naval Air Systems Command in Patuxent River, Md. CFM Internationals 50/50 parent companies are Evendale-based GE Aviation and Frances Safran Aircraft Engines. Another regional company, Crown Equipment Corp., of New Bremen, was added as an awardee to a multiple award contract for material handling equipment, awarded July 22, 2022, the department also said. (c)2023 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) Visit www.daytondailynews.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev watch as Khrushchevs limousine pulls up following one of their meetings at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria, in June 1961. At right, Secretary of State Dean Rusk confers with his Soviet counterpart Andrei Gromyko. (Gus Schuettler/Stars and Stripes) Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, began like any other day for Walter Cronkite, the anchor of CBS Evening News. He got to the CBS newsroom in Manhattan around 10 a.m., his usual start time, and spent the morning at his desk poring over the newswires, looking for stories to cover in his evening broadcast. President John F. Kennedy was touring Texas and would give a speech that afternoon in Dallas. That would surely be worth a mention. Then, around 1:30 p.m., a wire came in that changed everything. Cronkites editor, Ed Bliss, went to retrieve it. He said, They say shots rang out in Dallas as the presidents motorcade was going through the city. Oh, my God! Stay on it, Cronkite responded. He got up from his desk to see the wire himself. By then, another had come in: Kennedy was hit. He was being driven to a hospital. Cronkite went on the air right away. About an hour later, it fell on him to break the news to America that Kennedy was dead. With a grave look on his face, he announced: From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. The news traveled around the globe. Whatever else was happening in the world that day grew irrelevant. The attention of humanity was focused on Kennedys assassination. The reaction globally was one of shock and incredulity, said Fredrik Logevall, a Harvard professor and the author of the biography JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956, as well as a forthcoming second volume. People struggled to comprehend that the American president, who seemed to be in the prime of his life and who was such a global icon, was dead. Can it really be that hes gone? That was a universal question people asked themselves. In New York City, traffic screeched to a halt. Is it true? people shouted in desperation. In the citys hospitals, some patients flipped out upon hearing the news. Doctors had to inject them with tranquilizers. Not far away, on Long Island, the artist Elaine de Kooning was in her workshop. She happened to be painting a portrait of Kennedy, according to Thurston Clarke in JFKs Last Hundred Days. The president had commissioned the portrait a year earlier. The assassin dropped my brush, she later said. In Chicago, at a swanky restaurant, patrons left in the middle of their meals. Rather than wait for their checks, they dumped cash on the tables. Elsewhere in Chicago, a man walking on a street wondered why everyone was acting so strangely. He spotted a stranger holding a transistor radio against his ear and inquired, Whats the news? Hes dead, responded the stranger. Then the stranger grabbed him by the collar and said, Pray, man. On the campus of the University of Delaware, a junior was leaving class. The hallways were buzzing. He ran to his car and turned on the radio. He was devastated. How is that possible in the United States of America? he thought. He had always felt a special connection to Kennedy: Like the president, he hailed from an Irish Catholic family. Joe Biden had just turned 21. In Washington, the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, was in the middle of a dentist appointment. The radio was playing music in the background. Suddenly, the music stopped and Dobrynin heard Kennedys name. But he couldnt understand what was being said. The president has been assassinated, the dentist clarified, before instructing a stunned Dobrynin to keep his mouth open so he could continue working on his teeth. The front page of the European edition the day after president John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. (Stars and Stripes) In Atlanta, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was at home, glued to the TV. His wife, Coretta, was with him. After Kennedy was pronounced dead, King turned to Coretta and said, This is what is going to happen to me. This is such a sick society. Across the Atlantic Ocean, night had fallen. In London, at the Old Vic Theatre, the actor Laurence Olivier was performing. But, as William Manchester recounts in The Death of a President, Olivier stopped acting after learning the news and instructed the public to rise to their feet as the orchestra played The Star-Spangled Banner. In Rome, in homage to il presidente, cabbies parked a white taxi adorned with a black wreath in front of the U.S. Embassy, a palazzo on the posh Via Veneto. A 20-minute drive away, in Vatican City, the pope prayed in his private chapel. In West Berlin, under heavy rain, 60,000 people carrying torches gathered in silence outside City Hall. It was past midnight. We feel like our father has been taken from us, a young German mechanic mourner told the AP. We feel left alone. In Paris, hundreds of people came together on the Champs-Elysees. President Charles de Gaulle was astonished that the French would mourn a foreigner a Yankee to boot. I am stunned, the proud Gaul admitted. They are crying all over France. It is as if he were a Frenchman, a member of their own family. In what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the province of Katanga, ministers paid their respects at the U.S. Consulate. We Bantus always mourn the passing of a great chief, they said. In Japan, in the village of Shiokawa, villagers woke the mayor, Kohei Hanami, in the middle of the night to tell him about Kennedys death. Hanami had a history with the president: He had almost killed Kennedy in wartime. During World War II, he had captained a Japanese destroyer. And in 1943, in the South Pacific, Hanamis destroyer had sunk a U.S. torpedo boat, PT 109, commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy. Kennedy had been heroic and saved most of his men. Hanami had a soldiers respect for him. The world has lost an irreplaceable man, he said. It wasnt just Kennedys former foes mourning his passing; his current Cold War antagonists felt sorrow too. Even behind the Iron Curtain, there were genuine expressions of grief at the news that JFK had died, said Logevall. In Moscow, it was almost 11 p.m. when Radio Moscow interrupted a classical concerto and broke the news. A New York Times reporter in the Soviet capital was struck by the genuine grief of the Muscovites. At a bus stop on Gorki Street, half-an-hour from the Kremlin, people were in shock. He was a good man, a woman said. It is always the good who suffer. A man responded, It is bad for the American people and for our people. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was in his house in Kyiv when the phone rang. His foreign minister told him about Kennedy. Khrushchev wept. The fact that the leader of the other superpower, supposedly an arch-foe, had this kind of reaction is extraordinary, said Logevall. Only a year earlier, Kennedy and Khrushchev had squared off during the Cuban missile crisis. Nuclear war had been narrowly averted; diplomacy had triumphed. Since then, the two leaders had fostered detente between the United States and the Soviet Union. In August 1963, they had signed a treaty banning most nuclear tests. More was in the offing. In September, Kennedy had proposed a joint American-Soviet mission to the moon. He had even begun to secretly plan a trip to Moscow to see Khrushchev in 1964, probably after the presidential election in November, which he was favored to win. In his speeches, Kennedy spoke of world peace as achievable and hailed a new approach to the Cold War a desire not to bury ones adversary, but to compete in a host of peaceful arenas, in ideas, in production, and ultimately in service to all mankind. The efforts that Kennedy and Khrushchev had made to lower the temperature of the Cold War had had real effects, and had changed the tenor of superpower relations, said Logevall. The change to the geopolitical picture in the last year of Kennedys life contributed to the sense that wed lost something here that was immense. Even Cuban leader Fidel Castro felt this sense of loss. He was lunching with Jean Daniel, an influential French journalist, on Varadero Beach, east of Havana. Daniel was there as Kennedys unofficial envoy. The president had met him a month prior and tasked him with sounding out Castro about the possibility of improving relations between the United States and Cuba. But they had no time. Midway through lunch, a secretary barged in. There had been an assassination attempt on Kennedy. Castro told Daniel, This is bad news. He was so dismayed he repeated it twice more. He hoped Kennedy would pull through. Moments later, he learned Kennedy hadnt. Castro stood up. At 61, with broad shoulders, he cut a towering figure. Everything is changed, he said. Everything is going to change. ... The Cold War, relations with Russia, Latin America, Cuba. In Israel, it was early evening. David Ben-Gurion, the former prime minister, was listening to the radio when he heard the news. It was one of the greatest shocks of my life, he said in 1965. Then Ben-Gurion summed up why Kennedys sudden death brought humanity together in grief: Such a promising young president. Really, he represented for the whole world their leader. (Rick Emert/Stars and Stripes) Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, Sept. 10, 2003: Quick Reactionary Force soldiers load onto a Chinook at the flight line. The soldiers, from 10th Mountain Divisions Company A, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, were put on alert and had to be ready to board the Chinook in 15 minutes. The alert turned out to be an exercise. In this image released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, North Korea launches its Chollima-1 rocket with a spy satellite aboard on Nov. 22. (KCNA) CHEONAN, South Korea Seoul is restarting aerial reconnaissance operations at the North Korean border, suspended since 2018, after Pyongyang launched a rocket carrying a spy satellite late Tuesday. The move is related to a partial suspension of the Comprehensive Military Agreement that took effect at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Ministry of National Defense spokesman Heo Tae-keun said during a news conference that afternoon. North Koreas behavior shows again that it has no will to comply with the agreement, he said after a Cabinet meeting that included Prime Minister Han Duck-soo. The accord was signed in 2018 by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in after summits in Pyongyang and the Demilitarized Zone. It established no-fly zones and prohibits armed troops at the border. Senior South Korean military officials met early Wednesday to discuss preparations for partially suspending the agreement after the North fired a Chollima-1 rocket carrying a spy satellite at 10:43 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Souths Joint Chiefs of Staff. Defense Minister Shin Won-sik, who presided over the meeting, emphasized that military readiness should be paramount if the deconfliction agreement is suspended, according to a news release from the ministry. Military action should be carefully prepared, he said, adding that Seouls surveillance and response capabilities should be ready for further provocative acts by North Korea, according to the release. North Koreas satellite launch is a clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and a serious provocation against [South Korea] and the international community, Shin added. In this image released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un celebrates the countrys launch of a rocket with a spy satellite aboard on Nov. 22. (KCNA) With the suspension, fixed-wing aircraft are no longer prohibited from flying within 25-mile and 12-mile buffer zones on the Korean Peninsulas eastern and western borders, respectively. The revision also scraps a ban on unmanned aerial vehicles flying within nine- and six-mile buffers on those borders. The change does not affect a prohibition on armed troops at guard posts along the border. No further details about late Tuesdays launch, including whether it was successful, were released by the Joint Chiefs. North Koreas state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Wednesday that the satellite was in orbit. Kim observed the launch and the country plans to launch additional satellites, according to KCNA. The U.S. strongly condemns the launch, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement Wednesday. Watson reiterated Washington and Seouls position that the Norths space launch vehicle used ballistic missile technology and was directly related to [North Koreas] intercontinental ballistic missile program. Pyongyang has been banned by the U.N. Security Council from conducting ballistic missile tests since 2006. The regime has fired 21 ballistic missiles in 14 days of testing so far this year. We urge all countries to condemn this launch and call on [North Korea] to come to the table for serious negotiations, Watson said. The door has not closed on diplomacy but Pyongyang must immediately cease its provocative actions and instead choose engagement. North Korea attempted two other satellite launches this year on Aug. 24 and May 31. Those ended in failure and South Koreas military salvaged debris from the May launch in the Yellow Sea. Migrants look at a Finnish Customs official's dog at the international border crossing at Salla, northern Finland, on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (Jussi Nukari/Lehtikuva via AP) HELSINKI Finnish border guards and soldiers have begun erecting barriers including concrete obstacles topped with barbed-wire at some crossing points on the Nordic countrys long border with Russia to better control the flow of undocumented migrants, officials said Wednesday. Some 600 migrants without proper visas and documentation, mostly from the Middle East and Africa, have arrived in Finland in November compared to a few dozen in September and October. The arrivals include residents of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Kenya, Morocco and Somalia, border officials said. We need to do this to maintain order (at the crossing points) and guarantee the security of legal border traffic, Tomi Tirkkonen, deputy commander of the Kainuu border guard district in eastern Finland, told The Associated Press. The Kremlin has voiced regret about Finlands decision to close the checkpoints and rejected Finnish authorities claims that Russia has encouraged the influx of migrants at the border to punish Finland for joining NATO. Tirkkonens district monitors and surveils two of Finlands nine crossing points on the border with Russia, which runs 1.340 kilometers (830 miles), serves as the European Unions external border and makes up NATOs northeastern flank. That includes the Vartius border station, one of two remaining Finnish crossing points that accept asylum applications from migrants coming from Russia. The Finnish government decided to close four busy Russia border crossings in southeastern Finland last week over suspicions of foul play by Russias border officials. Undoubtedly Russia is instrumentalizing migrants as part of its hydrid warfare against Finland, said Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen on Wednesday. Finland joined NATO in April after decades of military non-alignment and pragmatic friendly relations with Moscow. We have proof showing that, unlike before, not only Russian border authorities are letting people without proper documentation to the Finnish border but they are also actively helping them to the border zone, Valtonen said in comments to The Associated Press on Wednesday. Migrants gather for hot drinks inside a tent near the border with Finland at the Salla checkpoint, one of the still open border checkpoints situated in the Kandalaksha district of the Murmansk region, about 812 miles north of Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023. (Governor of Murmansk region Andrey Chibis telegram channel via AP) Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday that Russian authorities are ready to work together with Finnish officials to reach an agreement on the border issue. She argued that Finland should have put forward its concerns to work out a mutually acceptable solution or receive explanation, she said. On Monday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Finnish ambassador in Moscow to lodge a formal protest over the closure of the most actively used checkpoints on the border. Some 30-70 migrants are arriving each day at the Vartius checkpoint in Kainuu and the Salla checkpoint in Finlands Arctic Lapland region, where winter conditions include minus 20-degree Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) temperatures and plenty of snow. Andrei Chibis, governor of Russias northern Murmansk region that borders Finland, on Wednesday posted pictures of migrants in a tent near the Salla checkpoint set up by the regional authorities to let them warm themselves up, eat and drink hot tea. He described the situation as a humanitarian crisis and blasted the Finnish authorities, saying foreign citizens cant cross the border to the Finnish side. Most of the migrants are young men in their 20s but some are families with children and women, border guard data and photos from news outlets indicate. The number of migrants attempting to cross into Finland is unusually high and the government of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has accused Moscow of deliberately ushering migrants to the Russia-Finland border zone that is normally under heavy control by Russias Federal Security Service, or FSB. Theres been a remarkable change in Russias modus operandi in regard to migrants and their movement on the Russia-Finland border, Tirkkonen said, adding that Finland is set to get some assistance from the EUs border and coast guard agency Frontex to deal with the situation. Finland, a nation of 5.6 million people, joined NATO in direct response to Russias war with Ukraine. Many interpret Moscows migrant maneuvers as a retaliation against Helsinki opting to join the Western military alliance but analysts say Russias primary motive for such as action remains unclear. ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan, November 22. President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov invited partners from the UAE to actively participate in the implementation of major international energy projects on their territory, Trend reports. The President said this during a meeting in Ashgabat with UAE Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Suhail Mohamed Al Mazrouei. During the meeting, the readiness of the Turkmenistan's side for a constructive exchange of views and consideration of specific proposals from representatives of UAE business structures was also confirmed. Furthermore, the sides highlighted effective cooperation in trade and economic, financial, fuel and energy, transport and communication spheres, and also discussed prospects for further development of interstate cooperation. At the end of the meeting, President Serdar Berdimuhamedov and Minister Suhail Mohamed Al Mazrouei expressed confidence in the successful development of bilateral cooperation. Meanwhile, Turkmenistan is rapidly developing its energy sector, focusing on the creation and implementation of international energy projects. The country expresses interest in attracting Emirati partners to participate jointly in these projects, which allows Turkmenistan to strengthen its position in the global energy market. Lawmakers of Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation attend a session in Moscow, Russia, on Oct. 25, 2023. The upper chamber of Russias parliament on Wednesday, Nov. 22, approved a spending increase of roughly 25 percent. (Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation via AP) Russias parliament approved a federal budget Wednesday that increases spending by around 25% in 2024-2026 and devotes a record amount to defense. The budget was passed unanimously by the Federation Council the upper chamber of the Russian parliament and will be sent to President Vladimir Putin to sign it into law. The budget for 2024-2026 was developed specifically to fund the Russian military and to mitigate the impact of 17,500 sanctions on Russia, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said after the lower chamber approved it on Nov. 17. Under the budget, the countrys largest, defense expenditure is expected to overtake social spending next year for the first time in modern Russian history. It comes as the Kremlin is eager to shore up support for President Vladimir Putin before a March presidential election. Record low unemployment, higher wages and targeted social spending should help the Kremlin ride out the domestic impact of pivoting the economy to a war footing but could pose a problem in the long term, analysts say. The budget is about getting the war sorted in Ukraine and about being ready for a military confrontation with the West in perpetuity, said Richard Connolly, an expert on Russias military and economy at the Royal United Services Institute in London. This amounts to the wholesale remilitarization of Russian society, he said. Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, greets his supporters upon his arrival at a meeting in a hall on the sea side of Gaza City, on April 30, 2022. (Adel Hana/AP) The mastermind of the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the worst Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed in generations is a secretive figure, feared on both sides of the battle lines. In Gaza, no figure looms larger in determining the future trajectory of the war than Yehya Sinwar. Obsessive, disciplined and dictatorial, he is Hamas top leader inside the Palestinian territory, a rarely seen veteran militant who learned fluent Hebrew during years in Israeli prisons and carefully studied his enemy. Israeli officials have vowed to kill him and crush the militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007. But seven weeks into the war, the 61-year-old Sinwar remains alive, in hiding and at the helm of Hamas fighters as they battle Israeli forces. He also controls the groups negotiations over the fate of nearly 240 hostages that militants captured during the Oct. 7 attack. With the devastating toll from Israels bombardment and ground invasion, Sinwars political fate may now depend on how the war ends and whether Palestinians feel they gained anything from their immense losses. If he can win the release of all Palestinian prisoners and the lifting of the 16-year blockade of Gaza, people will feel they obtained something, said Hani al-Masri, a veteran Palestinian analyst. Otherwise, it will be a big problem for Sinwar personally because people will say that there was destruction, and we got nothing in return. Sinwar was able to claim an apparent political victory although one that came at a staggering cost in Palestinian lives with the announcement Wednesday of plans for a temporary cease-fire and a hostage-for-prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel. The exchange, which had been scheduled to begin Thursday, was then postponed until at least Friday. Israel offered no immediate explanation for the delay. The wiry, grey-haired Sinwar is believed to have engineered the surprise Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, along with the even more shadowy Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas armed wing. The attack caught Israels military and intelligence establishment off guard and shattered the image of Israeli invincibility, as militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in scenes of brutality. Hamas said it launched the attack in retaliation for increasing Israeli depredations against Palestinians and the continuing occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza and to push the Palestinian cause back onto the world agenda. What it brought was devastating Israeli retaliation, killing thousands and leveling swaths of Gaza. To Israelis, Sinwar is a nightmarish figure. The Israeli armys chief spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, called him a murderer who proved to the whole world that Hamas is worse than ISIS, referring to the Islamic State group. Among fellow Palestinians, some respect Sinwar for standing up to Israel and for remaining in impoverished Gaza, in contrast to other Hamas leaders living more comfortably abroad. In a show of defiance two years ago, Sinwar ended one of his few public speeches by inviting Israel to assassinate him, proclaiming, I will walk back home after this meeting. He then did so, shaking hands and taking selfies with people in the streets. But he is also deeply feared for his iron grip in Gaza, where public dissent is suppressed. In contrast to the media-friendly personas cultivated by some of Hamas political leadership, Sinwar has not sought to build a public image. He is known as the Butcher of Khan Younis for his brutal approach to Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. Sinwar was born in 1962 in Gazas Khan Younis refugee camp to a family that was among thousands of Palestinians driven from what is now the city of Ashkelon during the 1948 war surrounding Israels creation. He was an early member of Hamas, which emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, when the coastal enclave was under Israeli military occupation. Sinwar convinced the groups founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, that to succeed as a resistance organization, Hamas needed to be purged of spies for Israel. They founded a security arm, then known as Majd, which Sinwar led. Arrested by Israel in the late 1980s, he admitted under interrogation to having killed 12 suspected collaborators. He was eventually sentenced to four life terms for offenses that included the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers. Michael Koubi, a former director of the investigations department at Israels Shin Bet security agency who interrogated Sinwar personally, recalled the confession that stood out to him the most: Sinwar recounted forcing a man to bury his own brother alive because he was suspected of working for Israel. His eyes were full of happiness when he told us this story, Koubi said. But to fellow prisoners, Sinwar was charismatic, sociable and shrewd, open to detainees from all political factions. He became the leader of the hundreds of imprisoned Hamas members. He organized strikes to improve conditions. He learned Hebrew and studied Israeli society. Being a leader inside prison gave him experience in negotiations and dialogue, and he understood the mentality of the enemy and how to affect it, said Anwar Yassine, a Lebanese citizen who spent about 17 years in Israeli jails, much of the time with Sinwar. Yassine noted how Sinwar always treated him with respect even though he belongs to the Lebanese Communist Party, whose secular principles conflict with Hamas ideology. In 2008, Sinwar survived an aggressive form of brain cancer after treatment at a Tel Aviv hospital. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released him in 2011 along with about 1,000 other prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid. Netanyahu was harshly criticized for releasing dozens of prisoners held for involvement in deadly attacks. Back in Gaza, Sinwar closely coordinated between Hamas political leadership and its military wing, the Qassam Brigades. He also cultivated a reputation for ruthlessness. He is widely believed to be behind the unprecedented 2016 killing of another top Hamas commander, Mahmoud Ishtewi, in an internal power struggle. In 2017, he was elected head of Hamas political bureau in Gaza. Sinwar worked with Hamas leader in exile, Ismail Haniyeh, to realign the group with Iran and its allies, including Lebanons Hezbollah. He also focused on building Hamas military power. For Hamas, surviving the war in any form would defy Israel and offer a victory of sorts. Sinwar himself may not survive. Im sure we will eventually kill him, Koubi said. But to destroy the ideology he planted, thats not so easy. This image from video provided by the Department of Defense shows a Nov. 8, 2023, airstrike on a weapons warehouse, center, in eastern Syria. The strike targeted a facility linked to Iranian-backed militias, in retaliation for what has been a growing number of attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in the region for the past several weeks. (Department of Defense) WASHINGTON An Iranian-backed extremist group threatened Wednesday to expand attacks on U.S. targets after U.S. aircraft killed multiple militants in airstrikes in Iraq following the first use of short-range ballistic missiles against American forces at al Asad Air Base west of Baghdad. U.S. fighter jets struck a Kataib Hezbollah operations center in western Anbar province and a Katib Hezbollah command and control node near Jurf al-Saqr, south of Baghdad, early Tuesday, two U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operation. Kataib Hezbollah said eight of its members were killed in the airstrikes. U.S. officials could not confirm the deaths. The attacks followed a retaliatory strike by an AC-130 gunship after the militants fired two short-range ballistic missiles at al Asad on Tuesday, killing the attackers as they fled in a vehicle. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the missiles caused several non-serious injuries and some minor damage to infrastructure. In a statement Wednesday, Kataib Hezbollah said it was considering expanding the scope of targets if the U.S. military continues with its strikes. It added airstrikes will not go unpunished. Attacks on U.S. installations by Iranian-backed militant groups, under the umbrella of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria, have escalated in the wake of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. Israeli strikes began after Hamas extremists breached border defenses on Oct. 7, swarming into Israeli territory and killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 men, women and children hostage. Since the Israel-Hamas conflict escalated, Iranian-backed militants have launched at least 66 rocket and missile attacks against U.S. facilities in Iraq and Syria, wounding at least 62 service members. The current series of attacks began on Oct. 17, the date that a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds of Palestinians. Previously, U.S. counterattacks had focused on militant weapons caches and training centers in Syria, due to political sensitivities in Iraq. The U.S. has sought to maintain good relations with the Iraqi government despite its own close ties with Iran. The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who rose to power through the backing of an Iran-backed political coalition, called the recent escalations a dangerous development, reflecting the delicate balance the government must strike between Iranian factions and U.S. military presence. In a statement, Sudanis office called the U.S. attack a violation of the countrys sovereignty and of the U.S.-led coalitions mission to combat Islamic State militants on Iraqi soil. The statement complained that the airstrikes were carried out without giving Iraq notice. The Iraqi prime minister has, however, called for Iraqi authorities to pursue the attackers of U.S. bases in Iraq as he tries to maintain a delicate balance in maintaining positive ties with both Washington and Tehran. U.S. officials speaking on background said Washington is trying to communicate that it does not seek wider conflict but that the Iran-backed attacks against American forces must stop and that the U.S. will take further action if needed. The U.S. still maintains forces in Iraq and Syria as part of operations against the Islamic State group and its allies, which U.S. officials say receive money, weapons and other support from Iran. Washington has pledged strong support for Israel in its conflict with Hamas and has dispatched two carrier groups, multiple squadrons of warplanes and U.S. personnel to try and keep the conflict from expanding into a regional war. Kataib Hezbollah rose to prominence during the Iraq War as one of the special groups, a U.S. military term for the mostly Shiite insurgent factions fighting American and Iraq troops alongside the larger Al-Qaida in Iraq, a largely Sunni organization. In 2009 Kataib Hezbollah was added to the State Departments list of foreign terrorist organizations because of multiple rocket, mortar and sniper attacks against American, Iraqi and other international forces. A series of Kaytusha rocket attacks by Kataib Hezbollah against Camp Taji in Iraq in 2020 killed three service members two Americans and a British soldier and seriously wounded several others. In response the U.S. conducted two rounds of airstrikes taking out multiple weapons facilities. Stars and Stripes reporter Matthew Adams, editor Robert H. Reid and The Associated Press contributed to this report. The Israeli government announced in a statement released in the early hours Wednesday that it had approved a hostage release with militant group Hamas. At least 50 women and children taken hostage will be released over four days, the statement said, during which there will be a pause in fighting as the hostages surface from the groups hideouts and underground warrens in Gaza where they have been held. Before the truce was approved, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war will continue even after a deal. Whatever happens next, nothing can erase the trauma already unleashed. Hamass Oct. 7 shocking attack on southern Israel was the bloodiest single day in the history of the Jewish state and broke the uneasy, arguably unsustainable, status quo that existed between Israel and the Palestinians. In response, Israel has carried out a campaign to wipe out Hamas that is unprecedented in its scale, reach and devastation. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombardments, many of them children. The bulk of the Gaza Strips over 2 million people have had to flee their homes. The territorys population in the north was ordered to evacuate to the south by Israeli authorities, sparking a panicked exodus. Israeli strikes hit targets across Gaza, but this weekend, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant indicated that the focus of their operation may be shifting further away from hollowed-out Gaza City in the north toward Khan Younis in the south, where Israeli authorities claim Hamass main command structure may be. People who were on the western side of the city have already encountered the [Israel Defense Forces]s lethal strength, Gallant told Israeli radio. People who are on the eastern side understand that this evening. People who are in the southern Gaza Strip will understand that soon as well. Even if the fighting stopped today, huge swaths of Gaza have been reduced to rubble. According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which cited data from local authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza, some 45 percent of all of Gazas housing units have already either been destroyed or severely damaged. By one measure, it took four years of conflict in Syria to destroy a comparable share of what Israel pulverized in a matter of weeks. Israel dropped thousands of munitions daily on targets across Gaza, but especially in the territorys north. The city of Beit Hanoun, once home to more than 50,000 people, is a ruin where barely a single inhabitable building remains standing, according to a visiting Israeli journalist earlier this month. Satellite imagery and drone footage show how the towns once crowded, bustling streets are now a moonscape of debris and blasted buildings. Researchers examining satellite evidence estimate that perhaps more than half the buildings in north Gaza are damaged. All the while, a humanitarian crisis teeters from bad to worse. Many Palestinians in Gaza are encamped in makeshift tent cities or crammed into U.N.-administered facilities, some of which have still been struck by Israeli bombardments. Critical infrastructure from hospitals to desalination plants to fuel depots are failing or shuttered. U.N. officials warn of the growing toll of hunger and disease stalking the territory. In a Tuesday interview with CNN, U.N. relief chief Martin Griffiths described the situation in Gaza as the worst ever he has seen in a long career as a humanitarian official. Nobody goes to school in Gaza, nobody knows what their future is. Hospitals have become places of war, not of curing, he said. No, I dont think Ive seen anything like this before. Its difficult to calculate the costs of reconstruction. An 11-day war over Gaza in 2021 saw 2,000 homes destroyed and some 22,000 housing units damaged, and required more than $1 billion in foreign funding to aid recovery efforts. Thats a drop in the bucket for the current requirement, whenever hostilities truly cease. Although Gaza has a long history of conflict, there are no parallels to the scale of the present devastation, explained The Washington Posts Adam Taylor. Some Palestinian officials put the economic cost of Israels ground operation in Gaza in 2014 at more than $6 billion. The current war is already longer and far more destructive. (The Washington Post) Neither Israel nor its Arab neighbors have much interest in repeating earlier cycles of conflict, destruction and reconstruction. Gazas economy has cratered after more than a decade-and-a-half of Israeli blockade on the territory, which restricts the movement of goods in and the movement of people out. If, as the U.S. government expects, some normalcy is to be restored under a new Palestinian-led administration in the territory, a tremendous amount of foreign investment is required. Many in Israel are not concerned about what comes after at this point, given the widespread desire to neutralize Hamas after what it inflicted on innocent Israeli civilians. Some politicians on the Israeli right, including ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus cabinet, want to exact an even deeper toll on Gazas population. On Monday, far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel should collapse the state system in Gaza, a call, effectively, for more civilian suffering and destruction. He also echoed a suggestion by a former Israeli general to pursue the starvation of Gazas people, and to allow for the spread of disease in their ranks. Israeli authorities are not taking a similar line, though Netanyahu has rejected the prospect of a political administration run by the enfeebled Palestinian Authority which itself doesnt want to be seen entering Gaza on the backs of Israeli tanks. But Israelis may have to eventually reckon with the desolation theyve wrought. Even the great majority of Israelis who dont dream of resurrecting Gush Katif have very little empathy for the suffering of Gazas residents, wrote David Rosenberg in Haaretz, referring to the visions of the countrys radical settler movement. Even if third-country donors pay for the lions share of the cost, it will be hard to accept with equanimity that we must have a hand in helping Gazans rebuild their homes, schools and infrastructure and in creating jobs for them and inevitably, many of these jobs will have to be in Israel itself because Gaza cannot generate enough itself for the foreseeable future. And those third-country donors face tough questions, as well. Arab officials do not want to clean up Israels mess and help it police their fellow Arabs, reported the Economists Gregg Carlstrom from the sidelines of a regional conference in Bahrain. But they also do not wish to see Israel reoccupy the enclave, and they admit, at least in private conversations, that the Palestinian Authority is too weak at present to resume full control of Gaza. If none of those options is realistic or desirable, it is not clear what is. Lt. Col. Herman Bernard West III, right, was relieved of his command of 1st Battalion, 94th Field Artillery Regiment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord last month for loss of confidence, the Army said. West is a nephew of retired Army Lt. Col. Allen B. West, left, who served as a Republican congressman from Florida from 2011 until 2013 and later as chairman of the Texas Republican Party in 2020-2021. (Instagram) An Army battalion commander and nephew of a prominent Republican politician was relieved of his command last month for loss of confidence, the Army said Tuesday. Lt. Col. Herman Bernard West III had commanded the 1st Battalion, 94th Field Artillery Regiment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord since June, according to the Army statement. The Army gave no reason for his dismissal, but Lt. Col. Jennifer Bocanegra, a spokeswoman at JBLM, said West has not been charged with violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Jason Wareham, an attorney in Denver who is representing West, told the Army Times newspaper on Monday that West has been accused of sexual harassment. Efforts to contact Wareham on Tuesday were unsuccessful. West is a nephew of retired Army Lt. Col. Allen B. West, who served as a Republican congressman from Florida from 2011 until 2013 and later as chairman of the Texas Republican Party in 2020-2021. In 2003 the elder West was relieved as commander of an artillery battalion in the 4th Infantry Division following a use-of-force incident against an Iraqi police officer suspected of attacking U.S. troops. The elder West admitted to violating rules on treatment of prisoners, including subjecting him to a mock execution with an unloaded pistol and striking him during interrogation. West accepted non-judicial punishment including a $5,000 fine and was allowed to retire from the Army in 2004 as a lieutenant colonel. Samsung SF-3100 fax machine with inkjet printing on normal paper, 1999. (Wikimedia Commons) Desperate to get the attention of their elected officials to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, Americans have turned to a technology many young voters havent used before: the fax machine. Incoming faxes to senators and representatives have increased over the past week since a number of social media posts went viral, suggested faxing in addition to calling and emailing. Over the past month, Israels incursion into the Gaza Strip after Hamas captured over 200 hostages has inspired massive protests across the United States and pushed people to contact their representatives in hefty numbers. On Monday, 13 Democratic senators sent a letter urging President Biden to protect Palestinian civilians and work toward peace in the region, and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) called for a cease-fire. Israel and Hamas formally agreed to four-to-five-day fighting pause and a hostage deal on Tuesday. The volume of calls and emails has led some offices to answer less often and to fall behind emptying voice-mail inboxes, making it impossible to leave a message. A fax, suggested activists on social media, was another pathway for constituents to make their voices heard. What originally tickled me about the idea was that there was this physical piece of paper they couldnt ignore, said Kendra Appe, 37, a therapist in Seattle who has been asking for a cease-fire. I like the idea of invading their space a little more. You cant ignore me. If you were born before 1995, you can skip the next paragraph. Fax (short for facsimile) machines let anyone send a copy of a document over phone lines by scanning the paper in on one end and calling the recipients fax machine, which then prints out a duplicate version. Faxes are typically black and white and include a cover page with the To and From names, fax number, a subject and short message. The technology has largely been replaced by email but lingers in industries such as health care, law and real estate. In Congress, its unlikely the documents are still printed out. Many, if not most, of the offices have systems that turn faxes into emails, their pages arriving as attachments, said Daniel Schuman, governance director at Popvox Foundation, a nonprofit focused on modernizing government and tech. When the offices did have actual fax machines, too many letters could force them to run out of paper and create a bigger disruption. That doesnt mean faxing is without value. Almost all comments are still tallied manually by staffers, who look at or listen to everything that comes in and turn them into reports for their member, Schuman said. Appe regularly attends protests, calls their representative daily and is using a free site called FaxZero to send them a letter, as well as a single page that says Cease-fire Now! in a large, bold font. On a typical day, FaxZero processes about 4,000 faxes, said owner Kay Savetz, who runs its parent company, Savetz Publishing. That number nearly tripled last week last Thursday, it sent 11,000 faxes, primarily to lawmakers. Its old-school but it feels tangible, it feels more real than sending an email, said Savetz, whose company has three employees. Is there really a difference? I dont know, but I think its important in our democracy that people reach out and be heard, whether youre comfortable doing it with fax or email or picking up the phone and making a call. The 17-year-old site, which feels like a time capsule of the 2000s internet, lets anyone send a fax online without owning a machine. Individuals can send up to five free faxes a day, and since 2012, the site has listed the fax numbers for members of the House and Senate. The faxes are encrypted, so FaxZero cant see what issues or positions people are pushing for, but the company can see the metadata. In 2017, it added leader boards of the most faxed representatives in the past day, week or month. As of this writing, all were topped by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). Phone calls to politicians are also spiking, according to 5Calls, a liberal nonprofit website founded in 2016 that helps people with scripts and numbers for making calls. Over the past month, the site documented 321,000 calls, primarily asking for a cease-fire, said 5Calls co-founder and technical director Nick ONeill. Its the largest spike in interest the site has experienced in years, he said, since a campaign to save the Affordable Care Act. About 50 percent of calls are going to voice mail, 25 percent are reaching a human, and 25 percent get no humans or voice-mail options, ONeill said. We are getting some feedback from the people inside these offices to keep doing it, trying to give us hope, Appe said. They know if we stop talking, then its easier for these elected officials. Different forms of communication have varying levels of impact, experts say. Emails, faxes, phone calls and tagging members of Congress on social media are effective in aggregate, but there are some best practices. Instead of just voicing an opinion, mention a specific bill number if there is one, keep the message short, be polite and have a specific ask. The even more impactful options are in person, Schuman said. You can go to your district office or attend a town hall or virtual town hall. If youre in Washington, D.C., you can request a meeting with the congressperson or a member of their staff. Many members will be traveling back to their hometowns over the holidays. Sign up for mailing lists to find out about local events. Find an organization that is doing work on the issue and see what they recommend. There always a desire for one cool hack to save democracy, Schuman said. Its get involved. Thats the hack, thats what its always been. Ukrainian soldiers navigate on the Dnipro river by boat at the frontline near Kherson, Ukraine, Sunday, June 11, 2023. (Felipe Dana/AP) WASHINGTON As lawmakers in Washington weigh sending billions more in federal support to Kyiv to help fight off Russian aggression, close to half of the U.S. public thinks the country is spending too much on aid to Ukraine, according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Those sentiments, driven primarily by Republicans, help explain the hardening opposition among conservative GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are rebuffing efforts from President Joe Biden to approve a new tranche of Ukraine aid, arguing that the money would be better spent for domestic priorities. Yet opposition to aid is down slightly from where it was a month ago in another AP-NORC poll. Now, 45% say the U.S. government is spending too much on aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia, compared with 52% in October. That shift appears to come mostly from Republicans: 59% now say too much is spent on Ukraine aid, but thats down from 69% in October. Nonetheless, the Republican resistance to continued Ukraine aid remains strong. I understand the citizens need help, but I feel like were spending way too much money on Ukraine when we have our issues here, on our own soil, that we need to deal with, said Eric Mondello, 40, from Fountain, Colorado. Pointing to needs such as health care for veterans and homelessness in communities, Mondello added: I understand the U.S. has been an ally to others, but I feel like, lets take care of our people first. More than one-third (38%) of U.S. adults say that current spending is about the right amount, which is up slightly from last month (31%). Among Republicans, nearly 3 in 10 (29%) say the current spending is about right, up from 20% last month. Paula Graves, 69, is among those who says the amount of spending for Ukraine is the right amount. Putin, hes straight up evil. I dont think there should be any question in anyones mind, said Graves, of Clovis, California. Hes a dictator. Hes infringed on human rights, hes a very scary person and if Ukraine falls to him, whos next? What countrys next? Graves, who says she is not affiliated with a political party but leans more conservative, said she believes the U.S. has a leadership role on the global stage and added: I think we definitely need to put America first, but I dont think that needs to be first and only. The White House has been repeatedly pressing lawmakers to pass Bidens nearly $106 billion emergency spending package that he proposed in October, which includes more than $61 billion specifically for the war in Ukraine. The rest of Bidens request has aid for Israel as it battles Hamas, money for various priorities in the Indo-Pacific region and additional resources to help manage migration at the southern border. On Ukraine, the Biden administration is increasingly warning that the well of aid is running dry. In an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Ukraines effort to defeat Russian forces matters to the rest of the world and pledged that U.S. support would continue for the long haul. That message was reinforced at the White House. As President Biden has said, when aggressors dont pay a price for their aggression, theyll cause more chaos and death and destruction, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, told the White House press briefing Monday. They just keep on going, and the cost and the threats to America and to the world will keep rising. But Congress has rebuffed the White House efforts at bolstering Ukraine support at least twice in recent months. First, it ignored a roughly $40 billion supplemental request before a Sept. 30 funding deadline. Then last week, it passed a stopgap funding measure that keeps the government operating through early next year, but with no additional Ukraine aid. In the Senate, a small bipartisan group is working on legislation that would combine fresh Ukraine assistance with stricter border measures to address concerns from Republicans that the U.S. was focused on needs abroad at the expense of issues closer to home. A broad majority of senators remains supportive of Ukraine aid, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., being one of the most stalwart supporters despite the isolationist strain in his party. South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said lawmakers will continue to work on the Ukraine-border package over the Thanksgiving break and wont wait until mid-January when Congress faces another government funding deadline to act on Ukraine. The big question mark is in the House, where still-new Speaker Mike Johnson who had voted against Ukraine aid as a rank-and-file conservative has spoken broadly of the need to counter Russian aggression yet faces unruly GOP lawmakers who have shown more hostility to continued support for Kyiv. Johnson, too, is insisting that additional Ukraine aid be paired with tougher border measures, although it is far from certain that any immigration agreement that clears the Democratic-led Senate could pass the GOP-controlled House. Half of U.S. adults are extremely or very concerned that Russias influence poses a direct threat to the United States. Democrats (53%) and Republicans (51%) are similarly concerned about Russian power but Democrats are more likely than Republicans to see Ukraine as a nation of shared values to the U.S. and to support more aid for Ukraine. About half of the public (48%) endorses providing weapons to Ukraine (57% among Democrats, 42% among Republicans). About 4 in 10 favor sending government funds directly to Ukraine (54% for Democrats, 24% for Republicans). Americans have grown slightly more likely to say the U.S. should take a less active role in solving the worlds problems, compared with a September poll from AP-NORC and Pearson. Slightly fewer than half (45%) now say the U.S. should be less involved, up from 33% in September. Just 16% of Democrats now say the U.S. should take a more active role, down from 29% in September. Peter Einsig, a Republican from Tulsa, Oklahoma, said he still believes the U.S. has a role to play abroad, but that he remains concerned about excessive government spending and federal debt. Yet Einsig said he would be more inclined to support aid to Ukraine if there were more oversight into how the money was being used abroad, as well as a timeline of how much longer the U.S. would be providing support. We dont have transparency on where the money is really, really going, said Einsig, 40. Its a big lump sum. Four in 10 U.S. adults say Ukraine is an ally that shares U.S. interests and values. That view is most common among Democrats (53%), who are much more likely than independents (28%), Republicans (29%) and Americans overall to see Ukraine as a nation with similar values and needs. About half of Republicans say Ukraine is a partner that the U.S. should cooperate with, but say it is not a nation that shares U.S. values. The poll of 1,239 adults was conducted Nov. 2-6, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORCs probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to represent the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. Robert and Heather Cook, with their dog, Bandit, pose with the Coast Guard members who saved them Saturday, about 90 miles off the shore of Hernando Beach, Fla. (U.S. Coast Guard) Heather Cook smelled smoke, and she knew theyd have to abandon ship. The engine of their sailboat was dead about halfway into what was supposed to be a month-long trip. Cook, her husband Robert and their dog Bandit were left with no option other than being lifted into the Coast Guard helicopter already hovering overhead. The Coast Guard rescued the couple and Bandit, a Maltipoo who turns 1 this week, over the weekend about 90 miles off Hernando Beach on Floridas Gulf Coast. They abandoned their boat, named Here and Now, on Saturday after a porthole that wasnt supposed to open failed and began gushing water. Cook told The Washington Post on Tuesday that it blew out and catastrophically failed. Petty Officer 1st Class Nicole Groll, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, told The Post the situation was dire. They were basically dead in the water, Groll said. The Cooks were sailing to Biloxi, Miss., to attend a wedding. They left Port Canaveral on Floridas Atlantic coast on Nov. 2 and planned to get to Biloxi on Dec. 1, making stops along the way. They had left the safety of the marina in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., nestled amid tony restaurants and a new $100 million pier, and sailed about 30 hours before realizing they had a problem. Cook said she was at the helm Saturday when Robert was doing his routine check of the boat. Suddenly, her husband came up and told her: We are taking on water. We are taking on water. Already, 1 1/2 to 2 feet of water had pooled below. Cook said her 58-year-old husband spent most of the next two hours manually bailing out water as she bilged water back into the 6-foot seas. I swear I thought he was going to have a heart attack, she said. At one point, she said, she activated their digital alert that sent a formatted distress signal to authorities. The Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg received the call about 11 a.m., according to a news release. The water was unceasing. Then the boats electronic instruments began to go. Cook said the Coast Guard reached her on a handheld maritime radio. They told her they were already above the doomed sailboat. God was on our side every step of the way, she said. Lt. j.g. Zovek Chapa-Errasti was co-piloting the helicopter. They tried to drop Petty Officer 3rd Class Kevin Peer onto the sailboat, but the sails were down and they couldnt get him on deck. So, Peer plopped into the water near the vessel and the Cooks threw him a line so he could make it aboard. On the boat, Peer assessed the situation: bad. Cook said Peer helped them bail, even thinking to plug the gaping hole in the vessel with pillows, and things were improving because the seas had calmed. But the helicopter was losing fuel, so they had to make a decision. It was hard to think about leaving the sailboat behind. This is everything we have, Cook remembers her husband telling her. She looked at him and said: No. We are everything we have. This is just stuff. The Cooks formed a plan to have a nearby vessel help them to shore, but thats when she smelled the smoke. They were at least two days from shore with no way to mechanically propel or steer the boat. So she asked her husband: Whats it going to be, Captain? We have to save ourselves, she recounted him saying. They grabbed their ditch bag with important documents, making sure to snag her wedding band and the eyeglasses they had taken off during the hard work of ridding water. Cook said she got into the metal basket dangling from the helicopter before Peer handed her Bandit, who was wearing his own life vest. Coast Guard footage shows the basket swaying as it reeled up Cook and Bandit. Beneath them the water rippled from the helicopter blades. In the basket, she said Bandit was kicking and shaking from the wind and noise. When she and Bandit were buckled into the helicopter, she looked down for the first time. Our boat looked very small, she said. I knew my husband was still on it. Robert and Peer were hoisted back into the helicopter. They were together and safe again. We just held hands and cried, Cook said. Soon after, she leaned over and told her husband of 33 years that she had forgotten the Harry Potter Lego Advent calendar set. The ridiculous things you think of, she said with a laugh. The pair met while both serving in the Air Force in Okinawa, Japan. They had each been deployed and faced life-threatening situations before and, thankfully, were able to keep their cool, Cook said. They were very grateful and happy to be back, Chapa-Errasti said. He said it was a good thing that they had all their equipment registered because it was easier to find the vessel and confirm that it was in trouble. And people rarely have a life vest for their dog, so he deemed them prepared. The couple had honed their skills over nine months of sailing, setting off from their home near Tampa for occasional trips. But after their ordeal over the weekend, Cook said they are done. Both from Southern California, she said they love the ocean but will now get their traveling kicks from their RV or on a cruise. Cook spoke to The Post from their RV just as it reached Montgomery, Ala., with Bandit in her lap. She was excited that she was going to hold her grandchildren before she went to sleep again. Though she didnt have the Advent calendar, Cook managed to get a few items from the on-base store after they landed: a Coast Guard sweatshirt for herself and a Coast Guard leash for Bandit. I have a new favorite branch of service, she said. A logo of the Justice Department is seen in Washington, on Nov. 18, 2022. A government official says the U.S. has thwarted a plot to kill Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. (Andrew Harnik/AP) WASHINGTON The U.S. has thwarted a plot to kill Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said Wednesday. U.S. authorities have raised concerns with New Delhi that the Indian government may have had knowledge of the plot, according to the official who was not authorized to comment on the sensitive matter. The official declined to comment on when or how U.S. officials became aware of the plot as well as how the alleged assassination attempt was derailed. The FBI is investigating the matter, the official said. Spokespeople for the FBI and Justice Department declined to comment Wednesday. The revelation follows the September disclosure by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of what he said were credible allegations that the Indian government may have had links to the assassination in that country of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. India rejected the accusation as absurd, but Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat while it investigated. The thwarted assassination plot was first reported by the Financial Times, which said the U.S. informed some allies of the alleged plot. The official who spoke to AP added that concerns over the plot have been raised by U.S. authorities at the highest levels of the Indian government, and officials in New Delhi indicated they were treating the matter seriously. We are treating this issue with utmost seriousness, and it has been raised by the U.S. Government with the Indian Government, including at the senior-most levels. Indian counterparts expressed surprise and concern, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement. They stated that activity of this nature was not their policy. Based on discussion with senior U.S. government officials, we understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable, the statement added. Law enforcement officials have repeatedly warned about what they say is an alarming trend of foreign governments seeking to harass, stalk or intimidate dissidents and political opponents in the U.S. Indias foreign ministry issued a statement noting that the U.S. had raised information pertaining to a nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others during recent conversations. The statement described the information as a cause of concern for both countries and said India takes it seriously. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Azerbaijan has great potential for development of low-carbon industry, Boston Consulting Group representative Stanislav Yankelevich said, Trend reports. He spoke at the SPE Caspian Technical Conference in Baku. The third energy transition is already underway, and most countries have a great responsibility to support it. This requires around twenty trillion US dollars of additional investment until 2030 to enable the low-carbon transition. There is a large infrastructure for delivering energy from Azerbaijan to Europe. The capacity of this infrastructure can be doubled. Creating a low-carbon industry requires three main things: attracting more investment, closing technology gaps and increasing the number of relevant specialists. It is also important to provide additional training to graduates in the country. If these issues are resolved, Azerbaijan will be able to successfully compete with other countries in the world market, he said. Europe is Azerbaijan's largest market for "green" energy, and there is already a particular scheme in place to supply electricity from renewable sources. Thus, on December 17, 2022, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania, and Hungary signed a strategic collaboration agreement that calls for the development of an energy bridge connecting the Caucasus area to Europe. The agreement calls for Black Sea Energy to construct a 1,000 MW underwater power cable with a length of 1,195 kilometers. The cable will be built to transport "green" electricity generated in Azerbaijan through Georgia and the Black Sea to Romania, where it will be distributed to Hungary and the rest of Europe. This will allow for the supply of up to 4 gigatonnes of renewable energy. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel At the end of the day I am a pretty girl I wont deny that, I am but at the same time I am now disfigured. A teenager who lost vision in one eye after an unprovoked attack has spoken about navigating life since the attack now that she is single. Alanna Quinn Idris was hit in the face with the saddle of an electric scooter during an attack by four youths on her and a friend on the Ballyfermot Road, west Dublin, on December 30, 2021. The then 17-year-old was knocked unconscious and left with a shattered tooth, broken cheekbone, and a ruptured eyeball. Despite numerous reconstructive surgeries, she has lost vision permanently in her right eye as a result of the attack. Now 19-years-old, the brave Dubliner has opened up about the impact of the injury she suffered on her life as a single woman after her two-year relationship came to an end. Earlier this week Alanna underwent further surgery on her eye. Speaking on TikTok ahead of the operation Alanna said she wanted to talk about something that has been on my mind. If you know me, you would know I never sit around talking about my eye or how I feel about it. But I have surgery tomorrow my fifth surgery tomorrow to try fix what was done to me. For the last two years Ive been in a relationship the whole time from when this happened to me, so I never really had to think about my eye in that context, she said. Alanna Quinn Idris I always had that person with me, through all the court, through surgery up until last month. We arent together anymore and its just weird now navigating through life with this and also not having that person to fall back on. Alanna told how she is a lot more self aware of whats happened to me now that I am out of a relationship because I actually have to think about it. She also spoke about the surgery and said while she has the support of family and friends it was the first one Im going through alone as a single woman. Alanna continued: At the end of the day I am a pretty girl I wont deny that, I am but at the same time I am now disfigured. Its so weird to say that but I am and it may not be major and you cant see it from afar but I am. Alanna said she is now having to go through life thinking about how I will be with someone else and be face to face with someone. Thats what is in my head, why would they want to look at this? And I know there is somebody out there who is not going to think about it but it's just because I had that person from day one of it happening to me, she said. In the honest post, Alanna said she never talks about her private life and feels like a sap and an attention seeker when I come on and talk about it. However, she said she wanted to share her thoughts given the growth in her social media following since the horror attack. I have a good bit more (followers) but that only is because of what happened to me so its weird for me not talking about it, she said. Josh Cummins (19) of Raheen Drive, Ballyfermot, is to be sentenced next month after he pleaded guilty to intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm to Alanna. He further pleaded guilty to a count of violent disorder and one of production of an article, a hurl, in the course of a dispute. He also pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Louis O'Sullivan as part of the same incident. Cummins has no previous convictions. In March of this year, his co-accused, Darragh Lyons (19), was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for assault causing serious harm to Alanna. Lyons, of Weir View, Glenaulin, Chapelizod, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to Louis O'Sullivan and to violent disorder as part of the same incident. Another accused, described in court as 'Suspect A' is before the courts. The fourth male, 'Suspect B', has not been identified. During his sentence hearing, the court heard Lyons turned 18 on the day he punched Alanna in the face before later jumping over her unconscious body to attack her friend. During a moving victim impact statement, Alanna told court about the impact the attack has had on her life and said "sometimes I wish I never woke up from when I was hit." "I do not look or feel like the same person," She told the court. "The life I was supposed to live was taken away from me before I turned 18. "Nothing ever prepared me for the night of December 30. Life as I knew it came to an abrupt end. "I was the victim of a vicious and unnecessary assault that will forever impact my life from that day forward." She described having to live the rest of her life disabled, and how the woman she was supposed to be "died that night". "Sometimes I wish I never woke up from when I was hit with that object," she added. Henry, from the Markets area of Belfast faces one charge of being unlawfully at large from December 22 last year A violent burglar who allegedly went on the run from prison last Christmas was today ordered to stand trial accused of being unlawfully at large. Belfast man Emmanuel Henry was previously jailed for smashing a bottle of vodka over a mans head and stabbing him with the broken bottle following a break-in. Appearing at Limavady Magistrates Court, sitting in Coleraine, by videolink from prison, Henry (31) today confirmed he was aware of the unlawfully-at-large charge against him and did not object to the case being returned to the Crown Court. Henry, from the Markets area of Belfast but whose address was given as c/o HMP Magilligan, faces one charge of being unlawfully at large from December 22 last year. It is alleged that, having been sentenced to imprisonment, he was unlawfully at large from Magillian before the expiry of his sentence without lawful excuse. It was reported at the time that Henry had been granted temporary release over the Christmas period but he was circulated as wanted when he failed to surrender himself back into custody. He was originally jailed for four years at Belfast Crown Court in May 2017 for a burglary which was so violent that Henry reportedly suffered PTSD himself. The court heard Henry broke into a house in south Belfast in July 2015 and when confronted by the occupant, he smashed a vodka bottle over the mans head and stabbed him repeatedly in the arm and chest with the broken bottle. The victim sustained several serious wounds including a laceration to his lung which narrowly missed his heart. Despite offering the injured man help by showing him how to stem the blood with a duvet, Henry then held a knife to his throat and demanded he hand over money and his mobile phone. During the incident, Henry also told the man, Sorry, mate, wrong house, and, afterwards, Henry suffered flashbacks and nightmares following the incident and was later diagnosed with elements of PTSD. He was assessed as a dangerous offender at the time and in court today defence solicitor Chris McCann revealed that Henry is due before the Parole Commissioners next week as he applies to be released on licence. A prosecuting lawyer submitted there was a case for Henry to answer, a submission which Mr McCann conceded. Returning the case to Antrim Crown Court, District Judge Peter King scheduled the arraignment to be heard on December 14 and, given Henrys application for release on licence, he granted 750 bail. Karl Gallagher was charged after gardai found the cannabis, along with weighing scales and paraphernalia, Stock image of a person using cannabis at home A man caught with 600 of cannabis in his home had been diagnosed with cancer and was using the drug to ease the symptoms, a court has heard. Karl Gallagher (31) was charged after gardai found the cannabis, along with weighing scales and paraphernalia, in a search of his apartment in Dublins north inner city. Judge Bryan Smyth spared him jail, giving him a six-month suspended sentence when he appeared at Dublin District Court. Gallagher, a father of one, pleaded guilty to possession of drugs with intent to supply on December 11, 2020. He also admitted a related count of simple possession of the drug in the same incident. Garda Robert Doorley told the court a search was carried out at Avondale House, Dublin 1, under warrant on the day in question and a quantity of cannabis herb was discovered. Gardai also found and seized digital weighing scales and drugs paraphernalia. Gallagher had a previous conviction for sale or supply of drugs and had been put on a peace bond. Both Gallagher and his mother were previously diagnosed with cancer, defence solicitor Daniel Hanahoe said. The cannabis eased the symptoms. The accuseds diagnosis was in 2017, the court heard. Mr Hanahoe said he had medical documentation. Gallagher was working as a part-time delivery driver, had one daughter and was separated. Mr Hanahoe asked the judge to be as lenient as he could in the circumstances. Judge Smyth imposed the sentence on the supply charge, suspending it for two years. He took the other count into consideration. The charges were under Sections 3 and 15 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. Patrick Stewart (26) pleaded guilty to garda obstruction and threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour. Patrick Stewart, of Raheen Close, Tallaght, Dublin, had written a letter of apology, the court heard A father of two clipped a female gardas chin with a headbutt and spat in a second officers face in two vicious assaults. Patrick Stewart (26) was an angry and aggressive young man when he lashed out for no reason at the two gardai as he walked past them at a traffic stop. Blanchardstown District Court heard he had drunk himself into a stupor following family tragedies at the time. Judge David McHugh adjourned the case for a restorative justice report and sizeable charity donation by the accused. Stewart, an apprentice stonemason, of Raheen Close, Tallaght, pleaded guilty to garda obstruction and threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour. Garda Sergeant Maria Callaghan said gardai were on duty on Fonthill Road, Clondalkin, at 1.15am on December 10 last year when Stewart walked by, shouting at them aggressively. When told to move on, he screamed f**k off and spat at one of the gardai, hitting him in the face. When the other garda went to arrest him, Stewart said: Im not f**king giving ye my f**king details. He resisted arrest and attempted to headbutt a female garda in the face, catching her on the chin. Stewart had no previous convictions. What happened was horrendous but it was out of character and the accused had no recollection of it, his barrister Ciaran MacLoughlin said. Stewart had gone through a lot in the last number of years, including the death of his father. His drinking had increased dramatically, to the extent that he was a danger to himself. Since the incident, Stewart had given up going out and had stopped drinking whiskey, Mr MacLoughlin said. He had written a sincere and contrite letter of apology. He was an angry and aggressive young man on foot of incredible tragedies, Mr MacLoughlin said. Stewart literally drank himself into a stupor and got himself involved in something that had nothing to do with him. Judge McHugh said the case was as bad as it gets for public order offences, but noted the accuseds previous good character. It is alleged Mr Holland trespassed at a residential address in Coolock Dublin 13 on December 12, 2022, to commit an offence of making a threat to kill or cause serious harm. Glen Holland, 41yrs, of St. Michans House, Dublin 7 pictured at the Criminal Courts of Justice(CCJ) on Parkgate Street in Dublin after he appeared before the District Court. Pic: Paddy Cummins Glen Holland of St. Michans House, Dublin 7 pictured at the Criminal Courts of Justice(CCJ) on Parkgate Street in Dublin after he appeared before the District Court. Pic: Paddy Cummins A Dublin man accused of extortion by making threats to kill or seriously harm and demanding 30,000 with menaces has been sent forward for trial. Glen Holland (41) of St Michan's House, Dublin 7, was served with a book of evidence when he appeared before Judge Anthony Halpin at Dublin District Court. The Director of Public Prosecutions had directed trial on indictment at a higher level. Judge Halpin acceded to the State's request to grant a return for trial order and to send the accused forward to the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, where the case will be listed for mention in December. Glen Holland, 41yrs, of St. Michans House, Dublin 7 pictured at the Criminal Courts of Justice(CCJ) on Parkgate Street in Dublin after he appeared before the District Court. Pic: Paddy Cummins Mr Holland was granted legal aid and told to notify the prosecution if he intended to use an alibi in his defence. The judge also ordered gardai to hand over interview videos to his lawyers. The accused has yet to enter a plea to the charges formally and spoke to confirm he understood the judge's order. It is alleged Mr Holland trespassed at a residential address in Coolock Dublin 13 on December 12, 2022, to commit an offence of making a threat to kill or cause serious harm. At that location on the same date, he is also accused of making an unwarranted demand with menaces to a named male, "You are going to pay me thirty grand this week or next week, or I'm going to take your legs from you". The final charge in the book of evidence was for criminal damage to the front passenger and driver's windows of a white BMW car belonging to a named woman at Greek St, D.7 on November 5 last year. Mr Holland was remanded on bail. The charges are contrary to sections 12(1)(b) and (3) of the Criminal Justice (Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001, section 17 of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act 1994 and section 2(1) of the Criminal Damage Act, 1991. Caolan Gormley denies being in on plot that saw 39 lives lost The truck in which 39 Vietnamese migrants perished in October 2019. Photo: PA Media. A haulage boss accused of being part of a people-smuggling ring linked to the deaths of 39 migrants in the UK tried to stop his mother gossiping after news of the tragedy broke, a court has heard. Caolan Gormley (26) denied involvement in an unlawful immigration plot with his former boss Ronan Hughes and one of his own truck drivers, Christopher Kennedy. Mr Gormley had worked for Hughes after he got his licence at the age of 19 and had been friends with Kennedy since college, the Old Bailey in London was told. Giving evidence yesterday, Mr Gormley told jurors that he thought they were engaged in smuggling alcohol rather than humans. He told of his shock and total disbelief when 39 Vietnamese men, women and children were found dead in one of Hughess vehicles in Essex early on October 23, 2019. He said he saw the breaking news on social media then someone sent him a photograph of the truck and trailer on WhatsApp, which he sent on to Kennedy. The defendant said he was taking a break at a truck stop in Sandbach, Cheshire, on his way to deliver racehorse bedding to Cambridge when he spoke to Hughes. He called me the night before and I was returning the call. I remember when he answered he sounded different, panicked, making no sense at all. It was just mumbo jumbo. He was making zero sense, Mr Gormley said. At 3.46pm on October 23, Mr Gormley received a text from his mother in Co Tyrone, asking if the truck in the news belonged to one of Hughess brothers. He replied: Dont know and neither do u [sic]. Asked to explain the message, Mr Gormley said: My mother works in a doctors surgery and is a bit of a gossip, and I didnt want her gossiping. Perhaps there would be repercussions for her. Defence barrister Stephan Alfred asked: You thought it would be unsafe for her bandying names about? Mr Gormley replied: I mean talking about that in general, you wouldnt want people going around talking about it. He added that he never heard anything bad about anyone in the Hughes family until the migrant deaths. The truck in which 39 Vietnamese migrants perished in October 2019. Photo: PA Media. Mr Alfred suggested the tragedy had sent a shockwave through the industry. Mr Gormley said there was total disbelief this had happened, adding: I was just shocked, to be honest. On the evening of October 23, Mr Gormley said he dumped the burner phone he had used to communicate with Hughes. I didnt want any connection between me and Ronan Hughes. I was in the services on the Scottish-English border on the job around 10-11pm. I just disposed of it in the bin, he said. Mr Gormley was asked why he had denied to the bitter end being the owner of that phone when interviewed by police. I lied about it because I didnt want to confess a crime I had committed in relation to alcohol smuggling, he said. I had contacted Ronan Hughes on the phone. At that time the news had come out about what happened with the 39 dead and I didnt want any affiliation with that. Me and him and Christopher Kennedy were conspiring with alcohol but I wasnt conspiring with immigrants. That was the exact reason why. The victims of the tragedy Mr Gormley told jurors that he had agreed with Hughes to provide legitimate documents that could be doctored for illicit consignments of alcohol from Europe, and that Kennedy had collected some of it. The prosecution alleges he was involved with three trips on October 11, 14 and 18, 2019, and that they were all to do with smuggling people and not alcohol. Mr Gormley was asked about a run which was scuppered on October 14 when Kennedys truck was found to contain migrants at the French border. Kennedy said he stopped at the supermarket to buy alcohol and cigarettes on his way to the crossing. At that time he was actually covering his tracks for what had happened, he said. He just said they must have got in the trailer while he was in the shop. Its a very hot spot for migrants in the Calais area. Its very common. I had no reason not to believe his account. Kennedy told him there were five or six migrants found on board when he was stopped by French officials, the defendant said. The prosecution alleges that some migrants from that failed trip on October 14 were believed to have died days later in the fatal run overnight on October 22-23. A consignment of biscuits from Belgium was ruined during the October 18 run, the court heard. Mr Gormley said: Kennedy called me up and told me the biscuits had been rejected. I just presumed damage. Mr Alfred asked: Were you in any way involved in an agreement to facilitate the entry of migrants to this country? Mr Gormley replied: No, not at all. Jurors have been told that a number of individuals have already been convicted of their part in the people-smuggling operation. Hughes and Romanian Gheorghe Nica were said to have been in charge of a network of drivers willing and able to take lorry-loads of migrants to the UK. Mr Gormley, of Co Tyrone, denies a single charge of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration. The trial continues. Christian Fleming denies manslaughter of Glencar man in one punch incident The jury in the trial of Killorglin man Christian Fleming for manslaughter has heard how the deceased man, Stephen OConnor, had sustained brain injury after a propelled fall which saw the left side of his head impact against the flat surface. Acute alcohol intoxication was a contributory factor, Pathologist Dr Linda Mulligan told Tralee Circuit Criminal Court on Tuesday, but she added that alcohol was not the direct cause of his death. Christian Fleming of Mount Lyne, Killorglin, denies the unlawful killing of Stephen OConnor on a date unknown between February 10, 2019, and February 11, 2019. Glencar man Stephen OConnor died following what has been described in court as a one-punch incident outside a local take-away in Killorglin. Mr Fleming has also pleaded not guilty to assaulting John OConnor, causing him harm on February 10 at Main Street, Killorglin. Tuesdays sitting heard how Dr Mulligan carried out a post mortem examination on the late Stephen OConnor on February 12, 2019, at CUH after being directed to do so by the Coroner for Cork City. He had been removed to hospital in Cork, because of the nature of his injuries, the trial has already heard. Injury number one was to the corner of the right eye and this was in keeping with a punch to the face consistent with what Gardai told the pathologist was a blow to that area in an alleged assault, she told Tom Rice, prosecutor. The right side bridge of the nose and the right side of the corner of the eye had bruises and there were injuries to the left side of the scalp. The impact with the left side of the head against the flat surface caused the brain to move inside the skull, Dr Mulligan detailed. She gave details of haemorrhage and clotting on the right side of the brain, and other complications and of the cutting off of oxygen and how the swelling impacted on the brain stem which was ultimately the cause of death. Blood alcohol was at 302 mgs per cent and no illegal drugs were detected. The level of intoxication would have affected the late Stephen OConnors balance but was not a direct cause of death. Alcohol was a contributory factor but not a direct cause, she told Mr Rice on re-examination. Mr Rice said he felt counsel for the accused was implying that the level of alcohol could be fatal and so that is why he had put this question to Dr Mulligan. The, at times, harrowing and very detailed medical evidence was given via video link and Mr OConnors family could be seen to be visibly upset at the rear of the court. The link broke down a number of times and questions, as well as the pathologists evidence, had to be repeated. The injuries he had suffered had resulted from a propelled fall, Dr Mulligan said. The level of alcohol would have affected the dead mans balance, actions and reactions, she felt. However, this would depend on his metabolism, how regularly he drank, and on other factors. It was her opinion death had occurred because of traumatic head injury which had resulted from a propelled fall during an alleged assault, she said. The punch had propelled him to the ground. It is the propelled fall that causes the impact, she said during cross examination by counsel Mark Nicholas. Mr Nicholas, SC, asked if 302 mg was a significant level of intoxication and Dr Mulligan said it was over six times the legal limit for driving. But everyones reaction depends on a lot of factors, she added. However, it would have almost certainly affected his motion, coordination and balance, she said. While 302 mgs was high, according to Gardai, this man was walking and talking, she also said. The family of Stephen OConnor had consented to donation of his organs, the trial also heard. Brain stem tests were carried out at 3.25pm on February 11, 2019 and he was found to be brain stem dead, according to a written statement from a consultant at CUH. The hospital kept him on life support as the family had consented to organ donation and the family were with him for the hours until he was transferred at 11.20pm to the operating theatre for organ removal and his life support switched off. The trial also heard, read into court, medical evidence from Killorglin GP Dr Anne Cronin. John OConnor, whom Christian Fleming denies assaulting causing him harm, attended her clinic on February 15. He was complaining of bruising under his left eye and tenderness under his nose. She felt there were soft tissue injuries to his nose. Meanwhile, at Mondays sitting, evidence from witnesses on the night was heard at the Tralee court. The court heard that witness Patrick Devane, from Cahersiveen, went with friends to Killorglin and was dropped in Killorglin town centre near Aldi at around 9 pm. He went to Paud ONeills Bar and Barn Music venue and was talking to Christian Fleming and one of his friends. He was in good form, Mr Devane replied to Tom Rice, prosecuting. He had met Christian previously at the August Puck Fair in Killorglin and did not know him well. Mr Devane was shown CCTV footage and identified himself and Christian Fleming and a third man entering the toilet area and going together into a cubicle. It was now 12.26am on Sunday morning. They took cocaine in the cubicle, he told Mr Rice. I had cocaine. Christian gave me a house key and we all took a key, Mr Devane said Asked by Mr Rice to explain what he meant, Patrick Devane said: Put the key into the bag, take it out and put it to your nostril and sniff it. Did you have much cocaine with you that night? Mr Rice asked, to which Mr Devane replied no he had one gramme. When you had it, how did you feel? Mr Rice asked and Mr Devane replied that he did not know. I was drunk, it was long ago, he said, adding that he could not remember. I was on drugs, he added. His friends mom brought them home, he thought but wasnt sure. He did not go to Chicken Zone. Cross-examined by Katie OConnell, junior counsel for Mr Fleming, Mr Devane agreed a key of cocaine was a very small amount. Asked if Mr Fleming sniffed just one key, he replied Yes. Glenbeigh man Enda Sweeney had been socialising on the night playing pool at Kingstons Bar with a number of girls before going to The Forge. He gave evidence of going to Chicken Zone and seeing someone on the footpath, a clearly badly injured man. He gave advice to the person trying to assist the injured man and enquired if an ambulance had been sent for. He went into Chicken Zone for napkins for the injured man. He tried to speak to him but there was no reaction, only a strange sound and his eyes were closed, he told Mr Rice. Cross-examined by Ms OConnell, he was asked why he was wearing a three-piece suit on the night and if there was an occasion. You were on a night out in a three-piece suit? she asked. He said he was on a night out and that was what he wore. Witness Shauna OShea from Sunhill was socialising with friends at ONeills and went to Chicken Zone for food. She told the court she saw people having words back and forth and a slap was delivered and a man staggered against the wall. A bouncer was not having any of it and said lads get out. Who threw the slap? Mr Rice asked her. Christian, she replied. She did not know the tall man with the beard who was slapped. He staggered back a little and seemed okay afterwards she added. Other males left and she went up to order her food. The door was open and she heard males shouting and someone, a male, say Christian, run she said, but did not see what had taken place. Eventually when she came out she saw the man on the ground. She was asked to identify herself on CCTV in a red jacket on her way to Chicken Zone and did so. Cross-examined by Ms OConnell, Ms OShea said she saw Mr Fleming and others having words back and forth inside the premises. Other witnesses gave evidence to the jury of unpleasantness shortly before 1am in the form of a verbal argument in The Barn involving the deceased. There was nothing physical, only name calling, Caitriona Foley said. She had known the deceased and had been challenged by him verbally and said it was out of character for him and she was not afraid of him, although she was shocked. There was drink obviously on all sides. Ive never known Stephen to be in any way aggressive. I would know him to be a quiet man. At first I thought he was only joking, then he said it a second time. She was shocked, she said, at a remark he made when she was talking to her life-long friend Danny Moriarty, a neighbour from when they both lived in Iveragh Park. Stephen then called her a bitch and she called him a scumbag, she told the court. It was name calling back and forth, she continued, adding that people intervened. A CCTV clip of six minutes involving what Mr Rice described as unpleasantness and Ms OConnell described as a melee was shown to the court. Catriona Foleys husband, Brendan Foley, said he heard his wife being called a bitch. He agreed with Ms OConnell that, looking at CCTV, Mr Fleming was watching what was happening essentially. The trial continues. A six year prison sentence was imposed in 2013 for Michael Berrys part in the robbery The scene at the Maxol/Mace station on the Bellefield Road in Enniscorthy after the raid in July 2009. An offence committed 14 years ago was at the heart of a successful application made to the Circuit Court. Barrister Grainne ONeill was in Wexford to represent the State in proceedings against Michael Berry. The 47 year old from Hillview in Carnew was not present but he was represented by barrister Jordan Fletcher. Ms ONeill reminded Judge Cormac Quinn how Berry was one of five men involved in an ATM robbery in Enniscorthy. In July of 2009, the cash dispenser at the Maxol garage in Bellefield was plundered of more than 205,000. The defendants share of the proceeds came to 41,000 it was revealed during the trial which commenced in October of 2012. The prosecuting counsel told how gardai called to his home and seized 7,800 in cash they found hidden in a sock in a wardrobe. The scene at the Maxol/Mace station on the Bellefield Road in Enniscorthy after the raid in July 2009. Berrys credit union account containing 13,249 was frozen around the same time along with 5,013 in a Bank of Ireland current account. He stated at the time that he had been drawing unemployment payments and had made some money selling horses. A six year prison sentence was imposed in 2013 for his part in the hole-in-the wall robbery. Ms ONeill now came to court seeking forfeiture to the State of the 26,229 to hand after credit union dividends were taken into account. Judge Quinn granted her application. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Iran supports the decisions of the OPEC+ alliance as one of the founding members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji said, Trend reports. The minister added that because Iran considers the agreement of the OPEC and OPEC+ alliance members to benefit the oil market, producers, consumers and the world economy within the framework of the declaration of cooperation. Owji also stated that all observers and analysts on the oil market acknowledge the constructive achievements of the OPEC+ alliance for the realization of energy security and the establishment of stability in the oil market. The agreement and decisions of the OPEC+ alliance eliminate price volatility in oil markets, help improve the world's economic conditions, encourage new investments in the world's oil industry, and ensure energy security. "Continuing tension in the Middle East causes instability and uncertainty in the world's energy markets, especially oil markets. For this reason, all options will be examined at the next meeting of the member countries of the OPEC+ alliance," he said. According to the minister, maintaining the stability of the oil market requires continued cooperation between OPEC and OPEC+ members. The will of the member countries of the OPEC+ alliance is aimed at maintaining stability in the oil market. Currently, there are 13 members of OPEC and 12 members of OPEC+ alliance. On November 26, a meeting will be held in Vienna, Austria, with the participation of the officials of the member countries of the OPEC+ alliance. --- Follow the author on X (Twitter):@BaghishovElnur You hide against your insecurities through your fists A "sick, twisted and deranged monster" who claimed that his partner deliberately stabbed herself to death was today addressed directly by his victim's three sisters, one of whom shouted at him: "You are a coward, an active predator and an abuser of women. You hide against your insecurities through your fists". In their submissions to the sentencing court yesterday however, defence lawyers argued that the basis on which the jury convicted Martin Hayes was unknown and that "the precise circumstances are so obscure" that a "quasi-accidental stabbing" cannot be ruled out. In the first of seven emotional victim impact statement read to the Central Criminal Court today, the eldest sister of Amadea McDermott, Olivia Heffernan, said her sister's life was stolen from her by Martin Hayes and that she knew the mother-of-two would never have taken her own life as she loved her family and children too much. Ms Heffernan said her sister was under the "coercive control" of the killer and when she saw Amadea lying "motionless and lifeless" in the hospital bed she was taken aback by the level of bruising "the gentle soul" had sustained. "My instincts and gut feelings were 100 percent right about you". Ms Heffernan said "the hidden untraceable tracker" placed on her sister's mobile phone by Hayes had blown her away and she described the defendant as an "active predator, luring and waiting for his next prey waiting to abuse". She accused Hayes of "concocting lies" against the McDermott family which she said were "accusations of incest". Raising her voice today Ms Heffernan added: "To victims of domestic abuse everywhere around the world, stand up and be heard, don't hide behind the fists of cowards", saying if only her sister had done this she would still be alive today. Ms Heffernan said her sister's killer had shown no respect for her and that he had given evidence of still having access to her Instagram account. "How deranged are you," she asked. Amadea McDermott was killed in Dublin in July 2017 Earlier this month, grave digger Hayes (34) was found not guilty of Amadea McDermott's (27) murder but guilty of manslaughter by the majority verdict of a Central Criminal Court jury. Hayes, with an address at Poddle Close, Crumlin, Dublin 12 had pleaded not guilty to murdering the mother of two at her home in Rathvale Drive, Ayrfield, Coolock on or about July 20, 2017. Hayes had admitted using violence against Amadea McDermott in his own evidence to the trial, which also heard that he used a hidden app to access her phone. In his charge to the jury, trial judge Mr Justice Paul McDermott said if they accepted that Hayes inflicted the fatal wound without the requisite intent to kill or cause serious harm to Amadea then they should find him not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. The jurors took four days to reject Hayes' defence that his account aligned with a postmortem examination that found the single stab wound to Amadea McDermott's abdomen could be "consistent with self-harm". The prosecution had said Hayes' account was "absolutely a lie" and that all the evidence led to the "irresistible conclusion" that the defendant had inflicted the fatal injury. The trial heard that Hayes told emergency services who arrived at Amadea's home that the mother-of-two had self-harmed by stabbing herself. Sean Gillane SC, prosecuting, submitted in his closing speech that Hayes was becoming deranged about his partner having an incestuous relationship with a relative, an allegation that the barrister said was unconnected to reality. The defendant, he said, was "vibrating with menace" about this in the days leading up to the fatal assault. The trial heard Hayes had alleged to a social worker that he found evidence on a phone that Amadea was having an incestuous relationship with the relative. In a second victim impact statement read to the court on her behalf, Amadea McDermott's mother, Margaret Heffernan, told her daughter's killer: "Shame on you, you evil man". She said that Hayes had "no remorse whatsoever" and will "do it again". "She was a beautiful mam, I knew she would not have done this to herself. I will never see her beautiful smile again, life is so hard without her". Mrs Heffernan said she had waited six years for this moment, telling the court: "How it took so long I don't know but someone wasn't doing their job. He is the person who did this to my beautiful daughter and he should have been sorted out a long time ago". She said "the lies he has said about my daughter are unbelievable, he is deranged. She was beaten so many times by this evil man. She kept everything to herself. She must have been in fear of this monster". When questioned about a beauty therapist seeing extensive bruising on Amadea's body prior to her death, Hayes told prosecution counsel that he "threw her" into a sofa after "she wouldn't let" him go to work. "If someone is hitting me I'll hit them back; I've every right to," Hayes later said. The deceased's mother added today: "You took my beautiful daughter away from me, my heart is broken. I hope you will never get a chance to harm another woman, you evil man. I hope he will never see the light of day. I hope you rot in hell you evil man, I will never forgive you". Earlier, another of the victim's sisters, Euphrasia McDermott, also addressed Hayes from the witness box, saying: "My sister was the best, we did everything together, we were joined at the hip from kids to adults. I will never get over her loss or be able to forget the horrific death she had. She suffered physical and mental abuse everyday and managed to keep that smile on her face". Amadea's brother, Zac McDermott, said his sister's life had been decided by someone else and that it had been out of her control. "She should be here today but she can't because of a killer. It is torture, all that because someone decided her fate and took her life from us forever. Lock him up and throw away the key, he deserves to go away forever for what he did to my beautiful sister". Family members of Amadea McDermott leaving the CCJ Another sister Eucharia McDermott told the court in her statement that "despite the lies we have listened to throughout the trial Amadea was looking forward to the future". But her life, she said, was "all savagely and viciously taken away" from her at the hands of a "sick, twisted and deranged monster". "No human being should be allowed to do this". In seeking an outright acquittal for their client, Ronan Munro SC, defending, had told the jury that no DNA from Hayes had been found on the knife suspected of inflicting the fatal wound and that toxicology reports tallied with Hayes' account of both he and Amadea taking cocaine and drinking vodka on the night. Mr Gillane, prosecuting, said in his closing speech that Hayes "had as much contempt" for Amadea in death as he had for her in life and the evidence in the case established that the defendant was guilty of the crime of murder. "You heard his [Hayes] own words when he rings 112 at 00.40, the first thing he says to the ambulance man is that she is after stabbing herself and the seed is planted and that is the narrative when the paramedics arrive. He encouraged it [the seed] to grow by the time he spoke to gardai and embellished," Mr Gillane argued in his closing address. The barrister said the jury could see from Amadea's text messages to Hayes in the week leading up to her death that she wanted him to stop being violent towards her and was scared he would kill her. Mr Gillane added: "It's as if she had a crystal ball, she knew the storm was coming and that storm landed on this night, she wasn't someone who wanted death, she feared death". The jury also heard that in May of this year, six years after Amadea's death, an ex-girlfriend of Hayes gave a revised statement to gardai, telling them that the defendant had confessed his involvement in the murder. Niamh Higgins told the jury the defendant said that he had "helped" Amadea put a knife she was holding through her stomach by putting "his hands on her hands to help ram it through". The trial heard that Ms Higgins made two statements to gardai - one in November 2020 and a more recent one in May 2023. The statement from 2020 did not contain "the confession to murder", which Ms Higgins said she had withheld out of fear. Hayes took the stand at his own trial, denying that he had confessed to Ms Higgins that he had stabbed Amadea, telling the Central Criminal Court that the witness was lying and that she hated him. Hayes also told the jury that while his and Amadea's relationship was "toxic", he did not stab her to death and had done "everything to save her". A garda witness also told the jury that the deceased's sister, Eucharia McDermott, alleged that Hayes had been physically abusive to Amadea in the past. The trial heard that the couple's relationship was "difficult, volatile and abusive" and there was some degree of violence between the parties. The couple also abused alcohol and controlled drugs from time to time. Family members of Amadea McDermott family; Eucharia Euphrasia, Olivia and brother Zack at the CCJ SENTENCE HEARING At today's sentence hearing, Detective Sergeant Anthony Maloney detailed the background to the case. He agreed with Sean Gillane SC, prosecuting, that the relationship between Hayes and Amadea had been ongoing for a number of years, where incidents of physical abuse and "a fair level of argumentation" arose from time to time. Outlining the events that led up to the killing, Det Sgt Maloney said the defendant had made three calls to emergency services to attend the apartment in Coolock and also to members of Amadea's family. When medical personnel attended the apartment they found Amadea in some distress having suffered a stab wound to the abdomen and there was external evidence of blood in the apartment, he said. The deceased's sisters Eucharia and Euphrasia McDermott also attended at the apartment, where they learnt that Amadea had suffered a stab wound. Mr Gillane said Amadea was immediately brought to Beaumont Hospital and attempts were made to save her but unfortunately these efforts came to nought. The witness said an argument had developed between Hayes and Eucharia McDermott at the hospital. Mr Gillane said the defendant told gardai that an argument had started on the night when Amadea ran out of cocaine and alcohol. Hayes also indicated to gardai that Amadea had lost control and grabbed a knife threatening to hurt herself, said the detective. Hayes told gardai that he had produced another knife at one point and retired to the bedroom to separate himself from Amadea, said Mr Gillane. The defendant told officers that he later returned to the living room where he found Amadea on the floor, indicating that the wound to her stomach was from self-harm. Mr Gillane said a post-mortem was carried out on the deceased where it was found that Amadea had died from a stab wound to the right side of the abdomen. Former State pathologist Dr Marie Cassidy was shown a knife during the trial which had been placed on a table in the living room and she told the jury it could have caused the injury, said counsel. "She also indicated no great force would have been required to cause the injury itself," he added. Dr Cassidy, the witness agreed, had also given evidence of blunt force trauma to the deceased as well as indicating areas of fresh and old bruising on her body. Mr Gillane said the expert witness had told the jury that bruising to Amadea's head, trunk and limbs could be due to a fall but that injuries to her face were from direct blows. Mr Gillane said the investigation by gardai continued and Hayes was arrested on October 8, 2020 and detained until the next day but nothing of evidential value arose. Niamh Higgins, who was a key witness, speaking to Sunday World's Patrick O' Connell Counsel said the jury also heard from Niamh Higgins, who had entered into a relationship with Hayes after Amadea had died. "The jury heard evidence about Christmas Eve and that Hayes had explained to her [Ms Higgins] about an argument on the night [July 19] which started over text messages on a phone which indicated Amadea was having an inappropriate relationship with a relative," said Mr Gillane. The witness agreed that Hayes had also given a similar account to a social worker days after the incident. Ms Higgins, said Mr Gillane, also gave evidence to the jury that Hayes had told her that he had "helped or rammed the knife" into Amadea. The defendant was charged with the murder of Amadea on April 4, 2022, he said. Counsel said the jury had heard evidence of text message exchanges between Hayes and Amadea in the run up to the incident, where the deceased had indicated that the defendant had "sick thoughts in his head". The witness agreed that the jury had also seen recorded video clips of an interaction between the couple, specifically of a belief Hayes had about an inappropriate relationship that Amadea was having with a relative. "In one of those clips he was attempting to get Amadea to admit to it," said the detective. The court heard that Hayes has 29 previous convictions, of which 27 related to road traffic offences. Another of the offences was for criminal damage which "stemmed from a road traffic collision", said the witness. Under cross-examination, Det Gda Maloney agreed with Ronan Munro SC, defending, that moderate quantities of cocaine and alcohol had been ingested by Amadea and his client on the night of the stabbing. The witness also agreed that physical violence was a feature of the couple's relationship and it could be volatile when alcohol was consumed. The detective agreed with Mr Munro that the defendant told gardai that following an argument Amadea had come into their bedroom with a knife "indicating he was going to lose the best thing ever". He went on to say that Hayes told officers that he had waved a machete at Amadea that night which was hanging off the end of their bed saying 'get out'. Det Sgt Maloney agreed with Mr Munro that Dr Cassidy had told the jury that not much force would have been used to stab the deceased because of the sharpness of the knife. She also said that the wound "might be such that the person could be walking around for 30 minutes afterwards and they might not realise the risk posed as the bleeding would have been internal". Following this, Mr Gillane told Mr Justice Paul McDermott that the Director of Public Prosecution took the view that the case was in the high culpability bracket for reasons including that the deceased was a vulnerable person, that violence had been perpetrated by a man on a woman and that the incident took place in a domestic environment where the victim was entitled to feel safe. Addressing the judge in his submissions, Mr Munro said that from the defence point of view this was one of those rare cases where it would be challenging for the court to make findings of fact beyond a reasonable doubt. He said it was for the court to interpret the verdict and that it was his client's version to the jury that he had no hand, act or part in stabbing Amadea but that this had been rejected by them. However, counsel said it had also been rejected by the jury to convict Hayes of murder and that the court had to respect both of these things. Mr Munro said where there is genuine confusion or obscurity in a sentence, the sentence should reflect that most favourable to the defendant. "Clearly the core fact that the accused caused the stabbing to the deceased and she did not cause it to herself is established". He submitted that the manner of the stabbing was of critical importance against the background of violence, drug ingestion and bruising in the case. He said it was unclear whether the knife had been inserted in the course of a struggle. Mr Munro submitted to the court that no one could say on which basis the jury convicted Hayes. "They were invited to accept all, part or none of the primary witnesses". He added: "I say the precise circumstances [of the stabbing] are so obscure that a quasi-accidental stabbing is not ruled out. I say there is a considerable difficulty to the finding of facts". There was clearly and entirely understandable, Mr Munro submitted, a desire for vengeance at the highest level by the deceased's family. He added: "I do think there is tremendous difficulty in the case due to the facts remaining obscure. I'm inviting the court to give the most favourable version of a quasi-accidental struggle where both parties were intoxicated with cocaine". In reply, Mr Gillane said he had lost count of the number of times Mr Munro had referred to the jury verdict as "obscure". He said the judge had charged the jury very clearly and that was why he submitted there was nothing obscure about the verdict which the jury arrived at. Addressing the judge, Mr Gillane added: "You said the only way for a manslaughter verdict was if the jury were satisfied that Hayes had inflicted injury of the knife but at the time he didn't intend to cause death or significant injury". Mr Gillane said the jury was satisfied that Amadea's death was brought about by the defendant through the application of the knife in stabbing her in the stomach. Mr Justice McDermott remanded Hayes in custody until November 28, when he will be sentenced. He is a close criminal associate of a former cellmate of Walsh, and is believed to have helped him organise the plot to murder Irelands most under-threat criminal. A convicted drug dealer has been arrested by gardai in Portlaoise Prison in connection with the plot to murder gangland target James Nellie Walsh. The inmate, in his late 20s, is serving a lengthy jail sentence imposed earlier this year in relation to drugs-trafficking. He is the sixth person arrested over the plot last December and can be held for up to 24 hours. He is due to be released from garda custody today. He is a close criminal associate of a former cellmate of Walsh, and is believed to have helped him organise the plot to murder Irelands most under-threat criminal. This man is a top-tier suspect in relation to this plot, a source said. Walsh survived the assassination attempt at The Laurels estate in Carlow town on the evening of December 5, 2022. It was the second attempt on Walshs life in the space of six weeks. A Carlow-based gang is suspected of taking on the contract offered by a sub-cell of the Kinahan cartel. At the centre of the plot was the gangs knowledge that Walsh was attempting to buy a car. It is understood his ex-cellmate used this knowledge to lure Walsh to the location where the shooting happened and was also present at the scene at one stage. Walsh is involved in a long-running feud with Clondalkin-based Kinahan cartel-linked drugs traffickers. The gangland target is hiding out in a Co Kildare town, where he has a number of criminal associates. Gardai yesterday called to a property, where they believe Nellie Walsh is living, but he was not there. They believe if he were to give a statement they would be able to charge those involved. The suspected shooter in the case has not yet been arrested. It comes as two of the five suspects, arrested on Monday as part of investigations into the shooting, were released yesterday, including a Wexford-based woman who is also linked to Walshs ex-cellmate. The remaining three are still being held. Gardai are hopeful they can get charges in relation to at least two of the arrested suspects. Some of the suspects are understood to have been directing Walshs movements on the day and then feeding information back to spotters, who were communicating with the gunman. Carlow gardai have been involved in the long-running investigation into the plot, which has involved the analysis of CCTV, fingerprints and mobile phones. Walshs long-running drug feud has claimed four lives so far, including two of his closest associates who were shot dead just a week apart in 2017. The feud escalated in September when Walsh posted material on TikTok in which threats were made against arch-rival Peadar Keating, who is currently behind bars for directing the activities of a Kinahan cartel cell in a plot to murder Hutch associate James Mago Gately in 2017. Walsh was released from prison in July of last year after serving a 10-year sentence for a botched hit on gang rival Michael Frazier. His EWM Property Holdings firm bought the ten-acre site for 105,000 The farm field bought by Celtic Tiger socialite Marcus Sweeneys wealth management company to launder crime cash has been sold at auction by the Criminal Assets Bureau. His EWM Property Holdings firm bought the ten-acre site for 105,000 which the High Court has since declared the proceeds of crime. The property at Waynestown near Dunboyne in Co Meath was due for auction earlier this month and had a guide price of 150,000. It is now marked sale agreed according to daft.ie, where it had been listed for sale. Judge Alex Owens previously described Sweeney as being up to his oxters in organised crime after hearing evidence of his links to a leading figure in the crime gang known as The Family. The field at Waynestown had a guide price of 150,000 Sweeneys EWM Property Holdings had agreed to hand over the land in Co Meath on April 4 and was warned it could be found in contempt of court if the transfer did not happen on time. The firm involved in highly dubious investment schemes, including the land purchase at Waynestown. Sweeney is the director and founder of EWM in which a gang boss, the High Court heard, was one of the chief investors in the firm. Once known for his profile on the Dublin social scene, Sweeney had also been seen by gardai in the company of two men at a meeting in Dublin who were later arrested in possession of nearly 1m worth of heroin. He is also alleged to have associated with other Irish criminals suspected of drug dealing and money laundering and with criminals links to the UK and Turkey. The CAB case centred on the site at Waynestown which was bought with the proceeds of crime. Half the cash came from another investment firm, which in turn came from unknown sources, and a third from an innocent investor. Marcus Sweeney Finding in favour of CAB in January, Judge Owens said it was a very compelling case in which Sweeney was up to his oxters with organised crime. Sweeney had been served a Garda GIM form, given to people who gardai believe have an immediate threat to their life, according to evidence in the CAB case. This was a direct result of his involvement with criminals and money laundering and included serious threats, assault and intimidation. Gardai believe Sweeney and another business associate held a meeting with some of the investors in the firm in early 2020 over the debts. This, according to gardai in the CAB case, was done to reduce the threats to their person and property. A man in his 40s has been arrested in connection with a romance fraud investigation which has identified 15 potential victims that were allegedly defrauded of 275,000. The man was arrested by Gardai in the West Dublin area as part of an ongoing investigation into the laundering of the proceeds of romance frauds. The investigation has identified a potential 15 victims who have been collectively defrauded out of over 275,000. The money is understood to have emanated from romance frauds operating in numerous countries worldwide from November 2017 to date. Gardai attached to the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) arrested the man yesterday, Monday, November 20. The man is currently detained under the provisions of Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act, 2007 at a Garda station in Dublin. Investigations are ongoing, gardai said. In the aftermath of the gun attack, a house and a jeep in the Bawnlea area of the troubled Dublin suburb were set alight in apparent retaliation Scene of the shooting in Tallaght Scene of the shooting in tallaght. Photo: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin An escalating feud in the Tallaght area is threatening to spiral out of control after an innocent woman was shot in the leg in an incident which sparked revenge arson attacks on a house and a jeep. The woman who is aged in her 30s is receiving medical treatment today after she was allegedly shot by a major gangland figure who used a shotgun in the attack in the Swiftbrook area of Tallaght. Earlier it is alleged that people known to the innocent woman had stormed a house connected to the alleged shooter, a notoriously violent veteran drug dealer. In the aftermath of the gun attack, a house and a jeep in the Bawnlea area of the troubled Dublin suburb were set alight in apparent retaliation but no one was injured in either of these incidents. It is understood that no one who was targeted in the incidents last night has any involvement in the feud. The woman has been a long term target for the opposing faction and in May her innocent child's grave was smashed up and set on fire. The child had tragically passed away a number of years ago. Scene of the shooting in Tallaght Footage of the aftermath showed a headstone smashed up on the ground and damaged by fire while floral tributes to the innocent child were also destroyed. A property linked to the woman was previously destroyed in an arson attack. The woman has no involvement in the bitter Tallaght feud that has seen numerous shooting incidents, arson attacks and attempted murders this year. Armed garda patrols have now been increased in the area with garda forensic officers examining three different crime scenes this morning. A number of men have been arrested and charged before the courts with a wide variety of offences including firearms charges linked to the bitter dispute. Others have been charged with drug offences. At the centre of the gangland feud is a young man who survived an assassination attempt in the summer when he was rammed off his bike. He is also the chief suspect in the knife murder of innocent teenager Reece Cullen (17) in 2017 - a killing not related to the current dispute. It is something of a miracle that no-one has been killed yet in this feud, a source said today. Sources say that the dispute started over a seven figure drugs debt. Gardai and emergency services attended the scene of a number of incidents in Tallaght yesterday evening, Tuesday 21st November 2023, a garda spokesman said. At approximately 10:10pm, Gardai received reports of the discharge of a firearm at a residential premises in the Jobstown area. A woman aged, in her 30s, presented to Tallaght Hospital with a suspected gunshot injury. Her injuries are believed to be non-life threatening. Later in the evening Gardai and emergency services attended incidents of criminal damage by fire of a car and of a house at separate locations in the Jobstown area. No other injuries have been reported. Scenes have been put in place by Gardai and technical examinations are ongoing. No arrests have been made at this time. Investigating Gardai are appealing to anyone who was in the Jobstown area, between 9.30pm and 3:00am, who may have witnessed these incidents to come forward. Gardai are appealing to those with camera footage or to any motorist with dash cam footage to make it available to them. Anyone with information is asked to contact Tallaght Garda Station on 01 666 6000 or at the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111, he added. Officers are also investigating criminal damage by fire of a car and of a house at separate locations in the Jobstown area. Gardai at the scene this morning of a firearm incident in the Swiftbrook area of Jobstown. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin Gardai at the scene this morning of a shooting incident in the Swiftbrook area of Jobstown. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin A woman is being treated in hospital after being shot last night in Tallaght, Dublin. At approximately 10:10pm last night, gardai received reports that shot had been fired at at a home in the the Jobstown area. A woman aged, in her 30s, subsequently presented herself to Tallaght Hospital with a suspected gunshot injury. Her injuries are believed to be non-life threatening. Gardai and emergency services also attended the scene of a number of other incidents in Tallaght following the shooting. Gardai at the scene this morning of a firearm incident in the Swiftbrook area of Jobstown. Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin Officers are also investigating criminal damage by fire of a car and of a house at separate locations in the Jobstown area. No other injuries have been reported. Scenes have been put in place by gardai and technical examinations are ongoing. No arrests have been made at this time. A garda spokesman has appealed for any witnesses to the incidents to make contact with them. "Investigating gardai are appealing to anyone who was in the Jobstown area, between 9.30pm and 3am, who may have witnessed these incidents to come forward. Gardai are appealing to those with camera footage or to any motorist with dash cam footage to make it available to them. Anyone with information is asked to contact Tallaght Garda Station on 01 666 6000 or at the garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111. The serial offender is wanted by gardai in relation to recent offences all over the country including car thefts and impersonating officers in order to steal victims wallets A criminal who has been on a one-man crime wave all year is the chief suspect for a callous carjacking incident which led to a 70-year-old woman being hospitalised with injuries to her face, arms and legs. The shocking incident unfolded at around 5.30pm on Tuesday at a supermarket car park in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, when the criminal in his late 40s first tried to distract the pensioner. It is understood he flagged down the woman who was driving her car and falsely told her she had a flat tyre. The serial offender, who is originally from Co Tipperary, than bundled the woman out of the car and drove off. The woman was then dragged along the road for a short period because she had her hand on the car door. It is understood the victim was still in hospital today in what is described as a stable condition. Gardai are investigating the theft of a vehicle on Williamstown Road, Castlerea, County Roscommon that occurred on Tuesday 21st November 2023 at approximately 5:30pm, a garda spokesman said. A woman in her 70s injured during the course of this incident was taken to Sligo University Hospital Sligo for treatment, the spokesman added. Gardai are following a definite line of enquiry in relation to the carjacking. The car that was stolen is described as a red Volkswagen Fox, with a registration starting with 08 RN. The carjacker is described as middle-aged Irish man, of strong build, with dark hair. He was wearing a black coat, blue jeans, and brown shoes. The Sunday World can reveal that the man is a convicted sex offender who is wanted by gardai all over the country for various theft crimes committed this year. He is suspected of currently being in possession of the stolen car and was recently involved in a terrifying incident in which he rammed a gardas car. Separately, earlier this month, he is suspected of stealing a Ford Galaxy car in Athy, Co Kildare. This came after he was arrested in Enniskillen and charged with stealing a car in the Co Fermanagh town. His address at that time was understood be in Newry, Co Down, and gardai issued an alert about the criminal after being informed by the PSNI of his arrest in the North. The man is linked to a series of thefts over the space of 10 days in August after he stole a car in Co Longford. Using the stolen Toyota Corolla, the gangster then went on a one-man crime spree targeting people all over the country, from Sligo to Wicklow and even Cork. The offences range from impersonating gardai while stealing victims wallets in Co Louth to driving off without paying for fuel at a Co Cork petrol station. The man is also suspected of stealing a bag from a person at a Co Wicklow beach and impersonating gardai during some of his recent crimes. It is not an exaggeration to say that gardai in almost every county in the country have an interest in speaking to this individual, a source added. We couldn't hold her or feed her. I got to hold her skin-to-skin for about two minutes, and then she was taken away. Katie Ryle's life was tragically cut short after just eight weeks by epidermolysis bullosa A mother has recalled how her baby daughter died in her arms after being born with severe form of a skin condition which causes pain at the slightest touch. Miriam Ryle, from Dublin 12, lost her baby Katie to epidermolysis bullosa (EB) 19 years ago. "She passed away in my arms. I did not worry about hurting her any more, Miriam said. EB is an the extremely painful genetic condition caused by missing proteins which bind skin layers together and causes the skin to be extremely fragile. Ms Ryle recalled that shortly after Katie's birth a midwife noticed skin was missing from five of her fingers. Her distraught parents were helpless as she was rushed to the Rotunda Hospitals intensive care unit. We couldn't hold her or feed her. I got to hold her skin-to-skin for about two minutes, and then she was taken away. Baby Katie Ryle. Photo: Debra. "After a few days, Katie was transferred to the Nazareth ward in Our Ladys Childrens Hospital, Crumlin. Her blisters deteriorated covering her from her shoulders to her toes and inside her mouth, causing constant pain. A biopsy confirmed that she had Junctional EB, a severe and fatal form of the incurable condition where blistering occurs in the lower layer of the inner skin. They christened her Katie and her aunt bought her a pink and white striped dress, white cardigan and matching pink socks. Miriam tried to soothe the little infant in her final days by singing the folk song "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean." She remembers how on August 14, 2004, she came home and received the dreaded phone call from the hospital that Katie was about to lose her fight. The nurse placed her in my arms and I held her close, I didnt have to worry about hurting her anymore. She passed away in my arms a few minutes later. John and I spent the next few hours with her, cherishing the last time we would see or touch our sweet baby girl. She was speaking out for the first time about the tragic loss to ask the public to donate to the charity Debra Ireland which supports over 300 people with the condition. Miriam, left, showing Dee Callis, Head of Debras Family Support Team, Katies box of Katies mementos. Photo: Debra. She said the charity was only in its early stages when she lost her daughter but she is grateful for its support as she became part of the EB community. The support has been brilliant. Ive met other families who share the hardships of EB and these are the only people that truly understand what I've gone through. They heal wounded hearts. Deirdre Callis, Head of Debras Family Support Team, said the public can honour Katies memory with a gift that will provide comfort, support and assistance to families facing the heart-breaking challenges of EB. Im devastated every time I hear a story like this. Because of your generosity, I and other members of the team can be available to a family at a moments notice when a baby is born with EB, she said. Donations can be made at debra.ie/donate. His pet was a cross between a Labrador and Rottweiler and was subsequently put down Family members of the late Thomas Byrne , from left, Michael Byrne, brother, Trevor Byrne, son, Mary Walker, sister and Geraldine Fahey sister, outside Dublin District Coroner's Court (Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin) A hospital consultant has warned of the dangers of bites from dogs and cats after an inquest heard how a man suffered a fatal blood infection after being bitten by his pet dog. Thomas Hack Byrne (65), a father of one from Brownstown, The Curragh, Co Kildare died at Tallaght University Hospital on March 24, 2021 two weeks after he suffered puncture wounds to his face after being bitten by his dog. His pet was a cross between a Labrador and Rottweiler and was subsequently put down. A hospital consultant told a sitting of Dublin District Coroners Court that the case highlighted the need for people who are bitten by pets to receive medical treatment immediately. Consultant nephrologist at Tallaght University Hospital, Catherine Wall, said the bacteria, which caused the fatal infection, lives in the gums and teeth of dogs and cats which can be transferred to humans through bites. Dr Wall said it normally results in small infections but can pose a serious risk for certain groups, including older people; patients with a history of liver disease; people who are immune-compromised; cancer patients and those receiving steroid treatments. Dr Wall said Mr Byrne was gravely ill on admission to TUH on March 16, 2021 with evidence of multiple organ failure and required ventilation and dialysis. Although he showed some small signs of improvement during his stay at the hospital, as he had reacted positively to antibiotics, Dr Wall said she was also concerned about his medium-long term care. She pointed out that there was a low blood supply to his legs with the fear that at least one limb might need to be amputated. However, he subsequently suffered a cardiac arrest on March 24, 2021 and could not be resuscitated. Family members of the late Thomas Byrne , from left, Michael Byrne, brother, Trevor Byrne, son, Mary Walker, sister and Geraldine Fahey sister, outside Dublin District Coroner's Court (Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin) Asked by coroner Aisling Gannon if the situation might have turned out different if Mr Byrne had sought treatment earlier after being bitten by his dog, Dr Wall said it would have been helpful. However, she said the deceased was incredibly unlucky in that he appeared to have been infected with a large amount of the organism from the dog bite, even if he had cleaned the wound immediately. The consultant praised the speed in which the condition had been diagnosed by staff at Naas General Hospital, where he first presented on March 15, 2021. The deceaseds brother, Michael Byrne, told the inquest that he had taken his brother to hospital for suspected food poisoning and because he looked like he needed medical treatment. Mr Byrne said he had left his brother at the hospitals accident and emergency department but was unable to go inside due to Covid-19 restrictions. He told Ms Gannon that he was contacted by his sister, Geraldine, to make sure that Michael told hospital staff about having been bitten by his dog five days earlier in his home. Mr Byrne said his brothers condition deteriorated the following day and a decision was taken to transfer him to TUH. He recalled seeing his brother for the last time in TUH on March 17, 2021, when he was hooked up to machines before he passed away a week later. In response to questions from the coroner, he said his brother had been unable to stand up on the day that he was first brought to hospital. He had no movement. He couldnt do anything, said Mr Byrne. Family members told Ms Gannon that the deceased had told them he had suffered a fall to explain the cut on his face, which had been caused by the dog bite. He loved the dog so much that he didnt want anything to happen to it, said the deceaseds sister, Geraldine. The deceaseds relatives said they believed the incident had occurred when he was trying to get his mobile phone and had pushed the animal out of the way. They were unaware of the dog ever having bitten their brother before. A garda witness confirmed that there was nothing suspicious in relation to the death of Mr Byrne, who was due to retire later that year from his job with the Office of Public Works, based at the Curragh Camp. A pathologist who carried out a post-mortem on Mr Byrne, Patricia Gou, said he had died from sepsis which had most likely resulted from an infection, capnocytophaga canimorsus, that had been caused by a dog bite. Dr Gou said the patient also had underlying heart disease. A consultant physician and endocrinologist at Naas General Hospital, Conor Woods, said medical records showed Mr Byrne was suffering from nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain on admission. Dr Woods said the patients condition deteriorated within 24 hours from what was considered a blood infection that had resulted from a dog bite. He said getting the information from Mr Byrne about the dog bite had been helpful in getting the right treatment for him at the earliest possible stage. Dr Woods also said the outcome might possibly have been different if he had attended hospital several days earlier but not hours. Its a horrible case. I think you will always be left with that question, he remarked. The coroner said there was no history of Mr Byrnes dog ever having bitten him before the incident in what she described as an utterly unavoidable and unexpected death. Returning a verdict of accidental death, Ms Gannon offered her condolences to Mr Byrnes family and also acknowledged the extra difficult circumstances they experienced due to visiting restrictions on hospitals because of the pandemic. Her father, Mark Lovell, was shot dead in Newry last December - a killing which has been linked to a dispute between rival drug gangs. A woman recently described by police as the head of an organised crime gang in Northern Ireland was back in court today. Whitney Hughes, 31, is charged with 14 offences, including possession of heroin and cocaine with intent to supply. Hughes, of Ardcarn Park in Newry, County Down, is also accused of trading in counterfeit goods. Whitney Hughes Her father, Mark Lovell, was shot dead in Newry last December - a killing which has been linked to a dispute between rival drug gangs. Earlier this month, Hughes applied for a change to her bail conditions to allow her to travel to Dublin for the weekend with her partner. Outlining their objections to the bail variation, a PSNI officer claimed in court that she has criminal links in Dublin. She has quite a network in that area and is the head of an organised crime group in Newry, said the officer. The application for the bail variation was refused. Hughes was back in court today to fix a date for a preliminary inquiry in relation to the charges she faces. A date of December 13 was agreed between her defence solicitor and a judge at Newry Magistrates Court. She remains on bail. Mark Lovell, 58, was shot a number of times at close range inside his car while he was parked outside the home of a relative at Ardcarn Park in Newry on December 1 last. He had survived another murder attempt at his home in Dundalk, County Louth, shortly before he was killed. Two men were arrested in connection with the murder following searches of a number of properties in Newry. However, no one has been charged in with Lovells killing. Independent charity Crimestoppers has offered a reward of up to 20,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Mastercard plans to introduce the latest innovations in Kazakhstan and the region, Rafal Trepka, CEO of Mastercard in Central Asia, told Trend in an exclusive interview. Multi-directionality and diversification "Mastercard is a successful fintech with a more than 50-year history that operates in 210 countries. With the help of unique technologies and innovations, we create the present and determine the future in finance and in other areas of life and business across the world, including Kazakhstan," he said. Trepka noted that starting at the top level, the core element of the company's global strategy today is multi-directional, which is about providing choice to cardholders and business customers. "Now the focus of payment development is to offer the client freedom of choice: how, where and with what to pay. We want to give our partners, be it banks or retailers, the opportunity to use everything they are already accustomed to, and also help create a unique payment experience for customers. For example, a client may have different currencies and crypto assets in his account. And we will offer him instant, seamless and secure conversion and payment anywhere in the world," he said. As he noted, the second element of Mastercard's strategy is diversification. "Diversification is firstly about who and how we serve. Historically, our main partners have been banks. Today, the number of partners has expanded to government agencies, fintechs, technology companies, merchants, retailers, etc. We have created a powerful payments ecosystem. We are doing this both at the global level and in Kazakhstan," Trepka said. The role of Mastercard in digitalization of Kazakhstan According to him, Kazakhstan strives to become the leader of Central Asia in digitalization of all spheres of life, including the development of the digital economy and fintech. "Thanks to synergy between the government and the private sector, the country has seen explosive growth in cashless payments in recent years. In 2022, the volume of non-cash card transactions in the country amounted to 102.8 trillion tenge ($222.4 billion) or 99 percent of GDP. Against this background, the share of non-cash transactions across the country increased to 82.5 percent. Thus, Kazakhstan can already be called a cashless country, he said. In large cities - Almaty or Astana, people almost no longer use cash. Technologies such as contactless payment, Tap on Phone, digital wallets have become commonplace in Kazakhstan and part of the daily lives of millions of people. Many of them may even feel inconvenience when they have to pay in cash somewhere," he said. Trepka added that in this regard, the role of Mastercard as an international technological player in the development and implementation of these solutions in the country is recognized by all market participants, colleagues and partners. "On a daily basis, we help our key partners, banks, to develop multi-rail consumer solutions. The world is developing rapidly, new customer segments are constantly being formed. Banks strive to provide them with additional options for transferring money and payments to suit their changing demands and needs. And we help them provide these solutions by offering flexible configuration of payment methods and transfers, including cross-border transfers," he said. Regional CEO pointed out that in the long term, Mastercard is looking at Web 3.0 and focused on payments and products across the country and interaction with government agencies to implement them. "We are talking about an instant payment system, digital tenge and open banking. Our goal is to land these services in Kazakhstan in cooperation with the National Bank and second-tier banks. If we talk about specific solutions, first of all, for our cardholders there is Digital First or Digital Only technology, which implies a complete refusal to use plastic cards, with the replacement of these cards with a tokenized card in a smartphone. For those who still need a card, we, together with banks, issue cards made of biodegradable plastic. As you know, Mastercard has committed to eliminating plastic cards by 2028. There are also specially shaped cards for those who have poor vision, the so-called Touch Card, which, for example, we issued jointly with the Kazakh bank "Altyn," he said. Development of tourism and cybersecurity solutions Rafal Trepka noted that Mastercard is a key technology partner to the global travel and tourism industry, offering solutions, expertise and consulting both globally and locally. "Our data shows that the travel industry has bounced back following the coronavirus pandemic, with people around the world wanting to travel more, explore new destinations and gain invaluable experiences. Kazakhstan has impressive opportunities for the development of all types of tourism, and we actively cooperate with various organizations - city halls, national companies in the field of tourism. We provide Kazakhstani partners with access to our Data Tourism Insights Platform, which allows them to use analytics to develop foreign and domestic tourism in the country. We are also ready to provide technology and global expertise in the implementation of various programs and promote Kazakhstan as a touristic destination among the 2.3 billion Mastercard holders in the world through the Priceless platform. We are confident that thanks to our cooperation with partners from Kazakhstan, the tourism industry in the country will soon realize its enormous potential," he said. Regional CEO added that Mastercard is also focused on developing cybersecurity solutions in Kazakhstan. "The use of biometrics for identity verification is already working in many countries and, as far as I know, is perceived positively in Kazakhstan: according to our research, 30 percent of respondents in Kazakhstan fully support it. In Kazakhstan there is now a very large field of activity and many areas where it is possible to implement both financial and non-financial solutions from Mastercard. We actively help to develop the country's economy and its people because we are building a sustainable world where everyone can prosper. So we don't intend to stop," he said. Choosing Almaty as a regional hub As Trepka pointed out, Mastercard has been and will continue to be an important participant in the payment environment in Kazakhstan, along with other local and international players. "It should be noted that the issuance of payment cards together with our partner banks is, although an important part of our activities in the country, but does not reflect the full variety of projects and areas that we are working on today in Kazakhstan. We are currently developing and planning to introduce the latest innovations in the country and region, sharing wide international experience, supporting projects not only in the digitalization of the economy, but also in the field of education, culture, etc.," he said. As an example, Rafal Trapka pointed out Mastercards decision to choose Almaty as a regional hub in the CIS, Central and Eastern Europe for the development of its consulting business. "This decision was supported by the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev during a recent bilateral meeting between the countrys leadership and Mastercard top management in New York as part of the visit of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United States. The meeting discussed issues of cooperation in the development of e-government and the digital economy, the introduction of innovation and digitalization as a tool for increasing the efficiency of public administration, increasing transparency and ensuring more inclusive and sustainable economic growth," he said. According to him, together with the National Bank of Kazakhstan Mastercard is working to provide expert and technological support as part of the implementation projectsrelated to the national payment system. Kazakhstan Digital Country Partnership Program "These and other initiatives were reflected in the framework Agreement signed between the Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan BagdatMussin and the Global Head of Public Sector, Executive Vice President for Strategic Growth of Mastercard Nicola Villa. As part of this Agreement, Mastercard, with the advisory support of the Ministry, intends to develop and implement a five-year digital partnership program in Kazakhstan - the Kazakhstan Digital Country Partnership," Trepka said. As Regional CEO noted that cooperation will include initiatives such as promoting the Kazakh GovTech model using the Mastercard global network, expanding access to financial services through the digitalization of payments in various areas (government payments, agriculture, education, etc.), cooperation in the promotion and development of IT exports, e-commerce, digitalization of SMEs, fintech ecosystems, supporting Kazakhstan's Smart Cities program with a key focus on the tourism and urban transport sectors, promoting the creation of a secure and sustainable digital ecosystem through cybersecurity and anti-fraud. "The parties will pay particular attention to cooperation in promoting projects related to digital and financial literacy of various segments of the population. By concluding the Kazakhstan Digital Country Partnership, we are ready to take our cooperation with all stakeholders in Kazakhstan to a new, deeper and more comprehensive level. From Almaty, we plan to develop business and human capital in the banking sector for the entire Central Asian region. This will benefit everyone - business, people, society, the country as a whole. For companies and entrepreneurs, we bring global advanced technologies and share our international experience. To develop local specialists, we train personnel, provide jobs, and raise professionals. We are also creating numerous training programs for SMEs and students, who will also work in various fields and open their own businesses tomorrow," he said. Trepka pointed out that ultimately, this will affect the country's economy and GDP growth. "Another recent example that I would like to mention is cooperation with the municipalities of large cities in Kazakhstan. For example, we recently agreed that Mastercard will implement projects in the field of digital technologies with the mayors office of Almaty, the largest metropolis in Kazakhstan. We have identified a number of areas for cooperation, including the introduction of innovative solutions in the cashless payment system, and we will also provide the mayors office with access to our digital platform Mastercard Tourism Insights. Almaty is the most popular tourist destination in the country and access to our platform will allow to analyze a lot of data, which will help when making decisions for the development of the tourism industry: create a behavioral profile of a tourist, evaluate his preferences when choosing accommodations and objects of visit, monitor the airports congestion in dynamics and much more. This cooperation will help accelerate the development of Almaty as a Smart City, create a comfortable urban environment for both residents and foreign guests, and expand the citys tourism potential," Regional CEO said. According to him, these are just a few recent examples of Mastercard's work in Kazakhstan. "I gave even more examples in an interview with your publication in July of this year (read more here). Therefore, we sincerely believe that our work in Kazakhstan is very necessary and useful for everyone, and will contribute to the formation of a more open, safe, efficient and transparent environment for all participants of the economy," he said. Mastercard's transport solutions in Kazakhstan "Using our advanced technologies and global experience, we have implemented many projects in cooperation with transport companies, national carriers, in the field of public transport throughout Kazakhstan. Having started work on introducing cashless payment in public transport in 2015, when the world's 5th contactless cashless fare payment system was launched in Almaty subway, Mastercard continues to implement solutions for public transport. In Kazakhstani cities, in collaboration with local partners, projects are being launched to pay for travel with bank cards," he said. Trepka noted that Mstercard launches various promotions for cardholders to support cashless payment in public transport. "For example, together with the Almaty Subway, we announced that by the end of 2023, when paying with smartphones and smart watches that support Google Pay, Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, to which a Mastercard is linked, the fare will cost only 5 tenge, instead of 100 tenge. Such promotions provide customers with the opportunity not only to appreciate the convenience, speed and security of payments through mobile devices with Mastercard cards, but also to significantly save on daily expenses," he noted. Support for women's small and micro businesses in Kazakhstan In addition, as Regional CEO noted, in collaboration with the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, it is planned to support small and micro businesses created by women in Kazakhstan. "We are also continually expanding access to our Girls4Tech STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) curriculum for 8-12 year olds through a range of new and creative online educational resources. This program helps teachers and parents inspire students to study and master new areas of knowledge in Spanish, Arabic, Polish, French and other languages. Mastercard supported translation of educational materials into Kazakh language and now on the website Girls4Tech, which was launched in collaboration with the educational company Scholastic, parents and teachers can download lessons in Kazakh language," he said. Trepka added that ongoing Mastercard's research reveals the challenges women entrepreneurs face and the key issues that need to be addressed to advance women's role in sustainable and inclusive economies. Emily was kidnapped on October 7 during the Hamas raid into Israel which killed 1,200 people. She was initially feared dead but Israeli intelligence later informed her father, Dublin native Thomas Hand, that she may be alive and in Gaza. Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand (9) is one of the potential 50 hostages that will be released by Hamas in an exchange for 150 Palestinians held by Israel, according to Israels Channel 12, who quoted Benjamin Netanyahus office. The Prime Ministers office named Emily and 49 other children and women who will be released in the first tranche of hostages as part of a tentative truce deal brokered in recent days. Emily was kidnapped on October 7 during the Hamas raid into Israel which killed 1,200 people. She was initially feared dead but Israeli intelligence later informed her father, Dublin native Thomas Hand, that she may be alive and in Gaza. This comes as Israel's government and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of the 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave. Officials from Qatar, which has been mediating secret negotiations, as well as the U.S., Israel and Hamas have for days been saying a deal was imminent. Hamas is believed to be holding more than 200 hostages, taken when its fighters surged into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. A statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting. Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand, who turned nine last week, is believed to be among the hostages. Father of nine-year-old held hostage by Hamas calls for evidence of proof of life Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the nine-year-old could soon be free as a result of the hostage agreement. We are particularly pursuing the case of Emily Hand, a young Irish-Israeli girl who we believe has been held hostage in Gaza by Hamas, Mr Varadkar told Mary Lou McDonald in the Dail yesterday. "We're pushing, and using all our contacts and abilities, to ensure that that Emily Hand is along one of those to be released. Thats a major priority for us. And we're very strongly of the view that hostages should never be taken by anyone, in any conflict, anywhere, ever. Ireland is going to have to change the way it trades with Israel, the Taoiseach added in a major escalation of language over the Gaza conflict. He said: "I have said at European meetings, and I will say it again, that we cannot continue to aid Palestine and trade with Israel in the way we have done in the past." That is going to have to change in some way." For every additional 10 hostages released, the pause would be extended by another day, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. "Israel's government is committed to return all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal," said the statement, released after hours of deliberation that were closed to the press. Hamas said the 50 hostages would be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian women and children who are held in Israeli jails. The truce deal will also allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza, the Palestinian group said in a statement. Israels war cabinet is to meet to consider a possible deal on the release of hostages held by Hamas (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) Israel had committed not to attack or arrest anyone in all parts of Gaza during the truce period, it added. US President Joe Biden said he welcomed the deal. "Todays deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released," he said in a statement. The Qatar government said 50 civilian women and children hostages would be released from Gaza in exchange for the release "of a number of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons". The starting time of the truce would be announced within the next 24 hours, it said in a statement. The accord is the first truce of a war in which Israeli bombardments have flattened swathes of Hamas-ruled Gaza, killed 13,300 civilians in the tiny densely populated enclave and left about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to authorities in Gaza. But Netanyahu said Israel's broader mission was unchanged. "We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel," he said in a recorded message at the start of the government meeting. Hamas said in its statement: "As we announce the striking of a truce agreement, we affirm that our fingers remain on the trigger, and our victorious fighters will remain on the look out to defend our people and defeat the occupation." Pro-Palestinian supporters protest outside Parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. The majority of MP's voted to close the Israeli embassy in South Africa over the war in Gaza. (AP Photo/Nardus Engelbrecht) Release to begin tomorrow Three Americans, including a three-year-old girl whose parents were among those killed during Hamas's Oct. 7 attack, are expected to be among the hostages to be released, a senior U.S. official said. In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the U.S., Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain, Ireland and Portugal, Israel's government has said. Israeli media said the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. Implementing the deal must wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, reports said. Kamelia Hoter Ishay, the grandmother of 13-year-old Gali Tarshansky, who is believed to be held in Gaza, said she would not believe reports of a deal until she got a call that the teenager was freed. "And then I'll know that it's really over and I can breathe a sigh of relief and say that's it, it's over," she said. Qadura Fares, head of the Commission for Prisoners' Affairs in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, told Reuters that among more than 7,800 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel were about 85 women and 350 minors. Most were detained without charges or for incidents such as hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers, not for launching militant attacks, he said. Qatar's chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be working inside Gaza to facilitate the hostages' release. Israeli residents and Mexicans with family members living in Israel, protest for the release of children kidnapped by Hamas gunmen on October 7 and taken to Gaza, outside the UNICEF offices, in Mexico City, Mexico November 21, 2023. REUTERS/Henry Romero He said that the truce means there would be "no attack whatsoever. No military movements, no expansion, nothing." Al-Khulaifi added that Qatar hopes the deal "will be a seed to a bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire. And that's our intention." Hamas has to date released only four captives: U.S. citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct. 20, citing "humanitarian reasons," and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct. 23. The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel had died. "We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death," Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel. As attention focused on the hostage release deal, fighting on the ground raged on. Mounir Al-Barsh, director-general of Gaza's health ministry, told Al Jazeera TV that the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City. Israel said militants were operating from the facility and threatened to act against them within four hours, he said. On Tuesday, Israel also said its forces had encircled the Jabalia refugee camp, a congested urban extension of Gaza City where Hamas has been battling advancing Israeli armoured forces. The Palestinian news agency WAFA said 33 people were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on part of Jabalia. In southern Gaza, Hamas-affiliated media said 10 people were killed and 22 injured by an Israeli air strike on an apartment in the city of Khan Younis. Reuters could not immediately verify the accounts of fighting on either side. Danielle (43) became famous during the Celtic Tiger era as one of the pioneers of the likes of dermafillers Colourful TV star Danielle Meagher is in talks to take part in the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills whilst in the middle of importing into Ireland a ground-breaking product Botox product. Danielle (43) became famous during the Celtic Tiger era as one of the pioneers of the likes of derma fillers and earned qualified medical practitioner earned the nickname Dr Botox. Having taken part in TV3 reality series Dublin Housewives alongside Virginia Macari and Lisa Murphy, she later went on the star in 2013 in Celebrity Big Brother, during which she made pals with fellow housemates such as Charlotte Crosby, Louie Spence and Ron Atkinson. The Irish version of the show Ten years on Danielle is now living in Los Angeles where she has Launched a Botox skin care treatment in a tube for 200 a pop which she claims will rival injectable versions Treads the boards weekly as a stand-up comedians, including at the famed Comedy Store at which she had Quentin Tarantino attending the night of her line-up Kickstarted a new podcast series called Dairy of a Botox bitch, in which she delves into everything from skincare to American and Irish celebrities Confirms rumours in the LA showbiz world she is in talks with producers of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. All I can say about real Housewives of LA is they would love an Irishwoman to take part and there has been communication, but we will see how it goes, she teases. She now intends to flood the Irish market with her American made Botox product called Dermaface MD. Its like a popular filler. Derma filler is made of advanced hyaluronic serum, she explains. You tap onto your wet face. So, it pumps up your face, for anti-aging. Its not going to give the same pump up as if you get loads of filler injections, but its still very pumpy up (sic) and its medical grade. A 30ml bottle costs around 200 but includes free shipping to Ireland. Youd need to use maybe twice a week and it would last four to five months, she claims. The Botox I was giving in Dublin was 750, but I also charged 150 for consultation. Then two tubes of 850, so it was coming in at about 2,500. But this alternative is all for around 200. She argues many Botox clinks in Ireland are scamming people. With Botox many places are watering it down, especially with the Groupon ads, she maintains. They are diluting it heavily, and everyone knows that it doesnt last or take effect The other major problem with this is that when its diluted it will actually migrate from the area and that causes droopy eyes. She insists a person does not need to take Botox or her alternative lotion for the rest of their live once they start the treatment. I also had some skin cancer removed with mole surgery and I didnt get Botox for two and a half years and my face didnt collapse, she reveals. The first time I had skin cancer was before I did Celebrity Big Brother. Shes excited about her new podcast platform. In the podcast will be a big section called Botox where people can phone in and ask about skincare and non-surgical Botox, she notes. Obviously we have interviews with celebrities and also dip in about Ireland, talking about Marcus Sweeney or whoever. She loves living in L.A. Im living here now about three and a half years and I moved here because there a lot more opportunities, she recalls. I still have clinics are still in Dublin, London and Monaco and I fly back and do clinics and still have a lot of regulars, such as some of the royal family in Monaco. I sold my Botox company when its turnover was 2.5 million a year, so Ive had a nice few years. Danielle on stage She started doing comedy courses 10 years ago in Brighton and has since done more in California. Im now doing big venues in LA. I go on stage and introduce myself like Hi Im Dr Botox, an Irish Botox doctor, an Irish realty TV star. I did a show back in Ireland that you guys probably never heard of, its called the Real Housewives of Ireland, but for a lot less money. Also I did a show called 60 Plastic Surgery Shockers, she adds. I joke about Botox. I also have a go about Selling Sunset, saying I dont know about the name, maybe it should be called Hookers in Heels. She is still single but enjoys the dating scene. I went on a date a few weeks ago and the eejit took me to a comedy club. I was sitting there and then Craig Robinson was in the Comedy Store and I knew all my friends were there so I just bailed and left, having told him I was going to the toilet, she giggles. He was good looking but boring. Californian men are polite but sometimes youd like an Irishman who enjoys the craic. Some people feel like theyre born in the wrong body, I feel like I was born in the wrong country. I speaks to everyone at home every day but I was made for this country. Tubridys new show will broadcast on Virgin Radio UK and Dublins Q102 every weekday from 10am to 1pm Ryan Tubridy thanks the Q102 staff for their welcome Ryan Tubridy said he is gearing up for being back on air as he paid a visit to his new co-workers in Dublins Q102 studios. As part of his deal with Virgin Radio in the UK, the ex-Late Late Show hosts show will be simultaneously broadcast on both the UK and Dublin stations. Q102 and FM104 are part of the Wireless network who own several radio stations across Ireland as well as Virgin Media UK and News UK whose newspaper titles include The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun. Tubridys new show will broadcast on Virgin Radio UK and Dublins Q102 every weekday from 10am to 1pm. Writing on Instagram, the former RTE host said he was gearing up for his new gig. "Thanks to Venetia and Aidan for such a warm welcome on Q102 this morning. "Gearing up for January 2024. Tubridy also posed with the hosts of FM104s popular morning show, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, So much fun with the Strawberries this morning, he posted on Instagram. Ryan Tubridy thanks the Q102 staff for their welcome Last week, Ryan Tubridy said RTE is in his rear-view mirror and praised his agent Noel Kelly as the best in the business. In a sit-down interview with The Irish Sun, Tubridy said his agent Noel Kelly negotiated the best deal in the move and he is the best in the business and always was. Tubridy said the NK Management boss got on extremely well with the management at Virgin, adding: Ive had a bunch of people around me, advising me in the last few months and they have been spectacular. Tubridy confirmed there is no question that Kelly will remain his agent, also describing him as a friend and the best in the land. "And thats what its all about loyalty, and trust and standing by who and what you believe. And look at that today, here I am starting a new career in London. He also ruled out any return to RTE, despite Director General Kevin Bakhurst telling the Irish Independent this week that the door is not shut on talented broadcaster Tubridy. When asked about the possibility of a future return, the ex-Radio One host said: In a word, no. Tubridy called Virgin Radio his new home but admitted that he does miss his team at RTE, adding: I dont see any reason to go back there because I am starting a new beginning here. The Health Research Council has awarded $512,000 to University of Waikato researchers for five projects that aim to bolster health outcomes for Maori and Pacific peoples. The five successful projects focus on solutions-based research, building on the knowledge and expertise of Maori and Pacific communities. Tino rangatiratanga through kaupapa Maori pregnancy and parenting solutions Dr Nikki Barrett (Ngati Haua, Ngati Porou) has been awarded the Maori Health Research Erihapeti Rehu-Murchie Postdoctoral Fellowship worth $391,877 to enhance the wellbeing of Maori mothers and babies. Shell undertake the fellowship with Te Ngira: Institute for Population Research at the University of Waikato, working alongside Maori community provider Kirikiriroa Family Start Trust. As a Maori mama who has experienced both ends of the health spectrum, as a service user and health professional, I have a responsibility to my people to ensure my research will have a meaningful impact and contribute to improved health gains for our whanau, says Dr Barrett. Dr Barretts study builds on her prior research on Indigenous birthing knowledge and antenatal care. Her new study will centre on kaupapa Maori pregnancy and parenting initiatives to understand mechanisms and measures for success, and to provide meaningful and transformational change for Maori mama hapu (pregnant women) and whanau. Mana wahine perspectives for waka ama and hauora Kay Berryman (Ngati Maniapoto, Ngati Apakura, Waikato, Ngati Tuwharetoa, Ngai Tahu) has been awarded a Maori Health Research PhD Scholarship worth $123,600. Her PhD study through the University will explore Maori women and Indigenous women's perceptions and experiences of matauranga in the context of waka ama and its impact on their hauora (holistic wellbeing). My doctoral research will incorporate my hauora experience, gained through my own journey of waka ama. The PhD scholarship will enable me to dedicate myself fully to advancing health outcomes of wahine Maori and tamariki, explains Ms Berryman. The kaupapa Maori and mana wahine-led research will identify opportunities for integrating and enriching matauranga Maori and Indigenous knowledge within the context of waka ama to promote the revitalisation and relevance of traditional knowledge systems. Ms Berryman hopes that the research will help highlight the central role of women within Maori communities. Three Health Career Development awards for School of Health researchers The HRC funding round also recognised three Te Huataki Waiora School of Health researchers: Air Chathams new SAAB 340 touched down on its inaugural scheduled flight into Whakatane. The larger, more spacious and comfortable aircraft is welcomed by passengers of the daily scheduled flights between Whakatane and Auckland. It replaces the Fairchild Metroliner III, which seated only 18 passengers and was relatively cramped. Some passenger-carrying test flights of the new 34-seater had been made during August to test its suitability for the route, with one passenger commenting that it was much more comfortable, especially for taller travellers. There is a lot more leg room and its great to have overhead storage and even be able to stand up. The new aircraft also offers inflight service and toilet facilities. Air Chathams chief operating officer Duane Emeny says introducing the new aircraft to the Whakatane route was a key milestone for the airline and a significant upgrade to the Eastern Bay air service. The airline has maintained the Whakatane to Auckland route for the past eight years, since Air New Zealand discontinued the service, citing commercial reasons. Id like to think that our family business has proven that is not the case and look forward continued growth on the route with the larger plane. This date also marks the end of an era for regional air travel in New Zealand, with a farewell to the Fairchild Metroliner, which has served New Zealands smaller regional centres for decades. The Whakatane to Auckland flight service with Air Chathams was the last-standing route for the iconic aeroplane. It leaves with a touch of nostalgia for those whove travelled for decades on the Pencil Plane - just one of the many nicknames assigned to the Texas-build craft. For me, it will be sad to say farewell our faithful Metroliner. An aircraft that played a key part in the development of New Zealands aviation industry and has served the Eastern Bay well through some challenging years for the region. In partnership with local government and business entities, Air Chathams shared vision is to further develop the service with the larger aircraft into the future. Mayor Victor Luca and deputy mayor Lesley Immink, along with several of the district councils senior managers attended the Monday event and Dr Luca cut a ribbon to allow the first passengers to enter the airport terminal. Dr Luca has previously spoken about the importance of the air service to Whakatane, pointing out that amongst other organisations it is an important resource for our hospital, facilitating visits from doctors and other specialists. The 'Flying Pencil' becomes part of our district history, Dr Luca says. It served us well, but we now welcome the increased capacity and comfort of the SAAB 340 onto the Whakatane route. "The timing is great, heading into the holiday season and I hope our families, friends, and friends we are yet to meet, consider this new flight option for shorter breaks without needing to drive. Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. One of the trio alleged to be behind an underage prostitution operation is facing as many as 30 additional charges from around the country. The new charges for Darby Bronson Whareaorere are connected to the Prostitution Reform Act and were revealed at his appearance, via audiovisual link, at Rotorua District Court on Wednesday. Defence lawyer Scott Mills said he was unable to enter pleas for his client, who also faces charges of assisting a person aged 14-17 years old to provide commercial sex services and receiving payment he knew was derived from commercial sexual activity provided by an under-18 year old. Mills told the court every appearance theres new charges, and thats whats happened here. He said they were reasonably significant charges and numbered more than 30. Asked by Judge Greg Hollister-Jones whether the additional charges were connected to the Prostitution Reform charges he said yes, though some additional charges were unrelated. Mills said he had just received a box of disclosure and was unable to advance his client's case until he was aware of the new charges. He [Whareaorere] doesnt even know what they are, he said. Judge Hollister-Jones said he would schedule Whareaoreres next appearance for December 18, and said at that appearance he wanted to see a clear way forward. Clayton Fox, who is facing connected allegations with Darby Bronson Whareaorere, has also not entered pleas as additional charges are laid. One of Whareaoreres co-accused, Clayton Fox, was also revealed to be subject to a growing list of charges at his last appearance on November 16. He currently faces charges including sexual connection with a 13-15 year-old, assisting a girl aged between 14-17 years old to provide sexual services and receiving payments he knew were derived from commercial sexual services supplied by an under 18-year-old. Wikitoria Pepene is also facing charges linked to the same allegations, including being the operator of a business of prostitution who was not the holder of an operators certificate issued under Sec 35 of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003. She also faces charges with Fox for possession of methamphetamine for distribution and possession of cannabis. In October, Detective Senior Sergeant John Wilson, Bay of Plenty District Headquarters, Child Protection Team announced the arrest of Fox and Pepene, and police later told Stuff that Whareaorere had also been arrested in connection to the alleged offending. Charging documents name two underage females, both of whom cannot be named for legal reasons. According to Wilson, the charges relate to an illegal commercial sex service involving underage girls and supplying them with cannabis and methamphetamine. -Benn Bathgate/Stuff. People in Tauranga will be able to drink at a restaurant from 9am, but not buy alcohol from a store until 10am. A supermarket spokesperson says the change will remove the flexibility for people trying to fit shopping around work and family. From February 12, 2024, alcohol wont be available to buy until 10am in Tauranga. Currently sales can occur from 7am. The change to the Local Alcohol Policy was made by Tauranga City Councils Strategy Risk and Finance committee on October 30. Vetro Mediterranean Foods co-owner Christine Gore told Local Democracy Reporting she doesnt see the rationale behind the decision. The Tauranga store opens at 9am but wont be able to sell wine until 10am. All it's doing is inconveniencing our customers and making our staff ... police this rule that just doesn't make a lot of sense. The store has never had a problem with alcohol sales and doesnt sell spirits, RTDs or cheaper drinks, says Gore. People will be able to buy drinks at a bar from 9am but not a store. File photo: SunLive. The customers that shop at that time, they tend to be the more organised ones that are just picking up a bottle of wine to go with their groceries to take home for dinner. The whole idea of it is responsible drinking, we're selling food and wine that go together. Gore says it makes no sense that restaurants and bars with an on-licence can serve alcohol from 9am but stores cant sell it. There is a petition in store on the new alcohol sale hours, which Gore planned to present to council next year. So far, Gore says everybody disagreed with the new rules. Supermarkets will lose the most available alcohol sale hours with many open at 7am. Foodstuffs spokesperson Emma Wooster says the co-operative supported the maximum alcohol sale hours set by central Government, which is from 7am 11pm. Were disappointed in this decision because this change adds operational complexity to the running of the store, ultimately adding to cost and therefore the overall value, we can offer our customers. It also inconveniences customers who drink responsibly and need flexibility around their shopping times as theyre juggling family and work commitments. The cooperative owns New World, PaknSave and Four Square supermarkets. One liquor store owner thought alcohol sales should end at 9pm. File photo: SunLive. Super Liquor Greerton owner Doug Harvie says the council had missed the trick. It's not the opening hours where problem customers come, it's the closing hours. He would have the liked the council to make off-licence sales hours from 9am to 9pm. The majority of problem customers ... [are] organising grog for late night or all night parties and they cause us the most problems. However, Alcohol Action New Zealand chairperson Dr Tony Farrell says the later start time for stores would help reduce alcohol harm. Reducing alcohol accessibility impacts on the heavier drinkers who suffer the most harm from alcohol. I do feel for those businesses who will be impacted by the restrictions that have been brought in as a lot of harmful drinking is done with daily dosing at home." Alcohol Action New Zealand chairperson Dr Tony Farrell. Photo Supplied. The costs to the community with extended on-licence drinking times is high, says Farrell. Tauranga City Council district licensing committee secretary Nigel McGlone says the committee decided the shorter trading hours would help reduce alcohol related harm. The committee considered feedback from submitters, the Medical Officer of Health in making this decision and research findings from studies in New Zealand and overseas. Council accepts that there will need to be changes in the way premises manage the sale of alcohol. This may require access to alcohol areas to be restricted using obvious physical barriers and signage before 10am. The council believed there was sufficient time before the changes took effect for premises to signal the changes to their customers, says McGlone. Asked why the council allowed bars to serve alcohol from 9am but stpres couldnt sell it, McGlone replied: Bars and restaurants (on-licences) allow the sale, supply and consumption of alcohol on the premise, where patrons can be monitored and supervised. On-licences also had more conditions imposed on them including host responsibility to provide food, having water available, and information on alternative transport, he says. Off-licences have their main responsibilities at the point of sale only. Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. In a powerful display of unity against domestic violence, Taurangas Fraser Cove car park has again become a focal point for advocacy for White Ribbon Day. Collaborating with formidable allies, the event transcends traditional boundaries amplifying the message of breaking the silence surrounding domestic violence. The White Ribbon Day event, held from 10am - 2pm, featured information stands and the opportunity to talk with people from Super Maori Fullas, the New Zealand Defence Force Military Motorcycle Club, Ngati Ranginui Iwi, Plunket, Whaioranga Trust, AvaNiu Pasifika, Te Manu Toroa, Nga Mataapuna Oranga, Family Works Northern, Bluelight, Tautoko Tane Male Support Services Bay of Plenty, Ministry of Justice, Western Bay of Plenty Primary Health Organisation and Tauranga Womens Refuge. Ngati Ranginui Iwi and Western Bay of Plenty Primary Health Organisation were represented at the White Ribbon Day event. Photo: Ayla Yeoman. As attendees engaged in conversations korero, and enjoyed free food kai, the collective effort aimed to foster awareness, resilience, and support within the community, driving home the importance of standing together against the pervasive issue of domestic violence. The event is all about supporting White Ribbon, says NZ Defence Force Military Motorcycle Club member Graham Petch. Te Manu Toroa. Photo: Supplied. White Ribbon Day is commemorated each year on November 25. White Ribbon is about stopping violence against women and thats why we are here in full support. Graham says the Patriots Defence Force Motorcycle Club members with him have all served in the military and are from the Hauraki chapter. Most of them have been overseas, served overseas, and have cleaned someone else back yard up. But this is a chance for us, as ex-military people serving, to clean our own back yard up. Us ex-military people and serving military people are in full support of Tauranga Womens Refuge and the White Ribbon. The Family Works Northern team. Photo: Supplied. Graham says it was about 13 years ago that they started the Patriots support for White Ribbon through the Families Commission, coming to support the Super Maori Fullas. We used to ride our bikes around the North Island. The bikes used to draw out a certain character of people and we would tell them that domestic violence is not okay. We had undesirables coming out from the community to see the bikes and whats going on and the next minute were telling them that in this country of New Zealand we have no snakes or bears, nothing that can harm them but people who are getting violated are mainly getting killed in their own homes. Thats unacceptable. He says weve been there and we know what its all about. Weve heard the stories. One person told us how he slept under his house because he was so frightened to sleep in the house. Thats terrible. I came from somewhere with no violence and Ive heard stories over the years of people joining the military to get away from it. Kids being killed and 10 years later they havent found anyone responsible. He says White Ribbon is a wonderful cause, a campaign led by men to end male violence against women and girls. It started in Canada with women being killed 25 years ago. The White Ribbon movement began in Canada in 1991 following a massacre of female students at a university in Montreal. A small group of men got together and looked for a way for men to oppose violence against women. They decided to encourage men to actively show their opposition by wearing a white ribbon. Since then, the White Ribbon movement has developed internationally and is active in over 60 countries. In this country most violence by men against women takes place in the home with an average of 14 women a year killed by their partners or ex-partners. Each year there are over 3,500 convictions recorded against men for assaults on women and one in five women will experience sexual assault or sexual interference at some point in their lives. White Ribbon Day celebrates the many men willing to show leadership and commitment to promoting safe, healthy relationships within families and encourages men to challenge each other on attitudes and behaviour that are abusive. White Ribbon came to New Zealand in 2004 and the Families Commission became the lead agency in 2006. The White Ribbon Committee provided the advice on which the campaign acted. In 2014 the White Ribbon Trust took over the responsibility for the campaign. One of the men at the event today thanked his employer The Port of Tauranga for letting them off work today. Theyve let me come here because they are against family violence as well, as all employers should be. I appreciate them, with me being able to be here to push the message. I wouldnt have been able to be here if my employer hadnt let me off. ------------------------------- Visit www.areyouok.org.nz for information, resources and services on family violence or call 0800 456 450. The organisations below can also be recommended directly to people experiencing family violence. If someone is in danger, Police or CYF should be contacted immediately. Citizens Advice Bureau 0800 FOR CAB (0800 367 222) Citizens Advice Bureaux provide information, advice, advocacy and support to individuals. Services are free, impartial and confidential. Resources are comprehensive and regularly updated. Shine 0508 SHINEE (0508 744633) Preventing Violence provides an extensive range of services, including a national helpline; 24 hour crisis and advocacy for adult and child victims of family violence; a stopping violence programme for abusive people; a Child Crisis Team intervention service for children who have witnessed family violence; coordination of SAFTINET, an interagency network. Jigsaw 0800 228 737 Jigsaw is an umbrella group for child abuse prevention services and child protection services in New Zealand. PlunketLine 0800 933 922 Parents seeking advice on any aspect of the health and development of their child aged under five can phone PlunketLine to speak to a Plunket nurse. National Network of Stopping Violence Services 0800 478 778 A network of community organisations working to end mens violence to women and children across Aotearoa/New Zealand Womens Refuge 0800 733 843 See your local telephone directory or www.womensrefuge.org.nz for the refuge nearest to you. Womens Refuge is an independent community organisation run by women for women and children. It provides support and information and services are confidential and free. Sexual violence If you would like Kaupapa Maori support find help here: NORTHLAND, AUCKLAND, WAIKATO, KOROWAI TUMANAKO (Northland, Auckland, Waikato) Website: www.korowaitumanako.org Telephone: 027 422 6282 Email: korowai@korowaitumanako.org BAY OF PLENTY KITE RAPU I TE ORA Telephone: 07 315 8429 If you, or someone you know, has experienced sexual violence find help here: TOAH-NNEST website for help near you: http://www.toah-nnest.org.nz/index.php/get-help/find-help National Collective of Rape Crisis 24 hour helpline: 0800 88 33 00 The woman on trial for murdering her elderly father by setting his house alight has been found guilty. The jury in the trial of Lynne Maree Martin at the High Court in Gisborne reached their verdict after about two-and-a-half hours of deliberations. It was delivered at 3.20pm on Wednesday. Martin, who had displayed little emotion throughout the trial, burst into loud sobs at hearing the verdict. Justice Helen Cull remanded Martin in custody until sentencing, which will take place at a date yet to be set. Martin was on trial for the murder of her father Ronald Russell Allison, 88, by setting fire to his house near Te Karaka, about 30km from Gisborne, in the early hours of January 25, 2013. The jury heard evidence over 12 days in Gisbornes courtroom number 1, before what was often a full public gallery. The defence didn't call evidence and the jury didnt hear from Martin, though they did hear her voice in hours of conversations recorded on hidden devices. But they heard from about 50 witnesses, including Martins brother John and her husband Graeme. Ronald 'Russell' Allison and his wife Marie. The couple adopted Lynne when she was a baby. Their son John was also adopted. Photo: Marty Sharpe/Stuff. They also heard about a conviction she had for arson in Australia in 1999 a conviction that was allowed to be mentioned because the Crown, in a pre-trial application, successfully argued that it showed she had a propensity to behave a certain way under certain circumstances. The jurors also heard that in 2010 Martin was ordered by a court to pay someone $11,298.90. They werent told that it was ordered after a judge convicted her of low-down, deceitful, deliberate and premeditated offending that involved her stealing from an 82-year-old Alzheimer sufferer in a rest home. Known at the time by her first married name, Lynne Tweeddale, Martin was employed as a diversional therapist at a residential home in 2009 when she cared for the woman, who was in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's. According to a court news report, Martin took the womans eftpos card, obtained her PIN number and withdrew $12,282 from various ATMs. She also attempted to change the address on the womans bank statements, so her family wouldnt notice what she was doing. But the victims family became aware of the withdrawals and contacted police. Martin, then aged 49, admitted 22 charges of using a document for pecuniary advantage, and was sentenced to 300 hours' community work and ordered to pay $11,298.90 reparation. She had already paid $1000 in reparation at a restorative justice meeting between her and the victim's representative. Martin said she stole the money because she had a gambling addiction. Judge Louis Bidois told Martin her offending was "low-down, deceitful, deliberate and premeditated" and he considered sending her to jail to teach her a lesson. He told her a jail sentence was inevitable if she offended in the same way again. Justice Helen Cull heard the trial in the High Court at Gisborne. Photo: David Unwin/Stuff. Earlier in 2009, Martin, then going by the name Lynne Allison, had been in the same court for her third drink-driving conviction. She was stopped on Maranui Street, Mt Maunganui on April 7, and recorded a excess breath alcohol of 936 micrograms, more than twice the legal limit of 400mcg. She told the officer who pulled her up that she didnt care that shed been stopped because she had terminal cancer and was going out with a big bang". In court, she said she had no memory of what shed said and said she was having trouble coming to terms with her cancer and had stopped drinking. She was sentenced to nine months' supervision, fined $500 and lost her licence for 15 months. John told the court Lynne left the family home when she was 16 and moved to Australia in the late-seventies, before returning to New Zealand in 2006. Stuff understands she has numerous convictions from her years in Australia. Martin, then using the surname Tweeddale, was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court, pictured, in 2010 for stealing from a woman suffering from Alzheimers. Photo: Stuff. The arson (which in Australia is known as maliciously damaging property by fire) that the jury heard about took place on May 1, 1999. Martin was living in the city of Orange, about 250km inland from Sydney. She had been in an on-off relationship with a man who lived in Dubbo, a city 150km to the north. Martin was low on money and on the evening of April 30 she travelled by motorbike to see the man, from whom she was expecting to get a modest sum of cash and a car battery. When she arrived at the mans house, he wasnt there, so she went to a nearby pub, the Commercial Hotel to see if he was there. He wasnt there, so she waited there for about an hour, leaving at about 1am. As she left the pub she got into an argument with another patron and security staff. She told them the man she was looking for would get his and I will get him dont you worry. She then rode to a petrol station, bought a can of petrol and returned to the mans address, where she set fire to a vehicle in the mans carport. The fire service came and put the fire out. After the fire service left, Martin returned to the property and set fire to a second vehicle. The fire service returned and put the fire out and Martin was arrested a short distance away at 4am. Before setting fire to the vehicles shed scratched abusive messages to the man on them. When spoken to by police later, she denied the offending, saying Ive got a temper on me, believe me I have got a temper. Ive got a mouth and I can use it and legally I can get a person back, which I have done over the years. I dont need to go and vandalise somebodys car and burn it out. Disclosing a defendants previous conviction in a trial can be prejudicial and this can only be done in certain circumstances and only with the judges permission. One of the circumstances is when the conviction goes to show a defendant has a propensity to behave in a certain manner. The Crown applied to have the Australia conviction produced in the trial, arguing that it showed that Martin had resorted to committing arson as an extreme response to relationship problems involving financial difficulties, anger and alcohol. Martins defence opposed the Crowns application, but following a hearing in the High Court in August, Justice Peter Churchman granted the application. Churchman said there was an element of commonality in that after an interaction with someone with whom she had a relationship which did not result in the outcome she wanted, she consumed alcohol and after the consumption of alcohol she obtained materials to assist in starting a fire and then proceeded to do so. The cellphone towers from which Lynne Martin's cellphone polled on January 24-25, 2013. Photo: Supplied/Stuff. He acknowledged there were dissimilarities between the cases but said the similarities between the Australian offending and the facts of the present offending show a propensity to act in a certain way. -Marty Sharpe/Stuff. ASTANA, Kazakhstan, November 23. Kazakhstan and Hungary are ready to cooperate to develop specific joint projects, Trend reports. This was said during the meeting between the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan and Hungary, Murat Nurtlehua and Peter Szijjarto. The parties discussed the prospects for further strengthening Kazakh-Hungarian cooperation in the political, trade, economic, cultural and humanitarian areas. Countries, according to Murat Nurtleu, have fostered political interaction at all levels. "Hungary is our close ally and the only country in the Central and Eastern European region that has established a strategic partnership with us," the prime minister added. In turn, Peter Szijjarto emphasized the high level of existing cooperation among countries across the entire spectrum of contact. As he stated, Hungary is eager to expand current areas of our collaboration and will make every effort to do so. During the negotiations, special emphasis was placed on the expansion of commercial, economic, and investment connections, as well as concerns of energy cooperation. Over the past 20 years, investments worth more than $300 million have been attracted from Hungary to Kazakhstan. Negotiations are currently underway to implement investment projects worth $490 million in areas such as mechanical engineering, agriculture and logistics. Following the meeting, the parties signed a Work Plan between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Kazakhstan and Hungary for 2024-2026. Street and Police Departments Receive Approval for New Vehicles SIDNEY--The Sidney City Council met on Tuesday, November 14, and discussed reports, proposed Title 117 changes and approved the purchase of vehicles for the Sidney Police Department and the Sidney Street Department. Mayor Brad Sherman, and council members Brock Buckner, Brandon Bondegard, and Burke Radcliff were in attendance, along with City Manager David Scott, City Attorney J. Leef and City Clerk Lori Borchert. Councilman Paul Strommen was not in attendance. The meeting started with City Manager David Scott discussing details of continued loan payments of SRF Loan C317945 and continuing costs of the JESWA project that improved areas of Lodgepole Creek near SRMC. After the JESWA project was completed, the Sidney Watershed Coalition was formed in August of 2022 to manage flooding and drought issues in the area. Funded by an existing 1/2 cent city sales tax, the revenues are shared with the South Platte Natural Resources District in an 80/20 split. Scott noted that routine maintenance costs of the area, like spreading gravel or field maintenance, could be funded up to $6,000 out of the sales tax revenues, but expenditures over that amount would need to be approved by the City Council. The council members approved an amendment to continue to fund minor maintenance fees unanimously. The council then heard from Street Department Supervisor Hank Radtke concerning the purchase of a 2024 Ford pickup truck, paid through the equipment reserve, which was budgeted to $50,000. The truck is able to be purchased for $48,000 and the estimated delivery time is between two and three months, but could be longer due to effects from the recent strike. There were no local bids as there are no local Ford Dealerships, and the seller was selected using State of Nebraska guidelines. The vehicle replaces a 2002 Chevrolet 3/4 ton pickup, that will be sold at auction. The council approved of the purchase 4-to-0. Next, Sidney Police Chief Joe Aiken spoke to the council concerning the purchase of two Ford pickup trucks for police use. The prices are $48,890 per truck, but with the Police package and other upgrades, the cost comes out to $61,554 per truck for a total cost of $123,088 for both. The delivery time is four to six weeks from time of order, but Chief Aiken also noted that two vehicles ordered in 2022 are still in Omaha waiting on hard-to-get electronic parts to be installed. He said the earlier we get on the list of orders, the faster we can receive the vehicles. The council members approved the purchase 4-to-0. David Scott again addressed the council, this time about proposed changes in Title 117, which governs wastewater release into waterways in Nebraska under the Environmental Quality Council. They are seeking to apply a Recreational Designation to the area of Lodgepole Creek in Sidney. However, Scott said that the designation should not apply since the water level in Lodgepole Creek is far too shallow, with most of the creek's water subsurface, to be used for recreational activities as defined by the EQC. He also noted it is an unfunded mandate, meaning Sidney would have to pay for the costs of implementing these changes with their own funds. Also, there has been no proper study performed prior to the EQC trying to implement this change. The proposed change affects 12 wastewater facilities in Nebraska, and the particular issue Scott addressed would affect Sidney and Kimball. Both facilities would have to add chlorination and UV treatments to the water which would cost anywhere between $300,000 to $1,000,000 per year. Scott noted that Sidney's own surveys conflict with the state surveys, which have obvious errors such as having the entry and exit locations of Lodgepole Creek incorrectly noted in their survey. Scott said that a letter of opposition to the proposed change in Title 117 had been drafted, and Mike Palmer, City of Sidney Electric Superintendent and Todd Sukup, City of Sidney Wastewater Superintendent were to address the EQC in opposition to the change. Scott was not asking for any action of the council members other than supporting the opposition to the proposed change. Scott noted one positive in the situation is that Sidney's wastewater permit renewal is not until 2028, so if the proposed change does happen, Sidney would have a few years to figure out a way to allocate funds for the expense. Kimball, however, does not have that much time before their permit renewal. City of Sidney Finance Director Kegan Carwin gave his first budget presentation, noting that overall taxes and fees were about the same as last year, and revenues of the departments were similar to last year's, and in some cases a little better. The council approved the budget report 4-to-0. The Council then went into closed session for about ten minutes, discussing an issue involving possible litigation. After they reconvened for the public, David Scott delivered the City Manager's report, starting with the sale of 812 13th Street. The building has been inspected, and title work is being completed. There were a few repairs that needed to be done, paid for by UST Global, former leaseholder. Scott said the property should be ready for closing by December 1. Scott also noted the Holiday in Hickory event on December 2 will last between five and seven p.m., with the parade happening at 6 p.m. The route this year will be on Jackson Street in the downtown area rather than Illinois Street. There will be a road closure at 5 p.m with the road closed on 10th Avenue between Illinois and Jackson Streets. Pedlar's Corner will have S'Mores and a Santa Photo Booth, SRMC will be offering Hot Chocolate, the Sidney Public Library will be offering ornament kits, and 21st Century John Deere will have Hay Rides from Hickory Square to the museum. The Fox Theater will be hosting a free concert after the festivities at Hickory Square with country-Christian artist Justin Todd Herod. If a business or individual would like to have a float in the parade, please contact Kristine Radtke at 308-254-4441. Other events mentioned included a matinee screening of The Grinch on December 3 at the Fox Theater. The first 150 children in attendance will receive a Snack Pack. The Sidney Public Library will be hosting an open house on December 13. Shop Cheyenne County Days are between November 18 and December 9. The Cheyenne County Holiday Hop is also underway, with participating businesses decorating the windows or inside of their stores or facilities. Shoppers and visitors will be able to vote on their favorite displays on December 2, with the winner announced December 4. For more details, visit the Cheyenne County Chamber of Commerce website. Finally, Mayor Brad Sherman noted that he was contacted by an 8th Grader out of Georgia for a class assignment. The student were to pick a city or area anywhere in the world and learn as much as they could about their selection. The student that had contacted Mayor Sherman said that he just closed his eyes and put his finger on the map, and it was on Sidney, Nebraska. Mayor Sherman said that he has been corresponding with the student and is sending him a package with brochures and information about Sidney. "Perhaps in a few years will have a new Sidney resident from Georgia," Sherman said. The City of Sidney had scheduled a Strategic Planning meeting for noon on November 16, but a quorum of council members could not be present. The meeting will be rescheduled at a future City Council meeting. The next City Council meeting is scheduled for November 28 at 5:30 p.m. It may seem to you like America has lost its way. The pilgrims must have had similar thoughts (but in a much more literal way) when they had to lower the sails on the Mayflower and go adrift at sea for a while. Despite all of their hardships, though, the pilgrims eventually reached Cape Cod and returned thanks to God for bringing them to a whole new world. Hardship and tribulation can easily cause us to adopt a negative attitude towards life. So, during times of hardship I am often reminded of the old church hymn, "Count Your Many Blessings." The first stanza of that hymn says, "When upon life's billows you are tempest tossed, When you are discouraged thinking all is lost, Count your many blessings, Name them one by one." What many people don't know about this hymn is that it was composed by a clergyman named Johnson Oatman Jr. in 1897. Rev. Oatman was a struggling preacher from New Jersey who never secured a full-time position in the ministry and he often questioned God's calling upon his life. However, at the late age of 36 he discovered his talent for hymn writing and he composed more than 500 hymns thereafter. Of course, his most famous hymn was "Count Your Many Blessings." According to Rev. Oatman, the practice of counting our many blessings leads us to be surprised by "what the Lord hath done." Indeed, we often fail to acknowledge many of our true blessings. Sometimes, though, we never even get to see them, and such was the case for Rev. Oatman. Rev. Oatman did not live long enough to see the full impact of his hymn writing ability. Today the legacy of Rev. Oatman lives on through the many hymns that he wrote. These hymns continue to minister and bless thousands of Christians worldwide. Rev. Oatman died in 1922 in Norman, Oklahoma, but "Count Your Many Blessings" continues to be a favorite hymn sung in churches all across America, especially at Thanksgiving time. William Bradford was the leader of the pilgrims, who would later become the Governor of the Plymouth Colony. On November 9, 1620 the crew of the Mayflower sighted land at Cape Cod and finally came to shore. The joy of that moment overwhelmed the pilgrims, causing William Bradford to record it for their posterity. Bradford wrote: "Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof." I share these things with you today in order to encourage you to count your many blessings this year at Thanksgiving time. While we make it a point to return thanks every year at Thanksgiving time, thanksgiving is really something that should be done each and every day. Thankful people tend to have a much better outlook on life. They are happier and more content. Therefore, I would like to wish for you and your family to have a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving this year. Throughout the year of 1864, President Abraham Lincoln believed that he would lose the election in November. He admitted in August, "I am going to be beaten, and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten." The odds were stacked against him. Plenty of voters in the Union had reason to despise, even hate, Lincoln. The war that had begun in April 1861, at Fort Sumter, had turned into a ghastly event, full of fury, fever, horror, and madness. The human wreckage was colossal, on a scale never imagined before. Voters blamed Lincoln because he had failed to end the war quickly, to crush the rebellion, to vanquish Robert E. Lee's Confederate army, and to reunite the Union. No other country had ever held an election in the middle of a civil war, and yet it was on the calendar, set for November 8, "an unprecedented democratic exercise in midst of a civil war." The last time that a political party had nominated an incumbent President to run a second time had occurred in 1840, and no President since Andrew Jackson had won a second term. On August 23, Lincoln said, "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration." On September 1, 1864, Lincoln received some welcome news. The Union General, William Tecumseh Sherman, reported, "Atlanta is ours, and fairly won." This was a huge loss for the South, because Atlanta was a railroad hub, and the South's major manufacturing center. A reporter at the "Richmond Examiner" wrote, that the "disaster at Atlanta came in the very nick of time to save the party of Lincoln from irretrievable ruin. It will obscure the prospect of peace, late so bright. It will also diffuse gloom over the South." Lincoln beat the odds and won the Republican party's nomination. Former Union General, George McClellan, whom Lincoln had fired in 1862 from his position as the Union's lead General, won the Democratic party's nomination. On Tuesday, November 8, Lincoln carried all but three of the states' electoral votes, except for Delaware, Kentucky, and New Jersey. Lincoln won 212 electoral votes to McClellan's 21. Lincoln took 55% of the popular vote. Yet, some 78% of Union soldiers voted for Lincoln. The Civil War historian James McPherson wrote, that the 1864 election "was a powerful endorsement of Lincoln's iron-willed determination to fight on to unconditional victory." A British war correspondent observed "that the North was silently, calmly, but desperately in earnest, in a way the like of which the world never saw before. I am astonished the more I see and hear of the extent and depth of this determination to fight to the last." It was Lincoln's willpower that drove Sherman and Grant and their soldiers forward. On November 16, 1864, Sherman set his army on a march to the sea, to Savannah. In Geoffrey Ward's 1990 book "The Civil War," he wrote, that on November 24, "Union cooks served up 120,000 turkey and chicken dinners to the men of Grant's great army, outside of Petersburg, Virginia. "Dug in only yards away, the Confederates had no feast, but held their fire all day out of respect for the Union holiday." On December 22, 1864, Sherman sent Lincoln a telegram: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition." Ward wrote, that "On January 31, 1865, Congress voted 119 to 56 to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, to abolish slavery, and then sent it to the states for ratification." On March 4, 1865, Lincoln spoke at his second inauguration, saying, "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. "Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" Lincoln would live only 40 days of his second term. The celebrated author Ta-Nehisi Coates is not reliable regarding things he's spent considerable time thinking about here in the U.S., so it's presumably a mistake to put much stock in his newly formed opinions about matters he barely knows anything about. He proved as much in an interview about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the other day on Democracy Now! At the outset, Coates announced his opposition to "complexity" and "complication," and left little doubt about his sincerity in that regard with a preposterous depiction of Israel as a direct descendant of the Jim Crow South. If Coates weren't simply retailing the familiar left-wing critiques of Israel, his belief that there's nothing to learn on the ground in the Middle East that he doesn't already know from reading about the failure of Reconstruction might qualify as a high-handed form of "Orientalism." Coates makes much of a checkpoint that he encountered on a trip to Israel and the West Bank a few months ago in the West Bank city of Hebron. He says his Palestinian guide couldn't proceed down a certain street, but Coates was allowed to pass after an Israeli guard ascertained that his grandparents were Christian. It's hard to say much about this incident without knowing more. It is certainly true, though, that Hebron has more checkpoints than other West Bank cities. Why? Well, Coates doesn't mention that Hebron is one of the four holy cities of Judaism. Or, that there was a pogrom there in 1929 that led to the evacuation of the Jewish population. Or, that a small community of Jews has returned to the city. Without the Israeli security, the community likely wouldn't survive. Is that what Coates wants? Oh, sorry - complications. We've been told that they're unnecessary. Coates is dismissive of Israel's worries about terror attacks. The West Bank is not Gaza, but terrorism, including in Hebron, is still an ongoing concern. Coates gives no sign of realizing that Israelis themselves are forbidden from traveling to so-called Area A territory in the West Bank. If the various designations of territory with different rules seem arbitrary, they were hashed out in the Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel in the 1990s. In a laughable argument, Coates said he was shocked during his trip "when it suddenly dawned on me that I was in a region of the world where some people could vote and some people could not." It is true that Palestinians can't vote, but this isn't the doing of the Israeli government. There hasn't been an election in the Palestinian territories since 2006. The people who currently run the West Bank fear they would lose - for good reason. Hamas won the legislative elections last time around, and then waged a brief factional war to eliminate their Fatah rivals in Gaza. In Israel proper, there are about 2 million Arab citizens who have the right to vote and the other rights of Israel citizens. But I know, complexity only gets in the way. Coates directed the balance of his outrage at the Israeli military operation, without mentioning Hamas, October 7 or that fact that terror group uses civilians as human shields. Finally, he says that the U.S. has "exported" Jim Crow to Israel. Really? Did we eliminate it here, but conclude that it would be the right system for Israel? And bipartisan administrations pursued this policy while hiding it from the American public? As a high priest of woke progressivism, Coates was always going to be a fierce critic of Israel. He is a particularly instructive instance, though, of trying to take the Left's racial categories here at home and apply them to a conflict with its own fraught dynamics established long ago. "It's actually not that hard to understand," Coates maintained of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. "It's actually quite familiar to those of us with a familiarity [with] African-American history." If Coates has accomplished anything, it is demonstrating that this is wholly untrue. The producer of Afire, Anton Kaiser, next to the editor of SUR deutsche Ausgabe and the director of the film festival, Uwe Scheele. Victor Rojas Malaga Wednesday, 22 November 2023 | Updated 24/11/2023 12:41h. Compartir Copiar enlace WhatsApp Facebook X LinkedIn Telegram Both 'guten Abend' and 'buenas tardes' could be heard in equal measures last night in a packed Cine Albeniz in Malaga. German and Spanish accents mingled to open the German film week in the city, which kicked off with the premiere of Afire, a film that won the Grand Jury Prize at the last Berlinale German film awards ceremony. "It feels good to see so many people coming to see the film. We do not always appear in the premieres, so it is very exciting to see so many people come to this cinema," the producer of the feature film, Anton Kaiser, told SUR minutes before the screening. In his opinion, the success of his film lies, among other things, in the influence that young people had on him. "It was important to have this approach because during the pandemic young people were forgotten in the background and, in the film, they are brought to the forefront with their ideas, their projects and their approaches," he explained. The feature film is about a hot, dry summer which causes uncontrollable forest fires. Four young people go on holiday at a holiday home by the Baltic Sea, where they are slowly surrounded by a forest fire without them realising. A red sky looms over. They hesitate, they are afraid, but not of the fires; they are afraid of love. Before watching the film, in the original German version with Spanish subtitles, editor of SUR deutsche Ausgabe and director of the film festival, Uwe Scheele, said that this week will see the premiere of "the latest in German film production". The coordinator of the cultural programme at the Goethe-Institut Madrid language school, Ana Perez said that "what we have in common is that we enjoy films on the big screen". The German consul in Malaga, Franko Martin, also took the floor and made his speech in both languages. Likewise, the mayor of Torrox, Oscar Medina, said a few words in German as well, a gesture very much appreciated by the crowd in attendance. "Thank you for recognising my efforts," said the mayor of Torrox, the municipality with the largest German population on the Iberian Peninsula. Schedule for German film week The schedule for this week's film festival was organised by SUR deutsche Ausgabe, together with the German Consulate in Malaga and the Goethe-Institut in Madrid, and ranges from experimental films to comedies, featuring along the way some debuting director's, romantic films and musical dramas, dark comedies, science fiction, tragicomedies and thrillers. Starting today on Wednesday 22 November, there will be two screenings of The Ordinaries at Cine Albeniz, a tragicomedy by Sophie Linnenbaum that has received much acclaim from critics. The cinema will also have screenings of the musical drama Orphea in Love, about a call centre employee who becomes obsessed with a criminal. On Thursday 23 it will pay homage to Rainer Werner Fassbinder with a screening of Enfant Terrible, where Oskar Roehler portrays the brilliant film director, love-seeker and abuser of actors on sets. Thursday will also show Annika Pinske's Talking About the Weather, a film that addresses the present-day problems stemming from the unification of Germany. The film will be shown for free on Thursday in Mijas and Wednesday in Torrox as both town halls are in collaboration with the festival. Friday's theme will be identities, with the premiere of Christoph Hochhauser's Till the End of the Night, which mixes film noir with a story of a trans woman. Skin Deep directed by Alex Schadd will also be on show, a fantastic drama where a couple arrives at an island where people exchange their bodies. On the final day of the festival, Saturday, the curtain will be drawn with Undine and Frauke Finsterwalder's long-awaited Sissi & I, which tells the story of the mythical Empress Elisabeth of Austria, a widely portrayed figure in cinema. Surface pumps are being installed in La Vinuela reservoir to extract the last of the water. Eugenio Cabezas Axarquia Wednesday, 22 November 2023, 19:39 Compartir Copiar enlace WhatsApp Facebook X LinkedIn Telegram The much-needed rain has failed to arrive in the Axarquia area of Malaga province and this once flourishing agricultural area, which is home to subtropical fruit plantations as well as traditional Mediterranean crops such as grapes and olives is experiencing regular water cuts and millions of euros in losses due to poor harvests. Growers have been unable to access water from La Vinuela, the reservoir that supplies the area for over a year. At least eight towns and villages in the Axarquia have been living with nighttime cuts to the water supply since July (Velez-Malaga, Iznate, Benamargosa, El Borge, Almachar, Moclinejo, Periana, Sedella and Colmenar). Now the Andalusian regional government has taken unprecedented steps in an effort to extract as much of the remaining 7.6 per cent of water from La Vinuela reservoir. The Junta de Andalucia, which is exclusively responsible for water issues in the Andalusian Mediterranean Basin, continues to try to implement emergency measures, having already issued three drought decrees in three years. Silt and organic matter Work is being undertaken to install surface pumps in the reservoir, which are being connected to the supply intake, in an attempt to ensure that the water sent to the El Trapiche (Velez-Malaga) drinking water treatment plant is of the highest possible quality. As the reservoirs water levels fall, what remains is largely silt and organic matter, rather than water fit for consumption. The flow of water from the dam has been reduced to just 50 litres per second and for the time being, it is still possible to make it drinkable. However, prior to treatment, occasional excesses of pesticide content as well as of glyphosate and its metabolite AMPA have been detected. La Vinuela reservoir in the Axarquia on Tuesday 21 November E. Cabezas The water level of the dam is just two metres above the reservoir intake limit for water supply: it is currently at 183 metres above sea level while the intake limit is at 181 metres, as SUR has learnt. With the surface pumps, it will be possible in a few days to send water from the surface to the intake and, from there, to the pipe that connects to the El Trapiche water treatment plant. Cordoba A similar installation has been in use since last spring in two reservoirs in the northern part of Cordoba province: La Colada and Sierra Boyera, to supply some 80,000 inhabitants, although the water extracted is not drinkable. The Junta de Andalucia is also looking into an operation to remove the thousands of fish and turtles in the reservoir. However, for the moment, no increased mortality of these species has been observed. The specimens, which include carp, black-bass, eels and turtles, are taking refuge in an area of the reservoir which still has a depth of around 30 metres, SUR has learned. The budget for the work, which began last July, is more than 700,000 euros and is included in the third drought decree approved by the Andalusian regional government at the end of April this year. Cristina Vallejo Malaga Wednesday, 22 November 2023, 17:37 Compartir Copiar enlace WhatsApp Facebook X LinkedIn Telegram In Andalucia, the companies registered in the Social Security system dedicated to the hospitality and catering industry employ some 245,129 people. One out of every three waiters in the region works in Malaga province and the Costa del Sol where 79,500 work in the sector. These are the figures for October, published by the Institute of Statistics and Cartography of Andalucia (IECA). The province of Seville is in second position, having 30,000 fewer workers in the hospitality sector than Malaga. In third position is Cadiz, where the number of employees in the sector is around 38,000. All together there are 500,000 workers on private sector contracts in Malaga compared to the 574,602 workers in Seville, with 35% more waiters in Malaga than in Seville. In short, the hotel and catering sector is very over-represented in Malaga province, which is not surprising considering the strength of the tourism sector. Malaga also employs more domestic workers: of these 6,678 workers in the region, more than half, 3,642 live in Malaga. In second position is Cadiz, with 905 employed as cleaners and other domestic staff. And Seville is in third place with 556 workers. Another sector in which Malaga province also stands out is construction with more than 45,000 of the 170,826 total in Andalucia. This means that one out of every four workers in the Andalusian construction sector is employed in Malaga, ahead of Seville where 40,148 are builders. Along with construction, Malaga also does well in real estate activities: of these 14,600 workers in the region, more than 6,000 (i.e. just over 40%) are employed by Malaga companies. Seville has half as many workers as Malaga working in the property sector. Malaga, therefore, stands out in terms of employment volume in activities such as hospitality, construction, real estate and domestic service. But it lags a little behind in other activities. For example, according to IECA figures, agricultural companies in Malaga registered with the Social Security department only have 10,045 employees, less than a third of those in Seville (30,715) and barely 5% of all employment in the sector as a whole in the region, despite representing 21% of the workers in Andalucia (almost half a million social security contributors compared to the 2.3 million total). Agriculture is very under-represented in the productive structure of Malaga. The province also has a poor record for employment in industry, with just over 30,100 workers, compared to more than 65,000 in Seville and 35,864 in Cadiz. Employment in the province's factories barely accounts for 12.5% of the region's total. And despite the boom in new technologies in Malaga, it is also behind Seville in employment generated by companies in the information and communications sector: the 17,394 IT workers in Malaga pale next to the 27,449 IT workers of Seville. Nevertheless, Malaga accounts for more than 27% of IT employment in the region. C. V. Malaga Wednesday, 22 November 2023, 19:51 Compartir Copiar enlace WhatsApp Facebook X LinkedIn Telegram Calle Marques de Larios in Malaga city is the seventh most expensive shopping street in Spain, with average annual rents of 2,160 euros per square metre. Ahead is Barcelona's Passeig de Gracia, which is the most expensive in the country, according to data from the global report Main Streets Across the World by real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield. Rent in the Catalan capital is paid at the annual rate of 3,000 euros per square metre, a figure that is 9% higher than last year. Passeig de Gracia boasts luxury firms such as Dior, Versace, Loewe, and Prada, among others. The second most expensive commercial street in Spain is in Madrid and it is Calle Serrano, with rents of 2,940 euros per square metre per year, which is 9% higher than last year and which places it in the thirty-third position of the most expensive European streets for commercial rents. According to the Cushman & Wakefield study, the momentum of large luxury firms has contributed to the rental rises. The third most expensive street in Spain is also in Barcelona: it is Portal de l'Angel, and costs 2,880 euros per square metre to rent on an annual basis. Robert Travers, director of retail in the European region of Cushman & Wakefield, said that the sector is in a moment of growth. Unemployment in the main super prime locations is still low, which generates competitive tension when available spaces appear, and this is reflected in the increase in incomes, he said. Travers added that even when consumers have chosen to cut costs in a time of economic uncertainty, retailers have been securing or improving flagship stores in key markets. Travers said that physical stores will continue to compete with the online market. He said high-street stores are a fundamental part of the value proposition of any brand; they are the physical materialisation of the brand, something that is very difficult to achieve through the digital channel. We find more and more products available exclusively in physical stores, thus promoting authentic and real experiences. Globally, New York's Fifth Avenue is the most expensive shopping street in the world, with rents of 20,384 euros per square metre per year. The second is the Italian Via Montenapoleone, in Milan, after a 20% increase in its rental income, to 18,000 euros per square metre on an annual basis, unseating the luxurious Tsim Sha of Hong Kong, which is in third position. The top five is completed by London's New Bond Street (14,905 euros per square metre per year) and the Champs Elysees in Paris (11,414 euros per square metre per year). Vanessa Melgar Ronda Wednesday, 22 November 2023 | Updated 23/11/2023 22:47h. Compartir Copiar enlace WhatsApp Facebook X LinkedIn Telegram A Korean tourist has praised the honesty of two locals from Ronda after they traced and returned his waist bag containing 5,000 euros, his passport, and that of his daughter, which he had mislaid on a bus. Malena Leon, who runs the cafeteria at Ronda bus station and Francisco Gavilan, bus driver, swung into action to help the distraught visitor whose trip could have turned into a nightmare, not only because he was left without cash, but also because of the hassle of having to renew his identity documents. The tourist, Leon explained, had travelled from the Malaga city to Ronda, on a tour of Andalucia. After getting off the bus, he realised that he did not have his bumbag. He thought had fallen under the seat, but he did not know for sure. "He came to the cafeteria and asked me for help," Leon said. "With an [online] translator I could understand him as I don't speak any Korean. He came with his daughter and he was really worried about the passports," said the Ronda local who, given her years managing the cafe business, knows the routes and the drivers of the different transport lines operating in the municipality. "I located the driver, but he didn't pick up the phone at first, because he was driving, and later he called me," she said. Gavilan was driving between Ronda and Olvera, a town in Cadiz province where he lives. When he arrived he checked the bus for lost belongings but didnt spot anything. Minutes later, when he received the call from Leon, he returned to the vehicle and found the bumbag. "I hadn't seen it initially, it was under the seat.... This man was very lucky.... It was open, you could see the money, but nobody found it," Gavilan said. He took it home and in the morning delivered it, together with Leon, to its owner."He was very grateful," they said. The relieved tourist gave them one hundred euros each as a token of gratitude. "The reward for us was to help others, not the money," they said. "What he was really relieved about were the passports, he didn't care too much about the money, which was in dollars, banknotes from his country and in euros," they said, estimating that there were more than 5,000 euros and "also a lot of money in dollars". "You have to be very careful when travelling, especially with wallets, purses and waist bags," Gavilan said. Only the day before he returned a wallet to its owner, a young man from Olvera, who left it on the bus; and in April, Leon returned 6,000 euros, in another wallet, that belonged to an Argentinian who had lost it. "We are not going to keep what is not ours, it is what our parents taught us," the pair said. ASTANA, Kazakhstan, November 22. The Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) have discussed environmental and social standards for work in the region at the round table "Promoting sustainable development of Central Asia," Trend reports. According to Konrad Albrecht, Managing Director of the EDB Sustainable Development Directorate, the EDB strives not only to implement the best sustainable development practices in its activities, but also to promote the highest benchmarks and standards among its borrowers and partners. According to him, the bank is currently in the final stage of adopting a new Environmental and Social Responsibility Policy. In turn, ADB representatives noted that today the practice of applying standards in the field of sustainable development in Central Asia is more focused on environmental aspects. Currently, ADB is updating its policy of work in the region, paying attention to the social component, expanding the consideration of the interests of the population, work with local communities and local governments. Meanwhile, as noted by the AIIB's chief environmental and social development specialist, in the latest version of the Environmental and Social Aspects Policy, projects related to coal mining or indirectly related to coal are not supported by the bank. Ignacio Lillo Malaga Wednesday, 22 November 2023, 12:44 | Updated 13:20h. Compartir Copiar enlace WhatsApp Facebook X LinkedIn Telegram A national rail strike in Spain this Friday (24 November) will affect three AVE trains in each direction between the Costa del Sol and Madrid. The industrial action at Renfe and Adif has been called by the UGT, CC OO, CGT, Semaf, SF and SCF unions against the transfer of Rodalies local service to the Catalan regional government, a measure that is part of the investiture pact between PSOE and ERC. The Ministry of Transport has established minimum services, which, in the case of high-speed trains, will mean that six AVE trains will not run between Madrid and Malaga on Friday 24 November. However, sources consulted indicate that there is a possibility that the call for strikes will be withdrawn at the last moment. According to Renfe's website, the cancelled services will be the scheduled departures from Madrid at 8.25am, 10.25am and 4.35pm. Passengers on these trains will be routed to the next connection, although they can also change or cancel their tickets at no cost. From Malaga to Madrid the cancelled Friday services are the 8.05am, 11.58am and 17.57pm trains. Those affected will be routed to the next scheduled departure. In total, the unions have announced five days of strike action: 24 and 30 November; 1, 4, and 5 December. The Ministry of Transport has put mandatory minimum services in place to ensure the provision of passenger and freight rail transport. In the case of the Cercanias commuter line between Malaga city and Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol, 75% of trains will run during rush hour on Friday (from 6am to 9am; from 2pm to 4pm and from 6.30pm to 8.30pm), with a 50% service during the rest of Friday. In the case of Avant and Media Distancia (middle distance services) the schedule will run at 65%; and for AVE-Larga Distancia (long distance), 72%. For AVE/Larga Distancia and Media Distancia passengers whose train is affected by the minimum services, Renfe has implemented the following after-sales measures: passengers affected by cancelled trains will be offered, whenever possible, to travel on another train in the closest timetable to the one purchased. Passengers can cancel or change their ticket for another date without any cost. Cancellations or changes can be made through all Renfe sales channels. The minimum service timetable can be consulted on Renfe's website (www.renfe.com) and by calling 912 320 320. Alfonso Torices Madrid Wednesday, 22 November 2023, 18:47 Compartir Copiar enlace WhatsApp Facebook X LinkedIn Telegram Spain's richest 1% citizens, less than half a million people, pollute as much as twelve million people a quarter of the countrys population with their carbon dioxide emissions. Each Spanish billionaire, with his unbridled lifestyle, contributes 24 times more to the acceleration of climate change than a poor compatriot. That is the calculation of Oxfam Intermon in a report which states that the worlds richest 1% produced as much carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of global warming, as the five billion people who make up the poorest two thirds of humanity. In other words, the consumption of the worlds 77 million richest billionaires was responsible for 16% of total greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 (the last year with comparable data), which was greater than the pollutants released from all vehicles in circulation. And, the wealthiest 10% of the planet generated half of all carbon dioxide emissions. The report, Climate Equality: One Planet for the 99%, is published a few days before the start of the United Nations climate summit in Dubai where it is expected that most countries will not commit to the emissions cuts needed to keep the temperature from rising more than 1.5C, above which climate disaster is a certainty. The paper estimates that it would take about 1,500 years for anyone in the bottom 99% of humanity to generate the emissions that the top billionaires produce in a year. In fact, the pollution generated by the richest 1% in twelve months cancels out the carbon dioxide reductions achieved by almost one million wind turbines. In the last 30 years, the richest 1% have released twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorest half of humanity. Experts believe that the half million people in Spain with the highest incomes would have to reduce their emissions by 95% between now and 2030 to comply with their part of the Paris Agreement to avoid a rise of more than 1.5C. Today that 1% of the rich spew 22 times more carbon dioxide into Spain's air than is compatible with compliance with the agreement. Equivalent to the population of Dublin Oxfam Intermon calculates that the excessive emissions of the 1% of the wealthy will be responsible for the death of 1.3 million people due to the disasters that climate change will unleash in this decade, a figure that is equivalent to the population of Dublin, the Irish capital. "The damages of climate change affect most those who are least responsible: people in situations of poverty and exclusion and future generations," said Lourdes Benavides, the head of climate justice of the international NGO. "The biggest polluters on the planet, the fossil fuel corporations, and the world's super-rich, are primarily responsible for the climate crisis. They are making record profits while those least responsible for the climate emergency are hit by its devastating consequences. Those who pollute the most must bear the cost," Benavides said. The NGO calls on governments to address the twin crises of inequality and climate change by tackling the excess emissions of the richest people fiscally and investing the proceeds in improving public services and meeting climate targets. It estimates that taxing the incomes of the richest 1% at a rate of 60% would reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a volume equivalent to that released by the UK each year and raise nearly six billion euros, which could be used to finance the transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. ASTANA, Kazakhstan, November 22. Kazakhstan is ready to create the necessary conditions for the investment activities of the Vietnamese SOVICO Group in the country, Trend reports. This was stated during a meeting between the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the Chairman of the Board of SOVICO Group, Nguyen Thanh Hung. Tokayev added that the agreements made during his visit to Vietnam provided additional impetus to the expansion of bilateral cooperation and the opening of new areas of mutually beneficial cooperation. "We welcome your business activity in Kazakhstan. I am confident that we will be able to identify areas of mutual cooperation," Tokayev said. According to him, these measures will serve as additional impetus to fortify Kazakhstan-Vietnam commercial ties. The sides also discussed the most promising areas of collaboration, such as transportation and logistics, finance, and mining. Previously, SOVICO Group expressed interest in acquiring Kazakh airline Qazaq Air. Current Print Subscribers will be prompted to either login to their current site user account or to create a new one. A confirmation email will be sent when a new user account is created, which must be confirmed within three days in order to provide uninterrupted online access through your Print Subscription. Once the email address is confirmed please provide your Account Number to activate your Print Subscription Service. The state Supreme Courts Appellate Division has denied an appeal filed by a Fayetteville resident who is seeking to block the construction of a Hannaford grocery store off East Genesee Street in the village. Marguerite Ross, who lives near the 30-acre site of the planned store, has filed two lawsuits against the village and the developer, Northwood Real Estate Venture LLC of Fairport. The recent ruling pertains to the lawsuit Ross filed against the Fayetteville zoning board and its decision that redevelopment of the existing building on the site is allowed. Judge Donald Greenwood ruled against Ross appeal, saying, in part, the grocery store will improve the overall property and includes significant brownfield remediation. The 56,000-square-foot Hannaford grocery store was approved by the village of Fayetteville in the fall of 2022. It is slated to be built on the site of the former OBrien & Gere factory at 547 E. Genesee St. Fayetteville Village Mayor Mark Olson said hes pleased with the judges decision. It reaffirms the zoning board and code enforcement officers interpretation. I look forward to seeing progress and seeing the project move forward on the site, he said. Matt Napierla, the engineer for the project, said the decision moves the project a step ahead. A second lawsuit filed by Ross also was dismissed in court, but Ross could still appeal that ruling. That lawsuit alleged the village didnt adequately consider the environmental impact of the project, or the effect on neighbors. Judge Danielle Fogels ruling says it was clear the board did take a hard look at the environmental impacts and made its decision based on substantial evidence. Ross could not be reached for comment. Elizabeth Doran covers education, suburban government and development, breaking news and more. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact her anytime 315-470-3012 or email edoran@syracuse.com New Karate Kid movie to star Ralph Macchio, Jackie Chan A new Karate Kid movie is in the works with original star Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan, who starred in the 2010 reboot with Jaden Smith. ET reports the film will continue the franchise beyond the upcoming sixth and final season of Cobra Kai, focusing on a teen from China who moves to the U.S. East Coast and finds strength and direction via martial arts and a tough but wise mentor. A global casting call is seeking a Chinese actor to play the new karate kid; audition tapes should be sent to KarateKidCasting.com. The new Karate Kid movie is currently scheduled to be released in theaters Dec. 13, 2024. Scream star fired Melissa Barrera has been fired from Scream 7, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Berrera, who starred in 2022s Scream and 2023s Scream VI as Sam Carpenter (the older sister of Jenna Ortegas Tera), has been dropped from the horror franchises next sequel after social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war, including writing Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp and THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING. Production company Spyglass said it has has zero tolerance for antisemitism or the incitement of hate in any form, including false references to genocide, ethnic cleansing, Holocaust distortion or anything that flagrantly crosses the line into hate speech. 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The parents of 17-year-old Harold Moore of Syracuse werent worried on the evening of Nov. 10, 1923, as the plane he was in ascended from a field at the New York State Fairgrounds. Moore shouted back to his folks that he would return to them in a few minutes. He was embarking on an air joyride over Onondaga Lake. And he was in safe hands, or so he thought. His pilot, Herbert V. Shebat, was one of Syracuses most experienced aviators. He told the Moores he had flown 200 flights just that previous summer alone without a single crash. That was a lie, but it sounded good. In truth, Shebat had crashed a plane at almost the same spot just two months prior. He would crash again that night with Moore, and then three more times after that. He walked away from each crash with varying levels of injuries. He would become the subject of Onondaga Countys first aviation related lawsuit. He also became a pioneer in local flight history, and even founded the first aviation company in Syracuse. The crash that night with young Harold Moore would require a daring and spectacular rescue to save both mens lives. It was just another day in the life of Syracuses luckiest unluck pilot. *** Firefighters from Syracuse used ladders laid on top of the soda ash waste to rescue pilot Herbert Shebat and his passenger Harold Moore on Nov. 10, 1923. The thick white ooze might have saved the pair when their plane crashed but was slowly pulling them down in the toxic muck. The drawing is from the next day's Syracuse Herald.Courtesy of World Archives The plane that Shebat and Moore took off in at 5 p.m. that Saturday was in trouble from the start. Instead of soaring quickly, the plane labored after takeoff. After barely clearing the trees lining the Fairgrounds, it lurched to about 200 feet before its engines stopped. It dropped straight down, tail first. But instead of dropping onto the hard ground or the freezing water of the lake, the plane fell into the largest lagoon of soda ash waste from Solvay Processing. The Herald described the lagoon like this: The lagoons are formed by building up of four walls of solid matter in terraces and filling the space between them with liquid waste, pumped through a huge outflow pipe. As the interior fills, the outer walls are gradually built up higher and higher. The plane fell on top of feet of thick, sticky white muck covered with water from recent rain and melted snow. The ooze lessened the impact and possibly saved the pilot and passengers lives. Its likely the first and only time that the pollution around Onondaga Lake did something beneficial. But they were not out of the woods yet. The pair had been injured and they were trapped as the wreckage slowly sank in the muck. Newspaper reporters compared the mess to quicksand. Employees at the Halcomb Steel Company and State Fair Hotel saw the accident and rushed to help but could not get to the stranded men without sinking themselves. Finally, someone called the fire department. It was becoming dark, and the firefighters had to use acetylene torches and flashlights to see where they were going. Getting to the men in the plane proved a problem. The rescuers kept slipping up to their armpits in the ooze. With time running out, they came up with a plan. After laying extension ladders across the mire, they placed wood planks on them. Then, firefighters Gregory Dixon and R. E. Clapper scooted out to the wreckage and lifted them onto the ladder raft and guided it with ropes back to the lagoon wall. Moore and Shevat were taken to Crouse-Irving Hospital. Bogged down in the sticky thick soda ash waste from Solvay Process, the plane flown by Herbert Shebat was photographed after crashing on Nov. 10, 1923.Courtesy of World Archives Firefighter Dixon would complain of burning in his eyes days after the rescue. Harold Moore suffered a dislocated hip and a broken nose. Moore would charge Shevat with negligence and sued the pilot for $15,000 in damages. It was the first aviation related lawsuit in Onondaga County history. The pilot suffered a cut on his head and was back at the Fairgrounds flying field the next day, the Journal reported, ready to fly one of his other planes. This became a pattern in Shebats crashes. He walked away relatively unharmed. His passengers were not so lucky. On May 12, 1925, one of Shebats planes crashed into a stone quarry in Nedrow while carrying four passengers. They suffered injuries like skull fractures, concussions, loss of teeth and broken wrists. The pilot had a laceration of the jaw. Two months later, Shebat was giving two passengers a tour of the Thousand Islands when his aluminum seaplane fell 20 feet into the water near Alexandria Bay. Charles Viley suffered from internal injuries and shock after being rescued. His wife had a compound fracture of the right ankle. Shebat had a cut on the head. Two men were injured, one seriously, after Shebats Curtiss plane crashed after a 300-foot drop to the ground in a field near Alexandria Bay on Aug. 10, 1926. Shebat walked away with a few scratches. This accident, at least Shebats fifth, drew some criticism from his fellow aviators. Accidents such as this prove conclusively every air pilot should be subject to a rigid test before he is allowed to fly passengers, said Ivan Gates, general manager of the Gates Flying Circus in Syracuse. The pilot should be licensed by the Federal government. While it might be easy to laugh at the misadventures of Herbert Shebat, he was also a genuine Syracuse aviation pioneer. He flew planes for the Navy during World War I and, with the help of two others, started an aviation company in Syracuse which made daily flights. When the Journal became the first Syracuse newspaper to photograph the city from the sky, Shebat flew the plane. He flew reporters alongside the giant Navy dirigible Shenandoah in 1924 and introduced several new types of aircraft to the city. Shebat left Syracuse shortly after the pair of Alexandria Bay crashes and became a test pilot at Curtiss Wright. He made national news in 1931 when he flew from New Orleans to Buffalo in bad weather to be at the bedside of his son Robert who had appendicitis. He would later be appointed to the Civil Aeronautics Board as an air safety investigator, looking into the causes of plane crashes. He died in 1971 in Virginia. Read more How Syracuse rallied to save a downtown statue honoring a group of WWI heroes Inside Syracuses century-old effort to create the safest streets in America How did Skaneateles biggest, finest cruise ship end up a wreck at the bottom of the lake? This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle: Email | 315-416-3882. When is Thanksgiving? What is it? Thanksgiving in the United States is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Thanksgiving 2023 is being celebrated on Thursday, Nov. 23. The holiday originated as a harvest festival. The event that Americans typically call the First Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in October 1621. Thanksgiving became a national holiday in the U.S. when President Abraham Lincoln in October 1862 proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving during the Civil War. The Proclamation was written by his Secretary of State William Seward, of Auburn, N.Y. See whats open and closed on Thanksgiving: Are banks open on Thanksgiving? No, banks are closed on Thursday, but open on Friday. Is stock market open on Thanksgiving? No, financial markets are closed on Thursday. They re-open on Friday. Are government offices open on Thanksgiving? City, county, state and federal offices are closed Thursday. Some offices, such as the city of Syracuse, are also closed on Friday. Are post offices closed on Thanksgiving? Is there mail delivery? The U.S. Post offices are closed on Thursday, and there will be no mail delivery. USPS offices will be open on Friday, and mail will be delivered. UPS and FedEx are also closed Thursday, with no delivery for the Thanksgiving holiday, according to USA Today. Is parking free on Thanksgiving? Parking at all downtown Syracuse meters will be free on Thursday and Friday. Are restaurants and stores open? Will shopping malls be on regular hours? Many restaurants and stores are closed Thursday, including Target and Walmart. Most will re-open for regular hours on Friday, with some offering special hours for Black Friday shopping. Destiny USA will be closed on Thanksgiving. The Syracuse mall will reopen Friday at 7 a.m. for Black Friday shopping and begin extended holiday hours. Is Walmart open on Thanksgiving? Is Target open on Thanksgiving? Is Wegmans open? Walmart, Target, Trader Joes and Aldi are closed on Thanksgiving. Wegmans is open until 4 p.m. at most locations on Thanksgiving Day. Tops is also open until 4 p.m. and Price Chopper closes at 3 p.m. Thursday. Are pharmacies open? Some pharmacies, including most Walgreens locations, are closed on Thanksgiving. Most CVS and Rite Aid locations will be open on Thursday, along with Kinney Drugs located at 437 Electronics Parkway in Liverpool (retail store and pharmacy); check hours for your location before visiting. Will there be trash collection? City of Syracuse trash pick up will be one day late on both Thursday and Friday; Thursdays trash will be picked up Friday and Fridays pickup will be Saturday. Other municipal and private haulers may work on a different schedule. Are libraries open on Thanksgiving? Onondaga Countys Central Library and all city branches are closed Thursday and Friday. Suburban branch hours vary; you can check your branch through the county website. Are buses running on regular time? Centro is running on a Sunday/holiday schedule for Thanksgiving. Friday buses will operate on normal schedules. For information, call 442-3400 or visit Centros website. An 80-year-old hunter got lost in the vicinity of Plank Road in Altona last Saturday night. The lost hunter had communicated to another party using a two-way radio, but he didnt provide his location coordinates, saying only that he was 30 feet from a creek. Two New York State Department of Environmental Conservation forest rangers, and one DEC police officer, searched through the night in the highest probability areas but turned up nothing. The next morning, a state police helicopter joined the search, which had expanded to 11 rangers and two DEC police officers. They found the lost hunter in good health at 6:39 a.m. and walked him back to his hunting camp. The following reports are excerpted from DEC: On the afternoon of Nov. 16, a vehicle producing sparks ignited four separate brush fires in a one-mile stretch of I-84 in East Fishkill, Dutchess County.NYSDEC On the afternoon of Nov. 16, a vehicle producing sparks ignited four separate brush fires in a one-mile stretch of I-84 in East Fishkill, Dutchess County. A ranger and six fire departments extinguished the fires, the largest of which burned three quarters of an acre. On Nov. 16, an unattended backcountry campfire set 138 acres ablaze near Rush Creek State Forest. Rangers and DEC foresters, along with nine fire departments and the Allegany County Sheriffs Department drone unit, fought to get the fire under control, but not before it destroyed a seasonal cabin and sheds near the state forest. Rangers continue to patrol the area for hot spots. On the evening of Nov. 13, a ranger found a forest fire had swept into Allegany State Park from a forest fire burning in Pennsylvania. The next day, six rangers, along with the U.S. Forest Service, battled to contain the 45-acre blaze. Crews put the fire in patrol status on Nov. 15. On the evening of Nov. 17, a pair of hikers from Brewster didnt show up at the trailhead when expected. They didnt have proper clothing or headlamps and had texted friends at 4:42 p.m. to advise they were coming down Mount Marcy, the states highest peak. Rangers made voice contact with the pair at 9:02 p.m., and shortly thereafter found them near an old ski trail. One of the hikers had severe leg cramps. Another ranger hiked in with extra water and helped the hikers back to Adirondak Loj. Two ATV riders in Southampton were charged with illegally operating ATVs on public land and trespassing on posted lands.NYSDEC On Nov. 19, a ranger and a DEC police officer patrolling state land in Southampton, Suffolk County, stopped two ATV riders and charged them with illegally operating ATVs on public land and trespassing on posted lands. A 67-year-old deer hunter from Margaretville fell and injured his head, ribs, and leg in Hardenburgh on the afternoon of Nov. 18. Two rangers assisted local fire departments with a half mile carry-out after the patient had been packaged for evacuation. A LifeNet helicopter flew the hunter to the hospital. A 72-year-old hunter from New Jersey failed to show up after dark on Nov. 18 in the town of German, Chenango County. The elderly hunter had called his hunting partners to report he hadnt made it back to camp yet. Rangers joined local police and rescue personnel in a search for the lost hunter, finding his body at 3 a.m. The body was turned over to the coroner. Sign up for the CNY Outdoors Newsletter Enter your email address to get weekly updates on CNY outdoors news delivered to your inbox: READ MORE Rangers find missing Upstate NY man dead in Titusville State Forest - newyorkupstate.com Ranger finds, revives missing person in Oswego County - newyorkupstate.com Rangers rescue two missing Upstate NY hunters lost in the woods overnight - newyorkupstate.com Rangers find vulnerable adult who went missing in woods near Hudson Valley town - newyorkupstate.com Brooklyn hiker injured in steep Catskills terrain carried out by forest rangers - newyorkupstate.com Steve Featherstone covers the outdoors for The Post Standard, syracuse.com and NYUP.com. Contact him at sfeatherstone@syracuse.com or on Twitter @featheroutdoors. You can also follow along with all of our outdoors content at newyorkupstate.com/outdoors/ or follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/upstatenyoutdoors. A man is accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl at a family-friendly nudist club, according to a new report. A criminal report obtained by The Star Tribune shows Steven H. Wicklund, 69, of Pepin, Wisconsin, was charged Thursday with third-degree criminal sexual conduct. The man is accused of molesting the teenager while she was visiting her grandparents at the Oakwood Club near Stacy, Minnesota, over the summer. According to the criminal report, the girl and Wicklund, described as a family friend, were both nude at the club when he allegedly began to rape her and forced her to touch his genitals. The New York Post reports Wicklund allegedly continued to harass the victim months after the encounter, sending explicit text messages and requesting photos of her and her friends. Wicklund was charged after the teens mother found the messages and reported him to the police, according to the criminal complaint. The victim also told her mom that she was sexually assaulted during the trip to the nudist camp. Wicklund is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 12, according to the Star Tribune. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison and a $30,000 fine. The Oakwood Club bills itself as Minnesotas first nudist club, established in 1942. The Anoka County retreat promotes social nudism and non-sexual activities like sports, games and swimming; its website also describes the colony as family-friendly and clothing-optional. DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, November 22. The Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) is participating in the donors' committee discussing financial support for the construction of Rogun hydropower plant (HPP) in Tajikistan, Nikolai Podguzov, Chairman of the Board of EDB, said during the bank research presentation in Kazakhstan's Almaty, Trend reports. He expressed hope that resources would be allocated to Rogun, however Podguzov acknowledged the ambiguity surrounding these conversations. Podguzov stated during the World Hydropower Congress 2023 in Indonesia from October 31 to November 2 that new projects in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan will expand hydropower capacity in Central Asia. He stated that the Central Asian region now operates over 80 hydropower stations totaling around 14,000 MW of installed capacity. By 2035, the region's hydropower capacity is expected to be increased by 8,900 MW through modifications to current facilities and the construction of new hydroelectric power stations. Tajikistan's Ministry of Finance indicated in mid-August this year that direct government negotiations with potential investors for the building of Rogun HPP will begin by the end of the year. The Ministry of Finance noted that agreements have already been achieved to receive a $500 million preferential loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Furthermore, the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) aims to boost its funding for this project from $150 million to $250 million. By late October 2023, the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) had also signaled willingness to provide a $100 million credit. The Rogun HPP is estimated to have an installed capacity of 3,600 MW and annual electricity generation of 13 to 17 billion kilowatt-hours following full commissioning in 2033. The Taos News delivered to your Taos County address every week for a full year! We offer our lowest mail rates to zip codes in the county. Click Here to See if you Qualify. Plan includes unlimited website access and e-edition print replica online. Your auto pay plan will be conveniently renewed at the end of the subscription period. You may cancel at anytime. If you're interested in submitting a Letter to the Editor, click here. Submit Teagasc awards the Walsh Scholars Gold Medal and Alum Award The Teagasc Walsh Scholars Gold Medal was awarded to Davor Daniloski from Teagascs Food Programme. The Gold Medal, which is the Programmes highest accolade, was presented at an awards ceremony at Teagasc Ashtown today, Wednesday, 22nd November. Davor Daniloski, winner of the Teagasc Walsh Scholars Gold Medal, pictured with his mother, along with Teagasc Director, Professor Frank O Mara and Teagasc Chairman Liam Herlihy. The event was a showcase of the finalists development as Teagasc Walsh Scholars. Guests, who included family and friends, Teagasc and University supervisors, Deans of Graduate Studies from the Programmes university partners and Teagasc senior management, heard from finalists who each presented their studies. The Teagasc Walsh Scholar programme has over 250 participants pursuing a PhD, with over 40 completing each year. Opening the event, Jane Kavanagh, the Head of Research Development and Walsh Scholarships said; Today, we are not just attending an awards ceremony; we are diving into a celebration of intellectual curiosity, unwavering commitment, and the relentless pursuit of excellence. The Teagasc Walsh Scholar of the Year competition is more than just a recognition; it is a testament to the remarkable contributions our scholars make in the fields of agriculture, food research, environmental sustainability and rural development. Teagasc Director, Professor Frank OMara, said: Since the early days of the Walsh Scholarships Programme, Teagasc has sought to recognise the highest performing final year Scholars. It is inspiring for us to hear from some of them today. Their research studies cover the breath of agri-food challenges we face, and for which they play a key part in finding solutions for now and in the future. Professor OMara congratulated Davor Daniloski on being the 29th recipient of the Gold Medal. Davor Daniloskis research project is looking at how the genetic profiles of milk proteins called -casein affect milk functionality. A1 and A2 are variants of -casein. The research has proven that A2 milk is associated with lower heat stability and soft gel, which can be a negative attribute for dairy processing when producing milk powder, yoghurt, and cheese. However, it may prove favourable for human digestion when softer gel formation, as a precursor of milk products, is needed. Davor, who is a native of North Macedonia, is a dual located student, spending his time studying between Victoria University, Australia and Teagasc Moorepark, Fermoy, County Cork. He has also travelled with the project, most recently to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Centre for Dairy Research as part of the Teagasc International Training Award. Other Walsh Scholars recognised at todays event included: Lisa McGrane, Walsh Scholar of the Year for the Animal and Grassland Research and Innovation Programme. Lisa is based at Teagasc Athenry and is evaluating companion forages in combination with perennial ryegrass to increase animal performance and output in pasture-based sheep production systems. Maximilian Schughart, Walsh Scholar of the Year for the Crops, Environment, and Land Use Programme. Maximilian, who is based at Teagasc Oak Park, is investigating insecticide resistance and plant virus transmission in the grain aphid Sitobion avenae. Suzanne Kelly, Walsh Scholar of the Year for the Rural Economy and Development Programme. Suzanne, who is based at the Ulster University is exploring the value of social capital for innovation within agri-food business support programmes. Professor OMara congratulated the other Walsh Scholar finalists: Maria Frizzarin Rumia Basu Elena Grosu Mark Timlin Sara Alvarez Hernandez Oyinlola Ogunpaimo Karen McGrath Walsh Scholar Alum Award Professor Donagh Berry was the Walsh Scholars Alum Award Winner. Donagh Berry has been the Director of VistaMilk SFI Research Centre since 2018 and a Research Geneticist with Teagasc since 2003. He completed his Walsh Scholarship in 2003, graduating from Wageningen University, having undertaken a PhD that characterised the strain of cow best suited to Irish spring milk production systems. The announcement was made by Teagasc Director for Research, Professor Pat Dillon, at the Walsh Scholars of the Year and Gold Medal Awards ceremony. Accepting the award, Professor Berry shared with guests how his time as a Walsh Scholar was a springboard for his career. He said; I am delighted to be the Walsh Scholars Alum Award Winner. I am grateful to Teagasc for the opportunity they gave me all those years ago and I am honoured that my work is recognised through this award. Professor Pat Dillon said: We have over 1,500 alumni working in Ireland and across the globe, many in very influential positions in academia, the public sector and private industry. Todays event showcases the calibre of graduates the Walsh Scholarships Programme is producing. Moving forward it is a priority of the Programme to mobilise engagement and shared learning among the alumni network. The 11 Finalists of the Walsh Scholar of the Year Awards Why it matters: After looking at revenue and operating income per employee for big semiconductor companies, we thought that was a fun exercise, so we have looked at another dozen tech companies in various sectors. Broadcom and Apple are in a league of their own it is good to have a software or licensing business. During Qualcomm's earnings call earlier this month, one analyst pointed out that the company has twice as many employees as its peers. That thought wormed its way through our brain, and so we put it to the test. Editor's Note: Guest author Jonathan Goldberg is the founder of D2D Advisory, a multi-functional consulting firm. Jonathan has developed growth strategies and alliances for companies in the mobile, networking, gaming, and software industries. We looked up the employee count, revenue and operating income of the five largest semiconductor companies for their most recent fiscal year. Since we had so much fun with that, we extended the search to include the major Internet companies. We also had a run at telecom equipment makers recently, and so we added them into the mix. And since some of those companies have large warehouse and retail footprints, we added a couple of major retailers, too. We then calculated revenue and operating income per employee of the whole set. Company Employees Revenue ($ b) Op Profit ($ b) Rev/Employee ($) Op/Employee ($) Amazon 1,684,853 513.98 12.25 305,041 7,259 AMD 25,000 23.60 1.26 944,040 50,560 Apple 164,000 539.30 108.95 3,288,659 664,725 Broadcom 20,000 26.28 14.23 1,313,850 711,250 Cisco 83,300 57.69 10.08 692,559 121,224 Ericsson 105,000 23.612 2.35 224,876 22,381 Facebook 75,964 116.61 28.94 1,535,225 381,225 Google 190,000 282.84 74.84 1,488,611 393,905 Huawei 114,000 92.38 6.07 810,342 53,295 Intel 131,900 63.05 2.33 478,014 17,665 Microsoft 221,000 211.92 88.52 958,891 400,557 Nokia 86,896 26.50 2.47 304,974 28,379 Nvidia 26,196 26.67 4.22 1,018,247 161,246 Qualcomm 50,000 35.82 7.79 716,400 155,760 Target 400,000 107.59 3.85 268,970 9,625 TSMC 73,090 70.48 3.78 964,322 51,659 Wal Mart 2,300,000 605.88 20.43 263,427 8,882 Already this is fairly interesting, but we will break it down by sector to make it more readable. The tables below show subsections of the data above. We have grouped them by sector and then ordered them first by revenue per employee... Semiconductors Company Employees Revenue ($ b) Op Profit ($ b) Rev/Employee ($) Op/Employee ($) Broadcom 20,000 26.28 14.23 1,313,850 711,250 Nvidia 26,196 26.67 4.22 1,018,247 161,246 TSMC 73,090 70.48 3.78 964,322 51,659 AMD 25,000 23.60 1.26 944,040 50,560 Qualcomm 50,000 35.82 7.79 716,400 155,760 Intel 131,900 63.05 2.33 478,014 17,665 We should not have been surprised to see Broadcom lead both of these tables for semis. In part, their data is distorted by the fact they sell a lot of software which tends to boast larger productivity figures. Nonetheless, their figures stand out. For starters, they have 20,000 employees (possibly less after a recent headcount reduction there). They are also optimized for profitability, befitting a private equity portfolio. Nvidia also stands out on this list. And we are looking at FY22 revenue, so their recent massive earnings upside are not fully reflected here. For the Nvidia bulls out there, imagine what the company can do if it starts to boost its software revenue and approach Broadcom's profitability levels. To answer the question which kicked all of this off, Qualcomm does indeed have 50,000-ish employees, double those of Nvidia and AMD, but on a profitability scale they score rather well, coming in third. The company has to spend a lot on R&D but that effort is rewarded via their highly profitable licensing business. That being said, Qualcomm seems very generously staffed. As a counterfactual, imagine what Broadcom's results would look like if they had succeeded in acquiring Qualcomm. And Qualcomm still has the jets Intel comes in at the bottom of both rankings. In fairness, their results are depressed lately because of other problems. If (when?) they can really turn the corner and regain some of their profitability they will likely climb. In addition, their figures are also burdened by their manufacturing workforce which is fairly sizable. On the other hand, TSMC has 60,000 fewer employees, which likely means that some part of Intel is still overstaffed. FAAMG FAAMG Employees Revenue ($ b) Op Profit ($ b) Rev/Employee ($) Op/Employee ($) Apple 164,000 297.39 108.95 1,813,366 664,323 Facebook 75,964 116.61 28.94 1,535,056 381,023 Google 190,000 282.84 74.84 1,488,611 393,905 Microsoft 221,000 211.92 88.52 958,891 400,557 Amazon 1,684,853 513.98 12.25 305,061 7,269 The one surprise for us on this list is Google. The last time we ran this analysis (~10 years ago) they were by far and away the leader in this comparison. Turning to the hyperscalers, it should come as no surprise that Apple sits at the top of both rankings. We should point out that they are slightly less productive than Broadcom when it comes to profit per employee. Regardless, Apple is clearly a different kind of company. By the same logic, it is not surprising that Amazon sits at the bottom as it has a massive logistics workforce and a historic aversion to being too profitable. The one surprise for us on this list is Google. The last time we ran this analysis (~10 years ago) they were by far and away the leader in this comparison. They have added a lot of employees since then and are yet to see the benefit of that. Networking Company Employees Revenue ($ b) Op Profit ($ b) Rev/Employee ($) Op/Employee ($) Huawei 114,000 92.38 6.07 810,342 53,254 Cisco 83,300 57.00 15.03 684,250 180,444 Nokia 86,896 26.50 2.47 304,974 28,379 Ericsson 105,000 23.612 2.35 224,876 22,381 Turning to communications equipment, the surprise leader in revenue per employee is Huawei. These are 2022 numbers, so prior to their recent 'turnaround' and at the nadir of the US restrictions' impact. On the other hand, they are much less profitable per employee than Cisco, another company benefiting from a shift to software and licensing. And in fairness, Huawei is not publicly traded so their publicly-reported financials may not be based on the same accounting basis as the other companies. Nokia and Ericsson round out the bottom, again not a surprise. Retail Retail Employees Revenue ($ b) Op Profit ($ b) Rev/Employee ($) Op/Employee ($) Apple 164,000 297.39 108.95 1,813,366 664,323 Amazon 1,684,853 513.98 12.25 305,061 7,269 Target 400,000 107.59 3.85 268,970 9,620 Wal Mart 2,300,000 605.88 20.43 263,427 8,882 Finally, recognizing that Apple has a large retail footprint and Amazon has its logistics network, we wanted to see how the two companies compare to retail giants Walmart and Target. Again, Apple is off the charts, in hindsight it was probably unfair to put them on the list. Intriguingly, Amazon is the least profitable per employee of the group. ... software is still eating the world. So to answer the question which set all of this off, Qualcomm does have a larger workforce than its semiconductors peers, but makes up for some of that through its licensing business. We also came away with two big takeaways: first, business cycle matters a lot in these comparisons. Intel and Google's decline over the years is telling, and those forces matter more than headcount. Second, software is still eating the world. Having a high-margin software or licensing business is a great model if you can find one that works. Hong Kong: Officials complete national studies A delegation of politically appointed officials on a national studies programme and duty visit led by Director of the Chief Executive's Office Carol Yip, completed its study programme at the National Academy of Governance (NAG) this morning. The Executive Vice President of the NAG in charge of daily operations Prof Xie Chuntao gave the last lecture of the study programme on the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and presented Certificates of Completion of the NAG to the delegates. At the closing ceremony, Deputy Director of the Hong Kong & Macao Affairs Office (HKMAO) of the State Council Wang Linggui congratulated the delegation for completing its study programme. He encouraged members of the delegation to learn more and to capitalise on Hong Kong's strengths to serve the country's needs. Ms Yip thanked the HKMAO of the State Council and the NAG for the meticulous programme arrangements. She pointed out that the scholars and experts have reiterated in their lectures the unique role and contributions of Hong Kong as a special administrative region in the process of achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. She also noted that in the face of unprecedented changes of the century, the country steadfastly adheres to the path of peace, development, co-operation, and win-win outcomes, upholding the diplomatic policy objective of safeguarding world peace and promoting common development, and advancing the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, adding that Hong Kong should take up a greater and more significant role in this process. Ms Yip believes that members of the delegation will apply what they have seen, heard and learnt during the programme in their respective positions to tell the good stories of Hong Kong and the country. In the afternoon, the delegation visited the Museum of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to learn about the centennial history of the CPC. The delegation will depart for Nanjing tomorrow to obtain a deeper understanding of the development of innovation and technology, smart city, environmental ecology and culture and tourism there. This story has been published on: 2023-11-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. By Azernews Abbas Ganbay The Western coalition, led by the USA, continues to put pressure on Azerbaijan, while Yerevan still remains silent on Baku's proposal of the 5th peace treaty document. Being tempted by the Indian arms, Armenia gained momentum to be militarised by France. The West's plans in the Caucasus shifted to the southern part, where Azerbaijan, preventing insidious plans of the Western forces financed by Armenian lobbies, liberated its lands from the terrorist formations and clans occupying its territory. Huge stocks of weapons and ammunition belonging to the separatist clan, discovered by the Azerbaijani army on the territory of Garabagh after successful anti-terrorist measures, hint at the careful preparation of the separatist regime for military intervention in the territory of Azerbaijan. Yerevan and Brussels have signed an agreement on the status of an EU observer mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and this comes at a time of periodic waves of criticism and condemnation from the United States of America in the run-up to the signing of a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia. However, with time, the real purpose of the mission group's arrival in the region will be revealed. Speaking to AZERNEWS, Azerbaijani political scientist Farhad Mammadov said that there is an increase in the number of observers and, to some extent, an increase in their functions. "We will find out in the near future what this consists of. But for Azerbaijan at the current stage, in the absence of a peace treaty, this activity of the EU mission on the border is negative, as it creates an illusion in Armenia of ensuring its own security and contributes to the activation of claims from the Armenian side on territorial boundaries," the expert said. Mammadov noted that the fact that Armenia was forced to withdraw its armed forces from Garabagh after the anti-terrorist measures on September 1920 does not mean that these territorial claims have disappeared; just looking at Yerevan's accusations in the International Criminal Court would be enough to understand the wishes of Armenia. According to the expert, the activities of the EU mission are not transparent, the Armenian public is not informed about the mission's main activity in the country, and there is even a rumor that the Armenian authorities themselves are not fully aware of the work of the EU mission on their territory. On the one hand, the EU wanted to pressure Azerbaijan by putting forward initiatives to impose sanctions on it; on the other hand, the EU is eyeing the energy, oil, and gas sectors of Azerbaijan. By creating observation points over the territory of Armenia, the EU, in fact, serves its own political agenda, which includes targetting Russian forces around the region. By creating an illusion of help for Yerevan, the EU is ready to accept them into its ranks and soon to extend its hand to the North Caucasus after completing its job with Armenia. It is enough to say that the European Union and Western powers have been able to unilaterally pull Armenia into their own hands, just because Armenia made unusual maneuvers to quit CSTO, and tried to completely reject Russia despite the fact that its borders are still under Russian control. According to political analyst Farhad Mammadov, this request comes from Armenia's claim that Azerbaijan in September 2022 allegedly violated the borders (Armenian-Azerbaijani) and invaded its territory, and in accordance with this, there was a request to the CSTO for assistance, to which the leaders of the body drew up a document on "assistance to Armenia," with which Yerevan itself disagreed. Referring to Russia in this issue and the Armenian-Russian relations, the expert explained that this is another step to reduce Armenia's involvement in the CSTO and their expectations of the latter. "Accordingly, we can assume that this is an element that, in the future, will be the basis for Armenia's withdrawal from the Collective Security Treaty. Participation in the CSTO is a form of allied relations between Russia and Armenia, and if they take this step, it will have a negative impact on Armenian-Russian relations." the political analyst added. Thus, Armenia entering into a mixed and complex political game related to the West and creating a serious gap between itself and Russia raises serious questions about the future of the region. Armenia may not be aware that it is playing the role of a platform for the West, but the reality is that whether it is a European Union mission, France or other forces are using it for their own purposes against Russia or to complicate the situation in the South Caucasus. It remains a priority for Azerbaijan to pursue peace and prosperity both on its own territory and for all its neighbors living in the South Caucasus region. By playing "friends" with the West, Yerevan is missing and delaying the signing of a peace treaty, which, due to "whispering" by the West, affects the peace process in the region. ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan, November 23. Turkmenistan and China discussed the development of trade and economic cooperation, Trend reports. These issues were discussed at the third meeting of the Turkmen-Chinese Working Group on ensuring the security of economic cooperation facilities, at which the delegation of Turkmenistan was headed by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vepa Hajiyev. The two nations' representatives had a detailed exchange of ideas on the current agenda of bilateral ties during the meetings in Beijing. Simultaneously, it was highlighted that Turkmen-Chinese relations of comprehensive strategic cooperation are developing rapidly and consistently in many areas. They paid special attention to the implementation of the decisions of the previous meeting of the working group, and also identified priorities for further cooperation in this direction. During the meeting, the sides also exchanged views on topical issues of an international and regional nature, the source notes. Meanwhile, the development of economic partnership between Turkmenistan and China includes active cooperation in the field of energy, infrastructure projects and trade. China is an important consumer of Turkmen natural gas, finances and builds infrastructure facilities in Turkmenistan, and both countries continue to strengthen economic ties, which brings mutual benefits and contributes to the development of both economies. Stay up to date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel The big picture: Nvidia is accumulating a substantial amount of money, primarily due to its potent GPUs for AI acceleration. However, these computing devices are expensive and are facing growing challenges related to chip shortages. Sam Altman attempted to secure funding for a new AI chipmaker before OpenAI terminated his position due to perceived shortcomings in his "candid" communication with the board. OpenAI's management drama is becoming increasingly intriguing and tumultuous. The company recently terminated Sam Altman, who served as a board member before his appointment as CEO. However, Altman has now been reinstated, accompanied by a new board, and Greg Brockman has returned as OpenAI president. In the weeks leading up to his termination and subsequent reinstatement, Altman appeared to be actively seeking funds for a new venture centered around "AI chip" development. Insiders have disclosed that Altman aimed to raise billions of dollars from major global investors and even traveled to the Middle East to attract Saudi investment funds for his ambitious plan. The project, codenamed Tigris, intended to create new Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) specifically designed to efficiently handle substantial volumes of specialized AI workloads. Altman was reportedly proposing a cost-effective alternative to Nvidia's GPUs, which are widely recognized as the most sought-after computing units for accelerating AI algorithms. His plan sought to address the escalating costs associated with running platforms like ChatGPT and other OpenAI services, while also establishing a new supply line to mitigate challenges related to the GPU shortage. Seeking investment partners outside the US could, of course, become a cause for concern. As former US Treasury Department official Philip Ludvigson explains, "if the foreign investments are passive for example, don't come with board seats and stay under 10%, they are less likely to face scrutiny." Altman would likely have no shortage of funding partners for his new venture now, as major existing investors in OpenAI, such as Microsoft, are ready to pour billions of dollars into whatever the entrepreneur is cooking. According to Brad Lightcap, OpenAI's chief operating officer, the board's decision to fire Altman wasn't related to the AI chip venture or any other "financial, business, safety, or security / privacy" practice by the former/new CEO. The AI server market is expected to explode in just a few years, with Foxconn predicting a $150 billion business by 2027. Nvidia's revenues are currently skyrocketing, with the GPU company experiencing a net income increase of 1,259 percent compared to last year. In the short term, a low-cost TPU competitor would likely pose no threat to Jensen Huang's company. Workers from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis have officially ratified new contracts with significant wage increases, ending a historic autoworkers strike at the three Detroit giants, according to an announcement from their union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). Major Gains for Autoworkers The UAW revealed that 64% of members across the three companies voted in favor of the contracts, marking the conclusion of the first-ever simultaneous stoppage at the three automakers. UAW President Shawn Fain stated, "The members have spoken. After years of cutbacks, months of our Stand Up campaign, and weeks on the picket line, we have turned the tide for the American autoworker." "The Stand Up Strike was just the beginning. The UAW is back to setting the standard. Now, we take our strike muscle and our fighting spirit to the rest of the industries we represent, and to millions of non-union workers ready to Stand Up and fight for a better way of life," he added. The press release from UAW highlighted the significant gains achieved by the 150,000 UAW autoworkers at the Big Three, emphasizing the restoration of provisions sacrificed during the Great Recession. These include cost-of-living adjustments (COLA), annual bonuses for retirees, and the elimination of wage tiers. Read Also: SkillFusion: Pioneering the Charge for Reliable EV Charging Infrastructure With Skilled Workforce Solutions Key Provisions of Agreements Between Big Three and Autoworkers Key provisions of the agreements include substantial wage increases for all Big Three members, significant raises for tens of thousands of workers, and significant product and investment commitments from the companies. The contracts paved the way for a future of reindustrialization and increased working-class power. 1. Raises From at Least 33% to Over 160%: Members will receive raises of at least 33% over the agreement's lifespan, with some of the lowest-paid workers getting raises of over 160%. Immediate raises of over 40% are expected for tens of thousands of autoworkers upon ratification. 2. Faster Progression to Top Pay: A three-year wage progression to the top pay rate, down from eight years, has been secured at all three companies, restoring the progression in place before the 2011 contract. 3. Reopening Belvidere, Reinvesting in America: Stellantis has committed to reopening an assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois, which was closed in February. Additionally, the company pledged to build a $3.2 billion battery plant at the location, employing over a thousand union workers. 4. A Just EV Transition: Commitments have been made by all three automakers to bring thousands of electric vehicle (EV) and battery jobs under the union's national agreements. 5. Improvements in Retirement Security: Retired individuals currently receiving benefits will now be entitled to yearly bonuses, marking the first instance in 15 years and resulting in a substantial $1.25 billion enhancement in their overall benefits. Employees hired before 2007 are set to experience a rise in their pension multiplier. All six agreements, covering both hourly and salaried units at each of the three automakers, were ratified by the membership. The conclusion of these contracts follows a historical period of strikes, with the union successfully negotiating for improved conditions and benefits. Related Article: GM Partners with Niron Magnetics to Develop Eco-Friendly Electric Motor Magnets, Reducing Dependency on China 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney uncovered a pivotal conflict between Epic and Sony during the ongoing legal battle against Google. GamesIndustry.biz reports that Sweeney's revelation shed light on the aggressive push for PlayStation cross-play, a move that nearly escalated into legal action. The controversy unfolded as Epic, joined by developers of games like Rocket League and Ark: Survival Evolved, advocated for cross-platform multiplayer access. Sony resisted until September 2018, complying only after staunch opposition, revealed in Sweeney's court testimony. Epic's Strong Push for Cross-play The Verge tells us that the current focus of the Epic vs. Google trial gravitates around this crucial juncture, highlighting the lengths to which Epic was prepared to go in support of cross-play. Sweeney's testimony detailed a pivotal June 2018 email exchange with Phil Rosenberg, then senior vice president at PlayStation, revealing Epic's determination: "Please inform Kodera-san, and please be clear, that Epic will enable full interoperability between all platforms in Fortnite at a timely point in the future ... we are prepared to pursue this course with all available resources, wherever it leads us, and for however long." This resolve underscored Epic's commitment, willing to contest Sony's stance through legal means if necessary. However, Sweeney noted a significant shift in the relationship post-cross-play, with collaborations between Sony and Epic, including Sony Music's involvement in Fortnite events and Sony Corporation becoming an Epic shareholder. Read Also: Valve's Steam Deck OLED Fixed the Input Lag Issue? Here's What Tests Saw More from the Current Trial During the trial, Sweeney clarified Epic's ownership structure, dispelling notions of Tencent's control: "I came up with the idea of Project Liberty, and when we disclosed to them, they were rather surprised." Project Liberty, revealed during the Epic vs. Apple trial, marked Epic's initiative to introduce direct payment options into Fortnite, prompting its removal from app stores. Sweeney's admission reinforced his pivotal role in positioning Epic against tech giants like Google and Apple. While on the stand, Sweeney addressed Fortnite's distribution challenges, acknowledging its subpar performance via the Samsung Galaxy Store compared to Google Play. He also discussed Epic's profitability strategies, acknowledging differences in V-Bucks pricing on different platforms. Google's line of questioning aimed to highlight Epic's circumvention of policies and profit generation tactics. Sweeney's testimony offers a peek into the high-stakes clashes within the gaming industry, spotlighting the evolution of cross-play dynamics and Epic's bold stance against tech giants' app store policies. In Other News Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella has hinted at the potential return of Sam Altman to OpenAI after his departure as CEO. Altman, who had previously disclosed plans to join a fresh AI research unit at Microsoft, might have the chance to reassess this decision. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: PlayStation 5 Sales Skyrocket to 4.9 Million in Blockbuster Quarter 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Singapore is ramping up its fight against dengue fever, announcing a significant expansion of its Wolbachia program, CNA reports. The initiative involves releasing male Wolbachia-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes into specific areas to suppress the population of disease-carrying mosquitoes. Releasing Wolbachia-Carrying Mosquitoes in Key Singapore Areas The expansion, announced by Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and the Environment Baey Yam Keng at the International Vector-Borne Diseases Conference, targets five new residential zones in the southern part of the country. These areas - Bukit Merah - Telok Blangah, Clementi - West Coast, Commonwealth, Holland, and Marine Parade - Mountbatten - have been strategically selected based on historical dengue risk, mosquito population, and the National Environment Agency's (NEA) production capacity for these mosquitoes. The move is set to significantly boost the coverage of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes from 26% to 35% of all households in Singapore, encompassing both public housing and landed estates. Commencing in the first quarter of 2024, the releases aim to curb dengue transmission by interrupting the reproduction of Aedes mosquitoes. What Is Project Wolbachia? Under Project Wolbachia, male mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacteria are released to mate with female Aedes mosquitoes. The resulting eggs do not hatch, ultimately reducing the population of disease-transmitting mosquitoes. Notably, these male mosquitoes do not bite and cannot transmit diseases as they exclusively feed on plant juices. NEA's efforts are grounded in promising results from existing study sites. Dengue mosquito populations in selected study sites saw a reduction exceeding 90%. Residents in these areas, benefiting from at least a year of releases, were up to 77% less likely to be infected with dengue, as per NEA's data. However, the effectiveness of Wolbachia technology has shown variations across different sites and years, prompting the agency to stress the need for ongoing research and development. Read Also: Here's How Butterflies Helped Scientists Detect Cancer The technology is seen as a valuable but not standalone solution, considering the challenges posed by multiple dengue virus serotypes and the resilience of Aedes mosquitoes. In conjunction with the Wolbachia program, NEA is utilizing data analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize mosquito deployment. This strategic approach aims to reduce the number of male mosquitoes required for effective dengue suppression in these areas. What's Next? Looking ahead, NEA is planning long-term strategies to fortify Wolbachia operations. This includes developing an additional source of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes beyond their current capacity, a move intended to increase resilience and expand the program further. The agency will engage the industry to meet this enhanced capacity's technical and user requirements. While the Wolbachia initiative exhibits significant potential for dengue control, NEA emphasizes the need for continued community efforts to combat mosquito breeding. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: US FDA Grants Historic Approval to Ixchiq: First-Ever Vaccine for Chikungunya Virus 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Microsoft has recently unveiled a groundbreaking upgrade to Outlook Lite, enriching the app with a slew of vernacular features. This strategic enhancement brings translation, voice typing, and transliteration capabilities to the forefront, empowering users to seamlessly compose and read emails in their preferred regional languages while effortlessly managing SMSes - all within the intuitive interface of Outlook Lite. Outlook Lite for the Indian Market Designed as an email and SMS app explicitly tailored for the Indian market, Outlook Lite incorporates the quintessence of Microsoft Outlook into a compact, high-performance application catered for lightweight devices, irrespective of the network. The pivotal emphasis of Outlook Lite centers around fostering inclusivity and addressing the diverse linguistic needs of Indian users. This is achieved through a multifaceted approach, with features like voice typing and transliteration offering an intuitive method to dictate emails in Hindi or type in Tamil, automatically transliterating to English. Moreover, the app allows users to read emails in languages like Gujarati, expanding the horizon for communication. Read Also: Amazon Launches' AI Ready': Free Courses to Build Generative AI Skills Microsoft Outlook Gets Vernacular Features A notable highlight of this upgrade lies in Outlook Lite's current support for five Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Gujarati - with an ambitious plan for future expansion to encompass more languages and dialects. This strategic move is aimed at catering to India's rich linguistic diversity, ensuring a more inclusive digital ecosystem. Beyond the language spectrum, Outlook Lite optimizes SMS messaging by presenting users with a unified inbox, categorizing messages into distinct segments such as transactions, promotions, and personal, simplifying information assimilation. Additionally, it offers timely reminders for crucial appointments, bill payments, travel bookings, and gas refills, effectively managing the deluge of information that often inundates users. Improving User Experience Rajiv Kumar, the managing director of Microsoft India Development Centre and corporate vice president of Microsoft's Experiences and Devices, India Group, elucidated this innovation: "The evolution of Outlook Lite embodies our dedication to fostering inclusive digital experiences tailored for diverse communities in India. With SMS integration and vernacular language support, Outlook Lite redefines communication accessibility and provides users with a more convenient & personalized experience." Looking ahead, Microsoft has hinted at an upcoming feature - language translation for SMS. This groundbreaking addition is poised to facilitate seamless communication for users dealing with multilingual conversations or aiming to connect across diverse regions. In Other News A recent Epic v. Google lawsuit revelation confirmed a secret deal between the internet giant and Spotify, in which the music streaming company pays no commission rates. According to this claim, Spotify charges a 0% commission fee when customers pay for their subscriptions through the platform's payment channels. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says Sam Altman Might be Reinstated to OpenAI 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Eutelsat subsidiary OneWeb announced on Tuesday that it has obtained approval from India's space regulator to launch commercial satellite broadband services in the country. With this development, Eutelsat OneWeb surpasses SpaceX's Starlink and Reliance's JioSpaceFiber to become the first company granted permission by the nodal agency to offer satellite broadband services in the second-largest internet user market in the world. While the launch is contingent on spectrum allocation by the Indian government, which is pending, Eutelsat OneWeb remains ready to deploy upon receiving final authorization for commercial services, per a report published by Yahoo! News. India's Space Industry Growth Continues Eutelsat OneWeb's approval comes amid a growing emphasis on the development of India's space industry by Prime Minister Modi's government, particularly as the country heads toward elections next year. The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre granted a five-year validity for the approval of Eutelsat OneWeb's satellite broadband services constellation. Eutelsat OneWeb is prepared to have a significant impact on India's space industry thanks to support from Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal's Bharti Enterprises. The company has already received licenses from the Indian telecom ministry and the Department of Telecommunications to provide broadband services through satellite connectivity, with additional approval for gateway operations in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, according to TechCrunch. India's space industry has experienced significant growth, with the number of space startups increasing from 21 to 47 in the year following the country's allowance of private launches in 2020. Investors have shown increased interest, pouring $119 million into Indian space startups in 2022, compared to a total of $38 million in the years leading up to 2017. Read Also: Amazon Launches 'AI Ready': Free Courses to Build Generative AI Skills OneWeb Strengthen's Market Presence The existing licenses, gateway approvals, and partnership with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to launch 36 satellites further solidify Eutelsat OneWeb's presence in the Indian market. While the $400 billion global commercial space market is expected to reach $1 billion by 2030, India is aiming for a bigger share by 2040, targeting the market on a $40 billion portion of the country. Cyril Dujardin, Co-General Manager of Connectivity, Eutelsat Group, stressed the importance of this approval in bridging global connectivity gaps and expressed readiness to provide essential services to businesses in India, including the entire Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation. "Bridging the connectivity gap around the world requires collaboration not only across businesses but also with governments and regulators. We are pleased to have received these approvals from the space regulator that bring the country a significant step closer to providing high-speed connectivity to even the most remote locations," the company official noted, as quoted by Business Standard. Elon Musk's Starlink and Ambani's Reliance clash over India's satellite broadband spectrum allocation, according to a Reuters report. Amazon's Project Kuiper has been in negotiations with Indian authorities about offering satellite internet services, as the Economic Times reported last month. Related Article: TikTok Privacy Issues Unresolved, US Treasury Secretary Discusses Concerns 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Investors at OpenAI are weighing legal recourse following the abrupt removal of CEO Sam Altman by the company's board. Sources familiar with the matter disclosed brewing tensions within the organization, signaling potential upheaval within the AI giant. Boardroom Upheaval Sparks Investor Concerns The decision to oust Altman, who held a pivotal role in shaping OpenAI's trajectory, has ignited a simmering conflict between stakeholders and the board. With sources revealing that some investors are contemplating legal action against the board, Reuters reports that the situation threatens to unravel into a legal battle that could significantly impact the company's stability. Investors, alarmed by the potential fallout, are collaborating with legal advisors to assess their options. Their concern primarily revolves around the substantial investments made in OpenAI, which has emerged as a key asset in several portfolios. The departure of Altman has triggered a wave of employee discontent, with reports indicating that over 700 employees have threatened resignation unless the board reinstates Altman. Microsoft's Role and Ongoing Negotiations Microsoft, a significant stakeholder owning 49% of OpenAI, is embroiled in the unfolding saga. CEO Satya Nadella expressed openness to hiring Altman and Greg Brockman, the former president of OpenAI who resigned in protest. Microsoft's potential role in accommodating OpenAI employees, should they opt to leave, has further intensified the dynamics of this high-stakes situation - some calling it a powerful move. Read Also: Sam Altman OpenAI Return? Ex-CEO and Co-Founder is Willing to Rejoin the AI Company Board's Ethical Obligations and Uncertain Future The board's decision to remove Altman stemmed from a breakdown in trust and concerns over his external pursuits. However, the lack of transparency around the reasons for his dismissal has exacerbated tensions within the company. The ethical obligations of the nonprofit's board, designed to prioritize AI advancements for humanity over profits, stand at the center of this debate. Financial Ramifications and Industry Speculation The repercussions extend beyond internal discord. The Wall Street Journal reports that the pause in the sale of employee shares, valued at nearly $90 billion earlier this year, reflects the uncertainty engulfing the company. Investors purchasing these shares are hesitant to proceed without Altman's leadership. Moreover, market reactions, including fluctuations in Microsoft's shares, signal broader implications for the tech industry landscape. What's Next? As negotiations continue and stakeholders assess their legal options, the fate of OpenAI hangs in the balance. The potential for legal action, the precarious employee retention situation, and the underlying governance structure's implications for decision-making pose challenges that the company must navigate in the days ahead. The fallout from Altman's ouster has thrown OpenAI into disarray, stirring tensions among investors, the board, and employees. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says Sam Altman Might be Reinstated to OpenAI 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A recent analysis by the Mercator Institute for China Studies reveals that European academics are participating in "clearly problematic" artificial intelligence (AI) research projects with Chinese counterparts. The collaborations span areas such as biometric surveillance, cybersecurity, and military applications, raising ethical concerns, as reported by Science Business. Notably, a report by the Berlin-based institute highlights instances of collaboration between researchers at the German military's leading institute, Bundeswehr University Munich, and a People's Liberation Army university. The collaborative AI work focused on projects like drone target tracking and missile guidance, with publications continuing as late as 2019 to 2022. As tensions between Europe and Beijing escalate over human rights, technological competition, and potential geopolitical conflicts, there is a growing scrutiny of research links with China. The European Union and its member states have shifted collaboration in Horizon Europe away from industrially-sensitive projects toward environmentally-focused ones. However, the report indicates that several ongoing EU-funded collaborations still exist with Chinese military-linked universities. What Does The Analysis Say? Between 2017 and 2022, European researchers published over 16,000 AI-related papers with Chinese colleagues affiliated with institutions directly controlled by or closely tied to the Chinese military. This represents around half of all papers examined and includes collaborations with China's "Seven Sons of National Defense" universities, known for feeding personnel and research into Beijing's military. While a significant portion of the collaborations are in medical AI, the report identifies numerous papers, published as recently as last year, presenting human rights, cybersecurity, or military risks. Examples include research on "negative mental-state monitoring," "cross-ethnicity face anti-spoofing recognition," and "integrated missile guidance." The report also points out imbalances in the partnerships, particularly in funding sources. Of the papers disclosing funding, 80% were funded by China, with 60% from the Chinese government itself. This funding disparity raises concerns about China's potential influence on research priorities. Additionally, the report highlights that papers tend to have more authors with Chinese affiliations than European ones, potentially indicating that Chinese researchers are more commonly initiating projects. Co-authored papers also make up a larger proportion of European research than Chinese research. The UK stands out in the analysis, as 21% of all UK AI papers in 2021 were co-authored with Chinese partners, while papers with the UK accounted for just 3% of China's total. This raises concerns about an emerging dependency, suggesting that limiting collaboration and losing Chinese talent could come at a significant cost. Read Also: Elon Musk's X Takes Legal Action Against Media Matters for 'Malicious' Report The report emphasizes the need for a recalibration of AI ties with China, urging better mapping of the AI ecosystem and stronger due diligence by Chinese partners. It also calls for awareness-building in Europe and emphasizes the importance of involving Chinese talent in discussions about safe and ethical research. As part of these efforts, the report suggests that European countries consider implementing "proportionate" personnel screening systems to assess those engaged in research in sensitive fields. The Netherlands is already poised to introduce such checks. US Military Unveils New AI Warfare Tool The report is relevant in light of the most recent gathering of AI and military leaders for a private, three-day retreat, which Scale AI, a data security contractor working with OpenAI and the US Army, organized. The AI Security Summit, held in the mountains of Utah, aimed to facilitate open discussions on industry challenges. According to FirstPost, attendees from the military and AI sectors engaged in off-the-record conversations at a luxury hotel near Park City. The summit coincided with talks between US President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping addressing AI regulations. The summit combined substantive talks with leisure activities, with attendees choosing personalized cowboy hats, relishing gourmet meals, and taking part in archery lessons. Despite some general information emerging, including panel discussions on subjects like US-China AI relations and thorough analyses of AI-enabling chips, the confidential nature of the discussions has kept much of the summit veiled in secrecy. Meanwhile, the US Army has introduced a new AI-based tool, the Advanced Dynamic Spectrum Reconnaissance (ADSR), to enhance electronic warfare missions. According to The Defense Post, this technology enables wireless communication networks to detect and evade enemy jamming while reducing radio frequency emissions to minimize risks for friendly forces. Recently deployed during a multinational exercise in Germany, soldiers tested the state-of-the-art system and provided training to NATO allies, emphasizing the importance of real-time spectrum awareness for identifying and responding to enemy electromagnetic signatures in electronic warfare. Related Article: UK Government's Defense AI Center Leads Innovative Hackathon for AI-Powered Responses to Bomb Threats 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. On Monday, the UK, Somalia, the UAE, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation organized a global summit aimed at boosting food security through science and innovation. However, critics argue that the focus on technology overlooks increasing wealth inequality. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak emphasized the urgency of addressing hunger globally, stating, "In a world of abundance, no one should die from lack of food, and no parent should ever have to watch their child starve," according to a report from VOA. Virtual Hub Enhancing Food Production UK PM Rishi Sunak announced plans for a "virtual hub" for innovation in food production, known as CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), focusing on flood-tolerant rice, disease-resistant wheat, and more. Moreover, the UK has partnered with the Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI) to encourage major food companies to produce healthier and more sustainable products. The 2 million ($2.5 million) support package will facilitate assessments of leading global food and drink companies over the next two years, according to the UK government's news release. Additionally speaking at the conference, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamed emphasized the food stabilization initiative run in collaboration with the UK to address the humanitarian crisis in Somalia made worse by food insecurity and climate change. Read Also: Amazon Launches 'AI Ready': Free Courses to Build Generative AI Skills Addressing Inequality Should Be The Focus Despite the emphasis on technological solutions, critics argue that tackling the inequalities behind food insecurity is essential. Analyst Steve Wiggins from the ODI development think tank acknowledges technology as a tool but emphasizes addressing poverty, marginalization, and vulnerability as fundamental factors driving hunger. Nick Nisbett of the Institute of Development Studies, as quoted by VOA, remarked: "This summit is welcome. I think some of the solutions are welcome. But I think it's not going to be enough to tackle that huge problem of hunger, which has been with us for decades and which we seem to be going backward in many steps. Technological solutions tend to focus on the supply side, so new tech for agriculture, supply chains, and so on. But what we actually need to do is tackle the inequalities that lie behind that hunger." He further explained that the most straightforward approach might be to provide individuals with food or give them the financial means to buy food in the markets. The Telegraph reported that the global food crisis has worsened, with more than 122 million more people facing hunger than in 2019, as per the United Nations. Ongoing conflicts, the war in Ukraine, and the COVID-19 pandemic have created a "perfect storm" impacting food supplies. The UN report indicates that almost 600 million people are projected to face hunger by 2030, underscoring the urgent need for comprehensive solutions to global food insecurity. Related Article: Social Media Outranks Experts, Books for Parenting Tips 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Spotify is restructuring its royalty model to boost revenue for emerging and established artists, anticipating an additional $1 billion injection into the music industry over the next five years. The Swedish streaming giant aims to direct more funds toward popular artists, record labels, and distributors while addressing issues such as streaming fraud. How Will It Work? The three-fold approach, outlined in a recent blog post (Nov. 21), focuses on enhancing platform hygiene, ensuring fair distribution of payments, and combating challenges that, while affecting only a small percentage of total streams, have prompted Spotify to project an additional $1 billion in revenue for artists, according to Billboard. The new Spotify royalty model, set to impact over two-thirds of Spotify's song catalog, aims to prioritize more popular tracks and reduce the impact on less frequently streamed songs. The anticipated shift in Spotify's royalty pool is approximately 0.5%, translating to around $46 million out of the total $9.27 billion paid in royalties in 2022. The audio streaming company announced in its blog: "Starting in early 2024, tracks must have reached at least 1,000 streams in the previous 12 months to generate recorded royalties. "Spotify will not make additional money under this model. There is no change to the size of the music royalty pool being paid out to rights holders from Spotify; we will simply use the tens of millions of dollars annually to increase the payments to all eligible tracks, rather than spreading it out into $0.03 payments." Industry figures have welcomed the changes, with Denis Ladegaillerie, founder and CEO of Believe, expressing support for Spotify's initiative to eliminate artificial streaming and noise. He emphasizes the importance of creating more benefits for up-and-coming artists and applauds ongoing dialogue on the development. Read Also: Emmett Shear Takes Helm as OpenAI's Interim CEO Amid Leadership Turmoil "We believe that creating more benefits to develop up-and-coming artists would be a great complement to the institution of a 1.000 stream threshold. We are encouraged by our current dialogue with them on this topic," he said, as quoted in the Billboard report. Fighting Artificial Streaming Additionally, starting in Q1 2024, Spotify plans to implement measures to actively deter artificial streaming. The platform will charge labels and distributors per track when detecting "flagrant artificial streaming." This move is aimed at disincentivizing bad actors from uploading content that diverts funds from legitimate artists. "These charges will support our continued efforts to keep the industry and platform free of artificial activity," Spotify stated in its blog. To counter attempts to "game the system with noise," Spotify will increase the minimum track length for functional noise recordings to two minutes, ensuring eligibility for royalties. This step aims to prevent exploitation by bad actors who artificially shorten tracks to maximize royalty-bearing streams, per TechCrunch. The platform also plans to collaborate with licensors to value noise streams at a fraction of the value of music streams in the coming months. Spotify reportedly intends to launch its updated royalty model in the upcoming year. However, there is currently no specific date announced for the rollout. Related Article: OneWeb Secures India Regulatory Greenlight for Satellite Broadband, Beating Out Starlink 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, November 22. Uzbekistan and the UAE are interested in further expanding practical cooperation, Trend reports. This was mentioned during a meeting between President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan and a UAE team led by Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi. Current bilateral concerns were discussed during the conversation. The high dynamics of growth of diverse Uzbek-Emirati ties were recognized with satisfaction. The volume of commercial turnover and the number of joint ventures and projects have been steadily increasing. Simultaneously, cooperative activities, such as building digital government, are being effectively implemented within the framework of the chosen "road map." The parties confirmed their mutual interest in further expanding practical cooperation in the areas of effective management, development of trade potential, modernization of urban infrastructure, high technology, artificial intelligence and other areas. Cryptocurrency titans are falling, and the latest to do so is Changpeng Zhao, with the Chinese executive resigning his post as Binance's CEO and is set to plead guilty to the federal charges against his name. However, the company chose a scenario in which Binance will continue its operations in the United States, and this is through the whopping $4.3 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ). It is almost a similar case to Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, but in Binance's case, it did not file for bankruptcy now, with no news yet regarding missing customer funds. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao Resigns, To Plea Guilty (Photo : David Ryder/Getty Images) Changpeng Zhao is now stepping down from his role as Binance's CEO and he is also set to plead guilty for his crimes involving federal money laundering charges, taking place in the following events reports CNBC. Binance and Zhao's camp already reached a plea deal with the US government regarding this case, and it is set to end the multi-year investigation by Justice. It was revealed by Zhao that he will be replaced by Richard Teng as the new CEO of Binance, known for his previous role as the Global Head of Regional Markets. CZ was said to have violated and caused a financial institution to violate the Bank Secrecy Act. The report also noted that Zhao was banned from getting involved with Binance for three years after his sentencing, after failing to establish anti-money laundering measures. Read Also: SEC Applies for an Emergency Motion to Prevent Binance US Access to Customer Assets Binance Settles $4.3 Billion to US DOJ As part of its continued operations and agreement with the US government, Binance will forfeit $2.5 billion and pay $1.8 billion in settlement to the Justice Department. Personally, Zhao is asked to pay $50 million. However, Zhao will not be the only executive facing charges, as Samuel Lim, Binance's former compliance chief, is also set to receive suits as part of the deal. The End of an Era for Zhao, Binance? Changpeng Zhao, a.k.a. CZ, has been a remarkable executive at Binance, with him at the helm through the thick and thin of the company, growing it to become one of the largest crypto exchange platforms in the world. He was widely regarded for the many predictions he had in the crypto industry but was also one of the skeptics of Bitcoin's rally past $69,000. There were many disputes and scrutinies that Binance faced over the years, with many regulators pursuing the platform because of their license problems, operations, and more. At one point, the SEC went full blast against Zhao and Binance, claiming that they grew the company while placing investors' assets at a massive risk, going as far as evading the law. In the most recent developments in Binance's case, it was given a chance to continue its operations by subjecting it to a settlement amounting to $4 billion, with its negotiations now meeting its conclusion. Binance will continue its operations after it agreed to settle the $4.3 billion, but it will move forward without CZ, as he is set to face the law's wrath, reportedly pleading guilty to the charges against him. Related Article: Binance DOJ Lawsuit Settlement: $4B Reportedly Set for Crypto Platform's Continued US Operations 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Sony Electronics has proudly declared the conclusion of a second phase of testing in collaboration with the Associated Press for Sony's in-camera authenticity technology. This innovative technology generates a digital signature within the camera, essentially creating a birth certificate for images and verifying the content's origin. (Photo : Sony) New In-Camera Signature Solution Attaches Digital Certificate to Photos at the Point of Capture to Certify Legitimacy. Concluding Testing for In-Camera Authenticity Technology Amidst the rapid evolution of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the demand for content authenticity tools has never been more pressing. Sony and the Associated Press (AP) have successfully concluded testing on their advanced in-camera authenticity technology, offering a robust solution to combat the rise of counterfeit images and empowering photographers and consumers with the tools necessary for photo verification. While Sony's participation in the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) last year signified a commitment to the cause, Peta Pixel reported that the transition from conceptualization to practical implementation has taken some time. However, the wait is now on the brink of completion. Following extensive and ongoing testing, the AP, which has exclusively equipped its photographers with Sony gear since 2020, collaborated closely with Sony to achieve what the company deems significant progress in addressing the challenge of content authenticity. Sony's latest in-camera solution introduces a distinctive approach, creating a digital signature at the moment of capture without the need for specialized hardware, unlike Leica's M11-P. Existing camera models like the Sony a1 and a7S III are set to support in-camera signatures and C2PA authentication, and the upcoming Sony a9 III is anticipated to be a preferred choice for many photojournalists, integrating this advanced authentication technology. Upon activation, this authentication technology establishes an unbreakable digital chain when a photo is taken, providing clarity on the authenticity or potential manipulation of an image for both news outlets and their audiences. Growing Concern About Manipulated Imagery in Journalism Neal Manowitz, President and COO of Sony Electronics, acknowledges the dual impact of generative AI on creative expression and the growing concern about manipulated imagery in journalism. He underscores the real-world social impact of disseminating false information and images, emphasizing Sony's commitment to addressing this challenge. PR Newswire reported that Sony actively contributes to the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) steering committee, playing a role in establishing the current industry standard for tracking editing and manipulation of imagery. David Ake, the Director of Photography at the AP, emphasizes the significant threat posed by fake and manipulated images to news organizations. Beyond contributing to mis- and disinformation, these images undermine the public's trust in accurate and factual reporting. Ake expresses pride in collaborating with Sony Electronics to develop an authentication solution aimed at addressing this critical issue. Also Read: Sony x Honda Partnership To Produce Electric Vehicles! New EVs With Advanced Camera Sensors To Arrive by 2025 The latest field test, marking the second phase according to Sony, concluded in October. This month-long testing period involved rigorous assessments of the digital signature and C2PA technology within the context of a real-world photojournalism production workflow. To ensure the preservation of the digital signature without disrupting professional workflows, Sony and the AP partnered with Camera Bits, the developer of the widely-used workflow software Photo Mechanic. They integrated technology into the app that safeguards a camera's digital signature throughout the metadata editing process. Related Article: Sony Shifts Camera Productions to Thailand; Here's How It Benefits the Company 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. From the outside and through the social media's lens, Tesla's Gigafactories are safe; but new claims from its employees and workers are now sharing the horrors within its walls, especially with its tech. Giga Texas is the home of the Cybertruck and the Model Y, but what remained unknown to the public until now reports of explosions, robot-related injuries, and other incidents. While it is true that plants and factories have unforeseen accidents or happenings, the number that piled up now and was revealed via reports is a gritty reality for those who face it every day. Tesla's Giga Texas Mayhem: Explosions, Robot-Related Injuries (Photo : SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images) Giga Texas is best known as the main plant of the Cybertruck, but a recent report from The Information claimed various gruesome incidents that occurred in the past year that highlight the mayhem it faces. Tesla is known for using robotic arms for different phases in production, but one report claimed that in 2021, an engineer approached one and got pinned to the wall. It was believed to be shut down but attacked said engineer which resulted in a bloody scene as recounted by witnesses. Injury reports were submitted to OSHA, with one submitted by Tesla to Travis County, Texas reportedly not matching witness accounts. Read Also: UPDATE: Tesla Cybertruck Reselling Clause Removed, No Longer Seeks to Sue Owners Are Workers Not Safe in Gigafactory Texas in Austin? The Verge also noted an incident back in New Year's 2023 where an explosion occurred in the metal casting area, an incident which remains unclear if it was reported to OSHA. Other accidents saw falling equipment dropping near workers, with some directly to employees leaving them with fractures and punctured lungs. A great deal of reports highlight the dangers Giga Texas workers face in their daily operations, with The Information noting that one out of every 21 employees was harmed in 2022. Tesla's Giga Texas and Gigafactories When Elon Musk and the base of Tesla's operations moved to Texas, it also established Gigafactory Texas as a place of opportunities, offering more than 20,000 jobs for the locals and those nearby. Much like other Gigafactories in the world, Tesla's production plants see multitudes of workers joining it, especially as it claimed that this would ramp up production of its different EV models. However, fast forward to more than a year later, several complaints came flooding in, with workers filing lawsuits against Tesla for their alleged labor breaches, as well as neglect to its workforce. It was said that workers were made to undertake dangerous tasks without the proper safety training, with others also claiming unpaid overtime work in Giga Texas. Musk and Tesla recently celebrated Giga Texas for finishing the Cybertruck and soon delivering massive orders for its electric pickup, best known for relying on its die-cast machine. However, the untold horrors with supplementary reports that detail the everyday dangers workers face within Giga Texas were only revealed now, with injury claims presenting a scrutiny against how the company treats its workers. Related Article: Tesla Gigafactory Workers Flee in Panic After Receiving Active Shooter Alert; Texas Police Continue to investigate 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Europe experienced a deadly embrace with extreme temperatures in 2022, with a new study suggesting that over 70,066 deaths may be attributed to the searing heat. Analyzing daily temperature readings and mortality data from 147 locations across the continent, this research sheds light on the profound impact of high temperatures on human health. (Photo : PASCAL GUYOT/AFP via Getty Images) This photograph taken on June 17, 2022 shows a pharmacy sign displays the temperature of 44 Celsius degrees in the city of Montpellier in France. Witnessing 70,000 Deaths Due to Heatwaves A study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) suggests that Europe has witnessed over 70,066 deaths due to the exceptionally high temperatures during the summer of 2022. As per EurekAlert!, the research team amalgamated daily temperature readings and mortality data from 147 locations across 16 European countries to arrive at this conclusion. Various degrees of aggregation were scrutinized and compared to estimate mortality from both extreme heat and cold. These new findings diverged from a previous analysis by the same team, covering 823 regions in 35 European countries. The earlier study reported a lower number of heat-related premature deaths in 2022, totaling only 62,862. Joan Ballester Claramunt, a researcher at ISGlobal, emphasized that the differences were minimal during periods of extreme cold and heat, citing the example of the summer of 2003, where the underestimation by the weekly data model was only 4.62%. Interesting Engineering reported that the health repercussions of heatwaves can be severe, leading to increased mortality rates, especially among groups already susceptible to pre-existing conditions. Elevated temperatures for prolonged periods place significant stress on the human body. Extreme heat can trigger heat-related disorders such as heatstroke and exhaustion, posing a potential fatality risk if not promptly addressed. Those most vulnerable include the elderly, young children, individuals with pre-existing medical conditions, and those with limited access to cooling facilities or air conditioning. Also Read: Staying Cool Without Air Conditioning? Possible! In the realm of this study, the ability to utilize weekly data proves advantageous, especially considering the bureaucratic hurdles that often hinder or make it impossible for researchers to conduct large-scale epidemiological studies based on daily data. Ballester asserted that, in instances where daily data is not accessible, the readily available weekly data across Europe can offer a good approximation of the estimates obtained using the daily data model. Concluding the importance of weekly data, Ballester noted that models relying on this frequency provide sufficient precision in mortality estimates, making them valuable for real-time applications in epidemiological surveillance. These models can inform public policies, such as the activation of emergency plans to mitigate the impact of heat waves and cold spells. What to do? Amid heatwaves, individuals and communities are urged to adopt preventive measures, including staying well-hydrated, avoiding strenuous outdoor activities during peak heat periods, and keeping a watchful eye on elderly or vulnerable citizens. Public health campaigns and emergency response strategies are crucial for mitigating the effects of heat waves and reducing associated mortality. The study's findings have been published in the journal The Lancet Regional Health - Europe. Related Article: NASA Unveils Detailed Maps Showing How Fierce Phoenix Heat Wave Was 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. NASA's Psyche spacecraft has successfully fired a laser in a deep-space test. On November 14, NASA received a laser signal from an instrument aboard the Psyche spacecraft, currently over 10 million miles from Earth on its way to a mysterious metal asteroid. This marked the first successful test of NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system, a groundbreaking communications link using laser light instead of traditional radio waves. 'First Light' Transmits a Near-Infrared Laser In a statement from NASA, it said the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment achieved "first light" by transmitting a near-infrared laser encoded with test data from almost 10 million miles away to the Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in California. This accomplishment represents the farthest-ever demonstration of optical communications. DSOC is part of the Psyche spacecraft, which is on a two-year technology demonstration mission as it travels to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, DSOC's flight laser transceiver successfully locked onto an uplink laser beacon transmitted from the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL's Table Mountain Facility. Trudy Kortes, director of Technology Demonstrations at NASA Headquarters, noted that achieving "first light" is a crucial milestone in DSOC's development, paving the way for higher-data-rate communications supporting future endeavors like sending humans to Mars. The test involved sending test data via laser to and from deep space, demonstrating the potential for sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video. The DSOC team, in collaboration with the Psyche mission-support team, ensured that the technology demonstration did not interfere with the spacecraft's operations. NASA noted that DSOC had to pass several milestones before this achievement, including unveiling the flight laser transceiver, powering up the instrument, and coordinating with the Psyche spacecraft's checkouts. With the success of "first light," the DSOC team will focus on refining the systems controlling the downlink laser's pointing aboard the transceiver. Read Also: NASA's Psyche Spacecraft Finally Lifts Off for Mission to Mysterious Metallic Asteroid DSOC Experiment of NASA The DSOC experiment aims to showcase data transmission rates surpassing current radio frequency systems used in spacecraft by 10 to 100 times. By utilizing near-infrared laser communication, DSOC condenses data into considerably denser waves, augmenting the volume of data that ground stations can receive. This is pivotal for facilitating upcoming exploration missions and advanced high-resolution scientific instruments. While optical communication has been successfully demonstrated in low Earth orbit and up to the Moon, DSOC stands as the inaugural trial of this technology in the expansive realm of deep space. The experiment encounters the formidable task of precisely directing signals across vast distances, compensating for the time it takes for light to traverse from the spacecraft to Earth. Despite the intricacies involved, the "first light" signifies a remarkable milestone in the progress of sophisticated communication technologies tailored for deep-space exploration. "Achieving first light is a tremendous achievement. The ground systems successfully detected the deep space laser photons from DSOC's flight transceiver aboard Psyche," said Abi Biswas, project technologist for DSOC at JPL. Related Article: NASA Psyche Mission to Delay Due to Glitch; SpaceX Falcon to Bring it to 'Metal World' 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. France successfully test-fired on November 18 the latest unarmed version of the M51.3 strategic ballistic missile designed to be launched from French navy submarines. The test, executed over the Bay of Biscay, reaffirms France's commitment to maintaining a robust and independent nuclear force, New Atlas reported. Nuclear Capability of France While discussions about the nuclear arsenal of France may not dominate public discourse, the Force de frappe or Force de dissuasion, armed with 290 fusion warheads, plays a crucial role in Europe's security landscape. This nuclear capability is designed to serve as a deterrent against potential threats to the French homeland. France employs a diversified approach to its nuclear capabilities, with some weapons deployed on fighter bombers. However, the centerpiece of its nuclear deterrence strategy lies with the French Navy's Triomphant-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Always on patrol, each of these submarines carries 16 M45 missiles, capable of carrying multiple TN75 warheads with a yield of 110 kilotons. Developed by ArianeGroup since 2010, the M51 family of missiles represents an advancement over its predecessor, the M45. The latest variant, M51.3, has been in development since 2014 and offers improvements such as the ability to carry warheads with a yield of up to 150 kilotons, according to New Atlas. Additionally, it features an enhanced third stage for extended range and improved capabilities to penetrate missile defenses, with an estimated range of about 10,000 km (5,000 miles) and a top speed of Mach 25. Read Also: Giant Whale-Shaped Solar-Powered Airship to Make the World's First Zero-Carbon, Non-Stop Trip Around the Globe Cutting-Edge Nuclear Deterrent Scheduled to be in service by 2025 on the Triomphant class and the planned SNLE 3G successor submarine class, the M51.3 is a testament to France's ongoing commitment to maintaining a cutting-edge nuclear deterrent. The recent test, conducted under the French General Directorate of Armaments (DGA), saw the missile launched from the DGA missile testing site in Biscarrosse, southwestern France. The flight path took the missile over the North Atlantic, with a controlled splashdown in a remote sea area far from any coastline. Sebastien Lecornu, Minister of the Armed Forces, expressed satisfaction with the successful qualification firing of the M51.3. Emphasizing the importance of this development in perpetuating the credibility of France's nuclear deterrence, Lecornu commended the collaborative efforts of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA), and industrial partners. The Defense Ministry's statement highlighted the meticulous monitoring of the missile throughout its flight phase by the DGA's test resources. The fallout zone in the North Atlantic, far from any coast, underlines the commitment to conducting tests in strict compliance with international agreements. Related Article: 2024 Paris Olympics: French Lawmakers to Vote on Controversial Bill Legalizing AI-Powered Surveillance 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The United States (US) government has reportedly secured a settlement with Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, amounting to over $4 billion, according to an anonymous source cited by the Associated Press. The settlement comes after months of accusations against Binance, including operating as an unregistered securities exchange and violating various US securities laws. Binance Under Legal Scrutiny Binance, a Cayman Islands limited liability company founded by CEO Changpeng Zhao, has been at the center of legal scrutiny, facing allegations similar to those discovered following the collapse of the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, in 2022. The charges involve accusations of operating as an unregistered securities exchange and violating US securities laws. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, has been accused of redirecting customer funds, hiding the mingling of billions of dollars in investor assets, and allegedly channeling them to a third party personally owned by Zhao. In response to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing a lawsuit against Binance, the company asserted its collaboration with the investigation but criticized the SEC for acting independently and opting for legal action. Read Also: CryptoWatch: All About Jack Dorsey's Bluesky Decentralized Blockchain Platform, Cryptocurrency Prices Nearing a Resolution? It was reported on November 20 that the ongoing investigation led by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) into Binance is nearing a resolution with a substantial settlement of $4 billion. This development is seen as a potential conclusion to the extended probe against Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, who has been the subject of alleged criminal charges. Negotiations surrounding the settlement indicate that Binance's US operations will continue, sparing the cryptocurrency exchange platform from a severe blow. According to Bloomberg, sources familiar with the matter noted that the DOJ sought a settlement of up to $4 billion, addressing potential criminal charges in the US against Zhao. The focus of the lawsuit reportedly revolves around Binance's violations related to money laundering, bank fraud, and sanctions. Despite Zhao's current residence in the United Arab Emirates, where there are no extradition treaties with the US, he remains liable to criminal charges if he enters the US. While the $4 billion settlement represents a significant financial setback for Binance, it allows the platform to continue its operations in the US, avoiding potential market fallout and safeguarding its customer base. The settlement is viewed as a measure to prevent a collapse similar to previous incidents in the cryptocurrency exchange industry. It is worth noting that the cryptocurrency sector has been contending with controversies and upheavals, as demonstrated by the recent conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried, the 31-year-old founder of the unsuccessful cryptocurrency brokerage FTX. He was found guilty of fraud involving the misappropriation of a minimum of $10 billion from both customers and investors. Related Article: CryptoWatch: Binance Exits the Netherlands, US Crypto Crackdown on Regulations, and Damus' Potential Ban 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Digital payment platforms are often praised for their convenience, but they are now under scrutiny in a recent study from the University of California, Davis, that reveals their potential misuse in facilitating drug dealing and other illicit activities. The dark side of these platforms comes to light as researchers explore the intersection of digital payments and illegal drug markets. Drug Dealing on Digital Payment Apps While they transform financial interactions, these digital payment apps underscore the importance of ongoing vigilance and the necessity for adaptive regulatory measures, according to Pantelis Loupos, assistant professor of marketing and business analytics at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and co-author of the study. "This study serves as a reminder to maintain awareness of our digital footprints and to engage with digital services responsibly," Loupos said in a press statement. The study, titled "Social drug dealing: how peer-to-peer fintech platforms transformed illicit drug markets," scrutinizes 23 million transactions involving two million users over a two-year period using the expansive dataset from Venmo. It uncovers that a minimum of 83,068 unique users participated in drug-related activities, utilizing emojis, words, or street slang associated with drugs. The research seeks to illuminate the implications of these findings for regulatory measures and individual responsibility. The analysis differentiates between users who use the platform solely for drug-related transactions and those involved in various legal and illicit activities. It identifies specific terms and emojis related to drug dealings, often coded to hide the true nature of the transaction. Emojis like pills or syringes and slang terms like "greens," "blues," or "shrooms" are used to represent different drugs. The study uncovers coded language for quantities, such as using "pizza" to represent a kilogram of cocaine or "cupcakes" for a small amount of marijuana. Users employ euphemistic phrases like "pay for dinner" or "pitch in for gas" to mask their transactions' true nature. Read Also: Sygnia CEO Magda Wierzycka Criticized Elon Musk for Crypto Tweets, But Who Exactly is She? Get to Know Her and the Fintech Company Dual-Use Nature of Fintech Platforms Loupos emphasizes that this study underscores how fintech platforms have a dual-use nature and showcases innovative ways these services can be co-opted. Importantly, it offers law enforcement and regulatory bodies a more profound understanding of digital transaction patterns, contributing to the development of more effective countermeasures. The study emphasizes the evolving landscape of illegal drug transactions, intertwining with modern technologies and platforms. "Our findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between these two types of illicit users and provide law enforcement agencies with valuable insights that can aid in combating illegal drug transactions in digital payment apps," the study's abstract reads. The research team's findings were published in the Annals of Operations Research. Related Article: UK to Launch Fast-track Visa Program for Migrants in the Fintech Sector as Demands for Highly Skilled Workers Grow 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Australian Red Cross Lifeblood has collaborated with Australian scientists to create the world's smallest moustache, measuring just five microns, using a peculiar ingredient: a red blood cell. The Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication (MCN) at the Australian National Fabrication Facility and the Ramaciotti Centre for Cryo-Electron Microscopy at Monash University joined forces for this microscopic feat, Scimex reported. The Tiny 'Mo' Moustache The tiny "Mo" was designed to support Movember, a global men's health charity, and draw attention to the crucial role of blood donation in men's health. After Lifeblood collected a red blood cell from a volunteer donor in Melbourne, the MCN team used a remarkable instrument called a FIB-SEM to capture the image of the minuscule moustache. The FIB-SEM can image structures as small as 1/10,000th of the width of a human hair, using high-energy beams of metal ions to etch and deposit tiny structures, as explained by Bernie Orelup, Engineering & Operations Manager at the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication. Explaining the procedure, Orelup compared it to assembling a miniature "Mr. Potato Head" accessory. The team carefully fashioned the minuscule moustache by applying layers of 3D-printed polymer resin to a tiny stalk, then gently affixing it to a single red blood cell using a micro manipulator. The sophisticated nanofabrication techniques enabled the creation of a symbol supporting men's health, unseen by the naked eye yet conveying a potent message. Prior to the microscopic examination, the single red blood cell underwent a process of fixation onto a gold-coated slide and received a coating of metal approximately 15 nanometers thick. Throughout November, Lifeblood is partnering with Movember to promote men's health and encourage blood or plasma donations. Alison Gould, a spokesperson for Lifeblood, highlighted that many leading causes of illness for men, such as heart disease, lung and throat cancers, and blood clots, often require billions of blood cells during treatment. She emphasized that blood donation is not only a way to help others but also an opportunity to learn about one's own health. Read Also: 3D Mini Human Colons With Immune Cells Developed to Advance Treatments for Colon-Related Diseases Small in Size, Big in Impact The microscopic moustache, though small in size, aims to make a big impact by inspiring individuals to contribute to men's health through blood donation. Donors in November will receive a limited-edition Movember-designed bandage. Bernie Orelup expressed how this project merged their nanofabrication expertise with a noble cause. The small moustache serves as a testament to the importance of advanced scientific tools in unraveling mysteries on a miniature scale. "The focused ion-beam scanning electron microscope (FIB-SEM) was our key to unlocking the secrets of this tiny 'Mo.' It allowed us to reveal a world that is usually hidden from view, emphasizing the importance of advanced scientific tools in unravelling mysteries on a miniature scale," Orelup said in a statement. Related Article: NYU Surgeons Successfully Complete World's First Full Eye Transplant Following Deadly Accident 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Sam Altman, once again CEO of OpenAI, has reclaimed the helm of the top tech company, culminating in the resolution of a tumultuous board-led ouster that triggered an unprecedented employee revolt. Altman's reinstatement brings closure to a gripping corporate saga that gripped the tech industry over the last few days. Corporate Drama Inside OpenAI Last Friday, Nov. 17, the board overseeing OpenAI abruptly removed Altman, citing alleged inconsistencies in his communication with the board, leading to an eruption of internal unrest. The board's decision set off a chain of rapid developments that mirrored a drama-filled television series. Within a week, OpenAI underwent leadership changes, appointing interim CEOs, only for Altman's reported alliance with Microsoft to be retracted. Negotiation deadlines for Altman's return passed, while employees threatened collective resignations, showcasing the magnitude of internal solidarity. As the uprising among employees intensified, Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist and board member, had a change of heart: "I profoundly regret being part of the board's decisions," he conveyed in a message on X. He not only endorsed the letter but also stepped down from the board, though he continues to work as an employee at OpenAI. Sam Altman Returns as CEO In a bid to quell the upheaval, OpenAI announced on Tuesday an 'agreement in principle' for Altman's return as CEO, accompanied by an overhaul of the board. We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this. OpenAI (@OpenAI) November 22, 2023 Notable figures such as Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo, a former early Facebook employee, and Quora's CEO, join the revamped board. NBC News reports that the preceding board's removal of Altman lacked specific details but hinted at communication discrepancies, sparking debates over AI development pace and control, issues that had simmered within the board for over a year. Microsoft, a pivotal investor in OpenAI, expressed support for the board's changes and Altman's reinstatement, emphasizing the significance of stability and informed governance. We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board. We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance. Sam, Greg, and I have talked and agreed they have a key role to play along with the OAI leadership team in ensuring https://t.co/djO6Fuz6t9 Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) November 22, 2023 Read Also: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says Sam Altman Might be Reinstated to OpenAI Back to Business Altman, renowned within San Francisco's tech circles, expressed his enthusiasm for resuming leadership, emphasizing his dedication to OpenAI's mission in an informal statement: "i love openai, and everything i've done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together." The turbulence within OpenAI elicited widespread support for Altman, including endorsements from tech luminaries like Elon Musk and Eric Schmidt. Over 700 out of 770 employees penned a letter urging Altman's return, underlining the precariousness of the startup's future. Despite the internal strife, The New York Times reports that investor interest in OpenAI remains robust, with reports indicating an upcoming funding round valuing the company at over $80 billion, led by Thrive Capital. Altman's reinstatement and the board's restructuring mark a significant turn, possibly stabilizing the company after a period of uncertainty. The transition is anticipated to reinforce OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft, which is vital for its AI development endeavors. Related Article: Report: OpenAI Investors Explore Legal Action Against Board After CEO Sam Altman Ouster 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Iran has approved for the entry of 120 inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vice President of Iran and Chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami said, Trend reports. He spoke to the reporters after the meeting of the Cabinet of Iran in Tehran on November 22, 2023. The Vice President stressed that, as the specified number of inspectors have been granted access to Iran, the IAEA should refrain from repeating certain political issues. Eslami also mentioned that, regarding the prevention of the entry of some IAEA inspectors into the country, the first is that they have not come to Iran for some years, and the second is that Iran has the right to accept or not the inspectors announced by the IAEA. The IAEA's activities in Iran are within the framework of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the monitoring of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and the Convention on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The IAEA's latest information on Iran is based on the mentioned frameworks. The JCPOA states that if several parties fail to fulfill their obligations, the other party may suspend its obligations. In addition, the strategic action plan of the Iranian Parliament is being implemented, he said. Recently, some world media reports cited the IAEA as saying that Irans 60 percent enriched uranium reserves had increased from 6.7 kg to 128 kg. Irans nuclear program was the subject of the JCPOA, a deal signed by Iran and the P5+1 group (US, Russia, China, UK, France, and Germany) on January 16, 2016. However, on May 8, 2018, the US withdrew from the JCPOA and imposed new sanctions on Iran as of November 2018. Iran claims that its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, but the IAEA has reported that Iran has increased its highly enriched uranium by 27 percent in the last three months and now has 4,745 kilograms of enriched uranium. This is 15 times more than the amount allowed for Iran in the JCPOA. Iran has been trying to resume talks with the other parties on its nuclear issue and revive the JCPOA. The main goals of Iran are to end the sanctions imposed by the US and Western countries, access funds frozen abroad, and resume its crude oil exports. In late 2020, the Iranian parliament decided to implement a strategic plan to tackle the sanctions, citing the non-implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed between Iran and six countries and the imposition of sanctions on Iran. According to the decision of the Iranian parliament, as of February 23, Iran suspended the implementation of additional steps and an additional protocol provided for in the nuclear deal. As a result, the control mechanism of the IAEA decreased by 2030 percent. --- Follow the author on X (Twitter):@BaghishovElnur The countenance of an ancient Egyptian mummy, Minirdis, has been unveiled after 2,300 years and scientists are hungry to know an interesting finding about his anatomy, particularly on his face. The elite individual, part of a revered holy family, met an untimely demise at the age of 14, leaving behind a legacy intertwined with Egyptian religious traditions. Minirdis' Background Minirdis, a scion of a holy family, held the promise of inheriting his father's role as a priest of the fertility god, Min. His life, filled with the anticipation of spiritual responsibilities, was tragically cut short at the tender age of 14. Interred in the Akhmim cemetery, in Upper Egypt, his mummified remains became a silent witness to the passage of millennia. Related Article: 3,000-Year-Old Mummy Uncovered at Lima Trash Dump Site; What Does it Say About Ancient Peru? What the Scientists Discovered About the Egyptian Mummy Boy? Recent scientific endeavors to reconstruct Minirdis' face have unraveled a rare medical condition - megalencephaly, characterized by an abnormally large brain. Cicero Moraes, lead author of the forthcoming study, delves into the diagnostic process. He highlighted that the skull volume values pointed to three standard deviations above the norm for head circumference and brain volume, according to The Sun. "I noticed that the coffin seems to be for a person older than the mummy, but even so, the head takes up almost the entire length of it. Therefore, the death mask had been rotated, otherwise, it would not have been possible to close the coffin," he added. Reconstructing How Minirdis Looks Like Digitally The reconstruction of Minirdis' likeness was a meticulous process, involving a digitized model of his skull. Soft tissue addition and the guidance of data from living individuals, particularly within the relevant age group, brought the ancient visage back to life. The intricate interplay of science and art revealed a young and innocent face from antiquity. Despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding Minirdis' cause of death, historical insights suggest a life adorned with material and spiritual abundance. As the son of a priest belonging to the religious elite, Minirdis walked a path filled with promises and privileges within ancient Egyptian society. Unraveling the Cause of Death While megalencephaly itself can manifest benignly, it also raises the specter of developmental delays, intellectual disability, seizures, and paralysis, per Daily Mail. The unanswered question of Minirdis' cause of death adds a layer of intrigue to the narrative, leaving historians and scientists confused about his health history. As Minirdis' reconstructed face gazes across the ages, it offers a poignant connection between the past and the present. Thousands of years dissolve as his eyes observe a modern world in search of answers about its ancient roots. The study eagerly awaited for formal academic presentation, promises to deepen our understanding of ancient Egyptian life, medical conditions, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the mummified remains of the 14-year-old kid. Read Also: Ancient Scent: Scientists Recreate 'Perfume' Used to Preserve Egyptian Mummies 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. OpenAI has just announced a game-changing update for ChatGPT users - the free accessibility to the voice feature for all amid the controversial return of CEO Sam Altman after he was kicked. This marks a significant expansion of capabilities, allowing users to interact with ChatGPT using their voice on the mobile app. The inclusion of an audible response enhances the overall user experience, making ChatGPT even more versatile. Free Voice Feature for All ChatGPT Users The much-anticipated voice feature, once exclusive to paying users, is now accessible to everyone. According to a report by The Verge, OpenAI has democratized the power of voice interactions, inviting a broader user base to engage with ChatGPT using their own voice. This update is a testament to OpenAI's commitment to inclusivity. ChatGPT Voice rolled out for all free users. Give it a try totally changes the ChatGPT experience: https://t.co/DgzqLlDNYF Greg Brockman (@gdb) November 21, 2023 In X, which is formerly known as Twitter, newly reinstated OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman tweeted a short clip about ChatGPT Voice. Related Article: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says Sam Altman Might be Reinstated to OpenAI Evolution of Voice and Image Prompts In September, OpenAI introduced the ability to prompt ChatGPT using voice and images. While initially limited to paying users, this groundbreaking feature has now been launched for free. Users can seamlessly integrate voice prompts into their interactions so they could open up new possibilities for dynamic and engaging conversations. OpenAI's Staff Struggles Amid CEO Changes The release of the free voice feature comes amidst organizational upheaval at OpenAI. The sudden removal of CEO Sam Altman has led to internal discord, with staff members expressing their dissatisfaction and issuing ultimatums to the board. The ongoing drama has unfolded in the public eye as Altman reclaimed his CEO position in the company. It was a surprise for others, but to some, it's something that will automatically happen in the first place. Humor in ChatGPT's Demo OpenAI's post on X includes a playful demonstration of the voice feature, injecting a sense of humor into the turbulent times. In the example, a user humorously asks ChatGPT about ordering pizzas for a large group, mirroring the hunger and late-night discussions within the OpenAI team. This lighthearted approach acknowledges the challenges while embracing the potential of the new feature. ChatGPT's Voice Feature Reshapes User Experience As users explore the possibilities of ChatGPT's free voice feature, every user wants to know more about it. The voice feature not only adds a new dimension to interactions but also sets the stage for further innovations in how users engage with AI models. The democratization of voice capabilities marks a step towards a more inclusive and dynamic AI experience. Advantages of ChatGPT Voice According to Gizchina, here are the pros of the new voice feature in OpenAI's chatbot. Eliminates the need to type questions Provides a more natural and intuitive way to interact with AI Makes AI more accessible to people with disabilities Expands the reach of AI to a wider audience Represents a significant milestone in the evolution of AI applications Read Also: OpenAI Turmoil: Hundreds of Employees Demand Board Resignation in Bold Letter 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The holiday season is in full swing, and for many, Amazon Prime has been a go-to for Black Friday shopping. While the platform offers competitive deals and Prime perks, the need for returns might arise. Whether it's a wrong product, a defect, or a change of heart, understanding the intricacies of Amazon returns is crucial. Transparent Returns Process: Key to a Smooth Experience Amazon's returns or exchanges process can be straightforward, provided you follow the right steps. To ensure your returns are free and efficient, understanding the reasons for the return is vital. CNET advises that customers should be honest and precise about the issue, as misclassification can lead to potential charges or negative repercussions. Related Article: Hulu's Secret Black Friday Deal for GMA Viewers: 99 Cents for Premium Subscriptions! Valid Reasons for Returns: Making the Right Selection Amazon provides various reasons for returns, each with its own implications. Some reasons, like "No longer needed," may qualify for free returns, while others, such as "Bought by mistake," could incur charges. Familiarize yourself with the available options to avoid any surprises during the return process. Shopping with Alexa: A Return-Friendly Option For worry-free returns, consider making purchases through Alexa. Any physical merchandise ordered via voice shopping with Amazon's digital assistant comes with free returns, regardless of the reason. This ensures flexibility in your shopping choices without concerns about return shipping costs. Choosing the Right Return Shipping Method: UPS Pick-up Option When initiating a return, don't settle for the default return shipping method. Look for alternatives, and if possible, opt for UPS Pick-up. This option allows you to return items without leaving home. Ensure you confirm your return and select the UPS Pick-up method, which often comes with a $0.00 cost, making it a convenient and cost-effective choice. Refund Preferences Decide how you want your refund - whether as a credit to your Amazon account or back to your debit or credit card. While a credit is issued swiftly, a refund to your card may take additional processing time. Consider your preferences and choose the option that aligns with your needs. Packaging and Sending Once you've made your selections, follow Amazon's instructions for packaging and sending the return. Ensure the box is securely taped, protecting the return label. Place the package in an easily accessible location, and if scheduling a UPS Pick-up, set reminders to avoid any oversights. Making Returns Effortless Scheduling a UPS Pick-up is a convenient way to ensure your return reaches Amazon without leaving your home. If the UPS driver attempts pickup and you're unavailable, they may leave a prepaid mailing label for self-application. Plan ahead to avoid any inconvenience. Navigating Amazon returns during the holiday season doesn't have to be a challenge. By understanding the process, selecting the right reasons for returns, and utilizing convenient options like UPS Pick-up, you can ensure a hassle-free experience. Read Also: Best Buy Black Friday Deals: Snag This Google Pixel 8 Pro for as Low as $50 With This Sweet Trick 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Four US lawmakers have formally urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to initiate an investigation into Elon Musk's statements regarding the safety of Neuralink's brain implant technology, Reuters reports. The request alleges potential securities fraud by Musk, CEO of Neuralink, for purportedly misleading investors about the risks associated with the innovative technology - violating SEC Rule 240.10b-5. Musk's Neuralink Experiments Killed Off 12 Monkeys The call for scrutiny, spearheaded by Democratic House Representatives Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, and Barbara Lee and Tony Cardenas of California, revolves around concerns raised about Neuralink's handling of safety protocols during animal testing. According to the letter sent to the SEC, the lawmakers highlight significant discrepancies between Musk's public statements and internal data from Neuralink's experiments involving monkeys. Citing veterinary records obtained from these experiments, the lawmakers point out that at least 12 monkeys experienced severe health repercussions due to the implants, ultimately leading to their euthanasia. These records indicated a range of distressing outcomes, including paralysis, seizures, brain swelling, and other adverse effects linked directly to the Neuralink implants. Read Also: Binance CEO Resigns: Changpeng Zhao to Plead Guilty, Settles $4.3B to DOJ Musk's Neuralink Statements Under Scrutiny Musk, in a post on his social media platform X, attempted to ease investor concerns by asserting, "No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant," and indicating that the company selected "terminal" monkeys to minimize risk to healthier ones. However, the lawmakers dispute these claims, highlighting evidence contradicting Musk's statements, suggesting that the monkeys weren't in a terminal state and were relatively young before being subjected to Neuralink's experiments. This push for an SEC investigation stems from a history of allegations and concerns surrounding Neuralink's animal testing practices. Earlier this year, Reuters reported on the company's rushed surgeries on monkeys, pigs, and sheep, allegedly resulting in a higher number of animal deaths than necessary. This rush for results reportedly came from Musk himself, pressuring staff to hasten the safety data required by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve human testing. Neuralink, valued at approximately $5 billion, has recently announced receiving FDA clearance for its first human clinical trial without disclosing the trial's specifics. Here is the full letter shared by Wired: The Honorable Gary Gensler Chair U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F St. NE Washington, DC 20549 Dear Chair Gensler: Thank you for your ongoing work to protect investors and safeguard the integrity of our financial system. We write to request that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigate whether Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of the medical device company Neuralink (Central Index Key # 0001708503), committed securities fraud by making intentionally misleading statements to investors. Since 2016, Neuralink has conducted experiments on animals with the intention of developing an implantable brain-computer interface. Between May 2017 and December 2020, employees performed invasive, exploratory brain studies on rhesus macaques at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis). During most of the experiments, Neuralink employees drilled two dime-sized holes in the animals' heads, implanted electrodes in their brains, and attached titanium plates to their skulls using bone screws. In 2021, as a result of a California Public Records Act lawsuit against UC Davis, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine obtained veterinary records from Neuralink's experiments that show that the implantation of the Neuralink device caused debilitating health effects in the monkeys. Test monkeys suffered from chronic infections, swelling in the brain, "remnant electrode threads" from the device, a "tattered" cerebral cortex, paralysis, seizures, loss of coordination and balance, and depression. Public records reveal that at least 12 young, previously healthy monkeys were euthanized by Neuralink as a direct result of problems with the company's implant. On September 10, 2023, Mr. Musk responded to animal welfare concerns at Neuralink via a post on the social media platform X, which he also owns. He wrote: "No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant. First our early implants, to minimize risk to healthy monkeys, we chose terminal mon[k]eys (close to death already)[.]" Yet Mr. Musk knows this statement is false. Monkey health records show that, while several animals had suffered physical trauma and been used previously in experiments at UC Davis, there is no evidence that they were "close to death," as Mr. Musk stated. Rhesus macaques often live to about 25 years in captivity, with some living to 40. But the average age of the 12 monkeys euthanized by Neuralink was 7.25 years when they were moved to the company's experimental protocol. The animals' deaths and the reasons for their deaths relate directly to the safety and marketability of Neuralink's brain-computer interface. It is critical that the company provide investors with factually accurate information, and thus we are concerned that Mr. Musk may have violated SEC Rule 240.10b-5: It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of the mails or of any facility of any national securities exchange...[t]o make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading...in connection with the purchase or sale of any security. In its 2018 complaint against Mr. Musk for posting misleading messages on the platform then known as Twitter, the SEC referenced his 22 million followers, emphasizing the reach of his social media account: "His tweets were published instantaneously to those people and were also publicly available to anyone with Internet access." Mr. Musk's online reach has grown significantly since 2018. Today, he has 162.9 million followers on X, the most of any account on the platform, and his September 10 post has already received more than 788,000 views. The company claims to have raised $280,274,981 in investments, with a minimum investment accepted from any outside investor of $14,995, according to its August 2023 Form D notice. Given the scale of these investments and Mr. Musk's history of misleading investors, it is crucial that the SEC investigate whether Mr. Musk's September 10, 2023 post violated SEC Rule 240.10b-5. Thank you for considering this request. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: Elon Musk's X Takes Legal Action Against Media Matters for 'Malicious' Report 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A Florida court found "reasonable evidence" that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other officials knew about Autopilot system faults but permitted hazardous cars to be operated. Circuit Court for Palm Beach County Judge Reid Scott last week allowed the plaintiff in a fatal collision case to bring suit against Tesla for deliberate misconduct and gross negligence, according to a Reuters report. The ruling presents a challenge for Tesla, which had previously won two product liability trials in California related to its Autopilot system. The Florida lawsuit emerged from a crash near Miami in 2019, resulting in the death of the Tesla owner. The October trial was postponed and has not been rescheduled. Tesla may face an unpleasant public trial due to "alarming inconsistencies" between its internal knowledge and marketing promises, according to the judge's summary of evidence. The judge pointed out similarities between the 2019 crash and a 2016 fatal accident involving Autopilot, raising questions about Tesla's knowledge of the system's shortcomings. The judge stated: "It would be reasonable to conclude that the defendant Tesla, through its CEO and engineers, was acutely aware of the problem with the 'Autopilot' failing to detect cross traffic." Tesla's Anticipated Countermove Banner's attorney, Lake "Trey" Lytal III, expressed pride in the outcome based on evidence of punitive conduct. The judge emphasized the significance of a 2016 Musk-directed video showing a Tesla driving without human assistance. The judge emphasized that the video did not indicate it was aspirational and lacked a disclaimer about the technology's current market availability. Tesla may argue human error as it has in the past, citing a National Transportation Safety Board investigation that found blame on both the truck driver and the Tesla owner for over-relying on Autopilot, as per a TechCrunch report. The case is expected to proceed to trial, potentially revealing new information about Tesla's internal knowledge and marketing practices. Tesla's lawyers may seek precedent from two earlier cases in California, where the company emerged victorious, emphasizing human error and challenging the plaintiffs' claims. Read Also: Spotify's Upcoming Royalty Model Changes to Generate $1 Billion for Artists: Here's What to Know In a recent verdict, a jury ruled in favor of Tesla in a case involving accusations that its Autopilot system caused the 2019 death of Tesla driver Micah Lee. Tesla knew about the product's faults, according to the two survivors' $400 million lawsuit. The EV manufacturer argued that human error caused the incident. This case, identified as No. 50-2019-CA-009962, is currently under trial in the Circuit Court for Palm Beach County, Florida. Tesla Employees in Sweden Go On Strike Meanwhile, Tesla workers in Sweden have initiated the first-ever strike for the company globally. The location of the strike in Sweden, known for its robust labor movement, adds significance. According to The Guardian, over 90% of Swedish workers benefit from collective bargaining agreements, contributing to decades of industrial harmony. The conflict, originating from a local dispute, has escalated and may have broader implications for labor movements and auto workers globally. Although Tesla does not produce cars in Sweden, the strike, triggered by the rejection of a collective bargaining agreement for 130 mechanics, has garnered solidarity from unions in various sectors, potentially impacting Tesla operations worldwide. Related Article: Elon Musk's X Takes Legal Action Against Media Matters for 'Malicious' Report 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. In an impressive feat in the field of medicine, Khattab Omar Rashid, a 24-year-old man from Oman, has surpassed astonishing challenges by bravely undergoing his fifth open-heart surgery, a decision that ultimately preserved his life. As first reported by Gulf News, the operation was performed in Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre in Mumbai, India. Omani Man Undergoes 5 Open Heart Surgeries Rashid's journey began on October 9 when he was admitted in critical condition, grappling with heart failure compounded by an active infection. What sets Rashid's case apart is the staggering series of surgeries he had endured before arriving at Jaslok Hospital. Four prior open heart surgeries, including a recent one merely two months earlier in another Indian hospital, had challenged his resilience. The initial surgery aimed to rectify a birth defect in his heart, addressing a subaortic membrane. Subsequent procedures followed, each attempting to resolve complexities arising from the previous surgeries. However, a persistent leak adjacent to the aortic valve led to two additional surgeries in Oman. The turning point came when a diagnosis revealed an ascending aortic aneurysm, a life-threatening condition where the heart's main blood vessel becomes dangerously dilated. The severity of Rashid's situation was emphasized by the medical team at Jaslok, who expressed the exceptional risks associated with managing an aortic aneurysm, particularly in cases where it had eroded the back of the breastbone. Read Also: UK Becomes First Country to Approve Gene Editing for Medical Treatment: CRISPR A Rare Procedure Dr. Suresh Joshi, Director of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at Jaslok, emphasized the rarity of such a procedure, labeling the fifth repeat open heart surgery as an exceptional technical challenge due to the intricate nature of the operation. The risks loomed large - excessive bleeding and potential damage to vital organs such as the brain, kidneys, and liver, especially given Rashid's active infection. During the surgery, the team courageously removed the aneurysm, excised the infected aortic heart valve, and opted for an unconventional yet crucial choice: aortic root replacement using a homograft obtained from a cadaveric donor in Chennai. This choice, while uncommon due to organ donation scarcity, proved vital in the presence of infection, as explained by Dr. Upendra Bhalerao, also part of the surgical team. The successful surgery marked a turning point in Rashid's arduous journey. Against all odds, he responded well to treatment and was discharged on November 8, heralding a triumph for both medical science and Rashid's resilient spirit. World Records It is uncertain if Rashid's surgery set any world records, but there are a couple of notable ones on record: Seth Wharton made history by becoming the longest survivor of an artificial double heart valve replacement, securing a Guinness World Record. He lived for 31 years and 238 days after his surgery on October 2, 1990, despite undergoing three open heart surgeries. Another remarkable record belongs to Jim Ward from Rancho Santa Margarita, California. He holds the title for the longest-surviving patient after open heart surgery, living an astonishing 70 years and 255 days following his operation at the age of 11 on February 19, 1952. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: NYU Surgeons Successfully Complete World's First Full Eye Transplant Following Deadly Accident 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. North Korean IT workers use fake identities, work credentials, and LinkedIn accounts and prepare interview discussions to get jobs at Western technology firms, according to experts' analysis. A collection of internal documents that Reuters and cybersecurity researchers meticulously reviewed reveals the complexity of this North Korea covert operation. This detailed examination of North Korea's remote IT workforce provides profound insights into the elaborate strategies employed to covertly raise funds for the nation's isolated regime. North Korea's Tactic to Reach Its Nuclear Ambition For four years, North Korea has escalated the export of thousands of IT professionals. The US, South Korea, and the UN agree that raising millions of dollars for Pyongyang's nuclear missile development is their major aim. According to inside documents, North Korea's tremendous effort and deceit to secure the success of a plan has become a financial lifeline for its cash-strapped leadership. Leading US cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks found a cache of private papers online, revealing North Korea's remote IT workforce's sophisticated operations. The findings include 30-page interview scripts used by North Korean software developers, which offer suggestions for navigating discussions about "good corporate culture" and other subjects during job interviews. Additionally, the cache includes fraudulent resumes, online profiles, and forged identities that North Korean workers utilized to apply for software development positions. Further insights into the tools and techniques employed by North Korean workers to convince firms globally to employ them were revealed through leaked dark web data. Chile, New Zealand, the US, Uzbekistan, and the UAE are among the nations involved. This shows North Korea's thorough planning and execution of its foreign money acquisitions, which are essential to its nuclear goals. Read Also: Amazon Launches 'AI Ready': Free Courses to Build Generative AI Skills The documents also reveal tactical overlaps with previously reported North Korean threat activities, such as Operation Dream Job, involving approaching potential employees with job offers and tricking them into downloading a malicious npm package hosted on GitHub as part of an online interview. The discovery highlights the multifaceted cyber capabilities of North Korean threat actors and their involvement in diverse cyber-related efforts. "These GitHub accounts appear well maintained and have a lengthy activity history. These accounts indicate frequent code updates and socialization with other developers. As a result, these GitHub accounts are nearly indistinguishable from legitimate accounts," Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 warned, as quoted by The Hacker News. Flexible Tactic Goes Beyond Financial Agenda Beyond financial theft, North Korean threat actors have been linked to espionage and supply chain attacks, showcasing the versatility of the regime's cyber program. State-backed North Korean hackers have allegedly stolen over $2 billion from cryptocurrency organizations and banks over the past five years, primarily to support weapons programs. The cyber program, known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), has demonstrated fluidity and adaptability in the face of various cyber-related challenges. In 2023 alone, North Korean hackers are estimated to have stolen $340 million in cryptocurrency assets. This staggering figure underscores the regime's commitment to leveraging cyber capabilities beyond financial gains according to CSO. The DPRK's cyber program remains a versatile threat actor, capable of adapting to and engaging in a range of malicious activities. The involvement of highly skilled, youthful hackers contributes to the program's adaptability. Related Article: Digital Payment Apps Can Easily Be Misused for Drug Dealing, New Study Finds 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A research team led by Prof. Chen Wei from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has unveiled a groundbreaking invention-an all-weather hydrogen-chlorine (H2-Cl2) battery capable of withstanding extreme temperatures from a bone-chilling -70C to a sweltering 40C. This study, highlighted as the cover article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, represents a significant stride in pursuing efficient and versatile energy storage technologies. (Photo: Image via J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2023) Making Hydrogen-Chlorine Batteries Rechargeable Hydrogen fuel cells have long been hailed for their promise to deliver sustainable energy, primarily due to the abundance of hydrogen. Among them, H2-Cl2 fuel cells stand out with their fast electrochemical kinetics, high redox potential, and robust, specific capacity of the Cl2/Cl- redox couple. However, a persistent challenge has plagued these cells as the volatility of chlorine gas during the charging process, leads to poor Coulombic efficiency and reversibility. This report shared by the Chinese Academy of Science tells us that the research team's journey began with the identification of a critical issue: traditional adsorptive cathodes struggled to immobilize Cl2 due to a lack of binding sites with a strong affinity for it, resulting in low reversibility. The team ingeniously designed a hierarchically porous carbon cathode to overcome this hurdle, blending highly micro-/mesoporous carbon (HPC) and macroporous carbon felt (CF). This innovative approach effectively confined the elusive Cl2 on the cathode, unlocking enhanced reversibility. Read Also: Hydrogen Fuel Can Be a Competitive Substitute for Diesel or Gasoline, New Study Says Impressive Results, Unveiling the Mechanism The H2-Cl2 cells showcased exceptional performance, maintaining high Coulombic efficiency and stability over an impressive 500 cycles at a discharge capacity of 3 mAh cm-2. Their resilience in ultralow temperatures was even more noteworthy, boasting a discharge plateau of 1.1 V and a specific capacity of 282 mAh g-1 at a bone-chilling -70C. The research team turned to advanced techniques to unravel the mystery behind this improved reversibility. Combining X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) with theoretical calculations illuminated the Cl2/Cl- reaction, revealing its correlation with the reversible formation and breakage of C-Cl bonds. This groundbreaking insight into the battery's inner workings opens new avenues for designing aqueous chlorine batteries and high-energy-density hydrogen batteries across a broad temperature spectrum. A New Frontier for Energy Storage In simpler terms, the researchers have pioneered a rechargeable H2-Cl2 battery that not only overcomes the challenges posed by extreme temperatures but also offers a promising solution to the longstanding issues of Coulombic efficiency and reversibility. This development represents a significant stride towards implementing hydrogen-chlorine batteries in real-world scenarios, transcending the limitations that have hindered their widespread adoption. In Other News A Florida court found "reasonable evidence" that Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other officials were aware of Autopilot system flaws but allowed hazardous cars to be driven. Judge Reid Scott of the Circuit Court for Palm Beach County last week granted the plaintiff in a fatal collision case the right to sue Tesla for deliberate misconduct and gross negligence. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: University of Tokyo Unveils Cobalt-Free Lithium-Ion Battery Boosting Energy Storage by 60% (Photo: Tech Times Writer John Lopez) 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Lack of deep sleep in older people increases their risk of getting dementia, a recent study reveals. Insufficient slow-wave sleep in persons over 60 may raise dementia risk by 27% for every 1% loss of deep sleep yearly, according to Monash University neuroscientist Matthew Pase. Slow-wave sleep, the third stage of a 90-minute sleep cycle, strengthens muscles, bones, and the immune system by slowing brain waves, heart rate, and blood pressure. As reported by Science Alert, Pase noted: "Slow-wave sleep, or deep sleep, supports the aging brain in many ways, and we know that sleep augments the clearance of metabolic waste from the brain, including facilitating the clearance of proteins that aggregate in Alzheimer's disease." He added that though the function of slow-wave sleep in dementia development remains unknown, " Our findings suggest that slow-wave sleep loss may be a modifiable dementia risk factor." Researchers from Australia, Canada, and the US evaluated Framingham Heart Study data from 346 people. Two overnight sleep examinations were performed on these people between 1995 and 1998 and 2001 and 2003, with an average five-year delay. Sleep variables across time were examined in the community-based sample, all over 60 in 2020 and dementia-free in 2001-2003. The researchers examined results from two polysomnography sleep studies and tracked dementia until 2018. Slow-wave sleep decreased after 60, peaked between 75 and 80, then stabilized. Comparing participants' first and second sleep studies revealed a link between each percentage point decrease in slow-wave sleep per year and a 27% increased risk of developing dementia. This risk rose to 32 percent when focusing on Alzheimer's disease. These connections are evident, but the study does not prove a causative link, requiring further research to properly understand slow-wave sleep loss and dementia. The results suggest that slow-wave sleep may reduce dementia risk, which should guide sleep quality measures for older adults. The Enduring Research on Sleep-Memory Link The relationship between sleep and memory has been studied for generations, according to a CBC article. In the mid-1700s, philosopher David Hartley mused about dream-filled sleep and memory development. By the 1900s, modern researchers began confirming this idea, illustrating how different sleep stages influence memory development. Neuroscientist Matthew Walker highlighted the importance of sleep in processing newly acquired information and long-term memory storage in 2009. Read Also: UK Proposes Tech Solutions for Food Security at Global Summit Over the last two decades, studies have indicated that just a day and a half without sleep can disrupt memory game performance and slow reaction times. Research involving American nurses revealed that both insufficient and excessive sleepless than five hours or more than nine hours per nightcorrelated with poorer cognitive test results, suggesting mental aging beyond their years. Some studies compare sleep deprivation to the cognitive damage caused by 0.10% blood alcohol after one day. In 2013, the CDC declared poor sleep a "public health epidemic," especially in older persons, associating it with a decline in cognition and dementia. Strawberry May Help Fight Dementia In a recent study, University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers examined the cognitive benefits of strawberry-infused supplement powder. The research included 30 moderate cognitive decline patients aged 50-65. Participants were instructed to abstain from consuming any berry fruits and instead added a daily packet of supplement powder to their water, with half containing strawberries. Cognitive tests, mood assessments, signs of depression, and metabolic data were collected. The findings indicated that those who consumed the strawberry-infused powder showed "reduced memory interference," suggesting better executive control during memory testing. Additionally, this group exhibited lower depressive symptoms, improved emotional control, and enhanced problem-solving abilities compared to the placebo group, according to lead researcher Robert Krikorian from UC. "There is epidemiological data suggesting that people who consume strawberries or blueberries regularly have a slower rate of cognitive decline with aging," the expert noted, as quoted by Fox News. Related Article: Microautophagy: Study Reveals How Cells Repair Damaged Lysosomes, Defy Aging 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A newly released report sponsored by the UK government strongly advocates a major revamp of the nation's payment system. Reuters tells us that the report urges a rapid shift towards digital payment options and a decreased dependence on Visa and Mastercard, the global industry leaders. A Needed Shift for UK Payments? The comprehensive analysis, "Future of Payments Review," underscores the pressing need for a transformative shift in the way financial transactions are conducted and regulated. The heart of this review revolves around the pivotal role of Visa and Mastercard in the UK's card payment systems. Despite their significant contribution to the payments ecosystem, the report highlights mounting dissatisfaction among merchants due to the perceived exorbitant costs associated with these card schemes. This discontent has sparked a chorus of calls for a viable digital alternative that could potentially alleviate the financial burden faced by retailers and service providers. "At the core of this review lies the need for a digital paradigm shift in our payment mechanisms. While acknowledging the contribution of traditional card schemes, it's imperative to address the dissatisfaction among merchants, paving the way for a more cost-effective and innovative payment landscape," stated an excerpt from the Future of Payments Review. Read Also: US Secures Over $4 Billion Settlement With Binance Open Banking One of the critical focal points of this comprehensive analysis is the advocacy for open banking as a potent catalyst for ushering in a more competitive and cost-efficient payment ecosystem. The report suggests that leveraging open banking, wherein third-party fintech firms utilize customer banking data with consent to offer payment services, could potentially provide a more economical alternative to traditional card schemes. "Open banking represents a watershed moment in reshaping payment journeys. By harnessing the power of open banking, we have the potential to provide retailers with a diversified choice beyond conventional card schemes," the report emphasized. Additionally, the report underscores the importance of enhancing consumer protection within open banking transactions. Recommendations include the implementation of robust dispute resolution mechanisms to bolster trust and security for consumers adopting open banking solutions. Industry Leaders Respond The response from industry leaders has been diverse. Reuters reports that Mastercard welcomed the review's recognition of the card's contribution to the payment landscape while reaffirming its commitment to investing in cutting-edge payment technologies, including open banking innovations. Apart from addressing merchant grievances, the report delves into enhancing the overall consumer shopping experience by advocating for a simplified approach to Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) requirements. This move aims to reduce fraud while ensuring a seamless shopping experience for consumers. Furthermore, the review emphasizes the necessity for a cohesive regulatory framework to drive efficiency and innovation within the payments sector. Recommendations range from evaluating fraud reduction targets to streamlining regulatory requirements for fintech firms, fostering an environment conducive to growth and innovation. Stay posted here at Tech Times. Related Article: Digital Payment Apps Can Easily Be Misused for Drug Dealing, New Study Finds 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Iran plans to start building the main reactor of a new nuclear power plant in Khuzestan Province, located in the southwest of the country, by the end of this year (March 19, 2024), Vice President of Iran and Chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami said, Trend reports. He spoke to reporters after the meeting of the Cabinet of Iran in Tehran on November 22, 2023. Eslami noted that excavation work for the foundation of the Karun Nuclear Power Plant will begin in the next few days. The chief also said that the construction and concreting of the main reactor will be a significant milestone in the countrys nuclear development. The Karun Nuclear Power Plant is expected to cost $2 billion and take eight years to complete. It will have a capacity of 300 megawatts of electricity. Iran aims to build the plant with its own domestic capabilities. Currently, Irans sole nuclear power plant in operation is the 1st unit of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant. Unit 1 of the Bushehr NPP was launched in 2011 by the Russian Atomic Company (ROSATOM). In 2013, ROSATOM handed over the operation of the unit to an Iranian company. The unit has been generating 1,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year since 2013. --- Follow the author on X (Twitter):@BaghishovElnur Italy's data protection authority has initiated a fact-finding investigation into the widespread collection of personal data for training artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, as announced on Wednesday. Renowned for its proactive stance among the 31 national data protection authorities, the Italian watchdog is particularly focused on ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a cornerstone of European data privacy regulations. This move follows an earlier incident this year when Italy briefly barred the popular chatbot ChatGPT over concerns of a potential privacy breach. The current investigation aims to evaluate whether online platforms are implementing sufficient measures to prevent the excessive collection of personal data, commonly referred to as data scraping, for use in AI algorithms. The Italian data protection authority stated, "Following the fact-finding investigation, the Authority reserves the right to take the necessary steps, also in an urgent matter," as quoted by Reuters. The statement did not specifically name any company involved. To ensure a comprehensive examination, Italy has invited participation from academics, AI experts, and consumer groups, encouraging them to share their perspectives during a 60-day fact-finding period, according to TVP. France, Germany, and Italy Agree on AI Regulation In a broader context, France, Germany, and Italy recently reached an agreement on the regulation of AI These governments support voluntary but legally binding commitments for AI providers in the European Union, according to a joint paper that Reuters obtained. This agreement is anticipated to expedite negotiations at the European level. Read Also: Cybersecurity Alert: North Korean Hackers Deploy Malware Through Bogus Job Recruitment Tactics While the European Parliament presented the AI Act in June, designed to mitigate risks and prevent discriminatory effects, recent discussions faced challenges. During these talks, MEPs walked out due to a deadlock over the proposed approach to foundation models. France, Germany, and Italy, among the larger member states, expressed reservations about certain regulations. They argued that making the code of conduct initially binding only for major AI providers could create a competitive advantage for smaller European providers but might reduce trust in them. Regulation Focusing on AI Use The three governments emphasized that rules of conduct and transparency should be universally binding, irrespective of the provider's size. Initially proposing no sanctions, they suggested the potential establishment of a sanction system if violations were identified over time. The paper envisions a European authority to monitor compliance with these standards. Germany's Economy Ministry, jointly responsible for the topic with the Ministry of Digital Affairs, emphasized the need to regulate the application of AI rather than the technology itself. Euronews reported that Digital Affairs Minister Volker Wissing has expressed satisfaction with the agreement with France and Germany, highlighting the importance of regulating the use of AI rather than the technology itself "to play in the top AI league worldwide." In August, international privacy watchdogs, including the UK's ICO, Canada's OPC, and Hong Kong's OPCPD, urged mainstream social media platforms to safeguard users' public posts from scraping. Their joint statement emphasizes that platforms have a legal responsibility to protect user data in most markets, per TechCrunch. Related Article: Analysis Reveals Europe-China AI Military Research Collaboration Raising Concerns 2023 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. 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 DAZN: Most expensive subscription package offers new customers less performance for the same money 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" Welfare institutions set out from the "dream" to hold up a beautiful life for special children 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 "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 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... Zelensky announces the entry of the war with Russia into a new phase and Kiev drops 18 marches The criminal investigation into the truck accident on the E22 is closed Ministry of Education: Strictly investigate and deal with the behavior of training institutions that are "difficult to refund" and "run away with money". The implementation plan for the Beijing Junior High School Academic Proficiency Examination was announced, and the examination time for each subject was clarified Peskov: The Kremlin proceeds from the fact that sanctions have been imposed for many years Beijing clarified how to test the experimental operation of physics, chemistry and biology subjects in the high school entrance examination 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" "Playing ahead of the curve": how OPEC+'s decision to further reduce oil supplies may affect its price 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 Sanchez coincides with the president of Israel in Dubai in the midst of the diplomatic conflict, but without foreseen contact 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. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. President of the National Assembly of Armenia Alen Simonyan has refused to take part in the meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in December, Trend reports. "Armenia has no decision regarding withdrawal from the organization, but I believe that my participation in the current situation is inappropriate," he told Armenian media. Earlier, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan also announced that he will not take part in the meeting of the CSTO Foreign Ministers, which will be held on November 22-23 in Belarus. Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan will not take part in the meeting of the CSTO in Minsk either. Prior to that, on November 14, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, during a phone call with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, declared his decision not to partake in the CSTO on November 23. Meanwhile, in a recent closed-door conference attended by experts and representatives from various information platforms and propaganda media, the Armenian PM declared a shift in the country's foreign policy direction. After the meeting, Pashinyan expressed his decision to discontinue involvement in the activities of the CSTO and the CIS, actively seeking alternative arrangements for both organizations. He also noted that Western partners had made several intriguing promises across different domains. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. The decision of the Armenian leadership not to participate in the joint meeting of the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) is regrettable, the Spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing, Trend reports. "It does not serve the interests of the Armenian people and will not assist to the strengthening of this friendly country's security and stability. At the same time, as we understand it, Armenian counterparts do not seek to obstruct the operation of the organization's statutory bodies or hamper the implementation of already agreed-upon statutory documents," she added. "In essence, this opens the door for Yerevan to participate in future work." Hopefully, the Armenian counterparts will take advantage of this opportunity soon." "Russia believes the CSTO will play an important role in maintaining regional stability in the South Caucasus", the official emphasized. "The deployment of a CSTO monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the decision on which is still on the table, would be a significant factor in ensuring the security of Armenia, unlike the EU mission, which continues to demonstrate its complete ineffectiveness and perform tasks that are far from the declared ones," she added. On November 14, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, during a phone call with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, declared his decision not to partake in the CSTO on November 23. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel Sign up to our free US news bulletin sent straight to your inbox each weekday morning Sign up to our free morning US email news bulletin Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the US Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Binace, the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange, will pay over $4bn to US officials after admitting to unlicensed money transfers, sanctions violations, and willfully failing to institute anti-money laundering protections, federal officials announced on Tuesday. The oversights allowed trading with sanctioned nations like Iran, Cuba, and Syria, and failed to institute systems to report suspicious potential transactions with terror groups, according to the Treasury Department. Binance was allowing illicit actors to transact freely, supporting activities from child sexual abuse to illegal narcotics to terrorism, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellensaid on Tuesday. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of and CEO of Binance, is also stepping down, and will pay a $50m fine after pleading guilty to related charges. He could face up to 18 months in prison. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility, the executive wrote on X. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself. Changpeng Zhao is stepping down as Binance CEO (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) Federal officials described a wide-ranging set of problems at the crypto exchange, which at times handled two-thirds of global crypto trades. It willfully enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions between American users and users subject to US sanctions, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in remarks on Tuesday. And its platform accommodated criminals across the world who used Binance to move their stolen funds and other criminal proceeds. Binance prioritized its profits over the safety of the American people. The massive penalty, one of the largest in US financial regulation history, will also go towards resolving inquiries from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of the Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. On multiple occasions, Binance leadership intentionally took steps that allowed dangerous and illegal transactions to take place, according to the Justice Department. Binance knew it served US customers, meaning it had to register with FinCen and implement anti-money laundering controls, but chose not to comply, per the DOJ. Rather than set up these protections, the company created a separate Binance.US platform in 2019, while seeking to encourage VIP customers to obscure their accounts and continue using the main exchange, officials said. Binance executives, including Zhao, made a plan to contact VIP customers and help the VIP register a new account for an offshore entity and transfer holdings to that account, the DoJ said in an announcement of the agreement on Tuesday. Binance employees also called US VIPs to encourage them to provide information that suggested the customer was not located in the United States. The company, knowing it had US customers, also failed to introduce controls that would stop them from making trades with sanctioned jurisdictions like Iran, resulting in over $898m in trades between US and Iran-based users between January 2019 and May 2022. At one point, according to the DoJ, Zhao told employees it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission, while in another instance, a compliance employee wrote in a message, We need a banner is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you. In a statement on Tuesday, Binance acknowledge making criminal violations. These resolutions acknowledge our companys responsibility for historical, criminal compliance violations, and allow our company to turn the page on a challenging yet transformative chapter of learning and growth, the company wrote. With the compliance and governance enhancements enshrined in our commitments, we can begin to share our vision for Binances exciting future and the future of the crypto industry. The company also emphasised that the resolutions dont allege Binance misappropriated user funds or engaged in market manipulation. Richard Teng, the companys former global head of regional markets, will take over as CEO, according to Binance. The massive agreement with federal regulators will also require Binance to accept the appointment of a government monitor to oversee the business and bar Zhao from involvement with the company until three years after the monitor is appointed, according to court records viewed by The New York Times. Notably, the Securities and Exchange Commission was not a part of the Binance agreement. The SEC sued Binance and Zhao in June, alleging that they used companies beneficially owned by Zhao to inflate trading prices and make money off customers, allegedly mixing customer funds with Binance money. While we take the SECs allegations seriously, they should not be the subject of an SEC enforcement action, let alone on an emergency basis. We intend to defend our platform vigorously, the company responded at the time in a statement. And, to be clear: any allegations that user assets on the Binance.US platform have ever been at risk are simply wrong, and there is zero justification for the Staffs action in light of the ample time the Staff has had to conduct their investigation, the company added in the statement. The massive settlement comes just weeks after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty in federal court of defrauding customers on his popular cryptocurrency exchange out of billions of dollars. Bankman-Frieds defence team has vowed to fight the charges. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }} {{ message }} {{ /verifyErrors }} {{ ^verifyErrors }} Something went wrong. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} Over the last decade, the US Supreme Court has gradually chipped away at a landmark voting rights law adopted at the height of the civil rights movement. A federal court ruling is teeing up another major Supreme Court case that could radically weaken the Voting Rights Act by blocking private citizens and civil rights groups from filing lawsuits to protect what has become Americas bedrock voting protections. On Monday, a three-judge panel with the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that determined that citizens and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP cannot legally challenge discriminatory state and local election laws. According to two of the judges on the panel, only the US Department of Justice can do so. Michael Li, senior counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, called the decision so unmoored from precedent that even the current ultraconservative Supreme Court is almost certain to reverse it. Under the lastest decision, voters facing discriminatory laws would have to rely only on the Justice Department to take up their case. If a highly politicised Justice Department under a Republican president hostile to voting rights declines, minority voters would be out of luck, Mr Li wrote. The result would be catastrophic. The case Arkansas State Conference NAACP v Arkansas Board of Apportionment deals with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election laws and policies that discriminate against voters based on race. Two years ago, the Supreme Courts decision in Brnovich v Democratic National Committee struck at Section 2 by making it more difficult to challenge election laws. And in 2013, the nations highest court gutted critical federal oversight measures from the 1965 Voting Rights Act to protect against discriminatory laws. That 2013 ruling struck out federal preclearance guidelines that required states with histories of racial discrimination at the polls from implementing new elections laws without first receiving federal approval. Ten years later, the Supreme Court is poised to review the latest case surrounding Section 2, after a court ruling that landed a body blow to what is left of the Voting Rights Act, according to Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project. The ability to sue has been fundamental and critical to beating back voter suppression, she said. This is unreal. At least 182 successful Section 2 lawsuits were filed within the last 40 years, including 15 that were brought solely by the US attorney general, Chief Judge Lavenski R Smith noted in his dissent. The 2-1 decision upheld a previous decision from US District Court Judge Lee Rudofsky, who was appointed by former president Donald Trump. The judge dismissed a lawsuit last year that challenged a voting map in Arkansas over allegations that the newly drawn congressional districts weakened Black voters electoral power. Judge Rudofsky gave US Attorney General Merrick Garland five days to join the case. When he didnt, the judge dropped it. Appeals court judge Judge David Stras another Trump appointee wrote that the assumption that Section 2 can be enforced rests on flimsy footing. Richard L Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, wrote that the decision was written with a wooden, textualist analysis despite recognizing that the Supreme Court and lower courts have for decades allowed such cases to be brought and that Congress intended to allow private plaintiffs to file them. The ACLUs Voting Rights Project director Sophia Lin Lakin, who argued the case before the court, called the ruling a travesty for democracy. For generations, private individuals have brought cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to protect their right to vote, she said in a statement. By failing to reverse the district courts radical decision, the 8th Circuit has put the Voting Rights Act in jeopardy, tossing aside critical protections that voters fought and died for. Barry Jefferson, political action chair of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP, the lead plaintiff in the case, called the ruling a devastating blow to the civil rights of every American, and the integrity of our nations electoral system. The plaintiffs are now exploring all available options to ensure that the rights of all voters are fully protected. Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to restore elements of the Voting Rights Act and expand voting rights protections in the wake of the 2020 election. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers across the country have enacted dozens of restrictive voting laws and laws that reshape the roles of election administration, giving power to partisan officials to do what Mr Trump and his allies failed to do in 2020. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. France has sold real military junk to Armenia, Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing, Trend reports. "The deliveries of Bastion armored vehicles to Armenia look rather naive. In Ukraine, they have shown their low efficiency in real combat situations. If you put them on display, maybe it makes sense. From the point of view of Paris' efforts, it means that France simply sold Yerevan real military junk that Paris could not supply in other directions. How this purchase can strengthen the protection of Armenia's sovereign territory remains a mystery. Not to mention the fact that such a hodgepodge of equipment from different manufacturers has never contributed to the strengthening of combat capabilities," she noted. Zakharova emphasized that Yerevan's hope that "the West will help " has failed. This also applies to the conclusion of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan. Bastion was originally designed for French troops in its former colonies in Africa. Now France is looking for any opportunity to get rid of this equipment. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel People who gathered in support of Israel stand across the street from people in support of the Palestinian people during a demonstration over the Israel-Hamas war near the Tulane University campus in New Orleans, Thursday, October 26, 2023. (Photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune) BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Yerevan's reckless bet on West helping out, has failed, Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing, Trend reports. "Yerevan is eager to negotiate in Washington and Brussels, although neither the US nor the EU can be considered conscientious intermediaries for a number of reasons. Their actions are subordinated to the goal of pushing Russia out of the South Caucasus. They want to destroy the existing security mechanisms, while stealing and reinterpreting the trilateral agreements reached with Moscow's participation. Therefore, there can be no real benefit from their mediation," she noted. Zakharova said that despite invitations, negotiations on the peace treaty froze. She emphasized that the Russian side has repeatedly invited Armenia to join the negotiations in Moscow and other platforms, but "there is no clear response from Yerevan". Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel The leaked files separately open a rare window into the fierce struggle between western and Chinese companies to control potentially the worlds largest untapped deposit of lithium, a critical mineral that has stoked tensions between Beijing and Washington. Since May 2022, when AVZ was suspended from trading over disclosure concerns, more than 20,000 Australian retail investors have held shares with a paper value of nearly $2.7 billion. AVZ is due to hold its annual shareholder meeting in Perth on Thursday, where the company will be under intense scrutiny. Transparency Internationals Clancy Moore said AVZs arrangements with Mihigo were absolutely shocking. AVZ managing director Nigel Ferguson. Credit: YouTube Moore noted negligible due diligence was initially done by AVZ when it made the $US1 million payment and AVZs advisers confidentially told the company that a top-notch lobbying firm could have been hired in the DRC for around $100,000. Given the scale of the monies offered to the middleman, we would expect regulators to review this matter without delay, Moore said. This masthead is not suggesting Ferguson or Mihigo paid any bribes, only that the companys conduct created a major corruption risk, given the inadequate due diligence that occurred. It is also not suggested any benefits were paid to DRC officials who met Mihigo. Ferguson detailed his decision to pay Mihigo in confidential briefing notes he sent his fellow AVZ board members in June 2022. Ferguson noted he had met Mihigo to workshop how to get things done for us in mid-2022 by using contacts between MM and PR05 [the DRC President Felix Tshisekedi] and PW05 [the first lady]. Ferguson also wrote that in addition to the DRC president and his wife, Mihigo was to help obtain the backing of other key players for us moving forward with the power to assist, before listing those players as the chief of the DRCs domestic spy agency and the minister of finance. In another note describing a second meeting with Mihigo, Ferguson described his detailed plan of attack. It involved Mihigo attending meetings with PR05 [President Tshisekedi] as well as the countrys intelligence chief, finance minister and the presidents brother. Next, Ferguson said he planned to personally brief the president, spy chief and finance minister in a one-hour meeting with each. The town of Manono in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Credit: WikiCommons This would enable Ferguson to appraise of them of the misinformation circulating from AVZs Chinese rivals, whom AVZ blamed for blocking its access to top DRC officials while sabotaging its African operations. It would allow the company to convince the president of the clear and professional intentions of AVZ, Ferguson wrote. Ferguson planned to stay in the DRC for at least three more days to allow for several potential follow-up meetings with [the president] and other officials to provide more comfort to officials around our intentions for the project and the country. A leaked letter written by Mihigo to AVZ states the president requested specifically to keep confidential the conversation he had with the Australian firms middleman. Ferguson told his fellow directors he had already instructed AVZ to wire a once off signature fee/retainer of US$1 million to Mihigo. This is to include all expenses, travel, accommodation and personnel (up to 10) he requires to complete the tasks over 12 months, Ferguson wrote. If Mihigo delivered to AVZ the mining project and other government support, a bonus of US$5m has been agreed to be paid in a mixture of cash and shares and only paid in stages. Loading The leaked documents reveal Mihigos hiring caused a furious response from director Peter Huljich, with the board ordering an urgent investigation by US private investigation firm Veracity. Veracitys inquiry not only warned of the bribery risks faced by AVZ from operating in the DRC but that Mihigo appears to be receiving a fee that is well above market rate for his services. While research has uncovered no clear indications of Mihigos involvement in corrupt dealings, it would not be unusual in the Congolese context for some portion of his fee to be used for bribes, Veracity wrote. It also noted Mihigo had ties to a former DRC presidential adviser arrested on corruption charges and a second former official currently on trial for involvement in an alleged coup plot. Ferguson defended the upfront payment to Mihigo, saying he had already intervened to protect AVZs interests in a matter involving the DRCs national security agency. Thats directly as a result of Marius [Mihigo] calling the people in question and imposing his will, Ferguson wrote, adding: We are confident that this [paying Mihigo] will produce results. At this time, the Australian miner was contesting not only Chinese companies it accused of acting corruptly, but lobbying from Chinese Communist Party officials. One memo details how President Tshisekedi had discussed the intervention of the ambassador of China to convince him to side with AVZs Chinese commercial rivals. A leaked strategy plan describes how AVZ sought to counter this with US political assistance and by using 3rd party assistance to promote project to US state [United States] as a critical project for Battery Minerals Supply Chain. AVZs lawyers, DLA Piper, told the board that if it had not redrawn the agreement with Mihigo and updated its anti-bribery and corruption policy, there would have been unavoidable questions about breaches of officeholder duties. The firm said it was critical the refashioned agreement and new anti-bribery and corruption policy were adopted and enforced by the board. Transparency Internationals Moore said AVZs dealings in Congo without appropriate care cast a dark shadow over the company. [Congo] is one of the worlds most corrupt countries and its mining sector is possibly the most corrupt prone globally, he said. For an ASX-listed company to hand over a million dollars to a connected middleman [without appropriate controls] is absolutely shocking conduct. He said geopolitical competition for critical minerals like lithium was creating increased corruption risks. In a statement, AVZ Minerals claimed Mihigo had proposed the bonus fee, which the board unanimously rejected. The company also insisted it had conducted appropriate due diligence into Mihigo, including asking the Australian embassy in Zimbabwe about him. New evidence has emerged supporting the controversial claim that explorer Captain Cooks ship HMB Endeavour was shipwrecked off the US coastline after being deliberately scuttled by British forces during the American War of Independence. Daryl Karp, Australian National Maritime Museum chief executive, said their archaeologists had uncovered further evidence that the wreck located at Newport Harbour, Rhode Island, south of Boston, was the Endeavour. A painting by John Alcott of Captain Cooks HMB Endeavour entering Botany Bay . Credit: The museums claim about finding the Endeavour was first aired in February 2022. However, the museums research partner, the Rhode Island Maritime Archaeology Project, rejected assertions that the wreck had been definitively identified, vowing not to be swayed by Australian emotions or politics. What we see on the shipwreck site under study is consistent of what might be the Endeavour, but there has been no indisputable data to prove the site is that iconic vessel, the projects executive director Kathy Abbass said at the time. There were many unanswered questions that could overturn such an identification. Former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann arrived at his defamation trial alone, and took a seat in the front row behind his lawyers. He wore a fresh haircut and a sharp suit. The courtroom filled up, leaving one spare seat on either side of him. It was the first day of the proceedings Lehrmann had brought against Network Ten and its one-time star journalist Lisa Wilkinson, who he claimed had defamed him by making him out to be a rapist in an interview with his former colleague Brittany Higgins, and two other broadcasts. Lisa Wilkinson and lawyers arrive at court on Wednesday. Credit: Louise Kennerley And then, 10 minutes before proceedings were due to begin, Wilkinson floated through the doors in a powder pink suit, and the only free spaces in the front row were on either side of the man who was suing her. A frantic rearrangement ensued. Some people leapfrogged seats to make way for Wilkinson, giving way to an invidious new scenario in which she would be required to sit next to the mens rights activist Bettina Arndt. A controversial YouTuber is under police protection a year after an alleged arson attack on his home that detectives say was meticulously planned and linked to organised crime as well as his online content. The Bondi house of Jordan Shanks-Markovina, also known as Friendlyjordies, was significantly damaged in a fire about 12.20am on November 23 last year. Shanks-Markovina was not home at the time, having misplaced his key earlier that day. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Puffett from NSW Polices arson unit addressed media on Wednesday morning, following the release of CCTV footage that showed two suspected stolen cars near the area about the time of the fire. The new laws rushed through federal parliament last week to impose curfews and ankle bracelets on former immigration detainees face their first High Court legal challenge as lawyers for a former Chinese student claim the new measures are unconstitutional. Lawyers for the man, who was placed in detention last year after serving a prison sentence, lodged court documents on Wednesday night in a bid to have the Migration Act amendments declared invalid, alleging they treat former detainees as criminals and raise concerns about the separation of powers between parliament and the courts. Lawyers for a former Chinese student released from detention after time in jail claim the governments tough new monitoring rules are unconstitutional. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen The application before this Court raises issues of significant public importance, necessitating prompt and thorough judicial examination. These matters are not only pivotal to the affected individuals but also bear considerable weight in the broader context of constitutional law and administrative practice, the court document says. According to the application, the man who has been given the pseudonym S151 has been told by the Commonwealth he must abide by a curfew, requiring him to stay at home between 10pm and 6am. Biden had an upfront look at what the victims of the Hamas attack endured when he held an emotional, lengthy meeting on October 13 with the families of Americans being held hostage or missing. Days later on October 18, Biden travelled to Tel Aviv for talks with Netanyahu. The official said securing the release of hostages was a central focus of the presidents discussions with Netanyahu and his war cabinet, as well as humanitarian assistance. US President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on October 18. Credit: AP Five days later, on October 23, the White House teams work helped yield the release of two American hostages, Natalie and Judith Raanan. From outside Sullivans West Wing office McGurk, Sullivan and Finer tracked in real time the captives difficult, multi-hour journey out of Gaza. The return of the two Americans proved it was possible to gain freedom for hostages and gave confidence to Biden that Qatar could deliver through the small team that had been established, the officials said. Now, the process intensified to get more hostages out. When this happened, Burns began speaking regularly with Mossad director David Barnea. Biden saw an opportunity to gain the release of a large number of hostages and a deal for prisoners was the only realistic path to securing a pause in the fighting, the officials said. People search buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, on November 18. Credit: Getty On October 24, with Israel poised to launch a ground offensive in Gaza, the US side received word Hamas had agreed to the parameters of a deal to release women and children, which would mean a pause in fighting and a delay of the ground invasion. US officials debated with the Israelis whether the ground offensive should be delayed. The Israelis argued the terms were not firm enough to delay it, since there was no proof of life for the hostages. Hamas claimed they could not determine who was being held until a pause in fighting began. Loading Americans and Israelis viewed the Hamas position as disingenuous. The official said Israels invasion plan was adapted to support a pause if a deal came together. Biden then engaged in detailed talks over the next three weeks as proposals about a potential hostage release were traded back and forth. Demands were made that Hamas produce lists of hostages it was holding, their identifying information, and guarantees of release. The process was long and cumbersome communication was difficult and messages had to be passed from Doha or Cairo into Gaza and back, the officials said. Biden held a previously undisclosed phone call with the Qatari prime minister when the phasing of releases began to take shape, the official said. Loading Under an early draft, women and children hostages would be freed in a first phase, together with a commensurate release of Palestinian prisoners from the Israelis. The Israelis insisted Hamas ensure all women and children come out in phase one. The US side agreed, and demanded through Qatar proof of life or identifying information for the women and children held by Hamas. Hamas said it could guarantee 50 in the first phase, but refused to produce a list of identifying criteria. On November 9, Burns met in Doha with the Qatari leader and Mossads Barnea to go through the texts of the emerging arrangement. The key obstacle at that point was that Hamas had not clearly identified who it was holding. Loading Three days later, Biden called the emir of Qatar and demanded to know the names or clear identifying information for the 50 hostages including ages, gender and nationalities. Without the information, the official said, there was no basis to move forward. Shortly after Bidens call, Hamas produced details for the 50 hostages it said would be released in the first phase of any deal. In a November 14 call, Biden urged Netanyahu to take the deal and Netanyahu agreed. McGurk saw Netanyahu that same day in Israel. Walking out of a meeting, Netanyahu grabbed McGurks arm and said we need this deal and urged Biden to call the emir of Qatar to agree the final terms, one of the officials said. Talks stalled as communications went dark in Gaza. Terms of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire All fighting in Gaza halts for four days. Hamas will release 50 women and children held as hostages. In exchange Israel will release 150 Palestinian women and children from jail. The truce deal will allow hundreds of trucks of humanitarian, medical and fuel aid to enter Gaza. Israel to extend truce an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. When they resumed, Biden was in San Francisco attending an Asia-Pacific summit. He called the emir of Qatar and told him this was the last chance, and the emir pledged to apply pressure to close the deal, the officials said. The president insisted the deal had to close, now. Time was up, one official said. On November18, McGurk met in Doha with the Qatari prime minister. Burns was dialled in after he spoke with Mossad. The meeting identified the last remaining gaps towards a deal. The agreement was now structured for women and children to be freed in the first phase, but with an expectation for future releases and the aim to bring all hostages home to their families. In Cairo the next morning, McGurk met with Egypt intelligence chief Abbas Kamil. Word came from Hamas leaders in Gaza that they had accepted nearly all the agreements worked out the day before in Doha. Only one issue remained, tied to the number of hostages to be released in the first phase and the ultimate structure of the deal to incentivise releases beyond the 50 known women and children, the officials said. Pope Francis met separately with relatives of Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinians living through the war and set off a firestorm by using words that Vatican diplomats usually avoid: terrorism and, according to the Palestinians, genocide. Francis spoke about the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians after his meetings, which were arranged before the Israeli-Hamas hostage deal and a temporary halt in fighting was announced. Francis met at the Vatican with 12 relatives of some of the 240 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for about 20 minutes. Separately, he met for about the same amount of time with 10 Palestinians whose relatives have been killed or otherwise affected by the war in Gaza, along with priests who minister there. Francis spoke about the meetings at the end of his weekly general audience in St Peters Square, where some people in the VIP seats wearing Palestinian scarves held up small posters showing bodies in a ditch and the word genocide written underneath. Palestinian ambassador to the Holy See Issa Kassissieh speaks during a press conference at The Vatican with family members of Palestinians living in Gaza after they met Pope Francis. Credit: AP Here weve gone beyond war. This isnt war any more, this is terrorism, Francis told the crowd. Please, let us go ahead with peace. Pray for peace, pray a lot for peace. He also asked for God to help both Israeli and Palestinian people resolve problems and not go ahead with passions that are killing everyone in the end. Francis has spoken out repeatedly calling for an end to the war and has tried to maintain the Vaticans typical diplomatic neutrality in conflicts. The Vatican is particularly concerned about the plight of Christians in Gaza. Members of the Palestinian delegation said they were stunned by Francis deep knowledge of the toll the war has taken on the people of Gaza and said he used the term genocide to describe it during their private meeting. The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said he didnt believe that Francis used that term. He used the terms he used during the general audience and regardless represent the terrible situation that Gaza is living, Bruni said. But the Palestinians doubled down. Ten people heard it, said another member of the delegation, Suhair Anastas, who left Gaza in the past week with her daughter, among those allowed to leave because she also holds a Canadian passport. Francis often causes diplomatic kerfuffles with his off-hand comments. He has used the term genocide before in reference to the Ottoman-era Turkish attacks on Armenians and, more casually, agreed when asked if the Catholic abuses against Indigenous peoples in Canada amounted to a genocide The Israeli relatives, for their part, thanked Francis for receiving them but some expressed dismay that he didnt have more time to hear from all members of the delegation. They also questioned his use of the term terrorism without saying who had committed it. They expressed hope that he might be able to use his moral authority to help free all the hostages. AP BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Talks about Armenia's forced search for an alternative to Russia is an attempt to shift responsibility and find the guilty in own mistakes, the Spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing, Trend reports. She made the remark, commenting on the statements of the Armenian authorities regarding the so-called 'change of direction' in the country's foreign policy. "It's interesting to know how this is working practically. It's a blatant attempt to conceal true intentions. It's clear that it involves a fundamental change in Armenia's orientation in foreign affairs, and this is being done quite obviously with hints from the West," Zakharova said. "They are trying to camouflage it, hoping that they can maintain the previous level of assistance and some special relationships. This is all visible and understandable, and it cannot be hidden. Talks about Armenia allegedly being forced to seek an alternative because it did not receive a response from Russia to its requests, and that Armenia is not leaving the CSTO but, on the contrary, is an attempt to shift responsibility and find those responsible for their own miscalculations," she stated. Zakharova mentioned that consultations were held with Armenia, both in a bilateral format and within the framework of the CSTO. However, Yerevan made the decision in favor of hosting an EU mission in the country. "Armenia's request to remove the consideration of the draft statement in support of achieving peace in the region from the CSTO summit agenda is also very eloquent. Russia and other CSTO allies remain open to dialogue and are ready to help if Yerevan wants to do so," she said. Stay up-to-date with more news at Trend News Agency's WhatsApp channel BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. The death toll in the Gaza Strip has reached 14,532 since October 7, the press service of the Gaza authorities says, Trend reports. According to information, about six thousand children and about four thousand women were among the dead. It is reported that at least seven thousand people are missing in the Gaza Strip, including about 4.7 thousand children and women. A combined attack was carried out on Israel on October 7. From the beginning, a massive rocket attack began from the territory of the Gaza Strip, followed by the penetration of militants by land, water, and air. Israel declared a state of war after a massive rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a mass gathering of reservists. Abbas Ganbay The Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Azerbaijan, Dragana Kojic, made a statement regarding visits to persons detained in Azerbaijan and Armenia and noted that these visits are carried out regularly, Azernews reports. "Employees of the committee regularly visit persons of Armenian origin detained in Azerbaijan, as well as Azerbaijanis detained in Armenia. The last time they visited places of detention was in late October or early November. During the visits, the ICRC officers are interested in the conditions of detainees' detention and their treatment," she noted. According to D. Kojic, they are now considering whether there are conditions for the detainees to establish contact with their families. She added that the ICRC regularly discusses these issues with both Azerbaijan and Armenia. It should be noted that the "presidents" of the so-called organization in Garabagh Arkady Ghukasyan, Bako Sahakyan, Araik Harutyunyan, former "foreign minister" David Babayan, as well as "parliament speaker" David Ishkhanyan, generals Leva Mnatsakanyan, David Manukyan and former "state minister" Ruben Vardanyan were arrested and taken to Baku by the law enforcement bodies of Azerbaijan. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Israel and Hamas may start swapping hostages on November 23, Trend reports. Israel has approved a plan to return at least 50 hostages from the Gaza Strip within four days. A combined attack was carried out on Israel on October 7. From the beginning, a massive rocket attack began from the territory of the Gaza Strip, followed by the penetration of militants by land, water, and air. Israel declared a state of war after a massive rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a mass gathering of reservists. Batavia, NY (14020) Today Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain for the afternoon. High 49F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.. Tonight Cloudy skies with periods of light rain late. Low 39F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%. BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 22. Turkiye elected as a member of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee for 2023-2027, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Trend reports. The minister said that Turkiye was elected as a member of the committee through voting at the session of the "24th General Assembly of States Parties" held in Paris. The Minister added that during the four-year membership period, Turkiye, together with other members of the World Heritage Committee, will have a say in the decision-making process regarding candidates for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List Shimmering mother-of-pearl is admired for its iridescent quality. Formed by a lining of nacre on the inside of certain mollusc shells, this delicate material (handle with care!) lends itself beautifully to watch dials, whether in natural white or other attractive shades Bulgari, CHF 3,290 An affordably priced watch that is perfect for daily wear, with a white mother-of-pearl dial and a design that has been winning hearts for more than 40 years, since its first presentation by the Italian brand in 1977. Then as now, it stands out for the double signature engraved in a circle around its bezel. Bulgari Bulgari in steel, 23mm diameter, quartz movement, steel bracelet Bulgari Breitling, CHF 7,500 A great example of how a mans watch can be successfully interpreted for women. Originating in 1952 as a tool for pilots, the Navitimer becomes a refined bijou of a watch, dressed with twelve diamond hour markers on a white mother-of-pearl dial. And not a slide rule in sight. Navitimer in steel and red gold, 32mm diameter, quartz movement, steel and red gold bracelet Breitling Van Cleef & Arpels, CHF 7,850 The archetypal jewel watch. Its diminutive case is adorned with delicate gold beading as a frame for the white mother-of-pearl dial, which is finished with sunray brushing. A single lug attaches the colourful alligator strap and there is no visible winding crown. A signature of Van Cleef & Arpels. Perlee Watch in yellow gold, 23mm diameter, quartz movement, leather strap Van Cleef & Arpels Breguet, CHF 26,500 A jewel and a watch whose proportions are adapted to a womans slimmer wrist. Diamonds surround the gold case, as though to highlight the white mother-of-pearl dial with its Clou de Paris guilloche pattern. Keeping time is the in-house Calibre 537/3 with automatic winding, assembled from 191 components. Classique Dame reference 8068 in rose gold with diamonds, 30mm diameter, automatic movement, leather strap Breguet Bovet, CHF 53,400 Recognisable at a glance, thanks to its pocket-watch-style case, this stunning timepiece contains an in-house movement with automatic winding. Crafted in gold and lavished with diamonds, its dial comes alive with, at its centre, a magnificent butterfly that has been hand-drawn in luminescent paint. Chateau de Motiers in red gold with diamonds, 40mm diameter, automatic movement, leather strap Bovet Jaeger-LeCoultre, CHF 54,500 The most feminine of Jaeger-LeCoultre watches in a high jewellery version, its gold case covered with a carpet of diamonds in different sizes. More diamonds form a double row of precious stones around the bezel. The movement under the white mother-of-pearl dial is an in-house calibre with automatic winding. Rendez-Vous Night & Day in rose gold with diamonds, 36mm diameter, automatic movement, day/night indicator, leather strap Jaeger-LeCoultre Patek Philippe, CHF 70,000 Launched in 1996, this annual calendar is worthy of the title grand complication. Its triple calendar (date-day-month) needs only one correction per year, courtesy of an ingenious in-house movement with automatic winding. In this version for women, the white mother-of-pearl dial is beautifully showcased by a case in gold, entirely set with diamonds. Annual Calendar in rose gold with diamonds, 38mm diameter, automatic movement, day and month by hands, date in an aperture, moon phases, leather strap Patek Philippe Chanel, CHF 192,700 A couture-inspired watch that feels as comfortable as a bespoke garment, despite a 55mm diameter. Equally impressive is the yellow gold dial, inlaid with black mother-of-pearl which is engraved in a quilted motif. Yellow gold threads and chains hung with diamond charms complete the illusion. Baguette-cut diamonds add brilliance to the buckle. Govt to propel young artists to achieve excellence in cinema PANAJI, UNION Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur on Tuesday said the Government is committed towards boosting creative economy, mentoring outstanding artists and encouraging youngsters to achieve cinematic excellence. Prime Minister Narendra Modi believes in the energy of youth and he wants that more opportunities be given to them, Thakur said. He was speaking after inaugurating the 75 Creative Minds of Tomorrow section on the sidelines of Film Bazaar of the ongoing International Film Festival of India (IFFI) 2023 in Goa. This is the third edition of the section in which 75 young filmmakers have been selected from 19 States. Thakur said, Nine years back, India was nowhere in the startup domain, but with a new policy, India has emerged as the third largest startup ecosystem in the world with one hundred thousand startups in the country. When the world was facing the COVID-19 pandemic, India had 50 unicorns, he said. You can well imagine, when big companies were struggling, the Indian youth were making waves, he said. Thakur said, It gives me immense joy that all of you are seizing the opportunity that the 75 Creative Minds of Tomorrow provides. I would like to emphasise that the Government of India is committed to employment generation, boosting creative economy, mentoring outstanding artists and encouraging youngsters to achieve cinematic excellence, he said. The Minister said (earlier) there was film audience from places like Manipur, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh but not filmmakers. Now we have filmmakers coming from there, he added. Denial is over: Climate change is happening By Celeste Young & Roger Jones Climate change isnt just a problem for scientists, engineers and governments. We need both large-scale and small-scale action. Adapting to the climate and working to reduce further heating can be an uncomfortable and at times painful process where we have to embrace and acknowledge our grief for the changing world. Were often taught to avoid potentially dangerous or painful things especially if they are unfamiliar. But now, doing what weve always done is not safe. CLIMATE-FUELLED disaster is now front-page news, as record-breaking floods, fires, droughts and storms keep arriving. The damage done by climate change is systemic and pervasive, resonating through our communities, economies and environments. It manifests in many ways, from empty spaces in supermarket shelves to houses left unliveable after floods, anxious communities, collapsing ecosystems and emergency services stretched to capacity. Climate researchers initially assumed that if you gave people the right information, we would act on it. Burning fossil fuels comes with severe consequences so lets phase out fossil fuels. But they found out very quickly this was not the case. For many people, it triggered cognitive dissonance, where they knew climate change was happening but acted like it wasnt. After all, many people still smoke, even though they know it is bad for their health. And many of us still fly to Italy even though we know how many extra tonnes of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. BUT WHY IS IT SO EASY TO UNDERSTAND BUT NOT ACT? Change seems hard, doing nothing is easy. Its because of public and private narratives we have grown up with. Our expectations of life are geared towards wanting comfort and stability. This means not everyone has developed the ways of thinking needed to deal with the impacts (such as natural hazards) we are now facing. Sudden changes caused by these such as the loss of a home are almost invariably shocking and can create a sense of disbelief. How could this be? When do we get back to normal? Surely it wont happen again? Our research on systemic risks such as climate change adaptation suggests this disconnect is common. Because we expect and hope for stable normality, we find it hard to truly believe the changes we are seeing will continue. Theres also a divide between who benefits and who pays. Your family trip to Iceland pays off for you in shared memories and good times. The damage in terms of emissions is spread across the globe. Often the damage done has less impact on the people who have done most to cause it, compounding inequality and eroding the ability of those most at risk to respond. Adapting to the climate and working to reduce further heating can be an uncomfortable and at times painful process where we have to embrace and acknowledge our grief for the changing world. Were often taught to avoid potentially dangerous or painful things especially if they are unfamiliar. But now, doing what weve always done is not safe. Then there are the limitations of individual action. No matter how committed you are to cutting your own climate impact, it makes very little difference if others arent doing the same. Action needs to be collaborative and sustained over the longer term, favouring public good over individual vested interests and short term gains. The politicisation of action in Australias climate wars has polarised opinion and eroded trust in the research. It has also left some people feeling that their actions are too small to matter. All of this means we can find it surprisingly easy to detach our own daily actions driving to work, holidays in Queensland, watching Netflix from the broader goals of getting emissions down to zero as soon as possible. SO HOW CAN WE AVOID CLIMATE HYPOCRISY? Many of us understand the risks of climate change full well, but we do not accept the responsibility. That, in turn, means we may feel okay not to act. Or we may understand and accept the risk, but not have the resources or ability to act. We know that presenting climate change as a problem without a solution or using fear tactics disengages and demotivates us. It can also feed anxiety, which undermines action. So the first step to overcoming climate inaction is to identify where you can act directly, such as switching your second car to an e-bike, investing in solar panels, working on local re-vegetation projects or making climate-friendly consumer choices. Where you have influence, apply this through voting, education or advocacy. Humble actions matter because they accumulate to create change. This isnt to say you should give up holidays. It is about making informed choices. Ending the burning of fossil fuels will take time and our choices will change as we transition away from this. But doing something is always better than nothing. Active responses can help reduce climate anxiety and they are also the panacea for avoiding climate hypocrisy. And while large-scale policy responses are necessary, individual action and pressure can help speed up the shift. Climate change isnt just a problem for scientists, engineers and governments. We need both large-scale and small-scale action. As the costs of climate change escalate, we can no longer afford to know about climate change but not act. n (The Conversation) ECI imposes ban on political figures from taking up role of counting agents Staff Reporter The Election Commission of India has imposed a ban on the appointment of Ministers of the central and state governments, Members of parliament, MLAs, Members of legislative councils, as well as chairpersons of local bodies, cooperative institutions and government undertakings as counting agents of candidates. According to the Commissions directives, individuals holding positions such as the Chairperson of any local organization, Mayor, Chairperson of Municipal Councils and Chairpersons of central and state cooperative institutions, as well as chairpersons of government undertakings at the central and state levels, cannot be appointed as counting agents for candidates contesting in the legislative assembly elections. This restriction applies regardless of whether they have received security clearance. The Election Commission has also prohibited government servants from becoming counting agents for candidates. People working in any capacity, either on a temporary basis or through government grants or funding, in institutions receiving financial assistance from the government, cannot be appointed as counting agents for candidates. This restriction extends to para-medical or health workers, dealers affiliated with fair price shops and Anganwadi workers in government or non-government funded institutions. The Election Commission clarified that there is no restriction on the appointment of Counting agents for candidates contesting for the positions of Gram Panchayat Pradhan or Sarpanch, Panchayat members, Corporators of Municipal Corporation or Municipal Council. According to the Commission, any Indian citizen with an NRI status can also be appointed as a counting agent for a candidate. The Election Commission has clearly stated that people who have been provided security coverage by the State (central and state governments) cannot be appointed as counting agents or representatives for candidates, whether they willingly relinquish their security or not. Such people are not allowed to enter the counting hall with or without their security personnel. The Election Commission has advised candidates who are in the fray for Assembly elections to appoint counting agents who are at least 18 years of age, ensuring proper representation during the counting process. The situation unfolded when Vitalii Veres, a prominent Ukrainian soldier who defended the country's independence near Bakhmut and suffered severe injuries resulting in the loss of his eyes, planned to create a video documenting his war journey, particularly the pivotal battle. The 29-year-old National Guard officer chose the hit song "Fortress Bakhmut" by Antytila as the ideal musical accompaniment for his project. Respecting copyright, Veres reached out to Serhiy Vusyk, one of the band's co-founders and keyboardists, to seek permission. To his surprise, Veres received a refusal, delivered in a rather rude manner. ADVERTISIMENT In response, Vusyk issued a public apology to the soldier, explaining the circumstances that led to his initial reaction. The video apology was shared on the band's Instagram page. OBOZ.UA compiled a chronology of the scandal in the material. Vitalii Veres recorded a video announcing his plan to create a video recounting his war experiences, particularly the significant battle near Bakhmut in which he sustained injuries. Expressing his admiration for the song "Fortress Bakhmut," Veres contacted Serhiy Vusyk, requesting permission to use the track and seeking acknowledgment on the band's page. Screenshots of the correspondence between Veres and Vusyk were shared by the soldier, revealing the refusal from Vusyk. Vusyk later issued a public apology, acknowledging the misunderstanding and offering clarification for his initial response to Veres' request. The video apology was shared on Antytila's Instagram page. ADVERTISIMENT "Why should we grant permission for you to post our songs?" replied the Antytilas' keyboardist sharply. Meanwhile, the soldier attempted to explain that he had fought near Bakhmut. However, he received the following response: "There are thousands of us, and we are no exception. What does this have to do with the song, and why should we honor you? You should familiarize yourself with the publicly available information about where, with whom, and for how long the musicians of Antytil, including myself, have fought." ADVERTISIMENT Evidently, Vusyk was attempting to convey that he, along with the band's frontman Taras Topolya and other members, had personally been on the battlefield after the full-scale invasion. The hero was deeply shocked and hurt by the musician's harsh and rude responses. He posed a question to the band, asking, "Does your song truly carry meaning? And are you genuinely in support of the military, or is it merely empty talk?" The military man's video quickly went viral online. Internet users wrote outrageous comments against the musicians, who themselves fought in the first months of the full-scale invasion and now allegedly support the soldiers with music and fundraising. Many of Antytila's supporters were disappointed in them, and some were still waiting for official explanations. ADVERTISIMENT Eventually, the time for official explanations came. The band's keyboardist recorded a video in which he immediately noted that Vitalii did not respond to his personal messages and did not pick up the phone, so he had to address him in public. "I admit that I was wrong. I in no way wanted to offend or humiliate the soldier. Yes, I did not understand and delve into who I was talking to, and due to heavy schedules and the influx of comments under the video or in personal messages, a bunch of bots, and other different personalities... I responded quite sharply. At the same time, from the first day of publication, the song 'Fortress Bakhmut' was made freely available for use without any restrictions. This is easy to check. And that's what surprised me about Vitalii's message, who wanted to be recognized. But I did not understand it. I apologize for my reaction," commented the Antibodies member. ADVERTISIMENT He also emphasized that he did not intend to purposefully offend the military. Vusyk highlighted that he is a co-author of the song "Fortress Bakhmut," which was written from his personal experience as a volunteer from the first day, standing alongside the military and experiencing the loss of friends. We support wounded soldiers all over the world, and we have taken care of the children of our fallen comrades. Antytila has always maintained a principled civic position, and we have been with the Armed Forces as volunteers since 2014 and as military personnel since February 24, 2022," Vusyk summed up. ADVERTISIMENT Earlier, OBOZ.UA wrote that Taras Topolia, who was a paramedic at the front after the full-scale invasion, answered whether he was going to return to the military and the war zone. Only verified information on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! ED searches at Telanganas Assets worth Rs 600 crore richest candidate HYDERABAD, THE Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday searched the premises of Congress candidate from Telanganas Chennur seat Vivek Venkatswamy and some others as part of a hawala-linked foreign exchange violation probe, official sources said. The 119 Assembly seats of the State will go to polls on November 30. The sources said the federal agency is undertaking the searches under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) in Chennur (Mancherial district) and Hyderabad, they said. A suspected bank transaction of Rs 8 crore that was carried out recently and is allegedly linked to a company promoted by the Congress leader is under the scanner of the agency, the sources said. With declared assets worth over Rs 600 crore, Vivek is the richest politician contesting the November 30 Assembly polls in Telangana. Vivek and his wife own movable assets valued at Rs 377 crore, mostly shares in various companies, including his own Visaka Industries, which was founded in 1981. The familys immovable assets stood at over Rs 225 crore. According to the affidavit filed by him, Vivek and his wife have liabilities or loans worth Rs 41.5 crore. Ghastly mishap between bus-jeep snatches six lives in Chitrakoot Our Correspondent Chitrakoot, In a ghastly road accident, six people lost their lives and six were seriously injured when a passenger bus collided with a Mahindra Bolero jeep. The dead include one small girl also. Those injured were sent to Medical College, Prayagraj and one to district hospital, Karvi. This accident occurred on Tuesday afternoon on Mirzapur National Highway 35 near Bagrehi Lalapur under jurisdiction of Rapiura police station. The bus of tje Transport Corporation was on its way to Ayodhya from Banda via Chitrakoot. Both vehicles collided head-on and the jeep was dragged about 20 meters. The jeep was reduced to mangled metal heap. Police reached the spot soon. after the accident and sent the injured to hospital. Two died on spot and four died during treatment. Collector and SP Chitrakoot reached the spot and took stock of the rescue work and treatment of the injured. The deceased has been identified as Rampratap Patel son of Anandi Patel, Anandi Patel, son of Birju Patel, Ashok, wife of Ramparatap Patel, Sanad Patel, son of Rampratap Patel, Akansha Patel, daughter of Rampratap Patel, all residents of Laichan. Ajaygarh, Panna district and Jagdish Kushwaha, son of Gaya Prasad Kushwaha, age 52 years, resident of Kori, Banda district, Uttar Pradesh. Staff Reporter Renowned filmmaker Subhash Ghai is going to be presented with Global Nagpur Award at Nagpur First Summit award in a gala function to be held on December 9. The inauguration of the 10th Global Nagpur Summit will be held at IIM campus, MIHAN, and would have in attendance Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. The inaugural ceremony is at 9.30 am, followed by the Global Social Expo with the theme 'Towards Resilient Rurban Economy,' NGO showcase, Changemaker Awards. Apart from Ghai, the awardees include luminaries such as International Fashion Designer Manish Vaid and Animation Expert Ashish Kulkarni. The annual awards are pinnacle of the summit and it would be held at Persistent Systems Auditorium, IT Park, later in evening on first day of summit. Global Nagpur Awards is a prestigious recognition honouring individuals from Central India who have left an indelible mark on the global stage. The summit is a magnet for industry stakeholders, political leaders, and thousands of spectators. The next day, December 10, unfolds with the City Growth Conference at Chitnavis Centre. It will feature tracks on IT on a theme of 'Rising Nagpur' and Fashion and Textile with a theme 'Sustainability and Innovation in Textile' and Manthan with Manish from 9:30 am onwards. The two-day event over the past nine editions has emerged as a powerful platform, propelling Central India onto the international stage. Renowned experts, both national and international, have graced the event with keynote speeches and engaging panel discussions. The dedicated team behind Nagpur First, led by Chairman Emeritus Dinesh Jain, International Chair Shashank Rao, India Chair Tanveer Mirza, Treasurer Jayprakash Parekh, GNS 2023 Chair Amitabh Khanna, GNA 2023 Chair Rajeev Aggarwal, IT Track Chair Dr. Rizwan Ahmed, Textile Track Chair Prashant Mohta, Education Track Chair Dr. Vivek Nanoti, and Marketing and Branding Head Nivedita Pendharkar, International Ambassadors Hakimuddin Ali and Faiz Wahid are tirelessly working towards ensuring the 10th Global Nagpur Summit achieves unprecedented success. As the excitement builds, Central India eagerly awaits the transformative discussions and global recognition that the summit promises to bring. The 10th Global Nagpur Summit is not merely an event; it's a testament to the region and prowess and potential on the global stage. For those eager to connect with the dynamic initiatives of Nagpur First Foundation or become an integral part of the transformative Global Nagpur Summit, reaching out is just a call away. Contact Mr. Tanveer Mirza at 7972028539 or Dr. Richa Sugandhh at 8411093953 to explore the avenues of collaboration, engagement, and participation. Join hands with Nagpur First Foundation and contribute to shaping the future of Central India on the global map. Your journey toward impactful connections and global influence begins with this call. JHEERAM GHATI MASSACRE Apex court dismisses NIAs pleaagainst Chhattisgarh Police NEW DELHI : IN A setback to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Supreme Court onTuesday dismissed its plea against the Chhattisgarh Police probe in the FIR alleging larger conspiracy in the 2013 Jheeram Ghati Naxal attack that killed 29 people, including leaders of the state Congress unit. A bench of Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said, Sorry, we would not like to interfere. Dismissed. During the hearing, Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, appearing for the NIA, told the bench that the larger conspiracy angle into the incident should be investigated by the NIA as the main FIR of the case has been investigated by the central agency. He said when the Chhattisgarh Police refused to hand over the records to the NIA, the agency moved the trial court, which rejected the plea. Thereafter, the High Court also dismissed the plea against the trial court order on March 2, 2022, he said, adding that when the main case is being investigated by the NIA, a separate FIR related to the same incident cannot be investigated by another agency. Raju said that a chargesheethasbeenfiled in the main case and out of the 109 witnesses, 84 witnesses have been examined till now. After seven years of the incident in 2020, a person comes forward alleging a larger conspiracy and the state police lodge an FIR basedonhis complaint, the ASGsaid.He addedthere are severaljudgementsofthetop court which say all connected cases are to be investigated by one agency. Senior advocate ANS Nadkarni and advocate Sumeer Sodhi, appearing for the Chhattisgarh government, vehemently opposedthe submissions of the NIA and said the state had initially requested the agency to investigate the larger conspiracy angle of the incident but they refused. The State Government then requested the Centre to entrust the probe of a larger conspiracy to the CBI as NIA had refused to probe. The Centre refused to hand over the probe tothe CBI. Then what could the State Government do? It asked the police to register the FIR and investigate the larger conspiracy angle, Nadkarni said. He informed the court that the NIA never investigated the larger conspiracy angle since 2013 and only investigated the incident. Criminal conspiracy under section 120B of the IPC is not a scheduled offence. It is a stand alone offence and can be investigated by the police separately. NIA can only investigate scheduled offences, Nadkarni submitted, adding that the Central investigating agency moved the trial court for transfer of FIR from police to it but the lower court does not have the power to do so. Kidnapper couple caught LCB rescues 12-year-old boy from Madhya Pradesh Staff Reporter In a swift operation, the Local Crime Branch (LCB) of Nagpur Rural Police successfully rescued a 12-year-old boy from the clutches of kidnappers in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday. The dramatic rescue took place after a police raid on a house in Chhindwara, where the accused were holding the boy hostage, police said. The arrested accused have been identified as Pravin alias Sonu Hariram Padangre (35), Geeta Guruprasad Kaurati (28), and an eight-year-old daughter of Geeta, all residents of Kali Chhapar No 2 village in Damoh tehsil of Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh. Pravin has a criminal history with eight offences against him, including murder, dacoity, robbery, and theft. He had been in a live-in relationship with Geeta, who previously ran a liquor den in Madhya Pradesh. According to police, the boy is the nephew of Keshav Shriram Arya (70), a resident of Plot No 20, Subodh Nagar, Nagpur. He was involved in contract farming on a 50 acre land located in Kalmeshwar tehsil, where the accused got employment at salary of Rs 14,000/- per month. Pravin and Geeta were working in the farm for the past eight months and staying in the hut constructed on the farm. Aryas sister-in-law and her son came for a stay at the farm for Diwali vacation. On November 18, a dispute arose between Arya and Pravin over payment of salaries of the past eight months. As Arya refused to release the salary immediately, Pravin and Geeta hatched a conspiracy. They assaulted Arya and tied his hands on the night of November 18. The accused took away the 12-year-old son, along with a motorcycle of a farmer and Rs 25,000/- from the house. The duo left the motorcycle at Saoner and boarded a passenger train in the morning. After alighting the train at Chhindwara, the duo kept the boy at the house of his friend and moved to Kali Chhapar village. After registering the case under Section 363 of Indian Penal Code, the LCB teams dispatched to Madhya Pradesh on the hunt. However, the cops faced tremendous difficulties as complainant Arya was not having exact names and addresses of the accused. Using technical surveillance, the police received the location of the accused and arrested him. Subsequently, the police rescued the boy and reunited with the mother. The official said that mother of Pravin was admitted at a hospital in Nagpur. Acting on the information, the police searched the hosptial and identified the mother. Pravins relatives told the police that he was not having any contact with them since he married to Geeta. However, Pravin contacted his sister which helped the police to trace his location through the mobile number which resulted into his arrest. Under the guidance of Superintendent of Police (SP) Harssh Poddar, Addl SP Dr Sandip Pakhale, SDPO Saoner Bapu Rohom, the arrest was made by PI LCB Omprakash Kokate, API Rajiv Karmalwar, Ashish Thakur, PSI Battulal Pande, ASI Suraj Parmar, Dinesh Adhapure, Nilesh Barwe, Sanjay Bante, Iqbal Sheikh, Vinod Kale, Pramod Tabhane, Amol Kuthe, Mukesh Shukla, Satish Rathod, Sumeet Bangde and others. Mah CM inspects pollution control measures in Mumbai MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Tuesday morning visited parts of Mumbai to review steps taken to control dust and air pollution and said the city civic body has been directed to do cloud seeding if required. The civic body has already approached a Dubai-based company, which has 100 per cent accuracy in cloud seeding and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be signed with it, Shinde said. The Government and the civic corporation will do whatever they can to reduce Mumbais pollution. The civic body has been directed to do cloud seeding if required, he said. The CM was replying to queries by mediapersons at the Joggers Park in suburban Bandra during his early morning inspection of various works undertaken in the city as a part of the dust and air pollution control measures. Cloud seeding is an artificial technique aimed at enhancing the probability of rains. Shinde reviewed various road and footpath cleaning and washing works undertaken as a part of dust control measures in some areas at Pedder Road, Bandra, Kalanagar, Milan Subway, Juhu and Santacruz. The Chief Minister said he has directed the Municipal Commissioner to hire 1,000 tankers on rent and wash the city roads on alternate days. If all the roads in Mumbai are washed on alternate days, dust will be greatly reduced and air pollution will also go down, he said. Poor health of medical colleges: Ajit Pawar addresses problem Staff Reporter Ajit Pawar, Deputy Chief Minister has asked officials concerned to plan the separation of administration and healthcare system in Government Medical College and Hospitals (GMCHs) in State properly. The Government believes that the present system of working is creating an overload on medical colleges, leading to degradation in quality of healthcare delivery, he said. Pawar was addressing a review meeting held here on Tuesday. Years ago, the Government had divided Public Health Department into two -- Public Health and Medical Education. Now, both are working in their domains. Over the years, the Department of Medical Education is working on three fronts--administration, healthcare delivery and imparting education to their students. Over 12 years ago, the then Medical Education Secretary Bhushan Gagrani had suggested having two Deans to look after administration and healthcare-academics. Nobody knows what happened to that idea. The Shinde-Fadnavis Government has given a momentum to that idea by introducing some changes. Dinesh Waghmare, Medical Education Secretary, who attended the meeting, told The Hitavada, There will be two separate sections -- administration, and academic-plus-healthcare. The Government is planning to appoint a Chief Executive Officer to handle the administration part while Dean will continue looking after the healthcare and academic. In the present structure too, Government Medical College and Hospitals (GMCHs) are working in two sections --administration and academic-healthcare. Medical Superintendent is the administration head while Dean has the overall control. As per planning of the present Government, the CEO will take care of non-medical appointments, various purchases, including medicines, surgical items, equipment, various construction works, cleanliness, security, maintenance etc. Dean will have control over the education, healthcare. President Murmus native place in Odisha gets 1st express train BADAMPAHAR, NOVEMBER 21 became a special day for President Draupadi Murmus village, Rairangpur, as the people in this region received the gift of an express train for the first time. During her visit to Odisha, President Murmu flagged off three new trains from Badampahar station. These trains are Train No. 18049/18050 Shalimar -Badampahar - Shalimar Weekly Express, Train No. 18051/18052 Badampahar-Rourkela - Badampahar Weekly Express, and Train No. 08147/08148 Tatanagar- Badampahar- Tatanagar MEMU Service. On this occasion, addressing the gathering, President Murmu said, The development of any area depends on the connectivity of that area. Be it rail, roads or postal services - all these services make peoples lives easier. She said that three trains launched today will help locals travelling to neighbouring states like Jharkhand and West Bengal. She added that people will also not face any inconvenience in visiting Odishas industrial town Rourkela. The President said that despite the increasing trend of cell phones and courier services, India Post has not lost its relevance. The inauguration of a new Postal Division at Rairangpur is an important event for region. She expressed confidence that people of this area will now be able to avail of postal services easily. The President said that the Government is taking various initiatives for development of tribals and there is almost three times increase in the budget as compared to 2013-14. RELIANCE to invest Rs 20,000 CR more in WB KOLKATA : RELIANCE Industries chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday announced an additional Rs 20,000-crore investment for West Bengal over the next three years. Ambani said the fresh investment will be in the areas of digital life solutions, retail and bioenergy. We plan to invest an additional Rs 20,000 crore in Bengal in the next three years for enhancing digital life solutions, augmenting Reliance Retail footprint and on bioenergy, he said at the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) here. The Reliance Industries has invested close to Rs 45,000 crore in the last few years in the state, Ambani said. Reliance will leave no stone unturned to accelerate Bengals growth, he asserted. The Reliance Foundation will also take up the task of renovating and restoring the iconic Kalighat Temple in Kolkata to regain its original glory, Ambani added. MAMATA ANNOUNCES SLEW OF NEW POLICIES: WEST Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced a slew of new policies including plans to double the States exports, modernise its logistics and promote renewable energy manufacturing, while opening the Bengal Global Business Summit here. Banerjee also announced a policy to promote bio-fuels and a new sub-seacablelanding station at the sea-resort of Digha to help improve internet connectivity in the eastern region. The Chief Minister also said the states economywasgrowingat8.41 per cent and its GDP would touch USD 212 billion this fiscal. West Bengal was ranked sixthinterms of GDP among Indian states in a recent report by Forbes India. She also to ldastar-studdedgathering of business leaders including petro-chemicals to retail tycoon Mukesh Ambani, energy baron Sanjeev Goenka andWipros Rishad Premji,thatfour new industrialcorridorswouldbe set up including DankuniKalyani, Tajpur portRaghunathpur, DankuniJhargram and Durgapur to CoochBeharinnorthBengal. Dankuni, eastern Indias largest logistics hub, already boasts of 9 km of conveyor belts to carry goods to and fromstoragesilos, addedher formerfinance minister and principal chief advisor Amit Mitra. The Bengal Global Business Summit, an annual affair, is being attended by several hundred companies from some 17 countries, including UK, US, Australia, Korea, Japan, Germany and France. SILKYARA TUNNEL RESCUE UTTARKASHI : The FIRST visuals All 41 trapped workers safe THE first visuals of the 41 workers trapped inside Silkyara tunnel emerged Tuesday, raising hopes of families anxiously awaiting their evacuation as a multi-pronged rescue effort entered its 10th day. The visuals were captured using an endoscopic camera sent in through a six-inch pipeline, which was pushed on Monday through the rubble of the collapsed portion of tunnel on Uttarakhands Char Dham route. In a video released by the rescue agencies, the workers wearing yellow and white helmets, are seen receiving food items sent to them through the pipeline and talking to each other. Officials watching them on a screen are heard giving instructions, asking them to clean the lens and show themselves on camera. They are heard asking them to come near the mouth of the pipeline and use the walkie-talkies, apparently sent down earlier. In Delhi, the Government issued an advisory to private television channels, asking them to be sensitive in their coverage of the rescue operations. Relatives have talked earlier to the trapped workers through the four-inch compressor tube that already existed. Food items like dry fruit were also being sent through that pipe. But the new wider lifeline, which pierced through 53 metres of rubble, has come as a boost to the morale of the rescue workers. Communication is much better and larger quantities of food can now be sent in. I talked to him this morning, Sunita Hembrum, whose brother-in-law Pradeep Kisku is among the trapped labourers, told PTI. She has come to Silkyara from Banka in Bihar. Oranges have been supplied to them through the new food pipe. Efforts are also underway tosend khichdi to them. He was fine,shesaid.Earlier we had to shout to make ourselves audible but today his voice was clear, she said. Accordingtoofficials,food items like dalia, khichdi, sliced apples and bananas can be sent in through the new pipeline. Also, mobile phones and chargers could also be sent to the workers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Tuesday, the second day in a row, to enquire abouttheprogressofthe rescue effort. On social media, Dhami said he informed the PM about communicating with the workers using the endoscopic camera. The prime minister said it is our top priority to rescue all the workerssafely,theCMposted.The tunnel collapsed following a landslide early on November 12, leaving 41 workers trapped behind a huge mound of debris. On Friday afternoon, efforts to drill through the debris with a huge auger machine received a setback when it encountered a boulder.Apart from resumingt his operation, which involves inserting sections of a steel pipe as the machine drills through, rescue agencies have begunwork onabunch of alternative plans. FOCUS ON HORIZONTAL DRILLING TO RESCUE WORKERS TRAPPED IN UTTARKASHI TUNNEL: OFFICIALS: THE focus is on horizontal drilling to bring out alive all the 41 workers trapped inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi and vertical drilling will only be the second-bestoption,said officials on Tuesday. Briefing reporters on the rescue efforts, National Disaster Management Authority member Lt General (Retd) Syed Atta Has nain said thats imultaneous efforts are being made on five fronts to save these trapped workers. He further said that the focus is on horizontal drilling as rock formation has created challenges for vertical drilling.AnuragJain, Secretary of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, said that under the current circumstances vertical drilling is the second best option. The Ukrainian military eliminated another Putinist, choreographer and theater actress Polina Menshikh. The Russian woman came to the village of Kumachove, Starobeshivskyi district, Donetsk region, to congratulate the occupiers on the Day of the Russian Missile Forces and Artillery, which the aggressor country celebrates on November 19. ADVERTISIMENT AFU offered a firework show, attacking a house of culture where a concert for Russian marines was taking place. At that time, Menshikh was performing on stage. The moment was captured on video: it shows the cheering patriot performing in front of the invaders, but suddenly there is an explosion and the lights go out. It is ironic that before that, the artist sang the phrase "envy us". According to the propaganda media, the "volunteer" was an ethnic dance teacher, heading a theater studio. She also directed one of the performances. On her social media page, she actively talked about her love for Soviet films and Russian culture. ADVERTISIMENT Menshikh wrote that her grandfather, an officer, was partly responsible for her upbringing, so "this influenced her strange tastes as for a young lady." "As a six-year-old girl, I loved watching the program 'I Serve the Soviet Union' with my grandfather and then discussing it," she writes. Polina Menshikh regularly traveled to the enemy-occupied Donbas and supported Russian soldiers at the front. Her profession as an actress resulted in a cruel joke: she celebrated the day of rocket troops and artillery perfectly, getting into the role. However, every performance comes to an end, especially for the occupiers. ADVERTISIMENT Earlier, OBOZ.UA told how Pavel Volya humiliated historical figures of Europe and sang odes to the "Russian land," proving that he is a mouthpiece of propaganda. Read all the details in our article. Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! THREATS to kill PM Modi, Yogi,to blast Mumbais Sir J J hospital MUMBAI : AN ANONYMOUS person called up the Mumbai Police Control Room and allegedy issued death threats to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, an official said here on Tuesday. The caller, who had dialled the police control number late on Monday night, also threatened to blow up the Governmentrun Sir J J Hospital in Mumbai. Moving into action, the Azad Maidan Police managed to track the caller and picked him from the Sion area of south-central Mumbai early Tuesday.The youth, identified as Kamran Khan, has been booked under various sections of the IPC. Famous Russian stand-up comedian Pavel Volya proved that he is a mouthpiece of Kremlin propaganda by telling a monologue about "healing Russia" in a new episode of the Comedy Club show on the Russian TV channel TNT. In his episode, the comedian admired the vast territories occupied by the terrorist country and spoke with admiration about the travelers who discovered these lands. ADVERTISIMENT In order to fully live up to the status of a Kremlin henchman, the stand-up not only sang odes to Russia, but also tried to humiliate European historical figures. The video was posted online. For example, Volya based the "jokes" in his material on the fact that he compared European discoverers with Russian ones. In fact, he ridiculed the appearance of the former, hinting at their belonging to the LGBT community, which, among other things, stereotyped people of homosexual orientation. By humiliating LGBT people, the comedian did an excellent job of fulfilling one of the essential tasks of a classic Russian propagandist. ADVERTISIMENT However, the Russian audience is happy to consume such content. The average viewer from the aggressor state finds it very funny that European men in the Middle Ages wore shosas, or ancient stockings. Volya did not miss the opportunity to laugh at the fact that sailors from Europe wore tights and would not have survived the harsh Russian climate. "They don't look like pioneers, they look like men who fell into women's lace panties. In general, it seems that these discoverers have discovered each other. And this is what our discoverers looked like! Remember them! You can immediately see that the law banning gay propaganda came into force 400 years ago," the comedian said, and the Z-patriots burst out laughing in response. ADVERTISIMENT It's interesting that Volya spoke dismissively of the discoveries of European navigators. He said that they had discovered lands where it was warm and where everyone now flies to vacation. And the Russians, the Putinist continued with pride, discovered places where "you can go for 15 years." As OBOZ.UA previously wrote, musician and TV presenter Kolya Serga, who joined the Armed Forces in 2022, is convinced that Comedy Club is one of the most successful tools of Kremlin propaganda. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government are using humor to instill the right "values" in their people. Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Today, people can easily send messages to the other side of the world or see their loved ones via video. It's hard to imagine how much effort it took for our ancestors to communicate at a distance. The letters they sent had to be meaningful and could take weeks or even months to reach their recipient. In some cases, they never reached the hands of the person they were written to. This happened in 1758 during the Seven Years' War, when the French ship Galatea was captured by the British and 181 of its crew members were imprisoned. A box of letters intended for the sailors was sent to the British Admiralty, where it was put in storage. It remained there for 265 years. ADVERTISIMENT Cambridge University researcher Renaud Morier found the box and opened it for the first time in almost three centuries. He found 102 letters sent by loved ones, friends, and relatives to sailors from France. The historian published an analysis of the letters, as well as details about the fates of their authors and recipients in the journal Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales, Cosmos reports. "I ordered this box just out of curiosity. There were three piles of letters tied with a ribbon. The letters were very small and sealed, so I asked the archivist if I could open them, and he did. I realized that I was the first person to read these very personal messages since they were written. Their recipients had not had this opportunity. It was very emotional," said Professor Morier. ADVERTISIMENT One of the messages comes from Marie Dubosc to her husband Louis Chambrelan, the first lieutenant on the ship. The woman died in 1759, before her beloved was released from captivity. The lieutenant returned to France in 1761 and remarried. "I could spend the night writing to you... I am your forever faithful wife. Good night, my dear friend. It is already midnight. I think it is time for me to rest," Marie Dubosk wrote to her husband. According to the professor, despite the fact that the letters were written in the 18th century, their texts seem very familiar, and the words resonate. Many of the letters were extremely intimate and passionate. Women wrote about their sexual lust for their military lovers, whom they had not seen for a very long time. For example, Anne le Cerf wrote to her husband: "I cannot wait to possess you." ADVERTISIMENT "These letters destroy the old-fashioned notion that war is a man's business. While men were away, women ran the household and made important economic and political decisions. Many of the letters speak of family love, but some of them also contain complaints," the historian said. Marguerite Quesnel, Nicolas' 61-year-old mother, was disappointed that her son did not write to her more often. She openly wrote that she resented the child, but still congratulated him on the winter holidays. "On the first day of the year, you wrote to your fiancee, not me.... I think about you more than you think about me. In any case, I wish you a happy new year filled with the blessings of the Lord. I think I should go to the grave, I've been sick for three weeks. Please give my regards to Varin [a fellow worker], only his wife gives me your news," the woman complained. ADVERTISIMENT A letter from Nicolas's fiancee was also lost in the box. The girl also complained, but this time about her lover's mother. However, she noticed that the letter he sent to his mother made the woman kinder and defused the atmosphere, and "the black cloud over them dissipated." According to the professor, not all people in those days were literate and able to write, so they used the services of scribes. This means that sometimes even the most intimate messages had to be spoken out loud, in front of everyone, so that another person could write them down. "Most of the people who sent these letters told the scribe what they wanted to say and relied on others to read their letters aloud. It was someone they knew who could write, not a professional. Keeping in touch was a community effort," Morier commented. ADVERTISIMENT Earlier, OBOZ.UA wrote about the reasons why absolutely all couples quarrel and how to look for compromises in order not to break up. Read the tips from a psychologist in our article. Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Don't fall for fakes! Honored Artist of Terrorist Russia, actor and producer Vasily Mishchenko, who supports the war in Ukraine, has issued a portion of nonsense about a "cruel" teenager in Italy and two Ukrainian women who allegedly beat his daughter. The Putinist claimed that refugees attack people who speak Russian abroad. ADVERTISIMENT However, the Russian's dubious version of the story is shattered by his next statement that there are many Russian-speaking people in Ukraine. The incoherent statement of the Eternal Call star was published by propaganda media. For some reason, Mishchenko's daughter, who was walking through "decaying Europe" and not a "blooming" terrorist country, spoke Russian to the studio at home. This was allegedly heard by two women and a child, who began to catch up with the Russian woman and attack her with their fists. The peak of the ineptitude of this fiction was the allegedly "cruel teenager" who "shouted: "Let me hit her! Let me!" ADVERTISIMENT According to the actor, his shocked daughter went to the police, but no case was opened against the Ukrainian women. It is impossible to verify the authenticity of the actor's words, because law enforcement in Italy "put everything on hold," Mishchenko said. Neither the Russian woman nor her father understood why Ukrainians were angry with them and trying to eradicate the Russian language. "You would think, why are you? You left your country, you live in a completely different country. Why are you so irritated by the Russian language? Do you want to ban it here? It won't work. You're trying to ban it in your country, and it won't work," the Putinist said. ADVERTISIMENT His words imply that Ukrainians inside the state should start fights when they hear Russian, but if they continue to speak the enemy language, then the speakers are not in danger. By the way, in the same interview, the Russian said that he despises his colleagues who leave Russia after February 24, 2022. Earlier, OBOZ.UA wrote that Mishchenko asked the occupiers to take him to the front line to kill Ukrainians, but was refused. Read here why the terrorists did not want to take the 68-year-old actor into their ranks. Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! On the night of November 18-19, the final of Miss Universe 2023 took place. One of the mandatory stages of the contest, which every contestant must pass, is a swimsuit defile. ADVERTISIMENT This year's winner, 23-year-old model and presenter Shainnis Palacios from Nicaragua, was no exception. The beauty is not shy about her beautiful figure, which can be seen on her Instagram page. ADVERTISIMENT ADVERTISIMENT We would like to remind you that Shannice Palacios became the first Nicaraguan woman to win the crown at the prestigious contest. The girl is a model and a morning show host on a local channel. Read all the details about the new Miss Universe 2023 in our article. Earlier, OBOZ.UA told about how Angelina Usanova, a participant from Ukraine, impressed in the final of Miss Universe 2023 with a "space" dress with the Ukrainian starry sky. Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Don't fall for fakes! No project slated for the area where the mangrove forest was located, no approval for any kind of mangrove removal, says Pinder Ministers during the Cabinet meeting that took place yesterday in Eight Mile Rock for the first time, in the newly-opened Obediah H. Wilchcombe building. Prime Minister Philip Davis converses with Minister of Tourism Chester Cooper, during the Cabinet meeting that took place yesterday in Eight Mile Rock for the first time, in the newly-opened Obediah H. Wilchcombe building. In the aftermath of the recent elections in Nigeria, a disconcerting pattern has materialized, casting a profound shadow over the democratic landscape. Notably, the mandates of three elected governorsDauda Lawal of Zamfara State, Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano State, and Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau Statewere abruptly terminated by the decisions of the Appeal Court. The increasing pattern of controversial judicial declarations in states controlled by opposition political parties raises compelling questions about the potential manipulation of the courts. This intriguing trend, spanning states such as Nassarawa, Kano (with confused verdicts), Zamfara, and now Plateau, suggests a perplexing situation where electoral outcomes seemingly missed by the ruling party on Election Day are, instead, handed to them through the corridors of the courts. The concentration of such occurrences in opposition-controlled territories adds a layer of suspicion, prompting concerns about the impartiality and independence of the judicial processes involved. This dynamic invites a closer examination of the intricate intersection between legal proceedings and political maneuvering within the context of Nigeria's democratic landscape. This simultaneous upheaval has sparked a surge of fear and suspicion, pushing citizens to question the legitimacy of the democratic process and the independence of the courts. As the dust settles on these contentious verdicts, it becomes increasingly important to conduct a thorough evaluation of their consequences for Nigeria's democratic fabric. The perceived anti-democratic threats emitted by these verdicts, as well as their possible consequences for the nation, are evident. Nigerians must heed the alarm about recent judicial decisions, recognizing their potential to reshape the legal and political landscape. The decisions may carry adverse consequences, possibly conflicting with democratic principles. Encouraging public awareness and engagement becomes reasonable in the face of these developments. In democratic societies, citizens' vigilance and participation are indispensable for holding institutions accountable and ensuring governance aligns with the values and expectations of the people. Concerns amplify regarding judicial decisions, concentrating power in the hands of a select few judges. At the core of these apprehensions is the idea that the judiciary, through its decisions, might be subverting the will of the people expressed through the democratic electoral process. This sparks a broader conversation about the judiciary's role in upholding democratic values, emphasizing transparency and fairness in electoral processes. Calls for an "uproar" in response to perceived injustices or threats to democratic processes echo the sentiment of individuals deeply invested in issues affecting their society. Public outcry, peaceful protests, and civic engagement become mechanisms for citizens to voice concerns, demand accountability, and call for change. Concerns expressed reflect a common worry about the potential consequences of institutional actions that could erode public trust, leading to a loss of confidence in democratic processes. Emphasis on caution within the judiciary and the need to prevent powerful politicians from unduly influencing judicial decisions aligns with principles of judicial independence, integrity, and accountability. The judiciary plays a crucial role in upholding the rule of law, ensuring fairness, and protecting the rights of citizens. Amidst the palpable unease surrounding these abrupt changes in political leadership, there is a growing sentiment that demands the attention of Nigeria's highest legal authority. The nation's Chief Justice finds himself at a crucial juncture where the public's trust in the judiciary hangs in the balance. Advocates for democratic stability and transparency argue that the Chief Justice should consider private interventions with his colleagues. The aim is to underscore the imperative of exercising utmost caution in the decisions that shape the country's political landscape. The call for a discreet, internal dialogue within the judiciary reflects a deep-seated concern that public perception, a cornerstone of any thriving democracy, may be at risk of erosion. As this exploration delves into the circumstances surrounding these judicial actions, the role of the Chief Justice in safeguarding the integrity of the judiciary will be a focal point of scrutiny. The recent removal of elected officials through judicial decisions has left a lingering unease, with some observers expressing concerns about what they perceive as institutional extremisms. While the term may evoke unsettling thoughts of potential upheaval, it is essential to clarify that such expressions are not a call for drastic measures, including military intervention or violent protests. Instead, they underscore the gravity of the situation and the need for a careful examination of institutional practices. The recent removal of elected officials through judicial decisions has left a lingering unease, with some observers expressing concerns about what they perceive as institutional extremisms. In navigating the complex terrain of recent judicial decisions, the judiciary must exercise prudence, avoiding inadvertent alignment with powerful politicians. Judicial independence, a legal doctrine and a democratic safeguard, demands a delicate balance in upholding justice while preventing erosion of democratic values. The potential repercussions of pushing public tolerance boundaries are cleara stern warning echoes: "Do not test the will of the people; enough is enough." This sentiment, not a call for violence, underscores the resilience of a populace that may assert its collective will when be pushed too far. As discussions unfold, the risk of public backlash becomes apparent, emphasizing the delicate construct of the people's trust in the democratic process. The exploration delves beyond legal intricacies into broader implications for democratic stability and public trust, urging the judiciary, a cornerstone of democracy, to navigate with utmost caution. Diving into recent judicial decisions, the focus extends to the Supreme Court's role in resonating with the public, instilling confidence in democracy. Upholding the law while safeguarding the democratic spirit requires a nuanced approach. Calls for the Chief Justice's discreet intervention underscore the pivotal leadership role in safeguarding public trust. The caution against institutional extremisms serves as a reminder the judiciary must stand firm, resisting undue influence, with resilience finding expression in the assertion of collective will. Judicial decisions, especially with political ramifications, impact public trust. Judicial independence remains fundamental, but judges must grasp broader societal implications. Engaging in internal discussions about consequences and public perception contributes to a judiciary sensitive to societal needs. Open communication within the judiciary and other branches maintains public trust without compromising judicial independence. Encouraging judges to consider public impact, engage in ethical self-reflection, and foster responsibility aligns with the judiciary's role in democracy. At this pivotal juncture in Nigeria, navigating challenges requires a delicate balance the judiciary must uphold justice, transparency, and democratic values. This stance reflects a commitment to democratic ideals, urging institutions, including the judiciary, to function for the common good and safeguard the democratic process. For democratic stability, the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, must heed public perception. The sentiment echoes that the judiciary should consider broader implications, not solely technicalities, emphasizing the people's trust in the democratic process. As Nigeria stands at the edge of a judicial abyss, recent decisions echo a haunting warning. The psychological fabric of democracy teeters on the brink, challenged by verdicts that cast shadows on the very essence of governance. In the face of these perilous verdicts, the nation grapples with the delicate task of navigating the abyss. The call for a nuanced understanding, cautious judicial intervention, and public awareness becomes paramount. The fate of democracy rests on the collective psyche, urging a resolute commitment to justice, transparency, and the preservation of democratic values. In the expansive canvas of Nigeria, where a mere trio, quartet, or even a quintet of judges possesses the mystical ability to rewrite the electoral narrative crafted by millions, one can't help but feel a sense of bewilderment. Have we inadvertently stumbled into a twilight zone of democracy, where the sanctity of the people's voice is overshadowed by the gavel's decree? The legitimacy of this concentrated judicial power play now stands in the glaring spotlight, prompting quizzical looks and a collective squint from those who believed democracy was a narrative authored by the people, not a script edited by judicial panels. The cherished principle of honoring the majority's will appears to be on an unexpected detour through the hallowed halls of the courthouse. Is this a stark reality check for democracy, or are we merely witnessing a theatrical plot twist in the grand theater of absurdity? Are these judicial heads taking the people for fools, orchestrating a ride through the landscape of a developing society where police brutality can quell protests? Well, not for long. Soon enough, "enough" will truly be enough. Professor John Egbeazien Oshodi, who was born in Uromi, Edo State, Nigeria, to a father who served in the Nigeria police for 37 years, is an American-based police and prison scientist and forensic, clinical, and legal psychologist. A government consultant on matters of forensic-clinical psychological services in the USA; and a former interim associate dean and assistant professor at Broward College, Florida. The Founder of the Dr. John Egbeazien Oshodi Foundation, Center for Psychological Health and Behavioral Change in African Settings. In 2011, he introduced state-of-the-art forensic psychology into Nigeria through N.U.C. and Nasarawa State University, where he served in the Department of Psychology as an Associate Professor. He has taught at various universities and colleges including Florida memorial University, Florida International University, Broward college, Lynn University, and a contributing faculty member at the Weldios university in Benin Republic, Nexus International University, Uganda, Nova Southeastern University and Walden University in USA. He is a Human Rights Psychologist with a focus on African related environments. [email protected] The Supreme Court has fixed November 30th, 2023 for a hearing on the application filed by the Federal Government seeking to review a judgment that the old N200, N500, and N1000 should be legal tender until December 31, 2023. The government prayed the apex court to lift its March 3 order that old naira notes should remain legal tender along with new notes till December 31. Recall that the apex court had on March 3 restrained the Central Bank of Nigeria from giving effect to the deadline on the use of old notes. The seven-member panel of the apex court faulted the policy of the CBN, saying the timing and implementation were defective. This is a sequel to a suit instituted by the Kaduna, Kogi, and Zamfara state governments challenging the implementation of the policy. Thirteen other states later joined the suit as co-plaintiffs. Meanwhile, in a new suit, the FG is asking the apex court to allow the redesigned notes and the old notes to continue to coexist until the required structures are put in place. In the fresh application by the Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), the Federal Government is seeking the following reliefs, An order of this Honourable Court reviewing or varying its consequential order contained in the judgment in Suit No. SC/CV/162/2023 was delivered on the 3rd day of March 2023 to the effect that the old 200, 500, and 1,000 naira notes should be legal tender until December 31, 2023. An order of this Honourable Court varying its consequential order contained the March 3 judgment to the effect that the old 200, 500, and 1,000 Naira notes should be legal tender until December 31, 2023. An order of this Honourable Court reviewing and/or varying the said consequential order to read thus: An order that the old versions of 200, 500, and 1,000 notes/currency shall continue to be legal tenders alongside the new or redesigned versions until the government decides to bring the circulation of the old versions to an end after its consultation with critical stakeholders and after putting all required structures in place. And for such order or further orders as this Honourable Court may deem fit to make in the circumstances. In an affidavit in support of the Motion on Notice, Assistant Chief State Counsel, Terhemba Agbe, said the CBN Governor, Dr Olayemi Cardoso, has confirmed that some Nigerians have started hoarding the affected old and new notes in anticipation of the December 31 deadline. The next year begins with Jupiter no longer being retrograde, and this fills us with faith, hope, and optimism for a brighter future. Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and Capricorn will be able to enjoy pleasant events that will dramatically change their lives. ADVERTISIMENT Astrologers have compiled a horoscope for 2024 that will help you figure it all out. Rethinking your values can open up unexpected opportunities and new perspectives. Aries. Next year, Aries will embark on a journey of self-discovery and improvement. You will have an inner spark to achieve your goals and build a happy future, and there is a good chance that you will achieve everything within a year. Super-powerful energy will drive you, overcoming all obstacles. A new and exciting chapter of life awaits you as you take control of your power and get rid of insecurity and fear. Jupiter's conjunction with Uranus on April 20 will lead to unexpected gains that will significantly improve your financial situation. Taurus. Pay attention to your tasks at work, thanks to your perseverance and dedication, you will be able to receive praise from your superiors, which will contribute to your career growth. Review your daily routine to optimize your time and avoid exhausting yourself. If you've been thinking about starting your own business or coming up with creative ideas, 2024 is the perfect time. ADVERTISIMENT After Jupiter enters Gemini on May 25 and your second house of finance, you will start earning more money. On September 17, a lunar eclipse in Pisces will change your outlook and show you a new path to fulfill your dreams. Gemini. 2024 will bring you endless ideas and wisdom. If you work in the media, you will increase your ability to influence the masses and be able to spread your thoughts. Get ready for a change of heart by spring, as the lunar eclipse in Libra on March 25 and the solar eclipse in Aries on April 8 could create new romantic connections or rekindle your relationship with your partner. Jupiter, the planet of generosity and abundance, will also enter your zodiac sign on May 25 for the first time since 2013. This transit makes you a celestial favorite in 2024. The largest planet in the solar system offers you a chance to grow, expand, and explore new things. ADVERTISIMENT Capricorn. Jupiter will join forces with Uranus through your fifth house of love, creativity, and self-expression on March 4. Get ready to invent something extremely unconventional and new in your life. You may meet a loved one and build a strong and lasting relationship with them. Venus will meet Jupiter in the earth sign of Taurus on May 25, bringing value, romance, and abundance to the romantic realm. Mars will also join forces with Uranus in Taurus on July 15, so be prepared for a surge of energy and inspiration. This can show you a completely different reality. Earlier, OBOZ.UA published a horoscope for 2024, where it told which zodiac signs are better not to get involved with. Subscribe to OBOZ.UAchannels on Telegram and Viber to keep up with the latest events. Abbas Ganbay Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, commenting at a briefing today on the delivery of French "Bastion" armoured vehicles to Armenia, said that France sold illiquid military equipment to Yerevan, with Paris sending it to Yerevan because it could not sell it elsewhere, Azernews reports. The Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that arguments that the supply of such equipment to Armenia would benefit the country's security seem naive: "This armoured equipment has shown very low efficiency in real combat conditions." As a reminder, on 14 November, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a telephone conversation with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that he would not participate in the CSTO meeting on 23 November. Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Armenian Parliament Speaker Alen Simonyan said that they would not participate in the CSTO Minsk meeting. We shall remind you that Ukraine refused the Bastion armoured vehicles sent by France because of weak protection. The French publication "Ouest France" published an article a few days ago saying that these unusable vehicles were sent to Armenia. "These vehicles were originally intended for Ukraine, but Kyiv considered that these vehicles have poor protection against artillery fire and anti-tank missiles," Ouest France said. We would like to add that Yerevan received the first batch of military aid from France. The first batch of armoured vehicles for the Armenian army is already being delivered to the country via Georgia. It should be noted that Bastion armoured vehicles were originally developed for French troops in former colonial countries of Africa. And now France is looking for any way to get rid of this equipment. Truck traffic on the border between Slovakia and Ukraine has been temporarily unblocked. However, in the morning, about 350 trucks were waiting in line at the Vysne Nemecke checkpoint to enter Ukraine. ADVERTISIMENT This was reported by the State Border Guard Service. They noted that the rest of the traffic is being processed as usual, both for entry and exit. These include, in particular: cars; buses. "Truck traffic through the Vysne Nemecke checkpoint has been temporarily unblocked. As of this morning, there are about 350 trucks on the territory of Slovakia in front of the Vysne Nemecke checkpoint heading to Ukraine," the statement said. What preceded it On November 21, the spokesman for the State Border Guard Service, Andrii Demchenko, informed the media about the blocking of the border between Slovakia and Ukraine. "According to information received from the Border Police of the Slovak Republic, today at 13:30, traffic was blocked for trucks heading in the direction of the Slovak Vysne Nemecke checkpoint, adjacent to the Ukrainian Uzhhorod checkpoint," he said. ADVERTISIMENT At the same time, the Union of Road Carriers of Slovakia (UNAS) warned that they could "tie" the border blockade to a meeting of representatives of Polish and Ukrainian carriers scheduled for November 21. "If no agreement is reached and Polish carriers continue to protest, the UNAS leadership will join in," said the head of the union, Stanislav Skala. At the same time, the Slovak-Ukrainian border has already been blocked before as a "warning". It happened on November 16 and lasted only 1 hour. "Our goal is to support our Polish colleagues, as well as all carriers within the EU. We will ask the European Commission to immediately introduce permits for the transportation of Ukrainian vehicles," Skala said. What do Polish and Slovak carriers demand? Polish carriers with one of the local associations are trying to paralyze the border between Ukraine and Poland by blocking three checkpoints there for 15 days, including Yahodyn-Dorohusk, Korczowa-Krakovets and Rava-Ruska-Hrebenne. The carriers are demanding the abolition of the "transport visa-free regime" for Ukraine, which contradicts the agreement between Ukraine and the EU. ADVERTISIMENT In fact, they want to return the system that was in place until June 2022. Back then, every carrier heading to the EU had to obtain permission to cross the border of a particular country. Mustafa Nayyem, head of the State Agency for Infrastructure Restoration and Development of Ukraine, explained that this requirement is unrealizable, and Ukraine will not agree to return the system of permits for freight transportation. "Ukraine has no intention of even discussing a return to the permit system. The agreement on freight liberalization was ratified and agreed by all EU members and signed between the European Union and Ukraine, not by any individual country," Nayyem explained. However, the Ministry of Transport of Slovakia has already agreed to assist UNAS. "In early December, the EU Council of Ministers will be held in Brussels, where the Slovak Minister of Transport will propose to reconsider this decision (to cancel the issuance of commercial permits to Ukrainian carriers - Ed.) The massive increase in the number of transportation through the EU by Ukrainian carriers is at the expense of European carriers," the Slovak ministry said. ADVERTISIMENT It should also be borne in mind that the blockade of the border by Poland was organized by only one association of Polish carriers, which had previously been actively working with Russia. Polish politician Rafa Mekler took over the political representation. He represents the far-right Ruch Narodowy party and actively spreads Russian propaganda fakes about Ukraine, telling his voters about "Banderites." As reported by OBOZ.UA, due to the blockade of the border by the Polish far-right, Ukraine's economy suffers significant losses, in particular, due to a decrease in the number of goods imported into the country. However, there is no need to talk about a critical decline in imports and an impending shortage of certain items as businesses are actively looking for other ways to import goods or offer Ukrainians affordable alternatives. ADVERTISIMENT Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! 60 years have gone by since JFK's assassination Having lived through that dreadful day and the times then, plus the years down life's highway since, this one day has never left my memory. From the time I was a child and throughout this long life, there have been many memorable events, from Pearl Harbor, WWII, the atomic bomb, many storms, all the way to 9-11, and the insurrection of the U.S. Capital on Jan. 6, 2021. However, no tragedy or event has lived with me more than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963. Because I relived it through many columns, it's hard to believe 60 years have gone by. No tragedy tore to the core of Americans like the killing of the 35th President. The three T.V. networks, broadcasted only in black and white, interpreted their broadcast and it was a few days before they returned to their regular programming and commercials. No other event ever totally took up so much airtime. Lee Harvey Oswald was accused of killing the President but he was never charged with the crime. He was charged with killing a policeman, Officer Tibbets, and was killed himself before the Kennedy case was made against him. The reason President Kennedy was in Texas was to mend two democratic factions at odds, Sen. Ralph Yarborough's liberal forces and the Gov. John Connally's conservatives. The state, which was mostly democratic, was becoming polarized. Vice president Johnson, a friend of Gov. Connally, who most believes fixed the Duvall County 87 vote outcome that gave Johnson the election against Coke Stevenson, tried to mend the democratic split to no avail. Kennedy came to Houston, Fort Worth and was in Dallas when he was shot. He was due to be in Austin that night. Some Orange folks were on the way to Austin for that event when they heard on the car radio that the President had been shot. They turned around. JFK had served only 1000 days. Johnson became the 36th President of the United States. It was lunch time on Friday. Four of us guys had planned a special kind of noontime meal. Dist. Attorney Jim Morris had gotten a bushel of oysters and I had made arrangement to use the banquet room at the Marine Room on Second Street, a building I owned. We hired a black gentleman, who knew his trade, to shuck the oysters and furnish his famous red sauce. As Morris, attorneys Louis Dugas and Jerry Zunker and I left the courthouse, the radio said that the presidential parade in Dallas was in progress. We were eating oysters on the half-shell as fast as they were being shucked when a waitress came into our room and announced that President Kennedy was just shot in Dallas. At first, we didn't believe it, assuming it probably was just a rumor. As we discussed it, we became convinced that this dreadful act was indeed conceivable in Dallas. That put a damper on our special meal. On our return to the courthouse, the car radio confirmed that the president of the United States and the governor of Texas had been shot. Zunker had served as a co-campaign chairman with Gene Hoyt for the election of Gov. John Connally. Phyl and I worked in that campaign. Hoyt got a district judgeship out of it. Radio and TV sets were turned on everywhere as everyone gathered to wait for the news on President John F. Kennedy's condition. People openly wept when it was learned that the president was dead. I went to the living quarters in the county jail to watch television. There I found Sheriff Chester Holts in his living room with tears running down his cheeks. He expressed what was on most people's minds. "What kind of damn animal would snuff out the life of this remarkable man? Respect for the law is completely shattered when someone can take it on themselves to murder the president of the United States." "The Dallas police department is one of the finest in the country," he continued, "but they'll have problems protecting the fellow who did this. If they're not extra careful someone will kill him." The television reported Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president on Air Force I while Jackie Kennedy, the dead president's wife, stood at his side still splattered with blood and brains of her husband on her clothes. The Warren Commission found that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone when he shot the president from the Texas Book Depository with a mail order rifle. The next day, while being transferred, Sheriff Holt's fears came to past. While the police were transferring Oswald, Jack Ruby seemed to come out of nowhere, shot and killed him. Ruby had been in the Western Union station next door to the police station to wire some money. Jack, like most everyone in those days who carried money, also carried a pistol in his pocket. When he left Western Union, he noticed the crowd next door. He went over to see. He was well known by the Dallas police, who frequently visited his Carousel Club. Jack was later convicted of the murder of Oswald after a much publicized trial. Having known Ruby, I believe he acted on impulse and believing he would be a national hero. After all, most everyone was saying that Oswald needed killing. Jack was a Jewish guy from up north and they loved JFK. On Nov. 25, President John F. Kennedy was buried after a funeral possession that drew a million people and featured the famous salute by son, "John John," now deceased. In fact, almost all the players of that sad day are gone. Jack Ruby died while being held in jail awaiting a re-trial. Gov. Connally recovered and held several national offices, including Sec. of the U.S. Treasurer. He switched parties after LBJ's death and tried a run for president as a Republican. That didn't take off. President Johnson finished Kennedy's term and was elected to one of his own. He didn't seek reelection after being consumed by the Vietnam conflict. Richard Nixon replaced him, and in his second term, shamefully left office for what became known as the Watergate cover up. Nov. 22, 1963, is a date that truly changed the course of history. My friends, DA Jim Morris and lawyer Louis Dugas have both died. As far as I know Zunker still lives in Austin. Anytime after that day when we all got together we recalled that dreadful day. We were all young men then lived to see a changing country where respect has so often been replaced by hatred and disrespect of our country and democracy. For a decade, volunteers for Vidor's First Baptist Church had a vision of providing a residential home for women who have addictions. The vision is now a reality. The Women's Care Center is now open in a remodeled nursing home in Vidor. The center's director, Gena Rogers, said 10 rooms are available in the program, which lasts a minimum of six months and can go on for up to a year, if needed. The residents are not required to work and are able to concentrate on recovery and living in the world sober. Requirements include Bible studies and participation in the center's other programs. Those are 12-step chemical dependency classes, how to prevent relapse, finances and financial responsibility, arts and crafts, plus life skills. Those skills can be fundamental things like making a bed, doing laundry, and cooking. A current resident is working on her GED and participates in the GOALS (Greater Orange Area Literarcy Services) program. At this time, the center cannot accept women with mental health issues, or ones with a past history of violence. It is also not a homeless shelter. Otherwise, there's one big requirement, though. "They have to really want to be in recovery," Rogers said. The cost for the Women's Care Center program is $100 a week, plus a $500 deposit, that is refundable at the end of the program. The cost covers the furnished room plus dinner each day. Clients are responsible for their own breakfast and lunch. Rogers said donors may be able to provide the $500 deposit and some scholarships are available. Each client has a private bedroom, unlike many recovery centers. Rogers said she visited a center in Houston that had 10 women sleeping in the same room in five bunk beds. Life Groups, previously known as Sunday school classes, at First Baptist Vidor, along with individuals, decorated each bedroom to make it feel welcoming. The decor includes colorful bedding covers on a twin bed with sheets and pillows. Residents are not allowed to have cell phones or use the internet during their stay. After their first 30 days in the center, they may have approved visitors. They are also required to go to First Baptist Church Vidor. Besides their daily studies, women at the center have counseling every day and have house chores. Rogers said a night manager and a weekend manager are at the center for the clients. The weekend manager is a recovering addict and has been sober for four years. The church and private donors are supporting the center. A volunteer is selected to mentor and help each client along her way to sobriety. Also, the church's Main Street Thrift Store at 335 North Main Street in Vidor, allocates 75 percent of its income to the Women's Care Center. Donations of new and used goods are accepted at the thrift store. Rogers got involved in the recovery center for personal reasons, she said. Her son-in-law was getting out of incarceration and she was seeking help for him to stay on a path of sobriety. While asking around the community, she learned of First Baptist's plan for the women's center. She got involved and was preparing for retirement. She worked for longtime local lawyer and former district attorney Steve Howard, who is now retired. Knowing of his retirement, she was planning for a new path. This summer, she was named director of the Women's Care Center. Her work is still personal. Her daughter is an addict and the last they knew, was in Los Angeles. Rogers is raising two granddaughters and is happy their father, her son-in-law, has been sober a few months. Information on enrolling, volunteering, or donating to the Women's care center can be found at the website wccvidor.org. Applications are online or available by calling 409-498-4007. Ukrainians have been warned about the importation of poisoned Egyptian tangerines into the country. They contain the dangerous pesticide dimethoate. The products were imported by a company registered in Kyiv. ADVERTISIMENT The tangerines were purchased in Egypt and imported through Greece. This was reported by the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection. "(Tangerines - Ed.) were exported from Greece (exporter: DROSERO TRADE SMPC, Giannitsa) to Ukraine (recipient: Fudkom LLC, 57 Zaliznychne Shosse St., Kyiv, 01014; place of delivery: Martusivka village, Boryspil district, Kyiv region)," the statement said. The batch of hazardous products will be completely withdrawn. Consumers are asked to contact the territorial offices of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection if they find such fruits. The agency warned that dimethoate, which is used to control pests, has "moderate toxicity." It is prohibited to use it on berry crops, as well as fruit plantations where berries, vegetables, and herbs are grown between rows. ADVERTISIMENT According to the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), the permissible level of the chemical in the detected fruit was 33 times higher than the permissible level. At the same time, it was not known whether the tangerines had entered Ukraine before the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection issued its notification. Earlier, the pathogenic toxic microorganism Bacillus cereus was found in sauces imported from the Netherlands in the Ternopil region. This microorganism can cause food poisoning, stomach diseases, etc. In addition, coffee was found to be hazardous to health in Ukraine. It was imported from Germany. An excessive amount of chlorpyrifos was found in the coffee, which could lead to heart disorders, neuropathy, gastritis, etc. As reported by OBOZ.UA, in Ukraine, consumers are often sold counterfeit butter in markets and supermarkets. But while the share of counterfeit products in retail chains is about 40%, almost all products in the markets are falsified. ADVERTISIMENT Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Orange County will have a four-way race for sheriff as incumbent Lane Mooney fends off three challengers in the Republican Primary. Other challenged local races will be for constable in Precincts 2 and 4. County Republican Chair Leo LaBouve said filings will continue until December 11, but he thinks most of the candidates have filed. County Democratic Chair Jack Smith said he doesn't expect any people to file in that party's primary, which means whoever wins the local Republican nominations will run unopposed in the 2024 general election, unless an independent late files. The party primary races will be Tuesday, March 4. Voting registration for the election ends on February 5. Candidates file with the party chairs, who oversee the elections. Incumbent Sheriff Mooney has filed for his second term in office. Challenging him will be Ronald Dischler, a longtime Orange County working for the Beaumont Police Department. Also, Bobby Smith, a retired Texas Ranger, and Mike Sanchez, police chief for the Vidor ISD. For Precinct 2 constable, incumbent Jeremiah Gunter has filed for re-election. He is facing challenges by retired law officers Harold Hass and David Bailey. Precinct 4 Constable Matt Ortego is being challenged by Joey Jacobs, currently a captain with the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Incumbent constables Lannie Claybar in Precinct 1, and Brad Frye have filed and so far have drawn no opponents. Others who have filed in the Republican primary are Octavia Guzman for County Tax Assessor-Collector. Incumbent Linda Fisher is retiring. Also county commissioner incumbents Johnny Trahan in Precinct 1 and Kirk Roccaforte in Precinct 3. The other two precinct commissioners will be up for election in 2026. Longtime Assistant District Attorney Krispen Walker has filed for district attorney after incumbent John Kimbrough announced he would be retiring at the end of his current term. Bobby Smith County Court-at-Law Judge Troy Johnson will also be retiring and Rodney Townsend has filed to run. State 163rd District Judge Rex Peveto filed for re-election. LaBauve said the 128th District judge's position is on the ballot this year and he expects incumbent Judge Courtney Arkeen to file. LaBouve has been accepting filing forms at the Orange County Republican Party headquarters in shopping center at 260 Strickland Drive in Pinehurst on Monday, December 11, from 3 to 6 p.m, which is the deadline for filing. In addition, LaBouve will be running for re-election and so far has drawn no challengers. Filings for state and national offices are made through the Texas Republican Party based in Austin. Democratic Chair Smith said Orange County locally has switched to all candidates running as Republicans, just as they once ran only as Democrats for decades. "If you want the job, you call yourself anything you want to be elected," he said. Questions on sticking to SoO The political equations | Did the violence of May 3 start because the demand for a Separate Administration was raised or did the Separate Administration demand come after the violence erupted in all its ugliness on May 3 ? Everyone knows the answer to this, including people on either side of the clash divide. And which group first started torching houses at Torbung and Churachandpur just because the houses belonged to people of a community different from the Kuki-Zo community ? Why did the violence spread quickly to Kangpokpi and Moreh ? Again everyone knows the answer. Imphal and the valley retaliated only late in the evening and the very fact that a Kuki gentleman visited the office of The Sangai Express late in the evening of May 3 should underline the fact that Imphal reacted only late in the evening. Violence erupting at Chura-chandpur after the Tribal Solidarity March of May 3, ostensibly staged against the demand that the Meteis be included in the ST list and the directive of the High Court of Manipur to the Government of Manipur to send the report which had been gathering dust since 2013, quickly spreading to Kangpokpi and Moreh while the rally wound up without a hitch at the Naga dominated districts of Senapati, Ukhrul and Tamenglong should negate the very purpose for which the rally was staged. This in brief was how the ongoing clash started and just a few days earlier, everything that could go wrong had gone wrong at Churachandpur, with a Forest beat office set on fire and an open gym scheduled to be inaugurated by the Chief Minister himself burnt. These are just some examples that come to mind at the moment and to get a better understanding of the ongoing conflict in Manipur, one will need to go beyond the mere rhetoric of dubbing it as a political problem and question why the Suspension of Operation pact with Kuki militants was signed in the first place ? Were the SoO outfits waging any sort of war against the Indian Nation that a pact was necessary to engage them in talks ? Under whose counsel was the pact signed and why did Imphal held back for three years before it was convinced to get on board the SoO wagon ? This question is important in the face of the geo-political reality of the North East region, which is home to a number of armed groups, including the NSCN (IM), the conglomerates CoRCOM, ASUK etc with a politically unstable Myanmar as the next door neighbour. That the Kuki-Zos have many kindred tribes in Myanmar rounds up the reality in the ongoing clash in Manipur. It is this very reality that was referred to by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the floor of Parliament not so long back and which rubbed the recently floated Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) of Churachandpur as well as the Kangpokpi based Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) the wrong way, so much so that they went to press crying foul over the statement of the Union Home Minister. Again it was in line with what the Union Home Minister said on the floor of Parliament that External Affairs Minister S Jaishanker talked about large scale infiltration in Manipur as being one of the reasons for the ongoing clash. All these facts fall in the political realm, no doubt about that, but this should be seen beyond being a political problem. Acknowledge the fact, admit it and accordingly proceed to see how the problem may be tackled at the political level. Military approach is not the solution is a derivative that may be understood in the observation of Lt General RP Kalita who held that the issue in Manipur is a political problem but the question of bigger import is how willing or ready is New Delhi to acknowledge the facts ? It was political calculation which necessitated SoO with armed groups, which have never been hostile to the Indian armed forces and given the fact that political equations can and do change with the passage of time, what are the political gains that New Delhi hopes to gain out of continuing with the SoO pact ? There will be no one line answer, but the very fact that these questions have become significant should say so many things. 90,000 displaced : UN | New Delhi, Nov 22 : Amid mounting hostilities between Myanmar's anti-junta groups and Government forces, India on Tuesday asked its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to the neighbouring country and advised Indians living there to register with the embassy in Yangon. Since the current conflict in Myanmar started in 2021, a large number of citizens from the neighbouring country have taken refuge in India. According to the UN, the intensified fighting in Myanmar since last month has displaced about 90,000 people. "In view of the evolving security situation in Myanmar, all Indian Nationals are advised to avoid non-essential travel. Those already living in Myanmar are advised to take precautions and avoid travel to the regions affected by violence. Inter-state travel by road should also be avoided," the advisory said. The Ministry of External Affairs also asked Indian nationals living in Myanmar to register with the Embassy of India in Yangon. PTI Ukrainian TV presenter Lesia Nikitiuk replicated the look of American movie star Marilyn Monroe of the 50s. The Ukrainian's followers and colleagues were amazed by the transformation. ADVERTISIMENT The host shared photos of herself in her new role on her Instagram page. She also recorded a video in a silver dress, repeating the famous shot from the movie The Seven Year Itch. In it, the Hollywood beauty is holding her dress, which suddenly flew up in the wind. Commenters did not hide their delight. Many of Nikitiuk's fans wrote that the star looks great. "Lesia, this haircut looks great on you!" "Sexier than Merilyn". "Monroe Ivanivna". "The look is very luxurious." "Lesia Ivanivna, I'm in shock". ADVERTISIMENT Many celebrities have tried the look of the main blonde of cinema. This is not surprising because Marilyn Monroe was once considered the standard of beauty. She drove men crazy and was the idol of many women. OBOZ.UA has collected 5 secrets of the success and seduction of the Hollywood legend. Luxurious blonde The decision to go blonde was a life-changing one in Monroe's career. Before that, she was known by her real name Norma Jeane Mortenson Baker and had curly chocolate-colored locks. ADVERTISIMENT Thus, the change of the look could be said to symbolize a change of personality. The producers assured the girl that "gentlemen prefer blondes." Makeup and the cat look Everyone associates Marilyn Monroe with red lipstick because that's how we used to see her in photos. Red lips were the highlight of the actress' looks. However, it wasn't just lipstick that fascinated the beauty. Her legendary "cat" look from under her long eyelashes is hard to compare with anything else. She not only painted her eyes with mascara but also used a pencil, adding an arrow. ADVERTISIMENT Smile One of Marilyn's trump cards was her snow-white million-dollar smile. "Smile, because life is a beautiful thing, and there are so many reasons to smile," she said. Rumor has it that the actress used soda to make her teeth look white. Unique fashion style Monroe's reported measurements were 92-60-92. The star knew how to skillfully emphasize her figure with tight silhouettes and plunging necklines. She chose dresses in calm shades that suited her fair skin. Monroe most often combined her looks with stiletto heels. ADVERTISIMENT Femininity and imperfection "I definitely feel like a woman and enjoy it," Marilyn said. The celebrity's weight at different times ranged from 53 to 66 kilograms with a height of 162 cm. Monroe did not strive for thinness because it would deprive her of her sexuality. The star was confident, "Girls who think they're fat because they don't wear a size zero should know that they're actually beautiful and society is ugly." She considered imperfections beautiful, although she herself seemed to be an ideal to many. The beauty emphasized that these are the features that make a person unique, not like others. ADVERTISIMENT Earlier, OBOZ.UA talked about the makeup-free beauty secrets of Victoria Beckham, Pamela Anderson, Cindy Crawford, and other stars. Only verified information is available on OBOZ.UA Telegram and Viber. Don't fall for fakes! Bengal Global Business Summit, in its 7th edition 2023, came to an end today with pledges for investments in the state from the captains of the industry. The grandiosity of the event can be gauged by the total sum of Rs. 3,76,288 crore that has been promised as investment by international and national business giants at the Summit. Attended by 400 international delegates, representatives from 17 partner countries, business and official delegations from nearly 40 countries, and 15 Ambassadors and High Commissioners from different countries, this was a truly global business investment event. Advertisement In all, 188 MoUs were signed and a large number of new industrial policies for ensuring enabling environment in the state were announced. During the two-day Bengal Global Business Summit in Kolkata, several notable businessmen made announcements about their projects involving investments in the state. In the next two years, Narayana Health plans to open a 1,000-bed super specialty hospital in Kolkata. Renowned cardiac surgeon Devi Prasad Shetty, the projects chairman, stated that Narayana Health has allocated Rs 1,000 crore for it. We are totally committed to investing in West Bengal. Within two years, I am optimistic we will have a 1000-bed super specialty hospital in Kolkata with an investment of Rs 1,000 crore Over 10,000 people will be employed, said Dr Shetty, while addressing the seventh edition of this Global Business Summit. class=osv-ad-class>Addressing the gathering, Sanjiv Goenka, Chairman of RPSG Group, announced that the conglomerate would also set up a top-notch medical facility in Kolkata. Though, he did not specify any details. Leading conglomerate ITC Ltd. announced on Tuesday that it would increase the number of hotels it owns in West Bengal from five to nine, the MD and the chairman of the company Sanjiv Puri said. He also added that the company will soon open its eighteenth manufacturing facility in the state, during the seventh Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) held here. He, however, did not elaborate on ITCs plans announced on Tuesday. We have 17 manufacturing units (in Bengal) one more will be commissioned in the near future. We have five hospitality assets in the state, and over time, ITC is going to take this to nine, Puri said. According to Puri, in the past few years, the major tobacco company has made investments in West Bengal totaling nearly Rs 7,000 crore. Additionally, he said that the state had undergone a remarkable, multifaceted transformation thanks to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjees leadership. Harsh Pati Singhania, MD of JK Paper, announced that the JK Group would establish a dairy project in Kharagpurs Vidyasagar Industrial Park. The JK group is returning to West Bengal which is its janmabhoomi. With a dairy project set to come up in the Vidyasagar Industrial Park, Kharagpur, the company will source milk from 95,000 farmers and cover 2,000 villages. This will generate an approximate income of Rs 1,000 crore for the farmers of the state. Bengal Global Business Summit, in its 7th edition in 2023, has come to an end today with fabulous pledges for investments in Bengal from captains of industry. In total, a sum of Rs. 3,76,288 crore has been the investment promise made by the international and national business Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 22, 2023 Dr Biplabendu Talukdar, resident of Bhadreswar, is a doctor by day and an idolmaker by night. The assistant professor at department of immunohaematology and blood transfusion, has been carrying on with his childhood passion of making idols of deities and then performing puja, in accordance with the rituals. Dr Biplabendu used herbal colours and paintbrush to provide finishing touches to the idol of Jagadhatri. Health minister Chandrima Bhattacharya was all praise for the doctor. She also found out that other doctors too are involved in assisting Dr Talukdar. She inaugurated the Jagadhatri Puja by Dr Talukdar and other doctors at Bhadreswar. Advertisement The minister heaped praises on the doctor and his assistants. She said, Even after a hectic daily schedule, to hold on to his childhood passion and love towards creativity is really a gift of the almighty. They are not only saving precious lives in the hospital and at the same time blooming hidden talent in preserving the traditional art and culture of Bengal. June Armstrong, a pensioner from Canterbury, England, was fined $3,300 for a chicken sandwich she forgot to declare when she arrived in Australia. The 77-year-old grandmother paid the fine but still hopes to get the money back. ADVERTISIMENT The story was reported by the New Zealand Herald. The pensioner claims that she hasn't been able to calm down for five months, thinking about the fine all the time and even taking sleeping pills. June Armstrong arrived at the airport in Christchurch, New Zealand, on May 2 at around 4 a.m. to catch a morning flight to Brisbane, Australia. She wanted to visit her family and stay with them for three months. When she arrived at the airport, she bought a muffin and a gluten-free chicken and salad sandwich that was packed. She ate the dessert right away and saved the sandwich for later. Once in Australia, the woman headed for the exit through border control. When a security officer looked in her backpack, he found a chicken sandwich, checked her declaration and assessed a fine of $3,300. ADVERTISIMENT Hearing the amount of money she would have to pay, the grandmother burst into tears. The staff tried to calm her down. Taking the advice of the security service, she tried to appeal the fine but has not yet been able to do so. Although a snack containing bread can be imported into Australia, it must not contain meat or uncanned animal products. If a traveler fails to declare items that pose a "high level of biosecurity risk," the fine for violation can be even more than $3,000. June Armstrong said she had almost come to terms with the idea that she had paid such a large sum due to inattention. The pensioner hopes that her experience will be a lesson for other travelers not to forget about food in their bags. Earlier, OBOZ.UA wrote about useful life hacks for the first flights with a child. These recommendations will minimize stress and make your vacation unforgettable. ADVERTISIMENT Only verified information is available on our Obozrevatel Telegram and Viber. Don't fall for fakes! Protesting against massive delay in repair of National Highway 10, which is a lifeline for the border region of Darjeeling, Kalimpong and neighbouring state Sikkim, Darjeeling MP Raju Bista has requested the Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari for his intervention towards ensuring early repair of NH10. Mr Bista has informed Mr Gadkari how a massive flashflood on Teesta has washed away many portions of the NH10 on the 4 October this year. However despite it being over 45 days the road connection has only been restored partially. Making him aware of the major problems arising out of this delay, I conveyed to him that while smaller vehicles are able to pass, bigger vehicles such as trucks and buses are unable to pass. This has caused massive surge in the price of food, fuel and other essentials in our border regions, MP Mr Bista said. Moreover, because of the delay in the repair of the National Highway the truck drivers have been forced to drive on narrow mountain roads, putting their lives to risk, as the cases of accidents soar due to narrow roads, he claimed. I had written to Union Minister for Road, Transport and Highways, on 6 October this year, requesting for NHAI or NHIDCL to take over the West Bengal portion of NH 10. I have been informed that while NHIDCL has taken over the road, he claimed. Advertisement The top officials of the Union education ministry have made it clear in a meeting at New Delhi with the newlyappointed acting vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati University (VBU), Professor Sanjay Kumar Mallick, to install new plaques and remove the older ones as soon as possible. Already, a six-member committee has been formed by the Union ministry of education for setting up the plaques in VBU campus, a write-up has also been provided which the varsity has to translate. The acting VC of VBU, Professor Mallick has updated the education ministry officials about the current situation and the officials have given him certain instructions, sources said. The process for a permanent vice-chancellor of VBU should be undertaken, the officials said. The former vice-chancellor of VBU, Professor Bidyut Chakraborty has been allowed to stay in his official residence Purbita in Santiniketan till 30 November. Professor Bidyut Chakraborty has been facing questions from Birbhum Police for several cases lodged against him. Yesterday, for three hours he has been grilled and will again be grilled by the Santiniketan Police tomorrow. The state government also wants Poush Mela should be organised this year, which is one of the most popular cultural attractions in Tagores abode of peace and draws huge tourists, both from India and abroad. Since 2020, it has not been held. During September this year, UNESCO announced the awarding of the World Cultural Heritage tag to Santiniketan. Advertisement Bodies of an elderly couple were discovered at their residence in Anandapur, Kolkata, today. The police suspect the wife was first murdered by her husband, who then leapt from the fourth floor of their residence. The couples lifeless bodies were recovered from their flat in Anandapur after locals heard a commotion and rushed out. The authorities found 75- year-old Amulya Samaddar had jumped from the fourth floor, following the alleged murder of his wife. The investigation reveals that the deceased wife, Gita Samaddar, 63, had been ailing for the past decade, battling various health issues, including recent cardiac problems. She was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday due to deteriorating health. The police suspect financial strain and the burden of medical expenses could have driven the husband to commit the act. Gitas body displayed signs of assault, hinting at a possible struggle before her tragic demise. Advertisement The couple lived alone, and while initial speculation suggests a tragic end, the police are delving deeper into the case to ascertain if there are any hidden motives or external factors at play Film maker Sourav Sarkar exhibited his documentary film named The Stolen Star and interacted with the reporters here today to create awareness among the people which is heavily required to create empathy to prevent bullying and suicidal death for protecting childhood. The director of The Stolen Star, Mr Sarkar, who has made several films on social justice in last 10 years, has exhibited the film in many places recently in observance of the World Childrens Day 2023 so that the society gets an exposure to the failure of the school administration system to protect the child and the family from emotional hazard. According to Mr Sarkar, The Stolen Star portrays the fight for justice of the reported suicidal death of Arka, a twelve year old Indian boy in Canada. Mr Sarkar has opened an eye for the society to fight for justice for all these children, like his mother, who suffered at the worst, even in presence of the codified Rights of emotional and holistic protection of children in the universal covenants long back. Advertisement The Stolen Starhas already been invited for exhibition and panel discussion at different public institutions in West Bengal as well as Maharashtra National Law University in Mumbai, Mr Sarkar said. Amit Mehrotra, chief of UNICEF of West Bengal said, On this World Childrens Day, everybody is urged to treat girls and boys equally. Encourage everyone in the family to eat together. Ensure girls and boys attend schools regularly and complete their education and finally do our bit to save the planet for children. In a Press statement UNICEF mentioned: You must have noticed some places of worship, iconic buildings and structures of Kolkata and different districts in West Bengal have been illuminated in blue light for the past couple of days. Famous structures like Bidhan Sabha Bhavan (Assembly Building), Howrah Bridge (Rabindra Setu), Metcalfe Hall, Birla Planetarium, Nehru Childrens Museum, Kolkata Press Club, Birla Industrial and Technological Museum and UNICEF office in Kolkata were lit up in blue light to espouse the rights of children for commemorating World Childrens Day (20 November). In a scathing attack on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Leader of the Opposition in Kerala Assembly V D Satheesan on Wednesday called the former a criminal. Stepping up his criticism against the chief minister, Satheesan said Pinarayi Vijayan is still the criminal he used to be. He is a criminal. His old traits are still with him, Satheesan said, apparently referring to Vijayans alleged involvement in cases of political violence in the past. Advertisement Satheesan targetted CM Vijayan personally in response to the latters remarks on the brutal attack by DYFI workers on the Youth Congress activists who waved black flags at him in Kannur. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has the other day termed the attack on Youth Congress workers as an exemplary rescue work by DYFI. Youth Congress activists who waved black flags to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his cabinet colleagues, returning from the Nava Kerala Sadas in the Kalliassery constituency, were brutally beaten up by CPI-M-DYFI workers in Pazhayangadi near Kannur on Monday. The chief ministers assertion that DYFI workers had actually saved the lives of Youth Congress activistswho had purportedly attempted to jump in front of his cavalcade and wave black flags at the Nava Kerala Sadas in Pazhayangadiinfuriated the Congress leaders I saw it happen in front of my eyes. The DYFI workers were attempting to stop those (Youth Congress workers) from jumping in front of the approaching vehicle. They had to employ some force, but it was necessary to save the lives of the Youth Congress activists. It wasnt an attack, CM Pinarayi Vijayan said. At a news briefing, the Chief Minister told reporters, It was an admirable move on the part of the DYFI workers and my plea to them is to continue the same. Satheesan said that the Chief Minister has a cruel mind and that Kerala is not a monarchy and accused the Chief Minister of inciting riots It was clearly an attempt to murder and the chief minister is justifying it. He is a criminal. His old traits are still with him, Satheesan told media persons in Kochi Pinarayi Vijayan is not eligible to hold the position of Chief Minister with the charge of the Home Department for a moment. Pinarayi Vijayan should resign as Chief Minister immediately, said V D Satheesan. The Opposition leader also made it clear that if the CM is reluctant to step down from power, he should issue a public apology. The Chief Minister must tender an apology to the public for asking the DYFI workers to take law into their hands and step down from his post. His statement has been proved wrong as the police who booked a case against those involved have invoked Section 307 (attempt to murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against 14 DYFI workers. We are planning to take legal recourse against the Chief Minister for his inflammatory appeal, he said. Campaigning in Rajasthan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday attacked the Congress leadership for indulging in dynastic politics and punishing its leader Sachin Pilot for his fathers revolt against the high command in 1996. Addressing a BJP rally in Bhilwaras Shahpura, he said the Congress party has a feeling of rancour for Pilot as his late father, Rajesh Pilot had raised his voice on party issues. You know the history of the Congress. Whosoever tries to raise his voice against wrongdoings in the party, he will lose political space because of the high command sitting in Delhi, he said. Advertisement Rajesh Pilot, only once raised his voice against the Congress and that too for the betterment of the Congress, but the party is punishing Sachin Pilot to the date. Rajesh Pilot is no more but Congress has a feeling of rancour for his son, he said. Rajesh Pilot had argued against putting forth Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi as the partys prime ministerial candidate. Modi said people in Bhilwara had made up their mind to remove the Congress from power. He said the Congress had not lost its arrogance and never tolerated anybody speaking truth. The Congress can get destroyed, but will not tolerate anybody raising voice against its top leaders, he said. Modi said he is confident that the Congress would get such a defeat in the Rajasthan elections, which they could not imagine in their dreams. He said Congress Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot will never be able to become the chief minister again. The partys policy of appeasement will take the party towards its destruction. Communal tension had increased in the state during the Congress rule. If the Congress continues in power in the state, migration will continue and atrocities on women will increase, he said. This required the Congress should be removed from power in the state. Modi asked people to vote for lotus, the partys election symbol. Development of a state required appropriate policies and decisions, he said. The Congress had policies which were anti-people and it took decisions against the country. The Congress was soft on terrorists, communalists and criminals, and the party followed the path of corruption, he said. It were these policies which had made development in Rajasthan impossible, he said. The Congress had left no stone unturned in looting the state in the last five years, he said. The government had charged more for petrol. The BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and the price of petrol was lower by Rs 12 to 13 in these states, he said. Should the Congress government continue in Rajasthan, he said. The government had encouraged the industry of paper leak and transfer postings. The Centre sent money for the states development, but the funds were looted, he said. This is the true face of the Congress; it does not care for the middle classes or the poor, Modi said. The partys crimes are recorded in the red diary, he said. Mentioning about this diary makes the chief minister lose his cool, he said. The PM said a big danger is hovering over Rajasthans culture. The road that the Congress has taken for polarisation will lead Rajasthan towards devastation, the PM said. Addressing a rally in Dungarpur, the Prime Minister said the Congress will never again form a government in Rajasthan. The party was behind scam in every government recruitment in Rajasthan. He said from where hope from Congress ends, Modis guarantees start. The Congress never helped crores of Adivasis in the country. The BJP created a separate ministry for them and increased budget for the welfare of the Adivasis. The Prime Minister said the massive presence of women and common people in his election meetings showed the countdown for the Congress Government had started in the State. At least four Army personnel, including two Captains and two Havaldars have been killed in an ongoing encounter with terrorists in Rajouri area of Jammu and Kashmir. A Major and two more jawans have been critically wounded. The Indian Army troops, including Special Forces are deployed in the area after inputs were received about movement of a group of terrorists in the area. In a post on X, the 16 Corps said that a joint operation was launched in Kalakote area of Gulabgarh forest in Rajouri district on November 19 following intelligence inputs of movement of terrorists in the area. Advertisement After days of intensive search operation, the Indian Army said that contact with terrorists was established today and intense gunfight ensued. The Army said that terrorists have been injured and they have surrounded them as operation continues in the area. Based on specific intelligence Joint Operations launched in #Kalakote Area #Gulabgarh forest #Rajouri, District on 19 Nov 23. Contact established on 22 Nov and intense firefight ensued. The terrorists have been injured and surrounded and operations are in progress, amidst acts White Knight Corps (@Whiteknight_IA) November 22, 2023 The terrorists have been injured and surrounded and operations are in progress it said. The India Army also hailed the supreme sacrifice of its soldiers while trying to prevent collateral damage to women and children. Earlier on Friday, a Pakistani terrorist was killed in Budhal area of Rajouri district. A huge quantity of arms and ammunition were seized, said security forces. The Kerala Police have arrested four Youth Congress workers in connection with the alleged use of forged election ID cards in the Youth Congress state election. Abhi Vikram, Vikas Krishnan, Binil Vinu and Fenny were arrested by the Museum Police. They are natives of Adoor. The police informed that there is digital evidence against the accused. Meanwhile, police sources said that a notice will be issued to the Youth Congress state president Rahul Mankoothil, asking him to appear for interrogation in connection with the case. Advertisement In this connection, cyber sleuths have collected the database of the website which was used for election purposes. The website was hosted on a cloud platform from the United States and an extensive repository of about seven lakh individuals was recovered. 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. Police 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. An eight-member special team of Kerala Police has been assigned to probe the alleged use of fake voters ID cards during the Youth Congress election in the state. Thiruvananthapuram City Police Deputy Commissioner Nidhinraj P is heading the probe team. Senior Congress leader and permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee, Ramesh Chennithala said on Wednesday that the LDF governments public outreach programme, the Nava Kerala Sadas is an utter failure and waste of public money. Terming the Nava Kerala Sadas as a publicity stunt of LDF before the upcoming general election, Ramesh Chennithala said the LDF is using the government machinery for its election campaign. Speaking to media persons in Kozhikode, Chennithala said this(Nava Kerala Sadas) is a program that does not benefit the people. No one can complain directly to the Chief Minister or Ministers. Advertisement Though the projected intention is to receive complaints from the public, the Sadas are not at all useful for people. The people cant even give a complaint directly to the CM or to any ministers. Now, people are aware of this. They know they have been fooled, Chennithala said. Chennithala said that the Chief Minister has no vision for development and the government does not have the money to solve the problems being faced by the people. Commenting on the Chief Ministers comment that the Opposition is upset over the success of the Nava Kerala Sadas,Chennithala asked why should the opposition be upset? . If you go to all 140 constituencies, it will benefit UDF. It will make our job easier, he said. Days after filing a terror case against Khalistan extremist and proscribed Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) founder Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, the National Investigation Agency on Wednesday conducted raids in Punjab at several premises of suspects having links to outlawed Unlawful Association and Pannuns SFJ. National Investigation Agency is conducting raids at the premises of suspects in Punjab having links to outlawed Unlawful Association, Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), news agency ANI quoted sources as saying. The raids come two days after the anti-terror probe agency booked Pannun over his video threatening Air India passengers. Advertisement NIA registered a case against the Khalistani extremist under sections 120B, 153A & 506 of the Indian Penal Code and sections 10, 13, 16, 17, 18, 18B & 20 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. In the video released on November 4, Pannun had asked Sikhs not to fly by Air India planes on and after November 19. He claimed threat to their life if they fly on Air India planes. The Khalistani extremist also threatened not to allow Air India to operate anywhere in the world. Who is Gurpatwant Singh Pannun? Born and raised in Khankot village, located on the outskirts of Amritsar in Punjab, India, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun hails from a modest background. His father, Mohinder Singh, formerly worked for the Punjab State Agricultural Marketing Board, while his mothers name is Amarjit Kaur. Pannun also has a brother named Magwant Singh Pannun. Although Pannun is not widely known in his village, his family possesses substantial assets, including valuable agricultural land, a school, and a college within the village. Their wealth can be traced back to their migration from Pakistan to Khankot village during the Partition in 1947. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has gained notoriety for his advocacy of a separate state for Sikhs in Punjab. As the legal advisor and spokesperson for Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), he played a role in promoting the concept of Khalistan, an independent Sikh state. Scientists have discovered a galactic nebula, a cosmic cloud of dust and gas that rhythmically changes color and brightness every four years. It is the only one of more than a billion space objects that has this behavior. ADVERTISIMENT The discovery was reported by researchers from the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. Their work has been published on the arXiv preprint site and is awaiting review by the scientific community. Roberto Saito of the Federal University of Santa Catarina and his colleagues have been looking for traces of supernovae in observations by the VISTA telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile for nine years. This telescope is capable of surveying sections of the Milky Way in search of extremely rare events in our galactic neighborhood. In particular, it is used to search for supernovae, the last of which exploded in our galaxy in 1604. The researchers noticed a particularly strange nebula. It changed color and brightness in sync with the light source. The scientists named the strange nebula VVV-WIT-12. WIT is an abbreviation of What is it? This is how researchers designate objects that are difficult to classify. ADVERTISIMENT Saito said that the researchers have a database containing more than 1 billion objects and more than 17,000 square degrees of sky, but "this is the only source with this behavior." The scientists also noticed another strange detail about the nebula. It turned out that, in addition to changing color over the course of four years, it was not synchronized with itself. That is, when the side of the nebula closest to the Earth became brighter, the farthest side dimmed and vice versa. "It was a surprise for us. It's quite difficult to understand," Saito said. The researchers suggest that the interesting object may be an unusual young star in the process of formation. Its very "youth" may be the reason for such variability. However, to understand the nature of the star, they will need a detailed spectrum that would show its chemical composition. The VISTA telescope is not equipped with such a feature. ADVERTISIMENT Saito hopes that more details about the object will be revealed through future observations using newer large-scale survey telescopes, such as the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile. Earlier, OBOZ.UA reported that scientists saw the unique space cataclysm "Tasmanian Devil" for the first time. Subscribe to OBOZ.UA on Telegram and Viber to keep up with the latest events. Even as he welcomed the deal for the release of 50 Israeli hostages in Gaza, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday appealed to G20 leaders to ensure that the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict does not take a regional form. The deaths of civilians in any country is condemnable. Today, we welcome the news of the release of hostages and hope all the hostages will be released soon. It is necessary to ensure timely and continuous delivery of humanitarian aid. Despite the clouds of crisis that we are seeing today, One Family has the power to work for peace. he said addressing a virtual summit of G20 leaders. The PM said that from the perspective of human welfare, the G20 should raise its voice against terrorism and violence and in support of humanity. Today, India is ready to move step by step to fulfil the expectations of the world and humanity, he added. Advertisement Modi said that when he had proposed the virtual summit in September, there was no anticipation of what the global situation would be today. New challenges have arisen in the last months. The situation of insecurity and instability in the West Asian region is a matter of concern for all of us. Our coming together today symbolises that we are sensitive to all issues and stand together to resolve them, he added. He said the deaths of civilians, wherever they happen, is condemnable. In todays world full of distrust and challenges, it is mutual trust that binds us, connects us to each other, he said and noted that in the last one year of Indias presidency of G20, the member nations have expressed faith in One Earth, One Family, One Future. Mr Modi said as the world of the 21st century moves forward, the concerns of the Global South will have to be given top priority. The countries of the Global South are going through many difficulties for which they are not responsible. In this context, the need of the hour is that we give our full support to the development agenda. It is necessary to bring reforms in the global economic and governance structures to make them Bigger, Better, Effective, Representative and Future Ready, he added. The Indian leader also spoke at length about Artificial Intelligence (AI), saying there is a need to use technology in a responsible manner. There is increasing concern all over the world about the negative use of AI. India has a clear thinking that we should work together on the global regulation of AI. Understanding the seriousness of DeepFake, how dangerous it is for the society, for the individual, we have to move forward. We want AI to reach the people, and it must be safe for society, he added. The PM said India will host a Global Partnership Summit next month. Recalling that at the G20 Summit in New Delhi in September he had raised the issue of Green Credit regarding environmental protection, Modi said India has already started it. Through the Global Biofuels Alliance launched in New Delhi, we are promoting the development of alternative fuels along with reducing carbon, he added. Continuing the drive to weed out employees having terror links, the Jammu & Kashmir government on Wednesday terminated four employees, including president of Doctors Association of Kashmir (DAK), for their alleged involvement in anti-national and terror-related activities. According to an order issued by the general administration department, those terminated include a doctor, a police constable, a teacher, and a laboratory bearer in the higher education department. They have been sacked by the UT administration by invoking 311 (2) (c) of the Constitution of India, which empowers it to do so without an inquiry. Those sacked include Dr. Nissar-ul-Hassan, assistant professor in Srinagars SMHS hospital, Salam Rather (laboratory bearer in Higher Education department), Abdul Majeed Bhat (constable ) and Farooq Ahmad Mir (teacher). Advertisement Officials said that this is part of UT administrations war against the terrorist ecosystem and its key stakeholders, who were surreptitiously inducted into the government machinery by political regimes of different shades in the past. In the last 3 years, the Union Territory administration has invoked 311 (2) (c) of the Constitution of India to sack more than 50 such employees for their involvement in anti-national and terror activities. Among those sacked after abrogation of Article 370 and J&K becoming a UT were a grandson of pro-Pakistan separatist Syed Alishah Geelani and sons of Salahuddin, who is steering terrorism in India while sitting in Pakistan. Just three days ahead of voting for the 199 of the 200-member Rajasthan Legislative Assembly Elections, incumbent Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Wednesday made a big prediction on Congress partys performance in the polls. Speaking to news agency ANI, Gehlot said that Congress party will break the Rajasthans tradition of voting out the incumbent government every five years and win as many as 156 seats. People have made up their mood to repeat the government in the state this time. I believe we are moving towards 156 seats. The tradition (of changing the govt in every 5 years) is going to break this time. People in the state are happy with the kind of work we have doneIn Rajasthan, it is definite that the govt will be repeated, he said. Advertisement His claim is different from the earlier assessment of the Congress leadership. Last month, Rahul Gandhi had admitted that while they are certain of a victory in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, there will be a close contest in Rajasthan between the Congress and the BJP. #WATCH | Jaipur: On Rajasthan Assembly elections, CM Ashok Gehlot says, People have made up their mood to repeat the government in the state this time. I believe we are moving towards 156 seats. The tradition (of changing the govt in every 5 years) is going to break this time. pic.twitter.com/udrp1FTdhF ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 For the last three decades, an incumbent government has not retained power in the desert state. This time, the Congress is hoping to change that and Gehlots former deputy and foe-turned friend Sachin Pilot has also echoed him. In an exclusive interview with The Statesman, Pilot Tuesday said, There has been a trend among the voters of Rajasthan to elect the Congress and the BJP alternately. But this time around, people want to change this tradition by voting for Congress in the ongoing assembly polls. Once an archrival of CM Gehlot, Pilot, who almost brough down the Congress government in Rajasthan 3 years ago, said that they are contesting the elections unitedly and there has been overwhelming public response. We are contesting elections unitedly without any differences. I have joined most of the meetings of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. The public response has been overwhelming he added. Rajasthan will vote on November 25 and the results will be declared on December 3. Two captains were among four soldiers of the Indian Army killed in an ongoing encounter with terrorists in the Kalakote forest area of Jammus Rajouri district on Wednesday. A Major and two jawans were critically injured during the fierce gunfight and they have been airlifted to the military hospital at Udhampur. More troops have been deployed in the area to neutralise the terrorists. Advertisement Two Captains and two Havildars were killed, while three other troops were shifted to the military hospital in a critical condition. Senior Army and police officers have reached the spot to oversee the operation against terrorists. White Knight Corps of the Indian Army said that based on specific intelligence, joint operations were launched in the Kalakote area in the Gulabgarh forest of Rajouri on 19 November. Contact was established with terrorists on 22 November and intense firefight ensued. The terrorists have been injured and surrounded and operations are in progress, amidst acts of valour and sacrifice by own Bravehearts in trying to prevent collateral damage to women and children in the highest traditions of the Indian Army. White Knight Corps salutes the supreme sacrifice, it added. Inspector General of Police (Jammu Range) Anand Jain said in the morning that an encounter has started between terrorists and joint forces of the Army and J&K Police in the Bajimaal area of Dharmsal in the Rajouri district. Two terrorists are believed to be trapped in the cordon, the IGP added. A team of the Army and police launched a cordon and search operation in the area on a specific input about the presence of terrorists in the forest area. As the joint team approached the suspected area, the hiding terrorists fired upon the security forces. Earlier on Friday, a Pakistani terrorist was killed in Budhal area of Rajouri district. A huge quantity of arms and ammunition were seized, said security forces. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Wednesday responded to a report that claimed the United States has foiled a plot to kill Khalistan extremist and Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) co-founder Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and raised the issue with the Indian government at the senior most level. MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi, when asked about the the report, said that the US government has shared some inputs that were being examined by relevant departments. He said the inputs were related to a nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others which is a concern for both the countries. Advertisement India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well, Bagchi said. The report published by the UK daily Financial Times claimed that US authorities thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist in the United States and issued a warning to India over concerns the government in New Delhi was involved. The report named SFJ founder Pannun, who was booked by Indias anti-terror probe agency NIA over his video threatening to fliers of Air India. Earlier today, the NIA also conducted raids on several premises linked to the Sikh extremists SFJ in Punjab. White House spokesperson Adrienne Watson, when asked about the FT report, said that India expressed surprise and concern and stated that activity of this nature was not their policy. We understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable, Watson was quoted as saying by Reuters. This comes just two months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged that Ottawa has evidence of credible allegations linking agents of Indian government to the murder of another Canadian Sikh extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June early this year. While India rejected Canadian PMs claims as absurd and motivated, the issue triggered a massive diplomatic row between Canada and India. Who is Gurpatwant Singh Pannun? Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is a dual citizen of America and Canada. Born and raised in Khankot village, located on the outskirts of Amritsar in Punjab, India, Pannun hails from a modest background. His father, Mohinder Singh, formerly worked for the Punjab State Agricultural Marketing Board, while his mothers name is Amarjit Kaur. Pannun also has a brother named Magwant Singh Pannun. Although Pannun is not widely known in his village, his family possesses substantial assets, including valuable agricultural land, a school, and a college within the village. Their wealth can be traced back to their migration from Pakistan to Khankot village during the Partition in 1947. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun has gained notoriety for his advocacy of a separate state for Sikhs in Punjab. As the legal advisor and spokesperson for Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), he played a role in promoting the concept of Khalistan, an independent Sikh state. The Uttarakhand tunnel rescue operation has entered its final stage and only 12-meter drilling is left to reach the 41 construction workers who are trapped under the debris since November 12. The Silkyara rescue operation is now in the final stages. NDRF team is deployed to rescue the workers. An ambulance is deployed inside the tunnel and a team of doctors is deployed in the CHC located at Chinyalisaur for health check-ups of the workers. Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami himself is also present in Uttarkashi, CM Office Uttarakhand said. The rescue teams are likely to complete the drilling by 11:30-12:00 pm today and big news is expected soon after. Advertisement I am happy to announce that we have been able to move forward by another 6 meters and it is expected that in the next 2 hours when we prepare for the next phase, we will be able to achieve remaining work, Former advisor to the Prime Ministers Office, Bhaskar Khulbe, who is looking after the entire rescue operation, said. Earlier today, teams of National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) also reached the spot to help in evacuation of the trapped workers. They carried oxygen cylinders likely to given to trapped workers they are extracted. Around 30 ambulances have also been deployed near the spot to transport the trapped workers to hospital when they come out. 30 ambulances are present at the spot. We have been directed to be on alert as the rescue could be completed by the night. All necessary items including medicines are available in the ambulances, news agency ANI quoted an ambulance staff as saying. Meanwhile, a 41-bed hospital has been set up at Community Health Centre in Chinyalisaur for medical examination and care of trapped workers after they are evacuated from Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi. #WATCH | 41-bed hospital readied at Community Health Centre in Chinyalisaur for medical examination and care of trapped workers after they are evacuated from Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi pic.twitter.com/hBt4NkElSs ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 The workers are trapped in a 400-meter buffer zone of the unfinished Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhands Uttarkashi since November 12 when a portion of it collapsed following a landslide. The tunnel project is part of the Chardham all-weather road. Myanmar finds itself at a critical juncture. The recent triumph of the rebel grouping known as the Brotherhood Alliance in northern Myanmar signifies a watershed moment for the countrys trajectory, echoing far beyond its borders. This victory, the most significant blow to the military junta since the 2021 coup, prompts a re-evaluation of power dynamics, regional influence, and the uncertain future that lies ahead. The rebel forces, a coalition of the Arakan Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Taang National Liberation Army, have displayed unprecedented coordination in their offensive. Overrunning 100 military outposts and seizing control of vital border crossings, they pose a formidable challenge to the juntas grip on power. The battleground near Myanmars border with China, where much of the fiercest fighting has occurred, adds another layer to this complex narrative. Chinas response to its neighbours internal strife is indicative of its delicate diplomatic position. While expressing concern and advocating for an immediate ceasefire, China finds itself forced to take a nuanced position. The juntas weakening control jeopardises key economic investments in the region, prompting Beijing to walk a tight-rope between maintaining stability and protecting its interests. Advertisement The alliances offensive, allegedly not possible without tacit approval from China, highlights the intricate web of relationships at play. The junta, facing economic sanctions, a foreign exchange shortage, and internal corruption allegations, now grapples with a military that appears unexpectedly vulnerable. The possibility of losing control over key trade routes and border crossings, which account for a significant portion of cross-border trade, further weakens the juntas standing. However, the prospect of an imminent collapse remains remote, contingent on the juntas ability to mount a decisive response. The international community watches with a mix of anticipation and apprehension. The weakening of the junta could be perceived as a historic moment, signifying the resilience of resistance against authoritarian rule. Yet, the complexities of Myanmars internal dynamics caution against premature conclusions. The anti-junta fighters, operating under the banner of the National Unity Government, capitalise on this opportunity, recognising that such moments are rare and fleeting. As the rebel alliance celebrates its success, questions linger about the broader implications for Myanmars politics. Will this victory pave the way for a more inclusive and democratic future, or will it plunge the nation into further chaos? The delicate dance between regional powers, particularly China, adds another layer of uncertainty to an already intricate situation. In this unfolding drama, the resilience of the Myanmar people and their quest for selfdetermination take centre stage. The Brotherhood Alliance represents not only a military force but a symbol of collective resistance against oppressive rule. The international communitys role is crucial, not only in supporting the aspirations of the Myanmar people but also in navigating the diplomatic challenges posed by a nation in flux. The end game must ensure a return of democratic forces, and not a free-for-all between various armed groups. In Nepal, where the majestic Himalayas beckon, a tale unfolds of a nations aspiration for progress and connectivity, intricately tied to a colossal international airport project. As Nepal embarks on investigating this venture funded and built by Chinese state-owned companies, it unfurls a narrative that extends far beyond the boundaries of Pokhara. At the heart of this investigation lies the Pokhara airport, a $216 million endeavour conceived over a decade ago under the auspices of Chinas financial support. The airport, envisioned as a gateway to the Himalayas and a catalyst for tourism in the region, has encountered turbulence even before the first regular international flight could grace its runway. The concerns raised are many. These include the projects staggering cost, its questionable quality, and the lingering spectre of debt repayment. It is a poignant reminder of the delicate dance that developing nations engage in when accepting financial lifelines from global powerhouses. In this intricate waltz, the spotlight shifts to Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, a colossal campaign disseminating financial support globally, underlining a commitment to economic and diplomatic collaboration. Nepals predicament, however, showcases the potential pitfalls of such partnerships. The investigation into alleged irregularities in the airport project illuminates a broader discourse around the transparency and accountability of international infrastructure investments. Advertisement As developing nations grapple with the aftermath of borrowed funds, the Pokhara airport project serves as a stark cautionary tale, urging a reassessment of the dynamics between borrower and lender. The financial quagmire surrounding the airports construction raises questions about the wisdom of heavy reliance on external financing. While the intention behind the project was undoubtedly noble ~ an attempt to bolster Nepals economic prospects and create a thriving tourist destination ~ it now stands at the crossroads of financial strain and diplomatic intricacies. The very essence of the investigation underscores a growing global sentiment ~ one of wariness and scrutiny concerning the methods and motivations behind Chinas overseas infrastructure projects. The notion of a flagship project under the Belt and Road Initiative faces scepticism, and the repercussions extend far beyond Nepals borders. Sri Lankas handover of a deep-water port and Pakistans substantial foreign debt to China serve as cautionary tales etched into the narrative of global infrastructure collaboration. It is crucial to recognise that the Pokhara airport is not merely a physical structure. It symbolises the hopes and aspirations of a nation seeking a foothold in the global economy. The investigations outcome holds the potential to shape diplomatic ties, influence borrowing practices, and perhaps, recalibrate the trajectory of similar projects in the future. Nepals airport saga serves as a thread that prompts reflection on the symbiotic relationship between nations, the delicate balance of economic interests, and the imperative need for transparent, mutually beneficial agreements. As the investigation unfolds, the world watches, hopeful that from the shadows of scepticism, a path to responsible and sustainable global infrastructure collaboration emerges ~ a path that honours the aspirations of nations while navigating the complexities of international partnerships. In a surprising twist in the OpenAI saga, the company on Wednesday announced return of Sam Altman as its CEO less than a week after he was sacked by the board. The development comes after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that he is taking in Altman to lead a new AI research initiative and OpenAI appointed former Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear as its new CEO. However, the twist in the OpenAI saga came today when it said that Altman will rejoin the Microsoft-backed tech startup as its boss. From Altmans sacking by OpenAI board to his return as CEO, here is the timeline of key events that have unfolded in the last five days: Advertisement Friday, November 17, 2023: OpenAIs board of members inform Altman that they have decided to sack him. This happened on a Google Meet call between Altman and the board members. Saturday, November 18, 2023: In a blog post, the company made the new of Altmans sacking public. In the post, it was said that the board has lost confidence in his abilities to lead the company. It also accused Altman of not being candid in his conversations with the board. Saturday, November 18, 2023: In a joint statement shared by Greg Brockman, the co-founder of the tech firm who also stepped down in protest, said that Altman was fired over a Google Meet call without any prior info. He said that they are trying to find out what actually happened. The statement was reposted by Altman. Brockman also claimed that the board told him that he will keep his place but Altman have to go. Saturday, November 18, 2023: Mira Murati, the Chief Technology Officer in OpenAI was appointed as an Interim CEO. Sunday, November 19, 2023: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella offers full support to Altman. He announced that Altman and Brockman will join Microsoft to lead the new AI research initiative. Amid reports of investors pushing the board to reinstate Altman, OpenAI announced former Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear as its new CEO. Monday, November 20, 2023: OpenAI employees wrote an open letter, threatening to quite if Altman is not reinstated. They also demanded the board members who sacked him to step down. November 22, 2023: Open AI announced that Altman will return as CEO and new board members will be appointed. Altman also confirmed the new and said that he is looking forward to returning to OpenAI. Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia military group, has vowed to retaliate against Israels brutal aggression after two journalists from Lebanese TV channel Al-Mayadeen were killed in Israeli attacks on the southern village of Tayr Harfa. This crime, the previous attack on Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah, the killing of dozens of journalists in Gaza and the destruction of their headquarters by the occupation forces, reveals the important role played by the media in exposing the enemys practices and exposing its horrific crimes against civilians, especially in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah said on Tuesday in a statement. The military group called on international media and humanitarian bodies to condemn the crime and similar crimes that preceded it, and exert the highest levels of pressure on the Israeli government to stop its attacks on media professionals and civilians, Xinhua news agency reported. Advertisement Meanwhile, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati strongly condemned the Israeli attacks that killed media professionals in the south on Tuesday. He said the attack proved once again that Israels goal is to silence the media that exposes its crimes and attacks. For his part, Lebanese Defence Minister Maurice Slim called for a unified and effective Arab and international position in the face of the continuous Israeli aggression as statements of denunciation and condemnation are no longer sufficient. Farah Omar, a reporter working for local TV channel Al-Mayadeen, and Rabih Al-Maamari, a photographer working for the same channel, were covering the events in southern Lebanon on Tuesday when two Israeli drones hit them, killing both of them and a civilian named Hussein Akil, Lebanese TV channel Al-Manar reported. On October 13, Issam Abdallah, a Lebanese photojournalist working for Reuters, was killed while covering Israeli attacks in the southern village of Alma al-Shaab while several other journalists working for Agence France-Presse and Al Jazeera were injured. On October 14, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry submitted a complaint to the UN Security Council against Israel for launching attacks on journalists. The Lebanon-Israel border witnessed increased tension for over six weeks after Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets toward Shebaa Farms on October 8 in support of the Hamas attacks on Israel on Monday, prompting the Israeli forces to respond by firing heavy artillery toward several areas in southeastern Lebanon. The Finnish government has decided to close all checkpoints on the border with Russia, except for the northern Raya-Josepi checkpoint. The latter is currently open daily for 4 hours. ADVERTISIMENT At the same time, the government is ready to decide on additional border restrictions as early as Wednesday, November 22, at a government meeting in the evening. This is stated in the article in the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper. As noted, Finnish Deputy Minister of Justice Mikko Puumalainen gave the green light to a new draft decision of the Ministry of the Interior to strengthen border crossing points in the eastern part this afternoon. "The Deputy Chancellor of Justice has assessed the draft decision and the draft memorandum submitted today from the point of view of law enforcement oversight. A confidential memorandum on this issue is also available. Based on the documents, there are no legal obstacles to further preparation of the proposed decision," the Ministry of Justice office told the newspaper. ADVERTISIMENT Now the government is to hold a press conference on the issue at the official residence of the Prime Minister in Quesaranta. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, Interior Minister Mari Rantanen and Head of the Border Guard Department Markku Hassinen will be present. Earlier, Orpo explained that in recent weeks, citizens of Iraq, Yemen and other countries have begun to arrive in Finland via Russia in large numbers and seek asylum. Before this, Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen noted that Russian border guards let people who do not have documents enter Finland through their checkpoints, although they should not do so. Moreover, Russian border guards even help asylum seekers get to the border. ADVERTISIMENT As OBOZ.UA previously reported, members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine supported a resolution approving the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of November 20, 2023. It refers to the introduction of sectoral economic and other sanctions against Russia and Belarus in the defense industry. Only verified information on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Following a nearly two-month hiatus, India has started offering e-visa services to Canadian citizens again, sources with knowledge of the situation reported on Wednesday. Visa applications were halted on September 21 due to strained relations between the two nations as a result of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus unfounded claims of a possible Indian connection to the murder of pro-Khalistani leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia. However, India started offering Canadian citizens visa services again in October for a limited number of visa categories, with the exception of journalists, employment, tourists, students, missionaries, and films. Advertisement Hours before Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes part in the virtual G20 Leaders Summit, services for all types of visas have resumed. The Canadian Prime Ministers office (PMO) confirmed Trudeaus attendance because it is scheduled for November 22. Trudeau would be meeting Prime Minister Modi for the first time, albeit virtually, as relations between the two countries soured due to the formers accusations against New Delhi. A charge that New Delhi dismissed as absurd and motivated was made by Trudeau in the House of Commons, claiming that there were credible allegations of a possible connection between Indian agents and the killing of Nijjar. The prime minister of Canada has not yet offered any proof that India was involved in the murder. In a dramatic flare-up that lasted for weeks, Trudeau reiterated on November 12 that India was complicit in the murder of Nijjar and charged New Delhi with breaking the Vienna Convention by kicking out dozens of diplomats. Last week, S Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs, stated that India is not ruling out looking into Canadas allegations, but he also pointed out that Ottawa has not yet produced any proof to support its position. At a Wilton Park, a UK foreign office agency in London, event, Jaishankar was asked whether there was any proof that India was involved in Nijjars murder. This years UN climate summit, COP28, is on the horizon, marking the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This assembly serves as an annual congregation for the 198 nations that are signatories to the convention, united in their commitment to addressing climate change challenges and devising strategies for mitigation and adaptation. Notably, South Asian Himalayan countries are actively preparing for their participation in this crucial event. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal of Nepal, addressing the national conference on climate change in Kathmandu, sounded a cautionary note. He forewarned about the potential surge in climate change-induced disasters, looming food security crises, and the growing scarcity of potable water. These concerns are set to be highlighted by Nepal in the upcoming COP28. The Prime Minister expressed his determination to advocate fervently during the summit, urging affluent and developed nations to honor their commitments to curb the rise in global temperatures. Nepal, during COP28, intends to assert its claims on climate action while emphasizing the urgent and complete implementation of agreements to secure climate financing as grants for adaptation and resilience. PM Dahal underscored the climate-related challenges confronting Nepal, citing the melting and exploding glaciers, the escalating occurrences of landslides and dry droughts in hilly areas, and the pervasive flood incidents in the Terai region. Global warming, he noted, is responsible for the substantial melting of two-thirds of the regions mountain glaciers. Advertisement The Prime Minister pointed out that the adverse impacts of climate change disproportionately affect vulnerable groups, including impoverished families, small-scale farmers, marginalized ethnic communities, women, children, the elderly, and people with physical challenges. He emphasized the extensive repercussions of climate change on critical sectors such as agriculture, hydro resources, and tourism, as well as on national economy-contributing domains like food security, health, water supply, livelihoods, and security. Echoing these concerns, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, during his visit to Nepal, highlighted the alarming rate at which glaciers in the country were melting. He described the situation as dire and accelerating, drawing attention to the urgency of addressing climate-related challenges. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), based in Kathmandu, further underscored the severity of the situation. According to ICIMODs assessment, glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, a region that encompasses Asia, could witness a staggering loss of up to 75% of their volume by the end of the century due to global warming. This alarming projection raises concerns about the potential consequences, including hazardous flooding and water shortages for the 240 million people inhabiting the mountainous region. As COP28 approaches, Nepal is poised to articulate its concerns and advocate for global cooperation to address the pressing issues exacerbated by climate change. The urgency of the matter, as underscored by both national and international leaders, underscores the critical importance of concerted efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities and the environment. 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%. Have an interesting bit of news youd like to see mentioned in the Along the Way column? Email it to Natasha Connolly at news@thesunchronicle.com. A citizen of a terrorist country spoke with disgust about her experience of living in Gelendzhik. The woman had lived in the popular Russian resort for five years and said she would never return. The Russian woman cried that she could no longer stand the smell of rotting waste from overflowing garbage cans, the lack of water for days on end, and the unfriendly locals. ADVERTISIMENT The tourist told about the "charms" of the domestic resort of the "great and mighty Russia" on one of the Russian portals. She said that it is still possible to get used to the exhausting heat in the city, but this is not the biggest disaster that vacationers will have to face. "I would rather choose to freeze in winter, not see the Black Sea in summer and eat less fruit. I'm so tired of these places that I don't want to come back even for a while," a citizen of the aggressor state said about her trip to the south. During the holiday season, Gelendzhik, according to the Russian woman, turns into a foul-smelling anthill from which she wants to escape. Music is blaring everywhere, it's impossible to move normally on the streets, and on top of that, it's insanely hot. The fact that the tap water is only available on schedule for a few hours a day adds to the entourage. ADVERTISIMENT The "patriot" also did not like the large number of homeless people and animals on the streets. In addition, there are garbage cans that remain overflowing for weeks, and the amount of garbage in them multiplies. "In summer, it's especially disgusting because of the smell of waste rotting in the heat," the traveler said. In addition, the locals, who actually live off the tourists, are not particularly friendly. The Russian woman complained: "For example, when I didn't choose anything in one clothing store, they shouted after me that I had just touched everything and left. The assistant of my dentist in Gelendzhik did not hesitate to discuss me during the procedures and make very strange jokes." ADVERTISIMENT However, the tourist's complaints did not end there. She shared that the city's cultural life is extremely poor, and the chaotic public transportation and loud music from cars make her feel very uncomfortable. And this is not the only case when Russians speak angrily about their own resorts. Gelendzhik was also criticized by another tourist who was shocked by the high prices in the city. According to her, she spent much less on vacation in Turkey or Egypt. "A hotel with a swimming pool cost 41 thousand rubles (463$) for a week's stay, another eight thousand (90$) was spent on tickets to Adler, and six and a half thousand rubles (73$) on a taxi. In addition, food in restaurants and cafes cost an average of two and a half thousand rubles (28$). In addition, we went on excursions: we went up the Olympus cable car for 1.2 thousand (13.5$), and rode on sap boards with an instructor for 15 thousand rubles (169$)," the Russian woman said. ADVERTISIMENT As OBOZ.UA wrote earlier, Russians were outraged by the behavior of their own compatriots on vacation in Sochi near the Black Sea coast. Tourists from the Russian Federation complain about feces in the water and inappropriate behavior of vacationers. For more details, follow the link. Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Live updates | Israel says hostage release will not take place before Friday, as talks are ongoing Israels national security adviser says cease-fire talks with the Hamas militant group are still ongoing, and a hostage release will not take place before Friday Only a small number of protesters are blocking the checkpoints on the Ukrainian border with Poland. However, they cannot be calmed down, and Ukrainian businesses are losing a million hryvnias a day. That is, since the start of the strike on November 6, individual entrepreneurs alone could have lost UAH 16 million, and the total losses reached UAH 305.88 million. ADVERTISIMENT These calculations were provided by the European Business Association (EBA), which surveyed entrepreneurs. "Both importers and exporters are equally affected, as 49% of companies import goods to Ukraine. At the same time, 25% of goods go to Poland, 15% to Germany, as well as to other Baltic countries, Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Asia, and Africa," the report says. In addition, businesses are already reporting a shortage of transportation, in part due to the reluctance of carriers to take orders during the strike. Transportation costs are rising significantly, affecting the cost of production and the price competitiveness of enterprises. The losses of carriers are only part of Ukraine's economic losses. As Iryna Kosse, a research fellow at the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting, explained to OBOZ.UA, the losses of the entire Ukrainian economy are much higher, given the failure of companies to fulfill contracts and the suspension of production. Poland also has problems, and they are proportional to those of Ukraine. "Polish businesses will also suffer losses from this blockade. And these losses may be comparable to the Ukrainian ones," the expert noted. ADVERTISIMENT The strike is only gaining momentum: as of November 22, a queue of thousands of trucks has formed at the border, and four checkpoints have been blocked: "Yahodyn-Dorohusk, Rava-Ruska-Hrebinne, Krakovets-Korchova, and Medyka-Shehyni. Ukraine plans to hold talks with Poland and the European Commission this week to unblock the Ukrainian-Polish border, where "Polish carriers" are rallying. The far-right, which organized the rally in Poland, has already announced that they want to extend the action until February 1, 2024. Journalist Yevhen Plinskyi showed the protesters on his Telegram channel. It turned out that only a few cars blocked the border. In fact, because of them, Ukraine's economy suffers millions in losses every day. "And now keep yourselves in check. You will now see Polish protesters and their 'checkpoint' in these images," the journalist commented. ADVERTISIMENT Deputy Economy Minister Taras Kachka announced the upcoming talks, Reuters reports. The Poles are demanding the return of the permit system for Ukrainian carriers to cross the border, toughening transport rules within the "European Conference of Transport Ministers"; a ban on registering companies in Poland if their finances and accounting are outside the European Union; access to the Ukrainian system "Shlyakh"; allocation of a lane for empty cars; and identification of EU cars in the Ukrainian system "eChezhda". The demands were supported by the Slovaks On November 21, the border of Ukraine from Slovakia was again blocked by local carriers. The protest was held at the Vysne Nemecke-Uzhhorod checkpoint, where a line of hundreds of trucks immediately formed. On November 22, the protest was called off, but temporarily. Even after the unblocking, 530 trucks remained in the queue. ADVERTISIMENT Slovaks are holding their own protests in support of Polish carriers. Both Polish and Slovak organizations are making unlawful demands on Ukraine. Earlier, the Slovak-Ukrainian border was blocked as a "warning". It happened on November 16 and lasted only 1 hour. "Our goal is to support our Polish colleagues, as well as all carriers within the EU. We will ask the European Commission to immediately introduce permits for the transportation of Ukrainian vehicles," said Stanislav Skala, head of the Union of Road Carriers of Slovakia (UNAS), which organizes these actions. Exporters and importers suffer heavy losses Ihor Kirpa, founder of the Khortytski Lini transport company, told OBOZ.UA that the Poles' actions have forced them to take a detour through other countries. Such a "trip" is quite expensive - about 1-1.5 thousand euros in additional logistics costs. ADVERTISIMENT "A simple example. Khortytsia vodka used to be transported from Zaporizhzhia to Warsaw. Now 24 cars a day pass through. In Yahodyn, 4,000 cars are registered in the electronic queue for 200 days. Who needs this vodka in 200 days? So they cancel the order," he explained. The Epicenter K group of companies told OBOZ.UA about the important role of Poland in Ukrainian imports and exports. They emphasized that many Ukrainian companies operate through Polish ports, in particular Gdansk and Gdynia. Most of the goods in Ukraine come from Polish and German ports, as well as the Dutch city of Rotterdam. "Accordingly, the strike of local carriers and a significant decrease in the volume of vehicles crossing the border with Poland have affected the amount of goods that can be imported into Ukraine," the group of companies admitted. ADVERTISIMENT The border with Ukraine is blocked by a far-right party Ukrainian carriers say that only one association of Polish carriers, which previously actively worked with Russia, supported the blockade of the border. Polish politician Rafa Mekler took over the political representation. His party has a small representation in the Sejm and represents the far right: they are against Poland's integration into the EU and in favor of limiting ties with Ukraine. However, the far-right does not have much support in Poland (they have only 6 seats out of 460 in the parliament). Rafa Mekler represents the far-right party Ruch Narodowy. He actively spreads Russian propaganda fakes about Ukraine and tells his voters about "Banderites." A few days after the outbreak of a full-scale war and the influx of Ukrainian refugees in Poland, he declared the "need to preserve the ethnic system." ADVERTISIMENT According to Mykola Solsky, Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, the situation is complicated by the specific demands of the strikers. After all, "it is difficult to find any constructive things in them." As reported by OBOZ.UA, due to the blockade of the border by the Polish far-right, Ukraine's economy is suffering significant losses, in particular, due to a decrease in the number of goods imported into the country. However, there is no need to talk about a critical decline in imports and an impending shortage of certain items: businesses are actively looking for alternative ways to import goods or offer Ukrainians affordable analogues. Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Indias lab-grown diamond (LGD) industrys coming out parade actually happened not in India, but across the seven seas. When PM Modi gifted US First Lady Jill Biden a 7.5 carat diamond made in Surat, Gujarat, back in the summer while on his first state visit to the global superpower, it had a ripple effect in the fortunes of the LGD industry back home, mainly in Gujarat. While LGDs had found a steadily growing market among youngsters and the socially and sustainability conscious, many believe the Modi move helped the crossover into mainstream that much more faster, as evinced by the spurt in LGD business this Diwali festive season. There was a significant spurt in the sale of grown diamond (another terminology used for lab-grown diamonds) jewellery sale this festive season, said Lisa Mukhedkar, founder and CEO of Aukera Jewellery, which reported a spike of 20 per cent month-on-month. And estimates suggest the growth of LGD, which is presently minuscule compared to that of natural diamonds, will grow at an impressive CAGR of 14.8 per cent in the next decade in the country, hitting a market size of 1.1 billion dollars, from the present valuation of just under 300 million dollars. Globally, the LGD market presently clocks in at 12 billion dollars. (LGDs) are 100% carbon, mirroring the elemental composition of mined diamonds, vouched Mukhedkar. Where they differ is that they are not mined from the bowels of the earth, but by replicating the atmospheric conditions, temperature and pressure akin to the earths coretiny diamond seeds are placed within a plasma reactor (a vacuum chamber) where temperatures soar to 6,000 degrees, leading to carbon atoms to rain down on the seed, layer by layer, mimicking the process that occurs under the earths surface. So, what takes millions of years to produce naturally, science expedites to a mere few weeks. What has made the tide turn in favour of LGDs have been a few unrelated incidents. In 2018, the US Federal Trade Commission ruled that grown diamonds were as legitimate as natural diamonds. This was followed by certification by other bodies like IGI, GIA and others. Diamond industry behemoths like de Beers, Swarovski, Cartier and LVMH also started using LGDs in their collections, further accelerating the categorys growth. Another factor has been the significant enhancement in the quality of LGDs, which now offer the best of cut, colour and clarity, and larger sizesall at a significant cost advantage. For example, the 7.5 carat LGD that Modi gifted Jill Biden would cost around Rs 15 lakh, while it would have spiralled upwards of Rs 40 lakh if it was a natural diamond. With natural diamonds on the decline for the last few yearsproduction has come down since the mid-2010s while the Ukraine war has brought down the supply line from Russia down to a trickleIndias Surat-centred diamond industry is slowly training its eyes on LGDs. While it controlled 90 per cent of the cutting and polishing of natural diamonds, India now has a decent one-fourth of the total LGD business, exporting more than what is sold within the country. However, from the looks of it, that may change fast. IIT Madras was sanctioned Rs 242 crore to research on indigenous production of LGDs in this years budget. Lab-grown diamonds is a technology and innovation sector with high-employment potential. Customs duty on the seeds used in lab-grown diamond manufacturing will be reduced. These are environmentally-friendly diamonds which have optically and chemically the same properties as natural diamonds, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said in her budget speech. A paradox exists in the bustling symphony of existencethe silent note of loneliness that resonates amid the clamour. The notion of loneliness, transcending the boundaries of time, is as ancient as human consciousness itself. The existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre aptly said, If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company. From a philosophical vantage, loneliness is a deep-rooted byproduct of the existential condition, highlighting mans quest for meaning in an otherwise indifferent universe. Yet, while philosophers like Sartre interpreted loneliness as a consequence of existential angst, others saw it as a path towards self-awareness and enlightenment. The Stoics, for example, regarded loneliness as an opportunity to cultivate inner strength and resilience, rendering external validations moot. Such schools of thought can be paralleled with Buddhist teachings, where loneliness is not feared but embraced. Within the folds of Buddhism, one is encouraged to retreat into solitude, peeling away layers of worldly distractions to find the true self. Mainstream Hinduism mirrors these sentiments, lauding the hermit who relinquishes societal ties to pursue eternal truth. The Bhagavad Gita speaks of the self-realised soul who, though among people, remains detached, finding serenity within. This serene introspection, akin to solitude, is where the demarcation between solitude and loneliness surfaces. While solitude is a chosen state of being alone without feeling lonely, loneliness is an emotional response to perceived isolation. Solitude is a soulful retreat, and loneliness is its haunting shadow. However, not all encounters with loneliness harbour philosophical profundities and spiritual awakenings. From a psychological vista, loneliness can be double-edged. On the one hand, it allows the space for introspection, personal growth, and fostering a robust sense of self-identity. On the other, if left unchecked, it can spiral into a pathological state of depression. Herein lies the cruxthe differentiation between momentary loneliness and chronic emotional isolation. When loneliness becomes pervasive, it can transcend from being a fleeting emotion to a sustained psychiatric illness of depression. At this juncture, we must resist the allure of treating emotional complexities such as anxiety and depression with a purely pharmacological lens. Medicine, despite its marvels, is not a panacea. The minds ailments often require and benefit from the subtle touch of psychological treatments. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) offers a beacon of hope. By reshaping thought patterns and behaviours, CBT provides individuals with tools to combat the oppressive weight of loneliness and depression, offering a renewed perspective on life. From a neuroscientific viewpoint, loneliness isnt always merely an abstract feeling because it etches its mark upon the brain. Studies indicate chronic loneliness can increase cortisol levels, signifying stress and reduced brain activity associated with empathy and perspective-taking. Yet, it is through this understanding that interventions, both therapeutic and self-imposed, can be developed. The joie de vivre or joy of living can be rekindled through practices such as mindfulness. Rooted in Buddhist philosophy, mindfulness is the art of staying present, embracing the here and now without judgment. In so doing, one builds a bridge between the external world and the inner self, alleviating the pangs of loneliness with awareness and connection. In juxtaposition, Christianity offers another dimension to the discourse on loneliness. Drawing from the teachings of Jesus, who himself faced profound loneliness on the cross, loneliness is not an end but a beginning. Ones faith is tested and refined through such trials, leading to a deeper communion with the divine. But as with all things, balance is vital. The dance between solitude and loneliness, introspection and despair, demands a keen awareness. As the French would say, Cest la viesuch is life. While we might drift into the depths of loneliness, there is solace in knowing that, with introspection and mindfulness, we can navigate the maze. Perhaps the Austrian poet and thinker Rainer Maria Rilke encapsulated the essence best when he wrote, Therefore dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. Within the labyrinth of loneliness are lessons to be learned, insights to be gained, and a deeper self, awaiting discovery. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, Hell is other people. In truth, perhaps in measured moments, so is heaven. The author is a retired emeritus consultant psychiatrist from London and formerly the founding medical director of Cygnet Hospital Godden Green, Sevenoaks, Kent, UK. Eight school children have been injured after the autorickshaw in which they were travelling in collided with a speeding lorry at Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The accident took place at the Sangam Sarath theatre junction on Wednesday morning. Eight school children were injured and shifted to the hospital. Four of them have been discharged. Three students are undergoing treatment. One student's condition is critical, Deputy Commissioner of Police Srinivasa Rao was quoted as saying by ANI. A purported video of the incident captured on a CCTV camera positioned in the area shows the auto turning turtle after ramming into the lorry and passersby rushing to help. The Jammu & Kashmir administration has dismissed four employees, including the self-styled president of the Doctors Association of Kashmir (DAK), for engaging in anti-national and terrorism-related activities. The four individualsa doctor, a police constable, a teacher, and a laboratory bearer in the higher education departmentwere terminated by the UT administration invoking the authority granted by Article 311(2)(c) of the Indian Constitution, allowing dismissal without an inquiry. They are identified as Dr Nissar-ul-Hassan, the self-styled president of DAK, Salam Rather, Abdul Majeed Bhat and Farooq Ahmad Mir. This is part of the administration's effort to counter the terrorist ecosystem and its affiliates who had infiltrated the government system through various political regimes in the past. In the past three years, more than 50 employees have been removed under Article 311(2)(c) of the Constitution due to their alleged involvement in activities against the nation's interests and ties to terrorism. A government order regarding the dismissal of Hassan stated, "Considering the facts and circumstances of the case and based on available information, the activities of Dr Nisar-ul-Hassan, assistant professor, medicine, SMHS Hospital, Srinagar, are deemed to warrant dismissal from service. The Lieutenant Governor (LG) is satisfied under sub-clause (c) of the proviso to clause (2) of Article 311 of the Constitution of India that it is in the interest of the state's security. Therefore, it is not expedient to hold an inquiry in the case of Dr. Nisar-ul-Hassan. Accordingly, the Lieutenant Governor hereby dismisses from service." The process of removing employees linked to terrorism commenced after the revocation of Article 370. Since then, the government has consistently taken action against individuals involved in anti-national activities. The dismissed employees belonged to various government departments, including the police. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has conducted multiple raids in Punjab and Haryana as part of its investigation into the attacks on the Indian Consulate in San Francisco. A total of 14 locations spread across the districts of Moga, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, Mohali and Patiala in Punjab, and Kurukshetra and Yamunanagar in Haryana were raided on Wednesday, the agency said in a statement. The crackdown has led to the seizure of digital data containing information related to the accused persons, along with other incriminating documents, it said. The anti-terrorism agency claimed that the raids were conducted to unravel the conspiracy behind the attacks involving criminal trespass, vandalism, damage to public property and attempts to cause hurt to the Consulate officials and set the Consulate building on fire through acts of arson. The Consulate General of India in San Francisco was attacked on March 19 by a group of assailants. Prior to this attack, on the same day, some attackers attempted to set the Consulate building on fire by sprinkling inflammable substances early in the morning. Subsequently on July 2, at midnight, a few persons attempted to set the Consulate building on fire. The NIA has been probing the case with the aim to identify and prosecute the attackers and the assailants of the attacks and send a strong message to such anti-Indian elements, the statement said. A team of the central agency had visited San Francisco in August 2023 to investigate the incidents which, it said, had led to fear among the Consulate staff and the community. NIA has been trying to identify and collect information about US-based entities and individuals involved in these violent incidents. The agency claims to have already identified certain individuals who were part of the conspiracy behind the repeated attacks. These include the attackers and many of their associates, who are both Indian and foreign nationals, it said. India has resumed electronic visa services for Canadians after a nearly two-month suspension over 'operational reasons' amid diplomatic tussle between the two G20 countries, said reports, citing sources. The development comes as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to attend the virtual G20 summit hosted by India on Wednesday. Diplomatic ties between New Delhi and Ottawa hit a low after Trudeau said in September that there are "credible allegations of a potential link" of Indian government and the Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar's death. Following this, Ottawa expelled the head of Indian intelligence in Canada. In a reciprocal move, New Delhi dismissed a senior Canadian diplomat, strongly rejecting Trudeau's claims as absurd and motivated. India also asked Canada to downsize its diplomatic presence in the country following which Ottawa recalled dozens of its envoys. On October 26, India resumed visa services for select categories, including entry, business, medical and conference visas in Canada. However, student, employment, tourist, journalist, film and missionary visas were still under suspension. This came after External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said New Delhi will resume visa services for Canadians if it sees progress in the safety of its diplomats in Canada. Israel has approved a cease-fire deal with Palestine militant group Hamas that would see the release of over 50 women and children hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons and a four-day ceasefire. The truce comes on the 47th day of the devastating war, which saw over 11,000 Palestinians killed, two-thirds of them women and minors. Another 2,700 are missing, presumed to be buried under rubble. It was not immediately clear when the truce would go into effect but local media reports quoted a government official who speculated that the deal will be in place on Thursday. A statement by Israel's Prime Minister's Office said 50 women and children will be released over four days, during which there will be a pause in fighting. "The Israeli government is committed to bringing all the abductees home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, under which at least 50 abductees women and children will be released over a span of four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting," the statement said. "The release of every ten additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite," it added. "The Israeli government, the IDF and the security forces will continue the war to return all the abductees, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that Gaza does not renew any threat to the State of Israel." The deal was put on vote during the war cabinet meeting and according to Israel Ynet, all but three ministers in the far-right Jewish Power party voted in favour of the deal. However, there was no mention of anything on the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. According to a report by The Times of Israel, Tel Aviv agreed to release Palestinian women and minors from prison. Though the sources refused to give a precise number, speculations are that the figure is 150. However, Al-Arabiya quoted a Palestinian Authority minister who said 350 jailed Palestinian minors and 82 women would be freed. Israel would also agree to allow additional fuel into Gaza as well as significant amounts of humanitarian aid. Tel Aviv has prevented the entry of fuel into Gaza since the war started. The agreement will also see the Red Cross given access to the remaining hostages and supplying them with medicine, Netanyahus office said on Tuesday. However, the deal will only cover Israeli citizens and not the several dozen foreign workers from East Asian countries who are among the roughly 240 hostages held in Gaza. Israel, the United States and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, had negotiated for weeks over a hostage release that would be paired with a temporary cease-fire and the entry of more aid. On Monday, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh went on public announcing that it has arrived at a truce deal. The United States thwarted a conspiracy to kill Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil and issued a warning to Indian government over concerns it was involved in the plot, a UK-based daily has reported. Citing unnamed sources, the Financial Times claimed that the protest to New Delhi was registered after Prime Minister Narendra Modis state visit to Washington in June this year. The report, however, did not mention whether the protest to India resulted in the plot being abandoned or if it was foiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). India has declared Pannun, the founder of the banned Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), a designated terrorist. The FT report comes two months after Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged credible involvement of Indian agents in the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in a Vancouver suburb. New Delhi has rejected the allegations though the country had designated Nijjar as a terrorist in 2020. The FT report claimed that US federal prosecutors have filed a sealed indictment against at least one suspect in a New York district court. The US justice department is debating whether to unseal the indictment and make the allegations public or wait until Canada finishes its investigation into Nijjars murder. Further complicating the case, one person charged in the indictment is believed to have left the US, said the daily. However, the US Justice Department and the FBI have not issued any formal statement on such claims. The report further claimed that Washington had shared details regarding Pannuns case with a wider group of allies after Canadas public accusation against India. "Just like Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar's assassination by the Indian agents on Canadian soil was a challenge to Canada's sovereignty, the threat to American citizen on American soil is a Challenge to America's sovereign," Pannun told Reuters,responding to the FT report. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday filed a case against Pannun over his recent video threat to flying Air India passengers. Pannun was booked under sections including 120B, 153A and 506 of the IPC. He was also charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Earlier, Trudeaus remarks in Canadian parliament had heightened the tensions between India and Ottawa and triggered a diplomatic row and tit-for-tat expulsions of senior diplomats. Despite the deteriorating weather in Ukraine followed by rain and snow, the fighting at the front continues. Both Russian and Ukrainian troops continue to conduct offensives. First of all, we are talking about the Kherson region and the Kupiansk direction of the front. ADVERTISIMENT This is stated in the analysis of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Referring to the words of the Kherson Regional Military Advisor Serhii Khlan, they noted that Russian shelling of the right bank of the region has decreased due to bad weather conditions. Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the 14th Separate Mechanized Brigade, Nadiia Zamryha, said the day before that the occupiers continued to storm the Kupiansk direction despite the snow and frost. According to her, the number of enemy attacks is likely to decrease due to weather conditions, but they will not stop their offensive operations completely. ADVERTISIMENT During a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Kyiv on November 20, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized the need to strengthen Ukraine's capabilities before the winter period. At the same time, Russian "war bloggers" have been writing in recent days that both sides have faced problems using drones to adjust artillery fire as bad weather conditions reported along the entire front. In addition, mud in the fields makes it difficult for vehicles to move, but Ukrainian and Russian forces continue to maneuver and operate in all directions. The ISW suggests that the cold winter weather is likely to prompt a resumption of more active hostilities, and the ongoing rainy weather is unlikely to stop Ukrainian or Russian attacks. ADVERTISIMENT As reported by OBOZ.UA: - Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine adhere to their plan to de-occupy the territories captured by the enemy. He emphasized that our defenders will not give the enemy a single moment to regroup or anything like that. - Russian occupation forces are trying to regain lost ground in Bakhmut direction of the Donetsk region. The situation in this area of the front is currently under control, but the occupiers have started attacking the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces once again. Only verified information is available on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Pakistan's interim government on Wednesday recommended placing the names of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and 28 others on the Exit Control List (ECL) to prevent them from fleeing the country, citing their alleged involvement in a corruption case. A subcommittee of the federal Cabinet recommended placing the names of Imran Khan, the chief of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, and 28 others on the ECL in the Al-Qadir Trust case, the Dawn newspaper reported. The case alleges that the ex-premier and his wife, Bushra Bibi, obtained billions of rupees and land worth hundreds of kanals from Bahria Town Ltd for legalising Rs 50 billion that was identified and returned to the country by the UK during the government led by Khan. Imran Khan, 71, was initially arrested in the said case earlier this year from the premises of the Islamabad High Court but was later released after the Supreme Court declared the arrest unlawful. On November 14, the PTI chief, who is already imprisoned in Adiala Jail in the cipher case, was again arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in the Al-Qadir Trust case. He was then handed over to the watchdog on physical remand. In a post on X, the Ministry of Interior said a meeting of the subcommittee of the federal cabinet was attended by interim Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti and officials of other departments. The committee recommended putting the names of 41 people sent by various departments and institutions on the ECL. On the recommendation of NAB, names of 29 people, including Imran Khan, were recommended to be put on the ECL..., it said. Separately, recommendations were also made to remove 13 cases from the list. The ministry said courts had sought the removal of seven names from the ECL and of the appeals submitted for revision, it was recommended to remove the names of three people from the ECL. It added that the recommendations of the committee have been sent to the federal Cabinet for approval. Separately, the Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notices to the Federation and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and sought responses from them on Khan's bail plea in the cipher case in which he is charged with leaking state secrets. The former premier and his aide Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who is also behind bars, were indicted in the case on October 23. Both have pleaded not guilty and approached the apex court for bail. The Islamabad High Court on Wednesday declared null and void the official notification of the Pakistan government for the jail trial of former prime minister Imran Khan in the cipher case in which he is charged with leaking state secrets. The trial is being held in the Adiala Jail, where Khan has been kept since September 26 when he was shifted there from District Jail, Attock. Chennai, Nov 21 (PTI) Tamil Nadu was leading the green energy transition revolution and was in the process of developing a green hydrogen hub, Industries Minister T R B Rajaa said here on Tuesday. At the India EV Conclave event organised on the theme 'Electrifying Tomorrow: Navigating the EV Transition", he said 50 per cent of installed energy capacity in the state was green and the government was targeting to increase it to 75 per cent. "Tamil Nadu is leading the green energy transition revolution. The government's commitment and efforts were acknowledged with the 'UN Promotion Award 2023 for Excellence in Scaling Up Energy Transition Investments' at the recent World Investment Forum held in the UAE," he said. "We are in the process of developing a green hydrogen hub. If we also have a robust electric vehicle charging infrastructure, the transition from fossil-fuel dependency to green energy sources and renewables will benefit all," the minister said. He said leading electric vehicle players such as Ola, TVS Motor and Ather in Krishnagiri, Ampere Vehicles in Ranipet, BYD India in Kancheepuram, Stellantis in Thiruvallur and E-Royce Motors in Coimbatore contribute to large-scale production of such vehicles in Tamil Nadu. "Our state, led by Chief Minister M K Stalin, is policy driven and has a clear vision of inclusive, sustainable growth. Tamil Nadu is among the few states with a future-ready EV policy," Rajaa said. The policy has paved the way for revolutionary changes in the way people commute, backed by the 'battery-as-a-service' initiative, he said. Rajaa added that the electric vehicle sector would get tremendous visibility during the forthcoming Tamil Nadu Global Investors Meet to be held in January next year. Ahmedabad, Nov 22 (PTI) The central government is committed to provide steadfast support to traditional fishermen in their transition to deep-sea fishing, asserted Union minister L Murugan on Wednesday. This support will be extended through the Centre's schemes, namely the Blue Revolution and the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana, said the Union Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying. Murugan was speaking at a technical session on 'Deep-Sea Fishing: Technology, Resources, and Economics' at the 'Global Fisheries Conference India 2023' here. The two-day fisheries conference at Science City in Ahmedabad was inaugurated by Union Cabinet Minister of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Parshottam Rupala on Tuesday. "The government is providing up to 60 per cent financial assistance to traditional fishermen to convert their vessels into deep-sea fishing boats. Additionally, loan facilities are also available to facilitate this transformation," an official release of the ministry quoted Murugan as saying at the conference. He emphasised the need for modern fishing vessels equipped with in-built processing facilities to maintain international quality standards for deep-sea resources like tuna. Acknowledging that traditional fishermen currently lack these capabilities, the junior minister said the government is committed to address this gap. "Tuna fishes are in high demand worldwide, and India has the potential to increase its tuna fishing capacity. However, we need technological advancements in this area," he noted. Murugan called for more start-ups to enter the deep-sea fishing sector and for research to focus on reducing fuel costs and exploring the use of green fuels in fishing boats. "There is a need for research and design in upgrading fishing vessels to effectively harness the potential of deep-sea fishing in a sustainable way," the minister maintained. Deep-sea fishing is undertaken beyond the limit of territorial waters, which is 12 nautical miles from the shore, and within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles from the shore. It involves catching fish that live in the deep parts of the sea. Highlighting the high value of deep-sea resources, Deputy Commissioner of Fisheries, Government of India, Sanjay Pandey, pointed out that 'Indian Ocean yellowfin tuna', a fish variety, has an end value of more than USD 4 billion. World Bank Consultant Dr Arthur Neiland said despite the promising potential of yellowfin and skipjack tunas in India's EEZ, with an estimated harvest of 179,000 tonnes, the actual catch is a mere 25,259 tonnes, indicating an utilization rate of only 12 per cent. He emphasised the need for investment from public and private sectors in deep-sea fishing which could generate economic, social and environmental benefits. "Utilising India's strong institutional base, with expertise in fisheries science and management, fish processing and infrastructure will also be beneficial for the deep-sea fishing development plans," Dr Neiland noted. Kolkata, Nov 22 (PTI) ITC Limited on Wednesday launched a mobile application to provide crop advisory, market access and financial services to the farmers of West Bengal. ITC chairman Sanjiv Puri launched the ITCMAARS (Metamarket for Advanced Agriculture and Rural Services) application on the concluding day of the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) here. He said the application, on which services would be available in Bengali, would offer world-class technologies and services to farmers in partnership with a large number of leading players in the agri sector, besides banks, institutes and technology firms. Puri said ITC aims to reach out to five lakh farmers over time. He said that ITC's agri business already has a significant presence in the state, where it works with nearly 1.7 lakh farmers, introducing new crop varieties, promoting crop development for enhancing quality and improvement in yield, besides providing advisory and other services. Kolkata, Nov 22 (PTI) The West Bengal Hosiery Association (WBHA) on Wednesday said that an investment of Rs 400 crore in capacity building of hosiery parks in the state is expected by the next fiscal year. Addressing a session on manufacturing industries with a focus on MSMEs and textiles at the seventh Bengal Global Business Summit, WBHA secretary Pradeep Arora said, "This investment aims to add a sprawling 20 lakh sq ft of operational area to the hosiery parks." Chief Secretary H K Dwivedi, in his address, underscored the importance of Medium and Small Scale Industries (MSMEs) in the rural hinterlands, while stressing the need for robust support mechanisms such as enhanced access to credit, simplified compliance obligations, and swift project approvals. Acknowledging the challenges faced by MSMEs, Dwivedi said the state government was taking a proactive approach by regularly organising stakeholder consultation meetings at the district level, often in the presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and representatives of district chambers of commerce. He urged the chambers of commerce to actively collaborate with the government, identifying and addressing grey areas hindering the growth of MSMEs. N G Khaitan, president of the Bharat Chamber lauded the government's initiatives in facilitating land allotments to investors within a 15-day timeframe. Khaitan also praised the government's efforts to promote the garment and hosiery industry through the establishment of specialised industrial parks. WBHA president Vinod Kumar Gupta spoke about the pivotal role of the textiles sector as India's second-largest employment generator, trailing only agriculture. Gupta lauded the West Bengal Textile Incentive Scheme 2022, hailing it as a flagship policy that maximises resource utilisation, stimulates new employment, and widens operations, positioning the state as a prime investment destination in the textile sector. New Delhi (India), November 22: In the dynamic landscape of animal nutrition, one name stands out as a beacon of innovation and quality Mr. Natwar Patel. With a vision that transcends ordinary standards, Mr. Patel has led Neovet Formulations on a transformative journey, redefining the industry's benchmarks over two dedicated decades. Neovet is crafting the Future of Animal Well-being with a Holistic Approach, with an aim to nurturing growth, ensuring Health and providing Comprehensive Solutions for Sustainable animal welfare. Neovet's strategic emphasis on aqua, poultry, and veterinary supplements underscores its commitment to comprehensive solutions within the animal health sectors. Neovet's inclusion of IMO (Indigenous Microorganisms) in aqua supplements is a forward-thinking approach, promoting a balanced aquatic ecosystem and improved yields in fish farming. This demonstrates an awareness of the importance of sustainable practices in aquaculture, aligning with evolving industry standards. The introduction of innovative supplements by Neovet is particularly noteworthy. The supplements designed for poultry and veterinary applications, indicates a dedication to optimizing animal health and productivity. Poultry farming, in particular, demands specialized nutritional support, and Neovet's commitment to providing effective solutions that contribute to the well-being of both animals and the farmers who rely on them. Neovet's initiative is commendable for its holistic approach to animal welfare. By addressing the specific needs of aquaculture, poultry, and veterinary care, the company is positioned to make a meaningful impact on the overall health and sustainability of these industries. This strategic focus aligns with the evolving landscape of responsible farming practices, reflecting positively on Neovet's role as a provider of innovative and comprehensive solutions in the animal health sectors. At the helm of Neovet Formulations is Mr. Natwar Patel, a stalwart with a rich background encompassing more than 20 years of experience in animal nutrition. His journey began in a multinational corporation, where he honed his skills as a production manager, subsequently evolving into a sought-after consultant in the field. In 2010, driven by a passion for quality and innovation, Mr. Patel embarked on a transformative journey, establishing Neovet with a vision to redefine industry standards. With a profound commitment to excellence, Mr. Natwar Patel has strategically positioned Neovet as an industry trailblazer. The company boasts two state-of-the-art manufacturing plants, each catering to specific needs one dedicated to domestic requirements and the other geared towards international exports. This dual focus underscores Neovet's versatility and adaptability to diverse market demands. Neovet Formulations takes pride in being among the select few companies offering not only third-party manufacturing but also bespoke solutions tailored to clients' unique requirements. The company's commitment to customization has positioned it as a reliable partner, providing job work to an extensive network of 45+ companies. This adaptability and customer-centric approach have solidified Neovet's reputation for delivering consistently high-quality products. Neovet stands as a comprehensive solution provider for aqua, poultry, and veterinary feed supplements. The product portfolio spans a diverse range, including Aqua Feed Supplements, Poultry Feed Supplements, Veterinary Feed Supplements, Sodium Perborate, EDTA for Aqua, Disinfectants, Sanitizers, and an array of essential minerals like Magnesium Chloride, Potassium Chloride, Hydrated Lime, Ferrous Sulphate, Manganese Sulphate, Zinc Sulphate, Copper Sulphate, and Zeolite for Aqua. Neovet Formulations has set a transformative mission to revolutionize the aquaculture industry. The company aims to achieve this by consistently delivering high-quality, innovative, and sustainable aqua feed supplements. Neovet is dedicated to enhancing the health and productivity of aquatic species, fostering the global growth of aquaculture enterprises, and contributing significantly to global food security. Looking ahead, Neovet envisions becoming a globally recognized leader in the aquaculture industry. The company aspires to set new benchmarks for excellence in aqua feed supplement manufacturing, supply, and export. Neovet dreams of a future where its cutting-edge products play a pivotal role in the prosperity of aquaculture businesses worldwide. Neovet Formulations stands not just as a manufacturer and supplier but as a stalwart in the arena of animal nutrition. With an unwavering commitment to quality, innovation, and customer satisfaction, Neovet is not merely a company; it is a force shaping the future of aquaculture, poultry, and veterinary industries. In every product, in every partnership, Neovet Formulations echoes the spirit of excellence, setting new standards that resonate across borders. For More Information Please visit https://neovetformulations.com/ (Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with PNN and PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.). PTI PWR PWR PWR San Francisco, Nov 22 (AP) The ousted leader of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is returning to the company that fired him late last week, the latest in a saga that has shocked the artificial intelligence industry. San Francisco-based OpenAI said in a statement late Tuesday: "We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board" made of former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo. OpenAI's previous board of directors, which included D'ANgelo, had refused to give specific reasons for why it fired Altman on Friday, leading to a weekend of internal conflict at the company and growing outside pressure from the startup's investors. Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has rights to its technology, quickly moved to hire Altman on Monday, as well as another co-founder and former president, Greg Brockman, who had quit in protest after Altman's removal. That emboldened a threatened exodus of nearly all of the startup's 770 employees who signed a letter calling for the board's resignation and Altman's return. Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott put out a call to the startup's employees Tuesday on X, formerly Twitter: "We have seen your petition and appreciate your desire potentially to join Sam Altman at Microsoft's new AI Research Lab. Know that if needed, you have a role at Microsoft that matches your compensation and advances our collective mission." Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also made clear in a series of interviews Monday that he was still open to the possibility of Altman returning to OpenAI, so long as the startup's governance and board problems are solved. Co-founded by Altman as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build so-called artificial general intelligence that's smarter than humans and benefits humanity, OpenAI later became a for-profit business but is still run by its nonprofit board of directors. The board was down to just four members after the departure of Altman and Brockman. Brockman returned to social media Tuesday as if it were business as usual, touting a feature called ChatGPT Voice that was rolling out for free to everyone who uses the chatbot. "Give it a try totally changes the ChatGPT experience," Brockman wrote, flagging a post from OpenAI's main X account that featured a demonstration of the technology playfully winking at recent turmoil. "It's been a long night for the team and we're hungry. How many 16-inch pizzas should I order for 778 people," the person asks, using the number of people who work at OpenAI. ChatGPT's synthetic voice responded by recommending around 195 pizzas, ensuring everyone gets three slices. (AP) NSA NSA Kolkata, Nov 22 (PTI) A total of seven movies have been selected for the Bengali Panorama section of the 29th Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) and most of them are made by debutant directors. For the first time in the festival which will begin on December 5, the Bengali Panorama section has been made a competitive zone this year and the winner's purse is Rs 7.5 lakh, a KIFF official said. Barring the director duo of Rajdeep Paul and Sarmistha Maiti whose 'Mon Potongo' (Mind Flies) is one of the selected films, the makers of all six other movies are first-timers. Their 'Kalkokkho' (House of Time) won the Best Bengali Film award at the National Film Awards in August. Abhijit Sridas' 'Bijoyar Pore' (Autumn Flies) and Rajesh Roy's 'Matripaksha' (Invisible Chord) will also be the contenders for the top honour in the KIFF. Rajdeep Ghosh's 'Bonbibi' (Widows of the Wild), Amartya Sinha's 'Asampurno' (The Relentless Search), Debapratim Dasgupta's 'Abar Ashibo Firey' (We Shall Come Back) and Anisul's 'Awnath' (Orphan) are the remaining films chosen for the Bengali Panorama section. In a post on social media, popular actor Swastika Mukherjee said that out of the seven films, she acted in two - 'Bijoyar Pore' and 'Matripaksha'. She said, "Over the years people have asked me why I always choose to work with newcomers. Yes, there are a lot of constraints, lot more hard work and then there are results as amazing as this!" Chennai, Nov 22 (PTI) A case has been registered against actor Mansoor Ali Khan for his comments against actress Trisha Krishnan, Tamil Nadu police has said. Based on a complaint from the National Commission for Women, an FIR has been registered against Khan on November 21 by Thousand Light All Women Police Station here. IPC sections 354 (A) (sexual harassment--sexually coloured remarks) and 509 IPC (insult to the modesty of a woman) have been slapped against him and a probe is on. A video clip of the actor's indecent comments, intended to insult the modesty of women went viral on social media, police added. On X, the National Commission for Women had said: "The National Commission for Women is deeply concerned about the derogatory remarks made by actor Mansoor Ali Khan towards actress Trisha Krishna. We're taking suo motu in this matter directing the DGP to invoke IPC Section 509 B and other relevant laws. Such remarks normalize violence against women and must be condemned." On November 19, 2023, actors' association, (The South Indian Artistes' Association-SIAA, also known as Nadigar Sangam), strongly condemned actor Mansoor Ali Khan for his sexist comments against actress Trisha Krishnan and demanded that he make a public apology. Khan, however, has made it clear that he would not apologise. London, Nov 22 (PTI) A drug dealer who claimed to be a pharmacist has been jailed for four-and-a-half years after the death of an Indian-origin University of Cambridge student led to his arrest. Benjamin Brown was tracked down by the Cambridgeshire Police after officers found 20-year-old Keshava Iyengar dead in a friend's room at Trinity College, Cambridge University, in March 2021. A coroners report later concluded that Iyengars death was drug-related and the police investigation uncovered messages on his phone from a drug dealer called Lean Xan Man. Officers identified Lean Xan Man as 32-year-old Brown from Guildford in Surrey. Brown was running a huge operation from his bedroom in Surrey, which had tragic consequences, said Detective Constable Dan Harper from Cambridgeshire Police, who investigated the case. It is not possible to prove that Browns actions caused the death of Keshava, but you can say with certainty that drugs ruin lives and there is a reason why some can only be prescribed by a medical professional. This is why it continues to be a priority for police in Cambridgeshire, he said. The Huntingdon Law Courts, where he was sentenced last week, heard that Brown described himself as a "pharmacist" selling a variety of prescription-only drugs through Instagram and Snapchat. He was arrested in July 2021 and a search of his home uncovered drugs, more than GBP 15,000 in cash and sticky labels with his business logo. Brown pleaded guilty to two counts of being concerned in the supply of banned and controlled substances supply of Class A drugs, two counts in the supply of Class C, one count in the supply of Class B, possession of Class A and possession with intent to supply Class C. According to the police, the judge presiding over the case described Browns drug dealing business as substantial, sophisticated and lucrative. He said through greed he had profited from the vulnerabilities of others dependent on prescription medication for conditions such as anxiety. Last night, the occupiers attacked Ukraine with 14 Shahed drones, launching them along a complex trajectory. In this way, the enemy continues to "test" the capabilities of Ukrainian air defense as its primary goal is not to strike but to test new routes with accompanying intelligence activities. ADVERTISIMENT This was stated by Oleksandr Kovalenko, an expert, columnist for the Information Resistance group and blogger known by the pseudonym "Zlyi Odesyt" (Angry Odesa resident). In his Telegram channel, he noted that on the night of November 22, Ukrainian air defense forces showed a 100 percent result, shooting down all 14 attack drones launched by Russia. The air alert lasted more than seven and a half hours. "I would like to note the systemic complexity of the route and flight path of the drones. That is, they are not choosing the shortest route, for example, to Starokostiantyniv, but alternative options, which indicates that the enemy continues to test the capabilities of our air defense system in terms of coverage. This suggests that the primary goal of the current raids is not to strike specific targets but to test new routes with accompanying reconnaissance activities," the expert explained. ADVERTISIMENT Kovalenko added that as of November 22, Russia had used 240 Shahed-131/136 UAVs in Ukraine. "This is not the record number of September (521), or even May (413), but it indicates the accumulation of this component as well," he said. In addition, the expert drew attention to the fact that before the drone attack on the Odesa region, enemy tactical aviation used an X-31P anti-radar missile, which could be"an attempt to reveal Odesa air defense to adjust the route." Kovalenko also noted that the aggressor country used an X-22 missile to attack Zaporizhzhia for the first time in ages. It "fell into a field as expected," although the blast wave damaged private buildings. The last time these missiles were used was on August 15, during a missile attack on Odesa and the region, the expert recalled. ADVERTISIMENT As reported by OBOZ.UA, Russia launched 14 Shahed drones at Ukraine at night. All of them were shot down. The occupiers also attacked the port infrastructure of Odesa and Zaporizhzhia with X-31P missiles. Only verified information on our Telegram OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Islamabad, Nov 22 (PTI) Pakistan President Arif Alvi has stirred a controversy by proposing a one-state solution to the Palestine problem in a significant departure from established policy, prompting the caretaker government to distance itself from the remarks and calls for his resignation. The presidential office made waves on Friday by advocating for a "one-state solution" to the Palestine issue. However, Alvi's office retracted the statement within a few hours, marking an abrupt about-face in the official position. The presidency initially released a statement attributing to President Alvi the suggestion of a "one-state solution" during a telephonic conversation with Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas. If the two-state solution was not acceptable to Israel, then the one-state solution was the only way where Jews, Muslims and [a] good percentage of Christians could live to exercise equal political rights, the original press release quoted Alvi as telling the Palestinian president. Almost all news TV channels ran the presidents statement, which was also released by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan. The Presidency later retracted the press release and issued a new one, which omitted any mention of the controversial proposal. Caretaker Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani on Tuesday termed President Arif Alvis proposal of a one-state solution to the Palestine problem as not being in line with the countrys principled and historic stance on the issue. He was speaking on the floor of the Senate when Pakistan Peoples Party senator Raza Rabbani asked for an explanation from him over the controversial press release. The foreign minister said the Presidency had not sought input from his ministry before issuing the press release, adding that he was not aware of the context in which the president had suggested the one-state solution. Jilani said that soon after the release of the presidents statement, his ministry had to issue a clarification, stating Pakistans official position on the Palestine issue. That clarification, he said, was sent to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Secretariat and other organisations concerned, including UN bodies. Jilani said that Pakistan had always suggested a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem based on the border of 1967 and in line with the UN Resolution No 242. Taking the floor after the completion of the agenda, Senator Raza Rabbani said: "A contradiction was issued [after the press release] but I demand the resignation of the president over his statement." He also asked the foreign minister to inform the House as to what counter-measures has the government taken to overcome this disastrous statement that was issued by the president? Islamabad, Nov 22 (PTI) Pakistans Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted for hearing the bail plea of jailed former premier Imran Khan in the cipher case and issued notices to the Federation and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), seeking their responses in the matter. In March 2022, Khan and his foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi were alleged to have violated the secret laws of the country while handling a communication (cipher) sent by Pakistan's embassy in Washington. The diplomatic cable reportedly went missing from Khan's possession. A three-member bench comprising Justice Sardar Tariq Masood, Justice Ayesha A. Malik, and Justice Yahya Afridi declared as admissible the bail petition filed by the 71-year-old Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party chairman through his lawyer Salman Safdar. At the outset of the hearing, Safdar read out loud the first information report registered against Qureshi and Khan in the case after which Justice Masood inquired how far the matter dated back to and the punishment it carries if a person is found guilty. It is from 2022, the lawyer replied. Safdar then briefed the court on the inquiry report and accusations made against the former prime minister in the case. He added that Khans then-principal secretary Azam Khan also accused the PTI chief of misusing the cipher. Justice Masood then inquired whether the role of the co-accused was determined in the case. The lawyer stated Azam Khan from being an accused was turned into a witness for the case. He added that Azam was kidnapped and after the kidnapping his statement was recorded under Section 164. Look, this is how the truth comes out, said Justice Masood. On this, Safdar then contended that his client was being politically victimised. During the hearing, Justice Malik asked the lawyer what was the central ground of his case. Our case is that this case is not maintainable, responded Safdar. The sections included in the FIR against the PTI chief are those that are included in espionage offences. It was never mentioned in the investigation where the spying was done or which enemy country benefited out of it, said Safdar. To this, Justice Masood observed that the government was contending the accused compromised the code of the cipher. Justice Afridi then brought up the issue of the cable's secrecy and whether the PTI chief had shown the document to anyone. Safdar told the court that the cipher was not shown to anyone during this time. "If the contents of a document are shared while waving it, doesn't it mean making it public?" asked Justice Masood while referring to the first time when the PTI chief revealed the alleged conspiracy in a rally. The court issued notices to the federal government and the FIA and asked them to respond to the bail petition. The apex court then adjourned the hearing for an indefinite period. Earlier, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had rejected Khan's bail application on October 27. The cipher case is about the allegations that the ousted premier and his foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi violated the secret laws of the country while handling a communication sent by the countrys embassy in Washington in March last year. The duo was indicted on October 23 and their formal trial has already begun with the recording of statements by witnesses. The IHC had upheld the indictment when challenged by 71-year-old Khan. However, the IHC on Tuesday declared the jail trial as illegal as the proper procedure was not adopted for it. It also said notifications issued for conducting the trial in jail were against the law and spoiled the proceedings, including the indictment of the PTI leaders and the testimonies of four witnesses. A special court was conducting the trial in jail citing security concerns since Khan was indicted on the charges last month. The PTI chairman is currently in Adiala jail after he was indicted by the special court on October 23. In August this year, Khan and Qureshi were booked under the Official Secrets Act 1923 in the cipher case after the FIA invoked Section 5 of the said law. The diplomatic cable reportedly went missing from Khan's possession. According to the ousted premier, the cable contained a threat from the US to topple the PTIs government. The controversy emerged on March 27, 2022, when Khan less than a month before his ouster in April 2022 while addressing a public rally waved a letter before the crowd, claiming that it was a cipher from a foreign nation that had conspired with his political rivals to have the PTI government overthrown. He did not reveal the contents of the letter nor did he mention the name of the nation it came from. However, a few days later, he accused the US of conspiring against him and alleged that Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Affairs Donald Lu had sought his removal. The cipher was about former Pakistan ambassador to the US Asad Majeed Khan's meeting with Lu. The former prime minister, claiming that he was reading contents from the cipher, said that "all will be forgiven for Pakistan if Imran Khan is removed from power". Then on March 31, the National Security Committee (NSC) took up the matter and decided to issue a "strong demarche" to the US for its "blatant interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan". Later, after his removal, then-prime minister Shehbaz Sharif convened a meeting of the NSC, which came to the conclusion that it had found no evidence of a foreign conspiracy in the cable. In the two audio leaks that took the internet by storm and shocked the public after these events, the former prime minister, then-federal minister Asad Umar, and then-principal secretary Azam Khan could allegedly be heard discussing the US cipher and how to use it to their advantage. On September 30, the federal cabinet took notice of the matter and constituted a committee to probe the contents of the audio leaks. In October, the cabinet gave the green signal to initiate action against the former prime minister and handed over the case to the FIA. (This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI) Jakarta, Nov 22 (PTI) India and ASEAN Wednesday launched a five-day Millets Festival here in the Indonesian capital, a move aimed at raising awareness and creating a market for millets and millets-based products among the 10-member bloc. The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) participated in the ASEAN-India Summit and East Asia Summit on September 7. During the ASEAN-India summit, one of the joint statements adopted was about food security," India's Ambassador to ASEAN Jayant Khobragade said. "In two months we are having the Millet festival which also covers food security. That is how effectively our comprehensive strategic partnership is working, he said. Describing Millets as one of the important elements for ensuring food security, he said this was very well in the overall framework of the ASEAN-India relationship. There is a lot of interest. For this millet festival, we have representation not only from Indian farmers and industrialists but also from ASEAN member states, he added. Khobragade also highlighted the crucial role of millet in addressing global hunger and nutrient deficiencies. The Indian Mission to ASEAN and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare have jointly organised the ASEAN-India Millets Festival starting November 22 during which a Millet-centric exhibition is being held featuring participation from Millet-based FPOs, start-ups and Indian chefs. Arief Prasetyo Adi, Head of the National Food Agency (Badan Pangan Nasional (BPN)) Indonesia, underscored millets as a farmer-friendly and sustainable food choice for the future in the face of climate change. He said that the ASEAN -India Millet Festival has an opportunity to raise awareness of the benefits of millet, from nutritional status and environmental sustainability to economic development. The ASEAN-India Millets Festival aims to create a market for millets and millets-based products among the ASEAN Member states. Millets can grow on arid lands with minimal inputs and are resilient to changes in climate. They are, therefore, an ideal solution for countries to increase self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on imported cereal grains. India spearheaded the UN General Assembly Resolution for declaring the year 2023 as the 'International Year of Millets', a move aimed at addressing food security challenges. The Year will also promote the sustainable production of millets while highlighting their potential to provide new sustainable market opportunities for producers and consumers. Indias Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare is leading a delegation at the event, representing a diverse set of professionals from Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), industry leaders and more. A Millet-centric exhibition is being held as part of the festival featuring participation from Millet-based FPOs, start-ups and Indian chefs. The exhibition also aims to foster collaboration between ASEAN countries, celebrate cultural and culinary diversity and promote sustainable millet practices for a healthier future. The exhibition features five Indian FPOs, namely Citi Block FPC, Jewargi Taluka Millets FPC, Bhumitrajalalpur, Vaam Agro, and Lambasingi Tribal Products FPC, and two start-ups namely Taru Naturals and Sattva Millets and Food Products (Mibbles) exhibiting unique millet-added products such as millet cookies, namkeen, khakhra, cakes, and more. Ankit Patel, who represented Ahmedabad-based Vaam Agro company that deals in spices, said that he started manufacturing the millets-based products just four months ago and till now the company has sold products worth Rs 50 lakhs. "We have started with six Millets products, including Dhokla and Khakhra. Our products have got a great response," Patel said. Indonesia-based Rizal Satria said that he started manufacturing millet-based products three years ago when very few people in his country knew about such products. "Now more people know about it and we expect a steady growth in our Millets business of Millets," he said. A major highlight of the festival is the live cooking workshop, where celebrity chefs from India and Indonesia will showcase the culinary potential of millets. The 10 member countries of ASEAN are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. Mumbai, Nov 21 (PTI) A three-year-old boy was abducted from Wadala in Central Mumbai allegedly by a woman and her male friend for selling him for Rs 2 lakh to unidentified persons in adjoining Thane district, a police official said on Tuesday. The boy was later abandoned by the woman and handed over to the police by two men known to her, he said. The woman, Sanika Waghmare (19), and her male friend Pawan Pokharkar (20), both residents of Wadala who failed in their efforts to sell the boy, have been arrested, said the official. The incident occurred on Monday afternoon when the boy was playing in a ground outside his residence. Waghmare abducted the child on instigation of her male friend, who had asked her to kidnap a boy below 10 years of age for selling him for Rs 2 lakh, said the official. After abducting the boy, Waghmare and Pokharkar hired a cab and went to Kalyan town in Thane district to finalise a deal with persons not identified yet, but returned with the child to Wadala as the agreement did not work out, he said. Afterwards, she handed over the boy near a bus stop to two men known to her, said the official, adding as instructed by Waghmare, the duo took the child to a police station in Wadala. Police then called the woman and her male friend and after interrogation, placed them under arrest, he said. The boy was later reunited with his family members. Kolkata, Nov 22 (PTI) Arrested West Bengal Forest Minister Jyotipriya Mallick's health further deteriorated on Wednesday, following which state-run SSKM Hospital formed a medical board to monitor his condition, an official said. Mallick, arrested by the Enforcement Department (ED) for his alleged involvement in the multi-crore ration distribution scam, was brought to SSKM Hospital from Presidency Jail after his blood sugar level increased on Tuesday night, he said. The minister, who was admitted to the cardiology department of the hospital, complained of numbness in the left side of his body on Wednesday morning. "He underwent an MRI today. We are waiting for the reports. For an overall checkup, we have formed a team comprising one doctor each from neurology, endocrinology, medicine, nephrology, urology, and cardiology departments. They are going to oversee his condition and determine the next course of action," the official said. Mallick, who has been suffering from high blood sugar and other ailments, was arrested this October. Tonk/Jaipur, Nov 22 (PTI) Rajasthan's former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi Wednesday for commenting on how the Congress treated him and his father, saying there was no need for anyone other than the party and the people to worry about him. Pilot said his father was a dedicated Congressman throughout his life and the prime minister's statements were far from fact and aimed at diverting people's attention. At a public meeting in Rajasthan's Bhilwara district, Prime Minister Modi claimed that Rajesh Pilot had "once challenged this Congress family for the party's good. But this family is such that after punishing Rajesh ji, they are bent upon punishing his son also". He alleged that anyone who speaks the truth in the Congress is shunted out from politics and apparently suggested that Rajesh Pilot lost favour with the Congress leadership after contesting against Sitaram Kesri for the party president's post in 1997. Sachin Pilot has been involved in a power tussle with Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and the prime minister has been referring to it in his poll campaign. Responding to PM Modi's claim, Sachin Pilot told PTI, "My late father contested the election for Congress president's post along with Sharad Pawar against Sitaram Kesri in 1998. At that time, Sonia Gandhi was not in active politics. Kesri won that election and subsequently nominated both Pawar and my father to the working committee. That is the way a healthy democratic organisation and political party should function, he said. "As far as I am concerned, I was given an opportunity to become a member of Parliament at a very young age and I have held many responsibilities at the Central government and the state level for many years," said Pilot, who is contesting the assembly election from Tonk. He said no one should worry about him and his political future. "As far as I am concerned, I feel that no one needs to worry about my present and future. My party and people will worry about that and will take good care of me." Pilot asserted that his father joined the Congress as he was inspired by Indira Gandhi and served the public for a long time, fighting communal forces throughout his life. The former Rajasthan deputy chief minister said, "As far as Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi are concerned, we have had relations with this family for decades. This relation is of the heart, this relation is old and I think no one should make statements on this." "We are working to strengthen the party," he said. "I feel that the BJP's election (campaign) has not taken off. Because of the fact that their campaign is not getting traction among people and voters, they are now looking to divert the attention with such factually wrong statements. It's a clear indication that the BJP is on the backfoot," the Congress leader said. Pilot said he is in the Congress working committee and has discharged the responsibilities that have been given to him by the party and will continue to do so. "I would urge the BJP leaders to start focusing on the development agenda, debate what they have to offer and present their performance report card while they were in the government in Rajasthan," he said. "The Congress formed governments in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka. It is going to form governments in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh where voting has been completed and the party will form government in Rajasthan also," Pilot added. The Congress accused Prime Minister Modi of "unleashing another pack of lies" after he alleged that it "punished" Rajesh Pilot and his son Sachin Pilot for speaking the truth. AICC spokesperson and chairman of the media department Pawan Khera said, "The prime minister's lies stand exposed today in Bhilwara". "Today, Narendra Modi while continuing the 'Pradhan Mantri Jhooth Bolo scheme' in a fit of panic unleashed another pack of lies," he alleged in a statement. New Delhi, Nov 22 (PTI) A Delhi Police constable was transferred to district lines for allegedly assaulting kids in Mehrauli in southern part of the city, officials said on Wednesday. A video of the incident went viral on social media where constable Chhotelal Meena was seen slapping kids. The parents of the kids also submitted a complaint to police in connection with the incident. According to police, the officer has been sent to district lines (taken off active duty) and necessary departmental action being taken. Ghaziabad (UP), Nov 22 (PTI) A PhD scholar of AIIMS-New Delhi was arrested on Wednesday from the Hauz Khas area of the national capital on the charge of raping a woman by giving her sedatives, impregnating her and then terminating her pregnancy, police said here. The woman, in her complaint filed at the Kavi Nagar police station, claimed that she got in touch with the accused through a matrimonial site and they were supposed to get married. However, the accused and his family members started demanding Rs 25 lakh in cash and an SUV. When their demands were not met, they postponed the wedding date on the pretext of examination, the complainant told the police. After this, the accused and his brother-in-law reached the woman's residence in Ghaziabad and raped her after serving a cold drink laced with sedatives. They also recorded some objectionable videos of the woman, Assistant Commissioner of Police Abhishek Srivastav said. The woman claimed the accused had threatened to make the video viral on social media and forced her into physical relations. When she became pregnant he got the pregnancy terminated and refused to marry her, the police official said. The ACP said the accused was arrested from his residence in Delhi's Hauz Khas on Wednesday. An FIR has been lodged against him and 11 others at Kavinagar police station on November 2, he said, adding the rest of the accused would be nabbed soon. Kolkata, Nov 22 (PTI) Three persons were arrested from the premises of the state-owned Nil Sircar Medical College and Hospital for allegedly assaulting and molesting on duty junior doctors there, police said on Wednesday. The three persons were identified as construction workers working in a portion of the hospital where the junior doctors went late on Tuesday night, he added. "There was allegedly a fight between the junior doctors and construction workers. The accused workers manhandled and molested the doctors then. We have arrested three of them and started an investigation," Entally police station official told PTI. A case was lodged at the police station in this connection, he added. A North Korean hacking group has stolen the email accounts of nearly 1,500 South Korean people, including dozens of government officials, this year after taking control of about 500 transit servers at home and abroad, the Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) said Tuesday, Azernews reports, citing Yonhap News Agency. The North's hacking organization, identified as "Kimsuky," was also found to have attempted to steal the victims' virtual assets, as well as their personal information, IDs and passwords, the KNPA said, though the virtual asset theft attempts failed due to strict security procedures. A total of 1,468 South Koreans, including 57 former and current government officials, had their email accounts stolen by Kimsuky in 2023, marking a nearly 30-fold increase from only 49 victims reported to the authorities last year. Last year's victims were mostly diplomacy and security experts but Kimsuky has indiscriminately expanded the target of its hacking attacks to the general public, the agency said, adding 1,411 ordinary citizens, including company employees and self-employed people, suffered damage this year. Kimsuky sent malicious emails to the victims under the feigned names of government organizations, reporters and research institutes after changing its IP address via 576 servers at home and abroad, the KNPA said. The hacking group then gained access to the victims' attached documents, address directories and other data, though there were no confidential materials among the stolen information. Notably, Kimsuky's hacking method has become far more sophisticated, as some of the victims were induced by attached URLs to access fake websites imitating trustworthy organizations or portals, the agency noted. The North's hackers attempted to steal virtual assets from 19 of the victims by fraudulently accessing their virtual asset exchange accounts but those attempts were not successful due to strict security procedures, the KNPA said. The agency has also confirmed that Kimsuky has earned less than 1 million won (US$775) by secretly running a virtual asset mining program on 147 transit servers taken over through hacking. North Macedonia, the second Balkan country after Romania, has successfully trained the first group of Ukrainian defenders. Information about the training was kept secret for security reasons. ADVERTISIMENT This statement was made by Defense Minister Slovanka Petrovska to the Macedonian national television channel, as reported by BalkanInsight. According to her, the exercises took place "at facilities owned by the army of the Republic of North Macedonia, as decided by the government." Simultaneously, the minister did not disclose the nature of the training received by the Ukrainian military or the number of soldiers who have completed or will complete this course. She added that North Macedonia, a NATO member since 2020, will continue to train Ukrainian defenders throughout 2024 and "as long as it is needed." This support to our country makes North Macedonia the second Balkan country, after Romania, to provide bases on its territory for training Ukrainian soldiers. Since the start of the Russian invasion, Romania has offered its bases for hosting instructors from other countries to train Ukrainian soldiers. In November of this year, the country inaugurated a training center for Ukrainian pilots to learn to fly F-16 fighter jets supplied by the West. ADVERTISIMENT Since the commencement of the large-scale war in Ukraine, North Macedonia has sent ten shipments of military aid to Kyiv and is considered one of the most significant equipment suppliers among Ukraine's allies, given its size and population of just under 2 million people. Earlier, North Macedonia confirmed the transfer of four Su-25 aircraft to Ukraine. However, these can only be used for spare parts. The aircraft in question are four Su-25s that are not airworthy (three single-seat Su-25s and one two-seat Su-25UB). As OBOZREVATEL previously reported, the Ministry of Defense of North Macedonia handed over T-72 tanks to Ukraine. Only verified information is available on the Obozrevatel Telegram channel and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 21 (PTI) Kerala Police on Tuesday took into custody three Youth Congress workers in connection with the alleged use of fake voter ID cards during the recent organisational polls. Laptops, mobile phones and fake election photo identification cards were also seized from them, the police said. The allegations of using fake voter ID cards had cropped up two days after the Youth Congress announced the result of its organisational poll. Youth Congress leader Rahul Mankoottathil was elected president of the state organisation in the polls held a few weeks ago. A case was registered in the matter on the direction of the Chief Electoral Officer of the state, who had received complaints that fake voter ID cards were used during the Youth Congress organisational polls. An eight-member special investigation team was constituted to probe the case. The three Youth Congress workers taken into police custody have been identified as Abhi Vikram, Feny and Binil Binu, a police official said. An FIR has been registered in the matter under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) and 471 (Using as genuine a forged document). Earlier, the police had said that the mobile application allegedly used for creating the fake IDs and its developer were being probed. Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay M Kaul had on November 17 forwarded the complaints his office received to the state police chief, urging appropriate action against the culprits involved in the fraud. The Youth Congress had denied the allegations. BJP state president K Surendran had accused a faction of the Congress in Kerala of creating fake voter ID cards and warned of its serious implications, suggesting potential misuse in general elections and for acquiring SIM cards. He blamed a Congress MLA for the creation of an application for creating fake IDs and claimed that top Congress leaders, including K C Venugopal and V D Satheesan, were aware of it. CPI(M) state secretary M V Govindan had said it was a serious matter and called for an urgent and comprehensive investigation. The Left party had approached the Election Commission, expressing concern that the use of fake voter ID cards could pose a significant threat to democracy. Thane, Nov 22 (PTI) A 35-year-old sex worker was allegedly murdered by some unidentified person at Bhiwandi in Maharashtra's Thane district, police said on Wednesday. The incident occurred around 11.30 pm on Tuesday, inspector Vijay Kadam of Bhiwandi Town police station said. The victim, who is yet to be identified, had shifted from Pune to Hanuman Tekdi locality, the red light area of Bhiwandi, and was sharing her room with another sex worker, he said. An unidentified accused attacked the woman with a grinding stone, in which she was killed on the spot, the official said, adding that the motive behind the murder is yet to be known. 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%. Polish authorities say that they have arrested and pressed charges against a 38-year-old Polish woman with Islamic extremist sympathies who planted an explosive device on a street in central Warsaw earlier this month. There were no injuries. Police said in a statement published on Monday that the woman placed the device in Warsaw on the night of Nov. 10-11 and then took a train back to her home in western Poland. Nobody was hurt, but the device had the potential to hurt many people, police said. The makeshift explosive device filled with gas containers and nails could have caused a serious threat to the health and lives of many people, the statement said. It added that she was charged with causing danger and bringing danger to the life and health of many people, as well as preparation for causing such danger. Police used CCTV footage to track her movements. After planting the device in Warsaw, she headed to the central train station in the capital and then traveled to the western Polish city of Wroclaw, and was arrested at her home in the nearby town of Strzelin. Police described the suspect as a Polish woman interested in Middle Eastern affairs, but wouldnt give any more details about her. They released a video showing police fingerprinting and handcuffing her, and also showed some of the objects they said they found in her home. Among them was an image of Osama bin Laden. Police officers secured items and gadgets related to the Islamic State, as well as items that could have been used to construct another explosive device, police said. (AP) A stampede at a military stadium has left at least 37 people dead in Republic of Congo after large crowds of young people responded to a recruitment appeal, authorities said Tuesday. The Congolese Armed Forces Command later announced that all recruitment operations have been suspended in Brazzaville until further notice following the tragedy late Monday. Public prosecutor Oko Ngakala said that an investigation would be launched and questioned why the event was still going on at midnight. Brandon Tsetou, a young graduate who escaped the suffocation, said he had been lined up in front of Ornado stadium since Monday morning. According to the organizers, it was the last day. Thats why many of us decided to wait until late into the night, hoping to register, he told The Associated Press. Some were so impatient that they had to force their way in, causing a stampede that left a number of people dead or injured, which we deplore. Long lines formed outside recruitment centers each day over the past week as young people have sought to join the army, one of the few institutions offering work in Republic of Congo. As many as 700 people a day have registered, though there are only a total of 1,500 places available. The provisional toll established by the emergency services is 37 dead and many injured, according to a press release issued Tuesday by the prime ministers office crisis unit. Among the victims was 23-year-old Chancelvie Oko, according to her uncle Germain Ndzale. Oko wanted to join the military to help her support her two children following her husbands death in a traffic accident two years ago, Ndzale said. In Republic of Congo, the youth unemployment rate is about 42%, according to World Bank statistics. Despite being an oil-producing country, poverty is widespread in the nation of 5.61 million people, with only 15% of those living in rural areas having access to electricity. Tresor Nzila, executive director of the nongovernmental organization Action Center for Development, called for a full investigation and for the government to publish a list of victims. This human tragedy reflects the distress of a sacrificed youth, he said. The Congolese government is incapable of creating other employment. The defense and security forces have become the main job providers. The government must be held directly responsible, because it did not assess the risks of its actions, Nzila said. (AP) A judge in Atlanta is set to hear arguments Tuesday on a request to revoke the bond of one of former President Donald Trumps co-defendants in the Georgia case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week filed a motion asking county Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to revoke the bond of Harrison Floyd. She wrote in her motion that Floyd has been attempting to intimidate and contact likely witnesses and his co-defendants in violation of the terms of his release. Floyds attorneys wrote in a court filing that Willis allegations are without merit and that the motion is a retaliatory measure against their client. Floyd neither threatened or intimidated anyone and certainly did not communicate with a witness or co-defendant directly or indirectly, they wrote. McAfee set a hearing on Willis motion for Tuesday afternoon. The charges against Floyd relate to allegations of harassment toward Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County election worker who had been falsely accused of election fraud by Trump and his supporters. Floyd took part in a Jan. 4, 2021, conversation in which Freeman was told she needed protection and was pressured to lie and say she had participated in election fraud, the indictment says. Floyd, who was a leader in the organization Black Voices for Trump, was one of 18 people charged along with Trump in a sprawling indictment in August. The indictment accuses them all of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to keep the Republican incumbent in power even after he lost the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching a deal with prosecutors that includes a promise to testify in any trials in the case. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set, but Willis last week asked McAfee to set it for Aug. 5, 2024. Floyd was the only defendant in the case who spent time in jail after his indictment because hes the only one who didnt have a lawyer reach an agreement on bond conditions before he turned himself in at the Fulton County Jail. The conditions of his release include not communicating directly or indirectly about the facts of the case with any of his co-defendants or any known witnesses. In her motion to revoke Floyds bond, Willis cited numerous posts Floyd had made on social media in the previous weeks. They included repeated attacks on Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and numerous mentions of Freeman, both likely witnesses in the case. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he also accused attorney Jenna Ellis, a co-defendant who pleaded guilty last month, of lying. Willis called these and other posts intentional and flagrant violations of his bond conditions. Floyds attorneys noted that while Trumps bond order specifically mentions the use of social media as part of his bond conditions, Floyds does not. They included examples of social media posts that Trump made about his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a co-defendant, and about attorney Sidney Powell, who pleaded guilty in the case. A review of President Trumps social media posts make the decision to go after Harrison Floyd hard to justify, they wrote. They argue that attempting to indirectly communicate with anyone by tagging them on social media is analogous to shouting to someone across a crowded stadium. They also argued that Floyd wouldnt attack Freeman because he views her as a favorable witness for his defense. They said that Floyds posts are political speech protected by the First Amendment and that Willis is retaliating against him for rejecting a plea offer and subpoenaing Fulton County election records, among other things. (AP) It happens every November, when the cold descends on Kyiv. The change in weather always makes Dmytro Riznychenko think back, and he is overwhelmed by his emotions. This is where it truly began, Riznychenko said, walking through central Kyivs Independence Square recently, reflecting on the uprising that unleashed a decade of momentous change for Ukraine, eventually leading to the current war with Russia. Ten years of war and struggle, the 41-year-old psychologist continued, wearily and reluctantly. And it seems like the blood has only just begun to flow, truly. I regret nothing. But, God, its just so tiresome. On Nov. 21, 2013, the Moscow-friendly president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, announced he was shelving an agreement to bring the country closer to the European Union and instead would deepen ties with President Vladimir Putins Russia. Outraged crowds soon filled Independence Square for peaceful anti-government protests. Later, after riot police used truncheons and tear gas to disperse the people, demonstrators set up tent camps with barricades, self-defense units and banners with revolutionary slogans. In response to the police violence, hundreds of thousands joined the demonstrations in early December. The standoff reached a climax in February 2014, when police unleashed a brutal crackdown on the protests and dozens of people were slain between Feb. 18-21, many by police snipers. A European-mediated peace deal between the government and protest leaders envisioned the formation of a transition government and holding an early election, but demonstrators later seized government buildings, and Yanukovych fled to Russia. The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance said 107 people were killed in the uprising. Kateryna Gladka was a 23-year-old student when she joined the pro-Western crowds at the time, viewing it as the revolution of her generation. For me, the top priority was the value of freedom, basic freedom, and dignity. We had to prevent a totalitarian regime and the return of Soviet things, Gladka said in a telephone interview. She recalls the police violence and blood staining the street near Independence Square, and I very clearly understood that we had entered another stage. After Yanukovychs ouster, Russia responded in March 2014 by illegally annexing Ukraines Crimean Peninsula. Then, separatist forces backed by Moscow began an uprising in the eastern Ukraine region known as the Donbas, which grew into a long-running conflict, leaving thousands dead. Finally, in February 2022, Putin launched his war that continues to this day, with tens of thousands of deaths on both sides amid Europes biggest conflict since World War II. Yanukovych was that puppet, a figure for Moscow, which hoped to use him as a person to keep Ukraine on the Russian leash, said Kateryna Zarembo, an analyst at the Kyiv-based think tank, The New Europe Center. When he fled, it became clear to the Kremlin that they were losing Ukraine. Asked Tuesday about the 10th anniversary of the start of the uprising in Kyiv, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russias view that it was a coup, a forceful coup financed from abroad. Ukrainians in 2013 had wanted the country to enter into a deal with the EU, but Putin pressured Yanukovych to pull out at the last minute. Ukrainian leaders who followed were more eager than ever to bring Kyiv into the Western fold. So what we saw in 2022 that Ukraine had to be either part of Russia or destroyed those intentions were seen earlier, Zarembo said. When that didnt happen, Russia intervened militarily. Despite the calamities, Ukraine has become more united than in its 32 years of independence and has drawn closer to the EU, the United States and the West in general an outcome Putin had tried to prevent. Today, under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the country has won widespread support and admiration amid the Russian invasion. All of this came at a very high cost, Riznychenko said. Standing on the Alley of Heavenly Hundred, so named to honor those killed in the uprising, he recalled the sniper fire from a special police unit known as Berkut, which was disbanded in 2014. There was a feeling that death had opened its arms, Riznychenko said. It was cold, I remember how the dead were lying. I remember them under blankets near the Main Post Office. That I remember, he added. Now, their portraits are on permanent display on the street honoring those slain in what Ukraine calls its Revolution of Dignity, and Riznychenko said he later memorized the names. In 2014, he volunteered to fight in eastern Ukraine against the Moscow-backed separatists, and was injured in Ilovaisk. Investigations of the shootings are continuing, and the Prosecutor Generals Office recently indicted five members of the Berkut police unit, all now living in Russia. Another 35 people are being investigated. Independence Square today also features a multitude of small blue-and-yellow flags, with each symbolizing a fallen soldier in the war. Their numbers grow daily. Every year, Gladka gathers with friends at a nearby restaurant, aptly named The Last Barricade, to commemorate the uprising. But after 21 months of war with Russia, the date brings conflicting emotions. To be honest, I am personally very tired of the fact that every generation has to die for Ukraine, she said, noting that 10 years of her youth have been stained by violence, and she now wants a normal and ordinary life. This endless struggle is like some closed circle that just lasts for centuries, she said. (AP) State authorities were investigating Monday after a California Highway Patrol officer shot and killed a man over the weekend in the middle of a Los Angeles area freeway during a struggle recorded on video. Sunday afternoons deadly encounter occurred after the highway patrol responded to multiple calls of a male pedestrian walking in westbound lanes of Interstate 105 in south LA County, the agency said in a statement. All traffic in that direction was temporarily blocked. A CHP officer tried to convince the man to get off the freeway but he refused and that led to a struggle, authorities said. During the struggle, the pedestrian was able to access a Taser he had in his possession, activated the weapon, and used the Taser against the officer, the CHP said in a later statement. Following the pedestrians use of the weapon against the officer, and in fear for his safety, the officer fired his service weapon. The man was pronounced dead at a hospital. The Los Angeles County medical examiners office confirmed the person died but did not provide identification, pending notification of family. A cause of death was not immediately released. The highway patrol referred inquiries about the investigation to the California Department of Justice, which typically investigates fatal police shootings. The justice department confirmed it was investigating, but provided no additional details. A minute-long video recorded by a bystander and posted on social media begins with an officer on top of another person as the two grapple in the middle of a closed stretch of freeway. It was not clear who took the original video. As they struggle, a shot is fired and the officer suddenly jumps to his feet while the other man goes limp on the pavement. The officer immediately fires at least four shots at the prone man, the video shows. For the remainder of the clip, the officer keeps his gun drawn while the man lies motionless. Ed Obayashi, a use-of-force expert who investigates police shootings for law enforcement agencies in California, cautioned against jumping to conclusions from the video alone. Obayashi said investigators will want to know why the officer approached the pedestrian without a partner or other backup nearby. They were able to close the freeway, so presumably there was law enforcement in the area, he said. Obayashi said the investigation will focus on whether the man was armed and why the officer felt the need to shoot after standing up and disengaging from the fight. Was there a knife? Or a stun gun? Obayashi said investigators will ask. We dont know what kind of threat this officer perceived. Highway patrol officers arent required to wear body cameras, but the agency uses in-car cameras. State Sen. Steven Bradford, Assemblymember Mike A. Gipson and Councilmember Tim McOsker, who represent the area where the shooting occurred, released a joint statement calling for transparency by the highway patrol. The video of this shooting is deeply disturbing, Bradford said. This appears to be an unnecessary use of deadly force. The community deserves answers. If the roles were reversed, people would be immediately calling for murder charges. I call on the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Justice to be transparent and for the community to be calm and patient during the investigation. (AP) The worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange has agreed to pay more than $4 billion as part of an agreement with the U.S. government, a person familiar with the agreement told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The development in the case against Binance was confirmed on the condition of anonymity ahead of an expected announcement. The value was first reported by Bloomberg. It comes months after the company was accused of operating as an unregistered securities exchange and violating a slew of U.S. securities laws in a lawsuit from regulators. Binance is a Cayman Islands limited liability company founded by CEO Changpeng Zhao. The charges were similar to practices uncovered after the collapse of the second largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, last year. Zhao has also faced allegations of diverting customer funds, concealing the fact that the company was commingling billions of dollars in investor assets and sending them to a third party that Zhao also owned. At the time the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against the company, Binance said that it had been cooperating with the investigation but said that the agency chose to act unilaterally and litigate. The cryptocurrency industry has been marred by scandals and market meltdowns. Sam Bankman-Fried, the 31-year-old founder of the failed cryptocurrency brokerage, was convicted earlier this month of fraud for stealing at least $10 billion from customers and investors. (AP) The Russian military command deploys Storm Z units, consisting of former prisoners, to the most intense areas, using them as expendable assets. However, the wounded and deceased Storm Z soldiers are not permitted to be evacuated from the battlefield. ADVERTISIMENT This information was disclosed to Russian media by the mother of one of the "Storm Z" militants, who was reportedly "killed" by Ukrainian defenders two months ago. Nevertheless, the Russian woman is still unable to obtain any information from the command regarding her son's death or the return of his body for burial. According to the mother of 32-year-old Ivan Leshchov from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, who was serving a sentence for drug trafficking, he signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry and was deployed to the Kupyansk sector in August as part of the 25th Brigade. A mobilized former convict complained to his mother in telephone conversations that the command threatened them with execution and left the bodies of the "Storm Z" soldiers on the battlefield without conducting proper searches. ADVERTISIMENT The ex-prisoners also did not receive the payments promised by the Ministry of Defense. "I have not received a single penny, nothing at all. I sent it myself to buy cigarettes, clothes, food," the Russian woman said. According to her, even when her son received a shrapnel wound, he was not provided with any treatment and was left on the front line. In late September, her colleagues told her that her son had been killed in Vilshany. Since then, for two months, the Russian woman has been unable to obtain information about her son's fate, as he is not listed in any lists. Leshchov's family has appealed to the Russian Presidential Administration, the military prosecutor's office, and the Red Cross, but they have not received any information. "I am not demanding anything supernatural. Just get the child and bury him. Don't bury him in a mass grave; they are just piling them up there," the Russian woman complains. ADVERTISIMENT As reported by OBOZ.UA, in the units "Storm" and "Storm-Z", formed mainly of prisoners, in some places 10-15% of the original personnel remained in the ranks. At the same time, the Russian command continues to form new similar units Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Walmart says it is working closely with investigators to try to determine why a shooter opened fire at one of its stores in Ohio and wounded four people before killing himself. The attack was reported at around 8:30 p.m. Monday at the Walmart in Beavercreek, a town of about 50,000 in the Dayton metropolitan area. Three women and a man were taken to area hospitals, where three of the victims remained in critical condition on Tuesday, police said in a statement. The fourth victim had injuries that were not life-threatening. Authorities said the shooter died after apparently shooting himself. His name and a motive for the attack have not yet been released. Police earlier said on social media that the store had been cleared and secured and there wasnt any active threat. Were heartbroken by whats happened at our Beavercreek, Ohio store. This remains a developing situation, and were working closely with investigators on the scene, Walmart, the worlds largest retailer, said in a statement. The shooting happened a day after two people were shot and killed outside a Walmart in south Anchorage, Alaska. Police are still searching for a suspect in that case. The store was evacuated before closing for the day, and officers helped people reach their vehicles. In November of last year, a Walmart supervisor in Chesapeake, Virginia, fatally shot six employees on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The shooter died at the scene of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. In 2019, a white gunman killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso in a racist attack that targeted Hispanic shoppers. The store in Ohio where Mondays shooting took place was the scene of a fatal shooting involving police almost 10 years ago. A white police officer shot 22-year-old John Crawford III, after he picked up an unpackaged pellet rifle he found on a shelf in August 2014. The family of the Black man reached a settlement of $1.7 million with the city of Beavercreek. The settlement included changes in police policy. Walmart launched a computer-based active shooter training in 2015, which focused on three pillars: avoid the danger, keep your distance and lastly, defend. Then, in 2019 after the shooting in El Paso, Walmart discontinued sales of certain kinds of ammunition and asked that customers no longer openly carry firearms in its stores. It now sells only hunting rifles and related ammunition. (AP) The White House voiced concern Tuesday that Iran may provide Russia with ballistic missiles for use in its war against Ukraine, a development that likely would be disastrous for the Ukrainian people, a U.S. national security official said. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby noted that Iran already has been providing Russia with unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, guided aerial bombs and artillery ammunition, and may be preparing to go a step further in its support for Russia. Kirby highlighted a September meeting in which Iran hosted Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to show off a range of ballistic missile systems, sparking U.S. concern. We are therefore concerned that Iran is considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles now for use in Ukraine, Kirby told reporters during a conference call. In return for that support, Russia has been offering Tehran unprecedented defense cooperation, including on missiles, electronics and air defense. Kirbys warning came as President Joe Bidens request for more than $61 billion in emergency U.S. funding to continue to support Ukraines defense remained stalled in Congress. The additional aid for Ukraine is part of a larger $106 billion funding request from the Democratic president that also would support Israel, Taiwan and the U.S. operations on the border with Mexico. A growing group of lawmakers in the Republican Party, which controls the House of Representatives, opposes sending more money to Ukraine. Kirby and other top U.S. officials have been urging Congress to pass aid for Ukraine, saying existing funding is drying up. He also noted Irans announcement earlier this year that it had finalized a deal to buy Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, and said Iran is looking to buy additional military equipment from Russia, including attack helicopters, radars and combat-trainer aircraft. In total, Iran is seeking billions of dollars worth of military equipment from Russia to strengthen its military capabilities, Kirby said. Russia has also been helping Iran develop and maintain its satellite collection capabilities and other space-based programs. He said the burgeoning military partnership between Iran and Russia is harmful to Ukraine, Irans neighbors in the Middle East and quite frankly to the international community. At the direction of the Russian government, Kirby said the Wagner mercenary group was preparing to provide an air-defense capability to either Hezbollah or Iran. He said the U.S. would be watching to see whether that happens and was prepared to use counterterrorism sanctions authority against Russian individuals or entities that might make these destabilizing transfers. Russia has used Wagner in the past when it has wanted to be able to deny involvement, especially in foreign military operations. The U.S. says the Kremlins reliance on Iran, as well as North Korea countries largely isolated on the international stage for their nuclear programs and human rights records shows desperation. That comes in the face of Ukrainian resistance and the success of the global coalition in disrupting Russian military supply chains and denying replacements for weapons lost on the battlefield. The White House has said Russia has turned to North Korea for artillery. U.S. officials say Iran has also provided Russia with artillery and tank rounds for its invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and other countries have taken steps to thwart the potential supply, sale or transfer involving Iran and ballistic missile-related items, Kirby said. The U.S. has also issued guidance to private companies about Iranian missile procurement practices to make sure they arent inadvertently supporting Irans development efforts. Last May, the White House said Russia was interested in buying additional advanced attack drones from Iran for use in the war against Ukraine after it used up most of the 400 drones it had previously purchased from Tehran. A U.S. intelligence finding released in June asserted that Iran was providing Russia with materials to build a drone manufacturing plant east of Moscow as the Kremlin looks to lock in a steady supply of weaponry for the war. (AP) German authorities on Tuesday raided the homes of 17 people in the state of Bavaria accused of spreading antisemitic hate speech and threats targeting Jews online. According to the Bavarian criminal police, the suspects were 15 men and two women aged between 18 and 62, German news agency dpa reported. Police questioned the suspects and confiscated evidence from their homes, including cellphones and laptops, the agency said. The suspects were said to have celebrated the attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7, and were accused of spreading hate speech against Jewish people on social media, using symbols of banned terrorist organizations, dpa reported. The police operation focused on Bavarias capital city of Munich, where nine of the accused resided. Further searches were carried out in the Bavarian towns of Fuessen and Kaufbeuren as well as in the counties of Passau, Fuerstenfeldbruck, Berchtesgadener Land, Coburg, Aschaffenburg and Hassberge. One suspect allegedly sent a sticker in a WhatsApp school class chat with the words Gas the Jews. Another person, a German-Turkish dual citizen, allegedly posted on his account that the Jewish sons deserved nothing more than to be exterminated, dpa reported. Unfortunately, antisemitism has an impact on the daily life of many Jews in Germany, Michael Weinzierl, the Bavarian police commissioner against hate crime, told dpa. The terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel also has an impact on their lives in Germany. Weinzierl said it was important to show Jews and Israelis living in the state that we stand behind them here in Bavaria, that we protect them here and also protect them from hostility. Last month, Germanys chancellor and president strongly denounced a rise in antisemitism in the country following the Israel-Hamas war. In the state of Bavaria, there were 148 antisemitic incidents from Oct. 7 to Nov. 9, an increase of 285% from the same time period a year earlier, according to the RIAS group, which tracks antisemitism in the country. Since Oct. 7, Jews in Germany have been experiencing psychological terror, said Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council for Jews in Germany, the countrys leading Jewish group. Antisemitic turmoil first manifests itself in language, but words become deeds, Schuster said. Society as a whole must now take a clear stance. For too long, we have allowed a ntisemitism to penetrate into the heart of our society via extreme right-wing circles, radical left-wing demonization of Israel or Islamist fanatics. Germany has strict rules against hate speech. Raids in connection with the publication of banned symbols such as swastikas and other Nazi symbols are not uncommon. The denial of the Holocaust, in which the Nazis and their henchmen murdered 6 million European Jews, is also banned. (AP) New York City is on high alert as authorities have received intelligence chatter about an elevated risk of a potential terrorist attack directly linked to the war in Gaza. Governor Kathy Hochul said she has taken action to bolster security measures and reinforce the staffing of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in response to a fresh threat assessment provided by the New York State Intelligence Center. This assessment highlights growing concerns that the violence in Gaza is generating discussions among extremist groups regarding potential targets within New York. Hochul said, I am working hard at the state level with the control I have. Ill be talking about this tomorrow, about exactly what were doing, and how many online threats weve uncovered, how many have been investigated, what the outcome is. The governor detailed her plans to address online threats and radicalization, coinciding with CBS News obtaining another threat assessment that underscores an increasing terror threat to New York State. According to the intelligence center, the surge in antisemitic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric on social media platforms is contributing to a rise in hate crimes targeting Jews, Muslims, and Arabs. The expansion of Israeli operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the increase in civilian casualties raises the likelihood that violent extremist threat actors will seek to conduct attacks against targets in the West, with New York State being a focus. Terrorist messaging has placed focus on attacking soft targets such as protests, group gatherings, and other public events, the report warned. Last week, Governor Hochul allocated $2.5 million to augment the State Polices investigative capacity within the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force across New York City, Albany, Buffalo, and Rochester. We are working with all law enforcement, federal, state, and local, statewide. These are not just New York City events, Hochul emphasized. FBI Director Christopher Wray previously voiced his own concerns in testimony to Congress, saying, Our most immediate concern is that violent extremists, individuals or small groups, will draw inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks against Americans going about their daily lives. That includes not just homegrown violent extremists, inspired by a foreign terrorist organization, but also domestic violent extremists targeting Jewish or Muslim communities. Weve already seen that with the individual we arrested last week in Houston. The situation has become increasingly worrisome as the number of bias incidents investigated by the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force surged by 124% in October, with anti-Jewish incidents showing a staggering 214% increase. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) A vehicle speeding toward a U.S.-Canada bridge from the American side crashed and exploded at a checkpoint in Niagara Falls on Wednesday, killing two people and prompting the closing of border crossings in the area, authorities said. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said there was no indication of a terrorist attack. Much remained unclear about the crash, which investigators were working to understand. Hochul said it wasnt clear whether the driver was intentionally heading for the Rainbow Bridge across the Niagara River when the vehicle hit a median and flew into the air. Based on what we know at this moment, she said, there is no sign of terrorist activity in this crash. It prompted the closing of four border crossings and raised concerns on both sides of the border. The White House said President Joe Biden was closely following developments, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said officials were taking this extraordinarily seriously. This is obviously a very serious situation in Niagara Falls, Trudeau said in Parliament before excusing himself from Question Period in the House of Commons to be briefed further. The two deceased people were in the vehicle, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Aaron Ferguson, a spokesperson for the city of Niagara Falls, New York, said the vehicle was traveling at high speed from that city and crashed into the border station. Jim Diodati, the mayor of Niagara Falls, Ontario, told The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that what happened appeared to be an isolated incident. The U.S. FBIs field office in Buffalo and other agencies were investigating the blast. Photos and video taken by bystanders and posted on social media showed thick smoke, flames on the pavement and a security booth that had been singed. Videos showed that the fire was in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection area just east of the main vehicle checkpoint. The agency had no immediate comment. Speaking to WGRZ-TV, witness Mike Guenther said he saw a vehicle speeding toward the crossing from the U.S. side when it swerved to avoid another car, crashed into a fence and exploded. All of a sudden, he went up in the air and then it was a ball of fire like 30 or 40 feet high, Guenther told the station. I never saw anything like it. The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission called the incident a serious car crash. From inside Niagara Falls State Park, Melissa Raffalow said she saw a huge plume of black smoke rise up over the border crossing, roughly 50 yards (45 meters) away from the popular tourist destination. Raffalow told AP in a message that police arrived soon after, urging visitors to disperse as they began cordoning off the street. Raghu Bhattarai said by phone that he was inside his restaurant, the Niagara Tandoori Hut, near the bridge when he heard a sound he described as a boom. A few minutes later, he saw black smoke rising. The bridge and three others between western New York and Ontario were quickly closed as a precaution, and the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport began security checks on all cars and told passengers to expect additional screenings. The safety measures tied up traffic at the airport and elsewhere on one of the busiest U.S. travel days of the year, ahead of the American Thanksgiving holiday. Trudeau said additional measures were being contemplated and activated at border crossings across Canada. In Toronto, about 100 miles (about 160 kilometers) away, police said they were increasing patrols as a precaution. New York City police were monitoring the news from Buffalo but already had boosted security at various spots because of the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday. The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission reported that all four of its crossings the others are Lewiston, Whirlpool and Peace Bridge were closed. Sanchit Chatha, his wife Reyshu and their 13-year-old daughter, Trisha, had stopped in Niagara Falls for lunch en route home to Toronto from Buffalo when they started getting news notifications about the explosion. Worried friends called, knowing the family was in the area. Trisha was concerned at seeing the bridges to Canada shut down, her mother said. She has a math test tomorrow, the mother explained as the family waited to find out when the crossings would open. About 6,000 vehicles cross the Rainbow Bridge each day, according to the U.S. Federal Highway Administrations National Bridge Inventory. About 5% is truck traffic, according to the federal data. The bridge, constructed in 1941, is just over 1,440 feet (439 meters) long and has a main span constructed of steel, according to the data. (AP) By Rabbi Yair Hoffman Some call it the Great Divide between Modox and More Yeshivesh. However, the question has not yet entered the list of Shidduch questions that are generally posed to parents of children who have now entered the phase of dating. Some are even disturbed by the very question: Is it halachically proper to formally celebrate Thanksgiving with a turkey dinner with ones family? This is not to say that the Yeshiva community does not express appreciation for the wonderful freedoms that this country has championed both for its citizens and for peoples throughout the world. The greatest of our Rabbis have stated that the United States is a malchus shel Chessed a Kingdom of Lovingkindness and that our thoughts and prayers should express appreciation for the wonderful nation in which we live. Indeed, one Rosh Yeshiva once stated, I would rather be a street-sweeper in America where I have the religious freedom to learn Torah, than a Rabbi in Communist Russia. THE QUESTIONS The questions rather, however, are, is it permitted to express ones appreciation within the context of following the rituals of the Thanksgiving holiday? We may further ask, what is the exact nature of the Thanksgiving holiday? From a halachic perspective, is it a religious holiday or a secular holiday? And what, exactly, is the halachic definition of a religious holiday? It is clear that these are the questions that must be resolved and addressed. They must be addressed using logic and reason rather than emotion. No question of law or halacha should be addressed with emotion as the underlying motivation, as noble as the motivation may be. Each person should, of course, address the question to ones own Rav or Posaik. So, let us begin. The issue at hand is the prohibition of Ubechukosaihem lo sailechu (VaYikra 18:3). What are its ramifications? The Shulchan Aruch and Rama (Yore Deah 178:1) discuss the parameters: We do not walk in the customs of the Ovdei Kochavim..(Ramah) Rather, one should be separate from them in ones dress and in his other actions. This is only prohibited in matters that they do which involve immodesty.. or in a matter that they do as a custom or law with no basis to it.. and it contains within it a smattering of Avodas Kochavim that they have from their ancestors.. The underlying issue is, therefore, does the holiday in question contain within it a smattering of Avodas Kochavim that they have from their ancestors? THE DIFFERENT VIEWS The Gedolim have issued their opinions on the matter. Rav Yitzchok Hutner clearly forbade the celebration of Thanksgiving (heard from his student, Rabbi Yaakov Feitman), as did Rav Avidor Miller, while Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Mordechai Gifter had more lenient approaches. TRANSLATION OF RAV MOSHES RESPONSUM Below is a translation of Rav Moshe Feinsteins view found in his Igros Moshe (YD 4:11). And in the matter of participating with those who consider Thanksgiving as a sort of holiday to make a feast. It would seem that: (1)Since in the books of their religion this day is not mentioned as a holiday, and also that they are not obligated in holding a meal and; (2)Since it is a day of commemoration for the people of the country, in which he is also happy in the country that he came to reside in now or from before, we do not have a lav prohibition in rejoicing at such a feast, nor in the consumption of turkey. And we find similar to this in Kiddushin 66a, that Yannai the King made a simcha for the victorious capturing in the war of Kuchalis in the wilderness. They ate vegetables there to commemorate it. But it is certainly forbidden to establish it as an obligation and as a Mitzvah. Rather it may be a voluntary celebration now. In this manner, without making it an obligation and a Mitzvah, he may do so. But I do hold that nonetheless it is forbidden to make this a permanent celebration. Only in that year that Yannai the king captured did he make it a simcha but not a permanent one. There is also the prohibition of adding on to the Torah. Even though one can question whether it is a lav nonetheless, it is certainly forbidden. Other Poskim, however, held to the more strict view that Thanksgiving does fall under the Ramahs rubric of a smattering of Avodas Kochavim that they have from their ancestors. The history of Thanksgiving can be quite informative in understanding this position. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING The pilgrims, or Puritans, were, by and large, Christian religious refugees from England. They differed slightly from the Puritans that had remained in England. They conceived of themselves as the new Israelites, entering the promised land. They did take many of their names from the Old Testament, but they also believed strongly in their Christian heritage. Many of them died in this new land in which they arrived. The end of 1622 and the beginning of 1623 were particularly harsh months. They had survived the winter, and that summer they celebrated. The first celebration took place on July 30th, 1623. In 1789, a resolution was presented to Congress to establish Thanksgiving as a national holiday. It was accepted and Thursday, November 26th 1789, was chosen as the day. In 1817, New York State adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom. By the middle of the 19th century many other states also celebrated a Thanksgiving Day. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln appointed a national day of Thanksgiving. Since then, many presidents have issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation, usually designating the fourth Thursday of each November as the holiday. Rav Feinstein ztl applied the criterion of the day not being mentioned in the books of their religion as a determining factor as to whether or not a particular day might be considered a religious holiday or a national holiday. DOES A RELIGION HAVE TO BE SO OFFICIAL? But does a religion have to be so official? What if a group of people breaks off from a church? The break-away church may not have official books of their religion yet we would clearly categorize their practices and observances as a religion. Lets take, for example, the Anglicans that were in this country at the very beginnings of the United States. In the 1770s, the Anglicans in this country were in a slightly awkward position. They were loyal Americans and yet they still belonged to the Church of England, whose leader was the King of England. What did these American Anglicans do? They broke away. Would one imagine that any religious practice that they observed would not be considered Avodah Zarah? Later, they formed the Episcopalian Church. But until that point they were a breakaway without official books or laws. WHO WERE THE PILGRIMS? Who were the pilgrims? They were Puritans who were religious refugees from England. To quote Bradford Smith, the author of Bradford of Plymouth: Puritanism in England was essentially a movement within the established church for the purifying of that church for ministers godly and able to teach, for a simplifying of ritual, for a return to the virtues of primitive Christianity. There was nothing revolutionary about the main body of its doctrine. . Its innovating principle was in the idea that the Bible, rather than any established religious hierarchy, was the final authority. Therefore every man, every individual, had direct access to the word of G-d. It was the Puritans aim to reconstruct and purify not only the church, but individual conduct and all the institutions men live by. THE PURITANS CONCEPT OF G-D Our next question is also paramount. What was their concept of G-d? The pilgrims were Puritans who believed in the Christian concept of the trinity. So here we have a holiday established by a breakaway group from the Church of England the purpose of which is to thank G-d, or their concept of G-d, for having saved them from that harsh winter. Their concept of G-d does not coincide with the Judaic idea of G-ds Absolute Unity. One can easily understand why these Poskim do not agree with Rav Feinsteins position. CONCLUSIONS Rav Moshe Feinstein did rule that one may eat turkey on Thanksgiving and eat a meal together with family at this time as long as one does not make it into a hard and fast rule. Those who wish to follow this position certainly have whom to rely upon. Others who question this understanding of the nature of the holiday, should certainly not observe it if they feel uncomfortable. If they feel that it involves a smattering of Avodah Zarah they should certainly refrain. Once again, these issues should be decided through logic and not through an emotional appeal or zeal one way or the other. It should also be presented to ones Rav or Posaik. Everyone, however should take the time to express gratitude to Hashem for the beautiful country we have. Not doing so, when everyone else is expressing their gratitude smacks of a lack of gratitude. In order that it not be something reserved specifically for this day, however, it might be worthwhile to express this gratitude on a grander scale than just one mere day. The author can be reached at [email protected] JOIN THE TENS OF THOUSANDS WHO ALREADY ARE ALERTED OF BREAKING NEWS LIKE THIS IN LIVE TIME: YWN WHATSAPP STATUS UPDATES: CLICK HERE to join the YWN WhatsApp Status. YWN WHATSAPP GROUPS: CLICK HERE to be added to an official YWN WhatsApp Group. MAKE SURE TO CHECK THIS PAGE FREQUENTLY AS UPDATES WILL BE PUBLISHED IN LIVE TIME THERE IS NO NEED TO REFRESH THIS PAGE AS UPDATES WILL APPEAR AUTOMATICALLY Zainab Chaudry, a member of the Maryland Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention and director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Maryland office, has come under fire after posting that reports of murdered Israeli babies were fake, and declared that Israel is comparable to Nazi Germany. I will never be able to understand how the world summoned up rage for 40 fake Israeli babies while completely turning a blind eye to 3,000 real Palestinian babies, Chaudry wrote on Facebook on October 26. An October 17 post showed photos of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin lit up with the Israeli flag and decorated with the Nazi flag during the 1936 Olympics, drawing a parallel between the two, and captioning it, That moment when you become what you hated most. On Nov. 6 she wrote that it is an inconvenient fact that Israel is to blame for the ongoing war, and that it all started in 1948. She celebrated martyred Palestinians in yet another post, and quoting a supposed Islamic prophecy that garrisons who defend the lands of Islam will be in Ashkelon. Despite these posts, Chaudry has kept her position on the Maryland Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention, which ostensibly aims to address hate crime incidents across the state and promote understanding of diverse perspectives. When asked by Fox News about the posts, Chaudry said that the Nazi comparison was shared with her by a Jewish friend, so clearly theres nothing wrong with her sharing it and then went on to accuse Israel of genocide. The Israeli prime minister has analogized the bombing of Gaza to an ancient biblical story about the total genocide of a city, [and] declared that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, the Israel defense minister has justified starving Palestinian civilians by calling them human animals, the Israeli military spokesman has said that the aim of their bombing campaign is destruction rather than accuracy. Multiple Israeli ministers have called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, with one even calling the ongoing war a Nakba 2023, she said. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterress recent remarks about civilian deaths in Gaza have sparked a furious fact-checking response from social media users. During a press conference on Monday, Guterres stated, We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary-General. The comment was posted on the official U.N. News account on the social media platform X, eliciting a community note on the platform, which allows users to provide context to potentially misleading posts. The community note highlighted conflicts with higher death tolls than Gaza, specifically referencing the Syrian civil war and the Yemen War. Both conflicts have seen civilian death tolls in the hundreds of thousands, far surpassing the figures in Gaza. Israels Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gilad Erdan ripped into Guterres, writing, Short memory? I think not. More likely that its the regular bias and anti-Israel approach of the secretary-general. Guterres, in his comments, had avoided discussing the accuracy of numbers provided by Hamas in Gaza. Since he took over as UN secretary general, the Syrian civil war saw over 10,000 civilian deaths in 2017 alone. The Yemen War, predating his term, has resulted in over 377,000 deaths, with a U.N. report stating that one child died every seven minutes in Yemen in 2022, including non-combat-related deaths. The Gaza Health Ministry, controlled by Hamas, reported over 11,000 deaths in Gaza since Israels response to the October 7 terrorist attack that killed 1,200. However, these figures do not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths and theyre almost certainly inflated. We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict since I have been Secretary General- UN chief @antonioguterres pic.twitter.com/cj3EZgbSoE UN News (@UN_News_Centre) November 20, 2023 (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Israel and Hamas on Tuesday appeared close to a deal to temporarily halt their devastating six-week war for dozens of hostages being held in the Gaza Strip to be freed in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. But as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his Cabinet for a vote, he vowed to resume the Israeli offensive against Hamas as soon as the truce ends. There is a lot of nonsense out there to the effect that after the pause to return our hostages, we will stop the war, Netanyahu said. Then let me make it clear: We are at war and will continue the war. We will continue the war until we achieve all of our war aims: To eliminate Hamas, return all of our hostages and our missing, and ensure that there is no element in Gaza that threatens Israel. Yesterday evening, I met, together with the members of the War Cabinet, members of the hostages families. I listened closely to their plight. With shaking voices, sometimes in tears, they described the nightmare they are in. I told the dear families: Returning our hostages is a sacred and supreme task and I am obligated to it together with my colleagues. As the Rambam says: There is no greater precept that redeeming captives. We will not relent in our efforts until we redeem them all, the young men and women, the elderly men and women, the male and female soldiers, all of them. In war there are stages, and in returning the hostages there are stages, but we will not relent until we achieve the absolute victory and until we bring them all back. This is my sacred duty, of all of us. In recent days, I have spoken with our friend, US President Joe Biden and I requested his intervention in order to improve the outline that will be presented to you. Indeed, it has been improved to include more hostages and at a lower cost. These talks have been productive. President Biden joined in the effort and I thank him for it. Before you this evening, now, is a difficult decision but it is the correct decision. All of the security agencies fully support it; they have made it completely clear in their professional assessment, that the security of our forces will be ensured during the pause and that the intelligence effort will be maintained in those days. They have made it clear that not only will the war effort not be harmed, it will enable the IDF to prepare for the continuation of the fighting. I would like to reiterate: The war is continuing and the war will continue until we achieve all of our goals Eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages and assuring that the day after Hamas, Gaza will no longer threaten Israel, that there will be no other element that supports terrorism, educates its children for terrorism and threatens the State of Israel. With G-ds help, we will do it and we will succeed and together we will win, Netanyahu concluded. The Israeli Cabinet was expected to vote on a plan that would halt Israels offensive in Gaza for several days in exchange for the release of about 50 of the 240 hostages held by Hamas. Israel has vowed to continue the war until it destroys Hamas military capabilities and returns all hostages. Hamas predicted a Qatari-mediated deal could be reached in the coming hours. Netanyahu acknowledged that the Cabinet faced a tough decision, but supporting the cease-fire was the right thing to do. Netanyahu appeared to have enough support to pass the measure, despite opposition from some ministers. Netanyahu said that during the lull, intelligence efforts will be maintained, allowing the army to prepare for the next stages of battle. He said the battle would continue until Gaza will not threaten Israel. The announcement came as Israeli troops battled Palestinian terrorists in an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza and around hospitals overcrowded with patients and sheltering families. Details of the expected cease-fire deal were not released. Israeli media reported that an agreement would include a five-day halt in Israels offensive in Gaza and the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for some 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Israels Channel 12 TV said the first releases would take place Thursday or Friday and continue for several days. Talks have repeatedly stalled. But even if a deal is reached, it would not mean an end to the war, which erupted on Oct. 7 after Hamas terrorists stormed across the border into southern Israel and killed at least 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped some 240 others. TALKS ON HOSTAGES Israel, the United States and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, have negotiated for weeks over a hostage release that would be paired with a temporary cease-fire and the entry of more aid. In Washington, President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a deal on releasing some hostages was very close. We could bring some of these hostages home very soon, he said at the White House. Qatars Foreign Ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari expressed optimism, telling reporters that we are at the closest point we ever had been in reaching an agreement. He added that negotiations were at a critical and final stage. Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said Tuesday that an agreement could be reached in the coming hours, in which Hamas would release captives and Israel would release Palestinian prisoners. Hamas leader-in-exile, Ismail Haniyeh, also said they were close to a deal. Israels Channel 12 TV, citing anonymous Israeli officials, said a truce could be extended and additional Palestinian prisoners released if there were additional hostages freed. FIGHTING IN JABALIYA AND AROUND HOSPITALS Inside Gaza, the front line of the war shifted to the Jabaliya refugee camp, a densely built district of concrete buildings near Gaza City that houses families displaced in the 1948 war surrounding Israels creation. Israel has bombarded the area for weeks, and the military said Hamas fighters have regrouped there and in other eastern districts after being pushed out of much of Gaza City. Residents of Jabaliya said there was heavy fighting as Israeli forces tried to advance under the cover of airstrikes. They are facing stiff resistance, said Hamza Abu Mansour, a university student. The Israeli military said strikes hit three tunnel shafts where terrorists were hiding and destroyed rocket launchers. Footage released by the military showed Israeli soldiers patrolling on foot as gunfire echoed around them. Its unclear how many Palestinian civilians remain in northern Gaza, but the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees estimates that some 160,000 people are still in its shelters there, though it can no longer provide services. Thousands more still shelter in several hospitals in the north even after many fled south in recent weeks. (YWN/AP) The Defence Intelligence of Ukraine is intrigued by the footage of the Crimean bridge that connects the occupied peninsula with the aggressor country. Ukrainian reconnaissance men from the Artan Special Forces sent a "greeting" to the occupiers, leaving a "business card" on the shore opposite the illegal structure, and promised the bridge to continue its "adventures." ADVERTISIMENT A corresponding publication appeared on November 22 on the official pages of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine. The agency's press service reminded that the "sacred" construction of Russian President Vladimir Putin is "completely unnecessary." "Crimean autumn wind and a completely superfluous construction. To be continued..." the post reads. Judging by the video published by the GUR, the footage was taken from the shore of the occupied Crimea, and the illegally built Kerch Bridge is visible on the horizon. It can also be seen that a "business card" with the name of the Artan special unit was left on the coast - in this way, Ukrainian intelligence officers apparently sent a "hello" to the occupiers. ADVERTISIMENT As reported by OBOZ.UA: - On November 1, thick smoke rose over the Crimean bridge, traffic on it was blocked, the occupiers announced an air alert on the peninsula, and then reported on the "work of air defense." ADVERTISIMENT - British military intelligence stated that the Crimean bridge has become a "security burden" for Russia, as it requires multi-component protection. Putin's "sacred" structure remains under threat due to the ingenuity of the Ukrainian military and the SBU, the agency noted. - On October 8, 2022, the first explosion occurred on the Kerch Bridge, which collapsed two half-sections of the roadway and damaged the railroad track. On July 17, 2023, a second powerful explosion occurred on the bridge, creating several large dips. - Earlier, the head of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, promised to bring the Kerch Bridge case to an end. "It's only a matter of time," he said. Only verified information on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! In an extraordinary early Wednesday morning vote, Israels cabinet endorsed an agreement aimed at securing the release of approximately 50 hostages who were kidnapped and taken to Gaza during the terror attack on October 7. Although not all the agreements details have been officially disclosed to the public, an Israeli government official, during a briefing with reporters the previous Tuesday, indicated that the deal is expected to result in the release of 50 Israeli citizens, predominantly women and children, in daily groups of 12-13 individuals. In exchange, Israel has committed to a ceasefire, lasting at least four days, marking the first ceasefire since the outbreak of the war. Additionally, Israel has agreed to release Palestinian women and minors from incarceration, enabling them to return to their homes, primarily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While a specific number has not been provided, Hebrew media reports suggest the figure to be approximately 150. Statement by the Government of Israel The Government of Israel is obligated to return home all of the hostages. Tonight, the Government has approved the outline of the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostages women and children will be released over four days, during which a pause in the fighting will be held. The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause. The Government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Israels war Cabinet on Tuesday night approved a long-awaited deal to temporarily pause the fighting in Gaza in exchange for Hamas release of dozens of hostages. Cant make heads or tails of the deal? Not to worry. YWN reporter Moshe Schwartz has you covered with his analysis of it. Here it is: Israel says It will get at least 50 hostages from Hamas over a 4-day period. They will be women and children. It has agreed to a 4-day pause in fighting during that time. Every additional 10 hostages released after that point will result in an additional day of no fighting. After the pause in fighting, Israel will return to its stated goal of freeing the remaining hostages and destroying Hamas. An Israeli official told reporters (earlier today before an official statement was released) that over the next 24 hours, the names of Palestinian prisoners set to be released will be made public so that Israeli citizens can appeal against their release. Israel will not release Palestinian prisoners who have been convicted of killing Israelis. Hamas says It has agreed to a 4-day ceasefire No IDF activity allowed during that time in all of Gaza and no vehicles allowed to enter into Gaza. Hundreds of trucks of humanitarian aid, including medical and fuel, to arrive in all areas of Gaza including the north. It will release 50 women and children hostages under 19 years old. Israel will release 150 women and children under the age of 19 that are being held in Israeli prisons. All air traffic over northern Gaza will halt (including drones) from 10 am to 4 pm each day (6 hours). Israel has agreed not to attack or arrest anyone anywhere in Gaza during the ceasefire. Israel has agreed to the free movement of people from northern Gaza to southern Gaza. Media says The deal was approved by a significant majority of the Israeli cabinet (CNN) Hebrew media says Israel is expected to release about 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and children over the four-day pause. (Axios) Three Americans could be part of the agreement securing the release of 50 women and children held hostage in Gaza. (CNN) Israel will allow around 300 aid trucks per day to enter Gaza from Egypt. More fuel will also be allowed in during the pause in fighting. (Axios) There are various locations where the hostages will be brought out of Gaza. (CNN) After their safe passage, the released hostages will receive medical attention in Israel. (CNN quoting NSCs Kirby) Roughly 12 hostages will be released daily by Hamas (AP) So when does it start? While neither statement said when the truce would begin, Israeli media reported that the hostages could begin to be released as soon as Thursday. (AP) The deal cannot be enacted until Thursday at the earliest, to allow time for judicial approval. (NYT) Confused About The Israel-Hamas Hostage/Ceasfire Deal? So am I. So I'm going to break it down below by what Israel and Hamas have confirmed and what media reports are saying (I read tens of articles so you don't have to). Hopeful we'll all be the wiser Let's go! Israel pic.twitter.com/e0YH6zpjik Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) November 22, 2023 (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Tatyana Prima thought shed left the bombs behind when she fled Ukraine more than a year and a half ago, after Russia decimated her city, Mariupol. The 38-year-old escaped with her injured husband and young daughter, bringing the family to safety in southern Israel. The calm she was slowly regaining shattered again on Oct. 7, when Hamas invaded. All these sounds of war that we hear now, they sometimes work as a trigger that brings back memories of what weve gone through in Mariupol, she said. Its hard feeling like that youre the one responsible for your child, the one who wants whats best for them, and in some way like youve failed them. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, more than 45,000 Ukrainians have sought refuge in Israel, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics and aid groups. Like Prima, most of them were slowly picking up the pieces of their lives and finding ways to cope when the war in Israel erupted. Now they are reliving their trauma. Some have left Israel, but many remain refusing to again flee a war. Most have lost in-person support systems due to restrictions around gatherings. Others have lost hope of reuniting with loved ones they left behind. On Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages, Prima awoke to the sound of alarms. She lives in the coastal city of Ashkelon, a few kilometers (miles) from the Gaza Strip. The thud of airstrikes and shelling is constant as Israel pushes forward with its offensive. She describes it as deja vu, reminding her of the morning in Mariupol that forever changed her life. Mariupol has been one of Ukraines hardest-hit cities, besieged and bombarded for weeks as people scrounged for food, water and heat and were cut off from the world with no telecommunications. During the wars early weeks, Prima cooked over an outdoor fire, used snow for drinking water, and sheltered with a dozen relatives on the outskirts of the city, she said. But the shelling intensified, and rockets fell around them. After her husbands hand was blown off fetching water, she decided to leave. That day marked a descent into hell, she said. The family joined a convoy of cars fleeing the city, passing corpses as black ash fell from airstrikes. They went through countless Russian checkpoints and by April 2022 arrived in Israel, where her husbands relatives lived in Ashkelon. Many Ukrainians live in the countrys south. Theres a large Russian-speaking community, and rent is often lower than in bigger, central cities. Ashkelon residents were accustomed to occasional rockets from Gaza, but attacks have surged in the war. Air raid sirens are a constant sound. While most rockets are intercepted, about 80 have landed since the war in populated areas or empty fields, accounting for nearly one-third of all Hamas rocket incidents in Israel, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. Shelling sounds remind Prima of her agony in Ukraine, yet she remains stoic when speaking about Israels war, convinced the army and the countrys Iron Dome defense system will protect her family. But the war has intensified feelings of isolation, she said. Her community support groups have moved online in-person gatherings are restricted to buildings with bomb shelters because of the threat of attacks. There is this tremendous hopelessness that these people are facing, said Dr. Koen Sevenants, a mental health specialist with experience in conflict zones. Sevenants and other experts warn that when people who havent fully recovered from a traumatic incident are revictimized, the triggering event can often be worse, with risk for depression and anxiety. Refugee organizations have adapted some of their programs, providing financial assistance and bringing food to people who dont feel safe leaving their homes. But they cant do it all, said Rabbi Olya Weinstein of Project Kesher, which helps some 6,000 people who fled the war in Ukraine and brings families groceries or provides food vouchers. Under rockets, its very hard to be available for everyone, said Weinstein, who hears peoples concerns for the future. Theyre asking what will happen what will happen with Israel, will we remain here forever, will we remain alive, what will happen to our kids? Some Ukrainians have been forced to move within Israel since the war began. About 100 children sheltering at a Jewish home in Ashkelon fled soon after Hamas attacked to the center of the country, said Yael Eckstein, of The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a philanthropic organization that supports the children. It was the second time they were forced from their home in less than two years they fled a city near Ukraines capital and evacuated to Israel during the early weeks of that war. Theyre struggling to process everything, Eckstein said, with one asking: Since hes now living in a war zone, why cant he go back to Ukraine? Veronika Chotari thought shed see her 18-year-old daughter, Tereza, for the holidays. Her daughter stayed in Ukraine last year when Chotari sought cancer treatment in Israel for her youngest child, moving into the quiet central town of Petah Tikva. Until October, shed never heard a siren there, she said. Now, instead of planning to see each other, the two spend hours texting from bomb shelters, making sure the other is alive. Im worried about you mom, please I know its impossible but lets find another place for you, Tereza wrote. Im tired of all this, I hate these wars. (AP) The websites of two government ministries in Bahrain briefly became inaccessible Tuesday night after a cyberattack took them down, purportedly over the island kingdoms stance on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. A statement posted online by a self-described group calling itself Al-Toufan, or The Flood in Arabic, claimed hacking the Foreign Ministry and the Information Affairs Ministrys websites. Both later became accessible. Another statement included scans of passports for American citizens and a top Russian diplomat in Bahrain that allegedly came from the hack. The statement said the hacks came in retaliation for the abnormal statements issued by the islands Al Khalifa ruling family, without elaborating. Bahrains Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa opened a summit last week in the kingdom with a call for a swap between Hamas and Israel for the hostages and a halt in the bloodshed. A Bahrain government statement sent later Tuesday night to The Associated Press acknowledged that a number of government agency websites have today been the target of malicious cyberattacks. The government of Bahrain has implemented a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy and framework to address such threats, the statement said. Government operations were unaffected by the attacks, and work is ongoing to restore access to the targeted websites. In February, the self-described group issued a claim that it had taken down the websites of Bahrains international airport, state news agency and chamber of commerce to mark the 12-year anniversary of an Arab Spring uprising in the small Gulf country. The same shadowy self-described group targeted government websites during elections held last year that were boycotted by a banned Shiite opposition group and others. Bahrain reached a diplomatic recognition deal with Israel in 2020 alongside the United Arab Emirates. The island kingdom, home to the U.S. Navys 5th Fleet, has drawn repeated criticism from Iran, its regional arch rival, over that. (AP) The Israeli government on Wednesday morning published the details of the hostage deal approved by the cabinet earlier in the morning. The deal was approved after a meeting that lasted about eight hours. The only party that voted against the deal was the Otzma Yehudit party. The Israeli public has 24 hours to appeal the deal to the Supreme Court, and then if the Court, as expected, rejects the petition, the deal will be implemented. Fifty hostages, women and children, will be released during the first four days of the ceasefire. No mothers will be released without their children or vice versa. Israel will release 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly males under age 20, and 13 women all of whom were not convicted of murder. However, 17 prisoners on the list were convicted of attempted murder and in many cases, caused grievous injuries to their Israeli victims. Many belong to terror groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and have been convicted of crimes such as causing severe bodily harm, arson, possession of illegal weapons, and endangering state security. A list of prisoners to be released was published on Wednesday morning and Israelis have 24 hours to appeal to the Supreme Court against the deal or the release of specific prisoners. Prior to each phase of the return of hostages, Israel will receive in advance, the evening prior, the list of hostages who will be released the next day. Hamas is expected to release the first list of ten hostages on Wednesday evening. The hostages will be brought into Israel on Thursday morning via the Red Cross. The Palestinian prisoners will be released later on Thursday. Israel will release the prisoners only after the hostages arrive in Israel. Each released prisoner will return to his home, whether in East Jerusalem, Yehudah and Shomron, or Gaza. After the initial stage of the deal is completed and 50 hostages have been returned to Israel, if Hamas releases additional hostages, it will receive three Palestinian prisoners in exchange for each hostage and one ceasefire day for every release of ten hostages. Israel will be restricted for six hours of each day of the ceasefire [between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.] from gathering intelligence in Gaza via surveillance drones. On each day of the ceasefire, four fuel trucks, four gas trucks, and 200 trucks of humanitarian aid will enter Gaza. The current deal approved by the Cabinet is limited to ten days from the first release, partially to prevent Hamas from dragging out the return of the hostages. But at the same time, the government approved the release of 300 terrorists in the hope that Hamas will release up to 98 hostages. If another deal is reached after ten days, it will need to be brought to the government for approval. According to the data that Israel has received, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups are holding about 195 Israelis, of whom 40 are children and 58 are women. The current estimate is that the deal will eventually include 98 hostages. At this point, Hamas is only aware of the whereabouts of 75 of them, with at least 10 children being held by Islamic Jihad or other terror groups or individuals. A number of hospitals are preparing to receive the hostages in separate departments from other wings of the hospital. The children who will be released will be brought to the Schneider Medical Center in Petach Tikva, while the adults who will be released will be transferred to Sheba, Wolfson, Ichilov, Shamir (Asaf Harofeh) and Soroka hospitals. The hospitals were instructed to document any physical findings that could testify to war crimes. (YWN Israel Desk Jerusalem) The helicopter-borne Houthi attack on an Israel-linked ship in the Red Sea highlights the danger now lurking in one of the worlds key shipping routes as the Israel-Hamas war rages, as well as the terrorists tactics mirroring those of its chief sponsor, Iran. While Tehran has denied aiding the Yemen terrorist group in launching their attack Sunday, the targeted ship before the assault passed by an American-sanctioned Iranian cargo vessel suspected as serving as a forward spying base in the Red Sea. The terrorists, dressed commando-style in bulletproof vests carrying assault rifles, covered each other and moved in military formation before quickly seizing control of the bridge of the Galaxy Leader. While their body-camera footage serves as a propaganda coup to bolster their own position in Yemen amid some protests against their rule, it also signals a new maritime front has opened in a region long focused on the Persian Gulf and its narrow mouth at the Strait of Hormuz. It also puts new pressure on commercial shippers traveling through those waters, threatens to increase insurance costs that will get passed onto consumers and likely further stretches the U.S. Navy as it tries to serve as the regions security guarantor. This has all the signs these people were trained by a professional military, which could clearly be Iran, an American defense official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. This looks like something we havent seen before. Its not just the U.S. and Israel suspecting Iranian involvement, however. The risk intelligence firm RANE referred to the tactics employed by the Houthis as reminiscent of those used by Irans paramilitary Revolutionary Guard when seizing vessels in the past over years of tensions regarding Tehrans collapsed nuclear deal with world powers. Ambrey, a private intelligence firm, similarly referred to the operation as an Iranian-style vessel seizure that provides the Houthis with a negotiation lever in much the same way Hamas taking of some 240 hostages in their Oct. 7 attack on Israel did. The incident displayed a significant increase in the Houthis capability to disrupt merchant shipping, Ambrey said. In the past, the Houthis had only used sea mines, missiles and remote-controlled improvised explosive devices in the Red Sea. It added: The sophistication of the operation suggests that Iranian involvement is highly likely. The Galaxy Leader, linked to Israeli billionaire Abraham Rami Ungar, also passed by the Iranian cargo vessel Behshad before the attack Sunday, according to satellite imagery first reported by the firm Tanker Trackers. The Behshad has been in the Red Sea since 2021 off Eritreas Dahlak archipelago. It arrived there after Iran removed the Saviz, another suspected spy base in the Red Sea that had suffered damage in an attack that analysts attributed to Israel amid a wider shadow war of ship attacks in the region. Satellite images Tuesday from Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by the AP showed the Galaxy Leader off Yemens port city of Hodeida, which is held by the Houthis. Iran, for its part, denied Monday having anything to do with the attacks. However, Hamas has Iran as one of its main sponsors. The Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, another Iranian-backed group, has engaged in cross-border fire for weeks with Israel. Iraqi militias have claimed drone attacks on U.S. bases there. Syria, another Iranian beneficiary, has launched sporadic attacks too. It remains unclear just how much control the Iranians exert over the Houthis. However, the rebel group has seen its ballistic missile and drone program rapidly advance despite being targeted by a yearslong United Nations arms embargo. Analysts attribute that to Iranian weapons shipments, of which some have been previously seized by the U.S. and allied navies. Houthi weapon sophistication has grown in other ways as well. The Houthis have been able to fly this year a Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jet over the capital, Sanaa, during a military parade, along with a Northrop F-5 Tiger combat aircraft at another. A Houthi parade also saw Soviet-era Mil Mi-17 helicopters flying through the sky the same helicopter used in Sundays attack. A Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis had targeted Yemens air force with airstrikes at the start of the war and the Houthis have yet to explain how they got these aircraft flying again. The Houthis also have shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone during the Israel-Hamas war with a surface-to-air missile, as well as have fired drones and missiles toward Israel. All of this makes the Red Sea, which stretches from Egypts Suez Canal down to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait separating East Africa from the Arabian Peninsula, increasingly dangerous for shipping. That narrow strait, some 29 kilometers (18 miles) across at its tightest point, is crucial for cargo and energy shipments. The U.S. has sent more vessels into and through the Red Sea, including the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its strike group. The Eisenhower is now in the Gulf of Oman, according to satellite images, meaning there are fewer U.S. Navy assets in the Red Sea to deter any possible new attacks. And if the next attack sees fatalities particularly of U.S. or Israeli nationals that raises the risk of a wider war breaking out on the seas. Significant Houthi interference with commercial shipping through the Strait is almost certain to trigger U.S. intervention due to the political and potentially economic implications, the New York-based Soufan Center warned. (AP) Many of the Palestinian prisoners who were included on the list to be possibly released as part of the hostage deal committed violent crimes, including attempted murder, and 74 prisoners on the list are residents of East Jerusalem. All released prisoners will be returned to their homes. In one case, a female terrorist who attempted to murder her neighbor in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood of Jerusalem could be returned to her home next to her victim! In another case, security officials noted that there is information about a terrorist on the list from Yehudah and Shomron who attempted to murder an Israeli by stabbing him over 20 times in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem only four months ago that he will commit another terror attack if he is released! It should be noted that Israelis have 24 hours from the time the hostage deal was approved [early Wednesday morning], to appeal to the Supreme Court against the deal or any specific prisoners on the list. Seventeen prisoners on the list were convicted of attempted murder. Many belong to terror groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad and were convicted of crimes such as causing severe bodily harm, arson, possession of illegal weapons, and endangering state security. The list of the 150 released prisoners just completely debunked the lie that Israel just arresting innocent Palestinian women and children who just threw stones Almost all the women committed stabbing or shooting attacks, Almost all the children were 17-18 years old men with pic.twitter.com/klI13NeG3U Adin (@AdinHaykin1) November 22, 2023 Army Radio journalist Doron Kadosh examined the list and found a number of prisoners who inflicted grave injuries on Israelis in attempts to murder them. Some of the prisoners and their crimes are listed below not in any particular order: Muhammad Abu Katish, 17, who attempted to murder a yeshivah bochur [partially paralyzing him for life] and was only recently sentenced to 15 years in prison. Abu Katish specifically sought out a Chareidi victim. He served only one year of the 15 years he was sentenced. Bassel Abidiya a 17-year-old terrorist from East Jerusalem who stabbed and wounded two civilians seriously and lightly at Shaar Yafo in Jerusalem exactly one month before October 7th. Abrahaim Temer carried out a shooting attack in April of this year near the kever of Shimon HaTzaddik in Jerusalem and wounded two Breslover chassidim moderately and lightly. Fatma Amarna, 44, attempted to murder a Border Police officer a number of months ago in the Old City of Jerusalem. The officer was saved by his protective vest. Ahmed Najama a 16-year-old terrorist from Jenin who carried out a stabbing attack in Bnei Brak during Operation Bayit Vegan. Malek Solmein, a resident of East Jerusalem who attempted to murder Border Police officers at Shaar Shechem in 2016. She was 16 at the time. Meison Musa who stabbed and seriously injured a female IDF soldier next to Kever Rochel. Asraa Jabes, 38, who attempted murder by exploding a gas balloon in her car near Maale Adumim in 2015. Her face was disfigured as a result of the explosion and she went to court to request a nose job at the expense of the State. Her request was denied. In addition, a terrorist who carried out a stabbing attack less than two months ago at Shaar Yafo, seriously wounding an Israeli man, is on the list. (YWN Israel Desk Jerusalem) Democrat Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown has taken action against a member of his own hate crime task force following the discovery of numerous antisemitic social media posts. Zainab Chaudry, who serves as the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Maryland office, posted the hateful messages in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which resulted in over 1,200 casualties, including the beheading and burning of children and babies. In a press release, Attorney General Brown stated, The Office of Attorney General learned last week about personal social media posts of a member of the Maryland Commission on Hate Crimes Response and Prevention, Zainab Chaudry, Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Maryland Office. He continued, Attorney General Brown has determined that Ms. Chaudrys social media posts risk disrupting the work and mission of the Commission, so he is announcing steps that he took today to ensure that the vital work and mission of the Commission can continue without interruption, and revealed that Chaudrys membership on the commission would be temporarily suspended. Brown also expressed the intent to create a draft values statement regarding personal communications by commission members, emphasizing the need for careful communication and conduct. Chaudrys controversial social media posts included an October 26 Facebook message, where she wrote, I will never be able to understand how the world summoned up rage for 40 fake Israeli babies while completely turning a blind eye to 3,000 real Palestinian babies. Another post from October 17 read, [T]hat moment when you become what you hated most, accompanied by photos of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, with both the Israeli flag and the Nazi flag during the 1936 Olympics. In a November 6 post, Chaudry appeared to imply that the existence of Israel was the root cause of the ongoing conflict, using the phrase it all started in 1948, the year of Israels founding. She also shared content celebrating martyred Palestinians and a post referencing an Islamic prophecy about garrisons who defend the lands of Islam in Ashkelon, an Israeli city north of Gaza. When contacted for comment by Fox News Digital, Chaudry argued that the Nazi post was initially shared by a close Jewish friend and went on to accuse the Israeli government of seeking to commit genocide against Palestinians. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) The Israel Defense Forces have reported the successful interception of a cruise missile over the Red Sea, near the southernmost city of Eilat, Wednesday afternoon. It was reportedly shot down by an Israeli Fighter Jet. It is suspected that the missile was launched by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. Importantly, the IDF has confirmed that the missile did not breach Israeli airspace. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) A major Iranian-backed militant group in Iraq warned it may strike additional U.S. targets after U.S. warplanes killed multiple militants in response to the first use of short-range ballistic missiles against U.S. forces at Al-Asad Air Base Monday. U.S. fighter jets struck a Kataib Hezbollah operations center and a Kataib Hezbollah command and control node near Al Anbar and Jurf al Saqr, south of Baghdad, on Tuesday, two defense officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide additional sensitive details of the attacks. There were Kataib Hezbollah personnel at both sites at the time of the strikes, but the officials said they could not yet confirm whether anyone there was killed. Militia officials in Iraq said the attack had killed eight Kataib Hezbollah members. The U.S. airstrikes followed an earlier retaliatory strike by an AC-130 gunship that was in the air when the Iranian-backed militants fired two short-range ballistic missiles at Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq late Monday evening. The gunship was able to locate the origin of the missiles, and fired on several militants who had fled in a vehicle, killing several of them. Kataib Hezbollah in a statement meanwhile said it was considering expanding the scope of targets if the U.S. military continues with its strikes, adding that the attack will not go unpunished. The dangerous back-and-forth strikes have escalated since Iranian-backed militant groups under the umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Syria began striking U.S. facilities Oct. 17, the date that a blast at a hospital in Gaza killed hundreds. The attacks have continued unabated since, with at least 66 rocket and missile attacks hitting U.S. facilities and wounding at least 62 service members. The Monday attack stood out in that it was the first time militants had used ballistic missiles, and the U.S. response inside Iraq was immediate. It was also noteworthy because the previous planned counterattacks by U.S. warplanes had focused on militant weapons caches and training centers in Syria, due to political sensitivities in Iraq. The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who rose to power through the backing of an Iran-backed political coalition, called the recent escalations a dangerous development, reflecting the delicate balance the government must strike between Iranian factions and U.S. military presence. In a statement, Sudani called the the U.S. attack a violation of the countrys sovereignty and of the U.S.-led coalitions mission to combat Islamic State militants on Iraqi soil, given that the attack was done without giving Iraq notice. Over the past month however, the Iraqi premier has also called for the authorities to pursue the attackers of U.S. bases in Iraq, as he tries to maintain a delicate balance in maintaining positive ties with both Washington and Tehran. On Tuesday evening, U.S. officials speaking on background said the U.S. is trying to communicate that it does not seek wider conflict, but that the Iran-backed attacks against American forces must stop and that the U.S. will take further action if needed. The U.S. has moved considerable assets to the region two carrier groups, multiple squadrons of warplanes and U.S. personnel to try and dissuade factions from turning the crisis between Israel and Hamas into a regional war. Its not the first time the U.S. has taken significant action against Kataib Hezbollah. Iin 2020 a series of Kaytusha rocket attacks by Kataib Hezbollah against Camp Taji in Iraq killed three service members two Americans and a British soldier and seriously wounded several others. In response the U.S. conducted two rounds of airstrikes taking out multiple weapons facilities. (AP) As Russia faces challenges on the military front, the Kremlin is compelled to shift its tactics from short-term strategies to a more prolonged approach. The current focus is on the "boa constrictor effect" a method aimed at gradually destabilizing Ukraine. The goal is to apply systemic pressure with increasing intensity to eventually undermine its statehood. ADVERTISIMENT Oleksiy Danylov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, elaborated on this in his blog. According to him, Putin, the dictator, believes he is not constrained by time and is prepared to engage in a protracted struggle. "He can wait out unfavorable external circumstances, but history has seen many such 'immortals' some met unfortunate ends at their dachas in Kuntsevo, while others faced the gallows," cited Danylov, referring to historical episodes. Danylov further suggests that the Russian Federation's ideal scenario involves Ukraine reverting to a state of uncontrollability and complete anarchy, akin to the period of 1917-1921. During this time, external and internal conflicts prevailed, leading to a fragmented nation. The Ukrainian army, instead of battling the Bolsheviks and interventionists, was consumed by internal power struggles, resulting in the loss of another opportunity for independence and statehood. ADVERTISIMENT "We've been caught in this cycle for our entire history," he laments. Danylov emphasizes that Ukraine's security and defense agencies are actively countering the outlined Russian plan. However, unity within society is crucial for effective resistance. "Ukrainians deserve respect, an open and honest conversation; they deserve to know and understand the potential consequences. With a united understanding of the dangers, we can act cohesively, leaving the enemy no opportunity to exploit divisions," he concluded. As previously reported by OBOZ.UA, Danylov stressed in Halifax that Ukraine requires external security guarantees, with NATO membership being the most effective. Post-war, Ukraine aspires to claim its rightful place in the new architecture of European and global security, contributing to the transformation of the world order. ADVERTISIMENT Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Sponsored Content By Dovid Grossman Rabbi Tzion Menachem, a world renowned Mekubal from Eretz Yisroel, will be arriving in New York to meet with people who are seeking guidance and assistance in numerous matters. He meets people facing all sorts of difficulties and gives them chizuk, strengthening them and thus enabling them to face challenges. Whether it is children who are off-the-derech, issues of marriage or parnassa, Rav Menachem seems to give consistent and solid direction and advice that many people understand as truly miraculous. Aside from being a Mekubal, Rav Menachem is a Rav in Elad where he has a shul and a Kollel Choshain Mishpat where his students study to be dayanim. Rav Menachem is an extraordinary Talmic Chachom as well as a great Mekubal and Tzaddik. Rabbi Tzion Menachem shlita will be in New York from November 20th November 28th, 2023. For an appointment please call: 718-781-6426 Rav Menachem has also authored a commentary on shaar ruach hakodesh of Rav Chaim Vitals classic Kabbalistic work entitled Etz Chaim. Rav Menachem had studied under the great Kabbalistic luminaries of our generation, HaRav Yoseph Dayan ztl and HaRav Mordechai Sharabi ztl. It is said that virtually everyone who merits to see him and receives his advice, whether it has to do with medical issues, business issues, family matters or anything else is so impressed that they recommend Rav Menachem to ten friends. The following is a typical letter and experience. It was written by the son of a very famous Askan: Around two years ago my bas yechidah began experiencing discomfort with her legs. I wont go into detail but we constantly visited doctors to no avail. As time went on her condition worsened. At the end of last year her legs began buckling. This became a regular occurrence and she got used to it happening. Rabbi Tzion Menachem shlita will be in New York from November 20th November 28th, 2023. For an appointment please call: 718-781-6426 This is when my story begins; In mid May 2015 on a Sunday when my daughter stumbled into our house crying. A heaviness had crept into her legs and by the time she got home she lost sensation in some parts and had little in the rest. I hurriedly took her to the doctor. After countless hours we knew she needed the hospital. She spent 15 hours undergoing tests with no results. There was nothing visibly wrong with her and the doctors said it was probably a one time thing. Fast forward. The next day my daughter buckled and she fell down a large ight of stairs. I knew she couldnt go on like this and hurried to another hospital. We spent a week there. In the beginning it was nerve racking knowing that my daughter might have a serious illness. But I knew that it wasnt in my hands. After the rst few days we all breathed a sigh of relief when all serious issues were ruled out, however we were still anxious about the fact that her legs were still numb and developed a numbness in her arm. At the end of a long week with no answers, we had only one more test which would be done as an outpatient. My daughter left the hospital in a wheelchair. Thats when my father-in-law called me to ask for my daughters full name. About a half hour after we came home my father-in-law called me again. He had spoken to Rav Tzion Menachem shlita, a Rav and Rosh Kollel from Elad, a city in Eretz Yisroel. He told us that we had closed a window in our home 2 years ago and that is what caused all the problems. With shock we recalled that most certainly we had left a hole in the wall but we had stuccoed on our home two years ago and sure enough the hole which once was, was no longer. With bated breath I quickly called someone down to drill a hole in my wall. Unbelievably very soon after the hole was drilled my daughter started gasping and crying as the sensation began returning to her legs. With tears streaming down our faces I together with my family watched her stand up and walk on her own. The gratitude and feelings of shevach vhodaah to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for sending us such a shaliach are indescribable. Rabbi Tzion Menachem shlita will be in New York from November 20th November 28th, 2023. For an appointment please call: 718-781-6426 Sponsored Content In these difficult times, the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization (IDFWO) stands as a beacon of compassion and support. Dedicated to caring for the widows and orphans of fallen IDF soldiers and security personnel, IDFWO plays a crucial role in providing life-long support to those who have sacrificed so much for the state of Israel. In the wake of the devastating Hamas terror attacks and the outbreak of a full-scale war on multiple fronts, IDFWO responded rapidly. Dedicated staff and volunteers assisted in evacuations, secured accommodations for displaced families from Southern Israel, distributed essential vouchers for sustenance and basic hygiene, and extended various forms of assistance. 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Sponsored Content Am I allowed to make egg and onion on Shabbos? How to choose a shirt from a pile of clothing and not transgress borer on Shabbos? Can you put food in the oven on Shabbos? Numerous Shabbos questions are impossible to answer without thorough knowledge of its laws. Shabbos comes once a week, so if a person is not well-versed in its intricacies, then it is inevitable that transgressions will take place. The many books of basic laws are wonderful, but to really understand the halachos and to apply them, it is essential to learn and remember hilchos Shabbos with the background discussion. What is the challenge we face? It takes several years for a full-time advanced Torah learner to cover the laws of Shabbos in depth. Kinyan Hilchos Shabbos for men offered a solution. World famous Rosh Yeshiva and Rosh Kollel, HaRav Hagaon Yitzchak Berkovits shlita used his vast knowledge to arrange all the Gemaras with the commentators on each area of hilchos Shabbos and presented it in the form of source sheets that cover material from the Gemara until practical halacha. This enables one to cover the main opinions in each topic and gain a deep understanding of the halacha without being overwhelmed with a lot of information. Rabbi Yehonasan Gefen, a close talmid of Rav Berkovits who spent eight years as a Rosh Chaburah in Rav Berkovitss famous Jerusalem Kollel, with the Ravs endorsement, took on the monumental task of adaptng the Hebrew sheets into English to make the program available for busy professionals. After successfully running the Hilchos Shabbos program for several years, Rabbi Gefen joined forces with Rabbi Dr. Yakov Pesah, also a musmach of Rabbi Berkovits, and together they co-founded Kinyan Hilchos Shabbos program for men and launched it online. It became an instant success worldwide. During the launches of the Hilchos Shabbos course for men, it became crystal clear that a course especially tailored for Jewish women was necessary. The program received many emails asking for a womens cohort of this important and highly relevant series. Women, just as much as men, require practical knowledge on how to keep the myriad halachos of Shabbos. Indeed, they may even be faced with more scenarios than men. Therefore, Rabbi Gefen, in consultation with Rabbi Berkovits has adapted the original curriculum to be uniquely tailored to Torah observant women, as an online program in Hilchos Shabbos (www.HilchosShabbosforWomen.com), accessible to motvated women worldwide. It empowers women to know the laws of Shabbos that are so relevant to their lives. Participants in each online chabura receive source sheets with explanations in English. In addition to the weekly online Zoom shiur with Rabbi Gefen, he is available for questions. There are tests in each section, and the option of a signed certificate of completion from Rav Berkovits. While this course for women is in Hilchos Shabbos, several months ago, Rabbi Gefen has also launched another online program for women in Hilchos Bein Adam LChaveiro. This program is based on a curriculum of Kollel Linas Hatzedek / Center for Jewish Values, a premier international Bein Adam LChaveiro resource, whom we thank for their permission. The Bein Adam LChaveiro online program for women taught by Rabbi Gefen became very successful already in its first launch. As women, we are required to learn halacha in order to fulfill it properly. Says Dr. Shoshana Snyder from Los Angeles. Rabbi Gefens course provides women with a level of knowledge and understanding of the halacha from the primary sources to the halacha lmaasei. The depth of the learning is gratifying. Participating in this program has raised my awareness of the need to apply the halacha in situations that would have escaped my notice in the past. The shiurim are clear and there is plenty of opportunity for questions. Rabbi Gefen is available for questions via email in between shiurim as well. I am not aware of any other opportunity available for women to learn halacha at this level. I look forward to receiving the sources and hearing the shiur every week! Its been a real pleasure to be part of the program. I look forward to the source sheets and shiur every week. I have an increased appreciation of the halachos and how to apply them in daily life. The material has abundant sources with varying opinions and a halacha lmaaseh sectionI highly recommend the program! says Basya Gutmann from Clifton, New Jersey. Over 1000 of our past and present participants in our programs come from six continents and range in skill level from beginner to advanced, adds Rabbi Dr. Pesah. Our vision is to enable everyone to learn halacha in a structured way and make it doable for every motivated person. Mrs. Batya Eshel from Safed in Israel shares her experience: The shiur is well focused in general, and of course the more prepared I am the more I get out of it. Questions from the participants are handled well, and we all get a lot out of the shiur. Using Zoom allows us access to a shiur that we wouldnt be able to access in person. Says Rabbi Berkovits: Imagine never getting stuck again on Shabbos not knowing what to do! The program begins on Sunday, June 11th. For more information, tuition, and to apply go to: www.HilchosShabbosforWomen.com Sponsored Content In an unfortunate twist to the developing saga in Eretz Yisrael, the Israeli government cut the allowances given to Kollel Yungerleit. Families that were already struggling to make ends meet, are really not surviving now. When Torahs protection is needed most, we need to ensure these yungerleit can stay and learn in the Batei Medrash. Harav Meir Tzvi Bergman Shlita has asked Shai Graucher to help raise emergency funds to give to these yungerleit. We are trying to adopt as many as we can, and have BH found a sponsor who will match whatever donations are given. Your $150 means over 500 shekel given to a family, making a meaningful difference in their survival. Please help us support Torah learning now in Eretz Yisrael when Klal Yisroel needs it most. YOU CAN DONATE HERE. Black Friday this week is tipped to be the busiest on record as millions of shoppers look to grab online bargains. As many as three in five people will be shopping for deals in the Black Friday sales. But beware today the boss of Barclays bank warns that an unprecedented rush of scammers will try to prey on those looking for a bargain this year, particularly online. Risk analysts at data firm LexisNexis Risk Solutions say customers should prepare for an onslaught of fraudulent attacks as the Black Friday bonanza gets under way. Here we reveal the top five Black Friday scams you need to watch out for and how you can protect yourself Scam threat: Shoppers have been told to prepare for an 'onslaught of fraudulent attacks' as the Black Friday bonanza gets under way 1. Incorrect bank details swindle This growing scam involves fraudsters emailing shoppers to say that there has been a problem with their transaction that needs correcting immediately. The email will purport to be from a retailer that you may have recently bought from, telling you that some of the billing information you provided is incorrect. The scammer hopes that you will click on a link in the email to enter your bank details and other personal information. Once they have this, they may use it to carry out fraudulent transactions in your name. Or they may contact you later claiming to be from the police, your bank or another trusted authority and use the information that you have handed over to convince you that they are genuine. This type of scam will be particularly successful during Black Friday due to the sheer quantity of shoppers making purchases. That is because scammers tend to send the same bogus email to tens of thousands of potential victims claiming to be from a large retailer. If you have not bought from that retailer recently, there is a good chance you will ignore the email. But if you have, it could strike a chord and youre more likely to fall prey. If a retailer asks you to change your bank details with urgency and claims there is a risk of losing out on an order you have made, then you should be suspicious. 2. Fake goods and purchase con A purchase scam is where you make a payment for goods or services that are fake or never turn up. Shoppers are particularly at risk of falling victim to purchase scams during Black Friday as they are in the mindset of hunting down bargains and getting good deals on Christmas presents for loved ones. More than one in four parents have been tricked by purchase scams in the past according to trade body UK Finance. They are particularly likely to be susceptible, as fraudsters often take advantage of the fact that lots of parents will be trying to track down a popular present for their children. Fake goods are most commonly advertised on Instagram or Facebook Marketplace. This is Money and Money Mail are campaigning for social media companies to better protect users, and has revealed just how easy it is for scammers to target victims on their platforms. According to Lloyds Bank, the most common items listed in fake ads or posts for Black Friday include Apple iPhones, Nintendo Switches, Nike trainers, PlayStations, Lego sets and drones. Be wary of offers that seem too good to be true. Check customer reviews of the seller to make sure they have a good track record. 3. Tracking number trick In this type of scam, a fraudster will send fake text messages or emails containing links, pretending to be from a retailer or courier with fake parcel tracking information. Scammers take advantage of the fact that shoppers are likely to have lots of parcels arriving at this time of year. If you click the link or open the attachment, crooks can then infect your device with malware or direct you to fake websites where they will trick you into handing over your personal details. Jodie Wilkinson, from card payment firm TakePayments, says: An influx of Black Friday online orders can cause delays with delivery. Scammers may take advantage of this by sending out delivery update emails with messaging like Theres a problem with your delivery, or Click here for a delivery update, with a link in a fraudulent email. Stop and think before you click on any links contained in an email. 4. Brute force computer attacks Retailers will see surges in brute force attacks this year, according to LexisNexis Risk Solutions. This is where fraudsters attempt to break into customer accounts by using technology that can attempt to guess their password and log in details millions of times a second. If a company with which you have an account contacts you to say your password has been changed, tell the firm immediately if it wasnt you. If you have a debit or credit card linked to that account, you may want to ask your bank to put a temporary freeze on it to prevent any unauthorised payments. 5. Bogus discount codes and offers During Black Friday, consumers are bombarded with messages from retailers promising deals. Scammers often replicate these messages from big-brand names. They send emails or text messages including fake discount codes or links to counterfeit websites. If you want to take advantage of a Black Friday deal and are not sure if an offer you have seen is genuine, go directly to the retailers website. We're braced for gangs of crooks targeting shoppers By MATT HAMMERSTEIN CEO of Barclays UK Vigilant: Barclays UK boss Matt Hammerstein Finding that Black Friday deal online will be this weeks highlight for thousands of Barclays customers. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of shoppers looking for a bargain will attract an unprecedented number of criminals ready to scam them. We at Barclays, like other UK banks, are braced. We warn customers to be vigilant, but our data shows that money lost to purchase scams surged by 22 per cent during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend last year. Victims were robbed of 970 on average. And it doesnt stop there. Hundreds of millions of pounds are lost to scams every year because of the co-ordinated attacks of organised crime gangs. But efforts to prevent this crime lack the same co-ordination, with the Government, regulators, the banks and tech firms working in siloes. This fragmented fight against scams allows criminals to slip through the cracks and take advantage of the lack of data sharing between these different groups. We wholly support the Daily Mails Stop the Social Media Scammers campaign and urge the Prime Minister to bring together a united, cross-Government group empowered by our new Home Secretary and the Chancellor, and rally regulators, policymakers, industry groups, and companies across different sectors to effectively fight scams. Banks cannot win this fight alone. We need the Government to look at how and where scams occur. Barclays data shows that nine in ten scams happen on tech platforms. Yet it is only banks that publicly publish data relating to scams. We must work together to stamp out this criminal activity, which is hurting countless individuals and jeopardising our economy and its future growth. Organised criminal scam gangs might be strong but, by working together, with the Government leading the charge, we can be even stronger. My plumber keeps not turning up to fix my bathroom. So far, hes made excuses but I want him to do the job. Can I demand money off the bill? T. M., London. Excuses: A reader is struggling to get a plumber to turn up and fix her bathroom as arranged Dean Dunham replies: This is a common complaint when it comes to the likes of builders, electricians and plumbers. If you had a firm date agreed for the start and completion of the job, there would technically now be a breach of contract as the agreed date would have formed a term of the contract. However, traders usually steer clear of agreeing dates and in these circumstances you have to turn to the law and the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Section 52 of the Act says where no date is agreed for the performance of a service, the default position is that the work must be carried out within a reasonable time. What amounts to reasonable depends on the circumstances, but where the trader has consistently failed to show up, as here, it probably moves into the boundaries outside of reasonable. So with the law on your side, you next need to consider what remedy you are entitled to for the breach. Youll find Section 54 of the Consumer Rights Act provides the answer. It gives the consumer the potential right to a price reduction to reflect the breach, to ask the trader to start the job (known in law as specific performance) or to end the contract and claim back any money already paid. The first two remedies can be difficult to enforce in circumstances where you want the trader to carry on with the job, as they will often reject such a claim and these are not matters you would want to take to court. If, however, you decide to end the contract, you would be on solid ground to do so and claim any deposit or advance payments back. Rental regulations I want to rent out a bedroom in our house. What is the law on charging rent? A. S., Harrogate. Dean Dunham replies: You will be taxed on the profit you make from the letting over and above your personal tax allowances. This is calculated by setting against the rent the expenses of letting. This includes things such as replacing fixtures or furniture, or a wear and tear allowance. Alternatively, a resident landlord can take advantage of the Rent A Room allowance; but only if the let is of furnished rooms rather than for example, a whole converted flat which is part of the house. Under this allowance, the gross income received (up to 7,500) from letting is tax-free. If you receive the single-person discount on your council tax, this will cease, causing your bill to increase. You should also consider if you are legally entitled to rent out a room, or if you need permission from a third party. If youre a tenant, there may be a prohibition from sub-letting in your tenancy agreement or it may say you need your landlords consent. Similarly, if you are in a shared ownership, your agreement may prohibit sub-letting or require you to obtain consent. The position is usually clearer if you own your home, but you may still need to obtain consent from your mortgage provider, if applicable. Finally, if you do rent a room out, make sure you enter into a tenancy agreement with the lodger. Failure to do so could make it difficult to evict them if it doesnt work out, although the law does treat resident landlords with some leniency. As such, the law provides greater freedom to end an arrangement because it is acknowledged that, should the relationship break down between the landlord and the person he or she lets to, the landlord is more vulnerable in his or her own home. You also need to consider the effect of a lodger on your home insurance as this is material information that you should really disclose to the provider, following which it is likely you will receive an increase to your premium. Failure to disclose could cause your provider to reject a future claim. My dear wife passed away in December last year. Like me, she only had her state pension to live on. She had a loan with lender Creation Finance that she had taken out more than two years earlier. I contacted its call centre and spoke to a very uncaring, unsympathetic person who told me I would have to take over my late wifes debt or I would end up in court. I started paying off the loan but the repayments meant I was really struggling to make ends meet. I contacted the Citizens Advice Bureau which told me to stop paying it and to ask Creation for a refund of the 561 I have paid towards the loan, unnecessarily. I contacted Creation but ten months on I am still waiting for my money. Can you help? M. S., Kent. Grieving: A reader is still waiting for a refund from loan company Creation after he was mistakenly told he was legally required to pay off his late wife's debt Sally Hamilton replies: I was horrified to read of your dealings with Creation and I find it extraordinary that you were given such shamelessly wrong information. You would only have had to make payments if the debt was taken out jointly or you acted as a guarantor neither of which was the case here. This incorrect advice meant you were put under huge financial strain at what was already an extremely difficult time. I made contact with Creation and asked for it to put right these wrongs as a matter of urgency. After my involvement, the firm helped you to provide the information it needed to verify the refund, although you told me that youd already sent a copy of your wifes death certificate to Creation three times as part of this process. The refund has now been made and although Creation maintains it cannot find recordings of the calls you made at the outset, it has made a payment of 150 as an apology for your experience. You were very relieved to have your money back after such a long wait and glad you can finally put the matter behind you. Dealing with finances after the death of a loved one is stressful, says Lorraine Charlton, debt expert at Citizens Advice, who adds: Youre not usually liable for the debts of someone who has died, unless the debt was taken out jointly with you or you acted as a guarantor. The exceptions to this are council tax and water charges, which you may be liable for if you were the partner of the deceased or shared accommodation with them. In all other cases, debt reduces the estate of the person who has died. If there is not enough money in the estate to pay the debt, the creditors cannot recover the debt from anyone else. Straight to the point In December 2021, I bought a water fountain for 178 from Outdoor Living UK. It briefly worked, then stopped. I told Outdoor Living but they didnt respond within 30 days so the return window had closed. Now a crack has appeared in the faulty fountain. L.T., via email. Outdoor Living UK says you are outside of the time frame for a refund and over the one-year warranty on the product. It says the photos you sent in December 2021 show no crack in the feature, but a photo sent in June 2023 shows a crack in line with frost damage. *** I booked a family holiday to Florida with British Airways. When we got to the airport to fly home, we were denied boarding as the airline had sent a much smaller plane. This was very stressful for our family of eight. British Airways flew us home two days later. We made a claim in September but cant get through to anyone. W. S., via email. British Airways has now contacted you to offer 10,109 in denied boarding compensation and another 705 for the costs you incurred. These funds should be with you within 14 working days. *** I bought my cousin a 140 Airbnb voucher but when he tried to redeem it, it said it had already been used. I found out the voucher is sitting in an account in my name, which I didnt know I had, but Airbnb cannot give me the details to verify the account as it said this would breach its policy. H. C., via email. Airbnb says you paid via your Apple Pay email address and it understands you havent been able to sign into that account. You have been issued a new voucher as a goodwill gesture. O2's no help after identity theft I am battling an ongoing case of identity fraud. A couple of years ago I upgraded my sons phone at our local O2 store. The assistant asked if she could have the old phone for reconditioning and we handed it over after she assured us all data would be wiped. A few months later I received a SIM card in the post, addressed to a name vaguely similar to my sons. I rang O2 and was told to destroy it. Then, in May this year, my son accessed an old bank account and found four phone contracts had been taken out in his name and had debited around 500 over a series of months. His bank refunded the money and cancelled the direct debits. I rang O2 who said the case would be referred to the fraud team and was given an Action Fraud number and reference for the call. I continued to receive default notices for the fraudulent contracts, debt recovery letters addressed to the fraudster at my address, new SIM cards and more new direct debit notifications in the name of the thief. I contacted O2 on each occasion and was told someone would be in touch. So far, silence. This has caused us much anxiety and stress. Please help. C. T., Yorkshire. Sally Hamilton replies: Knowing a fraudster is in possession of your personal details or those of a loved one is not a nice feeling, to say the least. Identity theft is stressful and without the assistance of O2 you and your son have been stuck in limbo. In the meantime, post for criminals and from debt agencies has been pouring through your letterbox. I contacted O2 which swiftly looked into your case and conceded that it appeared that your son has been the victim of identity fraud. Scam Watch Shoppers must be on guard when buying sought-after goods from social media websites like Instagram and Facebook Marketplace this Black Friday, Lloyds Bank warns. Tricksters will advertise fake deals for goods from big brands such as Apple, Nike and Lego at slashed prices. Apple iPhones, Dyson Airwraps, Nike trainers, Ugg boots, PlayStations and Lego sets are among the most common fake items listed. Victims are asked to send money direct from their account to another via bank transfer, which provides little consumer protection. Stay safe and buy from a trusted retailer, and pay by card for protection, says Lloyds head of fraud prevention, Liz Ziegler. The firm was careful to add, however, that there was absolutely nothing to suggest this was caused by you using the O2 Recycle scheme with the old device. The scammer had somehow been able to gather enough personal information about your son (name, address, date of birth and bank details) to successfully pass credit checks in order to take out phone contracts. Its not possible to know how they got their hands on those details. But the good news is that O2 has finally closed the account, recalled the debt from the debt agency and made the request for the credit file to be updated. An O2 spokesman said: We always aim to take swift action whenever fraud is reported to us and we apologise that in this case it took longer than it should have to close down the account. Identity theft can be very hard to prevent. Fraudsters have many ways of obtaining enough personal information about a person to be able to start applying for financial agreements in their name. They often buy personal or business information that has been stolen in an online data breach, or glean it in other ways, such as through social media or phishing. This is where crooks send out dodgy emails or text messages that trick recipients into giving away personal information or bank details. Do not click on suspicious messages and change your passwords regularly. Sally Hamilton is away. Edited by Holly Thomas. Sage Group has unveiled a 350million share buyback programme after sales surged over the last year. The accounting software provider, which is one of Britain's biggest technology companies, revealed underlying revenue rose 10 per cent to 2.18billion in the year ending September, thanks to bumper results across all regions. Turnover increased the most in North America, growing by 15 per cent to 973million following solid demand for Sage's financial management software product Sage Intacct. Strong result: Sage Group, one of Britain's biggest technology firms, revealed underlying revenue went up 10 per cent to 2.18billion in the year ending September Sales were additionally bolstered by more customers using Sage 50 and Sage 200 products, which are aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises. This helped revenues in the company's cloud computing arm - Sage Business Cloud - climb by a quarter to 1.63billion. Sage's underlying operating profits rose by 18 per cent to 456million, supported by higher margins and the non-recurrence of certain costs, including 32million from a property restructuring scheme and a 9million charge for French payroll taxes. The company expects organic revenue growth to be 'broadly in line' with 2023 levels over the next financial year and operating margins to 'trend upwards'. The Newcastle-based firm proposes to pay a 12.75p per share final dividend, taking its full-year dividends to 19.3p, a 5 per cent hike on the prior year. It has also announced a 350million share repurchase plan, which it expects to complete by 23 April. Sage Group shares shot up 11 per cent to 1,106.5p on Wednesday morning, meaning they have increased by almost half since the beginning of this year. Steve Hare, chief executive of Sage, said: 'Small and mid-sized businesses are continuing to digitalise, despite the macroeconomic uncertainty. 'We are building a resilient platform to deliver sustained, efficient growth, and I am confident that Sage is well-positioned to take advantage of the market opportunity in 2024 and beyond.' Founded in 1981, Sage is one of the few technology businesses listed on the FTSE 100, which it joined 24 years ago after its shares shot up by an astonishing 28,000 per cent during the 1990s. In recent years, the firm's expansion has partly come through takeovers, including of Lockstep, Brightpearl and Task Sheriff. Mark Crouch, an analyst at eToro, said: 'While there are alternatives to Sage, the group has carved out a good reputation in the sector. 'It is also a sector where revenues tend to be stickier, as businesses don't tend to switch technology platforms often. That gives us confidence that Sage can continue to grow sustainably, and we expect further share price gains.' Rio Tinto will pay a $28million (22.3million) fine to settle a US lawsuit that accused it of fraud in handling a failed investment in a Mozambique coal project. The group's former chief executive, Tom Albanese, has also agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission a $50,000 civil fine to settle related claims. Neither Albanese nor Rio Tinto admitted wrongdoing. Rio Tinto agreed not to violate recordkeeping and reporting provisions of federal securities laws, and to retain an independent consultant for two years to ensure it properly accounts for asset writedowns. Fined: Rio Tinto will pay a $28m fine to settle a US Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit In a statement this week, Rio Tinto, said: 'Without admitting to or denying the SEC's allegations related to its books, records and reporting requirements, Rio Tinto will pay a US$28 million penalty and retain an independent consultant to advise on its current policies, procedures, and controls related to impairment, disclosures and project risk.' It added: 'Rio Tinto welcomes closure of the SEC case on appropriate and reasonable terms.' The 2017 lawsuit related to the disclosure of the impairment of Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique (RTCM) in its 2012 year-end accounts. RTCM was acquired in 2011 and divested in 2014 for $50million. In 2013, it announced a $14billion impairment, which included a $3billion impairment relating to RTCM. Rio Tinto said: 'With this settlement, all investigations of Rio Tinto regarding this matter have been finalised. 'Rio Tinto settled claims brought by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission in 2022 and the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority in 2017 relating to the same RTCM impairment. 'The US Court who approved the SEC settlement previously dismissed a related private putative securities class action in 2019. An appeals court affirmed the dismissal.' Former Rio Tinto chief financial officer Guy Elliott remains a defendant, and his lawyer has asked Torres to dismiss the remaining SEC claims because they could not be proven. Rio Tinto shares slipped o.43 per cent to 5,508.00p on Wednesday afternoon. Civil fine: Rio Tinto's former chief executive, Tom Albanese, agreed to pay a $50,000 civil fine to settle related SEC claims Earlier this month, Rio Tinto dismissed the former head of its aluminium division, Ivan Vella, with immediate effect. Vella, who has spent two decades at the mining giant, was already due to leave the company in December, Rio had said in June, to become chief executive of Australian battery minerals producer, IGO Ltd. He continued to lead the aluminium business until his successor Jerome Pecresse started on 23 October. In the weeks to 15 November, the contract termination date, Vella was supporting Pecresse in his new role. 'The termination relates to actions that did not follow Rio Tinto's guidance on acceptable management of confidential information,' an internal communication email reportedly said, according to Reuters. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Core Laboratories (NYSE:CLB Free Report) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research note issued to investors on Saturday morning. Other research analysts have also issued research reports about the company. TheStreet lowered Core Laboratories from a b- rating to a c rating in a research report on Thursday, November 2nd. Piper Sandler boosted their target price on shares of Core Laboratories from $19.00 to $21.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Monday, July 31st. Finally, Citigroup cut their price target on shares of Core Laboratories from $21.00 to $20.00 and set a sell rating on the stock in a report on Monday, September 18th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating and two have issued a hold rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Core Laboratories presently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $21.88. Get Core Laboratories alerts: Check Out Our Latest Stock Report on Core Laboratories Core Laboratories Trading Down 1.1 % Core Laboratories stock opened at $18.23 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.78, a current ratio of 2.71 and a quick ratio of 1.82. The stock has a market capitalization of $851.78 million, a PE ratio of 21.20, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.67 and a beta of 2.61. The businesss fifty day moving average is $22.30 and its 200 day moving average is $23.30. Core Laboratories has a one year low of $17.77 and a one year high of $27.94. Core Laboratories (NYSE:CLB Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The oil and gas company reported $0.22 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.23 by ($0.01). Core Laboratories had a return on equity of 16.85% and a net margin of 8.10%. The firm had revenue of $125.30 million during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $129.81 million. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $0.18 earnings per share. The companys revenue for the quarter was down .5% on a year-over-year basis. On average, sell-side analysts predict that Core Laboratories will post 0.58 EPS for the current year. Core Laboratories Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 4th. Shareholders of record on Monday, November 13th will be given a dividend of $0.01 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, November 10th. This represents a $0.04 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.22%. Core Laboratoriess dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 4.65%. Institutional Investors Weigh In On Core Laboratories A number of institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Comerica Bank purchased a new stake in shares of Core Laboratories during the third quarter valued at $575,000. Townsquare Capital LLC increased its stake in shares of Core Laboratories by 35.1% in the 3rd quarter. Townsquare Capital LLC now owns 34,460 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $827,000 after purchasing an additional 8,959 shares in the last quarter. Toroso Investments LLC raised its holdings in Core Laboratories by 6.9% in the 3rd quarter. Toroso Investments LLC now owns 38,348 shares of the oil and gas companys stock worth $921,000 after purchasing an additional 2,480 shares during the period. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company grew its holdings in Core Laboratories by 23.1% in the third quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 21,733 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $522,000 after purchasing an additional 4,073 shares during the period. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada increased its position in shares of Core Laboratories by 3.3% in the third quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 49,633 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $1,192,000 after buying an additional 1,589 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 97.81% of the companys stock. About Core Laboratories (Get Free Report) Core Laboratories Inc provides reservoir description and production enhancement services and products to the oil and gas industry in the United States, Canada, and internationally. It operates through Reservoir Description and Production Enhancement segments. The Reservoir Description segment includes the characterization of petroleum reservoir rock, reservoir fluid, and gas samples to enhance production and improve recovery of oil and gas from its clients' reservoirs. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Core Laboratories Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Core Laboratories and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Russia has again complained about a "drone attack". In particular, in the temporarily occupied Crimea, at night and in the morning of November 22, the Russian occupiers were disturbed by both surface and aircraft. ADVERTISIMENT The Russian Ministry of Defense reported on their "destruction," but later it became known that the UAVs had reached the occupiers' military unit, Crimean Wind reports. The day before, on November 21, an unknown drone crashed and exploded on the territory of the Bryansk Chemical Plant, which produces explosives. The occupiers were restless at night and in the morning of November 22 in the temporarily occupied Crimea. At 05:14, the Russian Defense Ministry complained that Ukraine had attempted to attack the peninsula from the sea. "On November 22, in the western part of the Black Sea, four unmanned boats of the Ukrainian Navy were detected heading towards the Crimean peninsula. All the targets were destroyed," the Russian Defense Ministry reported in a boilerplate fashion. ADVERTISIMENT At 07:29 Kyiv time, the Russian Defense Ministry reported another "repelled" drone attack, this time from the air. "Today at about 07:30 Moscow time (06:30 Kyiv time - Ed.), an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by an aircraft-type UAV against targets in the Russian Federation was prevented. Three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed over the territory of the Republic of Crimea by regular air defense systems," the so-called Russian Defense Ministry said. At the same time, comments by Crimeans in local publics raise doubts about the "successful repulsion of the attack." Residents of Novoozerne in Donuzlav, according to Crimean Wind, discuss a loud explosion that scared them. They agree that the explosion was the result of an air raid, and some of them also rushed to "help" at the site of the hit. ADVERTISIMENT According to the Krymsky Viter Telegram channel, it turned out that the "downed" drone flew to a Russian military unit in Crimea. "At 7:05 a.m. today, a drone arrived at the berth of the Russian military unit in the Narrow Bay in Chornomorske, the same place where landing boats and personnel were destroyed last time, our source said. The consequences of the arrival are not yet known. Our source also says that the pier is now fenced off with boom barriers made of barrels tied with cables," the report said. ADVERTISIMENT And the Russian edition of ASTRA said that the Bryansk Chemical Plant, which specializes in the production of explosives, was attacked once again in the Bryansk region of the Russian Federation on November 21. Yesterday morning, a drone crashed on the territory of the 50th Anniversary of the USSR Chemical Plant in the town of Seltso. It exploded during the fall. The explosion occurred near one of the plant's workshops. The newspaper claims that "there were no casualties or damage." ADVERTISIMENT The Bryansk Chemical Plant named after the 50th anniversary of the USSR is part of the Tekhmash Concern of the Rostech State Corporation. Concern Tekhmash specializes in the development and serial supply of ammunition. The publication recalled that the previous attack on the company took place on October 13. The roof and ventilation chamber of the production facility were damaged as a result of two UAVs. The next day, another drone pierced the roof of a new workshop under construction on the plant's premises. Earlier, the DIU fighters hit two expensive enemy radar stations. They were deployed by Russians in the Kursk region. On November 18, Ukrainian soldiers discovered the enemy's radio position and struck at it. Thus, two radars were hit - one 55Zh6 Nebo, and the other, probably Gamma-S1E. ADVERTISIMENT On November 21, explosions occurred in the temporarily occupied Yevpatoriya and Saki. Local publics wrote about the possible damage to the Saki thermal power plant and that a massive fire broke out there upon arrival. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Genco Shipping & Trading (NYSE:GNK Free Report) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a report released on Saturday morning. A number of other equities research analysts have also commented on GNK. TheStreet lowered shares of Genco Shipping & Trading from a b rating to a c rating in a research note on Wednesday, November 15th. BTIG Research lowered their price objective on shares of Genco Shipping & Trading from $22.00 to $20.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Friday, July 21st. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus lowered their price objective on shares of Genco Shipping & Trading from $23.00 to $22.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, October 19th. One analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and three have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $20.67. Get Genco Shipping & Trading alerts: Read Our Latest Stock Report on GNK Genco Shipping & Trading Price Performance Shares of Genco Shipping & Trading stock opened at $14.78 on Friday. Genco Shipping & Trading has a twelve month low of $12.39 and a twelve month high of $19.84. The company has a quick ratio of 2.32, a current ratio of 3.08 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.15. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $13.83 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $13.81. The stock has a market capitalization of $628.73 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 59.12 and a beta of 1.03. Genco Shipping & Trading (NYSE:GNK Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, November 8th. The shipping company reported ($0.09) earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of ($0.05) by ($0.04). Genco Shipping & Trading had a return on equity of 4.11% and a net margin of 2.75%. The business had revenue of $83.36 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $46.21 million. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $1.00 earnings per share. The companys revenue was down 38.7% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts forecast that Genco Shipping & Trading will post 0.55 EPS for the current year. Genco Shipping & Trading Announces Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 22nd will be paid a $0.15 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 21st. This represents a $0.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.06%. Genco Shipping & Tradings payout ratio is 240.00%. Hedge Funds Weigh In On Genco Shipping & Trading Institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. grew its position in Genco Shipping & Trading by 7,675.4% during the first quarter. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. now owns 1,200,057 shares of the shipping companys stock valued at $18,793,000 after buying an additional 1,184,623 shares during the period. Impact Partnership Wealth LLC bought a new position in Genco Shipping & Trading during the second quarter worth about $447,000. New York Life Investment Management LLC boosted its position in Genco Shipping & Trading by 26.7% during the first quarter. New York Life Investment Management LLC now owns 30,439 shares of the shipping companys stock worth $477,000 after purchasing an additional 6,423 shares during the period. Arizona State Retirement System boosted its position in Genco Shipping & Trading by 8.1% during the second quarter. Arizona State Retirement System now owns 11,931 shares of the shipping companys stock worth $167,000 after purchasing an additional 893 shares during the period. Finally, American International Group Inc. boosted its position in Genco Shipping & Trading by 14.5% during the second quarter. American International Group Inc. now owns 20,268 shares of the shipping companys stock worth $284,000 after purchasing an additional 2,571 shares during the period. Institutional investors own 52.75% of the companys stock. About Genco Shipping & Trading (Get Free Report) Genco Shipping & Trading Limited, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the ocean transportation of dry bulk cargoes worldwide. The company owns and operates dry bulk carrier vessels to transports iron ore, grains, coal, steel products, and other dry-bulk cargoes. It charters its vessels primarily to trading houses, including commodities traders; producers; and government-owned entities. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Genco Shipping & Trading Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Genco Shipping & Trading and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited (NYSE:TEVA Get Free Report) has been assigned an average rating of Hold from the seven analysts that are presently covering the stock, MarketBeat.com reports. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell recommendation, three have assigned a hold recommendation and three have given a buy recommendation to the company. The average 1-year price objective among brokerages that have covered the stock in the last year is $11.17. Several equities research analysts have recently issued reports on TEVA shares. Bank of America lifted their target price on Teva Pharmaceutical Industries from $12.00 to $13.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Friday, September 8th. UBS Group boosted their price objective on Teva Pharmaceutical Industries from $8.00 to $11.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research note on Wednesday, September 20th. Finally, StockNews.com assumed coverage on Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a buy rating on the stock. Get Teva Pharmaceutical Industries alerts: View Our Latest Analysis on Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Trading Down 1.9 % Shares of TEVA stock opened at $9.27 on Wednesday. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has a 12-month low of $7.09 and a 12-month high of $11.44. The company has a current ratio of 1.00, a quick ratio of 0.65 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.46. The stocks 50-day moving average price is $9.23 and its 200-day moving average price is $8.72. The stock has a market capitalization of $10.39 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -4.68, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.93 and a beta of 1.16. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries (NYSE:TEVA Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Wednesday, November 8th. The company reported $0.60 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.57 by $0.03. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries had a positive return on equity of 29.91% and a negative net margin of 14.46%. The firm had revenue of $3.90 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $3.73 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the firm posted $0.56 earnings per share. The businesss revenue was up 8.3% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts predict that Teva Pharmaceutical Industries will post 2.17 EPS for the current fiscal year. Institutional Investors Weigh In On Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Several large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in TEVA. Zurcher Kantonalbank Zurich Cantonalbank grew its stake in shares of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries by 4.8% during the first quarter. Zurcher Kantonalbank Zurich Cantonalbank now owns 377,326 shares of the companys stock valued at $3,339,000 after buying an additional 17,151 shares during the last quarter. Nomura Asset Management Co. Ltd. grew its stake in shares of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries by 4.1% during the first quarter. Nomura Asset Management Co. Ltd. now owns 344,508 shares of the companys stock valued at $3,049,000 after buying an additional 13,633 shares during the last quarter. Headlands Technologies LLC bought a new position in shares of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries during the second quarter valued at approximately $204,000. DSC Advisors L.P. bought a new position in shares of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries during the first quarter valued at approximately $1,593,000. Finally, Altshuler Shaham Ltd grew its stake in shares of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries by 295.7% during the first quarter. Altshuler Shaham Ltd now owns 316,382 shares of the companys stock valued at $2,798,000 after buying an additional 236,432 shares during the last quarter. 43.23% of the stock is owned by institutional investors. Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Company Profile (Get Free Report Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes generic medicines, specialty medicines, and biopharmaceutical products in North America, Europe, Israel, and internationally. The company offers sterile products, hormones, high-potency drugs, and cytotoxic substances in various dosage forms, including tablets, capsules, injectables, inhalants, liquids, transdermal patches, ointments, and creams. Recommended Stories Receive News & Ratings for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Canadian National Railway (TSE:CNR Get Free Report) (NYSE:CNI) has earned a consensus rating of Hold from the thirteen ratings firms that are currently covering the firm, MarketBeat reports. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have given a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 1 year price target among brokerages that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is C$166.13. Several equities analysts recently issued reports on CNR shares. Desjardins raised their price objective on Canadian National Railway from C$171.00 to C$172.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Wednesday, October 25th. Scotiabank reduced their price objective on Canadian National Railway from C$170.00 to C$168.00 and set a sector perform rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 25th. BMO Capital Markets reduced their price objective on Canadian National Railway from C$177.00 to C$175.00 in a research note on Wednesday, July 26th. Royal Bank of Canada cut their target price on Canadian National Railway from C$163.00 to C$158.00 and set a sector perform rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 25th. Finally, CIBC cut their target price on Canadian National Railway from C$177.00 to C$175.00 in a research note on Wednesday, July 26th. Get Canadian National Railway alerts: Get Our Latest Analysis on CNR Canadian National Railway Stock Down 0.4 % CNR opened at C$156.78 on Wednesday. Canadian National Railway has a 1 year low of C$143.13 and a 1 year high of C$175.39. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 94.19, a quick ratio of 0.58 and a current ratio of 0.72. The company has a market cap of C$101.55 billion, a PE ratio of 21.30, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.38 and a beta of 0.69. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of C$149.82 and a 200 day moving average price of C$153.83. Canadian National Railway (TSE:CNR Get Free Report) (NYSE:CNI) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 24th. The company reported C$1.69 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of C$1.74 by C($0.05). Canadian National Railway had a return on equity of 23.42% and a net margin of 29.08%. The company had revenue of C$3.99 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of C$4.09 billion. Sell-side analysts expect that Canadian National Railway will post 8.1075157 earnings per share for the current year. Canadian National Railway Announces Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 28th. Investors of record on Thursday, December 7th will be issued a dividend of $0.79 per share. This represents a $3.16 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.02%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, December 6th. Canadian National Railways payout ratio is currently 42.93%. Insider Buying and Selling In related news, Senior Officer Janet Drysdale sold 5,995 shares of Canadian National Railway stock in a transaction dated Thursday, November 9th. The stock was sold at an average price of C$153.46, for a total transaction of C$919,977.71. 1.97% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders. Canadian National Railway Company Profile (Get Free Report Canadian National Railway Company, together with its subsidiaries, engages in rail and related transportation business. The company offers rail services, which include equipment, custom brokage services, transloading and distribution, business development and real estate, and private car storage services; and intermodal services including temperature controlled cargo, port partnership, transloading and distribution, logistic parks, customs brokerage, trucking, and moving grains in containers. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Canadian National Railway Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Canadian National Railway and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (NYSE:CRL Get Free Report) has been assigned an average rating of Moderate Buy from the eleven ratings firms that are covering the company, Marketbeat reports. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have issued a buy rating on the company. The average 1-year target price among brokers that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $232.54. A number of research analysts have recently weighed in on CRL shares. UBS Group cut their price objective on Charles River Laboratories International from $250.00 to $215.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, November 9th. Guggenheim cut their price objective on Charles River Laboratories International from $255.00 to $225.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Friday, September 22nd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their target price on Charles River Laboratories International from $225.00 to $250.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Thursday, August 10th. Morgan Stanley dropped their target price on Charles River Laboratories International from $220.00 to $205.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a report on Friday, November 10th. Finally, StockNews.com started coverage on Charles River Laboratories International in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Get Charles River Laboratories International alerts: Check Out Our Latest Research Report on CRL Charles River Laboratories International Trading Up 0.9 % Shares of NYSE CRL opened at $192.32 on Wednesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.76, a current ratio of 1.45 and a quick ratio of 1.16. The stock has a market capitalization of $9.86 billion, a P/E ratio of 20.81, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.00 and a beta of 1.35. Charles River Laboratories International has a 1-year low of $161.65 and a 1-year high of $262.00. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $188.26 and a 200 day moving average price of $198.30. Charles River Laboratories International (NYSE:CRL Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, November 8th. The medical research company reported $2.72 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $2.35 by $0.37. The firm had revenue of $1.03 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1 billion. Charles River Laboratories International had a return on equity of 18.15% and a net margin of 11.27%. The firms quarterly revenue was up 3.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the business posted $2.63 EPS. Equities research analysts expect that Charles River Laboratories International will post 10.58 EPS for the current fiscal year. Insider Activity In other news, Director Richard F. Wallman bought 1,000 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Thursday, August 24th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $198.79 per share, for a total transaction of $198,790.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 1,000 shares in the company, valued at approximately $198,790. The acquisition was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In other news, Director Richard F. Wallman bought 1,000 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Thursday, August 24th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $198.79 per share, for a total transaction of $198,790.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 1,000 shares in the company, valued at approximately $198,790. The acquisition was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, COO Birgit Girshick bought 1,322 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 20th. The stock was purchased at an average price of $187.82 per share, for a total transaction of $248,298.04. Following the transaction, the chief operating officer now owns 44,449 shares of the companys stock, valued at $8,348,411.18. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Insiders have bought a total of 7,942 shares of company stock worth $1,447,729 over the last quarter. 1.30% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders. Hedge Funds Weigh In On Charles River Laboratories International Institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Mitsubishi UFJ Trust & Banking Corp lifted its position in Charles River Laboratories International by 0.3% during the first quarter. Mitsubishi UFJ Trust & Banking Corp now owns 158,988 shares of the medical research companys stock worth $32,087,000 after buying an additional 512 shares in the last quarter. Treasurer of the State of North Carolina lifted its position in Charles River Laboratories International by 0.7% during the first quarter. Treasurer of the State of North Carolina now owns 22,754 shares of the medical research companys stock worth $4,592,000 after buying an additional 150 shares in the last quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. lifted its position in Charles River Laboratories International by 3.6% during the first quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. now owns 166,213 shares of the medical research companys stock worth $33,545,000 after buying an additional 5,850 shares in the last quarter. BI Asset Management Fondsmaeglerselskab A S increased its stake in Charles River Laboratories International by 136.1% during the first quarter. BI Asset Management Fondsmaeglerselskab A S now owns 876 shares of the medical research companys stock worth $177,000 after acquiring an additional 505 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Sugarloaf Wealth Management LLC increased its stake in Charles River Laboratories International by 88.5% during the second quarter. Sugarloaf Wealth Management LLC now owns 856 shares of the medical research companys stock worth $180,000 after acquiring an additional 402 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 98.91% of the companys stock. Charles River Laboratories International Company Profile (Get Free Report Charles River Laboratories International, Inc, a non-clinical contract research organization, provides drug discovery, non-clinical development, and safety testing services in the United States, Europe, Canada, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Research Models and Services (RMS), Discovery and Safety Assessment (DSA), and Manufacturing Solutions (Manufacturing). See Also Receive News & Ratings for Charles River Laboratories International Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Charles River Laboratories International and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. BCE Inc. (NYSE:BCE Get Free Report) (TSE:BCE) has been assigned an average rating of Hold from the six brokerages that are presently covering the stock, MarketBeat Ratings reports. Five equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation and one has given a buy recommendation to the company. The average 12-month price target among brokers that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $56.50. Several equities analysts have weighed in on BCE shares. StockNews.com started coverage on BCE in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating on the stock. TheStreet lowered BCE from a b rating to a c+ rating in a research note on Thursday, August 3rd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their target price on BCE from $62.00 to $59.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 18th. Canaccord Genuity Group raised BCE from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research note on Monday, October 23rd. Finally, TD Securities lowered BCE from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research note on Friday, September 1st. Get BCE alerts: View Our Latest Stock Analysis on BCE Institutional Investors Weigh In On BCE BCE Trading Down 0.3 % A number of hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the business. Tompkins Financial Corp raised its position in shares of BCE by 12,729.2% during the third quarter. Tompkins Financial Corp now owns 64,146 shares of the utilities providers stock worth $2,448,000 after purchasing an additional 63,646 shares during the period. Belpointe Asset Management LLC raised its position in BCE by 11.8% in the 3rd quarter. Belpointe Asset Management LLC now owns 7,853 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $300,000 after buying an additional 826 shares during the last quarter. Integrated Wealth Concepts LLC raised its position in BCE by 2.7% in the 3rd quarter. Integrated Wealth Concepts LLC now owns 40,431 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $1,543,000 after buying an additional 1,067 shares during the last quarter. Townsquare Capital LLC raised its position in BCE by 1.3% in the 3rd quarter. Townsquare Capital LLC now owns 116,532 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $4,448,000 after buying an additional 1,491 shares during the last quarter. Finally, The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company raised its position in BCE by 20.8% in the 3rd quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 11,007,473 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $423,202,000 after buying an additional 1,893,418 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 42.30% of the companys stock. NYSE:BCE opened at $39.37 on Wednesday. BCE has a 1-year low of $36.15 and a 1-year high of $48.38. The businesss 50-day moving average price is $38.53 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $42.13. The company has a current ratio of 0.57, a quick ratio of 0.52 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.68. The firm has a market capitalization of $35.91 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.75, a PEG ratio of 5.63 and a beta of 0.62. BCE Cuts Dividend The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, January 15th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 15th will be given a dividend of $0.6969 per share. This represents a $2.79 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 7.08%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, December 14th. BCEs dividend payout ratio is currently 156.35%. About BCE (Get Free Report BCE Inc, a communications company, provides wireless, wireline, Internet, and television (TV) services to residential, business, and wholesale customers in Canada. The company operates through three segments: Bell Wireless, Bell Wireline, and Bell Media. The Bell Wireless segment offers integrated digital wireless voice and data communication products and services, as well as consumer electronics products. Read More Receive News & Ratings for BCE Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for BCE and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Shares of The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI Get Free Report) have been given an average rating of Moderate Buy by the eleven ratings firms that are presently covering the stock, MarketBeat.com reports. Five research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, five have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating on the company. The average 1-year price objective among brokerages that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $336.40. A number of research analysts recently issued reports on CI shares. Sanford C. Bernstein raised their price objective on shares of The Cigna Group from $326.00 to $330.00 in a report on Tuesday, October 10th. Edward Jones lowered shares of The Cigna Group from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Thursday, August 17th. Royal Bank of Canada restated a sector perform rating and issued a $327.00 price objective on shares of The Cigna Group in a report on Wednesday, November 15th. Cantor Fitzgerald lifted their target price on The Cigna Group from $310.00 to $334.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a report on Friday, November 3rd. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upped their price target on The Cigna Group from $284.00 to $300.00 in a research report on Wednesday, August 9th. Get The Cigna Group alerts: View Our Latest Analysis on CI The Cigna Group Stock Performance The Cigna Group stock opened at $286.50 on Wednesday. The company has a quick ratio of 0.71, a current ratio of 0.71 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.61. The stock has a market cap of $83.84 billion, a PE ratio of 16.16, a P/E/G ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 0.65. The Cigna Group has a 12-month low of $240.50 and a 12-month high of $340.11. The businesss 50-day moving average price is $294.97 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $281.92. The Cigna Group (NYSE:CI Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Thursday, November 2nd. The health services provider reported $6.77 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $6.68 by $0.09. The Cigna Group had a net margin of 2.79% and a return on equity of 12.62%. The firm had revenue of $49.05 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $48.14 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $6.04 earnings per share. The companys quarterly revenue was up 8.3% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, analysts expect that The Cigna Group will post 24.82 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. The Cigna Group Announces Dividend The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 21st. Investors of record on Wednesday, December 6th will be issued a dividend of $1.23 per share. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, December 5th. This represents a $4.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.72%. The Cigna Groups dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 27.75%. Insider Activity In other The Cigna Group news, EVP Cynthia Ryan sold 3,768 shares of the stock in a transaction on 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 completion of the transaction, 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 filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Insiders own 0.60% of the companys stock. Institutional Inflows and Outflows Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of the business. TimesSquare Capital Management LLC bought a new stake in shares of The Cigna Group during the second quarter valued at about $645,000. Princeton Global Asset Management LLC increased its holdings in The Cigna Group by 5.1% during the 2nd quarter. Princeton Global Asset Management LLC now owns 2,656 shares of the health services providers stock worth $745,000 after acquiring an additional 128 shares during the period. Activest Wealth Management purchased a new stake in The Cigna Group in the 2nd quarter worth approximately $34,000. Summit Trail Advisors LLC bought a new position in The Cigna Group in the 1st quarter valued at $207,000. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership grew its position in shares of The Cigna Group by 74.0% during the 1st quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 1,379,854 shares of the health services providers stock valued at $352,594,000 after purchasing an additional 586,872 shares in the last quarter. 85.32% of the stock is owned by institutional investors. The Cigna Group Company Profile (Get 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. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for The Cigna Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for The Cigna Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Builders FirstSource, Inc. (NYSE:BLDR Get Free Report) has earned an average rating of Moderate Buy from the fourteen brokerages that are presently covering the stock, Marketbeat.com reports. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and ten have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average twelve-month price objective among brokers that have covered the stock in the last year is $140.77. Several brokerages have recently issued reports on BLDR. Benchmark raised their price objective on Builders FirstSource from $153.00 to $220.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Thursday, August 3rd. BMO Capital Markets raised their target price on Builders FirstSource from $125.00 to $135.00 and gave the stock a market perform rating in a report on Friday, August 4th. Truist Financial dropped their target price on Builders FirstSource from $175.00 to $145.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a report on Friday, November 3rd. Wedbush reaffirmed an outperform rating and set a $175.00 target price on shares of Builders FirstSource in a report on Thursday, August 3rd. Finally, Barclays dropped their price objective on Builders FirstSource from $200.00 to $175.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, October 12th. Get Builders FirstSource alerts: Read Our Latest Stock Report on BLDR Institutional Trading of Builders FirstSource Builders FirstSource Trading Down 1.3 % A number of institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in the company. D Orazio & Associates Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Builders FirstSource by 3.7% in the third quarter. D Orazio & Associates Inc. now owns 2,360 shares of the companys stock worth $294,000 after acquiring an additional 84 shares during the last quarter. V Square Quantitative Management LLC lifted its position in Builders FirstSource by 10.2% during the third quarter. V Square Quantitative Management LLC now owns 915 shares of the companys stock worth $114,000 after buying an additional 85 shares in the last quarter. Altshuler Shaham Ltd lifted its position in Builders FirstSource by 5.2% during the first quarter. Altshuler Shaham Ltd now owns 1,759 shares of the companys stock worth $156,000 after buying an additional 87 shares in the last quarter. Measured Wealth Private Client Group LLC lifted its position in Builders FirstSource by 2.5% during the third quarter. Measured Wealth Private Client Group LLC now owns 3,673 shares of the companys stock worth $457,000 after buying an additional 90 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Mezzasalma Advisors LLC lifted its position in Builders FirstSource by 0.6% during the third quarter. Mezzasalma Advisors LLC now owns 14,715 shares of the companys stock worth $1,832,000 after buying an additional 90 shares in the last quarter. 94.73% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Builders FirstSource stock opened at $132.59 on Wednesday. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $121.50 and a two-hundred day moving average of $128.68. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.74, a quick ratio of 1.11 and a current ratio of 1.76. Builders FirstSource has a one year low of $59.96 and a one year high of $156.85. The stock has a market cap of $16.35 billion, a PE ratio of 11.26 and a beta of 2.04. Builders FirstSource (NYSE:BLDR Get Free Report) last released its quarterly 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. Builders FirstSource had a return on equity of 41.27% and a net margin of 9.10%. The company had revenue of $4.53 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $4.88 billion. During the same period last year, the business posted $5.20 earnings per share. The firms revenue was down 21.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, research analysts anticipate that Builders FirstSource will post 13.72 EPS for the current fiscal year. Builders FirstSource Company Profile (Get 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. Read More Receive News & Ratings for Builders FirstSource Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Builders FirstSource and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD Get Free Report) has been assigned an average recommendation of Moderate Buy from the eight analysts that are covering the company, MarketBeat reports. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell recommendation and six have given a buy recommendation to the company. The average 12 month price objective among analysts that have covered the stock in the last year is $69.50. Several brokerages have commented on BUD. StockNews.com initiated coverage on shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating for the company. Bank of America upgraded shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV from a neutral rating to a buy rating in a research note on Friday, September 29th. HSBC upgraded shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV from a hold rating to a buy rating in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. Finally, TD Cowen initiated coverage on shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV in a research note on Friday, September 15th. They issued an outperform rating for the company. Get Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV alerts: Check Out Our Latest Analysis on Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV Hedge Funds Weigh In On Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV Stock Performance Large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Pacer Advisors Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV by 2.5% during the second quarter. Pacer Advisors Inc. now owns 15,024 shares of the consumer goods makers stock worth $852,000 after buying an additional 361 shares in the last quarter. Sigma Planning Corp grew its holdings in shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV by 15.4% in the first quarter. Sigma Planning Corp now owns 6,744 shares of the consumer goods makers stock valued at $450,000 after purchasing an additional 902 shares during the period. National Bank of Canada FI grew its holdings in shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV by 0.6% in the second quarter. National Bank of Canada FI now owns 68,256 shares of the consumer goods makers stock valued at $3,868,000 after purchasing an additional 392 shares during the period. Brookstone Capital Management purchased a new stake in shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV in the second quarter valued at about $213,000. Finally, Prossimo Advisors LLC grew its holdings in shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV by 13.4% in the second quarter. Prossimo Advisors LLC now owns 15,997 shares of the consumer goods makers stock valued at $907,000 after purchasing an additional 1,895 shares during the period. 5.53% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Shares of NYSE BUD opened at $62.06 on Wednesday. The company has a current ratio of 0.64, a quick ratio of 0.43 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.88. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV has a 12 month low of $51.66 and a 12 month high of $67.09. The company has a 50 day simple moving average of $56.08 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $56.76. The stock has a market cap of $107.81 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 19.89, a PEG ratio of 1.88 and a beta of 1.20. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, November 1st. The consumer goods maker reported $0.86 EPS for the quarter, meeting the consensus estimate of $0.86. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV had a net margin of 10.56% and a return on equity of 14.94%. The business had revenue of $15.57 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $15.72 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $0.81 EPS. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 3.2% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts predict that Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV will post 3.04 earnings per share for the current year. About Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (Get Free Report Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV produces, distributes, markets, and sells beer and beverages. It offers a portfolio of approximately 500 beer brands, which primarily include Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois; Beck's, Hoegaarden, Leffe, and Michelob Ultra; and Aguila, Antarctica, Bud Light, Brahma, Cass, Castle, Castle Lite, Cristal, Harbin, Jupiler, Modelo Especial, Quilmes, Victoria, Sedrin, and Skol brands. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. AdvanSix (NYSE:ASIX Get Free Report) and Linde (OTCMKTS:LNAGF Get Free Report) are both basic materials companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, earnings, risk, dividends, valuation and analyst recommendations. Profitability This table compares AdvanSix and Lindes net margins, return on equity and return on assets. Get AdvanSix alerts: Net Margins Return on Equity Return on Assets AdvanSix 6.00% 12.10% 6.22% Linde N/A N/A N/A Institutional & Insider Ownership 86.4% of AdvanSix shares are held by institutional investors. 5.2% of AdvanSix shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term. Analyst Recommendations Sell Ratings Hold Ratings Buy Ratings Strong Buy Ratings Rating Score AdvanSix 0 0 1 0 3.00 Linde 0 0 0 0 N/A This is a summary of recent recommendations for AdvanSix and Linde, as provided by MarketBeat.com. AdvanSix currently has a consensus price target of $40.00, indicating a potential upside of 53.14%. Given AdvanSixs higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe AdvanSix is more favorable than Linde. Valuation & Earnings This table compares AdvanSix and Lindes revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation. Gross Revenue Price/Sales Ratio Net Income Earnings Per Share Price/Earnings Ratio AdvanSix $1.56 billion 0.45 $171.89 million $3.27 7.99 Linde N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A AdvanSix has higher revenue and earnings than Linde. Summary AdvanSix beats Linde on 8 of the 8 factors compared between the two stocks. About AdvanSix (Get Free Report) AdvanSix Inc. manufactures and sells polymer resins in the United States and internationally. It offers Nylon 6, a polymer resin, which is a synthetic material used to produce fibers, filaments, engineered plastics, and films. The company also provides caprolactam to manufacture polymer resins; ammonium sulfate fertilizers to distributors, farm cooperatives, and retailers; and acetone that are used in the production of adhesives, paints, coatings, solvents, herbicides, and engineered plastic resins, as well as other intermediate chemicals, including phenol, monoisopropylamine, dipropylamine, monoallylamine, alpha-methylstyrene, cyclohexanone, methyl ethyl ketoxime, acetaldehyde oxime, 2-pentanone oxime, cyclohexanol, sulfuric acid, ammonia, and carbon dioxide. It offers its products under the Aegis, Capran, Sulf-N, Nadone, Naxol, and EZ-Blox brands. The company sells its products directly, as well as through distributors. AdvanSix Inc. was incorporated in 2016 and is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey. About Linde (Get Free Report) Linde Aktiengesellschaft operates as a gases and engineering company worldwide. It operates in two divisions, Gases and Engineering. The Gases division produces and distributes atmospheric gases oxygen, nitrogen, and argon; and hydrogen, acetylene, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, shielding gases, noble gases, and high-purity specialty gases for use in industry, commerce, science, and research sectors, as well as develops and distributes procedures and systems for gas applications. This division also offers pharmaceutical and medical gases and services to the healthcare industry; and support services, technical equipment, and safety products, as well as develops hydrogen technology. The Engineering division provides planning, project development, and construction services with a focus on market segments, such as olefin, natural gas, air separation, and hydrogen and synthesis gas plants. This division's plants are used in various fields, including the petrochemical and chemical industries; in refineries and fertilizer plants; to recover air gases; to produce hydrogen and synthesis gases; to treat natural gas; and to produce noble gases. Linde Aktiengesellschaft is headquartered in Munich, Germany. As of October 31, 2018, Linde Aktiengesellschaft operates as a subsidiary of Linde plc. Receive News & Ratings for AdvanSix Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for AdvanSix and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Profund Advisors LLC increased its position in Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM Free Report) by 48.8% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The fund owned 7,140 shares of the restaurant operators stock after acquiring an additional 2,342 shares during the quarter. Profund Advisors LLCs holdings in Yum! Brands were worth $989,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Fisher Asset Management LLC boosted its stake in Yum! Brands by 1.6% in the 1st quarter. Fisher Asset Management LLC now owns 39,704 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $5,244,000 after purchasing an additional 616 shares during the period. FMR LLC boosted its stake in Yum! Brands by 466.5% in the 1st quarter. FMR LLC now owns 5,867,285 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $774,951,000 after purchasing an additional 4,831,505 shares during the period. Level Four Advisory Services LLC boosted its stake in Yum! Brands by 68.7% in the 1st quarter. Level Four Advisory Services LLC now owns 3,421 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $452,000 after purchasing an additional 1,393 shares during the period. New Mexico Educational Retirement Board boosted its stake in Yum! Brands by 3.8% in the 2nd quarter. New Mexico Educational Retirement Board now owns 13,572 shares of the restaurant operators stock worth $1,880,000 after purchasing an additional 500 shares during the period. Finally, Handelsbanken Fonder AB boosted its position in shares of Yum! Brands by 34.6% during the 2nd quarter. Handelsbanken Fonder AB now owns 110,261 shares of the restaurant operators stock valued at $15,277,000 after acquiring an additional 28,336 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 80.17% of the companys stock. Get Yum! Brands alerts: Yum! Brands Stock Performance YUM opened at $128.25 on Wednesday. Yum! Brands, Inc. has a 52-week low of $115.53 and a 52-week high of $143.24. The stock has a market capitalization of $35.95 billion, a PE ratio of 24.38, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.96 and a beta of 1.04. The stocks 50 day moving average price is $123.45 and its 200-day moving average price is $130.21. Yum! Brands Announces Dividend Yum! Brands ( NYSE:YUM Get Free Report ) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The restaurant operator reported $1.44 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.26 by $0.18. Yum! Brands had a negative return on equity of 17.45% and a net margin of 21.32%. The company had revenue of $1.71 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1.77 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm earned $1.09 earnings per share. The firms revenue for the quarter was up 4.1% on a year-over-year basis. Research analysts forecast that Yum! Brands, Inc. will post 5.31 EPS for the current fiscal year. The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 8th. Investors of record on Tuesday, November 28th will be given a dividend of $0.605 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 27th. This represents a $2.42 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.89%. Yum! Brandss dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 46.01%. Wall Street Analyst Weigh In YUM has been the subject of a number of research analyst reports. Guggenheim dropped their price target on Yum! Brands from $153.00 to $152.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, August 8th. Citigroup dropped their price target on Yum! Brands from $173.00 to $163.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, October 17th. Morgan Stanley dropped their target price on Yum! Brands from $155.00 to $150.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 11th. Barclays dropped their target price on Yum! Brands from $140.00 to $126.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research report on Monday, October 23rd. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft began coverage on Yum! Brands in a research report on Thursday, October 19th. They issued a hold rating and a $131.00 target price for the company. Ten investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eight have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $145.21. Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on YUM Insider Activity at Yum! Brands In related news, CEO David W. Gibbs sold 3,804 shares of Yum! Brands stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $131.23, for a total transaction of $499,198.92. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 57,325 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $7,522,759.75. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. In related news, CEO David W. Gibbs sold 3,804 shares of Yum! Brands stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $131.23, for a total transaction of $499,198.92. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 57,325 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $7,522,759.75. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, CEO David W. Gibbs sold 3,727 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, November 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $127.97, for a total transaction of $476,944.19. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 57,325 shares of the companys stock, valued at $7,335,880.25. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 20,638 shares of company stock valued at $2,603,751 in the last three months. Company insiders own 0.31% of the companys stock. Yum! Brands Profile (Free Report) Yum! Brands, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, develops, operates, and franchises quick service restaurants worldwide. The company operates through four segments: the KFC Division, the Taco Bell Division, the Pizza Hut Division, and the Habit Burger Grill Division. It operates restaurants under the KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and The Habit Burger Grill brands, which specialize in chicken, pizza, made-to-order chargrilled burgers, sandwiches, Mexican-style food categories, and other food products. Featured Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding YUM? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Yum! Brands Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Yum! Brands and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. The Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed the defeat of a group of Russian invaders near the front line on the left bank of the Kherson region on November 19. At the time of the strike, Russian marines from the 810th Marine Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces had gathered to celebrate the Day of the Russian artilleryman. ADVERTISIMENT The confirmation was posted on the Telegram channel of the Strategic Communications Directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. According to Russian propagandists, several dozen invaders did not survive the "warm greetings" from Ukrainian soldiers. "Recently, the Ukrainian Defense Forces successfully struck a group of Russian invaders from the 810th Marine Brigade. According to the Russian side, at the time of the strike, the occupiers had gathered to celebrate the so-called Day of the Russian Artilleryman. The Ukrainian Defense Forces promptly identified the location of the Russians' festivities and warmly congratulated them!" the statement reads. ADVERTISIMENT StratCom recalled that Russian propagandists threw a real tantrum after arriving at the location of the invaders in the occupied part of the Kherson region. They reported the elimination of dozens of occupants and claimed that about a hundred Russians were seriously injured. According to Robert Brovdi, the commander of the "Birds of Magyars" company of the 59th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, at least 25 invaders were killed, and the Russians are carefully concealing the number of Russian officers among them and the wounded. The 810th Marine Brigade, which experienced the revenge of Ukrainian soldiers for the defenders of the 128th separate mountain assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine killed by a Russian missile on November 3 in Zaporizhzhia, is stationed in the temporarily occupied Sevastopol near Kozacha Bay. It is part of the Black Sea Fleet coastal troops. ADVERTISIMENT This strike is often confused with another effective defeat that took place that day in the village of Kumacheve in Donbas, journalist Roman Shraik noted. There, the invaders were driven to the local house of culture to attend a "gala concert" by Russian director Polina Menshikh. She died on arrival. Many invaders accompanied the lovers singing "patriotic songs" on the occupied Ukrainian land. The two events are often confused with each other, as journalist Roman Shraik pointed out. As a reminder, on November 3, Russians killed soldiers of the 128th Air Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Zaporizhzhia, who were lined up for an award on the occasion of the Day of the Artilleryman. A Russian X-59 missile was fired at the gathering of soldiers, who were reportedly waiting for the brigade to arrive. ADVERTISIMENT According to the brigade's leadership, 19 soldiers were killed, and many more soldiers and several civilians were injured. Defense Minister Rustem Umerov reacted to the tragedy late in the evening of November 4, saying that he had ordered an investigation into the deaths of the soldiers. "All the circumstances of what happened will be clarified. I instruct the Chief Inspectorate of the Ministry of Defense to conduct a full investigation into this tragedy. Our enemy is a cunning terrorist. We must make every effort to protect our people and give all honest answers to the families and friends of the fallen soldiers," the minister wrote. The brigade commander, Dmytro Lysyuk, remained unharmed: he arrived at the scene of the tragedy after the attack. The commander of the 128th Brigade has been suspended pending an internal investigation. ADVERTISIMENT After the tragedy, three days of mourning were declared in Zakarpattia for the dead soldiers. On November 14, Umerov announced the first results of the investigation into the circumstances of the missile attack on the 128th Brigade. According to him, it was found that the soldiers were indeed gathered in the courtyard of a house for an award ceremony, ignoring all the rules of camouflage. No security measures were taken even after the air raid was declared and an enemy reconnaissance drone was spotted in the area where the soldiers were located. On November 21, Magyar confirmed the defeat of the Russian marines and emphasized that this was how Ukrainian soldiers retaliated against the invaders for the dead comrades from the 128th. Only verified information on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber . Do not fall for fakes! ProShare Advisors LLC decreased its position in The Charles Schwab Co. (NYSE:SCHW Free Report) by 5.9% during the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The firm owned 337,824 shares of the financial services providers stock after selling 21,023 shares during the period. ProShare Advisors LLCs holdings in Charles Schwab were worth $19,148,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Signet Financial Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Charles Schwab by 0.3% during the 4th quarter. Signet Financial Management LLC now owns 49,378 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $4,111,000 after buying an additional 139 shares in the last quarter. Welch & Forbes LLC raised its position in Charles Schwab by 2.8% in the 2nd quarter. Welch & Forbes LLC now owns 5,797 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $329,000 after buying an additional 160 shares during the last quarter. Capital Advisors Inc. OK raised its position in Charles Schwab by 0.6% in the 2nd quarter. Capital Advisors Inc. OK now owns 28,547 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $1,618,000 after buying an additional 162 shares during the last quarter. Main Street Financial Solutions LLC raised its position in Charles Schwab by 2.6% in the 2nd quarter. Main Street Financial Solutions LLC now owns 6,475 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $367,000 after buying an additional 162 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Investment Advisory Services Inc. TX ADV increased its position in shares of Charles Schwab by 0.5% during the 4th quarter. Investment Advisory Services Inc. TX ADV now owns 32,642 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $2,718,000 after purchasing an additional 164 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 81.61% of the companys stock. Get Charles Schwab alerts: Insider Activity In other news, General Counsel Peter J. Morgan III sold 8,000 shares of Charles Schwab stock in a transaction on Tuesday, August 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $59.61, for a total value of $476,880.00. Following the transaction, the general counsel now directly owns 8,014 shares in the company, valued at approximately $477,714.54. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. In other Charles Schwab news, CFO Peter B. Crawford sold 3,792 shares of Charles Schwab 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 owns 44,725 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $2,563,189.75. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, General Counsel Peter J. Morgan III sold 8,000 shares of Charles Schwab stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 29th. The stock was sold at an average price of $59.61, for a total value of $476,880.00. Following the sale, the general counsel now directly owns 8,014 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $477,714.54. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders have sold 21,824 shares of company stock worth $1,214,937. 6.60% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders. Charles Schwab Trading Down 1.0 % NYSE SCHW opened at $55.99 on Wednesday. The Charles Schwab Co. has a 12 month low of $45.00 and a 12 month high of $86.63. The companys 50-day moving average price is $53.87 and its 200-day moving average price is $56.40. The stock has a market cap of $99.20 billion, a PE ratio of 18.66, a PEG ratio of 2.50 and a beta of 0.94. The company has a current ratio of 0.66, a quick ratio of 0.66 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.87. 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 (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $0.75 by $0.02. The firm had revenue of $4.61 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.62 billion. Charles Schwab had a return on equity of 24.58% and a net margin of 30.14%. Charles Schwabs quarterly revenue was down 16.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $1.10 earnings per share. Equities research analysts forecast that The Charles Schwab Co. will post 3.16 earnings per share for the current year. Charles Schwab Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 24th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be given a dividend of $0.25 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 9th. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.79%. Charles Schwabs dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 33.33%. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities research analysts have recently commented on the stock. Piper Sandler reduced their price target on shares of Charles Schwab from $86.00 to $75.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research report on Monday, October 9th. StockNews.com initiated coverage on Charles Schwab in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a sell rating for the company. Barclays boosted their price objective on Charles Schwab from $55.00 to $57.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 17th. JMP Securities restated a market outperform rating and issued a $77.00 price target on shares of Charles Schwab in a research note on Tuesday, October 17th. Finally, Raymond James upped their price target on Charles Schwab from $72.00 to $76.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 17th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, two have issued a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $69.91. Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on SCHW Charles Schwab Company Profile (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. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding SCHW? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for The Charles Schwab Co. (NYSE:SCHW Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Charles Schwab Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Charles Schwab and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. ProShare Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Stryker Co. (NYSE:SYK Free Report) by 7.1% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 56,459 shares of the medical technology companys stock after buying an additional 3,753 shares during the period. ProShare Advisors LLCs holdings in Stryker were worth $17,225,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Several other institutional investors also recently made changes to their positions in the stock. BlackRock Inc. boosted its position in Stryker by 0.7% during the 1st quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 24,673,528 shares of the medical technology companys stock worth $7,043,552,000 after purchasing an additional 178,460 shares during the period. Bank of New York Mellon Corp boosted its position in Stryker by 1.5% during the 1st quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 6,683,415 shares of the medical technology companys stock worth $1,907,914,000 after purchasing an additional 98,909 shares during the period. FMR LLC lifted its holdings in Stryker by 50.5% in the 1st quarter. FMR LLC now owns 6,012,525 shares of the medical technology companys stock worth $1,716,396,000 after buying an additional 2,017,006 shares in the last quarter. Morgan Stanley lifted its holdings in Stryker by 21.7% in the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 5,978,782 shares of the medical technology companys stock worth $1,461,753,000 after buying an additional 1,066,751 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in Stryker by 2.0% in the 1st quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 5,954,038 shares of the medical technology companys stock worth $1,695,169,000 after buying an additional 117,786 shares in the last quarter. 76.24% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Stryker alerts: Insider Activity at Stryker In related news, CEO Kevin Lobo sold 56,483 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $287.91, for a total value of $16,262,020.53. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 81,034 shares in the company, valued at approximately $23,330,498.94. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. In other news, insider Viju Menon sold 5,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $289.00, for a total transaction of $1,445,000.00. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 6,994 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,021,266. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, CEO Kevin Lobo sold 56,483 shares of the firms stock in a transaction on Friday, November 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $287.91, for a total transaction of $16,262,020.53. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 81,034 shares in the company, valued at $23,330,498.94. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 62,733 shares of company stock worth $18,068,658. 5.90% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders. Stryker Stock Up 1.5 % SYK stock opened at $293.66 on Wednesday. Stryker Co. has a 12 month low of $223.91 and a 12 month high of $306.93. The firm has a market cap of $111.56 billion, a PE ratio of 43.57, a P/E/G ratio of 2.76 and a beta of 0.94. The firm has a 50 day simple moving average of $274.84 and a 200 day simple moving average of $282.53. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.58, a current ratio of 1.48 and a quick ratio of 0.83. Stryker (NYSE:SYK Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Thursday, November 2nd. The medical technology company reported $2.46 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.43 by $0.03. The business had revenue of $4.90 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.87 billion. Stryker had a net margin of 13.00% and a return on equity of 22.62%. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 9.4% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $2.12 earnings per share. Equities research analysts forecast that Stryker Co. will post 10.41 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of equities analysts have commented on the stock. Roth Mkm reiterated a buy rating and issued a $345.00 price objective on shares of Stryker in a report on Thursday, November 9th. Bank of America upgraded shares of Stryker from a neutral rating to a buy rating and boosted their price objective for the stock from $310.00 to $315.00 in a report on Tuesday, September 5th. Barclays upped their target price on shares of Stryker from $321.00 to $335.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research note on Monday, August 7th. UBS Group upped their target price on shares of Stryker from $289.00 to $297.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada restated an outperform rating and issued a $325.00 target price on shares of Stryker in a research note on Thursday, August 17th. Five investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have issued a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $311.30. Read Our Latest Report on Stryker Stryker Profile (Free Report) Stryker Corporation operates as a medical technology company. The company operates through two segments, MedSurg and Neurotechnology, and Orthopaedics and Spine. The Orthopaedics and Spine segment provides implants for use in hip and knee joint replacements, and trauma and extremities surgeries. This segment also offers spinal implant products comprising cervical, thoracolumbar, and interbody systems that are used in spinal injury, deformity, and degenerative therapies. Featured Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding SYK? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Stryker Co. (NYSE:SYK Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Stryker Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Stryker and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Canadian Natural Resources Limited (NYSE:CNQ Get Free Report) (TSE:CNQ)s stock price gapped down before the market opened on Wednesday . The stock had previously closed at $66.09, but opened at $64.31. Canadian Natural Resources shares last traded at $64.12, with a volume of 565,271 shares traded. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of research firms have commented on CNQ. StockNews.com began coverage on Canadian Natural Resources in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. CIBC upped their price target on Canadian Natural Resources from $90.00 to $93.00 and gave the stock an outperformer rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 29th. Royal Bank of Canada upped their price objective on Canadian Natural Resources from $95.00 to $96.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research report on Friday, November 3rd. Jefferies Financial Group upped their price objective on Canadian Natural Resources from $84.00 to $94.00 and gave the stock a hold rating in a research report on Monday, August 28th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company upped their price objective on Canadian Natural Resources from $80.00 to $85.00 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a research report on Friday, August 4th. Four investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $93.71. Get Canadian Natural Resources alerts: Check Out Our Latest Analysis on Canadian Natural Resources Canadian Natural Resources Stock Down 2.7 % Canadian Natural Resources Increases Dividend The stock has a market cap of $69.64 billion, a PE ratio of 13.41 and a beta of 1.52. The firm has a fifty day moving average of $64.60 and a 200 day moving average of $60.54. The company has a quick ratio of 0.65, a current ratio of 0.91 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.25. The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, January 5th. Investors of record on Friday, December 8th will be issued a $0.7203 dividend. This represents a $2.88 annualized dividend and a yield of 4.48%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 7th. This is a positive change from Canadian Natural Resourcess previous quarterly dividend of $0.67. Canadian Natural Resourcess dividend payout ratio is 55.97%. Hedge Funds Weigh In On Canadian Natural Resources Several large investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Vanguard Group Inc. increased its holdings in Canadian Natural Resources by 6.2% in the first quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 40,235,475 shares of the oil and gas producers stock valued at $2,493,796,000 after buying an additional 2,332,528 shares during the last quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia increased its holdings in Canadian Natural Resources by 29.8% in the second quarter. Bank of Nova Scotia now owns 24,739,040 shares of the oil and gas producers stock valued at $1,409,093,000 after buying an additional 5,684,896 shares during the last quarter. TD Asset Management Inc increased its holdings in Canadian Natural Resources by 1.0% in the second quarter. TD Asset Management Inc now owns 17,926,955 shares of the oil and gas producers stock valued at $1,009,030,000 after buying an additional 182,756 shares during the last quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp grew its holdings in shares of Canadian Natural Resources by 3.2% during the second quarter. Mackenzie Financial Corp now owns 17,431,591 shares of the oil and gas producers stock worth $979,927,000 after purchasing an additional 533,430 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership purchased a new position in shares of Canadian Natural Resources during the first quarter worth about $960,796,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 73.88% of the companys stock. About Canadian Natural Resources (Get Free Report) Canadian Natural Resources Limited acquires, explores for, develops, produces, markets, and sells crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids (NGLs). The company offers light and medium crude oil, primary heavy crude oil, Pelican Lake heavy crude oil, bitumen (thermal oil), and synthetic crude oil (SCO). Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Canadian Natural Resources Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Canadian Natural Resources and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Shares of Crescent Energy (NYSE:CRGY Get Free Report) gapped down before the market opened on Wednesday . The stock had previously closed at $11.50, but opened at $11.12. Crescent Energy shares last traded at $11.09, with a volume of 169,964 shares changing hands. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth CRGY has been the topic of a number of recent research reports. Truist Financial lifted their price target on shares of Crescent Energy from $20.00 to $21.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research report on Wednesday, September 13th. Bank of America lifted their price target on shares of Crescent Energy from $12.00 to $13.00 in a research report on Wednesday, September 27th. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price target on shares of Crescent Energy from $16.00 to $19.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Friday, October 20th. Stephens initiated coverage on shares of Crescent Energy in a research report on Tuesday, September 26th. They set an overweight rating and a $17.00 price target on the stock. Finally, Mizuho lifted their price target on shares of Crescent Energy from $18.00 to $19.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research report on Monday, September 18th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, one has issued a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $17.17. Get Crescent Energy alerts: Read Our Latest Research Report on CRGY Crescent Energy Trading Down 4.0 % Crescent Energy Announces Dividend The company has a quick ratio of 1.03, a current ratio of 1.03 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.18. The businesss 50 day moving average is $11.84 and its 200-day moving average is $11.49. The firm has a market cap of $1.98 billion, a P/E ratio of 13.37, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 8.90 and a beta of 2.38. The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, December 4th. Investors of record on Monday, November 20th will be paid a $0.12 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, November 17th. This represents a $0.48 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 4.35%. Crescent Energys dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 55.81%. Insider Buying and Selling In related news, insider Brandi Kendall purchased 9,333 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, November 9th. The stock was acquired at an average price of $10.71 per share, for a total transaction of $99,956.43. Following the completion of the purchase, the insider now owns 19,502 shares in the company, valued at $208,866.42. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. In other Crescent Energy news, insider David C. Rockecharlie bought 5,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, November 13th. The stock was purchased at an average price of $10.68 per share, for a total transaction of $53,400.00. Following the completion of the purchase, the insider now directly owns 70,000 shares in the company, valued at $747,600. The acquisition was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, insider Brandi Kendall bought 9,333 shares of the stock in a transaction on Thursday, November 9th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $10.71 per share, with a total value of $99,956.43. Following the purchase, the insider now owns 19,502 shares of the companys stock, valued at $208,866.42. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. Over the last quarter, insiders purchased 18,833 shares of company stock worth $209,061. Insiders own 13.20% of the companys stock. Institutional Trading of Crescent Energy Several institutional investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in CRGY. Teacher Retirement System of Texas bought a new position in shares of Crescent Energy during the third quarter worth about $101,055,000. Vanguard Group Inc. grew its position in shares of Crescent Energy by 45.8% during the third quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 3,201,580 shares of the companys stock worth $43,125,000 after acquiring an additional 1,005,961 shares during the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. grew its position in shares of Crescent Energy by 12.3% during the second quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 2,817,609 shares of the companys stock worth $29,359,000 after acquiring an additional 308,715 shares during the last quarter. State Street Corp grew its position in shares of Crescent Energy by 9.0% during the second quarter. State Street Corp now owns 1,353,672 shares of the companys stock worth $14,105,000 after acquiring an additional 111,982 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC grew its position in shares of Crescent Energy by 15.6% during the second quarter. Hotchkis & Wiley Capital Management LLC now owns 1,102,510 shares of the companys stock worth $11,488,000 after acquiring an additional 148,610 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 53.31% of the companys stock. Crescent Energy Company Profile (Get Free Report) Crescent Energy Company, an energy company, acquires, develops, and produces crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids (NGLs) reserves. The company holds a portfolio of oil and natural gas assets in key proven basins, including the Eagle Ford, Rockies, Barnett, Permian, and Mid-Con in the United States. Read More Receive News & Ratings for Crescent Energy Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Crescent Energy and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. RBO & Co. LLC trimmed its position in shares of Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO Free Report) by 56.1% during the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The firm owned 95,588 shares of the companys stock after selling 122,069 shares during the period. RBO & Co. LLCs holdings in Altria Group were worth $4,330,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Altria Group by 3.3% in the 2nd quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 37,025,033 shares of the companys stock worth $1,672,836,000 after buying an additional 1,168,982 shares during the last quarter. Element Capital Management LLC boosted its position in Altria Group by 5.9% in the 2nd quarter. Element Capital Management LLC now owns 218,233 shares of the companys stock valued at $9,886,000 after buying an additional 12,122 shares during the period. Sei Investments Co. boosted its position in Altria Group by 4.8% in the 2nd quarter. Sei Investments Co. now owns 667,477 shares of the companys stock valued at $30,236,000 after buying an additional 30,697 shares during the period. D.A. Davidson & CO. boosted its position in Altria Group by 19.1% in the 2nd quarter. D.A. Davidson & CO. now owns 293,706 shares of the companys stock valued at $13,305,000 after buying an additional 47,095 shares during the period. Finally, Penserra Capital Management LLC boosted its position in Altria Group by 11,943.8% in the 2nd quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 11,562 shares of the companys stock valued at $523,000 after buying an additional 11,466 shares during the period. 58.94% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors. Get Altria Group alerts: Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several research firms have issued reports on MO. Citigroup lowered their price objective on shares of Altria Group from $46.50 to $45.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 18th. Bank of America reduced their price target on shares of Altria Group from $49.00 to $47.00 in a report on Monday, October 9th. StockNews.com lowered shares of Altria Group from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Friday, October 27th. UBS Group reduced their price target on shares of Altria Group from $40.40 to $39.20 and set a sell rating for the company in a report on Friday, October 6th. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group boosted their price target on shares of Altria Group from $55.00 to $56.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Friday, October 13th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and two have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average target price of $47.53. Insiders Place Their Bets In other Altria Group news, Director Robert Matthews Davis acquired 1,200 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 6th. The shares were purchased at an average price of $40.50 per share, for a total transaction of $48,600.00. Following the completion of the purchase, the director now directly owns 8,473 shares of the companys stock, valued at $343,156.50. The acquisition was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 0.07% of the companys stock. Altria Group Stock Performance NYSE:MO traded up $0.26 during midday trading on Wednesday, reaching $41.02. 2,292,732 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 7,925,031. Altria Group, Inc. has a 12-month low of $39.06 and a 12-month high of $51.57. The business has a 50-day moving average of $41.72 and a two-hundred day moving average of $43.64. The stock has a market capitalization of $72.55 billion, a PE ratio of 8.30, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.72 and a beta of 0.65. Altria Group (NYSE:MO Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The company reported $1.28 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $1.29 by ($0.01). Altria Group had a net margin of 35.58% and a negative return on equity of 237.91%. The firm had revenue of $5.28 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $5.43 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $1.28 EPS. The companys revenue was down 2.5% on a year-over-year basis. Research analysts anticipate that Altria Group, Inc. will post 4.95 earnings per share for the current year. Altria Group Increases Dividend The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 10th. Shareholders of record on Friday, September 15th were issued a $0.98 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, September 14th. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 9.56%. This is a boost from Altria Groups previous quarterly dividend of $0.94. Altria Groups dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 79.84%. Altria Group Profile (Free Report) Altria Group, Inc, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells smokeable and oral tobacco products in the United States. The company provides cigarettes primarily under the Marlboro brand; cigars and pipe tobacco principally under the Black & Mild brand; moist smokeless tobacco products and snus products under the Copenhagen, Skoal, Red Seal, and Husky brands; and on! oral nicotine pouches. Featured Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding MO? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Altria Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Altria Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Algebris UK Ltd cut its holdings in Unum Group (NYSE:UNM Free Report) by 26.8% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 274,514 shares of the financial services providers stock after selling 100,321 shares during the period. Unum Group comprises about 6.4% of Algebris UK Ltds holdings, making the stock its 8th largest position. Algebris UK Ltd owned 0.14% of Unum Group worth $13,037,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. A number of other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of the business. Raleigh Capital Management Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of Unum Group during the second quarter worth about $27,000. Financial Management Professionals Inc. boosted its holdings in shares of Unum Group by 2,262.1% in the second quarter. Financial Management Professionals Inc. now owns 685 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $33,000 after acquiring an additional 656 shares during the period. Newbridge Financial Services Group Inc. increased its holdings in shares of Unum Group by 228.8% in the 2nd quarter. Newbridge Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 743 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $35,000 after acquiring an additional 517 shares during the period. CVA Family Office LLC raised its position in Unum Group by 37.8% in the 2nd quarter. CVA Family Office LLC now owns 1,075 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $51,000 after purchasing an additional 295 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Global Retirement Partners LLC boosted its stake in Unum Group by 64.7% during the 2nd quarter. Global Retirement Partners LLC now owns 1,398 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $67,000 after purchasing an additional 549 shares during the period. 79.37% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Unum Group alerts: Unum Group Price Performance Shares of NYSE UNM traded up $0.22 during midday trading on Wednesday, hitting $42.82. The company had a trading volume of 198,770 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,386,463. The firm has a market capitalization of $8.35 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 6.88, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.79 and a beta of 1.07. Unum Group has a twelve month low of $36.27 and a twelve month high of $52.15. The business has a 50-day simple moving average of $47.41 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $47.35. The company has a quick ratio of 0.29, a current ratio of 0.29 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.36. Unum Group Announces Dividend Unum Group ( NYSE:UNM Get Free Report ) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 31st. The financial services provider reported $1.94 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.92 by $0.02. Unum Group had a return on equity of 15.54% and a net margin of 10.07%. The business had revenue of $3.09 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $3.11 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the company earned $1.51 EPS. The companys quarterly revenue was up 4.3% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts anticipate that Unum Group will post 7.72 earnings per share for the current year. The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 17th. Stockholders of record on Friday, October 27th were paid a dividend of $0.365 per share. This represents a $1.46 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 3.41%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 26th. Unum Groups dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 23.59%. Unum Group declared that its board has authorized a stock buyback plan on Tuesday, October 31st that allows the company to buyback $500.00 million in shares. This buyback authorization allows the financial services provider to repurchase up to 5.2% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock buyback plans are generally a sign that the companys management believes its stock is undervalued. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades UNM has been the subject of a number of research reports. Jefferies Financial Group upped their target price on shares of Unum Group from $55.00 to $59.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Thursday, September 14th. StockNews.com lowered Unum Group from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Tuesday. Citigroup increased their price target on Unum Group from $56.00 to $58.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. Morgan Stanley dropped their price objective on shares of Unum Group from $54.00 to $53.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, November 15th. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company raised their target price on shares of Unum Group from $62.00 to $63.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 15th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Unum Group has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $54.50. Read Our Latest Research Report on UNM Unum Group Company Profile (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. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Unum Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Unum Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc. lessened its stake in Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS Free Report) by 3.5% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 22,274 shares of the casino operators stock after selling 809 shares during the quarter. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc.s holdings in Las Vegas Sands were worth $1,292,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC. A number of other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of LVS. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. grew its position in shares of Las Vegas Sands by 13.9% during the 1st quarter. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. now owns 46,767 shares of the casino operators stock valued at $1,818,000 after buying an additional 5,716 shares during the last quarter. American Century Companies Inc. grew its position in shares of Las Vegas Sands by 17.1% during the 1st quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 13,612 shares of the casino operators stock valued at $529,000 after buying an additional 1,985 shares during the last quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. grew its position in shares of Las Vegas Sands by 6.9% during the 1st quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. now owns 33,282 shares of the casino operators stock valued at $1,294,000 after buying an additional 2,145 shares during the last quarter. Cetera Advisor Networks LLC grew its position in shares of Las Vegas Sands by 26.7% during the 1st quarter. Cetera Advisor Networks LLC now owns 13,502 shares of the casino operators stock valued at $525,000 after buying an additional 2,848 shares during the last quarter. Finally, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. grew its position in shares of Las Vegas Sands by 47.6% during the 1st quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 27,000 shares of the casino operators stock valued at $1,050,000 after buying an additional 8,711 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 39.16% of the companys stock. Get Las Vegas Sands alerts: Las Vegas Sands Price Performance LVS stock traded up $0.18 on Wednesday, hitting $49.62. 624,947 shares of the companys stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 4,530,596. Las Vegas Sands Corp. has a 1-year low of $42.27 and a 1-year high of $65.58. The stock has a market cap of $37.93 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 56.18, a P/E/G ratio of 3.67 and a beta of 1.19. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $47.04 and a 200-day moving average of $53.51. The company has a current ratio of 1.50, a quick ratio of 1.50 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.82. Las Vegas Sands Dividend Announcement Las Vegas Sands ( NYSE:LVS Get Free Report ) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, October 18th. The casino operator reported $0.55 EPS for the quarter, meeting the consensus estimate of $0.55. Las Vegas Sands had a net margin of 7.81% and a return on equity of 21.05%. The business had revenue of $2.80 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.72 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned ($0.27) earnings per share. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 178.1% on a year-over-year basis. On average, analysts forecast that Las Vegas Sands Corp. will post 1.91 EPS for the current fiscal year. The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 15th. Investors of record on Tuesday, November 7th were paid a dividend of $0.20 per share. This represents a $0.80 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.61%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Monday, November 6th. Las Vegas Sandss dividend payout ratio is presently 90.91%. Las Vegas Sands announced that its Board of Directors has approved a stock buyback plan on Wednesday, October 18th that permits the company to repurchase $2.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the casino operator to reacquire up to 5.5% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase plans are often an indication that the companys board believes its shares are undervalued. Analyst Ratings Changes LVS has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price objective on shares of Las Vegas Sands from $71.00 to $64.00 in a research report on Tuesday, September 26th. Stifel Nicolaus upped their target price on shares of Las Vegas Sands from $69.00 to $70.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Thursday, October 19th. UBS Group upped their target price on shares of Las Vegas Sands from $71.00 to $77.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Thursday, November 16th. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Las Vegas Sands in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a hold rating for the company. Finally, Morgan Stanley decreased their target price on shares of Las Vegas Sands from $68.00 to $64.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research report on Friday, October 13th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and thirteen have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Las Vegas Sands has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $69.68. Read Our Latest Report on Las Vegas Sands Las Vegas Sands Company Profile (Free Report) Las Vegas Sands Corp., together with its subsidiaries, develops, owns, and operates integrated resorts in Macao and Singapore. It owns and operates The Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, the Londoner Macao, The Parisian Macao, The Plaza Macao and Four Seasons Hotel Macao, Cotai Strip, and the Sands Macao in Macao, the People's Republic of China; and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. Read More Receive News & Ratings for Las Vegas Sands Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Las Vegas Sands and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc. grew its holdings in Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR Free Report) by 8.5% in the second quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 38,479 shares of the aerospace companys stock after buying an additional 3,005 shares during the period. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc.s holdings in Spirit AeroSystems were worth $1,123,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. Other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. LPL Financial LLC boosted its stake in shares of Spirit AeroSystems by 0.4% during the 2nd quarter. LPL Financial LLC now owns 102,283 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $2,997,000 after purchasing an additional 357 shares during the period. Ancora Advisors LLC boosted its stake in shares of Spirit AeroSystems by 6.1% during the 1st quarter. Ancora Advisors LLC now owns 7,000 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $341,000 after purchasing an additional 400 shares during the period. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio boosted its stake in shares of Spirit AeroSystems by 0.8% during the 3rd quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio now owns 52,370 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $1,148,000 after purchasing an additional 413 shares during the period. Legal & General Group Plc boosted its stake in shares of Spirit AeroSystems by 0.3% during the 2nd quarter. Legal & General Group Plc now owns 141,263 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $4,139,000 after purchasing an additional 460 shares during the period. Finally, Mystic Asset Management Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Spirit AeroSystems by 1.4% during the 2nd quarter. Mystic Asset Management Inc. now owns 38,116 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $1,113,000 after purchasing an additional 533 shares during the period. 88.05% of the stock is owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Spirit AeroSystems alerts: Spirit AeroSystems Price Performance Shares of NYSE:SPR traded up $0.33 during trading hours on Wednesday, hitting $26.16. The companys stock had a trading volume of 1,042,597 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,234,028. Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. has a 52 week low of $14.65 and a 52 week high of $38.55. The company has a market capitalization of $2.76 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -2.94 and a beta of 1.69. The firms fifty day moving average price is $19.91 and its 200 day moving average price is $23.90. Wall Street Analyst Weigh In Spirit AeroSystems ( NYSE:SPR Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The aerospace company reported ($1.42) EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of ($1.56) by $0.14. The business had revenue of $1.44 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.46 billion. The companys revenue for the quarter was up 12.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm posted ($0.15) EPS. On average, equities research analysts predict that Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. will post -3.14 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. SPR has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. UBS Group initiated coverage on shares of Spirit AeroSystems in a research note on Tuesday, October 10th. They set a neutral rating and a $17.00 price target for the company. Melius cut shares of Spirit AeroSystems from an overweight rating to a neutral rating and set a $23.00 price objective for the company. in a research report on Tuesday, September 5th. Benchmark reissued a buy rating and issued a $45.00 price objective on shares of Spirit AeroSystems in a research report on Tuesday, October 3rd. The Goldman Sachs Group cut shares of Spirit AeroSystems from a buy rating to a neutral rating and lowered their price objective for the company from $45.00 to $30.00 in a research report on Wednesday, August 2nd. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price objective on shares of Spirit AeroSystems from $38.00 to $36.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, November 16th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have assigned a hold rating and seven have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $27.93. View Our Latest Analysis on SPR About Spirit AeroSystems (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. Featured Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding SPR? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:SPR Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Spirit AeroSystems Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Spirit AeroSystems and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Mystic Asset Management Inc. bought a new position in shares of The Charles Schwab Co. (NYSE:SCHW Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The fund bought 4,417 shares of the financial services providers stock, valued at approximately $250,000. Several other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the business. Copperleaf Capital LLC increased its position in Charles Schwab by 48.6% during the 2nd quarter. Copperleaf Capital LLC now owns 21,255 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $1,205,000 after purchasing an additional 6,950 shares during the period. Sei Investments Co. grew its holdings in shares of Charles Schwab by 7.1% in the 2nd quarter. Sei Investments Co. now owns 1,388,959 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $78,725,000 after acquiring an additional 92,560 shares during the period. Korea Investment CORP grew its holdings in shares of Charles Schwab by 0.5% in the 2nd quarter. Korea Investment CORP now owns 1,172,611 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $66,464,000 after acquiring an additional 5,384 shares during the period. Platinum Investment Management Ltd. acquired a new stake in shares of Charles Schwab in the 2nd quarter worth approximately $1,417,000. Finally, Magellan Asset Management Ltd acquired a new stake in shares of Charles Schwab in the 2nd quarter worth approximately $161,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.61% of the companys stock. Get Charles Schwab alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets SCHW has been the topic of a number of research reports. Barclays upped their price target on Charles Schwab from $55.00 to $57.00 and gave the stock an equal weight rating in a report on Tuesday, October 17th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their target price on Charles Schwab from $92.00 to $85.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, October 17th. Jefferies Financial Group lowered their target price on Charles Schwab from $66.00 to $62.00 in a report on Tuesday, October 10th. StockNews.com started coverage on Charles Schwab in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a sell rating on the stock. Finally, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft lowered their target price on Charles Schwab from $70.00 to $69.00 in a report on Wednesday, October 11th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, two have given a hold rating and eleven have given a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Charles Schwab presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $69.91. Charles Schwab Stock Up 0.0 % NYSE SCHW traded up $0.02 during trading hours on Wednesday, hitting $56.01. The company had a trading volume of 2,039,464 shares, compared to its average volume of 15,339,371. The firms 50 day moving average is $53.87 and its 200 day moving average is $56.40. 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 company has a market capitalization of $99.23 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 18.66, a P/E/G ratio of 2.50 and a beta of 0.94. The Charles Schwab Co. has a fifty-two week low of $45.00 and a fifty-two week high of $86.63. Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW Get Free Report) last announced its 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. The company had revenue of $4.61 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.62 billion. Charles Schwab had a return on equity of 24.58% and a net margin of 30.14%. The companys revenue was down 16.3% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the firm earned $1.10 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts anticipate that The Charles Schwab Co. will post 3.16 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Charles Schwab Dividend Announcement The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 24th. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be issued a $0.25 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 9th. This represents a $1.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 1.79%. Charles Schwabs dividend payout ratio is currently 33.33%. Insiders Place Their Bets In other Charles Schwab news, Director Paula A. Sneed sold 6,918 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, October 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $49.98, for a total value of $345,761.64. Following the transaction, the director now owns 112,398 shares of the companys stock, valued at $5,617,652.04. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. In other news, Director Paula A. Sneed sold 6,918 shares of Charles Schwab stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, October 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $49.98, for a total transaction of $345,761.64. Following the sale, the director now owns 112,398 shares of the companys stock, valued at $5,617,652.04. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this link. Also, CFO Peter B. Crawford sold 3,114 shares of Charles Schwab stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $56.19, for a total value of $174,975.66. Following the sale, the chief financial officer now directly owns 41,611 shares in the company, valued at approximately $2,338,122.09. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold 21,824 shares of company stock valued at $1,214,937 over the last quarter. Insiders own 6.60% of the companys stock. Charles Schwab Company Profile (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. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding SCHW? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for The Charles Schwab Co. (NYSE:SCHW Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Charles Schwab Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Charles Schwab and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. WFA of San Diego LLC reduced its holdings in Lockheed Martin Co. (NYSE:LMT Free Report) by 89.4% during the second quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The fund owned 78 shares of the aerospace companys stock after selling 661 shares during the quarter. WFA of San Diego LLCs holdings in Lockheed Martin were worth $36,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of LMT. Edmond DE Rothschild Holding S.A. increased its position in shares of Lockheed Martin by 100.0% in the first quarter. Edmond DE Rothschild Holding S.A. now owns 60 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $28,000 after purchasing an additional 30 shares during the last quarter. Coppell Advisory Solutions Corp. bought a new position in shares of Lockheed Martin in the 4th quarter worth $31,000. Cascade Investment Advisors Inc. purchased a new stake in shares of Lockheed Martin during the 1st quarter valued at $35,000. KB Financial Partners LLC bought a new stake in shares of Lockheed Martin during the 1st quarter worth $35,000. Finally, Alaska Permanent Fund Corp purchased a new position in Lockheed Martin in the second quarter worth $35,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 74.26% of the companys stock. Get Lockheed Martin alerts: Lockheed Martin Stock Performance Shares of NYSE:LMT opened at $448.15 on Wednesday. The company has a current ratio of 1.36, a quick ratio of 1.16 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.86. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $433.75 and a 200-day moving average price of $445.75. The company has a market cap of $111.19 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 16.37, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.90 and a beta of 0.60. Lockheed Martin Co. has a 12 month low of $393.77 and a 12 month high of $508.10. Lockheed Martin Increases Dividend Lockheed Martin ( NYSE:LMT Get Free Report ) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, October 17th. The aerospace company reported $6.77 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $6.67 by $0.10. Lockheed Martin had a return on equity of 75.46% and a net margin of 10.29%. The business had revenue of $16.88 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.73 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $6.87 EPS. Lockheed Martins quarterly revenue was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts anticipate that Lockheed Martin Co. will post 27.19 EPS for the current year. The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 29th. Investors of record on Friday, December 1st will be paid a $3.15 dividend. This is a positive change from Lockheed Martins previous quarterly dividend of $3.00. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 30th. This represents a $12.60 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.81%. Lockheed Martins dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 43.84%. Analysts Set New Price Targets LMT has been the topic of a number of research reports. Citigroup lowered their price target on Lockheed Martin from $555.00 to $540.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, October 18th. UBS Group started coverage on Lockheed Martin in a report on Tuesday, October 10th. They set a neutral rating and a $470.00 price objective on the stock. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their target price on Lockheed Martin from $495.00 to $481.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, October 18th. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Lockheed Martin in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a buy rating on the stock. Finally, Morgan Stanley cut their price objective on shares of Lockheed Martin from $532.00 to $510.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, October 18th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have given a hold rating and five have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Lockheed Martin has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $484.07. Check Out Our Latest Research Report on LMT Lockheed Martin Profile (Free Report) Lockheed Martin Corporation, a security and aerospace company, engages in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of technology systems, products, and services worldwide. It operates through four segments: Aeronautics, Missiles and Fire Control, Rotary and Mission Systems, and Space. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding LMT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Lockheed Martin Co. (NYSE:LMT Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Lockheed Martin Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Lockheed Martin and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. The Ukrainian Air Force has no plans to change the airborne alert system for Russian MiG-31 takeoffs. These aircraft can carry Kinzhal missiles, and the Ukrainian military often lacks information on whether a particular aircraft is armed. ADVERTISIMENT Yurii Ihnat, head of the public relations service of the Air Force Command, stated, "Sometimes there is information that the MiG took off with a missile, sometimes it took off without a missile, and sometimes there is no such information. We have no right to take risks here." He mentioned this during an interview on Ukrainian Radio. Ihnat highlighted that the military has not received new instructions on how to notify the public about MiG-31 takeoffs. Regardless, the Ukrainian Air Force will continue to warn of the danger of UAVs, missiles, tactical aircraft, or MLRS attacks. "We will not change the scheme of warning the population. We try to do it as quickly as possible on the official telegram channel. As for the level of threat, in other words, the color of the map, it will be decided at the highest level," Ihnat stated. ADVERTISIMENT As previously reported by OBOZ.UA: - The MiG-31, capable of carrying hypersonic missiles "Kinzhal" with a range of 2000-3000 km, triggers prolonged alarms in all regions of Ukraine when used by the Russians, impacting the Ukrainian economy. - Yurii Ihnat previously noted that experts are exploring ways to solve this problem, but the mechanism is not simple due to the safety considerations for Ukrainians. Only verified information is available on the OBOZ.UA Telegram channel and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! Geode Capital Management LLC increased its position in Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY Free Report) by 2.3% during the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 15,205,501 shares of the companys stock after buying an additional 338,077 shares during the period. Eli Lilly and Company accounts for about 0.8% of Geode Capital Management LLCs investment portfolio, making the stock its 16th biggest position. Geode Capital Management LLC owned about 1.60% of Eli Lilly and Company worth $7,111,568,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Other hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Silicon Valley Capital Partners purchased a new stake in Eli Lilly and Company during the first quarter valued at approximately $25,000. Laffer Tengler Investments purchased a new stake in Eli Lilly and Company during the first quarter valued at approximately $33,000. Raleigh Capital Management Inc. raised its position in Eli Lilly and Company by 156.4% during the first quarter. Raleigh Capital Management Inc. now owns 100 shares of the companys stock valued at $34,000 after purchasing an additional 61 shares during the period. Activest Wealth Management purchased a new stake in Eli Lilly and Company during the second quarter valued at approximately $40,000. Finally, Riggs Asset Managment Co. Inc. raised its position in Eli Lilly and Company by 50.4% during the first quarter. Riggs Asset Managment Co. Inc. now owns 179 shares of the companys stock valued at $61,000 after purchasing an additional 60 shares during the period. 81.38% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Eli Lilly and Company alerts: Insiders Place Their Bets In other Eli Lilly and Company news, EVP Alonzo Weems sold 1,148 shares of Eli Lilly and Company 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 completion of the sale, the executive vice president now owns 7,760 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $4,586,004.80. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through this hyperlink. In related news, major shareholder Lilly Endowment Inc sold 37,660 shares of Eli Lilly and Company stock in a transaction dated 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 completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 100,275,279 shares in the company, valued at approximately $54,825,684,274,988.30. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, EVP Alonzo Weems sold 1,148 shares of Eli Lilly and Company stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, September 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $590.98, for a total value of $678,445.04. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president now owns 7,760 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $4,586,004.80. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 534,231 shares of company stock valued at $20,880,573,165. 0.13% of the stock is owned by company insiders. Eli Lilly and Company Stock Down 0.5 % Eli Lilly and Company Announces Dividend Shares of Eli Lilly and Company stock traded down $2.82 during trading on Wednesday, reaching $589.78. The companys stock had a trading volume of 760,672 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,087,413. The company has a quick ratio of 0.82, a current ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.59. The company has a market cap of $559.88 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 107.36, a P/E/G ratio of 3.63 and a beta of 0.33. Eli Lilly and Company has a 1-year low of $309.20 and a 1-year high of $629.97. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $577.88 and a two-hundred day simple moving average of $512.30. The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 8th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be given a $1.13 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, November 14th. This represents a $4.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.77%. Eli Lilly and Companys payout ratio is 81.88%. Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of research analysts have recently commented on the company. Credit Suisse Group upped their target price on Eli Lilly and Company from $490.00 to $580.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 9th. Truist Financial upped their target price on Eli Lilly and Company from $525.00 to $600.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 9th. Argus upped their target price on Eli Lilly and Company from $470.00 to $620.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research note on Tuesday, September 5th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft assumed coverage on Eli Lilly and Company in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. They set a hold rating and a $535.00 target price on the stock. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada upped their target price on Eli Lilly and Company from $490.00 to $580.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research note on Tuesday, August 8th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have given a hold rating and twenty have given a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, Eli Lilly and Company has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $557.00. Read Our Latest Stock Report on LLY About Eli Lilly and Company (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. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding LLY? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Eli Lilly and Company Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Eli Lilly and Company and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY Free Report) by 0.6% in the second quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The firm owned 39,034,341 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock after purchasing an additional 225,065 shares during the quarter. Geode Capital Management LLCs holdings in Bristol-Myers Squibb were worth $2,489,314,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Other large investors have also bought and sold shares of the company. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich grew its stake 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 worth $42,152,211,000 after acquiring an additional 658,377,716 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank bought a new position in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb during the 4th quarter worth approximately $1,873,696,000. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC grew its stake 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 acquiring an additional 21,451,006 shares in the last quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. grew its stake in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 193.4% during the 1st quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. now owns 7,214,000 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $186,351,000 after acquiring an additional 4,755,058 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Boston Partners grew its stake in shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb by 31.1% during the 1st quarter. Boston Partners now owns 18,080,568 shares of the biopharmaceutical companys stock worth $1,252,480,000 after acquiring an additional 4,286,479 shares in the last quarter. 74.98% of the stock is owned by institutional investors. Get Bristol-Myers Squibb alerts: Analyst Ratings Changes Several equities analysts recently weighed in on BMY shares. Cantor Fitzgerald cut shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from an overweight rating to a neutral rating and decreased their target price for the company from $68.00 to $55.00 in a research note on Wednesday, November 15th. TheStreet cut shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a research note on Thursday, November 9th. Wells Fargo & Company decreased their target price on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $78.00 to $65.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research note on Friday, July 28th. Morgan Stanley decreased their target price on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $56.00 to $50.00 and set an underweight rating for the company in a research note on Friday, October 27th. Finally, Barclays decreased their target price on shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb from $60.00 to $51.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research note on Friday, October 27th. One equities research 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.com, the company currently has an average rating of Hold and an average price target of $63.59. Bristol-Myers Squibb Stock Performance Shares of BMY traded up $0.34 during midday trading on Wednesday, reaching $48.82. 3,830,472 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 9,738,584. Bristol-Myers Squibb has a twelve month low of $48.42 and a twelve month high of $81.43. The company has a quick ratio of 1.07, a current ratio of 1.18 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.11. The company has a market cap of $99.34 billion, a P/E ratio of 12.39, a PEG ratio of 1.56 and a beta of 0.38. The stocks 50 day simple moving average is $55.12 and its 200 day simple moving average is $60.59. Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY Get Free Report) last posted its 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. The company had revenue of $10.97 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $10.96 billion. Bristol-Myers Squibb had a return on equity of 51.59% and a net margin of 18.44%. The companys revenue was down 2.2% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the firm earned $1.99 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Bristol-Myers Squibb will post 7.56 earnings per share for the current year. Bristol-Myers Squibb Announces Dividend The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 1st. Investors of record on Friday, October 6th were paid a $0.57 dividend. This represents a $2.28 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 4.67%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 5th. Bristol-Myers Squibbs dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 57.87%. Insider Activity at Bristol-Myers Squibb In related news, Director Theodore R. Samuels II purchased 8,500 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 20th. The stock was acquired at an average price of $49.81 per share, with a total value of $423,385.00. Following the completion of the purchase, the director now directly owns 35,500 shares in the company, valued at $1,768,255. The purchase was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website. In other Bristol-Myers Squibb news, Director Theodore R. Samuels II bought 8,500 shares of the firms stock in a transaction on Monday, November 20th. The shares were purchased at an average price of $49.81 per share, for a total transaction of $423,385.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now directly owns 35,500 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,768,255. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, EVP Ann Powell sold 17,986 shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb 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 completion of the transaction, the executive vice president now owns 27,868 shares in the company, valued at approximately $1,706,915. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.08% of the stock is owned by insiders. Bristol-Myers Squibb Profile (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. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding BMY? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Bristol-Myers Squibb Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Bristol-Myers Squibb and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc. decreased its position in Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY Free Report) by 9.5% during the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The institutional investor owned 2,450 shares of the companys stock after selling 258 shares during the period. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc.s holdings in Eli Lilly and Company were worth $1,149,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of the company. Silicon Valley Capital Partners acquired a new position in Eli Lilly and Company in the first quarter valued at $25,000. Laffer Tengler Investments acquired a new position in Eli Lilly and Company in the first quarter valued at $33,000. Raleigh Capital Management Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Eli Lilly and Company by 156.4% during the first quarter. Raleigh Capital Management Inc. now owns 100 shares of the companys stock valued at $34,000 after purchasing an additional 61 shares during the period. Activest Wealth Management acquired a new position in shares of Eli Lilly and Company during the second quarter valued at about $40,000. Finally, Riggs Asset Managment Co. Inc. raised its holdings in shares of Eli Lilly and Company by 50.4% during the first quarter. Riggs Asset Managment Co. Inc. now owns 179 shares of the companys stock valued at $61,000 after purchasing an additional 60 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.38% of the companys stock. Get Eli Lilly and Company alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets Several brokerages have recently weighed in on LLY. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Eli Lilly and Company from a hold rating to a buy rating in a report on Friday, November 3rd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. reiterated an overweight rating on shares of Eli Lilly and Company in a report on Wednesday, November 8th. Credit Suisse Group upped their target price on shares of Eli Lilly and Company from $490.00 to $580.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. BMO Capital Markets upped their target price on shares of Eli Lilly and Company from $565.00 to $633.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group upped their target price on shares of Eli Lilly and Company from $385.00 to $470.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have assigned a hold rating and twenty have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, Eli Lilly and Company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $557.00. Eli Lilly and Company Stock Performance Shares of Eli Lilly and Company stock traded down $2.38 on Wednesday, reaching $590.22. 860,429 shares of the company traded hands, compared to its average volume of 3,087,827. Eli Lilly and Company has a 52 week low of $309.20 and a 52 week high of $629.97. The company has a 50 day moving average of $577.88 and a 200 day moving average of $512.30. The firm has a market capitalization of $560.30 billion, a PE ratio of 107.36, a PEG ratio of 3.63 and a beta of 0.33. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.59, a current ratio of 1.05 and a quick ratio of 0.82. Eli Lilly and Company Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 8th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be given a dividend of $1.13 per share. This represents a $4.52 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.77%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 14th. Eli Lilly and Companys dividend payout ratio is currently 81.88%. Insider Activity In other news, major shareholder Lilly Endowment Inc sold 37,660 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, August 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $546,751.75, for a total transaction of $20,590,670,905.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the insider now directly owns 100,275,279 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $54,825,684,274,988.30. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. In related news, EVP Alonzo Weems sold 1,148 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $590.98, for a total transaction of $678,445.04. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 7,760 shares in the company, valued at approximately $4,586,004.80. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, major shareholder Lilly Endowment Inc sold 37,660 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, August 28th. The shares were sold at an average price of $546,751.75, for a total transaction of $20,590,670,905.00. Following the sale, the insider now 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 sold 534,231 shares of company stock valued at $20,880,573,165 in the last three months. Company insiders own 0.13% of the companys stock. About Eli Lilly and Company (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. Featured Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding LLY? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Eli Lilly and Company Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Eli Lilly and Company and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host a virtual meeting of the Group of 20 leaders on Wednesday, at which Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin is scheduled to speak. US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will not attend the summit. ADVERTISIMENT This was reported by Bloomberg. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that Premier Li Qiang would take part in the video summit instead of Xi. It is noted that today's meeting is taking place as Modi concludes India's presidency of the G20. The Indian leader used the one-year term, which expires this month, to demonstrate the South Asian country's growing global influence ahead of the 2024 national elections, in which Modi will run for a third term as prime minister. At the same time, Indian Foreign Minister Vineet Kwatra said at a briefing the day before that the vast majority of G-20 leaders would attend the video meeting. U.S. President Joe Biden is skipping the summit, and the Kremlin has confirmed that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will address the gathering of world leaders. ADVERTISIMENT India is hoping to review the progress made during its year of presidency, when it prioritized support for emerging economies as a key agenda item. In addition, the group also developed compromise language on Russia's invasion of Ukraine during the leaders' summit in September. Since then, however, the war between Israel and Hamas has exacerbated the divide between the developed world and the Global South. As a reminder, Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in the United States for the first time in six years. On November 15 in San Francisco, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit , he met with White House Chief of Staff Joe Biden. As reported by OBOZ.UA, US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to resume negotiations between their countries at the military level. This step was confirmed by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. ADVERTISIMENT President Biden described the conversation with his Chinese counterpart as "one of the most constructive and productive discussions." According to him, the talks focused on issues in the interests of both countries, as well as global challenges, including the war launched by Russia against Ukraine. In turn, Xi Jinping, after his meeting with US President Joe Biden, noted that Beijing intends to build and maintain exclusively partnership relations with Washington. Neither side is interested in confrontation and conflict between the two largest economies in the world. Only verified information is available on our Telegram channel OBOZ.UA and Viber. Don't fall for fakes! The Israeli Cabinet of Ministers on Tuesday, after more than five hours of discussion, approved a deal with Hamas mediated by Qatar to release at least 50 hostages held by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. In exchange, Israel agreed to a four-day pause in operations in the enclave. ADVERTISIMENT In addition, Jerusalem gave permission to deliver more fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza. Israel will allow about 300 trucks with humanitarian supplies from Egypt every day. This was reported by The Times of Israel and Axios. In exchange for the return of hostages, Israel will release about 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and minors. It is now known that the names of the Palestinian prisoners to be released will be made public within the next 24 hours so that Israeli citizens can challenge their release in court. Israel will not release Palestinian prisoners convicted of killing Israelis. "In the second phase, Hamas may release dozens more women, children and the elderly in exchange for Israel extending the truce for a few more days," the report said. The office of the Israeli Prime Minister noted that the release of each of the next ten hostages by Hamas would lead to an additional day of pause in the fighting. ADVERTISIMENT "The government of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces and the security forces will continue the war to return all the abductees, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that Gaza no longer poses any threat to the state of Israel," they added. It should be noted that this official statement does not include any concessions such as the release of Palestinian prisoners or the delivery of additional fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza. As reported by OBOZ.UA: - U.S. President Joe Biden hopes for the rapid release of some of the hostages held by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. He said that so far "everything looks good" in this regard. - According to media reports, Israel may return some of the hostages captured by the Hamas terrorist organization as early as Thursday, November 23. Only verified information on our Telegram Obozrevatel and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! On Tuesday, November 21, Russia and Belarus vetoed the election of Estonia as the OSCE chair in 2024. This happened during a meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the Austrian capital Vienna. ADVERTISIMENT This was reported by ERR, citing Estonian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bretty Sarapuu. Since decisions in the OSCE are made by consensus, Estonia was not elected chairman of the organization that day. The situation is currently unclear as to which country will eventually take over. Estonia remains the only candidate from the European Union. According to Sarapuu, Estonia will discuss this incident with other EU countries. She also said that a meeting of the organization's foreign ministers will take place next week in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, which is currently the OSCE chair. The issue is expected to be on the agenda again. As reported by OBOZ.UA, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov complained that he could not get to the OSCE meeting, which will be held in the capital of North Macedonia from November 30 to December 1. The airspace of this country is closed to Russian aircraft due to sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine. ADVERTISIMENT Only verified information is available on our Obozrevatel Telegram and Viber. Do not fall for fakes! [November 21, 2023] Tokenized US Treasuries from Ondo Finance Now Available on Injective Blockchain Tweet NEW YORK, Nov. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For the first time ever, users on Injective , a lightning-fast blockchain for Web3 finance applications, can acquire tokenized US Treasuries in the form of the USD Yield token (USDY) from Ondo Finance . Ondo is the market leader in connecting traditional financial assets to blockchain networks, with over $200 million of its tokenized US Treasuries circulating today. USDY is the world's first tokenized note secured by US Treasuries, providing similar accessibility and utility as stablecoins. Tokenized US Treasuries have fueled the growth of the real-world assets sector, where traditional financial assets are made available on blockchains so that investors can leverage benefits from the technology such as 24/7 global transferability and compatibility with decentralized financial application. The market capitalization of real-world assets has grown from $100 million to over $704 million since the beginning of 2023, with Ondo leading the way. Eric Chen, co-founder and CEO of Injective Injective Labs, expressed his view on Ondos integration, stating, "Ondo is rapidly redefining the real-world asset market, and for the first time in history users will be able to access tokenized treasuries directly across Injective native dApps. This integration signifies a key milestone in making traditional financial instruments accessible within the DeFi ecosystem. Injective is continuing to pave the way towards truly connecting traditional finance with the blockchain world." Users will be able to access USDY either by bridging USDY over to Injective from Ethereum using the Injective Hub or via a host of native dApps built on Injective suh as Helix, the premier decentralized exchange on the network. Injective has directly integrated some of the largest institutions on its chain, enabling the highest levels of liquidity and capital efficiency for real-world assets. The introduction of USDY to Injective will mark the first time that users across the Cosmos ecosystem can access tokenized treasuries. The integration with Ondo also cements Injective's position as a leading L1 for both interoperability and real-world assets. USDY is only available on Ethereum and Mantle, an EVM rollup, to date, making this release its first expansion outside of the EVM environment. "We are delighted to offer a yield-bearing product that incorporates mature financial structuring and robust investor protections while catering to the diverse needs of both individual and institutional investors. USDY is a significant stride towards a more inclusive and secure financial landscape, said Nathan Allman, CEO of Ondo Finance. About Injective Injective is a lightning-fast interoperable layer-one blockchain optimized for building the premier Web3 finance applications. Injective provides developers with powerful plug-and-play modules for creating unmatched dApps. INJ is the native token that powers Injective and its rapidly growing ecosystem. Injective is incubated by Binance and is backed by prominent investors such as Jump Crypto, Pantera, and Mark Cuban. For more information, please visit https://injective.com/ About Ondo Finance Ondo Finance provides institutional-grade, blockchain-enabled investment products and services. Ondo has an asset management arm that creates and manages tokenized financial products as well as a technology arm that develops decentralized finance protocols and blockchain solutions. Ondos first core products are tokenized cash equivalents that deliver very low risk, high quality yield from U.S. Treasuries, money market funds, and similar instruments, offering on-chain investors an alternative to stablecoins where holders rather than issuers earn the vast majority of the underlying asset yield. Ondo also developed Flux Finance, a DeFi lending protocol supporting tokenized treasuries as collateral, recreating treasury repo markets on-chain while creating on-chain utility for Ondos tokenized securities. For more information on our products, please reach out to us at [email protected] or check out the following resources: Website | X/Twitter | Blog Disclaimer The USDY Tokens are not being offered or sold, and will not be offered or sold, in the United States or to U.S. persons. In addition, the USDY Tokens have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Act") or the securities laws of any other jurisdiction, and may not be offered, sold or otherwise transferred in the United States or to U.S. persons unless the securities are registered under the Act, or an exemption from the registration requirements of the Act is available. Additional limitations on transfer also apply. julie at injectivelabs.org [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 21, 2023] COSRX Unveils Game-Changing Cold Weather Skincare Deals: Early Access to Amazon Black Friday Promotions for Skincare Enthusiasts LONDON, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Recognized as a game changer in the cold weather skincare game, the derm-favorite brand COSRX has set the stage. The COSRX Black Friday beauty deals of 2023 have graced us ahead of schedule, offering skincare enthusiasts extra time to take advantage of all the promotions that will carry on through Cyber Monday - until November 27, 2023. Discover numerous BFCM deals worthy of a place in your shopping cart: The Vitamin C 23 Serum Beloved by dermatologists and cosmetic chemist (@dr.tomassian @208skindoc @javonford16 cites it as one of their top picks), The Vitamin C 23 Serum is formulated with 23% pure vitamin C with maximum effectiveness and minimum irritation that fades acne scars and brightens dull, tired skin. It also improves uneven skin tone leaving the complexion clear and healthy. Reviewers report that it fades acne scars and spots and visibly brightens dull skin, leaving you with a youthful glow. One reviewer commented that "Worth the money. My face looks and feels better. Dark spots are looking better." Another shopper supported this claim stating that "The results really make it worth it. I really feel like even the first overnight wearing it my skin was much more even!" The Niacinamide 15 Serum Along with 15% niacinamide, The Niacinamide 15 Serum is packed with allantoin, n-acetylglucosamine (NAG), and zinc PCA, which work together to refine skin and unclog pores for clear skin, improve hyperpigmentation and texture, and treat blemishes with noticeable results in four weeks. Experience a transformation in your skincare routine with The Niacinamide 15 Serum, a powerful solution for achieving smooth and flawless skin. Users report zero irritation from day one, with pesky dark spots gradually fading within weeks. The serum effectively controls shine in the T-zone, leaving the face feeling remarkably soft post-application. This serum emerges as an affordable and effective skincare option, poised to become a staple in beauty cabinets. The Retinol 0.1 Cream The Retinol 0.1 Cream, a fusion of retinol, moisturizing panthenol, vitamin E, and adenosine, stands as a versatile solution to diminish wrinkles, fine lines, and pores. Its remarkable capabilities extend to enhancing skin elasticity, preventing acne, and fading scarring, making it a standout in the skincare market. Its lightweight and non-sticky formula ensures a comfortable application, while being hypoallergenic and dermatologist-tested adds an extra layer of confidence for users. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281346/Capture_One_Catalog0052.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/cosrx-unveils-game-changing-cold-weather-skincare-deals-early-access-to-amazon-black-friday-promotions-for-skincare-enthusiasts-301995357.html [November 21, 2023] Coty Inc. Announces Early Results of Cash Tender Offers for Up to $400 Million Outstanding Debt Securities Tweet Coty Inc. (NYSE: COTY) ("Coty" or the "Company") announced today the early results of its previously announced tender offers to purchase for cash, (i) up to $150,000,000 aggregate principal amount (the "Unsecured Notes Cap") of the Company's 6.500% Senior Notes due 2026 (the "Unsecured Notes") and (ii) up to $250,000,000 aggregate principal amount (the "Secured Notes Cap") of the Company's 5.000% Senior Notes due 2026 (the "Secured Notes"). The Unsecured Notes and the Secured Notes are referred to collectively herein as the "Notes," such offers to purchase are referred to collectively herein as the "Tender Offers" and each a "Tender Offer," and the Unsecured Notes Cap and the Secured Notes Cap are referred to collectively as the "Notes Caps" and each a "Notes Cap." The Tender Offers are being made pursuant to the terms and conditions set forth in the Offer to Purchase, dated November 7, 2023 (the "Offer to Purchase). The Company refers investors to the Offer to Purchase for the complete terms and conditions of the Tender Offers. As of 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on November 21, 2023 (such date and time, the "Early Tender Date"), according to information provided by D.F. King & Co., Inc., the tender and information agent for the Tender Offers, the aggregate principal amount of each series of Notes listed in the table below has been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn in each Tender Offer. Withdrawal rights for the Notes expired at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on the Early Tender Date. Title of Security Security Identifiers Principal Amount Outstanding Principal Amount Tendered at Early Tender Date Principal Amount Accepted Approximate Proration Factor Unsecured Tender Offer 6.500% Senior Notes due 2026 CUSIPs: 222070AB0 (144A) U2203CAA9 (Reg S) ISINs: US222070AB02 (144A) USU2203CAA90 (Reg S) $473,017,000 $241,182,000 $150,000,000 62% Secured Tender Offer 5.000% Senior Secured Notes due 2026 CUSIPs: 222070AE4 (144A) U2203CAE1 (Reg S) ISINs: US222070AE41 (144A) USU2203CAE13 (Reg S) $900,000,000 $523,855,000 $250,000,000 48% All conditions were satisfied or waived by the Company at the Early Tender Date. The Company has elected to exercise its right to make payment for Notes that were validly tendered on or prior to the Early Tender Date and that are accepted for purchase on November 30, 2023 (the "Early Settlement Date"). The Tender Offers for the Notes will continue to expire at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on December 7, 2023, or any other date and time to which the Company extends the applicable Tender Offer (such date and time, as it may be extended with respect to a Tender Offer, the "Expiration Date"), unless earlier terminated. As the aggregate principal amount of the Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Early Tender Date in the Tender Offers exceeded the applicable Notes Cap, the Company will accept for purchase the Notes on a prorated basis. The applicable consideration (the "Total Consideration") for each $1,000 principal amount of the Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase pursuant to each Tender Offer will be calculated in the manner described in the Offer to Purchase by reference to the applicable fixed spread for such Notes plus the applicable yield based on the bid-side price of the applicable U.S. Treasury Reference Security at 10:00 a.m., New York City time, on November 22, 2023 (the "Price Determination Date") (excluding Accrued Interest (as defined below)). The Total Consideration includes an early tender premium of $30.00 per $1,000 principal amount of each series of Notes accepted for purchase (the "Early Tender Premiums"). Each holder who validly tendered and did not validly withdraw its Notes at or prior to the Early Tender Date and whose Notes are accepted for purchase will be entitled to receive the applicable "Total Consideration" which includes the Early Tender Premiums. All holders of Notes accepted for purchase in the Tender Offers will receive accrued and unpaid interest on such Notes from the last interest payment date with respect to such Notes to, but not including, the Early Settlement Date ("Accrued Interest"). Promptly after the Price Determination Date, the Company will issue a press release specifying, among other things, the Total Consideration for each series of Notes. The Company intends to fund the purchase of validly tendered and accepted Notes with available cash on hand and other sources of liquidity. Information Relating to the Tender Offers The complete terms and conditions of the Tender Offers are set forth in the Offer to Purchase. BofA Securities, Inc. and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC are serving as Dealer Managers in connection with the applicable Tender Offers. Investors with questions regarding the terms and conditions of the Tender Offers may contact the dealer managers as follows BofA Securities, Inc. 620 South Tryon Street, 20th Floor Charlotte, North Carolina 28255 Attn: Debt Advisory Toll-Free: +1 (888) 292-0070 U.S.: +1 (980) 683-5454 Collect: +1 (980) 388-4370 Email: [email protected] J.P. Morgan Securities LLC 383 Madison Avenue New York, New York 10179 United States U.S. Toll-Free: +1 (866) 834-4666; U.S. Telephone: +1 212 834 4818 D.F. King & Co., Inc. is the Tender and Information Agent for the Tender Offers. Any questions regarding procedures for tendering Notes or request for copies of the Offer to Purchase should be directed to D.F. King & Co., Inc. by any of the following means: by telephone at +1 (800) 290-6424 (toll-free) or +1 (212) 269-5550 (collect) or by email at [email protected]. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to sell or purchase, or the solicitation of tenders with respect to, the Notes. No offer, solicitation, purchase or sale will be made in any jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The Tender Offers are being made solely pursuant to the Offer to Purchase made available to holders of the Notes. None of the Company or its affiliates, their respective boards of directors, the dealer managers, the tender and information agent or the trustee with respect to any series of Notes is making any recommendation as to whether or not holders should tender or refrain from tendering all or any portion of their Notes in response to the Tender Offers. Holders are urged to evaluate carefully all information in the Offer to Purchase, consult their own investment and tax advisors and make their own decisions whether to tender Notes in the Tender Offers, and, if so, the principal amount of Notes to tender. About Coty Inc. Founded in Paris in 1904, Coty is one of the world's largest beauty companies with a portfolio of iconic brands across fragrance, color cosmetics, and skin and body care. Coty serves consumers around the world, selling prestige and mass market products in more than 125 countries and territories. Coty and its brands empower people to express themselves freely, creating their own visions of beauty; and Coty is committed to protecting the planet. Cautionary Notes Regarding Forward Looking Statements The statements contained in this press release include certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the securities laws. These forward-looking statements reflect Coty's current views with respect to, among other things, the proposed Tender Offers and the expected source of funds. These forward-looking statements are generally identified by words or phrases, such as "anticipate," "are going to," "estimate," "plan," "project," "expect," "believe," "intend," "foresee," "forecast," "will," "may," "should," "outlook," "continue," "target," "aim," "potential" and similar words or phrases. These statements are based on certain assumptions and estimates that Coty considers reasonable and are not guarantees of Coty's future performance, but are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Coty's control, which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from such statements, including the Company's ability to consummate the Tender Offers on the terms and timing described herein, or at all, and other factors identified in "Risk Factors" included in Coty's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023 and its subsequent quarterly report on Form 10-Q. All forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this press release, and Coty does not undertake any obligation, other than as may be required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking or cautionary statements to reflect changes in assumptions, the occurrence of events, unanticipated or otherwise, or changes in future operating results over time or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231121225712/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 21, 2023] Sungrow's 1+X Modular Inverter Enables Precise Diagnosis of Inverter Branch Faults Tweet HEFEI, China, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- In large-scale utility PV applications, Sungrow's 1+X Modular Inverter can assist with its intelligent branch diagnosis function, particularly beneficial when a system solution does not contain a combiner box or if the combiner box lacks communication capabilities. This innovative solution accurately identifies faulty branches within the inverter, providing real-time alerts for timely Operation and Maintenance (O&M). This proactive monitoring minimizes power plant losses and maximizes the customer's profitability. By collecting current and voltage parameters from each branch of the DC inputs, the 1+X Modular Inverter uses AI algorithms to analyze the operational status of each branch. In the event of a fault, it promptly signals the monitoring system, notifying the O&M staff to take necessary measures. Key Advantages: More Accurate Diagnosis: The 1+X Modular Inverter leverages a vast database compiled from real-world data acoss various industries and time periods. This, coupled with factors such as inverter output power, ensures highly accurate diagnostic results. More Diagnostic Types: The 1+X Modular Inverter can diagnose the combiner box offline, and the PV string offline, offering a comprehensive diagnostic solution for enhanced system reliability. About Sungrow Sungrow Power Supply Co., Ltd. ("Sungrow") is the world's most bankable inverter brand with over 405 GW installed worldwide as of June 2023. Founded in 1997 by University Professor Cao Renxian, Sungrow is a leader in the research and development of solar inverters with the largest dedicated R&D team in the industry and a broad product portfolio offering PV inverter solutions and energy storage systems for utility-scale, commercial & industrial, and residential applications, as well as internationally recognized floating PV plant solutions, NEV driving solutions, EV charging solutions and renewable hydrogen production systems. With a strong 26-year track record in the PV space, Sungrow products power over 150 countries worldwide. For more information about Sungrow, visit www.sungrowpower.com. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sungrows-1x-modular-inverter-enables-precise-diagnosis-of-inverter-branch-faults-301995402.html SOURCE Sungrow Power Supply Co., Ltd. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] MediaTek's New Dimensity 8300 Chipset Redefines Premium Experiences in 5G Smartphones Tweet DUBAI, UAE, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- MediaTek today announced the Dimensity 8300, a power-efficient chipset designed for premium 5G smartphones. As the newest SoC in the Dimensity 8000 lineup, this chipset combines generative AI capabilities, low-power savings, adaptive gaming technology, and fast connectivity to bring flagship-level experiences to the premium 5G smartphone segment. Based on TSMC's 2nd generation 4nm process, the Dimensity 8300 has an octa-core CPU with four Arm Cortex-A715 cores and four Cortex-A510 cores built on Arm's latest v9 CPU architecture. With this powerful core configuration, the Dimensity 8300 boasts 20% faster CPU performance and 30% peak gains in power efficiency compared to the previous generation chipset. Additionally, the Dimensity 8300's Mali-G615 MC6 GPU upgrade provides up to 60% greater performance and 55% better power efficiency. Plus, the chipset's impressive memory and storage speeds ensure users can enjoy smooth and dynamic experiences in gaming, lifestyle applications, photography, and more. "With MediaTek's optimized Dimensity 8000 series, consumers don't have to pick and choose between accessibility and premier experiences like flagship-grade memory or accelerated AI capabilities they can have it all," said Dr. Yenchi Lee, Deputy General Manager of MediaTek's Wireless Communications Business Unit. "The Dimensity 8300 unlocks new possibilities for the premium smartphone segment, offering users in-hand AI, hyper-realistic entertinment opportunities, and seamless connectivity without sacrificing efficiency." The MediaTek Dimensity 8300 is the first premium-tier SoC to come with full generative AI support, thanks to the APU 780 AI processor integrated into the chipset. This enables the Dimensity 8300 to provide support to developers to build innovative applications that leverage large language models (LLMs) up to 10B, as well as stable diffusion. The APU 780 features the same architecture as the flagship Dimensity 9300 SoC, resulting in 2x improvement in INT and FP16 computation and a 3.3x boost in AI performance over the Dimensity 8200.These AI capabilities, combined with MediaTek's 14-bit HDR-ISP Imagiq 980, will take premium smartphone photography and video capturing to new heights. Users will be able to capture sharper, clearer videos at 4K60 HDR, and record for longer thanks to the Dimensity 8300's extremely power efficient design. To further optimize battery life, MediaTek's next generation of HyperEngine adaptive game technology offers advanced power savings enhancements. Leveraging exclusive performance algorithms, the Dimensity 8300 intelligently adapts to computing demands and monitors device temperature, keeping devices cool while optimizing gameplay so users can enjoy full FPS, low lag, and seamless rendering. The Dimensity 8300 supports ultra-fast speeds with a built-in 3GPP Release-16 standard 5G modem which utilizes scenario-specific optimizations to provide improved connectivity in environments that have weaker connections. These optimizations amplify sub-6GHz performance and range for a more reliable connectivity experience. The modem supports 3CC carrier aggregation, with up to 5.17Gbps downlink speeds. Other key features of the MediaTek Dimensity 8300 include: LP5x 8533Mbps and uFS4.0 MCQ memory provides a 33% speed boost on LPDDR and up to 100% faster R/W to flash compared to Dimensity 8300's predecessor. MediaTek 5G UltraSave 3.0+ improves 5G power efficiency up to 20% in daily usage scenarios compared to the previous generation. Upgraded Wi-Fi 6E performance with 160 MHz bandwidth, plus Wi-Fi/Bluetooth hybrid coexistence technology so earbuds, wireless gamepads, and other peripherals work together seamlessly. Dimensity 5G Open Resource Architecture (DORA), allowing device makers to create unmatched smartphones that stand out in unique ways amongst competitors. Dimensity 8300 will power 5G devices launching in the global market before the end of 2023. To learn more about MediaTek's Dimensity portfolio, please visit: https://i.mediatek.com/mediatek-5g. Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2283399/MediaTek_Dimensity_8300.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/mediateks-new-dimensity-8300-chipset-redefines-premium-experiences-in-5g-smartphones-301995497.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] Cybersecurity in Banking Market to Reach $282 Billion Globally by 2032 at 14.4% CAGR: Allied Market Research Tweet The growing digital transformation in banking and technological advancements in banks & financial institutions are anticipated to drive the growth of the global cybersecurity in banking market during the forecast period. The Asia-Pacific region is projected to hold the majority of the market share by 2032. PORTLAND, Ore., Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Allied Market Research has recently published a report, titled, "Cybersecurity in Banking Market by Type (Data Protection, Governance, Risk and Compliance, Email Security and Awareness, Cloud Security, Network Security, Identity and Access Management, Security Consulting, Web Security, IoT/OT, End point Security, Application Security, Security and Operations Management, Others), by Organization Size (Small, Medium, Large), by Deployment Mode (Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Data Center, Managed Services): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2023-2032". According to the report, the global cybersecurity in banking market generated $74.3 billion in 2022, and is anticipated to generate $ 282 billion by 2032, rising at a CAGR of 14.4% from 2023 to 2032. (We are providing report as per your research requirement, including the Latest Industry Insight's Evolution, Potential and COVID-19 Impact Analysis) 127 - Tables 48 - Charts 260 Pages Download Research Report Sample & TOC: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-sample/13103 Prime Determinants of Growth The digital transformation and the rising adoption of critical IT infrastructure within the banking sector are the factors expected to drive the growth of the global cybersecurity in banking market in the forecast period from 2023 to 2032. However, the shortfall of skilled professionals may hamper the cybersecurity in banking market growth in the coming future. On the contrary, the development of the various technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, Internet-of-Things (IoT), 5G, and other in banks and financial institutions is expected to offer remunerative opportunities for the expansion of the cybersecurity in banking market during the forecast period. Report Coverage & Details: Report Coverage Details Forecast Period 20232032 Base Year 2022 Market Size in 2022 $74.3 billion Market Size in 2032 $282 billion CAGR 14.4 % No. of Pages in Report 294 Segments covered Type, Organization Size, Deployment Mode, and Region Drivers Growing digital transformation in banking Increasing cyber threats Adoption of critical IT infrastructure within the banking sector Opportunities Technological advancements in banks and financial institutions Collaboration between traditional banks and fintech startups Restraints Lack of skilled professionals Procure Complete Report (294 Pages PDF with Insights, Charts, Tables, and Figures) @ https://bit.ly/3R9g6bx COVID-19 Scenario The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the growth of the global cybersecurity in banking market. Rapid increase in new pandemic-related threats along with a rise in challenges caused by enforced work from home guidelines led to insecure gaps in financial institutional networks. During the pandemic, the global financial system went through a tremendous digital transformation. Moreover, the pandemic led to an increase in demand for online financial services and made work from home arrangements a new normal. Moreover, the increase in online shopping from fraudulent sites during the pandemic led to concerns over sharing data, leaving consumers worried about their digital identity and personal information online. Therefore, several people faced financial losses due to less awareness about online activities and transactions during the pandemic chaos. Type: Cloud Security Sub-segment to Continue its Dominance During the Forecast Period The cloud security sub-segment of the global cybersecurity in banking market accounted for the largest share of 14.1% in 2022 and is expected to grow at the highest CAGR of 18.4% by 2032. This is mainly because of the trend to migrate workloads to the cloud across various sectors especially in banking sector. The adoption of cloud services for improving the security of products and services is increasing in the banking sector. Furthermore, financial services organizations are likely taking centralization of cloud responsibilities which is helping them to control costs by formation of different policies and governing cloud use. Organization Size: Large Sub-segment to Hold Major Market Share by 2032 The large sub-segment of the global cybersecurity in banking market accounted for the largest share of 48.2% in 2022 and is expected to continue to dominate in terms of market share by 2032. This is mainly because of the high spending by large banks on cybersecurity as compared to small and medium sized banks. The growing need for securing the products and services against cyberattacks in large organizations is expected to boost the sub-segment's growth during the forecast period. Deployment Mode: Public Cloud Sub-segment to Flourish Immensely by 2032 The public cloud sub-segment of the global market accounted for the highest share of 32.4% in 2022 and is projected to rise at the highest CAGR of 15.5% during the forecast period. This is mainly because public cloud offers various benefits as compared to private cloud, such as infrastructure cost efficiency, infinite scalability, agility and speed to the market, security and resilience, and future proofing. In addition, the use of public clouds also allows banks and other financial services firms to deploy applications quickly without having to worry about hardware maintenance or software upgrades. Therefore, the demand for public cloud deployment is expected to rise in the future. Get Customized Reports with your Requirements: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/request-for-customization/13103 Region: Asia-Pacific Market to be the Most Dominant by 2032 The cybersecurity in banking market in the Asia-Pacific region accounted for the largest share of 48.1% in 2022 and is predicted to grow at the highest CAGR of 15.2% during the forecast period from 2023 to 2032. This growth is mainly due to the rising usage of mobile banking and the growing banking sector in various countries of the region. been the world's largest regional banking market for a decade. The presence of various banks, such as China Construction Bank Corp., Bank of China Ltd., and Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. are few leading players in this region. Leading Players in the Cybersecurity in Banking Market: Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. jp morgan chase & nspcc BNP Paribas Agriculture Bank of China citi group Barclays PLC HSBC Bank of China Limited Wells Fargo & Company & Company Standard Chartered PLC bank of america The report provides a detailed analysis of the key players of the global cybersecurity in banking market. These players have adopted different strategies, such as new product launches, collaborations, expansion, joint ventures, agreements, and others to increase their market share and maintain their dominance in different regions. The report is valuable in highlighting business performance, operating segments, product portfolio, and strategic moves of market players to showcase the competitive scenario. Inquiry before Buying: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/purchase-enquiry/13103 Trending Reports in BFSI Industry (Book Now with 10% Discount + COVID-19 Scenario): Operational Risk Management Consulting Services in Manufacturing Market by Type (People Risk/Internal Fraud, Systems Risk/Technological Failure, External Risk, Legal and Regulatory Risk, Process Risk, Others), by Organization Size (Large Enterprises, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), by Manufacturing Type (Process Manufacturing, Discrete Manufacturing): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2031. Risk Management Consulting Services Market Size, Share, Competitive Landscape and Trend Analysis Report by Types (Network risk, Operational risk, Financial and financial risks, Other), by Enterprise Size (SME, Large Enterprise) and Region: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2022-2032. Multi-Cloud Networking in Fintech Market by Component (Solution, Service), by Enterprise Size (Large Enterprises, SMEs), by Cloud Type (Public, Private): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2031. Public Cloud in BFSI Market by Component (Software, Services), by Type (Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service, Others), by Enterprise Size (Large Enterprises, SMEs), by End User (Banking, NBFCs, Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2031. Hybrid Cloud in BFSI Market by Component (Solution and Services), Type (Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS)), Enterprise Size (Large Enterprises and Small & Medium Size Enterprises), and End User (Banking, NBFCs and Others): Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2021-2030. About Us: Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business-consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Wilmington, Delaware. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports Insights" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain. We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Allied Market Research CEO Pawan Kumar is instrumental in inspiring and encouraging everyone associated with the company to maintain high quality of data and help clients in every way possible to achieve success. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry. Contact: David Correa 1209 Orange Street, Corporation Trust Center, Wilmington, New Castle, Delaware 19801 USA. Int'l: +1-503-894-6022 Toll Free: +1-800-792-5285 UK: +44-845-528-1300 India (Pune): +91-20-66346060 Fax: +1-800-792-5285 [email protected] Allied Market Research Blog: https://blog.alliedmarketresearch.com BFSI Blog Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/636519/Allied_Market_Research_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/cybersecurity-in-banking-market-to-reach-282-billion-globally-by-2032-at-14-4-cagr-allied-market-research-301995459.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] FPT Joins SAP Regional Strategic Services Partner Initiative in Asia Pacific Japan Tweet Global IT services provider FPT today announced that it has joined the SAP Regional Strategic Services Partner (RSSP) initiative, established by SAP Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) to expand the capabilities and reach of established partners in the APJ region that are on a rapid growth trajectory. Through the RSSP initiative, SAP will provide eligible partners with strategic support, which may include coordinated industry-aligned solutions, a joint go-to-market strategy, and access to SAP regional and market unit industry expertise. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231120391277/en/ FPT and SAP's strategic partnership signing ceremony was attended by FPT Chairman Truong Gia Binh, SAP Asia Pacific and Japan President Paul Marriott, RWE AG CIO Edgar Aschenbrenner, and other senior executives. (Photo: Business Wire) The RSSP initiative will enable FPT to scale its SAP practice more rapidly across the APJ region and work more closely with SAP to drive joint customer success. Unlike SAP's existing Global Strategic Services Partner (GSSP) programme, which includes a select group of the company's most strategic global consulting, infrastructure, and technology partners, the RSSP initiative is designed to facilitate collaboration within partner organisations based in the region that demonstrate capabilities and capacity requirements specific to the needs of APJ customers. FPT's SAP implementation and maintenance services are built on a strong foundation of a vast pool of certified and experienced SAP resources and well-established project management framewoks, with over 900 certifications and a dedicated team of SAP consultants. "At FPT, we are passionate about building a happier future for individuals, fostering success for organizations, and prosperity for nations. The 20 years of partnership between SAP and FPT has been a journey of happiness, because we shared a purpose - the purpose to enable enterprises in Vietnam and worldwide to manage their resources with efficiency, with transformation and with growth and expansion," said Dr. Truong Gia Binh, FPT Chairman. "We have fostered collaborations with many world-class leaders to enable successful digital transformation for our customers. This collaboration with SAP allows us to leverage their industry expertise and resources to offer enhanced SAP S/4HANA Cloud migration service and managed service to meet the growing needs of our customers in the Asia Pacific Japan region," said Pham Minh Tuan, Chief Executive Officer, FPT Software. "SAP has a vibrant and fast-growing partner ecosystem in the region. Many of our APJ-based partners have thousands of SAP-certified consultants worldwide and deliver hundreds of SAP-related projects every year. We have a unique opportunity to do more with our regional partners and drive more innovation and value for our customers," said Utkarsh Maheshwari, Chief Partner Officer, SAP Asia Pacific Japan. "We welcome and congratulate FPT Corporation on joining the SAP Regional Strategic Services Partner initiative," he added. To qualify for the SAP RSSP initiative, candidate partners must meet or exceed a defined set of SAP criteria, including geographic presence, vertical industry competencies, and alignment on a common sustainability strategy. FPT's collaboration with SAP dates to 2003, with many successful joint digital transformation projects across various sectors, including Manufacturing, BFSI and Energy. Prior to joining the RSSP initiative, FPT received multiple awards from SAP over the years, including SAP Partner of the Year for Vietnam, Outstanding Performance in Midmarket Partner of the Year, and Best RISE Partner of the Year, which was recently announced at SAP Partner Success Summit in April 2023. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. About FPT FPT Corporation (FPT) is a globally leading technology and IT services provider headquartered in Vietnam. FPT operates in three core sectors: Technology, Telecommunications, and Education. During over three decades of development, FPT has constantly provided practical and effective products to millions of people and tens of thousands of business and non-business organizations worldwide, establishing Vietnam's position on the global tech map. Keeping up with the latest market trends and emerging technologies, FPT has developed the Made-by-FPT ecosystem of services, products, solutions and platforms, which enables sustainable growth for organizations and businesses and offers distinctive experiences to customers. In 2022, FPT recorded total revenue of US$1.87 billion and 60,000+ employees. For more information, please visit https://fpt.com.vn/en. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231120391277/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] Polish Mobile Payment System BLIK to Modernize and Expand into Romania and Slovakia with DXC Technology Tweet DXC to develop existing platform to drive new business opportunities in new markets WARSAW, Poland, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- DXC Technology, a leading Fortune 500 global technology services provider, will support Polish Payment Standard (PSP) in the expansion of its mobile payment system, BLIK, into Romania and Slovakia. DXC will modernize and adapt the BLIK central system to meet payment standards in Romania and Slovakia. DXC will ensure BLIK is able to handle transactions in Romanian Leu and Euros, and can connect to the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) system. Continuing a nine-year relationship, DXC will use software engineering to help develop PSP's essential activities, adapting the existing system to serve the fastest-growing e-commerce segments in Romania and Slovakia, and providing daily technical support. One of the largest payment systems in Poland, BLIK is at the forefront of driving a new era of digital payments in the region. Between July and September 2023, BLIK facilitated 455 million transactions worth 63 billion PLN ($15.7 billion USD). "BLIK is highly regarded in Poland and we have confidence that our solution will easily meet the requirements to integrate with other large European banks. This will help us grow the number of users engaging in e-commerce payments," said Dariusz Mazurkiewicz, President at Polish Payment Standard. "We are pleased to have the support of an experienced partner in DXC that can help us implement our plans." PSP is a joint venture between six leading Polish banks (Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Santander Bank Polska, ING Bank Slask, mBank and PKO Bank Polski) and Mastercard. BLIK, introduced in 2015, is a key part of Poland's shift towards a common payment system. It allows customers to use their mobile phones to withdraw cash from more than 20,000 ATMs and facilitates hundreds of thousands of digital payment transactions. "This is a major project for Polish and European banking. As a trusted partner, we will help PSP innovate the BLIK solution on a global scale to achieve international success," said Michal Burda, Country General Manager at DXC Technology Poland. Forward Looking Statements All statements in this press release that do not directly and exclusively relate to historical facts constitute "forward-looking statements." These statements represent current expectations and beliefs, and no assurance can be given that the results described in such statements will be achieved. Such statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements, many of which are outside of our control. For a written description of these factors, see the section titled "Risk Factors" in DXC's upcoming Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023, and any updating information in subsequent SEC filings. No assurance can be given that any goal or plan set forth in any forward-looking statement can or will be achieved, and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements which speak only as of the date they are made. We do not undertake any obligation to update or release any revisions to any forward-looking statement or to report any events or circumstances after the date of this report or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events except as required by law. About DXC Technology DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC) helps global companies run their mission-critical systems and operations while modernizing IT, optimizing data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. The world's largest companies and public sector organizations trust DXC to deploy services to drive new levels of performance, competitiveness, and customer experience across their IT estates. Learn more about how we deliver excellence for our customers and colleagues at DXC.com. About BLIK BLIK is a common standard for mobile payments. Currently, virtually every customer of domestic payment institutions offering a mobile application has the opportunity to use BLIK in mobile banking applications. Polish Payment Standard (PSP) is responsible for the development of the system. PSP is constantly developing BLIK's capabilities so that the system is as functional as possible for its users. The shareholders of PSP are: Alior Bank, Bank Millennium, Santander Bank Polska, ING Bank Slaski, mBank, PKO Bank Polish and Mastercard. For more information, please see: https://blik.com/ CONTACT: Aleksandra Andreasik-Binkowska, DXC Media Relations Poland, [email protected] Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2281743/DXC_Technology_Company_Polish_Mobile_Payment_System_BLIK_to_Mode.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/polish-mobile-payment-system-blik-to-modernize-and-expand-into-romania-and-slovakia-with-dxc-technology-301994061.html [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Abbas Ganbay "The Armenian leadership's decision not to participate in the joint CSTO meeting is regrettable," Russian Foreign Ministry press service chief Maria Zakharova said during a weekly briefing today, Azernews reports. "We do not believe that it meets the interests of the Armenian people and will contribute to strengthening the security and stability of this friendly country. At the same time, as we understand, our Armenian colleagues do not intend to block the work of the organization's statutory bodies and hinder the work of already agreed-upon statutory documents. In fact, this leaves the door open for Yerevan to join the follow-up work. We hope that our Armenian colleagues will use this opportunity in the not-too-distant future," Zakharova noted. Zakharova stressed that Russia is convinced that the CSTO will play an important role in ensuring regional stability in the South Caucasus. "The deployment of a CSTO monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the decision on which is still on the table, would be a weighty factor in terms of ensuring Armenia's security, unlike the EU mission, which continues to demonstrate its complete ineffectiveness and fulfill tasks that are far from the declared ones," Zakharova added. Recall that on November 14, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced his decision not to participate in the CSTO meeting on November 23 during a telephone conversation with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also reminded Yerevan that the Armenian leadership's refusal to participate in the Minsk meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) is not in the interests of the Armenian people. "The decision of the Armenian leadership not to participate in the joint CSTO meeting is certainly regrettable. We do not believe that it meets the long-term interests of the Armenian people," the Russian Foreign Ministry said. It should be noted that Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Alen Simonyan said that they would not participate in the Minsk meeting of the CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organisation. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi reviewed in a meeting with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in Dubai on Thursday cooperation between Egypt and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in light of the program to fully implement Egypts economic reforms. [November 22, 2023] Research consortium led by Finland-based VTT and Lockheed Martin will develop signals intelligence technologies benefiting the global defence industry Tweet HELSINKI, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The aim of the cooperation project is to develop methods and technologies for radar and communication signal detection and classification on a modern battlefield, filled with emitters with low-probability of interception and detection signals. The framework agreement, signed on November 21, initiates long-term cooperation between Lockheed Martin, the Finnish research community, and the Finnish industry, creating relationships that benefit all parties. The agreement is connected to Finland's procurement of the F-35 fighter jets. Research consortium led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Lockheed Martin have finalised a frame agreement for indirect industrial cooperation. Other members of the consortium are defence and technology company Patria, Harp Technologies, a Finnish SME active in space, defence, and remote sensing technologies, and two leading, innovative Finnish universities: Aalto University and the University of Tampere. Finland is a leading nation of digital technologies. The state-owned VTT, founded more than 80 years ago during World War II to develop the most advanced technologies and products in the world, has previously developed ground-breaking satellite signal technology for the European Space Agency ESA, resulting in the world's first 75 GHz signals that could ease clutter on the radio waves in the future. "The purpose of the project is to combine the expertise and technological strengths of different parties, creating highly developed solutions and advanced new expertise that can be applied to the needs of the international defence industry, and to the products of next-generation electronic reconnaissance," says Sauli Eloranta, Vice President of Safe and Connected Society Research Area at VTT. For Finland, the project will also help strengthen the security of supply concerning the country's own technological expertise and talent. The project will, e.g., help draw new students to study and work with the subject of digital defence technologies, creating a pathway for the new professionals to join both national and international defence industry companies over time. Through indirect industrial cooperation initiatives, Lockheed Martin will build and benefit from industry partnerships with Finnish companies, universities and colleges, offering opportunities and new avenues to develop and strengthen the cooperation far into the future. "The cooperation is a significant step for VTT and Finland at large. We are very keen on assessing additional future cooperation opportunities with Lockheed Martin. The technology cooperation offers us an opportunity to continue to develop our strong expertise in defence technologies and to increase cooperation with other defence industry actors," concludes Eloranta. The project is expected to last three years. Lockheed Martin and VTT are also looking to sign another framework agreement for a second project focusing on millimeter-wave passive imaging radiometer development during 2023, with the work aiming to start in 2024. More information about Lockheed Martin and VTT's collaboration. More information about the consortium members: Patria, Aalto University, Tampere University and Harp Technologies Oy. For additional information: Sauli Eloranta, Vice President, Safe and Connected Society, VTT [email protected], tel. +358 40 580 8664 Media material: Image: Lockheed Martin F-35 Credits: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Finland Industrial Development MOA Signing took place on 21 November 2023. Credit: Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Further information on VTT: Kirsi Jaatinen Communications Manager +358 20 722 6757, [email protected] www.vtt.fi The following files are available for download: https://news.cision.com/vtt-info/i/lockheed-martin-f-35,c3241327 Lockheed Martin F-35 https://news.cision.com/vtt-info/i/lockheed-martin-and-vtt-industrial-development-moa-signing,c3241835 Lockheed Martin and VTT industrial development MOA signing https://news.cision.com/vtt-info/i/lockheed-martin-and-vtt-industrial-development-moa-signing-2,c3241854 Lockheed Martin and VTT industrial development MOA signing 2 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/research-consortium-led-by-finland-based-vtt-and-lockheed-martin-will-develop-signals-intelligence-technologies-benefiting-the-global-defence-industry-301995738.html SOURCE VTT Info [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] Xuan Wu Cloud and Huawei Cloud Signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to Create a Large Model for the Consumer Goods Industry, Empowering Intelligent Growth in the Industry Tweet SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 22, during the Huawei Cloud Pangu Large Model Forum in Shenzhen, Xuan Wu Cloud and Huawei Cloud officially entered into a memorandum of cooperation. Utilizing Huawei Cloud's Pangu Large Model and Ascend AI Cloud Service, the two companies will work together to develop a large model tailored for the consumer goods industry, fostering intelligent transformation upgrade within the sector. Present at the event, Xuan Wu Cloud's Chief Operating Officer & Senior Vice President, GUO Haiqiu, and Huawei Cloud's Director of EI Service Product Department, YOU Peng, signed the agreement on behalf of their respective organizations. It is understood that in this collaboration, both parties aim to capitalize on their strengths and actively participate in collaborative innovation and technological breakthroughs, with the goal of developing a comprehensive model for the consumer goods industry. Both sides target to deepen cooperation across diverse areas, including cloud infrastructure, large models, and applications. Additionally, they will collaboratively explore business models for the future, identify potential business opportunities, and achieve mutual success through cooperation at all levels in resources, technology, and beyond. GUO Haiqiu stated that this collaboration presented an excellent opportunity for mutual growth in the evolving era of AI within the consumer goods industry. It bears positive implications on Xuan Wu Cloud's future market expansion and product innovation. As a prominent domestic provider of intelligent CRM services, Xuan Wu Cloud has built a robust technological fondation incorporating AI (Artificial Intelligence), DI (Data Intelligence), aPaaS (Low-Code Development Platform), and cPaaS (Cloud Communication Platform) and key SaaS product applications, including Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Service Cloud, empowering clients in high-growth sectors like FMCG and finance to undergo intelligent transformation and elevate their capabilities. It's noteworthy that Xuan Wu Cloud currently stands as the sole player in the Chinese CRM industry, boasting independent AI full-stack technological innovation. Recently, they introduced a large multimodal model for mass consumption named "Xuan Tao" and AIGC applications covering large consumer terminal business scenarios. In terms of industry expertise, Xuan Wu Cloud has devoted over a decade to vertically integrating within the consumer goods sector, and achieved a market share of over 20% among billion-scale customer groups in sectors such as liquor and food. This signifies that Xuan Wu Cloud has garnered extensive experience through successful collaborations with top-tier clients, business scenario applications, and the accumulation of substantial data in the consumer goods sector. To drive the widespread adoption of AI in industries, Huawei Cloud consistently aligns with the "AI for Industries" approach, integrating AI technology with industry expertise. Building on the continuous advancements in Ascend AI Cloud Service and the Pangu Large Model, Huawei Cloud has crafted large models tailored for sectors including mining, government affairs, automotive, meteorology, finance, manufacturing, railways, drug research and development, and digital humans. These models aim to enhance services for customers, partners, and developers, facilitating intelligent upgrades across industries. In support of the efficient innovation of various large models, Huawei Cloud has established three major AI cloud computing centers in Gui'an, Ulanqab, and Wuhu to provide surging Ascend AI computing power to enterprises and accelerate AI to reshape industries. "Looking ahead, we aim to establish the outstanding large model within the domestic consumer goods industry by integrating Xuan Wu Cloud's AI applications and industry expertise on the foundation laid by Huawei Cloud's Pangu Large Model. This comprehensive initiative empowers the consumer goods sector for its digital transformation and advancement toward intelligent growth," shared GUO Haiqiu. He further added, "Concurrently, both parties will sustain and deepen collaboration in the AI domain. As we embark on the journey towards digitalization in the consumer goods industry, we will march forward hand in hand, sharing the value and opportunities presented by the new era of AI." View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/xuan-wu-cloud-and-huawei-cloud-signed-a-memorandum-of-cooperation-to-create-a-large-model-for-the-consumer-goods-industry-empowering-intelligent-growth-in-the-industry-301994638.html SOURCE Xuan Wu Cloud Technology Holdings Limited [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] Infosys and TK Elevator Extend Strategic Collaboration Tweet To consolidate, harmonize and modernize the digital landscape of TK Elevator with an AI-first strategy BENGALURU, India, Nov. 22, 2023 /CNW/ -- Infosys (NSE: INFY) (BSE: INFY) (NYSE: INFY), a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, today announced a strategic long-term collaboration with TK Elevator (TKE), one of the world's leading urban mobility companies. As a part of the engagement, Infosys will consolidate, harmonize, and modernize TK Elevator's digital landscape. The engagement aims to continually innovate and transform the company's application and IT environment, leveraging an AI-first strategy powered by Infosys Topaz, an AI-first set of services, solutions and platforms using generative AI technologies. The two companies will work together to transition the operations of all TK Elevator's business applications across North America and major markets in Europe to Infosys, thereby enabling integrated applications management. This will not only help unify the underlying infrastructure operations to enable an end-to-end, business process-focused operational paradigm, but also contribute to a simplified and agile digital landscape. Some of the key deliverables of this collaboration include: Application management: Infosys will leverage its Live Enterprise Application Management Platform (LEAP), a cloud-enabled platform to provide NextGen Application Management Services and part of Infosys Cobalt, to deliver a user-centric, business outcome-driven solution. Underlying infrastructure: Infosys will lead Software-defined Wide Area Network (SD WAN) transformation and operations, in addition to the existing Service Desk, Data Center,Cloud, LAN, and Workplace. Future-ready IT model: Infosys will also work towards delivering an integrated applications and underlying infrastructure operating model, including Service Integration and Management (SIAM). Susan Poon , Global CIO at TK Elevator, said, "Technology empowers our employees and business associates to deliver high-quality services to customers and users across the value chain. We are delighted to significantly expand our collaboration with Infosys, which brings end-to-end digital transformation capabilities, helping us accelerate our business transformation and to realize our strategic vision." "We aim to bring diverse geographies and business units together with this strategic collaboration. The enhanced collaboration with Infosys will enable a strong, globally harmonized technology backbone, while simultaneously contributing to deliver savings for TK Elevator. With this new initiative, we are confident that Infosys will help us stay a step ahead in a dynamic and competitive landscape," said, Sebastian Oberst, Global Head IT Governance at TK Elevator. Jasmeet Singh, Executive Vice President and Global Head, Manufacturing, Infosys, said, "As manufacturers reimagine their business, they are increasingly looking to refresh the core of their technology stack and application support processes. We are excited to collaborate with TK Elevator and usher an advanced infrastructure and applications services operating model that will help harmonize and future-proof their IT operations and accelerate their digital transformation objectives. Infosys Cobalt and Infosys Topaz will serve as the core of TK Elevator's digital strategy, providing the agility and resilience needed to realize their vision." About Infosys Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. Over 300,000 of our people work to amplify human potential and create the next opportunity for people, businesses and communities. We enable clients in more than 56 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With over four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer clients, as they navigate their digital transformation powered by cloud and AI. We enable them with an AI-first core, empower the business with agile digital at scale and drive continuous improvement with always-on learning through the transfer of digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem. We are deeply committed to being a well-governed, environmentally sustainable organization where diverse talent thrives in an inclusive workplace. Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NSE, BSE, NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next. Safe Harbor Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects, or our future financial or operating performance are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding the execution of our business strategy, our ability to attract and retain personnel, our transition to hybrid work model, economic uncertainties, technological innovations such as Generative AI, the complex and evolving regulatory landscape including immigration regulation changes, our ESG vision, our capital allocation policy and expectations concerning our market position, future operations, margins, profitability, liquidity, capital resources, and our corporate actions including acquisitions. Important factors that may cause actual results or outcomes to differ from those implied by the forward-looking statements are discussed in more detail in our US Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company unless it is required by law. Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/633365/Infosys_Logo.jpg View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/infosys-and-tk-elevator-extend-strategic-collaboration-301995765.html SOURCE Infosys [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] Valens Semiconductor to Participate in the Goldman Sachs 15th Annual Global Automotive Conference in London HOD HASHARON, Israel, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Valens Semiconductor (NYSE: VLN), a premier provider of high-performance connectivity solutions for the audio-video and automotive markets, today announced that it will participate in the Goldman Sachs Global Automotive Conference being held in London on December 6, 2023. 15th Annual Global Automotive Conference: Valens Semiconductor CEO Gideon Ben-Zvi will be available for one-on-one meetings during the conference. For more information about the event or questions about registration, please reach out to your contacts at Goldman Sachs. About Valens Semiconductor Valens Semiconductor is a leader in high-perormance connectivity, enabling customers to transform the digital experiences of people worldwide. Valens' chipsets are integrated into countless devices from leading customers, powering state-of-the-art audio-video installations, next-generation videoconferencing, and enabling the evolution of ADAS and autonomous driving. Pushing the boundaries of connectivity, Valens sets the standard everywhere it operates, and its technology forms the basis for the leading industry standards such as HDBaseT and MIPI A-PHY. For more information, visit https://www.valens.com. Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1517334/Valens_Logo.jpg Valens Semiconductor Investor Contacts: Daphna Golden Vice President Investor Relations Valens Semiconductor Ltd. [email protected] Margaret Boyce Financial Profiles, Inc. [email protected] View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/valens-semiconductor-to-participate-in-the-goldman-sachs-15th-annual-global-automotive-conference-in-london-301995712.html SOURCE Valens Semiconductor [November 22, 2023] Slenergy's Smart Factory Enhances Product Reliability in the Renewable Energy Landscape FRANKFURT, Germany, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Slenergy, a leading innovator in the renewable energy industry, celebrates significant success in Europe with its ground-breaking iShare-Home one-stop residential energy solution. The iShare-Home solar system debuted in Germany this May, and a tailored version was introduced to Italian households in Milan this October. Designed to tackle current challenges in the residential solar energy landscape, Slenergy's iShare-Home system offers capacities ranging from 4-15 kW. This one-stop solution, distinguished by standardized system design, modular product design, easy installation and smart energy management, incorporates PV modules, hybrid inverter, energy storage, cable set, mounting structure and smart monitoring system. In a solar industry driven by a promising future, innovative technology and robust competition, Slenergy distinguishes itself through unmatched local service and unprecedented one-stop solution with product reliability as its core. The company ensures superior reliability by leveraging its cutting-edge smart factory. As a new entrant in PV backed by a decade-long expertise in electronics, Slenergy isdedicated to advancing the industry through precision manufacturing. The company has redefined the manufacturing landscape by introducing an industry-leading automated production line grounded in lean principles that surpasses conventional mechanization. Situated within Slenergy's 380-mu industrial park, the 68,000 m2 smart factory serves as a center of seamless automation. Beyond advanced automation, Slenergy's manufacturing process rests on two additional pillars: a robust process control system and high-level vertical supply chain integration. By linking to materials at the deepest industry level, Slenergy's control system enables comprehensive recording and analysis of manufacturing data. The vertical integration of the entire supply chain optimizes efficiency in the manufacturing process and speed to delivery. Slenergy's smart factory rigorously implements risk control strategies across all phases, including incoming materials, production, inspection and quality sampling. Through real-time system-level quality control in the entire production process, Slenergy closely monitors the manufacturing process to uphold quality commitments. This comprehensive quality approach, monitoring both the system and products, is critical for fulfilling Slenergy's pursuit of excellence while delivering consistently high-quality products. With the successful achievements of its iShare-Home solution in Europe, Slenergy is realizing its vision of driving the global transition toward renewable energy. As the company expands internationally, its pioneering smart factory ensures the high quality of its one-stop systems. Through continued innovation in the new energy sector, Slenergy promises to advance energy independence and reduce carbon footprints by providing reliable, affordable and sustainable energy solutions. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/slenergys-smart-factory-enhances-product-reliability-in-the-renewable-energy-landscape-301995886.html SOURCE SLENERGY [November 22, 2023] Laura Kinder, President of Daversa Partners, Wins 'Woman of the Year' for Business Intelligence Group's 2023 BIG Awards Tweet Today, Laura Kinder, President of Daversa Partners, has been honored with the prestigious 'Woman of the Year' award for Business Intelligence Group's 2023 BIG Awards for Business. This accolade not only spotlights Laura's remarkable leadership prowess but also stands as a powerful endorsement of her significant contributions to the technology sector. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122824069/en/ Laura Kinder, President of Daversa Partners, Wins 'Woman of the Year' for Business Intelligence Group's 2023 BIG Awards. (Graphic: Business Wire) At the age of 28, Laura ascended to Partner distinguishing herself as one of the industry's leading executive headhunters. Her remarkable leadership has propelled Daversa Partners to the forefront of the industry, earning the firm numerous recognitions from Forbes and Fortune. As a result, Daversa Partners has set new benchmarks for industry excellence, and has established itself as a premier workplace. p> Recognized as one of Crain's Most Notable Women in Tech, Laura leads one of the most prolific executive search practices in the firm. Over the past 15+ years, she has made over 1,000 successful placements across both consumer and B2B businesses. Her role in building leadership teams for transformative companies has earned her the trust and endorsement of leading investors and founders. Founder and CEO, Paul Daversa, emphasized, "Laura is not just extraordinary; she is a catalyst in our industry. Her influence stretches beyond her role as a trusted advisor to an endless list of founders, funders, and operators; she is a game-changer who has launched Daversa Partners into unparalleled heights. Laura's status as one of the trailblazing women in tech is indisputable. In just two short years, she has flawlessly transitioned from Senior Partner to President. Her unique ability to generate unmatched value has been vital to our company's success." "In the spirit of achievement and excellence, we congratulate Laura Kinder on her outstanding success in 2023. This victory exemplifies the highest standards of innovation and business acumen," said Maria Jimenez, chief nominations officer. "Kudos to all the winners who have demonstrated unparalleled excellence, collectively shaping the future of business. May this recognition inspire continued greatness in the years to come." About Daversa Partners Daversa Partners is technology's premier executive search firm that builds the leadership teams for growth and venture-backed companies. Our global footprint spans two continents giving our high-performance teams visibility into the entirety of the market. We are dedicated to developing meaningful relationships with entrepreneurs, executives, and investors across Consumer and Enterprise businesses. We believe that the most successful companies achieve major breakthroughs by acquiring extraordinary talent. These people are hard to find and even harder to recruit, they are Material Impact Executives; we only recruit these people. This is what sets us apartand this is what makes Daversa the search partner of choice. For more information on Daversa Partners please visit www.daversapartners.com About Business Intelligence Group The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry and business award programs, business executives-those with experience and knowledge-judge the programs. The organization's proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and then rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122824069/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] Generational Change at JAB: Joachim Creus Appointed CEO Tweet JAB is pleased to announce that Managing Partner Joachim Creus has been appointed CEO of JAB. Additionally, Mr. Creus will continue to serve as Vice Chairman of the JAB Board and is the designated successor to Chairman Peter Harf. JAB also announced that Frank Engelen has been promoted to Managing Partner, effective immediately. Olivier Goudet, who has been Managing Partner and CEO of JAB since 2012, will become a Senior Investment Advisor with the majority of his personal wealth remaining invested in the firm and its assets for the long term. Mr. Goudet will stay closely involved with JAB's ecosystem, continuing to serve in his capacity as a Board Director across certain JAB portfolio companies. "It is a great privilege to be named CEO of JAB," said Creus. "Peter built JAB, implementing a long-term strategic vision to transform decades of successful development as a family office into an investment company focused on the global consumer goods and services sector. Then, for the last 12 years under Olivier's leadership, we scaled JAB with the right assets, building a diverse and highly resilient investment portfolio which is ideally positioned to continue to deliver attractive risk adjusted returns over the long term." Since joining JAB in 2010, Mr. Creus has played a critical role in establishing JAB into a global investment firm focused on consumer goods and services. In his more than 13 years with the firm, he has worked side-by-side with Harf and Goudet to drive JAB's major investments and expansion initiatives, including all of its platform acquisitions and the creation of JAB Consumer Partners. Mr. Creus has also worked extensively with and continues to support the Reimann family, JAB's anchor shareholder group. "Continuity of leadership is paramount at a firm like JAB, and the appointment of Joachim to CEO is a testament to our strong faith in his vision," said JAB Chairman Peter Harf. "Over the last decade, not only has Joachim been instrumental to building an enduringinvestment firm, he has also become a member of the extended Reimann family." Referring to the appointment of Frank Engelen as Managing Partner, Harf continued: "We have worked closely with Frank for more than 10 years. Since he joined JAB in 2020, he has played a key role across JAB's portfolio including its pet insurance platform, an increasingly important asset to the firm." Before joining JAB, Mr. Engelen worked more than 15 years as a partner at PwC, where he was a trusted advisor to JAB since 2013. During his time with PwC, he also served as a member of the Management Board of the Dutch firm for five years, leading the deals and consulting business, and as a member of the Executive Board of PwC Europe for two years. He has more than 25 years of financial and executive business experience, particularly in consumer goods and financial services. Mr. Creus succeeds Olivier Goudet who has been CEO since January 2012. During this time, Mr. Goudet led JAB's strategic transformation, nearly tripling the investment firm's equity as it built leading investment platforms across the coffee & beverages, petcare, fast-casual restaurants, indulgence, and beauty & luxury sectors. Of note, Mr. Goudet introduced JAB's coffee and beverage strategy, resulting in the formation of JDE Peet's and the creation of Keurig Dr Pepper. He was also the architect of the veterinary care and pet insurance strategies. "Olivier is an exceptional investor, and, on behalf of JAB, I want to thank him for his leadership over the last 12 years," added Harf. "I am very pleased that he remains part of the JAB family. With his continued counsel, and the leadership of Joachim, Frank and the broader team at JAB, we are ideally positioned for this next phase of long-term value creation." "After 12 years leading JAB, and with my 60th approaching, now is the right time to open a new chapter," said Goudet. "With Joachim at the helm, Frank as a Managing Partner, and Peter's unparalleled vision, I'm convinced that JAB has the right team in place for the future, and I look forward to remaining a shareholder and to working with the team as Senior Investment Advisor. It has been a true honor and privilege to work under Peter's guidance and inspiration, as well as alongside Joachim with his unique ability to convert big ideas into great successes." About JAB JAB Holding Company invests in consumer-focused industries with attractive long-term dynamics, including strong growth prospects, attractive margin and cash flow characteristics, and proven resiliency. JAB is the largest shareholder of Keurig Dr Pepper Inc., a leader in the North American beverage industry, and Krispy Kreme, Inc. a global leader in doughnuts and other premium-quality sweet treats. JAB is also the controlling shareholder of Coty Inc., a global leader in beauty. Together with JAB Consumer Partners, JAB is the controlling shareholder of JDE Peet's, the world's leading pure play coffee and tea company; National Veterinary Associates, one of the world's largest animal care services platforms; Independence Pet Group, a leading provider of pet insurance in North America; Pinnacle Pet Group, a leading provider of pet insurance in Europe; Panera Brands Inc., one of the world's largest fast casual restaurant companies, which includes Panera Bread, Caribou Coffee and Einstein Bros. Bagels; Pret A Manger, a leading company in the ready-to-eat food market; and Espresso House, the largest branded coffee shop chain in Scandinavia. JAB Holding Company also owns luxury goods company Bally. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122572919/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] Baron & Budd Obtains Awards Over $52 Million on Behalf of Public Entities for Camp Fire Tweet Today, the national law firm of Baron & Budd, alongside Diab Chambers LLP, announced the City of Chico has been awarded $43 million from the Fire Victim Trust for damages resulting from the 2018 Camp Fire. The City of Chico operated as the response and recovery hub for the Town of Paradise which was almost entirely destroyed by the fire. The funds will compensate the City for damaged infrastructure, largely roadways damaged by tens of thousands of first responder, FEMA, utility, and construction trucks. The Trust has also awarded over $9 million to the Thermalito Water & Sewer District for damages to its infrastructure, including sedimentation which affected its water systems. The Camp Fire was the most destructive and deadliest wildfire in the state's history burning through more than 153,000 acres and killing 85 people. The City of Chico served as the emergency response base for several months after the Camp Fire for CalFire, FEMA, the Town of Paradise, the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and many other organizations. "We are very impressed by the way the Trust worked so diligently to understand the City's unique claims for public damages," said Baron & Budd Shareholder, John Fiske, outside counsel for the City of Chico. "These funds are crucial for the communities affected by devasting wildfires, and we are thankful to the Trust as it continues to allocate the remaining awards to the fire victims." The Fire Victim Trust engaged in extraordinary fact-finding efforts to understand the unique claims of the only municipal corporation with damages in the Trust. JAMS Mediator Judge Jay Gandhi (Ret.) mediated the technical damages between the City and the Trust, and Trustee Cathy Yanni personally oversaw the process and the compensation. The Trust has supported other public entity claims as the rebuilding of Paradise requires compensation to the individual fire victims as well as the public organizations that serve the community, such as roads, water, and other public infrastructure. The Trust has issued awards to more than 99% of its claimants and is currently making pro rata payments of 60%, although an additional pro rata increase is expected in 2024. The City of Chico was represented by John Fiske and Torri Sherlin of Baron & Budd, PC, and Ed Diab and Rob Chambers of Diab Chambers, LLP, and by City Attorney John Lam. About Baron & Budd, P.C. Baron & Budd, P.C. is among the largest and most accomplished plaintiffs' law firms in the country. With more than 40 years of experience, Baron & Budd has the expertise and resources to handle complex litigation throughout the United States. As a law firm that takes pride in remaining at the forefront of litigation, Baron & Budd has spearheaded many significant cases for hundreds of public entities and tens of thousands of individuals. Since the firm was founded in 1977, Baron & Budd has achieved substantial national acclaim for its work on cutting-edge litigation, trying hundreds of cases to verdict and settling tens of thousands of cases in areas of litigation as diverse and significant as dangerous and highly addictive pharmaceuticals, defective medical devices, asbestos and mesothelioma, wildfires, environmental contamination, fraudulent banking practices, e-cigarettes, motor vehicles, federal whistleblower cases, and other consumer fraud issues. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122116482/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [November 22, 2023] MiraCosta College's Pioneering Biomanufacturing Program: Fueling the Biotech Boom and Bridging Educational Gaps Tweet OCEANSIDE, Calif. and WASHINGTON, Nov. 21, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Biotechnology is not just another industry; it's a transformative force that has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, agriculture, and even our approach to combating climate change. In recent years, North San Diego County has emerged as a rapidly expanding bioscience hub, attracting some of the most innovative firms in the biotech sector. However, this industry's swift growth presents challenges, most notably the urgent demand for a specialized workforce. At MiraCosta College, we anticipated this need within our community because of our future focus. As one of 15 community colleges within the state of California to offer a bachelor's degree, we responded by creating a program in biomanufacturing. This initiative has become pivotal for regional development, educational equity, and employment excellence. Built on a Foundation of Industry Partnership When the community called for qualified professionals in the rapidly expanding biotech sector, MiraCosta College answered. But we didn't do it alone. By forming strategic partnerships with local biotech firms, we developed a novel and specialized biomanufacturing bachelor's program designed to meet industry demands. In collaboration with our industry partners, we've also established pathways for students to receive grants for paid internships and earn-and-learn opportunities. These experiences ensure that our students not only acquire theoretical knowledge but also gain invaluable practical experience. Integrating these internships into our program facilitates a seamless transition for our graduates into the workforce, making them job-ready from day one after graduation. Our students graduate with a comprehensive understanding of the subject and hands-on experience that makes them invaluable assets in the workplace. Setting a National Standard Our program prepares people for national certification through a unique and accessible pathway. The program's success has reverberated beyond our local and even state boundaries. A case in point is Luis De Luna, a MiraCosta College student who was the first in his family to attend college and has earned the prestigious DREAM Scholar recognition from Achieving theDream, a national nonprofit focusing on equity in higher education. Luis is a testament to our program's accessibility, effectiveness, and broader impact on creating a diverse and talented workforce. This story of transformation, perseverance, and excellence earned national recognition, solidifying MiraCosta College's reputation as a leading educational institution in the biosciences. Such stories reinforce the excellence of our program and its ability to change lives. Leads to Inclusive Economic Development The STEM fields are historically underrepresented in terms of both race and gender. Statistics from The Pew Research Center show a striking gap: White workers constitute 63 percent of all STEM jobs, while Black and Hispanic or Latino/a workers make up just 28 percent. Similarly, despite earning most degrees, women comprise a meager percentage of STEM degree earners. MiraCosta College has been intentional about making this high-quality program accessible to students who are often left behind by the educational system. Through financial aid, mentorship, and hands-on training, we have broken barriers and bridged educational gaps, offering new avenues for social mobility. In 2022, MiraCosta College was one of 77 recipients of nearly 1100 community colleges recognized by INSIGHT Into Diversity for establishing cutting-edge programs, events, and initiatives to improve STEM diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Success by the Numbers The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Around 95 percent of our biomanufacturing bachelor's program graduates go directly into the field, supporting our regional industry and economy. This is not just a statistic; it is a robust endorsement of our program's effectiveness, the high standard of education we provide, and the pressing industry demand for skilled biomanufacturing professionals in our region and state. Fueling Innovation Through State and Federal Investment MiraCosta College is thrilled to announce that it has received two substantial grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), totaling over $1.6 million. These grants aim to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing education for diverse, underrepresented community college and high school students. The BioSCOPE grant of $649,986 aims to remove the fear of science and offer hands-on, industry-relevant skills to students. This project collaborates with the Bay Area Bioscience Education Community (BABEC) and Laney College. The other grant of $1 million focuses on creating pathways for students in emerging biomanufacturing technologies, specifically targeting underrepresented groups in STEM. As a leader in the state, MiraCosta College has been awarded nearly $10 million to support our biotechnology program and the life science industry. More Than A Program, A Paradigm. As the biotech sector continues to expand in North San Diego County and across the nation, we believe MiraCosta College's novel biomanufacturing bachelor's program serves as more than just a case study of success; it serves as a model for how educational institutions can and should respond to community needs. In a politically divided nation, certain issues transcend party lines. Democrats and Republicans can agree on the importance of workforce development and socioeconomic mobility. Our biomanufacturing bachelor's program is a testament to this shared vision, proving that common ground can be found when it comes to improving our communities and ensuring a brighter future for our students. This program is not merely a conduit to employment; it's an ecosystem of opportunity, fostering talent, rectifying social inequalities, and meeting the demands of an ever-evolving industry. Uniquely American, community colleges serve more than 10 million students annually, providing critical access to higher education in academic and workforce development. As the voice of the nation's community colleges, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), delivers educational and economic opportunity for more than 10 million diverse students in search of the American Dream. Uniquely dedicated to access and success for all students, AACC's member colleges provide an on-ramp to degree attainment, skilled careers, and family-supporting wages. Located in Washington, D.C., AACC advocates for these not-for-profit, public-serving institutions to ensure they have the resources and support to increase economic mobility for all. https://www.aacc.nche.edu/ View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/miracosta-colleges-pioneering-biomanufacturing-program-fueling-the-biotech-boom-and-bridging-educational-gaps-301996143.html SOURCE American Association Of Community Colleges [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] We'll post a peek at their argument . . . However, it's important to note that AG Kobach has successfully argued his case so far and the court has agreed up to this point . . . Check-it: Sharon Brett, legal director of ACLU of Kansas, argued in a 60-page document submitted to the Shawnee County District Court that Attorney General Kris Kobachs mistaken interpretation of how a new state law applied to drivers licenses could result in violation of rights guaranteed under the Kansas Constitution. Kobach relied on his analysis of Senate Bill 180 when filing a lawsuit against the Kansas Department of Revenue to halt the agencys acceptance of gender identity changes on drivers licenses. The ACLU intervened in the dispute centered on implications of Senate Bill 180, a vague piece of legislation labeled the Womens Bill of Rights. The alleged conflict is one of petitioners imagination, Brett said. Even if SB 180 could be interpreted to require denial of drivers licenses with accurate gender markers to transgender Kansans, which it does not, petitioners requested relief should still be denied because it would violate intervenor-respondents rights to personal autonomy, privacy and equal protection under the Kansas Constitution. The balance of hardships, the public interest and irreparable harm tips overwhelmingly in favor of resuming KDORs gender marker policy during the remainder of this litigation, she said. Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . . El-Sisi's remarks came as he addressed an extraordinary virtual summit of the BRICS group, which was held to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip and the ongoing Israeli war. El-Sisi affirmed Egypt's support for international efforts to reach a ceasefire and protect civilians in the Gaza Strip, foremost of which is the UNSC resolution calling for truces and humanitarian corridors across the strip. The president added that the entire strip has been facing collective punishment, siege, starvation, and pressure toward a forced displacement. "These cruel scenes have revealed the inadequacy of the international community and the stagnation of human conscience," he said. Furthermore, El-Sisi affirmed that Egypt has condemned the killing of civilians by all parties, especially the targeting of hospitals. He emphasized that the international community bears a humanitarian and political responsibility to save Gazan civilians and to stop these inhuman practices, which force people to leave their homes and lands. El-Sisi said that Egypt is making all efforts to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinians. "Egypt opened the Rafah border crossing from the first moment to bring humanitarian aid into the strip," he noted. Moreover, the Egyptian President added that Egypt has designated El-Arish Airport to receive aid from across the world, stressing that it is the Israeli authorities, not Egypt, which has obstructed their delivery. "What aid enters Gaza is much less than the needs of its people," he said. During his speech, El-Sisi stressed that Egypt rejects any attempts to forcibly displace the Palestinians, inside or outside Gaza, considering it as a grave violation of international law. "The proposals for Israel's reoccupation of the Gaza Strip will only aggravate and complicate the situation," he said, addressing leaders at the BRICS summit. Egypt's president mentioned that the international community wrongly stands silent on the violence by settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as daily military incursions there by the Israeli army, all of which are unacceptable policies that stoke regional tensions. During the summit, El-Sisi highlighted Egypt's current priorities: stop the bloodshed through an immediate ceasefire, safe access to humanitarian aid, and stop the targeting of civilians in the Gaza Strip. The President also stressed the necessity of resolving the root causes of the conflict by allowing Palestinians to establish an independent state within the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Kansas City moves closer to the culmination of a deadly police shooting controversy that has worsened racial and partisan divisions across the region. For us, here's the crux of the debate going forward . . . POLITICS & CULTURE WAR DOMINATE CONSIDERATIONS OF FORMER KCPD DETECTIVE DEVALKENAERE'S FATE!!! Yes, that might be obvious to some, it was recently noted by Guv Parson but we notice voters & local media are easily confused about complicated legal arguments. The greatest example . . . There has NEVER been any legal ruling about KCPD planting a gun or tampering with evidence. Instead, that's a dangerous theory promoted by progressive activists and a smallish subset of local legal eagles. From our vantage . . . The is focal point of the case and how it is viewed by differing factions offers an indication or bias, politicking and/or careful consideration. Meanwhile . . . There's also denying that supporters of the former KCPD detective confront an uphill battle, the odds of their success are getting worse as progressive thought leaders look to bolster the actions of Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker . . . Which brings us to today's latest setback . . . On Tuesday, the appellate court overruled DeValkenaeres rehearing motion and denied his application for transfer to the Missouri Supreme Court, ending proceedings at the appellate level. The Missouri Court of Appeals also overruled and denied a similar motion the Missouri Attorney Generals Office filed on DeValkenaeres behalf . . . DeValkenaeres attorneys have until Dec. 6 to appeal directly to the Missouri Supreme Court by filing an application for transfer. UPDATE . . . Jackson County Prosecutor's statement regarding Missouri Appeals Court decision "Today, the Western District Court of Appeals denied all pending motions that challenged the courts affirming the manslaughter conviction of a Kansas City police officer. The ruling today validates again the prosecution of this matter. "Today's decision is based on the rule of law in Missouri and focuses on the merits of this conviction. Others will view these rulings through a political lens. For that, I have no comment." ################### Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com links . . . Appeals court overrules DeValkenaere's rehearing motion, denies transfer to Missouri Supreme Court The Missouri Supreme Court is now Eric DeValkenaere's last hope for overturning his double-felony conviction after the appeals court denied his rehearing motion on Tuesday. A jailed ex-KC cop is a problem for Mike Parson. Blaming the prosecutor won't solve it * Missouri Independent Missouri Gov. Mike Parson clearly doesn't know what to do about Eric DeValkenaere, the former KC cop convicted of killing a Black man. Attorney: Don't blame Jean Peters Baker for politicizing 'highly unusual' DeValkenaere case, Gov. Parson Missouri Gov. Mike Parson accused Jackson County Prosecuting Attorney Jean Peters Baker of politicizing the case against the convicted KCPD officer Eric DeValkenaere. Developing . . . This local blog has a pretty good paywall and we're not sure if the deets are juicy enough to justify the cost. For now . . . Here's a tease from suburban bloggers: Were in a war, he opened his address given at the Determined Patriotism Conference at a church in Kansas City, Kansas, over Veterans Day weekend. That war is not partisan, he said, but is good against evil. Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . . You decide . . . JoCo sheriff spouts conspiracy theories at right-wing conference In a speech to the Determined Patriotism Conference, Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden inveighed against China, apartments and the county commission. Update . . . Non-Paywall Link . . . Johnson County Sheriff embraces conspiracy theories at right-wing conference: 'We're in a war' Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden, who is set to be up for re-election next year, appeared at the Determined Patriotism Conference to deliver remarks about China, apartment buildings, and the county commission - all while continuing to question the security of elections without providing any evidence. You decide . . . When we think of Europe, images of famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Colosseum in Rome often come to mind. These popular sites attract millions of visitors each year. But Europe is also home to many more treasures that are less known. Europe is a continent rich in history, culture, and natural beauty. Beyond the well-known tourist paths, many hidden places are waiting to be discovered. From small villages in lush valleys to ancient ruins overlooked by their more famous counterparts, these lesser-known sites offer a unique view into Europe's diverse heritage. As you read on, you will journey to uncover these hidden wonders. These places offer a refreshing escape from the usual tourist hotspots and a more personal and authentic experience. Whether you are an experienced traveler or just starting to explore the world, Travelers Today will introduce you to some of Europe's most enchanting yet underappreciated destinations. Exploring the Undiscovered: Lesser-Known Wonders in Europe Europe's beauty extends far beyond its famous landmarks, with many hidden corners that offer unique and memorable experiences. Here's a list of some incredible, lesser-known wonders in Europe, each with its own charm and story. 1. Newgrange, Ireland Step back in time at Newgrange, a Neolithic monument predating the Egyptian pyramids. Renowned for its historical depth and stone carvings, according to Newgrange, this site is a marvel during the winter solstice. As the sun rises, its rays illuminate the inner chamber, creating an unforgettable sight. This ancient wonder is not just a tourist spot but a link to Ireland's distant past. 2. Belogradchik Rocks, Bulgaria Venture into the world of natural wonders with the Belogradchik Rocks. These spectacular rock formations have inspired numerous local tales, with each shape resembling mythical figures like the Madonna, the Monk, and the Horseman. The nearby ancient fortress adds to the area's appeal, making it a perfect blend of nature and history. 3. Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia This UNESCO World Heritage site is a paradise of cascading waterfalls, crystal-clear lakes, and lush greenery. Stroll along wooden paths that wind through this breathtaking landscape. It's a haven for those who love the outdoors, offering stunning views and a peaceful environment. 4. Giethoorn, Netherlands Discover the charm of Giethoorn, a village where canals replace roads. Often compared to Venice, its peaceful waterways, traditional houses, and absence of cars create a peaceful and picturesque setting, as per Tassie Devil Abroad. Exploring Giethoorn by boat offers a unique perspective on this quaint Dutch village. Read Also: Why South Korea's Blend of Traditional and Modern Attractions is a Must-see for Every Traveler 5. Alberobello, Italy Alberobello, famous for its trulli - distinctive stone huts with conical roofs - is a remarkable example of traditional Apulian architecture. This fairy-tale town provides a glimpse into a simpler way of life and is a testament to the region's cultural heritage. 6. The Azores, Portugal Located in the mid-Atlantic, the Azores are a group of nine islands known for their volcanic landscapes, lush greenery, and azure waters. Each island has its own identity, offering activities from hiking and whale watching to enjoying hot springs. 7. Kutna Hora, Czech Republic Once a prosperous silver mining town, Kutna Hora is now famous for its Gothic architecture, especially the Sedlec Ossuary, a chapel adorned with human bones. Its historical buildings and unique attractions make it a fascinating day trip from Prague. 8. Ronda, Spain Perched on a mountaintop in Andalusia, Ronda is famous for its dramatic views and the Puente Nuevo, a stone bridge spanning a deep gorge. The town's blend of Moorish and Spanish architecture, along with its bullfighting history, adds to its appeal. 9. The Scottish Highlands, Scotland For those seeking natural beauty and solitude, the Scottish Highlands are a must-visit. With its rugged landscapes, historic castles, and mysterious lochs, it offers an escape into a world of folklore and nature. 10. Kotor, Montenegro Nestled between mountains and a bay, Kotor is known for its medieval architecture and scenic setting. The town's fortified walls and narrow streets are filled with history, while the nearby bay offers stunning vistas. The Beauty of Europe's Hidden Wonders In these hidden corners, history feels more intimate. You might find yourself wandering through a medieval town where every cobblestone tells a story or exploring ancient ruins that are free from crowds. These experiences allow you to connect with Europe's past in a way that the more famous sites cannot always provide. It is in these moments that you realize you are walking the same paths that people trod centuries ago, undisturbed by the passage of time. Culturally, these lesser-known wonders in Europe are just as rich. They are home to local traditions that have survived the test of time, offering a glimpse into a way of life that is both fascinating and enlightening. Here, you can join in village festivals that have been celebrated for generations or taste culinary delights that are unknown outside these regions. These experiences not only please the senses but also deepen your understanding of the diverse tapestry that makes up European culture. Related Article: Best Places to Travel to in Europe Each Month of 2024 Brazil is a blend of diverse ecosystems, from the lush Amazon rainforest to the sun-kissed beaches of Copacabana. As part of your Brazil travel advice, know that this diversity ensures every traveler finds something special. Whether you are seeking adventure, cultural experiences, or relaxation, Brazil's extensive landscape caters to everyone. However, starting your Brazilian journey requires more than enthusiasm. As a first-timer, the size and diversity of the country might feel overwhelming. But there's no need to worry. With the right advice, your trip through Brazil can be as smooth as a samba dance. Understanding local customs, knowing the safest travel routes, and learning some basic Portuguese phrases can greatly enhance your experience. Essential Brazil Travel Advice: Tips and Tricks Planning a trip to Brazil? This section is full of important Brazil travel advice to help you explore this vibrant country with ease and confidence. First, a word on safety. Brazil is a country of many contrasts, and like any large nation, some areas are safer than others. Rough Guides advised that it is smart to stay up to date about the places you intend to visit. In cities, especially in tourist areas, keep your belongings secure. Petty theft can happen in crowded places. Avoid showing off expensive jewelry or gadgets. Staying low-key helps you stay safe. Getting around Brazil can be an exciting experience. The country is large, so internal flights are often the quickest way to travel long distances. For those on a budget, long-distance buses are a reliable and affordable option. According to the Lonely Planet, they're comfortable and offer a great view of the countryside. In cities, taxis and ride-sharing services are usually safe and convenient. Just be sure to use official taxi services or trusted apps. Read Also: Why South Korea's Blend of Traditional and Modern Attractions is a Must-see for Every Traveler Effective communication is important in any trip. Portuguese is the official language, but you'll find English speakers in tourist areas and larger cities. Learning a few basic Portuguese phrases can be helpful and show respect for the local culture. Brazilians are known for their friendly nature, so don't be shy to ask for help when you need it. Now, where should you visit? Brazil is famous for its beautiful beaches, lush rainforests, and lively cities. Do not miss iconic places like Rio de Janeiro, with its famous beaches and the Christ the Redeemer statue, or the Amazon rainforest for a memorable adventure. For a different experience, consider visiting during Carnival to experience Brazil's famous festivities. Lastly, respect local customs and the environment. Brazilians are generally relaxed, but it's important to respect their culture and traditions. Be mindful of the environment, especially in environmentally sensitive areas like the Amazon. Making the Most of Your Brazilian Journey Your trip to Brazil will be filled with meaningful experiences and memories to cherish by following these tips: Explore Beyond the Beaten Path Brazil is much more than its famous landmarks. Discover the cultural richness of Bahia, where African and Brazilian cultures meet, or the wildlife-rich Pantanal. These less-traveled places offer a different perspective of Brazil. Experience Brazil's Natural Wonders While the Amazon and Iguazu Falls are must-sees, do not miss out on places like Chapada Diamantina National Park. Hiking trails, waterfalls, and caves await you, often without the crowds found in more popular spots. Dive Into Local Festivals and Culture Align your trip with local festivals like the Carnival for an exciting experience. Smaller town festivals can also offer a deeper connection with Brazilian traditions and lifestyle. Savor the Local Cuisine Each region in Brazil has its own culinary delights. From coastal seafood to the hearty dishes of the interior, be adventurous with street food for the most authentic tastes. Connect with Locals Brazilians are known for their friendly nature. Engaging with locals, even in simple Portuguese, can lead to personal recommendations and enrich your experience far beyond typical tourist activities. Related Article: 7 Things That Can Ruin Your Vacation - What You Can Do About It Japan, a country with a rich history and folklore, offers a captivating journey into the mysterious and paranormal. As you explore, the haunted places in Japan often stand out, attracting thrill-seekers and ghost hunters from all over the world. These locations, filled with stories of spirits and unexplained events, are a major draw for those interested in the unknown. In recent years, the fascination with these spooky sites has increased significantly. Why are these places so intriguing? Often, the answer is in Japan's deep-rooted beliefs and legends. These haunted locations are not just about scary stories; they represent a connection to a historical past that many find interesting. From ancient castles with legends to deserted villages with a mysterious past, each site offers a look into a different side of Japan's cultural heritage. The Fascination with Haunted Places in Japan Understanding Japan's haunted locations is straightforward yet fascinating. When you think about Japan, images of peaceful temples, vibrant cities, and lovely cherry blossoms might spring to mind. However, Japan has another side - a rich history of ghost stories and haunted spots that attract ghost hunters and thrill seekers globally. Central to this interest is Japan's ancient folklore, full of ghost and supernatural creature stories. These tales are a significant part of Japanese culture, influencing literature and films. For paranormal experts, these stories aren't just exciting - they offer a window into a world beyond our usual experiences. Read Also: Why Is Mount Fuji So Famous in Japan? Exploring Its Cultural and Natural Significance Aokigahara Forest Consider some of Japan's most famous haunted sites, like the Aokigahara Forest, often called the Sea of Trees. Situated at Mount Fuji's base, this dense forest is notorious for being a location where many have ended their lives. This sad history has led to various ghost stories, contributing to a spooky atmosphere that both scares and fascinates visitors. Himeji Castle This stunning castle, also known as the White Heron Castle, has a ghostly tale. The story of Okiku, a servant who was thrown into the well within the castle grounds, is well-known. Visitors and locals claim to hear her wails from the well, especially at night. This eerie tale draws ghost hunters keen on experiencing the paranormal firsthand. The Himuro Mansion Near Tokyo, this mansion is rumored to be one of the most haunted places in Japan. A blogger shared that legend has it that a family practiced a dark ritual here to ward off evil. The mansion is said to be cursed, attracting those who are curious about the occult and unexplained phenomena. The Nakagusuku Hotel Ruins These ruins in Okinawa are a modern addition to Japan's haunted locations. The hotel was abandoned during construction due to various mysterious incidents. It's said that the construction disturbed ancient burial grounds, leading to its haunting. The unfinished, decaying structure, along with its chilling backstory, entices adventurers and ghost hunters. The Oiwa Shrine Located in Tokyo, this shrine is dedicated to the spirit of Oiwa, a woman who was betrayed and then killed herself. Her story is one of Japan's most famous ghost stories. The shrine, a symbol of her tragic tale, attracts those fascinated by the darker aspects of love and betrayal. Kokoro shared that according to various accounts, the shrine is regarded as one of Tokyo's most haunted locations and is even included in ghost-themed walking tours. So, why do these haunted places in Japan attract so many? It seems to be a mix of curiosity, a love for history, and a bit of an adrenaline rush. These sites offer a glimpse into Japan's past, its folklore, and the supernatural. For many, exploring these locations is about challenging their fears and stepping into a world that is both mysterious and thrilling. For you, whether you are a believer in the paranormal or just someone with a curiosity for the unknown, visiting these haunted places in Japan could be an unforgettable experience. Each site has its unique story and atmosphere, offering a different glimpse into the intriguing world of the supernatural. Related Article: 5 Places to Visit in the US if You're Willing to Give Dark Tourism a Try Singapore's tourism numbers experienced a third consecutive monthly decline in October, with international visitor arrivals totaling 1,125,948, according to the latest data from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB). Although slightly lower than September's 1,130,757 visitors, it remains significantly higher than the 816,833 visitors recorded in October 2022. Singapore Tourism: Visitor Trends Reflect Seasonal Patterns The Singapore tourism trends in 2023 follow seasonal patterns, similar to what was observed before the pandemic. There was a surge in July and August, mainly due to Chinese tourists, followed by a tapering off in September and October, as noted by DBS Bank analyst Geraldine Wong. According to The Straits Times, Indonesia continued to be the leading source of visitors in October, with 180,881 tourists arriving from the country, up from 175,601 in September. China ranked second, with 122,764 visitors in October, down from 135,677 in September. With those figures, Wong pointed out that some Chinese tourists chose Singapore over Thailand and Japan due to safety concerns. In a notable shift, India climbed to the third spot as a source country for Singapore tourism, with 94,332 visitors in October, up from 81,014 in the previous month. Malaysia and Australia ranked fourth and fifth, with 88,641 and 88,032 international arrivals, respectively. For the year 2023, Singapore has welcomed approximately 11.3 million visitor arrivals. This falls slightly short of the STB's expectations of reaching between 12 million to 14 million arrivals for the full year. Read Also: Why is Armenia's Yerevan Called the Pink City? Singapore Tourism Board, Klook Team Up to Boost Tourism In hopes of increasing the number of visitors coming to the country, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and Klook are teaming up to boost tourism in Singapore, investing over S$2 million in marketing efforts as part of their partnership. They have been working together for two years since they signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) in April 2023. Singapore tourism industry is gradually recovering, with over 11 million visitors arriving by the end of October. A recent survey by Klook's Travel Pulse found that one in three millennials and Gen Z travelers in Southeast Asia are interested in traveling within the region, showing a strong desire to explore closer to home. As per TTG Asia, Sarah Wan, general manager of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Klook said: "Singapore has been a key destination leading travel recovery within South-east Asia, and we're excited to once again partner STB. We aim to inspire travellers by highlighting how Singapore makes unexpected, diverse and unique experiences possible." Terrence Voon, who serves as the Executive Director for Southeast Asia at STB, emphasized that their fresh strategies are designed to support the recovery of tourism and spotlight unique experiences that will create lasting memories for travelers visiting Singapore. These efforts will also align with STB's recent "Made in Singapore" campaign, which demonstrates how the city elevates everyday moments into exceptional and unforgettable experiences. Additionally, this partnership between STB and Klook signifies a continued commitment to revitalizing Singapore tourism sector and fostering a vibrant travel environment within the region. Related Article: Thanksgiving Travel Peaks: Millions Set to Fly and Drive Over Holiday Week As the world slowly reopens its doors to travelers, many are eagerly embracing the concept of "revenge travel" to satisfy their long-postponed wanderlust. These tourists are going to exciting destinations, reuniting with loved ones in their favorite cities, and making up for the adventures they missed during the pandemic. But the question remains: Is revenge travel still a prevalent trend in the post-pandemic era? Revenge Travel Still Alive in the Post-Pandemic Era In 2021, the term "revenge travel" became popular. It means taking a trip that was delayed because of the pandemic. Forbes reported that revenge travel can be going on an exciting vacation, staying at a wellness center, visiting a favorite city, or simply spending time with friends and family nearby. It is all about making up for trips that were missed during the global pandemic. The report also stated that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says that more people are going through airport security checkpoints, showing that more people are traveling. Airports worldwide are also seeing more visitors, especially as more people get vaccinated and return to their usual work routines. However, the current travel situation is a bit mixed. In some places, travel numbers are not as high as they were before the pandemic, according to the Airports Council International Europe. Additionally, a study by Morning Consult found that some travelers are being held back by the high cost of travel. People surveyed said they were frustrated by travel problems like delays and disruptions. Interestingly, the study also found that Generation Z travelers are booking more trips, and their travel experiences might soon be just as exciting as those of millennials. Read Also: Skagway Unveiled: A Gateway to Alaska's Rich History and Adventurous Wonders With Alaska Shore Tours Online Travel Bookings in the Philippines Surge, Predicts Google Google reported an impressive 88 percent growth in online travel bookings in the Philippines from 2022 to 2023, according to their e-Conomy Southeast Asia 2023 Report. These bookings cover airfare, hotel reservations, and vacation rentals, marking the highest growth among various sectors in the digital economy. Google anticipates that the travel sector is well on its way to reaching a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $3 billion this year, according to ABS-CBN News. Furthermore, it is projected to maintain an 18 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) until 2025, reaching a remarkable $4 billion GMV. However, the report highlights that e-commerce will remain the primary driver of growth in the Philippine digital economy. Google predicts that the e-commerce sector will soar to $24 billion by 2025, with a 21 percent CAGR. In addition, online media company also reported that online media, encompassing advertising, gaming, video, and music on demand, is expected to grow by $3 billion GMV in 2023, with a 13 percent CAGR. By 2025, it is forecasted to reach $5 billion at a 19 percent CAGR. Meanwhile, the transportation and food delivery sectors are also set to thrive. Projections indicate they will reach $2 billion GMV in 2023, with an ongoing growth rate of 19 percent CAGR until 2025. Google attributes the momentum in mobility, including the return to in-person work, increased travel, dining out, and traditional in-store shopping, to the rising digital transactions in the transportation sector. The future looks promising for the Philippine digital economy, with Google foreseeing it potentially reaching up to $150 billion by 2030, largely driven by the expanding e-commerce landscape. Related Article: American Traveler Permanently Barred from the Philippines for Alleged Disrespectful Conduct As Israeli forces move southwards in the Gaza Strip, the desperate need for a ceasefire and a semblance of Palestinian reconciliation is still on the agenda. As the Israeli war on Gaza entered a new, and possibly end, phase this week, Israel escalated its attacks on the Gaza Strip, especially the middle and southern parts, with a view to displacing as many people as possible. Israel is acting to make all of Gaza as unsafe as possible in order to push as many people out as possible. It does not matter where they go, that is very clear, said a source at an international humanitarian organisation working on the ground in Gaza. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source said that his organisation, along with others, is currently working through UN channels to designate safe havens where displaced Palestinians that have been forced out of the north and the middle of Gaza to the south can be located in some sort of tents. We are seeing a very bad situation on the ground in the south of Gaza, he said. He added that there are entire families that have been rendered homeless even in the south, and houses with a capacity of seven people are now being inhabited by triple or quadruple this number. It is horrible to see over 50 people living in a two-bedroom house with one bathroom and no running water, the source said. It is simply unsustainable. People will end up in tents, especially as many who have come from the north have not ended up in relatives houses. According to figures from international organisations working in Gaza, over one million Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza as a result of the Israeli war that started on 7 October in reaction to an attack on southern Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas. The same organisations suggest that at least another half a million people have been rendered homeless. There is now the question of whether there are enough safe areas for tents to accommodate one and a half million people and whether enough field hospitals can be found to provide medical help to the 50,000 people who have been wounded as a result of the intense Israeli strikes. Many more people have had to be evicted from hospitals, including from intensive-care units, as a result of the Israeli targeting of medical facilities in the north and middle of Gaza. An informed Egyptian source said that the evacuation of badly wounded people for treatment outside Gaza, in Egypt and elsewhere, and the possibility of some partial reconstruction scenarios were currently being discussed in several capitals and with the UN. Nobody knows exactly when this war is coming to an end, but we think we are now talking about weeks and not months. In any case, we need to consider scenarios for the next phase, he said. The source declined to use the term the day after, however. I am not sure we are talking about that because when we talk about the day after we are assuming we are moving from war to no war. This is not necessarily the upcoming scenario, he said. He added that there are no indications of an Israeli intention to fully stop the war. We are hopefully inching closer to a four-day ceasefire that is supposed to start in the early hours of the morning on Friday 24 November, he said. But this is not to say that the war is starting to come to an end. I think we will be seeing a shift from high-intensity strikes to low-intensity strikes from Israel, he explained. The source said that to see an end to the war, there has to be a deal on the situation on the ground first. The Israelis will not stop short of this. They might agree to a sequence of ceasefires in the coming weeks along with the release of batches of the Israeli civilians taken by Hamas on 7 October, he said. On Tuesday this week, Ismail Haniyeh, the Doha-based chief of the Hamas Politburo, issued a statement saying that a ceasefire deal was in the offing. But the Egyptian source said that a deal was in the offing last week as well before Israel decided to attack the Al-Shifa Hospital despite appeals from several regional and international capitals against the move. We are working with the Qataris and the Americans on it and are pushing for the ceasefire that Gaza desperately needs, he stated. He said that Egypt is working with the US, Qatar, Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and other partners to find a way out from the conflict. If the war were to stop tomorrow without a clear vision for the future, at least in the short term, then we would be taking the risk of some sort of renewed conflict sooner rather than later, he said. According to the Egyptian view, the source said, there needs to be an approach to get the PA back on the ground in Gaza with the approval and in coordination with Hamas. Short of this consensual arrangement, he added, the PA might wish to take the risk of going back into Gaza. However, if it does, it will be resisted. This week, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi received Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in Cairo. The issue of the future management of Gaza was on the table in their talks. Following her visit to Cairo, Von der Leyen went to Arish to oversee a new phase of EU assistance to the Egyptian border governorate with Gaza. Even as we deal with the urgency today, we must also think about what the day after could look like, she said. Josep Borrell, high representative of the EU for foreign and security policy, was also in Qatar this week to discuss the future management of Gaza in a bid to move from war to peace. Borrell stressed that the day after is today, adding that the PA has to go back to Gaza and that the solution of Gaza has to be part of the overall solution for the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, an Arab-Islamic delegation of foreign ministers that was assigned by the Arab-Islamic Summit convened earlier this month in Saudi Arabia has been touring the capitals of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to discuss a roadmap for the next few weeks. According to Arab and European sources who spoke this week in Cairo, the roadmap for the remaining weeks of this year includes a sequence of ceasefires that should culminate in a more permanent ceasefire to be followed by political talks on the management of Gaza, the return of a provisional PA delegation to Gaza, and then discussion of the future. This will include the management of Gaza, the security of Gaza and its borders with both Egypt and Israel, the stabilisation of the situation in the West Bank, where Israel has been conducting aggressive attacks and arrests, and possible political avenues, limited and dim as these might be. In statements that echoed the same line this week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the international community needs to look into a transitional period. A New York-based diplomat said that the UN Security Council is trying hard to push for conditions that could lead to an eventual final ceasefire, hopefully before Christmas. He agreed that much has to be agreed in terms of interim management and that the remaining four weeks before Christmas might not be enough. But everyone is trying hard to get to a sustainable ceasefire before Christmas, he stated. * A version of this article appears in print in the 23 November, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Search Keywords: Short link: The Ascott Limited is delighted to announce the appointment of Mr. Kanit Sangmookda as the new Country General Manager for Thailand & Laos, effective from 1 November 2023. (TRAVPR.COM) THAILAND - November 22nd, 2023 - Bangkok, Thailand, 20 November 2023 The Ascott Limited (Ascott), a lodging business unit wholly owned by CapitaLand Investment (CLI), is delighted to announce the appointment of Mr. Kanit Sangmookda as the new Country General Manager for Thailand & Laos, effective from 1 November 2023. With more than 20 years of experience in the hospitality sector, Mr. Kanit has held key positions in leading international hotel chains such as Marriott International, Minor Hotels, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts. His impressive career trajectory includes the following notable positions such as General Manager of Renaissance Johor Bahru Hotel in Malaysia, General Manager of Le Meridien Kota Kinabalu and Jakarta in Indonesia. He was also the General Manager of Four Points by Sheraton Sabah, as well as serving as the Regional Director of Revenue Management with Starwood SEA Region. Commenting on his appointment, Mr. Kanit said, "I am thrilled to be joining the Ascott team and am excited to lead the Thailand & Laos region, leveraging my experience and passion for the hospitality industry. I look forward to contributing to Ascott's continued success in the region." Mr. Chuck Abbott, Regional General Manager, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand & Philippines, remarked, "We are delighted to welcome Kanit to Ascott. His extensive experience, strong leadership skills, and passion for the industry make him the perfect candidate to lead our Thailand & Laos operations. We are confident that under his guidance, we will continue to deliver exceptional service and value to our guests and stakeholders." With the appointment of Mr. Kanit, Ascott looks forward to strengthening its presence in Thailand and Laos, providing exceptional experiences and unparalleled hospitality to its guests. When he's not on the hotel grounds, Mr. Kanit is a devoted family man who enjoys a range of personal interests, including music, sports, fitness activities, and photography. These diverse passions are sure to bring a fresh perspective to his role as Country General Manager. For reservations or more information about Ascott properties in Thailand, please call us at +66 2 204 4400 / 1800 888 272 (Thailand toll-free), email enquiry.thailand@the-ascott.com or visit www.discoverasr.com. ### World leaders and international organizations welcomed the Israel-Hamas truce deal, which is expected to go into effect on Thursday, as it will help ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and de-escalate the conflict. However, Israel used the remaining hours before the truce could go into effect to kill more civilians. 23:00 On Wednesday evening, hours before an announced truce deal between Israel and Hamas could go into effect sometime on Thursday, a massive Israeli airstrike on a residential block in the district of Sheikh Radwan in Gaza City killed and injured tens of civilians. Al Jazeera reporters who rushed to the scene captured difficult scenes of emergency responders attempting to pick tens of bloodied victims - mostly women and children - from the rubble of two residential buildings in the densely populated neighbourhood. More than 200 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured in various Israeli airstrikes and artillery bombardments on various parts of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday. On Wednesday, as the world awaits some pause for the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza and the entry of humanitarian relief to the strip, the Palestinian health ministry said more than 14,300 Palestinians, including more than 5,840 children, have been killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since the start of the war on 7 October. At least 33,000 have been wounded. More than 6,800 are still missing or presumed dead under the rubble, many of them children. More than 1.7 million Palestinians have been internally displaced. 22:00 Renowned Tunisian-Egyptian actress Hend Sabry resigned from the World Food Programme on Wednesday citing the program's failure to effectively mobilize against the Israeli policy of cutting off all food for Palestinians in Gaza amid its relentless bombardment of the strip for over 46 days. Sabry, an award-winning film and TV actress, worked with in-need populations in Sudan, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Libya among other countries over her years as a Goodwill Ambassador for the WFP. "I have tried to make my voice heard at the highest level of the World Food Program and to join my colleagues in calling for WFP to be used as it has done successfully before, to advocate and push hard for an immediate, humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and to leverage WFPs influence to prevent the use of starvation as a weapon of war." "It is a weapon that has so far killed more than 14,000 people, made more than 1.6 million people homeless, destroyed half of the buildings, and bombed hospitals and schools that were supposed to be safe shelters." "For this reason, I announce my resignation and wish all my colleagues in the World Food Program safety and peace." 21:45 The head of the United Nations children's agency on Wednesday called the besieged Gaza Strip "the most dangerous place in the world to be a child," and said that the hard-won truce deal between Israel and Hamas was not enough to save their lives. UNICEF's executive director Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council that over 5,300 children have reportedly been killed in Gaza since 7 October, accounting for 40 percent of the deaths. "This is unprecedented," said Russell, who had just returned from a trip to southern Gaza. "I am haunted by what I saw and heard." Russell welcomed a deal reached Wednesday by Israel and Hamas to free hostages and pause ferocious fighting and bombardment in Gaza. An Egyptian medic provides care to a premature Palestinian baby, recently evacuated from the Gaza Strip, at a hospital in al-Aris in the North Sinai Governorate of Egypt on November 22, 2023. AFP View the full gallery 21:30 As the world waits for a ceasefire, Al Jazeera reporters say the Israeli artillery is frantically targeting various parts of the Gaza Strip, from Gaza City in the north to Al-Bereij refugee camp in the centre and Khan Younis in the south of the strip, killing and injuring tens during the day and into the evening hours on Wednesday. 21:00 The Israeli army announced that the number of its soldiers and officers who were killed since the start of its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip has reached 72, bringing the total of casualties among military personnel to 392 since 7 October. Moreover, the Israeli army also announced that a top commander in the Golani Brigade was killed in north Gaza. For an in-depth look at what the Israeli side is saying or not saying on the real number of its casualties - click here Meanwhile, Al Jazeera aired new videos provided by Qassam brigades showing its fighters destroying Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles in various street battles in northern Gaza. 20:30 Egypts Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry said on Wednesday that the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip has raised many questions about the silence of international parties on the crisis compared to their positions on other armed conflicts. This came during Shoukrys meeting -- as part of an Arab-Islamic delegation -- with the UKs Foreign Secretary David Cameron. 20:00 Renowned American actress Susan Sarandon, the Academy Award-winning actress, was dropped by United Talent Agency for her support of the Palestinian Cause. Sarandon, 77, who won the Oscars for her role in Dead Man Walking (1995), took part in demonstrations against the Israeli war on Gaza and its slaughter of Palestinian children. "You do not have to be Palestinian to stand with the Palestinian people," Sarandon told the crowd at a recent protest. "It's time to have an open heart. It's time that Palestine be free. There is no freedom until everyone is free." Hollywood companies cut ties with... Actress Susan Sarandon because of her participation in a pro-Palestine march! Because she stood for what was right pic.twitter.com/k0kMBsbMSU I.S.K.N.D.E.R FREE (@najjer67281) November 22, 2023 Separately, Melissa Barrera lost her role in the "Scream" movies for Instagram posts calling for the end to the Israeli war on Gaza and signing an artist-initiated petition demanding a ceasefire. 19:30 Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Jordans King Abdullah II reaffirmed the importance of continuing efforts to achieve a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, according to a statement by Egyptian Presidential Spokesman Ahmed Fahmy on Wednesday. This came during the Egyptian-Jordanian Summit that took place a few hours after a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas was announced. 19:00 "We have just witnessed over the last few weeks the largest displacement of Palestinians since 1948. The scale of destruction and loss is staggering. It is an exodus under our watch. The younger generation, forced to live through traumas of ancestors or parents," UNRWA said on Wednesday. We have just witnessed over the last few weeks the largest displacement of Palestinians since 1948. The scale of destruction and loss is staggering. It is an exodus under our watch. The younger generation, forced to live through traumas of ancestors or parents. pic.twitter.com/7p2dQiBhPf UNRWA (@UNRWA) November 22, 2023 Israeli forces bombed several civilian-packed residential areas in the north and also in the south of the Gaza Strip Wednesday morning ahead of a pending truce deal. Israeli bombardment of homes killed at least 30 Palestinians in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, and 10 in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Wafa added that 15 Palestinians were killed in the city's Al-Sabra neighborhood while dozens were killed and injured in Israeli strikes targeting five homes in Al-Daraj and Al-Tuffah neighborhoods. Elsewhere, Israeli strikes on northern Gaza destroyed dozens of homes in the Al-Rimal neighborhood, Al-Shati refugee camp, Tal Al-Hawa, and Sheikh Ejleen. Three homes were bombed in Beit Hanoun, killing 25 people in the northern strip. Not far, Israeli tanks continued a deadly siege and strikes on the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia for the third consecutive day. Overnight, Israel allowed a number of patients to be transported out of the hospital to hospitals in southern Gaza. In the southern parts of the strip, Khan Yunis, Al-Maghazi, Al-Bureij, and Al-Nuseirat were targeted by Israeli warplanes and artillery fire, with reports of more fatalities and wounded. 18:00 French President Emmanuel Macron will on Wednesday discuss "the situation in the Middle East" with foreign ministers from major Arab and majority-Muslim countries, his office said. Joining the talks at the Elysee Palace in Paris will be the top diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey, the presidency added, as well as Arab League boss Ahmed Aboul Gheit. 17:30 More than 14,100 Palestinians, including more than 5,840 children, have been killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, according to a Wednesday morning tally by the Gaza health ministry. At least 33,000 have been wounded. More than 6,800 are still missing or presumed dead under the rubble. Director of the Hamas media office in Gaza Ismail al-Thawabteh revealed at least 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombardment in the last 24 hours, adding that nearly 800,000 Palestinians are still residing in the north of the Palestinian territory. 17:00 A Hezbollah source told Al Jazeera that the Lebanese resistance group will abide by the four-day ceasefire, despite not being part of the negotiations. Hezbollah will stop firing at Israel from southern Lebanon if Israel adheres to the ceasefire, the source said, stressing that any violation of the ceasefire will be met with a fierce response. 16:45 Taher Al Nono, a political adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, told Al Jazeera, that according to the ceasefire agreement at least 200 to 300 trucks, including eight fuel trucks, will be allowed entry into the Gaza Strip. This will include the entire strip, south and north, Al Nono added. 16:00 US special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues David Satterfield said displaced people in southern Gaza must be allowed to return to their homes in the north. There should be no displacement outside the Gaza Strip, Satterfield stressed. These remarks come as the United Nations revealed on Wednesday all 2.4 million people in Gaza are going hungry, and 1.65 million have been displaced by the war, with almost half the houses in Gaza destroyed or damaged. 15:00 UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres "welcomes the agreement reached by Israel and Hamas, with the mediation of Qatar supported by Egypt and the United States," a spokesman for the UN chief said in a statement. "This is an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done," Guterres said the UN would provide support for the implementation of the agreement. Good deal, but not enough. The World Health Organization (WHO) also welcomed the deal, but the UN health agency's chief said it would not end civilian suffering. "We welcome the announcement of the Israel-Hamas agreement for 50 Israeli captives to be released," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, formerly Twitter. "My thoughts are with the families, some of whom my WHO colleagues and I met with in recent weeks. We also welcome the four-day pause in fighting that will allow more aid to be safely delivered into Gaza." But he added that "this is not enough to end the suffering of civilians" and "that those still in captivity must receive any needed medical care". "We continue to call for all captives to be released. We also continue to call for a ceasefire so that civilians in Gaza can receive sustained, safe, and scaled-up support for recovery. Read the full report on world reactions to the truce deal 14:10 Egypts Al-Qahera TV channel said the Israel-Hamas truce will take effect at 10am local time (0800 GMT) Thursday. Egypt helped mediate the four-day ceasefire, which will facilitate the release of dozens of captives captured by Hamas on 7 October. The deal will also see the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and the entry of more humanitarian aid into Gaza. 14:00 The United Nations welcomed the deal between Israel and Hamas to free captives and pause the fighting and bombardment in Gaza, but said much more needed to be done. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres "welcomes the agreement reached by Israel and Hamas, with the mediation of Qatar supported by Egypt and the United States. This is an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done," a spokesman for Guterres said in a statement. I welcome the agreement reached by Israel & Hamas. Its an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done. The @UN will mobilize all its capacities to support the implementation & maximize positive impact on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Antonio Guterres (@antonioguterres) November 22, 2023 12:00 President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi welcomed the successful Egyptian-Qatari-American mediation efforts resulting in a humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, emphasizing Egypt's persistent commitment to achieving lasting peace. "I would like to express my welcome to the success achieved by the Egyptian-Qatari-American mediation in reaching an agreement to implement a humanitarian truce in the Gaza Strip and exchange captives between the parties," El-Sisi wrote on his official Facebook account. 10:20 At least five fighters of a pro-Hezbollah group within Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces were killed in two US strikes south of Baghdad early Wednesday, security sources said. Iraqi mourners carry the coffin of Fadel al-Maksusi, a Kataeb Hezbollah fighter who was also part of the Islamic resistance in Iraq, the group that has claimed all recent attacks against US troops in Iraq and Syria, during a funeral in Baghdad on November 21, 2023, AFP 10:00 The Palestinian Authority welcomed a humanitarian truce agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, a senior Palestinian official said. "President Mahmud Abbas and the leadership welcome the humanitarian truce agreement, value the Qatari-Egyptian effort made, and reaffirm the call for a comprehensive cessation of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the entry of humanitarian aid," senior official Hussein al-Sheikh wrote on X, formerly Twitter. 9:30 Britain welcomed a truce deal between Israel and Hamas as a "crucial step" towards providing relief to the families of the captives and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. "This agreement is a crucial step towards providing relief to the families of the hostages and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza," Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in a statement. 9:00 China welcomed a truce deal between Israel and Hamas after they reached an agreement on a four-day humanitarian pause in exchange for the release of 50 captives in Gaza. "We welcome the temporary ceasefire agreement reached by relevant parties," foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular briefing. Beijing hopes "that it will help ease the plight of the humanitarian crisis, de-escalate the conflict, and ease tensions," Mao said. Injured Palestinians evacuated from the Indonesian hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip receive care at Nasser hospital in the Palestinian territory's southern city of Khan Yunis, on November 20, 2023. AFP Search Keywords: Short link: A nurse in the public health care system says she is in charge of a clinic in which she is a UAF experts co-author national climate assessment Climate change will have far-reaching consequences to the people of Alaska, according to the fifth National Climate Assessment, a report from the U.S. government released last week. By Ritika S. Redrawing the Earth shows the shift toward renewable energy sources that help slow climate change. This drawing was created by an eighth grader as part of the National Climate Assessment art gallery. Five experts from the University of Alaska Fairbanks were among the authors of the Alaska chapter of the assessment, which goes beyond documented ecosystem changes to focus on societal implications of climate change. Climate change exacerbates disparities in access to healthcare, especially among Alaska Native and rural residents. Communities are also navigating compounding stressors. For example, people are facing challenges like declining salmon populations while also managing damage to infrastructure from coastal erosion or permafrost thaw. According to the report, adaptation will be costly, and will require increased capacity and strong collaboration across agencies and tribes. Im pleased that the report provides a picture of climate adaptation planning in Alaska and the challenges and barriers communities have in adopting and implementing these plans, said co-author Adelheid Herrmann, a postdoctoral researcher at the UAF Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. Communities face new threats of potential loss of life, lifestyle, livelihoods, food security, clean air and water. The focus on people required a diverse group of co-authors. Each brought unique connections to communities, as well as a wide range of professional and on-the-ground experience. We prioritized describing the changes that people are already seeing or will see in the future such as changing population size and/or geographic distribution of fish speciesand how that might affect Alaskans livelihoods, said Danielle Meeker, a sustained assessment specialist with ACCAP. I believe that this approach aligns better with how many Alaskans are thinking about climate change, based on their own experiences. National climate assessments are mandated by Congress through the 1990 Global Change Research Act. The assessments describe climate changes and their causes, project future conditions, and evaluate adaptation and mitigation options for employment sectors like commercial fishing, tourism and more. To learn more about the assessment, read the seven key Alaska messages or attend an ACCAP webinar on Dec. 5 at 11 a.m. Herrmann and Meeker were joined by three other UAF-affiliated experts: Sarah Trainor, Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy; Jeremy Littell, Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center; and Jeff Falke, Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Adelheid Herrmann, acherrmann@alaska.edu; Danielle Meeker, demeeker@alaska.edu 094-24 This morning the Ukrainian-Slovak border has been unblocked, and trucks are allowed to cross the border as scheduled. The relevant statement was made by Spokesperson for Zakarpattia Customs Office Viktoriia Senhetovska in a commentary to Ukrinform. The Uzhhorod-Vysne Nemecke checkpoint has been unblocked since 00:00 (midnight). The customs service is working as scheduled. Over the past day, 173 trucks have been registered here for entry and 104 for exit, Senhetovska told. In her words, 400 trucks are now waiting in line on the Slovak side to cross the Ukrainian border. A reminder that, on November 21, 2023, the Slovak Union of Carriers blocked the movement of trucks through the Vysne Nemecke checkpoint adjacent to the Ukrainian checkpoint Uzhhorod. Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi received Jordans King Abdullah II at Cairo International Airport on Wednesday afternoon, before holding the Egyptian-Jordanian Summit later in the day, the Egyptian presidency announced. According to the kings office, El-Sisi and King Abdullah will discuss the situation in Gaza and the means to ending the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. The meeting between the two heads of state comes just a few hours after a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas was announced, thanks to successful Egyptian-Qatari-American mediation. The agreement marks the biggest diplomatic breakthrough since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, which has raised fears of a wider conflict across the Middle East. During the recent Joint Arab Islamic Summit in Riyadh earlier this month, both leaders reaffirmed their rejection of the collective punishment of innocent people in Gaza by siege, starvation, or displacement. The Egyptian and Jordanian leaders said such policies violate international humanitarian law. Search Keywords: Short link: facebook like button Tweet tweet button for twitter Published November 21, 2023 CAPTION: Recipients of the Opportunity Fund pose with President Berry. Pictured L-R: Paul Ware, Dr. Brice Jones, Molly Masters, Dr. Eric Siereveld, Dr. Heather Kennedy, Dr. Allison Wiedemeier, Krishna Patel, Dr. Kim Marie Tolson, President Ron Berry, Erick Burton, Dr. Jessica Dolecheck, Dr. Caroline Carpenter, Donna Glaze, Dr. Emilee Sasser, Dr. JoEllen Showers MONROE, LA The University of Louisiana Monroe held a press conference on November 20, 2023, to announce the 2023-2024 awardees of the ULM Opportunity Fund. Nine projects were funded with a total of $50,000 after a review process conducted by the Opportunity Fund Committee. Allison Thompson, ULM Director of Institutional Effectiveness, is the Chair of the Opportunity Fund Committee. President Ron Berry and Dr. Christine Berry started the ULM Opportunity Fund with a personal commitment of $100,000 to support a wide variety of activities not typically funded through traditional budgetary means, said Thompson. They wanted to remove obstacles for people creating life-changing opportunities for others. Other donors have graciously followed their lead and today we will be able to award $50,000 to nine projects through which ULM faculty, staff, and students will positively impact both our campus community and the surrounding region, she added. When Christine and I thought about this project, we hoped a day like today would come, said President Berry. Just hearing about these projects being funded makes me emotional, because each one of them is truly life-changing, he stated. The 2023-2024 ULM Opportunity Fund recipients: Kaitlin Arnett, Director of Recruitment, will receive $6,000 to conduct ACT Prep Workshops for local high school students. Partnering with local high schools to ensure that students have the resources they need to succeed aligns directly with the Universitys mission to change lives. Dr. Jessica Dolecheck, Director of the Health Studies Program, will receive $5,000 for the College of Health Sciences Professional Business Luncheon. This event offers students the invaluable opportunity to apply training in areas such as etiquette, workplace attitudes, and professionalism while engaging with College of Health Sciences alumni, healthcare professionals, and potential employers in their respective fields. Ms. Donna Glaze, Director of Nursing Technology and Dr. Caroline Carpenter, Associate Professor of Nursing, will receive $1,385 for the Kitty DeGree School of Nursing Virtual Dementia Tour. The Tour is scientifically proven to promote sensitivity and awareness in individuals caring for those with dementia. With the additional resources provided by the Opportunity Fund, KDSON will ensure students can deliver excellent person-centered care for this vulnerable population and their families. Dr. Brice Jones, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications, and the Office of Marketing and Communications staff will receive $6,900 to enhance the office's visual communications. The ULM Office of Marketing and Communications will use the award to purchase additional equipment to allow the staff to improve visual communications that tell the story that is ULM, reinforcing our mission and vision, and providing an inside look at the ways in which we are changing peoples lives every day on the bayou. Dr. Heather Kennedy, Field Experience and Residency Coordinator for the School of Education, will receive $7,990 to assist in the creation of an Interactive Model Classroom used by teacher candidates preparing for field experiences and residency. This classroom will allow faculty to model best practices for teaching and give teacher candidates authentic opportunities to put those skills to work in a classroom setting. Krishna Patel, a senior Health Studies student, will receive $4,000 for her Feminine Hygiene Accessibility Initiative. This initiative will assist ULM students in meeting their basic needs by providing feminine hygiene products in select restrooms on campus. Students can focus more on success in their courses and less on financial hardships they may incur by buying basic necessities. Dr. JoEllen Showers, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy, and Dr. Emilee Sasser, Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy, will receive $10,375 for Enhancing OT Services for Feeding Difficulties. This project will enhance services provided by the ULM Pediatric Occupational Therapy Clinic to children and adolescents with feeding difficulties as well as educate their caregivers/families. Dr. Eric Siereveld, Assistant Professor of Music, will receive $3,750 for the ULM Jazz Clinic and Festival. The event draws in students and jazz ensembles from surrounding areas and states to provide educational and culturally significant jazz experiences as well as an opportunity to perform in front of internationally acclaimed jazz musicians. Dr. Kim Marie Tolson, Professor of Biology and Director of the ULM Museum of Natural History, and Dr. Allison Wiedemeier, Associate Professor of Biology, will receive $4,100 for the ULM Museum of Natural History K-8 STEM Discovery Boxes. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. The funds will be used to create Discovery Boxes containing materials needed to instruct in-class STEM activities. Available to be checked out by teachers for a week, each box will contain the lesson plan and items necessary for teachers to conduct a grade-appropriate, hands-on science lesson in their classroom. The ULM Opportunity Fund awards funds for projects each year. The funded projects are selected by the Opportunity Fund committee after a review process. The 2023-2024 Opportunity Fund Committee is Allison Thompson, Chair, Director of Institutional Effectiveness; Seth Hall, Chief Strategy Officer; Dr. Ashanti Jones, Associate Program Director, Physical Therapy; Dr. Kioh Kim, Professor, School of Education; Carmen Wright, Director of Student Athlete Success; James Beinkemper, Benefits Specialist, Human Resources; Dr. Gina Craft, Associate Dean for Administrative Affairs and Assessment, College of Pharmacy; and Brandon Wilder, Financial Aid Counselor. For more information about The ULM Opportunity Fund, including how to donate or how to apply for future rounds of funding, click here. A compelling YouTube video debunking Israeli myths on Palestine by renowned Egyptian influencer Ahmed El-Ghandour, also known as El-Da7ee7 (the nerd), has captivated Arab audiences, amassing millions of views and prompting calls for it to be translated in order to spread its powerful message worldwide. The video, titled "The Story of Palestine," uses Israeli sources to debunk modern and historical myths Israeli myths about Palestine and the dispossession of the Palestinian people in the 1948 Nakba. Released on 14 November, the video has been viewed more than 13.3 million times and has been hailed for shaping public discourse across borders. Everything I told you so far is from Israeli sources, Ghandour says after presenting first-hand accounts from a number of Israeli soldiers responsible for the Tantura massacre in May 1948. Tantura is a metaphor for all of Israel; which is a very thin and fragile layer of Western urbanization and only a metre below that fragile layer is evidence of killing, ethnic cleansing, and genocide, says Ghandour. Ghandour breaks down the video into seven chapters, with each section addressing a different myth. He highlights the irony of Zionism, which in responding to discrimination against Jews replicates it by discriminating against anything that is not Jewish. Zionism is based on the belief that the whole world hates Jews, that the entire world is anti-Semitic, explains Ghandour, addressing the misconception that Judaism is synonymous with Zionism. He also addresses the myth of pre-1948 Palestine as an empty land, the myth of independence from Britain, the claim that Israel is the sole democracy in the Middle East, and the narrative of Israel as a modern-day David against an Arab Goliath. Ahmad Al-Ghandoor, better known here in Egypt as El-Da7ee7 managed to sum up the entire story in 1 hour. This video is a must-watch, even if youre a Middle Eastern Arab like myself. If not, turn on English cc. Dont skip this video if you wish to be educated. #Gaza #Palestine https://t.co/XURKUvHZMY (@nyhaall) November 16, 2023 El Da7ee7 managed to sum up the entire story in 1 hour. This video is a must-watch, even if youre Middle Eastern Arab like me, said one viewer on X, formerly known as Twitter. This episode helped me a lot while I was explaining to my non-Arab friends about the current situation, to the point that I literally didnt need to say anything. I just sent the link. Thank you, a viewer commented on YouTube. To those still claiming that they need to "educate themselves" on what is happening in Palestine before speaking on it, here is a video on the history of Palestine and Zionism as a whole. I ask everyone watch it to understand the history of the genocide.https://t.co/6lNBfTJBhy Deadpool1763492 // CEO of LORE (@deadpool3763492) November 16, 2023 Another viewer shared the video on X saying, Here is a video on the history of Palestine and Zionism as a whole. I ask everyone to watch it to understand the history of genocide. Many comments described the video as phenomenal, emphasizing the importance of sharing it with the world. On X, one user said: "The reactions are excellent to El-Da7ee7's episode on Palestine. It's an impactful episode that we need to translate for the whole world. Egyptian YouTuber Ahmed El-Ghandour and his team excelled in describing the suffering of their brothers and sisters." .. .. . pic.twitter.com/Eh4jVF0dUT MO (@Abu_Salah9) November 14, 2023 Egyptian actress Dalia Shawky expressed her gratitude for the episode with a comment on Instagram, saying: I am grateful to you beyond description, Ahmed. Palestinian actor Yazan Nobani called it an episode for history. Another viewer commented: It is so rich with historical facts that people must be aware of, urging the creator to come back with translations so a wider audience can access it. Last month, Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef debunked Israeli myths about Palestine in two back-to-back interviews with British Journalist Piers Morgan that also went viral around the world. Search Keywords: Short link: Egypt's Minister of Trade and Industry Ahmed Samir opened on Wednesday the first Gulf-Egyptian Business Forum at the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce (FEDCOC) in Cairo. The two-day event is being attended by high-ranking trade officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), read a cabinet statement. The forum is meant to discuss avenues for cooperation between Egypt and Gulf markets and focus on the opportunities offered by Egypt to the private sector under the State Ownership Policy Document, Samir said. Discussions include the reconstruction and revamping of Egypts infrastructure through projects encompassing energy generation and building of roads, ports, and modern and industrial cities, Samir added. The minister noted that Egyptian-Gulf cooperation may extend to building logistics centres and industrial areas to link the region to other markets with over three billion consumers. Egypt-Gulf trade exchange reached $34 billion in 2022, and bilateral investments recorded $33 billion, according to Secretary-General of the GCC Jassim Mohamed Al-Budaiwi. Egypt has been working on boosting business relations with the Gulf. On 20 November, the Egyptian-Saudi Business Forum kicked off in Cairo with $1.5 billion worth of agreements expected to be signed. These recent advancements align with Egypt's broader objective of attracting foreign investments, particularly from Gulf countries, to strengthen its dwindling US dollar reserves. To achieve this goal, Egypt has been selling state-owned assets through its IPO programme, offering strategic investors stakes in 35 state-owned companies. Search Keywords: Short link: In a recent legal development, graduates of a 12-week sales bootcamp, Prehired, find themselves at the center of a significant student debt forgiveness initiative. The case, brought forth by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and 11 state attorneys general, exposes a web of alleged deceptive practices, leading to a court order requiring Prehired to shut down permanently and provide over $30 million in debt forgiveness. Let's dissect the intricacies of this case and its broader implications. False Hopes and Predatory Practices At the heart of the matter are the promises that Prehired made to its students - assurances of six-figure salaries and guaranteed jobs upon completion of the program. The court alleges that these promises were not only misleading but served as a facade for a more sinister operation. Prehired is accused of employing predatory business practices that lured students into agreeing to illegal and exploitative loans. READ ALSO: US Department Of Education Probes Anti-Semitic, Anti-Muslim Discrimination During Ongoing Palestine Conflict Income-Share Agreements Under Scrutiny Income-share agreements (ISAs), once heralded as a potential solution to the student loan crisis, have faced a rapid descent from grace. Initially celebrated for offering an innovative approach, ISAs involve students receiving upfront payments for their education with a commitment to repay a percentage of their future earnings. However, the Prehired case underscores how this model, if not carefully regulated, can devolve into a tool for exploitation. The CFPB alleges that Prehired operated by keeping students "in the dark" about crucial loan details, creating an environment where misinformation thrived. Furthermore, deceptive debt collection practices were allegedly employed, including the transfer of loans to affiliated companies and pursuing debt collection in distant and undisclosed forums. These actions, according to court documents, misled students into signing settlement agreements that favored the company over the consumers. Between January 2018 and April 2022, hundreds of students enrolled in Prehired's program, with over 1,000 entering into income-share agreements. The CFPB contends that Prehired charged exorbitant fees for its 12-week bootcamp, reaching up to $30,000. For those unable to afford these fees upfront, the company allegedly steered them towards income-share loans with promises that they would only start repaying once their income reached a certain threshold. The reality, as per the allegations, was far from these promises, leaving students in financial distress. Legal Fallout and the Government's Response In response to the allegations, Judge John Dorsey signed a stipulated judgment requiring Prehired to permanently shut down. The judgment also mandates the refund of over $4 million to student borrowers who made payments on income-share loans between May 2019 and March 2023. Additionally, all outstanding loans, valued at nearly $27 million, were canceled, providing a form of redress for those affected. The Prehired case stands as a cautionary tale in the evolving narrative of student debt and alternative education financing. As the reputation of ISAs faces increasing scrutiny, there is a growing call for more stringent regulations to safeguard students from deceptive practices and predatory lending. The case prompts a reevaluation of the ethical considerations and sustainability of income-share agreements as an alternative to traditional student loans. The saga of Prehired and the subsequent student debt forgiveness order highlights the urgent need for a transparent and ethical landscape within education financing. As the shadows of deceptive practices are brought to light, the education sector and regulatory bodies face a pivotal moment in reshaping the narrative around student debt, ensuring that students are protected from unscrupulous actors in their pursuit of education and career opportunities. RELATED ARTICLES: Colorado Children To Worry Less About Future Education Thanks To CollegeInvest First Step Program In an age where information pervades our lives, the battle against fake news takes center stage. California schools, recognizing the pressing need for media literacy education, are stepping up efforts to equip students with the tools to navigate the digital landscape responsibly. What exactly are the initiatives, challenges, and potential impact of media literacy education in California? Ever-Rising Tide of Fake News As misinformation becomes increasingly pervasive, California schools are acknowledging the urgency of addressing the challenges posed by fake news. The state, known for its innovation and progressive policies, is taking a proactive stance by integrating media literacy into the curriculum. The aim is not just to combat the immediate threat of misinformation but to foster a generation of critical thinkers who can discern fact from fiction in an era where truth is often elusive. California's move to incorporate media literacy into the educational framework signals a paradigm shift. Schools are not only focusing on traditional subjects but are also recognizing the importance of teaching students how to navigate the vast sea of information available online. From deciphering the credibility of sources to understanding the subtle nuances of bias, the curriculum overhaul aims to empower students with the skills necessary for responsible information consumption. READ ALSO: If Higher Education Is The Future, Why Is It Still So Difficult To Find A Job Challenges on the Horizon of Navigating Media Literacy Education While the intent behind integrating media literacy education is commendable, it comes with its own set of challenges. Educators are tasked with navigating a constantly evolving digital landscape, where new forms of misinformation emerge regularly. Striking a balance between providing comprehensive knowledge and ensuring that the curriculum remain adaptable to emerging trends poses a significant challenge. Technology is a primary driver of the information age and plays a dual role in the quest for media literacy. While it facilitates access to a wealth of information, it also amplifies the spread of misinformation. California schools are confronted with the task of leveraging technology to teach media literacy effectively, emphasizing critical thinking skills and digital responsibility in the face of ever-evolving online platforms. Recognizing the dynamic nature of media literacy, California schools are investing in the professional development of educators. Equipping teachers with the knowledge and tools to effectively convey the nuances of media literacy is crucial. By fostering a continuous learning environment, schools aim to create a cadre of educators capable of navigating the complexities of the digital information landscape alongside their students. Assessing the Impact of Media Literacy Education As California schools embark on this journey of integrating media literacy into their educational fabric, the question arises: how will success be measured? Evaluating the impact of media literacy education extends beyond conventional academic metrics. Success lies in students' ability to critically evaluate information, discern bias, and engage in informed discussions. California's education system is poised to assess success not just through standardized tests but through the cultivation of a generation adept at navigating the intricate web of information that defines their daily lives. In confronting the challenges posed by fake news, California schools are taking a proactive stance, recognizing the necessity of media literacy education. The initiatives undertaken signify a commitment to nurturing not just academically proficient students but critical thinkers equipped to navigate the complexities of the digital age. As California pioneers this path, the nation watches, recognizing the importance of instilling media literacy as a cornerstone of education in an era where the ability to discern truth from falsehood is an essential life skill. RELATED ARTICLE: Research Fraud Committed By More Than 1,000 Authors; List Of Highly Cited Researchers Trimmed A prestigious private university on the outskirts of India's capital is grappling with controversy following the resignation of one of its faculty members earlier this month. The departure of Sabyasachi Das, an assistant professor of economics at Ashoka University, stems from a dispute over his academic paper titled "Democratic Backsliding in the World's Largest Democracy." The 50-page document alleges potential electoral manipulation during the 2019 general elections in favor of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Brave Callout of Manipulation Das's paper contends that manipulation took the form of targeted electoral discrimination against India's largest minority group, Muslims. The abstract expresses concerns about weak monitoring by election observers, presenting a worrisome development for the future of democracy. However, the paper's circulation on social media last month sparked a backlash from BJP supporters, leading to Das's resignation. The university, located in the BJP-ruled northern Haryana state, distanced itself from the paper, citing an incomplete critical review process. This move fueled further controversy, prompting the university's governing body to form an inquiry committee to assess the paper's academic merits. READ ALSO: Research Fraud Committed By More Than 1,000 Authors; List Of Highly Cited Researchers Trimmed Faculty Clamors for Upholding Academic Freedom As the new academic session commenced, students and teachers protested Das's departure, highlighting broader concerns about declining academic freedom in India. Over 80 faculty members penned a letter to the university authorities, asserting that stifling critique poisons the lifeblood of pedagogy. They insisted that addressing the crisis requires upholding academic freedom rather than relying on apologies and resignations. Despite the faculty's plea, the university maintained its position. Another economics professor, Pulapre Balakrishnan, resigned in protest, claiming that academic freedom was violated in the university's response to Das's paper. The economics department rallied behind Das, asserting that the paper adhered to accepted norms of academic practice, and the governing body's interference amounted to institutional harassment. The economics department demanded Das's unconditional reinstatement and sought assurance from Ashoka's governing body that it would refrain from evaluating faculty research. The faculty issued a warning that unresolved questions regarding basic academic freedom would impede their ability to fulfill teaching obligations. Despite these protests, Das refrained from responding to requests for comments on the controversy. The BJP criticized Das's paper as "half-baked," and India's intelligence agency reportedly visited the university in the wake of the controversy. History of Academic Freedom Concerns The ongoing debate over academic freedom at Ashoka University echoes previous instances. In 2021, academic and columnist Pratap Bhanu Mehta resigned, citing his association with the institution as a political liability. Renowned economist Arvind Subramanian also resigned, asserting that the university was no longer a bastion for academic expression and autonomy. Calls for a committee on academic freedom were made following Mehta's resignation, but discussions faded over time. The recent controversy has reignited demands for such a committee. Critics have accused the Modi government of undermining public and private institutions, reshaping history, and stifling independent research. A global survey placed India's academic freedom index in the bottom 30 percent among 179 countries. Since Modi assumed power in 2014, several universities faced scrutiny, and academics critical of the BJP and Hindu nationalist affiliates faced consequences. The elite Indian Institute of Science canceled a discussion on a stringent law used by the government, and universities suspended students for watching a documentary critical of Modi. While teachers at Ashoka University have decided not to disrupt teaching for now, concerns about the stifling and monitoring of educational institutions persist. The university's media team has not issued an official statement. Amid the ongoing challenges to academic freedom, observers suggest that universities need to collectively decide how to respond to the current situation. The Modi government's alleged influence on educational institutions, curriculum changes, and appointments with ideological affiliations raise broader questions about the future trajectory of academic freedom in India. RELATED ARTICLE: Auckland Star Academic's Legal Battle Unveils Systemic Challenges Students meet University President Stephen Perez with a barrage of questions concerning the support and understanding of rural students, mirroring a growing effort on various campuses to cultivate a stronger sense of belonging for rural students, a demographic that contends with higher dropout rates compared to their suburban counterparts. Perez Initiates Change Within the University President Perez, addressing students and staff, articulated the university's commitment to "change the narrative." This commitment is evident in tangible efforts, such as the establishment of a permanent rural student resource center within the library. The overarching goal is to nurture a sense of community and provide assistance in navigating the unique challenges faced by rural students. While approximately a fifth of Americans reside in rural areas, as per the U.S. Census Bureau, the representation of these students on college campuses remains minimal. Few institutions have dedicated spaces or clubs designed for rural students to connect, share experiences, and offer mutual support. The challenges encountered by rural students are distinctive, spanning from feelings of alienation to navigating bustling campuses and urban transportation systems. The absence of physical spaces for these students to convene exacerbates the struggle. READ ALSO: UN Flags Opportunity To Transform French Educational Inequality Into Catalyst For Progress Trend of Student-Driven Networks Grows With institutional support often elusive, rural students across the nation have taken it upon themselves to create support networks. This trend has gained momentum in the past two or three years, sometimes evolving independently of administrative backing. Notably, these student-led rural clubs often emerge in prestigious institutions, including Ivy League universities, albeit with only a handful of members. The significance of this trend is gradually spreading across various campuses. At Chico State, the North State Student Ambassadors stand out as a beacon of support for rural classmates. This group actively advocates for their peers and endeavors to create an inclusive environment. Housed within the library, their dedicated space includes a map outlining the university's 12-county service area, covering an expansive 33,000 square miles. Of these counties, Modoc, Plumas, and Trinity register as 100 percent rural, according to census data. Addressing the gathering, sophomore Brynna Garcia highlighted the prevailing low opinion of the university among high school students in remote Northern California towns. One contributing factor, as acknowledged by President Perez, is the infrequent presence of Chico recruiters in these towns. Garcia, a moderator for the event, revealed that few of her peers in Red Bluff, an hour north of Chico, even considered the university as an option. Impact of Designated Spaces Karen Schreder, an assistant professor of education at Chico, highlighted the significance of spaces like the library for rural students. Although seemingly modest, the library space provides these students with an opportunity to momentarily escape the pressures of adapting to an unfamiliar environment. Schreder emphasized the stark contrast between the tight-knit support system in their hometowns and the challenges of navigating a larger, unfamiliar community. While elite colleges are increasingly focusing on recruiting applicants from rural areas, there is a consensus that attention often wanes after enrollment. Ty McNamee, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Mississippi, emphasized that a rural club can play a crucial role in alleviating the sense of neglect that some rural students experience on campus. Shared cultural backgrounds create a support network, a sentiment echoed by McNamee, who initiated a rural student group while at Columbia University. Students engaged in official rural clubs are actively working to expand these opportunities to more universities and colleges. Madison Mellinger, a senior at Princeton University, organized a two-day virtual conference last February, attracting 80 to 90 students. The conference aimed to assist students in establishing rural clubs, covering topics such as "imposter syndrome and the rural identity" and "starting and developing your rural student club." While the exact number of rural student clubs is unknown, the most successful ones have established connections with school administrations, resulting in crucial financial support. Initiatives Across the Country Spark Change Inspired by the initiative at Chico, Virginia Tech plans to create a physical space for rural students. Amy Azano, a professor at Virginia Tech, acknowledges the challenges faced by rural students even in a university surrounded by rural communities. The plan is to build a sense of belonging, recognizing that the idyllic setting does not automatically ensure comfort for rural students. As the event at Chico concluded, students mingled, discussing weekend plans. Some planned to drive back to their small towns, where the remoteness is an integral part of the allure. In these shared experiences and moments of connection, the seeds of change are sown, fostering a supportive environment for rural students seeking to navigate the complex terrain of higher education. RELATED ARTICLE: 3 Best Ways To Prepare For Standardized University Admission Exams Israeli consul for public diplomacy in New York, Yuval Donio-Gideon, attempted to influence Bard College's decision to offer a course titled "Apartheid in Israel-Palestine." This incident unfolded against the backdrop of escalating tensions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and raised questions about academic freedom, external influences on educational institutions, and the broader debate on whether Israel practices a form of apartheid in Palestine. This incident not only exposed the delicate balance universities must maintain between academic inquiry and potential offense but also shed light on the complex interplay of donor influence and the broader geopolitical landscape in shaping the direction of higher education. Clash of Perspectives The Israeli consul's intervention highlighted a clash of perspectives between those advocating for academic freedom and those expressing concern about potential antisemitism. The course, designed and taught by Jewish American writer Nathan Thrall, delved into the mounting evidence suggesting that Israel may be violating international laws against apartheid. However, the consul argued that the course breached the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, raising questions about where the line between academic inquiry and potential offense is drawn. Bard College's response to the Israeli consulate's objections emphasized the institution's commitment to academic freedom. President Leon Botstein affirmed that while the consul expressed concerns, the college stood firm in allowing the course to proceed. This incident brought to light the delicate balance educational institutions must navigate when faced with external pressures that may compromise their commitment to fostering open and diverse intellectual environments. READ ALSO: UN Flags Opportunity To Transform French Educational Inequality Into Catalyst For Progress Pro-Israel Advocacy and Donor Influence The controversy surrounding the course extended beyond diplomatic intervention, with property developer and Boston Celtics co-owner Robert Epstein resigning from Bard's board of trustees in protest. Epstein, a major donor, brought attention to the intersection of financial influence and educational decisions. His departure raised questions about the extent to which external pressures, including those from donors, could impact the academic direction of a university. The crux of the issue lies in the course's exploration of whether Israel's actions amount to apartheid. While proponents argue that this is a valid and necessary academic inquiry, critics, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and local Jewish groups, label the course as a form of antisemitism. The ADL's CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, asserted that the course "slanders and delegitimizes the democratic state of Israel," highlighting the deep divisions in interpreting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Global Context This incident also reflects broader global trends, with the Israeli government threatening to publish a ranking of supposedly antisemitic campuses in the U.S. The move to shame institutions that allegedly promote anti-Israel positions raises questions about the boundaries of free expression on college campuses and the role of governments in influencing academic discourse. The clash among the Israeli consulate, Bard College, and external influencers underscores the complexities surrounding academic freedom, donor influence, and the ongoing debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As educational institutions navigate these challenges, it is essential to maintain spaces for rigorous intellectual exploration while being mindful of the potential impact external pressures can have on shaping academic curricula. The Bard incident serves as a microcosm of the larger struggles institutions face in balancing diverse perspectives, maintaining academic integrity, and upholding the principles of free and open inquiry. RELATED ARTICLE: US Department Of Education Probes Anti-Semitic, Anti-Muslim Discrimination During Ongoing Palestine Conflict Photo : jcomp on Freepik Small liberal arts colleges face an uphill battle in the current higher education environment. With the nation's top universities, including the well-known private institutions and biggest state schools, attracting the most attention and donors, smaller colleges must innovate to survive. In that regard, Bard College President Leon Botstein offers a blueprint for lasting success. Bard College, located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, about 90 miles north of New York City, is known for charting original paths to higher education. That approach starts with Leon Botstein, who has led Bard College since 1975, one of the longest tenures of any current college president in the country. Over the years, he's instilled something akin to a startup culture at the academic institution that's resulted in a willingness to experiment and a spirit of innovation. "Music is my profession, actually. I didn't grow up to become a college administrator. So, like many college administrators, I came to it through a field, and in my case, the field was music," Botstein said in an interview on the "Now What?" podcast. "So, music is at the center of my life and always has been. And the great thing about music is that it has always been useless. And by being useless, it actually evokes the most human part of who we are. I'm not important. You are not important. Nobody is important because they're useful." Bard College offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs and continuously displays an innovative and agile approach to higher education, showing an ability to pivot and create quickly when a situation calls for flexibility. For example, the school recently admitted approximately 85 displaced Afghan students, mostly women, who fled their home country when the U.S. military pulled out. The college also runs the Bard Prison Initiative, which offers associate and bachelor's degrees to incarcerated men and women in prisons across New York state. The college's approach reflects the beliefs of Leon Botstein, who is dedicated to improving people's lives through education and exposure to the arts. He strongly believes that cultivating the life of the mind will lead to a more just and equitable world. Botstein is also ambitious about what a liberal arts college can accomplish. He recently fielded questions from a group of parents visiting Bard College. When asked what he wanted Bard's "brand" to be, he replied, "What Bard stands for, which is another way of answering your question, is a real belief that learning and studying is not only enjoyable, but that it will influence the way you conduct your life." Leon Botstein's Creative Approach, Including Bard Early College From the beginning of his time at Bard College, Leon Botstein's leadership quickly demonstrated his ability to think outside of traditional approaches to college administration. His outside-of-the-box thinking continues to this day and often becomes apparent in his dismay over certain trends in higher education. In one example, he wrote an opinion piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education on the need to step away from the college rankings systems that have been in place since the 1980s. "The embrace of rankings by colleges has damaged the quality of teaching and the link between higher education and democracy," Botstein wrote. "The rankings game corrupts the idealism without which higher education cannot thrive. The worst consequences have been for undergraduate education, where rankings have accelerated the erosion of autonomy, ambition, innovation, and quality in colleges. Generations of students have been the victims." That same spirit has driven the establishment of many inspired programs at Bard College. In one of the most well-known examples, the Bard Early College program provides high school students the opportunity to simultaneously earn a high school diploma and an Associate in Arts degree (earning up to 60 college credits from Bard). Built on "the belief that many adolescents are ready and eager to start college at an earlier age," Bard Early College is one organization distributed over eight sites in public school systems: the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens in New York City; Newark, New Jersey; New Orleans; Cleveland; Baltimore; the Hudson Valley in New York; and Washington, D.C. The program has awarded more than 3,000 college degrees. In an interview with Dumaine Williams, Botstein spoke about the program. He quickly dismissed the notion that it was created for gifted students. The program is designed with something different in mind. "The students for whom the Early College 'works' is not a select group that is defined by standard metrics of so-called academic ability," Botstein explained. "Our experience in the Early College is that standard metrics are behavioral indications and motivations. We'd rather have a focused, ambitious student for whom it takes longer to get the work done well than a bright, quick-on-the-feet student who could do it if that's what he wanted to, but either is cynical or lacks the motivation. We actually evaluate, for lack of a better word, the whole person, as much as we can through a subjective, differentiated way of selecting the student not only on grades and test scores." Bard Prison Initiative and Other Innovative Programs Another innovative program is the Bard Prison Initiative. Founded in 2001, the groundbreaking program expands college access to communities typically excluded from higher education. BPI operates at seven correctional facilities, enrolling over 400 incarcerated students in full-time programs who ultimately earn college credits or a degree from Bard College. Bard College also co-founded, with Central European University in Vienna, Austria, the Open Society University Network. The global network of educational institutions offers access to higher education across geographic and demographic boundaries, using online systems to eliminate barriers to learning. Member institutions are in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Bard College also has emerged as a leader in music education and performance, establishing a performing arts center designed by Frank Gehry, the renowned architect whose other buildings include the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Dancing House in Prague. Bard College also has a Conservatory of Music and The Orchestra Now, a graduate-level training program for musicians from around the world. A Life Spent in Music and Education Any understanding of Leon Botstein's life must start with music. His work as an educator and musician is entwined. Botstein has held the position of musical director of the New York City-based American Symphony Orchestra since 1992. While an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago, where he earned degrees in history and philosophy, Botstein founded the University Chamber Orchestra, which still exists. He also served as concertmaster and assistant conductor of the university orchestra. Botstein earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University, writing about the musical life of Vienna in the 19th and early 20th centuries. People are, he believes, "sacred and unique" because of what they can accomplish as human beings, including the creation of music. "It comes out of your brain," Botstein said. "It is totally human-made, and in its artificiality, it's a reminder, without any belief system, of the sanctity of our being. So, music is useless as a tool, if you will, but it's an essential form of life." Leon Botstein was born in Zurich, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants who immigrated to the United States when he was a child, settling in New York City. During his childhood, Botstein studied with legendary violinist Roman Totenberg and during the summers with faculty from the National Conservatory in Mexico City. He attended the High School of Music and Art and graduated at 16 before attending the University of Chicago. In addition to his position at Bard College, Botstein also served as president of the experimental Franconia College in New Hampshire when he was only 23, earning him national recognition. In 1975, at the age of 25, he was appointed president at Bard. Botstein is also the founding artistic co-director of the Bard SummerScape and Bard Music Festivals and serves as conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in Israel. He's written books on education, history, and music in both German and English, including a series of essays published as part of Princeton University Press' annual Bard Music Festival volume. He has curated exhibits for the Jewish Museum in Vienna. From 1990 to the present, he's been editor of the distinguished academic journal The Musical Quarterly. Botstein said as an immigrant, he has a feeling of gratitude for living in the U.S. and a dedication to working hard. "I can't complain about my life. I have been blessed with a much easier life than my parents' generation or my grandparents' generation, certainly," he said on the "Now What?" podcast. He added that he's driven by a desire "to contribute something to the country that rescued me and my parents. So, I've gained satisfaction from having lived in a way that can help others." (@Abdulla99267510) Pakistans Ambassador to the United States Masood Khan congratulated Dr Sohail Masood, CEO Kabafusion, on being honored with award. ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-Nov 22nd, 2023) A leading Pakistani-American entrepreneur Dr. Sohail Masood has been awarded prestigious Entrepreneur Of The Year 2023 National Award. Pakistans Ambassador to the United States Masood Khan congratulated Dr Sohail Masood, CEO Kabafusion, on being honored with award. The Ambassador said that Sohail Masoods phenomenal successes in the field of healthcare and his recognition as one of the leading entrepreneurs in the United States was a matter of pride for Pakistani diaspora in the United States as well as Pakistani nation. He said that Pakistanis living in the United States were an abiding link between Pakistan and the United States and were significantly contributing towards the progress of their homeland as well as their motherland. Starting his professional career in 1992, Pakistani-descent Sohail Masood led his company to become one of the largest home infusion providers in California. It is pertinent to mention here that EY Entrepreneur of the Year, previously Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, is the most coveted annual award program of the United States in recognition of entrepreneurship. Each year over 300 compete in different categories with only 10 being selected after passing through rigorous criteria. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Sabang, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Nov, 2023) Huddled on a beach after a sleepless night, a group of around 200 Rohingya refugees sit on the sand of a western Indonesian island, cordoned off by yellow tape meant to stop them running away. Locals in Sabang, in Aceh Province, have refused to accept the members of the persecuted Myanmar minority after they landed overnight, and were trying to push them back out to sea on Wednesday. But some of the Rohingya refused, leading to a stalemate on the beach where some people could be heard crying and others were passed out from exhaustion, using bags for pillows and shawls for blankets, surrounded by washed-up ocean debris. "We have been suffering 15 days at the sea," refugee Abdul Rahman, 15, told AFP. "We are very worried now. We don't want to go anywhere else, we only want to stay in this country." This is the third time in a week that Acehnese locals have sought to push hundreds of Rohingya refugees back out to sea after they reached the shore. Last week locals prevented a boat from docking, forcing some exhausted Rohingya to swim to land to plead with them to allow their fellow passengers to disembark. Including the stranded arrivals in Sabang, more than 1,000 Rohingya have landed on Aceh's shores in the last week, according to local officials. Next to screaming babies, some children on the beach Wednesday whacked the sand and built sandcastles, seemingly oblivious to the fractious situation unfolding around them, while others tried to cover their faces from the sun on the shadeless strip of ground. The night before, after landing, the large group sat together in rows surrounded by locals and security officers, with only flashlights illuminating them on the beachfront, according to images and footage shared with AFP by the United Nations. Instead of being taken to shelter, the group -- which includes 91 women and 56 children -- was kept on the sand overnight without bedding. Rahman said the arrivals had come from different camps in Bangladesh, and many had been in Kutupalong, the world's biggest refugee camp. (@FahadShabbir) BEIJING, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Nov, 2023) Team Pakistan captivated attendees with an array of activities showcasing the rich tapestry of Pakistani heritage and vulture during cultural festival at the South China University of Technology (SCUT), Guangzhou, China. The event was held with support of Consulate General of Pakistan in Guangzhou was a resounding success, highlighting the diversity and vibrancy of Pakistan. The 'Delicacy Street' was a feast for the senses, where visitors indulged in traditional Pakistani dishes like the ever-popular Chicken Biryani, Suji Halwa, Sheer Khurma, Pakora with mint and yogurt Chutney, and Gol Gappay. The food stalls, complemented by a display of traditional dresses and cultural artifacts, were a testament to Pakistan's culinary and artistic heritage. Pakistani students said they celebrated Pakistani Culture. A separate cultural walk show was a dazzling display of regional attire, demonstrating the myriad colors and designs unique to different parts of Pakistan. This vibrant showcase allowed attendees to visually explore the country's diverse fashion heritage. They further said that the festival featured captivating dance performances to traditional folk songs with eight students participating. These performances were a lively embodiment of Pakistani dance traditions and were received with great enthusiasm. The singing segment, which included renditions of famous Pakistani chart busters and the patriotic song 'Hai Jazba Junoon', created an atmosphere of pride and unity. Acting Consul General of Pakistan in Guangzhou Sardar Muhammad hailed the teamwork and amazing projection of the rich culture of Pakistan by these talented Pakistani students. Sardar Muhammad told China Economic Net, "International cultural festivals offer a unique opportunity for students to broaden their horizons, learn about different cultures, and develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for diversity." "In today's globalized world, it is essential for students to have exposure to and an understanding of different cultures, and international cultural festivals provide an immersive and engaging way to achieve this." International cultural festivals play a crucial role in shaping the next generation of leaders, thinkers, and global citizens. By exposing students to the richness and diversity of the world's cultures, these festivals can help cultivate a more inclusive, empathetic, and culturally literate society. They are an invaluable opportunity for students to learn, grow, and connect with the broader global community, he added. APP/asg Saudi Arabia is seeking to increase mutual trade with Egypt to $100 billion, said Second Vice Chairman of the Federation of Saudi Chambers, Fayez Alharbi, according to CNBC Arabia. Saudi Arabia is seeking to increase mutual trade with Egypt to $100 billion, said vice-chairman of the Federation of Saudi Chambers, Fayez Alharbi, according to CNBC Arabia. Alharbi noted that there are unprecedented directives from Egyptian and Saudi leadership to boost mutual investments. The Egyptian government pledged to immediately solve any problems facing Saudi Investors in Egypt, Alharbi stated during a meeting between a Saudi business delegation and the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce (FEDCOC). He added that Saudi Arabians are considering investing in the Egyptian renewable energy sector in the coming period. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have recently reached an agreement on partnerships of up to 60 percent in each country for manufacturing projects aimed at reaching the African market, Alharbi revealed. Trade chambers in both countries also agreed to set a work plan for 2024 to design a vision to give their industries access to the African markets, he added. Alharbi said that 802 Egyptian companies are investing in Saudi Arabia and there are plans for more expansion in the kingdom. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are preparing to sign agreements worth $1.5 billion at the upcoming Egyptian-Saudi Business Forum which was launched in Cairo on 20 November. Over the years, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have maintained warm relations in various fields, including politics, economics, and security. They have consistently coordinated on regional issues, further deepening their ties. In July, the two nations signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to enhance cooperation in the development of non-oil exports. Another MoU was signed to promote the growth of the automotive industry. Official data indicates that trade exchange between Egypt and Saudi Arabia saw a 13.5 percent increase in 2022, reaching $10.3 billion, compared to $9.1 billion in 2021. Egypt turned a $10.5 billion deficit in its Balance of Payment (BoP) in FY2021/2022 to a surplus of $882 million in FY2022/2023, catapulted by record revenues from tourism and the Suez Canal. Search Keywords: Short link: Vietnam Hong Kong Opportunities Abound As Bilateral Trade Expands Hong Kong is Vietnams fifth largest investor with growing bilateral trade in multiple sectors Nguyen Van Quan, chairman of Vietnams Institute for Economics and Trade Development (IETD) said there remains vast potential for cooperation between Vietnam and Hong Kong in numerous trade sectors including investment, services, finance, and logistics. He was speaking at the Vietnam-Hong Kong Business & Investment Matchmaking event held in HCMC on Monday (November 20) and said that bilateral trade between Vietnam and Hong Kong was increasing at a rate of over 10% per annum. Vietnam exported goods worth US$10 billion to Hong Kong last year and imported commodities worth US$1.78 billion from Hong Kong, up 19.8% year-on-year. Hong Kong is currently Vietnams fifth largest foreign investor, with 2,164 projects representing a total investment of nearly $29.5 billion, mostly in the processing and manufacturing industry, real estate, and electricity, gas and water production and distribution. Quan stated that Hong Kong is a regional transit centre and a trade and tourism hub, making it a significant market for Vietnamese food and providing ample opportunities for investment for Vietnam businesses. Vietnam has a Free Trade Agreement with Hong Kong via the ASEAN-Hong Kong Free Trade Agreement, which came into effect in 2019. Bui ang Dung, former deputy chairman of the National Assemblys Finance-Budget Committee, said Hong Kongs strength as a financial and banking centre in the region could facilitate connections between Vietnam and the region, as well as with major European and North American countries, particularly in science-technology, innovation, investment cooperation, finance, trade, and logistics. Edmond Yue, of the Hong Kong General Committee of Commerce (HKGCC), said Hong Kong investors found Vietnam an attractive and vibrant market in the region thanks to its political stability, wide market, and abundant human resources. New Vietnam Visa Policy for Entering Hong Kong In a related development, the recent relaxation of visa policies for Vietnamese nationals by Hong Kong is expected to open up a new period of bilateral partnership. Previously, Vietnamese citizens were only eligible for single-entry visas, enforcing a maximum stay of seven days for tourism or business activities. Under the new visa policy, Vietnamese nationals can now apply for multiple-entry visas valid for two years or more. Vietnamese Consul General in Hong Kong Pham Binh am said the new visa policy would create employment opportunities for Vietnamese labourers and businesses. Both economies stand to benefit from increased cooperation and closer ties, complementing each others strengths, he said. Related Reading South Africas largest opposition party and main Jewish representative body have slammed parliaments decision to cut diplomatic ties with Israel. A majority of lawmakers voted for the motion to close Israels embassy in Pretoria because of Israeli actions in Gaza. During a heated session in South Africas parliament on Tuesday, all members of the governing African National Congress which has a long history of solidarity with the Palestinians -- voted in favor of cutting ties with Israel. Many wore Palestinian scarfs and burst into song after the motion originally brought by radical opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters -- passed. The vote is non-binding, but it is now up to the government to decide whether to act on the motion. President Cyril Ramaphosas spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, read a statement. The president notes and appreciates parliament's guidance on our diplomatic relations with Israel, particularly with respect to the status of the Israeli Embassy in South Africa," Magwenya said. "The president and Cabinet are engaged over the matter, which remains the responsibility of the National Executive. On the day of the vote, Ramaphosa chaired a virtual meeting of leaders of the BRICS group of developing nations which include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - on the situation in the Middle East, where Gaza health officials say at least 11,000 people have been killed by Israeli military operations. At the BRICS meeting, Chinese President Xi Jinping described Israeli actions as collective punishment of people in Gaza, with Ramaphosa going further. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide," Ramaphosa said. South Africas main opposition, the Democratic Alliance, voted against the motion. Emma Powell, shadow minister for international relations and cooperation, warned afterward that cutting ties would leave thousands of South Africans in Israel without access to emergency consular services and affect South Africas representative office in Ramallah. The ANC have rendered our own citizens entirely trapped, with no way of accessing diplomatic assistance from their government," said Powell. The Israeli Embassy in Pretoria was not available for comment. Israels ambassador was recalled to Israel for consultations ahead of the parliamentary vote. However, Mary Kluk, vice president of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, an umbrella organization representing the countrys sizeable Jewish community, deplored parliaments decision. This vote had nothing to do with peace, and it was confirmed for me when I was watching on television, the chanting of From the River to the Sea, a clear call for the destruction of the Jewish state," said Kluk. South Africa recently referred Israel to the International Criminal Court for potential war crimes in Gaza. Israel says it is acting in self-defense after gunmen with the militant group Hamas killed an estimated 1,200 people on October 7th in the deadliest single attack on Israeli civilians in the history of the State of Israel. U.S. President Joe Biden highlighted "strong international coordination" by his administration to halt the flow of fentanyl and the ingredients used to produce the deadly drug following his diplomatic engagements with leaders of China and Mexico last week. "We've focused on prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery," he said on Tuesday during a meeting at the White House to address the scourge of the illicit drug that has killed more than 200,000 Americans in recent years. "But this challenge also has roots outside our borders, outside the borders of the United States." Biden vowed to accelerate his administration's efforts to combat the drug following counternarcotics deals with Beijing and Mexico City reached last week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. Fentanyl is mass-produced in Mexico using precursor chemicals largely from China and trafficked via cartels into the U.S. "It's a global challenge that demands global action," Biden said. Following their meeting, Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the resumption of bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics to reduce the flow of precursor chemicals that fuel fentanyl. "It's a big step forward, and we're grateful for that," said John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, during a briefing for reporters on Tuesday. "It may be some time before you see the practical results." With Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Biden agreed to expand law enforcement cooperation and intelligence sharing to restrict trafficking of the drug. The administration has been under pressure to take tougher measures to stop fentanyl from coming into the country. Republican lawmakers regularly highlight the smuggling of fentanyl as a reason to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border. Several Republican candidates say they would use military force against Mexican cartels in response to the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Republicans also accuse Biden of being soft on China's role in the epidemic. "Communist China's actions have told us that they choose to be our enemy. Fentanyl produced in China has killed thousands of Americans," Republican Senator Rick Scott said in a statement. Ineffective track record China can control the flow of precursor chemicals in ways that Latin American governments cannot, but whether Beijing will invest in the effort remains to be seen, said Peter Reuter, professor in the School of Public Policy and the Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland. Past efforts to control production and exports from outside the country have proved ineffective, he said. "We always worry about displacement," Reuter told VOA. "That is that if China stops sending the precursors, that the very large, poorly regulated, corruptly regulated, Indian industry will replace China." Illegal fentanyl is often produced in clandestine laboratories using precursors and fentanyl analogs produced by legitimate chemical and pharmaceutical companies that are not domestically or internationally regulated. A heavy focus on supply-based strategies to limit their entry from abroad can be counterproductive to the positive steps in harm reduction that the administration has taken as traffickers find workarounds to avoid breaking the law, said Brandon Marshall, professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. "Many of these efforts to restrict the supply lead traffickers to identify substances which are more potent," he told VOA. "That's what we see play over and over again." Biden urged lawmakers to approve more funds to support Americans with substance abuse disorders and close existing loopholes for small shipments of the drug, which can go undetected in border crossings and even through the postal system. "I also urge Congress to permanently make fentanyl and related substances as Schedule One drugs," he said. Such a move means that drug users would be even more stigmatized and move them further away from the help that they need, said Mary Sylla, director of Overdose Prevention Policy and Strategy at the National Harm Reduction Coalition, an advocacy group for the rights of people who use drugs. That puts people into a prison system that actually increases the likelihood of overdose, she told VOA. Sylla argued that more focus and resources should be placed instead on efforts to reduce the negative impacts of substance use, including syringe services, overdose prevention and drug treatment for those who are interested. In 2018, the Trump administration placed a temporary class-wide emergency scheduling of fentanyl-related substances, chemicals that are similar in structure to fentanyl as used in clinical/hospital settings. The emergency ban has been extended by Congress several times. The ban may have unintended and negative impacts, including making research on these substances much more difficult, Marshall said. In 2021, a group of more than 100 organizations wrote a letter urging Congress and the Biden administration to allow the emergency scheduling to expire, arguing that the scheduling exacerbates pretrial detention, mass incarceration and racial disparities in the prison system. "As we approach the 50-year milestone of President Nixon's announcement of the War on Drugs, there is ample evidence that these unscientific policies destroy communities, entrench racial disparities, and do nothing to reduce drug supply or demand," the letter said. Katherine Gypson contributed to this report. Political analysts and opposition politicians in Africa accuse China of undermining the spread of democracy in the region by propping up entrenched ruling parties and promoting what Beijing sees as the advantages of one-party rule. The beneficiaries in many cases are former liberation movements that won struggles against colonial and white-minority rule decades ago, often with Chinese support. Now organized as governing political parties, they have stayed in power ever since, often while accused of stifling any opposition. A major instrument of Chinese influence is a $40 million political training school based in Tanzania and jointly established last year by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and six southern African former liberation movements. Each of the six nations participating in the school Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Angola has been ruled by the same party since independence. Promoting 'weiwen' The CCP capitalized on an opportunity to relocate some of its political and ideological programs to Africa, China-Africa scholar Paul Nantulya said of the school in a recently published paper for the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. The six FLMSA parties are focused on supporting one another to preserve their rule against perceived threats, Nantulya explained. The CCP term for this is 'weiwen,' meaning 'stability maintenance' or 'regime survival.' The Nyerere Leadership School is the first political school the CCP has built overseas, a bold move by a party that often denies that it promotes its political system abroad. The school enables the CCP to proselytize and methodically share its governance model, Nantulya continued. The CCP hopes to gain a return on investment as the school gives it a permanent home for year-round interactions with each partys new recruits and senior party cadres. This puts it in an advantageous position to shape the African liberation parties China friendly policies and long-term influence. Chinas position China denies it plays a role in keeping ruling parties in power. We dont interfere in the African countries pursuit for a development path that fits their national conditions. We dont interfere, nor impose our own will on Africa, wrote Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington in response to VOAs inquiry. VOA also asked whether China engages equally with political opposition parties in Africa. When it comes to party-to-party relationship, the Communist Party of China is ready to deepen interactions with political parties and organizations of all countries, including those in Africa. We seek shared views and expand shared interests, Liu said. The United States also provides training in its model of governance to foreign political parties through the congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy, whose website says it is dedicated to fostering democratic institutions including political parties, trade unions, free markets and business organizations while supporting "human rights, an independent media, and the rule of law. But China itself is a one-party state, and Ray Hartley, research director of the Brenthurst Foundation, a Johannesburg-based policy think tank, said the Tanzania school's existence is problematic. "It is concerning that this particular school is for leaders of selected 'liberation movements' only, especially since it teaches the doctrine that the party must be all powerful and trump the judiciary." "In Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and Tanzania, these liberation movement governments have been in power for decades and have not hesitated to undercut democratic processes to keep it that way," Hartley added. Ruling party and the opposition With some notable exceptions such as South Africas African National Congress party, Nantulya said many former liberation parties have been largely intolerant of opposition challenges and have employed wide ranging measures to stifle, constrain and even dismantle opposition parties. One example is Zimbabwe, which has been governed by former liberation movement ZANU-PF since 1980, and whose elections this year were marred by widespread irregularities, according to observers. While many Western nations expressed concern over the Zimbabwean polls, Beijing congratulated the winner, the ruling partys President Emmerson Mnangagwa. It's a cause for concern for us in Zimbabwe and in Africa in general especially in view of the no questions asked policy on the Chinese in their engagement with Africa, their tendency to view Africa as a dumping site and of course undermining human rights democracy transparency in favor of errant regimes, said Promise Mkwananzi, spokesperson for Zimbabwes main opposition party, the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC). His partys members have been jailed, tortured and killed while mounting a challenge to the regime. It leaves opposition parties with no choice but to question the motives of the CCP in Africa. We believe that the CCP must have principled, non-partisan approaches to African countries and not blindly side and even aid ruling parties to rig elections violate human rights and undermine democratic entrenchment in Africa, Mkwananzi added. Zimbabwes governing party, ZANU-PF did not respond to a request for comment. Change of guard? However, historical friendships don't mean China isn't able to adapt to changes on the continent when necessary. What happens to a ruling party when it loses an election or is removed from power is telling, Nantulya told VOA. He uses Zambia as an example, because it has had several changes of power and its former liberation movement lost to the opposition again in 2021 polls. Zambias former liberation party is not part of the leadership academy in Tanzania, and Nantulya noted, I think the Communist Party of China does not want to embarrass or complicate its relationship with Zambia. It has a policy of cultivating whoever is in office. He points to the fact that the CCP has been wooing new Zambian leader Hakainde Hichilema. Likewise, in some countries in Africa, where things are less stable or specific political parties are less securely entrenched, Nantulya noted Beijing does cultivate relationships across the political spectrum, giving the examples of Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, its different when a political party program is only training ruling parties and helping them to entrench their stay in office, he said. Egypts main Internet operator Telecom Egypt signed an agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to install and operate the Managed Root Server (IMRS) in the Egyptian companys Regional Data Hub. Installing ICANN IMRS in Cairo will enhance internet flexibility and speed in Egypt and Africa by decreasing dependency on servers and networks abroad, according to a Cabinet statement on Wednesday. The new agreement will help improve internet connectivity in Africa and improve infrastructure in Egypt and Africa, said Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat. CEO and Managing Director of Telecom Egypt Mohamed Nasr stated that installing the IMRS will enable responding to all DNS Queries from Africa locally instead of relying on other similar regional servers across the globe. A DNS query is a demand for information sent from a user's computer (DNS client) to a DNS server. The IMRS will also reduce risks of hacking and cyberattacks, Nasr added. Installing an additional IMRS in Egypt will aid the efforts for developing the technology services infrastructure in Egypt, building on the countrys strategic location and its role as a regional hub for internet movement in Africa, stated Interim President and CEO of ICANN Sally Costerton. ICANN has deployed 14 IMRS instances in 12 African countries to help bring potential African Internet users online they will need more Internet infrastructure. ICANN is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet, ensuring the network's stable and secure operation. Telecom Egypt, a Cairo-listed state-owned company, has been accelerating efforts to boost internet infrastructure in Egypt. In 2023 alone, the company signed agreements to connect the Egyptian and African networks with the European Medusa Submarine Cable System and land 2Africa subsea internet cable, the worlds longest undersea communications cable, which is connected to 33 countries. Egypt has made significant progress in recent years towards digitalization. The country inked 29 agreements with foreign businesses, including IBM, Amazon, Microsoft, and Dell Technologies, in December 2022 to establish outsourcing centres, which are projected to increase Egypt's digital exports by $1 billion by 2025 and generate more than 34,000 jobs. Egyptian digital exports are projected to reach approximately $5.5 billion in FY2022/23, up 12.2 percent from $4.9 billion in FY2021/22. Last October, Minister Talaat stated that Egypt invested EGP 50 billion in digital transformation projects. Search Keywords: Short link: Geert Wilders, the Dutch populist whose anti-Islam comments have led to death threats, could become the next leader of the Netherlands following an election upset for his Freedom Party (PVV) on Wednesday. After 25 years in Dutch politics without holding office, Wilders was set to lead coalition government talks and has a good chance of becoming prime minister. An exit poll on Wednesday evening showed the PVV in a clear lead, 10 seats ahead of its closest rival, Frans Timmermans' Labour/Green Left combination. "We will have to find ways to live up to the hopes of our voters, to put the Dutch back as number one," Wilders said in his first response, adding that "the Netherlands will be returned to the Dutch, the asylum tsunami and migration will be curbed." Wilders was convicted of discrimination against Moroccans after leading a chant at a campaign rally in 2014, when he asked the crowd whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans. After supporters chanted "Fewer!" he answered: "We're going to take care of that." Wilders said in 2021, when the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, that he was the victim of a "witch hunt" and a broken legal system. Having made strongly anti-European Union comments in the past, he moderated his tone over the election campaign as he sought to get his party into government. He will have to work with pro-EU parties to form a coalition. But he kept to his strict anti-immigration, Dutch-first approach, winning his PVV its largest support in its 17-year existence. "It's enough now. The Netherlands can't take it anymore. We have to think about our own people first now. Borders closed. Zero asylum-seekers," Wilders said in a television debate on the eve of the election. "Wilders is by far the best campaigner. Even his political opponents will admit that," author Willem Post of the Netherlands' Clingendael Institute think tank said. "He's the one-liner guy. He's a bit like [former U.S. President Donald] Trump." Wilders' inflammatory views on Islam have prompted death threats and he has lived under heavy police protection for years. He has called Islam a "fascist ideology" and a "backward religion" and wants to ban mosques and the Quran, the Muslim holy book, in the Netherlands. His comments have led to sometimes violent protests in nations with large Muslim populations, including Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt. In Pakistan, a religious leader issued a fatwa against him. A self-proclaimed fan of nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Wilders is explicitly anti-EU, urging the Netherlands to take back control of its borders, to significantly reduce its payments to the union and to block the entrance of any new members. Wilders has also repeatedly said the Netherlands should stop providing arms to Ukraine, as he says the country needs the weapons to be able to defend itself. However, none of the parties that he could potentially form a government with share these ideas. The politician is one of the Netherlands' most recognizable figures thanks to his dyed blond mane, but little is known about his private life, except that he is married to a Hungarian-born woman and has two cats. U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on signs that Iran and Russia are poised to boost military ties. The Institute for Science and International Securitys David Albright on how the IAEA governing board might react to Irans latest defiance of international demands for transparency in its nuclear program. VOA Persians Saghi Laghaei on witness accounts of Irans increasing harassment of women who refuse to wear a mandatory hijab. Iranian-American activist Sarah Raviani on how she helped to build a coalition of advocates for tougher U.S. sanctions on Irans Islamist rulers. An alleged plot by Indian government agents to assassinate a Sikh separatist on American soil is a serious issue that Washington has raised with New Delhi, U.S. officials confirmed on Wednesday. We are treating this issue with utmost seriousness, and the U.S. government has raised it with the Indian government, including at the senior-most levels. Indian counterparts expressed surprise and concern. They stated that activity of this nature was not their policy, White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson told VOA News. Based on discussion with senior U.S. government officials, we understand the Indian government is further investigating this issue and will have more to say about it in the coming days. We have conveyed our expectation that anyone deemed responsible should be held accountable, Watson said. U.S. authorities thwarted the conspiracy and issued a warning to Indias government over concerns it was involved in the plot, the Financial Times reported earlier Tuesday. The general counsel of Sikhs for Justice, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, who is a citizen of the United States and Canada, was the target, according to the newspaper. Sikh separatist movement Pannuns group is part of a movement that, for decades, has been advocating an independent Sikh state in India to be called Khalistan. Indias government frequently has accused such separatists of being terrorists. Indias Ministry of External Affairs has yet to comment publicly about the alleged plot to kill Pannun. It has previously denied any government involvement in the killing this past June of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar near the western Canadian city of Vancouver. SEE ALSO: India Dismisses Canadas Allegations of Links to Sikh Leaders Killing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, three months after the fatal shooting, said there were credible allegations linking the Indian government to Nijjars death. Indias government called that absurd. U.S. federal prosecutors have filed a sealed indictment in a New York district court against at least one alleged perpetrator of the plot against Pannun, according to the Financial Times. Pannun, earlier this month, issued a video warning to Sikhs, a religious minority in India, not to fly on Air India because that would be life-threatening. He has denied it was a violent threat against the airline. Sikh militants are blamed for the 1985 bombing of an Air India jetliner. Flight 192, which had departed Montreal for India, via London, disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 329 people on board. It was the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. Pannun told the newspaper he would let American officials respond regarding specifics of the plot against him. The threat to an American citizen on American soil is a challenge to Americas sovereignty, and I trust the Biden administration is more than capable to handle any such challenges, said Pannun. Past accusations Indias external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has planned assassinations targeting Sikh and Kashmiri activists living in foreign countries, according to The Intercept, citing what the online nonprofit news site said were secret Pakistani intelligence assessments that had been leaked to it. Pakistan has previously made public allegations that RAW was involved in bombings and targeted killings inside India, including attacks on Chinese nationals working in the country. The first hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza are expected to be released Thursday, when Israel is due to begin a four-day pause in its attacks on Gaza under an agreement announced by the warring parties. Qatar, which helped broker the deal along with the United States and Egypt, said Hamas, in stages, would release 50 women and children in the coming days, while Israel is expected to free 150 Palestinian prisoners. None of the identities of those being freed has been disclosed, but U.S. officials said they believe some of the nine American hostages believed to be held by Hamas will be among those released. Fighting continued Wednesday ahead of the truce, set to take effect at 10 a.m. local time Thursday. Explosions were seen over Gaza and Hamas fired missiles into Israel. One airstrike hit a residential building in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, reportedly killing 17 people, including children, while in northern Gaza about 60 bodies and 200 people wounded by heavy fighting were brought into the Kamal Adwan Hospital overnight. The hospitals director, Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout, told Al-Jazeera television on Wednesday that the medical center is using cooking oil to keep its generator running. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza said 128 bodies were brought in overnight after nearby strikes, more than double the number that arrived Tuesday night. The deal encompassing the hostage-prisoner release and temporary truce evolved after weeks of stop-and-start negotiations amid the continuing bloodshed in Gaza. Israel began its military campaign to wipe out Hamas after the U.S.-designated terrorist group launched a cross-border attack on Oct. 7. Israel said 1,200 people were killed that day and about 240 hostages taken back to Gaza. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 12,000 Palestinians, including at least 5,000 children, have been killed in Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip. U.S. President Joe Biden expressed his appreciation to Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar and President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt for helping broker the deal. Biden praised the commitment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the brief stop in the fighting to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure the provision of additional humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinian families in Gaza. But Netanyahu said Israel would resume the war after the truce and keep fighting "until we achieve all our goals," including the destruction of Hamas' fighting and governing abilities and the return of all hostages. Several countries, including Britain, France, China and Russia, also welcomed the agreement. Qatar's Tamim said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire and "serious talks" on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel said the four-day stop in fighting would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed by Hamas. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it could assist with any release. Israel's Justice Ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible to be let out as part of the deal, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offenses. Under Israeli law, the public has 24 hours to object to any release. The Israeli military says it has detained more than 1,850 Palestinians in the West Bank since the war began, mostly suspected Hamas members. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed there, mainly during battles triggered by army raids. Attacks by Jewish settlers have also surged. The pause in fighting will also allow for more humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza. Such assistance has been sharply curtailed since the fighting began. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 79 trucks reached the Palestinian enclave on Tuesday, bringing the total during the past month to 1,399 truckloads of aid. The agency said an average of 10,000 truckloads of commercial and humanitarian commodities were reaching Gaza each month prior to the conflict. The United Nations says more than 1.7 million people have been displaced within Gaza, including 930,000 people staying at over-capacity U.N.-run shelters. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell welcomed the Israel-Hamas agreement and called for the release of all hostages held by Hamas. The humanitarian pause must be used to provide as much urgently needed aid as possible to the civilians enduring the devastating war in Gaza, Borrell said in a statement. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the deal a step in the right direction. The United Nations will mobilize all its capacities to support the implementation of the agreement and maximize its positive impact on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, said a statement by Farhan Haq, Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna also welcomed the deal, telling France Inter Radio that France hopes French nationals are among those released. In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the deal the first good news in a long time regarding the conflict. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron hailed the agreement as a crucial step towards providing relief to the families of the hostages and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. A media watchdog on Tuesday called on the international community to take action as details emerged about the death of a dissident journalist, seemingly at the hands of police in China. Freelance journalist Sun Lin died in a hospital Friday, just hours after a police raid on his home in the eastern city of Nanjing. A friend of the journalist, named Sun Liyong, told VOA Mandarin that nurses at the hospital have said that Sun Lin's clothes were ripped when he was admitted. "He was sent to the hospital at 2:44 p.m. He probably was dead already before that. Three hours later, at 5:45 p.m., he was officially pronounced dead," Sun Liyong said. Sun Liyong, who is founder of the Australia-based group the Support Network for the Persecuted in China, posted on social media details of the raid that he says came from the journalist's neighbors. Neighbors reported seeing security officers arrive around 1 p.m. on Friday and shortly after heard sounds of fighting. Days before the raid, the journalist had been sharing videos of anti-China protests on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum, held in San Francisco. The journalist's family said he was healthy before the raid and had spoken with relatives earlier that day, according to Sun Liyong. On social media platform X, Sun Liyong said that police visited the home of the journalist's ex-wife and asked that their daughter not "make a scene" over the death. VOA's sister network Radio Free Asia reported that friends and colleagues of Sun Lin's have also been visited by police since his death. As of Monday, the family had still not been allowed to see Sun Lin's body, according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, or RSF. Friends and activists issued a letter demanding that the Nanjing government open an investigation and that those responsible be held accountable. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent late Tuesday. The Paris-based RSF has said it is "horrified" by the death of Sun Lin. "This gruesome murder is a direct consequence of the Chinese regime's paranoia, which leads its leaders to see an enemy of the state in every independent media or journalist," RSF Asia-Pacific bureau director Cedric Alviani said in a statement. The watchdog called on the international community to pressure Beijing to "end its relentless attacks" on press freedom. Sun Lin, who also wrote under the name Jie Mu, had a long career in journalism and activism in China and had pushed back on censorship. A former editor of Nanjing-based newspaper Business Times Today, he was once fired for writing articles critical of Beijing. Sun Lin later contributed to the U.S.-based website Boxun. His coverage included cases of official harassment and political corruption, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2018 Chinese authorities sentenced Sun Lin to four years in prison for "incitement," and since his release in 2022 he had been under surveillance and denied visits from friends. Because of that, Sun Lin had installed security cameras in and around his home, his friend Sun Liyong said. "There are no dead corners in Sun Lin's house, there are cameras all over his house," Sun Liyong told VOA Mandarin: "But the Public Security Bureau is in possession of all the footage now." China is a leading jailer of journalists and ranks behind only North Korea as having the worst environment for media freedom on RSF's World Press Freedom Index. This article originated in VOA's Mandarin Service. The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Kenyas Health Ministry has rolled out a digital health information system to help workers diagnose patients and store their health records. Mohammed Yusuf reports from a village in western Kenya, where hospitals have recorded an increase in people seeking medical assistance since the deployment of the system Hundreds of mourners gathered Wednesday in Beirut to pay tribute to two journalists killed in an Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon this week. Farah Omar and Rabih al-Maamari, who worked for the Lebanese broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, are among more than 50 journalists killed in the region since Israels response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack. Israel began its military campaign to wipe out Hamas after Hamas militants crossed into southern Israel on October 7. Israel said 1,200 people were killed and some 240 captives taken in the terror attack. Gaza health officials say more than 12,000 Palestinians, including at least 5,000 children, are confirmed killed in Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip. As of early Wednesday, at least 53 journalists were among those casualties, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists or CPJ. Of those, 46 are Palestinian, four Israeli and three Lebanese, the New York-based nonprofit said. CPJ has described the first month of the war as the deadliest for journalists since it started documenting media deaths in 1992. The Israeli military said earlier in the conflict that journalism safety cannot be guaranteed. Among the media casualties is Bilal Jadallah, who was director of the regional media freedom group Press House-Palestine. Jadallah died Sunday when a strike hit his vehicle. A few days earlier his colleague Ahmed Fatima, a photojournalist for Egypts Al Qahera News TV who also worked at Press House-Palestine, died in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. The Vienna-based International Press Institute or IPI says it attributes the majority of media deaths to Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. The CPJ paid tribute to Jadallah, who had partnered with them to help research and document attacks and press freedom violations in the region. [Jadallahs] killing leaves a gaping hole in the media landscape in Gaza, where journalists are in severe peril as they cover the war that has claimed the lives of dozens of their colleagues, said Sherif Mansour, who oversees CPJ Middle East research. The Al-Mayadeen journalists were killed Tuesday about one and half kilometers from Lebanons border with Israel. Their media outlet accused Israel of targeting the news crew, and Lebanons caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati called the deaths an assassination. Israels security cabinet had voted under emergency measures last week to block the Lebanese station, saying its broadcasts harm national security. Reuters cited Israel's military as saying it is "aware of a claim regarding journalists ... who were killed as a result of [Israeli army] fire ...This is an area with active hostilities, where exchange of fire occur. Presence in the area is dangerous." Al-Mayadeen is known to be pro-Palestinian and supportive of Iran's regional military alliance, which includes Hamas. The stations deputy general manager Bahia Halawi told VOA last week she believes that steps to shutter the station are in retaliation for its critical coverage but added that Al-Mayadeen does not recognize Israel as a state. Issues of perceived media bias have been present throughout the conflict. With foreign media largely unable to report from inside Gaza, they are relying on local journalists for information. In a few isolated cases, networks had to end ties with freelancers after they were found to have posted pro-Hamas or anti-Israel content on social media. With limited independent foreign reporting in Gaza, media advocates have underscored the need to protect local journalists. IPIs deputy director Scott Griffen said that amid an information blackout and the barring of international journalists from entering Gaza, the world depends heavily on Palestinian journalists for coverage of the war. We stand behind all of them in their incredible courage, Griffen said in a statement this week, adding that Israel should allow the foreign press to enter and report freely from Gaza. Some information for this story came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected overhead images of U.S. military facilities in Guam, state media reported Wednesday, hours after claiming the successful launch of his countrys first military spy satellite. During a visit to a satellite control center in Pyongyang, Kim observed satellite images of Andersen Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other major U.S. military bases, reported the official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA. The report did not include any images allegedly taken by the satellite, launched late Tuesday from the countrys west coast. It said the device would undergo seven to 10 days of fine-tuning before formally starting its reconnaissance mission on December 1. Kim wants to launch many more spy satellites and place them on different orbits, as part of efforts to better monitor U.S. and allied troops in the region, KCNA reported. It was North Korea's third attempted spy satellite launch this year. Previous launches, in May and August, ended in failure because of rocket problems. South Koreas military believes the latest attempt successfully placed a satellite into orbit, although it said additional analysis is needed before determining whether the device is operating normally. The United States and its allies condemned the launch as a provocation and violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, while quickly arranging shows of military force against Pyongyang. On Wednesday, a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Santa Fe, docked at a South Korean port, according to South Koreas Navy. A day earlier, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrived in the South Korean port city of Busan. South Korea, the United States, and Japan are engaged in talks on holding a joint maritime drill involving the U.S. aircraft carrier, reported South Koreas Yonhap news agency. Earlier, South Korea announced the partial suspension of a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement meant to ease tensions. A first step Analysts debate how much useful information North Koreas spy satellite program will provide. North Korea has not revealed how many satellites it intends to keep in orbit simultaneously. The quality of imagery they will produce is also uncertain. After retrieving parts of a North Korean spy satellite and space launch vehicle that plunged into the sea in May, South Korea's military said it assessed that the device "had no military utility" as a reconnaissance satellite. "However, I think even a satellite with rudimentary capabilities could still be a first step, or could modestly improve North Korea's situational awareness," said Tianran Xu, an analyst who focuses on Northeast Asian security and missile systems for the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network. North Korea has placed at least two satellites into orbit the latest in February 2016 but neither is believed to be working. Pyongyang claimed those launches were part of its peaceful space development program. The United States and its allies condemned those launches as thinly disguised tests of long-range missile technology. North Korea is banned from any ballistic missile activity under multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions. Russian help During a September meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Russia's Far East, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to confirm Moscow was helping Pyongyang build satellites. However, the exact nature of any cooperation remains unclear, since it may be too early for North Korea to have incorporated much of the help, Xu said in an interview with VOA. "Even if there is some substantial Russian aid coming either in satellite technology, sensor technology, or in the launch vehicle itself if it's that substantial, they may choose to use the knowledge for their next launch," Xu added. A Russian military aircraft flew to Pyongyang on Wednesday, less than a day after North Korea launched the satellite, according to aviation tracking data cited by NK News, a Seoul-based publication that focuses on North Korea. Russia and North Korea have expanded military and other cooperation in recent months, especially as both countries' ties with the United States have plummeted. South Korea response South Korea, which had repeatedly warned the North against moving ahead with the launch, on Wednesday announced it would resume reconnaissance and surveillance flights along the border with North Korea. The moves came as part of the partial suspension of the 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement, or CMA, between Seoul and Pyongyang. The agreement set up buffer and no-fly zones and banned other military activity along the inter-Korean border. North Korea has repeatedly violated the agreement in recent years. After it was signed, U.S. military officials in South Korea were publicly supportive of the CMA, saying it was helping to reduce tensions along the border during a period of sensitive diplomacy. That diplomacy was short-lived, though, and North Korea soon intensified its weapons tests, verbal threats and cross-border provocations. Some analysts fear that a unilateral South Korea withdrawal from the agreement could lead to misunderstandings and miscalculations, increasing the chances of a clash with North Korea. Any abrogation of the CMA "will be the result of deteriorated inter-Korea relations and escalatory steps by North Korea, not the cause," said Sydney Seiler, who until earlier this year was the national intelligence officer for North Korea in the U.S. National Intelligence Council. "The only question left for Seoul in such a scenario is how to manage the messaging and any domestic political blowback," Seiler, who is now a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic & International Studies, told VOA. North Korea has not publicly responded to South Korea's decision to suspend parts of the CMA. Earlier Tuesday, a North Korean state media editorial defended the country's space program as a "war deterrent" that will help promote a "strategic security balance" in the region. The North Korean editorial, written by an aerospace technology researcher, slammed South Korea's coming launch as an aggressive and "extremely dangerous" military provocation. Later this month, South Korea plans to launch its first domestically built spy satellite, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Security experts in Africa are raising concerns about the growing use of drones by terrorist groups and the readiness of government forces to match their sophistication. A report last week showed African terrorist groups are using global affiliations to acquire and modify drones for their own needs. Though the drones are not yet being used to launch attacks, analysts worry that in the long run, they could change the balance of power with governments. The Institute for Security Studies report says that while the global focus has been on the adaptation of unmanned aerial systems in Iraq, Syria and other spots in the Middle East, drones are becoming part of the tool kit for violent actors across Africa. The report said African militant groups like Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province and al-Shabab are acquiring and modifying drones for their own purposes. It said terror groups use social media and messaging platforms to get the knowledge they need from groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State. The report also suggested that the increasing affordability of the technology may be contributing to the growing trend. An analyst for Beacon Security in Nigeria, Kabiru Adamu, worries the drones will make terror groups more powerful. "It creates another layer of challenge for the already challenged security operations that are in that region. Even though that has more or less been restricted to locations around the Middle East and some parts of Asia, but we've also seen indications of that happening in the Lake Chad basin," Adamu said. "On several instances we've had reports of military field operations encountering unmanned aerial vehicles that are mainly for surveillance purposes. We're yet to pick up any reports that indicate the arming of such unmanned aerial vehicles." Terror groups often use drones for propaganda, intelligence gathering or reconnaissance purposes. Last month, African air force chiefs met in Senegal and said the continent urgently needed to develop sophisticated defenses in response to the growing threat. But the report said African countries lack the capacity to address the problem. Adamu agrees. "It will shock you that we do not have any sanctioned or certified methods for mitigating aerial attacks in the country using unmanned aerial vehicles at the moment," Adamu said. "I think we're currently trying to develop our capacity for that. It appears to me that the Nigerian military in particular is playing catch-up in this area. The armed groups are ahead." Last year, Islamic State West Africa Province used drones to shoot propaganda videos showcasing its training camp. Also last year, the group's surveillance drones were spotted over the position of government forces shortly before fighters launched an attack. Experts say African nations need to develop domestic approaches before they start thinking about regional and continental response. Chidi Omeje, a security analyst, says there's no time to waste. "Just like the report said, they're watching and learning. So there's it's a very serious development, it's something that the subregion military groups should take particular interest on to see how they can be on top of the situation," Omeje said. "You know how callous those guys are, and the moment they have such window of opportunity to do more harm, they'll definitely employ that tactic. It's quite concerning." Experts say Nigeria needs to lead the regional effort but that the country itself lacks a coherent policy to combat armed groups' use of the drones. It has been 10 years since the start of the uprising known as Maidan, or the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine. The wave of civil unrest was sparked by the Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to not sign an association agreement with the European Union, which set off a three-month resistance movement. VOA met with three Maidan activists, whose lives along with their country changed forever in November 2013. Minister of Education and Science of Kyrgyzstan Dogdurkul Kendirbaeva met with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Turkey to Kyrgyzstan Ahmet Sadik Dogan and the President of Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) of the country Abdullah Eren, Azernews reports, citing 24.kg News Agency. Dogdurkul Kendirbaeva noted the strengthening of cooperation in the field of education and proposed considering the possibility of organizing two-week training courses in Turkey to improve the qualifications of teachers teaching STEAM subjects. She also raised the issue of translating Turkish books on STEAM subjects into the Kyrgyz language and adapting them for the Kyrgyz Republic. Representatives of the embassy and YTB reported that the ministrys proposals will find support. Abdullah Eren told about the scholarship program of Turkey, and also said that they were ready to allocate 50 grant places for the 2024-2025 academic year for Kyrgyzstanis who will get the highest scores at the Nationwide Testing, the Ministry of Education added. The late crush of holiday travelers is picking up steam, with about 2.7 million people expected to board flights on Wednesday and millions more planning to drive to Thanksgiving celebrations across the United States. Airline officials say they are confident they can avoid the kind of massive disruptions that have marred past holiday seasons, such as the meltdown at Southwest Airlines over last Christmas. But heavy rain and snow showers along the East Coast could cause delays. The National Weather Service was predicting accumulating snow Wednesday in northern New England, including up to 20.3 centimeters of snowfall in northern Maine. Snow was also expected to hit the northern Rocky Mountains on Thanksgiving Day, bringing up to 30 centimeters of snow to parts of Wyoming by Friday. Still, as of Wednesday morning, U.S. airports were reporting only nine flight cancellations and 260 flight delays, according to FlightAware. Airlines have added tens of thousands of employees in the last couple years, and Southwest says it has bought more winter equipment to keep planes moving even during sub-freezing temperatures. Security lines at airports could be long because of the crowds. Delta Air Lines is telling passengers to arrive at the airport at least two hours before their flight if they are traveling within the United States, three hours early if they're flying overseas and maybe earlier on Sunday and Monday. The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 2.7 million passengers Wednesday. On Sunday, it expects to screen 2.9 million, which would surpass a previous record set on June 30. The holiday will also test the Federal Aviation Administration, which faces shortages of air traffic controllers at key facilities that caused reductions in flights to the New York City area this summer and fall. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said during a news conference Monday that the government has prepared for holiday travel by hiring more air traffic controllers, opening new air routes along the East Coast, and providing grants to airports for snowplows and deicing equipment. Meanwhile, AAA predicts that 55.4 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home between Wednesday and Sunday, the third-highest forecast ever by the auto club. AAA says most of them 49.1 million will drive. Drivers will get a break from last year on gasoline prices. AAA says the nationwide average for gas was down to $3.28 a gallon on Wednesday, compared with $3.63 a year ago. Air travelers will enjoy lower prices too. Airfares in October were down 13% from last year, according to government figures, and fares around Thanksgiving have been about 14% lower than a year ago, according to the travel site Hopper. Even so, the high cost of rent, food, health care and other expenses were weighing on people's travel plans. Jason McQueary, a 25-year-old social worker and graduate student, said rent and other essentials eat up most of his paycheck and he was grateful for his credit card points, which brought down the cost of his roundtrip flight from Denver to Chicago from $450 to $150. "I was just like, 'man, I'm glad I only come home once a year,'" said McQueary, who was waiting to get picked up Tuesday after arriving to Chicago O'Hare International Airport to spend Thanksgiving with family in his hometown of Byron, Illinois. U.S. officials said there was no indication of a link to terrorism from a car crash Wednesday at a checkpoint in Niagara Falls, New York, which killed two people inside the vehicle and prompted authorities to close multiple checkpoints amid questions about what happened. Exactly what caused the car to approach the checkpoint at a high rate of speed before flying into the air, crashing into the ground and bursting into flames remained unclear early Thursday. A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified, the FBIs Buffalo office said in a statement. The crash happened as the car traveled from the U.S. side toward the checkpoint that leads onto the Rainbow Bridge, which links the United States and Canada, and took place on one of the busiest travel days in the U.S. ahead of Thursdays Thanksgiving Day holiday. U.S. police said Thursday they were still investigating the crash. The Niagara Falls Police Departments Crash Management Unit has taken over the investigation. Due to the complexity of the incident, the investigation will take some time to complete, Niagara Falls Police Department Superintendent John Faso said in a statement. At this time the identity of those involved is pending positive identification and notification to next of kin. U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed the Rainbow Bridge but said late Wednesday it had reopened three other crossings the Peace Bridge, Whirlpool Bridge and Lewiston Bridge after temporarily suspending traffic at those sites out of an abundance of caution. In addition to the two people killed, a law enforcement official speaking on the condition of anonymity, told VOA that an employee from the CBP Office of Field Operations was taken to a hospital with minor injuries and later released. Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, I want to be very, very clear to Americans and New Yorkers. At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist attack. Hochul visited the scene of the incident, which she described as horrific. You actually had to look at it and say, Was this generated by A.I.? because it was so surreal to see how high in the air this vehicle went and then the crash and explosion and the fire, she said about the video of the crash. The White House said President Joe Biden was informed of the incident, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told parliament, This is obviously a very serious situation in Niagara Falls. Trudeau excused himself from Question Period in the House of Commons to be briefed further, saying, We are taking this extraordinarily seriously. VOA's National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to the story. Also some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. U.S. forces have carried out two series of strikes against Iran-backed forces and their facilities in Iraq since Monday, according to U.S. Central Command. In a statement, the command said that U.S. fighter aircraft launched "precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq during the early hours of Wednesday local time, which were in direct response to attacks against U.S. and coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups. The U.S. strikes targeted an operations center and a command and control node used by the Iran-backed militant group Kataib Hezbollah near Al Anbar and Jurf al-Saqr, a defense official told VOA. Kataib Hezbollah forces were present at the two facilities, which the defense official said had supported recent attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria. Early assessments point to at least six militants killed in the two strikes, the defense official added. On Monday, U.S. forces struck and killed Iran-backed proxies who earlier had launched a close-range ballistic missile against al-Asad Air Base in Iraq. It was the first time a ballistic missile had been launched against U.S. forces in the Middle East since a surge in attacks began Oct. 17, and the first time U.S. forces have retaliated with a strike in Iraq. Mondays Iran-backed attack marks an escalation from previous attacks over the past month, as ballistic missiles can be more powerful and carry more destructive payloads than the rockets and drones used in previous incidents. U.S. Central Command said the ballistic missile attack caused injuries to eight U.S. personnel and minor damage to infrastructure. The Pentagon said U.S. forces were able to locate an Iran-backed militia vehicle and a number of personnel involved in the attack. An AC-130 gunship crew then conducted a self-defense strike in retaliation, killing three enemy fighters. Iran-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 told VOA. More than 60 rocket and drone attacks against U.S. forces have occurred since Oct. 17. Most of those attacks 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 injured dozens of U.S. military personnel. They range from traumatic brain injuries to perforated eardrums to minor injuries caused by shrapnel. Officials say those injured have since 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. In addition to the AC-130 strike in Iraq, U.S. fighter jets have conducted three rounds of strikes targeting four facilities used by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and their proxy groups in Syria. The Middle East has been a tinderbox since Iran-backed Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing at least 1,200 people while taking about 240 people hostage. Israels retaliatory strikes and ground offensive have caused thousands of deaths. The United States has increased its presence in the region to protect its roughly 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria and to deter malign actors, including Iran, the Houthis, Hezbollah and other Iran-backed proxy militias, from expanding the Israel-Hamas conflict. A spate of attacks from Iran-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 Iran-backed facilities in Syria, much like the strikes carried out by U.S. forces in recent weeks. The last time Iran or Iran-backed proxies used ballistic missiles against U.S. forces in Iraq was in 2020 following a U.S. attack in Iraq that killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of Irans elite Quds Force. Wednesday will mark 60 years since the fateful day in Dallas in 1963 when U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Despite having one of the shortest tenures of any U.S president, the youthful Kennedy - along with his wife Jacqueline - forever changed the office of the U.S. presidency. The Kennedy administration challenged post-war America to rise to the challenge of new opportunities and innovations. At his inauguration in January 1961, Kennedy declared: "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Kennedy followed that months later, in a speech before a joint session of Congress, by setting the goal of landing a man on the moon within a decade. It was the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, and Kennedy used all of the tools at his disposal to emphasize the power and persuasion of the U.S. in diplomatic trips around the world. He joked that he was the "man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy" to Paris and inspired the crowds in West Berlin with the phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner!" Kennedy also guided the country through the threat of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis in the autumn of 1962. However, it was Kennedy's shocking death that forever stamped his life and legacy onto the world's memory. In November 1963, the 46-year-old Kennedy arrived in Texas for a two-day, five-city trip to help raise campaign funds for his re-election the following year and to increase political support for his ticket with Vice President Lyndon Johnson, a native Texan. After starting his second day in Texas at nearby Ft. Worth, Kennedy and his wife flew to Dallas, where they met the vice president and Texas Governor John Connally and their spouses. Shortly before noon, the presidential motorcade, with Kennedy and Connally in the second vehicle, left the airfield to drive through the downtown area of the city to the Dallas Business and Trade Mart for a speech and luncheon. The cars moved along streets lined with cheering crowds and at around 12:30 p.m. local time turned from Main Street onto Elm Street in front of the Texas School Book Depository at Dealey Plaza. Moments later, shots rang out and both President Kennedy and Governor Connally were struck by bullets. Kennedy was hit in the neck and head, while Connally suffered a wound to the chest. The limousine sped away under escort to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital where little could be done for the mortally-wounded U.S. president. A Catholic priest was summoned to give him the last rites. Governor Connally, though seriously wounded, would recover from his injuries after emergency surgery. As live radio reports described the scene, the infant television news programs of the major networks ABC, CBS and NBC cut into their programming to bring the tragic news to the American people. Kennedy's body was returned to Air Force One, where before takeoff, Vice President Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States. After returning to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, President Johnson tried to console the country that Friday evening. On Sunday, November 24, in a solemn procession, Kennedy's casket was taken by horse-drawn caisson to the Capitol building where it lay in state at the Rotunda. An estimated 250,000 people filed past to pay their respects. The official funeral was held on Monday, November 25, as heads of state and dignitaries from more than 100 countries attended the formal ceremony at St. Matthew's Cathedral. One of the more emotional moments forever captured on film and pictures was JFK's youngest child, 3-year-old John F. Kennedy, Jr. - known as "John John" - saluting his father's casket as it went past the family. Back in Dallas, police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, a recently-hired employee of the Texas Book Depository and a former U.S. Marine. On Sunday, November 24, when police were transferring Oswald from police headquarters to county jail, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot him at point-blank range on live television, and Oswald died two hours later. President Johnson appointed the Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy to be chaired by Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States, to investigate the assassination and the subsequent killing of the alleged assassin. The 889-page final report was delivered to Johnson in September of 1964. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone when he fired the three rifle shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally. It also concluded that Ruby acted alone when he shot Oswald two days later. Despite abundant conspiracy theories and studies that challenge these results, the findings, though controversial, remain the official government position on President Kennedy's death. North Korea said Wednesday it had succeeded in putting a military spy satellite into orbit, with state media claiming leader Kim Jong Un was already reviewing images of US military bases in Guam sent by Pyongyang's new eye in the sky. Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have slammed the sanctions-busting launch, Pyongyang's third attempt this year to put a satellite into orbit, and the first since Kim met President Vladimir Putin at a Russian cosmodrome in September. After failed attempts in May and August, the official Korean Central News Agency reported that a rocket had blasted off late Tuesday and "accurately put the reconnaissance satellite 'Malligyong-1' on its orbit". Images in state media showed Kim watching the launch, then smiling and waving, surrounded by white-uniformed scientists and engineers celebrating the satellite's purported success. The satellite will "formally start its reconnaissance mission from December 1 after finishing 7 to 10 days' fine-tuning process", KCNA said, adding that it was already transmitting images. Kim "watched the aerospace photos of Anderson Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other major military bases of the U.S. forces taken in the sky above Guam in the Pacific, which were received at 9:21 a.m. on Nov. 22," according to KCNA. - Eyes and fist - Washington said the launch was a "brazen violation" of successive rounds of UN resolutions barring the North from tests of ballistic technology -- used in both missiles and satellite launch rockets. In response, Seoul on Wednesday partially suspended a 2018 military deal with the North, saying it would resume surveillance operations along their border. South Korea's military said the purported spy satellite "was assessed to have entered orbit, from comprehensive analysis of flight track information and various circumstances". But it added that "determining whether the satellite is actually operating will take time". Speaking at Pyongyang's space launch centre, leader Kim claimed the development meant the North now has "both 'eyes' overlooking a very long distance and a strong 'fist' beating a very long distance", in a possible reference to the country's banned intercontinental ballistic missiles, which it claims could hit the US mainland. Kim "stressed once again that it is necessary to operate many more reconnaissance satellites" to both increase the country's "military strike means... as well as for self-defence". China, Pyongyang's longtime treaty ally and main economic benefactor, did not condemn the launch but said the situation was "complex and sensitive", foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a briefing. "All parties concerned should remain calm and restrained, look squarely at the crux of the problem, adhere to the general direction of a political settlement, and do more to help ease tensions," she added. - Korean space race? - Seoul has been saying for weeks that nuclear-armed Pyongyang was in the final stages of preparation for another attempted spy satellite launch. Seoul's spy agency this month said Pyongyang appeared to have received technical advice from Russia in return for sending at least 10 shipments of weapons for Moscow's war in Ukraine. The North's May attempt failed due to the "abnormal" startup of its second-stage engine, Pyongyang state media said at the time, while the August misfire was attributed to an error in the "emergency blasting system". Putin suggested in September after his meeting with Kim that his nation could help Pyongyang build satellites. Seoul and Washington have both subsequently accused Pyongyang of shipping weapons to Russia, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning this month that military ties between North Korea and Russia were "growing and dangerous". The launch also appears to kick off a space race on the peninsula, experts said, with Seoul planning to launch its first spy satellite via a SpaceX rocket later this month. "Kim Jong Un demonstrated his will to have an upper hand in military superiority by attempting to launch the first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit before South Korea," said Lim Eul-chul, associate professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam University. "Of course, it appears that there will be differences in the performance of the satellites." Successfully putting a spy satellite into orbit would improve North Korea's intelligence-gathering capabilities, particularly over South Korea, and provide crucial data in any military conflict, experts say. kjk-sh/ceb/sco On the initiative of South Africa, which filed a complaint against the IDF at the ICC, the BRICS held a virtual summit on 21 November to discuss the genocide in Gaza. The five founding states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) took part, alongside the new members (Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates) and the Secretary General of the United Nations. Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the importance of this virtual summit, bringing together representatives of over half of the worlds population. He urged for this format to be adopted for every international crisis, in parallel with the United Nations Security Council. Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined the three urgent imperatives: 1. the end of hostilities and the achievement of an immediate ceasefire; 2. the cessation of all forms of violence and attacks against civilians and the release civilians held in captivity; 3. the end of collective punishment targeting the population of Gaza. The international community implement concrete measures to prevent the conflict from boiling over and endangering stability in the Middle East as a whole. Xi Jinping also stressed that the underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies in the ignorance of: 1. the right of the Palestinian people to exist as a people (denied by the revisionist Zionists from Zeev Jabotinsky to Benjamin Netanyahu) 2. its right to a State (reaffirmed during the Oslo Accords in 1993); and 3. its right of return (stipulated by resolution 194 of the General Assembly of the United Nations, in 1948). It is therefore appropriate to organize an international conference to redress these injustices. Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement for a four-day halt to Israels devastating war in Gaza, accompanied by the release of dozens of captives held by Hamas in return for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, mediators said Wednesday. The truce marks the biggest diplomatic breakthrough since the start of the war that has devastated vast swaths of Gaza and raised fears of a wider conflict across the Middle East. Qatar, which has played a key role in mediating with Hamas, announced the deal without saying when it would go into effect. Fifty Israeli captives will be released in stages over the four days, in exchange for what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will release women and children first, and the supply of humanitarian aid flowing into the besieged territory will be ramped up. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume the war after the truce and keep fighting until we achieve all our goals, including the defeat of Hamas. Residents in Gaza City said the fighting there had intensified overnight into Wednesday, with gunfire, heavy artillery and airstrikes in central neighbourhoods. They are mad. Apparently, they want to advance before the truce, said Nasser Al-Sheikh, who is sheltering with relatives in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. The announcement capped weeks of indirect Qatari-led negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The United States and Egypt were also involved in stop-and-go talks to free some of the roughly 240 captives captured by Hamas and other fighters during their wide-ranging 7 October operation. President Joe Biden welcomed the deal, saying Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure that the captives are released and humanitarian aid can be sent to Gaza. Qatars top diplomat Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said he hoped the deal would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it is standing by to assist any swap. Israel's Justice Ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible for release as part of the deal, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offences. Under Israeli law, the public has 24 hours to object to any release. Israel said that to facilitate the captives' release it would initiate a four-day "pause" in its six-week-old air, land, and sea assault of Gaza, while it stressed that the agreement did not spell the end of the war. Qatar's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told AFP that it is expected that the truce will be extended by the release of further captives by Hamas. "If by [the end of the four days] the Palestinians can commit to an additional number, then the truce can be extended," Al-Ansari said. Israel said that the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 captives released by Hamas. "It will take some time to get all the civilians out within these parameters, it will take some time also to... ascertain how many we have left," Al-Ansari said. The temporary cessation of hostilities would not come into effect immediately and would "need some time to be prepared on the ground," he said. During the period captives are moved, Israeli reconnaissance of Gaza will be put on temporary hold, said the spokesman, who is also a key adviser to Qatar's prime minister. Under the deal "there are no military prisoners among those to be released," he said, indicating that was an area where trust would have to be built if talks were to move forward. Search Keywords: Short link: Jenna Ortega. Photo: Mike Marsland/WireImage For producers on Scream 7, the call is coming from inside the house. The Hollywood Reporter confirms Jenna Ortega has walked away from the follow-up to 2022s Scream. Sources say that the Wednesday star, who became a major celebrity in the time since she filmed last years installment, informed Scream studio Spyglass months ago she did not intend to return. Even though Ortegas departure was reportedly in the works prior to the actors strike, the announcement has pointed timing, coming one day after news broke that Spyglass had fired co-star Melissa Barrera, who plays her sister, from Scream 7, calling her social-media posts condemning Israels recent actions in Gaza a violation of its policy against antisemitism. Ortega, like Barrera, has signed the Artists4Ceasefire letter urging Congress to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. Photo: Jason McDonald/Netflix This review was originally published in September. We are recirculating it now timed to Maestros debut in select theaters. Carey Mulligan gets first billing in Bradley Coopers film about the life of conductor Leonard Bernstein (played by Bradley Cooper). And she deserves it. As Bernsteins wife Felicia Montealegre, she has to absorb, attract, shield, and parry every loving embrace and slight from her brilliant husband. Its a reactive performance, and Mulligan plays it with a heartbreaking universality. Yes, shes doing an accent and a part, much like Cooper is. But we connect with her in ways that we dont with him. As Bernstein, Coopers performance is a masterful reconstruction, but it remains a reconstruction, earthbound and cool to the touch. (As for the much-speculated-upon nose it doesnt look to me all that different from Coopers own, not-exactly-short proboscis, save for scenes showing him as an old man, where the make-up job is actually quite accomplished.) One senses that the actor has obsessively studied every TV appearance, every inch of documentary footage, to recreate Bernsteins diction and manner, his haughty and rapid-fire way of speaking. Maybe thats the problem. It feels throughout like were watching a TV interview with Bernstein, like he knows the camera is on him. There are almost no unguarded, intimate moments. Or rather, there are no unguarded, intimate moments that dont feel like guarded, public moments. The problem, and maybe also the point: The film opens on an aged Bernstein, years after Felicias death, being interviewed for television, and the cameras do always seem to be on him throughout the movie. This is, after all, a conductor who achieved stratospheric fame partly thanks to his public image, and the way that he used the medium of TV to broaden the appeal of classical music for young viewers and average Americans. The film suggests, intentionally or not, that the performance never ended for Bernstein, that he was always playing a part. Maestro somehow proves that Cooper is a director of genuine vision, even though its not a particularly successful movie. He recreates with epic aplomb the legendary November 14, 1943 phone call a young Bernstein, then an assistant conductor for the New York Philharmonic, received asking him to fill in at the last minute for flu-ridden guest Bruno Walter, for a Carnegie Hall concert that would be broadcast live on the radio. A massive curtain, light filtering around its edges, dominates the screen as Lenny receives the phone call that will change his life and the course of classical music in the United States. When he triumphantly opens the curtain to let an explosion of light fill the room, we see that hes in bed next to a man, David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer), who was Bernsteins lover for some years before he met Felicia. Then, the camera tracks with Bernstein as the set opens onto the orchestra, in a delirious shot that ably evokes the dizzying nature of his sudden rise to celebrity. Maestro is not a particularly long or dense picture. Cooper has reportedly bristled at descriptions of it as a biopic, and its not hard to see why. The film doesnt pretend to be a complete look at Bernstein, and there are many aspects of both his life and career that go largely unmentioned. The focus here is on his marriage to Felicia, his homosexuality, and his conducting, all of which are emotionally intertwined. Felicia seems to understand Lenny even better than he understands himself. (I know exactly who you are, she says early on. Lets give it a whirl.) He certainly loves her, and theres fine chemistry between Cooper and Mulligan. In his conducting, however in those frenzied, explosive public performances that Cooper, again, recreates wonderfully we sense an inner restlessness, a man yearning to break out of his skin and his persona to find himself. Thats a beautiful, moving idea, but the movie feels emotionally stunted, perhaps because this construction is based on the idea of stamping down, of denial. Its also probably why Mulligan nearly acts Cooper off the screen: Her Felicia seems to know exactly who she is, and our heart breaks for her, while Lenny is a restless dynamo, impossible to pin down, a man who never self-actualized. There is a lovely moment near the end, in which Bernstein, now an old man, dances with his students during a party at Tanglewood, and we get a brief glimpse of unguarded freedom. But it remains a glimpse. In that sense, maybe the film lives up to its opening lines, something the real Bernstein did say: A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers. If Maestro remains frustratingly unresolved, maybe thats because it has to be. Photo: Just Trish Podcast A new Elvis will join the likes of Austin Butler and Jacob Elordi. But this time, a baby will be heading into the big screen if you count YouTube. Trisha Paytas announced on Tuesday during their podcast Just Trish that they will welcome their second child in 2024 with their husband Moses Hacmon. That is our name. Whether its a boy or girl, its Elvis, explained Paytas. Trish is worried, however, if being pregnant will affect their chances of being cast in The White Lotus. They just announced that theyre filming in February, so White Lotus, if you need a 6-month pregnant person, by then, to come to Thailand Paytas explained before revealing that theyre fully ready for baby Elvis to be born in Thailand if it means being on the show. Later on Tuesday, after learning what the word autumnal meant, Paytas embraced Christian Girl Autumn by sharing a pregnancy announcement photo shoot on Instagram. Baby Elviss first social post, thank you very much! Just like her pioneer ancestors, Heather Gay is blazing a new trail. And that trail is making all of her friends attend a pioneer-themed luncheon. She explains this big plan on FaceTime to her daughter, telling her that she wants to do something that celebrates the kitschy, fun parts of the culture while also forcing Lisa Barlow to finally partake in the traditional parts of Mormonism that shes managed to avoid. Maybe if Fendi started making temple garments Meanwhile, Monica is having a mother-daughter moment of her own, sharing old photo albums with her daughter, including pictures of her birth father. She doesnt want her daughter to be left without any part of him the way Monica was when Linda destroyed any trace of her father. And then were off to Angie and Shawns awkward date, where they feel like theyre not on the same page anymore. Angie says she doesnt even know what kind of music he likes anymore, and the only reason this is noteworthy is because it leads us to the revelation that Angie still regularly listens to The Humpty Dance. Later, Angie meets up with Whitney to trade notes on their shared marital issues. The not finding time to connect with my husband story line is a classic on Housewives. Its abstract and vague enough that they can lean on it during filming when they need a story line and then when its time for the reunion, they can just say its all better. Thats not to say any of its fabricated, but as far as story lines go, this one gives them a lot of control when it comes to how much they do or dont want to share. For example, Whitney is really laying her cards on the table, even filling us in on a conversation she and Justin had on their last anniversary trip in which they romantically asked one another if they still want to be married. And on top of that, she outright says, I dont think its natural to be married and monogamous. Okay, Juan Dixon! Thats a flashback waiting to happen. If things ever do go south between Whitney and Justin, shes giving the editors plenty of clips to pull for a montage. While Whitney is bearing all, Angie stays vague, and when asked how much sex theyre having, she says they knock boots barely once a week. That feels generous, especially considering that they share a bed with their daughter. But I certainly dont begrudge Angie for lying about that. Shes barely comfortable in front of the cameras as it is, and she knows that if she gave a real answer, especially after the gay accusations, everybody would have a field day. Just look at how the RHONY cast carried on about Jessel and Pavit, and hes not even a hairdresser. One of my favorite things about Heather is that shes a people-pleaser to her core. When she wants somebody to like her, shell let them get away with murder (or a nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme, or calling her inbred), and she pulls out all the stops to stay in their good graces. Thats where were at with her and Lisa, whom shes catering to, literally, laying out a gorgeous meal from Wendys for their lunch. But before Lisa can enjoy it, she crashes into a boulder in Heathers driveway, scraping up the side of her car. I want to have that removed, Heather tells her, upset that the rock sabotaged all her hard work creating Lisas dream lunch. You need to, Lisa says, but she must have learned from the $60,000 ring drama because, shockingly, thats the last we hear of it. Instead, the pair chat about Jacks mission, which seemed impossible just a few episodes ago, but give Lisa a Wendys 4 for 4 and shed spill state secrets. The conversation then turns to a night out that Heather had with Monica, where she found out that Monicas grandmother is from Bermuda, which gave her (production) an idea for the cast trip. But the one condition Heather gave to Monica was that she has to make up with Lisa. Monica wants to go to Bermuda, so she agrees. For Lisas part, she says she has no issue with her being there and says, Shes not my problem. But if you thought we were done talking about Whitneys marriage after her lunch with Angie, youd be wrong. And if you thought we were done talking about Meredith and Seths podcast after last week, you would also be wrong. Because Whitney and Justin are off to the Marks household to record an episode of this podcast, which Ive been repeatedly assured is a real thing. The foursome is so chummy together that when Whitney cracks a joke about wanting to see Merediths bathtub, it feels like that fight was from another lifetime. On the podcast itself, Whitney and Justin reveal that they once had sex in their office with the head of HR in the room, which feels distinctly George Costanzaesque. Then, on a more wholesome note, they talk about how Whitney was there for Justin when his father died. Two very different topics of conversation, but after Whitney laments the relationships weak points to Angie, its nice to hear some of the highlights. Now, you might recall that following Lisas drag meltdown in Palm Springs, a firm No Costumes decree was put into place. But nonetheless, Heather is hoping therell be an exception to that rule for her pioneer luncheon, for which shes providing all of the women traditional bonnets and aprons. Naturally, when Lisa and Meredith arrive and see the bonnets laid out, they quickly (and in unison) remind Heather of their rule, but against all odds, they give them a shot. Maybe just because they wanted to claim the ones that best matched their outfits before everybody else arrived. Once everybody dons their Handmaids Tale cosplay, Heather explains that she wants to do something that focuses on the fun aspects of their heritage. Now, the definition of fun here is very interesting. Because, apparently, fun means churning butter in a jar and making creepy little dolls out of garbage. They have to shake a half-filled jar of heavy cream like a Shake Weight for six minutes, which proves to be too long for most of them but not Meredith. Meredith is intent on persevering and continues shaking her jar throughout the other activities. Once you start something, you have to finish it, she says. I dont see any butter on the table. While it doesnt seem like any butter does end up being made, the table is luckily filled with other Mormon favorites, and its over this meal that Heather decides its time for a game. If you ever find yourself in a situation where a Real Housewife suggests playing a game, run. Run away as fast as you can because somebody is about to say the meanest thing you could ever fathom. Heathers game, sticking to her pioneer theme, is called Whos On Your Wagon? Sounds fun, right? No, the premise is simply asking each woman who of the group theyd throw off their wagon and leave for dead. Lisas up first, and to nobodys surprise, she says, Well, Im a big supporter of women, so I would keep everyone but the one thats the nastiest to women, so Monica, you would have to go. Just cause youre mouthy and mean to women. And were off to the races. Monica fires back by saying whats actually nasty is Lisas comments about her mother. You called your mom Ted Bundy, Lisa responds. He used to kill people, have sex with them, decapitate them, and eat them. This is where Whitney chimes in via confessional to clarify that Lisa is probably thinking of Jeffrey Dahmer. Either way, point taken, and here is a fun fact: Ted Bundy was Mormon, so were on theme. Everybody starts to jump in, and eventually Angie shatters a milk jar on the floor to get everyones attention (or remind them that shes there), which sadly barely works. Eventually, Heather pulls an emotional Monica aside and wonders how theyre supposed to announce their cast trip after this. Monica says she doesnt want to go anymore, and Heather earnestly asks, Why? What did she say that hurt you? Seeing that Monica is emotional, Lisa comes up and says, Hey listen, if you need for me to acknowledge that your moms not nice to you, Im sorry, and by me saying I saw her being nice, does not mean I negate any of your feelings, breaking new ground when it comes to sentence structure. The bottom line is Lisa really wants to go to Bermuda. In turn, Monica apologizes for calling Lisa ugly, and as this all plays out, Heather is behind them, furiously shaking her jar of milk. So finally, theyre able to announce their trip to a foreign, passport-required location. While Jens away, the non-criminal women can play! But as they give out clues about where theyre going, Monica breaks down yet again and says she doesnt want to go on the trip. At this point, Heather snaps, saying, You were attacking her full force, and now youre crying and acting like we all came for you. Shes furious, and we can practically pinpoint the exact moment she turns on Monica. Its when she almost costs them all their long-awaited trip abroad. Theyve suffered so long for Jen Shahs crimes, having to take a cast trip to San Diego of all places to accommodate the conditions of her bail. And now Monica does this? Speaking of Jen, Monica brings her up in her confessional, saying, I really always wondered why Jen never had anything nice to say about Heather and Lisa, and now I know exactly why. When in doubt, Monica loves to bring up Jen to support whatever point shes trying to make. Its like a trusty Swiss Army knife in her back pocket: a tool adaptable for any scenario. Heather thinks that Monica is suddenly acting like a different person and wants to know what happened to the fun Monica she was planning the trip with. Shes dead like Taylor Swift said. ENGLISH TEACHER We are seeking an english teacher full time to join a bilingual school in Formello (Rome near Olgiata) Italy. The candidate will have to teach english language, art and geography both in elementary and middle school. The successful candidate will have An outstanding curriculum . Experience and referencies Passion about developing the whole child Enthusiasm about involvement in the school community Collaborative and positive approach Supportive approach to students Please send your CV with a cover letter For further information about the school, please see the school site www.myspecialtime.it Share Comment on this story Comment Add to your saved stories Save ROME Italy has erupted in outrage over the death of a young woman, allegedly at the hands of her possessive ex-boyfriend, with the Italian premier vowing to crack down further on gender-based violence that has claimed the lives of more than 50 women so far this year. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Police in Germany over the weekend arrested Filippo Turetta, who had been on the run since Nov. 11, when he was last seen fighting with 22-year-old Giulia Cecchettin, hitting her in a physical attack that was captured by roadside video cameras. Cecchettins body, reportedly with multiple stab wounds, was found wrapped in plastic on Saturday in a ditch near Lake Barcis, in the province of Pordenone north of Venice. Italian newspapers had been consumed with the search for them both, given multiple reports from friends and family that Turetta had refused to accept Cecchettins decision to end the relationship. Cecchettins sister, Elena, said she had been concerned about Turettas possessiveness of her sister but never imagined he could hurt her. Advertisement Police in the eastern German city of Halle said Sunday that they had detained a 21-year-old Italian man who was wanted by police in Italy after his car broke down on the A9 highway in the south of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Italian news reports said police road cameras had traced Turettas black Fiat Punto as he drove on mountain roads through northern Italy, into Austria and then Germany. Italian state-run radio network RAI said Turetta had agreed to be extradited, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said he was expected back in Italy within days. Venices chief prosecutor, Bruno Cherchi, suggested Monday it might take longer and urged patience so the investigation can complete its course without external pressure. Share this article Share The fate of Cecchettin, who had been due to graduate university Thursday with a degree in engineering, had dominated news reports for a week and led to an outpouring of anger when her body was finally found. Even Turettas parents attended a candlelit vigil for her, and RAI led its main evening news program Sunday with a backdrop made up of portraits of all the women killed in Italy this year. Advertisement Premier Giorgia Melon i expressed outrage at Italys long history of violence against women by their partners or ex-partners, saying it has appeared to be getting worse recently. She cited data from the Interior Ministry saying of the 102 women killed in Italy this year up to Nov. 12, 53 died at the hands of their partners or former partners. Every single woman killed because she is guilty of being free is an aberration that cannot be tolerated and that drives me to continue on the path taken to stop this barbarity, she said in a statement on social media. A government-backed bill that has already passed the lower Chamber of Deputies and is coming to the Senate later this month would boost preventative measures to protect victims of gender-based violence. In addition, the Interior Ministry urged all schools to hold a minute of silence on Tuesday in honor of Cecchettin and all abused women and victims of violence. An organization of Italian university rectors, meanwhile, vowed to launch initiatives to make students more aware of gender-based violence. The aim, the group said, was to promote respect of the person and halt violence against women through education that fosters a culture of respect and responsibility. Share Comment on this story Comment Add to your saved stories Save TOKYO A volcano in Papua New Guinea erupted on Monday, and the Japan Meteorological Agency said it was assessing a possible risk of a tsunami for Japanese coasts. Mount Ulawun on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea erupted at around 3:30 p.m. (0630 GMT) Monday, spewing volcanic smoke as high as 15,000 meters (50,000 feet), the agency said, quoting the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in Darwin, Australia. The agency said it was assessing a possible impact, including the risk of a tsunami approaching Japan later Monday. First tsunami waves could reach Izu and Ogasawara islands about three hours after the shaking caused by the eruption, JMA said. The agency has not issued any tsunami advisory or warning. It said that no notable change to sea levels has been detected at observation sites in and outside Japan. Advertisement Papua New Guineas Geohazards Management Division said Ulawuns volcanic activity started Monday afternoon. The eruption is expected to continue indefinitely, it said, and raised the volcanos risk level to the highest stage of four. Share this article Share Ulawun is one of the most active volcanoes in Papua New Guinea, which sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where much of the worlds earthquake and volcanic activity occurs. Ulawun has repeatedly erupted since 1700s, and had a last major eruption in 2019. Geoscience Australia, a government agency, said there was no tsunami warning for Australian waters. The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not issue any warning. JMA, however, urged coastal residents to stay cautious in case of a delayed tsunami. It said it could not immediately predict a possible size of the waves. ___ McGuirk reported from Canberra, Australia. A young Perth father who killed his newborn daughter has been jailed for 11 years, with a Supreme Court judge lashing him for taking no responsibility for the crime. Juan Daniel Visagie, 28, sat emotionless as Justice Bruno Fiannaca sentenced him over the death of his baby three years ago. Juan Daniel Visagie is also facing domestic violence charges against his now ex-partner. Credit: Facebook Visagie was found guilty of causing Aleaha Sammuts death by a jury earlier this year after experts testified the girl was likely vigorously shaken, causing her to suffer a catastrophic brain injury. Previous court hearings revealed Visagie had been under investigation by child protection authorities at the time of her death over domestic violence toward his partner, Aleahas mother Maddison Sammut. Six Palestinians were shot dead in an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry said. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers across the West Bank since October 7, according to the ministry. The Palestinian Red Crescent said the Israeli army stormed the refugee camp in the northern city of Tulkarem and briefly detained a 16-year-old with shrapnel wounds to his face. A 26-year-old young woman "beaten by the Israeli army" had been transferred to a hospital, the Red Crescent added. Local sources reported that an occupation drone bombed with two missiles a house in the Al-Balawneh neighbourhood in the Tulkarm camp, wounding at least three young men, while it later bombed gatherings of citizens, according to WAFA news agency. Meanwhile, the occupation forces imposed a siege on the Thabet Thabet Governmental Hospital in the city of Tulkarm, which obstructed ambulances from transferring the injured to receive treatment. Eyewitnesses also reported that the occupation army chased the ambulances, obstructed their work, and prevented them from moving freely. The Israeli army was still in the camp at mid-morning Wednesday, an AFP photographer reported. The Palestinian Red Crescent said that it treated a total of 26 injured, including four with bullet wounds, in the West Bank towns of Tulkarem, Bethlehem, Tubas and Qalqilya. Search Keywords: Short link: The World Health Organization has documented 178 Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities that killed 553 people, including 22 healthcare workers, since the war started on Oct. 7, the agencys regional director said Wednesday. Ahmed Al-Mandhari said in an online briefing that about 800 people, including 48 healthcare workers, were injured in the attacks, which damaged 24 hospitals and 32 ambulances. The war has forced the shutdown of 27 out of 36 hospitals and 47 out of 72 primary health care clinics across Gaza, he said. The facilities stopped providing services mainly because of a lack of fuel and attacks, he said. Hospitals must be allowed to replenish the resources they need to continue functioning, he said. We cannot keep providing drops of aid in an ocean of needs. WHO also said that one of its local staff members in Gaza was killed along with her family when a strike hit the home where they were sheltering. It said Dima Abdullatif Mohammed Alhaj, 29, was killed Tuesday along with her husband, their 6-month-old son, and her two brothers. The UN health agency said in a statement late Tuesday that over 50 people were reportedly killed in the strike. The war started after Hamas on October 7 launched the worst offensive in Israel's history, leaving 1,200 people dead, and an estimated 240 Israelis and foreigners were taken captives, according to Israeli officials. Since then, Israel launched a bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza, which, according to the Palestinian health ministry, has killed at least 14,128 people, including 5,840 children and 3,920 women, with another 33,000 people wounded. Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, WHOs representative for the Palestinian territories, said Alhaj was a wonderful person with a radiant smile, cheerful, positive, respectful. She was a true team player. Alhaj, who had worked as a patient administrator with WHO since 2019, was among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled from northern Gaza to shelter in the south. She had left her home in Gaza City and was staying with relatives. WHO said her death is another example of the senseless loss in this war." * This story was edited by Ahram Online. Search Keywords: Short link: The European Union said on Tuesday a review of its development aid to Palestinians, ordered after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, found no evidence of funds going to the militant group and that its assistance would continue. The EU is the biggest provider of such aid to Palestinians. It has earmarked $1.3 billion for its programs for the period between 2021 and 2024. The European Commission, the EU's executive body, announced the review two days after Hamas militants attacked Israel from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking some 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Officials said the review was ordered as a precaution, not because they had any indications EU money was going to Hamas. "The review found no indications of EU money having directly or indirectly benefited the terrorist organization Hamas," said Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis. A delegation of Achill Island farmers, including Sean Corrigan, John Lee, and Dominic Veasey, travelled to Speenoge in Co Donegal last Monday night, November 13, to meet with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue. The urgent meeting was called to deal with the issue of farmers commonage lands being burned across Achill Island earlier this year, which has resulted in the non-payment of agriculture scheme monies for these areas. The story was reported on the front page of last weeks Western People. Commonage fire outbreaks are a problem during dry weather on the island. These burnings have had implications on many local farmers to the sum of tens of thousands of euros in payment cuts across several commonages in the Achill parish, said a group spokesperson. Achill Island farmers are not arsonists. Many local farmers see that it is unfair, that they are currently being penalised for something that they have not caused on their commonages and are not to blame for environmental damage that fire causes to their own lands. Achill Island is a very popular destination for visitors who use the Wild Atlantic Way, the Great Western Greenway, hill walking, and the influx of visitors due to films including The Banshees of Inisherin, that farmers and everyone locally welcomes. However, some farmers feel this influx may be an influencing factor. A further meeting with Department of Agriculture officials will be taking place in the coming weeks to discuss further the issue and to gain a resolution. The first supply of the all-new Toyota C-HR Hybrid Electric is available to order now for delivery in January 2024. Prices start from 40,520. C-HR is a stylish car with a standout design. The five hybrid electric models are: Sport, Sport+, Sol, Premiere Edition and GR Sport Premiere Edition. Customers can choose from 1.8 and 2.0 hybrid electric powertrains. The car benefits from the latest, fifth generation Toyota technology which the Japanese automaker says delivers a class-leading balance of increased power and low emissions. The new C-HR has a range of sustainable features including seat fabric made from 100pc recycled plastic bottles, a vegan-material steering wheel, and new paint which uses water-based instead of oil-based paint. The new model will arrive in Toyota dealerships around now (mid November). "All the workers are completely safe," Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said in a statement. "We are trying with all our might to get them out safely soon." "We will bring you out safely; do not worry," rescuers can be heard reassuring the men on the video. An official is also heard telling them to present themselves before the camera one by one to confirm their identities. The insertion of the wider pipe is being seen as a breakthrough. It was used late Monday to give the first hot cooked meal of rice and lentils to the men, who so far had survived on dry supplies like nuts and roasted chickpeas sent through a narrower pipe. Officials said it will also be used to send other essentials such as medicines, mobile phones and chargers. A video, released by state authorities, shows the men wearing their helmets and construction jackets and standing around the medical endoscopy camera that was sent through a 15-centimeter pipe pushed through the rubble on Monday. An official asks the men to smile and wave. The workers can be seen responding to the instructions. In India, the first images of 41 construction workers trapped in a tunnel in the northern state of Uttarakhand emerged on Tuesday as rescue teams established visual contact with them. The workers were building the tunnel as part of an ambitious highway project in the Himalayan mountains when it partially collapsed on Nov. 12. Family members of the trapped workers who have gathered at the rescue site told reporters they were reassured after seeing the images of their relatives. Earlier rescue teams had used radios to contact the men, who are all low-wage workers. Efforts to extricate them entered the 10th day on Tuesday. Initial attempts to drive a 91-centimeter-wide steel pipe horizontally through which the men could squeeze out were suspended on Friday due to concerns that more debris could fall and complicate the rescue operation. Rescue efforts have also been slowed by the breakdown of heavy machines that were drilling through the rock and debris to create an escape route. Despite the challenges, an international tunnel expert, who has joined the operation, has expressed confidence that the men will be rescued as multiple options are being explored. "We've got mission from the top, missions from the front, mission from the side. The men are coming home. We're just not sure which door they're going to use," Arnold Dix, the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association president, told news agency ANI. "We're knocking on the top door. We're knocking on all these doors. Which one opens? Not sure." Currently, engineers are creating an access road to the top of the hill from where they plan to dig a vertical shaft to reach the workers. Authorities said they would also continue digging horizontally from the mouth of the tunnel toward the laborers. The effort is complicated by the geology of the Himalayas, a young mountain chain that is prone to landslides. Officials are not putting any time frame to the operation and have said digging will have to be done slowly. "It may look easy from the outside, but on-site we have to factor in the effects of the drilling vibrations on the fragile terrain," Anshu Manish Khalkho, director of state-run highway management company National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited, told reporters on Friday. The government said in a statement on Monday that it is committed to saving the lives of all workers. "We are keeping constant communication and making all efforts to keep up the morale of the workers." Authorities have not said what caused the partial collapse of the under-construction tunnel, which is part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious highway project to improve connectivity and access to important Hindu pilgrimage locations in Uttarakhand. The picturesque state is often called the "Land of the Gods" due to its many Hindu religious sites. A Mayo TD has blasted the lack of progress on the delivery of a new emergency department at Mayo University Hospital. Fine Gaels Alan Dillon raised the issue in the Dail last week. "For me and for members of the Oireachtas, holding the HSE to account is really important. The executive's inaction is, at times, unjustifiable. The urgency of this matter is stark when one looks at the alarming number of patients who spend more than 24 hours on trolleys at MUH and that was underscored in 2023 when the latest figures were released, said Deputy Dillon. He said there is an urgent need for the improvement of facilities at MUH. "There is a pressing need for a new ward block within MUH and we must vigorously campaign for the realisation of that. "A recent HIQA report outlined deficiencies within the facilities and held that the need for a 75-bed ward block at the Mayo site was unquestionable. "This is one of the long-term actions that the management within MUH presented as a valid solution, particularly in the context of addressing the shortage of single, en-suite rooms in MUH. "Mayo deserves access to quality healthcare services in a timely and efficient manner." In response, the Minister of State at the Department of Health Mary Butler said she will relay to Minister Stephen Donnelly the concerns raised by Deputy Dillon. After the Covid-19 lockdown, a father was questioned by his daughters as to what he missed most during the long months of isolation. He thought for a moment and replied: "A lot of things but mainly two: going to Mass and attending funerals." To say the least, his daughters were more than surprised. After a number of years in Dublin in lucrative employment and enjoying its rewards, their fathers sense of loss would have featured well down their own list and, if the truth be told, might not have featured at all. Mass, for many of their generation, Covid or no Covid, was outside their modern comfort zone, and funerals were normally outside their ambit. They are still young, of course, and have much to learn, not least the kind of wisdom that only age can deliver, so inevitably life is viewed in primary colours and Mass and funerals and what seems outdated rituals is part of a grey zone that has often little or no significance or even meaning for their generation. Being there, done that, as they say, and theyve long lost the tee-shirt. Nowadays, as we know, those who attend religious services are generally from the grey (haired) zone, elders hanging in there, as congregations once moderated by the awkward but life-giving and life-saving presence of young couples and young children melt away with the passing years. And people begin to wonder, like the poet Philip Larkin in Church Going when churches fall completely out of use what we shall turn them into. Once, churches were lovingly constructed and maintained, a place in Larkins words: In whose blent air, all our compulsions meet / Are recognised, and robed as destinies. Now they are more often ignored than gravitated to as a place to grow wise in. Now life and its curiouser wisdom often seem to have little more than a brittle connection with a serious past. Ive mulled over this ground before the dramatic change from a society where the toll of the church bell demanded and received a ready response to a dearth of attention to a religious impulse. And the virus continues to spread infecting structures and practices that were not too long ago hallowed by time. A recent survey of Anglican clergy in Britain indicated that almost two-thirds of them believe that Britain is no longer a Christian country. The last census in 2021 showed a 13% drop (to 42%) in those calling themselves Christian and a 12% rise (to 37.2%) in those who declared they had no religion. While comparable figures in Ireland are not quite that dramatic, all the indications are that similar graphs are going in the same direction. It may be, someone suggested recently, that while Irish people have no problem in rejecting their Catholicism, they are reluctant to accept that they are no longer Christian just as its easier to deny a religious impulse as long as we can take refuge in the more anemic category of spiritual. A case of the definitive Irish cop-out of having our cake and eating it. I suspect part of the reason for the rejection of the term religious is that religion is getting a bad press. The long litany of conflict, prejudice, exploitation and general bad odour seems to trump the religious dividend of community fellowship, moral rectitude and supports for significant relationships. Juliet Samuel, a columnist with the Sunday Times, has suggested that, with the decline in religious practice, we are in danger "of forgetting the utility of things we used to know". Instead of saying our prayers at bedtime, we scroll; where once there was private meditation, now we share constantly; and the good habits embedded by religion are now being relearned from therapists. There is, of course, a cost to all this. The home and the hearth are being displaced with more and more people spending more and more time in soul-less places like hotel lobbies and shopping centres. The particular experiences that end up as lasting memories get shuffled to the sidelines. Life becomes less than the sum of its constituent parts as freedom from religion ends up as a series of secular truths that do little for those seeking solace in post-religious societies. So rather than any childish sense that the loss of a religious impulse delivers a new freedom, the loss can be viewed as an impoverishment of life and spirit. It is not just a loss but a diminishment, a sadness that at the heart of life there is a gap that eventually becomes an itch, for which there is no secular antidote. No gathering to communally reflect on issues beyond our ken; no church to situate the questions that life throws up at us; no shared wisdom to help us plot a track through the maze of alternatives that life can surface; and no religious language to provide a vocabulary to help us suss out shards of meaning when a personal crisis knocks on our door. It seems strange that at a time when, its natural, in Larkins words that someone will forever be surprising / a hunger in himself to be more serious, we ignore the obvious sources that would or at least might assuage the present famine. Even to the extent of wondering why your father would bother going to Mass or attending funerals. * My new book, Holding Out for a Hero/The Long Wait for Pope Francis, is now available at 18 in the usual outlets. And at www.mayobooks.ie. Sarah Slater Two women who filmed the assault and subsequent death of an Irish teenager who fell from an apartment balcony during an armed robbery in Australia have been given a two-year probation order, with no recorded conviction. Cian English (19), originally from Co Carlow but who was living in Hawthorne, Brisbane, was fatally injured after falling from a fourth-floor balcony at the View Pacific resort in Surfers Paradise on May 23rd, 2020. The incident occurred during a trip to the Gold Coast with a friend. Jason Ryan Knowles (25), Hayden Paul Kratzmann (23), and Lachlan Paul Soper-Lagas (21) had been charged with murder, but agreed to a plea deal of manslaughter. Kratazmann and Knowles were jailed for nine-and-a-half years, while Soper-Lagas was sentenced to eight years in prison. The Supreme Court in Brisbane heard on Tuesday that two women, who were 16 at the time, filmed the attack as Mr English and his friend were threatened with a knife, forced to undress, assaulted, robbed, degraded and tortured. According to reports from Austrian media outlets, the women, are now 19 and 20-years-old, filmed up to 27-minutes of the torture. Brisbane Supreme Court heard one of the women filmed herself forcing Mr English to clean his blood from the floor. The other woman also filmed the scene from the balcony after Mr English fell to his death. The women each pleaded guilty to one count of torture and two counts of armed robbery. 'Demeaning conduct' Crown prosecutor Caroline Marco said both women knew Mr English was critically injured on the ground after he fell from the balcony, but instead of calling police they packed their belongings and fled the scene. Ms Marco said the women later uploaded their videos to social media. After these events, you weren't shocked to your senses. You posted videos to your social media accounts, Justice Peter Applegarth said, delivering their sentences. As terrible as (Mr Englishs death) is, its the demeaning conduct and the complete disregard of the dignity of two human beings, Justice Applegarth added. As horrible as your behaviour was, and how despicable you acted after the events...I am conscious of your remorse. The judge said the womens decision to upload the videos to social media instead of calling emergency services was completely reprehensible. Mr Englishs mother Siobhan told the court on Tuesday that she continues to deal with the painful loss of her forever hero. The harrowing pain and haunting nightmares of seeing my beautiful boy broken and covered in bandages is an image that will never leave my mind, she said. Cians life was taken away without any care or compassion. I still cant bear to think about how he died. It destroys me a little bit every time. He was only 19 years young and he was taken away in the most horrific circumstance. He wasnt ill, it wasnt an accident. Cian didnt want to die, he had his whole life ahead of him. An entire generation has been altered forever. Judge Applegarth handed down a two-year probation order for each of the women, and a conviction was not recorded. By David Young and Cillian Sherlock, PA Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has expressed hope that Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand will be included in the first group of hostages released in Gaza. His comments came as Irelands Department of Foreign Affairs cautioned that there had been no official confirmation that the nine-year-old would be released as part of the deal for a four-day pause in fighting in the region. Emily, whose father Tom is originally from Dublin, is believed to be being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. Addressing the Dail on Wednesday, Mr Varadkar also questioned whether Israel listens to anyone anymore as he expressed doubt whether it would heed international calls to stop the killing of civilians in Gaza after the four-day pause was over. Thomas Hand has been campaigning for his daughter Emilys release (Norma Burke/PA) The ceasefire will facilitate the release of 50 hostages being held by Palestinians including, we hope, Emily Hand, and will also facilitate the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, in some cases teenage boys imprisoned for doing little more than throwing stones at armed soldiers, he said. In relation to the four-day ceasefire, that will allow humanitarian aid to get into Gaza food, fuel, medicines, water, all of the basic needs for human life. And Ireland, individually and also as part of the UN and the EU, will do anything we can to make sure that that happens and happens well. And it is our view that the ceasefire should not just last for four days, that it should be extended to allow space for there to be a peace initiative, which can bring a permanent end to violence in the region, resulting in a two state solution Israel and Palestine as secure and viable states living side by side. He added: Sadly, the Israeli government doesnt listen to us. Im not sure the Israeli government listens to anyone anymore. They used to listen to the Americans. Im not even sure if thats the case anymore. "They are, as President Biden said, at risk of being blinded by rage. And its the sad reality that Im not actually sure that any action or statement by us or the European Union or the US will change the current course of action that they are on. That doesnt necessarily mean that we dont do the right thing. And we have increased our humanitarian aid to Gaza and Palestine. We have provided additional funding to the International Criminal Court so they can fund the investigation into war crimes that may have been committed in the Palestinian territories and will continue to press at UN level and EU level. Providing an update on the status of Emily, a Department of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said: The Department of Foreign Affairs welcomes the announced agreement between Israel and Hamas for a truce and the release of some of the hostages held in Gaza. Our focus in particular is on the case of nine-year old Irish citizen Emily Hand. We have worked consistently for her release over recent weeks, including through extensive contacts with regional partners. There is no official confirmation at this time of those scheduled to be released under this agreement. The department welcomes the truce agreed as part of the hostage deal. A break in hostilities is essential to allow for significant increased humanitarian access. Gazas civilian population urgently need fuel, food, water, and medical supplies, on a sustained basis and at scale. Mr Varadkar fielded questions on the Israel-Hamas conflict during Leaders Questions in the Dail. Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns reiterated her call for Mr Varadkar to back a suspension of Israels trade deal with the EU. Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns urged the Government to formally recognise Palestine as a state (Brian Lawless/PA) Taoiseach, there must be consequences if Israel is determined to continue this barbarism, she said. Mr Varadkar sought legal advice after Ms Cairns insisted a human rights clause in the EU-Israel trade deal had been breached thus providing grounds for the deal to be suspended. The Taoiseach said he had asked for the legal advice to be prepared but had not yet received it. But he made clear his view that sanctions only worked if taken on a multilateral basis. Ms Cairns also called on the Government to use November 29th International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People to formally recognise Palestine as a state. Mr Varadkar said Ireland recognised Palestine on a de facto basis but would only do so officially when it was formally established as a secure state as part of a two state solution peace deal. Fiona Magennis A 33-year-old woman accused of murder is alleged to have stabbed her housemate in the chest after her boyfriend went to his room to ask for a cigarette, a jury has heard. Nicola Brennan, of no fixed abode, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Juris Viktorovs (36) at Shillelagh, Ballyconnell, Co Wicklow on February 10th, 2022. Opening the case for the State on Tuesday afternoon, Fiona Murphy SC told the jury of eight men and four women that Mr Viktorovs, who was originally from Latvia, lived at the house in Ballyconnell and shared a room there with his girlfriend. She said Ms Brennan also lived at the address with Viacestaus Narnickis known as Young Slav who was her partner at the time and with whom she shared a room. She said another man who they knew and who was known as Old Slav was also there at the time. Old Slav and Young Slav worked together, she said. Ms Murphy said it was fair to say that all five were people who drank heavily on a regular basis. She said Old Slav was married but would stay at the house if he was drinking with the occupants. On the date in question, the accused and her partner were in the company of Old Slav and his wife before Old Slavs wife dropped the three of them back to the house, she said. Counsel said, at a certain point, the two couples were in their rooms and Young Slav came to Juris Viktorovs room and asked for a cigarette. She said the deceased rolled a cigarette for him and the pair spoke in Russian. Ms Murphy said while they were speaking, the accused came in and shouted something at Young Slav and threw a knife to him, but he kicked it away. She said it is alleged Ms Brennan then stabbed Mr Viktorovs. Counsel said Mr Viktorovs took the knife out of his chest and laid on the ground. 'Chaotic' She told the jury at that point, a number of 999 calls were made, and it is the prosecutions case that the accused made a number of comments during this time. She said it became clear that Mr Viktorovs had died and it was fair to say that things were somewhat chaotic in the house. She told the jury the accused was arrested and her boyfriend, Young Slav, was also arrested. She said gardai were satisfied Young Slav was not involved in the stabbing and no charges were brought against him. The knife believed to be the murder weapon was found in the room, she added. The knife was plunged into a mattress and the DNA of the deceased was found on the tip of the blade. She said a false nail was found in Ms Brennan's room, and also in Mr Viktorovs room. While at the Garda station, Ms Brennans clothes were seized and the blood of the deceased was found on the cuff of the pyjamas she was wearing at the time, counsel told the court. False nails were found discarded, and they were a match for the ones found at the house, she added. Ms Murphy told the jury they will hear evidence of conversations she had with people following her release from custody. The accused was subsequently rearrested and detained, and the court will hear various accounts Ms Brennan gave during this time. The prosecution will say all of this evidence will satisfy you that she is guilty of murder, Ms Murphy said. She said the prosecution's case against Ms Brennan is that she stabbed Mr Viktorovs in the chest, causing his death. Evidence in the case is due to commence on Wednesday. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) The websites of two government ministries in Bahrain briefly became inaccessible Tuesday night after a cyberattack took them down, purportedly over the island kingdom's stance on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. A statement posted online by a self-described group calling itself Al-Toufan, or The Flood in Arabic, claimed hacking the Foreign Ministry and the Information Affairs Ministry's websites. Both later became accessible. Another statement included scans of passports for American citizens and a top Russian diplomat in Bahrain that allegedly came from the hack. The statement said the hacks came in retaliation for the abnormal statements issued by the island's Al Khalifa ruling family, without elaborating. Bahrains Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa opened a summit last week in the kingdom with a call for a swap between Hamas and Israel for the hostages and a halt in the bloodshed. A Bahrain government statement sent later Tuesday night to The Associated Press acknowledged that a number of government agency websites have today been the target of malicious cyberattacks. The government of Bahrain has implemented a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy and framework to address such threats, the statement said. "Government operations were unaffected by the attacks, and work is ongoing to restore access to the targeted websites. In February, the self-described group issued a claim that it had taken down the websites of Bahrains international airport, state news agency and chamber of commerce to mark the 12-year anniversary of an Arab Spring uprising in the small Gulf country. The same shadowy self-described group targeted government websites during elections held last year that were boycotted by a banned Shiite opposition group and others. Bahrain reached a diplomatic recognition deal with Israel in 2020 alongside the United Arab Emirates. The island kingdom, home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, has drawn repeated criticism from Iran, its regional arch rival, over that. Follow AP's coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war 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. BETHLEHEM, Pa. Bethlehem City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday night to award an $87,855 contract to a Philadelphia-based architecture and planning firm for a feasibility study of a community center on the city's Southside. Atkin Olshin Schade Architects + MASS Design Group will determine the financial feasibility of such a project, as well as identify potential sites in South Bethlehem. Councilwoman Rachel Leon explained that many of the meetings leading up to the contract were done with input from Community Action and Boys' and Girls' Clubs. "It was a weeding down process to make sure that the right person was picked," Leon said. "It was quite a lengthy list. Some of the things that happened within those meetings were trying to find ways in which we weren't overstepping other people in the nonprofit sector and in the city." Councilwoman Grace Crampsie Smith cast the lone dissenting vote. "I am definitely more fiscally conservative, and I am really worried about the amount of money that we're spending on consultants," Crampsie Smith said. "I think $90,000 is a lot of money." "I am 100% for a community center that is going to benefit the youth and all the people of our community," she continued, "but at the same time, I just really am hesitant because money used for consultants could be used directly for the resources and services that are really going to help people." Funds for the feasibility study will be coming from the community recovery fund, a line item in this year's budget that used American Rescue Plan Act dollars. Crampsie Smith suggested that graduate students at Lehigh University or Moravian College could be used to conduct a study. Mayor J. William Reynolds said the whole process leading up to a feasibility study has been very intentional. "We made this announcement about the community center over a year ago, and the reason why we didn't hire or we didn't start that process was because when we talked to people, it was this process that was laid out and was the best one for us to follow," Reynolds said. "The idea of doing feasibility studies is about building confidence," he added. "And it is about being able to build up that confidence that this makes sense in that we know what they (the consultants) are doing." 2024 budget In other business, council voted to approve a first reading of several ordinances related to the proposed 2024 budget. The plan presented by the mayor will require a tax increase of 2.6% in both Northampton and Lehigh counties. Because Tuesday's votes were first readings, several budget workshops could still occur before the final adoption of the budget ordinances, scheduled for Dec. 19. HARRISBURG, Pa. - The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is warning consumers to discard Hilltop Meadow Farm brand 60 Day Aged Pepper Jack Raw Milk Cheese. The cheese will have sell by dates of 9/21/2023 or earlier. The Dept. of Agriculture confirms the testing of this cheese shows the presence of Listeria monocytogenes bacteria. The Pepper Jack Raw Milk Cheese from Hilltop Meadow Farm, located at 153 Martin Road, Pine Grove, Schuylkill County, is being voluntarily recalled by the farm. The product was sold at the following locations: Meadow Run Farms, 727 Rettew Mill Road, Littitz, Lancaster County Shady Acres Farm Market, 8514 Elizabethtown Road, Elizabethtown, Lancaster County. Willow Haven Farm, 7686 Herber Road, New Tripoli, Leigh County Healthy Habits Natural Market, 1120 Center Turnpike, Orwigsburg, Schuylkill County Little Leaf Natural Products, 505 S Main Street, Montrose, Susquehanna County Whole Earth Center, 360 Nassau St, Princeton, New Jersey Healthy Way, 396 S Main St, Massena, New York Northstar Bison Store, 225 Birch Avenue, Cameron, Wisconsin The tainted Pepper Jack Raw Milk Cheese is labeled with the Hilltop Meadow Farm label and designations From A2/A2 Milk and Made from 100% Grassfed Cows Milk product descriptions. Listeria monocytogenes can cause listeriosis, an illness which has symptoms including fever, muscle aches, nausea and diarrhea. Listeriosis mainly affects pregnant women, newborns, the elderly, and adults with impaired immune systems. Listeriosis in pregnant women can result in miscarriage, premature delivery, serious infection of the newborn, or stillbirth. To reported illnesses have been attributed to the product, but people who consumed the Pepper Jack Raw Milk Cheese should consult their physicians if they become ill. For more information about food safety in Pennsylvania, visit agriculture.pa.gov. S. WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. Tuesday night's meeting of the Parkland School District Board of Directors was the finale for two. Directors Patrick Foose and Robert Bold both offered speeches in their respective swan songs. Foose thanked the Parkland community for allowing him to serve and also pondered his legacy. "I am proud to say I have not once voted to raise your property taxes," Foose said. "...My legacy is one of fighting for the underdog." For his part, Bold was reflective and modern. "After 22 years, I can proudly look back on my years at Parkland and think of all the things we accomplished," Bold said. "I would also leave a challenge to this board from a president I won't name, whose theme was, 'Don't stop thinking about tomorrow.'" The commander in chief to whom Bold referenced was former President Bill Clinton. At the start of 2023, Bold replaced Jarrett Coleman on the board after Coleman was elected to serve as a state senator. Bold was first elected to the board in 1999 and served for 20 years after retiring from a 30-year teaching career in the Allentown School District. Bold went on to serve five times as the board's president and three times as vice president, in addition to serving on various committees. In April 2021, Bold came out of retirement and was appointed to the school board again when Director Marie Maritch departed. Other news On Tuesday night, the board OK'd a dual credit agreement with Cedar Crest College. The deal allows Parkland School District to offer college credits to certain qualified high school students. The board also approved a contract with ProCare Therapy to provide psychological services for district students as needed. School psychologists will receive $105 per hour. Directors also approved various other contracts including a fee proposal from Reuther + Bowen for civil engineering services at Kernsville Elementary. The deal is worth $15,000. Directors additionally OK'd various contracts related to the construction of an operations core and shell expansion. Collectively, the five deals are worth $994,765. Finally, the district will enter into an agreement with MKSD for additional design services at the new operations center for a $315,572 payment. President Yoon Suk-yeol told the British Parliament on Tuesday that collaboration between the two countries will expand significantly in areas such as AI, cybersecurity, nuclear power, defense, bio-technology, space, semiconductors, and the maritime sector. "This year we celebrate the 140th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties," Yoon said. "It will be an important and meaningful year for our partnership." "Tomorrow, Prime Minister [Rishi] Sunak and I will sign the Downing Street Accord. Our bilateral relations will be reborn as true global strategic partners," he added. "Together, we will build a free and open international order. Together, we will cultivate sustainable growth and prosperity for all of humanity." HELLERTOWN, Pa. - A man faces charges in connection with the drug overdose death of a 19-year-old man in Northampton County. Holden Wilkins, 21, of Hellertown, faces charges of drug delivery resulting in death, possession with the intent to deliver a controlled substance, and delivery of a controlled substance, all felonies, as well as a misdemeanor charge of involuntary manslaughter, according to a news release from the Hellertown Police Department. On July 9, 2022, the Hellertown Police Department started an investigation into what was an apparent drug overdose death of 19-year-old borough resident Riley T. James. Authorities issued a warrant for the arrest of Wilkins after the investigation concluded, police said. Police say Wilkins was apprehended at his residence Tuesday, arraigned, and committed to Northampton County Prison. Bail is set at $1 million. ALLENTOWN, Pa. The Lehigh County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday deferred discussion on a bill establishing countywide non-discrimination requirements. According to board President Geoff Brace, the county's law department advised the commissioners about potential concerns regarding the state Sunshine law specifically, procedures related to amending ordinances. Brace said the board was not sure it agreed with the concerns, but decided it was better to "err on the side of caution" and defer discussion until the Dec. 6 meeting. "[It's] not beneficial for county government to have that kind of mistake be the reason we don't have the ordinance," said Brace. According to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act "requires agencies to deliberate and take official action on agency business in an open and public meeting." The act outlines requirements for prior notice of meetings allowing the public to "attend, participate, and comment before an agency takes an official action." Brace said the delay could allow board members whose amendments "compete" with one another to work together to narrow down the number of sections with amendments presented. This vote is the second delay for the bill, which was introduced in September. Then, it was tabled so that commissioners could take the time needed to digest the 22-page bill as well as the various amendments presented by their fellow commissioners. "We have a responsibility to get it right so it can be effective," Brace said at the September meeting. The ordinance would establish requirements for employment, housing, education, health care and public accommodations. It would also allow for the creation of a human relations commission to investigate and enforce discrimination claims. Renaming RIIC In other news, commissioners conducted the second reading of the bill changing the name of the Regional Intelligence and Investigation Center (RIIC) to the James B. Martin Regional Intelligence and Investigation Center. According to the ordinance, the center "was developed under the visionary leadership of District Attorney James Martin ("Jim Martin"), who served six terms in office and made a significant impact on the effectiveness and sustainability of law enforcement in the region." Commissioner Antonio Pineda said that renaming the facility is a "very small way of saying thank you for the service he's provided to our county." County Director of General Services Rick Molchany said decisions to rename facilities are not made lightly. Consideration from the board, the county executive and others are all included, he said. "The effort is collaborative," Molchany said. "We work together deciding which makes the most sense for the legacy of the county." Brace recounted his experience with Martin and the facility. In particular, he discussed the case of a former student named Tyree Wimberly. In 2013, Wimberly was shot outside Scoobies Gentleman's Club in Allentown. According to Brace, Martin showed him how the RIIC had identified the perpetrator and how police in the Lehigh Valley and other states were using that information to locate the perpetrator and make an arrest. Learning about the facility and its work made a believer out of Brace. "When you see how county government can affect outcomes, and you can see how innovations in county government and our investments can affect justice for the family of a young man who was murdered, you start to believe in it," Brace said. Other news The board also voted to amend the 2023-27 Lehigh County capital plan to include purchasing a vehicle to "safely and securely transport the Office of the District Attorney's K9 officer." According to board documents, the project's estimated cost is $52,000, which will be paid through a $25,000 grant from the K9 Kop Project. Any expenses above those covered by donation will be paid using the Office of the District Attorney's forfeiture fund. In prison news, a first reading was held on a measure that would allow the county to enter into an agreement with Lehigh Carbon Community College to provide "needed education services to adult offenders in Department of Corrections custody in an effort to better prepare them for release and reduce recidivism." Commissioner Jeffrey Dutt said the agreement with LCCC gives opportunity for inmates where there might not have been any. "Education provides that opportunity," said Dutt. In other criminal justice-related news, Commissioner Bob Elbich reported on work the county is doing with the national Stepping Up initiative. The data-driven program "supports local jurisdictions in establishing and reaching measurable goals that demonstrate reduced prevalence of serious mental illness across the justice system," according to the initiatives website. Data from the county will be forthcoming, said Dutt. Commissioner Brace said the report generated is "going to be a significant piece of research." ALLENTOWN, Pa. - A 27-year-old man who pleaded guilty to a drive-by shooting in Allentown has learned his sentence. Justin Nevius was sentenced Wednesday by Judge Douglas Reichley to serve 30 to 60 years in prison, according to the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office. On May 3, Nevius pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and possession of a prohibited firearm. Nevius was charged in the drive-by shooting of Kippy Henry, 42, in the area of Seventh and Gordon streets in October 2021. A witness involved in the incident told police that before the shooting, Nevius was cut off by Henry, who was driving a minivan, according to court paperwork. Nevius became angry and followed the van to where it was parked at Seventh and Gordon, court papers said. The witness told investigators that the minivan driver was heard yelling, "What the (expletive) are you going to do?", then Nevius opened fire on the vehicle and Henry inside, the police paperwork said. Surveillance video from several nearby properties shows a car, believed to be driven by Nevius, pull up next to the minivan, then several muzzle flashes are seen from the driver's side, said the Lehigh County district attorney and Allentown police. Two passengers in the car get out and run, then the car pulls away, officials said. Officers arrived on scene to find Henry suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, and several windows in the van were shot out, police said. Henry, of South Whitehall Township, died shortly after 8 p.m. at the hospital. Nevius was arrested in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, where he lived, authorities said. ALLENTOWN, Pa. - The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said Wednesday it will consider a joint settlement that addresses widespread consumer billing issues connected with PPL Electric Utilities Corporation. The settlement was proposed by the PUCs independent Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement and PPL, according to a news release from the PUC. The settlement would include a payment of a $1 million civil penalty and PPLs agreement to absorb more than $16 million in related costs, the PUC said. PPL issued a statement about the proposed settlement: "We hope the commission will approve the proposed joint settlement, the elements of which build upon the significant changes we already have made to PPL Electric Utilities' processes and systems over the past year to prevent a billing issue like this from happening again. Supporting our customers and continuously improving our service continue to be top priority for us." According to the news release, PPL voluntary agreed to absorb more than $16 million in additional costs related to rectifying its billing issues, including: Approximately $2.3 million in voluntarily waived late fees; Approximately $7.8 million of additional bad debt expense arising out of the voluntary service termination moratorium; Forgoing collection of approximately $1.7 million from customers who were underbilled in the estimation true-up process; An additional approximately $3.7 million of unplanned costs in engaging external vendors; And approximately $700,000 of unbudgeted employee overtime expenses. Per the proposed settlement, PPL will not seek to recover any of those related costs in future rate cases or in any other manner, the PUC said. The proposed joint settlement was submitted for review and consideration by the PUC Commissioners, who will make a final determination in the matter. In early 2023 the PUC launched a comprehensive investigation into billing issues impacting PPL customers in response to large numbers of consumer calls and complaints about unusually high or low estimated bills, missing monthly bills, and the lack of adequate customer service support resulting in consumers being unable to reach PPL Call Center representatives to discuss their billing concerns, according to the news release. The matter was referred to the PUCs independent Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement (I&E), which enforces the state public utility code and PUC regulations and has the authority to bring enforcement actions to the commission. Based on data obtained from PPL during I&Es investigation, the billing issues originated in December 2022, when PPL discovered that customer meter data was not transferring from the utilitys meter data management software to their customer service system, according to the PUC. The PUC says the inability to transfer actual meter data backed up normal customer billing operations and resulted in sending estimated December 2022 bills. Later, human error caused additional incorrect bills to be issued, while some customers received no bills, and issues with bill estimation resulted in wildly inaccurate bills, the PUC said. According to the proposed joint settlement, more than 48,000 PPL accounts received no bills during one or more months between December 2022 and April 2023 billing periods, and during that same period more than 91,000 unique PPL accounts received no bills. Additionally, between December 2022 and January 2023 nearly 795,000 estimated bills were issued by PPL, and a total of more than 860,000 estimated bills were issued between December 2022 and May 2023, according to the news release. An analysis of estimated bills issued by PPL revealed that 67.31% (261,104 customers) of the bills had an estimate differing from the customers actual usage of 10% or greater, according to the PUC. Of these bills, the PUC said one-third indicated an estimate that varied from actual by more than 25%. And nearly 48,000 customer bills were based on an estimate differing from actual usage by more than 50%, the PUC said. More than 82,000 estimated bills were impacted by missing or inaccurate supply charges resulting in a process where PPL canceled the initial estimated bills and rebilled accounts to correct errors generating consumer confusion and "creating a complicated tangle of bills that took months to unravel," according to the PUC. The PUC says customers who attempted to contact PPL about billing issues were faced with extremely long wait times or were unable to reach the utility at all. The PUC says call center data from the period between January and April 2023 showed that 41% of calls to PPL were abandoned without customers being able to reach a representative. L. NAZARETH TWP., Pa. The Lower Nazareth Township Board of Supervisors held a seventh conditional use hearing Tuesday night for a proposed warehouse along Route 191/Nazareth Pike. The 450,000-square-foot warehouse at 523 Nazareth Pike is proposed by Northampton Farms LLC, an affiliate of Jaindl Land Co. Six previous hearings were held earlier this year on May 11, June 21, July 13, Aug. 10, Oct. 3 and Oct. 10. Tuesday's hearing began with attorney Kevin Kelleher calling his first resident objector to testify against the project: Cynthia Paukovitch, of Midland Circle. In an emotional testimony, Paukovitch largely focused on the potential negative impacts from diesel fumes. She and several other residents living in the vicinity of the proposed site suffered from multiple chemical sensitivity, asthma or other related respiratory conditions that would be worsened by diesel-emitting trucks at the warehouse site, Paukovitch said. Paukovitch also expressed her concern about the number of vacant warehouses in the Lehigh Valley, arguing that the project should not move forward because the developer has not identified a tenant for the proposed warehouse. Later, attorney Marc Kaplin called the developer's final witness of the conditional use approval process: Acoustical engineer Norman Dotti, of Butler, New Jersey-based Russell Acoustics LLC. During his testimony, Dotti stressed the importance of distinguishing between the "maximum" and "average" dBA levels. Dotti said that although more trucks moving around the warehouse facility would generate the most noise, the movement of trucks alone would only increase the average dBA level and not the maximum so the proposal was in compliance with township regulations. Dotti also noted that the positioning of the warehouse facility and proposed berms on the site would reduce "sound propagation," meaning less noise for residents as their distance from the site increases. An eighth hearing will be held Tuesday, Dec. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Lower Nazareth Township Municipal Building. At this hearing, Kelleher said he would call more residents as objectors, as well as a traffic engineer to present traffic-related concerns on behalf of these objectors. POTTSTOWN, Pa. - The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office and Pottstown Police have announced an arrest in a deadly shooting. Authorities say just after noon on Wednesday, police were dispatched to the area of South Hanover Street at Security Plaza, near the railroad tracks. Arriving officers found the alleged shooter being held by witnesses to the shooting, who kept him there until police arrived. The male victim, who authorities say was shot at least twice at close range, was transported to Pottstown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His identity has not been released. Investigators say the shooter is in custody and will be charged later today. PHILADELPHIA A Montgomery County woman will spend decades behind bars for a 2022 DUI crash that killed two Pennsylvania State Troopers and a pedestrian. According to online court records, 23-year-old Jayana Webb pleaded guilty Tuesday to multiple counts of third-degree murder and homicide by vehicle while DUI and was sentenced to serve at least 27.5 years in state prison. On March 21, 2022, Webb, of Eagleville, Montgomery County, killed State Troopers Martin Mack and Branden Sisca and 28-year-old pedestrian Reyes Oliveras of Allentown. Officials say the Troopers were trying to get Oliveras to safety after he had been walking on I-95 in Philadelphia, when Webb struck all three with her vehicle at a high rate of speed. There is no word at this time on when her sentence will begin. Authorities say Webb is currently seven months pregnant. A hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday to confirm the plan for her sentence. JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) Three people were killed and three were missing after a landslide barreled down a heavily forested, rain-soaked mountainside and smashed into homes in a remote fishing community in southeast Alaska. The slide estimated to be 450 feet (137 meters) wide occurred about 9 p.m. Monday during a significant rain and windstorm near Wrangell, an island community of 2,000 people some 155 miles (250 kilometers) south of the state capital of Juneau. Rescue crews found the body of a girl in an initial search and late Tuesday the bodies of two adults were found by a drone operator. Searchers used a cadaver-sniffing dog and heat-sensing drones to search for two children and one adult unaccounted for after the disaster, while the Coast Guard and other vessels looked along a waterfront littered with rocks, trees and mud. Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel said a woman who had been on the upper floor of a home was rescued. She was in good condition and receiving medical care. One of the three homes that was struck was unoccupied, McDaniel said. Our community is resilient, Wrangell interim borough manager Mason Villarma told The Associated Press in a phone interview. And it always comes together for tragedies like this. Were broken, but resilient and determined to find everybody thats missing. Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration for Wrangell, saying he and his wife were heartbroken and praying for all those affected. The landslide left a scar of barren earth from near the top of the mountain down to the ocean. A wide swath of evergreen trees was ripped out of the ground and a highway was buried by debris, cutting off access and power to approximately 75 homes. Troopers said a large-scale search and rescue mission wasnt initially possible because the site was unstable and hazardous. A geologist from the state transportation department was flown in from Juneau and conducted a preliminary assessment, clearing some areas of the debris field for ground searches. Troopers warned of the threat of additional landslides. They urged people caught on the other side of the slide, away from Wrangell, to evacuate by water taxi. Wrangell received about 2 inches (5 centimeters) of rain between 1 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday, with wind gusts up to 60 mph (96 kph) at higher elevations, said Aaron Jacobs, a hydrologist and meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Juneau. It was part of a strong storm system that moved through southeast Alaska, bringing heavy snow in places and blizzard-like conditions to Juneau as well as rainfall with minor flooding to areas farther south. Landslides also were reported in the Ketchikan area and on Prince of Wales Island, he said. Rainfall amounts like what Wrangell received Monday are not unusual, Jacobs said, but strong winds could have helped trigger the slide. Saturated soil can give way when gusts blow trees on a slope, said Barrett Salisbury, a geologist with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. Another storm system is expected in the Wrangell area late Wednesday into Thursday. Wrangell is one of the oldest non-Alaska Native settlements in the state, founded in 1811 when Russians began trading with Tlingits, according to a state database of Alaska communities. Tlingits, Russians, the British and Americans all accounted for historical influences on Wrangell. Timber once was a major economic driver, but that has shifted to commercial fishing. In December 2020, torrential rains prompted a landslide in another southeast Alaska city, claiming two lives. The 200-yard-wide (183-meter-wide) slide slammed into a neighborhood in the community of Haines, leaving about 9 feet (2.7 meters) of mud and trees covering city streets. Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska, and Raby from Charleston, West Virginia. Saudi-based Retal Urban Development Company has reached an agreement with the National Housing Company (NHC) to jointly develop more than 1,100 residential units in the prime cities of Riyadh and Jeddah at a total investment of SAR925 million ($246.4 million). Under this deal, the duo will develop 366 residences in Zones 1 and 2 of Al Shafa Residential Land located in Riyadh at an estimated cost of SAR290 million, writes a TradeArabia staff reporter citing a Retal filing to Saudi bourse Tadawul. The project, which will come up over a 133,934 sq m area in the Saudi capital, is likely to be completed in 2027. On the South Jeddah project, Retal said it will build 803 residential units in the Saudi port city at an estimated cost of SAR635 million. The Jeddah project, which will come up over a 209,483 sq m area, will also be completed in 2027. Both the projects will be funded through self financing, off-plan sales and available facilities, said Retal in the bourse filing. The projects are expected to have a positive impact on the company's results post the start of sale and the project execution, it added.-TradeArabia News Service Samsung Electronics has ranked fifth on a global top 100 brands list for the fourth consecutive year. Automakers Hyundai and Kia were also included in the list. In the annual Best Global Brands list published by consulting firm Interbrand on Tuesday, Samsung Electronics came in fifth with a value of US$91.4 billion, up 4 percent from the previous year. Since entering the top 10 for the first time in 2012 at ninth, Samsung has consistently climbed the ranks, reaching sixth place in 2017 and fifth in 2020, remaining there since. Apple topped the list with $502.7 billion, followed by Microsoft ($316.7 billion), Amazon ($276.9 billion) and Google ($260.3 billion). According to Interbrand, despite the challenging market conditions in the information technology industry this year, Samsung's brand value increased across all business sectors, from smartphones and home appliances to networks and semiconductors. Hyundai's value increased 18 percent to $20.4 billion to rank 35th, up three notches, while Kia was the 88th best brand. Israels Cabinet approved a cease-fire agreement with the Hamas militant group that would bring a temporary halt to the devastating war that is now in its seventh week. The Israeli government said that under an outline of the deal, Hamas is to free at least 50 of the roughly 240 hostages taken in Hamas Oct. 7 attack over a four-day period. Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, later confirmed the deal, saying the start time will be announced in the next 24 hours and that it will last for four days. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before the Cabinet voted early Wednesday that the war would continue even if a deal was reached. Israel, the United States and Qatar have been negotiating for weeks over a hostage release that would be paired with a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the entry of more humanitarian aid. Israel says Hamas uses civilians and hospitals as shields, while critics say Israels siege and relentless aerial bombardment amount to collective punishment of the territorys 2.3 million Palestinians after Hamas Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. Currently: Israel's Cabinet approves a cease-fire for hostages deal with Hamas. Palestinian prisoners also to be freed. South Africa's president accuses Israel of war crimes and acts tantamount to genocide in Gaza. South African lawmakers vote in favor of closing Israels embassy and cutting diplomatic ties. Bahrain government websites are briefly inaccessible after a cyberattack over the Israel-Hamas war. Find more of APs coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war Heres what's happening in the war: BIDEN PRAISES HOSTAGE DEAL AND SAYS HE WON'T STOP UNTIL THEY'RE ALL RELEASED NANTUCKET, Mass. United States President Joe Biden said in a statement late Tuesday that he welcomes the agreement to release at least 50 hostages being held in Gaza and stressed that it is important that all aspects of this deal be fully implemented. I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented, said Biden, who was in Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the Thanksgiving holiday. Biden said the agreement should release some American hostages, and added, I will not stop until they are all released. Biden emphasized that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has committed to supporting an extended pause to make sure not only all hostages are released but that humanitarian assistance can be sent to Palestinians in Gaza. Todays deal is a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination of many dedicated individuals across the United States Government to bring Americans home, Biden said. THE RED CROSS STANDS BY TO ASSIST ANY SWAP DUBAI, United Arab Emirates The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is standing by to assist any swap in the Israel-Hamas war. Currently, we are actively engaged in talks with the parties to help carry out any humanitarian agreement they reach, the Red Cross said. As a neutral intermediary, it is important to clarify that we are not part of the negotiations, and we do not make decisions on the substance of it. Our role is to facilitate the implementation, once the parties agree. QATAR CONFIRMS THE ISRAEL-HAMAS CEASE-FIRE AND HOSTAGE DEAL DUBAI, United Arab Emirates Qatar has confirmed an agreement for a cease-fire and swap between Israel and Hamas, saying the start time will be announced in the next 24 hours and that it will last for four days. The statement early Wednesday morning from Qatars Foreign Ministry described the talks that produced the agreement as a mediation by Egypt, the United States and Qatar for a humanitarian pause. The starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours and last for four days, subject to extension, the statement said. The agreement includes the release of 50 civilian women and children hostages currently held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons, the number of those released will be increased in later stages of implementing the agreement. It added that the cease-fire will allow the entry of a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel designated for humanitarian needs. It offered no specifics on that, however. HOSTAGES TO START BEING RELEASED ROUGHLY 24 HOURS AFTER DEAL OK'D BY ALL PARTIES, WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL SAYS Hostage releases will begin roughly 24 hours after the cease-fire deal is approved by all parties, said a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matters. The government of Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israels Cabinet on Wednesday approved the cease-fire deal that would bring a temporary halt to the devastating war The effort to free all of the roughly 240 hostages seized by Hamas in its brazen Oct. 7 attack began when Qatar approached the U.S. and Israel and quietly established a group to coordinate, the official said. The groups efforts led to the release of two American citizens, Natalie and Judith Raanan. Their release proved their system could work and that intensified the process for larger-scale release, according to the official. Intense negotiations have continued since. Associated Press reporter Colleen Long contributed from Washington. ISRAEL'S CABINET APPROVES CEASE-FIRE WITH HAMAS INCLUDING RELEASE OF SOME 50 HOSTAGES Israels Cabinet on Wednesday approved a cease-fire deal with the Hamas militant group that would bring a temporary halt to the devastating war and release dozens of hostages being held in the Gaza Strip. Under what the government called an outline of the deal, Hamas is to free at least 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it is holding in the Gaza Strip over a four-day period. It said it would extend the lull by an additional day for every 10 hostages released. The government said the first hostages to be released would be women and children. It was not immediately clear when the truce would go into effect. Netanyahu convened his Cabinet for the vote late Tuesday. The meeting stretched well into the early hours Wednesday. FIGHTING IN JABALIYA SPILLS OVER TO HOSPITALS, AND STRIKE KILLS 3 DOCTORS GAZA CITY Four people, including three doctors, were killed when a hospital was struck amid intense fighting Tuesday in the Jabaliya refugee camp, the hospital director told Al-Jazeera TV. The director of al-Awda hospital, Ahmed Mahna, blamed the strike on Israel, a claim that The Associated Press could not independently confirm. The medical aid group Doctors Without Borders confirmed that two of the doctors killed worked for it. The group called for better protection of medical facilities, staff and patients in the besieged enclave. Seeing doctors killed next to hospital beds is beyond tragic, and this must stop now, The aid group said in a post on X. The Israeli military said Hamas fighters had retrenched in Jabaliya, a densely built district of concrete buildings near Gaza City that houses families displaced in the 1948 war surrounding Israels creation. Israel has bombarded the area for weeks. NETANYAHU SAYS WAR WILL CONTINUE AFTER ANY CEASE-FIRE JERUSALEM Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel will continue its war against Hamas, even if a temporary cease-fire is reached with the Islamic militant group to release hostages. In comments ahead of an expected Cabinet vote on a cease-fire proposal, Netanyahu vowed to press ahead. We are at war, and we will continue the war, he said. We will continue until we achieve all our goals. The Cabinet was expected to vote on a plan that would halt Israels offensive in Gaza for several days in exchange for the release of about 50 of the 240 hostages held by Hamas. Israel has vowed to continue the war until it destroys Hamas military capabilities and returns all hostages. EGYPT WILL TAKE ALL MEASURES TO KEEP PALESTINIANS FROM ENTERING, PRIME MINISTER SAYS CAIRO Egypts prime minister said Tuesday that Egypt will take all measures to prevent Palestinians from crossing into Egypt, as the Israeli army makes preparations to enter the south of besieged Gaza. The comments by Mostafa Madbouly in a speech in Parliament were the strongest warning yet, hinting that military force could be used. Egypt will not hesitate in taking all measures that guarantees the protection of its borders, Madbouly said. Since the start of the conflict, Egypt has continually ruled out becoming a host nation for displaced Palestinians. The North African country fears that a mass exodus of Palestinians onto Egyptian soil would nullify Palestinian demands for statehood, and jeopardies Egypts security and economy, However, Egypt has allowed thousands of dual nationals and hundreds of injured and sick Palestinians to enter through the Rafah crossing from Gaza during past weeks. HOSTAGES DEAL COULD BUILD TRUST, SAYS WOMAN WHOSE HUSBAND AND CHILDREN WERE TAKEN TEL AVIV, Israel A woman whose husband and two young children were abducted when Hamas fighters stormed Israel on Oct. 7 said that a deal to bring home some hostages now could pave the way for future deals. Hadas Kalderon talked to N12 News Israel amid reports that Hamas and Israel were close to a cease-fire that would include freeing some hostages as well as some Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Kalderon said negotiators should save whoever they can right now because we don't know what will happen. Who would dare vote against a deal? she asked. Kalderon said she is in every dilemma possible, acknowledging that Offer, the father of her children, could remain in captivity even if her children are released under the proposed deal. I still say: we are morally obligated our responsibility is to return everyone, she said. But lets be realistic. EU OFFICIAL: AID MONEY NOT BEING DIVERTED TO HAMAS STRASBOURG, France A senior European Union official said the bloc will continue to provide financial aid to the Palestinians after an investigation found that no money has been diverted to Hamas. The review found no indications of EU money having directly or indirectly benefited the terrorist organization Hamas, EU Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters. Payment to Palestinian beneficiaries and UNRWA will continue without payment delays. Finally, for those projects in Gaza that are not feasible due to the war, the money will be reallocated to Gaza either as humanitarian or development aid. BIDEN: VERY CLOSE TO DEAL ON RELEASING SOME HOSTAGES WASHINGTON President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a deal on releasing some hostages was very close to being finalized, and that he was hopeful they can get home to their families very soon. Were now very close, very close. We could bring some of these hostages home very soon, Biden said at an unrelated appearance at the White House. Things are looking good at the moment. TURKEY, ALGERIA LEADERS HIT ISRAEL FOR CRIMES IN GAZA ALGIERS, Algeria - The presidents of Turkey and Algeria had harsh words for Israel's actions in Gaza on Tuesday as they said they hoped for successful negotiations on the release of hostages and risoners. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government maintains ties with Hamas officials, said Turkeys foreign minister and intelligence chief were working with Qatari officials to negotiate releases. We are engaged in constant talks and our expectation is to receive a positive result," Erdogan said in a joint news conference with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Tebboune said as regional powers, he and Erdogan would continue to push to stop the human tragedy resulting from the crimes perpetrated by the Zionist entity in Gaza. Tebboune reiterated his calls to take Israel to the International Criminal Court and said the denunciation of Israels crimes must be accompanied by an urgent initiative to halt the expansion of colonization in the West Bank. Erdogan said Israels actions had turned into collective punishment and constitute war crimes. STRIKE HITS BASE WITH U.S. TROOPS; INJURIES MINOR BAGHDAD A strike hit a base housing U.S. troops in Iraq early Tuesday, causing minor injuries to U.S. personnel and damage to infrastructure, a U.S. military official in the country said. The official said U.S. forces responded in self-defense against those who carried out the strike on al-Asad military base in western Iraq. A second defense official said multiple militants were killed in a strike carried out by a special operations AC-130 gunship that was already operating in the area. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Also early Tuesday, a drone strike on a highway west of Baghdad targeted two pickup trucks linked to the Kataeb Hezbollah militia, killing one militia member and injuring at least three others, two militia officials said. The militia officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the strike hit a convoy traveling from Anbar to Baghdad. Later on Tuesday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iran-backed militias, issued a statement announcing the death of one of its members in Iraq in what it said was a U.S. airstrike. It was not immediately clear if the strike that killed the Kataeb Hezbollah member was the same one launched in retaliation to the attack on the al-Assad base. The two incidents come as Iranian-backed militants have launched dozens of attacks on bases and facilities housing U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. While most of the more than five dozen attacks have been ineffective, at least 60 U.S. personnel have reported minor injuries. The militant groups have said that the strikes are in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. By Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Tara Copp in Washington KEY ISRAELI DECISION-MAKING BODIES TO DISCUSS ISSUE OF RELEASE OF HOSTAGES JERUSALEM Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office has announced meetings of three key decision-making bodies late Tuesday to discuss the issue of the release of hostages. A statement released by Netanyahus office said the special war Cabinet will convene at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT), followed by meetings of the broader Security Cabinet and then the full Cabinet. It gave no further details, but the various bodies are required to approve important government decisions. OFFICIALS OF MUSLIM NATIONS VISIT SECURITY COUNCIL MEMBERS TO PUSH FOR CEASE-FIRE MOSCOW Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday hosted counterparts from the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Officials from eight Muslim countries and territories are visiting the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and other nations in an attempt to secure an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid. Speaking at the start of the talks in Moscow, Lavrov said Russia condemns any form of terrorism, but added that terrorism must be fought using methods that dont amount to collective punishment and dont contradict, or to put it bluntly, rudely violate the norms of international humanitarian law. ISRAELI STRIKE KILLS TWO TV JOURNALISTS ALONG LEBANON-ISRAEL BORDER BEIRUT -- An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed two journalists for Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV who were reporting on violence along the tense Lebanon-Israel border, Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary and the station said Tuesday. The Pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV identified the journalists as correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari. The station is politically allied with the militant Hezbollah group. Hezbollahs media office vowed that the killing of the journalists will not pass without retaliation. Hours later, Hezbollah said it fired two missiles that struck an Israeli intelligence unit inside a home near Kibbutz Manara in northern Israel, killing and wounding those inside. It said the attack was in retaliation for the killing of the journalists and civilians on the Lebanese side of the border. The Israeli military said it was looking into the matter. In a statement earlier Tuesday, it said its aircraft struck three armed terrorist cells in the area of the border with Lebanon in addition to Hezbollah infrastructure. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli strike on a home in the border village of Kfar Kila killed an 80-year-old woman, Laiqa Serhan, and wounded her granddaughter. Last week, the Israeli government blocked Al-Mayadeen TV from broadcasting in Israel. Israeli shelling of southern Lebanon on Oct. 14 killed Reuters videojournalist Issam Abduallah and wounded other journalists from Agence France-Presse and Qatars Al-Jazeera TV. IRAN-BACKED YEMEN REBELS' ATTACK ON SHIP RAISES RISKS IN RED SEA DUBAI, United Arab Emirates The helicopter-borne Houthi attack on an Israel-linked ship in the Red Sea highlights the danger now lurking in one of the worlds key shipping routes as the Israel-Hamas war rages, as well as the rebels tactics mirroring those of its chief sponsor, Iran. While Tehran has denied aiding the Yemen rebel group in launching their attack Sunday, the targeted ship before the assault passed by an American-sanctioned Iranian cargo vessel suspected as serving as a forward spying base in the Red Sea. The rebels, dressed commando-style in bulletproof vests carrying assault rifles, covered each other and moved in military formation before quickly seizing control of the bridge of the Galaxy Leader. While their body-camera footage serves as a propaganda coup to bolster their own position in Yemen amid some protests against their rule, it also signals a new maritime front has opened in a region long focused on the Persian Gulf and its narrow mouth at the Strait of Hormuz. It also puts new pressure on commercial shippers traveling through those waters, threatens to increase insurance costs that will get passed onto consumers and likely further stretches the U.S. Navy as it tries to serve as the regions security guarantor. HAMAS OFFICIAL SAYS AGREEMENT ON HOSTAGE RELEASE COULD COME SOON BEIRUT -- Israel, the United States and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, have been negotiating for weeks over a hostage release that would be paired with a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the entry of more humanitarian aid. Hamas has released four hostages, Israel has rescued one, and the bodies of two were found near Shifa. Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said Tuesday that an agreement could be reached in the coming hours in which Hamas would release captives and Israel would release Palestinian prisoners. Hamas leader in exile, Ismail Haniyeh, also said they were close to a deal, but similar predictions in recent weeks have proven premature. Hamas gunmen and their allies captured more 240 hostages during their deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which they also killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians. AWARD-WINNING PALESTINIAN POET ARRESTED BY ISRAELI TROOPS, BROTHER SAYS TEL AVIV, Israel The brother of an award-winning Palestinian poet in Gaza says he has been arrested by Israeli troops and his whereabouts are unknown. Mosab Abu Toha has been contributing pieces to Western media since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, painting a dire image of its toll on civilians through his personal experience. His brother, Hamza Abu Toha, posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday that Mosab was arrested while evacuating to southern Gaza, following Israeli military orders. Hamza said his brothers wife and children were allowed to continue south, but the military detained my brother. Mosab Abu Toha last posted on X on Nov. 15, writing Alive. Thanks for your prayers. The literary and free expression organization PEN said it was concerned about the arrest and demanded to know Abu Tohas whereabouts and the reason for his arrest. The New Yorker magazine, to which Abu Toha has contributed multiple articles, called for his safe return. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports. SEOUL, South Korea (AP) South Korea said North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the sea but the launch likely failed Wednesday night, hours after Seoul said it would resume front-line aerial surveillance in response to the Norths spy satellite launch. South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a brief statement early Thursday a missile was launched from the Norths capital region toward the Norths eastern waters but that the launch was believed to have ended in failure. It gave no further details such as what type of missile was fired and what happened to it. The launch was North Korea's first known weapons firing in more than two months. It followed South Korea's announcement earlier Wednesday that it decided to partially suspend an inter-Korean agreement and resume flying surveillance aircraft along the border in reaction to the North's satellite launch. North Korea Thursday lambasted the South Korean move, saying it'll deploy more powerful and new weapons at the border in a tit-for-tat measure. South Korea, the U.S. and Japan have strongly condemned the Norths satellite launch on Tuesday night because they believe it was meant to improve the countrys missile technology as well as establish a space-based surveillance system. U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibit any satellite liftoffs by North Korea, viewing them as covers for testing its long-range missile technology. The North says it has a sovereign right to launch satellites. The North's neighbors are trying to confirm whether its satellite launch was successful as it claimed and whether the satellite can perform reconnaissance functions. South Koreas military said it assessed that the satellite had entered orbit. But it said it needs more time to verify whether it works. Earlier, the Pentagon said it was assessing the success of the launch, while Japan said there had been no confirmation of the Norths report on the satellite entering orbit. North Koreas space agency said its Malligyong-1 satellite was placed in orbit on Tuesday night, about 12 minutes after liftoff. Leader Kim Jong Un watched the satellite launch on site. He later visited the Pyongyang control center of the Norths space agency, where he was briefed that the satellite would officially begin its reconnaissance mission from Dec. 1, following a period of fine-tuning, according to state media. The Norths official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim was presented with satellite photos of Anderson Air Force Base, Apra Harbor and other U.S. military facilities in the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, which it said were taken Wednesday morning. It didnt publicize the photos, and many experts remain skeptical about whether the North Korean satellite is advanced enough to conduct meaningful military reconnaissance. In December, when North Korea released black-and-white satellite photos of South Korean cities following a test launch, many experts said the imagery was too crude for surveillance purposes. In 2012 and 2016, North Korea placed Earth observation satellites into orbit, but experts say neither has ever transmitted imagery back to North Korea. North Korea used the same satellite in its two failed launches in May and August. South Koreas military retrieved debris from the first launch and assessed at the time the satellite wasnt sophisticated enough to perform military reconnaissance. Before Tuesdays launch, South Korean officials said North Korea was likely receiving Russian technological support for its spy satellite launch program as part of the two countries push to boost their partnerships. The U.S., South Korea and others accuse North Korea of shipping conventional arms to support Russias war in Ukraine in exchange for receiving high-tech Russian technologies to enhance its own military programs. Both North Korea and Russia have denied the accusations. A spy satellite is among an array of sophisticated weapons systems that Kim wants to acquire. Experts say he would eventually aim to use his enlarged arsenal to win sanctions relief and other concessions from the U.S. when diplomacy resumes. Some civilian experts said North Koreas Malligyong-1 satellite is likely capable of only detecting big targets like warships or planes. But by operating several such satellites, North Korea could still observe South Korea at all times, they said. Animosities run high on the Korean Peninsula due to North Korea's series of weapons tests since last year and the expansion of U.S.-South Korean military drills. When Heo Tae-keun, South Koreas deputy minister of national defense policy, announced the partial suspension of the 2018 inter-Korean agreement, he said South Korea will promptly and strongly punish North Korea if it uses the South Korean step as a pretext to launch another provocation. Heo called the North's satellite launch a grave provocation that threatens our national security. North Korea's Defense Ministry responded Thursday it will get South Korea to face searing consequences over its decision. It said North Korea won't be bound by the 2018 deal any longer and restore all the steps it has taken to ease frontline military tensions under the agreement. The North's space agency said the satellite would help improve the Norths war readiness in the face of the enemies dangerous military moves. The agency said North Korea will soon launch several more spy satellites to better monitor South Korea and other areas. The 2018 agreement, struck during a short-lived era of reconciliation between the rival Koreas, created buffer and no-fly zones along the countries heavily fortified border. Under the deal, the Koreas were required to halt front-line aerial reconnaissance and live-fire exercises. They also removed some of their guard posts and land mines at border areas. The deal invited conservative criticism in South Korea, with critics saying it significantly restricted the operation of the countrys aerial surveillance assets, which are much more superior to North Koreas. They also accused the deal of heavily benefiting North Korea, because it only called for mutual reductions of conventional military strength while leaving the Norths growing nuclear arsenal intact. Associated Press journalist Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report from Tokyo. JERUSALEM (AP) Israel and Hamas on Wednesday agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza a diplomatic breakthrough that will free dozens of hostages held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory. The truce raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, which was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 deadly rampage into Israel. Now in its seventh week, the war has leveled vast swaths of Gaza, fueled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank, and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a nationally televised news conference that the war would resume after the truce expires. Israels goals are to destroy Hamas military capabilities and return all 240 hostages held captive in Gaza. I want to be clear. The war is continuing. The war is continuing. We will continue it until we achieve all our goals, Netanyahu said, adding he had delivered the same message in a phone call to U.S. President Joe Biden. He also said he had instructed the Mossad spy agency to hunt down Hamas exiled leadership wherever they are. The cease-fire efforts hit another hurdle when Israel's national security adviser said in a late-night announcement that the deal would not take effect before Friday, a day later than originally expected. Tzachi Hanegbi gave no reason for the delay, but Channel 13 TV said there were still some last-minute details being ironed out. If implemented, the deal temporarily freezes both sides at a tenuous moment. Israeli troops hold much of northern Gaza and say they have dismantled tunnels and much of Hamas infrastructure there. But Israeli officials acknowledge the groups infrastructure remains intact elsewhere. Netanyahus announcement Wednesday appeared to be aimed at public concerns that a truce will lead Israel to halt its offensive before achieving its goals. Israel has said it is determined to take its ground offensive into the south. That could be potentially devastating for Gazas uprooted population, most of which is squeezed into the south with nowhere to go to avoid the assault. Residents in Gaza City said the fighting intensified overnight into Wednesday, with gunfire, heavy artillery and airstrikes. Palestinian militants continued firing rockets at Israel throughout the day, without causing casualties. A DIPLOMATIC BREAKTHROUGH The announcement of the truce capped weeks of indirect, stop-and-go negotiations to free some of the hostages taken by Hamas and other militants during their Oct. 7 raid. Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, helped mediate the deal. Fifty hostages will be freed in stages, in exchange for the release of what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will let go women and children first. Israel said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed by Hamas. Hamas said hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid including fuel would be allowed to enter Gaza. Netanyahu said the deal also included a provision for the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the hostages in captivity. The cease-fire is to take effect at 10 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) Thursday, according to Egypts state-run Qahera TV channel. Biden welcomed the deal, saying Netanyahu committed to supporting an extended pause. Qatars prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said he hoped it would eventually lead to a permanent cease-fire and serious talks on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israels Justice Ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible to be released, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offenses. WILL THE WAR RESUME? The war erupted when several thousand Hamas militants broke into southern Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking hostages. Weeks of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, followed by a ground invasion, have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It does not differentiate between civilians and militants, though some two-thirds of the dead have been identified as women and minors. The ministry said that as of Nov. 11 it had lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of large parts of the health system, but says the number has risen sharply since then. Some 2,700 people are missing and believed buried under rubble. Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters, though it has presented no evidence for its count. Hamas, meanwhile, will have a chance to regroup. Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar will likely present the release of the prisoners seen by most Palestinians as heroes resisting occupation as a major achievement, and declare victory if the war ends. STRIKES CONTINUE An airstrike overnight hit a residential building in the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 17 people, including children, said Ahmad Balouny, a relative of the deceased. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of two children pulled from the rubble. Outside Khan Younis, workers dug a mass grave for 111 bodies that Israeli authorities handed over after troops took them from Shifa Hospital and other parts of northern Gaza. Israeli troops had taken the bodies apparently for DNA analysis amid the search for hostages in the north. Strikes also leveled buildings in the Nusseirat refugee camp and the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The citys Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said 128 bodies were brought in overnight after strikes. In northern Gaza, about 60 bodies and 200 people wounded by heavy fighting were brought into the Kamal Adwan Hospital overnight, hospital director Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout told Al-Jazeera television Wednesday. Over 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced in the war. Many, if not most, will be unable to return home because of the vast damage and the continued presence of Israeli troops in the north. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said that more than 1 million Palestinians were seeking shelter in 156 of its facilities in Gaza. The cease-fire deal promises an increase of aid to the south, bringing some relief to hundreds of thousands who have struggled to find food and water. Israel has barred imports to Gaza since the start of the war, except for a trickle of aid entering through Egypts Rafah crossing. A Qatari statement said the cease-fire would allow a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid, including fuel. But it gave no details on actual quantities. Humanitarian aid groups operating in Gaza criticized the cease-fire, saying the truce was too short and the Rafah crossings capacity was insufficient to deliver enough aid to meet the urgent demand. The Palestine Red Crescent aid group and U.N. teams evacuated 190 wounded and sick people, their companions and some medical teams from Shifa Hospital to hospitals in southern Gaza, Wednesday, a Red Crescent spokesperson said. DEAL COULD DIVIDE ISRAELIS The return of hostages could lift spirits in Israel, where their plight has gripped the country. Families of the hostages have staged mass demonstrations to pressure the government to bring them home. But they could also find themselves divided as some hostages are freed and others not. Ofri Bibas Levy, whose brother, sister-in-law and two nephews aged 4 and 10 months are among the captives, said the deal puts the families in an inhumane situation. Who will be released, who wont? she asked. No matter which way it happens, there will still be families that will remain worried and sad and angry. Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press reporters Najib Jobain in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip; Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip; Melanie Lidman and Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem; Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed. Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index has recovered to over 2,500 points after 11 trading days in the doldrums. The KOSPI closed at 2510.42 on Tuesday, up 0.77 percent from the previous session, thanks to increased buying by foreign investors and institutions. The recovery came nearly two weeks after Korea announced a complete ban on short selling. Climate Justice Coalition stands in solidarity with Palestinian liberation Members of the Climate Justice Coalition have joined millions of people all over the world in the call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the occupation We bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Israeli state, operating with support of the United States, as it enacts gross human rights violations upon the people of Palestine, with complete disregard for human life, international law and global harmony. While Israels actions are as a retaliation to the attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas, this does not justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population in response. We have watched in horror as the Israeli state cut off water, electricity and the internet. It has placed the people of Gaza under siege, refusing food, fuel and medical supplies to enter Gazan borders. Israel has continuously and relentlessly bombed schools and hospitals, using illegal white phosphorus, leaving no place of refuge for Gazans. Israel has now issued a military order forcing northern and central Gaza residents to evacuate their homes and move south, as these areas are now classified as a war zone. Over 12 000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza, including at least 192 medical staff and 44 journalists. Hundreds more have been killed and imprisoned in the West Bank, while the worlds focus remains on Gaza. A full report of the war crimes is documented in the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs relief report here. As the Climate Justice Coalition, we stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and occupied people all over the world. Palestinian liberation, like all anti-colonial struggles, is a climate justice issue. The colonial and neocolonial dispossession of peoples to facilitate resource and land grabs, is a key driver of climate injustice. It contributes to the climate crisis by facilitating the extraction of polluting resources like oil and gas, and degrading lands which might otherwise serve as climate sinks. It also makes people, especially indigenous, poor, and Black communities, increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis by displacing them from their homes and starving them of access to vital resources like water, food and land. We will not be silent in the face of injustice. As members of the Climate Justice Coalition, we condemn this US-state sanctioned genocide, through provision of weapons, political support for Israel during this time, and internal censure of the only Palestinian-American Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib for calling for a ceasefire. We call out the billions being spent on this genocide, that could be directed to other social, economic and environmental justice concerns and recognise that this is the industry of war at work, that continues profiting from mass atrocities in the region. We recognise how this tragedy could be halted by stronger actions from the US, but that their interest in Israel as a geopolitical entry point in the fossil-fuel rich middle-eastern region outweighs their concern for Palestinian lives. We call out the double standards in politicians of the global north, who readily stood with Ukraine but failed to do so with Palestine. We also acknowledge the threat this poses to geopolitical unity for coordinated action on issues like human rights and climate change, as well as the far-reaching and long term social, political and environmental impacts this level of destruction will have. There can be no peace in the region without justice. To quote Nelson Mandela: The United Nations took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous systembut we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. We call on international actors like the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice to take swift and direct action to ensure that justice does indeed prevail, and echo the call for the South African government to expel the Israeli ambassador and sever all ties with the state of Israel while it commits these atrocities and until Israels apartheid against Palestinians is ended. Signed on behalf of the following undersigned Climate Justice Coalition individual members: Thembi Luckett Tara Nair van Ryneveld Maia Nangle Motlatsi Makhasane Ferron Pedro Kholwane Simelane Alia Kajee Sunny Morgan Mametlwe Sebei Lungisa Ngapi Robert Krause Alex Lenferna Shaazia Ebrahim Mbali Baduza Motheo Brodie Cleopatra Nqobile Shezi Gabriel Klaasen Sarah Robyn Farrell Trevor Shaku And the following Climate Justice Coalition member organisations: The expanded secretariat of the Climate Justice Coalition Centre for Applied Legal Studies Lawyers for Human Rights United Front XR Gauteng Sekhukhune Combined Mining Affected Communities Debt for Climate South Africa GIWUSA African Climate Alliance South African Federation of Trade Unions (SAFTU) SAFCEI For Media Enquiries, contact: Shaazia Ebrahim, Climate Justice Coalition, at comms@climatejusticecoalition.org NOTES TO EDITORS About the Climate Justice Coalition: The Climate Justice Coalition is a coalition of South African trade unions, civil society, grassroots and community-based organisations working together on advancing a transformative climate justice agenda, which tackles the inequality, poverty and unemployment that pervades South Africa. Mystic Asset Management Inc. acquired a new position in shares of The Charles Schwab Co. (NYSE:SCHW Free Report) in the second quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor acquired 4,417 shares of the financial services providers stock, valued at approximately $250,000. A number of other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in SCHW. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich increased its position in Charles Schwab by 93,993.8% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 965,692,348 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $54,735,442,000 after purchasing an additional 964,666,040 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank acquired a new position in Charles Schwab during the 4th quarter worth approximately $1,325,555,000. Morgan Stanley increased its position in Charles Schwab by 62.5% in the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 22,255,649 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $1,853,005,000 after acquiring an additional 8,563,389 shares during the period. Flossbach Von Storch AG increased its position in Charles Schwab by 48.7% in the 1st quarter. Flossbach Von Storch AG now owns 16,619,849 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $870,548,000 after acquiring an additional 5,445,011 shares during the period. Finally, Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC increased its position in Charles Schwab by 91,051.8% in the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 5,365,193 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $446,706,000 after acquiring an additional 5,359,307 shares during the period. 81.61% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Charles Schwab alerts: Charles Schwab Stock Up 0.0 % Shares of Charles Schwab stock traded up $0.02 during trading hours on Wednesday, reaching $56.01. The companys stock had a trading volume of 2,039,464 shares, compared to its average volume of 15,339,371. The Charles Schwab Co. has a one year low of $45.00 and a one year high of $86.63. The company has a market capitalization of $99.23 billion, a P/E ratio of 18.66, a P/E/G ratio of 2.50 and a beta of 0.94. The stocks fifty day simple moving average is $53.87 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $56.40. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.87, a quick ratio of 0.66 and a current ratio of 0.66. Charles Schwab Announces Dividend Charles Schwab ( NYSE:SCHW Get Free Report ) last released its quarterly earnings data on Monday, October 16th. The financial services provider reported $0.77 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates 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 analyst estimates of $4.62 billion. During the same period last year, the firm earned $1.10 earnings per share. The businesss quarterly revenue was down 16.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, research analysts forecast that The Charles Schwab Co. will post 3.16 earnings per share for the current year. The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 24th. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be issued a $0.25 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 9th. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.79%. Charles Schwabs dividend payout ratio is currently 33.33%. Analysts Set New Price Targets SCHW has been the subject of several recent research reports. JPMorgan Chase & Co. decreased their price target on shares of Charles Schwab from $92.00 to $85.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, October 17th. Barclays upped their price target on shares of Charles Schwab from $55.00 to $57.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 17th. Jefferies Financial Group reduced their price objective on shares of Charles Schwab from $66.00 to $62.00 in a research note on Tuesday, October 10th. Morgan Stanley reduced their price objective on shares of Charles Schwab from $71.00 to $64.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 11th. Finally, UBS Group reduced their price objective on shares of Charles Schwab from $80.00 to $72.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, October 16th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, two have given a hold rating and eleven have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $69.91. Get Our Latest Analysis on SCHW Insider Activity In related news, General Counsel Peter J. Morgan III sold 8,000 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $59.61, for a total transaction of $476,880.00. Following the completion of the sale, the general counsel now owns 8,014 shares in the company, valued at $477,714.54. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. In related news, General Counsel Peter J. Morgan III sold 8,000 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $59.61, for a total transaction of $476,880.00. Following the completion of the sale, the general counsel now owns 8,014 shares in the company, valued at $477,714.54. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Also, 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 sale, the chief financial officer now owns 44,725 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $2,563,189.75. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 21,824 shares of company stock worth $1,214,937 over the last quarter. Insiders own 6.60% of the companys stock. Charles Schwab Company Profile (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. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding SCHW? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for The Charles Schwab Co. (NYSE:SCHW Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Charles Schwab Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Charles Schwab and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. North Korea launched a space rocket carrying a military spy satellite on Tuesday night from Cholsan in North Pyongan Province. The North on Wednesday morning claimed that it successfully put the satellite into orbit and vowed to launch several more in a "short span of time." It was the North's third attempt after failures in May and August. The rocket carrying the satellite into space is based on the same technology as an intercontinental ballistic missile, making the launch a grave violation of UN sanctions. The Joint Chiefs of Staff here said the rocket spotted passing through the airspace above Baeknyeong and Ieo islands in the West Sea. A space rocket carrying a satellite is being fired in Cholsan, North Pyongan Province on Tuesday, in this photo released by the [North] Korean Central News Agency on Wednesday. President Yoon Suk-yeol chaired an emergency meeting on Zoom from the U.K., where he is on a state visit. In Japan, evacuation orders were issued for the southern prefecture of Okinawa for fear that it could be at risk from debris. The North earlier informed Japan of the rocket's possible trajectory over waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean near the Philippines, a move interpreted as emphasizing that it was a normal satellite launch and not a direct military provocation. A military officer here said an 80-ton liquid fuel engine base was sent from Russia to North Korea before their leaders' summit in Siberia on Sept.13, and Russian missile experts went to North Korea afterwards. President Yoon Suk-yeol (right) chairs an emergency Zoom meeting from a hotel in London on Tuesday. /Yonhap South Korea believes that a reconnaissance satellite would improve the accuracy of any North Korean missile attack and poses a significant threat. The government therefore feels that the launch would finally offer a legitimate reason to scrap a moribund inter-Korean military agreement from 2018. The South Korean military has been unable to conduct major drills because of the buffer zones between the two countries that the deal established. North Korea has violated the deal hundreds of times, but South Korea has broadly stuck to its obligations and only recently decided to suspend some provisions such as the no-fly zone. The government last week said that it will suspend them to alleviate security concerns in case North Korea plans a Hamas-style guerilla invasion. It added that the entire deal will be formally scrapped if there is another provocation by North Korea such as the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile or space rocket. Element Capital Management LLC raised its stake in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (NYSE:ADM Free Report) by 5.7% in the second quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The fund owned 71,538 shares of the companys stock after purchasing an additional 3,837 shares during the period. Element Capital Management LLCs holdings in Archer-Daniels-Midland were worth $5,405,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. A number of other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in ADM. Cetera Investment Advisers increased its position in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland by 71.9% during the first quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 18,699 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,688,000 after acquiring an additional 7,821 shares during the last quarter. Sequoia Financial Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland in the first quarter valued at approximately $277,000. Brighton Jones LLC acquired a new position in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland in the first quarter valued at approximately $226,000. Candriam Luxembourg S.C.A. grew its holdings in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland by 22.0% in the first quarter. Candriam Luxembourg S.C.A. now owns 31,004 shares of the companys stock valued at $2,798,000 after purchasing an additional 5,586 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Baird Financial Group Inc. grew its holdings in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland by 2.1% in the first quarter. Baird Financial Group Inc. now owns 459,907 shares of the companys stock valued at $41,512,000 after purchasing an additional 9,327 shares in the last quarter. 77.73% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Archer-Daniels-Midland alerts: Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of brokerages recently weighed in on ADM. Stephens dropped their price objective on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland from $80.00 to $75.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating for the company. Argus lifted their price objective on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland from $91.00 to $95.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Tuesday, August 1st. Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland from $87.00 to $76.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a report on Monday, October 30th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price target on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland from $77.00 to $75.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Archer-Daniels-Midland currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $92.90. Archer-Daniels-Midland Stock Up 0.1 % Shares of NYSE:ADM traded up $0.04 during trading on Wednesday, hitting $73.77. 473,984 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 2,932,766. The stock has a market capitalization of $39.35 billion, a P/E ratio of 10.27, a PEG ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 0.83. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.33, a current ratio of 1.69 and a quick ratio of 1.07. Archer-Daniels-Midland Company has a 12-month low of $69.31 and a 12-month high of $98.12. The firms 50 day moving average price is $74.25 and its 200-day moving average price is $76.76. Archer-Daniels-Midland (NYSE:ADM Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 24th. The company reported $1.63 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.53 by $0.10. The business had revenue of $21.70 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $23.69 billion. Archer-Daniels-Midland had a net margin of 4.05% and a return on equity of 16.63%. The companys revenue was down 12.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm earned $1.86 EPS. On average, research analysts predict that Archer-Daniels-Midland Company will post 7.26 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Archer-Daniels-Midland Announces Dividend The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, December 6th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be given a dividend of $0.45 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 14th. This represents a $1.80 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.44%. Archer-Daniels-Midlands dividend payout ratio is presently 25.07%. About Archer-Daniels-Midland (Free Report) Archer-Daniels-Midland Company procures, transports, stores, processes, and merchandises agricultural commodities, products, and ingredients in the United States, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, and internationally. The company operates in three segments: Ag Services and Oilseeds, Carbohydrate Solutions, and Nutrition. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding ADM? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (NYSE:ADM Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Archer-Daniels-Midland Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Archer-Daniels-Midland and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Employees Retirement System of Texas lowered its stake in Autoliv, Inc. (NYSE:ALV Free Report) by 18.6% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 37,588 shares of the auto parts companys stock after selling 8,570 shares during the period. Employees Retirement System of Texas holdings in Autoliv were worth $3,196,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Several other large investors have also modified their holdings of the stock. Park Place Capital Corp purchased a new position in Autoliv during the 2nd quarter worth $25,000. Grey Fox Wealth Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of Autoliv during the first quarter worth about $28,000. New York State Common Retirement Fund acquired a new position in shares of Autoliv during the first quarter worth about $49,000. CWM LLC raised its holdings in Autoliv by 43.5% during the second quarter. CWM LLC now owns 683 shares of the auto parts companys stock worth $58,000 after purchasing an additional 207 shares in the last quarter. Finally, DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral Genossenschafts Bank Frankfurt am Main acquired a new stake in Autoliv in the second quarter valued at about $72,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 56.70% of the companys stock. Get Autoliv alerts: Wall Street Analyst Weigh In Several equities analysts have issued reports on the company. The Goldman Sachs Group boosted their target price on Autoliv from $126.00 to $142.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Thursday, October 26th. StockNews.com started coverage on Autoliv in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating for the company. Citigroup reduced their target price on Autoliv from $99.00 to $95.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, October 11th. Danske cut shares of Autoliv from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research note on Friday, October 6th. Finally, Barclays raised their price objective on shares of Autoliv from $97.00 to $100.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research note on Monday, October 23rd. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have issued a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Autoliv has an average rating of Hold and an average price target of $107.00. Autoliv Price Performance Shares of Autoliv stock traded up $0.21 on Wednesday, hitting $101.78. The companys stock had a trading volume of 48,002 shares, compared to its average volume of 999,628. The company has a market capitalization of $8.56 billion, a P/E ratio of 20.99, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.48 and a beta of 1.73. Autoliv, Inc. has a 52-week low of $73.65 and a 52-week high of $103.99. The firm has a fifty day moving average price of $95.95 and a 200-day moving average price of $92.82. The company has a quick ratio of 0.75, a current ratio of 1.01 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.51. Autoliv (NYSE:ALV Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Friday, October 20th. The auto parts company reported $1.66 earnings per share for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $1.79 by ($0.13). Autoliv had a return on equity of 20.97% and a net margin of 4.15%. The company had revenue of $2.60 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $2.61 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the business posted $1.23 EPS. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 12.8% on a year-over-year basis. On average, equities research analysts expect that Autoliv, Inc. will post 7.04 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Autoliv Increases Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, December 13th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, November 28th will be issued a $0.68 dividend. This represents a $2.72 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.67%. This is a positive change from Autolivs previous quarterly dividend of $0.66. The ex-dividend date is Monday, November 27th. Autolivs dividend payout ratio is 54.55%. About Autoliv (Free Report) Autoliv, Inc, through its subsidiaries, develops, manufactures, and supplies passive safety systems to the automotive industry in Europe, the Americas, China, Japan, and rest of Asia. It offers passive safety systems, including modules and components for frontal-impact airbag protection systems, side-impact airbag protection systems, seatbelts, steering wheels, and inflator technologies. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Autoliv Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Autoliv and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Shares of Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. (NYSE:BAM Get Free Report) (TSE:BAM.A) have earned a consensus recommendation of Moderate Buy from the eleven analysts that are presently covering the company, MarketBeat reports. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have given a hold rating, six have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating on the company. The average 1 year price target among brokers that have updated their coverage on the stock in the last year is $37.32. BAM has been the subject of a number of analyst reports. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods decreased their price objective on shares of Brookfield Asset Management from $33.00 to $31.00 and set an underperform rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 11th. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft reduced their target price on shares of Brookfield Asset Management from $35.00 to $34.00 and set a hold rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, October 11th. BMO Capital Markets lifted their target price on shares of Brookfield Asset Management from $33.00 to $34.00 and gave the stock a market perform rating in a report on Thursday, August 10th. Bank of America reduced their target price on shares of Brookfield Asset Management from $42.00 to $37.00 in a report on Friday, October 6th. Finally, Scotiabank reduced their target price on shares of Brookfield Asset Management from $37.50 to $36.50 and set an outperform rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, November 7th. Get Brookfield Asset Management alerts: Check Out Our Latest Research Report on BAM Brookfield Asset Management Trading Down 0.9 % Shares of BAM stock opened at $33.36 on Wednesday. The firms fifty day moving average price is $32.31 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $32.66. Brookfield Asset Management has a 1 year low of $26.76 and a 1 year high of $36.50. The firm has a market capitalization of $13.77 billion and a P/E ratio of 27.57. Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE:BAM Get Free Report) (TSE:BAM.A) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Monday, November 6th. The financial services provider reported $0.35 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $0.31 by $0.04. Brookfield Asset Management had a net margin of 51.79% and a return on equity of 91.07%. The company had revenue of $893.00 million during the quarter. As a group, equities research analysts forecast that Brookfield Asset Management will post 1.36 EPS for the current fiscal year. Brookfield Asset Management Dividend Announcement The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 29th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 30th will be given a $0.32 dividend. This represents a $1.28 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 3.84%. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, November 29th. Brookfield Asset Managements payout ratio is presently 105.79%. Hedge Funds Weigh In On Brookfield Asset Management Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in BAM. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC increased its position in Brookfield Asset Management by 30,651.5% during the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 31,097,454 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $891,564,000 after purchasing an additional 30,996,329 shares in the last quarter. Bank of Montreal Can acquired a new position in Brookfield Asset Management during the 2nd quarter worth approximately $391,679,000. Capital International Investors increased its position in Brookfield Asset Management by 39.8% during the 2nd quarter. Capital International Investors now owns 25,723,697 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $839,364,000 after purchasing an additional 7,329,168 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank acquired a new position in Brookfield Asset Management during the 4th quarter worth approximately $152,180,000. Finally, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. increased its position in Brookfield Asset Management by 166.2% during the 1st quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now owns 7,051,145 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $398,883,000 after purchasing an additional 4,402,115 shares in the last quarter. 61.92% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Brookfield Asset Management Company Profile (Get Free Report Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. provides alternative asset management services. Its renewable power and transition business includes the ownership, operation, and development of hydroelectric, wind, solar, and energy transition power generating assets. The company's infrastructure business engages in the ownership, operation, and development of utilities, transport, midstream, data and sustainable resource assets. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Brookfield Asset Management Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Brookfield Asset Management and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. SentinelOne, Inc. (NYSE:S Get Free Report) has earned an average rating of Hold from the twenty-four analysts that are currently covering the firm, MarketBeat.com reports. Sixteen investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold recommendation, seven have issued a buy recommendation and one has given a strong buy recommendation to the company. The average 12-month price objective among analysts that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $20.21. A number of research firms have commented on S. Piper Sandler increased their price objective on shares of SentinelOne from $15.00 to $17.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Friday, September 1st. Needham & Company LLC increased their price objective on shares of SentinelOne from $19.00 to $23.00 in a research note on Friday, September 1st. Jefferies Financial Group increased their price objective on shares of SentinelOne from $15.50 to $17.00 and gave the company a hold rating in a research note on Thursday, August 24th. Wedbush reiterated an outperform rating and set a $22.00 price objective on shares of SentinelOne in a research note on Friday, September 1st. Finally, DA Davidson raised their price target on shares of SentinelOne from $13.50 to $16.50 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research report on Friday, September 1st. Get SentinelOne alerts: Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on SentinelOne SentinelOne Stock Down 0.5 % SentinelOne stock opened at $17.33 on Wednesday. SentinelOne has a 52-week low of $12.43 and a 52-week high of $21.95. The firm has a fifty day moving average of $16.36 and a 200-day moving average of $16.28. The firm has a market capitalization of $5.12 billion, a P/E ratio of -12.74 and a beta of 0.28. SentinelOne (NYSE:S Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, August 31st. The company reported ($0.08) earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of ($0.14) by $0.06. The business had revenue of $149.42 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $140.98 million. SentinelOne had a negative net margin of 74.19% and a negative return on equity of 21.47%. The businesss revenue was up 45.8% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business earned ($0.32) EPS. On average, research analysts expect that SentinelOne will post -1.14 EPS for the current fiscal year. Insider Activity at SentinelOne In other SentinelOne news, CFO David J. Bernhardt sold 1,538 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $16.61, for a total transaction of $25,546.18. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now owns 415,045 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $6,893,897.45. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. In other SentinelOne news, CAO Robin Tomasello sold 3,735 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, September 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $17.57, for a total transaction of $65,623.95. Following the transaction, the chief accounting officer now owns 155,070 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $2,724,579.90. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Also, CFO David J. Bernhardt sold 1,538 shares of the firms stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 18th. The shares were sold at an average price of $16.61, for a total transaction of $25,546.18. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer now directly owns 415,045 shares in the company, valued at approximately $6,893,897.45. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 270,131 shares of company stock worth $4,444,214 in the last ninety days. 5.93% of the stock is owned by insiders. Hedge Funds Weigh In On SentinelOne Several hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the business. Comerica Bank acquired a new position in shares of SentinelOne in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $37,000. Jacobs Levy Equity Management Inc. acquired a new position in shares of SentinelOne in the 3rd quarter worth approximately $995,000. Tudor Investment Corp Et Al grew its stake in shares of SentinelOne by 183.7% in the 3rd quarter. Tudor Investment Corp Et Al now owns 726,105 shares of the companys stock worth $12,242,000 after purchasing an additional 470,139 shares during the last quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio increased its position in shares of SentinelOne by 10.1% in the third quarter. Public Employees Retirement System of Ohio now owns 93,729 shares of the companys stock worth $1,580,000 after acquiring an additional 8,568 shares in the last quarter. Finally, The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company raised its holdings in shares of SentinelOne by 30.7% during the third quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 45,238 shares of the companys stock valued at $763,000 after acquiring an additional 10,637 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 71.33% of the companys stock. SentinelOne Company Profile (Get Free Report SentinelOne, Inc operates as a cybersecurity provider in the United States and internationally. Its Singularity Extended Detection and Response Platform delivers an artificial intelligence-powered autonomous threat prevention, detection, and response capabilities across an organization's endpoints; and cloud workloads, which enables seamless and automatic protection against a spectrum of cyber threats. Recommended Stories Receive News & Ratings for SentinelOne Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for SentinelOne and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CF Get Free Report) has been given a consensus recommendation of Hold by the fourteen research firms that are covering the firm, MarketBeat reports. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have given a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 12-month target price among brokerages that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $92.44. Several research firms have recently issued reports on CF. Stifel Nicolaus lifted their target price on shares of CF Industries from $88.00 to $89.00 and gave the company a hold rating in a report on Wednesday, October 4th. Mizuho boosted their price objective on shares of CF Industries from $83.00 to $86.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a report on Friday, August 4th. Piper Sandler boosted their price objective on shares of CF Industries from $80.00 to $92.00 in a report on Monday, August 7th. Barclays lowered shares of CF Industries from an equal weight rating to an underweight rating and set a $85.00 price objective for the company. in a report on Tuesday, November 14th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price objective on shares of CF Industries from $70.00 to $80.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a report on Monday, August 7th. Get CF Industries alerts: View Our Latest Research Report on CF Institutional Investors Weigh In On CF Industries CF Industries Price Performance Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Comerica Bank increased its stake in CF Industries by 133.8% in the 3rd quarter. Comerica Bank now owns 54,551 shares of the basic materials companys stock worth $4,677,000 after buying an additional 31,215 shares in the last quarter. Creative Planning grew its position in shares of CF Industries by 39.9% during the third quarter. Creative Planning now owns 18,910 shares of the basic materials companys stock valued at $1,621,000 after purchasing an additional 5,398 shares in the last quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV lifted its holdings in shares of CF Industries by 4.2% in the 3rd quarter. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV now owns 13,465 shares of the basic materials companys stock valued at $1,154,000 after acquiring an additional 542 shares during the last quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company lifted its holdings in shares of CF Industries by 87.3% in the 3rd quarter. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company now owns 454,631 shares of the basic materials companys stock valued at $38,980,000 after acquiring an additional 211,913 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada lifted its holdings in shares of CF Industries by 9.8% in the 3rd quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 590,323 shares of the basic materials companys stock valued at $50,614,000 after acquiring an additional 52,685 shares during the last quarter. 90.63% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. CF stock opened at $76.49 on Wednesday. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $82.01 and a 200-day moving average price of $76.25. CF Industries has a 52-week low of $60.08 and a 52-week high of $109.79. The firm has a market capitalization of $14.61 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 7.12, a PEG ratio of 1.66 and a beta of 0.98. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.36, a quick ratio of 4.18 and a current ratio of 4.52. CF Industries (NYSE:CF Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The basic materials company reported $0.85 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $1.02 by ($0.17). CF Industries had a net margin of 27.53% and a return on equity of 25.77%. The business had revenue of $1.27 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $1.29 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $2.55 earnings per share. CF Industriess revenue for the quarter was down 45.2% on a year-over-year basis. Equities research analysts forecast that CF Industries will post 8.06 EPS for the current fiscal year. CF Industries Announces Dividend The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be paid a $0.40 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 14th. This represents a $1.60 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.09%. CF Industriess dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 14.88%. CF Industries Company Profile (Get Free Report CF Industries Holdings, Inc manufactures and sells hydrogen and nitrogen products for energy, fertilizer, emissions abatement, and other industrial activities worldwide. Its principal products include anhydrous ammonia, granular urea, urea ammonium nitrate, and ammonium nitrate products. The company also offers diesel exhaust fluid, urea liquor, nitric acid, and aqua ammonia products; and compound fertilizer products with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. See Also Receive News & Ratings for CF Industries Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for CF Industries and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Algebris UK Ltd raised its stake in shares of Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:CFG Free Report) by 1.4% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 791,935 shares of the banks stock after buying an additional 10,857 shares during the quarter. Citizens Financial Group comprises about 10.1% of Algebris UK Ltds investment portfolio, making the stock its 3rd biggest position. Algebris UK Ltd owned about 0.17% of Citizens Financial Group worth $20,553,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC. Several other hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Federated Hermes Inc. boosted its position in shares of Citizens Financial Group by 21.6% in the first quarter. Federated Hermes Inc. now owns 137,691 shares of the banks stock worth $4,182,000 after acquiring an additional 24,503 shares during the last quarter. Nisa Investment Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Citizens Financial Group by 7.6% during the 1st quarter. Nisa Investment Advisors LLC now owns 79,120 shares of the banks stock valued at $2,403,000 after buying an additional 5,619 shares during the period. BI Asset Management Fondsmaeglerselskab A S increased its holdings in shares of Citizens Financial Group by 66.7% during the 1st quarter. BI Asset Management Fondsmaeglerselskab A S now owns 34,864 shares of the banks stock worth $1,059,000 after buying an additional 13,944 shares during the last quarter. Vinva Investment Management Ltd purchased a new position in shares of Citizens Financial Group in the 1st quarter worth $508,000. Finally, First Hawaiian Bank boosted its holdings in Citizens Financial Group by 4.4% in the second quarter. First Hawaiian Bank now owns 30,903 shares of the banks stock valued at $806,000 after acquiring an additional 1,293 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 92.67% of the companys stock. Get Citizens Financial Group alerts: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades CFG has been the subject of several research analyst reports. Stephens restated an overweight rating and set a $36.00 price target on shares of Citizens Financial Group in a research note on Friday, September 8th. Citigroup restated a neutral rating and issued a $33.00 price target on shares of Citizens Financial Group in a report on Tuesday, September 19th. Wolfe Research upgraded shares of Citizens Financial Group from an underperform rating to a peer perform rating in a research note on Monday, October 23rd. Morgan Stanley dropped their price objective on shares of Citizens Financial Group from $32.00 to $31.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a research report on Thursday, October 19th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada reduced their target price on shares of Citizens Financial Group from $37.00 to $33.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, September 12th. Nine investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average target price of $34.07. Citizens Financial Group Stock Performance CFG traded up $0.02 during trading on Wednesday, reaching $26.90. 903,832 shares of the company were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 6,584,310. The company has a current ratio of 0.92, a quick ratio of 0.92 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.83. The stock has a market cap of $12.54 billion, a P/E ratio of 6.69 and a beta of 1.38. Citizens Financial Group, Inc. has a 52 week low of $22.77 and a 52 week high of $44.82. The firm has a 50 day moving average of $25.88 and a 200 day moving average of $27.24. Citizens Financial Group (NYSE:CFG Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Wednesday, October 18th. The bank reported $0.85 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $0.91 by ($0.06). The firm had revenue of $3.09 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.04 billion. Citizens Financial Group had a net margin of 17.61% and a return on equity of 9.60%. During the same period in the previous year, the firm earned $1.30 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts forecast that Citizens Financial Group, Inc. will post 3.64 EPS for the current fiscal year. Citizens Financial Group Dividend Announcement The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 15th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, November 1st were paid a dividend of $0.42 per share. This represents a $1.68 annualized dividend and a yield of 6.25%. The ex-dividend date was Tuesday, October 31st. Citizens Financial Groups payout ratio is currently 41.79%. Citizens Financial Group Company Profile (Free Report) Citizens Financial Group, Inc operates as the bank holding company for Citizens Bank, National Association that provides retail and commercial banking products and services to individuals, small businesses, middle-market companies, corporations, and institutions in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Consumer Banking and Commercial Banking. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CFG? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Citizens Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE:CFG Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Citizens Financial Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Citizens Financial Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Shares of Crescent Point Energy Corp. (NYSE:CPG Get Free Report) (TSE:CPG) gapped down before the market opened on Wednesday . The stock had previously closed at $7.04, but opened at $6.81. Crescent Point Energy shares last traded at $6.91, with a volume of 479,846 shares traded. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of analysts have commented on CPG shares. Royal Bank of Canada restated an outperform rating and set a $13.00 price target on shares of Crescent Point Energy in a research report on Tuesday. StockNews.com started coverage on shares of Crescent Point Energy in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. TD Securities downgraded shares of Crescent Point Energy from an action list buy rating to a buy rating and set a $13.50 price target on the stock. in a research report on Tuesday, September 12th. Finally, CIBC dropped their price target on shares of Crescent Point Energy from $15.00 to $14.75 and set an outperformer rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, August 28th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold rating and four have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $14.21. Get Crescent Point Energy alerts: Check Out Our Latest Stock Analysis on CPG Crescent Point Energy Price Performance Crescent Point Energy Cuts Dividend The companys 50 day moving average price is $7.89 and its 200-day moving average price is $7.54. The company has a market cap of $3.96 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of -5.70 and a beta of 2.18. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.45, a quick ratio of 1.29 and a current ratio of 1.29. The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, January 2nd. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 15th will be paid a $0.072 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, December 14th. This represents a $0.29 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 4.17%. Crescent Point Energys dividend payout ratio is currently -23.14%. Hedge Funds Weigh In On Crescent Point Energy Several hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in CPG. Ronald Blue Trust Inc. grew its position in Crescent Point Energy by 33.6% during the third quarter. Ronald Blue Trust Inc. now owns 6,863 shares of the oil and gas producers stock valued at $57,000 after purchasing an additional 1,727 shares in the last quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. acquired a new stake in Crescent Point Energy in the first quarter valued at approximately $50,000. Lazard Asset Management LLC acquired a new stake in Crescent Point Energy in the first quarter valued at approximately $62,000. Optiver Holding B.V. lifted its stake in Crescent Point Energy by 1,516.7% in the second quarter. Optiver Holding B.V. now owns 9,700 shares of the oil and gas producers stock valued at $65,000 after acquiring an additional 9,100 shares during the last quarter. Finally, AXQ Capital LP acquired a new stake in Crescent Point Energy in the third quarter valued at approximately $89,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 35.46% of the companys stock. Crescent Point Energy Company Profile (Get Free Report) Crescent Point Energy Corp. explores, develops, and produces light and medium crude oil, natural gas liquids, and natural gas reserves in Western Canada and the United States. It's crude oil and natural gas properties, and related assets are located in the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba; and the states of North Dakota and Montana. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Crescent Point Energy Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Crescent Point Energy and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co NY cut its position in Dominion Energy, Inc. (NYSE:D Free Report) by 2.3% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 36,429 shares of the utilities providers stock after selling 841 shares during the quarter. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co NYs holdings in Dominion Energy were worth $1,887,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Several other institutional investors and hedge funds have also made changes to their positions in the company. ProShare Advisors LLC increased its stake in Dominion Energy by 2.5% during the 2nd quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC now owns 128,389 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $6,649,000 after buying an additional 3,113 shares during the period. Providence Capital Advisors LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Dominion Energy by 1.5% in the second quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC now owns 36,544 shares of the utilities providers stock worth $1,893,000 after buying an additional 552 shares during the period. Personal CFO Solutions LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Dominion Energy during the 2nd quarter valued at $259,000. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC boosted its position in Dominion Energy by 2.5% during the second quarter. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC now owns 477,105 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $24,709,000 after purchasing an additional 11,834 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Robinson Value Management Ltd. lifted its holdings in shares of Dominion Energy by 1.7% during the 2nd quarter. Robinson Value Management Ltd. now owns 59,555 shares of the utilities providers stock valued at $3,084,000 after buying an additional 1,021 shares during the last quarter. 70.66% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Dominion Energy alerts: Analyst Ratings Changes D has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. Mizuho decreased their target price on Dominion Energy from $58.00 to $46.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, September 6th. Morgan Stanley cut their price objective on shares of Dominion Energy from $55.00 to $50.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, August 23rd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their price objective on shares of Dominion Energy from $55.00 to $49.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research report on Tuesday, October 17th. StockNews.com raised shares of Dominion Energy from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research report on Friday, November 10th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada decreased their price objective on shares of Dominion Energy from $71.00 to $53.00 and set a sector perform rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, September 13th. Ten equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Dominion Energy currently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $50.17. Dominion Energy Stock Up 0.0 % Dominion Energy stock opened at $46.42 on Wednesday. The company has a market cap of $38.84 billion, a P/E ratio of 23.68, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 3.96 and a beta of 0.52. Dominion Energy, Inc. has a 1-year low of $39.18 and a 1-year high of $63.94. The company has a fifty day simple moving average of $43.94 and a 200 day simple moving average of $48.69. The company has a current ratio of 1.14, a quick ratio of 1.07 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.26. Dominion Energy (NYSE:D Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Friday, November 3rd. The utilities provider reported $0.77 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $0.78 by ($0.01). The business had revenue of $3.81 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.38 billion. Dominion Energy had a net margin of 9.66% and a return on equity of 10.94%. The firms revenue for the quarter was down 3.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same period last year, the business posted $1.11 EPS. Research analysts anticipate that Dominion Energy, Inc. will post 2.93 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Dominion Energy Dividend Announcement The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, December 20th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 1st will be given a $0.6675 dividend. This represents a $2.67 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 5.75%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 30th. Dominion Energys dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 136.23%. Dominion Energy Company Profile (Free Report) Dominion Energy, Inc produces and distributes energy in the United States. It operates through four segments: Dominion Energy Virginia, Gas Distribution, Dominion Energy South Carolina, and Contracted Assets. The Dominion Energy Virginia segment generates, transmits, and distributes regulated electricity to approximately 2.7 million residential, commercial, industrial, and governmental customers in Virginia and North Carolina. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding D? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Dominion Energy, Inc. (NYSE:D Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Dominion Energy Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Dominion Energy and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. E Fund Management Co. Ltd. lowered its position in shares of Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT Free Report) by 9.8% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 3,826 shares of the healthcare product makers stock after selling 414 shares during the quarter. E Fund Management Co. Ltd.s holdings in Abbott Laboratories were worth $417,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Other hedge funds have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado increased its stake in shares of Abbott Laboratories by 9.8% during the 2nd quarter. Public Employees Retirement Association of Colorado now owns 1,415,759 shares of the healthcare product makers stock worth $154,346,000 after purchasing an additional 126,547 shares during the last quarter. Core Alternative Capital boosted its position in shares of Abbott Laboratories by 27.0% during the 2nd quarter. Core Alternative Capital now owns 1,290 shares of the healthcare product makers stock worth $141,000 after acquiring an additional 274 shares in the last quarter. Fort Sheridan Advisors LLC raised its holdings in shares of Abbott Laboratories by 315.5% during the 1st quarter. Fort Sheridan Advisors LLC now owns 12,182 shares of the healthcare product makers stock worth $1,234,000 after buying an additional 9,250 shares in the last quarter. Freestone Capital Holdings LLC lifted its stake in Abbott Laboratories by 12.8% in the 1st quarter. Freestone Capital Holdings LLC now owns 99,836 shares of the healthcare product makers stock valued at $10,109,000 after purchasing an additional 11,303 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Harbour Investment Management LLC grew its position in Abbott Laboratories by 0.5% during the 1st quarter. Harbour Investment Management LLC now owns 26,750 shares of the healthcare product makers stock worth $2,709,000 after acquiring an additional 138 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 73.70% of the companys stock. Get Abbott Laboratories alerts: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several research analysts have commented on the company. Wells Fargo & Company cut their target price on Abbott Laboratories from $136.00 to $116.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, October 19th. StockNews.com started coverage on Abbott Laboratories in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. They set a buy rating on the stock. Jefferies Financial Group cut their price target on shares of Abbott Laboratories from $120.00 to $112.00 in a report on Monday, October 2nd. TheStreet lowered Abbott Laboratories from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a report on Monday, October 16th. Finally, Raymond James reduced their target price on shares of Abbott Laboratories from $123.00 to $110.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, October 19th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and ten have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat, the company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $117.47. Insider Activity In related news, Director Daniel J. Starks sold 50,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, October 26th. The stock was sold at an average price of $94.05, for a total value of $4,702,500.00. Following the completion of the sale, the director now owns 6,725,316 shares in the company, valued at approximately $632,515,969.80. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this link. Corporate insiders own 1.10% of the companys stock. Abbott Laboratories Price Performance Shares of ABT stock traded up $0.87 during trading on Wednesday, hitting $102.78. The company had a trading volume of 1,130,381 shares, compared to its average volume of 5,146,543. Abbott Laboratories has a 52 week low of $89.67 and a 52 week high of $115.83. The stock has a market capitalization of $178.43 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 34.82, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.53 and a beta of 0.69. The company has a quick ratio of 1.23, a current ratio of 1.74 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.38. The stocks 50-day moving average is $96.44 and its two-hundred day moving average is $102.80. Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 18th. The healthcare product maker reported $1.14 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.10 by $0.04. Abbott Laboratories had a net margin of 12.92% and a return on equity of 20.15%. The firm had revenue of $10.14 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $9.82 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $1.15 EPS. The businesss revenue for the quarter was down 2.6% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts predict that Abbott Laboratories will post 4.44 EPS for the current fiscal year. Abbott Laboratories Announces Dividend The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Wednesday, November 15th. Shareholders of record on Friday, October 13th were paid a dividend of $0.51 per share. This represents a $2.04 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.98%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, October 12th. Abbott Laboratoriess dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 69.39%. Abbott Laboratories Company Profile (Free Report) Abbott Laboratories, together with its subsidiaries, discovers, develops, manufactures, and sells health care products worldwide. It operates in four segments: Established Pharmaceutical Products, Diagnostic Products, Nutritional Products, and Medical Devices. The Established Pharmaceutical Products segment provides generic pharmaceuticals for the treatment of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency, irritable bowel syndrome or biliary spasm, intrahepatic cholestasis or depressive symptoms, gynecological disorder, hormone replacement therapy, dyslipidemia, hypertension, hypothyroidism, Meniere's disease and vestibular vertigo, pain, fever, inflammation, and migraine, as well as provides anti-infective clarithromycin, influenza vaccine, and products to regulate physiological rhythm of the colon. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding ABT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Abbott Laboratories Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Abbott Laboratories and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Geode Capital Management LLC lifted its holdings in shares of Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY Free Report) by 2.3% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 15,205,501 shares of the companys stock after acquiring an additional 338,077 shares during the quarter. Eli Lilly and Company comprises approximately 0.8% of Geode Capital Management LLCs holdings, making the stock its 16th biggest holding. Geode Capital Management LLCs holdings in Eli Lilly and Company were worth $7,111,568,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. Wellington Management Group LLP lifted its holdings in Eli Lilly and Company by 1.6% in 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 holdings in Eli Lilly and Company by 533,336.4% in 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. Morgan Stanley lifted its holdings in Eli Lilly and Company by 44.1% in 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. Norges Bank acquired a new position in Eli Lilly and Company in the 4th quarter worth $3,416,206,000. Finally, Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC lifted its holdings in Eli Lilly and Company by 102,752.2% in the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 5,446,026 shares of the companys stock worth $1,992,374,000 after buying an additional 5,440,731 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.38% of the companys stock. Get Eli Lilly and Company alerts: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades LLY has been the topic of a number of recent analyst reports. Truist Financial boosted their price objective on shares of Eli Lilly and Company from $525.00 to $600.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. 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. Jefferies Financial Group raised shares of Eli Lilly and Company from a hold rating to a buy rating and boosted their target price for the stock from $408.00 to $615.00 in a research report on Tuesday, August 8th. UBS Group reissued a buy rating and issued a $710.00 target price (up previously from $612.00) on shares of Eli Lilly and Company in a research report on Friday, October 20th. Finally, Argus boosted their target price on shares of Eli Lilly and Company from $470.00 to $620.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Tuesday, September 5th. One 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. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $557.00. Insiders Place Their Bets In other Eli Lilly and Company news, major shareholder Lilly Endowment Inc sold 37,660 shares of the companys 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 completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 100,275,279 shares in the company, valued at approximately $54,825,684,274,988.30. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In other Eli Lilly and Company news, major shareholder Lilly Endowment Inc sold 37,660 shares of the companys 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 completion of the transaction, the insider now owns 100,275,279 shares in the company, valued at approximately $54,825,684,274,988.30. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, CAO Donald A. Zakrowski sold 670 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $571.10, for a total transaction of $382,637.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief accounting officer now directly owns 4,708 shares of the companys stock, valued at $2,688,738.80. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last 90 days, insiders sold 534,231 shares of company stock worth $20,880,573,165. Insiders own 0.13% of the companys stock. Eli Lilly and Company Stock Performance NYSE LLY traded down $2.82 on Wednesday, hitting $589.78. The stock had a trading volume of 760,672 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,087,413. Eli Lilly and Company has a one year low of $309.20 and a one year high of $629.97. The company has a quick ratio of 0.82, a current ratio of 1.05 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.59. The stock has a market cap of $559.88 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 107.36, a P/E/G ratio of 3.63 and a beta of 0.33. The companys 50-day moving average is $577.88 and its two-hundred day moving average is $512.30. Eli Lilly and Company Announces Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 8th. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be given a $1.13 dividend. This represents a $4.52 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.77%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 14th. Eli Lilly and Companys dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 81.88%. About Eli Lilly and Company (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. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding LLY? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Eli Lilly and Company Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Eli Lilly and Company and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. As extreme weather events linked to the climate crisis continue, 2023 will most likely be the hottest year since at least 1850, when reliable temperature records began to be kept. 1850 is the year thats usually taken as a reference to explain the origins of the problem of global warming, which is fundamentally linked to fossil fuels the main cause of greenhouse emissions. These gases accumulate for decades or centuries in the atmosphere, causing global warming. Its only after the Industrial Revolution that humans began to use coal, oil and gas on a large scale, subsequently triggering the climate crisis. But not all of humanity is equally responsible for this phenomenon. Contributions to climate change are unequal, warns a report from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which was published this past Monday, November 20. A minority of countries have contributed to the majority of emissions, the study emphasizes. The authors when speaking about historical responsibilities point directly to the richest and most developed nations. Together, the United States of America and the [nations that make up the] European Union contributed almost a third of the total accumulated emissions [of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas] from 1850 to 2021. More precisely, both powers racked up 32% of the CO that was expelled during this 171-year-long period (19% overall coming from the U.S. and 13% overall from the 27 EU members). However, the third main player in this story is China, which has already generated another 13% of the worlds carbon dioxide since 1850. The data comes from the UNEPs Emissions Gap Report, which warns that greenhouse gases continue to increase: in 2022, they grew by another 1.2%. The authors highlight that progress has been made since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, although the climate plans that the worlds nations have in place will still lead to a warming of between 2.5 and 2.9 degrees Celsius, far below above the safety levels established in the pact eight years ago. This is the 14th edition of the report that year after year has provided an increasingly clear picture of past and present emissions, explains Joeri Rogelj, one of its main authors. Hes a professor of Climate Science and Politics at Imperial College London. Not only in terms of how many emissions are being produced globally, but also by whom and what their effect on global warming has been, he adds. But this year is the first time the study delves into countries historical contributions to global warming since 1850. This information helps us better understand the current situation, he adds. If we look to the past, its clear that the nations that were historically responsible for heavy emissions were found in what is today the G20. The current members of this group accumulated almost 80% of all the carbon dioxide that was expelled between 1850 and 2021. In addition to CO emissions, the report adds another indicator: the contribution to global warming. While this is a less precise measurement compared to the case of carbon dioxide, it attempts to include the estimates of accumulated emissions of other greenhouse substances, such as methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases. In this ranking, the U.S. is first once again, with 17%, followed by China (12%), the EU (10%), Russia (6%) and India (5%). But the picture changes when current emissions are analyzed. China is, by far and has been for two decades now the worlds leading emitter. In 2021, according to the UNEPs report, it was responsible for 30% of all greenhouse gases. China is followed at a great distance by the U.S. (11%), India (7%), the EU (7%) and Russia (5%). Another useful indicator when it comes to determining the responsibility for climate change is by looking at emissions according to population. In this case, the United States and Russia both emitting around 15 tons of CO per capita in 2021 top the list. Next is China, with just over 10 tons per inhabitant. The world average is around 6.5. China, indeed, is behind the United States. But while the U.S. economy has reduced its emissions per capita in the last 20 years (dropping from 22.3 tons to 15.3), the Asian giant continues to increase them. Emissions per capita in China have more than doubled over the past two decades, going from 3.6 tons to 10.2. What experts fear is that this figure will continue to grow in the case of China and other developing nations such as India, the most populous nation on the planet. This seriously compromises the international fight against climate change. To escape poverty and develop, people need clean and safe energy, Rogelj affirms. Historically, the main way in which energy could be provided was [by burning] fossil fuels. [Todays] developed countries used them a lot, which generated large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, the expert adds. The poorest countries have the inalienable right to develop and they need energy to do so, Rogelj emphasizes, but fortunately, today, we also have low-carbon energy options that are cheap. With the right support, the poorest countries should be able to avoid the climate mistakes of the past. UNEP highlights that an increasing number of countries have reached the peak of their emissions and have reduced their absolute emissions [over the past] 10 years. That is to say, the peak has already arrived. 36 countries are at that point of which 22 are members of the European Union while the other eight include high-income countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. Six middle-income countries, meanwhile, have also reached the point of peak emissions: Albania, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, North Macedonia and South Africa. Reaching that peak as soon as possible and then drastically reducing emissions is what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement. This pact signed in the French capital in 2015 establishes as its central objective that the increase in the global average temperature remains below two degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial levels) by the end of the century, while 1.5 would ideal. At the moment, warming is at around 1.2 degrees Celsius. In the best case scenario, scientists propose that the 1.5 barrier will be exceeded, but then the temperatures will fall. To achieve this, the first step is to slash emissions by 42% by 2030. But the individual climate plans of the almost 200 countries that are in the Paris Agreement will lead to a reduction of between 2% and 9%, according to estimates by the UNEP. To stay below two degrees of global warming, the cut in emissions in 2030 would have to at least be 28% also far from what national climate plans currently propose. The response time is running out, although countries must periodically update their climate plans. At the climate summit that begins on November 30 in Dubai the COP28 the first major assessment will be made. There will also be a call to more stringently reduce emissions. In 2025, all signatory nations must present their new promises. Theres no person or economy left on the planet untouched by climate change, so we need to stop setting unwanted records on greenhouse gas emissions, global temperature highs and extreme weather, said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, in a statement released on November 20. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged countries to strengthen their climate plans to cover the whole economy and plot a course for ending fossil fuels. Specifically, he has asked the nations that will meet in Dubai to triple renewables capacity, double energy efficiency and bring clean power to all, by 2030. He has also asked for the signatory nations to commit to phasing out fossil fuels, with a clear time frame aligned to the 1.5-degree limit. Employees Retirement System of Texas cut its stake in shares of Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP Free Report) by 10.3% during the 2nd quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The fund owned 87,000 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock after selling 10,000 shares during the period. Employees Retirement System of Texas holdings in Boston Properties were worth $5,010,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. A number of other large investors have also bought and sold shares of the stock. Kinneret Advisory LLC boosted its position in shares of Boston Properties by 2.3% during the 1st quarter. Kinneret Advisory LLC now owns 4,043 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $525,000 after purchasing an additional 90 shares in the last quarter. Toroso Investments LLC raised its stake in Boston Properties by 6.7% during the 1st quarter. Toroso Investments LLC now owns 1,915 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $247,000 after buying an additional 121 shares during the period. Yousif Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in Boston Properties by 0.4% in the first quarter. Yousif Capital Management LLC now owns 28,520 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $3,673,000 after acquiring an additional 125 shares in the last quarter. Texas Permanent School Fund Corp grew its stake in Boston Properties by 0.5% in the second quarter. Texas Permanent School Fund Corp now owns 29,779 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $1,715,000 after acquiring an additional 150 shares during the period. Finally, Massmutual Trust Co. FSB ADV increased its holdings in shares of Boston Properties by 39.5% during the second quarter. Massmutual Trust Co. FSB ADV now owns 593 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $34,000 after acquiring an additional 168 shares in the last quarter. 94.58% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Boston Properties alerts: Boston Properties Stock Performance BXP stock traded up $0.38 during midday trading on Wednesday, hitting $54.00. The companys stock had a trading volume of 155,616 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,646,352. Boston Properties, Inc. has a 1 year low of $46.18 and a 1 year high of $79.42. The stock has a market cap of $8.47 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 43.59, a PEG ratio of 4.79 and a beta of 1.19. The stocks 50-day moving average price is $56.76 and its 200 day moving average price is $58.16. The company has a quick ratio of 4.21, a current ratio of 4.21 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.89. Boston Properties Announces Dividend Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 31st. Investors of record on Friday, September 29th were issued a dividend of $0.98 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, September 28th. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 7.26%. Boston Propertiess dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 318.70%. A number of brokerages recently issued reports on BXP. Wells Fargo & Company increased their target price on Boston Properties from $64.00 to $80.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. Argus lowered shares of Boston Properties from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research note on Monday, August 14th. The Goldman Sachs Group lifted their price objective on shares of Boston Properties from $56.00 to $64.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a report on Friday, August 11th. Evercore ISI lowered their target price on shares of Boston Properties from $72.00 to $68.00 in a report on Monday, October 9th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets raised their price target on shares of Boston Properties from $75.00 to $80.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Friday, September 8th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have assigned a hold rating and four have issued a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of Hold and an average target price of $67.87. Get Our Latest Research Report on Boston Properties Insiders Place Their Bets In other news, SVP Eric G. Kevorkian sold 1,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $66.43, for a total transaction of $66,430.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 994 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $66,031.42. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. In other news, EVP Raymond A. Ritchey sold 65,000 shares of the stock in a transaction on Tuesday, September 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $67.11, for a total transaction of $4,362,150.00. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. Also, SVP Eric G. Kevorkian sold 1,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Monday, September 11th. The shares were sold at an average price of $66.43, for a total value of $66,430.00. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now owns 994 shares in the company, valued at $66,031.42. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders own 1.09% of the companys stock. Boston Properties Profile (Free Report) BXP (NYSE: BXP) is the largest publicly traded developer, owner, and manager of premier workplaces in the United States, concentrated in six dynamic gateway markets Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC. BXP has delivered places that power progress for our clients and communities for more than 50 years. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding BXP? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Boston Properties Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Boston Properties and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Employees Retirement System of Texas lessened its position in Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT Free Report) by 32.3% in the second quarter, Holdings Channel.com reports. The firm owned 42,000 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock after selling 20,000 shares during the quarter. Employees Retirement System of Texas holdings in Camden Property Trust were worth $4,573,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Several other large investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. increased its stake in shares of Camden Property Trust by 39.5% in the second quarter. JPMorgan Chase & Co. now owns 2,857,014 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $311,043,000 after buying an additional 809,510 shares during the period. Penserra Capital Management LLC increased its position in Camden Property Trust by 26.9% in the 2nd quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 6,150 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $667,000 after acquiring an additional 1,303 shares during the period. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. raised its stake in shares of Camden Property Trust by 17.8% during the second quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 14,185 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $1,544,000 after acquiring an additional 2,147 shares during the last quarter. Osaic Holdings Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Camden Property Trust by 16.3% during the second quarter. Osaic Holdings Inc. now owns 23,114 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $2,517,000 after purchasing an additional 3,238 shares during the period. Finally, Bessemer Group Inc. grew its stake in shares of Camden Property Trust by 130.8% in the second quarter. Bessemer Group Inc. now owns 584 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $63,000 after purchasing an additional 331 shares during the last quarter. 95.04% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors. Get Camden Property Trust alerts: Camden Property Trust Stock Up 0.8 % Shares of CPT traded up $0.68 during trading hours on Wednesday, reaching $88.38. The stock had a trading volume of 44,397 shares, compared to its average volume of 822,976. The firm has a 50-day simple moving average of $93.14 and a 200 day simple moving average of $103.04. Camden Property Trust has a 12 month low of $82.81 and a 12 month high of $127.60. The company has a current ratio of 0.10, a quick ratio of 0.10 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.74. The company has a market capitalization of $9.44 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 41.97, a P/E/G ratio of 2.96 and a beta of 0.84. Camden Property Trust Announces Dividend Wall Street Analyst Weigh In The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 17th. Shareholders of record on Friday, September 29th were paid a $1.00 dividend. This represents a $4.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 4.53%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, September 28th. Camden Property Trusts dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 191.39%. Several brokerages recently issued reports on CPT. Barclays raised their target price on Camden Property Trust from $137.00 to $138.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a research report on Friday, September 22nd. Royal Bank of Canada cut their price objective on Camden Property Trust from $114.00 to $109.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, October 30th. UBS Group cut Camden Property Trust from a buy rating to a neutral rating and reduced their target price for the company from $127.00 to $94.00 in a report on Monday, November 6th. Evercore ISI lowered their price target on shares of Camden Property Trust from $117.00 to $111.00 in a report on Monday, October 9th. Finally, Wedbush started coverage on shares of Camden Property Trust in a research note on Tuesday, October 3rd. They issued an outperform rating and a $110.00 price objective on the stock. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have issued a hold rating and seven have issued a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average target price of $113.44. Check Out Our Latest Analysis on CPT About Camden Property Trust (Free Report) Camden Property Trust, an S&P 500 Company, is a real estate company primarily engaged in the ownership, management, development, redevelopment, acquisition, and construction of multifamily apartment communities. Camden owns and operates 172 properties containing 58,961 apartment homes across the United States. Further Reading Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CPT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Camden Property Trust Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Camden Property Trust and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Employees Retirement System of Texas lessened its holdings in Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK Free Report) by 18.6% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund owned 61,658 shares of the industrial products companys stock after selling 14,050 shares during the period. Employees Retirement System of Texas owned approximately 0.05% of Crown worth $5,356,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. A number of other hedge funds have also modified their holdings of CCK. BI Asset Management Fondsmaeglerselskab A S lifted its position in Crown by 101.8% in the first quarter. BI Asset Management Fondsmaeglerselskab A S now owns 438 shares of the industrial products companys stock valued at $36,000 after buying an additional 221 shares during the last quarter. Tobam acquired a new stake in shares of Crown during the second quarter valued at about $58,000. Quarry LP purchased a new stake in shares of Crown in the 1st quarter valued at approximately $58,000. Fifth Third Bancorp lifted its holdings in shares of Crown by 91.9% in the 2nd quarter. Fifth Third Bancorp now owns 691 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $60,000 after acquiring an additional 331 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Ameritas Advisory Services LLC purchased a new position in shares of Crown during the 1st quarter worth approximately $91,000. 95.18% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get Crown alerts: Insider Transactions at Crown In related news, COO Gerard H. Gifford sold 9,784 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $92.24, for a total value of $902,476.16. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer now directly owns 123,399 shares of the companys stock, valued at $11,382,323.76. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. In other news, COO Gerard H. Gifford sold 9,784 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, September 5th. The shares were sold at an average price of $92.24, for a total transaction of $902,476.16. Following the completion of the sale, the chief operating officer now owns 123,399 shares in the company, valued at approximately $11,382,323.76. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. Also, COO Gerard H. Gifford sold 13,535 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $80.48, for a total transaction of $1,089,296.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief operating officer now owns 109,864 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $8,841,854.72. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Corporate insiders own 0.90% of the companys stock. Crown Stock Down 0.3 % NYSE CCK traded down $0.22 on Wednesday, hitting $82.95. 59,141 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,131,145. Crown Holdings, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $75.61 and a fifty-two week high of $96.35. The company has a 50-day moving average price of $83.81 and a 200-day moving average price of $85.88. The company has a quick ratio of 0.70, a current ratio of 1.13 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.21. The company has a market cap of $10.01 billion, a PE ratio of 19.68, a PEG ratio of 2.75 and a beta of 1.10. Crown (NYSE:CCK Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Tuesday, October 24th. The industrial products company reported $1.73 EPS for the quarter, hitting analysts consensus estimates of $1.73. The firm had revenue of $3.07 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $3.23 billion. Crown had a net margin of 4.17% and a return on equity of 26.84%. The companys revenue was down 5.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the previous year, the firm posted $1.46 earnings per share. Sell-side analysts anticipate that Crown Holdings, Inc. will post 6.04 EPS for the current fiscal year. Crown Dividend Announcement The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, November 22nd. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 8th will be issued a $0.24 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 7th. This represents a $0.96 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.16%. Crowns payout ratio is currently 22.70%. Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of brokerages have issued reports on CCK. Royal Bank of Canada cut their target price on Crown from $115.00 to $110.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research report on Thursday, October 26th. Citigroup boosted their price objective on Crown from $103.00 to $105.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, October 25th. Truist Financial restated a buy rating and set a $106.00 target price on shares of Crown in a report on Tuesday. Loop Capital boosted their price target on shares of Crown from $112.00 to $128.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Wednesday, July 26th. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised their price objective on shares of Crown from $88.00 to $93.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Thursday, August 10th. Five analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eight have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Crown has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $101.69. Get Our Latest Report on Crown Crown Profile (Free Report) Crown Holdings, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, supplies rigid packaging products in Pennsylvania and internationally. It operates through Americas Beverage, European Beverage, Asia Pacific, and Transit Packaging segments. The Americas Beverage segment manufactures recyclable aluminum beverage cans and ends, glass bottles, steel crowns, and aluminum caps. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CCK? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCK Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Crown Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Crown and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Northern Trust Corp cut its holdings in shares of EOG Resources, Inc. (NYSE:EOG Free Report) by 6.9% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 6,074,824 shares of the energy exploration companys stock after selling 452,991 shares during the period. Northern Trust Corp owned approximately 1.04% of EOG Resources worth $695,203,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. A number of other large investors have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in EOG. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. boosted its stake in shares of EOG Resources by 6.2% during the 2nd quarter. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. now owns 186,635 shares of the energy exploration companys stock worth $21,359,000 after acquiring an additional 10,969 shares in the last quarter. Prospera Financial Services Inc boosted its position in shares of EOG Resources by 196.9% in the 2nd quarter. Prospera Financial Services Inc now owns 7,593 shares of the energy exploration companys stock valued at $870,000 after purchasing an additional 5,036 shares during the period. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. raised its holdings in EOG Resources by 18.2% during the 1st quarter. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. now owns 65,998 shares of the energy exploration companys stock worth $7,565,000 after buying an additional 10,154 shares during the period. Procyon Advisors LLC lifted its stake in EOG Resources by 41.9% during the second quarter. Procyon Advisors LLC now owns 4,659 shares of the energy exploration companys stock valued at $533,000 after buying an additional 1,376 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Continuum Advisory LLC boosted its holdings in shares of EOG Resources by 6.6% in the first quarter. Continuum Advisory LLC now owns 7,112 shares of the energy exploration companys stock worth $815,000 after buying an additional 438 shares during the period. 89.21% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors. Get EOG Resources alerts: EOG Resources Price Performance NYSE:EOG traded down $2.85 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $121.40. The companys stock had a trading volume of 563,074 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,282,682. The company has a current ratio of 2.43, a quick ratio of 2.10 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $127.04 and a 200-day moving average of $122.61. The company has a market capitalization of $70.79 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.23, a P/E/G ratio of 0.36 and a beta of 1.51. EOG Resources, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $98.52 and a fifty-two week high of $144.91. EOG Resources Increases Dividend Analysts Set New Price Targets The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 31st. Investors of record on Wednesday, January 17th will be given a dividend of $0.91 per share. This represents a $3.64 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 3.00%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, January 16th. This is an increase from EOG Resourcess previous quarterly dividend of $0.83. EOG Resourcess dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 24.52%. Several research firms recently weighed in on EOG. Mizuho dropped their price target on EOG Resources from $158.00 to $150.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, November 15th. Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. downgraded EOG Resources from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research note on Thursday, August 24th. Morgan Stanley raised their price objective on EOG Resources from $129.00 to $132.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research note on Monday, October 2nd. Truist Financial upped their target price on EOG Resources from $165.00 to $169.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Monday, November 6th. Finally, Piper Sandler lifted their price target on shares of EOG Resources from $157.00 to $158.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Thursday, November 16th. Seven investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fourteen have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat, EOG Resources presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $147.77. Get Our Latest Stock Analysis on EOG Resources About EOG Resources (Free Report) EOG Resources, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, explores for, develops, produces, and markets crude oil, and natural gas and natural gas liquids. Its principal producing areas are in New Mexico and Texas in the United States; and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The company was formerly known as Enron Oil & Gas Company. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding EOG? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for EOG Resources, Inc. (NYSE:EOG Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for EOG Resources Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for EOG Resources and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. EOG Resources, Inc. (NYSE:EOG Get Free Report) gapped down before the market opened on Wednesday after Wells Fargo & Company lowered their price target on the stock from $152.00 to $150.00. The stock had previously closed at $124.25, but opened at $120.60. Wells Fargo & Company currently has an overweight rating on the stock. EOG Resources shares last traded at $121.40, with a volume of 563,074 shares traded. Several other equities research analysts have also commented on EOG. Stifel Nicolaus boosted their target price on shares of EOG Resources from $143.00 to $159.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research report on Friday, August 18th. TD Securities boosted their target price on shares of EOG Resources from $125.00 to $135.00 and gave the stock a hold rating in a research report on Friday, August 4th. Citigroup lowered shares of EOG Resources from a buy rating to a neutral rating and decreased their target price for the stock from $144.00 to $135.00 in a research report on Monday, October 23rd. Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. lowered shares of EOG Resources from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report on Thursday, August 24th. Finally, Bank of America boosted their price objective on shares of EOG Resources from $143.00 to $147.00 in a research report on Wednesday, September 27th. Seven analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fourteen have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $147.68. Get EOG Resources alerts: Get Our Latest Report on EOG Institutional Inflows and Outflows EOG Resources Stock Performance Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently modified their holdings of the stock. Truvestments Capital LLC acquired a new position in shares of EOG Resources during the 2nd quarter valued at about $25,000. Fortis Capital Advisors LLC acquired a new position in shares of EOG Resources during the 4th quarter valued at about $28,000. Pinnacle Holdings LLC acquired a new position in shares of EOG Resources during the 1st quarter valued at about $25,000. Lumature Wealth Partners LLC acquired a new position in shares of EOG Resources during the 1st quarter valued at about $28,000. Finally, Kalos Management Inc. acquired a new position in shares of EOG Resources during the 1st quarter valued at about $27,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 89.21% of the companys stock. The stocks 50 day moving average price is $127.04 and its 200 day moving average price is $122.61. The company has a market cap of $71.04 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.01, a P/E/G ratio of 0.36 and a beta of 1.51. The company has a current ratio of 2.43, a quick ratio of 2.10 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14. EOG Resources Increases Dividend The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, January 31st. Investors of record on Wednesday, January 17th will be given a dividend of $0.91 per share. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 2.99%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, January 16th. This is an increase from EOG Resourcess previous quarterly dividend of $0.83. EOG Resourcess dividend payout ratio is 24.52%. About EOG Resources (Get Free Report) EOG Resources, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, explores for, develops, produces, and markets crude oil, and natural gas and natural gas liquids. Its principal producing areas are in New Mexico and Texas in the United States; and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. The company was formerly known as Enron Oil & Gas Company. See Also Receive News & Ratings for EOG Resources Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for EOG Resources and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in Union Pacific Co. (NYSE:UNP Free Report) by 2.4% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The firm owned 11,429,882 shares of the railroad operators stock after purchasing an additional 265,117 shares during the quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC owned about 1.88% of Union Pacific worth $2,333,184,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of the company. Sei Investments Co. lifted its stake in shares of Union Pacific by 4.4% in the second quarter. Sei Investments Co. now owns 224,342 shares of the railroad operators stock worth $45,904,000 after buying an additional 9,377 shares in the last quarter. Covestor Ltd lifted its stake in shares of Union Pacific by 51.1% in the second quarter. Covestor Ltd now owns 278 shares of the railroad operators stock worth $56,000 after buying an additional 94 shares in the last quarter. Korea Investment CORP lifted its stake in shares of Union Pacific by 3.2% in the second quarter. Korea Investment CORP now owns 399,112 shares of the railroad operators stock worth $81,666,000 after buying an additional 12,545 shares in the last quarter. Deuterium Capital Management LLC bought a new position in shares of Union Pacific in the second quarter worth approximately $233,000. Finally, D.A. Davidson & CO. lifted its stake in shares of Union Pacific by 1.7% in the second quarter. D.A. Davidson & CO. now owns 168,106 shares of the railroad operators stock worth $34,398,000 after buying an additional 2,855 shares in the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 77.36% of the companys stock. Get Union Pacific alerts: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several brokerages have recently issued reports on UNP. Royal Bank of Canada reiterated an outperform rating and issued a $282.00 target price on shares of Union Pacific in a research note on Friday, October 20th. Bank of America lowered their price objective on shares of Union Pacific from $265.00 to $257.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research report on Monday, September 25th. Atlantic Securities downgraded shares of Union Pacific from an overweight rating to a neutral rating and set a $244.00 price objective on the stock. in a research report on Thursday, July 27th. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Union Pacific in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price objective on shares of Union Pacific from $254.00 to $236.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, October 11th. Ten investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fourteen have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the company presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $238.96. Insider Transactions at Union Pacific In other news, EVP Eric J. Gehringer sold 1,274 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, October 30th. The shares were sold at an average price of $203.24, for a total value of $258,927.76. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 31,991 shares of the companys stock, valued at $6,501,850.84. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Corporate insiders own 0.30% of the companys stock. Union Pacific Price Performance Shares of NYSE UNP traded up $1.54 during midday trading on Wednesday, reaching $223.54. The stock had a trading volume of 378,906 shares, compared to its average volume of 2,819,046. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $209.40 and a 200-day moving average of $210.35. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2.22, a quick ratio of 0.57 and a current ratio of 0.72. The company has a market capitalization of $136.27 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 21.30, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.61 and a beta of 1.10. Union Pacific Co. has a 12-month low of $183.69 and a 12-month high of $240.48. Union Pacific (NYSE:UNP Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 19th. The railroad operator reported $2.51 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $2.41 by $0.10. The firm had revenue of $5.94 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $5.96 billion. Union Pacific had a net margin of 26.37% and a return on equity of 49.14%. The companys revenue for the quarter was down 9.5% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $3.19 earnings per share. As a group, research analysts anticipate that Union Pacific Co. will post 10.24 EPS for the current fiscal year. Union Pacific Profile (Free Report) Union Pacific Corporation, through its subsidiary, Union Pacific Railroad Company, operates in the railroad business in the United States. The company offers transportation services for grain and grain products, fertilizers, food and refrigerated products, and coal and renewables to grain processors, animal feeders, ethanol producers, and other agricultural users; petroleum, and liquid petroleum gases; and construction products, industrial chemicals, plastics, forest products, specialized products, metals and ores, soda ash, and sand, as well as finished automobiles, automotive parts, and merchandise in intermodal containers. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Union Pacific Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Union Pacific and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Geode Capital Management LLC boosted its position in United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS Free Report) by 2.9% in 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 13,590,985 shares of the transportation companys stock after buying an additional 388,258 shares during the quarter. Geode Capital Management LLCs holdings in United Parcel Service were worth $2,430,504,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of UPS. Pacific Center for Financial Services purchased a new stake in United Parcel Service in the first quarter worth approximately $25,000. Worth Asset Management LLC purchased a new stake in United Parcel Service in the first quarter worth approximately $27,000. Carolina Wealth Advisors LLC boosted its stake in United Parcel Service by 216.0% in the second quarter. Carolina Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 158 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $28,000 after buying an additional 108 shares in the last quarter. Centerpoint Advisors LLC boosted its stake in United Parcel Service by 205.0% in the first quarter. Centerpoint Advisors LLC now owns 183 shares of the transportation companys stock worth $36,000 after buying an additional 123 shares in the last quarter. Finally, WFA of San Diego LLC purchased a new stake in United Parcel Service in the second quarter worth approximately $40,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 58.45% of the companys stock. Get United Parcel Service alerts: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of analysts have recently weighed in on the company. Credit Suisse Group dropped their price objective on United Parcel Service from $204.00 to $194.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, August 9th. Oppenheimer dropped their price objective on United Parcel Service from $195.00 to $184.00 and set an outperform rating for the company in a research note on Monday, September 18th. TD Cowen dropped their price objective on United Parcel Service from $190.00 to $185.00 and set a market perform rating for the company in a research note on Thursday, September 14th. Evercore ISI dropped their price objective on United Parcel Service from $185.00 to $179.00 and set an in-line rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, September 12th. Finally, Stifel Nicolaus increased their price objective on United Parcel Service to $203.00 in a research note on Wednesday, July 26th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, sixteen have given a hold rating, six have issued a buy rating and one has given a strong buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, the company has an average rating of Hold and a consensus target price of $188.91. United Parcel Service Stock Up 0.4 % UPS traded up $0.58 during trading on Wednesday, reaching $150.35. The stock had a trading volume of 654,292 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,392,678. The stocks 50 day moving average is $149.98 and its two-hundred day moving average is $166.00. The company has a current ratio of 1.22, a quick ratio of 1.22 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.98. The company has a market capitalization of $128.09 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 15.16, a P/E/G ratio of 1.70 and a beta of 1.10. United Parcel Service, Inc. has a one year low of $133.68 and a one year high of $197.80. United Parcel Service (NYSE:UPS Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 26th. The transportation company reported $1.57 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.53 by $0.04. United Parcel Service had a return on equity of 43.46% and a net margin of 9.19%. The business had revenue of $21.06 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $21.40 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $2.99 earnings per share. The firms quarterly revenue was down 12.8% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts expect that United Parcel Service, Inc. will post 8.81 earnings per share for the current year. United Parcel Service Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Stockholders of record on Monday, November 13th will be paid a $1.62 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, November 10th. This represents a $6.48 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 4.31%. United Parcel Services dividend payout ratio is currently 65.59%. United Parcel Service Profile (Free Report) United Parcel Service, Inc, a package delivery company, provides transportation and delivery, distribution, contract logistics, ocean freight, airfreight, customs brokerage, and insurance services. It operates through two segments, U.S. Domestic Package and International Package. The U.S. Domestic Package segment offers time-definite delivery of letters, documents, small packages, and palletized freight through air and ground services in the United States. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding UPS? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for United Parcel Service Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for United Parcel Service and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Great West Life Assurance Co. Can lowered its position in shares of Invitation Homes Inc. (NYSE:INVH Free Report) by 2.1% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The firm owned 875,345 shares of the companys stock after selling 19,199 shares during the quarter. Great West Life Assurance Co. Cans holdings in Invitation Homes were worth $30,189,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Other large investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. lifted its holdings in shares of Invitation Homes by 16.1% during the first quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. now owns 29,600 shares of the companys stock worth $1,189,000 after purchasing an additional 4,111 shares during the period. Cetera Advisor Networks LLC acquired a new stake in Invitation Homes during the 1st quarter valued at approximately $373,000. MetLife Investment Management LLC acquired a new stake in Invitation Homes during the 1st quarter valued at approximately $480,000. Yousif Capital Management LLC increased its stake in shares of Invitation Homes by 5.2% in the first quarter. Yousif Capital Management LLC now owns 36,134 shares of the companys stock worth $1,452,000 after acquiring an additional 1,783 shares during the period. Finally, Raymond James Trust N.A. purchased a new position in shares of Invitation Homes during the first quarter worth $225,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 96.79% of the companys stock. Get Invitation Homes alerts: Invitation Homes Price Performance NYSE:INVH opened at $33.16 on Wednesday. The stock has a 50 day moving average of $32.07 and a two-hundred day moving average of $33.53. Invitation Homes Inc. has a 12 month low of $28.49 and a 12 month high of $36.53. The firm has a market cap of $20.29 billion, a P/E ratio of 41.97, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 4.24 and a beta of 0.93. The company has a current ratio of 0.21, a quick ratio of 0.21 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.53. Invitation Homes Announces Dividend Invitation Homes ( NYSE:INVH Get Free Report ) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, October 25th. The company reported $0.21 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $0.44 by ($0.23). Invitation Homes had a return on equity of 4.77% and a net margin of 20.52%. The firm had revenue of $617.70 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $614.21 million. On average, analysts expect that Invitation Homes Inc. will post 1.75 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, November 22nd. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, November 7th will be given a $0.26 dividend. This represents a $1.04 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.14%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, November 6th. Invitation Homess dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 131.65%. Analyst Ratings Changes Several equities research analysts have commented on INVH shares. Evercore ISI lowered their price target on shares of Invitation Homes from $37.00 to $35.00 in a report on Monday, October 9th. UBS Group assumed coverage on Invitation Homes in a research report on Friday, September 29th. They set a buy rating and a $38.00 price target for the company. KeyCorp dropped their price objective on shares of Invitation Homes from $37.00 to $35.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 4th. BTIG Research cut shares of Invitation Homes from a buy rating to a neutral rating in a research note on Thursday, August 17th. Finally, Raymond James dropped their price target on shares of Invitation Homes from $38.00 to $37.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, November 8th. Nine investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nine have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Invitation Homes currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $35.26. View Our Latest Analysis on Invitation Homes Invitation Homes Company Profile (Free Report) Invitation Homes, an S&P 500 company, is the nation's premier single-family home leasing company, meeting changing lifestyle demands by providing access to high-quality, updated homes with valued features such as close proximity to jobs and access to good schools. The company's mission, "Together with you, we make a house a home," reflects its commitment to providing homes where individuals and families can thrive and high-touch service that continuously enhances residents' living experiences. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding INVH? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Invitation Homes Inc. (NYSE:INVH Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Invitation Homes Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Invitation Homes and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Guggenheim Capital LLC grew its stake in Prologis, Inc. (NYSE:PLD Free Report) by 0.4% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 573,098 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock after purchasing an additional 2,505 shares during the period. Prologis makes up approximately 0.6% of Guggenheim Capital LLCs holdings, making the stock its 20th largest holding. Guggenheim Capital LLC owned approximately 0.06% of Prologis worth $70,279,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Several other large investors also recently modified their holdings of the stock. Norges Bank acquired a new position in shares of Prologis in the 4th quarter worth approximately $980,759,000. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich lifted its holdings in Prologis by 69,785.9% during the 2nd quarter. Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd Zurich now owns 7,903,391 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $969,193,000 after buying an additional 7,892,082 shares in the last quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC lifted its holdings in Prologis by 12,581.9% during the 1st quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC now owns 5,760,504 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $46,168,000 after buying an additional 5,715,081 shares in the last quarter. Morgan Stanley lifted its holdings in Prologis by 48.0% during the 4th quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 14,577,827 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $1,643,359,000 after buying an additional 4,729,040 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Bank of Montreal Can acquired a new position in Prologis during the 2nd quarter worth $333,749,000. 90.90% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors. Get Prologis alerts: Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Several research analysts have issued reports on the company. Mizuho reaffirmed a buy rating and set a $140.00 price objective on shares of Prologis in a report on Wednesday, September 13th. TheStreet downgraded Prologis from a b- rating to a c+ rating in a report on Friday, October 20th. Stifel Nicolaus reaffirmed a buy rating and set a $130.00 price objective on shares of Prologis in a report on Tuesday. Evercore ISI reduced their price objective on Prologis from $132.00 to $125.00 in a report on Monday, October 9th. Finally, StockNews.com raised Prologis from a sell rating to a hold rating in a report on Friday, November 3rd. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, ten have given a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the companys stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Prologis has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $139.00. Prologis Trading Up 0.6 % Prologis stock traded up $0.64 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $111.25. 877,410 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 2,977,732. The firm has a market capitalization of $102.79 billion, a P/E ratio of 34.14, a PEG ratio of 2.32 and a beta of 1.02. Prologis, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $96.64 and a fifty-two week high of $136.67. The company has a quick ratio of 0.43, a current ratio of 0.43 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.47. The companys 50 day simple moving average is $108.87 and its 200-day simple moving average is $118.28. Prologis (NYSE:PLD Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 17th. The real estate investment trust reported $1.30 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.26 by $0.04. The business had revenue of $1.78 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.72 billion. Prologis had a return on equity of 5.21% and a net margin of 38.24%. The firms revenue was up 53.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $1.73 EPS. On average, equities analysts anticipate that Prologis, Inc. will post 5.6 earnings per share for the current year. Prologis Announces Dividend The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, September 29th. Investors of record on Monday, September 18th were paid a dividend of $0.87 per share. This represents a $3.48 annualized dividend and a yield of 3.13%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, September 15th. Prologiss payout ratio is presently 107.41%. Prologis Profile (Free Report) Prologis, Inc is the global leader in logistics real estate with a focus on high-barrier, high-growth markets. At September 30, 2023, the company owned or had investments in, on a wholly owned basis or through co-investment ventures, properties and development projects expected to total approximately 1.2 billion square feet (114 million square meters) in 19 countries. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Prologis Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Prologis and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. StockNews.com initiated coverage on shares of Hersha Hospitality Trust (NYSE:HT Free Report) in a research report report published on Saturday morning. The brokerage issued a sell rating on the real estate investment trusts stock. A number of other brokerages have also commented on HT. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft lifted their price target on shares of Hersha Hospitality Trust from $8.00 to $10.00 and gave the stock a hold rating in a report on Monday, August 28th. Stifel Nicolaus lowered shares of Hersha Hospitality Trust from a buy rating to a hold rating and lifted their price target for the stock from $8.75 to $10.00 in a report on Monday, August 28th. BMO Capital Markets boosted their target price on shares of Hersha Hospitality Trust from $7.00 to $10.00 and gave the company a market perform rating in a report on Monday, August 28th. Jefferies Financial Group lowered shares of Hersha Hospitality Trust from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report on Tuesday, August 29th. Finally, Barclays upgraded shares of Hersha Hospitality Trust from an underweight rating to an equal weight rating and boosted their target price for the company from $8.00 to $10.00 in a report on Tuesday, August 29th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating and ten have issued a hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat, Hersha Hospitality Trust currently has an average rating of Hold and an average price target of $9.63. Get Hersha Hospitality Trust alerts: Check Out Our Latest Stock Report on HT Hersha Hospitality Trust Stock Performance Hersha Hospitality Trust Announces Dividend NYSE HT opened at $9.95 on Friday. The firms fifty day moving average price is $9.90 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $7.79. The stock has a market cap of $400.74 million, a PE ratio of 58.50 and a beta of 1.81. Hersha Hospitality Trust has a fifty-two week low of $5.64 and a fifty-two week high of $10.31. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.73, a quick ratio of 1.68 and a current ratio of 1.68. The business also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, October 16th. Stockholders of record on Friday, September 29th were issued a dividend of $0.05 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, September 28th. This represents a $0.20 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.01%. Hersha Hospitality Trusts dividend payout ratio is currently 117.65%. Institutional Investors Weigh In On Hersha Hospitality Trust Several hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in HT. Beryl Capital Management LLC bought a new stake in Hersha Hospitality Trust in the 3rd quarter worth about $24,077,000. Millennium Management LLC grew its position in Hersha Hospitality Trust by 1,635.3% in the 4th quarter. Millennium Management LLC now owns 1,310,139 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $11,162,000 after purchasing an additional 1,234,641 shares in the last quarter. Pentwater Capital Management LP purchased a new position in Hersha Hospitality Trust in the third quarter valued at about $10,846,000. Schonfeld Strategic Advisors LLC purchased a new position in Hersha Hospitality Trust in the third quarter valued at about $8,080,000. Finally, BlackRock Inc. boosted its stake in Hersha Hospitality Trust by 26.6% in the second quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 3,703,610 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $22,555,000 after acquiring an additional 778,972 shares during the last quarter. 56.96% of the stock is owned by institutional investors. Hersha Hospitality Trust Company Profile (Get Free Report) Hersha Hospitality Trust (HT) is a self-advised real estate investment trust in the hospitality sector, which owns and operates luxury and lifestyle hotels in coastal gateway and resort markets. The Company's 25 hotels totaling 3,811 rooms are located in New York, Washington, DC, Boston, Philadelphia, South Florida, and California. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for Hersha Hospitality Trust Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Hersha Hospitality Trust and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. One of the rooms at the Met that houses the European Paintings collections. The new natural lighting system can be seen, in an image provided by the museum. This past Monday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City reopened the 45 rooms that make up the European Paintings collection, after the completion of a renovation that began in 2018. This part of the gallery hosts works that were created between 1300 and 1800. Its now illuminated more naturally, thanks to large skylights. The renovation the largest infrastructure project undertaken in the museums history will allow visitors to better appreciate the details of the 679 paintings on display. Many have been restored as part of the comprehensive renovation of the facilities, while a chronological reordering of the works has also taken place (previously, the paintings were grouped according to artist nationality). The colors chosen for the walls from burgundy to different shades of blue gives the space an intimate atmosphere, like a reading room or music room. I think [the European collection is a] central part of the museum, yes. Its probably also an area where people think that theyve already seen it all. So the important thing about this reopening with more natural light and a magnificent installation is that it offers new stories, new themes, new approaches that, basically, rejuvenate our idea of what Europe means in the field of painting, explains Max Hollein, director of the museum. The renovation which is also committed to sustainability, thanks to a series of technical improvements entails a new narrative. For instance, theres a greater presence of works by women, such as a recently-acquired still life by Clara Peeters a Flemish still-life painter from Antwerp or two loaners by Sofonisba Anguissola (Italy) and Judith Leyster (Netherlands). Theres also a dialogue between the ancient and modern, as well as a broader geographical interaction: visitors can see the complex relations of Europe with New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru. The best example of this conceptual rereading is the room dedicated to El Greco, with several Picassos interspersed, creating a juxtaposition. This shows the influence that the Greek painter had on the Spaniard. A room dedicated to viceregal art has also been incorporated (it was brought over from the American wing) to convey a natural projection of creation in Spain. In the adjoining rooms, you can find virgins painted by Francisco de Zurbaran and Bartolome Esteban Murillo, or the portrait that Velazquez did of his slave and disciple Juan de Pareja. They rub shoulders with colorful images of crowned nuns such as Portrait of Sor Juana de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, acquired in 2021 and depictions of the Three Wise Men from Mexico and Peru. Some paintings seem halfway between Seville and Latin America, according to curator Jose Luis Lazarte. One example of this is the beautiful Saint Michael the Archangel by Ignacio de Ries, a disciple of Zurbaran. Theres a link with [Latin America], because of the very American colors, explains Lazarte, an expert in paintings conservation. A painting by Picasso sandwiched between two by El Greco, in a room dedicated to the latter. Hyla Skopitz (MET) The interconnection of cultures, materials and colors offers a staging that is both solemn and modern, breathing new life into a collection that includes another 112 works, including sculptures, decorative art, furniture and even a selection of ancient musical instruments. In this effort to re-energize the collection, a triptych (panel painting) by Francis Bacon draws attention near several Madonnas from the Renaissance era. Theres also a crucifixion by Salvador Dali in a room thats dedicated to Spanish religious art from the end of the Middle Ages. These are all Met winks at the visitors, emphasizes Stephan Wolohojian, senior curator of the European Paintings collection at the institution. The Met has a very important representation of Spanish painting especially, of course, El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos, of the Spanish Renaissance). [The museum has] the most important collection of works by El Greco outside of Spain. And thats why its almost the centerpiece of the new exhibit, in dialogue with Picasso, Hollein explains. It offers you the possibility of, on the one hand, appreciating artistic development over time, and also, of course, of seeing the artists creation in its entirety. It can be seen how Picasso especially in his Blue Period took a close look at El Greco. I think its an exciting way to activate the collection, to show the development of painting, Hollein adds. Five years of careful work now allow us to explore Europe the continent as a cultural concept, long before the political notion thanks to an organic collection, which adapts, transforms and, above all, grows. Weve made several important acquisitions, and thats also a sign that this is a living collection. We received donations and an important painting by [Italian Renaissance painter Francesco] Salviati. Weve also been able to acquire very important works by female artists from the Dutch Golden Age (such as the painting by Peeters). This shows that the Met collection isnt closed, especially in the area of European paintings. Even though [the level of work] is so high, we still have opportunities to enrich the collection. In fact, the collection has never stopped growing since it was created in 1871, when the institution acquired 174 paintings from three private sources in Europe. Since then, its been enriched by numerous donations, legacies and purchases, making it one of the most complete collections of European paintings in the world. Starting from the original location in 1880, the galleries were modernized and refurbished between 1951 and 1954, to accommodate new collections. In the 1970s, another adjustment was undertaken, with partial renovations following in 1987 and 2013. The space that opens its doors today is thanks to the contributions of numerous philanthropists, but also thanks to the economic support of both the municipal and state governments. A room at the Met, dedicated to Hispanic art of the Americas (1550-1820). HYLA SKOPITZ Like everything at the Met, quality means quantity. To renovate the 45 rooms, the museum had to clear nearly 130,000 square feet (more than twice the size of the White House) so as to be able to replace 1,400 skylights, some of which were installed in the 1930s. Walls were painted and moldings were restored, while some door frames were shifted to improve visibility of the rooms new vanishing points, which provide depth. Finally, new heating and air-conditioning systems were installed. The five years and $150 million budget were a wait that has been well worth it, according to Wolohojian. During the renovation and until the end of this past March, when the final touches were undertaken the 45 rooms were never all closed at the same time. Some were always kept open to the public, as the work was carried out in phases. The Met has placed great importance on the efficiency and sustainability of the project. The three wings of the building that house the 45 rooms (the equivalent of an entire block, which, in New York City, isnt exactly small) were the ones that previously consumed the most energy in the museum. But with the new lighting, heating and cooling systems, millions of dollars in savings are expected for the city, which pays the museums utility bills. The skylights alone will reduce the Mets overall carbon footprint by 7% annually, while minimizing the condensation-related risks posed by the old skylights. In phases, as the masonry and painting work were carried out, the team in charge of the renovation moved the paintings to temporary locations in other parts of the museum, while some were loaned out to other institutions. With one exception: three gigantic canvases by the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo werent moved from their place, due to their size (one of them measures 10 feet by 10 feet). The house painters carried out their work with reverential zeal, painting around the frames. The three occupy the majestic entrance to the gallery, at the end of the stairs of the museums central lobby. This is the big door that leads from New York to Europe. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAIS USA Edition Shares of Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE:IR Get Free Report) have received an average rating of Moderate Buy from the ten analysts that are presently covering the company, Marketbeat reports. Two analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eight have assigned a buy rating to the company. The average 1-year price target among brokerages that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $71.10. Several equities analysts recently weighed in on the stock. Barclays cut their price objective on shares of Ingersoll Rand from $76.00 to $74.00 in a report on Thursday, September 7th. Cfra increased their price objective on shares of Ingersoll Rand from $66.00 to $68.00 and gave the company a hold rating in a report on Thursday, November 2nd. Wells Fargo & Company cut their price objective on shares of Ingersoll Rand from $76.00 to $70.00 in a report on Monday, October 9th. Stifel Nicolaus upgraded shares of Ingersoll Rand from a hold rating to a buy rating and set a $73.00 price objective on the stock in a report on Tuesday, October 24th. Finally, The Goldman Sachs Group increased their price objective on shares of Ingersoll Rand from $76.00 to $79.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Thursday, August 3rd. Get Ingersoll Rand alerts: View Our Latest Analysis on Ingersoll Rand Ingersoll Rand Price Performance Shares of IR stock opened at $70.54 on Wednesday. Ingersoll Rand has a 1 year low of $50.75 and a 1 year high of $70.82. The firms 50 day moving average is $64.65 and its 200-day moving average is $64.51. The firm has a market capitalization of $28.55 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 37.72, a PEG ratio of 2.04 and a beta of 1.47. The company has a current ratio of 2.26, a quick ratio of 1.60 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.28. Ingersoll Rand (NYSE:IR Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The industrial products company reported $0.75 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $0.66 by $0.09. Ingersoll Rand had a net margin of 11.47% and a return on equity of 11.82%. The company had revenue of $1.74 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.69 billion. Sell-side analysts forecast that Ingersoll Rand will post 2.72 EPS for the current fiscal year. Ingersoll Rand Dividend Announcement The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 14th. Shareholders of record on Monday, November 20th will be paid a $0.02 dividend. This represents a $0.08 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.11%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, November 17th. Ingersoll Rands payout ratio is presently 4.28%. Insider Transactions at Ingersoll Rand In other news, insider Andrew R. Schiesl sold 9,532 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, November 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $66.22, for a total transaction of $631,209.04. Following the completion of the sale, the insider now owns 58,263 shares of the companys stock, valued at $3,858,175.86. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. In other news, CFO Vikram Kini sold 169,153 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, September 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $69.43, for a total transaction of $11,744,292.79. Following the completion of the sale, the chief financial officer now owns 47,917 shares of the companys stock, valued at $3,326,877.31. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, insider Andrew R. Schiesl sold 9,532 shares of the stock in a transaction on Friday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $66.22, for a total transaction of $631,209.04. Following the sale, the insider now directly owns 58,263 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $3,858,175.86. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. 0.83% of the stock is owned by insiders. Institutional Inflows and Outflows Several large investors have recently added to or reduced their stakes in IR. OFI Invest Asset Management acquired a new position in Ingersoll Rand during the third quarter worth $25,000. Quintet Private Bank Europe S.A. acquired a new position in Ingersoll Rand during the first quarter worth $26,000. Pacifica Partners Inc. acquired a new position in Ingersoll Rand during the third quarter worth $28,000. Lazard Asset Management LLC boosted its holdings in Ingersoll Rand by 1,566.7% during the second quarter. Lazard Asset Management LLC now owns 450 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $29,000 after purchasing an additional 423 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Raleigh Capital Management Inc. boosted its holdings in Ingersoll Rand by 87.0% during the second quarter. Raleigh Capital Management Inc. now owns 475 shares of the industrial products companys stock worth $31,000 after purchasing an additional 221 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 94.54% of the companys stock. About Ingersoll Rand (Get Free Report Ingersoll Rand Inc provides various mission-critical air, fluid, energy, specialty vehicle, and medical technologies in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates through two segments, Industrial Technologies and Services, and Precision and Science Technologies. Recommended Stories Receive News & Ratings for Ingersoll Rand Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Ingersoll Rand and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Korea Investment CORP decreased its holdings in Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:KEYS Free Report) by 16.8% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 473,881 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock after selling 95,640 shares during the quarter. Korea Investment CORP owned about 0.27% of Keysight Technologies worth $79,351,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC. A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of the business. Bradley Foster & Sargent Inc. CT grew its holdings in shares of Keysight Technologies by 0.4% in the 4th quarter. Bradley Foster & Sargent Inc. CT now owns 13,421 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock worth $2,296,000 after acquiring an additional 57 shares during the period. Sumitomo Life Insurance Co. grew its holdings in Keysight Technologies by 0.4% in the second quarter. Sumitomo Life Insurance Co. now owns 14,996 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock valued at $2,511,000 after purchasing an additional 58 shares during the last quarter. Putnam Investments LLC increased its position in shares of Keysight Technologies by 0.4% in the first quarter. Putnam Investments LLC now owns 19,634 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock valued at $3,170,000 after buying an additional 74 shares in the last quarter. Cumberland Partners Ltd raised its stake in shares of Keysight Technologies by 0.3% during the 1st quarter. Cumberland Partners Ltd now owns 27,875 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock worth $4,501,000 after buying an additional 75 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Czech National Bank lifted its holdings in shares of Keysight Technologies by 0.4% in the second quarter. Czech National Bank now owns 21,088 shares of the scientific and technical instruments companys stock valued at $3,531,000 after purchasing an additional 78 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 81.72% of the companys stock. Get Keysight Technologies alerts: Keysight Technologies Trading Up 1.5 % NYSE:KEYS traded up $2.03 on Wednesday, hitting $136.59. 213,231 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 1,233,512. The stock has a market cap of $24.25 billion, a PE ratio of 22.73, a PEG ratio of 3.33 and a beta of 1.04. Keysight Technologies, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $118.57 and a fifty-two week high of $189.45. The company has a current ratio of 3.66, a quick ratio of 2.93 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.37. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $128.20 and a 200-day moving average of $145.68. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth Keysight Technologies ( NYSE:KEYS Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Monday, November 20th. The scientific and technical instruments company reported $1.99 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.87 by $0.12. Keysight Technologies had a net margin of 19.34% and a return on equity of 28.96%. The firm had revenue of $1.31 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.30 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $2.02 earnings per share. Keysight Technologiess revenue for the quarter was down 9.2% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, equities analysts expect that Keysight Technologies, Inc. will post 6.96 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. Several equities analysts have weighed in on KEYS shares. Robert W. Baird raised their price target on Keysight Technologies from $155.00 to $160.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a research report on Tuesday. Barclays reduced their target price on shares of Keysight Technologies from $144.00 to $134.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday. Morgan Stanley upgraded shares of Keysight Technologies from an equal weight rating to an overweight rating and set a $165.00 price target for the company in a report on Friday, September 15th. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their price objective on shares of Keysight Technologies from $200.00 to $175.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, August 18th. Finally, StockNews.com cut shares of Keysight Technologies from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research note on Thursday, November 16th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, two have issued a hold rating and nine have assigned a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Keysight Technologies currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average target price of $171.18. View Our Latest Report on Keysight Technologies About Keysight Technologies (Free Report) Keysight Technologies, Inc provides electronic design and test solutions to commercial communications, networking, aerospace, defense and government, automotive, energy, semiconductor, electronic, and education industries in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. Its Communications Solutions Group segment provides electronic design automation (EDA) software; radio frequency and microwave test solutions, and related software; hardware and virtual network test platforms and software applications, including data center, routing and switching, software defined networking, security, and encryption; oscilloscopes, logic and serial protocol analyzers, logic-signal sources, arbitrary waveform generators, and bit error rate testers; and optical modulation analyzers, optical component analyzers, optical power meters, and optical laser source solutions, as well as resells refurbished used Keysight equipment. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding KEYS? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:KEYS Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Keysight Technologies Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Keysight Technologies and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Korea Investment CORP boosted its position in Boston Scientific Co. (NYSE:BSX Free Report) by 7.0% in the second quarter, HoldingsChannel reports. The firm owned 1,531,546 shares of the medical equipment providers stock after buying an additional 99,672 shares during the quarter. Korea Investment CORPs holdings in Boston Scientific were worth $82,841,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Several other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of BSX. Employees Retirement System of Texas boosted its position in Boston Scientific by 4.5% in the second quarter. Employees Retirement System of Texas now owns 747,000 shares of the medical equipment providers stock worth $40,405,000 after purchasing an additional 32,000 shares during the last quarter. OPTIMAS CAPITAL Ltd bought a new position in Boston Scientific during the second quarter valued at about $2,895,000. Railway Pension Investments Ltd purchased a new stake in Boston Scientific during the second quarter worth about $9,147,000. Penserra Capital Management LLC raised its position in Boston Scientific by 11,841.0% in the second quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 9,314 shares of the medical equipment providers stock worth $503,000 after acquiring an additional 9,236 shares during the period. Finally, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. boosted its stake in Boston Scientific by 83.1% in the second quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. now owns 182,219 shares of the medical equipment providers stock valued at $9,856,000 after acquiring an additional 82,715 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors own 89.11% of the companys stock. Get Boston Scientific alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets BSX has been the topic of a number of research reports. Robert W. Baird lifted their price target on shares of Boston Scientific from $60.00 to $63.00 and gave the stock an outperform rating in a report on Thursday, September 21st. UBS Group increased their price target on Boston Scientific from $63.00 to $66.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Thursday, September 21st. Citigroup reaffirmed a buy rating and set a $63.00 price objective on shares of Boston Scientific in a report on Thursday, September 21st. BTIG Research lifted their target price on shares of Boston Scientific from $62.00 to $64.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a research note on Thursday, September 21st. Finally, Needham & Company LLC dropped their price target on shares of Boston Scientific from $65.00 to $60.00 and set a buy rating on the stock in a research note on Friday, October 27th. Two research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, fourteen have issued a buy rating and one has issued a strong buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, Boston Scientific currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $60.55. Boston Scientific Price Performance Boston Scientific stock traded up $0.39 during midday trading on Wednesday, hitting $55.71. 1,008,029 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 8,108,936. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $52.14 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $52.36. Boston Scientific Co. has a 52-week low of $43.44 and a 52-week high of $55.83. The company has a market cap of $81.61 billion, a P/E ratio of 67.46, a PEG ratio of 2.16 and a beta of 0.77. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.44, a quick ratio of 0.90 and a current ratio of 1.42. Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, October 26th. The medical equipment provider reported $0.50 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.48 by $0.02. Boston Scientific had a net margin of 8.93% and a return on equity of 15.46%. The company had revenue of $3.53 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $3.48 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the business earned $0.43 earnings per share. Boston Scientifics revenue for the quarter was up 11.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts forecast that Boston Scientific Co. will post 2.01 earnings per share for the current year. Insider Activity In related news, CEO Michael F. Mahoney sold 113,356 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, November 6th. The stock was sold at an average price of $52.51, for a total value of $5,952,323.56. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 1,498,922 shares of the companys stock, valued at $78,708,394.22. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. In other Boston Scientific news, CEO Michael F. Mahoney sold 113,356 shares of Boston Scientific stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, November 6th. The shares were sold at an average price of $52.51, for a total transaction of $5,952,323.56. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer now directly owns 1,498,922 shares of the companys stock, valued at $78,708,394.22. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, EVP Wendy Carruthers sold 11,671 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Friday, September 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $53.95, for a total transaction of $629,650.45. Following the completion of the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 57,058 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $3,078,279.10. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last quarter, insiders have sold 408,996 shares of company stock worth $21,589,497. 0.53% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders. About Boston Scientific (Free Report) Boston Scientific Corporation develops, manufactures, and markets medical devices for use in various interventional medical specialties worldwide. It operates through MedSurg and Cardiovascular segments. The company offers devices to diagnose and treat gastrointestinal and pulmonary conditions; devices to treat various urological and pelvic conditions; implantable cardioverter and implantable cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators; pacemakers and implantable cardiac resynchronization therapy pacemakers; and remote patient management systems. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding BSX? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Boston Scientific Co. (NYSE:BSX Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Boston Scientific Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Boston Scientific and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. MetLife Investment Management LLC reduced its position in U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB Free Report) by 0.7% in the second quarter, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 356,793 shares of the financial services providers stock after selling 2,548 shares during the quarter. MetLife Investment Management LLCs holdings in U.S. Bancorp were worth $11,788,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Several other institutional investors have also recently modified their holdings of the company. Osaic Holdings Inc. grew its position in U.S. Bancorp by 26.0% during the second quarter. Osaic Holdings Inc. now owns 1,363,165 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $33,297,000 after acquiring an additional 281,331 shares during the last quarter. Altrius Capital Management Inc raised its position in U.S. Bancorp by 27.6% in the 2nd quarter. Altrius Capital Management Inc now owns 105,307 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $3,479,000 after purchasing an additional 22,803 shares during the period. WFA of San Diego LLC bought a new stake in U.S. Bancorp in the second quarter worth $91,000. GeoWealth Management LLC purchased a new stake in U.S. Bancorp during the second quarter valued at about $793,000. Finally, Providence Capital Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of U.S. Bancorp by 55.0% during the second quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC now owns 78,560 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $2,596,000 after buying an additional 27,868 shares during the last quarter. 75.40% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors. Get U.S. Bancorp alerts: Insider Transactions at U.S. Bancorp In other news, insider James B. Kelligrew acquired 500 shares of the firms stock in a transaction that occurred on Sunday, August 27th. The stock was bought at an average cost of $54.40 per share, for a total transaction of $27,200.00. Following the acquisition, the insider now directly owns 940 shares in the company, valued at $51,136. The acquisition was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. Over the last 90 days, insiders have bought 654 shares of company stock worth $30,148. Corporate insiders own 0.24% of the companys stock. U.S. Bancorp Price Performance Shares of USB opened at $37.01 on Wednesday. The firms 50-day simple moving average is $33.53 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is $34.22. U.S. Bancorp has a fifty-two week low of $27.27 and a fifty-two week high of $49.95. The stock has a market cap of $57.62 billion, a PE ratio of 11.01, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.74 and a beta of 1.02. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.92, a quick ratio of 0.80 and a current ratio of 0.80. U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, October 18th. The financial services provider reported $1.05 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $0.96 by $0.09. U.S. Bancorp had a return on equity of 15.80% and a net margin of 14.39%. The business had revenue of $7.03 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $7.02 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $1.18 earnings per share. The firms quarterly revenue was up 11.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts anticipate that U.S. Bancorp will post 4.32 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. U.S. Bancorp Announces Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Monday, October 16th. Shareholders of record on Friday, September 29th were issued a $0.48 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, September 28th. This represents a $1.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 5.19%. U.S. Bancorps dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 57.14%. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of equities research analysts have recently weighed in on USB shares. Oppenheimer increased their target price on U.S. Bancorp from $60.00 to $63.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a report on Thursday, November 16th. Jefferies Financial Group cut their target price on shares of U.S. Bancorp from $36.00 to $31.00 in a report on Tuesday, October 10th. The Goldman Sachs Group lowered their price target on shares of U.S. Bancorp from $41.00 to $35.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Monday, October 2nd. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of U.S. Bancorp in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a sell rating on the stock. Finally, Bank of America dropped their target price on shares of U.S. Bancorp from $45.00 to $40.00 in a report on Tuesday, October 10th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, twelve have assigned a hold rating and ten have given a buy rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, U.S. Bancorp currently has an average rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $45.90. View Our Latest Research Report on U.S. Bancorp About U.S. Bancorp (Free Report) U.S. Bancorp, a financial services holding company, provides various financial services to individuals, businesses, institutional organizations, governmental entities and other financial institutions in the United States. It operates in Corporate and Commercial Banking, Consumer and Business Banking, Wealth Management and Investment Services, Payment Services, and Treasury and Corporate Support segments. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding USB? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for U.S. Bancorp Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for U.S. Bancorp and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co NY lowered its stake in Archer-Daniels-Midland Company (NYSE:ADM Free Report) by 3.0% during the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the SEC. The fund owned 23,734 shares of the companys stock after selling 734 shares during the period. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co NYs holdings in Archer-Daniels-Midland were worth $1,793,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC. A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the stock. Great West Life Assurance Co. Can grew its stake in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland by 17.5% in the second quarter. Great West Life Assurance Co. Can now owns 381,638 shares of the companys stock valued at $28,980,000 after acquiring an additional 56,955 shares in the last quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland by 6.6% in the second quarter. ProShare Advisors LLC now owns 2,222,988 shares of the companys stock valued at $167,969,000 after acquiring an additional 138,417 shares in the last quarter. Moran Wealth Management LLC lifted its position in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland by 2.5% during the 2nd quarter. Moran Wealth Management LLC now owns 126,580 shares of the companys stock valued at $9,564,000 after acquiring an additional 3,044 shares during the period. Providence Capital Advisors LLC lifted its position in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland by 0.5% during the 2nd quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC now owns 58,552 shares of the companys stock valued at $4,424,000 after acquiring an additional 286 shares during the period. Finally, Trust Investment Advisors lifted its position in shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland by 4.3% during the 2nd quarter. Trust Investment Advisors now owns 18,011 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,361,000 after acquiring an additional 749 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 77.73% of the companys stock. Get Archer-Daniels-Midland alerts: Archer-Daniels-Midland Stock Up 0.2 % Shares of NYSE:ADM opened at $73.73 on Wednesday. The firm has a market cap of $39.33 billion, a P/E ratio of 10.27, a P/E/G ratio of 1.59 and a beta of 0.83. The company has a quick ratio of 1.07, a current ratio of 1.69 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.33. Archer-Daniels-Midland Company has a 12-month low of $69.31 and a 12-month high of $98.12. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $74.25 and a 200 day simple moving average of $76.76. Archer-Daniels-Midland Announces Dividend Archer-Daniels-Midland ( NYSE:ADM Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 24th. The company reported $1.63 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $1.53 by $0.10. Archer-Daniels-Midland had a net margin of 4.05% and a return on equity of 16.63%. The company had revenue of $21.70 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $23.69 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the company posted $1.86 earnings per share. Archer-Daniels-Midlands revenue for the quarter was down 12.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Analysts predict that Archer-Daniels-Midland Company will post 7.26 earnings per share for the current year. The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, December 6th. Stockholders of record on Wednesday, November 15th will be given a dividend of $0.45 per share. This represents a $1.80 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.44%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Tuesday, November 14th. Archer-Daniels-Midlands dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 25.07%. Wall Street Analyst Weigh In A number of analysts have recently weighed in on the company. Argus upped their target price on Archer-Daniels-Midland from $91.00 to $95.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 1st. Morgan Stanley lowered their price objective on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland from $87.00 to $76.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research report on Monday, October 30th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price objective on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland from $77.00 to $75.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 25th. Stephens lowered their price objective on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland from $80.00 to $75.00 and set an equal weight rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 25th. Finally, StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Archer-Daniels-Midland in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a buy rating on the stock. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat, Archer-Daniels-Midland presently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $92.90. Get Our Latest Analysis on Archer-Daniels-Midland Archer-Daniels-Midland Profile (Free Report) Archer-Daniels-Midland Company procures, transports, stores, processes, and merchandises agricultural commodities, products, and ingredients in the United States, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, and internationally. The company operates in three segments: Ag Services and Oilseeds, Carbohydrate Solutions, and Nutrition. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Archer-Daniels-Midland Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Archer-Daniels-Midland and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co NY lowered its stake in shares of Trane Technologies plc (NYSE:TT Free Report) by 3.0% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The firm owned 9,938 shares of the companys stock after selling 308 shares during the quarter. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co NYs holdings in Trane Technologies were worth $1,901,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Several other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Profund Advisors LLC grew its position in Trane Technologies by 8.6% during the second quarter. Profund Advisors LLC now owns 2,656 shares of the companys stock valued at $508,000 after buying an additional 210 shares during the period. Trust Investment Advisors boosted its position in Trane Technologies by 4.0% during the second quarter. Trust Investment Advisors now owns 8,609 shares of the companys stock worth $1,647,000 after purchasing an additional 328 shares during the period. Edgestream Partners L.P. bought a new position in Trane Technologies during the second quarter worth about $4,923,000. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC boosted its position in Trane Technologies by 0.3% during the second quarter. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC now owns 40,810 shares of the companys stock worth $7,805,000 after purchasing an additional 128 shares during the period. Finally, Johnson Investment Counsel Inc. bought a new position in Trane Technologies during the second quarter worth about $291,000. Institutional investors own 80.66% of the companys stock. Get Trane Technologies alerts: Insider Transactions at Trane Technologies In other news, CEO David S. Regnery sold 17,585 shares of Trane Technologies stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $220.00, for a total value of $3,868,700.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 93,081 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $20,477,820. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. In other news, CEO David S. Regnery sold 17,585 shares of Trane Technologies stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 7th. The stock was sold at an average price of $220.00, for a total value of $3,868,700.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 93,081 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $20,477,820. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, SVP Keith A. Sultana sold 1,637 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction dated Friday, November 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $217.36, for a total value of $355,818.32. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 42,257 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $9,184,981.52. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders sold a total of 32,366 shares of company stock valued at $7,093,065 in the last quarter. 0.39% of the stock is owned by insiders. Trane Technologies Stock Performance NYSE:TT opened at $226.03 on Wednesday. The stock has a market cap of $51.44 billion, a P/E ratio of 26.62, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.86 and a beta of 1.01. The firms fifty day simple moving average is $205.97 and its 200 day simple moving average is $195.70. Trane Technologies plc has a twelve month low of $162.04 and a twelve month high of $229.94. The company has a quick ratio of 0.87, a current ratio of 1.29 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.67. Trane Technologies (NYSE:TT Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Wednesday, November 1st. The company reported $2.79 EPS for the quarter, beating analysts consensus estimates of $2.66 by $0.13. Trane Technologies had a net margin of 11.30% and a return on equity of 31.97%. The firm had revenue of $4.95 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $4.80 billion. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business posted $2.27 EPS. The companys quarterly revenue was up 13.1% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, research analysts predict that Trane Technologies plc will post 9.01 EPS for the current year. Trane Technologies Announces Dividend The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 29th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 1st will be given a $0.75 dividend. This represents a $3.00 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.33%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 30th. Trane Technologiess dividend payout ratio is presently 35.34%. Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of equities analysts have weighed in on the stock. Royal Bank of Canada increased their target price on shares of Trane Technologies from $204.00 to $231.00 and gave the stock a sector perform rating in a research report on Thursday, November 2nd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upgraded shares of Trane Technologies from an underweight rating to a neutral rating and set a $191.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Friday, October 6th. Citigroup raised their price objective on shares of Trane Technologies from $218.00 to $237.00 in a research report on Thursday, August 3rd. Morgan Stanley raised their price objective on shares of Trane Technologies from $231.00 to $234.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Friday, September 22nd. Finally, Wells Fargo & Company cut their price objective on shares of Trane Technologies from $195.00 to $190.00 in a research report on Monday, October 9th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, nine have issued a hold rating and five have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, Trane Technologies presently has an average rating of Hold and an average price target of $207.31. Read Our Latest Analysis on Trane Technologies Trane Technologies Company Profile (Free Report) Trane Technologies plc, together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, sells, and services of solutions for heating, ventilation, air conditioning, custom, and custom and transport refrigeration in Ireland and internationally. It offers air conditioners, exchangers, and handlers; airside and terminal devices; air sourced heat pumps, auxiliary power units; chillers; coils and condensers; gensets; dehumidifiers; ductless; furnaces; home automation products; humidifiers; indoor air quality assessments and related products; large and light commercial unitary products; refrigerant reclamation products; thermostats/controls; transport heater products; variable refrigerant flow products; and water source heat pumps. Further Reading Want to see what other hedge funds are holding TT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Trane Technologies plc (NYSE:TT Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Trane Technologies Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Trane Technologies and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Osaic Holdings Inc. increased its stake in shares of iShares S&P 100 ETF (NYSEARCA:OEF Free Report) by 21.9% during the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 195,684 shares of the companys stock after buying an additional 35,118 shares during the quarter. Osaic Holdings Inc. owned about 0.49% of iShares S&P 100 ETF worth $36,864,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. A number of other large investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in OEF. Bank of New York Mellon Corp grew its position in iShares S&P 100 ETF by 2.5% during the first quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 30,538 shares of the companys stock worth $6,367,000 after buying an additional 734 shares in the last quarter. Baird Financial Group Inc. acquired a new stake in iShares S&P 100 ETF during the first quarter worth approximately $261,000. Oxford Financial Group Ltd. acquired a new stake in iShares S&P 100 ETF during the first quarter worth approximately $115,000. Equitable Holdings Inc. grew its position in iShares S&P 100 ETF by 25.2% during the first quarter. Equitable Holdings Inc. now owns 5,012 shares of the companys stock worth $1,045,000 after buying an additional 1,010 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Laurel Wealth Advisors Inc. acquired a new stake in shares of iShares S&P 100 ETF in the 1st quarter valued at $432,000. Get iShares S&P 100 ETF alerts: iShares S&P 100 ETF Stock Performance Shares of OEF stock opened at $214.76 on Wednesday. The stocks fifty day moving average price is $204.48 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $204.43. The company has a market cap of $8.64 billion, a PE ratio of 18.54 and a beta of 0.99. iShares S&P 100 ETF has a fifty-two week low of $167.20 and a fifty-two week high of $215.83. iShares S&P 100 ETF Company Profile iShares S&P 100 ETF, formerly iShares S&P 100 Index Fund (the Fund), is an exchange-traded fund. The Fund seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the S&P 100 Index (the Index). The Index measures the performance of the large-capitalization sector of the United States equity market and consists of blue chip stocks from diverse industries in the S&P 500 Index. See Also Receive News & Ratings for iShares S&P 100 ETF Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for iShares S&P 100 ETF and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Physicians Realty Trust (NYSE:DOC Get Free Report) has been assigned a consensus recommendation of Hold from the nine brokerages that are currently covering the firm, MarketBeat Ratings reports. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, five have assigned a hold rating and three have given a buy rating to the company. The average 1 year price objective among brokers that have issued ratings on the stock in the last year is $15.70. Several equities research analysts recently commented on DOC shares. Truist Financial reissued a hold rating and set a $15.00 target price on shares of Physicians Realty Trust in a report on Wednesday, August 16th. StockNews.com started coverage on Physicians Realty Trust in a report on Thursday, November 16th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Wells Fargo & Company boosted their target price on Physicians Realty Trust from $14.00 to $15.00 and gave the stock an underweight rating in a report on Monday, August 7th. Finally, Citigroup dropped their target price on Physicians Realty Trust from $15.00 to $14.00 and set a neutral rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, August 22nd. Get Physicians Realty Trust alerts: Read Our Latest Analysis on Physicians Realty Trust Insider Transactions at Physicians Realty Trust Institutional Investors Weigh In On Physicians Realty Trust In other news, SVP Laurie P. Becker sold 22,322 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Thursday, September 14th. The shares were sold at an average price of $13.47, for a total value of $300,677.34. Following the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 55,776 shares of the companys stock, valued at $751,302.72. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink . In related news, Director Albert Black, Jr. purchased 2,264 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, September 12th. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $13.26 per share, with a total value of $30,020.64. Following the completion of the purchase, the director now owns 101,472 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $1,345,518.72. The acquisition was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through the SEC website . Also, SVP Laurie P. Becker sold 22,322 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Thursday, September 14th. The stock was sold at an average price of $13.47, for a total transaction of $300,677.34. Following the completion of the sale, the senior vice president now owns 55,776 shares of the companys stock, valued at $751,302.72. The disclosure for this sale can be found here . 0.79% of the stock is currently owned by company insiders. A number of large investors have recently bought and sold shares of the business. Employees Retirement System of Texas boosted its holdings in Physicians Realty Trust by 39.5% in the third quarter. Employees Retirement System of Texas now owns 212,000 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $2,584,000 after purchasing an additional 60,000 shares in the last quarter. Tudor Investment Corp Et Al bought a new stake in Physicians Realty Trust in the third quarter worth $712,000. Morgan Stanley boosted its holdings in Physicians Realty Trust by 12.5% in the third quarter. Morgan Stanley now owns 1,976,849 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $24,098,000 after purchasing an additional 218,905 shares in the last quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC boosted its holdings in Physicians Realty Trust by 14.5% during the third quarter. Penserra Capital Management LLC now owns 42,813 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $512,000 after acquiring an additional 5,406 shares during the period. Finally, Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV bought a new stake in Physicians Realty Trust during the third quarter valued at about $136,000. 95.51% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors. Physicians Realty Trust Stock Performance DOC opened at $11.15 on Wednesday. The businesss 50 day moving average is $11.69 and its 200-day moving average is $13.25. The stock has a market cap of $2.66 billion, a PE ratio of 58.66, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.67 and a beta of 0.90. The company has a current ratio of 2.85, a quick ratio of 2.85 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.67. Physicians Realty Trust has a twelve month low of $10.52 and a twelve month high of $16.34. Physicians Realty Trust (NYSE:DOC Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Monday, October 30th. The real estate investment trust reported $0.05 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $0.25 by ($0.20). Physicians Realty Trust had a net margin of 8.60% and a return on equity of 1.56%. The business had revenue of $138.50 million for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $133.31 million. During the same period last year, the firm posted $0.26 EPS. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 5.3% on a year-over-year basis. On average, analysts predict that Physicians Realty Trust will post 1 earnings per share for the current year. Physicians Realty Trust Announces Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 17th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, October 3rd were paid a dividend of $0.23 per share. This represents a $0.92 annualized dividend and a yield of 8.25%. The ex-dividend date was Monday, October 2nd. Physicians Realty Trusts dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 484.24%. Physicians Realty Trust Company Profile (Get Free Report Physicians Realty Trust is a self-managed health care real estate company organized to acquire, selectively develop, own, and manage health care properties that are leased to physicians, hospitals, and health care delivery systems. The Company invests in real estate that is integral to providing high quality health care. Recommended Stories Receive News & Ratings for Physicians Realty Trust Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Physicians Realty Trust and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. lowered its position in American Express (NYSE:AXP) by 1.8% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 1,071,438 shares of the payment services companys stock after selling 19,508 shares during the quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. owned about 0.15% of American Express worth $186,645,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other hedge funds and other institutional investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Steward Financial Group LLC grew its position in American Express by 104.9% in the first quarter. Steward Financial Group LLC now owns 211 shares of the payment services companys stock worth $34,000 after acquiring an additional 108 shares in the last quarter. Impact Partnership Wealth LLC purchased a new position in American Express in the second quarter worth $35,000. Addison Advisors LLC boosted its position in American Express by 44.8% during the first quarter. Addison Advisors LLC now owns 239 shares of the payment services companys stock valued at $39,000 after buying an additional 74 shares during the period. Tilia Fiduciary Partners Inc. boosted its position in American Express by 80.7% during the first quarter. Tilia Fiduciary Partners Inc. now owns 300 shares of the payment services companys stock valued at $49,000 after buying an additional 134 shares during the period. Finally, WFA of San Diego LLC purchased a new stake in American Express during the second quarter valued at about $52,000. 83.08% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors. Get American Express alerts: Wall Street Analyst Weigh In Several analysts have issued reports on the stock. Barclays initiated coverage on shares of American Express in a research report on Wednesday, November 15th. They set an overweight rating and a $184.00 price target for the company. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price objective on shares of American Express from $192.00 to $167.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, October 17th. Piper Sandler raised shares of American Express from an underweight rating to a neutral rating and upped their price objective for the company from $150.00 to $151.00 in a research note on Tuesday, October 24th. Piper Sandler Companies raised shares of American Express to a neutral rating and set a $151.00 price target for the company in a research note on Tuesday, October 24th. Finally, Bank of America decreased their price target on shares of American Express from $203.00 to $202.00 in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. Three research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, seven have given a hold rating and nine have given a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, American Express currently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $171.42. Insider Buying and Selling In related news, Director Walter Joseph Clayton III bought 1,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, October 24th. The shares were bought at an average price of $143.93 per share, for a total transaction of $143,930.00. Following the completion of the acquisition, the director now owns 2,000 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $287,860. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at the SEC website. In other news, Vice Chairman Douglas E. Buckminster sold 11,344 shares of American Express stock in a transaction on Wednesday, November 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $158.87, for a total transaction of $1,802,221.28. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 88,376 shares in the company, valued at approximately $14,040,295.12. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this hyperlink. Also, Director Walter Joseph Clayton III purchased 1,000 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, October 24th. The shares were acquired at an average price of $143.93 per share, for a total transaction of $143,930.00. Following the purchase, the director now directly owns 2,000 shares in the company, valued at $287,860. The disclosure for this purchase can be found here. 0.12% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders. American Express Stock Up 0.7 % Shares of NYSE:AXP traded up $1.06 during trading on Wednesday, reaching $163.35. 118,363 shares of the stock traded hands, compared to its average volume of 3,148,403. American Express has a 52-week low of $140.91 and a 52-week high of $182.15. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.70, a quick ratio of 1.60 and a current ratio of 1.60. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $152.08 and a two-hundred day moving average of $160.01. The stock has a market cap of $119.04 billion, a P/E ratio of 15.23, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.02 and a beta of 1.21. American Express (NYSE:AXP Get Free Report) last issued its earnings results on Friday, October 20th. The payment services company reported $3.30 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.96 by $0.34. American Express had a net margin of 13.61% and a return on equity of 30.60%. The company had revenue of $15.38 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $15.36 billion. During the same quarter last year, the company posted $2.47 earnings per share. The firms quarterly revenue was up 13.5% on a year-over-year basis. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that American Express will post 11.2 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. American Express Dividend Announcement The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, November 10th. Investors of record on Friday, October 6th were issued a $0.60 dividend. This represents a $2.40 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.47%. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, October 5th. American Expresss dividend payout ratio is currently 22.51%. About American Express (Free Report) American Express Company, together with its subsidiaries, provides charge and credit payment card products, and travel-related services worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Global Consumer Services Group, Global Commercial Services, and Global Merchant and Network Services. Its products and services include payment and financing products; network services; accounts payable expense management products and services; and travel and lifestyle services. See Also Want to see what other hedge funds are holding AXP? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for American Express (NYSE:AXP Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for American Express Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for American Express and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. decreased its position in iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF (NYSEARCA:IWN Free Report) by 0.1% during the second quarter, HoldingsChannel.com reports. The fund owned 1,408,302 shares of the companys stock after selling 728 shares during the quarter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc.s holdings in iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF were worth $198,289,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. A number of other large investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in IWN. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC boosted its holdings in shares of iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF by 100,352.6% in the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 73,502,207 shares of the companys stock worth $10,192,551,000 after purchasing an additional 73,429,036 shares during the period. Bishop & Co Investment Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF by 14,027.6% in the 2nd quarter. Bishop & Co Investment Management LLC now owns 6,436,537 shares of the companys stock worth $45,714,000 after purchasing an additional 6,390,977 shares during the period. Alaska Permanent Fund Corp purchased a new position in shares of iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF in the 2nd quarter worth approximately $129,043,000. Vaughan Nelson Investment Management L.P. boosted its holdings in shares of iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF by 941.7% in the 2nd quarter. Vaughan Nelson Investment Management L.P. now owns 877,282 shares of the companys stock worth $123,521,000 after purchasing an additional 793,067 shares during the period. Finally, Jane Street Group LLC boosted its holdings in shares of iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF by 136.7% in the 2nd quarter. Jane Street Group LLC now owns 212,000 shares of the companys stock worth $28,864,000 after purchasing an additional 789,244 shares during the period. Get iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF alerts: iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF Price Performance Shares of iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF stock traded up $1.21 on Wednesday, reaching $138.14. The company had a trading volume of 115,623 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,471,240. The firm has a market cap of $11.09 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.40 and a beta of 1.15. The firms 50-day moving average price is $133.52 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $138.40. iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF has a 1 year low of $124.97 and a 1 year high of $157.65. About iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF, formerly Ishares Trust Russel 2000 (the Fund), formerly iShares Russell 2000 Value Index Fund, is an exchange traded fund. The Fund seeks investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Russell 2000 Value Index (the Index). The Index measures the performance of equity securities of Russell 2000 Index issuers with relatively lower price-to-book ratios and lower forecasted growth. Recommended Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding IWN? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF (NYSEARCA:IWN Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. A dying Indigenous man arrives at a healers hut deep in the Brazilian Amazon. He has fled from a gold mine in 1974, amid the economic debacle of the military regime. The healer rubs potions on him, strikes him lightly on the stomach with a green branch and spits water all over his body, which is apparently lifeless. The corpse disappears, leaving only the mans belongings, and at the same time a jabiru enters the room; the long-beaked bird with a stately posture seems to have received the Indigenous mans soul. History and fantasy go hand in hand in this scene of Eureka, Argentine director Lisandro Alonso Martinezs new film, which is being screened at the Gijon International Film Festival in Spain this week. The movie forms part of a new wave of Latin American films that revisit the regions painful past dictatorships, guerrillas, legacies of colonialism with surreal, fantastical twists that are influenced by magical realism. Representative of these movies are the fantasy-horror version of the Chilean dictatorship, as told with Pinochet as a vampire in Pablo Larrains El Conde (2023); the conversation between a filmmaker and Hernan Cortes in a scene in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritus Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022); a revolutionary messiah who returns from the dead to lead a sect during the U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic in Nino Martinez Sosas Liborio (2021); the appearance of a mythological being in the form of a woman in front of chewing gum extractors during the 1920s on the Mexico-Belize border in Yulene Olaizolas Tragic Jungle (2020); the manifestation of a specter before the late-19th-century genocide of the Selknam people in Tierra del Fuego (Chile) in Theo Courts White on White (2019); and the spirits that warn of Colombias 1970s marimba bonanza in Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallegos Birds of Passage (2018). This Latin American cinema rejects period pieces and biopics in favor of fusing reality and supernaturalism to tell the regions past. The fantastical, the break in the space-time continuum, give me playful elements to try cinematographic tools and broaden my range as a filmmaker, Lisandro Alonso Martinez, whose Eureka premiered at Cannes, told EL PAIS. Latin American film production seeks stories from the regions past because of the wounds that remain open in its historical memory in the present. Justice and accountability for the military governments crimes for which there have been exemplary solutions in Argentina, while those responsible have not been tried in countries like Guatemala and Brazil and the unpunished slaughter of Indigenous communities in the name of modernity are among those wounds. For there to be reconciliation, we must talk about that traumatic past that many people and governments do not want to see or seek to erase, argues Paul Schroeder Rodriguez, a professor of Spanish at Amherst College (Massachusetts) and the author of the book Latin American Cinema: A Comparative History. The last chapter focuses on the 21st century and is entitled Shared Memory. In it, he writes: What has been happening in Latin America around the recovery of historical memory is a regional phenomenon (...) The study of memory in the latest cinema has a great deal to tell us about these processes in the region and helps us to answer why no Latin American country has yet managed to fully face the fears and myths that still generate their traumatic pasts. An image from Jayro Bustamantes film 'The Curse of La Llorona.' La casa productora In The Curse of La Llorona (2019), Guatemalan director Jayro Bustamante draws on a local horror legend about the spirit of a woman crying for her children to settle the score for the massacre that the military perpetrated against Quiche Mayans in the 1980s. A fictionalized version of Efrain Rios Montt, the de facto president who ordered the killings of over 200,000 Indigenous people because he believed that they were helping communist guerrillas during Guatemalas civil war, is haunted by the ghost of one of the mothers he murdered along with her children. Genocide is a subject that still causes a lot of pain among the descendants of the victims. Dealing with it as realistically as possible meant sticking my finger in a wound. However, by dressing it up as a legend, I made it more accessible to the victims; magical realism allowed me to tell it in a palatable way, says Bustamante. In White on White, Chilean-Spanish director Theo Court portrays the late-19th-century massacre of the Selknam Indigenous people committed by English landowners interested in Tierra del Fuego. The extermination is seen through the eyes of a photographer hired by an English landowner. Before he immortalizes the slaughter with his plate camera, a feathered being associated with the communitys rituals appears to him. To me, it seemed contradictory that something as magical as that element could give rise to the massacre, a kind of fear of what we dont know and have to annihilate. I didnt want to do something attached to reality because that somehow constricts you as a creator, Court says via video call. The feathered being that appears before the slaughter of the Selknam in Theo Court's White on White. El Viaje Films Colombian director Cristina Gallego concurs: she couldnt shoot a realistic film if she wanted to tell the main characters view of the boom in marijuana trafficking in Birds of Passage. The same was true for Dominican director Nino Martinez in his depiction of local resistance against the invasion of the U.S. Marines in Liborio. Both the Wayuu, the Indigenous group in Colombia that experienced the misfortune of drug trafficking in the 1970s, and the Liboristas, the peasant followers of a healer/leader in Liborio, Dominican Republic, have different perceptions of their surroundings. As Gallego explains, Birds of Passage went from being a historical story to one of magical realism when we began to follow the codes of the Wayuu culture, which is magical, dreamlike and mystical. For his part, Martinez notes that the Liboristas, like much of the peasantry in the Caribbean, construct reality in a different way than urban people, who have a more Cartesian and objective mentality. They dont differentiate between the lived world and the dream world. Indigenous stories told by Indigenous people By showing how they perceive life, Indigenous peoples and native communities do not just participate in these films as actors; they also construct their own history. In Birds of Passage, Wayunaiki is spoken throughout the film, and Gallego says that stories from the oral tradition allowed her to get to the heart of the matter. Over 300 extras in The Curse of La Llorona are Mayans, seeking justice for their ancestors, while Liboristas are also part of Martinezs film. In Eureka, Alonso Martinez focuses on the Pine Ridge Native American reservation and its inhabitants in the second of the films three stories. In the first tale, a cowboy played by Viggo Mortensen searches for his daughter in the Wild West in the 19th century. I wanted to continue with the native theme that was already in my previous work. The first thing was to know who portrayed them and the western [genre] came to mind. Then [in the second story], I take the audience to a place where they observe the consequences of the colonization of the West: a community that lives in confinement, without documents or law, where the average life expectancy is 50 years and the suicide rate is rampant, Alonso Martinez says. In his last film, Jauja (2014), the Buenos Airess native had already waded into the regions past, introducing fantastical elements. Schroeder Rodriguez points out that, historically, native peoples experiences and perspectives have been told by others. Indigenista [a pro-Indigenous movement] cinema, which took off in the 1930s, focused on these communities but [the stories were] told by mestizo and Creole authors. They were called ventriloquists, he explains. With the advent of digital cinema and its concomitant democratization, the scholar says, Indigenous peoples are now the creators of their own films, which circulate among them and are valued according to their own criteria. One of the premonitions in the form of dreams in Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerras 'Birds of Passage.' Emanuel_Rojas The Colombian film Kings of the World (2022), which won the Concha de Oro prize, does not go back to a specific episode in the region in the 20th century. But it does reflect the consequences of a historical event the Colombian armed conflict to depict the victims of forced displacement: five street kids seek to recover the land of one of their grandmothers through the Victims and Land Restitution Law. The actors are natives; they come from disadvantaged and conflictive environments, and they are fluent in the language typical of the streets of Medellin. According to the descriptions of the characters, we selected native actors. They all come from difficult and humble backgrounds, says director Laura Mora. She is currently directing three episodes of the series Cien anos de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude). For Mora, the crucial point of the Colombian conflict is land. There has been an absurd number of people who have lost their land to landowners, elites or drug traffickers. When the Havana peace accords came about in 2016, land was one of the most difficult issues; [its] an issue that very few people want to take responsibility for, she observes. Her film is full of magical and dreamlike moments, where reality imitates the hypnotic nature of Bajo Cauca, Colombia. Magical realism, a controversial term Although it originated in German post-expressionist painting, magical realism has always been associated with Latin American fiction, primarily literature. Some consider the term to be a trivializing, export-oriented label. Martinez does not believe that the word magic has a positive connotation: I would not denigrate these ways of understanding realities that are different for others by using the word magic, because that implies a trick, a deception. For his part, Court prefers to speak of the marvelous strange or the everyday strange. Actor Vicente Santos as the titular character in Nino Martinez's film 'Liborio.' timothy k fitzgerald On the other hand, for Bustamante, magical realism beyond being an artistic movement seems to be a way of life that we Latin Americans use in our daily lives. Gallego agrees that the esoteric and the magical are typical of the region, an inheritance from Indigenous peoples. Mora says that its a form of survival, a way to face the painful and bloody reality that the region is experiencing, because without imagination and beauty, existence becomes impossible. ProShare Advisors LLC raised its holdings in Crown Castle Inc. (NYSE:CCI Free Report) by 2.5% in the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 127,794 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock after purchasing an additional 3,169 shares during the quarter. ProShare Advisors LLCs holdings in Crown Castle were worth $14,561,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of CCI. Providence Capital Advisors LLC increased its position in Crown Castle by 2.0% in the second quarter. Providence Capital Advisors LLC now owns 21,408 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $2,439,000 after purchasing an additional 411 shares during the period. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC lifted its holdings in Crown Castle by 2.7% in the second quarter. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC now owns 88,327 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $10,064,000 after buying an additional 2,282 shares during the period. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. boosted its stake in Crown Castle by 4.9% in the second quarter. Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. now owns 142,288 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock valued at $16,213,000 after acquiring an additional 6,702 shares during the last quarter. Great Lakes Advisors LLC grew its stake in shares of Crown Castle by 13.8% during the second quarter. Great Lakes Advisors LLC now owns 6,793 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $774,000 after purchasing an additional 825 shares during the period. Finally, Russell Investments Group Ltd. grew its position in shares of Crown Castle by 9.9% during the 2nd quarter. Russell Investments Group Ltd. now owns 358,047 shares of the real estate investment trusts stock worth $40,802,000 after buying an additional 32,192 shares during the period. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 90.27% of the companys stock. Get Crown Castle alerts: Crown Castle Stock Performance Crown Castle stock opened at $103.60 on Wednesday. The business has a 50 day moving average of $94.21 and a 200-day moving average of $104.03. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.28, a current ratio of 0.44 and a quick ratio of 0.44. Crown Castle Inc. has a 1 year low of $84.72 and a 1 year high of $153.98. The company has a market capitalization of $44.93 billion, a P/E ratio of 28.94, a P/E/G ratio of 2.57 and a beta of 0.66. Crown Castle Dividend Announcement Crown Castle ( NYSE:CCI Get Free Report ) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, October 19th. The real estate investment trust reported $0.61 EPS for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $1.69 by ($1.08). The business had revenue of $1.67 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.70 billion. Crown Castle had a return on equity of 21.85% and a net margin of 21.93%. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $1.85 EPS. On average, equities research analysts predict that Crown Castle Inc. will post 7.14 earnings per share for the current year. The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 29th. Stockholders of record on Friday, December 15th will be given a $1.565 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, December 14th. This represents a $6.26 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 6.04%. Crown Castles dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 174.86%. Analyst Ratings Changes A number of analysts recently issued reports on CCI shares. Bank of America cut Crown Castle from a buy rating to a neutral rating and set a $115.00 target price for the company. in a research note on Thursday, August 10th. Royal Bank of Canada downgraded shares of Crown Castle from an outperform rating to a sector perform rating and lowered their price objective for the company from $125.00 to $100.00 in a report on Monday, October 16th. Wells Fargo & Company reduced their target price on shares of Crown Castle from $110.00 to $100.00 and set an underweight rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, October 17th. Morgan Stanley lowered their price target on shares of Crown Castle from $151.00 to $113.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Monday, October 16th. Finally, Scotiabank initiated coverage on Crown Castle in a research note on Friday, October 13th. They issued a sector perform rating and a $110.00 price target on the stock. Two analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, six have given a hold rating and eight have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company presently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average target price of $125.56. Get Our Latest Report on CCI About Crown Castle (Free Report) Crown Castle owns, operates and leases more than 40,000 cell towers and approximately 85,000 route miles of fiber supporting small cells and fiber solutions across every major U.S. market. This nationwide portfolio of communications infrastructure connects cities and communities to essential data, technology and wireless service bringing information, ideas and innovations to the people and businesses that need them. Recommended Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CCI? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Crown Castle Inc. (NYSE:CCI Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Crown Castle Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Crown Castle and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. ProShare Advisors LLC trimmed its holdings in shares of Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX Free Report) by 11.4% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 112,550 shares of the oil and gas companys stock after selling 14,457 shares during the period. ProShare Advisors LLCs holdings in Phillips 66 were worth $10,735,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Other institutional investors have also added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC lifted its position in shares of Phillips 66 by 100,843.8% in the 4th quarter. Moneta Group Investment Advisors LLC now owns 9,979,304 shares of the oil and gas companys stock worth $1,038,646,000 after purchasing an additional 9,969,418 shares during the period. Barclays PLC boosted its position in Phillips 66 by 416.9% during the second quarter. Barclays PLC now owns 7,451,470 shares of the oil and gas companys stock valued at $710,721,000 after purchasing an additional 6,009,826 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank purchased a new position in shares of Phillips 66 in the 4th quarter worth approximately $364,237,000. Wellington Management Group LLP grew its holdings in Phillips 66 by 62.1% in the first quarter. Wellington Management Group LLP now owns 7,188,087 shares of the oil and gas companys stock worth $620,979,000 after purchasing an additional 2,753,700 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Bank of Montreal Can purchased a new position in Phillips 66 in the second quarter worth $109,888,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 71.83% of the companys stock. Get Phillips 66 alerts: Insiders Place Their Bets In other news, VP Joseph Scott Pruitt sold 7,000 shares of the businesss stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, September 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $117.02, for a total value of $819,140.00. Following the completion of the sale, the vice president now directly owns 6,682 shares in the company, valued at $781,927.64. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. In related news, EVP Timothy D. Roberts sold 12,970 shares of Phillips 66 stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, September 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $124.41, for a total value of $1,613,597.70. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 80,009 shares in the company, valued at approximately $9,953,919.69. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available at this link. Also, VP Joseph Scott Pruitt sold 7,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, September 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $117.02, for a total value of $819,140.00. Following the transaction, the vice president now directly owns 6,682 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $781,927.64. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Over the last 90 days, insiders have sold 50,770 shares of company stock worth $6,158,614. 4.57% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders. Phillips 66 Price Performance Shares of NYSE PSX opened at $117.41 on Wednesday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.58, a current ratio of 1.29 and a quick ratio of 0.96. The stock has a market capitalization of $51.66 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 7.08, a PEG ratio of 0.41 and a beta of 1.34. The firms 50 day simple moving average is $115.50 and its 200-day simple moving average is $107.63. Phillips 66 has a 12 month low of $89.74 and a 12 month high of $125.19. Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Friday, October 27th. The oil and gas company reported $4.63 EPS for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $4.78 by ($0.15). Phillips 66 had a net margin of 5.05% and a return on equity of 23.32%. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $6.46 EPS. Analysts expect that Phillips 66 will post 15.45 EPS for the current year. Phillips 66 Dividend Announcement The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 1st. Investors of record on Friday, November 17th will be issued a $1.05 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 16th. This represents a $4.20 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 3.58%. Phillips 66s payout ratio is 25.33%. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades A number of research firms have recently weighed in on PSX. Wolfe Research raised Phillips 66 from a peer perform rating to an outperform rating and set a $146.00 price objective for the company in a research report on Tuesday, October 31st. Piper Sandler dropped their price target on Phillips 66 from $138.00 to $134.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a research note on Thursday, October 5th. Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. upgraded shares of Phillips 66 from a hold rating to a buy rating and lifted their target price for the stock from $115.00 to $130.00 in a research note on Monday, October 30th. Bank of America boosted their target price on shares of Phillips 66 from $141.00 to $143.00 and gave the stock a neutral rating in a research report on Monday, September 18th. Finally, Mizuho decreased their price target on shares of Phillips 66 from $131.00 to $116.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a report on Friday, October 6th. Four analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eleven have issued a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $132.50. View Our Latest Research Report on PSX About Phillips 66 (Free Report) Phillips 66 operates as an energy manufacturing and logistics company in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Midstream, Chemicals, Refining, and Marketing and Specialties (M&S). The Midstream segment transports crude oil and other feedstocks; delivers refined petroleum products to market; provides terminaling and storage services for crude oil and refined petroleum products; transports, stores, fractionates, exports, and markets natural gas liquids; provides other fee-based processing services; and gathers, processes, transports, and markets natural gas. Read More Want to see what other hedge funds are holding PSX? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX Free Report). Receive News & Ratings for Phillips 66 Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Phillips 66 and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. lessened its holdings in shares of Quanta Services, Inc. (NYSE:PWR Free Report) by 2.4% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 684,741 shares of the construction companys stock after selling 16,736 shares during the period. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. owned 0.47% of Quanta Services worth $134,517,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also made changes to their positions in PWR. Osaic Holdings Inc. raised its position in shares of Quanta Services by 2,026.3% during the 2nd quarter. Osaic Holdings Inc. now owns 1,344,871 shares of the construction companys stock worth $11,136,000 after acquiring an additional 1,281,621 shares in the last quarter. Norges Bank purchased a new position in Quanta Services during the 4th quarter worth approximately $180,853,000. FMR LLC grew its stake in Quanta Services by 19.7% during the 1st quarter. FMR LLC now owns 4,905,283 shares of the construction companys stock worth $817,416,000 after buying an additional 806,157 shares during the last quarter. Great Lakes Advisors LLC purchased a new position in Quanta Services during the 1st quarter worth approximately $118,223,000. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada grew its stake in Quanta Services by 52.2% during the 1st quarter. Royal Bank of Canada now owns 1,492,323 shares of the construction companys stock worth $196,405,000 after buying an additional 511,508 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 87.86% of the companys stock. Get Quanta Services alerts: Insider Buying and Selling In related news, EVP Donald Wayne sold 5,000 shares of Quanta Services stock in a transaction on Friday, September 1st. The stock was sold at an average price of $210.92, for a total transaction of $1,054,600.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the executive vice president now directly owns 41,323 shares of the companys stock, valued at $8,715,847.16. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. 1.30% of the stock is currently owned by insiders. Analyst Ratings Changes A number of research firms recently issued reports on PWR. Stifel Nicolaus restated a buy rating and set a $212.00 price target on shares of Quanta Services in a research note on Thursday, November 16th. The Goldman Sachs Group upgraded Quanta Services from a neutral rating to a buy rating and lowered their target price for the company from $214.00 to $211.00 in a research note on Wednesday, November 8th. Credit Suisse Group lifted their target price on Quanta Services from $201.00 to $238.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research note on Friday, August 4th. DA Davidson lifted their target price on Quanta Services from $170.00 to $190.00 and gave the company a neutral rating in a research note on Monday, August 7th. Finally, Robert W. Baird reiterated an outperform rating and issued a $219.00 target price on shares of Quanta Services in a research note on Thursday, September 14th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven 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 $209.17. Check Out Our Latest Research Report on Quanta Services Quanta Services Price Performance PWR stock traded up $0.31 during midday trading on Wednesday, hitting $183.67. 53,862 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 925,390. The stocks 50-day moving average price is $178.42 and its 200-day moving average price is $187.51. The stock has a market cap of $26.69 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 39.10 and a beta of 1.11. Quanta Services, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $134.61 and a fifty-two week high of $212.82. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.66, a quick ratio of 1.57 and a current ratio of 1.61. Quanta Services Announces Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Friday, October 13th. Investors of record on Monday, October 2nd were issued a dividend of $0.08 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Friday, September 29th. This represents a $0.32 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.17%. Quanta Servicess dividend payout ratio is presently 6.82%. Quanta Services Company Profile (Free Report) Quanta Services, Inc provides infrastructure solutions for the electric and gas utility, renewable energy, communications, and pipeline and energy industries worldwide. The company's Electric Power Infrastructure Solutions segment engages in the design, procurement, construction, upgrade, repair, and maintenance of electric power transmission and distribution infrastructure and substation facilities; installation, maintenance, and upgrade of electric power infrastructure projects; installation of smart grid technologies on electric power networks; and design, installation, maintenance, and repair of commercial and industrial wirings. Recommended Stories Receive News & Ratings for Quanta Services Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Quanta Services and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. RBO & Co. LLC trimmed its position in Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO Free Report) by 56.1% during the second quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the SEC. The fund owned 95,588 shares of the companys stock after selling 122,069 shares during the period. RBO & Co. LLCs holdings in Altria Group were worth $4,330,000 as of its most recent filing with the SEC. Other hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of the company. Loomis Sayles & Co. L P bought a new stake in Altria Group in the first quarter valued at about $25,000. Northwest Bank & Trust Co bought a new stake in Altria Group in the second quarter valued at about $27,000. WFA of San Diego LLC bought a new stake in Altria Group in the second quarter valued at about $30,000. Ellevest Inc. grew its stake in Altria Group by 346.7% in the first quarter. Ellevest Inc. now owns 670 shares of the companys stock valued at $30,000 after acquiring an additional 520 shares during the period. Finally, Meeder Asset Management Inc. acquired a new position in Altria Group in the first quarter valued at about $35,000. 58.94% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors. Get Altria Group alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets MO has been the subject of several recent research reports. Citigroup reduced their price objective on Altria Group from $46.50 to $45.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 18th. StockNews.com cut Altria Group from a buy rating to a hold rating in a research report on Friday, October 27th. UBS Group reduced their price objective on Altria Group from $40.40 to $39.20 and set a sell rating for the company in a research report on Friday, October 6th. Bank of America dropped their target price on Altria Group from $49.00 to $47.00 in a report on Monday, October 9th. Finally, Jefferies Financial Group upped their target price on Altria Group from $55.00 to $56.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Friday, October 13th. One equities research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, three have assigned a hold rating and two have issued a buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $47.53. Insider Transactions at Altria Group In other news, Director Robert Matthews Davis bought 1,200 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, November 6th. The shares were bought at an average price of $40.50 per share, for a total transaction of $48,600.00. Following the completion of the purchase, the director now owns 8,473 shares in the company, valued at $343,156.50. The acquisition was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this link. 0.07% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders. Altria Group Trading Up 0.6 % NYSE:MO traded up $0.26 on Wednesday, hitting $41.02. The companys stock had a trading volume of 2,292,732 shares, compared to its average volume of 7,925,031. The stock has a fifty day moving average of $41.72 and a two-hundred day moving average of $43.64. The firm has a market capitalization of $72.55 billion, a P/E ratio of 8.30, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 2.72 and a beta of 0.65. Altria Group, Inc. has a one year low of $39.06 and a one year high of $51.57. Altria Group (NYSE:MO Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Thursday, October 26th. The company reported $1.28 earnings per share for the quarter, missing analysts consensus estimates of $1.29 by ($0.01). The firm had revenue of $5.28 billion for the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $5.43 billion. Altria Group had a negative return on equity of 237.91% and a net margin of 35.58%. Altria Groups revenue for the quarter was down 2.5% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $1.28 EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts anticipate that Altria Group, Inc. will post 4.95 EPS for the current year. Altria Group Increases Dividend The company also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Tuesday, October 10th. Stockholders of record on Friday, September 15th were paid a dividend of $0.98 per share. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, September 14th. This represents a $3.92 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 9.56%. This is a positive change from Altria Groups previous quarterly dividend of $0.94. Altria Groups dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 79.84%. Altria Group Profile (Free Report) Altria Group, Inc, through its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells smokeable and oral tobacco products in the United States. The company provides cigarettes primarily under the Marlboro brand; cigars and pipe tobacco principally under the Black & Mild brand; moist smokeless tobacco products and snus products under the Copenhagen, Skoal, Red Seal, and Husky brands; and on! oral nicotine pouches. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Altria Group Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Altria Group and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Jacobs Solutions (NYSE:J Get Free Report) had its target price decreased by Royal Bank of Canada from $157.00 to $151.00 in a report released on Wednesday, Benzinga reports. The firm currently has an outperform rating on the stock. Royal Bank of Canadas price objective suggests a potential upside of 22.25% from the companys previous close. J has been the topic of several other reports. TD Cowen lifted their price target on Jacobs Solutions from $128.00 to $143.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Thursday, August 10th. Citigroup raised their target price on shares of Jacobs Solutions from $144.00 to $155.00 and gave the stock a buy rating in a report on Wednesday, August 9th. Credit Suisse Group cut their target price on Jacobs Solutions from $153.00 to $151.00 and set an outperform rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, August 9th. StockNews.com started coverage on Jacobs Solutions in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating for the company. Finally, HSBC began coverage on Jacobs Solutions in a report on Friday, September 15th. They set a hold rating and a $149.00 price objective on the stock. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and seven have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, Jacobs Solutions has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $148.44. Get Jacobs Solutions alerts: Read Our Latest Stock Report on Jacobs Solutions Jacobs Solutions Stock Performance Shares of NYSE J traded down $1.56 during midday trading on Wednesday, hitting $123.52. 355,252 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 637,142. Jacobs Solutions has a twelve month low of $109.00 and a twelve month high of $141.16. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.48, a current ratio of 1.46 and a quick ratio of 1.46. The firm has a market cap of $15.55 billion, a P/E ratio of 21.33, a PEG ratio of 1.64 and a beta of 0.83. The stocks 50 day moving average price is $134.18 and its 200-day moving average price is $127.17. Jacobs Solutions (NYSE:J Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Tuesday, November 21st. The company reported $1.90 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $2.02 by ($0.12). Jacobs Solutions had a return on equity of 14.30% and a net margin of 4.65%. The business had revenue of $4.29 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $4.21 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company posted $1.80 EPS. The companys revenue for the quarter was up 10.5% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities research analysts anticipate that Jacobs Solutions will post 7.33 EPS for the current year. Insider Activity In other news, insider Steven J. Demetriou sold 6,666 shares of the stock in a transaction on Monday, October 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $138.97, for a total transaction of $926,374.02. Following the transaction, the insider now owns 567,960 shares in the company, valued at approximately $78,929,401.20. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website. Insiders sold a total of 19,998 shares of company stock worth $2,722,394 in the last three months. 1.00% of the stock is owned by insiders. Hedge Funds Weigh In On Jacobs Solutions Several hedge funds have recently bought and sold shares of J. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan Trust Fund bought a new position in shares of Jacobs Solutions in the first quarter valued at approximately $125,000. Panagora Asset Management Inc. lifted its position in shares of Jacobs Solutions by 22.6% during the 1st quarter. Panagora Asset Management Inc. now owns 3,472 shares of the companys stock worth $478,000 after purchasing an additional 641 shares during the last quarter. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS boosted its stake in Jacobs Solutions by 5.7% during the 1st quarter. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Empls Retrmt SYS now owns 17,290 shares of the companys stock valued at $2,383,000 after purchasing an additional 933 shares during the period. Cibc World Market Inc. increased its position in Jacobs Solutions by 4.8% in the 1st quarter. Cibc World Market Inc. now owns 14,801 shares of the companys stock worth $2,040,000 after buying an additional 680 shares during the period. Finally, Vontobel Holding Ltd. boosted its position in shares of Jacobs Solutions by 5.6% in the first quarter. Vontobel Holding Ltd. now owns 8,445 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,179,000 after acquiring an additional 448 shares during the period. 84.77% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Jacobs Solutions Company Profile (Get Free Report) Jacobs Solutions Inc provides consulting, technical, scientific, and project delivery services for the government and private sectors in the United States, Europe, Canada, India, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Mexico, the Middle East, and Africa. It operates through three segments: Critical Mission Solutions, People & Places Solutions, and PA Consulting. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Jacobs Solutions Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Jacobs Solutions and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. StockNews.com downgraded shares of Scorpio Tankers (NYSE:STNG Free Report) from a buy rating to a hold rating in a report issued on Saturday morning. A number of other research firms have also recently weighed in on STNG. Bank of America cut Scorpio Tankers from a buy rating to a neutral rating and dropped their price target for the company from $60.00 to $45.00 in a research note on Friday, July 21st. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft raised their target price on shares of Scorpio Tankers from $55.00 to $61.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Thursday, September 21st. Finally, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their price target on Scorpio Tankers from $83.00 to $73.00 and set an overweight rating for the company in a report on Tuesday, November 14th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $68.00. Get Scorpio Tankers alerts: View Our Latest Report on STNG Scorpio Tankers Stock Down 1.9 % NYSE:STNG opened at $55.20 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $3.01 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 4.60, a P/E/G ratio of 0.16 and a beta of 0.34. Scorpio Tankers has a 52-week low of $40.34 and a 52-week high of $64.20. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.29, a quick ratio of 0.82 and a current ratio of 0.83. The stocks fifty day moving average price is $54.71 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $49.79. Scorpio Tankers (NYSE:STNG Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, November 9th. The shipping company reported $1.91 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.60 by $0.31. The company had revenue of $291.20 million for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $277.96 million. Scorpio Tankers had a net margin of 46.07% and a return on equity of 27.56%. The businesss quarterly revenue was down 40.6% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period last year, the firm posted $4.29 earnings per share. On average, analysts anticipate that Scorpio Tankers will post 10.41 EPS for the current year. Scorpio Tankers Increases Dividend The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 15th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 30th will be given a dividend of $0.35 per share. The ex-dividend date is Wednesday, November 29th. This is a positive change from Scorpio Tankerss previous quarterly dividend of $0.25. This represents a $1.40 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.54%. Scorpio Tankerss payout ratio is currently 8.35%. Institutional Investors Weigh In On Scorpio Tankers A number of institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in STNG. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC raised its stake in Scorpio Tankers by 32.7% during the 2nd quarter. Allspring Global Investments Holdings LLC now owns 3,106 shares of the shipping companys stock worth $147,000 after acquiring an additional 766 shares during the period. Strs Ohio raised its holdings in shares of Scorpio Tankers by 280.6% in the first quarter. Strs Ohio now owns 11,800 shares of the shipping companys stock worth $664,000 after buying an additional 8,700 shares during the period. Epoch Investment Partners Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Scorpio Tankers by 12.2% during the first quarter. Epoch Investment Partners Inc. now owns 22,535 shares of the shipping companys stock valued at $1,269,000 after purchasing an additional 2,450 shares during the period. Empirical Finance LLC bought a new position in Scorpio Tankers in the 2nd quarter worth about $432,000. Finally, Alterna Wealth Management Inc. bought a new position in Scorpio Tankers in the first quarter worth approximately $242,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 66.82% of the companys stock. Scorpio Tankers Company Profile (Get Free Report) Scorpio Tankers Inc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the seaborne transportation of refined petroleum products in the shipping markets worldwide. As of March 23, 2023, its fleet consisted of 113 owned, finance leased, or bareboat chartered-in tankers, including 39 LR2, 60 MR, and 14 Handymax with a weighted average age of approximately 7.2 years. Read More Receive News & Ratings for Scorpio Tankers Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Scorpio Tankers and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc. boosted its stake in shares of The TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE:TJX Free Report) by 3.5% in the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The firm owned 4,069 shares of the apparel and home fashions retailers stock after acquiring an additional 137 shares during the period. Retirement Planning Co of New England Inc.s holdings in TJX Companies were worth $345,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. Other large investors also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Adero Partners LLC raised its position in shares of TJX Companies by 4.5% in the second quarter. Adero Partners LLC now owns 2,807 shares of the apparel and home fashions retailers stock valued at $238,000 after buying an additional 121 shares during the last quarter. First Business Financial Services Inc. raised its position in shares of TJX Companies by 0.7% in the second quarter. First Business Financial Services Inc. now owns 18,064 shares of the apparel and home fashions retailers stock valued at $1,532,000 after buying an additional 121 shares during the last quarter. Chatham Capital Group Inc. raised its position in shares of TJX Companies by 1.7% in the second quarter. Chatham Capital Group Inc. now owns 7,627 shares of the apparel and home fashions retailers stock valued at $647,000 after buying an additional 125 shares during the last quarter. Alpha Financial Partners LLC raised its position in shares of TJX Companies by 2.5% in the first quarter. Alpha Financial Partners LLC now owns 5,337 shares of the apparel and home fashions retailers stock valued at $418,000 after buying an additional 129 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Tradition Wealth Management LLC raised its position in shares of TJX Companies by 3.7% in the first quarter. Tradition Wealth Management LLC now owns 3,672 shares of the apparel and home fashions retailers stock valued at $288,000 after buying an additional 132 shares during the last quarter. 89.28% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get TJX Companies alerts: Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth TJX has been the subject of a number of recent research reports. Barclays increased their target price on shares of TJX Companies from $95.00 to $101.00 and gave the company an overweight rating in a research report on Tuesday, August 15th. Citigroup upped their price objective on shares of TJX Companies from $90.00 to $103.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Thursday, August 17th. StockNews.com started coverage on shares of TJX Companies in a report on Thursday, October 5th. They issued a buy rating for the company. BMO Capital Markets upped their price objective on shares of TJX Companies from $85.00 to $95.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a report on Thursday, August 17th. Finally, Bank of America upped their price objective on shares of TJX Companies from $94.00 to $102.00 and gave the company a buy rating in a report on Thursday, August 17th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and fourteen have given a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, TJX Companies currently has an average rating of Moderate Buy and an average price target of $98.11. Insider Transactions at TJX Companies In other news, Chairman Carol Meyrowitz sold 64,817 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $91.13, for a total transaction of $5,906,773.21. Following the sale, the chairman now owns 135,050 shares of the companys stock, valued at $12,307,106.50. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through the SEC website. In related news, CEO Ernie Herrman sold 35,907 shares of the firms stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $89.29, for a total value of $3,206,136.03. Following the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 595,191 shares of the companys stock, valued at $53,144,604.39. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, Chairman Carol Meyrowitz sold 64,817 shares of the firms stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $91.13, for a total transaction of $5,906,773.21. Following the completion of the sale, the chairman now directly owns 135,050 shares in the company, valued at approximately $12,307,106.50. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Corporate insiders own 0.13% of the companys stock. TJX Companies Stock Up 1.4 % Shares of TJX traded up $1.22 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $90.29. 1,581,675 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 5,033,206. The company has a market cap of $103.30 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 25.51, a P/E/G ratio of 2.12 and a beta of 0.91. The TJX Companies, Inc. has a fifty-two week low of $72.92 and a fifty-two week high of $93.78. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42, a quick ratio of 0.47 and a current ratio of 1.19. The stocks 50-day moving average is $89.57 and its 200-day moving average is $85.95. TJX Companies (NYSE:TJX Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, November 15th. The apparel and home fashions retailer reported $1.03 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.99 by $0.04. The business had revenue of $13.27 billion for the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $13.09 billion. TJX Companies had a net margin of 7.85% and a return on equity of 62.67%. The businesss quarterly revenue was up 9.0% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $0.86 earnings per share. On average, sell-side analysts anticipate that The TJX Companies, Inc. will post 3.75 earnings per share for the current fiscal year. TJX Companies Announces Dividend The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, November 30th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 9th will be given a dividend of $0.3325 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, November 8th. This represents a $1.33 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.47%. TJX Companiess dividend payout ratio is presently 37.68%. TJX Companies Profile (Free Report) The TJX Companies, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, operates as an off-price apparel and home fashions retailer in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. It operates through four segments: Marmaxx, HomeGoods, TJX Canada, and TJX International. The company sells family apparel, including footwear and accessories; home fashions, such as home basics, furniture, rugs, lighting products, giftware, soft home products, decorative accessories, tabletop, and cookware, as well as expanded pet, and gourmet food departments; jewelry and accessories; and other merchandise. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for TJX Companies Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for TJX Companies and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Ovintiv (NYSE:OVV Get Free Report) had its target price cut by analysts at Wells Fargo & Company from $51.00 to $49.00 in a report released on Wednesday, Benzinga reports. The brokerage currently has an equal weight rating on the stock. Wells Fargo & Companys price target would suggest a potential upside of 11.46% from the stocks current price. A number of other brokerages have also recently issued reports on OVV. Scotiabank increased their price objective on Ovintiv from $49.00 to $53.00 and gave the stock a sector perform rating in a report on Monday, October 16th. National Bankshares raised their price objective on shares of Ovintiv from $59.00 to $69.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a research report on Thursday, October 12th. Citigroup raised shares of Ovintiv from a neutral rating to a buy rating and boosted their price objective for the company from $48.00 to $52.00 in a research note on Wednesday. Bank of America increased their target price on shares of Ovintiv from $62.00 to $66.00 in a research note on Wednesday, September 27th. Finally, Morgan Stanley boosted their price target on shares of Ovintiv from $47.00 to $49.00 and gave the company an equal weight rating in a research report on Tuesday, October 17th. Eight equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and eight have assigned a buy rating to the companys stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $56.61. Get Ovintiv alerts: Read Our Latest Report on Ovintiv Ovintiv Stock Performance Institutional Trading of Ovintiv Shares of OVV traded down $0.71 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $43.96. The stock had a trading volume of 1,179,560 shares, compared to its average volume of 3,406,182. The firm has a market cap of $12.00 billion, a P/E ratio of 4.36, a PEG ratio of 0.52 and a beta of 2.74. Ovintiv has a 52 week low of $32.07 and a 52 week high of $57.13. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.57, a current ratio of 0.45 and a quick ratio of 0.45. The business has a fifty day moving average price of $47.17 and a 200-day moving average price of $43.02. A number of hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in OVV. Dodge & Cox increased its holdings in shares of Ovintiv by 24.8% in the 1st quarter. Dodge & Cox now owns 27,016,020 shares of the companys stock worth $974,738,000 after purchasing an additional 5,361,244 shares in the last quarter. BlackRock Inc. lifted its stake in Ovintiv by 52.6% during the 2nd quarter. BlackRock Inc. now owns 26,756,052 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,018,603,000 after acquiring an additional 9,221,114 shares during the period. FMR LLC boosted its holdings in shares of Ovintiv by 2.3% during the 3rd quarter. FMR LLC now owns 22,877,626 shares of the companys stock valued at $1,088,289,000 after acquiring an additional 507,562 shares during the last quarter. EnCap Energy Capital Fund XI L.P. purchased a new position in shares of Ovintiv during the second quarter valued at approximately $559,852,000. Finally, EnCap Energy Capital Fund X L.P. bought a new position in Ovintiv during the second quarter valued at approximately $380,527,000. 98.30% of the stock is owned by institutional investors. Ovintiv Company Profile (Get Free Report) Ovintiv Inc, together with its subsidiaries, explores, develops, produces, and markets natural gas, oil, and natural gas liquids in the United States and Canada. It operates through USA Operations, Canadian Operations, and Market Optimization segments. The company's principal assets include Permian in west Texas and Anadarko in west-central Oklahoma; and Montney in northeast British Columbia and northwest Alberta. Featured Articles Receive News & Ratings for Ovintiv Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Ovintiv and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Geode Capital Management LLC grew its position in Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC Free Report) by 0.5% during the second quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the SEC. The firm owned 69,071,445 shares of the financial services providers stock after purchasing an additional 324,823 shares during the period. Geode Capital Management LLC owned approximately 1.84% of Wells Fargo & Company worth $2,940,412,000 at the end of the most recent quarter. A number of other hedge funds have also modified their holdings of WFC. Carson Advisory Inc. increased its position in Wells Fargo & Company by 1.6% in the 2nd quarter. Carson Advisory Inc. now owns 13,371 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $571,000 after acquiring an additional 217 shares during the period. Main Street Research LLC increased its position in Wells Fargo & Company by 1.2% in the 2nd quarter. Main Street Research LLC now owns 19,615 shares of the financial services providers stock valued at $837,000 after acquiring an additional 226 shares during the period. First Bank & Trust increased its position in Wells Fargo & Company by 1.0% during the 2nd quarter. First Bank & Trust now owns 23,900 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $1,020,000 after purchasing an additional 233 shares during the period. Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank increased its position in Wells Fargo & Company by 4.6% during the 4th quarter. Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank now owns 5,625 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $232,000 after purchasing an additional 245 shares during the period. Finally, Nicolet Advisory Services LLC increased its position in Wells Fargo & Company by 2.3% during the 1st quarter. Nicolet Advisory Services LLC now owns 11,859 shares of the financial services providers stock worth $449,000 after purchasing an additional 262 shares during the period. 72.47% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Wells Fargo & Company alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets WFC has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. UBS Group boosted their target price on Wells Fargo & Company from $51.00 to $53.00 in a research report on Thursday, October 12th. StockNews.com initiated coverage on Wells Fargo & Company in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a hold rating on the stock. Jefferies Financial Group dropped their target price on Wells Fargo & Company from $48.00 to $43.00 in a research report on Tuesday, October 10th. HSBC initiated coverage on Wells Fargo & Company in a report on Thursday, September 7th. They issued a hold rating and a $45.00 price target on the stock. Finally, Morgan Stanley upped their price target on Wells Fargo & Company from $49.00 to $52.00 and gave the stock an overweight rating in a report on Tuesday, August 1st. Nine investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating, seven have given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus target price of $48.31. Wells Fargo & Company Trading Up 0.2 % Shares of Wells Fargo & Company stock traded up $0.08 during trading hours on Wednesday, reaching $42.68. 3,039,527 shares of the companys stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 19,284,994. Wells Fargo & Company has a 52-week low of $35.25 and a 52-week high of $48.84. The firm has a market capitalization of $155.00 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 9.20, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.83 and a beta of 1.17. The company has a fifty day moving average of $40.95 and a 200-day moving average of $41.81. The company has a current ratio of 0.87, a quick ratio of 0.87 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.17. Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings results on Friday, October 13th. The financial services provider reported $1.39 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates of $1.24 by $0.15. Wells Fargo & Company had a return on equity of 11.18% and a net margin of 17.06%. The company had revenue of $20.86 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $20.09 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $1.30 EPS. The businesss revenue for the quarter was up 6.6% compared to the same quarter last year. Sell-side analysts forecast that Wells Fargo & Company will post 5.06 EPS for the current fiscal year. Wells Fargo & Company Dividend Announcement The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, December 1st. Shareholders of record on Friday, November 3rd will be paid a dividend of $0.35 per share. This represents a $1.40 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.28%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 2nd. Wells Fargo & Companys dividend payout ratio is presently 30.24%. Insiders Place Their Bets In other Wells Fargo & Company news, Director Richard K. Davis purchased 3,500 shares of Wells Fargo & Company stock in a transaction on Thursday, November 9th. The shares were bought at an average price of $41.22 per share, with a total value of $144,270.00. Following the purchase, the director now directly owns 4,244 shares in the company, valued at approximately $174,937.68. The acquisition was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Corporate insiders own 0.07% of the companys stock. Wells Fargo & Company Profile (Free Report) Wells Fargo & Company, a diversified financial services company, provides banking, investment, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance products and services in the United States and internationally. It operates through four segments: Consumer Banking and Lending; Commercial Banking; Corporate and Investment Banking; and Wealth and Investment Management. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Wells Fargo & Company Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Wells Fargo & Company and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. WFA of San Diego LLC acquired a new position in The Charles Schwab Co. (NYSE:SCHW Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor acquired 684 shares of the financial services providers stock, valued at approximately $39,000. A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the business. Key Financial Inc increased its position in 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 in the last quarter. AlphaMark Advisors LLC bought a new position in shares of Charles Schwab during the 2nd quarter valued at approximately $28,000. Global Trust Asset Management LLC increased its holdings in Charles Schwab by 633.8% in 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 in the last quarter. SJS Investment Consulting Inc. raised 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 worth $31,000 after acquiring an additional 507 shares during the period. Finally, Worth Asset Management LLC purchased a new position in Charles Schwab during the first quarter valued at approximately $32,000. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 81.61% of the companys stock. Get Charles Schwab alerts: Analysts Set New Price Targets Several brokerages recently issued reports on SCHW. Jefferies Financial Group decreased their target price on Charles Schwab from $66.00 to $62.00 in a research note on Tuesday, October 10th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. lowered their target price on shares of Charles Schwab from $92.00 to $85.00 and set an overweight rating on the stock in a report on Tuesday, October 17th. StockNews.com began coverage on shares of Charles Schwab in a research report on Thursday, October 5th. They set a sell rating for the company. Raymond James lifted their price target on shares of Charles Schwab from $72.00 to $76.00 and gave the company an outperform rating in a report on Tuesday, October 17th. Finally, JMP Securities reissued a market outperform rating and set a $77.00 price objective on shares of Charles Schwab in a report on Tuesday, October 17th. Three investment analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, two have given a hold rating and eleven have issued a buy rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat, the stock has an average rating of Moderate Buy and a consensus price target of $69.91. Charles Schwab Stock Down 1.0 % NYSE SCHW opened at $55.99 on Wednesday. The company has a quick ratio of 0.66, a current ratio of 0.66 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.87. The Charles Schwab Co. has a 52 week low of $45.00 and a 52 week high of $86.63. The firm has a market capitalization of $99.20 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 18.66, a PEG ratio of 2.50 and a beta of 0.94. The company has a fifty day moving average of $53.87 and a two-hundred day moving average of $56.40. Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW Get Free Report) last released its quarterly earnings results on Monday, October 16th. The financial services provider reported $0.77 EPS for the quarter, topping analysts consensus estimates 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 during the quarter, compared to analysts expectations of $4.62 billion. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $1.10 EPS. The firms revenue for the quarter was down 16.3% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, analysts predict that The Charles Schwab Co. will post 3.16 earnings per share for the current year. Charles Schwab Announces Dividend The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, November 24th. Stockholders of record on Friday, November 10th will be issued a $0.25 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 9th. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 1.79%. Charles Schwabs payout ratio is 33.33%. Insider Buying and Selling In other Charles Schwab news, Director Paula A. Sneed sold 6,918 shares of the companys stock in a transaction on Tuesday, October 24th. The stock was sold at an average price of $49.98, for a total value of $345,761.64. Following the transaction, the director now owns 112,398 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $5,617,652.04. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through this hyperlink. In other Charles Schwab news, Director Paula A. Sneed sold 6,918 shares of the companys stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, October 24th. The shares were sold at an average price of $49.98, for a total value of $345,761.64. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 112,398 shares in the company, valued at approximately $5,617,652.04. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, General Counsel Peter J. Morgan III sold 8,000 shares of Charles Schwab stock in a transaction that occurred on Tuesday, August 29th. The shares were sold at an average price of $59.61, for a total transaction of $476,880.00. Following the sale, the general counsel now directly owns 8,014 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $477,714.54. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders sold 21,824 shares of company stock valued at $1,214,937. Insiders own 6.60% of the companys stock. Charles Schwab Company Profile (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. See Also Receive News & Ratings for Charles Schwab Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Charles Schwab and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. Opinion articles written in the style of their author. These texts are to be based on verified facts and must be respectful towards people, even though their actions may be criticized. All opinion articles written by individuals from outside the staff of EL PAIS shall feature, along with the authors name (regardless of their greater or lesser renown), a footer stating their office, academic title, political affiliation (if any) and main occupation, or the occupation related to the topic being assessed Twilight Zone: The Movie was an episodic film that, in 1983, brought together the directors who changed commercial cinema in the 1970s and 1980s: Steven Spielberg, John Landis, George Miller and Joe Dante. The first story, directed by Landis, was titled Time Out and narrated the tale of a racist and anti-Semitic man who, without further explanation, travels back in time and finds himself persecuted by the SS as a Jew in Vichy France, and then transformed into a Black man about to be lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. He ends up on a cattle train heading east in an unknown direction. I would not want those who believe that we live in a dictatorship or who shout racist and fascist slogans to be subjected to a similar lesson, but it wouldnt hurt them to look back a little either. Europe, for centuries, has suffered the most horrendous satrapies and its inhabitants have been subjected to state violence Spain lived under a dictatorship until 1975 although some of those protesting in recent days in Madrid seem to long for a return to it. Mary Beards latest book, Emperor of Rome, is an exciting journey through power in ancient Rome, but also a reflection on power in general, across all eras and at all times. It is also about the terror in which not only Roman citizens lived, but also the whole imperial court: it was never clear if one was going to get out alive from a dinner with the emperor. But there is no need to go back to such a remote era, when a slave could be thrown into a pool to be eaten by lampreys for breaking a glass, something Beard tells us the aristocratic Pollio did. Frank Dikotter, an expert on communist China and Maos cultural revolution, which cost the lives of millions of people, in 2020 published a book titled Dictators: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century, in which he reviews the lives of eight satraps from the last century, each one more bloodthirsty, egomaniacal, and ruthless. Demonstrations in Bucharest against the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989. R. Sigheti (Reuters) / C. Platiau (Reuters) The Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (1918-1989) destroyed an important part of the historical center of Bucharest and bankrupted his country to build himself a gigantic palace; he installed the largest mass surveillance system in Eastern Europe; he repressed the Hungarian minority; he condemned most of the Romanian population to live in misery. He did not even need to be particularly cruel, although he was when he needed to be: most of the dissidents had been killed during the ruthless rule of his mentor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Between 1949 and 1951, he carried out the so-called Pitesti experiment, one of the peaks of cruelty in the 20th century. It consisted of tortured prisoners being turned into torturers. The ego of Ceausescu and his wife Elena knew no bounds: they received all possible academic degrees, had a legion of diplomats to obtain foreign decorations (or to invent them), gave themselves the most extravagant names Star next to another star in the celestial arc for example and it was mandatory for bookstores to stock their works. An old joke went that in Romania, only books by the Ceausescus or about the Ceausescus were sold. State television devoted half of its programming to the couple and the titles of the special programs produced about them were very suggestive: The Era of Nicolae Ceausescu, Twenty Years of Socialist Achievements. To disagree strongly with a government and the laws it promotes is one thing. To say that we live in a dictatorship is to ignore the cold, poverty, and terror in which millions of people lived for hundreds of years and in which many millions still live. It is an affront to the victims of those regimes, to those who suffer today under constant threat to their lives, their property, and their families. Perhaps it is not necessary to go as far as the character in Twilight Zone: The Movie a few seconds in a real dictatorship is enough to prove that there are things that, no matter how many times they are repeated, are still nonsense. Wills Financial Group Inc. grew its holdings in Lockheed Martin Co. (NYSE:LMT Free Report) by 1.8% in the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 20,843 shares of the aerospace companys stock after buying an additional 374 shares during the quarter. Lockheed Martin accounts for 4.9% of Wills Financial Group Inc.s investment portfolio, making the stock its 4th largest position. Wills Financial Group Inc.s holdings in Lockheed Martin were worth $9,596,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. Other large investors have also made changes to their positions in the company. Argent Trust Co raised its stake in Lockheed Martin by 1.6% in the 1st quarter. Argent Trust Co now owns 33,538 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $15,854,000 after purchasing an additional 535 shares during the last quarter. Stock Yards Bank & Trust Co. lifted its position in Lockheed Martin by 1.8% during the second quarter. Stock Yards Bank & Trust Co. now owns 14,026 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $6,457,000 after buying an additional 245 shares in the last quarter. Red Wave Investments LLC grew its holdings in Lockheed Martin by 3.3% in the 2nd quarter. Red Wave Investments LLC now owns 729 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $336,000 after buying an additional 23 shares in the last quarter. Park National Corp OH increased its stake in shares of Lockheed Martin by 41.1% in the 2nd quarter. Park National Corp OH now owns 46,614 shares of the aerospace companys stock worth $21,460,000 after acquiring an additional 13,567 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Fulcrum Equity Management boosted its position in shares of Lockheed Martin by 69.5% during the 2nd quarter. Fulcrum Equity Management now owns 756 shares of the aerospace companys stock valued at $348,000 after acquiring an additional 310 shares during the last quarter. 74.26% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Get Lockheed Martin alerts: Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities research analysts recently issued reports on the stock. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft began coverage on shares of Lockheed Martin in a research report on Wednesday, September 27th. They set a hold rating and a $435.00 price objective for the company. Jefferies Financial Group reduced their price target on shares of Lockheed Martin from $505.00 to $455.00 and set a hold rating on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, October 4th. Citigroup lowered their price objective on Lockheed Martin from $555.00 to $540.00 and set a buy rating for the company in a research report on Wednesday, October 18th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut their target price on Lockheed Martin from $495.00 to $481.00 and set a neutral rating for the company in a research note on Wednesday, October 18th. Finally, Morgan Stanley decreased their price target on Lockheed Martin from $532.00 to $510.00 and set an equal weight rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, October 18th. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, ten have given a hold rating and five have assigned a buy rating to the stock. According to MarketBeat.com, Lockheed Martin presently has a consensus rating of Hold and a consensus price target of $484.07. Lockheed Martin Stock Up 0.4 % Shares of NYSE LMT traded up $1.98 during mid-day trading on Wednesday, hitting $450.13. The company had a trading volume of 388,521 shares, compared to its average volume of 1,243,307. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.86, a current ratio of 1.36 and a quick ratio of 1.16. The company has a market capitalization of $111.68 billion, a PE ratio of 16.37, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.90 and a beta of 0.60. The businesss 50-day simple moving average is $433.75 and its 200 day simple moving average is $445.75. Lockheed Martin Co. has a 1-year low of $393.77 and a 1-year high of $508.10. Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT Get Free Report) last posted its earnings results on Tuesday, October 17th. The aerospace company reported $6.77 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $6.67 by $0.10. The firm had revenue of $16.88 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $16.73 billion. Lockheed Martin had a return on equity of 75.46% and a net margin of 10.29%. Lockheed Martins revenue for the quarter was up 1.8% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $6.87 earnings per share. On average, analysts predict that Lockheed Martin Co. will post 27.19 earnings per share for the current year. Lockheed Martin Increases Dividend The firm 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 $3.15 dividend. This represents a $12.60 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 2.80%. This is a boost from Lockheed Martins previous quarterly dividend of $3.00. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 30th. Lockheed Martins payout ratio is presently 43.84%. About Lockheed Martin (Free Report) Lockheed Martin Corporation, a security and aerospace company, engages in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of technology systems, products, and services worldwide. It operates through four segments: Aeronautics, Missiles and Fire Control, Rotary and Mission Systems, and Space. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Lockheed Martin Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Lockheed Martin and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter. This combo photo shows primary school student Pan Wenxiang, 9, posing for a photo (L) and Pan learning singing songs of the Dong ethnic group during a training course (R) in Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, July 13, 2023.[Xinhua/Huang Xiaobang] NANNING, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) The signature embroidery with a centuries-long history of the Dong ethnic group and their modern farmer paintings are breathing new life into Dong people's intangible cultural heritages while bringing locals considerable incomes. Dong people mainly live in China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Hunan Province and Guizhou Province. Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County, which sits in a mountainous area at the junction of Hunan, Guangxi and Guizhou, is a densely populated county for Dong people. The county, with over half of its residents from the Dong ethnic group, has preserved various ancient distinctive handicrafts. Among the cultural heritages is the Dong embroidery, a combination of paper-cutting and flower embroidery skills that has existed for nearly 1,000 years. In the past, due to the poor traffic infrastructure, young generations in the county preferred to work outside their hometown, leaving the place in grinding poverty and the Dong embroidery lacking inheritors. However, the local government reached out a helping hand, building an inheritance base for the antique craft with training courses and a complete sales network for the embroidery products set up. Wei Qinghua and her daughter Qin Guizhen co-founded the Qing Hua Embroidery Workshop, dedicated to the inheritance and further promotion of the Dong embroidery. They integrate the Dong embroidery art into decorative rings, earrings, bracelets, and other ornaments. Now, their handicrafts are also sold online, winning the hearts of young consumers across China. The two also traveled to the United Kingdom, the Republic of Korea, and other foreign countries and regions to display their charmful embroidery. Their products have participated in various fairs and expos, including the China-ASEAN Expo, and have been exported to Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia. Women learn embroidery at a training class in Guyi Township of Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, June 16, 2022. [Xinhua/Lu Boan] "Our embroiderers are constantly improving their skills, replacing ordinary cotton yarns with threads of brighter colors. Their adaption has made the patterns even more colorful than before," said Wei Qinghua. Nowadays, the embroiderers spend their spare time on the items, which helps them earn more than 2,000 yuan (about 280 U.S. dollars) each month per person, she added. Over the years, her workshop has trained more than 2,500 embroiderers, creating more than 300 jobs in the county. Besides the ancient handicrafts, Sanjiang is also giving its traditional farmer paintings a modern touch. Local Dong farmers love to draw things based on their daily lives and production activities. And now, their hobby has proved to be lucrative. The Museum of Dong Paintings in Sanjiang displays many colorful farmer paintings with rich contents and scenes. The fans, porcelain, scarves, and other derivatives inspired by the artworks draw visitors' attention. "We often invite teachers to teach us how to paint better and take our painters to local communities, villages, and schools to pass on their painting skills," said Wu Fanyu, founder of a local art gallery and also a representative inheritor of Sanjiang's farmer paintings. Wu added there are several public welfare training sessions held every year, and now many children are getting to know and learn the farmer paintings. The Dong people had lived in relatively isolated mountains and river valleys for thousands of years. Not until 2014, when a high-speed railway began to run through the country, did the county become a sought-after tourist attraction. For the locals, people-to-people exchanges, protection and inheritance efforts, and innovations during the art process have all contributed to the ethnic county's rural revitalization in modern days. (Source: Xinhua) The 2023 Wuzhen Theater Festival recently kicked off in Wuzhen, Tongxiang, Jiaxing, east China's Zhejiang Province. The festival showcased 87 performances selected from 28 specially invited plays from 11 countries and regions. Eighteen performances were staged during the festival's Emerging Theater Artists' Competition. Additionally, there were 12 Wuzhen Dialogues, 12 workshops, 27 reading sessions, six major exhibitions, and over 2,000 carnivals. Photo shows the Wuzhen Carnival of the 2023 Wuzhen Theater Festival in Wuzhen, Tongxiang, Jiaxing, east China's Zhejiang Province. [Photo from the official account of the Wuzhen Theater Festival on WeChat] What sparks would fly when the ancient town of Wuzhen meets theater and tradition encounters modernity? Since its establishment 10 years ago, the Wuzhen Theater Festival has nurtured local talents in various aspects such as theater construction, stage design, theater services, and brand promotion. More importantly, it has strengthened the local community's capability in the theater business. In 2016, Andi, who studied drama performance, returned to his hometown Wuzhen and founded a small theater group called Utopian Youth Drama Club. In 2016, the group performed an interactive drama themed with the pawnshop culture of Wuzhen during a Carnival of the Wuzhen Theater Festival. In the following two years, it brought to the festival a segment of Chinese cross talk on intangible cultural heritage. "The Wuzhen Theater Festival provides us with a platform for learning and communication," Andi said. "Without the festival, I wouldn't have started my career in theater, and I couldn't even imagine being able to make a living by drama." The Zhaoming Academy, a historical site situated on the north side of Xizha Street in the Xizha scenic area, Wuzhen, enjoys a long history. Today, with sound maintenance and protection, the Zhaoming Academy has become a tourist attraction and also serves as a performance venue during the Wuzhen Theater Festival. Wuzhen is steeped in cultural relics and historic sites that showcase its rich history and heritage. Chen Xianghong, initiator of the Wuzhen Theater Festival and president of Wuzhen Tourism Co., Ltd., said that Wuzhen possesses a wealth of historical and cultural assets and the Wuzhen Theater Festival has further lifted the artistic vibe in the town. Photo shows a market of the 2023 Wuzhen Theater Festival in Wuzhen, Tongxiang, Jiaxing, east China's Zhejiang Province. [Photo from the official account of the Wuzhen Theater Festival on WeChat] Over the past 10 years, the Wuzhen Theater Festival has been continuously developing. Its Wuzhen Carnival has turned bridges, streets, and alleys into stages and theaters, bringing the art of drama to more audiences who have never stepped into a theater before. This year, the Wuzhen Carnival was hosted in the public spaces, on the rivers, and even in the air above the Xizha scenic area, featuring a variety of performance art forms, including parades, installation art, improvisational performances, multimedia, and more. In addition, the inclusion of music, film, trendy toys, installations, reading, exhibitions, and markets has made the festival more diverse and open. "The theater becomes a part of Wuzhen, and Wuzhen becomes a stage for theater," Chen commented. The Wuzhen Theater Festival, with its unique charm, has gradually integrated into the local lifestyle. Gao Yunchao, a skilled craftsman at a lantern workshop in the Xizha scenic area, was a volunteer for the second Wuzhen Theater Festival. "It was my first close encounter with drama, dance, and other forms of art, and it was quite fascinating," Gao said. Starting from the third Wuzhen Theater Festival, he became an apprentice at the lantern workshop. The place in front of the workshop happened to be a stage of the Wuzhen Carnival, and it became a prime spot for Gao to watch the performances. Over the years, he has watched many performances such as shadow puppetry, sketch comedy, and contemporary dance in the workshop, and growing from an apprentice to a skilled craftsman. Photo shows the Wuzhen ancient town scenic area in Tongxiang, Jiaxing, east China's Zhejiang Province. [People's Daily Online/Yuan Xinyu] Over the past 10 years, the Wuzhen Theater Festival has nurtured a multitude of local audiences. Visiting Wuzhen in October to watch plays has become a cherished tradition for many locals. Everyone was talking about drama during the festival, from homestay owners to chefs, and from taxi drivers to young mothers. Ji Mengting, a resident of Wuzhen, has parents who run a homestay in the Xizha scenic area. The family of three has been attending the Wuzhen Theater Festival since its first edition. In her eyes, the festival is an annual theatrical extravaganza that not only boosts local tourism but also allows the locals to experience a variety of artistic styles. As Wuzhen becomes more and more international, it is attracting more and more international talents. Wei Zhehao, who had worked in the tourism industry in the UK for eight years, returned to China in 2020 to work at a university in Jiaxing and is currently on assignment at the Wuzhen scenic area. In his view, Wuzhen has two major brands, the Wuzhen Theater Festival and the World Internet Conference, making it an internationalized ancient town in China. He believes the hosting of the Wuzhen Theater Festival has not only brought positive impacts on Wuzhen's economy, culture, and education, but has also brought about significant changes to Wuzhen in rural tourism and brand image building. Every year, Wuzhen attracts people from all over the world to visit, invest, and settle down. Chen said the theater festival provides a new idea for the development of small towns and rural revitalization. "Some people say that the Wuzhen Theater Festival is a mirror reflecting a cultural pursuit that belongs to Chinese small towns in the process of contemporary urbanization. It is referred to as a new rural development model," Chen noted. "Wuzhen has evolved from a tourist town to a cultural town, and now it has entered a new stage of development. This is also a manifestation of the strength of small towns," he added. (Source: People's Daily Online) NANCHANG, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) At the 2023 Nanchang Air Show, the Pioneer Team from Italy provided the audience with a wonderful aerobatic performance. Accompanied by joyful music, four planes flew about the sky with green, white and red trails of smoke streaming behind. The 2023 China Aviation Industry Conference and Nanchang Air Show was held in east China's Jiangxi Province from Oct. 27 to 29. Six teams representing the highest level of aerobatic performance from home and abroad took turns to show off their skills. In addition to two Chinese aerobatic teams, there were the Aerosuperbatics Wingwalkers, the Airborne Pyrotechnics, and the Global Stars Aerobatic Team, all from Britain, and the Pioneer Team from Italy performing mid-air ballet for the crowds. Corrado Rusalen, the leader of the Pioneer Team, arrived in Nanchang nearly a week in advance to do some intensive training, becoming familiar with the venue and coordinating with various departments. The aircraft had been disassembled for transport to Nanchang by container ship, so he arrived last Sunday to start the process of re-assembly. This is Rusalen's sixth time performing in China, and he has grown to love the experience. "Coming to China again is like meeting old friends. When we fly a plane up into the sky, it's just like embracing our friends," he said. Since the Pioneer Team was established in 2005, it has performed in more than 20 countries, including Japan, Spain and France, with a total of over 300 performances so far. This year, Rusalen participated in the show with his wife Silvia Rappo, who is also the youngest woman pilot on the team. "She flies in the number-two position, and it's not common to find teams with a woman in the flight formation," he said proudly. "She's my wife in daily life, and my left wing during flight." During the daytime, the Pioneer Team made colorful patterns in the sky with trails of smoke. At sunset, the team set off flash bombs and wing fireworks to make the show more spectacular. Their performance this year prompted cheers and applause from the crowd. Rusalen said that he first met Rappo when she came to the company where he used to work to buy a plane for personal use. They fell in love and now share their lives as both colleagues and spouses. "Aerobatics was like Cupid, bringing me and my wife together," he said. At the show, Rusalen also felt happy to reunite with flight teams from other countries. He said that coming to China to perform has provided him the opportunity to make friends with more pilots from other countries. "We get in touch even when we're not performing in a show, and we send messages and cooperate with each other," he said. Looking to the future, Rusalen and Rappo intend to keep putting on air displays around the world. "We'll continue to fly to the best of our ability, so that more people can experience the charm of aerobatic performances," Rappo said. (Source: Xinhua) Xi'an is the starting point of the ancient Silk Road. The trade route, established more than 2,000 years ago, linked China, Central Asia and Europe. Xi'an has long attracted people from countries along the Silk Road to move there to study and/or do business. These foreigners, who have taken root in Xi'an, have helped form a bond that has brought Xi'an and their countries, along the Silk Road, closer through economic, trade and cultural exchanges. Mambetova Elnura, from Issyk-Kul, in Central Asia's Kyrgyzstan, is one of the foreigners who consider Xi'an to be their second home. Elnura, whose Chinese name is Ye Liya, has been living in Xi'an since 2015. In 2018, she and her husband, Chao Yonglin, a Xi'an native, established a cross-border, e-commerce company that conducts international trade and cultural exchanges. Love for Ancient City Elnura has loved both the Chinese language and Chinese culture since she was a child. She studied the Chinese language at Kyrgyz National University named after Jusup Balasagyn, between 2008-2012. After she graduated, in 2012, with a bachelor's degree, she worked as a Chinese-language teacher at the university. In 2015, she moved to Xian, to begin her master's degree, in business administration, at Chang'an University. "Xi'an, formerly known as Chang'an, presents a successful blend of history and modernity. I fell in love with the city when I first arrived. What impresses me most is the Xi'an Ancient City Wall, situated in the center of the city. The wall represents the long history and profound culture of the city, and it is a witness to the development of the city," Elnura says. She still remembers the first time she visited Tang West Market Museum, where she saw a map of the ancient Silk Road. "The winding route passed through my home country, and my hometown. I learned relevant historical records showed Suyab Town (Ak-Beshim Ruin, in Kyrgyzstan), an important city on the ancient Silk Road, was the birthplace of Li Bai (701-762), a great poet during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Monk Xuan Zang (602-664) might have visited my hometown. I never thought China and Kyrgyzstan had such close ties in ancient times," Elnura says. In June 2016, Chang'an University organized a "silk road" delegation of students to visit Yanliang, known as China Aviation City. It was during that activity that Elnura met Chao. "I never imagined that I would marry a foreigner. But when love comes, nationality doesn't matter at all. My husband is optimistic and hardworking, and he takes good care of our family," Elnura says. Entrepreneurial Dream "I am both a participant and a beneficiary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In Xi'an, I have achieved family happiness and career prosperity," Elnura says. As the BRI continues to progress, Elnura and her husband's company continues to develop steadily. They mainly conduct import and export business with enterprises in Central Asian countries. "We sell Chinese goods, such as clothes, shoes, socks, toys, electronic products and new-energy vehicles, to Central Asian countries, and we import Kyrgyz-made specialty products, including honey, flour, beef and mutton. Chinese products, of high quality and with reasonable prices, are popular in my home country, and the Kyrgyz-made products are also well-received in the Chinese market," Elnura explains. Elnura says their cross-border, e-commerce business has benefited greatly from the Chang'an China-Europe freight-train service, which began operating in November 2013. Chang'an China-Europe freight trains, which depart from or arrive in Xi'an, have made a great contribution to the building of an important channel for international trade, especially given its high efficiency and low cost. Some 77,000 China-Europe freight-train trips have been made during the past 10 years, with stops in 217 cities in 25 European countries, indicate statistics released by the National Development and Reform Commission in September. In February, the first direct flight between Xi'an and Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, was launched by China Southern Airlines. "It takes just over four hours for us to travel between the two cities," Elnura says. She believes the route will boost cross-border tourism in Central Asia, and, in turn, will facilitate deeper exchanges between China and Central Asia. "We plan to develop a cross-border tourism business in the future. I believe, along with the deepening of BRI and the complete linkage of passenger flight routes from Xi'an to the five countries in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia will become popular tourist destinations for Chinese," Elnura says. Elnura is currently studying for her Ph.D., in Chinese linguistics, at Shaanxi Normal University, in Xi'an. Her research focus is the overseas spread of Chinese culture. "Kyrgyzstan was one of the first countries to support and participate in the BRI. It is the BRI that has changed my life and made my entrepreneurial dream come true. I would like to build a bridge of people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and Kyrgyzstan, and contribute to the friendship between the two peoples," Elnura says. Photos Supplied by Interviewee (Women of China English Monthly October 2023 issue) Sam Altman at the APEC summit in San Francisco, California on November 16, 2023. CARLOS BARRIA (REUTERS) It looks like a chapter in one of the most dramatic Silicon Valley soap operas of 2023 is ending, at least for now. OpenAI confirmed on Tuesday night that Sam Altman, one of its founders, is returning as CEO. The announcement comes just five days after the executive, one of the most significant players in the artificial intelligence boom in the United States, was fired by its board of directors and then signed on by Microsoft, one of the companys shareholders. The return of the entrepreneur has led to a restructuring of the companys board of directors. Through a message on X (formerly Twitter), it was announced that the new board will be made up of some of the most important figures in Silicon Valley. Among them is Bret Taylor, one of the CEOs of Salesforce, with experience in Twitter before the arrival of Elon Musk; the economist Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration, and Adam DAngelo, CEO of Quora and the only director to remain in the position after days of tension following the initial departure of Altman. The company has admitted on social media that there is an agreement, but all is not yet said and done. We are collaborating to figure out the details, OpenAI wrote in its message, published around 10 p.m. U.S. West Coast time. The company had faced a lot of pressure from its investors, mainly Microsoft, which has a $13 billion stake in OpenAI, to bring Altman back. The pressure didnt just come from the world of finance. OpenAI employees and engineers signed a letter supporting the CEO after his surprise dismissal on Friday afternoon. The document, signed by 770 workers, demanded Altmans return to the companys board. The message by OpenAI has been viewed as a white flag after days of conflict in Silicon Valley. Many of those affected, including Greg Brockman, the companys former president, and its chief technology officer Mira Murati, have congratulated the company for backtracking on the decision made last week. Brockman tendered his resignation on Friday after the board demoted him to a non-executive position, and the news rocked Silicon Valley. On Tuesday he also announced his return to the San Francisco-based company. Altman also made statements on social media. I love OpenAI, and everything ive done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. When i decided to join Microsoft on Sunday evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and with Satyas support, im looking forward to returning to openai, and building on our strong partnership with Microsoft, he tweeted. He was alluding to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who wrote his own message of encouragement following news of Altmans reinstatement. The company had appointed Emmett Shear as CEO on Monday to replace Altman. The new executives profile was very different from that of OpenAIs founder, as he was a member of the camp of experts who believe that the unmonitored development of artificial intelligence could even lead to the end of humanity. Shear, 40, had made his career mainly on Twitch, the social video network. However, he says Altmans return to the company he founded was not bad news for him. I am deeply pleased with this outcome after 72 intense hours of work, Shear, who has considered himself part of the solution, said on social media. Several organizations are hosting free Thanksgiving meals, and other community events for Thanksgiving throughout the Local 6 area. Weve compiled a list of events to keep on your radar this holiday. Kentucky Kuttawa Kuttawa Independent Church is hosting a free Thanksgiving lunch from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 23. The event will happen at 98 Lakeshore Drive. Dine in or drive-thru options are available for the lunch, and anyone is welcome. To order a meal, call 270-625-2582. Paducah Paducah Community Kitchen is hosting a thanksgiving feast from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 23. You can come into the kitchen to eat, or a drive-thru pick-up area will also be available. The kitchen is located at 1237 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. For more information you can call 270-575-3400. West Kentucky Fellowship of Christian Athletes to host annual Turkey Trot The West Kentucky Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Edward Jones is hosting the 9th annual turkey trot 5K and 10K on Thursday, Nov. 23. Illinois Carbondale Newman Catholic Student Center to host Thanksgiving Day meal The Newman Catholic Student Center is looking for more volunteers as they get ready to host their annual Thanksgiving Day meal on Thursday, Nov. 23. The Rainbow Cafe LGBTQ Center is hosting their annual Queersgiving on Friday, Nov. 24 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The event is free and anyone is welcome. The event will be held at the Rainbow Cafe at 118 North Illinois Avenue. On their Facebook page they explain that many LGBTQIA+ people experience hardship during the holidays. Enjoy found and chosen family and great food while feeling secure that youre fully accepted for who you are. The center says they need a headcount of those attending, so if you plan to go to the event, visit their Facebook page and check going. Centralia Poplar Place will be hosting their annual Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, Nov. 23 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Dine-in and carry-out will be available as well. The event will happen at Poplar Place at 323 North Poplar Street. Missouri Jackson Curlys Kitchen in Jackson along with Ron Cook and Friends are hosting their 8th annual Community Thanksgiving Day Feast on Thursday Nov. 23. The event will be held at the Jackson Elks Lodge at 542 West Independence Street. The first meal will be at 11:30 a.m. The second meal will be at 1 p.m. There is no charge for the meal, but donations will be accepted at the front door if youd like to donate. Call 573-204-3475 to make a reservation for the event. Tennessee Union City LOUISVILLE, KY The Louisville Metro Police Department has released the investigative file into the April 10, 2023 Old National Bank mass shooting in downtown Louisville, which left five people dead and injured several others. In the announcement made Tuesday, LMPD Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel and Mayor Craig Greenberg said the investigation into the Old National Bank mass shooting is officially closed. On April 10, 2023, the citizens of Louisville collectively suffered one of the most devastating events in the citys history. Five innocent people: Josh Barrick, Deana Eckert, Tommy Elliott, Juliana Farmer, and Jim Tutt had their lives inexplicably stolen from them. Others were shot, but survived, and their lives are forever changed," Mayor Greenburg said in a statement included in a news release about the investigation. "Countless family members, Old National Bank employees, and others will undoubtedly carry the pain of that day with them." According to Louisville NBC affiliate station WAVE, on the day of the shooting, 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon an ONB employee walked into a boardroom meeting and opened fire with an assault rifle. In an emotional speech on the day of the shooting, Gov. Andy Beshear said two of the victims were close friends of his. Weve got to wrap our arms around these families and everybody who needs it, Beshear said. Dont be afraid to get some help. Our bodies and our minds are not meant to go through these types of tragedies," he said. Three of the victims injured in the shooting were LMPD officers. One Nickolas Wilt was listed in critical condition after being shot in the head, just ten days after graduating from the police academy. He survived but suffered serious injuries. Sturgeon waited for police to arrive while hiding behind a column inside the downtown office building, and began shooting at them as they responded. The gunfire ended when he was fatally shot by a responding officer. LMPDs Public Integrity Unit received a findings letter from the Commonwealths Attorneys Office indicating that the actions of Officer Galloway engaging with and shooting the suspect were not criminal in nature and were justifiable as set forth within the Kentucky Revised Statutes, LMPDs announcement read. A link to the full investigative report is provided below. The information provided in the report may be disturbing for some readers. It includes details about the shooting, Sturgeon's autopsy report, and notes and journal entries written by him. Mason Johnson is in jail after police said his use of police equipment led them to discoveries of murder plots, bombs and more. The IRS is once again delaying implementation of a rule change that would have required more 1099-Ks to be issued to small businesses, gig workers and those with side hustles. Chinese President Xi Jinping greets Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the APEC summit in San Francisco. JOHN G. MABANGLO (EFE) The Chinese authorities consider that bilateral relations with Argentina are going through a good moment, and on Tuesday warned the new president-elect, Javier Milei, that breaking diplomatic ties would be a serious mistake, according to the terms used by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in her daily media appearance. With these words, Mao described a recent interview with economist Diana Mondino, tapped to be the next foreign minister of the Latin American country. The Chinese spokesperson also stressed that Beijing is willing to work with Argentina so that relations continue to advance steadily and that the economic complementarity between both countries means that there is great potential for cooperation. The spokesperson did not miss the opportunity to underscore that China is Argentinas second trading partner and the first export market for its agricultural products. Last year, exports to the Asian giant exceeded $8 billion and imports were $17 billion, according to official Argentine figures. And in recent months, Beijing has also become a lender to Buenos Aires thanks to swap credits in yuan to pay back Argentinas loan from the International Monetary Fund and other emergencies. On Monday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry congratulated Milei on his election as president. Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist, has launched various verbal attacks against his two main trading partners, Brazil, which is also a strategic regional ally, and the Asian superpower. The ultra-liberal politician who won the election on Sunday against the Peronist candidate Sergio Massa went so far as to compare the Chinese government to a murderer and has proclaimed that the Chinese people are not free. In addition, recent statements by Diana Mondino, the economist who is emerging as the next foreign minister, have alarmed Beijing. We will stop interfering with the governments of Brazil and China, Mondino said. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, however, assured that what Mondino really said during the interview is that no country can exit diplomatic relations and still be able to engage in economic and trade cooperation; and that it would be a serious foreign policy error for Argentina to cut ties with important countries such as China or Brazil. China is an important trading partner of Argentina. According to Mondino, the newly elected Argentine government values its relations with China, especially the commercial ties between both countries. During his campaign, Milei insisted time and again that he is in favor of leaving international trade in the exclusive hands of the market, without state intervention, although, as experts point out and his rivals insist, there are a series of issues such as tariffs or health rules that are the responsibility of the states. His position contrasts with that of the outgoing government of Alberto Fernandez, who nurtured the relationship with China and visited Beijing shortly before the electoral campaign. Argentina was one of the prominent guests at the recent forum of the New Chinese Silk Road, the mega investment and infrastructure program with which Beijing seeks to connect to the world. Held in October in Beijing, at the opening of the event, outgoing President Fernandez spoke of China as a brother. China helped us financially when the pressure from the International Monetary Fund put us in check, he said in a speech. He also cited Beijings numerous investments in the country, among others, in the lithium mining sector, a key resource for the production of batteries for electric vehicles, an industry led by China. During the visit, Fernandez announced that Beijing had authorized the free use of a second tranche of $6.5 billion of currency swap lines, and returned home after signing various protocols and agreements linked to agricultural exports. The United States, Israel and the free world are going to be the main allies of the next government of Argentina, Milei explained. The newly elected president, who will take office on December 10, confirmed the day after his victory that he intends to travel to the United States and Israel even before assuming power. In addition to congratulating him, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen, wrote to him: I invite you to visit Israel soon to continue our dialogue and inaugurate the Argentine Embassy in Jerusalem, capital of Israel. It is very likely that the far-right victory will also affect Argentinas announced accession into the BRICS bloc, to which it was invited along with five other countries last August. It is an expansion promoted by China of which the outgoing Argentine president was an enthusiastic proponent. But aligning with the bloc to which Russia, China, Brazil, India, and South Africa belong and which Iran or Saudi Arabia are going to join does not fit into Mileis international plans. I am not going to promote a deal with communists, he announced during the campaign. The mass movement against the Israeli genocide in Gaza took an important step forward by targeting Sir Keir Starmer and other Labour MPs for supporting Israels war crimes and ethnic cleansing. With national demonstrations calling for a ceasefire now happening fortnightly, over 100 local events were held this weekend. The most politically significant were protests outside the constituency offices of Labour MPs who refused to back a call for a ceasefire in a parliamentary vote last Wednesday. Hundreds marched through Camden, north London, to demonstrate outside Starmers office, carrying placards reading Starmer, blood on your hands, Starmer: still supporting war crimes, No justice, no peace, You decided Palestinian lives are dispensable; you should be ashamed of yourself, No integrity; you uphold crimes against humanity and If it smells like a Tory, acts like a Tory and lies like a Tory, its probably a Tory. They chanted, Keir Starmer, you cant hide; youre supporting genocide. Others protested in Tower Hamlets, Harrow, Islington and Lewisham, all in London, outside Rushanara Ali, Bob Blackman, Emily Thornberry and Vicky Foxcrofts offices; in Cardiff outside Jo Stevens office; in Birmingham outside Steve McCabes; and in Leicester outside Jonathon Ashworths. Labour responded by slandering and urging the repression of the protestors. Starmer denounced the terrible abuse his MPs had been subjected to and claimed that he had been asking myself over and over again, particularly at the moment, how do I protect them [his family] as we go into this? The insinuation that MPs, let alone their families, have been physically threatened by the protestors is a lie; some red paint splattered against Stevens office was the only action taken beyond marching, chanting and delivering speeches. Frequent references to murdered MPs Jo Cox and David Amess were both slanderous and inflammatory. Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed and shot by a fascist, Tommy Mair, in the run up to the 2016 Brexit referendum. Conservative MP Amess was killed in 2021 by Ali Harbi Ali, a Somali known to the police for his sympathy for ISIS. Peaceful protesters are in this way equated with the far-right and Islamist terrorists. Starmers right-hand woman, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, delivered the most extensive attack on democratic rights, telling Sky News on Sunday that Some of the protests have crossed the line from protest to intimidation. Giving Labours extraordinary view of democracy, she declared, Anything that would attempt to intimidate an MP to vote in a certain way or to put pressure on them [emphasis added]it is anti-democratic in my view. She told the BBC the same thing, that the huge pressure MPs have been put under over the vote on Gaza has been very concerning. In 2003, facing a mass movement against another criminal war, on Iraq, former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair declared, I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership. Reeves channelled the same authoritarian spirit this weekend: In a democracy we elect our MPs and they make decisions. They represent their constituents but they also listen to all of the evidence. She was supported by Blairs spin doctor Alastair Campbell, a chief architect of Britains involvement in the Iraq War, who condemned protestors intimidating behaviour and the Green Partys nastiness for publicising the (publicly available) list of Labour MPs who did not vote for a ceasefire. The last generation of Labour Party war criminals defends the next. Stripping back the hypocritical rubbish about the morals and procedures of representative democracy, the World Socialist Web Site explained of the former Labour prime ministers comment, Blairs dictumthat the essence of leadership is a readiness to defy the popular willwas a distilled expression of the contempt felt by the global financial oligarchy and its hirelings for democratic norms. It was his recognition that it is not possible to secure a democratic mandate either for predatory wars abroad or economic and social policies at home aimed at enriching the elite at the expense of the vast majority. This gulf between all the parties of big business and the vast majority of the working class has widened immeasurably, driven by growing hostility to the ruling classs pursuit of class war at home and imperialist war. Labour now intends to mobilise the state to censor and suppress popular criticism of its MPs, lining up with the Tory governments dictatorial agenda. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has held discussions with police to ensure the safety of Labour MPs, according to the Telegraph, while Shadow Leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell has called for social media companies to do more to stop the whipping up of hate and misinformation. The political challenge now being mounted against Labour must be thought through to the end. The party is repeatedly proving itself a defender of genocide and prepared to trample the democratic rights of its opponents among workers and young people. Where does this leave political leaders who continue to sit as its MPs and campaign for its election? Not one of the 56 MPs who lent their votes to a doomed ceasefire motion attended, endorsed or took part in the protests this weekend. If asked why, and none of Britains pseudo-left groups gravitating around the Stop the War Coalition would embarrass them by doing so, they would answer that to do so would mean being thrown out of the party. But why remain inside an increasingly authoritarian party of genocide and war if not to fight the warmongers? Starmers predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, who will never stand as a Labour MP again, does not have even this excuse. Freed of any party discipline, he refuses to mobilise his supporters against Starmer and company. All that can be allowed are polite and pointless registrations of disagreement within the House of Commons. Corbyn and the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs serve to block, as they did even in power, any fight being taken up against the right-wing Labour Party. Yet these are the figures advanced by the Stop the War Coalition as leaders of the protest movement. It was the subordination of the mass movement against the Iraq War to these forces which allowed the invasion and bloody occupation to go ahead 20 years ago at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. The same and worse cannot be allowed to happen again. Defeating British imperialisms support for Israels genocide in Gaza means toppling both the Tory government and its Labour partners in crime. A new political leadership must be built capable of leading a mass movement of the working class and young people, as part of an international and socialist struggle against war. That leadership is the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International. The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is publishing an appeal to the rank-and-file from a victimised Communication Workers Union rep in response to its article exposing the rigged outcome of the Falconer Review into the cases of mass victimisation during the year long dispute at Royal Mail. CWU leaders Dave Ward and Andy Furey claimed in a statement on November 10 that the independent review had delivered justice. The terms of Collective Agreement between the CWU and Royal Mail refute this lie. Left, Lord Falconer of Thoroton. Right, CWU General Secretary Dave Ward. [Photo by Official portrait photo, UK Parliament / CC BY 3.0 Only 21 dismissals have been overturned by the direct ruling of Lord Falconer, out of 26 selected priority cases. This is a fraction of the CWU reps and members framed up in the largest mass victimisation operation mounted against workers since the 1984-5 miners strike. Only 230 cases were referred to the review out of a reported 400 dismissals and suspensions. The CWU does not bother to explain, let alone challenge the three dismissals upheld and two referred for further review by Falconer. In the case of the 21, in addition to lost earnings an option of an additional financial settlement for leaving the company has been put forward of 25,000. But this is all tied to accepting an admission of guilt and denial of due process. The original disciplinary charges are only commuted down and treated as time expired, with workers forced to forfeit the right to clear their name and expose management frame-up methods by signing a waiver on bringing Employment Tribunal claims. The same terms are repeated in the Collective Agreement covering all 125 dismissals and 67 cases short of dismissal in which cases will not be heard individually. Royal Mail is fully exonerated and CWU reps and members treated as the guilty party. The CWU held an online meeting with victimised reps on November 9, which has been described by those who attended as a victory party on the outcomes from the Falconer Review. None of the details of the Collective Agreement were outlined. Once the surrender terms began to filter through the CWU were forced to hold another online meeting on November 17 in an attempt to silence opposition from victimised reps and memberswho were told it was time to move on. Ward did not provide any direct answers to questions over whether the CWU would support Employment Tribunal cases for those who refused to accept the ultimatums of the Collective Agreement or if the commuted and expired disciplinary charges remained on employment records. **** Fellow Postal Workers and CWU members, Over the past two years you have worked for a hostile employer in Royal Mail, in the most toxic environment you could have imagined and where you were subjected to the most barbaric working conditions and witnessed institutionalised bullying on a seismic scale. Royal Mail, your employer, the global brand company of 500+ years (and maybe we have come to expect this since the UK Government sold off the crown jewels of industries) has left workers at the mercy of capitalist greedy shareholders. However, nothing prepared you for the recent dispute and the legacies that accompanied it and continue to leave scar tissue to every piece of fabric in Royal Mail and your daily lives. How did the same union we put our faith in, supported during the dark days of the dispute, as we faced the wrath of rogue managers and unagreed changes, allow our colleagues to suffer more than they already have? Simple: Same as the rest of the rotten agreement surrendering pay, jobs and conditions, they capitulated and sacrificed the real strength within the union for their own gains, further punishing members and leaving them unrepresented. I spoke with another of the suspended reps and he has advised me that he was not contacted by anyone from the independent review group with regards to his own case. He said that he has no idea who represented him or whether his individual case was looked at, at all. The CWU capitulated again when Royal Mail advised them about their financial situation and were concerned at the ongoing costs of the Falconer Review. Royal Mail were allowed to dictate the terms of the investigation. Those terms were that Lord Falconer would look at 26 cases, Royal Mail would choose 13 and the CWU choose 13 and following the review into the 26 that they would meet again. After approximately 5 weeks of the review, the outcome for Royal Mail was damning. And it was at that stage that Royal Mail stopped the process, unchallenged, and the groups involved negotiated a collective agreement. Colleagues, how is a collective agreement fair to those who never had the opportunity to have their cases heard? Why not continue with the process and show the world what kind of company Royal Mail really areand more important prove that their conduct and actions during the dispute was unlawful? Let me quote some of the adjectives used by Dave Ward in long awaited outcome meeting; momentous, unprecedented, really good outcome, a great result for trade unions, in the spirit of reconciliation, many at Royal Mail will be shocked at this outcome. Colleagues, having spoken to many members and suspended members let me be clear. The CWU Executive led by Ward and Furey have betrayed each of you, not just this time but for the past two years. Their strike policy was designed to make you believe that you were hurting Royal Mail, when in fact it was designed to be ineffective and hurt you in your pocket. Truth be told, they had no intention of hurting Royal Mail. They knew that you were working in toxic working conditions but stood back and allowed this to happen without intervention despite their numerous threats. This outcome for all victimised members must be the biggest gut-wrenching betrayal in the history of trade unionism. Ward and the executive were aware that Royal Mail were breaking policy and procedural rules, and this was verified in the Lord Falconer outcome. Yet they continued to allow Royal Mail to control proceedings. Today there are more than 400+ dismissed and suspended representatives and members out there, livelihoods destroyed, many in financial ruin, with many family issues as a result and many suffering stress. Colleagues, this was unnecessary, and the fault clearly lies at the door of this CWU. They had the support from membersindeed they had a 96% vote for further strike actionbut chose not to use it. Ask yourselves why? The CWU is defunct as a union, workers have got no protection, and this message needs to get out to the rank-and-file. **** The only independence the Falconer Review enjoyed was from the CWU membership. It was the mechanism Ward and Furey used to overcome members insistence that there should be no ending the dispute without the unconditional reinstatement of all victimised workers. As the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) warned: The Falconer Review is the outcome of high-level state intervention. Former Trades Union Congress (TUC) General Secretary and retired ACAS Chair Sir Brendan Barber approached Falconer to head the review. Both are connected to the Blairite wing of the Labour Party, led today by Sir Keir Starmer. This conspiracy was hatched at the ACAS talks to suppress renewed strike action and draw up the rest of the surrender terms in the rotten agreement finally enforced in July and establishing a new benchmark of exploitation. As the PWRFC pointed out, the CWU agreed that Lord Falconer would have sole discretion over the review. A trusted representative of the ruling class was placed in charge who, as a minister in the Blair Labour government, backed the illegal war against Iraq in 2003 and had previously advised the National Coal Board during the 1984-85 miners strike. The Falconer Review and the rest of the pro-company agreement have embedded the union bureaucracy as an arm of the company. This must be defeated by a unified struggle of the rank-and-file against the regime of management intimidation and sweatshop conditions. Only through an independent fight against the union bureaucracy and management can the brutal restructuring agenda to extract further profits at the expense of postal workers and any public service be defeated. Attend the next Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee meeting on Sunday, November 26 at 7 p.m.register here. The Australian Labor government, backed by the media, has provocatively inflated a minor naval incident involving Australian and Chinese naval ships in waters off Japan and China into an international diplomatic row. The latest unsubstantiated accusations against Beijing are part of a broader US-led propaganda campaign to vilify and heighten tensions with China in preparation for war. HMAS Toowoomba [Photo: US Navy] In a press statement released on Saturday, Australias Defence Minister Richard Marles claimed that a Chinese destroyer had ignored communications from the HMAS Toowoomba, an Australian frigate, that it was engaged in diving operations. The Chinese vessel approached and operated its hull-mounted sonar in a manner that posed a risk to the safety of the Australian divers. Marles condemned the action on November 14 as unsafe and unprofessional conduct, saying the divers were forced out of the water and sustained minor injuries likely due to being subjected to the sonar pulses from the Chinese destroyer. He claimed that the diving operation was necessary to remove fishing nets tangled around the frigates propellers. The incident was immediately broadcast in the Australian, American and international media, hyping the threat posed by sonar pulses and criticising or condemning Chinas aggressive actions. In Australia, Coalition opposition leaders seized on the event to demand that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese come clean on whether he raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC meeting last week in San Francisco. While refusing to comment on his discussion with Xi, Albanese told Sky News on Monday that the incident was dangerous, it was unsafe and unprofessional from the Chinese forces. He warned that such actions do damage to the relationship between the two countries. Albanese said that his government had raised these issues in the appropriate way and very clearly, unequivocally. Major American newspapers including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal have reported the incident and the Australian accusations. In a particularly inflammatory statement, Republican Senator Jim Risch, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared that Chinas actions were more than risky operational behaviour and constituted an act of aggression undertaken in international waters. In a barely disguised call for a military response, he insisted: Lines must be drawn and enforced. Other US allies have also weighed in. A spokesman for Japans Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Australian Financial Review yesterday: Japan is seriously concerned about any acts that could increase tensions in the region, including this act, and is closely monitoring the situation. Philippines military spokesman Colonel Medel Aguilar told the Australian that the Chinese militarys actions were really harmful and irresponsible. China has responded to the propaganda barrage by bluntly denying the Australian governments allegations. On Monday, Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian branded the claims as completely untrue and urged Australia to respect the facts, stop rude and irresponsible accusations toward China. He called for the building of a positive atmosphere for developing better bilateral relations and military-to-military ties. Wu said the Chinese warship CNS Ningbo had been tracking, monitoring, identifying and verifying in accordance with the law and regulations. He added: The Chinese vessel kept a safe distance from the Australian vessel and did not conduct any activity that could affect the Australian sides diving operations. Details of what took place remain extremely sketchy. The allegations made in the statement by Australian Defence Minister Marles raise more questions than answers. In particular, it remains unclear where the incident took place and what the HMAS Toowoomba was doing. According to Marles, the Australia frigate was in international waters inside of Japans Exclusive Economic Zone en route to commence a scheduled port visit. The Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extends 200 nautical miles or 370 kilometres from a countrys actual territorial waters. In the case of Japan, it encompasses a vast sweep of ocean extending from its northern island of Hokkaido to waters adjacent to its southern island chain in the south near Taiwan. Chinese commentators have pointed out that Japans EEC overlaps with waters claimed by Beijing and no demarcation has been agreed. Chinas Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning hinted that the Australian frigate was operating in waters off the Chinese mainland, saying: We hope relevant parties will stop making trouble in front of Chinas doorsteps. While Marles declared that the HMAS Toowoomba had been in the region conducting operations in support of United Nations sanctions enforcement, its activities were far from innocuous. The frigate was part of an Australian naval task force that included the destroyer, HMAS Brisbane, and supply ship, HMAS Stalwart, dispatched to East Asia as part of the escalating US-led military build-up against China. The task force involves some 500 naval personnel, helicopter teams from the Navys Fleet Air Arm and command and support personnel. According to the Australian Defence Magazine, the warships, which left in early October, were to participate in a number of exercises and activities with regional partners including Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This three-ship regional presence deployment showcases Australias significant commitment to engaging with our partners in the Indo-Pacific region, said Commodore Mick Harris, Director General Maritime Operations, claiming it demonstrated Australias resolve for a stable, peaceful, resilient and prosperous Indo-Pacific. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Australian operations are part of US efforts to strengthen military alliances and partnerships throughout Asia, boost multi-lateral war games and escalate naval and air force provocations close to the Chinese mainland. The long string of claims that the Chinese military has engaged in aggressive, unsafe and unprofessional actions are used to justify the continued presence of US and allied warships and warplanes thousands of kilometres from their territory. The HMAS Brisbane took part in Japanese led Annualex naval exercises which began on November 11, alongside warships from Japan, the United States and Canada. The military drills involved the Philippines for the first time as an observer and were clearly aimed against China. The US, Australia and Japan have all strengthened military ties with Manila as its territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea have escalated. As for the HMAS Toowoomba, its involvement in so-called UN sanctions enforcement is also a thinly disguised pretext for operating in North East Asia. One aspect of its deployment was to contribute to Australias Operation Argos to enforce UN sanctions against North Korea. While the UN Security Council voted for sanctions, it has not given its approval to the enforcement operations. These have been implemented by the US along with its allies, including Australia, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and have resulted in the seizure of North Korean ships for allegedly illegal activities. As the furore surrounding the incident on November 14 continues, the original pretext for the outrage in the Australian political and media establishment has been quietly buried. The minor injuries to the divers have never been detailed and Marless office confirmed on Monday that they had recovered and returned to duty. Police arrested 23 pro-Palestine demonstrators last night at Sydneys Port Botany after protesters blocked an access road for more than an hour, opposing the presence of an Israeli container ship. Sit-down protest at Port Botany Contrary to false reports in the corporate media of a violent clash, the 500-strong sit-down protest was an entirely peaceful affair until the intervention of police, including the riot squad. Protesters were hauled bodily from the road, while others feared being trampled as mounted police rode through the seated crowd. The police violence was captured and shared widely on social media, with footage showing intimidation of demonstrators, including women and children. One video shows the crowd passing a child in a pram over their heads to safety. Those arrested have been charged with failing to comply with a move on direction and damage or disruption to a major facility. The latter charge forms part of extremely draconian anti-protest legislation, carrying a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment. The police attack is a significant escalation of the crackdown, led by Labor governments at both the state and federal level, on protests in Australia opposing Israels genocide. This is underscored by the comments of senior Labor figures, who have unequivocally endorsed the police response. New South Wales (NSW) Labor Premier Chris Minns rejected the accusation of heavy-handedness, telling Sky News that police should be commended for their work in the last 24 hours. Anti-protest police lined up at Port Botany Spelling out the political motivation of the crackdown, Minns said, We cannot have a situation where our ports are blocked for commerce because one group or another has a political disagreement with another country. Minns declared: We cant have this situation every single week where Sydney grinds to a standstill. This, along with previous comments about the cost of the massive police presence at mass rallies, is an indication that Minns is seeking to expand the suppression of protests beyond the ports. Labors federal Home Affairs Minister Clare ONeil said on Nines Today program, That type of activity is utterly despicable. I hate to see violence against the police. ONeils ludicrous characterisation of police riot squads and mounted units as the victims is in line with the propaganda campaign waged by Labor and the entire political and media establishment since October 7, in which opposition to genocide and Zionist oppression has been falsely equated with hate speech and threats to community safety. In fact, the incident at the port demonstrates it is the governments and the police that are the threat to the public. As they are backing Israels unending bombardment of civilians in Gaza, the Australian authorities are threatening and now violently attacking those opposing Israeli war crimes. Over the past six weeks, broad layers of workers and young people have taken part in repeated mass rallies around the country as part of the global movement that has erupted. The federal Labor government, like all the other imperialist powers, has responded by doubling down in its support for the Israeli regime. Growing numbers of those attending the protests are recognising the need for direct action to cripple the Zionist war machine. The large attendance at yesterdays demonstration, called with less than 12 hours notice, on a weeknight and at a difficult to access port, reflects the determination of workers and young people to fight, including by taking concrete action aimed at obstructing the genocide. Zim, Israels largest shipping line, has the closest of ties to the Zionist state. The company immediately responded to the October 7 uprising by pledging to make all of its vessels and infrastructure available to the Netanyahu regime and its genocidal onslaught against Palestinians. Yesterdays action, called by Trade Unionists for Palestine and the Palestine Justice Movement Sydney, was the third rally directed against Zims operations at Australian ports. On November 8, demonstrators in Melbourne prevented trucks carrying Zim containers from accessing the port. On November 11, a protest was held at Port Botany, although no Zim ships were present due to schedule changes made by the company after the rally was called. These protests were promoted by Unionists for Palestine and the pseudo-left Solidarity group, as if the presence of Zim ships in Australia was a rare event, when in fact the company is a regular visitor to ports around the country. Isolated community protests pose only a minor inconvenience to Zims operations. Even in yesterdays rally, called at short notice after the ship docked, many hours were allowed to elapse without interruption at the port. The elephant in the room is the refusal of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), which covers all of the major ports, to take any action whatsoever against Zim. The MUA leadership, especially in Sydney, has adopted a posture of opposition to the Israeli genocide and has declared its support for the struggle against it. But its complete opposition to industrial action by workers was spelled out at a public meeting of the Trade Unionists for Palestine at the MUA offices in Sydney on November 3. MUA Sydney branch secretary Paul Keating refused to answer a question from the Socialist Equality Party over whether the union would call strikes to block military supplies to Israel. Shortly after he aggressively pushed the SEP members out of the building. MUA Sydney Branch Secretary Paul Keating addresses the Port Botany rally Trade Unionists for Palestine, and Solidarity, which has the closest ties to the MUA leadership, are running cover for the unions refusal to call any strikes. Trade Unionists for Palestine handed over the microphone to Keating last night, where he again delivered some demagogic bluster. But on the critical issue of industrial action, Keating declared: We demand governments take away the cloak of secrecy when it comes to the export of arms to Israel. Dock workers have the right to know what theyre loading, and if its weapons of destruction, murder and death, we need to know so that we can demand that we will not load that. Even accepting at face value the dubious claim that the MUA is not well aware of what its members are loading on and off ships, this amounts to nothing more than an excuse for business as usual. The Labor government is completely on board with Israels genocide. Why would it provide information that would potentially compromise it? The conception that workers would limit their industrial action to only a particular type of cargo is absurd. Keatings remarks called into question and undermined the purpose of last nights protest, given there is no public evidence that the ship docked in Port Botany is carrying weapons. The point that has been made by Palestinian activists and others, is that Zim has pledged its full resources to Israels assault. All of its operations and profits are thus components of an interconnected network that is facilitating the genocide. All Zim ships are part of this network, whether or not they are carrying fully-assembled weapons at any given time. Keatings comments are a cynical evasion of this reality and a justification for de facto collaboration with the Israeli state. The MUA has also repeatedly raised the countrys anti-strike laws, drafted by Labor and the unions, as a reason that no industrial action has been called against the genocide. For this reason, the union leadership has insisted, protests must be carried out by the community. But the Fair Work Act industrial laws they cite were drawn up by Labor and the unions. The MUA remains affiliated to Labor, whose explicit policy is the maintenance of anti-strike Fair Work legislation. The police attack is a warning: Labor governments are determined to shut down anti-genocide, anti-war protests, and will, if necessary, employ state violence to do so. This assault on democratic rights must be opposed. Workers must demand in the first instance that all charges against those arrested last night are immediately dropped. This struggle, together with the fight to block supplies to Israel, cannot be subordinated to the MUA and other union leaderships. Just as they enforce the dictates of governments and corporations for cuts to workers jobs, wages and conditions, so the parasitic union bureaucracy is functioning as an industrial police force on the key issue of Gaza, enforcing industrial peace and aiding the Israeli effort. Workers need their own organisations of struggle, rank-and-file committees, independent of and opposed to the union leaderships. The massive protests have demonstrated broad support for a struggle against the genocide among working people. The next step is concrete industrial action to block the mass murder, organised by such rank-and-file committees. Such a fight is inseparable from a political struggle against the Labor governments which are overseeing Australias support for the genocide and the assault on those opposing it. The union leaders, Labors most ardent defenders, are the central obstacles to this struggle. Meta has shut down the Facebook page of the Palestine Committee of Norway in Trndelag. A statement on their newly launched backup page reads: Our site was blocked a fortnight ago and we were informed that it was not due to a violation of our guidelines. There is a suspicion of reporting or censorship. The World Socialist Web Site condemns this act of censorship as a violation of democratic freedom of expression and calls for the page to be reinstated immediately. The shutdown of the Palestine Committees page joins a whole flood of acts of censorship and bans around the world. These target social media, events, public appearances and even opinions and slogans condemning the genocide in Gaza. Recently, YouTube, the video and social media platform of Googles parent company Alphabet, cut off the channel of the MintPress News (MPN) anti-war website from all revenue. In Germany, even the slogan From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free is now considered a criminal offence, although it expresses nothing other than the prospect of a free, secular and democratic Palestine in which Arabs and Jews will live on an equal footing. Governments around the world are moving to suppress pro-Palestinian voices, and Norway is no exception. Members and supporters of the Palestine Committee are now taking to the streets, organising information stands in shopping arcades and informing the population about this act of censorship. The next protest will take place in downtown Trondheim on Saturday. At one of the previous protests in Trondheim, a WSWS reporter spoke to Magnus Barka Hjelle, the leader of the local Students for Palestine (Studenter for Palestina Trondheim). Magnus Barka Hjelle at the Students for Palestine information table in Trondheim (Norway) The conversation initially centred on the situation in the Gaza Strip, where the number of people killed by Israel since October 7 at the time had far exceeded 11,000. Hjelle reported that one of his friends, who has family in the Gaza Strip, was currently unable to contact his family. When asked about the shutdown of the Facebook account, Hjelle said that it was not the Norwegian government itself that had blocked the groups Facebook page: Its not the government, its Meta, its Facebook. Facebook has blocked our account. He said that the Norwegian government should actually ensure that such a block is lifted, but did not expect it to actually do so. When asked by the WSWS reporter how he assessed the situation and who were the enemies and who were the friends of the Palestinians, he replied: I think most of the governments in the NATO countries are the enemies. I think the population has changed, at least in the last few years, and you see some of the biggest anti-war protests in Europe since the Iraq war. So I think the population supports the Palestinian people and the government has a problem with going against the Israeli government. When asked about the wider context of the conflict, Magnus explained that Israel originated as a colony of settlers who took possession of the land and expelled its population, much like South Africa, the US and New Zealand and Australia. The first Zionists such as Theodor Herzl made this very clear by talking about the Zionist project in the style of colonial rulers: They founded the Jewish Colonial Fund for Palestine and named all organisations after colonial structures. Theodor Herzl himself turned to Cecil Rhodes, who was colonising South Africa, and asked for his advice on the colonisation of Palestines population. The conversation then turned to the future of the Middle East. Our reporter explained that the WSWS was fighting for a democratic, secular and socialist state on the entire territory of Palestine, and Magnus replied that he too saw no future in the two-state solution: I dont want to speak for the Palestinians themselves, but you see more and more support for a one-state solution (...) or more and more rejection for the two-state solution in Palestine. You have to see that we already have a one-state solution, which is a one-Israel solution. Israel controls the whole area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. So, we already have a one-state solution. But what should this state look like? Should it be an apartheid state or a democratic state? That is the question here. Rally against the genocide in Gaza, Trondheim, 11 November 2023 Shortly after this conversation, around 300 people also gathered in Trondheim on Saturday afternoon, November 11, for a rally against the genocide in Gaza. Further rallies have already taken place several times in Oslo and also in Bergen, Jessheim and other cities in this small country. Millions are taking to the streets around the world, and their protest against the brutal genocide is becoming more and more international. Despite all the efforts of governments and media corporations, they are unable to contain the resistance to war and oppression. It coincides with an intensification of the international class struggle. In this situation, it is crucial to equip the growing international movement with a revolutionary leadership and a socialist programme. The fight against censorship and the defence of democratic rights are central to this. Protests planned by Australian high school students opposing Israels genocidal onslaught against Gaza are spreading. This welcome development has seen student strikes organised for Friday in Sydney, Adelaide and the working-class steel city of Wollongong. They join Melbourne school kids who are going to walk out of classrooms on Thursday in opposition to the bombardment. Protesters march in Sydney on October 29, 2023 The International Youth and Students for Social Equality supports the strikes and urges the widest participation of young people. Demonstrations by schoolchildren against the Israeli war have emerged internationally, including in the US, Canada and Britain. Youth are joining in the mass movement which has erupted around the world, involving millions of protesters. Young people are being compelled to take a stand by the daily images of the imperialist-backed slaughter taking place in Gaza. More than 13,000 Palestinians have been killed, over 5,000 of them children. The Israeli government is carrying out blatant war crimestargeting civilians, schools, hospitals and essential infrastructure. And it is doing so with the complete backing of the imperialist powers. The federal Labor government has been as aggressive as any in the world in insisting on Israels right to defend itself, as bombs rain down on the civilians of Gaza. Labor has angrily rejected calls for a ceasefire, while the joint Pine Gap spy base in central Australia helps coordinate Israeli airstrikes. As the list of school strikes has expanded, the attacks against them by the political and media establishment have intensified. New South Wales (NSW) state Labor Premier Chris Minns declared that students should not attend the protests, but stay at school to get educated. A spokeswoman for NSW Education Minister Prue Car said, students are expected to attend school on school days, not take time off from their lessons to attend protests. Their remarks are almost identical to those of Victorian state Labor Premier Jacinta Allan and Education Minister Ben Carroll who spoke out against Thursdays planned school strike in Melbourne. The fears that the strikes will disrupt education are transparently absurd, as though participating in a single protest for several school hours will irreparably damage a students learning. The very Labor governments pushing this line are presiding over the greatest crisis of the public education system in decades. The state Labor administrations in NSW and Victoria have both pushed through regressive industrial agreements covering the schools. The deals, signed off on by the corporatised education unions, lock-in real pay cuts for teachers and entrench massive staff shortages and classroom overcrowding. While in uproar over students missing a few hours class, the NSW and Victorian governments have created such a dire situation that growing numbers of lessons are not going ahead at all. Instead, it often happens, especially in oppressed working-class schools, that groups of students are herded together in a large space and effectively babysat. As it has slashed expenditure on public education and healthcare, the federal Labor government has massively expanded military spending, including the $368 billion AUKUS commitment to acquire nuclear-powered submarines for a US-led war against China. What is really occurring is that the Labor governments are now directing a broader assault on democratic rights against children. When demonstrations opposing Israels onslaught first erupted in October, Prime Minister Anthony Albaneses federal Labor government hysterically denounced the pro-Palestinian protests. The Minns administration threatened to ban them and to unleash an unprecedented police crackdown. As with those dictatorial actions, the schoolchildren are being subjected to lies and slander. A letter sent to the Victorian government by pro-Israeli forces and reported in the press hysterically described the Melbourne school strike as mass exploitation of children. It stated that children protesting would threaten liberty, safety, security and tolerance. This is the fraudulent line that opposition to the Israeli state is antisemitism. But in fact equating all Jewish people with the war crimes of the Israeli military is both false and itself antisemitic. Students are protesting, not because they are hostile to Jewish people, but because they oppose a genocide. Many Jewish people who have joined the global protests have noted the parallels between the onslaught on oppressed people in Gaza by an advanced industrial state, and the mass extermination of European Jewry in the Nazi Holocaust. The attacks on the student strikes underscore the perverse and fraudulent character of the whole official discussion about safety and hate speech. While falsely deploying such terms, government officials, media commentators and Zionist groups are literally vilifying children, whose wrongdoing is to oppose war crimes. They are doing so, arm in arm with extreme right-wing forces. In a deranged opinion piece for the Herald Sun, commentator Andrew Bolt this week launched a tirade against students planning to participate. How many of these lecturing children could even find Gaza on a map? Bolt asked. Asserting that protesters, including children, were Hamas supporters, Bolt asked: Oh, have I insulted you by putting you on the side of mass-murdering, head-hacking, pack-raping terrorists? Bolts ranting about the Palestinian military action of October 7 is lurid. As the WSWS has explained, what occurred had the character of a desperate prison break. It simply cannot be understood outside the context of 75 years of occupation and oppression, and Gazas status as an open-air concentration camp surrounded on all sides by the Israeli Defence Force. The Palestinian attack, moreover, was merely the pretext for a long-planned Israeli onslaught aimed at clearing Gaza and the other occupied territories of all Palestinians. Bolt legitimises the worst elements of this ethnic cleansing, describing the systematic Israeli bombardment of hospitals as Palestinian civilians...dying in the crossfire. In McCarthyite fashion, the Murdoch-commentator asserted that the young and foolish, ignorant of history children were being manipulated and preyed upon by left-wing groups. Bolt identified one young female activist by her full name. That is the stuff of far-right witch-hunts. Bolts own credentials, moreover, further undermine claims that the attacks on the school strikes are part of a struggle against antisemitism and racism. As per his Wikipedia page, Bolt has spoken out against the changing racial demographics of Australia. In August 2018, Bolt wrote an article titled Tidal wave of new tribes dividing us in which he argues that a tidal wave of migrants is swamping Australia, forming enclaves and changing our culture. The Wikipedia article states that Bolt has also spoken approvingly of Jean Raspail's book The Camp of the Saints, a novel depicting Europe being swamped by grotesquely-caricatured Asian immigrants. The line-up of the whole establishment against the student strikes, from the Labor governments to the extreme far-right, must be opposed. The ruling elite is terrified that the strikes against the Gaza genocide will develop into a mass movement of students and youth, as occurred during the Vietnam war. The opposition to the Israeli bombardment intersects with broader anger over the climate catastrophe, a social and cost-of-living crisis, and an eruption of militarism, including Australias frontline role in the US preparations for a disastrous war against China. In supporting the strikes, the IYSSE raises the critical issues of political perspective that are posed. The mass slaughter in Gaza is the true face of capitalism and imperialism. It shows the future that this outlived social order offers young people, not only in the Middle East, but globally. The alternative is a turn to the working class, the great revolutionary force in society, and a fight for international socialism to establish a world based on peace and social equality. Details of the strikes: Melbourne 1:30 p.m. Thursday, 23 November Flinders Street Station Sydney 1:30 p.m. Friday, 24 November Sydney Town Hall Adelaide 1:00 p.m. Thursday, 23 November Parliament House of South Australia Wollongong 12:30 p.m. Friday, 24 November Wollongong Town Hall A few weeks ago, the Jewish Museum in Berlin sacked Udi Raz, one of its guides, for speaking the truth about the state of Israel and calling it an apartheid state during guided tours. The WSWS has already reported on the case and now had the opportunity to speak directly with Udi Raz, who is a board member of the Berlin-based organisation Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East. Udi Raz speaks at a demonstration against the genocide in Gaza [Photo by Mariam Aboughazi] * * * WSWS: Can you tell us more about the incident? Why were you sacked? Udi Raz: I used the term apartheid to describe the human rights situation in the West Bank. I have been working at the Jewish Museum since the beginning of this year. There were repeated exchanges between the museums education department and myself, where it was always argued that it was better to avoid the term, as it was academically controversial. I then repeatedly provided arguments that actually supported the continued use of the term. But in the end, the education department said that you should only use the term if you really have a sense of whether the group understands the term or the discourse and can categorise the term correctlyi.e., historically, geopolitically, geographically, and so on and so forth. Thats how I applied it. However, the head of the museums education department once went on a guided tour with me where I used the term accordingly. I only used it because I had a feeling that the group would be able to categorise it correctly. They were able to do so and there was also a lot of praise for the fact that I described the human rights situation in the West Bank in such detail and with such differentiation. I never refer to my own position, but to the academic work of human rights organisations that are researching the area, including Amnesty International. I also say this explicitly during my guided tours. The head of the education department has emphasised several times that I have received a lot of praise and that I am one of the most highly praised guides in the museum, but since I have used the term again, I am not allowed to receive any more commissions. WSWS: So, the Jewish Museum basically sacked you without notice? Are you no longer working at all? Udi Raz: I was a freelancer, which means there was no contract. There was a framework contract, but I wasnt actually an employee of the museum. This means that I have no further claims against the museum. And the museum didnt have to justify why I wasnt getting any more commissions. However, it is interesting that this time the museum explicitly explained why I was dismissed. I think thats an interesting case. WSWS: Yes, definitely. Maybe you can say something again about the context in which you called Israel an apartheid state? What did you talk about in your tours? Udi Raz: I am trained to speak specifically about Jewish people in Germany after 1945. This also corresponds to a certain section of the museum building. In this part of the museum there is a specific room called the Israel room, where the triangle is thematised: Jewish people, Israel and Germany. There, I describe the different attitudes of the two states, the bilateral relations, starting from the 1950s until 2008, so to speak, when the then Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the protection of Israel to be a matter of state for Germany. I also told my own story in this context. I am Jewish Israeli myself and I live in Germany. I explained why I am here at all. I told them that I come from a place, a city called Haifa. And then I ask the question: Where is Haifa? Then the visitors usually say either Israel or Palestine or both. And then I emphasise that its absolutely fine for me that the place where I come from has more than just a name, because many Palestinian people also live in Haifa. But I explain that there is a specific area in this region called the West Bank. And I speak specifically about this region because I simply have knowledge of it. I have often been to the West Bank myself to demonstrate against the construction of the wall together with Palestinian people who live there. And accordingly, I have often heard their experiences of life there and realised that this reality of life is completely different to the one I knew as a Jewish person living in the same country. But even more glaring is the fact that I, as a Jewish person, was able to cross the wallthrough the checkpointswhile the Palestinian people cannot. And then I always explain that the Jewish people who live in the West Bank have Israeli citizenship. Accordingly, they can, for example, help decide who sits in the Israeli parliament. Palestinian people, on the other hand, do not have Israeli citizenship and are not allowed to participate in decision-making. This means that the Jewish people in the West Bank live under the legal system of the Israeli state, while the Palestinian people living in the same area live under the military law of the Israeli army. And in this context, I explain that Amnesty International, for example, published a report in 2021 characterising this reality as an apartheid system. In this context, I also explain that resistance to such an apartheid system is not always peaceful. There are indeed people who are prepared to kill and even sacrifice their own lives in order to resist. At some point, Id had enough, and I just wanted to leave Israel. Pupils from my school were also murdered in terrorist attacks. And then I decided in favour of Berlin. But in Berlin, I realised that my heart still lies therealso because of my family and friends. And its important to me to make my voice heard here too. But you can imagine how shocked I was when Germans here in Germany accused me of being antisemitic. And the reason for this is that many Germans are trying to deal with the past. I appreciate that in principle and I have no criticism of it. But you always have to question how it is done. There are also attempts to deal with the past that are actually quite sensible: such as restorations, compensation, migration rights for Jewish people from the former Soviet Union. But this position, which says that Germany stands by Israel no matter what Israel does, means that Palestinian people living in Palestine/Israel are not allowed to enjoy any human rights at all. And the fact that Palestinian people are de facto not allowed to demonstrate in Germany emphasises this. While Palestinian people in Palestine/Israel do not enjoy any human rights, these people in Germany have no civil democratic rights at all. WSWS: Do you see a connection between your dismissal and the war in the Middle East and at the same time the general restriction of democratic rights? Udi Raz: Thats a good question. I think that in a situation like the one we are seeing right now the masks just fall. One cant simply be ambivalent. We know exactly who stands on the side of international law, who stands on the side of humanism, who recognises human rightsincluding those of non-Jewish people. And the way in which accusations of antisemitism are dealt with is in itself antisemitic. For example, the claim that Jewish people are not able to imagine a future in which they can live in peace with Palestinians. WSWS: Yes. The whole equating of the Jewish population with the Israeli government is an antisemitic argument. Because it means youre saying that the Jewish population is responsible for Israels crimes. Udi Raz: Absolutely. Nationalist Germans often claim that Islamists are not able to differentiate between Jewish people and Israel. Thats true, but Israel and Germany feel the same way. Israel doesnt see any difference between Jewish people and Israel and Germany doesnt differentiate either. WSWS: As socialists and internationalists we say that the war can only be stopped by a united movement of Israeli and Arab workers and also workers here in Germany and in the US. We are fighting for an expansion of the protests and for workers worldwide to stand up for a political general strike against arms deliveries. What do you think about such an international perspective? Udi Raz: Basically, I think its always right to utilise every potential to start a conversation. I think I would like to see a future where all people are allowed to live in the same region and take part in such a dialogue. That there is no differentiation between different ethnic groups. This applies to Jewish people, Palestinian people, Druze and all people who simply live there and are affected by the system. And basically, arms deliveries are far more harmful than any other type of crisis management. And in this situation, Germany is now taking on the task of supplying weapons instead of decriminalising non-violent movements such as BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions]. WSWS: Youve already said that the masks are falling here. In parliament, all the deputies from the Left Party to the Alternative for Germany (AfD) have voted in favour of a motion supporting Israel. It really is a united front of all parties. Udi Raz: The Left Party already showed that with the anti-BDS resolution in 2019. Even then, the masks fell. This is now an urgent matter, because people are actually dying as a result of such policies. People also died before, but not in such large numbers. Its hard to believe how a party that calls itself left-wing can allow something like this to happen. WSWS: And the fact that the AfD is at the forefront of this campaign exposes the fact that this is not about the fight against antisemitism. Its leading members declare that the Holocaust was just so much bird shit in history. Udi Raz: As a Jewish person living here in Germany, I am totally appalled by this politicisation of the term antisemitism, because it distracts from the actual manifestations of this phenomenon, which are extremely dangerous. And we have to name phenomena such as antisemitism and any other kind of racism, monitor them and stop them accordingly. WSWS: An extremely aggressive anti-Muslim campaign is currently taking place. Foreigners, Muslims and refugees are having hatred stirred up against them. What do you think about this? Udi Raz: Its very sad. But the accusations of antisemitism against Muslim people as such are also proof that its not really about antisemitism at all. This is an attempt to defame Muslim people. WSWS: Thank you very much for this interview. Injured Palestinians last Thursday at the Indonesian Hospital in the Gaza Strip. STRINGER (REUTERS) The war and its consequences are advancing on Israels three open fronts: Gaza, the West Bank, and the border with Lebanon. In the Strip, where more than 14,000 people have already died, fighting continues in the north between Israeli troops and Palestinian resistance forces, while bombing continues in the south. Israeli attacks on hospitals, where hundreds of patients and thousands of civilians are taking refuge, are continuing as denounced by the authorities in the enclave, where Hamas governs. Meanwhile, the United Nations is attempting to evacuate three hospitals in the north that have asked for help amid the shelling. Among them is the Al Shifa hospital, the largest in the Strip. The Palestinian Red Crescent on Tuesday reported the deaths of three doctors in an attack on the Al Awda hospital in the north of the Strip. Doctors Without Borders confirmed that two of them worked for the organization. Jordan, for its part, has complained that Israel ordered it to evacuate the field hospital it operates in Gaza, although it does not plan to comply, according to a public statement by Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh. The latest death toll in Gaza is 14,128, including 5,600 children and 3,550 women, according to health officials in the Strip, who added that they fear there are between 5,000 and 6,000 unrecovered bodies. The Israeli army is maintaining a siege on Gazas hospitals as one of the main targets of its offensive. In recent hours, the Israeli military has continued its attack on the Indonesian hospital, in the north, and the Al Aqsa hospital in the south. The former is surrounded by troops and tanks and under constant shellfire, according to a Gaza Health Ministry spokesman, who added that dozens of corpses are crowded in different rooms of the center in a tragic and indescribable situation. The director of Al Aqsa, Iyad Abo Zaher, reported through the same spokesman that the hospital is unable to care for the wounded and that diseases are becoming more frequent among children. UNICEF spokesman James Elder referred to the risk of a massive outbreak of disease, which could increase the infant mortality rate amid overcrowding. Three hospitals have asked for help to be evacuated from under the Israeli army siege, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which acknowledges it is trying to draw up the necessary plan to carry out such an operation. None of the medical centers in the northern part of the Strip are able to function normally, although they continue to receive patients and citizens seeking refuge. The three that have requested evacuation Al Shifa, Al Ahli and the Indonesian hospital have been under attack by Israeli troops for weeks. Violence in the West Bank and Lebanon Israeli forces have carried out a new armed incursion in the West Bank, this time in the Balata refugee camp, near Nablus, where a teenager was shot in the chest, according to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian National Authority. The border with Lebanon is also subject to constant shelling and air strikes. The Lebanese authorities reported the death of eight people, two of them journalists, on Tuesday. The death of these two reporters, who worked for the Al Mayadeen television network, brings to three the number of reporters killed while covering the war near the Lebanese border. The third was Reuters cameraman Isam Abdullah, who was killed on 13 October in what Reporters Without Borders called a deliberate attack. A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on Monday, prior to the latest attack, that 48 journalists or media employees have been killed since the war began on October 7. Of these, 43 died in Gaza, 4 in Israel, and 1 in Lebanon. Last week, Elon Musk tweeted his agreement with the fascist and antisemitic Great Replacement Theory on X/Twitter, the social media platform owned by the billionaire CEO of Tesla and Space X. The Great Replacement Theory (GRT) is an anti-immigrant and antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims Jewish people and left-wing groups are seeking to replace white people in Europe and America with inferior stock from South America, Africa and Asia. GRT has been embraced and promoted by sections of the financial oligarchy and much of the Republican Party. In August of 2017, then-President Donald Trump embraced white supremacists who marched in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and chanted Jews will not replace us! Trump called them very fine people. Adherents of the fascist conspiracy include several neo-Nazis who have gone on to perpetrate deadly massacres in recent years, including the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting and the 2019 Poway synagogue massacre in California. On November 15, a Zionist account posted a tweet attacking Nazis for being cowards and posting Hitler was right. In response, a fascist account replied that Jewish communities have been pushing... dialectical hatred against whites through hordes of minorities... flooding their country. Musk responded to the latter post with the statement, You have said the actual truth. (Left) Musk stating his support for the "Great Replacement Theory," which prompted a neo-Nazi to create an image glorifying Musk as Adolf Hitler. [Photo: Elon Musk] Musk followed up his support of the GRT with a fascistic attack on the Anti-Defamation League, writing that the ADL unjustly attacks the majority of the West, despite the majority of the West supporting the Jewish people and Israel. It is not right, Musk declared, and needs to stop. Musks recent attacks on the ADL, as with his promotion of the #BanTheADL campaign earlier this year, are not rooted in the organizations defense of the state of Israel. Musk and the neo-Nazis to whom he is appealing use the ADLs defense of Zionism to claim that the organization is antiwhite. In this way, the ADL is simply a stand-in for international Jewry. At the same time, Musk and his fascistic followers have no problem with the right-wing and false definition of antisemitism embraced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the ADL which characterize all critiques of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians as antisemitic. As with Musks campaign against the ADL in September, his latest antisemitic outburst quickly went viral and has been celebrated and promoted by neo-Nazis and fascists over the past week. Hitler-lover and leader of the America First groyper movement Nick Fuentes explained the significance of Musks statement to his fascist audience in a livestream appearance on November 15. We are tired about hearing about antisemitism, he said, because Jews are supporting anti-white hatred. This is what we were saying at Charlottesville, Fuentes added. This is like when the Charlottesville marchers said, Jews will not replace us! That is like a summary, of that... Elon Musk replies, You have said the actual truth. Fuentes approvingly took note of a subsequent tweet in which Musk stated that not all Jewish communities support GRT, but it is also just not limited to the ADL. Fuentes continued: He said Jewish communities are attacking white people. Jewish communities are supporting non-whites that hate white people. Its groups like the ADL, but its just not the ADL, and its anti-white hatred and it needs to stop. This is the richest man in the world, and one of the top Twitter users with a 160 million followers, Fuentes added, his voice rising, drawing a link between Jewish influence and anti-white hatred. Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk are all now regularly talking about white genocide, anti-white hatred and the role of Jewish elites! Andrew Torba, the CEO of far-right social media site Gab, where the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter posted his antisemitic rants before carrying out his massacre, approvingly reposted Musks tweet on his social media accounts. One meme posted by Torba noted that Elon affirms Jews are the ones pushing anti-white hatred. Fascist Patrick Casey, who was with Fuentes at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, showcased Musks tweet on his YouTube show last week. So, pretty good stuff here, Casey said, I like what I am seeing from Elon Musk. Musks embrace of the GRT, while popular with neo-Nazis, provoked outrage among large sections of the population, including many Jewish artists, journalists and rabbis. Over 160 Jewish people signed a statement under the banner X Out Hate, calling on large corporations to stop advertising on X. The group had urged an advertiser boycott in September following Musks earlier antisemitic outburst. In its updated November 16 statement, the group correctly noted that Musk is spreading the kind of antisemitism that leads to massacres, and that it was an implicit support for Nazism. On November 16, an IBM spokesperson revealed that the company had immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation. On November 16 and 17, Media Matters for America, an online publication founded by journalist David Brock in 2004 and closely linked to the Democratic Party, published several articles pointing out that Nazi content flourished on X and even appeared next to advertisements from major brands such as Apple, Oracle and Infinity. On November 17, several large corporations, including Apple, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global, Comcast, GM, Sony and Verizon, announced that they had suspended advertising on the platform. The same day, the White House released a statement condemning Musk and his abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate in the strongest terms. These empty words are betrayed by the billions in government contracts the US government, including under the Biden administration, continues to hand out to Musk and his companies. The New York Times noted in a November 19 article that in the last few weeks the US government has pledged as much as $1.2 billion worth of SpaceX launches next year. This is on top of a September announcement that the Pentagon agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars for Starshield, a new, secure communications system... In an attempt to stop the tide of advertisers fleeing and cover for his fascistic politics, last Friday, some 48 hours after affirming the GRT, Musk tried to appeal to Zionist CEOs by pledging to suspend accounts that used the words decolonization and from the river to the sea. He called these phrases euphemisms for genocide. The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, who has worked hand-in-glove with the US and Israeli governments to demonize anti-genocide protests as antisemitic, retweeted Musks pledge to censor pro-Palestinian posts and thanked the antisemite in a Friday X post. Greenblatt called Musks pledge an important and welcome move, and said he appreciates this leadership in fighting hate. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt thanking Musk for his "leadership in fighting hate" less than 48 hours after Musk promoted the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory. [Photo: Jonathan Greenblatt] Early Wednesday morning, the Israeli cabinet of ministers approved a proposed hostage exchange and a four-day pause in its genocidal war on Gaza. The terms of the deal mediated by Qatar between Israeli and US officials, on the one hand, and the Hamas administration of Gaza on the other were not published. However, Washington and its Israeli ally clearly intend at most a brief lull in the genocidal onslaught waged against the people of Gaza. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks with his ministers to approve or reject the deal, he said: We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that nobody in Gaza can threaten Israel. Netanyahus strategy to ensure that Gaza is utterly helpless entails a blockade of water, fuel and food to Gaza, and the unrestrained application of overwhelming firepower against civilians, which has already destroyed half of Gazas buildings and claimed over 14,000 lives. Israeli officials laid out plans to expel all the Palestinians who survive the conflict from Gaza, ethnically cleansing the area. The pause agreed by Netanyahu does not mark any change in this strategy. It aims to allow the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) some time to regroup and obtain the return of about 50 of the hostages taken by Hamas forces during the October 7 uprising against the Gaza blockade, and to lull to sleep mass global protests against the Israeli war on Gaza. The weeks since October 7 have seen millions protest worldwide against the NATO-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. This movement has shaken capitalist governments around the world which maintain close relations with the Israeli regime. This deal does not in any way represent an attempt to grant the demands of this movement, but rather to be seen as partially granting its demands while preparing even greater atrocities. Indeed, the same day Israeli and US officials agreed to the deal, they escalated threats and attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Russia. The war on Gaza must be not paused, but stopped. The announced deal indicates the possibility and the necessity of escalating the movement to stop the war on Gazaabove all, by mobilizing workers internationally in a struggle against it. The deal approved by the Israeli cabinet of ministers, on the other hand, states: The Israeli government is committed to bringing all the abductees home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, under which at least 50 abducteeswomen and childrenwill be released over a span of four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting. The release of every ten additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite. To underscore that the Israeli government is opposed to any halt to the war on Gaza, the statement added: The Israeli government, the IDF and the security forces will continue the war to return all the abductees, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that Gaza does not renew any threat to the State of Israel. Six weeks after the conflict began, it is apparent that Netanyahus plans to eliminate Hamas and kill all of its members entail the destruction of Gaza as a functioning society and the unleashing of genocidal violence to complete the conquest of the Palestinian enclave. Two central points can already be made based on the initial, partial reports on the deal Qatar has negotiated between the Netanyahu regime, Washington and Hamas. Firstly, it is an inherently unstable and shaky agreement, opposed by powerful factions in the Israeli ruling elite who openly support a genocidal policy. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party denounced the pause as a disaster and the decision of the Israeli cabinet to approve it as idiocy. Secondly, the deal does not announce a shift by the Israeli government or its allies to a peace policy. Rather, it is part of a plan for a continued escalation of Israeli and NATO military operations across the Middle East and the entire Eurasian landmass, as the capitalist system again plunges humanity into a world war. Shortly before the deal was announced, Israel launched yet another air strike on the Jabaliya refugee camp, which it has repeatedly targeted for atrocities. The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that the strike killed 33 people and wounded dozens more. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also launched intensified bombings across Israels northern border into Lebanon. The Israeli strikes claimed the lives of three employees of Al Mayadeen TV, which said the IDF deliberately targeted its correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Memari. Both of them, together with another employee of the channel, were killed. The escalation of Israeli military aggression against Gaza, Lebanon, and other surrounding areas proceeds hand-in-hand with NATO military escalation against Iran, Russia and China. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that US warplanes bombed pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, who had fired on US troops at al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq. US forces have been stationed there since the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq as part of the war for regime-change in Syria that NATO has waged since 2011. Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said: We can confirm an attack last night by Iran-backed militias using a close-range ballistic missile against US and coalition forces at Al-Asad Airbase, which resulted in eight injuries and some minor damage to infrastructure Immediately following the attack, a US military AC-130 aircraft in the area conducted a self-defense strike against an Iranian-backed militia vehicle and a number of Iranian-backed militia personnel involved in this attack. This self-defense strike resulted in several enemy KIA (killed in action). NATO attacks against Iran and pro-Iranian forces are part of a broader, global war that NATO is waging against Iran, Russia and, ultimately, China, which has supported Iran and Russia. In a webinar for the press, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby emphasized that as part of the war on Gaza, Washington and its NATO allies will intensify military operations against Russian and Iranian forces in Ukraine and the Middle East. Kirby denounced Russias Wagner Group militia, which he claimed was preparing to provide anti-air missile systems and other essential weaponry to Lebanese or Iranian forces. Wagner, at the direction of the Russian government, (is) preparing to provide an air defense capability to either Hezbollah or Iran, he said. Iran may be preparing to go a step further in its support for Russia, he continued. We are ... concerned that Iran is considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles now for use in Ukraine. He made clear that NATOwhich is already at war with Russia in Ukraine and is firing on Iranian troops or allied forces in Iraq, Syria and Lebanonintends to escalate these wars. Were certainly prepared to use our counterterrorism sanctions authorities against Russian individuals or entities that might make these destabilizing transfers, he said, adding: Were going to continue to use these and other tools at our disposal to expose and disrupt Russians and Iranians expanding military partnership, alongside our allies and partners. Such statements reveal that the genocidal war Israel has waged on the Palestinians is bound up with far broader political and geopolitical calculations of the NATO imperialist powers. To truly stop the genocide against Gaza, workers and youth around the world must continue and intensify the struggle against militarism and imperialist war. On November 14, members of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), the Sri Lankan section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), celebrated the 80th birthday of comrade K. Ratnayake, which fell on that day, at his house in Piliyandala in the outer suburbs of Colombo. SEP general secretary addressing the gathering on Ratnayakes 80th birthday Ratnayake has dedicated his entire adult life, encompassing some six decades, to the fight for the socialist emancipation of the working class and the oppressed masses. Despite his advanced years and health issues, he continues to play a central role in the political work of the SEP. Ratnayake was a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), the predecessor of the SEP, in 1968, having become politically active as a student at Peradeniya University. He was the secretary of its youth wing, the Revolutionary Communist Youth, from 1968 to 1971. In 1972, Ratnayake became editor of the RCL organ Kamkaru Mawatha (Workers Path) and its Tamil version Tholilalar Pathai, continuing in that role for decades. When the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) was established in 1998, he was elected as the WSWS national editor of the SEP (Sri Lanka), a position he still holdsa remarkable achievement. Ratnayake closely collaborated with legendary Trotskyist leaders Keerthi Balasuriya, founding General Secretary of the RCL until his death in 1987, and Wije Dias, who was then elected as General Secretary and led the SEP until his death in 2022. Despite his difficult health conditions, Nanda Wickremesinghe, another leading founding member of the RCL/SEP, visited Ratnayakes house to personally wish him a happy birthday. Ratnayake was also a prominent leader in the Central Bank Employees Union. Together with his beloved wife, Jerani, and other comrades he carried out a principled struggle for international socialism in the union. He and Jerani were among dozens of employees sacked from the Central Bank along with 100,000 public sector workers as the government of President J.R. Jayawardene cracked down on a general strike in 1980. Amid the horrific anti-Tamil pogroms in July 1983 instigated by the Jayawardene government, Ratnayakes house was burnt down by racist thugs. Last year, tragically, Ratnayake lost his wife and companion Jerani who was a life-long SEP member. Deepal Jayasekera A number of SEP comrades, including General Secretary Deepal Jayasekera, attended Ratnayakes birthday celebrations. In their remarks, they pointed to, not only Ratnayakes immense contribution to Trotskyism but also the determination, courage and other great personal qualities evident in his life work. Greetings from a number of comrades representing IC sections around the world were read out, including from David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and the SEP (US). (Norths greetings can be read in full here). SEP (Sri Lanka) general secretary Jayasekera began by thanking Ratnayakes daughter and son, Vanaja and Jayan, for organising the celebration. Jayasekera recalled his first encounter with Ratnayake was through the pages of Kamkaru Mawatha in 1987. I had the privilege of closely working with him under his guidance since I was called to Colombo to join the editorial staff in 1990, he said. Maweekubura Kiribanda, Nanda Wickremesinghe, Sakuntha Hirimuthugoda, Saman Gunadasa, W.A. Sunil, Wilani Peiris, Pani Wijesiriwardena and Wasantha Rupasinghe also made brief remarks recalling their political experiences with Ratnayake. K. Ratnayake Speaking at the end, Ratnayake said: If I have made contributions to the party, as comrades have stated here, I was able to do it as part of the contributions of all party comrades. He recalled his close collaboration with Keerthi Balasuriya, Wije Dias, Wickremesinghe and several others, in the founding of the RCL. Ratnayake continued: As part of the ICs struggle in defence of Trotskyism against Pabloite revisionism since 1953, our world party paid particular attention to the opportunist shift of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP). The IC intervened opposing the historic betrayal of the LSSP in 1964, when it joined the bourgeois coalition government of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). The IC intervened in the crises of the LSSP (R), a faction that emerged in opposition to the LSSP leadership. This faction, however, did not break from the national-opportunist politics of Pabloism which led to the 1964 betrayal. There was pressure on us to enter the LSSP from elements led by the veteran Pabloite V. Karalasingham. However, the ICs political intervention helped us to defeat this pressure and unite to build the party. Fifty-five years have passed since the formation of the Sri Lankan section of the IC. We have gone through numerous working class struggles in Sri Lanka and internationally. Our comrades faced repression and violence unleashed by successive governments, the police and military and goons of the capitalist parties in building this party within the working class. Ratnayake concluded his remarks by explaining the critical stage of the global crisis today, as the imperialist powers, led by the US, are hurtling towards a new world war. He declared: The most important development is the rise of the international class struggle. The task we have to shoulder is building the SEP as a mass party, along with its sister parties of the IC, to provide the revolutionary leadership necessary to bring the working class to power. Ratnayakes grandchildren singing Happy Birthday In his greetings, David North noted that Ratnayakes six decades-long political life has been inextricably connected to the fight for Trotskyism, the defense of the International Committee, and the building of the Fourth International as the World Party of the Socialist Revolution. North recalled the decisive role played by Ratnayake in the founding of the RCL in 1968. Emphasizing the mammoth task of surveying his lifelong struggle for Trotskyism, North made the following remarks: But what must be stressed, in what can only be the briefest summing up of your decades of revolutionary activity, is that you have personified the political resilience, commitment to political program and principles, and unflinching personal courage upon which the fight for socialism depends. And to these qualities one must add, as all your comrades and co-workers in the Sri Lankan SEP, the editorial board of the WSWS, and the International Committee will attest to, an extraordinary capacity for sustained hard work. Chris Marsden, National Secretary of the SEP (Britain), described Ratnayake as a patient, thoughtful comrade whose approach to politics and the development of perspective and program is of the highest order of seriousness. He concluded, by stating: It is thanks to comrades such as yourself that there exists in Sri Lanka a party and a cadre that can provide a revolutionary orientation and leadership to the working class, and whose experiences of advancing a perspective based on the theory of Permanent Revolution provide an essential element in the development of the ICFI on the Indian sub-continent and throughout the world. On behalf of the SEP (Australia), WSWS editor Peter Symonds and national secretary Cheryl Crisp wrote: You can take satisfaction in t he huge contribution that you have made to the development of the SEP in Sri Lanka and, more broadly, to the building of the International Committee of the Fourth International. They recalled, Comrades from here have appreciated the hospitality shown by you and your wife, Jerani, whose death last year was a terrible loss to you and your children, Jayan and Vanaja. You are a very cultured man with broad interests and knowledge and a wry sense of humour. Richard Phillips, from the Australian SEP, has collaborated closely with Ratnayake in the editorial work of the WSWS. Phillips paid tribute to Ratnayakes extraordinary lifetime of political struggle for the socialist and internationalist perspectives of the ICFI, which had impacted on countless workers and young people, winning them to Trotskyism and its revolutionary and internationalist principles. Christoph Vandreier from the SEP in Germany said: In all the international discussions in which we have jointly participated, your thoughtful and incisive contributions have been essential for the development of our international perspective. Alex Lantier from the SEP in France said: The powerful development you made opposing the communal war in Sri Lanka, Tamil nationalism and the Indo-Lankan Pact was central to the building of our party in France. Critical comrades who played a leading role in the founding of the Parti de l'egalite socialiste [SEP in France] were won by your, Keerthis and Wijes great struggle for socialism against the WRPs growing adaptation to Indian bourgeois nationalism, Stalinism and Pabloism. Nick Beams, of the SEP (Australia), wrote: The program builds the party. That is fundamental to our analysis. But the program requires fighters for it. And in the course of your life, you have been one of the most stalwart and intransigent fighters for the program of Trotskyism. Keith Jones, on behalf of the Canadian section of the ICFI, noted: You have been an implacable fighter for the political independence and hegemony of the working class and the program of world socialist revolution. Jones added: Your capacity for self-sacrifice is well-known. Often, too often, you have taxed yourself mentally and physically staying up all hours of the night to ensure that the WSWS is provided with a Marxist assessment of the developing class struggle in Sri Lanka and South Asia, and the working class with a revolutionary perspective and orientation. Gnana, assistant national secretary of the SEP in France, said in his greetings: The LSSPs betrayal, civil war, attacks by killers of the JVP, repeated harassment by the government and its military and intimidation by Tamil nationalists have failed to intimidate you. You have never become unstable. Very determined Trotskyist leaders, the leadership of the RCL/SEP in which you are part, have served as an example of extraordinary political strength. Travelers wait in a security line at Denver International Airport on Tuesday, November 21, 2023. [AP Photo/Thomas Peipert] This week will see record travel across the United States, with over 5.3 million Americans flying and over 55 million driving at least 50 miles to visit family for Thanksgiving. Misled by the government and media, the vast majority of these people are unaware that their travel coincides with and will facilitate yet another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic across the US, as well as the spread of new, potentially more dangerous variants of SARS-CoV-2. The latest wastewater COVID-19 surveillance data from Biobot Analytics show that rates of transmission have increased 28 percent across the US over the past month. Using these data, oncologist Dr. Mike Hoerger of Tulane University estimates that at present roughly 762,000 Americans are being infected with COVID-19 each day, with 5.3 million people now actively infectious. He forecasts that by Christmas there will be roughly 1.3 million daily new cases in the US, with 8.9 million infectious people. Noting that there is already more virus circulating today than during 60% of the days of the pandemic, Dr. Hoerger concludes, were clearly in the 8th US COVID wave. Many European countries, including the Nordic and Baltic countries as well as Poland and the Czech Republic, have seen similar spikes in wastewater or test positivity rates. The latest wave is being driven by the Omicron EG.5.1 subvariant (nicknamed Eris by variant trackers), as well as the HV.1 subvariant in the US and other descendants of the XBB recombinant variants globally. At the same time, scientists are raising alarm over the growing global dominance of the Omicron BA.2.86 subvariant (nicknamed Pirola), and in particular its descendant JN.1. Over the past week, multiple variant trackers have called attention to the rapid rise of JN.1, which they predict will become dominant globally in the weeks and months ahead. On November 17, leading variant tracker JP Weiland published a statement on BA.2.86 and JN.1, noting, The emergence of BA.2.86 represents the largest evolutionary jump since the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. Stating that JN.1 contains a mutation that lab studies have shown significantly improves antibody escape over BA.2.86, he warned that a change to symptom profile or severity cannot be ruled out. He concluded, Additional mutations to JN.1 to further increase transmissibility are anticipated. In other words, the highly immune-evasive JN.1 variant is quickly becoming dominant, is expected to soon become even more transmissible, and could be more pathogenic than prior variants, which would only become evident after hospitals and morgues began filling up. While official rates of death and hospitalization due to COVID-19 have declined in the US and globally over the past year, they remain stubbornly high, making clear that this virus is nothing like the flu or common cold. Health care expert Gregory Travis recently noted that there were 5,305 official deaths from COVID-19 in October 2023 across the US, compared to 145 deaths from influenza in the same month, while over the past 12 months there have been a total of 85,200 official COVID-19 deaths. According to Traviss tally of excess deaths from disease in the US during the pandemic, most of which are attributable to COVID-19, there have now been over 1.3 million excess deaths across the country, compared to roughly 1.15 million official COVID-19 deaths. Globally, The Economist estimates that there have now been 27.4 million total excess deaths, roughly 4 times the official figure of 7 million, while at present there continue to be 5,240 excess deaths each day. Beyond this monumental mortality burdenwhich has left in its wake hundreds of millions of grieving loved onesthe pandemic has also unleashed the greatest scale of time-concentrated morbidity in human history. The mass disabling event associated with prolonged symptoms known as Long COVID, which can impact the brain, heart, lungs, kidneys and virtually every other organ in the body, is ongoing and expanding with each new wave of infection. Hundreds of millions of people are now believed to be suffering from symptomatic Long COVID globally. In a recent interview with the World Socialist Web Site, immunologist Dr. Amy Proal, one of the worlds leading experts on Long COVID, reviewed the scientific findings on viral persistence, which show that SARS-CoV-2 can persist in myriad body tissues, including in asymptomatic infections. Summing up and denouncing the present pandemic policy, she stated: Were seeding children from a young age with viral RNA in their tissues, with a virus that people are getting multiple times a year as it continues to mutate, and we do, as you mentioned, see that reinfection seems to up the chance of developing chronic symptoms. Its absolutely unsustainable and a complete crisis. All of this objective reality of the pandemic has been deliberately covered up, minimized and distorted by every capitalist government and corporate media outlet in the world, who have instead promoted disinformation to lull the population into believing that COVID-19 is now harmless and the pandemic is over. This propaganda campaign has been spearheaded by the Biden administration in the US, with Biden stating bluntly in September 2022 that the pandemic is over. In May 2023, Biden lifted the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declaration, leading to the total dismantling of pandemic surveillance systems across the US. Not only is the pandemic ongoing, but the very policy of abandoning mitigations and surrendering to the coronavirus is accelerating the pace of viral evolution, thereby heightening the danger that the pandemic could take a far deadlier turn in the months and years ahead. The response of the capitalist ruling class to the pandemic amounts to a massive and unprecedented social crime. The encouragement of mass infection with a novel, neurotropic virus signifies a fundamental turning point in modern history, in which the ruling elites have declared open war on the working class and society as a whole. Clawing back all the social gains won by workers in over a century of struggle, they are ruthlessly placing profits above the most minimal public health measures. Commenting on this vast social retrogression during the pandemic, a group of principled scientists known as the John Snow Projectwhich includes Drs. Proal, Satoshi Akima, Christos Argyropoulos, David Berger, Malgorzata Gasperowicz, Lidia Morawska and othersnoted recently: The unofficial alliance between big business and dangerous pathogens that was forged in early 2020 has emerged victorious and greatly strengthened from its battle against public health, and is poised to steamroll whatever meager opposition remains for the remainder of this, and future pandemics. A major force in forging this unofficial alliance was the New York Times, whose writer Thomas Friedman coined the ruling elites mantra in March 2020, the cure cannot be worse than the disease, by which he meant public health could not be allowed to impinge on private profit. The Times continuously denounced Chinas Zero-COVID elimination policy, which saved millions of lives in the first three years of the pandemic. In a piece published Tuesday, the Times revived these slanders, stating: China managed to hold back the waves with its zero Covid policy, but protests against its brutality grew so intense that President Xi Jinping dropped it abruptly in November 2022. The floodgates opened: Within a few weeks, more than a billion Chinese people contracted Omicron, resulting in over a million deaths. With these statements, the Times states explicitly that taking measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 was brutal, whereas accepting millions of deaths was normal. The implications are far-reaching and speak to the incredible indifference to human life now pervading ruling circles. The same ruling class that has imposed policies resulting in the needless death from COVID-19 of over 1.3 million Americans is directly responsible for the death of over 400,000 Ukrainian youth in the brutal US-NATO proxy war against Russia, as well as Israels genocidal war against Gaza, which has now killed over 14,000 civilians, mostly women and children. While funneling over $100 billion in American-made bombs, missiles, tanks, drones and other military hardware to the far-right governments of Ukraine and Israel, the Biden administration has cut off all pandemic funding and financial assistance, with over 10 million Americans losing access to Medicaid and millions more relying on food pantries to survive this winter. The homicidal response of the American ruling class to the pandemic, preceded by decades of imperialist war and ever-deepening social inequality, produced a profound but as yet unconscious radicalization within the American and international working class. These built-up social tensions have now erupted to the surface in response to the genocide in Gaza, which has triggered perhaps the largest global anti-war movement in history. It is critical that this growing mass movement be led in an anti-capitalist and socialist direction, an essential component of which will be the fight for a vast expansion of public health throughout the world. In its article, the John Snow Project notes that an elimination strategy to stop the pandemic globally is now more viable than ever before. By deploying all available public health measures, the Project stresses, Any country that has the necessary resources (or is provided with them) can achieve full containment within a few months. The only political tendency fighting for this global elimination strategy, and for a revolutionary socialist program to stop the descent into barbarism and World War III, is the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its national sections, the Socialist Equality Parties (SEPs). The essential task is to build this party as the vanguard of the working class and prepare for the revolutionary struggles ahead. UPS Velocity warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky. [Photo: UPS Media] United Parcel Service opened a new, technologically advanced warehouse last week. The 900,000 square foot facility, the companys largest, will operate with over 3,000 robots doing the heavy lifting. The warehouse will initially employ 200 workers, but that number may eventually grow to 500. All of them are non-union jobs. The warehouse is located on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky, the location of the companys all-points international air hub Worldport, which employs roughly 12,500 workers. All told, UPS employs about 25,000 people in the Louisville area. The opening of the new warehouse, called UPS Velocity, comes on the heels of the sellout contract passed last August. Hailed as the most lucrative agreement ever negotiated by the Teamsters at UPS, the contract contains no protections against jobs lost to robots and AI. As reported by the World Socialist Web Site, UPS plans to reduce its 140,000 part-time employees in sortation centers through automation. Experts estimate this will save UPS $3 billion a year in labor costs. UPS Velocity represents the leading edge of the companys shift to automation. Speaking with Bloomberg News, Bill Seward, president of UPS Supply Chain Solutions, said, Its a linchpin of our strategy. Seward was echoing UPS Chief Executive Officer Carol Tomes comments on the cost of the contract to the company when she said, [W]e can put together plans to mitigate that cost, plans to drive productivity inside of our business through automation, which, oh by the way, we retained the ability to do so. According to Seward, the push for automation at UPS will allow the company to grab up market share from companies with older infrastructures that rely on human beings to do the work. Robots process orders faster and more accurately, track inventory and stack inventory higher in the building, therefore saving on space. It is anticipated that UPS Velocity will process more than 350,000 packages per day. Seward declined to discuss the impact on jobs that automated warehouses will have, saying only that worker retention will increase by about 30 percent and injuries from lifting heavy objects and repetitive motion will decrease by 40 percent with the help of the robots. In a recent interview with Freightwaves, former UPS executive Alan Amling was more forthright in his assessment of the move to automation on jobs: As wages rise, the relative cost of technology drops. I expect you will see accelerated investments in technology that help employees become more productive, and in some cases, replace them. Amling went on to predict that job growth at UPS will be low to zero in the coming years. At the end of September, UPS announced that it was deploying automation technologies such as pick-and-place and unloading technologies as well as autonomous guided vehicles at a number of facilities in the United States. So far this year, 57 percent of UPS volume first processed at US hubs went through automated facilities. According, an article in Supply Chain Dive, AI and machine learning technology diverted volume from non-automated to automated hubs, reducing labor hours as demand declined in the second quarter this year. The new facility is not only key to UPS strategy going forward, it is also a devastating exposure of the Teamsters bureaucracys claims that its new contract with the company was historic and life-changing. In reality, the new deal not only maintains two-thirds of the workforce as part-timers, where new hires will make only $21 an hour for the first four years of the contract, it also sets the stage for the massive job losses through automation. The only limitation in the contract is that the Teamsters be notified in advance when the company intends to employ these new technologies. To the extent that workers voted for the contract because they believed the Teamsters claims, this means it was ratified under false pretenses. In the announcement of its investigation into the integrity of the vote for the contract, the UPS Rank-and-File Committee stated: An illegitimate vote can only produce an illegitimate result. The bureaucracy will use the result to claim there is huge support for them and this contract. But that is a lie. The whole procedure, from start to finish, was manipulated to produce the desired outcome. The Teamsters bureaucracys deliberate charade of tough talk and empty threats to call a national strike belied the fact that the Teamsters officials knew that job cuts through automation were coming but did nothing to warn the membership they were imminent as the result of the accelerating shift to automation at UPS. The fight against job cuts can only be organized through a rebellion against the unaccountable, pro-corporate apparatus. This means the development of new, democratic structures through the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee to organize joint actions and return the initiative to the shop floor where it belongs. All the Light We Cannot See is a drama series directed by Shawn Levy and developed for Netflix by Steven Knight, based on the 2014 war novel of the same name by US author Anthony Doerr. To its credit, the four-episode series attempts to grapple with some large questions: war, technology, fascism, intolerance and more. But despite a good deal of effort, no doubt sincere for the most part, the results are weak. The viewer does not know a great deal more about those questions than he or she did before watching the drama. The series tends largely to confirm liberal, muddle-headed accepted wisdom. Aria Mia Loberti in All the Light We Cannot See All the Light begins with the US army bombing the northwestern French port city of Saint Malo in August 1944, during the final stages of World War II. The German forces, who have been occupying the city since 1940, are on their last legs. Marie-Laure (Aria Mia Loberti), a blind French teenager, broadcasts parts of Jules Vernes novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea from her attic in the city. In fact, she is delivering coded messages to the Allies. She is also trying to contact her father Daniel (Mark Ruffalo) and her uncle Etienne (Hugh Laurie), the latter a member of the French resistance. Meanwhile, also in Saint Malo, Werner (Louis Hofmann), a young radio technician and a member of the German occupation, listens illicitly to Marie-Laures readings on the air. He is a highly gifted radio engineer, having studied at an elite Third Reich school, although he is not a Nazi in his heart. In one of the more far-fetched strands of the plot, when Marie-Laure and her father escaped from Paris to Saint Malo, the latter took a large gem, known as the Sea of Flames, from the museum where he worked to keep it from the Germans. A psychopathic Nazi officer, Reinhold von Rumpel (Lars Eidinger), is desperate to get his hands on the legendary gem, because he believes it will magically cure his diseased body. The paths of the central characters will intersect and that will have traumatic consequences. All the Light We Cannot See has certain qualities. The two protagonists, Loberti and Hofmann, are fine and believable. Marie-Laures younger blind self is endearingly played by Nell Sutton, as are the children in Werners orphanage. Those performances are sincerely and genuinely done. If there is a strong point in the series, it is the theme of youth pitted again against authoritarianism and violence, especially during todays epoch of unending wars and now genocide. Louis Hofmann in All the Light We Cannot See But the approach to World War II, Nazi Germany, the German occupation and the French resistance is muddy, confused and ahistorical. One would have to look elsewhere to learn anything truly valuable and concrete about these events. They merely form the backdrop to a timeless tale about a struggle between heroically good people and unaccountably bad people. Von Rumpel, in particular, is a character out of the Marvel Comic Universe with his fanatical pursuit of the disease-curing diamond (think, for example, of the ridiculous Johann Schmidt/Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger). The Sea of Flames as a motif is not a valuable addition to the story. Daniel, Marie-Laures father, tells his daughter that the legend about the gem says that the stone is cursed. The curse is that if you touch the stone whoever you love will suffer a terrible misfortune. But if you possess the stone, you yourself will never die. Presumably, the stone is a metaphor for the Nazi greed for power and territory. This watered-down bit of Wagnerism simply seems clumsy and out of place in a semi-realistic historical drama. Moreover, the films ending is very melodramatic and predictable, although implausible, with a female empowerment twist. Obtrusively, the filmmakers have decided to book-end the series with the Americans as great liberators, even as the US was preparing to firebomb Dresden and other German cities and a year later would incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. The WSWS review of Steven Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan (1998) argued that to suggest, as Spielbergs film did, that American soldiers freed the world was inaccurate, even if one assumes that the defeat of Nazism by Allied, not simply US, forces represented such a thing. By June 1944 the fate of Hitlers regime had already been largely sealed by defeat at the hands of the Red Army; first, outside Stalingrad in January 1943, and second, in the massive tank battle at Kursk in July of that year The Soviet population, despite the crimes and blunders of the Stalin bureaucracy, played a critical role in defeating Nazism. To introduce the notion in our day, after more than 30 years of continuous war leading to millions of deaths, that the American military is a force for freedom is both fraudulent and dangerous. Khaleeji Bank, one of the leading Islamic banks in Bahrain, has sealed a partnership deal with Naseej, a leading Bahraini real estate developer, to provide exclusive financing offers to buyers interested in purchasing property in Naseej's key projects in the kingdom. As per the deal, the citizens will be given exclusive benefits when purchasing residential units in recently developed projects by Naseej such as 'Basateen' in Busaiteen, 'Canal View' on Dilmunia Island and 'Nasayem Arad' in Arad. Khaleeji Bank said its clients will have access to financing with a tenor of up to 25 years, as well as a grace period of up to 6 months when purchasing a residential unit in one of these Naseej projects. They will also be eligible to win cash prizes of up to BD1,000 and exclusive offers from select retail brands. Additionally, clients will benefit from opening a "Salary Account which provides unique benefits, such as an expected profit rate of up to 4% of their salarys value, no minimum balance, and a chance to win on of 5 cash prizes worth BD 1,000 each in monthly exclusive raffles for Salary Account Holders. The "Basateen" project is considered a pioneer in the Muharraq Governorate, providing high-quality, sophisticated, and distinctive residential villas. The project offers typical residential models in design, construction, finishing, and decor, making them the ideal choice for families looking for luxury housing with a variety of features and amenities that meet the needs of every home and family housing. This project consists of 23 villas built on a total area of approximately 5,000 square metres. The villas range from 180 to 457 square metres in size, with three- and four-bedroom options available. The "Canal View" project offers 246 luxury apartments for sale or rent with full ownership, which include a variety of different units like studio, as well as one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom options. The units provide stunning views of the canal and the main fountain on Dilmunia Island, making it an ideal choice for families seeking a quiet and safe environment on a private island, allowing them a very modern lifestyle with amenities that meet their daily needs. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) and other leaders on a screen during the G20 virtual summit in New Delhi, India, November 22 2023. Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday welcomed a cease-fire in Gaza thats expected to enable the release of dozens of hostages taken by Hamas, and urged leaders of the top rich and developing nations to work together to ensure the Israel-Hamas war doesnt expand. Hosting a virtual meeting of Group of 20 leaders, Modi said the hostages should be released and humanitarian assistance expedited. India has the G20 presidency for 2023. Terrorism is not acceptable and civilians death is condemnable, he said. Israel and Hamas agreed to a four-day cease-fire in the war in Gaza a breakthrough that will facilitate the release of dozens of hostages held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, and bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory, officials said Wednesday. The truce raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, which was triggered by Hamas Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and Chinas Premier Li Qiang represented their countries at the virtual summit. President Joe Biden attended the September G20 meeting in New Delhi that added the African Union as a member. Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped both the September G20 summit and Wednesdays virtual summit. Russias President Vladimir Putin and Canadas Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attending the virtual summit. Putin in his speech pointed to shifts on the global stage to argue that the world is going through a process of radical transformation with new, powerful centers of global economic development emerging and strengthening. Turbulence in the markets is increasing, chronic problems in the international financial sector, energy and food security are worsening, he said. Putin noted the criticism of Russias action in Ukraine but sought to deflect attention from it by pointing at civilian suffering in the Israel-Hamas war. Yes, of course, military actions are always a tragedy for specific people, specific families and the country as a whole, he said. And, of course, we must think about how to stop this tragedy. The war and the loss of life cant but cause shock, Putin continued. But isnt anyone shocked by the extermination of civilians in Palestine, in Gaza today? Isnt anyone shocked about doctors forced to perform operations on children and use a scalpel on childrens bodies without anesthesia? Modi urged the G20 leaders to push for effective implementation of various decisions made at their September summit in New Delhi. Those include climate financing, reforms of multinational development banks and work on the creation of a framework for ethical and artificial intelligence as well as developing a common framework for digital public infrastructure. Indias Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the U.S. administration has asked Congress to increase World Bank financing by more than $25 billion and Germany has pledged $331 million in hybrid capital that can be used by the World Bank to increase lending over the next 10 years. Other issues critical to developing countries include alternative fuels like hydrogen, resource efficiency and food security. Modi announced the creation of a social impact fund with an initial contribution of $25 million to help developing countries meet sustainable development goals. He urged other countries to join the initiative. Artificial intelligence should reach the people and it must be safe for the society, Modi said. He invited all G20 member countries to attend a Global AI summit in New Delhi next month. India is promoting itself as a bridge to the developing world and a rising global player. Ahead of the G20 virtual summit, Modi held a similar meeting with 130 leaders of mostly developing countries. Indias G20 presidency ends on Nov. 30 and the baton is being passed to Brazil for 2024. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAIS USA Edition After 47 days of war, diplomatic maneuvering, and pressure from the families of the hostages, Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement whereby the Islamist militia will release 50 of the nearly 240 people it kidnapped during its October 7 attack, in exchange for a four-day truce, the entry of hundreds of trucks of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners. In both cases, those released will be women and children. The agreement, brokered by Qatar, the United States and Egypt, is the most important diplomatic milestone since the conflict broke out, but it is far from signifying an end to the war. We will not stop after the ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stressed, to quell fears in his government that international pressure will make the temporary cessation of hostilities definitive. The implementation of the agreement, confirmed by both Israel and Hamas, will be carried out in phases: some 12-13 hostages will be handed over and around 40 Palestinian prisoners released per day. When the four-day truce ends, the release of every additional 10 hostages will result in one additional day in the [humanitarian] pause, the Israeli government said in a statement, which does not outline the concessions made and insists that the Government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza. According to Netanyahu, the pact also includes allowing the Red Cross to visit the remaining hostages and provide them with medical care. Hamas also confirmed the agreement in a statement. It puts the release at 150 women and children (mainly from the West Bank and East Jerusalem) and notes that it includes an Israeli commitment not to attack or arrest a single person anywhere in Gaza during the truce. It also stipulates the entry into the Strip of hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid, medicine, and fuel. Israel has maintained a complete siege of Gaza since the October 7 attacks, allowing only a tiny fraction of the required aid to enter from Egypt and only for the southern part of the enclave, where most of the 1.1 million inhabitants displaced from the north have sought refuge from the Israeli assault. Last week, Israel gave the green light for the entry of two trucks a day of fuel to prevent the accumulation of sewage from generating a health crisis that could also affect its soldiers, force a halt to the war, or even end up crossing into Israel. An official Israeli source quoted by local media stated that the 50 hostages to be released are all Israeli nationals: 30 minors, eight mothers and 12 other women. If Hamas releases more hostages of other nationalities, it will be within the framework of an agreement with their respective countries. Before the current war Israel held some 5,300 Palestinian prisoners, but the wave of repression in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has raised that number to around 8,000, according to the estimates of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) minister in charge of prisoners, Qadura Fares. An Israeli tank and soldiers on the border with Gaza, October 21. RONEN ZVULUN (REUTERS) An unprecedented agreement Like many things since October 7, the agreement between Israel and Hamas is unprecedented. Just as that day was the deadliest in Israels 75-year history, with more than 1,200 people killed, and the subsequent air strikes in Gaza are unparalleled Israel dropped as many bombs in the first few days of the war as the United States dropped in Afghanistan in a year and 69% of those who have lost their lives in the conflict are children and women, Israel has never received so many hostages at the same time. The price for the releases is also much lower than in previous exchanges, with a ratio of one hostage for every three prisoners. Hamas had previously managed to secure the release 1,000 prisoners in exchange for a single Israeli soldier, Guilad Shalit, who was returned in 2011 after being held in Gaza for five years. Among those in the exchange was Yahia Sinwar, who would eventually become the Hamas leader who masterminded the October 7 attacks. After weeks of negotiations, the pact ultimately hinged only on the Israeli governments approval, as Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari made clear on Tuesday night before the executive meeting began. It is a difficult decision, but it is the right one, Netanyahu said. The Israeli prime minister has had to strike a balance between accusations of inaction on the part of the hostages families, who demand that their release be the governments top priority, and the most nationalist and right-wing elements of his government, who do not want any restrictions on Israels actions and demand forcefulness in Gaza, where over 14,000 Palestinians have been killed and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. While the government debated, dozens of Israelis pressed for an agreement in front of the headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces in Tel Aviv, carrying banners such as Agreement now! or What is the price of my son? A group of protesters demand the release of hostages in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. AMIR COHEN (REUTERS) Although the ultra-right had announced its opposition to the deal and some ministers among Netanyahus Likud party harbored doubts, only three of the 38 members of the Cabinet voted against: the ministers of Jewish Power, the formation of the head of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir. The pact does not require parliamentary endorsement, but, by law, if any of the Palestinians released from prison have committed blood crimes the relatives of their victims can appeal to the Supreme Court, which would delay the process by 24 hours. One of the elements that delayed the approval until 3 a.m. local time was the number of minors included. Hamas argues that, in the current chaos of an overrun Gaza split in two, it has no ability to know exactly where they all are, nor to guarantee their handover without a ceasefire, which opens the door to the release of the other 10 children. Most of the hostages are held by Hamas, but Islamic Jihad, other smaller armed groups and even civilians are holding dozens more. The other thorny issue was assurances that Israel will continue to obtain intelligence during the six hours a day for which, according to the agreement, drones will only be allowed to fly over the north of the Strip. Several ministers asked the security leadership for this guarantee, according to national public television. Hours before the pact was confirmed, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari clarified that it would not affect the goal of eliminating Hamas politically and militarily. We will know how to restore our operational achievements, he noted. The wrapped body of nine-year-old Mohammed Awad is carried by his grandfather at Nasser hospital following Israeli air strikes in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, 21 November 2023. Israels Cabinet on Wednesday approved a ceasefire deal with the Hamas militant group that would bring a temporary halt to a devastating war that has stretched on for over six weeks and release dozens of hostages being held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Under the deal, Hamas is to free 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it is holding in the Gaza Strip over a four-day period, the Israeli government said Wednesday. It said it would extend the lull by an additional day for every 10 hostages released. The government said the first hostages to be released would be women and children. Ahead of Wednesday mornings Cabinet vote, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would resume its offensive against Hamas after the ceasefire expires. It was not immediately clear when the truce would go into effect. Netanyahu convened his Cabinet for the vote late Tuesday. The meeting stretched well into the early hours Wednesday, underscoring the sensitivity of a proposal that would suspend an Israeli offensive against Hamas before it has reached its goals. Ahead of the vote, Netanyahu sought to assure the government ministers that the break was only tactical, vowing to resume the offensive after the truce expires. Top security officials also attended the meeting. We are at war, and we will continue the war, Netanyahu said. We will continue until we achieve all our goals. Israel has vowed to continue the war until it destroys Hamas military capabilities and returns all hostages. Netanyahu said that during the lull, intelligence efforts will be maintained, allowing the army to prepare for the next stages of battle. He said the battle would continue until Gaza will not threaten Israel. The announcement came as Israeli troops battled Palestinian militants in an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza and around hospitals overcrowded with patients and sheltering families. The deal does not mean an end to the war, which erupted on Oct. 7 after Hamas militants stormed across the border into southern Israel and killed at least 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped some 240 others. The toll in Gaza In weeks of Israeli airstrikes and a ground invasion, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, two-thirds of them women and minors, and more than 2,700 others are missing and believed to be buried under rubble, according to Gazas Health Ministry. The ministry says it has been unable to update its count since Nov. 11 because of the health sectors collapse. Gaza health officials say the toll has risen sharply since, and hospitals continue to report deaths from daily strikes, often dozens at a time. The Health Ministry in the West Bank last reported a toll of 13,300 but stopped providing its own count Tuesday without giving a reason. Because of that, and because officials there declined to explain in detail how they tracked deaths after Nov. 11, the AP decided to stop reporting its count. The Health Ministry toll does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants but has not provided evidence for its count. In southern Lebanon, an Israeli strike killed two journalists with Al-Mayadeen TV, according to the Hezbollah-allied Pan-Arab network and Lebanese officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. A separate Israeli drone strike in Lebanon killed four Hamas members, a Palestinian official and a Lebanon security official said. The Israeli military has been trading fire almost daily across the border with Lebanons Hezbollah group and Palestinian militants since the outbreak of the war. Talks on hostages Israel, the United States and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, had negotiated for weeks over a hostage release that would be paired with a temporary ceasefire and the entry of more aid. In Washington, President Joe Biden said Tuesday that a deal on releasing some hostages was very close. Qatars Foreign Ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari expressed optimism, telling reporters that we are at the closest point we ever had been in reaching an agreement. Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said Tuesday that an agreement could be reached in the coming hours. Fighting in Jabaliya and around Hospitals Inside Gaza, the front line of the war shifted to the Jabaliya refugee camp, a densely built district of concrete buildings near Gaza City that houses families displaced in the 1948 war surrounding Israels creation. Israel has bombarded the area for weeks, and the military said Hamas fighters have regrouped there and in other eastern districts after being pushed out of much of Gaza City. The fighting in Jabaliya also affected two nearby hospitals, trapping hundreds of patients and displaced people sheltering inside. A strike Tuesday hit inside one of the facilities, al-Awda, killing four people, including three doctors, the hospital director told Al-Jazeera TV. The director, Ahmed Mahna, blamed the strike on Israel, a claim that AP could not independently confirm. The medical aid group Doctors Without Borders confirmed that two of the doctors killed worked for it. Residents of Jabaliya said there was heavy fighting as Israeli forces tried to advance under the cover of airstrikes. They are facing stiff resistance, said Hamza Abu Mansour, a university student. The Israeli military said strikes hit three tunnel shafts where fighters were hiding and destroyed rocket launchers. Footage released by the military showed Israeli soldiers patrolling on foot as gunfire echoed around them. It was not possible to independently confirm details of the fighting. Its unclear how many Palestinian civilians remain in northern Gaza, but the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees estimates that some 160,000 people are still in its shelters there, though it can no longer provide services. Thousands more still shelter in several hospitals in the north even after many fled south in recent weeks. Most hospitals are no longer operational. The hospital situation in Gaza is catastrophic, Michael Ryan, a senior World Health Organization official, said Monday. With Israeli troops surrounding the Indonesia Hospital, also near Jabaliya, staff had to bury 50 dead in the facilitys courtyard, a senior Health Ministry official in the hospital, Munir al-Boursh, told Al-Jazeera TV. Up to 600 wounded people and some 2,000 displaced Palestinians remain stranded at the hospital, according to Gazas Health Ministry. A similar standoff played out in recent days at Shifa Hospital, Gazas largest, where over 250 patients and medical workers are stranded after the evacuation of 31 premature babies. Israel has provided evidence in recent days of a militant presence at Shifa. But it has yet to substantiate its claims that Hamas had a major command center beneath the facility, allegations denied by Hamas and hospital staff. Dire conditions in North and South Most of Gazas population of 2.3 million have crowded into the southern section of the Gaza Strip, where Israeli strikes have continued and where the military says it intends to extend its ground invasion. Many are packed into U.N.-run schools and other facilities across the territorys south or sleeping on the streets outside, even as winter rains have pelted the coastal enclave in recent days. There are shortages of food, water and fuel for generators across all of Gaza, which has had no central electricity for over a month. Strikes overnight crushed residential buildings in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 20 people, according to hospital officials. Footage from the scene showed the legs of five young boys sticking out from under a collapsed concrete slab of one home. Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targets throughout Gaza, often killing women and children. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAIS USA Edition NEW YORK A woman who worked as a stand-in at The Cosby Show in the 1980s said in a lawsuit Tuesday that Bill Cosby drugged and sexually abused her after offering to mentor her in her acting career. The anonymous accuser said that soon after meeting Cosby while working on his show, he started offering style tips and performing acting exercises with her in his dressing room. When he invited her to his home, she accepted, she said, in part because of Cosbys wholesome image as `Americas Dad, according to the lawsuit. Bill Cosby has been sued by an actress on "The Cosby Show" for battery, assault and more. Once there, she said she blacked out during an acting exercise after drinking wine apparently laced with an intoxicant. She awoke partially undressed and vomiting into a toilet, according to the lawsuit in the state Supreme Court in New York. An unidentified actor on the show later expressed to her that Cosby could do whatever he wanted to do with impunity at `The Cosby Show, according to the lawsuit, which seeks damages for battery, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress and false imprisonment. NBCUniversal, along with Kaufman Astoria Studios and The Carsey-Werner Company, are accused in the lawsuit of negligence related to Cosbys alleged behavior. Representatives of the companies did not immediately respond to emailed messages seeking comment Tuesday evening. What is the Adult Survivors Act? It is the latest in a string of lawsuits filed against Cosby under New Yorks expiring Adult Survivors Act, which has given victims of sexual abuse a one-year window for claims that would otherwise be barred by time limits. That window closes on Thanksgiving. A spokesperson for Cosby, 86, declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, but suggested that look-back windows in place in New York and elsewhere should be closed because they were being abused to go after wealthy celebrities. Joan Tarshis, one of Bill Cosby's 1st accusers, sues actor for alleged sexual assault When will it stop and who will be the next man to be victimized by these look-back windows? spokesperson Andrew Wyatt wrote in an email. Cosby has been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by more than 60 women, including several who have filed lawsuits over the past year under the Adult Survivors Act. He has denied all allegations involving sex crimes. Cosby was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era and spent nearly three years at a state prison near Philadelphia before a higher court overturned the conviction and released him in 2021. Cosby had been 'a father figure': Woman accuses Bill Cosby of drugging, sexually assaulting her in the '80s This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Bill Cosby sued by 'Cosby Show' actress for alleged sexual assault The Chowchilla kidnapping is considered one of the largest kidnappings in the history of the United States. In the summer of 1976 three masked men highjacked a Dairyland Elementary school bus full of children. The bus comprised 26 young children and the bus driver. The men took them to a quarry nearly 100 miles away in Livermore, California, and buried them alive in an underground box truck. People Magazine reported that the children as well as the driver made a miraculous escape. Authorities identified and arrested all three suspects brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld and Frederick Woods within days of the kidnapping. Following their capture, each received 27 sentences of seven years to life in prison without parole. The convicts had their original sentences overturned in 1980, suggesting that they caused no serious bodily injury. They got the chance for parole. Richard Schoenfeld got parole in 2012. Then came his brother James Schoenfelds 2015 release. Very recently in August 2022, Frederick Wood, the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping, also walked out of prison. The Chowchilla kidnapping survivors unsuccessfully contested his parole. Where are the Chowchilla kidnapping convicts now? Chowchilla kidnapping suspects (Photo Credit: Joe Rosenthal | San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images) According to Sportskeeda, three young men, brothers Richard and James Schoenfeld and Frederick Woods, orchestrated the infamous Chowchilla kidnapping. The kidnappers came from wealthy San Francisco families and were arrested nearly two weeks after the incident. Their initial prison sentences without parole were overturned following a 1980 appeal. All three of them have now made parole. The outlet confirmed from multiple sources that Richard Schoenfeld was granted parole in 2012. The 57-year-old walked out of prison in June of that year. His brother James Schoenfelds parole came three years later in 2015. The latest development was Frederick Woods parole last year. Police suspected him to be the mastermind of the plan. In a highly controversial and contested decision, the parole board granted 70-year-old Woods parole in August 2022. CBS 48 Hours previously recounted the case in an episode. The Chowchilla kidnapping occurred on July 16, 1976. On that summer day, three masked men hijacked a school bus carrying 26 children aged between five and 14, along with their bus driver Ed Ray. The kidnappers put the hostages in two locked and dark vans as they drove for 11 hours in the heat. They drove for more than 100 miles, took them to a quarry, and buried the hostages alive in an underground box truck. The 27 hostages remained underground for nearly 16 hours before making a daring escape by digging their way out. Led by the bus driver and some of the older students, they used mattresses, stacking them high enough to reach a metal plate on the roof. The hostages dug through the dirt and finally escaped 16 hours later. According to the New York Times, the kidnapping prompted a massive manhunt. Within two weeks, police tracked down and arrested all three kidnappers. Authorities linked them to the ordeal using incriminating such as a ransom note demanding $5 million, a document with the plan of the kidnapping, and a list of all the names of the victims. The suspects fingerprints also played a crucial role in their convictions. CBS News stated that Frederick Woods was the rock quarry owners son and James Schoenfeld was his partner from a used car business. Besides the duo, James younger brother Richard also played a part in the crime. Their current whereabouts remain uncertain. An upcoming CNN documentary titled Chowchilla will revisit the decades-old kidnapping incident. It airs on December 3, 2023, at 9 p.m. ET on the network. The post Chowchilla Kidnapping: Who Were the Kidnappers & Where Are They Now? appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More. Viewers of Criminal Code Season 1 are wondering how many episodes are in the series and when each new episode comes out. This highly-anticipated Brazilian crime drama series follows the complex investigation of federal agents from the Foz do Iguacu bureau after the robbery of a high level is carried out in Paraguay. Their investigation takes a much more complex turn after the robbery is connected to other crimes in the neighboring country. Heres how many episodes are in Criminal Code Season 1 and on what day new episodes come out. How many episodes are in Criminal Code Season 1? Criminal Code Season 1 has 8 episodes. The episode list is as follows: Episode 1: Free for All Episode 2: Traces of the Night Episode 3: Animal Man Episode 4: Convoy Episode 5: Everything for the Family Episode 6: At Home Episode 7: Hacienda Episode 8: The End and The Beginning This series premiered on November 14, 2023, on Netflix with all eight episodes dropping on the same day. This Brazilian crime drama series was created by Heitor Dhalia. He has directed this series along with Pedro Morelli. The cast of Criminal Code Season 1 includes Maeve Jinkings as Suellen, Romulo Braga as Benicio, Thomas Aquino as Sem Alma, Pedro Caetano as Rossi, Larissa Bocchino as Suely, Erom Cordeiro as Fernando, Thais Lago as Monica, Gabriel Chadan as Caua, Priscila Martz as Refem, Debora Veneziani as Leticia, Gabriela Moreno as Cynthia, Douglas Sampaio as Felipe, Mari Oliveira as Maria Clara, and more. When do new Criminal Code episodes come out? All episodes of Criminal Code Season 1 are currently available to watch. There are no new episodes. The official synopsis for the series reads: To crack the code of an investigation into a larger-than-life robbery, federal agents need to get creative. With The Nightmare Before Christmas celebrating its 30th anniversary, theres been the expected chatter about sequels, reboots, and probably a Movies Neil Bolt 17 mins ago Scream 7 director Christopher Landon has commented on the firing of the films lead, Mellisa Barrera, over her Pro-Palestine stance. Movies Neil Bolt 2 hours ago Gremlins meets Home Alone in Magnus Martens Christmas creature feature Theres Something in the Barn. Can it deliver festive family Movies Neil Bolt 11 hours ago Ridley Scotts highly anticipated Napoleon is now playing in theaters. If that werent enough to lure you off your couches Movies Jeff Ames 17 hours ago The post Criminal Code Season 1: How Many Episodes & When Do New Episodes Come Out? appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More. The beloved band Hall & Oates best known for hits like Rich Girl and Private Eyes are involved in a mysterious legal rift. Daryl Hall, 77, one half of the 70s pop rock duo, is suing Oates, 75, but details involving the case are unclear as the case remains sealed, according to Variety. Hall filed the lawsuit as well as a motion for a temporary restraining order on Nov. 16 in Nashville, Tennessee, court records show, as first reported by Philadelphia magazine. In addition to the suit, the court officially issued Hall a temporary restraining order against Oates the following day set to begin Nov. 30. The musician and his organization, The Daryl Hall Revocable Trust, is also suing Oates individual trust, The John W. Oates TISA Trust, and its co-trustees in the Nashville Chancery Court. Representatives of Hall and Oates didnt immediately respond to HuffPosts request for comment. Fans of the group on X didnt waste any time reacting to the shocking news of the lawsuit. Hall & Oates beefing wouldve never been on my bingo card Khai (@khaisview) November 22, 2023 If Hall & Oates can't make it then damnit we all don't stand a chance Michael-Paul (@YaBoyMH) November 22, 2023 Smh Hall & Oates cant be beefing they gave us bangers pic.twitter.com/4a2wTQdXVe six (@Sixfever) November 22, 2023 just found out Hall & Oates hate each other pic.twitter.com/AYH9rvhmxT anthony (@_maddalone) November 22, 2023 As a long time fan of Hall & Oates, to hear what's going on between Daryl and John is no surprise. In fact, one getting a restraining order vs the other is something I'm surprised didn't happen decades ago. pic.twitter.com/4xD4TCp06J Vince 22 (@VinceG222) November 22, 2023 Not Hall& Oates in a legal feud?! pic.twitter.com/7fjbJzluyh kee la soul (@itsKeeforU) November 22, 2023 Last year, Hall dished out some less than loving words about Oates while appearing on Bill Mahers Club Random podcast. You think John Oates is my partner? Hes my business partner. Hes not my creative partner, Hall told Maher. He added at the time: John and I are brothers, but we are not creative brothers. We are business partners. We made records called Hall & Oates together, but weve always been very separate, and thats a really important thing for me. Hall then took a shot at Oates collaborative abilities, telling Maher that he singlehandedly did all those [harmonies] in their 1980 No. 1 hit Kiss on My List, which credits Oates only as a co-producer on the track. I did all those [harmonies], Hall declared. Thats all me. Hall and Oates have achieved global fame since dropping their first album, Whole Oates, in 1972. Less than a decade later, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) proclaimed the five-time Grammy nominees as the most successful duo in rock history in 1984. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said the Recording Academy called Hall & Oates the most successful musical group in rock history. They were proclaimed the most successful duo. Related... Protesters hold signs demanding the liberation of hostages who are being held in the Gaza Strip after they were seized by Hamas gunmen on October 7, in Tel Aviv, Israel, November 21, 2023. Israel has agreed to a truce with Hamas after having refused for weeks any kind of temporary pause in fighting. Under pressure from the families of the hostages and a large part of Israeli society, and after weeks of negotiations mediated by Qatar, Israels government and the Palestinian militia have agreed to a ceasefire of at least four days. The pact represents the first respite for civilians in Gaza after 47 days of relentless fighting inside the Palestinian enclave. The agreement includes the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel. These are the main keys to the agreement. What does the pact between Israel and Hamas consist of? The parties agree to a four-day ceasefire in Gaza, which may be extended by 24 hours. In parallel, Hamas will release 50 hostages out of the approximately 240 people of different nationalities they kidnapped during their Oct. 7 attack in Israel (four women have already been released, and the army has freed a female soldier). The 50 hostages will include 30 children and 20 women, eight of whom are mothers. In exchange, Hamas has secured the release of 150 of the approximately 8,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The Palestinians released will also be women and children. The exchanges, supervised by the Red Cross, will be carried out in phases, day by day. Netanyahu also announced that the Red Cross will be able to visit the remaining hostages in Gaza and provide them with medical assistance. As part of the agreement, hundreds of trucks carrying aid will be able to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, at the Strips border with Egypt. These trucks will include desperately needed fuel, which is vital in the absence of electricity for the operation of hospitals and for obtaining drinking water. The United Nations warns that, in addition to the relentless Israeli bombardments, the Gazan population is increasingly exposed to epidemics and diseases due to the harsh conditions of overcrowding, lack of hygiene, poor water consumption and insufficient food. These conditions are coupled with the arrival of winter and the absence of a functioning hospital in the north of the Strip, devastated after weeks of air strikes. When does the truce start and how long will it last? According to Israel and Hamas, the exchange of hostages and prisoners is expected to begin on Thursday. Hamas assures that the temporary truce will begin on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. local time (3:00 a.m. Eastern Time). It will last four days. However, it may be extended by 24 hours for every 10 additional hostages Hamas releases on top of the original 50, Israel said in a statement. The maximum the ceasefire can last is 10 days, and the maximum number of Palestinian prisoners released will be 300. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen has said that Israel will receive the first group of hostages on Thursday. The start date, Thursday, is also conditioned by the 24 hours required by Israeli law for possible appeals to the Supreme Court if any of the Palestinians released from prison have committed blood crimes. Where was the agreement forged and what countries participated in negotiations? The agreement has been brewing for weeks behind the scenes, essentially in the Qatari capital, Doha, where Hamas political leaders are currently based. The Qatari government is the main sponsor of the pact, but the United States, Israels main ally, and Egypt, Gazas neighbor with the only functioning border crossing at Rafah, were also instrumental in the negotiations. What does Israeli society think of the pact? For weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to accept any form of ceasefire, even for just a few hours or a few days, to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Both Israel and its main ally, the United States, believed that a cessation of hostilities, even if temporary, would allow Hamas to rearm and reorganize. Netanyahu was caught between two internal fronts. On the one hand, he faced the pressure of the families of the approximately 240 hostages who have been held in Gaza since October 7 and who demanded that he pull out all the stops to bring them back. On the other, the more nationalist and extreme right wing of his cabinet continued to pressure him not to give in to what they consider to be the demands of a terrorist organization. Israel remembers well how the soldier Gilad Shalit was released in 2011 in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners after being held in Gaza for five years. However, now its not just one soldier but 240 hostages, including civilians. With every day that passed, pressure mounted on Netanyahu to secure their release, as the families of the captives supported by a significant portion of Israeli society continued to protest the Prime Ministers inability to bring their loved ones home. Thus, in the eyes of Israeli society, the three-to-one ratio of 50 hostages to 150 prisoners is viewed as a positive step. Hamas had demanded, in the early days of the war, that all Palestinian prisoners be released in exchange for releasing the hostages. Whats happened in the past 47 days of war? Hamass October 7 attack, unprecedented in scope and perpetrated on Israeli territory, triggered a war that has been raging for 47 days. Some 1,200 people were killed in Israel by militiamen who razed homes, military barracks and killed more than 200 attendees at a music festival. In addition, some 240 hostages were taken to Gaza, some of whom will now be released thanks to the agreement. In Gaza, Israeli attacks have killed more than 14,000 people, including more than 5,000 children. In the first three weeks of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, the bulk of the attacks came from the air, as bombardments. However, in late October, the army began to carry out ground incursions inside the Gaza Strip, which culminated in the definitive invasion of the Palestinian territory on October 27. The Israeli armys offensive is primarily centered in northern Gaza, where the scale of destruction is immense: Israels attacks have hit, in addition to thousands of residential buildings, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, schools (some of them belonging to the United Nations) and media offices. The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated territories in the world, with some 2.3 million people half of whom are minors crammed into 140 square miles. Federal labor prosecutors have accused Medieval Times of retaliating against a worker who raised concerns about working conditions, including the sexual assault of employees by customers, according to a new complaint obtained by HuffPost. A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board in Illinois issued the complaint against the dinner theater chain Monday. It alleges that Medieval Times interrogated workers at an Illinois castle about their union activity, illegally disciplined workers and fired the worker who spoke up about alleged sexual assault. Workers at castles in New Jersey and Southern California unionized with the American Guild of Variety Artists last year. The labor board complaint accuses Medieval Times of restraining and coercing employees as they tried to exercise their collective-bargaining rights at a third castle, in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg. The company has nine locations across the U.S. Medieval Times did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations. By issuing the complaint, labor board officials have signaled that they looked into the unions claims and found merit in them. Barring a settlement between the parties, the allegations will be litigated in a labor board hearing where both sides call witnesses. The charges come on the heels of two other complaints that prosecutors lodged against the company: one that alleged Medieval Times management took part in an illegal scheme to undermine union support in California, and a second that alleged the company tried to illegally silence workers by getting their union TikTok account banned. (The former complaint has been settled, while the latter is set to go to trial next month.) The complaint regarding the Illinois castle alleges that a worker shared his concerns about customers assaulting employees directly with the companys chief executive, Perico Montaner. It said the company later gave the worker more onerous working conditions, disciplined him and then fired him in December. Prosecutors accuse Medieval Times of taking those actions because the worker had spoken up about working conditions and because the company wanted to discourage employees from engaging in protected concerted activities. When workers at Medieval Times went public with their union campaign last year, they told HuffPost that one of the reasons they wanted to organize was to create a safer workplace. They said that show cast members, including actors who play the queen character, are sometimes touched or grabbed by customers whove been drinking. As one employee said at the time, It feels like the customer experience so greatly outweighs not only our employee experience but our safety and our well-being. The union has accused Medieval Times of breaking the law repeatedly while trying to throttle the union campaign, including by trying to get the unions social media accounts shut down. Last year Medieval Times filed a lawsuit against the union, claiming that it had violated the companys trademarks. The company alleged that the unions adopted name, Medieval Times Performers United, and the medieval imagery of its logo had created consumer confusion around the Medieval Times brand. A judge recently tossed the companys claim. In a separate complaint issued Monday, a regional director for the NLRB in New Jersey alleged that the companys trademark lawsuit was retaliatory and meant to prevent workers from speaking out, according to an NLRB spokesperson. Joe Raedle/Getty Images Not content to only target transgender students and staff during school hours, a Florida Republican introduced a state bill this week that would effectively expand Gov. Ron DeSantis infamous Dont Say Gay rules to include government workplaces and nonprofits. House Bill 599, introduced on Tuesday by freshman representative Ryan Chamberlin, makes sweeping changes to Florida employment statutes to declare that a person's sex is an immutable biological trait. The bill would prohibit government employees or contractors from being compelled to use a persons pronouns if those pronouns do not correspond to his or her sex. It would also bar employers from asking any worker to state their own pronouns. Even more draconian, the bill would prevent trans employees from sharing their pronouns at all. Under the proposed law, employees and contractors cannot provide to an employer his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if, again, they do not match the workers assigned sex. Chamberlins bill would also ban any tax-exempt nonprofit or employer that receives state funds from requiring any training, instruction, or other activity on sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Instead, the bill would establish nondiscrimination protections for what it calls deeply held biology-based beliefs, a new spin on religious exemptions that are commonplace in other anti-LGBTQ+ bills and conservative talking points. Advocates say the bill, if passed, could have dramatic consequences for LGBTQ+ organizations and individuals across Florida. Writing on Truthout, independent trans journalist Erin Reed speculated that the bill could effectively torpedo LGBTQ+ nonprofits and activist programs, comparable to Russian laws that outlaw gay and trans propaganda. Virtually every LGBTQ+ organization would be radically affected by [H.B. 599] and would likely have to shut down, Reed argued, as it would be nearly impossible to continue even basic operations legally. It would be a blatant power grab by the state targeting organizations critical to the government and would further drive LGBTQ+ activism and organizing underground in the state. Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani, the states first elected Iranian American lawmaker, echoed Reeds analysis in a Tuesday post on X, formerly Twitter. H.B. 599 would basically ban [LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Florida] from existing, Eskamani wrote, calling the bill bigoted, unnecessary and highly unconstitutional. The Lawmaker Who Wrote Florida's "Don't Say Gay" Law Is Going to Prison for Fraud Rep. Joseph Harding will serve four months in prison after being convicted of COVID-19 relief fraud. The Florida legislature is not currently in session, though lawmakers are still allowed to file bills for consideration next year. Any action on H.B. 599 will likely take place during the legislatures next regular session, which is scheduled to begin in March 2024. Since the original Dont Say Gay legislation passed in 2022, trans Floridians lives and their families have been upended, with many finding no choice but to flee the state entirely. But all hasnt been rosy for its main architect, either; Rep. Joseph Harding was sentenced to four months in prison last month, after pleading guilty to multiple charges of COVID-19 relief fraud. Get the best of whats queer. Sign up for Thems weekly newsletter here. Originally Appeared on them. Japanese EV automaker HW Electro (HWE) says its delightfully boxy Puzzle will come to the US in 2025. More kei van than kei car, the electric vehicle has rooftop solar panels and equipment for commercial disaster relief (including a crowbar!). But it could be equally appealing for those wanting an EV with maxed-out charm and a minimal environmental footprint. Its on track to be HWEs first vehicle available in the US market. HW Electro CEO Xiao Weicheng said that the Puzzle embodies HWEs core values of sustainability, connectivity and social contribution. Its solar panels mean owners could perhaps drive it for much longer than typical EVs without plugging in. It also includes emergency features like power outlets, photovoltaic panels, built-in WiFi, USB ports, a first aid kit and a crowbar. Notably, these features are all on the vehicles exterior. As reported by The Independent and Electrek, HWE unveiled the Puzzle micro-van at the 2023 Japan Mobility Show before teasing 2025 US availability this week in New York. With Puzzle, a new world begins, Weicheng predicted. HW Electro Puzzle Street shot of the HW Electro Puzzle driving down an otherwise empty street. Trees and city buildings in the background. The EV, currently still in the concept stage, has a two-person cabin and looks strikingly smaller than the gargantuan EVs Americans are growing accustomed to. The Puzzle aligns with Japans regulatory definition of a kei car, ideal for tight or crowded roadways and cramped parking spots. The vehicle has 15-inch wheels, and its over six feet tall, nearly five feet wide and over 11 feet long. It has a cargo capacity of 770 lbs and sliding rear doors for easy cargo management. Its sole passenger seat folds down to boost its hauling capacity (and can double as a work surface when not in use). HWE hasnt yet revealed the Puzzles price or max speed. Auto Evolution reports that its lithium iron phosphate battery will offer a 125-mile range. Its hard to predict what Americas EV market will look like by the time the Puzzle arrives in 2025. Although sales are growing, consumer demand has fallen behind auto industry projections, leaving room for uncertainty as the world tries to avoid climate changes most catastrophic scenarios. If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, SheKnows may receive an affiliate commission. This year marks the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedys assassination in Dallas, Texas. The Nov. 22 date is etched in many Americans memories for the shocking and devastating loss of the 35th President of the United States, and its First Lady Jackie Kennedys bravery on that tragic day that is still being praised. More from SheKnows Jackie was sitting next to her husband when the motorcade traveled through the streets of the city in an open-topped limo. Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository with two shots hitting the president. The country was in turmoil and the first lady understood how important it was to calm everyones fears she had to be the most courageous one of all. Wearing her blood-stained pink suit on Air Force One, Jackie stood by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson as he was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States. She famously said, Let them see what they have done amid her overwhelming grief. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in to the office of the Presidency aboard Air Force One in Dallas, Texas, hours after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Historian Steve Gillon, author of The Kennedy Assassination24 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnsons Pivotal First Day as President, told People just how meaningful it was for Americans to have Jackie stand by Lyndon B. Johnson after losing her beloved husband. She set aside her grief for the stability of the nation. She went out in her blood-stained suit and stood next to Lyndon Johnson, he said. Despite these horrible circumstances, she was willing to stand for a photo because she understood what it meant for the nation to have continuity in government. She understood that she had a role to play in helping the nation transition to a new president. Buy Now 'The Kennedy Assassination24 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnson's Pivotal First Day as President $5.74 That powerful image symbolized the strength of a nation and reassured the American people that we had a new president. Jackie put Americans ahead of her own well-being after witnessing her world change in an instant. Before you go, click here to see photos of JFK and Jackie O.s grown-up grandkids. John Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy, Tatiana Schlossberg Best of SheKnows Sign up for SheKnows' Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Among the eight-course Japan Supper Club menu at Veritas has been this dish featuring king crab, short-grain Koshihikari rice and a variety of seaweed called tosaka nori. Veritas restaurants eight-week trip to Japan through a supper-club menu of small bites and sake pairings is coming to a close. Next stop: Thailand. Chef Josh Dalton, who marries his love for travel with his love of food, will head to Southeast Asia for two weeks in January to experience the culture and cuisine of Thailand before developing his own take on its flavors for the next Veritas supper club. He said it will debut as early as spring. Veritas, located at 11 W. Gay St., Downtown, will serve a classic American steakhouse menu starting Wednesday and continuing through the holiday season. In the supper clubs he brings to Veritas, Dalton said he seeks to introduce others to the places he travels with the hope theyll explore further on their own. His international menus so far have visited Japan, Mexico, Spain and France. More from Josh Dalton: Team behind Veritas excels with stellar menu at Speck Italian Eatery The Japan Supper Club, introduced in early October, received positive reviews for its food, cocktails, wines and attention to details such as oshibori, or a warm hand towel, between courses. Its last night is Saturday. Following his January trip, when he'll also visit Singapore and Australia, Dalton said he'll begin to develop the Thai supper-club food and cocktail menus with Veritas colleagues. The months-long process includes sourcing ingredients and tweaking the restaurant's decor. rvitale@dispatch.com More: New campaign encourages nominations of Columbus chefs for James Beard Awards This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Veritas and Josh Dalton plan Thai focus for next evolution of menu Jon Hamms nipple piercings in Fargo arent real, but thanks to his dedicated nippleologist, theyre pretty convincing. The actor, 52, is set to star as Roy Tillman, a police sheriff, preacher and rancher, in the forthcoming fifth season of FXs anthology series. When the shows trailer debuted last month, fans got a first look at Hamms bare torso and his characters (fake) accessorized nipples. I had to have some very blue latex put on my nipples, and then they cast a resoundingly lifelike pair of nipples, which they then pierced and placed over my own nipples, and we shot said nipples, Hamm shared during a Fargo screening earlier this month. The crew doesnt get enough credit. He stars alongside Juno Temple (Dorothy Dot Lyon), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Lorraine) and Joe Keery (Gator), among others. Everything We Know About Fargo Season 5: The Cast, Premise and More While Temples character finds herself in hot water with the authorities, Dot is suddenly plunged back into a life she thought she had left behind, according to FXs official logline. Meanwhile in North Dakota, Hamms character has been searching for Dot for a long time. FX/YouTube During FXs behind-the-scenes look at Fargo season 5, which was released on Monday, November 20, Hamm described his character as somewhere mixed between Joe Arpaio and the Tiger King. Fargo, the TV series, is inspired by the 1996 movie of the same name which starred Frances McDormand, William H. Macy and Steve Buscemi. The show, created by Noah Hawley, premiered via FX in 2014 and is executive produced by Joel and Ethan Coen, who directed the original film. Hawley, 56, teased that he opened Fargo season 5 with a connection to the movie by defining Minnesota Nice. (This season is set to take place in both Minnesota and North Dakota.) Which TV Shows Are Renewed, Which Are Canceled in 2022-2023? Get the Status of Your Favorite Series This idea that in polite society, people dont know how to bend, Hawley shared during the shows screening. They just break because theyre putting it all down and putting on this brave face. And of course, they become these passive aggressive people. But I look around and I dont see a lot of passive aggression anymore. I see a of aggressive aggression. So, the question really becomes, what happens to the basically decent people that we tell stories about all the time, to put them into this situation where their neighbors are now turning on each other? Fargo season 5 premieres on FX Tuesday, November 21 at 10 p.m. ET. Kaitlin Armstrongs highly anticipated trial in pro-cyclist Anna Moriah Mo Wilsons murder concluded last week with a guilty verdict. A Travis County jury convicted her of first-degree murder on November 16. The same panel deliberated for about three hours the following day and recommended a 90-year prison term. Judge Brenda Kennedy accepted and delivered the same sentence, per NBC News. Prosecutors alleged that Armstrong was infuriated over her boyfriend Colin Stricklands friendship with Wilson. Strickland, also a pro-cyclist, had previously dated the victim briefly in 2021 while he and the accused were separated. The prosecution also presented video, cellphone, ballistic, and DNA evidence in court, linking the defendant to the crime. Wilsons friend Caitlin Cash found her dead body on the floor of her house where the former had been staying on May 11, 2022. Armstrongs vehicle was spotted near the same house around the time of the murder. Moreover, the accused, a yoga teacher, was on the run for 43 days. Authorities arrested her in Costa Rica in June that same year. Kaitlin Armstrongs sentencing and murder trial, explained In a murder case that witnessed a 43-day international manhunt, Kaitlin Armstrong was sentenced to 90 years in prison on November 17, 2023. Judge Brenda Kennedy handed her the sentence a day after the jurys guilty verdict in pro-cyclist Anna Moriah Mo Wilsons murder, per CBS News. Wilson, 25, died of multiple gunshot wounds on May 11, 2022. Prosecutors claimed Armstrong fatally shot Wilson in a jealous rage over her then-boyfriend Colin Stricklands friendship with the 25-year-old. The news report also mentioned that the victim had gone swimming with Strickland on the day of the murder. At the time of her murder, Wilson had been visiting Austin ahead of a race and staying at her friend Caitlin Cashs house. Cash was the one who found her body and claimed that she even tried to perform CPR but to no avail. The prosecution presented solid evidence in court. Moreover, they even stated that Armstrongs Jeep was spotted near the apartment around the time of the murder. Police also proved that bullet casings found near the victims body matched a gun the accused owned. CBS report stated that after the killing, the yoga teacher briefly met with police, sold her vehicle, and used her sisters passport to flee to Costa Rica. There, she spent over $6,000 on a nose job there and hair color, and styling to evade arrest. Authorities eventually arrested her at a beachside hostel after 43 days in June of that year. The post Kaitlin Armstrong Sentenced in Pro-Cyclist Anna Moriah Mo Wilsons Murder appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More. On Nov. 22, 818 Tequila will reimburse drinkers up to $8.18 Courtesy of Sophie Sahara for 818 Tequila Kendall Jenner's 818 Tequila is covering bar tabs the night before Thanksgiving People flood bars the night before Thanksgiving, so 818 Tequila wants to help cover the tab. Kendall Jenners tequila brand is honoring Thanksgiving Eve by buying bar goers a drink. On Nov. 22, 818 will contribute up to $8.18 towards your first cocktail of the night. They're dubbing the deal "Cheersgiving." The drink must have 818 Tequila in it and the purchase must be made between 6 am to 11:59 pm PT. Eligible bars and restaurants can be found in Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming and specific spots can be located on the 818 website. All drinkers need to do is submit their receipts on the brand's form here. The model announced her tequila back in 2021. Named after The Kardashians stars hometown area code, the spirit anonymously won several tasting competitions the year that it launched. The tequila is available in four varieties Blanco, Reposado, Anejo and Eight Reserve by 818 and is sold at restaurants and bars nationwide, even at 818 Shack, an open-air cocktail lounge at SLS Baha Mar in the Bahamas. Related: The Rolling Stone's New Rum, RHONY's Erin Lichy's Mezcal, Plus More Stars in the Alcohol Business Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for FWRD Kendall Jenner Jenner recently took her tequila on a college tour. From Oct. 9-11, the model visited four college campuses across the Midwest to promote her award-winning tequila brand, 818 Tequila. Ohio State University, Indiana University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Michigan were all on her college tour. The founder made multiple stops at each campus where she surprised students and patrons with signed bottles, meet-and-greets and brand merch items i college @drink818, Jenner captioned an Instagram montage of her college stops. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan thank you for the warm welcome For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on People. Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Polish director Agnieszka Hollands migrant crisis drama Green Border. The film, which won Venices Special Jury Prize, explores the migrant crisis on the green border between Belarus and Poland, through the eyes of refugees trapped in the inhospitable terrain, activists trying to help them and border guards. More from Deadline The drama hit the headlines worldwide in September following a political backlash in Poland, after the film angered the then ruling right-wing, anti-migrant coalition led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party for the films underlying critique of its policies. Polish distributor Kino Swiat pushed on with the Polish release nonetheless with Holland doing her promotional tour with security guards by her side. PiS lost its parliamentary majority in general elections in October and a centre-left coalition led by Donald Tusk is expected to take the reins of power in the coming weeks. Following its prize-winning Venice debut, Green Border also screened at TIFF, New York Film Festival, and AFI Fest. The drama is also nominated for three European Film Awards including Best European Film, ahead of the EFA ceremony in Berlin on December 9. The North American deal for Green Border was negotiated by Kino Lorber Senior Vice President Wendy Lidell and Julien Razafindranaly for Films Boutique. In the UK, Green Border will be released by Modern Films, who will back the film for the European Film Awards and the BAFTAs. Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release in 2024, followed by a home video, educational, and digital release on all major platforms. Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The 'Percy Jackson' star popped the question ahead of Thanksgiving Stefanie Keenan/Getty Ann Corrigan and Logan Lerman on July 19, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. Logan Lerman and longtime girlfriend, Analuisa "Ana" Corrigan, are engaged! The 28-year-old ceramics artist announced the news in a sweet post on Instagram on Tuesday that Lerman, 31, proposed to her. Thats Mrs Logie to you, Corrigan simply captioned the Instagram carousel. "Love you sweetie," Lerman added in the comment section. Corrigans post included a photo of a photobooth strip of the couple embracing one another and a close-up video of the engagement ring the Percy Jackson star gave his new fiancee. Corrigan is a ceramics artist from San Diego who graduated with a BFA from Parsons School of Design, according to her website. ana corrigan/instagram Logan Lerman's fiancee Ana Corrigan's engagement ring The couple was most recently seen together at Joey King and her now husband Steven Piets Spanish wedding in Mallorca. Related: Logan Lerman Smiles as He Wraps His Arm Around Girlfriend Ana Corrigan During Night Out in Los Angeles Lerman shared an Instagram carousel of snapshots of himself and Corrigan attending King and Piet's wedding. The carousel began with a silhouetted photo of Corrigan looking out at the Mediterranean Sea. In addition to photos with King and Piet, Lerman also shared a photo of his now-fiancee at the wedding ceremony in a black and beige woven dress. Related: All the Celebrity Engagements of 2023 In an interview with Architectural Digest, Corrigan said the couple were initially dating long-distance, while he was in Los Angeles and Corrigan was in New York City. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Corrigan was visiting Lerman and she ended up staying on the West Coast long-term. The couple have kept their relationship out of the spotlight, but in December 2021, Lerman posted a celebratory Instagram in honor of Corrigans 27th birthday. Yesterday was my best friends birthday. She truly makes every day better and brighter," he wrote. I wake up every morning feeling like the luckiest guy in the world knowing I have this one in my life," Lerman continued. Heres to many more adventures together. Love you, Anita. 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. Corrigan shared her first Instagram post with Lerman to celebrate his birthday in January 2020. Shes since marked each of his birthdays, with her most recent tribute featuring a shout-out to his lengthy locks. HBD logie Im obsessed with you, and your hair is an inspiration to us all, she captioned the post. She included several photos of Lerman with his long hair, which he has since cut. For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on People. Pope Francis has been sending messages for weeks to both sides of the conflict between Israel and Palestine to try to tone down the belligerence. On Wednesday morning, the pontiff decided to go a step further and receive two delegations at the Vatican: relatives of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, and relatives of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel under the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After the meeting, at the public audience held on Wednesdays, Francis surprised everyone with a resounding statement about his vision of the conflict: Here weve gone beyond war. This isnt war anymore, this is terrorism, he said. Pope Francis meets with Israeli relatives of hostages at the Vatican on November 22, 2023. VATICAN MEDIA (via REUTERS) The Catholic leaders statements are striking because they include under the category of terrorism both the attacks by Hamas and the action of the Israeli army in Gaza. This is a comparison that, in public at least, most of the international community is avoiding, particularly those actors who are trying to provide some type of help in the mediation process. The pontiff alluded to the conflict at the end of his audience in an improvised speech. Let us not forget to persevere in prayer for those who are suffering because of wars in so many parts of the world, especially for the beloved people of Ukraine and Israel and Palestine. The Vatican had worked in recent days to facilitate todays meeting between the Pope and the Israeli and Palestinian delegations. Although the details of the visit were finalized earlier, the meeting has taken place right after the agreement between the government of Israel and Hamas for the release of 50 hostages in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and a four-day truce. Please, let us go ahead with peace. Pray for peace, pray a lot for peace, said the pope. The Vatican has also tried to mediate in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but so far it has not achieved much. The government of Ukraine is upset at Pope Francis for not taking sides regarding the Russian invasion. Last August, he also angered the Kyiv government when he praised Russias imperialist past. Wondering where to stream Murder in Big Horn Season 1 online? Then go no further, as we have all the streaming details. Directed by Razelle Benally and Matthew Galkin, the limited series showcases the disappearances of various Indigenous women in Big Horn County in Montana, as many families and friends of the victims share their stories. Heres how you can watch and stream Murder in Big Horn Season 1 via streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video. Is Murder in Big Horn Season 1 available to watch via streaming? Yes, Murder in Big Horn Season 1 is available to watch via streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The three-part docuseries captures the disappearances and murders of Indigenous women in Montanas Big Horn County. While the footage of various victims has been showcased with family and journalist interviews recorded, the series does a brilliant job of capturing the authorities negligence, incompetence, and hesitance in resolving the cases related to the missing Indigenous girls. For example, in the very first episode, we meet the 14-year-old Henny Scott, who disappeared in 2018. When her family went to the authorities to report the case, it was delayed and kept on hold due to their vacation period. Overall, the questions of racism and marginalization of Indigenous women become the docuseries central themes, which have been extremely well-executed. Various real-life victims like Henny Scott, Keysara, and Selena Not Afraid appear in the footage of the documentary Watch Murder in Big Horn Season 1 streaming via Amazon Prime Video Murder in Big Horn Season 1 is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. You need to set up an Amazon Prime Video account by selecting one of the plans that the streaming platform offers to its prospective subscribers and providing your details. You can watch the miniseries via Amazon Prime Video by following these steps: Go to Amazon Prime Video Select Sign in and Create your Amazon account Sign up for a Prime Video membership: $14.99 per month or $139 per year with an Amazon Prime membership $8.99 per month for a standalone Prime Video membership Amazon Prime is the online retailers paid service that provides fast shipping and exclusive sales on products, so the membership that includes both this service and Prime Video is the companys most popular offering. However, you can also opt to subscribe to Prime Video separately. The synopsis for Murder in Big Horn is as follows: A powerful portrait of tribal members and their communities within Big Horn County, Montana battling an epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) that has been prevalent since colonization. This docuseries examines the circumstances surrounding many of these cases, told solely through the perspectives of those involved: Native families, Native journalists, and local law enforcement officers. NOTE: The streaming services listed above are subject to change. The information provided was correct at the time of writing. Wondering where to watch Squid Game: The Challenge Season 1? Youve come to the right place, as weve got all Movies ayeshaasif 21 seconds ago Gremlins meets Home Alone in Magnus Martens Christmas creature feature Theres Something in the Barn. Can it deliver festive family Movies Neil Bolt 6 hours ago Ridley Scotts highly anticipated Napoleon is now playing in theaters. If that werent enough to lure you off your couches Movies Jeff Ames 12 hours ago According to Deadline, Prime Video has officially granted a series order to the upcoming drama titled Motorheads, with Cruel Intentions TV Maggie Dela Paz 12 hours ago Read more The post Murder in Big Horn Season 1 Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via Amazon Prime Video appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More. It was a very open palate, says Shona Heath while discussing her work as a production designer on Yorgos Lanthimos Poor Things. She and her colleague James Price used the script from Tony McNamara as the bouncing board for everything. Watch our exclusive video interview with Heath and Price above. Yorgos was really keen that the film used all sorts of 1930s studio techniques, and also very up-to-date technology like LED screens for the sky, Heath explains. He was keen to have a new world created for him totally from scratch. He wanted to use all the techniques from miniatures to massive studio builds. He wanted everything. More from GoldDerby SEE Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) reveals how his father influenced his portrayal of Dr. Godwin Baxter: My worlds are coming together Price says it took a while to figure out where they could build a set with such a grand scale. We did a bit of a European tour, he explains. Budapest seemed like the only place that could really house us because we were going to be a big outfit. We took over two huge film studios there and we built our biggest set, Lisbon. At one point I was informed that we had three-quarters of the construction crew that work in Hungary as a whole. We became like a self-eating snake. We would turn up on set and we would be like, Wheres that painter gone? It really was a monumental task. Poor Things is an incredible tale about the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Following the movies Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, Searchlight Pictures set a nationwide release date for December 8. PREDICT the 2024 Oscar nominees Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Dont miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why? SIGN UP for Gold Derbys free newsletter with latest predictions Best of GoldDerby Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Queen Camilla was by King Charles' side to host the President of the Republic of Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, during a state visit to the U.K. YUI MOK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Camilla at Buckingham Palace state banquet on Nov. 21, 2023 Queen Camilla is sparkling in another stunning royal headpiece! The Queen, 76, stepped out on Tuesday evening for the state banquet at Buckingham Palace in honor of the President of the Republic of Korea Yoon Suk Yeo and Kim Keon Hee's state visit to the U.K. She joined King Charles, Prince William, Kate Middleton and other members of the royal family at the glamorous event. For the first time, Queen Camilla wore the Burmese Ruby tiara, complementing her red velvet evening dress by Fiona Clare. The headpiece was part of Queen Elizabeth's collection and worn by the late monarch on multiple occasions. According to The Court Jeweller, the tiara was made by jeweler Garrard in 1973, constructed from diamonds and rubies that Queen Elizabeth received as wedding presents. The rubies came from the people of Burma, while the diamonds came from the deconstructed Nizam of Hyderabad Tiara. YUI MOK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images Queen Camilla at Buckingham Palace state banquet on Nov. 21, 2023 Related: Queen Camilla's Most Glittering Tiara Moments See Her Go-To Sparkler! Queen Camilla also accessorized with the late Queen Elizabeth's ruby and diamond necklace and earrings from her private collection. While Queen Camilla has worn many tiaras over the years, she recently had her debut in a historic diadem at the State Opening of Parliament earlier this month. The Diamond Diadem (also known as the George IV State Diadem) was made for the coronation of King George IV in 1820 and it's what the monarch wore (along with a large purple velvet cap) on his way to Westminster Abbey for his crowning ceremony. Since King George IV, the Diamond Diadem has been worn by every British queen, whether they reigned or were consorts: Queen Adelaide, Queen Victoria, Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) and Queen Elizabeth. The accessory was closely associated with Queen Elizabeth, King Charles' mother who died in Sept. 2022. She wore the Diamond Diadem for the first time in public at her first State Opening of Parliament in 1952 (before she was formally crowned at her coronation). At her coronation in June 1953, Queen Elizabeth wore the headpiece on her way to Westminster Abbey for the crowning ceremony. Yui Mok/POOL/AFP/getty Queen Camilla and King Charles at the Buckingham Palace state banquet on Nov. 21, 2023. Related: Kate Middleton Drops into an Expert Curtsy for King Charles While Navigating Stairs! Queen Elizabeth also wore the diadem on the way to most State Openings of Parliament (though she swapped it for the Imperial State Crown for the service) and in photographs including those used for British and Commonwealth coinage, banknotes and postage stamps. Since Queen Elizabeth's death, Queen Camilla has sported a number of accessories closely related to the late monarch. Last month, Queen Camilla visited Mansion House with King Charles to take part in longstanding traditions marking a new monarch's first visit to the City of London (the historic square mile that joins 32 boroughs to make up Greater London) in their coronation year. The outing marked a royal first as she made her debut in the Girls of Great Britain and Ireland tiara. Queen Elizabeth wore the accessory numerous times throughout her 70 years on the throne, including in depictions of her on some British and Commonwealth banknotes and coins. YUI MOK/POOL/AFP via Getty Images The Buckingham Palace state banquet on Nov. 21, 2023. Queen Camilla also sported her first tiara of King Charles' reign for the 2022 state banquet hosting the President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, a sapphire and diamond tiara that Queen Elizabeth wore for a 2015 state visit with President of China Xi Jinping. King Charles was also decked out in accordance with the white tie dress code for the state banquet, wearing his decorations, medals, the Garter Star and the Thistle Stars along with the neck order, the sovereign's badge of the Order of the Bath. He also wore a gift from the Korean president he received earlier in the day: the Grand Order of the Mugunghwa. The order comprises of a star, neck decoration, sash and badge. Yui Mok-WPA Pool/Getty Images Prince William and Kate Middleton at the state banquet on Nov. 21, 2023 King Charles gave a speech starting with a line delivered in Korean welcoming their guests to Britain, which was met with applause. In addition to praising the nation's efforts on sustainability with a special shout out to K-pop band BLACKPINK, who attended the banquet the monarch referenced Korea's influence on pop culture rivaling the U.K.'s! "Korea has matched Danny Boyle with Bong Joon-ho, James Bond with Squid Game and the Beatles' 'Let It Be' with BTSs 'Dynamite,' " he said. "Our cultures share a remarkable ability to captivate imaginations across the world, transforming a so-called soft power into a shared superpower." There was also a new addition to the state banquet reflecting King Charles' reign at the head table, the glasses at each place setting featured the King's cypher etched on for the first time. The others still have the late Queen Elizabeth's symbol. Can't get enough of PEOPLE's Royals coverage? Sign up for our free Royals newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more! Chris Jackson - WPA Pool/Getty Images State visit begins on Nov. 21, 2023 Queen Camilla was also by King Charles' side earlier in the day when they welcomed Korea's president and first lady at Horse Guards Parade. "She is the yin to his yang," a close palace insider told PEOPLE of the King and Queen's relationship. "She is the type to say, 'It'll all be fine; let's crack on and get on with things.' " Royal biographer Christopher Wilson, who studied the couple in the book A Greater Love, added that Queen Camilla soothes King Charles in a way no one else can. "Her presence reassures him," Wilson said. "Despite all the trappings of majesty, it's cold and lonely at the top, and it's easy to see the comfort she provides him." For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on People. Bradley Haas "died a hero protecting the patients and staff of New Hampshire Hospital" when a gunman opened fire Friday, officials said Franklin Police Department/ Facebook Bradley Haas Bradley Haas, a security guard who was killed after confronting a shooter at a psychiatric hospital in New Hampshire, is being remembered as a hero who dedicated his life to public service. Haas, 63, of Franklin, was working his shift in the lobby entrance of the New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord when a gunman fatally shot him around 3:30 p.m. Friday, according to a news release from the New Hampshire Attorney Generals Office. Haas was a father and the former chief of police with the Franklin Police Department for nearly 30 years, the release states. He also previously served as a military police officer in the U.S. Army. Authorities said Haas family is asking for privacy at this time. An autopsy determined he died of multiple gunshot wounds and his manner of death was homicide, the AGs office said. On Saturday, New Hampshire Homeland Security and Emergency Management issued a statement about Haas' death, describing how the security officer was heroic in facing the shooter and preventing further harm. WMUR via AP Authorities at the crime scene. On behalf of all members of the New Hampshire Department of Safety, I extend our sincerest condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of Security Officer Bradley Haas, Commissioner Robert L. Quinn said. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases. Officer Haas was a dedicated member of the safety team who died a hero protecting the patients and staff of New Hampshire Hospital, he added. Our hearts ache at this loss. After Haas was shot, the AGs office says that the suspected shooter, 33-year-old John Madore, was shot and killed by a New Hampshire State Police trooper also assigned to the hospital. Authorities have not publicly shared the troopers identity as they had yet to be formally interviewed. New Hampshire Attorney General John Madore State Police Col. Mark Hall said, per WMUR-TV and NBC News, that investigators are looking into a U-Haul truck that was left at the scene and contained AR-15-style weapon, a tactical vest and ammunition. Madore's connection to the truck is unclear. While the investigation remains ongoing, the AGs office has asked anyone with information on the case to contact the State Police Major Crime Unit at (603) MCU-TIPS (603-628-8477) or by email at mcu@dos.nh.gov. For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on People. The 'Real Housewives of New York City' alum tied the knot with Georgia businessman Robert Bovard on Nov. 11 CAPEHART Tinsley Mortimer and Robert Bovard on their wedding day Tinsley Mortimer is sharing a glimpse of her dreamy wedding! The Real Housewives of New York City alum, 48, tied the knot with Georgia businessman Robert Bovard in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 11. In an exclusive interview with Town & Country, Mortimer spilled all the details about her special day. Per the outlet, the bride walked down the aisle wearing a Monique Lhuillier tulle gown featuring floral appliques, while Bovard donned a Ralph Lauren suit. According to Mortimer, the best part of her wedding day was being surrounded by family. The TV personality and entrepreneur's sister, Dabney, served as her maid of honor, and she made her walk down the aisle with her baby daughter in her arms. Meanwhile, Bovard's young son, Bobby, was his best man, and his twin daughters, Ruthie and Mary, were flower girls. Mortimer's godfather George Gambrill Lynn had the honor of walking her down the aisle, while she also found a way to include her late father in the ceremony by pinning his photo to her bouquet. The Real Housewives alum and Bovard also had a family member officiate their ceremony: her first cousin, Mercer Ferguson, who added a dash of humor to the proceedings. Related: All the Celebrity Weddings of 2023 "Our service was part traditional and part full of laughter thanks to Mercer," she told Town & Country. "It was so special to have my family up there with me surrounded by my new family Robert, the twins and Bobby." CAPEHART Tinsley Mortimer marries Robert Bovard In PEOPLE's exclusive photo from the ceremony, Mortimer and Bovard stand under an arch of hot pink bougainvillea created by floral designer Everett Simon. The color pink played a big role in the couple's overall Palm Beach theme, as it was also featured on the invitations and incorporated into their pink ombre cake. A rep for Mortimer confirmed the couple's engagement to PEOPLE last month after the former reality star shared a photo of Bovard who is president of Augusta, Georgia-based Augusta Iron & Steel Works Inc. and appeared to hint at her upcoming nuptials in an Instagram Story post. Family vacay before the big day! Mortimer wrote over the photo of her and Bovard posing by the water at sunset, alongside Bovard's three young children whose faces were covered by emojis. Tinsley Mortimer/Instagram Tinsley Mortimer and Robert Bovard Bovard welcomed a son and twin daughters with his late wife of 12 years Mary Dial Bovard, who died from a brain tumor in June 2021, according to her obituary. Related: The Real Housewives of New York City Cast: Where Are They Now? 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. Getty Images Mortimer previously expressed her desire to marry and build a family with a special someone in the 2023 Hulu documentary Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl, which examines Manhattan's early-2000s socialite culture. I just want to be a housewife, a real housewife. Not a 'Real Housewife,' a real housewife!" she said. "I dont only want to talk about all my business stuff I want to do. I want to have a child and be a housewife, a real one." After leaving her old stomping ground of New York City behind, Mortimer appears to have settled in Augusta, where Bovard's company is based. The city just so happens to have a Real Housewives connection: Beverly Hills castmember Sutton Stracke was born and raised there. She and Mortimer bumped into each other last year, and Stracke, 52, captured the moment with a photo of the pair that she posted on Instagram on Nov. 28. "Guess who I found living in my hometown? @tinsleymortimer is the perfect match for Augusta! Cant wait to see more of her on my visits home," she wrote. For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on People. Chedly Ben Ibrahim/NurPhoto via Getty Images Since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for Hamas October 7 attack, over 13,000 Palestinians have reportedly been killed and more than 1.5 million have been displaced over 46 days. In response, people around the world have come together to call for a ceasefire and advocate for a free Palestine. Solidarity protests and marches in cities including Washington, D.C., London, Hebron, Kuala Lumpur, and Istanbul, have garnered thousands (and hundreds of thousands). Many of the loudest protesters have been queer and trans people. Among many moments of LGBTQ+ solidarity, queer journalists have resigned from the New York Times over the papers coverage of Gaza, and queer celebrities like Kehlani, Jonathan Van Ness, Angelina Jolie, Susan Sarandon, and Indya Moore have publicly taken pro-Palestine stances. On the ground, queer and trans people in London, New York, and Washington, D.C. and other major cities have formed blocs, marching together at protests and staging their own direct actions. Online, the anonymous group Queers in Palestine has kept a running list of LGBTQ+ organizations from all over the world that have signed onto its No Pride in Genocide statement. It currently lists more than 500 signatories. Across the board, many who have voiced support for Palestinians have faced backlash, disciplinary measures, and other reprisals. But especially online, many queer and trans people have been met with a particular genre of retort: arguments that LGBTQ+ people supporting Gazans are like chickens for KFC or minks for fur. The rhetoric has become so common that on November 5, an Israeli sketch comedy show aired a skit, which has garnered millions of views, satirizing queer pro-Palestinian activists, portraying them as empty-headed clowns who celebrate the LGBTQH (the H is for Hamasget it?) community. In the sketch, two Columbia students exuberantly wave a combination Pride and Palestine flag, even as their Hamas fighter BFF says, We will throw you from the roof, you homosexual dirt. In Gaza, homosexual sex has been outlawed since 1936, and in the occupied territories generally, queer and trans identities continue to be subjects of intense debate in public life, as well as targets of anti-LGBTQ+ violence and persecution. But these retorts fail to acknowledge that international queer solidarity with Palestinians is nothing new, and that LGBTQ+ Palestinians have long been fighting for their rights as queer people alongside their freedom as Palestinians. Dr. Sa'ed Atshan, a professor of Anthropology and Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College, has spent much of his life and career thinking through these issues. His 2020 book Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique is a close look at the necessity of connecting the struggle for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia and transphobia within the occupied territories. We asked Dr. Atshan for his perspective on the rise in queer solidarity with Palestinians, the arguments against it, and how to make sense of the current moment. What was it like growing up in the West Bank? I spent [my] childhood years in the West Bank, in Ramallah, and growing up under Israeli military occupation. On one hand, there's a tremendous amount of beauty and joy in living in Palestine: the people, the landscape, the generosity of spirit, the food, the love, the community, the sense of solidarity, the traditions being really held in a collectivist society and space. There was just a lot of beauty. Picking olives during the olive harvest season. I dont know if youve ever had the experience of picking a fresh fig off the tree; its just amazing. So, I feel deeply connected and rooted there, and my ancestors are from there, and the spirits of my ancestors are with me. But at the same time, there is oppression and there is suffering and there are soldiers and there are Israeli settlers and there are roadblocks and there are systematic denials of our fundamental basic human rights and our civic political rights and our socioeconomic rights. These are the realities. You have the former and the latter, and somehow, you have to just navigate these dynamics. How would you contextualize this moment that we're in right now, in particular with respect to queer solidarity with Palestinian civilians? I think that what were witnessing now on the ground in Palestine runs along a continuum of whats been happening for over 75 years now, of Israeli settler colonialism and military occupation and apartheid and different forms of ethnic cleansing. But at the same time, what were seeing is truly unprecedented in terms of the scale of the killing of Palestinian civilians, as well as the denial of access to water and electricity and power and medicine, on a scale in Gaza that is absolutely horrifying and very, very, very difficult. And similarly, what happened on October 7th in Israel, after the horrific attacks and massacre by Hamas, also exists along a historical continuum. This is not the first time that Palestinian armed groups have deployed violence against Israeli civilians. Theres a history, unfortunately, of suicide bombings, but the scale of the killing of Israelis is unprecedented. [Although] I want to be clear that theres a profound asymmetry in power and a profound asymmetry in the loss of life between Israelis and Palestinians. Where the queer solidarity movement with Palestine fits in this landscape is that theres a long, long history of queer solidarity with Palestine in the U.S., in Europe, and around the world, but the queer Palestinian movement was born in the early 2000s, and has become transnational and has only increased over time. But now, I think, given the horror of what Israel is doing in Palestine, specifically in Gaza, I believe that its very, very clear that we are witnessing a resurgence of global queer solidarity with Palestinians. What do you say to those who argue queer people shouldn't be in solidarity with Palestinians because homophobia is rampant in Palestinian territories? In my work, I dont deny or elide the realities of homophobia within Palestinian society and the potency of it, as well as the need to combat it and resist it. So many people in the queer Palestinian movement are connecting the struggles for queer liberation and the Palestinian liberation struggle as inextricably linked and fundamentally connected. That needs to be named very clearly and unequivocally. That being said, homophobia is not unique to Palestinian society. It exists in most parts of the world, including in Israeli society, as well as here in the United States. It's a near-universal phenomenon, unfortunately. Homophobia, transphobia, heteronormativity, patriarchy, sexism, gender and sexuality-based violence; these are realities that we have to grapple with all around the world. It's very dangerous to pathologize Palestinian society as uniquely homophobic or that homophobia is endemic to the society without this broader context, as well as without understanding the ways that life under brutal military occupation exacerbates homophobia within Palestinian society as well. In order for us to deal with questions of how queer people are treated in Palestine, we have to address the broader landscape of the denial of freedom to Palestinians more generally speaking. I also think that its racist, in my opinion, to argue that the struggle against racism thats directed against Palestinians should somehow be halted or undermined because there's homophobia within Palestinian society. Not only does it erase the existence of queer Palestinians, who themselves are subjected to both homophobic violence and racialized violence, it also renders invisible the history of LGBTQ activism within Palestinian society. But if you think about how Palestinians get exceptionalized Theres this kind of exception when it comes to the oppression of Palestinians; the oppression that we face gets normalized and even justified. Because Im simultaneously queer and Palestinian, I cant sever parts of my body and self. I am both of these things at once. Could you say more about this exceptionalism? How do these types of arguments about homophobia within Palestine play into that? In 2021, Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick published the book, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics, which highlights how liberal discourses in the United States often exclude the explicit acknowledgment of the need for Palestinian rights and liberation. This exceptionalism when it comes to Palestine gets rationalized in different ways one of which is pinkwashing. This pinkwashing emphasizes homophobia within Palestinian society in order to contribute to the dehumanization of Palestinians writ large. By pathologizing Palestinians as uniquely bigoted on a collective level, it makes it easier to stigmatize them and to undermine empathy with Palestinians who face devastating levels of death and destruction. How can we recognize dehumanizing rhetoric? We can recognize such dehumanizing rhetoric when Palestinians are portrayed merely as perpetrators of homophobia and/or violence or when Palestinians are victim-blamed for the systemic oppression they face. This pinkwashing is also invested in erasing Palestinians altogether or not representing Palestinians as a multi-dimensional society with a just struggle for freedom. Were also seeing people say things like, you cant be gay in Palestine. But of course, there are queer people everywhere. It seems like there is an inability to even imagine LGBTQ+ Palestinians existing, whether openly or not. Why do you think that is? Well, I think part of it is that we dont get to hear their voices as much as we should. Obviously, they exist; obviously, they have voices; obviously, they speak; and if we listen deeply enough, we can hear those voices. So I think that we need to do a better job of amplifying those voices. That is part of it. Part of it is that a lot of folks are in the closet, and it is too dangerous for them to be visible. The politics of visibility doesnt resonate with everyone, and it can be very dangerous and problematic for many people. So, I don't impose the politics of visibility on others. But then, there are others who are privileged, such as myself, for whom it is possible to be out and public and visible. And there are other LGBTQ activists for whom thats the case as well. And so then, we feel a responsibility to help give voice to the voices that are not being heard, that deserve to be heard as well. In your book, you talk about how the queer left solidarity movement has at times pressured queer Palestinians to privilege anti-imperialism above fighting the homophobia they experience. Can you talk a bit about that phenomenon? I want to be clear, Im not arguing that we want to focus less on anti-imperialism. I agree completely that it is paramount as a priority. But what Im arguing is that the queer liberation struggle cannot be disentangled from the anti-imperialist struggle. They are fundamentally connected, and the existence of the queer Palestinian body is a testament to that. Because Im simultaneously queer and Palestinian, I cant sever parts of my body and self. I am both of these things at once So I argue that the attempt to actually try to privilege one over the other is a fallacy because they are inextricably linked to begin with. They cannot be separated. Get the best of whats queer. Sign up for Thems weekly newsletter here. Originally Appeared on them. Hadasa Bozakkaravani, 48, was charged with four hate crimes Courtesy of the NYPD Hadasa Bozakkaravani A Brooklyn woman who is accused of throwing a hot drink at a dad wearing a Palestinian scarf and his son is now facing hate crime charges, the NYPD confirms to PEOPLE. Hadasa Bozakkavarani, 48, was charged with assault of a person younger than 11, assault, reckless endangerment and aggravated harassment, all as hate crimes, as well as other charges, the police department says. A video posted on Instagram by the victim, Ashish Prashar, 40, shows Bozakkavarani appear to throw something at Prashar, who was playing at a park with his 18-month-old son in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. Related: Woman Threw Coffee at a Dad and Toddler and Allegedly Called Them Terrorists, Triggering Hate Crime Investigation In the video she can be heard saying You and your son, go away, before throwing a cup containing a hot drink. Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases. In the Instagram caption for the video, Prashar, who was wearing a scarf called a keffiyeh, alleges she approached him and his son screaming and shouting, calling us terrorists, dogs, while claiming he was part of the terrorist group Hamas. A spokesperson for the Brooklyn District Attorneys Office tells PEOPLE that Bozakkaravani made her first appearance in court Tuesday and was released from custody. She has not yet entered a plea. Online court records indicate that her next court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 24. An attorney for Bozakkaravani did not immediately respond to a request for comment. For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on People. Rely on these stress-free dessert recipes that you can pack with the fillings of your choice this holiday season. Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Thom Driver Toasted Pepita and Ancho Chile Peanut Brittle Here's your holiday season secret weapon: Have chocolate bark or nut brittle ready by the pound to set out for snacking, wrap up for gifting, or add to a dessert spread. These simple pleasures promise shards of sweet crunch with eye-catching accents like gold leaf, pistachios, and rose petals. Best of all, you can make them in minutes, giving you a break while you create some sweet joy for your family and friends. Pistachio-Rose Brittle Photo by Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Torie Cox / Prop Styling by Christine Keely Quality saffron is key to both the flavor and color of this vibrant, crisp brittle that has great crunch. A striking contrast of green pistachios and pink rose petals makes it a visual treat, too. Get the Recipe Dark Chocolate Bark with Roasted Almonds and Seeds Julia Hartbeck This super-chunky dark chocolate bark from chocolatier Jacques Torres only requires a few ingredients dark chocolate, roasted whole almonds, and salted roasted sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Get the Recipe Pista Burfi Bark Andria Lo Floral, fragrant cardamom shines in this rich and nutty dessert inspired by burfi, an Indian sweet that's fudgy and milk-based. Blogger and cookbook author Hetal Vasavada tops her bark with edible flowers and gold leaf, making for a stunning presentation. Get the Recipe Toasted Pepita and Ancho Chile Peanut Brittle Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Thom Driver Toasted Pepita and Ancho Chile Peanut Brittle Speckled with rusty-red chile powder, loaded with nuts, and sprinkled with flaky sea salt, this delectable brittle can be packaged in small festive bags for the ultimate holiday gift. Get the Recipe Spiced Cashew Brittle and Chocolate Crunch Bark Jonny Valiant Cayenne-spiked cashew brittle is delicious alongside crunchy chocolate bark in this dual recipe. Get the Recipe Dark Chocolate Bark with Walnuts and Dried Cherries Laura Resen Sometimes, a small piece of bittersweet chocolate is the perfect indulgence. This recipe, from F&W's Grace Parisi, gets an extra boost from walnuts and dried cherries. Get the Recipe Smoked Almond Brittle Kate Mathis This clever sweet-and-savory brittle gets a more complex flavor from smoked almonds in the mix. The texture is light, crisp, and almost honeycomb-like. Get the Recipe Best-Ever Nut Brittle Tina Rupp Crunchy, buttery, and a bit salty, this customizable nut brittle is perfect for gifting or including on a holiday treat platter. Get the Recipe Sunflower-Seed Brittle Tina Rupp You can have a pound of this brittle ready in a half hour. We like this one paired with all kinds of semi-firm cheeses. Get the Recipe Spiced Pepita Brittle Con Poulos Heat sugar and water on the stove, swirl in butter and spiced pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds), then let cool for a dessert garnish or quick snack. Get the Recipe For more Food & Wine news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on Food & Wine. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. He was visiting the city as part of his re-election campaign. Here are some dark, unnerving, and surprising facts about the historic and tragic event: Note: Graphic and intense content ahead, including an autopsy photo. 1.Kennedy had only been in Dallas for about one hour when he was assassinated... Air Force One landed at Love Field in Dallas at 11:30 a.m. Kennedy was assassinated at Dealey Plaza at 12:30 p.m. Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 2....and his body left Dallas, flown via Air Force One back to Washington, DC, just over three hours after the time he'd landed in Dallas that morning. Air Force One left Dallas, with Kennedy in a casket, at 2:47 p.m. Historical / Corbis via Getty Images 3.When Mrs. Kennedy joined the swearing-in of Vice President Johnson aboard Air Force One, Johnson's wife asked Mrs. Kennedy if she wanted to change out of her blood-stained dress. Kennedy famously replied, Oh no, thats all right. I want them to see what they have done to Jack. National Archives / Getty Images 4.That famous pink Chanel suit is still around. It remains uncleaned and is currently stored inside a climate-controlled vault in the National Archives and will remain "out of public view" until at least 2103. According to Business Insider, sourcing the New York Times, "After Jackie Kennedy's death in 1994, the items were bequeathed to her daughter and sole surviving heir, Caroline Kennedy. However, they remained at the archives during this time. In 2003, Caroline Kennedy officially transferred ownership to the National Archives with the provision that they would be hidden from public view for another 100 years." Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 5.The car John F. Kennedy was riding in when he was killed continued to be used even after his assassination. Initially, the 1961 Lincoln Continental Presidential Limousine, called "X-100" by the Secret Service, was impounded for evidence after the assassination. However, in December 1963, roughly a month after JFK's death, the White House approved a plan to revamp the car. After some work and testing, it was delivered to the White House. Then, in 1967, it went through "major modifications" and went on to be used once in a while through the Carter administration. It was then returned to Ford (as it was actually a lease) in 1977 and is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 6.Clint Hill, a secret service agent who served on Jackie Kennedy's Secret Service detail and who famously jumped onto the back of Kennedy's limo, shielding Jackie Kennedy and the already-hit Kennedy still says he feels "a sense of guilt" to this day. Speaking in the National Geographic documentary, JFK: One Day in America, Hill said, "I should have been able to do more than I did. I wasn't fast enough. I guess I wasn't faster than a speeding bullet." As of 2023, Hill is the last surviving person who was in the presidential limo that day. Pascal J Le Segretain / Sygma via Getty Images 7.According to Hill, after Kennedy was shot, Jackie Kennedy screamed, "They shot his head off! ... I love you, Jack." Fort Worth Star-telegram / Tribune News Service via Getty Images 8.The scene of the assassination was completely chaotic, with no one really knowing what was happening. Speaking in JFK: One Day in America, Sid Davis, a Washington correspondent who was in the press bus following the motorcade, explained, "I saw a father take a little boy, and place the boy on the ground, and he put his body on top of the boy." Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 9.When Kennedy arrived at Parkland Hospital, he was declared "moribund," meaning "in the state of dying." According to Vanity Fair, the surgical team performed a tracheotomy "hoping to provide needed oxygen through a ventilator to keep him breathing (which by that time was described as gasping or agonal respiration)." Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 10.According to the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (aka the Warren Commission), Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and fired three shots at the President, with the second and third shots fired actually hitting him. As explained in the National Archives, "According to the Commission, one bullet hit the President near the base of the back of the neck, slightly to the right of the spine, and exited from the front of the neck. The other entered the right rear of the President's head and exited from the right side of the head, causing a large wound." Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 11.Interestingly, according to the National Archives, "The Commission based its findings primarily upon the testimony of the doctors who had treated the President at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and the doctors who performed the autopsy on the President at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD." The article continued, "In forming this conclusion, neither the members of the Warren Commission, nor its staff, nor the doctors who had performed the autopsy, took advantage of the X-rays and photographs of the President that were taken during the course of the autopsy." Pascal J Le Segretain / Sygma via Getty Images 12.The famous Zapruder film, which is the only film known to exist showing all of the shooting, was not shown to the public until 1975, over a decade after the assassination. According to the Sixth Floor Museum, "When Abraham Zapruder sold his film to Life magazine the day after the assassination, it was with the understanding that the magazine not exploit the graphic details of the presidents death. Life executives agreed to withhold the film from public exhibition until emotions cooled down. The film was first aired on television by Geraldo Rivera on March 6, 1975, on the ABC show Good Night, America." Note: The image above is NOT from the Zapruder film. Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 13.There has been A LOT of skepticism and conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy over the years and part of that is because of the Zapruder film. For example, in the film, you can see that the President's head appears to be thrown backward as the front right side of his head appears to "explode," which has made many conspiracists believe that the President was hit by a bullet shot from the front (aka the "grassy knoll" theory). Mark Ralston / AFP via Getty Images 14.The Zapruder film is widely available for viewing on YouTube, where you can see the actual assassination. (Warning: It is very graphic.) Note: The image above is NOT from the Zapruder film. Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 15.Lee Harvey Oswald actually attempted to assassinate a former Army general several months before he killed Kennedy. According to Smithsonian Magazine, "Seven months before Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy, he took his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (the one he'd eventually use to kill Kennedy) to Major General Edwin Walkers house, stood by the fence, aimed toward the window, and shot at him. Oswald missed his shot and escaped into the night." Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 16.Oswald himself was killed just two days later on live TV by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner whose motive was never made entirely clear... However, former police officer Rusty Robbins, who knew of Ruby, said in JFK: One Day in America, "Jack did what he did. He wanted to be somebody. Everybody loved the president so everybody hated the man who had killed the president. Somehow [Jack thought] this was going to make Jack a hero." Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 17....and this became the first known human killing seen on live TV. Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 18.No definite conclusion was ever reached as to what Lee Harvey Oswald's motive was. However, the Warren Commission did conclude that Oswald acted alone. National Archives - Jfk / Corbis via Getty Images 19.Finally, Kennedy wasn't the only person killed that day by Lee Harvey Oswald. Oft forgotten is that a police officer, J.D. Tippit, was also killed shot three times in the chest and once in the temple by Oswald roughly 45 minutes after Kennedy had been killed. According to CBS New Texas, "Tippit saw Oswald walking down 10th Street and stopped to ask him a question. Witnesses say Oswald shot Tippit four times. Oswald was later arrested in the Texas Theatre a few blocks away." Bettmann / Bettmann Archive Air Tahiti Nui's flight pass which is is on sale from Nov. 25-Nov. 26 consists of trips to Paris, Tahiti, Tokyo, and New Zealand for $1,525. Jet setting around the world can be incredibly glamorous, but it can also be incredibly expensive. Thats where Air Tahiti Nui comes in. The French Polynesian airline is offering travelers the chance to score its first-ever Tiare Pass, offering round-trip tickets from the United States to each destination the airline flies to (Paris, Tahiti, Tokyo, and New Zealand) for one low price. The pass which goes on sale for two days on Nov. 25th and Nov. 26 from at 9 a.m.-9:30 p.m. PST each day is available for just $1,525, the airline shared with Travel + Leisure. In total, the airline will offer up to 250 passes for sale. Courtesy of Air Tahiti Nui Pass holders can then visit each of the carriers dreamy destinations from its gateway cities in the U.S. (Los Angeles or Seattle) over the course of one year between Dec. 1, 2023, and Dec. 1, 2024. "As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, the Tiare Pass embodies Air Tahiti Nui's heartfelt gratitude to our cherished travelers, Caroline Borawski, the vice president of the Americas at Air Tahiti Nui, told T+L. This special offering unlocks a year of unforgettable travel experiences to some of the world's most iconic destinations all in one remarkable package for 250 fortunate pass holders. To book, the carrier is going old-school by requiring travelers to call the airlines reservation team directly at a special booking phone number. However, that phone number will only be revealed online on Nov. 25 at 9 a.m. PT. Each pass holder will then be able to book flights in the airlines economy cabin, but must book each ticket over the phone. Each flight will come with one checked bag and an onboard meal included. Flights to Tokyo are also blacked out from May 8, 2024, to October 26, 2024. Air Tahiti Nui one of T+L readers favorite international airlines isnt the only airline to offer a flight pass. Last year, Frontier Airlines launched its unlimited GoWild! Pass (which is currently on sale for Black Friday), and Alaska Airlines offers its own flight subscription pass, allowing travelers to book six, 12, or 24 roundtrip flights per year at a fixed monthly rate. For more Travel & Leisure news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter! Read the original article on Travel & Leisure. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looks at an Iranian missile during the IRGC Aerospace Force achievements exhibition in Tehran, Iran November 19, 2023. The White House voiced concern Tuesday that Iran may provide Russia with ballistic missiles for use in its war against Ukraine, a development that likely would be disastrous for the Ukrainian people, a U.S. national security official said. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby noted that Iran already has been providing Russia with unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, guided aerial bombs and artillery ammunition, and may be preparing to go a step further in its support for Russia. Kirby highlighted a September meeting in which Iran hosted Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to show off a range of ballistic missile systems, sparking U.S. concern. We are therefore concerned that Iran is considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles now for use in Ukraine, Kirby told reporters during a conference call. In return for that support, Russia has been offering Tehran unprecedented defense cooperation, including on missiles, electronics and air defense. Kirbys warning came as President Joe Bidens request for more than $61 billion in emergency U.S. funding to continue to support Ukraines defense remained stalled in Congress. The additional aid for Ukraine is part of a larger $106 billion funding request from the Democratic president that also would support Israel, Taiwan and the U.S. operations on the border with Mexico. A growing group of lawmakers in the Republican Party, which controls the House of Representatives, opposes sending more money to Ukraine. Kirby and other top U.S. officials have been urging Congress pass aid for Ukraine, saying existing funding is drying up. He also noted Irans announcement earlier this year that it had finalized a deal to buy Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, and said Iran is looking to buy additional military equipment from Russia, including attack helicopters, radars and combat-trainer aircraft. In total, Iran is seeking billions of dollars worth of military equipment from Russia to strengthen its military capabilities, Kirby said. Russia has also been helping Iran develop and maintain its satellite collection capabilities and other space-based programs. At the direction of the Russian government, Kirby said the Wagner mercenary group was preparing to provide an air-defense capability to either Hezbollah or Iran. He said the U.S. would be watching to see whether that happens and was prepared to use counterterrorism sanctions authority against Russian individuals or entities that might make these destabilizing transfers. The U.S. says the Kremlins reliance on Iran, as well as North Korea countries largely isolated on the international stage for their nuclear programs and human rights records shows desperation. That comes in the face of Ukrainian resistance and the success of the global coalition in disrupting Russian military supply chains and denying replacements for weapons lost on the battlefield. The White House has said Russia has turned to North Korea for artillery. U.S. officials say Iran has also provided Russia with artillery and tank rounds for its invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and other countries have taken steps to thwart the potential supply, sale or transfer involving Iran and ballistic missile-related items, Kirby said. The U.S. has also issued guidance to private companies about Iranian missile procurement practices to make sure they arent inadvertently supporting Irans development efforts. Last May, the White House said Russia was interested in buying additional advanced attack drones from Iran for use in the war against Ukraine after it used up most of the 400 drones it had previously purchased from Tehran. A U.S. intelligence finding released in June asserted that Iran was providing Russia with materials to build a drone manufacturing plant east of Moscow as the Kremlin looks to lock in a steady supply of weaponry for the war. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAIS USA Edition "Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Archaeologists believe they may have discovered the final location of Noahs Ark on Turkeys Mount Ararat. Soil samples from atop the highest peaks in Turkey reveal human activity and marine materials. Dating of the rock and soil from the location match with Biblical timing of Noahs Ark. Researchers from a trio of universities in Turkey and the United States have spent roughly a year analyzing the rock and soil in the famous Durupinar formation on Mount Ararat, the highest mountain in Turkey. They believe that the boat-shaped site may hold the ruins of the legendary Noahs Ark. The Biblical account of Noah tells of God instructing Noah to build a giant ark to spare his family and pairs of animals from an impending flood meant to destroy the evil and wickedness running rampant on Earth. Noahs Ark is said to have come to rest on the mountains of Ararat following a 150-day flood about 5,000 years ago. Researchers now believe theyve found evidence of human activity near the boat-shaped formation in the mountains from between 5500 and 3000 BC. Faruk Kaya, AICU vice rector professor, says that analyzing rocks and soil from the uniquely shaped area on the mountain shows human activity in the region, timed to the years following the flood in the legend of Noahs Ark. In terms of dating, it is stated that there was life in this region as well, Kaya says, according to The Daily Mail. This was revealed in the laboratory results. Human activity, however, does not a Biblical account prove. The Durupinar formation has been put forth as a potential ark resting place for many years, and has received extensive attention from those hoping to find Noahs Ark. Despite the hype, archaeologists have consistently reaffirmed over the years that the formation is natural, not the result of a petrified shipwreck, and that there is no geologic record of a global flood like the one described in religious texts. Some believe that a more local flood may have been possible, but that is also debated. The team says it isnt currently possible to say that Noahs Ark itself was at the Durupinar site. With the dating, it is not possible to say that the ship is here, Faruk Kaya, one of the researchers on the project, said according to Turkish news publication Hurriyet. We need to work for a long time to reveal this. In the next period, we agreed to carry out a joint study under the leadership of ITU, Andrew University and AICU. Three universities will continue their work in this field in the future. For now, the scientists point to the evidence in the soil of clayey materials, marine materials, and seafood, according to Hurriyet, within the geological formation as evidence. The team of researchers placed a renewed focus on the region in 2021 by exploring varying geological areasincluding the Durupinar formation, which is made of limonite that bears resemblance to a ship like Noahs Ark. Further exploration led the team to take the rock and soil samples from the countrys highest peaks for laboratory analysis. The story of God, Noah, his family, the animals in his care, and Noahs Ark has caused much debate for centuries. The search for proof of this event will likely continue for some time, and only that time will tell if it is there to be found. You Might Also Like Mike Potter has hunted his 160-acre property in Atchison County, Kansas for the last 10 years. Hes tagged a buck every year, even though he now has to travel there from his home in Byron Center, Michigan. This season, he killed his best buck yet, and he did it on a hot, muggy day when most hunters would have stayed at home. If I still lived in Kansas, I wouldnt even have bothered hunting that day because it was so hot, Potter tells Outdoor Life. But we only had a week to hunt, so we kept at it. Potter says that he, his father Larry, and his friend Kevin Beer hunted the property during the first week of November, which is typically prime time. But this year was different. The rut is always during the first week of November, and thats when I time my hunt, he says. But this year it was way too warm in early November. Conditions were just awful. This trail cam photo was taken around seven weeks before Potter killed the buck. The week before, Potter explains, a cold snap had kicked off an earlier-than-usual rut. But they were greeted at deer camp by 75-degree weather and a warm south wind. Potter says the bucks were in lockdown mode as they stayed bedded down with the does theyd corralled the previous week. We saw almost no bucks those first few days, Potter says. On the morning of Nov. 6, the three hunters headed out, and once again, the warm weather kept deer activity to a minimum. They met back at the cabin for lunch and then returned to their tree stands. Potter got in his 18-foot-high ladder stand at 2 p.m. He was set up near a pond that was close to a known bedding area, and sometime around 5 o'clock that evening, a lone buck walked out of the woods and over to the pond for a drink. Read Next: 35 Pieces of Deer-Hunting Wisdom to Read Before You Hunt This Season Id put scent on my boots that morning, and when the buck finished drinking, he put his nose to the ground and followed my steps right to my open shooting lane at 30 yards, Potter says. I thought hed surely scent me, but he was steady on that trail, nose to the ground. The buck made a scrape, then passed behind some trees on the way toward Potters shooting lane. Potter drew back his compound bow, and when the deer stepped into the opening, he released. Fixed with a two-blade mechanical broadhead, the arrow hit the deer right behind the shoulder. I saw my arrow in flight because it had a lighted nock, and I knew the shot was good, Potter says. The deer ran downhill into a thick dry creek bed, and I heard him fall. After walking out to where the deer had been standing, Potter found his arrow and then backed out of the area. He met up with his dad and friend back at camp, and they returned to the dry creek bed, where they recovered the buck with an ATV. Read Next: Pennsylvania Crossbow Hunter Tags Giant 18-Point Buck with a Little Help from His Friends Potter says they estimated the bucks live weight around 200 pounds. His taxidermist gave it an unofficial green score of 171 4/8 inches. Its the best deer Ive ever taken, Potter says. Why that huge buck was cruising and headed to the pond for a drink is a mystery. But it sure shows that you cant kill a deer by staying in camp on a couch. Potter's approach was the right one, according to whitetail expert Dr. Grant Woods . Since the rut revolves around photoperiod, or the amount of sunlight in a given day, temperature shouldn't factor too much into the decision to hunt or not hunt. "Even if its 80 degrees, but the prom only happens once where you hunt, its still going to happen [during a warm front], Woods tells Outdoor Life. "If [fawns are] born too early, theyre going to fall into a snowbank and theyre not going to make it. And if theyre born too late theyre not going to gain enough weight before the next winter and theyre not going to make it. So the system is pretty refined over a long time. The rut is going to happen at the same time [locally, every year]. President George W. Bushs vision was that by imposing democracy on Iraq, "freedom" would spread throughout the greater Middle East, ensuring the survival of Israel. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI After 1945, one of the principal reasons why America lost every war it started was because of profoundly flawed strategic thinking. The tragedy is that this flaw still persists. In Vietnam, the specter of a monolithic, Godless communist threat produced the Domino Theory. If Vietnam were to fall to the alleged Sino-Soviet colossus, so too would all of Southeast Asia. And the rot would spread. As President Lyndon Johnson warned, "If we don't stop them commies on the Mekong, we will fight them on the Mississippi." But "them commies" were far from united. Red China and the Soviet Union harbored deep mutual animosities that led to ideological divides and armed border clashes between both. Vietnam did fall without strategic consequence. After U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, America invaded Iraq in 2003. The cause celebre was weapons of mass destruction that had to be eliminated. The mistake was staggering: Iraq had none. Broader strategic thinking took the form of the "freedom agenda" devised by President George W. Bush. Bush's vision was that by imposing democracy on Iraq, "freedom" would spread throughout the greater Middle East, ensuring the survival of Israel. The "geostrategic landscape of the region would be forever altered," he reasoned. It was and not for the better. As Russian President Vladimir Putin warned and predicted, the region would be thrust into a condition of continuing violence. The current attacks against U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq by Iranian-backed militias and other anti-American factions reflect this turmoil. The overriding strategic construct during the Cold War and since was deterrence. The underlying premise of Cold War deterrence was that by retaining the survivable capability to retaliate after absorbing any first strike and still destroy the enemy would prevent war. Deterrence was often "extended" to cover conventional war. Deterrence became known by the ironic shorthand of MAD for Mutual Assured Destruction. Because the United States and USSR could eliminate each other as functioning societies, and probably much of mankind, as well, in a thermonuclear war --thermonuclear weapons were 1,000 times more powerful than nuclear ones -- war was too dangerous to be waged. Subvariants of deterrence attempted to balance defensive and offensive systems. The Cold War ended without a single shot, nuclear or otherwise, being fired in anger by the United States or USSR against the other. Yet, as relations with Russia and China would grow tenser, deterrence continued to underpin strategic thinking. The current U.S. National Defense Strategy directs the Department of Defense "to compete and contain, deter, and if war comes, prevail over China as 'the pacing threat; Russia as the 'acute threat'; Iraq; North Korea; and extremism." However, as the presidents of the United States, China, Russia and France have agreed: "Nuclear war must never be fought and can never be won." The critical question is whether deterrence is still relevant, even at the nuclear level. Given thermonuclear is in no one's interest, where have Russia and China been deterred? Russia occupied part of Georgia in 2008. In 2014, it absorbed Crimea. And in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. China is expanding its influence in Asia. It is building up its military capability in part to be able to seize Taiwan by the late 2020s. China continues to steal intellectual property and fly spy balloons over America. Where is deterrence working? Two years ago, I argued for a new MAD -- Massive Attacks of Disruption -- to replace the old MAD. Acts of disruption, of man or nature, now form the overarching dangers to society. Climate change, destructive acts of nature and COVID-19 were among the most visible of these threats. Now, an even newer construct is needed. And the foundation is prevention. The acronym will be MAP for Mutual Assured Prevention. The differences are profound. Deterrence is based on the reactive threat of retaliation. Prevention is active. The aims of MAP are to prevent, contain and limit damage of massive disruptions, including war. War, then, is not to be deterred but prevented. Prevention of war includes military-to-military and arms limitations talks; confidence-building measures; agreements such as the Incidents at Sea; hotlines; personnel exchanges; and limits on provocative maneuvers and military exercises. In parallel, MAP covers the spectrum of MAD. Failing to recognize the perils of past erroneous strategic thinking and correct them may not prove disastrous. But do not bet on that. Harlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior adviser at Washington's Atlantic Council, the prime author of "shock and awe" and author of "The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large." Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. As members of the royal family filed into the Buckingham Palace ballroom for a lavish state banquet in honor of South Korea, all eyes were on the most senior royals. However, it did not go unnoticed that one key player who would usually have been taking his seat at the horseshoe table was not there. The Duke of Kent was absent from the state banquet on November 21 having not attended a public engagement since November 1. The Duke, 88, also recently missed remembrance events including the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall and Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph. According to the court circular, the Duke's last public engagement was on November 1, when he attended the Senior Serving and Retired Officers' Briefing at the Army and Navy Club in central London. Prior to that, the court circular shows that he carried out engagements across five days in October, including attending two concerts at central London venue Wigmore Hall. David Davies - PA Images - Getty Images The royal familys official website points out that the Duke of Kent, who is the late Queens first cousin, is a working royal involved with 140 charities. The Duke currently divides his time between engagements relating to his own Patronages, and work in support of The King and the wider Royal Family, the site adds. The Duke, whose first name is Edward, featured in a key portrait for King Charless coronation showing all the working royals. He attended the state banquet a year ago for the President of South Africa, which was the first of the Kings reign. Following the Dukes absence from the cenotaph, The Sun quoted a source saying that he was experiencing episodic mobility issues. The same phrase was used by royal aides to describe Queen Elizabeths reason for being unable to attend events in the last few years of her reign. Chris Jackson - Getty Images The Duke of Kent is the oldest child of Prince George, the former Duke of Kent, who was a younger brother of King George VI. Buckingham Palace representatives did not respond to a request to comment on the Dukes reason for missing recent public events. You Might Also Like MILAN Beauty brand Yepoda has closed a series A funding round led by JamJar Investments and involving former Estee Lauder Cos. Inc. executive Chris Good, who will join the label not only as investor but also as adviser. Additional funding for the round came from V3 Ventures, led by Treatwell founder Lopo Champalimaud, and Slingshot Ventures. More from WWD The value of the investment was not disclosed, but Yepoda said the financing will be used to expand its product range as well as global footprint and omnichannel offering. To this end, the brand will open its first brick-and-mortar store worldwide in Milan on Dec. 5. Based in Germany, Yepoda was launched in 2020 by Veronika Strotmann and Sander van Bladel with a mission to make K-beauty accessible to the Western market. The label focuses on products with clean and vegan formulations developed in South Korea, resulting in an assortment that mirrors the countrys famous skin care routine. Completed with beauty accessories, Yepodas offering includes cleansers, serums and moisturizers retailing at prices ranging from 8 euros for single sheet masks to roughly 30 euros for creams. Bestsellers comprise The Depuff Eyespresso eye patches with caffeine and green tea; The Eyes Cream with phytomucin, a plant-based alternative to snail mucin; The Bubble Double cleansing foam with pomegranate and salicylic acid, as well as The Repair Hero and The Glow Hero serums. Yepodas cleansing duo. Since its launch, Yepodas popularity on social media helped fueled its rapid growth across Europe, enabling the brand to attract more than 350,000 customers in its core markets, which are Italy, France, Germany and Spain. Rarely Ive seen a new beauty brand make such a significant impact so quickly, said Good in a statement. Yepoda has established itself as a leading brand for K-beauty in Europe and has managed to build not only a true love brand with a loyal customer base but also a product assortment with exceptional formulations. As reported, Good retired as the Estee Lauder Cos. group president, North America, in June 2022. He was elevated to that role in 2018. Prior to his time in North America, he was named president of the beauty giants U.K. and Ireland business in 2014 and held myriad other roles with the company, which he joined in 1987. Chris extensive experience in the beauty industry makes him an extraordinary adviser for Yepoda who can support us to grow our market presence with his invaluable insights and strategies, said Strotmann. Yepodas founders Sander van Bladel and Veronika Strotmann. V3 Ventures cofounders Champalimaud and Vaidya are also veterans of the industry and expected to bring their expertise to the young label. The former founded and built hair and beauty booking platform Treatwell from 2008 to the end of 2019, leading the company through a major European expansion campaign that included five acquisitions. The latter launched Dr. Vaidyas in 2016 and built it into the largest Ayurvedic direct-to-consumer brand in India, with more than 2 million customers and more than 80 products by the time he sold the company four years later. The lead investor of the round, JamJar Investments, is a venture capital firm that specializes in early-stage consumer brands and has backed food delivery service Deliveroo, watch trading marketplace Chronext and coffee retailer and brand Bluebottle, among others. Yepoda is one of the hottest brands weve ever been invested in, said JamJar cofounder Richard Reed. They combine front-edge innovation in skin care with deep Korean authenticity, an uncompromising approach to sustainability, endless creativity and only make products of the highest quality, all of which combined with the talented founders and team explains their stunning growth. The Glow Hero serum by Yepoda. Dutch venture fund Slingshot Ventures invests in consumer-centric business, too, including the Wild Cosmetics company of refillable natural deodorant and the Boldking brand of grooming products for men. In a statement, Yepodas founders welcomed the new investors, underscoring that we all believe in growing strong, sustainable consumer brands and with their support, Yepoda has everything that it takes to become an even more significant player in the beauty industry. The Repair Hero product by Yepoda. Best of WWD Photo: Universal History Archive/Getty Images An Austrian castle with ties to Mozart will soon be auctioned off, the New York Post reports. In 1791, the palatial abode, known as Schloss Stuppach, was home to Count Franz Anton Walsegg. The Count commissioned the composer to write his now-famous Requiem in D minor in honor of Walseggs late wife, who had died in the castle a year prior to the request. Mozart himself died before finishing the composition, leaving his student, Franz Xaver Sussmayr, to pick up where he had left off. The completed manuscript was subsequently handed over to Walsegg in 1792, after which it remained inside Schloss Stuppach until 1830 when it was rehomed to the Austrian National Library. In 2001, the prized document was insured for $7.97 millionmaking it one of the worlds most valuable music manuscripts. Located in a lushly landscaped park near the mountain town of Gloggnitz in lower Austria, the castles earliest mention dates to 1130, with added construction in the 15th and 17th centuries, per the listing details. As a result, the 50-room structure combines medieval, renaissance, and baroque styles. Previously on the market for $12.1 million, the propertys auction details give a presale estimate of $4.31 million to $10.85 million, with bidding taking place from December 1 through December 14. See the video. Spanning nearly 27,000 square feet of interior living space and equipped with antique furnishings, the historic dwelling features four bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a movie theater, a library, a chapel, and even a dungeon. Elaborate millwork, ornate crystal chandeliers, wood-burning fireplaces, and parquet wood floors are found throughout the estate. Previous owners marketed the space as Mozarts Last Castle and turned areas of the building into independent businesses that are included in the sale, including a club salon, an experience theater, a concert program, and a retail space, according to the listing. Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest More Great Celebrity Style Stories From AD The Mitchell Gold Co. found a buyer after its sudden shutdown and bankruptcy sent the upscale luxury home decor chain into a tailspin just a few months ago. Surya, a Cartersville, Ga.-based home furnishings firm hat specializes in rugs, textiles, lighting, furniture and decor, has acquired Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams (MG+BW) assets including intellectual property, some inventory and its manufacturing facilities. In a statement, Surya said it plans to relaunch MG+BW as a trade-only partner, accessible to leading interior designers and design-driven retailers. This means consumers wont be able to shop and purchase from the brand directly. More from Sourcing Journal We are dedicated to restoring MG+BW to its former glory and beyond, and we look forward to redefining the standards of excellence in the home furnishings industry, Surya president Satya Tiwari said. Our acquisition of the MG+BW brand reiterates our ongoing commitment to serve the design community as a complete resource for home furnishings. Mitchell Gold, who co-founded the pricey label, will serve as an advisor to Surya. After navigating through unsettling times, I now see a promising next chapter for the brand we built over 30 years, he said. Suryas deep understanding of the market, alignment with our design philosophy, and proven track record to drive future success creates a winning formula. I am enthusiastic about supporting them in any way I can. Surya plans to reboot manufacturing and assembly operations at MG+BWs facilities in Taylorsville, N.C., with the goal of shipping MG+BW products in the first quarter of 2024. It wasnt immediately clear how many of MG+BWs former workers might be rehired. Surya, which began as a supplier of textile art via hand-knotted woven rugs, has been a frequent flier on the Inc. 5000 list of the Americas fastest-growing private companies. The Dump furniture outlet store in Chicago. In another development in the bankruptcy case, Ryder Last Mile Inc. received court approval to begin shipping items it has held in storage to customers. A court document revealed that Ryder is storing more than 2,000 separate items of furniture manufactured by MG+BW in several U.S. warehouses. But customers who have paid in full for their undelivered items and have not requested a refund or credit are expected to pay additional delivery and storage charges that were incurred by the shipping firm. Other furniture companies are benefitting from Mitchell Golds misfortunes. Haynes Furniture, which also owns The Dump Luxe Furniture Outlets, a retail chain selling home goods closeouts, overstocks and samples, recently got ahold of unsold Mitchell Gold inventory. The Dumps six stores in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and Virginia will carry Mitchell Gold furniture, rugs, mattresses, lighting, and home accents at up to 80 percent less than original MSRPs. The merchandise will arrive in most of the stores in time for Black Friday. Virginia-based Haynes Furniture will also stock the Mitchell Gold inventory in its Newport News, Richmond and Virginia Beach stores. This is an incredible opportunity for our customers to access the exclusive designs and impeccable quality of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams at prices that make luxury truly affordable, said Randi Strelitz, chief merchant and director of The Dump Luxury Outlets and Haynes Furniture. This move lies at the heart of our brand and merchandising strategy our core belief that luxury should not be reserved for the privileged few. Strelitz continued, We take pride in being the trusted, go-to partner for luxury brands, turning industry challenges into opportunities and delivering exceptional value to our customers. Additional reporting by Jessica Binns. Chinese hospitals have been overwhelmed with sick children as an outbreak of pneumonia escalates in cities across the country, including Beijing, according to reports. ProMed a large, publicly available surveillance system which monitors human and animal disease outbreaks worldwide issued a notification late on Tuesday detailing a reported epidemic of undiagnosed pneumonia in children. It was a ProMed alert in late December 2019 that brought a mystery virus later named Sars-Cov-2 to the attention of many doctors and scientists, including senior officials at the World Health Organization. The latest post, based on a report from the Taiwanese outlet FTV News, said that hospitals in the capital Beijing and Liaoning almost 500 miles northeast were struggling amid an influx of children sick with pneumonia. Many, many are hospitalised, Mr Wei, a Beijing citizen, told FTV News. They dont cough and have no symptoms. They just have a high temperature (fever) and many develop pulmonary nodules. In an editors note, ProMed said: This report suggests a widespread outbreak of an undiagnosed respiratory illness ... It is not at all clear when this outbreak started as it would be unusual for so many children to be affected so quickly. The report does not say that any adults were affected suggesting some exposure at the schools. The alert added that more definitive information is needed to determine the cause and scope. However, the outbreak could be linked to Mycoplasma pneumoniae, also known as walking pneumonia, which is reportedly surging as China enters its first winter without its stringent Covid-19 lockdown in place. Other countries, including the UK and US, saw similar surges in diseases such as RSV and flu once pandemic restrictions were lifted, as years of suppressed circulation hit immunity among the population. Symptoms of walking pneumonia which generally affects young children include a sore throat, fatigue, and a lingering cough that can last for weeks or months. In severe cases, this can eventually deteriorate into pneumonia. Last month, local media reported that hospitals nationwide were seeing an increase in infections, with clusters of cases often emerging in schools and nurseries. It is the first wave of mycoplasma pneumoniae infections since most Covid-19 containment measures were lifted at the beginning of this year, Zhou Huixia, director of the childrens medical centre at the Seventh Medical Center of the Chinese PLA General Hospital, told China Daily. The wave has appeared particularly ferocious since the National Day holiday in early October, she said. Compared to previous years, we found more patients with mixed infections, drug resistance and lobar pneumonia. Chinese medical workers on a break - STR/AFP She added that the intense wave of infections is expected to peak in November, and may coincide with an uptick in other infectious respiratory diseases that were suppressed during lockdowns. Last month, Li Yuchuan, director of the outpatient department of Beijing Childrens Hospital, also told China Voice that the hospital has been struggling with paediatric respiratory diseases this year. It has been running at a relatively high level. The first peak occurred from mid-to-late February to late March, when influenza was the main cause; the second peak occurred in May, when there were a variety of pathogens, such as RSV; the third peak appeared in September, said Dr Li, adding that the facility has had to boost capacity to cope. The recent surge in Mycoplasma pneumoniae has also raised concerns about growing antibiotic resistance, as the bacteria is increasingly sidestepping macrolides a preferred class of drug and China has the worlds highest rates of resistance. A study from February 2022 found that macrolide resistance was identified in more than 80 per cent of mycoplasma pneumoniae found in children hospitalised with the bacteria in China. Yet Chinese experts stressed that very few children have died from walking pneumonia to date. There is a steady number of patients developing severe cases, but there are very few critical cases, and there are no related deaths so far, Hua Shaodong, a paediatrician at the Beijing Childrens Hospital, told China Daily. The average days in hospital for hospitalised patients is around seven to 14 days. 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. Going to college for the first time is a massive culture shock for anyone. The newfound freedom, independence, and 'adult' status are enough to make your head whirl as a domestic student. So, I can't imagine how difficult all of that could be for an international student. Jacob Wackerhausen / Getty Images A little bit ago, I asked the non-Americans of the BuzzFeed Community who attended college in the US to share their culture shock experiences, and here's what they had to say: Note: Not all responses are from the BuzzFeed Community. Some are from: this Reddit thread and this Reddit thread. 1."The biggest culture shock was just how positive American culture is. People are much more optimistic. If you say youve achieved something or are attempting to achieve something, people get excited and want to boost you up, not be pessimistic and tear you down like in Britain. Even complete strangers will get happy and excited if you say youre trying to strive for some goal." thehallouminati Simon2579 / Getty Images 2."Im from Germany, and I studied abroad in California. For me, there were two things. Number one was how big the sport culture really is. You see it in movies, but if youve never experienced it, you dont understand." "Number two was a little scarier. We had an incident where someone saw someone with a gun on campus. There was an alert for everyone to shelter in place. It turned out to be fine, and nothing happened, but the pure panic you experience, especially coming from a country where guns aren't an issue, was just insane. After that, I sat in a lot of lectures, thinking about what I would do and how I could escape if someone started shooting." candyheyn 3."That sororities and fraternities are real. You see it on TV and online, but it doesn't nearly compare to what it's like for the whole school year in real life." Anonymous Stephen Reeves / Getty Images 4."The relationship between university students and professors is more casual. You still address them as Professor or Doctor. But they tend to be more approachable and easier to talk to. Of course, there are always a few who are dicks or think they are too important to talk to you. But most of them are super helpful." u/morto00x 5."GPAs. We didnt have these growing up in a few Latin American countries. It took me some time to figure out that taking easy electives would help increase my GPA. I wish Id known this from the get-go. I wouldve signed up for a Spanish minor instead of a German minor. Those classes wouldve been an easy A." Anonymous Valeriy_g / Getty Images 6."The fact that I can create my own schedule each semester and that not everyone who has the same major necessarily studies the same set of courses. I did my MBA in Tampa, and I was amazed by how, apart from the foundation courses, I had a few class options to choose from each semester to complete my major." "For each class, I could also read about the professor and choose the time slot that best works for me and enroll based on that. In India, we all have the same schedule, same set of classes at the same time everyday and we all graduate at the same year unless we flunk our exams." Anonymous 7."I grew up in Guatemala, and like the rest of the world, the drinking age is 18. Most people start at a younger age, so it is not a big deal to drink alcohol where I grew up. I moved to the US when I was 18 for college and was surprised at all the childish things other students did to sneak in alcohol, but also how drunk they would get as well." Anonymous Image Source / Getty Images/Image Source 8."As you might know, there are a lot of Chinese students in US colleges, and they often form their own social bubbles (my friend studying at another college with a huge portion of Chinese students said she's been speaking Chinese most of the time outside of classes)." "I intentionally avoided that and mostly hang out with American people on campus. After the first few months, I still feel like the ways we think don't 'click.' I'm constantly scared of saying stuff related to politics, religion, race, sex, and disability for fear of offending people. Take sex as an example. On one side, Americans seem to be a lot more serious about sexual harassment, but also a lot more sexually blunt towards each other, making me confused about the middle ground I should be on." u/_SilentTiger 9."College Homecoming parades and all of the events. I couldn't believe how many people showed up at my already packed campus. There were people coming for homecoming that graduated 20+ years ago!" Anonymous Sshepard / Getty Images 10."I went to drama school, and the biggest culture shocks were how friendly and willing to talk to strangers Americans are, the amount of processed ingredients in basic foodstuffs like bread or orange juice, and I know its a cliche, but the toilets are very different!" thehallouminati 11."The professors are damn helpful; they actually want to see you succeed, and if you go the extra mile, they'll go there with you. I've studied in the UK, US, and MX with professors of every nationality, and the best ones, bar none, have been Americans. Second place goes to Mexico, and then Europe." u/Mreta Skynesher / Getty Images 12."I went to a public university in Mexico for my bachelor's and an Ivy League school for my graduate degree. The concept of 'office hours,' the idea that professors had protected time to talk to the students about the material in class, was unfathomable to me." "I was used to classes in which the faculty-to-student ratio was 1:200. How the professors answered their emails in like 30 seconds and how accessible they were in general was amazing. In Mexico, it would take a week just to make an appointment with one of my professors." u/kikrmty And finally, this person shared their experience with finding it very difficult to understand American taboos: 13."Acculturation! It's surprisingly complicated. I completed my undergrad in the States and didnt face any problems because I am not a social person. However, in grad school, where we have to socialize with peers, things became much more difficult and sometimes got me in trouble too. Things that are 'okay' and normal in my home country are considered taboo and stigmatized in the US." "While my country is open-minded and progressive too, it still lacks behind the west. Heck, LGBTQ+ marriages are not yet recognized. Pronouns, etc., are not considered the norm back home, and people may actually make fun of you on the streets if you ask them to call you with certain pronouns of your preference in my home country. Out here, its much more difficult. I actually didnt get close with my classmates because of my lack of cultural awareness; I even remember offending someone because I called someone she/her instead of they/them. It takes learning, but Ive seen people get distant from me because of these mistakes I make. Why do I make these mistakes? Because English is a language that takes conscious effort to communicate with as a non-native speaker, and the lack of cultural awareness makes me spit out something taboo or outright offensive. I do apologize, but the damage is already done! The bonus is that I learn every time I make a mistake! But people are still quick to judge me, especially in a professional setting!" u/harbingervedant77 Korrawin / Getty Images Note: Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity. Are you a non-American who went to college in the US and want to share your culture shock experience? Let me know in the comments! This post contains discussion of graphic violence. Sometimes you hear a fact that makes you think, "There's no way that can be true." And yet it is. Robert Recker / Getty Images Redditor u/BlackAfghaniRose recently asked the people of Reddit, "Whats a fact that sounds like a conspiracy theory?" Yes, sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction: 1."JFK's brain was removed during the autopsy and stored in an archive. Its current whereabouts are unknown." u/AdMaterial9419 New York Daily News Archive / NY Daily News via Getty Images 2."The Church of Scientology had members secretly infiltrate US government agencies in order to destroy unfavorable documents and investigations into them." u/TripleThreatTua Epics / Hulton Archive 3."Ernest Hemingway suffered from ongoing paranoia that the FBI were surveilling him, which was thought to be a key factor in his suicide. Most chalked it up to mental illness at the time. Decades later, his file was released, proving he was under investigation for his ties to Cuba, his phones were tapped, and he was right all along." u/allbitterandclean Photoquest / Getty Images 4."In the spring of 1968, US President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek election to a second full term. He gave no explanation, and everyone assumed that it was because of Vietnam and his resulting unpopularity, but it was far from the full story. Concerned that males in his family tended to die young, and having barely survived a heart attack in the 1950s, in 1967 Johnson had commissioned an actuarial study to determine his likely lifespan. The actuaries concluded that Johnson was unlikely to survive to age 65. Johnson realized he'd have a very short retirement if he ran and won in 1968, as he'd be 64 at the end of the term. This led him to decide against running. The actuaries were right, as Johnson died at 64. Had he served a second full term, he would have died less than 24 hours after the end of the term." u/prosa123 5."Tax service companies such as Intuit spend millions of dollars a year lobbying to make sure the IRS does not make it easier to file your taxes." u/ktappe Scott Olson / Getty Images 6."In the lead-up to the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico, the country was embarrassed by massive protests. At one of the large protests in Mexico City, they put snipers in some tall buildings near a large government building guarded by a line of police officers. When the protesters made it to the line of police officers, they continued to peacefully protest. The snipers opened fire on the police, making it appear that the protestors were shooting at the cops. The cops retaliated, mowing down countless protestors, thinking they were defending themselves. Protestors were killed and fled the scene. The government was ready, rushed in, and immediately cleaned up the scene. To this day, they have no idea how many people were killed at the scene, and no one knew about the plot to instigate the massacre of the protestors until years later. It worked, though there were no more protests." u/BigMax 7."In the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of Native American women were sterilized without their consent as part of a practice to sterilize poor and minority women to 'help their financial situation and their family's quality of life' by preventing unwanted pregnancies in poor communities. Some were not informed at all and had it done to them completely without their knowledge; others were threatened with having their healthcare taken away if they did not agree to have it done to them. Some studies estimate that as many as 25%50% of Native American women were sterilized in the 1970s, representing tens of thousands of victims. This was essentially a modern day genocide in the United States." u/SendMeNudesThough 8."Project SUNSHINE in which the US government, in the wake of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ordered a major study to better understand the effects of radiation exposure and nuclear fallout on the human body. So an international network of agents was recruited to locate recently deceased children and steal body parts from them to use for testing." u/likelyadvancement Bettmann / Bettmann Archive 9."There was ONE recorded homicide in New York City on September 11, 2001. The people who died because of the attacks werent considered part of the homicides for that day because a very high number like that is a statistical outlier that would throw off accurate record numbers. The one person who was murdered was a Polish immigrant named Henryk Siwiak, who was nowhere near the attacks. He was killed in the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn at around 11:40 p.m." u/SuperdudeKev Robert Giroux / Getty Images 10."COINTELPRO is straight up conspiracy theory-sounding, but 10,000% true. They even sent letters to MLK telling him to commit suicide. No wonder people believe that the US government is probably doing other shady shit because they probably are." u/Ksan_of_Tongass 11."There are government-built bunkers dotted around the US that hold a total of 1.4 billion pounds of cheese. The government was buying excess milk to prop up the dairy industry, turning it into cheese and shoving it underground since the end of Prohibition up until the Reagan administration." u/DevinMeister Thepalmer / Getty Images 12."Some time after World War II, the US was doing some pretty wild experiments, including trying to see if they could teach dolphins to talk. They believed this was only achievable by full immersion, so they built a house and filled it with water and had a researcher live with the dolphin." u/Skootchy Stuart Westmorland / Getty Images 13."Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the US National Security Agency was conducting mass surveillance on citizens, collecting data from internet communications, phone calls, and other sources." u/Euphoric-Beat-7206 Barton Gellman / Getty Images 14."Everyone, even from Roman times, knew asbestos was bad for your health." u/the-software-man 15."In two-thirds of all US states, EMS is NOT considered an essential service. As such, it receives next to zero government funding or support." u/Boogaloogaloogalooo Justin Sullivan / Getty Images 16."The Pentagon has never been able to account for more than half its budget." u/Dune1008 Alex Wong / Getty Images 17."In 1919, the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol was prohibited. But instead of plummeting, alcohol sales soared. Speakeasies opened everywhere, and people in some neighborhoods were drinking even more than before. In 1926, the authorities asked manufacturers to add toxic substances to their alcohol. In New York alone, 1,200 drinkers were poisoned, and 400 died. A wave of deaths would eventually sweep across the country. This 'poisoning policy' was not stopped until December 1933." u/Mrnoword 18."Operation Northwoods. The US government proposed having the CIA commit terrorist attacks in major US cities so we could blame them on Cuba and go to war. The proposals called for CIA operatives to both stage and commit acts of terrorism against American military and civilian targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The possibilities detailed in the document included the remote control of civilian aircraft which would be secretly repainted as US Air Force plane, a fabricated 'shoot down' of a US Air Force fighter aircraft off the coast of Cuba, the possible assassination of Cuban immigrants, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, blowing up a US ship, and orchestrating terrorism in US cities. The proposals were rejected by President John F. Kennedy." u/ThePresidentPlate And finally... 19.There's a psychological reaction called 'The Backfire Effect' which essentially means that people, after they're given proof that what they think they know is absolutely wrong, will believe misconceptions or misinformation even more deeply." u/ZorroMeansFox Got your own facts? See you in the comments! These entries have been edited for length and clarity. Juan Joya Borja, a Spanish comedian also known as El Risitas (The Giggles), is once again making waves on social media despite his death in April 2021. Although the truth is, he never really stopped: his uniquely infectious, high-pitched laughter and toothless grin, which caught the public imagination during a 2001 television interview in Spain, has since become a classic meme in many countries, including the United States, where the clip is often associated with tech issues. The latest iteration comes courtesy of X owner Elon Musk, who took the Spanish-language video clip on Tuesday and adapted it to the big tech news story of the day: OpenAIs decision to fire CEO Sam Altman (who has since been reinstated). In the original clip, Joya Borja is in fact telling host Jesus Quintero a funny anecdote involving paella pans from back when he was working as a dishwasher at a beach restaurant. But the subtitles make it look like he is discussing the surprise dismissal last Friday at OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. We cant let AGI [artificial general intelligence] fall into the wrong hands, reads the subtitle as El Risitas speaks in a serious tone. There is a dramatic pause. Then Satya appears and raptures the whole fucking company! he apparently says, cracking up. In reality, the comedian is laughing about the fact that he lost some of the restaurants paella pans that hed left out on the beach overnight, when the tide came up. The meme has gone around so much that a new version is now circulating in which, instead of listening to the original audio of the Canal Sur interview, an artificial intelligence tool has been used so that Joya Borja reads with his own voice and intonation the subtitles written by Musk. Joya Borjas international fame was cemented in 2015, when someone decided to subtitle the famous interview to poke fun at the relaunch of the Spiderman film saga. Shortly thereafter, Joya Borja morphed into an Apple engineer discussing the features of the companys 2015 laptop: It doesnt have USB ports, it has a mobile processor and it costs $1,299! El Risitas also famously became an Nvidia software engineer. The different versions of the video have accumulated millions of views on YouTube, turning Joya Borja into an icon on the internet, to the extent that his face is an emoticon on Twitch. Even Marine Le Pens National Rally used the image of the Seville native to try to attract the young vote, thus associating him with the political far right. Given the impact of the latest iteration of the meme, the Spanish broadcaster that owns the rights to the original interview, Canal Sur, on Tuesday reminded Elon Musk about the need to pay rights. Juan Joya Borja died at the age of 65 in Seville in 2021 after a few months in hospital, where he had been admitted for a leg amputation. Jesus Quintero, the TV host who catapulted him to fame, died last year. Red wine headaches are something that many of us face, and as the festive season approaches, they're something we're likely to be confronted with even more frequently. When it comes to drinking wine, it makes sense that excessive amounts cause a hangover and leave you waking up with a headache, but what about those times when you only have a couple of glasses and you're still faced with a throbbing headache? Well, scientific researchers have been trying to work out what exactly causes these types of headaches and how people can avoid them. And there is an answer - sort of. A team at the University of California found that when ingested, quercetin - which is found in grape skin - blocks the enzymes in your body that are built to break down toxins (such as alcohol) leading the toxins to build up and headaches to ensue, even without feeling the buzz from the alcohol. red wine Filter & Purifier by PureWine, 12.79 | Amazon A wine purifier filter for the preservatives that trigger unwanted wine allergies and sensitivities to histamines and sulfites in wine.View Deal Doctors who worked on this Scientific Research explained that red wine headaches have confused researchers for some time, as there are a number of ingredients in wine that people have thought might be responsible for headaches. "This puzzle has been around for literally thousands of years," said Dr. Morris Levin, the director of the Headache Center at the University of California. "There are a lot of ingredients in wine that could conceivably cause a headache, not the least of which is just alcohol itself." "When quercetin gets in your bloodstream, your body converts it to a different form called quercetin glucuronide," Andrew Waterhouse, professor emeritus at the University of California Davis added. "In that form, it blocks the metabolism of alcohol." That's not to say quercetin is bad for you, in fact, there are numerous health benefits, but when combined with alcohol it might reduce the digestion of alcohol. At present the research is still just a hypothesis, and the report concluded, "Further studies on human subjects are needed to verify this hypothesis." But how can this hypothesis be applied to everyday wine consumption? headache How can you avoid quercetin and therefore red wine headaches? Well, there are red wines that have higher levels or quercetin and therefore are more likely to give you a headache. Dr. Tom Collins, a leading viticulturist from Washington State University told The Telegraph, "Grapevines make quercetin in response to sun exposure, as a sunscreen of sorts. Quercetin is present in other plant-based foods as well, including tea, kale, broccoli, onions, and many fruits, where presumably the quercetin glucuronide would also inhibit the enzyme, but in the absence of ethanol, there without significant impact." As sunlight is a major factor, logic would suggest that grapes that are exposed to less sun, have less quercetin, and therefore are less likely to cause headaches. Some research has also suggested that wines to avoid are those where the thick grape skin has a high amount of sun contact such as; a Cabernet Sauvignon. Specifically the ones grown in Chile which were higher than the same grape grown in France, California, and Australia. In fact, Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Pinot Noir all have higher concentrations of flavonols (such as quercetin) than the same wines made from grapes in different locations. In addition, non-red wines have significantly less quercetin as they are not produced with the skin, where the quercetin is contained. This means you can always switch to white or rose and drink away! SHANGHAI Change is in sight for the fashion publishing business in China. Conde Nast on Wednesday shot down speculation about whether Vogue Chinas editorial director Margaret Zhang will leave the publication after her contract expires next March. More from WWD A recent listing on the Chinese hiring platform Liepin, which quickly began to circulate on the social media platform Xiaohongshu, showed that Vogue China is hiring a deputy editor. Responsibilities of the position include assisting the editor in chief in overseeing the editorial team, supporting marketing and sales initiatives and overseeing branded special projects. As the deputy editor at Vogue China, you will be the driving force behind the magazines features content, working closely with a talented team of journalists and editors, wrote the job description. In this pivotal role within our senior leadership team, you will not only shape the voice and tone of our features but also play a crucial part in advancing Vogues global cultural initiatives, the post continued. The deputy editor position at Vogue China, which essentially oversees the day-to-day operations of the magazine, is not dissimilar to the role of head of editorial content, which has been given to the heads of all other directly operated international editions of Vogue under the singular vision of Anna Wintour, Conde Nast global chief content officer and Vogue editor in chief. The December issue of Vogue China. Wintour has solidified her dominance over the companys editorial operations over the last few years. Most recently, Chioma Nnadi was named British Vogues head of editorial content, taking over responsibilities from current editor in chief Edward Enninful, who will be taking on the new position of global creative and cultural adviser at Vogue and will also become an editorial adviser at British Vogue. Vogue China is the last remaining international Vogue edition operated directly under Conde Nast to have an editor in chief title besides Wintour herself. However, in the titles masthead, the Australian-Chinese Zhang is listed as editorial director. In China, the role of editor in chief at Vogue China by law is reserved for the magazines local publishing partner, China Pictorial. According to multiple industry sources, Zhangs contract will expire next spring. Zhangs tenure at Vogue China has been controversial. She was publicly called out by Huasheng Media founder Chuxuan Feng on Weibo for being disrespectful to the Chinese market, and her business skills have been questioned on social media as several covers have gone unsponsored under her watch. According to industry insiders, a Vogue China cover, while in theory not for sale, can fetch at least a 3 million renminbi, or $428,000, in sponsorship from top luxury brands. Having no one paying for a cover is extremely uncommon in the highly commercialized Chinese fashion magazine business. In a statement sent to WWD, Conde Nast confirmed the hiring of a deputy editor, who will report to Zhang, and said the move underscores the companys commitment to the title and to Zhang. That said, Conde Nast was unable to confirm whether the deputy editor would later become head of editorial content at Vogue China, a move that has happened across all other directly operated international editions. Apart from the hiring plan, Vogue China is preparing for the inaugural China edition of the Vogue Forces of Fashion conference. Wintour is visiting the country for the first time in more than 10 years and will be in Shanghai on Thursday to host the event. The lineup for the event includes executives and designers at brands like Vivienne Westwood, Salvatore Ferragamo, Courreges, Jason Wu and Proenza Schouler. A recent issue of Cosmopolitan China. Vogue China isnt the only publication that got people talking this week. On Wednesday, Hearst Magazines announced it had terminated its license agreement for Cosmopolitan and Esquire in China, effective immediately. In a statement sent to WWD, the legacy media company said We are currently discussing the relaunch of these brands with interested parties in this important market. The Chinese edition of Esquire was founded in 1996, under a license agreement with Trends Group, a Beijing-based media company that started in 1993 as Trends Magazine, the first local fashion publication founded by two former travel reporters, Liu Jiang and Wu Hong. In 1998, Trends signed a license agreement for Cosmopolitan to launch the title in China, where media titles are only allowed to be operated by Chinese companies. A recent issue of Esquire China. In China, foreign titles must obtain a publishing permit to legally publish content in China. Both Esquire and Cosmopolitans permits are issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Apart from the Trends Group partnership, Hearst Magazines China was formed in 2011 after the acquisition of Hachette China. The Shanghai-based company operates titles such as Elle China, Super Elle, Elle Men and Elle Decor. In 1997, Trends Group set up the advertising firm Beijing Shi Zhi Shang Advertising Co. to manage the commercial side of the magazine business, with Trends Group, Beijing Meng Si Tong Consulting Service Ltd., Hearst, and IDG as major shareholders. According to Chinese corporate data provider Tianyancha, Hearst holds a 20 percent stake in Shi Zhi Shang. In the 2010s, Trends Group grew to become one of the largest fashion publications in China with 17 titles including Harpers Bazaar and Mens Health under its belt, according to local media reports at the time. After Lius sudden death in 2019, shareholders wrestled for control of the media empire. In 2022, Trends Magazines Co. Ltd, a business entity that owns five titles including Cosmopolitan and Esquire, declared its independence as a wholly state-owned enterprise and withdrew advertising rights from Shi Zhi Shang. In an internal letter that Trends Magazines distributed to employees, which was widely circulated online, Shi Zhi Shang is accused of not paying a substantial amount of the advertising income to Trends Magazines for many years. Soon after, Shi Zhi Shang struck back with a public announcement that said the company still held exclusive advertising rights for Cosmopolitan and Esquire. But it was unveiled in a notice issued by Shi Zhi Shang Wednesday that the company stopped operating Cosmopolitan and Esquires main brand business in July 2022. According to industry sources, Shi Zhi Shang still holds the licensing rights to magazines such as V Magazine, which launched its Chinese edition this March, and Harpers Bazaar, which launched its Chinese edition in 2001. At the time of publishing, members of both Cosmopolitan and Esquires editorial teams confirmed to WWD that the high-level changes have yet to affect daily operations. Best of WWD Tens of thousands of people gathered in the streets to celebrate King William Gabula Nadiope IV and Queen Jovia Mutesi's union. BADRU KATUMBA / Getty Images This past weekend, the kingdom of Busoga in Uganda experienced an unforgettable royal wedding: On November 18, 2023, King William Gabula Nadiope IV and Queen Jovia Mutesi tied the knot at Christs Cathedral in Bugembe, Tatler reports. Many well-known government officials, including Vice President Jessica Alupo, and other royals, like Queen Sylvia of Buganda, attended the regal event. Tens of thousands of people also gathered in the streets to celebrate the couple, according to the outlet. Queen Mutesi arrived in a motorcade of luxury cars before stepping into the cathedral, the publication reports. It appears that the bride donned a long-sleeved ball gown with a lace-embroidered bodice, which bore a striking resemblance to the one that Kate Middleton sported on her big day. She topped off her frock with a tiara, a lace-trimmed tulle veil, diamond drop earrings, and a bouquet of white flowers. The groom stood by her side in a rich purple robe featuring gold embroidery. Related: The Most Iconic Royal Wedding Dresses Throughout History BADRU KATUMBA / Getty Images Since King William is part of the Anglican Church, Anglican Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba officiated the couples wedding ceremony, according to Tatler. Two arrangements of white flowers and greenery flanked the altar, which served as the backdrop for their service. After the bride and groom exchanged vows, there was a large procession to the Igenge Palace, the official royal residence of the king, for a reception. King William has been the head of the throne since 2014. According to the outlet, King William graduated from Coventry University in Coventry, England, in 2015, where he received a first-class masters degree in business administration, per the outlet. In his professional life, hes also worked as an economist in the Uganda Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources. Queen Jovia is the daughter of Stanley Bayoole, who served as the former mayor of Mayuge town council and is currently the resident district commissioner of the Bulambuli district. After trading vows with the king, the queen consort gave Jovia her new title: Inebantu of Busoga. She is now the fifth queen of the kingdom. The last Inebantu was Alice Muloki, who passed away on November 6, 2005, so its been 18 years since a queen ruled Busoga, Tatler reports. Up Next: All of the Celebrity Weddings of 2023 Read the original article on Brides. Nike and Sacai are once again mashing up models from disparate eras, this time resulting in one freaky boot. The regular collaborators are debuting the Magmascape, a hybrid hiking boot that brings elements from the Air Magma and Air Footscape. The formula for the mashup is relatively simple. Up top is the collar from the Air Magma, a hiking boot that dates back to the 80s and was a predecessor to the ACG line, as well as the majority of the sole unit. The Air Footscape, a running sneaker launched in 1996, then forms the majority of the upper. Sandwiched in the middle is an all-new, full-length mudguard with an irregular shape that almost look like its covered in indoor rock climbing holds. More from Footwear News Suede and mesh form the upper, which hosts an asymmetrical and double-lacing system, one of which features a speed-lace toggle. Those familiar with the Air Footscape will also recognize the anvil-shaped heel stabilizer, which now takes on slightly sharper lines. Two colorways are arriving for the Magmascapes debut. Pecan mixes shades of brown with black, while Varsity Royal opts for blue, grey, and black along with sparse turquoise detailing. Either should provide a functional but also somewhat whimsical choice for winter. Just today, Sacai released a new version of its VaporWaffle hybrid sneaker along with Jean Paul Gaultier as a third collaborator. The Sacai x Nike Magmascape will get an early launch Nov. 30 in-person in Japan, followed by a Dec. 6 release through Sacais website and Dec. 7 on the SNKRS app. Pricing is set at $200. Sacai Nike Magmascape Sacai Nike Magmascape Sacai Nike Magmascape Sacai Nike Magmascape Sacai Nike Magmascape About the Author: Ian Servantes is a Senior Trending News Editor for Footwear News specializing in sneaker coverage. Hes previously reported on streetwear and sneakers at Input and Highsnobiety after beginning his career on the pop culture beat. He subscribes to the idea that ball is life and doesnt fuss over his kicks getting dirty. Best of Footwear News Sign up for FN's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In a startling development impacting the global snack and confectionery market, hazelnut prices have dramatically spiked. The Mintec Benchmark Prices for Turkish hazelnuts, a critical ingredient in many beloved treats, surged by 24% in four weeks to $790 per 100 kg (about $358 per pound). The price hike is tied directly to concerns over the dwindling supply from Turkey, the worlds leading hazelnut producer, according to Mintec. Earlier this May, the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council (INC) estimated the 2023-24 Turkish hazelnut crop at about 893,000 tons, a slight 2% drop year-over-year. However, the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestrys subsequent estimate was substantially lower at 791,000 tons, raising eyebrows across the industry. The situation worsened as Turkish sources reported even lower yields since the harvest began in late August. There are very few hazelnuts this year. We went to speak to farmers, and they all said that the harvest would be much smaller than last year, said Kenan Incirkus, a trader based in Giresun, Turkey. We are seeing the effects of global warming, insect damage and, in particular, a lack of rainfall during the critical nut development period in May. Some market sources fear the harvest could plummet to as low as 683,000-717,000 tons. This reduction, coupled with strong demand from major buyers like Ferrero, has led to a scramble in the market. Aldo Trisciuoglio, CEO of the nut trading company Log2Go, notes that many contracts made earlier in the year, when prices hovered around $550 per 100 kg (about $249 per pound), are now at risk of not being fulfilled, adding to market pressures. As prices continue to rise, the market is bracing for potential changes. Traders anticipate a reduction in hazelnut usage in product mixes. The hazelnut situation in Turkey echoes similar patterns seen in other agricultural commodities worldwide. This summer, olive oil surged in price due to sustained above-average temperatures. Similarly, the challenges faced in the tomato sauce supply chain, essential for pizza and pasta, reflect a global trend where the effects of Earths overheating disrupt traditional agricultural practices and market stability. The beer industry has also grappled with hops shortages due to drought conditions. These stories paint a picture of a food industry at a critical juncture, where sustainability and adaptation to rising global temperatures are necessary for future stability and growth. Join our free newsletter for cool news and actionable info that makes it easy to help yourself while helping the planet. Toa Green is the daughter of Thai immigrants who came to Kentucky as students. Her parents, both Master's degree holders, eventually decided to open their own Thai restaurant. Green recalls growing up in the restaurant and helping her parents run the establishment while balancing responsibilities as a student -- and swore that she would never work in a restaurant again. After graduating from college, Green moved in with her sister and fell back into the rhythm of family dinners and home. After landing a marketing position at a nonprofit, she started to think about how she might help people in her own way: through making food and by giving her time. She had organized food-related events and enjoyed the work so much that restaurant work again crossed her mind. Though her family had sold their Thai restaurant, Green began to plan what it might look like to start a new concept. On her Crank & Boom podcast, she recognized that her early experiences working in her family's business taught her valuable lessons that she later tapped into as an entrepreneur. "It was hard work -- it was extremely hard work," she recalled of the early days of starting her new endeavor, Thai Orchid Cafe. Read more: 25 Best Ice Cream Brands Ranked The Evolution Of An Idea Aerial shot of Crank & Boom waffle bowl sundae on counter - Mary Jane Speer Thai Orchid Cafe brought back many of the favorite dishes from Toa Green's parents' Thai restaurant, but the menu also featured modern twists. Green wanted to add a fun dessert option to the menu and had her heart set on a coconut ice cream she remembered eating in Thailand. The Thai dessert was served in a hot dog bun and topped with sweetened condensed milk and peanuts. Not sure where to find such an item, she began making her own coconut ice cream using a Cuisinart and was able to replicate the taste nearly perfectly. Green could only make one batch a day, however, and would often have to post a sold-out sign at the restaurant. But the success of the dessert encouraged her to continue her ice cream-making efforts, and she teamed up with a local farm to make sweet potato pie ice cream with caramelized pecans. This flavor was also a hit, and Green kept dreaming. Next, she used local strawberries to make strawberry ice cream. She recognized that quality ingredients could make a huge difference in the taste and texture of her products. It was a turning point for Green, who observed that customers would visit the restaurant specifically for ice cream orders. Social media engagement with the restaurant's ice cream-related posts also surpassed that of other dishes, and one customer even drove during a snowstorm specifically for ice cream pints -- which, at the time, were packaged in soup containers. Finding Nationwide Success Crank & Boom owners posing in a store - Sarah Jane Webb Much to Toa Green's surprise, customers kept asking for her ice cream. Since the restaurant wasn't as busy in the summer, she started selling her homemade products at local farmer's markets. She purchased a larger commercial machine -- a $10,000 investment -- and began cranking out pints under the label of Crank & Boom, "crank" referring to the old-fashioned way of making ice cream and "boom" to the burst of flavor offered in each bite. Green and her husband also began branding shirts and got an event cart as momentum continued to build. On her Crank & Boom podcast, she recalled saying "yes" to everything and showing up to every event and festival that she could, regardless of the number of participants present. In time, the ice cream became associated with festivals, and fans of the brand demanded an actual storefront. Now, with two brick-and-mortar locations and products shipping throughout the United States, Green and her team's hard work and commitment have paid off: Crank & Boom Craft Ice Cream is a recognized nationwide ice cream brand. "I don't know of anything that is easy when you are trying to build something," Green admits on her podcast. She encourages entrepreneurs to have a clear mission to help keep them going through the hard moments common at the beginning of such an endeavor. "The regret of not trying is much more deeply hurting to me," she says, adding, "It's okay to be scared if you're going take the big leap into something." Ice cream lovers across America are certainly glad she did. Read the original article on Tasting Table. Though photographer Meghan Marin and designer Parker Limon have different personal styles, they agree on how to furnish their Brooklyn apartment: by stooping and Craigslisting and eBaying as much as possible. We are definitely those types of people who wont pay full price for anything, Parker admits. Well hunt for it until we find something that we like, or well have our eyes on something for years until we find it used. So its taken us a while to get here, but it feels really good because we put in the time. The result of the couples meticulous, budget-minded sourcing method is an intentional collection of vintage and secondhand gems that brings life to their 1,800-square-foot two-bedroom rental in a 1899 Bed-Stuy brownstone. Meghans eclectic family heirlooms and DIY projects mix with Parkers beloved 1960s Italian and Bauhaus treasures for an idiosyncratic aesthetic that somehow just works. In the living room, a colorful IKEA rug is paired with a camel leather Article sofa from Craigslist. Whenever we have friends over, its never fourits always like 15, so we wanted a nice long couch that would fit as many people as we possibly could, explains Parker. This is the maximum size you can fit against this wall and still have a lighting fixture and some plants on the side. Its the centerpiece of the room. Other seating options include a Marcel Breuer tubular steel Wassily chair that an eBay seller kindly biked over from Astoria and an LC2 Petit Modele armchair whose frame the couple inherited from a friend who was moving. The empty frame sat in the apartment for months before Parker found an artisan to craft custom white pleather cushions. The only seller I could find does marine vinyl custom boat seats, so I got in touch with them, he says. We had these made and they just shipped them to us from San Francisco. The adjacent dining area features a vegetable-covered hutch from Meghans childhood home, a framed silk scarf that belonged to her grandmother, and a set of cherry dining chairs that she refurbished by hand. A furniture factory in my hometown shut down a couple years ago, and they were doing a big sale, she remembers. I got these chairs [for about $40]and I refinished, sanded, oiled, and redid the webbing. Its nice to put the TLC back into the stuff that we have. The primary bedroom is small and cozy, with a simple Home Depot bed frame, a mattress Meghan snagged from a staged home she photographed, and earth-toned French flax linens from Bed Threads. Meghan and Parker styled the original mantle with special objects like a circular mirror, candles, a basket purse, and an ikebana book from a flea market in Wilmington, Vermont. Its just a lot of knickknacks, she says. We are very good at collecting a rock or a seashell or just picking up little things here and there. The couple use their second bedroom as an office, so they built a long double desk with an IKEA butcher block and powder-coated steel legs. The workspace also includes a drafting table for messy projects and two tall bookcases where they store Meghans film negative archives, her photography equipment, Parkers architecture school models, and, of course, lots of books. Filled with their past creations, its the place where the two creatives can continue making new work. Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest More Great Stories From Clever By now, the dust has settled on the great Skeleton Bay pilgrimage of 2023. In August, hordes of the worlds best surfers descended upon Namibia to surf the worlds longest sandbar lefthander after years of hibernation from the mythical spot. Koa Smith returned to the wave; Kelly Slater surfed it for the first time. This place has changed my life and introduced me to different feelings that I didnt know existed, Koa Smith says in the edit above. Weve seen nibbles of Koas trip to Skeleton Bay, but not the full course meal. He is, after all, one of the pioneers of the wave getting more barreled than almost anyone out there. Like, for example, the sampler we saw a few months ago, which showed Koa and a near one-minute barrel; here's what he had to say about that: On my journey to my goal of getting the ONE MINUTE BARREL! This one felt close! Technically I would say I came out of the barrel around that 25 sec mark which resets the time clock! Let the drops on the lens reflect the tears in my eyes that I did come out . In real time it all felt like one long blurry friggin TUBE! So funny to see my mind trying to comprehend what just happened at the end there! Its a feeling that words just fall short trying to explain. But if I had to try Id say its like jumping off a big cliff and cuddling someone you love at the same damn time !! for now The mission for the 1 min tube continues!!! Riding a 56 @albumsurf Disorder Asym twin fin Slater, on the other hand, had a little tougher time with the wave. 90 percent chance I dont see you again until tonight and were eating dinner, he told Koa. Yep, pretty much. *** Don't miss another headline from SURFER! Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Instagram, and stay connected with the latest happenings in the world of surfing. We're always on the lookout for amusing, interesting and engaging surf-related videos to feature on our channels. Whether you're a professional surfer or just an amateur, we want to see your best footage and help you share it with the world. Submit your video for a chance to be featured on SURFER and our social channels. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch high-quality surf videos. NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Members of the Arkansas National Guard gathered at Camp Joseph T. Robinson in North Little Rock Wednesday morning in preparation for deployment. Thirty-five Guardsmen of the 216 Military Police Company will be deployed to Romania, where they will conduct law enforcement duties on a military installation, including customs duties for American military members arriving from other countries and ensuring no contraband or prohibited items are possessed. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders deploys Arkansas National Guard to southern border; said mission to focus on countrys security The Guardsmen will be given a pass to spend Thanksgiving with their families and will depart for their mobilization station at Fort Bliss, Texas, Nov. 27. This unit has a proud history of service, Maj. Gen. Jonathan Stubbs, Arkansas adjutant general said. This deployment will only add to the units legacy and rich history. These Guardsmen know that well be here to support their families left behind. Weve been blessed with robust resources to assist, guide, and help their loved ones while theyre away doing the nations business. Arkansas leaders celebrate announcement of training program at Ebbing Air National Guard Base in Fort Smith The 216th was created as a field artillery battery in West Memphis in the 1950s. It converted to a military police company in 2000 and moved to North Little Rock in 2009. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KARK. Editor's note: This story originally ran on the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination. It has been more than half a century, and so many lifetimes ago. Yet the images from November 1963 remain haunting, blurred into our national consciousness. Sixty years later, CBS News relives that drama, moment by moment, as it unfolded before a world in shock. Bob Schieffer | CBS News: When the president came to Texas, I was a young newspaper reporter covering the crime beat for the Fort Worth Star Telegram. With JFK and his elegant wife Jackie heading our way, for us it was the biggest story of the year. Little could we know history was about to be made. Time stopped cold, in that dark moment, on a Dallas street. The horror of the assassin's shots shattered dreams and echoed through the decades, coloring our politics, and lives. It was also a watershed moment for American television news, led by CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite. With the death of a president came the birth of live coverage. America shared a national tragedy, as it happened. Because of television we thought we knew JFK and his family more intimately than any of his predecessors, the man friends simply called "Jack." Voice of John F. Kennedy: I was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1917. I have eight brothers and sisters and they... I'm the second oldest, And it was a great pleasure growing up in a large family. I think it makes a tremendous difference. Voice of Rose Kennedy: His father would go out and watch the sailboats ... and then he'd say, "Why are your sails flapping while the other one was straight? And the other one won the race and you didn't. ... If you're gonna race, why, do it right and come in a winner. Second place is no good." Sandy Socolow | Walter Cronkite's producer: John F. Kennedy ... was brought up in an ultra-rich way. Very well educated. ... Very good-looking. Very personable. ... He was extraordinarily self confident. Schieffer: Sure, he was playing the media. ... But the fact is he was just so good at it, that it worked. ... And who could blame him? 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate rehearsal:Kennedy: It's a pleasure to be here tonight to participate in this program which opens up a series of discussions. ... Is that about the right tone of voice?Richard Nixon: Think I better shave. Walter Cronkite on the air, 1960: And the popular vote ... 84 percent of the precincts counted now ... give Kennedy just a little margin over 50 percent of the vote... Nixon almost 50 percent of the vote. One of the closest elections in our nation's history has been recorded in this year of 1960. Walter Cronkite | CBS News (1993): Kennedy seemed to be leading us into a new era of, of youthful exuberance ... over the fun of life, the fun a country could have being itself, being important in the world. We were dancing on clouds. Schieffer: It was just the difference in night and day. He was the Technicolor President, and we had sort of seen the presidency in black-and-white up until that point. ... Suddenly we had this young handsome president and this gorgeous wife and these beautiful children ... and he is the first president that we came to really know, and we came to know his family and that was because of television. Newscaster Walter Cronkite and President John F. Kennedy sit together during an interview for the premiere broadcast of the Schieffer: In those days presidents didn't travel very much and it was a major event. ... They decided to come to Texas because they thought they could raise money there. ... The people were so excited. Schieffer: The relationship between Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy was very complex. They were partners. Were they ever friends? Robert Caro | Author and historian: Not really. Friday, Nov. 22, 1963 Schieffer: They decided to fly from Fort Worth to Dallas, which is literally only 30 miles. They flew over. Air Force One lands at Love Field. Bob Huffaker | Former KRLD radio reporter: Well the day began gray and cold ... there was a misting rain falling and the temperature was cold. Suddenly at mid-morning the skies opened up and it was a beautiful ... blue, spring-like day. Caro: We see it, the great plane is gleaming silver in the background, everything is bright under a bright Texas sun, and you hear the television announcer: "There she is..." Reporter: ...and there's Mrs. Kennedy, the first lady stepping from the plane. Wearing a bright pink suit with a dark fur collar and a matching pink hat, and the president wearing a dark suit. Caro: They hand Jackie at the bottom of the stairs this bouquet of roses. Reporter: She does makes a very striking picture as she clutches the huge bouquet of bright red roses... Caro: He takes Jackie and they walk along the fence. And someone said there was no brighter moment in the Kennedy presidency then that moment at Love Field in Dallas. President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy are seen in their motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, shortly before his assassination. Texas Governor John Connally sits in front of them, in white hat. / Credit: Bettmann Schieffer: They decided because the skies had cleared to take the bubble-top off the presidential limousine. Reporter: And the president will be riding in the open. ... That car was flown in here last night from Washington... Huffaker: The crowd cheered as the president and his beautiful wife came past us. Reporter: And now the ticker tape and uh ... other confetti and such is beginning to flow from the windows and the crowd at our point is surging forward. There is a big cheer going up... Schieffer: As they turned to go into the main downtown area, Nelly Connally, who was John Connally's wife, [Texas] Governor Connally's wife, turned to the president and said, "Well, Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you." Reporter: ... and here is the President of the United States ... and what a crowd... what a tremendous welcome he is getting now. Huffaker: The crowd just surged out from their points on the sidewalk and filled the street from curb to curb. Caro: Then they turn off Main Street into this open grassy area, Dealey Plaza, and there's a sharp cracking sound. ... John Connally, I remember saying to me, "I was a hunter. I knew the moment I heard it, it was the crack of a hunting rifle." Abraham Zapruder film: I was down on this freeway early ... and even the freeway was jammed pack with spectators waiting their chance to see the president as he made his way toward the trade mart ... it appears as though something has happened in the motorcade route ... something I repeat has happened in the motorcade route. Schieffer: Well, it was just pandemonium. It was just a terrible moment. Caro: So the three cars the cars with President Kennedy, the Secret Service car and Johnson's car squeal up the ramp to an expressway ... and then off the expressway and into the emergency bay at Parkland Hospital. Reporter: There has been a shooting ... Parkland Hospital has been advised to stand by for a severe gunshot wound. Cronkite (1993): Looking right at it when the bells rang, five bells for a bulletin. ... Shots rang out while the president's motorcade drove through the streets of Dallas. ... And with that I turned around and shouted, "Let's get on the air, lets get on the air!" Well. in those days we didn't keep a camera hot. Socolow: And he couldn't get on the air on television. You never saw Cronkite. You saw a card on the screen. Cronkite on the air: Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. Huffaker: This was the day that the news went live on television. Cronkite on the air: The first reports say the president, Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. Schieffer: People were crying. People were just walking around with a blank look on their face. "What does this mean? What's happened?" Walter Cronkite on the air: This is Walter Cronkite in our newsroom. There has been an attempt, as perhaps you know now, on the life of President Kennedy. He was wounded in an automobile driving from Dallas Airport into downtown Dallas, along with Governor Connally of Texas. They've been taken to Parkland Hospital where their condition is as yet unknown. Dr. Kenneth Salyer: I'm Dr. Kenneth Salyer. And on Nov. 22, 1963, I was on neurosurgery call at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas. ... A nurse ran into the room and said "the president's been shot." Schieffer: And what did you do? Dr. Salyer: When I walked in, my colleagues were at the top of the table in Trauma Room One. ... The president ... had a large, huge jagged injury of the right side of his skull, with pieces missing. Schieffer: Was he alive? Dr. Salyer: He was still breathing ... and we were trying to intubate him, get a tube into his windpipe, trachea. ... But it wouldn't go past this wound. Cronkite on the air: We have not been told their condition. At Dallas, in a downtown hotel room, a group had been gathered to hear President Kennedy and was waiting his arrival. Let's switch down there now where Eddie Barker of KRLD is on the air. Eddie Barker reporting: As you can imagine there are many stories that are coming in now as to the actual condition of the president. One is that he is dead. This cannot be confirmed. Schieffer: Did you think this was survivable? Dr. Salyer: I didn't make that assessment at the moment I was taking care of him. ... This is a major, high velocity injury. Huffaker: As I was standing in the crowd, two priests brushed past me... Voice of Bob Huffaker | KRLD Radio: President Kennedy is on the inside of Parkland Hospital and two priests have just been sent in to the room with the president. Dr. Salyer: As I looked up in the room, in the far back of the room is Mrs. Kennedy ... blood splattered on her dress. But she was just observing everything, wasn't talking. Cronkite (1993): My God who, what, why? Surely the president won't die. I mean, that can't be. He won't die, surely. Schieffer: How long did that go on? Dr. Salyer: It seemed like forever. But it was really probably less than 30 minutes. Cronkite on the air: From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official: President Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2:00 Eastern Tme, some 38 minutes ago. [Takes off glasses, pauses.] Socolow: He stopped in his tracks. ... tough man who understood the momentousness of what he was charged with doing. Cronkite (1993): It was disbelief that it could have happened, that it had happened. Dr. Salyer: As I was looking at Mrs. Kennedy and everyone started to exit the room and she came over. We had covered him up ... and she laid on his chest. And took a ring off, and put onto his finger. ... And I thought it was a very touching moment. Socolow: As the news spread people stopped what they were doing to go to the radio, mostly, but also to television. ... It was the first instance of wall-to-wall news coverage. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: It was one of the most shocking things I'd ever heard. Frankly, I was very upset and couldn't adjust to it and could hardly believe it in the beginning. Penny Robinson to Charles Kuralt: Nobody could believe it. It's too... there's no words to express what happened at all. Charles Kuralt | CBS News 1963: It's true that there are no words to express it and that feeling is obvious all around us on the streets of Los Angeles. Richard Nixon: Today millions of people throughout the world are trying to find words adequate to express their grief and their sympathy to his family. Man on the street, NYC: We are sorry. Deeply moved over this incident. This is a dark day in the history of America. Edward Kennedy: I do want to say how appreciate both my parents have been for the tremendous outpouring of thoughtfulness and prayers that have come from all Americans from all parts of the country.Man on the street: Someone to do this must be mentally deranged. No clear-thinking human person would ever think of doing something like that. Dan Rather | CBS News Dallas reporting: These are scenes at a building across the street from the scene where President Kennedy was shot. ... Some empty cartridges have been found in that building. ... Perhaps out of one of those open windows is where the assassin of President Kennedy is believed to have fired the fatal shots. Dan Rather (2008): After the initial hammer to the heart that an assassination of the president the reality of that sinks in, then it was, "focus on the story." Because if you don't do that, then you're at some risk of just falling apart emotionally. Cronkite on the air: In Dallas a Dallas policeman just a short while ago was shot and killed while chasing a suspect. Schieffer: And a policeman named J.D. Tippit saw a man walking down the street. And called him over to the police car. And when he did, Oswald walked up and shot him at point-blank range. Dan Rather reporting: This is 24-year-old Lee H. Oswald. ... Now here is the gun police say was used to kill the president. ... Oswald first was charged with killing the policeman, police say that have at least one eyewitness to that. Oswald: I really don't know what this situation is about. Nobody has told me anything except I'm accused of, uh, murdering a policeman. Reporter: Did you kill the president? Oswald: No, I have not been charged with that. In fact nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question. Schieffer: And I drove down to The Star Telegram. ... And a woman called in and said, "Is there anyone there who can give me a ride to Dallas?" And I said, "Well, lady, you know, we're not running a taxi here. And beside, the president has been shot." And she said, "Yes ... I think my son is the one that they've arrested." Marguerite Oswald: I spoke a few words to Lee and he says, "Mother don't worry about a thing..." Schieffer: And it was Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, Marguerite Oswald. We wrote down the address, and went out and picked up her. And we drove her to Dallas. ... It was my first really big scoop. Caro: The agents say to [Lyndon] Johnson, "We've gotta get out of here." Johnson says, "No, I'm not leaving without Mrs. Kennedy." They say to him, "Mrs. Kennedy won't leave without her husband's body." He says, "then we'll go to Air Force One and we'll wait there until she comes aboard with the coffin. But I'm not leaving Dallas without her." Dan Rather reporting: Mrs. Kennedy, back the way she had come, in an ambulance now which bore her husband's body. Caro: When they get Johnson on the plane they draw the window shades. They're afraid of snipers. Nobody knows at this moment if this was the beginning of a conspiracy. Schieffer: Air Force One is still on the ground at Love Field. Johnson has literally taken command? Caro: He walks into the center of the room and begins giving orders ... who he wants there. Particularly he wants Mrs. Kennedy there. Cronkite on the air: We just got word from our reporters out there at the airport ... that Lyndon B. Johnson has been sworn in as the President of the United States. Caro: Mrs. Kennedy has come aboard with her husband's coffin, and it's put in the rear section. Schieffer: Mrs. Kennedy would not change clothes. She said, "I want them to see what they have done to him." Caro: Lady Bird Johnson says, "That immaculate woman her skirt was caked with blood." And Lyndon Johnson asks her to be present at the ceremony, and she was to say, "For the sake of history I should." Schieffer: The picture said exactly what Johnson wanted it to say. And that is: "The United States is still on course. We have had the death of a president. But the country and the constitution still lives." Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office as President of the United States, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy Nov. 22, 1963. / Credit: National Archive/Newsmakers A new president: LBJ Robert Caro: Lyndon Johnson takes the oath of office on Air Force One. His hand comes down, he says: "Now let's get airborne." On this flight across the United States, you have this plane carrying two presidents, one dead and one alive. No matter how long America's history is, this will always be one of the most dramatic and defining moments in it. Reporter: President Lyndon Johnson has arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. This is film, or tape, of that arrival. (Background: "Live, live, live!") It is live. It is live, right now. Caro: And this great silver plane comes gliding out of the darkness. Reporter: This is one of the most unique and tragic moments in the history... Caro: The minute the front door opens, Robert Kennedy runs up the front steps to the plane. Pushes past Lyndon Johnson without even looking at him. Doesn't acknowledge him. And, comes up to Jackie, and says, "Jackie, I'm here." Reporter: I'm watching a turnover in government, at the highest office. And now we can see what we believe to be a coffin containing the body of President Kennedy being moved from Air Force One. Caro: And when the coffin comes out, right behind it, are Jackie Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. Reporter: This is a scene at Andrews Air Force Base. With a casket of carrying the body of President Kennedy is being transferred to an ambulance. Socolow: Nobody understood, at the time, what this event meant for television news. Television news, suddenly became important. Reporter: Behind it comes, Mrs. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.... And now President Johnson is coming down the ramp, out the back door. Schieffer: Johnson had this innate sense of command. He knew that the country had to know that there was continuity. It was a sad moment, but it was a great moment in the history of the country because it said: there is still a president. Caro: There is no presidential podium, there's no presidential seal, all they've done is put this bunch of microphones on the bare tarmac. President Lyndon Johnson: We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best, that is all I can do. I ask for your help ... and God's. Schieffer: The speech was poignant, but it was brilliant in its brevity. Cronkite (1993): We had a whole new world out there. Lyndon Johnson was not going to be John Fitzgerald Kennedy by any means. Reporter: At 4:30 this morning Mr. Kennedy's body was returned to the White house. George Herman was on hand when it arrived. George Herman reporting: President John F. Kennedy comes back to the White House for the last time. Cronkite on the air: There will be a particularly poignant time for the Kennedy family next week.The two Kennedy children, uh, both have birthdays next week. John, 3, November the 25th, and Caroline, 6, on November the 27th. An entire nation has almost come to a stop today, uh, in the wake of the horrible news. Huffaker: I had never seen anything like I saw when I arrived on that Saturday morning after the assassination. The entire hallway was filled with, probably, perhaps as many as a hundred reporters. Cronkite on the air: We reported to you on the arrest of that individual in Dallas. He is being grilled now. He is said to be 24 years old. The name has been given for him by Dallas Police as Lee H. Oswald. Reporter: Has he confessed sir? Has he made a statement? Official: He has not confessed.He has made no statement. Charges of murder have been accepted against him. Dan Rather reporting: Oswald has admitted nothing. After further questioning, he was formally charged with the president's death. That gun is a powerful military rifle, which police found in the building from which the president is believed to have been shot. Schieffer: Lee Harvey Oswald was on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository when he shot the president. He had a birds-eye view. If you go and look out that window, where he was, you realize you didn't have to be a very good shot. Dan Rather reporting: Lee Oswald, espouser of leftist causes: an active member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, an avowed admirer of Russia and of Cuba's Fidel Castro, a man who once lived in Russia. Reporter: What did you do in Russia? Oswald: A policeman hit me. Huffaker: We knew that Oswald was the most hated suspect of the 20th century. Reporter: Chief, do you have any concern for the safety of your prisoner In due of the high feeling among the people of Dallas over the assassination of the president? Police Chief: No, but precautions ... necessary ... precautions will be taken, of course. Schieffer: On that Sunday, the plan was to transfer Oswald from the Dallas City Jail, where he had been questioned and where he had been kept, and transfer him to the county jail. Harry Reasoner, CBS News, on the air: This is how things stand at this hour. In Washington, it is not long until the time for the transfer of the body of President Kennedy from its repose at the White House to the rotunda of the Capitol where it will lie in state. In Dallas, Lee Oswald, the man accused of the assassination of the president, is to be moved from one jail to another. We will have a direct report. Rather (2008): This was something ... brand new. Covering this kind of tragedy, nobody had done it on television before. Harry Reasoner on the air: Let us go now to the White House and Robert Pierpoint. Dan Rather (2008): Nobody knew how to do it, and in terms of coverage ... everybody in television ... we were making it up as we went along. Harry Reasoner on the air: We are now switching to Dallas where they are about to move Lee Oswald and where there is a scuffle in the police station... Reporter: We are going to switch now to Bob Huffaker, down in the basement of the courthouse, who is close to the scene. Go ahead, Bob. Bob Huffaker: Lee Harold Oswald has been shot. The situation is now that Lee Harold Oswald has been shot. The man who saw the shot fired, said it was fired by a man wearing a black hat, a brown coat... Huffaker: I had looked and seen Oswald grimace, grasp his stomach and fall. And I knew, that, what we had feared, had actually taken place. Harry Reasoner: We have, we got our tape. We have re-racked the video tape that shows that whole scene of confusion. Schieffer: Suddenly, these two detectives walk out, with Oswald between them, and someone just walks up and sticks a gun in Oswald's side and shoots him. Guards escort Lee Harvey Oswald during a press conference two days after his arrest in connection with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Oswald was shot and killed by local night club owner Jack Ruby during the press conference. / Credit: CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images Schieffer: And again it's just this total, what in the world happened? How could this have happened? Socolow: From a journalist's point of view, there were so many questions to be answered. Who was the murderer? Why did he do it? Reporter: And you knew him? Officer: Yes, sir. Bob Huffaker: And he is a resident of Dallas, is he not? Officer: Yes, sir. Cronkite (1993): The police, uh, captured a man at the scene who reporters saw shoot Oswald and have booked him.They say his name is Jack Ruby, or Rubenstein. Huffaker: The operator of a seedy strip club in downtown Dallas. Bob Huffaker reporting: Here comes Oswald, he, he is ashen and unconscious ... and now the ambulance is coming out ... the ambulance with Lee Harvey Oswald, who was shot. Cronkite (1993): He was taken to Parkland Hospital and died an hour and 15 minutes after he was shot, in a emergency room just 10 feet from the room where President Kennedy had died almost exactly 48 hours before. Schieffer: That weekend was unlike anything that had ever happen in television or in journalism, uh, in this country. I never felt that way until 9/11. Did Oswald act alone? Bob Schieffer: The day Oswald was to be transferred to the county jail in Dallas, I was sent to cover his arrival. As we know he never got there. Instead, his murder fueled a firestorm of suspicion about a possible conspiracy. Was Jack Ruby sent to silence the president's assassin? Even after all these years, a [2013] CBS News poll shows most Americans 61 percent don't believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Reporter: It appears as though something has happened in the motorcade route something, I repeat, something has happened in the motorcade route. Schieffer: From the moment the sound of those shots were heard, people began to wonder ... was there a conspiracy? Reporter: Parkland Hospital has been advised to stand by for a severe gunshot wound... Schieffer: Those who were down on Dealey Plaza ... didn't know what had happened. Reporter: Something is wrong here, something is terribly wrong... Caro :It's an atmosphere of uncertainty. As Air Force One is heading to Washington, the Mexican border is being sealed because we're afraid of conspirators getting away. Philip Shenon: Within hours of the assassination, Bobby Kennedy took the director of the CIA out on to his lawn and asked the question bluntly, "Did you kill my brother?" Schieffer: And his answer? Shenon: His answer was no. In his account of the Kennedy assassination, Philip Shenon, a former investigative reporter for The New York Times, explores why many suspected an international conspiracy. Shenon: There was terrible suspicion at that time about the Soviet Union, about Cuba, about the larger Communist threat. ... Fidel Castro knows, in the fall of 1963, that the Kennedy administration is trying to kill him. And so ... it was an obvious suspicion that Castro would be involved in Kennedy's death. Before the week was out, President Johnson decided that to quell America's fears, a high level commission to investigate the assassination was necessary. Reporter: The seven members of the Warren Commission, headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court... Shenon: In September 1964, after... 10 months of investigation ... the Warren Commission determined ... that there was no evidence of a conspiracy and that it appeared Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in Dealey Plaza. Yet the Warren Commission itself would come under intense scrutiny. Four separate government investigations, 33 television reports from CBS News alone, and of course, Hollywood. After all these years, what do we finally know? Was the president really killed by a lone gunman in Dealey Plaza? The best record of the assassination to stand the test of time is Abraham Zapruder's famous 26 seconds of 8mm film photographed just steps from the president's motorcade. From his perch, what did Abraham Zapruder see? For 38 years, Dale Myers, a professional computer animator, has researched the assassination. Ten years ago, utilizing new computer technology, he was able to take the 8mm film and analyze it frame by frame, believing it might solve the mystery of whether there was a second shooter in Dealey Plaza. Dale K. Myers: The Zapruder film was the only film that captured the entire shooting from start to finish. ... Most people don't realize how small the Zapruder film is. An 8mm film is actually smaller than a postage stamp ... and this makes it very difficult to see what's going on, especially when the film is projected in real time. ... I thought there's a way now with the technology to take my computer models and match the Zapruder film exactly, frame for frame ... to finally, once and for all, isolate what's happening in the car as the shots are fired. Schieffer: To make its lone gunman conclusion work, the Warren Commission maintained that a single bullet hit President Kennedy and then wounded Gov. Connally. Critics dismissed it as a "magic bullet theory." Even Gov. Connally never accepted it. Gov. John Connally (1992): To me it's just inconceivable that the first shot that went through his neck, entered my back. I don't believe that, I never will believe that. They can't run enough tests to make me believe that. Myers: Kennedy, when he emerges from behind the sign, he's obviously hit as the hands come up in a very dramatic fashion. So the problem that conspiracy theorists point out is they say, "Well, the time lag between this and the moment when Gov. Connally ... is hit is too short for a single gunman to be firing two rounds." So they say, "This must be a conspiracy." ... Which meant that ... there was a second shooter in the plaza. The shooting, as we now understand it ... there were three shots fired. ... Zapruder begins filming right here. First shot is fired, bang. Second shot is fired, bang. ... And the third and fatal shot is fired here, bang. ... The reality is, is the president wasn't hit by the first shot. No one was. The first shot missed and Myers' analysis shows what happened with the second shot. Myers: At frame 222, Connally is not injured. 223, but at 224 ... we can see the right shoulder buckle and start to drop. ... This is a very dramatic change in body position. ... He's clearly been hit. ... We know the bullet has emerged right here in the coat area. And so we can actually see this on camera, the lapel suddenly blow open and then the dramatic reaction of the governor after that. So again, in real time, it's very clear that they both react at the same time.... the two men are ... hit by the same bullet. This computer technology confirms the controversial single-bullet theory. And by rotating the Zapruder footage in three dimensions, Myers can demonstrate why the single bullet had to pass through Kennedy and hit Connally. Myers: If you take the entrance wound on Kennedy's back and connect it with a straight line and project that line forward, it hits Gov. Connally, who's seated directly in front of him. It has to hit Connally ... otherwise, you get a real magic bullet, a bullet that exits Kennedy's throat and vanishes into thin air. But there's more computer analysis now allows us to investigate the source of the single bullet. Myers: So we take the back wound on Connally. We take that as a straight line back to Kennedy's throat wound and then just project it ... rearward and see where it takes us. And I was really a little bit surprised after all the conspiracy talk to find it goes right back through the southeastern corner of the Texas School Book Depository. 21st century technology concludes Oswald was the only shooter. And despite all the theories and all the investigations over the last 50 years, no one has yet produced credible evidence of a conspiracy behind Oswald. So why do so many people still refuse to believe a single person did this? Shenon: It's just a difficult concept for folks that one young, unstable man with a $21 rifle could change the world. [Pauses] And yet it happened. A nation united in grief As rumors and uncertainty spread, one thing was certain: America, and much of the world, was united in unimaginable grief. The president had been assassinated. The drama that was about to unfold in Washington played like an epic tragedy, and television broadcast live images that would be branded into our nation's memory. Reporter: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, leaving the White House for the last time. Bob Schieffer: I was always struck by, just what seemed like overwhelming grief that people seemed to be experiencing. Caro: So the caisson is pulled up to the front of White House. Then they put the coffin on it, put the flag on top of it. Then all of a sudden there she is in the doorway. Reporter: Mrs. Kennedy, Caroline, and John ... Caro: Her face is behind the veil. She's holding a little figure in each hand in a sky blue coat her son and her daughter. She moves forward toward the limousine and Robert Kennedy ... his face is also unforgettable... ravaged face, uh, comes out behind her. Reporter: President Johnson has gotten into the car with the Kennedy family. Caro: I mean, here's Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy, two men who hate each other. They're going to be riding behind the body of Robert Kennedy's brother. In this long, slow procession. The caisson pulls away. Reporter: President John Kennedy ... his body in the casket moving down Pennsylvania Avenue now, up toward Capitol Hill. Caro: Then they go into the Rotunda. Schieffer: People felt like they knew the Kennedys. We had seen their family. And so we felt like we were losing someone who was very close to us. Reporter: The line, 40 blocks long ... estimated by police at 500,000. Schieffer: There was this one moment where, uh, Caroline reaches up under the flag, to be, obviously trying to be closer to her father. And it wasn't enough just to put her hand on the flag. Charles Collingwood | CBS News reporting: So great is the crush outside the Capitol, waiting to get in, that people who have not been in line at 10 o'clock can't possibly go by the coffin before it is borne away at 10 o'clock tomorrow. Reporter: Mrs. Kennedy followed the casket on foot to St. Matthews Church. Cronkite (1993): It really happened. The president of the United States, dead, and there he lied. It had happened, it was over, it was done, and we were about to bury it. Bury something of our past along with that man. Schieffer: I think the picture that most people will remember is this tiny little boy, in his little-boy suit, uh, and he puts his hand up... and he salutes. it's hard for me to think of it even today and not be touched by that. A young John F. Kennedy Jr. salutes his father's funeral procession on Nov. 25, 1963, in Washington D.C. / Credit: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images Caro: It's all the pomp and majesty that a republic can muster. Schieffer: You had the riderless horse. Caro: The great black horse. Schieffer: You heard the sound of the drums. ... It was a soft sound. Solid. Caro: It was like it burned it into our consciousness. Schieffer: It was overwhelming. ... It was overwhelming. Caro: When you see these images, even today, you feel this is a watershed moment in American history. ... Really, never to be forgotten. Schieffer: So many parts of our culture changed because of that weekend. I truly believed it was the weekend that America lost its innocence. America was never quite the same after that day. A nation that had been brimming with confidence suddenly felt a new vulnerability. How could this have happened? Would it have been different had Kennedy lived? We can never know. But that weekend was only the beginning of one of the most tumultuous and violent decades in the country's history a decade that would see more assassinations, Vietnam, bloody riots, and Watergate, which would bring down and force the resignation of a very different president. It would be a time when we would question our leaders our institutions and everything we had taken for granted for so long. Thanksgiving turkey recipe that cooks in under 2 hours From the archives: JFK's assassination in Dallas covered by CBS News in 1963 Ancient Vines | Sunday on 60 Minutes Until just a few years ago, Albania used to be an exclusive tourist destination. This summer, however, the endless search for hidden, inexpensive spots brought an avalanche of visitors to its crystal clear beaches. The place even became a source of controversy after a series of influencers criticized the countrys quality as a vacation destination. Their complaint? That the place was not as idyllic as they had seen on TikTok. A recent study reflects how this platform can spark a sudden increase in the amount of people that visit a certain place. Unlike other social networks, TikTok promotes the videos that generate many interactions quickly; this can lead to the sudden popularity of a destination and cause saturation problems in places intended for much smaller crowds. Some attributes that differentiate TikTok from other social networks are its virality and its type of users. One of the key factors of TikTok is its audience, which is younger. Destinations that can be classified as cheaper and easier to access adapt better to the users of this social network, says Jennifer Mourenza, digital marketing specialist at the AccuraCast agency. The impact, however, reaches other layers of the population: according to a report made by MGH, a marketing agency that specializes in tourism, 35% of users of this social network in the United States traveled to a new place after seeing it there. Of course, the percentage rises to 45% among people between 25 and 44 years old. The amount of people who travel to the destinations that are promoted on TikTok like Albania, whose growth in the tourism sector is indisputable is not easy to estimate. The country saw a 26% increase in foreign visitors during July, compared to the previous years figures. The rise is more noticeable outside of the central summer months: in September, 45% more international tourists arrived, totaling 1.1 million (more than one third of the local population), and last January there were 94% more visitors, according to the Albanian Institute of Statistics. In the first nine months of the year, the country had 29% more tourists than in the same period of 2022. However, the study published by the Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism did find correlations between the TikTok numbers and the on-the-ground data, on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. There, the largest mountain in Jianfengling National Forest Park went from receiving 50 visitors in January 2021 to around 400-600 starting the following month. That happened after somebody posted a video showing the view from the enclave, with a spectacular sunrise emerging from a sea of clouds, which garnered 65,000 likes. Two other points of interest, near the Daguangba Reservoir, also gained sudden popularity after a video got 29,000 likes. TikToks algorithm is different, and it is more suitable for spreading videos to many people. Stronger virality is achieved. TikTok generates waves of popularity that dont exist on Instagram, says Jerome Bergerou, international director at AccuraCast. Both he and Mourenza mention the case of the Cornish beaches, which they know closely because their headquarters are in London. During the pandemic, visits to this British coastal area skyrocketed: Extremely striking videos were published, showing spectacular beaches that are located in England and that were totally unknown to people, and there was a viral effect, says Mourenza. After the lockdown in the United Kingdom, the influx of tourists seeking sun and sand in Cornwall exploded. Figuring out which of these tourists were inspired by TikTok and whether they really represented a significant number is no easy task, especially at a time in which tourism retreated to the interior of countries, to the detriment of international destinations. Still, it seems clear that today Cornwalls beaches are popular on TikTok, whether one goes by the information published by the local newspaper CornwallLive or by the 26.7 million views garnered by the hashtag #cornwallbeaches. Although tourism is usually seen as an engine of economic prosperity, these sudden growths come with downsides. The study on the TikTok effect on destination development highlights that the massive, unexpected arrival of visitors caused problems of traffic, crowds and pollution. Regarding the consequences that an unforeseen increase in visitors can have, journalist Pedro Bravo, author of the essay on mass tourism Exceso de equipaje (Excess baggage), mentions some key points: There are public services that are prepared to serve a certain amount of people, and they suddenly find themselves saturated. And by public services we can understand everything from water to cleaning, security or waste collection. This continues to happen even in historically saturated places, such as the Balearic Islands. In the island of Hainan, the avalanche of visitors brought to light the lack of organized transportation within the national park, as well as the absence of hiking routes and the impact of private vehicles: more traffic and less safety on the narrow mountain roads. In addition, researchers noted a lack of public toilets, garbage cans and eating and drinking facilities. Environmental problems also arise due to the greater generation of waste and, in many cases, greenhouse gases, according to Bravo. Furthermore, if there is no established hotel infrastructure, accommodation for tourist use will proliferate, making housing more expensive for the local population. These are the usual problems that come with mass tourism. They exist even in places that are supposed to be used to mass tourism, like the Balearic Islands, Amsterdam, Venice, Madrid or Barcelona. Imagine if you are not even prepared and suddenly you get all this, the author emphasizes. Places like the beaches of Cornwall or Albania are already showing signs of overcrowding. Bravo points out that the process differs between a country and a specific place, as the influx of tourists on a national scale requires a prior plan and state involvement. Usually, in the case of countries, before a wave of tourism comes, the necessary tourist infrastructure has already been put in place. Hotels are needed. There must be negotiations with the airlines so more planes come, and the slots reserved for the airlines have to be cheap in order for the flights to be cheap. Travel agencies also have to include it in their catalogs and make price offers. All of that has happened before the first tiktoker arrives, he explains. Then comes the promotion of the destination which, why not, could take place on TikTok. In 2022, the travel site Breaking Travel News highlighted Albanias explosive popularity on TikTok that summer. However, as Bergerou points out, it is difficult to know if there is paid content behind it or not. She explains that there are two ways to advertise: the first is direct, with ads. The other is more effective. It consists in using influencers to generate content about the tourist destination. These influencers are supposed to declare that they are receiving money for promoting the destination, but many times this is not done and it is not always clear which content is paid and which is organic, says Bergerou. What is clear in Albania is that there has been previous airport planning in the country. In 2021 it opened its second international airport, in Kukes, apart from the one that the capital, Tirana, already had, and there are plans to build two more in the tourist areas of Saranda and Vlora. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAIS USA Edition The Colorado Supreme Court agreed late Tuesday to take up a case weighing whether to bar former President Trump from the 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment. A lower court last week found that the former president engaged in insurrection by inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot but determined the constitutional prohibition on holding office after engaging in insurrection or rebellion did not apply to the presidency. Trump and the group of citizens seeking to remove him from the ballot have both appealed the decision. Best Black Friday Deals Trump in his appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court said he agreed with the latter part of the ruling keeping him on the states ballot but is appealing on other issues. But the district court nonetheless made legal and factual findings wholly unsupported in the law, and these errors demand review especially if the Petitioners in this matter also seek review of the sole dispositive issue upon which President Trump prevailed, Trumps attorneys wrote. Left-leaning group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which filed the lawsuit on behalf of four Republicans and two independent Colorado voters, asked the states top court to rule that the amendment does indeed apply to the presidency. Top Stories from The Hill The 14th Amendment prohibits someone from holding any office under the United States if they engaged in insurrection after taking an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution. Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace said in her ruling that that language means the 14th Amendment cant be used to prevent Trump from appearing on the ballot, regardless of whether the then-presidents actions on Jan. 6 cleared the threshold. Wallace ruled the presidency was not an office under the United States because the 14th Amendment explicitly lists all federal elected positions, except for the presidency and vice presidency. Wallace further ruled Trump was not an officer of the United States in the first place, referencing other constitutional provisions that distinguish the presidency from federal officers. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War, excludes from federal or state office those who engaged in insurrection against the Constitution after previously taking an oath to support it, CREW argued in its appeal brief. The case is one of multiple 14th Amendment lawsuits against Trump proceeding across the country. A liberal activist group that filed a lawsuit in Michigan appealed its case to the states top court last week. Minnesotas top court threw out another 14th Amendment lawsuit earlier this month. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. In 2021, the EU saw a population decrease of 2.7 per 1,000 people, with 980 regions seeing a drop in population, 173 regions registering population growth and 11 showing no change. File Photo by Will Oliver/EPA-EFE Nov. 21 (UPI) -- The population of the European Union fell by 265,257 people during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, the EU's statistacal agency reported Tuesday. Eurostat said the pandemic played a role in the decline, with the EU reporting more deaths than births between Jan. 1, 2021 and Jan. 1, 2022. Migration was positive during the time, with more people entering the EU than leaving it. Overall the EU saw a population decrease of 2.7 per 1,000 people, with 980 regions seeing a drop in population, 173 regions registering population growth and 11 showing no change. Bulgaria registered the greatest decline, down 25.7 per 1,000 people. Declines were reported in every region of Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Portugal and Romania and almost every region of Czechia, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. The highest population growth was reported in France, with the Mayotte area registering a gain of 32.2 per 1,000 people and Guyane up 23.1 per 1,000 people. Population growth was registered in every region of Ireland and in a high number of regions in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden. The European Union reported the COVID-19 pandemic led to 872,000 excess deaths between March 2020 and July 2021, a 13% increase over the average number of deaths during the five previous years. The U.S. Census Bureau reported earlier this month that the U.S. population is projected to peak at almost 370 million people in 2080 before declining to 366 million by 2100. The Census Bureau attributed the slower pace of population growth to an aging population, higher mortality rates, declines in fertility, and international migration. Englands final two qualifiers of the campaign to reach Euro 2024 next summer confirmed one indisputable fact: there are four untouchables in the team that Gareth Southgate cannot do without. They are: Harry Kane, Jude Bellingham, Declan Rice and John Stones. Without any of that quartet England are not the same. They go from one of the two or three strong favourites to win next summer, along with France and Portugal, to merely contenders. In theory, Southgates first-choice line-up is fairly set. If everyone is fit and playing, it will likely be a 4-2-3-1 formation: Pickford; Walker, Stones, Maguire, Shaw; Phillips, Rice; Saka, Bellingham, Rashford; Kane. Eight of those players are pretty much nailed-on. The doubts? Luke Shaw at left-back because of his fitness issues, which may allow Kieran Trippier or Ben Chilwell (if he can get fit) in, midfielder Kalvin Phillips, who needs to secure a move away from Manchester City in the January transfer to gain some playing time, and on the left Marcus Rashford, who faces strong challenges from Phil Foden, in particular, and Jack Grealish, and maybe now even Cole Palmer. Harry Maguire is fortunate to have kept his place and needs to play far better than he did against North Macedonia. Otherwise, he will lose out to Marc Guehi or Lewis Dunk. There will be those who argue Aaron Ramsdale should be considered in goal ahead of Jordan Pickford, but that is no contest, especially if Ramsdale continues to sit on the bench at Arsenal. They put into perspective the claim England should walk it in Germany And then there are the Golden Quartet; the Fab Four; the Irreplaceables. England are just not the same without them. Their presence is transformative and puts into perspective the optimistic claim this is somehow Englands strongest-ever squad, who should be walking it in Germany next year. Of course every side has its core that makes the difference, but what is undeniable for England is the difference those four make to every department on the pitch from defence, through midfield, to the trio of forward-minded players behind the main striker. It means they are even more important. It is not, say, a pair of strikers or a couple of midfielders. It is the spine. John Stones's ability to pass out of defence takes England to a higher level - Eddie Mulholland Without Stones, Englands defence simply lacks the confidence required at the highest level to bring the ball out and pass into midfield. His partnership with Maguire now goes back more than five years and, while the Manchester United centre-half might have originally been its senior player, that is no longer the case. The worry is Stones has started to suffer injuries that have limited his appearances for City, which is all the more frustrating given how well the 29-year-old is playing and the maturity he has shown to adapt to a role stepping into midfield under Pep Guardiola. Similarly, Rice is raising his game to the elite level and not just because he has secured his 105million move from West Ham United to Arsenal. The 24-year-old has eclipsed Phillips, when it appeared the latter was more central to England in the last Euros. Guardiola must surely be regretting signing Phillips and not him in July 2022. City again tried for Rice last summer but baulked at the price, while it also became clear he was far progressed in his decision to join Arsenal. Declan Rice has become an elite player since joining Arsenal - PA/Nick Potts For England it is evidently a case of Rice and Bellingham plus one, or Rice plus one if as is now likely Bellingham plays as a No 10. The options are limited Jordan Henderson is struggling to justify his squad inclusion since moving to Saudi Arabia, Phillips does not play for his club and Trent Alexander-Arnold is yet to fully convince he can play as part of the double pivot that Southgate favours, while James Ward-Prowse is out of favour. Maybe Rico Lewis? It means that, as with Stones in defence, England would be in real trouble without Rice. Tthe difference he makes was there with the drive he brought coming on as a substitute in the sides leaden performance against Malta. Bellingham is world class, even aged 20. It is just whether Southgate moves him back into playing as an eight or keeps him in the No 10 role, as he has filled to such devastating effect since his move to Real Madrid. Bellingham enhances England and would do any team in the world, frankly. The goal threat is diminished without him. Jude Bellingham has developed into a key man for England - Getty Images/Stu Forster If Bellingham were absent there is a case to argue that Foden could step in although, as Southgate has debated, he does not really play there for City regularly. Foden did so impressively in coming on in the Champions League final, but Guardiola prefers to deploy Julian Alvarez. And there is no way Foden offers the same goal contribution at present as Bellingham. Then there is Kane who, at 30, has been raising his game to new heights since the move to Bayern Munich. Southgate will be pleased his captain will play at least four fewer league games 34 as opposed to 38 in the more intense Premier League and will be afforded a proper winter break in Germany. England obviously cannot do without Kane. Despite performing so well in the Premier League, the likes of Ollie Watkins and Callum Wilson have not taken their opportunities to prove they can at least be a convincing understudy to him. Dominic Calvert-Lewin remains in the reckoning if he can stay fit, while Southgate has name-checked Ivan Toney, who returns from his ban for betting in January. The Brentford striker is in his thinking. A disappointment of the past two games and the recent friendly against Australia is that few outside Southgates apparent first-choice XI have pushed their claim. Rashford has also suddenly become more of a concern. Having done well for England in October, he has unfortunately brought his poor United form to international duty. But he is replaceable. The Golden Quartet are not. 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 Republican senator and the Qatari ambassador to the U.S. argued back and forth on social media Monday, with the U.S. lawmaker criticizing the Gulf country for hosting Hamas while at the same time negotiating for the release of hostages held by the group in the Gaza Strip. Sen. Ted Budd (N.C.) wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, criticizing Qatar for saying a deal to release hostages being held by Hamas is close at hand while hosting political leaders of the U.S.-designated terrorist organization in Doha, adding that Hamas are terrorists with American blood on their hands. But Meshal Hamad Al-Thani, ambassador of the State of Qatar to the United States, responded that he had earlier explained that the channel of communication between Qatar and Hamas was set up at the request of the U.S. Senator, as I explained to you when I met you last week, the channel with Hamas was established in Qatar at the request of the US to maintain open lines of communication, AlThani wrote on X. We are focused on the negotiations and working hard with all sides to help release more hostages safely. Budd responded that he believes Hamas is stalling for time among international efforts. Mr. Ambassador, I appreciate the Qatari governments efforts to get Hamas to release hostages. But Hamas terrorists are using your hospitality to buy time, he wrote. We must hold Hamas accountable for the blood on its hands, the hostages they illegally hold, and the war they started. I hope we can agree on that. The Biden administration has praised Qatar for working assiduously to negotiate among Hamas, the U.S. and Israel for the release of an estimated 240 hostages, even as American officials have said that Dohas historic position as a safe haven for Hamas political leaders may be in jeopardy. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after a meeting in Qatar at the end of October that he had raised in Doha that there can be no more business as usual with Hamas. And Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, has said that Qatari officials in Doha are absolutely putting pressure on Hamass political officials living in the city. We have two stalwart partners, Qatar and Egypt, who are working methodically, relentlessly at this issue, she said of efforts to secure the release of hostages. The problem is who theyre dealing with, she added, referring to Hamas. But theyre exercising every bit of their influence and energy to try and break the impasse on the hostages. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill. Donald Trumps 30ft tall border wall has seen hundreds of migrants sustaining serious injuries from falls as they try to climb it rather than deter them, according to medical officials. Hospitals in El Paso and San Diego, border cities located in Texas and California, are admitting one person a day for injuries sustained while attempting to climb the wall, reported USA Today. Some of the injuries include shattered ankles, feet, leg bones and more severe spinal and cranial injuries, the outlet reported. An expert on the injuries, Dr Susan McLean, told the newspaper that the falls carry a mortality rate higher than COVID-19 in the general population. Approximately 148 people died at the border in fiscal year 2023. Officials at The University of California San Diego Health Medical Center told the newspaper that theyd received 345 patients who sustained injuries from border falls last year. El Paso University Medical Center said nine patients had died from similar falls last year, while 326 people sustained injuries. An aerial image shows migrants waiting along the border wall to surrender to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agents for immigration and asylum claim processing after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United Staes on the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on May 10, 2023 (AFP via Getty Images) Regardless, both the Biden administration and state agencies are expanding the barrier. About 70 miles of fencing in south Texas will be installed this year, while an 18-foot fence in San Diego will be switched out for a 30-foot one. Mr Biden previously said he had no choice but to keep building the structure. Money was appropriated for the border wall, he said in October. I tried to get them to reappropriate. They didnt. In the meantime, theres nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it is appropriated. According to the newspaper, women injured from climbing the wall tried to scale the structure using a makeshift rope ladder and plastic pipe. While pitching the wall to US taxpayers, Mr Trump boasted that the barriers design would make it unscalable, referring to it as a world class security system, in 2019. He ultimately spent $15bn on building the structure. LATAH COUNTY, Idaho (ABC4) The judge in the Kohberger murder case issued an order last week restricting the use of cameras in an effort to address concerns from both judicial and media officials. According to court documents filed Friday, Judge John Judge, who decided he would continue to allow cameras in the court last month, issued an order allowing only the court itself to record during the Kohberger trial. This means journalists and members of the public will not be allowed to use cameras during court proceedings. Bryan Kohberger, a criminology PhD student, is accused of stabbing four University of Idaho students to death at a residence in Moscow, Idaho. The case has received widespread media attention. Since August, over a dozen media outlets have argued to keep cameras in the court proceedings, saying it is the only way for many community members affected by the crimes to have the opportunity to see and hear the proceedings for themselves. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now ABC4 Daily News Both the defense and the state, however, have fought to remove cameras, pointing to the necessity for an impartial jury and the potential damage of exposing victims and witnesses. The defense showed examples of some media outlets continuing to violate court rules by zooming in on Kohberger and filming before and after the hearing. They also expressed fears of cameras capturing sensitive documents or witness and victim testimonies. At this juncture, the Court has no confidence that directives to stop photographing or videoing during such testimony would be adhered to, documents state. RELATED: University of Idaho announces plan for house where 4 students were killed The judge clarified it was not all media outlets and journalists who violated the courts orders, but that restricting the cameras to the court itself would reduce the burden of monitoring the media and the public. The new arrangement will give the court more control over video and audio recording while still allowing those affected to watch the proceedings if they are unable to attend in person. While the judge holds the right to change this mandate at any time, as of now all future hearings will be recorded and live-streamed through the Courts YouTube channel. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to ABC4 Utah. [Source] Loki star Ke Huy Quan revealed in a recent interview why he believes his character in the second season of the Marvel Studios series can inspire others. Joys of playing O.B.: Quan shared with Marvel.com the joys of portraying Ouroboros, also known as O.B., who spent 400 years with no human connection in the basement of the Time Variance Authority (TVA). For Quan, O.B.'s most important characteristic is his enthusiasm: Despite years of solitude, O.B. is genuinely happy to be part of the team when he meets Loki, Mobius, Sylvie and B-15. Inspiring character: Quan sees O.B. as an inspiration, emphasizing the importance of loving and being passionate about what one does, regardless of the nature of the work. Admiring O.B.'s quirkiness and humor, Quan credits executive producer Kevin Wright and head writer Eric Martin for creating an original character not lifted from the comics. Trending on NextShark: Man experiencing severe headaches for 5 months discovers chopsticks in his brain "I hope people love his passion, his enthusiasm. He loves being part of the team. Sometimes, it's not always about yourself. It's about the big team, about contributing... That energy, that enthusiasm, is incredible. I hope that people will have that with whatever they do." Collaborative effort: In the interview, Quan also delved into the impact of the practical sets and physical spaces O.B. inhabits in his portrayal. From the detailed sets to the talents of the team, Quan underscored the immersive experience that allowed him to fully embody O.B. He said "Loki" became a collaborative effort where every element, from costumes to sets, contributed to the character's authenticity. "It really helped, as an actor, because I didn't have to imagine any of this. Everywhere you look, you can feel, you can touch, you can step on it. The only visual effects that we had were outside the window, beyond the Temporal Loom. But all the physical space was practical, and that was amazing." Trending on NextShark: Boba tea faces challenge in Singapore due to new labeling law Nostalgic surprise: Quan, known for his iconic role as Data in The Goonies, was able to sneak in a delightful Easter egg from the '80s classic into Loki Season 2. Revealed through a social media post challenging fans to spot the reference, the 52-year-old star said he playfully incorporated a Data utility belt into O.B.'s TVA uniform. Trending on NextShark: Indian TikToker 'traumatized' after woman brings surprise guests on first date Download the NextShark App: Want to keep up to date on Asian American News? Download the NextShark App today! We are each faced with making personal choices every day, but those who are tasked with making decisions that affect others in life-altering ways bear the heavy burden of responsibility. For Central Texas water industry leaders during this past summer, we faced unprecedented challenges set by record-breaking heat coupled by continued population growth, leading to more strain on traditional water resources such as rivers, lakes and aquifers. Fueled by water supply constraints, decision makers used the available policies and technology to help manage the water supply while keeping their customers taps flowing. Were all the right choices made? We heard from many critics and some supporters expressing their opinions of our attempts to address these challenges. And the challenges are not over; if we dont get significant rainfall in the right areas this season, were going to be facing tougher decisions next summer. Earl Foster Historically, Texas is prone to extended periods of drought eased by flooding events. In fact, the past 20 years have been dominated by abnormal dryness, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. But in this same timeframe, the Texas Hill Countrys population has also doubled, according to a recent State of the Hill Country report. Its becoming increasingly important that when we do get rain, we hold onto the supplied water for as long as possible because its never guaranteed when the next rainfall event will occur. In October, the Lakeway Municipal Utility District hosted an open house. We had presenters at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. every day for five days covering topics from weather forecasting to drought-tolerant native landscaping and staying safe during a flood or wildfire. It was the third time we hosted this type of event this year in an effort to help emphasize to our customers the importance of water conservation efforts they can implement in their own lives. Of course, we have other educational efforts throughout the year as well: a newsletter, banners along the main boulevards in the community we serve, pamphlets at our customer service office, a website and routine appearances in the city of Lakeways communication efforts, as well as this column. However, attendance at the open house was low. This may be because we all live in a busy world and habits are hard to break. If the information is not perceived as having immediate value or impact on our lives, we tend to ignore it. The answer to getting out of this seemingly persistent drought starts with more rain, but it continues through habit changes from every person who depends on traditional water sources. According to the Texas Water Development Board, half or more of household water use during the summer months is directed outdoors, primarily to keep lawns green, so to reduce the demand on our water supply, we stepped up our communication and enforcement of irrigation restrictions. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality requires every water utility to maintain and uphold a Drought Contingency Plan containing specific criteria for the initiation and termination of drought response stages. Because our source water, Lake Travis, is managed by the Lower Colorado River Authority, our plans trigger levels are based on the current LCRA Water Management Plan. In an August 14, 2023, news release, the LCRA announced the combined storage in lakes Travis and Buchanan, the two water supply reservoirs in the Highland Lakes, fell below 900,000 acre-feet, or about 46% of capacity, reaching the lowest combined storage since 2015. With this new trigger level, the LCRA requested that all of its firm water customers mostly municipalities, water districts and industries, including Lakeway MUD reduce use by 10% to 20% and implement mandatory water restrictions. Long before LCRAs announcement, in September 2022, Lakeway MUDs decision-makers already had implemented one-day-per-week irrigation restrictions, anticipating the continuation of water supply shortages into the upcoming summer. To meet LCRAs constraints, many impacted utilities, including Lakeway MUD, stepped up enforcement efforts by sending out excess irrigation notices, issuing penalty fees (or even shutting off water) for noncompliance and implementing drought rates. While some residents relayed praise for holding high water users accountable, this sudden change took many customers by surprise, leading to feelings of resentment. According to the LCRA River Operations Report, at time of submission, the combined storage in lakes Travis and Buchanan sits at approximately 846,000 acre-feet, or about 42% of capacity. With over 1.4 million people relying on the Highland Lakes for drinking water, where do you think well be next summer if the rain fails to fill the lakes before then? Its easy to blame the decision-makers for the low lake levels, but we encourage you to reassess the burden of this responsibility and consider if we might find ourselves in a different situation if more people were using less water, especially to irrigate their lawns. Its a habit we must break to help overcome the guaranteed cycles of drought by relying less on traditional water resources to sustain landscaping choices that dont make sense for the climate we live in. Written by Stephanie Threinen, public information liaison for the Lakeway Municipal Utility District. Earl Foster is the general manager of LMUD. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Lakeway MUD: Rainy weather here, but drought far from over Texas Governor John Connally adjusts his tie (foreground) as US President John F Kennedy (left) & First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (in pink) settled in rear seats, prepared for motorcade into city from airport, Nov. 22, 1963. Bettmann Archive President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, exactly 60 years ago. His visits purpose was to smooth over frictions in the states Democratic Party between two senators, and it was also supposed to serve as an informal launch of his 1964 reelection campaign. However, history took a different turn when Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine, shot the President from a building while he was moving along in the presidential limousine. The Kennedy assassination fueled conspiracy theories that persist to this day, adding an air of mystery and intrigue to the tragedy. The Warren Commission, tasked with investigating the assassination, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. However, skepticism and alternative theories have persisted, contributing to a lingering sense of uncertainty and suspicion surrounding the event. Heres a breakdown of the events of that fateful day. Before the shooting At 7:23 a.m., Lee Harvey Oswald arrives at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, accompanied by Buell Wesley Frazier. Frazier questions Oswald about a long, paper-wrapped package, and Oswald dismisses it as just some curtains. At 8:45 a.m., President Kennedy addresses the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. Adviser Kenny ODonnell instructs Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman not to use the presidential limousines bubbletop if the weather is clear in Dallas. Kennedy views a negative advertisement in The Dallas Morning News, expressing concern about the city. Kennedy tells his wife Jackie: Were heading into nut country today. The motorcade departs Hotel Texas at 10:40 a.m. for Carswell Air Force Base. Air Force One departs Carswell Air Force Base at 11:20 a.m. for Dallas. President John F Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie Connally ride together in a convertible limousine in Dallas. Bettman Archive (Getty Images) Air Force Two and Air Force One arrive at Love Field in Dallas at 11:35 a.m. The Kennedys and Texas governor John Connally and his wife disembark Air Force One and are greeted by vice president Lyndon Johnson and his wife. Dealey Plaza events The motorcade departs Love Field at 11:55 a.m., delayed by the Presidents interaction with supporters. At 12:29 p.m., the motorcade turns into Houston Street and enters Dealey Plaza. At 12:30 p.m., the motorcade makes a sharp left turn onto Elm Street, a downward-sloping road. Witnesses recall hearing three shots as the limousine travels down Elm Street, after the president started waving with his right hand. The Zapruder film captures the moment of impact on Kennedy and Connally. A bullet struck the President in the throat, and another in his mid-back. He is seen with an anguished expression. Secret Service Agent Clint Hill said he heard one shot, then jumped off the running board of the Secrete Service follow up-car directly behind Kennedy. He then ran towards the Presidential limo. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy leans over dying President as a Secret Service man climbs on back of car. Bettmann Archive The Warren Commission report notes that seconds after the shooting, Agent Roy Kellerman looks at his watch and says 12:30 to William Greer. He then radios Police Chief Jesse Curry and tells him the President had been shot. As the limousine accelerates, Mrs. Kennedy climbs onto the rear, and Hill shields her and the President. The Connallys stated they heard Ms. Kennedy say, I have brains in my hand!. The limo driver and police motorcycles turn on their sirens and race to Parkland Hospital, approximately four miles away. At 12:33 p.m., Oswald leaves the Texas School Book Depository. He was confronted by patrolman Marion Baker and Depository superintendent Roy Truly, who identified him as an employee. He later claimed that he went outside to watch (the presidential motorcade). Police radios report shots fired at the Presidents motorcade at 12:34 p.m. At 12:36 p.m., President Kennedys limousine arrives at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he is admitted with Connally to begin treatment immediately. Aftermath Kennedy is admitted to Parkland Hospital and receives emergency treatment. Malcolm Perry, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and a vascular surgeon, is the first to treat the President. He performs a tracheotomy followed by cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Other medical experts try to save the presidents life but the wounds are fatal. CBS News reports the shooting at 12:40 p.m. with anchorman Walter Cronkite. Reporter Dan Rather calls Parkland Memorial Hospital at 12:45 p.m. A doctor tells him he believes Kennedy is dead. President Kennedy is officially pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. Tom Shires, Parklands chief of surgery later said: I am absolutely sure he never knew what hit him. Connally is taken to emergency surgery. Acting White House Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff announces Kennedys death at 1:33 p.m. Before this, he asked new President Johnson if he could make the announcement. Johnson ordered the announcement be made after he left the hospital, as he feared the shooting was a worldwide conspiracy and that he was a possible next target. Oswald leaves the depository, walks seven blocks, boards a bus, and eventually arrives at his rooming house around 1:00 p.m. At 1:04 p.m., Oswald departs the rooming house, seen standing at a bus stop by housekeeper Earlene Roberts. At 1:15 p.m., Oswald shoots and kills Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. At 12:54, Tippit had received a broadcast that described a suspect in the shooting at Dealey Plaza. At approximately 1:11-1:45 p.m. he pulled alongside a man who resembled the police description. Oswald walked over to Tippits car and exchanged words with him through an open window. Tippit got out of the car and as he walked toward the front, Oswald drew his handgun and fired five shots. Three bullets hit Tippit in the chest. He was pronounced dead at 1:25 p.m. at the Methodist Hospital. At 1:38 p.m. Anchorman Cronkite reports that Kennedy is dead and Johnson will be sworn in as the new President of the United States. Johnson phones Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the president, at 1:40 p.m., to express his condolences. Oswald is seen at the Texas Theatre around 1:35 p.m., leading to police surrounding the theater at 1:45 p.m. Oswald resists arrest, attempting to shoot a patrolman, and is taken into custody at 1:51 p.m. During the arrest, he yells, Well, its all over now!. Kennedys body is removed from Parkland Hospital and taken to Air Force One at 2:00 p.m. Oswald undergoes interrogation and denies involvement in the assassination. President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in at 2:38 p.m., and Air Force One departs for Washington, D.C., at 2:47 p.m. Oswald is charged with the murder of Officer Tippit at 7:05 p.m. and later charged with President Kennedys murder at 11:26 p.m. WASHINGTON DC - NOVEMBER 25: John F. Kennedy's funeral in Washington D.C. November, 25 1963 (Photo by Flip Schulke/Getty Images) Flip Schulke Archives (Getty Images) On November 24, two days after the shooting, detectives were escorting Oswald through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters toward an armor car that was going to take him to a nearby county jail. At 11:21 a.m CST, Jack Ruby, a nightclub operator in Dallas approached Oswald and shot him once in the abdomen at close range. Oswald was taken by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital the same hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead. Oswald tied from his woulds at 1:07 p.m. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAIS USA Edition Man convicted of beheading mother of his child with samurai sword outside their home (Nicholas Mazzoni/pool) A man who beheaded his girlfriend with a samurai sword in the street in California has been convicted of first-degree murder. Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta, 34, was found guilty of the brutal crime which occurred in the city of San Carlos, in San Mateo County in September 2022. He killed his partner Karina Castro, the mother of his then-one-year-old daughter, outside her apartment, reportedly due to an argument over Snapchat messages. At the time of the murder, local media reported that Castro was beheaded by a sword in the attack, with additional cuts all over her body and numerous cuts on her neck. The verdict was returned on Monday in a Redwood City courtroom, in California. According to KGO-TV, Landaeta and Castro were in an ongoing relationship, but law enforcement sources said that the victim had taken out a temporary restraining order against the suspect in April 2022. Jose Rafael Solano Landaeta (34) found guilty by a jury of 1st degree murder with use of a sword. Landaeta beheaded his girlfriend on the street in San Carlos on September 8, 2022. pic.twitter.com/H4AuncdEgD San Mateo County District Attorney (@SanMateoCoDA) November 20, 2023 Family members of the victim told the outlet that Landaeta was schizophrenic and on medication. His family reportedly confirmed this through his attorney. Both law enforcement and Castros family say that Landaeta had been violent with Castro, leading her to request the restraining order. The San Mateo District Attorney said Castro never called police when Solano violated the order. Following the incident DA Steve Wagstaffe said he was not in no way critical of Castro for not having alerted authorities. Theres something called the cycle of domestic violence and this is one of them, he said. San Mateo County Sheriffs Lieutenant Eamonn Allen said deputies who responded to the scene were upset based on the nature of the crime, and were receiving support. Witnesses were also offered counseling, he said. There were some civilians that did see it and those people were traumatised in their own right by seeing this horrific crime, Mr Wagstaffe later added. According to KGO-TV, who later interviewed Landaeta in prison, he admitted to killing Castro, but claimed it had been in self-defence. Landaeta could face 26 years to life in prison, according to Mr Wagstaffe. Debris is scattered about inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls (AP) A vehicle explosion that closed all four international border crossings between the United States and Canada in New York near Niagara Falls is being investigated as an attempted terrorist attack. Explosives were found in the vehicle in which two people were killed on the Rainbow Bridge, sources told Fox News. The deaths were also confirmed to CNN by law enforcement sources. The vehicle was driving into the US from Canada and attempted to drive towards the border officer building, the sources told the news network. A 27-year-old man was taken to Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital with back pain and minor cuts. His condition is described as not severe. City of Niagara officials said that the incident on Wednesday involved a vehicle trying to enter the US, with the FBI Field Office in Buffalo describing the incident as an explosion. The Rainbow Bridge connects the US and Canadian cities of Niagara Falls and is located less than a mile from the famed waterfalls themselves. Law enforcement personnel block off the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls, N.Y. (AP) The Peace Bridge, Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, Whirlpool Bridge, and Rainbow Bridge were all also closed in both directions As this situation is very fluid, thats all we can say at this time, the FBI Buffalo office said on X. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she was closely monitoring the situation The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority said it would be increasing security systemwide. Travellers at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport have been warned to expect additional screenings, while vehicles will undergo extra security checks The Buffalo and Niagara Falls Airports are fully operational. We advise travelers to give themselves time for these extra precautions in addition to holiday travel, the agency said on X. The White House is closely monitoring the situation, according to an official. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had been briefed by Canadas National Security and Intelligence Advisor on the situation. We are in contact with the US Officials. The Minister of Public Safety, RCMP and CBSA are fully engaged and providing all necessary support, the prime ministers statement read. Dominic Le Blanc, Canadas Minister of Public Safeyy, told reporters it was too early to early to speculate on the explosion. Obviously any time a piece of infrastructure as important as a border crossing sees violent circumstances it is a cause of concern for the government of Canada and the United States, he said. Until we have more inaccurate information it is not responsible (to speculate). New Yorks governor says that there is no sign of terrorism in the violent vehicle explosion that left two people dead and injured a border guard at the Rainbow Bridge crossing between the United States and Canada in New York near Niagara Falls. Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that there was no evidence of any terror planning and that an investigation would continue to look into what happened. This vehicle basically incinerated, there is nothing left but the engine. it is going to take a long time for our federal law enforcement partners to piece together the real story, she told a press conference and said no threats had been made against the region. The pieces are scattered over 13, 14 booths so it is a large scene. Based on what we know at this moment there is no sign of terrorist activity. This is a local individual. Its a Western New York resident who was most likely in that vicinity prior to the high speed, high rate of speed, extraordinarily high rate of speed that led to the crash into the median that sent the vehicle airborne. She added: We need to dial down the temperature, all is well, we are still investigating but based on the preliminary investigation there is no sign of terrorism in this horrific explosion. FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Matthew Miraglia also told reporters that there was no indication of terrorism. We do have someone in mind for it and were working through it through the JTTF, he said in reference to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. We do not have any derogatory information on this person that weve identified, were scanning his social media, theres nothing there, were still running a full investigation so thats a preliminary assessment, Agent Miraglia said. We feel, at this point, this might be just something that occurred, theres no larger picture here to look at for now. Debris is scattered about inside the customs plaza at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls (AP) Instead, investigators believe the crash involved a local New York man and his wife who had ill-fated plans to attend a KISS concert over the border in Canada on Wednesay night. The couple, who have not been identified but are said to live in western New York, were travelling in their speeding Bentley when the car rammed into the crossing, law enforcement sources told CNN. The sources said that the couple were planning to cross the border to go to a KISS concert in Toronto that night. But, the concert was cancelled earlier in the day due to frontman Paul Stanley being taken ill with flu. The pair instead headed to a casino not far from the border, CNN reported with the crash then unfolding when the couple left the casino in their Bentley. Surveillance footage captured the vehicle driving at high speed and exploded as it crashed near a security checkpoint at the Rainbow Bridge crossing on Wednesday morning. The car became airborne during the incident and crashed into a cement pillar. A suitcase was found near the vehicle but did not contain any explosives, officials told The New York Times. A 27-year-old Border Patrol agent was taken to Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital with minor back pain and minor cuts, according to Fox News. Video showed black smoke billowing from the scene of the crash, while debris could be seen scattered inside the customs plaza where an inspection booth was completely destroyed. The Peace Bridge, Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, Whirlpool Bridge, and Rainbow Bridge were all also closed in both directions at the request of US officials. Later on Wednesday all of the bridges apart from the Rainbow Bridge were reopened to traffic. Eye witness Mike Guenther told WGRZ-TV that he saw a vehicle speeding towards the US border crossing when it swerved to avoid another vehicle, crashed into a fence and exploded. All of a sudden he went up in the air and then it was a ball of fire like 30 or 40 feet high, Mr Guenther told the station. I never saw anything like it. Earlier, City of Niagara officials said that the incident involved a vehicle trying to enter the US, with the FBI Field Office in Buffalo describing the incident as an explosion. While terrorism is believed to have been ruled out, it remains unclear whether the crash was intentional or accidental with investigators said to be probing the possibility that the driver may have suffered a medical emergency. The Rainbow Bridge connects the US and Canadian cities of Niagara Falls and is located less than a mile from the famed waterfalls themselves. Law enforcement personnel block off the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge, Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, in Niagara Falls, N.Y. (AP) As this situation is very fluid, thats all we can say at this time, the FBI Buffalo office said on X. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority increased security systemwide. Travellers at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport underwent additional screenings, while vehicles were put through extra security checks. The Buffalo and Niagara Falls Airports are fully operational. We advise travelers to give themselves time for these extra precautions in addition to holiday travel, the agency said on X. The airport was closed to international arrivals for several hours before being re-opened. Amtrak temporarily suspended rail services between the US and Canada, while police in Toronto have increased patrols in the city out of an abundance of caution. Smoke billows from Niagara Falls explosion as two dead in Rainbow Bridge blast (Reuters) The White House is closely monitoring the situation and law enforcement is on-scene and investigating, a White House official told The Independent Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had been briefed by Canadas National Security and Intelligence Advisor on the situation. We are in contact with the US Officials. The Minister of Public Safety, RCMP and CBSA are fully engaged and providing all necessary support, the prime ministers statement read. Dominic LeBlanc, Canadas Minister of Public Safety, told reporters it was too early to speculate on the explosion. Obviously any time a piece of infrastructure as important as a border crossing sees violent circumstances it is a cause of concern for the government of Canada and the United States, he said. Until we have more accurate information it is not responsible (to speculate). The Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo has announced that it was closing until after Thanksgiving Out of an abundance of caution at the advice of police. The truly pivotal events in our history are the ones for which everyone living at the time has the story of where they were and how they learned about it. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy 60 years ago on the 22nd is etched into the memories of those of us who were alive when it happened. I was a senior at a boarding school when a local shopkeeper asked if I knew that President Kennedy had been shot. There was an appliance store next door. The walls were lined with television sets, all tuned to the same station. From where the television camera was located, a stream of limousines was rushing past, sirens wailing. Then came the announcer's voice. I repeat, the voice said, the only information we have at this time is that the president was shot from an overpass on his parade route through Dallas, Texas. Word was out quickly By the time I got back on campus, the word was out that Kennedy had died. Within hours, Lee Harvey Oswald was in custody and charged with the murder. Americans were glued to their TV screens, watching in a mixture of horror and astonishment as Oswald himself was gunned down in the lobby of the Dallas police station by a small-time thug named Jack Ruby, who claimed his only motive was sympathy for the dead president's wife. There were irregularities with Kennedy's autopsy, and the public still hasnt seen thousands of documents. It stunk to high heaven. Chief Justice Earl Warren was appointed to lead a massive federal investigation into the assassination but by the time it was published, few people in America were prepared to believe it. It all seemed too pat. Maybe its hard to believe that an event with such profound and varied consequences could result from the efforts of a single deranged individual. And I never forgot what I heard in that appliance store when it just happened: "shot from an overpass on his parade route through Dallas, Texas." A complex individual Kennedy was certainly a complex individual. He was, as it turned out, an unfaithful husband. He warmed to the civil rights movement with reluctance and had a miserable record of getting bills passed through Congress. But as a teenager, I was struck by his youth, the endearing sight of little children romping through the White House, and the way he challenged the country to move forward. After eight years of grandfatherly President Dwight Eisenhower, Kennedy was a breath of fresh air. Boarding school was painfully far from home when the Cuban missile crisis blew up during Kennedys presidency. Our dormitory master brought us into his apartment to see the videos of Russian ships steaming toward Cuba with long-range missiles and American warships steaming to intercept them. If the Russians wouldn't turn back, Kennedy said, there would be war. My roommate and I lay in our bunks that night, unable to sleep. It was a clear night. Suddenly, out our window, a meteor shower blazed across the sky. There was no time to say anything. We held our breath and waited for a sheet of white light to turn us into atoms. Nothing happened. Rarely in my life had I ever wanted to be home more desperately than at that moment. After the assassination, the school wisely decided to let us all go home for the weekend. Waiting at the train station, my eyes fell on a newsstand and one of the tabloids that announced with huge banner headlines, LIZ BITES BURTON. It was my first realization that while a large segment of the population might be fixated on one issue, millions of other Americans might be thinking of other things altogether. If Kennedy had trouble getting his bills passed, the new President Lyndon Johnson had no such trouble. Kennedys civil rights bills passed through Congress. Johnson declared a war on poverty and then mired the country in Vietnam. It was a turning point that passed quietly in its own way: a national loss of hope that the federal government was our friend, or that it could successfully channel our national energy into massive projects worth doing. Or, remembering the Warren Commission report, that our government could be trusted to tell us the truth. A lot of things died when Kennedy was struck from behind by Oswald's bullets or when perhaps he was struck through the forehead from the grassy knoll, or from an overpass on his parade route through Dallas. I was an adult with children of my own before I ever found my way to Dealey Plaza in Dallas. I had been asked to speak at a convention and then asked to take several teenage children on a field trip. You can go up to the old book repository building, up to the very floor, the very room from which Oswald took aim at the president of the United States. They've left the place exactly the way Oswald left it, cardboard boxes stacked in piles near the window. I tried to explain to the kids what had happened when my eyes filled with tears. How could I explain to them that this was the moment at which my generation was slapped awake and informed that, Happy Days notwithstanding, all was not right in America, and it wasn't going to be. Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times. Email him at columnresponse@gmail.com. The Cape Cod Times mobile app gets you to the heart of the matter fast. Whether breaking news, sports, entertainment or weather get succinct, personalized coverage along with award-winning videos, captivating photography, and interactive user features. Download the app. This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Opinion: Remembering President Kennedy 60 years after assassination A painting stolen from a New York City art gallery that has been lost for almost six decades has finally turned up in a village in northern England. Art conservationists are rejoicing after Flower Market Madeline by celebrated French painter Edouard Leon Cortes turned up in Mawdesley, England, when a small art dealer was offering it up for sale, a statement by Art Recovery International said. The painting, which depicts a flower market in the style of other street artworks by Mr Cortes, can be traced back through a number of hands before it was re-discovered. Lancashire-based Carnes Fine Art bought the artwork in November 2022 from Capes Dunn auction house in Manchester, England, who said that they were given it by an estate in Cheshire that same year, who also confirmed they acquired the scenic painting from MacConnal-Mason Gallery in London. Before the paintings international adventure, it was originally displayed in a collection owned by the Arnot art dealer family in New York. Art Recovery International, a private company that specialises in recovering stolen or missing pieces of art around the world to institutions and the art market, set out to negotiate the paintings return to its rightful owner. The painting by Edouard Leon Cortes was part of a series of artworks that have gone missing by the artist (Courtesy of Art Recovery International) Christopher A Marinello, the founder of the company and a lawyer, spent several months contacting various parties who were involved in the sale of this painting to try and convince them to return the flower market artwork. Luckily, most parties were cooperative in reversing the sale. We are very grateful to Bradley Carnes, Capes Dunn, and their vendor for releasing this stolen painting unconditionally to the Arnot Gallery, Mr Marinello explained. While in this instance, we were able to convince many of the parties to reimburse the other, eventually, there will be those who are out of luck. I cannot stress enough the importance of performing due diligence and authentication checks which would have uncovered this stolen painting decades earlier. While it is unclear how and when the painting turned up in the London-based gallery, experts have a good understanding of how the painting came to flee the US. In 1966, Louis Edelman worked as a gallery manager and salesman for the Herbert Arnot Gallery based in New York, one of many that were owned by the Arnot art dealer family, that was displaying a series of paintings by Mr Cortes. Chief of New Yorks FBI division assessing stolen paintings by Mr Edelman (Courtesy of Art Recovery International) After Mr Edelman left to open up his own gallery, it was discovered that while in his role, he had secretly sold over 3,000 artworks worth over $1 million in his own name behind the back of the company. Eventually, Mr Edelmans secretive sales caught up with him when the thief was arrested by the FBI in Chicago and was handed a two-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine in 1969. As for the 3,000 paintings, many were lost in the international art market, although some, like Flower Market Madeline, have been reappearing in auction houses and galleries across the world. Other Mr Cortes paintings have reappeared in the recent past, such as another flower market scene called Marche Aux Fleurs which was found in a Goodwill in Easton, Maryland, in March 2008. While another New York City establishment, Rehs Galleries has displayed and owned a number of Mr Cortes works as well, Mr Marinello stressed that anyone buying or selling a painting by the artist should check with the Arnot Gallery for proper authentication. We have been recovering one or two pictures per year from this 60-year-old theft, and were never going to give up until every last one is returned, he concluded. Vladimir Putin has spoken at a G20 virtual summit today, repeating the propagandistic line that Russia remains open to peace talks in Ukraine and calling the special military operation a tragedy despite ordering the invasion. Yes, of course, military actions are always a tragedy, Putin said. And of course, we should think about how to stop this tragedy. By the way, Russia has never refused peace talks with Ukraine. The Russian leader said the invasion was necessary to overcome what he called a coup. During his brief speech, which was roughly 17 minutes long, it appeared that only a handful of countries tuned in to hear him speak, including Spain, Singapore, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Korea and the hosts India. China and the US had declined to attend, according to a report in Bloomberg. It comes as Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian troops face "difficult" defensive operations on parts of the eastern front with bitter winter cold setting in. Images from the frontline in Donbas, as well as in Kyiv, show that snow has already begun to fall. Key Points Russia has never abandoned peace negotiations with Ukraine, says Putin Ukrainian army pushing Russian forces back at Dnipro river Putin Scales back attacks on Avdiivka Ukraines defence 10:03 , Chris Stevenson Ukraines military says it is inflicting major losses on Russian troops as Vladimir Putins forces seek to try and encircle the key strategic city of Avdiivka in the east. Russia has been trying to advance in the area for weeks, with the army saying that Ukrainian troops have repelled more than 30 attacks in the last 24 hours. Yale historian says west can help Ukraine break stalemate 10:15 , Lydia Patrick A historian urges western countries to continue their aid to Ukraine so they can overcome their deadlock. Timothy Snyder insisted Ukraine had not reached a stalemate since the west could drop five more queens on the board, in conversation with the Guardian. It comes as Kyivs top military commander said the Ukrainian counteroffensive was stalling in an interview with the Economist in November. Professor Snyder told the Guardian: I hate the stalemate analogy because war is not a game of chess,. In chess, there are only so many pieces on the board, and the reason why you get into stalemate is that your pieces get into a certain arrangement. Historian Timothy Snyder has spoken out in support of Ukraine (Yale University) Russia carry out deadly attack on Ukrainian hospital 09:45 , Lydia Patrick At least three people were killed and eight others injured after Russian missiles struck a hospital in southern Ukraine, said the countrys emergency services. Missiles had struck and damaged two buildings of the hospital in Selydove town late on Tuesday, interior minister Ihor Klymenko had said in an earlier statement. He had warned in his statement that casualties would increase as officials assessed damage from the attack. Rescue workers finished clearing the rubble after sifting through the remains night and day, 24 hours after the attack, emergency services said on Wednesday. A whole section of the building had totally collapsed, they said. Ukraine says at least three dead in Russian airstrike on hospital Mapped - Current battlefields and frontlines 09:14 , Lydia Patrick Putin ally adopted Ukrainian child, claim BBC 08:38 , Lydia Patrick A 10-month-old who was taken from a Kherson children home has been linked to Vladmir Putins political ally. Sirgey Mirnov, aged 70 and leafer of a Russian Political party has been named on the adoption record of a two-year-old who was taken in 2022 by his current wife, found the BBC. The girl who was orginally named Margarita and 47 other children were taken from the care home when the city was under Russian occupation last year. A BBC investigation has attempted to trace the missing and to identify a mysterious woman in lilac who claimed to be the head of childrens affairs from Moscow. The smiley baby was discharged from hospital where she was being treated for bronchitis and returned to the home- where she was then taken, report the BBC. Some weeks later more children were taken from the home, the BBC believes almost all the children remain in Russian hands, just one child, three-year-old Viktor Puzik has returned. A view of the courtyard of Kherson regional children's home in Kherson, southern Ukraine (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) Ukraine says at least three dead in Russian airstrike on hospital 08:16 , Andy Gregory At least three people were killed and eight others injured after Russian missiles struck a hospital in southern Ukraine, said the countrys emergency services. Missiles had struck and damaged two buildings of the hospital in Selydove town late on Tuesday, interior minister Ihor Klymenko had said in an earlier statement. He had warned in his statement that casualties would increase as officials assessed damage from the attack. Rescue workers finished clearing the rubble after sifting through the remains night and day, 24 hours after the attack, emergency services said on Wednesday. A whole section of the building had totally collapsed, they said. My colleague Arpan Rai reports: Ukraine says at least three dead in Russian airstrike on hospital Swedens Nato bid unlikely to be ratified by summit next week, sources say 07:52 , Andy Gregory Turkey has informed Nato that ratification of Swedens membership bid will not be completed in time to allow the countrys accession ceremony at a meeting of alliance foreign ministers next week, two sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters. Last week, the Turkish parliaments foreign affairs commission delayed a vote on Swedens Nato membership bid in order to hold further talks on the subject. One source said the commission will likely resume its debate on the matter on Tuesday or Wednesday, when Nato foreign ministers will meet in Brussels a gathering that some had hoped would mark Swedens accession. Finland considering shutting entire Russian border 07:00 , Alexander Butler Finlands foreign minister has revealed they are considering closing some of the four remaining crossing points - or even the entire border - with Russia. More than 600 people without valid travel documents to the EU have come to Finland via Russia so far this month, prompting Helsinki to shut several crossings. Russia claims Ukraine attacked a group of journalists 05:01 , Alexander Butler Moscow has claimed a group of Russian journalists have come under attack from Ukrainian forces. The Russian Defence Ministry said the incident happened in Ukraines southern Zaporizhzhia region, which is partially under Russian occupation. Russia annexed the region, illegally, in September last year. 03:01 , Alexander Butler The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has now written to European Council President Charles Michel arguing EU leaders should not endorse the European Commissions recommendation that Ukraine be allowed to join the bloc. The European Council is not in a position to agree on the future of the enlargement process unless a consensus on our future strategy towards Ukraine is found, he said. The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) 01:00 , Alexander Butler After more than a thousand of its workers went to fight Russias invasion, a coal mining enterprise in eastern Ukraine suffered a huge staff shortage. Its answer was to allow women to work underground for the first time in its history. Over a hundred took up the offer. I took this job because the war started and there were no other jobs, 22-year-old Krystyna said. For five months, she has worked as a technician 1,542 feet below ground, servicing the small electric trains that haul workers more than 2.5 miles from the lift shaft where they descend to the seams of coal. Its like Covid: Zelensky says Putin has made five or six attempts on his life 00:01 , Alexander Butler Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that at least five or six Russian attempts to assassinate him have been foiled by his security services. The wartime leader, speaking from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, said the volume of attempts had turned him almost numb to the danger. He compared the later attempts to catching the Covid-19 infection. The first one is very interesting, when it is the first time, and after that it is just like Covid, he said in a new interview. Its like Covid: Zelensky says Putin has made five or six attempts on his life Ukrainian sniper breaks world record after killing Russian solider nearly 2.5 miles away Wednesday 22 November 2023 23:00 , Alexander Butler A Ukrainian sniper claims to have broken the world record by killing a Russian soldier almost 2.5 miles away, with a custom rifle called Lord of the Horizon, Holly Evans reports. The previous record was held by a Canadian special operations sniper at a distance of 2.2 miles in Iraq in 2017. In a press statement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said: The SBU sniper set a world record for a successful shot. He hit a Russian soldier from an incredible distance. SBU snipers are changing the rules of world sniping, demonstrating the ability to work effectively at fantastic distances. Ukrainian sniper breaks world record after killing soldier nearly 2.5 miles away Estonia accuses Russia of helping migrants to its border Wednesday 22 November 2023 21:00 , Tom Watling Estonias interior minister accused Russia on Wednesday of being involved in a hybrid attack operation to bring migrants to its border, aiming to undermine security and unsettle the Baltic states population. A total of 75 migrants, largely from Somalia and Syria, have attempted to enter Estonia from Russia through the Narva crossing point since Thursday, Estonias public broadcaster ERR reported. None have asked for an asylum and all were turned back, the interior ministry said. Estonia has made preparations to close border crossings if the migration pressure from Russia escalates, and to deal with migrants if they try to enter outside official crossings, Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets told Reuters through a spokesperson. Unfortunately, there are many signs that Russian border officials and possibly other agencies are involved, said the minister. Quite frankly, (the) ongoing migration pressure on EuropeAAAs eastern border is a hybrid attack operation, he added. Russian officials were not immediately available to comment. Estonias neighbour Finland said on Tuesday Russian authorities were likely directly involved in more than 500 asylum seekers, mostly from Yemen, Somalia, Syria and Iraq, arriving in a sudden surge from Russia over the past two weeks. On Monday, the Kremlin denied Russia was deliberately pushing illegal migrants towards the Finnish border and said Russian border guards were carrying out their duties in line with the rules. Migrants look at a Finnish Customs officials dog at the international border crossing with Russia earlier this week (AP) 10 years later, a war-weary Ukraine reflects on events that began its collision course with Russia Wednesday 22 November 2023 20:00 , Tom Watling It happens every November, when the cold descends on Kyiv. The change in weather always makes Dmytro Riznychenko think back, and he is overwhelmed by his emotions. This is where it truly began, Riznychenko said, walking through central Kyivs Independence Square recently, reflecting on the uprising that unleashed a decade of momentous change for Ukraine, eventually leading to the current war with Russia. Ten years of war and struggle, the 41-year-old psychologist continued, wearily and reluctantly. And it seems like the blood has only just begun to flow, truly. I regret nothing. But, God, its just so tiresome. 10 years later, a war-weary Ukraine reflects on events that began its collision course with Russia Ukraine may fail to meet future grain demands amid non-stop Russian attacks, says UN Wednesday 22 November 2023 19:00 , Tom Watling Ukraine may not be able to meet domestic and export demand for wheat in the years to come if Russias attacks on its export routes and facilities continue, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. If attacks on food infrastructure and the blockage of sea export routes continue, it will dramatically impact the agricultural production outlook over years to come, and may, in a worst-case scenario, lead to wheat production being unable to meet domestic and export demand, said the WFPs Ukraine director Matthew Hollingworth on Tuesday. Ukraine may fail to meet future grain demands amid non-stop Russian attacks, says UN Germany's defense minister unveils more help for Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion Wednesday 22 November 2023 18:00 , Tom Watling German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius vowed Tuesday to keep supporting Ukraines efforts to win its war against Russia, pledging further military aid worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion). The new support is to include further Iris-T SLM anti-aircraft missile systems as well as anti-tank mines and 155-millimeter artillery shells, German news agency dpa reported. We are talking about 20,000 additional shells, Pistorius said at a joint news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, in Kyiv, according to dpa. Germany's defense minister unveils more help for Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion Putin may start sourcing ballistic missiles from Iran, warns White House Wednesday 22 November 2023 17:00 , Tom Watling The White House said on Tuesday it was concerned that Iran might be providing Russia with ballistic missiles for use in its war against Ukraine. Moscow is already receiving Irans help with Shahed drones, guided aerial bombs, and artillery ammunition and may be gearing up to go a step further in its support for Russia, said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby. Moscow has received hundreds of Shahed drones that the Russian military used against Ukraines energy facilities and other key infrastructure. Putin may start sourcing ballistic missiles from Iran, warns White House Putin scales back attack on Ukraines strategic Avdiivka town after heavy Russian losses Wednesday 22 November 2023 16:30 , Tom Watling Vladimir Putin has scaled back his assault on Avdiivka, said Kyivs military officials who also warned that the attacks have not fully stopped yet. Mr Putin is pouring in fewer troops and equipment in an attempt to seize the battered but strategic Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk oblast that has largely been occupied by Russia. Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles, said Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun. Putin scales back attack on Ukraines strategic town after heavy Russian losses Lithuanian military support package arrives in Ukraine Wednesday 22 November 2023 16:03 , Tom Watling A Lithuanian military support package has arrived in Ukraine, a ministry of defence statement has shown. You can read the specifics of the package below. One more new package of military support from Lithuania has reached Ukraine today @LTU_Army delivered 3 million units of 7.6251 mm ammunition, remote detonation systems & winter equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces Our commitment to assist Ukraine remains unbreakable pic.twitter.com/IkA508EMFL Lithuanian MOD (@Lithuanian_MoD) November 22, 2023 Here are some of the latest photos from Ukraine Wednesday 22 November 2023 15:16 , Tom Watling Below are some of the latest photos from Ukraine as the first snowfall of the winter covers parts of the country. A woman walks her dog beside destroyed Russian armoured vehicles during the first snowfall of winter in Kyiv (EPA) Vladimir Putin speaks during a virtual G20 summit hosted by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi (POOL/AFP via Getty Images) A Ukrainian tank crew member of the 21st Mechanised Brigade sits inside a German made Leopard 2A5 battle tank near the front line (AFP via Getty Images) Russia has shipped grain to Africa free of charge, Putin tells G20 Wednesday 22 November 2023 14:40 , Tom Watling Russia has sent the first vessels carrying grain to Africa free of charge, President Vladimir Putin told an online gathering of the Group of 20 leading economies on Wednesday. Russia pulled out of a United Nations-backed deal in July that had allowed safe passage for Ukrainian grain exports via the Black Sea, but Moscow has since pledged to help developing countries that rely on Russian and Ukrainian grain exports. In his comments to the G20 meeting, Putin also said a large share of global economic activity was shifting to Asia and Africa, and he called for a bigger role for developing nations in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Putin says Russia stands for mutually-beneficial cooperation in the world Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:36 , Tom Watling Vladimir Putin said Russia stands for restoring the spirit of open and mutually beneficial cooperation in the world. Putin finishes addressing the G20 Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:34 , Tom Watling Vladimir Putin has finished addressing the G20 virtual summit. We will continue to post the most newsworthy bits of his speech as they are translated. Russia says relations with US risk breaking at any moment Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:30 , Tom Watling The fabric of relations between Russia and the US is extremely thin and risks being torn at any moment, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday. Zakharova told reporters at her weekly briefing that Washingtons actions could lead to unpredictable consequences. Russia has never abandoned peace negotiations with Ukraine, says Putin Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:28 , Tom Watling Vladimir Putin has said Russia has never abandoned peace negotiations on Ukraine. The situation in Ukraine cannot but shock, but the coup in Ukraine and the extermination of the civilian population there and in Palestine is not shocking, he said, according to state media. Putin pictured addresses a virtual G20 summit Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:25 , Tom Watling Vladimir Putin has been pictured addressing the virtual G20 summit. It appears only a handful of countries have tuned in to hear him speak, inlcuding India, Spain Indonesia, and Korea. Vladimir Putin addresses a G20 virtual summit (Tass) Ukraine troops face difficult defence in east as bitter cold sets in, admits Zelensky Wednesday 22 November 2023 13:16 , Tom Watling Ukrainian troops face "difficult" defensive operations on parts of the eastern front with bitter winter cold setting in, but forces in the south are still conducting offensive actions, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday. Russian troops launched offensives on different sections of the front line in Ukraine's east this autumn, trying to advance on the devastated town of Avdiivka and in the northeast between the towns of Lyman and Kupiansk. "Difficult weather, difficult defence on the Lyman, Bakhmut, Donetsk and Avdiivka fronts. Offensive actions in the south," Zelenskiy said on Telegram messenger. Snow and freezing temperatures that stood at about minus 5 degrees Celsius during the day on Wednesday and were expected to drop lower may further complicate operations on the battleground, where fighting is moving to an attritional phase. Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, controls nearly a fifth of Ukraine. Kyiv launched a counteroffensive to retake occupied territory this summer, but has not forced a major breakthrough. Since mid-October, Avdiivka, where the front line has changed little since the first war erupted in 2014 between Kyiv and Russian-backed militants, faced waves of attacks followed by temporary lulls, according to the Ukrainian military. After one such lull the day before, the head of the "Tavria" military command said on Wednesday that Russian troops had "dramatically increased" the number of assaults and airstrikes. "Our defenders are steadfastly holding the defence in the Avdiivka direction," Commander Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said on Telegram. Ukrainian forces continued the offensive on the southeastern Melitopol front, he added. In their morning readout on the battlefield, the General Staff said troops were also holding onto the bridgeheads secured on the eastern side of the River Dnipro that was occupied by Russian forces in the early days of their invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a joint press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) Vladimir Putin begins G20 speech Wednesday 22 November 2023 12:54 , Tom Watling Vladimir Putin has just begun speaking at the G20 virtual summit, according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. Kremlin declines to comment on US suggestion that Russia may get ballistic missiles from Iran Wednesday 22 November 2023 12:40 , Tom Watling The Kremlin declined on Wednesday to comment on a suggestion by White House spokesman John Kirby that Iran may be considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine. "We are developing relations with Iran, including in the field of military-technical cooperation, but we do not comment on this information," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a regular news briefing. Kirby said the United States would monitor the situation between Iran and Russia, and take appropriate action as needed. Iran has been a key military support for Russia, supplying the Kremlin with thousands of Shahed kamikaze drones that have been used to target critical Ukrainian infrastructure. Ukrainian air defense intercepts a Shahed drone mid-air over Kyiv (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) Putin scales back attack on Ukraine town after heavy Russian losses Wednesday 22 November 2023 12:20 , Athena Stavrou Vladimir Putin has scaled back his assault on Avdiivka, said Kyivs military officials who also warned that the attacks have not fully stopped yet. Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles, said Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun. Read more... Putin scales back attack on Ukraines strategic town after heavy Russian losses Ukraines coal mines turn to women for first time ever Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:53 , Athena Stavrou Ukrainian coal mines have allowed women to work underground for the first time in history to solve wartime staff shortages. Krystyna, 22, is one of the 100 women who took up the offer. She has worked as a technician 470 metres below ground for five months. She took the job after overcoming her fear of leaving her four-year-old son, Denys, at home with her mother. Her hometown of Pavlohrad is 100 km (62 miles) from the front, but is often hit by Russian missiles. I took this job because the war started and there were no other jobs, she said candidly. Her beloved older brother worked in the same mine. He joined the army two weeks after the start of the full-scale invasion, Krystyna said, adding that she worries greatly about him. She added: Our boys were taken to the front, and now we need to support them: there is no-one else to work in the mine now. Putin to give Russian view on world situation at G20 virtual summit today Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:41 , Athena Stavrou The Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin will set out Russias view of what it sees as the deeply unstable world situation when he addresses an upcoming virtual G20 summit. Russian state TV presenter Pavel Zarubin said on his Telegram channel on Sunday that it would be the first event in a long time including both Putin and Western leaders. According to the state RIA news agency, the G20 virtual summit will be held on Wednesday. Separately, RIA reported that Putin will also take part via video link in a discussion on Tuesday about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a summit of the BRICS bloc of nations. (POOL/AFP via Getty Images) Russia says three Ukrainian drones destroyed over Crimea Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:40 , Athena Stavrou Russian anti-aircraft units destroyed three Ukrainian drones over the Crimean peninsula, the Russian defence ministry said. An attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack with aircraft-type UAVs on objects on the territory of the Russian Federation was prevented, the defence ministry said. Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine says it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected from its territory. Russia says Crimea is now part of Russia. Three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were destroyed over the territory of the Republic of Crimea by air defences, the ministry added. Kremlin declines to comment on US suggestion that Russia may get ballistic missiles from Iran Wednesday 22 November 2023 11:00 , Athena Stavrou The Kremlin has declined to comment on a suggestion by White House spokesman John Kirby that Iran may be considering providing Russia with ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine. We are developing relations with Iran, including in the field of military-technical cooperation, but we do not comment on this information, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a regular news briefing. Kirby said the United States would monitor the situation between Iran and Russia, and take appropriate action as needed. Ukraine downs all 14 Russian drones launched overnight Wednesday 22 November 2023 10:20 , Athena Stavrou Ukrainian air defences shot down all 14 Shahed drones launched by Russian forces in an overnight attack, the air force said on Wednesday. The air force said in a statement the attack on Ukraines central, southeastern, and western regions lasted from 8pm on Tuesday until 3am on Wednesday. There were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage. The air force also said that the Russian military launched an X-22 missile in Zaporizhzhia region in the southeast but the missile failed to reach its target, falling into a field. Bad weather hampers fighting, ISW say Wednesday 22 November 2023 09:39 , Athena Stavrou Ukrainian and Russian forces have continued to conduct offensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine despite rainy and snowy weather conditions, a war monitoring think tank said. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported that Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Military Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan stated on Monday that the Russian shelling of the west (right) bank of Kherson Oblast had decreased due to poor weather conditions. Ukrainian 14th Mechanized Brigade Spokesperson Nadiya Zamryha also said on Tuesday that Russian forces continue to conduct assaults in the Kupyansk direction despite the snow and frost. Zamryha added that the number of Russian attacks will likely decrease due to weather conditions but that Russian forces will not stop offensive operations completely. Putin Scales back attacks on Avdiivka Wednesday 22 November 2023 09:32 , Athena Stavrou Vladimir Putin has scaled back his assault on Avdiivka, said Kyivs military officials who also warned that the attacks have not fully stopped yet. Mr Putin is pouring in fewer troops and equipment in an attempt to seize the battered but strategic Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk oblast that has largely been occupied by Russia. Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles, said Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun. Avdiivka, that has a vast coking plant, has seen fierce fighting and is now down to just 1,500 residents compared to its pre-war population of about 32,000. The invaders are not abandoning their plans to surround Avdiivka. Eight attacks were repelled today, the spokesperson said. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty/Serhii Nuzhnenko via REUTERS) Putin scales back attack on Ukraines strategic Avdiivka town after heavy Russian losses Wednesday 22 November 2023 07:54 , Andy Gregory Vladimir Putin has scaled back his assault on Avdiivka, said Kyivs military officials who also warned that the attacks have not fully stopped yet, reports my colleague Arpan Rai. Mr Putin is pouring in fewer troops and equipment in an attempt to seize the battered but strategic Ukrainian stronghold in the Donetsk oblast that has largely been occupied by Russia. Russian occupying forces have reduced the number of ground and air attacks, though they still violate the rules of war by shooting at medical teams and evacuation vehicles, said Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun. Avdiivka, that has a vast coking plant, has seen fierce fighting and is now down to just 1,500 residents compared to its pre-war population of about 32,000. The invaders are not abandoning their plans to surround Avdiivka. Eight attacks were repelled today, the spokesperson said. Putin scales back attack on Ukraines strategic town after heavy Russian losses Ukrainian sniper breaks world record after killing Russian soldier nearly 2.5 miles away Wednesday 22 November 2023 07:00 , Holly Evans A Ukrainian sniper claims to have broken the world record by killing a Russian soldier almost 2.5 miles away, with a custom rifle called Lord of the Horizon. The previous record was held by a Canadian special operations sniper at a distance of 2.2 miles in Iraq in 2017. In a press statement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said: The SBU sniper set a world record for a successful shot. Read the full article here Ukrainian sniper breaks world record after killing soldier nearly 2.5 miles away Poland set to get more than 5 billion euros in EU money Wednesday 22 November 2023 06:00 , Holly Evans Poland is set to receive more than 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in EU funds after the European Commission gave a positive assessment Tuesday of the countrys revised recovery plan that includes green reforms and investments. The 5.1 billion euros pre-financing is part of the blocs REPowerEU program aimed at helping the 27 EU nations recover from the energy crisis that followed Russias invasion of Ukraine last year, and reduce their dependance to Russian fossil fuels. The announcement came a month after an election in Poland secured a parliamentary majority to pro-EU parties aligned with Donald Tusk. Read more here Poland set to get more than 5 billion euros in EU money after commission approves recovery plan Russia claims Ukraine attacked a group of journalists Wednesday 22 November 2023 21:04 , Alexander Butler Moscow has claimed a group of Russian journalists have come under attack from Ukrainian forces. The Russian Defence Ministry said the incident happened in Ukraines southern Zaporizhzhia region, which is partially under Russian occupation. Russia annexed the region, illegally, in September last year. Queen commends journalists risking their lives in the Middle East and Ukraine Wednesday 22 November 2023 05:00 , Holly Evans The Queen has commended journalists risking their lives reporting from the Middle East and Ukraine, as she celebrated the 135th anniversary of the Foreign Press Association (FPA) at its annual awards ceremony. Camilla was made an honorary member of the FPA at the Sheraton Grand Park Lane hotel in Piccadilly, west London, following in the footsteps of the King, who has also received honorary life membership. The FPA in London is the oldest and largest association of foreign correspondents in the world, founded in 1888 by foreign journalists who came to London to cover the case of Jack the Ripper. Read more here Queen commends journalists risking their lives in the Middle East and Ukraine Ukrainians who fled their country for Israel find themselves yet again living with war Wednesday 22 November 2023 04:00 , Holly Evans Tatyana Prima thought shed left the bombs behind when she fled Ukraine more than a year and a half ago, after Russia decimated her city, Mariupol. The 38-year-old escaped with her injured husband and young daughter, bringing the family to safety in southern Israel. The calm she was slowly regaining shattered again on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants invaded. All these sounds of war that we hear now, they sometimes work as a trigger that brings back memories of what weve gone through in Mariupol, she said. Its hard feeling like that youre the one responsible for your child, the one who wants whats best for them, and in some way like youve failed them. Read more here Ukrainians who fled their country for Israel find themselves yet again living with war Hungary threatens to block Ukraine from joining the EU Wednesday 22 November 2023 21:01 , Alexander Butler Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has written to European Council President Charles Michel arguing EU leaders should not endorse the European Commissions recommendation that Ukraine be allowed to join the bloc. Leaders are set to meet next month to hammer out a deal over supporting Ukraine. The European Council is not in a position to agree on the future of the enlargement process unless a consensus on our future strategy towards Ukraine is found, he said. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) Zelensky thanks worlds media for fostering support for Ukraine Wednesday 22 November 2023 03:00 , Holly Evans President Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed the important role of the worlds media in fostering international support for Ukraine, as he met representatives of Fox News and The Sun, including Fox Corporation chief executive Lachlan Murdoch. He met Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall and The Sun journalist Jerome Starkey in his Kyiv office and thanked them for comprehensive coverage of the war, including shining light on Russian atrocities despite personal risks, the presidents official website said in a statement. He also told The Sun how he has survived at least five assassination attempts by Russian President Vladimir Putin, likening his reaction to the attempts as just like Covid. Read more here Zelensky thanks worlds media for fostering support for Ukraine 10 years later, a war-weary Ukraine reflects on events that began its collision course with Russia Wednesday 22 November 2023 02:00 , Holly Evans It happens every November, when the cold descends on Kyiv. The change in weather always makes Dmytro Riznychenko think back, and he is overwhelmed by his emotions. This is where it truly began, Riznychenko said, walking through central Kyivs Independence Square recently, reflecting on the uprising that unleashed a decade of momentous change for Ukraine, eventually leading to the current war with Russia. Ten years of war and struggle, the 41-year-old psychologist continued, wearily and reluctantly. And it seems like the blood has only just begun to flow, truly. I regret nothing. But, God, its just so tiresome. Read the full article here 10 years later, a war-weary Ukraine reflects on events that began its collision course with Russia Germany's defense minister unveils more help for Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion Wednesday 22 November 2023 01:00 , Holly Evans German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius vowed Tuesday to keep supporting Ukraines efforts to win its war against Russia, pledging further military aid worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion). The new support is to include further Iris-T SLM anti-aircraft missile systems as well as anti-tank mines and 155-millimeter artillery shells, German news agency dpa reported. We are talking about 20,000 additional shells, Pistorius said at a joint news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, in Kyiv, according to dpa. Read more here Germany's defense minister unveils more help for Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion Ukrainian troops beat back Russian attacks near Bakhmut as Putins forces make desperate push Tuesday 21 November 2023 23:59 , Joe Middleton Russian forces in Ukraines eastern theatre of war are stepping up their assault around Bakhmut and have switched from defensive to offensive lines of attack, Kyivs military officials said. The attacks are focused on Klishchiivka, a village on higher elevation about 9km away from Bakhmut, said Volodymyr Fityo, a spokesperson for Ukrainian ground forces. Klishchiivka was recaptured from Russian forces by Ukraine in September in counteroffensive operations. Bakhmut had been taken by Russian troops in May and has faced some of the most violent fighting between the two countries. Ukrainian troops beat back attacks near Bakhmut as Putins forces make desperate push Plans to send UK prisoners to jails abroad will cost at least 200million and wont happen until 2026, the governments own assessments show. Justice secretary Alex Chalk pledged at the Tory conference in October to send criminals overseas in a desperate bid to ease overcrowding in Englands prisons. But new impact assessments published as part of the Criminal Justice Bill reveal that Ministry of Justice (MoJ) officials think the plan will likely cost 202.9million over 10 years. That could amount to 35,000 per prison place per year, but officials admitted prices were highly uncertain. The MoJ expects to be able to send at least 500 prisoners to foreign jails, and up to 1,000, but the most likely scenario is 600 places, officials predict. Justice secretary Alex Chalk has pledged to send criminals abroad, to relieve pressure on UK prisons (Getty) When the plans were unveiled, the government cited similar measures introduced in European countries including Norway and Belgium which saw hundreds of prisoners sent to the Netherlands. But no further details on where prisoners could be sent have been revealed. The estimated cost of the plans range from 169.1million to 338.1million, but the most likely figure is around 200million, the report says. This excludes the cost of healthcare for relocated prisoners so the totals would likely be higher. However, the assessment acknowledges that the full costs of this policy are unknown as the plan depends on which countries agree to take inmates. The plan will only deliver a marginal operating cost saving, according to the current estimates. Officials said the estimated annual cost of 35,000 per prison place abroad should not be directly compared to the cost per place in the UK, which is 46,696. Instead they say 1,800 per place is saved each year by sending prisoners abroad. This leads to savings of 700,000-1.4m over the 10 years. Officials also assume that the policy wouldnt start until April 2026 and expects each prisoner to serve two years in a foreign jail before being returned to the UK. According to the assessment, prisoners who are sent abroad would have the same frequency of family visits as those kept in the UK in accordance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that everyone has a right to a private and family life. It has not been determined who would bear the cost of these visits, MoJ officials wrote. They acknowledged that criminal defence lawyers would also be affected by the policy as they will be required to either speak over the phone or travel to the foreign jurisdiction. In the assessment summary, MoJ officials said that without intervention, the government is at risk of not being able to provide prison places to all those sentenced and overcrowding within prisons may continue. The chair of the Prison Governors Association, Andrea Albutt, has previously warned that there are only a few hundred spaces left in adult male prisons in England and Wales, saying: We are now bust on prison places. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: It costs around 47,000 to lock up prisoners in the UK so this law change aims to reduce costs and mirrors similar schemes already used by Belgium and Norway. The costs are estimates as we are still in early discussions with partner countries and delivering value will be a priority in any agreement. A transgender worker who was denied insurance coverage for her transition procedures is suing her employer and its health care plan. Lillian Bernier, represented by GLBTQ+ Legal Advocates and Defenders, filed the suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire. It names her employer, Turbocam Inc., and Health Plans Inc. and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care of New England, which jointly developed, administer, and operate Turbocams health benefits plan. Bernier has worked as a machinist at Turbocam, based in Barrington, N.H., since 2019. She began to transition to living as female in October 2020 and began receiving medical treatment, according to the lawsuit. She was assigned male at birth but has known from an early age that she is female, the suit says. She has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by her primary care physician and by her mental health counselor, and she legally changed her name to Lillian Bernier in February 2021. She has needed, and continues to need, hormone replacement therapy, counseling, and medically recommended surgeries to treat her gender dysphoria, the suit notes. But her health insurance plan excludes coverage for this care, and she has paid out of pocket for some treatment while forgoing or delaying other procedures, according to the suit. Turbocam and its lawyers have told Bernier and her attorneys that the company will maintain the exclusion. The exclusion, however, violates federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sex and disability, and New Hampshire state law prohibiting discrimination based on sex, gender identity, and disability, says a GLAD press release. GLAD initially filed the discrimination claim on Berniers behalf last December with the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission, a preliminary requirement to filing the lawsuit in court. The initial claim was cross-filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which issued Bernier a right to sue letter in October. New Hampshire then closed her case, leaving the lawsuit as the only path available to her. Turbocam identifies itself as a Christian company. Its website states that its mission is to honor God, create wealth for its employees, and support Christian service to God and to people. The company manufactures parts for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems as well as the automotive and airline industries. Responding to the New Hampshire and EEOC filing several months ago, attorney Jordan Pratt of First Liberty Institute, representing Turbocam, told The Boston Globe, Turbocam sees Lillian and all employees as created in Gods image and is providing as much support as possible consistent with its mission, faith and the law. Pratt also told the Globe that employees have the option of taking a substantial cash bonus that they can use to choose any health insurance or medical services they desire. However, attorney Chris Erchull of GLAD said that was not enough to allow her to pay for other coverage. A company like Turbocam does not have a legally protected right to provide lesser benefits to transgender employees simply because of the owners religious belief, Erchull added in the Globe article. First Liberty usually represents clients that are part of the religious right. Turbocam referred The Advocate to First Liberty regarding the current suit, and we have requested comment but have yet to hear back. Im proud of my work as a machinist at Turbocam, Bernier said in the release. Like everyone else I rely on the pay and health care coverage from my job to support myself and my family. Even though I pay into the employee health plan like everyone else, I have had to pay out of pocket for my health care in addition to that, which is a stress on me and my family. Im just asking for fair coverage and to be treated the same as my coworkers. Providing lesser health benefits to transgender workers is employment discrimination, Erchull added in the release. By maintaining a blanket exclusion of coverage for health care related to gender transition, Turbocam is trying to sidestep the law, which they would be unable to do were Harvard Pilgrim and HPI not facilitating the discrimination. Lillian has dedicated her time and energy to Turbocam, including working onsite throughout the COVID pandemic. She is simply asking to be treated with the same dignity, humanity, and fairness as other employees. The suit seeks a declaration that Turbocam and the health plan have committed illegal discrimination and an order for them to cease doing so. It also seeks punitive and compensatory damages plus attorneys fees and court costs. David Lynx is executive director of the Larson Gallery at Yakima Valley College. He writes this weekly column for Explore. Learn more at www.larsongallery.org. In the 60 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, speculation about the historic event has abounded. From documentaries to conspiracy theories, the assassination continues to fascinate and spark passionate debate. Recently, two new documentaries shed a little more light on the subject, and a witness named Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents protecting the presidents motorcade that day, has come forward to challenge the magic bullet theory established by the Warren Commission in 1964. According to Landis, the official account does not align with what he saw. If social media had been around in 1963, facts, clues, suspicion and speculation would have fueled an eternal flame. But above the memories looms the legend, still hovering over the United States as if the events occurred just yesterday. The JFK case is still compelling today, especially as his nephew Bobby Kennedy has jumped into the 2024 presidential race, gaining a notable 24% in early polling. For the United States, successive generations of wealthy Kennedys are the closest thing the country has ever had to a dynasty the Camelot dynasty. The Warren Commission presented evidence (stored in the National Archives in Washington) supporting the single shooter conclusion. However, Landis challenges this by claiming to have found a second bullet in Kennedys limousine. This hypothesis raises doubts about the sole responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested for the murder and killed two days later by Jack Ruby while in custody at a Dallas police station. The vast majority (97%) of the case-related documentation is publicly accessible. The National Archives research service estimated 11 months ago that only 515 documents remain fully classified, with an additional 2,545 partially classified. The most recent decision in this regard is a memorandum from President Joe Biden, dated December 15, 2022, in which he states that from the date of this memorandum until May 1, 2023, relevant agencies and NARA [National Archives and Records Administration] will jointly review the remaining material in the archives [] in order to maximize transparency by disclosing all information in records concerning the assassination, except when the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise. Any information that agencies propose for continued deferral of public disclosure beyond June 30, 2023, will be limited to the absolute minimum under the legal standard. Classified documents The 3% of documentation that remains classified to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations continues to capture the imagination of many. And who better than an eyewitness like Paul Landis to challenge the official story? But why it took him 60 years to come forward is another question. In interviews leading up to the October release of his memoir, The Final Witness, Landis says he heard three gunshots and then saw the president collapse in the back seat of the limousine. Three shots, not two, as he declared in a written statement a week after the assassination. Landis story provides hope to those who contend that there were multiple shooters in Dallas on that fateful day. While he unequivocally dismisses conspiracy theories, he challenges the primary finding of the Warren Commission, which posits that one of the bullets struck the president from behind, exiting through the front of his throat, and then striking Governor Connally, inflicting serious wounds to his back, chest, wrist and thigh. The notion that a single bullet could cause such extensive damage seemed implausible, leading skeptics to dub it the magic bullet theory. The Warren Commission reached that conclusion in part because a bullet was found on a gurney believed to have transported Connally to Parkland Memorial Hospital. They assumed it had been removed during first aid. However, Landis, who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, claimed otherwise. Landis says he found the bullet in the limousine, lodged in the back of the back seat where Kennedy was sitting. He grabbed the bullet as evidence, worried that it might disappear in all the confusion. Landis then placed it on Kennedys gurney at the hospital, and somehow, it ended up with Connally. A Secret Service agent rushes to aid the president and his wife Jackie. Bettmann Archive Landis always believed that Oswald acted alone, but expressed doubts about his conviction in a September interview with The New York Times. The investigation concluded that the bullets were fired from a Mannlicher-Carcano C2766 rifle, which was discovered on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (now a nondescript government building). If Governor Connally was indeed struck by another bullet, Landis says it seems implausible that Oswald would have had time to reload his rifle so quickly. In other words, a second shooter. The documentary JFK: What the Doctors Saw puts the post-mortem medical reports in the spotlight, capturing the accounts of the doctors who attended to President Kennedy in the Parkland Memorial Hospital emergency room. The New York Times review of this documentary drips with sarcasm: While some documentaries feel like rundowns of a Wikipedia page, What the Doctors Saw more closely resembles a Q. and A. session with Siri. What did the staff observe? An entrance wound on Kennedys throat. What does that suggest? A bullet entered from the front. Why is that significant? It contradicts the findings of the Warren Commission. The 90-minute documentary clinically marches through the inconsistencies between the injuries that the doctors observed at the Dallas hospital and the official autopsy conducted at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The three-part documentary JFK: One Day in America by National Geographic delves into the events of November 22, 1963. The Wall Street Journal review applauds the production for skillfully weaving previously unreleased content with more familiar material. The documentary includes private film footage and lesser-known clips offering unique perspectives like Jack Ruby casually interacting with the press and police at the Dallas police station the night before he killed Oswald. We also watch a grieving Jackie Kennedy waiting for her husbands coffin to arrive before making the journey back to Washington. These intimate moments evoke a sense of closeness and deep sorrow. The documentary introduces new material, including testimonies from two Secret Service agents: Clint Hill and Paul Landis, who refrained from commenting on his bullet theory in the documentary. There has been plenty of speculation about Jack Ruby, the underworld small-fry and strip club owner who killed Oswald in front of the whole world. How was Ruby able to roam around the Dallas police station so freely carrying a pistol? Two murders within 48 hours? In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Ruby acted alone, seeking revenge for Kennedys death. A lone gunman, just like Oswald. Nevertheless, there are those who suspect that Oswalds death was the conclusive element of a larger conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Five years later, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at a campaign rally in a Los Angeles hotel, another grim milestone in the countrys history of political violence. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAIS USA Edition 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. You are the owner of this article. High school students Nariah McGee, left, Sahar Abid and Manyi Zhao discuss their project assignment during Amazon's Future Engineer summer program at Seattle World School on July 27. (Karen Ducey / The Seattle Times) The opportunities and challenges women faced during their entrepreneurial journey were discussed at length at a panel discussion hosted by The Supreme Council for Women, in partnership with the Labour Fund (Tamkeen). The event hosted prominent Bahraini women entrepreneurs from various sectors as part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week. The panel included Hala Almoayyed, Chief Executive Officer of Almoayyed Contracting Group, who spoke about her successful experience in the construction sector, where women are generally underrepresented. FinTech sector opportunities She was joined by Eman Al-Sabah founder of Fablemill, who addressed the role of women in filmmaking specifically and in the creative sector in general, and Dania Al-Shuwaikh Co-founder of Daleel, who presented the opportunities available to women in the rapidly evolving FinTech sector. The discussion also featured Aida Al-Mudaifa, Founder of Early Riser, who highlighted the most prominent challenges facing startups in terms of growth and expansion. This event comes as part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week, which Bahrain celebrates annually with various events aimed at startups and entrepreneurs. Holistic support As part of Tamkeens ongoing efforts to empower Bahraini women and increase her competitiveness in the entrepreneurship field, this event gave exposure to various Bahraini women who had great presence in their field of expertise at Riyadat Centre- which is a business incubator known for its holistic support in terms of services provided, consultation, entrepreneurship management. Since inception, Tamkeen has supported more than 15,000 women-led enterprises, and enabled more than 7,000 women to launch their entrepreneurial concepts. In addition, 407 women benefited from the Riyadat portfolio to finance their businesses with a total value of BD9.44 million ($25.05 million). On the human capital front, more than 72,000 women have benefited from various training and employment support initiatives.--TradeArabia News Service KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 18:29 | World, All The Taliban's ban on girls in Afghanistan studying beyond primary school is "a small issue" and should not prevent the international community from recognizing it as the country's legitimate government, a spokesman said in a recent interview. Zabihullah Mujahid told Kyodo News in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, that female education is "an internal matter" and that it is difficult at the moment to convince conservatives and moderates to "be at one table" on the issue. The Taliban has suspended secondary and higher education for girls and prohibited female employees of national and international organizations operating in Afghanistan from working, a move that has provoked strong condemnation from Western countries. The Taliban, which returned to power in August 2021, are not recognized by the international community as the legitimate government, due in part to concerns over the rights of women and girls. Mujahid described criticism of the restrictions on women's education as a "propaganda tool by Western countries to isolate us." "If we reopen girls' schools (now), people would think that we came under pressure from the United States and the international community," he said, adding, "We do not want that." But while it is not a current priority, the spokesman said it is possible to resume secondary and higher education for girls and women within several years. After the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet said its treatment of women and girls would be a "fundamental red line" that should not be crossed. But Mujahid insisted resuming education for women should not be a condition for recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate government. "If we are recognized, we will be able to pursue this issue even better and more easily," he said, adding the country will need help from Japan in transportation and buildings once it is ready to reopen girls' schools. The Japanese government has said it will continue to work with the international community to urge the Taliban to reverse its policy toward women and girls, while continuing efforts to ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, a hard-line religious scholar, and ministers discussed the issue of resuming education for girls and women but they failed to reach an agreement due to opposition from hard-liners. By P.J. GLISSON [email protected] Wakefield TOWNSHIP The interim CEO of Highland Copper Company presented an optimistic outlook last week for the Copperwood Project now advancing in Wakefield Township. Barry OShea said that, while a feasibility study predicted a mine life of 11 years, he believes that inferred tonnage may extend the timing to 15 years. Mine construction is expected to start in 2024. OShea was speaking in a Nov. 15 virtual session with Copperwood Site Manager Mike Foley. Its really only using a portion of the defined resource, said OShea of the feasibility study, adding that additional inferred tonnage comes to 79 million. OShea also expressed pleasure in having Foley in place. Its great for us to have Mike on the ground, said the CEO. Hes local. He knows the people. When asked to introduce himself, Foley said hed been with Highland for the past couple months and is a lifelong resident of Gogebic County. He has a degree in civil engineering from Michigan Technological University with long-term experience as a consultant, including in mining and municipal interests. Foley summarized the creation last summer of an east stream diversion in the southeast corner of the project as part of environmental preparations and therein commended great work by contractors and Highland employees. He said that many new acres of permanent wetlands will result from the project and that Highlands initial site work will facilitate efficient passage of fish and other animals. Foley mentioned community support at all levels in Gogebic and Ontonagon counties, as well as in Houghton County and from Michigans Department of Natural Resources and Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy. In terms of job potential, he added that Highland also has been connecting with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, Michigan Works, and Invest U.P., as well as with educational institutions such as Gogebic Community College, Northern Michigan University, Bay College and MTU. Foley said that Highland officials look forward to continue working with those sources in filling professional, technical and hands-on personnel. Kyle Stewart of 6ix.com, a financial technology company, moderated the online session, which included queries from the public via presubmitted email or from live chat. Under questioning, OShea conceded that copper prices vary over time. Globally, theres been some uncertainty, and its holding copper back a little, he said. But he added that current pricing and projected expectations in the range of $4 per pound or more suggest robust returns and significant tax benefits. Moreover, he said that Highland also has significant opportunities to increase the net present value, referred to by its acronym of NPV. The Nugget, a mining blog, defines NPV as a widely accepted tool for measuring the value of a mine project by calculating current value of the cash flows at the required rate of return of a project compared to the initial investment. Among value-added opportunities envisioned by OShea are bulk ore-sorting technology, metallurgical recovery improvements, ground support design criteria, mining height optimization, potential royalty restructuring and government grants. When asked about any opposition the company has received, OShea said Were a mining business, adding that, as such, there always will be elements of opposition. He said, We take them seriously and listen as needed. One of the questions directed to Foley was about where the mining product will be smelted. He responded that it will be transported first by truck, and then by train, to an as-yet-unnamed smelter. Were very pleased to be in the United States, said OShea. There are very few fully permitted copper mines in the United States. He said that the Copperwood Project already has received permits for water resource and wetland protections, dam safety, inland lakes and streams, air discharge, nonferrous metallic mining, water intake, and Great Lakes submerged land. We dont take for granted our licenses to operate in Michigan and in the U.S., said OShea, explaining that the Copperwood Project is on private land, thereby not requiring federal processes. Were excited at our prospects, he said, assuring that the company is committed to operating in a sustainable manner. OShea added, Were pretty proud of what weve achieved. We have no warrants or debts. We look forward to moving things forward as we step into 2024 with a strong balance sheet and good assets. He said Highland also hopes to work cooperatively with other industries such as the auto industry. He mentioned that General Motors has invested in mining companies and added that auto companies in general are eyeing material supply. OShea said that a domestic supply of copper is needed in this country to feed the transition to more environmentally friendly energy sources. The Copperwood Project will be financed, in part, by Highlands sale of 66% of its White Pine North Project in Ontonagon County to Kinterra Capital Corporation, based in Canada. According to OShea, the White Pine North Project has a 22-year mine life. He said that Kinterra is providing both capital and technical resources for that location and also is operating that project. In a later report to the Marenisco Board of Trustees on Monday evening, Foley said that in order to move forward the Copperwood Project still needs about $400 million in funding. By Yusuke An, KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 16:16 | All, Japan They are not as threatening to humans as bears and rarely draw national attention. They are a species of deer but not adored like the one at the world-famous Nara Park, either. The Reeves' muntjac, as they are called, is a small and invasive species of deer originating in China and Taiwan. In some parts of Japan, the species has grown significantly in numbers over the decades and torment local communities by feasting on crops and fray nerves with its sharp barking sounds. Damage to crops and the ecosystem has been substantial and the local governments concerned are striving to ultimately eradicate the species, or "kyon" in Japanese -- a seemingly far-fetched goal. One of muntjacs' main habitats is Izu Oshima, the biggest of the Izu Islands located 100-plus kilometers southwest of Tokyo, where the muntjac population outnumbered the 7,000 or so inhabitants by almost a factor of three at one point. On a recent walk in Izu Oshima's Motomachi district, where the town hall is located, barking noises pierced the night air to the dismay of many residents. "They look cute but have a bark like an old man's," a male resident in his 40s said. "They are noisy and wake us up at night. I often hear of collisions between muntjacs and vehicles," he added. Muntjacs stand about half a meter at the shoulder. They are also called "barking deer" because of their harsh braying sounds. They first appeared on the island as zoo animals, but it is believed that a dozen or so of them escaped through a fence that was blown down by a typhoon in 1970. The deer went feral and, with their high fertility rate, spread quickly and widely. Muntjacs are omnivores and eat plants including "ashitaba," a species of flowering plant in the carrot family, and "sakuyuri" a type of lily indigenous to the Izu Islands. Baffled by damage caused by muntjacs, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which has jurisdiction over the islands, began culling them in 2007. In recent years, it has invested nearly 1 billion yen ($6.6 million) annually in the efforts, including using drones to search for the animal. It had been culling almost 1,000 of them per year but because they were reproducing at a rate outpacing that figure, there were some 19,500 muntjacs on Izu Oshima by 2019, up from around 4,500 in 2006, according to an official of the Tokyo government. Its annual budget to deal with the muntjac-related problems rose from the initial figures of tens of millions of yen to more than 100 million yen in fiscal 2016. Approximately 700 to 900 million yen has been appropriated annually in the last five years, with money also going on setting up nets, cages and other traps and adopting a method for hunters to drive the animals into fence-enclosed areas. The population of muntjacs has finally begun to decline thanks to the capture of around 5,000 of them a year since fiscal 2020. Nonetheless, there were still as many as 17,000 at the end of 2022. To enhance capturing efforts, Sohgo Security Services Co., the security service company known as ALSOK, began the use of drones in October to find muntjacs on behalf of the metropolitan government. On one week each month, infrared camera-equipped drones detect the heat source of muntjacs hidden in grassy areas from above and inform hunters of their whereabouts. With the animal treated as an expensive foodstuff in Taiwan, a panel of experts set up by the Tokyo government discussed the prospect of using the culled animals for venison. But panel members were cautious, saying the objective of preserving the ecosystem should not be downplayed. The effects of capturing muntjacs have begun to show "at long last," said Motoi Sato, an official responsible for wildlife at the metropolitan government. "But because their damage to crops remains serious, we will increase our efforts to root them out as early as possible." Elsewhere in Japan, the propagation of muntjacs is also a serious problem on the Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo, where the number of the deer species more than doubled in the past decade to 71,500 in fiscal 2022, according to the prefectural government. Like the case of Izu Oshima, the issue in Chiba reportedly originated from an escape from a leisure facility -- in the 1980s. Related coverage: FOCUS: Law change puts traditional Japanese daikon farmers in a pickle FOCUS: Japan faces "friendshoring" dilemma in Asia amid China risks FOCUS: Use of AI-based robots on the rise in Japanese agriculture The Georgia judge overseeing the election subversion case against former President Donald Trump and others imposed stricter bond conditions for one of the defendants after prosecutors complained about his social media posts that mentioned witnesses and co-defendants 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. Lui Tilvar nu i s-a rupt fasul Vremea a fost in acest an prietenoasa cu participantii de la parada de 1 Decembrie din Bucuresti. Cu toate acestea, ministrul Apararii, Angel Tilvar, nu a renuntat la geaca de fas, pe care a purtat-o si la parada de anul trecut, cand insa in Bucuresti a fost lapovita si temperaturi mult mai scazute. Plusul din [] The post Lui Tilvar [citeste mai departe] KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 13:50 | All, Japan Toshiba Corp.'s shareholders approved a consolidation of the company's shares at an extraordinary meeting Wednesday, paving the way for its delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Dec. 20 and marking the end of its 74-year history as a public company. The move will allow a consortium led by Japan Industrial Partners Inc. to buy the remaining shares it failed to acquire in its successful 2 trillion yen takeover bid for the troubled Japanese conglomerate, founded in 1875. The intention behind the delisting is to sever ties with overseas activist shareholders, allowing the company to focus on growth areas such as social infrastructure and quantum technology, Toshiba has said. "Toshiba has amazed the world with our incredible technology," Toshiba President Taro Shimada said at the meeting. "We'd like to make our innovative technologies shine across the world again under a stable shareholder base." The JIP-led consortium acquired 78.65 percent of Toshiba's shares in the takeover bid, more than two-thirds of the total amount it needed for the consolidation proposal to be approved at the meeting. Under the approved plan, 93 million shares will be consolidated into one stock, reducing general shareholders' holdings to less than one share. The consortium will then buy the remaining portion to make Toshiba its wholly-owned subsidiary. "It is sad and disappointing" to see the company delist, Hiroshi Sukegawa, a 65-year-old shareholder and former Toshiba employee, told reporters before the meeting began. "It is Toshiba's duty to society that it rises again." Toshiba, one of Japan's leading companies, started as an electric appliance maker and gradually branched out into new business sectors such as infrastructure and renewable energy. But the company has been struggling to recover after running into a spate of problems in the 2010s, including a scandal related to overstating its profits in financial filings. It also incurred massive losses in its U.S. nuclear business in the same period. The company increased its capital in 2017 by allotting about 600 billion yen worth of shares to third parties in a bid to improve its financial standing, leading to activist shareholders investing in the company. Related coverage: Kioxia, Western Digital halt merger talks amid SK Hynix's objection Toshiba to delist in Japan on Dec. 20 after 74 years of history 2 tril. yen Toshiba takeover bid succeeds, Japan investor group says Stiri pe aceeasi tema - Presedintele Senatului, liderul PNL Nicolae Ciuca afirma ca Guvernul va avea un dialog asezat cu mediul asociativ, pentru a stabili detaliile unui nou Cod Fiscal, care sa aiba o aplicabilitate pe termen mediu si lung. El a mai transmis la Foreign Investors Summit 2023 ca dialogul cu mediul de afaceri - Presedintele Senatului, liderul PNL Nicolae Ciuca a declarat miercuri, la Foreign Investors Summit 2023, ca Romania poate sa proiecteze un plan consolidat pentru reconstructia Ucrainei, el afirmand ca s-a discutat si se discuta despre reconstructia Ucrainei prin pozitionarea - The President of the Senate, PNL (National Liberal Party) leader Nicolae Ciuca, is of the opinion that the report published by the Moody's Agency shows that Romania has a robust economy, arguing that "this solid economic situation is the result of the measures taken during the Liberal government.""The - The President of the Senate, Nicolae Ciuca, highlighted, on Tuesday, in Prague, during the second Parliamentary Summit of the Crimea International Platform, that Romania has supported and will continue to support Ukraine, whose peace was violated by Russia."Since the first day of the Russian invasion, - The President of the Senate, Nicolae Ciuca, laid, on Monday, a wreath of flowers at the troixa in Dobroutov, Czech Republic, erected in honor of the Romanian soldiers who gave their lives for the liberation of Czechoslovakia in the Second World War, on which occasion he showed that he is " a duty of - Scheduled events for September 25PARLIAMENT:- President of the Georgian Parliament Shalva Papuashvili is paying an official visit to Romania ECONOMY:- The Ministry of Finance organizes tender for two bond issues in the amount of RON 700 million each - An International Monetary Fund - President of Georgian Parliament Papuashvili is paying a visit to BucharestThe President of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, will be paying an official visit to Bucharest on Monday. He will meet the President of the Senate, Nicolae Ciuca, after which there will take place a larger - Romania needs to change mentality when making public policies for seniors (Liberal's chairman Ciuca)Senate president and National Liberal Party chairman Nicolae Ciuca said on Saturday that Romania must change its mentality when making public policies for seniors, and it is necessary to start from Border police officers have detained an American man wanted for murder on three counts on an international warrant, at the Zahony border crossing with Ukraine, the police headquarters of Szabolcs-Szatmar County said on police.hu. The 21-year-old man sought to illegally enter Hungary by crossing the Tisza rail bridge in the evening on Nov. 16, the portal said. He identified himself as a national of Puerto Rico but could not present identification documents or valid documents for staying on Hungarian territory. A procedure conducted by the Zahony border police directorate identified the man as a US citizen who was listed by Swiss authorities on a European and an international warrant wanted for murder on three counts. The police have taken the man into custody and contacted the Swiss authorities, the website said. Meanwhile, Orban Takes a Trip to Switzerland Prime Minister Viktor Orban is paying an official visit to Switzerland, and his agenda includes talks with the countrys leaders in Bern on Tuesday and a keynote political speech in Zurich on Wednesday, the prime ministers press chief said in a statement. Orban met Swiss Federal President Alain Berset and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, and his delegation includes Janos Boka, minister for European Union affairs, Marton Nagy, minister of economic development, and Balazs Orban, the prime ministers political director. In Zurich, Orban will address the 90th anniversary celebration of Swiss conservative weekly Weltwoche, and a panel discussion afterwards will include contributions by Swiss Peoples Party MEP Roger Koppel. Earlier this year, a new Nebraska statue arrived in the U.S. Capitol. Each state memorializes two people in the Capitol building, and our newest addition is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather. One quote by Cather, from her novel My Antonia, encapsulates what Im thankful for during this season of gratitude: We were talking about what it is like to spend ones childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. Since its inception, Thanksgiving has been a day of remembrance. The pilgrims spent the holiday reflecting on their arrival in the New World. They remembered the bounty of America and the beginnings of their new lives here. As Nebraskans, we have the opportunity to remember our own beginnings this Thanksgiving. Just as the pilgrims traveled across the world to reach their new home, the pioneers who founded Nebraska traveled across miles of unfamiliar wilderness to settle in a new place. Cathers quote describes the natural glory our ancestors found when they arrived in what would soon become our countrys 37th state. As Nebraskans, we have all experienced that glory. As much as I travel across Nebraska, I never forget the singular beauty of our state and its intrinsic connection to the land. Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude. As we remember the blessings of our country and our state, we also give thanks for the blessings in our individual lives. Nebraskans gather each Thanksgiving with family and friends to acknowledge the things we are grateful for, from jobs to harvests to loved ones. And of course, we cant forget the food. Festive Thanksgiving spreads encourage us to share, enjoy, and give thanks. One way to share our gratitude is by showing kindness to others. For many Nebraskans, Thanksgiving is a day of service. Ive seen several heartwarming examples of this leading up to Thanksgiving. One organization that helps people with breast cancer hosted Thanksgiving meals in Lincoln and Ralston where survivors shared stories and gratitude with one another. That kind of camaraderie is vital for those in treatment or recovering from treatment. The organization will also deliver Thanksgiving meals to breast cancer survivors ahead of the holiday weekend. That isnt the only nonprofit providing for those in need this Thanksgiving. The Salvation Army of Lincoln has been preparing all month to pass out Thanksgiving meal boxes to families across the city. Staff at Salvation Army hope to serve over 600 families this Thanksgiving season so that Nebraskans can celebrate the holiday despite difficult circumstances. In the holiday hustle, lets remember those less fortunate and those who may not have a place to celebrate this Thanksgiving. Lets remember to share our love and gratitude to the loved ones we see over the holiday. I wish you all a Thanksgiving full of joy and laughter as you gather to reflect on lifes blessings. New Delhi: If you want to start a business with less capital and earn handsome profit there is a project identification or a smart business idea that involves minimum capital but yields enormous profit. Owing to its widespread consumption across all age groups and in nearly every location in India, this product is in high demand. The business idea that we are talking about is that of making potato chips. From this business, you can make more money than you would from several other jobs. The central government supports people initiating ventures in the Food Products Sector under the Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana (PMMY). You can also avail MUDRA loans up to Rs 10 lakh under PMMY for starting this business. The Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) has also prepared a report on how to start this business. Business Idea: Potato Chips Making Business Potato chips are consumed as a snack, side dish, or appetizer. They pair well with practically any food and drink option and are convenient to snack on anytime, anywhere. Therefore they are well-liked by people and in huge demand on the market. Given the enormous demand for potato chips, starting a potato chip business will result in bumper profits. You will need to use astute strategies if you hope to take the lead in this industry. You will need a potato-slicing and chips-making machine for this. If you want to start a big plant then you will have to buy heavy machines. However, in the initial phase, you can start production with small machines or even hand slicers. Business Idea: Potato Chips Manufacturing Process To make potato chips, you'll need potatoes, oil, spices, and other ingredients. The potatoes are cleaned in cold water after they have been peeled. After that, the potatoes are sliced into paper-thin pieces by a rotating presser. The slices flow into troughs filled with oil after passing beneath air jets that remove extra water. Salt is sprinkled on the slices as they fall. The to-be-flavored potato chips go through a drum that is loaded with the preferred powdered seasonings. The chips are sent to a packing machine for packaging once they have cooled and been sorted. According to the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) feasibility report, initiating a potato chips manufacturing venture requires a total investment of Rs 21.47 lakh, out of which you will be required to give Own Contribution of Rs 2.15 lakh. Over a period of five years, you can expect a net profit of upto Rs 7.48 lakh --in the fifth year. Business Idea: Cost And Requirements For Potato Chips The Khadi and Village Industries Commission has prepared a report on the potato chips making business. According to this project study, in order to launch the business you will require capital for Machinery and equipment, Raw materials, Manpower, Land, Potato chips license and registration. Potato Chips Manufacturing Business COST OF PROJECT Land Building & Civil Work - Plant & Machinery: Rs 12.69 lakh Furniture & Fixtures: Rs 1 lakh Pre-operative Expenses Contingencies Working Capital Requirement: Rs 7.78 lakh Total: Rs 21.47 lakh Potato Chips Manufacturing Business MEANS OF FINANCE Own Contribution: Rs 2.15 lakh Bank Finance: Rs 12.32 lakh working capital from bank: Rs 7 lakh Total: Rs 21.47 lakh KVIC Margin Money 25% of 13.69 Lacs =( 3.42 Lacs) Business Idea: Profit From Potato Chips Making The KVIC feasible report giving a Five Year's Projected Profitability Statement said that in the first year you can see a net profit of Rs 4.01 lakh, Rs 4.87 lakh in the second year, Rs 5.76 lakh in the third year, Rs 6.50 lakh in the fourth year and Rs 7.48 lakh in the fifth year. Making potato chips can bring in lakhs of rupees if your product has a unique taste and quality. Contacting any local distributor would enable you to sell your chips. Additionally, you can list your products on various e-commerce. You can also take orders from big businesses and supermarkets. (Disclaimer: This article is for sole information purpose and for readers' project identification. The earning calculator is also mostly based on assumptive figures to give an example of certain type as mentioned by KVIC previous estimates. The Zee News article does not intend to give any financial advice of any sorts. For initiating any venture, you must do your own due diligence and market research.) New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a scathing attack on the Congress government in Rajasthan, led by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, while addressing a public meeting in Dungarpur district on Wednesday. He accused the Congress of bad governance, corruption, and injustice to the youths of the state. PM Modi said that the people of Rajasthan have made up their minds to vote out the Congress in the upcoming assembly elections. He claimed that wherever Congress leaders are going to seek votes, they are getting only one answer - Gehlot ji, koni mile vote ji (Gehlot ji, you will not get the votes). He urged the people to seize the opportunity of democracy and change the Congress government that has failed to deliver on its promises. He warned them not to make a small mistake that can make them suffer for five years. He said that it is important to send away Congress so that all the central government schemes can be implemented faster in Rajasthan. He also slammed the Congress government for doing scams in all the government appointments and shattering the dreams of the youths. He said that this is an injustice to the children of the state who deserve a better future. He assured the people that the BJP government will work for the development and welfare of Rajasthan. New Delhi: A new report by the Pew Research Centre has revealed that India has the third largest population of illegal immigrants in the US, after Mexico and El Salvador. The report estimates that there were about 725,000 Indian unauthorised immigrants in the US in 2021, up from 600,000 in 2017. The report, based on census data and other sources, shows that the total number of unauthorised immigrants in the US reached 10.5 million in 2021. This number represents about three per cent of the total US population and 22 per cent of the foreign-born population. This is a slight increase from 10.3 million in 2017, but still below the peak of 12.2 million in 2007. The report also finds that the number of unauthorised immigrants from Mexico, the largest source country, declined to 4.1 million in 2021, the lowest since the 1990s. However, the number of unauthorised immigrants from other regions, especially Central America and Asia, increased significantly. Central America accounted for the largest increase, with 240,000 more unauthorised immigrants in 2021 than in 2017, followed by South and East Asia, with 180,000 more. Among the countries with the largest numbers of US unauthorised immigrants, India, Brazil, Canada and former Soviet Union countries all experienced growth from 2017 to 2021, the report says. El Salvador, with 800,000 unauthorised immigrants, and Guatemala and Honduras, with 700,000 and 525,000 respectively, also saw an increase in their numbers. The report also reveals that the six states with the largest unauthorised immigrant populations in 2021 were: California (1.9 million), Texas (1.6 million), Florida (900,000), New York (600,000), New Jersey (450,000) and Illinois (400,000). These six states accounted for 60 per cent of the total unauthorised immigrant population in the US. The report notes that the UT administration has taken action against the unauthorised immigrants and their supporters by invoking Article 311 (2) of the Constitution of India, which allows it to terminate their employment without an inquiry. In the last three years, the UT administration has sacked more than 59 such employees for their involvement in anti-national and terror activities. The report also compares the trends of the unauthorised immigrant population with the lawful immigrant population in the US. It says that the lawful immigrant population grew by more than 8 million, a 29 per cent increase, and the number of naturalised US citizens grew by 49 per cent. In 2021, naturalised citizens accounted for about half (49 per cent) of all immigrants in the country, the report says. New Delhi: The Chhindwara assembly seat is in the spotlight as PCC chief Kamal Nath himself is contesting the election from here. Before the election, a bet of 10 lakh rupees has been placed between two local people over Kamal Nath and BJP candidate Bunti Sahu, which has been recorded on a letter pad with a revenue stamp. It is reported that the bet is between a contractor of the electricity company, Prakash Sahu, and his friend Ram Mohan Sahu, who have wagered on the outcome of the Chhindwara assembly seat. In fact, Prakash Sahu and his friend Ram Mohan Sahu had a heated argument over the win and loss of their respective candidates. The argument escalated to the point that they decided to bet 10 lakh rupees on it. They made a letter pad on which they wrote that if Kamal Nath loses, Prakash Sahu will pay his friend Ram Mohan Sahu 10 lakh rupees. But if BJPs Bunti Sahu loses, then Ram Mohan Sahu will pay his friend Prakash Sahu 1 lakh rupees. Witnesses signatures were also taken on the letter pad. The verdict will come on December 3. The Chhindwara assembly seat is a high-profile seat in the state. In 2018, when Kamal Nath was elected as the chief minister, Congresss Deepak Saxena vacated this seat for him. Kamal Nath was then elected as the MLA from here. But this time, he has directly entered the electoral fray. While BJP has fielded local leader Bunti Vivek Sahu against him. New Delhi: Aadhaar Issuing body Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has invited application for the post of Deputy Director General (JS equivalent) in Pay Matrix Level 14 on deputation (Foreign Service term basis) at the UIDAI headquarters in New Delhi. The last date to apply is 08.01.2024. Since this vacancy is to be filled up on deputation basis, private candidates are not eligible, UIDAI said. The period of deputation shall be of five years. In its advertisement, UIDAI has said, "Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), invites applications for filling up one post of (may vary at the time of selection) Deputy Director General (JS equivalent) in Pay Matrix Level 14 (Pay Band Rs. 1,44,200-2,18,200) on deputation basis on Foreign Service terms, from amongst suitable and eligible officers." #UIDAI invites #applications for filling up the post of Deputy Director General (JS Equivalent) on a Deputation basis (Foreign Service terms) at UIDAI Headquarters, New Delhi. The last date to apply is 08.01.2024 pic.twitter.com/atpbU4mEUj Aadhaar (@UIDAI) November 22, 2023 UIDAI said officer from the organized accounts services or officers having experience in handling of Finance & Accounts related work and having Bachelor Degree in Law will be preferred. UIDAI will accept application from candidate with age below 56 years as on the closing date of the application. Eligibility: UIDAI prescribes the following - Officers from the Central Government holding analogous posts on regular basis in the parent cadre/department; OR - Officers with four years of regular service in the Pay Matrix Level 13 or above OR - Officers from State/ UT Government/ Public Sector Undertaking/ Autonomous Organization holding regular post in corresponding grades with requisite experience Eligible and willing candidate may apply in the prescribed pro forma and forwarded to Director (HR), Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), 4th Floor, Bangla Sahib Road, Behind Kali Mandir, Gole Market, New Delhi-110001. The last date for receipt of applications complete in all respect is 08.01.2024. UIDAI said, application may also be sent through mail on email id: deputation@uidai.net.in. You can also directly go to the UIDAI page and check out the full Advertisement. JAIPUR: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Wednesday made a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he is nervous at the moment and that his recent roadshow in the state was a big flop. "PM Modi's roadshow was a failure. It was a roadshow of just 9 km. They were so nervous and called people from outside... They never discuss the local issues...," Gehlot said while hitting out at the BJP. #WATCH | Jaipur: CM Ashok Gehlot says, "PM Modi's roadshow was a failure. It was a roadshow of just 9 km. They were so nervous and called people from outside... They never discuss the local issues..." pic.twitter.com/GmWGOQWsWZ ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 The Rajasthan Chief Minister also lashed out at the BJP government at the Centre, alleging that central agencies like ED and CBI are being misused to topple governments in non-BJP-ruled states. Attacking the Centre, CM Gehlot said, "These agencies (ED, IT) are important, their actual work is for the economic offender...their attention should be directed there so that the country's economy remains strong and economic offences don't take place.'' The Rajasthan Congress veteran went on to say, ''Their work (in that direction) has ceased for nine years, just making the government topple and rise and for that, they threaten MLAs to make them change their party. They are trying to make the government topple in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra...with ED's pressure and IT raid...People are not liking this." #WATCH | Jaipur: On Rajasthan Assembly elections, CM Ashok Gehlot says, "These agencies (ED, IT) are important, their actual work is for the economic offender...their attention should be directed there so that the country's economy remains strong and economic offences don't take pic.twitter.com/1DE5igdu03 ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 Gehlot also said that the decision about his political future would be taken by the Congress High Command. Gehlot said, "My role has always been whatever the high command wants. I do not decide my own role. The role that high command will give me, I will stick to that" The Rajasthan Chief Minister, however, expressed confidence about bucking anti-incombency in getting a majority mandate in Rajasthan. The reactions from CM Gehlot came in response to PM Narendra Modi's prediction that Congress will not be able to form the government in the state this time. "Today, taking the blessings of Mavji Maharaj Ji, I am daring to make a prediction. It is the power of this holy land that this thought has come to my mind and I am taking this courage by seeking forgiveness from Mavji Maharaj. People of Rajasthan should write what I am saying- the prediction is that Ashok Gehlot's government will never be formed in Rajasthan," PM Modi said. PM Modi made this remark while addressing a public rally in Dungarpur's Sagwara in poll-bound Rajasthan. He also criticised the Gehlot government over the paper leak issue and said that the dreams of youths have been shattered due to its awful policies for education. The Prime Minister also accused the state government of practising 'scams' in all the government appointments. "...Because of bad governance of Congress, dreams of youths have been shattered...The Congress government in Rajasthan has done scams in all the government appointments... This is an injustice to your children...", PM Modi said. Taking a swipe at Congress, the PM said that guarantees of Modi start at the point where people give up their hopes in Congress on the issue of welfare schemes. "Gareeb kalyan, jan kalyan ke prati jahan congress se ummeed khatam hoti hai waha se Modi ki gurantee shuru hoti hai," the PM said. He further urged people to elect the Bharatiya Janata Party to power and said that it is important to oust the Congress from power so that all the central government schemes can be implemented faster in the state. "...Democracy has given you a chance to change this Congress government of bad governance... Sometimes a small mistake can make you suffer for five years... It is important to send away Congress so that all the central government schemes can be implemented faster in Rajasthan..." he added. In a jibe at Rajasthan CM, PM Modi said that the people are denying to vote for Ashok Gehlot this time. "Wherever Congress leaders are going to seek votes, they are getting only one answer - 'Gehlot ji, koni mile vote ji (Gehlot ji, you will not get the votes). Gehlot on Tuesday made an emotional appeal to voters to consider his image, even if the local candidate has limited impact, stating, "Imagine that I am contesting from all these 200 seats." "There are 200 candidates contesting the election, I got requests from around 150 places but I can't go everywhere for the campaign, so I am appealing to everyone that you imagine that I am contesting the election from all these 200 seats. I request you to repeat this government again. You (people) don't have to see who is contesting from the local level," Gehlot said while speaking to ANI. Rajasthan is set for assembly polls on November 25, with votes to be counted on December 3. Of the 200 assembly seats, 199 will be contested on November 25, as elections in the Karanpur constituency were adjourned due to the passing of the Congress candidate Gurmeet Singh Koonar. In 2018, the Congress won 99 seats, while the BJP won 73. Gehlot assumed the CM position with the support of BSP MLAs and Independents. The 2023 Rajasthan Assembly elections are likely to be a two-way contest between the ruling Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), even as various regional and smaller parties will try to make an impact. KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 15:14 | Japan, All, World Japan has been informed that a suspect in North Korea's abduction of Japanese national Tadaaki Hara in 1980 died in 2018, police said Wednesday. The suspect Kim Kil Uk, a former principal of a North Korean school in Japan, was among the 11 people Japan had issued international arrest warrants for concerning past kidnappings of Japanese citizens by Pyongyang. Kim died on March 13, 2018, the Japanese police said, citing information provided by South Korean police via Interpol. Investigative sources have said he died in South Korea and was 90 years old. If the information is verified, Kim would be the first among the 11 alleged abductors to be confirmed dead. Japan officially lists 17 nationals as having been abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s but suspects Pyongyang's involvement in many other disappearances. Kim and former North Korean agent Shin Kwang Soo, 94, are suspected of luring Hara, then 43, from Osaka to Miyazaki Prefecture and abducting him to North Korea in June 1980. Shin is believed to have later illegally acquired a passport purporting to be Hara and entered Japan numerous times for espionage purposes. Related coverage: Japan holds junior high school "summit" on abductions by North Korea Photo exhibition held in Tokyo on iconic North Korea abductee Uttarkashi: Eleven days after a portion of the under-construction Silkyara tunnel collapsed in Uttarakhand's Uttarkashi, the rescuers on Wednesday said that they have reached 'very close' to making a critical breakthrough. Additional Secretary Technical, Road and Transport Mahmood Ahmed said on Wednesday that some big news is expected in the next 24 hours as an additional 880-millimeter pipe has also been pushed 21 metres through the rubble to free 41 workers. "If there are no obstacles, some big news may be received tonight or tomorrow morning. An iron rod has also come along with the debris. It is a matter of happiness that this iron in the middle of laying the pipeline did not create any problems for us...," Ahmed said in a press conference. "An additional 800 mm pipe has also been pushed 21 metres inside the tunnel. Around 12:45 am, we started drilling through the auger machine and so far, we have pushed three more pipes...As long as we reach 45-50 metres inside the tunnel, we will not be able to give you the exact time. We are also doing horizontal drilling, we have entered around 8 metres from there as well," he added. The rescuers earlier said that they had identified the location for vertical drilling to bring out all 41 workers trapped inside the tunnel. As per the Director of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation (NHIDCL), Anshu Manish Khulko, "The location for vertical drilling has been identified. Road work for vertical drilling on the hill above the tunnel is almost complete. More than 350 meters of road construction work is complete. BRO is building a road from both Silkyara and Barkot sides which is almost complete." Meanwhile, a piling machine that was stuck yesterday due to the road being narrow, has now reached the Silkyara tunnel site. The rescuers earlier said that they were focusing on the 'horizontal drilling' method to evacuate 41 labourers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel and expressed confidence that if everything goes right, some 'good news' will come up in the next 40 hours. The use of 'horizontal drilling' became the focal point of the rescue mission, with officials expressing optimism that a positive breakthrough is imminent. 11 . NHIDCL . 11 . , pic.twitter.com/Lq6ELhoGyf Zee News (@ZeeNews) November 22, 2023 Additional Secretary Technical, Road and Transport, Mahmood Ahmed, provided insights into the altered drilling methodology. Now, 800 mm-diameter pipes, a reduction from the initial 900 mm, are being employed with the telescoping method. The adjustment aims to navigate the challenging conditions within the tunnel more effectively. #WATCH | Uttarkashi (Uttarakhand) tunnel rescue | Location has been identified for vertical drilling to bring out 41 workers trapped inside Silkyara Tunnel. A part of the Silkyara tunnel collapsed in Uttarkashi on November 12. pic.twitter.com/EPYq0eEBNE ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 'Good News' Soon, Say Officials Ahmed, addressing a press briefing, shared that the horizontal drilling efforts from both the Silkyara and Barkot sides are progressing. He expressed confidence, stating, "If everything goes right, we will come up with some 'good news' in the next 40 hours." While the focus is on horizontal drilling, challenges posed by the rock formation have prompted authorities to consider vertical drilling as a secondary option. The use of 800-mm pipes, according to Mahmood Ahmed, will facilitate a smoother process. First Glimpse of Trapped Workers Brings Hope In a significant development, the first visuals of the trapped workers emerged on Tuesday. An endoscopic camera sent through a new six-inch wide pipeline captured the workers wearing yellow and white helmets. The footage showed them receiving food items and communicating with each other, offering a glimpse into their conditions. Officials watching them on a screen were heard giving instructions, asking them to clean the lens. The workers were told to come near the camera and use walkie-talkies, apparently sent down earlier. The camera was then pulled back up so that water could be released under pressure to clean the pipeline. Relatives had talked earlier to the trapped workers through the four-inch compressor tube that already existed. Food items like dry fruit were also being sent through that thinner pipe. Enhanced Communication Through 'Lifeline' Pipeline The deployment of the new pipeline serves as a morale booster for both the trapped workers and their anxious relatives. The improved communication allows for better coordination, and larger quantities of food, including oranges, dalia, khichdi, sliced apples, and bananas, can now be sent through the lifeline. PM Modi Reviews Rescue Operation Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke to Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami and enquired about the progress of the Uttarkashi tunnel rescue work which entered the 11th day. The Chief Minister, in a post on X, said that PM Modi enquired about the progress made in the last 24 hours. PM Modi also reiterated the government's commitment to the rescue mission. In a conversation with the Uttrakhand Chief Minister, he emphasized that the safe rescue of all trapped workers remains a top priority. @narendramodi , , , Pushkar Singh Dhami (@pushkardhami) November 22, 2023 Health Concerns, Evacuation Plans A doctor, communicating with the trapped workers through the new pipeline, reported some complaints, including a burning sensation while passing urine. Electrolyte powder packets, multivitamin tablets, and anti-depressants are being sent to address health concerns. Uttarakhand Director General (Health), Vinita Shah, is overseeing preparations for the workers' evacuation to different hospitals in the district. Multi-Front Rescue Efforts Simultaneous efforts on five fronts, as highlighted by NDMA member Lt General (retd) Hasnain, signify the comprehensive approach to the rescue mission. The coordination involves deploying heavy machinery and constructing roads to facilitate alternative approaches. Tribhuwan Singh Pangti, a retired additional director general of the Geological Survey of India (GSI), emphasized the safety of horizontal drilling, while international tunnelling expert Arnold Dix pointed out the precision required in vertical drilling. As the rescue mission enters a crucial phase, the collective efforts aim to ensure the safe evacuation of the trapped workers, offering a ray of hope in the face of adversity. Char Dham Project A group of 41 workers got trapped after a section of the 4.5-kilometre tunnel along the Brahmakhal-Yamunotri National Highway collapsed on November 12. This tunnel, intended to connect Silkyara and Dandalgaon in Uttarkashi, constitutes a segment of the Char Dham project. The under-construction tunnel aims to enhance connectivity to the Hindu pilgrimage sites of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri. The workers, fortunate to have escaped without any injuries, currently reside within a 400-meter safety zone situated behind a substantial 200-meter stretch of rocky debris and coordinated efforts are underway for the past 11 days to rescue them safely. It has been 47 days today since the war between Hamas and Israel came to a halt. You have seen images of Israel's attacks and the situation in the Gaza Strip for the last 46 days. But after trying to completely eradicate Hamas for the past month, Israel has now agreed to a 4-day ceasefire. Some see it as Israel's Master Stroke, while others perceive it as Israel's surrender to Hamas. Therefore, in today's DNA, Sourabh Raaj Jain will tell you the inside story of Israel's victory and the conditions of this conflict resolution. In fact, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States have been trying for several days to achieve a ceasefire. These countries achieved success on the 47th day when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a Cabinet Meeting late Tuesday night, where agreement was reached on the ceasefire. Israel will temporarily cease hostilities for 4 days. But the most significant aspect here is that Netanyahu has agreed to the ceasefire based on Hamas's conditions. Watch Full DNA Episode Here One of Hamas's conditions is to halt Drone Surveillance in South Gaza from 10 AM to 4 PM. The reason being considered behind this is that Hamas terrorists have shifted from North Gaza to South Gaza. Israel is keeping an eye on them through drones. Consequently, Hamas leaders want to evade Israeli aerial surveillance. These Hamas leaders know that Israel is not going to stop and after the ceasefire, Israel will change tactics once again. VIZAG: At least eight school-going children were seriously injured after an auto in which they were travelling collided with a lorry in Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam (Vizag) on Wednesday morning. The horrifying crash took place near the Sangam Sarat Theatre in Visakhapatnam. According to news agency ANI, which shared the horrifying visuals of the accident, eight children from Bethany School were injured. One of them is said to be critical at the moment. #WATCH | Andhra Pradesh: Eight school children were injured in an accident when an auto collided with a lorry near Sangam Sarat Theatre in Visakhapatnam Source: CCTV Footage from a local shop pic.twitter.com/sr9xaadUVo ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 The injured students were immediately shifted to a nearby hospital for treatment. Sharing more details about the accident, DCP Srinivasa Rao said, ''An auto collided with a truck at Sangam Sarat Theatre junction in Visakhapatnam. Eight school children were injured and shifted to the hospital. Four of them have been discharged. Three students are undergoing treatment. One student's situation is critical.'' Visakhapatnam | An auto collided with a truck at Sangam Sarat Theatre junction in Visakhapatnam. Eight school children were injured and shifted to the hospital. Four of them have been discharged. Three students are undergoing treatment. One student's situation is critical: said pic.twitter.com/nNht8WC64a ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 The truck driver and cleaner tried to flee but they were nabbed by the local auto drivers and handed over to the police. The incident was captured by a CCTV camera installed in the locality. The footage shows the auto ramming directly into the speeding lorry. A few seconds after the crash, 2-3 children were thrown out of the vehicle while others remained trapped inside the auto that turned turtle due to the impact of the collision. The lorry driver reportedly stopped his vehicle 100 metres ahead of the crash site. A preliminary investigation has been launched into the incident and the police are currently examining the CCTV footage. Prime facie, it appears that the accident occurred due to the negligence of the auto driver. However, a probe is being conducted into the matter at the moment and legal action is being taken, said the police. DGCA carried out inspections at three airports in India, namely Kochi, Bengaluru, and Delhi, to find out that Air India was not abiding by the relevant Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR). Upon the failure of law compliance, the aviation watchdog - DGCA has slapped a penalty on the airline that amounts to Rs 10 lakh. DGCA has first issued a show-cause notice to the air carrier on Nov 3 and based on its reply, it was found that the airline was not complying with certain provisions of the Civil Aviation Requirements. These pertain to "not providing hotel accommodation for passengers affected by delayed flights, non-training of some of their ground personnel as per the stipulations and non-payment of compensation to international business class passengers who were made to travel on unserviceable seats", it said. For these lapses, the regulator has imposed a financial penalty of Rs 10 lakh. Air India has ordered 470 aircraft to serve the Indian economy and is set to receive a new aircraft every six days over the next 18 months, CEO and MD Campbell Wilson said on Friday. He was speaking at the 67th Assembly of Presidents of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines here. We have new aircraft, we are recruiting many, many new crew and staff, improving the training regime and there is more work to do and we are making good progress, he said. Speaking at a session, Wilson said a vast majority of Air India customers want reliability and punctuality, and the challenge is to satisfy customers' requirements. Also Read - Air Traffic Records New High With Over 4.5 Lakh Flyers And 5,958 Flights On Nov 19 Moreover, new aircraft are being put on international flights and most of the grounded planes have been restored, Wilson added. Tata-owned Air India has ordered 470 aircraft to serve the Indian economy which is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8 per cent and it is set to receive a new aircraft every six days over the next 18 months, he said. He also exuded confidence of competing with other airlines and increasing traffic for Air India. Current air travel demand in India is 20 per cent above 2019 levels as India reopened sooner, according to Subash Menon, director general of Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. New Delhi: OpenAI announced on Tuesday that Sam Altman, who was recently removed as CEO, will be returning to the position after reaching an agreement. This comes after discussions about the future of the startup known for its work in artificial intelligence. As part of the agreement, the board of directors, which had previously dismissed Altman, will see some changes. Bret Taylor, formerly co-CEO of Salesforce, and Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, will join the current director Adam D'Angelo. We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo. We are collaborating to figure out the details. Thank you so much for your patience through this. November 22, 2023 Altman expressed his excitement about returning in a post on X. The reasons behind Altman's initial firing were not clearly explained by the board, but it was mentioned that it was related to a lack of openness and the need to protect OpenAI's mission of developing AI for the benefit of humanity. i love openai, and everything ive done over the past few days has been in service of keeping this team and its mission together. when i decided to join msft on sun evening, it was clear that was the best path for me and the team. with the new board and w satyas support, im Sam Altman (@sama) November 22, 2023 This development signifies a potential new direction for OpenAI, a non-profit organization, which has dealt with concerns among its staff about the risks of AI and its potential commercialization. Microsoft, a major financial backer of OpenAI, also welcomed the changes to the board. Altman's return concludes a tumultuous period that included him agreeing to lead a new research team at Microsoft. Despite initial rejection by OpenAI's board, the situation was resolved with Altman's return. Tulsi Vivah, a pivotal Hindu ritual, celebrates the sacred union between the Tulsi plant and Lord Shaligram. This ceremony, observed in Hindu homes across the country, involves watering the Tulsi plant in the morning and lighting a diya and incense stick in the evening. Devotees believe that worshipping the Tulsi plant helps ward off evil, and during Tulsi Vivah, the union with Lord Shaligram is celebrated to invoke conjugal bliss and longevity. Date: This year, Tulsi Vivah will be celebrated on November 24. According to Drik Panchang, Tulsi Vivah falls on Dwadashi Tithi of Shukla Paksha in the month of Kartik. Also read: Dev Uthani Ekadashi 2023: Date, Significance, Puja Vidhi, And Rituals - All You Need To Know Shubh muhurat: The Dwadashi Tithi will begin at 9:01 PM on November 23 and will end at 7:06PM on November 24. The Shubh Muhurat for Tulsi Vivah is from 6:50 AM to 12:07PM on November 24. Rituals: Devotees start their rituals by preparing in the morning after bathing. They adorn their puja rooms, placing the Tulsi plant and Lord Shaligram side by side. Tulsi is attired as a bride in a saree or dupatta, and Shaligram is adorned as the groom. The priest officiates all wedding rituals involving Tulsi and Shaligram. Devotees observe a fast until evening, crafting bhog items for the puja. Following the ceremony, the bhog is distributed among the devotees. Significance: Tulsi Vivah is observed to find an ideal life partner and is thought to bring blessings of fertility to childless couples who perform the puja with devotion. Additionally, those without a female child may conduct Kanyadaan, considering Goddess Tulsi as their daughter. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today reiterated his long-standing demand for special status to the state. The Bihar cabinet even passed a resolution today urging the Narendra Modi-led Centre to grant special category status to Bihar. Taking to X, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said that Bihar needs Rs 2.5 lakh crore for various welfare schemes after the caste-based census. Kumar said that Bihar's caste-based census was a first in the country and on its basis, the reservation limit has been increased. "On the basis of social, economic and educational status data of caste-based census, the reservation limit for Scheduled Castes has been increased from 16 per cent to 20 per cent, the reservation limit for Scheduled Tribes has been increased from 1 per cent to 2 per cent, reservation for extremely backward classes has been increased. The limit has been increased from 18 per cent to 25 per cent and the reservation limit for backward classes has been increased from 12 per cent to 18 per cent, that is, the reservation limit for socially weaker sections has been increased from 50 per cent to 65 per cent. 10 per cent reservation for economically weaker people of the general category will remain applicable as before. That is, the total reservation limit for all these categories has been increased to 75 per cent," said Kumar. He further said that about 94 lakh poor families have been found in Bihar including all the categories based on the caste-based survey and an amount of up to Rs 2 lakh will be provided in installments for employment to one member of each of those families. He also said that the limit of Rs 60,000 being given to 63,850 houseless and landless families for purchasing land has been increased to Rs 1 lakh. Besides, these families will be given Rs 1 lakh 20 thousand to build houses. "The 39 lakh families who are living in huts will also be provided permanent houses, for which an amount of Rs 1 lakh 20 thousand per family will be provided. Under the Sustainable Livelihood Scheme, now Rs 2 lakh will be given instead of Rs 1 lakh to help extremely poor families. An amount of approximately Rs 2 lakh 50 thousand crore will be spent in the implementation of these schemes," said the Chief Minister. , 16 20 , Nitish Kumar (@NitishKumar) November 22, 2023 The Chief Minister said that a huge amount of money is required for these works and the target is to complete them in 5 years. "If Bihar gets the status of a special state by the Central Government, then we will complete this work in a very short time," he said. Responding to Nitish Kumar's demand, Bihar BJP president Samrat Choudhary said, "Nitish Babu, your share in Bihar's budget of Rs 2,61,000 thousand crore is only Rs 32,000 crore, the remaining Rs 2,29,000 crore is given by the central government under the leadership of Narendra Modi. Nitish Babu, the development of Bihar is not possible while you are on the throne. Nitish ji, for the welfare of Bihar, you need to take special rest, only then the development of Bihar is possible." Responding to Nitish Kumar's threat of holding a state-wide movement for special category status, BJP MP Sushil Modi said that no state will be given special status as the concept itself has been done away with. In a setback for Indian Army, four soldiers were killed in an encounter with terrorists in the Rajouri area of Jammu and Kashmir. The encounter broke out earlier today in the Baji Maal area of Rajouri. According to Zee News TV report, the four soldiers include one captain rank official. However, there is no official confirmation from the army so far. One terrorist is also reportedly killed in the encounter. Watch This Report According to officials, the exchange of fire is currently underway between terrorists and a joint team comprising personnel of the Jammu and Kashmir Army and Police. "A team of security forces was on a search operation in Baji Maal forest area of Rajouri when contact was established with terrorists and a firefight erupted," officials said. Three terrorists are said to be trapped in the exchange of fire. The army is installing lights at the site to assis forces in the encounter. New Delhi: In a significant development, India has decided to resume electronic visa services for Canadian nationals, ending a nearly two-month hiatus, according to sources familiar with the matter. The decision comes after visa services were temporarily halted on September 21, following a diplomatic dispute triggered by Canada's allegations of the Indian government's involvement in the June killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen. The resumption of e-visa services is being seen as a good gesture by India ahead of the virtual G20 Leaders Summit today. Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will also participate in the virtual event being hosted by India on Wednesday. India resumes e-visa services to Canadian nationals: Sources pic.twitter.com/CyMY0AIaMC ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 Full Resumption of Visa Services, Including Tourist Visas With this latest move, all visa services, including tourist visas, have been reinstated, claimed sources. Notably, services for certain categories, such as business and medical visas, had already resumed last month, marking a gradual normalization of diplomatic relations. Diplomatic Tensions, Suspension of Visas Diplomatic tensions escalated in September, leading to India's suspension of visa issuance for Canadian citizens until further notice. The dispute included the expulsion of a senior diplomat from each country and India imposing "parity" in the number of senior officials in their respective missions. As a part of the escalating tensions, both nations exchanged travel advisories. India urged its citizens in Canada to exercise "utmost caution" due to concerns about "politically-condoned" hate crimes. India Seeks Evidence Despite the serious allegations, the Indian government has consistently and firmly denied any involvement in Nijjar's death, dismissing the claims as "absurd" and "motivated." External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, speaking at an event in the United Kingdom, reiterated the demand for evidence from Canada, stating that India is open to considering any proof supporting the allegations. Impact on Bilateral Ties, Trade Talks The strained relations between India and Canada have not only impacted diplomatic ties but also led to a pause in discussions on a long-pending trade deal. Talks on this front, on hold since September, might continue to be on hold, as Canada remains focused on the Nijjar case, according to statements from Canada's Trade Minister, Mary Ng. Row Over Hardeep Singh Nijjar's Killing Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, was fatally shot outside a gurudwara in Vancouver, Canada, in June. The Indian government had officially designated Nijjar as a terrorist in 2020. The resumption of e-visa services represents a positive step towards normalizing relations, although the broader impact on diplomatic ties and trade negotiations remains to be seen. Srinagar: Continuing the action against anti-national elements and terror supporters, the Jammu & Kashmir administration has terminated four employees, including the president of Doctors Association of Kashmir (DAK), for their involvement in anti-national and terror-related activities. The sacked employees are Dr. Nissar-ul-Hassan (doctor), Salam Rather (laboratory bearer in Higher Education department), Abdul Majeed Bhat (constable) and Farooq Ahmad Mir (teacher). They have been dismissed by the UT administration by invoking Article 311 (2) of the Constitution of India, which empowers it to do so without an inquiry. Officials said that this is part of UT administrations action against the terrorist ecosystem and its key stakeholders. In the last three years, the Union Territory administration has invoked Article 311 (2) of the Constitution of India to sack more than 59 such employees for their involvement in anti-national and terror activities. Meanwhile, two Kupwara residents were arrested along with arms and ammunition in Bemina area of Srinagar. A top police official said that they were arrested during a routine checking at Bemina Bypass near Lal Petrol Station on Wednesday morning. He identified them as Mumtaz Ahmad Lone (38) and Jahangir Ahmad Lone (29), both residents of Trehgam, Kupwara. Two pistols, six empty magazines and ten grenades were also recovered from their possession. A case FIR no 128/2023 under sections 7/25 of the Arms Act and 13, 18, 23, 39 of the UAPA has been registered, he said. KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 09:19 | All Episode 21: Legend of Zelda Who should play Zelda and Link? Three Kyodo News journalists Yamaguchi-san, Eduardo and Toma talk about how a live-action film adaption of the popular "Legend of Zelda" game is in the works. Listen as they come up with their dream cast and discuss other recent game adaptations. Article mentioned in the podcast: Nintendo announces development of live-action "Legend of Zelda" film Kyodo News presents a bilingual podcast for English learners about the ins and outs of news writing and how to translate tricky Japanese phrases into English. Have fun listening to journalists discuss recent articles as they occasionally go off on unrelated tangents. More Podcast episodes: Podcast [English World] Episode 20: Hay fever Podcast [English World] Episode 19: A subdued Halloween Podcast [English World] Episode 18: Steep price hikes for baby items NEW DELHI: Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will participate in the virtual G20 Leaders' Summit being hosted by India on Wednesday. The confirmation regarding his virtual attendance comes at a critical juncture, amid escalating diplomatic tensions between India and Canada. The diplomatic strain became apparent when Raymonde Gagne, the Speaker of the Canadian Senate, opted to skip the Presiding Officers' Summit of Parliaments of G20 nations in Delhi on October 12. Trudeau's recent accusations, on November 12, alleging India's involvement in the killing of designated pro-Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, have further intensified the diplomatic row. He accused New Delhi of violating the Vienna Convention, expressing concern about the expulsion of 40 diplomats at a time when Canada sought cooperation from India and other global partners to investigate the murder. "We reached out to India to ask them to work with us in getting to the bottom of this matter. Canada is a country that will always stand up for the rule of law," Trudeau emphasized, highlighting the seriousness of the situation. Canada's Actions And India's Response In response to the allegations, Canada withdrew 41 diplomats from India and suspended visa and consular services in Chandigarh, Mumbai, and Bengaluru consulates. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in India, however, asserted that no international norms were violated, calling for diplomatic parity. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, on November 16, challenged Trudeau's claims, stating that Canada had not provided evidence to support its allegations regarding Nijjar's killing. While expressing Canada's commitment to the rule of law, Trudeau reiterated the desire to work constructively with India. Despite the current tensions, he emphasized Canada's dedication to collaborative efforts. G20 Virtual Summit: A Global Confluence Against this backdrop of diplomatic strains, the G20 Virtual Summit is scheduled to commence at 5:30 pm. The summit promises a significant gathering of world leaders, with participants from all G20 member nations, the Chair of the African Union, nine guest countries, and leaders of 11 international organizations. Chinese Premier Li Qiang will attend the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit at India's invitation, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said adding that China hopes that the virtual summit can pool consensus and send a positive signal to this end. Previously, at the G20 Summit hosted by India in September, Li Qiang attended on behalf of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning confirmed the Chinese Premier's presence at the G20 Summit. When asked about China's expectations from the summit, she emphasised the need for the G20 to address global challenges through cooperation and make a positive contribution to world economic recovery. Key Agenda, Expectations The virtual summit aims to address crucial global issues, assess outcomes, and review developments since the conclusion of the New Delhi G20 Summit in September. Notable achievements, including the G20 consensus on tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030 and doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvement by 2030, will be discussed. These commitments were made during the G20 Leaders' Summit in Delhi earlier this year, marking substantial progress on major G20 priorities. As world leaders convene virtually, the spotlight remains on Trudeau's participation, adding a layer of complexity to an already intricate diplomatic scenario. The outcomes of the summit are eagerly anticipated, considering the current geopolitical dynamics and the pressing issues on the global agenda. New Delhi: The Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen Rana Pratap Kalita has said that the ethnic clashes in Manipur are a political problem that can only be solved by a peaceful dialogue between the Meitei and Kuki communities, news agency PTI reported. He also said that the violence will not stop unless around 4,000 weapons, which were looted from security forces, are recovered from common people. The Eastern Command General Officer Commanding-in-Chief also said that India is providing shelter to anyone from Myanmar seeking refuge, including common villagers, army or police, in Mizoram and Manipur, but not armed cadres of militant groups or drug traffickers. Our efforts have been to contain the violence and motivate both sides of the conflict to come for a peaceful resolution of the political problem. Because ultimately, there has to be a political resolution to the problem, Kalita told reporters at an interaction organised by the Gauhati Press Club on Tuesday. He said that the Indian Armys initial aim was to carry out rescue and relief operations for the people who were displaced from their houses, and then to contain the violence, which they have been largely successful. However, he added that some sporadic incidents keep taking place here and there due to the polarisation between the two communities. He said that the root cause of the clashes was the legacy issues between the three communities that live in the state Meitei, Kuki and Naga. He pointed out that there had been conflicts between the Kukis and Nagas in the 1990s when almost 1,000 people were killed. "What has happened now is that both the communities have completely got polarised. Though the level of violence has come down, more than 5,000 weapons were taken away from various police stations and other places. Out of that, only about 1,500 weapons have been recovered. So, around 4,000 weapons are still out. Till the time these weapons are out in society, this sort of sporadic violent activities will continue, he said. He also said that weapon smuggling along with drugs through the Indo-Myanmar border has been checked, although some isolated incidents may be there. But since 4,000 weapons are already out in the open, I think there is no requirement of weapons to come from outside, he stressed. More than 180 people lost their lives and several hundreds were injured since ethnic clashes broke out in Manipur on May 3, after a Tribal Solidarity March was organised in the hill districts to protest against the Meitei communitys demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status. Meiteis account for about 53 per cent of Manipurs population and live mostly in the Imphal Valley. Tribals Nagas and Kukis constitute little over 40 per cent and reside in the hill districts. On the refugee crisis from Myanmar, Lt Gen Kalita said, Any instability in our neighbourhood is not in our interest. It definitely impacts us as we share the common border. The problem of the Indo-Myanmar border gets accentuated because of the difficult geography and terrain conditions, and lack of development. He further said that as the border is porous and people are from the same ethnicity on both sides of the border, a lot of free movements take place, and it becomes difficult for the forces managing the borders to identify who are the people from India and who are from Myanmar. "We are giving shelter to anybody who is seeking refuge, whether it is a common villager or Myanmar Army or Myanmar Police. There is a due process that is followed. Whenever they want to come in, the weapons are separated obviously. Thereafter there is a proper identification, which is carried out so that the undesirable elements are segregated. We get in touch with the MEA and (Myanmar) Embassy. Generally, all these Myanmar Army people want to go back to their country, he said. He also said that India is not allowing any armed cadres of militant groups or drug traffickers to enter the country. The United States has claimed to have thwarted the assasination plot of Khalistani terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on its soil. According to several media reports, the US authorities not only thwarted the conspiracy to kill Pannun but also issued a warning to India over concerns about New Delhi's involvement in the plot. The Ministry of External Affairs of India released a statement tonight reacting to media queries related to the reports related to US claims. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is a Khalistani terrorist and chief of Sikh For Justice. He recently issued threats to hijack an Air India plane and bomb blast during the India-Australia final in Ahmedabad. The NIA has already registered several cases against him. Pannun is an American and Canadian citizen. However, it's not clear whether the FBI intervened to foil the plot or any arrests have been made in the case or not. However, according to reports, the US informed some of its allies about the plot after the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, another Khalistani terrorist who was killed in Canada. Earlier in September, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged an Indian hand behind Nijjar's killing but did not provide any evidence so far. India had rejected Canada's claim. According to the reports, the US lodged its protest with India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's high-profile state visit to Washington in June. The reports also claimed that US federal prosecutors filed a sealed indictment against at least one alleged perpetrator but the sealed indictment is yet to be opened due to Canada's pending probe in the Nijjar murder case. The reports also said that one person indicted has already left the US. Pannun told the Financial Times that he would let the United States respond to the issue of threats to his life on American soil from the Indian operatives. Responding to the report, MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, "During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organized criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others. The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow up action. On its part, India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well. Issues in the context of US inputs are already being examined by relevant departments." NEW DELHI: In a scathing attack on Congress and the Gandhi family, Union Home Minister Amit Shah likened them to 'Rahu and Ketu' in Indian politics. Speaking at a rally in Pali, Shah said, ''The people of Rajasthan have leaked the Gehlot-led-Rajasthan government's paper. Congress is going on 3rd December and BJP is coming. Congress party and Gandhi family are Rahu and Ketu of India. All the troubles that have arisen in the future of India have happened only because of the Gandhi family and Congress." The Union Minister emphasized that the upcoming elections on December 3rd could usher Rajasthan into a new era with the BJP taking charge. Shah Highlights BJP's Achievements, Promises Shah lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's accomplishments, citing the elevation of India's economy and significant diplomatic strides. He pledged that a BJP government in Rajasthan would enhance the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi to Rs 12,000, ensure MSP for millet, and provide gas cylinders at an affordable rate of Rs 450. Addressing a rally in Nasirabad, Shah accused Rahul Gandhi of opportunistic rhetoric about OBC communities. He highlighted the BJP's commitment to OBC development, including the establishment of the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) and the appointment of the nation's first OBC Prime Minister. Shah Targets Gehlot Government Expressing disdain for the Ashok Gehlot-led government, Shah claimed to have unearthed corruption on an unprecedented scale. Promising a thorough investigation if the BJP comes to power, he assured that corrupt individuals would face consequences. Shah Slams Dynastic Politics In Neem ka Thana, Shah criticized the Congress's focus on dynastic politics, particularly Sonia Gandhi's persistent efforts to launch Rahul Gandhi. He asserted that only PM Modi could address corruption and atrocities, making a strong case for the BJP's vision for Rajasthan. Employment, Paper Leak Issue Taking a dig at the paper leak issue in the state, Shah promised transparency in government exams under the BJP rule, vowing to provide employment to 2.5 lakh youths without any leaks. Shah contrasted the economic assistance provided to Rajasthan during Congress's tenure (2004-2014) with the substantial support delivered by Modi's government. He pledged significant financial aid to farmers and promised to cover medical expenses up to Rs 10 lakh. Rajasthan Gears Up For Crucial Polls As Rajasthan braces for assembly polls on November 25, the political landscape remains charged. With 199 of the 200 assembly seats in contention, the election results on December 3 are anticipated to shape the state's future. The BJP aims to wrest power from Congress, which won 99 seats in 2018, with Gehlot assuming the CM position with support from BSP MLAs and Independents. The political stage is set, and the electorate awaits the outcome that will determine Rajasthan's trajectory. HYDERABAD: In a shocking incident, Akbaruddin Owaisi, the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader and Telangana assembly poll candidate, was captured on camera delivering explicit warning to a police inspector during a political rally in Hyderabad's Lalitabagh. The confrontation ensued when the inspector requested Owaisi to adhere to the Model Code of Conduct imposed for the upcoming Telangana assembly polls. The warning from Owaisi came after the police inspector cited a breach of the Model Code of Conduct and the time limit set by the poll panel and urged the AIMIM leader to halt his speech. Owaisi, undeterred, openly threatened the inspector, suggesting that just a signal to his supporters could force the officer to leave the venue. "Do you think that after facing knives and bullets, I got weak, still there's lots of courage in me. Five minutes are left, and I'll address five minutes, no one can stop me. If I give a signal, then you'll have to run, shall we make him run?" Owaisi asserted. His brother and senior AIMIM leader Asaddudin Owaisi defended his brother, saying the police officer threatened Akbaruddin and interrupted his speech even before his time concluded. #WATCH | Telangana: AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi threatened a police inspector who was on duty and asked him to leave the spot while he was addressing a campaign in Lalitabagh, Hyderabad yesterday. The police inspector asked him to conclude the meeting on time as per the Model pic.twitter.com/rf2tJAOk3b ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 Case Registered Against Akbaruddin Owaisi The Hyderabad police today registered a case against Akbaruddin Owaisi for threatening the police officer. Rohit Raju, DCP South East zone, said, "On the complaint of the Santosh Nagar SHO, a case has been registered against (AIMIM leader) Akbaruddin Owaisi. The case has been booked under section 353 (obstructing official duties) IPC and other relevant sections.'' Hyderabad | On the complaint of the Santosh Nagar SHO, a case has been registered against (AIMIM leader) Akbaruddin Owaisi. The case has been booked under section 353 (obstructing official duties) IPC and other relevant sections: Rohit Raju, DCP South East zone ANI (@ANI) November 22, 2023 AIMIM's Stakes In Upcoming Polls Notably, Akbaruddin Owaisi is a prominent candidate from the Chandrayangutta constituency, a stronghold of the AIMIM. The party has secured victories in this segment in the past two Assembly elections, held in 2014 and 2018. Triangular Contest In Telangana With Telangana poised for polls on November 30, the electoral landscape is witnessing a triangular contest involving the BJP, the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), and the Congress. The BRS, previously known as Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), dominated the previous Assembly election in 2018, securing 88 out of 119 seats with a substantial 47.4% of the total vote share. In contrast, the Congress secured a distant second with just 19 seats. As the state braces for the single-phase polls, scheduled for November 30, the political fate of Telangana remains uncertain. The counting of votes, along with four other poll-bound states, is slated for December 3. The outcome of these elections is poised to shape the political trajectory of the region in the coming years. New Delhi: 'Atal', a brand new show, is all set to stun the viewers. It highlights the prominent journey of the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In the annals of Indian history, several Prime Ministers have emerged as transformative leaders, steering their nation through pivotal moments with great vision and resolve. Their tenures were marked by a series of monumental decisions that shaped the countrys destiny and propelled it to the forefront of global influence. Through strategic vision and decisive actions, these leaders etched their names in history, leaving an indelible legacy that defined an era of unprecedented success and progress. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an influential statesman, and Indians hold his legacy in high regard. Produced by Euphoria Productions, the show will deep dive into the formative years of the leader who played a pivotal role in shaping India's destiny. Set against the backdrop of British colonial rule in India, the show will delve into the intricacies of Atal Bihari Vajpayees childhood, shedding light on the incidents, beliefs, and challenges that moulded him into the leader that he was. The storyline will highlight his relationship with his mother, who deeply influenced his beliefs, values and thinking. On one hand, India was facing slavery under British rule and on the other, it was facing internal strife and division of wealth, caste, and discrimination. A dream envisioned by Atal's mother of a united India was a dream he deeply cherished. This storyline unfolds the inspiring story of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a boy from humble beginnings who became one of India's most prominent leaders. On &TVs new show Atal, Vishnu Shankar, Business Head - &TV, commented, At &TV, we strive to create content that resonates deeply with our audience and inspires them through relatable and meaningful storytelling. Our latest offering, Atal, is a compelling story of Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayees formative years. His image as an eminent leader, poet and orator is known to everyone, but most are unfamiliar with his childhood. The storyline offers a unique perspective on the early experiences and challenges that shaped his beliefs and values and moulded him into the leader and human being he was. We are honoured to be sharing his story with our audience and we hope they are equally entertained and inspired. The shows Producer, Aarrav Jindal of Euphoria Productions, added, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a luminary of eloquence and wit, imprinted an enduring legacy on Indian politics. Fusing political acumen, personal charm, and unwavering commitment to national welfare, he stands tall as a revered leader in India's history. Vajpayee reshaped the political canvas, aligning it seamlessly with our cultural roots. A statesman fostering economic growth, he bridged diverse factions, earning admiration across people. His decisions propelled India's global ascent, embodying profound wisdom and foresight. Vajpayee's inclusive leadership, promoting progress and unity, remains an everlasting inspiration, transcending political boundaries. Our show, Atal, seeks to kindle today's generation with his timeless legacy and charismatic persona, unveiling his untold childhood narrative. Shanti Bhushan, Writer of Atal show, shared, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee reshaped Indian politics, infusing it with a fresh perspective rooted in our cultural heritage. His deep connection to Indian values and traditions gave mainstream politics a distinct identity. Vajpayee's political legacy, built on pride, love for the country, and patriotism, laid the foundation for a united India. In today's globalised world, preserving our identity and nationalism is a crucial challenge. Our show, Atal, aims to inspire todays generation, providing a platform to nurture ideas that uphold our country's pride on the world stage. Vajpayee's life story is a compelling narrative, guiding today's youth to contribute globally to India's cultural vibrancy and significance. Talking about his role as Young Atal, Vyom Thakkar commented, I am very excited and equally thankful to depict Young Atals role. I had only heard about him in our history books and from my parents, but I never imagined that someday I would portray his childhood role in a television show! Sharing details on Krishna Devi Vajpayees role, Neha Joshi commented, I am honoured to portray the significant role of Krishna Devi, Atals mother. Despite Krishna Devis profound passion for history and politics, she gracefully transitioned into a devoted supporter of her husband, Vajpayee Ji. Her life's mission is to maintain harmony within her family, standing firmly behind her husband's choices. With a rock-solid resolve and deep religious conviction, she silently opposes British colonial rule, fervently desiring India's liberation. Krishna Devi is the foundation that shapes her son, Atal. She instils in him her unyielding vision and a natural inclination to question the status quo. She may not vocalise her views to the world, but she embodies a genuine desire to see her beloved country, India, break free. Her unyielding commitment to her family, unspoken defiance against colonial oppression, and influential role in shaping her son's destiny make Krishna an exceptional character. On Krishna Bihari Vajpayees role, Ashutosh Kulkarni commented, It is a proud moment for me to portray young Atals father on screen. In 1930, Krishna Bihari Vajpayee, a devout educator and nationalist, led a Brahmin household with four sons and three daughters. A devoted nationalist, Krishna Bihari firmly believes in the permanence of British rule in India, advocating for cooperation and respect towards the colonial powers. His aspirations for his family are deeply rooted in education, emphasising the mastery of English, academic excellence, and the pursuit of government employment. Tune in to watch Atal, premiering on Dec 5th at 8:00 pm only on &TV. New Delhi: In a breakthrough deal, Israels government voted on Wednesday to approve a proposal for Palestinian Hamas militants to release 50 women and children held as hostages in Gaza in return for a four-day ceasefire, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. The deal was mediated by Qatar, with the involvement of the U.S., Israel and Hamas. The negotiations have been going on for days, amid hopes of ending the war that has devastated Gaza and killed thousands of people. Hamas is believed to have more than 200 hostages, who were captured when its fighters launched a massive attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli estimates. A statement by the Prime Ministers Office said that 50 women and children will be freed over four days, during which the fighting will stop. The ceasefire will be extended by another day for every additional 10 hostages released, it said, without mentioning the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. However, a U.S. official briefed on the discussions had said earlier that the deal would also include the exchange of 150 Palestinian prisoners. Israels government is committed to bringing all the hostages home. Tonight, it approved the proposed deal as a first stage to achieving this goal, said the statement, released after hours of closed-door deliberation. Israels Ynet reported that only three ministers from the far-right Jewish Power party voted against the deal. The deal will bring the first pause in a war that has seen Israeli airstrikes destroy large parts of Hamas-ruled Gaza, kill 13,300 civilians in the tiny densely populated enclave and leave about two-thirds of its 2.3 million people homeless, according to Gaza authorities. Before meeting with his full government, Netanyahu met on Tuesday with his war cabinet and wider national security cabinet over the deal. Ahead of the announcement of the deal, Netanyahu said that the intervention of U.S. President Joe Biden had helped to improve the tentative agreement so that it included more hostages and fewer concessions. But Netanyahu said Israels broader mission had not changed. We are at war and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals. To destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel, he said in a recorded message at the start of the government meeting. The ceasefire will also allow for humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israeli media including Channel 12 news said that the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. The deal has to wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, reports said. Hamas has so far released only four captives: U.S. citizens Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17, on Oct. 20, citing humanitarian reasons, and Israeli women Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, on Oct. 23. The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel had died. We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death, Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel. KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 12:57 | All, World Israel's Cabinet on Wednesday approved a four-day cease-fire in return for the freeing of around 50 women and children from among the hostages being held by the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip. The deal, brokered by the United States and Qatar, will also see around 150 Palestinian women and children released from Israeli prisons, Hamas said in a statement. The cease-fire would also allow for the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, where Israel launched an air and ground assault after a surprise attack by Hamas on Oct. 7. Israel has said the attack by Hamas killed 1,200 people and around 240 hostages were taken to Gaza. Israel's bombardment has killed over 14,000, including more than 5,000 children, according to Gaza health authorities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will continue with its offensive against Hamas after the truce expires. But his government also said combat could be suspended for an extra day for every 10 additional hostages released. KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 16:09 | All, World South Korea on Wednesday approved the partial suspension of an inter-Korean military accord signed in 2018 following North Korea's latest launch of a military spy satellite. As a result of the move, South Korea will resume aerial reconnaissance and surveillance operations in the demilitarized zone separating the two countries at 3 p.m., the defense ministry said. Suspending the part of the accord that prohibits flying in airspace above the military demarcation line would enhance the South Korean military's ability to respond to the North's move and identify targets in the country, Prime Minister Han Duck Soo said. The move came after North Korea launched a military reconnaissance satellite in its third attempt this year. Pyongyang's previous launches in May and August ended in failure. President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is currently visiting Britain, approved the proposal following a Cabinet approval at an extraordinary meeting held by Han. North Korea's latest launch "clearly shows that it has no intention to abide by the Sept. 19 Military Agreement designed to reduce military tension on the Korean Peninsula and build trust," Han said during the meeting. The agreement was signed on Sept. 19, 2018, by Yoon's predecessor Moon Jae In and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with the aim of halting hostile military activity between the two countries. Meanwhile, Yonhap News Agency reported Wednesday that South Korea is in talks with the United States and Japan about holding a joint maritime drill involving a U.S. aircraft carrier near the Korean Peninsula, in response to the satellite launch by North Korea, citing South Korean government sources. The navies of South Korea and the United States will be joined by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force in the drill likely to take place Sunday, with the Carl Vinson, the U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, participating in the exercise, the sources said, according to the report. South Korea and the United States are slated to hold a bilateral naval drill Saturday, the report said. The Carl Vinson entered Busan port on Tuesday, according to South Korea's Navy. A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine named Santa Fe also arrived in Jeju Island, southern South Korea, on Wednesday. Related coverage: North Korea claims it successfully put satellite into orbit North Korea fires rocket, entry of payload into orbit not confirmed KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 22:48 | World, All, Japan The leader of the junior partner in Japan's ruling coalition called Wednesday while visiting Beijing for the end of China's ban on Japanese seafood imports imposed over the release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the sea. Komeito party chief Natsuo Yamaguchi met with Cai Qi, the fifth-ranking Communist Party leader, in the Chinese capital and handed him a personal letter from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida addressed to President Xi Jinping. During a summit held last week in San Francisco, Kishida and Xi agreed to hold expert consultations on the water discharge and build "mutually beneficial" bilateral relations based on common strategic interests. Yamaguchi, who is visiting China for the first time since August 2019, told reporters after the meeting that he explained to Cai about the Fukushima plant's wastewater, emphasizing it undergoes science-based and transparent monitoring and seeking Beijing's understanding. "I have conveyed (to the Chinese side) the Japanese public's concern over the import ban and called for exchanges of views to settle the matter," Yamaguchi said. He added that Cai stressed the importance of ensuring food safety and protecting the health of the Chinese people. Yamaguchi originally intended to visit China in August but postponed the trip due to strained bilateral ties over the wastewater discharge that began late that month. The party leader also said he called on China, which currently presides over the U.N. Security Council, to address North Korea's missile development, a day after it launched a military reconnaissance satellite using banned ballistic missile technology. He sought the release of Japanese nationals detained in China for alleged espionage, saying a lack of transparency surrounding their detentions has deterred bilateral personnel exchanges. Yamaguchi agreed with Cai on the restart of regular dialogue between the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito coalition and the Communist Party last held in 2018. The Komeito chief also proposed China lease giant pandas to a Sendai zoo in northeastern Japan, saying it will encourage people affected by the 2011 devastating earthquake and tsunami and "play an important role in softening public sentiment" toward China. He later held talks with Liu Jianchao, head of the Communist Party's International Liaison Department. Yamaguchi will stay in China until Thursday. Related coverage: Japan to keep urging China to lift food import ban: PM Kishida Japan, China seek mutually beneficial ties through talks amid strains Japan urges lifting of seafood ban by China, Russia at WTO session KYODO NEWS - Nov 22, 2023 - 09:45 | World, All North Korea said Wednesday it has "successfully launched" a rocket carrying a spy satellite and it "accurately" entered into orbit, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. Pyongyang defended the launch as its "legitimate right" for strengthening its self-defense capabilities and said it will make "a great contribution" to enhancing the country's war readiness amid "enemies' dangerous military moves," KCNA reported. The rocket Chollima-1 flew normally along the preset flight track and put the reconnaissance satellite Malligyong-1 on its orbit at 10:54 p.m. Tuesday, about 12 minutes after the launch, the report said. It came ahead of a nine-day launch window that was supposed to commence Wednesday. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the launch on the spot and congratulated those involved, including scientists and technicians, the agency said. Pyongyang vowed to place several more satellites into orbit in a short span of time to secure its reconnaissance capabilities over South Korea, it added. The Japanese government said it has not confirmed whether the payload successfully entered Earth's orbit. The firing followed Pyongyang's two failed attempts earlier this year to place a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit. Related coverage: North Korea fires rocket, entry of payload into orbit not confirmed FOCUS: Russia unlikely to give North Korea missile technology for ammunition Japan, S. Korea leaders vow joint response to N. Korea, close contact CAPE TOWN, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The South African parliament on Tuesday voted in favor of a motion to shut down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria and suspend all diplomatic relations with Israel until it agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. A total of 248 members of the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, voted in favor of the non-binding motion, while 91 lawmakers opposed it. The motion was tabled by the opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters, and was backed by the ruling African National Congress. The parliament said the measures will be in place until Israel agrees to a ceasefire and participates in UN-facilitated negotiations. The vote came after Israel recalled on Monday its ambassador to South Africa, Eliav Belotserkovsky, "for consultations." Also on Tuesday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa chaired a BRICS extraordinary virtual summit on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. South Africa announced last week that it had referred Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes investigation. Its cabinet also called on the ICC to issue arrest warrants for all those involved, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Earlier this month, South Africa recalled all of its diplomats from its embassy in Israel. In a significant milestone for technological innovation and sustainable air mobility growth in the UAE, Embention, a global leader in avionics with the highest aircraft mobility standards, and Eanan, a leading Dubai-based Urban Air Mobility (UAM) company, have signed a memorandum of understanding within the framework of the Dubai Airshow 2023. The signing ceremony, on November 16, marked the official launch of the first fleet of unmanned aircraft entirely designed and produced in Dubai. This agreement covers the manufacturing of Embentions Veronte Autopilot System in Dubai, which is the core flight control system for Eanans aircraft and is in compliance with aircraft certification standards. Following the historic agreement for UAM autopilot manufacturing in the UAE, Enan presented its S-700, their largest unmanned aircraft with a payload capacity of up to 200 kg, setting a new standard in sustainable air mobility. These aircraft are part of a zero-emission fleet, contributing to Dubai's vision of becoming a sustainable and smart city. The ability to transport heavy loads between cities will boost logistics efficiency, while smaller unmanned aerial vehicles are expected to manage the delivery of packages to customers. Embention, leaders in autopilots and components for UAV and UAM, contribute to the project with more than 16 years of experience in the autonomous vehicle control. With an outstanding track record in implementing advanced solutions for unmanned aerial systems, Embention has been instrumental in the development of technologies that guarantee the safety and efficiency of aircraft. In the signing agreement Ulrich Weckx, CEO of Eanan Al Samma, highlighted the importance of the partnership with Embention. ''We are very pleased to partner with Embention in the field of flight control systems. We value safety above all else and believe that partnering with Embention will certainly allow us to achieve the safety objectives of our aircraft. "We are excited and grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Eanan in the development of the first fleet of drones designed and produced in Dubai. This collaboration marks a significant milestone for Embention's expansion in the Middle East, delivering a flight control system made in the UAE" said David Benavente, CEO of Embention. The launch of the first fleet of locally designed and produced drones in Dubai marks an exciting chapter in aviation history and cements the city's position as a global leader in advanced aerospace technologies. Embention and EANAN are poised to pioneer the sustainable air mobility revolution. TradeArabia News Service SEOUL, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea on Wednesday decided to partially suspend the military agreement with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), which was reached in 2018 following the inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang. Photo taken on Sept. 14, 2020 shows the outside view of the United Nations headquarters in New York, the United States. (Xinhua/Wang Ying) The resolution urges UN member states to observe the Olympic Truce individually and collectively throughout the period from the seventh day before the start of the Paris Olympic Games until the seventh day following the end of the Paris Paralympic Games in 2024. UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The UN General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a resolution on the Olympic Truce. The resolution urges UN member states to observe the Olympic Truce individually and collectively throughout the period from the seventh day before the start of the Paris Olympic Games until the seventh day following the end of the Paris Paralympic Games in 2024. The draft resolution was put to vote at the request of Russia. The resolution was adopted with 118-0 with two abstentions. Russia and Syria abstained. Prior to the voting, Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Maria Zabolotskaya said the French facilitators of the draft "toed the line of a group of Western states" and presented a draft resolution that did not incorporate "the principles of equal, depoliticized access to sport or the prohibition of discrimination." ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The East African bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) on Wednesday called for the Ethiopian government and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) rebel group to uphold commitment to the peace process. In a press release, IGAD said its Executive Secretary Workneh Gebeyehu acknowledges the vital role of dialogue and negotiation in addressing grievances and resolving conflicts as well as in achieving enduring peace in the Horn of Africa region. "Leveraging upon IGAD's experience in mediating similar situations, the Executive Secretary understands that in any negotiation process, there are inevitable periods of challenge and complexity," the IGAD press release stated. "IGAD will continue to remain seized of the situation and stands ready to provide unwavering support to both sides in their pursuit of a peaceful resolution to the situation," the press release said. The IGAD executive secretary also expressed his optimism that the Ethiopian government and the OLA will initiate a new round of talks to address and resolve the remaining issues. On Tuesday evening, both the Ethiopian government and the OLA disclosed that the second round of negotiations between the two sides which were being held in Tanzania ended without an agreement. In April, the Ethiopian government and OLA delegation met for the first time in Tanzania for peace talks. The first round peace talks ended without an agreement. The OLA is a breakaway faction of ex-rebel group Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an opposition political party claiming to fight for the rights of ethnic Oromos who make up about 35 percent of Ethiopia's population. The OLA, with an estimated 3,000 fighters, operates mainly in the western and southern parts of the Oromia Region, the principal homeland of ethnic Oromos. In May 2021, the Ethiopian parliament voted to designate the OLA as a terrorist group, a designation still in effect now. BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna will visit China from Nov. 23 to 24 at the invitation of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning announced on Wednesday. During the visit, the 6th meeting of the China-France high-level dialogue mechanism on people-to-people exchanges will be held, said Mao. JAKARTA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- A 6.6-magnitude earthquake rocked off Indonesia's eastern province of North Maluku on Wednesday, leaving one person dead, local disaster official said. The tremor, which hit the hardest at III to IV MMI (Modified Mercalli Intensity) in Ternate city, caused the collapse of a telecommunication tower and killing of a worker, said Fehby Alting, head of the provincial disaster management and mitigation agency. The quake happened when a worker was working to demolish the Telkomsel-operated tower whose lifetime had expired, whereas the tower collapsed and killed the worker, Alting told Xinhua via phone. The official added that other buildings or houses in the city and other parts of the province were not damaged, while the risk assessments of the impact of the tremors have yet to be completed. The earthquake occurred at 09:48 a.m. Jakarta time (0248 GMT) with its epicenter situated at 68 km northwest of Halmahera Barat (West Halmahera) district and a depth of 109 km under the seabed, the country's meteorology and geophysics agency said. The quake was also felt in districts of West Halmahera and North Halmahera of North Maluku province, as well as Manado city, Bitung city, Minahasa district and Sitaro district of North Sulawesi province, the agency said. The official of the agency did not issue a warning for a tsunami as the tremor would not trigger giant waves. Indonesia, an archipelagic nation, has been frequently stricken by earthquakes for its position on a vulnerable quake-stricken zone called "the Pacific Ring of Fire." The remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War are casketed in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Cao Can) INCHEON, South Korea, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. The Chinese delegation led by Vice Minister of Veterans Affairs Chang Zhengguo, officials with the Chinese Embassy in South Korea, representatives of Chinese students and Chinese companies in South Korea as well as officials with the South Korean Defense Ministry and personnel responsible for the excavation and identification of the remains attended the ceremony. A flower basket was laid at a temporary settlement for the remains of the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) martyrs. Chang went forward to arrange the flower basket and ribbons. All members of the Chinese delegation bowed three times to the CPV martyrs and presented flowers. The South Korean side placed the remains in coffins after the memorial service of the Chinese side. Since 2014, China and South Korea have successfully handed over the remains of 913 CPV martyrs in South Korea for nine consecutive years, following humanitarian principles and conducting friendly and practical cooperation. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows the ribbon on a flower basket laid at the ceremony in Incheon, South Korea. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Cao Can) The remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War are casketed in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows belongings left behind by Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in Incheon, South Korea. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) The remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War are casketed in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows belongings left behind by Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in Incheon, South Korea. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) The remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War are casketed in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows belongings left behind by Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in Incheon, South Korea. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows belongings left behind by Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in Incheon, South Korea. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Cao Can) The remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War are casketed in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Cao Can) The remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War are casketed in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Cao Can) The remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War are casketed in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Cao Can) Chinese Vice Minister of Veterans Affairs Chang Zhengguo (C) attends the ceremony to lay the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in coffins in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows belongings left behind by Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in Incheon, South Korea. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows belongings left behind by Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in Incheon, South Korea. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) The Chinese delegation members bow to show respect during the ceremony to lay the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in coffins in Incheon, South Korea, Nov. 22, 2023. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows coffins containing the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in Incheon, South Korea. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to their homeland. The ceremony to lay the 25 remains in coffins was held in Incheon, west of the capital Seoul. (Xinhua/Yao Qilin) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Long Lei) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Yang Qing) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Pan Yulong) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Pan Yulong) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Long Lei) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Long Lei) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Pan Yulong) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Pan Yulong) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Li Gang) This photo taken on Nov. 22, 2023 shows slogans for the returning of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War in downtown Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province. The remains of 25 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were casketed in South Korea on Wednesday to be sent back to Shenyang. This year's repatriation ceremony, the tenth of its kind, is scheduled to be held at the Incheon International Airport on Thursday. (Xinhua/Li Gang) "China has very clear vision on how to go forward in space and China is active on all domains of space." Attendees at an event in China's Chongqing have spoken highly of China's progress in the aerospace industry and eyed great potential in the future. Produced by Xinhua Global Service ABUJA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) has allocated 1 million euros to help Nigeria fight against diphtheria, the EU delegation to the most populous African country said. The donation was to help Nigeria restrain the outbreak of the disease, particularly in curbing the spread in the most affected communities in the northern part of the country, the EU delegation to Nigeria said in a statement. Once thought to be under control, diphtheria, a highly contagious bacterial infection that affects a person's nose, throat, and, sometimes, skin, is resurging in Nigeria. At least 19 Nigerian states out of the 36, including the Federal Capital Territory, are battling the disease. "Nigeria is currently facing the world's second-largest diphtheria outbreak with 10,322 confirmed and 16,616 suspected cases since the beginning of the year," the EU statement said. The northwestern state of Kano is the epicenter of the outbreak, with over 8,447 confirmed cases and 589 deaths so far in that state alone, the EU said, noting six northern states collectively account for 96 percent of all suspected cases. Last month, the Nigeria Center for Disease Control confirmed that over 600 people were killed by the disease, which can be curbed through vaccination. "Despite control efforts since the start of the outbreak in late 2022, the disease has gradually spread to other states in the northwest and northeast regions. Children aged 1 to 14 years represent 72 percent of all confirmed cases," the EU said. Analysis of the vaccination status showed that over 60 percent of all suspected cases had not been vaccinated, the statement added. MANILA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Wednesday confirmed that 17 Filipino seafarers were among the crew members of a cargo vessel taken hostage by Yemen's Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. In a television interview, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega expressed alarm over the ongoing hostage crisis involving the Filipinos and other nationalities working on the hijacked ship. "We are alarmed. It is not the first time Filipino seafarers were held hostage," de Vega said. DFA Spokesperson Teresita Daza said the Philippine government was working for the release of the Filipino hostages. "We have been making diplomatic representations with governments," she said in a brief statement. Daza added that "various government agencies are meeting and working to get back our seafarers back safely." Yemen's Houthi rebels on Sunday confirmed that they have hijacked an "Israeli cargo ship" in the Red Sea. Local media reported that a total of 25 people were on board, including those from Bulgaria, Ukraine, the Philippines, Mexico and Romania. TIANJIN, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- During the Tianjin International Shipping Industry Expo 2023 held in north China's Tianjin Municipality from Nov. 16 to 18, global attendees expressed a shared belief in the increasing prowess of China's shipping industry. The event showcased China's robust advancements, creating new realms of development within the global landscape. The latest issue of the Xinhua-Baltic International Shipping Center Development Index unveiled a notable presence of Chinese shipping center cities in the top 10 global rankings for 2023. Cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong, Ningbo and Zhoushan were prominently featured on this list, underscoring China's growing significance in the international shipping arena. The report also highlighted Singapore, London and Shanghai as the world's leading shipping centers, emphasizing the continuous ascent of Asia-Pacific shipping hubs. "In a rapidly evolving global trade landscape, China's achievements in shipping are paving the way for the future," said Jin Yu Cheong, head of Baltic Exchange Asia. Over the past 10 years, the centers of the international shipping industry have undergone significant changes, with goods, trade and capital gradually moving eastward, said Hayao Gen, president of Fenghai Technology Consulting Services Co., Ltd., a consulting firm of Japan Port Group. Chinese port cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Qingdao now rank among the top international shipping centers, contributing to the stability of global supply chains, said the port construction expert. China has made a major breakthrough this year in terms of ship fleet size, an important indicator of the development of the shipping industry. Data showed the tonnage of the ship fleet owned by Chinese shipowners has reached 249.2 million gross tonnes, surpassing Greece in gross tonnage to become the world's largest shipowner country. According to the General Administration of Customs, China's foreign trade reached 42.07 trillion yuan (about 5.87 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2022. China remained the world's largest trading nation in goods, achieving this feat for a sixth consecutive year. Meanwhile, China's port cargo throughput and container throughput have both ranked first in the world for several years in succession. Among the world's top 10 ports in terms of port throughput and container throughput, China is home to eight and seven ports, respectively. About 95 percent of China's cargo transport is achieved by sea transport, with maritime routes and service networks covering major countries and regions in the world. Moreover, the promotion of the Belt and Road Initiative has created new development space for China's shipping industry in the world. "With Belt and Road cooperation as the focus, China is pioneering an opening-up strategy that integrates both land and sea, facilitating mutual progress between the East and West," Ma Jiantang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, said at the expo. Hong Kong: Deputy CS joins youth exchange Deputy Chief Secretary Cheuk Wing-hing joined an exchange and visit activity of a youth delegation to the Mainland comprising Hong Kong and Macau youth representatives in Beijing today. With guidance from the Hong Kong & Macao work office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Hong Kong & Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, the exchange and visit activity was jointly organised by the All-China Youth Federation, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, the Macao SAR Government, the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong SAR and the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Macao SAR. The delegation of 150 youth representatives from different Hong Kong and Macau sectors are in Beijing from November 19 to 23 to gain first-hand experience of learning about the country's history and culture and deepen their understanding of national affairs and national development. Vice Premier of the State Council Ding Xuexiang, accompanied by Director of the Hong Kong & Macao Affairs Office of the State Council Xia Baolong and First Secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League A Dong met all the delegation members at the Great Hall of the People. Under Secretary for Home & Youth Affairs Clarence Leung also attended. Mr Cheuk encouraged young people to engage in exchange programmes and visit more places on the Mainland, so as to become a new generation of young people with an affection for the country and Hong Kong who are equipped with a global perspective and positive thinking. The Hong Kong SAR Government will continue to enhance the breadth and depth of internship and exchange programmes on the Mainland to further enhance young Hong Kong people's understanding of the country and proactively integrate into the overall development of the country, he added. Mr Cheuk attended a sharing session in the evening and listened to Hong Kong youth representatives sharing stories of their exchange programme on the Mainland. This story has been published on: 2023-11-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. In a remarkable achievement, Abu Dhabi has been honoured with two prestigious awards at the World Cruise Awards in a testament to the exceptional experiences and infrastructure it offers to cruise enthusiasts. Not only did it clinch the title of the Worlds Best Cruise Destination, but its Zayed Port cruise terminal also secured the recognition of being the Worlds Best Cruise Terminal. Brands to win top honours included Norwegian Cruise Line - Worlds Best Cruise Line; Royal Caribbeans Wonder of the Seas -- Worlds Best Large Cruise Ship; and Star Clippers -- Worlds Best Boutique Cruise Line. The highly-anticipated winners of awards' 2023 programme were announced at the red-carpet 3rd annual World Cruise Awards Gala Ceremony, hosted at Atlantis The Royal, Dubai. Botswana also enjoyed a strong showing, winning 'Worlds Best River Cruise Destination. The results follow a year-long search for the worlds leading cruise brands. Votes were cast by cruise industry professionals and the public, with the nominee gaining the most votes in a category named as the winner, said a statement. Other winners include Philippines (Asias Best Cruise Destination); Mauritius (Indian Oceans Best Cruise Destination); Cape Town Cruise Terminal (Africas Best Cruise Terminal); Celebrity Cruises (Europes Best Cruise Line), Silversea (Asias Best Cruise Line); and Zadar Cruise Port, Croatia (Europes Best Cruise Terminal). World Cruise Awards is the sister event to World Travel Awards, currently celebrating its 30th anniversary. - TradeArabia News Service VIENNA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 89,000 women and girls were killed in 2022 across the globe, the highest annual figure recorded in the past two decades, according to a fresh research brief released by the United Nations (UN) on Wednesday. The research brief published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women suggested that the increase in femicides occurred "despite a drop in the overall number of homicides." Fifty-five percent of the femicides last year were committed by family members or intimate partners, while 12 percent of homicides against males were perpetrated in the home. The contrast underscores the "disturbing reality that home is far from a safe haven for women and girls," the brief said. "The alarming number of femicides is a stark reminder that humanity is still grappling with deep-rooted inequalities and violence against women and girls," UNODC Executive Director Ghada Waly said in a statement on Wednesday. "Governments must invest in institutions that are more inclusive and well-equipped to end impunity, strengthen prevention, and help victims, from frontline responders to the judiciary, to end the violence before it is too late," Waly added. UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomes the agreement reached by Israel and Hamas on the release of hostages, with the mediation of Qatar supported by Egypt and the United States, said his spokesman on Wednesday. "This is an important step in the right direction. But much more needs to be done," said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for Guterres. The United Nations will mobilize all its capacities to support the implementation of the agreement and maximize its positive impact on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, said the spokesman. A Long March-2C carrier rocket carrying a new-generation ocean color monitoring satellite blasts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, Nov. 16, 2023. (Photo by Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua) City releases plan to boost annual production of commercial rockets Shanghai is aiming to foster a complete industrial chain for commercial rocket production, with an annual production capacity of 50 commercial rockets and 600 commercial satellites by 2025, according to an official plan released on Monday. The plan says Shanghai will focus on satellite manufacturing, launching, ground system equipment, spatial information applications and services, to strengthen the integrated development of satellite communications, navigation and remote-sensing technologies. Centering on the development of three major products new-generation medium and large carrier rockets, low-cost and highly integrated satellites, and intelligent application terminals the city will strive to build a full-coverage industrial chain, ranging from rockets and satellites, to ground stations and terminals. Wu Qing, vice-mayor of Shanghai, noted in April that the city has built a relatively complete spatial information industrial system, with districts having formed integrated and innovative development patterns in key sectors such as R&D, manufacturing and application. In addition, the city is hoping to expand the application of space technologies and data services in sectors such as city governance, transportation, maritime, safety, energy and finance. The Shanghai government will roll out supportive policies to attract and foster talent and leading firms, as well as innovative platforms such as laboratories, institutions and research centers. By 2025, Shanghai expects its spatial information industry to exceed 200 billion yuan ($28 billion), according to the plan. Last year, China's space industry saw remarkable achievements, including conducting a record 64 rocket launches, and completion of the Tiangong space station, one of the world's largest and most sophisticated orbiting infrastructures. China's space industry has increasingly allowed commercial participation since 2015, following the issuance of the Medium and Long Term Development Plan for China's Civil Space Infrastructure (2015-25), which aims to push forward the healthy and rapid development of China's civilian space infrastructure. Last July, China's first space launch site dedicated to commercial missions started construction in Wenchang, Hainan province. This year, China's commercial space industry has witnessed a rising pace of development, with more private firms in the satellite and rocket sectors achieving successful launches. In January, rocket startup Galactic Energy launched five satellites into orbit. In April, the Tianlong-2 Y1 carrier rocket had its maiden flight from Jiuquan, becoming China's first orbital liquid-fueled carrier rocket. Then in July, the Zhuque-2 Y2, a methane-liquid oxygen space rocket, independently developed by Beijing-headquartered LandSpace, blasted off from the Jiuquan launch site. In the same month, Galaxy Space launched China's first flat-panel communication satellite with a flexible solar array. Last year, Shanghai released guidelines on promoting the development of the spatial information industry. Earlier in September, the city unveiled a plan to speed up construction of new infrastructure, including the establishment of commercial satellite networks. ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The African Union (AU) Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat has stressed the crucial need to tap into the nexus between peace, security and development in Africa. Faki made the statement on Wednesday as he announced the commemoration of the third Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development (PCRD) Awareness Week, scheduled on Nov. 22-30. He called on all stakeholders to redouble efforts for intensified engagement and the incorporation of best practices to proactively prevent the resurgence of conflicts towards a peaceful, stable and prosperous Africa, according to an AU statement. Faki underscored the need to build peace in post-conflict settings by intensifying capacity-building initiatives across AU member states. "It is crucial to support the youth and women, collaborate with civil society and engage academia. The AU Commission's inclusive approach fosters agency, collaboration and ownership, recognizing the imperative of harnessing Africa's living forces to contribute to sustainable peace," he said. This year's edition of PCRD Week is commemorated under the theme "Fostering Africa's Future through Sustained Peace-building." Faki said the theme reaffirmed the AU's commitment to promote tangible initiatives to improve African lives and livelihoods and empower the continent's resilient citizens to actively contribute to rebuilding their societies. He said Africa is at a critical juncture, where the continent's collective efforts are needed to overcome the significant impact of armed conflicts and threats such as terrorism and transnational crime. He called on Africa's friends to support African-led efforts to shape the future trajectory of peace-building across the continent. Noting the considerable normative and operational milestones achieved since the inception of the AU PCRD Policy in 2006, Faki reiterated the AU's continued commitment to support the institutional capacities of African countries. He further underscored the AU's keen resolve to prioritize the consolidation of peace and prevent the recurrence of conflict in Africa through inclusive and nationally-owned processes. Kurban Hupur checks stored plums at an agricultural cooperative in Payzawat, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Sept. 4, 2023. (Xinhua/Ding Lei) URUMQI, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Plums planted in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region are known for their sweet and juicy taste thanks to the region's prolonged sunshine and great day and night temperature difference. However, it was once a headache for local farmers to preserve the fresh plums until new technologies changed that. Payzawat County in Xinjiang is the country's largest production base of high-quality plums. The introduction and application of new technologies and practices are bringing local orchardists increasing incomes, a better life, and a promising future. One year into his work at the Doowin Goodies Pilot Plant in Payzawat, an agro-tech company, Aiztiali Yimam, a 26-year-old resident and college graduate, is still amazed by the new changes. "There are many things I have never seen in the past, including preservation technologies from Japan and the Netherlands, as well as smart sorting equipment from France," he said. The young man is responsible for operating the plant's fresh-storage facilities. "Every two hours, I have to check all the fresh-keeping storehouses to make sure the equipment is running properly, and the temperature-controlling equipment directly determines the quality of the plums," Aiztiali Yimam explained. He said that in the past, the plums had to be sold within about 20 days of picking. "They could not sell at a good price, and the plums that didn't sell could only be made into dried fruits," he added. Now, with the assistance of new technologies and equipment, plums can be stored for much longer, and the sales period has been extended to two to six months, allowing the fruit to reach customers farther away and the price to be kept relatively stable. To take advantage of the new technologies, Payzawat County has built a cold storage system with a total storage capacity of about 100,000 tonnes. Kurban Hupur, who has been planting plums for nearly two decades, constructed three cold storage units of more than 200 square meters in front of his house three years ago. "I will sell my plums when the price is appropriate and put them in cold storage when the price is low," he said. In just a few years, Kurban Hupur's planting area of plums grew from 4 mu (about 0.27 hectares) to more than 20 mu. In 2020, he started a cooperative to buy more than 100 tonnes of plums annually. Kurban Hupur said that with government support, he established a cooperative with direct contact with buyers, and there have been several long-term partners from provinces like Zhejiang in the east and Guangdong in the south. As more and more plum growers have begun to focus on quality, the fruit produced here has become increasingly popular. Businessmen from all over China flock to Payzawat every year to place orders even before the plums are ripe. Nowadays, plums from Payzawat are also exported to Southeast Asia and Central Asia. This August, Payzawat plums were transported to the southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen by cold chain transport and then to Malaysia by sea. The plum planting area in Payzawat County has reached 450,000 mu, with the total output value estimated at 4.5 billion yuan (about 643 million U.S. dollars) annually. "New technologies and large enterprises have gathered in our small county, making our plums more and more famous," said Kurban Hupur. "I'm earning more, which improves our lives and gives my family more opportunities to go out and see the outside world." This aerial photo taken on Sept. 2, 2023 shows a plum industry park built with the assistance of south China's Guangdong Province in Payzawat, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Ding Lei) Workers sort out plums on a smart operating line at a plum industry park in Payzawat, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Aug. 30, 2023. (Xinhua/Ding Lei) Aiztiali Yimam checks fresh-storage facilities of Doowin Goodies Pilot Plant, an agro-tech company, in Payzawat, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Sept. 2, 2023. (Xinhua/Ding Lei) This photo taken on Sept. 2, 2023 shows plum products displayed at a plum industry park in Payzawat, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Ding Lei) ULAN BATOR, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia will start building a metro line here in 2024 to address traffic congestion in the capital, a senior Mongolian official said Wednesday. "For the first time, the government made a decision to build a metro line in the capital, Ulan Bator," Borkhuu Delgersaikhan, a cabinet member and chair of the National Committee on the Reduction of Traffic Congestion in Ulan Bator, told a press conference after a regular government meeting. The construction of the 22.3-kilometer-long metro line from the east to the west of the capital city is set to begin in May next year and is expected to be completed in 2027, he said. For many years, traffic congestion has been a major pressing issue in Ulan Bator. The city, which was originally built to have 500,000 residents, is now home to around half of the country's population of 3.4 million. Currently, buses are the most popular means of public transport in the Mongolian capital. ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) on Tuesday called on African countries to embrace digitization, enhanced intra-Africa trade and better land-policy systems to address the demands of rapid population growth and urbanization in Africa. "With population growth and rapid urbanization, the food industry will continue to grow in the coming years. Investing in the capacity of farmers to increase production will be vital," said Claver Gatete, Executive Secretary of the UNECA, in a statement at the fifth edition of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa (CLPA). On the theme of "Promoting Sustainable Land Governance in Africa for Accelerating Implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA)," the high-level conference runs from Nov. 21-24 at the African Union (AU) headquarters in the Ethiopian capital. The UNECA chief underscored the importance of investing in research institutions to develop models of appropriate and sustainable agro-processing, technological innovations and implementation of land and agriculture policies. "Inclusive digital technologies can support land and trade policy-making processes through data driven decision-making. They can identify opportunities for reform, job creation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and food needs," he said. The UNECA chief said the AfCFTA, if well implemented, holds the potential to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty, boost Africa's income by 450 billion U.S. dollars, while connecting 1.3 billion people. Noting that Africa is committed to agro-industrialization for value addition and economic diversification, he said the youth can "tap into the growing agriculture and agribusiness sector, projected to be 1 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030." The UNECA chief regarded sound land governance systems as essential to promoting secure access to land and creating an enabling environment for investments to unlock the productive capacities of Africa. "Good land governance will support agro-industrial parks, infrastructure and renewable energy, all needed ingredients for industrialization and trade," Gatete said. He further called for concerted efforts in seeking solutions that impact the livelihoods of youth, women and smallholder producers, which he said constitute Africa's largest private sector and an integral part of the continent's quest to find climate smart solutions. This conference is organized biennially by the African Land Policy Centre, which is a joint initiative of the UNECA, the AU, and the African Development Bank. Cars are pictured at the parking area of Qingdao Cruise Terminal in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Nov. 21, 2023. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) People prepare to board at the passenger transportation center of Qingdao Cruise Terminal in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Nov. 21, 2023. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) People visit the passenger transportation center of Qingdao Cruise Terminal in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Nov. 21, 2023. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) The Qingdao Cruise Terminal is pictured in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Nov. 21, 2023. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) This aerial photo taken on Nov. 21, 2023 shows the cruise ship "Mediterranea" docked at Qingdao Cruise Terminal in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) This aerial photo taken on Nov. 21, 2023 shows the cruise ship "Mediterranea" docked at Qingdao Cruise Terminal in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) This aerial photo taken on Nov. 21, 2023 shows the passenger transportation center of Qingdao Cruise Terminal in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) Qingdao Cruise Terminal is pictured in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Nov. 21, 2023. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) People walk past a billboard at the passenger transportation center of Qingdao Cruise Terminal in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, Nov. 21, 2023. Qingdao has been vigorously developing its cruise tourism service. As cruise voyages become increasingly frequent along with a climbing number of inbound tourists, they also contribute to the sustainable development of related sectors in the city. To date, Qingdao is connected by 40 international cruise lines to nearly 20 port cities. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng) BEIRUT, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Tuesday condemned the targeting of journalists and civilians in a recent Israeli strike on southern Lebanon. UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said in a statement that the UNIFIL was shocked and saddened to learn that a group of journalists was hit in south Lebanon, while extending condolences to the families and friends of those killed near Tayr Harfa. Tenenti emphasized that intentionally targeting journalists and civilians is a violation of international law that may amount to war crimes. "We continue to urge all parties to respect their safety and avoid striking areas where they may be hurt or killed," said Tenenti. Two journalists and one civilian were killed on Tuesday morning in Israeli attacks, the National News Agency (NNA) reported. Also on Tuesday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, who was in Belgium for a visit, said his country would file a complaint with the UN Security Council to call for the condemnation of "this heinous crime" of killing journalists, according to the NNA. The Lebanon-Israel border has been witnessing increased tension for over six weeks after Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets toward Shebaa Farms on Oct. 8 in support of the Hamas attacks on Israel the previous day. The rocket attacks prompted the Israeli forces to respond by firing heavy artillery toward several areas in southeastern Lebanon. GAZA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The al-Shifa hospital in Gaza on Wednesday began to evacuate dozens of patients and injuries to the south of the Strip, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said in a statement. The PRCS said 14 ambulances have arrived at the hospital to evacuate the patients. Kidney patients will be transferred to the Abu Yousef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, while the wounded will be taken to the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, both in the southern strip, according to the statement. On Wednesday, the Israeli army continued its operation at the al-Shifa complex, trapping 259 injured people and patients, along with at least 19 medical staff, said the Hamas-run health ministry, adding that the hospital is in severe shortage of water, electricity, and medical supplies. At present, the al-Shifa Hospital is no longer operational and is not receiving new patients, according to the health ministry. VIENNA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The ministerial meeting of the OPEC+ alliance originally planned for Sunday in Vienna has been postponed to Nov. 30, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said in a statement on Wednesday. The OPEC+ alliance, which comprises 13 OPEC member states and their 10 allies, is due to decide on their output targets at the upcoming ministerial meeting. Oil prices have slid since October amid concerns over economic growth and demand. Brent Crude dropped below 80 U.S. dollars a barrel on Wednesday, from this year's peak of over 90 dollars a barrel in September. However, in an oil market report published by OPEC in mid-November, the organization remained bullish on demand and slightly raised its forecast for this year's global oil demand growth to 2.46 million barrels per day (bpd). This was up 20,000 bpd from the previous month's estimate. OPEC said in the report that oil market fundamentals remain strong, and blamed speculators for the recent drop in crude prices. SOFIA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Bulgaria's five-month-old government led by Nikolai Denkov on Wednesday survived a second no-confidence motion filed by the opposition in the parliament. The motion was backed by 71 deputies, while 155 voted against it in the 240-member Parliament. The Revival party, the There Is Such People (ITN) party, and a coalition led by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) filed the no-trust motion on Nov. 8, accusing the government of inability to guarantee the national security and defense of the country. During the plenary debate, Kristian Vigenin, member of the parliamentary group "BSP for Bulgaria" and vice-president of the National Assembly, blamed the decisions of the Bulgarian government and the ruling majority in the field of security and defense of a possibility that serves "foreign economic and political interests" and is motivated by "personal political commitments to foreign countries." In response, Denkov said that on the issue of national security, a national consensus should have been sought, which had to be centered on the modernization of the Bulgarian armed forces and on the country's full inclusion into the "European and Euro-Atlantic structures." "All other actions, including this no-confidence motion, undermine our national security in a complex and risky external environment," he said. The first no-confidence motion against Denkov's government was demanded by the same parties on Oct. 5 because of the cabinet's alleged failure in the energy sector, and was backed by 71 deputies, while 143 voted against it. The Denkov cabinet took office on June 6 this year, enjoying the support of the GERB party, the We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB) bloc and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF). Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, meets with Papali'i Li'o Taeu Masipa'u, speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the Independent State of Samoa, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing) BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator Zhao Leji met with Papali'i Li'o Taeu Masipa'u, speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the Independent State of Samoa, on Wednesday. Zhao, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, said Samoa was one of the first Pacific Island countries to establish diplomatic ties with China. China is willing to strengthen political mutual trust and mutual support, expand mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields, and enhance mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples, Zhao said. Zhao said the NPC of China is ready to work with the Legislative Assembly of the Independent State of Samoa to give full play to the functions of legislative bodies, and exchange experience in legislation and supervision to contribute to jointly building the Belt and Road and expanding cooperation in various fields. China stands ready to continue strengthening cooperation with Pacific Island countries for common development, Zhao added. Papali'i said Samoa adheres firmly to the one-China principle, adding that Samoa has benefited significantly from jointly building the Belt and Road. He said the legislative assembly is willing to strengthen exchanges with the NPC of China and make unremitting efforts to promote bilateral cooperation. Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, meets with Papali'i Li'o Taeu Masipa'u, speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the Independent State of Samoa, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing) GAZA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said on Wednesday that it has reached a four-day ceasefire agreement with Israel under a Qatari-Egyptian mediation after 46 days of bloody conflict in the besieged coastal enclave. BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Eight members of the Iraqi paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces were killed and four others were wounded on Wednesday by U.S. airstrikes near the Iraqi capital Baghdad. A statement by the Hashd Shaabi said that at 2:30 a.m. (2330 GMT on Tuesday), the U.S. aircraft attacked positions of the Hashd Shaabi forces in the Jurf al-Nasr area, south of Baghdad, leaving eight of its fighters killed and wounding four others. "We affirm our strong condemnation of this hostile act, which represents a blatant violation of Iraq's sovereignty," the statement said. Meanwhile, the U.S. Central Command said in a statement that the U.S. aircraft conducted precision strikes in Iraq in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups. A statement by the media office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani said the U.S. airstrikes constitute a clear violation of the coalition's mission which is to fight the Islamic State militants on Iraqi soil. The latest U.S. airstrikes came after the Iraqi armed group "Islamic Resistance in Iraq," an umbrella body for Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, claimed responsibility for carrying out a series of rocket and drone attacks on military bases housing U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria. The attacks by the armed group are believed to be part of a series of retaliatory measures amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza. BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- China hopes all parties relevant to the Korean Peninsula issues can be cool-headed and exercise self-restraint, and China will continue to play a constructive role in facilitating the political settlement of the issues, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Wednesday. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) announced its success in putting a reconnaissance satellite in orbit on Tuesday. The United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea said they will take strong measures in response as the satellite was launched with ballistic missile technology, which they said violated relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council. Mao told a press briefing that China noted the DPRK's announcement and the reaction of relevant parties. She said the situation on the Korean Peninsula has come to where it stands today for a reason. It is in the common interests of all regional countries to maintain peace and stability on the peninsula, and to promote the political settlement of the peninsula issues, Mao said. She said it is hoped that relevant sides can be cool-headed and exercise self-restraint, follow a dual-track approach, and take phased, synchronized steps. All parties should strive for a political settlement and address each other's reasonable concerns in a balanced way through meaningful dialogue, she said. GAZA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas senior official told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the ceasefire in Gaza will begin Thursday at 10:00 a.m. local time (0800 GMT). A Palestinian source, who requested to remain anonymous, confirmed to Xinhua that "the news is true." Abu Marzouk said the majority of the 50 captives to be released during the ceasefire are foreign nationals. Sixty-one patients from the Gaza Strip, accompanied by 49 relatives, arrived in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Monday to receive medical treatment, said Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca. BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese commercial space company GalaxySpace is developing a new-generation communication satellite to support broadband communication of mobile phones directly connected to satellites, according to the Science and Technology Daily on Wednesday. The satellite has a carpet-shaped design, GalaxySpace founder and CEO Xu Ming said this week at the Aerospace Information Industry International Ecosystem Event 2023 in southwest China's Chongqing. Both communication antennae and solar panels will be installed on the satellite, said Xu, noting that it is a form of phased array antenna and solar wing integrated communication satellite. The satellite will feature a strong power system to facilitate signal transmission. At present, the construction of space infrastructure shows a trend of low-orbit, large-scale and low-cost development, which has created opportunities for commercial space companies. The event in Chongqing, held on Nov. 20 and 21, attracted 434 enterprises and 67 institutions from both home and abroad to discuss the development of the aerospace information industry. SEOUL, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korea decided Wednesday to partially suspend the military agreement with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that was reached after the 2018 inter-Korean summit. The partially suspended inter-Korean military pact was approved during an extraordinary cabinet meeting presided over by South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo in Seoul. With the suspended effectiveness, South Korea will restore reconnaissance and surveillance operations against the DPRK around the Military Demarcation Line dividing the two Koreas, said Han, adding that such a measure is vital for national security. In April 2018, then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un met in the village of Panmunjom and signed the Panmunjom Declaration, followed by a joint declaration inked in Pyongyang in September 2018. The military agreement, an annex to the joint declaration, was signed on Sept. 19, 2018, to stop all hostile military acts and establish buffer zones across the inter-Korean border on the ground, at sea and in the air. LANZHOU, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Northwest China's Gansu Province saw its foreign trade with ASEAN member countries grow 70.2 percent year on year to 7.65 billion yuan (about 1.07 billion U.S. dollars) from January to October this year, according to the local customs bureau. In the first 10 months, the total value of Gansu's foreign trade was 41.06 billion yuan. The province's exports rose 5.7 percent year on year to 10.27 billion yuan, and its imports totaled 30.79 billion yuan. During the period, Gansu's trade with the Belt and Road Initiative participating countries accounted for 73.8 percent of its total trade volume, climbing to 30.32 billion yuan. Meanwhile, its trade with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership member countries came in at 11.26 billion yuan, posting a year-on-year growth of 6.3 percent. Mechanical and electrical products, and agricultural products were Gansu's major export items, with export volumes growing 3.7 percent and 21.8 percent year on year, respectively, according to the customs office. LIMA, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Peruvian President Dina Boluarte on Tuesday appointed Victor Torres Falcon as interior minister, replacing Vicente Romero Fernandez, who resigned last week after being censured by Congress. Torres Falcon is a retired national police general, and held different positions such as head of the Special Unified Command of Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro River Valley. Noting that the new minister has "a difficult task" ahead, Boluarte said she is certain he will know "how to respond to the level that the citizenry and all of Peru demands." His predecessor Romero was censured by Congress on Nov. 15 for alleged "incapacity and lack of leadership to fight crime." Criticism against Romero was fueled by the lack of results of a state of emergency declared by the government in September to tackle crime in four districts of the Lima metropolitan area and seven in the northern department of Piura. CHONGQING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Global efforts should be coordinated to develop the aerospace information industry with enhanced trust and synergy among all parties, said industry insiders at a relevant event held in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. Themed "One Starry Sky, One Shared Future," the Mingyue Lake Aerospace Information Industry International Ecosystem Event 2023 gathered more than 1,000 representatives from China's local governments, global enterprises in the aerospace information industrial chain, and research institutions from home and abroad. Collaboration should strengthen within the aerospace information industry to build an industrial ecosystem for space information applications, said Shi Hongwei, vice president of the First Research Institute of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, during the event held from Monday to Tuesday. Integration into local development strategies is crucial to achieving synergistic development of the space information industry, Shi noted. Christian Feichtinger, executive director of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), said that the IAF and China share a "very rich" history of connection and cooperation. "For many years, we have been fruitfully cooperating," he said, noting the federation's pleasure in witnessing the significant progress that China has made in space in recent years. The event saw the establishment of the International Alliance of Aerospace Information Industry, which consists of global universities, enterprises, investment organizations, and research institutions and looks to build a coordination platform within the industry. Ten investment institutions jointly initiated a 100-billion yuan (about 14.03 billion U.S. dollars) community fund during the event. The fund will invest in aerospace information infrastructure and key enterprises. Also, during the event, Chongqing released 15 aerospace information application scenarios to serve the city's transportation, emergency response, and public security, among others. Mourners carry the body of a Palestinian killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers during his funeral at a refugee camp near Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, on Nov. 22, 2023. Seven Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids in the northern West Bank on Wednesday, said the Palestinian health ministry. Six of the victims were from the Tulkarm refugee camp, and one near the Qalqilya city, said the ministry. (Photo by Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua) RAMALLAH, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Seven Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids in the northern West Bank on Wednesday, said the Palestinian health ministry. Six of the victims were from the Tulkarm refugee camp, and one near the Qalqilya city, said the ministry. Palestinian sources said the Israeli forces carried out a drone attack in the Tulkarm camp Wednesday morning, killing six Palestinians. The forces also stormed the camp with dozens of military vehicles and an armored bulldozer demolishing infrastructure and properties in the camp, said the sources. Meanwhile, in the town of Azzun near Qalqilya, a Palestinian youth succumbed to his injuries from live bullets during confrontations with the Israeli army. The Israeli raids on Wednesday bring the total death toll of Palestinians across the West Bank to 225 since Oct. 7, when the Hamas-Israel conflict broke out, the health ministry said. Mourners carry the body of a Palestinian killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers during his funeral at a refugee camp near Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, on Nov. 22, 2023. Seven Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids in the northern West Bank on Wednesday, said the Palestinian health ministry. Six of the victims were from the Tulkarm refugee camp, and one near the Qalqilya city, said the ministry. (Photo by Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua) Mourners carry the body of a Palestinian killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers during his funeral at a refugee camp near Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, on Nov. 22, 2023. Seven Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids in the northern West Bank on Wednesday, said the Palestinian health ministry. Six of the victims were from the Tulkarm refugee camp, and one near the Qalqilya city, said the ministry. (Photo by Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua) Mourners carry the body of a Palestinian killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers during his funeral at a refugee camp near Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, on Nov. 22, 2023. Seven Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids in the northern West Bank on Wednesday, said the Palestinian health ministry. Six of the victims were from the Tulkarm refugee camp, and one near the Qalqilya city, said the ministry. (Photo by Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua) ABUJA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least 17 people were killed and 206 others sustained varying degrees of injuries in a road crash Tuesday involving an overloaded truck in Nigeria's north-central state of Niger, police said Wednesday. The driver of the truck, laden with goods and passengers beyond its capacity, lost control of the vehicle on a busy expressway in the Magama local government area, Bisi Kazeem, the national spokesperson for the Federal Road Safety Corps, said in a statement sent to Xinhua. Emergency workers rushed to the scene to attend to the injured and retrieve the bodies of those who lost their lives, Kazeem said, adding that a total of 229 people were involved in the crash. Citing a preliminary investigation by the traffic police, the official attributed the crash to a speed violation. The injured were rushed to a government hospital for treatment, he said, adding the remains of the deceased victims were deposited in the mortuary of the same hospital. Deadly road accidents are frequently reported in Nigeria, often caused by overloading, bad road conditions, and reckless driving. Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with 150 representatives of Hong Kong and Macao youths that have visited the mainland via an exchange program and has talks with them at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Shen Hong) BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang on Wednesday met with 150 representatives of Hong Kong and Macao youths that have visited the mainland via an exchange program and had talks with them. Ding, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, called on the youths to profoundly study the history of the country and the Chinese nation to cultivate patriotism among their fellow youngsters. He added that youths from Hong Kong and Macao should also safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests and contribute to the steady implementation of the "one country, two systems" principle. "As long as youngsters in Hong Kong and Macao realize sound development, Hong Kong and Macao will develop well, and so will the entire country," said Ding. Ding encouraged them to actively integrate themselves into the country's development and realize their dreams with solid efforts in the process. Youths attending the meeting spoke of their experience during the tours, vowing to actively participate in the country's development and make contributions to China's national rejuvenation. The exchange program has brought 165,000 youngsters from Hong Kong and Macao to the mainland this year. Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with 150 representatives of Hong Kong and Macao youths that have visited the mainland via an exchange program and has talks with them at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Shen Hong) HEFEI, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Bao Zheng, also known as Bao Gong, is a household name in China for his unwavering commitment to justice, as well as his incorruptibility and dedication to upholding the rule of law. The influence of the legendary judge, who lived from 999 to 1062, can still be seen in China today, particularly in his home province of Anhui in east China. Born in Hefei, the capital of Anhui, Bao is considered one of the most important Chinese sages. People commonly refer to him as "Justice Bao," thanks to his expert handling of criminal cases, his fearlessness in giving straightforward advice, and his deep resentment of evil deeds. Folk tales, traditional operas, films and television series through history have disseminated his legend. Lectures on the life and principles of the renowned judge are organized regularly in Bao Gong Park in Hefei, where Bao's tomb is located. These lectures serve to educate the public -- especially civil servants -- on the values of righteousness and the importance of a clean government. The lectures, which are part of courses on clean and ethical culture, are a notable initiative launched by Hefei's discipline inspection commission. "I find myself on this special platform talking about the stories of Bao Gong almost every month," said Pei Bin, a professor at the Party school of the Hefei Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China. Historical records note that before Bao's time in office, individuals were unable to file lawsuits directly with government. Bao implemented a crucial reform upon assuming office in Bianjing, known today as Kaifeng, in Henan Province. He revised the existing law, enabling people to submit information and statements for each case directly. This change effectively prevented officials from accepting bribes and falsifying information related to lawsuits. During his administration, the frequent flooding of the Huimin River within the city of Bianjing was a significant problem, bringing hardship to the public. With no fear of those in power or the aristocracy, he vigorously dismantled enclosures and cleared waterways to alleviate these struggles. His actions have become inspiring tales of benevolence and courage. Initially, the emperor wanted to bestow half of Luzhou City, which is now known as Hefei, upon Bao for his contributions to the country, but Bao repeatedly declined this offer. In the end, the emperor's insistence won out and Bao agreed to accept a portion of the city's defensive moat. People were puzzled by his decision, but Bao had his own considerations. He believed that if his descendants ever failed to obtain official positions through imperial civil service examinations, they could rely on his section of the river to make a living by raising fish and growing lotus roots. In the year 1062, Bao passed away due to illness. In his will, he stated that if his descendants were to engage in corruption, embezzlement or other wrongful acts while serving in government positions, they would not be allowed to return to their ancestral home, nor would they be allowed to be buried in the family graveyard. Bao now rests eternally by the Baohe River in Hefei, which was named after him. Bao Gong Park was established in his memory, welcoming over 1 million visitors annually, including descendants of the Bao family from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, as well as other countries like Singapore and Thailand, along with followers of Bao's principles and ideals. "Bao Gong has become the 'spokesperson' for cultural integrity in our city. The outstanding Chinese moral qualities of loyalty, filial piety, integrity and love are integrated into our economic, social and cultural development, as well as in the entire process of fighting corruption and advocating for integrity," Pei said. Fairness and justice are universal values shared by all humanity. Bao Gong represents not only China's commitment to these values but also serves as a symbol of these values for the world. Stories and the spirit of Bao have and will continue to inspire movies, operas, books and more. Since 2010, a series of six comic books featuring Bao Gong have been published in France, the result of a collaboration between a Chinese cartoonist and a French scriptwriter. The comics quickly became a hit in Europe and were later translated into a number of languages, including Dutch, Italian, English and German. "The tales of Bao Gong are seemingly boundless, and the essence of his character is destined to endure eternally," Pei said. DOHA, Nov.22 (Xinhua) -- Qatar announced on Wednesday that Hamas and Israel have reached an agreement for a humanitarian pause, lasting four days, with the effective date to be announced within 24 hours. Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing) BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin in Beijing on Wednesday. Xi said that China and Russia, each other's largest neighbors and both permanent members of the UN Security Council, share extensive common interests. "This year, President Putin and I had face-to-face in-depth exchanges twice and reached a lot of new consensus on deepening the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination and practical cooperation in various fields," said Xi. Noting that next year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of China-Russia diplomatic ties, Xi said China is ready to work with Russia to deepen bilateral relations featuring permanent good-neighborly friendship, comprehensive strategic coordination and mutually beneficial cooperation to inject new impetus into the development of the two countries and contribute to the prosperity and stability of the world. Xi stressed that strengthening cooperation between legislative bodies plays an important role in ensuring the steady and long-term development of China-Russia relations. Xi expressed his hope that the Russian State Duma and the National People's Congress of China will strengthen exchanges of legislative experience and give full play to the role of special committees and friendship groups of the two legislatures to provide better legal support for bilateral cooperation. He called on the two legislatures to ensure the synergy of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Eurasian Economic Union, and deepen communication and coordination in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS, G20 and other multilateral platforms. Volodin said that under the strategic guidance of President Xi and President Putin, Russia-China relations have reached the best level in history, noting that all parties in the Russian State Duma have a high degree of consensus on developing friendly relations with China. Russia firmly pursues the one-China policy and firmly supports China in safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia is willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation between the legislatures and between the political parties of the two countries, actively implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, deepen friendship and mutual trust between the two peoples, said Volodin. Wang Yi, Peng Qinghua attended the meeting. Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan) People conduct rescue work among the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on Nov. 22, 2023. Israel and the Gaza-ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed Wednesday a cease-fire agreement in the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip for four days, to allow for more aid delivery to Gaza as well as the exchange of Israeli hostages held by the armed Palestinian faction and Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel. (Photo by Khaled Omar/Xinhua) GAZA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Israel and the Gaza-ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed Wednesday a cease-fire agreement in the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip for four days, to allow for more aid delivery to Gaza as well as the exchange of Israeli hostages held by the armed Palestinian faction and Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel. The humanitarian pause, mediated by joint Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. efforts, would enable the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza, mainly children and women and most are foreign nationals, in exchange for about 150 female and teenage Palestinians jailed in Israel, the Israeli presidency and a top Hamas official revealed separately. Hamas politburo member Moussa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the cease-fire in Gaza will begin at 10:00 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) on Thursday. The hostages will be released in smaller groups over a span of four days, during which "there will be a pause in the fighting," said the statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, adding that the release of every additional 10 hostages will result in one additional day in the pause. A Hamas source told Xinhua that Hamas and Israel were still finalizing on Wednesday night their respective swap list that would be handed to each other. According to the source, the two sides would pause fighting simultaneously when the time comes, and Hamas would send the first batch of hostages to Red Cross personnel. The latter would then transfer them onward to Israel after the Israeli side confirmed their identities, after which the Israeli side would release a batch of Palestinian prisoners to their residences in the West Bank. Under the agreement, more truckloads of humanitarian aid, medicine, and fuel will be allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Israel would also pause aerial surveillance on Gaza for six hours starting 10 a.m. local time daily. Had the cease-fire and swap deal been commenced, it would be the first step to suspend hostilities between the two sides since the start of the conflict. Israeli newspaper Times of Israel reported earlier in the day that the cease-fire might extend for 10 days to allow for the release of up to 300 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 100 Israeli hostages from Gaza. Responding to the list circulated among Israeli media, Thaer Shriteh, spokesman for the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said the list includes prisoners with lengthy sentences and those who have spent years in Israeli prisons. Palestinian sources familiar with the affairs told Xinhua that the published list includes 221 names from the West Bank, 74 from Jerusalem, and five from Gaza, and among them 47 were affiliated with Hamas. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO leadership welcomed the humanitarian cease-fire deal and appreciated the Qatari and Egyptian efforts in this regard, Hussein Al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee said in a statement on Wednesday. He added, "We renew the call for a comprehensive halt to the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, the entry of humanitarian aid, and the implementation of a political solution based on international legitimacy leading to ending the occupation and achieving freedom, independence, and sovereignty for the Palestinian people." Israel has 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. A total of 14,532 Palestinians have died, more than 35,000 others were injured since the start of the current Israel-Hamas conflict, the Hamas-run government media office said Wednesday. People conduct rescue work among the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on Nov. 22, 2023. Israel and the Gaza-ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed Wednesday a cease-fire agreement in the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip for four days, to allow for more aid delivery to Gaza as well as the exchange of Israeli hostages held by the armed Palestinian faction and Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel. (Photo by Khaled Omar/Xinhua) People conduct rescue work among the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on Nov. 22, 2023. Israel and the Gaza-ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed Wednesday a cease-fire agreement in the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip for four days, to allow for more aid delivery to Gaza as well as the exchange of Israeli hostages held by the armed Palestinian faction and Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel. (Photo by Khaled Omar/Xinhua) People conduct rescue work among the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on Nov. 22, 2023. Israel and the Gaza-ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed Wednesday a cease-fire agreement in the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip for four days, to allow for more aid delivery to Gaza as well as the exchange of Israeli hostages held by the armed Palestinian faction and Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel. (Photo by Khaled Omar/Xinhua) People conduct rescue work among the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on Nov. 22, 2023. Israel and the Gaza-ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed Wednesday a cease-fire agreement in the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip for four days, to allow for more aid delivery to Gaza as well as the exchange of Israeli hostages held by the armed Palestinian faction and Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel. (Photo by Khaled Omar/Xinhua) People conduct rescue work among the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on Nov. 22, 2023. Israel and the Gaza-ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed Wednesday a cease-fire agreement in the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip for four days, to allow for more aid delivery to Gaza as well as the exchange of Israeli hostages held by the armed Palestinian faction and Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel. (Photo by Khaled Omar/Xinhua) People conduct rescue work among the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, on Nov. 22, 2023. Israel and the Gaza-ruling Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) confirmed Wednesday a cease-fire agreement in the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip for four days, to allow for more aid delivery to Gaza as well as the exchange of Israeli hostages held by the armed Palestinian faction and Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel. (Photo by Khaled Omar/Xinhua) JERUSALEM, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Israel announced on Wednesday that it will resume its offensive in the Gaza Strip immediately after the implementation of the newly clinched truce deal to release hostages. "We are at war with Hamas, a war that was launched with the Oct. 7 Hamas' massacre and that will continue," said Eylon Levy, spokesperson for the Israeli government, during a press conference. Levy said that the war will "immediately" resume after the full implementation of the truce deal and the release of the hostages planned under the agreement. Israeli and Hamas officials were still working on Wednesday night to finalize the last details of a temporary truce deal. The four-day truce is set to come into effect on Thursday, but as of Wednesday night, the exact hour for the commencement of the ceasefire has not been officially announced. Moussa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas senior official told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the cease-fire in Gaza will begin Thursday at 10:00 a.m. local time (0800 GMT). Additionally, specific details regarding the release of at least 50 children and women held by Hamas militants in Gaza, as well as at least 150 Palestinian women and teenage prisoners in Israeli custody, were not confirmed. Head of Israel's National Security Council Tzachi Hanegbi confirmed in a statement that talks on the specific details of the deal were still ongoing. "The (hostage) release will begin according to the original agreement, and not before Friday," he said. Chief of Israel's intelligence agency Mossad, David Barnea, traveled to Qatar, a country that does not have official ties with Israel, for talks on the details of the deal, according to a statement released by the Israeli government. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Israeli government voted to accept the Qatar-mediated deal with Hamas for hostage release and a temporary cease-fire. During the truce, both Israel and Hamas will halt the fighting. The conflict has seen massive destruction in Gaza, including whole neighborhoods razed by Israeli strikes, and the killing of at least 14,532 people, mostly civilians, according to official Palestinian figures. According to Israeli figures, about 1,200 people were killed and about 240 others were held as hostages during the Hamas attacks on southern Israel that triggered the conflict. Levy said that each day during the cease-fire, Israel and Hamas would exchange lists of hostages and prisoners to be released on the next day. The hostages would be transferred to the Red Cross and then to Israeli forces. Later, Palestinian prisoners would be released. The first group of hostages will include 8-13 people, according to the Hebrew-language Ha'aretz newspaper. Levy said they would be taken first for a medical checkup. For each additional 10 hostages that Hamas would release, Israel would offer an additional day of ceasefire, said Levy. Israeli media reported that 200-300 truckloads of fuel and aid would enter Gaza daily. Levy said that during the truce, Israel would put no constraint on the entry of humanitarian aid into the coastal enclave, which Israel cut off from electricity, fuel, food, and water since the beginning of the conflict. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the deal in a statement, saying it was "an important step in the right direction, but much more needs to be done to end the suffering." Chinese Premier Li Qiang attends the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit and delivers a speech at the meeting, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing) BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Wednesday attended and delivered a speech at the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit in Beijing. Noting the road to global economic recovery is still difficult, Li said China stands ready to work with all parties to uphold the original aspiration of cooperation, respond to the call of the times, and forge ahead to create a better future for humanity. Li called on G20 members to give high priority to development cooperation and oppose the politicization of development issues. The premier said that more practical measures should be taken to implement the consensus reached at the 18th G20 Summit in New Delhi. "It is necessary to coordinate and cooperate more closely, revitalize multilateralism, continue to strengthen macro policy cooperation, and pay more attention to the concerns of developing countries in the reform of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund," Li said. Noting China has demonstrated through practical actions its firm determination to promote high-level opening up and to share development opportunities with the world, Li said China will continue to work with all parties in an open and inclusive manner to make greater contribution to world economic recovery and global development and prosperity. Leaders of G20 members, leaders of guest countries, and heads of relevant international organizations attended the meeting. Chinese Premier Li Qiang attends the Virtual G20 Leaders' Summit and delivers a speech at the meeting, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan) ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has called for concerted efforts to tackle the threat of antimicrobial resistance in Africa. The call came as the Africa CDC, a specialized healthcare agency of the African Union (AU), joins global partners to mark the World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2023, which runs from Nov. 18 to 24 in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, the Africa CDC said in a statement on Monday. According to the Africa CDC, antimicrobial resistance jeopardizes the effectiveness of essential medicines, impacting the treatment of infections in both humans and animals. "In Africa, where antimicrobial resistance has been identified as a more significant challenge than HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, the urgency to address this issue is paramount," it said. On the theme of "Preventing Antimicrobial Resistance Together," the event advocates for collaboration across sectors to preserve the efficacy of these critical medicines. As part of the week-long activities, the Africa CDC, in collaboration with partners, reiterated its commitment to championing increased resources dedicated to tackling antimicrobial resistance on the continent. The healthcare agency underscored the importance of global solidarity and collective efforts to curb the spread of drug-resistant infections. It further called on AU members and regional economic communities to develop policies and national programs to improve surveillance, delay emergence, limit transmission and mitigate harm from antimicrobial-resistant organisms. ADDIS ABABA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The African continent needs to invest in digital infrastructure and skills development so as to be at the forefront of advancements in digital technologies, a senior African Union (AU) official has said. AU Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy Amani Abou-Zeid called on public and private-sector actors in Africa to embrace the latest advancements in digital technology to promote the continent's socio-economic development. She made the call ahead of the AU's biennial ministerial meeting aiming at driving Africa's digital agenda forward, which will be held later this week. "Africa must and will be at the forefront of shaping how technologies are developed and deployed to meet the needs of the people. This will require investments in digital infrastructure, skills development, entrepreneurship, and research and development," an AU statement issued Tuesday quoted Abou-Zeid as saying. She said that any digital transformation strategy in Africa must start with the people and communities it aims to serve. "Technology should augment human capabilities, not replace them," Abou-Zeid said. "Our focus is on using technology to solve real problems that Africans face, from access to education and health services to financial inclusion." Digital technologies like mobile money, e-commerce, and e-learning have the potential to create new opportunities if developed with the needs of African users in mind, she said. The draft Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy seeks to position Africa at the forefront of harnessing artificial intelligence for socioeconomic development ethically and inclusively, Abou-Zeid said. "By adopting a human-centric approach to AI, the strategy aims to leverage the opportunities that emerging technologies offer while mitigating potential risks and negative impacts," she said. CAIRO, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Wednesday welcomed the success of the joint Egyptian mediation efforts with Qatar and the United States for a ceasefire in Gaza. "The joint mediation efforts succeeded in reaching a deal for the implementation of a humanitarian truce in the Gaza Strip and the exchange of prisoners from both sides," said the Egyptian president in a statement published on his official Facebook page. The president stressed the commitment to the continuation of the Egyptian efforts exerted to reach a final and sustainable solution for achieving justice, imposing peace, and guaranteeing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian People. Israel and Hamas on Wednesday confirmed their agreement on a proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza. In exchange for Hamas to release hostages, the Israeli side agreed to release Palestinian prisoners and allow more humanitarian aid to enter the besieged enclave, said the Israeli government in a statement. Under the deal, at least 50 hostages, mainly children and women, would be freed for the release of about 150 female and teen Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, said the statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office. Later in the day, the Qatari Foreign Ministry confirmed the ceasefire agreement, which was jointly mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, adding that the starting time of the pause will be announced within the next 24 hours. Since the new round of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict erupted on Oct. 7, Egypt and Qatar have been making efforts to mediate between the warring parties, secure the release of hostages held by Hamas, and de-escalate the situation in Gaza. LUSAKA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least 33 people were arrested by joint security agencies in northern Zambia's Mpika district during a raid on illegal mining activities, the police said on Tuesday. The joint operation was conducted between Sunday and Tuesday by officers from the police, Immigration Department and the Drug Enforcement Commission, and was meant to stop illegal mining currently taking place in the area and apprehend illegal immigrants. The illegal miners became unruly as they attempted to revolt against police presence, Rae Hamoonga, the Zambia Police Spokesperson, said in a statement. Three were illegal immigrants among those arrested during the joint operation, he added. The police spokesperson said there was no loss of life, injuries or damage to police equipment, and the police managed to confiscate 150 explosives and 23 explosives from one illegal miner. TRIPOLI, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, on Tuesday urged the Libyan authorities to protect the rights of children to education, healthcare and safety. Bathily made the call during an event held in the capital Tripoli to honor children rights champions from across Libya. "I commended the remarkable contributions of these young champions, who tirelessly advocate for the protection of child rights in their communities. I am impressed with their active engagement for national reconciliation, peace and stability in a united Libya," Bathily said. "Libyan authorities and political leaders should listen to the concerns and demands of the children, the real future of the country," he said, urging the protection of children's rights to education, healthcare, safety and participation. Due to years of armed conflict and political instability, Libyan authorities have been struggling to provide basic services for the people, mainly proper education and healthcare. MONROVIA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Liberian police said Wednesday the number of people killed after a speeding car hit crowds celebrating President-elect Joseph Boakai's election win has risen to three and that a suspect connected to the incident has been arrested. The incident, which took place late Monday at the headquarters of Boakai's Unity Party in Monrovia, the capital, was initially reported to have left two people dead and 18 others injured. It happened just hours after the National Elections Commission declared the former vice president as winner of the presidential runoff in the West African country. Later, national police spokesman Moses Carter told the media that 25 people were injured in the incident. Carter said a suspected driver of the vehicle, identified as Lawrence Williams, is being questioned. Preliminary police investigation indicated that the speeding vehicle allegedly driven by Williams plowed into the crowd of jubilant supporters, resulting in the tragic loss of lives and causing panic and chaos at the event. Local media reported that the suspected driver of the vehicle immediately set it ablaze and ran toward a waiting motorcycle. "The public can be assured that this investigation will reach a logical conclusion where justice will be served," Carter told the media. The president-elect, Boakai, has expressed condolences to the families of the victims. In a statement issued after he visited some of the victims in hospital, Boakai "expressed deep sorrow" and called for a thorough and transparent investigation into the incident. CAIRO, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Egypt-China Friendship Association celebrated here on Wednesday the 65th anniversary of its establishment with a gathering of Egyptian and Chinese officials, diplomats, experts, businessmen, and other guests. Held in the Abdeen Palace in the Egyptian capital Cairo, the celebration highlighted the distinguished ties between Egypt and China throughout history and in recent years. Yang Wanming, head of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), said his association would focus on promoting cultural exchange and mutual learning between the Chinese and the Egyptian peoples in the coming years. "CPAFFC is willing to cooperate with the Egyptian side in the Egypt-China Friendship Association to implement the youth exchange program within the framework of the BRICS mechanism, so that young people would contribute to the common development of China and Egypt," he said. Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang hailed the role played by the Egypt-China Friendship Association in promoting friendship between the two countries. Egypt's Minister of Civil Aviation Mohamed Abbas Helmy said the ancient civilizations of Egypt and China served as "a solid foundation" for the development of their bilateral relations and the expansion of their cooperation and partnership in various fields. Since its establishment in 1958, the Egypt-China Friendship Association has been playing an important role in enhancing cooperation between the two countries by holding various activities, including seminars, symposiums, and ceremonies. SEOUL, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The aerospace agency of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Wednesday that the reconnaissance satellite "Malligyong-1" will formally start its mission from Dec. 1 after a seven-to-10-day fine-tuning process, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. The National Aerospace Technology Administration made the announcement during a visit by Kim Jong Un, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs of the DPRK, to Pyongyang General Control Center of the aerospace agency, according to the KCNA report. Noting that the country has finally developed and possessed aerospace reconnaissance capability by its own efforts and technologies, the DPRK top leader lauded the satellite launch as "a great event" in developing the DPRK armed forces and coping with the evolving military situation in the region, said the report. Kim stressed the need to send into orbit more reconnaissance satellites of various kinds and operate them in a combined and practical manner, in order to "provide the DPRK armed forces with abundant valuable real-time information about the enemy and further promote their responsive posture," it added. The DPRK successfully launched a space rocket and sent the "Malligyong-1" into orbit late Tuesday, the KCNA reported earlier Wednesday. JAKARTA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- China's information and communications technology infrastructure provider Huawei supports Indonesia's telecommunications company Telkomsel in expanding its big data and fixed-mobile convergence services. At the signing of an agreement on Wednesday in Jakarta, Telkomsel's Director of Information Technology Bharat Alva said the support is in a multi-cloud strategy, as well as lakehouse technology and 'storage and compute decoupling' architecture which allows it to cut operating costs. "We were impressed to see the solutions that Huawei Cloud brought to us and are very excited to see what can be achieved through our cooperation," Alva said. This collaboration aims to improve the communication and network experience for more than 153.3 million customers throughout Indonesia, Alva added. "Huawei Cloud aims to become a trustworthy foundation for enterprises in digital transformation, and through local data centers, local teams, and local enterprise support services, we are bringing innovative technology and premium service with our enriched ecosystem to Indonesian customers," said CEO of Huawei Cloud Indonesia James Zhang. Telkomsel is Indonesia's leading digital telecommunications company, supported by more than 228,000 base transceiver stations and the latest 4G and 5G broadband networks. This photo taken on Nov. 21, 2023 shows a view of the General Tire Technology (Cambodia) factory in the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Located in southwest Cambodia, the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ), a joint venture between Chinese and Cambodian companies, has not only positively impacted on local people's lives, but also significantly contributed to the kingdom's economic growth.(Photo by Liao Hongqing/Xinhua) SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Located in southwest Cambodia, the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ), a joint venture between Chinese and Cambodian companies, has not only positively impacted on local people's lives, but also significantly contributed to the kingdom's economic growth. A landmark project under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the 11-sq-km special economic zone currently houses 175 factories from China, Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia and other regions, generating some 30,000 local jobs. Em Sreyda, a 24-year-old employee at the General Tire Technology (Cambodia) factory in the SSEZ, said working at the factory has allowed her to have both a good income and specific skills. "I like my job because there is no working pressure, and when we don't know how to do things, they (Chinese colleagues) always teach us," she told Xinhua on Tuesday. "Here, we can improve our Chinese language proficiency, and the wages are also decent. I earn 600 to 700 U.S. dollars per month," she added. Sreyda said the SSEZ is very important as it serves as a stable source of jobs for local residents. Say Udom, 22, a warehouse supervisor at the Jiangxi 3L Medical Products factory there, said his basic wage is 500 U.S. dollars per month, and it will be higher, with his overtime pay and bonus. "Working at the factory, I have a decent income, so I can support my family and save some money to buy things I like, and recently, I just bought a new motorcycle," he said. "With this job, my living conditions have improved much because the factory has offered us accommodation and food, and so I can reduce a lot of expenses," he added. Udom said the SSEZ is crucial to local workers as its factories have not only provided jobs, but also food and accommodation. "I would like to thank Chinese investors for investing in Cambodia, particularly in this special economic zone, because their investments have greatly helped improve our living conditions," he said. Yeak Chhit, a quality control team leader at the Jiangxi 3L Medical Products factory, said the job enables him to earn as much as over 700 U.S. dollars a month. "The job has much improved my living conditions," the 28-year-old told Xinhua. "Now I have money to buy any items I need." Situated some 20 kilometers northeast of the international deep-water Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, the SSEZ is the biggest industrial zone in size and occupancy in Cambodia. Ky Kheng, 38, a beverage and grocery seller inside the zone, said the SSEZ has transformed the former fishing village into a bustling town full of good infrastructure, gas stations, phone shops, barbershops, markets and restaurants. "I'm happy with the zone's development because sales here are much better than in other places, so my income is also high," he said. "This special economic zone has a lot of workers and factories, and my sales are pretty good." Kheng said the SSEZ has brought better lives to both local workers and residents living around the zone. Jiangxi 3L Medical Products factory's manager Chen Juan said the BRI has enabled economic benefits, personnel trainings, and good reputation for enterprises in the zone. "The BRI has significantly contributed to boosting our company's brand benefits. In the three aspects of economic benefits, personnel training, and reputation, our company has genuinely gained dividends from the Initiative," she told Xinhua. The SSEZ's president Chen Jiangang said the value of imports and exports passing through the zone rose to 2.7 billion U.S. dollars in the first 10 months of 2023, up 33 percent year-on-year. "The value of imports and exports through the SSEZ accounts for 7.13 percent of Cambodia's total trade turnover," he told Xinhua. "This achievement is quite amazing. It can be said that the investment of our enterprises in Cambodia has brought vitality to this once barren land, and it also provides a sense of achievement to the local people." Chen said that currently, on average a Cambodian worker employed in the industrial park can earn more than 300 U.S. dollars per month. Founded in 2008, the SSEZ is expected to accommodate up to 300 enterprises in coming years, generating up to 100,000 jobs. People work at the Jiangxi 3L Medical Products factory in the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) in Sihanoukville, Cambodia on Nov. 21, 2023. Located in southwest Cambodia, the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ), a joint venture between Chinese and Cambodian companies, has not only positively impacted on local people's lives, but also significantly contributed to the kingdom's economic growth. (Photo by Liao Hongqing/Xinhua) A man works at the General Tire Technology (Cambodia) factory in the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) in Sihanoukville, Cambodia on Nov. 21, 2023. Located in southwest Cambodia, the Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ), a joint venture between Chinese and Cambodian companies, has not only positively impacted on local people's lives, but also significantly contributed to the kingdom's economic growth. (Photo by Liao Hongqing/Xinhua) NEW DELHI, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- A top Indian army officer, Lieutenant General Rana Pratap Kalita, said the ongoing ethnic violence in the northeastern state of Manipur needs a political solution. Kalita, who is General Officer Commanding-In-Chief of Eastern Command, told the media in Guwahati on Tuesday that incidents of sporadic violence in Manipur continued due to sharp polarization between the two communities. "Because of the polarization between the two communities, Meiteis and Kuki, some sporadic incidents are taking place here and there, including yesterday's incident ... ultimately, there has to be a political solution to the problem," he said. According to Kalita, over 4,000 looted weapons are still in the hands of the people and are being used in incidents of violence. Kalita's remarks came amid a 48-hour shutdown in Manipur's Kangpokpi district to protest against Monday's killing of a policeman and his driver. The shutdown call given by the Committee on Tribal Unity accused Meitei insurgents of the killings. Markets remained closed and traffic stayed off the roads in the wake of the shutdown. Manipur has been on edge since May 3 when large-scale violence broke out in the state during a tribal protest over the inclusion of the non-tribal Meiteis community for a scheduled tribe status -- designated for disadvantaged socio-economic groups which gives them reservations in education and government jobs. The ethnic clashes between the majority Meitei group and the tribal Kuki minority have displaced 60,000. The mobs in the state resorted to vandalism and arson targeting houses and shops. As per figures released by police in mid-September, 175 people have been killed, 1,118 injured and 33 reported missing since May 3. So far efforts by the federal government to restore peace in the state have not yielded desired results. CHARIKAR, Afghanistan, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Police have arrested five drug smugglers and seized illegal drugs from their possession in east Afghanistan's Parwan province, Fazal Rahim Maskenyar, the spokesperson of the provincial police department, said Wednesday. In the operation, police seized 8 kilograms of hashish, 30 grams of heroin and some objects used in manufacturing heroin, the official said, adding further investigation is underway. In another development, recently, local police have discovered 44 kilograms of hashish in the northern Takhar province and arrested five people over their involvement in illegal drug business. Afghan police have also foiled the attempt to smuggle 73 kilograms of illegal drugs in Maiwand district of the southern Kandahar province a couple of days ago. The Afghan caretaker government has vowed to fight against illegal drugs, cultivation of illicit crops including poppy, processing of drugs and drug trafficking. NEW DELHI, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- India's aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), on Wednesday imposed a fine of 1 million Indian rupees (around 12,000 U.S. dollars) on private airline company Air India for its failure to comply with the norms pertaining to basic facilities to be provided to flyers. A show-cause notice was issued to Air India on Nov. 3. "Based on Air India's reply to the show-cause notice, it was found that the airline did not comply with the provisions of the CAR (Civil Aviation Requirement)," the DGCA said in a statement. The non-compliance of norms included "not providing hotel accommodation for passengers affected by delayed flights, non-training of some of their ground personnel as per the stipulations and non-payment of compensation to international business class passengers who were made to travel on unserviceable seats," the statement said. Last year, the DGCA imposed a penalty of 1 million Indian rupees on Air India for not complying with the CAR provisions. COPENHAGEN, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- A new Danish alliance was formed this week to combat an escalating health crisis due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria (AMR). The Novo Nordisk Foundation announced the launch of the Danish AMR Alliance on Wednesday. Members of the alliance include Pfizer Denmark and Pharmadanmark, as well as 18 other Danish partners from business, associations and academia. The collaboration aims to combat the rapidly-spreading phenomenon of AMR, which can turn simple injuries into major health risks. Studies indicate that AMR will claim as many lives as cancer by the year 2050, emphasized Hans Jorn Kolmos, professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Southern Denmark and Odense University Hospital. "Without effective intervention against AMR, we face a future where basic medical procedures become highly risky," said Kolmos in the press release. The Danish AMR Alliance aims to unify global efforts to tackle this expanding threat. "The challenge of antimicrobial resistance cannot be solved by one country alone and requires a global effort. Denmark can play an important role in this by establishing significant initiatives that can inspire other countries to follow," said Steffen Pierini Luders, senior vice president of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. AMR was directly responsible for 1.2 million deaths worldwide in 2019, according to Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance report published in The Lancet in 2022. The Novo Nordisk Foundation said that the situation is particularly dire in the Global South, where AMR's impact is disproportionately severe. MOSCOW, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Russia welcomed the agreement reached between Israel and Hamas on a four-day humanitarian pause, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday. "In Moscow, we welcome the achievement of an agreement between Israel and Hamas on a four-day humanitarian pause. Russia has been calling for this since the beginning of the conflict escalation," she stated. "We note the special efforts of Qatar aimed at the practical implementation of the international community's call for de-escalation," she said. "This is the most important decision that was made, and which still gives hope that de-escalation is possible," said Zakharova, adding that it is important not to disrupt the humanitarian pause. Earlier on Wednesday Israel and Hamas confirmed their agreement on a Qatar-mediated proposal for a four-day ceasefire in Gaza. BUDAPEST, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's ruling Fidesz party submitted a legislative package to the parliament on Tuesday night, calling for criminalizing foreign funding for political parties and establishing an oversight authority for NGOs. "This legislation closes the door to any electoral cheating, and foresees sanctions for anyone using foreign funds in a campaign, potentially leading to three years of imprisonment," said Mate Kocsis, head of the parliamentary group of Fidesz, on Facebook. A specialized authority will be established to identify and investigate organizations receiving foreign money aiming to influence voters. According to the bill available on the parliament's website, the Hungarian government is amending several laws ahead of the municipal and European Parliament elections in June 2024. The Criminal Code seeks to criminalize accepting foreign funding in elections, punishable by up to three years' imprisonment. Additionally, a new Sovereignty Protection Authority, launched in February, will investigate foreign intervention to safeguard Hungary's sovereignty. According to the proposal, the new authority, based in Budapest, will be independent from all other state organs and with an independent budget. It will aim to safeguard national sovereignty through a systematic approach by devising a comprehensive methodology for evaluating risks associated with sovereignty, and will also collect information to gauge the assertion of national sovereignty and craft recommendations for protective measures. Additionally, this body will produce annual reports on national sovereignty, funding research endeavors to improve the socio-economic, cultural, institutional, and legal landscapes crucial for affirming and preserving Hungary's sovereignty. This photo taken on Nov. 15, 2023 in The Hague, the Netherlands, shows a campaign poster of Geert Wilders, who leads the Party for Freedom (PVV). The Party for Freedom (PVV) led by Geert Wilders is leading the 2023 Dutch parliamentary elections, according to a first exit poll cited by Dutch public broadcaster NOS on Wednesday. THE HAGUE, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Party for Freedom (PVV) led by Geert Wilders is leading the 2023 Dutch parliamentary elections, according to a first exit poll cited by Dutch public broadcaster NOS on Wednesday. The PVV is on a predicted 35 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, the lower house of the parliament. The Green Left-Labor alliance led by Frans Timmermans is second on a predicted 26 seats. The People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), which won the previous four elections with outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, is forecast to end up with 23 seats with its new leader Dilan Yesilgoz-Zegerius. The New Social Contract (NSC) led by Pieter Omtzigt ranked the fourth with 20 seats. "The biggest party!" Wilders said in a victory speech. "The voter has spoken. The Dutch people want their country back. The Dutch people will be number one again." If confirmed, the PVV, founded in 2006, is set to become the biggest party in the Netherlands. The result came unexpected as the latest polls predicted a close match between the PVV, the VVD and Green Left-Labor alliance. In the previous elections held in 2021, Rutte's VVD won with 34 seats, before the Democrats 66 (D66) that won 24 seats and the PVV with 17 seats. D66, led by Rob Jetten, is now predicted to get 10 seats, according to the latest exit poll. The farmers' movement BoerBurgerBeweging (BBB) and the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) will get seven and five seats respectively. The official results of the 2023 Dutch parliamentary elections are expected to be announced on December 1. CHICAGO, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) agricultural futures rose across the board on Tuesday, led by wheat. The most active corn contract for December delivery rose 0.5 cents, or 0.11 percent, to settle at 4.7 U.S. dollars per bushel. March wheat soared 12.25 cents, or 2.15 percent, to settle at 5.8275 dollars per bushel. January soybean gained 10 cents, or 0.73 percent, to settle at 13.7725 dollars per bushel. Declining Brazilian corn and soybean crop estimates underpinned the CBOT on breaks. There were rumors that Ukraine's Odessa port endured infrastructure damage in a drone or missile attack from Russia. World wheat prices rallied on the news. Farmers in the United States, Brazil and Argentina will not sell corn and wheat in a down market. Chicago-based research company AgResource stays bullish of soyoil and soybeans, while the grain markets forge seasonal lows. China's state buyer Sinograin is rumored to have purchased five to eight cargoes of U.S. soybeans off the Pacific Northwest (PNW). There is talk that China is also asking for U.S. soft red winter (SRW) wheat offers. It is drier across Northern Brazil and wetter across Southern Brazil. The weather pattern of a high pressure ridge across Northern Brazil and a low pressure trough across Southern Brazil is returning, leaving Northern Brazil wanting more rain while Southern Brazil struggling to seed spring crops amid flooding rain. NEW YORK/OTTAWA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Buffalo Field Office of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating a vehicle explosion Wednesday morning at a border crossing between the United States and Canada in Niagara Falls, the FBI said. "As the situation is very fluid, that's all we can say at this time," the FBI said in a statement. The incident killed two occupants in the car, which was coming from the Canadian side toward the United States and ended in an explosion at Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, according to media reports. One border officer was injured. New York State Police is actively working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to monitor all points of entry to New York, said New York State Governor Kathy Hochul in a separate statement. Four border crossings in the Niagara Falls area were closed while security check at the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport was beefed up. "Right now we currently have the Rainbow Bridge closed in both directions in Niagara Falls," said Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt, adding that the Fort Erie Peace Bridge is also closed in both directions. Canadian government officials are operating under the assumption the incident is terror-related, and are trying to determine if the incident was isolated, Canadian media reported. On Wednesday afternoon, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had been briefed by the national security and intelligence advisor on the situation. "We are in contact with the U.S. officials. The minister of public safety, RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency) are fully engaged and providing all necessary support," Trudeau said. New Delhi: Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) has taken a pioneering step towards sustainable green energy generation by focusing on significantly reducing the water footprint within its expansive solar portfolio through the introduction of cutting-edge technologies. In a bid to make the generation of renewable energy more sustainable, AGEL is rolling out a water-free robotic cleaning system aimed at drastically lowering water consumption for the maintenance of its solar modules. The company plans to implement this innovative approach across its operational solar and hybrid sites, especially targeting regions like Rajasthan and Kutch in Gujarat, known for their arid and water-scarce environments. By adopting this technology, AGEL aims to reduce water usage for solar module maintenance to zero. Presently, the state-of-the-art robotic cleaning technology has been integrated into 30% of AGEL's operational solar and hybrid plants, which amounts to 2,070 megawatts out of 7,043 megawatts (including the solar component of hybrid plants). This adoption is projected to save a staggering 283 million liters of water annually, equivalent to the yearly water requirement of approximately 2.7 million households. AGEL is on the verge of finalizing an agreement worth 0.80 million USD with an Israeli firm for the supply and installation of these advanced robotic systems. The initial order will cater to a 150-megawatt under-construction site in Phalodi, near Jodhpur. Concurrently, installation work has already commenced at the hybrid plant in Jaisalmer. However, the company refrained from commenting on specific details regarding the deal. Having already employed robots to combat dust accumulation on solar panels and modules in the past, AGEL's new robotic technology uses a water-free approach that not only contributes to environmental conservation but also enhances the energy output of solar panels. Addressing the pressing concerns surrounding freshwater scarcity, AGEL has been actively involved in various water stewardship activities, aligning with the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 6 on the sustainable management of water resources. During the recent H1 FY24 earnings announcement, Amit Singh, CEO of Adani Green Energy, affirmed the company's commitment to surpassing 45 gigawatts of capacity by 2030 in line with India's decarbonization goals. Singh highlighted AGEL's current status as India's largest operating renewable portfolio holder, boasting an 8.4-gigawatt capacity, while emphasizing the company's efforts to bolster execution capabilities in preparation for its next phase of growth. While AGEL continues its endeavor to minimize water usage across all operational plants, it is also actively exploring methods to reduce water consumption in upcoming projects. Notably, in FY23, AGEL attained water-positive certification (for plants exceeding 200 megawatts) from DNV, an independent global assurance agency. Looking ahead, the company plans to make further investments in advanced technology to drive down water consumption. "As we move forward, we are opting to implement robotic cleaning to drastically reduce water usage to nearly zero across our plants At AGEL, we recognize our pivotal role in mitigating climate change risks. Beyond delivering returns to our stakeholders, it's our moral obligation to contribute to a cleaner planet for future generations," Singh expressed. As one of the country's premier renewable energy companies, AGEL is poised to become a significant player in India's quest for a prominent position within the global renewable energy sector. The focus on research and innovation in the sector, bolstered by supportive policies in India, has fostered a robust ecosystem conducive to the growth of locally manufactured green energy. Incentives specific to the industry and funding options have played pivotal roles in creating an enabling environment for the renewable sector. This not only addresses climate concerns but also holds the promise of a more equitable future. As India endeavors to realize its renewable energy targets, there exists immense potential for expansion and technological innovation that will further drive sustainable growth within this industry. DRI Seeks Permission to Resume Probe into Adani Group Over Alleged Coal Import Overvaluation: Report European Parliament to open office in Kyiv report 22 November, 01:31 AM Flags of Ukraine and the EU (Photo:Dusan Cvetanovic / Pixabay) The European Parliament has decided to open an office in Kyiv to develop closer cooperation with the Ukrainian parliament, EU news outlet Euractiv reported on Nov. 21. The decision was reportedly made earlier on Nov. 21, aimed at facilitating relations with the Verkhovna Rada, particularly in connecting with relevant committees in the European Parliament, as well as easing administrative work. Each member state in the European Parliament has a liaison office to assist the parliament in working with member states, such as communicating with stakeholders, organizing events, and maintaining relations with local media. Video of day Read also: EU parliament supports joint arms procurement bill According to the document, only a few European Parliament offices have been created in non-European cities, including New York, Addis Ababa, and Jakarta, where parliamentary staff are seconded to EU delegations. An EU delegation in any country outside the European Union serves as a diplomatic mission of the EU on the territory under the aegis of the European External Action Service. The article further says that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola to open a representative office in Ukraine during her visit to Lviv on March 4. The matter was raised again in late April by the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ruslan Stefanchuk. Will you support Ukraines free press? Dear reader, as all news organizations, we must balance the pressures of delivering timely, accurate, and relevant stories with requirements to fund our business operations. As a Ukrainian-based media, we also have another responsibility to amplify Ukraines voice to the world during the crucial moment of its existence as a political nation. Its the support of our readers that lets us continue doing our job. We keep our essential reporting free because we believe in our ultimate purpose: an independent, democratic Ukraine. If youre willing to support Ukraine, consider subscribing to our Patreon starting from 5$ per month. We are immensely grateful. Please help us continue fighting Russian propaganda. Truth can be hard to tell from fiction these days. Every viewpoint has its audience of backers and supporters, no matter how absurd. If conscious disinformation is reinforced by state propaganda apparatus and budget, its outcomes may become deadly. There is no solution to this, other than independent, honest, and accurate reporting. We remain committed to empowering the Ukrainian voice to push against the muck. If youre willing to stand up for the truth consider supporting us on Patreon starting from 5$ per month. Thank you very much. Will you help tell Ukraines story to the world? Twenty years ago, most people hadnt even heard of Ukraine. Today, the country is on everyones lips and everyones headlines. War pushed us on the front page. But there are many other things we do that we are proud of from music and culture to technology. We need your help to tell the world Ukrainian story of resilience, joy, and survival. If youre willing to back our effort, consider supporting us on Patreon starting from 5$ per month. We are immensely grateful. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google News Kremlin tight-lipped on rumors of possible delivery of short-range ballistic missiles from Iran 22 November, 05:47 PM Dmitry Peskov (Photo:Wikimedia) The Kremlin has declined to comment on the recent statements by the United States regarding Iran's alleged preparations to supply short-range ballistic missiles to Russia for use in the war against Ukraine, Russian media reported, citing Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. "I don't think it's worth commenting on. Our relations with Tehran are developing, including in the sphere of military-technical cooperation," Peskov said. U.S. officials believe that Iran is preparing to provide Russia with short-range ballistic missiles to use against Ukraine, U.S. newspaper the Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 21. Video of day According to the officials who spoke with the journalists, Iran has already transferred drones, guided bombs, and artillery shells to Russia. Washington is now concerned that ballistic missiles could be next, after Iran displayed Ababil drones and Fateh-110 missiles to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu during his visit to Tehran in September. The report added that the Russian embassy in Washington and the Iranian delegation at the UN have not commented on the situation. The United States believes that Iran is becoming an increasingly important partner to Russia, and is benefiting from the relationship. Sources say that Russia is helping Iran improve its satellite capabilities and is supplying the country with missiles, air defense systems, and military electronics. Washington previously accused Iran of supplying Mohajer-6 and other drones to Russia. According to media reports, in exchange for the arms, Russia supplies Iran with cyber warfare technology, "captured Western weapons," and assists in developing Iran's missile program. Russia is also engaged in the production of Iranian kamikaze drones in the special economic zone in Alabuga, Tatarstan. Iran transfers materials and technologies to Russia, and continues to supply Shahed attack drones. However, Moscow officially denies this. Will you support Ukraines free press? Dear reader, as all news organizations, we must balance the pressures of delivering timely, accurate, and relevant stories with requirements to fund our business operations. As a Ukrainian-based media, we also have another responsibility to amplify Ukraines voice to the world during the crucial moment of its existence as a political nation. Its the support of our readers that lets us continue doing our job. We keep our essential reporting free because we believe in our ultimate purpose: an independent, democratic Ukraine. If youre willing to support Ukraine, consider subscribing to our Patreon starting from 5$ per month. We are immensely grateful. Please help us continue fighting Russian propaganda. Truth can be hard to tell from fiction these days. Every viewpoint has its audience of backers and supporters, no matter how absurd. If conscious disinformation is reinforced by state propaganda apparatus and budget, its outcomes may become deadly. There is no solution to this, other than independent, honest, and accurate reporting. We remain committed to empowering the Ukrainian voice to push against the muck. If youre willing to stand up for the truth consider supporting us on Patreon starting from 5$ per month. Thank you very much. Will you help tell Ukraines story to the world? Twenty years ago, most people hadnt even heard of Ukraine. Today, the country is on everyones lips and everyones headlines. War pushed us on the front page. But there are many other things we do that we are proud of from music and culture to technology. We need your help to tell the world Ukrainian story of resilience, joy, and survival. If youre willing to back our effort, consider supporting us on Patreon starting from 5$ per month. We are immensely grateful. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Google News In this article, we discuss the 12 countries that have the most aircraft carriers, including the only naval power that has a $13.3 billion warship. You can skip our detailed analysis on key trends and players in the naval industry and head over directly to our article titled: 5 Countries Have Aircraft Carriers But Only One Has A $13.3 Billion Warship. Aircraft carriers are critical naval assets that allow planes to land and take off from in the sea. Their history dates back to 1910 when a US pilot named Eugene Ely flew a plane from the deck of an American cruiser in Virginia, and then later in 1911 famously made a landing on the Pennsylvania battleship in San Francisco Bay. Over the decade that followed, several naval powers experimented to develop their aircraft carriers for use during conflicts. The most notable among these include the HMS Argus which was developed by the British Navy during World War I; and the USS Langley the first aircraft carrier to join the fleet of the US Navy in 1922. However, it was not until the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that truly marked the entrance of aircraft carriers in military conflicts. Since then, even today, they are the most potent platforms for naval warfare. Manufacturers, over the years, have ensured that aircraft carriers evolve with time. Today, these are larger in size and come equipped with armored and angled flight decks, landing signal systems, steam-powered catapults, and latest electromagnetic and gear technology to address challenges faced by older carriers from heavy weights and high landing speeds of aircrafts. There are also various variants of these aircraft carriers now, such as nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, helicopter carriers, amphibious assault ships, and multipurpose carriers. Disputes and conflicts in different parts of the world have propelled navies to procure aircraft carriers. As a result, the global aircraft carrier industry is forecasted to grow at 2% between 2023 and 2028, with the Asia-Pacific region likely to be the fastest growing region during this period when it comes to procurement of these giant war machines. Story continues In the United States, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (NYSE:HII) is leading the industry with its expertise in designing and building nuclear-powered carriers for the US Navy, including the much-famed next-generation aircraft carrier class Gerald R. Ford that would enable the American Navy to meet naval operational needs of the 21st century. The American Navy does not only procure these ships from Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (NYSE:HII), but also receives service facilities from the company during the life of the aircraft carrier. In 2022, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (NYSE:HII) generated $10.67 billion in revenues. 2023 has again been a great year for the company, which is reflected in its financial performances in the third quarter of the year. Below is an excerpt from Thomas E. Stiehle, Executive VP and CEO, in Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (NYSE:HII) Q3 2023 Earnings Call: "Our third quarter revenues of $2.8 billion increased approximately 7.2% compared to the same period last year, and represents a record third quarter result for HII. This increased revenue was largely attributable to growth at Mission Technologies and Ingalls shipbuilding. Operating income of $172 million increased by $41 million or 31% from the third quarter of 2022, and operating margin of 6.1% compared to operating margin of 5% in the same period last year." Another key contributor to the US Navys strength is General Dynamics Corporation (NYSE:GD), which has been designing ships for the US Navy since 1960. In April this year, the company won a seven-year contract worth $847 million for repair, maintenance, and modernization of the aircraft carriers operated by the US. General Dynamics Corporation (NYSE:GD) is also currently constructing an ESB 8 expeditionary sea ship and two John Lewis class fleet oilers for the American Navy. Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT), which is known for its expertise in aerospace, has also played an active part in enhancing the US military's naval strength by taking part in sea-based tests of aircraft carriers. Gerald R. Ford Aircraft Carrier Program Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered carriers being developed by Newport News Shipbuilding, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (NYSE:HII), for the US Navy to replace the Nimitz class aircraft carrier design. The Ford class would be an improved version of the Nimitz, and would include features that would allow the carriers to have more aircraft deployments, higher electrical power for ship systems, fewer sailors, and reduce 50-year operating and support costs for each ship by an estimated $4 billion. The American Navy has plans to have at least four Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers CVN-78, CVN-79, CVN-80, and CVN-81. The CVN-78 carrier was procured in 2008. The overall procurement cost for this warship was estimated to be $13.3 billion then. It was commissioned in 2017 and became operational in December 2021. Between October and November of 2022, the CVN-78 was deployed for its first operational stress test in the Atlantic waters, during which it completed more than 1,250 aircraft flights. The CVN-79 was procured in 2013 for an estimated $12.7 billion dollars and is currently being built with improved processes. By its next maintenance period, it will be capable of deploying Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT)s F-35C fighter jets. It is scheduled to be delivered to the US Navy in July 2025. The CVN-80 and CVN-81 are likely to join the naval fleet in 2028 and 2032 respectively. 12 Countries Have Aircraft Carriers But Only One Has A $13.3 Billion Warship Methodology Since only one country has a $13.3 billion warship, it is ranked first in our rankings. For the rest, we have listed countries that have aircraft carriers in ascending order of the number of carriers they possess. Navies that have more carriers rank higher. In the case where countries had the same number of aircraft carriers, we used tonnage to rank one over the other. Data has been sourced from our recent article, 12 Countries With Most Aircraft Carriers. Lets look into the 12 countries that have aircraft carriers including only one that has a $13.3 billion warship. Top 12 Countries That Have Aircraft Carriers But Only One Has A $13.3 Billion Warship: 12. Thailand Aircraft Carriers: 1 Thailands HTMS Chakri Naruebet is not just the countrys but also Southeast Asias only aircraft carrier. It is the smallest carrier in the world, with a displacement of 11,486 tons. It was commissioned in the Thai Navy in 1997 and also includes accommodation facilities for the royal family of Thailand. 11. Brazil Aircraft Carriers: 1 Initially constructed as HMS Ocean by the United Kingdom, the aircraft carrier was renamed Atlantico by Brazil after it was acquired from the Royal Navy in 2018. Atlantico is now South Americas only aircraft carrier and has a tonnage of 21,500. The Brazilian navy plans on using the ship to operate drones. 10. Spain Aircraft Carriers: 1 Spains Juan Carlos I is a multipurpose vessel that can be used both as an amphibious assault ship and a light aircraft carrier. It has a displacement of 26,000 tonnes and a range of 9,000 nautical miles. Juan Carlos I is equipped with facilities required to launch the Spanish militarys Harrier fighter jets. 9. Turkey Aircraft Carriers: 1 TCG Anadolu is Turkeys only aircraft carrier and is equipped with aviation facilities that allow the Turkish military to use the ship to launch and land aircrafts on. Ankara is planning to equip the carrier with Bayraktar TB3 after Turkeys talks with the US for Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE:LMT)s F-35 jets broke down due to the Turkish government acquiring air defense missiles from Russia. The TCG Anadolu has a displacement of 27,000 tons. 8. France Aircraft Carriers: 1 Frances nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, FS Charles de Gaulle, is one of the most potent carriers in the world due to the deployment of a fine mix of aircrafts such as Rafale fighters, E-2 Hawkeye aircrafts, and military helicopters. FS Charles de Gaulle has a tonnage of 45,000. France plans on replacing it with Porte-Avions Nouvelle Generation at some point in the 2030s. The new carrier is likely to have a displacement of 75,000 tons. 7. Russia Aircraft Carriers: 1 Russia also has only one aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, which was commissioned way back in 1991. The ship travels at a speed of 29 knots, has a range of 8,500 nautical miles, and tonnage of 58,000. The old carrier has suffered multiple breakdowns in the sea in recent years, and is currently undergoing maintenance and upgrade. According to Russian media group TASS, Admiral Kuznetsov is likely to re-enter naval service by the end of 2024. 6. Italy Aircraft Carriers: 2 Italy is one of the few countries to have more than one aircraft carrier the Giuseppe Garibaldi and Cavour. The former is now old and set to be replaced by Trieste. It was commissioned in 1985 and has taken part in several NATO operations in Libya and Afghanistan. Cavour, on the other hand, is equipped with modern aviation facilities, and is the only Italian carrier to launch and recover F-35 fighter jets. Click to continue reading and see the 5 Countries Have Aircraft Carriers But Only One Has A $13.3 Billion Warship. Suggested Articles: Disclosure: None. 12 Countries Have Aircraft Carriers But Only One Has A $13.3 Billion Warship is originally published on Insider Monkey. SINGAPORE, November 22, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of B++ (Good) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "bbb" (Good) of Petrolimex Insurance Corporation (PJICO) (Vietnam). Additionally, AM Best has assigned the Vietnam National Scale Rating (NSR) of aaa.VN (Exceptional) to PJICO. The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. The ratings reflect PJICOs balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management. PJICOs balance sheet strength assessment is underpinned by its risk-adjusted capitalisation, which is expected to remain at the strongest level prospectively, as measured by Bests Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). The companys BCAR decreased in 2022, albeit still remained at the strongest level, mainly attributed to higher capital requirements due to robust business growth and higher investment exposure. At the same time, PJICOs capital and surplus reported a slight decrease as a result of substantial dividend payments. AM Best expects that future dividend payouts will be moderated over the medium term. The company maintains a conservative investment strategy, with a majority of its investments held in cash and term deposits. The company has a moderate reliance on reinsurance to support its underwriting capacity for large property and engineering risks, as well as to manage accumulation risks and catastrophe exposure. However, the credit risk associated with this dependence is mitigated partly by the good credit quality of the reinsurance panel. AM Best assesses PJICOs operating performance as adequate, evidenced by a five-year weighted average return-on-equity ratio and combined ratio of 12.2% and 97.1% (2018-2022), respectively. The companys overall earnings remain driven by a stable stream of investment income. PJICO posted thinner underwriting margins in 2022 following normalisation of post-pandemic claims trend. Underwriting profits from commercial lines including property and marine cargo businesses have benefited typically from low net loss ratios and good reinsurance commission income. The elevated expense ratio continues to be an offsetting factor in the companys operating performance assessment. Story continues AM Best assesses PJICOs business profile as neutral. PJICO is a non-life insurer based in Vietnam, with gross premiums written of VND 3.9 trillion (USD 167 million) in 2022, equating to approximately 5% of the domestic market. The companys premium mix is diversified moderately with key business lines being motor, accident and health, property, and marine cargo. PJICO has a wide distribution network, whereby its business is mainly sourced directly and through agencies. The companys profile benefits from its common branding and preferential access to cargo business arising from its largest non-majority shareholder, Vietnam National Petroleum Group. Ratings are communicated to rated entities prior to publication. Unless stated otherwise, the ratings were not amended subsequent to that communication. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Bests website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Bests Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Bests Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Bests Credit Ratings, Bests Performance Assessments, Bests Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Bests Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright 2023 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122061813/en/ Contacts Ken Lau Senior Financial Analyst +65 6303 5025 ken.lau@ambest.com Christopher Sharkey Associate Director, Public Relations +1 908 882 2310 christopher.sharkey@ambest.com Victoria Ohorodnyk Director, Analytics +65 6303 5020 victoria.ohorodnyk@ambest.com Al Slavin Senior Public Relations Specialist +1 908 882 2318 al.slavin@ambest.com Man holds laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia said on Wednesday it would spend A$26.2 million ($17 million) to establish "rapid assistance" teams to respond to cyber crises in the Pacific region, and another A$16.7 million to identify cyber vulnerabilities in the Pacific Islands. The cyber security boost comes after Australia and the United States committed last month to funding two new undersea cables to be rolled out by Google in the Pacific Islands to increase connectivity for eight remote island countries. Minister for the Pacific Pat Conroy said the rapid response teams would "build long-term resilience in the Pacific" and provide critical support. Last year, Vanuatu's government, hospitals and court were locked out of computer systems and email for weeks by a hacker, days after a new government was elected, and Australia sent security experts to assist. Fiji's government said on Tuesday that a new undersea cable to be rolled out by Google, connecting the United States and Australia via Fiji, would bring FJD $200 million ($89 million) in investment to Fiji and see the first Tier 3 datacentre built in the Pacific Islands. A second undersea cable would connect the United States to Australia via French Polynesia. ($1 = 1.5366 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Stephen Coates) After seemingly having won the return-to-office wars, employers may be walking into a legal storm by enforcing rigid return-to-office (RTO) mandates. The post-pandemic era presents a unique challenge as employers grapple with shifting workforce dynamics. The insistence on a full return to the office, without considering individual circumstances, could lead to a surge in legal issues, particularly discrimination claims. This concern is not mere speculationit's a reality backed by a significant uptick in workforce discrimination charges. Rigid RTO policies are disproportionately impacting disabled employees, mothers, and older workersand could even, in certain cases, breach the law. The disability discrimination dilemma One of the most pressing issues is disability discrimination. With many employees having worked remotely for over two years without a dip in productivity or performance, employers face a challenging legal landscape when justifying the need for in-person work. Thomas Foley, executive director of the National Disability Institute, noted that he has great concerns over RTO for people with disabilities, including transportation to and from work, workplace accessibility, and the potential to encounter micro (or larger) aggressions. Brandalyn Bickner, a spokesperson for the EEOC, said in a statement that the ADA's reasonable accommodation obligation includes modifying workplace policies and might require an employer to waive certain eligibility requirements or otherwise modify its telework program for someone with a disability who needs to work at home. In a notable legal settlement, a facility management company agreed to pay $47,500 to settle an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) lawsuit for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The case, EEOC v. ISS Facility Services, Inc., involved the company's refusal to allow a disabled employee at high risk for COVID-19 to work part-time from home, despite previously allowing a rotating schedule during the pandemic. The company's denial of the employee's request for accommodation, followed by her termination, was deemed a violation of the ADA. The settlement also required the company to permit EEOC monitoring of future accommodation requests. This case emphasizes the importance of ADA compliance and the need for employers to be flexible and consistent in accommodating employees, especially in changing work environments. Story continues In a lawsuit against Electric Boat Corp., Zacchery Belval, a resident of Enfield, Conn., claimed discrimination for the company's failure to provide reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act. Belval, who has multiple health issues, including a heart defect and severe anxiety, argued he was at increased risk for COVID-19. He had worked from home during the pandemic, but faced challenges when the company encouraged a return to the office. The physical demands of returning and poor office conditions led him to seek continued remote work, which the company partially granted. However, Belval deemed this accommodation insufficient. When he did not return to work under these conditions, Electric Boat considered him resigned. This case underscores the complexities employers face in implementing return-to-office policies while also needing to provide ADA-compliant reasonable accommodations, particularly for employees with significant health risks. Mental health issues have become increasingly prominent in the context of workplace accommodations. The pandemic has led to a 25% increase in cases of depression and anxiety in the U.S., underscoring the need for employers to consider remote work as a reasonable accommodation. Companies are facing a rise in mental health disability discrimination complaints from employees who view remote work as a reasonable accommodation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has observed a 16% increase in such charges between 2021 and 2022, particularly for conditions like anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress syndrome. This trend is indicative of a broader challenge where mental health disorders have become a prominent reason for disability complaints. Employers who fail to make an effort to accommodate such requests risk facing EEOC actions. In September, the agency filed a complaint against a Georgia company after it fired a marketing manager who requested to work remotely three days a week to accommodate anxiety. Impact on older workers Older workers are particularly impacted by RTO mandates. A recent survey from Carewell has illuminated this trend, revealing that as many as 25% of workers over the age of 50 are contemplating retirement more seriously in light of RTO mandates. This statistic is particularly striking when compared to the 43% who expressed a reduced likelihood of retiring if given the option to work remotely. Such figures not only highlight the preferences of older workers but also underscore the potential unintended consequences of inflexible RTO policies. The resistance to RTO mandates among older workers isn't just a matter of preference; it brings to the forefront concerns about age discrimination. If RTO policies disproportionately affect older employees, either by forcing them into early retirement or by making their work conditions less favorable compared to their younger counterparts, employers could face age discrimination claims. These concerns are amplified by the fact that losing older workers en masse could mean a significant loss of experience, skills, and institutional knowledge for organizations. Employers, therefore, need to carefully consider the impact of RTO mandates on their older workforce. Offering flexibility, whether through remote work options or hybrid models, could be crucial in retaining older employees. Additionally, engaging in dialogue with this segment of the workforce to understand their specific needs and concerns can help in formulating policies that are inclusive and considerate of all age groups. Working parents and gender disparities The legal risks associated with RTO policies are further highlighted by their impact on working parents, especially mothers. The transition from remote to office work brings into sharp focus the balancing act that working parents, especially mothers, must perform between their professional responsibilities and childcare obligations. The legal implications of these policies stem from the potential for indirect discrimination and unequal treatment of working parents. Studies have consistently shown that working mothers are disproportionately affected by the lack of flexibility in work arrangements. The data reveals that nearly twice as many working mothers as fathers have considered leaving their jobs due to the stress associated with childcare. This statistic is alarming and points towards a deep-seated issue in the current work environment where the needs of working mothers are not adequately accommodated. Furthermore, 30% of mothers, compared to 17% of fathers, report difficulties in finding working hours that align with their childcare needs. This disparity not only highlights the challenges faced by working mothers but also raises concerns about potential gender discrimination in the workplace. The lack of flexible working options can exacerbate existing inequalities. Mothers often bear a larger share of domestic and childcare responsibilities, and inflexible work schedules can intensify these demands, leading to increased stress and potential burnout. This situation is particularly challenging for single mothers or those without access to external childcare support. The inability to balance these demands can lead to mothers being forced to choose between their careers and their family responsibilities, a choice that fathers are less likely to face to the same extent. From a legal standpoint, these disparities could give rise to discrimination claims under various employment laws. Employers who fail to provide reasonable accommodations or flexibility to working parents, particularly mothers, might be seen as engaging in indirect discrimination. Such practices can be construed as creating an unfavorable work environment for certain groups of employees, thereby violating equal employment opportunity laws. To mitigate these risks, employers must take proactive steps to provide equitable support to all working parents. This could include offering flexible work schedules, remote work options, or part-time arrangements that allow parents to manage their work and childcare responsibilities more effectively. Additionally, employers should consider implementing policies that specifically support working mothers, such as extended maternity leave, breastfeeding breaks, and facilities, or support for childcare. Instituting these changes requires a cultural shift within organizations to recognize and value the diversity of employees' needs. This shift involves not only policy changes but also a broader understanding and empathy toward the challenges faced by working parents. By fostering an inclusive work environment that accommodates the unique needs of working mothers, employers can not only avoid potential legal challenges but also enhance employee satisfaction and retention. Additional discrimination considerations in remote setups The evolving legal landscape, shaped by advancements in legal technology and updated guidelines on harassment, presents new challenges and complexities for employers, particularly in the context of remote and hybrid work environments. The EEOC has recently published important updates in its guidance that address the nuances of remote work and discrimination. One of the key aspects of this new EEOC guidance is the clarification it provides on legal standards and employer liability in the context of remote work. As the workplace extends beyond the traditional office environment into remote and hybrid models, the definition and scope of harassment have also expanded. This expansion necessitates a reevaluation of existing policies to ensure they adequately address the unique challenges and scenarios presented by remote work settings. For instance, harassment in virtual meetings or through digital communication platforms presents different challenges compared to in-person interactions, requiring tailored responses and preventive measures. The guidance also underscores the importance of accommodating the needs of diverse employee groups, with specific attention to LGBTQ+ employees. This focus is critical in fostering an inclusive work environment and ensuring that harassment policies are sensitive to the needs of all employees, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression. Employers are encouraged to review and update their policies to ensure they provide clear, specific protections against harassment of LGBTQ+ employees, which is essential in maintaining a respectful and inclusive workplace culture. Additionally, the guidance highlights the need for updated policies related to video meetings and lactation accommodations. As video conferencing becomes a staple in remote and hybrid work models, employers must establish clear guidelines to prevent and address harassment that may occur in these virtual settings. This includes setting standards for professional conduct during video calls and ensuring that employees' privacy and dignity are respected. Similarly, the guidance on lactation accommodations reflects an understanding of the changing needs of working parents, particularly mothers, in remote work scenarios. Furthermore, the EEOC emphasizes the importance of training for employees on these new aspects of workplace conduct. Training programs should be updated to include scenarios and examples relevant to remote and hybrid work environments, ensuring that employees understand their rights and responsibilities under the new guidelines. This training should also cover how to report harassment in remote work settings and the resources available to employees who experience or witness such behavior. In response to these challenges, I tell my clients that they would benefit from adopting a flexible approach to RTO mandates. A one-size-fits-all policy may not only lead to legal repercussions but also overlook the diverse needs of a modern workforce. Companies need to consider individual employee circumstances, including disability, age, and parental responsibilities, to navigate this new landscape successfully. Inflexible RTO mandates not only risk alienating key segments of the workforce but also invite a host of legal challenges. By embracing flexibility and inclusivity in return-to-work strategies, employers can mitigate legal risks, foster employee engagement, and build a more inclusive and productive work environment. Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D. (a.k.a. the office whisperer), helps tech and finance industry executives drive collaboration, innovation, and retention in hybrid work. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. He is the bestselling author of seven books, including Never Go With Your Gut and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox and over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist at UNCChapel Hill and Ohio State. More must-read commentary published by Fortune: The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com By Tom Wilson LONDON (Reuters) -The most powerful man in crypto has lost his crown - and could see his freedom curtailed as well. Binance chief Changpeng Zhao on Tuesday stepped down and pleaded guilty to breaking U.S. anti-money laundering laws as part of a $4.3 billion settlement resolving a years-long probe into the world's largest crypto exchange, prosecutors said. The deal with the Justice Department, part of a large settlement between Binance and other U.S. agencies, resolves criminal charges for conducting an unlicensed money transmitter business, conspiracy and breaching sanctions regulations. It also leaves Zhao's future uncertain. "Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance," Zhao tweeted. "Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility." Zhao, known as CZ, will personally pay $50 million and is barred from all involvement with Binance. U.S. sentencing guidelines call for prison time of 10 to 18 months for the charges he faces. Prosecutors are seeking an 18-month prison sentence, the New York Times reported. Zhao and his lawyers did not return calls seeking comment. LOFTY AMBITIONS After launching Binance in Shanghai in 2017, Zhao dreamed big. "We want to take over the entire market!" he told staff in a company chat group that year. The 46-year-old CEO did not waver in his belief as he built up his crypto exchange. Even this year, Zhao felt a major goal was within reach. "The idea that a five-year-old start-up could mature and operate at the same level as a financial institution that has been around for 200 years was once impossible to fathom," Zhao wrote in January in a review of the previous year. "But we are nearly there today." In that review, Binance hailed its progress in complying with regulations across the world. The exchange had strived through the year to strengthen client checks, it said, developing crypto's "best security and compliance team." Story continues Zhao's public aim to be a part of all that has been dashed by Tuesday's guilty plea and settlement. "By failing to comply with U.S. law, Binance made it easy for criminals to move their stolen funds and illicit proceeds on its exchanges," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Tuesday. "Binance also did more than just fail to comply with federal law. It pretended to comply." 'ZHAO ANSWERS TO NO ONE' Zhao was born in China before moving to Canada in 1989 at age 12, two months after China's Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, he wrote in a blog last year. The tycoon crisscrossed the globe in his quest for success, working in Tokyo and New York before moving to Shanghai, where he embraced crypto and founded Binance. Its expansion was dramatic. Binance became the world's biggest crypto exchange within six months. While its market share has slipped this year, it still accounts for about half of global crypto trading volumes, according to research firm CCData. From the company's earliest days, Zhao kept a tight grip on Binance, as a powerful leader committed to secrecy and focused on market domination, a Reuters report last year found. As CEO, he remained in control of minute operational detail, at the same time posting social media selfies with world leaders and city mayors. Zhao installed a tight circle of associates, many of whom had worked or studied in China, into top jobs. Co-founder Yi He now runs Binance's venture capital arm, as well as other key departments. As Binance hired more widely from traditional financial and regulatory worlds, Zhao's tight control over his company was undiminished. The company, which calls itself an "ecosystem," has set up more than 70 entities, most controlled by Zhao personally. "Zhao answers to no one but himself," the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wrote in March after suing Binance for operating what it called a "sham" compliance program. It is unclear whether Zhao will now relinquish control of the firms. In the meantime, one of his appointees will take over running Binance. Richard Teng, a senior Binance executive who joined in 2021, is the new CEO, Zhao posted on social media on Tuesday. Teng "will ensure Binance delivers on our next phase of security, transparency, compliance, and growth," he said. (Reporting by Tom Wilson in London; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Bill Berkrot) Changpeng Zhao leaves a federal court in Seattle on Tuesday - Chloe Collyer/Bloomberg The chief executive of Binance has stepped down after pleading guilty to anti-money laundering violations in the US, marking the second crypto king to be toppled by US prosecutors in less than a month. Changpeng Zhao, known in the industry as CZ, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme in a Seattle federal court on Tuesday. He has also agreed to pay a $50m (39.9m) fine and step down from Binance under a broader deal to settle multiple investigations into the cryptocurrency exchange. The company has agreed to pay the US $4bn to end multiple federal investigations. It marks a stunning fall for one of the last figureheads of the cryptocurrency industry. Mr Zhao becomes the second crypto entrepreneur to see his business career end in US courts this month following the conviction of former FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried on multiple counts of fraud earlier this month. Mr Zhao was a rival of Mr Bankman-Fried and was instrumental in the collapse of FTX. A tweet he sent saying Binance was selling a token issued by FTX triggered concerns about the exchanges finances and ultimately led to the companys unravelling last year. Merrick B. Garland, the US Attorney General, said in a statement: In just the past month, the Justice Department has successfully prosecuted the CEOs of two of the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchanges in two separate criminal cases. The message here should be clear: using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor, it makes you a criminal. Binances deal draws to a close a string of legal battles between the company and US officials. These include a lawsuit from US regulator the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which in April accused Binance of failing to conduct basic compliance to stop potential terror financing and money laundering, including suspected transactions with Hamas. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said: Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform. Story continues The US Treasury said Binance allowed Hamas military wing al-Qassam Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda and other criminals to conduct transactions. Mr Garland said: Binance became the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in US history. Officials said Binance had earned around $1.35bn in fees from US customers. Mr Zhao said in a statement posted on Twitter: Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself. In a blog post, the company blamed its past failures on the fact it grew at an extremely fast pace globally, in a new and evolving industry that was in the early stages of regulation. It admitted to making misguided decisions along the way. Founded in 2017, Binance, which is based offshore, grew rapidly but has been dogged by controversy. It has been the subject of official warnings from the UKs Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which has blocked it from launching in the UK and warned it poses significant risk to consumers. Lord Ed Vaizey, the former digital and culture minister, joined Binances advisory board last year to provide advice on how the company could satisfy the regulators issues. In October, Binance was forced to stop signing up new UK customers after the FCA cancelled approvals for a partner company it was working with. Richard Teng, Binances former global head of regional markets, has been named the companys new chief executive. Digital coins have long faced criticism that they can be used by criminals to avoid detection, while consumers have been conned out of hundreds of millions of pounds by cryptocurrency scams. The cryptocurrency industry has faced mounting scrutiny after the collapse of FTX. At one stage valued at $32bn, the worlds second biggest exchange filed for bankruptcy last year and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was found guilty of fraud in the US after he was accused of misusing customer funds. He will be sentenced next year. The price of the digital currency of Bitcoin fell by 2pc on Tuesday and was trading at around 29,350. Lord Vaizey 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. (Bloomberg) -- Deere & Co. shares slid the most in 18 months after the company forecast smaller-than-expected profit next year, with slowing equipment demand from farmers starting to weigh on the worlds largest tractor maker. Most Read from Bloomberg Net income for the fiscal year will be between $7.75 billion and $8.25 billion, Deere said Wednesday after reporting fourth-quarter earnings that beat analysts expectations. Its full-year outlook came in well below estimates compiled by Bloomberg of $9.32 billion, prompting the stock to drop as much as 7.1%. Declining crop prices have hit machinery makers in recent months, with farmers less willing to buy new equipment for planting and harvesting. While demand for new tractors remains elevated, there are concerns that production of farm equipment could start outstripping demand. Rival farm machinery maker CNH Industrial NV recently said it was reducing salaried workers with equipment sales slumping. Seed maker Corteva Inc. has also warned of a slowdown in demand from farmers. Deere on Wednesday said net sales next year could drop 15% to 20% in its largest segment of production and precision agriculture. Deeres widely disappointing 2024 guidance suggests a weaker ag-equipment market than we previously contemplated, Bloomberg Intelligences Christopher Ciolino said in a note. Machinery demand has softened especially in Brazil, where farmers harvested the countrys biggest soybean and corn crops ever. The large hauls meant farmers were getting lower prices for their crops even as equipment and seeds costs kept rising. The inventory imbalance is now causing farm suppliers to cut back. Its a reversal from last year, when supply chain disruptions from Russias invasion of Ukraine resulted in record profits for the agricultural sector. Story continues In Brazil, Deere and the rest of the industry ended up building more inventories than planned, even though we pulled back production in 2023, Deere Chief Executive Officer Josh Jepsen said on a Wednesday call. Therefore, we will underproduce demand next year. (Adds CFO comment in last paragraph.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Key Insights The projected fair value for Gold Road Resources is AU$1.87 based on 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity With AU$1.85 share price, Gold Road Resources appears to be trading close to its estimated fair value Our fair value estimate is 6.2% lower than Gold Road Resources' analyst price target of AU$1.99 How far off is Gold Road Resources Limited (ASX:GOR) from its intrinsic value? Using the most recent financial data, we'll take a look at whether the stock is fairly priced by projecting its future cash flows and then discounting them to today's value. We will take advantage of the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model for this purpose. There's really not all that much to it, even though it might appear quite complex. Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. For those who are keen learners of equity analysis, the Simply Wall St analysis model here may be something of interest to you. View our latest analysis for Gold Road Resources The Method We use what is known as a 2-stage model, which simply means we have two different periods of growth rates for the company's cash flows. Generally the first stage is higher growth, and the second stage is a lower growth phase. To start off with, we need to estimate the next ten years of cash flows. Where possible we use analyst estimates, but when these aren't available we extrapolate the previous free cash flow (FCF) from the last estimate or reported value. We assume companies with shrinking free cash flow will slow their rate of shrinkage, and that companies with growing free cash flow will see their growth rate slow, over this period. We do this to reflect that growth tends to slow more in the early years than it does in later years. Generally we assume that a dollar today is more valuable than a dollar in the future, so we discount the value of these future cash flows to their estimated value in today's dollars: Story continues 10-year free cash flow (FCF) estimate 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 Levered FCF (A$, Millions) AU$163.7m AU$167.6m AU$173.1m AU$125.9m AU$120.6m AU$117.9m AU$116.7m AU$116.6m AU$117.3m AU$118.5m Growth Rate Estimate Source Analyst x6 Analyst x6 Analyst x2 Analyst x1 Est @ -4.17% Est @ -2.30% Est @ -0.98% Est @ -0.06% Est @ 0.58% Est @ 1.03% Present Value (A$, Millions) Discounted @ 7.5% AU$152 AU$145 AU$139 AU$94.1 AU$83.9 AU$76.2 AU$70.2 AU$65.2 AU$61.0 AU$57.3 ("Est" = FCF growth rate estimated by Simply Wall St) Present Value of 10-year Cash Flow (PVCF) = AU$944m 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 (2.1%) 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 7.5%. Terminal Value (TV)= FCF 2033 (1 + g) (r g) = AU$119m (1 + 2.1%) (7.5% 2.1%) = AU$2.2b Present Value of Terminal Value (PVTV)= TV / (1 + r)10= AU$2.2b ( 1 + 7.5%)10= AU$1.1b The total value, or equity value, is then the sum of the present value of the future cash flows, which in this case is AU$2.0b. The last step is to then divide the equity value by the number of shares outstanding. Relative to the current share price of AU$1.9, the company appears about fair value at a 0.9% 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 The 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 Gold Road 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 7.5%, which is based on a levered beta of 1.092. 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 Gold Road Resources Strength Earnings growth over the past year exceeded the industry. Currently debt free. Weakness Earnings growth over the past year is below its 5-year average. Dividend is low compared to the top 25% of dividend payers in the Metals and Mining market. Opportunity Annual earnings are forecast to grow faster than the Australian market. Current share price is below our estimate of fair value. Threat Revenue is forecast to grow slower than 20% per year. Next Steps: Whilst important, the DCF calculation shouldn't be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. 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 Gold Road Resources, we've compiled three essential factors you should explore: Risks: You should be aware of the 1 warning sign for Gold Road Resources we've uncovered before considering an investment in the company. Future Earnings: How does GOR'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 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. The Simply Wall St app conducts a discounted cash flow valuation for every stock on the ASX 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. FinVolution Group (NYSE:FINV) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 21, 2023 Operator: Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for participating in the Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call for FinVolution Group. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Today's conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to your host, Jimmy Tan, Head of Investor Relations for the Company. Please go ahead. Jimmy Tan: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. The Company results were issued via Newswire services earlier today and are posted online. You can download the earnings release and sign up for the Company's e-mail alerts by visiting the IR section of our website at ir.finvgroup.com. Mr. Tiezheng Li, our Chief Executive Officer; and Jiayuan Xu, our Chief Financial Officer, will start the call with their prepared remarks and conclude with a Q&A session. During this call we will be referring to several non-GAAP financial measures to review and assess our operating performance. These non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the financial information prepared and presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. For information about these non-GAAP measures and reconciliation to GAAP measures, please refer to our earnings press release. Before we continue, please note that today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the Company's results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding these and other risks and uncertainties are included in the Company filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law. Story continues Finally, we posted a slide presentation on our IR website providing details of our results for the quarter. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Tiezheng Li. Please go ahead, sir. Tiezheng Li: Thanks, Jimmy. Hello, everyone. And thank you for joining our earnings call. This is Tiezheng Li, CEO of FinVolution Group. We are happy to speak with you today. During the third quarter, we steadily executed our local focus, global outlook strategy. We are strengthening our efforts to build our business throughout the Pan-Asian region. Cumulatively, we are proud to [indiscernible] serve over 29 million borrowers in China, Indonesia and the Philippines. As we continue to expand our presence in these countries, we have tapped more deeply into our leading [results] and are now successfully deploying from [indiscernible]. Now our regional funding partners can now support our loan facilitation operations across different countries, greatly improving our capability to serve more borrowers in our markets. We plan to leverage and replicate this success as we expand into additional countries while strengthening our presence in existing markets. China's post-COVID economic recovery continued to progress gradually during the third quarter, with macro data reflecting uneven improvement in different areas. For instance, in September, the consumer confidence index came up slightly to 87 points but is still hovering at a relatively low levels. Also, according to data from the national statistical bureau, employment rate officially peaked at 5.3% in July before trending down to 5% in September, although there has been some moderate recovery in the consumption market. The bulk of the recovery has been in children's education, above medical, health care, domestic travel and other off-line activities. Purchase intention for big ticket items such as property, cars and luxury goods remain relatively weak. Meanwhile, the overall macro environment in Indonesia, our largest overseas market, remained robust as the region is in a faster stage of development. For instance, Indonesia's consumer confidence index from August to October remained high at about 125 points, a positive indicator for increasing consumer spending. Its unemployment rate in September also declined to 5.3% compared with 5.9% in the same period last year, its lowest level since the first quarter of 2020. Thus far, our tactical approach of maintaining prudent progressive growth in China market, we are pursuing rapid growth in the international market has proven very effective and in the current uneven micro conditions we have observed. We are waiting for China's economy to recover at a faster rate. We have been constantly investing in R&D to further streamline our processes. We have customer experience and achieve operational efficiency improvements. Since 2018, we have deployed around RMB2.4 billion to develop cutting-edge technologies and implement them throughout our business operations. In particular, we made notable progress with BLU, our AI-powered chatbot, which now supports operations in six different countries with five language options: Chinese, English, Tagalog, Bahasa and Spanish. Furthermore, by integrating BLU with our human loan collection personnel for [data] and reminder calls, we have achieved cost savings of up to 80%, while maintaining our pertaining certain cost efficiency levels. BLU's effectiveness was -- again showcases our R&D progress as well as our ability to improve operational efficiency. It's programmatic yet innovative type that can be seamlessly applied in our operations across different markets. The beginning of AI, we continue to leverage AIGC to boost social media engagement for our overseas business, increasing our campaigns' audience targeting accuracy and achieving greater visibility on leading social media platforms. Thanks to our engaging AIGC-driven advertisement and the inventive use of technology. Our followers on Facebook surpassed the 1 million milestone. Now our followers on TikTok grew to around 740,000. As always, we continue to promote financial inclusion. A mission that reflects our commitment to social responsibility and support our business goals. Our average borrowing rate in China maintained stable sequentially, making our products and services accessible to even more borrowers. I'm pleased to report that despite all the macro uncertainties, FinVolution Group's total transaction volume for the third quarter grew to RMB51 billion. While our outstanding loan balance grew to RMB66 billion, representing a year-over-year increase of 13% and 9%, respectively. These results clearly demonstrate that our local focus, global outlook strategy and not only variable, but it is also scalable, which is a critical factor for our future growth. On a related note, I would like to share a brief update on our recent ESG initiatives. Our dedication to sustainability and giving back to society remains at the heart of our corporate values and forms a core part of our identity. An individual using a laptop to access the fintech platform to manage their finances. Over the last couple of years, the Company has made several charitable trips to the [indiscernible] area. This year, we donated 350 renewable energy streetlamps to improve infrastructure for the local villages. We also organized a unique school event for children at FinVolution kindergarten, another of our long-standing community projects in the area. Going forward, we will continue to align our ESG and business goals to maximize our positive societal impact to creating value for all of our stakeholders. To summarize, the third quarter of 2023 was not without challenges, but our firm and focused execution of our local focus, global outlook strategy alongside tech innovation empowered our steady progress and strengthened our foundation supporting long-term sustainable growth. We will continue to embrace inclusion accessibility and technology as we seek to serve borrowers throughout the Pan-Asian region with better financial services. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Jiayuan Xu, who will discuss our operational and financial results. Jiayuan Xu: Thank you, Li, and hello, everyone. Welcome to our Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. In the interest of time, I will not go through all of the financial line items on this call. Please refer to our earnings release for further details. As Li mentioned, the domestic macro recovery has been gradual and reflects uneven improvements in certain areas. For instance, the official manufacturing purchasing managers' index, PMI, from August through October fluctuated between 49.7, 15.2 and 49.5 points according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on October 31, 2023. Meanwhile, total social financing data in October increased to RMB1.8 trillion, up 9% from the same period last year. Total retail consumption in October increased to RMB4.3 trillion, up 7.6% compared with the same period last year. Our stable and better-quality borrower base empowered us to maintain steadfast and the resilient operational metrics domestically in the third quarter despite the uneven macro environment. Cumulatively, we have served around 25 million borrowers in China with the number of unique borrowers remaining stable at around 2.3 million. Additionally, our domestic transaction volume reached RMB49 billion, up 11% year-over-year and 8% sequentially. Meanwhile, our outstanding loan balance reached RMB64.6 billion as of September 30, 2023, up 8% year-over-year and 3% sequentially. All these achievements demonstrate our solid standing in the China market and also highlight our unwavering commitment to serving our customers. We continue to employ prudent risk management tactics and effective fraud detection technologies, resulting in only minor fluctuations in our risk levels during the quarter. Day one delinquency rate was 5.7%, while vintage and delinquency rate is expected to be around 2.4% to 2.5% for the quarter. Going forward, we will continue to monitor the credit risk performance closely and make timely adjustments when necessary. Finally, boosted by the AI-powered chatbot, Li mentioned earlier. Our loan collection team capture the loan collection recovery rate at around 89%. Furthermore, we continue to add new funding partners, bringing our cumulative number to 88 financial institutions with a strong pipeline of potential future partners in place. These operational achievements enabled us to maintain a healthy take rate of around 3.1% during the third quarter. Recognizing the critical role that a small business play in our economy. We also upheld our commitment to small business owners with unwavering support during this bumpy recovery period. During the third quarter, we served around 448,000 small business owners and facilitated RMB12.3 billion of loans for them, representing an increase of 9% compared with the same period last year and 7% sequentially. Now let me move on to our international expansion efforts. As Li shared, Indonesia, our largest overseas market enjoyed ongoing growth in its macro economy during the third quarter. Sales of motorcycles, the most popular mode of transportation in Indonesia has also accelerated. During the first nine months of 2023 motor bike sales were up 31% compared with the same period of 2022, reaching around 4.7 million units, a positive indication of growing customer spending. Given these promising trends and the data points, we anticipate the Indonesia's domestic consumption will remain robust. We were pleased to record another quarter of significant improvement in our overseas markets across multiple operational and financial metrics. Cumulatively, we have served over 4 million borrowers in Indonesia and the Philippines and continue to rapidly attract new borrowers in these regions. The number of unique borrowers during the quarter reached another new high at 928,000, up 27% year-over-year and 18% sequentially. Furthermore, we continue to increase the population of institutional funding in Indonesia, and we strengthened our local presence and broaden our local network. For the third quarter, the percentage of loan facilitated for our local financial institutions reached 74% compared with 55% for the same period last year. As a result, international transaction volume surged by 99% year-over-year and 21% sequentially to RMB2.2 billion for the third quarter. We also set new records in outstanding loan balance at RMB1.3 billion, up 102% year-over-year and 16% sequentially, as well as revenue contribution of RMB585 million, up 67% year-over-year and representing around 18% of total revenue. Leveraging our experience of shifting to better quality borrowers in China, we also take a proactive approach to acquiring better quality borrowers in the Indonesian market. Apart from the online lending business, we are also pilot testing an off-line business model with different consumption scenarios to provide more holistic service for our borrowers. In addition, we are also actively exploring the acquisition of additional license to better support our local operations driven by our dedication to R&D innovation as well as our successful execution of our local focus, global outlook strategy. Net revenues for the third quarter grew to RMB3.2 billion, up 8% year-over-year and a sequential increase of 4%. Sales and marketing expense increased by 13% sequentially to RMB530 million as we increased our efforts to acquire better quality borrowers through diversified channels. Number of new borrowers in the China market increased by 7% year-over-year and 12% sequentially to 406,000. Notably, the number of new borrowers in the international market increased by 27% year-over-year and 36% sequentially to 423,000. In total, we acquired around 829,000 new borrowers during the third quarter, up 16% year-over-year and 23% sequentially. Net income for the third quarter was RMB575 million, a sequential decrease of 2.6%. Our leverage ratio, which we define as risk-bearing loans divided by shareholders' equity remained stable at 4.1x, indicating future growth potential as the overall macro economy recovers to a healthier state. Our strong balance sheet and liquidity position continues to enhance shareholders' confidence while providing us optimal flexibility to execute our strategy. In particular, our cash position remains robust with over RMB8.5 billion of cash and short-term liquidity as of the end of September 2023, representing an increase of 58% year-over-year and 4% quarter-over-quarter. We believe our current cash position is sufficient to support our business expansion and return value to our shareholders. Before I conclude, let me briefly update you on our share repurchase program. For the first nine months of the year, we have deployed around USD 66 million to repurchase our shares in the market. As of September 30, 2023, we have cumulatively returned the USD 511 million to our shareholders in the form of share repurchase and the dividend distribution, reflecting our strong commitment to enhancing shareholder value. In summary. Our solid results for the third quarter are a testament to the effectiveness of our local focus, global outlook strategy. As well as our [indiscernible] business model and technological advantages. We have used our time wisely during China's uneven post-COVID recovery and are poised to be at forefront of the industry when recovery accelerates. Looking ahead, we will remain focused on developing and implementing cutting-edge technology while expanding our healthy customer base, driving growth and creating greater value by making financial service better. With that, I will conclude my prepared remarks. We will now open the call to questions. Operator, please continue. See also 15 Best Merlot Wines Under $50 and Top 15 Countries With Best Dental Health. To continue reading the Q&A session, please click here. FIU's Gregory Maloney. In an era in which global supply chains are becoming increasingly complex, Florida International University is addressing the growing need for skilled logistics leaders. Dr. Gregory Maloney, the director of FIUs masters program in logistics and supply chain management, shared insights on the vital role of education in this field during an interview on FW Now on Nov. 14. Dr. Maloney stressed the importance of a comprehensive educational approach at FIU, which equips logistics professionals not only with in-depth knowledge of supply chain management but also with crucial business skills. This big-picture approach is so important in an industry as reshaped by technological innovation, e-commerce growth and changing global trade patterns as freight is. FIUs programs are specifically tailored to meet the challenges of todays industry. Theyre preparing graduates to be versatile professionals capable of leading and innovating in the global economy. Ive spent a lot of time in this industry interacting with people, and it still amazes me how many times I hear somebody say, Well, you know, I kind of just fell into this industry, Dr. Maloney said. Part of the reason for that is that we, as educational institutions, historically havent done the best job as far as creating the right degrees for that next level of manager and director in these spaces. Beyond logistics: A business-oriented approach Offered in both online and hybrid formats, FIUs programs blend business acumen with logistics expertise. Theyre taught out of the universitys business college, ensuring students grasp vital business concepts like management, negotiation and strategic decision-making. Within this industry, theres a lot of really smart people, theres a lot of people good at technical issues and problem-solving, but not necessarily a tremendous amount of business background, Dr. Maloney said. So the curriculum responds to industry demands for professionals who can combine the two. The aim is to produce graduates who are well-rounded and capable of handling managerial and executive roles in larger business segments. This shift in logistics education aligns with the industrys need for leaders who can manage complex supply chain networks effectively. Story continues FIU is setting new standards in logistics education, fostering a generation of professionals proficient in both technical logistics and business management. This comprehensive approach makes FIUs graduates highly valuable in a competitive, rapidly evolving industry. Adapting to a changing workforce Dr. Maloney also highlighted the concerns of the current generation entering the workforce. He noted their apprehensions about the economy and their quest for job security and meaningful careers. The economic situation, particularly in South Florida where home ownership affordability has become dire, is prompting students to seek stable, growth-oriented careers. Students are a little worried about the economy right now, Dr. Maloney said. Theyre talking about, Well, you know, how do I get that great job and achieve that American dream? Additionally, the shift toward hybrid work environments post-COVID is influencing student expectations. While perhaps not seeking fully remote roles, students appreciate the flexibility offered by hybrid models, combining in-office interaction with remote work. This balance is becoming increasingly important in their career plans. Dr. Maloneys insights point to a crucial need in the logistics industry. It needs to adapt to a changing workforce. FIUs approach, balancing technical expertise with business acumen, aligns with the aspirations and needs of the new generation. Its teaching the leaders of tomorrows supply chains. The post How FIU is preparing the next generation of logistics leaders appeared first on FreightWaves. Michael Rothenberg Courtesy of Michael Rothenberg Michael Rothenberg became known for his rapid rise to success with his VC firm, Rothenberg Ventures. But this week he became yet another Silicon Valley star to be convicted of fraud. Rothenberg faces a lengthy prison sentence and hefty fines. A once high-flying Silicon Valley venture capitalist, whose partying lifestyle inspired an HBO show, has been convicted of committing fraud amounting to $18.8 million. Michael Rothenberg, 39, was found guilty by a federal jury in California of "wire fraud, money laundering, bank fraud, and making false statements to a bank," according to a press release issued by the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. Rothenberg first rose to prominence in 2013 after raising $5 million for his venture capital management fund, Rothenberg Ventures, aged just 27. Attracting attention for his lavish spending and love of partying, he was dubbed "the Valley's party animal" by Bloomberg. Clients of Rothenbergs Ventures were lavished with gifts such as free tickets to Golden State Warriors and San Francisco Giants games and hot-air balloon wine tours of Napa Valley, Bloomberg reported. The company would also shell out on tickets to the Golden Globes and helping to sponsor actor Chace Crawford's 30th birthday party in Hollywood, TechCrunch reported in 2016. Rothenberg's biggest event, called Founder Field Day, saw the firm book out AT&T Park in San Francisco. The event amassed tech founders and the VC firm's portfolio companies for a day of networking. But the event, which saw masseuses on site and inspired the HBO drama "Silicon Valley," was rather more extravagant than mere networking, with founders getting the chance to swing at home plate, an after-party show performed by Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas, and rescue puppies for attendees to cuddle up to, Vox reported. But in 2016, Rothenberg Ventures collapsed after admitting to investors it was being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It had more than $50 million in assets under management, Wired reported at the time. Story continues The company eventually ran out of operating funds, and all its employees except its lawyer were put on unpaid leave, per Wired. Questions were rife about how Rothenberg had used his fund's money, and many investors said they were unaware that he was shifting large amounts of venture capital fund money to his own virtual-reality-production company, River Studios, which worked on virtual-reality videos for the likes of Coldplay. In 2018, the SEC alleged that Rothenberg had misappropriated "fund and fund investor money," and created "the false appearance that the money was used for legitimate fund expenses or investments or had otherwise been paid back." Rothenberg was also convicted of defrauding the now-defunct Silicon Valley Bank in 2015 after he was alleged to have made false statements "in relation to a line of credit" for his VC management company. He will be sentenced in March and faces a lengthy jail term and hefty fine. According to the US Attorney's press release, the maximum sentences for each count of the charges of bank fraud and making a false statement to a bank are "30 years of imprisonment and a fine of $1,000,000." The maximum sentence for the counts of wire fraud is "20 years of imprisonment and a fine of $250,000," while he could also face a 10-year sentence and $250,000 fines for the counts of money laundering. Read the original article on Business Insider Binance Was Used to Funnel Money to Hamas, Other Militant Groups (Bloomberg) -- In February 2019, Binance Holdings Ltd.s then-Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim acknowledged that the cryptocurrency exchange was being used to funnel money to Hamas, explaining to a colleague that terrorists normally sent small sums. Most Read from Bloomberg Hamas could barely buy an AK47 with 600 bucks, the colleague responded in a chat message, according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commissions March lawsuit against the worlds largest crypto exchange. That apparently nonchalant attitude caught up with Binance and its chief executive officer, Changpeng Zhao, on Tuesday. In announcing $4.3 billion in fines against the company and a guilty plea by Zhao for failing to comply with anti-money-laundering laws, the US government put Hamas and other terrorist organizations front and center. The broad settlement also resolves the CFTC suit. Binance enabled a range of illicit actors to transact freely on the platform, the Treasury Department said in a statement that named Hamas, Al Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as terrorist organizations that received funds through the exchange. Binances settlement and Zhaos guilty plea come as Hamas is embroiled in a war with Israel, sparked by the groups Oct. 7 attacks that killed more than 1,200 people, with more than 200 taken hostage. Israel responded by invading Gaza, where thousands more have been killed. In a press conference, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said Zhao willfully violated federal law that requires financial institutions to guard against money laundering and terrorist financing. Cavalier Attitudes According to the government, Binance failed to report suspicious transactions with terrorists. As part of its settlement, the company will have to file those reports going forward and review past activity it should have disclosed. Story continues This will advance our criminal investigations into malicious cyber activity and terrorism fundraising, including the use of cryptocurrency exchanges to support groups such as Hamas, Garland said. Treasurys Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will receive $3.4 billion of the fines paid by Binance, while its Office of Foreign Assets Control will get $968 million. The FinCEN fine is the largest in that bureaus history. A number of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs have expressed cavalier attitudes about terrorists or other bad actors using their platforms. BitMEX co-founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo and Samuel Reed last year pleaded guilty to willfully failing to implement anti-money-laundering and customer identification policies at their crypto derivatives exchange. Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Virgil Griffith was sentenced last year to more than five years in prison for participating in a 2019 blockchain and cryptocurrency conference in North Korea. At the conference, Griffith discussed how North Korean money might be converted into cryptocurrency as a way to evade sanctions. Photos showed him dressed in a North Korean-style uniform, standing in front of a whiteboard on which he drew a smiley face and wrote No sanctions yay. (Updates with remarks by Merrick Garland, background.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. QINGDAO, China, Nov. 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- This is a report from Publicity Department of the CPC Qingdao Shinan District Committee: On the morning of November 12, beneath the clear sky and cascading sunlight, the azure sea rippled as melodious violin tunes filled the air. Against this scenic backdrop, 89 grooms knelt, presenting rings to their brides, embarking together on a journey of"A Solemn Pledge of Love," marking the initiation of a fashionable and blissful adventure. The picturesque natural landscapes and distinctive cultural advantages have endowed the city's IP of " A Solemn Pledge of Love " wedding experience with both allure and contemporary flair. Qingdao's Shinan District actively cultivates a "sweet industry" extending from its wedding culture, incorporating elements such as tourism, photography, hotels, and wedding services. This synergy aims to create a romantic cultural landmark and amplify the cohesion of the wedding industry. "In a romantic city like Qingdao, experiencing a musical wedding firsthand in such a unique way is truly unforgettable," praised Li Yanzhong, a groom from Rizhao City. During the ceremony, violinist Wang Yuan offered musical blessings to the couples. Music is a flowing architecture, and architecture is solidified music. The district revitalizes historical areas through a combination of "historical architecture + music." Immersive experiences intertwine architecture, music, history, and culture, breathing new life into historical structures. "Life without music is incomplete," echoes the contemporary sentiment of many young individuals. By making music a cultural hallmark, Shinan District brings high-quality art closer to the public in an innovative, trendy manner. This effort not only enriches lives through the arts but also cultivates an appreciation for beauty, discovery, and creativity. Throughout autumn, the district has hosted various art performances, spanning from the professional Qingdao Concert Hall to school auditoriums and malls. This expansion of urban artistic spaces contributes to an improved urban living environment and elevates the quality of city life. Story continues As the aesthetics of the city continually captivate the public eye, Shinan District injects fresh inspiration into urban renewal, fostering consumption vitality, and enhancing the city's competitiveness. With vibrant cultural and tourism scenes and the charm of different musical art crossovers, Shinan District revitalizes the historical city center with music, confidently meeting the spiritual and cultural needs of its residents and propelling continuous economic growth in the region. Cision View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harmonious-unions-qingdaos-unique-music-wedding-experience-301995778.html SOURCE Publicity Department of the CPC Qingdao Shinan District Committee (Bloomberg) -- HP Inc. reported quarterly sales just shy of analysts estimates as the predicted uptick in the personal computer market hasnt yet materialized. Most Read from Bloomberg Revenue fell 6.5% to $13.8 billion in the period ended Oct. 31, the Palo Alto, California-based company said Tuesday in a statement. HPs sales of computers to businesses slipped 11% from a year earlier to $6.21 billion, under-performing expectations. PC makers have been battered the past 18 months as demand cratered in a post-pandemic bust. Recently, analysts have begun to see signs of life for the industry. In an October report, IDC wrote that while the global economy remained subdued, the PC market had moved past the bottom of the trough. HP Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lores said he expects improvements in the new year. The company is seeing corporate demand stabilize and consumer spending pick up around the upcoming holidays, which gives us confidence that the PC market will grow in fiscal year 24. In the current period ending in January, HP said profit, excluding some items, will be 76 cents to 86 cents a share, compared with analysts average estimate of 85 cents. The company affirmed its full-year profit guidance of $3.25 to $3.65 per share delivered last month. That weaker-than-expected first quarter outlook means HP will be relying on strength in the second half of the 2024 to meet its full-year guidance, wrote Bloomberg Intelligences Woo Jin Ho. Though we expect HP to see gains from a PC rebound, growing competitive pressures may require sales and margin resilience in printing. Lores said he expects consumers and businesses to opt for higher-end computers in 2024, driving up the average sale price. More PCs are used as communication tools you need better cameras, more memory, better speakers, he said. Story continues Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue from consumer PCs ticked down 1% to about $3.19 billion. Printing unit revenue generated $4.4 billion, in line with estimates. Fiscal fourth-quarter adjusted profit was 90 cents a share. The shares fell about 3.5% in extended trading after closing at $27.87 in New York. The stock has gained 3.7% this year. (Updates with comments from analyst in the sixth paragraph.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. (Bloomberg) -- Huawei Technologies Co. alarmed politicians from Washington to Tokyo when it took the wraps off a $900 smartphone that signaled Chinas rapid advance in semiconductor technology. The episode also thrust the little-known company that made the chip for Huawei into the middle of the US-Chinese battle for geopolitical supremacy. Most Read from Bloomberg Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. has emerged as Beijings secret weapon in breaking through a US-organized blockade aimed at containing Chinas technological progress, despite years of American sanctions. Its success in delivering an advanced, 7-nanometer processor to Huawei set off jubilant celebration at home, and triggered partisan finger-pointing in Washington over the apparent failure. The accomplishments of SMIC, as the Shanghai company is known, are all the more surprising because its been hit by US restrictions for more than a decade and was formally blacklisted in 2020. The Commerce Department is supposed to wield broad control over the companys purchases of any equipment or software with American inputs, but the agency continued to issue licenses to SMIC suppliers in at least certain cases. US lawmakers and industry experts are now calling for the Biden administration to crack down further, even at the risk of fraying US-China tensions. Once this comes to light, theres not much they can do but get much tougher on SMIC, said Douglas Fuller, associate professor at the Copenhagen Business School. If they dont get tougher on SMIC, then this policy doesnt make any sense. The US government has said its chip strategy is not aimed at Chinas smartphones, but rather its military capabilities. Semiconductors are at the foundation of the tech industry, enabling everything from artificial intelligence models and cloud computing to drones, tanks and missiles. Story continues SMIC and the Commerce Department declined to comment for this story. For now, local investors are celebrating SMIC. Since Huaweis Mate 60 Pro emerged in late August, the companys stock has gained 22%, or about $5 billion, of market value to become the third best-performer on the benchmark gauge for Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong. Read more: Controversial Chip in Huawei Phone Produced on ASML Machine The question for SMIC longer term is whether it can produce sophisticated chips in volume or whether the US will kneecap its capabilities. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who oversees the Biden administrations tech restrictions, has said China lacks the capacity to make such components at scale. Industry veterans including Burn J. Lin, a former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. vice president, argue that the US is underestimating its capabilities. SMIC has been stockpiling chipmaking machines for years, including the same models of deep ultraviolet lithography equipment from the Netherlands ASML Holding NV that were used to make the industrys first 7-nm semiconductors. SMIC made Huaweis chip on DUV machines from ASML, Bloomberg News has reported. SMIC should be able to advance to more powerful 5-nm chips with the ASML machines it already operates, said Lin, who championed lithography technology at TSMC. Fuller and other experts agree. The genie is out of the bottle, said Jan-Peter Kleinhaus, director of technology and geopolitics at the German think-tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung e.V. SMIC pronounced smick has already etched its name into industry lore. The company was founded more than two decades ago by Richard Chang, who was born in China, raised in Taiwan and then spent two decades at Texas Instruments Inc. He built the chipmaker on the barren land of eastern Shanghai, and from the get-go, it was clear the company enjoyed a somewhat exalted position in China, winning land and tax exemptions to support its ambitions. SMIC muscled out rivals such as Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd. to become the countrys leading maker of semiconductors. As one of Beijings best shots at making advanced chips, SMIC became a US target soon after its founding. In 2005, Washington halted its plan to buy $1 billion worth of chipmaking equipment from Applied Materials Inc. for fear it would compete with Micron Technology Inc. That same year, Taipei fined its founder for violating investment laws when establishing SMIC. In 2009, a California court ruled that SMIC improperly used TSMC trade secrets. Those early setbacks helped it develop a reputation as a controversial underdog. Shanghais government, then the centerpiece of Chinas modernization, was clearly in its corner. SMIC also assiduously cultivated other city governments, working with Beijing as well as up-and-coming cities like Shenzhen to develop local production bases. SMIC quickly set up foundries across the country and vied with TSMC for contracts. The company began hiring Taiwanese executives and engineers to oversee its expansion. Chang, a devout Christian, at one point even persuaded local authorities to let him build a church close to the factory for his overseas staff. Its local connections helped cultivate a slate of big-name clients including US giants from Qualcomm Inc. to Broadcom Inc. Along the way, it won backing from powerful concerns, from the Big Fund Chinas main semiconductor investment vehicle to the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore. Then in December of 2020, the Trump administration blacklisted SMIC for allegedly supporting Chinas military, an assertion the company denied. That addition to whats known as the Entity List meant US companies would need a license from the Commerce Department to supply SMIC. Restrictions on SMIC soon grew tighter. In October 2022, the US unveiled landmark export controls that included limits on the sale of cutting-edge chipmaking gear to Chinese fabs, or manufacturing plants, that produce chips at 14nm or below. But there were loopholes. While the US regulations hit American chipmaking firms immediately, the Biden administration took months to win over the Dutch and Japanese governments. That meant companies in those two countries, such as ASML and Tokyo Electron Ltd., could keep selling advanced machines to Chinese customers, who rapidly stockpiled gear. ASML can ship advanced DUV machines through the end of this year under its governments rules. In addition, it has been complicated for Raimondos Commerce Department to implement its own regulations. Most supplies for fabs, including ASMLs DUV machines, can be used to produce both chips forbidden under the US controls and less sophisticated chips that are allowed. The Justice Department is looking into whether Applied Materials sold hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment without proper licenses to SMIC by shipping gear from the US to South Korea, then to China, Reuters reported. The fallout for SMIC remains uncertain. The Biden administration is still calibrating how to react to its cooperation with Huawei, which is also blacklisted. The US did unveil a new set of chip controls this October that further tightened restrictions on doing business in China. Hawks such as Congressmen Mike McCaul and Mike Gallagher have lambasted the administration for botching its enforcement. The Commerce Department is investigating the matter but otherwise staying quiet about potential moves. SMIC may be headed for punishment from Washington, but its accomplishments have already given hope to Beijings strategy of building a more self-reliant tech industry. This marks a milestone in Chinas semiconductor progression, Bloomberg Intelligences analysts Charles Shum and Sean Chen wrote in a memo. The chip shows that Chinas tech juggernaut is forging ahead, making progress circumventing US sanctions while quietly pursuing tech self-sufficiency. --With assistance from Jane Lanhee Lee. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. A masked Palestinian militant of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), holds-up his rifle on September 2, 2014 in Gaza city during a rally to celebrate a week after the Egypt-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Israel announced on September 1, 2014 it will expropriate 400 hectares (988 acres) of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, angering the Palestinians and alarming Israeli peace campaigners. AFP PHOTO/MAHMUD HAMS (Photo credit should read MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images) (MAHMUD HAMS via Getty Images) Viewed from one of Istanbuls glitziest restaurants, the Bosphorus looks sublime. The venue is a favoured haunt of mandarins, businessmen, minor celebritiesand Hamass financiers. A man on whom America has imposed sanctions for funding the Islamist group describes his various board seats. Its ridiculous, he says, of Americas accusation, but eventually admits, now, if youre asking what our employees do with their own money, why would I know? Hamas has three sources of power: its physical force inside Gaza, the reach of its ideas and its income. Since Hamass attacks on October 7th, Israel has killed more than 12,000 Palestinians in Gaza in seeking to wreck the first. But Israels declared goal of destroying Hamas for good requires its financial base to be dismantled, too. Very little of this sits in Gaza at all. Instead, it is overseas in friendly countries. Furnished with money-launderers, mining companies and much else, Hamass financial empire is reckoned to bring in more than $1bn a year. Having been painstakingly crafted to avoid Western sanctions, it may be out of reach for Israel and its allies. Hamass income pays for everything from schoolteachers salaries to missiles. Around $360m each year comes from import taxes on goods brought into Gaza from the West Bank or Egypt. This is the easiest source of cash for Israel to strangle. After withdrawing from the strip in 2005, it strictly limited the movement of goods and people across the border. Now it stops even most basic necessities from getting in. A much larger income stream, though, comes from abroad. Israeli officials reckon this amounts to around $750m per year, making it the main source of funding for Hamass current stockpile of arms and fuel. Some comes from friendly governments, the biggest of which is Iran. America reckons that the ayatollahs provide $100m to Palestinian Islamist groups, mainly in military aid. The task for Hamass financiers is to move this money around without falling prey to Americas sanctions. In the past month alone, American officials have imposed three rounds of restrictions on people and companies for funding Hamas. Story continues Dodging American sanctions requires some ingenuity. Millions of dollars flow to Hamas through crypto markets. Youd be surprised how much of the markets activity comes back to [Hamas], says Firuze Segzin, an economist at Bilkent University. Americas treasury department says Hamas has smuggled more than $20m through Redin, a currency exchange crammed among tourist shops deep in Istanbuls run-down Fatih neighbourhood. But the lions share of Hamass moneyat least $500m a year, say Israeli officialscomes from its investments, some of which are firms registered in countries across the Middle East. These are run by professionals from Hamass investment office and employ its members. American officials say the firms donate to charities which in turn funnel funds to Hamas; Turkish officials say profits are sometimes taken directly. Untangling these revenue streams is tricky for Western regulators. One such firm built the Afra Mall, Sudans first shopping mall, while another mines near Khartoum, its capital. A third built skyscrapers in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates (uae). Many of these companies boast of their business deals, but deny affiliation with Hamas. Can any revenue streams remaining to Hamas be choked off? That depends on the countries through which they flow. Since 1989, when Israel arrested a handful of Hamass top brass in Gaza and the West Bank, its bankers have lived abroad. Over time, though, geopolitical shifts have forced them to keep moving. Hamas abandoned its first financial hub, Amman, after Jordans ties to America grew too close. Today, while Hamass politicians favour Doha, the capital of Qatar, and its companies range from Algeria and Sudan to the UAE, its financiers live in Istanbul. Zaher Jabarin, accused by Israel of running Hamass finances (which he denies), is based there, as are several other individuals under sanctions by America for funding the organisation. Eager to gain regional influence by supporting the Palestinian cause, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkeys president, offers shelter. Israel says that the Turkish government hands out passports (which it denies) and lets Hamas keep an office in the country. Meanwhile, Turkeys banking system helps Hamas dodge American sanctions by conducting complex transactions across the world. A booming, lightly regulated crypto market helps. Many of Turkeys biggest banks, including Kuveyt Turk, have been accused by Israel and America of knowingly storing Hamass cash. Some murmur that Mr Erdogan quietly approves. In 2021 the Financial Action Task Force, a G7 watchdog, placed Turkey on its grey list of countries doing too little to freeze terrorists assets. No one benefits more than Hamass businessmen. The Turkish governments tacit approval opens doors and makes things smooth in business, says one of the groups finance employees. Trend GYO, an Istanbul-listed firm that has been placed under sanctions by America for funnelling funds to Hamas, won an official contract to build Istanbul Commerce University. Construction companies, which feature heavily in Hamass portfolio, can quietly swallow huge lumps of cash, and regularly receive large loans. All this allows Turkish officials to say that they are not directly lining Hamass pockets. So far, Hamas seems financially bulletproof. Israel has inflicted little harm on either its income or savings; Turkeys banks have been unco-operative. Americas numerous sanctions are less effective if their targets can keep cash outside its banking system. And Hamas hides its companies well. Every time you think youve got a big fish, it changes its name, despairs one ex-Treasury official. In fact, the risk is that Hamass finances will improve. As Israel steps up its attacks on Gaza, Western governments may blanch at the humanitarian horror. Countries with pro-Palestinian populations may make it even easier for Hamas to earn money. For months, rumours have circulated that some civil servants in Mr Erdogans economic ministry are co-ordinating with Hamass finance office. For Israel, Hamas growing richer despite the war would be a disaster. With its wealth and financial roots intact, itor a similar organisationmay well flourish after the destruction. Gazans, meanwhile, have been plunged into tragedy so that Israel can destroy a group whose money and power are safely ensconced elsewhere. Compare their plight to the picture in Istanbul: eating lobster and gazing at the Bosphorus. 2023 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/20/inside-hamass-sprawling-financial-empire Iraqi Assyrians' Future Should Not Be Dictated By a Militia Group: Chaldean Patriarch Patriarch Rapahel Louis Sako, the head of Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq and the world, speaking at MEPS23 in Duhok, Nov. 21, 2023. ( MEPS) The future of Iraqi Christians could not be dictated by a militia group, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church in the country and the world said on Tuesday at the MEPS23 Forum in Duhok. Remarks by Patriarch Raphael Louis Sako, who had fled Baghdad for Erbil in recent months, came during a keynote speech he delivered on Tuesday morning on the second day of Middle East Peace and Security (MEPS). Calling for peace and living in harmony, the clergyman said the future of Christians in Iraq could not be determined by anyone. "A militia group could not dictate the future of Christians," he said. The patriarch has reportedly been threatened by an Iranian-backed militia group that claims to be composed of Christian fighters in the Nineveh Plains. Similarly, Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid has withdrawn a presidential decree that had recognized the religious leader as the head and custodian of the Chaldean church. The faith leader also laid out a project that would enhance religious coexistence in Iraq, which includes amending the Iraqi constitution that would stipulate greater protection and representation to the Christian community as well as other minority groups in Iraq. Hundreds of politicians, political pundits, and researchers are attending the second day of MEPS23 in Duhok. MILAN (Reuters) - Italy's data protection authority has kicked-off a fact-finding investigation into the practice of gathering large amounts of personal data online for use in training artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, the regulator said on Wednesday. The watchdog is one of the most proactive of the 31 national data protection authorities in assessing AI platform compliance with Europe's data privacy regime known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Earlier this year, it briefly banned popular chatbot ChatGPT from operating in Italy over a suspected breach of privacy rules. On Wednesday, the Italian authority said the review was aimed at assessing whether online websites were setting out "adequate measures" to prevent AI platforms from collecting massive amounts of personal data for algorithms, also known as data scraping. "Following the fact-finding investigation, the Authority reserves the right to take the necessary steps, also in an urgent matter", the regulator said. No company was specifically mentioned in the statement. Italy invited academics, AI experts, and consumer groups to take part in the fact-finding process, sharing their views or comments over a 60 day period. Several countries have been looking at ways to regulate AI. European lawmakers have taken a lead by drafting rules aimed at setting a global standard for a technology that has become key to almost every industry and business. The draft rules could get approved by next month. France, Germany and Italy have reached an agreement on how AI should be regulated, according to a joint paper seen by Reuters, which is expected to accelerate negotiations at the European level. (Reporting by Elvira Pollina; Editing by Mark Potter) (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian state energy company Petroleo Brasileiro SA is the buyer of at least one diverted tanker carrying liquefied natural gas as it responds to surging domestic power demand caused by high temperatures, according to a person familiar with the matter. Most Read from Bloomberg The LNG Alliance, carrying a US cargo from Sabine Pass in Louisiana, was initially heading to the UK but is now showing a destination of Pecem, Petrobras northeastern LNG import terminal, tanker data compiled by Bloomberg shows. The Global Sealine and Malaga Knutsen are also abruptly turning away from Europe, although the final destinations were not indicated. In addition to Petrobras LNG terminals, private companies import LNG at Acu and Sergipe. Petrobras has LNG cargoes due to be delivered to Brazil in the coming days, as part of its commitment to deliver natural gas to its customers, the company said in a statement. The diversion of LNG cargoes comes as European gas storage hubs are well-stocked and Asian buyers are looking to sell surplus inventory. Brazils LNG import demand is typically offset by high reservoir levels as the country relies on hydropower generation, but low wind and solar resources have spurred this latest need to import LNG, the person said. --With assistance from Anna Shiryaevskaya. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. Over the last year, a good number of insiders have significantly increased their holdings in MAAS Group Holdings Limited (ASX:MGH). This is encouraging because it indicates that insiders are more optimistic about the company's prospects. While we would never suggest that investors should base their decisions solely on what the directors of a company have been doing, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether. Check out our latest analysis for MAAS Group Holdings MAAS Group Holdings Insider Transactions Over The Last Year In the last twelve months, the biggest single purchase by an insider was when MD, CEO & Executive Director Wesley Maas bought AU$53m worth of shares at a price of AU$4.00 per share. That means that an insider was happy to buy shares at above the current price of AU$3.60. Their view may have changed since then, but at least it shows they felt optimistic at the time. We always take careful note of the price insiders pay when purchasing shares. It is generally more encouraging if they paid above the current price, as it suggests they saw value, even at higher levels. MAAS Group Holdings insiders may have bought shares in the last year, but they didn't sell any. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below! MAAS Group Holdings is not the only stock insiders are buying. So take a peek at this free list of growing companies with insider buying. Does MAAS Group Holdings Boast High Insider Ownership? I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. A high insider ownership often makes company leadership more mindful of shareholder interests. It's great to see that MAAS Group Holdings insiders own 59% of the company, worth about AU$684m. This kind of significant ownership by insiders does generally increase the chance that the company is run in the interest of all shareholders. Story continues So What Does This Data Suggest About MAAS Group Holdings Insiders? The fact that there have been no MAAS Group Holdings insider transactions recently certainly doesn't bother us. On a brighter note, the transactions over the last year are encouraging. Judging from their transactions, and high insider ownership, MAAS Group Holdings insiders feel good about the company's future. While we like knowing what's going on with the insider's ownership and transactions, we make sure to also consider what risks are facing a stock before making any investment decision. Every company has risks, and we've spotted 4 warning signs for MAAS Group Holdings (of which 1 is potentially serious!) you should know about. 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. By buying an index fund, investors can approximate the average market return. But if you pick the right individual stocks, you could make more than that. For example, Malaysia Building Society Berhad (KLSE:MBSB) shareholders have seen the share price rise 32% over three years, well in excess of the market decline (2.6%, not including dividends). Let's take a look at the underlying fundamentals over the longer term, and see if they've been consistent with shareholders returns. View our latest analysis for Malaysia Building Society Berhad To paraphrase Benjamin Graham: Over the short term the market is a voting machine, but over the long term it's a weighing machine. By comparing earnings per share (EPS) and share price changes over time, we can get a feel for how investor attitudes to a company have morphed over time. Over the last three years, Malaysia Building Society Berhad failed to grow earnings per share, which fell 8.3% (annualized). Thus, it seems unlikely that the market is focussed on EPS growth at the moment. Therefore, we think it's worth considering other metrics as well. Interestingly, the dividend has increased over time; so that may have given the share price a boost. Sometimes yield-chasing investors will flock to a company if they think the dividend can grow over time. On top of that, revenue grew at a rate of 3.0% per year, and it's likely investors interpret that as pointing to a brighter future. You can see how earnings and revenue have changed over time in the image below (click on the chart to see the exact values). We know that Malaysia Building Society Berhad has improved its bottom line lately, but what does the future have in store? This free report showing analyst forecasts should help you form a view on Malaysia Building Society Berhad What About Dividends? When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. So for companies that pay a generous dividend, the TSR is often a lot higher than the share price return. As it happens, Malaysia Building Society Berhad's TSR for the last 3 years was 66%, which exceeds the share price return mentioned earlier. This is largely a result of its dividend payments! Story continues A Different Perspective It's nice to see that Malaysia Building Society Berhad shareholders have received a total shareholder return of 48% over the last year. Of course, that includes the dividend. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 1.7%. Therefore it seems like sentiment around the company has been positive lately. Given the share price momentum remains strong, it might be worth taking a closer look at the stock, lest you miss an opportunity. I find it very interesting to look at share price over the long term as a proxy for business performance. But to truly gain insight, we need to consider other information, too. Consider risks, for instance. Every company has them, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for Malaysia Building Society Berhad you should know about. But note: Malaysia Building Society Berhad may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with past earnings growth (and further growth forecast). Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on Malaysian exchanges. 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. Workers at the Medieval Times dinner theater in Buena Park will return to work Wednesday after a nine-month strike. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times) Show performers and stable hands at Medieval Times' Buena Park castle are ending their nine-month strike and will return to work Wednesday morning without a contract agreement, the union said. On Friday, the union made an "unconditional offer to return to work" a decision that was "weighed against numerous logistical and legal factors" and not made lightly, it said in a statement. "We felt that it was in our best interest to continue to try to work toward the collective bargaining agreement while returning to work," said Erin Zapcic, who plays a queen at the Buena Park castle and serves as a union steward. "Our fights not over, and just because were going back to work doesnt mean were not 1000% committed to getting a collective bargaining agreement that makes Medieval Times as safe and equitable as it possibly can be. The roughly 50-person bargaining unit includes knights, squires, stable hands and show cast members, including trumpet players and actors playing the queen, lord chancellor, lord marshal and Lord Cedric. About 27 workers were on strike for the last nine months, Zapcic said. Read more: When your polling place is a dungeon: Medieval Times workers vote on unionizing Medieval Times did not respond to a request for comment. Buena Park Medieval Times workers voted to unionize last November, citing low wages and a desire to improve working conditions, including better treatment of animals involved in the show. It is the second castle in the dinner-theater chain to unionize. Three months later, workers went on strike after wage negotiations were unsuccessful, and the union filed unfair labor practice charges against the company. During the strike, Medieval Times brought in performers from other locations throughout the country to keep the shows going, Zapcic said. Medieval Times is not reinstating three workers for "misconduct while on strike," the union said, including one of the strike captains who plays a knight in the show. The Medieval Times union said in a statement that it will pursue "appropriate legal avenues" to get the workers reinstated. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. OpenAI has been at the forefront of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom over the last year, and the companys board of directors made waves last week with its decision to oust co-founder and CEO Sam Altman for not being consistently candid in his communications with the board. The OpenAI board of directors has a relatively unique structure in that the companys for-profit, commercial arm is governed by the board of OpenAIs non-profit 501(c)3 arm. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 and underwent a restructuring in 2019 that created the commercial arm to allow for fundraising while the nonprofits mission was preserved. It has risen to public prominence over the last year following its release of ChatGPT . In the wake of Altmans ouster, the board of directors has had its hands full with an employee revolt and talks about Altmans potential return to OpenAI that are reportedly ongoing. It also tapped Emmett Shear as the new interim CEO after the initial interim CEO, Mira Murati, was among those who called for the board to resign over its handling of Altmans ouster. WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT OPENAIS NEW INTERIM CEO EMMETT SHEAR OpenAI co-founder and former CEO Sam Altman (L) was ousted by the company's board that includes co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever (R), who has since said he regrets his role in the process. The board may be restructured in the future, as both Shear and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, whose company is a major investor in OpenAI and hired both Altman and former board president Greg Brockman amid the turmoil, have expressed an openness to reforming its governance structure. Altman and Brockman were both board members before last weeks shakeup. The board of directors currently includes OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, and independent directors including Quora CEO Adam DAngelo, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley and Helen Toner of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology. The board members and OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Heres a look at the background of the remaining board members READ ON THE FOX BUSINESS APP OPENAI INVESTORS CONSIDER SUING BOARD AFTER ALTMANS OUSTER: REPORT Story continues Sutskever, OpenAIs chief scientist, was a co-founder of the company in 2015 and served as its research director after previously working as a research scientist focused on AI at Google. Earlier this year he announced that he was co-leading OpenAIs "Superalignment" project that uses 20% of the companys computing power to ensure the AI systems built by OpenAI dont become harmful to humanity as AI-powered superintelligence advances. Ilya Sutskever, Russian Israeli-Canadian computer scientist and co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI, speaks at Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv on June 5, 2023. The Wall Street Journal reported that Sutskever convened the boards video call with Altman on Friday in which the CEO was fired. Early Monday, Sutskever took to X, formerly Twitter, to write, "I deeply regret my participation in the boards actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything weve built together and I will do everything I can to reunite the company." Altman reposted Sutskevers post with three red heart emojis shortly thereafter. WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)? DAngelo, the CEO of Quora, co-founded the firm in 2009 after he previously served as the chief technology officer of Facebook. He joined the OpenAI board in 2018 before it was reorganized to accommodate fundraising efforts. Late Monday night, DAngelo took to X to repost Replit CEO Amjad Masads post on the platform that said: "Have known Adam DAngelo for many years and although I have not spoken to him a while, the idea he went crazy or is being vindictive over some feature overlap or any of the other rumors seems just wrong. Its best to withhold judgement until more information comes out." McCauley has been an OpenAI board member since 2018 and is also the CEO of GeoSim Systems, a geospatial tech company involved with developing 3D models of cities. She holds a degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University as well as a masters degree in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. OpenAI has surged in the AI race over the last year following the launch of ChatGPT. Toner has been the director of strategy and foundational research grants at Georgetowns Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) for the last five years. Like McCauley and DAngelo, Toner isnt an employee of OpenAI and holds an uncompensated role on OpenAIs board. She previously studied Chinas AI ecosystem as a research affiliate at Oxford Universitys Center for the Governance of AI, and was a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy. Original article source: Meet the OpenAI board members that ousted Sam Altman Nordstrom Inc (NYSE:JWN) reported a decrease in Q3 net sales by 6.8% year-over-year. Adjusted EPS stood at $0.25, excluding a favorable adjustment related to Canadian operations wind-down. Gross profit margin improved by 180 basis points compared to the same period last year. The company reaffirmed its fiscal 2023 revenue outlook and narrowed its EPS guidance range. On November 21, 2023, Nordstrom Inc (NYSE:JWN) released its 8-K filing, revealing a third-quarter net earnings of $67 million, translating to earnings per diluted share (EPS) of $0.41. Adjusted for a favorable true-up related to the wind-down of Canadian operations, the adjusted EPS was $0.25. The company's total revenue for the quarter was $3.3 billion, a 6.8% decrease compared to the same period in fiscal 2022. Financial Performance Overview Nordstrom's third-quarter performance was marked by a decline in net sales and gross merchandise value (GMV), with a 6.8% and 7.1% decrease respectively. The wind-down of Canadian operations negatively impacted net sales by 270 basis points. However, the timing shift of the Anniversary Sale positively affected net sales by approximately 200 basis points. Excluding these factors, net sales would have been down around 6%. Digital sales decreased by 11.3%, representing 34% of total sales during the quarter. Margin and Expense Management The company's gross profit as a percentage of net sales improved by 180 basis points to 35.0%, primarily due to lower markdowns and increased inventory productivity. Selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses as a percentage of net sales slightly decreased by 5 basis points to 36.3%. The company ended the quarter with a decrease in ending inventory by 8.8% compared to a 6.8% decrease in sales, indicating improved inventory management. Store Updates and Future Outlook Nordstrom Inc (NYSE:JWN) has actively managed its store portfolio, opening or relocating 20 stores and announcing plans for additional openings. The company updated its fiscal 2023 outlook, expecting a revenue decline of 4.0 to 6.0 percent versus fiscal 2022, including the impact of the Canadian operations wind-down and the 53rd week. The adjusted EBIT margin is projected to be between 3.8 to 4.1 percent of sales, with an adjusted EPS of $1.90 to $2.10. Story continues Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Highlights As of October 28, 2023, Nordstrom Inc (NYSE:JWN) reported cash and cash equivalents of $375 million. The balance sheet showed a total asset value of $9.013 billion. Net cash provided by operating activities for the nine months ended October 28, 2023, was $107 million, with capital expenditures of $375 million during the same period. Management Commentary CEO Erik Nordstrom commented on the quarter's results, stating, In the third quarter we continued to make progress against our priorities, and were especially pleased with the resulting improvements in gross margin and earnings." President Pete Nordstrom highlighted the company's favorable inventory position and assortment heading into the holiday season. Investor Considerations While Nordstrom Inc (NYSE:JWN) faces market challenges, including a softening consumer spend, the company's efforts in improving gross margin and inventory management are notable. The reaffirmed revenue outlook and narrowed EPS guidance provide a clearer picture for investors. As the holiday season approaches, Nordstrom's strategic positioning and store updates could play a crucial role in its performance. For detailed financial tables and further information, readers are encouraged to view the full 8-K filing. Explore the complete 8-K earnings release (here) from Nordstrom Inc for further details. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. OneMain Financial expects its pending $115 million acquisition of Foursight Capital to close in the first half of next year. Credit: Adobe Stock OneMain Financial is buying a small auto lender called Foursight Capital, pushing the subprime lender further into the auto finance business. OneMain, whose main offering is installment loans for consumers with lower credit scores, has been steadily expanding into the credit card and auto lending sectors. The latter efforts would get a boost from its planned acquisition of Foursight, which works with a wide network of car dealers and has a loan portfolio of nearly $1 billion. Evansville, Indiana-based OneMain said that it is paying $115 million in cash to buy Foursight from Jefferies, an investment bank that has owned the auto lender since 2012. The companies expect the deal to close in the first half of next year, pending customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Doug Shulman, OneMain's CEO, said in a statement Tuesday that the acquisition is part of the company's efforts to "diversify and grow our suite of lending products for hardworking Americans." "Foursight is an attractive tuck-in acquisition giving us a seasoned team, scalable technology, tested credit models, a franchise dealer network and a high-quality loan portfolio to support our disciplined expansion into the auto lending business," Shulman said. OneMain has long accepted automobiles as collateral from some customers. Borrowers can qualify for lower rates or obtain larger loans when they use cars as collateral, thereby reducing the risk for OneMain. More than half of OneMain's loans, some of which are made at its storefronts across the country, are secured by cars. Even before the Foursight acquisition, OneMain was expanding gradually into offering loans to individuals who are buying cars. For now, consumers can get loans directly from OneMain if they buy a car at one of the lender's partner dealers. Loan receivables from that channel totaled more than $650 million last quarter, Shulman told analysts in October. "We plan to continue to build our auto purchase lending program in a disciplined way," he said. Story continues Foursight's $900 million loan portfolio, while larger than OneMain's quarterly auto loan receivables, would still make up a relatively small chunk of the acquirer's business. OneMain had about $20 billion in net finance receivables during the third quarter, much of that thanks to its bread-and-butter portfolio of personal loan products. The acquisition would open up a new channel for OneMain: indirect auto loans at large franchise dealers. Some banks have recently pulled back from indirect auto loans, or loans arranged by dealers' financing departments. But they remain a critical source of financing for car buyers. Depending on the loans they qualify for, consumers can finance their vehicles from banks, credit unions and other lenders that show up on dealers' screens. Those lenders then buy the credit from the dealerships, taking responsibility for collecting payments from borrowers, as well as shouldering the risk that customers won't repay their loans. Foursight, which was founded in 2012, offers indirect auto loans through a network of dealers in 38 states. Its roughly 200 employees are expected to join OneMain. The acquisition, which follows a period of unusually strong consumer credit performance during much of the pandemic, comes as more U.S. consumers are falling behind on their auto loan payments. Some lenders are tightening their underwriting criteria, including by charging higher annual percentage rates. "While the lending backdrop remains less competitive, allowing for higher APRs, we believe worsening credit trends could continue in the near to intermediate term," Vincent Caintic, an analyst at Stephens, wrote in a recent note to clients. Shulman, the OneMain CEO, said last month that the company's underwriting standards have remained "rigorous." OneMain has been tightening its underwriting criteria for at least a year to lower the risks of potential losses. The performance of OneMain's auto loans "has been excellent, far better than comparative industry performance," Shulman said in October. MEFLEX PANAMA CITY, PANAMA, Nov. 22, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MEFLEX, a groundbreaking startup at the forefront of fashion and technology innovation, is proud to announce its official launch as the leading platform in the burgeoning world of Fashion AI NFTs. In just one week since its debut, MEFLEX has garnered an impressive 25,000 users, solidifying its position as a transformative force in the fashion industry and NFT ecosystem. MEFLEX introduces a revolutionary platform that empowers users to seamlessly create AI-powered fashion images, sparking new avenues of creativity and self-expression. What sets MEFLEX apart is its cutting-edge image-to-image module, which intuitively understands user sketches and transforms them into captivating, high-quality fashion images. By bridging the gap between AI and fashion, MEFLEX opens up endless possibilities for designers, artists, and fashion enthusiasts alike. Key Features of MEFLEX: AI-Powered Fashion Creativity: MEFLEX leverages advanced AI technology, allowing users to craft unique, visually stunning fashion designs effortlessly. Image-to-Image Transformation: MEFLEX's groundbreaking image-to-image module breathes life into user sketches, enabling them to transform their concepts into professional-grade fashion images. User-Friendly Interface: MEFLEX is designed with user accessibility in mind, ensuring that both industry professionals and newcomers can utilize its capabilities with ease. NFT Integration: Users can seamlessly mint their AI-generated fashion creations as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), tapping into the world of digital fashion collectibles. MEFLEX Wallet App: Available on App Store and Google Play: MEFLEX Wallet App, an essential component of the platform, is readily accessible for users on both App Store and Google Play. Over 35,000 Downloads: The MEFLEX Wallet App has already been downloaded more than 35,000 times, underlining its popularity and user-friendly features. Free AI Image Generation: MEFLEX is committed to democratizing AI creativity by offering free AI image generation, ensuring that fashion enthusiasts of all backgrounds can enjoy and explore the limitless possibilities of AI-generated fashion designs. Story continues Founder and CEO of MEFLEX, Jonghun Lee, expressed enthusiasm for the platform's rapid growth and the success of the MEFLEX Wallet App: "We are thrilled by the overwhelmingly positive response to MEFLEX and the rapid adoption of our Wallet App. Our vision is to empower individuals across the fashion and creative spectrum by harnessing the potential of AI technology. We are just beginning our journey, and the possibilities ahead are incredibly exciting." MEFLEX has already piqued the interest of fashion influencers, designers, and artists who see the platform as a game-changing tool for their work. With a rapidly expanding user base, MEFLEX is committed to continuous innovation and the promise of new features, partnerships, and collaborations that will reshape the fashion and NFT landscape. For more information about MEFLEX, to download the Wallet App, and to join the creative revolution, please visit https://meflex.io . About MEFLEX: MEFLEX is a pioneering startup that blurs the boundaries between fashion and artificial intelligence. With a mission to empower creators and enthusiasts, MEFLEX offers cutting-edge AI tools and an innovative image-to-image module for generating captivating fashion images. MEFLEX is redefining the way fashion is conceived, created, and shared in the digital age. Visit MEFLEX: MEFLEX Website Note to Editors: For more information on MEFLEX's groundbreaking features and its visionary approach to digital lifestyles, please visit MEFLEX Website. High-resolution images, interviews, and additional materials are available upon request. https://www.meflex.io/ CONTACT: Ed Yeom Meflex cto at meflex.io Mr Teng joined the world's largest crypto exchange just over two years ago The sudden resignation of Changpeng "CZ" Zhao has shocked the crypto world. But who is the new boss of Binance, Richard Teng? A native of Singapore, Mr Teng joined the world's largest crypto exchange just over two years ago as the chief executive of Binance's Singapore business. That was the year when Binance came under a Justice Department investigation, and as regulatory scrutiny of the company and Mr Zhao intensified, Mr Teng was rapidly climbing the ranks in the background. He only stayed in his original position as the Singapore CEO for five months, according to his LinkedIn page, before he was promoted to regional head of Europe, Asia and the Middle East and North Africa in April 2023. Mr Teng later moved on to become head of regional markets this May before he was appointed to the top job on Tuesday - just slightly more than two years after he was first employed by Binance. In announcing his successor, Mr Zhao called Mr Teng a "highly qualified leader", adding that "with over three decades of financial services and regulatory experience, he will navigate the company through its next period of growth". Prior to joining Binance, Mr Teng worked in the more traditional financial and regulatory sectors as a director of corporate finance at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and a chief regulatory officer of the Singapore Exchange (SGX). He then moved on to the become chief executive of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), an international financial centre in the United Arab Emirates, where he stayed for six years. The ADGM regulates the trading of digital assets. In a statement on Wednesday, Mr Teng said he was honoured to step into the role, adding that he would focus on reassuring Binance's 150 million users about "the financial strength, security and safety of the company". But his new role will come with its fair share of challenges. Retaining customer confidence will be an item on Mr Teng's agenda, with Binance having suffered reputational damage in recent months. Story continues In March, US regulators sought to ban the company, alleging it had been operating in the country illegally. It was also accused of breaking numerous US financial laws, including rules intended to thwart money laundering. The Justice Department later ordered Binance to pay $4.3bn (3.4bn) in penalties and forfeitures. Despite this, Mr Teng has reiterated that Binance is "here to stay", adding that company's foundation stands "stronger than ever". The top floor of Davidge Hall, through which aspiring medical doctors once crept to reach a secret dissection lab with stolen cadavers, is cracked and peeling from rainwater and leaking steam pipes. An earthquake shook the 200-year-old University of Maryland, Baltimore building in 2011, pulling apart its copper seams and exposing design flaws in the roof and windows. Rainwater has repeatedly seeped from the faulty roof into the glass-domed lecture hall, staining its ornate plaster wall with brown streaks. After years of patchworking the problematic roof, it will soon be replaced after the Maryland Board of Public Works approved a $3.8 million contract this month for the renovation. The copper roof is just one part of the buildings ongoing renovations that have closed the hall since March. The first floor, which has an active lecture hall, is expected to open in early 2024. Like most historic buildings, the upkeep is arduous. By the end of next year, Davidge Hall will have a new roof, a new HVAC system and restored classrooms with IT upgrades, thanks to donations from alumni, said Larry Pitrof, an amateur historian and the executive director of the Medical Alumni Association of the University of Maryland. What we conveyed to the university was we can take care of the interior of the building; thats what alumni are excited to be refurbishing, naming rooms and things like that, they can give money for, Pitrof said. But replacing a roof how [do we] excite a graduate about restoring a roof or changing out the HVAC system? Davidge Hall, named for Baltimore physician Dr. John Davidge, who created the medical school and became its first dean, is the founding building of UMB and the entire University System of Maryland. Created 86 years before the Johns Hopkins Universitys medical school, its the fifth-oldest medical school in the United States and the oldest teaching facility continuously used for medical education, according to the university. In the early 1800s, American medical practices were crude and distrusted, as medical doctors had to compete with the Catholic Church and street-corner apothecaries. It would be 70 more years until physicians widely understood that germs cause disease. The thought was to bring together the best medical minds in the country and try to solve some of these medical mysteries, Pitrof said. Dr. Davidge in 1807 successfully lobbied the Maryland General Assembly to approve the schools charter, originally called the College of Medicine of Maryland. Doctors no longer had to teach out of their own homes and risk angry mobs protesting the use of grave-robbed cadavers. When the hall opened in 1812, it was surrounded by a brick wall for protection. Larry Pitrof, executive director of the Medical Alumni Association of the University of Maryland, stands outside Davidge Hall on West Lombard Street. The building is undergoing renovation, including a new copper roof. The private university, rechartered in 1812 as the University of Maryland, merged in 1920 with the Maryland State College of Agriculture to become the University of Maryland, Baltimore and College Park, a public university. This created the university system, and the two schools became separate in 1970. Davidge Halls opulence and Pantheonic architecture stand out among modern buildings on West Lombard Street in the downtown area. Davidge and other founding clinicians had to pay for the facility with their own money. They erected a prestigious building to signal the importance of formalized medicine. Famous physicians graduated from the school, such as James Carroll, who in 1900 discovered that mosquitos were the vector for yellow fever. The disease hit Baltimore hard with outbreaks in 1794 and 1800. Samuel Mudd, an 1856 graduate, was incarcerated on conspiracy charges after he set John Wilkes Booths broken leg after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Mudd treated yellow fever patients in prison and was later pardoned. The glass dome in the anatomical lecture hall at Davidge Hall at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, which is undergoing renovation. Inside Davidge Hall are two amphitheaters. Chemical Hall, located on the ground floor, has 200 antique seats and is still used today for elective classes about the history of medicine. Before Bunsen burners were invented, students learned how to conduct chemistry experiments by holding beakers over a fire inside the halls kiln. On the third floor is Anatomical Hall, which has a domed ceiling. Benjamin Latrobe, who designed the U.S. Capitol and the University of Pennsylvanias medical school (the oldest in the country), was consulted during the construction, Pitrof said. Borrowing from Latrobes design of UPenns circular lecture hall and Italian technology, the room was designed to reverberate the voices of those standing directly under the dome. [Faculty] could be basically heard by everybody, even if he was whispering, Pitrof said. We didnt have microphones back then, so this was the technology that was employed to make this a usable hall. Surgical students would come by candlelight and walk through a maze of stairs and doorways to reach the dissection lab to learn about how the body functions from studying cadavers. Back then, the embalming practices were nonexistent. So when you brought in cadavers, you can imagine the stench that must have been like to walk in this building, Pitrof said. Davidge Hall lecture amphitheater in 1970. After years of patchworking the problematic roof, it will soon be replaced after the Maryland Board of Public Works approved a $3.8 million contract for the renovation. The alumni associations goal is to honor the historical and architectural integrity of the building while making sure its still relevant and usable for students today. The building is undergoing technology upgrades so students can watch recorded lectures and professors can use a laser projector to teach. But the chairs inside Chemical Hall will not have attached desks or outlets. Theres a value in understanding the history of medicine when you practice medicine techniques that were used, therapies that were employed, the year discoveries took place and how weve all sort of continued to build upon the prior generation, Pitrof said. This gives students a real clear understanding of what it was like to practice medicine here in the early 1800s. (Bloomberg) -- Some owners of WeWork Inc.s more than 700 properties are objecting to the companys plans to shut down many of its locations in bankruptcy. Most Read from Bloomberg Objections filed Tuesday, the deadline for such motions, pushed back on the companys timeline for rejecting leases, and rules they say wrongly favor WeWork. For example, one landlord claims WeWork would retain the right to stay in a location, even after canceling a lease. The filings provide a fresh look at the delicate balance WeWork must strike as it seeks to renegotiate or shed onerous leases, a key part of its bankruptcy plan. Its in talks with landlords for hundreds of properties about rent cuts and other concessions, and must be careful not to push so aggressively that landlords choose to walk away and seek new occupants. WeWork is walking a fine line because it has to aggressively cut rent costs in order to reorganize successfully, but at the same time its future depends on maintaining healthy relationships with some of those same landlords if it hopes to strike new agreements with them after emerging from bankruptcy, said Evan DuFaux, a special situations analyst at the research firm CreditSights. The case is likely to turn on the landlords strategy regarding renegotiation and rejection of leases. Regulatory filings show that plans during bankruptcy discussions with creditors involved shuttering nearly half of its US and Canadian locations. The company hasnt shared new figures since filing for chapter 11, but said in a response to questions from Bloomberg that the disclosed numbers were outdated and didnt reflect the significant progress made in talks since then. Story continues WeWork filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 6, a move that gave it broad rights to reject or cancel contract agreements that are not financially feasible, including leases. It was earlier attempting to negotiate with landlords outside of court. WeWorks advisers from law firm Kirkland & Ellis and real estate specialist Hilco Global have been asking for rent cuts in a range of sizes, sometimes above 25%, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Some landlords have also expressed concern over their ability to draw on collateral that guaranteed their rental income. A $1.5 billion letter of credit facility that backed rent promises at some of the properties is of issue in some of their objections. WeWork appears to be trying to play a game of Gotcha with unsuspecting mom and pop landlords in order to force them into what are effectively new leases that WeWork would otherwise be unable to obtain in any legal or consensual manner, lawyers for the owner of the companys headquarters said in a court filing. The company will be back in court next week to ask Judge John Sherwood to approve rules for canceling leases and paying any associated costs. Such rules are typically seen in big retail cases, where a company faces pressure to quickly analyze the profitability of hundreds of stores and then decide which to close and which to keep open. Under Chapter 11 rules, companies have up to 210 days to decide whether to cancel a lease. Other contracts, like those signed with suppliers or customers, have no time limit. The case is WeWork Inc., 23-19865, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey (Newark). --With assistance from Steven Church. (Updates to add source of information on scope of disclosed closure plans, company comment in fifth paragraph.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek 2023 Bloomberg L.P. FILE PHOTO: The New York International Auto Show, in Manhattan, New York City (Reuters) - Volkswagen said on Wednesday that it would hike salaries for production workers at its Tennessee-based Chattanooga assembly plant by 11%, weeks after the United Auto Workers union won significant pay and benefit hikes from the Detroit Three automakers. The German company and other non-union automakers in the U.S. have come under increased pressure to improve pay and benefits following the record contracts achieved by the UAW in late October after thousands of its members went on a six-week targeted strike. Japanese automakers Honda Motor and Toyota have raised wages for non-union U.S. factory workers in recent weeks amid signs that the union is turning its attention to organizing the workforce at foreign-owned and Tesla auto plants. Hyundai Motor has also announced a 25% increase over the next four years for non-union production workers in Alabama and Georgia. UAW President Shawn Fain told Reuters last week that the union was getting expressions of interest in organizing from many Tesla workers. The Elon Musk-led company, which enjoys an operating profit advantage over other automakers, has not announced any salary hikes in the U.S. Volkswagen's pay increase is effective from December, with a compressed wage progression timeline beginning in February. (Reporting by Mehr Bedi in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid) - Following $60m Series B, Volt expands global footprint beyond UK, Europe and Brazil - Integration with PayTo brings a best-in-class PayTo payment experience to Australian consumers - Megatix named as first Australian company to implement Volts real-time payment technology LONDON, November 22, 2023--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Volt, the global real-time payments platform, today announces its expansion into Australia following a period of sustained growth for the UK-headquartered fintech company. Following Volts $60m funding round earlier this year, this development marks the latest step in its ambitious growth plans to meet market demand for real-time payments across the globe. Having already established itself across the UK and Europe, and expanding its global footprint by entering the South American market via Brazil in 2021, with a network of more than 5,000 banks, Australia represents a significant milestone for Volt and the account-to-account (A2A) payments industry. Volts gateway will be integrated with PayTo, an Australian digital payment platform that enables consumers to authorise and control payments directly from their bank account. While the adoption of real-time payments in Australia is still relatively new, with debit and credit cards dominating the payment landscape, there is appetite for new and innovative payment methods. A recent report from Cognizant found that Australia is the second leading market in the adoption of new payments technology, following China, with Juniper Research reporting the value of open banking payments will reach $330bn globally by 2027. The first merchant in Australia to integrate Volts technology is Megatix, one of the country's fastest growing ticketing platforms. The self-service ticketing platform is well established in the market and partners with some of Australias most high profile events and venues by providing technology that enables safe and secure purchase of tickets to its customers. Story continues Thanks to Volts real-time payment capabilities, Megatix customers in Australia now have the ability to select Instant Bank Transfer as a payment option at checkout. Not only does this help vendors to bypass costly credit card fees, but it also offers customers a more secure, fast and seamless payment option. Additionally, with real-time payments Megatix, and its vendors, receive payments much quicker - thus improving cash flow and business efficiency. Reflecting on the news, Tom Greenwood, Founder and CEO of Volt, said: "I am incredibly excited to finally introduce our technology to the Australian market and begin our journey into the APAC region. Our goal at Volt is to revolutionise the payments sector and create a solution that significantly benefits not only merchants who use our technology but their customers as well. Australia is fast becoming a key market for many global businesses and similarly to Brazil when we launched there, our introduction into this fast-growing market will be transformative to the payments space." Roshan Odhavji, CEO of Megatix, added: "Our goal is to be at the forefront when it comes to creating an innovative ticketing platform and we have found the perfect payment technology partner in Volt to do just that. With Volts industry leading real-time payment capabilities, were now able to offer our customers a slick checkout experience, and be the first in the market to do so. Thanks to open banking and Volts technology, were able to improve the payments process immeasurably for our customers, such as eliminating costly chargebacks associated with payments which have been a historic pain point for our vendors." Volt will also be establishing a physical presence in Australia, looking to make a number of significant hires to manage and grow the Australian market, in the very near future. - ENDS - About Volt Founded in 2019, Volt is building the infrastructure for global instant payments. Today, its open payments gateway allows merchants and PSPs to process transactions securely between accounts held at more than 5,000 banks in the UK, the EU and Brazil. Volts unique aggregation model provides unrivalled open payments reach and maximises the speed, security and resilience of transactions. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231122965340/en/ Contacts Sophie Barocas sophie.barocas@archetype.co Warren Buffett has laid out plans for Berkshire Hathaway and his fortune in the event of his death in a letter published on the global conglomerates website. The legendary investor, dubbed the Oracle of Omaha, released the statement alongside news that he had donated millions of Berkshire Hathaway shares to four charitable trusts associated with his family. Buffett, 93, converted 1,600 Class A shares into 2,400,000 Class B shares according to a regulatory filing seen by Fortune, submitted to the SEC on Nov. 21. Of those shares, 1,500,000 were gifted to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, and 300,000 shares were given to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and NoVo Foundation, respectively. According to calculations by news agency Reuters, this amounts to a total donation of $866 million in Berkshire Hathaway fundssupplementing a $759 million donation made at the same time last year. Buffett has made a habit of making such moves at Thanksgiving, last year making contributions to the charities run by his three children and the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his late wife. In the unexpected letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, the man worth $121 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index began by reassuring readers: I feel good but fully realize I am playing in extra innings. Buffetts letters are usually limited to an annual message to shareholders, and less frequently relate to large donations of Berkshire Hathaway stocks. Buffett is showing no signs of slowing, having spent a portion of the year traveling. This spring he visited Japan and held intense meetings with the countrys top five trading houses: Itochu, Mitsubishi Corp., Mitsui & Co., Sumitomo Corp., and Marubeni. Since then a stock rally has ensued across Japan, leading analysts to agree Buffett is still at the top of his game. An awesome responsibility Buffett, who has invested in the likes of Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and more recently the Japanese trading houses, also doubled down on his well-reported beliefs about wealth and philanthropy. Story continues Since 2006 Buffett has donated an estimated $52 billion to charitable causes, a large sum of which$39 billionhas been donated to his friend Bill Gates charitable foundation. Buffett wrote that he and his children agree that dynastic wealth is not desirable, adding: Moreover, we have had many opportunities to observe that being rich does not make you either wise or evil. We also agree that capitalismwhatever its weaknesses, including the vast disparities in wealth and political influence that it delivers somewhat capriciously to its citizenshas worked wonders and continues to work wonders. He added that 99%-plus of his wealth will be donated to his charitable trust, while confirming his three childrennow between ages 65 and 70are the executors of his current will. They were not fully prepared for this awesome responsibility in 2006, but they are now, Buffett noted. In the letter Buffett revealed some details of how his fortune will be handled, saying his three children must act unanimously. Because of the random nature of mortality, successors must always be designated, he added. Laws in respect to philanthropy will change from time to time, and wise trustees above ground are preferable to any strictures written by someone long gone. Whatever the rulesand rules are necessaryprivate philanthropy will always have an important place in America. Buffetts will upon his death will be an open book, he added, with no imaginative trusts or foreign entities. Instead it is rather simple and will be available for public inspection at the Douglas County Courthouse. The future of Berkshire Hathaway It was in 1962 that Buffetts name was first attached to Berkshire Hathaway, back then a troubled textile manufacturer operating out of Massachusetts. Since then the business has grown to a market cap of more than $780 billion with reportedly more than 380,000 employees. Its CEO seems confident the company will continue to thrive in his absence though admitted, like any business, mistakes will inevitably be made. Berkshireone of the largest and most diversified companies in the worldwill inevitably encounter human errors in judgment and behavior. These occur at all large organizations, public or private, Buffett wrote. But these mistakes are unlikely to be serious at Berkshire and will be acknowledged and corrected. We have the right CEO to succeed me and the right board of directors as well. Both are needed. He added that in the short term Berkshires characteristics and behaviors will be supported by Buffetts holdings, but before long will become an independent entity earning whatever reputation it then deserves. Decay can occur at all types of large institutions, whether governmental, philanthropic, or profit-seeking, Buffett wrote. But it is not inevitable. Berkshires advantage is that it has been built to last. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. For example, although software-as-a-service business Salesforce.com lost money for years while it grew recurring revenue, if you held shares since 2005, you'd have done very well indeed. But while the successes are well known, investors should not ignore the very many unprofitable companies that simply burn through all their cash and collapse. So should Peppermint Innovation (ASX:PIL) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? In this article, we define cash burn as its annual (negative) free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company spends each year to fund its growth. We'll start by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves in order to calculate its cash runway. View our latest analysis for Peppermint Innovation When Might Peppermint Innovation Run Out Of Money? You can calculate a company's cash runway by dividing the amount of cash it has by the rate at which it is spending that cash. As at June 2023, Peppermint Innovation had cash of AU$3.1m and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was AU$2.6m over the trailing twelve months. Therefore, from June 2023 it had roughly 14 months of cash runway. While that cash runway isn't too concerning, sensible holders would be peering into the distance, and considering what happens if the company runs out of cash. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below. How Is Peppermint Innovation's Cash Burn Changing Over Time? Whilst it's great to see that Peppermint Innovation has already begun generating revenue from operations, last year it only produced AU$376k, so we don't think it is generating significant revenue, at this point. Therefore, for the purposes of this analysis we'll focus on how the cash burn is tracking. With cash burn dropping by 13% it seems management feel the company is spending enough to advance its business plans at an appropriate pace. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Peppermint Innovation due to its lack of significant operating revenues. We prefer most of the stocks on this list of stocks that analysts expect to grow. Story continues Can Peppermint Innovation Raise More Cash Easily? Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for Peppermint Innovation to raise more cash in the future. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash and fund growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations. Peppermint Innovation has a market capitalisation of AU$33m and burnt through AU$2.6m last year, which is 8.1% of the company's market value. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money. How Risky Is Peppermint Innovation's Cash Burn Situation? The good news is that in our view Peppermint Innovation's cash burn situation gives shareholders real reason for optimism. Not only was its cash burn reduction quite good, but its cash burn relative to its market cap was a real positive. Cash burning companies are always on the riskier side of things, but after considering all of the factors discussed in this short piece, we're not too worried about its rate of cash burn. On another note, Peppermint Innovation has 4 warning signs (and 3 which shouldn't be ignored) we think you should know about. Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies, and this list of stocks growth stocks (according to analyst forecasts) 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. Assessing the Dividend Performance and Sustainability of NDVLY New World Development Co Ltd (NDVLY) recently announced a dividend of $0.02 per share, payable on 2023-12-27, with the ex-dividend date set for 2023-11-22. As investors look forward to this upcoming payment, the spotlight also shines on the company's dividend history, yield, and growth rates. Using the data from GuruFocus, let's look into New World Development Co Ltd's dividend performance and assess its sustainability. What Does New World Development Co Ltd Do? Warning! GuruFocus has detected 7 Warning Signs with NDVLY. High Yield Dividend Stocks in Gurus' Portfolio This Powerful Chart Made Peter Lynch 29% A Year For 13 Years How to calculate the intrinsic value of a stock? New World Development, or NWD, is the listed property arm of Chow Tai Fook, owned by the Cheng family. Chow Tai Fook owns a 45% stake in NWD, which mainly engages in residential property development and investment properties of retail malls and offices in Hong Kong and mainland China. NWD also develops high-end hotels across Hong Kong, mainland China and in Southeast Asia. Additionally, NWD holds a 75% interest in New World Department Store China, which operates 24 department stores in mainland China. New World Development Co Ltd's Dividend Analysis A Glimpse at New World Development Co Ltd's Dividend History New World Development Co Ltd has maintained a consistent dividend payment record since 2003. Dividends are currently distributed on a bi-annually basis. Below is a chart showing annual Dividends Per Share for tracking historical trends. New World Development Co Ltd's Dividend Analysis Breaking Down New World Development Co Ltd's Dividend Yield and Growth As of today, New World Development Co Ltd currently has a 12-month trailing dividend yield of 12.68% and a 12-month forward dividend yield of 4.90%. This suggests an expectation of decreased dividend payments over the next 12 months. Over the past three years, New World Development Co Ltd's annual dividend growth rate was -1.30%. Extended to a five-year horizon, this rate increased to 1.20% per year. And over the past decade, New World Development Co Ltd's annual dividends per share growth rate stands at 3.10%. Story continues Based on New World Development Co Ltd's dividend yield and five-year growth rate, the 5-year yield on cost of New World Development Co Ltd stock as of today is approximately 13.46%. New World Development Co Ltd's Dividend Analysis The Sustainability Question: Payout Ratio and Profitability To assess the sustainability of the dividend, one needs to evaluate the company's payout ratio. The dividend payout ratio provides insights into the portion of earnings the company distributes as dividends. A lower ratio suggests that the company retains a significant part of its earnings, thereby ensuring the availability of funds for future growth and unexpected downturns. As of 2023-06-30, New World Development Co Ltd's dividend payout ratio is 5.03, which may suggest that the company's dividend is sustainable. New World Development Co Ltd's profitability rank, offers an understanding of the company's earnings prowess relative to its peers. GuruFocus ranks New World Development Co Ltd's profitability 7 out of 10 as of 2023-06-30, suggesting good profitability prospects. The company has reported positive net income for each year over the past decade, further solidifying its high profitability. Growth Metrics: The Future Outlook To ensure the sustainability of dividends, a company must have robust growth metrics. New World Development Co Ltd's growth rank of 7 out of 10 suggests that the company's growth trajectory is good relative to its competitors. New World Development Co Ltd's revenue per share, combined with the 3-year revenue growth rate, indicates a strong revenue model. New World Development Co Ltd's revenue has increased by approximately 17.90% per year on average, a rate that outperforms approximately 76.28% of global competitors. The company's 3-year EPS growth rate showcases its capability to grow its earnings, a critical component for sustaining dividends in the long run. During the past three years, New World Development Co Ltd's earnings increased by approximately 17.30% per year on average, a rate that outperforms approximately 69.19% of global competitors. Lastly, the company's 5-year EBITDA growth rate of -37.10%, which outperforms approximately 3.81% of global competitors, indicates that while EBITDA has seen a decline, it still fares better than a small percentage of its peers. Conclusion: Weighing New World Development Co Ltd's Dividend Prospects In conclusion, New World Development Co Ltd's upcoming dividend, alongside its historical payouts, presents a mixed picture for investors. While the dividend yield remains attractive, the anticipated decrease in dividend payments and the negative three-year dividend growth rate may raise concerns. However, the company's low payout ratio, combined with its strong profitability and revenue growth, suggests that the dividends could be sustainable in the long term. Investors should weigh these factors when considering New World Development Co Ltd as a potential addition to their dividend portfolios. GuruFocus Premium users can screen for high-dividend yield stocks using the High Dividend Yield Screener. 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. The Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors officially approved a performance agreement for the company that is building a waterpark in Thornburg. The performance agreement was created in 2022. At its Nov. 14 meeting the board signed off on the final agreement, just a month after Kalahari Resorts & Conventions held an elaborate groundbreaking event for the project. Plans for the resort call for more than 1.38 million square feet of commercial space, a 267,429-square-foot indoor water park, a 10-acre outdoor water park, a 900-room hotel and a 156,278 square-foot convention center in Thornburg, between Interstate 95 and U.S. 1. The waterpark is expected to open in 2026. At Tuesdays meeting, Supervisor Chris Yakabouski asked for an explanation about the agreement, since it was a late addition to the meeting consent agenda, a repeat of the first time the agreement was introduced and approved by the county in June 2022. County Attorney Karl Holsten told the board Nov. 14 that the documents help close the financing for the Kalahari project, explaining that the companys financing requires necessary collateral. In this case the collateral likely includes the land, he said, as well as the performance agreement with the county. Its really just part of financing for the project, county attorney Holsten said. The performance agreement allows the Wisconsin-based waterpark operator to take advantage of tax breaks determined by how the waterpark performs. If Kalahari were to default on the project, the performance agreement could be assigned to other companies that could take over the project and benefit from the tax breaks. Holsten said this is typical for a project like Kalahari and is required by the lenders. As a video played on a large screen at the Fremont Public Schools administration building on Tuesday, Nov. 21, former district educator Dave Pinkall sat silently, intently watching the images pop up on the screen. Holding his chin and occasionally wiping at his cheeks, Pinkall the man credited with creating the FPS Learning Center 50 years ago reacted with soft chuckles, grins and a bit of water in the corners of his eyes. The video montage of students and staff over the past 50 years of the Learning Center was part of the FPSs celebratory breakfast, marking the 50th anniversary of the program, which is intended to provide both an education and life skills to non-traditional students who current Head Teacher Lea Bruner said have backgrounds that are very diverse. The Learning Center has 60 students in the 2023-2024 school year and pupils who attend the program are selected after applying to gain admission. Those that are admitted and participate in the tailored learning curriculum are a mix of students from challenging backgrounds, Bruner said. Some are entangled in the criminal justice system and on probation, while others work full-time jobs to support either themselves or their families. A few students are expectant mothers or already teenage parents of young children. Or, a student may have mental health or anxiety issues, such as ADHD or other conditions that make attending traditional high school classes impossible. It is a little like parenting. You build up their confidence and give them the skills and knowledge and then let them loose on the world, Bruner said, explaining how she views teaching and leading the Learning Center. So many have had barriers in life and education. It is very fulfilling, she said. The Learning Center gives students flexibility. The backgrounds (of students) are very diverse. We definitely have a team approach that is part of bringing everyone together as a community. More than 50 people were present for the nearly 45-minute celebration on Tuesday, including current students and teaching staff at the Learning Center as well as past teacher-mentors from the five-decade old program and assorted school administrators and Board of Education members. Before the speeches and video, attendees were treated to an early Thanksgiving meal of turkey with all the fixings. Many past teacher-mentors reminisced about their years of involvement in the program and shared stories of students successes. Following a speech by Bruner, in which she recounted the history of the program, Pinkall addressed attendees, telling them that Fremonts Learning Center was only the third created in the state of Nebraska. The program was born when he applied for and received funds from a Title 1 grant in 1972. The first class of the FPS Learning Center had just two students. (We) were trying to help kids who were the drop-outs, the push-outs, the kick-outs, the alienated ... whatever words you want to use. We had a nucleus of people administrators and teachers who felt it was important to find a way to serve these kids, Pinkall said. To keep them in school, to create opportunities for them to have a good life. There was a time in this country when you really didnt need a high school diploma to get a decent job, he said. That was changing, and we recognized that. We thought having these kids out on the street and not completing (high school), they were not going to have much of a chance. Pinkall said that he and others who created the FPS Learning Center did so with a compassionate mantra in mind. The early years of the program were somewhat chaotic, he said, with few rules and little structure compared to todays Learning Center modern protocols, attendance requirements and grading system. Over time, weve really developed a nice model to create the opportunities you now have. It was fun to see (the current) kids come in, and I thought they kind of look kind of different, but they look like the kids we worked with in 1972, Pinkall said. I am thankful that we have this (program) to help you find your way in life, to have a purpose and to move on. It was my honor to play a part in getting this thing going. FPS Superintendent Mark Shepard also spoke to the attendees, thanking all the current and previous members of the districts Board of Education for their foresight and support of the Learning Center over the past 50 years. Learning Center is a special place. The bottom line is, it has filled a niche within our community and really filled a need with our students for that opportunity to continue their education and complete their education, Shepard said. And, to tie it into the work place ... to tie it into a future job and the workplace. Weve kind of come full circle in education and, if you look at what we are doing with our new Career Education Center, it is really, truly that opportunity that allows our students and allows each of you to complete your high school diploma and pursue some kind of career opportunity. Shepard said he has taken part in dozens of Learning Center graduation ceremonies, which are a separate ceremony from the regular high school graduation, and he noted that he is proud of all the students who reach that goal and accomplishment despite speed bumps they have overcome. The stories are real, and they are heart-wrenching at times, he said of the spring graduation event. But the fact that you follow through, that you get through all your courses and graduate, it is the key to that. It sets you up for the future. A 55-year-old man died in a two-vehicle crash Saturday night in Scottsbluff. Frederick Evans, who was not wearing a seat belt, died as a result of his injuries, the Scottsbluff Police Department said. The incident occurred shortly after 10 p.m. on the 1300 block of 14th Avenue. Investigators determined that Evans was southbound on 14th Avenue in a 2009 GMC pickup truck. Evans' pickup crossed over the center of the road and collided with a northbound 2012 GMC pickup truck. The force of the collision caused Evans' pickup to roll over onto its passenger side. Police said they are investigating whether a medical condition contributed to the incident. Scottsbluff police were assisted at the scene by the Scottsbluff Fire Department, Valley Ambulance Service and deputies from the Scotts Bluff County Sheriffs Office. Top Journal Star photos for November 2023 Memorial Parks big Kiss will linger a little longer. The 26-foot sculpture of a World War II sailor kissing a nurse to celebrate the wars end will remain in the parks new Eagle Plaza for at least two more months, the Omaha Parks Foundation has learned. Officially called Embracing Peace, the sculpture by the late artist Seward Johnson re-creates an iconic photograph in which a sailor spontaneously gave a deep kiss to a woman in a nurses uniform (actually, she was a dental assistant) on V-J Day in New Yorks Times Square. Seward Johnson Atelier (the nonprofit that owns the statue) reached out and said they dont need it back right away, said Tiffany Regan, the Omaha Parks Foundation executive director. We said wed love to keep it until January. We thought it would be neat to have it with snow on it, through the holidays. The Robert H. Storz Foundation underwrote the $60,000 cost to bring the sculpture to Memorial Park last April, ahead of the citys commemoration of the parks 75th anniversary in June. They planned to keep it through Veterans Day, which was last weekend. Storz, who operated a brewery in Omaha, was the driving force behind the creation of Memorial Park soon after World War II to honor Douglas Countys war dead. Johnson created the original sculpture in 2005 to display in Times Square for the 60th anniversary of V-J Day. A Navy veteran of the Korean War, he died in 2020, but a nonprofit he established to promote art in public places, Johnson Atelier, continues to circulate traveling exhibits of his work. Other versions of Embracing Peace are on permanent display, in Sarasota, Florida and San Diego. The Memorial Park sculpture is a traveling copy. It has drawn barbs wherever it has been erected including Omaha from critics who say it depicts a sexual assault, or that it is kitschy. Theo Brown of Omaha called the sculpture an embarrassment to the ... entire city of Omaha in a letter to the World-Heralds Public Pulse. In the same forum, John Daley of Council Bluffs, derided it as a fugitive from a sci-fi movie that belonged in Las Vegas, or in a used-car lot. But the sculpture has plenty of defenders, too. Its a symbol of joy, happiness and a celebration of the end of World War II, nothing more, said Phil Huston of Omaha in another Public Pulse letter. In 2010, George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman, believed to be the couple depicted in the Times Square photograph, visited Papillion-La Vista High School on a speaking tour. Mendonsa, 22 at the time, had been a sailor aboard the USS The Sullivans when the Navy ship was attacked by kamikaze pilots in the western Pacific. Zimmer Friedman, then 21, was an Austrian immigrant who lost her parents in the Holocaust. Regan said the statue has drawn many people to the park and the new plaza. Some couples have posted photos of themselves re-enacting the kiss in front of the sculpture, while others have visited in wedding garb or military uniforms. Its been a very, very favorable response, Regan said. It has really brought awareness to the park. She said the Parks Foundation has reached about 80% of its fundraising goal for the construction and maintenance of Eagle Plaza, but it is still about $250,000 short. The foundation built the plaza to use for public events such as art exhibits and musical concerts, or private events such as weddings. Fundraising continues through its website, OmahaParksFoundation.org/memorial-park-75. During the months the sculpture has been on display, it has provided a backdrop to several military-themed events commemorating Memorial Day, the end of the Korean War, 9/11, POW/MIA Recognition Day, Veterans Shine On and Veterans Day. Jenee Castellanos, associate curator of exhibitions and engagement for the Seward Johnson Atelier, said the group is delighted Embracing Peace can stay on in Omaha until its next stop is announced.We are heartened to hear the stories of the visitors that have traveled to see the sculpture, she said in an email. Now they will have more time to see it. Photos: Embracing Peace sculpture installed at Memorial Park The top U.S. labor watchdog accused Apple of violating the National Labor Relations Act by withholding benefits from unionized employees at its Towson store, according to a complaint released Tuesday. The Towson Town Center store became the first unionized Apple store in the nation in June 2022 when its employees voted 65-33 to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). In November 2022, the Machinists union filed an unfair labor practice charge against Apple with the NLRB. The union said the technology giant barred its members from enjoying educational and medical benefitsoffered to all other employees, to threaten and intimidate its employees from seeking union representation, and to retaliate against those employees who had availed themselves of that right, according to the unions filing. By only offering certain benefits to employees who were not part of the union, the NLRB complaint said, Apple violated Towson workers rights to collectively bargain and engage in union activity. Apple did not respond to a request for comment. Another Apple store in Oklahoma City unionized with the Communications Workers of America in October 2022. Two members of Congress admonished the company for union busting in a May 4 letter to NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. In a statement, IAM Eastern Territory General Vice President David Sullivan said he was pleased that the NLRB had recognized the importance of upholding the Towson union members rights. The issuance of this complaint will advance the principles of fairness and equality in the workplace, he said. The boards recognition of the merit of this charge is a victory for IAM and underscores the strength of collective bargaining and the importance of workers standing united to protect their rights in the face of unfair labor practices. An unfair labor practice hearing is scheduled for Feb. 20, 2024. Apple and IAM representatives will be able to give testimony, according to a notice included with the complaint. This is simply one mans perspective from the early 21st century (first written in 2010). I had to make a decision about crimes that occurred at locations that are inside the city today, but were outside our corporate limits at the time they occurred. I chose the latter. Before beginning, though, I have to deal with three crimes that stand apart: the murders of three police officers in Lincoln. Im not quite sure how to place them in a list. They all had huge impacts on the community, and on the police department in particular. Because these are my colleagues, I deal with them separately and in chronological order. Patrolman Marion Francis Marshall Shot in the shadow of the new Nebraska State Capital, Gov. Charles Bryan came to his aid and summoned additional help. Lt. Frank Soukup Marion Marshall was technically not a Lincoln police officer, so Lt. Soukup was actually the first Lincoln police officer killed on duty. One of his colleagues who was present at the motel and involved in the gunbattle, Paul Jacobsen, went on to enjoy a long career and command rank at LPD, influencing many young charges (like me) and leaving his mark on the culture of the agency. Lt. Paul Whitehead In the space of a few months, three LPD officers died in the line of duty. Frank Soukup had been murdered, and George Welter had died in a motorcycle crash. Paul Whitehead's partner, Paul Merritt, went on to command rank, and like Paul Jacobsen left an indelible mark at LPD and the community. A 16-year-old boy accused in the fatal stabbing of another 16-year-old boy was ordered held without bail at a court appearance Monday. Christopher DeLong Jr., who turned 16 while in custody at the Douglas County Youth Center last Friday, faces charges of second-degree murder and use of a weapon to commit a felony related to the killing of 16-year-old Clayton McCue. DeLong is accused of stabbing McCue in the head on Nov. 8 in a church parking lot near Millard. DeLong was charged as an adult on Nov. 9 with first-degree assault and use of a weapon to commit a felony, and prosecutors said at his first court appearance last week that more serious charges were likely as McCue was then considered brain dead. DeLong's bail was initially set at $500,000. The second-degree murder charge, which alleges that DeLong killed McCue intentionally but without premeditation, was filed on Friday. On Monday, Douglas County Court Judge Stephanie Hansen ordered DeLong to be held in custody without bail. Officers were dispatched to the parking lot of Living Faith United Methodist Church near 180th and Q streets shortly before 8:45 p.m. Nov. 8, according to a police report. They found McCue with a stab wound to the head, and multiple witnesses at the scene identified DeLong as the suspect. DeLong was taken into custody the same night, the report said. A GoFundMe raising money for McCue's medical and funeral expenses has raised more than $11,000. DeLong is scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing on Dec. 27. Two people were hospitalized Tuesday after a man was shot by a police officer and a woman was run over by the driver of the car who was shot, according to the Lincoln Police Department. At about 12:20 p.m. in the parking lot of the Microtel Inn & Suites at 2505 Fairfield St., a Lincoln police officer tried to confront 35-year-old Garrett Hanika on an outstanding warrant out of Council Bluffs, Iowa, for a probation violation regarding a weapons charge, according to an LPD news release. Hanika backed his orange Jeep into the police cruiser as the officer approached him, according to Acting Police Chief Michon Morrow. After Hanika backed the Jeep into the cruiser, he changed gears and accelerated rapidly toward the officer, Morrow said. The officer then fired several shots at the vehicle, hitting Hanika, she said. During this sequence, a 39-year-old woman inside the Jeep exited and was run over by the driver. First responders extricated the woman from underneath the Jeep and transported her to the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, according to Morrow. Hanika was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. He was arrested on suspicion of first-degree assault, attempted first-degree assault on an officer, use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony and resisting arrest with a deadline weapon. A heavy police presence remained at the scene for several hours as officials investigated the incident. Review of police shootings in Lincoln since 2013 1. Douglas DaMoude, May 30, 2014 2. Tyson Hubbard, March 5, 2015 3. Tareik Artis, Sept. 22, 2015 4. Zachary Grigsby, Nov. 29, 2015 5. Germichael Kennedy, June 26, 2016 6. Thomas Sailors, Jan. 5, 2018 7. Christopher Brennauer, Dec. 29, 2018 8. Joseph Francis Cimino, Oct. 8, 2019 9. Hailey Stainbrook and Christian Alexander, Feb. 20, 2021 10. German Pedraza, Nov. 24, 2021 11. Chace Abney, May 1, 2023 A SpaceX rocket carried the latest Air Force Academy satellite into orbit this month, where it will provide a key piece of the real-world training future Space Force officers receive at the school. While the Space Force relies on simulators to prepare satellite operators, the Academy has three satellites in orbit, all built and operated by cadets a legacy of the decades of space education that it has offered. The latest addition, FalconSAT-X, spent four years under construction at the Academy before it launched on Nov. 11 and is still in the commissioning stage. During its early days in space, ground operators fix problems and prepare it for tasks. The opportunities to "talk" to satellites are brief, but regular as they pass over head for about 10 minutes every hour and a half. In that window, operators can download data or upload it to make changes. Working to fix real satellites in orbit is part of the hands-on approach of the Astronautics Department, said Lt. Col. Dan Showalter, Space Systems Research Center director. "We're trying to train up future officers that can make decisions that matter, or make decisions when they matter," he explained, "And so providing a real opportunity to do that, where the consequences are real, that produces officers that are better prepared on the day that they commission." Quality training is important as space has become more contested and crowded than ever before. To deter attacks, Space Force has already started sending up hundreds of new satellites. The new redundancy is expected to make an attack on a satellite less appealing, because it will cost more to shoot down a satellite than to build and launch it, the director of the Space Development Agency has said in the past. Sign Up for free: Military Brief Your weekly local update on local military news and events, sent straight to your inbox. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. At the Academy, students from all majors can get exposure to satellite operations through the Cadet Space Operations Squadron and learn how to operate satellites from other cadets. While those in the senior engineering capstone program, around 50 students, get in-depth experience running the satellites unavailable to other incoming Space Force officers. "It's crazy that we are going to be second lieutenants in the Space Force and we've already commissioned a satellite," said senior Garrett Siemen, commander of the Cadet Space Operations Squadron. For those focused on satellite operations, changes in patterns can reveal problems with a satellite. If it suddenly stops making contact with a ground station that's a possible indicator, he said. Another senior in the capstone class, Noelle Mourani, is learning to plot and analyze binary data from the satellite to help determine its health and whether changes need to be made. Since FalconSAT-X is brand new, her team is establishing normal ranges for that data. Once the satellite is ready, the cadets will run tests on the 11 different radio antennae on it used for satellite-to-satellite communications and a particular type of thruster, Siemen said. The technology on Academy satellites sent up for testing is sponsored by companies and other government agencies, such as the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Institute of Technology. So the technology falls in the line with the interests of those partners. Cadets started construction of the school's latest satellite in the fall. In this iteration, students are designing and building solar arrays for it, instead of buying them, which is expected to improve performance, Showalter said. The satellite under construction will be the school's 10th since the program started in 1997. Adams County Sheriff's deputies found three men dead inside of a home on Tuesday evening. Initial investigations suggest one of the victims died by suicide. Deputies responded to gunshot reports in the area of 84th Avenue and Franklin Drive around 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the Adams County Sheriff's Office told Denver Gazette news partner 9News. A family member of a victim went to the house on Tuesday and found the victim dead. They then called 911. Responders had to force their way into the home. When officers searched the home, they found three men dead from gunshot wounds. The two victims are believed to be in their 70s or 80s, and the third man, the suspected shooter, is believed to be in his 40s or 50s. Deputies found evidence that the shooting may have stemmed from a family dispute, the sheriff's office told 9News. A neighbor, Bob, said he hadn't seen anyone in or out of the home since Sunday. He believed one of the victims was the nephew of the man that lived in the residence. "They seemed to get along just fine," he said. Bob, who declined to provide his last name, also noted that there was an older dog believed to be a beagle at the residence. It was taken from the house. "He's a good dog. It's sad. Just because the owner made bad decisions doesn't mean he should suffer," Bob added. Another neighbor noted that there were tons of police and emergency responders when she came home Tuesday evening. They had shut down the whole street. The police presence has since dwindled with only one deputy vehicle on the scene Wednesday morning. Adams County Sheriff Gene Claps will be unavailable for a press conference on Wednesday, the office told The Denver Gazette. Updates will continue. The Denver Gazette's news partner, 9News, contributed to this story. The last defendant in the murder case of a man found dead in unincorporated El Paso County last year was sentenced to a maximum term in prison on Tuesday. Yessica Cortes-Barcenas, 28, appeared in court Tuesday afternoon after taking a plea to murder in the second degree. Cortes-Barcenas is the last of four people found guilty in the murder of Manuel Hernandez-Uribe, 31, whose body was found on Old Stage Road in June 2022. Cortes-Barcenas was the ex-girlfriend of Hernandez-Uribe, according to court records from the case. Along with Cortes-Barcenas, Isidrio Sarabia-Gonzalez, 24, Braulio Barron-Rubio, 34, and Ector Sarabia-Cabrera, 23, have also been convicted in the killing of Hernandez-Uribe, who was found along the side of the road with gunshot wounds, according to an arrest affidavit. On June 6, Hernandez-Uribe made several 911 calls reporting a break-in at his home in Colorado Springs, an arrest affidavit states. A little over an hour later at 6:04 a.m., Hernandez-Uribe placed a second 911 call, telling officers he was "in danger." In the 911 call, he can be heard saying in Spanish "I don't want problems, I have two kids. I didn't do anything ... I didn't mean to." A female voice can be heard saying "shut up" before the phone call ended, according to the affidavit. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. "When CSPD officers arrived approximately 20 minutes later, they found forced entry to the front door, but Hernandez-Uribe was not present," the affidavit states. Cortes-Barcenas was arrested on suspicion of the murder along with the others after a police investigation into surveillance footage, text messages and Facebook messages, according to court documents. The other defendants in the case have plead to similar offenses. Cortes-Barcenas was sentenced to 48 years in the Colorado Department of Corrections with a mandatory five years of parole. The sentence is the maximum stipulated in her plea, which had a range from 30 to 48 years. Judge Laura Findorff said she saw Cortes-Barcenas as the "nexus" of the crime, having known the victim and been involved in the break in of his residence that led to Hernandez-Uribe's murder. Findorff said she imposed the max sentence due to Cortes-Barcenas' "shocking" lack of accountability for the crime in the pre-sentencing investigation. The judge also rejected Cortes-Barcenas' attorney's assertion that Cortes-Barcenas had less of a role in the killing than other defendants. A number of locations in the Colorado Springs area will host free Thanksgiving community meals Thursday. They include: The Salvation Army will be serving free meals to an estimated crowd of more than 3,000 people on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, at these locations from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.: The Salvation Army Colorado Springs, 908 Yuma St. Woodland Park Community Church, 800 Valley View Drive Manitou Springs City Hall, 606 Manitou Ave. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Fountain Valley Senior Center, 5745 Southmoor Drive The Salvation Army Family Hope Center, 709 South Sierra Madre St.. Marian House soup kitchen, traditional holiday meal served 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Marian House soup kitchen, 14 W. Bijou St., includes turkey with all the trimmings and a variety of pies homemade by volunteers. Maryland will get over $30 million in disputed payments that the state was set to receive nearly 25 years ago, when the landmark settlement between tobacco companies and nearly every U.S. state was approved. A panel of arbitrators unanimously ruled Friday that the funds were owed to the state by tobacco giants Philip Morris USA Inc., the manufacturer of Marlboro and Parliament cigarettes, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., which owns the Camel and Newport lines. Tobacco companies harmed Marylanders, and in the late-1990s agreed to a significant settlement as a result of their actions. Now they attempt to backtrack on that settlement but that wont happen on my watch, said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown in a news release. Marylanders should not have to bear the high costs of treating illnesses caused by decades of big tobacco hooking people to its deadly products. Attorneys representing the tobacco companies were not immediately available for comment. The tobacco settlement agreement, entered on November 23, 1998, was created to reduce smoking in the U.S., especially among young people, by raising the costs of cigarettes through payment obligations on tobacco companies, restricting tobacco marketing, eliminating industry practices that obscure tobaccos health risks and supporting smoking prevention programs. The arbitration put an end to the cigarette companies attempt to avoid paying millions of dollars in settlement payments, based on their claims that Maryland had failed to enforce a statute regulating the cigarette industry in 2005, 2006 and 2007. The arbitration hearing was held from March 14 to 21 before a panel of three arbitrators, each of whom is a retired federal judge. On Friday, the arbitrators issued a 50-page award that agreed with Maryland and unanimously found that the state had enforced its tobacco laws. The Gazette asked readers around Colorado Springs and the Front Range to tell us what they're most thankful for in six words or less this Thanksgiving week. Several responded. A few common themes? We're thankful for the simple things in life: family, health and home. Here are some of the responses. "Spending Thanksgiving with someone I love" - John "My family get together after years" - Sowone "Phones making far family close" - Diana "Very successful ascending aorta aneurysm surgery" - Phil "Warm sunshine, laughter and loving hugs" - Mary "Special hometown week in the Midwest" - Joyce "That I live in the USA" - Diana "My loving family and God's love" - Floyd Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. "Talented, inspiring, positive coworkers who care" - Vanessa "The wonderful staff at Memorial Hospital" - Shelley "Observing other customers kindness toward cashiers" - Pat "Our Performing Arts Curtains Continue Rising" - Diana "Security Health Wife Bikes Humor Colorado" - Phil "Seizure medicine working for baby grandson" - Hen "Proximity and love of my family" - Rebecca "Faith, family, friends, freedom and our future" - Kathy "I have my family to love" - Charles For 50 years the Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels on Interstate 70 have been both the most critical east-west highway link in Colorado and something of a poor cousin of the Colorado Department of Transportation. The tunnels are showing their age, said John Lorme, director of maintenance and operations for CDOT, and staffing has often fallen below 40%. A $12 million project began at the tunnels about three years ago, when Lorme approached the Transportation Commission and convinced them to let him use that payroll savings from less workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and other savings to turn an old storage building at the west end of the tunnels into a state-of-the-art dispatch and command center. The project included building a 10-bay maintenance facility. The new center is assigned to monitor the I-70 corridor from Golden to Silverthorne, including ancillary roads. Monitoring includes sophisticated laser monitors on Loveland Pass to detect avalanches from the Seven Sisters avalanche paths just above the Loveland ski area. When the tunnels were built, CDOTs snowplows were the size of pickup trucks and mid-size maintenance vehicles. Now, Lorme said, the fleet has not only grown but the trucks are too large to use the original maintenance facilities. If you've driven past here in the past, you might've noticed a lot of our equipment was literally staged outside, said Lorme. But our plows today are, and most of our vehicles, are all class eight vehicles and they're too big to fit. So, for the past two and a half, three decades, we have been maintaining vehicles and operating outside in the elements year-round versus having facilities. Repairing equipment under those conditions at more than 11,000 feet above sea level meant that equipment often had to be loaded on trailers and trucked down the hill to CDOT maintenance facilities in Aurora. It takes resources, and it pulls that vehicle and those maintainers out of the fight up here, Lorme said. And we also had to wash vehicles at the bottom of the hill, because we're really concerned about where the chlorides are going from our deicing materials and all the other road grime. Lorme said for the first time CDOT has wash bays at the tunnels that are environmentally safe and prevent contamination from road salts, petroleum products like grease and oil, and other pollutants. Two mechanics bays allow trucks to be maintained where they are needed, and the other bays are all heated, which means drivers arent trying to get ready for a shift outside at -20 below 0 and 40-mile-per-hour winds. This will dramatically improve morale among drivers, Lorme said. In addition to a sophisticated dispatch and monitoring room, the command center has emergency sleeping quarters, bathrooms, showers and cooking facilities as well as offices and conference areas. When fully staffed, the center will have CDOT maintenance superintendents, the Colorado State Patrol, and other personnel on duty 24/7, Lorme said. Its two floors can also accommodate CDOT and local firefighters should the need arise. The old operations center at the east end of the tunnel will still be used, but all the critical functions are now handled by the dispatch center which has an enormous video wall with 48 monitors that can oversee all of the thousands of traffic cameras CDOT has installed all over the state. Most of the things you will never see, said Lorme in an interview with the Denver Gazette. They actually are the bones of communications that work within the systems. A lot of the tunnel infrastructure is literally copper wire or coaxial cable, and we're upgrading all those systems to fiber optics and modern cabling systems. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Lorme said using the old communications infrastructure is like trying to connect an iPhone to a 1970s television. The dispatchers also monitor and control CDOTs lighted highway signs and other connected infrastructure, including sensors on guardrails that can detect an impact. Video cameras can see problem potholes and other damage to roadways including accidents. Lorme said there is 100% video coverage on I-70 from Golden to Silverthorne. Lorme was asked if artificial intelligence was being used to automatically detect accidents. That's a great question and I believe we are, said Lorme. I do know that our fire suppression systems and our infrared cameras can notify us instantaneously when there's a heat source. We also have a hot braking technology that we can tell a truck driver has got hot brakes and we can basically notify them through the message boards. This new command center is just one of four centers CDOT has. The primary center is in Golden, with centers in Pueblo, at the Hanging Lakes Tunnel on I-70, and now the Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels. Each of the four can take over if any of the others fail. CDOT is working hard, Lorme said, to recruit and retain drivers and maintenance personnel. Because of the cost of living in many of the mountain towns, CDOT offers housing stipends and Lorme has used savings to build housing specifically for CDOT personnel. We're the first in the nation to do housing stipends, said Lorme. We have housing stipends because even with the salaries that we pay, you can't live in Vail. He said CDOT is also building housing specifically for CDOT personnel, most of whom are required to live within 30 minutes of their work assignment and are on-call 24/7. I have 11 condos that are about halfway built in Frisco, and I have 12 brand new homes that are being built in Fairplay, said Lorme. They're 2,000 square foot, beautiful shotgun style, two-story, three-bedroom homes that maintainers are going to be living in. And then we're going to build some outside of Aspen and Basalt, and we're building some in Steamboat. Applicants do not have to have a commercial drivers license or much experience. he said of the push to get more CDOT employees. (If) theyve got two years of experience and theyve got a decent reference or two, then we'll put them through and we'll make them professional highway maintainers from scratch, Lorme said. We are always looking for good people hardworking, good people. He also said that CDOT maintenance workers are jacks-of-all-trades and are not trained in just one specialty, but are trained to do every kind of job for CDOT. Since we've started our training program, we're recruiting 18-year-olds, male, female greater numbers of females a more diversified workforce, said Lorme. And we're hoping that this continues to create a family atmosphere and that these guys or gals realize that, hey man, I'm going to stay here for a long time. To apply, go to colorado.gov and go to the careers homepage and search CDOT. You have permission to edit this html. Edit Close By Joe Cash and Ryan Woo BEIJING (Reuters) -China and Uruguay upgraded their bilateral ties on Wednesday, setting the stage for further trade and investment and elevating the ambitious South American country's relations with Beijing to those of fellow Mercosur members Brazil and Argentina. Uruguay is seeking to strike deals abroad that it hopes will be more beneficial to it than a local trade bloc, while China has for years sought closer ties with South America, in large part to secure access to raw materials such as grains and oils. "China is ready to work with Uruguay to take establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership as a new starting point... and enrich cooperation," President Xi Jinping told his Uruguayan counterpart Luis Lacalle Pou at a meeting in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Chinese state media reported. China, the world's second-largest economy, is already a major investor in South America and has offered tariff-free access to its huge consumer market to four countries. Lacalle Pou first proposed a free trade agreement (FTA) with China in 2021 to secure similar opportunities for its exporters as those enjoyed by Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru, and to boost exports of raw materials, industrial goods and technology. But Uruguay faces opposition from other members of the Mercosur bloc who want to settle an FTA with Europe instead. At present, Beijing has no tariff preference for Uruguayan beef, which constituted 67% of the South American country's exports to China in 2022, a market where there is a 12% tariff on the meat, United Nations COMTRADE data shows. By comparison, other major beef exporters Australia and New Zealand, which have FTAs with China, pay tariffs at 3.3% and 0%. Lacalle Pou commented on how China has become Uruguay's main trading partner and told Xi during the meeting about plans to join the Shanghai-headquartered New Development Bank. China received 27% of Uruguay's exports in 2022, COMTRADE data shows, while Brazil purchased 17% of its outbound shipments, and Argentina and the United States 6% each. MERCOSUR Uruguay cannot easily sign a unilateral FTA with China because it agreed to a 'Common External Tariff' with Mercosur members, not least because the bloc reached agreement in principle on an FTA with Brussels in 2019. The South American country has applied to join a major trans-pacific free trade pact that China also aspires to join, but Beijing must overcome major political hurdles before it can accede to the agreement and Montevideo faces the same restraints its Mercosur membership places upon it in negotiations. Uruguay came close to signing an FTA with the United States in 2006, but its government at the time eventually rejected the deal over fears of expulsion from Mercosur if it did so. Under the Mercosur CET, Chinese exporters must pay tariffs at 9%, should they wish to export to Uruguay, which is better than the 12% Uruguayan ranchers face on beef shipped to China. According to a study conducted by the National Meat Institute of Uruguay in 2021, if China signs an FTA with Uruguay, the meat industry can implement a 0% preferential tariff, which will reduce tariffs by $150 million. Xi and Lacalle Pou witnessed the signing of cooperation documents across a range of sectors including agriculture, education, and science and technology, as well as over customs inspections, which could be a boon for Uruguay's meat exports. Uruguay is one of the few countries to run a trade surplus with China, which last year doubled to $1.5 billion from $766 million in 2021, data from China's National Bureau of Statistics shows. The elevation of ties with Uruguay to the level of Brazil and Argentina also pushes the remaining Mercosur member Paraguay further outside China's global trade and investment network. Agriculture-dependent Paraguay, whose main exports include beef and soybeans, is the last South American nation that has ties with democratically governed Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory, and not with Beijing. Xi said he hoped to build "a model of solidarity and cooperation between countries of different sizes, systems and cultures" with Uruguay, while Lacalle Pou invited him to visit Uruguay next year. (Reporting by Joe Cash and Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Ella Cao; Editing by Toby Chopra, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Chizu Nomiyama and Alexander Smith) By Ahmad Ghaddar LONDON (Reuters) -An OPEC technical panel invited a top financial market dealer to give a presentation this week which painted a bearish outlook for the oil market, according to materials from the presentation seen by Reuters. "Market sentiment had been fragmented for much of this year, but the evidence is that there has been a recent shift in collective sentiment to bearish as we head towards the end of the calendar year," one of the presentation slides by Onyx Capital Group showed. OPEC - the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries - did not immediately reply to a request for comment. London-based Onyx Capital Group is the world's biggest market maker by volume across oil swaps, trading more than 25 billion barrels equivalent a year. It says it owns a dataset that analyses market positions to predict how the market behaves. Onyx CEO Greg Newman gave the presentation, according to a company tweet on X, formerly Twitter. Its content was not made public, however. According to the materials seen by Reuters, it also showed that Brent futures had undergone two significant sell-offs since the start of the quarter, with the first, from Sept. 27 to Oct. 2, driven by weak U.S. gasoline markets and financial speculators. Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdelaziz bin Salman, OPEC's most influential minister, famously warned financial speculators against betting heavily in the oil market in 2020, challenging those looking to short the market to "make my day". The second sell-off, which happened in November, moved the oil market to a collective neutral-to-bearish sentiment, with commercial participants like oil producers and airlines joining financial speculators in seeing a weak outlook. "The second aggressive moves were correlated with a weakening forward outlook for underlying crude and refined products market," Onyx said in the presentation materials. It added that the oil market forward curve signalled the market expects supply of heavy crude, which several OPEC members produce, will likely come back next year, and inventories will start to rebuild. The Economic Commission Board (ECB), which OPEC describes as its "think-tank", meets twice a year ahead of the ordinary ministerial OPEC conference to review market conditions and economic developments. While it has no decision-making capacity, the research it produces is important for ministers that will eventually decide on output policy. Ministers from OPEC and allies led by Russia, a group known as OPEC+, are due to meet on Sunday to decide on output policy. The group is likely to discuss output cuts to shore up falling oil prices, which are down more than 13% since the start of this quarter. Goldman Sachs this week said it expected Saudi Arabia and Russia to extend their voluntary oil production cuts into the first quarter 2024. It also sees a 35% possibility the group will deepen production cuts, potentially through another 0.5-1 million barrel per day reduction shared among the large producers, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait. The ECB on Tuesday also heard presentations from banks JPMorgan and BNP Paribas, three sources told Reuters. It will meet for a second day on Wednesday. (Additional reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Jan Harvey) By Ted Hesson and Jonathan Landay WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A speeding car crashed in flames on the bridge linking New York state and Ontario at Niagara Falls on Wednesday, killing two people in the vehicle and sparking a security scare that closed four U.S.-Canadian border crossings. Hours later, federal and state authorities said investigators had found no evidence of an act of terrorism, though circumstances surrounding the crash on the Rainbow Bridge remained murky, leaving it to be determined whether it was accidental or intentional. "At this time, there is no indication of a terrorist attack" or threat to the public, New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters on Wednesday evening. Her comments were echoed by federal and local law enforcement officials at a separate news conference. The FBI said in a statement it had concluded its investigation. "A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified," the FBI said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Video of the crash caught on security camera and posted to X by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency showed the car traveling from the U.S. side at high speed, then hitting an object and flying into the air before crashing to the ground and exploding in flames. The driver and a passenger perished in the wreck, and a CBP officer suffered minor injuries. He was treated at a hospital and released, an agency official said later. Authorities did not identify the two people killed. CNN reported the driver was a 56-year-old man who was traveling in a Bentley automobile with his wife to attend a concert by the rock group KISS. A performance of the band scheduled for Wednesday in Toronto as part of the group's farewell tour was canceled after one of its members, Paul Stanley, came down with flu. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on its website the Buffalo Niagara International Airport had closed, but Hochul said there were no interruptions. 'HEIGHTENED ALERT' The crash unfolded at a time of heightened security concerns around the world stemming from the conflict in the Middle East and at the peak of U.S. holiday travel on the eve of Thanksgiving celebrations. The Rainbow Bridge and all three other border crossings along the Niagara River between western New York and the Canadian province of Ontario - the Peace Bridge, the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and the Whirlpool Bridge - were shut for several hours as a precaution. Other international crossings remained open on "heightened alert status," the governor said. Security measures were escalated at other airports and railways managed by the Niagara-Frontier Transit Authority, as well as at various locations around New York City, officials said. The three bridges that were not involved were reopened early Wednesday evening, but the Rainbow crossing remained closed during the investigation and as officials assessed the crossing's safety. Hochul said the car that crashed sailed over an 8-foot-tall fence before landing in a fireball that incinerated the vehicle, leaving little but the engine visibly intact and scattering debris over more than a dozen security booths on the bridge. Witness Mike Guenther told Buffalo television station WGRZ-TV that he was walking near the bridge with his wife when the car, traveling at high speed, struck a fence at the crossing and was catapulted into the air before exploding. He was flying, over 100 miles an hour," said Guenther, who was visiting from Kitchener, Ontario. He said the vehicle, which he described as a luxury sedan, was "fish-tailing" out of control before it crashed. It was a ball of fire, 30 or 40 feet high, never seen anything like it, said Guenther. (Reporting by Ted Hesson and Jonathan Landay in Washington; Additional reporting by Ismail Shakil, Katharine Jackson, Daphne Psaledakis, Susan Heavey, Daniel Trotta, Andrew Hay, Ward Jasper, Makini Brice, Gabriella Borter, Joseph Ax, Richard Cowan and Daniel Whitcomb; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by David Gregorio and Leslie Adler) OTTAWA (Reuters) - An Ottawa jury on Wednesday found a former top Canadian police intelligence official guilty of charges linked to the leaking of secret information, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported. Cameron Ortis, a former director general with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) who had access to highly sensitive domestic and foreign intelligence, was on trial on six charges, including multiple counts under a 2012 security of information law. He was found guilty of all charges, CBC reported, adding that prosecutors are expected to seek a sentence in the range of 20 years. A sentencing hearing will be held in early January. Prosecutors argued Ortis used his position within the RCMP to leak sensitive information, while Ortis claimed during his trial that he was acting to protect Canada from a "grave threat" passed along by a foreign entity, according to CBC. Canada is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network alongside the United States, Britain, New Zealand and Australia. Security experts have said the case risked Canada's standing in the network. A lawyer for Ortis could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) By Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shortly after Hamas militants took hostages during their deadly assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, the government of Qatar contacted the White House with a request: Form a small team of advisers to help work to get the captives freed. That work, begun in the days after the hostages were taken, finally bore fruit with the announcement of a prisoner swap deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt and agreed by Israel, Hamas and the United States. The secretive effort included tense personal diplomatic engagement by U.S. President Joe Biden, who held a number of urgent conversations with emir of Qatar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the weeks leading up to the deal. It also involved hours of painstaking negotiations including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA Director Bill Burns, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy Jon Finer, and U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk, among others. Two officials involved in the effort provided extensive details of the work that led to an agreement in which 50 hostages are to be freed in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners during a four-day pause in fighting. Shortly after Oct. 7, Qatar - a long-established mediator in a volatile region - approached the White House with sensitive information regarding the hostages and the potential for their release, the officials said. The Qataris asked that a small team, which they called a "cell," be established to work the issue privately with the Israelis. Sullivan directed McGurk and another National Security Council official, Josh Geltzer, to establish the team. This was done without telling other relevant U.S. agencies because Qatar and Israel demanded extreme secrecy with only a few people to be in the know, the officials said. McGurk, a seasoned diplomat with deep experience in the Middle East, held daily morning calls with the prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani. He reported back to Sullivan and Biden was briefed daily on the process. Biden got an upfront look at what the victims of the Hamas attack endured when he held an emotional, lengthy meeting on Oct. 13 with the families of Americans who were either being held hostage or were unaccounted for. Days later, Biden traveled to Tel Aviv for Oct. 18 talks with Netanyahu. The official said securing the release of hostages was a central focus of his discussions with Netanyahu and his war cabinet, as well as humanitarian assistance. Five days later, on Oct. 23, the White House team's work helped yield the release of two American hostages, Natalie and Judith Raanan. From outside Sullivans West Wing office McGurk, Sullivan and Finer tracked in real time the captives' difficult, multi-hour journey out of Gaza. The return of the two Americans proved it was possible to gain freedom for hostages and gave confidence to Biden that Qatar could deliver through the small team that had been established, the officials said. Now, an intensified process started to get more hostages out. When this happened, Burns began speaking regularly with Mossad director David Barnea. Biden saw an opportunity to gain the release of a large number of hostages and that a deal for prisoners was the only realistic path to securing a pause in the fighting, the officials said. On Oct. 24, with Israel poised to launch a ground offensive in Gaza, the U.S. side got word that Hamas had agreed to the parameters of a deal to release women and children, which would mean a pause and a delay in the ground invasion. U.S. officials debated with the Israelis whether or not the ground offensive should be delayed. The Israelis argued that terms were not firm enough to delay, since there was no proof of life for the hostages. Hamas claimed they could not determine who was being held until a pause in fighting began. Americans and Israelis viewed the Hamas position as disingenuous. The official said Israel's invasion plan was adapted to support a pause if a deal came together. Biden then engaged over the next three weeks in detailed talks as proposals about a potential hostage release were traded back and forth. Demands were made that Hamas produce the lists of hostages it was holding, their identifying information, and guarantees of release. The process was long and cumbersome - communication was difficult and messages had to be passed from Doha or Cairo into Gaza and back, the officials said. Biden held a previously undisclosed phone call with the Qatari prime minister when the phasing of releases began to take shape, the official said. Under the agreement that was taking shape, women and children hostages would be freed in a first phase, together with a commensurate release of Palestinian prisoners from the Israelis. The Israelis insisted Hamas ensure all women and children come out in this phase. The U.S. side agreed, and demanded through Qatar proof of life or identifying information for women and children held by Hamas. Hamas said it could guarantee 50 in the first phase, but refused to produce a list of identifying criteria. On November 9, Burns met in Doha with the Qatari leader and the Mossad's Barnea to go through the texts of the emerging arrangement. The key obstacle at that point was that Hamas had not clearly identified who it was holding. Three days later, Biden called the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and demanded to know the names or clear identifying information for the 50 hostages including ages, gender and nationalities. Without the information, the official said, there was no basis to move forward. Shortly after Biden's call, Hamas produced details for the 50 hostages it said would be released in the first phase of any deal. Biden in a Nov. 14 call urged Netanyahu to take the deal - Netanyahu agreed. McGurk saw Netanyahu that same day in Israel. Walking out of a meeting, Netanyahu grabbed McGurks arm and said we need this deal and urged Biden call the emir of Qatar on the final terms, one of the officials said. Talks stalled as communications went dark in Gaza. When they resumed, Biden was in San Francisco attending an Asia-Pacific summit. He called the emir of Qatar and told him this was the last chance, and the emir pledged to apply pressure to close the deal, the officials said. "The president insisted the deal had to close, now. Time was up," one official said. On Nov. 18, McGurk met in Doha with the Qatari prime minister. Burns was dialed in after he spoke with Mossad. The meeting identified the last remaining gaps toward a deal. The agreement was now structured for women and children to be freed in the first phase, but with an expectation for future releases and the aim to bring all hostages home to their families. In Cairo the next morning, McGurk met with Egypt intelligence chief Abbas Kamil. Word came from Hamas leaders in Gaza that they had accepted nearly all the agreements worked out the day before in Doha. Only one issue remained, tied to the number of hostages to be released in the first phase and the ultimate structure of the deal to incentivize releases beyond the 50 known women and children, the officials said. A flurry of additional contacts ensued, and the deal finally came together. (Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Don Durfee and Lincoln Feast) President Joe Biden celebrated the Wednesday deal brokered between Israel and Hamas for a temporary ceasefire and prisoner exchange. The United States and Qatar served as key negotiators throughout the process, which resulted in a temporary ceasefire of at least four days in exchange for the release of 50 prisoners taken hostage by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack. BIDEN MIGHT BE DEMOCRATS' BIGGEST PROBLEM CONVINCING BLACK AND LATINO VOTERS NOT TO SUPPORT TRUMP "Jill and I have been keeping all those held hostage and their loved ones close to our hearts these many weeks, and I am extraordinarily gratified that some of these brave souls, who have endured weeks of captivity and an unspeakable ordeal, will be reunited with their families once this deal is fully implemented," said Biden, who is currently vacationing for Thanksgiving in Nantucket, Massachusetts. The president specifically thanked Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar and Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for their "critical leadership and partnership in reaching this deal" and lauded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for "supporting an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure the provision of additional humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinian families in Gaza." During the ceasefire, Israel will also release 150 Palestinians. Senior Biden administration officials told reporters that negotiations will continue to secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. "As President, I have no higher priority than ensuring the safety of Americans held hostage around the world. That's why from the earliest moments of Hamas's brutal assault my national security team and I have worked closely with regional partners to do everything possible to secure the release of our fellow citizens," the president continued. "We saw the first results of that effort in late October, when two Americans were reunited with their loved ones. Today's deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released. Today's deal is a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination of many dedicated individuals across the United States Government to bring Americans home." "I welcome the commitment that Israel has made to support an extended pause to ensure this deal can be fully carried out and to ensure additional humanitarian assistance reaches civilians in Gaza. The flow of aid must substantially increase and civilians must be protected. We also call on Hamas to release all the remaining hostages," Vice President Kamala Harris added in a separate statement. Original Location: Biden says Hamas hostage deal a 'testament' to administration's diplomacy Washington Examiner Videos The Carroll County Health Department has seen a small uptick in COVID-19 cases this fall, according to Maggie Kunz, the agencys health planner. The rise comes as a new, highly contagious COVID-19 variant called HV.1 is now the dominant strain in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With so many people testing [for COVID at home, its harder to count cases of COVID, but we can still look at trends, Kunz said. We dont know about levels of specific variants in our county, but we do know that we have seen a small uptick in COVID cases this fall, after a low summer. Kunz said the county health department keeps a close eye on hospitalizations as an indicator of how many cases there are in the county. COVID hospital admissions are still low in Carroll County, she said. According to the Maryland Department of Health data for Carroll County, the total number of cases since March 2020 was 29,106 as of Tuesday. The total deaths were 491. In Maryland, the number of confirmed cases was 1,412,987. The number of confirmed deaths was 16,929. Last month, the HV.1 variant gained traction and overtook other variants to become the prevalent strain, according to the CDC. This is the latest variant to fall off the genetic mutation assembly line, Carroll Countys Deputy Health Officer Dr. Robert Wack said. Though the strain is new, the risk is not. Wack urged residents to get vaccinated. Get your COVID shot if your are due and protect the vulnerable people in your daily life, he said. The symptoms caused by an HV.1 infection include a sore throat, runny nose, cough, tiredness, headache, muscle aches, fever and chills, according to the CDC. The new booster shot offers protection, and the health department is hosting clinics for people who are uninsured or underinsured, Kunz said. For more information on the booster shot, and to register, go to https://cchd.maryland.gov/registration-links. Most pharmacies offer the booster shot. To search for locations and times, go to vaccines.gov. Home-testing kits for COVID are also available at Carroll County Public Libraries from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. This includes the following branches. The administrative offices at 1100 Green Valley Road in New Windsor. Eldersburg Branch, 6400 West Hemlock Drive in Eldersburg. Exploration Commons at 50 East Main St. in Westminster. Finksburg Branch, 2265 Old Westminster Pike in Finksburg. Mount Airy Branch, 705 Ridge Ave. in Mount Airy. North Carroll Branch, 2255 Hanover Pike in Hampstead. Taneytown Branch, 10 Grand Drive in Taneytown. HV.1 has emerged just as the country enters the respiratory virus season. The health department also is urging people, especially older adults, to get their flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) shots. The flu shot is also recommended for everyone six months and up, and RSV is now available for babies and people over 60, Kunz said. Last December, respiratory illnesses, including the flu and COVID, rose in Carroll County. Though the impact of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms, decreased last December, flu cases rose rapidly in Maryland, according to the county health department at the time. COVID cases also rose. Both the flu and COVID can cause serious illness and death, especially in vulnerable populations, the county health department said. For more information on flu, RSV, and COVID shots, go to https://cchd.maryland.gov/finding-a-flu-vaccination. Going into the holidays, is a great time to think about preventing the spread of COVID and other illnesses, especially if you are visiting people at higher risk of serious illness, Kunz said. Get vaccinated, wash your hands, open windows to let air into family gatherings, mask when appropriate, test as needed. If you feel sick, reschedule your celebration, she said. The Colorado Supreme Court will be hearing appeals in the effort to keep former President Donald Trump off the state ballot. Last week, state Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled that Trump had engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, but she allowed him to remain on the ballot through a technicality. The ruling was objected to by both sides, with Trump taking issue with the ruling that he had engaged in insurrection and plaintiffs taking issue with him remaining on the ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court will hear the appeals of both. ISRAEL-HAMAS HOSTAGE NEGOTIATIONS ARE 'CLOSEST WE'VE BEEN TO A DEAL,' US OFFICIAL SAYS "We look forward to presenting arguments on the one legal question at issue that an insurrectionist former president can and must be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment," Sean Grimsley, the attorney leading the group that filed the challenge, said in a statement obtained by NBC News. The oral arguments in front of the court are slated for Dec. 6. The development was expected. Attorney Andrew Lieb of Lieb at Law predicted earlier on Tuesday that the matter would proceed to the Colorado Supreme Court. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. "There have been findings that Trump caused an insurrection, and this issue isn't going away," he said. Similar efforts to remove Trump from the ballot have been rejected in Michigan and Minnesota. Original Location: Colorado Supreme Court to hear appeal in Trump ballot case Washington Examiner Videos Portland Public Schools allocated more than $2 million in coronavirus relief funds over the past two years to ensure its class sizes did not increase, and now, the city's teachers union is striking over class sizes. The funds, which were allocated to the district through the American Rescue Plan Act signed by President Joe Biden in the early days of his administration, were spent during the last two school years before the Portland Teachers Association launched its first-ever strike to demand higher pay and smaller class sizes. EXISTING HOME SALES FALL TO LOWEST LEVEL SINCE 2010 THANKS TO HIGH MORTGAGE RATES According to publicly available information, Portland Public Schools was granted $73,869,716.23 in COVID-19 relief funds through the American Rescue Plan, of which $70,472,382.63 was budgeted by the district. This included reserving $852,068.44 for the 2021-2022 school year and $2,155,620.44 for the 2022-2023 school year for the purpose of maintaining class sizes. The funds from the legislation also included $13,523,355 allocated for "Instructional Professional Development," $1.086 million for "high dosage tutoring," and $9.4 million for summer school. On its website, the school district said it had allocated $26 million of its total grant toward addressing learning loss but listed "racial equity" as a problem of learning loss. Now, the Portland Association of Teachers is demanding that the school district commit to harder caps on class sizes as the union launched its strike at the beginning of the month. The union argues that teachers have had to contend with increasingly larger class sizes, even as the number of students in the district has declined. In the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, enrollment in the district has dropped from 49,550 students in the 2018-2019 school year, the last pre-pandemic school year, to 44,771 for the 2023-2024 school year. The district had 3,667 teachers in 2018, while the Portland Association of Teachers reportedly had 3,587 members in the 2023-2024 school year. There are also 495 nonrepresented district employees, which could include teachers who have not joined the union. The strike began on Nov. 2, and since then, students have been out of school, and the strike has yet to end. Portland Public School officials say the price tag of the union's demands exceeds $200 million, funds the district says do not exist. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. With so many missed school days, the union and the district have now begun negotiating how to make up the missed days once classes resume. Students could lose a week off their winter break, and classes could extend later into the summer under the main proposal under consideration. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER On Monday, it appeared as though there might be a breakthrough in negotiations, but reports later indicated that the district's proposal on class sizes was a "nonstarter" for the union. The rejection came hours after the school board rejected a settlement that would have allowed parents to be a part of "class size committees" at schools, the Oregonian reported. The district said that the proposal would violate student privacy laws because parents on the committee would require access to the private information of other people's children. Original Location: How Portland schools spent COVID-19 funds in years before teachers strike Washington Examiner Videos "Squad" member Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) claimed Tuesday evening that President Joe Biden is losing support from black voters due to the president not "having a conversation about reparations." Bowman's comment comes after recent polling data from NBC News indicates that the president's support from black voters is faltering, with Biden's net approval rating going from over 46% throughout the year to 27% in November. The New York congressman argued that the decreased support is due to the Biden administration focusing on sending money to other countries to fight wars overseas instead of spending that money on education or healthcare. WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT HEARS ORAL ARGUMENTS IN HIGH-STAKES REDISTRICTING CASE "So I think it's a combination of all these things that's turning young people off, and people of color have been turned off for a while because of lack of comprehensive immigration reform if you're talking about the Latino community and no conversation at all about reparations if you talk about the black community," Bowman said on MSNBC's Alex Wagner Tonight. "But we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year on weapons and war, but we can't even have a conversation about reparations? Those are the things that are happening right now." Bowman's comment about the Biden administration on wars comes as the United States aims to help Israel after the terrorist group Hamas attacked the country on Oct. 7. The administration is also focused on how it can continue to financially support Ukraine, which is still fighting its war against Russia that started in February of last year. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Beyond losing support from black voters, recent polls also indicate that Biden is losing support from younger voters, with one issue this demographic has against the Biden administration being the economy. A recent poll showed that 59% of voters under the age of 30 would rate the current state of the economy as "poor." Former President Donald Trump is expected to be the Republican Party's 2024 nominee for president, setting the stage for a rematch between him and Biden. In a hypothetical rematch between the two, Trump would win more support from voters between the ages of 18 and 34, polling at 46% with voters in that age group, against Biden's 42%, according to a new poll. Original Location: Jamaal Bowman claims Biden is losing black support for not discussing reparations Washington Examiner Videos Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) is brushing off comments from former President Donald Trump calling her the "most unpopular governor in America" and doubling down on her endorsement of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Reynolds endorsed DeSantis in the 2024 Republican presidential primary on Nov. 6, causing severe backlash from Trump and his allies. The former president's campaign released a video on Tuesday dismissing the impact of the Iowa governor's endorsement of his rival in the GOP primary. BIDEN MIGHT BE DEMOCRATS' BIGGEST PROBLEM CONVINCING BLACK AND LATINO VOTERS NOT TO SUPPORT TRUMP "Kim Reynolds of Iowa has gone from a popular governor to the most unpopular governor in the entire United States of America not an easy feat," Trump said, referring to a recent Morning Consult poll that reported her having the highest disapproval of any U.S. governor, at 47%. Reynolds hit back at Trump in a tweet on Tuesday, calling DeSantis the "most effective leader I've ever seen." "It's not about me. It's about our country. [Ron DeSantis] follows through on his promises, can serve 8 years, and has a WINNING record," the Iowa Republican governor said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. "If you like what we are doing in Iowa, you'll love what he'll do for this country!" Trump, however, disagreed in his video. He said Reynolds's endorsement of DeSantis, whom he called a "wounded bird," gives him "exactly zero bounce." Trump has a 59.4% RealClearPolitics rating, followed by DeSantis with 14%. The DeSantis War Room put out a map of Iowa on X on Tuesday showing Reynolds outperformed Trump in every district in 2022 that he won in 2020. The post read, "Interesting." Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. The Trump campaign's video attacking Reynolds is the latest display of tension between Reynolds and the former president. Their relationship has soured since Reynolds initially stated she would remain neutral in the Iowa caucuses. In August, Trump took credit for Reynolds's success, stating, "I got her elected. I endorsed her." CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Reynolds received a favorability rating of 81% in an Iowa poll in August. Trump, comparatively, received a 65% favorability rating. Another poll from the state found that one-fifth of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers would not vote for Trump in 2024, and two-fifths of caucusgoers believed Trump should drop out of the race if he is imprisoned on federal crimes. The Washington Examiner reached out to the DeSantis campaign for comment. Original Location: Kim Reynolds responds to Trump calling her the most unpopular governor: Its not about me Washington Examiner Videos Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley's newfound momentum in the GOP primary suggests she may be overtaking Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in the race to compete as the alternative to former President Donald Trump. Breakout performances at the first three primary debates and stinging rebukes of her competitors have all helped her rise in the field as others have begun to drop out of the race. Yet as the 2024 election cycle inches closer to next year's Iowa caucuses, Haley's path to the nomination remains daunting given the former president's seemingly unbreakable hold over the GOP base. Despite increasing legal troubles, Trump's supporters have remained loyal to him, with some giving perfunctory consideration to the rest of the presidential field. BIDEN MIGHT BE DEMOCRATS' BIGGEST PROBLEM CONVINCING BLACK AND LATINO VOTERS NOT TO SUPPORT TRUMP Trump repeatedly leads his rivals in fundraising and polling, often by more than 40 percentage points. A RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump with 59.4% support, DeSantis at 14%, and Haley at 10.6%. However, in two of the early nominating states, support for Haley has put her firmly in second place nearly nine months after she launched her presidential campaign. A poll from the Des Moines Register-NBC News-Mediacom Iowa poll last month showed Haley and DeSantis tied at 16%, with Trump once again dominating at 43%. Then, two polls last week firmly placed Haley ahead of DeSantis in a sign that she's beginning to cement her role as the chief alternative to Trump. An Emerson College poll of New Hampshire voters showed Trump polling at 49% in the GOP primary, Haley at 18%, a 14-point increase since September, and DeSantis at 7%. Then, a CNN-University of New Hampshire poll showed Trump at 42% support among likely GOP voters, Haley at 20%, and DeSantis at 9%. "It's clear that the non-Trump vote is beginning to coalesce around Nikki Haley. As Haley's numbers head north, DeSantis's numbers are either headed south or have flatlined," Republican strategist Brian Seitchik told the Washington Examiner. "But the fact is, Nikki Haley has two shots to make this race: Iowa and New Hampshire." Seitchik cautioned that if Trump wins the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15 and the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 23, he will have locked down the GOP nomination. But he conceded that Haley was the one candidate who may be able to block a smooth path for Trump in January. "No one really knows if there's enough time yet for Haley to catch Trump at this point. Most folks would probably bet against that happening," Seitchik said. "But at this time, she's the only one even in the hunt to have a realistic shot at beating Trump in one of the first two contests." Woodrow Johnston, a Republican consultant based in Las Vegas, said Haley had a "narrow path" to the nomination. Johnston pointed to President Joe Biden's nomination struggles in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2016, in which it appeared he would lose the primary to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) until he won the South Carolina primary and captured the Democratic nomination. "If she can hang on to South Carolina, there could be that comeback Biden moment," Johnston said. "It could change the whole map. And then, as I see it, maybe the folks who are in this race technically but still haven't really gotten any traction even close to Nikki Haley, if they start consolidating behind her, then maybe, maybe, just maybe she might have a shot." Former President Donald Trump and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Seth Herald/Getty; Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Trump and his allies are portraying an air of inevitability about the former president securing the GOP nomination. Trump, who has generally taken to attacking both Haley and DeSantis, skipped all three previous GOP primary debates and will skip next month's fourth debate in Alabama, claiming that his lead in the primary is proof enough that he will win the nomination. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), in his endorsement of Trump this week, alluded to the herculean task Haley, DeSantis, and others are facing. "It's time for the GOP to unite behind President Trump. Let's end the political primary charade and focus on retiring Joe Biden," Marshall said. Other political experts also offered some caution on Haley's rise to second-place status. "Haley may be 'surging,' but she remains far behind," said David Greenberg, a professor at Rutgers University. "In recent decades, what has propelled candidates from a distant second- or third-place position in the polls into serious contention has been an optimistic, exciting message a message that makes voters feel good about the candidate and the future. Haley needs to be more than an alternative to Trump or DeSantis. She needs to get people excited about the prospect of her becoming president." Haley's comments on abortion at the third debate in Miami this month and her comments during the Family Leader's Thanksgiving family forum may prove to be a new way for the GOP to handle an issue that has become an electoral albatross. While proclaiming her staunch anti-abortion views, the former South Carolina governor also called for the public to reach a "consensus" on the issue, minimize the number of abortions, and end the "demonization" of women who have gotten one. Haley has previously stated that a federal abortion ban would not make it through a Democratic-led Senate and White House but said she would sign a law limiting abortion, including a six-week abortion ban, if legislation could make it to the president's desk. Sarah Chamberlain, president and CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership, said that as the lone woman on the debate stage, Haley has the credibility to speak to women's healthcare issues, including on abortion. "I think her position on abortion is right there where the bulk of American people are: 15 weeks to 17 weeks. All the polling that we've done shows that," Chamberlain told the Washington Examiner. August polling from the RMSP showed that 71% of likely Republican primary voters supported a federal abortion ban around 17 weeks. Haley's comments may not appease the most adamant anti-abortion conservatives but could pay off with Republican voters who believe the GOP needs new messaging on abortion to win elections. "While most Republican primary voters take a strong anti-abortion position, some recognize that absolutism is not a political winner, especially after the overturning of Roe [v. Wade]," said Greenberg. "It is a risk for Haley to take a more moderate position on abortion, but since she is behind, she has to take risks." CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Chamberlain, similar to the other GOP strategists, suggested that Haley is still in a good position to prosper in 2028, if not this election cycle. "If she comes in second to Trump, I would think that she is then the front-runner for 2028," she said. "She's young enough. If she just keeps going and keeps out there, I think there'd be no issue that she becomes the 2028 nominee." Johnston, the Las Vegas GOP strategist, said Haley could even be Trump's vice president after serving in his Cabinet as a former U.N. ambassador. "Even though I'm sure Trump is annoyed that Nikki Haley is running, he doesn't appear to be quite as annoyed at her as he is with Ron DeSantis," he said. "So I also don't think it's completely outside the scope that she gets a VP slot. ... It's not impossible." Original Location: Nikki Haley faces narrow path to overcoming Trump's hold on GOP Washington Examiner Videos Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) announced Tuesday his intention not to seek reelection in 2024, joining 31 other House members. The congressman will instead become president of Youngstown State University, which was voted on by trustees 8-1. BIDEN MIGHT BE DEMOCRATS' BIGGEST PROBLEM CONVINCING BLACK AND LATINO VOTERS NOT TO SUPPORT TRUMP "After much thought and prayerful deliberation, I have accepted the offer to lead Youngstown State University and will not be seeking an 8th term in Congress," Johnson posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. "There is still much left on my agenda to do before I depart Congress, including doing all I can to help pass tax exemption legislation to benefit the people of East Palestine as well as a broader rail safety bill, streamline America's LNG export process, and advance a responsible budget and spending package for the remainder of this fiscal year. It's business as usual," he added. Johnson will only serve for "several more months" before leaving to start his new role. He won't finish his current term. Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. The congressman wrote he was not actively seeking another job and said it was a difficult decision for him to leave. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER His announcement is the 12th to be made this month, making November 2023 the month with the most announced departures since Ballotpedia began tracking them in 2011. Previously, the most announced departures were in January 2014, with 10. The 2014 retirements and departures were preceded by the October 2013 government shutdown. Current House members have endured both a lengthy speaker battle and two possible government shutdowns this fall. Original Location: Republican Bill Johnson becomes 32nd House member not seeking reelection in 2024 Washington Examiner Videos The United States conducted airstrikes against two facilities used by Iran and Iranian-supported proxies in Iraq on Wednesday morning local time. This is the fourth time the U.S. military has carried out planned strikes against Iranian-linked targets in Iraq and Syria, where U.S. troops have come under attack more than 60 times in the last month by Tehran proxies. ISRAEL-HAMAS HOSTAGE NEGOTIATIONS ARE 'CLOSEST WE'VE BEEN TO A DEAL,' US OFFICIAL SAYS "On the morning of November 22 in Iraq, U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) forces conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq," U.S. Central Command said in a statement. "The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, including the one in Iraq on November 21, which involved use of close-range ballistic missiles." These strikes came in response to a recent attack where proxy forces launched a close-range ballistic missile at the Al-Asad Air Base, injuring eight people, CENTCOM said in a statement at the time. Immediately after the attack, a U.S. AC-130 gunship fired at a vehicle Department of Defense officials said was carrying militia members, killing "several." The gunship fired on the vehicle because it determined those inside were responsible for launching the close-range ballistic missiles. "The militants were targeted because the AC-130 was able to determine the point of origin from where the close-range ballistic missile was being fired upon or fired to the base," Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters. "So they were able to take action cause they saw the militants, they were able to keep an eye on the movement of these militants as they moved into their vehicles, and that's why they were able to respond." Sign up for free: Springs AM Update Your morning rundown of the latest news from Colorado Springs and around the country overnight and the stories to follow throughout the day delivered to your inbox each evening. Sign Up View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, who are in the region to prevent the regrowth of ISIS, have increasingly come under attack by these proxies over the last month. There have been about 66 attacks against troops from Iranian-backed proxies since Oct. 17, and they have resulted in more than 60 U.S. troops reporting injuries, at least 25 of whom had traumatic brain injuries, though that number does not include the injuries incurred in the ballistic missile attack. Original Location: US launches strikes targeting Iranian proxy facilities in Iraq following ballistic missile attack Washington Examiner Videos Lauren Uram is an organizer with Pro-Animal Future, a local group that seeks to turn public support for animals into law. She holds a BA in ecology from CU Boulder. Alan Gottlieb is editor of Denver-based public education watchdog boardhawk.org. Gottlieb covered Denver Public Schools as a newspaper reporter in the mid-1990s, worked as an education program officer for The Piton Foundation and co-founded Education News Colorado and Chalkbeat. Writing about the Middle East right now is the surest way to upset a lot of people. Emotions are running high as one would expect given the amount of inhumanity and suffering in Israel and Gaza. The real victims, of course, are the innocent people in Israel and Gaza who must endure the corruption and incompetence of their leaders. These leaders clearly seem to be more interested in their own political survival than what is good for the long-term safety and security of their people. On the Gaza side of the conflict, the terrorist group Hamas rules over a population with little or no say in the government or their daily lives. Hamas must be defeated, not only because it refuses to recognize Israel and will always be a threat to the Israel people. But also because of the barbaric actions after invading Israel and because it has no interest in governing the people of Gaza or helping them achieve peace and prosperity. As long as Hamas is in power, violence will continue, and the people of Gaza are doomed. The daily lives of the people in Gaza are also controlled, to a large extent, by the Israeli government, also not interested in their well-being. Gaza has been described as an open-air prison for more than two million people. Except for what they can smuggle in, what comes into Gaza from its borders is determined and controlled by Israel. The people of Gaza are dependent upon the Israeli government for their food, water, fuel and electricity. They are prisoners in their own land. Thus, they are at the mercy of their own government, Hamas, and their keepers within the Israeli government. A friend with family there told me about something he witnessed during a visit several years ago. He saw a shipment of fruit for Gaza in a truck that was waiting to cross the border. After the truck was inspected, the Israeli soldiers held the truck, sitting out in the hot sun, until the fruit had gone bad before allowing it to pass. On the Israeli side, you have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was willing to make a deal with hard-right, anti-peace politicians in order to build a coalition government so he could remain in power. His deal with the Israeli people was that if they would put up with his hard-right, anti-democracy coalition government, he would keep them safe. Of course, he did not keep them safe. Perhaps he was too busy trying to disable the Israeli justice system for the sake of protecting himself from criminal persecution. Netanyahu understands that, after the war, he will be held responsible for the massive security breakdown that allowed Hamas to walk across the border and kill 1,400 Israelis. Thus, he has no incentive to make peace with the people of Gaza. Perhaps he believes if he kills enough people in Gaza, the Israeli people will forget his governments incompetence. However, once again, he has made a significant miscalculation as the world watches the slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians, including more than 5,000 children, in Gaza. Netanyahu might be winning the battle in Gaza, but he is losing the war of public opinion and the prospects of long-term security for the people of Israel. The fact that Hamas has tunnels under neighborhoods in Gaza does not give Netanyahu the right to bomb homes, schools and hospitals filled with innocent people, killing thousands of civilians who, by no choice of their own, are in his way. He orders the people of Gaza to leave their homes before he destroys them, but gives them nowhere safe to go. No one is arguing that Netanyahu does not have the right to remove Hamas from Gaza. Hamas must be defeated, but not at the cost of thousands of childrens lives. It seems that Netanyahu is not just trying to defeat Hamas, but trying to destroy any likelihood the people of Gaza will have a future home in Gaza. Netanyahu might destroy Gaza, but his methods will surely give life to new extremists in the Middle East and around the world. He will not bring peace to Israel. Instead, he has ensured the birth of more terrorists, more killing and more suffering for millions of people for years to come. Lets be clear about something else: Standing against the behavior of Hamas is not the same as being anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian. Some people are generalizing the behavior of Hamas to the millions of people around the world who are Muslim. They are displaying their own prejudices. Also, standing against Netanyahus right-wing government and its actions in Gaza is not the same as being pro-Hamas. Nor is it being anti-Israel or anti-Jewish. Generalizing the behavior of Netanyahu to the people of Israel or the millions of Jews around the world exposes ones own anti-Semitism. These grand generalizations and prejudices are the root cause of the inhumanity we are witnessing today against innocent victims on both sides. Tom Zirpoli is the Laurence J. Adams Distinguished Chair in Special Education Emeritus at McDaniel College. He writes from Westminster. His column appears on Wednesdays. Email him at tzirpoli@mcdaniel.edu. A federal judge has refused to dismiss the lawsuit of a former Weld County schools superintendent who alleges her school board fired her after she stood up against multiple incidents of racism, sexism and homophobia involving one of the district's principals. The four-day special session on property taxes, which concluded this week, may have shown a lot more about what the future holds for the Colorado General Assembly come January. Here are some takeaways: The end of a fragile peace in the Senate? Unlike the House, where Republicans routinely use every tactic at their disposal to slow down agendas and House Democrats regularly shut down debate, senators, for the most of part, get along pretty well. The special session, indeed, saw a cantankerous House, but the Senate also found itself in a rare, public dispute that seemed out of character for its members. A dustup on Friday night is now leading to worries that from folks within and without the chamber that tactics to shut down debate could also become the norm in the Senate once the the 120-day session starts on Jan. 10, barely 50 days away. Some senators and observers said that would not be productive, breaking what they described as the only fragile peace that exists in the state Capitol these days. Indeed, during the special session aimed at offering property tax relief to Coloradans, the public saw plenty of time-outs, as lawmakers negotiated bills and amendments, but just as many breaks to argue about rules and process. That started in the Senate on Friday. Here's what happened. A standard procedure in a special session is for the majority party in the Senate to issue a notice three days before the start to allow for the suspension of rules so that business can move quickly. Why that mattered was on display on Friday, when Senate Democrats tried to bring up a "special orders" calendar one that had not been given a previous notice so that they could proceed with the debate on Senate Bill 23B-001, the main primary property tax relief legislation. But to bring up a "special orders" calendar, the rules had to be suspended beforehand by that three-day notice. Alternatively, the Senate must agree to allow it with a two-thirds majority vote. That's 24 out of the Senate's 35 members. Here's the conundrum for Democrats they hold 23 seats, so it means one Republican must cross the aisle and vote in favor of the motion. That wasn't going to happen in this special session. The first vote to suspend failed, 23-12, with a roll call vote requested by Republicans. Senate President Steve Fenberg then called for a second vote, and asked for "aye" votes before Republicans could move for a roll call. Sen. Bob Gardner, the Republicans' rule master made that request as Fenberg was calling for the "no" votes. Fenberg nonetheless declared the motion approved. Despite Fenberg telling Republicans the vote had been cast and "those are the rules," the rules, in fact, don't say when precisely that roll call vote has to be requested. Denied the opportunity for the roll call vote, Gardner appealed the decision, which the majority denied on a 23-12 roll call vote. That turned out to be the last action the Senate took Friday night before adjourning. Fenberg insisted in a sidebar conversation that was not on camera but which drew a half-dozen members of the press corps that both sides had agreed on a three-day session, and to push off the second reading debate for a day would push the session into a fourth day. Republicans, meanwhile, said they wanted the public to have more time to look at the legislation being proposed. After more than an hour of that discussion, Fenberg returned to the dais and Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez of Denver made the motion to "lay over" the special orders calendar until Saturday, in effect acceding to the Republicans' request for a one-day delay. Fenberg did not say why. Bad behavior abounds in the House without consequence Sign up for free: News Alerts Stay in the know on the stories that affect you the most. Sign Up For Free View all of our newsletters. Success! Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. View all of our newsletters. House Democrats have often complained in the last several years about what they deemed to be offensive comments made by Republicans and for which there were little to no consequences. The question now is whether they would apply the same standards to one of their own. More specifically, how will House Speaker Julie McCluskie and House leaders respond to the actions of Rep. Elisabeth Epps of Denver, who spent 45 minutes on Monday talking about the Israeli-Hamas conflict, claiming Israel was engaging in "ethnic cleansing" and eating up almost all of the time allotted for debate on a bill on a federal food and nutrition program. She ended her comments with "Free Palestine!" and then went into the House gallery and joined Pro-Palestinian protesters in shouting down at the House floor, calling Democrats "fascists" and claiming she'd rather sit with those who oppose "genocide." House Rule 23(b) says "no member shall engage in loud private discourse or commit any other act tending to distract the attention of the House from the business before it." The House has not invoked that rule in at least 25 years. Epps's comments came while Rep. Ron Weinberg, a Loveland Republican who is Jewish, was given time to address her earlier comments. "We are not enemies," Weinberg said. The standoff in the gallery lasted more than an hour. Protesters were asked to leave by the House sergeants, a request they refused to obey. Epps eventually returned to the House floor and left shortly thereafter. House leaders said nothing publicly about her actions once the chamber resumed its business and lawmakers wrapped up their work for the special session. Will this become the standard in the 2024 session? McCluskie has yet to say whether she's considering action to remind lawmakers about the rules and to avoid the actions that led to Monday's disruption of House business. Amid an election year, will Colorado's lawmakers 'disagree better'? If the disruptions that took place in both the House and Senate weren't enough, 2024 is an election year, in which Republicans will try to claw back seats they lost to Democrats, who, in turn, will seek to main their supermajority hold of the House and extend that to the Senate. Senate Democrats need to defeat a Republican to claim its 24th seat, giving them a two-thirds majority. House Democrats already hold 46 seats they just need 43 seats for a two-thirds vote. The contentiousness of this week's special session could spill over into in 2024, when lawmakers are once again expected to clash over guns, abortion, property taxes, rent and drug use. Interestingly, Gov. Jared Polis and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox held a forum at Colorado State University on the very issue of divisive political discourse last week, when they talked about statesmanship, the kind exhibited by the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The duo is pushing an initiative by the National Governors Association called "Disagree Better," whose animating concept is to offer ways for people with disparate views to hold robust and difficult conversations about major problems without shouting at each other. "I think you have to get at what the reward structures are for politicians. And, currently, too many of them see the easy way, where you become part of the problem and the fire-throwing. You get millions of Twitter followers. You raise tons of money. You demonize the other side," Polis told Colorado Politics after the forum. "And when that's the route that propels you to power, you generally are going to govern accordingly. Because that's the easy thing for you to do." "The political industrial complex is full of cowards and people who will just copy whatever works. If tearing the other side down gets you elected, then people will do that. But if we can show a different way that, actually, (it works) treating people with respect, even if we disagree, the kind of John McCain model that you mentioned, you will see more and more people try and do that," Cox added. "Even better, you'll find more and more people that want to run for office who won't do it now because it's too toxic." Will Colorado's politicians "disagree better" as Polis urged them to? Stay tuned. Two Virginia babies were switched at birth three years ago, the world learned recently. Since then, talk has abounded: How often does this happen, why and how? Answers are only speculative, but the statistics are startling. About 28,000 babies get switched in hospitals every year, temporarily or permanently, out of four million births, says Nicholas Webb, vice president of technology for Talon Medical Limited, a San Antonio, Texas-based vendor of a new high-tech ID bracelet for newborns. He says his figures are from a 1996 study by Inter/Action Associates, a Las Vegas, Nev.-based security consulting firm. If the figures are accurate the National Institutes of Health doesnt track switches this translates into one mistake per 1,000 transfers, Webb says. A transfer is every time the baby is brought from the nursery to the mom, and vice versa. During a mothers average two-day hospital stay, a baby is transferred about six times, he says. The good news is, he says, most mistakes are fixed before the baby leaves the hospital. In addition to the long-used ID bracelet systems, some hospitals have begun to promote immediate mother/child bonding and therefore immediate recognition by allowing newborns to remain in the delivery room for their preliminary physicals, rather than be taken to the nursery. This lessens the risk of a mom not being able to identify the baby, says Vivienne Stearns Elliott, spokeswoman for Greater Baltimore Medical Center. Susan Quinn of Ellicott City, who gave birth to a baby boy this past week, spent six hours with him immediately after delivery. If he wasnt the one to come back, we wouldve noticed, she says. Standard hospital infant-identification procedures usually involve putting an ID bracelet on the baby immediately after birth, in the delivery room, and keeping it on until discharge. Its a system that has remained relatively constant since the 1950s. A nurse in the delivery room fills in a baby ID bracelet with time of birth, sex, mothers name, doctors name and an identification number, explains Jeanne Ten Broeck, assistant director of nursing for OB/GYN at Johns Hopkins Hospital. A bracelet is strapped onto each of the babys ankles and the mothers wrist. The bracelets are compared each time the baby is transferred to and from the mother. Before the newborns discharge, the mother signs a form stating that she has the right baby, and one of the infants bands is fixed onto the form for hospital records. At Anne Arundel Medical Center, bracelets are given to both the mother and the father, says spokeswoman Mary Lou Baker. Six months ago, Webbs company started selling a high-tech version of the ID bracelet, one that uses computer chips and scanners. Bracelets are strapped onto the babys ankle and wrist and onto each parent. When a correct match is made, the system plays 10 bars of Hush Little Baby Dont You Cry; if theres no match, the bracelet blares a very strident siren sound, says David Cocke, Talons chief financial officer. The band is about $10, according to Webb, so for less than the cost of a large pizza you can protect your kid. Webb says errors arise when parents dont take the time to verify for themselves the identification numbers, and assume that the nurses have done their jobs. But with managed health care attempting to reduce the cost of health-care workers, he says, [were] seeing a lot less nurses doing a lot more work. Pub Date: 8/16/98 The Mason City Council has denied a new application for a liquor and tobacco license for Northside Liquor, 1303 N. Federal Ave. in Mason City. According to Police Chief Jeff Brinkley, Northside Liquor has a valid license until April. The new application was made in a different name and would have taken effect Dec 1., when the business signed a new lease. Northside Liquor will continue to operate under its current license until it expires in April. Brinkley supported the council's decision, saying, "I believe they are applying for the license now to avoid sanctions that ABD (Alcoholic Beverages Division) will hand down to them for the most recent violations. " Councilman Paul Adams noted there had been 23 complaints against the business from parents, neighbors, the ABD and even a confession from a driver accused of OWI that they had made an illegal purchase at the location. Six violations have been forwarded to Iowa's ABD by the Mason City Police Department. "My goal is to eventually, at 1303 N. Federal to get the ABD to ban a license for that location based on the number of violations that we have," Brinkley said. Councilman John Jaszewski asked, "Your intent would be to close this operation down completely?" "I'd hope that the ABD, because of the history of violations, would make it so the physical premises of 1303 N. Federal would no longer have a liquor license," Brinkley said. "There's a pattern and practice of, I think, of disobeying regulations and legal authority that has tried hard to work with them to make them compliant, and they're just choosing not to." Jaszewski expressed concerns losing its liquor license would close the business. Brinkley assured him there are multiple locations owned by this group and it would not be out of business due to the loss of this one license. The council will also consider liquor establishment density in the future. Police calls for service in areas with high density of retail liquor locations are often considerably higher than other locations. A future city ordinance could spread those retail liquor locations throughout the city, easing density. GREENSBORO City Councilwoman Goldie Wells was joined at noon Tuesday by some of her favorite prayer warriors and other guests at her church to take part in a Day of Prayer or Reflection. Wells and Mayor Nancy Vaughan had asked residents to pause at that time wherever they were to reflect or pray for a stop to violence in the city during a record-setting year of 67 homicides to date. We ask the citizens of Greensboro to unite and ask for peace in our city, Wells said Tuesday from the front pew of her church. Wells had invited anyone in the community to participate with her at Wells Memorial Church of God, 1001 E. Washington St., where she encouraged those in attendance to share their own prayers aloud. One after another, the prayers filled the church. A prayer for peace in the city. A prayer to see each life is valuable. A prayer to look beyond differences. A prayer for healing after trauma inflicted on the community. A prayer for law enforcement officers and for strength, courage and protection for each. Police Chief John Thompson, Deputy Police Chief Renae Sigmon and Assistant Chief Stephanie Mardis were in the church to hear the prayer for them and for their fellow officers. Thompson leaned forward to rest his head on his clasped hands on the back of the pew in front of him. Faith has always been a very important part of my life, Thompson said afterward. I cant separate that from who I am. Thompson said he was appreciative of the opportunity that would allow anyone in the community to participate in their own way. Greensboro has seen other violent crimes decline, but homicides this year have exceeded the previous record of 62 for the entire year of 2020. Two homicides occurred in the city this past weekend. Vaughan said in a video message that she and council members wanted to bring healing to grieving families this holiday season and know prayer alone will not solve the problem of gun violence. As she addressed the violence, Vaughan said, its everybodys problem. She shared a prayer in her message that asked, in part, for those who have lost loved ones, for first responders, and for leaders to come together to resolve issues and find solutions. Brenda McGibboney, a member of Wells Memorial, said after Tuesdays gathering there that she considers each day a day of prayer. Were praying for one another, for families and for peace, she said. When it seems like everything is out of control, its in Gods control. Hes got us. As lawmakers in Washington weigh sending billions more in federal support to Kyiv to help fight off Russian aggression, close to half of the U.S. public thinks the country is spending too much on aid to Ukraine, according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Those sentiments, driven primarily by Republicans, help explain the hardening opposition among conservative GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are rebuffing efforts from President Joe Biden to approve a new tranche of Ukraine aid, arguing that the money would be better spent for domestic priorities. Yet opposition to aid is down slightly from where it was a month ago in another AP-NORC poll. Now, 45% say the U.S. government is spending too much on aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia, compared with 52% in October. That shift appears to come mostly from Republicans: 59% now say too much is spent on Ukraine aid, but thats down from 69% in October. Nonetheless, the Republican resistance to continued Ukraine aid remains strong. I understand the citizens need help, but I feel like were spending way too much money on Ukraine when we have our issues here, on our own soil, that we need to deal with, said Eric Mondello, 40, from Fountain, Colorado. Pointing to needs such as health care for veterans and homelessness in communities, Mondello added: I understand the U.S. has been an ally to others, but I feel like, lets take care of our people first. More than one-third (38%) of U.S. adults say that current spending is about the right amount, which is up slightly from last month (31%). Among Republicans, nearly 3 in 10 (29%) say the current spending is about right, up from 20% last month. Paula Graves, 69, is among those who says the amount of spending for Ukraine is the right amount. Putin, hes straight up evil. I dont think there should be any question in anyones mind, said Graves, of Clovis, California. Hes a dictator. Hes infringed on human rights, hes a very scary person and if Ukraine falls to him, whos next? What countrys next? Graves, who says she is not affiliated with a political party but leans more conservative, said she believes the U.S. has a leadership role on the global stage and added: I think we definitely need to put America first, but I dont think that needs to be first and only. The White House has been repeatedly pressing lawmakers to pass Bidens nearly $106 billion emergency spending package that he proposed in October, which includes more than $61 billion specifically for the war in Ukraine. The rest of Bidens request has aid for Israel as it battles Hamas, money for various priorities in the Indo-Pacific region and additional resources to help manage migration at the southern border. On Ukraine, the Biden administration is increasingly warning that the well of aid is running dry. In an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Ukraines effort to defeat Russian forces matters to the rest of the world and pledged that U.S. support would continue for the long haul. That message was reinforced at the White House. As President Biden has said, when aggressors dont pay a price for their aggression, theyll cause more chaos and death and destruction, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, told the White House press briefing Monday. They just keep on going, and the cost and the threats to America and to the world will keep rising. But Congress has rebuffed the White House efforts at bolstering Ukraine support at least twice in recent months. First, it ignored a roughly $40 billion supplemental request before a Sept. 30 funding deadline. Then last week, it passed a stopgap funding measure that keeps the government operating through early next year, but with no additional Ukraine aid. In the Senate, a small bipartisan group is working on legislation that would combine fresh Ukraine assistance with stricter border measures to address concerns from Republicans that the U.S. was focused on needs abroad at the expense of issues closer to home. A broad majority of senators remains supportive of Ukraine aid, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., being one of the most stalwart supporters despite the isolationist strain in his party. South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said lawmakers will continue to work on the Ukraine-border package over the Thanksgiving break and wont wait until mid-January when Congress faces another government funding deadline to act on Ukraine. The big question mark is in the House, where still-new Speaker Mike Johnson who had voted against Ukraine aid as a rank-and-file conservative has spoken broadly of the need to counter Russian aggression yet faces unruly GOP lawmakers who have shown more hostility to continued support for Kyiv. Johnson, too, is insisting that additional Ukraine aid be paired with tougher border measures, although it is far from certain that any immigration agreement that clears the Democratic-led Senate could pass the GOP-controlled House. Half of U.S. adults are extremely or very concerned that Russias influence poses a direct threat to the United States. Democrats (53%) and Republicans (51%) are similarly concerned about Russian power but Democrats are more likely than Republicans to see Ukraine as a nation of shared values to the U.S. and to support more aid for Ukraine. About half of the public (48%) endorses providing weapons to Ukraine (57% among Democrats, 42% among Republicans). About 4 in 10 favor sending government funds directly to Ukraine (54% for Democrats, 24% for Republicans). Americans have grown slightly more likely to say the U.S. should take a less active role in solving the worlds problems, compared with a September poll from AP-NORC and Pearson. Slightly fewer than half (45%) now say the U.S. should be less involved, up from 33% in September. Just 16% of Democrats now say the U.S. should take a more active role, down from 29% in September. Peter Einsig, a Republican from Tulsa, Oklahoma, said he still believes the U.S. has a role to play abroad, but that he remains concerned about excessive government spending and federal debt. Yet Einsig said he would be more inclined to support aid to Ukraine if there were more oversight into how the money was being used abroad, as well as a timeline of how much longer the U.S. would be providing support. We dont have transparency on where the money is really, really going, said Einsig, 40. Its a big lump sum. Four in 10 U.S. adults say Ukraine is an ally that shares U.S. interests and values. That view is most common among Democrats (53%), who are much more likely than independents (28%), Republicans (29%) and Americans overall to see Ukraine as a nation with similar values and needs. About half of Republicans say Ukraine is a partner that the U.S. should cooperate with, but say it is not a nation that shares U.S. values. BURLINGTON An unattended turkey fryer was blamed for a house fire early Wednesday, fire officials said in a news release. The Burlington Fire Department responded to a house fire at 840 N. Sellars Mill Road at 12:57 a.m. to find heavy fire and smoke showing from the sides and rear of the house. Firefighters made sure everyone was out of the home and were able to safely rescue the family dog. A family cat also escaped the fire. The fire was under control is about 30 minutes, officials said in the news release. The cause of the fire was determined to be from a turkey fryer that was heating up and left unattended for an extended period of time. Fire officials asked the public to be "extra vigilant when cooking and especially if utilizing a turkey fryer." The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) discourages the use of turkey fryers that use oil and provides safety information and alternatives here: turkey-fryers. Firefighters discovered one of the bedroom doors in the house was closed and the room inside was virtually undamaged by heat and smoke, while the remainder of the house had substantial damage. Fire officials suggest residents close bedroom doors at night and ensure working smoke alarms are present in all sleeping areas as well as hallways outside of bedrooms. Damage was estimated at about $150,000 to the structure and $50,000 to the contents. A Helena man will be sentenced Dec. 18 for attempted deliberate homicide after the Montana Supreme Court had reversed an earlier conviction and ordered a new trial in February 2022. Andrew Pierce Lake was found guilty Nov. 2 for stabbing a man seven times outside of Jesters Bar on Rodney Street in Helena in March 2017. Lake will be sentenced by Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Kathy Seeley. The victim had reported that they initially did not know they had been stabbed, but realized it when blood came rushing down the back of his neck. The victim had wounds that ran from the base of his skull on the left side down the left side of their torso with one stab wound below their left chest, according to court documents. The attack happened on Fifth Avenue after an apparent argument between the victim and Lake. The victim had stated they did not feel a physical fight was worth their time and decided to stay away from Lake. Later in the night the victim told investigators that he was walking to his car and saw Lake in front of him, but did not instigate a fight, according to court documents. This is when Lake came behind the victim and stabbed him after grabbing his head. In a previous report from the Independent Record, Lake had made the claim he acted in self-defense and believed the victim was going to stab him. Lake discarded the knife used in the crime while leaving his blood covered clothes in his living room which were later seized as evidence by investigators. Lake was sentenced in August 2019 to 80 years in prison. He was ordered to pay $77,000 in restitution for the victim's medical bills. The dispute was related to comments that Lake had repeatedly made about child abuse, according to court documents. Lake told a detective that he likes to say things that shock other people and provided an example of a joke about sexually abusing a child, the documents say. The Montana Supreme Court reversed the conviction in February 2022, noting the lower court erred in letting prosecutors elicit unfairly prejudicial testimony regarding the mans explicit comments about child sexual abuse. Supreme Court Justice Dirk Sandefur wrote the opinion that was concurred by four other judges. He noted later that the state exploited and emphasized that heightened focus at every available opportunity with multiple witnesses, thereby permeating and polluting the trial with repetitive and unnecessarily explicit references to a highly offensive and prejudicial subject matter that, at best, had only ancillary relevance to the facts centrally at issue in the case. The Lewis and Clark County Detention Center is hovering along the overpopulation limit again nearly three years after renovations were finished to house more inmates with no plans to renovate until the mill levy expires. On average, head counts have eclipsed the 156-inmate capacity with the number steadily rising every month since November 2022. In November 2022, it was 158.55 inmates on a daily average. In March 2023 it rose to 162.29 and in September 2023 it was 170.97 inmates, according to the Lewis and Clark County Sheriff's Office. Regularly the jail sees an influx of inmates on Monday mornings due to weekend arrests. This number tends to diminish after Monday night when some are released. The averages are based on the amount of inmates processed into the detention center even though some are bonded out immediately, meaning some of the numbers are inflated slightly. The detention center underwent renovations to expand the jail from being able to house 80 inmates to 156, which was completed in spring of 2021. This was not the first proposed plan to the public. The first pitch the county gave to voters in 2015 was a $42 million project that could have housed 350 inmates, but this was rejected. Its not a problem we did not know was coming, but what we do to alleviate that is we will work with judges to say we will not arrest people on a misdemeanor warrant, Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton said. County Detention Capt. Bradley Bragg said there is an overcrowding issue, but it is not major. Before the renovations, inmates would sleep on the floor of the library due to the overcrowding within the jail. This is still true according to Bragg, but not as frequent. They will sleep on the floor within the facility with a mat, but we work as quickly as we can to move people around and get them off the floor, Bragg said. Before the first reconstruction its American Civil Liberties Union, Montana was active in supporting the original jail expansion project that was pitched to Lewis and Clark County. In a previous report by the Independent Record, Caitlin Borgmann, then-executive director of ACLU Montana, said they would like to come up with a plan without litigation regarding the overcrowding in the jail. The problem is not just in Lewis and Clark County. Jail overcrowding is an ongoing issue throughout the state, ACLU Montana Legal Director Alex Rate said. Currently, Montana state facilities are overcrowded in regards to total incarcerated individuals and the operational capacity. He said what is happening in Lewis and Clark County Detention Center is predictable, and the pre-trial is not working well enough to keep overcrowding out of jails. People should not be incarcerated because they are poor, Rate said and added that an issue with the jailing system is that people are being jailed while being presumed innocent by law. He mentioned that unfortunately people in the prison system are quickly forgotten by societies. Bragg mentioned a very early idea that may change in the future due to the fact that the levy does not finish for another couple of years. Bragg said that the department would like to go back to a single-floor facility because it is more manageable than having a multi-tiered building. The plan would possibly move offices and inmate pods to the same floor or have offices below the pods on a separate floor leaving the pods all on the same floor of the facility. An option that was added to the county by the Criminal Justice Services Department was the pre-trial program. According to Dutton a fail-safe for the county is to speak with judges and try to make them agree that misdemeanor offenders involved in nonviolent crimes should not be sent to the jail to help reduce the risk of overcrowding known as the pre-trial program. We said we are going to fill this up, but the idea is that bricks and mortar arent going to cure everything and we understand that, Dutton said. There has got to be some programs that will help us not put everybody in jail and keep them in jail. He said that there has to be some kind of help that inmates could be connected with which is why Dutton said there needs to be an in-house mental health counselor and program coordinator. We allow individuals to keep their jobs, keep their housing, keep those things so that they can be contributing members of society until their court date, Director of the Department of Criminal Justice Services at Lewis and Clark County Kellie McBride said. I dont think its a last resort, I just think its a piece of the criminal justice system. The pre-trial program in place is determined not only by the judge, but by a Public Safety Assessment, which is a score driven assessment of the individual in question. The score is generated by assessing the defendants age, prior convictions and prior failures to appear in court. PSAs rank each defendant in one of three levels in which they are given instructions on how often they will need to check in with a pre-trial officer according to the Lewis and Clark County Department of Criminal Justice Services five-year-report released in July 2023. Even though the plan reflects positive data toward the pre-trial program and defendants attending scheduled court dates, it has not worked as far as overcrowding within the jail. The program has a 96% rate for inmates who make it to their court dates on time, 82% remained law abiding and 79% made it to court dates and remained law abiding. This reflects positively on the department according to McBride, but still leaves the jail overpopulated. Some of the folks in the detention center dont qualify for pre-trial services because they are already under the (state) department of corrections, McBride said. She added that it would not make sense to have state probation and parole supervising as well as pre-trial supervising. The department would like to strengthen the pre-trial program over the next 18 months and work with the community to create a law enforcement assisted diversion program to keep people out of the jail. We are doing that in an organic way right now. The Helena Police Department is working with Good Samaritan Ministries, so that if someone is stopped for a low level misdemeanorthey can contact one of the street outreach workers, McBride said. The department met with Good Samaritan to strengthen the program and possibly gain more funding to support the diversion aspect of the program. These programs were a part of the bond that was accepted and this was all a part of the pre-trial program offered by the detention center. Some inmates are given the pre-trial option, but still receive a bond that they cannot afford, which lands them in the jail adding to the overcrowding. Bragg also talked about the pre-trial program and how the county attorneys are pushing judges to follow this pathway instead of sending people directly to jail with a cash bond. The pre-trial arrangement has roughly 300 people on it that would be in the jail without it. Staffing is another issue with the sheriffs department at the detention center because it is understaffed by about 15 employees even though this would not allow for more inmates to be taken in, but rather ease scheduling and training issues. The hiring process can extend from one and a half months to two months before they are entered into the 12-week field training course. The COVID-19 regulations during the pandemic have since been dropped meaning that inmates can be housed within the jail more regularly if it is a misdemeanor with a threat to public safety. Before the first reconstruction, inmates were being transferred to Broadwater and Gallatin counties to try and ease overcrowding. There are 10% of state inmates being taken in at the detention center which is an inmate awaiting transport to Montana State Prison after being found guilty. This percentage has gone down so a majority of inmates are county inmates and 90% are felons and the other 10% are misdemeanors with a threat to public safety as decided by a judge. In a report from KTVH in 2021, Dutton was quoted saying that the county had to pay $75 to $80 a day to house inmates in other jails. This led to about $400,000 a year at the height of overcrowding and transfers. The overcrowding is not around the 20-30 inmates limit as it was before the first reconstruction, but overcrowding has caused double bunking and may lead to more changes within the jail. At the time, when the expansion was being voted on a levy was proposed to voters which would have paid for operations, maintenance, and inmate programs for mental health and chemical dependency and measures to limit the number of prisoners needing incarceration pending trial. The Lewis and Clark County Chief Administrative Officer, Roger Baltz was hired when it was being voted on. He said that there were a number of strategies taken into account regarding what should be done for the jail at the time. The citizens approved a general obligation bond of $6.5 million and our county commissioners supplemented that with some additional money, Baltz said. The citizens were then asked to approve an operations and maintenance levy which allowed for $4 million dollars per year over 15 years to operate the newly expanded jail. This levy was approved. A general obligation bond is a bond that a county asks the government for funding in which it will be paid back over a period of time. A mill levy is a form of property tax. It is determined by how much it will cost to run public services and in this case the detention center. A levy must be completed, unless the IRS views this levy as an economic hardship on the county. The jail levy won't expire for another nine years Having the general obligation in place to pay for the remodeling that needed to be done to expand the capacity of course was crucial. Also what was crucial was our citizens to approve the levy for operating such a facility, Baltz said. The former ASARCO East Helena smelter site is being transformed into property that in the coming years will bring at least $1.6 billion in investments, including thousands of living units and other improvements. Or as one person a recent meeting called it: The Miracle of East Helena. The Nov. 15 meeting was hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Montana Environmental Trust Group (METG) as part of an annual update on cleaning up the site. At one time the lead smelter, which operated from 1888-2001, processed 70,000 tons of lead bullion a year and provided a livelihood for thousands. Contamination, including arsenic and selenium in soils at the site, caused groundwater plumes and levels above safe drinking water standards. In 1984, the EPA declared East Helena a Superfund cleanup site. The smelter closed in 2001, and after later declaring bankruptcy, ASARCO placed about $96 million in a trust managed by METG. Those involved in the cleanup efforts updated the community at the meeting. The trust has sold more than 830 acres to four groups in 2023, officials said. Cindy Brooks, managing principal with the Montana Environmental Trust Group, said the trust sold 72 acres to Habitat for Humanity; 26 acres to Power Townsend; 7 acres to American Chemet and 776 acres to Oakland Cos. She said 45 acres were donated by Oakland to the city of East Helena for new city services and a new East Helena Valley Rodeo Arena. They are also under contract with Habitat for Humanity for a 136-acre parcel. Overall, METG has transferred 1,663 acres of the 2,035 acquired from ASARCO. We have 372 acres left that we hold title to, Brooks said, adding 211 acres are undevelopable, 5 acres will be donated to the city of East Helena and 20 acres will be available for sale. They said land has already been used for two schools, a 300-single-family-home subdivision, a 30,000-square-foot commercial center now under construction and an 8-mile trail system, also under construction. Future uses include 1,230 single and multi-family homes, a light manufacturing center with rail access, commercial development, city services and a rodeo arena. You are looking at investments in excess of $1.6 billion in this community, she said, citing infrastructure and property improvements, jobs and taxes. She said the last project METG has been engaged in is the Unfumed Slag Removal Project and continued work with Metallica. Brooks said the goal is to remove 2 million tons of unfumed slag, which is the last primary source of selenium loading to groundwater. She said Metallica crushes the slag into 2-inch pieces, then moves it by conveyor for about a quarter-mile to a stockpile and rail area where it is loaded onto railcars and goes to Vancouver, British Columbia, and is loaded onto ships for South Korea. It will go to Korea Zinc Co. Ltd., the largest zinc-smelting facility in the world and be used for cement manufacturing. As of Oct. 31, 109,878 tons had been shipped, she said, adding the project is expected to be completed by late 2025. When the project is done the trust will braid or cap the slag pile. That is the final, permanent remedy for the East Helena facility, Brooks said. She said Metallica has had significant project challenges, much like those in 2022, noting rail issues that involve labor and railroad car shortages, rail bridge weight issues and a strike that closed the port for two months. During that time no material was able to leave East Helena. Brooks said one of the bigger accomplishments since 2022 has been the removal of the temporary bypass channel. Essentially we are done out on the east bench, she said. Brooks said the East Field soil repository was used up until April 2022 and is now permanently closed. A Smelter Road Repository has been created. East Helena Mayor Kelly Harris expressed his appreciation to the trust. When I was a kid that (the smelter) is where the people went to work, he said. Now it is where people are going to live and people are going to play and people are going to recreate. And there going to be manufacturing jobs there. It is kind of interesting to see the future there. We are all very excited. Jacob Kuntz, executive director of Helena Area Habitat for Humanity, said they have a 72-acre section off of Montana Secondary Highway 282, the former site of the East Helena landfill, and another 137 acres under contract across the street. He said they want to build a world-class community and Habitat was hoping for at least 1,000 homes. He said they're going through a design process that will happen in February that will include trail systems, streets and infrastructure. Plans are to build single-family homes, townhomes and condos. He said it will probably be two years until the first wall is raised on a house. Kuntz said the kudos shared at the meeting were not just noise. This really is an amazing project, he said. All of those folks working together and seeing the vision of what the land can be and what the needs of community are it is pretty inspiring. He said he calls the transformation of the property The Miracle of East Helena, jokingly adding that he would trademark the phrase. This is really stunning, what has happened with this piece of land, he said. Landy Leep, chief operating officer of Billings-based Oakland Cos., said his company plans a new project called Prickly Pear Estates. The real estate investment firm has been in East Helena since 2018 with the 100-acre Highland Meadows project. He said each development Oakland deals with has unique characteristics it has had to overcome. Leep said a Superfund site was an interesting new world for us. He said of the 780-acre Prickly Pear Estates: The more we talked about it the more it made sense to us. Leep said they closed on property in September and will have the first 100 subdivision lots in 2 1/2 to 3 years. He envisions at least 1,000 homes over the next 20 years. We see East Helena being a pivotal housing market for this area, he said. Leep also mentioned there would be 50-70 acres of commercial properties, hotels, convenience stores, car washes and retail. He told people they could see activity on the site as early as next spring. He said this would include access roads and infrastructure. We understand the responsibility we have, he said. Well be here for a long, long time. I promise you, you are in good hands. We'll take good care of this property and make you proud it is part of East Helena. Mary Hollow, executive director of Prickly Pear Land Trust, and Nate Kopp, its program and trails director, said two parks, The Grove and Prickly Pear Creek Park, would be on the property. The Grove, about 80 acres of formerly smelter-contaminated land and 2 miles of new trails in East Helena, officially reopened to the public in May. Kopp said Prickly Pear Creek Park should open in the spring. Construction will include the installation of the bridge in March or April, with a grand opening this spring, and relocation of the Manlove cabin. Kopp said taking on 300 acres of parkland is "a big ask," so they will bring in a parks coordinator in the spring. Prickly Pear Land Trust officials also said they would be concentrating on the Greenway project to connect Helena, East Helena and Montana City. Kathy Moore, environmental division administrator for Lewis and Clark Public Health, said she has been involved with the site since 2006. She said she would be retiring and Beth Norberg, environmental programs supervisor, would be overseeing the program. Moore said she was happy to see the changes coming to East Helena. She said the remediation program is now exploding and she was thrilled to see the progress. "I couldn't be happier," she said. "It was kind of what I hoped would happen and here it is." "I am thrilled," Moore said. This is pretty cool." To watch the presentation, go to: https://bit.ly/3MTup1m. The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled unanimously against counties' bid to levy fewer mills for the state's school equalization mechanism. The ruling settles a months-long dispute between local officials, school advocates and Gov. Greg Gianforte's administration that set off splintering legal challenges in Montana. Counties will soon begin the process of sending out supplemental tax notices. Lewis and Clark County Officials previously estimated a $50,000 cost locally for re-printing additional tax notices if the counties lost their case. As counties grappled with booming property tax increases following the state's reappraisal process, commissioners in all but seven of Montana's 56 counites had approved resolutions to levy 78 mills for the mechanism rather than the 95 as requested by the Montana Department of Revenue since the measure went into place 20 years ago. The school equalization mills, also referred to as the 95 mills, are collected from each county and redistributed by the state in a fashion that levels out funding for school districts in richer and poorer counties. Counties have argued they have the authority to lower, or float down, those mills at the local level. Education advocates argued doing so would put a dent in public school funding, and the revenue department has contended its interpretation of the state law that created the school equalization mechanism required it to mandate the full 95 mills. The state department filed legal challenges in October seeking a judicial ruling to that effect, although the counties' moved ahead with their lower rates and then took the question to the state Supreme Court. Chief Justice Mike McGrath authored the unanimous opinion, writing that the law gives Department of Revenue exclusive authority to calculate the 95 mills and that counties must abide by that calculation. Regarding the calculation in question, McGrath wrote the court would defer to the department's interpretation which had been unchallenged for more than two decades. "Counties have the authority to levy mills according to local interests," McGrath wrote, citing the 1972 constitutional delegation's foundation for tax powers among different government bodies. "In cases of statewide mills, however, that authority rests with the state." The ruling covers this and future tax cycles. A timeline for those supplemental tax notices was not immediately clear Thursday. Lewis and Clark County Chief Administrative Officer Roger Baltz said Wednesday officials will being working out the process ahead. "This just happened," he said. "We'll be following up with our elected officials to thoroughly review what happened and what we need to do to meet our legal obligations." Gianforte on Wednesday applauded the court's decision. "I appreciate the Montana Supreme Court bringing clarity to the law around the 95 public school mills which the state collects and returns in full to school districts," Gianforte said in an emailed statement. "Todays decision reaffirms what has guided us: we have an obligation, both constitutional and moral, to ensure each Montana child has access to a quality education, and we wont defund our public schools." Helena Independent Record reporter Nolan Lister contributed to this report. DECATUR Progress is something to be thankful for, according to several Decatur leaders. In order to be a winner, you dont fix the blame, you fix the problem, said the Rev. Courtney Carson, quoting his grandmothers wisdom from years ago. Nearly 800 community members, including representatives from law enforcement, service and non-profit organizations, businesses and schools as well as individuals, came together for the 70th Decatur Regional Chamber of Commerce Thanksgiving Community Luncheon on Tuesday at the Decatur Conference Center and Hotel. We celebrate not just a tradition, but a legacy of togetherness, gratitude and shared joy, said Chamber President Mirinda Rothrock. Lots of good things are happening in Decatur. We need to celebrate those. Thirteen-year-old Meredith Potter, a Johns Hill School student, was one of four Boy Scout Troop members on hand to present the American flag during the luncheon. According to the teenager, the event was an opportunity to give back to others in the community who have helped the scouts. Whenever we do need help for our projects, or just in the real world, we have people that we can talk to about it, she said. As the luncheons keynote speaker, Carson reiterated the importance of working collectively while fixing the problems the city often faces. All things work together for the good, he said, quoting a Biblical scripture. Because of that promise, Im thankful for the city of Decatur, thankful for our past, thankful for our present, and thankful for our promising future. Carson acknowledged several leaders, organizations, businesses, politicians, schools and individuals in the community who have been a part of Decaturs progress. This city is trending in the right direction, he said. I know of no other city in the state that has taken a profound position on diversity, equity and inclusion like the city of Decatur. One of his examples was the abrupt closing of Akorn Pharmaceuticals in February. Immediately following the surprise announcement, the community came together, Carson reminded the crowd. Because we dont fix the blame, we fix the problem, he said. And we are winning in this community. In 2016, Carson met with former Macon County Sheriff Tony Chubby Brown to come up with a strategy for address the challenges the city was facing. Carson quoted a Wall Street Journal statistic at the time, stating Decatur was the sixth worst city for African American to live during that time. We created our own trends, Carson said about the next steps at the time. We got the leaders and the local law enforcement, local leaderswe had peaceful protests of love, peace and unity. After the luncheon, Brown said he remembered his first progressive meeting with Carson. Doing a lot of stuff with the community, it always goes hand-in-hand, Brown said about the collaborations with other groups. The two men provided assistance in helping cleanup the Johns Hill area. Courtney and myself, we grew up in that neighborhood, Brown said. Although she has heard several Thanksgiving Luncheon speakers, Rothrock admits she was moved by Carsons address. What an inspirational message, she said. Decatur has issues, people have issues, but instead of fixing blame, why not fix the problem. According to Carson, the city should keep the same energy moving in the positive, supportive direction. Maybe Decaturs winning because we have some in this community who arent afraid to be innovative and courageously creative, he said. FROM THE ARCHIVES: Decatur's Community Thanksgiving Luncheon 32nd Community Thanksgiving luncheon 1984 Community Thanksgiving luncheon 62nd Community Thanksgiving Luncheon 2015 community Thanksgiving luncheon 61st Community Thanksgiving Luncheon 35th Community Thanksgiving Luncheon 2016 Community Thanksgiving Luncheon 2015 luncheon 2015 luncheon 56th Community Thanksgiving luncheon 56th Community Thanksgiving Luncheon 56th Community Thanksgiving Luncheon 59th Community Thanksgiving Luncheon 59th Community Thanksgiving Luncheon Retired Navy Capt. Don Walsh, a Naval Academy graduate and explorer who in 1960 was part of a two-man crew that made the first voyage to the deepest part of the ocean to the snuff-colored ooze at the bottom of the Pacifics Mariana Trench has died. He was 92. Walsh died Nov. 12 at his home in Myrtle Point, Oregon, his daughter, Elizabeth Walsh, said Monday. In January 1960, Walsh, then a U.S. Navy lieutenant, and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard were sealed inside a 150-ton, steel-hulled bathyscaphe named the Trieste to attempt to dive nearly 7 miles below the surface. A bathyscaphe is a self-propelled submersible used in deep-sea dives. The two men descended to 35,800 feet in the Challenger Deep, the deepest point of the Earths oceans, part of the Mariana Trench, about 200 miles off Guam in the Pacific. After a descent of about five hours, the steel-hulled submersible touched down on what the log described as the snuff-colored ooze of silt stewed up by the ship reaching the bottom. When they reached the seafloor, the two men shook hands. I knew we were making history, Walsh told The World newspaper of Coos Bay, Oregon, in 2010. It was a special day. After spending 20 minutes on the floor and confirming there was life there when a fish swam by, they began their 3 1/2-hour ascent. We were astounded to find higher marine life-forms down there at all, Piccard said before his death in 2008. Piccard designed the ship with his father, and they sold it to the U.S. Navy in 1958. Walsh was temporarily serving in San Diego when Piccard requested volunteers to operate the vehicle. Walsh stepped forward. In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, Navy Lt. Don Walsh and explorer Jacques Piccard descend to the deepest spot in the worlds ocean, in 1960, a feat not repeated again by another human being until 2012, when movie director James Cameron returned to the same spot in a small submarine. There was an opportunity to pioneer, Walsh told The World. I wasnt sure what I was going to be doing, but I knew Id be at sea. It wasnt until later they told us what they had in store. Walsh was born Nov. 2, 1931, in Berkeley, California. He joined the Navy at age 17, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. He earned a masters degree and a doctorate in oceanography from Texas A&M. He served in the Navy for 24 years, retiring with the rank of captain and serving on various submarines. He then became a professor at the University of Southern California before opening his own marine consulting business in 1976. In 2010 he received the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award and served on many boards, including as a policy adviser to the U.S. State Department. Walsh was a Navy officer, a submariner, an adventurer, and an oceanographer. To his family, we extend our deepest condolences and gratitude for allowing him to explore, and share his extraordinary experiences and knowledge with us, Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Kurt Rothenhaus said in a Navy news release. A photo provided by the National Archives, via Naval History and Heritage Command, shows the Navy submersible Trieste at sea just before the record-setting dive by Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, in 1960. Walsh traveled the world, including many trips to Antarctica, where the Walsh Spur pointed rock is named in his honor. His daughter said one of the earliest lessons she and her brother Kelly learned from their parents is that the world is not a scary place a lesson that was reinforced because their parents always came home after their various travels. He encouraged them to venture out, as well. Dont be scared of it and go have adventures and learn things and meet people, she recalled him teaching. Hes certainly instilled an enthusiastic curiosity about the world in Kelly and I, and thats a tremendous gift. In 2020, Kelly Walsh made his own journey to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in a vessel owned and piloted by Dallas explorer Victor Vescovo. An extraordinary explorer, oceanographer, and human being. Im so honored I could call him my friend, Vescovo posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the day after Don Walshs death. In addition to his children, Walsh is also survived by his wife of 61 years, Joan. Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska. The Catawba County Schools Board of Educations decision to restrict a book in October was again a topic of discussion on Monday. Vice chair Leslie Barnette requested the discussion. Barnette said her intention was not to reverse the vote, which was to restrict Mondays Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson to students who are 18 or older. What I am concerned about is we based that decision on an unresearched Google search, Barnette said. Barnette said the Google search in question was made by board member Annette Richards. Barnette added that she believes it was well-intentioned and that Richards was trying to reach a compromise, which Barnette said she appreciates. But after the meeting, Barnette said many people pointed out that search results depend on what terms are entered and which search engine is used. Barnette said she also saw that Young Adult literature was a genre unto itself when she looked into it. I just want to go on record that I dont want our board to make decisions on spur-of-the-moment Google searches, Barnette said. I want our decisions to be based on fact and research and data, and I think every member of the board wants that as well. Richards said she Googled the words, In the state of North Carolina what is considered a legal young adult? The results she shared were, she said, from the North Carolina legislative government site, which states that a person is no longer considered a minor once they reach the age of 18 years old. So, I did get it from a factual search. There was some conversation about the age range of Young Adult fiction, which Director of Digital and Media Literacy Amanda Moose clarified as being 12 to 18. Board member Jeff Taylor asked who establishes the age range and if it is consistent across the board. Moose said it is consistent and it is established by organizations such as the American Library Association, Kirkus Review and Wilsons Childrens Catalogue. Catawba County Schools recently hosted Mark Reed, managing director of the John M. Belk Endowment. The visit provided an opportunity for the district to showcase its schools and programs, highlighting its commitment to educational growth. The days tour, led by Superintendent Matt Stover, began at the districts Central Office facilities and extended to several schools. A notable moment was at Maiden High School, where the visit featured the annual Thanksgiving luncheon sponsored by the Exceptional Childrens Adaptive Curriculum class, highlighting their unique contributions and skills. The tour then moved to the new Maiden Elementary Schools construction site, showcasing the districts vision for future educational spaces. At Fred T. Foard High School, the focus was on Career and Technical Education (CTE) opportunities, illustrating the practical and diverse learning options available to students. The visit concluded with conversations with the CCS Principal of the Year, Heather Houser, and teachers at Mountain View Elementary. Reeds experience in education, from his time at Charlotte Country Day and St. Johns in Houston, brought a unique perspective to the visit. His success in leading educational institutions and developing their facilities and programs is noteworthy and aligns well with the districts goals. Under Reeds leadership, the John M. Belk Endowment focuses on increasing access to post-secondary education, particularly for underrepresented students. It strives to provide access, completion and workforce relevance. During the visit, Reed shared his perspective on education, saying, Being around students is the easy win for me. He reflected on how the opportunity to lead the John M. Belk Endowment aligned with his personal and professional journey: It got me thinking about my roots (in public education) and providing opportunities for others. Thats what the endowment is about. We work with organizations that support students from all backgrounds. We have a legacy of starting organizations that really impact students. To learn more about the work of the John M. Belk Endowment and its alignment with Catawba County Schools, visit jmbendowment.org. The Women of First Presbyterian Church is holding their first Advent Communion and Lunch. It will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 29, at noon. It will be at First Presbyterian Church in Davis Hall, 65 North Church Street, Concord. The cost of the lunch is $12. Those gathered will worship together and share the Lords Supper lifting up traditional themes of Advent: Hope, Peace, Love and Joy that God offers us in this and every season. The entire celebration should last an hour. Please bring co-workers, friends, family or others interested in this event. Please RSVP by Monday, Nov. 27, by calling 704-788-2100. option 7 or email Suzanne.russell@firstpresconcord.org A healthy debate occurred Monday evening between several Cabarrus County commissioners regarding tax incentives for a new business aiming to move to the area. New York-based Nicolock Paving Stones is a manufacturer and retailer of premium hardscape supplies, including interlocking concrete pavers, segmental retaining walls and outdoor living components. The company, which has operations in New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland, plans to build a 50,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Concord and invest roughly $22 million in real and personal property. Entitled Project Stone, the project is estimated to create 30 full-time jobs for local workers, with average wages between $65,000 to $75,000. Nicolock requested a three-year, 85 percent economic development grant, which would total $357,398, according to Samantha Grass, Cabarrus Economic Developments project manager, who presented the information to the commissioners. The net revenue for the county during the three years would be $63,070. Nicolock intends to have the facility in operation by the end of 2024. The Concord location would be its ninth manufacturing facility. The Concord City Council approved a three-year, 85 percent grant totaling $231,826 for Nicolock during its Nov. 9 meeting. The city stands to collect $40,910 in net revenue. Following a public hearing, where no one spoke, Commissioner Chris Measmer expressed reservations about supporting the motion, especially in light of a labor shortage, where many companies are struggling to hire employees. My concern is we have a company that is wanting to move to our area and if we give them a tax break, theres going to be an unfair advantage for this company to be able to pay higher wages compared to the companies that are currently operating in Cabarrus County, Measmer said, noting his worries were focused around the incentives being offered not the actual company. Measmer said he did not think the commissioners would be sending a good message to businesses and citizens in the area by approving the tax incentives. For the local taxpayer, how does it make them feel that the board gets to pick and decide who gets a tax break and who doesnt? Measmer added. He noted that most big companies like Nicolock would want to locate to a growing county like Cabarrus regardless of whether any incentives were offered. They want to be in this area, he said. They want to be in our community. Unlike Measmer, Chairman Steve Morris said he believes tax incentives play a key role in attracting companies to Cabarrus. After the initial three years, Nicolock would pay property taxes of around $125,000, Morris said. Those funds would greatly help the county address high-priority projects, such as the construction of new schools. When we look at a high school that we thought was overly expensive 5-6 years ago and it cost us $78 million and then when we look at projections today, that to build that same high school is going to cost us $130 million, the difference in that money has got to come from somewhere, Morris said. By hiring 30 local employees and paying them wages that is higher than the county average is also a key boon because that gives them disposable income that theyre going to spend at our local small businesses, Morris said. So from my perspective, it is a plus all the way around, Morris said about approving the incentives. Vice Chairman Lynn Shue said he understands there are people, like Measmer, who are opposed to offering any type of tax incentive since many of the businesses would naturally make their way to Cabarrus. That might be true 20 years ago, but now, thats not true anymore, Shue said. Were competing now with neighbor counties, with neighbor states and they literally are rolling the red carpet out to get these businesses to come to their communities. As the former chair of the Cabarrus County Board of Education, Shue said helping to lure key businesses like Nicolock benefits young people looking for employment. Between Cabarrus County Schools, Kannapolis City Schools and Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, around 4,000 students graduate each year, Shue said. Theyve got to have jobs, he said. And its our job to try to provide jobs to them through people that come into this community. Shue emphasized that as more people move into the county, the cost of goods and services naturally increase. That is why it is such an asset to attract large businesses like Nicolock. To me this is not rocket science, Shue said. The community grows, the need grows and therefore the revenue has to grow. And so you have a choice: increase taxes or bring industries in that will help pay the bills. Shue said he and Measmer are friends and colleagues but on this particular issue, they will never agree, which is OK. Im just trying to tell you that we need to do everything we can to get businesses here, Shue said. Following the prolonged back-and-forth, the commissioners approved the tax incentives by a 4-1 vote, with Measmer in opposition. Macquarie Technology Group has welcomed the 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy, a new government plan that will seek ways how to bolster Australias cybersecurity defences. Australian media reported the strategy outlines ways how the government and its agencies would protect themselves, individuals, and businesses from cyber criminals. The strategy comes a year after millions of Optus and Medibank customers had their personal data leaked in high-profile cyber attacks. ABC reported that the report comes a week after the nations digital spy agency revealed reports of cybercrime were up 23% on the year before and were now reported to law enforcement agencies every six minutes. Most collaboration between government, industry and intelligence currently happens within what could be deemed the regulatory compliance vertical, owing to the legal ramifications organisations can face when cyber events happen, commented Macquarie Technology Group co-founder and Macquarie Government managing director Aiden Tudehope. This Strategy provides the opportunity for greater collaboration between intelligence operators within both government and enterprises typically CISOs, CIOs and CTOs and their counterparts in the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD). The ASD paints a picture of the ever-changing threat landscape, and consistent, quality intelligence can help it offensively attack and disrupt cybercriminals. Tudehope added the ASDs recent annual assessment emphasised that need, particularly in the context of the Aukus partnership which may be a target for state actors looking to steal intellectual property for their own military programs. Our Aukus allies want to see confidence in Australias industrial base to support the partnership, he said. Given the horizontal effect cyber security has across all industry sectors and their supply chains, getting behind the Strategy and building more cyber-aware citizens and businesses will help create that confidence and showcase the incredible capabilities and talent we have in the local sector. Macquarie also called for the Strategy to become the pre-eminent Strategy to which people, industry, and governments including relevant legislative and policy regimes align. The current cyber security and privacy legislation landscape has evolved considerably in recent years, and in the process has become fragmented across the Commonwealth, states and territories, said Tudehope. Minister ONeils Strategy establishes cyber security as a unifying nationwide endeavour, led by the Federal Government as the exemplar, but delivered in synchronicity with all tiers of government, the private sector, and the wider economy. This is a nationwide pursuit which requires a nationwide approach to succeed. To underscore this alignment, Tudehope welcomed the major uplift in Australian organisations cyber security posture, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), announced by the government in the cyber health-check program and small business cyber resilience service. SMEs, companies under $3M revenue, are currently exempt from Australian privacy laws and many data protection, deletion, and governance requirements. But they make up about 95% of all organisations in Australia, and many are part of Government and critical infrastructure supply chains, sharing data and digitally interacting with entities crucial to the nations economy and national resilience. Organisations with an immature understanding of cyber and privacy measures could be inadvertently creating risk for other, potentially more critical organisations, and we strongly welcome the government targeted support to help SMEs achieve new levels of cyber security and sophistication. Tudehope added that organisations can find additional opportunities to uplift their capabilities within the Essential Eight (E8) maturity model and Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) Act, which is effectively uplifting 11 critical sectors. To become the worlds most secure nation by 2030 and to build beyond that as cyber threats arent static the Strategy rightly focuses on uplifting everyone, he said. A Team Australia approach will see the collaboration we need become part and parcel of our cyber ecosystem, while raising the cybersecurity awareness and literacy of every single organisation and resident in the nation, he concluded. Insight Don't let Xi and Biden's agreements fool you By Doyle McManus Los Angeles Times/(TNS) Published November 22, 2023 Embed from Getty Images Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. In a world beset by wars in Gaza and Ukraine, it's good news when two superpowers step back from frictions that increased the danger of another war in Asia. That's what happened last week when President Joe Biden met with China's Xi Jinping at a country estate in the ridges west of Silicon Valley. The two presidents met after a year of frosty noncommunication, touched off by China's suspected espionage balloon that wandered across U.S. airspace last winter, by aggressive Chinese military actions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, and by U.S. restrictions on advanced technology. The presidents agreed to bury a few of their differences for the simple reason that neither needs another crisis right now. Beijing's stock has been falling literally and figuratively. Its economy, once the world's powerhouse, has slowed to a low-for-China growth rate of 5%. Foreign investors are pulling money out of the country, a reversal of a decades-long trend. On the diplomatic front, Xi appears to have recognized that he needs to soften China's image as a bully, which has driven other countries into the arms of the United States. Biden also hoped to ratchet down tensions. In the coming presidential election year, he doesn't want to contend with a third foreign policy crisis on top of Gaza and Ukraine. He probably won't get much credit from voters for lowering friction with China, but he might win points if Xi delivers on his promise to choke off the supply of chemicals used in fentanyl production. Xi acceded to U.S. requests on other issues, too. He agreed to reopen talks among the two countries' military leaders, including a "red line" for communication in emergencies like near-collisions in the waters and airspace around Taiwan. Even before the summit opened, China agreed to strengthen cooperation with the United States on climate change. And Xi agreed to open talks on managing the dangers of artificial intelligence in military systems. The Chinese leader was clearly on a charm offensive. He told American business leaders that China wants to be "a partner and a friend," not an adversary. He even threw in the possibility of sending pandas to the San Diego Zoo. Those were easy concessions; they don't cost much in economic or political terms. Still, China watchers were skeptical about how much Beijing will actually deliver. "It's a little early to pop the cork on the Champagne," said Bonnie Glaser, a China scholar at the German Marshall Fund. "I'm not convinced that they are actually going to take serious action to prevent military accidents. They don't want to eliminate all the risks for the U.S. military if it operates near their coastline. I'm not sure they're going to answer the phone in an emergency." Whether China keeps its specific promises should be easy to measure. If there's a reduction in the supply of ingredients for fentanyl, we'll know it. If Chinese officers show up for joint military conferences, we'll see that although it's unclear how much cooperation will result. "They've never taken it all that seriously in the past," warned Bates Gill, executive director of the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis. And if a FedEx cargo plane arrives with pandas aboard, we'll know that, too. The more important test is whether those small steps lead to larger openings such as cooperation on nuclear arms control or peace efforts in Gaza and Ukraine. "The Biden administration is testing the proposition that we can have intense competition and cooperate with China at the same time," Glaser said. "These agreements have at least created opportunities for the two countries to demonstrate that they can cooperate in some areas." But it's equally noteworthy that there was no discernible movement on the big, fundamental issues that divide the two countries beginning with their military standoffs over Taiwan and the South China Sea. That's where collisions both figurative and literal are not only possible but likely, and where basic differences are impossible to paper over. "This meeting hasn't altered the fundamentals of the relationship," Gill said. "There's a big chasm over issues that aren't going to get settled by military dialogues or actions on fentanyl." In superpower relationships like this one, breakthroughs don't often happen. The test is whether collisions can be averted, and whether those that occur can be managed more successfully than the months-long spat over the spy balloon not whether the two countries agree to share symphony orchestras or pandas. Breakthroughs would be nice. But when they aren't available, stability will do fine. (COMMENT, BELOW) Previously: 11/08/23: Biden says the US must help Israel and Ukraine succeed --- he's staking his reputation on it 11/02/23: Today's wars and the international order 10/25/23: Biden says the US must help Israel and Ukraine succeed --- he's staking his reputation on it 10/05/23: Biden and Trump want working-class votes. The economy may decide who gets them 09/13/23: Zelensky is coming to Washington to ask for more Ukraine aid. Congress should say yes 09/13/23: Voters think Biden's too old to run again. Can he persuade them that they're wrong? 08/23/23: Canada is recruiting immigrants from Silicon Valley to boost its economy. It might work 07/05/23: Bizarre standoff with Wagner Group's Prigozhin weakens Putin. But don't count him out 06/27/23: Blinken tried to build a floor under US-China relations. He may have to keep doing it 05/09/23: With just weeks left to strike a deal, it's time to worry about the debt ceiling 05/02/23: A centrist, third-party alternative for 2024 is a nice idea --- but a nightmare in practice 04/25/23: Trump seems to have a firm grip on GOP polls --- but his rivals think they can do better 04/04/23: Ukraine is counting on its spring offensive against Russia. Biden has a stake in it too 03/22/23: Silicon Valley Bank's collapse may be a blessing in disguise 03/07/23: DeSantis wants to displace Trump as the GOP's 2024 nominee. But he has hurdles to overcome 02/21/23: Biden's 2024 presidential campaign harks back to past Dem triumphs 02/14/23: Chinese balloon is gone, but it's still making US-China relations harder to manage 01/24/23: Biden said the pandemic is over. But, aw shucks!, the pandemic just won't cooperate 01/17/23: The war in Ukraine could become a long, frozen conflict. Are we ready for that? 01/10/23: The real winner from the House fight? 12/28/22: Why Trump will never go to jail over Jan. 6 12/20/22: Democracy around the world is looking a little healthier, at least next to the alternative 12/13/22: Biden's policy makes Ukraine fight by rules Russia doesn't follow 12/09/22: Iran protests have shoved the nuclear issue off center stage. It will be back 09/20/22: Biden sent the wrong message on COVID. He can still fix it 09/20/22: Putin's brutality in Ukraine can get worse. Get ready for a chilly winter 09/13/22: China's economy is slowing, its population aging. That could make it dangerous 06/28/22: To deter China on Taiwan, Biden needs to reassure 05/24/22: India has become a US partner in countering China --- a limited partner, that is 05/11/22: Slow Joe's premature self-congratulation won't help the US in Ukraine 05/03/22: Can the US deter Putin from using his arsenal of battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine? 04/08/22:Biden's budget is big. Dems will vote to make it bigger 03/22/22: Ukraine's resistance offers a useful lesson to Taiwan 03/15/22: China wanted to appear neutral between Russia and Ukraine. It isn't 02/22/21: Who needs an invasion? Putin's offensive against Ukraine has been underway for a long time 02/09/21: If Putin wants an exit from the Ukraine crisis, the offramps are open 11/30/21: Biden wants to focus on China. Putin has another idea 11/23/21: Our oldest president just turned 79. He might have something to learn from the second-oldest 11/16/21: Can Biden and Xi talk their way out of a slide into conflict? 10/13/21: Congress has a chance to take bipartisan action on Facebook. Don't let it slip away 09/24/21: Can Dems win on crime issues with murders rising? Biden thinks so 06/29/21: Can Dems win on crime issues with murders rising? Biden thinks so 04/20/21:Afghanistan's war -- and America's stakes in it -- won't end when the troops leave 03/31/21: Here's why our new cold war with China could be a good thing 02/25/21: Sen. Joe Manchin drives Dems crazy. Here's why they need more senators like him 08/11/20: Goodbye to traditional political conventions --- and good riddance 05/19/20: We won't end COVID-19 with 'test and trace' 04/07/20: Joe Biden is stuck in his basement. It just might help him win 03/10/20: Where did Bernie's revolution go wrong? 03/05/20: Dems give Trump good reason to smile 02/18/20: Who will be the Un-Bernie? 02/11/20: Buttigieg wants to be the Goldilocks candidate. It just might work 01/21/20: The world according to Bernie 09/04/19: Trump's draft deal with the Taliban looks ugly, but it may be the best we can get 04/22/19: Something is missing from media-fawning Buttigieg campaign --- his stance on major issues 03/14/19: Biden, If He Runs, Will Face A Cruel Irony Doyle McManus Los Angeles Times (TNS) Doyle McManus is an American journalist, columnist, who appears often on Public Broadcasting Service's Washington Week. SIGN UP FOR THE DAILY JWR UPDATE. IT'S FREE. Just click here. The political world spends a lot of time discussing former President Donald Trump's lead over the Republican field in national polls currently at 44.5%, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls. But of course the race will unfold as a series of state contests, beginning in Iowa on Jan. 15, New Hampshire on Jan. 23, Nevada on Feb. 8, and South Carolina on Feb. 24. By then, Republicans should have a pretty good idea who their 2024 presidential nominee will be. Of course, Trump is leading in the early-voting state polls, too a 29.7-point lead in Iowa, a 27-point lead in New Hampshire, and a 30.5-point lead in South Carolina. (The Nevada contest is a weird primary/caucus mix that will not be very influential.) Something big will have to happen for Trump's huge leads to disappear. But there is a secondary race, too, the race to be the backup nominee should Trump somehow fail. Right now, the secondary race appears to be coming down to Ron DeSantis vs. Nikki Haley, and Haley is emerging with a strong hand, at least for the moment. As is always the case, there's been a huge amount of campaigning in Iowa. It's important to all the candidates, but even more important to candidates who are slipping in the polls and see a good finish in the first-voting state as a way to revive their fortunes. When the campaign of Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) was faltering, he saw a strong Iowa effort as his only hope. Then he gave up on that, too. Currently, DeSantis is going "all in" campaigning in Iowa in a move widely seen as an indicator that he believes a poor showing there would not be survivable. But here's the problem with Iowa, even for candidates who manage to do well there. It's been 23 years since a Republican hopeful won the Iowa caucuses and then went on to win the Republican nomination. Going backward, in 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) won the caucuses and didn't win the nomination. In 2012, Rick Santorum won the caucuses and didn't win the nomination. In 2008, Mike Huckabee won the caucuses and didn't win the nomination. You have to go back to 2000, when George W. Bush won both the caucuses and the nomination, to find an Iowa winner who became the GOP's standard-bearer. New Hampshire has been a different story. In 2016, Trump won the primary and then the nomination. In 2012, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) won the primary and the nomination. In 2008, John McCain won the primary and the nomination. The last GOP candidate to lose the New Hampshire primary but still win the nomination was Bush in 2000. Which brings the story back to DeSantis. Say his efforts pay off and he does well in Iowa. (As for all the other candidates, "does well" means "finishes second to Trump.") He will then have eight days to do well in New Hampshire, where of course Trump is also leading. That's where Haley's strength could kick in and do some serious damage to DeSantis. A recent University of New Hampshire-CNN poll found Trump leading Haley by a 42% to 20% margin, with Chris Christie in third place at 14% and DeSantis in fourth with 9%. News coverage of the poll focused on Haley's rise from 12% in the last UNH poll in September to 20% today. New Hampshire voters can register as Republican, Democrat, or "undeclared," and undeclared voters are allowed to vote in the Republican primary. The UNH poll showed Haley doing very well with undeclared voters. Among registered Republicans, Trump led Haley by a margin of 55% to 17% a 38-point lead. Among undeclared voters, Haley led Trump by a slim margin of 25% to 24%. In the new poll, undeclared made up 43% of the group of likely GOP primary voters surveyed. Of course, even with the undeclared support, Haley is still 22 points behind Trump. But the survey does point to the importance of undeclared voters in New Hampshire, and it raises the subject of mischief voting. In the past, some Democrats have urged fellow Democrats to re-register to undeclared temporarily in order to vote in the Republican primary. On the other side, in 2008, the late Rush Limbaugh famously created "Operation Chaos" in which he urged Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Now, there are special concerns about possible mischief voting in the 2024 New Hampshire primary because President Joe Biden has offended many in New Hampshire by throwing the state out of the first group of Democratic primaries, choosing instead to start with South Carolina, where Biden won in 2020. So what will New Hampshire Democrats, facing a new situation in January, do? Would the Republican primary be a perfect place for a Democrat to cast a protest vote against Trump, and for Haley, in the Republican primary? Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire poll, downplayed the possibility, saying mischief voting has never been a serious factor in a New Hampshire primary. "Regarding independents, very few, about 3% of voters, move from one party to another over primary cycles," Smith said in an email exchange. "Most independents who are really Democrats will vote in the Democratic primary or stay at home. It's hard enough to get people to vote in their own party's primary, let alone the other party. The idea of a mass of untethered independents is a story that gets trotted out by losing candidates. Fact is that no one has won the New Hampshire primary without winning the plurality of their party's registered voters." If the New Hampshire Republican primary were held today, it seems clear that Haley would beat DeSantis. And then the campaign would move on to South Carolina, where Haley happens to be the former governor and where she leads DeSantis 18.8% to 10.5%, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. If a candidate wins New Hampshire and South Carolina, no matter what happened in Iowa, that candidate is probably on the way to the nomination. Of course, right now, that candidate looks to be Trump. But the secondary race is important, too, given Trump's legal situation and the always-there possibility that something weird could happen in a very unusual Republican campaign. In that event, the winner of the secondary race could become the Republican nominee. And at the moment, Haley is coming on strong. (COMMENT, BELOW) CHARLESTON Deputy Sheriff R.O. Wiley was called to the Frank Swinford farm, southwest of Oakland, Tuesday afternoon by the information that Swinford had found a copper still on his land. Wiley answered the call and was given possession of the "corn juice" making machine. Swinford found the still in a turn of the road, near his farm...CHARLESTON The steel enameled markers of blue and white to designate the Charleston-Shiloh trail out of Charleston to the Lincoln burial grounds, south of Charleston will arrive in Charleston this week, according to word received at the offices of the Chamber of Commerce. The markers, which will be placed on telephone poles, will begin at the post office and will be placed at intervals along the marked trail to the Shiloh cemetery...MATTOON With the big string of Mallard ducks on display in front of his store window this morning, and which are a part of the two days' killing by J.D. Icenogle and his brother-in-law, Fred Rider, it is considered doubtful it the former can ever qualify for Dr. Ferguson's silver cup to be awarded the "Ike" who tells the "biggest hunting or fishing story," local men believe. Mr. Icenogle appears to verify his stories, which would eliminate him from the Ferguson cup competition. The ducks were killed on the Illinois river, near Liverpool. None was offered for sale, which would be a violation of the state game law. They were an unusually attractive exhibit...DANVILLE Arthur Finley, 71, the neatest farmer in eastern Illinois, if not in the state, died today. The Finley farm, three miles southwest of Danville, was always neat as a pin. The houses, barns and other outbuildings always looked as though they were freshly painted, no dead limbs littered the orchards or the woods, no farm implements or machinery cluttered the farm yard or barn lot. There was a shed or building for everything. The roadside and the ditches for the entire district in front of the Finley place were carefully mowed several times each year and looked as though they had been sodded. Strangers were immediately attracted in passing the place by its immaculate cleanliness and order...ST. LOUIS Miss Carroll Graney of Cairo, a sister to Mrs. H.R. Tolle of this city and a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W.P. Graney of Cairo, made her initial public appearance before a large audience at the Missouri theater in St. Louis on Wednesday evening. Miss Graney, a dancer of renown with unusual talent for her youth, is well known to scores of Mattoon people as she has often visited at the Tolle home. She appeared here at the opening of the Mattoon Country Club. STEWARDSON Nola Schultz and her daughter-in-law, Mikaela, who are part of a farm family that's history stretches back generations in southeast Shelby County, recently added a new title to their resumes shopkeepers. The two of them opened Schultz Country Market this fall at 2885 E. 300 North Road, just east of Illinois 32, in rural Stewardson. This new shop is located on the family farm, which produces the beef and pork that is sold in the freezer cases there and the fresh eggs in the cooler. Nola Schultz said they had been thinking about opening a retail market for a couple of years and this idea became a reality after her husband, Brian, and her son, Austin (Mikaela's husband), constructed their shop building. "We started this shop to help diversify our farm, but we also want to be an asset to the community," Nola Schultz said. With that goal in mind, the Schultzes have stocked a small selection of fresh produce to help fill the grocery store void in their hometown. Shelves at the market have been filled recently with onions and sweet potatoes, while the cooler case contained a variety of greens. They have worked with a produce distributor in Taylorville, the Regenerative Life Farm in Findlay, and other suppliers. Nola Schultz said they have turned to Beachy's Bulk Foods in Arthur for wholesale items such as dried noodles and to the Central Illinois Bakehouse in Champaign for baked goods, including a croissant/doughnut pastry that is available on Saturdays. "They are delicious. They are just light, really layered and full of flavor," Nola Schultz said. To stock their market, she and daughter-in-law said they have tried to use products from as close to this area of east Central Illinois as possible to help support fellow small businesses. These items have included Tessa's Raw Honey from Stewardson, Squatter's Knob BBQ from Toledo, and Nada's Salsa from Toledo. "Shopping local is what keeps our communities growing," Mikaela Schultz said. The Schultz family's locally raised beef and pork is available in a wide variety of cuts at the market. Mikaela Schultz said this selection ranges from rope sausage, pork burgers and barbecue stuffed porkchops to hamburger, steaks and beef roasts. She added that all of the beef and pork is frozen and vacuum sealed, so it can last 18 months in a home freezer. In addition to the fresh eggs from Nola Schultz's moveable coops, she also offers prepared Cornish cross chickens in season from May to October. Both women said they have enjoyed getting to visit with their customers this fall and get to know them. Mikaela Schultz said it has been fun to help them select beef or pork from the freezer case and know it would be their supper that night. "I just think that it's really neat to have that direct consumer relationship with our customers," Mikaela Schultz said. Nola Schultz said they also enjoyed hosting a visit by a local 4-H Cloverbud group for young children last week to the market and the farm. She said they plan to host other tours for youth programs in the future to help participants learn about where their food originates. Her grandchildren also have been visiting recently. Nola Schultz said she has enjoyed seeing this next generation of her family lending a hand with the market and the farm. "We just want to continue that work ethic with our grandchildren as we watch them grow," Nola Schultz said. I have a question for David Bramble, the Baltimore-based developer who wants to transform Harborplace with a plan that includes two apartment towers on the space now occupied by the malls Light Street pavilion. Brambles company has a partnership agreement to redevelop the parking lot at 300 East Pratt Street, directly across from the eastern edge of Harborplace. Baltimore long-timers remember the parking lot as the site of the News-American, a Hearst daily that folded in 1986. The newspaper building was demolished a few years later, and that primo property has been awaiting redevelopment for more than three decades. Some guy from New York said he wanted to build a skyscraper there, but it didnt happen. Brambles company, MCB Real Estate, got involved, and the partnership rolled out a plan for a 40-story, mixed-use tower on the site in the year before the pandemic. So heres my question: Why propose 32- and 25-story buildings on Harborplace (with 900 apartments) and suffer criticism from numerous Baltimoreans, including this columnist, when you could build a very high, very spectacular building with hundreds of apartments at 300 East Pratt? Its not enough, Bramble said in an interview on Tuesday. Not enough? A high-rise directly across Pratt, with hundreds of apartments, many with views of the waterfront, would not create the foot traffic needed to make Harborplace a thriving place again? No, he said. We need more. I feel that Baltimore has amazing potential for growth. And we should be filling Baltimore up with people. We should be building apartments and obviously, hopefully [the demand for] office space comes back and adding office. We should be growing. If you want downtown to be safe, we should fill it with people. This is whats economically sustainable, mixed use. We need to fill Baltimore up. I would build 10 more of these things if I could. They all dont fit here, but we do believe in density. Were big believers in density, and no one has pushed back so much on the density. Its really more, I think, people reacting negatively to the height [of the proposed Light Street buildings], which is kind of shocking. I agree with the guy. Who wouldnt? More people in downtown Baltimore would be a great thing. But were talking about Harborplace, public space leased to the developer by the city. In 1980, the citizens of Baltimore allowed the corner of Light and Pratt to be turned into a waterfront mall because Baltimore and the tourist industry needed a big boost. In the four decades since then, all kinds of new development came to downtown Baltimore. The late James Rouses mall at Harborplace provided the spark. But, over the last decade or so, Harborplace became a mismanaged eyesore. Because of that, Bramble says, MCB had a hard time finding tenants for its proposed 40-story tower at 300 East Pratt; none of the prospects wanted to be near Harborplace and its fabulous Pratt Street trash compactor. Thats one of the reasons MCB took on the project, Bramble says. The project would start with Harborplaces demolition. To those who want to see the area revert to more open space, Bramble answers that his designs provide more than we have there now, made possible in large part by reconfiguring the entrance to Harborplace, the pedestrian-unfriendly intersection of Pratt and Light. Thats the best part of his plan, followed by the glassy pavilion with restaurants along Pratt Street, a structure called The Sail. None of that is as unappealing as the proposed high-rises on the Light Street side. Their construction would feel like a permanent taking of public space Mr. Rouses pavilions are mere pop-up tents compared to apartment towers and they would change the nature of Harborplace. Bramble, of course, disagrees. With artist renderings to help make the case, he emphasizes that the towers designed for Light Street are relatively narrow buildings that require less of a footprint than does Harborplaces Light Street pavilion. From Light Street, we would see more of the harbor than we do now. Its a convincing argument if we were not talking about a public park. As I see it, if we dont draw a line, the whole waterfront could end up looking like Harbor East. Bramble disagrees that his plan is that extreme, and he counters that the accommodations for public space will make Harborplace far more inviting than it is now. More than that, he sees the transformation critical to heading off an existential crisis for the central business district, where commercial property values have dropped significantly since the pandemic. If we dont do something down here thats dramatic, downtown Baltimores in huge trouble, he says, When youre talking to MCB, youre talking to people who invest all over the city. We believe in the city. But we can tell you that, if the central business district looks like Howard Street, all of those investments are going to be lost. We cant survive if the heart of the city goes to shambles, which is where its headed. The upside, he says, is a trend found in downtown data. The [central business district] is in a crisis, Bramble says, yet it is still Baltimores fastest growing residential neighborhood. That tells you something: People want to live down here, and if we build product that people want to live in, we think theyll come and we think theyll make the place amazing. A Winston-Salem man is facing a stalking charge after he was found Sunday underneath a womans car in Clemmons, authorities said Tuesday. Trevor Antonio Lewis, 25, is charged with misdemeanor stalking, the Forsyth County Sheriffs Office said. Lewis was being held in the Forsyth County Jail with no bond allowed because he is accused of this offense while he was on pretrial released for previous stalking charges, the sheriffs office said. Forsyth county deputies responded to a report of a suspicious person on Kenbridge Drive in Clemmons, the sheriffs office said. Deputies then found Lewis under a womans car, and investigators determined that a man had followed the woman home from the Walmart store on Kester Mill Road in Winston-Salem, the sheriffs office said. The sheriffs office is asking local residents to remain vigilant and be aware of their surroundings, particularly during the holiday season. If people suspect someone is following them, they should report the person to a store associate, call 911 or proceed to a secure location such as the sheriffs office, the Winston-Salem Police Department, or the Winston-Salem or Forsyth County fire departments, the sheriffs office said. Not just this day but every day, the safety of our citizens is paramount, Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough Jr. said. We are encouraging you to be aware of your surroundings and to be vigilant. Anyone with information about this incident can call the Forsyth County Sheriffs Office at 336-727-2112 or Crime Stoppers at 336-727-2800 or its Spanish line at 336-728-3904. The Text-A-Tip program at 336-920-8477 allows people to text information, photos or videos to the sheriffs office. Wells Fargo & Co. is facing two official branch employee requests for federal permission to join a union who say they are trying to take a transformative step toward repairing Wells Fargos toxic culture and improving the U.S. financial system. The branches are located in Albuquerque, N.M., and Bethel, Alaska, with the employees consisting of bankers and tellers. Those employees filed a petition Monday with the National Labor Relations Board declaring their intent to become part of the Communications Workers of Americas Wells Fargo Workers United. Since the unions launch in 2021, Wells Fargo workers are talking about their concerns with shareholders, members of Congress and officials at the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department. According to the advocacy group Committee for Better Banks, the requested union elections would be the first at a major U.S. bank in decades. The Wells Fargo 2023 shareholder meeting featured a shareholder proposal requesting the ability for employees to form a union. About 66% of shares were voted against the proposal. The proposal would have provided employees with the following abilities: union membership be applicable to Wells Fargos direct operations and subsidiaries globally; include a commitment to non-interference when employees exercise their right to form or join trade unions; and prohibit any member of management or agent of Wells Fargo from undermining the right to form or join trade unions or pressuring any employee from exercising this right. The advocates said momentum is building with over 1,000 workers signing the WFWU support pledge in just the last two weeks. Wells Fargo workers in every state, division and department need a voice on the job for ourselves and our customers, Sabrina Perez, a senior premier banker at the Albuquerque branch, said in a Committee for Better Banks news release. Ive worked at Wells Fargo for nearly 10 years, and in the seven years since the fake account scandal, three CEOs have promised change and failed to deliver. Now it is finally our turn to lead. Since the fraudulent customer account scandal erupted in September 2016, Wells Fargo has been subject to a series of federal fines and consent orders that have added up to at least $11.5 billion. While we are the first Wells Fargo workers to file for union elections, we will not be the last, Perez said. Wells Fargo could not be immediately reached for comment. Reuters quoted Saul Van Beurden, Wells Fargos chief executive of consumer, small and business banking, who highlighted investments the lender had made for employees over the past four years, like increasing staffing levels and bumping up median base salaries. U.S. senators efforts A frequent critic of Wells Fargo U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio has taken his latest concerns about the banks labor practices to its chief federal regulators. Browns letter to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Reserve Board carries considerable political weight since he is chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The letter was sent to Michael Hsu, the agencys acting comptroller, and Federal Reserve vice chairman Michael Barr. Brown focused on Wells Fargo branch employees filing unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over the past 12 months. He said Wells Fargo employees who tried to report labor abuses reportedly faced retaliation from the company. There are also open NRLB investigations on Wells Fargo affecting employees attempting union-organizing efforts across the country. Committee for Better Banks cited as an example unfair labor practice charges filed against the bank with the NLRB. In Salt Lake City and Hillsboro, Ore., where these charges were filed, the NLRB found that Wells Fargo broke the law when managers routinely tore down union flyers and implied workers would be reprimanded if they continued to post flyers. Recent allegations of unfair labor practices against Wells Fargo are yet another example of the banks pattern of repeatedly violating a range of federal and state laws, Brown said. Potential violations of federal labor law raise additional concerns about Wells Fargos continued inability to fix its longstanding problems and do right by its customers, investors and workers. Regulators should take stronger actions to change Wells Fargos culture of noncompliance and account for the troubling unfair labor practice allegations that could be the bellwether for broader safety and soundness and consumer compliance risks, Brown said. Nick Weiner, organizing director for Committee for Better Banks, said the union effort has been spurred in part from the lack of progress after a group of Wells Fargo workers met with chief executive Charlie Scharf to discuss the same issues theyre organizing around today. Nothing has changed for them since that conversation, and they know nothing will unless they organize and secure that collective voice. Brown cited that Scharf has told the Senate committee that he would not remain neutral if Wells Fargo employees try to unionize. Abusive labor conditions and retaliation against workers who attempt to communicate concerns raise red flags about management quality and can be indicators of greater risk to the institution and consumers, Brown said. Will it work? The reach and effectiveness of the branch employees union efforts may struggle to gain much traction in the current banking environment for a number of reasons, said Tony Plath, retired finance professor at UNC Charlotte. The toxicity within Wells Fargos culture has been around for at least 20 years now, and well known by the general public for nearly 10 years now, Plath said. If these people were genuinely serious about using union membership to reform the banks culture, where have they been all these years? Plath said branch employees, particularly tellers, are feeling the pinch from both Wells Fargos ongoing effort at closing branches and the potential for being replaced by artificial intelligence programs. In 2021, Wells Fargo raised its minimum wage for hourly workers to $18 to $22, depending on location. Most banks have made genuine and generous attempts to increase bank wages, benefits and working conditions over the past decade, especially for lower-paying positions, like tellers and platform personnel, Plath said. So, just wheres the motivation for bank clerical employees to support a drive to unionize the industry? Wherever it is, Im just not seeing it, Plath said. The Wells Fargo branch employees move to unionize is part of a broader wave of pro-union activity that has swept across the nation since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, said John Quinterno, principal with South by North Strategies Ltd., a Chapel Hill research company specializing in economic and social policy. Quintero said that most employees pursuing union representation are seeking similar things: fair pair, access to benefits, reasonable working conditions, safety protections given the continued existence of COVID, a voice in the workplace and basic dignity. This often comes in response to management decisions that squeeze workers and treat them as disposable. Davidson Countys recent streak of landing major economic-development projects may be extended as the Board of Commissioners considers a request Monday for what is known as Project Puma. Several media reports indicate that Project Puma involves the same company that had considered opening a $258 million manufacturing plant in Rowan County with up to 352 jobs by the end of 2029. The Salisbury Post reported in September that the company ended negotiations with Rowan commissioners because it was considering another potential location. According to a legal notice from the commissioners, the boards public hearing will address selling 47 acres in the I-85 Corporate Center to the company behind Project Puma as part of a proposed economic development project. At $50,000 per acre, the company would be required to pay $2.35 million for the land. The property thats owned by the county is located on Egger Drive and Belmont Road in Lexington that contains just under 103 acres overall. The public hearing will be held at 6 p.m. Monday in Davidson County Governmental Center, 913 N. Greensboro St. in Lexington. The legal notice did not include a job or capital-investment pledge, but did say it create a substantial number of new, permanent jobs in the county. The Salisbury Post reported the Project Puma company was never formally disclosed. Rod Crider, president of the Rowan Economic Development Corp., told the Salisbury newspaper that after conducting a thorough analysis, the company determined that the property did not meet their requirements. The potential Project Puma project would follow several economic-development successes in Davidson and Lexington. In August, Nucor Corp. broke ground on a $350 million steel manufacturing plant in Lexington with a pledge to create at least 180 jobs by the end of 2025. Nucor is North Americas largest recycler, using scrap steel as its primary raw material. The plant is being constructed on a 123.66-acre tract at 6776 E. U.S. 64 near Kepley Road off U.S. 64 between I-85 and N.C. 109. With production slated to begin by end of 2024, it is being estimated to produce as much as 430,000 tons of rebar a year, which typically is used in the construction of roads, buildings, sidewalks and other structures. The average annual wage at the Nucor facility would be $99,660, which is more than double the Davidson County annual average wage of $45,170. Nucor has been made eligible for up to $19.3 million in state economic incentives for the plant, but did not request local incentives. Also in August, Siemens Mobility Inc. broke ground on its $220 million Lexington plant that is planned to have 506 employees at full production of passenger rail cars, also known as rolling stock. The global manufacturer committed March 8 to begin production in 2024 of passenger rail cars. The average annual wage was disclosed as $51,568. Siemens Mobility Inc. has paid $16.16 million for the 202-acre Lexington Industrial Park. Siemens officials said they chose the Lexington site because of three local factors: rail service, local workforce availability and cost of construction. The average annual wage was disclosed as $51,568. When Craig Goodson took over as Davidson Economic Commissions president and chief executive in July 2017, he quickly had a website created davidsoncountyedc.com to tout the countys economic offerings. Goodson said the website put us on the map with site-location consultants and large companies who were just beginning to do their initial site searches in-house. We have developed three major industrial parks I-85 Corporate Center (500 acres), Lexington Industrial Park (200 acres) and NCi85 Industrial Park (900 acres) plus the CenterPoint 275,000-square-foot industrial speculative building at I-85 and US 64. We have been ready when this resurgence in advanced manufacturing in the Carolina Core, and being on I-85 between Charlotte and Raleigh with a rich manufacturing heritage didnt hurt either. You can read the full text of this article if you: Select an option Log In Buy Article Content & Permissions Access through Ovid This past year has been one of the most difficult I have endured. Over the span of my more than 2-decade career as a physician associate/assistant (PA), I have treated complicated medical issues, offered heartfelt words of support and guidance to patients and their families, delivered bad news, and provided solace to patients and their families forever affected by progressive and debilitating illness. I did not know what it felt like to stand in their shoes until I had to face my father's dementia, decline, and death. My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer disease in 2012. He maintained his function and normal routine within a small, close-knit community. A visiting nurse came weekly to assist with his medications. Loyal friends drove him to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions, to the grocery store for food and other necessities, and to the local Irish American club where he socialized. In 2019, it became clear his dementia had advanced to a point that more intervention was necessary. Living alone became a serious safety concern as his cognitive abilities declined. Paranoia and delusion invaded longtime friendly relationships with neighbors. His refrigerator was filled with expired food and milk that he stubbornly refused to discard. He hoarded money, and worsening aphasia made his communication unintelligible to most. My sister and I both lived out of state and reluctantly resigned to his requirement for full-time care. After a thorough search for a care facility suitable for his specific needs, he was admitted to a memory unit near his home. Shortly thereafter, his cognition and physical health rapidly declined. Within a year, he entered hospice care and ultimately died from aspiration pneumonia. The rapidity and turbulence of my father's journey within a year placed me in the center of an unforeseen emotional whirlwind. Time and retrospect taught me five important lessons about the course of Alzheimer disease. First, family members bear witness to the behavioral debility, memory decline, and loss of expression associated with Alzheimer disease. Swearing, spitting, aggression, paranoia, and inappropriate behavior are par for the course. At times it can be comical, other times frightening, sometimes both simultaneously. Although aphasia may be mild at first, with time it advances to near mutism. No matter what stage of this progressive disease my father was in, if I listened closely, I could decipher a word or a thought he was trying to communicate. His long-term memory resurfaced at times, most notably in the late stages of his illness. Despite the more than 30 years that had passed since he and my mother divorced, hers was the only face he recognized and the only name he spoke in his final days. Second, the disease strips patients of their dignity. As my father declined, I assisted in changing, showering, and feeding him. His actions and behaviors became so childlike toward the end, I felt as if we had exchanged roles. This was but one of the consequences of this degenerative disease. Fully aware that living in this state would not have been my father's preference, I prayed that he would not have to endure suffering for long. The duality of feeling both sadness and relief with his passing was understandable given the difficult journey we had experienced. Third, I learned so much from my father's amazing caregivers, who gifted me with pivotal lessons. Spending time with a loved one in an institutional memory unit can be lonely and depressing. These wonderful people trained me how to distract, redirect, and find humor in different situations that I was ill-equipped to handle. Those who choose to work in these environments are extraordinary people. They gave kind and thorough updates of his daily life, elaborate descriptions of his limited interaction with others, how well he ate and slept. All this was provided with the love and care our family needed to calm our hearts and minds. Fourth, the hospice industry is remarkable. The caring people who are called to work in this noble industry walk patients and families through the hospice process with the ideal combination of empathy, reality, and practicality. The individualized attention dedicated to our father allowed us to place our trust in them and feel confident that he was safe and well cared for. Their insight prepared us for the real possibility of death due to aspiration pneumonia, which is likely with 90% of patients with Alzheimer disease. The pros and cons of every viable option for my father were competently and honestly discussed. Their patience, expertise, and intimate understanding of Alzheimer disease provided our family with the perspective needed to make the best decisions for our father. We were heartened to learn of the extra efforts devoted to ensuring his comfort and well-being. When our father needed additional help with basic hygiene needs, the facility allowed a team of three nursing assistants to tend to him. All details of his care were addressed, including a specialized chair to assist with proper posturing, feeding assistance, spiritual support, and even arranging for his favorite music to be accessible at his bedside. Our family could not always be physically present, but the hospice team reliably communicated every detail with us, especially as his final days approached. They compassionately comforted us during the grieving process and reassured us it was okay to let go. Fifth and finally, when you lose someone to Alzheimer disease, you lose them twice. You lose them when they stop recognizing you, and you lose them when they die. You grieve the loss twice. First, you grieve the loss of your loved one's mind, then the loss of their physical body. Both processes are equally as painful. It was made clear to me that this vicious disease causes great suffering to the patient and their family, highlighting that both require tender guidance and kindness. My father is gone, but the emotions stemming from the entire experience still envelop me. My father's death has changed me. It has changed me as a clinician, as a mother, a daughter, a sister, a teacher, and a friend. I miss my father more than words can say, but I carry with me many fond memories of him. Reflections of my final year with him do not define who he was to me or how he will be remembered. The lessons learned from those final moments are what will resonate in my words and actions when helping my patients and their families on their own journeys. The shoes I stand in now cannot walk their path for them, but certainly have enough tread left to show them the way. General practice or primary care is a vital component of contemporary medicine worldwide and the largest specialty of most healthcare systems.1 Primary care is central to patient healthcare. Furthermore, maintaining an efficient and accessible general practice is essential to how patients perceive this care.2,3 In many countries, general practitioners (GPs) are the foundation for meeting the growing demand for healthcare caused by increases in the older population, progressively complex patient needs, and expanding treatment possibilities.1 As the World Health Organization acknowledges, primary care is essential to address patient needs.4 In the Netherlands, every resident is encouraged to register as a patient in a general practice.5 For all noncritical health problems, patients consult their GP first. The GP oversees various conditions, from common ailments to chronic diseases, and manages patients longitudinally. When more complex problems arise, the GP serves as a gatekeeper and refers patients to an appropriate medical specialist in a hospital or ambulatory care setting.1 About 13,000 GPs are clinically active across about 5,000 general practices in the Netherlands.5 A typical patient visits the GP office 4.3 times per year.6 Most (92%) new health problems present in primary care.7 In the aggregate, the healthcare provided by GPs contributes to efficient and low-cost services with a high patient satisfaction rate.8 The biggest challenges to general practice care in the Netherlands are the high workloads and long hours.6,9 General practices in the Netherlands are organized under two structures: a GP physician as the practice owner (self-employed) or an association consisting of several GPs as salaried employees.10 In the first case, the GP is directly responsible for the business results as an entrepreneur, and the GP's income is derived from the practice results. In the larger organizational model, GPs are contracted employees. Although there is a trend toward more group practice arrangements, most Dutch GPs work in small practices of three or fewer GPs.11 Evening and weekend services are separately organized and not included in this study.12,13 Since the start of the new century, PAs and NPs have been included as medical care providers in Dutch general practices.14 The central drivers for this change are universal: the increased demand for healthcare due to an increase in the older population and the shifting of less-complex, specialized medical care from hospitals to general practices.15 The introduction of PAs and NPs in 2001 was a national strategy to reduce the workload of GPs and other specialties and to provide more cost-effective care.2,13,16 Worldwide, evidence has been accumulating about the usefulness of PAs and NPs and their quality of care.17,18 However, the financial and organizational benefits of employing PAs and NPs in general practices have yet to be thoroughly investigated.13 We set out to examine whether the employment of a PA or NP can benefit GPs' workload, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The research questions were: What are the financial aspects of PA or NP employment in a GP practice? Does the employment of a PA or NP in a GP practice have benefits beyond financial ones? METHODS The Radboud University Medical Center's research ethics committee approved the research protocol. Informed consent was obtained from all subjects. A descriptive study and a mixed-methods approach were selected to explore PA and NP employment in representative general practice arrangements. The intent was to identify the contribution that the PA or NP provided to the GP's workload. A second focus was on the employment costs of an NP or a PA and their financial benefit as employees in terms of return on investment (ROI). Study sample Four representative types of practices were selected based on input from an advisory group. Self-employed GPs with a direct personal financial interest in an NP. Self-employed GPs with a direct personal financial interest in a PA. A group GP practice in which the GPs are contracted, and which employed an NP. A group GP practice in which the GPs are contracted, and which employed a PA. The selection of practices that met the inclusion criteria was a purposeful sample drawn from a list of Dutch practices employing at least one PA or NP.19 Criteria were the employment of an NP or PA for the past 2 years, the staff agreeing to interviews, GPs willing to provide financial and organizational practice data, and the practice willing to make available patient care data. The selection was completed when four candidate practices were willing to participate and met the inclusion criteria. Because of the sensitivity of the data requested, the funds available, and the amount of work to collect and analyze the data, the project was limited to four practices that could represent the range of interest. We invited family physicians to form a reference group to maintain a grounding in our work. All were recruited from the medical school's GP training program. In total, 13 GPs agreed to be a part of the reference group; seven solo practices (employing three PAs and four NPs) and six associated or group practices (four employed a PA and two employed an NP). The medical school-associated GPs served as a content validation measure to determine whether the results from the four practices were generalizable. The practice data were collected in 2018 (Table 1). TABLE 1. - Variables and data sources Variables and data sources Quantitative data Qualitative data GP single-owner practice with NP Extraction data from patient information system Reimbursement information: Number of enlisted patients Number of visits Classification of complaints Information about personnel: Number Hours per week Salary Function Roster data Interviews with GP, PA, NP, primary care RN, GP assistant, and GP managers: Task profile Effects of employment Financial effects Working hours and workload Interviews with NP/PA: Task profile Motivations Barriers Working hours GP single-owner practice with PA GP in association with NP GP in association with PA Validation A group of 13 GPs provided their experience with PAs and NPs. The 13 GPs represented seven solo practices (employing three PAs and four NPs) and six GP associations (employing four PAs and two NPs). Qualitative data collection To obtain information on quality, accessibility, patient experience, and workload, we interviewed clinicians and support staff. The data were enriched with roster details and information on the practice operation. In total, 23 individual interviews were held, and between five and eight interviews were undertaken with each practice. The interviewees included the solo GPs and at least two GPs in the group practices. Each employed PA or NP was interviewed. In addition, the GP assistant, medical assistant, primary care RN, GP manager, and, where available, a GP resident or NP student were interviewed (Table 2). Participation was voluntary, and participants were not compensated or rewarded for their contributions. None of the interviewees declined, dropped out, or refused to answer questions. One of the two researchers/interviewers recorded all interviews individually and coded and matched them for consistency. Following the interviews, the codes of the two researchers (AJK and YG) were compared and discussed until a consensus was reached.20 TABLE 2. - Characteristics of assessed general practices Characteristics of assessed general practices P1 with one NP (One GP as owner) P2 with one PA (One GP as owner) P3 with one NP (Association of GPs) P4 with one PA (Association of GPs) Number of enrolled patients 2,262 4,235 9,805 4,912 Number of GPs 1 (1 FTE) 4 (2.3 FTE) 5 (3.9 FTE) 2 (1.3 FTE) Number of NPs 1 (0.58 FTE) - 1 (0.95 FTE) - Number of PAs - 1 (1 FTE) - 1 (0.78 FTE) Number of interviews 5 5 8 5 Practice arrangement of the interviewee 1 GP 1 NP 2 GP assistants 1 GP manager 1 GP 1 PA 1 GP assistant 1 primary care RN 1 GP manager 2 GPs 1 GP resident 1 NP 1 student NP 1 primary care RN 1 medical assistant 1 GP manager 1 GP 1 PA 1 GP assistant 1 primary care RN 1 GP manager Reference group The findings from the four GP practices were presented to a reference group of 13 GPs to affirm that the sampled practices were typical and not distorted by confounding. This reference group, drawn from a university medical school, reflected on the findings throughout. The discussion with the reference group, led by an independent chair, focused on the results of the practices examined and compared those results with results of the practices of the 13 GPs. The opinions, ideas, and beliefs about whether these four select practices represented Dutch GPs were recorded. Quantitative data collection To understand the effects on production and calculate the ROI, medical and financial quantitative data were collected, along with quantitative information about the employment of the PA or NP. The procedures, patient schedules, patterns of business, and annual reports supplemented the administrative data. These data were used to calculate the ROI component of this study. In the Netherlands, GPs use a standardized computer system to administer and store patient encounter data. The electronic General Practice Information System (GPIS) consists of routine care, health insurance information, morbidity information, history of contact with healthcare providers, and patient information. The GPIS-linked administrative and encounter data are used to submit billable claims to healthcare insurance companies to reimburse services and to registries for research purposes.21 The four practices made their GPIS available to the research team, including financial and patient care data. The quantitative data were extracted from the GPIS for enrolled patients, as were the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC) codes and the number of visits per day, week, and year correlated with the type of healthcare provider. The patient's reason for a visit (that is, presenting complaint) was compiled separately. In addition, the reimbursement returns and other financial data were extracted from the practice's information system or derived from the business operations. To gain insight into the pecuniary aspects of a GP practice, the financial data for 2018 were examined as the most recent year of the research. In Practice #2 (P2), the PA worked clinically for 8 months in 2018, and the data were extrapolated to 12 months. A central focus was the labor costs and benefits associated with the PA or NP and their contribution to the overall production in each general practice. Therefore, we included data on personnel information, the number of employees, employee function, hours worked per week, salary, and roster (schedule information) from the information system. In interviews, we gathered information on task profiles, workload, working hours, motivations, and barriers to employment. The billable revenues generated by the PA or NP relevant to their employment were assessed. The data obtained from the GPIS of the four practices also were obtained from the 13 GP practices that served as the reference group for validation purposes. Data analysis All qualitative data from semistructured interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded, and processed in ATLAS.ti, a computer program for qualitative data analysis. A coded list of questions was developed before the interviews, and the codes were used to compare transcribed responses. ROI The ROI of adding an employee to a practice was viewed as a straightforward but key measure of profit derived from the investment (employment). This measure was used to evaluate the rank attractiveness of the new hire in terms relative to cost. All quantitative data were extracted from the GPIS. The total production of the practice and the production of the GP, PA, or NP, along with the overall financial turnover, were analyzed based on ICPC and were calculated as part of the general practice characteristics. The financial annual effects of employing a PA or NP were calculated using billable care as income generated by their employment, and the costs were salary costs, including 35% overhead. The cost of education or training was not included because the government finances healthcare professional education and universal healthcare insurance. Next, the quantitative and qualitative data were presented as preliminary findings and discussed with the GP reference group. A set of validated results were agreed upon and advanced as reportable. RESULTS Characteristics of general practices The number of GPs ranged from one to five in general practice offices, and the full-time equivalent (FTE) of the GP ranged from 0.58 to 1 (Table 2). The FTE for the PA ranged from 0.78 to 1, and the NPs from 0.58 to 0.95. Across the four practices, the patient census ranged from 2,262 to 9,805 (mean of 5,303). The number of empaneled patients per FTE GP was 2,599 (1,841 to 3,778). When the NP or PA was added to a GP practice, patients per FTE clinician (GP, NP, or PA) averaged 1,774 (1,283 to 2,315). The average number of consultations (encounters), home visits, telephone sessions, and procedures performed by GPs over the four practices per year converted to FTE was 6,839; for the NPs, 2,636; and for the PAs, 4,926. The list of ICPCs consisted of 1,257 diagnoses and spanned a broad spectrum of conditions. All four practices had similar patient populations and diagnoses. The most common conditions seen by GPs, PAs, and NPs were musculoskeletal, dermatologic, and respiratory disorders. The two PAs saw a broader range of patient diagnoses in the four practices than the NPs: GPs averaged 493 unique ICPCs, PAs 369, and NPs 205 (Table 3). However, the NPs in both practices were involved with more time-consuming older adults than the GP or the PA. TABLE 3. - Number of different ICPC diagnoses in 2018 Number of different ICPC diagnoses in 2018 Practice Number or span of ICPC diagnoses Percentage of PA or NP ICPC diagnoses compared with the GP P1 NP 263 58 GP 455 P2 PA 401 77 GP 523 P3 NP 146 25 GP 589 P4 PA 336 83 GP 405 Implications of PA and NP employment on GP workload Based on the interviews, the practice staff's most frequently mentioned effect of the new PA or NP was that each could offset the workload demands of the practice, giving the GP more time for complex patients. The division of labor resulting from PA and NP employment implied better productivity and improved efficiency, which appears to have increased GP job satisfaction. The increased time for patients as a result of the new employee was mentioned by the staff but not quantified. Some of the comments about the qualitative aspects of the PA/NP were: GP2: The PA provides less stress for the GP and more relief of workload with more time per patient and more time for management tasks. PA2: The PA helped [alleviate] the increase in work pressure for the GP. A comment from the GP reference group was that the NP or PA seems to know their boundaries or roles well. A comment from a GP was that the PA or NP had more time per consultation than a [typical] GP. This time was perceived by the patient and staff as a quality-of-care enhancement. Another comment was that a solo practice lacked the time commitment to train or guide [on-board] the PA or NP. ROI The productivity of the NP and PA expressed as a percentage of billable services (such as consultations, home visits, and telephone consultations) was 70% to 100%, with an average of 71% for the NPs and 85% for the PAs. The other tasks were nonbillable aspects of care, such as completing forms, insurance concerns, and addressing administrative issues. NPs were involved in more in-home visits and telephone consultations than PAs, who primarily provided care during consultations (Figure 1). Except for the fourth practice (P4), about 30% of the tasks were listed as other. No traceable differences were found between practices owned by GPs or group practices. FIGURE 1.: Percentage of billable production in 2018 The ROI of PAs and NPs was positive in three practices (Figure 2). In P2 (one GP and one PA), the PA's employment costs exceeded the PA's revenue, with an ROI of 91%. This was due to a relatively large portion of the PA's duties (about 30%) being administrative, not billable, and the PA having a relatively high salary. FIGURE 2.: Cost and reimbursement of PAs and NPs in 2018 In P3, the NP often managed older adults and received additional reimbursement for home visits. In P4, the PA mainly performed consultations that differed in quantity and diversity, at least from those of the GP in the same practice. Content validation of the reference group After collecting and analyzing the data from the four case studies, focus interviews were undertaken with the GP experts. In the validation or reference group, 10 of the 13 GPs had experience with an NP or PA in their practice. An overview of their characteristics can be found in Table 4. TABLE 4. - Characteristics of reference group GPs who had experience with a PA or NP Characteristics of reference group GPs who had experience with a PA or NP Practice Number of PAs or NPs Number of enlisted patients GP A GP as owner 2 PAs Unknown GP B GP in association 1 PA 5,000 GP C GP in association 2 PAs 140,000 GP D GP in association 2 NPs 2,300 GP E GP as owner 1 PA 5,000 GP F GP in association 2 NPs 9,000 GP G GP as owner 1 NP Unknown GP H GP in association 3 NPs Unknown GP I GP in association 2 NPs 3,500 GP J GP in association 4 NPs Unknown A summary of comments made by the GP reference group: Reduction of workload and patient panel growth were recognized reasons for hiring a PA or NP. The diversity in the background and work experience of the PAs and NPs was considered in the hiring interview. The characteristic that stood out most was that the PA or NP had a broad range of caseloads across all age groups. The NP's role often involved care of older adults and long-term care more than the PA's role. One comment from the representative GPs was that PA and NP onboarding could take up to 1.5 years to achieve maximum employment. In addition to productivity, sharing the workload, and a sense of collaboration, many suggested another clinician (PA or NP) could be considered to handle a growing caseload. This added clinician factor could not always be calculated into maximum production gains but was noted by many interviewees as an attribute that could further improve office flow. DISCUSSION Analyzing the broadly drawn data from four Dutch general practices seems to have revealed the subjective value of an employed PA or NP on GPs' workload and the objective value of the ROI. At the same time, no difference was found between practices owned by GPs or GP group practices. In the aggregate, each of the PAs or NPs was productive and saw many patients. Clearly, these clinicians were value-added and helped to reduce the GP's workload. In three of the four cases, the ROI was positive. In P2, the PA was engaged more in improving the administrative aspects of the practice early in his employment and, consequently, reduced reimbursable productivity. However, the organizational improvement activity was considered temporary, and later the PA was focused full-time on patient care. The gathered data in this study show a division of labor in the annual output of services that involves a PA or NP in a typical Dutch general practice. The effect on workload was attributed, as evidenced by the interviews with GPs, to the fact that a PA or NP accounts for some of the productivity, which is supplemented by performing additional tasks. These aspects have alleviated some of the perceived workloads of the GPs. Three of the practices in this study enrolled more patients than the national average of 2,085 patients per FTE. Although the results are confined to four out of 500 GP practices in the Netherlands, they are representative, broadly speaking, of how GPs could benefit financially and subjectively by employing PAs and NPs. Understanding the favorable effect of incorporating a PA or an NP in a medical practice is a growing healthcare professional labor topic in Europe and North America.22,23 For example, Halter and colleagues in the United Kingdom found that PAs were increasingly used in significant medical consultation roles in primary care.24 Pany and colleagues validated a series of studies in the United States that team-based care produces better outcomes than solo practitioners.25 Leach and colleagues noted that the outcomes for patients with chronic diseases treated by PAs, NPs, or physicians revealed no differences, suggesting that a broad range of care can be collectively managed by PAs, NPs, and physicians.26 Our study showed that in addition to their reimbursed productivity, PAs and NPs saw a wide variation in patient conditions: the PA saw 75% of the same conditions and the NP 42% of the same conditions as seen by the GP. The consensus of the reference group was that this addition to the staff contributed to offsetting some of the GP workload. The literature on PA and NP employment ROI is scarce. However, two systematic reviews on PAs and NPs spanned 72 cost-effectiveness studies.18,27 The reviews concluded that PAs and NPs are cost-effective in most employment cases, either as a physician substitute or as a complement to improve care output. The ROI was positive in the few instances where it was calculated, because of the relatively high productivity for which revenue was obtained compared with wages. Primary care providers in the Netherlands, where PAs and NPs are increasingly used, found that employing these clinicians was valuable.17,28 Such findings are seen globally.24,25,29,30 What works best for one clinician or practice is copied by othersbut perhaps more importantly, the best practice policy tends to affect all clinicians. In adult medicine, PAs and NPs produce the same outcome as GPs, suggesting that best practices are emulated. LIMITATIONS AND STRENGTHS We questioned whether a dual distinction of a self-employed GP and a group practice of GPs could do justice to all the organizational differences in GP practices. To this end, we validated the generalizability of findings with a sample of GPs. The reference group confirmed that the outcomes of the four practices could be comparable to the approximately 500 GP practices in the Netherlands. A note was added that the 1-year familiarization period, as the inclusion criterion in this study, may be on the short side, and the effects of employability could improve after a year or two. Although relevant topics such as quality of care and patient satisfaction were not measured directly in our study, previous studies have shown positive effects of PA or NP employment on Dutch patient satisfaction, with at least equal or higher quality of care compared with care provided by physicians.17,18 All practices and the 13 GPs in the reference group were created through purposeful sampling with voluntary participation. This method has a risk of bias given the broad aspect of the research questions. More critical details such as observing patient-clinician interactions, time-motion studies, the role of general practice assistants or primary care RNs, and the effect of other office staff were the economic tradeoffs for the bigger picture. A strength of the current study is the large number of interviews with different professionals and the in-depth answers we received. In addition, the participants came from a wide geographic area, and the variation in types of practices was thought to reflect the distribution of practices in the Netherlands.9 Another strength is that the interviews were conducted in a semistructured manner consistent across the four practices. We have constructed a general representation of the activity of GPs employing a PA or an NP in the Netherlands. More importantly, the global movement reflects the work to include PAs and NPs in family medicine.31 Finally, this undertaking intended to set the stage for a more granular examination of activity in general medicine, how it expands to accommodate a change in the healthcare landscape, and move research to care outcomes. CONCLUSION Since PAs and NPs were introduced in Dutch healthcare, primary care practices have grown. The employment of PAs and NPs comes at a time of increased demand, an increase in the older population, and more complex patient care needs. This results in more frequent and prolonged visits to the general practice. We analyzed four representative general practices that employ PAs and NPs. Solo and group practices using PAs and NPs are productive primary care team members and PAs and NPs are worthwhile staff additions in each case. In all four GP practice analyses, the employment of a PA or NP made a valuable contribution to the practice flow while reducing GPs' workloads. In three of the cases, the ROI was positive. In the fourth case, the PA performed additional management tasks that led to a negative ROI. Nonetheless, PA and NP employment was evaluated as a positive contribution to general practice care. More robust research in a larger sample is needed to draw firmer conclusions. The GPS keeps me on course; steadily, I navigate the twists and turns as the car climbs along the blacktop country road that runs by the river. It's been years since I've driven this route through the small villages of western Massachusetts to the northwest corner of the state. It takes just under 2 hours to make the trip. I pull into a parking space at the end of the dusty street beside the weathered clapboard house that bears a small sign identifying the medical practice within. The physician meets me at the door. Mutually masked, we momentarily face each other in silence. Come in, he says, and then suddenly, Oh, it's you! His eyes crinkle at the corners, confirming the unseen smile beneath his mask. We've got one more patient for the morning, and then we can sit and talk. Meantime, you can have a seat in the waiting area and talk with Hazel, the doctor says. She's been a patient of mine for 35 years. I slip into a chair beside the older Black woman and offer her a fist bump. She readily complies. So you're waiting to see the doctor? I ask. Oh, no, I've already been seen. I'm just waiting for my ride. I see. I hear you've been a patient here for a long time. She nods her head. Wouldn't ever go anyplace else, she says. Doc always takes his time with me. He's the best. Your ride has arrived, Hazel, the receptionist calls through the open window. Slowly, Hazel rises to her feet and shuffles toward the door. Nice talking with you, I say; she nods her head. Shortly, the door to the only examination room in the office opens and the last patient of the morning steps out. The doctor appears in the doorway and beckons me in. I take a seat in the chair next to his desk. The PA quietly drops into a chair across the room. So good you could make it up here today, the doctor says. I was just telling my colleague here that you could be our consultant for a kid we saw this earlier this week. He clicks a digital file in the computer on his desk. The lower half of a youngster's face appears, demonstrating a smattering of perioral crusted lesions. Herpes simplex? I say. Recurrent, he says. I think he needs to go on suppressive therapy. The mother gave us some pushback. What would you do? We spent a good bit of time with her, the PA adds. It's hard when you're seeing the patient for the first time. You don't know them, and they don't know you. I nod my head. It usually takes time to establish a trusting relationship with the patient, I say. Sometimes all you can do at the initial visit is give it your best shot. Confirm the diagnosis if you can, offer treatment options, give them your opinion, and let them weigh in. Patient-centered care, the doctor says. Tell him about the other family we saw: the couple that had the baby with eczema. Oh, yes, the PA shifts in her chair, it was all we could do to reassure them that the eczema wasn't all that bad. We went over everything from diagnosis and treatment to prognosis. I bet we spent almost 45 minutes with them. They were so distraught. It's difficult for new parents to accept the diagnosis of a chronic illness in their child, I say. It takes a while for it to settle in. I'm so thankful that we can take time with patients, the PA says. I did a clinical rotation here as a student. After graduation, I took a job at an urgent care center. It was all about how many patients you could see in an hour. Everyone was too busy to do any teaching. I probably sent too many patients to the ED because I didn't have a lot of experience under my belt. She drops her eyes. After 5 months I quit. And now you're here, I say, pursuing your clinical education where you left off. It's tough to work in corporate medicine, the PA says. I didn't think medicine would be like that. What did you do? I reflect a moment. Well, I found a mentor, I say, with a slight nod toward the doctor adjacent, a mentor who taught me that the most important thing in medical practice is to take time to listen to the patient, to demonstrate to the patient that you care, because it's the caring part that helps them to heal. And then I add, And it's the caring part that sometimes helps to heal you, too. After falling a level during the pandemic, Lincoln Public Schools jumped back up a classification rating this year on a statewide assessment that is heavily based on state test scores going from "good" back to "great." Each year, the Nebraska Department of Education releases data assessing the proficiency of public schools across the state, primarily looking at results of annual statewide tests taken by students in third to eighth grades, as well as juniors ACT scores. The department also considers things like graduation rates, English language learners and chronic absenteeism. The state developed this accountability and performance classification model in 2015. The data is based on the 2022-23 school year and places each school into a classification ranking of either needs support for improvement, good, great or excellent. The report known as Accountability for a Quality Education System Today and Tomorrow, or AQuESTT shows LPS had one less school at the needs support for improvement level than the year prior, with only two schools falling into this category today: Northeast and Northwest high schools. Of the 59 schools at LPS included in the report, 26 received a good ranking, the same number reflected in the 2021-22 data; 20 were great, up one from the year before; and 11 were labeled as excellent, an increase from seven the previous year. At the start of last year, two new schools were opened: Robinson Elementary and Northwest High School. The newest high school, Standing Bear, will be included in next years report. Additionally, 18 schools in the district improved their ratings compared to last year, according to the report. Three schools went from needs support for improvement to good: Saratoga Elementary School, and Culler and Dawes middle schools. Eight schools increased from good to great: Brownell, Kooser Meadow Lane, Prescott and Randolph elementaries, and Irving, Lefler and Schoo middle schools. And seven schools jumped from great to excellent: Beattie, Cavett, Kloefkorn, Sheridan and Wysong elementaries, and Lux and Scott middle schools. Statewide, 27% of schools (303) received ratings of "excellent;" 40% (437) were labeled "great;" 26% (288) good and 7% (76) as "needs support for improvement." One way the state determines the ratings is by looking at how proficient students at each school are in reading, math and science. For students in third to eighth grades, that's based on scores from the Nebraska Student-Centered Assessment System, a test they take each April. Those proficiency scores cannot be compared to the previous years scores, however, because the state readjusted cut scores for the test taken last spring, which are used to determine what scores are deemed proficient or not. Nebraska Education Commissioner Brian Maher said he looks at this year's results as a coach would after a good game: It was a good outcome, but when you watch the game films and break it down, you see you have a lot of work yet to do. With state assessments, the state needs to do focused work on performance by certain subgroups of students, including those with special education needs, low-income students and English language learners, he said. "Statewide assessments showed student and school growth but also showcased the need for a focused effort in several areas," he said. In both math and science, proficiency rates for third through eighth grade students at LPS fell slightly below the state average, with 59% of students scoring proficient in math compared with the states 61%, and 66% in science vs. a state average of 70%. But, in reading, students at LPS earned the district a proficiency rate 2 percentage points above the state average of 58% a big achievement, according to Sarah Salem, associate superintendent for teaching and learning. Knowing that early literacy is a really important component of student success, having every single grade level above state proficiency in reading is something that we are really, really proud of, Salem said. LPS has been putting an extra emphasis on the teaching of reading to young students in recent years in response to a nationwide early literacy crisis, which may be in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To curb this, teachers across the district have put in additional hours of professional learning to implement the most effective ways to teach reading. To have every grade level outperform the state in reading is a huge testament to the fact that our teachers have bought in to the best practices for teaching reading and all school staff is supporting early literacy, Salem said. I think for LPS to be above the state in each of those grade levels is pretty incredible. For high schools, the classification ratings largely come from juniors ACT scores, a four-part test required by many colleges that quizzes students on their knowledge of math, science, English and reading. The state reported that 46% of last years juniors across the state were proficient in reading, while 43% met expectations at the district level. The state also had proficiency percentages of 42% and 49% in math and science, respectively. LPS reported rates of 43% in math and 48% in science. The average composite score on the ACT for LPS juniors was 19.1, just over the states average score of 18.7. Because it is used by thousands of juniors and seniors every year and is a nationally recognized test, we feel really good about that and where we are with that assessment, Salem said. While the data was just released publicly on Wednesday, schools have had the numbers for months and were able to host workshops over the summer to go over the data, look for trends and ensure all staff members understand the report. It isnt something the district takes lightly, Salem said. We've looked at this data, we've analyzed the data, she said. During workshops, school officials were able to compare the numbers to their school improvement plans and make necessary changes to reflect the data. While the report is helpful to schools, the data only shows a snapshot and shouldnt be used to judge a school in its entirety, according to Salem. The work done by teachers inside the classroom on a day-to-day basis is what matters the most, said Takako Olson, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. Whether it's creating engaging lesson plans, completing regular checks for understanding with their students or participating in professional learning to ensure they are experts in what theyre teaching, it can all make a big impact on students education, she said. We trust their work, Olson said. That's the first and foremost thing that we would want our community to know. Salem shared a similar sentiment, noting the important work teachers and staff at LPS do daily and the effects it can have on students district-wide. To go from good to great, to have ACT scores that are above the state and national average, it just speaks to the incredible work our staff is doing every single day, Salem said. So, we just really celebrate them in the work that they do to make sure every student is getting what they need. Top Journal Star photos for November 2023 What Marylander had the biggest impact on the state this year? Send your nominations for The Suns 2023 Marylander of the Year by Dec. 10 to talkback@baltimoresun.com, with Marylander of the Year in the subject line. Well announce the finalists in mid-December and a winner before the end of the year. As inspiration, heres the roster of The Suns previous honorees: 1987: Steven Muller. The Johns Hopkins president won The Suns inaugural award for his relentless drive, intelligence, vision, institutional ambition, smooth tongue and grasp of the possible. 1988: Vincent DeMarco. Mr. DeMarco was the essential element in the coalition that won support for landmark restrictions on guns known as Saturday night specials. 1989: Anne Tyler. The novelist won the award in the same year that Breathing Lessons won the Pulitzer Prize and The Accidental Tourist became a hit movie. 1990: Robert Linowes. Montgomery County attorney Robert Linowes won for the work of a commission he chaired that sought to create a fairer, more equitable state tax system. 1991: Cal Ripken Jr. The Sun honored Cal Ripken after a season in which he was the All-Star game MVP, American League MVP and Sporting News and AP Player of the Year. 1992: Bea Gaddy. The Sun said of Baltimores advocate and helper for the poor, Others preach the Golden Rule; Bea Gaddy lives it. 1993: James W. Rouse. The Sun said the developer makes people believe. He lends his credibility and contacts and ideas. For lack of a better label, he is called a visionary. 1995: Kweisi Mfume. The Sun honored Kweisi Mfume when he took over leadership of the NAACP. His whole life seems to have been mapped out for this day. 1996: Cast and crew of Homicide. The Sun said Homicide was so true that a real fleeing shoplifter ran onto a film location and surrendered to actors. 1997: Nancy Grasmick, Del. Howard Pete Rawlings and Walter Sondheim. The Sun recognized the three people who made possible a landmark agreement to provide higher funding for Baltimore schools. 1998: Peter G. Angelos. The Sun said the attorney could easily be Marylander of the Decade. Few have given such philanthropy, and very few have tried to exercise such influence. 1999: Freeman Hrabowski. UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III earned the 1999 award for nurturing excellence in mathematics and science among African-American men. 2000: Bill Struever. The Sun honored developer Bill Struever because he adopts buildings that others have discarded and helps them fulfill a potential he sees in them. 2001: The Ravens. The Ravens won the Super Bowl and (collectively) Marylander of the Year in 2001. 2002: John Waters. Hairspray became a Broadway smash, and John Waters became Marylander of the Year. Editors note: The Sun shelved Marylander of the Year for the next decade, thinking it had run its course. But why let a good idea go to waste? 2012: Buck Showalter. The Sun resumed honoring Marylanders of the Year in 2012 with the Orioles manager who helped bring the team back to the postseason for the first time in 15 years. 2013: Ben Jealous. The NAACP head was instrumental in Marylands decisions to abolish the death penalty and enact marriage equality. 2014: Larry Hogan. The Republicans improbable win in the governors race upended our notions about political campaigns and shook up the states power structure in a way that will have lasting impact. 2015: Barbara Mikulski. The longest-serving woman in Congress has always had an uncommonly good ear for what the common man and woman thinks and repeating it to the powers-that-be. 2016: Kevin Plank. The Under Armour CEO was recognized for his bold plan to remake Port Covington and his willingness to work with the community on job opportunities and affordable housing. 2017: Erricka Bridgeford. The co-founder of the CeaseFire movement sparked hope that we can make Baltimore a less violent, more peaceful place. 2018: Staff of the Annapolis Capital Gazette. After its newsroom was the site of the deadliest attack on American journalists in history, the staff bravely put out a damn paper the next day. 2019: Elijah Cummings. Even as his health quietly faded, the congressman from Marylands 7th Congressional District never stopped fighting for Maryland nor urging us toward our better selves. 2020: Kathleen Neuzil and front-line workers. In this unusual pandemic year, we chose two winners: Dr. Neuzil for being a leading vaccine researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and front-line workers in the health care and service industries, who saved lives and preserved our quality of life amid stay home orders. 2021: Marylands 24 health officers. The second year of the pandemic took a particular toll, with 2021 deaths surpassing 2020s and misinformation abounding amid politicization of the virus. Through it all, Maryland health officers acted with a unity of public health purpose under trying and exhausting circumstances. 2022: Survivors of sexual abuse and their advocates seeking accountability from Catholic Church. Their bravery led to a multi-year investigation and efforts that continue today to hold the Church legally accountable. The Biden-Harris administration has done more harm to the Second Amendment than all previous administrations combined. Biden and his unelected, behind-the-scenes shot-callers have been methodical in their multifaceted war on our civil rights. The next administration if it's one that actually respects the law and its citizens will have a lot of work to do to restore the Second Amendment to what the Framers had in mind. It will be a daunting task. The Biden-Harris administration has hammered law-abiding Americans with dozens of infringements aided and abetting by the legacy media and a variety of anti-civil rights groups, some of which received taxpayer dollars. What follows is a list of suggestions for how to restore our civil rights. The list is neither complete nor comprehensive. It's more of a starting point and, unlike the Constitution, a living document. It includes actions that can be taken immediately and long-term goals that may require Congressional support. Fire ATF Director Steve Dettelbach Joe Biden's second choice to head the ATF, Steve Dettelbach, lied under oath when he told his Senate confirmation committee that he would not use the power of his office to lobby for new laws or regulations. Recently, Dettelbach called for banning "assault weapons," which he could not define, and standard-capacity magazines. Dettelbach has allowed unelected bureaucrats in the White House to weaponize the ATF. Under his watch, the ATF routinely violates the civil rights of law-abiding Americans. ..... 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 Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. Historians, in writing about the chronicle of Thanksgiving in the United States, usually concentrate on presidential proclamations for the holiday. To be sure, Congress sometimes has a role in delineating special dates, but a national day of thanks in November became identified with chief executives, thanks to George Washington, whose proclamation for a day of public thanksgiving in 1789 set the precedent. The tradition was broken in the 19th century, most notably by Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, who viewed such proclamations as crossing the boundary between church and state. But Abraham Lincolns stirring revival of the practice, amid the Civil War in 1863, gave the pronouncement the foundation for subsequent White House occupants and set the date as the fourth Thursday in November. In reality, the proclamation over time has become pro forma, abundant with early American history and several hundred words in praise of the nations blessings. Newspapers frequently carried the proclamations, but even with the advent of radio and television, extended attention to the statements was hard to come by except in more recent times when levity was added to the annual rite by a president pardoning a turkey before a live audience. It is an unofficial Thanksgiving Day proclamation from a White House occupant that sticks with me, and perhaps has more resonance today than many others. It came from first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who held that post from 1933 to 1945, making her the longest serving first lady. Beginning in December of 1935, and continuing through most of 1962, she wrote a syndicated newspaper column appearing six days a week. Entitled My Day, the column began during her husband Franklins first term and became enormously popular, because it wasnt a hallelujah column for him and his administration or for reveling in the niceties of privileged living. Eleanor simply wrote about what she did every day taking children to the Smithsonian, playing with her grandchildren or working with her staff on matters as unexciting as remodeling. Eleanor was no accomplished writer, and her articles often reflected the hastiness of penning accounts of activities late at night just before her newspaper deadline. Most of the articles would never find a home in todays newspapers because they had little to offer in terms of useful information or food for thought. A typical example is her column of April 20, 1938: I love Washington in the spring when everything is fresh and green and the blossoms are out. Tulips of every color are blooming around the fountain in front and back of the White House. Later it will be hot and dusty and the sun will burn things up, but now nature is at her best everywhere. But her columns on Thanksgiving Day were notable exceptions to her more run-of-the mill observations. And the one published on Nov. 24, 1938, was one of the most moving in her literary arsenal. Before she goes into details of the Youth Panel Discussion she attended or the dinner out with Mr. Donald Comer, she starts with words of patriotic gratitude. I dont know the reason for her views, but in the context of the times it could have been the Nazis rampaging of Jewish homes and stores in Germany two weeks earlier. What is clear is that the passage speaks as if it were written for the nation today in the context of our memory of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and subsequent challenges to the nations democracy. She began: This will come to all of you on Thanksgiving Day and you will have read the Presidents proclamation and in your churches and in your homes you will be giving thanks for the fact that you are citizens of the United States; that under a democracy you still have the right of suffrage and may express your opinion freely and without any fear of interference unless you advocate the use of force in the overthrow of your government. For all these things we are deeply grateful, and those of us who have health are grateful for that, and those of us who have people to love, and interests which keep us mentally active are grateful for that. Above all, we are grateful for the hope of constant growth in vision and understanding as individuals and as a national group. Lastly, we are thankful for our faith in ourselves; for the feeling that we can meet and solve our problems; that we can look at ourselves honestly and finally do away with discriminations and injustices which now exist in our own country, and for the belief that we can eventually grow to the stature required of those who are citizens of a real democracy. As we gather this week to give thanks, let us remember those words. Thomas V. DiBacco is professor emeritus at American University. His email is tvmzdb6063@cs.com. KEARNEY With its festive floats, massive balloon characters and famous performers, the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade is a holiday tradition like no other. Brock Persson, a graduate of Kearney High School and the University of Nebraska at Kearney, was in the middle of it all. A music teacher at Todd County High School in South Dakota, Persson was part of The Band Directors Marching Band that performed during the parade. Im ecstatic, he said earlier this month. Its going to be so awesome. One of 11 marching bands in this years parade lineup, The Band Directors Marching Band is composed of band directors and music educators from across the country who donate their time and expertise to promote the inspirational power of music. Its part of Saluting Americas Band Directors, a project created by the Michael D. Sewell Memorial Foundation to carry on the legacy of the late Mike Sewell, a longtime band director in the Pickerington, Ohio, school system. The programs motto is We teach music. We teach life, something Persson truly believes in. A Kearney High School graduate, Persson was part of the Pride of the Plains Marching Band, Symphonic Band, Wind Ensemble, Loper Low Brass Ensemble and Mens Chorus at UNK, where he earned a bachelors degree in music education in December 2015. Hes currently in his eighth year with the Todd County School District, which is located within the Rosebud Reservation in south-central South Dakota. Persson views music education as a way to positively impact lives and provide the support many students need. If I can get one student to school every single day, I know theyre safe, and I know they have an opportunity that they would not have if they stayed at home, he said. Persson, who teaches high school band, choir and digital music production, applied for Saluting Americas Band Directors so he could inspire his own students and spread the message about the importance of music programs on Native American reservations and settlements. Earlier this year, he co-founded Music Directors for Indigenous Students, a nonprofit that supports music education and teacher recruitment and retention in these schools. I want students to have a lifelong love of music, he said. You dont have to stop playing after high school. Look for every opportunity to play. Look for every opportunity to collaborate with others. As a member of The Band Directors Marching Band, Perssons first major performance was on New Years Day 2022 when the group was part of the 133rd annual Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. A total of 270 band directors and music educators marched there. It was amazing, Persson, of Valentine, said. That wall of sound was just glorious. The 5.5-mile route was a challenge for the sousaphone player, but definitely worth the effort. Thats the longest parade Ive ever done. Theres a hill that you go down and its miles of people on both sides of the street. It was definitely mind over matter, he said. The Band Directors Marching Band received the Showmanship Award during that parade. After the Rose Parade, our image just blew up, Persson said. People were like, How did I not know about this? Where do I sign up? Persson arrived in New York on Nov. 19 with his wife Kalinda, also a UNK graduate and an elementary teacher at Todd County, and their young daughter. Last week, the band performed Amazing Grace during a ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and will do sightseeing ahead of Thanksgivings big event. My students are really, really excited to know someone who is going to be on national TV, he said. Im proud that I can represent them and serve as a role model for music. Theres an isolated field high in the Allegheny Mountains that evokes a peculiar sense of thanksgiving. The National Memorial is where America pays tribute to 40 fallen heroes who on 9/11 foiled hijackers plans to crash United Flight 93 into Washington, D.C. At a special memorial service a year after the attack that ended near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge who was then governor of Pennsylvania expressed his gratitude. He said that America is grateful to the 40 victims who won the first battle in the war against terrorism. Sometimes thanksgiving and pain make strange bedfellows. Today, a veneer of tranquility settles over the historic day-long apocalypse. The early morning light sweeps across miles of autumn ambers, russets and oranges and settles onto the 93-foot Tower of Voices, made of 40 wind chimes whose somber tones recall the lost voices of Flight 93. As people pore over exhibits in the visitors center, conversations are hushed and brief. For several minutes, a man in a T-shirt stands transfixed in front of a picture of what looks like a blackened bomb crater left when the huge Boeing 757 slammed into the ground at over 550 mph. Its payload of almost 7,000 gallons of fuel incinerated almost everything except a 6-foot piece of aircraft and a collection of debris. Lord Almighty! whispers the man. On a wall of family photos hangs a picture of the affable Todd Beamer, who in a last phone call prayed with a dispatcher. And whose legendary final words, Lets Roll, still inspire millions. Onlookers stand outside and silently gaze at the now manicured grass field that marks the exact spot of the crash. At the 20-year commemoration of 9/11, President George Bush reminded the crowd that there was shock at the audacity of evil, but gratitude for the heroism that opposed it. If nothing else, the memorial urges us to be thankful for each day with family. To be thankful for the men and women of the armed forces who pledge their lives to defend our country. And for those rare, ordinary citizen-heroes who go the extra mile. But for some, nagging questions remain. Like, where was God? The Bible would say he was there. Just as he was there on a lonely hill near Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago when his own son suffered an agonizing death. It too is a place of thanksgiving. Jesus sacrifice bought eternal life for all who would believe. Typically, we dont view lifes upheavals as times of thanks. But regarding the difficult side of thanksgiving, the Bible is unequivocal: Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, (I Corinthians 15:57.) A 43-year-old man with no permanent address wanted for the brutal beating of a La Crosse woman Oct. 3 has been returned to Wisconsin. Police in Florida arrested Freeman Cole on Oct. 30 in Osceola County. He is charged in La Crosse County Circuit Court with felony counts of first-degree attempted homicide, strangulation/suffocation and false imprisonment and misdemeanor counts of battery, theft and disorderly conduct. Judge Ramona Gonzalez issued a warrant for his arrest Oct. 6 and ordered a $500,000 cash bond. Jail records show Cole was booked into the La Crosse County Jail on Nov. 21. Cole appeared in court later that day and failed in his attempt to get his bail reduced. Defense attorney Araysa Simpson asked judge Scott Horne for a substantially lower bond. She told the court that Cole had planned his trip to Florida prior to the alleged assault and isnt a significant flight risk. Simpson said Cole can afford to post only $1,000. She told the court that Cole has arranged for a place to stay in La Crosse, if released. Assistant District Attorney Jasmine Betancourt asked the court to keep bail at $500,000. His flight risk is clear, and his danger to the public is significant, Betancourt said. Horne agreed with Betancourt. He noted Cole has three violent felonies on his record and described the Oct. 3 allegations as extremely serious. Cole addressed the court very briefly from the jail and said, Allegations. Key word, allegations. Prosecutors allege that Cole committed the assault inside a storage unit on Fiesta Court in La Crosse. The woman told police she feared for her life during the assault. She said the beating didnt end until an employee from a nearby KFC intervened. The woman sustained heavy bruises and lacerations to her face and arms and was transported by ambulance to a local hospital. Horne scheduled a preliminary hearing for Nov. 29. Winona Countys decision to not allow Daley Farms in Lewiston to expand above the countys animal cap was upheld Tuesday by District Court Judge Douglas Bayley. The farm currently has a capacity of 1,608 cows and 120 calves, which is equal to 2,275 animal units. The farm has sought for about half a decade to expand its facility to allow for a maximum capacity of 3,983 cows, 525 heifers and 120 calves, which is equal to 5,968 animal units. The current animal cap in Winona County, created in 1998, limits farms to 1,500 animal units a little less than a fourth of the capacity Daley Farms is seeking. The farm already operates above the countys cap and was grandfathered in, as its herd size was in place prior to the cap in 1998. Legal action The farm first submitted a variance application in 2018, which if approved would have allowed the facility to expand. Twice, the Winona County Board of Adjustment has denied the request for the exception to the animal cap. Each time, the farm has taken legal action and most recently argued county officials conspired with an agriculture advocacy group to deny the request without seriously considering it. On Tuesday, Bayley ruled the Winona County Board of Adjustments reasonably denied the variance application in its most recent vote in 2021 and there was not evidence of bias on the board. Daley Farms is not done fighting for its potential expansion. In a statement to the Winona Daily News, a representative from Daley Farms said they are obviously disappointed in the courts ruling and will appeal the decision. We hope that the higher courts will correct this grave injustice and restore the fundamental right of all citizens to a fair hearing, the statement said. The evidence in this case overwhelming demonstrates that Winona County officials actively conspired with Land Stewardship Project to ensure that the outcome of Daley Farms variance application was decided before any evidence was presented or the application was heard. Nitrate concerns The Land Stewardship Project, a nonprofit organization listed as an intervenor in the case, applauded the courts decision Tuesday. In a statement, the organization said Daley Farms project would concentrate the manure of approximately 4,500 dairy cows in a region where drinking water is already plagued by such high nitrate levels. Those water concerns were recently highlighted by the Environmental Protection Agency, as the agency ordered the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Minnesota Department of Health earlier this month to take action to address high levels of nitrates found in the water of Minnesota residents in eight counties, including Winona County. The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy said Tuesday in a statement that large feedlots like Daley Farms are particularly hazardous in Winona County because the nitrate from the liquid manure used on farm fields is quickly absorbed into the groundwater below the surface. Multiple members of the Land Stewardship Project have expressed their support for the current animal cap on farms in Winona. Each community is unique. Minnesota law allows communities to decide for themselves how their land should be used, said Land Stewardship Project member and Winona resident Kelley Stanage. Because of its vulnerability to pollution due to karst geology, Winona County long ago placed a cap on the number of animal units farms can have in one operation. Exceptions cannot and should not be made to this cap simply because an operation wants to bring in more money. Stanage, along with other members of the Land Stewardship Project, were sued by Daley Farms in 2022 for allegedly conspiring with Winona County Board members Marie Kovecsi, Chris Meyer and Greg Olson to deprive Daley Farms of its right to a fair hearing in its quest to receive the variance. The lawsuit was dropped in March 2023. MADISON, Wis. (AP) A man accused of firebombing an anti-abortion office in Wisconsin last year has agreed to plead guilty to a federal charge of damaging property with explosives. Online court records show Hridindu Roychowdhury, of Madison, filed a signed plea agreement Monday in the Western District of Wisconsin. He will face up to 20 years in prison but prosecutors have agreed to recommend the judge reduce his sentence because he has accepted responsibility for the crime. A judge is set to consider whether to accept the agreement at a hearing on Dec. 1. According to court documents, someone broke a window at the Madison office of Wisconsin Family Action on May 8, 2022, six days after news outlets reported that the U.S. Supreme Court was set to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The reports sparked abortion rights supporters to mount protests across the country. Two Catholic churches in Colorado were vandalized in the days leading up to the Madison firebombing. And someone threw Molotov cocktails into an anti-abortion organizations office in a suburb of Salem, Oregon, several days later. The U.S. Supreme Court did indeed overturn Roe v. Wade a little more than a month later, putting Wisconsin's 1849 ban on abortion back in play. A Dane County judge this past August ruled that the state's ban doesn't apply to medical abortions, prompting Planned Parenthood to resume offering abortions in the state weeks later. Someone threw two Molotov cocktails through the broken window, setting a book case on fire, and spraypainted If abortions aren't safe then you aren't either on the office's outside wall. Firefighters extinguished the fire. Investigators pulled Roychowdhury's DNA as well as two other people's DNA from the Molotov cocktails and the broken window. DNA that investigators pulled from a half-eaten burrito that Roychowdhury threw away matched one of the profiles. Court documents do not say whether investigators have used the two unknown DNA profiles to identify anyone. Police arrested Roychowdhury at Boston International Airport in March 2023. He had a one-way ticket to Guatemala, according to prosecutors. Roychowdhury's attorneys, Joseph Bugni and Alex Vlisides, didn't immediately respond to an email Tuesday seeking comment. This story has been updated to correct that Roychowdhury has agreed to plead guilty rather than pleading guilty and a judge will decide whether to accept the plea at the Dec. 1 hearing rather than sentence him then. On 21 November authorities in Mexicos Chihuahua state indicted a suspect for the murder of journalist, who was killed five days previously. End of preview - This article contains approximately 400 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options On 21 November Brazils environment minister,, was summoned to an agriculture committee session in the lower house of congress to defend her ministrys actions in the face of criticisms from conservative lawmakers. End of preview - This article contains approximately 397 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options On 21 November Costa Rican authorities detained four suspected gang members accused of manufacturing and trafficking the synthetic drug fentanyl. Analysis: These are the first arrests in Costa Rica associated with the powerful opioid, which is driving record overdose deaths in the US an issue which dominated recent talks between Mexicos President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and US President Joe Biden. It also follows the first-ever seizure of fentanyl in Honduras earlier this month. While the dismantling of the first fentanyl trafficking organisation in Costa Rica is a key victory for local authorities, it will heighten security-related concerns in the country which continues to face record homicides linked to the presence of international drug trafficking organisations (DTOs). The surge in violence remains a source of significant pressure on President Rodrigo Chaves who, in May, was compelled to replace his security minister and introduce a new security plan. In a press conference with the countrys deputy health minister Mario Urcuyo and Attorney General Carlo Diaz , Security Minister Mario Zamora said the arrests were made during a joint operation between Costa Rican authorities and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He said raids took place in three residences in Tibas canton and San Sebastian district, both in San Jose province, and La Guacima, a district of Alajuela province. and Attorney General , Security Minister said the arrests were made during a joint operation between Costa Rican authorities and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He said raids took place in three residences in Tibas canton and San Sebastian district, both in San Jose province, and La Guacima, a district of Alajuela province. According to the local media, authorities seized 1,100 fentanyl pills which were targeted towards the international market as well as domestic consumption, in particular, bars in San Jose and Escazu municipalities, San Jose province. Those arrested were reportedly Costa Rican and Colombian nationals although further details have yet to be provided. The dismantling of the criminal organisation comes as Honduran police discovered a haul of 493kg of fentanyl on 8 November. According to the Honduran police, the drugs were hidden in a shipping container which had arrived from the UK in the port of Puerto Cortes. The police statement said it was unclear whether Honduras was the final destination. The latest arrests come as violence continues to soar in Costa Rica. On 17 November the local media reported figures from Costa Ricas judicial investigation agency (OIJ) which registered 807 homicides so far this year, a significant increase on the 654 recorded for the whole of 2022 a surge in violence blamed on DTOs. In a further sign of the unprecedented violence facing the country, on 15 November the US Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (Ofac) designated Gilbert Hernan de Los Angeles Bell Fernandez , a Costa Rican drug trafficker who has played a significant role in Costa Ricas recent transformation into a major narcotics transit hub. , a Costa Rican drug trafficker who has played a significant role in Costa Ricas recent transformation into a major narcotics transit hub. According to the Ofac statement, Bell, who was arrested by Costa Rican authorities in 2015 on drug-related charges, is known not only for the volume of drugs he moves but the violence with which he operates. It describes him as one of the most prolific drug traffickers in Limon province, moving large quantities of cocaine. Looking Ahead: The Chaves government is under particular pressure to address security, with opinion surveys showing that it has become the chief public concern. The latest survey released on 15 November by the Centro de Investigacion y Estudios Politicos (Ciep) of the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) showed that 41.3% of the 1,003 respondents cited it as their chief concern, up from 27.8% in September. When Geoffrey Holt of Hinsdale, New Hampshire died earlier this year at 82, not many people knew he had over $1 million. He wore worn-out clothes. He did not do jobs that paid a lot of money. He rode a bicycle instead of owning a car, and he had a small home. But when he had extra money, he invested it well. One friend said he put money into a mutual fund that held stock in communications companies. This was in the days before mobile phones. Holt told one friend, Edwin Smith, that the money had grown more than he expected. Holt died with $3.8 million. He left all the money to the town of Hinsdale. The town has about 4,200 people and is about 160 kilometers northwest of Boston, Massachusetts. In Holts will, the document he left when he died, he said the money should be used for education, health, recreation and culture. Steve Diorio is one of the town leaders. He called the money a tremendous gift. No determination has been made yet about how the town will use the money. However, it seems as if the money will go into a special fund, and organizations can submit their ideas for approval. Some have suggested upgrading the town hall clock, others have talked about repairing civic buildings or buying a vote-counting machine. Kathryn Lynch is another town leader. She said Hinsdale will use the money carefully, or frugally, which is how Holt lived. Smith, Holts friend, said he seemed to have what he wanted, but he didnt have much. Holt would ride his bicycle or his lawn mower around town. He would go to a small store to buy a newspaper and he would sit on the lawn mower reading it or watching cars pass. When he was younger, he worked as a manager for a grain production center. After the center closed, he did small jobs around town helping people fix things in their homes or teaching teenagers how to drive. He did not have a television, and his friend said his home was not in perfect condition the legs of his bed made holes in the floor. But Smith said Holt studied financial magazines and carefully decided how to invest his money. He also liked reading about history some of his favorite topics included World War II and learning about the auto manufacturer Henry Ford. He also enjoyed listening to classical music and had a record collection that included works by Handel and Mozart. Holts sister, Alison, is 81. She lives in California. She said she knew her brother invested his money and did not like to spend wastefully. She said their father passed the ideas along to his children. Alison said her brother had a learning disability called dyslexia, so he had trouble reading and writing. But he was very smart in certain ways. She thought that Geoffrey was disappointed he could not succeed in education, so maybe socking away all that money was a way to compete. The Holts grew up nearby in Springfield, Massachusetts. Geoffrey Holt went to Marlboro College in Vermont and also served in the U.S. Navy. Neither Geoffrey nor his sister had any children. Alison said her brother did not need a lot to be happy. But she is sad he never used the money to indulge himself a little bit. Im Dan Friedell. Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based a story by the Associated Press. ________________________________________________ Words in This Story tremendous adj. very large or great fund n. an amount of money that is meant to be used for or serves a specific purpose civic adj. related to a city or town frugally adv. being careful not to spend money when it is not necessary; the careful use of money sock away v. (phrasal, informal) to save a supply of something, often money, by putting it in a safe place indulge v. to permit yourself or someone else to do something purely for the pleasure of it We want to hear from you. How would you use the money if you were a town leader? A recent opinion study says a big majority of parents in the United States believe their child is performing at grade level in school. However, standardized tests show far fewer students are on track. Polling company Gallup and the nonprofit group Learning Heroes released the public opinion poll this month. Report cards show students school performance. Parents depend on them to understand their childs progress. But report cards do not show all of a students performance, researchers say. Without more knowledge about their childs learning, parents might not seek extra support for their children if it is needed. Bibb Hubbard is the founder and president of Learning Heroes, based in Arlington, Virginia. Report cards are the number one indicator that parents turn to to understand that their child is on grade level, yet a grade does not equal grade-level mastery. But nobodys told parents that. In the Gallup poll, 88 percent of parents believed their child was on grade level in reading, and 89 percent of parents believed their child was on grade level in math. However, a federal survey of school officials said half of all U.S. students started the last school year behind grade level in at least one subject. One report examined grade point averages and test scores in the state of Washington over the past 10 years. Researchers found grades increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many school systems had eased their grading policies because of the difficulties students were experiencing. Some of those policies could still be in place, masking the lack of learning that is showing up in standardized tests, but not in grades, said Dan Goldhaber. He is a co-author of the report and the director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, in Arlington, Virginia. School systems across the U.S. have spent federal aid money from the COVID-19 crisis on programs to get students back on track. For example, school systems have introduced more tutoring and summer academic programs. But Goldhaber said fewer students attended these programs than the system had planned. For programs like summer school or online tutoring, the family chooses whether to participate. What we see is that its only a fraction of the students that are invited or eligible that are actually participating, he said. The Gallup poll findings suggest that parents might not know they could be taking action to help their child's school performance. The poll involved more than 2,000 parents of students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Half the respondents said they have discussed their child's academic progress with a teacher. Among parents who know their child is behind grade level in math, the percentage greatly increases: 74 percent have spoken with a teacher. Report cards do not give enough information, said Sarah Carpenter. She is director of The Memphis Lift, an education activist group in Tennessee. A report card is really tricky in our opinion, because you're just looking at A's and B's and C's, Carpenter said. She said a report card does show whether a childs reading or math level is where it should be and added that parents do not understand this. Trenace Dorsey-Hollins is a parent and founder of another activist group Parent Shield Fort Worth in Texas. She said if educators spoke to parents about issues like reading and grading, families would be better able to support their children. She said, Parents dont know what they dont know. So, we dont want them to blame themselves. But now that you have the information, use the information to demand better and ensure that your child and all children get exactly what they need. Im Dan Novak. Dan Novak adapted this story for VOA Learning English based on reporting by The Associated Press. Quiz - Researchers: Report Cards Unclear About Students Knowledge, Learning Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz _________________________________________________ Words in This Story on track phrase happening in a way that is expected or planned poll n. a study in which researchers as people their opinions about a subject to learn what people think about it indicator n. a sign that shows the condition or the existence of something mastery n. being able to do something expertly grade point average n. a number that shows the average grade that a student has in school mask v. to hide something tutor v. to teach either one or a small group of students outside of normal class time participate v. to take part in something fraction n. a part of a whole eligible adj. able to join something or receive something The U.S. Thanksgiving holiday is symbolized by its traditional food, a large bird we call a turkey. But turkey is certainly not from Turkey. In fact, its English name is based on one big mistake. We could say it is a case of mistaken identity. Lets set the record straight. The word Turkey has meant the land of the Turks since ancient times. The word turkey as it refers to the bird first appeared in the English language in the mid-1500s. The misunderstanding over the word happened because of two similar-looking kinds of birds. There is an African bird called the guinea fowl. It has dark feathers with white spots and a patch of brown on the back of its neck. Portuguese traders brought the guinea fowl to Europe through North Africa. This foreign bird came to Europe through Turkish lands. So, the English thought of the bird as a Turkish chicken. When Europeans came to North America, they saw a bird that looked like the guinea fowl. This bird was native to the North American continent. Orin Hargraves is a lexicographer, someone who writes dictionaries. Hargraves explains what happened. Some Europeans saw an American turkey, thought that it was the guinea fowl, which at that time was called the turkey cock, and so gave it the same name." Hundreds of years later, we continue to call this North American bird turkey, even though it has no connection at all with the country Turkey, or even with Europe. But English is not the only language with interesting -- and even questionable -- names for this North American bird. The Turkish, for their part, call turkey hindi, the Turkish name for India. The reference to India probably comes from the old, wrong idea that the New World was in Eastern Asia. The French call it dinde, a name that also connects the bird to India. DInde means from India in the French language. Turkey has similar names in several other languages. So, what do they call this North American bird in India? Well, in the Hindi language, turkey is tarki. But wait, theres more. In Portuguese, the same bird is called Peru, after the South American nation. Thanks to our VOA Learning English Facebook friends, we have a few more names for turkey to share with you. The Vietnamese word for the bird is ga tay or western chicken. Our Facebook friend Nguyen Duc explains that local chicken is smaller than western chicken. A Facebook friend in Myanmar explained that the Burmese word for turkey is kyat sin. The name translates to elephant chicken in English. That animal looks like a big chicken, Zaw Myo Win explained. The Dari language name for the bird, "fel murgh" also translates to elephant chicken. Abdulla Kawer explained to us that here in Afghanistan this name represents the size of this delicious meal. He adds that he thinks the descriptive name elephant chicken is better than a country name. Im Ashley Thompson. Ashley Thompson and Anna Matteo wrote this report for Learning English. It was first published in 2017. How do you say 'turkey' in your language? Let us know in the comments section! ________________________________________________ Words in This Story symbolize - v. to represent or express a particular idea or quality translate - v. to change words from one language into another language WASHINGTON, D.C. Nebraska District Court Judge James E. Doyle IV was honored with the 28th Annual William H. Rehnquist Award for Judicial Excellence during an event at the Supreme Court of the United States Nov. 16. U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts presented the award to the retired Dawson County jurist in front of about 200 honored guests and dignitaries. In his remarks, Roberts spoke of former Chief Justice Rehnquists devotion to his family and shared examples of his humility, characteristics shared by Doyle. One of the highest judicial recognitions in the country, the Rehnquist Award honors a state court judge who demonstrates the outstanding qualities of judicial excellence, including integrity, fairness, open-mindedness, knowledge of the law, professional ethics, creativity, sound judgment, intellectual courage and decisiveness. While introducing Doyle, Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Heavican highlighted the judges contributions to the citizens of Nebraska, especially those in rural communities, which included improving interpreter services, establishing problem-solving courts, and increasing public and media access to live court proceedings. Judge Doyle responded to challenges by utilizing technology and implementing new ideas to find better ways to provide justice to court users, Heavican said. He was always mindful of the need to provide judicial resources where most needed. In his remarks, Doyle, who retired in August, spoke about his commitment to increasing resources for people living in rural Nebraska. He shared stories about two participants who inspired him to improve probation services and expand drug treatment and mental health courts to all populations across Nebraska. Doyle established the first rural drug court in 2006 and served as chair of the Nebraska Supreme Courts Committee on Problem-Solving Courts. Under his guidance, problem-solving courts were established in every judicial district in Nebraska. The problem-solving court programs not only restore individuals to purposeful and meaningful lives, the programs build and strengthen communities where the programs are operated, he said. LINCOLN At least one Nebraskan cheered Gov. Jim Pillens executive order last week requiring state employees to return to working in their offices by Jan. 2. One Lincoln businessperson reached out to State Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, expressing optimism about being able to fill job vacancies because people would be leaving state employment because of the order. Meanwhile, hundreds of unhappy state workers flooded phone lines and email inboxes at the Nebraska Association of Public Employees, the largest state employee union, in the days following the Nov. 13 directive. Justin Hubly, NAPE executive director, said employees working from home full or part time called with worries about the orders effects on their lives and families. Others raised concerns about co-workers quitting and leaving already short-staffed state agencies struggling to find replacements. People are definitely asking if they should start looking for another job, he said. Were concerned that this is going to cause such a huge problem for agencies. We believe this decision is shortsighted. The struggle developing over Pillens return-to-office order mirrors struggles going on nationally, as governments and other employers are pushing to undo COVID-era work arrangements and are meeting resistance from employees who want to continue the flexibility of remote work. The conflicts are playing out in the midst of an extremely tight labor market, which has given workers more leverage. Nebraska maintains one of the nations lowest unemployment rates. The preliminary October rate was 2.2%, up 0.1% from September but down 0.5% from one year earlier, according to the Nebraska Department of Labor. A survey released in May by the Arlington, Va.-based firm Eagle Hill Consulting showed that nearly half of federal, state and local government employees said they would look for another job if their agencies reduced remote work flexibility. About 60% of remote and hybrid government workers said their job satisfaction would decrease if they were required to return to the office and 44% said their productivity would decrease. But Pillen defended his order last week, arguing that the most effective way to run state government is to have people in the office, where they can communicate with each other face to face and build workplace culture and engagement. He said he has gotten support for his action. Commonsense Nebraskans are very, very excited and proud that they have a governor thats commonsense, that is requesting that everybody thats a public servant in Nebraska comes to work like all the rest of Nebraskans are, he said. I dont believe in doing it from home. Individual state employees will have to make decisions about staying in their jobs based on whats best for them, Pillen said. But he said having workers in the office uses tax dollars most responsibly. Along with returning to the office, Pillens order requires state employees to work 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Surveys done by the Governors Office show that getting all state employees back to the office may not be easy. The surveys were sent out in August to the states code agencies, meaning those run by the governor. Those 18 agencies account for the bulk of state employees. Other state agencies include those administered by independent boards or commissions and those that fall within the legislative or judicial branches of government. Based on the surveys, at least 20% of the 12,494 full-time equivalent code agency employees are working full-time remotely or working hybrid schedules, in which they spend some days in the office and some days at home. In some agencies, half or more employees are working full or part time remotely. All of the employees in the Fire Marshals Office work remotely at least part of the time, and the field staff spends 100% of its time out of the office. The Department of Banking and Finance said 62 of its 63 positions can work at least one day every two weeks from home, while the Department of Natural Resources reported that 72 of 104 employees work hybrid schedules. Natural Resources Director Tom Riley said the agencys telework policy was updated last year, when the agency moved into a new office with 30% less square footage. He pointed to an internal survey that found agency employees reported the same level of engagement with their work whether they were in the office full time or part time. The Department of Environment and Energy has 55% of its employees working one or two days a week from home. The survey said six field staff members work from home full time, saving taxpayers the cost of rent because there is no state office close. About 53% of Revenue Department employees work full or part time from home. At the Department of Health and Human Services, the states largest agency, 1,145 employees work hybrid schedules and 418 work full time remotely. The agency said it has no in-office work spaces assigned to remote workers, although there are some hoteling spaces that can be used if one of those people needs to be in the office. The Department of Administrative Services said it adopted a telework policy in 2021 to provide space for another state agency in the same building. It said the policy saved the state about $500,000 a year by having about 20% of its employees working full or part time from home. The surveys also showed that several agencies had telework arrangements in place well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The previous policies were adopted to provide flexibility to employees and meet the agencys needs. The Department of Agriculture said its field staff has always worked remotely to provide efficient customer service across the state, while additional staff members have been working hybrid schedules since the pandemic. In some focus areas, we have seen productivity increase during work-from-home times due to fewer interruptions than in the office, the agency said. It remains to be seen how many state employees will end up working in the office full time. Pillens order provides for some exceptions to be authorized by agency heads. The exceptions include employees whose assigned work hours fall outside the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday schedule. They also include situations in which office space is unavailable without additional cost. Exceptions can be made for employees who move away from their original office location and no reasonable in-office arrangement is possible, as long as the employee remains in Nebraska. In addition, exceptions can be made to sustain critical operations in a business area with a workforce shortfall. The last exception is subject to the governors approval. The order requires agencies to measure and track productivity for employees who are given exceptions and requires agencies to regularly report the status of their workforce. Pillen did not provide evidence to show whether remote and hybrid work arrangements had affected productivity and effectiveness. People commenting on news stories online about the announcement offered their own perspectives. I WFH (work from home) and get a lot more done. Less distractions and never late to work due to traffic or weather, said one commenter under the name kkwarcinski. But Dan Allen backed the governor. He said state employees just this year got the highest salary increases in 35 years. Is it too burdensome to ask them to come to work in offices we pay for? And Steve Tillman asked: Was there an economic feasibility study done on this? As a taxpayer, I want the workers working in an environment that gives me the most work for my $. Governing by executive order is not governing. Our best Omaha staff photos & videos of November 2023 The President of the United States has been assassinated by a gunman in Dallas, Texas. John F Kennedy was hit in the head and throat when three shots were fired at his open-topped car. The presidential motorcade was travelling through the main business area of the city. Texas Governor John Connally was also seriously injured when one of the unknown snipers bullets hit him in the back. The men were accompanied by their wives, who were both uninjured. Vice-president Lyndon Johnson who was following in a different car has been sworn in as the new US leader. The presidential party was driving from Dallas airport to the city centre when witnesses said shots were fired from the window of a building overlooking the road. The president collapsed into Jackie Kennedys arms, who was heard to cry Oh no. Seconds later Governor Connally was also hit. Dallas Times Herald photographer Bob Jackson was in the motorcade close behind the Democrat leaders car and heard the shots as it entered Dealey Plaza. As I looked up I saw a rifle being pulled back from a window it might have been resting on the windowsill I didnt see a man, he said. Mr Kennedys limousine was driven at speed to Parklands Hospital immediately after the shooting. The president was alive when he was admitted, but died at 1400 local time (1900 GMT) 35 minutes after being shot. Police and Secret Service agents stormed the School Book Depository building moments after the shots were fired and recovered a rifle with a telescopic sight, said to be the assassination weapon. The mood of shock in the US was echoed by Senator Mike Mansfield in an emergency forum of the senate. This is terrible I cannot find words, he said. Courtesy BBC News In context A little under an hour after the shooting, a policeman approached Lee Harvey Oswald, believing he recognised his description. The policeman was shot dead. Oswald was arrested almost immediately under suspicion of murder. Shortly afterwards, he was also charged with the assassination of President Kennedy. The suspect was never tried as he was shot dead himself two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The Warren Report, commissioned to investigate the presidents death, concluded he had been killed by shots fired by Mr Oswald from the School Book Depository building. But conspiracy enthusiasts quickly turned the assassination into one of the most disputed events in modern history, with theories ranging from claims it was an elaborately staged suicide to the driver being the murderer. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa accused Israel of war crimes and acts tantamout to genocide in Gaza during a virtual meeting of leaders of developing countries including Russias Vladimir Putin and Chinas Xi Jinping late yesterday. Ramaphosa also condemned Hamas for its attack on Israeli civilians that sparked the conflict and said both sides were guilty of violating international law. The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime, Ramaphosa said at the start of the meeting of leaders and top diplomats from the BRICS bloc of countries. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide. In its attacks on civilians and by taking hostages, Hamas has also violated international law and must be held accountable for these actions, Ramaphosa said. Also joining the meeting were officials from BRICS members Brazil and India, and from Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, which are set to join the bloc in January. Ramaphosa chaired the extraordinary meeting and made the opening remarks because of South Africas position as current chair of BRICS. Putin said in his address that there was a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, but blamed the crisis on what he called failed diplomacy by the United States. All these events, in fact, are a direct consequence of the U.S. desire to monopolize mediation functions in the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, Putin said. He called for a cease-fire in Gaza, the freeing of hostages and the evacuation of civilians from the Gaza Strip. Putins comments were in line with Russias cautious approach to the Israel-Hamas war. He proposed last month that Moscow could mediate in the conflict due to its relationships with both Israel and the Palestinians, and has previously blamed the war on failed U.S. efforts. Putin has condemned the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants on towns in southern Israel that sparked Israels offensive in Gaza, now in its seventh week, while warning Israel over its response and against blockading the Gaza Strip. Russia and China are leading voices in BRICS, which has largely cast itself in recent years as standing against the perceived dominance of the West in global affairs. But it has struggled to adopt united policies or positions on many issues because of the differing priorities of the five current members. The meeting came a day after Chinas top diplomat hosted the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Indonesia in Beijing, their first stop on a tour of U.N. Security Council permanent members. The meeting underlined Chinas longstanding support for the Palestinians and its growing geopolitical influence. India, which also wants to be seen as a leader of the developing world, has long walked a tightrope between Israel and the Palestinians and historically has close ties to both. South Africa has been fiercely critical of Israel over the war in Gaza and had already filed a request with the International Criminal Court to investigate it over alleged war crimes. South Africa has for years compared Israels policies in Gaza and the West Bank with the apartheid regime of racial segregation. South Africas Parliament is to vote on a motion today [Macau time] to shut down the Israeli Embassy and sever diplomatic ties with the country over the war. Israel on Monday recalled its ambassador to South Africa for discussions. At yesterdays meeting, Ramaphosa called for the International Criminal Court to urgently initiate prosecutions against those responsible for what he termed war crimes on both sides. He said South Africa also wants to see an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, the opening of humanitarian corridors, the release of civilian hostages, dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians and the deployment of a U.N. force to monitor a cease-fire. GERALD IMRAY, CAPE TOWN, MDT/AP The Secretary for Administration and Justice, Andre Cheong, believes the issue of underperforming civil servants can be addressed via performance appraisal. At a recent parliamentary session, lawmaker Becky Song raised concerns about the approach of some civil servants, including a tendency to avoid making mistakes by doing minimal work or exhibiting laziness. She said allowing underperformance to go uncorrected would cause a handful of diligent workers in each department to become overloaded, while others were disengaged. Acknowledging this situation, Cheong said most civil servants were hardworking and law-abiding, as the last three years of disease control and prevention measures proved. However, others tended to fulfil only basic responsibilities. These civil servants meet their basic responsibilities and do not oppose management. However, they tend not to contribute above and beyond to their work, Cheong said. In this case, they cant be dismissed [because they have not made mistakes]. However, the senior official believes civil service workplace attitudes can and must change from top to bottom, meaning supervisors must discourage this attitude. Cheong believes the appraisal system can help modify this culture. Several lawmakers asked about the implementation of an accountability system for civil servants. Cheong affirmed the importance of investigations into serious flaws and issues (a requirement at law) but noted the need for flexibility. He cautioned against an overly punitive approach, such as demotions for minor errors or transgressions, because that could deter civil servants from taking risks at the expense of building a diligent and responsible team. In the coming year, the government will review laws and regulations governing civil servants obligations and work ethic to provide greater clarity. During the review, proposals will also be made to improve appointment criteria by adding the requirement of specific accreditation through specialized training. Training will also be provided to civil servants, targeting misconduct and corruption. Laws and regulations will be reviewed to close loopholes as well, the secretary added. Laws will also be updated to meet UN anti-corruption provisions, and civil servants may be subject to criminal prosecution based on the severity of their transgressions. Lawmaker Pang Chuan asked about the appraisal system for public entities. Ng Wai Han, director of Public Administration and Civil Services Bureau (SAFP), said a dedicated committee had appraised 49 public entities. Suggested enhancements have been distributed to the entities, which must use the feedback to plan improvements. The director said 25 of 114 people had been promoted to superintendent positions, after completing leadership training. The training program has been co-organized by the SAFP and the University of Macau since 2020. The fifth iteration of the training program, currently on offer, has been restructured. This years program was initiated in response to problems identified, which were discussed during the course. The proposed solutions are to be implemented in training attendees workplaces. This years training has 25 participants and is set to end on Jan. 15, 2024. The number of civil servants was also discussed at the parliament session. During the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Chief Executive restricted the number of civil servants to 38,000. Currently, the city has 34,286 civil servants, a decrease from 35,101 in April 2020 according to Cheong. Despite the cap, Cheong said the head of the government has discretion to increase the workforce following requests from the relevant departments. The purpose of this discretion is to avoid overloading departments that have more responsibilities. However, public entities are encouraged to utilize the horizontal relocation mechanism, which facilitates the reappointment of civil servants to same-level positions in other departments or bureaus, to ease workforce shortages. The review of special careers in the civil service needs to be conducted with sensitivity, considering the need for balance and fairness. The governments aim is to decrease the number of special careers to improve internal mobility among civil servants. To date, the government has reformed 26 bureaus or entities. It is confident in capping the number of bureaus or entities at 75, currently standing at 73 across the government. Five task forces, such as the Financial Intelligence Office and the Cotai hospital preparatory office, have already or are due to undergo changes. The Personal Data Protection Office and Public Assets Supervision Planning Office have been transformed into permanent entities, without undergoing name changes. Senior Hamas officials said yesterday that an agreement could be reached soon in which the militant group would release hostages and Israel would free Palestinian prisoners. Israel, the United States and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, have been negotiating for weeks over a hostage release that would be paired with a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and the entry of more humanitarian aid. Similar predictions of a hostage agreement in recent weeks have proven premature. Israels army is widening its operations across northern Gaza, where they battled Palestinian militants yesterday in the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp, the territorys largest. The military said forces are preparing the battlefield in the Jabaliya area, just north of Gaza City, and have killed dozens of militants in recent days. Troops discovered three tunnel shafts where fighters were hiding and destroyed rocket launchers, it said. It wasnt possible to independently confirm details of the fighting. A strike on a nearby hospital killed 12 people on Monday as Israeli troops and tanks battled militants outside its gates. Israel says Hamas uses civilians and hospitals as shields, while critics say Israels siege and relentless aerial bombardment amount to collective punishment of the territorys 2.3 million Palestinians after Hamas Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office has announced meetings of three key decision-making bodies late yesterday to discuss the issue of the release of hostages. A statement released by Netanyahus office said the special war Cabinet will convene at 6 p.m. (early today, Macau time), followed by meetings of the broader Security Cabinet and then the full Cabinet. It gave no further details, but the various bodies are required to approve important government decisions. The meetings come as Hamas officials say a deal could be reached soon on a cease-fire and swap of Palestinian prisoners for hostages held by the Islamic militant group in Gaza. On the return of the hostages, we are making progress, Netanyahu said in a meeting with Israeli soldiers. I dont think its worth saying too much, not even at this moment, but I hope there will be good news soon. Meanwhile, an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon has killed four members of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, a Palestinian official and a Lebanese security official said. The strike yesterday occurred in the village of Chaatiyeh near the Mediterranean coast, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal military information. Lebanons state-run National News Agency confirmed that four people were killed in a vehicle but did not give any further details. The Palestinian official said the four were members of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas military wing. The Lebanese security official said the four were members of Hamas, without saying if they were from the military wing. The Israeli military did not comment on the strike. Hamas has a large presence in Lebanon, which is home to tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them living in the countrys 12 refugee camps. An Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed two journalists for Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV who were reporting on violence along the tense Lebanon-Israel border, Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary and the station said yesterday. The Pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV identified the journalists as correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari. The station, which is politically allied with the militant Hezbollah group, said the journalists were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports. Last week, the Israeli government blocked Al-Mayadeen TV from broadcasting in Israel. The state-run National News Agency said Israels military struck the outskirts of Teir Harfa and the nearby village of Majdal Zoun. More than 12,700 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 4,000 people are reported missing. Some 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the Oct. 7 attack, and around 240 were taken captive by militants. MDT/AP In the first ten months of this year, the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM) invested nearly 1.30 billion in investment proposals, exceeding the annual investment amount of 2022. IPIM data released yesterday showed the institute received 292 new investment proposals and assisted 213 of them, creating 805 jobs. More than 40% (91 projects) of the assisted investment projects are related to the 1+4 industries, according to the bureau. During the pandemic from 2020 to 2022, IPIMs Investors One-stop Service received 820 new investment proposals. The institute provided assistance for 552 of these proposals, resulting in a cumulative investment of more than MOP 2.1 billion and creating over 1,600 jobs. 4,300 business talks in the first 10 months In the MICE events organized/coordinated by IPIM, the bureau boasted that it connected with 392 exhibitors and received 57 investment proposals. 23 projects were successfully implemented. Covering different industries such as big health, high technology, cultural tourism and trade and environmental protection, the completed investment projects were proposed by investors from Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs), the Chinese mainland and other places. To assist enterprises in business expansion, IPIM aims to organize business matching sessions at MICE and trade events that bring together global industry representatives. In the first ten months this year, IPIM facilitated more than 4,300 business collaborations. Local firms in Hengqin Since the establishment of the administrative authority of the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Co-operation Zone in Hengqin in September 2021, the government has been working on promoting Macao-Hengqin investment to attract international resources. IPIM launched the Cross-border Business Registration Services in the Cooperation Zone to assist Macau enterprises in registering their businesses in the Cooperation Zone. As of the end of October 2023, IPIM had completed 37 business registrations for Macau investors. Additionally, IPIM has received 44 investment projects referred by the Cooperation Zone and has assisted 16 to establish Macau operations. Support was also provided to 155 enterprises and institutions, rendering assistance 238 times through the IPIMs China-PSC Business Compass services in the first ten months of this year. Several projects included the introduction of PSC wine products into mainland chain stores using Macau as an entry point. LV North Korea told Japan yesterday that it will launch a satellite in the coming days in violation of U.N. resolutions, its apparent third attempt to fire a military spy satellite that drew immediate rebukes from its neighbors. North Korea is eager to operate spy satellites to deal with what it calls escalating U.S.-led military threats. But its two previous attempts to place a spy satellite into orbit earlier this year ended in failure due to technical issues. Japans coast guard said North Korea notified Tokyo of its plan to launch a satellite sometime between Wednesday and Nov. 30. The notice identified three maritime zones where debris from the rocket carrying the satellite may fall. Two are in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and China and the third in the Philippine Sea, Japanese coast guard spokesperson Kazuo Ogawa said. Ogawa said the areas are the same as the ones North Korea identified for its failed satellite launches in May and August, implying the third attempt would have a similar flight path. North Korea has given Japan the launch information because Japans coast guard coordinates and distributes maritime safety information in East Asia. The Norths notification came a day after rival South Korea warned it to cancel its launch or face consequences. South Koreas military suggested Seoul would suspend a 2018 inter-Korean agreement to reduce tensions and resume front-line aerial surveillance and live-firing drills in response to a North Korean satellite launch. U.N. Security Council resolutions ban any satellite launches by North Korea because they are seen as a cover for testing its missile technology. North Korea says it needs a space-based surveillance system to better monitor its rivals, but South Korea says the Norths launches are also designed to enhance its long-range missile program. Since last year, North Korea has carried out about 100 missile tests as part of its efforts to modernize its arsenal of nuclear-capable weapons targeting the United States and its allies. Many foreign experts say the North still has the few remaining technological hurdles to overcome to possess functioning nuclear-tipped missiles. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida asked officials to coordinate with other countries to ask North Korea to cancel its launch. He said Japanese destroyers carrying Aegis-class radars and PAC-3 missile defense systems on Okinawa have been activated to stand by in case of an unexpected development. Even if the purpose is to launch a satellite, if ballistic missile technology is used, it is a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions, and this is a matter that greatly affects the safety of the people, Kishida said. During trilateral phone talks, senior officials from Japan, South Korea and the U.S. affirmed their cooperation to strongly request North Korea to cancel its launch plan, according to Japans Foreign Ministry. South Koreas Foreign Ministry separately urged North Korea to withdraw the launch plan immediately, saying that Seoul will sternly deal with an illegal provocation by North Korea in close coordination with Washington and Tokyo. After the second launch failure, North Korea had vowed a third attempt would take place in October, but failed to follow through. South Korean officials said the delay was likely because North Korea is receiving Russian technology assistance. North Korea and Russia are pushing to expand their relationships in the face of separate confrontations with the West North Korea over its nuclear ambitions and Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. Foreign governments and experts say North Korea is seeking Russian technologies to enhance its nuclear and other military capabilities in return for supplying conventional arms to support Russias war efforts in Ukraine. Such transfer would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban any weapons trading to and from North Korea. I will just say that our position is very clear, which is that Russia should not supply North Korea with technology that would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday. North Korea should not supply Russia with arms that it can use to prosecute its war of aggression against Ukraine. Both Russia and North Korea dismissed the alleged weapon transfer deal as baseless. But when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un travelled to Russia in September, President Vladimir Putin told state media that his country would help North Korea build satellites. In the first launch attempt, the North Korean rocket carrying the satellite plunged into the ocean soon after liftoff. North Korean authorities said the rocket lost thrust after the separation of its first and second stages. After the second launch failure, North Korea said there was an error in the emergency blasting system during the third-stage flight. South Korea retrieved debris from the first launch and said the satellite wasnt advanced enough to perform military reconnaissance. But some civilian experts said the North Korean satellite was still likely capable of detecting big targets like warships so it could be militarily useful for the North. MARI YAMAGUCHI & HYUNG-JIN KIM, TOKYO, MDT/AP Chinas first cat clone from somatic cells using domestic equipment and reagents was born on Sunday in Qingdao, Shandong province, proving that the country has established a self-sufficient cloning process, according to researchers. The cat, an orange male weighing 141 grams, was birthed by a surrogate female after a 69-day pregnancy. Researchers from Qingdao Agricultural University partnered with Qingdao PanGene Technologies Co on the project. Zhao Minghui, an associate professor in the universitys college of life sciences, said that previous animal cloning processes had relied heavily on imports from the United States and facilities provided by Japanese and European suppliers. The birth of the new cat proved that China has a complete industrial chain in the field of animal cloning, Zhao said. The research, which began in 2020, faced challenges involving imported reagents during pig cloning attempts. Over time, the team successfully transitioned to domestic reagents, with additional support from a partner in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, to enhance their experimental facilities. From the end of October to the beginning of November this year, the team succeeded in cloning 20 pigs of a local breed using homegrown equipment and reagents. Cloning cat somatic cells demanded more resources in terms of facilities, reagents and materials compared with pig cells, Zhao said. Yuan Bao, a professor at Jilin University and president of Jinlin Association for Laboratory Animal Sciences, said the success in cloning a cat was not only a big breakthrough in Chinese animal cloning technology but also represented advancement in high-end equipment manufacturing, precision machining and chemical engineering in China. The achievement will boost confidence in domestic equipment, reagents and material suppliers and help generate more high-end homegrown products in the biomedical sector, Yuan said. He said these will be more widely applied and will enhance Chinas position and influence globally. China Daily The Court of Final Appeal (TUI) has upheld the sentences of a physician and seven other private clinic staff members, the Office of the President of TUI has noted in a press statement. The case involved the performance of several plastic surgery procedures for aesthetic purposes, which neither the clinic nor the staff were licensed to conduct. According to the TUI statement, citing findings from the court case, the clinic started operating on Feb. 27, 2013. From April 2013, the clinic began offering liposuction surgery and fat transplant breast augmentation services. In 2015 and 2016, the clinic hired staff members to provide these services and administer anesthesia, despite none of the staff possessing the required licenses from the Health Bureau (SSM) to provide nursing services. During the investigation, it was also discovered the clinic was concealing the conduct of unlicensed activities via forged documents and providing false information to the SSM. After the SSM discovered the situation in September 2017, the clinic was ordered to suspend operations for 90 days. This suspension was extended Dec. 28 of the same year. However, the physician continued to provide services at the same clinic in breach of the suspension order. The Public Prosecutions Office (MP) filed charges against the eight defendants and the Criminal Court of the Court of First Instance (TJB) adjudicated the case. The court found sufficient evidence that the eight defendants committed crimes of usurpation of duties as well as several other charges related to the delivery of forged documents, and providing false information to the SSM. Based on the weight of evidence and witness testimony, the TJB found the physician guilty of crimes of usurpation of functions, forgery of documents and disobedience. The physician was sentenced to prison sentences of one year and three months, one year and six months, and six months, respectively for each crime. The physician was suspended for three years upon the condition of paying a MOP200,000 contribution to the Macau government within six months from the date of the final ruling. Other staff members were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 7 months to 1 year, and suspended for 2 years upon the condition of paying a MOP30,000 contribution to the Macau government within six months from the final ruling. The leaders of Britain and South Korea will seek to strengthen trade and defense ties between their countries during a state visit to the U.K. by President Yoon Suk Yeol. Yoon landed at Stansted Airport near London yesterday [Macau time]. Britain hopes his formal three-day visit will help cement an Indo-Pacific tilt in its foreign and trade policy. During that time, the president will be treated to both royal and diplomatic pomp, including a ceremonial welcome with military honor guards, an opportunity to address Parliament and a state banquet hosted by King Charles III at Buckingham Palace. Hes also scheduled to hold talks with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak focused on trade, technology and defense. The two countries will officially launch talks on an upgraded free trade agreement to replace their current deal, which largely replicates the arrangements the U.K. had before it left the European Union. Britain has launched trade talks with several countries since leaving the EU in 2020, though it has finalized deals only with Australia and New Zealand. The U.K. also has joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP, an Asia-Pacific trade bloc that includes Japan and 10 other nations. Sunak and Yoon are expected to sign an agreement covering cooperation in defense and technology, including artificial intelligence. Britain hosted the first international AI Safety Summit this month, and South Korea intends to hold a follow-up event next year. Britain also plans to invest in South Korean semiconductor manufacturing as part of international efforts to diversify the supply of the key computer components. Many of the advanced chips are produced in Taiwan, and the coronavirus pandemic and an increasingly assertive China have heightened concerns about future supply. The two leaders are also set to boost defense cooperation, including joint naval patrols to enforce U.N. sanctions on North Korea. Sunak said agreements made during Yoons visit would drive investment, boost trade and build a friendship that not only supports global stability, but protects our interests and lasts the test of time. MDT/AP If you have something special to celebrate, I recommend doing so at Lallande, the French-inspired restaurant on Monroe Street from Bloom Bake Shop owner Annemarie Maitri and her husband, Mark Pavlovich. No special occasion coming up? A meal at Lallande will turn any evening into a fine-dining event. Just make your reservation far enough ahead. I tried to book a table for three a week in advance to celebrate a friend's birthday on a Thursday night and could only get a 4:30 p.m. or 8 p.m. slot, and picked the earlier time. There was one other party in the intimate, elegant restaurant then, and our engaging server took a lot of time explaining Lallande's menu and concept. Our meal started with an unusual amuse bouche, large round slices of raw kohlrabi with an interesting miso chili sauce on the side. The tarte flambee ($18) was a generous starter, but was quickly upstaged by stronger subsequent dishes. The rectangular, whole wheat flatbread, was topped with fabulous roasted squash, kale, goat cheese, pepitas and sumac. The flatbread glistened from homemade creme fraiche. The leeks in vinaigrette ($12) showcased that vegetable by honoring a French dish, and it was delicious in an understated way, topped with parsley and chives. Marias Brussels sprouts ($13) also got a subtle treatment with a hot bacon dressing that was lighter than it sounds. The sprouts were small enough to be left whole, and cooked perfectly al dente. The dish is named for Maria N. Vue of Xiong's Tasty Produce, a Dane County Farmers' Market vendor, and it will come off the menu soon, when Maria stops harvesting Brussels. The scallops Coquille St. Jacques ($42) were fabulous, the highlight of the meal. Instead of being served with mashed potatoes like they are elsewhere, here they were buried in a creamy brandy-infused mushroom sauce, with parsley, gruyere and breadcrumbs. A chopped kale salad came on the side. The croque monsieur ($18) was stuffed with ham and Grand Cru cheese, which is like gruyere, and topped with a layer of broiled Grand Cru and Mornay sauce. A lot of effort goes into this sandwich. Maitri said they toast the bread on a flat top, smear it with the Mornay sauce, grill the meat, put it together, warm it in the oven, then put it in the broiler to crisp the top. "So, it hits three heat sources," she said. It was served with fantastic, thin, homemade potato chips. The French martini ($13) with vodka, Chambord and pineapple had a plump raspberry suspended in the center of a dainty martini glass. The cocktail was strong and crisp. While we were finishing dinner, Maitri stepped away from the dramatic open kitchen and told us a little bit about herself and the restaurant named for her grandmother, Lorraine Lallande deGravelle. Maitri, the daughter of a military fighter pilot, was born in Japan and grew up all over the place. She moved to Madison from Baltimore because her children's father was from Wisconsin. Maitri said she came here "kicking and screaming," and now can't imagine living anywhere else. When she reflects on her childhood, she pictures her mother and father together in the kitchen. She said it's where she saw them shine, "and they gave that to me." They took care of people, whether it was family or guests, and that's what she's trying to do at the restaurant, Maitri said. Lallande will be closed Jan. 1-10 while Maitri, Pavlovich and her three children, two in college and one at West High School, are in France. Last year they were in Paris, and this time they'll be in Marseille and Leon. Maitri called the trip "work and pleasure." The restaurant, with floor-to-ceiling windows, opened in August in the former Crescendo Espresso Bar + Music Cafe, and shares a wall with Bloom. The room was packed and buzzing by 6:30 p.m., as my friends and I were looking over the dessert menu. We were interrupted by our server, who brought over a thick, complimentary slice of Bloom's chocolate mocha layer cake for my friend's birthday, and it was big enough for all of us to share. That cake was not on the dessert menu, but for comparison, a chocolate ganache tart with raspberry coulis was $12. With our bill we were given a wax paper bag of French sable cookies made with almond flour that were sealed with a Bloom sticker. We appreciated that both the cake and the cookies weren't overly sweet. Maitri said it was important to her that the bakery staff feel Lallande is their sister restaurant. She loves the synergy the restaurant has with Bloom's bakers, who make the bread, crackers, cookies and cakes for Lallande. We were also given a postcard with Lallande's logo that our server said restaurant staff would send anywhere in the world, an unusual, charming offer. Maitri said postcards go all over Wisconsin and Illinois, but they've also been sent to India, Australia, Paris and London. "I just feel like we're sending joy, like when we go down on the corner to the mailbox right by Neuhauser (Pharmacy), where we drop them in every night." Once you eat at Lallande, you'll want to spread the word, too. Diner's scorecard Restaurant: Lallande Location: 1859 Monroe St. Phone: 608-733-9150 Website: lallandemadison.com Hours: 4 p.m. until 10 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Last seating at 9 p.m. Prices: Appetizers $8 to $13, sandwiches $18, soup $7, salad $18, entrees $27 to $42, desserts $7 and $12 Noise level: Medium Credit cards: Yes Accessibility: Yes Outdoor dining: No Delivery: No Online ordering: No, but some people call for takeout Drinks: Wine, beer and curated cocktails Gluten-free: A lot of flexibility Vegetarian offerings: Many Kids menu: No, but can accommodate Parking: Street parking Service: Great Bottom line: This French-inspired bistro on Monroe Street has quickly become of one of Madison's finest restaurants. A federal grant will help Fitchburg hire five more police officers, the city announced this week. Fitchburg was awarded the U.S. Department of Justice COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) Hiring Program grant for the first time in more than 25 years and was one of eight cities in Wisconsin awarded a grant, with none of the other seven gaining more than two officers, Chief Alfonso Morales said at a news conference Tuesday. The grant will provide Fitchburg with $625,000 to assist with funding five officers over three years. Morales said the goal is for the five to be neighborhood officers, because the COPS hiring program is designed to reduce crime and advance public safety through community policing. These neighborhood officer positions will advance our community policing strategies and bolster our partnerships with community organizations, like the ones that provided their support through this grant, Morales said. Through this collaborative partnership, we will seek contemporary approaches to address long-standing community crime concerns, public safety issues and quality of life matters. All while continuing to deepen trust with the community and reduce violent crime. The 2022 annexation of portions of the town of Madison the city of Madison absorbed other portions of the town and population growth has pushed Fitchburg past 34,000 residents, and it now is one of the lowest-staffed mid-size police departments in the state, Morales said. Fitchburgs growth is projected to push it past 40,000 residents in the next decade, he said. The Justice Department is committed to providing our law enforcement partners with the resources they need to keep our communities safe, U.S. Attorney Timothy OShea said in a statement. The Fitchburg Police Department has been a strong partner in getting firearms out of the hands of criminals and reducing violent crime and drug trafficking. This grant will allow Fitchburg to hire additional officers to better combat violent crime and keep Fitchburg safe. Were in agreement with a Wisconsin judges order instructing a former chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to hand over documentation from her work advising Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, on possible impeachment of a current justice. Were written on the impeachment itself before, and we stand behind those statements. This is a little different. Patience Roggensack is the only one of the three handpicked judges advising the speaker on the issue to thus far duck public scrutiny of her work. Vos himself has turned over some 20,000 pages of documents as public records. Jon Wilcox, a former justice, has said he didnt produce a report on the question, but did advise against impeachment. A third former justice, David Prosser, turned over his records from the work. Like Wilcox, he said impeachment shouldnt be taken up at this time. Roggensacks silence is impossible to miss. By ignoring her responsibility she is effectively placing herself above Wisconsins open records laws, a stunningly defiant position for someone who once served on the states highest court. Theres no plausible way for Roggensack to claim she isnt aware of the attempts to open up her records. Aside from voluminous press coverage, a process server went to her home with a subpoena. Judge Frank Remington, who issued the order, was told an elderly man opened the door to Roggensacks home, claimed he didnt know anyone by that name, and closed the door. That claim is exceedingly difficult to believe. Most people dont allow complete strangers into their homes, let alone allow them to open the front door when someone knocks. The fact Roggensacks attorney isnt returning phone calls or emails about the issue contributes to the overall impression of a former justice simply hiding and hoping she can wait out the demand for open records. Remingtons order gives Roggensack 30 days to comply. He cited Wisconsins long and storied tradition on the responsibility of open government. That tradition is under threat, though. The Legislature has not yet addressed the gaping loophole the Supreme Court opened in the open records law last year. By saying governmental bodies can duck the penalties associated with open records lawsuits if they hand over the documents before a case is settled, the court eviscerated the law. It gave bad actors a plain incentive to delay and defy legitimate requests, something Roggensack now seems to be taking clear advantage of. Open records are unequivocally a necessity. There is no way for a population to keep tabs on how its government behaves unless it can see the documents that underpin decisions. Thats true regardless of whether the officials involved want those documents to become public. When you act at the request of a public official on a question of public importance, there can be no legitimate argument for a blanket withholding of documents. There can be genuine concerns about redactions within the documents to avoid irreparable harm to innocent people, but the documents themselves are public records and must be treated as such. Everyone in the current fracas has seemed to recognize that fundamental fact, with the glaring exception of Roggensack. Theres no question the others understood their responsibility under the law. They acted accordingly. For a former justice, someone who purportedly would understand granular details of the law and the full implications of defying it, to take a stance so contrary to Wisconsins public records requirements is concerning. Roggensack must hand over the records. If she wont because of the laws requirement alone, perhaps shell recognize a courts authority to compel such action. The summer of 2020 was enlivened by Black Lives Matter protests that followed the shocking murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd, who was not armed, was arrested for allegedly paying for goods with a counterfeit $20 bill. After worldwide protests against police violence, it was easy to imagine that police departments around the nation would, at the very least, work hard to change cultures sodden with machismo, infused with implicit bigotry and seduced by military-style hardware. More than three years later, though, very little has changed. Black and brown men are still disproportionate victims of police violence. According to The Washington Post, Black Americans are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans. Latinos are also killed disproportionately by police. Last week, Randall Adjessom, a 16-year-old Black teen, was shot dead in his Mobile, Alabama, home by police officers carrying out a pre-dawn raid. Yes, the boy aimed a gun, but he was awakened in the early morning by the noises of strangers in his home. Who knows whether he heard any warnings from police? Who knows whether he was frightened out of his wits but not yet wide awake? He cant tell us. More important, why did Mobiles narcotics officers believe it necessary to show up before dawn with a SWAT team? You know, SWAT those heavily armed, trigger-happy cops who are trained to respond in life-or-death scenarios. The narcotics officers were executing a warrant to look for marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Police Chief Paul Prine acknowledged that nothing of huge significance was found in the home. The subject of the warrant, an 18-year-old relative of the dead teen, was not even present. This is sickening. Another Black teenager is dead as a result of our foolish war on drugs, a war that stretches back 50 years to the presidency of Richard Nixon but has no end in sight. Police departments still find it only too easy to use overwhelming force to target small-time drug dealers, even at the risk of civilian lives. Police officers also exhibit an implicit bias that sees Black and brown men as more threatening than white ones. As the Post notes, half of the people shot by police are white, but they comprise 62% of the U.S. population. Black Americans comprise only 14%, but they account for about 24% of those killed by police. Mobile officials have released no details that suggest there was any reason to conduct an early morning raid at that home nothing that suggests the 18-year-old target of the investigation was a major player in the drug trade. Marijuana? As one angry Mobile City councilman noted, We entered that place like we were going to find a murderer that was holding a gun at somebodys head. Adjessom is the third Black person killed by Mobile police in the last couple of years. Jawan Dallas was killed in police custody in July, apparently after he was struck by a police Taser. He was stopped by officers who were searching for a burglary suspect. They claim Dallas was a threat because of his strange movements in his vehicle. In March 2023, Kordell Jones apparently jumped out of a back window holding (but not aiming) a legally purchased rifle to escape SWAT officers carrying out a no-knock raid an atmosphere notorious for police violence. He was immediately shot daead even though he was not the target of the raid. The police chief blamed Jones brother, the target of the raid, for his death. In the wake of the outrageous shooting of Adjessom, Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson hit the right notes. In a press conference, he expressed condolences to the family and called for a pause on pre-dawn raids. He also announced an independent investigation into police actions at the home. Still, thats not enough. The Mobile Police Department, like so many around the country, needs a top-to-bottom change in a culture that places a target on Black and brown men. Unless that can be accomplished, more Black and brown Americans will die unjustly at the hands of police. WASHINGTON The White House voiced concern Tuesday that Iran may provide Russia with ballistic missiles for use in its war against Ukraine, a development that likely would be disastrous for the Ukrainian people, a U.S. national security official said. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby noted Iran already provided Russia with unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, guided aerial bombs and artillery ammunition, and may be preparing "to go a step further in its support for Russia." He highlighted a September meeting in which Iran hosted Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to show off a range of ballistic missile systems, sparking U.S. concern. Meanwhile, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius vowed Tuesday to keep supporting Ukraine, pledging further military aid worth $1.4 billion. Lincoln County Magistrate has seven applicants The Fifth Judicial District Magistrates Commission received seven applications for the position of Lincoln County Magistrate to replace Judge Brendan Ash, who was recently appointed as Camas County Magistrate, effective Jan. 2. The applicants, in alphabetical order: Carl I. Dillman, civil chief deputy prosecutor, Gooding County Lee J. Fisher, chief deputy prosecutor, Elmore County Cheri L. Hicks, deputy public defender, Blaine County Bryan V. Norton, attorney at-law, Borton-Lakey Law & Policy, Meridian Adam J. Ondo, civil deputy public defender, Twin Falls County Michael J. Seib, deputy prosecutor, Jerome County Justin R. Walter, attorney at-law, Hall Angel & Associates, Idaho Falls A public comment period is open through Dec. 15. Questionnaires are available from the Trial Court Administrators office at the Theron Ward Judicial Building, 427 Shoshone St. N., Twin Falls; at the Lincoln County District Court, 103 S. Birch St., Shoshone; or online at http://www.5thjudicialdistrict.com/. Also:Idaho U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch and U.S. Rep. Russ Fulcher were among the more than 100 congressional members who signed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court last week authored by Americans United for Life, opposing the Biden Administrations efforts to increase access to chemical abortions. Political commentator, radio host and author Glenn Beck will be the featured speaker at the Ada County Lincoln Day Dinner on Feb. 15 at the Boise Centre. A VIP reception is set for 5 p.m., followed by a banquet dinner and presentation at 7 p.m. For more information, call 208-949-7133, email info@adacountylincolnday.org, or go online to adacountylincolnday.org. The deadline to register to vote and affiliate as Republican to participate in the March 2 Idaho Republican Presidential Nominating Caucus is Dec. 31 November is the time of year when our hearts and minds turn to gratitude when celebrating Thanksgiving. Expressing sincere gratitude gives our body a boost of dopamine, the happy chemical in our brain. One thing that everyone craves in the workplace is appreciation. Everyone, regardless of their title or position, wants to feel like their work adds value to the organization. It is everyones job to show appreciation to their coworkers. Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, shared a few principles on giving appreciation. Principle 1: Dont criticize, condemn, or complainWe are human, which means we have emotions. Our emotions are what cause us to criticize, complain, and condemn. There will be times when our emotions get the best of us. However, instead of complaining about your boss or coworker, try to understand them. Try to figure out why they do what they do. This breeds empathy, tolerance, and kindness. Principle 2: Give honest and sincere appreciationThe only way to get anyone to do anything is by making the other person want to do it. We need to inspire others to want to do the job. The most profound principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. Kind words can be a miracle to another person daily by giving honest appreciation. Charles Schwab, the first president of the American steel company, hired by Andrew Carnegie with a salary of $1 million, said: I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. When employees feel appreciated by their managers, they are more productive. Four guiding principles when showing appreciation in the workplace: Not everyone feels appreciated in the same way: The first core principle to understand is that employee appreciation is not one-size-fits-all. People respond differently, and it is essential to build relationships to learn what type of appreciation the other person responds to. Get to know your coworkers and supervisors. Learn how they feel appreciated. Words of praise only work for some: Words of affirmation are the most commonly used language of appreciation, but over half of employees value different types of appreciation. Others feel appreciated with an unexpected cup of coffee or gift card to the local coffee shop. In acts of service, this person responds well to others who help them without being asked. Appreciation isnt just a top-down process: While manager-driven employee recognition is powerful and necessary, its also important to acknowledge everyones responsibility to create a culture of appreciation at work. Rather than relying solely on your company leaders to power employee appreciation, your organization should create opportunities for peer-to-peer appreciation. Appreciation is most impactful when communicated regularly, delivered personally, and perceived as authentic: Appreciation at work is about something other than checking an item off the to-do list. Its about expressing genuine gratitude and making your employees feel seen, heard, and valued. And the best way to accomplish this is to communicate appreciation consistently, personally, and authentically. I learned a long time ago that when someone pops into your mind, you need to pause what you are doing and call them, stop by, or send an email or text message. Everyone is battling with things we know nothing about, and too often, the natural response is, I am fine. Kind words given with sincerity will make a world of difference to the receiver. I have a favorite poem by Frank Herbert Sweet, titled Before It Is Too Late, that describes this eloquently: If you have a tender message, Or a loving word to say, Do not wait till you forget it, But whisper it today; The tender word Unspoken The Letter never sent The long-forgotten messages, The wealth of love unspent For these some hearts are breaking, For these some loved ones wait: So show them that you care for them Before it is too late. In this season of thankfulness and gratitude, make it a habit to show sincere appreciation to others. Sen. Chuck Winder, the leader of Idahos Senate, is a good and patient man. I often disagree with him on issues coming before the Senate, but I dont question his ethics, temperament and dedication to serving the public. He has watched a decline in civility in the ranks of the Senate and recently took action to bring some of the instigators up short. He deserves the support of fellow senators and of the wider public. Legislative business suffers when there is continual internal sniping among the members. In Nov. 6 letters, Winder reprimanded Sens. Scott Herndon, R-Sagle, and Glenneda Zuiderveld, R-Twin Falls, for taking potshots at other senators. He also called out Sen. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa, for attacking and degrading other senators and the public. Zuiderveld and Lenney were stripped of committee leadership positions. It should not have been a surprise that the three conducted themselves in a disgraceful manner. They won primary races against reputable incumbents in 2022 with ugly, truth-deprived campaigns. The IFF really scored with the election of these three to the Senate. They all get a 100% rating on IFFs education index by doing IFFs bidding on every education measure coming before the Idaho Senate. To get a 100% rating, you must oppose almost every education funding bill, while supporting measures that would require taxpayers to pay for private and religious schooling. Quote Zuiderveld has drawn an opponent in the 2024 GOP primary who might be able to explain to her the horrors of communism. Alex Caval knows firsthand. ... She has done well in Twin Falls and will be a marvelous replacement for Zuiderveld. The three senators even voted against legislation funding their own community colleges North Idaho College, the College of Western Idaho and the College of Southern Idaho. Loyalty to the IFF takes priority over support for their communities. The three also scored near the top of IFFs freedom and spending indexes. It is usually a given that legislators will support those who put their lives at risk to serve in the U.S. military. Yet, the IFF disapproved of funding services for Idaho veterans so the three naturally voted against our veterans. In addition to their steadfast support for IFF on the Senate floor, the threesome has stood up for IFFs goals in their local communities. Herndon proudly supported the appointment of Brandon Durst as superintendent of the West Bonner County School District. He gave cover to Durst as that former IFF employee tried to methodically destroy the districts schools. Luckily, the school patrons woke up and kicked Durst out. The IFF has come out strong against the Open Primaries Initiative, so the threesome must also oppose it. Zuiderveld kind of misfired on the issue, claiming on social media that the initiatives sponsor, Reclaim Idaho, is a communist PAC. Her tweet had a screenshot of contributors to Reclaim Idaho, including Rich Stivers, a well-regarded Twin Falls Republican whose father served as House GOP Speaker back in the 1980s. She implied that Rich, a Vietnam veteran who put his life at risk fighting the communists, was a commie supporter? Ignorance must be blissful. I must come to Richs defense. I served in Vietnam and had access to communist propaganda. I can attest that the commies never supported open primary elections. In fact, the only elections they supported were ones where the party bosses controlled who got placed on the ballot. If officials departed from the party line, they were severely disciplined. That doesnt sound like Reclaim Idaho, but it does have a definite flavor of the IFF-supported Dorothy Moon branch of the Idaho GOP. Zuiderveld has drawn an opponent in the 2024 GOP primary who might be able to explain to her the horrors of communism. Alex Caval knows firsthand. Her family escaped communist Romania and immigrated to the U.S. in 1988. She has done well in Twin Falls and will be a marvelous replacement for Zuiderveld. The other two in the threesome will have a rematch with their 2022 opponents and may also be replaced. Woodward and Agenbroad both say they will be prepared to defend against the smears this time around. Chuck Winder may be able to rest easy by this time next year. A friend of mine dropped by unannounced the other day. We had a wonderful visit, reliving old times, talking about how much Idaho has changed over the years. We spoke of friends who are no longer with us, good times, hardships we have endured, and the benefits and drawbacks of getting older. We spoke at length about family values, agreeing we both support strong moral principles, good education, the opportunity to provide a way for our children to have ensure a good life. That is a conversation not just in Idaho but shared across America. Eventually our discussion turned to politics and the upcoming legislative session starting in January. My friend asked me, in all sincerity, to explain why Idaho politics has become so divisive. Why have politicians become so argumentative and disrespectful of one another? As a politician, I took to heart what I was hearing, not with a grain of salt, but with a heaping spoonful of embarrassment for how Idahos Legislature is perceived. Being the first to admit that politics, politicians, and ideologies in the U.S. and Idaho are becoming more extreme, I find it alarming that some politicians feel the need to adhere to a party platform and that adherence appears to be more important than listening to and representing the people of Idaho. There is no longer a focus for working on behalf of the people who elected us. Quote Many politicians do not understand that morality or values cannot be legislated. Values differ from individual to individual. It is not to say one persons values are better than or worse than anothers; just different. It seems we spend our time arguing amongst ourselves over matters better left to the family or individual instead of focusing on important issues like ensuring that all Idahoans have access to affordable health care, free public education, and the liberty to follow his or her own convictions without fear of reprisal. Many politicians do not understand that morality or values cannot be legislated. Values differ from individual to individual. It is not to say one persons values are better than or worse than anothers; just different. There is disagreement over what books should be in a library or who can sue whom for reasons that are, truthfully, just plain punitive in nature. During all this bickering, we forget to acknowledge and provide support to those people and organizations that help everyday Idahoans. I feel improving reimbursement rates for Medicare/Medicaid providers, long lasting and meaningful tax relief, funding childcare across the state as well as care for our population of people with developmental disabilities would be a better use of our time. We need to find ways to encourage medical professionals to move to Idaho instead of passing legislation discouraging them from practicing in the State of Idaho. My friend asked me, If we (the politicians) were to put our differences aside, what would we have? My answer was this: A group of people who agree and want the freedom to provide a better life for themselves and their children. People who desire the freedom to choose their health care professionals and the type of care they need. Those that believe in having access to an education system that will embolden their children to think critically, not singularly. As an elected official, I exemplify integrity, dignity, and civility. Anger and frustration lead to roadblocks. Name-calling and being disrespectful are not productive. Common sense is necessary in our decision making, remembering that no matter how thin or blurry a line might be, there are always two sides. Collaboration and understanding from all involved will ensure Idaho remains the Gem State. Bangkok, Thailand Myanmar anti-coup fighters were battling the military for control of a state capital, both sides said on Tuesday. Clashes across Myanmar have entered a fourth week, sparked by a surprise offensive against the military by an alliance of ethnic minorities along a swathe of territory near the China border. The offensive has galvanised other opponents of the military, with clashes spreading to the east and west in what analysts say is the biggest challenge to the junta since it seized power in 2021. Karenni Nationalities Defence Force (KNDF) and ethnic minority Karenni Army (KA) fighters were in very intense fighting with the military in Loikaw town, KNDF chairman Khun Bedu told AFP. KNDF, KA and Peoples Defence Force fighters were in control in many areas, he said, without giving details. He said the military was fighting from positions at the main police station and other government buildings. Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said anti-coup fighters had attacked Loikaw prison on Tuesday, without giving details. Loikaw is normally home to around 50,000 people. The United Nations has evacuated most of its staff from Loikaw due to aerial bombardment of the town and active fighting in urban areas, a spokesperson told AFP on Tuesday. They did not say when the evacuations had taken place or how many staff had left. The National Unity Government dominated by lawmakers ousted in the militarys 2021 coup said that a total of 228 people UN and other NGO staff and their families had been evacuated. Anti-coup fighters also launched drone attacks on two airports in northern Sagaing region, hundreds of kilometres from Kayah, junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said. He did not say whether the attacks had caused casualties or damage. Fighting has raged since October 27 after the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and Arakan Army (AA) launched attacks on the military near the northern border with China. Last week the AA launched fresh attacks on the military in western Rakhine state. Access to the affected areas is impossible while fighting rages, making it difficult to confirm casualty tolls from the various clashes. At least 75 civilians including children have been killed and 94 people wounded in the fighting, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing initial reports. Stampede kills 31 during Congo army recruitment drive Brazzaville, Congo A desperate crush to get through a stadium gate for an army recruiting event saw at least 31 people trampled to death in the Republic of Congo capital, officials said Tuesday. A prosecutor said he had opened an investigation into the disaster when several thousand youths descended on the Michel dOrnano stadium on Monday night hoping for one of 1,500 army posts. Security officials said the dead were left after people tried to push through one gate. They said some tried to force the gate open while others tried to jump over a wall into the stadium. The government revised down a toll of 37 dead to 31 but officials said many of the 145 injured were in serious condition. A 24-year-old man, who declined to be named, told AFP how people were pushing to get through the gate, sparking a stampede. There were people injured far worse than me, said the survivor, who dislocated his foot. Another survivor, who also requested anonymity, said: There was a row of people in front of me. The people fell. I fell on top of them and other friends fell on top of us. He said he lost conscious and only woke up in an ambulance. Several videos on social media appeared to show dozens of bodies in a city morgue. Others showed injured people being admitted to hospitals in Brazzaville. The army said in a statement read on national television that the recruiting drive had been indefinitely suspended. Tresor Nzila, head of local rights NGO, called for a full investigation and to hold the Congolese government responsible for not evaluating the risks of a call-up. The Congolese government is incapable of creating other employment opportunities, he said. The defence and security forces have become the main job providers. The Republic of Congo, which is also known as Congo-Brazzaville to distinguish it from its larger neighbour the Democratic Republic of Congo, is an impoverished country of about five million people despite its rich oil and gas reserves. Youth unemployment is about 42 percent, according to the World Bank. Congo-Brazzavilles state prosecutor Andre Ngakala Oko said he had launched an investigation. Congo has witnessed similar disasters. Seven people died in a stampede at a music festival in Brazzaville in 2011. And at least 150 people were trampled to death in the capital in 1994 when worshippers crammed into a church to avoid a storm. A congressional leader on Tuesday led the filing of a resolution urging President Ferdinand Marcos Jr to cooperate with the International Criminal Courts investigation into the alleged crimes against humanity committed in the anti-illegal drugs campaign of the past administration. Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr, chair of the House committee on human rights, and 1-Rider Rep. Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez filed House Resolution 1477, to appeal the Marcos administration to extend their full cooperation to the ICC Prosecutor in its investigation of any crimes committed under its jurisdiction. Abante and Gutierrez are both members of the House majority bloc. The resolution noted that the ICCs jurisdiction includes but is not limited to the crime against humanity of murder, committed in the Philippines in the context of the so-called `war on drugs campaign. HR 1477 supports the earlier resolution filed by the Makabayan Bloc which also wants the present government to take part in the ICC investigation on the issue. The timing is not actually a good timing, this is now to correct the perception of the ICC To me, our criminal justice system is still credible, Abante, chair of the human rights panel, told ANCs Headstart. Abante added: I still trust the criminal justice system, so by cooperating with the ICC, we strengthen our commitment to transparency and accountability. He said the resolution, filed alongside 1-Rider party-list Rep. Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez, is also about protecting the human rights of those being investigated. The resolution comes 15 days after the House approved another resolution in defense of the chamber from insinuations of corruption from former President Rodrigo Duterte and as rumors swirl of a rift in the administration UniTeam coalition. In February, Dutertes allies filed a resolution expressing an unequivocal defense of Duterte and the drug war, where law enforcement has acknowledged the deaths of thousands in anti-narcotics operations. That resolution was led by including Pampanga Second District Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was removed as a deputy speaker earlier this month. I still believe in the former Presidents leadership, Abante, a former House minority leader, said, adding cooperation with the ICC shows that we are willing to address allegations head on. Abante acknowledged that there may not be enough support for the resolution to hurdle the committee level and that even if the House adopts it, it will not be binding on the executive branch. Sa akin, I have done my part in asking the Philippine government to extend their full cooperation to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC, he said. The Philippines in 2019 left the ICC, a court of last resort for when national authorities cannot or are unwilling to prosecute crimes against humanity. Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said Tuesday that the proposal needs serious study and stressed that the Philippines is no longer part of the ICC. BAGHDAD, IraqUS fighter jets struck two targets in Iraq early on Wednesday killing five pro-Iran fighters in retaliation for repeated attacks on US troops in Iraq by Iran-backed groups, US and Iraqi sources said. The US military conducted discrete, precision strikes against two facilities in Iraq, US Central Command said on X, previously Twitter. The strikes were in direct response to the attacks against US and coalition forces by Iran and Iran-backed groups, the post added, and come the day after a previous US air strike targeted Iranian-backed fighters in Iraq. An Iraqi security force official said Wednesdays strikes killed five fighters of the Hezbollah Brigades, a pro-Iran group within Iraqs Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization) force. A Hashed official confirmed the death toll. Wednesdays attacks were carried out by US fighter aircraft on two facilities south of Baghdad, a Pentagon source said on condition of anonymity. Hours earlier, a warplane struck the vehicle of Iranian-backed fighters after they had fired a short-range ballistic missile at US and allied personnel, the Pentagon said. It was the first time the United States has announced a strike on Iran-backed forces in Iraq since they launched a flurry of attacks against US targets in response to Washingtons support for Israel in its war to destroy Hamas. Washington has targeted Iran-backed groups in neighboring Syria, however, carrying out strikes on three occasions in recent weeks. Since the Gaza war erupted with a deadly Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, US forces deployed in Iraq and Syria have been attacked at least 66 times, most recently on Monday night, according to Pentagon officials. A former mayor of Cateel town in Davao Oriental was shot dead in his vehicle outside a fast food restaurant in Barangay Buhangin Proper, Davao City on Wednesday, police said in an ABS-CBN report. Giselo Castillones, 67, mayor of Cateel during the 1980s, suffered five gunshot wounds and was declared dead on arrival at the Southern Philippines Medical Center, Davao City police spokesperson Capt. Hazel Tuazon said. Castillones driver, Junie Castro, was injured in the attack, while their female companion at the back of the car was unharmed. The victims had just returned to their SUV after eating when unidentified assailants on board a motorcycle shot them. Authorities recovered five cartridges of a .45 caliber pistol at the crime scene. Checkpoints were put up in various parts of the city to help apprehend the assailants. Pasang Masda transport group president Roberto Ka Obet Martin took a swipe at Manibela president Mar Valbuena on Wednesday, saying the latter had deceived Pasang Masda members from Lardizabal-Tayuman in Manila to convince them to participate in their three-day strike. Martin said he instructed his members to pull out from the Manibela strike, which also claimed participants from the Federation of Jeepney Operators and Drivers Association of the Philippines (Fejodap) and the Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng Tsuper at Operator Nationwide (Piston), which ended their own strike yesyerday. (Valbuena) was engaging in black propaganda to fool other transport members. He even distributed Pasang Masda t-shirts (which were not ours). He just wanted to destabilize the government, Martin told Manila Standard. I do not call (Valbuena) a constructive leader but a destructive one. The government cannot just easily give in to his demands right there and then, he added. I am the (longest and) oldest transport leader here. Before I refused to listen but now I understand why things are like that. The government is trying to listen to us in the transport sector. There have been continuing dialogues. Are they not enough? Martin asked. Seventeen Filipino seafarers were among the foreigners held hostage when Yemens Huthi rebel group seized a cargo ship in the southern Red Sea earlier this week. There were 17 Filipinos according to the manning agency, together with other foreigners, Department of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega said in a television interview. De Vega said the government is paying extra attention to the hostage-taking as it was said to be connected to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas militants. We are alarmed. This is not the first time Filipino seafarers were held hostage (but) this is connected to the war between Hamas and Israel because the ship was targeted because it was allegedly Israeli-owned although the operator was a Japanese company, he said. The Department of Migrant Workers said it already communicated with the families of the Filipino seafarers. We are currently working with the Department of Foreign Affairs, as well as officials of the registered shipping and manning agency of the vessel to monitor the safety and well-being of the 17 Filipino seafarers onboard the ship, and to bring them home safely, the DMW said. De Vega said the DFA is hoping the rebels will not renege on their word that no foreign hostages would be harmed. There is an all of government approach and various government agencies are meeting and working together on this, he said. We will ensure their welfare. The safety of our countrymen abroad is a paramount policy and priority of our government. Just wait and we will find a way to save them, he added. The vessel, owned by an Israeli businessman, had 25 people on board, including the crew hailing from Bulgaria, Ukraine, the Philippines, Mexico and Romania. The Bahamas-flagged Galaxy Leader is operated by Japanese firm, Nippon Yusen K.K. Nippon Yusen has already set up an emergency task force at its headquarters in Tokyo. Huthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that the rebels seized an Israeli ship and took it to the Yemeni coast. Israels military, writing on X, said the hijacking of a cargo ship by the Huthis is a very grave incident of global consequence. A US military official said the seizure of the vessel is a flagrant violation of international law. We demand the immediate release of the ship and its crew. We will consult with our allies and UN partners as to appropriate next steps, the official said. The Bab al-Mandab Strait a narrow pass between Yemen and Djibouti at the foot of the Red Sea is one of the worlds busiest shipping lanes, and carries about a fifth of global oil consumption. The Huthis, declaring themselves part of the axis of resistance of Iran-affiliated groups, have launched a series of drone and missile strikes targeting Israel since October, following a surprise attack by Hamas militants on Israel. Analysts have said the goal of the rebels, who control Yemens capital Sanaa and much of the country, is strategic rather than military as they seek regional and domestic legitimacy. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, after the Palestinian militants killed around 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages on Oct. 7, according to Israeli authorities. The Hamas government in Gaza says 13,000 people have been killed in Israels relentless aerial bombardment and ground operations in the territory. With AFP Panel studies 3 bills asking Marcos to back probe on drug war A joint panel in the House of Representatives on Wednesday began considering resolutions urging President Marcos to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its investigation of alleged crimes against humanity committed during President Rodrigo Dutertes bloody war on drugs. The President has so far rejected calls to cooperate with the ICC, which would put his predecessor, the father of his vice president and his ally in the last campaign, in the crosshairs of the investigation. The joint committees on justice and human rights are expected to consider two resolutions calling for cooperation with the ICCHouse Resolution 1393 filed by the Makabayan bloc and HR 1477 filed by Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abate Jr. and 1-Rider party-list Rep. Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez. But during Wednesdays meeting, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said he filed a third resolution that seeks to determine whether the ICC has jurisdiction over the country, even though Duterte withdrew from the ICC in March 2018. It is essential that we first establish and confirm the verity of the following factual and legal parameters with respect to the subject House resolutions, Lagman told the committee. No less than the Supreme Court on July 22, 2021, categorically ruled that the ICC has jurisdiction over the commission of covered crimes filed against President Duterte and others [] Considering that the ICC prosecutor has jurisdiction to investigate former President Duterte and his co-respondents, pursuant to world order and the rule of law, the concerned agencies of the Philippine government must perforce cooperate with the ICC investigators, he added. In response, the House committees on justice, and on human rights agreed to defer deliberations on the subject and request the attendance of resource persons who can provide inputs to the committee discussions. Abante, who filed HR 1477, said cooperation with the ICC was an opportunity to show that domestic processes work. I still trust the criminal justice system, so by cooperating with the ICC, we strengthen our commitment to transparency and accountability, Abante, chairman of the committee on human rights, told ANCs Headstart. About two weeks earlier, the House approved a resolution in defense of the chamber against insinuations of corruption from former President Duterte. In February, Dutertes allies filed a resolution expressing an unequivocal defense of Duterte and the drug war, which law enforcement agencies acknowledge has killed thousands of suspects in anti-drug operations. That resolution was signed by former President and current Pampanga Second District Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was removed as a deputy speaker earlier this month amid talk of a rift in the ruling coalition. On Dutertes initiative, the Philippines left the ICC, a court of last resort for when national authorities cannot or are unwilling to prosecute crimes against humanity. Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said Tuesday that the proposal needs serious study and stressed that the Philippines is no longer part of the ICC. Senator Imee Marcos opposed the resolutions calling for cooperation with the ICC, noting that her brother, President Marcos, has repeatedly said the court has no jurisdiction in the Philippines. The President said several times we will not submit to the ICC because we are an independent country with our own justice system, Senator Marcos said. Senator Ronald dela Rosa, who led the bloody war on drugs as Dutertes police chief, said the resolutions would have no effect unless the President acts on them. These government agencies are taking orders from the President and not from Congress, he said. Cape Verdean teachers will go on strike for two days from Wednesday November 22, due to a lack of agreement with the government on salary adjustments and other issues, a Union leader confirmed. The strike is still on, confirmed Jorge Cardoso, from the National Teachers Union (Sindep), after two other Unions the Santiago Island Teachers Union (Siprofis) and the Democratic Teachers Union (Sindprof) had been in intense negotiations with the Government over the last few days to resolve pending issues and avoid a strike, but without success. The government wants to play games and were willing to treat things seriously, but well never accept a game, said the union leader, indicating that the biggest point of contention has to do with the salary increase for the teaching profession. The teachers want a 35% increase in their basic salary (to 107,000 escudos, around 970 euros), but the government has not accepted this proposal, justifying that it would have a budgetary impact of more than 2.25 billion escudos (20.4 million euros). Jorge Cardoso guaranteed that the teachers are determined to continue the struggle until the last consequences and its not just tomorrow (Wednesday) and the day after tomorrow (Thursday). If the government, in the person of the Minister [of Education, Amadeu Cruz], calls us to sign an agreement, but a closed one, we wont have any problems, well be ready, because we have no interest in creating problems, he said, speaking to the press. The president of Sindep said that he expected more than 90% of the students to join the strike over the two days, estimating that there will be no classes in any educational establishment at all levels from the 1st to the 12th grades. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday November 21 accused Israel of war crimes and genocide in Gaza and called for an immediate and complete ceasefire, as he opened an extraordinary virtual Summit of emerging Brics countries devoted to the conflict. The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the illegal use of force by Israel is a war crime, declared Mr. Ramaphosa in his opening remarks at this meeting of the five-country bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), which is due to be attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinas Xi Jinping. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food, and water to the people of Gaza is tantamount to genocide, Ramaphosa added. We urge the international community to agree on urgent and concrete actions to end the suffering in Gaza and pave the way for a just and peaceful resolution of this conflict, he pleaded, drawing up a list of these proposed actions. In addition to an immediate and complete ceasefire, he called for the deployment of a rapid UN force to monitor the cessation of hostilities and protect civilians. He also called on all countries to show restraint and stop fueling this conflict, in particular by ceasing to supply arms to the parties. For his part, Xi Jinping called for an International Peace Conference to find a just solution to the question of Palestine. South Africa is one of the countries most critical of the massive and deadly Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for the bloody attacks on Israel on October 7 by Hamas, which controlled Gaza at the time. On Friday, Mr. Ramaphosa joined four other countries in requesting an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the war. Pretoria also announced earlier this month that it had recalled its diplomats posted in Israel for consultations. And on Monday, Israel announced the recall of its ambassador to South Africa. At least nine villagers were killed on Tuesday November 21 in a new attack in western Cameroon attributed by the authorities to English-speaking separatist rebels, who have been battling the army for seven years in a conflict that has taken a heavy toll on civilians. At dawn, the attackers stormed the market in the village of Bamenyam, in the Bamboutos department. David Dibango, Prefect of Bamboutos, told state radio CRTV: There are nine dead. I counted nine dead, confirmed a gendarmerie officer, requesting anonymity and attributing the massacre to secessionists. This village in the West region borders the North-West region, populated by the English-speaking minority of Cameroon, a vast, predominantly French-speaking country in Central Africa. Since late 2016, a deadly conflict in the North-West and South-West regions has pitted pro-independence armed groups against security forces, with each side regularly accused of crimes against civilians by international NGOs and the UN. These attacks are relatively frequent in the two regions or on their edges, with the rebels accusing some villagers of collaborating with the State. On November 6, 25 civilians, including women and a child, were killed in Egbekaw, in the North-West, in an assault attributed by Yaounde to the separatists, who executed some victims and burned others. According to CRTV, a woman was among those killed in Bamenyam on Tuesday November 21. Two members of the security forces who were returning fire were wounded, according to the official media, and a number of stores were set on fire. 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: Protesters hold empty containers of anti-retroviral (ARV) medicines during a demonstration over shortages of ARVs, organized by people living with HIV or AIDS, sex-workers, members of the LGBT community, and their supporters, in the port city of Mombasa, Kenya, Thursday, April 22, 2021. Kenyan authorities issued a warning Wednesday about counterfeit HIV prevention drugs being sold in the country saying "their safety, quality and efficacy cannot be assured." Credit: AP Photo-file Kenyan authorities issued a warning Wednesday about the sale of counterfeit HIV prevention drugs in the country, saying their "safety, quality and efficacy cannot be assured." The Pharmacy and Poisons Board said the drugs were in two batches falsely labeled as Truvada, a commonly used HIV prevention drug worldwide. The board said on X, formerly Twitter, that it will take "stern legal and regulatory action" against anyone found trading, distributing, selling or dispensing from the batches. Kenyan police fear that thousands of counterfeits of Truvada could already be in circulation on the market. Around 1.4 million people have HIV in Kenya, according to UNAIDS data in 2022. Of those, 1.2 million are on antiretroviral therapy drugs. Truvada is manufactured by U.S.-based Gilead Sciences Inc., which in January warned that millions of dollars' worth of fake versions of its HIV drugs were being sold in the U.S., posing dangers to patients. But their discovery in Kenya, East Africa's commercial hub, shows the herculean task of tackling fake medicines. Truvada is used in treating HIV and as a preexposure prophylaxis for people at high risk, including those with multiple sexual partners and those who share needles while injecting drugs. Earlier this month, Kenya's National Syndemic Diseases Control Council, a state body charged with coordinating national strategy for HIV and AIDS, raised the alarm that HIV infection rates among those ages 15 to 29 had surged by 61% between 2021 and 2022. Across Africa, health workers have expressed concern about complacency as AIDS treatment improves. 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. 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: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Ahead of the release of the government's review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), the topic taking center stage is the diagnosis of autism. Over one-third of people accessing the scheme list it as a primary disability. NDIS Minister Bill Shorten has flagged changes to NDIS access, shifting the emphasis from diagnosis to the real-world impact of autism on learning or participation in society. He's called for education and health systems to step up and be part of a broader ecosystem of support. "We just want to move away from diagnosis writing you into the scheme," the minister said this week. "Because what [then] happens is everyone gets the diagnosis." Is autism "overdiagnosed" in Australia due to the NDIS, or is it being better identified? What the data really shows Recently reported non-peer reviewed research suggests the NDIS has fueled Australia's diagnosis rates to be among the highest in the world at one in 25 children. The same research reported Japanwith early identification and support in place since the early 1990shas similar rates. It's useful to look at the peer-reviewed data available. A recent screening study we conducted with 13,511 Victorian children aged one to 3.5 years found one in 31 (3.3%) were autistic. This finding was based on data collected between 201318 (before and during the rollout of the NDIS). The United Kingdom reports a prevalence rate of one in 34, based on 20002018 data for 10- to 14-year-olds. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report a 2020 prevalence rate of one in 36 children aged eight. Before the full nationwide rollout of the NDIS, 2020 research based on the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children showed a prevalence rate of one in 23 (4.4%) in 12- to 13-year-oldseven higher than the recently reported paper claiming NDIS was driving up autism diagnosis rates. We're getting better at identification The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children also shows younger children (born 200304) have a higher autism prevalence (4.4%) than older children (2.6%; born between 19992000). Yet, younger children had fewer social, emotional, and behavioral challenges than older children. These findings tell us we are getting better at identifying children with more subtle traits at earlier ages. This is leading to better outcomes. There is growing awareness of the presentation of autistic people (particularly girls, woman and gender-diverse people) who have historically missed out on diagnosis in childhood due to a lack of understanding of their "internalized" presentation, leading to "masking" and "camouflaging" their differences. They may do this until the demands of life exceed their capacity to cope, leading them to seek a diagnosis. This has contributed to the overall percentage of autistic participants accessing the NDIS. Diagnostic overshadowing Another reason for the rise of autism diagnosis is a phenomenon known as "diagnostic overshadowing". This is a tendency to explain all differences in a person based on their primary diagnosis. In the past, many autistic people were diagnosed only with intellectual disability or misdiagnosed with intellectual disability. As knowledge of autism has improved, more people were correctly diagnosed as autistic or as both autistic and having an intellectual disability. The result? A clear change in the prevalence rates of these two disabilities. A US study conducted between 2000 and 2014 found the trend of autism diagnosis was on the rise, while the diagnosis of intellectual disability had declined. If the prevalence of autism was truly on the rise, rates of intellectual disability would remain static as rates of autism rose. We see a similar trend of people accessing the NDIS between 2017 and 2023 based on NDIS data. Autistic participants rose by 6% (29% to 35%) from 2017 to 2023, while participants with intellectual disability dropped by 20% (36% to 16%). This suggests we are not only correctly diagnosing autism as the primary disability, but we may also be reducing co-occurring disability that can significantly impact day-to-day life. This functional focus was the original intention of the NDIS and the purpose Shorten and NDIS review co-chairs have said they want to return to. A diagnostic ticket to the NDIS Current eligibility to access the NDIS is based on permanent disability, which substantially impacts the individual's everyday activity. (Children from birth to nine years old with any developmental concerns or differences can access the Early Childhood Approach, an arm of the NDIS based on needs not diagnosis.) The National Disability Insurance Agency (the NDIA, which administers the scheme) currently interprets "severity" levels for autism from the diagnostic manual to determine funding. Severity levels range from "requires support" (level one), to "requires very substantial support" (level three). However, the diagnostic manual used by clinicians says, "[] descriptive severity categories should not be used to determine eligibility for and provision of services; these can only be developed at an individual level and through discussion of personal priorities and targets." This means NDIA eligibility criteria for the scheme excludes needed, meaningful, support for children receiving "level one" diagnoses. As a result, some clinicians have been accused of "manufacturing" level two diagnosis and "rorting of the system" to ensure NDIS eligibility. Challenges change over time NDIS access and funding should not be based on diagnostic levels; it must be based on individual needs. To make the fundamental shift, Shorten and the NDIS review co-chairs are foreshadowing that access to the NDIS should not be deficits based. The NDIA will need to educate and train its staff in a holistic approach, focusing on what autistic people can achieve with appropriate support in place. If we invest in early supports, autistic children are less likely to require as many supports as they age. This is a good thing for the financial sustainability of the NDIS, which was designed as an insurance scheme and not a welfare system. Australia is at the forefront of identifying autism early, consequently improving children's and families' quality of life. Our rates of early diagnosis should be celebrated, not demonized. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 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: New data shows that births rose in the first half of 2023 in states where abortion bans came into effect following the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022. States with bans had an average 2.3% rise in the fertility rate compared to states where abortion remained legal, according to an analysis of preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That means around 32,000 more births than expected. "We don't always detect signals in these population aggregates because there's a lot of variation when you group everybody together," Alison Gemmill, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, told CNN. "The fact that there is a signal at the population level means that something's really going on. It's pretty strong evidence." Experts note that fertility rates usually don't undergo significant fluctuations. According to Gemmill, who wasn't involved in the new analysis, the 4.5% reduction that occurred in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic was a notable aberration and the largest in decades. So any sizable uptick in births following the fall of Roe v. Wade is significant, experts said. It suggests that as abortions became harder to obtain, more births occurred. The new data also showed that fertility rates rose more sharply in states with longer travel times to the nearest legal abortion providers. For example, 2023 fertility rates rose 5.1% in Texas and 4.4% in Mississippi, the data showed. In terms of demographics, the new research showed that Hispanic women had an especially high uptick (4.7%) in births in the first half of 2023, as did women in their early 20s (3.3%). "[The Dobbs decision] has had a profound impact on birthing people's ability to decide what their family looks like and how they navigate that," Rachel Hardeman, a professor of health and racial equity at the University of Minnesota, told CNN. "All of the material resources necessary for a family to not just barely survive, but to thrive in our society are going to be impacted by their ability to access health care, broadly speaking, and abortion care, specifically." More information: Find out more about abortion rates in the United States at KFF. Copyright 2023 HealthDay. All rights reserved. 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: This non-rotated partial least squares (PLS) tested a contrast comparing general/autobiographical facts and repeated/unique events (1, 1, 1, 1). (a) Average brain score. Error bars are 1 SE of bootstrap estimates. (c) Brain scores shown at each lag (i.e., each TR/1.2 s). Error bars are 1 SE. (b and d) Brain scores with positive saliences shown in warm colors (increased activity for repeated/unique events relative to general/autobiographical) and negative saliences shown in cold colors (reduced activity for repeated/ unique events relative to general/autobiographical). Credit: eLife (2023). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.83645 Researchers have investigated the shared and unique neural processes that underlie different types of long-term memory: general semantic, personal semantic and episodic memory. Their study, published Nov. 21 in eLife, suggests that these memory types all use the same network of the brain, rather than relying on different areas of the brain altogether. This calls into question a previous theory that characterizes general semantic and episodic memory as two distinct systems. Instead, the authors suggest that different long-term memory types could be viewed as a spectrum, where they rely on activating the same areas of the brain at differing magnitudes. Long-term memory can be classified into different categories. One of the most common distinctions is between semantic and episodic memory. Semantic memory refers to an individual's non-personal, general knowledge of the world, while episodic memory concerns the recollection of contextually specific events from their personal past. For instance, the thought "I know that a sauna is very hot, steamy, and relaxing " is an example of a semantic memory, while "I remember winning a dare of who could stay longest in the sauna. It was a Friday night and we celebrated with a large glass of cucumber water," is an example of episodic memory. This distinction has been called into question in recent years. Previous research has discovered an overlap between the neural correlates of semantic and episodic memory. Neural correlates refer to the specific patterns of brain activity that are associated with the creation, storage and/or retrieval of memories and are used to help researchers understand how memories are formed and accessed in the brain. Furthermore, several types of long-term memory exist that do not neatly fit into the semantic-episodic distinction. For example, personal semantics includes knowledge of personal facts (for example, "I have a sauna membership") and summaries of repeated events (for example, "I always start my gym routine with stretches and good music"). As such, personal semantics exists conceptually between the boundaries of semantic and episodic memory; it is personal, like episodic memories, but detached from the context of how they were learned, like in semantic memories. Some forms of personal semantics, such as autobiographical facts, appear to have neural correlates similar to semantic memory, while others, such as memories of repeated events, have neural correlates more similar to those of episodic memory. "Personal semantics, despite its importance, remains an understudied area of long-term memory," says lead author Annick Tanguay, who conducted the study at the School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Canada, and the University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K. (currently A postdoctoral research fellow at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, United States). "Few studies have directly compared personal semantics to semantic or episodic memory, and even fewer have compared different types of personal semantics to one another or to both semantic and episodic memory. With our study, we were able to do so," added senior author Patrick Davidson, Associate Professor at the School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Canada. Tanguay and colleagues used a neuroimaging technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record the brain activity of 48 participants while they answered yes/no questions designed to involve either memory for general knowledge (semantic memory), unique events (episodic memory), autobiographical knowledge or memory for repeated events (two types of personal semantic memory). The team then used multivariate analysis methods to compare the participants' brain activity across the four memory conditions. Their results indicated that personal semantic, general semantic and episodic memory had both shared and unique neural correlates. When they contrasted four memory conditionsautobiographical facts, repeated events, general semantics, and episodic memorywith a control condition, they identified the shared neural correlates, finding that all four types of memory involved activity within several regions of the brain's "core memory network." On the other hand, when they examined the four memory conditions individually, the team found that they engaged the network to a different degree of magnitude. In the large regions of the brain's medial frontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, and medial temporal lobes, there was a relatively small increase in activity when remembering autobiographical facts compared to general knowledge facts. There was a further, larger increase in activity when remembering repeated events and another small increase when remembering unique events. In other areas of the brain, such as the right frontal inferior gyrus and the superior parietal lobule, the team also observed a progressive decrease in activity in the same order of memory types. Another 106 participants made ratings on the same statements to gain additional insights into what might explain similarities and differences between memory types. In sum, the neural activity in many regions of the "core memory network" seemed to coincide with an increase in personal relevance, an increase in the visual details people perceived in their mind's eye, and whether the memory involved a scene. The authors note, however, that caution must be exercised when drawing parallels based on data from distinct groups of participants. "Rather than looking at a memory type overall, more work needs to be done to understand links between individual pieces of information across the spectrum of memory. For example, what does it mean for someone to know they usually do stretches at the gym and also to remember a specific instance when this happened?" comments co-author Daniela Palombo, Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Canada. "Taken together, our data support a continuum perspective of long-term memory, with different memory types varying in magnitude of activation within a common network of brain regions," concludes senior author Louis Renoult, associate professor in psychology at the School of Psychology, University of East Anglia. "For future studies, it would be interesting to better understand the nature of the elementary components that underlie the similarities and differences between these memory types, such as the perceptual and spatial aspects of these memories and how much self-reflection they involve." More information: Annick FN Tanguay et al, The shared and unique neural correlates of personal semantic, general semantic, and episodic memory, eLife (2023). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.83645 Journal information: eLife 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: Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain For many, Thanksgiving can be a source of anxiety, conjuring up thoughts of hectic travel schedules, long hours in the kitchen and uncomfortable conversation with family members. But as one Texas A&M University researcher explains, the holiday can help fill an important psychological need. According to Dr. Joshua Hicks, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, taking time to be thankful helps us feel a greater sense of meaning in our lives. Holidays like Thanksgiving can boost those feelings, he says. "If you're searching for meaning, just taking a break to feel gratefulfor what you have, for the people around you, whatever it iscertainly helps," Hicks said. By its very nature, the tradition of Thanksgiving works to promote this type of behavior by encouraging people to gather together and take stock of the things that bring them comfort and happiness. "It's an easy way to appreciate things for most people," Hicks says. "You have all these things available for you: Often you have authentic interactions with loved ones, you have good food and even a soothing sense of nostalgia related to previous Thanksgiving gatherings. All of these things are ripe for the experience of meaning." Sources of meaning For the last several years, Hicks has been studying the unique psychological importance of experiences like these, building on previous scholarship about the different ways humans find meaning in their lives. Previously, Hicks said, sources of meaning were broken into three main factors: coherence, or the feeling that one's life makes sense; purpose, which concerns the formation and pursuit of clear life goals; and existential mattering, described by Hicks as "the idea that your actions actually matter in the grand scheme of things." But according to Hicks' research, there exists a separate fourth pathway to meaning, which he has termed "experiential appreciation." As Hicks explains, the ability to savor small moments like a meal, a talk with a friend, or time spent in nature contributes uniquely to a person's overall sense of meaning. "It's a very subtle aspect of meaningit could be as simple as walking across campus and looking at something that you find beautiful," he said. "There's beauty everywhere, and just noticing and detecting it lie at the heart of experiential appreciation." In the context of Thanksgiving, Hicks says experiential appreciation is highly compatible with broader notions of thankfulness or gratitude, making the holiday an excellent opportunity to replenish your sense of meaning. "Gratitude goes hand in hand with that," Hicks said. "It's important to appreciate things, whether it's your experiences, your loved ones, your relationships, that you're alive, all of that is very important." Still, Hicks admits, there are a number of obstacles that may detract from a person's ability to find joy and meaning in the Thanksgiving festivities. Conflicts with family members, including political disagreements, are some of the most common, he said, as are issues related to overuse of smartphones and social media. These in particular can prevent people from being truly present at their holiday gatherings. "You have to resist the urge to get lost in your phone," Hicks said. "This is a time to connect and come together, and I think when you do that, all this other stuff becomes trivial in many ways." That feeling of human connection is one of the main psychological benefits of the holiday season, Hicks said. So while you're enjoying that next bite of turkey or pumpkin pie, make sure you're also savoring each moment spent with friends, family members and others. "If you want to make the holidays extra meaningful for yourself and others," Hicks said, "it is always good to reach out to loved ones or even acquaintances who don't have anywhere to go during the holiday. It is one of the easiest things you can do to remind people that they matter." 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: Credit: Esma Atak from Pexels Do adults with a history of childhood trauma have altered brain responses to psychological challenges? Previous studies indicated that this can occur in laboratory animals, but it has been unclear whether it occurs in humans. Now a team of scientists, led by researchers from McGill University, have found evidence that exposure to childhood adversity is associated with an altered ability to process stressful challenges and other emotional material. These effects might diminish the ability to cope with threatening events, increasing the risk for psychiatric disorders later in life. "By integrating the results from 83 previous brain imaging studies, we were able to provide what is arguably the clearest evidence to date that adults who have been exposed to early life trauma have different brain responses to psychological challenges," says Marco Leyton, Full Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University. "This includes exaggerated responses in a region that processes emotionally intense information (the amygdala), and reduced responses in a region that helps people regulate emotions and associated behaviors (the frontal cortex)," adds Leyton, who is the Director of the Temperament Adversity Biology Lab (TAB Lab) at McGill. Protecting children from trauma "These findings might explain why adults who experienced childhood trauma have intense emotional responses to stress. Once these responses begin, coping is extremely difficult. This could express itself as heightened threat reactivity and susceptibility to mental health problems," says Dr. Niki Hosseini-Kamkar, first author of the study and who undertook the work as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University. The results highlight the need to protect children from trauma. If trauma does occur, help should be provided early, potentially decreasing the development of long-lasting effects. The importance of these findings is underscored by current events in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe where war is traumatizing new generations of children. "Many questions remain. For children who are exposed to traumas, what are the best interventions, how soon do they need to be applied, and what factors might aggravate or protect against the development of problems?," adds Hosseini-Kamkar, who conducted the study while at McGill but is now pursuing research at the Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families and the University of Ottawa Institute for Mental Health Research. According to the researchers, these results are an important next step in understanding associations of adversity exposure with brain function and mental health problems while highlighting the importance of considering the role of development. The work is published in the journal JAMA Network Open. More information: Niki Hosseini-Kamkar et al, Adverse Life Experiences and Brain Function, JAMA Network Open (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.40018 Journal information: JAMA Network Open 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: Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain War and politics can cause serious mental anguish and trauma, even for people thousands of miles away from a conflict. Counselors who specialize in loss and grief may well meet clients who have lost relatives in conflicts such as those in Ukraine and the Middle East. How do we work on the side of our grieving client without taking sides in a conflict? Counseling should be a safe and confidential space for clients to express their true feelings, particularly about complex topics. For counselors to create this space, they must be both politically aware and self-aware and have a healthy relationship with their own clinical supervisors. Politically aware counselors recognize that the emotional issues bringing clients to counseling often cannot be separated from political issuespoverty, discrimination, violence and war. Dealing with personal bias Therapists are human. They will have strong feelings where they perceive inhumanity, injustice, and oppression. Nevertheless, they can work with people affected by war from either side of a conflict. Counselors and psychotherapists adhere to ethical codes that inform their work. The British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy's ethical code expects a therapist to be aware of strong feelings, including perceived injustice, which could affect the therapeutic relationship with their client. The ethical bereavement counselor eschews their bias. They can work with an Israeli, a Palestinian, a Ukrainian, or a Russian, even with their personal perceptions of the rights and wrongs of the politics of a particular conflict. Difficulties arise, however, when the counselor is unaware of biases they may hold. Unconscious bias is a prejudice against a person, group, or culture which is outside of the practitioner's awareness and is a recognized issue in health professions. Because this could negatively contribute to the counseling relationship, a therapist's work is supervised by a peer, an experienced practitioner generally with a diploma in clinical supervision. In most countries, including the UK, clinical supervision is mandatory throughout a therapist's career to ensure their clients are kept safe. If a counselor has any feelings that may affect their relationships with clients, they discuss it with their supervisor. This is an opportunity to reveal unconscious behavior and harmful biases. Once these have been discussed in supervision, the counselor may decide that they favor one side in the conflict and that it would be unethical to take on a new client bereaved by war. If the relationship was with an existing client, the counselor might decide that they couldn't work with the new bereavement and instead support the client in finding another counselor. However, bias doesn't always mean ending the client relationship. A counselor with sympathies towards Ukraine in the face of Russian military aggression may still feel able to counsel a bereaved Russian wife or mother. Supporting the client without taking sides Many bereavement counselors follow the model of person-centered counseling. This approach helps clients explore their own feelings and reach their full potential (rather than a counselor solving their problems for them). One of the core conditions of person-centered counseling is not judging the client for their words and actions. The client may express vengeful thoughts about the "enemy" who killed their loved one, and here the counselor treads a difficult path. When the counselor listens without judging, the client may interpret this as the counselor taking their side. They may even post about their therapist's support on social media, which would compromise the therapist's neutrality. A counselor may need to be explicit about supporting the client's grief and understanding their feelings without taking sides in the conflict. For some people bereaved by war, activism becomes part of their grief. Parents of victims or soldiers in a war may campaign for justice for their child. Counselors may raise with the client the possibility that activism is masking or delaying the grieving process. They may also need to be explicit that their support for the client's grieving approach is not the same as supporting their cause. Empathy and trauma in counseling Counselors are trained in using the skills of empathy. A bereavement counselor learns to feel what it's like to learn that a lost relative died in a terrorist attack, was crushed under the rubble of an apartment block, or bled to death after being hit by a mortar bomb. Hearing one side of the atrocities, along with graphic news coverage, can vicariously traumatize the counselor, leading to strong emotions, compassion fatigue and even the risk of developing a partisan position. It is just as important for counselors to take care of their own responses to war and conflict. Counselors are urged by their profession to practice self-care, which can include regular emotional support with the therapist's clinical supervisor. Even counselors need counseling. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 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: Credit: CC0 Public Domain The United Nations heralded Wednesday the forthcoming scale-up of malaria vaccination across Africa after the first shipment of doses arrived in Cameroon. Since 2019, more than two million children have been jabbed in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi in a pilot phase, resulting in substantial reductions in severe malaria illness and hospitalizations. Now the scheme is moving into a broader rollout, with 331,200 doses of RTS,Sthe first malaria vaccine recommended by the UN's World Health Organizationlanding Tuesday in Cameroon's capital Yaounde. The delivery "signals that scale-up of vaccination against malaria across the highest-risk areas on the African continent will begin shortly," the WHO, the UN children's agency UNICEF and the Gavi vaccine alliance said in a joint statement. They called it "a historic step towards broader vaccination against one of the deadliest diseases for African children". The doses are donated by manufacturer GSK. "We encourage all parents to take advantage of this life-saving intervention," said Cameroon's Health Minister Malachie Manaouda, adding that malaria "remains a major public health threat in the country". A further 1.7 million doses are set for delivery to Burkina Faso, Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone in the coming weeks. Malaria is the leading cause of mortality in infants and children aged under five in Liberia, the country's Health Minister Wilhelmina Jallah said. "This vaccine has the potential to save many lives and reduce the burden of this disease," she added. 'Breakthrough moment' Several African countries are finalizing preparations for malaria vaccines to be introduced into routine immunization programs, with the first doses set to be administered in January-March 2024. "Introducing vaccines is like adding a star player to the pitch... we are entering a new era in immunization and malaria control," said UNICEF chief Catherine Russell. Africa accounted for approximately 95 percent of global malaria cases and 96 percent of related deaths from the mosquito-borne disease in 2021. Yearly global malaria deaths fell dramatically between 2000 and 2019when they stood at 568,000but shot up 10 percent in 2020 to 625,000 as the COVID-19 crisis hit protection and treatment efforts. Deaths dipped slightly to 619,000 in 2021of which 77 percent were children aged under five. Meanwhile, global malaria cases rose slightly to 247 million. The vaccine rollout is a "breakthrough moment for malaria vaccines and malaria control, and a ray of light in a dark time for so many vulnerable children in the world", said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The RTS,S vaccine acts against plasmodium falciparumthe most deadly malaria parasite globally and the most prevalent in Africa. It is administered in a four-dose schedule which begins at around the age of five months old. "Broad implementation of malaria vaccination in endemic regions has the potential to be a game-changer for malaria control efforts, and could save tens of thousands of lives each year," the joint statement said. "This moment has been decades in the making," said the United States' global malaria coordinator David Walton, as he looked forward to "a world in which no child dies from a mosquito bite". 2023 AFP 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: Develop a clinical generative large language model, GatorTronGPT, for biomedical natural language processing, clinical text generation, and health care text evaluation. a Train GatorTronGPT from scratch using GPT-3 architecture with up to 20 billion parameters. b Solve biomedical relation extraction and question answering using a unified P-tuning base text generation architecture. c Apply GatorTronGPT to generate 20 billion words of synthetic clinical text, which was used to train synthetic natural language processing model, GatorTronS. d Turing evaluation of 30 paragraphs of text written by GatorTronGPT mixed with 30 real-world paragraphs written by UF Health physicians. TrM transformer unit; B billion. Credit: npj Digital Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41746-023-00958-w A new artificial intelligence computer program created by researchers at the University of Florida and NVIDIA can generate doctors' notes so well that two physicians couldn't tell the difference, according to an early study from both groups. In this proof-of-concept study, physicians reviewed patient notessome written by actual medical doctors while others were created by the new AI programand the physicians identified the correct author only 49% of the time. A team of 19 researchers from NVIDIA and the University of Florida said their findings, published Nov. 16 in the journal npj Digital Medicine, open the door for AI to support health care workers with groundbreaking efficiencies. The researchers trained supercomputers to generate medical records based on a new model, GatorTronGPT, that functions similarly to ChatGPT. The free versions of GatorTron models have more than 430,000 downloads from Hugging Face, an open-source AI website. GatorTron models are the site's only models available for clinical research, according to the article's lead author Yonghui Wu, Ph.D., from the UF College of Medicine's department of health outcomes and biomedical informatics. "In health care, everyone is talking about these models. GatorTron and GatorTronGPT are unique AI models that can power many aspects of medical research and health care. Yet, they require massive data and extensive computing power to build. We are grateful to have this supercomputer, HiPerGator, from NVIDIA to explore the potential of AI in health care," Wu said. For this research, Wu and his colleagues developed a large language model that allows computers to mimic natural human language. These models work well with standard writing or conversations, but medical records bring additional hurdles, such as needing to protect patients' privacy and being highly technical. Digital medical records cannot be Googled or shared on Wikipedia. To overcome these obstacles, the researchers stripped UF Health medical records of identifying information from 2 million patients while keeping 82 billion useful medical words. Combining this set with another dataset of 195 billion words, they trained the GatorTronGPT model to analyze the medical data with GPT-3 architecture, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer, a form of neural network architecture. That allowed GatorTronGPT to write clinical text similar to medical doctors' notes. Here are two paragraphs that reference two patient cases one written by a human and one created by GatorTronGPTcan you tell whether the author was machine or human? These paragraphs reference two patient cases, one written by a human and one created by GatorTronGPTcan you tell whether the author was machine or human? Credit: UF Health "This GatorTronGPT model is one of the first major products from UF's initiative to incorporate AI across the university. We are so pleased with how the partnership with NVIDIA is already bearing fruit and setting the stage for the future of medicine," said Elizabeth Shenkman, Ph.D., a co-author and chair of UF's department of health outcomes and biomedical informatics. Of the many possible uses for a medical GPT, one idea involves replacing the tedium of documentation with notes recorded and transcribed by AI. Wu says that UF has an innovation center that is pursuing a commercial version of the software. The first was written by a human physician at UF Health; the second was written by AI. Credit: UF Health For an AI tool to reach such parity with human writing, programmers spend weeks programming supercomputers with clinical vocabulary and language usage based on billions upon billions of words. One resource providing the necessary clinical data is the OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Network, coordinated at UF and representing many health care systems. "It's critical to have such massive amounts of UF Health clinical data not only available but ready for AI. Only a supercomputer could handle such a big dataset of 277 billion words. We are excited to implement GatorTron and GatorTronGPT models to real-world health care at UF Health," said Jiang Bian, Ph.D., a co-author and UF Health's chief data scientist and chief research information officer. More information: Cheng Peng et al, A study of generative large language model for medical research and healthcare, npj Digital Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41746-023-00958-w Journal information: npj Digital Medicine 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: A youth gets a shot of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine during a vaccination drive at University Stadium in Mexico City, Friday, July 23, 2021. Four out of five people in Mexico who got influenza shots so far this year turned down the governments recommendation they get Russian or Cuban COVID-19 boosters at the same time, officials said Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023. Credit: AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File Four out of five people in Mexico who got influenza shots so far this year turned down the government's recommendation that they get Russian or Cuban COVID-19 boosters at the same time, officials said Tuesday. Assistant Health Secretary Ruy Lopez Ridaura attributed the high refusal rate to people being reluctant to get two vaccines at the same time. "People have a certain reluctance to get simultaneous vaccinations," Lopez Ridaura said. But the population eligible for flu and COVID-19 shotspeople over 60 and people with underlying health problemsare considered high-risk, and Mexicans in those groups had extremely high take-up rates for COVID vaccines in 2021 and 2022, according to the Health Department. Some people appear to simply distrust the Russian Sputnik and Cuban Abdala vaccines, both designed in 2020 for variants prevalent at the time. "It is an old antigen, it's as if they were going to give me an influenza vaccine from 2020," said Andreu Comas, a professor of medicine at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi. "There are no studies regarding the effectiveness of both of these vaccines against the (current) variants." Mexico has bought millions of doses of the Russian and Cuban vaccines. The original plan was to administer around 20 million shots, but only about 1.9 million people, or 9.5% of those eligible, have agreed to take them since the vaccination campaign started in mid-October. In contrast, 10 million people got the influenza shot in the same period. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been a big supporter of Cuba, hiring Cuban doctors, buying vaccines and construction materials from Cuba and supplying oil to the island. Meanwhile, Mexico has held up approval for Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 boosters, both of which were designed to work against the COVID variants currently circulating. While those shots have been approved for use in the United States since September, they may not be available for Mexicans until 2024. 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. 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: Tetralogy of Fallot is when the heart has four malformations all at once. Credit: Mariana Ruiz / Wikipedia Through experiments on genetically modified mice, a team led by Ursula Quitterer, Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at ETH Zurich, determined which molecular switches are involved and how they need to be thrown to halt the malformations that damage the heart. One day, these insights could benefit people suffering from tetralogy of Fallot, provided substances are found that are capable of targeting and inhibiting BBLN or its interactions with other proteins. Quitterer and her team have already started searching for such substances. While tetralogy of Fallot is one of the most common congenital heart defects, this complex malformation is also exceedingly rare, affecting only 3 to 5 of every 10,000 newborn babies. For reasons that are still unclear, the affected individual's heart has defects in a total of four places: a ventricular septal defect, which is a hole in the wall dividing the left and right ventricles; pulmonary stenosis, in which the blood flow to the pulmonary artery is obstructed; an overriding aorta with the major blood vessel deviating to the right; and right ventricular hypertrophy, in which the heart muscle on that side thickens over time. Discoloration due to oxygen deficiency Depending on their severity, these malformations can disrupt pulmonary circulation, causing the heart to pump blood returning from the rest of the body directly into the aorta instead of into the pulmonary artery. This means the blood cannot pick up oxygen in the lungs, which causes its normally red hemoglobin to turn a blue-violet color. "Babies suffering from acute tetralogy of Fallot are blue. You can actually see that they have oxygen deficiency," says Quitterer. Quitterer and her team have spent the past 15 years attempting to find out what the pathological mechanisms of tetralogy of Fallot are. Now, through experiments on genetically modified mice, they have managed to assemble some of the key pieces of the puzzle. This puts them in a position to create a more accurate picture of the complexity of a malformed heart. Their insights were recently featured in the journal Nature Cardiovascular Research. Blank spot on the protein map At the core of the investigations is a tiny protein, which Quitterer describes as "a blank spot on the protein map"a protein that until recently didn't even have a proper name. For the past two years, it has been known as the bublin coiled-coil protein (BBLN), a name it was given by Dutch researchers who discovered that nematode worms lacking the BBLN protein end up with tiny bubbles in their intestine. Quitterer's team encountered this little-researched protein in samples of heart tissue taken from toddlers who were born with tetralogy of Fallot and later operated on at a Cairo University hospital. Compared to tissue samples from young tetralogy of Fallot patients, which showed no discoloration, when the researchers examined heart tissue from "blue babies" they found a concentration of BBLN that was six times higher. Morbidly enlarged rodent hearts To discover what causes this upregulation, Quitterer's team genetically modified some mice to produce human BBLN in their hearts. The higher the concentration of this protein, the more the hearts were enlargedand the higher the incidence of heart failure. Further investigations shed light on the molecular interactions involved in orchestrating the right-sided thickening of the heart muscle. "This unfortunate alteration, which makes a weak heart even weaker, also takes place in humans," Quitterer explains. Today in wealthy countries like Switzerland, operations are often carried out on patients when they are still babies. And thanks to major advances in surgical technique, heart surgery can correct all four defects early on. Such advances have already allowed medicine to vastly improve the life expectancy of people with this condition. But the pathological mechanisms in question continue to affect heart cells even after an operation. "As a result, tetralogy of Fallot patients who have had their hearts repaired still have a higher risk of long-term complications such as heart failure," Quitterer says. More information: Joshua Abd Alla et al, BBLN triggers CAMK2D pathology in mice under cardiac pressure overload and potentially in unrepaired hearts with tetralogy of Fallot, Nature Cardiovascular Research (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s44161-023-00351-6 Journal information: Nature Cardiovascular Research 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: EGFR was highly expressed in kidney myofibroblasts from both male and female patients. Credit: Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43226-x Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center for the first time have shown that activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is essential for the development of kidney fibrosis, tissue scarring following injury that can lead to kidney failure. Their discovery, reported Nov. 14 in the journal Nature Communications, could lead to the first effective treatment for kidney fibrosis, and may provide insight into the development of fibrosis in other organs, including the pancreas, lung and liver, and in other conditions. Epidermal growth factor and its receptor, which stimulate the growth of epidermal tissue, were discovered more than 60 years ago by the late Stanley Cohen, Ph.D., a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist at VUMC who died in 2020. Today EGFR is the target for a growing number of cancer drugs. Previous studies have implicated the EGFR signaling pathway in the development of kidney fibrosis, but until now the underlying mechanisms leading to fibrosis had not been determined. The paper's co-corresponding authors, Ming-Zhi Zhang, MD, MSc, and Raymond C. Harris, MD, have had a longstanding interest in understanding the mechanism underlying progressive kidney fibrosis and failure. The VUMC researchers focused on pericytes and fibroblasts, cells essential to the formation and functioning of the basement and extracellular membranes, which provide structural and biochemical support to tissues, including the kidney. Recent studies indicate that following acute kidney injury, pericytes and fibroblasts migrate, proliferate and ultimately differentiate into myofibroblasts. These cells are involved in the fibrotic scarring of the tubules, which in the kidney are key structures for the removal of waste products from the bloodstream. In a mouse model, the researchers showed that EGFR activation was necessary for the migration and proliferation of kidney fibroblasts and pericytes prior to their transformation into myofibroblasts. Selectively deleting EGFR from the two cell populations inhibited the development of fibrosis following acute kidney injury. At the molecular level, EGFR activation is triggered by an enzyme called ADAM17, which cleaves EGF and other ligands that bind to the receptor. ADAM17, in turn, is turned on by iRhom2 intramembrane proteins. Targeting iRhom2 could be one way to block EGFR activation. Another possible target is a related receptor called ErbB4, which, when activated in fibroblasts, potentially may counter the effects of EGFR activation, the researchers said. Further studies will be needed to confirm these hypotheses. More information: Shirong Cao et al, Epidermal growth factor receptor activation is essential for kidney fibrosis development, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43226-x Journal information: Nature Communications 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: Credit: Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.2147/PGPM.S426421 A team of researchers, including one from the University of Maine, argue that vitamin supplements can help prevent secondary strokes. They also advocate for the value of new technologies in eye research to verify these findings. Homocysteine is an amino acid associated with stroke and secondary stroke when elevated above normal levels. B vitamins and folate, also known as vitamin B9, can help lower levels of homocysteine and stroke, according to a peer-reviewed editorial published in the journal Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine. Elevated homocysteine is the result of genetic mutations or inadequate stores of vitamins B6, B12, folate and riboflavin (B2). Lowering it is relatively inexpensive because it can be achieved through vitamin supplementation. The research team recommends lowering high levels of homocysteine with low doses of folic acid and cyanocobalamin, which treats vitamin B9 and B12 deficiencies, respectively; or better, with the natural vitamin forms found in food, L-methylfolate and methylcobalamin. Merrill "Pete" Elias, professor emeritus with the UMaine Department of Psychology, Institute of Medicine and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, co-authored the editorial with colleagues from the University of Arkansas as part of the Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Study (MSLS), which he directs. In the editorial, researchers also argued that the 2021 Guideline for the Secondary Prevention of Ischemic Stroke should be revised to include the use of vitamins to reduce homocysteine, specifically folic acid and low dose cyanocobalamin, or better, L-methylfolate and methylcobalamin. Additionally, the authors urged the use of new ophthalmologic technology for monitoring risk of stroke and secondary stroke. The research team recommends retinal vascular imaging because this is a noninvasive method for evaluating central nervous system perfusion, which plays a crucial role in stroke. "The eye is the window to the brain. Thus vascular imaging will play an important role in monitoring the effectiveness of stroke prevention strategies such as the new 2021 Guidelines," Elias says. More information: Craig Brown et al, Homocysteine Reduction for Stroke Prevention: Regarding the Recent AHA/ASA 2021 Prevention of Stroke in Patients With Stroke and Transient Ischemic Attack, Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.2147/PGPM.S426421 Visitor numbers for both 2022 and 2023 have surpassed 90,000 and the Castle was voted in the TripAdvisor Travellers Choice Top 10 Tourist Attractions in Ireland in July 2022. Discover Limerick DAC (a wholly owned subsidiary of Limerick City and County Council) are developing a master plan for the Castle, which will provide a strategic roadmap to transform King Johns Castle into a world-class, must see, visitor attraction. The master plan will identify ways to enhance the significance and experience of the castle within its medieval Kings Island setting and to position the area as a major visitor hub. The goal is to significantly increase the value of the castle as a visitor attraction that delivers sustainable socio-economic benefits for the city and region. A man was arrested on suspicion of making a bomb threat to a local Missoula church on Monday. The alleged threat caused a shutdown of roads near 26th Avenue and South Avenue on Monday morning. Dustin J. Clark, 43, is charged with one felony count of intimidation committed based on someones religious affiliation, according to court documents. Hes also charged with first-offense stalking and violating privacy in communications, both misdemeanors. On Sunday, a woman contacted local law enforcement to report a small, suspicious package that was left at the Church of the Nazarene on 26th Avenue in Missoula, charging documents state. The woman said no one touched the package and church leaders directed people away as they arrived for Sunday morning services. The woman identified Clark as a possible suspect and reported hed recently been harassing the churchs pastor. The Missoula Sheriffs Office Explosive Ordinance Disposal team was sent to the scene and determined the package wasnt an explosive threat. Items with threatening messages written on them were inside the box, along with a white powder substance determined to be various benign chemicals, including carbon tetrachloride, magnesium hydroxide and naphyorne HCI, according to the case affidavit. A pastor from the church told investigators Clark was employed by him at a local tree-trimming business, according to charging documents. Clark recently had started acting aggressively toward coworkers. The pastor flagged concerning Craigslist posts including anti-Christian messaging, according to the charging documents. One post had a modified image of Leonardo DaVincis Last Supper painting with the apostles depicted as ghouls tearing apart and eating the body of Jesus Christ, the affidavit stated. The pastor showed authorities texts between himself and Clark. When the pastor asked Clark to stop contacting him, Clark allegedly replied with an explicative and sent the altered Last Supper photo also seen on Craigslist. The message also included a goat head with a pentagram and told the pastor he was going to hell, according to the affidavit. Prosecutors also allege Clark made graphic threats to the pastor. At 9:10 a.m. on Monday, authorities were dispatched again to the church for another suspicious package and notes left at the door. The deputy found a Ziploc bag with a wooden picture of Jesus taped to the door, the affidavit states. The bag had a note on it that read: "This is smart bomb please open carefule [sic], the affidavit states. The explosive team responded again to the church, triggering a road closure along 26th Avenue. Many nearby residents were also directed to stay inside their homes. The team determined the items left at the church were safe and seized them for evidence. Surveillance footage showed a dark sedan pulling up to the church at 6:21 a.m. that morning. Clark was known by authorities to drive a dark-colored Toyota sedan, the affidavit states. It also had bumper damage consistent with Clarks car. Clark was arrested later that day at his Missoula residence. While en route to the jail, Clark asked deputies to explain the intimidation charge. When a deputy advised him of the suspected bomb threat, Clark allegedly replied, Do you mean the smart bomb? charging documents read. Clark appeared in court on Tuesday afternoon. Tony Burchell, from the Office of Public Defender, argued Clark is protected by freedom of speech to voice dislike for Christians. He also said theres nothing linking Clark to the Craigslist posts mentioned in the affidavit. Justice of the Peace Landee Holloway set Clarks bail at $150,000. If Clark posts bail, hes barred from going near The Church of Nazarene or having any contact with case witnesses. Clark will be arraigned on Dec. 4 in Missoula County District Court. A felony intimidation charge based on someone's religious affiliation carries a possible maximum sentence of 10 years at the Montana State Prison. BOZEMAN An Indigenous fashion show that drew a standing-room-only crowd to American Indian Hall at Montana State University was the perfect backdrop for a celebration of cultural tradition through the lens of modern art, say organizers of the successful Native American Heritage Month event. It was such a positive place to be, said Riley Werk, a sophomore majoring in English education who helped organize the Nov. 13 show. Not a lot of people, even in Indian Country, have seen a fashion show like this. Werk is part of the three-person cultural outreach team in MSUs American Indian/Alaska Native Student Success Services. Together with cultural outreach specialist LaTrell Hendrickson in MSUs Department of Native American Studies, Werk and fellow student-employee Watson Whitford conceived the idea for the show and worked since the start of the semester to make the event happen. We started talking about a fashion series that includes workshops to make ribbon shirts and ribbon skirts because the Native fashion industry has become one more way of showcasing Native art, Hendrickson said. The team reached out to two professional Indigenous designers, both MSU alumni and members of the Crow Tribe: Angela Howe of Choke Cherry Creek Designs and Brocade Stops Black Eagle of Brocade Designs. They agreed to provide the clothing for the show, so Werk set about recruiting models. Meanwhile, Whitford, a freshman majoring in plant biology, began inviting Indigenous design vendors from tribes around and outside Montana. Thirty-five mostly student models representing every Native American nation in the region and several vendors of Indigenously designed wares including earrings, clothing, cosmetic items and beadwork signed up to participate. Some vendors traveled from out of state to attend. On the night of the show before a diverse and appreciative crowd, each model struck a couple of poses in silhouette behind a white sheet before striding down the catwalk. Werk said that for many of them, the experience not only boosted their confidence but also opened their eyes to future possibilities in the fashion business. Many students are interested in the fashion industry. This gave them an opportunity to be photographed, and that work can go into a portfolio, Werk said. The designers opened their arms to students entrepreneurship questions. Its opening doors. Whitford said he learned a lot about negotiation and working with people to figure out how to accommodate their needs and to encourage nervous models to exhibit confidence on the catwalk. Im proud of everybody, he said. To have these opportunities opens more doors and more paths. Above all, the organizers said they felt gratified when their goals for the project were fulfilled. Our main vision was to have people see our culture portrayed in a modern light, said Werk. The environment was a completely safe space where everyone was encouraging and positive. Whitford added that the fashion show was the perfect way to bring the Native American cultural perspective into a modern, Western institution. People who dont know about Indian community think we live in the past, but we are modernized people with different ways of incorporating our culture into modern styles of fashion or architecture, he said. We cant live in the old ways, but we cant live in the totally modern world or well forget who we are. Its healing, these different things we have, he said. I hope we continue doing these things for the community and show that were proud and make people feel included. JERUSALEM Israel's Cabinet on Wednesday approved a temporary cease-fire with the Hamas militant group that is expected to bring the first halt in fighting in a devastating six-week war and win freedom for dozens of hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip, in exchange for the release of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons. The deal calls for a four-day cease-fire, during which Israel will halt its military offensive in Gaza while Hamas frees "at least" 50 of the roughly 240 hostages it and other militants are holding, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said. The first hostages to be released are women and children. "The government of Israel is committed to bringing all of the hostages home. Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal," the office said in a statement. It said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages released by Hamas. A statement released by Qatar, which mediates with Hamas, Wednesday morning said the deal includes "the release of a number of Palestinian women and children detained in Israeli prisons, the number of those released will be increased in later stages of implementing the agreement," and that it would allow additional humanitarian aid into Gaza. The statement from Qatar's Foreign Ministry described the talks that produced the agreement as a mediation by Egypt, the United States and Qatar for a "humanitarian pause," adding that the start time of the truce will be announced within the next day. Hostage releases will begin roughly 24 hours after the deal is approved by all parties, said a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matters. Under Wednesday's deal, Hamas is expected to release roughly 12 hostages each day. While the statement did not say when the truce would begin, Israeli media reports said the hostages could begin to be released as soon as Thursday. Ahead of the Cabinet vote, which came after a six-hour meeting stretched into the early morning, Netanyahu said the war against Hamas would resume after the truce expires. "We are at war, and we will continue the war," he said. "We will continue until we achieve all our goals." Israel vowed to press ahead until it destroys Hamas' military and governing capabilities and all hostages are freed. Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israel's destruction, has ruled Gaza since ousting the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007. A longer-term lull could lead to pressure on Israel to end its war. The war erupted on Oct. 7 when several thousand Hamas militants burst across the border into Israel, killing at least 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage. Most of the dead were civilians, while the hostages include small children, women and older people. Israel responded with airstrikes on Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli offensive, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not differentiate between civilians and militants. Israel says it killed thousands of Hamas militants. The invasion caused vast destruction in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, displaced an estimated 1.7 million people and caused a humanitarian crisis. A lull would give Hamas and its shadowy leader, Yehya Sinwar, a chance to regroup after suffering heavy losses, especially if Hamas drags things out with additional hostage releases. Israeli officials acknowledge much of the group's infrastructure remains intact. A cease-fire could also add to the already growing international pressure on Israel to halt its offensive as the full extent of damage in Gaza becomes apparent. Some three-quarters of Gaza's population has been uprooted from their homes and are staying in overcrowded and unsanitary shelters. Many, if not most, will be unable to return home because of the vast damage in the north and the continued presence of Israeli troops there. That could lead to an even worse humanitarian disaster during the cold, rainy winter. And in Israel, the staggered releases of hostages risks triggering divisions between families of those who are freed and those who remain in captivity. Families of the hostages have staged demonstrations and marches pressuring the government to bring home their loved ones. In the meantime, fighting continued Tuesday, with the front line of the war shifting to the Jabaliya refugee camp, a dense warren of concrete buildings near Gaza City that houses families displaced in the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. Israel has bombarded the area for weeks, and the military said Hamas fighters regrouped there and in other eastern districts after being pushed out of much of Gaza City. In southern Lebanon, an Israeli strike killed two journalists with Al-Mayadeen TV, according to the Hezbollah-allied Pan-Arab network and Lebanese officials. A separate Israeli drone strike in Lebanon killed four Hamas members, a Palestinian official and a Lebanon security official said. On Tuesday, Gaza's Health Ministry said that as of Nov. 11 it had lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of large parts of the health system. It believes the actual death toll is sharply higher than the official number of 11,000. Some 2,700 people are missing and believed to be buried under rubble, and hospitals continue to report deaths from daily strikes, often dozens at a time. The Israeli military says 68 soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive. HINSDALE, N.H. Geoffrey Holt was unassuming as the caretaker of a mobile home park in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, where he lived a simple, but curious life. Residents would see Holt around town in threadbare clothes riding his lawn mower, headed to the convenience store, parked along the main road reading a newspaper or watching cars pass. He did odd jobs for others, but rarely left town. Despite having taught drivers ed to high schoolers, Holt had given up driving a car. He opted for a bicycle instead and finally the mower. His mobile home in the park was mostly empty of furniture no TV and no computer, either. The legs of the bed went through the floor. He seemed to have what he wanted, but he didnt want much, said Edwin Smokey Smith, Holts best friend and former employer. But Holt died earlier this year with a secret: He was a multimillionaire. And whats more, he gave it all away to this community of 4,200 people. His will had brief instructions: $3.8 million to the town of Hinsdale to benefit the community in the areas of education, health, recreation and culture. I dont think anyone had any idea that he was that successful, said Steve Diorio, chairperson of the town selectboard whod occasionally wave at Holt from his car. I know he didnt have a whole lot of family, but nonetheless, to leave it to the town where he lived in. It's a tremendous gift." The money could go far in this Connecticut River town sandwiched between Vermont and Massachusetts with abundant hiking and fishing opportunities and small businesses. There's been no formal gathering to discuss ideas for the money since local officials were notified in September. Some residents have proposed upgrading the town hall clock, restoring buildings, maybe buying a new ballot counting machine in honor of Holt, who always made sure he voted. Another possibility is setting up an online drivers' education course. Organizations would be be able to apply for grants via a trust through the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, drawing from the interest, roughly about $150,000 annually. Hinsdale will utilize the money left very frugally as Mr. Holt did, said Kathryn Lynch, town administrator. Holts best friend Smith, a former state legislator who became the executor of Holt's estate, had learned about his fortune in recent years. He knew Holt, who died in June at age 82, had varied interests, like collecting hundreds of model cars and train sets that filled his rooms, covered the couch and extended into a shed. He also collected books about history, with Henry Ford and World War II among his favorite topics. Holt had an extensive record collection too, including Handel and Mozart. Smith also knew that Holt, who earlier in life had worked as a production manager at a grain mill that closed in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont, invested his money. Holt would find a quiet place to sit near a brook and study financial publications. Holt confided to Smith that his investments were doing better than he had ever expected and wasn't sure what to to do with the money. Smith suggested that he remember the town. I was sort of dumbfounded when I found out that all of it went to the town, he said. Holt's sister, 81-year-old Alison Holt of Laguna Woods, California, said she knew her brother invested and remembered that not wasting money and investing were important to their father. Geoffrey had a learning disability. He had dyslexia, she said. He was very smart in certain ways. When it came to writing or spelling, he was a lost cause. And my father was a professor. So, I think that Geoff felt like he was disappointing my dad. But maybe socking away all that money was a way to compete. She and her brother grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their father, Lee Holt, taught English and world literature at American International College. Their mother, Margaret Holt, had a Shakespearean scholar for a dad. Their children were well-educated. Geoffrey went to boarding schools and attended the former Marlboro College in Vermont, where students had self-designed degree plans. He graduated in 1963 and served in the U.S. Navy before earning a masters degree from the college where his father taught in 1968. In addition to driver's ed, he briefly taught social studies at Thayer High School in Winchester, New Hampshire, before getting his job at the mill. He always told me that his main goal in life was to make sure that nobody noticed anything, his sister said, adding that he'd say "or you might get into trouble. Neither Alison nor Geoffrey had any children. Holt suffered a stroke a couple of years ago, and worked with therapist Jim Ferry, who described him as thoughtful, intellectual and genteel, but not comfortable with following the academic route that family members took. Holt had developed mobility issues following his stroke, and missed riding his mower. I think he saw it as service to people that he cared about, which were the people in the trailer park that I think he really liked because they were not fancy people." Residents are hoping Hinsdale will get noticed a bit more because of the gift. It's actually a forgotten corner in New Hampshire, Planning Commissioner Ann Diorio said. So maybe this will put it on the map a little bit." Robin McGraw Revelation is a luxury skincare brand that was established in 2016 with the goal, according to the owner, to empower women, by giving them full control over their beauty, and the health of their skin. Robin McGraw is not exactly a new name in the lifestyle scene in America. She has been in the spotlight for decades. First, she is a two-time New York Times bestselling author. Secondly, she is Dr. Phils wife, and has appeared on his show many times talking about her products. Therefore, when she launched the Robin McGraw Revelation in 2016, it took off almost immediately. Today, you will take a look at everything the technology and the formulas behind the bestselling products under this brand. That way, you will be able to tell whether it is a good investment for you or not. This is a dermatologist-backed brand name, and discovering such a brand name that you can use for all of your skincare routine is quite the thing. The Robin McGraw Revelation brand was established by Robin herself, in partnership with Dr. Jessica Wu, who is a dermatologist. In fact, they had met way back when Robin was looking for a dermatologist to help her with a problem. Every single ingredient used in any of the products, every cream or toner that comes from the production line, is clinically proven to assist with skin issues. A luxury brand with something for every woman, and all skin The most well-known skin types are combination, normal, oily, dry, and sensitive. These are just five of the common skin types, but there are more. For instance, some people even have an acne-prone skin, and others have the mature skin type. Robin McGraw skincare promises to have something for every skin type. Even if this is your first time to use skincare products, and you dont know what you want, there is a customer care team always standing by to help you know what is good for your skin. This brand name offers all types of skincare treatments that include toners, creams, lotions, masks, scrubs, and several more. On their website, they have disclosed all the ingredients that they have used in their products. When Robin and dermatologist Jessica Wu set out to bring women the best skincare products, they researched widely to come up with ingredients that could be suitable for all skin types. Today, this luxury skincare line is built on the premise that, It is never too late to start taking care of yourself. Thus, whether you are a young, middle-aged, or older woman, this brand name has something suitable for your needs. Every woman should take care of herself. That is the only way she is going to be able to take care of the people that she loves. Around 14 stunning skincare products under one roof With 14 stunning skincare products, this much makes Robin McGraw Revelation skincare line an all-under-one-roof kind of staple. This is why it has become a go-to brand name for women from all walks of life. And it came at just about the right time! Skin problems are on the rise, and the rush to treat them is high. Lately, there has been a flurry of beauty brands in the market, and everywhere you turn, there is someone advising you on skincare on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms. With so much information flying all around you, you can imagine how hard it can be to get the best value for money. Skincare becomes a costly affair when you have to keep trying different products, discarding them when they dont work, and getting new ones to correct the damage done by the first ones. It is a never-ending spiral down the rabbit hole! But Robin McGraw seeks to change all of that for you. She has done that by bringing you dermatologist-developed products. No matter how diverse your skincare needs are, you will find a product that can help you under this brand name. The prices, too, are quite in the open, so you can also make up your mind pretty fast. Being a luxury cosmetic brand name, the prices start at only $22 for some serums and toners. However, more advanced products such as LED masks can cost hundreds of dollars. All of her life, Robin McGraw has never made any move blindly. This is what gives many women the confidence that these products are tested and proven. This is a result-centric skincare brand. What assurance do you have that you are buying the best? The Robin McGraw skincare products are to be experienced, to be believed. Buyers want to know that they can really trust a brand name. The Robin McGraw Revelation website reveals all the products and their ingredients. That way, you know what you are really putting on the skin. But that is not all! People want clinically researched skincare products. The Robin McGraw skincare kits have solid clinical backing, from Jessica Wu. I usually tell my patients that when they take care of their skin, it is not only about the skin, but it is also about holistic health care. I partnered with Robin because I knew that this was an opportunity to help women all over the world by bringing them premium skincare products at affordable prices, says Dr. Wu. Besides being dermatologically tested, some of the products have also won awards. For instance, the Hydra Qwench moisturizer won the Fall 2017 Oprah Magazine, O-Ward award for best moisturizing serum. The Foaming Joy also won the Spring 2017 Oprah Magazine O-Ward award for best facial cleanser. Heavy online presence for the Robin McGraw Revelation brand Besides the clinical backing, this is one of the most covered brand names in the mainstream and social media platforms. Some of the publications that have covered the Robin McGraw luxury cosmetic brand name include Forbes, The New York Times, Allure, People Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times, to name but a few. Besides, the brand also has a heavy presence on social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Within these platforms, people who have used these products, and even those who havent used them, share their views and thoughts about Robin McGraw Revelation skincare products. This is a good place for a first-time buyer to pick a few things about what they can expect from the product they will buy. Such a widely covered brand name has a high reputation to protect, which is yet another indication of the trustworthiness of their skincare kits and products. Apart from having a huge presence on the socials, you can also find all of these products and their ingredients on the official Robin McGraw Revelation website. Several of these products are also available in online marketplaces like Amazon.com. A brief look at the Robin McGraw Revelation skincare line At this point, we look at the products that make this affordable luxury skincare brand name stand out from the crowd. 1. Microcurrent facial device This one is designed to give you an excellent facial treatment at home. It passes penetrative, but gentle microcurrent to the face skin, and this stimulates blood flow to the face. This helps to lower inflammation and redness, and the skin color also improves a lot. The micro electric current that this device generates also stimulates the production of collagen, which firms the skin and prevents the onset of wrinkles. 2. Clinical-grade Hyaluronic Acid serum This is a standalone hyaluronic acid serum that helps the skin to stay hydrated for hours by boosting interlayer moisturization, and preventing the loss of moisture to evaporation. When the moisture is retained in the skin, it becomes plumper, softer, smoother, firmer, and it does not develop lines and wrinkles. 3. BIOFACTOR EGF Serum/Growth Factor Skincare Serum Set This skincare set from Robin McGraw comes with four products: 5 compound peptide masks each is 25ML EGF serum 30ML Stem Cell Peptide Ampoule 10ML Matrixyl 3000 Peptide Ampoule 10ML This is the complete kit that addresses several facial skin issues at once. For instance, the EGF serum improves the cell production in the skin so that the old, damaged, and worn-out cells are replaced faster. Since you will use this as a kit, all the four products unleash their power to nourish the skin. There is more blood flow to the skin, which lowers inflammation, and improves the color of the skin around the eyes. Stem Cell Ampoule will help to diminish the lines and wrinkles on the face, thus reversing the aging process. The Matrixyl 3000 Peptide Ampoule boosts collagen synthesis, making the skin firmer, and more elastic. Robin McGraw LED Face and Neck Mask This LED face and neck mask is made with advanced technology to offer high quality light therapy that stimulates your skin cells to pump them up with energy. It also helps the skin to hold more moisture and as the cells absorb water, they become plump, and give you a more youthful looking skin. This mask comes with four settings, so you can choose the intensity of the LED light, depending on your needs. Thanks to the lightweight design of this mask, it feels comfortable, and the medical-grade skin is hypoallergenic, so it is also good for sensitive skin. By producing light in different wavelengths that penetrate to the inner layers of the skin, this LED mask does not stimulate the outer skin only. It enhances the production of collagen and elastin, the two protein compounds that are mainly responsible for skin strength, structure, and firmness. Serums, creams, toners, and gels This is where the real diversity of the Robin McGraw Revelation skincare line is truly felt, and by people from all walks of life. While the masks and other skincare technologies cost more money to buy, the serums, lotions, and toners cost much less. The Hydra Qwench hydrating serum is a beast of a moisturizer. It is going to turn the driest skin supple, smooth and moist. It is a nighttime use serum, so you wake up to a nourished and hydrated skin in the morning. The Foaming Joy purifying facial cleanser is a deep skin and pore cleanser. It removes the dead cells, bacteria, and grime that your skin picks up during the day. It is also an efficient makeup remover. 50 Fierce sunscreen and moisturizer is going to guard your skin from the UVA and UVB rays of the sun. It can prevent skin cancer, sun burns and other types of weather damage on the skin. It is also a good moisturizer that keeps the skin layers hydrated for long. Vita Boost is a vitamin therapy serum that infuses vitamins C, E, and provitamin B5 directly into the skin. These vitamins are very important for skin health, and for fighting the free radicals that cause fast aging and skin damage. The Twinkle Twinkle, You're A Star is a Triple Action Brightening Polish that exfoliates the skin, lifting the dead cells from the surface of the skin. This reveals the natural glow of the skin, and balances your complexion. It is a powerful product, so you are supposed to use it twice or thrice a week, only. Dot Your Eyes Power Peptide Cream is formulated to help lower the puffiness of the eyes, clearing the dark shadows and preventing under eye baggage. It can also help clear crows feet, and other fine lines and wrinkles. Starlight, Face Bright is a skin brightening serum that returns the skin to its natural color, balanced tone, and prevents moisture loss, keeping the skin hydrated for hours. Up, Up and Away is rich in amino acids, hyaluronic acid and other ingredients that combine to give it serious skin healing and hydrating power. How can you get in touch with Robin McGraw Revelation? In the US, you can call 929.297.9105 and speak with the customer support team. If you are out of the USA, the best way to reach the customer support team for clarification, or any question, is through emailing support at support@robinmcgrawrevelation.com. Reach the support team regarding returns, as the company gives a 30-day money-back guarantee if you change your mind, and return an unopened product within 30 days since the day of delivery. Finally, most of the Robin McGraw Revelation skincare products come in kits of two, or more products. They are also available for sale as individual products. It is better to get them in packages, as you may save more money that way. Lee Enterprises newsroom and editorial were not involved in the creation of this content. Editors note: Calendar items must be submitted at least five days before an event. Email all items to news@morganton.com. SUNDAY Tree lighting The Glen Alpine Womens Club will hold its Annual Memorial Tree Lighting at 4:30 p.m. at the bandstand in downtown Glen Alpine. TUESDAY, NOV. 28 DAY OF GIVING Burke County United Way will host the annual 1BurkGives Giving Day on Tuesday, Nov. 28, from midnight to 11:59 p.m. 1BurkeGives is a 24-hour online fundraising event at 1BurkeGives.org. During the event 35 local nonprofit organizations from across Burke County will be participating, raising funds for a wide range of causes. During the event, donors can also track their favorite nonprofits on the leaderboard, help organizations win prizes, and check-in on the event schedule for a live drawing or an in-person happy hour somewhere in Burke County. Follow BCUW on social media to stay in the loop (Facebook) (Instagram) and keep a look out for social media posts hashtagged #1BurkeGives! THURSDAY, NOV. 30 Smart Start meeting The NC Pre-K Committee of Burke County Smart Start will meeting at 8:30 a.m. at the Partnership office, located at 304 W. Union St. Meetings are open to the public. For anyone with a hearing impairment who may require the assistance of an interpreter or have other special needs, call the Partnership at 828-439-2326 or use the NC Relay System at 1-800-735-8262. SATURDAY, DEC. 2 Christmas Parade The town of Valdese will host its annual Christmas Parade at 10 a.m. on Main Street. The annual Christmas parade is known for kicking off an exciting calendar of holiday events in Valdese and the Town Council considers it a privilege to recognize Bruce Hawkins as the Grand Marshal. Hawkins has served as an influential member of the community as well as activist for the Civil Rights Movement. Train Museum open house The Piedmont & Western Railroad Museum located in the Old Rock School in Valdese, 400 Main St. W, will host its annual parade Open House from 9 a.m. to noon. The indoor railroad display is the largest in the state. Christmas Parade The town of Hildebran will hold its annual Christmas Parade at 1 p.m. The parade will begin at 202 S. Center St. Visit hildebranNC.com for more information. Christmas Parade The town of Glen Alpine will be held at 2 p.m. The lineup will begin on Pollard Avenue at 1 p.m. Everyone is welcome. TUESDAY, DEC. 5 Christmas Parade The Morganton Downtown Development Association will hold the 2023 Christmas Parade on Tuesday, Dec. 5 at 6 p.m. Floats, characters and marching bands will usher in the Christmas spirit as they parade around through downtown on Green and Sterling street. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 6 AARP meeting AARP Chapter 3262 will have their annual Christmas dinner on Wednesday, Dec. 6. It will be held at the Morganton Community House starting at 11:30 a.m. A donation of a canned item for Burke United Christian Ministries is appreciated. The cost is $13 per person. Homemade desserts provided by members. Email burkeaarp3262@gmail.com or call 443-0857 to register to attend. THURSDAY, DEC. 7 Tree lighting ceremony The town of Valdese will hold its annual tree lighting ceremony at 6 p.m. on the lawn of the Old Rock School, 400 Main St. W, Valdese. The event will include a special music performance by the Valdese Elementary School Students, led by music teacher Brittany Schaffer. Free hot chocolate will be available for attendees. A rain date is tentatively scheduled for Friday, Dec. 8. This year the Town of Valdese is excited to honor former town mayor Jim Hatley with this special event. Children in the Valdese community were always a special priority for Hatley and the Valdese Town Council chose to dedicate the Town Christmas Tree Lighting Celebration in his honor. NAACP meeting The Burke County NAACP #5367 will be holding their annual meeting on Thursday, Dec. 7 at 6 p.m. at the Mountain View Community Recreation Center located at 645 1st Street, Morganton, NC. All members are encouraged to attend the meeting. In addition to any citizens that are interested in joining the branch. Please keep in mind that because it is the flu season and the uptick in COVID reporting, COVID-19 protocols will be followed. TUESDAY, DEC. 12 Blood drive North Morganton United Methodist Church, 990 Sanford Drive, will host a blood drive with the Red Cross from 1-6 p.m. Visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-733-2767 to schedule an appointment. MONDAY, DEC. 18 ABC Board meeting The Valdese ABC Board will meet at 5:30 p.m. at the Valdese ABC Store at 1018 W. Main St. in Valdese. Christmas dinner The Vietnam Veterans of America, Capt. Robert Douglas Avery Chapter 1116, will host its annual Christmas dinner from 5-6 p.m. The dinner will be paid for by the chapter. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024 Cruise Unifour Christian Ministries will be embarking on a cruise to Grand Turk and Dominican Republic. Members of the public are invited to join. A down payment of $75 is required to reserve your spot and the remaining balance must be paid by Jan. 1. Call Annette Guffey at 828-493-1723 or 828-396-1906 for more information. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Local Weather Get the daily forecast and severe weather alerts in your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy County officials say hundreds of residents in rural parts of Butte-Silver Bow County have not received property tax bills that were mailed out in late October and they dont know why. Local tax bills sent to many property owners who live in other counties or states also have gone undelivered, said Butte-Silver Bow Treasurer Lori Baker-Patrick, and many sent to homes in the Centerville neighborhood were returned as undeliverable. Besides the little section of Centerville, and Im not really sure what contributed to that. None of our rural areas or out-of-state tax bills have made it to their destination at this time, Baker-Patrick told The Montana Standard on Tuesday. She said the county gets certified addresses for tax bills from the Montana Department of Revenue, most of them with nine-digit ZIP codes, and has bills printed and mailed through a local printing vendor. It sent out 17,745 bills on Oct. 27, she said. Local postal officials confirmed receiving the bills, Baker-Patrick said, and told her they are sent to Billings to be sorted by ZIP code order before making their way back to Silver Bow County or other locations. She said a postal official in Melrose contacted her in early November saying residents were wondering why they hadnt received their tax bills. As this month has progressed, we have gotten calls from Divide, Buxton, Anaconda, Ramsay, Whitehall all these folks in Montana plus all of our out-of-state folks saying that they have not received their original tax bills, Baker-Patrick said. She said her office sent out duplicate bills directly to those addresses but believes many of them havent been received, either. Baker-Patrick said her office has been fielding phone calls and doing whatever else it can to get bills to taxpayers, including by email. But by state law, she said, payments are due by Nov. 30, and property owners are responsible for paying. The phone doesnt stop ringing Ill just put it that way because people havent gotten their tax bills and theyre like, The tax bills are due, she said. The Standard contacted the Montana Department of Revenue with questions on Tuesday and sent emails with questions to the postmaster in Billings and to a media relations official at the U.S. Postal Service. Among other things, The Standard asked if they were aware of the situation in Butte-Silver Bow County, if they knew of other such problems in Montana, and what if anything they were doing to fix the problems. The Postal Service did not respond immediately but Jason Slead, communications director for the Montana Department of Revenue, checked with agency officials and did respond quickly. It doesnt sound like any of the (Montana DOR) folks down in Butte have heard of any issues, and were not aware of any issues occurring in other parts of the state outside of hearing that some areas have had hiring issues within the USPS that has caused some delays and other issues, he wrote in an email. We did receive a fair amount of returned mail with mailing assessment notices, which is pretty typical of a reappraisal year and make our best effort to find an updated or current address for those that are returned, he wrote. These would be updated in AT Pro and passed along to the treasurer. So were not aware of any issues or reasons why BSB might have experienced issues with their tax bill mailing nor are we aware of similar issues occurring in any other counties. Baker-Patrick said taxpayers who have not gotten their property tax bills can email her at lpatrick@bsb.mt.gov or call 406-497-6303. They are going to have to get hold of us so we can let them know how much it is, she said. We can email them but the problem with emailing is there are a lot of elderly in Butte-Silver Bow that dont have email. They dont have computers. At least the tax bills sent to homes in Centerville came back as undeliverable, Baker-Patrick said. Her office took them to the post office and mailed them again and they appear to have reached recipients. But county officials cant figure out the others. Im just at a loss, she said. If they (taxpayers) arent getting them and Im not receiving them back, where the heck are they? According to media reports, officials in Missoula County said they had to extend their due date for property tax payments to Dec. 8 because the state was late in sending them tax roll information. They said they didnt know why that delay occurred. The Standard sent a question to the state DOR about that Tuesday afternoon and Slead said he was checking into it. Missoula County was one of several counties that reduced its state mills from 95 to 77.9 over objections from the administration of Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. The state sued Missoula County and in essence all other counties that reduced the state mills, including Butte-Silver Bow. That legal dispute is ongoing. Baker-Patrick said the reduction in state mills here was made in time for tax bills to go out in late October as they usually do. Her office downloaded certified billing addresses from the state on Oct. 10, she said, and the local printer mailed bills on Oct. 27. Ive never seen this, she said. This is my eighth year sending out tax bills and this is over the top. Having to mail out additional bills costs the county and its taxpayers more money, Baker-Patrick said. The county spent more than $10,000 in postage to have the original ones mailed, she said. It has been a year-and-a-half since the Oglala Sioux Tribe sued the United States due to a breakdown of law and order on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Continued reports of drug-related offenses, assaults and homicides prompted the tribal government to take further action. Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out signed a new proclamation on Nov. 18 declaring a State of Emergency on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The new State of Emergency declaration will remain in effect until Jan. 1, 2025. A State of Emergency exists on the Reservation due to the failure of the United States Government and its agencies, particularly the DOI and BIA, to honor their treaty trust and statutory obligations to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, President Star Comes Outs proclamation read. The reservation is currently experiencing high rates of murder, suicide, drug offenses, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary and missing and murdered Indigenous women, according to tribal officials. Despite making up roughly 2% of the South Dakota population, Pine Ridge citizens account for 10% of people currently missing in the state. The South Dakota Missing Persons Clearinghouse reports 13 people currently missing from Pine Ridge, six of whom went missing this year and four within the past month. Seven of the total missing individuals are minors. In July 2022, the tribe launched a lawsuit against the United States arguing the government has failed to uphold its treaty obligation of protecting the tribe. The lawsuit references several historical documents that define the United States obligation. The Treaties of 1825, 1851 and 1868 all included clauses that state the United States is responsible for protecting the Oglala Sioux Tribe and its members from bad men." In 1877, after the confiscation of seven million acres from the former Great Sioux Reservation, the United States also promised compensation in the form of necessary aid and protection, according to treaty documents. The BIA has a responsibility to help our people, and I dont see that happening here, Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out said during a press conference Saturday. This is an emergency. Whats being done now while were waiting [for litigation]? In 2021, the tribe said the federal government only provided 13% of the tribes requested law enforcement and criminal investigations funding for the fiscal year 2023 budget. The tribe said it only has enough funding for 33 police officers. OST currently has 32 officers on staff, with between five and six officers working at one time. Those few are responsible for patrolling the 3.1 million acre reservation and all nine districts. The Nov. 18 Emergency Proclamation urges President Joe Biden to intervene and direct Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland to request sufficient funds for public safety on the reservation. This would include enough funding for the BIA standard of 2.8 officers per 1,000 persons in the service population. The proclamation also calls for South Dakota Senators John Thune and Mike Rounds, along with Representative Dusty Johnson, to hold field hearings on the lack of adequate law enforcement on South Dakota reservations. While census records indicate nearly 20,000 residents on Pine Ridge, the Oglala Sioux Tribe's total enrollment number is over 54,000 people. The tribe is requesting enough funding for 120 officers. We dont live in Indian country, we survive, Star Comes Out said. We have been patiently trying to cooperate with the government, and we feel that theyre stalling. Its hurting our tribe and its hurting our people. As of Aug. 15, both parties in the lawsuit were supposed to begin discussing the possibility of a settlement, per U.S. District Court for the State of South Dakota Chief Justice Roberto Langes order. There has been no movement since that order. Pine Ridge residents face the realities of life with limited law enforcement every day, OST officials explained. Officers often have to prioritize which calls they respond to, leaving many waiting hours for help if help ever comes. Some individuals have reported waiting three or four hours for a response, according to the tribe. The trust is not there anymore; the people don't feel safe anymore, Star Comes Out said. If youre wondering what a lack of treaty fulfillment looks like, just go to our reservation and see for yourself. Tribal entities such as Oglala Victim Services supported the call for a State of Emergency. On Nov. 16, the organization held a vigil for murdered tribal members and called for an end to drug-related violence. Victim Services said it will continue hosting weekly vigil walks until something is done about violence on the reservation. The Nov. 18 proclamation isnt the first time that a State of Emergency has been issued on Pine Ridge in response to violence. The tribe has authorized several declarations over the past seven years. Were living in a lawless government; were impoverished and we dont have the resources to combat [the violence], tribal council representative Anna Halverson said. There used to be one homicide per month or year, now we hear of one nearly every day. In 2017, a string of emergency declarations were issued regarding high amounts of missing tribal citizens, issues with tribal police, and drug usage. In Jan. 2020, then-president Julian Bear Runner issued a State of Emergency regarding the rising number of homicides and meth use on the reservation. The 2020 proclamation requested immediate help from several federal agencies, asking them to send investigators and other resources to the tribe. Nine months later, in Sept. 2020, the OST entered into an agreement with the Pennington County Sheriff's Department allowing for mutual aid between the two. President Star Comes Out said he is planning to speak with President Biden in the near future regarding this new proclamation. The McCullough Peaks wild horse herd is famously photogenic. Its known for robust mares and stallions with a rich diversity of coat colorings, from pinto and palomino to blue and strawberry roan. The terrain they inhabit is equally diverse, and stocked with wild beauty. Throughout the 113,938 acres of McCullough Peaks Wilderness Area, the herd is found roaming amidst the desert mountain foothills, rolling sage prairie, and into loamy badlands beyond. The herd has a presence in the area dating back centuries, and its reputation has spawned a small cottage industry of wild horse tourism in the nearby city of Cody. Although, its historic range over the decades has shrunk, and soon the herd will too. The BLM Cody Field Office is moving forward with a controversial bait trap gather that aims to remove around 40 mustangs and reduce the herd total to 140, considered within the Appropriate Management Level (AML) established by a 2015 Cody Resource Management Plan. BLM officials say the removal is needed to promote healthy rangeland and multiple use objectives for a thriving ecological natural balance required by the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1977. The herds growing fan base, however, have come out strongly against the removal plan. They say the management area can support the herds existing numbers and more without compromising multiple-use objectives; and they believe that the BLMs assessment is tilted in favor of other uses, like livestock. Public lands are supposed to be multiple use, but the ranchers who have the permits dont want to share. Im not anti rancher, but I think that the horses need to be able to live where theyre where theyre supposed to live, said Carol Walker, a wild horse photographer whos studied the McCullough Peaks herd for two decades. Youre talking about 175 adult horses on 110,000 acres. Thats not a huge impact. But when you talk about hundreds and hundreds of cattle out there, virtually your round, theyre the ones that make a big impact on the range. The McCullough Peaks Herd Managed Area (HMA) encompasses six grazing allotments, and under the Cody RMP has 6,179 animal unit months (the amount of forage to sustain one cow for a month). There are currently three livestock permittees operating within the HMA. (Permittees could not be reached for comment.) The BLM assessment does not include a complete rangeland analysis for the entire HMA. Nonetheless, ecological site inventory studies show that mustangs are significantly more erosive than livestock per capita, and that allowing the herd to stay above the AML would result in severe range degradation, according to BLM-Wyoming officials. One of the reasons is that livestock are rotated and confined to specific pastures for specific periods, allowing land managers to limit vegetation impacts during critical growing periods. Mustangs, on the other hand, are present across the entire range and impact a variety of its micro-habitats year-round, including riparian areas and priority sage-grouse habitat. You could you have several hundred horses out there, sure. But youre going to see a detriment to other other organisms and animals wildlife, said Micky Fisher, Public Affairs representative for BLM-Wyoming. Even still, wild horse advocates argue the gathering is unnecessary because the herd is already on the verge of losing numbers by natural causes. The American Wild Horse Campaign explained in a petition letter that 36% of the herds mares are over the age of 15, and 23 mares are over the age of 20. This makes it a disproportionately elderly group liable to lose as many as 20 mustangs in the coming winter, the letter states. In some ways the herds elderliness is the effect of another population control tactic: immunocontraception. The BLM in 2011 began systematically treating McCullough Peaks mares with a drug called Porcine Zona Pellucida vaccine (PZP), applied in the field via cartridge-fired dart rifle. Its a method supported by wild horse advocates and has kept the herds growth around 2% a year. (Officials say the herd would grow 20% annually if left unmanaged.) Contraceptive measures have actually increased the herds life expectancy because they reduce the stress and physical toll of foaling. However, in addition to PZP, the impending gather comes at a time when the BLM has begun implementation of a new fertility control drug, which some worry could have unknown repercussions on the herds genetic viability. For the first time on the McCullough Peaks herd, the BLM will begin the application of a drug known as GonaCon-Equine vaccine, a longer lasting contraceptive that increases the likelihood of permanent sterility. The drug is gaining favor in the world of wild horse management because of its longer lasting effects; whereas PZP must be applied annually, GonaCon can last up to four years. Managers say its also needed to curtail the reproductivity of non-responding mares on which PZP has proven ineffective. The decision troubles some horse advocates, who say not enough is known about the interaction between these separate fertility drugs and its use could have long term implications on herd diversity. Sandy Sisti is pharmaceutical expert and volunteer darter with the Cody BLM, but after more than a decade of working with McCullough Peaks herd, Sisti says she cannot in good conscience dart with GonaCon. I cant find any data that shows that using GonaCon on top of PZP would not have any negative impacts. Not knowing if there will be adverse drug interactions, to me thats not acceptable, especially since we dont have that many breeding age mares in the population, Sisti said. Now that theyre going to start using GonaCon, I dont want to be involved in darting the horses. Its concerning. The drug, nonetheless, has been approved for use, and the BLM assessment cites myriad studies indicating its safety, including a study showing that horses treated with GonaCon return to full fertility in under four years. The proposal stipulates that GonaCon will only be used on mares over the age of 13 whove already contributed offspring to the gene pool. Although the systematic application of fertility control raises additional concerns, particularly for the herds genetic viability. On the one hand, non-responding mares are diminishing the herds genetic diversity by stacking the gene pool with their DNA, which could be problematic in that their resistance to PZP may indicate an immune deficiency. In this way the application of GonaCon could help managers control for a more diversified gene pool. On the other hand, the herds current population is already below the threshold of a genetically viable population, according to leading equine geneticist, Dr. Gus Cothran, Director of the Equine Blood Typing Research Laboratory at the University of Kentucky. In peer-reviewed reports, Cothran says a herd needs a minimum of 150-200 animals with at least 100 breeding age animals in order to maintain the genetic viability required for species resilience. The AML established for the McCullough peaks herd is 70 -140. That AML is an arbitrary number. And this is a historic herd that has been there for a very long time, said Carol Walker, photographer. So they really are a cultural and historic resource, as well. The BLM counters that its decisions are informed by both voluminous scientific study as well as public input, and say theyve worked with activists to implement humane practices, including limiting more controversial gathering techniques like helicopter roundups. We are not as much a part of the discussion, per say. It isnt us picking a side. Were just moving forward with what the law that the American people through Congress has already established for us to do, said Micky Fisher of the BLM, referring the Wild Horse and Burro Act of 1977. The Wyoming Supreme Court ruled in August that settlement agreements involving government entities are subject to the transparency requirements of the Wyoming Public Records Act, even when those settlements include confidentiality provisions. At a glance, the courts decision seemed a clear and sweeping victory for public access to public information. My read on the ... case is that governmental entities can no longer hide behind the facade of these so-called confidentiality agreements in their settlement documents, one of the attorneys involved said of the ruling. Yet, when multiple reporters, and at least one lawmaker, cited the courts opinion in renewed attempts to obtain previously withheld settlement agreements involving police killings, they were again denied access by government entities, raising the specter of yet another long and costly court fight. The Gates v. Memorial Hospital ruling stemmed from a malpractice suit in Gillette, in which Jessica Gates asked Memorial Hospital of Converse County to provide copies of settlement agreements that disclosed payouts to patients. The hospital, in this case a government entity, declined to produce the contracts, so Gates called on Converse County District Court to compel disclosure, the ruling states. The district court ultimately required Memorial Hospital of Converse County to produce the records, but also imposed a protective order on them. Gates appealed this decision to the Wyoming Supreme Court, which ruled that records involving public agencies dealings with public funds are public records. They involve money, which in part, was collected through peoples taxes, the court noted, all of which subject those records to the Wyoming Public Records Act, the law governing the release of state and local documents. A district court lacks inherent power, equitable or otherwise, to issue a protective order to close public records the WPRA itself does not exempt, the court wrote in its conclusion. What appear to be the first attempts at applying the high courts directive to similar records held elsewhere, however, have met stiff resistance from other local government entities. Asked to provide the Casper Star-Tribune and WyoFile with settlement records regarding the police shootings of Douglas Oneyear and Robbie Ramirez, the city of Casper and Albany County have each, instead, moved to fight disclosure in the courts. Members of the public, in the meantime, remain in the dark about how much of their money was spent making these wrongful death lawsuits go away, and whether any policies were changed as a result of these agreements. What happened at the Casper Star-Tribune Douglas Oneyear was killed by two Casper police officers on Feb. 25, 2018. On the first anniversary of Oneyears death, his mother Linda Lennen filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the officers and the city. (Prosecutors had by then separately cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing in the shooting.) A years-long legal battle ensued. The parties agreed to settle on July 10 of this year, less than two weeks before a jury trial was set to begin. Lennen and her attorney Todd Hambrick are unable to comment on any details of that agreement because it contained a confidentiality clause, Hambrick told the Star-Tribune. I will say, however, that the City, litigating this matter for over five years only to settle the case weeks before trial, when they could have settled it five years ago avoiding all of that expense, is quite frankly, inexcusable, Hambrick wrote in an email. The Star-Tribune immediately filed a records request for the settlement but it was denied on July 18 because these records are not in the possession of the City of Casper, City Attorney Eric Nelson said. The Wyoming Association of Risk Management, our self-insurance liability pool, is the custodian of those records. That same day, Joe Constantino, executive director of WARM, also denied providing the documents due to the terms of the settlement agreement. On Aug. 8, as the requesting reporter considered her next steps, the Wyoming Supreme Court issued its Gates ruling, clarifying that settlement agreements fall under the states public records law and confidentiality clauses cannot be used to shield them across the board. The Star-Tribune filed an appeal with Wyomings public records ombudsman Charlotte Martinez three days later. The ombudsman post is designed to resolve public record disputes without a costly, time-consuming court battle. After almost two months of back-and-forth, WARM determined that it needs to obtain guidance on this complicated issue from the district court, Constantino said in an email, which was shared by Martinez. Martinez chose not to rule either way, preferring to let the courts decide instead. She noted the Wyoming Public Records Act specifically notes filing with the district court for several reasons, none of which seem particularly applicable in this case, Martinez wrote. I will be interested to see this filing as well. WARM and the city of Casper filed a motion on Oct. 2 to restrict disclosure to the Star-Tribune. What happened at WyoFile On Nov. 4, 2018, then-Albany County Sheriffs Deputy Derek Colling pulled Robbie Ramirez over for a minor traffic violation. Within minutes, Colling shot Ramirez twice in the back. Ramirez, a 39-year-old Laramie resident, was unarmed and living with mental illness. He died at the scene, feet from his own front door. After an investigation into Collings use of lethal force his third in uniform Albany County Prosecuting Attorney Peggy Trent declined to bring charges against the deputy for Ramirezs death. Then in September 2020, Ramirezs mother Debra Hinkel filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit. Court proceedings lasted close to two years before the parties reached a settlement in May 2022. Albany County denied WyoFiles initial Aug. 22, 2022 public records request for the settlement agreements because the documents were privileged or confidential by law, then-County Clerk Jackie Gonzales wrote in an email on Oct. 2, 2022. Ten months later, following the Gates v. Memorial Hospital decision, WyoFile resubmitted its request to Albany County on Aug. 22 of this year, this time citing the fresh precedent. Albany County responded on Sept. 15, filing in the 2nd District Court in Laramie to block WyoFiles access to the requested settlement agreements. In a motion, John Bowers, an Afton-based attorney hired to represent the county, argued that releasing the settlement documents in full would affect the future government operations of a Wyoming Governmental entity and cause substantial injury to the public. Judge Misha Westby has yet to rule on Albany Countys filing. Bigger than money In both Albany County and Casper, the lawsuits could only reach so deep into public coffers because legal costs and settlement fees are covered by insurance: WARM in Casper and the Local Government Liability Pool in Albany County. The county paid $62,771.00 for a policy in 2021-2022 and $65,413.00 for 2022-23 coverage, records requested by WyoFile show. Much like a co-pay for a visit to the doctors office, Albany County also paid a $5,000 deductible for the settlement regarding Hinkel v. Albany County in August 2022, county records also show. The exact settlement amount Hinkel received is unclear but the Local Government Liability Pool limits coverage per federal lawsuit to $1.5 million, the insurers executive director Torey Racines said. In the three years hes been director, the organization has not been involved with a lawsuit that settled beyond the limit, Racines said. His predecessor, Mike Todd said during his time as director, we have never received a judgment or settled up to these limits. Colling and OMalley were covered separately by the state-funded Self-Insurance Program, which is statutorily obligated to defend peace officers acting within the scope of their duties. Erin Edwards, who oversees the Self-Insurance Program, would not disclose whether state funds contributed to the Hinkel settlement, citing state statute that says, claim files maintained by the risk manager shall be considered privileged and confidential. However, what the state spends on the settlement of peace officer claims is publicly available in an annual report the Self-Insurance Program presents to the Legislature. In 2022, the state paid $1,322,108 on 19 settlements involving peace officers. Thats $523,760 more than the state has spent since 2018. Whether any of those public funds went to Hinkel remains shielded from the states taxpayers. Its not just the money that matters, First Amendment attorney Bruce Moats said. Sometimes in a settlement agreement, therell be things other than money where the government agrees to do certain things, Moats said. Those actions might include policy changes like requiring more training, which is important for the public to know when evaluating government performance. Regardless of whether an insurance company or a government entity pays the settlement, it is still an agreement entered into by a government entity, and therefore a public record, said John Cotton, the attorney who successfully argued for transparency in the Gates v. Memorial Hospital case before the Wyoming Supreme Court. Moats agreed. I dont care if its insurance, he said. Its all public funds thats paid on our behalf. The Local Government Liability Pool is paying for Bowers to represent Albany Countys efforts to block WyoFiles access to the Hinkel settlement, Racines said. When asked if the organization had a direct interest in fighting the release of the settlement agreement, Racines said no. We have a unique circumstance here where the understanding of the law changed, he said, and so thats why LGLP is paying for the clarification of what [Albany Countys] obligations are. The insurers continued involvement in resolving whether the Hinkel v. Albany County settlement should be publicly available is to complete the circle, and what the court says, is what the court says, Racines said. Hinkel, through her attorneys, communicated to the county and WyoFile that she would like the settlement documents made public. Also party to the settlement agreement is Dave OMalley, who served as Albany County sheriff at the time of Ramirezs death, and Deputy Colling, who is no longer with the department. Whether OMalley would consent to the release of the settlement documents is unknown. His attorney has yet to respond to WyoFile. Collings attorney, Stephenson Emery, said in an email to a colleague, which he also sent to WyoFile, that he is working to prevent the disclosure of the Release, or at least to redact the language about the motion for default judgment. The motion for default judgment filed by Hinkels attorneys in March 2022 alleged the sheriffs office altered videos of Colling killing Ramirez by deleting damning scenes and therefore asked the judge to rule the shooting of her son was unreasonable as a matter of law. Why a reference to the motion for default judgment which U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Freudenthal dismissed after the settlement was reached was included in the agreement is unclear, but it raises questions about whether the requested documents might contain information about the body- and dash-cam footage. In its continued effort to obtain the Hinkel v. Albany County settlement agreement, WyoFile filed a Nov. 6 motion to intervene in Albany Countys lawsuit to block public access to those records. If granted intervenor status, WyoFile would be able to make its case in court as to why the settlement agreement should be available to the public. Why it matters The publics trust in law enforcement is upheld by accountability and transparency, lawmakers and researchers say. When civilians are kept in the dark, it is harder for them to believe in the workings of police and government. Its not positive for community relations when they cant get answers, when they feel theres secrecy, when they feel like law enforcement doesnt answer to them, despite getting their paycheck from the public, Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, said. In fact, Provenza also filed a records request with the Local Government Liability Pool for the settlement agreements in Ramirezs case after spotting the Wyoming Supreme Court opinion, the lawmaker said. She has not been provided with the records either. The argument that releasing the settlement agreement could harm public interest by opening up Albany County to additional lawsuits is a strategy to dodge accountability, Provenza said. [A]ctually, if you just dealt with your mess, and didnt harbor people that were going to cause more litigation thats what would save taxpayers money if the government did their job, not if we conceal the government failing to do their job, Provenza said. Provenza pointed to Ramirezs case. She believes withholding the settlement is an attempt to avoid litigation with Colling instead of avoiding litigation with people who want public access to records. Motions filed by Bowers note Albany Countys concern that release of the settlement agreement would be viewed as a breach of the confidentiality agreement by the parties that would put the county at risk by incurring additional litigation. Hinkel supports the release of documents, leaving Colling and OMalley as the remaining parties who might sue. Pete Gosar, chairman of the Albany County Board of Commissioners, did not respond by press time about whether Colling or OMalley posed a threat of litigation. Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, understands there may be some arguments for individual privacy concerns within settlement agreements, but there may also be admissions of wrongdoing and commitment for better policy in the future, he said. As long as public entities, public employees and public funds are affected, the public has a right to know. I cant even imagine a good argument [for withholding], Case said. Its totally contrary to the public interest. It is very unnerving. Despite lawmakers revising the public records act and creating an ombudsman, who is supposed to act as a neutral third party in disputes, we still have frustrating difficulty getting information, Case said. Both Case and Provenza would be interested in drafting legislation that would clarify settlement agreements under the public records act and expand law enforcement transparency. But actually passing bills into law is another story, Case said. Most members of the Legislatures Joint Judiciary Committee are pretty conservative and so protective of law enforcement that they are not supportive of public information, Case said. Im protective of law enforcement, and I think public information goes hand in hand with that. We protect our society and democracy with public information, Case said. ...Its like openness is going backwards, and maybe some of that is a sign of the times. Scott Wolfe is a professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University, who researches policing. He says law enforcement agencies garner public trust when officers practice procedural justice during encounters, ensure transparency and perform duties within the law, research shows. Some agencies may have state laws or policy provisions that prohibit them from releasing certain information, but if agencies arent explaining that, thats kind of a problem they need to address, Wolfe said. He advises law enforcement leaders to educate your journalists, educate the public, Wolfe said. What are the constraints youre facing? I want to be more transparent, but heres why I cant. If there arent legal limitations, a deeper conversation needs to be had about why information is being withheld, he said. Those are very different conclusions. It just makes it worse if you dont because then it makes it look like youre trying to hide something, Wolfe said. Clarification: This story was updated to reflect that Rep. Provenza made her request to the Local Government Liability Pool. Richard L. "Dick" Koll March 16, 1925-November 14, 2023 Richard L. "Dick" Koll passed away at his home in Punta Gorda, on Tuesday, November 14, 2023. He was born on March 16, 1925, in Muscatine, the son of Charles L. Koll and Emma (Schafer) Koll. Funeral Service will be held at Zion Lutheran Church on Wednesday, November 29, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. Reverend Willie Rosin will officiate. Burial will be in Oakdale Cemetery, Wilton, IA. Visitation will be held from 4:00 until 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 28, 2023, at the Ralph J. Wittich-Riley-Freers Funeral Home. Memorials may be made to Camp Courageous or Zion Lutheran Church. Online condolences may be made at www.wittichfuneralhome.com. He was a 1944 graduate of Muscatine High School. It was wartime and there was a manpower shortage. Students were encouraged to work part time in a war-related job. Dick worked on the construction crews that built Grain Processing Corporation. Shortly after graduating from high school, Dick joined the U.S. Marines Corps and served throughout the South Pacific until the end of World War II. After the war, he enrolled at the University of Iowa and earned a degree in mechanical engineering. In 1955 he married Patricia A. Grunder, a marriage that would last 65 years until her death in 2020. After college, he worked a short amount of time at Grain Processing Corporation before joining the Pillsbury Company where he managed that company's facilities first in Lima, OH and later in Clinton, IA. After 10 years with Pillsbury, he returned to GPC where he would retire in 1990. His first job at GPC shortly after startup in the forties was that of maintenance laborer. When he retired, he was plant manager and senior vice president in charge of all plant related operations as well as engineering. He was proud of the part he played in the company's steady and significant growth during his tenure. He and Pat enjoyed travel, here and abroad, visits to their children in Wyoming and Florida, and winters spent in Florida. He was a member of Zion Lutheran Church, the American Legion, and a life member of the University of Iowa Alumni Association. He was a past member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Muscatine Country Club, and the Elks. He is survived by a daughter, Christine Koll Manhart and her husband, Michael, of Fort Lauderdale, FL; son, Cary Koll of Glenwood, IA; daughter in law, Wendy Carlson Koll of Jackson, WY; and a host of wonderful nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents; his wife; son, Craig E. Koll; and sister, Nida Tillman. On this version of Hot off the Wire: Millions of people are expected to hit airports and highways in record numbers over the Thanksgiving holiday. AAA forecasts that 55.4 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home with roads likely to be the most clogged on Wednesday. The holiday season is here, which means spending time with family on Thanksgiving and also, for millions of people, hunting for the best deals on Black Friday. Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November each year, which takes place this week. A lot of national retailers are keeping the doors closed on Thursday to give employees time with families and to recharge for the holidays ahead. That includes some of the biggest chains like Walmart and Target, which plan to re-open stores on Friday. Holiday meals may be changing for millions of Americans struggling with obesity and taking a new generation of weight-loss drugs. Experts and consumers say the drugs are shifting dining habits and social norms around food-centric holidays like Thanksgiving, Passover and Christmas. Some users welcome greater control over what they eat during the holidays. Others may lose their appetites entirely, doctors say, risking what one researcher called the reward of having a beautiful meal. Thanksgiving may be a time for Americans to come together, but opinion is divided over whats on the crowded dinner table. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research looks at the country's Thanksgiving tastes. Americans mostly agree on the deliciousness of pumpkin pie. And turkey rules. But were split over the eternal turkey question of dark meat versus white meat. And dont even ask if marshmallows belong on sweet potatoes it could cause a ruckus. The least favorite dishes? About two in 10 American celebrators said cranberries or cranberry sauce are their least favorite part of the feast. As for the cooking, women are much more likely than men to say they'll do all or most of it. As the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy is marked, the last surviving witnesses remember the day as part of a new National Geographic series "JFK: One Day in America." HINSDALE, N.H. (AP) For years, Geoffrey Holt was known as a mobile home park groundskeeper in a small New Hampshire town. Now, he's being remembered as a millionaire who gave his fortune to the community. Holt died in June at age 82. His 4,200 fellow residents in the town of Hinsdale recently learned he left nearly $4 million to benefit the following areas: education, health, recreation and culture. Holt was a modest man with few needs, but also a savvy investor who read financial publications. The Connecticut River town that has the nation's oldest continually operating post office plans to use the money frugally, as he did. A 41-year-old rural Rolfe man is guilty of felony theft and 50 timber violations for taking dozens of trees from public property, a jury recently decided. Jason Levant Fergusons criminal tree-theft case went to trial last week in Pocahontas County. He had been accused of taking about 150 trees from a wildlife management area northeast of Rolfe last year, purportedly to build himself a house, according to court records. Timber thefts are an uncommon but growing crime in Iowa, according to the states Department of Natural Resources. Fergusons thefts stood out for the number of trees taken and for one of the trees he was accused of felling: a bur oak that was about six feet in diameter at its base. That tree was a sapling when Iowa was made a state, said Craig Cutts, chief of the DNRs Law Enforcement Bureau. Iowa gained statehood nearly 180 years ago. Fergusons prosecution hit a snag last month when a district court judge decided that search warrants for his rural acreage were improperly approved and the evidence obtained by the subsequent searches couldnt be used to prosecute him. Those searches allegedly found evidence that someone had been growing marijuana and manufacturing methamphetamine on Fergusons property, and he faced numerous felony drug and weapons charges. Those charges were dismissed, but the tree theft case continued with the evidence DNR officers had obtained before the searches. That evidence included an admission by Ferguson that he had taken the trees from the Stoddard Wildlife Management Area and photographic evidence of tree trunks on his property, court records show. The trial last week spanned four days and ended with a 12-person jury finding him guilty of every criminal charge he faced, court records show. The jury deliberated for about two hours, Pocahontas County Attorney Dan Feistner said. Fergusons sentencing hearing is set for Jan. 26. He faces up to five years in prison for the felony theft charge and one year imprisonment each for the 50 counts of timber buyer violations, which were for cutting down trees he had not purchased and had no legal right to do so, according to court records. Photos: Missing children in Iowa Jade Colvin Fredrick Workman Benjamin Roseland Erin Pospisil Marc Allen Eugene Martin John Gosch Kimberly Doss Colleen Simpson Daquan Nelson Alivia Beeding The Kenyan Court of Appeal has affirmed that children born out of wedlock are eligible for inheritance, regardless of whether the deceased father adhered to the Muslim faith. In a November judgment delivered by Justices SG Kairu, Pauline Nyamweya, and G.V. Odunga, the court stated that cultural practices discriminating against certain individuals contravene the Constitution. A previous ruling by the high court, which denied inheritance rights to children born out of wedlock based on Sharia Law, was overturned by the Court of Appeal. High Court Decision Followed Lack of Will in the Estate of Late Businessman Salim Juma Hakeem Kitendo The High Court ruling followed the death of businessman Salim Juma Hakeem Kitendo, who passed away without a will. The assets of the deceased included a fuel station in Diani, multiple land plots, vehicles, various businesses, and bank accounts. In the recent ruling, the Court of Appeal judges succinctly stated that there is no rational justification to deny the children a fair share of their fathers estate. To deny children born out of wedlock the benefit which accrues to other children born in wedlock on the basis of the alleged sins committed by their parents, in our view cannot be justified since it would mean that this Court would be adopting hurtful discrimination and stereotypical response to a clear case of discrimination. It is our view that the rights of the children must be distinguished from marital issues, the ruling read in part. The Appellate Judges ruled that cultural practices that deny children the right to parental care and protection based on the marital status of the father and mother cannot be tolerated. We find that the 1st respondent and her children born from the relationship between the deceased and the 1st respondent are entitled to benefit from the estate of the deceased, the court adjudicated. The bench subsequently directed the case back to the high court for the adjudication of the distribution of the deceaseds property. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) successfully reclaimed eight acres of land, including Government staff quarters valued at Sh365 million in Mombasa. This property is part of a more extensive landholding in the Shanzu area, adjacent to Shanzu Teachers Training College, valued at Sh1.2 billion, which the EACC is actively working to recover. The anti-graft watchdog has secured orders from the Environment and Land Court in Mombasa, halting Gulf Energy, one of the defendants, from progressing with the developments it was carrying out on the property. On November 14, 2023, Justice Lucas Naikuni of the Environment and Land Court in Mombasa issued orders, as requested by the EACC, restraining the defendants from engaging in any transactions related to the property until the case is heard and determined. The case is scheduled for mention on December 7, 2023. The EACC stated on Tuesday that it is actively intensifying efforts to reclaim public property that has been unlawfully seized by individuals in collaboration with public officials in Mombasa County. Currently, there are more than 130 ongoing civil cases in Mombasa courts, where the EACC is pursuing the recovery and restoration to the public of stolen property valued at over Sh10 billion. EACC has since successfully concluded the recovery of various properties, subsequently returning them to the public. Among these is the Hobley Estate in the Buxton area, property of the Ministry of Housing, adjacent to the Affordable Housing Project in Mombasa, with a current market value of Sh500 million. Check out: PHOTOS Ruto Hands Over Buxton Point Affordable Housing Phase I to its New Owners The property, now accommodating County Government employees, was reclaimed through legal proceedings, leading to the cancellation of titles held by the encroachers as per the court order. Additionally, seven prime properties, including six Government houses owned by the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) and one house owned by the Ministry of Housing, all located in Nyali/Bamburi Estate and collectively valued at Sh420 million, have also been successfully recovered. The government has shattered the hopes of land developers occupying two plots associated with the Kirima family in Nairobis Njiru region. Lands Cabinet Secretary Alice Wahome has stated that after verifying land records, the government concurs with the courts determination that the land rightfully belongs to the late former Starehe MP, Gerishon Kirima. On 16th September 1967, Percy Everly transferred the property to Gerishon Kamau Kirima and Joan Gerishon Kirima who are the current registered owners of the LR no 6825/2 which measures 472.5 acres, she said. As a ministry, we have received a lot of inquiries on if we can buy the land or settle people in the land. We have no such plans, the land belongs to Kirima and the government has no claim on that land or any say in the matter. CS Wahome further explained that the land was mortgaged to National and Grindlays Bank on April 11, 1969, for Sh150,000. She also noted that the second parcel of land, LR No. 5908/8, measuring 507 acres, was transferred to Gerishon Kamau Kirima and Joan Gerishon Kirima by Demico De Massi on June 17, 1972. New grant IR 98744 was issued to Gerishon Kamau Kirima and Joan Gerishon Kirima upon expiry of the terms in 2003. The new term is for 99 years from 01.09.2003, she added. This development sets the stage for the potential eviction of unauthorized occupants unless they reach an agreement with the Kirima family. The Ministry has further issued a caution to those residing on public utility land within the two parcels, stating that immediate repossession will take place. I take this opportunity to warn members of the public. Unless youve engaged the Kirima family directly, you risk falling into a trap, CS Wahome warned. This development coincides with the Kirima familys efforts to deter individuals considered illegal settlers on their land in Njiru, Kasarani Constituency. A court ruling, issued on October 23, mandated occupants to vacate the land by December 31, despite President William Ruto suggesting an amicable solution. CS Wahome reiterated that the government is committed to reclaiming public utility land from land grabbers. The National Social Security Fund has announced job opportunities in diverse roles within the government agency responsible for the collection, safekeeping, responsible investment and distribution of retirement funds of employees. According to the announcement, NSSF is looking to fill 336 positions with qualified individuals. The National Social Security Fund has service delivery points spread across the country and is seeking to enhance the capacity of its human resource to achieve its obligations of service delivery to all Kenyans, reads the notice. The Fund seeks to recruit experienced and energetic Kenyans to fill these vacancies from the positions. Various positions are available, such as Regional Manager (6), Assistant Manager (19), Branch Manager (15), Senior Principal Officer (28), Accountant (24), Security Officer (2), Records Officer (2), Principal Officer (78), and Management Trainees (46), among others. Those interested are encouraged to submit their curriculum vitae at Social Security houses by December 11, 2023. This comes as the government steps up its commitment to providing employment opportunities for the Kenyan youth. Meanwhile, Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria of the Public Service and Delivery Management has announced that his ministry is set to introduce the Jobo Bila Connection initiative portal. The CS explained that the portal aims to facilitate job applications for Kenyans in the public sector, irrespective of their background. In the public sector, we are going to lead from the front in being an equal opportunities employer. We will soon develop a portal for all Kenyans to apply for jobs in the public sector regardless of their background dubbed the Jobo Bila Connection initiative, he said. The youth unemployment matter should be a concern for all of us because we are not safe unless all of us are safe. The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) is considering the incorporation of private motor vehicles into its annual motor vehicle inspection program, aiming to improve road safety. The proposal, currently in its preliminary stages, is under discussion to determine the most effective way forward. The draft comprises a regulatory framework for motor vehicle inspection, with a significant focus on incorporating private vehicles. Ongoing discussions are exploring the possibility of engaging private sector entities to enhance inspection capacity. George Njau, the Director General of NTSA, testified before the Senate Transport Committee on Tuesday, revealing that the authority currently manages 17 inspection centers across the country. Njau informed the committee that the matter of fees for private vehicle inspection is yet to be resolved and is still a subject of ongoing discussion. Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna expressed apprehensions about the initiative, suggesting that it might be a hastily conceived plan aimed at generating revenue. What is the justification for that fee? Are you looking for money, or are you looking for safety? Sifuna posed. Njau defended the proposal, emphasizing that the choice to implement inspections is rooted in safety and public involvement. He clarified, When we initiated this process, we conducted a public participation exercise earlier in the year across all regions. But Sifuna went on to criticize NTSA for contemplating the inclusion of private sector players in motor vehicle inspection, claiming that their profit-oriented approach would result in escalated costs for Kenyans. If you do not have the capacity yourselves to conduct inspections, do not involve the private sector. We already experience delays in commercial vehicle inspections; why insist on doing something beyond your capacity? posed the Senator. Sifuna added: Kenyans cannot afford any more levies; they lack the capacity to bear additional charges. Inspection should remain a government function, particularly for commercial vehicles. The Director General reiterated that the suggested road safety measures are still in the draft stages, with ongoing discussions on the best course of action. We can build on it to ensure we address all issues that directly impact Kenyans, he said. As part of their strategy, NTSA aims to distribute free handbooks to both private and commercial vehicle owners to address information gaps. We will provide handbooks to the public to refresh their knowledge on road safety, the traffic code, as there is sometimes an information gap on how to interpret and use available information, Njau explained. St. Helena residents Alan Galbraith and Jeff Warren, whose last names loomed large in the John F. Kennedy administration, shared their memories on Tuesday, a day before before the 60th anniversary of Kennedys assassination. Galbraiths father was the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, two-time recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Kennedys ambassador to India, and a close friend and adviser of the president. Warrens grandfather was Earl Warren, a chief justice of the Supreme Court and former California governor who also became Kennedys close friend. In front of a crowd of history buffs at the St. Helena Public Library, Galbraith and Warren shared insider stories of one of America's most beloved presidents. The talk was moderated by John Oliver Wilson. J.K. Galbraith As a young congressman out of Massachusetts, Kennedy would ask for J.K. Galbraiths advice on how to vote on legislation. As he gained experience, he would ask for advice on more nuanced policy matters. Eventually he felt confident enough to act on his own. Dad thought he was a terrific political student, Alan Galbraith said. Alan Galbraith met the future president only once, in 1954, when he and his mother dropped by then-Senator Kennedys office to pick up tickets to a Senate debate and Kennedy came out to chat. But his dad was always full of Kennedy stories. For example, when Kennedy chose Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate in 1960, he explained his reasoning to J.K. Galbraith in a private conversation. First, I had the feeling that Lyndon takes more of the Catholic flavor off me than anyone else. A Southern Protestant, Kennedy told Galbraith, as Galbraith later recounted in a book. Second, he obviously helps me in the South. Third, it wouldnt be worthwhile being president if Lyndon were the majority leader. Galbraith contributed what became a famous line to Kennedys 1961 inaugural speech: Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Immediately after the speech, Galbraith and his wife, Kitty, were traveling in a car with the author John Steinbeck and his wife, Elaine. As a network news crew filmed them, Galbraith asked Kitty and the Steinbecks about their favorite part of the speech, and Elaine Steinbeck mentioned the negotiate line, not knowing Galbraith had written it. Kennedy saw the conversation on the news and needled Galbraith about it the next day. He said dad put my mother up to saying that, so dad explained it had been Elaine Steinbeck, not my mother, Alan Galbraith recalled. But the president did think that was one of the finest lines in his speech. Earl Warren President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren to the Supreme Court as a political payoff, Jeff Warren said. Earl Warren missed out on the Republican presidential nomination in 1952 due to the machinations of Eisenhower and his running mate Richard Nixon, so Eisenhower offered to nominate him to the first vacancy on the Supreme Court. When the first vacancy turned out to be that of chief justice, Warren insisted that Eisenhower honor his pledge or else he was going to go coast to coast and tell everybody the generals word is no good, Jeff Warren recalled. Eisenhower kept his word, but he and Warren had a falling-out over the courts liberal decisions ending school segregation, limiting the power of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and striking down a ban on interracial marriage. Eisenhower came to consider his appointment of Warren the biggest damn fool mistake hed ever made. Kennedy, however, developed a close friendship with Warren. The Wednesday before the assassination, John and Jackie Kennedy hosted a dinner for Warren at the White House. The next time Warren saw Jackie, she was stepping off a plane from Dallas at Andrews Air Force Base, a widow. Here was a 34-year-old woman "hed been sitting next to a few nights before, Jeff Warren said. She gets off the plane with blood on her dress, really in shock. Ambassador to India When Kennedy was inaugurated, he invited J.K. Galbraith to join him on his first tour of the White Houses private rooms. He said the first lady was keenly interested in the quality of the furniture, so shed instructed him to figure out what was original and what was a reproduction. If it was a reproduction, Kennedy was to judge whether it was a good one or a bad one. Dad was a little astounded by this tour, Alan Galbraith remembered. When Kennedy named J.K. Galbraith ambassador to India, Galbraith's 10-year-old son Peter balked at having to move, so Kennedy wrote him a charming letter recalling when hed been shipped off to London to join his own father on an ambassadorial posting. Kennedy told Peter hed make lots of friends in India, learn to play polo, and encounter elephants and cobras, although I gather the cobras have to be handled professionally. But more important still, I think of the children of the people I am sending to other countries as my junior peace corps, Kennedy wrote. You and your brothers will be helping your parents do a good job for our country and you will be helping out yourself by making many friends. I think perhaps this is what you will enjoy most of all. The letter must have made quite the impression, since Peters little brother James started complaining that the president hadnt written to him. So Kennedy wrote James a letter too. Alan, the oldest of the brothers, was in college during his fathers time as ambassador, but he visited India once and accompanied his father on a speaking tour of Indias top universities. Ive never seen such crowds, Alan said. "They filled stadiums and overflowed beyond that." When the ambassador arranged to spend some time at the familys summer home in Vermont, Alan called the phone company to reactivate the phone line, but it still wasnt working when he and his father arrived. It turned out that beavers had downed some trees and brought down the phone lines. The Galbraiths soon found teams of utility workers repairing the line on a Sunday morning. The next time J.K. Galbraith met with the president, Kennedy asked him, By the way, Ken, did you get your phone fixed? It turned out that when Kennedy hadnt been able to reach his friend, hed called the head of AT&T and asked him to get the line working right away. When Jackie Kennedy visited India in March 1962, Galbraith was concerned that her itinerary included a trip to the Konark Sun Temple. The complex includes explicit erotic sculptures, and Galbraith was worried about the first lady being photographed next to them. The president told him not to worry, saying, Ken, dont you think shes old enough? The first lady never got to visit Konark after all, since Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was quite taken with her and had her change her schedule so they could spend more time together. After Camelot Galbraith helped arrange Kennedys funeral. Knowing that the grief-stricken first lady wouldnt be able to stay in the White House for long, he arranged for his friend Averell Harriman, the former New York state governor and U.S. secretary of commerce, to make his fully staffed Georgetown home available to Jackie and the Kennedy children. The day after the assassination, Jackie Kennedy asked Earl Warren to speak at the U.S. Capitol rotunda, where her husband was lying in state. He stayed up all night writing a brief speech paying tribute to Kennedy and denouncing the forces of hatred and malevolence that had inspired some misguided wretch to kill him. Jeff Warren said his grandfather accepted the job of investigating the assassination reluctantly, and only at the urging of President Johnson himself. Johnson needed the report to carry as much authority as possible, and Life magazine had named Earl Warren the most trusted man in America. The Warren Commissions conclusion that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone continues to generate controversy to this day. In 1975, one year after Warren died, the Church Committee found that the CIA and FBI hadnt been as forthright as they should have been with the Warren Commission, but the report found no proof that Oswald hadnt acted alone. As far as we knew, (Earl Warren) went to his grave thinking that he had the right man at the right time, Jeff Warren said. His own father had been murdered in 1939, so he knew what that type of pain was like. With his closeness to Jack Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy, he would not have done anything except to find the truth. Gifts from Jackie On Dec. 20, 1963, Jackie Kennedy wrote Warren a letter thanking him for his rotunda speech and saying her husband always loved you so much. He admired you inordinately long before he was president and you always sustained him, she wrote. I remember him saying one night when he was quite upset about what was happening in Congress, But those Republicans, how can you hope for anything from them? They nominated Dewey and Nixon when they could have had Earl Warren. Galbraith has a collection of inaugural speeches the first lady gave his father for Christmas in 1963, weeks after her husbands death. The President was going to give you this for Christmas, she wrote in her inscription. Please accept it now from me With my devotion always for all you did for Jack. I always think of him as gay and you contributed so much to that gaiety. Love, Jackie. Today in history: Nov. 22 1935: The China Clipper 1943: Cairo Conference 1963: John F. Kennedy 1977: Concorde 1990: Margaret Thatcher 2005: Angela Merkel 2010: Cambodia 2014: Tamir Rice 2017: Larry Nassar 2017: Ratko Mladic (This is the latest in a series of Q&A articles highlighting winemakers and grapegrowers in the St. Helena area.) 1. When was your winery founded? "I founded Smith-Madrone in 1971." 2. Why did you choose to be in the Spring Mountain District AVA? "As a grad student in the viticulture and enology program at UC Davis, I embraced the belief that there are two unassailable tenets of wine. The first is that only great wine can come from the very best grapes. Secondly, as Virgil wrote in 17 BC, 'Bacchus amat colles.' Bacchus loves the hills, hence this quest of mine drove me to the top of Spring Mountain. Our estate is dramatically situated, not only at 1,900 feet elevation but also with slopes approaching 34% in steepness and exposures to all four points of the compass." 3. Who is owner? Who is winemaker? Who is vineyard manager? "The winery is owned by a partnership. The winemaker is Charles Smith; associate winemaker is Francois Bugue; general manager/partner and vineyard manager is Stuart Smith." 4. How many acres do you farm in the Spring Mountain District AVA? "38.5 acres." 5. Do you farm sustainably/organically/biodynamically? "We farm sustainably and may have coined the term fire-safe farming." 6. Please describe your vineyards: soil; exposure; narrow spacing; type of trellising; irrigation/dry farmed, etc. "Our vineyards sit at elevations between 1,300 and 2,000 feet, on steep slopes which range up to 34%. We initially planted Chardonnay, Riesling and Cabernet Sauvignon in 1972. Cabernet Franc and Merlot were added in 1998. Petite Verdot was added in 2007. "I chose specific slopes with different exposures for specific varietals when planting the vineyards: eastern exposure for Riesling, southern and western exposures across flat stretches for the Cabernet Sauvignon and the coolest north-facing slopes for the Chardonnay. "The soils are mostly deep-red Aiken Stoney Clay loam, part of the Aiken, Kidd, Forward complex of soils which are volcanic-based, well-drained and deep for mountain soils. The underlying geology is the Franciscan Assemblage, unique to the California coastal ranges, which includes altered mafic volcanic rocks, deep-sea radiolarian cherts, sandstones, limestones, serpentines, shales and high-pressure metamorphic rocks, all of them faulted and mixed in a seemingly chaotic manner as a result of tectonic plate activity. The soils are rocky, with some rocks as large as small cars. We see lots of wildlife on our ranch, whether coyotes, black bears, skunks, wild turkeys, bobcats and foxes." 7. Wineries today try to differentiate the visitor experience. Whats unique about visiting your winery/tasting room? "When you come for a tour and tasting, youre always greeted either by one of the Smiths or Francois and the tasting takes place in our winery. You will spend your visit with one of us that has close to a half-century of experience and we will answer any and all of your questions. Weather permitting, you will likely stroll out into the Chardonnay and Cabernet vineyards surrounding the building or up to a scenic lawn with dramatic views in all directions up and down the valley floor and over to Howell Mountain and the eastern flank of the valley. The tasting is an extremely personal experience where we share not only our history but also the nuances of all of the wines we make." 8. What might surprise people to learn about you/your winery/your operation? "How small we are (we only produce around 3,300 cases a year). Were an all-estate fruit operation; all of our wines are made entirely from our estate vineyards. "How we decided on our name: Smith to honor our family and the hard work behind establishing the vineyard and winery, and Madrone to honor the prevalent tree on the ranch. "We are pioneers and longtime practitioners of dry farming and non-till: this approach is possible in mountain terroirs, if the right spacing and rootstocks are used. With climate change we cannot be fanatical about this and realize that in some drought years drip irrigation may be needed. Our goal is to use as little irrigation as is possible. We have one block of Cabernet Sauvignon that was planted in 1974 on AXR#1 and hasnt had a drop of water from us since the day we planted it." 9. What is special about the Spring Mountain District AVA in your opinion? Is it misunderstood? What do you wish visitors knew about it which perhaps they dont? "Its special because its so spectacularly beautiful. As you drive up Spring Mountain Road at every turn the views are different, whether a vista over the valley at a distance or forest or vines. Nothing is boring on Spring Mountain! Nothing is flat, predictable or easy. Farming on these steep slopes is a challenge and calls for a certain kind of personality. Theres an overall rustic vibe on Spring Mountain, not to diminish the elegance and complexity of the wines everyone makes. Theres also quite a history here of pioneers and Native Americans who lived here in older times." 10. Whats your favorite place in St. Helena to eat, drink or relax? "Villa Corona, Market and Press cant choose just one!" A proposal to merge the St. Helena Public Library with the Parks & Recreation Department is raising concerns among some library board members. City Manager Anil Comelo plans to hire an interim library director, Melinda Cervantes, to replace Chris Kreiden, whos retiring Nov. 30. Once Cervantes three-month tenure ends, Comelo said hes considering merging the library and Parks & Rec into a new Department of Community Services headed by current Parks & Recreation Director Dave Jahns. Jahns would continue to report directly to Comelo. The job of library director would change to library manager. The library manager and Parks & Recreation manager a new position that could be filled internally would report to Jahns. Comelo stressed that he hasnt decided whether to go ahead with the restructuring, but he said the model has worked well at his previous postings in Beverly Hills and Richmond. The new structure would allow the library manager to be 100% dedicated to the library without having to handle the administrative duties of a department head, Comelo told the library board on Nov. 16. It would also create greater synergy between library and Parks & Rec staff, especially in programming events, he said. For example, this year each department organized separate Mexican Independence Day events. This is about making a more cohesive, efficient department, Comelo said. A few library board members disagreed, especially chair David Slaby, who called the idea really stupid and vehemently criticized Comelo in remarks that grew increasingly heated during the hour-long board meeting. Why dont we save the city a lot of money and eliminate the city managers position? Slaby said when Mayor Paul Dohring stepped in to defend Comelo. Library board members questioned whether merging the library with Parks & Rec would harm fundraising efforts by the librarys nonprofit affiliate, the Friends & Foundation, St. Helena Public Library. Fundraising is going to be a problem, said board member Janet Myers. I think donations will go down, said board member Terry Wood. The foundation is already asking the community to fund projects that had previously been outside its purview, like landscaping, said Maria Stel, a former executive director of the foundation. If the library merges with Parks & Rec, there would need to be a lot of education of potential donors, Stel told the library board. Board members also questioned whether a library manager would have as much clout as a library director, and whether library professionals would see the job of manager as less prestigious and desirable than director. The feedback wasnt entirely negative. Board member Deborah Claymon Boeschen said the merger could produce more potential for synergy because of the overlapping missions of the library and Parks & Rec. The library is not just books anymore, she said. Its a community resource center. Its a place where people come together. The appointment of Cervantes as interim library director was less controversial, although Slaby was concerned about the loss of institutional knowledge given the two-day overlap between Kreiden and Cervantes. Kreiden said she would be available to advise Cervantes even after those two days. Cervantes has served in similar interim positions for other libraries and, like Kreiden, has a Master of Library Science degree. Comelo said the goal of the restructuring would be to improve services, not to save money. If this is not a good idea for us as a community, we wont do it, Comelo said. Inside the book-ban machine: The rise of 'parental rights' groups and their efforts to ban books Inside the book-ban machine: The rise of 'parental rights' groups and their efforts to ban books Conservative education groups have spread rapidly, frequently in areas with politically mixed populations New conservative book rating sites are fueling book bans Regional groups are also organizing to challenge books: About 1 in 6 complaints nationwide in 2022 were from St. Tammany Parish New state laws support attempts to restrict library materials Picture this: Youve just landed on Mars, ready to pull some unruly colonists back in line. The Martians are running around, yelling, The Americans are coming! and rallying their troops, small in number but mighty. The impending battle is shaping up to be a real underdog victory if the upstart Red Planet forces can pull it off. Then you start to think that this story sounds a little familiar. Thats because its meant to be. Stephanie Trott is teaching her eighth-grade classes about the American Revolution with a twist. Using ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools, her Redwood Middle School students are staging their own revolution, but set in the future on a new planet. Each class period has been made a separate Martian colony, tasked with forming a government, electing leaders and generating propaganda to entice its citizens to join the fight against the Americans representing the British in the original tale or stay loyal to it. Second periods elected queen, Kaitlyn Lowgren, said her class created a constitutional monarchy after studying various government structures. She said the activity of deciding which government to implement, and learning how to "rule" within that government, has been really fun. After forming a government, the story truly begins to develop, diverging in each class period based on the structure its students chose. Trott told ChatGPT to create a story on Mars that mimicked the Revolutionary War era from 1775 to 1783, then refine that story further based on each class period's government. The stories differentiated even more when students were tasked with choosing sides. Would they join the rebellion agitating for Martian self-rule or stay loyal to the American government millions of miles away? Trott explained that this activity was designed to reflect early American settlers' dilemma. Those who chose to create loyalist propaganda would get extra credit if they won the classroom war. If they lost, members of the newly independent Martian government would decide their punishment. It is supposed to mimic real life, Trott explained. For those who chose to stay loyal to the British, there was something in it for them. Those who chose not to were looking at more of the whole. Trott gave students an assignment to create propaganda based on the side they chose. She then wrote a rubric for ChatGPT, which determined what level of effectiveness each piece of propaganda could have had. I gave Chat the same rubric I gave the kids, which was: Does it use powerful language? Are there similarities to (the work of) Paul Revere and Thomas Paine? So again, trying to like the past and what they were using, Trott said. Based on those assessments, the AI gave her an estimate of how that propaganda would affect a model populations beliefs. In second period, 50% of the hypothetical colonists remained with the loyalists, while 30% joined the patriots. The other 20% decided to stay neutral. This class had the most effective propaganda, so their patriots have the best odds at victory, Trott explained. After the students were informed of their propagandas effectiveness, the loyalists and patriots prepared for a fierce battle (of dice rolling). The first side to generate 30 sixes would win the first battle of the war. The Americans aka the loyalists ultimately came out on top in a nail-biter. But the war, and the assignment, arent over yet. Trott said that learning how to utilize AI in the classroom has been a fun, but challenging process. She said although its the first year shes used it, she already feels like shes learned so much about the ways it can and cant be effective. One of the biggest challenges has been learning how to integrate the new opportunities AI creates into her pre-existing lessons. Matching up our study of the American Revolution with this project has been a challenge, since its the first year I am doing it. I feel like I have already learned so much, she said, adding there is a definite learning curve. In addition, Trott said she recognizes the limitations and potential negative impacts. It's a very insecure, vulnerable position. I'm like, My God, it's kind of like eliminating the need for kids to think, she said. You can ask ChatGPT to write an essay about the American Revolution. You can have it pull up quotes from novels that elicit a certain feeling, or relate to a theme your class is studying, she explained. Trott has caught students in her classes using it on assignments. But as shes gotten to know the tool, shes also gotten better at picking up when it has been used. Chat is very generic in the way it writes, so it's become really apparent when a kid submits something (if they use it)," she said. "If we talked about these specific things in class and I'm not seeing that anywhere in the writing, (I know). If you're kind of in tune with its writing, there's a generic quality thats pretty easy to see. She also said that in the same ways it can be harmful pulling quotes on command, writing narrative stories quickly, solving complex word problems and more it can also be helpful, especially for teachers. Trott has found that she can be more creative in her lesson planning with the help of artificial intelligence tools. So much of planning takes hours, so as a teacher, it helps me create projects that I think are going to be engaging for students in less time, she said. If Trott were to write up a Revolutionary War-themed story set on Mars, it would have taken hours she could otherwise spend grading, meeting with students, and actually teaching. It wouldnt have been feasible. However, she was able to ask ChatGPT to create a story that paralleled pre-revolutionary colonial America in no time at all. And yet ... Its like any predictive tool it's not perfect, theres some poetic license there. With the propaganda, its not like I think (what ChatGPT predicts) is exactly what would happen. It was just a helpful tool for me to have something outside of me to critique it. Trott said it cant replace grading either, at least not to her standards. She said that similarly to its writing style, the assessments it produces can be generic, and frankly a little too easy. Ultimately, Trott believes that like it or not, AI will make its way into education. Used well, she thinks it can be an asset. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown on Tuesday suspended a member of the states relatively new hate crimes commission for her social media comments on the latest war between Israel and Hamas. Zainab Chaudry, who is the executive director of the Maryland office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is temporarily suspended from her position as a member of the Maryland Commission on Hate Crimes Response and Prevention, the attorney generals office said. Brown, chairman of the hate crimes commission created by the Maryland General Assembly this year, has the authority to remove any member who disrupts the work and mission of the commission, the attorney generals office said in a news release. Chaudrys personal social media posts about the war since the terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the attorney generals office said, challenged the Commissions ability to do its work. The commission must serve as a model for the entire state on how to respond to incidents of hate and bias. The commission is facing its first test, said Brown, a Democrat, in a statement. How we respond has deep implications. I take this very seriously, and I will do everything possible to bring people together to move forward the critical work of this commission. Some have criticized Chaudrys Facebook posts, which promote the Palestinian cause and criticize Israel, as antisemitic. Zainab Chaudry, Maryland outreach director for the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations (CAIR), speaks at a press conference on the attack on a Muslim employee of the Baltimore Police Department. She told The Baltimore Sun on Tuesday the her comments reflect only her views, not those of the commission or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and said she was exercising her right to free speech. Its a shame that at this time there temporarily wont be any representation for the Muslim, Arab and Palestinian community in Maryland when we are seeing an unprecedented rise in Islamophobia and Palestinian hate crimes and bias incidents, Chaudry said. Islamophobic and antisemitic incidents, including those featuring violence, have increased across America since the latest Israel-Hamas war erupted Oct. 7. Seven Republican state delegates wrote a letter to Brown on Wednesday decrying one of Chaudrys posts as aggressive antisemitism and calling on the attorney general to not allow her to return to the commission. We are grateful for your swift suspension of Ms. Chaudry and hope that your commitment to defending the Jewish people will continue and that you will ultimately decide not to reinstate someone whose views pose such a danger to the Jewish community, the Republican delegates wrote. In addition to suspending Chaudry, Brown ordered his staff to create draft values statement about commission members personal communications, to be taken up at the commissions next meeting, according to his office. Brown also called on commission members to exercise great care in their communications and conduct, considering the duties and responsibilities they assumed when joining the commission. Borne from legislation passed by the legislature this year and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, the commission is responsible for developing strategies to prevent and respond to hate crimes as well as evaluating state hate crime policies and laws, according to the attorney generals office. The development with Chaudry comes after Johns Hopkins Medicine placed one of its physicians on leave earlier this month for his social media posts about Palestinians after Hamas Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The Council of American-Islamic Relations filed a complaint with the Maryland Board of Physicians against Dr. Darren Klugman, the Johns Hopkins Childrens Centers director of pediatric cardiac critical care and an associate professor at the university. Walt Ranch is a peaceful place, belying the bitter land use battles it stirred up for more than a decade over the role of agriculture in the mountainous watersheds. No longer do people cram the Napa County Board of Supervisors chamber to debate whether Walt Ranch is the proper place for vineyards. No longer do attorneys fight over its fate in courtrooms. Last spring, Walt Ranch became a 2,300-acre nature preserve owned by the Land Trust of Napa County. Someday, this world of oak woodlands, grasslands and expansive views is to be open to the public for hiking as a kind of park. Whats so special about Walt Ranch? The Napa Valley Register recently went to the property in the mountains between the city of Napa and Lake Berryessa to find out. The entrance is in the small, rural Circle Oaks subdivision. Mike Palladini, the Land Trust's stewardship director, drove the dirt-and-rock back roads of Walt Ranch in a Jeep. He called attention to one view in particular, from a hillside looking east over a valley to coastal mountains that are the last barrier before the Central Valley. You dont see any development, Palladini said. You dont see a house, you dont see vines. Its amazing, this big landscape looking out to the ridge, and youre only seeing natural habitat. Heres a place to get away from it all without leaving Napa County. One thing that stands out about Walt Ranch is its size. At 3.6 square miles, its more than twice as large as Yountville and is bigger than Calistoga. Its larger than Bothe-Napa State Park, with 16 miles of trails and roads. Its big and its size really facilitates the protection of a broad range of species, Palladini said. Some oaks are blackened, a reminder of the 2017 Atlas Fire that burned through the property at various degrees of intensity. Much of Walt Ranch has rebounded and hardly looks like a fire zone. Various oaks and other types of trees have red tags on them. These are among the 14,000 trees that were once slated to be cut down to make room for vineyards, before Walt became a nature preserve. Walt Ranch seems like two worlds. The eastern half has the oak woodlands and views of the Vaca Mountains. This area seems wetter, lusher. The western side is a more arid chaparral landscape, with rugged Sonoma Volcanics soils and views of the Atlas Peak area and a distant San Pablo Bay. Rare plants grow here, such as the holly-leaved ceanothus. The California Native Plant Society reports this plant is mainly found in Napa and Sonoma counties. Palladini is a perfect guide for nature lovers. He is quick to point out the various plants valley oaks, Oregon ash trees, manzanitas, elderberries, snowberries, Santa Barbara sedges. He can recognize birds from both their sounds and appearance. At one point, he got out of the Jeep, pulled out a spotting scope and quickly zeroed in on blue-crowned American kestrel. A stop at perennial wetlands yielded a look at wildlife captured by a wildlife camera. Palladini inserted the memory card from the camera into a laptop computer. Appearing on screen were a Western scrub jay, deer, American robin, Western gray squirrel, acorn woodpecker and black bear. The black bear got a close-up. In fact, it got so close, it apparently knocked the camera over. Walt Ranch in 2016 won county permission for 209 acres of vineyards. Estate homes were never proposed, though county zoning left 35 of them a possibility. But Craig and Kathryn Hall of HALL Wines ultimately settled on a different course for their land. They sold Walt Ranch to the Land Trust for $24.5 million earlier this year, donating $6.5 million of the purchase price. Before the Land Trust can open Walt Ranch to hikers, it must complete a management plan for the property. Land Trust CEO Doug Parker earlier this year said the plan will, among other things, determine the best places for public access. One might wonder why Walt Ranch is called Walt Ranch. Kathryn Hall's maiden name is Walt and her parents owned vineyards. Whether Walt Ranch will remain Walt Ranch now that it is a nature preserve is another question. Kimberly Howard of the Land Trust said a name change could be forthcoming at some point. What makes Walt Ranch special? I would say that Walt Ranch really well encapsulates, exemplifies, illustrates all of the reasons that our area is a recognized global biological diversity hot spot, Palladini said. It has a breadth of native plant and wildlife species. It has rare plants found only in this part of California and nowhere else on the planet. Its incredibly beautiful, he said. Overall, its really just amazing, Palladini said. Walt Ranch at a glance Facts about the preserve Size: 2,300 acres Dirt roads and trails: About 16 miles Open to public?: No, but it will be at some point. Rare plants: Jepson's leptosiphon, hollyleaf ceanothus, Napa bluecurl, narrow-flowered California brodiaea, dwarf calicoflower, Northern California black walnut Potential rare animals: Foothill yellow-legged frog, western red bat, pallid bat, western pond turtle (Source: California State Coastal Conservancy) Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan on Tuesday had a telephone conversation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, Sergei Aleinik, on the latter's initiative. They exchanged views on the Armenian-Belarusian bilateral agenda, informs the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia. The activities of the CSTO were touched upon, too. In this connection, Ararat Mirzoyan noted that he will not be able to participate in the joint meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, the Council of Ministers of Defense, and the Committee of Secretaries of Security Councils of the CSTO scheduled for Wednesday in Belarusian capital Minsk. Zhoghovurd newspaper of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: The Zhoghovurd daily has learned the details of the criminal proceedings within the framework of which Vahan Badasyan, former Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] president Arayik Harutyunyans representative on security and evacuee affairs was summoned to the RA Investigative Committee for questioning. According to the information we received, he was questioned within the framework of Article 330 of the RA Criminal Code (Public calls to commit violence, publicly justifying or advocating violence, as well as distributing materials or objects for this purpose). Armlur.am had written that Vahan Badasyan, former Artsakh president Arayik Harutyunyans representative on security and evacuee affairs, commander of the first battalion of the Hadrut defense region was summoned to the RA Investigative Committee for questioning. We tried to find out the information from his defense attorney Rafayel Martirosyan, who confirmed the information. Defense attorney Martirosyan did not want to elaborate on what criminal case Badasyan was summoned for questioning. It became known to us that he wrote a public speech on his social [media] page, which, according to the law enforcement officers, is a call to violence. But we have not yet been able to find out for precisely which [social media] post he was taken for questioning. The European Union has presented member states with a framework to give Ukraine lasting security commitments, including a mechanism for longer-term military support, the training of Ukrainian troops, and help to boost the countrys defense industry, Bloomberg reported. The draft paper, which was seen by Bloomberg, will be discussed by EU ambassadors this week and by the blocs leaders next month. It will also form the basis of consultations with Kyiv and the Group of Seven (G7) nations. The G7 members agreed at the 2023 NATO summit to coordinate a set of bilateral security guarantees with Ukraine aimed at deterring Russian aggression against the country. In turn, Ukraine has committed to continuing a series of reforms, including in the law enforcement and judicial systems, as well as in the security and defense sectors. The EU's framework program includes the following proposals: A predictable, efficient, sustainable and long-term mechanism for the provision of military equipment to Ukraine that mobilizes the European defense industry Providing training to Ukrainian armed forces Greater cooperation with the Ukrainian defense industry to boost capacity and align standards Strengthening Ukraines ability to counter cyber and hybrid threats as well as disinformation Supporting Ukraines de-mining efforts and addressing contamination caused by explosive remnants Helping Ukraine with its reform agenda relating to its EU accession process, as well as boosting its ability to monitor stocks of firearms, light weapons and ammunition and counter any illegal trafficking Supporting the countrys energy transition and nuclear safety efforts Sharing intelligence and satellite imagery The document states that support for arms supplies, as before, will be provided through the European Peace Fund, a mechanism that reimburses member states for what they supply to Ukraine. According to an EU diplomat in conversation with journalists, the initial EU plan to allocate 20 billion euros ($21.8 billion) over four years for compensating the transfer of weapons to Ukraine is at risk of falling apart because some member states, including Germany, could not agree on terms. Instead, EU countries hope to reach an agreement to allocate 5 billion euros in 2024 with commitments for ongoing support. EU leaders are also expected to discuss the European Commission's recommendation to officially begin membership negotiations with Ukraine at the December summit. Some streams of support for Ukraine from the EU are blocked by Hungary, as Budapest wants Brussels to first discuss its joint strategy toward Kyiv, said another diplomat. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of (MFA) of Armenia released a statement Wednesday in response to Tuesdays statement by the MFA of Azerbaijan. The Armenian MFA statement reads as follows: The Armenian side, once again reaffirming the political will of Armenia to make efforts towards the normalization of relations with Azerbaijan and the establishment of peace and stability in the South Caucasus, on November 21, sent to the Azerbaijani side its 6th edition of the agreement on the normalization of relations. We consider it necessary to remind that Armenia, after receiving the latest proposals from Azerbaijan, was in the process of reviewing them and had willingness to continue negotiations on the draft agreement, despite the deteriorating day by day humanitarian crisis resulting from the dire blockade in Nagorno-Karabakh. On September 19, Azerbaijan carried out a large-scale military attack against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, which resulted in the forced displacement of the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Afterwards, continuing to openly ignore the possibility of returning to the peace process and the efforts of international partners in that direction, the Azerbaijani side did not participate in the meetings at the level of heads of states first in Granada within the framework of the European political Community, and then in Brussels, despite the fact that these five-party and trilateral meetings were agreed in advance. The Armenian side continued working on the text of the agreement and considered it more effective to present it to the Azerbaijani side during the scheduled meetings. However, in order to prevent attempts to deadlock the negotiation process and aimed at achieving lasting peace in our region, the Republic of Armenia constructively sent its comments on the draft agreement. As demonstrated numerous times before, Armenia proved its readiness to resume engagement in the negotiations, guided by the following principles: . mutual recognition of each other's territorial integrity without any ambiguity and respect for it, . future delimitation process on the basis of the Alma-Ata Declaration and the most recent legitimate maps of the Soviet Union, . unblocking of the regional communications on the basis of full respect for the sovereignty and jurisdiction of states and the principles of equality and reciprocity. The Armenian side continues to believe that, despite all the difficulties and challenges, there is a real chance of establishing peace between the two countries, which can be implemented if both sides have political will. The Armenian side continues to demonstrate such will. One of its manifestations is that Armenia proposed to Azerbaijan to hold a meeting of the delimitation commission on the state border between the two countries. Azerbaijan MFA calls upon Armenia to hold talks at state border The State Revenue Committee of Armenia has informed who must submitby and including May 1, 2024a declaration of income for the reporting year of 2023. These persons are as follows: 1) State and community employees, Armenian citizens holding public office as of December 31, 2023, as defined by the Law on Public Service. 2) Armenian citizens who are participants (shareholders, equity holders, members), as of December 31, 2023, of Armenias resident commercial organizations that have declared a gross income of 1 billion drams and more in the results of 2022. 3) Armenian citizens who are considered real beneficiaries under the Law on Combating Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing. 4) Armenian citizens who received a loan of AMD 20 million or more during 2023. A vehicle exploded at a checkpoint on the American side of a U.S.-Canada bridge in Niagara Falls Wednesday, prompting the closing of four border crossings in the area, authorities said. The blast happened on the U.S. side of the Rainbow Bridge, which connects the two countries across the Niagara River. Three other bridges between western New York and Ontario were quickly closed as a precaution, and the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport began security checks on all cars and told passengers to expect additional screenings. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority posted on X, formerly Twitter, that all cars arriving at the Buffalo Airport would undergo security checks. The authority said travelers should also expect additional screenings. No further information was immediately available on the cause of the explosion. The FBIs field office in Buffalo said in a statement that it was investigating the blast, and investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were also responding to the scene. Photos and video taken by bystanders and posted on social media showed thick smoke, flames on the pavement and a security booth that had been singed by flames. Videos showed that the fire was in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection area just east of the main vehicle checkpoint. Speaking to WGRZ-TV, Mike Guenther said he saw a vehicle speeding toward the crossing from the U.S. side of the border when it swerved to avoid another car, crashed into a fence and exploded. All of a sudden he went up in the air and then it was a ball of fire like 30 or 40 feet high, Guenther told the station. I never saw anything like it. Ivan Vitalii, a Ukrainian visiting Niagara Falls, told The Niagara Gazette that he and a friend were near the bridge when they heard something smash. We saw fire and big, black smoke, he told the newspaper. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul had been briefed on the situation, their offices said. The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission reported that all four of its crossings the others are Lewiston, Whirlpool and Peace Bridge were closed. There is a CSTO event in December; I also will not participate. Armenian National Assembly (NA) speaker Alen Simonyan stated this in a briefing with reporters in the NA, answering the question why Armenian Defense Minister Suren Papikyan and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirozyan are not attending CSTO events. "Armenia has not decided to withdraw from the CSTO, but I believe my participation in this situation is inappropriate. Now the situation is that the CSTO, in fact, does not and has not fulfilled its obligations [to Armenia] in any way. What am I supposed to do if I go there? Simonyan said. When asked why he gets into the carmeaning that Armenia remains a member of the CSTOif it does not move him from point A to point B, Simonyan responded as follows: "I'm going to try to get that car working somehow, as I don't have another car at the moment." The NA speaker said that Armenias relations with the CSTO are not frozen in any way. "I informed them that I will not participate; no response yet, at least. I believe there won't be a reaction either because I'm sure they also understand the reasons for not participating. The [armed] forces of a third country [i.e. Azerbaijan] invaded the territory of the [CSTO member] sovereign country of Armenia, and the CSTO did not even give a political assessment. What are we [Armenia] supposed to do by going there?" commented Simonyan. He added: "I believe it is now the CSTO's turn here. The [other] CSTO countries should react, instead of living in an imaginary bubble that there is their reality and there is a reality in which we live, and these realities do not coincide at all. We are saying Armenia is not getting ready to leave the CSTO, but we fear that it is the CSTO that is leaving Armenia. With their actions, their statements, their speech they prove that, indeed, that organization has a problem." According to the speaker of the Armenian parliament, they have the impression that the CSTO is sending a mission, but they do not specify where they will send it. Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also announced that he will not participate in the CSTO summit scheduled for Thursday. Alen Simonyan, speaker of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenian assumes that there were no weapons in the CSTO support package which Armenia turned down. "I guess not, I can't say for sure," said Simonyan in a briefing with reporters in the NA Wednesday. Speaking about the topic of armament, the NA speaker said that Azerbaijan is attempting to present to the world that Armenia is allegedly arming itself and has offensive plans. "It can be said that Azerbaijan has everything except an atomic bomb. And today they are attempting to present to the world that Armenia is allegedly arming itself, attacking, and has offensive plans. I want to officially announce: Armenia has no intention of attacking any country, the armaments of Azerbaijan, which are bought for billions of dollars, the international community should pay attention to it and ask a question: why does Azerbaijan need that amount of weapons and ammunition? Probably, they don't have an atomic bomb only," emphasized the Armenian parliament speaker. Simonyan stressed that even in these days of the Israeli conflict, Azerbaijan is able to transport weapons to its country. At the same time, the NA speaker added that the Armenian side is constructive in the peace talks with Azerbaijan, is ready to discuss any proposal, but expects that Azerbaijan will also be constructive. Germany will provide an assistance of 84.6 million euros to Armenia in the form of grants and loans, which will be directed to the development of secondary vocational education, as well as to the implementation of new projects in renewable energy. Armenian Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan told this to reporters Wednesdayand based on the results of the Armenian-German intergovernmental negotiations in Yerevan. A protocol was signed based on the results of these talks, which were the first since 2014. Cooperation with Germany should bring Armenia closer to energy independence, which is very important for economic development, the minister noted. "Cooperation in the field of secondary vocational education should help to fill the vacant places [in Armenia] by several tens of thousands. Germany will assist also in the implementation of effective management systems at the community level," said Kerobyan. The economy minister reminded that an official representative office of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and a representative office of the Credit Institution for Reconstruction (KfW) Development Bank of Germany were opened in Armenia. "KfW has implemented projects worth about 1 billion euros in Armenia, it funds the large project Caucasian Power Transmission Network. Armenia's power transmission lines are being modernized. The German Development Bank has provided a loan for the construction of the Kaps Reservoir; the work is already underway," he noted. Kerobyan added that the German side conducted research on hydrogen production in Armenia. "I believe we will submit the draft decision to the government at the end of the year," said the economy minister. Vahan Kerobyan emphasized that overall, trade between Armenia and Germany has tripled in three years. Germany will assist the Armenian government in the integration of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh. Niels Annen, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, told this to reporters Wednesday in Yerevan. The German official noted that investments in renewable energy will enable Armenia to lower the cost price of electricity in the country. He assured that special attention will be paid to strengthening Armenia's energy independence. The Central Bank of Armenia signed an agreement on access to loans for small and medium-sized businesses in the country, Annen said. According to him, the aforesaid document signed today is a clear signal that Armenia and Germany are opening a new phase of cooperation. "We have made progress in the fight against corruption and will make additional investments in that domain. Any investment in improving the business environment should be made to overcome problems in the region as a whole. We laud the idea of the prime minister of Armenia about the Crossroads of Peace. We will present that project to German businessmen in the hope that they will continue the investments in Armenias economy," added Niels Annen. Deputy Prime Ministers Mher Grigoryan and Tigran Khachatryan held a joint meeting with the EU countries resident and non-resident ambassadors accredited to Armenia, as well as Ambassador Vassilis Maragos, Head of EU Delegation to Armenia. At the beginning of the talk, Deputy PM Khachatryan presented the measures being implemented by the Armenian government to address the primary needs of the Armenians forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian News-NEWS.am was informed by the government. Khachatryan reflected in the importance of creating preconditions for the generation of own income through work for these forcibly displaced people, as well as the importance of an effective solution to the task of providing housing for them, and emphasized the need for assistance from the EU countries in this regard. In turn, Deputy PM Grigoryan presented to his EU colleagues the possible challenges that await Armenia in the context of various scenarios of possible regional developments, the ways to overcome them, and reflected on the matters on the agenda of Armenia-EU relations. In this connection, the Armenian official stressed, in particular, the implementation of Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement, as well as the need for effective implementation of joint programs developed under the EU economic and investment plan. Also, Mher Grigoryan reaffirmed Armenia's desire and willingness to establish stable and lasting peace in its region. Subsequently, the meeting continued in the format of questions and answers. The decision of the Armenian leadership not to participate in CSTO events causes regret. This was announced by the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova. "We do not believe that this decision corresponds to the interests of the Armenian people and will contribute to the security and stability of our friendly country. The Armenian colleagues do not intend to stop their work in the statutory bodies of the organization, to prevent the implementation of the already agreed documents. Basically, it leaves open doors for Yerevan and enables [it] to join the work later. We hope that the Armenian allies will take advantage of this opportunity already in the not-distant future," she said. Zakharova emphasized that Russia is convinced that the CSTO will play an important role in regional stability in the current conditions. "A CSTO monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the decision about which is on the table as before, would be quite a weighty factor in ensuring Armenia's security, unlike the [current] EU [monitoring] mission [in Armenia], which continues to demonstrate its ineffectiveness," said the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry. Russia continues to take steps to assist Armenia and the Armenians of Karabakh. This was announced Wednesday by the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova. "This morning, a plane with humanitarian aid previously announced by the Russian government took off and headed for [Armenias capital] Yerevan. The 40-ton cargo was formed taking into account the needs of the Armenian side; it includes food and warm clothes... Considering that there were speculations in this regard, I will be even more specific. Its about blankets, a portable power station. We expect that all this will be useful, as it was formed taking into account the needs of the Armenian side," said Zakharova. "On November 13, the process of distributing humanitarian goods began on behalf of the Doctor Liza charity foundation named after Elizaveta Glinka. These are household electrical appliances and warm clothes. We welcome the efforts of the Armenian diaspora in Russia, financial assistance was provided by many regional branches of the Union of Armenians [of Russia]," concluded the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hosted a delegation led by the President of Iraq, Abdullatif Jamal Rashid, who is in Armenia on an official visit, the PMs office informs. Prime Minister Pashinyan said in his welcoming speech. "Honorable Mr. President, I am happy to welcome you and the delegation led by you to the Republic of Armenia. Your visit is significant and, in fact, historic because you are the first President of Iraq to visit the Republic of Armenia. There are rich cultural and historical ties between our countries, and I am happy to report that there is also a certain activation of economic ties. I hope that economic cooperation will deepen during your visit. Of course, the situation in the world and in the region is quite complicated now, and I will be happy to hear your assessments regarding the general situation and solutions. Honorable Mr. President, let me once again welcome you to the Republic of Armenia and express the hope that mutual visits between high-ranking officials of our countries will become more frequent as a result of your historic visit." The President of the Republic of Iraq stated in his turn. "Honorable Mr. Prime Minister, let me thank you and thank for hosting the delegation led by me in your country. We arrived yesterday and the time we spent was productive and interesting. During the meeting with the President, we discussed the relations between the two countries in various fields, as well as we talked about the current situation in Iraq, we touched on the bilateral cooperation in the political, economic, and trade spheres. We hope that it will be further strengthened. I would also like to express my support to the Armenian nation in connection with the calamity of the Armenian Genocide. I personally attended the events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Genocide. I consider it important to emphasize the role of the Armenian community of Iraq, whose presence in our country dates back to ancient times, about 10 thousand years. The people of Iraq have benefited greatly from the Armenian population, among whom there are doctors, scientists, specialists in various fields." The Prime Minister of Armenia and the President of Iraq discussed issues related to cooperation in the fields of economy, trade, high technologies, energy, water resources, and tourism. Issues related to regional security and stability, the process of normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations were addressed. Prime Minister Pashinyan presented the humanitarian problems of more than 100,000 forcibly displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh as a result of Azerbaijan's ethnic cleansing policy and the steps taken by the Armenian government to overcome them.